for myself, not as Mayor of Kalatha-from what I’ve seen of Prince Bahzell, I do, too.” She smiled. “I admit it would take me a while to get used to the ears, but hradani or not, I don’t think there could possibly be a better man on the entire Wind Plain.”
“Thank you,” Leeana said softly.
“You’re welcome-in a cranky, harassed, exasperated, preoccupied, worried sort of way.”
The mayor gave her another smile, then shook herself.
“All right, Balcartha. Have you had time to think about what this means for Leeana’s duties with the Guard?”
“Not really,” Balcartha admitted. “It’s obviously going to change them, of course. I may not be able to hear Gayrfressa’s voice when she talks to Leeana, but, trust me-one look at her body language, and I knew better than to even mention the fact that there’s no such thing as war maid cavalry! I doubt we’ve got more than a couple of hundred mounted war maids in the entire Kingdom, and aside from the thirty or forty of them serving with the Quaysar Guard, most of them are couriers, not cavalry troopers. I’m going to have to come up with some way to work around that. Still,” she looked consideringly at Leeana, “aside from this mildly irritating propensity of hers to run off and get married to hradani and bring coursers home with her and otherwise set the entire Kingdom by its collective ears without mentioning her plans to anyone, Seventy-Five Leeana’s always seemed to have her head screwed on properly. I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”
“Good luck,” Yalith said feelingly, and looked back at Leeana. “I don’t even want to think about what kind of…housing arrangements you’re going to have to make for Gayrfressa, either. Nobody in Kalatha has the kind of stables Baron Tellian could have provided, anyway-I know that much!”
“I’ve already thought about that, Mayor,” Leeana replied. “To be honest, Gayrfressa doesn’t really like stables all that much. She and I talked it over, and we think the best bet’s going to be to move me to the old guesthouse, assuming you and Five Hundred Balcartha approve.” She made a face. “I know it’s huge for a single war maid, but I’d have to spend enough time fixing the holes in the roof-and the floor-that I doubt anyone’s going to think of it as special treatment, and it backs up against the edge of town and all those open fields down to the river. And I could patch up the old stable to give her cover against bad weather. For that matter, once I got it into semi-habitable condition, I’d probably move Boots to it from the city livery.”
“So you’re keeping him, too?”
“Of course I am. And I’m going to be riding him regularly, as well.” Leeana smiled. “Gayrfressa would insist on that even if I didn’t want to.”
“That’s good to know,” Yalith said. She thought about it for several moments and then shrugged. “No one’s using that old wreck, anyway. In fact, I was thinking about having it torn down before it collapsed of its own weight. So if you and Gayrfressa want it, instead, I don’t see any problem. Balcartha?”
“There’s always been provision for active-duty Guard officers to live off-post under special circumstances.” Balcartha shrugged back at her. “I don’t see a problem, either. And I rather suspect that Seventy-Five Leeana’s platoon may well see fit to help her with those repairs she was talking about.”
“Ma’am, I don’t want to-”
“Oh, hush, Leeana! No one said anything about telling them to do it! The problem would come in if I tried to stop them from doing it, and you know it.”
Leeana subsided, and Balcartha nodded in satisfaction.
“All right, I think we can take that as settled. Mayor?”
“As far as I’m concerned, you can,” Yalith assured her. “Of course, it’s probably the only part of it that’s anywhere near ‘settled’!”
“One day at a time,” Balcartha said philosophically. “One day at a time.”
She stood for a moment longer, head cocked and arms still crossed, lips pursed as she obviously ran over a mental checklist. Then, suddenly, she chuckled richly.
“What now?” Yalith asked warily, and Balcartha smiled broadly.
“Oh, I was just thinking. You’re probably right about how the rumors are going to fly, and how our critics are going to react to all this, but that’s nothing-a mere bagatelle! — compared to what Leeana’s going to have to deal with right here in Kalatha itself.”
“I beg your pardon?” Leeana’s tone was even warier than the mayor’s had been, and Balcartha laughed.
“Oh, yes, Leeana! I promise you I intend to be right there to see it when it happens, too!”
“When what happens?” Leeana demanded.
“Why, when you have to explain this to Garlahna and she starts pumping you for all the juicy details about Bahzell!” Balcartha told her. “After all those years when you gave her grief over her, ah… energetic love life while you weren’t sleeping with anybody? ” The five hundred snorted. “Trust me, girl-you are never going to live this down where she’s concerned!”
There were, Brayahs Daggeraxe acknowledged, advantages to being a wind-walker.
For one thing, he could get away from all of the exquisitely polite, venomous backbiting and intrigue of court quickly when the time came.
He stood on the east tower of Sothokarnas, looking back across the city of Sothofalas and the blue ribbon of the Pardahn River, wending its way towards the distant Spear. The barge traffic was thicker and denser than it had been earlier in the year, he thought, and his mouth twitched wryly as he thought about how much thicker it was likely to become in the next few years if things worked out the way he was fairly certain they were about to. At the very least, those “things” were going to get very…interesting, and Sothoii were by nature conservative. “Interesting” had never been their favorite word, not with its implications of change and unpredictability, which, after all was why peope like Tellian Bowmaster made so many of their neighbors so acutely uneasy.
He snorted in harsh amusement at the thought and inhaled a deep, cleansing breath. Summer was moving steadily towards fall, and it was hot, even here on the lofty Wind Plain. There was scarcely a breath of breeze to ease the heat this afternoon-not down here at his current level, at any rate-and he listened to the cries of the birds hovering almost motionless in the updrafts above the mighty fortress. Those cries were distant yet crystal clear over the less distinct stir and murmur of the city.
The noise of the horses and armsmen gathered in Sothokarnas’ main courtyard was rather closer to hand, and the crisp rasp of commands came to him as Sir Frahdar Swordshank, King Markhos’ personal armsman and the captain of his forty-man detachment of the Royal Guard, chivied along his armsmen’s final preparations. Brayahs knew other eyes-hundreds of them, at the very least-were watching the same scene. It would scarcely do to admit it, but he rather suspected the owners of most of those eyes had already ordered their own escorts to assemble as soon as the King had been good enough to take himself out of the way. It didn’t need a mage to sense the palpable aura of impatience hovering like fog over Sothokarnas, at any rate, and Brayahs wondered if perhaps-just perhaps, unworthy though it might be-His Majesty wasn’t deliberately dawdling just a bit in order to tweak his loyal courtiers’ impatience. Markhos Silveraxe wasn’t the sort to pitch tantrums. Indeed, there were those who considered him rather cold and bloodless for a proper Sothoii king. Most people thought that was better than someone whose fiery temper led him into missteps, as his grandfather had demonstrated on more than one occasion, but Brayahs had been able to observe him from closer range than most for the past few years. There was a far sharper temper below the King’s surface than he’d seen fit to let most people see…and he was far more subtle about it than those same people were ever likely to guess.
He probably is deliberately making the lot of them wait, the mage thought now. He knows exactly how they’re all dancing with impatience to get home to their own estates and their own affairs. It would never do for him to say so openly, of course-just as it would never do for any of them to admit it, but he knows. And there’s no way he’d pass up this opportunity to whack them by making them pretend they aren’t champing at the bit…not if he’s one half as tired of all this quarreling and snapping and veiled innuendo as I am, at any rate. And the gods know he’s had to put up with even more of it than I have. On the other hand, he’s not a mage. He doesn’t have to hold his personal shields every minute of the day just to keep these idiots from driving him mad with their incessant, babbling, calculating, manipulating, dishonest, self-seeking, devious -
He chopped off the catalog of adjectives and inhaled again, even more deeply than before. Thank Semkirk mind speech wasn’t one of his major talents! Just the emotional aura that went with the steadily intensifying power
