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helmets and painted faces, wrapped in furs and waving their curved blades. Mia loved to read stories about them, thrilling tales of their brutality which had her shivering in delicious fear, while knowing herself to be quite safe. The barbarians were always defeated, in the legends just as in the real battles along the border.
    “They’re a strange race, though, aren’t they?” Mia said. “They must be, to fight a perpetual war they can never win.”
    “Perhaps,” Kendron said. “I certainly don’t understand them. But it’s the depiction of them that’s strange. The Vahsi I’ve fought against weren’t like this at all. They looked just like scruffy, bearded Skirmishers, only more disorganised. But enough of the barbarians. We have news for you, child. We’ve decided… we will be breaking this winter.”
    “Breaking? No! Not you!” Mia stared at them, her hands covering her mouth. It happened to every Karningholder marriage eventually. Still, it was hard to think of her own parents and all their husbands and wives scattering to different Karnings, broken apart just because they became too old to rule.
    “I know, I always thought I would die with a sword in my hand, too,” Kendron smiled, one eyebrow jinking upwards. “But it hasn’t happened, and we’re getting too decrepit for the border. And I’ll be honest with you, child, I’m tired of it. More than twenty years we’ve been on the northern border, and we’ve made a good job of it, on the whole, but these last two or three years… Time to let someone else have a stab at the barbarians.”
    “But where will you go? I don’t see you at the Ring, somehow.”
    “No, not there. We will never have to go there again, I hope. But there are some of your brothers we could go and annoy, and two of them are far enough north to be warm.”
    “I wish you could come here,” she said. But the remnants of broken marriages never went to daughters, only to sons or to the Ring, living out a twilight life with no proper role, dwindling towards death.
    They had little to say about Tella.
    “I remember her, of course,” Kendron said. “An active child, always flitting here and there, never still, and such a beauty as she grew up. But there were so many children, over the years, and she was never close to either of us. Who was her mother, do you remember, my dear?”
    Bellissa shrugged. “I’m not sure. She might have been the third wife’s, the one who died. She was a good looking woman, too. Or one of the Companions.”
    Kendron turned to Mia with a smile. “We remember our own much better.” He put an arm round her, and she snuggled contentedly against him.
    “Now,” he went on, “you must understand, child, that you are in a very dangerous situation with Tella gone. With four, a marriage falls naturally into two couples, or else there is just one couple and the others help out, as you have done. Or… well, there are other arrangements, of course. But three – that is more problematic. If a husband dies, the Voices have to replace him for the skirmishes. But a wife… It is not so easy.”
    Mia said nothing, puzzled. She already knew that Tella would not be replaced, so she would be lead wife. What would happen after that… well, they would settle it after the month of mourning. She would be upstairs and sleeping with one or other of her husbands, that was certain. Or perhaps they would share her. That wasn’t uncommon. She would accept whatever the men decided. But what could be dangerous about it?
    “What will most likely happen, you see,” Bellissa said, leaning forwards, “is that you and Jonnor will become a couple and Hurst…” She glanced at her husband.
    “If Hurst feels excluded, he may take it badly,” Kendron said.
    “Hurst…? I don’t think you know him very well,” Mia said, floundering a little, not sure where this train of thought was leading.
    “I know his reputation ,” he said. “I know he’s clever and ambitious.