by Kate Elliott
She woke briefly when he left her, woke enough to struggle to her feet and cross to the corral, to check the horses, to relieve herself. The gouge on Myshla’s leg was swollen, huge. What if they had to kill her? Terrified, Tess collapsed back onto the couch, exhausted, cold and hot by turns, and slept. When she woke again at Ilya’s return he had barely gotten settled before she sat up.
“Can’t we get rid of these blankets?” The cold air caressed her cheeks. She pushed the blankets away and got to her knees.
He gripped her arm and stopped her from rising. “You’ve got a fever. Here, drink.”
Her mouth was dry, her lips, her hands. The light hurt her eyes and made her temples ache. She drank eagerly, until he took the waterskin from her.
“Lie down.”
“I’m hot. Why do I need blankets?”
“To burn your fever away.”
“Who needs a fire?” she muttered, but she lay down and he tucked the blankets in around them. “Just stick my arm in kindling and it’ll ignite. I hope I’m not being incoherent. How is your knee?”
“Rest is the best cure. I slept all night.”
“Don’t you usually?”
“Not often,” he replied cryptically. He crossed his arms tight against his chest, an inoffensive barrier between them.
“I feel terrible. Tell me a story.”
He laughed softly. “To make you fall asleep?”
“Yes. Rest is the best cure. I heard that once from a very warm man—I mean a very wise man.”
One of his hands moved, bunching into a fist. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Tess giggled. “Freudian slip,” she said in Anglais.
“What does that mean?”
“Can’t explain. It’s a medical term. What about Vlatagrebi?” A throb began between her eyes.
“Well,” said Bakhtiian briskly. “If only Josef was here, but I’ll do my best.”
Partway through the story she fell asleep. She woke again, hot and aching. Pain lanced her eyes. Her pulse pounded incessantly through her ears. He gave her more water. She went back to sleep.
To wake again. And again. She was damp with sweat. She tossed fitfully, aching and miserable. He told her more of the story, or perhaps it was a different story, she could not be sure. The fire burned, as fitful as she was.
Day came, and with it light. Night followed. Finally the fever broke. She dozed calmly, waking at last when Bakhtiian moved.
“What happened?” She sat up. The unaccustomed light made her blink. She felt light-headed and tired but some how cleansed. Then, seeing him standing, holding on to his walking stick, she rubbed her eyes. “What are you doing? Your knee.”
“Is better. Possibly. I’m going outside.”
“But the storm—”
“Cousin, we’ve been here a night and a day and a night, and most of this day. The storm has passed down the mountain. I expect we can leave in the morning.”
Tess slowly unwound herself from the confusion of waking and looked up at him. “But your knee—Myshla! How is Myshla?”
“Still tender, but she’s putting weight on the leg. She’ll do. I need some fresh air and a chance to look at the weather. We also need more water. And I thought—” He hesitated. He had color in his face again, and this time she thought most of it natural. “I thought you might like some privacy to attend to yourself.”
It was said so demurely that she had to laugh. “Your manners are impeccable, Bakhtiian,” she said in Rhuian. “You have my permission to go.”
After attending to herself and fussing over Myshla, she walked outside to comb her hair and to set the blankets out to air. She felt weak but not terribly so. A wind rose up from the plains, a touch of late-summer warmth in it. Sitting on a terraced boulder, she sang a jaran song. The sun warmed her hair and her face. Bakhtiian hobbled into view and sank down beside her on the boulder.
“You finally had such nice color in your face,” she said, “but it’s all gone again.”
“It really is better. Can you take the horses out?” She nodded. “But do it quickly. There isn’t much light left.”
“Bakhtiian. Everything you say is true. Doesn’t it wear on you?”
He stood up. “Cousin,” he said, reserved, “I am not quite so good-natured as you think I might be.”
“But, Cousin, I have hope that you could be,” she said, laughing at him, and beat a hasty retreat to the horses.
She got back before the sun set, stabled the horses in their corner, and sat down by Bakhtiian’s feet. “I couldn’t find anything dry for the fire. Lord, I’m tired. I’m starving.”
“We’ll eat the last of the meat tonight.” He parceled it out. “The weather should hold for two days yet. We’ll catch the jahar by then.”
“Can you ride?”
“I have to ride or we’ll never get out of here.”
“Well,” said Tess, too cheerfully. “I remember sleeping in my brother’s bed in Jeds when there were thunderstorms.”
“Oh, yes. I shared a tent with Natalia for many years.”
With these expressions of sibling felicity, they felt able to resume the sleeping arrangements of the previous nights. In the morning, she saddled Kriye and Bakhtiian’s remount. They were out of the valley and down to the fork by mid-morning.
Chapter Nineteen
“It is not possible to step into the same river twice.”
—HERACLEITUS OF EPHESUS
AT THE FORK, BAKHTIIAN dismounted and rested his leg, his back against the thick-grained red rock, his bad knee propped upon the peeling trunk of the dead shrub. His breathing was shallow, but after a bit he mounted by himself and they went on. They emerged onto the plateau unexpectedly, rounding a corner into the midst of short, yellow grass. Behind rose the mountains. On the other three sides, only sky.
Tess turned to smile at Bakhtiian, blushing when she found his eyes on her. If he could still pass for an attractive man in her eyes after the past four days, as disheveled and worn as he was, with lines of pain enduring around his eyes and mouth, then she had only herself to blame. She remembered the feel of his face brushing her hair, his arm tightening around her—he had been asleep.
Kriye shied. Tess, calming him, felt hardly any transition from one state to the next as he settled.
“You’re becoming a good rider,” said Bakhtiian.
“Thank you.”
“You have a hand for them. Your little mare is fond of you.” He glanced back at Myshla as they rode out onto the plateau. His left hand gripped the pommel, white-knuckled. “She’s a beautiful animal. Are you fond of her?”
Tess was inordinately fond of Myshla, a fondness intensified by Myshla’s recognition that she, Tess, was her particular friend. But Tess thought of Jeds and looked away. “I am not in the habit,” she said evenly, “of becoming fond of things I will shortly have to part from.”
Silence, except for the constant drag of wind in grass.
“I understand you very well,” said Bakhtiian finally.
There was no more conversation. Late in the afternoon they agreed to camp, halting at a brush-lined stream.
“It’s much milder tonight,” said Tess as she unsaddled Kriye.
“Yes. Here are your blankets.”
She did not sleep very well, but perhaps that was because the ground was hard. She woke at dawn, stiff. Bakhtiian was already awake, saddling Kriye, forced to stand very curiously in order to favor his injured leg.
“I’ll saddle the horses,” said Tess, rolling up her blankets. He did not answer. She made a face at his back and went to wash in the stream. When she got back, he had saddled her remount as well. They mounted without speaking and rode on. Soon afterward they found a pyramid of flat-sided rocks, a khoen, at the crest of a rise.
“That’s ours!”
Bakhtiian merely nodded. At midday they spotted a rider in red and black atop a far rise, and the rider saw them. It was Kirill. He cantered up and pulled his horse ar
ound to walk with theirs.
“I rescue you again, my heart.” He winked at her and flamboyantly blew her a kiss. Kriye waltzed away from the sudden movement, but Tess reined him back.
“You’re a shocking flirt,” she said, laughing.
“Your manners, Kirill,” said Bakhtiian. “Where are the others?”
Kirill grinned slyly at Tess and pulled his chin: old gray-beard. Tess giggled.
“Well?”
“Against the hills,” said Kirill hastily. “How did you hurt your leg?”
Bakhtiian briefly described the nature and getting of the injury.
“Oh. So it was an injury. We thought—” He faltered. Tess, twisting one of her bracelets, stared at her wrist. Bakhtiian turned his head to stare directly at the younger man. “Ah, yes,” Kirill finished quickly. “We thought you had gotten into trouble.”
“I don’t know what else would have kept us out in such weather,” said Bakhtiian.
Kirill caught Tess’s eye and mouthed the words, “I do.”
Tess coughed, hiding her laughter, and then gave Kirill an abbreviated version of the last several days. Kirill engaged her in a lively discussion of how best to keep unconscious men on horses. Bakhtiian remained majestically silent.
“But Kirill, even tied to the saddle—Look! There it is!” She broke away from her two companions, Kriye stretching out into a gallop. The men gathered in the camp scattered, laughing, at her precipitous entrance. She rode almost through the camp before she got Kriye stopped. At first she was besieged by the curious, but Yuri finally escorted her away so that she could wash and change. Later, she walked with Yuri up the narrow valley at the mouth of which they were camped.
Tess took in a breath of cool air and pushed a branch away from her face. The sun shone overhead, though it was not a particularly warm day. “You wouldn’t know, with the weather as it is now, that we almost froze to death up there.”
“The worst of the storm went round us, but it was cold, and it rained. We had five fires. Tess.” He stopped at the foot of a shallow escarpment. Tufts of coarse grass dangled from its lip above his head. “How did you manage not to freeze to death? I had your tent. Ilya mentioned a fire, but…”
She blushed. “We managed,” she said stiffly.
Yuri grinned. “How like Ilya you sound, Sister. He said exactly the same thing, and in much the same voice. Do you know, when you didn’t come in that first night, we all assumed that the two of you had—”
“Don’t be a fool, Yuri. Bakhtiian was injured.”
“I rather liked the idea myself.”
“Then you can learn to dislike it.” She stepped sharply away from him, but the loose gravel, damp from rain, slipped away from under her feet. She slid down, one leg out, and had to throw an arm back to catch herself. Poised ungracefully on all fours, almost like some crustacean, she lowered herself to sit on the ground. Her frown dissolved and she laughed. “Gods, I’ve been in a bad temper these past few days. Listen, Yuri. If you tell anyone else, I’ll skin you alive.”
“I won’t!” He collapsed backward to sit beside her.
“We had to share the blankets and the cloak.”
“Oh,” said Yuri wisely, “you slept together for warmth. That probably did save you. I suppose, with his knee like that, you couldn’t have—”
“Yuri!”
“I’m just teasing.”
“Then stop teasing.”
“Why? Was it that uncomfortable?”
“It was too damned comfortable!” She glanced around, suddenly conscious of the cool quiet of the afternoon and the heated loudness of her voice. There was a pause, as if to let her words dissipate into the calm.
“Do you know what I think?” said Yuri finally.
“I won’t.”
“Your words say you do not want him, but everything else, your face and your tone and the way you put your words together, says that you do.”
“No.”
“You lay with Fedya.”
“Fedya never demanded anything. We shared—what we wanted to share, nothing more than that. More like friends than like lovers.”
“Why can’t you do that with Ilya?”
“Yuri, do you really suppose that it would be that easy with Ilya?”
He regarded her thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Tess. It depends on what Ilya wants.”
And what if Ilya decided that he wanted Jeds? But she could not say it aloud for fear of hurting Yuri’s feelings. “It depends on what I want, and I don’t want him. Don’t look at me like that. Yes, I’ll admit I find him attractive. I’ll even admit he annoys me frequently, which I suppose is a bad sign. But all other things aside—I’m leaving.”
He laid a hand on her arm. “I’d forgotten.”
She scooped up a handful of pebbles and let them dribble in ones and twos through her fingers. They landed on the other stones in a shower of snaps. “I have to return to Jeds.”
“Do you want to?”
She stared at the ground. A single, fine strand of her hair was wound among the pebbles like a snake. “I have a duty to my brother. He must be worrying about me. He doesn’t know where I am. I have to go back. Oh, let’s talk about something else.”
“We were talking about you and Ilya before.”
“Were we? You see, I’ve already forgotten. Yuri, Fedya loved his wife, and yet I always felt that it was somehow shameful that he did. Don’t jaran believe in love?”
“Fedya never gave up his grief, Tess. There is a difference. Of course jaran love. Niko and his wife are as devoted as the rain and the grass. Mikhal loves Sonia.”
“What about Sonia?”
“Frankly, I think the attachment is stronger on his side. Oh, she’s fond enough of him, and happy, but when she was younger, before Mikhal marked her, I think she lost her heart to a rider from another tribe.”
“Why didn’t he marry her?”
“I heard that two years later he went off with the arenabekh. Some men dislike women that much. Some men love only other men. Some—I don’t know why the others go. I’d never willingly give up the chance to marry.”
“Why, Yuri, do you have anyone in mind?” To her surprise, he blushed. “You do! Who is it?”
With terribly casual nonchalance, he palmed a rock and flipped it up into the brush above them. The buzz of an unseen insect stopped, resuming a moment later. “Well. Maybe. Perhaps I’ll mark Konstantina Sakhalin.”
“Konstantina Sakhalin! I didn’t know you’d fallen in love with her. And in such a short time.”
“In love with her? I like her well enough—” He flushed again and could not disguise a satisfied smile. “But, Tess, surely you understand that it would be a good connection for our tribes. Not that I’m so valuable of myself, not like Sevyan and Pavel.”
“Why do you call them valuable? I thought they were important because they’re married to Kira and Stassia. They don’t ride in jahar.”
“Tess!” Yuri blinked, looking astounded. “How can you say so? They’re smiths, and very fine ones, too, for being—well, Sevyan’s only forty, and Pavel’s about Ilya’s age. Mama was overjoyed when Mother Raevsky told her that Sevyan Lensky was interested in Kira. And it was sheer luck that his brother had also taken to the craft and that he and Stassi—” He chuckled. “I was only six but I still remember how Mama and Mother Raevsky and the Elders of both tribes haggled for ten days over the wedding portions. Uncle Yakhov was wild when Mother Raevsky demanded the prize ram from the herds and half the female lambs from the next season. And the rest, which I can’t recall now. But, of course, he saw that Sevyan and Pavel were worth it, when we only had old Vadim Gorelik for smithing, and he never better than a middling smith anyway. And then it helped him in the end, because when Mikhal fell in love with Sonia—oh, years later, of course—Mama simply looked the other way when Misha went to mark her, though he’d nothing really special to bring to the etsana’s tent. No craft, and though he’s got a good hand for the lute, he wasn
’t gifted by the gods for music like Fedya was. And he’s not a remarkably handsome man either.”
“But he’s very good-natured.”
“Yes.”
“But then, Yuri, I don’t mean to sound—”
He laughed. “Why should Mother Sakhalin agree to me? Because I’m Bakhtiian’s cousin. And my mother is etsana. Konstantina will be etsana someday, and I know exactly what is to be expected of an etsana’s husband.”
“Wouldn’t Ilya be the best choice to marry an etsana?”
“Ilya?” He chuckled. “Ilya is exactly the last man any etsana would want to marry. She doesn’t want a husband who will put himself forward, or who will quarrel with whichever cousin or nephew is dyan of her tribe’s jahar. So you see, I am perfect.” He preened a little, to make his point.
Tess laughed and draped an arm around his shoulders. “I always knew you were perfect, Yuri. But then who will Bakhtiian marry, if not an etsana’s daughter?”
“I thought you said you weren’t interested in him.”
“I’m curious, damn you.”
“Tess, Tess, no need to be snappish. How should I know, anyway? Why do you want to know?”
“Well, for one thing, he can’t have children unless he’s married, can he? He might have gotten a child on some woman but he wouldn’t be considered its father.”
“Yes, I remember in Jeds I was surprised how great a fuss those barbarians made over which man got which child on which woman. I only ever had one father, Tess.”
“What if an unmarried girl gets pregnant, or if a child’s mother dies?”