Chapter Twenty-Eight
“She did what? ”
Mayor Yalith Tamilthfressa stared back and forth between Commander of Five Hundred Balcartha Evahnalfressa and the young, redhaired woman in her office in disbelief. Balcartha looked back at her for a moment, then glanced at her younger companion.
“Warned you she wasn’t going to take it well,” she said dryly.
“ Take it well?!” Yalith’s stupefaction was turning rapidly into something else as the initial shock wore off, and she glared at the five hundred. “Lillinara, Balcartha! Is that all you’ve got to say?!”
“Honestly?” Balcartha shrugged. “No. I’m afraid my initial reaction was rather like your own, but I’ve had a little longer-like, oh, twenty minutes? Possibly as much as an entire half-hour? — to think about it.”
“You have, have you?” Yalith gave her a dirty look. “In that case, I’d be overjoyed to hear what conclusions you’ve reached!”
“Well, basically, there are two of them,” Balcartha replied. “First, Leeana has a right-the same right every war maid has-to decide for herself what to do with her life. And, secondly, there’s not one damned thing anyone can do to change any of it.” She shrugged again, smiling crookedly. “That being the case, I decided there wasn’t any point getting myself all worked up about it.”
“Oh, that’s incredibly useful!” Yalith said scathingly, and turned to Leeana. “Gods, girl, haven’t you done enough crazy things in your life without dumping this on us?! Do you have any idea at all how someone like Trisu or the other hard-line conservatives is going to react? Oh, and let’s not forget Baron Cassan!”
“Now, that’s unfair, Yalith,” Balcartha said in a rather firmer tone, regarding her old friend sternly.
“Unfair? Unfair? ” Yalith stared at her. “Who said it was fair? It’s not fair. I never said it was! But that doesn’t change any of the repercussions that’re going to be coming our way as soon as the anti-war maid bigots hear about this!” She looked back at Leeana, her expression marginally less thunderous, and shook her head. “Balcartha’s right, your decisions are your own, but you know they’re going to splash all over the rest of us, don’t you? Bad enough that we ‘let’ the daughter of one of the Kingdom’s barons run away to join us when she wasn’t even fifteen years old. But now, now that we’ve finished ‘corrupting’ her and teaching her to wallow in the gods only know what sort of perversions, she’s decided to take a hradani lover?”
“And become a wind rider, to boot,” Balcartha added helpfully.
“ Don’t! ” Yalith whirled back to Balcartha to shake an index finger under her nose. The five hundred looked down at it, deliberately crossing her eyes in the process, and Yalith glared at her. “Balcartha, you are not making this one bit better!” she snapped.
“Of course I am,” Balcartha replied calmly. “Someone has to interject a note of calm-or at least levity-into the proceedings, Yalith, and Leeana’s far too junior to go around throttling the mayor just because she’s spluttering and hissing like a demented teakettle.”
Yalith’s jaw dropped. She stared at the five hundred, as if unable to believe her own ears, and Balcartha snorted.
“Better,” she said, and shook her head gently at her old friend. “Now take a deep breath, Yalith, and sit back down. I’ll admit Leeana and Gayrfressa and-Lillinara help us all-Bahzell have…put us in an awkward situation, shall we say? But war maids are supposed to be accustomed to dealing with awkward situations, aren’t we? And the one thing none of us can afford is to let it appear for one moment that we have any qualms about Leeana’s right to do exactly what she’s done. And”-she added a bit more sternly as the mayor settled slowly back into the chair behind her desk-“she does have the right to do exactly what she’s done, and you know it.”
Yalith looked back at her for several seconds. Then she shook herself, sank slowly back into her chair, drew the deep breath Balcartha had commanded her to, and looked back at Leeana.
“She’s right.”
It would have been grossly inaccurate to describe the mayor’s tone as remotely cheerful. Indeed, the word that came most readily to mind was “resigned,” Leeana thought. But Yalith only pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head.
“She’s right,” the mayor repeated, “but I’m right, too, Leeana. I can’t even imagine what all of the repercussions of this are going to be, but you know there are going to be a lot of them, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Leeana replied steadily. “And I never intended for things to get as…out of hand as they have, I suppose. Or to ‘splash’ on Kalatha.” She shook her own head, her expression wry. “To be honest, Mayor Yalith, I didn’t really expect anyone besides possibly my closest friends to even know anything about it at all! But then, well-”
She extended her left wrist, and wonder replaced the exasperated worry in Yalith’s eyes as the wedding bracelet glowed. The silvery luminescence was soft at first, yet it grew quickly stronger, spreading up Leeana’s arm, radiating in the office’s shadows, sending ripples of moonlight across the ceiling and down the walls, and the mayor drew another, even deeper breath.
“Who am I to argue with the Mother Herself?” she murmured, and Balcartha chuckled gently.
“My very own thought when Leeana showed it to me. And, if I’m going to be honest, one of the reasons I’m taking this as calmly as I am.” The five hundred folded her arms across her chest and twitched her shoulders. “If Lillinara and Tomanak both decide to turn up and pronounce Leeana and Bahzell man and wife, who is anyone to argue with Them? This isn’t a matter of what the Charter says or doesn’t say, Yalith-not anymore. Not if the gods Themselves decide to change the rules!”
“And who’s going to believe that’s really what happened?” Yalith tipped back in her chair, her eyes regaining their normal shrewdness. “I’m not saying you’re not right, Balcartha, but you and I-and, eventually, I suppose everyone here in Kalatha-have seen or will see Leeana’s bracelet. That’s almost six thousand whole people!” She grimaced. “We’re not even the biggest war maid town, you know, much less anything most people would think of as the big city. How many of the rest of the Kingdom’s subjects do you think are going to be ready to take a bunch of war maids’ word for something like this without seeing that bracelet for themselves with their very own eyes?”
“About the same number who’re ready to take a war maid’s word for anything,” Balcartha retorted. “Give me a minute to take my boots off and I’ll count up the exact total for you.”
“Exactly.” Yalith nodded. “And now we add Gayrfressa to the rest of it.” She shook her head. “I admit my initial reaction was hardly what I’d call calm and reasoned, Leeana, but you do understand that rumor and exaggeration and outright lies-especially from people who don’t like war maids anyway-are going to spread like a thunderstorm, don’t you? And that no one who hasn’t seen that bracelet or you on Gayrfressa’s back with her-or his, damn it-own eyes is going to believe for a moment that the gods really and truly approved of all this. In fact, most of those people who don’t like war maids-which, I remind you, is just about everybody in the entire Kingdom- are going to be absolutely convinced we made up the entire blasphemous lie as a way to excuse your unnatural relationship with a hradani even if they do see the proof with their own eyes. Not to mention the way the people who think all war maids are basically whores at heart are going to take the fact that you’re actually sleeping with a hradani as proof of how thoroughly depraved and degenerate we all are!”
“I know,” Leeana sighed. “But, in a lot of ways, Mayor Yalith, this is just my original decision to become a war maid all over again, really, isn’t it?” She grimaced. “I do seem to be more of a lightning rod than anyone else, and I have to admit I’m a little frightened when I think about that. I mean, look at everything that’s already happened to Bahzell! I’m not too sure Norfressa’s going to survive adding my ability to attract stray lightning bolts to his!”
“It’s certainly going to be interesting to watch, anyway,” Balcartha said dryly. “From a safe distance, at least. Not that I don’t think you have a point,” she continued when Leeana and Yalith both looked at her. “On the other hand, I doubt the gods chose the two of you for those ‘stray lightning bolts’ at random, Leeana.”
“You may be right,” Leeana acknowledged, thinking about midnight eyes in a grove of pines beyond the world’s edge and a glittering gold and sapphire sprig of periwinkle hidden in Gayrfressa’s saddlebag. “Not that it’s going to make the experience any less…exciting.”
“And not just for you,” Yalith said sourly. Then she laughed. “But Balcartha’s got a point, too. I may wish you hadn’t done it, I may be nervous as hell about where all this is going to end, but one thing I’m not is stupid enough to argue with the gods Themselves. They obviously approve of your choice, Leeana, and to be honest-and speaking
