especially to a mother’s eye, and she felt her lips twitch as Bahzell caught sight of her and his shoulders straightened ever so slightly.
The two of them crossed the stable yard to her, Leeana looking up and Bahzell looking more or less across at her, and she shook her head.
“Why do I have the feeling the two of you have something to tell me?” she demanded, frowning ferociously.
“Well, as to that-” Bahzell began, but Leeana poked him none too gently in the ribs.
“Perhaps because of a certain discussion you and I had a few days ago, Mother,” she observed sweetly, and Hanatha laughed.
“If I get down from the saddle,” she told her daughter, “then this vast lummox of yours is going to have to help me get back into it. You do understand that, don’t you? I’m not as young and…nimble as you are, my love!”
“I feel confident he’d be happy to assist you,” Leeana assured her, and took Misty’s bridle as Bahzell stepped forward to help Hanatha down from the saddle she’d so recently climbed into. It was rather like what Hanatha imagined one of the dwarves’ “elevators” must feel like. Those huge hands lifted her effortlessly down from the saddle, and despite her weakened leg, she knew she was no featherweight.
Bahzell set her smoothly on her feet, and she clasped both hands on her cane, leaning on it as she considered the two of them. She couldn’t see them, but she felt certain at least a dozen pair of eyes must have been peeking out of the stable’s shadows behind her, watching her. And she knew her waiting armsmen were soaking up every detail from behind those disciplined faces of theirs. She hadn’t contemplated “discovering” what Leeana had been up to quite this publicly, but Hanatha Whitesaddle had never been a coward, and Hanatha Bowmaster hadn’t changed in that respect.
“Knowing you, Bahzell,” she said after a moment, aware of all those watching eyes and deliberately pitching her voice just loudly enough to be certain they could hear without being obvious about it, “I feel confident you’ve come to apologize to me for abusing Tellian’s and my hospitality.”
The hradani started to say something, but she raised her left hand and waved it in a shushing motion.
“Give me leave to finish, Milord Champion,” she said sternly, and waited until he’d subsided. “Good,” she said then. “As I say, I feel sure you’ve come to apologize. And before you do, I forbid it. Leeana is a war maid, and war maids make their own decisions and live their own lives. And even if that weren’t true, I know where her heart lies, and I have no qualms whatsoever about the man to whom she’s given it.” She looked directly into his eyes. “There may be some among the Sothoii-and possibly among your own people, as well-who will have qualms over this. None of them will be named ‘Bowmaster,’ however.”
She spoke clearly and calmly, although she felt her lips twitch again most inappropriately as Leeana arched one politely incredulous eyebrow and silently mouthed the words “Not even Aunt Gayala?” at her. Bahzell glanced down at the crown of his undutiful lover’s head as if he’d been able to read her mind, then looked back at Hanatha.
“It’s my best I’ll do to see as how you’ve never any cause to feel such,” he told her.
“I’m certain you will…and that I won’t,” she told him, reaching up to lay her hand on his chest as she sensed Walsharno and Gayrfressa moving into the yard behind her. “I know too much of what lives in here,” she said, pressing his chest lightly, “to worry about that, Bahzell. And since Leeana will always be my daughter, whatever the war maids’s charter may say, I trust you won’t mind if I find myself claiming you as a son, as well?”
“Oh, it’s in my mind that won’t be so very hard a thing to stand,” he replied, putting one of his hands over hers for a moment.
“And as far as that goes-” Leeana began, then broke off suddenly, and Bahzell looked down at her again, much more sharply this time, as his link with Gayrfressa tingled abruptly. Hanatha looked at her daughter, as well, but her expression was confused, wondering what had interrupted Leeana in midsentence.
‹ Well,› Walsharno said philosophically in the back of Bahzell’s mind, ‹ now we know why she came calling, don’t we?›
Bahzell nodded slowly, but his eyes never left Leeana as she stepped forward, reaching up towards Gayrfressa’s cheek. She looked no larger than a child beside the massive courser, but the chestnut mare’s remaining eye glowed as she gazed down at the human standing in front of her.
‹ I’d no notion courser mares ever bonded,› Bahzell replied silently to Walsharno, and the stallion tossed his head in a curious mixture of pride and resignation.
‹ As far as I know, they don’t, › he said dryly. ‹ No one’s ever said they couldn’t, you understand, but it just…doesn’t happen. Until now, of course.›
“Leeana?” Hanatha reached towards her daughter, but Bahzell intercepted her hand just before she touched Leeana. The baroness looked at him in surprise, and he gave her a wry smile.
“She’s a mite distracted, just now,” he said.
“Distracted?” Hanatha repeated, and he chuckled.
“Aye, that she is.” He shook his head again, watching Leeana reach up to Gayrfressa as the mare dropped her nose to blow gently against her hair. “It seems as how your daughter’s not the only young lady minded to set tradition on its ear this fine morning,” he told her.
Hanatha stared at him, and then, slowly, understanding dawned in those green eyes so much like Leeana’s and she drew a deep breath.
“Oh, my,” she said.
“Aye.” Bahzell flipped his ears at her. “You’re more like to know than I, being a Sothoii born and all, but it’s in my mind that there’s not been a wind sister before, has there now?”
Chapter Twenty
“Well, that’s marvelous,” Master Varnaythus said sourly, leaning back in his comfortable chair in the windowless room.
Malahk Sahrdohr sat across from him, eyeing the images in the gramerhain on the desk between them with an equally sour expression. Two coursers, a red roan and a chesnut with a white star, forged steadily through the Wind Plain’s tall, blowing grass towards the Escarpment. They moved side-by-side, in the smooth, unique four-beat “trot” of their kind, moving like echoes of one another and so close together their riders could hold hands as they went.
It was all too revoltingly romantic and touching for words, Varnaythus thought, grumpily watching the loose ends of Leeana Hanathafressa’s red-gold braid dance on the breeze.
“Surely it doesn’t make much difference, in the end,” Sahrdohr said after a moment. He sounded rather more hopeful than positive, Varnaythus noted.
“I’m not prepared to say that anything ‘doesn’t make much difference’ where Bahzell is concerned.” Varnaythus’ tone was no happier than it had been, and he glowered at the younger wizard, although he couldn’t really blame any of his current lack of joy on his associate. “And it particularly bothers me that none of Them suggested anything like this might be going to happen.”
“More evidence it really isn’t going to matter,” Sahrdohr suggested with a shrug.
“Or more evidence They didn’t see it coming.”
“What?” Sahrdohr straightened in his chair, frowning. “Of course They must’ve seen it coming, if it’s one of the cusp points!”
“Why?” Varnaythus asked bluntly, and then chuckled sourly as Sahrdohr stared incredulously at him. “Don’t tell me you think They’re infallible!”
Sahrdohr’s incredulous expression segued from astonishment to apprehension to complete blankness in a heartbeat, and Varnaythus’ chuckle turned into a humorless laugh.
“Of course They’re fallible, Malahk! We wouldn’t be sitting here in Norfressa if They were in fallible, because They’d have won in Kontovar twelve hundred years ago! Of course, the other side is fallible, too, or Wencit of Rum would still be sitting in Trofrolantha.” He shrugged. “It’s a fair balance, I suppose, though I’ve never been all that fond of the concept of fair. And if either side truly was infallible, They wouldn’t need us mortals to help things along,
