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“However a
“I suppose you’re right,” Leeana conceded after a moment. “I’m safe enough here in Balthar, though. Even Father’s willing to admit that, when he isn’t being stuffy just to make a point! And,” she added in a darker tone, “it’s not as if I’m not a weapon against him anyway.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly fair,” Kaeritha said with a quick frown. “And I’m certain that’s not how he thinks of it.”
“No?” Leeana gazed at her for several seconds, then gave her head a little toss that twitched her long, thick braid of damp golden-red hair. “Maybe he doesn’t, but that doesn’t really change anything, Dame Kaeritha. Do you have any idea how many people want him to produce a real heir?” She grimaced. “The entire King’s Council certainly goes on at him enough about it whenever he attends!”
“Not the entire Council, I’m sure,” Kaeritha objected, her eyes widening slightly as she sensed the true depth of bitterness Leeana’s normally cheerful demeanor concealed.
“Oh, no,” Leeana agreed. “Only the ones who don’t have sons they think are just the right age to marry off to the heir to Balthar and the West Riding. Or don’t think they’re still young enough for the job themselves—they can hardly wait to get their greasy little paws on me.” She grimaced in disgust. “All the rest of them, though, use it as an excuse to go on at him, gnawing away at his power base like a pack of mongrels snarling at a leashed wolfhound.”
“Is it really that bad?” Kaeritha asked, and Leeana looked surprised by the question. “I may be a champion of Tomanak, Leeana,” Kaeritha said wryly, “but I’m also an Axewoman, not a Sothoii. Tomanak!” She laughed. “As far as that goes, I’m only even an Axewoman by adoption. I was born a peasant in Moretz! So I may be intellectually familiar with the sorts of machinations that go on amongst great nobles, but I don’t have that much first-hand experience with them.”
Leeana appeared to have a little difficulty with the idea that a belted knight—and a champion of Tomanak, into the bargain—could be that ignorant of things which were so much a part of her own life. And she also seemed surprised that Kaeritha seemed genuinely interested in her opinion.
“Well,” she said slowly, in the voice of one manifestly attempting to be as fair-minded as possible, “it probably does seem even worse to me than it actually is, but it’s bad enough. You do know how Sothoii inheritance laws work, don’t you?”
“That much I have down, in general terms, at least,” Kaeritha assured her.
“Then you know that while I can’t legally inherit Father’s titles and lands myself, they’ll pass through me as heir conveyant to my own children? Assuming he doesn’t produce a son after all, of course.”
Kaeritha nodded, and Leeana shrugged.
“Since our enlightened customs and traditions won’t permit a woman to inherit in her own right, whatever fortunate man wins my hand in matrimony will become my ’regent.’ He’ll govern Balthar and hold the wardenship of the West Riding ’in my name,’ until our firstborn son inherits father’s titles and lands. And, of course, in the most unfortunate case that I might produce only daughters, he—or the husband of my eldest daughter—would continue to hold the wardenship until one of them produced a son.” The irony in her soprano voice was withering, especially coming from one so young, Kaeritha thought.
“Because of that,” Leeana continued, “two thirds of the Council want Father to go ahead and set Mother aside to produce a good, strong, male heir. Some of them say it’s his duty to the bloodline, and others argue that a matrimonial regency always creates the possibility of a succession crisis. Some of them may even be sincere, but most of them know perfectly well he won’t do it. They see it all as a sword to use against him, something he has to use up political capital fighting off. The last thing he needs, especially now, is to give his enemies any more weapons to use against him! But the ones who are sincere may be even worse, because the realreason they want him to produce a male heir is that none of them like to think about the possibility that such a plum might fall into the hands of one of their rivals. And the third of the Council who don’t want him to set Mother aside probably hope they’re the ones who will catch the plum.”
Kaeritha nodded slowly, gazing into the younger woman’s dark green eyes. Tellian Bowmaster’s marriage eighteen years before to Hanatha Whitesaddle had not simply united the Bowmasters of Balthar with the Whitesaddles of Windpeak. It had also been a love match, not just a political alliance between two powerful families. That had been obvious to anyone who’d ever laid eyes on them.
And if it hadn’t been, the fact that Tellian had furiously rejected any suggestion that he set Hanatha aside after the riding accident which had left the baroness with one crippled leg and cost her her fertility would have made it so. But that decision on his part did carry a heavy price for their only child.
“And how does the plum feel about being caught?” Kaeritha asked softly.
“The plum?” Leeana gazed back into Kaeritha’s midnight-blue eyes for several silent seconds, and her voice was even softer than Kaeritha’s when she finally replied. “The plum would sell her soul to be anywhere else in the world,” she said.
The two of them looked at each other, then Leeana shook herself, bobbed a quick half-bow, and turned abruptly away. She walked down the passage with quick, hard strides, her spine pikestaff-straight, and Kaeritha watched her go. She wondered if Leeana had actually intended to reveal the true depth of her feelings. And if the girl had ever revealed them that frankly to anyone else.
She frowned in troubled thought, then shook herself and turned back to the window as fresh thunder grumbled overhead. Her heart went out to the girl—and to her parents, for that matter—but that wasn’t what had brought her to the Wind Plain, and it was past time she got on with what had brought her here. She gazed out the window a few moments longer, inhaled one more deep breath of rain from her relatively dry perch, and then turned away and walked briskly towards the tower’s spiral stair.
The library was quiet, the silence broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in one corner and the soft, seething crackle of the fire on the hearth. There was no other sound, yet Bahzell looked up an instant before the library door opened. Baron Tellian, sitting across the gaming table from him looked up in turn, and then shook his head as the door swung wide and Kaeritha stepped through it.
“I wish you two would stop doing that,” he complained.
“And just what is it the two of us are after doing?” Bahzell inquired genially.
“You know perfectly well what,” Tellian replied, using the black pawn he’d just picked up from the chessboard to wave at Kaeritha, still standing in the doorway and smiling at him. “That.“ He shook his head and snorted. “You could at least pretend you have to wait until the other one knocks, like normal people!”
“With all due respect, Milord,” Brandark sat in a window seat to take advantage of the gray, rainy-afternoon light coming in through it and spoke without ever looking up from the book in his lap, “I don’t believe anyone’s ever been foolish enough to suggest that there was anything ’normal’ about either of them.”