by Kate Elliott
“Well, then,” said Anatoly, “what are we waiting for?” He scooped up Portia and headed down the path to the shoreline.
“The turtles! The turtles! I want to be a turtle, and you can be the Daddy Turtle and Mama can be the Mommy Turtle….”
“You’re just going to go?” Diana said to his back. “Just like that?”
Like a courtier, David answered for him. “Of course, Di. That’s his job.”
She said something else, but he couldn’t hear the words. He only heard that she was upset. But Anatoly already felt himself half gone, mounted and setting off at a brisk pace on this fresh campaign into unfamiliar territory.
“But I’m not male.” Feeling mutinous, Ilyana crossed her arms and sat down on the gazebo bench. Adults got to do all the exciting things. “She said that the hall is forbidden to males. I could go.”
David glanced around the courtyard, but here, in the cool haven of dawn, it was empty. There had been a party last night for Anatoly’s leavetaking, and evidently all the adults had some kind of hangover. All except David, who together with Diana had been the only ones to see Sakhalin off at planetrise.
“You could not go,” he said now. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Nothing bad happened to Anatoly Sakhalin.”
“Nothing happened to him! How would you like to be sent before the Chapalii emperor all by yourself?”
“I think it would be interesting. No human has ever mapped the Imperial Palace. You said so yourself. And it would be away from here!”
“Yana! Lots of places are away from here. I don’t think you quite understand. How would you like to be summoned before the emperor? It’s not just perilous, but troublesome, and perhaps inappropriate.”
“You don’t understand about the Sakhalin. Why shouldn’t he be summoned? Everyone knows that they’re first among the tribes. Naturally the emperor would—”
“—would have an interest in him,” David interrupted. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard that before, about ten times. Ilyana, I don’t think he’s being shown any kind of favor….”
“Of course he’s not being shown favor.” Gods, these khaja could be obstinate. “They’re just giving him his due. And he won’t be nervous. He’s ridden into enemy territory before.”
“With a jahar.”
“Well, won’t he be traveling in on a human ship? He’ll have someone to guide him.”
“That’s true. Charles will probably lend him Branwen Emrys. She’s actually an old acquaintance of Gwyn’s, and our most experienced captain on that run.”
“So you see!” exclaimed Ilyana triumphantly. “That’s exactly why I have to go explore that hall. Someone has to. Isn’t it still important for us to understand about Chapalii architecture? Anatoly Sakhalin thought that the Chapalii he met was female. Shouldn’t we find out more about her, too?”
“Goddess!” David threw up his hands. “You’re impossible. No, we should not. We should proceed with caution.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Yana, I am eighty-one years old. I’m middle-aged. You’re just sixteen. We don’t send children into danger.”
“I should have gone through with my flower night. Then I’d be a woman, and you couldn’t use that argument against me.” She chewed on her knuckles. “Hmm. I could still…” She slanted a glance up at David. Without quite looking at him, she could see that he was growing uncomfortable. Wind sighed through the open gate of the caravansary, drifting in to rustle her knee-length tunic. David stared steadfastly at the red tile roof. The sun breached the roof’s peak and spilled down over her, bringing with it a new swell of wind bearing dust, and an echo in her ears, the memory of Anatoly Sakhalin saying her name, that night. David was uncomfortable because he found her attractive. He was afraid she would ask him. Ilyana felt a breathtaking surge of confidence. She lifted her chin and tilted her head to one side, and smiled straight at him, knowing suddenly what it meant to be able to use beauty to get one’s own way.
“Damn it!” David exploded. He jumped to his feet, stalked down the gazebo steps, and halted on the sun-bleached stone of the courtyard, his back to her. From the caravansary hall, where the actors rehearsed, Ilyana heard Yomi calling out to someone—Yassir, the lighting designer—and she caught the sound of two women laughing in the bathroom and the splash of water into the tile cistern. On the breeze she smelled the faint aroma of the smoke of her mother’s cook fire.
“There’s a word for this,” said David without turning around. “Blackmail.”
Ilyana giggled. She felt bold. She felt powerful. And she felt a little nervous. “But, David.” Her voice shook. “We have to do this. You know we do.”
He still didn’t turn around. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that I agree. First, you will go together with Wingtuck Lien, and I’ll go as well but only to the entrance into the hall as described by Anatoly. Second.” He turned slowly round, like a leaf spun gently in the wind. His expression was harsh. “You will never again manipulate me like that. It isn’t right. Yana, you’re a beautiful girl and I don’t think you truly realize that yet, or the kind of trouble it’s going to cause you. I’m not blind. I can appreciate your beauty. I can even wish I was eighteen again, to have a chance to be the boy you pick on your flower night. But. I’m old enough to be your grandfather. So we will resolve right now that you will treat me as if I was your… your aged uncle, and you will consider yourself as a niece to me. You will respect me and obey me as your teacher, and I will respect you as a serious and promising student. Is that clear?”
Abashed, Ilyana glared at the pale mosaic floor of the gazebo, memorizing the thin lines that demarcated the individual tiles one from the other. She gulped down air past a lump in her throat. “Yes,” she said in a strangled voice.
There was a long silence.
From out of the shadowed colonnade, Portia padded into the sunlit courtyard on bare feet, her well-worn pillow clutched under one arm. “Where’s Papa?” Portia asked forlornly.
That evening David agreed to a practice run, going into the map room and returning to the place he and she had been to before: the mosaic courtyard that fronted the domed, painted palace. Ilyana climbed the steps to the latticework door and, carefully, leaned against it to peer in, to see if she could see the distant statue of Lord Shiva in the dim interior.
Squinting, she saw, perhaps, a faint anthropomorphic outline, perhaps…a faint rustling touched her ears, like a snake sliding through grass, like the whining of insects on a summer’s night. Startled, she pushed back from the lattice door, only it gave in against her hands instead, opening away from her. Unbalanced, she tumbled inside.
David shouted behind her, but she stood in the cool, shadowed interior of the entry hall, took in a deep breath, and sneezed. The air had a rancid odor.
“Air doesn’t smell in nesh,” she reminded herself.
Like an echo, another voice spoke.
“Who are you?”
The shadows moved. Ilyana caught a glimpse of a smooth, lucent surface that vanished as quickly. All was still.
“I am named Ilyana Arkhanov,” she replied, folding her hands in front of her in the polite fashion. “I beg your pardon if I’ve come in somewhere I shouldn’t have.”
“I have been watching you,” said the voice, and the shadows rustled. “You are the first female of your kind I have encountered.”
“How can you tell I’m female?”
“I study what comes before me. In your language you might say that I study structure and function, and then I classify according to design, proportions, and ornamentation.”
“Are you an architect?” But she must be, if she was actually Duke Naroshi’s famous sister.
“I am a builder. You must come to the hall of monumental time.”
Ilyana gulped, remembering David. She glanced behind and saw him framed in the doorway, frozen, unwilling to back up but also clearly unwilling to interrupt this odd and tenuous conversation. “Right now?”
>
“No. This is but a simulacrum, a net beneath which lies the true form. Come to the true hall. You need only ask.”
“Uh, who should I ask for? Do you have a name? I mean, if I’m allowed to ask that?”
“You ask many questions.”
Ilyana heard a soft sound from David, rather like he was unsuccessfully suppressing a laugh. “Well, that’s because I’m young.”
“Young.” The voice savored the word, as if by dwelling on it a new meaning could be built from it. “Then you must surely bring an attendant.”
“Who has to be female?”
“Female or ke.”
“Uh, what’s a ke?”
“The nameless ones, the ones without children to carry on their names. I believe you could give this word that meaning in your language.”
“Oh,” said Ilyana as an idea popped into her head. She glanced again at David, wondering if he had realized the loophole that had just been presented to him. Then she turned back and peered into the shadows. “But you still didn’t tell me your name.”
She saw again that glimpse of luminescence, shuttered quickly, and she thought that the voice, when it spoke again, had a curiously human tone: But she knew Chapalii didn’t have the same emotions as humans; they were alien, they weren’t like us. All the same, the Chapalii sounded amused. “You may call me Genji,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Scent of Rain
TESS SENT A RIDER south with the news Kirill had brought, and then there was nothing to do but wait.
“It’s at times like these,” said Tess to Cara one morning as they walked across the plaza to the library, “that I feel like saying be damned to all the interdiction laws and just give them decent communications. We could start with the telegraph and work up to satellite links.”
Cara paused on the steps and turned to look back toward Mother Orzhekov’s great tent. The gold banner at its peak flapped in the autumn breeze. “What are you going to do with your children?”
“I’m becoming adept at not looking at questions I don’t want to answer. They’re young yet. They’re learning what they need to know.”
“They won’t be young forever.”
“Who knows? If your formula works, maybe they will be.”
“But, Tess, at some point you’ll have to make a decision, when they get old enough to—”
“And then what will I tell Ilya? I know the situation becomes more and more ridiculous the longer it carries on. Let me live in peace for a while!”
“So to speak,” replied Cara dryly, following Tess up the steps.
Tess nodded at the guards, opened the door, and went inside. Inside, they found Sonia playing khot with the ke. Startled by this scene, Tess halted in her tracks and Cara had to gently shove past her in order to see what was going on.
“I think I must be wearing blinders,” said Tess in a low voice. “Lately I keep finding out that things are going on that I assumed weren’t. Or perhaps only,” she added with a wry grin, “that people are thinking and acting for themselves without consulting me first.”
“You sound more and more like your brother.”
“Thank you!”
Tess’s exclamation caused Sonia to look up, surprised, not having heard them come in. The ke did not shift position. Sonia smiled at them and beckoned them over, but Tess simply waved at her and took Cara over to the lectern where the Gospel of Isia of Byblos rested.
“Cara,” Tess continued as she opened the manuscript carefully, “do you know anything about how Chapalii perceive the world?”
“Not any more than you do. Isn’t it generally agreed that they use infrared? That they can see degrees of heat?”
“That same night you came in the ke told me that she could see the storm coming in. I don’t mean the clouds, but the front of the storm, as if she could see the currents. I’m not explaining myself very well. But if they can see in visible light and in infrared, why not other ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, too? How could we detect how broad a range they could see?”
“We could measure stimulus and response, but it’s difficult, to say the least, for the lab rats to conduct experiments on the scientists.”
“That’s a pleasant thought.”
Cara glanced back at the ke, who remained intent on the game. Sonia set down a white pebble on the board, and the ke responded at once by setting down a black pebble on a different part of the board. “We already know that the Mushai or one of his followers tampered with the genetic code of the humans they brought here. Recently I’ve been wondering why humans intrigued the Chapalii in the first place. It’s not as if we have any technological advances to give them.”
“Theater,” said Tess, half laughing. “Didn’t you hear that the Bharentous Repertory Company finally went to Duke Naroshi’s palace? Luxury items.”
“Luxury items,” Cara scoffed. “That old anthropological excuse. The rise of civilization, trade, and war all based on the desire to acquire cowrie shells. Huh. What’s this?”
Tess pulled a finger down the calligraphed page and drew Cara’s attention to the parchment set beside it. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the last fifteen days. Translating this into Rhuian. It’s tempting to read it as an ancient memory of the Chapalii and perhaps of the human arrival on Rhui. ‘And a bright light appeared out of the darkest skies, and on this light He ascended to His Father’s House. And the glance of God’s Eye scorched the earth where His feet took wing into the heavens.’ ”
“It’s also a common mythological trope.”
“But I’m hearing this now. Preachers in the square, talking about strange lights in the sky. The second coming of the Son of God and his sister. There’s certainly been more activity by our people in the last fifty years—”
“You know, Tess, in more barbaric times on Earth, doctors would confine people in small rooms if they thought they were ill, and the people so confined would begin to get odd ideas, and hallucinate. Perhaps you need a change of scene.”
Tess laughed. A khaja scholar—khaja were admitted once they had gained a dispensation—on the other side of the room looked up from his book and, seeing her jaran dress, looked away swiftly. “Admit that it isn’t entirely implausible. What do you know about Byblos?”
“A country in the south. Or a city. Or something in between. It’s hot. Rumored to be ancient. I’ve mostly heard stories that have more of legend about them than fact.”
“Kirill met Byblene merchants.”
“Kirill. Which reminds me, Tess—”
But Tess perceived that Cara was about to ask her an uncomfortable question about Kirill, so she quickly crossed the room to look at the khot game. Sonia was an excellent player whose skill had been honed in the past eight years by frequent games with her husband, Josef Raevsky, the acknowledged master in the Orzhekov tribe. But the ke held her own. Tess did not have a sophisticated enough understanding of the game to see quite what strategy the ke was using, but it seemed to focus on spreading a wide net so as to catch as many intersections as possible. Sonia was using one of her favored strategies: marking out territory in blocks and then connecting them.
Tess watched the game while Cara looked through the Byblene Gospel. The khaja scholar, perhaps made anxious by their presence, left, but two other men entered, dressed in the gray robes worn by Habakar officials. They passed on into a farther room. The game continued. Tess was beginning to see that the ke had an advantage.
The door opened again, bringing with it the scent of rain, and Tess looked up to see Kirill take three steps into the library and stop, looking uncomfortable. Sonia glanced up at Tess and had the gall to wink at her, smirking.
Irritated, Tess went over to Kirill. He waited for her by the door. Silver threaded his blond hair, so pale that it blended in unless you knew to look for it. He was about forty years old now, and maturity sat well on him. His clothes were slightly damp from the rain, and all at once the faint scent brought back memories to Tess
, the sweet memory of the first time she had slept with him, with the drizzle of rain outside and the muzzy smell of damp blankets and clothes permeating the close interior of her traveling tent. Gods, that had been twelve years ago, before she had married Ilya. Kirill met her gaze, and she knew instantly that he was remembering the same night.
Even more annoyed, she flushed. “What is it?”
“I’ve decided to ride south. I should have gone instead of the messenger.”
The thought of him leaving so abruptly darkened her mood further. “You said yourself you ought to spend time with your children. What can you do? The message doesn’t need you to deliver it.”
“I feel responsible,” he said shortly, not looking at her.
“Kirill, surely if the original message, the one sent from the north, didn’t reach the prince of Filis, then Ilya is in no danger yet. He won’t be in danger until he reaches Filis.”
“Perhaps.”
She had an insane urge to smooth the lines of grief away from his eyes. One of her hands lifted, but she snapped it back and hooked her fingers safely into her belt. “There’s something else you’re trying to tell me, isn’t there?”
He said nothing for a long moment. Then he lifted his eyes to look straight into hers. What she read there unsettled her, not least because it did not displease her. She tried to say something, but no words came out. He turned and left the library, that quickly, opening the door into the rain and heading out into it without hesitation. Just as he had done years ago. “What’s a little rain?” She recalled him saying that now, but the door shut behind him and she just stood there and finally walked over to stand next to Cara and stare at the Byblene Gospel.
“I won’t ask,” said Cara. “I like this bit where the sister—the Pilgrim, they call her—sews together her dead brother’s remains with thread spun from the feathers of a sparrow, the sinew of a deer, the scales of a fish, and the ashes of the wooden cup in which she caught his blood. Pagan holdovers woven into the new religion, surely.”