In which Aelliana proposes a solution.
Once again it’s Aelliana who gets to make the decisive move instead of Daav swooping in and rescuing her. (I may be labouring this point a bit. But seriously, how many novels are there where that happens?)
I am particularly interested by the part of Aelliana’s proposal which has her paying the blood-price for Ran Eld’s death when Sinit becomes Delm. There are several things going on here. For one, it gives Mizel an inducement to accept Sinit as nadelm, where her mother’s actions have cast doubt on the hope that she might accept as much simply because it’s the sensible course. It also serves a practical purpose in ensuring that when Sinit becomes delm there will be an amount of money she can rely on, no matter how the clan’s fortunes may have suffered in the mean time. There’s also some shifty work going on with the melant’i of the situation. I still don’t think that Aelliana truly owes Mizel anything for Ran Eld’s death, but by accepting the blood-price as her debt she’s making sure Mizel can’t try to stick it to anybody else (such as Daav); and by specifying that the payment will be made to Birin Caylon’s successor, the result will be that Birin Caylon gets the promise of an apology but never the apology itself.
The only excuse I can find for holding Aelliana to blame for Ran Eld’s death was failing to lay all before the delm at an earlier stage, so that the Binit could have stopped Ran Eld before he attempted to kill Aelliana.
It’s not unreasonable to blame Aelliana for an act of omission within the clan — it feels that way to the reader because the clan hasn’t upheld its duty to her, but it’s probably supportable by Code. But it is monumentally unfair for Aelliana’s mother to blame Aelliana for this (or Delm Minit to blame Aelliana-the-clanmember), because Binit’s sins of omission as both delm and mother were so much greater.
By that light, Sinit is the only innocent member of the family (Voni not only having failied to go to the delm but was actively complicit.) Not only was she an adolescent, there’s an indication she *did* go to the delm: “Ran Eld did strike Aelliana, Sinit had seen him do so, twice, no matter if the delm chose to hear of it.” Hence a lifeprice paid to Clan Mizel once the delm is an innocent party in the whole mess makes a lot of sense.
Elizabeth: holding Aelliana to blame for Ran Eld’s death was failing to lay all before the delm at an earlier stage
The surrounding circumstances make it clear that Aelliana may have attempted to communicate in the past, and found that neither her mother nor the delm was willing to hear her. Also Ran Eld’s “attentions” might have been less violent in the past, before they both overheard the conversation in which Aelliana’s grandmother showed her preference for Aelliana as nadelm. But once he was chosen as nadelm, it’s possible that by the code she was unable to go straight to the delm without permission of the nadelm, and she may have seen the marriage as a possible escape, before it became obvious that it was merely one of Ran Eld’s tactics to render her more “pliable.”