grand, carved chair dominated the table's far end. About the pillars, standing with swords at the hip and mugs in their hands, were numerous Goeren-yai warriors of Taneryn—long-haired, tattooed, beringed and proud. All paused in conversation now and turned to look as the Royal Guard extinguished their torches and parted to present their four charges.
Damon walked forward, surveying the array of hard faces that confronted him. Sasha remained at Kessligh's side…and realised that Damon, to the best of her knowledge, had never met Lord Krayliss and did not know what he looked like. She scanned the faces herself, searching.
“This is a meeting of war!” announced one man, tall and broad with long hair flowing, a strong moustache trimmed in two lines on either side of his mouth. His hard eyes were fixed upon Sasha with evident anger. “There has never been a woman present at a Goeren-yai council of war, and there never shall be!”
Sasha glared in return. Kessligh hooked a thumb into his belt and repressed a grimace that was somewhere between a wince and a sarcastic smile. “Looks like dinner to me,” he remarked.
“Yuan Kessligh,” growled the man. “You walk into this hall with more honour, and soaked in the blood of more enemies, than might any man in Lenayin. Do not tarnish that honour, sir, by betraying the honour of Taneryn and its chosen men.”
Kessligh strolled forward to Damon's side, and then a step beyond, gazing about at the gathering as he might typically consider a strange clutch of chickens—with thoughtful, off-handed curiosity. To Sasha, his manner and poise seemed nothing but familiar. And yet the armed and braided strongmen of Taneryn seemed to flinch backward—not in steps taken, but in posture, a slight lowering of the eyes here, a defensive folding of the arms there. Kessligh stood no taller than most, and somewhat slimmer than some, his unkempt hair streaked with grey, his person lacking any martial adornment save the blade at his back. And yet somehow, before warriors, nobles and a prince, he dominated the room.
“Your name, sir?” Kessligh asked the angered man, as calmly as ever.
“Yuan Cassyl Rathan of Dessyd village,” the man replied, with a proud lift of his chin.
“A first thing, Yuan Cassyl.” Meeting the man's gaze with a firm stare. “My honour is mine. Not yours. It is mine to do with as I wish. Your preferences mean nothing to me. Likewise your honour is yours. My actions have no bearing upon it. Only you can gain honour, Yuan Cassyl. Or lose it, by your deeds.”
There was a brief pause, to allow for a collective rumble of approval to follow, with some nodding of heads. For a great warrior to talk of such a thing as honour, before such a gathering, at such a time, was a serious matter indeed. At such times, men of great import listened hard.
“A second thing—you claim that your honour depends upon adherence to certain ancient traditions. I don't care.” An utter hush had filled the hall, broken only by the faint, rippling sound of flaming torches above. “I cannot afford to care. I am Nasi-Keth. Your ways are not my ways. I respect them nonetheless. Thirty years ago, the men of this place swore a similar, undying respect to me and my ways, however strange they found them. My ways include an uma—a student, if you will—who remains by my side to learn as best I can teach. I would never require you to change your ways, Yuan Cassyl of Dessyd village, were you to enter my house and my hospitality. It would be dishonourable of me. And yet now, you ask me to be like you—Goeren-yai, which I am not.”
“A rider came today from Perys,” came a new voice, deep and powerful. “He witnessed the great deeds there of our guests and the warriors of Tyree, against the bloody-handed Hadryn. He also claimed that the uma of Yuan Kessligh was there possessed by the Synnich, and in such a state slew nine Hadryn warriors by her own hand and tasted their blood.”
There was a flurry of spirit signs across the hall and a murmuring of oaths. Then the speaker emerged from behind a stone pillar. He bore a thick, wild mane of dark hair and a vast, bushy black beard. Grim, dark eyes peered from a profusion of strong yet intricate tattoos that masked the left side of his face. A long, single tri-braid fell clear from the rest, to lie upon the right