The main gate tower loomed above Leeana as Boots trotted up the last hundred yards of the approach road.
The trip through Balthar itself had been about as bad as it had every other time she’d come home to visit. She’d been tempted, actually, in a craven sort of way, to circle around the city completely this time and approach Hill Guard from behind, despite the hours it would have added to her travel time. She didn’t like admitting, even to herself, how much more the reaction she drew here in Balthar bothered her than did getting the same sort of reaction from anyone else, and she refused to admit it to anyone else. And so she’d ridden calmly and steadily through the very heart of the city where she’d grown up, erect and yet relaxed in the saddle, head high, looking about her with precisely the correct degree of interest for someone visiting home after yet another lengthy absence. It had been too much to hope she simply wouldn’t be recognized-she had to much of the Bowmaster look, and even those who’d never seen her with their own eyes had to have had the overgrown, disgraced war maid described to them in glowing detail-but at least a handful of people had actually looked happy to see her. There’d even been a few waves of welcome, and she’d acknowledged those with smiles and nods, even a few waves of her own, while resolutely ignoring the scowls and frowns coming back at her from far too many other faces.
At least the people of Balthar were too polite to actually throw things at war maids, she thought. They probably wouldn’t have thrown anything even at war maids who weren’t the daughters (whatever the law might say) of their baron. Knowing how Baron Tellian and Baroness Hanatha would have reacted to anyone who’d dared to publicly revile Leeana (however thoroughly she might deserve it) undoubtedly reinforced their restraint in her own case, but she was fairly certain they probably wouldn’t have done that to any other war maids, either.
Probably.
There was always a flow of traffic in and out of Hill Guard, and there were always gate guards to watch it. She’d expressly asked her parents not to tell any one outside the immediate family she was coming or to wait to greet her at the gate themselves. That would only have made it even worse, once word got back to the rest of Balthar, she thought glumly. That didn’t mean she looked forward to how the gate guards were going to react when they spotted her coming at them with no advance warning, though, and she found herself watching them much more warily than she ever had when she’d been Leeana Bowmaster. She saw them stiffen as they saw her in turn and recognized her and Boots, and she was close enough to see their faces fade almost instantly into total nonexpression. She knew two of those armsmen well-or she had, once, at any rate-and fresh hurt spiked as she saw the completely neutral countenances which had replaced the broad smiles which once would have greeted her. Still, it was better than “Leeana!”
Boots’ ears twitched at the sudden, clear-voiced, happy greeting, and Leeana drew rein and looked up sharply. An attractive, auburn-haired young woman with eyes as green as her own leaned out of one of the lower archer’s slits, waving energetically.
“Leeana!” she repeated, and Leeana felt her lips quiver with a stillborn smile. Obviously at least one of Hill Guard’s inhabitants had missed that bit about not greeting her. Or maybe the other young woman had simply figured the request didn’t apply to someone who wasn’t a member of the family? Either way, she suddenly realized how glad she was that someone had ignored it.
“I’ll be down to meet you as soon as I can find the way,” Sharlassa Dragonclaw continued. “Don’t you dare go away until I get there!”
“Well, if you insist,” Leeana replied a bit more mildly.
“I do,” Sharlassa said firmly, and disappeared back into the stonework of Leeana’s ancestral home.
It took Sharlassa a little longer than it would have taken Leeana to make the same trip, but then Leeana had been raised in Hill Guard whereas Sharlassa was undoubtedly still learning its interior geography. Besides, Sharlassa probably didn’t plunge headlong down stairs and through doors the way a teenaged Leeana once had.
While she waited, Leeana swung down from the saddle, looped her reins over her left arm, and stood beside Boots, leaning companionably against the gelding’s strong shoulder. Three of the four gate guards seemed a little uncomfortable, obviously unsure of exactly how they ought to react to her. Fortunately, Sergeant Barek Irongrip, the guard detachment’s commander, was one of the armsman she’d known since childhood.
“Good afternoon…Ma’am,” the sergeant said after a moment with a smile which was almost natural. It wasn’t quite natural, of course, but it was genuinely warm, Leeana noted gratefully, even if Irongrip was clearly trapped between the the way he would have addressed any other war maid and the way he would once have addressed her.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant,” she replied, addressing him with the formality of his rank, instead of using his given name, as once she would have. She owed him that, especially in front of his detachment.
“Her Ladyship said you’d be arriving today,” Irongrip continued. “She didn’t say how long you’d be staying, though.”
Well, so much for not warning them I was coming, Leanna thought philosophically. I wonder if I really ever expected Mother not to? But at least she and Father didn’t send a drum-and-fife band to meet me on the front doorstep!
“Probably for a little longer this time,” she said out loud. He started to say something else, then stopped with a smile of acknowledgment, and Leanna hid a somewhat tarter smile of her own. Had he been about to express pleasure that she’d be there longer and stopped himself because of other listening ears? Or was she doing him a disservice because of her own hypersensitivity? Or “Welcome home, Leeana!”
Leeana looked up quickly as Sharlassa finally appeared out of the great, stony arch of the gate tunnel. There was no doubting the warmth of the younger woman’s smile, or the genuine welcome in her greeting, and something inside Leeana seemed to melt-or thaw, at least-as Sharlassa used the word “home.” It was a tiny thing, she thought, wondering why tears insisted on prickling behind her eyes, but “Thank you, Milady,” she replied.
Sharlassa’s nostrils flared at the honorific. She started to say something quickly, then visibly stopped herself, and Leeana regarded her levelly. Understanding flickered in Sharlassa’s eyes as their gazes met, and she smiled, instead.
“I know you’re accustomed to seeing to Boots yourself,” she said, “but I think I should probably take you straight to the Baroness. Sergeant Irongrip will see to it he’s taken care of, won’t you, Sergeant?”
“Course I will, Milady. Happy to.” The sergeant saluted Sharlassa, not Leeana, but he looked directly at the war maid who’d once been heiress conveyant to Hill Guard as he spoke, and the smile behind his last two words was genuine.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Leeana said, and turned to unbuckle her saddle bags and sling them over one shoulder. She unstrapped her blanket roll from behind the cantle and tucked it under her arm, as well, suppressing a sudden, inappropriate urge to giggle as she reflected on the fact that everything she needed for a two-month stay had been packed into those bags or rolled up inside that blanket. Once upon a time, it would have required a freight wagon to haul everything a lady of her exalted station required for a visit like this one. She couldn’t deny that she missed some of those luxuries, often quite badly, but travel was certainly more convenient this way. At least for someone who had to travel without the hordes of servants who would also have been packed into that freight wagon along with the luggage, at any rate. Of course, back in that same once upon a time, those servants would have leapt to relieve her of her baggage rather than let such a nobly born personage soil her dainty hands carrying it herself.