All were in their best; she sat stiffly in her dress uniform, thinking wryly of the last time she'd worn it at Daurthunnicar's feast. Although this time it was with the regulation skirt. Swindapa couldn't have looked more different, in a white dress with lace panels, a broad-brimmed hat beside her on the pew, her hair fastened up with pearl-headed pins. Certainly an improvement on a collar and leash. Fancy clothes were going cheap on-island these days; overalls were harder to get. Still, it looked wonderful.

The organ started, thundering in the high vaulted white spaces of the church. She'd attended Baptist churches in her childhood, of course-mostly built out of weathered pine, down sandy tracks and surrounded by rattletrap cars.

Not much like this Congregational one, three-storied snowy spire and stately white walls on what passed for a hill on this sandspit island. We had better singing, though. Everyone stood. The sound was like a subdued slither under the trembling of the instrument, a rustle of cloth as people looked back toward the entrance.

Martha Stoddard stood there. She held a bouquet of flowers; otherwise she wore only another of her subdued but elegant gray suits.

"Silly to pretend I'm a girl," she'd said. Alston's lips quirked slightly. No side on that woman. Good-looking, too. In a spare sort of way; excellent bones, and those eyes would be full of mind and will when she was ninety. Now why don't I ever meet anyone like that? That wasn't quite the problem, of course, but…

Cofflin was waiting at the head of the aisle, sweating under the collar of his formal suit, looking pale. Looking rather like a bull waiting for the second blow from the slaughterhouse sledgehammer, in fact, or a man wondering desperately if he'd done the right thing.

The minister stood at the altar as the bride and her party walked down the isle. "Dearly beloved," she began.

"Well, there's one superstition disposed of," Alston said.

"Hmmm?" Cofflin asked.

He'd recovered most of his color by the time the outdoor reception began to wind down, and he was wandering about with his wife, talking to people and nibbling at the cake on his plate. Irreplaceable nuts and sugar and candied fruit had gone into the wedding cake, as well as flour made from grain the Eagle had brought back from Britain.

Alston looked over at him, and when she glanced back the remains of the piece on her own plate were gone. Swindapa was licking her fingers, grinning unrepentantly. Sometimes you can remember that she's still a teenager. Just turned eighteen, to be precise.

"What superstition?" Cofflin asked.

"About catching the bouquet," the captain said. It had been pure accident; the thing came flying at her face and she grabbed by instinct.

"It might come true," Martha observed.

"When pigs fly," Alston said.

"Congratulations again," a voice said; Ian Arnstein, with Doreen. They were holding hands.

Damned mating frenzy, Alston thought, smiling slightly. Maybe there's something in the air here in 1250 B.C. Or maybe it was just that people felt the loneliness pressing in on them and sought comfort where they could find it.

The ex-professor went on: "Have you mentioned what we discussed to the chief yet?"

"I didn't want to impose," Alston said dryly. "It is his wedding day, you know."

"Oh… sorry… bit of an obsessive-compulsive…" Arnstein floundered in embarrassment., "Always was socially challenged…"

"What did you discuss?" Martha Cofflin asked sharply.

"Well, the captain and I had this appalling thought."

Best get it over with, Alston decided. "We were talking about Isketerol's ships, and I mentioned that they could sail the same course to the Americas that we did, if Isketerol was keepin' his eyes open. Which he was."

Cofflin seemed to choke on a piece of the cake. "They could!" he wheezed, looking around.

"Easy. It's followin' winds most of the year, on the southern course. Ships no bigger did it routinely back in the early days after Columbus. Damnation, people have taken rowboats across the Atlantic. It's all a matter of knowing what's where, and how far, and the wind and current patterns. I may have made a mistake persuading him to come here, but he's so damned useful."

"Tartessians are sneaky," Swindapa said. "And greedy. They don't liked we trade our own bronzework to anyone. At sea they sink boats coming from, ah, you call it Ireland? Yes, the Summer Isle, we say. And amber traders from the mainland they sink, toos." Her features thinned to rage for a moment: "Theys help the Sun People invade our land."

Doreen nodded. "They want a monopoly," she said. "Tin's scarce here. Britain and northwestern Spain are the only sources these people know west of Bohemia and the Caucasus."

"The Tartessians are sort of upstarts, who've been getting quasi-civilized over the past century or so," Arnstein added. "They've copied the eastern civilizations somewhat, adapting them to their own patterns-rather like the Japanese with us. They're not as set in their ways as most people here-and-now."

Cofflin brushed a few crumbs off his jacket. "Well, so the locals could sail here. That's a bit startling, but why's it appalling?"

"Because piracy's hot, here," Alston said. "Down in the Mediterranean, from what Isketerol's let drop, anyone will attack anyone, if they think they can get away with it- ships, and 'longshore raids, that's where pirates make most of their loot anyway. And this island is the richest prize on earth. We underestimated the value of our goods. Badly. One small shipload would make a successful pirate the richest man in the world."

"Oh." Cofflin thought. "They couldn't do much against guns, could they?"

"Not the first time. After that we'd be out of ammunition. What's more, we're so short now that we can't even train people to use the few guns we do have. I saw the locals in operation in Britain. These people-peoples-are warriors; they don't scare easy."

"You're right," Cofflin said, wincing. "Those Indians we met the first day, a couple of them kept right on coming. Guess they realized all a gun can do is kill you, and they just weren't that scared of dying."

"We'd better start training a militia to use weapons we can manufacture," Alston said.

"We'll have gunpowder eventually," Martha observed.

"That's then, this is now. Even when we do, the locals are going to pick up tricks fast. Possibly not democracy or women's rights, but weapons? You bet. And we can't stay out of contact with the locals, not if we want to do more than decay into a bunch of illiterate potato farmers in a couple of generations. This island's too barren." She paused, frowning. "It might be better if Mr. Isketerol stayed here, rather than returning to Tartessos…"

"Thank you for that delightful end to the day," Cofflin said, turning on Arnstein. "Sorry, Professor, but I was just beginning to think we could relax a little."

"No, no, no, man, it ain't a sick cat, you can't tell its temperature by running a thermometer up its ass. You've got to, like, look at the color. Really look."

Marian Alston stopped a moment at the anguished cry, watching the group around the forge. Always a pleasure to watch someone who really knows what he's doing, she thought.

The blacksmith was a tall man, lean but with ropy muscle all along his bare sweat-slick arms and running under the thick canvas apron he was wearing. He was mostly bald on top, but a long ponytail of brown-streaked gray hair fell down his back, and a walrus mustache of the same color hung under sad sherry-colored eyes, like those of a basset hound hoping for a pat and expecting a kick. He held a rod of metal in a pair of pincers, turning it to show how it went from black to cherry-red to a fierce white at the tip.