by Kate Elliott
“Three out of five,” said Yuri proudly. “Let’s see you match that.” Returning with the arrows, he handed the bow to her. She aimed and hit.
“There. Is Doroskayev the only dyan riding against Bakhtiian?”
“He’s one of the few left. Roskhel is dead now. Veselov—Ilya won him over. Zukhov, Boradin, Makhov. They’re all dead, too. Boradin and Makhov died in the battle at the khayan-sarmiia. Ilya shouldn’t have won that battle because they outnumbered him, but he did. Doroskayev only hates Ilya because he hates Ilya, if you see what I mean. But his tribe is small. There is one dyan left, Dmitri Mikhailov, who commands a jahar large enough and dangerous enough to threaten us. But we haven’t seen him for two summers. I think he’s given up.”
Tess nocked another arrow and drew. “What about the tribal Elders? The women?”
“War is men’s business.”
“Meaning women are left to clean up.” She shot, missing the tree entirely.
“It’s your concentration.” Yuri rested one hand on the back of his neck. She drew again, steadying herself. “Ilya could never have united the jaran without the approval of the Elders. After all, his own mother was the first Elder he had to convince, and if he could convince her, he could convince anyone.” Tess shot and hit. “Do you know,” Yuri added, “when a person stands so still, you see them best. Like your eyes. I never knew eyes could be the color of gorad leaves. Such a green.”
Her fourth and fifth arrows hit true. Yuri shot and hit five times along the length of the tree. “You’re better at this than you think,” she said when he returned with the arrows.
“For a man. It comes of having four sisters. But I always liked archery better than saber.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Yuri!” Kirill called to them from the shore of the lake. He strode over and stopped to stare at the younger man. “You’re not actually practicing that, are you?”
Yuri hastily handed the bow to Tess, who turned to face Kirill with one hand on her hip. “If you practiced, we might eat fresh meat more often.”
Kirill had a careless air about him that belied his authority among the younger men. “It isn’t a man’s weapon, but it’s true, on such a long trip, we would eat better. I know.” He smiled. “We’ll have a contest.”
“I don’t like this,” muttered Yuri.
But the young riders took quickly to the idea: ten shots each. Mikhal immediately took the lead, with seven mid-hits, but this was blamed on his willingness when courting Sonia to go hunting with her.
Eventually Bakhtiian came up. Tess, finishing, found herself with five mid-hits, third behind Mikhal and Yuri. “Do you want a turn?” she asked Bakhtiian, made bold by her success.
“Gods, contest with the rest of us, and with a woman’s weapon?” asked Kirill.
Bakhtiian’s face shuttered as he looked past Tess at Kirill. Birds landed on the lake, wings skittering. Kirill returned Bakhtiian’s scrutiny with an even gaze. No one spoke.
“Very well.” Bakhtiian accepted the bow from Tess. “I would never disparage a woman’s prowess in archery, especially not if she had bow in hand. Not unless I had a very long head start.”
Everyone laughed except Kirill, who turned and left. Tess felt tension that she had not known was there leave her throat. Bakhtiian stood perfectly still, entirely concentrated. The dark waves of his hair matched his intense eyes and severe expression. With his arm drawn back, the curve of the bow framing him, he could have been the god of the hunt, caught forever in the instant before death. All ten shots hit between the middle ribbons.
Kirill returned, and he brought Fedya with him. Fedya was neither for nor against joining the contest. Kirill insisted.
“You don’t have to,” said Tess.
Fedya shrugged. “I don’t have the energy to refuse.” He was one of the shorter riders, stocky without stoutness, with long blond hair caught back in a single braid. Alone among the men he wore a second braid, a horse-tail pinned into his hair. He also habitually wore an expression that suggested that he knew the one, awful secret of man’s doom but was kind enough to hide it from everyone else. “I don’t mind. After all, I’m the only one here who can outshoot Bakhtiian.” The look he gave Kirill was ironic. But he also hit ten mid-shots.
It was growing dark. Tasha, at the fire, called to them that the food was ready. Tess did not follow the others, and Yuri sat with her, finding pebbles to toss into the pond.
“I like it here,” Tess said finally, watching the birds dive.
Yuri glanced at her but did not reply. The shifting greens and yellows of leaves stirred in the twilight breeze. Several birds flapped their wings, spraying water, and then settled.
“Fedya’s as good as some of the women. I thought men never practiced archery.”
“Fedya doesn’t need to practice. He sings to the bow, and it responds.”
“He looks as if he knows the wrongs of the world.”
“Fedya was touched by the gods as a child. What he knows, he’ll never tell.”
They rose and walked slowly toward the fire. This close, the breeze brought the spicy scent of Tasha’s vegetable stew to her. Stars bloomed one by one in the darkening sky. “Do you mean to say…” Tess hesitated, then began again in a lower voice. “That Fedya never boasts, or—”
“If you mean, does he talk about his lovers, no, he doesn’t. For all anyone knows, he hasn’t gone off with a woman since his wife died. If you made up to him, no one would ever find out through him.”
Tess halted, flushing. “You go so fast from start to finish.”
“Tess.” Yuri laid a hand on her shoulder. The ring of firelight faded into darkness a few meters in front of them, framing the men around the fire. “You’re having a hard time of it because of things inside you, and here you are, alone with twenty-seven men. I don’t count the pilgrims, you understand. It isn’t healthy.”
There was a silence.
“Forgive me.” Yuri removed his hand. “I didn’t mean to offend. As your brother I thought—”
Tess began to laugh. “Healthy!”
“Well, I don’t see what’s so funny. It’s true.”
“Oh, Yuri. I’m not laughing at you.”
“You’ll see I’m right.” He headed toward the fire.
“It’s when you’re being smug,” replied Tess, following him, “that I can really see the family resemblance between you and Bakhtiian.”
“I beg your pardon!”
Tess grinned. “Now, didn’t you say you would teach me some of your dances?”
“There.” Yuri pointed. The morning sun shone down on the spread of tents laid in neat lines beyond the edge of a narrow river. “I remember this tribe. Sakhalin is etsana here, and her sister’s son the dyan of their jahar. I was only a boy when we met with them last, but they are friends of our tribe. Bakhtiian says we will stay four nights with them.”
At the jahar’s appearance on the rise, two men and two women detached themselves from the camp and walked up to them. Bakhtiian and Niko dismounted and strode forward to meet them halfway. After what seemed to Tess a long, drawn-out conversation punctuated with elaborate gesturing, Bakhtiian returned, leaving Niko to walk back into camp with them.
Now Bakhtiian spoke with Ishii, and Tess noted with interest that Ishii’s face bore a green cast—he was displeased. But when Bakhtiian nodded and retreated from his side, Ishii sent his horse forward, down to the camp. The other Chapalii followed. Tess found Hon Garii easily enough. He rode beside another Chapalii, just behind Ishii, and behind them, the other eight rode in a mob that shifted precedence daily. In the clear light of early morning, she could discern on each of these eight the faint tattoo on the jaw beneath the right earlobe that marked these Chapalii as stewards. Born to serve, certainly, but not the lowest class by any means. Stewards alone served the nobility and had, in their turn, servants as well. That stewards made up the rest of the party, that they did work normally left to lesser castes, simply
proved to Tess the importance of this expedition. Now that she had settled in with the riding, it was time to investigate, slowly, circumspectly. She had time.
She laid a hand on the knife thrust between her trousers and her belt. As if the gesture had caught his eye, Ishii glanced back at her, and she removed her hand guiltily. But he looked away again, directing his people down and to one side of the tribe’s camp.
“We will stay four nights,” Bakhtiian was saying to the jahar. “You will comport yourselves in a respectful and modest manner.” He looked at Kirill as he said this. Kirill returned his gaze blandly. With Vladimir riding just behind him, Bakhtiian led the jahar down into camp.
As Tess dismounted, an elderly woman with a baby in a sling at her hip walked up to her. “Ah, my dear girl, I am Elizaveta Sakhalin. You are Terese Soerensen. Is that it?” She spoke khush slowly so that Tess could follow her words.
“Tess, if you will.” Tess felt comfortable with her at once.
“Yes, you will want to be with women again. My daughter—here, Konstantina!”
A young blonde woman with an unattractive face but sharp and friendly eyes came over. “But, Mama,” she said forthrightly, “Tsara and I and the others are to go out to hunt today. There is that great—” The word was lost on Tess. “—just beyond the ford.”
“Konstantina. A guest! Your manners.”
“But perhaps, Mother Sakhalin,” Tess began hastily, using the only honorific she knew for a tribal etsana, and seeing immediately that Sakhalin and her daughter approved of it. “If your daughter does not—will not mind—I hunt, go hunting, with her.”
Konstantina brightened. “Yes, Mama. You are good with the bow?”
Tess smiled. “No. Not at all. So I am tired of no fresh meat. Traveling with men.”
Enlightenment blossomed on both women’s faces. “Of course. Such a long journey and no herds. You will go with Konstantina. She will teach you. Then you can hunt for the jahar.”
Konstantina hustled Tess off as quickly as if she feared that her mother would change her mind, given a moment to reconsider. And into the company of women Tess was welcomed without reservation. She strode along, finding it difficult to keep up with their pace, and was given a lecture on the behavior of herds, animals, and shooting that she understood perhaps half of. The actual hunt proved more instructive. A huge herd of bovine grazing beasts milled along the river’s edge. Tess crouched, and watched, and stalked, and waited, and was even allowed to shoot a few times, although none of her shots brought down any game. Of the seven women with her, six brought down kills, and three of those brought down two. Konstantina allowed her to drag in one of her kills, and with the slender, musty-smelling calf draped across her shoulders, Tess trudged the long walk back to camp and was grateful to collapse in the shade of Mother Sakhalin’s great tent.
“Tomorrow,” said Konstantina, crouching beside her while they watched her brothers skin the kills, “we will have a dance. So.” She grinned slyly. Next to her, her cousin, Tsara, a pretty, dark-haired girl, dimpled and whispered into Konstantina’s ear. “Tsara wishes to know which of these riders is the best lover.”
Tess blushed. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know! Surely—how long have you traveled with them?”
“Six hands of days, now.” Seeing that Konstantina regarded her suspiciously out of those piercing blue eyes, Tess felt constrained to add, “In my land, it is different between men and women.”
“Of course. You are a foreigner. I had almost forgotten.”
Tsara sighed. “But so many of them are good-looking. And they are only here four nights. How will I choose?”
Studying Tsara, whose cheek was clear of the scar of marriage, Tess reflected that such a pretty girl would have no trouble attracting lovers. “Well, Kirill,” said Tess, and flushed, wondering why he had come first to her mind.
“Aha,” said Konstantina, watching Tess’s face. “A good recommendation, I think.”
“Mikhal is quiet and still in love with his wife. Yuri is sweet.”
“He is Bakhtiian’s cousin, is he not?”
“Yes, and Fedya—”
“The Singer? But who wants a sad man?”
“He sings very sweetly,” said Tess defensively. “He has a beautiful voice.”
“And what,” asked Tsara, “about the one with the necklaces? He is very pretty.”
“He’s an orphan.” Then, seeing their faces, she was sorry she had said it.
Konstantina waved one hand dismissively. “An orphan. What about the others?”
“What about Bakhtiian?” Tsara asked in a low voice.
Bakhtiian. Tess’s vocabulary failed her utterly. What about Bakhtiian?
But Konstantina, either oblivious to Tess’s sudden silence, or sympathetic to it, shook her head decisively. “Tsara, men like Bakhtiian are not for girls like us. You see who comes out of Nadezhda Martov’s tent in the morning.”
“Oh.” Tsara’s eyes went very round.
“Who is Nadezhda Martov?” Tess asked, feeling a little disgruntled.
“She is the finest weaver in all the tribes,” said Konstantina proudly. “She is my mother’s cousin’s cousin’s daughter, though she’s rather older than you or I. You’ll see.”
But Tess, going back to her own tent that night, where Yuri had pitched it for her back behind the Sakhalin tents, saw Bakhtiian sitting beside Niko and some of the men from the tribe around a distant fire, talking intently. Later, dozing, she heard him speaking with Vladimir, and she peeked outside to see him crawl, alone, into his own tent.
She spent the next day with Konstantina and Tsara and some of the other Sakhalin cousins, preparing a flat ground for dancing. Children raced around, some helping, some playing. Tess let Tsara fit a sling to her and carried around an amiable infant until it got hungry. In the afternoon, the young women lent her women’s clothing, insisting that no woman ought to attend a dance dressed as she was. They braided her hair properly, and Tsara lent her one of her beaded headpieces to cap her hair and drew kohl around her eyes to highlight them. Tess felt terribly embarrassed, walking at dusk to where the bonfire had just been lit, with the accustomed weight of her mirror, free of its case this night, but without her saber. But the riders of Bakhtiian’s jahar had well and truly blended into the mass of riders from this tribe, and she did not have to face their scrutiny up close. Ensconced among the women, Tess found it easy to take refuge in their confidence.
The music, as it began, sounded familiar and exciting. Tess recognized a dance Yuri had taught her, but as the women around her filtered away, seeking partners, she did not have the courage to go seek one of her own. She stood in the shadows and watched until Yuri came up to her.
“Well.” Yuri examined her. Tess blushed. “Sonia would approve.” He left it at that. “Would you like to dance?”
“Yes!”
Yuri caught her up, pulling her around, and her feet moved into the pulse of their own accord. Faces, muted in the firelight, flashed past. She loved dancing perhaps more than anything except for flying, was good at it, and this firelit stage, a hall enclosed by dark, with sound echoing in the air, voices singing with pipes, bodies, skirted tunics, brushing past her, the fine taste of grass and dust on her tongue, all heightened her senses so that the steps seemed as natural as breathing.
After two dances, Konstantina took Yuri away from her. Tess wandered to stand near the musicians, looking for a familiar face, but it seemed to her that all the men she knew were out dancing. She rubbed her hands together, feeling a little stupid. Vladimir came up to her. He smiled, looking straight at her.
“Oh, hello, Vladimir,” she said, feeling even more stupid. If she had exchanged twenty words with him on this journey, she would have been surprised.
He laid a hand on his necklaces, stones that winked and gleamed in the firelight. He wore bracelets on each wrist, rings on four fingers, and his eyes were unusually dark, startling against the blondness of his hai
r. “Neither you nor I have partners.”
Tess lowered her gaze. She knew this dance all too well; it reminded her of Jacques. “No,” she replied faintly.
He put out his hand, palm up.
Flushing, she put her hand on his and let him lead her out to the circle. He was her height, slim-waisted, and he danced gracefully enough that he easily covered the mistakes she made. He did not speak much, either. She danced with him again and again. Then, catching sight of Bakhtiian to one side, he excused himself hurriedly and walked away.
Left alone, she put her hands, warm from him, on her cold cheeks. A drum pounded out a slow, elegant rhythm, and Tsara ran up to lead her out into a line dance for women. Pipes serenaded them as they swept through the measures, the bright bells on their trousers and the brilliant headpieces of gold flashing against the firelight. But they abandoned her ruthlessly when it came time to dance with the men again—not, Tess thought, out of any selfishness, but simply because they seemed to think she could fend for herself. If only she had their confidence.
And Vladimir came up and asked her to dance again. They stood in the farthest ring of light after the dance ended, sleeves touching, the hem of her long tunic brushing the tasseled tops of his boots, and she felt in charity with Vladi for keeping her company. Glancing at him, she caught him looking at her speculatively. She flushed again, and cursed herself silently for flushing. I’m terrible at this, she thought. I ought to just—He watched her steadily, and he smiled, as if he was aware of the way her thoughts were tending. I ought to just get it over with. God knows, he’s pretty enough.
He laid his hand on her arm, light but intimate.
“Why aren’t any of the other women dancing with you?” she asked.
His hand tightened on her sleeve. “Someone said something. Kirill. I’d wager. He never has liked me.”
“Vladimir,” she began, suddenly guilty, knowing it was herself who had spoiled his chances, and somehow they had taken a step back, out of the last ring of light, and now they stood in shadow.