by Kate Elliott
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. David, I hope you’re not blind enough to have missed that she’s taken up with Yassir. The lighting designer. So Anatoly will end up paying the price one way or the other.”
“And what about Ilyana?” David asked.
Ilyana pushed through the curtain and went into the room, not wanting to hear whatever Hyacinth might say about her. “I’m ready,” she said. “I’m ready to go for Valentin.”
She walks the web of light and drops down into the hall of memory. David is not with her. She remembers seeing him place his hands on the nesh sponge, remembers a finger placed against hers, the comforting warmth of his body next to her, remembers Hyacinth holding one of Valentin’s hands against the sponge, just in case, but now she is here, alone, falling into the cavern of time, where Shiva danced the anandatandava in the hall of consciousness within the heart of woman, within the heart of man.
“I’m looking for my brother,” she says desperately, for Genji is there, her robes rustling with a thousand small voices as she moves from a lit corridor out into the grand hall. “He got lost in here.”
“It is careless to lose a brother,” says Genji. “They are difficult to replace.”
Ilyana wants to ask her if she has lost brothers, but she is afraid to, because here in nesh even more than out in the surface world she is aware of the passage of time, of the incremental slippage that drags Valentin farther and farther away from her, falling into the deepest wilderness, unmapped, much of it as yet unmade, formless….
“I know where he’s gone,” she says aloud as she realizes where he must be. Without thinking, or with thinking but without forethought, she builds the gate to the memory palace out of the seamless black floor and walks through to find David standing in the courtyard. “We have to go to the desert,” she says. “That’s where he went. He went to the desert.”
So David takes them through the shortcut he built, the vine lattice which passes through the stultifying humidity of the jungle and then into the sere heat of the endless, empty plain. Here it is flat, packed sand in a parched monotone extending to the horizon. Nothing stirs. She sees no sign of life.
“I don’t see him,” says David needlessly. “There’s nothing out here.”
But there is the smell of baking heat, and the sour taste of grit, and the biting sand that gets into her ears and rubs in the collar of her blouse and blisters the soles of her feet. And there, half hidden in a tiny drift of sand, dried camel droppings. This is still Valentin’s land. His soul still exists here.
“Not here,” she says, remembering. “He’s trying to get through to somewhere else.” Through the storm.
She stretches out her hands, her fingertips. She reaches for the sand, feels its grain, its silicate structure. In true nesh, she could not alter the constructs of another person’s habitat, but this is not true nesh, this is another type of nesh entirely, formless matter inhabited by a trace of Valentin’s soul.
She draws the sand up into the air and calls the wind from the north, blowing down upon her, she draws it through her until she is scoured clean inside and herself becomes a gateway. She pushes forward into the storm which is also herself. She forms in her memory the image of that place that Valentin struggled toward, the golden sea—not, as she had thought, that bronze gold undulation of endless sand which is the desert, but a moving sea rippled by currents of wind.
She battles forward, but the way is made easier because someone has already forged this path, she is only rediscovering it for herself, Valentin has already come before her, she can see the signs of his passing like an echo of his being. The golden light glares brighter and brighter until she has to shut her eyes against the blinding glare which is both of her and outside of her. The wind howls, screaming against her, the sand tearing her to ribbons. Then she feels the hot breath of a summer wind and she throws herself through, heedless of David struggling behind her.
And she is out on a golden plain flying above it like a bird. She is a bird. She is a fledgling eagle, soaring above a sea of grass. Sharp-sighted, she can see three days’ ride away, and there, beyond the swell and ebb of the ground and the endless motion of the wind through the grass, she sees a tribe moving.
Swifter than horses, she wings toward them, spying them out. As with any tribe, there are women and carts and children and the men of the jahar, dressed in the pale and bright surcoats of Bakhtiian’s army. There is her uncle, Anton Veselov, just as she remembers him, and beside him, a far mistier memory, is her grandfather, Dmitri Mikhailov, Karolla’s father and the man who led the final, failed rebellion against Ilyakoria Bakhtiian in the tribes. And there, riding beside the men with her bow strapped across her back, is Valye Usova. A herd of horses and a bigger herd of glariss, bleating and trotting in the familiar unruly mob, trails the line of wagons. An old woman drives the lead wagons; Ilyana takes a moment to recognize her. It is Mother Sakhalin, ancient, surely dead by now… but of course the others here are dead, too. She swoops down and as a child in the second cart points up into the heavens, marking her descent, she sees the driver of the second string of wagons: Her aunt, Arina Veselov. And riding beside her, an old but hale man, the healer Nikolai Sibirin whom she vaguely remembers.
Ilyana feels a terrible fear. She feels as if the heavens are contracting around her, but the sky remains cold and piercingly blue, as infinite as the grass. She lands, fluttering, on the second wagon, perched on the rim of the wagon beside Arina Veselov, who looks at her with grave eyes.
“Where is Valentin?” Ilyana asks, but it only comes out as a shriek, an eagle’s call, fierce and challenging.
“A spirit is visiting us from the heavens,” says Niko Sibirin.
Despairing, Ilyana flings herself skyward and flies, anywhere, away, not wanting to watch the tribe as it rides on across the golden sea of grass. Was this what Valentin wanted? I want to go home, he had said. The tribe continues on its way, receding into the distance behind her.
But there, a tiny speck in the grass, comes a rider. She wings closer, dives, heart fluttering in her chest with excitement.
It is! It is Valentin, riding a young bay mare.
“Valentin!” she cries in her eagle’s voice. “Valentin!”
He does not heed her. She swoops down, but he is intent on riding. He marks her only as a great bird, a spirit, watching from the heavens. His face is alight. Like a stone in her stomach, Ilyana realizes that he is happy.
“Valentin! It’s me. It’s Ilyana. Come back. Come back.”
But he keeps on riding, and though she tries, she cannot transform herself here. She is an eagle, a spirit, come from another land. She flies along with him until the wind picks up, driving her backward. Battling against it, she loses ground, he recedes from her, and she is torn away, sucked back through, and the plain is swallowed up in a howling storm of sand and grit battering against her and she feels a firm hand pull her back into the smothering haven of the jungle and she walks two steps, weeping, down the marble foyer that passes through the gate of the memory palace.
Weeping, Ilyana let go of the sponge. “He can’t hear me! He couldn’t hear me, he just kept on riding!”
“Where did you go?” David asked in a hoarse voice. “I couldn’t follow you.”
“Goddess,” swore Hyacinth, fainter. “You’ve been gone for hours. Take some water.”
“He’s trying to go home,” said Ilyana, and then she was sobbing so hard that she could no longer talk.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
A Taste of Betrayal
GUARDS TOOK VASHA TO the battlements and there he found Prince Janos surveying the army that, three days after the first alert, now surrounded the town and castle of White Tower. Staring at Janos’s back, Vasha tried to imagine the khaja man forcing Katya, but he could not. Another khaja man, perhaps, but not Janos. Anyway, Katya would never let such a thing happen to her. Janos swung around, and Vasha was abruptly reminded of the bruises Janos had received before the hunting
trip, as if he had fallen down… or gotten in a fight.
Seeing Vasha, Janos beckoned him to the wall. “How can you advise me, Prince Vasil’ii?”
Rather than speak to him, Vasha stared down at the army laying siege below: tents set up outside of catapult range, the sheer number of horses, and farther back, at the limit of his vision, the sudden onset of industry where the engineers would be directing the building of siege engines, towers, and the other paraphernalia of war. As a strike force setting out to join Yaroslav Sakhalin’s army, this group had no such weapons with them, but they knew how to build them, how to draft the local peasants to do the work under the supervision of soldiers. He knew this force, of course, knew the banners and recognized the colors: there, the red and gold of his father’s personal guard, the half that had stayed with the army and thus not perished in the ambush; there, various tribal colors. But most startling, flying among the banners, was the eagle rising, wings elevated and displayed, the heraldic device of the Prince of Jeds. Tess had come for revenge.
“I can give you no advice,” he said finally, miserably. “Those are my own people.” He wanted to ask about Katya, but he dared not.
“I don’t want to fight them. My defenses are strong, but as you can see they outnumber me. Is that banner not the banner of the Prince of Jeds? I would choose to negotiate. You know that is true. I can offer them an advantageous alliance. What can I send them as surety for my good will?”
Vasha almost said, ‘the priest,’ but discarded that idea. It was dangerous now to bring too much attention to Ilya. In any case, the army below would not be in a mood to negotiate. “Send an envoy. That is all you can do. They will not grant you terms.”
“You seem certain of that. I would send you, of course, but I must hold you in reserve. I hope you take no offense of it.”
“I take none. But there is one thing…” He met Janos’s gaze. “Free Princess Katerina. That would show you mean well.”
There it was, the knowledge in his eyes, that easy to see once you knew to look for it. Janos turned away from Vasha, hiding his expression, and Vasha was swamped with something like grief, a taste of betrayal. So it was true. Janos, decent to him, had raped Katerina. How could one man contain two such faces? And what of Katya, who was, Vasha supposed, never more to be spoken of between them? Janos looked out over the jaran army, the abandoned fields, and the clouds approaching from the east. Vasha felt the first spray of rain, a mist, dampening the stones.
“I will go down now,” said Janos to his guards. “Prince Vasil’ii, you will attend me, I hope.”
It was not a request. Clearly, Janos did not intend to give up any of his hostages. Nor, Vasha reflected wryly, would he have done any differently in the same situation. Except he would never, ever, force a woman to lie with him. Worst of all, following Janos down the narrow, slick steps, Vasha realized that he could not bring himself to hate the man, only the deed. And by thinking that, he might as well himself have betrayed Katya.
Tess sat under her awning and watched the khaja envoy approach her through the rain. She had sited her tent so that she could see the castle and the hastily-completed defensive works thrown up around the town. The rain gave them a blurred appearance, deceptively soft and welcoming. Because it was growing dark, and the lanterns threw light no farther than the square of her carpets, she did not realize until the envoy ducked under the awning that the man wore the badge of the Mircassian king.
“Why does a Dushan prince send a Mircassian envoy?” she asked, too impatient to waste time on the niceties.
The man bowed, gave his name and title, and looked, not surprisingly, a trifle nervous. “I had arrived at White Tower on other business,” he said, recovering his smooth manners, “and volunteered to act as go-between. Prince Janos wishes to know why you have invaded his lands and surrounded his castle.”
Tess scowled. “You may take this message back to Prince Janos. If he surrenders himself into my custody, I will spare the town and the castle and everyone who has taken refuge within the walls.”
“Your highness—”
“I am not negotiating. Take that message back to him. I want a reply at dawn tomorrow.” She gestured to one of the guards to escort him away. Given no choice, he went.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Gennady Berezin crouched down beside her. “You did not ask about hostages.”
“Had I asked about them, Prince Janos would know that I knew that he had that power over me. Now he must play that piece himself, in an attempt to counter my first attack.”
“If he does not agree to surrender himself? In his position, I would not.”
“I know nothing of Prince Janos, whether he is shrewd or foolish. I can only try to force his hand, make him show his full strength early rather than late.”
The soldier waved toward the castle. “His position is strong. I am sure we outnumber him, but he is protected by a ditch, a moat, and stone walls.”
“Perhaps by more than that. Princess Rusudani is the granddaughter of King Barsauma of Mircassia. A Mircassian envoy comes forward as a representative of Prince Janos. That suggests to me that Janos knows what he possesses, if indeed he possesses the princess. But where else would she have gone? She surely was captured at Urosh Monastery. And if he has jaran hostages as well—”
But there, having said it, she had to stop. Hope pierced her as painfully as any spear might; she felt it physically, she could not speak. She had not spoken Ilya’s name in days, as if by speaking it she might somehow release it from the earth and lose him, lose any hope of him.
“We will wait,” she said at last. “Prince Janos knows why we want him.”
After delivering his message, the Mircassian envoy retreated to the hearth, warming his hands at the great fire as if within its halo of light and heat he might find safety. Except there was no safety to be had within White Tower. Vasha sat in a chair, idly fingering the game pieces, and watched Janos pace the length of the solar and back again. Katya had fought, of course—Vasha was sure of that—but Janos must have overpowered her. And then—but beyond that Vasha could not go. Just could not. Janos looked preoccupied, grim, but not remotely like a man so monstrous that he would force a woman.
“Where is my wife?” Janos said suddenly. A servant scurried out. Sometime later Princess Rusudani swept in, attended by her women, by two guards, and by Bakhtiian. She looked cool and elegant except for two spots of color burning in her cheeks. Ilya held a copy of The Recitation in one hand and he stared fixedly at it, seeming not to see the room or Vasha.
“You will attend me,” Janos said to her as she entered. She sat down in her chair and began to embroider, the other women arranging themselves around her. They were unnaturally quiet, as if fear kept them from speaking, and finally Rusudani nodded toward Ilya and he opened The Recitation and began to read aloud from it in a low voice.
Janos sat down opposite Vasha and set the pieces up for a game. “The Prince of Jeds refuses to negotiate,” Janos said.
Ilya’s voice faltered. Rusudani signed to him to set down the book, and she began to embroider again, head bowed over the fabric.
“The jaran will not negotiate, my lord,” said Vasha.
“What would they do if I surrendered?”
“They will kill you.” As Vasha said it, he looked up and saw Rusudani’s gaze fixed on them. She glanced away at once, toward Ilya, who stared blindly at the open pages of the book. He was not reading but listening. “But they would also spare the town and all inside.”
“Would you surrender yourself under such circumstances?”
“Do you intend to?”
“No. I simply wondered.” He beckoned to the Mircassian envoy, and the man crossed the room to stand beside him. “At dawn you will go to the Prince of Jeds and inform her, graciously, that I hold Prince Vasil’ii and Princess Katherine, and that I am willing to enter into negotiations in return for her consideration of an alliance with Mircassia.”
To Vasha’s
surprise, Rusudani stood up. “I am the heir to Mircassia,” she said clearly. “Do you intend to negotiate without consulting me?”
Janos rose at once and went over to her. He took her hand and led her to the table. “You have been ten years in the convent, my lady. You have no experience in this. Lord Belos, bring Princess Rusudani some wine.”
Her presence affected Vasha so strongly that he had to bow his head. From under his lashes he watched her drink, the curve of her lips on the rim of the glass, the slight movement of her throat. She was so close to him that he could easily have touched her, as Janos touched her, keeping one hand firmly on her as if to mark that she belonged to him. For even more than the hostages, Rusudani was the prize that could save Janos’s life.
When she had finished drinking, she spoke, slowly enough that Vasha understood the gist of her words. “My lord husband, I would send the priest to the jaran as surety for your good faith. Give him to them to show that you mean to keep to any treaty you might agree to. Perhaps they will forgive you for…” She broke off, found her voice again. “For the other. For what transpired at the monastery.”
“No,” said Janos flatly. “I would be a fool to give up even one. Lord Belos, see that the jaran priest and the others, the soldiers, are put in the dungeon. We may have a use for them later.”
Color rose in Rusudani’s cheeks. “They are my prisoners, not yours, to dispose of.”
“Is it not said in The Recitation that a woman ought to be subject to the greater wisdom of a man?”
“Prince Vasil’ii, I appeal to you. Is such a thing said of women among the jaran?”
Her plea startled Vasha, and he stood as well, aware of how near she was. He did not look at her but at the pieces lined neatly up on the gameboard. “No, Princess Rusudani. A woman is subject to no man’s authority, except—” He faltered, remembering his conversations with Janos. Remembering Katerina.