Fourteen Years Ago, Barnslow, Neverwinter Territory

Mum and Kyla had been fighting for days. Dad was gone, up to Redfallows' Watch on business. Kyrwan did not know what business that might be. Dad was a butcher, most of his work took place at his shop in the town center. Ever since he'd left, the two had been tight and short with each other. He would hear snatches of conversation, late at night. The third night Dad had been gone, he crept downstairs and to where the barn door was open. Inside usually dwelled the doomed cows and sheep, no longer good for milk or wool, that Dad had bought for slaughter. This time, though, the bar was eerily empty. He glimpsed Kyla in the corner, sitting on an overturned bucket. She had her head in his hands, and it looked as though she'd been crying. Mum was standing over her, arms akimbo.

"It's eight years now you've been keeping this secret from us," Mum said, glaring down at her firstborn.

Kyla moaned and sobbed, and said nothing. She sounded almost like the plaintive sheep, stuck in the barn, waiting for Dad's sharp knife to slit her throat and spill her blood onto the already rust-stained earthen floor. Kyrwan had never been afraid to intercede on Kyla's behalf when Dad was beating her, but he harbored a fear in his heart for Mum. Dad was always rough, especially when he'd been drinking, but Mum was soft and kind. That made her anger that much more terrifying.

"Please, Mum," Kyla sighed, "There's no point... he's here now. He's a grown child, he's not going anywhere. What would you bring it up for?"

"Because you're with child again!" Mum exclaimed, "Don't think I haven't noticed. You hate beet greens, and here you are eating them out of the bin. I remember the last time. Who's going to take care of this bastard? I'm forty-one years old, Kyla, nobody is going to believe its mine!"

Kyla hid her face in her hands and sobbed.

"Who have you been whoring with?" Mum exclaimed, "Gods and Goddesses above I will slit your throat myself if you don't tell me!"

"I'll take care of it, Mum," Kyla said, her voice muffled by her two hands.

"If you don't tell me who the father is, I'll make sure you carry that burden nine months and cast you out with your shame this time. You're a woman grown, not a girl of fourteen as you were before. Gods, is it even the same father as Kyrwan?"

"Yes," Kyla mumbled.

The boy crouched there by the barn door, his attention jarred back by his mother speaking his name. What did she mean, did the child Kyla was carrying have the same father as Kyrwan? What did that...

He heard a crack resound and echo through the barn as Mother backhanded Kyla across the face. He watched, intently, forgetting his confusion. He watched as Kyla bowed her head, and then rose quickly, suddenly angry. It was as though, all in that instant, she had grown large and terrible, no longer afraid of her mother. She was nineteen years younger than Mum and taller by a head and a half. She towered over Mum, looking suddenly terrible and frightening, her roan-brown hair falling around her face.

"Are you sure you want me to tell you this?" she asked, her voice throaty and guttural.

Mum observed the change in Kyla just as Kyrwan had. She blinked her blue eyes, cowering backwards. She pulled her own hair, which was yellow going gray around the edges, behind her and tugged on it a bit. Kyrwan had seen fear in his mother's eyes exactly twice before, both times when Dad was drunk enough to lay off him and Kyla long enough to chase after Mum with a butcher's knife. And now, with her daughter more angry than cowed, she slunk back, terrified.

"Oh for fuck's sake, Mum, I'm not going to hit you. I'm not the son of a bitch you married."

She means Dad, Kyrwan thought.

"Don't speak of your..."

"Fuck that all, Mum. You know why none of the village lads came to claim him, like they did when you got me."

"Kyla, you have no idea what..."

"Do you think they don't talk, your sisters? Don't you think Cullan Quarely's boys have taken every opportunity to tell me just how this whole mess began?" Kyla tugged on the ends of her hair in frustration, "I should light this barn and house on fire and end it all for the miserable lot of us. If only Dad were here for it. I would dearly love to see him burn..."

"So it's true," Mum said, simply, letting her hands lie limply by her sides.

"I have to thank you, Mum, for never interceding on my behalf all of those years, for convincing me to carry... to carry that boy nine months, terrified he'd come out a monster, with twelve fingers and flippers for feet! Only to take him from me when I'd finally learned to love him, force me to be the dutiful elder sister, but nothing more..."

"I did you and him a favor."

"You did nothing. Your husband raped your thirteen year old daughter and you did nothing," Kyla said.

"I didn't know!" Mum protested.

"Bullshit," Kyla snapped, "I'm going to bed now. I'll be gone before dawn."

She turned her back on her mother and left the barn. Kyrwan scurried into the shadows before she could see him. There he sat, his hot little cheek in his cold hand, trying to make sense of everything he'd just heard. He had a hazy sense of where babies came from. He'd seen the village women grow thick about the waste, and had more than once heard the muffled screams of a woman in labor, and he had some sense that a man had some part in giving her the child. His cousins, the Quarelys, were all sandy-haired, blue-eyed louts like their father Cullan, while his other cousins, the Lyndels, were swarthy and dark-eyed like their father Ned. While a bit mystified as to the significance of the conversation he had just overheard, he knew quite surely that it was both terrible and of great import. He resolved, after nearly a quarter of an hour's thought, to go into the barn and demand that Mum explain to him what was happening.

He walked in. Someone – Kyla probably – had left a candle burning on a hay bale on the killing floor. It was empty of animals, but the bloodstains told where they had perished. He looked around, searching the dancing shadows for Mum.

He looked up to the hayloft, and saw her. She was sitting, her legs dangling over the loft like a child. In the candlelight, he could not make out her expression, but he saw when she looked down and saw him, staring straight into his eyes. In a single, fluid motion, she pushed herself from the loft.

Silly, Kyrwan thought, I've jumped from there. Why's she playing at a child's game?

She wasn't jumping from the hayloft. He heard as the rope she'd tied around her neck snapped tight, and heard a crackle like the sound a boot makes on a gravel path. She hung there, swinging, for a moment, Kyrwan staring at her, trying to figure out what in the hells had just happened. He remembered execution day, seeing thieves and murderers put to the gallows. He knew that crackling sound.

The realization came to him, and it felt like when he'd stood on the beach and been bowled over by a large waive. He gasped and fell to the bloodstained earth, putting his hands over his ears and trying to summon his voice.

"K-kyla..." he said, managing a croaky whisper.

Mum is dead.

"Kyla." he squeaked, a little louder this time.

Mum is dead and she's hanging there in the barn. Mum is dead and Kyla is leaving, she said so, and it'll just be you and Dad and he's going to get drunk and slice your throat and Mum is dead and Mum is...

"KYLA!"