“Yes,” Thorn said simply. Dignity seemed best. (They’re joking about her being in season. I’ll bet none of them got close to a woman this spring.)
(Neither did I. Neither will I. A hatani has nothing. Owns nothing. Betan has property in the city. She doesn’t have to marry. She could have all her children to herself.) Between Duun and the ribald jokes Thorn had learned some few things. (But I’ll bet someone will make her the best offer he can.)
“When Ghosan-hatani came to Elanten there were two sisters who asked her to judge between them and their husband. They had married the same man for a five-year, each in succession. They all three were potters and he was promised a potter’s shop from his mother’s heritage, so a marriage seemed profitable. But during the fourth year of the first sister the second sister bore a child which was only hers. The husband refused to consummate the second marriage if the woman did not disinherit this child. And both women would lose all they had invested in this shop. ‘This is a small matter,’ Ghosan-hatani said when the sisters came to her. ‘Judge it yourselves.’ Of course the husband was not there. He had no desire to have it judged. And the second sister looked at Ghosan and lost her courage. ‘Come away,’ she asked her sister. ‘We were mad to ask this hatani.’ And that sister ran away. But the first sister stayed. ‘I want a judgment,’ that sister said. So Ghosan-hatani went door-to-door in Elanten and asked everyone in the village what they knew. And she asked the magistrate. And everything confirmed what the sisters had said. ‘Give me a pen,’ Ghosan said. The magistrate gave the hatani a pen. And Ghosan wrote in the village records that the shop belonged to the child and to his descendants; and if not to them it belonged to the village of Elanten.”
“They would hate the child,” Thorn objected.
“Perhaps they would,” Duun said. “But when the child was grown and the husband was beyond his prime, what would keep him from turning the husband out? The husband not only consummated the marriage, he wanted to marry the women for good, but they only married him one year at a time for the rest of his life, even through he was very kind to them and to the child. The industry still exists in Elanten, and exports all over the world.”
“Do hatani marry?” Thorn asked. He was thinking about Betan. His heart beat fast. (Ought I to have asked that? It wasn’t the point of the story.) But there was a feeling in him that came in the night, when he had a vague and disturbing dreams, when he waked ashamed of himself. But Duun said nothing about these times, Duun only looked at him with that guardedness that did nothing to reassure him. (Does Duun do these things in the night? Something is wrong with me. Why shouldn’t it be? Who was my mother and father? Was I like that child?)
(Did some hatani judgment take me away from my mother? Was it Duun’s?)
“There are instances,” Duun said.
“Were you ever married?”
“Several times.”
It shocked Thorn. (He’s done-that-with a woman.) Thorn’s face went hot. (I might.) He thought of the foenin in the woods. And shifted restlessly, and hugged his knees. (Think of something else. What else has Duun done? What made his scars? Is it all one story?)
“There was a hatani named Ehonin,” Duun said. “He had a daughter with a woman not his wife. This daughter when she was grown trekked to another province where Ehonin was by then. She asked him to judge between him and her since her mother had married and disowned her. Ehonin made her hatani. She died in her schooling. This was her patrimony. Ehonin knew she was not able. She was weak. But he gave her what he had. To kill the wife wouldn’t have helped.”
“He could have made the daughter marry.”
“That would have been another solution, but there was no other participant. He could hardly drag someone into the situation who wasn’t involved. That’s never right. When the hatani himself is involved in the case, the judgments are never what they ought to be: the fewer people the hatani has in the case to judge, the fewer solutions are available.”