The gypsies were quick to clear the stage of their instruments when the sun began to wane into layers of orange over the village. Tables were filled with roasted meats and vegetables that the villagers were filing past. They had cloths and wooden plates filled with helpings in their hands as they reached the barrels to refill their cups. They sat wherever they could with their families, all facing the poles where shackled chains were being wrapped by the sons’ fathers.

  The road through the village, from the drawbridge to the wooden walls to the edge of the migrant shacks, was a row of poles, awaiting their grooms, bordered by the inhabitants of both Talkro and Alcer, ready for something that Draka had been hearing about since the first week he arrived.

  His chair was the largest on the stage, at the center, with Maud’s next to his and Aurie’s on the other side of hers. His spotted leopard pelt had been the one that Alice draped over his, the golden lion pelt for Maud’s, and the brown bear pelt for Aurie’s. Esme and Leo brought their plates to them, one at a time. Draka wasn’t feeling very hungry as he eyed those shackles on the pole in the square. Iron chains and shackles, as if they were prisoners.

  He had asked Valmond first about whether the tradition was pagan in origin. It was Pierre who reassured him that it had come about after the Great Fires and the First Paladin’s conquest of the region because of the lack of sons to daughters. It was a way to combat the need for polygamous marriages, he had said, and to allow a sense of equality to arranged marriages among the lower classes. Pragmatic reasoning.

  “Each part is symbolic,” Pierre told him as they were setting it. “The shackles are to symbolize the man’s place being fixed, while the women—who are only fixed to the pole by a hooked ribbon that can be removed by another woman’s cleverness—show how precarious and free their place is in the world. The man may not move, but the women will never remain where they were born. The competition between the women is how valued the man is by them for their place. They are to unhook each other’s ribbons until only one remains, who then kisses him and removes his blindfold, claiming him as her husband. When she unbinds him from the pole, she frees him to take his place as the head of his new family.”

  Draka regarded the pole in wonder. Some of the tradition sounded similar to those of his own people. As he nibbled on the bits of beef, he remembered his wedding to Sophia, in the blazing fires of a pagan ceremony. His face had been masked and he was also bound, though he was stripped bare and it was a rope instead of a chain, and there was no competition. He remembered the way his sister’s own mask, made to look like a howling wolf to match his, had allowed him to see her hazel eyes beaming with excitement through their holes as she brought the girl with a raven shaped mask before him and how he felt his blood quicken at the sight of her swaying hips and those full lips curled at him. Just like their unfolding of the blinds after the dance, Sophia had removed his mask and kissed him the first time before removing her own.

  “Before Great First Mother,” he still heard her voice coo over the roar of a fire that was as wide and tall as the fur traders shop behind him, “I claim this one as mine in this life and the next.”

  “Are you alright?” Maud touched his arm.

  Draka blinked the memory away. He noticed Aurie was watching him, too. Both of them mirrored each other. Pursed brows, lips stretched thin, and eyes that were pressed narrow to study him as closely as they could to understand why he looked so glumly at that pole. At those shackles.

  Lanterns hanging by ropes that were strung from rods over the haystacks on either side of the road were being lit as the vibrant pinks and yellows were all that remained of the day’s light. The boys were being led to their poles by their fathers like lambs to the slaughter. Not all at once, Draka saw. There would be three sets of dances, three chances for girls to win husbands, and three boys shackled to the same pole, one at a time.

  Hugo was first. Must be because he’s Maud’s cousin. He didn’t look away from the pole as he was led to it by Gregor. When they reached it, Father Hagen stepped forward with his staff topped by the wooden cross, and they knelt in front of it.

  Draka glanced down the road. Monks were doing the same at every pole and every father and son was kneeling in front of them. Along with the villagers, Draka lowered his head to listen to the prayer.

  “Almighty God,” Father Hagen held a hand over Hugo’s bowed head, “Bless this man as Thou provides him with Thy choice for his wife. Grant him a prosperous and fulfilling future and be with him always, in his heart and in his conscience. Lead him away from temptations and guide him on Thy holy path by Thy Will. Amen.”

  “Amen.” Hugo and Gregor stood.

  Gregor picked up the shackles while Hugo stepped backwards until his back was against the pole. Draka could never do this to a son. Being roped in his tribe was one thing, but shackled like a prisoner was something else entirely. Gregor snapped the bands around Hugo’s wrists so that they were behind him, around the pole. He slid the key into Hugo’s pocket with a grinning wink.

  Draka set his plate on the ground beneath his chair. He lost his appetite.

  The villagers were even silent. He swore he could hear the rustle of foxes in the empty field. As he reached for his stein of ale—which was still more than half full—he caught Aurie’s eyes on him. They hovered in his for a moment, then briskly turned back to Hugo’s pole.

  Leo reached for the plate and Draka pointed for him to take the stein. Then at the jug of water.

  Leo nodded.

  Draka sat straight in his chair. Perhaps this won’t be as terrible as it seems right now. Maybe there was something more to it than this dehumanization. Hugo was to be a knight and this…was anything but what a knight should ever go through by anyone’s standards.

  It was Leta who tied the blue cloth around his head to blindfold him. She kissed his cheek. Hugo smiled. Wide and excited. That made Draka’s ears perk and his brows smoosh together.

  “Wonder who’s fighting for him,” Aurie said, leaning on her knees with her elbows.

  “This is where the dowries would be counted if you hadn’t made the public calling outlawed,” Maud said to Draka.

  Draka nodded. At least that part had worked. Although a part of him wondered if it was the one bit of control the men had over who they married that he had taken away by doing that. Now, they were selected prior by their parents based on anything the parents decided. A good father and mother would think about what their son wanted, Draka imagined. An ambitious set of parents would decide merely on dowry size and other material gains, regardless of their son’s wants or needs. There was no winning, really.

  Eight girls stepped forward with long, wide ribbons draped over their arms that were tied to iron rings wide enough to fit around both shackles at once. Draka shifted toward the edge of his seat when he saw familiar faces among them. Balthazar's daughter, Emma; Andre’s and Chase’s sister, Chloe; and two of the gypsy girls apparently had dowries equal to what Gregor was willing to allow. The other four were Alcrois girls.

  “Chloe? Didn’t expect that,” Aurie shook her head. “You’d think they’d want her to wait for Raphael.”

  “She can’t, remember,” Maud shook her head. “Balthazar’s her mother’s cousin.”

  “Right, I forgot,” Aurie shook her head. “Poor thing. Emma’s going to unhook her quick.”

  The girls went to the hooks jutting from the pole around Hugo, each at the same level as his waist, and placed those wide rings on them. The hooks were flat. They came straight out and turned straight upward. No curve at the end, just one long straight edge. They had centimeters to work with.

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  Draka grabbed his chin as he tried to think how this all worked as the girls let their ribbons unravel from their arms like stripes of a maypole while they walked as far as they could without letting go of the ribbons.

  Each of them were in simple dresses, but different than what he had ever seen villagers wear before. No, specific for this. Their shoes were laced up their ankles. He could see their ankles. The dresses were thick material, too. Burlap, even. Tight around the hips, around the chest, around the shoulders, but not the arms, and enough over the legs that it wouldn’t hike up too far—Draka narrowed his eyes. He was paying attention now.

  The sons’ fathers began drumming from behind the sitting observers. The Ribbon Dancers kept hold of the ribbons as they raised one hand in exactly the same way. They circled the pole, wrapping the man in colorful twirls, then stopped and every other turned, switching hands. They bent their knees, meeting the eyes of the one they faced.

  A salute.

  The ones who had not turned before, did so with a switch of hands, and they returned the way they began, unwrapping the man on the pole. The drums kept the same beat as they followed around the pole to do the same, one more time.

  Draka’s mouth slowly fell open as he saw what those bent knees, those meeting eyes, those dresses, all was leading up to. The dress wasn’t just a dress, those turning bows weren’t just a simple moment in a dance, this was no simple competition. As the dancers returned to where their ribbons were straight, Draka’s eyes widened. His heart stilled in anticipation. The dress was their armor. The bows were salutes between enemies.

  This was war.

  “Until you healed me, I would never make it to this part,” Maud said with a huff of disappointment. “I could never hold on with one hand.”

  The dancers lowered their raised arms and turned one way, meeting gazes again, bowed heads, then turned the other way to meet gazes, bow once more, and finally face the man they desired.

  The drums stopped. Draka held his breath.

  Wooden sticks were snapped together in time.

  This time, the drums were like the beat of war drums, heavy and full of bass, quicker than a runner’s heartbeat.

  The Ribbon Dancers encircled the pole, spinning so their skirts flew outward like cup saucers. That’s when the drums tripled their pace.

  One cartwheeled behind another. Her ribbon wrapped the other’s and lifted it from the hook in a blink. Another spun and ducked under hers to straighten with her ribbon taunt so quickly that dust rose from the road to cast a drifting shadow over the pole. It lifted that one off its hook at the same time. Draka leaned back in his chair, trying to focus on the blurred lines of ribbons and colorful spinning dresses in acrobatic battle through drifts of shadowy clouds.

  Ribbons were flying from hooks. Girls stumbled to the ground and scrambled to keep from being trampled by the fray, sometimes pulled by their own family members into the crowd of observers. The remaining dancers spun and cartwheeled, somersaulted and vaulted, dodging around each other around the pole. They somehow did all this with their ribbons held in one hand with a skill that struck Draka with awe.

  The drums beat faster and faster. The remaining ribbons wrapped tighter and tighter around Hugo. Chloe had hers unhooked by one of the Alcer girls but backflipped over another to replace it on another hook. Draka smiled proudly as Chloe did a somersault that ended with another flip over the girl who nearly took her from the dance, defeating her with the brush of a ring whipping through the dirt to crash into a bail of hay. Now he understood why they lined the road with the stacks. The hay bale nearly exploded from the impact. The Alcer girl screamed in frustration while her father and mother dragged her back and Chloe danced on against the remaining three.

  Maud tapped Draka’s arm and pointed to Emma, who was in a duel with another Alcer girl, matching somersault with somersault until their ribbons were tightly woven together, then back again, all while circling the pole to keep away from Chloe and her foe. Emma was unhooked, however, when the Alcer girl straightened with a twist that wrapped herself toward the pole, using Emma’s as the taunt ribbon. Emma’s ribbon unraveled like a wind blade that struck Chloe hard on the shoulder and her foe in the face. Chloe let go of her ribbon to grab her shoulder with a hiss just in time for her former foe’s ribbon to miss catching her leg in a violent whip through the dirt. Emma’s foe had won.

  Draka was on the edge of his seat. He had never seen anything like it in his life. This…this was how Aurie had chosen her husband?

  He turned to find her shaking her head. She must have hoped for Emma or Chloe to win Hugo’s hand. A part of him wondered which one. But also, how brutally she must have been in order to gain Balor’s hand. How merciless? This girl had used Emma’s ribbon to strike another hard enough in the face that she had blood gushing between her mother’s fingers from her cheek. And Chloe was crying in her father’s arms, gripping her shoulder.

  The victor? She dropped her ribbon and swayed gloriously to Hugo with the smirk of a conqueror as she took his head in both her hands, planting her lips on his for a long, heated kiss.

  Draka looked for Enya, who nodded. The Clerics were already moving to the wounded girls. And there were many of them. Just like a battle, there were wounded all along the road, as the victorious were unbinding their conquests, Clerics were tending the wounded with glowing hands. Draka started to rise from the chair, but Aurie reached to stop him. He only now noticed that she had changed seats with Maud.

  “Not yet,” She said, looking between him and Enya. “Trust me. This is normal. You’ll end up doing it again. Do you heal during or after the battle is done?”

  “Blight on me, after,” Enya huffed. Draka blinked Enya up and down. “What?”

  Draka shrugged. Thumbs up. You look nice, he hoped she understood. Then, to Aurie, he nodded. We’ll wait.

  Hugo and the girl had their eyes fixed as she dug into his pocket for the key to his shackles. Once his wrists were unbound, he was brought from the pole.

  She took his hand and brought him forward a few steps. Then she stopped him. Chloe, still rubbing her shoulder, begrudgingly stood, just as the others did, and they surrounded the two in another circle. Draka pursed his brows again.

  “This is when they admit that she bested them and they stand as her protectors against any others who may wish to challenge her claim over him,” Aurie whispered to him with a lean. Now, that, Draka understood.

  The girls bowed to Hugo and his victor, then turned to face away from them. The drums beat like a heart steeped in passion while the victors danced around their man, who stood like a confused fool at her display. And, honestly, the same look Draka had on his. If not for Aurie’s hand resting on his arm, he might have felt himself shying away from the display. Hugo’s bride was whipping her hair, kicking her heels when she faced him, and kicking her feet at the girls she had defeated when she was turned from him. She wagged her dress, swished her hips, and danced around him a few rounds, before putting her arms around him and placing one of his hands on her hip and the other on her face.

  This part, Draka couldn’t help seeing the roots in what his own people did, it was steeped in the primal sexuality of it all. She was claiming him where all could see. The only difference was that Hugo was wearing clothes and she wasn’t branding him with a hot iron next to his genitals during the ritual. Well, and a few others. For the most part, it wasn’t as debauched as he expected. Her dance was sensuous, but not so much that it was grotesque, and mostly covered from the eyes of the villagers. He wondered who would be on the stage if he wasn’t here, who would be able to see into the circle, who would see what Hugo was seeing, what the girls who had been defeated were blocking them from seeing. And when it was done, after less than a minute, she lifted herself on her toes and pulled Hugo down the rest of the way to kiss her once again. And the circle broke.

  Draka blinked away the awe.

  “Imagine if that was you on the pole,” Aurie said as Raphael was being led to the Ribbon Pole by Balthazar for the next dance. “I’ve been told Queen Isabella would be on it. But who else, you think?”

  Draka turned to her with a raised brow.

  “Who do you think would win?” Aurie stood from the chair so Maud could take her place again. “Who would you want to win?”

  Draka shook his head, never taking his eyes from Aurie as she sat back in her own chair, and he left them there even as the drums began the beat of the next dance, though Aurie did her best not to return his gaze. When she did, her lips curved ever so slightly, causing her pale blue eyes to curve upward with them. And Draka finally knew the answer to both.

  He turned back just in time to see Anita, the eldest of Hugo’s sisters, send another girl’s ribbon ring bouncing across the faces of three Alcer girls at once and winced on their behalf.

  From Aurie, he heard a chuckle, “I taught her that.”