Sasha

by Joel Shepherd

  “And it took a lowlands Nasi-Keth to come and rescue the Verenthanes when the Cherrovan came back seventy years later,” Sasha retorted. Yuan Martyn's eyes flashed with anger. “Why go to such lengths to remove Lord Krayliss? If you're so unconcerned about the Goeren-yai?”

  Yuan Martyn smiled. “Someone must save Lenayin from herself. The gods’ work is never easy, but it is rewarding. The gods are merciful, but their wrath is harsh upon all who would obstruct the righteous path. Remember, little pretend princess. Never forget.”

  Sasha was almost surprised when the Verenthane Royal Guardsmen at Koenyg's door let her in with barely a query. Koenyg's chambers were large, with a main room here and a dining room beyond, half-hidden behind curtain drapes. Memories hit her with a rush, hard and unwelcome. These had been Krystoff's chambers. They'd seemed lighter then, somehow. The sun had always been shining through the far windows, in those memories, and gleaming golden upon the dining table. Now, the stone walls seemed darker, more foreboding.

  She passed the curtain drapes and found Koenyg seated with Archbishop Dalryn at the near end of the long dining table, each with a drink in hand. Both men rose upon her entry. “Sister,” Koenyg said blandly. “What a lovely surprise. What can I…?”

  “Did you send your wife's Hadryn lapdog after me?” Sasha demanded angrily. “Or did she send him herself?”

  Koenyg gazed at her for a long moment, the flexing of his free hand the only sign of a reaction. “You should refer to your brother's wife as either Princess Wyna, or sister,” said Archbishop Dalryn into that silence. “Your own title is no longer ‘princess’, and such informality is unbecoming.”

  “Was I talking to you?” Sasha snapped at the holiest Verenthane in Lenayin. The archbishop reddened. He was, in Sasha's opinion, an utterly unremarkable man. He had a longish face, with a pointy jaw, a bloated nose and loose skin sagging from his cheeks. His hair was dark streaked with grey, and curly—an unusual trait in Lenayin. It was usually hidden beneath his tall archbishop's hat, which now sat upon the dining table. Now it stuck up in fuzzy curls. Like an old feather duster, Sasha thought.

  “What happened?” Koenyg asked simply, sipping his wine. Or Sasha assumed it was wine, the archbishop's tastes were well known.

  “Martyn Ansyn told me not to support Lord Krayliss come his trial, or I'd suffer for it. When is Lord Krayliss's trial anyway, Koenyg? Have you decided? Or does it depend entirely on what I plan to say in his defence?”

  “Your brother should be addressed as Prince Koenyg,” the archbishop persisted, “or as brother. From your mouth in particular, such informality is…”

  “From my mouth in particular?” Sasha leaned on a chairback, and glared at him. “And how would you like me to address you, Dalryn? As the rural folk of Lenayin do? The Holy Brewery, perhaps? The Listing Bishop? Father Red Nose?”

  “You dare say such things in this place!” the archbishop fumed. His horrified stare fixed on Koenyg, but Koenyg only watched, wearily.

  “In this place more than any other!” Sasha retorted. “This is my brother, in the chambers that once belonged to my dearest friend, and I've far more claim to the sanctity of this place than you ever will. If you don't like it, get lost.”

  “Sasha, this is my invited guest.” Very little ever penetrated Koenyg's rock-like calm. He seemed no more alarmed by his sister's outburst than he might have been by a small, yapping dog about his ankles. “You are not.”

  “Did you send that thug to try and scare me?” Sasha yelled at him. Koenyg was heir to the throne and renowned throughout Lenayin for cold, emotionless calculation. But he was still her brother, and Damon's brother, and Sofy's. She might not have expected any better of his actions toward herself, but if he was capable of this toward her, then he could do it to her other siblings just as easily.

  “You should apologise to His Holiness,” Koenyg continued. “He is rightly unaccustomed to such indignities. He is also the spiritual leader of all the Verenthane faith in Lenayin. That includes you.”

  Oh, and there it was. Koenyg the plotter. Dared she declare her true allegiances? Kessligh had warned her often enough that if she did, assorted northerners, nobles, bishops and fanatics would demand her head.

  Sasha glared at him. Koenyg met her gaze calmly. A face much unlike Krystoff's—solid, where Krystoff had been lean; trimmed and presentable, where Krystoff had often been wild. Occupying chambers that had once been Krystoff's. They should still be his, Sasha thought bitterly. They would still be his, had not Krystoff offended so many of those same northerners, nobles, bishops and fanatics. Krystoff had fought them, but Koenyg sat at his private dining table and had drinks with them.

  Would you wield the axe yourself, brother, she wondered bitterly. If the time came to dispose of me, like they once disposed of him?

  “Did you send Martyn Ansyn to try and scare me?” she demanded once more.

  “First, apologise to His Holiness.”

  Sasha glared. “I'll do nothing of the sort.”

  Koenyg shrugged. “Then we have nothing to talk about.”

  To Sasha's right, the curtains to Koenyg's bedchambers were abruptly pulled back and there stood Princess Wyna. She wore white, the colours of northern mourning, her light hair pulled back severely from her face. She was pretty, perhaps, in the way that a simple sculpture might be pretty, or a painting. The beauty of form, with high cheekbones and pale green eyes. But there was no beauty of warmth, or happiness.

  “My children are saying their midday prayers,” she informed them coldly. “Whatever this business of yours, it should not be so loud to disturb the mourning rituals beneath a woman's own roof.”

  “My apologies, my sweet,” said Koenyg. “I do try to keep a civil tone at all times. My sister is challenged in this regard.”

  Wyna's pale eyes fixed on Sasha. Weeks it now was since Lord Rashyd Telgar had died, and still Wyna mourned for her father.

  “Sister,” Wyna said to Sasha coolly. “How do you fare?”

  “Well enough today,” Sasha said darkly. “It's tomorrow that concerns me.”

  “Tomorrow concerns us all,” said Wyna. She walked primly to her husband's side, her white dress swishing. “I could not help but overhear through the curtain. Has my loyal servant Yuan Martyn been causing you some concern, dear sister?”

  “Yuan Martyn has been causing the king's justice some concern,” Sasha replied.

  Wyna slipped her hand around Koenyg's elbow. “You seem very concerned for justice toward that mindless barbarian,” said Wyna with a slight frown. “Pray tell me, where is the justice for my dear departed father whom he murdered?”

  Sasha's eyes narrowed. You did send him, you ice-cold bitch. Wyna's gaze was as hard as glass. “If the king's justice does not extend to all Lenayin,” Sasha replied, “even to mindless barbarians, then what possible use is that justice at all?”

  “Mama?” came a boy's voice from the curtains. Sasha looked, and saw four-year-old Dany Lenayin standing in the doorway by the drawn curtain. “I said my prayers, Mama.”

  “Of course you did,” said Koenyg, walking to the boy with arms outstretched. Dany went to him and Koenyg scooped up his son, holding him effortlessly seated in the crook of one arm. “Dany, say hello to your Auntie Sashandra.”

  Dany had already said hello to his Auntie Sashandra upon her first arrival in Baen-Tar, but he turned and looked anyway. He was a pale boy, with dark hair like his father, but the features were mostly his mother's. Something about the pallid complexion, and the thin set of his lips, reminded Sasha abruptly of…Usyn, she realised. The boy looked like his Uncle Usyn. Gods and spirits forfend that he actually grew up to be like Usyn.

  “I saw you playing lagand yesterday,” said Dany. His eyes and voice were too calm for a boy his age.

  “And I saw you in the stands,” Sasha replied.

  “You play very well,” said Dany. “Not as well as my papa, though.”

  Sasha's lips twitched. “On the contrary, I thought
I played somewhat better than your papa.”

  Dany looked at his father. “She's not very ladylike, is she, Papa? Nor very polite.”

  “Auntie Sashandra was very close to your late Uncle Krystoff,” Koenyg explained to his son. “She's very much like Uncle Krystoff was.”

  “Uncle Krystoff was a very strange man, wasn't he, Papa?”

  “No one truly knows what Uncle Krystoff was, Dany,” said Koenyg. There was a darkness in his eyes as they met with his sister's. An old anger, never entirely quenched. “He remains a mystery to many, even to this day. Some say he was not truly a Verenthane.”

  “If he was not a Verenthane, Papa, then what was he?”

  Sasha stared at the boy. It scared her that he could so innocently ask such a question. What indeed? What was a Lenay, if not a Verenthane? It was almost as though the wild, ancient half of traditional Lenayin had been erased from these people's memory entirely.

  A memory struck her—leaping onto Krystoff's bed one morning to wake him. He'd wrestled her over, kicking and squealing, and tried to bite her on the neck. And over there, by the ornate wooden cabinets of glasses and plates, he'd shown her how a wondrous serrin invention—a looking glass—could burn a hole in an old piece of cloth when the sun fell through the open window just right. And back in the front room, he'd carried her in circles on his back, responding to her tugs on his ears, or her heels on his thighs, as a horse would to a rider's reins or stirrups. Once, she'd made a mistake, told him to go when she meant stop, and he'd careened straight into the wall. They'd fallen to the floor together, laughing.

  Now, Koenyg and his Hadryn wife slept in his bed, and entertained by his table, and hung gaudy pictures of Verenthane saints on his walls. And it hit her, suddenly—the great, terrible injustice of it all. If he'd lived, she might not have become what she was today. But if he'd lived…well, there would not burn this endless pain in her heart, that burned all the more terribly every time she set eyes upon Koenyg.

  “He may not have been a Verenthane,” Sasha told Koenyg, coldly. “He may not have been always polite, and he may not have been always sensible. But he was my brother. Gods know what you are.”

  She turned and strode out, leaving the stone and their memories in her wake.

  The foul mood stayed with her all the way down to the Great Hall, along gloomy hallways and flagstone floors. Memories of Krystoff. Her father, Koenyg, Kessligh, Damon, Sofy, herself…they all remembered a different Krystoff, a Krystoff shaped as much by their own personal needs and desires as by any truthful recollection. She'd needed Krystoff for her soulmate. Her father had needed an heir. Koenyg, a competitor to overcome. Kessligh, an uma. To Damon, he'd been yet another overbearing elder brother to measure up to. Perhaps only Sofy could claim any objectivity where Krystoff was concerned. Sofy, who was the most objective person on most things, it seemed.

  So how did Sofy do it? Perhaps, it occurred to her, it was because Sofy was not selfish. Sofy did not harbour any great ambitions for herself and did not impose her self-importance upon others.

  People saw what they wanted to see, Kessligh always said. They saw the world in terms that would paint themselves in the best possible light and excuse all their flaws, preferably by blaming them on someone else. The Nasi-Keth taught men and women not to be perfect, but merely to know themselves and to know their own wants and desires. Knowing that, a person might begin to understand his or her own prejudices and assumptions, and act against them. Kessligh had never claimed to be perfect, he merely claimed to make an effort. So what about me, Sasha wondered. What do I want? Was she so self-centred that she'd never be able to see the truth? How could she ever know anyone around her if she wasn't even sure of herself? Hells, she didn't even know if she was Verenthane, Goeren-yai or Nasi-Keth. Her own brother had challenged her to declare herself, and she didn't know what to say. Even after the duel at Halleryn, she still did not know. She knew what her heart said. But, in her life, to be ruled entirely by her heart would be suicide.

  The day did not improve. After lunch, she did what she usually did when her mood was foul and visited the stables. Horses, she'd discovered, spoke a quiet, foreign language of posture and emotion. After a while immersed in it, she found her very human concerns beginning to fade. This visit, however, she discovered that Peg's right hind hoof was developing a crack about a horseshoe nail, and the shoe would need replacing.

  The blacksmith's shop occupied a large, covered area to the stable's rear, facing directly onto the inside of the looming city wall. There were several blacksmiths, in fact, and they were clearly busy, their furnaces roaring, hammers clanging and new, glowing red horseshoes and nails being added to respective piles. Many horses occupied the hay-strewn floor, some worked upon by their riders, others waiting their turn. Sasha found Peg a spot at a water trough, found some tools and went to work.

  Peg hated blacksmiths and holding his huge leg still was no easy thing. The nails came out with difficulty. The heat from the fires was intense, and the day was warming, so she removed her bandoleer and sword, then the jacket and long-sleeved outershirt. The short-sleeved undershirt was too loose at the waist and hung out when she bent, so she gathered the hem into two tight fistfuls and tied them in a knot beneath her breastbone, leaving her midriff bare.

  She was starting on the third nail when she heard female voices coming along the row of horses, raised above the clamour of hammers. Baen-Tar ladies came to the stables often enough to admire the horses. There were male voices too—of course, she thought dryly, a true lady would require an escort. Peg tried to move his leg once more and she gripped it firmly between her knees.

  “A little patience, please?” she asked him loudly, repositioning the nail. Peg snorted.

  “Oh, look at that big black!” she heard then from the approaching ladies. “Isn't he gorgeous!”

  Great, that was all she needed. She got the nail head in and started hammering. The hammer was heavy, but gave no real trouble to a swordfighter—as always, it was a question of rhythm, balance and timing. No sooner had the nail gone all the way in than there was a female voice directly behind her, coming from Peg's front.

  “Excuse me? Rider? Could you tell me this horse's name and his owner?”

  Sasha sighed, dropped the hoof and hammer, and turned to face them. “His name's Peglyrion,” she said shortly. “I'm his owner.”

  The young ladies before her gasped in shock. They wore dresses of the Torovan fashion, one predominant colour with embroidered trimmings offset with an opposing-coloured sash tied at the waist. Some wore their hair done up with curls and combs, others straight and long down their backs. There were five immediately present, and one in particular, in a red gown with green sash and silver jewellery, was staring at her with contemptuous disbelief.

  “You!” exclaimed Alythia. The sisters locked stares. “Good lords, Sashandra, you really have no shame at all, do you? Look at you! You're dressed like a…like a…”

  “Like a woman trying to shoe her horse?” Sasha offered.

  “Like a disgrace! Have you no respect for local sensibilities?”

  “None,” Sasha said bluntly. “Now, are you just going to stand there and hurl insults, or can I get back to my horse?”

  One of the ladies murmured something to her companions, who giggled. They eyed Sasha's bare, sweaty arms and hard stomach with scandalised disbelief.

  Alythia's dark eyes blazed. “Have you any idea of the number of people you've managed to offend?” she exclaimed. “To say nothing of Father, disgracing his name in this…this appalling fashion…”

  “Father is both man and king enough to speak for himself,” Sasha said darkly, “he does not need you to do his complaining for him.” Sometimes Alythia worked her temper to boiling. But today, somehow, she just couldn't be bothered. It was all too predictable, too tiresome and far, far too silly. “Alythia, I'm really not interested. Enjoy your little day's outing, try not to step in anything foul…”

  She was about t
o turn her back when a new figure appeared, escorting another lady. The man wore a dark jacket with bright silver embroidery, and pants that puffed out at the thighs before tapering to tight, slender calves and boots. He wore a slim sword at the hip with a fancy silver handguard, and a wide-brimmed hat upon his head…with a feather in it, no less. His goatee was neatly trimmed, and dark curls fell about his neck. Several other men in similar dress followed, each escorting another lady.

  Bacosh, Sasha realised. Irritation at her prissy sister quickly vanished.

  “Ah,” said the man, seeing Sasha. “This must be the Lady Sashandra. Princess Alythia, would you mind ever so much for a formal introduction? I have heard…so many things…about your sister.” The accent was very smooth and melodious, and ever so charming. The dark eyes, however, felt…cold. The smile, Sasha thought, did not touch those eyes. An older man, perhaps nearer to fifty than forty, though well-hidden beneath makeup and hair dye.

  “Certainly, Duke Stefhan,” Alythia said primly. “Sashandra, this is Duke Stefhan of the Larosa province of the Bacosh. Duke Stefhan, Sashandra Lenayin, my sister.”

  The duke stepped past the water trough and reached for Sasha's hand. Sasha seriously considered withholding it. But that was needless provocation. They were only formalities. She extended her hand and repressed a shudder as the duke grasped it lightly and placed it to his lips. His grip lingered, unpleasantly. Possessively.

  “M'Lady Sashandra,” said the duke. “Your fame precedes you. Even in my nation, we have heard tales of your exploits.”

  “In my nation too, we have heard tales of yours,” Sasha said coldly.