by Kate Elliott
“Tess!” It was Yuri. Vladimir whirled and vanished into the darkness.
“What is it?” Tess asked a little peevishly, as Yuri halted next to her.
He didn’t answer for a moment, looking past her into the dark where Vladimir had disappeared. The music ended. “The next dance. The one I taught you that you liked so much. Come on.” He took her hand, hesitated. “It isn’t so bad for me to dance with you because everyone knows that by giving you my sister’s tent my mother sealed us brother and sister by every claim but blood. It’s all right for a brother to ask his sister to dance.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?” Oh, God, she’d done something wrong. As always, with men; as always.
“We’d better hurry. They’re forming up.” He dragged her into the circle and placed her so that her back was to the fire and he faced her. “Now don’t forget: step, behind, step, behind, step, then turn, and you’ve got the quick step-hop. And don’t forget to switch partners. But when the hold is called, you’re to stay with that partner until you’ve missed a step. That’s the contest. But don’t worry. No one will be watching you anyway.”
The drums began, a slow, straight beat in four. Tess did not worry. Identical sets, the music starting slow and getting faster and faster, and the switch of partners; if they wanted to make this a contest—where those who made mistakes dropped out and the last pair without mistakes won—she was happy just to dance it, because she loved its complexity. No man, faced with this foreigner when the drummer called “hold,” would expect her to dance without error.
The pipes came in with the melody. She danced the set twice with Yuri and on a double clap and turn moved right to a new partner. Spins and high steps, stamps that sounded hollow and muffled on the ground, a strong arm pulling her around, laughter across the fire. A man whistled. She loved it. She had that sense of dancing that anticipates the rhythm and so is exact, the ability to duplicate the melody in the steps. She danced, spun to a new partner, danced, moved.
The high melody, faster now, pierced through the thick sound of feet, of breath expelled and drawn in, of the snap of fire and the slap of clothing. The lutes took up a counter-melody and the drums added an off beat. The women’s long tunics swelled out on the turns, sinking back in, swirling around legs. Tess stamped and twirled and came to Niko. He grinned, breathing hard from exertion, and swung her around. As the dance went faster, it became somehow easier for her as she lost her self-consciousness in her absorption in the music. Low drums came in, the high ones pounding out patterns above, matching the pipes. She danced, kick-hop, slide step away, clap and return, moved to the next partner, danced, stamped, and whirled into the arms of Bakhtiian.
“Hold!” yelled the drummer: hold to this partner. The contest had begun.
Bakhtiian glared at her, but pulled her in, and they pivoted. Where she pulled out, she felt an exact counterweight against her. His hand on her lower back signaled her steps, and when he had to turn her so fast that she got dizzy, his other arm steadied her, strong at her waist, until she got her balance back. By the end of the first set, they understood each other. By the end of the second, they could no longer tell if the music was speeding up.
Tess laughed. Step-behind and five stamps, five stamps. She felt as if her soul were flowing out through her limbs, her fingers and her toes, her eyes and her lips. His face seemed luminous, as though sparks of fire had caught it and then spread down to burn in flashes on his shirt; he was not smiling. He spun, and she spun—the drummer called out, “To end!”—and she and Bakhtiian pivoted ten times and came to a perfect halt, stock-still and panting and exactly placed in the circle.
Except there was no circle. They had won.
“Oh, God,” said Tess in Anglais.
“You’re a good dancer,” said Bakhtiian, releasing her and bowing as they did at the court in Jeds. His hair seemed thicker, fluffed into a luxuriant disarray by the activity, touched with moisture on the ends. For an instant she had the urge to touch it. He straightened.
Yuri stood beyond, laughing. Beside him, Kirill had his arms crossed on his chest, grinning. Tsara stood next to him with one hand draped possessively over his arm. Konstantina clapped and cheered, egging on those around her. Niko and Mother Sakhalin stood together, smiling. Vladimir stood off to one side, alone, and he looked furious.
“Thank you,” Tess said. Words deserted her. She stared blankly at him, and he averted his eyes. “Ah, yes,” she went on, stumbling, mortified. “You understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Dancing.” She felt as if she were about to dive into a deep pool of murky water; something lay in the depths, and she did not know what it was. “Some people move their feet while there is music, some move their feet with the music.”
He smiled, swiftly, like the sight of a wild animal in flight: a moment’s brilliant grace and an unfulfilled suggestion of beauty. “What you found in riding, you already knew in dancing.”
Tess could think of nothing to say and was beginning to feel stupid again when Yuri came up.
“Tess, I had no idea you could dance so well. Everyone knows that Ilya can dance like the grass, but he never does. I don’t know why.”
“Yuri,” said Bakhtiian.
“I think that was a warning,” said Tess to Yuri.
“Excuse me,” said Bakhtiian curtly, and left them.
Yuri took Tess’s elbow and guided her past couples forming for the next dance, past the ring of watchers, some of whom congratulated her in low voices, to the shadowy edge of the firelight. His lips were pressed together into a thin line, and his shoulders trembled with suppressed laughter. Behind them, the lutes began a slow melody, accompanied by the shuffle and drag of feet.
“No one…no one ever says things like that to Bakhtiian.”
“Why not? It was a warning. I remember when he told you to go look after the horses. I’d never seen anything so rude.”
“Oh, Tess. The look—on his face when you said it.” He bit at his hand to stop himself from giggling.
“I didn’t see it.”
“Oh, oh.” Tears sparkled on his cheeks. He was still laughing, one hand pressed to his abdomen. “Oh, Tess, make me stop laughing. My stomach hurts.”
Tess began to wipe at her eyes, recalled the kohl, and stopped. “Listen, Yuri. I need your advice. About Vladimir.
Yuri stopped laughing.
“I’ve done something wrong, haven’t I?” she whispered. From the fire came a swell of laughter.
“No.” He reached for her. She avoided his hand. “Vladimir’s behavior—as if anyone could blame you—”
“Oh, Lord.” She broke past him and ran away, skirting the clusters of tents, until she found her own, pitched in solitary splendor at the very edge of camp. She flung herself down, crawled inside, and covered her face with her hands.
Once again, she had made a fool of herself with a man. She never knew what to do. She always did it wrong. She snuffled into her palms but could not force tears. Voices, angry voices, interrupted her, and she froze, scarcely breathing.
“By the gods,” said Bakhtiian. He sounded furious beyond measure. “If I ever see such an exhibition as that again, Vladimir, then you will leave my jahar. Perhaps Elena Sobelov might keep you as her lover, a kinless man without even a dyan to call loyalty to, but her brothers will kill you if you ever try to mark her.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Vladimir’s voice was sullen.
Tess squirmed forward and peered out the front flap of her tent. She could see neither of them.
“Not even Kirill would flaunt himself like that in front of a woman. Not even Kirill, by the gods, would put himself forward so, without any shame at all, and as a guest in this tribe. I expect my riders to behave as men, not as khaja savages.”
Out a little farther, and she could see them, standing by the glow of the fire around which Bakhtiian and Niko had spoken with men from this tribe the night before. Bakhtiian stood stiff a
nd straight, anger in every line of his body. Before him, bowed down by his bitterly harsh words, Vladimir stood hunched, cowed. Tess felt sorry for him suddenly, the recipient of Bakhtiian’s ill humor.
“She’s just a khaja bitch,” said Vladimir petulantly. “She doesn’t matter.”
Bakhtiian slapped him. Vladimir gasped. Tess flinched.
“Never speak of women that way.” Bakhtiian’s voice was low but his words burned with intensity. “Have you no shame? To throw yourself at her, there at the dance? What do you think Sakhalin must think of me, of our jahar? That we are so immodest that we make advances to women?”
A muffled noise had started that Tess could not immediately identify. The shadowy figure that was Vladimir lifted a hand to his face. He was crying.
“None of the women, none of them…came up to me…”He faltered. “She is khaja. I thought it wouldn’t matter.”
“Oh, gods, Vladi,” said Bakhtiian awkwardly, his voice softening. “Go to bed.”
Vladimir turned and fled into the safe arms of the night. Bakhtiian sighed ostentatiously and kicked at the fire, scattering its coals. The last flames highlighted his fine-boned face.
“Ah, Bakhtiian.” The woman’s voice was low and pleasant. She strode into the fire’s glow with confidence. “I was looking for you, Ilyakoria.”
He glanced up at her and looked down again. “Nadezhda. We have had so little time to talk since I arrived.”
“To talk?” She turned to rest a hand on his sleeve. She was older, a handsome woman dressed in long skirts and belled trousers washed gray by the night. “Talk is not precisely what I had in mind.”
He shifted so that his arm brushed hers, but still he did not look at her. “You flatter me.” She laughed, low and throaty, and lifted a hand to touch his face.
His diffidence astonished Tess and she felt suddenly like a voyeur, spying on a scene not meant for her eyes and ears. She shimmied backward into the tent, covered her ears with her hands, and curled up in her blankets. Eventually, she even went to sleep.
Light shimmered through the crystal panes that roofed and walled the Tai-en’s reception hall. Rainbows painted the air in delicate patterns, shifting as the sun peaked and began its slow fall toward evening.
Marco sat on a living bench, grown from polished ralewood, growing still, shaded by vines. He watched as Charles Soerensen moved through the crowd. Worked the crowd, really; Marco had always liked that use of the word. Each new cluster of Chapalii bowed to the same precise degree at Charles’s presence. The humans shook his hand, except for the Ophiuchi-Sei, who met him with a palm set against his palm, their traditional greeting. A handful of individuals from alien species under Chapalii rule also graced the reception, but Charles was always armed with interpreters of some kind, and he had the innate ability to never insult anyone unknowingly. Marco studied the crowd, measuring its tone, measuring individuals and family affiliations among the mass of Chapalii honored enough to receive this invitation, enjoying the consternation in the Chapalii ranks at the carousing of a score of human miners in from the edge of the system on holiday, marveling for the hundredth time over how the Chapalii architect responsible for this chamber had managed to coordinate the intricate pattern of the mosaic floor with the shifting rainbows decorating the loft of air above.
At the far end of the hall, under the twin barrel vaults that led out into the stone garden, Suzanne appeared.
Marco did not jump to his feet. He never did anything hastily or blindly, except for that one time in the frozen wastelands far to the south of Jeds, when he had run for his life with a spear through his shoulder, an arrow through his neck, and his dead guide left behind in a spreading pool of blood.
Suzanne did not move from the entrance. She merely stood to one side, shadowed by a pillar, and waited. After a few minutes, Marco rose and strolled aimlessly through the crowd, making his spiral way toward Charles. When he at last touched the sleeve of Charles’s shirt, he noted that Suzanne had vanished from the hall. Charles shook the hand of a ship’s master, exchanged a few easy words with her mate, and followed Marco out through the narrow side corridor that led to the efficiency and thence through a nondescript door to a hall that circled back and led out onto a secluded corner of the stone garden.
Suzanne waited there, standing under the shade of a granite arch cut into a lacework of stone above. A Chapalii waited with her. Seeing Charles, he bowed to the precise degree.
“Charles,” said Suzanne, “this is Hon Echido Keinaba. He has come to Odys on behalf of his family to negotiate shipping and mineral rights. I hope you will be able to find time to discuss this matter in detail with him tomorrow.” Then she repeated her speech in halting formal Chapalii, for Keinaba.
Charles nodded.
Keinaba bowed, his skin flushed red with satisfaction. “Tai Charles,” he said, speaking slowly, more as if he were choosing his words carefully than making sure the duke could understand him, “I am overwhelmed by your generosity to me and to Keinaba in this matter. I was most gratified to meet and converse with your esteemed heir the Tai-endi Terese on the shuttle from Earth up to the Oshaki, and I can only hope that her influence has helped bring your favor onto our family.” He bowed again, hands in that arrangement known as Merchant’s Bounty.
Charles did not move or show any emotion on his face. He simply nodded again.
“Perhaps, Hon Echido,” said Suzanne, “you would like to see the reception hall.”
“It is my fervent desire,” replied Echido. He bowed again and retreated.
“Where the hell did he come from?” asked Charles. “When did you get back?”
“One hour past, on the same ship as Echido. I rather like him, as much as I like any of them. Charles, Tess has vanished.”
“Explain.”
“The reason I came back in person instead of sending a bullet is that it only took me one day to establish without any doubt in my own mind that Tess finished her thesis, left Prague, and boarded the Oshaki with the intent to come to Odys. I have a holo interview with her friend Sojourner, with a security police officer from Nairobi Port, with a Port Authority steward, and a confirmed retinal print from the boarding access tunnel on Lagrange Wheel.”
“And?”
Suzanne shrugged. She slipped her hand into an inner pocket on her tunic and handed a thick, palm-sized disk to Charles. “My feeling? Sojourner had the distinct impression Tess didn’t want to come to Odys, but that she was running from an unhappy love affair.”
“Lord,” said Marco.
“Don’t kid yourself, Burckhardt. She evidently thought the boy was in love with her, but he was in love with her position and what she was and dumped her when he found out about the inheritance laws.”
“Do you mean to say,” Charles asked quietly, “that Tess was planning on getting married?”
“Looks like it.”
Charles’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “She didn’t tell me. And then?”
“No other ports of call, according to Echido, except Rhui and Odys. I picked him up on Earth. He did not in fact go back to Chapal, despite what that message said. He debarked from the Oshaki at Hydri and went back to Earth to get a ship back here. But he was very clear that he had met less. He said they talked about Rhui and the interdiction and Rhui’s rich resources.”
Charles considered the pattern of subtly shaded stones set in linked chevrons between twisting statues carved from black rock. “Suzanne, you will follow the trail of the Oshaki, as far as Chapal, if need be. Marco, to Jeds.”
Suzanne nodded. “I’ve already made arrangements for the Lumiere to run a shipment of musical instruments to Paladia Major. We can leave in two hours.”
Charles held out the disk. “This is a full report?”
“Of course.”
“Then go.” Suzanne said nothing more, but simply left, walking briskly on the path. Pebbles whispered under her shoes.
Marco coughed into his fist. “Charles, what if she doesn’
t want to be found? What if she needs some time alone, to be away from you, from—from everything? You ride her pretty damned hard.”
“She would have sent me a message.” Charles turned the disk in his hand over, and over again. “In any case, she and I haven’t the luxury of time away. It’s hard, but that’s where it stands. Tess must be found. Do you really suppose that I trust the Chapalii in a matter like this? The captain of the Oshaki lied to me. He knew she was on his ship. Even if he colluded with her, if her intent was to hide on Rhui, still…still…she’s leverage over me, and they know it.”
“They made you a duke.”
“And we still don’t understand how their damned alien minds work. Start in Jeds, Marco. You or Suzanne will find her.”
Marco watched Soerensen walk away, back to his duties at the reception which he would perform without the slightest visible sign that he had just discovered that his only sibling, his heir, had disappeared. Charles was about as yielding as the stone in this garden. Sun dappled the path where it wound underneath the granite arch, cut by the lacy filigree into twisting and subtly chaotic patterns that blended with the shapes of the pebbles. Perhaps the stone was more flexible. If Tess was missing by some machination of the Chapalii, there would be hell to pay, although Marco could not for the moment imagine what Charles could actually do about it. Chapalii did not harm their superiors, and very few Chapalii outranked Tess. She would be in no physical danger, at least, however small a consolation that was. And if Tess had run, and was hiding, and he found her and brought her back where she did not want to be: well, that might be worse.
Cloth brushed her back, and Tess started awake and lay still, cursing herself for her dreams. Jacques again, damn him. She felt flushed all along her skin, up and down her body, and she sighed, resigned, recalling the dream more clearly now. Jacques’s presence had not been the important element in this dream; what they were doing together was.
Outside, bells jingled softly, muffled by distance, and one of the herd beasts lowed, sounding more like a cow than the goat it resembled. A bird trilled once, twice, and then ceased. It must be nearly dawn. Yuri had taught her that trillers heralded dawn, whistlers noon, and hooters dusk.