by Bill Fawcett
"My daughter," he said then, still looking directly at Yalith, as if Kaeritha were not even present, "is young and, as I know only too well, stubborn. She is also, however, intelligent, whatever I may think of this current escapade of hers. She knows how badly her actions have hurt her mother and me. I cannot believe that she would not wish to speak to me at this time. I don't say she would look forward to it, or be happy about it, but she is neither so heartless nor so unaware of how much we love her that she would refuse to see me."
"I didn't say she had refused, Milord. In fact, she was extremely distressed when she discovered it would be impossible for her to do so. Unfortunately, our laws permit me no latitude. Not out of arrogance or cruelty, but to protect applicants from being browbeaten or manipulated into changing their minds against their free choice. But I will say, if you will permit me to, that I have seldom seen an applicant who more strongly desired to speak to her parents. Usually, by the time a young woman seeks the war maids, the last thing she wants is contact with the family she's fled. Leeana doesn't feel at all that way, and if it were her decision, she would be here this moment. But it isn't. Nor is it mine, I'm afraid."
Tellian's knuckles whitened on his dagger, and his nostrils flared. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
"I see." His tone was very, very cold, but for a man who had just been told his beloved daughter would not even be permitted to speak to him, it was remarkably controlled, Kaeritha thought. Then his eyes swiveled to her, and she recognized the raging fury and desperate love—and loss—blazing within them.
"In that case," he continued in that same, icy voice, "I suppose I should hear whatever message my daughter has been permitted to leave me."
Yalith winced slightly before the pain in his voice, but she didn't flinch, and Kaeritha wondered how many interviews like this one she had experienced over the years.
"I think you should, Milord," the mayor agreed quietly. "Would you prefer for me to leave, so that you may speak to Dame Kaeritha frankly in order to confirm what I've said, and that Leeana came to us willingly and of her own accord?"
"I would appreciate privacy when I speak to Dame Kaeritha," Tellian said. "But not," he continued, "because I doubt for a moment that this was entirely Leeana's idea. Whatever some others might accuse the war maids of, I am fully aware that she came to you and that you did nothing to 'seduce' her into doing so. I won't pretend I'm not angry—very angry—or that I do not deeply resent your refusal to allow me to so much as speak to her. But I know my daughter too well to believe anyone else could have convinced or compelled her to come here against her will."
"Thank you for that, Milord." Yalith inclined her head in a small bow of acknowledgment. "I'm a mother myself, and I've spoken with Leeana. I know why she came to us, and that it wasn't because she didn't love you and her mother or doubted for a moment that you love her. In many ways, that has made this one of the saddest applications ever to pass through my office. I'm grateful that despite the anger and grief I know you must feel, you understand this was her decision. And now, I'll leave you and Dame Kaeritha. If you wish to speak to me again afterward, I will, of course, be at your service."
She bowed again, more deeply, and left Tellian and Kaeritha alone in her office.
For several seconds, the baron stood wordlessly, his hand alternately tightening and loosening its grip on his dagger while he glared at Kaeritha.
"Some would call this poor repayment of my hospitality, Dame Kaeritha," he said at length, his voice harsh.
"No doubt some would, Milord," she replied, keeping her own voice level and as nonconfrontational as possible. "If it seems that way to you, I deeply regret it."
"I'm sure you do." Each word was carefully, precisely spoken, as if bitten clean-edged from a sheet of bronze. Then he closed his eyes and gave his head a little shake.
"I could wish," he said then, his voice much softer, its angry edges blurred by grief, "that you'd returned her to me. That when my daughter—my only child, Kaeritha—came to you in the dark, on the side of a lonely road, running away from the only home she's ever known and from Hanatha's and my love, you might have recognized the madness of what she was doing and stopped her." He opened his eyes and looked into her face, his own eyes wrung with pain and bright with unshed tears. "Don't tell me you couldn't have stopped her from casting away her life—throwing away everything and everyone she's ever known. Not if you'd really tried."
"I could have," she told him unflinchingly, refusing to look away from his pain and grief. "For all her determination and courage, I could have stopped her, Milord. And I almost did."
"Then why, Kaeritha?" he implored, no longer a baron, no longer the Lord Warden of the West Riding, but only an anguished father. "Why didn't you? This will break Hanatha's heart, as it has already broken mine."
"Because it was her decision," Kaeritha said gently. "I'm not a Sothoii, Tellian. I don't pretend to understand your people, or all of your ways and customs. But when your daughter rode up to my fire out of the rain and the night, all by herself, she wasn't running away from your heart, or your love, or from Hanatha's love. She was running to them."
The unshed tears broke free, running down Tellian's fatigue-lined, unshaven cheeks, and her own eyes stung.
"That's her message to you," Kaeritha continued quietly. "That she can never tell you how sorry she is for the pain she knows her actions will cause you and her mother. But that she also knows this was only the first offer for her hand. There would have been more, if this one was refused, Tellian, and you know it. Just as you know that who she is and what she offers means almost all those offers would have been made for all the wrong reasons. But you also know you couldn't refuse them all—not without paying a disastrous political price. She may be only fourteen years old, but she sees that, and she understands it. So she made the only decision she thinks she can make. Not just for her, but for everyone she loves."
"But how could she leave us this way?" Tellian demanded, his voice raw with anguish. "The law will take us from her as surely as it takes her from us, Kaeritha! Everyone she's ever known, everything she ever had, will be taken from her. How could you let her pay that price, whatever she wanted?"
"Because of who she is," Kaeritha said quietly. "Not 'what'—not because she's the daughter of a baron—but because of who she is . . . and who you raised her to be. You made her too strong if you wanted someone who would meekly submit to a life sentence as no more than a high-born broodmare to someone like this Blackhill. And you made her too loving to allow someone like him or Baron Cassan to use her as a weapon against you. Between you, you and Hanatha raised a young woman strong enough and loving enough to give up all of the rank and all of the privileges of her birth, to suffer the pain of 'running away' from you and the even worse pain of knowing how much grief her decision would cause you. Not because she was foolish, or petulant, or spoiled—and certainly not because she was stupid. She did it because of how much she loves you both."
The father's tears spilled freely now, and she stepped closer, reaching out to rest her hands on his shoulders.
"What else could I do in the face of that much love, Tellian?" she asked very softly.
"Nothing," he whispered, and he bowed his head and his own right hand left the dagger hilt and rose to cover the hand on his left shoulder.
He stood that way for long, endless moments. Then he inhaled deeply, squeezed her hand lightly, raised his head, and brushed the tears from his eyes.
"I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that she hadn't done this thing," he said, his voice less ragged but still soft. "I would never have consented to her marriage to anyone she didn't choose to marry, whatever the political cost. But I suppose she knew that, didn't she?"
"Yes, I think she did," Kaeritha agreed with a slight, sad smile.
"Yet as badly as I wish she hadn't done it, I know why she did. And you're right—whatever else it may have been, it wasn't the decision of a weakling or a cow
ard. And so, despite all the grief and the heartache this will cause me and Hanatha—and Leeana—I'm proud of her."
He shook his head, as if he couldn't quite believe his own words. But then he stopped shaking it, and nodded slowly instead.
"I am proud of her," he said.
"And you should be," Kaeritha replied simply.
They gazed at one another for a few more seconds of silence, and then he nodded again, crisply this time, with an air of finality . . . and acceptance.
"Tell her . . ." He paused, as if searching for exactly the right words. Then he shrugged, as if he'd suddenly realized the search wasn't really difficult at all. "Tell her that we love her. Tell her we understand why she's done this. That if she changes her mind during this 'probationary period' we will welcome her home and rejoice. But also tell her it is her decision, and that we will accept it—and continue to love her—whatever it may be in the end."
"I will," she promised, inclining her head in a half-bow.
"Thank you," he said, and then surprised her with a wry but genuine chuckle. One of her eyebrows arched, and he snorted.
"The last thing I expected for the last three days that I'd be doing when I finally caught up with you was thanking you, Dame Kaeritha. Champion of Tomanak or not, I had something a bit more drastic in mind!"
"If I'd been in your position, Milord," she told him with a crooked smile, "I'd have been thinking of something having to do with headsmen and chopping blocks."
"I won't say the thought didn't cross my mind," he conceded, "although I'd probably have had a little difficulty explaining it to Bahzell and Brandark. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that anything I was contemplating doing to you pales compared to what my armsmen think I ought to do. All of them are deeply devoted to Leeana, and some of them will never believe she ever would have thought of something like this without encouragement from someone. I suspect the someone they're going to blame for it will be you. And some of my other retainers—and vassals—are going to see her decision as a disgrace and an insult to my house. When they do, they're going to be looking for someone to blame for that, too."
"I anticipated something like that," Kaeritha said dryly.
"I'm sure you did, but the truth is that this isn't going to do your reputation any good with most Sothoii," he warned.
"Champions of Tomanak frequently find themselves a bit unpopular, Milord," she said. "On the other hand, as Bahzell has said a time or two, 'a champion is one as does what needs doing.'" She shrugged. "This needed doing."
"Perhaps it did," he acknowledged. "But I hope one of the consequences won't be to undermine whatever it is you're here to do for Scale Balancer."
"As far as that goes, Milord," she said thoughtfully, "it's occurred to me that helping Leeana get here in the first place may have been a part of what I'm supposed to do. I'm not sure why it should have been, but it feels right, and I've learned it's best to trust my feelings in cases like this."
Tellian didn't look as if he found the thought that any god, much less the War God, should want one of his champions to help his only child run away to the war maids particularly encouraging. If so, she didn't blame him a bit . . . and at least he was courteous enough not to put his feelings into words.
"At any rate," she continued, "I will be most happy to deliver your message—all of your message—to Leeana."
"Thank you," he repeated, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with an edge of genuine humor as he looked around Yalith's office. "And now, I suppose, we ought to invite the mayor back into her own office. It would be only courteous to reassure her that we haven't been carving one another up in here, after all!"
* * *
At least Chemalka seemed to have decided to take her rainstorms somewhere else.
Kaeritha grinned at the thought as she stood on the porch of the Kalathan guesthouse with a mug of steaming tea and gazed out into a misty early morning. Tellian and his armsmen had refused the war maids' hospitality and departed late the previous afternoon. Kaeritha felt certain that the baron hadn't declined Yalith's offer out of anger or pique, but it had probably been as well that he had. Whatever he might feel, the attitudes—and anger—of several of his retainers would have been certain to provoke friction and might well have spilled over into an unfortunate incident.
Her grin vanished into a grimace, and she shook her head with an air of resignation before she took another sip of tea. Tellian's warning that many of his followers were going to blame Kaeritha for Leeana's decision and actions had proved only too well founded. All of them had been too disciplined to say or do anything overt about their feelings in the face of their liege lord's public acceptance of the situation, but Kaeritha hadn't needed to be a mage to recognize the intense hostility in some of the glances which came her way. She hoped their anger with her wasn't going to spill over onto Bahzell and Brandark when they got back to Balthar. If it did, though, Bahzell would simply have to deal with it. Which, she thought wryly, he would undoubtedly accomplish in his own inimitable fashion.
She drank more tea, watching the sun climb above the muddy fields which surrounded Kalatha. It was going to be a warmer day, she decided, and the sun would soon burn off the mists. She'd noticed the training field and an extensive weapons salle behind the town armory when she passed it on the day of her arrival, and she wondered if Yalith's guard captain would object to her borrowing it for an hour or so. She'd missed her regular morning workouts while she and Leeana pressed ahead as rapidly as possible on their journey. Besides, from all she'd heard, her own two-handed fighting technique was much less uncommon among war maids. If she could talk some of them into sparring with her, she might be able to pick up a new trick or two.
She finished the tea and turned to step back into the guesthouse to set the mug on the table beside her other breakfast dishes. Then she looked into the small mirror—an unexpected and expensive luxury—above the fireplace. Welcome as the guesthouse bed had been, the communal bathhouse had been even more welcome. She actually looked human again, she decided, although it was still humid enough that it had taken her long, midnight-black hair hours to dry. Most of her clothes were still drying somewhere in the town laundry, but she'd had one decent, clean change still in her saddlebags. There were a few wrinkles and creases here and there, but taken all in all, she was presentable, she decided.
Which was probably a good thing. It might even do her some good in her upcoming interview with Yalith.
Then again, she thought ruefully, it might not.
* * *
"Thank you for agreeing to see me so early, Mayor," Kaeritha said as Sharral showed her into Yalith's office and she settled into the proffered chair.
"There's no need to thank me," Yalith replied briskly. "Despite any possible . . . lack of enthusiasm on my part when you handed me a hot potato like Leeana, any champion deserves whatever hospitality we can provide, Dame Kaeritha. Although," she admitted, "I am a bit perplexed by exactly what a champion of Tomanak is doing here in Kalatha. However exalted Leeana's birth may have been, I don't believe we've ever had a war maid candidate delivered to us by any champion. And if that was going to happen, I would have expected one of the Mother's Servants."
"Actually," Kaeritha said, "I was already headed for Kalatha when Leeana overtook me on the road."
"Were you, indeed?" Yalith's tone was that of a woman expressing polite interest, not surprise. Although, Kaeritha thought, there was also an edge of wariness to it.
"Yes," she said. Her left elbow rested on the arm of her chair, and she raised her hand, palm open. "I don't know how familiar you are with champions and the way we get our instructions, Mayor Yalith."
Her own tone made the statement a tactful question, and Yalith smiled.
"I've never dealt directly with a champion, if that's what you mean," she said. "I once met a senior Servant of the Mother, but I was much younger then, and certainly not a mayor. No one was interested at the time in explaining how she got her instructions fr
om Lillinara. Even if anyone had been, my impression is that She has Her own way of getting Her desires and intentions across, so I assume the same would be true of Tomanak or any of the other gods."
"It certainly is," Kaeritha agreed wryly. "For that matter, He seems to tailor His methods to his individual champions. In my own case, however, I tend to receive, well, feelings, I suppose, that I ought to be moving in a particular direction or thinking about a particular problem. As I get closer to whatever it is He needs me to be dealing with, I generally recognize the specifics as I come across them."
"That would seem to require a great deal of faith," Yalith observed. Then she wrinkled her nose with a snort of amusement at her own words. "I suppose a champion does need rather more 'faith' than the most people do, doesn't she?"
"It does seem to come with the job," Kaeritha agreed. "In this instance, though, those feelings He sends me already had me headed in this direction. As nearly as I can pin things down at this point, Kalatha was where He wanted me."
"And not just to escort Leeana to us, I suppose."
"No. I had some discussion with Baron Tellian before I left Balthar, Mayor. Frankly, the reports from his stewards and magistrates which he shared with me lead me to believe that relations between your town and its neighbors are . . . not as good as they might be."
"My, what a tactful way to describe it." Yalith's irony was dry enough to burn off the morning's mist without benefit of sunlight. She regarded Kaeritha without saying anything more for several more seconds, then leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest.
"As a matter of fact, Dame Kaeritha, our 'neighbors' are probably almost as angry with us as we are with them. Although, of course, my town council and I believe we're in the right and they aren't. I hope you'll forgive me for saying this, however, but I fail to see why our disagreements and squabbles should be of any particular interest to Tomanak. Surely He has better things to spend His champions' time on than refereeing fights which have been going on for decades. Besides, with all due respect, I should think that matters concerning the war maids are properly the affair of Lillinara, not the War God."