by Kate Elliott
Marco was definitely acting strangely all of a sudden. “You talk about it like it was in the past, and meant to stay that way.”
“It always is, David. In the words of the immortal Satchel Paige, ‘Don’t never look back. Something might be gaining on you.’”
“Marco, did you eat something that affected your brain? No doubt there are molds aplenty in this food. Or is that lovely young actress just addling it?”
“I’m just saying that Tess may have changed, and you should…go slowly when you see her again. And not expect too much.”
“Hah! Odd sort of advice, coming from you. You sound positively auntly, Marco.”
There was a sudden commotion at the far end of the hall. A woman screamed. A jaran soldier stumbled against a chair, tripping backward over it, and sprawled onto the floor. Like a wave rushing in, five men, swords drawn, plunged forward up the central aisle toward the dais. Marco jumped to his feet. David gaped.
For an instant, nothing and no one moved except for the five armed men, who ran toward the head table with death in their eyes and a sudden scrambling of guards at their backs.
Bakhtiian was on his feet before David realized he had moved. He grabbed the table and heaved it up and forward, and it crashed over onto its side. Plates and glasses and half-eaten food and the dregs of wine spilled onto the steps and clattered onto the floor. His saber was already in his hand in the span of time it took Charles to blink.
David sat there stunned with his food in front of him while an attack was waged not six paces away. Marco knocked over his own chair in his haste to get to Charles. Men shrieked.
“Aleksi!” shouted Bakhtiian as the first of the assassins leapt up the steps. A dark young man in a red shirt jumped over the upended table and cut down the first man so quickly that David did not even see the blow. Jaran soldiers closed in from the other end of the hall. A guard flung himself past David from behind and engaged the nearest assassin. The young man called Aleksi twisted his saber around another man’s sword, sending it flying, and with a cut that seemed born of the first one disarmed a second man by disabling his arms with wicked-looking slices. One man left—
And then Aleksi suddenly sprang around and flung a cut back at Bakhtiian, who ducked away from it while at the same time shoving over Charles’s chair. Charles landed in a heap, Bakhtiian in a crouch, and Marco tackled from behind the old baron who had sat beside Charles this whole time. From whose robes had appeared an ugly looking short sword, which Aleksi had knocked away.
David had not yet moved from his chair. All of the actors except Owen and the leading man, Gwyn Jones, were cowering under their table. Diana stood beside Jones. She gripped the edge of her chair, staring with bright eyes at Marco, who was sitting on top of the old baron, looking furious.
Now, two assassins were left. The one nearest David had been driven back into a circle whose boundaries were delineated in red: the scarlet shirts of the jaran guard. One lay quivering in a heap; one lay prostrate; one sobbed, clutching his bleeding arms against his chest. The two remaining clutched hard at their deadly-looking long swords.
Bakhtiian rose. “Aleksi, take them,” he ordered with astounding calm.
Aleksi nodded without expression and stepped forward, and the others made way for him. The elders and other barons on the dais clumped into a frightened group. Cara had already run down to Charles, and she helped him to his feet. Marco stayed sitting on the old baron.
And the most horrifying thing of all was that it was beautiful to watch. Barbarian he might be, but he was an artist with the sword. Two of them, against one of him, with such different weapons, but there was no doubt what the outcome would be. The knowledge made the two assassins desperate. Aleksi looked as cool as a man out for an evening stroll. One of his comrades shouted something in a joking voice, and Aleksi actually cut down one man with a swift slice along his face and chest, paused beside his comrade long enough to grab a saber in his other hand, and turned back to face the last man.
“And you realize, of course,” said Ursula el Kawakami, appearing in all her unwonted splendor beside David, “that he’s already at a distinct disadvantage, using that saber on foot against long swords. That’s a cavalry weapon. Amazing.”
Aleksi used one of the sabers to distract the poor man and neatly hamstrung him with the other. The man screamed out in pain and collapsed to the floor. There was a moment’s pause. The assassins were all disarmed.
Then everyone in the hall turned to look at Bakhtiian.
He sheathed his saber, and the scraping sound it made in the hush sent an atavistic shiver down David’s back. At once, the barons and elders of Abala Port flung themselves on the floor in an obscene frenzy of groveling.
But Bakhtiian ignored the nobles of Abala Port. He delivered a stinging rebuke to his guards, in his own language. They did not grovel. They looked ashamed.
At the door, a pack of jaran soldiers appeared, and they quickly entered the room under the command of an expressive young man and moved out to take control of the hall, to drag the prisoners aside, to move the heavy tables off the dais, to thoroughly search every man in the room save those of Charles’s party.
And when that was all accomplished, Bakhtiian said something more. One by one the original guards came forward, all but the two who had stood on the dais, and each man laid his saber at Bakhtiian’s feet, disarming himself. The intensity of their shame was painful to watch.
“Goddess Above,” whispered David, “must it be done so publicly?” Had he remembered that Ursula was standing there, he would not have said it aloud.
“Of course it must be done publicly. It’s a lesson for everyone.” The dishonored guards filed from the hall. “What do you think he’ll do to the prisoners?” She sounded breathlessly excited. Aroused, even, David thought with a shudder. “And to those terrified townsmen?”
Marco slipped back beside them, no longer needed at the front. “Now we’re about to see what justice means to the conquered,” he whispered. They waited. Bakhtiian waited. The silence stretched out until it was a visceral thing, agonizing to endure.
One of the townspeople finally found enough courage to rise to his knees. “Please believe,” he stammered, “that we knew nothing of this.”
Bakhtiian glanced at him as if at an afterthought. “I assume, Baron,” he said in a cold voice, “that you have laws by which you judge such cases here.”
“Of course! Of course!” Their fear was almost as humiliating to see as their desperate attempt at appeasement. “The punishment for treason is death.”
“Then by your own laws shall they be judged.” He lifted his chin, and the prisoners were led away.
“The sentence shall be carried out at once,” said the baron, and he snapped an order to a younger man, who hurried out of the hall on the heels of the prisoners. A richly-dressed old woman wept noisily in the corner.
Bakhtiian found his chair and sat down in it. He looked at Charles. Charles raised one eyebrow and sat down next to him. Cara remained standing behind Charles, but she did not touch him, although David could tell she wanted to. Her hand hovered over his shoulder, veered toward his sleeve, and settled, twitching, at her waist.
“Sit!” said Bakhtiian impatiently to the barons and elders. “You said you had other cases you wished to bring before me.”
David realized that his rump hurt, from sitting so still, from being so tensed up. Maggie crept over to them and Marco put an arm around her. She was so white that her freckles stood out like blazons. The actors had crept out from under their table and they stood in a tableau, clutching one another. Not one eye left Bakhtiian for more than a second, except perhaps for Charles, who looked thoughtful and not at all cowed. None of them dared move as, one by one, prisoners were led in, their crimes recited aloud, and Bakhtiian begged to judge and sentence each one.
But in every case he deferred to the elders of the town, to their own laws, and placed the judgment squarely back on them according to their
own customs. Despite himself, David was impressed by Bakhtiian’s restraint. Especially since some of their own people had just tried to murder him.
Last of all an unremarkable young man was brought forward. He had a big nose, rheumy eyes, and he looked young and frightened. The baron sighed and relaxed, as if he knew the worst was over.
“This young man is accused by Merchant Flayne of raping his daughter, and although the usual punishment is that he must marry the girl, he’s but an apprentice in a neighboring shop, and she was out walking at night by herself, and there is another merchant who has agreed to marry her despite—” He broke off because Bakhtiian stood up.
Stood up and took the three steps down to the accused with deliberate slowness. Glass rasped under his boots. Faced with Bakhtiian’s devastating stare, the accused dropped to his knees, clasped his hands together, and began to plead in the local dialect.
“And is it true?” asked Bakhtiian in a voice so soft that David could barely hear him. “Did he force her?”
“He has confessed to the deed. It’s the sentence that concerns us—”
Bakhtiian drew his saber and killed the young man. Cut him through the throat so quickly that it was done before anyone realized he meant to do it.
Charles stood up, right up out of his chair. Bakhtiian stared at the corpse and took a step up to avoid the pool of blood growing, flooding broken bits of glass and plate on the floor. He flicked a glance back at the dais. Slowly, slowly, Charles sat down. One of the actresses gave a great shriek and fainted. Bile swelled in David’s throat, and he clapped a hand to his mouth and fought against it, gulping, feeling it poison his tongue and burn his lips.
“David,” whispered Marco, and David felt Marco’s hand press into his back. “Breathe slowly. Breathe slowly.”
Bakhtiian turned to regard the baron. “Is there anyone else?”
The baron could not speak for a long while. He held one hand to his breast, and his eyes bugged out, staring. “None, lord,” he stuttered. “No more.” No more to be judged, did he mean? Or was it a plea for no more of this harsh and merciless justice? That was no justice at all, no law, but only the tyrant’s whim.
Bakhtiian turned to look at Charles. “Will you accompany me?” he asked, and David could not tell if it was a request or an order.
“I’d better wait for my own people, who are a trifle discomposed,” said Charles. How could he remain so self-possessed? The calm mask he wore for an expression only added to David’s dismay.
“He’s cool,” muttered Maggie.
“Oh, come now, what did you expect?” hissed Ursula with disgust. “Frankly, I think it was a just execution.”
Bakhtiian inclined his head, to acknowledge Charles’s decision. “Then if you will excuse me,” he said, distinctly to Charles, not to anyone else. He swept from the hall, his guards behind him. The young man named Aleksi lingered behind, and David saw him slip a folded piece of parchment into Charles’s hands. Then he, too, was gone, and they were left with the weeping actors, the shell-shocked townsfolk, and the dead man.
CHAPTER NINE
THEY HUDDLED TOGETHER IN the common room of the inn they shared. None of them wanted to be there, but neither did they want to go up to their filthy rooms. Owen stared at the fire, and Diana just knew that he was playing the awful scene back through his mind, gleaning ideas from it that he would eventually turn around and use in the theater.
“Cold-blooded bastard,” muttered Hal beside her. “Mom’s no damn better. Look at her.” Ginny sat next to Owen. For the journey, she had given up her slatepad and taken up a real paper notebook, but the result was the same: she jotted down notes and revised scenes in every spare second given to her.
Anahita lay prostrate on a bench, moaning softly. Hyacinth fanned her, and Phillippe massaged her feet. Seshat and Dejhuti sat off by themselves, and Helen and Jean-Pierre argued about how best to take the wine stain out of his white linen tunic. Joseph sat with one arm around Oriana and the other around Quinn, talking quietly to them. Yomi just watched over them all.
“What do you think, Gwyn?” Hal asked Gwyn Jones.
Gwyn appeared to ponder the question, but Diana could see right away that he didn’t care what Hal thought of the cavalier reaction of his parents to that horrible scene. “I think I’ve never seen someone handle a sword that well,” he said softly. “That young man is an artist.”
Hal rolled his eyes in disgust, heaved himself to his feet, and went over to sit beside Quinn.
“I think he expected sympathy,” said Diana.
Gwyn shrugged. “Di, I can’t change what happened. Why dwell on it?”
“What do you mean, that he’s an artist? Who?”
“The young man who did most of the fighting. He was brilliant.”
“How would you know? Or do you mean to say those weren’t simulated, all those fight scenes from the samurai interactives you did?”
Gwyn smiled, but not too much, since laughter would have been out of place. “Not simulated at all. I got into those vids because I was a martial artist. I only got interested in acting afterward. And lo, came here.”
“Are you sorry? After tonight?”
“No. Are you?”
She almost chuckled, had to stifle it. “That I’m an actor? Never. Coming here with Owen and Ginny?” She surveyed the common room: the slatted wood floors were warped from age and dampness, the smell of the stables permeated everything, and the food was pretty bad. “But look how respectfully he treated Charles Soerenson. I can't think we’re in any danger. Not really.”
“Just the rest of this world, evidently,” murmured Gwyn.
“Yes,” Diana mused. She stood up. “I’m going outside.”
He put a hand on her sleeve. “Diana, I’m not sure I’d do that. This isn’t Earth, you know. Don’t forget the testimony of the baron—I don’t think it’s safe for people to walk around by themselves at night.”
But then the door opened, and Marco came in. He looked flushed from the night air. He found her immediately with his gaze. Ten meters between them, but it might as well have been one. She could feel him as if he already had his arms around her, as if they were already alone. The rush of feeling washed over her like a swoon.
Marco laid a hand on the door latch, opened it, and went back outside. She took a step toward the door.
“Have a pleasant night,” said Gwyn.
She blushed, but she didn’t look back. Her hand trembled as she lifted the latch, but she knew now that the die was cast. She slipped outside, and he was waiting for her. She stood there, in the cold night air, not one meter from him, but she did not move closer, because the anticipation was sweet enough to savor.
“Diana,” he said, his voice low and a little rough. And she had the satisfaction of seeing that he shook, too; that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
“Marco!” The voice shattered the finespun web of intimacy. It was like being slammed into a brick wall.
“Marco! Damn it!” Maggie jogged up to them. “Back to Charles, you idiot.”
“Maggie, I’ll thank you to stay out of my—”
“Your what? Your affairs?” Maggie looked so angry that Diana thought she might burst. “After what just happened that you can even think about—”
“Maggie, I didn’t ask your opinion—”
“That’s not what I meant.” The narrow streets of Abala Port were empty but for two jaran horsemen riding patrol far down this street, menacing black shapes against the ramshackle angles of the buildings. “I meant that any person who thinks with their brain instead of their genitals would realize that this is not the time to—well, how can we know what the customs are among the jaran? Do you intend to take that chance? And anyway, Charles wants you back right now.”
“Marco!” That was David’s voice, from down the street.
“Hell,” said Marco under his breath. He cast an anguished glance at Diana. “You have my profoundest apologies, golden fair,” he said, and th
en he left, hurrying away down the street toward the inn where Soerensen and his group were staying. He passed David without pausing to speak to him.
David stopped beside Maggie and Diana. “What was that all about?” Then he looked at Diana. Then he looked at Maggie. Diana wanted nothing more at that moment than to shrink into the ground and die. “Never mind,” said David. “Listen, Mags, not Rajiv. Please. He gets up at dawn every morning. He’ll say, ‘But, David, should you not be putting your tools into better order?’”
“I always knew you only tented with me because I’m a slob,” retorted Maggie, but there was so much anger still hanging on her that she sounded irritated, not amused. “I’m sorry, Diana. I really am. I really, really am.”
“It’s all right,” said Diana in a small voice. Maybe the ground would open up and swallow her.
“We can’t know what they consider a crime so serious that it warrants summary execution. So you see why I had to send Marco away?”
“I see why,” Diana choked out. And she did, truly. They could not afford to offend their hosts, not now; probably, given the look on Bakhtiian’s face as he killed that man, not ever. But every part of her that had been set spinning by Marco’s entrance, by the promise of what was to come next, ached for release.
“Shall we go in?” asked Maggie, sounding impatient, or maybe she was just feeling embarrassed for Diana.
“I’d better go back to Charles,” said David. “Just don’t put me in with Rajiv.” He ran back into the night.
“Christ!” said Maggie with disgust. “Shall we get this over with?” She led the way. The heat of the fire blasted them as they came back into the common room. Gwyn, seeing Diana, raised his eyebrows but did not comment.
“Owen, Ginny. The rest of you. Please, may I have your attention?” Maggie did not have the natural authority of, say, Suzanne Elia Arevalo, but her agitation lent her a snappish air, and, in any case, everyone in the company was desperate for some sort of distraction. They quieted and regarded her with the kind of attention that only actors—trained to listen—and lovers usually grant a speaker. “Charles Soerensen just sent me down here with a new decree. No more mixed rooming, unless you possess a legal marriage certificate. Girls with the girls. Boys with the boys. That sort of thing. I’ve been sent to reassign places.”