David Weber - Wind Rider's Oath

She folded her delicate, skilled hands under the cloak, rubbing them lightly together for warmth. The spring day had been chilly enough at noon, with the sun directly overhead. Now that late afternoon was shading into evening and the omnipresent clouds of this torrential spring were blowing up once again out of the west, Theretha's breath was beginning to steam. It was going to be a wretched night if they wound up having to sleep under the thin protection of the cart's canvas cover, she thought miserably, and from Soumeta's combative expression, it was likely enough that that was precisely what they were going to do.

Not for the first time, Theretha wished she'd shown at least some aptitude for the weapons and self-defense training every war maid candidate was required to undergo. Unfortunately, she hadn't. Her instructors had done their best, but Theretha was a mouse at heart, not a direcat. As Darhanna, a senior instructor had put it, Theretha was one of those people whose best primary defense was to be invisible, because she simply couldn't bring herself to try to actually hurt someone, even in self-defense. Darhanna had been as kind as she could about it, and gotten her through the mandatory training somehow, but it had been only too obvious at the end of it that she regarded Theretha as someone who should never be allowed out without a keeper. Like Soumeta, she supposed.

Actually, Theretha agreed with Darhanna. There were times when she still couldn't believe she'd ever found the courage to run away to the war maids in the first place, despite everything her stepfather had done to her. She probably wouldn't have managed it even then, if her younger brother Barthon hadn't agreed to-insisted that she let him, actually-escort her to Kalatha, the nearest war maid free-town. Kalatha's mayor at the time had been deeply surprised to find a male member of her family actively abetting her in her flight. And surprise had turned into astonishment when the mayor discovered that Theretha's escape to the war maids had been Barthon's idea in the first place. In fact, the mayor had been suspicious, and initially disinclined to accept Theretha, as if she'd feared that Barthon was part of some elaborate trap or scheme to discredit the war maids. But then the mayor had received the report from Kalatha's senior physician on Theretha's condition.

It was the evidence of the botched, two-day-old miscarriage which had turned the mayor's suspicious resistance into angry acceptance. To her credit, the mayor hadn't even suggested that it might be Barthon's place to "avenge" Theretha. No doubt a good part of that restraint stemmed from the fact that war maids, like their patron Lillinara, believed it was a woman's own responsibility to seek redress for wrongs done to her. But the horrible, crippling burns Barthon had suffered in the furnace explosion which had killed their father would have prevented him from taking any sort of personal, direct action against their stepfather, and the mayor had recognized that. In fact, she'd offered Barthon a place in Kalatha, and Theretha still wished her brother had accepted the offer.

Despite the urging of the mayor and other older war maids, Theretha had steadfastly resisted the suggestion that she go to the courts in an effort to punish her stepfather. The odds against her being believed by the court in her home town were formidable. Those who knew only his public face thought her stepfather was an honest businessman, devoted to his deceased wife's family. They probably thought he liked puppies and small kittens, too, she thought grimly, and even if the magistrate had chosen to believe her, the chance that someone who could call on so many character witnesses-most of whom would actually believe what they were saying-would suffer any significant penalty would have been slight. As far as Theretha was concerned, she had better things to do with her life than to reopen all the old wounds in a futile effort to see her victimizer punished. She sometimes wondered if that belief was a reflection of the mouselike tendencies which had made any possibility of her becoming a warrior like Soumeta laughable.

Fortunately, she'd completed most of her apprenticeship before her father's death, and until her mother died, she'd insisted that Theretha's stepfather continue her training. He'd done so only grudgingly, but until his wife's death, he'd really had no choice, since she'd owned both the workshop and the store. But after Theretha's mother died, he'd taken gloating delight in refusing to sign her journeyman's certificate, no doubt because he'd seen that refusal as a means to deprive her of any independent livelihood and trap her in his power.

The war maids didn't much concern themselves with what sorts of certificates a woman might have received-or not received-before becoming a war maid. They were more concerned with what she could actually do , and the glassblower assigned to test Theretha had realized almost instantly what a treasure she represented. At sixteen and a half, Theretha had already possessed the skills her raw talent required to draw both utility and dazzling beauty from the clear, incandescent magic of molten sand. Now, ten years later, she was an acknowledged mistress of her craft, her work sought out and prized by wealthy commoners and aristocrats alike throughout most of the Kingdom of the Sothōii. Her pieces and name were even known to a select few collectors in the Empire of the Axe, and they commanded substantial prices. Very few of the connoisseurs who purchased them for prices Theretha sometimes had trouble believing were real, even now, realized she was a war maid, although it was unlikely many of them would have cared, even if they had.

She accepted an increasing number of commissions these days, but she'd never forgotten her father's admonition. Beauty was to the soul as water was to a fish, but it was the more mundane work of a glassblower's hands, dedicated to the day-to-day sustenance of others, that was his true reason for being. And so Theretha insisted-with the stubborn ferocity of a mouse who had discovered how to become a direcat in this one aspect of her life-upon keeping her hand turned to the merely useful, as well. The glassware, like the pharmacist's bottles and the spice seller's jars, which did nothing at all . . . except save lives or help someone else earn an honest living.

Or like the glassware in the cart she and Soumeta had brought to Thalar.

She hadn't really wanted to make the journey-especially not now, when everything seemed so . . . unsettled and difficult. For that matter, Mayor Yalith clearly had very mixed feelings about it. In a way, Theretha was the "kid sister" of every war maid in Kalatha, and all of them were intensely protective of her. Probably because they realized she was completely unsuited to protect herself from anything more dangerous than a crazed chipmunk, she thought.

But she'd decided that she didn't have a choice, and then managed to convince Yalith to see it her way. The bulk of the output from Theretha's workshop and her six employees consisted not of her beautiful art pieces, but of those everyday, practical items. That was what earned the routine revenues Kalatha needed and paid the salaries of the people who worked for her. It was essential to maintain the outlet through which those wares might be sold.

Thalar wasn't a very large or especially wealthy town, but it was the largest and wealthiest in the holding of Lorham. More to the point, it had the biggest, most active market, and Theretha had established what she'd thought were good relationships with the merchants who distributed her more mundane products. Especially with Herian Axemaster, who handled over half of all the glassware and pottery which moved through Lorham. Herian was also a factor for Clan Harkanath, the powerful Dwarvenhame trading house. But those relationships seemed to have suffered serious damage, along with every other aspect of Kalatha's relations with Lord Trisu and all of his subjects. If she wanted to maintain her access to the Thalar market, and through it, to the world beyond, she'd decided, she had to come along and see what she could do to repair them And, as she had somewhat delicately suggested to the mayor, the fact that her Thalar contacts also knew about her art pieces, and that Herian had actually handled the sale of several of them for her, ought to give her a bit more clout than she might have had otherwise.