"Sofy tells me she no longer objects," Sasha replied. "You make no decisions for her. She goes of her own free will." At the back of the room, Damon stared at his boots. Great Lord Rydysh of Ranash looked severely agitated.
Torvaal indicated to the table. There were only two chairs set, one on either side. Sasha nodded and stepped to her seat, waiting first for the king to sit. Then sat, directly opposite her father. It occurred to her, looking at him now, that they had never sat together like this before. Krystoff, Koenyg or Damon might have chanced a moment with their father, but the girls did not warrant such attention.
The old anger resurfaced, cold and hard. Tempered now, by the circumstances, but real enough. He'd ignored her before, all her views, values and opinions. Now, finally, she would not be ignored.
There was a pitcher of water and two cups on the table. Torvaal took the pitcher himself, and poured into both cups. Raised his cup to his lips, inviting her with his eyes to do likewise. "Don't drink it, M'Lady," said Jaryd from behind. "There's poisons that can be put on the cup, not in the water."
Torvaal stared up at the young man with genuine anger. "Master Jaryd," he said coldly, "I would never poison my own daughter."
"Then you'd be the only man amongst you who could say that for truth, Highness," Jaryd said darkly.
"You have no standing here, Jaryd," Lord Arastyn told him, very coolly. "You are a traitor to Tyree. Family Nyvar is no more, all its properties and titles are barren. I have no idea why Sashandra brought you, you are less than a landless peasant."
Sasha hoped Captain Akryd would restrain Jaryd before he tried anything stupid. But she made certain that her chair remained a suitable distance from the table, her feet braced upon the floor, rehearsing in her mind a fast grab for her blade.
"I am Commander of the Falcon Guard," Jaryd replied. There was no apparent tension in his voice, which only made it all the more ominous.
"And I just told you that you are not," Arastyn replied.
"The men of the Falcon Guard tell me I am," said Jaryd. "There are men of the Tyree White Talons who say so as well, and will tell any others of the commonfolk in Tyree who care to listen. How long will the noble families of Tyree survive should both their vaunted companies and most of the commonfolk, Verenthane and Goeren-yai, decide that you have outlived your usefulness?"
"Your Highness," Lord Rydysh broke in angrily, in heavily accented Lenay, "this is madness! You bargain with traitors! Look, this whelp threatens insurrection even now!"
"Any enemy of the Tyree nobility is an enemy of the Valhanan nobility too," Lord Kumaryn added, ominously, looking hard at Jaryd. "Should our noble friends in Tyree be threatened, all of Valhanan shall ride to their aid."
"All of Valhanan wouldn't ride to your funeral, Kumaryn," Jaryd retorted. "You don't speak for all of Valhanan any more than I speak for all of Saalshen."
"Silence!" Torvaal shouted. From either side of the table, the lords glared at Jaryd and Akryd. Behind them, Damon took another sip from his cup, apparently disgusted. "I shall not have arrogant fools destroy these talks before they have even begun."
"Talks!" Lord Rydysh snorted. "She's your daughter! Bring her to heel like a true Verenthane lord, show her her place with the back of your hand!"
"You watch your mouth with the king!" Koenyg snarled, turning on the northern great lord.
"Bah!" Lord Rydysh waved a dismissive hand. "Southerners have no balls. Your Highness, I tell you again-let me raise my forces and we'll ride through these traitors like a scythe through wheat!"
"She has seven thousand to command," Lord Parabys of Neysh came to his king's defence. "Don't be a damn fool, man."
"Seven thousand and the Udalyn," Sasha told them. "They've barely any cavalry, but taken all together it's a good ten thousand warriors. One move against me and all Hadryn's remaining force shall be destroyed between us. We'll give them as much mercy as they gave the Udalyn. That'll be most of Hadryn's standing soldiery gone. And almost all of their lords, I believe."
"You unutterable fool!" exclaimed Lord Kumaryn, horrified. "You are not merely a traitor, but an enemy of Lenayin! The Hadryn are the shield of the north! You would destroy the very protection that saves Lenayin from Cherrovan domination!"
"I'm not playing dice for a few coppers here!" Sasha retorted, allowing her voice to rise in volume. "I know exactly what I'm up against." With a hard stare at Lord Rydysh. "You have all lost the Goeren-yai. Not all of them, but an awful lot. That's neither my fault, nor my doing-I was recruited, plucked from my dungeon without any foreknowledge of what had been planned. This uprising was their choice, not mine.
"You've made a mess, my Lords. You've ignored the wishes of the very people whose welfare is supposed to be utmost in your hearts, and now you pay the price. They will not just lie down and let you ride over the top of them. If you fight them, they will fight back, and you know by now that there's an awful lot of them. It's your choice, my Lords. I'm perfectly happy for it all to stop right here. But the terms must be favourable. Unfavourable terms have already roused them to fight once. Assuredly they could do so again."
"No terms!" snarled Lord Rydysh, utterly unimpressed. "No terms with pagan traitors! Not on northern soil! We would rather die!"
"Perhaps that's just as well," Sasha said coldly. "We've already killed two of the three northern great lords this ride. Why don't we make it a clean sweep?"
Lord Rydysh glared at her, his narrow, dark eyes blazing fury. No one had realised that Great Lord Cyan of Banneryd had been amongst the defenders of Ymoth. He'd partaken in the cavalry defence and died within a few strides of Captain Tyrun before the Ymoth walls. Word had reached Sasha just ahead of King Torvaal's arrival, when someone from the Ymoth burial detail had realised just who the corpse had been.
Sasha gave Lord Rydysh a nasty little smile. "It hasn't been a wonderful month for northern great lords, has it? Three in thirty days. Your gods must love you dearly, to be claiming you all so fast."
"You speak of the deaths of Lenayin's finest as though it gave you pleasure!" Kumaryn exclaimed.
"Lenayin's finest picked their fight with me and with the Goeren-yai long ago," Sasha replied, unimpressed. "Their fight, their consequences, their problem. Not mine."
"You speak as though all the Goeren-yai worship you," said Great Lord Faras of Isfayen, contemptuously. "The Goeren-yai of Isfayen have barely heard your name. It is the same in most of the west and the south. The north despises you, and there are few Goeren-yai of consequence in Baen-Tar.
"In truth, all that follow you can be drawn from Valhanan, Tyree and Taneryn. You may stand now with seven thousand beneath you, but should the other great lords call their forces down upon you, seven thousand would seem as a sapling before the forest. The Goeren-yai of Isfayen shall not weep for you."
Sasha knew that he spoke the truth. The Goeren-yai of the western provinces of Yethulyn, Fyden and Isfayen practised ancient beliefs tending toward a mysticism that very few easterners pretended to understand. All had been traditionally hostile toward foreigners, and so had had little contact with either serrin or fellow Lenays over the centuries, except through conquest and bloody battles. They had participated in the Great War sparingly, preferring to let the easterners and northerners bleed against the invading Cherrovan army. Kessligh was no legend worth the speaking in the west, and the Nasi-Keth just another bunch of odd foreigners. Company soldiers had ridden with her, those having been in Baen-Tar, and having seen and heard of injustice first-hand, and company soldiers tended to be more well-travelled than most. But for the most part, she would find no love in the west, and probably not in the south, either. Neither would the serrin.