by Kate Elliott
Running a hand through his hair, he shoved that book aside and pulled the last one closer to him. “ ‘You know from astrological computation that the whole circumference of the earth is no more than a pinpoint when contrasted to the space of the heavens… The man who recklessly strives for glory and counts it his highest goal should consider the far-reaching shores of heaven and the narrow confines of earth.’ ”
Abruptly, his expression changed. He flung the book against the wall, but it only fell to the floor with a soft thud, having nothing hard to impact. He had lost his hold on the scroll. Turning to stop it from rolling up completely, he saw Tess.
At once, he looked guilty. Or he would have looked guilty, if the jaran had a concept of sin. She stepped into the tent. He closed the three books and was about to get up when she forestalled him by skirting the table and picking up the book he had thrown.
“The Consolation of Philosophy? Ilya …”
“Give it to me,” he snapped, and because he was in a mood, she handed it over without protest.
But she could not help trying to read the gold letters labeling the spines of the others. “On The Nature of the Heavens. The Principia?”
He opened his saddle bags and stuffed the books inside them. Then he rolled the scroll up carefully.
“What is that?”
“It is an old text from Byblos, that I took from the university today. It is called The Mysteries of Elia, but no one knows if it is the same Elia who has written the gospel in The Recitation, or another Elia. There is some debate. You know how scholars are.” He did not offer to let her look at it, which was strange of itself.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.
He tied the scroll with a bit of string, slid it into a case, and shoved it into the saddlebag before he straightened up and looked at her. The light had the odd trick of making him look even younger—and he already looked younger than his years. “I will let you know, when I find it.”
He said it so dismissively that Tess winced. He did not seem to notice. He rose and untied the flap, pulling it closed. The sky, the trees, the stars, all vanished, and they stood, the two of them, alone in the enclosed chamber, which seemed very small, now, and dim, lit only by the two lanterns.
He kept his gaze fixed on the flap, as though he could see through it to the outside world. “In White Tower they kept me chained at night when I slept. Always. I can still feel the shackles.”
“Ilya,” she began, knowing that the time had come. There was no putting it off any longer. He had already begun. It was up to her to lead him the rest of the way. “For a long time now I have been trying to think of a way to tell you—”
He whirled. The expression on his face struck her to silence. But he spoke, his voice so low she had to strain to hear it.
“I want nothing given to me, Tess. Do you understand?” He began to pace, agitated. “I am not a slave to be led about in chains, to be cosseted with sweetmeats and pats on the head so that I can pretend that nothing shackles me. If the gods have spoken through me, then let them speak. Let me obey the vision they have sent me and not question it.”
“What is this, then?” she demanded, gesturing toward the saddlebag bursting with books. Books he did not intend to let her see.
“What the gods wish me to know they will allow me to discover on my own.”
“Ah, gods,” Tess said under her breath, watching him cross to the entrance and twitch the flap aside to look out, up, at the trees or the heavens or the dark outline of the palace she could not be sure. But she knew at that moment that if she handed him a book open to the page where the answers were written, he would close it and hand it back without reading it.
What Sonia had embraced, Ilya turned his back on.
But then her gaze caught on the saddlebags, on the tip of the scroll, which he had evidently kidnapped from the university. It was not truly knowledge that Ilya had turned his back on. Ilya allowed his gods to act through him, but no one else. Not even her. He would rather knowingly remain ignorant than learn that he was just another pawn in a greater game. That was the lesson he had learned from Prince Janos, that he could not bear to be anyone less than the king.
Unlike Charles, he could not reshape his life to a new path. That was his great weakness.
Finally he turned to look at her and smiled, almost shyly, testing the waters. “I will send a messenger north to Sarai,” he said. “Sonia can arrange for someone to escort Natalia and Yurinya by ship here, when the winds shift.”
Tess started, being perfectly able to feel guilty. “Yes. We hadn’t talked yet about how long we might stay in Jeds.”
“Filis must be conquered, once and for all, and Vasha settled safely in Mircassia. We must stay at least until those campaigns are over.” His gaze strayed toward the saddlebags, but he did not add that he evidently had pressing business at the university.
“A year would be good,” agreed Tess. “That would give me time to bring the nobles back to heel, call a new council, institute a few laws, strengthen the parliament.”
So he drifted toward her, and she toward him, and in the end they met, commencing a new pattern. He knew that she had at least been willing to tell him the truths that she had chained him away from all these years. She understood, a bit, how close he had come to going over the edge. But Ilyakoria Bakhtiian was perfectly capable of reshaping the untenable path so that it circumvented or concealed the obstacles which might otherwise destroy him.
That was his great strength.
EPILOGUE
1
All of the Tribes
“BUT HE’S SHORT,” SAID the woman to her companion, not realizing that Anatoly could overhear her. The great foyer that connected the Bouleuterion, the assembly hall, with the public concourse boasted a number of interesting acoustic properties as well as the cyclopean sculptural frieze depicting the history of humanity for which it was most famous. The floor of the foyer was a mosaic map, not to scale, of the many solar systems that made up League space, and Anatoly had discovered that when he stood on the blue-white circle that represented the star Sirius he could hear the conversations of people standing within the Three Rings system, a spear throw away. It was, he supposed, an elaborate spying system.
“And that woman with him. Why, she looks positively savage! Aren’t those weapons she’s carrying?”
Anatoly glanced at Katerina Orzhekov, but Katya was too busy gaping at a relief of a woman sitting at a writing desk to listen. Her grasp of the common tongue spoken here was still shaky in any case; she had not yet completed the language matrix. Katya wore a mishmosh of jaran and Earth dress, a long skirted tunic with striped trousers beneath, boots, and her quiver and bow strapped on her back. There was a khaja law about carrying weapons in public places, but Anatoly had grown tired of obeying it, and now he didn’t have to anymore.
“It’s very strange,” agreed her companion.
“M. Sakhalin!”
“Damn,” said Anatoly, and to Katya, “Come.”
She spun at once and fell in beside him as he headed for the concourse, but even so, the longer legs of their pursuer proved their downfall.
“M. Sakhalin! What a pleasure to see you here. I was so honored to meet you at the reception last month. I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of forwarding some of the specs on our new line of luxury yachts to your…uh, your office. We have so many models to choose from and we can custom fit to any specification, even include, heh heh, an archery range.” The man bowed floridly toward Katerina and, straightening, caught her disdainful expression. He smiled nervously and shifted tactics. “Of course, M. Sakhalin, you understand that Cheng Shipyards guarantees the highest quality, and we are known league-wide for the speed and strength of our models.”
“Thank you, M. Chandani. I assure you that we are studying the matter even now. If you will excuse me.”
“Most honored, M. Sakhalin. Most honored.” Bowing, the merch
ant let them go, thank the gods.
“He smells of sweetcakes,” said Katya in a low voice. “All sticky and oversugared. Does this happen often?”
“It happens all the time.”
“How do you remember all their names?”
“I have an implant.” He tapped his temples just above his left ear. “It records each person I meet and cross references it with a name, and then those I don’t remember on my own can be recalled from the implant. It’s very useful. They’re flattered when you remember their names, even if they must know I have tools to help me.”
They crossed through into the concourse and were at once picked up by two of the Raven’s crew—Summer and Benjamin—and by the ubiquitous throng of agents, hangers-on, monitors, and official escorts that attended him whenever he went out into public territory. A tiny globe maneuvered, trying to get a good angle on him for the vids, and Katerina gave it a sharp whack with her bow. A few sympathizers in the crowd cheered. Finally, they got through the concourse and into the docking section and into the blessed quiet of the Gray Raven.
“Am I really that short?” Anatoly asked Summer as they cycled through the locks.
Summer grinned down at him. “Only in height, my dear. But 169 centimeters is below average for a man. Remember, we’re used to our princes being Chapalii, and they’re all about two hundred centimeters.”
“What’s a centimeter?” asked Katya. “Oh, it’s a unit of measure.”
“Five feet six and a half inches,” offered Benjamin, who could convert any unit, monetary or otherwise, into any other instantaneously. “Three point eight cubits, depending on the arm.”
The lock opened and they dispersed into the gleaming passageways of the ship.
“Come with me,” said Anatoly to Katerina. She followed him to the lounge. “Sit.” He sat on the couch, she on the floor in the jaran style, watching him intently.
“You have been with me for two khaja months now. How do you like it here?”
“I love it here,” she said fiercely.
“I have a task for you. Yesterday I finally got word that my message found my sister Shura, and she is now at Jeds, waiting for word from me. I want you to go back to Rhui.”
Her expression fell instantly.
“Not to stay. Go back to the tribes. Bring me one hundred men and women, to be the nucleus of my new jahar. Recruit them wisely, carefully. Find the ones who are discontent, who question—not troublemakers, but the ones who are restless.”
“I know how to find them,” said Katya quietly.
“Don’t let the others know what you are doing. Shura will help you. She, too, will know. She is one of them, as you are. If any riders live who were in my jahar before I left, and they wish to join me, bring them.”
“If they have families?”
“It’s true it would be best to bring younger people, those who are willing to leave the tribe and make a new tribe here. But I will not turn away the riders who served with me then. They must make the choice themselves. You, Katerina, will be etsana.”
She made a face.
“No, it must be you. You came here first. You are a daughter of the Eldest Tribes.”
“Your sister Shura—”
“It is not fitting that a brother and sister act together as dyan and etsana of a tribe. But you and I are cousins, of a sort, and we will do very well together, I think. I need the jaran, Katya. Surely you can see that.”
She nodded, her clear-eyed gaze steady on him. “Yes. This khaja world is very strange.”
But she had adjusted remarkably well. She had not come off the ship in shock, as he had. She had not retreated into a false world, as Karolla Arkhanov had, dragging her children down with her. With that same kind of preparation, with her guidance, the hundred riders and archers she brought off Rhui would adjust as well as she did. In their turn, when it was time, when it was appropriate, they could form the escort that would bring more jaran off Rhui, those that wanted to come.
Because not all would want to come. Nor should they.
“What about my cousin, Bakhtiian?” she asked suddenly.
He bowed his head, as any man does before the authority of a great etsana. “You must obey your aunt Tess Soerensen in this. I cannot interfere with her judgment.”
“It’s true, you know,” said Katya in a whisper. “Before I left, I went to him, but he would not speak to me. I don’t understand it.”
Anatoly felt a pain in his heart. He made an image in his mind of the man he had admired so passionately when he was a boy, the proud dyan, leader of all the tribes, who had lifted the jaran to face their destiny. Who yet, in the end, could not face the greater truth he had inadvertently uncovered. He was, gods forgive Anatoly for even thinking it, like Karolla in that.
“He is a Singer,” said Anatoly at last, unwilling to pass judgment. “He is subject to the will of the gods in a way we are not.”
He went to his cabin and lay down on his bunk, palming the top screen on and flipping through the channels idly. There was a report on his upcoming appearance before Parliament, in less than two hours. An Infinity Jilt serial. An immersion mass in the Church of Three Faiths temple in Gabon, ready to trigger once the viewer hooked into the nesh. Freefall acrobatics. A historical epic called Coming of Age in the Milky Way, about the great cosmological discoveries at the end of the Machine Age. The usual gossip channel. A fencing match.
He flipped abruptly back to the gossip channel.
The bastards!
A crowd of mini-globes and nesh and flesh correspondents had mobbed Chancery Lane. A golden-haired woman walked down the New Court steps escorted by a husky woman with an authoritative bearing and by her father and Aunt Millie. The voice-over was blithering on about final dissolution papers and his name and something about the appearance before Parliament, but Anatoly could see only Diana. He strained to hear her through the globes that hovered around her. Only a Singer could look so composed, only Diana could manage to look so poised, so lovely….
“M. Brooke-Holt! M. Brooke-Holt! We understand that your husband dumped you now that he’s become so important.”
“No comment,” said the advocate, the husky woman, bringing up the rear while Aunt Millie and Diana’s father forced a path through the crowd toward a private carriage.
“Isn’t there a child involved?”
Anatoly could not see Diana’s face. The advocate looked bored. “No comment,” she repeated.
“Is it true that he’s cut himself loose and is going to establish a harem of exotic primitives for himself, in the Chapalii style?”
Diana stopped dead and turned to fix a glare of monumental disdain on the hapless questioner. “Oh! You people are so stupid!” She turned her back on the camera, used her elbows to good effect, and ducked into the carriage. It sealed shut behind her, leaving the advocate in charge as the crowd moved back to avoid the backwash as the car rose and flew away.
Anatoly voiced the sound down and just stared at the screen, at the gray stone of the courthouse, at the bleak London sky above. He felt, at this moment, shame more than pain. He was shamed that his wife had abandoned him. Such a thing never happened in the tribes. What if they were to hear of it? Gods, he hadn’t even told Katerina Orzhekov the truth, and she didn’t understand the language or the tools well enough yet to discover it on her own.
Gods, what would his grandmother say? She would have accepted the emperor’s benediction calmly, without surprise; it was, after all, simply what was due to the Sakhalin tribe. But she would be furious that Diana had left him—for a second time.
You should have married the daughter of Baron Santer, she would say. You look like a fool, Anatoly. It never behooves a Sakhalin to look like a fool, and especially not a man. A man must show himself courageous, trustworthy, loyal to his dyan, and responsible to his mother, his sisters, and his wife and children. But if he allows himself to be made a fool of, then no one will respect him.
Though she was dead, he cou
ld reproduce her voice, her tone, her words with perfect accuracy, because he knew her so well. He was thankful that she was dead, so that she might never have to know.
The cabin door slid open without warning and Portia rushed in, followed by Evdokia Arkhanov. The two girls screamed with laughter and threw themselves onto his stomach, knocking the breath out of him. Moshe stopped in the entrance and covered his mouth, stifling his own laughter. “Sorry,” he said. “I hope we didn’t disturb you.”
Anatoly reached up and palmed off the overhead screen. “No.” He hoisted the girls off him and sat up. “I wasn’t doing anything productive. Now, Portia, you must get dressed in your fine clothes. You, too, Evdi.”
The Bouleuterion was domed above and below by stars, or so it appeared to Anatoly. The spider’s web of Concord, the great space station still under construction, threw odd patterns on the heavens, like etchings cut through clouded glass. Walking on the transparent floor, with only stars beneath his feet, made him nervous, so as he entered the hall and made his way through the sunken aisle to the center he kept his gaze on the amphitheater surrounding him.
Every seat in the hall was filled. At the high railings above, people stood at least three deep, judging from the heads sticking above the crowd. It was a circular hall, and the platform in the center faced no one and everyone. Four sunken aisles pierced the banks of seats into four quarters. As Anatoly came out into the middle, he let Portia down and shoved her toward Katerina, who waited in the lowest rank of benches. Portia stuck her little finger in her mouth and walked over to Katya, glancing back at her father for reassurance. When the girl sat down, wedged between Katya and Evdi, who were themselves flanked by Branwen and the rest of her crew, Anatoly strode out to the center.
He stood there alone, surrounded by over ten thousand seated assembly members doubled by a ghostly contingent of nesh and amplified by a high ring of vid globes and a hundred soft bulbs that transferred every last detail into the nesh reconstruction.