POV: siri
Summary
Siri walks back into Bevalis from a stolen afternoon in the hills, untidy and ungoverned and aware that her father will be angry. At seventeen, she is the fourth and youngest of King Dedelin's children: Vivenna is the heir-bride trained for the lowland throne, Ridger the heir, and Fafen discharging the family obligation as a monk. Siri is the redundant one, which means she can afford to disappear for an afternoon and only be lectured at when she returns. The town knows her on sight. She gives bright flowers to a little knot of Idrian children — flowers stand out against the deliberately drab streets of Idris, because Austrin teaching holds that color drawing attention to a person is sin even if the color itself is not, and a kingdom without color is also a kingdom without Awakeners to work it.
In the palace kitchen, the cook Mab tells her the king is in conference with Yarda and will only send her back to the kitchen as punishment anyway. They quarrel companionably about whether Hallandren really does the things the old women say it does at its altars; Mab mutters that the lowlanders have better armies, better steel, more food, and *those things*, and that this is a bad time for a royal princess to be standing out in any way. Siri tosses her last yellow flower into the stewpot to make her point and starts chopping vanavel root — then bolts for the stables the moment Mab's back is turned and gallops away into the afternoon. Her Royal Locks drift through blond, brown, and red as her mood swings; she cannot hold them to the disciplined black her sister manages without effort.
Upstairs in his study, King Dedelin sits with a pink envelope on his desk and his old friend General Yarda standing at his shoulder. The letter is in the gaudy pink that comes only from the lowland dye houses, and its language is simple: Vivenna's twenty-second birthday has arrived, and the treaty gives him no more time. He signed that treaty as his first official act after his father's assassination, twenty years before, and it bought him peace by promising his eldest daughter to the God King of Hallandren on this day. He has always known this day would come. Yarda says the war is coming regardless — their troops are still rebuilding from autumn raids and a granary fire, the Hallandren court is louder for invasion every year, and even the failed rising of the Pahn Kahl rebel Vahr only served to focus that court back on the highlands. The point is to slow the war, not to stop it. If they keep the treaty there will at least be lowland debates and arguments, and perhaps a child born before the assault.
The arithmetic is plain to Dedelin and he hates it. To send Vivenna is to send her to her death, because the first thing Hallandren will do when war comes is use her against him — and he is honest enough to admit he would break for her. Vivenna herself knocks then, in a grey dress and a respectful black knot of hair. She has seen the colored envelope carried up to the study and has come prepared. She announces she is ready to leave, hands in her lap. Yarda nods, resigned. Outside the window a rider gallops through the courtyard scattering people — a young woman in a too-bright brown cloak with her flame-red hair down. Dedelin feels his own locks bleed red in answer.
He rereads the treaty in his head: it requires him to send Hallandren his daughter on Vivenna's twenty-second birthday. It does not specify which daughter. If he sends the wrong one Hallandren will be insulted, but they will not attack until they have the heir, which gives him at least nine more months. He turns from the window. Vivenna, he tells the room, will not go to wed the tyrant god of their enemies. He is sending Siri in her place.