by Kate Elliott
Tess Soerensen stepped forward into the gap between the two pairs. She turned to Owen. “Elizaveta Sakhalin presents to you her grandson, who, in accordance with the traditions of the people, has come to bow to the parents and the relatives of the bride and to ask to be taken in to your camp as husband to this woman. He brings with him a string of fine horses, he brings his armor and his weapons, and he brings his skill at fighting. To his bride he brings a new set of bow and arrows. His family brings these presents for the bride’s family: wine and milk, dry fruit, meat, and a silk scarf to bind your camps together. They bring also blessings to this young couple, for their happiness and well-being.” She paused, and then with an open hand gestured to Owen.
He smiled. Diana realized abruptly that Owen had rehearsed this all along and simply not told her, or possibly anyone else, about it. He lifted a hand and Joseph appeared, bearing gifts in his hands: foodstuffs, clothing, a carved chess set. Diana felt cold and hot all at once, and because she did not know where else to look, she looked at Anatoly. His gaze, on her, was intense, and she clung to it as to a lifeline.
“‘More strange than true,’” Owen began, and in his pleasant baritone, he reeled off the entire speech.
Tess’s lips quirked up as he finished. “How am I supposed to translate that?” she asked.
“In whatever way it is most appropriate.”
Tess spoke at length, her phrases cadenced as Sakhalin’s had been, a ritual that was generations old. Gifts were brought forward and exchanged. Tess beckoned Diana forward, and then Anatoly, and then she retired. Anatoly put out his hands. Diana took them, clutched at them. They were warm and strong. Elizaveta Sakhalin and Owen came forward and bound the silk scarf around their clasped hands. More words were spoken. Then, sparking, a huge fire burst into flame out on the flat of ground beyond. Two drums beat out a rapid rhythm, and pipes came in with a melody. Under the concealing silk, Anatoly twined his fingers in with hers and stroked her palms with his thumbs. The caress lit fires all along her, and she swayed toward him, wanting nothing more at that moment than to be alone with him.
“Anatoly,” said his grandmother, scolding. He stopped what he was doing, but his entire face lit with a smile, a smile that was meant for Diana only, intimate, exultant. Daring much, Diana tilted her head up and kissed him, briefly, on the lips. He whispered words into her ear, another caress, and then pushed back and unwound the scarf from around their hands and tied it around her waist like a belt. Then he turned and left her, walked over to his family and a moment later Sonia Orzhekov had taken him out to dance. Diana gaped after them.
“Diana.” Appearing abruptly beside her, Bakhtiian bowed. His presence was as powerful as the fire’s. “It is traditional for a new bride to dance on her wedding night. I hope you will excuse my immodesty in asking you to dance.”
“Of course,” she said, wondering what on earth he meant. But it quickly became apparent to her that she was not meant to spend any time with Anatoly at all, during this celebration. She caught glimpses of him, dancing with other women, speaking with men out on the fringes of the celebration, glancing her way, once, his gaze catching on her, his smile, and then he was drawn away by someone else.
The actors emerged, pale without their makeup, to congratulate her. She danced. She felt confused and disoriented, but she went from one instant to the next and tried not to think beyond that.
“Well,” said Anahita, coming up beside her much later. “I see that Marco Burckhardt isn’t at the celebration. I haven’t seen him all day. What do you think of that?”
“I think you’re just jealous he was never interested in you,” Diana snapped.
“Bravo,” said Gwyn softly behind her as Anahita flounced away. “Congratulations, Diana.”
“Thank you. Owen made a spectacle out of it, didn’t he?”
“Owen can’t help himself. But I assure you that it was impressive.”
“Did he have it rehearsed all along? How did he know to bring presents? Where did he get them? Why didn’t he tell me?”
Gwyn chuckled. “I think you were part of the experiment. As for the rest, Owen always does his research. You ought to know that, Diana. If you hadn’t provided this wonderful opportunity for him, he’d have had to invent it. Ah, here comes your husband. I’ll leave you now.” He kissed her on the cheek and retreated.
Anatoly strode toward her, looking purposeful. His grandmother and several members of his family walked at his heels. A moment later Owen and Ginny arrived, together with Yomi and Joseph.
Yomi hugged Diana. “I hope you’re ready,” Yomi murmured. “We’ve come to escort you to your tent.”
All at once Diana could not move. In a few minutes, she would be alone with a man she barely knew, with a man she could scarcely even communicate with. She stood rooted to the ground. The others moved away, but she could not lift her feet, could not follow them. She had made a terrible, stupid mistake. She knew that now, knew it bitterly, and hated herself for knowing it.
Anatoly turned back. His eyes narrowed as he examined her. He put out his hand, offering it to her. Diana took in a big breath and laid her hand in his.
They walked through camp. No one spoke. The silence weighed on her, counterpointed by the music and singing coming from the celebration behind, which still played on. So she spoke:
“You that choose not by the view
Chance as fair and choose as true!
Since this fortune falls to you,
Be content and seek no new.
If you be well pleas’d with this
And hold your fortune for your bliss, Turn you where your lady is
And claim her with a loving kiss.”
Anatoly smiled and squeezed her hand. Joseph grinned. They left the jaran camp behind and came to her tent, set out in the middle, isolated, lonely. There Owen and Ginny kissed her, Yomi and Joseph hugged her, and they left. Anatoly’s family left, leaving with them two sets of saddlebags, a rolled up blanket, a leather flask and two cups. Diana stood alone with her new husband in a gloom lit only by the single lantern set on the ground beside them. He did not move, but only watched her. She hesitated, and then bent to pick up the lantern and pushed the entrance flap aside, and ducked into the tent. A moment later, he followed her in, carrying his worldly goods in his arms. He knelt and set them carefully in one corner, then rose.
She just stood there, the lantern heavy in her hand. His pale hair seemed lighter by contrast with the shadows in the tent. His lips moved, forming soundless words. Gently, he took the lantern from her and hung it from a loop on the center pole.
“Anatoly.” She dug for words, khush words, to speak to him, but they had all evaporated.
“Diana—” He said a whole sentence, but it was meaningless to her, nothing but sounds strung together.
They stood a moment in awkward silence. He lifted one hand to trace the scar on her cheek. His fingers slid to trace her lips, and she kissed them, and his other hand sought her hips, to draw her closer to him, and she slid one arm around his back and caught her other hand in his hair…
Then, as quickly as that, she discovered that in fact they did speak the same language.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AT THE EDGE OF the firelit glow cast by the roaring bonfire, Ilya Bakhtiian halted beside his wife where she stood in the gloom. Tess glanced up at him, then back out at the camp.
“They left, then?” asked Bakhtiian.
“Who, Anatoly and Diana? Yes.” She turned to face him, watching him as he watched her, measuring. Her lips quirked up. “No stranger than you and I.”
“Perhaps. But I doubt it. She will leave him.” Once, he would have hesitated to touch her in public, since it was unseemly. Now he lifted his hands without the least self-consciousness to cup her face and stare at her, searching. “I love you,” he said, and that was all, although it was a question.
“What would you do if I left?”
His lips drew out, tightening, and his face went t
aut. He dropped his hands from her face and grasped her hands instead. “You will not. I forbid it.”
“You can’t forbid it.”
“No.” The admission was shattering, wrung from him. “I cannot. But if I could, I would.”
“The ambassador from Vidiya has a slave. A woman.”
Now she had gone too far. “How dare you compare me to that pompous, overdressed boy?” he demanded. “How dare you even suggest that I have made such a thing of you?”
“To make you think, damn you.”
“Then go. You are free to choose.” He was so angry that he was shaking. “We ride south tomorrow. I can leave a jahar to take you to the coast with your brother, if that is what you wish. What I wish, you know well enough.”
“Oh, Ilya.” She embraced him suddenly. He was tense, stiff, but his anger could not sustain itself when she showed the least sign of her love for him. She felt him relax against her, and he sighed into her hair.
“Damn you,” he muttered.
“Come with me.”
“Where?” He drew his head back and frowned at her, suspicious.
She chuckled. “No, not to Jeds. To see my brother, now.”
“Why?”
“To tell him the truth. That I don’t intend to leave the jaran. Not now, at any rate. Not this year.”
He was still frowning. “When, then?”
“When you die, damn you. Now stop bothering me and come with me.”
He laughed, surprised, and hugged her tightly. “We have an old tale,” he whispered into her ear, “about a woman who poisoned her husband because she wanted to marry another man.”
Tess smiled and pressed into him, returning the embrace. “If you can find me another man to marry, then I’ll consider it.” She broke free of his grasp and pushed him away. “Now, you’ll come with me, and you’ll stay quiet while I talk with Charles.”
“Yes, my wife,” he said meekly, and he walked with her across camp to Soerensen’s encampment. At the gap, they passed about fifty paces away from the little tent that sat on the grass between both camps. Bakhtiian fought down a smile and he stopped Tess with a hand on her shoulder, and bent and kissed her. The night shielded them. “After,” he murmured, releasing her.
“Don’t distract me. You don’t know how hard it is for me to do this.”
Under the awning of Charles’s tent, Marco Burckhardt sat with a thin tablet on his lap. Charles sat next to him, staring at something on his hand. Two lanterns lit the two men, one to either side of them, and from the slightly askew flap of Dr. Hierakis’s tent, a steady glow could be seen coming from the interior. Then both men looked up, saw Tess, saw Bakhtiian, and Marco collected something from Charles’s hand and took it and the slate back into the tent before Tess and Ilya reached the awning.
Charles stood up. Cara emerged from her tent, glanced at the converging lines, and walked over to stand next to Charles. Marco reappeared from the tent.
“They’re hiding something from me,” Bakhtiian muttered, and he glanced at Tess to see what her reaction was. Tess flushed, but he could not see the color of her skin in the darkness, so she was safe.
“How long will the carousing go on?” Cara asked with a smile as she motioned them to come in under the awning.
Bakhtiian acknowledged her first, with a nod, and then Charles, and last Marco. “As long as they wish. The army rides south tomorrow. They’ll earn this celebration tonight.”
“The poor child won’t have much of a honeymoon, then,” said Cara. “But I saw that she was safely put to bed a little earlier. Where are you going, Marco?”
“Out to carouse,” he said curtly. He excused himself and left.
They watched him go. Charles’s expression was unreadable. Cara shook her head. Bakhtiian arched his brows, looking puzzled. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of man Sonia would take to her bed.” He glanced at Charles, as if to gain corroboration from the other man, and Tess was struck by how clearly he treated Charles as an equal. There were many men, men of the jaran in particular, whom he treated with respect, but there was no question of where the ultimate authority lay. No question but here: Ilya did not defer to Charles—he did to women, of course; that was so deeply engrained in him that Tess doubted he would ever lose the habit—but neither did he attempt in the slightest to command him.
“Sonia likes a challenge,” said Tess.
“Is that where he’s been at night?” Charles asked. “I had wondered.”
“And you didn’t ask?” Tess spoke the words and an instant later realized how sarcastic they sounded. “I have to talk to you,” she said quickly, to cover her embarrassment and to get it over with. This was something best done quickly, before she lost her nerve. Somehow, seeing Anatoly and Diana escorted off into the night to their tent had made her determined to talk to Charles now, however much she wanted to put it off.
“Please sit,” said Charles. Cara and Tess sat down next to each other, in chairs. Ilya hesitated. “I have pillows,” said Charles suddenly, “and something I brought for you from Jeds.” He vanished into the tent, emerging with two large pillows and a velvet bag. He tossed the pillows onto the ground so that the two men could sit side by side and on the same level.
Ilya’s lips twitched, and then he smiled. “Well done,” he said, and sat down. Charles sat down beside him, opened the velvet bag, and drew out two objects: a book and a clock.
He gave Ilya the clock first. It had a simple design, a white unnumbered face framed with mahogany; a spring door in the back opened to reveal the mechanical workings.
“This is different,” Ilya said, “than the clocks I saw in Jeds.”
“The lines and hands mark out the hours of the day.”
“Like a khaja wall marks out land,” said Ilya, glancing up at Tess. Then, turning back to Charles, “Its simplicity lends it beauty.”
Charles offered him the book and, of course, he took it. Ilya never could resist a book. He ran his hands along the leather binding in a way that was almost amorous, and then turned it to the title page and then to the text. He gave a short bark of laughter. “‘Being convinced that the human intellect makes its own difficulties—’” He closed the book and handed it up to Tess. “True enough words,” he said to Charles.
“The New Organon. Francis Bacon,” read Tess. “Charles!” Both men looked up at her expectantly. She stroked one arm of her chair, tracing the patterns in its carved wood with her fingers. “Charles,” she said again, and lapsed into silence. A book and a clock—the one by a philosopher who had helped develop the scientific method, the other, well, Ilya himself had compared a device that measures time in artificial increments to the walls that interrupt the natural flow of the land. These were the worst weapons Charles could have brought; and he knew it, and she knew it.
Cara rescued them from the uncomfortable silence. The doctor leaned down to rummage in a cloth bag crumpled at the base of her chair and drew out a mass of yarn, and began to knit.
Ilya’s face lit with interest. “That is like weaving. May I ask what it is you’re doing?”
“It’s called knitting. The women of your people don’t knit? Who did the marvelous embroidery on your shirt?”
He tilted his head to one side, looking pleased and a little shy. “I did.”
“You did?” Cara laughed. “Well. That ought to teach me not to make unwarranted assumptions. What were you going to say, Tess? Would you like something to drink? Some Scotch, perhaps?”
“I don’t think so—”
“Certainly.” Ilya cut across her refusal. “We would be honored.” He shot her an admonishing glance. Sharing food and drink was one of the two fundamental courtesies that bound the jaran tribes together.
“Perhaps you’d like to come with me,” said Cara, to Ilya.
“No. I want Ilya to stay here.” His presence was both the spur and the anchor, forcing her to go forward, keeping her stable. She clutched the book in both hands. “And you, too, Cara. It’s no long
speech. It’s very little, really, it’s very simple. I’m not going back.”
Charles rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “You’re not going back where?”
“To Jeds, with you, when you go back. When you leave.” She burned with heat. She knew it, could feel the flush on her face, could feel her pulse pounding. “It’s only fair to tell you, so you don’t keep thinking…that maybe I will. That I’m going back. I know that’s what you came for. But I can’t go. Not now.”
“Why is that?” Charles’s voice was cool, neutral.
Ilya sat straight, his chin lifted in triumph, and he looked at Tess, not at his rival, as if, having won, he could now dismiss him.
Why did she have to defend herself like this? And why must she do it so damned badly? “Because I love him,” she said in Anglais.
“Love is a compelling reason,” said Charles in Rhuian, and Ilya shifted his gaze to Charles. “But alone it is not always sufficient. I think it isn’t all that is keeping you here.”
“What do you mean by that?” demanded Ilya. Whatever ease had existed between the two men at the beginning of the conversation vanished, evaporating in the heat of Ilya’s question.
“Ilya,” said Tess.
“I’m getting the Scotch,” said Cara, “and I expect you two to behave yourselves until I get back.” She rose and strode off to her tent.
Charles raised his eyebrows. His gaze caught on Bakhtiian’s, and a moment later the two men smiled stiffly at each other.
“Serves you right,” muttered Tess. Cara returned with the bottle of Scotch and four sturdy glass tumblers. Ilya held up the one she gave him and turned it, watching the light splinter and catch in the crystal.
“This is beautiful.” He lowered the glass so that Cara could pour a splash of the liquor into it. With the others, he lifted it and drank. Tess lowered her glass and watched him, saw his eyes round at the potency of the alcohol. He choked back a cough and took another sip, cautiously this time.
Cara chuckled. “Now,” she said, “you will come with me, Bakhtiian. I have a few things to show you, and some questions to ask about your army’s medical logistics.”