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bodice, as if she were younger than I, and a murmur went through the Iolcan crowd at that—in the north, brides were always veiled, and the Mycenaean woman’s skin was dark as a shepherd’s, though even from this distance I could tell that she was beautiful.
    Her attendants sang the wedding song as they walked, their mouths like dark caves in their browned faces. I’d hummed that melody as a child, unaware of its meaning, and had wondered at the servants’ smiles. At the gate, the attendants halted, and Pelias stepped away from the procession to join his family and subjects by the porch steps. The sun had slipped to the horizon. The palace guards lit torches and passed them to the woman’s servants, who hefted them without missing a phrase of the wedding song, and the glow of the torches spread over the courtyard, brushed the faces of the attendants, shadowed their eyes and lips. I hadn’t seen such a group of silent men with torches since Hippothoe’s funeral. I felt a throb of her absence in my stomach, a flare of the constant mournful ache.
    One of the servants did not carry a flame. He stepped forward and held his arm out to the bride as if she needed help to cross the flat courtyard. I frowned, staring at the woman. She was still young, only a few years older than Pisidice, and she had been crying, as if she were going to her grave rather than her marriage bed. Her servants had braided her hair into a thick black crown and had reddened her cheeks and lips, but her eyelids were swollen and sore looking. Her eyes glittered blue-green in the torchlight like sun on the sea.
    Pisidice made a soft, scornful noise. Startled, I glanced over at her—I had almost forgotten her presence. She did not look back at me. Her eyes were on Pelias’s bride and her mouth had twisted into a knot of bitterness and envy. She could have been married a year before if Pelias had been willing to give her up. Now she would be displaced before a husband had come to claim her.
    Pelias held out his hands to his bride. From the side, his expression looked gentle; he was less fearsome when he wasn’t speaking. I looked again at the girl’s teary face and wondered what my father had said to her during the rituals on the beach. Now, though the wedding ritual did not call for it, he spoke one word: “Phylomache.” The crowd flinched again. Battle lover : an odd name for a girl, though maybe not so odd considering Atreus’s warlike court. The girl stepped forward and put her hands in Pelias’s, palms up, as if waiting for an offering.
    The wedding song ended abruptly on a high, ringing note that lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. Pelias closed his hands around the girl’s and led her through the crowd to the palace. The Mycenaean servants followed them, still carrying their torches, and the rest of the crowd surged up the stairs, girls and boys, palace servants and townsfolk and royalty, pushing me along. My breath caught in my throat, and I hiked my skirts up to my knees and ran with them, following my father and his bride.
    We rushed through the great hall and to the doors of the king’s bedchamber, and there the group stumbled to a halt, knocking me into the light-haired girl in front of me. Someone kicked me in the ankle and muttered a quick apology. I stood on my toes to look over the girl’s shoulder as bodies pressed me forward. Ahead, the bedchamber doors opened, and the boys and girls stared into it, holding their breath, a giant swell of air in their chests, expanding like love. The servants had lit lamps within the room and the large bed seemed to hover in the glow. Light picked out my father’s form and the edges of the woman’s insubstantial gown, gave her honey skin a sacrificial brilliance. Pelias raised their entwined hands, then turned and led his bride into the bedchamber, and a hoot went up from the crowd, a baying whoop like the call of wolves.
    The doors closed, and the boys began to sing, a wave of sound