Daughter of the Lion - Part Three - Chapter Four

[kalinara]

So last time, we saw the end of Strahan. Man, did villain decay get that guy good. That said, it was pretty satisfying to see a female character actually get to kill her enemy (and rapist!) outright.

So maybe the coast is clear?



So we rejoin Keely as she sits in the ruined chapel, with Strahan's gross Ihlini blood on her hands. I admit, I like this bit:

he knife stood up in his chest. Moonlight gilded the hilt, setting the gold to glowing. Setting the rubies to blazing as if they might banish the godfire. Thus banished, it flowed away, tearing like tomb-rotted linen.

I stared fixedly at the knife. Not mine, but very like it, hiked in gold and rubies, with the face of a snarling lion swelling out of the satiny grip. The Lion of Homana. I had seen its like before, carved into the marble of royal sarcophogi deep in the vaults of Homana-Mujhar.

And now Strahan's body profaned it.

I wonder if we've seen this knife before. Either way. I'm pretty happy about this.

So Keely reclaims the knife and uses the crimson robe to clean it. Once it's clean, she basically hugs it and thanks it. I don't blame her one bit. Now that she's not being chased by an evil sorcerer, she actually can read some of the newer runes left in the temple.

This is cool:

I traced them out carefully, reading them aloud. It was a Cheysuli birthline, naming the generations, the lineage of the warrior gone ahead to the afterworld. The names were all familiar, being of my clan. Being also of my House; he had been brother to my great-grandsire.

OHHH. We have seen this knife before. Keely realizes it too, when she digs in the dirt and unearths Cheysuli lir-gold. She puts it together: a Homanan knife and Cheysuli lir-gold.

She'd killed Strahan with Finn's knife. The character with the best...I don't want to call it redemption arc, because that would require an acknowledgment of how terrible he was when he started, but maybe "salvage arc", in the book. He went from being terrible to one of the most compelling characters in the first half of the series, and now he's made one last appearance, to help save Alix's great-granddaughter. Or rather, to help Alix's great-granddaughter save herself.

It is a rather nice reversal, isn't it?

Anyway, Keely knows better than to tarry, she tells us. There's still Ihlini on the island, even if Strahan is dead. Is there? I mean it makes sense, I just don't remember them being mentioned before.

She decides to do one last thing: move Strahan out of Finn's chapel.

The body was slack and heavy, utterly graceless in death. It was, I thought, an obscene parody of what he had been in life. I paused, hunching beside him, looking on his face. Wasting a moment to look, because he commanded it. Even in death, there was beauty.

He had died in shock, in disbelief. It showed in the set of his mouth, in the staring of his eyes. One blue. One brown. Set obliquely above the cheekbones so very like a Cheysuli's, if housed in fairer flesh.

Bile rose in my throat. It was all I could do to swallow it back. "So," I said aloud, "you win after all. No prince of a royal House will take to wife a despoiled woman. Even without the child . . . virginity is a necessity, and I no longer suit."

Oof.

Well, that clears that up. I mean, they didn't seem terribly bothered when Keely pretended to be Rory's mistress. But I suppose it's different because Keely knows the truth. She's annoyed me for most of the book, but I do feel for her here.

She tries to figure out what to do. If she goes to Hondarth in the state she's in, they'll assume she's a beggar or worse. She has no money and the only thing she could possibly sell is the lir-gold, and she's not going to do that. But there's another option...

I looked again at the body, sprawled outside the chapel. And in the end, ironically, it was Strahan who served me. He wore no belt-purse, providing me with no coin, but he did wear silver on brow and hips and a soft wool robe over leathers, even wet and muddy. It was better than what I had.

Do it! Loot his fucking corpse!

And she does. It's hard for her, takes all her strength and willpower to touch her rapist, but she gets the stuff off of him. The fact that he's not quite cold yet freaks her out, making her wonder, frightened, if he's still alive. But she calms down. He's dead.

So now Keely's got clothes (using Finn's knife to cut it shorter) and silver for "food, drink, rest, and herbs to loosen the child.") Good. I like that abortion is a clear, unashamed option in this universe.

The one thing she can't bring herself to touch is his circlet. She then kneels at the altar, not for the gods, but for Finn. This is sweet too:

"Kinsman, I honor you for your care. But Carillon gave you this knife when you swore yourself to his service, and I will not take it from you. Not after all these years."

Next, the lir-gold, glinting dully in thin moonlight.

I passed my thumb over the image of the wolf, smiling a little. "I am a woman, and therefore have no lir. But I honor yours, knowing who he was, and give him back to you. Storr's name will be remembered."

I feel like Finn probably wouldn't mind if she kept the knife. But she sinks it, and the lir gold into the mud, and covers it. She decides that it's not her place to determine if the weapon and gold should ever be found. That's up to Finn.

I like this bit too. Considering the importance of religion to the series, there's a lot we don't know about the practices. (And I'm still annoyed to know nothing of non-Cheysuli Homanan traditions.)

Keely realizes something else. She'd wiped off Strahan's blood from her hands, but some of her own is still there from cuts and scrapes. It's red and watery, the way it's supposed to be.

She bites her already injured lip (from earlier), and tastes copper. She's delighted to see that the blood there is red too. And she realizes something else: and takes lir shape. A hawk, the power comes quickly and powerfully. She starts to fly away and then, unexpectedly, falls toward the ocean.

The chapter ends here.

Comments

[bestbrotherever]

Wait, Strahan's really dead for real?

[kalinara]

As far as I remember, yes. But it's been a while since I read the book. (I didn't remember Corin being in it at all, tbh). So...we'll see?

[bestbrotherever]

I guess it would make sense, most people can't survive a knife to the heart, but the Ihlini have seemed so OP and invulnerable that it's hard to believe.

[kalinara]

Yeah, it's kind of anti climactic way to go. I do like it in the sense that for all his schemes and drama, Strahan gets taken out by his own ego as much as anything else.