by Kate Elliott
“Oh, my God.” Empty space swallowed her words. Her legs gave out, and she dropped to her knees. The air had a sweet, alien odor. A bug crawled up her thumb. She shook it off, cursing. No wonder the Chapalii had left so quickly. Trespassing—such a flagrant act of contempt for her brother’s authority that they must have some reason to risk a conviction of Imperial censure which would strip them of all rank. But there was nothing on Rhui worth that to a Chapalii.
For a long moment she did not move. What if there was?
Hills hid the Chapalii riders, but they had left a trail. She followed it. At the base of the hill it veered south. Wind brushed through the grass, lifting trampled stalks. Tess fished in her pouch, found the necklace and put it on, and pulled on her gloves. Then she walked.
The trail proved inconstant, but even when it faded, she could always find it fifty meters on. At first she was optimistic.
That evening it was the cold and her thirst that plagued her. But sheltering in a miserable patch of trees, with her cloak wrapped around her head and body, her clothing kept her just barely warm enough to doze. In the morning she melted snow in her bare hands and drank, and melted more, until her hands grew so stiff that she had to put her gloves back on. At least she would not die of thirst. But during the day the trail got worse.
Half the time she walked by instinct, following the curve of the hills, the snow-laden shadows, as if this Chapaliian violation of her brother’s edict left an invisible line that she, the avenging representative, could stalk. They should not be here—had never been here. What if they knew that Charles was biding his time, consolidating his power until he could successfully free humanity from their grip? What if their purpose all along had been to put him in a position within their hierarchy from which they could easily ruin him? And now, stupidly, she had gotten herself lost. He could not adopt a new heir unless she was certified dead. He would not know where to look for her—somewhere near Jeds—of course, the Chapalii would cover up their unauthorized landing. And she was the only one who knew they were here.
That night it was hunger more than the cold. Small plants grew under the grove of scrub trees she sheltered amidst, but she dared not try to eat them. In the darkness, as she stared up at the sky through a gap in the branches, none of the stars seemed familiar. She had known the night sky of Jeds well. It took her a long time to go to sleep.
The third day. It was harder to keep a steady pace. A thin cut on her upper lip stung constantly. She believed she was still following a trail—she had to believe it. In the afternoon, when she stumbled across a small water hole bordered by a ring of trees, she broke the crust of ice with one boot and drank until she was bloated. Then she fell asleep, exhausted.
Jacques was laughing at her. Her faithless lover was laughing. She had taken him once to her folk-dance club, where she went with her friends. He thought dancing silly. “Flying,” he said, “is a man’s sport.” So she said, “I’ll race you on the Everest Loop.” But she beat him, beat the president of the Sorbonne flying club. Bright, popular, magnetic, he was so much that she wasn’t. It had been a terrible mistake to beat him.
Until she found herself in the same class, Diplomacy and Chapalii Culture, and he had honored her with his laughter again. “You speak Chapalii so well,” he said. Withdrawn, uncomfortable with most people, she was flattered when he asked her to be in his study group. Later, somehow, he discovered she was the heir to the admired Soerensen, freedom fighter, duke in the Empire, champion of Earth and the League. That summer he asked her to marry him.
“No,” she said. She woke up, shivering.
Night. Late. Without thinking, her eyes focused on a formation of stars. She recognized the constellation. In Jeds, the Horseman rose high in the sky, sword leading. Here he hugged the hills, and by the angle of his sword she knew she was very far north, a thousand times farther north than she could possibly walk. She knew the map of the Jedan continent. Its northern mass was taken up by vast plains, broad as Siberia. She might as well attempt to walk from Mongolia to Venice. And she did not know whether winter was ending or just coming on. Oh God, she thought, don’t let me be there: I can’t be there.
When she slept again she dreamed that her bones lay, white, laced with the flowering vines of spring, on a golden, infinite hillside.
The rising sun woke her. Her left hand ached, the cloth of her cloak clutched in its fist. Shaking with cold, she pried it open with her other hand, and rose and drank and looked around. There was no trail. No sign that anyone had passed here, nothing, no life at all, except her. But south was surely that way, south to Jeds. She had a duty to Charles. However she had failed him before, she could not fail him now.
Strangely, the walking seemed easier, but she was very light-headed. Her eyesight grew unclear at intervals. When she picked up her feet, they seemed to fall from a great distance before they struck the ground. The sun rose high and cold above her.
Rounding the steep end of a small rise, she saw before her trampled grass, scattered ashes, and one long thin strip of worn leather. She was in the middle of it before she realized it was an abandoned camp. Her knees collapsed under her and she sat. She covered her face with her hands, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. It was recent, yes, alien and primitive, and there was a trail leading away, a trail she could follow.
She set off immediately. Ran sometimes, thinking she had seen something, stumbling, falling once into a freezing hard layer of snow, walked again, catching her breath and rubbing her cold cheeks with her bare hands. But as midday passed into afternoon, the grass thickened and lengthened, the hills ended abruptly, and the trail disappeared.
She stood silent on the edge of a vast plain. At first she merely stared. Nothing but grass, and grass and sky met in a thin line far in the distance, surrounding her, enclosing her in their vast monotony.
The wind scoured patterns in the greening grass. A single patch of flowers mottled a blazing scarlet through the high stems. A body could lie a hundred years in such space and never be found. In a hundred years her brother would be dead.
Her throat felt constricted. Tears rose, filling her eyes. But this was not the time to cry—think, think. She coughed several times, eyes shut. That, perhaps, was why she did not notice his approach.
A stream of words, incomprehensible, delivered in a steady, commanding voice.
She whirled. A man stood on the slope above her. He had dark hair, cut short, a trim dark beard, and the look of a man hardened by many years of difficult life, yet he had no coarseness. He waited patiently. His shirt was scarlet and full, his trousers black; his high boots were tanned leather and fit closely to his ankle and calf. A long, curving blade hung from his belt. He took one step toward her and asked another question in the same incomprehensible tongue.
She held her ground and replied in Rhuian. “Who may you be, good man?” she asked, remembering formality somehow, perhaps only because it was all that was left her. Here, not even her brother’s name mattered, except as a courtesy. “I am Terese Soerensen. I have nothing in my possession that could harm either you or your people.”
His unreadable expression did not change. He spoke a third time in his strange tongue, motioned to her, and turned to walk up the hill. She hesitated the barest second. Then she followed him.
Chapter Two
“Speech is the shadow of action.”
—DEMOCRITUS OF ABDERA
HE WAITED FOR HER just over the crest of the hill, one hand loosely grasping his horse’s reins. Compared to the horses she had traveled downside with, this was a stocky animal, with no beauty whatsoever; its legs were thick, its neck short and powerful. Its thin mane straggled over a dense coat, and its muzzle had a blunt shape that gave it the look of some prehistoric creature. Against its imperfections, the man standing at its head looked faultless: His red shirt was brilliant against the dull grass, his posture utterly assured, his eyes a deep, rich brown, his face—
Too hard. There was too little kindne
ss in his face. Wind stirred Tess’s hair and a bird called in the distance, a raucous cry. The man’s eyes as he examined her in his turn were intelligent. She recalled her conversation with the merchant: intelligent enough to suspect her off-world origins? How could he, when Jeds itself—thousands of miles away but at least still on his planet—was likely a meaningless word to him? When Rhui was interdicted, protected from the knowledge of the space-faring civilizations that surrounded it? Without realizing she was doing it, she shook her head. The movement made her dizzy. Her hunger and thirst flooded in on her, and she stumbled.
She did not even see him move, but his hands were under her elbow, pulling her up. She jerked away from him.
“Damn it,” she said, ashamed of her weakness. “I suppose it was too much to hope that you would speak Rhuian.” He stood very still, watching her. “God-damned native wildlife,” she added in Anglais, just to make herself feel better, but even her tone made no dent in his impassivity. He simply retreated to his horse, returning to her side a moment later with a hard, flat square of bread and a damp leather pouch filled with water.
She ate the bread, but drank only enough water to slake her thirst, and offered the pouch back to him. After he had tied it to his saddle, he mounted and held out one hand for her to swing on behind him. The strength of his pull surprised her; she had to grab at his shoulder to keep from falling over the other side. What he said under his breath did not sound like commendation.
Tess bit at her lip. She put one hand on each side of his waist, the cloth of his shirt fluid and smooth under her hands. Ahead, a wind moved in the grass. He glanced back at her, moved her arms so that they circled his waist entirely, and gave a terse command—even without knowing the language, she could translate the tone of voice. She took in a deep breath and held it, because her instinct was to tears. His legs moved against hers. The horse started forward.
His entire back was in contact with her. She turned her face to one side. Her cheek pressed against the back of his neck. The ends of his dark hair tickled her eye. His back was warm, and under her hands, held open and flat on his middle, she could feel every movement of the hard muscles in his stomach, his slow, controlled breathing. She closed her hands into fists.
They rode down onto the plain. Here, away from the hills, the sky seemed even larger, as if some giant hand had pushed the horizon down to reveal more blue. They seemed so small, the three of them alone in such an expanse, invisible, surely, to any eye looking down from above, yet his sense of purpose and direction gave them significance.
She could not judge time, but soon her thighs began to ache. After an eternity she began to believe that there had indeed been some change in the sun’s position. The grass continued on around them without a break. Snow glittered in occasional patches. The man in front of her neither spoke nor moved appreciably, except for the finest shifts to adjust for the horse.
A flash of brilliance sparked on a far rise, vanished, only to appear again closer: another rider in scarlet and black. This one had a second horse on a lead line, trailing behind him. Quickly, more quickly than Tess expected, the two riders met, slowed, and halted their horses.
The newcomer was a young man with bright blond hair and a cheerful smile. The smile emerged as he met them, fading into astonishment as he looked at Tess. He spoke in a flood of words, to which the dark man replied curtly. Unabashed, the younger man swung down from his horse and came over to stand below Tess. He blushed a little—easy to see on his fair skin—and lifted his arms up to her.
She flushed with embarrassed anger—he was helping her down as if she were a child. But her eyes met his, and there was something in his gaze, something utterly good-natured, that made her smile slightly, at which he blushed a deeper shade of pink and lowered his gaze. At least he was as embarrassed about this as she was. She let herself be helped down. He let go of her instantly, and for a moment she stood next to him under the censorious gaze of the dark man and felt allied with the young blond against a force impatient with both of them. Without a word, the dark man reined his horse around and left them standing there together while he rode back the way he and Tess had come.
She gaped, she was so surprised at this desertion. Beside her, the young man laughed.
“Not worry,” he said in perfectly horrible Rhuian. “Ilya is always angry.”
“I beg your pardon!”
He repeated the words, slower this time, so that she caught them all. “I beg pardon for my tongue,” he added, not looking very sorry about it. “It is not so good.”
“How did you learn Rhuian?” she demanded.
He shrugged. “I study in Jeds.”
She felt herself gaping again: this young native—nondescript except for the merry cast of his face, arrayed as barbarically as any savage, living out on a trackless plain—had studied in Jeds.
Under her stare, he dropped his gaze shyly. “I apologize. Forgive me. I have not given you my name. I am Yurinya Orzhekov.” Long lashes shaded his blue eyes. “But perhaps you will call me Yuri.” He hesitated, as if this request were a liberty.
Tess began to feel dizzy again and, leaning forward, she put her hand on the first thing within reach: his horse.
“Are you well? We go to camp now. Ilya says you were walking many days.”
“Yes, I…” In a moment her head cleared. “I’m Tess. Terese Soerensen, that is. But Tess, that is what my friends call me.”
“Ah,” he said wisely. “Can you mount?”
Under his stare, not intimidating at all, she felt it possible to be truthful. “The last time I rode a horse was, oh, ten years ago.”
“Well, then, I will keep the lead, and you hold on. Can you manage that?”
By this time she had adjusted for his atrocious accent—his vocabulary was decent enough. “Yes,” she replied gratefully, “I think I can manage that.”
He helped her mount, mounted himself, and led the way forward at a sedate walk. After he saw that she could manage that much, he let his horse ease back beside hers. “You are from Jeds”
“Ah…yes.”
“It is a very long way. Many months’ journey.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” She hesitated to question him further on geography, for fear of revealing the wrong sort of ignorance. Instead, she chose silence.
“Ah, you are tired. I will not bother you.” He lapsed into a silence of his own, but a rather companionable one, for all that.
She let it go because she was exhausted, still hungry, still dizzy on and off. When at long, long last they topped a low rise and she saw below a perfectly haphazard collection of about four dozen vividly colored tents, she felt only relief, not apprehension. A rider some hundred meters distant hailed them with a shout and a wave, and Yurinya waved back and led Tess down into a swirl of activity.
Their arrival brought a crowd of people to stare, mostly women and children, and soon after a woman whose broad, merry face bespoke a blood relationship to Yuri. She held a child in one arm, balanced on her hip, but when Yuri spoke briefly to her in their language, she handed the child over to another woman and crossed to stand next to Tess. She called out to the crowd, and it quickly dissipated, except, of course, for a score of curious, staring children.
She looked up at Tess and smiled. It was like water in the desert. Tess smiled back.
“I am Sonia Orzhekov,” said the young woman. “I am Yuri’s sister, so he has properly brought you to me.”
“You speak Rhuian.” Tess stared at her, at her blonde hair secured in four braids, her head capped by a fine headpiece of colored beads and leather; she wore a long blue tunic studded with gold trim that ended at her knees, and belled blue trousers beneath that, tucked into soft leather boots. An object shaped like a hand mirror hung from her belt. “I suppose you studied in Jeds, too.”
Sonia laughed. “Here, Yuri.” Her accent was far better than her brother’s, and she spoke with very little hesitation. “We’ll walk the rest of the way.” She lifted up
her arms and helped Tess down. “There. Men can never talk to any end, sitting up so high all the time. Yuri, you may go, if you’d like.” Although couched politely, the words were plainly a command. Yuri glanced once at Tess, smiled shyly, and left with the two horses.
“But did you?” Tess persisted. “Study in Jeds, I mean.”
“You are surprised.” Sonia grinned at Tess’s discomfiture. “Is Jeds your home?”
“Yes.” The lie came easier to her, now that she realized it was the best one she had, and not entirely untrue.
“So you do not expect to see such as we studying in the university in Jeds. Well.” Sonia shrugged. The blue in her tunic was not more intense than the fine bright blue of her eyes. “You are right. Jaran do not normally study in Jeds. Only Yuri and I, and Dina now, because Ilya did, and he thought it would be—” Her grin was as much full of mischief as laughter. “—good for us. Poor Yuri. I suppose he was miserable the entire time, though he will never say so much to me, even if I am his sister. And never ever would he say it to Ilya.”
“Who is Ilya, and why was he studying in Jeds?”
“Ilya Bakhtiian? He is my cousin, first, and also the dyan of our tribe’s jahar…You would say in Rhuian, perhaps, the leader of our riders. Why he went to Jeds? You will have to ask him. He’s the one who found you, if Yuri did not say.”
Tess, remembering that dark, aloof, censorious man, and their ride together, flushed a furious red.
Sonia merely laid a soft but entirely reassuring hand on Tess’s arm, guiding her, supporting her. “Come, you’re tired. Eat and sleep first. Then we can talk.”
So Tess did as she was told, and was relieved to be treated both kindly and firmly. Sonia took her to a huge, round tent, gave her warm stew and hot tea to drink, chased four inquisitive children out of the curtained back alcove of the tent, and helped Tess out of her boots and clothing. Then, giving Tess a yellow silk shift to wear, she pointed to a pile of furs and left, returning once with a small bronze oven filled with hot coals. Tess lay down. The furs were soft enough, but they smelled—not bad, precisely, but musky, an exotic, overpowering scent. Outside, children laughed and called in some game. A woman chuckled. Pots chimed against each other in the breeze. More distantly, a man shouted, and animals bleated and cried in soothing unison. A bird’s looping whistle trilled over and over and over again. Tess slept.