by Kate Elliott
Bakhtiian smiled, but Jiroannes did not find the expression reassuring. “By his wisdom, so shall we know him. Ambassador, know this before you judge: by jaran custom, false accusation is akin to treason, and the punishment for a first offense is to be stripped of all rank and possessions and given into another family’s camp, to act as their servant. As for the other—well—it is women’s jurisdiction. Sonia, what would the punishment be for forcing a woman?”
Sonia smiled viciously. “Death.”
Bakhtiian placed his hands on his staff, where they rested quietly, and he waited.
Jiroannes knew fear, stark fear, in that instant. A slave knew only his master’s coercion, having no power of his own. The conclusion was obvious, read both by simple reasoning and by the triumphant and angry look on Sonia’s face: under jaran custom, to lie with a woman slave was the same as raping her.
Here, kneeling alone before Bakhtiian, the power of the Great King seemed so distant as to be inconsequential. Jiroannes cast himself on both knees and bent his forehead down until it touched the dirt. No one struck him dead, so he lifted his head, although he did not raise his eyes,
“I would counsel mercy, great lord, by reason of their ignorance.”
Sonia hissed again, to show her displeasure.
“Bring the woman slave here to us,” said Bakhtiian. “As for these others. Zhensky, this time, I absolve you. I hope you have learned your lesson. Anatoly, you and your man will go to Mother Sakhalin, and you will accept whatever punishment she sees fit to burden you with, for your ill-advised conduct.”
They left. Jiroannes saw their boots pass him, but he did not dare look up to see their expressions, although he could not imagine they were anything but thrilled at their good fortune.
“As for the girl. By the gods, lift her up. It’s indecent for a woman to grovel so. Here now, Qissa. Bring your father to me. We have need of merchants to serve us. What he has lost, we will restore to him and his family, so long as he remains loyal to us.” The girl was led away by the two women who had brought her in. “Gods, I’m thirsty,” said Bakhtiian.
Jiroannes remained bent over in the dust, but he could smell the pungent aroma of fermented mare’s milk, and of another, richer scent, something hot. The court waited. It was silent, except for the shuffling of feet, someone leaving, someone arriving, a messenger coming in with a dispatch which he recited in rapid khush to Bakhtiian. Jiroannes was too terrified to even attempt to understand it. He was going to die. He had flouted his uncle’s direct order not to bring a woman in his party, and now he was going to die for it. Was the choice worth it, to have had a woman at his disposal all these months? By the Everlasting God, of course it was not. One year of continence was a small sacrifice compared to what he was going to pay now.
He was a fool, and a damned fool at that.
“Eminence,” said Syrannus in an undertone, crouching beside him. “They have brought her. You must rise, eminence, or be thought a coward in your dying.”
It was true. At least he would die like a man. He rose. It was a little hard to straighten his legs, because they were numb from kneeling for so long. Samae came forward, her face still. She hesitated, glancing first at Jiroannes and then at Bakhtiian, and then at Bakhtiian’s wife, as if she did not know where to give her obeisance. When she moved at last, to Jiroannes’s surprise, she moved to kneel in front of him.
“Furthermore,” said Sonia clearly into the silence, “he sent the girl to Mitya, who all unknowing thought she had come to his tent by her own will.” There was a gasp around the court, as if a heinous crime had just been compounded by something worse. “More than once,” she added. “I just discovered that this afternoon. I don’t blame the boy.”
What method did they use to execute their prisoners? Was it slow? Quick? But hadn’t the old crone said that prisoners ought to die quickly and bravely? The Great King’s torturers were not so merciful. He had seen them at their work.
“Sonia,” said Bakhtiian in a low voice, “because he is an envoy, I cannot kill him. By my own decree. But—” He forestalled her angry retort by raising a hand. “If I send him home a failure and request a new envoy from the Vidiyan King, surely that will be enough to ruin him.”
Which it would. Disgraced, he would be condemned to the provinces and to a life of obscurity and poverty. Suddenly death did not seem so horrible an option.
“It will have to serve,” said Sonia through tight lips, her voice hoarse. “What about the woman?”
“She will go free, of course. Syrannus.”
The old man started, shocked to be addressed by name by the great prince. “Your eminence.” He knelt.
“You may address me as Bakhtiian.” He said it with a frown, as if the title of “eminence” annoyed him. “Tell the woman that she is free.”
Syrannus looked at Jiroannes. “I am in no position to object!” muttered Jiroannes to the old man. Definitely, disgrace and dishonor was a worse fate than death.
Syrannus coughed. “Samae.” He spoke in Vidyan. “The prince has granted you your freedom. You are free.”
Samae said nothing. She remained kneeling at Jiroannes’s feet, her hands folded in her lap.
There was a pause. No one moved.
Her stubbornness irritated Jiroannes. At least let this horrible episode end, which it could not until she left. “You are free,” he snapped at her. “Do you understand?”
She shook her head. She did not otherwise move.
“Can’t she talk?” demanded Sonia. “Is her tongue cut out, perhaps? I saw that done in Jeds. What are you asking her?”
“I have never heard her speak,” said Jiroannes, angry that this woman doubted his honesty. “And she has a tongue. I know that well enough. I told her that she is free.” Then, to emphasize it, he said the words again to Samae, in Vidyan, in Rhuian and, haltingly, in khush.
Samae shook her head. She did not move.
“She seems to be refusing her freedom,” said Tess Soerensen.
“Gods!” exclaimed Sonia.
“I am tired,” said Bakhtiian, “and I want to eat my supper. Go, all of you. Leave us in peace, if you please. Ambassador.”
Reflexively, Jiroannes knelt, thus bringing himself onto a level with Samae. The effect was unsettling. He was aware all at once that his clothes were stained and mussed from kneeling and that dirt mottled his hands and cuffs. He felt the coarseness of dirt streaking his forehead. He stared at Samae’s profile and at the ragged lines of her short hair. Her face was expressionless. No muscle on her even twitched, although Jiroannes would have said that it was impossible for any human to sit so still.
“Ambassador. You will in future refrain from sending this woman to my cousin, unless she chooses of her own will to go to him.”
Jiroannes jerked his head up. “You are allowing me to stay?”
“A slave is one who has no power. She has the power to choose to refuse her freedom and stay with you. The gods know, I like it little enough, but it is her choice, not mine. So be it. But be aware that the women of this tribe will be watching you closely. They will not be so lenient again. Do you understand?”
“I understand. You are generous, Bakhtiian, more generous than the—”
“You may go.”
Jiroannes left. But walking back to his camp, with Syrannus a step behind him to his left and the girl three steps behind him to his right, he felt, not elated, but burdened. Her presence evermore would be a reproach to him. Surely she could not have refused her freedom merely to afflict him with her constant attendance?
That evening he called Lal to help him undress. And though his blood was hot, stimulated by the fear and the tension of the day, he could not bring himself to summon Samae to his bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE HILLS ABOVE QURAT had a torrid beauty dimmed and softened now in the cool light of dawn. Terraces angled down to the mudbrick walls of the city. Above the fields, parched trees and grasses grew along slopes alternately st
eep and gentle. Two riders negotiated a streambed dried out by the summer’s heat and walked their horses at a sedate pace along a sere hillside. They rode alone, except for the three riders—one man, two women archers—riding about fifty paces behind them, and the ring of riders two hundred strong that circled them an arrow’s shot away.
“It used to be,” said Bakhtiian, reining his stallion around a dead log, “that I could take you out alone onto the grass and lie with you under the stars. Now—” He glanced to his left, where riders appeared and disappeared between distant trees, their red shirts a flag.
“When did we ever do that?” Tess asked. “Grass is an uncomfortable bed, if you ask me, and in any case, by the time we married, you were already well on your way to needing an escort whenever you left camp.”
He smiled. “No, you’re quite right. It wasn’t you. I was much younger and more impulsive. It must have been Inessa Kireyevsky.”
“More impulsive?”
He laughed.
“Kireyevsky,” she mused. “I don’t know that name.”
“The Kireyevsky tribe is one of the granddaughters of the Vershinin tribe. Inessa was the only daughter of their etsana—”
“Of course. Was she married?”
“No.”
“Did you think of marrying her?”
Kriye pranced as Zhashi came up beside him, and Ilya reined him in. Zhashi flattened her ears, and for an instant Tess thought the mare might kick; instead, Zhashi ostentatiously lowered her head to graze. Ilya chuckled.
“Any man thinks of marrying, when he’s young. But I hadn’t been back from Jeds for that many years, and I had so much I wanted to do. I didn’t have time to marry.”
Tess studied him. Four years ago, she had been thrown together with him and his tribe. Four years ago, her life had changed utterly, and she did not regret what she had left behind. Not when he smiled at her as he did now. It was not that the essential core of restlessness, of ambition, in him was stilled by her presence: that had not changed in the least. But before their marriage a discontent, an uncertain temper, had worried at him constantly, wearing him away. That was gone now. Not muted, not faded, but quite simply gone. It had vanished the day he had marked her, and she had marked him. And to know that one had that effect on a person, especially on a personality as powerful as Ilya’s—well, it would have taken a stronger person than she was to resist the urge to stay.
He was in a mellow mood. She took in a deep breath. It was time to test the waters. “Vasil still rode with your jahar, back then,” she added.
His smile evaporated. “Vasil never learned how to let go of what was no longer his.”
Encouraging, but not an answer. “How long have you known Vasil?”
His whole expression shuttered. “I do not wish—”
“To speak of him. I know.” And neither do I, but the truth has to be faced, by me, and by you. “You’re very like Charles in some ways, keeping things to yourself, never sharing them with others. Ilya, if you don’t wish to speak of Vasil with me, then that is your right, but I think you ought to speak to someone about him. It’s eating away at you inside. Dr. Hierakis—”
“Dr. Hierakis? I think not.”
“Niko. No. I can see from your expression that he was too close to whatever happened. Do you know Vasil named his daughter after you?”
“Yes,” he said. For a jaran man, he certainly knew how to construct formidable walls.
Tess sighed, having used up her stores of courage for the day. She started Zhashi forward again. “What shall we name this one?” Her fingers brushed her abdomen, which had barely begun to swell.
His face relaxed, now that he saw she was willing to let the subject drop. “If it’s a girl, Natalia, after my sister.”
“Then Yurinya, if it’s a boy.”
“Agreed.” His voice dropped. “Oh, Tess. I was afraid we would never have a child. I have always wanted to have children of my own.”
Tess chuckled. “After lying with Inessa Kireyevsky out in the grass, and God knows what other women, you might well have some children.”
He shook his head, looking puzzled, and reined Kriye back as they came up to a stand of red-barked trees crowned with a sprinkling of thin leaves. “How could I have children, Tess? I wasn’t married.”
“But Ilya, you know very well that you could have gotten a child on some woman.”
“Yes, and in Jeds that child would be called a bastard. But here, the man she was married to would be its father, not me. And that is as it should be.”
From here, Tess could see far below, in miniature, the golden domes and minarets of Qurat, and the square citadel in the northwest corner of the city. “How much longer do we wait here?”
He studied the terrain. Although they overlooked the city here, they were much too far away to do any damage even with missile fire. Beyond the city lay the plateau and the huge camp of the jaran army, scattered out to the horizon. A thin line of river shone in the farthest distance; above it, clouds laced the sky. Closer, to the west, a narrow valley shot up into the mountains: the pass that led into the heart of the Habakar kingdom.
“I had hoped to draw them out. With the strength of the Habakar army still in front of us, I don’t want to leave this city behind untaken, not at such a strategic site. But we have now taken control of every city on this plateau but Qurat, and we must move forward.” He shrugged. “We shall see.”
“Look there. A rider is coming up.”
He sighed and reached out to grasp her hand and, drawing it up to his lips, to kiss her palm. Then he let her go. “It seems we have had our quiet for the day. Come, we’ll go meet him.”
The rider wore bells, and he was mounted on a fresh horse from the camp below. Aleksi and the two archers—Valye Usova and Anatoly’s sister Shura—joined them, and the circle of riders closed in to form into ranks around Bakhtiian. They parted to let the messenger through.
“Bakhtiian! The Habakar king is marching with a large army through the western pass toward our position.”
“Ah. So I did draw someone out. Good. How long?”
“One day. Two, perhaps. They’re slow, on the march.”
Ilya nodded. His expression closed up, becoming remote from Tess, from his companions, from everything except the matter at hand. “A council,” he said to the messenger. “You ride to the Sakhalin camp. Aleksi, get me Vershinin and Grekov. All the dyans to my camp.” The sun crept up ever higher in the sky, and Tess could see that it would be another hot day.
Another dawn. Two riders sat side by side on a slope overlooking a river and beyond it the far distant walls of Qurat and the hills and mountains behind. Where once had lain the camp of the jaran, filling the flat ground between as water fills a lakebed, now two armies moved, restless, falling into position. To the west, where the pass opened out onto Qurat’s plateau, the last of a stream of wagons, the Habakar supply line, trundled in toward the city, which had opened its gates now that the jaran had given up the ground before its walls. To the northeast, on the other side of the shallow river from the armies, huge squares of wagons had formed, making a mobile fortress of the jaran camp. Behind the two riders, along the ridgetop, a thousand horsemen waited, watching.
“Anatoly is furious,” said Tess. “He wanted to ride in the battle, not watch it from up here as part of my escort.”
Aleksi glanced up at the line of riders a stone’s throw above them. Because Anatoly’s jahar was lightly armored, red was still the dominant color of the line, diluted with the dull gleam of armor and accented by red ribbons tied to their lances. Scattered within the red line, the archers wore many different colors. “Anatoly is a fine commander, but he has yet to learn that battle is not the only way for a man to gain honor.”
“Aleksi, you can’t be any older than Anatoly. How have you gained this knowledge?”
She grinned at him, but Aleksi pondered the question, frowning. He patted his fine gray mare on the withers. Bakhtiian had given him the h
orse when Tess had adopted him as her brother. The irony still amused Aleksi, in a black kind of way. Tess had quite literally saved him from death; she had stopped the Mirsky brothers from killing him for the crime of stealing a horse from their tribe, a crime which it was quite true he had committed and deserved to die for. And in return, he, who deserved nothing, had gotten everything: a sister, a tent, a family, and a tribe. And this fine gray khuhaylan mare, who was a finer horse than anything the Mirsky tribe had ever owned. Certainly she was a far finer animal than the broken-down old tarpan he had stolen after Vyacheslav Mirsky had finally died. He would never have stolen a horse, but he needed to leave the tribe quickly, before they took away from him—the damned orphan the old man had taken in—the few but precious gifts Vyacheslav had given him.
“Tess,” he said finally, seriously, “though no one ever disputed how good I was with the saber, did that bring me honor? No, because I was an orphan. Even at Bakhalo’s school, though I won every contest, still, I had no standing. It seems to me that fighting in a battle can only bring a man honor if he already has honor from his family.”
Tess watched him, looking thoughtful. It was one of the things Aleksi loved about her. He had never been part of any tribe, not since he was very young, a little older than Kolia, perhaps, and his whole tribe had been killed by khaja raiders. The gods might as well have swept a plague over them, it was so sudden and so complete. All had gone, all but him and his older sister Anastasia. After that, the two of them had struggled along, always on the outside, sometimes tolerated, sometimes driven away, but Aleksi had learned to watch and guess and analyze, and in the end he had discovered that he did not see the world the same as other jaran did. But Tess never thought he was strange for that. Because Tess did not see the world the same, either.
“But Anatoly,” said Tess, “has a burden to bear as well, being the eldest grandchild of Mother Sakhalin. He wishes to prove himself worthy of his place.”