by Kate Elliott
“Little squirt. How you doing?” Gus gave Kori a hug.
“I didn’t know you was back,” said Kori.
“Were back. Yeah, the tour ended early, so I came back home. Hello, Ilyana. Pleased to see you again.”
Ilyana lifted her eyes just enough to see where he had stuck his hand out, so she lifted hers, and they shook hands.
“I hope you’re well,” added Uncle Gus solemnly.
She mumbled something in the affirmative, as reply. She wanted to shrivel up into a worm and just die. Kori’s Uncle Gus was a dancer and a choreographer, very well known and quite well connected, and the last time she had seen him he had been politely but firmly extricating himself from her dear father’s attempt to seduce him.
Uncle Gus took pity on her, released her hand, and turned back to his niece. “And I’m getting married.”
Kori shrieked, and then laughed. “To who? To who? Oh, not another dancer—!”
He chuckled. “To whom. To whom. You kids and your grammar. Not to a dancer, to a nice woman I went to university with years ago and just met up with again during the tour. She’s doing soil research right now on Tau Ceti Tierce.”
“A scientist!” Kori snorted. “What? You had to bring someone in to keep Mama company?”
“She’s at the flat now,” he said. “I was hoping you could come right home and meet her.” But then, because like Kori and everyone else in her family he was a sympathetic and perceptive soul, he hesitated. “But perhaps you are off to do something with Ilyana.”
“No, no,” said Ilyana quickly, cutting off Kori’s reply. “I’ll see you later.” She backed onto the grass until she shouldered up against the hedge. Kori lifted a hand in farewell and then dropped it, seeing very well that Ilyana meant them to just go on. She took her uncle’s arm and, chatting away, they walked off under the archway to the bike rack.
This time, it wasn’t the sun that brought tears to Ilyana’s eyes. Why couldn’t she have had a family like that? Or like Diana Brooke-Holt’s family, who always made her welcome even if Ilyana knew she would never really be one of them? Or like a real family: mother and father, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins and grandparents, all living in one set of tents….
She winced at her lapse. Not tents, but flats or houses or a complex, all the things they had here on Earth. But even back where she had been born, even back on the planet Rhui, with the jaran, she had never had a real family. She had always been different. Just a mother and a father—when her father was around—and one sibling. That was all. It wasn’t healthy to live like that, without cousins and aunts to surround you, without a grandmother and ancient wizened great-aunts to give a child sweets and whisper to her the secrets of weaving and tell her at bedtime the old stories of the moon and the sun. Well, now she had another brother and a sister, and yet another on the way, but still, they were alone.
Disgusted at herself, she sniffed, hard, and wiped away her tears. It didn’t do any good to cry. They all depended on her.
“Heyo,” said Valentin from the maze, startling her. He emerged, blinking hard against the sunlight. But he didn’t look as pale and sickly as he had in the nesh-pod. “I’m sorry,” he said, and touched her arm fleetingly. “But I won’t go anyway,” he added quickly. “I hate those receptions. You know I do. They’re disgusting. Dad is disgusting.”
“Stop it! It doesn’t matter what he is—”
“—he’s still our father,” he finished in a mincing voice, which changed abruptly. “And I wish he’d go away again.”
“Well he won’t go away!” she shouted. “Don’t be stupid, Valentin. I know you hate him, but he’s still our father. He tries to be nice.”
“Oh, he is nice, when he wants to be.” Valentin sat down on a bench and slid his blades onto the soles of his shoes. “He’s just so wonderful. Everyone says so.”
It bothered Ilyana that Valentin had so little balance that he had to sit to pull on his blades. She tugged hers out of her duffel and stood first on one foot, then the other, and sealed the blades onto the latches on her boots. With a like gesture, they slung identical duffels each over a shoulder to hang along their backs. Then they skated on the path out under the archway, toward home.
“I just want to live in nesh forever,” Valentin said, and Ilyana felt cold fear stab straight through her heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Transaction
HILLS AND FOREST BROKEN by fields and villages and an occasional town—such were the khaja lands that Vassily and his escort rode through, day after day after day, heading north. Some of these Yossian princes and dukes had mustered armies and fought Sakhalin; most of them had died or fled, and two, with their captured children and wives, had been sent north to pledge loyalty to Bakhtiian. Rather like he was being sent north, except that Bakhtiian was probably more merciful to the khaja princes than he would be to Vasha.
But that was too distressing to think about for long. Vasha knew how to hunker down and go on without staring his worst troubles in the face.
The land lay quiet. More, Vasha thought, because the khaja were still shocked by the sudden and devastating appearance of the jaran army than because they were now at peace. Sakhalin sacked cities that resisted and spared those that surrendered immediately. More and more, the khaja surrendered. He ought to have taken that tack with Sakhalin, he ought to have just obeyed, but to be sent out to groom horses with fifteen-year-olds! It was too much to endure.
“Shall we go over to the merchants’ camp?” Stefan asked, his question a welcome relief. They’d done with watering the horses and had hobbled them for the night, and it wasn’t their duty this evening to stand guard.
Vasha sighed, glancing back toward the jahar’s camp, where the captured khaja woman’s tent had been set up by older riders. Her name was Rusudani, and she was evidently a daughter or niece or cousin of Prince Zakaria of the Yos princedom of Tarsina-Kara. That was all he knew about her or was, at this rate, ever likely to know.
“You can’t talk to her anyway,” added Stefan, reading his mind.
“And you can’t talk to Merchant Bathori’s wife, either,” retorted Vasha, stung, “even if you do make eyes at her shamelessly.”
“Can too talk to her. She speaks Taor. So there.”
“But you never have, so what difference does it make?”
Stefan punched at him, and Vasha punched back, and they sparred a bit until they both broke off, laughing and out of breath.
“Come on, let’s go,” said Vasha. “The merchants’ camp is the only interesting place here, since we can’t go into that town.”
“We could sneak out…” suggested Stefan, but Vasha only shook his head. Riasonovsky had laid down strict rules for his charges, and Vasha did not intend to get into any more trouble.
They skirted the horses and started off along the river. At dusk, the river bank melded with the water and the moon’s reflection swam on the rippling current. On this side of the river lay the princedom of Hereti-Manas, across it that of Gelasti, but the land looked exactly the same to Vassily. A ford lay down at the bend in the river, and on the other bank stood the town of Manas the Smaller, itself a kind of younger cousin to the city of Greater Manas, the prince’s seat.
Here where they camped, the merchants’ wagons covered a whole grassy area, bounded by trees on one side and on the other by the high grass and reeds of the damp ground nearest the river. Insects riddled the air, except where fire and smoke drove them away. Riasonovsky had a third of his men on watch, but many of the rest had wandered over to the little bazaar the merchants had set up. A fair number of people, mostly women and old men, had forded the river from Manas the Smaller to come to bargain and barter and buy.
Even the newest boy sent to the army from the plains could have as many copper coins as he could carry, so Vasha and Stefan had money. They paid two copper coins each to the merchant from Parkilnous who doled out kava in tin cups. They lingered at the edge of his stall, sipping at the hot, bi
tter drink while they surveyed the makeshift bazaar, which they had come to know well in the twenty days since Riasonovsky had agreed to let the little caravan of five merchants and their entourages and goods travel with the jahar.
Master Larenin, the Parkilnese merchant, sold spices and seeds and nuts and beans, as well as salt, and the exotic smells alone were reason enough to linger by his stall. A Jedan man, Benefract, displayed his usual array of utensils and pots. Skins and worked leather and furs, some of which were traded for local varieties, came from the stall of the Yossian merchant Hunyati, who hailed from the Yos kingdom of Dushan.
But Vasha found Sister Yvanne’s tables most interesting. Sister Yvanne sat, as she usually did, in a heavy brocaded chair and supervised while two young men (Vasha wasn’t sure if they were her sons, her nephews, her apprentices, or her slaves) did a brisk business in what Katerina had condescendingly informed him were religious goods. Tiny silver knives, pendants to hang from gold and silver chains, rested on cloth. There were boxes, too, some of them small enough to hang on necklaces, other, larger ones made and decorated in different styles: cloisonné enameling, painted wood, even one that appeared to be carved from black bone. Once Vasha had seen Sister Yvanne open one (they each had some secret way of opening) for a customer; he could have sworn there was a bit of frail yellowed bone tucked inside, a fingerbone, perhaps. There were also leatherbound books in any one of several languages, stamped with gold leaf titles. The ones in Rhuian and Taor read The Recitation. Strangely, Sister Yvanne only sold this one particular book, and commentaries on it. She did not have a whole sampling of books such as a book merchant in Jeds might have.
“Look,” said Stefan, elbowing Vasha. “There she is.” He hastily handed his empty cup back to Master Larenin’s apprentice and sidled over toward Sister Yvanne’s tables.
She was the very young and very pretty wife of Merchant Bathori, a fat, middle-aged man who always seemed to Vasha to have been recently dipped in lard. She stood staring at the tiny silver knives, wringing her hands together and biting prettily at her lower lip, while Sister Yvanne eyed her with evident disapproval. Each woman wore a scarf to hide her hair, but while Sister Yvanne’s drab gray scarf matched her shapeless robes and covered her hair entirely, the young woman’s scarf was gaily bright. Wisps of pale hair escaped from under it to curl around her face.
“How can she stand to be married to that horrible old man?” Stefan whispered. “I didn’t think the khaja men marked women.”
“No, but a girl’s parents might sell her to a rich man, or a rich girl might be sent with some of her riches to a noble one. That’s how the khaja do it.”
“Oh.” Stefan looked mollified. “Poor woman. At least it wasn’t any of her choice. Still, it must be awful. Can you imagine—?” But he broke off, unable to voice what he didn’t want to imagine, or at least, what he did want to imagine, only for himself. He blushed and finally looked away from her, recalling proper manners. At least enough people moved about the bazaar that no one bothered to notice two young men loitering. Or if they did, they noticed Stefan, who was not just good-looking but had enough healer’s training to warrant respect. No one bothered to notice Vasha; he was just another dark-haired, slender boy a bit too old to still be helping with the horses. Surely that was what the khaja travelers thought of him. It galled.
At last Merchant Bathori ambled over, leaving his own stalls where he sold cloth. The way he casually rested a hand where the back of her skirt curved out over her buttocks, the way he publicly patted and squeezed her, made Vasha’s skin crawl. Stefan, glancing over, jerked his gaze away. She did not seem to mind, however. Perhaps she had grown used to it.
Vasha watched the transaction. The young woman wanted one of the tiny silver knives. But the odd thing was not that Bathori did not want to buy it for her—he seemed amenable—but that Sister Yvanne did not seem to want to sell it to her. They were the only two women in the merchants’ train. Surely as women they would have befriended one another. And what merchant refused a sale?
The khaja were very confusing.
“Vasha! What are you doing out here?”
Vasha started and turned around, tensing. Even since he had arrived at Sakhalin’s army six months ago and seen Katerina again, he had felt awkward and stupid around her. She had been his dearest cousin, and his first lover, before she had left two years ago to ride with a jahar of archers in Sakhalin’s army. At first she had been happy to see him, but that had all changed. Now he wished she had stayed with Sakhalin instead of choosing to act as Rusudani’s escort back to the main camp.
“What are you doing here?” he retorted.
“I may go where I please, which is more than I can say for you!”
“No doubt you’re still feeling clever because Sakhalin gave you the imperial staff.”
“Oooh. That still rankles, does it? But why should Sakhalin vest authority for the journey in your hands when he won’t even trust you in his army? Because he’s sending you home in disgrace?”
“Thank you for reminding me, since I’d obviously forgotten it.”
“Oh, Vasha,” she said plaintively, her mood changing abruptly, as it often did. “Why did you have to act so stupidly?”
But Vasha was too angry with her to listen to her sympathy now. He pointedly turned his back on her and looked back at the dispute going on between Sister Yvanne and Merchant Bathori. To his astonishment, a new party had entered the fray: Rusudani. She no longer concealed her face, but like all the women in Yos lands, she covered her hair with a scarf. She had a softer, rounder face than Bathori’s wife, and she was small, with plump hands, a delicate olive complexion, and dark eyes. The sight of her always made Vasha horribly embarrassed; not just that he thought her so pretty, but that he remembered what it was like to have her holding on to him so very very closely when they had ridden together away from the bandit raid, escaping back to the army. She had not so much as looked at him once since coming under Katerina’s wing.
“She wanted to visit the bazaar,” said Katerina, sounding disgruntled, “so of course I came with her, since we’re the only women here. One never knows how the khaja will treat a woman alone.” But with her long knife at her belt and her quiver with arrows and unstrung bow, Katerina looked like a woman any person, even a khaja, would treat with respect. “Even if she is a princess.”
“A noblewoman,” he replied, “but you can’t know she’s a princess. She could just be a lesser relation to Prince Zakaria.” He trailed off because Katerina gave him such a superior look.
“She has a prince’s manners, Vasha, as you ought to know.”
“Because I have them myself?”
“At the most inappropriate times.”
“Thank the gods I’m not as meek and humble as you are!”
“You two!” said Stefan. “My ears hurt.”
“Anyway,” Vasha added quickly, wanting to change the subject, “why shouldn’t she be safe? There are other women riding with us, Sister Yvanne and Merchant Bathori’s wife.”
Katerina snorted. “Bathori’s wife?” She blinked several times in quick succession. “Don’t you know anything?”
“But she rides in the finest painted wagon, over there,” protested Stefan, abruptly defensive, “which must be hers, and Bathori goes in to her every night.”
“I have no doubt he does,” said Katerina rudely. Both Vasha and Stefan blushed furiously, and Stefan, abashed, looked down at his boots.
“Katya!” exclaimed Vasha. “What’s happened to you?” Her coarseness shocked him more than her disdain for everything he did and said.
“You couldn’t understand,” she said bitterly. Then, like lightning, her mood shifted, and he saw tears in her eyes. Her lower lip trembled, and for an instant he thought she was going to start crying. Once, he would have been her first and most precious confidant.
“No doubt I’m too stupid to know,” he snapped, annoyed that she had abandoned him.
Her face stiffene
d at once. She brushed the ends of her braids back over her shoulder and strode away, over to the table.
“Oh, Vasha!” said Stefan, exasperated.
“Be quiet.” Vasha crossed his arms and stared after her, unwilling to admit to any wrongdoing. She had started it, after all.
And there was enough to distract him. At Sister Yvanne’s table, a strange spectacle unfolded. Rusudani pulled back the sleeve of her long tunic and displayed her wrist to the Sister. The change this small gesture wrought was miraculous. At once, Sister Yvanne agreed to give up one of the tiny silver knives, and Merchant Bathori exchanged coins with her.
But then the transaction changed yet again: Rusudani turned and addressed Bathori’s wife, and soon Bathori joined in until all three of them were, evidently, haggling over something. By degrees, Stefan inched closer to the conversation, and Vasha followed him, grateful to have any chance to see Rusudani.
Bathori was a great haggler. In the twenty days the merchants had traveled with them, Vasha had watched him wear down his customers with sheer volume of words. This time, he spoke infrequently and deferred more and more to Rusudani. After a bit, nodding her head, she reached into the complicated layers of robe, skirt, and trousers that she wore and brought out a purse. From that purse she removed five coins. Four she gave to Bathori and the fifth to Bathori’s wife.
Bathori’s wife curtsied and said, in clear Taor, “Lady, I am called Jaelle.” Then the two khaja women walked away together, Jaelle trailing three steps behind Rusudani.
Katerina still stood by the table. She glanced at Vasha and Stefan, turned her back toward them, and spoke briefly with Bathori and Sister Yvanne in Taor, the trade language many of the children of the Orzhekov tribe had learned during their time in Tess’s school. Toward Katerina, the khaja merchants’ demeanor was not just deferential but fawning.
“No wonder she has such a fat head,” said Vasha.
“What? Are you still angry with her?”