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Chapter Twenty-Four
Garlahna, Leeana decided, had a pronounced gift for apt description.
“Lots worse” than Erlis had made it sound was exactly how her first day had been.
The thought took almost more energy than she had as she dragged herself out of the kitchen. The sun had set over an hour ago, but she’d been up since at least an hour before dawn. And she didn’t believe she’d sat down for more than five minutes in a row all day long. Well, maybe with Lanitha. But it still didn’t feel as if she had.
Yesterday had been bad enough, but today had set a new record.
Garlahna had led Leeana about Kalatha yesterday afternoon like some sort of fresh exhibit in a freak show. Not that the older war maid had treated her like a freak or done anything but her very best to make Leeana feel welcome. Yet that hadn’t kept Leeana from realizing that it wasn’t just her imagination when she thought that other eyes watched closely. She and Garlahna had found themselves in a bubble of moving silence, surrounded by people—almost all of them women, though no more than half of them wore the chari and yathu—who watched them with almost frightening intensity.
Leeana knew where it had come from, of course. Mayor Yalith had put it into words during their interview, but she hadn’t really needed the mayor to do so. Of course her very presence here in Kalatha had to be seen as a threat. She might be certain that the parents and family she’d fled wouldn’t hold her actions against the war maids in general or Kalatha in particular, but there was no way the other inhabitants of Kalatha could share her assurance. They had to be wondering how her choice to come here would affect Baron Tellian’s decisions if it finally came to a showdown between them and one of his vassals. And at least some of them had to be wondering what could possibly have possessed the daughter of the man who was arguably the most powerful noble of the entire Kingdom to flee to join them. Why would she have given up the wealth, the prestige? The power of a father whose rank would have protected her from the things which had driven them into flight? What had he done to her to make her flee from him? What could have made her hate him that much?
She’d wanted to turn around and scream at them. To tell them they were wrong to worry about her father’s reaction and fools to believe for one instant that he’d ever hurt her. To shout that she’d run away from Hill Guard not because she hated her parents, but because she loved them so much. But that would only have made things worse—or convinced them she was insane. And so, like Garlahna, she’d pretended not to notice the way they stared or their whispered speculations.
She doubted that she’d fooled very many of them.
She certainly hadn’t fooled Garlahna. Her mentor had never commented directly upon the watching eyes, but she’d taken the opportunity to raise her voice in conversation with Leeana from time to time and “let slip” a few, pithy observations about small-minded, small-town gossip-mongers and people with nothing better to do with their time than make idiots out of themselves by gawking at other perfectly ordinary people or events. At least some of the watchers had taken Garlahna’s none-too-subtle hints and gone off to find other things to do. Most of them hadn’t, but Leeana had appreciated the other young woman’s efforts.
Their first stop had been Administration, located in the Town Hall, on the opposite side of the building from Mayor Yalith’s office. Leeana had been a bit surprised by the quiet, orderly efficiency of the office. She shouldn’t have been, she told herself, but it appeared that, despite herself, she’d absorbed more of the traditional prejudice against the war maids on a subconscious level than she’d thought. The sight of the orderly rows of filing cabinets, each drawer neatly tabbed and filled with folders or note cards, had astounded her.
Baron Tellian was one of the most progressive members of the Sothoii nobility, and he had only begun the transition from the old, cumbersome scrolls on which all important documents had “traditionally” been stored. It was an awkward proposition for him, given how many of his riding’s original documents were on those same old-fashioned scrolls, but he was determined to change over as much of his record-keeping and administration as possible. The original idea had come from the Empire of the Axe, like so many administrative reforms, but he’d recognized its manifold advantages as soon as he saw them.
Yet Kalatha must have completed the same process he was only just begi
She’d been just a bit shocked at how spitefully she’d told herself that. The strength of her need to “defend” her father by denigrating anyone who’d accomplished a similar task sooner than he had astonished her. It had also made her feel more than a little bit ashamed of herself , but she’d managed to shake that emotion off by the time Garlahna hauled her in front of Dalthys Hallafressa, the Town Administrator.
“No, not the Mayor,” Dalthys had informed her gruffly. Leeana had blinked, surprised by the Administrator’s response to the question she hadn’t asked. Dalthys, a heavyset woman in her late thirties or early forties, with graying brown hair, had given her a weary yet somehow conspiratorial smile.
“Mayor Yalith has the honor and dubious pleasure of governing Kalatha,” Dalthys explained. “I only run it. You might think of it as if she were, oh, a baron, say, and I were her seneschal.” Her brown eyes had glinted with amusement at Leeana’s expression. “Put another way, she has to take all the political headaches, and I get to get on with the everyday business of executing policy. Does that make sense?”
“Uh, yes—yes, Ma’am, it does.”
“No need for ’ma’ams,’ my girl,” Dalthys had told her with a slight frown. “We don’t talk to each other that way, and we don’t bow and scrape, either. Job titles or given names—or military ranks, for the Guard—work just fine for any war maid,” she’d half-growled.
“Yes, Ma—” Leeana had blushed, but she’d also managed to stop herself in time, and Dalthys had snorted.
“Not trying to bite your head off, Leeana,” she’d said more gently. “As a matter of fact, the fact that you—” meaning, Leeana had realized, “someone from your background,” although Dalthys had been too tactful to put it into so many words “—feel that we incorrigible war maids deserve to be addressed courteously just indicates that you were well brought up. But it’s best to get into the proper habits of thought from the outset, don’t you think?”
“Yes, Administrator Dalthys.”
“Good! I can always spot the smart ones. They’re the ones who agree with me!” Dalthys had chuckled, and Leeana had smiled at her.
“All right, all right,” Dalthys had said then, opening a huge ledger and frowning at the pages. “We need to find you a room.”
“Excuse me, Dalthys,” Garlahna had said.
“Yes?” Dalthys had looked up, over the top edge of the ledger, to fix Garlahna with her sharp eyes.
“At least for now, Erlis would like Leeana to room near me. I’m her assigned mentor, and since she’s here on a probationary basis, well—”
She’d shrugged, and Dalthys had nodded, slowly at first, then more rapidly.
“That makes sense,” she’d agreed, and looked back down at her ledger, flipping pages. Then she’d stopped and studied a column of entries. “I have one room—it’s technically a double, but there’s no one else assigned to it right now—three doors down the hall from yours, Garlahna,” she’d said after a moment. “Is that close enough?”