The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul — Victoria Goddard

Before the Fall of the Empire of Astandalas, the Red Company was legendary. A dozen or so years after that cataclysm, they have almost faded into myth. Pali Avramapul may not have gone under her own name since the dissolution of the Red Company, but she is no myth, and has certainly not faded. She fights folly and injustice as fiercely as ever—although, as a respected scholar of history at one of the Circle Schools of Alinor, she now tends to use her tongue and pen more than her sword. She still keeps the sword sharp, of course. You never know when adventure will come calling. She expects her sabbatical to be a decorous, respectable sort of adventure, the kind with which she can regale her colleagues in the Senior Common Room upon her return. She's not very upset when she finds one or two of her old friends and it turns out the adventure is much more likely to involve a plot to kidnap the Last Emperor of Astandalas. There's respectable, after all, and then there's respectable. Book Two of the Red Company Reformed, but able to be read on its own.