by Kate Elliott
Jaelle recognized his silhouette against the bright sun. No priest she had ever seen stood like a warrior, even looking like he had just come from digging ditches, which, evidently, he had. She heard the gasp that escaped Rusudani’s lips as she, too, gazed on the man who stood poised between the sun and the shadowed church. At that moment, Jaelle experienced a revelation. Rusudani was not in love with her husband. She was in love with Bakhtiian.
Vasha lay on his back and stared at the heavens. At one end of the clearing, near the hunting lodge, torches burned and men caroused. He heard their rough laughter and the counterpoint of higher women’s voices, laughing in answer and calling out, all in the Yossian tongue. He understood a bit of it now, enough to ask for a few things from the serving man assigned to him. Enough to politely extricate himself from the attentions of the khaja women who had been invited into the camp to amuse the men. He was not sure whether these women were whores, like Jaelle, or just common women from neighboring villages who had been given no choice and were now, most of them, making the best of it. No doubt they would be paid handsomely. Or, he thought, hearing an echo of Tess’s sarcastic descriptions of what she called “the rights of women in khaja lands,” they would be paid by being left alone until the next time Janos and his men visited this lodge.
It was a dry, clear night with a bright moon, still early in the evening. He lay alone in the grass, able by now to ignore the ever-present guards who shadowed him. Suddenly a faint star caught his eye. It moved. Kept moving, a speck of light following a straight path through the heavens. Stunned, he watched it make its slow way through the veil of stars. Was this truly the track of an angel’s wings?
“Prince Vasil’ii.”
Vasha almost jumped, he was so startled. But it was only Prince Janos. A servant cast a cloak over the grass and Janos sat down on it.
“I fear our amusements tire you, Prince Vasil’ii. Are Yossian women so ugly that you scorn them? I have heard it said that jaran men have a taboo fixed on them, that they may not touch any women but their own. Are your women sorceresses, that they have punished you in this way? But it can’t be true, can it, if Bakhtiian married the Jedan princess?”
“They are not ugly,” Vasha replied, and then blushed, thinking of Rusudani, who was Yossian on her father’s side. He sat up. “But it is not our custom to…” He did not know how to phrase it, how to avoid insulting Janos. “It is not a man’s place to be forward with a woman.”
“Be forward with her?”
“To press himself on her. To… well, that is a woman’s place, to tell a man she is interested in him.”
“But I thought you said women have no choice in marriage, by jaran custom.”
“I’m not talking about marriage, although it’s true what you say. I’m talking about taking lovers.”
“Taking lovers!”
“I don’t know what the khaja custom is in this matter, although Tess says that usually—” He broke off, not knowing how to phrase what Tess had said in such a way that it wouldn’t offend Janos. Tess did not mince words when it came to customs she did not approve of, and she could go on at length about the way the khaja treated women and slaves and what she called “peasants.” “But in the jaran, a woman is expected to take lovers as she pleases. It is not a man’s place to… uh… approach a woman.”
Janos did not reply immediately. Vasha craned his head back and searched the sky, but the moving star had vanished. Now he wondered if he had dreamed it.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said Janos finally, slowly. “A woman may take lovers?”
“Yes.”
“But then how can a man know if her children are his? And how can a man be sure that the girl he takes to wife is a virgin?”
“What is a virgin? Oh, I remember what that is.” Unable to help himself, Vasha chuckled, then clapped a hand over his mouth. “I beg your pardon. I just think khaja are very strange, sometimes.”
But Janos did not seem amused. “Do you truly mean that jaran women, whether married or unmarried, may take lovers?”
“Yes.”
“Barbarians!” Janos muttered under his breath. Then: “I beg your pardon, Prince Vasil’ii. This lack of modesty among your women must distress you, after you have seen how decorously women behave in our lands.”
“Those women aren’t behaving very decorously,” Vasha pointed out, nodding toward the hunting lodge.
“They are peasants. They don’t matter. I meant women of good breeding, like Princess Rusudani. Like your cousin, Princess Katherine.”
Vasha snorted. “Oh, I admit that Katya doesn’t show off her lovers like other girls do, but I can hardly imagine that she wishes to become like a khaja woman.” Abruptly, he was sorry he had said anything. Janos looked thunderstruck. The khaja prince shifted uneasily on the cloak, took a hank of cloth in one hand, and twisted it into a knot. He began to speak but stopped, seeming to reconsider his words.
“I wish to understand you, Prince Vasil’ii. It is a custom for most jaran women to take lovers while they are still unmarried?”
“Yes, and after they are married as well, but then usually only if their husband is riding out with the army. Of course a woman cannot be expected to wait for months at a time for comfort while he is gone. But it is always impolite to flaunt an affair in front of one’s husband. If a woman refused to behave circumspectly in such a matter, then the etsana of the tribe would take her to task. Otherwise there might be strife between the wife and the husband, and perhaps between her family and his.”
“But…but how does a woman show a man that she is interested in him?”
“She tells him. She asks him to her tent, into her blankets. Dances with him. Gives him a gift. I don’t know. There are a thousand ways, Just as there are a thousand ways a well-mannered man can show a woman that he is interested in her without being immodest.”
Janos sat for a long time in silence, contemplating his hands by the light of the full moon. He had broad, sturdy hands, and the back of his left hand was scarred by an old wound, the slash of a knife, perhaps. Vasha looked back up at the sky, but the stars remained fixed in the great wheel of night. No angels flew.
“It is time to return to White Tower,” Janos said abruptly. He stood up and called to his servant. “Bring our horses. Tell my guards to saddle up and to bring lanterns. We are leaving now.”
“Now?” Vasha asked, startled by this sudden change of subject.
“Yes. You will ride with me, of course.”
“Of course. But what about—”
“Lord Belos can bring the rest tomorrow, when they have recovered. We are leaving now.”
Vasha was not about to argue. His serving man brought his horse and his saddle bags. They left, but they made slow progress and once the moon had set they had to stop for the rest of the night in any case, hunkering down in blankets by the side of the path that served as a road through the forest.
Janos rode hard in the morning, more like a jaran man than a khaja prince, changing horses at noon and leading them on like a man driven forward by demons. It took two days more, but they reached White Tower on the afternoon of the second day, riding in through fresh embankments thrown up around the outer walls of the town. Still incomplete, the ditches and palisade swarmed with men hard at work under a pale autumn sky streaked with clouds.
Scarlet flashed. Vasha saw his father on the lip of a half-dug ditch. Vasha winced, to see him digging like a common slave. Although no member of the tribes shrank from honest work, this labor seemed demeaning. His wrists were loosely shackled, as were his legs: not enough to prevent him from working, but enough to constrain him against escape. Gods. Ilya surely chafed under such treatment.
Vasha reined his horse aside and made for his father. Shouts followed him, then Janos’s voice, ordering the guards to stay back. By the time Vasha came up beside the ditch, Janos had come up next to him. The guards trailed behind, fanning out into a semicircle. But Ilya dug steadily, hi
s back to them, pitching dirt into a small wheeled cart. He seemed deaf to the world.
“Father!” Vasha said in khush. “Father, speak to me.”
At first he thought Ilya hadn’t heard him, although how he could fail to hear him Vasha could not imagine, how he could fail to notice the guards and the presence of all those horses. Finally, stiffly, Ilya slacked off and turned slowly around. Looking up, he had to squint into the sun. His eyes registered Vasha and then he looked at Janos, and then away. Not insolently. Ilya never did things insolently; he was too powerful for that. Dismissively. He turned his back dismissively on Janos and went back to work. But Vasha could read as if like a book the muscles in his back, the choppiness of his movements: He was strung so tight with anger that he seemed about to burst from it. At that moment, Vladimir scrambled up out of the ditch, looking over the guards, marking the prince and where he sat mounted. He casually placed himself between Ilya and Janos and began to dig as well.
“Are your people all this insolent to their betters?” asked Janos. “How can you rule them, if this is so?”
Ilya stabbed at the earth with the shovel, chipping clumps of dirt that flew into the air.
Vasha gulped down a lump in his throat. “He is a priest, Prince Janos. It offends the gods to put him to this kind of work. I would advise you to let him return to serving Princess Rusudani and reading from the holy book.”
“All able-bodied men have been set to work here.”
“I don’t see you digging, Prince Janos.”
Janos was too surprised by this suggestion to respond.
“In any case,” added Vasha, changing tactics, “it would please me. He is a holy man, what we call a Singer, and it pains me to see him working here in chains like a common slave.”
“Very well. As a favor to you, Prince Vasil’ii. You may have one other to serve you, the young one. The rest must work out here.”
“Thank you,” replied Vasha, surprised in his turn.
Janos spoke to the guards, and an overseer was found to come unshackle Ilya. Vladimir stayed beside him, digging steadily so as not to arouse suspicion.
“Take him away and allow him to clean up,” said Janos. Ilya was led away. He had not looked at Vasha once in all that time, nor at Janos, only at some point in the middle distance where nothing existed.
“Vladimir, you are well? Nikita and Mikhail? How are they treating you?” Vasha asked quickly, in khush, not knowing when he would get another chance.
“We are treated fairly enough, Vasha,” said Vladimir without looking up, knowing better than to pause in his work. “They need us healthy to dig these defenses. They aren’t fools. They know that the jaran will come sooner or later. But look to your father, Vasha. He is half mad.”
“We must go,” said Janos.
Vasha rode away with him, glancing back once to see Vladimir pitch a shovelful of dirt into the cart. From this angle he could see into the ditch, where a line of men worked planting stakes. A few women moved among them, hauling water in buckets. He thought he glimpsed red shirts down there, Nikita and Mikhail, but he could not be sure. Then it hit him. Vladimir had said: your father. In this extremity, without thinking, the rider had acknowledged their relationship. Vasha felt dizzy with joy.
“Are all your priests, your singers, as insolent as this one?” Janos asked suddenly, bringing Vasha back to earth.
“They are the chosen ones of the gods, Prince Janos. They are not insolent. But they serve the gods, not men. It would be as if… an angel descended from the heavens and was chained. We treat our Singers, our priests, with respect. We honor them.”
Janos laughed. “Then your priests are holier than ours, Prince Vasil’ii, for ours spend most of their time fighting over what benefices they may wrest from the king and what portion of the taxes they may siphon off from those levied on the merchants. A lord may buy an abbacy for a younger son, and a bishop may sire a son by his mistress and call him a nephew and thus favor him with gifts and a bishopric of his own.”
They rode in under the gates and forged through the narrow streets, the guards clearing the way before them.
“But surely that is not true of all of them. Princess Rusudani seems sincere in her faith.” At once, Vasha berated himself for speaking her name. It seemed that he could not have a conversation with Janos but that he would mention her. Surely Janos would notice and become suspicious.
“She is devout, it is true, but her place is in the world, not in the convent.”
Vasha sighed. “When may I see my cousin?” he asked as they came into the forecourt and dismounted, giving their horses over to the hostlers.
“When it is safe to do so. You will attend me at supper, Prince Vasil’ii.”
Then he was gone, surrounded by servants and the steward of his castle, come to greet him. Beyond, Vasha saw Lady Jadranka appear with two serving women as escort. Janos turned aside to greet her. Four guardsmen escorted Vasha away to his tower. A bath was poured for him, and he luxuriated in it, getting out only when Stefan, covered with dirt, was let in.
“Here.” Vasha jumped out of the huge tub, sloshing water on the floor. “You look awful. Take a bath.”
Stefan did so gratefully while Vasha dried himself and a serving man brought in clean clothing—khaja clothing—and took away the other.
Vasha shut the door behind him and leaned against it. “Tell me everything.”
“What is there to tell?” Stefan sighed and sank deeper into the water, up to his neck. His bent knees stuck out along the opposite side. “Ah, it’s still warm. They’re digging a third defensive perimeter. We are slaves, so we were sent out to aid them.”
“Were you chained?”
“No, I was not. Only Ilya and Nikita, Ilya for resisting the overseer and Nikita for taking the whip in Ilya’s place when the overseer struck at him.”
“Oh, gods. Don’t they know better, Vladimir and Nikita and Mikhail? If they show him too much preference, if they protect him too much, then the khaja will surely become suspicious. I have tried as well as I can to make them believe he is a priest, a holy man—”
“He is a holy man, Vasha, or have you forgotten that he is a Singer?”
“No, of course not. But—”
“Vasha, Bakhtiian is half mad. They have to protect him or he’ll get himself killed. I think—” He faltered, grabbed the bar of soap floating in the by-now muddy water, and began to wash his hair.
“You think what!”
“I think he wants to get himself killed. He can’t endure captivity. If he dies, he has to die in a fight.”
“Oh, gods.”
“And you? What of you?”
“We went hunting. Some man killed a boar with a spear and all the others congratulated him. Others shot deer. I was not allowed a weapon, of course. They had birds that they had captured and tamed and bound by ropes tied to their feet. Janos offered to let me fly one, but I refused.” He shuddered. “It was terrible to see, imprisoning hawks and eagles in such a way.”
“Like your father,” said Stefan. He rinsed his hair and stood up. Water sluiced down off him, and Vasha handed him a towel and rooted around in the chest to find him a clean set of clothing. Luckily he and Stefan had the same build, so that the clothes brought for Vasha fit Stefan as well. Stefan put on the breeches and knelt to wash his own clothes in the tub. “Have you seen Katya? Or…” A betraying pause. “Jaelle?”
“No. Nor heard anything about them. I’m to go in to supper with Prince Janos tonight. I will ask him again, or perhaps I can ask his mother.”
Stefan smiled slightly without looking up from his washing. “Perhaps you can ask Princess Rusudani.”
Vasha kicked him halfheartedly, but he was too happy to see him to truly be angry at him for the remark. And he was too worried about his father.
“Bakhtiian saw Katya,” said Stefan. “Lady Jadranka had him called in. That was five days ago. But he’s said nothing of the interview. He hardly speaks at all.”
“I hope you can. Will you send me down to the well, please, in case I might see Jaelle there? If only we had something to send to Katya, I might be allowed to deliver it.”
“I’ll ask tonight.”
But he had no chance to ask. He was escorted to dinner at the great hall and placed at the high table, to Rusudani’s left, two places away from Prince Janos. The envoy from Mircassia sat on Janos’ right, with Lady Jadranka beyond him. Vasha ate steadily while Janos remained immersed in conversation with the envoy and occasionally turned to address a question to his wife. Rusudani seemed preoccupied, glancing now and again toward the door that led into the inner ward and thence to the kitchens, from which the servers came and went with food and wine. She caught Vasha’s eye once and immediately blushed prettily and stared at her plate. She was picking at her food, moving it around with her knife. Vasha recalled what Janos had said about the women of his people.
“I greet you in God’s name, Princess Rusudani,” he said haltingly in Yos.
Startled, like the deer he had seen flushed out of thickets in the forest hunt, she looked up at him, away toward her husband, who spoke earnestly with the envoy, and back at Vasha. “I hope you will something or other to my husband, Prince Vasil’ii,” she said in a whisper. “I did it something or other your father.”
He smiled blankly at her, transfixed by the mention of his father and by her beautiful eyes and sweet curve of her jaw. Remembered himself and looked down at his plate and the remains of a hank of meat.
“Do you understand me?” she asked slowly.
He shook his head. “Little. Only little.”
She glanced toward her husband again before leaning further toward Vasha. She wore a faint scent like rose water. His pulse raced. When she spoke again, she spoke slowly, pausing between each word. “I spoke a something to save your father. Can you forgive me?”