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Chapter Twenty-Two
At least Chemalka seemed to have decided to take her rainstorms somewhere else.
Kaeritha gri
She felt equally certain that the baron hadn’t declined Yalith’s offer out of anger or pique, but it had probably been as well he had. Whatever he might feel, the attitudes—and anger—of several of his retainers would have been certain to provoke friction and might well have spilled over into an unfortunate incident.
Her grin vanished into a grimace, and she shook her head with an air of resignation before she took another sip of tea. Tellian’s warning that many of his followers were going to blame Kaeritha for Leeana’s actions had proved only too well founded. All of them had been too disciplined to say or do anything overt in the face of their lord’s public acceptance of the situation, but Kaeritha hadn’t needed the mage power to recognize the hostility in some of the glances which had come her way. She hoped their anger with her wasn’t going to spill over onto Bahzell and Brandark when they got back to Balthar. If it did, though, Bahzell would simply have to deal with it. Which, she thought wryly, he would undoubtedly manage in his own inimitable fashion.
She drank more tea, watching the sun climb above the muddy fields which surrounded Kalatha. It was going to be a warmer day, she decided, and the sun would soon burn off the mists. She’d noticed the training field, and an extensive weapons salle, behind the town armory when she passed it on the day of her arrival, and she wondered if Balcartha Evahnalfressa, Yalith’s senior guard officer, would object to her borrowing the salle for an hour or so. She’d missed her regular morning workouts while she and Leeana pressed ahead as rapidly as possible on their journey. Besides, from all she’d heard, her own two-handed fighting technique was much less uncommon among war maids. If she could talk some of them into sparring with her, she might be able to pick up a new trick or two.
She finished the tea and turned to step back into the guesthouse to set the mug on the table beside her other breakfast dishes. Then she looked into the small mirror—an unexpected and expensive luxury—above the fireplace. Welcome as the guesthouse bed had been, the communal bathhouse had been even more welcome. She actually looked human again, she decided, although it was still humid enough that it had taken her long, midnight-black hair hours to dry. Most of her clothes were still drying somewhere in the town laundry, but she’d had one decent, clean change still in her saddlebags. There were a few wrinkles and creases here and there, but taken all in all, she was presentable, she decided.
Which was probably a good thing. It mighteven do her some good in her upcoming interview with Yalith.
Then again, she thought ruefully, it might not.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me so early, Mayor,” Kaeritha said as Sharral showed her back into Yalith’s office and she settled into the proffered chair.
“There’s no need to thank me,” Yalith replied briskly. “Despite any … lack of enthusiasm on my part when you handed me a hot potato like Leeana, any champion deserves whatever hospitality we can provide, Dame Kaeritha. Although,” she admitted, “I am a bit perplexed by exactly what a Champion of Tomanak’s doing here in Kalatha. However exalted Leeana’s birth may have been, I don’t believe we’ve ever had a candidate war maid delivered to us by any champion. And if that was going to happen, I would’ve expected one of the Mother’s Arms.”
“Actually,” Kaeritha said, “I was already headed for Kalatha when Leeana overtook me on the road.”
“Were you, indeed?” Yalith’s tone was that of a woman expressing polite interest, not surprise. Although, Kaeritha thought, there was also an edge of wariness to it.
“Yes,” she said. Her left elbow rested on the arm of her chair, and she raised that hand, palm open. “I don’t know how familiar you are with champions and the way we get our instructions, Mayor Yalith.”
Her tone made the statement a tactful question, and Yalith smiled.
“I’ve never dealt directly with a champion, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “I once met a senior Arm of the Mother, but I was much younger then, and certainly not a mayor. No one was interested in explaining to me how she got her instructions from Lillinara. Even if anyone had been, my impression is that She has Her own way of getting Her desires and intentions across, so I assume the same would be true of Tomanak or any of the other gods.”
“It certainly is,” Kaeritha agreed wryly. “For that matter, He seems to tailor His methods to his individual champions. In my own case, however, I tend to receive, well, feelings, I suppose, that I ought to be moving in a particular direction or thinking about a particular problem. As I get closer to whatever it is He needs me to be dealing with, I generally recognize the specifics as I come across them.”
“That would seem to require a great deal of faith,” Yalith observed. Then she wrinkled her nose with a snort of amusement at her own words. “I suppose a champion does need rather more ’faith’ than most people do, doesn’t she?”
“It does seem to come with the job,” Kaeritha agreed. “In this instance, though, those feelings He sends me already had me headed in this direction. As nearly as I can pin things down at this point, Kalatha was where He wanted me.”
“And not just to escort Leeana to us, I suppose.”
“No. I had some discussion with Baron Tellian before I left Balthar, Mayor. Frankly, the reports from his stewards and magistrates, which he shared with me, lead me to believe that relations between your town and its neighbors are … not as good as they might be.”
“My, what a tactful way to describe it.” Yalith’s irony was dry enough to burn off the morning mist without benefit of sunlight. She regarded Kaeritha without saying anything more for several more seconds, then leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest.
“As a matter of fact, Dame Kaeritha, our ’neighbors’ are probably almost as angry with us as we are with them. Although, of course, my Town Council and I believe we’re in the right and they aren’t. I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this, however, but I fail to see why our disagreements and squabbles should be of any particular interest to Tomanak. Surely He has better things to spend His champions’ time on than refereeing fights which have been going on for decades. Besides, with all due respect, I’d think matters concerning the war maids are properly Lillinara’s affair, not the War God’s.”
“First,” Kaeritha said calmly, “Tomanak is the God of Justice, as well as the God of War, and from Tellian’s reports, there seems to be some question of exactly what ’justice’ means in this case. Second, those same reports also seem to suggest that there’s something more to this than the sort of quarrels which usually go on between war maid communities and their neighbors.”
Yalith seemed less than pleased by the reminder that Tomanak was God of Justice—or perhaps by the implication that in that capacity he might have a legitimate interest in a matter which she clearly considered belonged to Lillinara. But if that was the case, she chose not to make a point of it. Yet, at least.