Kerowyn's Ride

“Why?” Her own repressed anger was warming her better than all her shivering. “You come in here and take my teacher’s time away from me, you treat me like I’m too stupid to know that you’re insulting me with your superior attitude, you act like you expect me to be excited about the so-called ‘privilege’ of training with you. Why should I tell you anything? Why should I share my edge with you? You haven’t done a thing to deserve it.”

He stiffened as she spoke, and she waited for the outburst she knew would followed her words.

It never came.

“Why is it that you’re here, Kerowyn?” he asked slowly. “All I know is that you’re Lady Kethry’s granddaughter. I thought—I guess I thought you were just playing at this business of learning from Tarma, but you’re talking about really going out and selling your sword—”

“I’m not talking about it, I’m going to do it,” she told him firmly. Her stomach growled, reminding her that it had been a long time since she’d last eaten. “I don’t have much choice in the matter, not unless I want to live on my brother’s good will until he decides to find an appropriate husband for me. If anyone would take me at this point; there’s no telling. I’ve certainly scandalized all of Dierna’s family. And of course that assumes I’d sit right down and marry whoever he found for me, like a good little girl, which I don’t think I’m minded to do.”

And if some of the hints about the Baron that Grandmother’s dropped are true, I suspect he’d have an interest in keeping me from producing any competition for the Keep. Kethry had never actually accused the Baron of anything, but Kero was perfectly capable of putting facts together for herself, including a few that Kethry didn’t know about. The Baron had been quite interested in the proposed marriage, and had sent a very handsome set of silver as a gift—yet had sent no representative to the wedding. Which argued for the fact that he might well have known that something was going to happen.

And he was in an excellent position to plan for it to happen. She was very glad that Tarma had hired all those guards, those very competent guards. Doubtless Kethry was keeping a magical eye on the place as well, since the promises she’d made to Rathgar were void with his death.

“I don’t know why your brother would have any trouble finding a husband—” Daren began.

Something about the way he said that crystallized the problem that had been going around in her head for weeks. She interrupted him. “What if I don’t want him to ‘find me a husband’? What if I’m perfectly happy without a husband? Why should everyone think I’m supposed to be overjoyed about getting wrapped up in ribbons and handed off to some man I’ve never even met? I’m not so sure I’d want to be handed off like a prize mare to anyone I have met!”

“But I thought that was what every girl wanted,” he said, with what sounded like honest bewilderment. “My sisters all do, or at least, that’s all they talk about.”

“Not Tarma,” she reminded him. “Not Grandmother. Not your Aunt Idra. And not me. Does every man drool at the idea of going out and hacking people to bits?”

“Well,” he admitted, “No. My cousin—”

“Well, nothing,” she interrupted again. “Every man doesn’t want the same thing. Then why should every woman want the same thing? We’re not cookies, you know, all cut out of identical dough and baked to an identical brown and sprinkled with sugar so you men can devour us whenever you please.” She was rather proud of that simile, and preened a little in the dark—but the talk of cookies made her hunger all the worse.

“No,” he replied. “Some of you are crabapples.”

For once her mind was working fast enough. “At least crabapples don’t get devoured,” she snapped. Though I’d eat crabapples right now, if I could find them. She’d have turned her back on him, if she could have, but there wasn’t room in their shelter.

“It’s not any easier on a man, you know,” he said after a sullen silence broken only by the steady pattering of rain on dead, soggy leaves. “We get presented with some girl our parents have picked out for us, we have no idea what she’s like, and we’re expected to make her fall deliriously in love with us so that she goes to the altar smiling instead of crying. And then we’re supposed to live up to whatever plans our fathers have for us, whether or not we actually fit what they have in mind. I’m just lucky. Faram’s the best brother in the world, and I don’t want the crown—he thinks I’d make a good Lord Martial, and I’ve always been pretty good at strategy, so I’m not going to have to do anything I hate. And since I’m the youngest, nobody’s going to be expecting me to pick out a bride until I want one. Poor Faram’s got to choose before Midsummer, and the gods help him if there isn’t at least a sign of an heir by Winter Solstice.”

All this came out in a rush, as if he’d been holding it in for much too long. Kero realized as she listened to him that she felt oddly sorry for him.

Maybe too much power and position is as bad as too little.

“So what are they forcing you into?” she asked quietly. “There must be something.”

He sighed, and winced halfway through as the sigh moved ribs that probably hurt. “I like the idea of planning