David Weber - Wind Rider's Oath

"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."