Her jaw clenched with remembered fury as she remembered the night Raythas Talafressa had gotten drunk enough to tell her seventy-five why she’d run away to the war maids, and there were hundreds of others who could have told the same tale-or worse. Not that those who lifted their noses at the war maids from the security of their own lives ever thought about the sorts of things that drove women into choosing that escape. After all, those weren’t the sorts of things nice people talked about, far less wanted to admit happened.
At least you do want to go home…and at least Mother and Father are glad to see you when you do, whatever the other citizens of your hometown may think. That’s something most of the others will never have, so why don’t you just take a deep breath and deal with it?
It was a conversation she’d had with herself every time she’d come home for one of her brief, infrequent visits, and that irritated her far more than she would ever have admitted to another soul. It wasn’t the sort of conversation a strong, competent person ought to have to have more than one time before she dealt with it once and for all, and she hadn’t. In fact, she might as well admit that she was nowhere near as strong and competent as she wanted to pretend, since there was a very simple reason her visits had been so few and so brief. And, no, whatever she might choose to tell herself, it wasn’t because her mother’s long and frequent (and her father’s shorter, but even more frequent) letters had let her keep up on events in Balthar and Hill Guard without making the long, wearisome ride between there and Kalatha.
It was because she was afraid of those visits. Because it hurt her to see what she saw all too often in the eyes of the people who’d once thought of themselves as hers. She might long to be here, and this might be the place she would always think of as home at the very center of her being, but it wasn’t her home any longer. She’d thrown that away, however good her reason for doing so might have been, and for all the calm demeanor she showed her father’s subjects when she visited, that deeply buried center of her being ached for all she’d lost. Not the power, not the wealth, but the belonging. That sense of knowing precisely who and what she was because her bone and blood were part of the soil on which Hill Guard stood, of the generation upon generation of Bowmasters who had been laid to rest in Bowmaster earth, stood guard over the people of Balthar and the West Riding, and died in their defense. She could stand the scorn of others, let the contempt of strangers roll off the unbowed shoulders of her soul without even a wince, but here it cut too deep, for these people had been hers. And so she’d visited no more than a dozen times in the years since she’d fled this place, and each of those visits had been brief and fleeting because, whether anyone else ever guessed it or not, she’d fled all over again at the end of each of them.
But not this time. No, this time she meant to stand her ground, and that was the reason she was having what she thought of as The Conversation with herself yet again. And the reason she’d been having it ever since she’d left Kalatha.
Of course, this time you’re having The Conversation as a distraction, too, aren’t you? Because you’ve finally found something-or gotten around to it, anyway-that makes you even more nervous than having run off to the war maids in the first place! Don’t want to think about that, do you?
Her mouth quirked, and she gave Boots’ shoulder another pat as she admitted that to herself, but it was true. She’d promised herself this day more than six years ago. That should have given her plenty of time to come to grips with all its implications, yet the butterflies dancing in her middle suggested that she hadn’t. There was excitement and anticipation in that dance, but there was also apprehension-possibly even fear, as difficult as she found it to admit that to herself-and she found herself wondering yet again how her parents were going to react to this decision.
Assuming it works out the way you plan for it to, she told herself. It may not, you know. And then how will you handle it?
She’d made a point of reminding herself of that possibility regularly, especially over the last couple of years, just in case. On the other hand, there had been those clues, however hard certain parties had labored to conceal them. There were times she’d been frustratingly certain it was all her own imagination…and other times she’d been absolutely positive it wasn’t. And then there’d been that peculiar, almost vibrating feeling that had tingled in her bones. She was prepared to admit at least some of that-possibly quite a lot of it, if she was going to be honest-had been no more than her own imagination and hope and desire speaking to her, yet not all of it had been. She was convinced of that. The problem of course was that what she was feeling might not have a great deal of bearing on anyone else’s feelings.
She snorted at the thought, but she also squared her shoulders and pressed with her heels, asking Boots for a little more speed. The gelding happily complied, and Leeana Hanathafressa reminded herself that whatever else might be true, she wasn’t accustomed to failing once she’d set her mind to something.
Especially not when it was something as important as this.
Sharlassa stood leaning on the battlements of Hill Guard’s main gate tower, shading her eyes as she peered down the long approach road. No one had asked her to take up her lookout post, and she supposed she should feel at least vaguely guilty about having done it, although no one had actually told her she was supposed to be in Sir Jahlahan’s office for another deadly dull session of etiquette lessons, instead. Fortunately, the seneschal’s schedule was erratic enough to make arranging lesson times too far in advance difficult, and so this particular block of her time had simply been left unassigned in hopes Sir Jahlahan would find the opportunity to give her a little extra polish. Was it her fault no one had informed her he’d been able to find that opportunity before she took herself unobtrusively off to her present position? Of course it wasn’t!
She told herself that very firmly, resolutely suppressing the small inner voice which tried to point out that before taking herself unobtrusively off to her present position she’d suggested to Tahlmah that she was going for a walk in the formal gardens, instead. She hadn’t quite come out and said so, of course; that would have been deceitful. Yet whenever that irritating inner voice reached a volume where she could no longer entirely ignore it, she was forced to concede that what she had said had certainly amounted to…misdirection.
On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly as if she were trying to hide her present location. Anyone looking out from one of the taller towers behind her could easily see her standing here in the sunlight if they happened to look in the right direction. Oh, Tahlmah would probably have gone to the gardens looking for her there first if Sir Jahlahan had found time to tutor Sharlassa, but her maid was an experienced Sharlassa-hunter. How long could it possibly take her to realize she was looking in the wrong spot and search elsewhere?
Besides, Sharlassa had a special reason for being here this afternoon, although the event she was waiting for was running behind schedule. That was scarcely a surprise. There were always delays on any journey. And while she was guiltily aware she was violating at least the spirit of the letter’s request, that request hadn’t actually been made to her, now had it? And even if it had Her thoughts broke off as she saw the handsome brown bay gelding with black legs and white stockings start up the approach road from Balthar. She watched it for a handful of seconds, then turned towards the stair and started down it at a pace just a bit too rapid to be called ladylike.