One of the more impressive regional fashions that Cliopher occasionally saw in the Palace of Stars were the peacock-feather robes worn by the theocrats of Selrhav, a minor southern archipelago in Colhélhé: not only were the great tailfeathers layered into cloaks of shimmering green, blue, and gold, but the smaller, scale-like feathers at the top of the train were worked into tunics that mimicked the appearance of mail, and the brilliant blue body feathers embroidered onto soft slippers and braided into the priests' and priestesses' hair.

Upon discreet inquiry, Cliopher learned from the assistant secretary to one lesser priestess's personal secretary that the people of Selrhav held peacocks to be messengers of the gods (most particularly of the Sun and of a local goddess of the underworld), and so clothed the gods' intermediaries in the feathers of the sacred birds, which were raised in temple gardens specifically for that purpose.

"And then we eat the carcasses, of course, for the gods abhor waste and to feed the body is as important as to tend the soul," the assistant secretary said. She touched her fingertips to her lips, then pressed them to the bright, unmistakable tuft of peacock blue threaded into a single one of her many braids, and Cliopher, his efela tucked hidden beneath his Astandalan secretariat robes like a shameful secret, his name and his home mispronounced and disregarded, ached with envy like the ocean ached for the Moon.