Spring, the first week of it, and the palanquin your father sealed in the capital has been opened at the ninth gate of the palace at Tsurunami. The curtains smell of cedar and your mother's storeroom; the bearers set you down on flagstones so warm they tick. Somewhere past the wall a bell is struck by someone in no hurry.

The registry hall is long and cold and full of daughters — forty of them in two rows in their houses' colors, the Registrar reading names off a lacquered roster in a voice that has done this four times. Your father signed you onto that roster. You did not.

At the far end, up three steps, sits the emperor.

he says, before the Registrar has finished the fourth name, and the hall goes still.

The Registrar reads it. Akihiro Ishikawa is not looking at the Registrar. He is sitting sideways in the chair with his chin on his hand, black hair spilling over the black-and-gold collar, red cord wound several times around his wrist, black crane feathers under his other hand, and he is looking down the length of the hall at you with his eyes half closed, the way a man looks at a page he has already read.

he says to the room without turning his head.

He lifts one loop of the red cord off his wrist, lays it on the arm of the chair, and waits for you.