He shrugged and nodded towards the door. Alfar gazed back at him for a long, thoughtful moment, then nodded in response. Not in agreement, precisely, but in acknowledgment. His own sudden urge to kick the sullen-faced innkeeper's backside up between his ears astounded him. Two days-even a single night-ago, he would flatly have rejected the very suggestion that he might find himself siding with hradani against another human. Now, though . . .
"You're right, Milord Champion," he said, deliberately pitching his voice loud enough for the innkeeper to hear, "there's no point trying to beat wisdom into a fool. You'll only hurt your hand on a skull with that much bone in it."
Chapter Nineteen
"You have to be out of your bloody mind!"
The gray-haired woman on the other side of the desk stared at Kaeritha and Leeana in disbelief. The bronze key of her office hung on a chain about her neck, and her brown eyes were hard, almost angry.
"I assure you, Mayor Yalith, that I am not out of my mind," Leeana replied sharply. She and Kaeritha were tired, mud-spattered, and worn to the edge of exhaustion from long days in the saddle, but she was obviously fighting hard to hang onto her temper. Equally obviously, her life as the daughter of the Baron of Balthar had not exactly suited her to dealing with attitudes like Yalith's.
"Madwomen seldom think they're out of their minds," the mayor shot back. "But whatever you may think, and however much you may believe that the war maids are a way out of some . . . some social inconvenience, there are aspects of this situation which could only lead to disaster."
"With all due respect, Mayor," Kaeritha put in sharply, intervening for the first time, "this girl is not talking about 'some social inconvenience.' She's talking, unless I was very much mistaken when I read King Gartha's original proclamation, about the exact thing you and your people are supposed to guarantee to any woman."
"Don't you go quoting the charter to me, thank you, Dame Kaeritha!" Yalith shot back. "You may be a champion of Tomanâk, but Tomanâk's never done anything for the war maids that I ever heard about! And the war maids are scarcely a convenient bolt-hole for some pampered noblewoman-the daughter of a baron, no less!-to use just to avoid a betrothal her family hasn't even accepted yet!"
Kaeritha started to speak again, quickly and even more sharply, despite her awareness that her own anger would only guarantee Yalith would refuse to listen to anything she said. But before she could open her mouth, Leeana laid a hand on her forearm and faced the Mayor of Kalatha squarely.
"Yes," she said quietly, holding Yalith's brown eyes with her own jade stare. "I am avoiding a betrothal my family hasn't accepted. I'm not aware, though, that the war maids are in the habit of asking a woman why she seeks to join them-aside from making certain she isn't a criminal trying to avoid punishment. Was I mistaken?"
It was Yalith's turn to bite off a hot return unspoken. She glared at Leeana for several tense seconds, then shook her head curtly.
"No," she admitted. "We aren't 'in the habit' of asking questions like that. Or, rather, we do ask them, but the answers don't-or shouldn't-affect whether or not we grant someone membership. But I trust you're willing to admit that this is not a usual situation. First, I'm quite certain you're the highest ranking young woman who's ever sought to become a war maid, and the gods only know where that might end. Second, you're less than fifteen years old, which mandates a probationary period in which you'd technically be neither a war maid nor your father's daughter, and I doubt even the gods know what could happen during that! Third, the most common reason women who later regret asking to become one of us seek us out in the first place is to escape an arranged marriage. We always make a special effort to be positive women like that are certain in their own minds of what they want. And, fourth, this is the worst possible time, from Kalatha's perspective, for us to be antagonizing someone like Baron Tellian!"
"I'll want to speak to you about that later, Mayor Yalith," Kaeritha put in, snapping the mayor's eyes back to her. "For now, though, I don't think you need to fear antagonizing Tellian. I don't expect him to be happy about this, and I don't know what his official position is likely to be. But I do know he isn't going to blame you for doing precisely what your charter requires you to do just because the applicant in question is his daughter."
"Oh no?" Yalith snorted in obvious disbelief. "All right, then. Let's say you're right, Dame Kaeritha-about her father, anyway. But what about Baron Cassan and this Blackhill?"
She grimaced in distaste.
"We're close enough to the South Riding that we know Cassan better than we'd like, and we've two or three war maids right here in Kalatha who sought us out after Blackhill abused them. If those two are hunting this young woman-" she jabbed a finger at Leeana "-as greedily as the two of you are suggesting, how do you think they're going to react if the war maids help her slip through their filthy fingers? You think, perhaps, they'll send us a sizable cash donation?"
"I expect they'll be as pissed off as hell," Kaeritha said candidly, and despite Yalith's own obvious anger and anxiety, her earthy choice of words lit a very slight twinkle in the mayor's eyes. "On the other hand," the knight continued, "how much harm can it really do you? From what Leeana's told me, Blackhill and Cassan are probably already about as hostile to you war maids as they could possibly get."
"I'm afraid Dame Kaeritha is right about that, Mayor Yalith," Leeana said wryly. Yalith looked back at her with another, harsher snort, and the young woman shrugged. "I'm not trying to say they won't be angry about it, or that they won't do you an ill turn if they can, if I manage to drive a stake through their plans by becoming a war maid. They certainly will. But in the long term, they're already hostile to everything the war maids stand for."
"Which is a marvelous reason to antagonize them further, I'm sure," Yalith replied. Her sarcasm was withering, yet it seemed to Kaeritha that her resistance was weakening.
"Mayor Yalith," Leeana stood very straight in front of the mayor's desk, and her youthful face wore a dignity far beyond her years, "the war maids antagonize every noble like Blackhill or Cassan every single day, simply by existing. I know I'm a 'special case.' And I understand why you feel concerned and anxious at the thought of all the complications I represent. But Dame Kaeritha is right, and you know it. Every war maid is a 'special case.' That was exactly why the first war maids came together in the first place-to give all those special cases someplace to go for the first time in our history. So if you deny my application because of my birth, then what does that say about how ready the war maids truly are to offer sanctuary to any woman who wants only to live her own life, make her own decisions? Lillinara knows no distinctions among the maidens and women who seek Her protection. Should an organization which claims Her as its patron do what She will not?"
She locked eyes once again with the mayor. There was no anger in her gaze this time, no desperation or supplication-only challenge. A challenge that demanded to know whether or not Yalith was prepared to live up to the ideals to which the mayor had dedicated her life.