Mercedes Lackey - Kerowyn's Ride

“Come in.” She turned away from the window, searching his face, though she really didn’t know what she was looking for. “Are you—”

“I’m all right,” he said, walking toward her, slowly. As his face came into the light, she saw that he looked a great deal calmer. In fact, he looked as if he had come to terms with the news, and with his own feelings. “I really am. They told me that Faram wants me home.”

As he said that, his face changed, and there was hope and a bit of excitement beneath the mourning.

“That—I was kind of afraid Faram had forgotten me,” he said shyly. “It would be awfully easy to. And—and I thought, he’s had one brother turn on him, he might not trust me anymore either. I wouldn’t blame him, you know, and neither would anyone else. I’d be tempted, if I were in his place, and I knew he was safely tucked out of the way with two of my father’s old friends keeping an eye on him. I thought that might even be the reason Father sent me out here in the first place, to get me out of the way, with someone he trusted making sure I didn’t turn traitor on him. I thought maybe that was why he didn’t send for me when Thanel went off to Valdemar.”

Kero nodded, slowly. That was sound reasoning; in fact, in his place, she’d probably have suspected the same thing.

“But Faram wants me. More than that, he wants me to apprentice to the Lord Martial.” There was suppressed excitement in his voice, and a light in his eyes. “It’s just about everything I ever dreamed of, Kero—”

“And you deserve it,” she interrupted him, with as much emphasis as she could muster. “You’ve worked for it: you’ve earned it. Tarma herself would be the first to tell you that.”

“And now you can come with me,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “There’s nothing stopping me from having you with me. Faram studied under Tarma, he knows Kethry, we won’t even have to go through that nonsense of getting you ennobled so we can be married—”

Married ? “Whoa!” she said sharply. “Who said anything about getting married?”

That brought him to a sudden halt. His eyes widened in surprise at her vehemence. “I thought that was what you wanted!” he said, in innocent surprise. “I want you with me, Kero—there isn’t anyone else I’d rather be married to—”

“Do you want me enough to have me apprenticed alongside you?” she asked pointedly.

He stared at her in shock, as if he could not believe what she was saying. “You know that wouldn’t be possible!” he exclaimed. “You’re a girl! Women can’t do things like that!”

“I’m your equal in blade and on horseback,” she replied with rising heat. “I’m your better with a bow and with tactics. Why shouldn’t I work at your side?”

“Because you’re a girl !” he spluttered. “You can’t possibly—it just isn’t done —no one would permit it!”

“Well, what would I be able to do?” she asked. “Sit on the Council? Act as military advisor?”

“Of course not!” He was shocked—despite all their talking, all the things they had done together—by the very idea. Not so enlightened as we appeared to be, hmm ?

“Well, will I be able to keep in training?” She waited for him to answer, and didn’t much care for his long silence. “All right, what will I be able to do?”

“Ride some, and hunt—genteel hunting, with hawk and a light bow,” he said, obviously without thinking. “Nothing like the kind of hunting we have been doing here. No boar, no deer, good gods, that would send half the Court into apoplexy! You can’t offend them.”

“In other words, I wouldn’t be able to do a single damned thing that I’ve been trained and working at for the past three years,” she pointed out bitterly. “I can’t offend them—by ‘them’ I assume you mean the men—by competing with them. You want me to give up everything I’ve worked for all this time, and even my recreations.”

“You could advise me in private,” he said hastily. “I need that, Kero, just like I need you! And we could practice together.”

“In private, so no one would know your lady wife can beat the breeches off you two times out of three,” she said acidly, deliberately telling the truth in the most hurtful way possible.”

“Of course, in private!” he replied angrily. “You can’t do things like that where people can find out about them! After all, you won’t be a common mercenary! Do you think I want anyone to know—”

“That I’m your equal, and their superior. How good I am.” She stood up. “In short, you want a combination of toy soldier and expensive whore; your delicate lady in public and whatever else you want out of me in private, with no opinions or thoughts of my own—except in private. Thank you, no. I told you that night we first talked that I wasn’t prepared to sell anything other than my sword. That hasn’t changed, Daren. And it isn’t likely to.”

She rose to her feet and stalked toward the door, so angry that she no longer trusted her temper with him and only wanted to be away from him so she wouldn’t say or do anything worse than she already had. She grabbed her cloak as she passed the door, and he made no move to stop her.

She was walking so fast, and was so blind with suppressed fury, that she didn’t realize until she was down in the dimly lit stables and on her way out the tunnel to the rear entrance that she had also snatched up Need on her way out.

She paused. For one moment that startled and alarmed her. Was the sword controlling her—had she so lost her temper that she’d lost her protections against its meddling? Then common sense reasserted itself. Just good reactions, she decided. Finally I’ve gotten to the point where, when I head out of my room, I snag a weapon without thinking about it. She flung the cloak over her shoulders, fastened the clasp at her throat, and belted the sword beneath it. Doesn’t it just figure, she thought angrily, as she strode out into the chill late-afternoon sunlight, that when I finally get to the point that I’m reacting like a professional fighter, Daren pulls this on me? Offering me anything I want—as long as I don’t do anything that embarrasses him. Like act like a human being capable of thinking for herself.

Another thought occurred to her, as she pictured the kind of pampered pet Daren seemed to want her to become. Dierna would have given her soul for an opportunity like this....

Suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks, just outside the hidden entrance to the stables, the wind molding her cloak tight to her body. So what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I want this easy life on a platter ?

She shivered, and pulled the cloak closer about her as another whip of breeze nipped at her. Why am I going out to fight for a living? Why do I want to? What kind of fool am I, anyway ?

She resumed her walk, but at a much slower pace. She paced the hard-packed path through the forest with her head down, eyes fixed on the frozen snow, but not really seeing it. If he’s offering this to me, it pretty much negates what I first told him, that I’m going to be a mercenary because no one is going to keep me fed and clothed ... he’s offering that. I don’t have to do this. So why do I still want to ?

She raised her head, and looked around, half hoping for some kind of omen or answer. There were no answers coming from the silent forest, only the mocking echoes of crows in the distance and the steady creaking of snow underfoot. There were no answers written against the sky by the bare, black branches, and no revelations from the clouds, either. She walked onward, following the familiar path to the river out of habit, her nose and feet growing numb and chill.