I keep my hands loose at my sides.
Pa turns to me. "I saw you dance."
"It was a dance."
"You looked happy."
I say nothing.
He lets out a slow breath. "Don't be foolish about her, Torgan. You're the heir. Everything you do reflects on thisfamily, and we're negotiating with humans who are waiting for a reason to treat us as less than them."
"Pa..."
"It isn't because she's human," he says. "She's a fine woman. Anyone can see that. But your sisters get to marry for their hearts because you don't."
There it is.
He isn't telling me anything I haven't told myself since I was old enough to understand what heir meant.
My sisters can choose.
I carry the family.
"There's nothing to be foolish about," I say.
Pa studies me. He knows I'm lying, but he also knows when pushing will get him nowhere.
"Good," he says.
The word sits between us.
I need somewhere without a view of Lissy, so I move toward the tables by the doors. The older guests have settled into serious drinking games, and that is where I hear the name.
"Voss," Kenna, a master weaver from the western villages, says bitterly. "I've sold to the same house in Valeforth for thirty years. This spring, they tell me everything goes through Voss Textiles. Their man offers half what my cloth brings at market, and the Merreach dockmasters won't take orc freight without a Voss stamp."
One of the other traders glances around. "Careful."
"I'm sixty-one and drunk at a wedding. When will I be safer?" Kenna drinks, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "They buy at half, sell at full, and call the difference a tariff. I asked to see the tariff schedule. Their man laughed at me."
The traders mutter their agreement before the conversation wanders back to looms and dyes.
I stand there with my fists clenched.
It isn't proof. It is a drunk weaver talking at a wedding.
But I've read enough shipping records to recognize what she is describing. At Valeforth Hall, the Duke called it coordination and protection. His sons sit at the docks and make sure the tariffs are paid as they should be.
Paid to whom?
The weavers are forced to sell for less. Shops like Lissy's pay more for the same cloth. Voss Textiles takes its share from both sides.
Princeton called her shop a mercy purchase.
Fuck him.
This is something I understand. A threat with a name. Records that can be checked. Men who can be watched.
For the first time tonight, I know what to do.
