The Novels of the Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  “Yes,” said Galina. “That’s what Aunt Sonia said. When they got here, he got Mitya to invite him in so that he could talk to her. She was very embarrassed by his behavior, as any woman would be. She flushed all red.”

  “Sonia did?” Aleksi asked, astounded.

  “No, no,” said Katerina. “The angel. Diana. But Sonia refused to translate for him so he just had to stand there. But he kept looking at her,” she finished with disgust.

  “He never looked at her straight,” said Mitya.

  “Oh,” said Galina, “you’re always defending him.”

  Mitya flushed at his little sister’s superior tone of voice. “And why not? I want to ride in his jahar when I’m old enough. He’s the best rider of all the young men.”

  “Mitya, everyone knows that Aleksi is the best rider. No one is as good with the saber as he is. Isn’t that true, Aleksi?”

  Aleksi grinned. “Anatoly is a good commander, and he deserves the command Bakhtiian gave him, though he’s young to be granted such an honor.”

  “But you wouldn’t ride in his jahar, would you?” asked Katerina, looking pleased with her sly question.

  “Katya, I ride in Bakhtiian’s own thousand. Why should I want to ride in anyone else’s?” The girls laughed, and Mitya appeared mollified.

  Sonia came out of Tess’s tent. “Are you children still here?” she called. “Galina, Mitya, take them and go. Mother Sakhalin will have plenty for you to do before you start serving.”

  Galina and Katerina rounded up the little ones and marched them off. Mitya lingered. “Would you like to walk with me?” Aleksi asked the boy, and Mitya’s face brightened, since this was clearly exactly what he had hoped for. The chance to stroll around camp beside the man everyone knew was the best saber fighter since the legendary Vyacheslav Mirsky, who had died of old age six years ago…Aleksi chuckled. Then he felt a pang of regret. He had never enjoyed such simple pleasures as a boy. No friends, no companions. Alone—He shut it off. No use thinking about it, no use remembering. He lived in the Orzhekov camp now. “Come on, then.”

  “Oh, wait,” said Mitya. “Aunt Sonia,” he called, “what shall I do with the saber?”

  She had already gone back into Tess’s tent, but came out again. “Here, give it to me.” She took it, smiled at Aleksi with the warmth that she seemed to have an endless supply of, and carried the precious weapon back inside.

  Aleksi walked on, and Mitya matched his pace to the older man’s. Already he was Aleksi’s height and would probably grow taller still. Now he was gangly and uncoordinated, coltish in an endearing way. It was a stage Aleksi had never gone through, so while he felt sympathy for the boy, he could not quite understand him. However awkward Mitya might be, he had time to grow and an enviable position to grow into. Grandson of Irena Orzhekov, who was etsana of the Orzhekov tribe, Mitya was thereby related to Ilyakoria Bakhtiian himself; his mother, Kira, and Ilya were cousins. The boy wore a golden torque around his neck and golden braces at his wrists and, like his little cousin Kolia, a belted girdle of golden plates. A heavy enough burden, Aleksi supposed, made doubly so by the fact that Mitya’s father was a respected smith. It was no wonder that Mitya admired Anatoly Sakhalin, a young man with equally important relatives who had managed to gain respect on his own account and not simply because of whom he was related to.

  They wandered through the late afternoon bustle of the camp. A child ran behind a wall of captured shields, hiding from her playmates. A blacksmith’s forge smoked, and two soot-stained, sweating men pounded out lance heads. Their strokes beat out a rhythm to the late afternoon. Two adolescent boys repaired bridles, and they waved at Mitya as he walked by. A group of women turned carcasses on spits over four large fires. The smell of the meat was tantalizing. Fat dripped and blazed on the coals.

  “He must be very powerful,” Mitya said suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “The prince of Jeds. Tess’s brother. The ambassadors that come to us have greater retinues, and they bring gifts. What is an actor, anyway?”

  “I’m not sure,” Aleksi admitted. “They tell stories, I think, but with their bodies, not with words and a song. Perhaps they will perform tonight.”

  But they did not. On the circle of ground separating the inner group of tents from the outer ring, blankets were laid and awnings set up in a great ring. At the southwest of this compass a single wagon sat upended and shorn of its wheels, covered with leather drawn tight with ropes and laden with pillows. Before it, on the ground, lay carpets under an awning of golden silk. Large square pillows embroidered with flying birds or galloping horses littered the carpets, seating for the feasters. Now, waiting, the pillows were empty, except for a single figure sitting under the center of the awning, writing painstakingly in a book. He glanced up and saw Aleksi and Mitya and beckoned them over.

  “Mitya,” he said, “surely Mother Sakhalin is expecting you.” Mitya murmured a few unintelligible words and retreated. Bakhtiian watched the boy flee. “His father says he’ll never be a blacksmith, so I hope he shows some promise for command. Here, Aleksi, sit down, if you please.”

  Even Bakhtiian’s polite requests sounded like orders, but Aleksi was used to it. He sat down and nodded toward the book lying open on Bakhtiian’s right knee. “You’re writing.” Aleksi could read, with effort, and he could make letters, but the gift of reading and writing with ease eluded him, though Tess encouraged him to practice every chance she got.

  “Yes.” Bakhtiian contemplated the open book, a page filled with neat lines in his precise script. His eyes moved over the last line, and Aleksi watched as his lips moved ever so slightly, forming the words he had written.

  “That’s Tess’s book,” said Aleksi abruptly, recognizing the pattern of marbling on the leather binding as Bakhtiian closed it.

  “Yes. She began to record our campaign three years ago. I write in it as well. You see.” He rifled through the pages. “It’s almost filled. We’ll have to start a second book.” He glanced at Aleksi, looked away, out at the near ring of tents, where women and men and children prepared the feast, and then back at Aleksi again. “Is Tess still angry?” he asked.

  Aleksi considered the question. Whatever else Bakhtiian might be, he was fair, and when he asked a question he wanted a straightforward answer whether or not that answer was flattering to himself. “I expect she’s still angry at you. I wouldn’t have advised that you try to keep her away from her brother while you showed him around camp.”

  Bakhtiian snorted. “And I did not, as it turned out. But perhaps it was for the best. Because she walked with us, he saw how well-loved she is and how much she has become jaran.” Then he hesitated. His fingers played with the clasps on the book. “This David ben Unbutu—” He trailed off.

  “She has said nothing of him.”

  “Ah,” said Bakhtiian, meaning by that comment nothing Aleksi could fathom. Then he looked up, and his whole face changed expression. It lit, like a smoldering fire that bursts into flame. He smiled.

  Aleksi glanced that way to see Tess and Sonia approaching. Sonia looked glorious, the brilliant blue of her tunic studded with beads of every color and gold plates lining the sleeves. Her headdress of gold and silver chains linked and braided over her blonde hair shifted as she walked. Golden crescent moons dangled to her shoulders; tiny bronze bells shook with her stride. The wealth gained in three summers of war adorned her, and she was by no means the vainest woman of the tribes. Beside her, Tess’s wedding clothes looked subdued, although they had been rich enough at the time.

  But Bakhtiian had eyes for no one but his wife. The force of his regard was both comprehensive and unnerving. A jaran man respected his wife; that went without saying. But to love her so openly, so entirely, so exclusively, that provoked criticism. It was not good manners. Except in Bakhtiian, who was beyond such criticism.

  Bakhtiian rose and walked out to greet his wife. He took her hand and even, daringly, kissed her on the cheek, there in the open. Sonia ra
ised her eyebrows, disapproving, but she said nothing.

  “Aleksi.” Bakhtiian released his wife’s hand and turned to Aleksi as he strolled up. “If you could tell Mother Sakhalin that Tess and Sonia and I are going now to escort the prince here. Perhaps Raysia Grekov can be persuaded to sing.”

  Sonia chuckled. “Yes, and if any man can persuade Raysia to sing, it is you, Aleksi.”

  Aleksi’s cheeks flamed with heat. How he hated it when anyone drew attention to him. Raysia Grekov was not just a singer, but a Singer, a shaman, a poet, touched by the gods with the gift of telling the old tales and singing new ones. That she admired his ability with the saber was a running joke: like to like, both touched by the gods. But she was the daughter of the etsana of the Grekov tribe, niece of their dyan, and while her cousin Feodor might hope to marry Bakhtiian’s niece Nadine, with such relatives, she certainly could not look upon Aleksi as anything but a casual lover.

  “Oh, don’t tease him,” said Tess, mercifully, and Aleksi escaped Sonia’s scrutiny and went to find Mother Sakhalin.

  He did not seek out Raysia Grekov, but by the time he returned to the feasting ground, the meal was well under way. Bakhtiian sat with Charles Soerensen to his right and Cara Hierakis to his left, honoring her, Aleksi noted, as if she were the consort of a prince as well as a great healer. Mother Sakhalin sat between Dr. Hierakis and Marco Burckhardt, and Sonia sat on the other side of Burckhardt, flirting with him outrageously. Tess sat on Charles’s right, and next to her, Qures Tinjannat, the ambassador from the king of Habakar lands who also happened to be a philosopher. Next to him, Niko Sibirin, and so on, foreigner mixed in with jaran. The newest ambassador was not here, but, of course, he had not yet been formally received.

  Aleksi prowled the back, sidestepping serious children bearing wooden platters mounted on broad bases that they set down in front of their elders. Young men from the army assisted. Aleksi steadied Kolia as the little boy stumbled over an uneven patch of ground; he was clutching a bronze cup filled with water, taking it to Bakhtiian.

  “Yes,” Bakhtiian was saying to Soerensen, “but when Sister Casiara wrote of the idea of precedence, she included the idea of legal precedence as well.”

  “You were establishing a legalistic precedence, then, when you wrote the letter to the coastal ports west of here and claimed that they had violated the peace by attacking a party of jaran?”

  “My envoys.” Bakhtiian nodded, took the cup from Kolia, and patted the little boy on his golden head before sending him away. “Envoys are sacrosanct. Is it not thus in all civilized countries?”

  Soerensen smiled, received from Galina a platter heaped with steaming meats and a few precious slices of fruit, and set the platter carefully on the carpet. “This is a clever design.” He unhooked the spoon that dangled from the platter’s lip. “Since you have no tables. You’re well-read, Bakhtiian. Whatever made you decide to travel to Jeds and study there?”

  Aleksi crouched, watching the two men. They were alike, in many ways, and underneath the uneasy truce they seemed to be honoring, he thought that perhaps they actually respected one another.

  Bakhtiian drew his gaze away from the other man and stared, as he often did when confronting his destiny, at the sky. Twilight lowered over them. Anatoly Sakhalin and Feodor Grekov led two lines of young men along the length of awnings, lighting lanterns at each pole. About thirty paces in front of Bakhtiian, out on the grass, Nadine supervised the building of two stacks of wood, side by side, twin bonfires.

  “I desired to know the world,” Bakhtiian said at last, glancing past Soerensen to Soerensen’s sister, who was deep in conversation with the Habakar philosopher, “and I had heard that Jeds cradled the finest university, where one could learn.”

  “Know the world?” asked Soerensen, sounding curious and not at all accusatory. “Or conquer it?”

  “If I know the world, then it will be mine.”

  Soerensen studied the other man. The prince had an ordinary face, similar to his sister’s only in the high cheekbones and blunt chin, but like a well-made saber, his edge was clean and sharp. “You say that with conviction, but without avarice.”

  “I want only to lead my people to the destiny that the gods have granted us. Surely that is not so different from what you want for your people, for Jeds.”

  As the sky purpled to dusk, a single star appeared, the bright beacon of the evening star. Soerensen considered it, as if it contained some answer for him, and then regarded Bakhtiian with a steady gaze. “Not so different. I want to go to Morava. The place Tess visited when she first came here.”

  “It’s north from here, out on the true plains. The ancient home of the khepelli. Is it true the khepelli wish to overrun these lands, to conquer them and drive we humans off them?”

  “We humans? What has Tess told you of the Chapalii?” Soerensen pronounced it differently, but it was clearly the same word.

  Bakhtiian’s smile was tight and sardonic. “Tess has told me many things, Soerensen. Which of them I can believe, and which I cannot, I have not yet divined.”

  A chuckle escaped from Soerensen quite spontaneously. “My sympathies,” he said, and the comment sounded sincere enough to Aleksi’s ears.

  “But it is true enough, is it not,” continued Bakhtiian, pressing this point, “that the khepelli are zayinu. The ancient ones. I don’t know the word in Rhuian. Not demons. Not spirits.”

  “Elves,” said Cara Hierakis from the other side, startling both men. “Of course. Ancient ones with powers unknown to humans.” Then she said something in their foreign tongue to Soerensen.

  “Can it be arranged?” asked Soerensen. “I must see Morava.”

  Bakhtiian’s expression had shuttered, becoming opaque and unreadable. “Is that why you came? Are the khepelli so dangerous?”

  “You know why I came,” said Soerensen quietly. Neither man looked toward Tess. “But it is true that the khepelli are dangerous. To both of us.”

  “I will consider this,” said Bakhtiian, and he turned to Dr. Hierakis and began to discuss wounds and medical procedures with her. Tess ceded her conversation with the philosopher to Niko and leaned toward her brother. They began to talk, rapidly and in their language. For a time, Aleksi listened. Tess had taught him Rhuian, but not the other tongue, the language of Erthe. He was beginning to be able to pick out words and meanings, but he could not string them together yet into meaningful sentences. But they were talking about the khepelli and the shrine of Morava, that much he could discern. Anatoly Sakhalin lit the lanterns, directly in front of Bakhtiian and passed on, smiling at his grandmother, pausing before Sonia and glancing once, quickly and with dislike, toward Marco Burckhardt, then going on. Soon enough he would reach the carpets where the actors sat.

  Aleksi snagged a platter of meat from Mitya and retreated to the solitude of the wagon to eat. Beyond, Raysia Grekov began to sing, accompanying herself on a bowed lute. She sang the tale of how the daughter of Mother Sun came down to the earth from Highest Heaven and how the legendary dyan Yuri Sakhalin fell in love with her and followed her into the heart of demon country.

  “Where the rocks littered the earth, where the mountains touched the paths of father wind, there she bore the child. Where the heat of her mother’s hands scorched the soil, where the demons swarmed at twilight, there she brought forth the child. He heard its cry on the wind, but he could not find them.”

  As Aleksi always did, he lost himself in her voice. She sang so sweetly, and with such power, that it was no wonder that the gods had drawn her up to Heaven once because of their desire to hear her sing. When they came to move the wagon, he jumped, startled, and kicked over the platter, spilling the scraps onto the grass.

  “What are you doing there, Aleksi?” asked Nadine. “Here, give us a hand.”

  Standing, he saw that the world had changed. Raysia was still singing, and a knot of people clustered around her, sitting and kneeling: the actors, mostly, listening intently. Bakhtiian was standing
off to one side, talking with Dr. Hierakis and Niko Sibirin. Charles Soerensen and Tess and the Habakar philosopher, together with Elizaveta Sakhalin, were off on the other side, leaving the central carpet clear.

  Aleksi helped Nadine and a few of the men from her jahar hoist the wagon and carry it onto the carpet and set it down. Nadine tossed six pillows onto it and then, with reverent care, received the horse-tail standard which Mitya had brought from the camp and laid it on the pillow embroidered with birds that Bakhtiian always sat on.

  “Shall I go get him, Uncle?” Nadine called to Bakhtiian.

  “You’re sounding cheerful,” said Aleksi. “Who are you going to get?”

  “Jiroannes Arthebathes,” said Nadine. “May he rot in hell.” She grinned.

  Bakhtiian waited until Raysia Grekov had finished her song. Then he lifted a hand in assent, and Nadine hurried off, her soldiers at her heels.

  Immediately the two bonfires were lit, and in their roar and glare, a sudden change transformed the scene. The older man and woman who headed the Company herded their actors off to one side, placing them behind a group of commanders who appeared from the right. Soerensen collected his party and retreated a discreet distance to the left. There they could watch but remain outside the action.

  Bakhtiian helped Elizaveta Sakhalin up onto the overturned wagon and settled her onto one of the pillows. Sonia followed her, then Tess, then Niko Sibirin, and then old Mikhail Suvorin, the most senior of the dyans currently with the main army. Bakhtiian balanced the horse-tail staff across his knees. They waited. At last the ambassador and his party arrived, halting beyond the twin bonfires.

  Aleksi saw the glitter of armor in the Vidiyan ambassador’s retinue: his guard. There was a pause. Past the shifting height of fire he saw Nadine explaining something to an older man and a younger one. The younger one, dark and bearded and dressed in wildly colorful clothing, bore himself arrogantly, by which Aleksi deduced he was the ambassador. But his bearing melted a bit when Nadine gestured him forward. To pass between the two fires, to reach Bakhtiian.