4. Brett

"My daughter was an innocent," Memnon growled, glaring at me. "Practically a child. This is not justice."

Killian, chief of the Crane Clan, snorted. "Your daughter was thirty, nowhere near a child." Memnon turned the glare on him, but even as Killian opened his mouth again, no doubt to cast aspersions on Clio's innocence, a throat cleared across the room.

Balthazar, chief of the Owl Clan. Thank all that was sensible and level-headed in the world.

Not that I didn't appreciate Killian's vehement defense of my innocence in matters, but the man was a hothead. He was far too likely to say something that caused an outright brawl, and then frankly, take joy in the fallout. He loved a fight almost as much as he loved his clan. Especially since Memnon had encouraged a relationship between Clio and Killian before he'd ultimately married her off to me, though, this was a matter close to his heart. Or... his irritation.

"I don't believe anyone is going to assail Brett's word," Balthazar finally said when everyone else had quieted. "He's a good, solid clan leader, and he would never lie to us. To say otherwise would bring question to the validity of the entire council, since he's made a binding vow to only speak the truth in these meetings. The same vow as you, Memnon."

I had made the vow, and... I had told the truth. And it had been a fucking dance to do that.

Clio attacked me with the intent to kill. She stabbed me, causing this scar on my ribs. I'm sorry I was forced to defend myself. I had no intention of killing her, and I'm sorry, but she's dead regardless of any apologies. The only possible outcomes were this or allowing her to murder me as she wished to.

Never quite saying I'd been the one to kill her, but also never telling them I hadn't been. Letting them believe it, because it was how things had to be. It was what everyone believed.

Almost everyone.

Minerva knew the truth, or at least that I was prevaricating. I could tell from the shrewd looks she kept giving me, thoughtful and narrow-eyed.

But like Balthazar, Minerva was my friend. Not just a fellow clan chief, but someone who would defend me if she could, just as I would do for her. She wouldn't poke until my story fell apart.

The binding vows allowed no lie to slip from my tongue at any official council meeting. It didn't force me to speak truths I wished to keep hidden.

A point Killian highlighted when he spoke again. "The Hawk is as good a man, as the Eagle is good at skirting the truth." Before Memnon could throw himself at the Crane Chief, though, Killian waved to me. "I believe you, Hawk. You are as honorable as your father before you, and he didn't just speak the vows of his chieftainship and then pay them cheap lip service. He lived them. He certainly wouldn't have killed his own wife without reason, even if he despised her."

A slow nod went around the room, every clan head except Memnon and his closest ally, the head of the Falcon Clan. No surprise Memnon didn't want to drop the subject. I'd feel no charity toward me if I were him. His daughter was dead because of me, and I might be sorry it was so, but I wouldn't trade my life for hers.

Clearly, as I was alive.

"He should still pay," the Falcon chief said, the first to speak up for Memnon in the discussion, and I was strangely grateful. I didn't want the entire conversation to simply exonerate me. I felt guilty. I was lying to them, if only by omission and necessity. They should be angry with me. "He can handle the outsider Urial is sending to beg for our resources."

Both Memnon and I frowned at him, at that.

"That's hardly a proper payment for murdering an innocent," Memnon rebuked.

"Good thing that isn't what happened," Killian said, nodding and ignoring Memnon entirely. "As long as I don't have to take another outsider home with me, I don't care what we do. You handle him, Hawk. If they're sending him to us, surely they don't care what happens to him."

That was... both brutal and likely true. The last three diplomats Urial had determinedly sent to us had all ended up dead. One in a fall, one when he'd insulted the clan chief he'd been sent to negotiate with, and the third, inexplicably, of Avianitis.

Who would have given him the illness, well... it didn't bear too much consideration. Whoever they were, they were likely quite unhappy with the results, and I didn't envy them. Who would fall in love with someone from the selfish, careless land to our north, full of liars and manipulators and betrayers?

It didn't matter. What mattered was that I was being offered penance. Memnon was right, in that it was nothing. It was an insult to Clio as much as a true punishment, but it was something I could do. Something I'd been assigned, to make up for what had happened. I told myself that if I somehow managed to forge a trade pact, or alliance, or any sort of agreement with Urial, I would make sure the Eagle Clan benefited by it.

Perhaps their daughter had tried to murder me. Perhaps even now, Memnon was seething, wishing he could finish the job himself. But I was not them. I was sad about the twisted, hurtful way things had happened between our clans, and if I could make it up to them, for myself, I would.

I did not think Memnon would ever forgive me, but in the long run, it was more important that I forgive myself. Memnon, I saw four times a year at these meetings, and hopefully never otherwise. Myself? I had to live with him every day, and it was damned inconvenient when I didn't like him very much.

"Is there other nonsense, or are we free?" Killian demanded, sighing with annoyance at the silent, serious room.

"None," Balthazar intoned, sober as always. Slowly, each of the other clan chiefs added their agreement to his, and then, we were free.

Well, they were free. I had to stay in the meeting place and await the man from Urial, whether that wait was hours, days, or... well, even if they'd insisted on sending a new envoy, it was Urial. It might be years. They were liars, to a man.

I returned to the Hawk tent to find a pacing Owen, whose head snapped up to look at me. "It went well?"

My response was a half-hearted shrug. I didn't want to seem too pleased with the outcome. And I wasn't. I was... well, I was still numb.

I had married Clio to make peace with her family, yes. But I hadn't wanted to be the death of her. It didn't matter that Rosaline had been the one to wield the knife; I had been her death. If only I had refused to marry her when my instincts had said the Eagle Clan's motives were questionable, she might still be alive.

"We have to host the new diplomatic envoy from Urial."

Owen's nose scrunched, and his lips twisted in an unhappy moue. I couldn't blame him. The Hawk Clan had never been forced to deal with diplomats before. We were known for our fertile farmland and plentiful livestock. We were farmers. Not diplomats.

The Raven were the clever ones, the Owls wise, and the Vultures patient. The Hawk were supposed to produce. To feed Nemeda. Not talk to strangers.

I didn't hear what he'd have said in complaint, though, because a moment later, Minerva ducked into the tent, inclined her head to Owen, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me back out. Once we were outside, she turned and started walking.

I knew my role in this relationship. I followed.

Minerva had been one of my dearest friends my whole life. Our love for each other had pulled our clans closer to each other, despite some old animosities that had kept our predecessors from being close. When we'd been children, ancient feuds hadn't mattered. Now? Well, they mattered even less.

It wasn't until after we'd reached and passed the boundaries of the camp, heading up the hill to the east, into the brush and shrubs growing there, that she finally slowed enough that I could catch up.

She glanced at me, one brow lifted. "Owen?"

I shivered at her entirely calm, perceptive tone. She knew everything. Everything, except who had actually killed Clio. I shook my head, letting it fall forward and barely breathing out the answer. "Rosie."

Her head snapped up sharply and she stopped walking to stare at me for a moment. "Everything else as you said?"

"Everything," I agreed.

She shook her head in disgust and turned to walk again. "How is the poor thing? She's not cut out for the life of a warrior."

"She's . . . handling it. She'll be fine."

Minerva stopped at the edge of an overlook that let us see the whole of camp, as well as the road from Urial. "This isn't nothing, this punishment."

"I know," I agreed. "Even if we don't want an alliance, we can't just dismiss and kill them. They're the liars and cheats, not us. It's abominable that somehow, we keep being the ones to kill them."

She shrugged as her raven-black hair whipped in the wind, the dozens of raven feathers tied into it almost weapons in their own right. Her cloak was the same, a sturdy wool thing, but sewn with an overlay of glossy black feathers. The cloak had been her mother's before her, and held a feather from... well, hundreds, maybe even thousands of different Ravens. I had a similar one in my tent, but I'd chosen not to wear it to the council meeting, when I was trying to go in supplication. It didn't do to cover oneself in finery and then ask forgiveness.

The feathers in her hair were from those closest to her. One for every clan member she'd lost in her life, and it was too damned many. It made me feel excessive and soft and weak, the relatively few tied into my own. Less than a dozen. One for each of my parents and grandparents who'd yet lived at my birth, and the younger brother I'd had all too briefly. One for each of Rosaline's parents. One for Owen's wife.

Like I said, the Hawk Clan were farmers. We didn't lose people. We didn't make alliances. We fed cows and chickens, raised messenger pigeons, and grew cotton.

Minerva and the Raven protected our southeastern border, and she was as deadly as she was beautiful. As deadly as Killian of the Crane Clan, who held the lands south of her, and had a longer border with the threatening, fractious southern kingdoms. It was only because of the ferocity of the Crane and Raven Clans, and the relative lack of cohesion between the southern kingdoms, that we were safe to farm.

She sighed and leaned back against me. Once, before it had been clear that she favored women and I men, our parents had hoped to merge our clans with a marriage between us. When my father had died, I'd still considered it. Merging the clans under Minerva's rule had seemed easy. No chance I would destroy the Hawk Clan with my incompetence if the Hawk was no more.

Minerva had told me to fuck right off with that nonsense. She sacrificed every aspect of her life fighting to protect Nemeda, and she'd have a marriage for love or not at all, because she deserved it. Besides, she didn't want to worry about goats and sheep and crop rotation. That was Hawk nonsense.

"I wonder sometimes," she finally said. "I know we've been told they're all bad, but can they truly be? The southerners are a bunch of brawling boychildren who shove their women down and force them to keep their houses and bear their children while they go off to war, like it's a game."

Hm. I hadn't known that. No wonder the southerners couldn't win a war. Nemeda's two greatest generals were Minerva and Killian, and I'd have put every feather in my collection on Minerva, if I were forced to bet on a fight between the two of them. Maybe that didn't mean all female generals were better than male ones, but... well, the extension of that presumption largely fit the men and women I knew. Certainly, Killian was the best fighter I knew. But Minerva was a genius, and underestimating that was liable to get a man killed, even the best fighter.

Still, she was making a point and I was woolgathering, like the farmer I was. "You think if the southern kingdoms are bad, Urial has to be good, somewhere deep down?"

She winced and shrugged. "No, of course not. But only a great arrogant jackass truly believes that he and his are the only good people in all the lands. Everyone is the hero of their own story. Not everyone but us can be monstrous villains."

I didn't know if she was right, but... well, she was Minerva. Of course she was right. I would have to give the diplomat from Urial a chance. After all, someone had given the last Avianitis. That had to mean something, even if it was tragic that he'd died of it.

Minerva grabbed my attention, pointing into the distance, to a disturbance in the dirt. A carriage, the strange contraptions the folk of Urial used instead of just riding their horses or using wagons. "Your diplomat. Shall I accompany you?"

I snorted at that and shoved her off me. "If you do, they'll want to go with you. You're prettier than me."

She grinned back, throwing me a wink and wrapping an arm around my shoulders before turning us back toward camp and setting out. "All the more reason for me to go. Can't have your diplomat thinking we're all as ugly as you."