by Kate Elliott
Vasha turned to see Riasonovsky striding toward them out of the darkness. Now what had he done? Had Riasonovsky come to berate him for speaking out of turn?
“Saddle horses,” said Riasonovsky. “We need every man to search.”
“Search for what?”
“The khaja woman, the Mirametis. She’s run away, leaving the other one in her bed as a decoy.”
Vasha flushed, and his heart raced. “But she said—”
Riasonovsky gave him a look, and Vasha swallowed the rest of his words. What she said and what she meant in her heart were clearly two different things. Stefan was already saddling horses, and soon other riders arrived and they rode out with them, branching off as a pair to search down by the river.
The moon hung high, lighting their way. Thin threads of pale cloud lay tangled across the sky in an unpatterned web, and the moon hid behind them at intervals, but never for long. The breeze here tasted more of the ambling river water than anything else, lazy, drowned in earth. But Vasha could also smell the late summer reeds and the last faint odor of the soil steaming under the summer sun. Misri moved cautiously, and Stefan’s halfblood mare walked beside her with stolid equanimity.
“Where will she go?” asked Stefan in a half whisper.
“She must be running to Prince Sigismar. Isn’t there a ford by the khaja town?”
“Surely she’ll know we’ll look there.”
Vasha shrugged. “How else can she cross? We crossed by that ford two days ago. She might backtrack. She could walk back to Manas the Smaller.”
“Why would she run to us at first, when we found her, and then run away now?” Stefan asked, reining his mare to a halt at a thin stretch of rocky beach. The river sang to them in three voices: a little boy’s voice among the pebbles, high and sweet, the constant steady murmur of a young lover, with grandfather’s bass roar underlying it all.
“Maybe she just wanted to escape those bandits. Gods, perhaps they weren’t bandits at all. They might have been anyone, another khaja faction. How are we to know? And she didn’t know then that her brothers were dead.”
“I still don’t understand why that is important.”
“I suppose you were lost in staring at the servant woman instead of listening! She is King Barsauma’s granddaughter. And Mircassia is the greatest kingdom between Parkilnous and Jeds.”
“But I thought in khaja lands the inheritance always passed through the male line. Does King Barsauma have no sons of his own?”
“He had at least two, but I remember that when I was in Jeds we got news that one had died unexpectedly.”
“Hush, look there!”
There was one place they had not expected to look: out in the river itself. But the moon slid out from behind the concealing clouds and betrayed her, a shadowy figure with bulky shoulders, up to her chest in the water.
Vasha swore and urged Misri forward. She flattened her ears, but she rarely disagreed with him, and anyway, she had no fear of water. She plunged into the water with great splashes, the bank gave out from under them, and they went in hard. Water streamed around him, hitting in gusts. At once, snorting, Misri came up and began to swim, and Vasha flung himself off the saddle and clung to her neck, trying not to hinder her. The figure moved swiftly, seeing them, and struck out into the current.
Behind, Vasha heard Stefan call out. He was soaked through and his boots dragged him down. His saber caught against one of Misri’s legs and he shifted, trying to thrust his body away from her to free her to swim, but there was nothing to push against but water until the current caught them and swept them steadily downstream toward the ford. The girl thrashed with her arms, but she somehow moved as much across the river as down with it.
Warned of the treacherous bank, Stefan and his mare had made a better start. They forged out across the river and Vasha barely saw them gain the other side about the same time as the slight figure of Rusudani struggled out of the water just as his feet scraped bottom, lost ground, and found purchase again. By the time he and Misri had scrambled up the bank, dripping, Stefan had the girl cornered on a stretch of beach upstream. Vassily saw them clearly with the moon so bright between a rent in the clouds that he could almost make out their features. She had a knife in her hand, but she did not move. She had tied her extra clothes onto a roll on her back.
Vasha led Misri down the bank, picking carefully along the brushy slope, slipping once to send a spray of dirt and pebbles into the water. She just stood there. She wore only a shift. The cloth clung to her form, outlining every curve, the more so because her thin shift was white.
From far away, Vasha heard a man call out a challenge. The river rippled by. Stefan held his position in front of her.
“Thank the gods,” he said as Vasha came up beside him. “Now what do we do with her?”
“Take her back to camp.” But she still held the knife up. They stood there, not knowing what else to do. She faced them. Stars shone through the rents in the cloudy web above. Air lifted off the river and brushed Vasha’s face, chilling his ears and neck. He shivered. His shirt stuck and slid against his skin as he shifted. Water squished in his boots. His toes were cold.
Like an echo, Rusudani shivered as well. With sudden decision, she sheathed her knife, unslung her roll of clothing, and covered herself in a kirtle that draped from her shoulders to her knees.
They all looked at each other for an unguarded moment. Vasha risked looking her straight in the face. She appeared resigned, but not beaten, and she met his gaze firmly, so that he looked away first, heart in his throat at the clear beauty of her face. Slowly, they walked down to the ford where they met some of the soldiers. Zaytsev arrived and took over.
“Get dry clothes on,” he said to Vasha and Stefan, and they went obediently.
Katerina met them by the tents. “Where did you find her? Gods, you’re both soaking wet.”
“We went in the river,” he said. He shifted from one foot to the other to keep warm, not wanting to shiver in front of her. “Do you think she was trying to escape to Prince Sigismar?”
But now Katerina looked smug. “I just spoke to her, through her interpreter. She says that she wanted only to return to the convent. She wants only to serve her god.”
“Do you believe her?”
Katerina shrugged. “What difference does it make? If she is truly the daughter of a daughter of King Barsauma, then she is a cousin twice over to the prince of Filis, Basil Atvandis. And Mircassia and Filis are the last great obstacles lying in the army’s path before we reach Jeds. She is a valuable hostage.”
“But you granted her sanctuary, Katya!”
“She is a hostage, nonetheless. It’s a good thing you ran off to steal horses.”
But that stung. And she knew it did; he could see it in her face. “You didn’t need to say that,” he said quietly. More clouds had drifted in by now. The sky grew as dark as Vasha’s thoughts.
“You didn’t need to antagonize Yaroslav Sakhalin the instant you rode in six months ago.”
“It wasn’t my fault! He hates me because I’m a bastard. As soon as I arrived, he sent me to groom and care for the horse herd like any common boy.”
“Every boy who comes to the army starts with the horse herds. You wanted to be treated differently. That’s what’s wrong with you, Vasha.”
“And you don’t take advantage of the deference shown you because you’re an Orzhekov?”
“I’ve proven my worth,” she said, her voice shaking. She turned and stalked off.
“Maybe if you two would just lie together you wouldn’t fight so much,” said Stefan, pulling a hand through his wet hair.
Vasha was too angry to reply. His head ached. “It isn’t fair,” he said finally, “to say that I wanted to be treated differently.”
Stefan coughed.
“Well! Is it?”
“I’m going to change into my dry clothes,” said Stefan.
“I just hate being treated like a servant!” Vasha sh
outed after him. The air had warmed a little with the promise of rain. Insects chittered. An animal slithered through the brush. Vasha slapped at a fly on his cheek and, cursing, slogged after Stefan, water still squelching in his boots.
Stefan was waiting with his saddlebags, and they changed quickly under the trees, slapping away bugs until they were both laughing.
“I suppose,” said Vasha, chastened, “that we ought to go back to the horse lines. It’s still our watch.”
“Yes,” said Stefan, and nothing more. Vasha went glumly. It hurt, that Stefan agreed with Katerina. But they hadn’t lived in the Kireyevsky tribe. The memory hit him so hard he almost staggered. His mother…dead, and the whole Kireyevsky tribe had turned against him, and cast him out of the etsana’s tent and sent him to sleep with the herds together with the other servants.
“Never again,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Who’s there?”
It was Zaytsev. “There you are, boys. Have you given your report to Riasonovsky? He’s waiting for it.”
Vasha gulped down a retort and simply nodded. They strung up rope next to the horses and hung their clothes out, hoping it wouldn’t rain. Crossing through camp, Stefan led them by angles past Rusudani’s tent.
“Don’t make a fool of yourself,” said Vasha, catching Stefan’s elbow and dragging him past the tent once he had seen that Rusudani was not outside. A ring of guards stood around the tent, and he didn’t want them to think he was… well, he didn’t want them to think anything about him.
“I’m not making a fool of myself!”
“You are, too. You stare at her like a stupid grazel.”
“And you don’t stare at the princess? Now I suppose you think that Bakhtiian will want you to marry her, so that he has a claim to the Mircassian throne.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” For the first time, Vasha felt abruptly hopeful. “It would be easier to conquer Mircassia with an alliance than with soldiers.”
“I have to piss,” said Stefan, and detoured into the underbrush. Vasha waited, brooding, knowing Stefan well enough to hear in his silence the words Stefan would not say but that other people would say: Why should a bastard receive any blessing, any favor, from the man who could not truly be his father, not by jaran laws. Only by khaja ones.
“Anyway,” said Vasha toward the bushes, “why shouldn’t he marry me to a khaja princess? Do you think the jaran would ever follow me, truly? They’ll follow Aunt Nadine’s children, or Aunt Sonia’s. But not me. So why shouldn’t he provide for me by granting me a kingdom, as he did for Mitya.”
Stefan swatted branches aside and came out, buckling his belt. “Mitya has a better claim to be Bakhtiian’s heir than you do.”
“I know that! But why shouldn’t he, anyway?”
“Is that what you want? Truly?”
Standing knee-deep in thick grass, Vasha heard Father Wind’s thick voice talking in the deep-leafed trees. Through a gap in the trees, Vasha saw a few torches and lanterns still burning, marking the merchants’ camp. Behind them, three fires burned down toward coals, orange flames shooting up from banks of glowing red. Occasional noises sounded on the night air, a voice, a twig snapping, farther off the startled lowing of a cow in a nearby village or the uff-uff of one of the bad-tempered little guard beasts that the khaja loved.
“Yes,” said Vasha finally. “Not that one thing, only of itself, but to be at the center of something, like Father and Tess are, and to build a web of alliances as strong as a weaving, that can never be ripped apart.”
“But then why did you steal the horses?”
“I don’t know. Why did you come with me?”
“I don’t know.” Stefan grinned. “We did manage it, though, even if it did make Yaroslav Sakhalin furious. I’ll bet he never stole horses when he was a boy.”
“I’ll bet he did.”
“Bet he didn’t.”
“Who’s going to ask him?”
Stefan laughed. “Come on. We’re supposed to report to Riasonovsky.”
They walked on, sidestepping riders sleeping curled in blankets on the ground.
“Do you really think Yaroslav Sakhalin never tried to steal horses or even grazel when he was a boy?” Vasha asked finally as they came up to Riasonovsky’s tent. They heard voices inside, two men talking together. By the light of the lantern hung within the tent, they saw two shadowy outlines, men standing by the tent flap.
“None of those Sakhalins stole horses. They didn’t have to.”
“What about my cousin Galina’s husband? They say he was pretty wild when he was young.”
A hand snaked out abruptly from the tent and yanked aside the tent flap, revealing Riasonovsky and a fair jaran man dressed in Sakhalin colors. “Who says that?” asked the second man. He grinned. “Well met, Vassily Kireyevsky. I heard you were riding this way. As it happens, I’m returning to Sarai as well. I’ve just told Riasonovsky that I and fifty of my men will be riding north with you. Galina is expecting our second child, as you know.”
Vasha’s first thought was that Riasonovsky could not have looked more expressionless had he been a Habakar holy man in the grip of a God-induced trance: He had seen one himself, and would have sworn that the holy man was dead, except he was sitting upright and unsupported, and had miraculously come back to life two days later.
His second thought was that no one could possibly have as bad luck as he had.
“Well met,” he stammered. “I didn’t know you were riding through these lands.”
Andrei Sakhalin smiled. As the feckless youngest son in a string of good-looking and hard-fighting boys (the eldest being his famous brother Yaroslav), he had profited by the others’ loyalty and service to Bakhtiian: When Galina Orzhekov, eldest granddaughter to Mother Orzhekov, came of age to be married, it had been agreed by the etsanas and the dyans of the Orzhekov and Sakhalin tribes that a Sakhalin prince ought to be granted the alliance. That prince had originally been meant to be Mother Sakhalin’s grandson, Anatoly, but he had been poisoned with love for a khaja Singer and had disappeared into khaja lands. That left Andrei, who was suspected of being light-minded; he was also thirteen years older than the girl, but he was unmarried. Galina had done her duty, not that she had any choice in marriage in any case.
“I hear you stole horses from the khaja,” added Andrei.
Vasha flinched and barely nodded.
Andrei chuckled. “Good for you. I stole horses from the khaja once, when I was a boy. They were filthy creatures—the horses, that is. Thank the gods I never got close enough to the khaja to tell what they were, although why do we even need to? Their stone tents reek from a morning’s ride away. I would have tried stealing grazel from the other tribes, which would have been more interesting, but even by then Yaroslav had pledged to aid Bakhtiian in uniting the tribes, so we were forbidden from trying anything that might have started a feud.” He sighed, looking wistful. “Ah, well.” He turned back to Riasonovsky. “I’ll bring my men over in the morning. I need fodder for the horses.”
Without further ado, he swept out of the tent, winked at Vasha, and walked out into the darkness.
There was silence.
“What is he doing here?” Vasha asked finally.
Riasonovsky grunted. “Going back to Sarai,” he said in a voice that made it obvious that he had nothing more to say on the matter. “Your report?”
They gave it, succinctly, and he dismissed them, leaving them to stand awkwardly out in the darkness. They looked at each other.
“What will happen to us when we get back to the tribes?” Stefan asked softly, the question Vasha most dreaded to hear. Suddenly his throat was choked with fear.
“Grandfather Niko will make sure that you get sent out to a good jahar, maybe Kirill Zverfkov’s or Tasha Lensky’s. Somewhere you could make a name for yourself.”
“I wouldn’t go. You’d never manage without me.”
“You might not have any choice,” Vasha said ho
arsely. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. Oh, gods, Stefan…” Then, because it was cowardly not to say it, he forced himself to, though his voice was the merest whisper, almost lost on the breeze. “What if my father casts me out? What if the tribe disowns me?”
“Tess wouldn’t disown you.”
Vasha just shook his head. Tess was khaja, after all, not jaran. In the end, it was the jaran council that would speak.
“Well,” repeated Stefan stubbornly, “I won’t go anyway, no matter what happens.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ardhanarishvara
ILYANA WOKE EARLY ON Frejday, feeling a pleasant sense of anticipation. The dust-eater purred at her feet. When she shifted to get up, it slid away under the bed (a real bed, which Diana’s Aunt Millie had built for her). She swung her feet down and kneaded the soft pile of rug with her toes.
“Up! Valentin, it’s morning time—” She broke off. Valentin’s sleeping pillows lay empty, his blankets still folded neatly in their center. Ilyana dressed quickly and ducked outside. Anton sat by the fire, drinking milk. “Where is Valentin?”
“I dunno.” Anton slanted a glance up at her, gauging her mood. “Doing something you don’t want him to, probably.”
“Anton!” Infuriating beast. Ilyana could see trouble building with Anton; he was getting more and more bored with his life and the restrictions set on him, and he had long since learned to be underhanded in his dealings. “Have you seen him?”
“No.”
Gritting her teeth, she went to her mother’s tent. Karolla was still asleep, and Vasil, with the baby snuggled in a sling against his chest, was playing a counting game with Evdokia. Ilyana slunk out quietly. Evdokia got so little attention from their father that she didn’t want to disturb her now. She went back to the pantry, drank some milk, and went out to the hallway.
No Valentin at the bottom of the steps, where he liked to sit and brood. She sighed and stared up the twisting flights, wooden banisters polished to a dark sheen. From the next level she heard, faintly, Hal and Diana and Anatoly singing a song together, and Portia giggling. Their door was cracked open, and Ilyana smelled frying bacon, so strong and tantalizing that she had to swallow. But Valentin wouldn’t be there, not if Anatoly Sakhalin was there, too. Higher, at the top, she knew that Hyacinth would not yet be awake and Yevgeni would already have left for the shop where he worked. She cursed under her breath and went out back to the garden.