Wind Rider's Oath

won't!'

Leeana hadn't had any notion of how to react, so she'd watched Garlahna from the corner of her eye and taken her cue from her mentor's lack of expression. Since she was the one actually talking to Ermath (or, at least, being talked to by Ermath), she'd settled for nodding pleasantly and saying as little as a she possibly could in response to the Housekeeper's comments and questions. It hadn't actually taken very long, but it had seemed much longer, before they got out of Ermath's office with the required vouchers for bed linens, towels, washcloths, and the one year's worth of clothing the charter required the town to provide to any new war maid.

At least Leeana had grown up accustomed to being measured, poked, and prodded by dressmakers and seamstresses. That had helped at their next stop, when Garlahna delivered her into the hands Johlana Ermathfressa.

Johlana's face would have made it obvious she was the Housekeeper's daughter even without her war maid matronym. But she was no more than half her mother's age, and the bright, humorous intelligence behind her eyes softened her sharp features remarkably. Leeana had been grateful for the difference between mother and daughter as Johlana discussed her wardrobe needs with a cheerfully earthy pragmatism that carried over into things like monthly cycle choices, and from there to homilies about sex, contraceptive techniques, and young women away from watchful families for the first time, even as she measured busily away. She'd seemed mightily amused by Leeana's obvious reservations about the chari and yathu she was expected to wear, but she'd also taken pity upon her.

'Oh, for Lillinara's sake-you won't be expected to wear them all the time, Leeana!' she'd scolded. 'I know. I know! Scandalous-simply scandalous!- until you get used to them. But you'll find they're more practical than you might think just yet. And, when you're not 'in uniform' for physical training or some sort of heavy labor, you can wear whatever you want. In fact, we'll actually provide you with a couple of pairs of trousers and shirts or smocks in the colors you'd prefer. And once you find a way to earn a kormak here or there-and all of our girls do that eventually, don't they, Garlahna?-you can spend them on whatever you want. Including something nice to wear. We may be war maids, but we're still females, too. Trust me, there's always a market for pretties of one sort or another here in Kalatha!'

Garlahna had nodded in enthusiastic agreement, and Leeana had smiled. Then Johlana had gathered up her jotted-down notes on Leeana's measurements and needs.

'You're a tall thing,' she'd observed. 'Good thing charis and yathus are fairly easy to fit!' She'd shaken her head. 'The biggest problem's going to be lacing a yathu tight enough until you fill out, girl! At least holding the chari up won't be a problem. Good breeders run in your family?'

Leeana had turned an interesting shade of red-again-at about that point, and Johlana had laughed.

'Don't pay me any attention, Leeana-no one else does, that's for sure! Just run along now. I'll have something for you to face Erlis in tomorrow morning.'

She'd made waving motions with both hands, and Garlahna and Leeana had made a hasty escape.

Leeana had been astonished as they emerged from Johlana's office to discover that the sun had already set. But her surprise had faded quickly as she realized just how tired she was. She and Kaeritha had ridden hard all morning to reach Kalatha, and she hadn't really stopped moving from the moment she dismounted here. None of which even considered the sheer emotional stress of all she'd been through in the last twelve hours or so. 'Worn out' was a pale way to describe her physical condition, and she'd wanted to weep in sheer exhaustion as she realized she and Garlahna still had to drag her bed linens to her assigned room and make up her bed before she could tumble into it.

She'd concluded later that Garlahna had known exactly how she felt, but her mentor had allowed no sign of that awareness to color her voice or her manner. She'd moved briskly along, simply assuming that Leeana would keep trotting along at her side, and because Garlahna had assumed that, Leeana had discovered she had no choice but to meet her mentor's expectations.

Somehow, she'd managed-with a lot more help from Garlahna than she suspected a 'mentor' was supposed to provide-to get her room more or less ready for occupancy. But then Garlahna had refused to allow her to collapse across the thin, hard mattress of the narrowest bed she had ever contemplated sleeping in. Instead, she'd marched a staggeringly tired Leeana to the meal hall, sat her down on one of the benches, and bullied one of the kitchen workers into providing a huge bowl of thick, delicious vegetable soup despite the lateness of the hour. Leeana had never tasted anything so wonderful in her entire life . . . she only wished she'd been awake enough to remember it later.

Things hadn't gotten any better the next morning.

Garlahna turned out to be one of those disgusting people who were bright and cheerful the instant they got out of bed. Leeana had nothing against mornings, but she usually preferred to at least let the sun get up before she did. Garlahna, however, had rousted her out of bed over an hour before sunrise-and not with the welcoming cup of hot chocolate Marthya would have brought her-and helped her into the new garments one of Johlana's minions had deposited outside Leeana's door during the night.

There was quite a difference, Leeana had discovered, between seeing the chari and yathu on someone else, or even worrying about how they would feel on her, and actually finding herself dressed-if that wasn't too strong a verb-in them for the first time. She'd been certain she was about to fall right back out of them! And despite the fact that she was far less bountifully provided for by nature then Garlahna, she'd been appalled by the amount of cleavage that showed once the yathu was laced snugly-very snugly-into place. If its designed function was to support her bosom during physical exertion, it was admirably fitted to the job, she'd decided. In fact, she'd rather thought that one of her father's steel breastplates had to have more flex to it. She wasn't quite certain how something could be simultaneously so confining and so humiliatingly revealing, but the yathu had managed just fine.

Not that the chari had been any better! The amount of leg it showed was bad enough, and she'd made a firm mental note to be very careful how she sat down in it. But she hadn't realized quite how low on the hips it sat, either, and the notion of displaying her navel for the entire world to see had not been a comfortable fit for the girl who had been the daughter of the Baron of Balthar. As for how her mother would have reacted to the sight-!

And it had been cold! The least they could have done was to provide her with shoes, she'd thought plaintively as Garlahna urged her out into the windy predawn darkness. She'd shivered convulsively as the chill breeze nipped at all that conveniently exposed skin, but that had been little more than a minor inconvenience compared to the wet, muddy, occasionally gravel-strewn ground under her bare feet.

'My feet are freezing!' she'd whispered to Garlahna.

'Hah! Only your feet?' Garlahna had laughed. 'Sweetheart, I came to Kalatha in early winter. I froze my sweet young arse off-not to mention something a bit higher!'

'You would have to mention that!' Leeana had groaned, reaching down to tug uselessly at her chari's hem as another cold breeze blew up it. She was accustomed to long skirts or trousers, and the predawn wind's chilly kisses on places it had no business kissing made her wish desperately that she was wearing them now.

'Oh, stop whining!' Garlahna's cheerful snort had robbed the words of any offense. 'I bet you don't even have icicles down there yet!'

'No, but they're forming nicely. And why can't I even wear shoes?' Leeana had moaned, too miserable, for the moment at least, to remember her aristocratic pride.

'Anything that doesn't kill you will only make you stronger,' Garlahna had replied with an oddly sympathetic chuckle. 'That's what they told me, anyway! And even if it weren't true, it's a matter of tradition.' She'd shrugged. 'Personally, I always figured it was just our way of proving how much tougher than mere men we are.'

'I'd rather have warm feet and let them sneer at me for being weak,' Leeana had muttered back.

'Hush!' Garlahna had said, and Leeana had looked up to discover that they had just joined at least forty or fifty other war maids.

At first, she'd assumed that mandatory morning calisthenics for everyone must be part of the same bizarre, self-mortifying philosophy which had denied her shoes. She certainly couldn't think of any other reason for so