One man sat a head taller than the rest. He wore a midnight-blue cloak with a hood that hid his face. His stag lifted its front two legs and pawed the air, its bi-hooves glinting like glass, though they were a hardier material, hornlike and durable. The man riding it gave no indication he noticed its restless motions. His cowled head remained turned in Kamoj’s direction.

“That’s Havyrl Lionstar,” Kamoj repeated as she pulled on her leggings. “The tall man on the big greenglass.”

“How do you know?” Lyode asked. “His face is covered.”

“Who else is that big? Besides, those riders are wearing Lionstar colors.” Kamoj watched the group set off again, cantering into the folds of the blue-green hills. “Hah! You scared them away.”

“With five against one? I doubt it.” Dryly, Lyode said, “More likely they left because the show is over.”

Kamoj winced. She hoped her uncle didn’t hear of this. As the only incorporated man in Argali, Maxard Argali had governed the province for Kamoj when she was young and was shifting his role to that of advisor now that she had reached her adulthood.

Lionstar’s people were the only ones who might reveal her indiscretion, though, and they rarely came to the village. Lionstar had “rented” the Quartz Palace in the mountains for more than a hundred days now, and in that time no one she knew had seen his face. Why he wanted a ruined palace remained a mystery, given that he refused all visitors. When his emissaries had inquired about it, she and Maxard had been dismayed by the suggestion that they let a stranger take residence in the honored, albeit disintegrating, home of their ancestors.

However, no escape had existed from the “rent” Lionstar’s people put forth. The law was clear: she and Maxard had to best his challenge or bow to his authority. Impoverished Argali could never match such an offer: shovels and awls forged from fine metals, stacks of dried firewood, golden bridle bells, dewhoney and molasses, dried rose-leeks, cobberwheat, tri-grains, and reedflour that poured through your fingers like powdered rubies.