"May I live then?" he asked her.

She nodded.

"With my lifelong accoutrements intact?"

The women giggled, but she did not laugh. She only nodded, gravely, once again. "Then may I risk my life again, and tell you that you are only a child, and yet I have never seen such perfect beauty in all my life."

"Of course she is beautiful, Almost-King-of-Burland. She is the Flower Princess."

"No," he said. "I do not speak of her perfect face or the flowers that look harsh beside her perfect skin or the way her hair looks deep as a new-plowed field in the sunlight. I say she has the perfect beauty of a woman who will never tell a lie in all her life."

He could not have known, unless a god told him, that she had taken that most terrible of all vows when she was given to the sea at the age of five. She was bound to the truth, and though she had said not a word to him, though not even the Sea Mothers knew of her vow, he had looked at her and seen it.

"She is not a woman," said Born-among-Falling-Lilac-Petals. "She is only eleven years old."

"I will marry you," said Palicrovol. "When you are twenty years old, if I am King of Burland I will send for you and you will come to me, for I am the only king in all the world who can bear the beauty of a wife who will not lie."

She stood then, letting the flowers fall where they would, ignoring the gasps of her women. She reached out and touched his wrist, where he opened his hand to her. "Palicrovol, I will marry you then whether you are King or not."

Palicrovol answered, "My lady, if I am not King by then, I will be dead."

"I do not believe that you will ever die," she said.

Then her women wept, for she had now betrothed herself, and it could not be undone however her father might grieve or rage at her choice.

But Palicrovol cared nothing for their keening. "My lady," he said, "I do not even known your