by Kate Elliott
A cool, commanding voice answered from inside the tent. “Send them in.”
A shudder shook through Vasha, so hard that at first he thought he could not walk. But Nadine Orzhekov was all he had. When she swept the entrance flap aside and ducked in, he followed tight against her, practically hugging her side. Vasha had never felt more afraid in his life.
Two men stood on either side of a table in the outer chamber. In that first instant, glimpsing them—one dark and stern, one fair and breathtakingly handsome—either one could have been the man he had dreamed of all these years. Dressed simply, and yet gifted with the commanding presence a general and great leader must have. Both tall. Both of them radiant. He could have fallen at the feet of either of them, and been happy to gain their notice. He clenched his hands and fought back tears. And remembered that his mother had always spoken of Bakhtiian as a dark-featured man.
Like an answer to his thought, the dark man started forward and embraced Nadine. “Dina! Have you just ridden in? Where is the prince?”
“About two days behind us, with the pack train. I rode ahead, Uncle.”
Oh, gods. Bakhtiian looked past her. It took every ounce of courage that Vasha possessed to hold his ground against that severe gaze. Bakhtiian had dark hair, a beard, and eyes that pierced right through him. “Who is this?” he demanded of his niece, without taking his eyes off of Vasha.
“I see I’ve come at just the right time,” replied Nadine sarcastically. “Where is Tess?”
“Come here. What’s your name?”
Vasha gulped down a breath and stepped out from behind Nadine, into the full force of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian’s stare.
“Vasha, this is Bakhtiian,” said Nadine brusquely. “Pay your respects.”
All the years of waiting and dreaming weighed on him. He had never believed it would come to this. How badly he wanted to make a good impression. “I am Vassily Kireyevsky,” he said softly, because it was all the volume he could manage. “My mother was Inessa Kireyevsky.”
“Inessa Kireyevsky! Gods.” Bakhtiian stared at him, and Vasha wanted only to drown, to spin away into the air, into nothing. The haze descended once again, and although he knew the others went on talking, he paid no attention to them, he only stared at Bakhtiian, memorizing him, the man he had never seen and yet knew as well as … his own father. But a spark rose burning within, fighting his paralysis: Bakhtiian remembered Inessa Kireyevsky. That was hopeful.
The curtain into the inner chamber stirred and opened, and a woman stepped out. “Isn’t Inessa Kireyevsky the one you lay with out on the grass, under the stars?” Her voice was low, touched with a kind laughter, generous and full.
Bakhtiian did not shift his gaze from Vasha, and the boy felt smothered under the weight of his stare. “You’ve a good memory, my wife,” he said in that same even voice that smothered the turmoil in its depths.
“For some things,” she replied.
An odd accent graced her voice, light, even pleasing, but obvious. Vasha tore his gaze away from Bakhtiian and stared at her: at her brown hair and her fine, exotic features. Her calves and feet were bare, but a silken robe of gold covered the rest of her. The fine sheen of the fabric caught the light, shimmering as she moved forward through the chamber. She was pregnant. She was not a jaran woman.
“You’re the khaja princess!” he blurted out.
“Yes.” She examined him. “What’s your name again? Vasha?”
Her interest seemed benevolent enough, although he was not sure he could trust her. “Vassily Kireyevsky.”
“How old are you, Vasha?”
“I was born in the Year of the Hawk.”
“And you’ve no father? Did your mother never marry?”
He hung his head in shame. Again, the truth had to be told. He wanted so desperately for them to like him. “My mother never married. That’s why my cousins wished to be rid of me.”
“Inessa never married?” said Bakhtiian, sounding skeptical. “I find that hard to believe.”
To Vasha’s surprise, it was Nadine Orzhekov who came to his defense. She rested a hand on his shoulder. He hadn’t even known if she liked him. “They treated him poorly enough. They didn’t want him. That’s why I thought he’d be better off here. Especially since Inessa claimed up until the day she died that you were the boy’s father.”
Bakhtiian flung his head back. He looked astonished. He fairly crackled with life. “How can I be his father? I never married her!”
“Vasha,” commanded the khaja princess. “Come here.” He obeyed, walking over to her. She placed a finger under his chin and gently tilted his head back, the better to examine his face. She was—not beautiful like his mother, but strong, with her odd khaja features, and she measured him kindly, with compassion in her eyes such as he had not seen since his grandmother died.
At that moment, he fell in love with her.
“It could be,” she said generously. “There’s a strong enough resemblance, once you look for it.”
“But, Tess—”
She cut off her husband ruthlessly. “Don’t be stupid, Ilya.” Then she lifted a hand and brushed Vasha’s dark hair lightly. “Vasha, do you know why your mother never married?”
He risked a look at Bakhtiian, who stood glowering at them. He swallowed, but knowing the princess expected him to speak, he managed to. “Because she thought that Bakhtiian was coming back to marry her. But he never did. And she never wanted anyone else.” All at once he realized that these words might offend the princess. He flushed, sick with worry. Bakhtiian’s fixed expression cowed him, and he was too afraid to look at the princess.
But the princess, when she spoke, merely sounded puzzled. “Surely this was inevitable?” she asked the others. Her hand traced a path down Vasha’s neck and came to rest on his shoulder. He melted against her, seeking shelter, and she gave it to him, tightening her arm around him.
Bakhtiian just stared. “Gods, I didn’t think she meant it when she told me she was pregnant.”
“Is it just a coincidence that he’s named Vassily?” asked the princess calmly.
In reply, the other man came to life, the fair one who stood over to one side of the princess, saying nothing, only watching. Given an instant’s choice between them, Vasha would have guessed that the fair man—on beauty alone—must be Bakhtiian, but he was someone else and thus did not count. Until now. “Do you mean to say,” he asked hoarsely, “that you told her to name the child after me?”
Frightened by this outburst, Vasha huddled closer in against the princess. As if in answer, she looked down at him. “Vasha. Is that what you wish? To be our son?”
The ground dropped out from under his feet. He could not speak, not even to beg for what he wanted more than anything in the world.
Like a slap, bringing him back to earth, Bakhtiian snapped at his wife. “Tess! We can’t take him in. That’s absurd. I’ll raise no objection if Nadine wishes to foster him, but—”
“You already made the choice, Ilya. You lay with her. She bore a child.”
“But, Tess—”
“Gods, Ilya, just look at him. By the laws of Jeds, this boy would be recognized as your son.”
Bakhtiian stiffened, and Vasha recognized, even through his stupor and the pain of his hope, the bearing of the general who had united the jaran tribes. “This isn’t Jeds,” he said in a taut, threatening voice, “and neither are the laws of Jeds my laws.”
Gulping in air, Vasha recovered himself. That was that, of course. As he had known it must be. But still….
“That may be,” said the princess with terrible gravity, “but by the laws of Jeds, and by the laws of Erthe, I acknowledge him as your son, and by that connection, as my son as well.” Her hand tightened on his shoulder, claiming him, and the world seemed to go white in deference to the fierce passion of her words, each one a force in and of itself. “And by the law of the jaran, by my stating it in front of witnesses, it becomes true.”
She had just
claimed him as her son.
She had just claimed him as her son! Which made him, by the laws of the jaran, Bakhtiian’s son as well.
He burst into racking sobs and collapsed to his knees in front of her.
A little while later, she knelt down beside him, stroking his hair, murmuring soothing words. “Vasha. Shhh. Don’t cry. Come now, stand up. Here’s something to drink.”
His nose was running, and he wiped at it, at his cheeks, with his sleeve and hid his face with his arm until the worst of it was gone. Then, on unsteady legs, he rose.
Only to face a worse apparition: that of Bakhtiian standing, looking angry and perplexed, holding out to him a cup filled with steaming tea. Vasha hesitated.
“Take it,” snapped Bakhtiian.
Long used to obedience, Vasha obeyed. His hands trembled as he took the proffered cup from the hands of his—from him. He shook so badly that a little bit of liquid slopped over the side, stinging his hand. “Thank you,” he murmured.
For some reason the comment made Bakhtiian give an exasperated sigh. “I need to go—” he began.
“No, you don’t,” said the princess mildly. “You need to stay here.”
He grunted, annoyed, and turned his back on them to go stand at the table. He lit another lantern and rolled out a thick slab of parchment that bore many little marks on it, and stared grimly at it, ignoring them.
Vasha drank down the tea. Gods, he was thirsty! The lantern light shadowed the man, but the thing studied lay illuminated. He gathered up his courage. “Is that a map?” he asked softly of the princess.
Bakhtiian glanced back at him. Vasha flinched, afraid he had said something he oughtn’t. Despair swamped him. Now that he was here, he could see how foolish dreams were: He had what he wanted, what his mother had told him was his rightful place, only Bakhtiian didn’t want the unwanted child any more than the Kireyevskys had.
“Yes,” said Bakhtiian curtly. “It is a map.”
There was a long pause.
Grudgingly, Bakhtiian spoke again. “Come look at it.”
Vasha took one step and halted. The princess took his arm, and thus encouraged by her closeness, he went to stand next to his…to his father. Together they examined the map.
2
Earth: One Year Later
ANATOLY SAKHALIN SAT ON a pillow and stared out the window. His hands lay open on his knees, but it was only by main force of will that he kept his body relaxed. On the street below, bordered by flowers and divided into two paths by a line of scrubby trees running down the middle of the paved surface, women and men passed at odd intervals, intent on their own business but greeting each other as they passed. Close to the trees other people flew by, legs pumping the strange two-wheeled creatures called bicycles. Here in the vast city called London, they all wore such strange clothing that Anatoly could not always be sure which were women and which were men. The sun shone down, and squares of light patched the rug on which he sat.
The flat lay quiet behind him. That had been their first fight. Twenty days ago he had walked off the ship into Diana’s arms, and since that time she had kept him next to her every instant. For the first eight days, they had stayed at her family’s house, and although he liked her rather loud and enthusiastic relatives, they had all, it seemed to him, conspired with her to keep him always under her eye. Then Diana had returned to the city and he, of course, went with her. When she rehearsed, he sat in the theater and watched. When she performed, he did the same thing, or waited in her dressing room. She ate with him, slept with him, stuck next to him as a father dogs his daughter’s first steps or as anyone leans over a new-built fire, coaxing it to burn on a windy day.
Gods, it infuriated him. She was sheltering him, damn her. Today he had refused to go with her to the theater. And when she had protested, when she had scolded him, he had finally said what he had known in his heart at that first embrace on the transfer station, twenty days past.
“You don’t want me here!”
Any fool could read the look that crossed her face. “But you are here, Anatoly,” she had said, not denying it, damn her twice, “and I’m responsible for you.”
In reply, he had seated himself on the pillow, turning his back to her, and refused to be budged. Eventually she had left.
He felt no triumph in the act, but, by the gods, a prince of the Sakhalin was not a child to be watched over! And yet, the bitter fact remained: Not one soul out there in London, except the members of the repertory company who had spent a year with the jaran, cared or even knew about the Sakhalin tribe, Eldest Tribe of the jaran. None of these khaja had heard of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, who even now led the jaran army on a gods-inspired mission to unite jaran and khaja lands. Anatoly had left that army to follow his wife to her country, and a damned strange country it was, too.
He had taken a long and confusing and often inexplicable journey to get here to this city called London, to this province (or was it a kingdom?) called England, to this planet (that had been explained to him, but he remained skeptical about the truth of the explanation since he was well aware that the khaja honored different gods and thus must believe a different story of the world and of creation than the jaran did) called Earth. And the worst of it was, for all his skill at tracking, for all that he had chased the Habakar king a hundred days’ ride into unknown territory and found his way back with no trouble to Bakhtiian’s army and known lands, he did not know where he was. As terrible as it was to admit it, he did not think that, if he wanted to return, he could find his way back to the plains by himself.
But he refused to return, because it would give his grandmother and Tess Soerensen the satisfaction of knowing they had been right to counsel him not to follow his wife.
These khaja were like grazel, he reflected as he examined the scene outside with distaste. They preferred to clump together in huge herds rather than roaming in smaller, freer groups as did wild horses and the jaran tribes. He felt closed in. And it smelled funny, too.
Like an echo of his thoughts, a familiar scent caught at him, and he turned his head to look back into the flat. While not a particularly large room, it had been furnished with little enough furniture that it almost gave the illusion of a tent as spacious as his grandmother’s. In the doorway leading into the hall, a vision appeared, a woman dressed as any proper, well-born jaran woman would dress. Standing there, she seemed a sudden and stark reminder of what he had left behind.
“I beg your pardon,” said Karolla Arkhanov. “May I come in?”
He rose at once. “Cousin,” he said, acknowledging her in the formal style.
She walked into the room, skirted the couch, and sat down on a pillow opposite him on the rug. Her children trailed after her, the fair-haired, sullen, small boy and the gorgeous daughter who carried the infant Anton in her arms.
“Mama,” said Ilyana in an undertone, shifting her baby brother in her arms as he squirmed to get free and down on the carpet, “we’re supposed to be in school.”
“Hush,” said Karolla, slanting a quick glance at her daughter. The girl did not look like her mother at all. Karolla was a pale, undistinguished, weary-looking woman, and Anatoly found it odd and rather disturbing that she acted more like her husband’s servant than his wife. “It’s a khaja thing, this school. There’s no reason you need to go.”
The girl set her lips tight, but to Anatoly’s surprise, she did not protest. The boy flung himself down on the carpet and stared at the flowered wall, or at nothing.
Anatoly got up and went over to Ilyana. “Here, I’ll take the little one,” he offered. Anton was a robust boy, not quite walking yet; solemn, a little grumpy, but coaxable. Anatoly liked holding him. He set the baby on his knee and turned back to Karolla, careful not to look at her directly. “Cousin, I apologize for… my impertinence, but as my wife says, the children must learn khaja ways as well as jaran ways if they are to get along here.” He pretended not to see the grateful glance Ilyana threw his way. Valentin stared dreamy
-eyed into the air and did not appear to hear him. Anton wiggled off his lap and crawled over toward his mother, thought better of it, sat up, and began chewing on his fat fist.
Watching him, Anatoly conceived the first element of his campaign to win his wife back. They must have a child, preferably three or four.
“Go on, then, if you want to,” said Karolla suddenly into the silence.
Ilyana leapt to her feet, grabbed Valentin’s wrist and yanked him up, and tugged him out of the room before he seemed aware that his feet were moving. Anatoly heard their feet pound down the stairs. “At their defection, Anton broke into hiccupping little sobs, and at once Karolla pulled him to her lap and let him nurse.
“We shouldn’t be here,” she said in a confiding voice. “The gods cannot approve.”
Irritated, Anatoly nevertheless was far too well-bred to show it. The two situations were scarcely comparable. He had, as was fitting, followed his wife to her people’s tribe. That his wife was also a Singer and thereby touched by the gods (although here on Earth they called her an actor) had made his duty all the more clear, and indeed, while the pressure for him to stay with the jaran had become intense, once decided he had not faltered from his choice to follow her.
“We are here,” he said mildly, finally, “and surely that is the duty the gods have given us.”
“To live exiled from our people?” asked Karolla bitterly. Then she answered herself. “But I have always lived in exile from my tribe, since I chose to follow my father and my husband.”
Unnatural acts both, thought Anatoly, but he did not voice the thought aloud, not wishing to hurt her feelings. “These khaja are strange,” he said instead. “Stranger even than the Habakar and the Xiriki-khai.”