Sasha (5 page)

“The culture here is set,” Kessligh replied. “I'm loath to tamper with it. Tradition has its own strength, and its own life. And I fear I've caused enough damage to Lenay custom already.” Meaningfully.

Sasha snorted. “Well I
would
be a good little farm wench, but it's difficult to fight in dresses, and impossible to ride…”

“You could have kept your hair long,” Kessligh suggested.

“And worn a man's braid?” With a glance at Damon, who listened and watched with great intrigue. The former Lenay Princess and the former Lenay Commander of Armies. To many in Lenayin, it still seemed an outrageously unlikely pairing. Many rumoured as to its true nature. “I couldn't wear it loose like the women because then it would get in the way, but I can't wear a braid like a man because then I'm not allowed to be a woman at all. The only option left was to cut it short as some of the serrin girls wear it. I don't do
everything
just to be difficult, you know, I did actually put some thought into it.”

“The evidence of
that
doesn't equal your conclusion,” Kessligh remarked with amusement.

Sasha gave Damon an exasperated look. “This is what passes for entertainment in the great mind of Kessligh Cronenverdt,” she told him. “Belittling me in front of others.”

“What's not entertaining about it?” Damon said warily. Sasha made a face at him.

“I assume you've made comment on Sasha's new appendage?” Kessligh continued wryly, with a nod at her tri-braid. “She insists it's all the fashion. Myself, I wonder why she can't hold to Torovan jewellery and knee-high boots like good, proper Lenay children.”

Sasha grinned. Damon blinked, and sipped his tea to cover the silence as he tried to figure out what to say. “You approve?” he said finally.

Kessligh made an expansive shrug. “Approve, disapprove…” He held a hand in Sasha's direction. “Behold, young Damon, a twenty-year-old female. In the face of such as this, of what consequence is it for me to approve or disapprove?”

Damon shrugged, faintly. “Most Lenay families are less accommodating. Tradition, as you say.” Sasha raised an eyebrow. It was more confrontational than she'd expected from Damon.

“This is my uma,” Kessligh replied calmly. “I am her uman. In the ways of the serrin, and thus the ways of the Nasi-Keth, it is not for uman to dictate paths to their uma. She will go her own way, and find her own path. Should she have chosen study and herbal lore instead of swordwork and soldiery, that would also have been her choice…although a somewhat poorer teacher I would have made, no doubt.

“So she feels a common cause with the Goeren-yai of Lenayin.” He shrugged. “Hardly surprising, having lived amongst them for twelve of her twenty years. The mistake you all make, be you Verenthanes or romantics like Krayliss, is to think of her as anything other than my uma. What she does, and what she chooses to wear in her hair, she does as uma to me. This is a separate thing from politics. Quite frankly, it does not concern you. Nor should it concern our king.”

“Our king concerns himself with many things,” Damon said mildly.

“Not this,” said Kessligh. “He owes me too much. And King Torvaal always repays his debts.” Damon gazed down at his tea cup. “Baerlyn is not the most direct line from Baen-Tar to Taneryn. What purpose does this detour serve?”

Damon glanced up. “Your assistance,” he said plainly. “You are as greatly respected in Taneryn as here. My father feels, and I agree, that your presence in Taneryn would calm the mood of the people.”

“The king's justice must be the king's,” Kessligh replied, a hard stare unfixing upon the young prince's face. “I cannot take his place. Such a role is more yours than mine.”

“We have concern about the people of Hadryn taking matters into their own hands,” said Damon. “Lenayin has been mercifully free of civil strife over the last century. The king would not see such old history repeated. Your presence would be valued.”

“I claim no special powers over the hard men of Hadryn,” said Kessligh, with a shake of his head. “The north has never loved me. During the Great War, my successes stole much thunder from the northern lords, and now Lenay history records that forces under my command saved them from certain defeat. That could have been acceptable, were I Verenthane, or a northerner. But I'm afraid the north views Goeren-yai and Nasi-Keth as cut from the same cloth—irredeemably pagan and godless. I do not see what comfort my presence there could bring.”

“But you will come?” Damon persisted.

Kessligh sipped his tea, his eyes not leaving Damon's. “Should my Lord King command it,” he said, in measured tones. “Of course, you understand that Sasha must therefore accompany me?”

Damon blinked at him. And glanced across at Sasha. “These events make for great uncertainty. I had thought for her to remain in Baerlyn, with a complement of Falcon Guard for protection.”

“You'd
what
?” Sasha asked, with no diplomacy at all.

Kessligh held up a hand, and she held her tongue, fuming. He unfolded his legs, in one lithe move, and leaned forward to pour some more tea from the earthen-glaze teapot. “She's safer at my side,” he said. And gazed closely at Damon. “And her continued presence here, away from me, would only create an inviting target, wouldn't you say? In these uncertain times, it's best to be sure.”

“I
’M SAFER AT YOUR SIDE?”
Sasha whispered incredulously, as she walked with Kessligh out through the inn's rear exit, and into the paved courtyard at the back. “What am I, some Baen-Tar noble wench to be protected at every turn?”

The night chill was sharp, breath frosting before her lips as she spoke. The remains of a declining fire burned within the courtyard, surrounded by a great many men, with a cup in hand, or placed somewhere nearby. Kessligh walked so as to keep well clear of the fire's light, and together they passed unnoticed in the dark.

“Damon's not here for me, Sasha,” Kessligh said grimly, hands in the pockets of his jacket as he strode. “He's here for you.”

“For me? He doesn't even want me along…”

“Damn it, pay attention,” Kessligh rebuked her, with more than a trace of irritation. “Haven't you grasped it yet? Despite everything I've been telling you, with your friends and drinking sessions, and that new growth sprouting from the side of your head? Krayliss is making his move, Sasha. It's a desperate, stupid, foolish move, but no more so than one might have expected from Krayliss. He threatens martyrdom. If we're all not extremely careful, he might just get it.”

Sasha frowned. She didn't like it when Kessligh got like this. He made everything seem so complicated. Why couldn't he just accept what she was, and how she felt? Why couldn't everyone? “Krayliss…” and she shook her head, trying to clear her mind. “Krayliss can't use me as a figurehead.” Trying to be rational. “I'm a woman, he'd never accept a woman as his symbol of Goeren-yai revival…”

“You're worse than a woman,” Kessligh cut in, “you're Nasi-Keth. Krayliss hates all foreigners, Sasha—that means me, the lowlanders and the serrin equally, he makes no distinction. But you're the closest thing to a genuine Goeren-yai within the royal line that he's got, and he might just be desperate enough. Have you seen the condition of the Falcon Guard's horses? Damon made the ride from Baen-Tar
fast.
He came to secure you, to make sure Krayliss couldn't reach you first. That's the doing of your father's advisors. Your father has little enough fear of you. They have plenty.”

“My father's advisors now include Wyna Telgar,” Sasha muttered. “To hear Sofy tell of it, anyhow. I'm sure my eldest brother's wife would not have been pleased to hear that her father is dead. I wonder why Koenyg did not come himself, with that dragon breathing fire down his neck.”

“Prince Koenyg is a stickler for the rules,” Kessligh said grimly. “Rathynal approaches and the heir should not go gallivanting off to the provinces to bash some lordly heads together. That's what junior princes are for.”

Lamps lit the stables ahead where several guardsmen were talking with local Baerlyn men, some of them regular stablehands. Several lads carried heavy blankets, or lugged saddlebags, or shifted loads of hay. The air smelled of hay, manure and horses—to Sasha's nose, a most familiar and agreeable odour, tinged with the sweetness of burning lamp oil.

“It's the Rathynal, isn't it?” Sasha said, arms wrapped about herself, only partly to repress the shivers brought on by the cold air. “That's why everyone's so jumpy.”

“There's a lot to be jumpy about,” said Kessligh, raising a hand in answer to the horsemen's respectful hails. “Such a large meeting can only reopen old wounds. Especially with foreign lowlanders invited. There's war in the offing, Sasha. Us old warhorses can smell it in the air. Damn right we're jumpy. You should be too.”

“There won't be a war,” Sasha said, with forced certainty as they walked down the long line of stables. “I just can't imagine we'll get involved in some stupid war in the Bacosh. It's all too far away.”

“It's nearer than Saalshen,” Kessligh said grimly. “And serrin come here all the time. Be careful of Master Jaryd—I know you derive great joy from boxing the ears of stuck-up young idiots like him, and I sympathise. But Rathynal is a time for all the great lords to make great decisions, and this Rathynal shall be greater than most. Lord Krayliss is a huge obstacle in such meetings—so long as he continues to sow division, Lenayin shall be forever divided, and the Verenthane nobility will never have its way on any great issue. Lord Krayliss delights in twisting the knife and ruining their grand plans at the most inopportune moments.

“Whether you like it or not, Verenthane nobility hear the rumours connecting you to the Goeren-yai, and to Krayliss, and they worry. In Lord Aystin's eyes, there may not be very much difference between you and Krayliss at all, and so I'd be surprised if his heir Jaryd feels differently. You can be certain Lord Rashyd and the northerners are not the only Lenay lords who would love to see Krayliss deposed and the entire ruling line of Taneryn replaced with a good Verenthane family. It would not surprise me to find that whatever incident has occurred, it was cooked up by Lord Rashyd with support from other Lenay lords, possibly including Great Lord Aystin Nyvar of Tyree himself.”

“You're telling me that the gallant and dashing Master Jaryd Nyvar may wish to plant a knife in my back?” Sasha suggested with some incredulity.

“I'm telling you to be careful. Verenthanes frequently claim that all the old blood feuds and bickering disappeared with the Liberation and the coming of Verenthaneism—don't believe it. It's still there, just hiding. It's sneaking self-interest disguised beneath a cloak of smiling Verenthane brotherhood, and that makes it even more dangerous than when it was out in the open, as in older times…or more dangerous, at least, if you are its target. Trust me—I was born in Petrodor, and I've seen it. In such disputes of power, it's always the knife you
can't
see that kills you.”

“I'd prefer the old days,” Sasha snorted. “At least then rival chieftains killed their opponents face to face.”

“Don't be stupid,” Kessligh said shortly. “A thousand corpses honourably killed is no improvement on a handful of victims strangled in the night.”

Terjellyn hung his head over the stable door, having heard them coming. Kessligh gave him an affectionate rub as a stable boy hovered, awaiting anything Baerlyn's two most famous residents might require.

“You'll be with Jaegar all night?” Sasha asked. The unhappiness must have shown in her voice, for Kessligh gave her a sardonic look.

“I think you can handle your brother for one night,” he remarked. “It would be nice if I could discuss Baerlyn's affairs with Jaegar before we ride. We might be gone several weeks.” Terjellyn nudged at his shoulder. The big chestnut stallion was a direct descendant of Tamaryn, Kessligh's mount during the great Cherrovan War thirty years gone. He'd ridden Tamaryn all the way from Petrodor, a mere sergeant among the Torovan volunteer brigades that had flooded into Lenayin following the invasion of the Cherrovan warlord Markield. The Liberation seventy years gone, the Archbishop of Torovan had not wished to see the thriving “Verenthane Kingdom” of Lenayin lost to a raging barbarian mob and had commanded Torovan believers to ride west on a holy war. Kessligh, however, had not ridden for faith.

Tamaryn had then borne him through the better part of an entire year's fighting, in the wooded valleys and mountains of Lenayin, during which Kessligh had risen to lieutenant, then captain, and then Commander of Armies for all Lenayin, and inflicted a thrashing upon the Cherrovan from which they had not recovered to this very day. Ever since, Kessligh had never had a primary ride that was not a descendant of Tamaryn—Terjellyn's great-grandfather. It was the only superstition Sasha had ever known him to concede.

“Be nice to Damon. Try not to provoke him too much.”

Sasha stared elsewhere as Kessligh opened the stable door, and gave Terjellyn a once-over before mounting bareback. The big stallion, a more mature and refined gentleman than her Peg, walked calmly into the courtyard.