The grim darkness in her eyes faded, replaced by happier memories.

"That was how I met Seldan Justinson and his wife, Marja," she said, the warmth of her eyes leaking over into her voice, as well. "They took me in as casually as if I were a stray puppy, and I'm not the only stray they saved. I may not have any idea where to find any of my blood relatives—assuming I have any—but I've got six brothers and eight sisters, most of 'em still living in Morfintan, and four of them still living with Seldan and Marja. He's Mayor now, and he and Marja are the parents who saved my life... and my soul." She met Bahzell's eyes fully, and her smile was gentle. "They taught me love again, you see," she said simply, and the Horse Stealer nodded.

Silence hovered for a long moment, and then Kaeritha inhaled deeply.

"Well, Seldan and Marja washed me, fed me, called in a healing mage for my face, sent me off to school each day—kicking and fighting every inch of the way—and generally set about civilizing me. They even got me to stop complaining about the silliness of a peasant girl learning to read by enlisting the aid of Mistress Sherath, the mage who served as the school's headmistress. She recognized something in me and decided I needed some specialized training. She was a mishuk herself, but I was clearly unsuited to a weaponless technique, so she enlisted Dame Chaerwyn from the Morfintan chapter of the Order of Tomanāk . I'd never dreamed that anyone would offer me that sort of training—it's illegal to teach a peasant the use of edged weapons in Moretz—and it was as if someone had offered me all the gold in Norfressa. I didn't think a great deal about why I was learning weapons craft. All I thought about then was that if I learned to fight, I'd never have to whore as my mother had... and that anyone, man or woman, who ever tried to force me to do something against my will would find a foot of steel in his or her belly."

She paused, her eyes momentarily dark and grim once more, then wrinkled her nose and raised one hand, palm uppermost, as if tossing something away from her.

"Whatever my motive for learning might have been, I soon realized I had a natural aptitude. My progress pleased Dame Chaerwyn, though she was always ready to cut me down to size when I got too impressed with myself, but she and Mistress Sherath were firm. If I wanted to continue my weapons lessons, then I had to spend at least an equal amount of time with my other studies, which is how I came to lose the wretched Moretz accent I'd brought to Morfintan with me.

"I don't think Mistress Sherath picked Dame Chaerwyn because she felt I was destined for the Order. It was just that she was the best weapons master in Morfintan who also happened to be a woman, and Mistress Sherath wasn't about to put me into a training salle with a man with a weapon in my hand. I don't blame her, either. There was still a lot of hate in me, and I think—no, I know —that bothered Dame Chaerwyn. But she taught me self -discipline along with weapons' skill, and by the time I was nineteen, she was prepared to sponsor me to the Order.

"I almost refused. She was the only woman in the Morfintan chapter, and she'd already told me how few women there were in the Order as a whole. I also knew she still had problems with some of the order's other members, despite the fact that she'd been the Morfintan chapter's senior weapons master for almost ten years. Besides, the Sisterhood of Lillinara seemed more suited to my needs."

She smiled once more, and this time the flash of white teeth was like an icy wind that sent a chill through Bahzell's bones. He saw the remembered bleakness in her dark eyes, still and blue as deep ocean water in that moment, and he understood. Lillinara was the patron of all women—the laughing maiden, the loving mother... and the avenger.

"But then I realized something," Kaeritha said softly. "Something Seldan and Marja and Mistress Sherath and Dame Chaerwyn had been trying to teach me for almost six years." She leaned back in her chair and looked not at Bahzell, but at Sir Yorhus.

"Vengeance is a poison," she said in that same soft voice, "and vengeance was what I wanted from the Sisterhood. I wanted the Silver Lady to accept my sword so that I could use that sword on the men who'd turned my mother into a whore and tried to do the same to me, and it didn't matter at all that those men were all back in Moretz. Any man who transgressed in any way against any woman would have done for me, because I didn't want justice. I wanted an excuse ."

Yorhus twitched, and then his eyes fell, as if unable to bear her gaze. She continued to look at him for several moments, then shrugged and turned back to Bahzell.

"I realized that even if the Sisterhood had been willing to accept my oath—and I'm not at all sure they would have—I would have given it for the wrong reasons. Yet I also knew that what had happened to my father, my mother, my sister and my brother—and to me —would happen to others, again and again. That it would go right on happening until someone made it stop, and that was what should truly be important to me: making it stop whenever and wherever I could. Not avenging myself on men who hadn't had a thing to do with what happened to me, whatever they might have done to someone else, but keeping those same things from happening to others and in administering justice , not vengeance, when they did. And when I realized that—" she shrugged "—there was only one place to take my sword."

"I'm thinking Dame Chaerwyn must have been pleased by that," Bahzell said after a moment.

"Oh, indeed she was!" Sir Terrian said before Kaeritha could reply. Blue eyes glinted at him dangerously, but he only shook his head with a smile. "But I don't think she was quite prepared for what she got. You see, no sooner had Kerry completed the required vigil over her arms and been knighted than Tomanāk Himself appeared and promoted her directly from knight-probationer to champion."

"It wasn't quite that simple," Kaeritha said tartly.

"No? Well, it came close enough," Terrian returned, unabashed by her tone, "and I have Chaerwyn's dispatch describing the entire affair in my files if you'd care to see it, Kerry, so don't think you can intimidate me into changing my story."

"You're absolutely hopeless, Terrian. Do you know that?" Kaeritha demanded.

"It's been said," the knight-general replied comfortably, and Bahzell laughed.

"Aye, and with reason, I'm sure," he observed, setting his empty cider tankard aside, and smiled at Kaeritha.

"It's grateful I am for the tale, sword sister, and honored you'd tell it to me," he told her, "but I'm also a mite curious about something else. From what Sir Charrow was telling me, there's but eighteen champions in all Norfressa." He cocked his ears questioningly, and Kaeritha nodded in confirmation. "Well, in that case, I can't help wondering why it is that two of us are after sitting in front of the self-same fire drinking cider while Wencit of R?m just 'happens' to be in the same room at the same time. No doubt it's naught but the suspicious barbarian in me, but I've the oddest notion there's a reason for it."

"Well, of course there is," Kaeritha agreed cheerfully. "You and Brandark and Vaijon are on your way home to Hurgrum, and Wencit has business of his own in the area, so he thought he might just travel along with you."

"Oh, he did, did he?" Bahzell gave the wild wizard a withering look, but Wencit only smiled benignly. "And yourself?" the hradani said, returning to Kaeritha.

"Well, I have a little job of my own to see to," she told him.

"Amongst hradani? " Bahzell couldn't keep the doubt out of his tone, but she only laughed and shook her head. "Well, if not with my folk, then with who? There's naught where we're bound but hradani and Soth—"

He stopped, staring at her in sudden speculation, and she gave him a sunny smile. She had to be joking, he thought. If Spearmen were hostile to the notion of woman warriors, the Sothōii were infinitely worse. Despite all the honor they officially showed the war maids, most Sothōii—men and women alike—privately considered them beyond the pale. They weren't truly "women" at all, for every one of them had renounced the ties of blood and family in order to become war maids, and that acutely unnatural act could never have been committed by any properly reared woman. The fact that the windriders regarded the war maids as invaluable allies and their only true peers meant little against that sort of bone-deep prejudice, and a female knight of Tomanāk would be only marginally more welcome than a Horse Stealer invasion. Not to mention the fact that Bahzell's father might be less than thrilled by the notion of having one of his son's companions wander off to hobnob with the Horse Stealers' most implacabale foes.

But as he looked into Dame Kaeritha Seldansdaughter's eyes, he knew she was completely serious. One might almost have said dead serious, he reflected, and shuddered at the thought.