by Kate Elliott
“Here comes your father,” said Karolla, like the knell of death. “He looks angry. See what your friendships with the khaja have brought us.”
He did look angry. Ilyana pulled the baby against her as if the child could shield her; and the baby did, in a way, because Vasil had an aversion to the little one, with her unsightly blemish, so unlike his other, more perfect children.
“What is going on?” Vasil demanded of his wife as he came to a halt underneath the awning. “Why is everyone in the company interesting themselves in our personal affairs? I was taken aside by—” He looked so angry that for an instant Ilyana thought he was going to spit. “—by Hyacinth, that meddling—” Ilyana didn’t recognize the khush word he used, but Karolla flinched. “Then Gwyn Jones mentioned that he’d caught a glimpse of Valentin! I don’t want my family to be the common gossip of every lowly tech and giggling inconsequential actor in this company!”
“Mother Yomi just came by to speak with me.”
Vasil threw up his hands in a theatrical gesture.
“It’s your own fault,” Ilyana blurted out. “You shouldn’t have fought with him.”
Vasil turned a stare on her that froze her. She felt like the most insignificant worm underneath his harsh gaze. He had never ever looked at her like this before. “Can this be my daughter?” he asked in a whisper that nevertheless resounded like a shout.
“But it’s true,” she stammered, determined to go on. “He’s addicted to nesh. He’ll never get cured if you don’t try to get help for him.”
Vasil’s expression did not change, nor did he look away from her.
“A child who will not live by the law of the tribes becomes an outcast,” said Karolla sternly. “It has always been thus, and it will remain so. Khaja may have their own laws, but they do not apply to us.”
“Of course they apply to us! We don’t live with the tribes anymore. Oh, why can’t you see?”
“Apologize to your mother, Yana.”
Infuriated by their obstinacy, Ilyana lost her temper. “I won’t! I have nothing to apologize for. Oh, gods, you just won’t listen.”
“Yana!”
“And you never call me by my full name! Never! Are you afraid to say it?”
Karolla slapped her, hard.
Vasil’s face whitened with rage.
Ilyana realized she had gone too far. Only she didn’t really understand how, or why. The baby hiccoughed with fear and began to wail. Looking at her father’s face, Ilyana was suddenly terrified. Pressing Little Rose against her, she scrambled to her feet, dodged him—he grabbed for her but missed—and ran, the baby screaming the whole time, for the safety of the caravansary. He wouldn’t make a scene in there. He just wouldn’t.
He didn’t follow her. Not yet, at any rate. She sat down, panting, on a bench in the courtyard, and endured a few curious glances from passersby by pretending not to notice them. She bounced the baby on her knee until the little one quieted and fell asleep. After a while, David came out, deep in conversation with the tech Wingtuck. Seeing Ilyana, he broke off and excused himself.
“What is it?” he asked in a low voice, coming up beside her.
“Nothing. Just sitting here.”
“Don’t lie to me, Yana.”
“Why won’t they call me Ilyana?”
“Who?”
“Anyone. My parents.”
“Well…” Like most adults, he had a way of rubbing his face with a hand and hesitating when he hoped you would get sidetracked by the pause and let the conversation move on to safer topics.
“My father loved him. You think I don’t remember him, but I do. He loved him more than he loved my mother or even me or any of us, his children, I mean. But not in a good way, like Hyacinth loves Yevgeni. So why did he name me after him? Why won’t he call me by that name?”
There was a long silence. Wingtuck, standing in the corner of the courtyard watching them, shrugged, lifted one hand in a wave, and walked away, out through the gate.
“Ilyana,” said David finally in his solemn adult voice.
“Don’t treat me like a child! I’m sixteen! I’m not a baby.”
“Did you just argue with your parents? Everyone is talking about Valentin. I stopped a couple of the actors from setting out to capture him.”
“That would be really stupid,” said Ilyana, alarmed. That would only drive Valentin further away.
“I know. I told them so. Don’t worry, they’re not going. And he’s barely eating any of the food you take out to him. Ilyana. Ha!” He sat down beside her, a half smile on his face. “Did I ever tell you about the time I thought that Ilya Bakhtiian was going to kill me? Tess got dead drunk and I let her sleep it off in my tent, only in the morning when I went to get her, Bakhtiian saw her and me coming out of the tent together. Goddess, I thought he was going to kill me on the spot.”
“Why would he? Women can take lovers if they wish to.”
“I didn’t know that then.”
The baby breathed softly in the silence. Outside, by the flower garden, some of the actors and techs were playing soccer. She could hear their shouting and laughter. “What was he like? They never talk about him.”
“Oh, Yana, he’s not someone you can explain in a few words. How do you know about him if they don’t talk about him?”
“I told you I remember him. I remember what he looked like. What he felt like, I mean, to be near. He didn’t scare me, but he was like…like standing outside to watch a storm come in.” Sitting there, her feet in sunshine and her face in the shade, she realized something else. “In a way it’s like he’s always with us, even though he isn’t here. Can that be?”
“Some people always remain with you, even when they’re a long way away. Even if you never see them again.”
“Do you have someone like that?”
His mouth tugged up, but he didn’t quite smile. He looked sad, but not bitter. “Yes.”
“Sometimes,” said Ilyana so low that she could hardly hear herself, “I think my father wishes that I was his child by Bakhtiian. I mean, if they could do that kind of thing, if they could have done it there. I think that’s why he treats me better than the others. But I don’t think I’m his favorite any more.” To her horror, she felt tears sliding down. She wiped her free hand fiercely over her cheeks.
“You did have an argument.”
She nodded, unable to trust her voice.
“I don’t know what to tell you about your father. I argued with mine often enough when I was about your age. But maybe we can do something to help Valentin. I don’t know how long he can survive with that little food, but I do know that he must be going through nasty withdrawal symptoms from nesh. By your own account it’s been—what—ten days since he ran away? Sooner or later he’s got to come out, if he hasn’t already. He’ll come here, at night, to get onto the nesh. I don’t know where else he could find a link.”
“So we set a trap to catch him? Then what do we do with him?”
“I don’t know. Feed him. He’s always been so damned thin it hurts me to look at him. Now that everyone knows, I think—well, you know we are allowed to send a message out every five days, to Maggie, who’s monitoring us for Charles. I could put in a query about nesh addiction, how to treat it.”
“I don’t know. I just feel like it would be a bad idea.”
“Be that as it may, I don’t see how doing nothing is going to help him now that it’s gone this far. You have to accept that your parents won’t or can’t help him. If they can’t, if they won’t, if it’s gotten this bad, then someone else has to. He’s ill, Yana. I remember that the company took responsibility for you, for your family, when you left Rhui. I’m sure that is partly what motivates Yomi now, that sense of responsibility.”
“But he won’t want any of you.”
“Damn it! It doesn’t matter what he wants. Hell, ask Genji for a ship to get him off planet. We can ship him off after Sakhalin. He’ll listen to Anatoly.”
“I’m sure Valentin will be all right if we just leave him alone for a while,” said Ilyana lamely. The baby turned her head and now her sweet breath blew moistly in, and out, on Ilyana’s neck. She snuffled and sighed in her sleep, stirred by tranquil baby dreams.
“I’m sure he won’t. Now it is agreed that we’ll monitor the latticework, and try to capture him?”
She couldn’t say yes. She couldn’t say no.
“Very well,” he said, accepting her abstention and making the decision himself. “I’ll talk to those I trust, and we’ll start sentry duty tonight.”
They sat there for a long time. The sunlight crawled up her skirts and touched her belt before the baby stirred and, waking, began to smack her lips, searching for milk. “I’m afraid to go back to my mother’s tent,” Ilyana said, admitting finally to the most immediate of her fears, which all seemed to be crowding round at an accelerated pace.
“Stay with Diana tonight—uh, no.” David looked shamefaced. “Umm, let me see. Well, listen, you can have the cot in my room and I’ll sleep with Gwyn and Hyacinth. I’ll take Little Rose back to your mother. No need for you—oh, hell.” He stood up abruptly and took the baby from her. Ilyana sat on the bench and watched him carry her out through the gate. The baby began to fuss and then to cry, and then distance drowned her cry and Ilyana sat and listened to the soccer match and to a friendly burr of voices from another room and to a rustling like the thin noise of wind through sparse leaves.
“Genji,” she said aloud, and wished suddenly more than anything else that she could be away from here, that she could vanish into Genji’s halls.
She snuck outside through the back gates, straightened her shirt, and walked, quickly at first and later, when the caravansary was distant enough, more slowly, trudging toward the far far distant wall of the dome.
The barge came to meet her.
It took her to the jeweled forecourt of the huge palace, ringed by six towers, where she had first heard the rustle of Genji’s robes. But this was the real palace, even bigger than she had imagined it, muted by a cascade of rain, endless sheets of it, drowning the jewels and the stuccoed walls as if it meant to wash them all away.
Walking from the barge up the steps, she did not get wet, although no awning sheltered her. But the rain struck on either side of a dry path, and up this dry path she walked, shielded by some trick of the air. Genji stood on the other side of the door, her robes a bell-like shadow behind the screen.
“You come alone, little sister,” said Genji in her odd voice, precise in enunciation but shot through with a drone, like insects on the wing.
“Is that okay?” Ilyana barely managed to force the words out of her mouth, she was so afraid she would be sent back. She couldn’t bear to go back, not yet.
“How long can you stay?”
“Forever,” said Ilyana fiercely. Then felt guilty. “No, not really. I have to go back after a while. My brothers and sisters need me.”
“You are eldest.”
It wasn’t a question, and yet it was. “Yes.”
“It is well you have come to me. There is beauty and wisdom in your art, but you are still young.”
“I haven’t done any art,” begun Ilyana, and then realized that Genji was talking about humans, not about her. “Is that why you keep the statues of Shiva here? I mean, in this palace, not right here.”
“Keep?” Genji pronounced the word carefully, as if considering its flavor on her tongue. “This idea of keep to retain as a possession, no, I keep nothing. Ah, but I love this imprecision. Each word bears a multitude of meanings. To celebrate or observe. In this way I keep Lord Shiva, just as I keep the ritual of Passing.”
“You can also keep someone company. Uh, what’s the ritual of Passing?”
“All things pass from one state into another.”
“Is it anything like the, uh, the rite of extinction?”
“It is not unlike that rite, which like a sun seen in water only reflects the original. The rite of extinction has a use for those who feel it necessary to create passages they can manipulate.” She turned and began to walk. Ilyana walked beside her, noticing how the Chapalii glided more than strode, sort of like when she and Kori skated on their frictionless skates, covering the ground not in jerky impacts but in a smooth sliding motion. Genji seemed to be waiting for Ilyana’s response, and finally, because Ilyana had none, she decided it was better to admit it than to pretend to knowledge.
“I don’t understand that.”
“No, perhaps you cannot,” said Genji, but not in an insulting way.
“Why not? Why couldn’t I, I mean?”
“You yourself will pass through rituals of passing, and in the end through the rite of extinction.”
“Does that mean death?”
“Termination alone does not always bring extinction. Perhaps, like Lord Shiva, you are not doomed to be obliterated.”
“I hope not! That sounds pretty awful.”
Ilyana felt more than heard amusement in Genji’s voice. “To be nameless can be a form of freedom.”
“Yeah, maybe it can,” Ilyana retorted, “but I notice that you use a name.” Then regretted saying it, because it was so presumptuous.
Genji did not answer because they passed under an arch. Ilyana paused and glanced back into the great entry hall they had left behind: Hadn’t the statue of Shiva dancing been in that hall the last time she’d looked?
“I am not bound by the same rites.”
“Oh, right,” exclaimed Ilyana, feeling that she had stumbled upon a revelation. “Because you live longer.” The next words died in her mouth as she stared down the hall they now stood in. This was the hall Anatoly had described, lined with statues and strange sculptures, there Shiva (she picked him out at once) and across from him a translucent sphere of light pulsing chaotically, and farther down, more and yet more, receding into a distance that seemed actually to curve away along the moon’s vast surface, except Ilyana knew she couldn’t possibly see that far. “This is the hall of monumental time. But I thought the other one with Shiva on the cliff, on the mountain, was the hall of monumental time.”
“This is the hall of memory, which is but one wing of the palace of time. Walk with me.”
They walked in silence. Ilyana stared at the statues, but Genji did not seem inclined to stop and explain anything. Finally, the thought that had been nagging at Ilyana surfaced again, and she gave up trying to hold it in. “But if you live so long, wouldn’t that mean that you would even live longer than the emperor? But if you live so much longer, how come you let him rule?”
Genji folded her hands together, the thin pale fingers as delicate as lace over the stiff jet fabric of her robes. “What makes you think the emperor rules over me?”
“Well, doesn’t the emperor rule over everyone? I mean everyone, everything, that lives within Chapalii space.”
“Time creates space.”
“Are you saying that if you live outside of time, then you live outside of space, too? But that doesn’t make sense. Then how come you can be here with me? You’re in space. You’re—” Impulsively, without realizing what she did, Ilyana reached out and touched Genji’s hand. Gasped, jerking her hand back. Genji’s skin was hard, ossified, and as smooth as a pearl. “You’ve got a shell!”
Genji laughed. Not in a human way, forcing breath out through her vocal chords and mouth and nose, but in a Genji way, amused and delighted. “You are quick in your curiosity, little sister.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We will turn aside here. You will come back again?”
“I have to go now?”
“Many of your hours have passed. Did you not say you have brothers and sisters to care for?”
Ilyana sighed, but it was true enough. The memory of them settled onto her like a burden. “Yes. But I can come back again?”
“Yes.”
They passed through an arch, crossed a hall carpeted with white pebbles, and came out at the far end of
the jeweled courtyard. It was still raining. The barge, like a well-trained horse, was waiting for them.
“Why do you want me to come visit you?” Ilyana asked, hesitating before she stepped out into the rain. It flooded down like heat, drenching the world.
“Because you interest me. I am a builder.”
Ilyana shivered. Here, in the gray light of a downpour, that sounded rather ominous. “Are you going to design me into something new?”
“Buildings grow. They are not forced.”
“But then what is your talent? I thought you were an architect. Didn’t you build this palace? Design it? Make it, uh, grow this way?”
“Ah. You speak of the shaping hand. It is true that what I touch is forever after marked in some fashion by that touch.”
“Does that mean I will be, too?”
Genji did not smile. Ilyana was not sure she could. But she inclined her head slightly and steepled her fingers, three fingers, two opposable thumbs on each hand.
“You already are.”
“What makes you think,” Ilyana asked, feeling pleased with herself, “that the emperor rules over her?” She settled herself more firmly on David’s cot and folded her hands smugly on her lap.
“Don’t distract me!” David snapped. “We’ve got enough trouble without you running off without telling anyone where you were going. You should have heard—well, anyway, it didn’t help the situation!”
She sagged back to lean against the wall. “Are my parents angry?”
“I thought they were angry before. We could have kept this under control until you ran off, Yana. Now it’s all blown open. Your mother as good as accused Yomi of kidnapping you—no, she phrased it some other way—your father was last seen headed toward the ruins—”
“He’ll never catch Valentin!”
“You don’t understand!” David rounded on her. She had never seen him so angry before. A sob choked her throat and she fought to stop from crying. “You will stay in this room until you have permission to leave. The upshot of this whole fiasco is that rehearsals have been canceled until Valentin is found and we hold a council to determine what must be done. That’s what you get for disappearing.”