Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses) (83 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

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She stopped speaking and looked hopefully over at Justin. He said, “That’s it? I talk about chicken dung and entrails? Somehow that doesn’t sound like the perfect moment to me.”
 
 
“No, it’s just—I don’t know how to explain it. The giving of the bride gift is supposed to seem like a natural extension of the conversation. It’s proof that you belong, that you fit in.”
 
 
“Which I don’t.”
 
 
She reached over and took his hand, giving it a tight squeeze before letting it go again. “Maybe you don’t,” she said. “But they’re willing to accept you. You’ll be fine. If you don’t find the right moment, then I’ll—I’ll have my mother ask you a question that makes it obvious this is the time to make the presentation.”
 
 
“ ‘Justin, shouldn’t you be giving my daughter something right about now?’ ” he said.
 
 
She laughed. “I think she can be more subtle than that.”
 
 
“I don’t require subtle. I require knowing what I’m supposed to do. So what other questions are people likely to ask me?”
 
 
“They’ll want to know about your family,” she said a little hesitantly. “It will seem strange to them that you had none. The concept of an abandoned child is not one that they can easily understand.”
 
 
He glanced at her. He could see that she was trying to speak carefully, not wanting to offend him. He kept his voice gentle as he asked, “What about whores? Is that a concept they understand?”
 
 
She looked even more unhappy. “There are women. In most of the
sebahta
. Who do not marry and who do not work in the gardens or help raise the children. They live in the households and they are not cast out, but they—they only play a small part in family rituals. Any man can go to these women, though they have the right to refuse to take a man to bed.”
 
 
“Not exactly the same thing,” he said.
 
 
She nodded. “But everyone knows what a whore is,” she said sadly. “Enough of our men have traded across the mountains that the word has become commonly known.”
 
 
“Well, I’m not going to lie about it,” he said.
 
 
“No, of course you shouldn’t lie. But you don’t have to tell them more than you want to tell them.”
 
 
He laughed. “Why do I get the feeling they’re going to be very curious about all the details of my life?”
 
 
She smiled. “Because you’re very wise! They
will
want to know everything.” She paused and then said, “And not just about your blood family. They will want to know about your own
sebahta
.”
 
 
He was amused. “I don’t think I have one of those.”
 
 
“Your—the people you consider family, with whom you have an unbreakable bond.”
 
 
Now he was thoughtful. “You mean, like Senneth.”
 
 
She nodded and gave him a sideways look. “And Kirra.”
 
 
“Kirra?”
 
 
She watched him closely and he knew there was something here that would surprise him. He would have to be careful. Ellynor’s face was casual, but he had the sense that she was about to say something that mattered to her a great deal. “She said she was your sister.”
 
 
He felt his eyebrows go up. “She said that?” Ellynor was still watching him and so he did not give a quick, sardonic answer; he considered it. A year ago he had not met the Danalustrous girl. The first three months they had traveled together, he would have said he hated her. They had quarreled half the time they were together last summer—in fact, they were usually quarreling. And yet he had put his life in her hands more than once. He had believed she could save Ellynor and he had known she would come back for him if she could. He trusted her. Wayward and restless and frivolous though she was. She would never betray him. “I suppose she is,” he said at last and he saw Ellynor relax, pleased with his answer. He smiled at her. “And I guess that makes Donnal and Cammon my brothers?”
 
 
“If you think of them that way.”
 
 
“They can be my brothers,” he decided.
 
 
“And Tayse, too?”
 
 
That required no cogitation. He said, “Tayse is my father.”
 
 
 
 
THEY arrived at the Alowa homestead in the middle of the afternoon on a sunny but absolutely frigid day. Justin was rapidly taking in details. There were about ten buildings on this roughly defined property, all of them solidly built of wood, some quite large. About half of them sported chimneys that were curling with smoke, so those must be houses where people lived; the others would be barns or sheds. There was a small, well-kept area in the center that appeared to be shared space. It featured two wells, a chopping block, some tools and a cart.
 
 
“Which house is yours?” he asked Ellynor, and she pointed at the largest one, two-and-a-half stories high, with brightly painted shutters on the windows. “Do we just go right in?”
 
 
“I’ve brought home a visitor,” she said. “I need to announce you.”
 
 
She slipped from the horse, so he dismounted quickly, and followed her to a hammered gong that hung from a metal frame. “Two strokes means company,” she said, picking up a mallet that rested against the frame.
 
 
“How many strokes means danger?”
 
 
She smiled. “Five. You would think of that.”
 
 
“You always have to be prepared for trouble.”
 
 
She gave him a sideways look. “Maybe I should strike the gong five times now.”
 
 
He grinned. “No. I’m going to be very well behaved.”
 
 
She hit the gong twice, and it sent out lovely but urgent notes that Justin guessed could be heard even some distance off the property, especially if you were trained to listen for the sound. The hammered metal hadn’t quite stopped quivering on its chains when the first doors opened and figures came streaming out. Justin took a deep breath and planted his feet, bracing himself. But Ellynor dropped the mallet and flung her arms out and ran straight toward one of the women racing from the big house. In seconds, she was enveloped by a shouting, crying, laughing crowd—children, men, women, dogs— and everyone was hugging her and everyone was repeating her name.
 
 
This, Justin supposed, was what it was like to belong to a family.
 
 
 
 
TORRIN had appointed himself Justin’s guide and guardian and nemesis; it was clear nothing was going to induce him to leave Justin’s side. Hayden and a rotating cast of cousins joined them at various points—for meals, for discussions, for tricky competitive games—but none of them stuck as close as Torrin. Justin was even bedded down in Torrin’s room, on a mattress on the floor that was far more comfortable than he would have expected.
 
 
Three days after their arrival, no one had offered to kill him, and so Justin thought the visit with the
sebahta
was going fairly well.
 
 
“Now here’s a game I bet you’re good at,” Torrin said. Half a dozen of them were lounging in a small open area in the middle of a barn that housed probably twenty cows. They’d spent much of their time there since Justin’s arrival. The space was cluttered with tools and broken chairs and partial bales of hay, but the body heat of the cattle kept the place relatively warm. It was a good place to retreat from the interference of women.
 
 
Justin looked over, keeping his face impassive. This was yet another test, as all the other games had been. Oh, certainly, they had all been played for the sake of entertainment—or would have been, on any ordinary day—but their real value had been the chance to gauge Justin’s reflexes and coordination. So far, he’d managed well enough, even when he couldn’t exactly comprehend the rules, because he’d understood the one great overriding rule: Make a show of strength.
 
 
It was not, after all, that different from running a gang of thieves on the streets of Ghosenhall and constantly proving you were so tough that no one wanted to challenge you.
 
 
“What kind of game?” he said.
 
 
One of the cousins—Arrol, Justin thought—was bringing out a wooden case filled with some kind of jangling cargo. He knelt in the middle of the floor and opened it, to reveal a collection of rings of various sizes, all made of metal. Arrol gave Torrin an unsmiling look. He was a strange one, Justin thought—tall, slim, and silent, more standoffish than the rest of the noisy cousins. He often wore an abstracted expression, as though his thoughts were far from this place and these people, and he hadn’t bothered participating in most of the contests.
 
 
He’d won the ones he did play, though. He was supple and fast, and behind his dreamy eyes was a quick intelligence. Justin thought he was probably more dangerous than Torrin, though Torrin was clearly the one all the other cousins admired most.
 
 
“Hoop toss,” Arrol said.
 
 
“What’s that?” Justin asked.
 
 
Torrin was pulling the rings out and lobbing them to the other players in the barn, reserving a pile of the smallest ones for himself. “We throw the hoops in the air—you catch them on your sword. The more you catch, the more points you win. The smallest ones are the hardest to capture,” he added.
 
 
Justin didn’t move. “I don’t nick up my sword with game pieces,” he said. Not that his own weapon was currently hanging at his belt; it had been given over to Torrin’s keeping the evening they arrived.
 
 
Torrin looked impatient. “No, of course you don’t,” he said. “We use old ones that have been discarded. There ought to be three of them back here in the barn. You can pick the one that feels best in your hand.”
 
 
By the Bright Mother’s weeping red eye
, Justin thought, following Torrin to a corner of the room.
This man will be competing with me till the day I die
.
 
 
The three swords were indeed fairly battered, and two of the blades were bent out of true, but the third one was in reasonably good shape, though lighter weight than the weapon Justin carried on a regular basis. That might be good, he thought, whipping the blade through the air just to get a sense of its reach and heft. If he was going to use it to pluck objects from the air—
 
 
“Where do I stand?” he asked.
 
 
They pushed him to the center of the open space, then stood around him. It turned out any of them could throw a ring in the air at any time, from any direction, the only stipulation being that it had to rise high enough to afford him a reasonable chance to catch it. They all agreed on the lower edge of the window set in the pointed slope of the barn’s upper story. Justin positioned himself, raised his sword, and nodded at Torrin.
 
 
Instantly, he was in the middle of a hailstorm of metal rings, and he dashed from side to side, spearing them from the air. One or two hit him on the back or shoulder; more than a few fell with a
thud
to the wooden floor. But he caught a good number, and they rattled against the hilt as he lunged for another one, and another. When all the hoops had been disposed of, he had eleven hanging from his blade. Another twenty or so dotted the floor. He didn’t think it was a bad showing for his first attempt to play—then again, he was always going to fare well at any activity that allowed him to have a sword in his hand.
 
 
“Good game,” he said, tilting his blade down so the hoops slid off in a musical clatter. “Do I do it again or is it someone else’s turn?”
 
 
No one bothered to tell him if he’d done well or poorly. Torrin held up his hand, and Justin passed him the sword. “Pick up about six rings,” Torrin directed. Justin joined the others in gathering the hoops from the floor, then they all made a circle around Torrin.
 
 
“Go,” the young man said, and the rings went flying.

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