by David Weber
Alfar's spoon paused midway between bowl and lips, frozen there by the understanding in the Bloody Sword's voice. After a lifetime of mutual hatred, compassion was the very last thing he would have anticipated from any hradani. Which, he suddenly thought, might say more about his own prejudices than it did about Bahzell or Brandark.
"I—" He paused, wondering what might be the right thing to say. Then he cleared his throat. "I know what you mean," he said. "But to see something like that—to know an entire herd of coursers could be destroyed that way . . ." He shook his head. "I doubt anyone but another Sothōii could really understand what that feels like, Lord Brandark."
"Just 'Brandark' will do fine, Master Axeblade." The Bloody Sword chuckled. "None of us hradani stand much on ceremony, and even if I'd been inclined to do that, I'd've given up months ago. These Horse Stealer louts are too ignorant and uncivilized to remember proper titles, anyway."
"Just you go right on being civilized, my lad," Gharnal advised him, while another chuckle rumbled through the other Horse Stealers. "Don't you be wasting a moment worrying about what nasty things might happen to a man whose mouth is so smart he can't be keeping it shut."
"You see?" Brandark said plaintively. "All of them are like that, not just him." He pointed at Bahzell with his chin, and the Horse Stealer snorted.
"But as to understanding how this all feels for a Sothōii," Brandark continued more seriously, "no doubt you're right. I can probably come closer now that I've met coursers myself—Sir Kelthys' Walasfro and Baron Tellian's Dathgar—but that's not the same thing as growing up around them." He shook his head, his eyes dark. "All I can say is that I never dreamed I'd meet such magnificent creatures. I wouldn't have believed anything could ravage an entire herd of them the way you've described, but if there's something out there that can, then I want it stopped, Master Axeblade."
A dark, almost hungry sound of agreement murmured its way around the table. Agreement, Alfar thought, from hradani. And not just any hradani—from Horse Stealer hradani. He'd discovered that he was past feeling surprise, but wonder was another thing entirely.
He started to say something more, then shrugged with a half-apologetic smile and applied his full attention to the meal Bahzell had ordered for him. He ate quickly, but not so quickly he didn't savor every mouthful. It wasn't the best cooking he'd ever tasted—far from it!—but he discovered that the old saw about hunger being the best seasoning was absolutely correct. By the time he'd finished the porridge, drunk the hot tea, eaten the toasted sausages, and mopped up the last egg yolk with a piece of bread, he felt better than he had in days.
"Thank you, Milord Champion," he said simply, pushing the last plate aside. "I still begrudge the delay, but there's no doubt I needed the food, and you're right. Only a fool drives himself into the kind of blind daze I was pushing myself into."
"I'd not say you'd gone quite that far," Bahzell said with another slow smile. "Still and all, I'm thinking as how we can both agree you'd pushed a mite further and harder than you'd the need to. And now, it's no doubt best we be on our way."
"Of course." Alfar stood, reaching for the belt purse Lord Edinghas had sent with him, but Bahzell shook his head.
"No need for that. The Order's seen to our shot."
"But—"
"Leave off, Master Axeblade," Bahzell advised him. "I've no doubt Lord Edinghas would stand good for it, but it's Tomanâk's business we're on. It may be as how Lord Edinghas might choose to be making a donation to Himself's church when all's done, but that's neither here nor there just now."
Alfar started to argue, then stopped himself.
"Better," Bahzell said again, then gathered up his fellow hradani with his eyes. "I'm thinking we'd best be on our way, lads," he said. He drained his tankard and set it on the table, then climbed to his feet.
"Aye," Hurthang agreed. "And not just because we've need of haste on Himself's business." He grimaced. "It's not so very popular we are in these parts."
"What?" Alfar looked at him sharply, remembering his own impression when he first entered the common room. Had the hradani actually chosen their table out of defensive considerations?
Hurthang waved one hand unobtrusively, and Alfar's eyes narrowed as he followed the gesture. A balding, broad shouldered, deep-paunched man in a leather apron stood behind the bar at one end of the common room. Alfar hadn't seen him enter, and he certainly hadn't come near the hradani to see if they had any orders. Instead, he simply stood there, arms folded across his chest, and glowered at Bahzell and his companions. There was as much fear as anger in his expression, and his shoulders hunched sullenly.
"Milord Champion," Alfar demanded, "has anyone —?"
"Don't be worrying yourself, Master Axeblade," Bahzell advised him. "It might be as how there was after being an . . . intemperate word or two last night. But that's something as any hradani minded to travel amongst other folk had best be being thick-skinned enough to deal with. I'll not say as how that's after making it any more pleasant, but people are after being people, warts and all, whatever it might be we'd prefer, and we'll not convince your folk to be setting aside all the blood that's flowed betwixt us overnight. The innkeeper was none too happy to be seeing us, but we'd Sir Jahlahan's sealed warrant as how we're on Baron Tellian's business, and our kormaks spend as well as the next man's."
He shrugged and nodded towards the door. Alfar gazed back at him for a long, thoughtful moment, then nodded in response. Not in agreement, precisely, but in acknowledgment. His own sudden urge to kick the sullen-faced innkeeper's backside up between his ears astounded him. Two days—even a single night—ago, he would flatly have rejected the very suggestion that he might find himself siding with hradani against another human. Now, though . . .
"You're right, Milord Champion," he said, deliberately pitching his voice loud enough for the innkeeper to hear, "there's no point trying to beat wisdom into a fool. You'll only hurt your hand on a skull with that much bone in it."
Chapter Nineteen
"You have to be out of your bloody mind!"
The gray-haired woman on the other side of the desk stared at Kaeritha and Leeana in disbelief. The bronze key of her office hung on a chain about her neck, and her brown eyes were hard, almost angry.
"I assure you, Mayor Yalith, that I am not out of my mind," Leeana replied sharply. She and Kaeritha were tired, mud-spattered, and worn to the edge of exhaustion from long days in the saddle, but she was obviously fighting hard to hang onto her temper. Equally obviously, her life as the daughter of the Baron of Balthar had not exactly suited her to dealing with attitudes like Yalith's.
"Madwomen seldom think they're out of their minds," the mayor shot back. "But whatever you may think, and however much you may believe that the war maids are a way out of some . . . some social inconvenience, there are aspects of this situation which could only lead to disaster."
"With all due respect, Mayor," Kaeritha put in sharply, intervening for the first time, "this girl is not talking about 'some social inconvenience.' She's talking, unless I was very much mistaken when I read King Gartha's original proclamation, about the exact thing you and your people are supposed to guarantee to any woman."
"Don't you go quoting the charter to me, thank you, Dame Kaeritha!" Yalith shot back. "You may be a champion of Tomanâk, but Tomanâk's never done anything for the war maids that I ever heard about! And the war maids are scarcely a convenient bolt-hole for some pampered noblewoman—the daughter of a baron, no less!—to use just to avoid a betrothal her family hasn't even accepted yet!"
Kaeritha started to speak again, quickly and even more sharply, despite her awareness that her own anger would only guarantee Yalith would refuse to listen to anything she said. But before she could open her mouth, Leeana laid a hand on her forearm and faced the Mayor of Kalatha squarely.
"Yes," she said quietly, holding Yalith's brown eyes with her own jade stare. "I am avoiding a betrothal my family hasn't accepted. I'm not aware, though,
that the war maids are in the habit of asking a woman why she seeks to join them—aside from making certain she isn't a criminal trying to avoid punishment. Was I mistaken?"
It was Yalith's turn to bite off a hot return unspoken. She glared at Leeana for several tense seconds, then shook her head curtly.
"No," she admitted. "We aren't 'in the habit' of asking questions like that. Or, rather, we do ask them, but the answers don't—or shouldn't—affect whether or not we grant someone membership. But I trust you're willing to admit that this is not a usual situation. First, I'm quite certain you're the highest ranking young woman who's ever sought to become a war maid, and the gods only know where that might end. Second, you're less than fifteen years old, which mandates a probationary period in which you'd technically be neither a war maid nor your father's daughter, and I doubt even the gods know what could happen during that! Third, the most common reason women who later regret asking to become one of us seek us out in the first place is to escape an arranged marriage. We always make a special effort to be positive women like that are certain in their own minds of what they want. And, fourth, this is the worst possible time, from Kalatha's perspective, for us to be antagonizing someone like Baron Tellian!"
"I'll want to speak to you about that later, Mayor Yalith," Kaeritha put in, snapping the mayor's eyes back to her. "For now, though, I don't think you need to fear antagonizing Tellian. I don't expect him to be happy about this, and I don't know what his official position is likely to be. But I do know he isn't going to blame you for doing precisely what your charter requires you to do just because the applicant in question is his daughter."
"Oh no?" Yalith snorted in obvious disbelief. "All right, then. Let's say you're right, Dame Kaeritha—about her father, anyway. But what about Baron Cassan and this Blackhill?"
She grimaced in distaste.
"We're close enough to the South Riding that we know Cassan better than we'd like, and we've two or three war maids right here in Kalatha who sought us out after Blackhill abused them. If those two are hunting this young woman—" she jabbed a finger at Leeana "—as greedily as the two of you are suggesting, how do you think they're going to react if the war maids help her slip through their filthy fingers? You think, perhaps, they'll send us a sizable cash donation?"
"I expect they'll be as pissed off as hell," Kaeritha said candidly, and despite Yalith's own obvious anger and anxiety, her earthy choice of words lit a very slight twinkle in the mayor's eyes. "On the other hand," the knight continued, "how much harm can it really do you? From what Leeana's told me, Blackhill and Cassan are probably already about as hostile to you war maids as they could possibly get."
"I'm afraid Dame Kaeritha is right about that, Mayor Yalith," Leeana said wryly. Yalith looked back at her with another, harsher snort, and the young woman shrugged. "I'm not trying to say they won't be angry about it, or that they won't do you an ill turn if they can, if I manage to drive a stake through their plans by becoming a war maid. They certainly will. But in the long term, they're already hostile to everything the war maids stand for."
"Which is a marvelous reason to antagonize them further, I'm sure," Yalith replied. Her sarcasm was withering, yet it seemed to Kaeritha that her resistance was weakening.
"Mayor Yalith," Leeana stood very straight in front of the mayor's desk, and her youthful face wore a dignity far beyond her years, "the war maids antagonize every noble like Blackhill or Cassan every single day, simply by existing. I know I'm a 'special case.' And I understand why you feel concerned and anxious at the thought of all the complications I represent. But Dame Kaeritha is right, and you know it. Every war maid is a 'special case.' That was exactly why the first war maids came together in the first place—to give all those special cases someplace to go for the first time in our history. So if you deny my application because of my birth, then what does that say about how ready the war maids truly are to offer sanctuary to any woman who wants only to live her own life, make her own decisions? Lillinara knows no distinctions among the maidens and women who seek Her protection. Should an organization which claims Her as its patron do what She will not?"
She locked eyes once again with the mayor. There was no anger in her gaze this time, no desperation or supplication—only challenge. A challenge that demanded to know whether or not Yalith was prepared to live up to the ideals to which the mayor had dedicated her life.
Silence hovered in the office, flawed only by the crackle of coal burning on the hearth. Kaeritha sensed the tension humming between Yalith and Leeana, but it was a tension she stood outside of. She was a spectator, not a participant. That was a role to which a champion of the War God was ill-accustomed, yet she also knew that this was ultimately not a battle anyone could fight for Leeana. It was one she must win on her own.
And then, finally, Yalith drew a deep breath and, for the first time since Leeana and Kaeritha had been ushered into her office, she sat down behind her desk.
"You're right," she sighed. "The Mother knows I wish you weren't," she went on more wryly, "because this is going to create Shigū's own nightmare, but you're right. If I turn you away, then I turn away every woman fleeing an intolerable 'marriage' she has no legal right to refuse. So I suppose we have no choice, do we, Milady?"
There was a certain caustic bite in the honorific, yet it was obvious the woman had made up her mind. And there was also an oddly pointed formality in her word choice, Kaeritha realized—one which warned Leeana that if her application was accepted, no one would ever extend that title to her again.
"No, Mayor," Leeana said softly, her voice accepting the warning. "We don't. Not any of us."
* * *
"Baron Tellian is here. He demands to speak to you . . . and his daughter."
Yalith gave her assistant a resigned look, then glanced at Kaeritha with a trace of a "look what you've gotten me into" expression. To her credit, it was only a trace, and she returned her attention to the middle-aged woman standing in her office doorway.
"Was that your choice of verbs, or his, Sharral?"
"Mine," Sharral admitted in a slightly chagrined tone. "He's been courteous enough, I suppose. Under the circumstances. But he's also quite . . . emphatic about it."
"Not surprising, I'm afraid." Yalith pinched the bridge of her nose and grimaced wryly. "You did say he was close behind you, Dame Kaeritha," she observed. "Still, I would have appreciated at least a little more time—perhaps even as much as a whole hour—to prepare myself for this particular conversation."
"So would I," Kaeritha admitted. "In fact, a certain cowardly part of me wonders whether or not this office has a back door."
"If you think I'm going to let you sneak out of here, Milady, you're sadly mistaken," Kalatha's mayor replied tartly, and Kaeritha chuckled.
It wasn't an entirely cheerful sound, because she truly wasn't looking forward to what she expected to be a painful confrontation. On the other hand, once Yalith had made her decision and the initial tension between them had eased a bit, she'd found herself liking the mayor much more than she'd originally believed she might. Yet there was still an undeniable edge there, rather like the arched spines of two strange cats, sidling towards one another and still unsure whether or not they should sheath their claws after all. She wasn't certain where it came from, and she didn't much care for it, whatever its source. But there should be plenty of time to smooth any ruffled fur, she reminded herself. Assuming she and Yalith both survived their interview with Tellian.
"I suppose you'd better show him in, then, Sharral," Yalith said after moment.
"Yes, Mayor," Sharral acknowledged, and withdrew, closing the door behind her.
It opened again, less than two minutes later, and Baron Tellian strode through it. It would have been too much to call his expression and body language "bristling," but that was the word which sprang immediately to Kaeritha's mind. He was liberally bespattered with mud, and—like Kaeritha's own—his bedraggled appearance showed just how hard and long he'd
ridden to reach Yalith's office. And in his effort to overcome her own head start on him. Even his courser must have found the pace wearying, and she suspected that most of his armsmen—those not mounted on coursers—must either have brought along two or three horses each to ride in relays, or else rented fresh ones at the livery stables along the way.
"Baron," Yalith said, rising behind her desk to greet him. Her voice was respectful and even a bit sympathetic, but it was also firm. It acknowledged both his rank and his rightful anxiety as a parent, but it also reminded him that this was her office . . . and that the war maids had seen many anxious parents over the centuries.
"Mayor Yalith," Tellian said. His eyes moved past her for a moment to Kaeritha, but he didn't greet the knight, and Kaeritha wondered just how bad a sign that might be.
"I imagine you know why I'm here," he continued, returning his gaze to the mayor. "I'd like to see my daughter. Immediately."
His tenor voice was flat and crisp—almost, but not quite, harsh—and his eyes were hard.
"I'm afraid that's not possible, Baron," Yalith replied. Tellian's brow furrowed thunderously, and he started to reply sharply. But Yalith continued before he could.
"The laws and customs of the war maids are unfortunately clear on this point, Milord," she said in a voice which Kaeritha considered was remarkably calm. "Leeana has petitioned for the status of war maid. Because she's only fourteen, she will be required to undergo a six-month probationary period before we will accept her final, binding oath. During that time, members of her family may communicate with her by letter or third-party messenger, but not in person. I should point out to you that she was not aware upon her arrival that she would be required to serve her probationary time, or that she would not be permitted to speak to you during it. When I informed her of those facts, she asked Dame Kaeritha to speak to you for her."