can't prove, and they won't construct these elaborate fantasies with which to advance their own power and kill each other. That's the whole point of the Nasi-Keth, Sasha—it's an attempt to help humans to think rationally. And that's difficult, I know, because humans are fundamentally irrational. But it's worth a try, don't you think?”
“Hmmph,” said Sasha, chewing her own mouthful. “What's rational?”
“Exactly the question the serrin ask each other constantly.”
“And what's irrational about the Goeren-yai beliefs?” Sasha continued. “It's rational, surely, that people survive as well as they can? Goeren-yai legends tell us much about these lands, and the animals, and the ways people can live and survive well out here. And the serrin have come here for centuries—they find Goeren-yai culture fascinating! So why should you, who takes his inspiration from the serrin, be so dismissive?”
“I'm not dismissive of the process, Sasha, just the conclusions. I'm dismissive of any culture that thinks it knows everything.”
“The Goeren-yai don't…!”
Kessligh cut her off with a raised hand. “I'm dismissive of any person who lives his or her life like a frog down a well—all it knows is that well, and those walls, with no interest in what lies outside. I'm trying to make you think, Sasha. That's all I've ever tried to do. That's all the Nasi-Keth as a whole have ever tried to do. To make people think before they commit some terrible evil in the name of their various truths, if it is at all possible that they might be wrong.”
“Aye,” Sasha replied, “well maybe that's the difference between me and you. You lead with your head, I lead with my heart.”
“Hearts can be rational too,” said Kessligh. “They just need a little training.” Sasha knew better than to try and get the last word in. “How was Damon last night?” he asked then, changing the subject.
“Nervous,” she said. “He slept a while, I think. His temper's short, but that's normal. Best not to push him.”
“With any luck, he won't make me. He's second from the throne, in truth. It's best he learned to deal with these kinds of things on his own.”
Sasha stifled a laugh behind her hand. “Damon. King!” She swallowed a mouthful, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can't imagine it.”
“Men have similar difficulty picturing you as my uma,” Kessligh replied, unmoved by her humour. His eyes flicked toward the riverbank. Sasha looked, and saw Master Jaryd Nyvar talking animatedly with a corporal. Their conversation was about swordplay by the look of their moving hands.
Sasha snorted. “Only because those men have never thought women good for anything but babies and housework.”
“What's wrong with babies and housework?” Kessligh said with a faint smile.
Sasha shrugged expansively. It was pointless to get annoyed. Kessligh simply liked contradicting her.
Kessligh swallowed his mouthful. “Before I came to Lenayin, I hadn't thought women good for much but babies and housework.”
Sasha frowned at him. “Oh come on! There are serrin everywhere in Petrodor! What about all of these wonderful serrin women you keep talking about, the ones you studied with as a Nasi-Keth uma yourself?”
“Serrin women, exactly,” said Kessligh around another bite. “Petrodor has a very conservative branch of Verenthane belief where women are concerned. My mother died when I was young and from then on the Nasi-Keth were my family. I saw many serrin women, but the human women I knew were very fixed in their notion of what a real woman was. Even when I rode to Lenayin for the war, I didn't see Lenay women as much different. It's only when I met you that I truly realised that a human woman might be born with the aptitude to be my uma.”
Sasha smiled. “Well at least I know what kind of behaviour impresses the great Kessligh Cronenverdt—brattish, noisy and overactive. I could revert, if you like?”
“Revert?” Kessligh asked in mock surprise. Sasha kicked him lightly on his boot and scowled. “My point,” Kessligh continued, “is that people never know what they shall be, and how they shall respond, until the moment of testing arrives. I can assure you that very few of my Nasi-Keth elders and peers suspected that I could rise to such heights from my beginnings. As a student I was quiet, uncooperative and solitary. I loved serrin teachings because they seemed to me to offer the best solution I'd yet seen to all humanity's obvious ills.
“But I was always frustrated that neither my uman nor my other tutors seemed to grasp the implications of those teachings fully. And