Damon looked at first indignant, wondering who would dare such impetuosity against Lenay royalty. Then realisation, and he strode rapidly to the door, flung off the latch and stepped back for it to open. Kessligh entered, holding a wicker cage occupied by three flapping, clucking chickens.
'Ah good,' said the greatest swordsman in Lenayin, noticing the fire. He carried the cage across the creaking floor with barely a glance to Damon or Sasha, and placed the cage between the two beds. The chickens flapped, then settled. 'These lowland reds don't like the cold so much. Makes for bad eggs.'
And he appeared to notice Damon for the first time, as the young prince relatched the door and came across with an extended hand. Kessligh shook it, forearm to forearm in the Lenay fashion. Damon had half a head on Kessligh and nearly thirty years of youth. Yet somehow, in Kessligh's presence, he seemed to shrink in stature.
'Yuan Kessligh,' Damon said, with great deference. 'Yuan,' Sasha reflected, watching them from her windowsill. The only formal title Kessligh still retained, and that merely denoting a great warrior. An old Lenay tradition it was, now reserved for those distinguished by long service in battle, be they Verenthane or Goeren-yai. It remained one of those traditions that bound the dual faiths of Lenayin together, rather than pulled them apart. But Kessligh, of course, was neither Goeren-yai nor Verenthane. 'An honour to see you once more.'
'Likewise, young Damon,' Kessligh replied, his tone strong with that familiar Kessligh-edge. Sharp and cutting, in a way that long years in the service of refined Lenay lords had never entirely dulled. Hard brown eyes bore into Damon's own, beneath a fringe of untidy, greying hair. 'And are you the hunter, this time? Or merely the shepherd, tending to errant sheep?' With a cryptic glance across at Sasha.
Sasha made a face, far less impressed by the gravitas of the former Lenay Commander of Armies than most.
'Oh, well…' Damon cleared his throat. 'You have heard, then? About Lord Rashyd?'
'I was just talking downstairs,' Kessligh said calmly. 'Catching up with old friends, learning the news, such as it is. So Master Jaryd will live to see past dawn, I take it?'
Damon blinked, looking most uncertain. Which was often the way, for those confronted with Kessligh's sharp irreverence on matters that most considered important.
'It appears that way,' Damon said, with a further uncertain glance at Sasha. Sasha watched, mercilessly curious. 'Please, won't you sit? I'll have someone bring up some tea.'
'Already done,' said Kessligh, 'but thank you.' And he sat, with no further ado, crosslegged on the further bed, with the chickens murmuring and clucking to themselves on the floor below.
Sasha considered the study in profiles as Damon undid his swordbelt and made to sit on the bed opposite. Damon's face, evidently anxious, his features soft and not entirely pronounced. And Kessligh's, rugged and lined with years, with a beakish nose, a sharp chin and hard, searching eyes. Like a work of carving, expertly done yet never entirely completed. He sat straightbacked on the bed, legs tucked tightly beneath, with the poise of a man half his years. It was a posture that wasted not a muscle or sinew, an efficiency born of lifelong discipline and devotion to detail. And his sword was worn not at the hip, as with most fighting men of Lenayin, but clipped to the bandolier on his back, as with all fighters of the svaalverd style.
Damon sat with less poise than Sasha's teacher-or uman, in the Saalsi tongue of the serrin-placing a foot on the bedframe and pulling up one knee. At his feet, the chickens clucked and fluttered at the further disturbance. Damon looked at the chickens. And at Kessligh. Struggling to think of something to say. Sasha tried to keep an uncharitable smile in check.
'These are good chickens?' he managed finally. Sasha coughed, a barely restrained splutter. Damon shot her a dark look.
'Well I'm trying to broaden the breeding range,' Kessligh replied serenely. 'These are kersan ross, from the lowlands. The eggs have an interesting flavour, much better for making light pastries.'
'You traded for these?' Damon asked, attempting interest, to his credit. It was Lenay custom that no serious talk could begin before the tea arrived. Poor Damon was horrible at small talk.
'A local farmer placed an order through his connections,' Kessligh replied. 'A wonderful trading system we now have with the Torovans. Place an order with the right people and a Torovan convoy will deliver in two or three months. They're becoming quite popular.'
'As with all things Torovan,' Sasha remarked. Damon frowned at her. Kessligh simply smiled.
'Ah,' he said. 'Thus speaks she of the Nasi-Keth. She who fights with Saalshen style, loves Vonnersen spices in all her foods, washes regularly with the imported oils of coastal Maras, lives off the wealth from the Torovan love of Lenay-bred horses, speaks two foreign tongues, and has been known to down entire tankards of ale with visiting serrin travellers while playing Ameryn games of chance. But no lover of foreigners she.'
Kessligh's sharp eyes fixed upon her, sardonically. Sasha held her tongue, eyebrows raised in a manner that invited praise for doing so. There had been times in the past when she had not been so disciplined. He grunted, in mild amusement. Then came a knocking on the door, which Sasha answered and found the tea delivered on a tray.
She set the tray on a footstool for Kessligh to prepare, then settled into a reclining chair with a sigh of aching muscles.
Damon accepted his tea with evident discomfort. Prince or not, few Lenays felt comfortable having Kessligh serve them tea. But that had not stopped Kessligh from cooking for entire tables of Baerlyn folk when suitable occasions arose. Sasha had always found it curious, this yawning gulf between the popular Lenay notion of Kessligh the vanquishing war hero, and her familiar, homespun reality. Kessligh the son of poor dock workers in lowlands Petrodor, trading capital of Torovan, for whom Lenay was a second (or third) language, still spoken with a tinge of broad, lowlander vowels that others remarked upon, but Sasha had long since ceased to notice. Kessligh the Nasi- Keth-a serrin cult (or movement, Kessligh insisted) whose presence had long been prominent amongst the impoverished peoples of Petrodor. Kessligh, serrin-friend, with old ties and allegiances that even three decades of life and fame in Lenayin had not managed to erase.
Kessligh considered Sasha's evident weariness with amusement, sipping at his tea. 'Did Teriyan wear you out?' he asked.
'More demonstrations,' Sasha replied wryly, stretching out legs and a free arm, arching her back like a cat. Her left shoulder ached from a recent strain. It seemed to have altered the balance of her grip, for the tendon of her left thumb now throbbed in sympathy where her grip upon the stanch had somehow tightened, unconsciously. The knuckles on her right hand were bruised where a stanch had caught her, and several more impacts ached about her ribs, causing a wince if one were pressed unexpectedly. The front of her right ankle remained tender from where she'd turned it several days ago, during one of Kessligh's footwork exercises. And those were just the pains she was most aware of. All in all, just another day for the uma of Kessligh Cronenverdt. 'They all want to see svaalverd, so I show them svaalverd. And rather than learning, they then spend the whole time complaining that it's impossible.'
Kessligh shook his head. 'Svaalverd is taught from the cradle or not at all,' he said. 'Best they learn little. It makes an ill fit with traditional Lenay techniques. Men who try both get their footing confused and trip themselves up.'
'We could try teaching the kids,' said Sasha, sipping her own tea. 'Before Jaegar and others get their hooks into them.'
'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.'
