Kaeritha one time about champions of Tomanak and about celibacy.” The faintest of blushes colored her cheekbones, but her green gaze never wavered. “And I remember one of the things she said to me, practically word for word. She said ‘All of the Gods of Light celebrate life, and I can’t think of anything much more “life-affirming” than the embracing of a loving, shared physical relationship.’ Was she wrong about that?”
Bahzell looked into those eyes for a long moment.
“No,” he said finally. “But it’s not so simple as all that, and well you know it. Like it or no, you’re still your father’s daughter, and human, while I’m not. And for all you may be of ‘legal age,’ you’re less than half my own.”
“And?” She raised an eyebrow at him, and for just a moment he had the absurd impression that she was the older of them. His eyes widened in consternation, and she laughed deep in her throat. “Bahzell, first, I was born and raised as a Sothoii noblewoman, the daughter of a baron. You do remember what that means? The betrothal that was proposed for me when I was less than fifteen years old to Rulth Blackhill…who was four years older then than you are now? ” She snorted. “You were right, Father never would have approved it, but the Council would have, and I can’t even begin to count the number of other fathers who would have approved it-or a marriage with an even greater differential than that, for that matter! So you’re not going to shock any Sothoii by pointing out the difference in our ages.”
“It’s not Sothoii as I’m thinking of,” he said. “No, and before you’ve said it, it’s not your war maids, either. It’s myself, lass. I’m too old for such as you.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that, Bahzell,” she said, and he’d never heard such mingled laughter and tenderness in a voice. “How long do hradani live?” she asked him.
“That’s neither here nor there.” He heard an edge of something very like desperation creeping into his own voice and gave himself a mental shake. “It’s not so very likely a champion of Tomanak is to live to die of old age, any road,” he told her, rallying gamely.
“And that should keep one of His champions from ever opening his life to love?” Leeana asked him gently. “Are His champions that cowardly, Bahzell? That unwilling to embrace the life they’re supposed to defend for everyone? Or are they supposed to defend it only for everyone else? ”
“I-” He paused, then raised his right hand, holding it out to her palm uppermost. “It’s not the thought of my dying before you as scares me, lass,” he said very, very quietly, “though well it should be. Aye, and it’s shamed I am that it isn’t.”
“You shouldn’t be,” she said softly. “And you still haven’t answered my question. How long do hradani live?” He looked at her, stubbornly-or perhaps desperately-silent, and she shrugged. “Two hundred years, that’s how long,” she told him, “and humans, even Sothoii, seldom live as long as one hundred. So when it comes down to it, love, you’re younger than I am.”
A strange, fiery icicle went through him as she called him “love,” but he shook his head.
“That’s not the way of it,” he said.
“Then Dame Kaeritha was still a child when you met her?” Leeana challenged. His ears flattened at the question, and her green eyes glinted. “Thirty years old she was, I believe. And how long had she been a champion of Tomanak? I believe she was all of two years older than I am now when He accepted her service as one of His swords, wasn’t she? And she’d been training for the Order for almost three years before that! Is the War God in the habit of taking the oaths of children, Bahzell?”
He stared at her, trying to find an answer to her unscrupulous question, and she smiled again. Then she rose, unfolding from the foot of his bed with the hard-trained grace of a war maid. She stood in front of him, so tall for a human woman, yet so delicate and petite-almost tiny-beside a Horse Stealer hradani, and the champion who’d glared unawed in the face of demons, monsters, creatures of the undead, and even an avatar of a Dark God himself felt himself tremble like a child.
“Before I ran away to the war maids, Bahzell, you told me any man with his wits about him should realize it was best to have someone who could help when life threw problems at him. And that he ought to be smart enough to want a wife with brains at least as good as his own. I don’t know about the brains, and because of the charter, I can’t offer you a wife the law would ever recognize, but this I can offer you: a heart that loves you. A heart that loves you, Bahzell Bahnakson, not some romantic, imagined champion out of song and story. You are the kind of champion the songs and stories search for, but that’s not the man I love. That’s what the man I love is, not who he is. Who he is is a man as gentle as he is strong. A man who tries to hide the size of his heart from the world…and fails miserably, because he can never-ever-turn away from someone else’s distress. A man who treated a frightened girl as his equal. Who gave her the respect of listening-really listening-to what she had to say and who took the time to understand why she was frightened. A man, Bahzell. Not a hero, not a champion, not a warrior anointed by the gods…just a man. A good man. A loving man. A man who stands by his friends, his word, and his duty and who I know no power on earth or in hell could ever cause to betray my trust and my love. That’s who I love, Bahzell Bahnakson. Can you honestly tell me that he doesn’t love me? ”
Silence hovered between them, and then he closed his eyes, his foxlike ears flat against his skull.
“No.” The whispered word was drawn out of him, so low even a hradani’s hearing might have missed its fluttering ghost. “No, I can’t be telling you that, and may all the gods there be forgive me for it.”
“Why?” She moved closer, standing directly in front of him, and cupped his face between her hands. His eyes opened again, and she smiled into them, her voice gentle. “There’s nothing to forgive, my love.”
“Lass, lass-” He felt himself falling into those green eyes of hers, and he raised his right hand again, this time to touch her cheek with birdwing delicacy. “I’m hradani, Leeana, and you’re human. It’s not so many children we hradani have, but it’s more than ever human and hradani could. And if it should happen as we did, there’s never a grandchild you’d ever see, for the mix of human and hradani is barren.”
“You’re not the only one who ever discussed that with Wencit, Bahzell,” she told him, leaning closer until their foreheads touched. “I’ve always known that. And I don’t care.”
He made a sound of mingled protest and disbelief, and she shook her head, her forehead still against his.
“I didn’t say it didn’t matter,” she said softly. “I said I didn’t care, because I would wed you- will wed you, before every god there is, whatever the charter may say about war maid marriages before the law — knowing we would never have a child. If we did, I would raise that child with you with love and happiness, and I would treasure every moment with him. But I’m a war maid, Bahzell, and war maids know there’s more to life than bearing children, however wonderful it may be to know that particular joy. Well, there’s more to life, more to being a man, a lover, and a husband-than simply siring children, too. If the gods see fit to give us that gift, it will fill me with more joy than I could ever describe, but whatever you may think of my age, I’m no longer a child myself. Young, yes; I’ll give you that. But I know what truly matters to me. I’ve spent more hours than you could imagine thinking about this, and I’ve made my choice. I want you, just Bahzell Bahnakson, and that will be enough. If we’re granted children, then my heart will overflow…but only because you’ve already filled it to the brim.”
She straightened enough to kiss his forehead gently, then stepped back again, standing between him and the bed while she unlatched her doublet and slid it from her shoulders. She smiled at the almost frightened look in his eyes and tossed it into another of the chairs. She raised her arms and stretched, arching her spine with luxurious, feline grace, green eyes gleaming with wicked, challenging tenderness at his expression before she put her hands on her flaring hips, cocked her head, and looked directly into his eyes.
“So, tell me, Milord Champion,” she said, her voice husky and soft and warm and teasing all at the same time, “are you really going to be so churlish as to throw me out of your room at such a late and lonely hour? Or are you going to prove a champion of Tomanak can be wise enough to recognize the inevitable and surrender gracefully?”
Chapter Nineteen
“Good morning, Tala!” Brandark sang out, clattering down the stone steps to the second floor chamber which had been established as the tower’s inhabitants’ dining chamber. “I could smell that omlet all the way up-”
The Bloody Sword halted abruptly as he came through the arched stone doorway. Bahzell sat in his usual place at the head of the table, but seated at his right hand, red hair loose over her shoulders and shining like flame
