‹ She says Gayrhodan probably hasn’t even noticed that she’s gone yet,› Walsharno told Bahzell dryly. ‹ I can’t decide whether she’s more pleased by his independence or irritated by it.›
“Not so much unlike us two-foots, after all, aren’t you just?” Bahzell said, reaching up to the side of her neck again. “And would it happen you’re minded to tell us now what it is as we owe the honor of your presence to?”
Gayrfressa looked at him for a moment, then snorted and shook her head in the gesture of negation the coursers had learned from their two-footed companions. He gazed back up at her, ears cocked, then shook his own head. If she wasn’t, she wasn’t, and there was nothing he could do about it. Besides “Hello, Prince Bahzell,” another voice said, and he froze.
For just a moment, he stood very, very still. Then he turned, and it would have taken someone who knew him well to recognize the wariness in the set of his ears, the intensity of his gaze.
“And good day to you, Mistress Leeana,” he said.
‹ Gayrfressa knew she was there, you realize,› Walsharno murmured from the stable as Bahzell made his way up the exterior stair towards the quarters he’d been assigned in Hill Guard’s East Tower. East Tower had been his home for almost seven years now, and his feet knew the way without any need for directions from his brain. Which was just as well, since his brain had other things to be thinking about just now.
“Sure and I’m not so clear what you’re meaning,” he said to his distant companion, and heard Walsharno’s gentle laughter in the back of that overly occupied brain of his.
‹ Brother, your secret is safe with me, but it’s scarcely a secret from me,› Walsharno told him. ‹ And surely, despite how hard you’ve tried, it can’t be a secret from you, either, now can it?›
“I’m not-”
Bahzell stopped, standing on the stair, turning away from the tower to look at the setting sun, and drew a deep, lung-swelling breath.
“It’s not something as could happen, Brother,” he said softly.
‹ Why not? › Walsharno’s tone was honestly curious…and deeply loving. Clearly, the courser didn’t understand all the innumerable reasons why it couldn’t happen, but then coursers had discovered over the centuries that quite a few things the Races of Man did didn’t make a great deal of sense to them.
“Taking first things first,” Bahzell said considerably more tartly, “I’m after being hradani, and she’s after being human-aye, and Sothoii, to boot! I’m thinking it wouldn’t be more than half-no more than two-thirds, at worst-of all the Sothoii warriors in the world as would be hunting my ears. And after that, she’s after being Tellian and Hanatha’s daughter. A fine thing it would be if such as me-and twice her age and more, come to that-was to be breaking their trust that way! Aye, and her the daughter of the Lord Warden of the West Riding! Wouldn’t that just make such as Cassan and Yeraghor sit up and start sharpening those daggers all over again.”
‹ I thought the war maids made up their own minds about things like this,› Walsharno said. There was no irony in the stallion’s tone, only simple thoughtfulness. ‹ And doesn’t their charter absolve them of any relationship to their birth families? I never really understood exactly how that bit is supposed to work-it has to be a two-foot thing-but how could anyone be offended or upset because of her relationship to Tellian and Hanatha if she doesn’t have one anymore? Legally, I mean?›
“There’s matters of law, and then there’s matters of custom, and finally there’s matters of the heart.” Bahzell’s voice was softer than it had been. “Whatever the law might be saying, there’s those as would use custom against Tellian quicker than spit, if such as me was to be wedding such as she. And I’ve no interest at all, at all, in what the law might be saying, either, Walsharno. Charter or no, that lass will be the daughter of their hearts until Isvaria takes them both, and I’ll not break those hearts. There’s better for her than me, and safer, too.”
He shook his head, ears flattened.
“I doubt the thought’s ever so much as brushed her mind-and if it did, it was never aught but a young lass’s imaginings when she’d grief and worry enough for a dozen lasses twice her age! Aye, and when she’d done no more than turn to an older and a wiser head for counsel.” His lips tightened, remembering a conversation atop another tower of this very castle. “I’d no business thinking what I was thinking then, and a fine fellow I’d be to be taking advantage of a lass so young who’d done naught but cry on my shoulder, so to speak. And that was all it was after being, Walsharno. Naught but a lass in pain and a foolish hradani thinking things he’d no business thinking, with her so young. Aye, and I knew she was too young for me to be thinking any such! And for all it’s true my skull’s a bit thicker than most, it’s not so thick as to think she’d any deeper thought of me than that…and well she shouldn’t have. No.” He shook his head again. “No, there’s things as can be and things as can’t, and all the wishes in the world can’t turn the one into the other, Brother.”
‹ I think you’re wrong, › Walsharno told him gently, ‹ but coursers don’t think the same way two-foots do. Perhaps this is simply one of those things we don’t understand very well. But whether you’re willing to admit it even to yourself or not, this choice of yours is heavy on your heart, Brother.›
“Oh, aye,” Bahzell half-whispered. “It is that. Yet it is what it is, and I’ll not shame her by trying to make it something it isn’t.”
Walsharno made no reply to that-not in words-but his loving support poured through Bahzell, and the hradani leaned against it as he might have leaned physically against the stallion’s tall, warm side, taking comfort from it. He stood there for several more minutes, unmoving, then shook himself and continued up the stair.
“Welcome home, Milord!” Tala Varlonsdaughter had obviously been awaiting his arrival, and she greeted him with an enormous smile as she opened the tower door. “We’ve missed you!”
“Ah, and I you!” Bahzell replied, smiling almost naturally at her and sweeping her into a warm embrace. He picked her up and bussed her firmly on the cheek, and she laughed and swatted him.
“None of that, now!” she told him. “I’m a respectable old woman, I’ll have you know!”
“Aye,” he sighed in deep, mock regret, shaking his head as he set her back on her feet. “And a sad disappointment that’s been to me over the years!”
She laughed again, smiling up at him fondly, and he remembered the terrified Navahkan “housekeeper” who’d helped him smuggle Farmah to safety despite her awareness of what would have happened to her had Churnazh caught the brutalized young maid trying to escape. Her own son was long dead, but as the head of his household here in Hill Guard, she’d become almost a second mother to him, and clearly a foster mother to every single member of the Hurgrum Chapter of the Order of Tomanak when they came to call. She took far better care of him-and Brandark-than they deserved, he thought fondly, and that didn’t even consider her cooking!
“And did Lady Hanatha feed you, Milord?” she asked now, eyeing him shrewdly.
“That she did,” he admitted, choosing not to mention the fact that he’d eaten rather less than usual. The food had been excellent, as always, but the redhaired young woman sitting across the table from him had tightened his stomach and turned the tasty meal into something very like sawdust in his mouth.