The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(465)

“The word is out, Shill,” he said quietly. “Everyone in town is talking about me. How I somehow got the Council to discuss male property inheritance. How I lured a group of innocent, good-hearted boys to Yukur for unnatural revels in the middle of the night. How I’m the reason a boy ran away to Menchey rather than marry the woman his clan had chosen for him. How I’ve been seen talking to men in the sharing houses, and foreigners. How I’ve been gathering an army, and soon it will be the Men’s Rebellion all over again.”

I leaned against his chair. “What’s a sharing house?”

“Where men go when they have no clan to care for them, and when they are not so homely that they are completely without value. They get meals and a bed to sleep in, provided they share it with any woman who wants them.” He smiled thinly. “Father fears I’ll end up in one, at the rate I’m going. I’m beginning to think I might not mind.”

I frowned. Sharing houses did not sound very nice. “Is any of that other stuff true, about you?”

“Does it matter? Home and tradition are threatened. Everywhere, young men of previously honorable character are acting out. Someone must be to blame.”

He sounded sad, too, underneath the mad. Maybe I should not have left, while Lumyn and Fahno and Mikna were still arguing. As I watched him, Eino reached into one of his sleeves and took out something small. I heard the echo of Lumyn’s voice and realized it was the thing she’d given him. A small box. He opened it, tilting it so I could see: inside was a very curvy knife. A beautiful knife, its handle wrapped in shiny white stuff and its sharp blade inlaid with small plates of black stone and red-and-green lacquer, done up in patterns like forest vines. I oohed. “I like that knife!”

“Do you?” Eino was smiling again, but it was still mad and sad and bitter. “I do, too, in spite of myself. Such a pretty threat.”

“Huh?”

He turned the knife over, setting his thumb against its edge. “Not how she sees it, of course. Lumyn is Darre through and through, whatever anyone else thinks. Of course she would give me a circumcision knife, and think it a romantic gesture; that’s how most Darre think of it, after all. It’s how I thought of it, really, until I thought, and realized just how grotesque the whole custom is.”

I knew the word because Papa Tempa had taught it to me. But—“She wants to cut you?”

“Of course. It’s how marriage goes, for Darre. A woman takes a man to her home, and there in solemn, intimate ceremony…” He shrugged. He’d cut his finger. A fat drop of blood welled up as I watched; I cringed away inwardly even as I stayed still and stared, hypnotized. Demon blood. “I suppose I should be glad these aren’t ancient times, when women would just kidnap the men they wanted, cut them to establish their claim, and rape them. We are civilized now. A proper woman gets permission from the boy’s clan head, first.”

I set my jaw. “No one’s going to do anything to you that you don’t want.” The air rang with my words. I was only a little godling; I couldn’t change the universe by word alone. But I could mean it, and Eino felt that. He blinked and looked at me as if finally noticing I was there, though he’d been talking to me all along. This time his smile was not as sad, and more genuine.

“I’m glad I have you for a friend, Shill,” he said, gently. “At least what you want from me is something I’m willing to give.” He reached for me, perhaps to pet my hair, but I flinched away from the blood on his finger, and he blinked. “… Sorry.” He put his hand back in his lap.

I was just proud of myself for not running away this time. I drew up my knees, wrapped my arms around them. “What do you want to do?” I asked. “Are you going to marry Lumyn, or Mikna?”

His voice hardened and his smile faded. “Not you, too, Shill.”

I shrugged, awkwardly. “I don’t care which. I just want to understand how you think about it.”

“Ah. Your quest for understanding.” Abruptly he got up, pacing with the knife in his hand. “What I think is that I don’t want to think about this, Shill. I think there are other problems in the world, other things I could be worrying about, besides who gets to slice me up and ride me! Like how to help you.” He stopped, glaring at me. “I want to be your enulai. But I don’t know my own magic. And you just saw—I haven’t been trained in how to be careful around gods! You should choose Mikna; at least she won’t kill you by accident.”

I wanted to say, I don’t want Mikna, but he was right; she was a better enulai. Maybe only because she’d been trained and he hadn’t, but I didn’t know how to make anyone train him. “She isn’t terrible,” I said, grudgingly.