Kai Low didn't know Lord Rong well enough yet to know if he'd simply bought into the party line or if he truly believed everything he was saying. It sounded nice, but lies often sounded better than the truth.
Beauty was a bit of a lie itself, since it was always in the eye of the beholder, and what was beautiful to one was ugly to another. How was he supposed to keep up with that?
At least beauty in the tribes was simple, care and nature, none of the face paint and jewels that the women in this place draped themselves in until they were unrecognizable. Even the men wore so much decoration that Kai Low had to work to recognize them without it.
What was the point? Were they so uncomfortable, so desperateTo be someone else? People that unhappy were rarely honest and Kai Low would never trust them.
He knew Lord Rong wore a mask of some kind. What kind of spy didn't? But he also showed his real face, which made it more difficult to tell when he was lying. He was one of the few people Kai Low had ever encountered who was so difficult to read.
Normally, Kai Low could at least get an idea of someone's truth, even if he never found out for sure. He'd known Lord Rong wasn't a tribesman despite his insistence that he was, but he couldn't prove it until Beng Shai had set eyes on him.
How fickle the truth was in human hands.
How was he supposed to know if Long Rong would stay true to his word? What if he and his lord changed their mind in a few months, a few years? The tribes prided themselves on being straightforward and honest, and they'd suffered for it in dealings with the stone cities in the past. Not just Song and Snow, but Sorrow too. The previous lord had been well known for speaking false promises to their faces and then doing something completely different, and the tribes had never learned, because it simply wasn't their way.
What if Kai Low trusted him and walked his own people to their execution?
The terror of that possibility made him bitter and angry and utterly untrusting. If his own brother could turn on him, then some strangers who didn't owe him the honesty of family could certainly do it.
Growing up, Kai Low had worshipped his brother. Kai San had his failings, something Kai Low took comfort in now, but his quietness, which their parents had hated, and his temper and his stubborn refusal to take a wife, were all simply part of the man Kai Low had called brother.
From the day he'd learned to crawl, Kai Low had followed Kai San everywhere. As he'd grown, everyone had loved to remind him of the most embarrassing moment, but Kai Low had always been warmed by them too, because Kai San had always been there to catch him, had been just as enraptured with the little figure chasing after him as Kai Low had been with the giant he'd adored.
Kai San had taught him how to gentle the wild horses, the first rite of passage to manhood among the Bandri, how to ride and shoot and fight with every weapon he knew. He'd shown Kai Low how to track animals, from the largest, the blue bear that hunted the northern plains, to the smallest, the hawk mouse, whose paws were smaller than the smallest toenail. He taught him how to listen to the birds, how to find water in the driest months, and when the wheat was ready to harvest. He'd even taught him how to mill it down to flour to make bread, despite their father's anger at teaching him a woman's task.
Looking back, that was one of the first signs that Kai Low and everyone else had missed. The real cracks, the ones he'd noticed as they happened, had started when he was a teenager. When their sister married, Kai San started splitting his time between their family and her new one. Their parents hadn't been pleased; they wanted Kai San to marry and start the next generation of their family, not leave and join his sister's husband's family.
Kai Low didn't understand what the problem was. Kai San and their sister, Kai Aba, had always been terribly close. Closer than she had ever been with Kai Low or their parents, and they'd both been upset at the separation her marriage had brought.
There'd even been some unsavory rumors after everything that they'd been closer than siblings should be, but Kai Low had never believed them. Kai Aba had married for love the first time, and luckily for her, he'd been from an acceptable family, so their parents hadn't objected. They'd had three children in three years, the happiest Kai Low had ever seen their family, and he'd enjoyed visiting and playing with the babes as they grew. Kai Aba had blossomed as well; a glow his sister had lacked under their parents' roof had appeared once she had her camp to manage.
Looking back, that was probably the happiest period in his family's life.
How quickly it had changed was still a bit shocking, but it was simply the way life went sometimes. Aba's husband's death in a skirmish with Beng Shai's family and Beng Shai's claiming had happened in a matter of days. Kai Low had attended the funeral and the wedding the next day and counted his blessings that his sister had gotten lucky enough with two husbands who were loving and respectful. Beng Shai hadn't hesitated to take in and claim her children and everyone who'd survived from her new family. His acceptance had been so deep that her children had entered the line of succession for the Bandri, which Kai Low and Kai Aba's parents had been ecstatic about.
The only ones who hadn't been happy were Aba and San.
It was understandable that she'd wanted time to mourn her first husband, but it was also the way of the tribes to carry out marriage claims immediately to protect everyone involved.
Kai Aba had been the most miserable bride Kai Low had ever seen on her wedding day to Beng Shai, despite her new husband desperately trying please her. Her parents had even pulled her aside and spoken to her. Granted, Kai Low recognized that yelling at her to smile and fake it hadn't been the most helpful suggestion, but even he'd thought she would move on in a few months. Some lives were short in the prairie, between war, famine, and the harsh environment. Most didn't make it to old age with their first spouse.
But Aba had never shaken the misery. To the point where it had affected her health and her relationships with everyone except her devoted husband, who'd catered to her every whim.
Not that she'd expressed what any of them were to him. It had mostly been the parents on both sides interfering and it had only been a few months before Ada had refused to allow her parents to visit her. They hadn't believed her order at first, but the third time they'd been turned away at her door, their disbelief had turned to fury, and they'd refused to return unless she came and apologized.
She never had.
Kai Low had been stuck in the middle and only seen his sister twice more before she'd told him not to visit if it was on behalf of their parents and he'd been too young and too busy with his own life to have another reason to visit her.
The only one who'd seen her with any regularity was Kai San.
He was the one who'd told them of her first attempt to take her own life. That Beng Shai was raising the children because her grief was so strong that most days she couldn't rise from her bed. To their parents, it had been an unspeakable display of weakness, and their reaction had angered Kai San so much that Kai Low had actually been afraid he would strike them.
He'd stopped visiting them after that, too. Spending long weeks on patrols or busying himself elsewhere when he wasn't visiting Ada. When a year had passed with no change and no pregnancy, even Beng Shai's family had begun to talk of ending the marriage, but Beng Shai had refused. He'd been in love with Ada for years and refused to hear a bad word spoken of her.
He'd been a bit blind in Kai Low's opinion, but apparently, some people just were when it came to love. The entire tribe had been convinced Ada would change course after that first year, mourning periods among the tribes were rarely that long, but it wasn't completely unheard of, and Beng Shai had been terribly hopeful.
Kai Low had only spoken to his sister once after he'd become one of Beng Shai's commanders, and he'd asked her when she was so determined to be unhappy with her life.
She hadn't answered him, except to say he was too young to understand. As a teenager, it was the last thing he'd wanted to hear.
It was the last time he ever spoke to her.
Two months later, she was dead and Kai San was gone.
~ tbc