Susan had observed all these things often; her father had for years been in charge of the Barony’s horse and had gone to Seafront often on business. Many times he had taken his much loved daughter with him. Oh, she had seen a lot of Hart Thorin over the years, and he had seen a lot of her, as well. Too much, mayhap! For what now seemed the most important fact about him was that he was almost fifty years older than the girl who would perhaps bear his son.

She had made the bargain lightly enough—

No, not lightly, that was being unfair to herself... but she had lost little sleep over it, that much was true. She had thought, after listening to all Aunt Cord’s arguments: Well, it’s little enough, really, to have the indenture off the lands; to finally own our little piece of the Drop in fact as well as in tradition... to actually have papers, one in our house and one in Rimer’s files, saying it’s ours. Aye, and to have horses again. Only three, ’tis true, but that’s three more than we have now. And against that? To lie with him a time or two, and to bear a child, which millions of women have done before me with no harm. ’Tis not, after all, a mutant or a leper I’m being asked to partner with but just an old man with noisy knuckles. ’Tis not forever, and, as Aunt Cord says, I may still marry, if time and ka decree; I should not be the first woman to come to her husband’s bed as a mother. And does it make me a whore to do such? The law says not, but never mind that; my heart’s law is what matters, and my heart says that if I may gain the land that was my da’s and three horses to run on it by being such, then it’s a whore I’ll be.

There was something else: Aunt Cord had capitalized—rather ruthlessly, Susan now saw—on a child’s innocence. It was the baby Aunt Cord had harped on, the cunning little baby she would have. Aunt Cord had known that Susan, the dolls of her childhood put aside not all that long ago, would love the idea of her own baby, a little living doll to dress and feed and sleep with in the heat of the afternoon.

What Cordelia had ignored (perhaps she’s too innocent even to have considered it, Susan thought, but didn’t quite believe) was what the hag-woman had made brutally clear to her this evening: Thorin wanted more than a child.

He wants tits and arse that don’t squish in his hands and a box that’ll grip what he pushes.