War Maid's Choice

by David Weber

  “That would require them to know that, though,” Varnaythus pointed out. “It’s the Purple Lords hiring the mercenaries, if I recall properly.”

  “And you think Markhos and his magi wouldn’t be able to get the truth out of Cassan?” Arthnar’s tone had gone beyond acid to derisive, and Varnaythus allowed himself a chuckle.

  It was a remarkably cold chuckle, the Fire Oar noticed.

  “I’m afraid Baron Cassan knows too much about my own business in the Kingdom,” he said. “I won’t bore you with all the minor details,” he waved his right hand in a brushing away gesture, “but let’s say it could be...inconvenient for me if he were to be properly interrogated by the King’s investigators.”

  “You seem remarkably unconcerned about the possibility,” Arthnar said slowly, and Varnaythus shrugged.

  “Let’s just say I’ve taken certain precautions to make certain that doesn’t happen. Of course, I might still find it expedient to take a short vacation someplace besides the Wind Plain—just for a year or two, perhaps, while things quiet down again. I was thinking about Krelik, as a matter of fact. I’m sure a Fleet Captain of your stature could find some minor service a man of my talents might perform to repay you for your hospitality.”

  “Oh, I imagine I could,” Arthnar agreed after a moment. “If I really thought about it for a while, I mean.”

  And he smiled.

  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 Tomanāk 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 no
w 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 Sothōkarnas, looking back across the city of Sothōfalas 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 “thing
s” were going to get very...interesting, and Sothōii 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 Sothōkarnas’ 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 Sothōkarnas, 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 Sothōii 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.