Wind Rider's Oath

just about outward appearances, young lady. The last time I saw you, you weren't exactly the happiest young woman I'd ever seen.'

'Oh.' Leeana looked down at her bare toes and actually wiggled them. 'I guess maybe you have a point,' she admitted after a moment.

The two of them stood on one of the training salle's covered porches. The porch's plank flooring was rough and unfinished under Kaeritha's boots, and must have felt even more so to Leeana's bare feet. But the girl didn't seem to notice that. Nor did she appear aware of how the fine garments, rich embroidery, and semiprecious stones of a great baron's daughter had vanished forever.

Kaeritha was. She hadn't actually seen Leeana in over two weeks, not since she'd carried Tellian's reply to his daughter's message to her the afternoon she and Kaeritha had arrived in Kalatha.

The knight had anticipated changes after that long a period, and she hadn't expected to find Leeana lounging about in the sorts of gowns her mother would have approved. But the leather breeches and smocks Leeana had favored as casual, get-your-hands-dirty clothing back home at Hill Guard Castle when her mother wasn't looking had also disappeared, and Kaeritha wondered what Leeana's parents would have had to say if they'd seen her at the moment.

'There do seem to have been some changes in your appearance, though,' she acknowledged with a smile. She cocked her head. 'Are you comfortable with them?'

' 'Comfortable' is such a . . . flexible word,' Leeana said with a grimace. She reached up and slid an index finger under the shoulder strap of her snugly laced yathu. 'I've seen heavy draft harnesses that were probably more 'comfortable' for the horses wearing them! Besides,' she grimaced again and withdrew her finger to indicate her bosom with a wave of her hand, 'it's not as if I really need it.'

'Ha! You may think that now, girl, but I think your opinion will change in a year or two.' She eyed the young woman consideringly for a moment, then chuckled. 'As a matter of fact, and bearing your height in mind, I expect you'll end up appreciating it even more than I would. And it probably won't take any 'year or two,' either, now that I think about it!'

'Really?' Leeana looked at her quickly, then blushed and looked back down at her toes. But she also grinned, and Kaeritha shook her head.

'I'd say the odds are in favor of it,' she said judiciously. 'You're already taller than I am, and you're not done growing. I'd say you've still got a bit of filling out to do, and it looks to me like you're probably going to be built a lot like your mother. So wait a few years before you start complaining.'

'If you say so, Dame Kaeritha,' Leeana murmured obediently, and Kaeritha suppressed another chuckle. She rather suspected that the war maids had designed their traditional garments at least partly for their shock effect. And whether the war maids' intentions had been solely to provide proper support or to combine that with a poke in respectable Sothoii society's eye or not, she felt certain that neither Baron Tellian nor Baroness Hanatha would have approved of the yathu's undeniable brevity and snug fit . . . or of the way that their daughter's shapely form (and navel) were exposed for all the world to see.

'Don't go fishing for compliments, young lady,' she said now, her tone severe, and Leeana produced a sound suspiciously like a giggle.

That giggle, and the girl's entire body language, did a great deal to reassure Kaeritha. Leeana had been called away from self-defense training to speak with Kaeritha, and the war maids' physical training regimen was as demanding as any Kaeritha herself had ever experienced. It was certainly more rigorous than anything Leeana had ever experienced before leaving Balthar. Not that the girl had ever been indolent or lazy. But the war maids believed in pushing their new recruits-especially the probationary ones-hard. Not just to make the difference between their old lives and their new ones clear on an emotional as well as an intellectual level, but also as a testing process designed to identify the young women with the potential and mindset to become war maids.

The great majority of those who went on to become the war maid community's warriors would serve as the light infantry, scouts, and guerrillas most Sothoii thought of whenever they thought about war maids at all. That combat style required speed and stamina more than sheer size or brute strength, and the physical training required to provide those qualities was demanding and unremitting. It had been Kaeritha's observation that most people-including most men, she thought sardonically-didn't much care to invest the focus and sweat required to maintain that high pitch of physical conditioning.

From what she could see so far, it looked as if Leeana was actually enjoying it.

'Are you happy, Leeana?' she asked quietly after a moment, and Leeana looked up quickly. Her smile disappeared, but she met Kaeritha's eyes steadily.

'I don't know,' she said frankly. 'I've cried myself to sleep a night or two, if that's what you're asking.' Her shoulders moved in what could have been called a shrug if it had been a little stronger. 'I can't say I didn't expect that, though. And it's not because life here in Kalatha is so hard. I'm running my backside off and working an awful lot harder than I ever did before, and half the time I think I'm about to drop dead of exhaustion. But I don't really mind that, either, or the fact that I'm not a baron's daughter anymore.' She shook her head. 'I think the only thing that really hurts is that I'm not legally Father and Mother's daughter anymore. Does that make sense?'

'Oh, yes, girl,' Kaeritha said softly, and Leeana drew a deep breath.

'But aside from missing Mother and Father-and being miserably homesick from time to time-I'm actually enjoying myself. So far, at least.' Her smile returned. 'Ravlahn-she's the Hundred in charge of physical training-has been running me hard ever since I got here. Sometimes I just want to stop running long enough to drop dead from exhaustion, but I'm learning things about myself that I never knew before. Now if only her demands on my time could excuse me from more 'traditional' classes.'

'Traditional classes?' Kaeritha repeated.

'Oh, yes.' Leeana's smile turned into a wry grin. 'I have to admit that I'd hoped running away to the war maids would at least rescue me from the clutches of my tutors. Unfortunately, it turns out that the war maids require all of their members to be literate, and they ' strongly encourage' us to continue with additional education.' She snorted. 'Except, in my case, they've dragooned me as one of the tutors, instead!'

'I see,' Kaeritha said, hiding a smile of her own as she recalled the team of strong horses it had required to drag her into a classroom when she'd been Leeana's age.

'What matters most, though,' Leeana continued quietly, 'is that by coming here I've done the most important thing. Father's enemies can't use me against him anymore, and I have the chance to be something besides an obedient little mare dropping colts for some fine stallion who completely controls my life.'

'Then I'm glad you have the opportunity,' Kaeritha said.

'So am I. Really.' Leeana nodded firmly as if to emphasize the mere words.

'Good.' Kaeritha rested one hand lightly on the girl's shoulder for a moment. 'That was what I wanted to know before I leave for Quaysar.'

'Quaysar? You're going to visit the Voice?'

Something about the way Leeana asked the question narrowed Kaeritha's eyes.

'Yes. Why do you ask?'

'No reason,' Leeana said, just a bit too quickly. 'It's just -' She broke off, hesitated, then shook her head. 'It's just that I have this . . . uncomfortable feeling.'

'About what?' Kaeritha was careful to keep any suggestiveness out of her own tone.

'About the Voice,' Leeana said in a small voice, as if she were admitting to some heinous fault.

'What sort of feeling? For that matter, why do you have any 'feelings' about her at all? I didn't think you'd even met her.'

'I haven't met her,' Leeana admitted. 'I guess you could say that what I've got is a 'secondhand feeling.' But I've talked to some of the other war maids about her. A lot.'

'You have?' Kaeritha's eyes narrowed. Her discussion with Yalith hadn't suggested that the Kalatha community was quite as heavily focused on the Voice as Leeana seemed to be implying.

'Yes,' the girl said. 'And to be honest, Dame Kaeritha, it's the way they've been talking to me about her that worries me most.'

'Suppose you explain that,' Kaeritha suggested. She stepped back and settled her posterior onto the porch's railing, leaning back against one of the upright roof supports and folding her arms across her chest. The morning