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“Well … yes, I suppose I am,” Leeana admitted, unable not to smile back at her.
“Of course you are. And I often thought your grandmother was dreadfully unfair when she took me to task for some dreadful lapse on my part. And to some extent, I imagine she was—just as I realize that I’m applying something of a double standard when I upbraid you. Unfortunately,” she continued to smile, but her voice became more serious, “this business of being a parent sometimes does require us to be a bit unfair.”
“I never thought you were really unfair,” Leeana told her. “Not like Aunt Gayarla, for example.”
“There’s a difference between unfair and capricious, dear,” Hanatha said. “And worthy as your father’s sister-in-law is in many ways, I’m afraid she’s always alternated between tyra
She shook her head and returned to her original thread.
“No, Leeana. What I meant is that sometimes—more often than I would prefer, really—I find myself telling you not to do things since I know just how … unwise they are because, when I was your age, I did those very same things. I’m afraid it truly is a matter of experience and the burned hand teaching best. The way parents discover the things their children shouldn’t do all too often turns out to be that they did the same things, made the same mistakes, they’re trying to prevent their children from repeating. It’s messy, and not a very organized way to go about things. Unfortunately, it seems to be the way that human beings’ minds are arranged.”
“Maybe it is, Mother,” Leeana said slowly, after several seconds of careful consideration, “and I know I may be prejudiced, but I happen to think you turned out pretty well.” Her mother snorted softly in obvious amusement, and Leeana smiled. But she also continued in the same serious tone of voice. “You and Father, more than anyone else I’ve ever met, seem to know exactly who you are and exactly what you mean to one another. And you don’t just love each other—you laugh with each other. Sometimes just with your eyes, but I always know, and I love it so whenever you do. If making the same ’mistakes’ makes me turn out just like you, I can’t think of anything I’d rather have happen.”
Hanatha’s eyes softened, and she inhaled deeply. She studied her daughter’s face, seeing the subtle merging of her own features and her husband’s in the graceful bone structure and the strong, yet feminine nose, and she shook her head again, gently.
“Knowing you think that makes me a very proud woman, Leeana. But you aren’t me. And who you are is a very wonderful person, someone your Father and I love almost more than life itself. I don’t want you to be another me, like something turned out by one of Cook’s cookie cutters. I want you to be you, and to live your own life. But even if you and I both wanted you to turn out exactly like me, it wouldn’t happen. It can’t, because you’re your father’s daughter … and because we can’t have any more children.”
Leeana bit the inside of her lip, hearing the echo of her own conversation with Dame Kaeritha, and unshed tears burned behind her eyes.
Her mother was still young, despite the silver strands pain and suffering had put into her hair, no more than a few years older than Kaeritha. She’d been only eighteen when she wed her husband, and Leeana had been born before her twenty-second birthday. If there’d been any true justice in the world, Leeana thought bitterly, her mother would have had at least two or three more children by now. For that matter, she would still have had time to have two or three more now. If only—
She stopped her thoughts and took herself sternly to task. Perhaps it was unjust, or at least unfair, that her mother had been injured so severely. And it was certainly a tragedy. But most women who’d suffered such injuries would have died. At the very least, they would have been completely crippled for whatever remained of their lives. But Hanatha Bowmaster was the Baroness of Balthar. The finest physicians in Balthar had attended her, and managed to keep her alive until a mage healer had arrived from the Sothofalas mage academy. And that healer had been escorted to Balthar by a fellow mage, a wind walker, which had gotten her there faster than even a courser might have.
But there were limits in all things, Leeana reminded herself. She’d heard the story of how Prince Bahzell had healed Brandark in his very first exercise of the healing power which was his as a champion of Tomanak. Yet despite the touch of a very god, Brandark’s truncated ear and missing fingers had not magically regrown. And just as they hadn’t, the healer who had attended her mother almost four full days after the accident had been unable to restore full mobility to a leg which had been practically dead anymore than she had been able to restore Baroness Hanatha’s fertility.
“I know that, Mother,” she said after a moment. “I wish you could, and not just because of any differences it might have made in my own life.”
“Leeana,” Hanatha said very gently, “we wish we might have had more children, too. But not because we could possibly have loved them more, or been more satisfied with them, than we’ve been with you. Yet the fact that you have no brothers is why you can’t live your life the way I lived mine, and for that I apologize with all my heart.”
Her green eyes glistened, and Leeana opened her mouth to reject any need for her mother to apologize for something over which no one but the gods themselves had any power. But Hanatha shook her head, stopping her before she spoke.
“I ought to have encouraged your Father to seek a divorce and take another wife,” she said very softly. “I knew it at the time, too. But I couldn’t, Leeana. I wasn’t that strong. And even if I had been, I knew in my heart that there was no way I could have convinced him to. And so, whatever you may think, he and I do owe you an apology for the way our own selfish decisions have constrained your life.”
“Don’t be foolish, Mother!” Leeana said fiercely. “If Father had been able to set you aside so easily, I certainly wouldn’t be the person I am now, because I love him. And I wouldn’t love a man who could do that. Of course there are things about my life I’d change if I could! I think that must be true of anyone. But I would never, ever have wanted them changed if the price had been to separate you and Father. Never!”
“No wonder I love you so much.” Hanatha’s tone was light, almost whimsical, but her eyes glowed, and Leeana smiled. They sat for several more moments in silence, and then Hanatha cleared her throat.
“At any rate,” she said more briskly, “the reason I was lurking in the hall to intercept you, was to chide you for doing something we both know you love to do and also knew you shouldn’t be doing.”
“I know that, Mother, but—”
“There are no buts, Leeana,” her mother said with stern compassion. “Perhaps there ought to be, but there aren’t. You simply ca
Leeana let out a deep breath of half-relief, but her mother wasn’t done, and she continued in that same gently implacable tone.
“But one thing I am going to insist upon, Leeana. And if you can’t agree to accept it, then I’m afraid you won’t be taking any rides anywhere except under your Father’s direct supervision.”