David Weber - Wind Rider's Oath

"Yes," Kaeritha said softly, emptying the teapot over the fire's embers and beginning to cover the ashes with dirt. "Yes, Leeana. Very silly indeed."

"Soumeta is here, Mayor. She says she has an appointment."

Yalith Tamilthfressa, Mayor of Kalatha, looked up from the paperwork on her desk with a grimace. Her assistant, Sharral Ahnlarfressa, stood in the door of her office, with a sour expression which was only too accurate a mirror of Yalith's own emotions.

"What about Theretha?" Yalith asked. "Is she here, too?"

"Theretha?" Sharral shook her head. "It's just Soumeta. And I checked your calendar. If she does have an appointment this morning, I didn't write it down there."

"Neither did anyone else," Yalith sighed.

"In that case," Sharral said grimly, "I'll send her packing so fast her head will swim!"

She started to turn to go, but Yalith's quick headshake stopped her.

"No," the mayor said. "Oh, I'd love to turn you loose on her, Sharral, but I can't quite do that."

"Why not?" Sharral demanded.

"You know perfectly well why. As big a pain in the arse as she may be, she's not exactly alone in her feelings, now is she?"

"Yalith," Sharral said, dropping the formal title she normally used when addressing her old friend on official town business, "she's only a Fifty. If you want her jerked up short for insubordination, I'm sure Balcartha would be delighted to take care of it for you."

Yalith leaned back in her chair and smiled affectionately at her assistant. For all practical purposes, Sharral was her unofficial vice-mayor, really, although the town charter provided for no such office. They'd known one another since girlhood, although Yalith had been born in Kalatha and Sharral had been five years old when her mother became a war maid. Ahnlar Geramahnfressa had been luckier than some-Sharral had been an only child. It was always sticky, and often painful, when a woman with children sought out the war maids. It was unusual for a mother to become a war maid, because the war maids' charter didn't provide any legal basis for her to retain custody of, or even the right to visit, her children after she severed herself from her family. It was a very rare, or very desperate, mother who was prepared to risk losing all contact with her children, however intolerable her own life might seem.

Yet a surprising number of them were allowed to take their daughters with them. In most cases, Yalith thought, that said all that needed saying about the fathers of those children. Those men didn't relinquish possession of their children out of gentleness and love; they did it because those children were merely daughters, not something as important as a son. No wonder the women unfortunate enough to be married to them sought any escape they could find!

But however their wives might feel, Yalith often wondered how someone like Sharral felt when she thought about it. How did it feel to know that the man who'd sired you had cared less for you than he did for a pair of old shoes? Did you feel rejected, discarded as something unimportant and easily replaced? Or did you spend every morning thanking Lillinara that you'd escaped having anything to do with a parent who could feel that way about his own child? Yalith knew how she felt about anyone who could do that, but she also knew the mind and the heart could be cruelly unreasonable.

"If I thought I could turn Balcartha loose on her, I'd enjoy that even more than handing her over to you, Sharral," the mayor said. "I'd really relish watching that, as a matter of fact. But it might look just a bit extreme to turn a Five Hundred-and the commander of the entire Town Guard, at that-loose on a mere Fifty. Not without clear provocation, at any rate."

"Extreme!" Sharral sniffed. "Balcartha is the Guard commander, and Soumeta is one of her officers-one of her junior officers, Yalith. A junior officer who's just lied to me in order to get in to see you without an appointment! That strikes me as a fair to middling offense against good discipline, and if Balcartha can't rake Soumeta over the coals for something like that, then just exactly who can ?"

"But that's the point, isn't it?" Yalith's mouth quirked in something much too astringent to be called a smile. "Soumeta isn't here just for herself, and she knows I know it. Besides, maybe she's right."

"And maybe she's a dangerous, arrogant, hotheaded, prejudiced, trouble-making idiot with the morals of a mink in heat, the appetites of a preying mantis, and delusions of her own importance, too!"

"You don't have to mince words with me after all these years, Sharral," Yalith said with a harsh chuckle. "Tell me how you really feel about her."

"It's not a joke, damn it, Yalith!" Sharral waved both hands in frustration.

"No, it's not," Yalith agreed more soberly. "But whether we like it or not, at this particular moment Soumeta is only saying what a dangerous number of other war maids think. So I can't just let you or Balcartha step on her-not without giving her a little more rope, first, at the very least-without running the risk of further alienating the people who already think I'm being too accommodating. Like Saretha and her crowd."

Sharral's lips tightened as if she wanted to dispute that. Unfortunately, she couldn't.

"All right," she sighed. "You win-or lose, or whatever it is you're doing! I'll show her in."

"Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice, Mayor," Soumeta said as Sharral closed the office door behind her and Yalith pointed at a chair on the other side of her desk.

"Did I do that?" Yalith asked pleasantly, arching both eyebrows and steepling her fingers in front of her chest as she leaned back and rested her elbows on the arms of her chair. "That's odd. I could have sworn Sharral just told me that you had an appointment with me."

Soumeta flushed, and Yalith smiled internally. Had the other woman really expected that a meaningless polite formula could somehow convince Yalith to gloss over what amounted to an arrogant demand that the mayor see her?

"I suppose I shouldn't have done that," Soumeta muttered after a moment. "It's just that it's important that I speak to you, and I didn't think Sharral was even going to tell you I was here."

"Sharral tells me about everyone who asks to see me, Soumeta," Yalith said evenly. "Whether she likes them or not."

Soumeta's flush deepened. It was especially obvious in someone with her fair skin and golden hair, and Yalith let her stew in her own juices for several seconds.

"Very well," she said finally. "You're here. What was so important that you simply had to see me?"

"Mayor Yalith," Soumeta gave herself a visible shake and leaned forward in her chair, "the situation in Lorham is worse than ever, and it's getting steadily worse still. We have to do something!"

"And what, precisely, would you like me to do, Soumeta?" Yalith asked with deadly patience.

"We can't just stand there while Trisu and his toadies systematically tear down everything we've accomplished in the last two hundred years!" Soumeta protested. "It's bad enough that he's violating our boundaries with that gristmill of his, or our prerogatives with those road tolls, but now his so-called market master in Thalar is squeezing us completely out." She bared her teeth. "Do you think for one minute that someone like Manuar would dare to do that without Trisu's backing?"

"First," Yalith said levelly, her dark eyes trained on Soumeta like twin ballistae, "we're not 'just standing there.' Second, there seems to be some question as to exactly what Master Manuar is or is not doing in Thalar. Third, when the Council and I specified that you were to be our official representative to him, we also instructed you not to be confrontational. The object was to make a firm statement through a spokeswoman official enough to make our concern plain, not to antagonize the man."