Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses) by Sharon Shinn

Ellynor stretched her arms over her head. “Oh, you’re right, it is complicated! There are some sebahta that almost always stay neutral, and they try to mediate disputes. There are some families that live close to the roads, and they want to avoid having their own young men get swept up in other people’s battles, and so they will post watchers on the road and try to make sure warring sebahta don’t accidentally meet. But there are some men who are always ready to fight. Who are always looking for the stranger’s insult or the dangerous pathway. The Lirren men are proud of their ability with knives and swords—and bare hands. Even when times are peaceful, they fight each other, just to keep their skills sharp.”
     
     
    “Even the men in your family?”
     
     
    Ellynor laughed. “Especially the men in my family! Not my father so much now, though my mother says he was always quarrelsome when they were younger. But my brothers— Hayden and Torrin—oh, they would fight anybody with hardly an excuse. Torrin especially. He is two years older than I am and just stuffed with pride. No one has ever beaten him, either friend or enemy. He is too good.”
     
     
    “I can’t imagine having brothers like that. They sound dreadful.”
     
     
    Ellynor laughed, though the sound was half a sigh. “Oh, in their way, they are wonderful. They both love me very much, though their love is smothering sometimes. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a boy without Hayden and Torrin watching, ready to strangle the poor man if he said something too familiar or tried to take my hand. And if he tried to kiss me—! Some man from the Cohfen sebahta did kiss me one feast night, and I thought Torrin would tear the head from his body. Hayden stopped him, but only because he was Cohfen, and not someone we wanted to fight with.”
     
     
    “I heard something once about the Lirrenfolk,” Astira said. “That the women aren’t allowed to marry anyone except Lirren men. Is that true?”
     
     
    Ellynor nodded, ruffling her hair against the pillow. She had unbound it and combed it out after their ride. She’d need to braid it or put it in its customary knot before taking her turn at the old woman’s bedside. “It’s true,” she said, lowering her voice even more. “If a girl tries to marry outside the Lirrens, her lover will be challenged to a duel to the death. Anyone in the sebahta-ris —her father, her brothers, her cousins—whoever is the best fighter can do battle on her behalf, but the lover must fight for himself. And they fight until one of them is dead.”
     
     
    “That’s terrible!” Astira exclaimed.
     
     
    Ellynor nodded again. “I know. You can guess that not too many Lirren girls are willing to risk it. For which one of them would you want to see bleeding his life away? You understand, the families are very close. The ties of affection are so strong, and not just between blood relatives, but between everyone in the sebahta . What kind of girl would put her father or her brother at risk? And yet, how could she stand to see her lover cut down? Wouldn’t she just rather give him up? Wouldn’t she just tell him, the very first time he showed her any affection, ‘Go away. I’m not interested in you’? Better that than to someday fall in love with him, and have to choose between giving him up or seeing him dead.”
     
     
    “That’s even more terrible,” Astira said. “I would despise anyone who put me in a position like that. I would hate my father to think he would force me to make such a dreadful decision.”
     
     
    Ellynor shrugged in the dark. “Well, there are not so many strangers who come traveling through the Lirrens,” she said. “A few merchants—now and then some of the king’s soldiers—and every once in a while, sailors from Arberharst and Sovenfeld. But mostly the men we see are the men of our families and of the sebahta-ris . We don’t have many chances to ruin our lives by falling