Wind Rider's Oath

'You have to be out of your bloody mind!'

The gray-haired woman on the other side of the desk stared at Kaeritha and Leeana in disbelief. The bronze key of her office hung on a chain about her neck, and her brown eyes were hard, almost angry.

'I assure you, Mayor Yalith, that I am not out of my mind,' Leeana replied sharply. She and Kaeritha were tired, mud-spattered, and worn to the edge of exhaustion from long days in the saddle, but she was obviously fighting hard to hang onto her temper. Equally obviously, her life as the daughter of the Baron of Balthar had not exactly suited her to dealing with attitudes like Yalith's.

'Madwomen seldom think they're out of their minds,' the mayor shot back. 'But whatever you may think, and however much you may believe that the war maids are a way out of some . . . some social inconvenience, there are aspects of this situation which could only lead to disaster.'

'With all due respect, Mayor,' Kaeritha put in sharply, intervening for the first time, 'this girl is not talking about 'some social inconvenience.' She's talking, unless I was very much mistaken when I read King Gartha's original proclamation, about the exact thing you and your people are supposed to guarantee to any woman.'

'Don't you go quoting the charter to me, thank you, Dame Kaeritha!' Yalith shot back. 'You may be a champion of Tomanak, but Tomanak's never done anything for the war maids that I ever heard about! And the war maids are scarcely a convenient bolt-hole for some pampered noblewoman-the daughter of a baron, no less!-to use just to avoid a betrothal her family hasn't even accepted yet!'

Kaeritha started to speak again, quickly and even more sharply, despite her awareness that her own anger would only guarantee Yalith would refuse to listen to anything she said. But before she could open her mouth, Leeana laid a hand on her forearm and faced the Mayor of Kalatha squarely.

'Yes,' she said quietly, holding Yalith's brown eyes with her own jade stare. 'I am avoiding a betrothal my family hasn't accepted. I'm not aware, though, that the war maids are in the habit of asking a woman why she seeks to join them-aside from making certain she isn't a criminal trying to avoid punishment. Was I mistaken?'

It was Yalith's turn to bite off a hot return unspoken. She glared at Leeana for several tense seconds, then shook her head curtly.

'No,' she admitted. 'We aren't 'in the habit' of asking questions like that. Or, rather, we do ask them, but the answers don't-or shouldn't-affect whether or not we grant someone membership. But I trust you're willing to admit that this is not a usual situation. First, I'm quite certain you're the highest ranking young woman who's ever sought to become a war maid, and the gods only know where that might end. Second, you're less than fifteen years old, which mandates a probationary period in which you'd technically be neither a war maid nor your father's daughter, and I doubt even the gods know what could happen during that! Third, the most common reason women who later regret asking to become one of us seek us out in the first place is to escape an arranged marriage. We always make a special effort to be positive women like that are certain in their own minds of what they want. And, fourth, this is the worst possible time, from Kalatha's perspective, for us to be antagonizing someone like Baron Tellian!'

'I'll want to speak to you about that later, Mayor Yalith,' Kaeritha put in, snapping the mayor's eyes back to her. 'For now, though, I don't think you need to fear antagonizing Tellian. I don't expect him to be happy about this, and I don't know what his official position is likely to be. But I do know he isn't going to blame you for doing precisely what your charter requires you to do just because the applicant in question is his daughter.'

'Oh no?' Yalith snorted in obvious disbelief. 'All right, then. Let's say you're right, Dame Kaeritha-about her father, anyway. But what about Baron Cassan and this Blackhill?'

She grimaced in distaste.

'We're close enough to the South Riding that we know Cassan better than we'd like, and we've two or three war maids right here in Kalatha who sought us out after Blackhill abused them. If those two are hunting this young woman-' she jabbed a finger at Leeana '-as greedily as the two of you are suggesting, how do you think they're going to react if the war maids help her slip through their filthy fingers? You think, perhaps, they'll send us a sizable cash donation?'

'I expect they'll be as pissed off as hell,' Kaeritha said candidly, and despite Yalith's own obvious anger and anxiety, her earthy choice of words lit a very slight twinkle in the mayor's eyes. 'On the other hand,' the knight continued, 'how much harm can it really do you? From what Leeana's told me, Blackhill and Cassan are probably already about as hostile to you war maids as they could possibly get.'

'I'm afraid Dame Kaeritha is right about that, Mayor Yalith,' Leeana said wryly. Yalith looked back at her with another, harsher snort, and the young woman shrugged. 'I'm not trying to say they won't be angry about it, or that they won't do you an ill turn if they can, if I manage to drive a stake through their plans by becoming a war maid. They certainly will. But in the long term, they're already hostile to everything the war maids stand for.'

'Which is a marvelous reason to antagonize them further, I'm sure,' Yalith replied. Her sarcasm was withering, yet it seemed to Kaeritha that her resistance was weakening.

'Mayor Yalith,' Leeana stood very straight in front of the mayor's desk, and her youthful face wore a dignity far beyond her years, 'the war maids antagonize every noble like Blackhill or Cassan every single day, simply by existing. I know I'm a 'special case.' And I understand why you feel concerned and anxious at the thought of all the complications I represent. But Dame Kaeritha is right, and you know it. Every war maid is a 'special case.' That was exactly why the first war maids came together in the first place-to give all those special cases someplace to go for the first time in our history. So if you deny my application because of my birth, then what does that say about how ready the war maids truly are to offer sanctuary to any woman who wants only to live her own life, make her own decisions? Lillinara knows no distinctions among the maidens and women who seek Her protection. Should an organization which claims Her as its patron do what She will not?'

She locked eyes once again with the mayor. There was no anger in her gaze this time, no desperation or supplication-only challenge. A challenge that demanded to know whether or not Yalith was prepared to live up to the ideals to which the mayor had dedicated her life.

Silence hovered in the office, flawed only by the crackle of coal burning on the hearth. Kaeritha sensed the tension humming between Yalith and Leeana, but it was a tension she stood outside of. She was a spectator, not a participant. That was a role to which a champion of the War God was ill-accustomed, yet she also knew that this was ultimately not a battle anyone could fight for Leeana. It was one she must win on her own.

And then, finally, Yalith drew a deep breath and, for the first time since Leeana and Kaeritha had been ushered into her office, she sat down behind her desk.

'You're right,' she sighed. 'The Mother knows I wish you weren't,' she went on more wryly, 'because this is going to create Shigu's own nightmare, but you're right. If I turn you away, then I turn away every woman fleeing an intolerable 'marriage' she has no legal right to refuse. So I suppose we have no choice, do we, Milady?'

There was a certain caustic bite in the honorific, yet it was obvious the woman had made up her mind. And there was also an oddly pointed formality in her word choice, Kaeritha realized-one which warned Leeana that if her application was accepted, no one would ever extend that title to her again.

'No, Mayor,' Leeana said softly, her voice accepting the warning. 'We don't. Not any of us.'

* * *

'Baron Tellian is here. He demands to speak to you . . . and his daughter.'

Yalith gave her assistant a resigned look, then glanced at Kaeritha with a trace of a 'look what you've gotten me into' expression. To her credit, it was only a trace, and she returned her attention to the middle-aged woman standing in her office doorway.

'Was that your choice of verbs, or his, Sharral?'

'Mine,' Sharral admitted in a slightly chagrined tone. 'He's been courteous enough, I suppose. Under the circumstances. But he's also quite . . . emphatic about it.'

'Not surprising, I'm afraid.' Yalith pinched the bridge of her nose and grimaced wryly. 'You did say he was