His coloring was unusually dark for a Sothoii, and he stared up at her, his brown eyes clinging to the embroidered sword and mace of Tomanak, glittering in gold bullion on the front of her poncho. From his expression, he would have found a fire-breathing dragon considerably less unnatural, but he was at least trying to handle the situation as if it were a normal one.
“Ah, please forgive my seeming discourtesy, Dame … Kaeritha,” he said. There was a slight questioning note in his pronunciation of her name, Kaeritha noticed, and nodded pleasantly, acknowledging his apology even as she confirmed that he had it right. “I’m afraid,” the officer continued with a surprisingly genuine smile, “that we’re not accustomed to seeing champions of Tomanak here in Lorham.”
“There aren’t that many of us,” Kaeritha agreed, amiably consenting to pretend that that had been the true reason for his confusion.
“I’ve sent word of your arrival to Lord Trisu,” he continued. “I’m sure he’ll want to come down to the gate to greet you properly and in person.”
Or to kick me back out of the gate if he decides I’m not a champion after all, Kaeritha added silently. On the other hand, one must be polite, I suppose.
“Thank you, Captain —?”
“Forgive me,” the officer said hastily. “I seem to be forgetting all of my manners today! I am called Sir Altharn.”
“Thank you, Sir Altharn,” Kaeritha said. “I appreciate the prompt and efficient manner in which you’ve discharged your duties.”
The words were courteously formal, but Sir Altharn obviously noticed the gently teasing edge to her voice. For a moment he started to color up again, but then, to her pleased surprise, he shook his head and smiled at her, instead.
“I suppose I had that coming,” he told her. “But truly, Dame Kaeritha, I’m seldom quite so inept as I’ve managed to appear this morning.”
“I believe that,” Kaeritha said, and somewhat to her own surprise, it was true.
“Thank you. That’s kinder than I deserve,” Sir Altharn said. “I hope I’ll have the opportunity to demonstrate the fact that I don’t always manage to put my own boot in my mouth. Or, at least, that I usually remember to take my spurs off first!”
He laughed at himself, so naturally that Kaeritha laughed with him. There might be some worthwhile depths to this fellow after all, she reflected.
“I’m sure you’ll have the chance,” she told him. “In fact, I —”
She broke off in midsentence as four more men, one of them the messenger Altharn had dispatched, arrived from the direction of the central keep. The one in the lead had to be Trisu, she thought. His stride was too imperious, his bearing too confident—indeed, arrogant—for him to be anyone else. He was fair-haired, gray-eyed, and darkly tanned. He was also very young, no more than twenty-four or twenty-five, she judged. And as seemed to be the case with every male Sothoii nobleman Kaeritha had so far met, he stood comfortably over six feet in height. That would have been more than enough to make him impressive, but if his height was typical of the Sothoii, his breadth was not. Most of them tended—like Sir Altharn or Baron Tellian—towards a lean and rangy look, but Trisu Pickaxe’s shoulders were almost as broad in proportion to his height as Brandark’s. He must, she reflected, have weighed close to three hundred pounds, none of it fat, and she felt a twinge of sympathy for any warhorse which found itself under him.
He was unarmored, but he’d taken time to belt on a jewel-hilted saber in a gold-chased black scabbard, and two of the men behind him—obviously armsmen—wore the standard steel breastplates and leather armor of Sothoii horse archers.
“So!” Trisu rocked to a halt and tucked his hands inside his sword belt as he glowered up at Kaeritha. She looked back down at him calmly from Cloudy’s saddle, her very silence an unspoken rebuke of his brusqueness. He seemed remarkably impervious to it, however, for his only response was to bare his teeth in a tight, humorless smile.
“So you claim to be a champion of Tomanak, do you?” he continued before the silence could stretch out too far.
“I do not ’claim’ anything, Milord,” Kaeritha returned in a deliberately courteous but pointed tone. She smiled thinly. “It would take a braver woman than me to attempt to pass herself off falsely as one of His champions. Somehow, I don’t think He’d like that very much, do you?”
Something flashed in Trisu’s gray eyes—a sparkle of anger, perhaps, although she supposed it was remotely possible it might have been humor. But whatever it had been, it went almost as fast as it had come, and he snorted.
“Bravery might be one word for it,” he said. “Foolishness—or perhaps even stupidity—might be others, though, don’t you think?”
“They might,” she acknowledged. “In the meantime, however, Milord, I have to wonder if keeping a traveler standing in the courtyard is the usual courtesy of Lorham.”
“Under normal circumstances, no,” he said coolly. “On the other hand, I trust you will concede that women claiming to be knights and champions of the gods aren’t exactly normal travelers.”
“On the Wind Plain, perhaps,” Kaeritha replied with matching coolness, and, for the first time, he flushed. But he wasn’t prepared to surrender the point quite yet.
“That’s as may be, Milady,” he told her, “but at the moment, you’re on the Wind Plain, and here what you claim to be is not simply unusual, but unheard of. Under the circumstances, I hope you’ll not find me unduly discourteous if I request some proof that you are indeed who and what you say you are.” He smiled again. “Surely, the Order of Tomanak would prefer that people be cautious about accepting anyone’s unsubstantiated claim to be one of His champions.”
“I see.” Kaeritha regarded him thoughtfully for a long moment. It would have been handy, she reflected, if Tomanak had seen fit to give to gift her with a sword like Bahzell’s, which came when he called it. It was certainly an impressive way to demonstrate his champion’s credentials when necessary. Unfortunately, her own blades, while possessed of certain unusual attributes of their own, stayed obstinately in their sheaths unless she drew them herself, no matter how much she might whistle or snap her fingers for them.
“I’ve come from Balthar,” she said, after a moment, “where Baron Tellian was kind enough to offer me hospitality and to gift me with this lovely lady.” She leaned forward to stroke Cloudy’s neck, and smiled behind her expressionless face as the first, faint uncertainty flickered in those gray eyes. “He also,” she continued blandly, “sent with me written letters of introduction and, I believe, instructions to cooperate with me in my mission.” Those eyes were definitely less cheerful than they had been, she noted with satisfaction. “And if you should happen to have anyone here in the Keep who is injured or ill, I suppose I could demonstrate my ability to heal them. Or —” she looked straight into Trisu’s eyes “— if you insist, I suppose I might simply settle for demonstrating my skill at arms upon your chosen champion, instead. In that case, however, I hope you won’t be requiring his services anytime soon.”
Trisu’s face tightened, its lines momentarily harder and bleaker than its owner’s years. The people wh’d described him as “conservative” had been guilty of considerable understatement, Kaeritha thought. But there appeared to be a brain behind that hard face. However angry he might be, his was not an unthinking reactionism, and he made his expression relax.
“If you bear the letters you’ve described,” he said after a moment, with what Kaeritha had to concede was commendable dignity under the circumstances, “that will be more than sufficient proof for me, Milady.”
“I thank you for your courtesy, Milord,” she said, bending her head in a slight bow. “At the same time—and I fear I owe you an apology, because I did make the offer at least partly out of pique—if there are any sick or injured, it would be my pleasure as well as my duty to offer them healing.”