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“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 close behind you, Dame Kaeritha,” she observed. “Still, I would have appreciated at least a little more time—perhaps even as much as a whole hour—to prepare myself for this particular conversation.”
“So would I,” Kaeritha admitted. “In fact, a certain cowardly part of me wonders whether or not this office has a back door.”
“If you think I’m going to let you sneak out of here, Milady, you’re sadly mistaken,” Kalatha’s mayor replied tartly, and Kaeritha chuckled.
It wasn’t an entirely cheerful sound, because she truly wasn’t looking forward to what she expected to be a painful confrontation. On the other hand, once Yalith had made her decision and the initial tension between them had eased a bit, she’d found herself liking the mayor much more than she’d originally believed she might. Yet there was still an undeniable edge there, rather like the arched spines of two strange cats, sidling towards one another and still unsure whether or not they should sheath their claws after all. She wasn’t certain where it came from, and she didn’t much care for it, whatever its source. But there should be plenty of time to smooth any ruffled fur, she reminded herself. Assuming she and Yalith both survived their interview with Tellian.
“I suppose you’d better show him in, then, Sharral,” Yalith said after moment.
“Yes, Mayor,” Sharral acknowledged, and withdrew, closing the door behind her.
It opened again, less than two minutes later, and Baron Tellian strode through it. It would have been too much to call his expression and body language “bristling,” but that was the word which sprang immediately to Kaeritha’s mind. He was liberally bespattered with mud, and—like Kaeritha’s own—his bedraggled appearance showed just how hard and long he’d ridden to reach Yalith’s office. And in his effort to overcome her own head start on him. Even his courser must have found the pace wearying, and she suspected that most of his armsmen—those not mounted on coursers—must either have brought along two or three horses each to ride in relays, or else rented fresh ones at the livery stables along the way.
“Baron,” Yalith said, rising behind her desk to greet him. Her voice was respectful and even a bit sympathetic, but it was also firm. It acknowledged both his rank and his rightful anxiety as a parent, but it also reminded him that this was her office … and that the war maids had seen many anxious parents over the centuries.