The Novels of the Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  Fedya was gone.

  “Tess.”

  Light infiltrated their bower. It had been dark when she had fallen asleep. Her clothes lay in a heap at her feet, so tangled that she had to pull them apart and set them in a neat row before she could put them on. Her hands shook. She tried to tuck in her shirt with one hand and comb her hair with the other, gave it up, and tucked her trousers into her boots instead. Crawling on her hands and knees to the entrance, pushing through leaves, untangling a vine from her hair, she stood up just outside. His back was to her.

  “Ilya?” Morning sun shone brightly in her eyes. She had to squint, and still she could not make him out clearly. He turned. She saw, with a shock, the streak of blood down his face, and then, like a rush of sick trembling, she realized that it was not his blood at all but someone else’s. “The blood,” she gasped.

  His hand lifted and explored his cheek. He looked surprised, as if he had not noticed it before. “I must have been too close when I killed him,” he said conversationally. His body was tense with controlled energy: nervousness or perhaps exhilaration. She shuddered. What had he said?

  “Killed who?” Her hand rose to touch, on her own face, the area the blood covered on his.

  “I don’t know,” he said cheerfully. “He was about to gut Niko. By the gods, woman, I couldn’t let a man do that to my oldest friend.” He sat down abruptly and his expression changed so completely that it frightened her. “Listen, Tess. I have to tell you something.”

  The world was silent, waiting on his words. They were too far from the jahar camp, even from the Chapalii camp, to hear—anything—and there was not even wind to rustle the grass. The sun simply shone, painfully bright as it crested the hills. “What happened? Damn it. Tell me.”

  “No one told—He didn’t—Oh, gods.” He ripped up a handful of grass and wiped the blood from his cheek. Pale streaks remained, striping his skin.

  Tess knew what had happened. She hadn’t even said good night to Yuri yesterday afternoon; she’d been in such a hurry to go off with Fedya—She couldn’t even picture where she’d left him, last seen him. She sank down onto her knees.

  “Who was killed?” she whispered. She almost reached out to touch him.

  He looked away, troubled.

  “Ilya,” she said, his name strange on her lips.

  “Fedya.”

  Tess merely stared at him, caught between relief and disbelief. She had been with Fedya only a few hours past; he was simply gone away for a bit. But Yuri—All her breath sighed out of her and she slumped forward, catching herself on her hands.

  “Yuri is alive? Where is he? I want to see him.” Fright made her childish. She was horrified that she had slept while blood was shed.

  “You can’t see him.”

  “Why not? Why not! He’s dead. Just tell me he’s dead!”

  “Don’t go hysterical on me.” His voice shook and he leaned toward her, one hand jerking out as if to steady her.

  She drew back. “I never faint. Where is Yuri?”

  “I sent him with Niko to help the khepelli break their camp and move out. We must travel as far from here as possible today.”

  “Let me go to him.”

  “Yes. But after you come with me.”

  She simply sat, unable to absorb the tone of his voice—implacable or entreating, she could not tell. He frowned, angry or impatient, and took hold of her arm and pulled her to her feet. A kind of haze descended on her. She let him lead her, as if he were afraid she would bolt given the chance, and they walked and walked, grass dragging at their boots. He talked as they went, his voice a level monotone.

  “Seven of our riders were injured, but all will live. Eight of the horses, but we’ll have to kill three of them, may the gods grant them peace. Six of Mikhailov’s men I know we killed, and at least twelve were hurt, perhaps more. It isn’t that we’re such better fighters, even though they outnumbered us. We had the advantage. I chose the ground carefully and we ambushed them, forced them to split into two groups. Vasil…The one who gave you the necklace fought well. He got away unhurt.”

  He led her down to a place she never had any clear idea of, only glimpses: three men building a fire, the bittersweet smell of ulyan sifting into the air; a bird hovering high above, wings unfolded in some updraft; a dead horse being flayed and its flesh cut into strips for provisions; and beyond it—

  “Who was killed?” She would have run, but Bakhtiian held her arm and she knew, anyway, who had been killed. In a way, she had known even before he told her. Bakhtiian waited until they were close to the body before he let her go.

  She took one step, and a second, and then stopped. Fedya. A blanket lay over him, stained reddish-brown at the chest. He could have been asleep; there was nothing but peace in his face. He looked young, relaxed, unguarded. She moved to kneel by him and glanced up.

  They were all turning away, averting their faces, offering her privacy for her grief as the only consolation they could give. Everyone had known, everyone. Yuri had lied to her when he said that no one knew. He had lied to spare her, perhaps to spare Fedya, though surely Fedya had had no illusions about the secrecy of their affair. Lord, had she really thought such a thing could be kept secret?

  She stared at his quiet face, and she reached out to touch, briefly, his slack body. She smelled blood and grass, that was all. She should have stayed with the tribe, should have stayed on Earth. And she was afraid because as she gazed at the dead man she felt no grief for him, torn so abruptly and horribly from life, only affection for what he had given her, as if her living, her memory of him, made up for his death. Why had he sung her that beautiful song last night of all nights? How could she have slept through the battle, fought so close, paid for so dearly? How could she not have known and acted to prevent it? Surely there was something she could have done.

  “He knew he was going to die,” she said aloud, trying to absolve herself, but all the riders had moved away. She shuddered, drawing her hands in to her chest.

  “There are some who seek release from the burdens of earth.” It was Bakhtiian’s voice, not too close, but low and gentle.

  She stood and turned to him. The tears in her eyes blurred his form. “He was protecting me, wasn’t he?” she demanded, suddenly furious. “He took me out there to make sure I stayed away from the battle.” As if, if he had not, he might still be alive. She walked away from all of them, found her way to the shaded, empty overhang, and wept.

  The sun, bright and silent, viewed the earth from her high seat and found nothing there worth mentioning, not even the stretch of ground where so short a time ago two bands had met and struggled and come to a temporary decision. Now the field of battle lay empty, yet from such a height it looked the same whether peopled by fifty or one.

  Or two. These two were dark and fair, night and day, maturity and youth. They lay without moving on the slope, watching their horses, watching the vacant plain, watching the last flames of the pyre.

  “Ilya?” Vladimir sat up. “Will it storm soon?”

  Bakhtiian did not move. “Yes.”

  “Down from the mountains.” Something lit in the eyes of the younger man. “When will we reach the mountains?”

  “You should be able to work that out for yourself. Forty days.”

  Vladimir took a breath, hesitated. “When we get back to our tribe, would you object if—if I marked Elena?”

  “Why should I object, Vladi?”

  “Why should—?” Vladimir swung his head around so fast that his hair caught for an instant in his eyes. “Don’t be coy, damn you. It’s common knowledge that she makes up to you every chance she gets.”

  “Is it?”

  “You’re laughing at me.” He jumped up and began to pace. “You always laugh at me when I talk about this. I know very well you’ve got no eye for her, but so much is said and—and it’s true I’ve nothing to bring her, being an orphan—and I never know what she thinks, and the gods know I want your approval.” He s
topped in front of Bakhtiian.

  “Vladi, it isn’t my approval you need. You’d best discuss this with my aunt. Or Niko’s wife, perhaps.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant. If you worry a bit more about what people are saying or thinking about you, then you’ll be almost as unsure of yourself as I was at your age. In this matter, my opinion isn’t important.”

  “It is to me…” Vladimir’s comment trailed off into silence. He sat down.

  “Vladi, who do you suppose built that temple?” Ilya picked a blade of grass and chewed at it halfheartedly, gazing out over the plain, half watching, half waiting.

  “I don’t know. The gods did.”

  “I don’t think the gods build in that manner.” He traced the curve of his lips with the rough, broken end of the stem. “It must have been long ago. What people could they have been?”

  “What were the khaja doing so far out on the plain?”

  Bakhtiian curled the stem around one finger and snapped the finger up, splitting the fibers. “I was also wondering that.” He touched his tongue to the moisture left on his finger. “I wonder who built the shrine.”

  “Which shrine?”

  “The shrine of Morava. I wonder who she thinks built it.”

  Vladimir grimaced. “I’m glad I don’t have to go to this Uynervirsite in Jheds that everyone talks about. It’s madness, wondering so much.”

  “It might be, at that,” said Ilya, sitting straighter and staring at something in the distance. “But don’t be so sure you won’t have to go.”

  “Ilya! You wouldn’t. Here I’ve finally got a place and—oh, damn you. I never know when you’re joking. Is that Yuri and Niko? Why did you tell the others to send them back?”

  Ilya stood and walked down the slope to meet them. They pulled up and dismounted, the horses snuffling and blowing.

  “Mikhailov’s jahar?” asked Niko.

  “Josef and Kirill are still tracking them. Tasha brought me the last report. I think we’re rid of them. For now.”

  Yuri had been looking about. “Ilya, you’ve got Myshla. Where is Tess?”

  “Get her and bring her to the new camp. She’s up—” He motioned.

  “I know.” Yuri led his horse over to Myshla and then, taking both leads in his hands, walked away up into the hills.

  “She’s been up there all this time?” Niko demanded. “After she saw Fedya? Damn it, Ilya! You know better. Why didn’t you go up?”

  Bakhtiian looked up at the sky, down at the ground, and, finally, out of the corners of his eyes at the old man. “Because I’m a damned coward.”

  “Ilya.”

  Bakhtiian colored, turning quickly to walk over to Vladimir. “Ah, thank you, Vladi.” He took the reins Vladimir offered him. “Shall we go?”

  Tess watched silently as Yuri left the horses below and climbed the rocky slope. She did not rise as he reached her, but when, wordlessly, he put out a hand, she gave him hers and let him pull her to her feet. They paused a moment, frozen there.

  “Oh, Tess,” he said, the barest whisper, but his eyes held a grief surely greater than her own. She turned in to him, hugged him for a timeless while. He was alive, he was here with her, solid and comforting. She did not want to think, but her thoughts wound around viciously nonetheless: what if she had been given the choice, to save Yuri or Fedya? Was it wrong of her to be glad that Yuri was alive? Not glad that Fedya was dead, never that, but she could not help but feel that her preference for Yuri, given the inevitability of the death of someone she cared for, had somehow influenced the outcome.

  Moisture cooled her face. She pulled back to look at him; tears wet his cheeks. He wiped at them quickly, the movement made jerky by his embarrassment. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said in a low voice that caught even as he spoke.

  “Oh, Yuri, I’m sorry. You knew him better than I did.”

  He shook his head, unable to reply. In the sun, his hair had the same dull gold cast as the grass.

  His sorrow so eclipsed hers as to make her ashamed, and doubly ashamed that where she might be allowed her grief, he must hide his. “Oh, God,” she said, directing her shame into self-loathing, “I slept through it. How can anyone sleep while someone else dies?”

  “Gods. Tess. I hope you never see battle.”

  “No. I’d rather have seen it. He was here, and then I woke up, and he’ll never come back. I don’t want to live like that. I want to see the things affecting me.”

  “You don’t want to see that.”

  But I do, she thought, but she did not say it. Yuri’s face was white and strained. Below, Myshla pawed restlessly at the ground and pulled at the tether. “Where is everyone else?” she asked.

  “They’ve gone on to the new camp.”

  “Do you mean Bakhtiian has entrusted me to you?”

  He rallied. “Just for the afternoon, dear Sister. And we’ve got a long ride to camp. If we don’t get there before dark, Bakhtiian will skin me and use my hide for a tent.”

  “How revolting, Yuri. And what did the Chapalii think of all this?”

  He shrugged, clearly not much interested in the Chapalii. “Lord Ishii is as cold as a stone in winter. He’s never the least bit afraid. But the younger one, Garii—he offered to Niko to help him tend the wounded.”

  “Garii offered to help tend the wounded?”

  Yuri nodded.

  “And Ishii did not forbid it?”

  “Why should he forbid it, Tess? If Garii has some knowledge of healing…Any man would do the same.”

  “Any man,” Tess muttered under her breath, wondering what game Garii was playing now. “Come on.” She took two steps down the slope, heading for the horses.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked when she paused.

  “Wait.” She hesitated, turning back to regard the entrance to the overhang. With resolve, she crawled back inside where the blanket still lay. She brought it back out, shook it as Yuri stared, and rolled it up neatly. “It’s Fedya’s blanket,” she said at last, when he still did not speak.

  “He has a sister,” he said finally.

  A sister who would mourn him. A sister who did not even know yet that he was dead. Tears filled her eyes, and she wiped at them impatiently, as if that would make them stop.

  Yuri took her hand. “Come, Tess,” he said softly. They went down together.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “The best men choose one thing above all else: everlasting fame among mortal men.”

  —HERACLEITUS OF EPHESUS

  IF THEY TREATED TESS more and more like one of their own, she scarcely noticed it because it seemed to flow naturally from her time among them. The ways of the jaran lay in her hands: she examined each one and let it settle within her until her strange hybrid of customs grew so complex and interwoven that, at odd moments, she forgot where one left off and the other began. The days removed her from Fedya’s death; he became increasingly the inhabitant of a sequestered dream.

  For months now she had become accustomed to the swell and flow of the plain, a grand monotony alleviated by hills and the occasional watercourse slicing through it. But the plains do not continue forever, just as happiness and sorrow both eventually come to an end. Their first hint of the highlands was a rough stretch of land pitted with gorges and rugged valleys that were barren of cover and composed of rock as stubborn and sharp and unyielding as a saint. The jaran playfully called it krinye-tom, the little mountains; Tess called it hell and wondered what the big mountains were like.

  They slowed their pace to a crawl and ranged wide to find enough fodder for the horses. The dirt clung to Tess. The heat baked the walls of hard stone, and sweat plastered her shirt to her back. The men veiled their heads in cloth to protect themselves from the sun. Tess’s scalp itched, but she did not dare undo her braided hair, having no water to wash it in. The horses got the greatest share of the water. Was there a point past which one could not become clean again? She dreamed of sh
owers. At least the others looked as filthy as she felt, and they joked about it constantly, liking it as little as she did. Only the Chapalii, who did not appear to sweat at all, appeared unaffected; Tess knew that this heat was doubtless a relief to them, being closer to their natural climate.

  At long last, they came out onto the watershed of the mountains, grass and shrubs and a scattering of trees on level land. Not a lush land, by any means—that would be far far south, across the great range—but a breeze cooled her cheeks and her shirt dried. They came to an isolated khaja village, and Bakhtiian traded gold trinkets and two tarpans for grain.

  Two days’ ride out from the village, Bakhtiian called an entire day’s halt when they came to a deep-bedded stream. Tess found a pool upstream from the horses, stripped, and washed herself and her hair—that twice—and every piece of clothing in her possession, for the dirt had contaminated even the saddlebags. Surely this stream of all streams was blessed by the gods, for the clearness of its water and the lazy trickle of its flow. She spread her damp blanket over a smooth-surfaced rock and, naked, stretched out on it to dry.

  Pulling her mirror case free of her gear, she undid its clasps and slid the mirror out. Her face surprised her, she had not seen it in so long: the blunt chin, the high cheekbones, the deep green of her eyes. Not a bad face, after all, though the green eyes seemed out of place; she kept thinking they ought to be blue or brown. She had grown lean. Streaks of gold lightened her hair. Her hands were strong. She felt—content.

  Except for Charles. Somewhere, Charles was worrying about her, searching for her. At least she was headed in the right direction. Yet at this moment, Jeds seemed like a goal too distant to agonize over. Turning over to let her back dry, she rested her chin on her laced fingers and stared at the rippling water. Light sparked off it, ever-changing, a constant, inexorable flux.

  Her privacy was assured, a privilege, not a prison, conferred on her because she was female, and that was a thing she had never known on Earth, where locked doors bought privacy and privacy could be violated by crime or, for those unlucky enough to be related to the most influential human in the Chapalii Empire, by the media and the ubiquitous Protocol Office. Only the most degraded of outcasts would assault her here and, as for the Chapalii, she outranked them. In this land, a person’s fortune could be measured in sun and sweet wind and kinship with other people. Material possessions became, in the end, a burden; what you possessed of the spirit was far more valuable. Gloom was disdained: in a world of fighters it was a hindrance; to a people beside whom freedom ran like a hound, it was absurd.