Lyanna Targanfel's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

By midmorning the man at the well had a crowd. Lyanna Targanfel heard him before she saw him, his voice carrying over the stalls. "Targan's girl," he called, slapping the mossy rim of the stone well. "Pretty face, father's name. Take away the name and what's left? A signature no merchant will sign under." Laughter cracked through the square. Lyanna stopped at the edge of the crowd with a folded contract in her hand and a stone pendant cool against her collarbone. She had three weeks until her wedding. She meant to be more than her parents' daughter before then. She knew the man. He had failed to win a harbor contract last winter and had been louder ever since. He pointed at her as she stepped through. "There she is. Go on, lass. Show us a deal you closed without your da's mark on it." The crowd waited. Lyanna felt the pendant under her shirt, the rough rune she had carved herself at twelve, the day a Kethosi buyer had spoken past her to a dock hand. She did not answer him yet. Instead she walked to the painted wooden figure that stood beside the well, the market's tribute to the season's best trader. The carving wore her face. The town council had set it there a week ago and most people still walked past without looking up. Lyanna climbed onto its base and turned to face the crowd. "The grain route to the north coast," she said. "I signed it. In Kethosi. My father cannot read Kethosi. My mother cannot read Kethosi. Ask the harbormaster whose hand is on the manifest." The man at the well laughed, but thinner now. "Words," he said. "Anyone can claim a route." Lyanna unfolded the contract she carried and held it open above her head. The Kethosi seal showed plain. She read the terms aloud in Kethosi, then in trade common, then in two more dialects so no one in the square could pretend they had not understood. A dockhand near the front nodded. He had been on that ship. He said so, loud. The crowd shifted. A woman who had laughed earlier looked at her boots. The doubter opened his mouth and shut it. Lyanna stepped down from the base of the wooden figure and walked to him. She did not raise her voice. "Say my name without my father's," she said. "Say Lyanna. Try it." He did not. He pushed back through the crowd and went down the lane toward the docks. People watched him go. Then they looked at her, and the looking was different. Lyanna folded the contract again. The square went back to its noise, but slower, with her in the middle of it now. She tucked the pendant back under her collar. One doubter was finished. She counted the faces that had laughed with him and were still in the square. There were more of them than she had thought.