by Kate Elliott
“He’ll go back to the acties, I bet.”
“We can hope.”
And another pair, in another place.
“It’s about time she did something, instead of just sneaking around with Yassir. I feel sorry for that poor husband of hers.”
A snort. “Serves him right, the arrogant tvut. He’s so polite he’d freeze your blood to ice, and all like he’s doing you a favor. D’you think it’s true he saw the emperor? Nah. Why him, and not anyone else?”
“Cos’ he’s a—what—a prince?”
Gales of laughter, which annoyed Ilyana more than the comments about her father had. But they broke off soon enough. “They got a message in this morning something urgent. That’s why La Brooke left.”
Only two performances left. Sitting beside Valentin’s couch, she shut her eyes and tranced out on his breathing. Monitored by the bed, his exhalation and inhalation soothed her because of its regularity. His body had curled even farther into a fetal position, and his right hand had ceased twitching, as it had been all yesterday.
She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to go back to London, not really, except to see Kori and her other friends, but that’s where they would go, if he could get around M. Pandit. But wherever they ended up, she could not bear going on day after day like this with her parents, even with an advocate in tow, to monitor their psychological health.
Valentin let out a breath. There was silence. She thought at first that she had dozed off, but she hadn’t. He had stopped breathing.
She jumped to her feet and bolted for the curtained door. When her hand touched the cloth, she froze. They would come soon enough. An alarm must be going off on Yomi’s slate. But why hurry them? They would just force Valentin’s heart to start up again; they would plug his brain stem into an artificial stimulator, and he would live, mindless, against his will, through the machine. She turned and stared down at him.
His face was slack, empty. All the mobility of expression that made him Valentin, little pest, favorite brother, had vanished when their father had severed him from his soul. His lips still had the pale rose tint of a delicate shell, but even that seemed to drain out of him as she watched, as he cooled. His life slipped away, and she let it go. When they all came running, it was too late to try to bring him back.
“I fell asleep,” she lied, starting to cry. She did not have to lie about her grief. They left her alone to weep while they conferred over the body. She went out to sit in the courtyard. The sun warmed her, and she took off her boots and let its heat linger on her toes, on her ankles, on her knees.
“Yana!”
She flinched and tugged her trouser legs back down to her ankles.
“It is unbecoming to expose yourself so shamelessly,” snapped her mother. “But I suppose that now that you have gone to live in… a man’s tent, that you no longer feel constrained to behave like a good woman.”
“I’m not sleeping in a man’s tent! I’m just using David’s cot. He sleeps somewhere else.”
Karolla hefted Little Rose up onto her shoulder. The baby’s presence was itself an accusation. Unnamed still, because of her sister’s stubbornness. But Karolla said nothing more. She walked over to the group gathering outside the room where Valentin lay.
They were arguing over what to do with the body. Ilyana spotted David’s thick crown of braids in the throng and sidled over to his side, squeezing past some of the others to reach him. She used his body as a shield from her father, who stood next to his wife, confronting Yomi.
“He must be left on the plains,” Karolla was saying in her pedantic way, “so that he can be born again into the world.”
Into which world? Ilyana thought. This world? What would he become, born back onto an alien moon? An alien himself? A ghost crying for its true home?
“He must be taken back to the plains,” repeated Karolla stubbornly.
“To Rhui?” Yomi asked. “You know that is impossible.”
“Then at least back to Earth. Surely even you barbarians have places where you lay out your dead so that Father Wind may cleanse their souls and return them to living.”
Someone whispered: “What does she mean, cleanse them?”
“I don’t think he wants to go back to Earth,” said Ilyana suddenly, stepping out from behind David. Everyone else started, except David, who had known she was there. “He hated it there. I think you should burn him. He wants to be released.”
“That is not our way,” said Karolla. “He has not earned release.”
Vasil just looked at Ilyana, as if she was a stranger to him.
“I don’t care about your way. It’s what he wants. Your way is what killed him.”
“Who gave you the right to speak such accusations? His body must be given to the wind so that his soul may be returned to the earth.”
“Let him go! Why won’t you just let him go? You don’t care about him, only about yourself.”
David grabbed Ilyana and dragged her back before her mother could slap her.
Karolla whitened. In khush, she said: “I cast you out of my tent. You are no longer my daughter.”
Ilyana gasped. She looked toward her father, but Vasil’s face was cast of stone. He deliberately looked away from her.
Karolla went on, inexorably but with a weird dignity, her words spoken almost by rote, as if memorized from some similar ceremony she had witnessed, she had endured, many many years before. “I declare you tribeless, motherless, kinless. Wander where you will, you shall find no welcome by this fire.”
Stunned, Ilyana could not move. David led her away, and she simply walked with him, nerveless, numb. Like rock, she felt nothing, but a sharp blow would crack her.
David sat her down on a bench in the sun. “What did she say?” he asked.
She shook her head. She could still see the knot of people, shifting nervously now that an explosion had occurred that they could not interpret. She could still see her father’s golden head, turned away from her.
David pulled her to her feet and guided her out of the caravansary. “What was that all about?” he demanded when they came out onto the dusty road that led to only one destination—to the ruined caravansary. A road that led nowhere. The planet loomed in copper glory in the sky. The sun splintered its rays through one of the outer rings, scattering light in odd fragments over the flat landscape. Out in the grass, the horses grazed peacefully, calm in the golden haze of the sun.
Ilyana broke away from David and ran. At first, anywhere, away. He came after her, but she was younger, not as fast in a sprint, but she had more endurance and she had a head start.
“Genji!” she called into the drowsy air. “Help me.”
The barge came for her. She clambered in, slipping once on the stairs in her frantic haste, and the hatch closed behind her to the sound of David cursing her in at least three different languages. Then she left him far behind. The craft slipped through the rose wall and rain poured over it, coursing down its ribs, splattering the dense glass. Clouds obscured the sky, as they always did. Here, in Naroshi’s palace—in Genji’s palace—it was always raining.
The barge halted and she tumbled out. She had never seen this place before. Rain drenched her, but it was a relief because the air stifled her with its heat and humidity. She stood in front of a small tile-roofed cottage in the middle of a clearing surrounded by jungle. She was soaked to the skin before she finally worked up enough courage to go inside.
She had to push the door open. She stood dripping on a mosaic entry way. What had she expected? A magical hut that, tiny on the outside, opened up into vast ballrooms on the inside? It was just a single room, about fifteen meters square, with no furnishings except a single shell-like chair placed in the center of the mosaic floor. The tiles in the floor had an odd quality of shifting every time Ilyana blinked, like the pattern of stars as seen by a ship in transit.
Genji sat in the chair. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t seem to be inside them. Ilyana waited. Wa
ter puddled at her feet and, slowly, dried up, sucked away into the tile floor. Her clothes lightened as the moisture evaporated out of them. It was oppressively hot. Ilyana looked up to the high beams that straddled the open room, beams as dark as ebony wood. When she looked back, Genji was watching her.
Ilyana opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“I have been traveling with your cousin,” said Genji. She did not rise from the chair. Ilyana realized abruptly that fine filaments bound her to the chair, wispy strands as delicate as a spider’s web.
“My cousin?”
“Prince Anatoly. Why have you come, my child?”
She had enough strength left to take three steps forward before she collapsed into a heap on the floor. The mosaic was cool against her skin, but as hard as her mother’s heart. Ilyana had no tears left.
“I have no mother,” she whispered, staring at her hands. She lifted her gaze to take in the smooth cascade of Genji’s night-blue robes, her pale shining alien hands curved lightly over the arms of her chair. “I have no tribe.”
“You will stay with me.”
Eyes wide, Ilyana stared up into her face. Not a human face, not even precisely a face by human standards, but no longer completely strange. A chill struck her, and she shivered, but it passed, soaked up by the heat. “Forever?” she asked, and her voice quavered, lost, and vanished. For an instant, she was terrified. She passed through to resignation and then at last, because she was young, threw away all her fears, consumed by an intense curiosity.
“ ‘Every change is merely part of a mystical pattern,’ ” said Genji. “You will stay for as long as need be.”
“We must go home,” Anatoly told his jahar. “We must consolidate our position before we attempt any campaigns.”
“Where is home?” Rachelle asked. “I mean, this ship is my home. Where is yours?”
“The plains,” he answered, but his own reply puzzled him. How could he govern his principality from the plains, unless he built a khaja tower with which to communicate with the universe beyond? “But I think it would be wise,” he added, temporizing, “to go first to Charles Soerensen.”
Branwen caught his eye and lifted her chin, which meant she agreed with him. He smiled back at her. He appreciated her gesture of the night before. He had no doubt it would be repeated, or at least he hoped it would. So few khaja women knew how a proper woman ought to behave.
“We’re being hailed.” Florien tapped one ear with the heel of a hand. “I’m not hearing this right. Isn’t a Yao a prince? We’ve got a prince wanting to come on board. Or at least, that’s what it says.”
“I will meet him…?” Anatoly looked questioningly at Branwen.
“Route them through the starboard lock. That’s the hold you first came in through, Anatoly. I’ll send Summer down with you, for brawn, and I’ll monitor from up here with Florien and Rachelle. Ben, you stay in reserve. Moshe, out of sight.”
Anatoly went down to the forward hold with Summer. After a long wait, the lock cycled open and two Chapalii stepped through. Anatoly hesitated, then noticed that they wore the tunic and trousers that identified them as stewards. They bowed to him. After a moment two robed Chapalii stepped through. He waited and they bowed to him as well. Last, a single Chapalii cleared the lock and halted to survey the plain metal hold. Anatoly could not, of course, read this creature’s expression, and in any case he had learned that the Chapalii did not have mobile enough facial muscles to express emotion through facial quirks and tugs. Nor did the Chapalii show the least trace of color on his pallid skin. All that distinguished him was his plain black robe and the teardrop pendant hanging from a chain around his neck. Anatoly waited, not wanting to make the mistake of bowing to a Chapalii of lower rank. He supposed that such a gesture would be fatal.
The Chapalii did not acknowledge him. Instead, it prowled the hold, touching every surface, picking up any loose objects and examining them closely. Only a noble of equal rank to his own would dare to be so rude.
“I am Anatoly Sakhalin,” said Anatoly into the silence. “Do you have a name or title by which I might politely address you?”
The prince did not bother to look at him. He was too busy trying to pry open one of Benjamin’s crates of sherry. “If you can discover it, you may use it.”
“Excuse me,” said Anatoly, irritated by this crass trespassing. “That crate contains valuable and fragile goods which are the property of one of my soldiers.”
The prince looked at him. He had an ovoid head and a single smear of permanent color on the left side of his hairless skull, where a human’s ear would have been. Except for that, he looked much like Naroshi: big-eyed, albino pale, with a slit mouth and three translucent ivory ridges lining his neck between his jaw and his shoulder. Like gills, Anatoly thought, recalling images of fish and newts from Portia’s animal program. Without replying, the prince headed for the door that led into the rest of the ship.
Anatoly moved to block him. “No. I’m not inviting you in.”
The prince inclined his head. Perhaps the gesture was meant as a compliment. Perhaps not. Behind him, his retainers stood in silence, fingers curled together in artful patterns. “The Tai-en Naroshi lies within my house. Now his daiga holdings have become yours. Don’t believe that I will forget this.”
Without waiting for Anatoly’s reply, he turned and walked back into the lock. His retainers followed him out, and the lock cycled shut.
“They’ve detached,” sang Florien’s voice over the ship’s com.
“Hell and blarney,” said Summer. “I’ve never seen one of those chameleons be just plain rude like that. How can that be a prince?”
Anatoly felt a shudder through the hull as the prince’s ship removed its grip from the Gray Raven. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Only a prince can afford to be that ill mannered,” he said, and was abruptly reminded of some of his uncles.
“Now I remember why Earth got rid of this hereditary aristocracy business,” said Summer. “What a jerk!”
Anatoly chuckled.
Summer glanced at him. “Too bad you’re not my type,” she added, and with that ambivalent praise left hanging in the air, they left the hold.
They took the fastest route back to Odys, which meant four days to Crossover and a much slower eighteen days to Odys.
“If they’ve got shortcuts built in,” said Branwen, surveying the three dimensional chart of their progress, “then they only exist in old imperial space.”
“Or they only exist going to and from Chapal,” suggested Florien.
Anatoly said nothing, he only listened.
In orbit around Odys, he and Branwen transferred to a shuttle and were ferried downside. Anatoly flipped through the viewscreen, but Rhui was out of sight, far away around the ecliptic, on the other side of Mother Sun.
Charles Soerensen greeted him personally on the landing pad. As well he might. He looked…wary, as a man looks who is confronting an animal that he is not sure has been tamed. Anatoly greeted him politely and waited for him to make the first move. After all, Anatoly now held an insurmountable position on the board. And Soerensen knew it.
“We need to talk,” said Soerensen blandly, waving him toward a ground car. “But first, you have a visitor.”
He said no more, just made small talk, and when they reached the great shell of his palace, he led Branwen away and left Anatoly at the door of an informally furnished room, plain white couches overlooking two walls of windows that opened onto the flat vista of the tule marshes.
The woman and the child inside did not see him immediately. How tender the mother was, kneeling to let her daughter whisper in her ear, smiling fondly as she replied to the question; how sweetly the child kissed her on the cheek and led her by the hand to look out the great floor-to-ceiling windows that let in light and sky.
How beautiful they looked together. He could not help but fall in love with Diana all over again, seeing her framed against the heavens.<
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Portia turned. “Papa!” She ran into his arms.
He swung her around and kissed her a hundred times, until, squealing and giggling, she begged to be put down. But after he put her down, she wrapped her arms around his leg and clung to him, grinning with sweet ferocity.
Diana did not come over to him. She hesitated, and he just stood there, dumb with longing, stricken with foreboding.
A woman Anatoly vaguely recognized appeared in the doorway. “Here she is,” the woman said. “Portia, dear, did you want to come get that surprise you made for your father?”
Portia did not want to leave, nor did Anatoly want to relinquish her, but he could see that this was some elaborate play staged by Soerensen, by Diana, by this woman, and at last he pried her off and sent her on her way, promising to come straight to her. Thus fortified, she went willingly.
He turned to his wife. “No greeting?” he asked lightly. He wanted to embrace her, to wrap himself in her and let her, for a time, relieve him of the terrible burden that the emperor had placed on him. She did not move. She did not smile her glorious smile. She offered him no light, no warmth. She stood stiffly, as if willing him to ignore the curve of her body under her dress.
“I had to tell you myself,” she said haltingly. “Is it true? What they say of you? That what happened…? Are you really… named a prince by the emperor?”
“Yes.”
It was like talking to a well-meaning stranger.
“I’m sorry, then, to dump this on you now. But there’s no point in waiting. It’ll just make it harder for Portia later.” She let out a breath. Even at three body lengths from her, he felt its finality. “I’ve retained an advocate and she will be serving dissolution papers on our marriage in two days.”
“But, Diana…” Floundering, helpless, he could only stare at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and he knew then that her decision was as irrevocable as the emperor’s.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Confession
JAELLE SAT ALONE UNDER an awning in the middle of the jaran camp. Soldiers had hustled her here last night, back through the ranks of jaran soldiers who were streaming into White Tower, and dumped her. She supposed she was now a prisoner of the jaran, rather than Prince Janos. What had happened to Katerina? Did Stefan still live?