“Try to remember. Until he is twelve, the boy isn’t a person. He has no rights. He’s like—a dog, or a toy or—”

“You can’t be saying this. No one could believe this.”

Kit spread her hands. “In Inrhio, as I understand it, it’s fairly common for a woman to abort a child before it comes to full term.”

Nolan stared at her. “So? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Isn’t it the same thing? Aborting a life before it becomes whatever you have determined is really an individual?”

“It’s not the same thing at all! One is a—a collection of cells so small you can’t see them unless you’re in a lab with special equipment, and the other is walking around talking, breathing, laughing, playing—”

“Frankly, I think both practices are equally abominable.”

“Then how can you talk so calmly? How can you defend something that you don’t believe in?”

“How can you attack something that you don’t understand?” she shot back.

He threw his hands in the air. “Fine! Finish your explanation! Nothing you say will make me view this as anything less than primitive and barbaric.”

“And both of those elements exist in the gulden lifestyle. But unless you know why those elements are in place, and how deeply they are woven into the collective gulden psyche, you will have no hope of changing the fabric of that society.”

“As if change were possible.”

“It’s possible. It’s happening. But slowly.”

“You can tell me about that later. Finish about the children.”

“All right. So until a boy is twelve, his father can do with him what he wills. But if his father dies before he’s twelve, his life becomes even chancier. When a man dies, care of his wife and family passes to his next of kin—father, brother, uncle, cousin—no matter how distant the connection. Most often, this kinsman does not want the responsibility of another family in his household, so his first priority is to marry off the widow. Though he only has a hope of doing that if she’s still of childbearing age, because no man wants to marry if he won’t be able to produce sons. Does this all make sense so far?”

“In its way,” Nolan said grimly.

“A man who wants to have his own children has no interest in raising another man’s son. So, most often, a man who marries a widow with young children will have all the children killed. He may keep the daughters, if they are pretty enough to attract good husbands—”

“He kills them? Just like that?”

Kit nodded. “It is as if he—as if he were to drown kittens because there were too many in the litter. It happens all the time on in-country farms.”

“I never drowned a kitten. I never killed anything in my life.”