Kit shrugged. “Most likely she’s married. Most likely her husband is violent, and she reached the breaking point. She’s run away. Almost no one will take in a runaway wife. Sometimes, if her father is very powerful and loves her very much, he’ll take her back and allow her to live in obscurity in his home for the rest of her life. Every once in a while, a brother will do the same thing. Rarely, though. You see, any man who takes a woman’s side against another man is undermining the system that makes the whole society work. It often makes him an outcast in his own community. He becomes suspect. He loses honor.”

“But that’s—then, she has no recourse? A woman who has been abused or married into a violent household?”

“Very little. Except to run away. And her chances of making it to the city are slim. Maybe one in four. Less.”

“And once she’s there—she’s not safe there, is she? I mean, you read those stories all the time, about some woman found slaughtered in the Lost City. A woman and all her children. And that’s because she’s run away from some cruel husband? He has the right to do that?”

“Ah. The slaughter of children is really a completely separate matter.”

“You say it so casually!”

“I’m not casual” was her sharp reply. “I’m just trying to explain it to you.”

“Then explain it.”

“In Geldricht, paternity is everything. For a man, there is almost no point to life unless he has a son to whom he can pass on all his wealth, his possessions, his profession. A daughter is a bargaining chip for making advantageous deals that include marriage, but a son is the future.

“But a son is not a real person until he is twelve years old. Try hard to understand that, or none of the rest of this will make sense to you. Until he is twelve, he may as well not exist. He is cloistered with the women and the other children, and even his father rarely sees him. At least, in the more traditional households. There are some fathers who spend time with their children, but they are rare. When a boy turns twelve, there is a ceremony that marks his—well, actually marks the occasion of his coming into existence. He has legal rights. He can hold a position on his father’s estate, he can inherit if his father dies. He is officially a man.

“It is those years before manhood that are dicey ones for a boy. If his father does not approve of the way he is growing up—if his father dislikes his looks, for instance, or considers that he is not intelligent enough, not manly enough, to follow in his footsteps, he can have the boy put to death. If he—”

“Put to death! Murdered! You can’t possibly mean that!”