“Why Do I Need New Robes. My Other Robes Do Not Have Any Holes.”

  I didn’t think I’d make it out of that room alive, and Windstopper, my supposedly loyal bodyguard was no help. In the end, River agreed to go with me. Once Noble Lion had set the date, I didn’t see my escort for a few days. Apparently, preparing for such an affair took a lot of preparation on her part.

  For my part, I already had more than a few robes in the colors of clan Silver Falcon, thanks to the palace staff, and Windstopper had one as well; probably in case he ever needed to appear by my father’s side during a formal meeting while we had been out on campaign. But tonight, my bodyguard was not appearing out on campaign, and he was not appearing by my father’s side.

  “Because, Windstopper,” I said to him, as I helped the mountain of a man into enough silk to make a small sailcloth, “the other formal robes my father gave to you are only in the colors of the Silver Falcon clan.”

  “I Am In the Silver Falcon Clan.”

  “You are. As am I. But we’re more than just our clan. We’re powerful in our own right. And tonight it's important that everyone sees that.”

  Windstopper looked at his reflection in the large disk of bronze by the wardrobe.

  “I Look Like a Lord.” He said in the closest thing he got to an exclamation.

  I had thought to make Windstopper’s attire a perfect match to my own, but in the end, I had decided that ‘homogenous’ was the old way of doing things. It was the Marshal’s way of doing things. I would not rob Windstopper of his own claim to power, and though he could not remember what star he had been born under – such things were not tracked so closely by commoners, as they so rarely manifested any gifts – I had decided that, along with the traditional colors of sky essence, one of two manifestations of the silver star so common in the Silver Falcon clan, a small slash of something else was in order. After all, I didn’t know of a single man within my father’s command who had a Mandate that could stop the wind. A slash of vibrant teal lined his collar, along with silver and white. It felt right.

  “You look like a Hero of our Times,” I said to him. “Now help me into mine.”

  Once my father had reached Iron Tower and officially made me his heir, my rank, and therefore my salary had increased substantially. The robes Windstopper now helped me don had cost a decent share of my new annual income and my bodyguard’s had cost twice as much on account of his size.

  Once we were dressed, standing before the copper disk, I realized they had been worth every ounce of copper and grain.

  “You Don’t Look Anything Like Your Father.” said Windstopper.

  I laughed and adjusted the robes. “That’s the point. Tonight is not about our clans or parents. Tonight is not about where we have come from. Tonight is about who we will be. It’s about what the Land Under Heaven will be for the next ten, twenty, possibly even hundred years.”

  “We Will Not Be Alive In One Hundred Years.”

  “No. But what we make will be.”

  On my own robes, my father’s silver, white, and grays were offset by slashes of black and blue for the star I had been born under. I had thought it too many colors to cram onto a single set of garments, but, given the lady’s advice, I realized now that it would be perfect for my purposes tonight. I saw now that the tailor had even taken it upon himself to include purple in the trim, which seemed to work perfectly with the other colors.

  Let the others guess at what they all meant. Purple wasn’t even a color traditionally associated with my Black Star! And even I didn’t know to what essence Windstopper’s blue-green corresponded.

  If my star and my Mandate were a battlefield, my position and formation tonight would be nearly undecipherable. Given that, I now felt I understood a small facet of the battlefield upon which River had spent her entire adult life. The game of powerful concubines was the game of attracting attention in the front rooms while removing rivals in the back. I am sure some of them used poison or daggers or assassins, or other more mundane means, but the most powerful weapon, both on the battlefield and in the Palace of Happiness, was always the Mandate from Heaven.

  Of course, once the Philosopher spoke, they would all know exactly where our prospects for the future stood, and all the misdirection leading up to it could be thrown to the wind.

  I took a deep breath and a mouthful of wine while we waited for the attendant to come lead us through the maze.

  So long as I don’t get Leaf and Sky, a future with a “Small Harvest,” I thought. Or maybe Mountain-Iron. Sounds great at first until you read that it means “Shrinking Away.” That could only be interpreted as a bad fortune.

  A last desperate desire to call the whole thing off surged through me even as the servant appeared at my door.

  With one last adjustment of my own robe, and then a pat on Windstopper’s broad shoulders, we followed the attendant through the twists and turns of the palace, to the Hall of Sixty-Four.

  The hall itself lived up to its name. While most names of halls within the palace were poetic and extremely figurative, sometimes requiring whole texts to describe how they had been dubbed, this one was surprisingly literal.

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  The room was a large square, lined on every side by pillars. Four arcades around the edges even now filled with lords that I vaguely recognized, and ladies I had only ever heard about in River’s stories.

  The young lords and ladies spoke in muted, excited tones about what they might get and raised quiet toasts for luck in the upcoming readings.

  “Do I Have To Stay One Hundred Paces Away Again.” asked Windstopper as we entered.

  “No. No, for this crowd, I don’t want you more than two steps away.”

  “Why Is Everyone Standing On The Side Of The Room.”

  “Because the floor isn’t a floor, Windstopper. It’s a chart of destiny.”

  The center of the room was open to the heavens, and though the night sky was brilliant this time of year, it was the floor that held everyone’s attention.

  Scanning the lords and ladies, I realized that they all seemed to know someone here, or many ‘someone’s. Somehow, I had never managed to make the introductions necessary to form friendships among the other clans. Such trivialities weren’t high on my father’s list, and could have proved a vulnerability besides until I manifested a Mandate.

  “It Looks Like A Floor.”

  Suddenly I was very happy not only to have Windstopper guarding my back, but to have him to talk to. We walked over toward the tiled gridwork that dominated the center of the room.

  “Look closely though. You may have seen one before, but they’re usually much smaller. You see on the north side? The eight essences of the elements. Sky and Iron for the Silver Star. That’s my father’s star. Then there’s Root and Leaf for the Green Star. Flame for Red. Water for Black. That’s my star. Then Mountain and Field for the Yellow Star.”

  “They Are Also On The Other Side.”

  “That’s right. The same eight essences on the north and the west. Where they meet they form a hexagram. Eight essences on top and eight essences on the side makes a grid of sixty four hexagrams, each delineated by the six lines – some broken, some unbroken – to indicate the combination of their essences. Are you following all this?”

  “It Is Not Hard. The Rules Are Simple. Though I Do Not Understand How Lines Are Supposed To Tell The Future.”

  He might not have seen something like this before, but Windstopper wasn’t stupid. After all, fates and reading and stars were something only the well-born could afford to get lost in. There was probably a chart of the essences in every high-born lady’s drawing room, and on every lord’s study shelf.

  But the scale of this chart was… dizzying. It lent real credence to the readings that would come out of it, as if fate itself were huge and undeniable.

  “You have me there, Windstopper. But telling the future is that man’s job.” I pointed to where a wizened old form sat alone at the northern arcade, on a cushion of every color. He was perhaps my father’s age, though the years had been harder on the Philosopher, a man who bore the weight of the stars, rather than that of a mere nation. “The Philosopher’s job is to figure out how the person, the stars and the reading of the chart all come together to form a destiny. They say he has his own very special Mandate to do it.”

  A smile slowly grew on Windstopper’s face as he took it all in, as if he stood atop a mountain and the clouds had cleared. All possibilities suddenly lay before him. Every direction was suddenly open to him. For me, it was like looking down at a thousand foot drop.

  “It's not so intimidating, once you know what you are,” said Noble Lion, sauntering up, looking resplendent in not only golden thread, but silver, white, and a duller metallic yellow as well, fibers of perhaps brass or bronze. “I’ve gotten Heaven-Earth ever since I was a boy. Twenty readings over the years and still it's always ‘the Fortress, the Fortress.’ I’m beginning to think all philosophers are in cahoots.”

  “It makes sense given your star and your Mandate,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. “Good to see you, Noble Lion. Outside of the Marshal’s meeting room, I mean.”

  “Likewise, Sparrow.” He sipped from his cup. A chaste sip of wine, perhaps to hide his expression of interest. “Have you… had a reading done before?”

  It was one thing to commit to trusting River back in my quarters, it was quite another to put her plan into action before a man who could rearrange the earth beneath his feet. But if it was a good plan before sundown and there was no new information, so…

  “Fate is fluid,” I replied cooly. A little too cooly, it felt, so I decided to deflect as the lady had advised, “Alas, my readings never seem to quite make sense for me. Guess I’ve never sprung for the expensive philosophers.”

  Noble Lion laughed. “Too true, Sparrow. Too true.”

  Good, good, I thought to myself, cast as much doubt on the process as possible, so that even if I get something dumb like Field-Field, second hexagram, “The Receptive Womb,” I could always laugh it off.

  River would have been proud of that response.

  But where was she?

  I scanned the crowd of young lords and concubines. Some men my age had even already taken wives and had brought them here tonight. It was not uncommon to marry quickly when life could be so short and heirs were essential to both clan and kingdom.

  Noble Lion seemed to be thinking something similar as he tracked my gaze. “Have you made a match yet?”

  “A wife you mean? No, not yet.”

  “I’m sure you’re resisting your father as long as you can,” Noble Lion laughed. “No doubt he’s keen to trade you away for another sliver of land in Trappersburrow, or a few dozen bushels of grain more per year, just as mine is.”

  I forced a laugh. Matchmaking among the higher ranks required tests. Lots of tests. And one of those tests was meant to prove you had a real and powerful Mandate from Heaven. After all, no one wanted to risk having a dud like me as a grandchild, no matter how many bushels of grain I came with.

  If heirs were supposed to be the direct result of a marriage, alliances were the indirect result. A common set of grandchildren had a way of making border disputes disappear and cooler heads prevail. In that context, I supposed, a reading of “The Receptive Womb” might be exactly what many of these lords and ladies sought.

  In any case, I had been right to hire my own tailor, as the colors of this younger court were as eclectic as-

  Suddenly every thought flew from my mind, because suddenly there she was, like a reflection of moonlight in the blackest of nights. River had chosen for her robes, every color and also no color. Her garments were all made up of an inky black satin that made the robes themselves all but invisible, and brought to life every shade of her blue-black hair, her shimmering skin, her eyes as deep as dark pools.

  She seemed to float across the room as she entered and took up her position by my side.

  When I could finally pull my eyes from her, I saw that every other stare within the Hall of Sixty-Four had been upon her, as well. The room had quieted as she walked – and darkened perhaps, as well – but now young lords made excuses to their wives for their distraction, and jealous glares shot like daggers towards River.

  Sharper barbs had been flung at her from more practiced hands, no doubt, and their gazes sunk into her without a splash.