"Hello, Leeana," the knight replied. "You're looking good."
"Different, you mean," Leeana corrected with a smile, almost as if she'd read Kaeritha's mind.
"Well, yes. But in your case, I think, 'different' and 'good' may mean the same thing. And, no, I'm not talking just about outward appearances, young lady. The last time I saw you, you weren't exactly the happiest young woman I'd ever seen."
"Oh." Leeana looked down at her bare toes and actually wiggled them. "I guess maybe you have a point," she admitted after a moment.
The two of them stood on one of the training salle's covered porches. The porch's plank flooring was rough and unfinished under Kaeritha's boots, and must have felt even more so to Leeana's bare feet. But the girl didn't seem to notice that. Nor did she appear aware of how the fine garments, rich embroidery, and semiprecious stones of a great baron's daughter had vanished forever.
Kaeritha was. She hadn't actually seen Leeana in over two weeks, not since she'd carried Tellian's reply to his daughter's message to her the afternoon she and Kaeritha had arrived in Kalatha.
The knight had anticipated changes after that long a period, and she hadn't expected to find Leeana lounging about in the sorts of gowns her mother would have approved. But the leather breeches and smocks Leeana had favored as casual, get-your-hands-dirty clothing back home at Hill Guard Castle when her mother wasn't looking had also disappeared, and Kaeritha wondered what Leeana's parents would have had to say if they'd seen her at the moment.
"There do seem to have been some changes in your appearance, though," she acknowledged with a smile. She cocked her head. "Are you comfortable with them?"
" 'Comfortable' is such a . . . flexible word," Leeana said with a grimace. She reached up and slid an index finger under the shoulder strap of her snugly laced yathu. "I've seen heavy draft harnesses that were probably more 'comfortable' for the horses wearing them! Besides," she grimaced again and withdrew her finger to indicate her bosom with a wave of her hand, "it's not as if I really need it."
"Ha! You may think that now, girl, but I think your opinion will change in a year or two." She eyed the young woman consideringly for a moment, then chuckled. "As a matter of fact, and bearing your height in mind, I expect you'll end up appreciating it even more than I would. And it probably won't take any 'year or two,' either, now that I think about it!"
"Really?" Leeana looked at her quickly, then blushed and looked back down at her toes. But she also grinned, and Kaeritha shook her head.
"I'd say the odds are in favor of it," she said judiciously. "You're already taller than I am, and you're not done growing. I'd say you've still got a bit of filling out to do, and it looks to me like you're probably going to be built a lot like your mother. So wait a few years before you start complaining."
"If you say so, Dame Kaeritha," Leeana murmured obediently, and Kaeritha suppressed another chuckle. She rather suspected that the war maids had designed their traditional garments at least partly for their shock effect. And whether the war maids' intentions had been solely to provide proper support or to combine that with a poke in respectable Sothōii society's eye or not, she felt certain that neither Baron Tellian nor Baroness Hanatha would have approved of the yathu's undeniable brevity and snug fit . . . or of the way that their daughter's shapely form (and navel) were exposed for all the world to see.
"Don't go fishing for compliments, young lady," she said now, her tone severe, and Leeana produced a sound suspiciously like a giggle.
That giggle, and the girl's entire body language, did a great deal to reassure Kaeritha. Leeana had been called away from self-defense training to speak with Kaeritha, and the war maids' physical training regimen was as demanding as any Kaeritha herself had ever experienced. It was certainly more rigorous than anything Leeana had ever experienced before leaving Balthar. Not that the girl had ever been indolent or lazy. But the war maids believed in pushing their new recruits—especially the probationary ones—hard. Not just to make the difference between their old lives and their new ones clear on an emotional as well as an intellectual level, but also as a testing process designed to identify the young women with the potential and mindset to become war maids.
The great majority of those who went on to become the war maid community's warriors would serve as the light infantry, scouts, and guerrillas most Sothōii thought of whenever they thought about war maids at all. That combat style required speed and stamina more than sheer size or brute strength, and the physical training required to provide those qualities was demanding and unremitting. It had been Kaeritha's observation that most people—including most men, she thought sardonically—didn't much care to invest the focus and sweat required to maintain that high pitch of physical conditioning.
From what she could see so far, it looked as if Leeana was actually enjoying it.
"Are you happy, Leeana?" she asked quietly after a moment, and Leeana looked up quickly. Her smile disappeared, but she met Kaeritha's eyes steadily.
"I don't know," she said frankly. "I've cried myself to sleep a night or two, if that's what you're asking." Her shoulders moved in what could have been called a shrug if it had been a little stronger. "I can't say I didn't expect that, though. And it's not because life here in Kalatha is so hard. I'm running my backside off and working an awful lot harder than I ever did before, and half the time I think I'm about to drop dead of exhaustion. But I don't really mind that, either, or the fact that I'm not a baron's daughter anymore." She shook her head. "I think the only thing that really hurts is that I'm not legally Father and Mother's daughter anymore. Does that make sense?"
"Oh, yes, girl," Kaeritha said softly, and Leeana drew a deep breath.
"But aside from missing Mother and Father—and being miserably homesick from time to time—I'm actually enjoying myself. So far, at least." Her smile returned. "Ravlahn—she's the Hundred in charge of physical training—has been running me hard ever since I got here. Sometimes I just want to stop running long enough to drop dead from exhaustion, but I'm learning things about myself that I never knew before. Now if only her demands on my time could excuse me from more 'traditional' classes."
"Traditional classes?" Kaeritha repeated.
"Oh, yes." Leeana's smile turned into a wry grin. "I have to admit that I'd hoped running away to the war maids would at least rescue me from the clutches of my tutors. Unfortunately, it turns out that the war maids require all of their members to be literate, and they ' strongly encourage' us to continue with additional education." She snorted. "Except, in my case, they've dragooned me as one of the tutors, instead!"
"I see," Kaeritha said, hiding a smile of her own as she recalled the team of strong horses it had required to drag her into a classroom when she'd been Leeana's age.
"What matters most, though," Leeana continued quietly, "is that by coming here I've done the most important thing. Father's enemies can't use me against him anymore, and I have the chance to be something besides an obedient little mare dropping colts for some fine stallion who completely controls my life."
"Then I'm glad you have the opportunity," Kaeritha said.
"So am I. Really." Leeana nodded firmly as if to emphasize the mere words.
"Good." Kaeritha rested one hand lightly on the girl's shoulder for a moment. "That was what I wanted to know before I leave for Quaysar."
"Quaysar? You're going to visit the Voice?"
Something about the way Leeana asked the question narrowed Kaeritha's eyes.
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
"No reason," Leeana said, just a bit too quickly. "It's just —" She broke off, hesitated, then shook her head. "It's just that I have this . . . uncomfortable feeling."
"About what?" Kaeritha was careful to keep any suggestiveness out of her own tone.
"About the Voice," Leeana said in a small voice, as if she were admitting to some heinous fault.
"What sort of feeling? For that matter, why do you have any 'feelings' about her at all? I didn't
think you'd even met her."
"I haven't met her," Leeana admitted. "I guess you could say that what I've got is a 'secondhand feeling.' But I've talked to some of the other war maids about her. A lot."
"You have?" Kaeritha's eyes narrowed. Her discussion with Yalith hadn't suggested that the Kalatha community was quite as heavily focused on the Voice as Leeana seemed to be implying.
"Yes," the girl said. "And to be honest, Dame Kaeritha, it's the way they've been talking to me about her that worries me most."
"Suppose you explain that," Kaeritha suggested. She stepped back and settled her posterior onto the porch's railing, leaning back against one of the upright roof supports and folding her arms across her chest. The morning sunlight was warm across her shoulders as she cocked her head.
"You know I'm the most 'nobly born' person in Kalatha," Leeana began after a moment, and Kaeritha raised one eyebrow. The girl saw it and grimaced. "That's not an 'oh-what-a-wonderful-person-I-am' comment, Dame Kaeritha. What I meant to say is that even though I was only Father's daughter, not his real heir, I've seen a lot more political backbiting and maneuvering than most of the people here have."
"All right," Kaeritha said slowly, nodding as Leeana paused. "I'll grant you that—on an aristocratic level, at least. Don't make the mistake of assuming that peasants can't be just as contentious. Or just as subtle about the way they go about biting each other's backs."
"I won't. Or, at least, I don't think I will," Leeana replied. "But the thing is, Dame Kaeritha, that the way people here are talking about the Voice strikes me as, well, peculiar."
"Why?"
"First," Leeana said very seriously, her expression intent, "there's exactly which of the war maids seem to be doing most of the talking. It isn't the older ones, or the ones in the most senior positions—not people like Mayor Yalith, or Administrator Dalthys, or Hundred Erlis, for example. And it isn't the very youngest ones, like Garlahna, except in a sort of echoing kind of way."
"What do you mean, 'echoing'?"
"It's almost like there's an organized pattern," Leeana said, obviously choosing her words with care. "I think that's what drew my attention to it in the first place, really. There've been enough whispering campaigns against Father over the years for me to be automatically suspicious when I seem to be seeing the same thing somewhere else."
"And you think that's what you're seeing here?"
"I think it may be," Leeana said, nodding slowly. "It took a while for my suspicions to kick in, and the thing that made me start wondering in the first place was that I seemed to be hearing exactly the same sorts of things, in almost exactly the same sorts of words, from half a dozen or more people."
Kaeritha's blue eyes narrowed even further.
"Would you care to tell me just which half-dozen people it was?" she asked.
"I'd rather not name any specific names" Leeana said uncomfortably. Kaeritha gazed at her coolly, and the younger woman looked away for a moment. It was interesting, Kaeritha thought. For all of her intelligence and insight, Leeana seemed to be afflicted with the eternal teenager's aversion for the role of informer.
"All right," the knight said after a moment. "I won't press you for names—not right now, at any rate. But you do understand, don't you, Leeana, that the time it may come when I'll have no choice but to?"
"Yes, Milady." Leeana nodded, although it was obvious she wasn't very happy about the thought.
"Good." Kaeritha nodded back, soberly, the gesture a promise that she wouldn't ask unless she felt she truly must. "In that case, go on with what you're saying. What made you notice these people in the first place?"
"The fact that what they were saying wasn't just a matter of people expressing the same general opinions, Dame Kaeritha. They were making the same arguments. And the way they were doing it—the way they were choosing their words, and who they were talking to—makes me think it's an organized effort, not something that's happening spontaneously."
It was an enormous loss to the Kingdom of the Sothōii in general that its invincible cultural bias against the possibility of female rulers had deprived the Barony of Balthar of Leeana Bowmaster as its liege lady, Kaeritha thought. She'd known from the outset that Leeana was keenly intelligent, but the brain behind those jade-green eyes was even better than she'd suspected. How many young women Leeana's age, the knight wondered, thrown into a world and facing a future so radically different from anything they had ever experienced before, would have had enough energy to spare to think analytically about what people around them were saying about anything, far less about someone as distant from her own immediate—and exhausting—experience as the Voice of Quaysar?
"Tell me more," she invited, still keeping her own voice as neutral as she could.
"The thing that struck me most about what the war maids talking about the Voice were saying," Leeana continued obediently, "was that they all agreed that the new Voice had changed the policies of the old Voice. Changed them for the better, in the opinion of whoever was doing the talking, that was. I know you never actually discussed with me what took you to Kalatha in the first place, Dame Kaeritha, but I knew the sort of research you'd asked Lord Brandark to do before you left. And—" she glanced away for a moment "— I heard Prince Bahzell and Father discussing it a little. So I know you're really concerned about the disputes between Lord Trisu and the war maids."
Kaeritha frowned, and Leeana shook her head quickly.
"I haven't discussed it with anyone here, Dame Kaeritha! I know you and Mayor Yalith talked about it—or talked about something, anyway—and if Tomanâk Himself sent you here, then it's not my place to be blabbering away about it. But that's part of why what I was hearing bothered me, I think, because the same people who were talking about how much they approved of the Voice were talking about Trisu. And what they were saying was that the new Voice, unlike the old Voice, understood that the war maids couldn't put up with the way lords like Trisu were trying to turn the clock back. She understood that it was time the war maids stood up to people like him. That when someone pushed the war maids, the war maids had to push back—hard. Maybe even harder than they'd been pushed in the first place, since they had so little ground they could afford to surrender.
"That was enough to get me started listening to the way they were saying things, not just what they were saying. And when I did, I realized they were suggesting, or even saying outright, in some cases, that it was the Voice, not Mayor Yalith or her Council, who'd really pulled Trisu up short."
"They may believe that," Kaeritha said, forbearing any attempt to pretend Leeana hadn't accurately deduced her purpose in traveling to Kalatha, "but I've spoken to both the Mayor and Lord Trisu. From the way both of them speak about the disputes—and about each other—the Voice has definitely played a secondary role, at most."
She watched the girl carefully. There were some thoughts—and suspicions—she wasn't prepared to share with anyone just yet. Besides, she was curious as to how closely this acute young woman's analysis would parallel her own.
"That's just it," Leeana said. "From what they were saying, the Voice didn't charge right in and begin speaking in Lillinara's voice or anything like that. Instead, they were saying—bragging, almost—that she was too subtle and wise to be that openly 'confrontational' herself. They said it was because she had to maintain the 'neutrality' of her office as Voice. But I've seen and heard about too many 'subtle and wise' noblemen who adopted the same sort of tactics. As far as I can tell, most of them were only avoiding open confrontations so they could hide in the shadows better when it came time to plant a dagger in someone else's back. Either that, or they were setting someone else up to do what they wanted done for them. Preferably someone gullible enough that they could convince him the idea had been his own in the first place."
"Are you suggesting that a Voice of Lillinara is doing that in this case?"
"I'm suggesting that it's possible," Leeana said, undeterred by the slight chill frosting Kaeritha'
s tone. "And that's not the only thing I think is possible. The way the war maids who seem to approve of the Voice are talking is also undercutting the authority of Mayor Yalith and the majority of the Town Council. Not directly, and not openly, maybe, but that's the effect it's having, and I don't think that's an accident. Every time they talk approvingly about how insightful the Voice is, and how clearly she sees what needs to be done, the implication is that without the Voice, Mayor Yalith and the Council wouldn't have seen how important it was to stand up to Trisu. Well, except for Councilor Saretha, maybe. But she and the Voice seem to agree about a lot of things, and the war maids who support one of them, tend to support the other, as well.
"The main thing that struck me, though, was that most of the war maids who most admire the Voice and Councilor Saretha are careful to emphasize that the Mayor and the rest of the Council are 'doing their best,' or 'well-intentioned, but mistaken.' Unlike the Voice, of course. I've seen that before, too. Not personally, but I did pay attention to my history lessons, Dame Kaeritha. I think this is an attempt to undermine the authority of the people who are supposed to be governing Kalatha. And I think the Voice is either actively involved in it herself, for some reason, or else that some third party is using her, as well."
"I see." Kaeritha contemplated Leeana for several more moments, then shrugged. "Is there anything else?" she asked.
"Well," Leeana said, and looked away again. She seemed uncomfortable for some reason, almost a bit flustered. "There's the fact that the ones I'm worried about seem to be actively recruiting from among the younger war maids. I think that's one reason I've heard so much about it in the relatively short time I've been here. The fact that I used to be Father's daughter—still am, really, until my probationary period is over—might make me more valuable in their eyes, and they might figure I'd be young and new enough to be easily impressed and convinced.
"And," she turned to look back at Kaeritha, "some of the other things they've been saying about the Voice make me . . . uncomfortable."