Fremur was growing frustrated by the other man’s silence. He had come here with a yearning for comradeship, looking for someone else who knew what it meant to be an outsider in his own clan. “What do you think of my sister Kulva?” he said, then immediately regretted it. He had come to give news. This was not the best way to deliver it, but he had been stung by Unver’s seeming disinterest.

The other man looked at him carefully, as though the words might be some kind of trap. “She is a woman.” He seemed to realize this was inadequate. “She is a good woman.”

“You care about her.” Fremur said it as a statement, not a question.

Unver’s expression grew more remote, as if a cold wind had brought frost. “She is nothing particular to me. And it is nothing to you, either.”

“I have seen you walking together.”

Unver’s hand dropped to the knife at his belt and his face hardened into something fearsome. “You have been spying for Odrig—”

“No! No, but I have seen you together twice, walking and talking, when I was looking for her. And I know my sister. She would not be so easy with you if you had not spoken together that way many times.”

Still the gray eyes fixed him, but at last Unver let his hand fall away from the knife. “Why do you say these things to me, Fremur? Do you plan to defend her honor yourself? If you insist it will be so, but you will die for nothing and her reputation will be ruined. I have not dishonored her in any way. We merely spoke away from wagging tongues.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or are tongues wagging already? Is that what you have come to tell me?”

Fremur was about to answer him, but Unver leaped to his feet suddenly and strode toward the unpainted wagon. “You must think me a fool, as all the rest of the clan does. Would I try to steal the sister of the thane? I would be hunted forever.” He stopped and spread his arms. “No! This is what I have built with my own hands—the finest wagon in the Crane Clan. I have gone on every raid, I have taken every task anyone would give me. Look!” He threw open the door of the wagon and pulled out an oilcloth bundle. He unwrapped it as Fremur stared, revealing a tumble of bright objects. “Real gold for the horses’ traces and reins. Silver for the hinges and fittings, specially made by the finest smith in the Lynx Clan. When I show this wagon to your brother, he and those other fools, their eyes will pop out! He will have no choice but to give Kulva to me.” Unver was breathing hard as he rolled the oilcloth again, as though he had run a long way. He shook the bundle at Fremur and the fittings clinked. “She will ride like a queen of the lakelands!”

Fremur now felt sick at his stomach. He had only wanted to make bad blood between Unver and his hated brother. He had not understood . . .

“But that is not . . . !”

“Not enough?” He was angry and would not look at Fremur. “Then I will get enough. I will bring your brother a dowry of fine horses. Not all my gold has gone to buy fittings!”

“Unver, no.” Fremur shook his head. He did not know where to begin. “That is not what . . . I only came to tell you . . .”

His eyes almost seemed mad. “What? Tell me what?”

“That my sister Kulva . . .” Fremur swallowed. It was not easy, because the lump in his throat seemed big enough to choke him. “My brother has promised her to Drojan. They will set out the marriage stones at the clan gathering, when the moon is full.”

Unver did not say a word for long moments. He only looked at Fremur as though he had suddenly sprouted feathers and flown into the air. “A lie,” he said at last, but his voice was hollow.

“It is no lie. I hadn’t seen you for days, and I didn’t know if you’d heard.” He was suddenly frightened, and tried to find words that would change the frighteningly animal look in the man’s eyes. “I didn’t know that she meant so much to you, Unver—that is truth. But you must have known Odrig would never give her to you! You are . . .” He could not think of how to say it, because he was the same way himself. Like a fish in a stream, how could he find a word for the water that was everywhere, that they both breathed and swam in? “You are unworthy. That is what Odrig thinks. Drojan is his friend. Drojan does everything that Odrig says.”

The oilcloth bundle dropped from Unver’s fingers to the ground and his face went pale as dry grass. For a stretching moment, Fremur was certain Unver would pull the knife from his belt and kill him, and he knew there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Expressions flickered across the tall man’s face so swiftly that Fremur could not make sense of any of them. Then Unver found his voice.

“Go!” he roared. “Get away from me! You and your cursed family! What are you but the crow who brings bad tidings, screeching and preening on a tree branch? Your sister is as false as a stone-dweller’s bargain!”

“It’s not her doing . . .”

“Go!” And with this last cry of rage, Unver turned his back on Fremur and strode back toward the wagon he had worked on so long and carefully. He put his hands against the side of it and pushed until the muscles of his neck bulged. The wood creaked and the wagon tottered, but it did not tip: it was too large for any single man to push it over, or so Fremur thought. Then Unver bent his legs beneath him, leaned his entire body into the side of the wagon, and, with a wordless cry of rage, managed to topple it. It fell slowly, as in a dream, and hit the hard ground with a crash like thunder, splintering into pieces.

Fremur turned and ran.

Jesa carefully swaddled Serasina and brought her to her mother, who was sitting near the window with three of her ladies-in-waiting, taking advantage of the afternoon light to work at their sewing.

“Ah, there she is, the little coney, the little fur-rabbit,” said the duchess. She set down her sewing and took the baby from Jesa, who stood by patiently. It was time for little Serasina to nap, and this was how it was done. Jesa did not entirely understand why a woman who loved her daughter as much as Duchess Canthia spent so little time holding her. In the Wran, where Jesa had been born, a child was put in a sling against her mother’s belly as soon as she could hold her head up, and rode that way all day. Drylander children, at least those Jesa had known here in Nabban, were treated more like beautiful jewelry or clothing, to be taken out by their mothers and admired, then soon put back again.

It was puzzling, but Jesa had given up trying to understand. Things were just different here among the drylanders, and Jesa had to believe that She Who Birthed Mankind had made them that way for some good reason. But as she took the baby back from the duchess and set her in her huge, painted cradle, it was hard to imagine what that reason could be.

Despite the tight swaddling, little Serasina fussed and wriggled. To quiet her, Jesa sank into a crouch beside the cradle and began to rock it. Duchess Canthia was a kind woman, and would not have begrudged her a stool to sit on, but Jesa was never entirely comfortable perched on such a thing. Some of the furniture the drylanders used felt to her as untrustworthy as ill-made boats, as if any moment they might tip and throw her down. She had been squatting on her heels since she had been only a few months older than little Serasina, and she was comfortable that way.

The duchess and her ladies talked quietly among themselves, but Jesa could tell from the way they glanced over their shoulders toward the cradle that Serasina’s crying was irritating some of them, so she began to sing one of the songs her own mother had sung to her, long ago in their house on stilts in Red Pig Lagoon.

Come moon, come sweet moon

Come across the marsh, bring an armful of mallows