“I’M SAFER AT YOUR SIDE?” Sasha whispered incredulously, as she walked with Kessligh out through the inn's rear exit, and into the paved courtyard at the back. “What am I, some Baen-Tar noble wench to be protected at every turn?”
The night chill was sharp, breath frosting before her lips as she spoke. The remains of a declining fire burned within the courtyard, surrounded by a great many men, with a cup in hand, or placed somewhere nearby. Kessligh walked so as to keep well clear of the fire's light, and together they passed unnoticed in the dark.
“Damon's not here for me, Sasha,” Kessligh said grimly, hands in the pockets of his jacket as he strode. “He's here for you.”
“For me? He doesn't even want me along…”
“Damn it, pay attention,” Kessligh rebuked her, with more than a trace of irritation. “Haven't you grasped it yet? Despite everything I've been telling you, with your friends and drinking sessions, and that new growth sprouting from the side of your head? Krayliss is making his move, Sasha. It's a desperate, stupid, foolish move, but no more so than one might have expected from Krayliss. He threatens martyrdom. If we're all not extremely careful, he might just get it.”
Sasha frowned. She didn't like it when Kessligh got like this. He made everything seem so complicated. Why couldn't he just accept what she was, and how she felt? Why couldn't everyone? “Krayliss…” and she shook her head, trying to clear her mind. “Krayliss can't use me as a figurehead.” Trying to be rational. “I'm a woman, he'd never accept a woman as his symbol of Goeren-yai revival…”
“You're worse than a woman,” Kessligh cut in, “you're Nasi-Keth. Krayliss hates all foreigners, Sasha—that means me, the lowlanders and the serrin equally, he makes no distinction. But you're the closest thing to a genuine Goeren-yai within the royal line that he's got, and he might just be desperate enough. Have you seen the condition of the Falcon Guard's horses? Damon made the ride from Baen-Tar fast. He came to secure you, to make sure Krayliss couldn't reach you first. That's the doing of your father's advisors. Your father has little enough fear of you. They have plenty.”
“My father's advisors now include Wyna Telgar,” Sasha muttered. “To hear Sofy tell of it, anyhow. I'm sure my eldest brother's wife would not have been pleased to hear that her father is dead. I wonder why Koenyg did not come himself, with that dragon breathing fire down his neck.”
“Prince Koenyg is a stickler for the rules,” Kessligh said grimly. “Rathynal approaches and the heir should not go gallivanting off to the provinces to bash some lordly heads together. That's what junior princes are for.”
Lamps lit the stables ahead where several guardsmen were talking with local Baerlyn men, some of them regular stablehands. Several lads carried heavy blankets, or lugged saddlebags, or shifted loads of hay. The air smelled of hay, manure and horses—to Sasha's nose, a most familiar and agreeable odour, tinged with the sweetness of burning lamp oil.
“It's the Rathynal, isn't it?” Sasha said, arms wrapped about herself, only partly to repress the shivers brought on by the cold air. “That's why everyone's so jumpy.”
“There's a lot to be jumpy about,” said Kessligh, raising a hand in answer to the horsemen's respectful hails. “Such a large meeting can only reopen old wounds. Especially with foreign lowlanders invited. There's war in the offing, Sasha. Us old warhorses can smell it in the air. Damn right we're jumpy. You should be too.”
“There won't be a war,” Sasha said, with forced certainty as they walked down the long line of stables. “I just can't imagine we'll get involved in some stupid war in the Bacosh. It's all too far away.”
“It's nearer than Saalshen,” Kessligh said grimly. “And serrin come here all the time. Be careful of Master Jaryd—I know you derive great joy from boxing the ears of stuck-up young idiots like him, and I sympathise. But Rathynal is a time for all the great lords to make great decisions, and this Rathynal shall be greater than most. Lord Krayliss is a huge obstacle in such meetings—so long as he continues to sow division, Lenayin shall be forever divided, and the Verenthane nobility will never have its way on any great issue. Lord Krayliss delights in twisting the knife and ruining their grand plans at the most inopportune moments.
“Whether you like it or not, Verenthane nobility hear the rumours connecting you to the Goeren-yai, and to Krayliss, and they worry. In Lord Aystin's eyes, there may not be very much difference between you and Krayliss at all, and so I'd be surprised if his heir Jaryd feels differently. You can be certain Lord Rashyd and the northerners are not the only Lenay lords who would love to see Krayliss deposed and the entire ruling line of Taneryn replaced with a good Verenthane family. It would not surprise me to find that whatever incident has occurred, it was cooked up by Lord Rashyd with support from other Lenay lords, possibly including Great Lord Aystin Nyvar of Tyree himself.”
“You're telling me that the gallant and dashing Master Jaryd Nyvar may wish to plant a knife in my back?” Sasha suggested with some incredulity.
“I'm telling you to be careful. Verenthanes frequently claim that all the old blood feuds and bickering disappeared with the Liberation and the coming of Verenthaneism—don't believe it. It's still there, just hiding. It's sneaking self-interest disguised beneath a cloak of smiling Verenthane brotherhood, and that makes it even more dangerous than when it was out in the open, as in older times…or more dangerous, at least, if you are its target. Trust me—I was born in Petrodor, and I've seen it. In such disputes of power, it's always the knife you can't see that kills you.”
“I'd prefer the old days,” Sasha snorted. “At least then rival chieftains killed their opponents face to face.”
“Don't be stupid,” Kessligh said shortly. “A thousand corpses honourably killed is no improvement on a handful of victims strangled in the night.”
Terjellyn hung his head over the stable door, having heard them coming. Kessligh gave him an affectionate rub as a stable boy hovered, awaiting anything Baerlyn's two most famous residents might require.
“You'll be with Jaegar all night?” Sasha asked. The unhappiness must have shown in her voice, for Kessligh gave her a sardonic look.
“I think you can handle your brother for one night,” he remarked. “It would be nice if I could discuss Baerlyn's affairs with Jaegar before we ride. We might be gone several weeks.” Terjellyn nudged at his shoulder. The big chestnut stallion was a direct descendant of Tamaryn, Kessligh's mount during the great Cherrovan War thirty years gone. He'd ridden Tamaryn all the way from Petrodor, a mere sergeant among the Torovan volunteer brigades that had flooded into Lenayin following the invasion of the Cherrovan warlord Markield. The Liberation seventy years gone, the Archbishop of Torovan had not wished to see the thriving “Verenthane Kingdom” of Lenayin lost to a raging barbarian mob and had commanded Torovan believers to ride west on a holy war. Kessligh, however, had not ridden for faith.
Tamaryn had then borne him through the better part of an entire year's fighting, in the wooded valleys and mountains of Lenayin, during which Kessligh had risen to lieutenant, then captain, and then Commander of Armies for all Lenayin, and inflicted a thrashing upon the Cherrovan from which they had not recovered to this very day. Ever since, Kessligh had never had a primary ride that was not a descendant of Tamaryn—Terjellyn's great-grandfather. It was the only superstition Sasha had ever known him to concede.
“Be nice to Damon. Try not to provoke him too much.”
Sasha stared elsewhere as Kessligh opened the stable door, and gave Terjellyn a once-over before mounting bareback. The big stallion, a more mature and refined gentleman than her Peg, walked calmly into the courtyard.
“We'll be off before dawn,” Kessligh told her from the height of his mount. “We'll go home first, get the gear, then rejoin the column on the way to Taneryn.” Sasha nodded, arms folded against the cold. “What's your problem?”
“What'll happen to Krayliss?” she asked.
“You care that much?”
“About the fate of the Goeren-yai?” Sasha shot back. “How could I not?”
Kessligh exhaled hard, glancing elsewhere with a frown.
“I don't know what to tell you,” he said finally. “You chose this path for yourself…”
“I did not,” Sasha retorted, sullenly. “It chose me.”
“You are still your father's daughter, Sasha. Whatever new role and title you bear now.” His eyes refixed upon her with narrowed intent. “None of us can escape the accidents of our birth so easily.”
“That's not what you told Damon back there. What was all that about me being your uma, and nothing more should matter?”
“One side of an argument,” Kessligh said calmly. “I'm sure Damon can provide the other side himself.”
“You should have chosen another uma. One without the family baggage.”
Kessligh's lean, wry features thinned with a faint smile. “I don't recall that I did choose you. In that, you chose me.”
Sasha gazed up at him. Kessligh's expression, alive with the dancing shadows of lamplight, was almost affectionate.
“Don't sleep in,” he warned her. “And for the gods’ own sakes, stay away from that rye beer. It's murder.” And he nudged Terjellyn with his heels, clattering off up the dark, cobbled path to the courtyard, and the laughing merriment of men.