Dirva did not knock on the door; the matchmaker already knew we were there. She was approaching middle age, a thin woman with a sharp nose. Her hair was cut short, and her clothes were threadbare and a size too large. She had a willful carelessness about her own presence that intrigued me. She had that imperious remoteness of a trained and polished shaper, a sense of remove, which permeated the air around her. She was a fortress. She looked at me, and it burned me alive. I gasped. I held onto the door frame for support. “Another like you, Dirva.”

“He is not here for that,” Dirva said. He stepped slightly in front of me. He had grown steely. He did not like her.

She turned and walked into the house. “Such arrogance,” she said.

Dirva followed her, and I followed him. She led us to a back room in the house and pointed to a couch. “She will be here soon,” the matchmaker said. She left the room without looking at either of us.

I sat next to Dirva on the couch. “Who is she?”

“A matchmaker.”

“Which one?”

“Shayma Hepzah’Brahim.”

The name was familiar. She was well known in the community, highly respected. A well-known shaper invariably has two qualities: prodigious talents and a deep sense of discretion. This meant she knew about Dirva, and his secrets, and that he had chosen her because he knew she would keep those secrets from his match. “Why doesn’t she like you?”

“The same reason she doesn’t like you. The same reason no shaper will ever like you, Ariah,” he said gently.

Some minutes later, the door opened again. The matchmaker came in first, her face a perfect, empty mask. She carried four wineglasses in her hands. My heart beat a fast rhythm when I saw them. Just behind her was a young woman dressed in factory coveralls. There was grease on the elbows of her suit, and her hair was wrapped in a Semadran headscarf. She lit up when she saw Dirva. She and the matchmaker sat on the couch across from us. The matchmaker opened Dirva’s bottle of wine and poured it. All eyes turned to me.

I did not really know what I was supposed to do. Typically it’s your parents that bless the match, and if they are your parents, it means they’ve already been matched themselves and seen the blessing done. I only knew of the process secondhand, through hearsay. I looked at the matchmaker, helpless, frozen. She blinked, but it was a blink that communicated a good deal of impatience and frustration. “There will be introductions,” she said, “and you will ask your questions. You and Dirva may speak in private. You make a decision. The courtship either proceeds, or it ends. If it proceeds, we drink the wine.” Her voice was soft and clipped and as expressionless as her face.