by Kate Elliott
“Anton Veselov has always been kind to me,” he admitted.
“I think you’d do well to cultivate Anton and Arina Veselov. After all, Arina will be etsana someday, not Vera.”
“Yes, and Vera hates her.”
“No doubt. Petya. I think—” He looked up at her, trusting and, as Yuri had said when speaking of Petya’s wife’s family, too handsome for his own good. Tess thought that Petya had probably had things much too easy growing up, with a sweet face like that. He had probably been a gorgeous, indulged child. She took in a breath. “Petya, I think that Vera would respect you more if you took a—a firmer hand with her.” She tried not to wince as she said it, unsure of what ground she was on here in the jaran. “For instance, if you will pardon a sister’s confidence, she hadn’t any right to punish Aleksia Charnov for making up to you.” Petya was silent. “I am sure,” Tess continued, seeing that he was receptive to this elder-sister tone of voice, “that a husband ought to expect the same respect from his wife as she expects from him.”
“It is true,” he said in a low voice, “that a wife has certain obligations to her husband that he may demand if she is unwilling to give them to him freely.”
Tess decided that to inquire into the scope of these obligations would be treading on too thin ice. “Well, then, I think you ought to stand up for yourself. Otherwise she will never forgive you.”
“She may never forgive me whatever I do.”
“That is true. But it’s yourself you have to respect most of all, Petya.”
He smiled, utterly guileless. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. And it wasn’t right, about Aleksia. Anton tried to tell me but I wouldn’t listen. I could have put a stop to it.” This realization hit him with some force, and he stopped speaking.
“Yes,” said Tess, feeling that Petya had as much to absorb as he was capable of for one evening. “It’s so late. Shall we go back?”
They strolled back in good charity with each other, and Petya told her about the pranks he and Yuri had played on the older boys, growing up. He left her at the edge of camp, and she devoutly hoped that he was not so fired up that he would charge straight over to his wife’s tent because she knew very well who was in there with her. Bitch, she said to herself, and wandered out to watch the last coals of the great fire burn themselves down.
A pair of figures had come there before her, and she paused. “Sibirin, he is no longer my son,” Sergei Veselov was saying in a cold voice, “and when Dmitri Mikhailov took him in, that is when I broke with Mikhailov.”
Tess retreated and wandered back through camp, tired but not quite sleepy. Only to see Kirill, with that wonderful, provocative chuckle he had, emerge from Arina Veselov’s little tent, pitched far behind her mother’s. She stared, too shocked to move, and then, recalling herself, began to hurry away. But he was too quick for her and far too good a scout.
“Tess,” he called in a whisper, and he jogged after her. She had to stop. He came up to her and, glancing round once to see that no one else was about, flung his arms around her and kissed her, laughing.
She pushed him away.
“Tess, what’s wrong?” He looked utterly bewildered and a little hurt.
“I’m just tired,” she said crossly. “Good night.” She walked back to her tent and burrowed in under her blankets, throwing Bakhtiian’s blanket outside. Knowing that Kirill had behaved as a jaran man ought did not make it easier to forgive him. Then, chastised by her own sense of justice, she reached outside and pulled the blanket back in again.
In the morning, Petya had gained so much in spirits that Vera actually looked twice at him as he helped Tess saddle Myshla, a task Vera had probably not ordered him to do.
When the time came for them to leave, Tess deliberately waited until everyone else had mounted before calling Petya back and, in front of the assembled jahar and the tribe, giving him the beautiful amber-beaded necklace that Vasil had given her.
“For luck,” she said softly, and kissed him on the cheek.
He flushed bright red but he looked delighted. Vera, caught in the crowd, looked furious. Arina Veselov was smiling with malicious pleasure. And then Tess mounted Myshla, blinking innocently under all their gazes, and drew Myshla into line next to Yuri’s mount. For good measure she caught Cha Ishii’s eye and acknowledged him with a cool, defiant nod. Bakhtiian made polite farewells, and they left, immediately driven by Bakhtiian’s command to an unrelenting pace that kept up until midday.
“Tess, Tess,” said Yuri as they started out at a pace more reasonable for the horses after the break. “You’re wicked, my dear sister. Oh, her face, her face when you did it.”
“Serves her right, the bitch.”
“Well, she wasn’t deserted last night, was she?” He screwed up his face, looking disgusted. “Gods, Ilya hasn’t said a word since we left. I hope he and Sergei Veselov didn’t argue. They’ve never been easy together.”
“Perhaps he misses her, Yuri.”
“Oho, you’re being nasty today, aren’t you? Is it Kirill you’re mad at, or is it Ilya? Or both of them?”
“You’ve gotten full of yourself.”
He laughed. “I had a pleasant night, Tess. But please, don’t argue with me. Petya looked so much better this morning. I don’t know what you did—”
“I only talked with him.”
“Still—”
“Yuri.” Bakhtiian drew up beside them. “North scout. You and Kirill.” Yuri opened his mouth, shut it, and rode away. Bakhtiian kept his horse even with Tess’s. He rode at one with the animal, as always, but his back was so stiff that a board could have been nailed there to hold the shape. There was a tight, drawn edge to his mouth, dark smudges of sleeplessness under his eyes. He neither spoke nor looked at her.
They rode on for some time in this manner. Clipped, drying grass rustled under their horses’ hooves. A golden brown haze marked the distant hills. His eyes remained fixed on some unmoving point situated just in front of Kriye’s head. Now and again an irregularity in the ground interrupted the black’s steady pace and she would see Bakhtiian’s eyes tighten at the corners and his lips pale from the pain. Still he said nothing.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” she asked finally.
His head turned. He fixed her with a stare so turbulent that she almost reined in Myshla to get away from him. “When my aunt gave you that tent,” he said, his voice so level that a brimful glass would not have spilled a drop if set upon it, “she expected you would behave properly. If you persist in flaunting your flirtations, especially with married men, so that you lose whatever reputation you have, you will no longer have the right to call it your own.”
“What I’m wondering,” said Tess, smiling, “is who got the beauty and who got the beast last night. Why don’t you come back when you’ve got something civil to say to me?”
Kriye shifted pace with a slight jolt. Bakhtiian’s eyes went almost vacant. The moment passed, and he stared straight at her again.
“This is advice,” he said tonelessly, “that you had better heed.”
“Had I?” She flipped her braid back over her shoulder with all the blithe unconcern of a very popular girl confronted with the plainest and least interesting of her rivals. “Forgive me if I choose to consult with Sonia about such matters first.”
He continued to stare at her, his eyes fixed on her face with the intensity of a panther which, hidden in the grass, watches its prey.
“You’d better say what you want right now, Bakhtiian, because I’m going to go find more congenial company.”
His right hand tightened. Slowly, he moved it so that it came to rest on the hilt of his saber.
Her hand was on hers in an instant.
He opened his hand and reclosed it finger by finger around the hilt. “I don’t give advice lightly.”
“No one ever does.” She had tried to keep her tone light and sarcastic. Now she simply lost her temper. “And how do you—by God!—how do you intend to make me heed
your advice?”
She regretted it immediately. The color banished from his cheeks by her comments, he regarded her with the expression of a man who has that instant conceived a diabolical plan. He took his hand off his saber. Fear, receiving no answer to its knock, opened the door and walked in.
“By the gods,” said Ilya. “I will.” He turned his horse and cantered to the back of the group.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Desire when doubled is love, love when doubled is madness.”
—PRODICUS OF CEAS
SHE CAUGHT KIRILL LOOKING at her over the campfire that evening, and he smiled at her, but it was a serious smile and rather sober. She smiled back and then he looked like Kirill again, and he went back to his supper, satisfied. Tess ate slowly, ignoring the Chapalii. But when she rose and walked out onto the plain, she saw a tall, thin, angular form shadowing her far to her right. She went back into camp.
“Walk with me, Yuri,” she said within Kirill’s hearing.
Yuri obeyed. “We’re being followed,” he said as soon as they were out of sight of camp.
“I know.” She turned.
“I should have known,” said Yuri, seeing that it was Kirill coming up behind them. “Somehow, I think I’m wanted back in camp.”
Kirill greeted him cheerfully as they passed. “I brought blankets,” he said to Tess. Then, reconsidering his words, he hesitated. “I mean, if you’re cold…Do you want me to go away?”
“Oh, Kirill, I’m sorry. I have an awful temper.”
“No, I’m sorry, Tess. I ought to have known better. It was an ill-bred thing to do. I’m no better than that loathsome Veselov woman. But then, I never have liked any of that family.”
“You liked Arina Veselov well enough.”
“She’s a pretty enough woman. You took Petya, after all.”
“Oho! You were jealous! But you encouraged me to make up to him.”
“Doing what is right,” said Kirill with dignity, “is not always easy.”
Tess laughed and put her arms around him. It felt very good to hug him. “My sweet Kirill.”
“Were you really jealous?” he asked in a low voice, as if he had no right to.
“Terribly.”
“My heart,” he said, and then nothing more.
In the morning, Yuri and Kirill were sent out to scout again. And again on the third morning. Bakhtiian did not so much not speak to her as ignore her with so much force that she knew the entire jahar was aware of it. How could she ever have thought he and Charles were men cut from the same cloth? Charles would never let his anger show. He would certainly never let the world know of his disapproval. That entire dinner party, soon after she had come to Jeds after their parents’ death, still loomed large in her memory. She had been a reckless and troubled ten-year-old girl intent on ruining everything Charles had worked for on Rhui, that delicate balance of his off-world retinue and the Rhuian guests ignorant of his off-world origins. Charles had dealt with her all evening in a firm but pleasant manner. He had even warned Dr. Hierakis off when the doctor had rebuked her. Then, in the privacy of Tess’s room, she had gotten the scolding. She could not now remember what he had said. But she remembered that he had never raised his voice. She had felt bitterly ashamed of herself. She had disappointed him. She had not lived up to his expectations. But that once, she had wished mightily that she could make him angry instead.
Well, Tess, just as well, she thought wryly, staring at Bakhtiian’s profile as he rode five men over from her. The wind ruffled his dark hair. His lips were set together and he contemplated the horizon with that expression of preoccupied intensity that was habitual with him. Then he turned his head to meet her gaze and as deliberately looked away.
That afternoon, standing apart from the others as they watered their horses at a spring, she saw Niko break away from the group and walk across the grass to her. He let his hand rest on Myshla’s withers as he considered Tess gravely. Tess crouched to look at herself in the smooth pond. The water reflected her face, the high cheekbones that sank into the deep hollows of her eyes. A single braid hung down over one shoulder, brown against the scarlet silk of her shirt. A pebble fell suddenly into the midst of the picture, dissolving her into ripples. She stood up.
“I’m not here to scold you, you know. But I think it’s time you resolved your differences with Ilya. I will mediate, if you wish that protection.”
“I have nothing to resolve with Ilya. My behavior has been unexceptionable.”
“That may be, but when you stir up coals, you must be prepared for flames.”
Tess glanced toward the jahar. They were ranged out in clusters, talking easily among themselves. Bakhtiian stood alone. Even at such a distance, she knew—she could feel—that he was watching her.
“I won’t make up to him,” she said stubbornly.
“I said nothing of that. Look to your own heart before you judge others. And never, never again take a lover away as blatantly as you did two nights past. It is bad manners, my girl, and you know better. For once in my life, I lay no blame on Kirill.” She flushed, angry and embarrassed. “Don’t make it worse. I know him very well. Remember that.” With a terse nod, he left her. It took her a moment to realize that his final comments referred to Bakhtiian not to Kirill.
“Damn them all,” she muttered. Then, because any excess of ill humor in herself disgusted and bored her, she decided to walk it off. She led Myshla the long way around the spring. A curtain of half-bare trees screened the far end, though incompletely. Damp leaves squelched under her boots, and a heavy odor rose from each measured step. Rounding a clump of evergreen shrubs, she almost ran into Hon Garii, who was crouching at the lip of the pond.
He started up. “Go back!” he whispered urgently.
She was too surprised to ignore the order. She jerked Myshla around and returned the way she had come. A moment later, she heard voices speaking in Chapalii, inaudible if she had not been listening for it.
“Have you obtained the water sample?”
“Assuredly, Cha Ishii, it has been done as you commanded.”
Then she was too far away to hear more. Go back. Meant for that moment, or meant to reiterate the warning Cha Ishii had given her at Veselov’s tribe? But there was nothing for it but to go on now, and she had never been one to be minded to turn back. Full speed ahead and damn the consequences. With a sigh, she returned to the jahar.
That evening Bakhtiian addressed a trivial comment to her. She was so shocked that she answered him.
As if encouraged by her reply, he paused beside her. “What do you expect the shrine to look like?”
“I have no idea, but I’ll admit to curiosity.”
He smiled, as if at a private joke. “I trust it will make an impression on you that you will never forget,” he said with something resembling amiability.
Instantly suspicious, she was thwarted from further questioning because he excused himself and left. In the morning, she had scarcely gotten her tent rolled up when he limped over toward her, Niko dogging his tracks.
“You’ll want to leave that with Yuri.” He nodded to the tent. “We’ll be riding forward scout today.”
“Ilya,” Niko said, “are you well enough to ride scout?”
“I know what I’m doing.”
This had nothing to do with his knee. “I’ll go saddle Myshla,” Tess said, retreating from the fray. But whatever Niko said, it evidently came to nothing, and she and Bakhtiian rode out together. Without remounts.
It was a quiet ride. How he contrived to keep his seat on Kriye with such ease she could not imagine. Around midday, the ground began to slope and fold. By early afternoon they rode into uneven hills. Their pace did not slacken, except when it was necessary to rest the horses. They were not scouting, or at least not as she had grown used to it. When they passed a gathering of plump grazers, he neither noted them nor even suggested she try to kill one for supper. Their path veered up, away along a bare ridge, down through a
hollow of high grass, and up a shallow stream until it disappeared into a chasm at the base of a hill.
Bakhtiian pulled up his horse. “Ah. The shrine.”
Tess stared. Nothing but grass and the stream’s underground escape. Bakhtiian rode on up the slope. She kicked Myshla to follow and came up beside him where he halted at the crest of the hill. They looked out over a long, deep valley that stretched westward, the shrine of Morava at its far end.
She had not expected a palace.
Long ago some wealthy noble from a far-flung empire must have taken these lands and built a home for herself befitting her exalted rank. When the empire shrank in the course of time, as empires do, the palace had been left as the last remnant of a great civilization in the wilds of the north. It could not have been that long ago.
It shone. From this distance, she could only guess that it was built of marble. A high dome graced the center. Two towers, filigreed with windows and carvings, stood on either side of the dome. Beyond them, squat towers marked the wings. Far to the left stretched a low wall. In the very middle lay a wide expanse of white stone stairs and a broad landing bounded on the side by thin, black pillars. From this distance it looked as if time and wind and rain had left it untouched. And when the jaran, freed by horses from the limits of the eastern plains, had found it, they had thought it a marvel and made it a shrine.
Already, he had ridden halfway down the slope. She hastened to follow him. At the base of the hill he waited for her, and they rode together into a line of trees that edged the valley floor. All of it planted, she guessed, as they rode out of the trees and into an overgrown but still patterned wilderness of shrubs and hedges and a few flowering bushes, and then back into a copse of trees, and out again. They followed a path, half concealed by grass and leaves, that led them alternately from the twilight of woods through sundrenched glades and back again.