War Maid's Choice-ARC (43 page)

“Oh, I do. I
do!
” Sharlassa clapped her hands in obvious delight. “I wondered if—that is, I mean—what I meant to say was—”

She paused, her expression flustered, and Leeana reached out to lay a hand briefly on her shoulder.

“I
know
what you meant to say. And thank you. Now I think we’d better go find Mother.”

“Oh.
Oh!
” Sharlassa’s eyes widened suddenly. “Does she—I mean, had you—?”

“I believe I can safely say Mother is the one person in Hill Guard this news is
least
likely to surprise,” Leeana reassured her, and Sharlassa heaved a deep sigh of relief.

“Oh, good,” she said, and then blushed brightly as Leeana laughed and Bahzell rumbled a chuckle.

“I’m thinking we’d best be off to the stables before this poor lass is after catching fire and burns to the ground in front of us,” he said, and Sharlassa’s blush burned even hotter for a moment, before she shook her head and looked back up at him with a laugh of her own.

“Better,” he told her then, and extended his arm once again to Leeana.

“Milady?” he invited, and she snorted as she tucked her hand back into his elbow.

“Not anymore,” she reminded him.

“Ah, but there’s ladies, and then there’s
ladies
,” he told her, “and war maid or no, it’s
my lady
you are now, Leeana Hanathafressa.”

Her eyes softened. Then she nodded to Sharlassa, and the two of them were gone.

* * *

“—and after the farrier finishes with the two-year-olds, we’ll want him to see to Gayrfressa,” Baroness Hanatha said, her cane hanging by its lanyard from her wrist as she leaned back against the dark gray mare saddled and waiting for her. Despite her damaged right leg, she rode at least three times a week, and Mist Under the Moon (less formally known as “Misty”) was her favorite mount. Now Misty waited patiently while Hanatha and Doram Greenslope spoke.

“Aye, Milady,” Greenslope agreed. “Mistress Leeana pointed that out to me already, she did.”

“I’m sure she did.” Hanatha smiled warmly at the stablemaster. “And I’m sure you’d have seen to it without my saying a word. I do try to be a proper hostess, though, Doram!”

“Aye, so you do, Milady.” Greenslope smiled back at her, then stooped slightly, making a stirrup of his hands. She balanced on her weakened leg, lifting the toe of her left riding boot to his waiting hands. Her bad leg prevented her from getting her foot high enough for a regular stirrup, but the stablemaster’s strong boost as she straightened her good leg sent her more than high enough to settle into position on Misty’s back, and Greenslope shook his head as he gazed up at her.

“Always does my heart good to see you up there, Milady,” he said simply. “That it surely does!”

“I’m glad. It
feels
good, too,” she told him, and touched Misty with her heel, turning towards the stable yard’s gate and the pair of armsmen already mounted and waiting to escort her on her morning’s ride. But even as the mare moved forward, she saw the armsmen stiffen in their saddles, looking at something she couldn’t see yet. She drew rein, and then felt her eyebrows rise as Bahzell Bahnakson and her daughter stepped through the gate together.

Very
together, she thought. She doubted she could have defined any single aspect of their body language—of the way they moved, their subtle awareness of one another in time and space—but it was more than enough, especially to a mother’s eye, and she felt her lips twitch as Bahzell caught sight of her and his shoulders straightened ever so slightly.

The two of them crossed the stable yard to her, Leeana looking up and Bahzell looking more or less across at her, and she shook her head.

“Why do I have the feeling the two of you have something to tell me?” she demanded, frowning ferociously.

“Well, as to that—” Bahzell began, but Leeana poked him none too gently in the ribs.

“Perhaps because of a certain discussion you and I had a few days ago, Mother,” she observed sweetly, and Hanatha laughed.

“If I get down from the saddle,” she told her daughter, “then this vast lummox of yours is going to have to help me get back into it. You
do
understand that, don’t you? I’m not as young and...nimble as you are, my love!”

“I feel confident he’d be happy to assist you,” Leeana assured her, and took Misty’s bridle as Bahzell stepped forward to help Hanatha down from the saddle she’d so recently climbed into. It was rather like what Hanatha imagined one of the dwarves’ “elevators” must feel like. Those huge hands lifted her effortlessly down from the saddle, and despite her weakened leg, she knew she was no featherweight.

Bahzell set her smoothly on her feet, and she clasped both hands on her cane, leaning on it as she considered the two of them. She couldn’t see them, but she felt certain at least a dozen pair of eyes must have been peeking out of the stable’s shadows behind her, watching her. And she
knew
her waiting armsmen were soaking up every detail from behind those disciplined faces of theirs. She hadn’t contemplated “discovering” what Leeana had been up to quite this publicly, but Hanatha Whitesaddle had never been a coward, and Hanatha Bowmaster hadn’t changed in that respect.

“Knowing you, Bahzell,” she said after a moment, aware of all those watching eyes and deliberately pitching her voice
just
loudly enough to be certain they could hear without being obvious about it, “I feel confident you’ve come to apologize to me for abusing Tellian’s and my hospitality.”

The hradani started to say something, but she raised her left hand and waved it in a shushing motion.

“Give me leave to finish, Milord Champion,” she said sternly, and waited until he’d subsided. “Good,” she said then. “As I say, I feel sure you’ve come to apologize. And before you do, I forbid it. Leeana is a war maid, and war maids make their own decisions and live their own lives. And even if that weren’t true, I know where her heart lies, and I have no qualms whatsoever about the man to whom she’s given it.” She looked directly into his eyes. “There may be some among the Sothōii—and possibly among your own people, as well—who
will
have qualms over this. None of them will be named ‘Bowmaster,’ however.”

She spoke clearly and calmly, although she felt her lips twitch again most inappropriately as Leeana arched one politely incredulous eyebrow and silently mouthed the words “Not even Aunt Gayala?” at her. Bahzell glanced down at the crown of his undutiful lover’s head as if he’d been able to read her mind, then looked back at Hanatha.

“It’s my best I’ll do to see as how you’ve never any cause to feel such,” he told her.

“I’m certain you will...and that I won’t,” she told him, reaching up to lay her hand on his chest as she sensed Walsharno and Gayrfressa moving into the yard behind her. “I know too much of what lives in here,” she said, pressing his chest lightly, “to worry about that, Bahzell. And since Leeana will always be my daughter, whatever the war maids’s charter may say, I trust you won’t mind if I find myself claiming you as a son, as well?”

“Oh, it’s in my mind that won’t be so very hard a thing to stand,” he replied, putting one of his hands over hers for a moment.

“And as far as that goes—” Leeana began, then broke off suddenly, and Bahzell looked down at her again, much more sharply this time, as his link with Gayrfressa tingled abruptly. Hanatha looked at her daughter, as well, but her expression was confused, wondering what had interrupted Leeana in midsentence.

<
Well,
> Walsharno said philosophically in the back of Bahzell’s mind, <
now we know why she came calling, don’t we?
>

Bahzell nodded slowly, but his eyes never left Leeana as she stepped forward, reaching up towards Gayrfressa’s cheek. She looked no larger than a child beside the massive courser, but the chestnut mare’s remaining eye glowed as she gazed down at the human standing in front of her.

<
I’d no notion courser mares ever bonded,
> Bahzell replied silently to Walsharno, and the stallion tossed his head in a curious mixture of pride and resignation.

<
As far as I know, they don’t,
> he said dryly. <
No one’s ever said they
couldn’t,
you understand, but it just...doesn’t happen. Until now, of course
.>

“Leeana?” Hanatha reached towards her daughter, but Bahzell intercepted her hand just before she touched Leeana. The baroness looked at him in surprise, and he gave her a wry smile.

“She’s a mite distracted, just now,” he said.

“Distracted?” Hanatha repeated, and he chuckled.

“Aye, that she is.” He shook his head again, watching Leeana reach up to Gayrfressa as the mare dropped her nose to blow gently against her hair. “It seems as how your daughter’s not the only young lady minded to set tradition on its ear this fine morning,” he told her.

Hanatha stared at him, and then, slowly, understanding dawned in those green eyes so much like Leeana’s and she drew a deep breath.

“Oh, my,” she said.

“Aye.” Bahzell flipped his ears at her. “You’re more like to know than I, being a Sothōii born and all, but it’s in my mind that there’s not been a wind
sister
before, has there now?”

Chapter Twenty

“Well, that’s marvelous,” Master Varnaythus said sourly, leaning back in his comfortable chair in the windowless room.

Malahk Sahrdohr sat across from him, eyeing the images in the gramerhain on the desk between them with an equally sour expression. Two coursers, a red roan and a chesnut with a white star, forged steadily through the Wind Plain’s tall, blowing grass towards the Escarpment. They moved side-by-side, in the smooth, unique four-beat “trot” of their kind, moving like echoes of one another and so close together their riders could hold hands as they went.

It was all too revoltingly romantic and touching for words, Varnaythus thought, grumpily watching the loose ends of Leeana Hanathafressa’s red-gold braid dance on the breeze.

“Surely it doesn’t make much difference, in the end,” Sahrdohr said after a moment. He sounded rather more hopeful than positive, Varnaythus noted.

“I’m not prepared to say that
anything
‘doesn’t make much difference’ where Bahzell is concerned.” Varnaythus’ tone was no happier than it had been, and he glowered at the younger wizard, although he couldn’t really blame any of his current lack of joy on his associate. “And it particularly bothers me that none of Them suggested anything like this might be going to happen.”

“More evidence it really isn’t going to matter,” Sahrdohr suggested with a shrug.

“Or more evidence They didn’t see it
coming
.”

“What?” Sahrdohr straightened in his chair, frowning. “Of course They must’ve seen it coming, if it’s one of the cusp points!”

“Why?” Varnaythus asked bluntly, and then chuckled sourly as Sahrdohr stared incredulously at him. “Don’t tell me you think They’re infallible!”

Sahrdohr’s incredulous expression segued from astonishment to apprehension to complete blankness in a heartbeat, and Varnaythus’ chuckle turned into a humorless laugh.

“Of course They’re fallible, Malahk! We wouldn’t be sitting here in Norfressa if They were
in
fallible, because They’d have won in Kontovar twelve hundred years ago! Of course, the other
side is fallible, too, or
Wencit of Rūm
would still be sitting in Trōfrōlantha.” He shrugged. “It’s a fair balance, I suppose, though I’ve never been all that fond of the concept of fair. And if either side truly was infallible, They wouldn’t need us mortals to help things along, which has worked out pretty well for me personally...so far, at least. But don’t wed yourself to the idea that They always know what They’re doing. Or that They even know what all the cusp points are. Both sides manage to hide at least some of the more critical threads from each other. That’s how They blindsided Wencit and the Ottovarans in Kontovar, but it also means the other side can blindside Them.”

It would have been hard to say whether Sahrdohr looked more unhappy or more worried by Varnaythus’ frankness, but he gave a grudging nod.

“Still,” he said after a moment, “I can’t see this leading to any fundamental advantage for them. So Bahzell’s found a lover—so what? If anything, it makes him
more
vulnerable, not less, especially if anything...unfortunate were to happen to Mistress Leeana. And she’s already legally out of the succession, so even if they were to have a child someday—and you know how likely
that
is—it won’t make any difference in the West Riding. For that matter, Bahzell’s so far down the succession from his father that it wouldn’t make any difference in Hurgrum, either!”

“Granted.” Varnaythus nodded. “And granted that it’s going to be more grist for the mill of really traditional Sothōii like Cassan and Yeraghor. In fact, it’ll be interesting to see which outrages them the most in the end. They’ve been disgusted over Leeana’s becoming a war maid in the first place, but now they get the chance to be even more disgusted and revolted by the notion of a hradani ‘polluting’ one of the most highly born Sothōii ladies imaginable. Of course, it would be more than a bit inconsistent of them to be pissed off over both those things at once, but little things like consistency never hamper your true bigot’s outrage, now do they?” He pursed his lips while he considered it for several seconds, then snorted. “Knowing Cassan, I imagine they’ll come down on the side of it’s being no better than bestiality, in the end. After all, what else could you expect out of an unnatural bitch like a war maid?”

“Ummmm.” Sahrdohr frowned thoughtfully. “You may have a point there, especially if we handle it properly—get behind it and push judiciously in the proper direction.”

“I’m perfectly willing to push all you want, but I’m not going to let myself be distracted from the main object. And if the chance comes along to kill either of them, I intend to take it.” Varnaythus showed his teeth in an expression no one would ever have mistaken for a smile. “Bahzell’s on our list anyway, and you’re right about the way this makes him more vulnerable. Champions of Tomanāk should be smarter than to offer up hostages to fortune this way. And any nasty little accident which befell Mistress Leeana would have a salutary effect on Tellian, too, for that matter. Using this to foment more unhappiness among the bigots might be useful, but if she’s considerate enough to wander into our sights at an opportune moment, I’ll take the opening in a heartbeat.”