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“You, Jessamy? You were the one I trusted most.”

I will not give Lord Gargaron the satisfaction of seeing me break down. But it is so hard to stand here with my father staring at me as if I am a scorpion crawled out of the night to sting him with its venom.Advertisement

A tap rattles the closed door.

“Enter,” says Lord Gargaron.

Mother comes into the room, and Polodos closes the door behind her to seal us in.

Even in her shapeless mourning shroud and with the bulk of her pregnancy before her, she glides like the most beautiful of ships, resplendent, moving gracefully under sail.

“My lord,” she says, and I am not sure which man she addresses.

For an instant I think neither Father nor Lord Gargaron is sure either.

Part of what makes her beautiful is that she has the discipline to regret nothing. Even under Gargaron’s censorious eye she does not wilt or fade.

“What is your wish, my lord?” she asks, addressing Father directly.

“Has Jessamy been running the Fives without my permission?”

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“She didn’t know!” I cry, for above all things I do not wish Mother to take the blame.

She sighs with such gentle reproof that she could as well have slapped me. “Of course I knew, Jessamy. Do you think I don’t know everything that goes on in this household?”

“You knew, Kiya?” Father raises a hand as if to strike in sheer, frustrated rage, glances at Lord Gargaron, and lowers the hand. “You let it go on despite knowing I could never allow it?”

“What harm? Amaya is youngest of the four and she is now the age I was when you and I met. When I was her age, I worked in the market. I came and went as I pleased. It seems to me it was in part my freedom to come and go that attracted you because it was so different from how women behaved in the land of your birth. Our daughters are no longer girls. They are becoming young women. Do you mean them to live shut up in this house all their lives?”

“As you have done? Is that what you mean? Was this house not good enough for you?” He is shouting. He has forgotten that Lord Gargaron watches all, a vulture waiting for the beast to die so he can consume the carrion.

Mother never shouts but there is a stony weight to her voice that is worse than any chastisement. “I have no complaints nor have I ever made any. I chose this life with you. I knew what it would be. But our daughters have had no choice.”

“So you let them sneak around. Good Goat, woman! What else have you allowed them to do?”

“They are good girls, Esladas! There is nothing wrong with Jessamy running the Fives. Many girls run the Fives.”

“Not my daughters! Not the daughters of men like me!”

Always Mother has championed us and encouraged us. Defended us. “She is good at it. In all the months and years you have been gone to the wars, what harm? I have been careful and so has she. She does it for the love, not for glory, not to shame you. So I ask again, what harm?”

“The harm is what falls on my honor and my reputation! But how can I expect you to understand a man’s honor? How can I expect you to understand the shame it brings on a man when his household of unruly women disobeys his few rules because he has wielded too generous a hand?”

Mother is as tall as Gargaron and a little taller than Father. She does not shrink or slump as they stare at her. If anything, she grows more magnificent. “I acted as I thought best to make this household a peaceful refuge for you, my lord. No whisper of shame or disobedience has ever met my ears. Have such whispers reached you, Lord Gargaron?”

“Indeed, none have,” he says with amusement and a flicker of respect. “The household of heroic Captain Esladas is never spoken of at all except as a curiosity. Yet it was not so difficult for me to discover the truth about this girl Jessamy.” Despite the brief courtesy he shows Mother, he bends the severity of his gaze on Father. “You have been imprudent in your supervision of your women. They have made a fool of you because you have been too compliant, more like an Efean man, henpecked and hog-tied by the women in his sad eunuch’s life. Yet I am willing to overlook the situation if you will agree to the offer I have set before you.”

He speaks to Father, looks at Father. But like currents striking stepping stones in the obstacle called Rivers, the words flow toward a different shore.

Mother blinks as their impact hits her. As she understands what this truly means for us. The radiance of her face dims. She staggers, and I grab her arm to support her.

In all my life I have only seen my mother cry three times, twice when we carried stillborn boys to the City of the Dead and its Weeping Garden where infant sons of Patron fathers are buried. The third time was when my father left for the campaign in Oyia across the sea, because she knew he would be gone for years and might never return. pqdm.com