War Maid's choice

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“She did what? ”

Mayor Yalith Tamilthfressa stared back and forth between Commander of Five Hundred Balcartha Evahnalfressa and the young, redhaired woman in her office in disbelief. Balcartha looked back at her for a moment, then glanced at her younger companion.

“Warned you she wasn’t going to take it well,” she said dryly.

“ Take it well?!” Yalith’s stupefaction was turning rapidly into something else as the initial shock wore off, and she glared at the five hundred. “Lillinara, Balcartha! Is that all you’ve got to say?!”

“Honestly?” Balcartha shrugged. “No. I’m afraid my initial reaction was rather like your own, but I’ve had a little longer-like, oh, twenty minutes? Possibly as much as an entire half-hour? — to think about it.”

“You have, have you?” Yalith gave her a dirty look. “In that case, I’d be overjoyed to hear what conclusions you’ve reached!”

“Well, basically, there are two of them,” Balcartha replied. “First, Leeana has a right-the same right every war maid has-to decide for herself what to do with her life. And, secondly, there’s not one damned thing anyone can do to change any of it.” She shrugged again, smiling crookedly. “That being the case, I decided there wasn’t any point getting myself all worked up about it.”

“Oh, that’s incredibly useful!” Yalith said scathingly, and turned to Leeana. “Gods, girl, haven’t you done enough crazy things in your life without dumping this on us?! Do you have any idea at all how someone like Trisu or the other hard-line conservatives is going to react? Oh, and let’s not forget Baron Cassan!”

“Now, that’s unfair, Yalith,” Balcartha said in a rather firmer tone, regarding her old friend sternly.

“Unfair? Unfair? ” Yalith stared at her. “Who said it was fair? It’s not fair. I never said it was! But that doesn’t change any of the repercussions that’re going to be coming our way as soon as the anti-war maid bigots hear about this!” She looked back at Leeana, her expression marginally less thunderous, and shook her head. “Balcartha’s right, your decisions are your own, but you know they’re going to splash all over the rest of us, don’t you? Bad enough that we ‘let’ the daughter of one of the Kingdom’s barons run away to join us when she wasn’t even fifteen years old. But now, now that we’ve finished ‘corrupting’ her and teaching her to wallow in the gods only know what sort of perversions, she’s decided to take a hradani lover?”

“And become a wind rider, to boot,” Balcartha added helpfully.

“ Don’t! ” Yalith whirled back to Balcartha to shake an index finger under her nose. The five hundred looked down at it, deliberately crossing her eyes in the process, and Yalith glared at her. “Balcartha, you are not making this one bit better!” she snapped.

“Of course I am,” Balcartha replied calmly. “Someone has to interject a note of calm-or at least levity-into the proceedings, Yalith, and Leeana’s far too junior to go around throttling the mayor just because she’s spluttering and hissing like a demented teakettle.”

Yalith’s jaw dropped. She stared at the five hundred, as if unable to believe her own ears, and Balcartha snorted.

“Better,” she said, and shook her head gently at her old friend. “Now take a deep breath, Yalith, and sit back down. I’ll admit Leeana and Gayrfressa and-Lillinara help us all-Bahzell have…put us in an awkward situation, shall we say? But war maids are supposed to be accustomed to dealing with awkward situations, aren’t we? And the one thing none of us can afford is to let it appear for one moment that we have any qualms about Leeana’s right to do exactly what she’s done. And”-she added a bit more sternly as the mayor settled slowly back into the chair behind her desk-“she does have the right to do exactly what she’s done, and you know it.”

Yalith looked back at her for several seconds. Then she shook herself, sank slowly back into her chair, drew the deep breath Balcartha had commanded her to, and looked back at Leeana.

“She’s right.”

It would have been grossly inaccurate to describe the mayor’s tone as remotely cheerful. Indeed, the word that came most readily to mind was “resigned,” Leeana thought. But Yalith only pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head.

“She’s right,” the mayor repeated, “but I’m right, too, Leeana. I can’t even imagine what all of the repercussions of this are going to be, but you know there are going to be a lot of them, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Leeana replied steadily. “And I never intended for things to get as…out of hand as they have, I suppose. Or to ‘splash’ on Kalatha.” She shook her own head, her expression wry. “To be honest, Mayor Yalith, I didn’t really expect anyone besides possibly my closest friends to even know anything about it at all! But then, well-”

She extended her left wrist, and wonder replaced the exasperated worry in Yalith’s eyes as the wedding bracelet glowed. The silvery luminescence was soft at first, yet it grew quickly stronger, spreading up Leeana’s arm, radiating in the office’s shadows, sending ripples of moonlight across the ceiling and down the walls, and the mayor drew another, even deeper breath.

“Who am I to argue with the Mother Herself?” she murmured, and Balcartha chuckled gently.

“My very own thought when Leeana showed it to me. And, if I’m going to be honest, one of the reasons I’m taking this as calmly as I am.” The five hundred folded her arms across her chest and twitched her shoulders. “If Lillinara and Tomanak both decide to turn up and pronounce Leeana and Bahzell man and wife, who is anyone to argue with Them? This isn’t a matter of what the Charter says or doesn’t say, Yalith-not anymore. Not if the gods Themselves decide to change the rules!”

“And who’s going to believe that’s really what happened?” Yalith tipped back in her chair, her eyes regaining their normal shrewdness. “I’m not saying you’re not right, Balcartha, but you and I-and, eventually, I suppose everyone here in Kalatha-have seen or will see Leeana’s bracelet. That’s almost six thousand whole people!” She grimaced. “We’re not even the biggest war maid town, you know, much less anything most people would think of as the big city. How many of the rest of the Kingdom’s subjects do you think are going to be ready to take a bunch of war maids’ word for something like this without seeing that bracelet for themselves with their very own eyes?”

“About the same number who’re ready to take a war maid’s word for anything,” Balcartha retorted. “Give me a minute to take my boots off and I’ll count up the exact total for you.”

“Exactly.” Yalith nodded. “And now we add Gayrfressa to the rest of it.” She shook her head. “I admit my initial reaction was hardly what I’d call calm and reasoned, Leeana, but you do understand that rumor and exaggeration and outright lies-especially from people who don’t like war maids anyway-are going to spread like a thunderstorm, don’t you? And that no one who hasn’t seen that bracelet or you on Gayrfressa’s back with her-or his, damn it-own eyes is going to believe for a moment that the gods really and truly approved of all this. In fact, most of those people who don’t like war maids-which, I remind you, is just about everybody in the entire Kingdom-are going to be absolutely convinced we made up the entire blasphemous lie as a way to excuse your unnatural relationship with a hradani even if they do see the proof with their own eyes. Not to mention the way the people who think all war maids are basically whores at heart are going to take the fact that you’re actually sleeping with a hradani as proof of how thoroughly depraved and degenerate we all are!”

“I know,” Leeana sighed. “But, in a lot of ways, Mayor Yalith, this is just my original decision to become a war maid all over again, really, isn’t it?” She grimaced. “I do seem to be more of a lightning rod than anyone else, and I have to admit I’m a little frightened when I think about that. I mean, look at everything that’s already happened to Bahzell! I’m not too sure Norfressa’s going to survive adding my ability to attract stray lightning bolts to his!”

“It’s certainly going to be interesting to watch, anyway,” Balcartha said dryly. “From a safe distance, at least. Not that I don’t think you have a point,” she continued when Leeana and Yalith both looked at her. “On the other hand, I doubt the gods chose the two of you for those ‘stray lightning bolts’ at random, Leeana.”

“You may be right,” Leeana acknowledged, thinking about midnight eyes in a grove of pines beyond the world’s edge and a glittering gold and sapphire sprig of periwinkle hidden in Gayrfressa’s saddlebag. “Not that it’s going to make the experience any less…exciting.”

“And not just for you,” Yalith said sourly. Then she laughed. “But Balcartha’s got a point, too. I may wish you hadn’t done it, I may be nervous as hell about where all this is going to end, but one thing I’m not is stupid enough to argue with the gods Themselves. They obviously approve of your choice, Leeana, and to be honest-and speaking for myself, not as Mayor of Kalatha-from what I’ve seen of Prince Bahzell, I do, too.” She smiled. “I admit it would take me a while to get used to the ears, but hradani or not, I don’t think there could possibly be a better man on the entire Wind Plain.”

“Thank you,” Leeana said softly.

“You’re welcome-in a cranky, harassed, exasperated, preoccupied, worried sort of way.”

The mayor gave her another smile, then shook herself.

“All right, Balcartha. Have you had time to think about what this means for Leeana’s duties with the Guard?”

“Not really,” Balcartha admitted. “It’s obviously going to change them, of course. I may not be able to hear Gayrfressa’s voice when she talks to Leeana, but, trust me-one look at her body language, and I knew better than to even mention the fact that there’s no such thing as war maid cavalry! I doubt we’ve got more than a couple of hundred mounted war maids in the entire Kingdom, and aside from the thirty or forty of them serving with the Quaysar Guard, most of them are couriers, not cavalry troopers. I’m going to have to come up with some way to work around that. Still,” she looked consideringly at Leeana, “aside from this mildly irritating propensity of hers to run off and get married to hradani and bring coursers home with her and otherwise set the entire Kingdom by its collective ears without mentioning her plans to anyone, Seventy-Five Leeana’s always seemed to have her head screwed on properly. I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

“Good luck,” Yalith said feelingly, and looked back at Leeana. “I don’t even want to think about what kind of…housing arrangements you’re going to have to make for Gayrfressa, either. Nobody in Kalatha has the kind of stables Baron Tellian could have provided, anyway-I know that much!”

“I’ve already thought about that, Mayor,” Leeana replied. “To be honest, Gayrfressa doesn’t really like stables all that much. She and I talked it over, and we think the best bet’s going to be to move me to the old guesthouse, assuming you and Five Hundred Balcartha approve.” She made a face. “I know it’s huge for a single war maid, but I’d have to spend enough time fixing the holes in the roof-and the floor-that I doubt anyone’s going to think of it as special treatment, and it backs up against the edge of town and all those open fields down to the river. And I could patch up the old stable to give her cover against bad weather. For that matter, once I got it into semi-habitable condition, I’d probably move Boots to it from the city livery.”

“So you’re keeping him, too?”

“Of course I am. And I’m going to be riding him regularly, as well.” Leeana smiled. “Gayrfressa would insist on that even if I didn’t want to.”

“That’s good to know,” Yalith said. She thought about it for several moments and then shrugged. “No one’s using that old wreck, anyway. In fact, I was thinking about having it torn down before it collapsed of its own weight. So if you and Gayrfressa want it, instead, I don’t see any problem. Balcartha?”

“There’s always been provision for active-duty Guard officers to live off-post under special circumstances.” Balcartha shrugged back at her. “I don’t see a problem, either. And I rather suspect that Seventy-Five Leeana’s platoon may well see fit to help her with those repairs she was talking about.”

“Ma’am, I don’t want to-”

“Oh, hush, Leeana! No one said anything about telling them to do it! The problem would come in if I tried to stop them from doing it, and you know it.”

Leeana subsided, and Balcartha nodded in satisfaction.

“All right, I think we can take that as settled. Mayor?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you can,” Yalith assured her. “Of course, it’s probably the only part of it that’s anywhere near ‘settled’!”

“One day at a time,” Balcartha said philosophically. “One day at a time.”

She stood for a moment longer, head cocked and arms still crossed, lips pursed as she obviously ran over a mental checklist. Then, suddenly, she chuckled richly.

“What now?” Yalith asked warily, and Balcartha smiled broadly.

“Oh, I was just thinking. You’re probably right about how the rumors are going to fly, and how our critics are going to react to all this, but that’s nothing-a mere bagatelle! — compared to what Leeana’s going to have to deal with right here in Kalatha itself.”

“I beg your pardon?” Leeana’s tone was even warier than the mayor’s had been, and Balcartha laughed.

“Oh, yes, Leeana! I promise you I intend to be right there to see it when it happens, too!”

“When what happens?” Leeana demanded.

“Why, when you have to explain this to Garlahna and she starts pumping you for all the juicy details about Bahzell!” Balcartha told her. “After all those years when you gave her grief over her, ah… energetic love life while you weren’t sleeping with anybody? ” The five hundred snorted. “Trust me, girl-you are never going to live this down where she’s concerned!”

There were, Brayahs Daggeraxe acknowledged, advantages to being a wind-walker.

For one thing, he could get away from all of the exquisitely polite, venomous backbiting and intrigue of court quickly when the time came.

He stood on the east tower of Sothokarnas, looking back across the city of Sothofalas and the blue ribbon of the Pardahn River, wending its way towards the distant Spear. The barge traffic was thicker and denser than it had been earlier in the year, he thought, and his mouth twitched wryly as he thought about how much thicker it was likely to become in the next few years if things worked out the way he was fairly certain they were about to. At the very least, those “things” were going to get very…interesting, and Sothoii were by nature conservative. “Interesting” had never been their favorite word, not with its implications of change and unpredictability, which, after all was why peope like Tellian Bowmaster made so many of their neighbors so acutely uneasy.

He snorted in harsh amusement at the thought and inhaled a deep, cleansing breath. Summer was moving steadily towards fall, and it was hot, even here on the lofty Wind Plain. There was scarcely a breath of breeze to ease the heat this afternoon-not down here at his current level, at any rate-and he listened to the cries of the birds hovering almost motionless in the updrafts above the mighty fortress. Those cries were distant yet crystal clear over the less distinct stir and murmur of the city.

The noise of the horses and armsmen gathered in Sothokarnas’ main courtyard was rather closer to hand, and the crisp rasp of commands came to him as Sir Frahdar Swordshank, King Markhos’ personal armsman and the captain of his forty-man detachment of the Royal Guard, chivied along his armsmen’s final preparations. Brayahs knew other eyes-hundreds of them, at the very least-were watching the same scene. It would scarcely do to admit it, but he rather suspected the owners of most of those eyes had already ordered their own escorts to assemble as soon as the King had been good enough to take himself out of the way. It didn’t need a mage to sense the palpable aura of impatience hovering like fog over Sothokarnas, at any rate, and Brayahs wondered if perhaps-just perhaps, unworthy though it might be-His Majesty wasn’t deliberately dawdling just a bit in order to tweak his loyal courtiers’ impatience. Markhos Silveraxe wasn’t the sort to pitch tantrums. Indeed, there were those who considered him rather cold and bloodless for a proper Sothoii king. Most people thought that was better than someone whose fiery temper led him into missteps, as his grandfather had demonstrated on more than one occasion, but Brayahs had been able to observe him from closer range than most for the past few years. There was a far sharper temper below the King’s surface than he’d seen fit to let most people see…and he was far more subtle about it than those same people were ever likely to guess.

He probably is deliberately making the lot of them wait, the mage thought now. He knows exactly how they’re all dancing with impatience to get home to their own estates and their own affairs. It would never do for him to say so openly, of course-just as it would never do for any of them to admit it, but he knows. And there’s no way he’d pass up this opportunity to whack them by making them pretend they aren’t champing at the bit…not if he’s one half as tired of all this quarreling and snapping and veiled innuendo as I am, at any rate. And the gods know he’s had to put up with even more of it than I have. On the other hand, he’s not a mage. He doesn’t have to hold his personal shields every minute of the day just to keep these idiots from driving him mad with their incessant, babbling, calculating, manipulating, dishonest, self-seeking, devious -

He chopped off the catalog of adjectives and inhaled again, even more deeply than before. Thank Semkirk mind speech wasn’t one of his major talents! Just the emotional aura that went with the steadily intensifying power struggle had been bad enough without having the participants’ actual thoughts spilling over into his brain!

Be nice, he told himself. It’s not as if they’re deliberately radiating all that garbage at you. In fact, Semkirk knows they’d be just deliriously happy to have you somewhere else entirely! The mere thought that you might be perching in a corner somewhere and surveying the contents of their muddy little minds is one reason they get so… apprehensive whenever they notice you walking by. And, he admitted more grudgingly, you know it’s inevitable that people who don’t have mage talents are going to worry about the intrusiveness of anyone who does have them.

Of course it was. And the fact that everyone knew the King relied heavily on magi as royal agents and investigators only made any good, devious-minded conspirator even more nervous. And the gods knew they’d been more devious than usual this summer!

He snorted at the thought and rested his forearms atop one of the battlements’ crenelations and cushioned his chin on them as he gazed moodily down at the assembling armsmen and considered what that meant for his own family and the North Riding in general.

His thoughts, not surprisingly, were not happy ones.

It was scarcely astonishing that his cousin Borandas had chosen to send his heir to represent him for the summer session of the Great Council rather than attending in person. He’d done that for the last two or three years, in fact, and the truly important decisions were usually made at the fall session. Borandas always attended that session in person, and sending Thorandas to deal with the normally more routine business of the summer session was undoubtedly good training for him, not to mention making sure the North Riding’s heir knew exactly what was happening in the capital if he should suddenly inherit the title. But this session had been far less “routine” than normal, and Brayahs rather wished Borandas hadn’t delegated it to his son this year. Or perhaps not. Brayahs loved his cousin, and he respected him as both his baron and a man, but there was no point pretending Borandas of Halthan was as needle witted as Tellian of Balthar or Cassan of Frahmahn. Of course, he wasn’t as devious, ambitious, and unscrupulous as Cassan, either. That had to be considered a plus for those living under his governance in the North Riding, although a bit more deviousness on his part might have stood the Kingdom as a whole in rather better stead at a moment like this one.

Brayahs didn’t really like admitting that, yet it was true. And while he generally applauded his cousin’s determination to remain neutral in the struggle between Tellian and Cassan, Borandas’ willingness to delegate to Thorandas had started to worry him. He had to agree that Thorandas was better suited than his father, by both nature and inclination, to holding his own in the snake pit of factions here in Sothofalas. Unfortunately, either Borandas had changed his policy where the North Riding’s neutrality was concerned without mentioning it to Brayahs, or else Thorandas had begun changing it for him.

You don’t know what messages Borandas may have sent him, Brayahs Daggeraxe, he told himself sternly. And no law or custom requires Borandas to keep you informed about his policies, either-not after you swore mage oath, and especially not since His Majesty tapped you as one of his court magi. It’s entirely possible he’s gotten more concerned over Tellian’s growing ascendancy than he’s mentioned to you, and who could blame him if he has? It can’t be comfortable for any of the other barons to reflect on how that new trade route’s going to pour kormaks into Tellian’s purse like water. For that matter, it’s enough to make you nervous…and you actually like Tellian!

All of that was true enough, yet Brayahs knew his cousin’s profound distrust for Cassan Axehammer. Borandas might be concerned by Tellian’s expanding powerbase, but Brayahs rather doubted he believed for a moment that Tellian had any designs on seizing outright control of the Kingdom’s policies, whereas anyone who’d ever met Cassan knew exactly what he had in mind.

The problem was that fear of Tellian-not to mention that deep, bred-in-the-bone conservatism of Sothoii in general-had pushed those who feared his new trade route, his new closeness to the Axemen and Kilthandahknarthas of Silver Cavern, and (above all) his friendship for the hated and feared hradani into ever more vociferous opposition to him. The rumors of increasing hostility on the part of the Purple Lords didn’t help matters where Tellian’s critics were concerned, either. And for all its centuries-long alliance with the Empire of the Axe, more than one Sothoii noble feared that Tellian’s plans were going to bind the Kingdom too tightly to the Axemen, turn them into some sort of hapless appendage of the Empire and subordinate their interests to those of their Axeman “friends.”

So, yes, there was enormous scope for completely reasonable anxiety over Tellian’s plans and ambitions. Brayahs understood that, even sympathized with it, but Thorandas was clearly fishing in those troubled waters, and that worried the mage. In fact, it worried him a lot.

No doubt Thorandas was seeking every advantage he could find for the North Riding, and Brayahs trusted his loyalty to the Crown, yet there was no denying that his prejudices against the hradani had produced a simmering hostility towards Tellian’s efforts even before the entire Derm Canal project had ever been proposed. And this business of offering for Shairnayith Axehammer’s hand…that worried Brayahs. It was a perfectly suitable match in almost every way-indeed, it would have been difficult for Thorandas to find an equally suitable one, given the girl’s birth and his own position-and the mere fact of a marriage connection didn’t automatically promise a union of policies, as well. That wouldn’t keep it from giving the appearance of one, however, and it would inevitably make Thorandas more…susceptible to Cassan’s advice.

Brayahs wasn’t the only one thinking those thoughts, either. He’d seen it in quite a few of the lords warden, and of the more perceptive members the Manthalyr, as well. Everyone knew the true power in the Kingdom rested with the Great Council, but no monarch could simply ignore the Kraithalyr or Manthalyr, and if the minor nobility and the commoners seated in those bodies decided Cassan was regaining his influence in the Great Council-or, even worse, successfully forging an alliance that pitted all three other ridings against the West Riding-the implications could be profound. Surely Borandas had to be aware of the dangers inherent in presenting that sort of appearance! For that matter, Brayahs knew Borandas was-or had been, the last time they’d discussed it, at any rate. So what could have possessed him to allow Thorandas to offer for the girl?

The mage sighed heavily, feeling the hot sun across his shoulders, listening to those birds, and worried. He’d also come to a decision, however. He’d deliberately resolved to stop discussing Borandas’ policies with him when King Markhos summoned him to serve at court, but he was going to have to break that resolve. At the very least, he had to reassure himself that Borandas was accurately informed on what had been happening here in Sothofalas. He didn’t like to even consider the possibility that Thorandas might have been…shading his own messages to his father, but he’d seen too many painful examples of what ambition or political expediency could do to simply set the thought aside.

At least we’ve got some time, he told himself encouragingly as a trumpet rang out and the King came striding across the courtyard to his waiting horse at last. Whatever Cassan and Yeraghor may be up to, they aren’t going to get a lot actually accomplished with the Council, the Conclave, and the Manthalyr all adjourned for the summer! And as soon as His Majesty disappears up the road to Chergor, every one of those Councilors, lords warden, and delegates is going to vanish in clouds of dust of his very own. Cassan’ll play hell trying to coordinate anything complicated over the rest of the summer, and that should give me at least a month or two to figure out exactly what Borandas’ real policy is.

He watched Markhos climb into the saddle. Then a bugle sounded and his armsmen surrounded him, with Tellian of Balthar riding on his left and Sir Jerhas Macebearer riding on his right, and swept out of Sothokarnas’ gates in a clatter of steel-shod hooves. Brayahs straightened and nodded in satisfaction as the last armsman passed under the great stone arch into the dark gullet of the gate tunnel. With the King’s departure from Sothokarnas, he was officially released from his own attendance here at court, and that was where the advantages of being a wind-walker came into their own.

He closed his eyes, turning his face up to the sun, seeing its redness through his eyelids, and sought his own center. He found it quickly, with the ease of long training and years of practice, and a sense of calm purpose and focus settled over him. It didn’t magically erase his concerns about his cousin and the Kingdom, but it set them to one side, placed them in a sort of mental pigeonhole until he needed them once again, in order to free his mind for other things.

His nostrils flared as he pictured the familiar towers and walls of Star Tower Castle, tall and proud, standing guard over the city of Halthan. He’d grown up in those towers, those walls, and he smiled as he felt them calling to him, beckoning him home.

He fixed the image in his mind, locking it there until it was more real than the bird cries coming down from above, or the sun on his face, or the distant, murmuring, thousand-tongued multivoice of Sothofalas. He took that image in his mental grasp and heard the wind rising at his back. The wind only he could hear, only he could feel, summoned by his talent, sweeping around him in an invisible, silent cyclone. It wrapped itself about him, plucking at his hair and garments with a thousand tiny, laughing hands, and he smiled again, released his grip on Sothokarnas, and stepped from everyday reality into the laughter of the wind.