Damon strode angrily along the upper corridor, the Star's old floorboards creaking underfoot, as the sounds of merriment continued from below. Sasha followed, conscious that her own footsteps made far less noise than her brother's, and that their respective weights were only half the reason why. When they reached his room, Damon ushered Sasha inside, closed the door and threw on the latch.
It was a good room, as Lenay accommodation went. Four times larger than most of the Star's rooms, its floorboards covered with a deer hide rug, and small windows inlaid across the stone walls. Against the inner wall, two large beds, with tall posts and soft mattresses beneath piles of furs and fine, lowlands linen. Between the two beds, a fireplace, crackling merrily, and a small pile of firewood in the wicker basket alongside.
“Why do you have to go and do that?” Damon demanded at her back. Sasha walked to the space between the two beds, where heat from the fire provided some comfort.
“Go and do what?” she retorted.
“And this!” Damon exclaimed, striding over, reaching with one hand toward the tri-braid upon the side of her head…Sasha ducked away, scowling at him. “What in the nine hells is that?”
“It's a tri-braid, Damon. One braid for each of the three spirit levels. Don't they even teach basic Goeren-yai lore in Baen-Tar any more?”
“Why, Sasha?” Damon demanded, angrily. “Why wear it?”
“Because I'm Lenay!” Sasha shot back. “What are you?”
“Cut it off. Right now.”
Sasha folded her arms in disbelief. “Make me!” she exclaimed. Arisen from the dinner table, there was a sword at her back now, and more weapons besides. Damon, unlike Master Jaryd, knew better.
“Good gods, Sasha,” he exclaimed, with a sharp inhaling of breath. He put both hands to his head, fingers laced within his thick dark hair, looking as he would never wittingly appear before his men—utterly at a loss. “A year since I've seen you. A full year. I was almost looking forward to seeing you again…almost! Can you believe that? And this is the welcome I get!”
Sasha just stared at him, sullenly. Her temper slowly cooling as she gazed up at her brother. Not all the Lenayin line were blessed with height—she was proof enough of that. But Damon was. A moderately tall young man, with a build that spoke more of speed and balance than brute strength. He would be very handsome indeed, she thought, if not for the occasionally petulant curl of his lip and the faintly childish whine in his tone whenever he felt events going against him.
He was the middle child of ten royal siblings, of whom nine now survived. With Krystoff dead, Koenyg was heir. Wylfred would be next, had he not found religion and committed to the Verenthane order instead, with their father's blessing. Then came Damon. Second-in-line now and struggling so very hard beneath the burden of expectation that came of one martyred brother who was already legend, and an overbearing stone-head of a surviving elder brother.
“I'm not a Verenthane, Damon,” Sasha told him, firmly. “I'll never be a Verenthane. You could cut my braid, stick me in a dress and feed me holy fables until my mind dissolves from the sheer boredom, and I'll still not be a Verenthane.”
“Well that's all fine, Sasha,” Damon said, exasperated. “You're not a Verenthane. Good for you. But you have a commitment to our father, and that commitment includes not making overt statements of loyalty toward the Goeren-yai.”
“Why the hells not?” Sasha fumed. “Goeren-yai are more than half of Lenayin last I looked! It's only you lordly types that converted, and the cities and bigger towns…most of Lenayin is just like this, Damon! Small villages and towns filled with decent, hard-working folk who ask nothing more than good rulers and the right to continue being who they are without some shaven-headed, black-robed idiot strolling into their lives and demanding their fealty.”
“Sasha, your last name is Lenayin!” Damon paused, to let the impact of that sink in. Wiser than to rise to her provocations. That was new. “The family of Lenayin is Verenthane! It has been for a century, since the Liberation! Now, whether your arrangement with Kessligh means that your title is officially ‘Princess’ or not, your family name remains Lenayin! And while that continues to be so, you shall not, under any circumstances, break with the continuity of the line of Lenayin!”
Sasha waved both hands in disgust and strode across the floor to lean against a window rim. Looking northeast up the valley, small lights burned from the windows of the houses that lined the road, then the dark, ragged edge of the upper treeline, separating the land from the vast expanse of stars. Hyathon the Warrior sat low on the horizon, and Sasha's eye traced the bright stars of shoulder, elbow and sword pommel raised in mid-stroke.
“Sasha.” Damon strolled to her previous spot, blocking the fire's warmth. “Master Jaryd speaks the truth. There have been rumours, since the call to Rathynal, of Krayliss courting your approval…”
“The nobility talks, Damon,” Sasha retorted, breath frosting upon the cold, dark glass. “Rumour is the obsession of the ruling class, everyone always talks of this or that development, who is in favour with whom, and never a care for the concerns of the people. That's all it is—talk.”
“Just who do you think you are, Sasha?” Damon said in exasperation. “A champion of the common people? Because I will tell you this, little sister—it's precisely that kind of talk that breeds rumours. Krayliss and his kind cannot be dismissed so easily, they do have a strong following amongst some of the people…”
“Vastly overstated,” Sasha countered, rounding on him. She folded her arms and leaned her backside against the stone windowsill. “The ruling Verenthanes simply don't understand their own people, Damon. And do you know why that is? It's because there are so few Goeren-yai among the ruling classes. Krayliss is the only provincial lord, and he's a maniac!”
“A maniac who claims ancestry with the line of Udalyn,” Damon said sharply. “You of all people should know what the Udalyn mean to Goeren-yai all across Lenayin. Such appeals cannot be taken lightly.”
“I of all people do know,” Sasha said darkly. “You're only quoting what Koenyg told you. And he knows nothing.”
Damon broke off his reply as the door rattled, held fast against the latch. Then an impatient hammering. Damon looked at first indignant, wondering who would dare such impetuosity against Lenay royalty. Then realisation, and he strode rapidly to the door, flung off the latch and stepped back for it to open. Kessligh entered, holding a wicker cage occupied by three flapping, clucking chickens.
“Ah good,” said the greatest swordsman in Lenayin, noticing the fire. He carried the cage across the creaking floor with barely a glance to Damon or Sasha, and placed the cage between the two beds. The chickens flapped, then settled. “These lowland reds don't like the cold so much. Makes for bad eggs.”
And he appeared to notice Damon for the first time, as the young prince relatched the door and came across with an extended hand. Kessligh shook it, forearm to forearm in the Lenay fashion. Damon had half a head on Kessligh and nearly thirty years of youth. Yet somehow, in Kessligh's presence, he seemed to shrink in stature.
“Yuan Kessligh,” Damon said, with great deference. “Yuan,” Sasha reflected, watching them from her windowsill. The only formal title Kessligh still retained, and that merely denoting a great warrior. An old Lenay tradition it was, now reserved for those distinguished by long service in battle, be they Verenthane or Goeren-yai. It remained one of those traditions that bound the dual faiths of Lenayin together, rather than pulled them a part. But Kessligh, of course, was neither Goeren-yai nor Verenthane. “An honour to see you once more.”
“Likewise, young Damon,” Kessligh replied, his tone strong with that familiar Kessligh-edge. Sharp and cutting, in a way that long years in the service of refined Lenay lords had never entirely dulled. Hard brown eyes bore into Damon's own, beneath a fringe of untidy, greying hair. “And are you the hunter, this time? Or merely the shepherd, tending to errant sheep?” With a cryptic glance across at Sasha.
Sasha made a face, far less impressed by the gravitas of the former Lenay Commander of Armies than most.
“Oh, well…” Damon cleared his throat. “You have heard, then? About Lord Rashyd?”
“I was just talking downstairs,” Kessligh said calmly. “Catching up with old friends, learning the news, such as it is. So Master Jaryd will live to see past dawn, I take it?”
Damon blinked, looking most uncertain. Which was often the way, for those confronted with Kessligh's sharp irreverence on matters that most considered important.
“It appears that way,” Damon said, with a further uncertain glance at Sasha. Sasha watched, mercilessly curious. “Please, won't you sit? I'll have someone bring up some tea.”
“Already done,” said Kessligh, “but thank you.” And he sat, with no further ado, cross-legged on the further bed, with the chickens murmuring and clucking to themselves on the floor below.
Sasha considered the study in profiles as Damon undid his swordbelt and made to sit on the bed opposite. Damon's face, evidently anxious, his features soft and not entirely pronounced. And Kessligh's, rugged and lined with years, with a beakish nose, a sharp chin and hard, searching eyes. Like a work of carving, expertly done yet never entirely completed. He sat straight-backed on the bed, legs tucked tightly beneath, with the poise of a man half his years. It was a posture that wasted not a muscle or sinew, an efficiency born of lifelong discipline and devotion to detail. And his sword was worn not at the hip, as with most fighting men of Lenayin, but clipped to the bandolier on his back, as with all fighters of the svaalverd style.
Damon sat with less poise than Sasha's teacher—or uman, in the Saalsi tongue of the serrin—placing a foot on the bedframe and pulling up one knee. At his feet, the chickens clucked and fluttered at the further disturbance. Damon looked at the chickens. And at Kessligh. Struggling to think of something to say. Sasha tried to keep an uncharitable smile in check.
“These are good chickens?” he managed finally. Sasha coughed, a barely restrained splutter. Damon shot her a dark look.
“Well I'm trying to broaden the breeding range,” Kessligh replied serenely. “These are kersan ross, from the lowlands. The eggs have an interesting flavour, much better for making light pastries.”
“You traded for these?” Damon asked, attempting interest, to his credit. It was Lenay custom that no serious talk could begin before the tea arrived. Poor Damon was horrible at small talk.
“A local farmer placed an order through his connections,” Kessligh replied. “A wonderful trading system we now have with the Torovans. Place an order with the right people and a Torovan convoy will deliver in two or three months. They're becoming quite popular.”
“As with all things Torovan,” Sasha remarked. Damon frowned at her. Kessligh simply smiled.
“Ah,” he said. “Thus speaks she of the Nasi-Keth. She who fights with Saalshen style, loves Vonnersen spices in all her foods, washes regularly with the imported oils of coastal Maras, lives off the wealth from the Torovan love of Lenay-bred horses, speaks two foreign tongues, and has been known to down entire tankards of ale with visiting serrin travellers while playing Ameryn games of chance. But no lover of foreigners she.”
Kessligh's sharp eyes fixed upon her, sardonically. Sasha held her tongue, eyebrows raised in a manner that invited praise for doing so. There had been times in the past when she had not been so disciplined. He grunted, in mild amusement. Then came a knocking on the door, which Sasha answered and found the tea delivered on a tray.
She set the tray on a footstool for Kessligh to prepare, then settled into a reclining chair with a sigh of aching muscles.
Damon accepted his tea with evident discomfort. Prince or not, few Lenays felt comfortable having Kessligh serve them tea. But that had not stopped Kessligh from cooking for entire tables of Baerlyn folk when suitable occasions arose. Sasha had always found it curious, this yawning gulf between the popular Lenay notion of Kessligh the vanquishing war hero, and her familiar, homespun reality. Kessligh the son of poor dock workers in lowlands Petrodor, trading capital of Torovan, for whom Lenay was a second (or third) language, still spoken with a tinge of broad, lowlander vowels that others remarked upon, but Sasha had long since ceased to notice. Kessligh the Nasi-Keth—a serrin cult (or movement, Kessligh insisted) whose presence had long been prominent amongst the impoverished peoples of Petrodor. Kessligh, serrin-friend, with old ties and allegiances that even three decades of life and fame in Lenayin had not managed to erase.
Kessligh considered Sasha's evident weariness with amusement, sipping at his tea. “Did Teriyan wear you out?” he asked.
“More demonstrations,” Sasha replied wryly, stretching out legs and a free arm, arching her back like a cat. Her left shoulder ached from a recent strain. It seemed to have altered the balance of her grip, for the tendon of her left thumb now throbbed in sympathy where her grip upon the stanch had somehow tightened, unconsciously. The knuckles on her right hand were bruised where a stanch had caught her, and several more impacts ached about her ribs, causing a wince if one were pressed unexpectedly. The front of her right ankle remained tender from where she'd turned it several days ago, during one of Kessligh's footwork exercises. And those were just the pains she was most aware of. All in all, just another day for the uma of Kessligh Cronenverdt. “They all want to see svaalverd, so I show them svaalverd. And rather than learning, they then spend the whole time complaining that it's impossible.”
Kessligh shook his head. “Svaalverd is taught from the cradle or not at all,” he said. “Best they learn little. It makes an ill fit with traditional Lenay techniques. Men who try both get their footing confused and trip themselves up.”
“We could try teaching the kids,” said Sasha, sipping her own tea. “Before Jaegar and others get their hooks into them.”
“The culture here is set,” Kessligh replied. “I'm loath to tamper with it. Tradition has its own strength, and its own life. And I fear I've caused enough damage to Lenay custom already.” Meaningfully.
Sasha snorted. “Well I would be a good little farm wench, but it's difficult to fight in dresses, and impossible to ride…”
“You could have kept your hair long,” Kessligh suggested.
“And worn a man's braid?” With a glance at Damon, who listened and watched with great intrigue. The former Lenay Princess and the former Lenay Commander of Armies. To many in Lenayin, it still seemed an outrageously unlikely pairing. Many rumoured as to its true nature. “I couldn't wear it loose like the women because then it would get in the way, but I can't wear a braid like a man because then I'm not allowed to be a woman at all. The only option left was to cut it short as some of the serrin girls wear it. I don't do everything just to be difficult, you know, I did actually put some thought into it.”
“The evidence of that doesn't equal your conclusion,” Kessligh remarked with amusement.
Sasha gave Damon an exasperated look. “This is what passes for entertainment in the great mind of Kessligh Cronenverdt,” she told him. “Belittling me in front of others.”
“What's not entertaining about it?” Damon said warily. Sasha made a face at him.
“I assume you've made comment on Sasha's new appendage?” Kessligh continued wryly, with a nod at her tri-braid. “She insists it's all the fashion. Myself, I wonder why she can't hold to Torovan jewellery and knee-high boots like good, proper Lenay children.”
Sasha grinned. Damon blinked, and sipped his tea to cover the silence as he tried to figure out what to say. “You approve?” he said finally.
Kessligh made an expansive shrug. “Approve, disapprove…” He held a hand in Sasha's direction. “Behold, young Damon, a twenty-year-old female. In the face of such as this, of what consequence is it for me to approve or disapprove?”
Damon shrugged, faintly. “Most Lenay families are less accommodating. Tradition, as you say.” Sasha raised an eyebrow. It was more confrontational than she'd expected from Damon.
“This is my uma,” Kessligh replied calmly. “I am her uman. In the ways of the serrin, and thus the ways of the Nasi-Keth, it is not for uman to dictate paths to their uma. She will go her own way, and find her own path. Should she have chosen study and herbal lore instead of swordwork and soldiery, that would also have been her choice…although a somewhat poorer teacher I would have made, no doubt.
“So she feels a common cause with the Goeren-yai of Lenayin.” He shrugged. “Hardly surprising, having lived amongst them for twelve of her twenty years. The mistake you all make, be you Verenthanes or romantics like Krayliss, is to think of her as anything other than my uma. What she does, and what she chooses to wear in her hair, she does as uma to me. This is a separate thing from politics. Quite frankly, it does not concern you. Nor should it concern our king.”
“Our king concerns himself with many things,” Damon said mildly.
“Not this,” said Kessligh. “He owes me too much. And King Torvaal always repays his debts.” Damon gazed down at his tea cup. “Baerlyn is not the most direct line from Baen-Tar to Taneryn. What purpose does this detour serve?”
Damon glanced up. “Your assistance,” he said plainly. “You are as greatly respected in Taneryn as here. My father feels, and I agree, that your presence in Taneryn would calm the mood of the people.”
“The king's justice must be the king's,” Kessligh replied, a hard stare unfixing upon the young prince's face. “I cannot take his place. Such a role is more yours than mine.”
“We have concern about the people of Hadryn taking matters into their own hands,” said Damon. “Lenayin has been mercifully free of civil strife over the last century. The king would not see such old history repeated. Your presence would be valued.”
“I claim no special powers over the hard men of Hadryn,” said Kessligh, with a shake of his head. “The north has never loved me. During the Great War, my successes stole much thunder from the northern lords, and now Lenay history records that forces under my command saved them from certain defeat. That could have been acceptable, were I Verenthane, or a northerner. But I'm afraid the north views Goeren-yai and Nasi-Keth as cut from the same cloth—irredeemably pagan and godless. I do not see what comfort my presence there could bring.”
“But you will come?” Damon persisted.
Kessligh sipped his tea, his eyes not leaving Damon's. “Should my Lord King command it,” he said, in measured tones. “Of course, you understand that Sasha must therefore accompany me?”
Damon blinked at him. And glanced across at Sasha. “These events make for great uncertainty. I had thought for her to remain in Baerlyn, with a complement of Falcon Guard for protection.”
“You'd what?” Sasha asked, with no diplomacy at all.
Kessligh held up a hand, and she held her tongue, fuming. He unfolded his legs, in one lithe move, and leaned forward to pour some more tea from the earthen-glaze teapot. “She's safer at my side,” he said. And gazed closely at Damon. “And her continued presence here, away from me, would only create an inviting target, wouldn't you say? In these uncertain times, it's best to be sure.”