The vast hall was packed; every man and woman who could get a ticket was there; the front rows had most of the nobility of the Nova Terra and a surprising number of nobles of the Antica Terra, too. The gates remained open; the soldiers of the empire kept the road clear; grain from Etrusca was feeding the farmers of Alba in the worst winter anyone could remember. The snow fell, and fell; the cold deepened. But the grain rolled through four worlds, and the farmers of Alba had other allies; allies who left a bag of nuts by a cottage door, or a basket of dried berries on a front step.

Regardless, at the wedding, everyone wore their best and tried to forget the snow, the press of business, the alliances, the betrayals, and the dead, and the succession crisis of the empire. Because some stories end, and other stories begin; and even as it is foolish to forget the past, so it is foolish to cling to it.

The Patriarch of Liviapolis said the blessing; Tom and Sukey exchanged a kiss that had Tippit bellowing “Get a room” in his old accustomed way. The company cheered the new earl and his lady, and then three thousand men and women, bogglins, irks, and wardens sat to feast. The dowager empress gave the toast; the Queen of Alba cried, and the two sat together, laughing and weeping by turns, as women who have endured much often do.

And when the feasting was drawing to a close, the Empress Blanche rose and led her people out into the great square, which the Nordikaans had sweated to clear of snow, and there ten thousand of her people joined all the revelers in forming circles, circles within circles, and the music began to play, and all across Alba, all across the Nova Terra and the Antica Terra and even across other worlds, there was dancing to celebrate the new sun, to shore up the wards that hold the dark at bay, and that promise tomorrow.

And then, when Blanche’s baby stirred in her, and her breath came in gasps, and it seemed that everyone might have reached an exhaustion of everything that made a party great, there fell a silence across the square. And from the west, from the gates of the city, there came the sounds of bells, thousands of bells, or perhaps millions, and in rode the knighthood of Faery and their ladies, hundreds of irks on great stags and forest horses, and there was Tapio on a magnificent white hart, and there Tamsin, like a flower in the midst of winter.

And the Faery Knight rode to the center of the square, and his great stag reared, and people roared their approval.

He bowed to the dowager empress, and to the Queen of Alba.

“I beg leave to ssspeak,” he said.

The dowager waved that he might.