Storm Warning

scraping on the polished wooden floor, and got up.

'I don't think anybody's going to bother us until Rubrik returns, Master Ulrich,' he said, gesturing to the couch nearest the table. 'I think you ought to get a little rest while we wait. I certainly intend to.'

Ulrich's smile widened a little, and he rose, a bit stiffly, from his own chair. He took the couch that Karal indicated, lowering himself down onto it with a grimace, and took a more comfortable, reclining position. Karal waited until his master looked settled, then chose one of the other two couches and sat gingerly down on it.

The cushions were certainly soft enough, and a faint, musky perfume rising from them as he lay down confirmed his guess as to the purpose they usually served. Small wonder they were covered in smooth leather—that kind of leather was easy to clean, easier than fabric.

On the other hand, he was not going to sit around on one of those straight-backed wooden chairs until their escort returned, while there was something a lot more comfortable in the very same room.

Besides, while he and his master were in here, the careless innkeeper was not able to use the room for any other purpose. Karal found himself almost hoping that Rubrik would not be able to make any other arrangements. These couches would not make the most comfortable beds in the world—unless you were accustomed to sleeping in certain positions—but they weren't the floor, or a pile of hay, or the ground under a tree. They certainly were softer than the pallet he'd been given in the Children's Cloister.

He didn't think he dared sleep, though, much as his body cried out for rest. They were alone and unarmed, and it could be presumed that the innkeeper was not altogether happy with their presence here, whether or not he knew anything about who or what they were. So Karal decided that this very moment was a good one to review his Valdemaran vocabulary, including all the tenses of all the verbs, in alphabetical order.

He had gotten as far as the third letter of the alphabet when Rubrik returned. His arrival woke Ulrich, who had been dozing. The priest sat up slowly and moved more stiffly than he had when he went to sleep. Karal frowned; that was not a good sign. Not only because it meant his master was very, very tired, but because Ulrich generally suffered from stiff and aching joints when the weather was about to change for the worse.

'I have good news of a sort,' Rubrik began. 'I have excellent accommodations for you—the problem is that you might wish to decline them. Your host—is actually a hostess. She is the local Commander of the Guard—as it happens, this village is her home, she has her command-post here, and she has offered her guest room to you.'

Ulrich considered this for a moment, as Karal blinked, and tried to imagine a woman in a position of military command. Women were not even permitted to serve with the Karsite army as Healer-Priests; only men could serve with soldiers. The old laws said that women who took on the 'habit and guise' of men were demons, to be controlled or destroyed—whichever came soonest. Female mercenaries captured by the Karsite Army had fared rather badly, historically, something that Ulrich had never tried to conceal from his pupil.

For that matter, in Karse, the law still forbade women to hold property on their own; all property, whether it be land or goods, must be owned by a male. By Karsite standards, this Commander was doubly shocking.

On the other hand, Her Holiness had been making it clear that the days of laws forbidding women to do anything were numbered. Vkandis had made His will clear on the subject.

I guess that eventually we'll even have women fighters in our Army, given the way that things are going. Somehow, he did not find that as horrifying as he should have. Maybe he was just tired.

Maybe being around Her Holiness Solaris had taught him he'd better never underestimate the competence of a woman.

'If the lady in question is not offended by us, I fail to see why we should take offense at her offer of hospitality,' Ulrich said, finally. 'I would be very pleased to meet our hostess. I have never met a female warrior face-to-face before. I believe the experience will be enlightening.'

He rose carefully and smoothed out the front of his riding robe with both hands. Karal scrambled to his feet, realizing belatedly that Ulrich had just accepted the unknown woman's invitation.

'I did tell her precisely who and what you are,' Rubrik replied, with a twitch of his lips. 'Since she is the local Commander, I had to inform her anyway. She said something similar about you, sir.'

'No doubt,' Ulrich replied dryly, but followed their guide out the door, through the taproom (which was still just as noisy and crowded as it had been when they entered), and back into the night, with Karal trailing along behind.

Evidently someone had already seen to their mounts, either stabling them at the inn or bringing them on ahead, and Rubrik had (correctly) judged that, weary as they were, neither Ulrich nor his secretary were ready to climb back into a saddle again. Instead, they left the courtyard of the inn, turned into the street, and walked the short distance along a row of shops and homes to the large house at the end. The narrow two-storied buildings seemed abnormally tall and thin to Karal; each had a workshop or store on the ground floor, and living quarters above. The house at the end of the street differed in all ways from those lining it; this building had no commercial aspect to it, and it was as broad as three of the others.