‘I don’t understand.’ His eyes flicked from face to face, his first and fourth wife seeming to form an unfamiliar alliance in defence of his daughter.
‘You think she’ll be safe here; safe with Cole? Cole may only be fifteen but he is his father’s son. The same blood runs through both their veins and the same darkness shadows both of their hearts.’ No one moved as Farah spoke. It felt like an age since she’d been seen, let alone heard, and the force of her will bore down on her husband. ‘Do you trust me so little, that you think I won’t give you a son of your own? You’re so desperate that you would trade your daughter off for a substitute heir?’
‘You don’t know it’s a boy, Farah.’ Erlon stated quietly and anger flared in Farah’s eyes.
‘If I had an inkling that it wasn’t, do you think I would have carried it for all these months, enduring the sickness it brought on me?’ She stabbed a finger at her stomach. ‘By the blood of our daughter, I would have cut this child from me if I weren’t certain it is the boy you so desperately want!’ Tears spilled from her eyes and she stepped away from Kelill’s supportive arm. ‘Do you know why my father matched me to you?’
Erlon stared at Farah, stunned. ‘It was a good match?’
‘He sent me to you, to get me away from Yorrell. He was willing to match me away from my clan to keep me safe.’
‘Safe from what?’ Erlon’s hands flew out from his sides in exasperation. Did he really not see? How could he not see?
‘From Yorrell!’ Farah was right in front of him now; the only thing separating them was her huge pregnancy and a tiny sliver of light. ‘When Yorrell sees something he likes, he’ll do anything to claim it, no matter the price. He was furious when I was sent away, enraged that his uncle had taken his favourite play thing and sent it off to match with a daari. I should have been a first wife, not a fourth, but it was worth it to escape him. If you leave Lidan here, you will never see her again. The girl she is, and the woman she will become, will die. She will never be the same.’
‘But she’s matching to Cole…’ His defence faded under the sheer force of Farah’s gaze.
‘If you believe that, then you’re a fool and I don’t know you at all.’ She shook her head and put her hand gently on his chest. The dana stiffened but did not move to interrupt. ‘You think you know Yorrell, but there are shadows in him hiding things you have never seen. Don’t leave Lidan, or any of your daughters here to discover them.’
Erlon’s eyes met those of his gathered wives, then Lidan’s, lingering there as he registered the fear and revulsion written on her face. Finally, he saw. ‘What am I going to tell him? I can’t just say no.’
‘Da?’ Lidan stepped forwards, taking the focus from Farah and allowing her to slip back to a chair provided by Kelill. The daari looked down at his daughter. ‘I’m thirteen. I’m not allowed to match until I’m eighteen—the Law protects first daughters. You tell Yorrell I’m not old enough. You don’t say no, you say, not yet.’
It was the most diplomatic response she could think of. It cut away the stark refusal her mothers wanted and found somewhere in the middle, protected by the Law all clans adhered to. First daughters could not match before their eighteenth birthday, and a plague of ngaru wasn’t going to change that. Erlon waited a moment and glanced at the dana. Her green eyes levelled on her daughter but there was no way to tell if she was proud or happy or furious under the perfect mask of her pale face. With a slight nod, she agreed.
‘Very well,’ the daari submitted with a sigh. ‘I will see what I can do.’ He left them standing in the tent, the door flapping closed in the cool evening breeze.
Farah let go a long sigh and shook her head. ‘I hope it works, for your sake.’ Their eyes met. Lidan saw fear and doubt, and her blood ran cold. ‘He won’t get out of it without paying a heavy price.’
Kelill murmured something about checking on the children before slipping out into the gathering night with Farah. They left Lidan with her mother, alone for the first time in months, standing in complete silence. Lidan felt as though a gale, until now hammering against her and forcing her backwards, had suddenly fallen away. Her body felt light, her muscles relaxed and she allowed her shoulders to drop, relief taking the place of panic. For now, she was safe from Yorrell and whatever plans he had simmering in his head.
Her mother refilled her wine cup and held it out to Lidan. She stared at it, uncertain and surprised.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t need something to settle your nerves.’ Sellan pressed the cup into Lidan’s hand and went to sit in the empty chair Farah left behind. ‘Quite the master stroke telling Farah of Yorrell’s plan.’
Lidan didn’t answer. Instead she drained the wine and clutched the empty cup for comfort. She struggled to find somewhere to comfortably rest her gaze, so she focused on the floor. If there was a lesson to be learned from her mother’s harsh hand and forked tongue, it was not to speak until asked a direct question, and then keep it brief. She felt the scrutiny of her mother’s eyes and lifted her face.
‘It was a move I should have thought of.’ The dana remained perfectly still. ‘How did you know about Farah’s past?’
‘I didn’t,’ Lidan replied.
‘Then how did you know to send her a message?’
‘I heard Yorrell ask Da if his cousin had given him a son yet.’ She shrugged, wondering at how simple the idea had seemed at the time when she’d hurried to Raeh and asked her to pass on a message. ‘Farah must have known Yorrell before she matched with Da, and if she agreed it was a good match, then perhaps I was worried over nothing.’
‘And she didn’t—a gamble you played and won. No doubt you knew how much stock your father places in her word.’ The dana stood and took her daughter’s shoulders in her hands. Lidan looked up and tried not to squirm. ‘I’m impressed.’
Lidan couldn’t help frowning. This wasn’t what she imagined her mother’s reaction would be. ‘I thought you wanted me to make a good match?’
‘Ah, but I do, Liddy.’ Sellan’s hand stroked her cheek, cold fingers against hot, flushed skin, then stepped away. ‘I intend you to match with a great man, should one present himself, but you won’t become the dana of another clan. You’ll be the dana of the Tolak clan. You are the heir and it is your right. But, if Farah has a boy…’
A chill blew through the open door of the tent and dimmed the light of the fires as Lidan swallowed a hard kernel of fear. She might be her father’s heir now, but that could change in a matter of weeks, perhaps days.
‘So tell me, child. Do you want to remain your father’s heir, or become some worthless minor daughter, usurped by a squalling babe?’
‘I…’ Lidan’s heart pounded and she picked at the seam in her skirt as she searched for the words. ‘I do. I want this more than anything.’
‘Is that so?’ Sellan folded her arms and eyed her daughter carefully. Lidan gave a quick nod, then glanced away, heat rising in her cheeks to declare her shame. She didn’t like where this was headed. It felt wrong, like partaking in a plot that she had tried to hold herself apart from.
Sellan stepped in close, less than an inch from Lidan’s nose, and her presence blocked out the world. ‘So what are you willing to do, to claim what is rightfully yours?’
Chapter Thirty-nine
The Corron, Namjin Range, the South Lands
Her sleep was restless, haunted by the imagined snarls and screams of the ngaru and the ache in her heart left by her admission to her mother. As she lay staring at the glowing coals in a nearby brazier and listening to her father snore, Lidan wondered if all her efforts to protect Farah’s child from her mother’s schemes and to convince her father of her worth had been for nothing. If that child was a boy, what would she have to do to keep her place among the clan?
Lidan had no desire to leave her home, or match to a man she didn’t know. Perhaps when she was older the prospect might not seem so terrifying, but for now it was an awful proposition. She knew her reasons fo
r wanting to remain with her people—she felt, in her bones, that it was where she was meant to be. She was meant to be her clan’s leader, meant to take her father’s place when he was gone. On this one thing alone, she and her mother agreed.
It was hot; hotter than any night previous, and her skin beaded with sweat. She kicked off her blankets and, for the first time in months, cursed the warming coals beside her bed. Certain she would look no better than a ngaru when the sun rose, she lay on her back and prayed to the ancestors for some rest. Sleep claimed her well past midnight, the wide glowing moon vanishing behind clouds and finally plunging the range into darkness.
*
Daari Erlon waited for his daughter beside the cooking fires and nodded as she approached, rubbing the sand of sleep from her eyes. Above, the sky rolled with clouds, dark and low, driven from the south by a warm wind. It felt strange after so many months wrapped against the cold for the day to be so warm before the sun had barely risen, but it was a joy to leave her coat behind and feel the air on her skin.
Raeh handed her a bowl of vegetable stew and hurried off after one of the girls, yelling at them to stop hitting their sister and eat their breakfast. Lidan ignored the noise and watched her father, reading the signs in his shifting feet that he had something to say.
‘Today may not be pleasant,’ he started with a knowing look in his eye, watching as she blew on a spoonful of stew and listened. ‘I might not be given a choice.’
Biting the inside of her lip, Lidan placed the bowl on a table and sighed. ‘I understand…’
‘I spoke more to Farah last night, and I want you to know, this is not a match I support. Under any terms.’
She felt a smile spread along her lips and Erlon raised his hand to stop it. ‘That doesn’t mean I can refuse it outright. Every daari is looking for a way to match his children to those of the others. I have four other proposals from the clans I need to consider for your sisters, yours being the fifth and most important. I’m going to need a good reason to refuse it.’
Lidan nodded and her gaze drifted to the ground. He was right—today was going to be unpleasant.
‘Liddy,’ he crouched in front of her and touched the leather of her knife sheaths. No longer disguised by the length of her coat, the handles of both knives stood proudly exposed, the straps of the holsters wrapping around her thighs under the fabric of her split skirt. ‘You know how to use these?’
She nodded and grew still. She had trained with Loge every day since they left the Caine behind. There was a warning in her father’s voice and worry in his eyes. It was as if he knew he was leading her into danger.
‘When we get up there, you put them on the table, beside my axe. Let them be seen in the light.’
‘Shouldn’t I keep them close?’
‘A good fighter can get to their weapon from the other side of the room. The table shouldn’t stop you.’ He tapped the sheath. ‘Putting them on the table shows your strength and your status. Show them you aren’t a toy or some pretty thing to be looked at and fought over.’
Lidan set her jaw and nodded again, her heart thumping with an injection of pride. She would stand beside her father and show the other daaris who she was. She was not a brood mare, to be traded over wine and laughter. She was the heir.
*
The daaris filed up the incline and through the gate of the Namjin village, their seconds and heirs following and dismounting in the common as the village folk left. Yorrell emerged from the hall and waved them inside, his eyes finding Lidan in the crowd almost immediately. This time she threw a glance at her father, standing at her side with one hand on the small of her back, and saw his eyes narrow in response. Her words the night before and the warning from Farah had hit home—now he saw what she’d seen all along.
Her heart swelled. The previous day, he’d been ready to throw her to these dogs like a scrap of meat, but now he saw the truth he’d been blind to. She lifted her chin and walked through the door, paying no mind to Yorrell or his son loitering in the shadows. Yesterday she looked down to avoid his gaze; today she passed by as if he wasn’t there at all.
Inside, men worked to raise hatches in the roof, standing on ladders and opening portals to permit light and fresh air into the hall. Each portal stood open about a foot, wedged in place by thick lengths of timber braced against the frame of the roof. The gaps in the thatch were enough to let a breeze flow in, without the risk of rain pouring through in the wet season. It was a welcome change to the dim, smoky interior Lidan had been subjected to for almost a week.
Tine-women poured cups of wine and laid out platters of food: roast meat and root vegetables, flatbreads and preserves, as well as rare fruit hardly seen in the dry season. When the rains came, the bush would burst with the stuff, but for the moment it was a delicacy. Yorrell had saved his most spectacular hospitality for the final day of the Corron, yet it left no impression on Lidan other than sickness. What others might have seen as a potent display of status, she saw as audacious and crude—excess at a time when the people of the South Lands could least afford it.
The daaris and heirs gathered at the table, their seconds standing behind them. All reached for their axes and placed them on the table. They turned the handles inward to the cold fire pit and waited. Lidan felt a nudge and realised with a start that her father had elbowed her. Her mind flicked into action and she remembered his instruction.
She took the hilts of her knives and drew the blades from their sheaths, the metal singing as it left the leather and shone in the watery light of the hall. Eyes from across the room fell on her hands as she laid the knives on the table, turning them so the apex of each blade pointed towards her. As she straightened, she glanced at the gathered men and watched their faces twist with shock and jealousy at the display she laid before them. Suddenly, Yorrell’s offering of fruit and abundant meat paled in comparison to her steel.
To her left around the table, Yorrell glared in barely veiled anger. Lidan tried desperately to suppress a smile as his gaze flicked between her father and the knives, for once never settling on her. She could sense the question in the Namjin leader’s angry glare: who was this man, to flaunt such wealth in his host’s house? Who was this man, who chose to gift his daughter knives of steel while he himself only wielded an axe of bronze?
Lidan bit down on a smirk. What would Yorrell do if he saw the massive sword hanging above her father’s audience chair? If knives like these made him puff up with envy, she could only imagine the red in his face and the words that would die on his lips at the sight of a blade that grand. For the first time since arriving on the Namjin range, Lidan felt strong, and she swore she saw the corner of her father’s lips turn up in a smile as they took their seats.
Yorrell cleared his throat and broke the trance set among the men by her knives. ‘I trust you all had a pleasant evening and found great joy in delivering the proposals of matching to your families.’
The men nodded and some of the boys couldn’t help grinning.
‘Bloody hot last night,’ Daari Allin muttered, prompting nods of agreement from those at the table. His clan hailed from the tablelands and foothills of the Malapa north of Namjin—the coldest of all the clan territories. If Lidan felt the heat of the night, then the Wolban people felt it more so.
‘You’ll be heading back to your frozen mountains soon enough, Allin.’ Yorrell waved his hand. ‘We have one order of business to conclude today, then the feasting will begin. My hall will be open to all, in celebration of the matching contracts and our alliance against these ngaru.
‘I shall begin. All those in favour of the alliance between our clans will raise their axes. Should the call to aid come from our brothers, we will furnish them with whatever rangers and supplies we can spare. We will defend the lives of our fellow clansmen as readily as we would our own kin. Who of you say aye?’
All five daaris leaned forwards and slipped a hand under the blades of their axes, lifting them an inch or so from the table
. The small gesture was all Yorrell needed to cement the agreement and he nodded at his tine-woman. She scurried to fill any cups begging for wine and the men drank. All but Erlon slammed their cups on the table and wiped their mouths with their sleeves. He placed his down carefully, and Lidan wondered if he’d drunk any at all. She left hers untouched.
For the following hours, the men bartered and argued over the details of their children’s matching contracts. They debated the value of a bride’s dowry and what her family got in return. A husband’s family were gifted fabrics and household items when a girl matched into their family, supplies to provide for the extra mouths they would feed when she gave birth to sons and daughters. The bride’s family were given horses, livestock, or tine-women. The helping hands the girl’s family lost when she left to live with her husband had to be replaced in some way, and a tine suited the transaction well.
Each daari at the table signed contracts for as many of their children as they could manage, while some agreed that their ties were already strong enough to not need a new match. In a few cases, the contracts were signed in lieu of upcoming births, or transferred to the children of their brothers or sisters. The whole proceeding reminded Lidan of horse-trading and by the afternoon, her ears rang and her head throbbed. When a tine-woman appeared with a platter of small cakes, she wolfed down a handful and collected a few more for later.
Exhausted by the noise and the sheer effort of keeping track of the contracts, she hardly noticed when the hall grew silent and the gazes of the men fell on her side of the table. Yorrell leaned back in his chair and smiled.
‘Now we come to the final—and undoubtedly most important—contract of the day.’ His hand opened towards his son sitting at his side. ‘The matching of my Cole, to your Lidan. It has been a long time since two heirs have matched, has it not, Horice?’
The oldest of the daaris nodded. ‘It is rare for a daari to have only females from which to name his heir. Rarer still that the heir is matched before a brother is born. An occasion to be celebrated, I’m sure.’
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