sent her back out I thought you’d set her on fire!” The tall, redhaired young woman shook her head. “What did you say to her?”
“That’s between her and me.” Balcartha smiled and shook her own head. “She does color up spectacularly though, doesn’t she?”
“Oh, I think you could certainly say that,” Leeana agreed. Then she smiled a bit penitently. “I really shouldn’t make fun of her for it though, I suppose. I can produce a pretty spectacular blush of my own, can’t I?”
“On the rare occasions when anyone can manage to embarrass you, yes,” Balcartha agreed.
“Are you implying that such a low person as myself no longer has the delicacy to feel embarrassment?” Leeana asked innocently, and Balcartha chuckled.
“Something like that…these days, at least,” she agreed, and Leeana threw up her right hand as if she were acknowledging a touch in a training match.
“I deserved that,” she acknowledged. “But she really is awfully young, isn’t she?”
“This from the broken down old grandmother in front of me?” Balcartha raised both eyebrows. “I seem to remember a fourteen — year-old who didn’t know which end of the dagger to hold when Erlis and Ravlahn first evaluated her. Now, let me see, let me see…what was her name?”
She gazed up at the ceiling, lips pursed in obvious thought, and Leeana laughed.
“You really are training with live blades today, aren’t you, Five Hundred Balcartha?”
“Only against some,” Balcartha replied with a twinkle.
As the commander of the Kalatha Guard, she wasn’t supposed to have favorites, and she never allowed favoritism to govern her actions, but there was no point pretending she didn’t have a special place in her heart for Leeana Hanathafressa. She did remember-vividly-the pampered fourteen-year-old noblewoman who’d fled to Kalatha almost seven years before. Not that Leanna had realized she’d been pampered, and by the standards of her birth rank, she hadn’t been. Which hadn’t changed the fact that, as Balcartha had just pointed out, she’d been totally unequipped with the skills her new life was going to require of her. Her embarrassment at finding herself clad-more or less-in the traditional chari and yathu had been only too apparent to someone with Balcartha’s experience, and unlike most war maids, Leanna hadn’t fled to Kalatha to escape an intolerable, all too often abusive family situation. Indeed, she’d escaped to Kalatha no more than hours in front of her pursuing father because of how much she’d loved her parents, and she’d been miserably homesick and unhappy at leaving them, however bravely she’d tried to hide it.
Looking at her now, Balcartha could still see that fourteen-year-old inside the poised, confident, athletic young woman who had replaced her. Not the misery or the uncertainty, but the dauntless, uncomplaining spirit which had risen to meet the demands of a life so utterly different from the one to which she had been raised.
Now Leeana smiled at her, and Balcartha unsteepled her fingers to point at the empty chair in front of her desk.
“Sit.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Leeana said meekly and settled obediently into the indicated chair. She also folded her hands neatly in her lap, planted her feet very close together, and sat very straight with a demure, earnestly attentive expression.
“You do realize you’re about to draw two extra weeks of patrol duty for being such a smartass, don’t you?” Balcartha inquired.
“Oh, I suppose something like that might happen in some other city guard,” Leeana replied. “ My five hundred is far too broad-minded and much too far above the sort of petty mindedness which would permit that sort of mean-spirited retaliation…Ma’am.”
“You just go right on believing that until you see the patrol roster,” Balcartha advised her. Then she shook her head. “Although truth be told, and given how much you actually seem to enjoy running around out in the grasslands, I suppose I’d better come up with some other way to demonstrate my petty mindedness. Maybe I should convince the mayor to send you back for another conversation with Lord Warden Trisu.”
“Mother forbid!” Leeana leaned back and raised both hands in a gesture of surrender, the dismay in her expression only half-feigned. “I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good!”
“That bad, was it?” Balcartha swung her chair slowly from side to side. “Didn’t Arm Shahana’s visit give you any cover? I thought he was on his best behavior when she comes to call on him.”
“I suppose he is, really.” Leeana cocked her head, and her tone was more serious. “I’d say he’s at least trying, anyway. Unfortunately-as you and Mayor Yalith are both perfectly well aware-Trisu can’t quite seem to forget who my father is.” She grimaced. “He’s not very good at hiding his conviction that becoming a war maid is about the most disgraceful thing a properly reared young noblewoman could possibly have done. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t try very hard, really.”
“What do you mean?” Balcartha’s chair stopped swinging and her eyes narrowed.
“Oh, I’m not saying he goes out of his way to offer me insults, Balcartha,” Leeana said quickly. “On the other hand, you know he doesn’t believe in operating under false pretenses, and becoming a war maid isn’t some sort of minor faux pas like getting myself caught sleeping with someone else’s husband or producing a child whose father I can’t name. It’s a seriously reprehensible thing for anyone to do!”
There was a genuine bite under the humor in her tone, Balcartha noted, continuing to gaze at her intently, and the younger woman shrugged.
“Whatever he may have thought or felt, he was perfectly polite in the way he addressed me, Balcartha. And let’s face it, we both know Mayor Yalith chooses me as her envoy to make a specific point to him. I understand that. That doesn’t mean I don’t get a little tired sometimes of being used as the mayor’s hammer, but I understand it.” She shrugged again. “If putting up with the occasional visit to Trisu is the worst thing the war maids ever ask of me, I’ll figure I’ve been a lot luckier than I deserve.”
“I see.” Balcartha considered her for another few seconds, then tipped back in her chair once more. “Should I take it, then, that you accomplished whatever it was Yalith sent you there to deal with?”
“I think so.” Leeana nodded, but she did not (Balcartha noted) tell her exactly what it was Yalith had sent her to Thalar Keep to do. The younger woman’s reticence didn’t offend the five hundred. In fact, she approved of it- strongly-and the fact that Leeana wasn’t the sort to gossip about any diplomatic missions upon which she might be sent was one of the reasons she tended to get sent on them.
Well, that and the fact that she’s smart as a whip, not to mention better educated than at least three quarters of our war maids, and better informed on the Kingdom’s politics than Yalith and me combined. And equipped with a confidence in her ability to handle even people like Trisu that most war maids twice her age could only envy. The really funny thing is that as smart as she is, I don’t think she fully understands even now just how unusual that confidence of hers is.
Part of it, the five hundred knew, was simply who and what she’d been born. It would have been ridiculous to expect someone like her friend Garlahna, who’d been raised on a farm, to have the same confidence and poise as the only daughter of one of the Kingdom’s four most powerful nobles. There was reason in everything, after all. Yet birth alone couldn’t explain Leeana Hanathafressa, and neither could the young woman’s knife-edged intelligence.
The truth, Balcartha admitted to herself just a bit more grimly, was that the majority of war maids had been damaged-or at least scarred-by whatever it was which had driven them to revolt against all the rules and expectations of “proper conduct” which had been trained into them. Not all of them, of course. There would always be those who simply discovered they wanted something more out of their lives. That they wanted to step beyond the mold and the restrictions, and thank Lillinara for them! But there was no point trying to deny that the war maid community was a refuge-a place to heal, or even hide-for the majority of women who sought it out.
In a sense, that was true for Leeana, as well, but what she’d come to hide from was the proposal of an arranged marriage she’d known her father’s political enemies had contrived as a weapon against him. And if she’d had the inevitable regrets, shed the inevitable tears at giving up her family, there’d been nothing damaged or scarred about her. There’d been only that deep, abiding, astounding strength, and over the years, Balcartha had come to have an equally deep and abiding respect for the parents who’d given it to her.
“And did Lord Trisu’s grooms offer to take care of Boots for you?” the five hundred asked out loud, her eyes gleaming faintly, and Leeana snorted.
“Lillinara, no!” She shook her head. “How can you even ask such a thing? Any properly bred Sothoii male offer to care for a war maid’s horse? They were far too busy undressing Garlahna and me with their eyes!”
