A Brother's Price

an act of considering. “Proper enough. It’s not like I’m asking to mount you.”
    “No.” he admitted uneasily, “but one seems to follow the other.”
    She giggled, and then leaned forward—pressing her body full against his, wetting her lips before whispering again. “Kiss me.”
    He supposed this was why the sisters were princesses. They commanded and everyone else was helpless not to obey. Certainly he also was helpless not to enjoy. Her lips were warm, moist velvet, her taste of apples, and her scent of cinnamon. She put her arms about his neck, ran her fingers down his braid, and tugged at the end. A moment later his braid uncoiled and his hair cascaded forward, a waterfall of silky black. She ran fingers through his hair.
    “Lylia,” Ren said from behind her sister.
    The younger princess broke the kiss. “I’m behaving.” She skipped backward, grinning, until she collided with Ren. She rolled her head back on Ren’s shoulder to look up at her older, taller sister. “He’s dreamy.”
    “You’re supposed to be escorting your cousin.” Ren lifted her arm to point back up the path. “Go!”
    “I’m gone.” She spun to duck under Ren’s arm and cantered off.
    “Um.” Jerin ran his thumb across his forehead, gath-ering up his hair and pulling it out of his face. “I’m not sure how to say no to you princesses.”
    “I suppose not,” Ren said quietly. “Our society can’t allow men to learn how to say no; it’s too important they say yes to so many women. Maybe if there were one man for every five women, or every three women, we could afford for men to say no.”
    “What if there were five men for every woman?”
    Ren studied a cloud as she considered. “Interesting question. Five sisters can share one man because each of them is individually rewarded with a child. Five men could share one woman, and be individually rewarded, but only if the woman was careful in allotting her pregnancies. It seems to run against human nature, though. Waiting five nights for one’s turn is not the same as waiting almost five years. Allowing your husband to impregnate your sister is not on the same level of commitment and risk as letting your wife carry and give birth to a child for your brother. Plus, any midwife can tell you, space the babies too close together, and each subsequent child is unhealthier than the previous one. Which brother gets to go first? Which brother has to be last?”
    “It would seem that the power would remain with the woman,” Jerin said.
    “It does indeed. The very nature of intercourse—an act to produce a pregnancy—and the risks to the woman’s health as such, I think will always make‘ the choice of yes or no the woman’s.”
    “So the man can never say no.”
    “Actually,” she said as she gathered up his hair into a ponytail, “you can always say no. I suppose I sound the hypocrite, but you have the right to choose who does what to your body.”
    “Even though I belong to my sisters, as much as a chair or a table belongs to them, and they can sell me to whoever they want, despite my wishes?”
    “I have never believed that to be right and good.”
    She began to rework his hair into a braid. “Nowhere in the holy book does it say that a sister has the right to treat her brother as something less than human. Sometime, somehow, simple human greed worked its way into the law. The greed says, I will not give up something I have without getting something in return, even for someone I should love dearly.”
    “But if you are giving up the only male you have, you’re giving up the ability to have children, even if only by means of incest. No babies to love, no daughters to tend you when you are old, no descendants to honor your memory.”
    She picked up his ribbon from where her sister had dropped it and tied the end of his braid. “If it didn’t cost you to gain a husband, you wouldn’t have to sell your brother. The ability to sell a brother leads to circumstances such as your uncle’s, who was sold to finance a trading house.”
    “My mothers allowed him to choose his wives. He loves them dearly.”
    “Your mothers are particularly noble, then, compared to stories I have heard at court. The most pitiful ones are widows suing their husband’s sisters because he committed suicide after the money was exchanged.”
    He nodded slowly. “It is hard knowing I won’t be going back home, that I’ll only see my youngest sisters and little brothers again