by Kate Elliott
“Why would a woman be out here alone?” Leotich put in, uncowed by Dmitri’s speech.
“Vasil?”
Vasil sighed, facing Tess again. “Temple,” he said slowly, as if he knew that his pronunciation was terrible. “Men—temple. You—see?”
Tess untwisted one hand from her cloak, realizing that this was at last the real test: knowing nothing about khaja culture, she had to hope they knew even less. “I go to the temple.” She pulled out her ankh necklace, holding it by the chain and displaying it to them as if it ought to mean something to them. Then, dropping it, she crossed herself, because it was the most pious gesture she could think of. More by accident than design, her cloak slipped again to reveal one pale thigh. With an exclamation, she yanked it tightly around her. The three men looked away.
“She’s going to the temple,” said Vasil in a low voice to Dmitri. He looked sidewise toward Tess. “You go? Temple?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Men? Men go?”
“Men go to temple. Men go. To temple. To temple.”
“I take it,” said Dmitri dryly, “that they were going to the temple.”
“Think straight, Mikhailov,” snarled Leotich, jerking his head to one side. “It doesn’t add up. How did they get ahead of us? How do we know it’s the same group? And what about her? Why is she here?”
“You saw her necklace, the sign she made.” Vasil took one step toward Leotich. The top of his saber pushed down the grass beside him. “She must be a pilgrim.”
“Bakhtiian has pilgrims with him. She could be one of them.”
“Why are you talking for so long?” asked Tess in a high, hurried voice that she did not have to feign. “Why don’t you leave me and go on your way? Is it not penance enough that I must travel this barbaric land alone? Must I be threatened with savages as well?”
“You’re frightening her,” said Vasil.
“Frightening her!” Leotich took one aggressive step toward Tess. “Greater things are at stake here, Veselov. Doroskayev said—”
“I’m beginning to suspect you’re a fool, too.” Dmitri reached out and took hold of Leotich’s sleeve with enough pressure that the man had no choice but to step back. “Karol Arkhanov saw those pilgrims. Eleven, he said, tall and very pale, all men. His word is good enough for me.”
“My clothes are there,” Tess broke in, desperate now for them to leave. Vasil, glancing at her, blushed and looked away when her gaze met his. “And here I am, surrounded by men.” She took out her necklace again. “I am a pilgrim, a holy woman. What do you mean to do?”
“Come on,” said Vasil. “We’ve frightened her enough. Let’s go.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Leotich. “I want to see what she’s got on underneath that cloak.” He put his hand on his knife and strode forward before the other men could react. Tess jerked back, twisting free of his grasping hand, and an involuntary cry escaped her. She stumbled back and fell to her knees.
Dmitri grabbed Leotich and yanked him up short. Vasil had his knife out, but he sheathed it again. Behind, the men in the jahar murmured, a swell of disbelief that faded as Leotich stood stiff and angry in Dmitri’s grasp.
“Gods, man,” said Dmitri. “You’ll get a reputation no man could live down.”
Tess sank down into the most abject huddle she could make, kneeling, and fumbled inside her cloak for the knife, palming it.
“No.” Leotich wrenched free of Dmitri. “Maybe Doroskayev was mistaken. Maybe Bakhtiian didn’t have a woman with his jahar. But let’s ask Vasil. After all, he knows better than anyone else whether Bakhtiian would have any use for a woman.”
Vasil backhanded him, hard. Leotich lunged at Vasil, but the younger man caught his blow on an arm and slugged him. Dmitri stepped between them and grappled for their arms. The scuffle neared Tess, and she scuttled backward, hand clutching her knife beneath her cloak.
The movement brought them all up short, as if it had suddenly reminded them of her presence. Dmitri now had both of Leotich’s wrists in his hands. “Sometimes I don’t know what I brought you for.” His voice was tight with contempt.
Leotich glared at him, pulling back. “We could at least split up. One to check out her story, the other to go on.”
Dmitri let him go with a snort of disgust. “Splitting up is the stupidest thing a jahar can do. We’ll catch him. Now get back to your horse.” However nondescript a man he might appear, he had command. Leotich sulked away. “So.” He let his gaze come to rest on Vasil, and Tess could not interpret the expression with which he viewed the younger man. Vasil met his gaze without shame, but it was obvious that the younger man was still angry. “So, Vasil,” Dmitri continued, “I believe it was agreed that you might ride with my jahar if you kept your grievances to yourself.”
“It will not happen again.”
“Well, then, can you make her understand that we mean her no harm?”
Vasil glanced at Tess and lowered his eyes, a lock of pale hair falling carelessly across his cheek. Tess wondered, quite at random, what it would be like to push that lock of hair aside, what he, the sum of his particular pleasing parts, would be like as a lover. Lord, she was beginning to think like a jaran woman! He took one tentative step toward her.
“Go away! Go away!” she cried, shrinking back.
Vasil shrugged and looked at Dmitri.
“So be it. At least we can track Bakhtiian now. Come on.” Dmitri turned away and walked back to the jahar. Vasil hesitated. He removed a necklace from around his neck and, crouching, laid it on the ground as slowly as if she were a wild animal.
“For you,” he said in Rhuian. He mounted and they all left, riding back the way they had come, northeast, back toward the temple.
Her heart beat as hard as if she had been running all this time instead of talking. When they disappeared from view, she sank back on her heels. All of her breath gusted out. Her hand still gripped the knife. After a bit, she uncurled her fingers and sheathed it. They would never meet with Doroskayev, and suddenly she felt glad that the Chapalii had killed him. She moved forward and picked up the necklace, draping it across her palm, amberlike stones strung on bronze links. It lay cool and smooth in her hand. Rare. She smiled. A gift from a renegade.
“Although,” she said aloud, “I suppose that depends on your point of view.”
Then she realized that she was still half-naked, and that Bakhtiian was hidden somewhere behind her. She got up hastily and went back to her clothing. It was dry enough. She felt like an idiot, shielding herself with a tree trunk, wrestling her trousers and tunic on under her cloak, but at last she was dressed and could venture out without embarrassment. The grass by the water hole, where she knelt to drink, was brilliantly green, short and slippery and cool to the touch. Last night, she thought, smiling, it had seemed warm. The shifting leaves made patterns of light on her arms. She washed her face, put on her jewelry, and laced on her boots. She hesitated. What if they returned? She glanced across the copse of trees but she saw no sign of Bakhtiian. Surely he’d chosen to be as cautious as she had. Adjusting her tunic and her weapons, she hiked to the top of the rise.
The sun beat warmly on her face. At the top, she surveyed the plains around her. There, in the distance, riding northeast, was the enemy jahar. Out on the flat beyond she saw no sign at all of Bakhtiian’s jahar. She seated herself on an outcropping of rock and waited, watching, until the enemy jahar vanished entirely from her sight. Then she walked down again.
Halfway down, she spied movement. Bakhtiian appeared, leading out the two horses. He saddled Myshla, and she reached him as he finished the last cinch and turned to saddle his own horse.
He looked up as she approached, pausing with one hand on the saddle. “By the gods, that was Dmitri Mikhailov’s jahar.”
“You should be furious,” said Tess, trying to sound contrite when she really felt like grinning. “I took a great chance.”
“There are no chances.” He favored her again with th
at unreadable look. “You succeed or you fail. Battles are not won by men who refuse to take risks.” It was quiet. Only the rustle of an animal in the undergrowth disturbed the sighing of the wind through the leaves. He returned to cinching up the saddle, the tarpan patient under his hands.
“Do you know, Bakhtiian, they were all good men.”
He glanced at her. “How do you mean?”
“They were all modest.” Now she grinned. She simply could not resist the urge.
His head tilted to one side and one eye narrowed, giving him a quizzical look. “Do you mean you—” He straightened, putting his hands on his hips. “The cloak, the clothes, a female alone. You did it all on purpose. You meant all along to embarrass them.” He burst out laughing, full laughter, without restraint and yet not uncontrolled. Tess suddenly felt extremely flattered. He stopped laughing and favored her with a smile. “Gods, you’re a dangerous woman. Using our own customs against us.”
“No more dangerous than you, Bakhtiian.”
“Perhaps.” He finished with his horse while she packed up her saddlebags and tied her belongings on to Myshla. “So they’re going back to the temple.”
“How did you know?”
“I deduced it.” He grinned. “Penance, indeed. I was also close enough to hear.”
“I never saw you!”
He blinked, guileless. “You weren’t supposed to. Do I really speak Rhuian like a native?”
“You have an accent,” she admitted, “but you speak Rhuian very, very well.”
“Thank you,” he said, and she thought the comment sincere. “We should go.” But he paused with one hand on the saddle. “Vasil left something for you.”
“Do you know them all? All the men who are riding against you?”
“Not all of them. Just the important ones, the ones whose grudge against me is so deep that they will not give it up unless they are dead.” He waited.
She took off the necklace and handed it to him. He looked almost discomposed as he took it from her.
“This is precious.” He turned the stones over in his hands, slipped them through his fingers as if their touch communicated some message to him. “Very rare. The stone comes from a princedom south of Jeds, and it is crafted by a master jewel-smith in the Tradesmen’s Quarter.”
“In Jeds? How would a jahar rider get a necklace from Jeds?”
But Bakhtiian’s face had shuttered, and he gave her back the necklace without a word and mounted his horse. “We must go.” He rode off without waiting for her, and she hastened to follow. They paused at the crest to gaze north and south, but there was no sign of men or horses, only the smooth, golden flow of grass spreading out on all sides. Tess gazed, watching ripples of wind stir the blanketing gold, and she felt—happy. Somehow, somewhere, she had developed an affection for this peculiarly same yet diverse land. Some movement of Bakhtiian’s made her glance at him. He was watching her. When she met his gaze, he did not look away, but stranger still, he seemed, for an instant, shy.
“Will you call me Ilya?” His hands lay still on his horse’s neck. His voice sounded as studied and calm as ever. She might have hallucinated that glimpse of shyness.
“If you will call me Tess.”
“Perhaps—” He hesitated again, slowly put out a hand. “Clasp friends?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“It is a mark of friendship. I give my honor into your hands, and you may call on it if you are in need. And your honor into my hands, the same. But it is not a gift to be lightly given or lightly used.”
“No,” she breathed, staring at him. Here, now, he was asking her to be not only his friend but his equal. “Of course.” Her voice shook slightly. “Of course I will clasp friends with you. Ilya.” She took his hand in hers.
“I am honored. Tess.”
By evening, when they caught up with the others, she felt so pleased with herself that she engaged Cha Ishii in the meaningless, polite, but deviously complex formalities of Chapalii dinner conversation just to test her adroitness. When she tired of that, she collected her blankets and sat out alone, just breathing in the cool air and watching the moon. Behind she could hear the riders laughing, pausing, and laughing again as Bakhtiian told the story of her encounter, no doubt embellishing it with a great deal of exaggeration. After a bit they quieted, and she guessed that a serious council was taking place.
Sometime later Fedya found her. “Tess.” He chuckled. “You’re a marvel.” She could see only the pale oval of his face in the moonlight as he settled down to sit beside her. The night bled all color from his shirt. “To fool Mikhailov. That is the marvel.”
“Fedya, how well does Bakhtiian know these men?”
He shrugged. “Mikhailov has been riding against Ilya for years.”
“What will they do next?”
He shrugged again, but it was a fatalistic gesture this time. “They’ll find out you sent them wrong. We have to prepare.”
An insect ran up her hand. She started, shuddering, and shook it off. “Prepare for what?” But even as she said it, she knew what he would reply. If Bakhtiian respected Mikhailov so much, then any battle against him would not fall out as easily as that night skirmish against Doroskayev and his men had. People died in real battles.
“They outnumber us, but we know where they are. We’ll choose the ground and ambush them.” Perhaps Fedya felt her shiver, though they were not touching. He put his hand on hers, a comforting gesture, but his skin felt cold. “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “You’ll be safe. I promise it.”
“Safe,” she murmured, and she kissed him, wanting more comfort than that.
Chapter Thirteen
“Courage minimizes difficulties.”
—DEMOCRITUS OF ABDERA
THEY RODE FOR SIX DAYS, until they came to a range of rugged hills that severed the flat monotony of the plains like a knife. Here they halted, setting up the jahar’s tents at the mouth of a canyon and the Chapalii tents what Tess judged to be about a kilometer away in a sheltered hollow. For two nights the riders slept in their tents. On the third, they slept in the scrub. Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, Fedya asked Tess if she would like to go hunting, and Tess, feeling nervous and jumpy, and knowing full well that she had seen no game in these hills, understood the invitation to be a smoke screen for his real intentions. She strapped on her quiver and rode out with him.
Their trail soon led to a rocky overhang close by, but well-hidden from, the Chapalii camp. Bushes and vines screened off the entrance from the casual eye. He pushed them aside and, ducking under the overhanging lip, she went in. Light filtered through the leaves, dappling the bed of moss and grass he had laid for them on the earth. The gesture was so touching and so intimate that she felt embarrassed suddenly, afraid that her feelings for him—tenderness and liking crossed with simple desire—might prove inadequate for his toward her. What if he loved her? She halted on her knees beside the little bed, hands buried in soft moss, knowing that she could never really love him, not as more than a friend and bedmate, not with her entire being. She was not sure anymore if she could love anyone in that way, the way she had thought she had loved Jacques.
Fedya stood just behind her. He laid a hand tenderly on her shoulder. “I made you a song, Anya,” he said softly, and then he chuckled, because he had just called her by his wife’s name. “Forgive me, Tess. I have not made a song since she died.”
Tess caught her breath, relieved and touched at the same time. “I am honored, Fedya,” she said, equally softly, and she felt a sudden warmth toward him, unrelated to their friendship, to their lovemaking, because that inadvertent slip made the truth so evident that she could not believe she had not seen it until now: she had never loved Jacques, just as he had never loved her. She had been infatuated with him, certainly, but love—Fedya had loved his wife. She did not feel diminished because he loved Anya still, though his Anya was dead and he stood here with a different woman. “I hope you will sing it fo
r me.”
“For what other reason would I make it, if not to sing it for you?” He knelt across from her, head slightly bowed by the slope of the overhang, and he sang. It was a song about the legendary dyan Yuri Sakhalin who, wounded unto death, had come to beg healing from the daughter of the sun.
Tess stretched out and leaned on her elbows, cushioned by the moss and his blanket, and watched him, transfixed. Singing, he was entirely with her and yet entirely away from her, so that she could really look at him, at his face, his shock of pale hair and the curve of his mouth, the elaborate design of birds embroidered into the sleeves and collar of his shirt, the fine spiraling patterns worked into his leather belt, his saber, lying parallel to his legs where he sat. In a more luxurious land he would have tended to plumpness, but this land had made him lean and tough, hardened with the riding. Yet his voice was sweet, as fragile as a budding flower. And when he finished, silence lay on him as naturally as song had.
“It’s beautiful, Fedya,” she said, a little in awe. “Thank you.” She kissed him.
“Remember it. Remember this place.”
Tess let her face slide in against his neck. His hair brushed her eyes. “He’s chosen this place for the ambush,” she said, because for four days no one, not even Yuri, had spoken a word to her about fighting.
He slipped his hand down to her back, holding her against him. “The plains are wide, but when men travel on a set path, they are very small, indeed.” His fingers found her waist and explored it to the clasp of her belt.
“Too small to run?” His hair smelled of grass. “Too small to avoid—your pursuer?”
“Tess,” he said. “There are better things to think of, this night, than war and death.”
She woke with a start. Someone in her dream had been calling her name insistently, unable to reach her.
“Tess. Tess.” The voice was wrong. That voice and her name did not belong together in waking life. Therefore, she was still asleep. But as she opened her eyes, she knew the voice for Bakhtiian’s. She reached out her hand—