sound of sliding steel as blades retreated into sheaths, the line of Hadryn nobility fading back, their departing expressions both angry and smug.
“Sasha?” Damon said cautiously, stepping forward to stand at her side as she retrieved her sword from the turf, and wiped dirt from the end. “Sasha, what did you just do?”
“I defended Krystoff's honour,” Sasha said shortly. Her heart was beating hard, but not with the fevered thumping of fear or excitement. This was colder, more calculating. Damon just stared at her, greatly pained. And it occurred to Sasha then, with only a mild surprise, that he feared for her life.
“Sasha, that was Farys Varan, son of Udys Varan! He's…he's known by all to be one of Hadryn's finest swordsmen…”
“Forget it,” Kessligh said grimly, taking a place at Sasha's side, eyeing the retreating Hadryn with calculation. “Farys's a corpse. It's what happens after he's dead that worries me.”
Sasha could hear the hard displeasure in his voice. She didn't care. When the fury caught her like this, she rarely did.
Camp that night was an abandoned barn on the valley floor. Sasha sat on a hay bale, her back to one corner of the barn's outer wall, where it would shelter her from the wind. On the grass nearby, there were many sheep huddled—Sasha knew only because of the occasional, restless bleating, their woolly shapes mostly invisible in the darkness. She gazed at the stars for a long, long time, thinking of many things, yet of nothing in particular. Sleep seemed far away.
A dark shadow approached soundlessly to her left, from over by the barn's mouth. There was just enough light for her to make out Kessligh's familiar outline, even wrapped in heavy cloak and blanket. He settled onto the hay bale at her side without a word. For a while they sat together, uman and uma, and gazed at the stars.
“It's past time for my watch,” Kessligh said then.
“I won't sleep,” Sasha replied. “I might as well take another watch if I'm to stay awake.”
“The surest way not to sleep is not to try,” Kessligh remarked. “Meditate. I slept well enough during the war in full knowledge that I would fight the next day. You should manage.”
“Probably.” Somehow, she just couldn't manage the energy for one of their customary arguments of technique and method.
“Sasha,” Kessligh said then, with the note of a man about to begin something…
“I don't know what else I could have done,” Sasha cut him off, tiredly. “There are lines to be drawn. In this land, respect is everything, and to tolerate such disrespect is to invite our enemies to attack us. Master Farys crossed the line. The north cannot be allowed to think their Lenay enemies will not fight back, otherwise they will continue to push and push, and soon every group in the land that does not agree with their bigoted ways will find themselves under attack.”
“I agree,” said Kessligh. Sasha turned her head against the wooden barn wall and gazed at the dark outline of his face. “I blame myself, in part. But the way of the uman is not the way of a parent. I cannot dictate your path to you, I can only help you to find your own.
“And I have seen this coming for a long time. I've warned you, haven't I?” Glancing across at her, a faint motion in the dark. “I warned you of consequences should you continue your attraction to the Goeren-yai so openly. I told you the offence it would cause, here in the north in particular. But perhaps, like so many things, it was meant to be.”
Sasha frowned. “That doesn't sound like serrin philosophy. That sounds fatalistic.”
Kessligh shrugged. “I am human, after all. But then it is serrin philosophy, too. Life is a battle, Sasha. All existence is in conflict. We fight the elements, we fight our consciences, we fight the limitations and eventual mortality of our bodies. All things happen by conflict, of one sort or another. The serrin have long recognised this fact. Once, long ago, they fought amongst themselves as we did. But then, having accepted the inescapable reality of conflict, they set themselves toward finding ways of living with it and negating its worst consequences.”
He sighed, softly, and resettled his shoulders against the hard barn wall, seeking better posture. “It was always going to be trouble, Sasha. Choosing you for my uma.” Sasha's eyes strained to make out his expression. “I knew it then, and I know it now. But I