“Rill?” Isana called. “What’s taking so long?”
The water bubbled and stirred in her scrying bowl (which doubled as her mixing bowl most days), and then three little splashes announced Rill’s presence. Isana crossed back to the bowl, drew her braid back over her shoulder, and regarded the surface of the water intently as the ripples stilled.
The fury showed her a dim view from what must have been a stagnant pool somewhere in the Pine Hollows. A murky shape that could have been Bernard paced across the image in the bowl and then was gone. Isana shook her head. Rill’s images were not always entirely clear, but it seemed that Bernard and Tavi were still pursuing the missing flock.
She murmured a dismissal to Rill and set the bowl aside — and then noticed a sudden lack of sound from the courtyard. A breath later, the tension levels of Bernardholt swelled into painful intensity.
Isana steeled herself against the perceptions and walked briskly out of the kitchen. She kept her breathing steady and held herself with rigid confidence. The holdfolk were pressed shoulder to shoulder, facing the center of the courtyard. They were silent, but for faint mutters and worried whispers.
“Kord,” she murmured. Isana stepped forward, and the holdfolk made way for her, clearing a narrow path through the onlookers until she could see the scene in the center of the courtyard.
Two men stood facing one another in the courtyard, and the air between them practically thrummed with tension. Kord stood with his arms folded over his chest, the ground at his feet shifting and trembling. His greasy beard framed his smile sharply, and his eyes were bright and eager beneath his heavy brows.
Facing him stood Steadholder Warner, a tall man, slender as a post, with gangling arms and legs and a head that shone bald but for a fringe of wispy grey hair. Warner’s narrow, chiseled face had flushed bright red in anger, and the air around him quivered and danced like heat rising off an oven.
“All I’m saying,” Kord drawled, “is that if that little slut of yours can’t keep her legs together and men out from between them, it’s your problem, friend. Not mine.”
“Shut your mouth,” Warner snarled.
“Or what?” Kord asked, throwing a sneer into the words. “What are you going to do, Warner? Run and hide behind the skirts of a woman and whimper for Gram to come save you?”
“Why you . . .” Warner spat. He took a step forward, and the air in the courtyard grew detectably warmer.
Kord smiled, a flash of teeth and said, “Go ahead, Warner. Call it to juris macto. Let’s settle this like men. Unless you’d rather humiliate your little whore by having her testify how she seduced my boy in front of every Steadholder in the Calderon Valley.”
One of Warner’s sons, a tall and lean young man with his hair shorn in Legion-fashion stepped up to his father and took his arm. “Pa, don’t,” he said. “You can’t take him on in a fair fight.” The other two took up a spot behind Warner, while Kord’s sons mirrored them behind their own father.
Warner’s daughter rushed to his side. Heddy’s cobweb-fine hair rose and rippled in silken yellow waves in the heated air around her father. She threw a conscientious look around her, her face flaming scarlet with embarrassment. “Papa,” she urged. “No, not like this. This isn’t our way.”
Kord snorted at the girl. “Bittan,” he asked, glancing back at his son. “You stuck your wick in that skinny tramp? Might as well have gone after one of Warner’s sheep.”
Isana had to clench her fists and brace herself against the raw tide of emotions in the courtyard. From Heddy’s panicky fear and humiliation to Warner’s rage, to Kord’s sly satisfaction and eagerness, every feeling washed over her, too intense to ignore. She forced them all away from her and took a breath. Kord’s earth fury was a vicious beast, trained to kill. He used it to hunt and to slaughter his cattle. Any fury started taking on aspects of its partner, after a while, but even considering Kord himself, the earth fury was a bad one. A killer.
Isana swept a look around the courtyard. The holdfolk all stood well clear of the conflict. None of them wanted to involve themselves in a struggle between Steadholders. Crows take her brother! Where was he when she needed him?
The flood of intense anger from Warner grew more harsh—in only a moment more, he would give in to Kord’s taunts and take the matter to juris macto, the Realm’s legal form of duel. Kord would kill him, but Warner was too furious at the treatment of his daughter to consider that. Warner’s sons, too, were flooding her with a growing torrent of anger, and Kord’s youngest son burned with a barely disguised lust for violence.
Isana’s heart fluttered with all the emotions, piling on top of her own fear. She pushed them all firmly away, struggling to master them—and stalked out into the courtyard, squarely between the two men, and put her hands on her hips. “Gentlemen,” she said, letting her voice ring out. “You are interrupting lunch.”
Warner took a step toward Kord, his eyes never leaving the other Steadholder. “You can’t expect me to stand here and take this.”
Kord sauntered forward a willing pace himself. “Juris macto,” he said. “Just declare it, Warner, and we can settle this.”
Isana spun to face Kord, meeting his eyes squarely. “Not in my courtyard you won’t.”
Bittan, behind Kord, let out a rough laugh and stepped forward, toward Isana. “Well, well,” he said. “What we got here? Another little hold whore standing up for whore Heddy?”
“Bittan,” Kord growled, in warning.
Isana narrowed her eyes at Bittan. The young man’s confidence, arrogance, and a sickening rush of his lust whirled over her like a foul, greasy smoke. She watched him approach, arrogantly smiling as he eyed her, from her bare feet to her long braid. The idiot evidently did not know her by sight.
“Going bad early,” Bittan commented. “But I bet you’d be good for a tumble.” He reached out a hand to touch Isana’s face.
Isana let him touch her for a moment, felt the desperate, arrogant need of the young man to prove himself in his own eyes. She reached up and seized his wrist and then said, voice cold, “Rill. Deal with this slive.”
Bittan abruptly convulsed and threw himself backward onto the ground. He let out a strangled scream that cut off halfway through, as clear, foaming water burst from his mouth. He thrashed on the courtyard stones in a frantic tangle of flailing limbs. His eyes bulged, and he tried to scream again, nothing but water flooding from his mouth and nose.
Kord’s other son rushed to his fallen brother, and Kord himself rolled forward a step with an angry snarl. “Bitch,” he growled. The earth bulged beneath him, as though preparing to lash forward.
“Go ahead, Kord,” Isana said, her voice icy. “But before you do, I should remind you that you are in Bernardholt, now. And you may not challenge me to the juris macto.” She smiled at him, as sweet and venomous as she could manage. “I’m not a Steadholder.”