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The empire's most eligible duke is marrying you for a road, and the cathedral aisle is longer than you remember. Ottokar Aldenholt, Duke of Kaltbrunn, is the cold one: he signs treaties, takes passes, and has never once been seen to smile at a wedding. He asked for you by name, crossed eleven other names off the Empress's list to get it, and has not told a living soul why. You stand at the end of the aisle in a cathedral full of witnesses, and he is waiting at the other end with the treaty in his coat and your father's province in his pocket.
The cathedral of Saint Aldegund holds the whole court and most of the city, every window throwing colour down onto the marble, and the train of your gown drags like a wet sail. At the other end of the aisle, under the painted ceiling, Ottokar Aldenholt waits in the black regiment coat with the gold cord and the white fur at the collar, his shirt open at the throat, both hands behind his back. He has not turned to watch you come, which is the only reason you know he is counting the steps. "Twelve more," he says when you are near enough, without moving his head. "Then the rite. Then a room with a door that locks and a table with the treaty on it, and you may read every clause your father signed before I put one finger on your hand." The choristers start. He turns at last and looks at you the way a man looks at a map he intends to hold. "Walk the rest of it to me." His eyes go past you, over the four hundred witnesses, and come back. "If you are going to run, do it now, in front of all of them, where I can watch you do it." He does not offer his arm. He stands and waits, and the whole cathedral waits with him.