“It is, but the leaders of her village speak our language too. They call it the trader tongue.” Craigson paused again. “Your own name is actually Kayara,” he said gently. “Though it’s not hard to see why it might have turned to Kyra over the years.”
She felt an irrational panic rising in her chest. For some reason, that revelation knocked her off balance more than even the mention of her mother. All these years as an orphan, she’d had at least her name. With effort, Kyra fought the panic back down.
“What was my ma like?”
“She was a strong woman. A leader of her people, and she loved her village dearly.” Craigson looked at Kyra, and suddenly chuckled. “I hear you’re quite a climber.”
“Climber?” It was such a random thing to say. “I do climb walls when I need to. I’m a thief.” She felt surprisingly ashamed at that admission, now that Craigson had just told her how respectable her mother was, but Craigson didn’t react to the revelation at all.
“If you ever cross the Aerins and see your mother’s village, you’ll see why it amuses me. They are all well-practiced climbers. You look a great deal like her people—small, slight of form. And your face is the spitting image of your aunt.” He braced a hand on his knee. “Maikana bore you and raised you for two years, but there was a drought that you couldn’t weather. She put you in my care until the rains came again. I wasn’t planning to take you across the Aerins, but your father somehow got word that I had you.”
“My father. He was Makvani?”
“Your mother was human. Your father was a member of a Makvani slaver clan that attacked your mother’s village.”
Pashla had told her before about the Makvani’s history as slave traders. But if her father had been a slaver who’d attacked her mother’s village…It raised a horrifying implication. “Did he…force my mother…”
Craigson furrowed his brow. “To be honest, I don’t know what happened between your parents. She never spoke of the specifics, and I never asked. I know that things were not simple between them and that it didn’t end well. Maikana didn’t want him to know about you, but somehow he found out. We crossed the mountains when we learned he was seeking you, but he and his companions pursued us. We managed to evade them for a while because we knew this land better, but they caught up to us near Forge. I stowed you in what I thought was a safe place and led them away.” Here, Craigson paused and eyed a spot on the ground in front of him with distaste. “They left me for dead, but some travelers found me. It took me two days to get coherent, and several more until I could go search for you. And by then…” He spread his hands. “You were gone. Along with the rest of my caravan. I figured they’d taken you, or that you’d died.” Kyra was surprised to hear a slight tremor in Craigson’s voice. The trader seemed so gruff.
“And my da. Do you know what happened to him?”
“Aye, I kept track of his whereabouts, and I made sure to avoid him and his clan. He crossed back over the Aerins, and after a while it got too dangerous for me to travel, so I found a quiet place outside Edlan and settled down. I didn’t hear of him for many years, though there was news of fighting among the Makvani and rumors that some clans were searching out new lands. So it wasn’t a surprise to me when I heard he’d come back, this time with his entire clan. He must know by now that I’m here. I’m sure he keeps an eye on travelers.”
It took Kyra a moment to realize the implications of Craigson’s words, but when they sank in, she found it hard to breathe. Thus far, only two clans had come across the Aerins, and she’d met both their leaders. Could it be…
“Who is my father?” This time, her eagerness was mixed with dread.
Craigson hesitated then, and that space between two breaths felt like an hour. But then he met her eyes. “Your father is the leader of the first clan that came over the mountains. His name is Leyus.”
E I G H T E E N