Sasha

Sasha and Teriyan grinned. Rony was Jaegar's youngest daughter, now four years old. Jaegar had four girls, no boys, and contempt for anyone who thought that made him unlucky.

"Who won?" Sasha asked.

"Well I'd like to claim a great victory over the forces of darkness," Jaegar admitted, taking his cup from the floor to wash down a mouthful, "but in truth, it was a brutal, bloody draw. Rony suffered a spanking, but Sharyn now has to devise a way to bake a flatbread with the damn stuff inside it, so Rony can eat it without noticing the taste."

"Sweet spirits," Teriyan groaned, a hand to his face with the agonised expression of a father who sympathised.

"The most devious and stubborn of adversaries, little girls," Sasha said knowingly.

Jaegar nodded, eating hungrily. "The very worst."

Sasha rode back to the house with a lit torch in one hand. Chersey did not mind the flame, nor the ghostly shadows that it cast across trail and trees. Sasha rode at a fast canter, partly because the distance was short and Chersey knew the road well, and partly because she'd learned to be cautious of possible ambush, even here so close to town. One did not become uma to Kessligh of the Nasi-Keth without learning to be careful.

She was greeted upon the open lower slope by a raucous barking of dogs from the verandah. Light glowed in the house's windows, spilling across the verandah where it raised on stilts above the gentle slope. She rounded the huge vertyn tree, and the chicken run and wide vegetable garden that it sheltered, and continued upslope to the stables. Once in her stall, she gave Chersey a rub in case of sweat that might chill, made certain she had feed and drink for the night, and fastened the heavy blanket over the mare's broad back and about the sides.

Then she checked on each of the sixteen long faces that peered over their respective stall doors at her, having no doubt of Kessligh, Andreyis and Lynette's care, but always wishing to check for herself. Her horses were her life, at least as much as her swordwork. She fussed over them for a while by the light of an oil lamp, more for the pleasure of their company than because they required the attention. Then she made her way down the long, dark slope toward the dim light of the house ahead, with nothing to guide her steps in the pitch, silent blackness than memory of the grassy ground.

Kaif and Keef greeted her on the rear verandah, taking time from crunching a huge bone to sniff at her with wagging, shaggy tails. The open kitchen was warm, with evidence of a recently prepared meal on the bench. Beyond the partition, Kessligh sat with his Nasi-Keth guest, Alden, before the open fire of the main room, sipping tea.

"Evening!" said Aiden brightly, rising from his chair. "Did you have a good time?" He had a round, cheerful face and a flat mop of black hair. His build seemed verging on fat, yet there was a poise to him, and a balance, that perhaps only a fellow swordsman would notice.

"A wonderful time, thank you," said Sasha, kneeling by the fire to warm the kettle on the stand above the flames. "Please sit, we Lenays aren't much on formality."

Aiden sat, with a beaming smile. His accent was very broad and his manners very Torovan, Sasha thought.

"I was telling Kessligh," said Aiden, as Sasha walked to close the main room shutters that Kessligh had left open to give her some light to ride home to, "that in Petrodor, there are few inns with women. Petrodor is very conservative place, yes? Very Verenthane. No women drinking, no women dancing…"

Sasha finished the second shutter's latch, and noted the several large books lying beside Kessligh's comfortable chair. Serrin books, she recognised them. She wondered what he and Aiden had been discussing all evening.

"Very few women here either," Sasha replied, standing before the fire. Kessligh's expression remained distant, barely listening. Something about it made her uncomfortable. "Mostly the women are stuck at home, cooking and caring for the children. I have to admit, I don't know many of them half as well as I should. And have precious little to discuss with them when I do get a chance to talk. Our lives are just so different. At least with the men, I can talk horses and swordwork."

"Very few women in the Nasi-Keth too," Aiden added, watching her curiously. "Yuan Kessligh is great visionary. No Petrodor women achieve your success. Not all serrin teachings taken so seriously by humans, yes?"

Sasha snorted. "He's a great visionary?" Half-serious, half-joking. "What about me? I did it, not him."

Aiden laughed. "True, true," he conceded, cheerfully.

"Besides, how much vision does it take to tell the difference between a woman and a lump of coal?" With a sideways glance at Kessligh.

Aiden shrugged, broadly. "In Petrodor, I think maybe a lot," he said.

Kessligh usually rose to that bait. Tonight, he barely noticed. Sasha looked at him, uneasily. "So what did you two spend all evening talking about?"

Aiden's good cheer faded. He looked at Kessligh, waiting for him to speak. Sasha had often wondered what Kessligh was to those Nasi-Keth in Petrodor with whom he corresponded. What was he to Aiden? A leader? An inspiration? A "great visionary"? His achievements in Lenayin had certainly made him a significant figure for Nasi-Keth everywhere. But he'd been gone for thirty years, and lived so far away

…

"Aiden brings news from Petrodor," Kessligh said. "Saalshen's representative there, Rhillian, is making waves. I've spoken to you of her before."

Sasha frowned. "I remember. Isn't she Saalshen's second-in-command in Petrodor?"

"Serrin concepts of rank are not easily translated," Kessligh replied. "There is no rank, only ra'shi. Respect. One earns ra'shi through deeds and experience, so it's not always easy to tell who's truly in charge. Rhillian's ra'shi grows powerful across all Saalshen, not just Petrodor."

The kettle began to boil. Sasha knelt and put two teaspoons of ground tea-leaves into the teapot where it sat beside the fireplace. "So what did Rhillian do?" she asked, taking the tea cloth so that the kettle's handle did not burn her fingers, and pouring. "She's been agitating for Saalshen to get tough, hasn't she?"

Kessligh looked at Aiden, inviting him to speak. "The holy brotherhood are saying she attacked the archbishop and tried to steal the Shereldin Star," said Aiden.

Sasha stared at him. "The Archbishop of Petrodor?" she asked.

Aiden nodded. "It is nonsense of course-if she attacked the archbishop, he would be dead. Everyone knows this, yet no one likes to say it. No one will admit the true power of Saalshen in Petrodor, and that no one is safe from the serrin, if the serrin don't want you safe, yes?"

"But… the Shereldin Star?" Sasha remembered the kettle in her hand, and put it down before the fireplace. "Isn't that that stupid artefact all the Verenthanes rave about?"

"The holiest relic of Verenthanes," Aiden said solemnly. And Sasha realised in a flash that Aiden, like most of the Petrodor Nasi-Keth, was most likely Verenthane. She'd probably offended him, she thought, and chided herself for not minding her tongue. Kessligh had renounced all other faiths in the pursuit of serrin teachings. But for most lowlanders, faith was not so easily cast aside. "I have spoken with serrin, they say Rhillian did not want the star. I think they tell truth, here. We think Rhillian only means to warn the archbishop. Some things the serrin will not take lying down."

"And what was the archbishop doing with the Shereldin Star? Isn't that…" and she paused, and something cold and worrisome occurred to her. "Isn't that in the possession of the Larosa?"

Again, Aiden nodded, sombrely. "It was. The Larosa have had many wars against the Saalshen Bacosh. They want the Verenthane holy lands back. They want to unite the Bacosh under a single king and throw the serrin out. They swore, two centuries ago, that the Shereldin Star would one day be returned to the holy lands, but only when the serrin are gone.