by Kate Elliott
“Perhaps you would like to return with me to my tent for refreshments:”
“Oh, certainly!”
In such charity they went, Syrannus behind them and the two slaves behind the old man. Under his own awning, Jiroannes seated Mitya on a pillow and excused himself to go inside for a moment so that Samae could re-bind his turban, which had loosened at the back. He sat on the couch and she unwound the cloth from his head. His hair fell down around his shoulders and down to his waist, and Samae lifted the ribboned strands and wound them back up in fresh linen. The quiet lent a kind of intimacy to their endeavor, contrasted to the bustle outside as Laissa’s servants prepared for the arrival of Mother Sakhalin.
“Samae,” he said, surprising himself more than her, perhaps, “what did you do as a child? Who were your parents?”
Her hands stilled. She tensed, not so much in fear but in astonishment, or anticipation, or anger. How could he tell? He knew so little of her. He felt the tiny movements of her fingers, caught half in his hair and half in the complex folds of cloth wound around his hair.
“Husband!” Laissa swept in. “Move aside, girl!” She cuffed Samae hard on the right cheek, carelessly, but her eyes glinted as she surveyed the slave’s retreat to the foot of the couch. “Come, come. I want you to greet Mother Sakhalin, and then you may retire to entertain the boy, the young prince. He is Bakhtiian’s nephew? No, his cousin’s son. How curious their customs are, but evidently he has no children by his own wives yet.”
Jiroannes rose, the cloth tumbled in his hands. “It is a grave insult to interrupt a man with his hair unbound. Apologize instantly.”
She took a step back, retreating from his anger. It reminded him of those first days, when she had been in his power entirely, when she had groveled before him. “I beg your pardon, husband. I was not aware—”
“Then you will learn. The Everlasting God commands us never to cut our hair and to conceal it from the eyes of strangers, just as we conceal the beauty and worth of our wives from those who might covet them. Do you understand?”
She bowed her head submissively. He clenched one hand into a fist and opened it. Her fear lent her a sudden attraction, and he felt the immediate, full force of desire. But he had a guest outside. “You may go.” She turned to retreat, for once not answering back. “Wife.” At his clipped tone, she froze and looked back over her shoulder. “I will punish my own slaves, when they deserve it. It is not your place to lay hands on them. Do you understand?”
Her gaze shifted past him, seeking Samae, and then darted back. “I understand,” she replied in a low voice.
“I will entertain my own guest. How you choose to entertain women is no concern of mine. Be sure that they are gone by full dark, however, as I mean to come to your bed tonight, and I expect you to be waiting for me.”
She dropped her gaze to stare at the carpet, and he saw that the prospect frightened her. This power he still held over her, who had been virgin and protected by her God from the appetites of men for so many years. Invested as Javani in the year she began her woman’s courses, by the reckoning of her people she had reigned as priestess for over sixteen years before the jaran had burned the holy temple. Another woman would have borne many children in the intervening span and been aged and withered by the burdens of womanhood, but Laissa had remained young, her flesh unmarked by God’s punishing Hand. So had the Everlasting God decreed, that women bear children as a punishment for their weak natures. Jiroannes intended to get many children on her.
She ducked her head and padded away into the safety of her own chambers.
“Samae.” He said it softly. “Let me see your face.” She did not move. He walked over to her and lifted her chin. Red stained her pale skin, where Laissa had hit her. Jiroannes smoothed his fingers over her cheek. “Never mind it. It will fade. Here, now, bind my turban back up, and then you may attend me and the prince. And you may go to him tonight, if you wish it.”
Her gaze lifted to his face. She stared, eyes wide, and then recalled herself and averted her gaze. Her astonishment pleased him, and it fed his desire as well. Tomorrow night he would not go to Laissa’s bed. Tomorrow night, perhaps, he would call for Samae to attend him once again. He sat down on the couch and let her minister to him. Was it his imagination, or did she perform her duties eagerly now, with a certain tenderness? He would find out more about her, who her parents were, why she had been sold into slavery, how she had come to learn the mysterious arts of the Tadeshi concubines, why she cried to see the actors perform their play. Quickly she performed her task and followed him outside, where she knelt in silence three paces behind him, eyes lowered, while Lal served tea and cakes to Jiroannes and Mitya. The two men chatted together, about the return of the Prince of Jeds, about the marriage of Bakhtiian’s niece, about the siege of Karkand, about the relative merits of the weave of cloth from Habakar looms and how much the merchants trading this fine cloth to countries north and south ought to be taxed by the jaran on their profits.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I’M NOT WELCOME AT this council, am I?”
Tess squatted down in front of the chest, lifted the lid, and rummaged inside. “Ilya, in all fairness, why should you be?” She found the length of gold cloth she was looking for and drew it out. “Charles wouldn’t be welcome at your councils, either.”
“There might be a time when it was appropriate for him to attend.”
“There might be, it’s true. I think I’ll use this gold cloth to make a shirt for Vasha.”
“A shirt for who?”
“You remember him. Your son.”
“Tess, he is not—”
“Ilya.”
In the silence, he paced while she heaved herself to her feet and went to the table, to unroll the bolt there, smoothing her hand over the fabric. “He’s a good-looking boy,” Ilya conceded at last, “and he seems well-mannered. Katya likes him.”
“Katerina has befriended him, yes. But then, she’s a generous girl, like her mother.”
“Unlike me?”
Tess grinned suddenly and walked across to him. She took his hand. “I know it was abrupt of me to adopt him like that. But he looked so bedraggled and so pathetic. He’s so young. Was his mother dark-featured as well?”
Ilya nodded absently, attention on the entrance flap, not on her. Outside, they heard Katerina calling out: “Vasha! Vasha! Come here!”
“But what are we going to do with him?” he asked at last.
“Raise him as our child.”
“Our child? But it goes against all our traditions … by no custom of the jaran would he ever come to me. Even so, we can never know if he is truly my child.”
“Do you doubt that he is? I don’t. Oh, it’s moving.”
He spread both hands over her belly and they just stood there. A smile caught on his lips and he closed his eyes. “Yes, I feel it. Our child, Tess.” He sighed, content, and drew his hands up to enclose both her hands between his. “Tess.” He hesitated, glanced toward the entrance, and then back at her. When he spoke, she could barely hear him. “We traveled alongside their tribe for five months, and every night I slept in her tent. It was stupid of me, to show any woman such exclusive attention, but—”
“But?”
“Roskhel’s tribe rode alongside ours for those same months, and I wanted away from my mother’s tent. I hadn’t a tent of my own, and anyway, Inessa was very pretty, so it was no hardship for me to lie with her every night. By the time we left them, she knew she was pregnant. Vasha is my child by the laws of Jeds, where such lines are followed through the man whose seed makes a woman pregnant. But we are not in Jeds. Nor do I rule there. By the laws of the jaran he is not my child, nor am I his father, except that I’m married to you, and that you adopted him as a foster-son.”
He released her abruptly. A moment later Katerina burst into the tent. “Aunt Tess! Vasha, come here!”
The boy pushed through the opening hesitantly and halted right on the threshol
d as if he did not want to intrude, the heavy flap caught on his shoulders. Katerina grabbed his wrist and jerked him forward.
“Look. Vasha, show them!”
“Little one,” said Ilya sternly, “he needn’t show us anything he doesn’t want to.” He turned a steady gaze on Vasha, and the boy stared up at him.
Oh, yes, the resemblance was strong enough that anyone might guess just by looking at them together that they were father and son. And Vasha had the eyes, the same fire there, burning. He stared at his father as much with awe as with apprehension. Ilya looked vexed. Finally, Vasha uncurled his right hand to display a finely-carved bone clasp, the kind one would use to close a saddlebag or a pouch.
“By the gods,” Ilya murmured. He lifted it up and examined it. It was long and narrow, like a finger, curved, with a small hole at one end for a leather strip to lace through. He laughed out of sheer surprise. “My father gave me this. He carved it for me, as a present, when my first cycle of years had passed. Do you see the eagle, here? How his wings curl and drape around the clasp, as if he’s embracing the winds?” Katya hung on her uncle’s arm, staring. Vasha did not move, did not even close his hand or withdraw it. “Where did you get it?”
Vasha shrugged, dipping his chin down, staring at the carpet.
“Vasha! When I ask a question, I expect an answer.”
The boy mumbled something.
“Gods, boy! I’m not going to punish you for it. I thought I’d lost this years ago, but I see that your mother merely stole it from me.”
His gaze leapt up to Ilya. He glared. “She did not! She said you gave it to her!”
“I never gave it to her! And it happened more than once, that she’d take things from me and tell people I’d given them to her—” His voice dropped suddenly, in the face of Vasha’s humiliated anger. “But perhaps I merely dropped it somewhere, and she found it and kept it to give to me again.”
“Only you never came back,” said the boy in a muted tone, looking down again.
“No, I never did. Well, here. I give it back to you, then.”
“To me!” His gaze flashed up to Ilya and down again.
“As my father gifted me with it, so do I gift it to you.”
“Oh,” said Katerina.
Vasha did not move. Ilya placed the clasp on the boy’s palm and closed his fingers over it. “Vasha, you are with us now. Let this be the seal between you and me, then, that … that we’ll raise you as we would any son of ours.” Still Vasha did not speak. Ilya glanced at Tess. “Well?” he demanded, as if she could help him.
“I have to go. Katya, I’m going to make a shirt for Vasha out of this cloth. Take it over to your mother and show it to her, please.”
“Of course, Aunt Tess.” Katya rolled up the cloth and hurried away.
Tess straightened her clothes over her belly. “Give me a kiss, little one,” she said to Vasha. He started and came to kiss her, once on each cheek, in the formal way. She kissed him on the forehead as well, kissed Ilya on the cheek, and went to the entrance. There she paused on the threshold.
Ilya examined the boy as if he hadn’t the least idea what to do with him. He coughed, glanced at Tess, and frowned. “Well. Do you know how to ride, Vasha?”
“Of course I know how to ride! How do you think I got here? Oh, I beg your pardon, I’m sorry. That was ill-mannered of me. Yes, I know how to ride.”
Ilya sighed. He put out a hand as if to pat the boy on the shoulder, withdrew it, and then reached out again and awkwardly touched Vasha on the arm. “You’ll ride out with me today, then. We’ll go find you a mount.”
Satisfied, Tess left them. She stopped to consult with Sonia about the shirt and then went on to Charles’s encampment. She enjoyed the walk; she much preferred walking to riding these days, although she sometimes had to stop when her belly tightened up, all the muscles tensing, practicing for the event scheduled to occur in about seventy days. She was seven months pregnant now, with two months to go, more or less, Earth-time, although the year and month were longer here on Rhui.
Sometimes, especially late at night, she really thought the best thing would be to return to Jeds. But Cara could care for her as well here as at Jeds, really, especially with the new equipment Charles had brought with him, and it was too late by now to get her off-planet. What if she died?
But there was no point in worrying. She couldn’t turn back now. What would come, would come. And she did have Cara, after all. Somehow, with Cara here, she couldn’t imagine anything going wrong.
So what would happen after the baby came? These days it seemed like a veil lay drawn between her here, now, and what lay after the baby’s arrival. What did she want out of life anyway? Mostly she wanted to be finished with the pregnancy, which weighed on her like a kind of mental torpor, as if all the activity in her body, mental or otherwise, had been channeled into her womb. Yet for two days now the thought of the female Chapalii had nagged at her. All this time humanity had read old human patterns onto Chapalii culture: males who possessed all the status and did everything important and females who lived in seclusion, as second-class citizens. Now it appeared that they had been wrong; now it appeared that the Chapalii possessed two cultures. Yet surely the two cultures intertwined somehow. Surely the pattern was readable, if only the right person, with the right skills, could investigate. Tess knew quite well who the right person was.
Yet she did not want to leave Rhui. She did not want to leave the jaran. Charles lived in a world made cold by his obsession; by joining with him, her world, her surroundings, would be cold as well. She would have to leave the warmth of her family behind. Because the jaran were her family, now. Somehow, she had to find a way to work with Charles and yet remain on Rhui.
“Tess!”
“Oh, hello, Aleksi. Where did you come from?”
He ran up to her and settled into a walk. Pink flushed his cheeks. “Sonia told me where you’d gone. I thought—” He broke off.
“You thought what? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” But his expression belied the comment. He hesitated, and then words came out in a rush. “Tess, don’t leave me behind when you go. When you leave. I’ve got no place here, except with you. Whatever there might be, out there, in the heavens, I’ll gladly risk it, as long as I can stay with you.”
“Aleksi!” She stopped. “I’m not leaving. Not yet, anyway.”
“But someday—?”
“Yes.” She said it reluctantly. “Yes, someday I’ll leave the jaran.”
“Then?”
She smiled sadly, thinking of Yuri, who had refused her offer to go with her to Jeds. Gods, it seemed long ago that he had died. “Aleksi, I promise that when I leave, I’ll take you with me if that’s what you truly want.” His flush faded. His expression cleared. “You may as well come with me now. You already know too much as it is.” He assented with a nod and walked beside her the rest of the way to Charles’s tent.
Charles waited outside. He rose when he caught sight of her, and came to greet her. “You’re looking well.”
“Thank you.”
He looked at Aleksi and then back at Tess.
“He knows already, Charles. I don’t see the harm in letting Aleksi sit in on the council.”
“You don’t?”
“Believe me, Aleksi has no standing whatsoever in the tribes except what I’ve given him. He knows it. I know it. We can trust him.” Beside her, Aleksi stood perfectly still, effacing himself in that way he’d learned over the years to avoid notice.
Charles studied the young man, and then Tess; he drew two fingers down the curve of his short beard, stroking it to a point at his chin. “What benefit?” he asked finally.
“Benefit! You would ask that. All right. This one. He has his own tent. When you leave, you can leave a modeler and communicator with him which he can keep in his tent, which I can then use without fear of it being discovered by Ilya or anyone else.”
“This assumes that when I leave, you do
n’t come with me.”
“I’m not coming with you.”
“Come inside. Everyone else is here.” He turned to go in, turned back. “And you as well, Aleksi.”
Aleksi glanced once, swiftly, at Tess. Tess knew well enough what the invitation meant: Aleksi had just stepped outside the boundaries of his old life and been accepted into a new one. He knew it, too. All of them knew that this was an invitation that would never be extended to Bakhtiian.
They ducked inside the tent. Tess sank gratefully into the chair Cara offered her. She greeted everyone: Marco, David, Maggie, Jo, Rajiv, and Ursula. Aleksi crouched beside her, one hand on the back of her chair. Better that he be here, to mark that although she was part of this world, this council, she also had inseparable links to Rhui. She rested a hand on her abdomen. The fetus moved, rolling under her hand, under the cloth of her tunic, under the skin and the flesh. That link alone marked her forever, mother to a child half of one world, half of another.
“I think,” said Charles into the silence, “that we need to consider the interdiction. We need to consider putting into place a matrix within which the plan of sabotage can develop and from which it can be launched at the appropriate time. Also, I’m running out of time. Now that I’ve proclaimed myself a player in court politics, I can’t be absent for too long without losing—what? face?—without losing position, certainly, and without causing so much suspicion that the emperor might feel called upon to act, to investigate what I’m actually doing here on my interdicted world. Comments?”
“No doubt that you must go back soon,” said Cara.
“I think we should pull everyone off Rhui,” said Rajiv, “except those vital to the matrix.”
“But if we pull everyone off,” said Marco, “then won’t the Chapalii be suspicious? We ought to let it go on as it always has, more or less.”
“Marco, you only say that because you still have continents you want to explore.”