Read Chanur's Legacy for Free Online

and muscle and you got the hormones that went with it, you got a husband with ideas, and Hilfy Chanur had spent sleepless nights telling herself there were reasons to abide by the old customs, that shooting Korin Sfaura, while a solution on the docks at Kshshti, was not a solution on Chanur’s borders, with a neighboring clan.
    Not unless one wanted to crack the amphictiony wide open, and see war on Anuurn.
    Gods-rotted bastard he had turned out to be. But the male-on-male fighting men learned for territory had a few things still to learn from Kshshti docks. Korin had limped out of Chanur territory, half-wed and vowing revenge, and by the time he’d made another try, cousin Harun had come in as lord Chanur ... big lad, Harun. Rhean had searched the outback to find him and get him home, out of his wilderness exile. Best fighter they could find, best lord of household, for a clan taking a lot of challenges. Of all the lads that had come home at Kohan’s invitation, and some of them even settled inside Chanur walls, Harun ... was not one of that liberal, easy-going number. Ask any of the males he had sent packing, including the ones born to Chanur. A hani of the old school—hair-triggered— thick-skulled ...
    But it had taken him to rid the clan once for all of what she had brought home, and detest and despise na Harun Chanur as she did, and know, as she did, that Rhean had brought him home precisely to counter aunt Py’s influence ... she had to think that he might be the right hani for the times; because Pyanfar’s gallivanting about and Pyanfar’s naming her head of clan had certainly raised the hair on a number of conservative backs. Change happened and you thought it was forever, and immediately there were all the enemies of that change making common cause and meeting in the cloakrooms.
    And there were all the victims of that change—dead, like poor bookish Dahan Chanur, who had died for nothing more than wanting to collect his notebooks. Gods-rotted thick-headed Harun had ordered him out, Dahan had said something about his notes, headed back for his room, and Harun had flung him into a wall.
    That was the lord of Chanur now.
    And she had done Rhean’s daughter out of the Legacy, and some didn’t forgive her for pulling rank and spending her ascendancy as clan head as an absentee.
    Truth be told, she was guilty of everything they said at home. Aunt Rhean was disgusted with her. High and wide she’d fouled it up, mate-picking and house-running ... parted company with aunt Py, that day on Anuurn docks. And aunt Py ...
    Ex-clan-head Pyanfar Chanur had said, being lately hailed grand high whatever of everywhere civilized, and leaving Anuurn’s dust for good.
    Aunt Py had said, Responsibility, Hilfy. Jabbing her with an attention-getting claw. / can’t go down there again. It’d be war. And every enemy I have— listen to me! Another jab, and a grab, because she’d tried to walk out on Pyanfar, and nobody did that.
    Every enemy I have on Anuurn will try to break the clan. That’s the only revenge they can get on me. I want you to go down there, take the responsibility I gods-rotted carried, do your marrying ... Kohan ‘s not going to hold out forever ... and get somebody in his place that can hold on to what he helped build, Do you hear me, Hilfy Chanur?
    Gods-rotted right she’d heard her. Pyanfar talking about Kohan as if he was already dead, just to be written off; Pyanfar telling her to go down there and make a baby or two, when Py’s own offspring in Mahn had been trouble from birth ... tell her about handling her responsibilities to the clan, when Pyanfar was off with her ship and her crew and everything in the universe that mattered to her.
    Py wanted her off her ship and away from Tully, was the bare-faced truth. Go fall in love with your own species, kid. Tully’s all right for Chur and Geran, and Haral and Tirun and anybody else who wants a roll in the bunk, but don’t even think of the heir of