by Kate Elliott
Bakhtiian himself ceased speaking for three whole breaths together. “I beg your pardon, Sonia,” he said in a softer tone. “Cousin, perhaps you would allow me to speak with your companion, Terese Soerensen?”
“Well, Ilya, really, now that Mama has taken her in, you must approach Mama with that request, I think. Although Mama is out with the younger Kolenin girls today, since there was a herd of grazel seen by the scouts, so she’ll be gone until dark. But there will be supper in any case. Mama may be back by then.”
It was not difficult, Tess reflected, to see that Bakhtiian was seething with fury, having had something he wanted denied him. She tried very hard not to smile. Sonia was being very earnest, but a mocking and almost scolding tone still crept through.
“As you say, Sonia.” He gave a brusque bow. “Excuse me.” He left.
“But, Sonia,” said Tess when she realized she was still breathing, “he just ordered Yuri to do what he wanted him to do.”
“Yuri is a man. He cannot be so free with you.”
“Are there people I should not talk with? Or approach? I hope you will be honest with me, Sonia. I would not want to—offend—anyone.”
Sonia looked puzzled a moment, but then her expression cleared. “Of course, even while I speak Rhuian I forget you are of Jeds. Though Vania is right. You are taller than any woman of the tribes. You must remember that here, with us, because you are a woman you may speak with whomever you please. Now, kriye,” she said to her son, who had watched the proceedings with unblinking interest, “you will behave yourself with Tess.” He nodded and gripped his grimy hand more tightly around Tess’s fingers. “I wish he were always so well-behaved, but I am afraid that he takes after his uncle. But come, you will meet my sisters, and then this evening Mama will receive you into the family. Katerina and Stassia made welcome cakes just for the occasion.”
She led Tess away into the haven of women’s company, a haven that was comprehensive in providing both companionship and work. Sonia’s mother arrived with a pair of adolescent identical twin girls with bronze-gold hair. The girls struggled along in her wake, each with a slender antelope slung over her shoulders and a bow and quiver of arrows strapped onto her belt. Mother Orzhekov was a small, thin woman of vast energy, whose features were easily as stern as her nephew’s. She welcomed Tess with sober grace and invested her into the family, all without a particle of discomfiture at their lack of any common language. But by the end of the evening, Tess had learned perhaps fifty words of khush and could thank the matriarch in her own tongue, a feat which pleased the entire family immensely: Mother Orzhekov, her three grown daughters and their husbands and ten children, her dead daughter’s husband and two children, and her son, Yuri, two great-nephews, three grand-nieces and a half dozen assorted other family members.
Once accepted into the Orzhekov tent, Tess discovered quickly enough that her place in the tribe itself was established and unshakable. There was plenty of work for the women, but never too much because it was shared. If the men treated her with distant interest and an intense reserve, the women shamelessly enjoyed her company and monopolized her time. The children, of course, were always underfoot. Tess never had to be alone and never asked to be. However solitary she had lived at Univerzita Karlova in Prague, she had imposed it on herself because of her brother’s name and reputation. But what was the Chapaliian Empire to these people? They did not even know it existed. The Prince of Jeds was just a name; that Bakhtiian, Yuri, and Sonia had been to Jeds mattered little to anyone else, except as a curiosity. She felt free.
Seven days after her arrival she felt confident enough with her khush to venture out alone at dusk. She first took the short side trip to survey the Chapalii tents. The Chapalii stayed inside, mostly, and she did not yet want to attempt to bully her way into their most intimate territory—after seven days with the jaran, she had come to have a great respect for the sanctity of tent and family. But the corral with the Earth horses was close enough to serve as a good observation post, and it gave her a legitimate destination. The man on watch was Sonia’s husband Mikhal. He acknowledged her with a shy nod and strolled away, leaving her.
Tess leaned against the high side of one of the pair of wagons that formed the barrier and stared over it at the animals. She found it easy to pick out the Earth horses from the handful of native animals. What was the khush word for horse? Tarpan, that was it. The Kuhaylan Arabians were beautiful creatures by any measure, small, certainly, with delicate heads, huge eyes, and small, mobile ears, but there was strength in their line, in the elegant arch of their tails, and intelligence in their broad foreheads. No wonder these riders desired such stock.
The sun sank below the horizon and one bright star appeared in the darkening sky: the planet Odys. Charles was there, deeply involved in his work, ignorant of this trespass. She alone could warn him that Chapalii had invaded Rhui, yet there was so very much space between them. Surely he had gotten her letter, and had put in a message to Dr. Hierakis at the palace in Jeds—put in a message, only to discover that she had not arrived in Jeds. Her disappearance would simply be another burden laid on him.
The horses were quiet, but their movements spoke. They swished their tails. One stamped. Another snapped at a fly. Dappling the hillside beyond the corral, the mass of goatlike herd animals that provided milk and wool and meat for the tribe blanketed the grass. Something scuffed the ground behind her. She whirled.
“I beg your pardon,” said Bakhtiian. He did not look very sorry. The wind stirred his hair and rustled the folds of his shirt, more gray than red in the half light.
“You didn’t waste any time,” she replied, emboldened by seven days among forthright women. “This is the first time I’ve been alone.”
“Indeed.”
“Was there something you wanted to know?” Seeing his expression, she could not restrain a smile. “No, I don’t mean that as facetiously as it sounds. They are beautiful animals, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are,” he said fervently, distracted by this comment. He leaned against the wagon an arm’s length away from her and gazed with rapt intensity at the horses. “See the stallion—the gray—there. He alone is priceless. The black stallion is picketed out—” He gestured with a turn of his head. “And mares—thirty-six here, another hundred at journey’s end. It is not so long to travel, to receive such a prize.”
“How long a journey is it?”
He smiled, not at her. When he turned to look at her, the smile faded. “Your employers have not kept you very well informed, I see. It seems of a piece with so negligently leaving you behind at the port. And being surprised that you had followed them so far.”
“Ah, well,” said Tess in khush, using a phrase she had learned from Yuri, “the wind has a careless heart.”
“You learn quickly.”
“I like languages. What will you use these horses for?” It was a casual question, thrown out to distract him, so she was not prepared for the sudden change in his expression.
“To make war.” He did not smile. “Now. You are no interpreter. Why are you here?”
She considered refusing to answer, but he was a dangerous man. It was better to choose her words carefully. “I am here to travel with the priest and his party.”
“I do not think that they want you to travel with them.”
“But I will travel with them nevertheless. Do you intend to make me leave the tribe?”
“I have never had any such intention. I don’t have time, now, to get you back to the port from which you can sail to Jeds. You will be safe with the tribe until we return.”
The implication of this reply took a moment to sink in. The breeze shifted, bringing the rich, musty scent of horses directly to her. “Until who returns?”
“Ah. You thought the khepelli party was to be escorted by the entire tribe. But it is many months’ journey to the shrine of Morava, where these holy men hope to find enlightenment. My jahar, my riders, will be their sole escort. We ca
n move faster, and if there is trouble—Well, then, we are better able to deal with it. You, of course, will stay with the women.”
As if that settled the entire thing, he nodded and excused himself. He faded into the darkness, but she heard him exchange words with Mikhal a moment later, and then there was silence. She pushed away from the corral and walked slowly over to stare from a safe distance at the Chapalii tents. Two were dark, but one had a light on inside, a steady glow that she recognized as artificial. What other technology had they brought with them? She had not even brought an emergency transmitter, knowing she could rely on Dr. Hierakis once she reached Jeds.
She stood awhile, as the night air cooled around her, chilling her neck, and watched, until the light flicked out with unnatural suddenness. An animal chittered in the grass. Above, a brilliant spray of stars littered the night sky. She felt scared, suddenly, standing alone in unknown surroundings, caught out on a trackless plain, a solitary and untried force against whatever convoluted plans the Chapalii had made, were making even now, against her brother. The breeze tickled her cheeks. She sighed and walked back to camp, to the bright sanctuary of Sonia and her family.
Chapter Five
“Harmony consists of opposing tension.”
—HERACLEITUS OF EPHESUS
TESS FOLLOWED YURI OUT of the corral the next morning and walked with him behind the herd of horses as they were driven down to water at a pool. There was a skirmish, biting, a kick, and then the horses at the fore settled down to drink. Watchful young men patrolled the fringe of the herd, mounted on sturdy tarpans.
“It looks like they’re fighting over precedence,” Tess said, “but I suppose that’s just me wanting to make them like people. Or Chapalii,” she added to herself in Anglais.
Yuri glanced at her. “You don’t know much about horses, do you?”
“They have four legs, two ears, and a tail. That about covers it. Surely these aren’t all the horses your tribe owns?”
“Of course not. We keep the herd out on the grass. But we’ll keep the khuhaylans in close so that they can get to know us and trust us.” He called a greeting to an adolescent boy who rode by, and then turned and started back to camp.
“Yuri,” said Tess as she walked beside him, “can you teach me to ride?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m coming with you, when you leave.”
Now he lifted his head to stare at her. “But Tess, women don’t ride. I mean, not that women can’t ride horses, of course. They often ride out to hunt, but they never ride with the jahar.”
“I have to get to Jeds. I have to travel with the pilgrims.”
He examined her. Unlike the other young men, he was not shy with her, because of his status as her adopted brother. His expression was always a mirror of his thoughts, and right now he was troubled and thinking hard. “Are you a spy, as the priest Ishii says you are?” he asked finally.
“No, I’m not.”
“I believe you, Tess, but you must tell Ilya something convincing in order to get him to change his mind about letting you go with the jahar. It’s a very serious matter, riding. Ilya has enemies.”
“If Cha Ishii requests that I accompany you, then surely Ilya must agree.”
“I don’t think the priest Ishii wants you to go.”
“He doesn’t, but he will do as I say.”
“I think Ilya will be very curious to know why the priest will do as you say, Tess. You are alone, you have no saber, no horse, no tent, no family. Why should the priest obey you when he does not want to?”
Over the last seven days, Tess had developed a story, of sorts, to satisfy the women’s interest in her past. Now seemed the appropriate time to spin it further. “You know my brother is a merchant, Yuri. But I haven’t said—he has trade agreements, treaties, with the khepellis, and has recently suspected that they are not adhering to these treaties. So he sent me to their empire, their lands, to discover—well, I followed this party, I came over the seas with them, on the same ship. According to these treaties, they ought not to be here, and—and I need to know what they are looking for.”
Yuri rubbed his lower lip with one finger. “I never liked Jeds,” he said at last. “I never understood it. This is not Jeds, and this is not the land where the khepellis come from. So how can you have a treaty that says which of you may travel here?”
The question took Tess aback for a moment, but her training in Chapalii culture—more mercantile even than Earth’s—saved her. “Trade rights. Who gets to trade where.”
The answer evidently satisfied Yuri. “Well, I suppose Mama can spare you from the work for some time each day. If she agrees, then I will teach you.”
“And Bakhtiian?”
“If my mother gives you permission, then there is no reason for him to object. Why should he anyway? You’ll need to know how to ride whether you travel with the tribe or the jahar.”
“How many days will I have?”
“To learn? Until Eva Kolenin’s baby comes, I think. Ten days, perhaps, or twelve. But I warn you, Tess, no matter how well you can ride, you will have a hard time convincing Ilya.”
“Bakhtiian won’t have a choice. I’m going, Yuri.”
Yuri simply shook his head and refrained from comment.
Mother Orzhekov proved amenable, as long as Tess did her share of the work. It had not taken Tess many days to discover that there was leisure as well as work in this culture, and that a handful of women washing clothes were as likely to pause for an hour to gossip or play with the children as to work straight through and hurry on to another task. No one hurried except Bakhtiian, who was commonly said to have breathed too much southern air than was good for him when he had left, seventeen years ago, an impetuous, serious child of sixteen, and returned from Jeds five years later, just as serious and not one whit less impetuous. That journey had made him hasty and reckless, although Mother Orzhekov could be heard to mutter that Ilyakoria had always been hasty and reckless. But even she treated him with a respect that no thirty-three-year-old man, that not even Nikolai Sibirin, twenty years his senior and a healer as well, came close to receiving. He was a visionary—he was their visionary. Bakhtiian had great plans, and the tribe would follow him, even to the ends of the earth. The name he had earned on that trip—bakh-tiian, he-who-has-traveled-far—was as much a mystical as a physical appellation, and it now superseded his own deceased mother’s name of Orzhekov, which by birth he ought to be called.
And when Eva Kolenin went into labor and all the men were chased out of camp until the babe was safely born, for fear their presence might attract malignant spirits, Bakhtiian went only as far as his own small tent, set somewhat in back of the cluster that marked his aunt’s family.
Sent to get water from the stream, Tess and Sonia and Elena, the handsome gray-eyed girl who was still somehow unmarried, walked through the camp. Tent awnings flapped over empty ground cloths; men’s work, a shirt half-embroidered, a knife getting a new hilt, a saddle half made, lay abandoned, left in neat piles. The low trembling of drums accompanied their walk. A lulling chant rose and fell in time with the rhythm. A group of children ran by, giggling. They hushed suddenly, overborne by a swell in the chanting, and escaped in a rush out into the high grass. Alone at this end of camp, Bakhtiian sat in front of his tent, stitching at a pair of boots. He glanced up as the three women passed. Elena smiled at him, but his impassive eyes swept across them without pausing before he went back to his work. Elena frowned. Tess looked back and saw that he had, for a moment, looked after them.
“Why may he stay in camp?” she asked, slowly, in khush.
“You’ve the ending wrong,” said Sonia, correcting her. Her baby, Kolia, was asleep in a sling on her back. “This way.” She repeated it twice, and then went on. “Bakhtiian has his own tent, so there is no one to make him leave.”
Elena glanced back, and when she spoke, she measured her words carefully so that Tess could understand most of them. “They say that i
n some tribes, by the settled lands, the men own the tents. Do you suppose that is true? I would not want to live in such a tribe.”
“But not every woman has a tent,” said Tess.
“No.” said Sonia. “A woman who is marked for marriage is gifted a tent by her mother or her aunt.”
“Marked for marriage?”
Sonia lifted one hand to brush at the diagonal scar that ran from her cheekbone to her jawline. “When a man chooses to marry you, he marks you.”
“He marks you—with what?”
Sonia and Elena looked at each other. Elena had no scar. “With his saber,” said Sonia, as if it ought to be obvious.
Tess was appalled. She could not imagine Sonia allowing a man to mutilate her like that. But she was not about to say so. “And—ah—is that the only way to be married? To be—marked?”
“Yes,” said Elena.
“No.” Sonia shrugged. Grass dragged against the hems of their bright tunics. “There is another. ‘The long road to the setting sun, the binding of the four arches.’ But that is a path held by the gods. Few people wish—or dare—to ride it.”
Elena sniffed. “Better marked than bound.”
“I see,” said Tess, not understanding at all. She hesitated. “Does it hurt?”
Sonia smiled. “Yes. At first. But it is not a very deep cut. Bearing a child hurts far more. The small pain prepares you for the larger one.”
They reached the stream and began to fill the large leather pouches with cold water. “I’m not sure I would choose to marry, if I had to get such a scar,” said Tess carefully.
Elena turned sullen abruptly, hands caught in the rushing water. “What choice does a woman have in marriage?”
“Elena,” said Sonia. “Everyone knows Vladimir prefers you to all the other girls. Mikhal said that Vladi refused Lila’s and Marya’s advances, all because he’s trying to work up enough courage to mark you.”
“A kinless orphan! What woman would want that kind of husband?” Elena leaned forward, her hands in fists, her pale eyes fixed on Sonia. “I won’t let him get close enough to mark me. He’s fine as a lover, but I won’t have him as a husband.” Tears filled her eyes, and she jumped up and ran off.