by Kate Elliott
And three women walked directly toward Tess. Tess had time to examine them as they neared: one old; one young, dark, and pretty; and one—
Surely this was the “her” Yuri had spoken of.
She had that rare sum of parts that is called beauty. She was quite tall for a woman, almost as tall as Tess, and pleasantly slender. Her hair shone gold, and it hung to her waist, unbraided. She was cursed as well with truly blue eyes and full lips gracing an impossibly handsome face blemished only by the thin, white scar, running from cheekbone to jawbone, that was the mark of marriage. The three women halted in front of Tess, but it was the fair-haired beauty and Tess who did the assessing. Without rancor, both smiled.
“Welcome,” said the beauty. “I am Vera Veselov.”
“I’m Tess. Tess Soerensen.” Tess hesitated and glanced at the older woman, sure that this must be the etsana.
“Yes,” said Vera, as if this information was no surprise. “This is my aunt, Mother Veselov. Oh, and Arina, my cousin.” Arina smiled tremulously, looking as if she might like to say something but did not dare to. “She will be fine with me now, Aunt,” Vera finished, and thus dismissed, the etsana meekly withdrew, nodding once at Tess.
Arina loitered behind and, when Vera said nothing, ventured a few steps closer. But Vera was not actually paying any attention to Tess either. She was staring past Tess toward—Tess turned—Bakhtiian.
“He looks no different,” said Vera softly. She glanced at her husband, who still stood talking eagerly and with all the enthusiasm of youth to Yuri. What lay in that glance Tess could not read for it lasted only a moment. Then Vera looked again toward Bakhtiian. He stood talking easily with the older man who had first hailed him.
“Well, Tess Soerensen,” said Vera finally, breaking her gaze away from Bakhtiian. “You have ridden an unusual road for a woman.”
“Yes, I suppose I have.”
Vera smiled again and she had that rarest of things in a self-conscious beauty: a smile that enhanced her. “We will have a dance tonight. You must meet our young men.” A glance here again for Bakhtiian. “And tell us about your own. Oh, are you still here, Arina? Why don’t you take Tess along and have Petya take her horse and then show her where she can pitch her tent?” Without waiting for a reply, she nodded to Tess and walked away, straight across toward Bakhtiian and his companions.
Tess looked at Arina, who scarcely came up to her chin. Arina smiled. “Can you really use a saber?” Arina asked.
“A little.”
“Oh,” said Arina with such reserve that Tess wondered if she had offended her. “I always wanted to learn. I made my brother teach me when I was little, but then Vera said it was unbecoming in a woman to—” She flushed. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean—”
“No, I know what you meant,” said Tess kindly. “You are Mother Veselov’s daughter, then?”
“Yes. Here is my brother Anton.” She called to a burly, black-haired man who looked to be about twice her age. “He will take your horse.” A brief exchange, and Anton took Myshla from Tess with the greatest courtesy. “Vera oughtn’t to have offered Petya,” Arina muttered darkly, “but then, she’ll always do as she wishes, whether it is seemly or not.” She shot an expressive glance toward her cousin, who had insinuated herself into the group surrounding Bakhtiian.
“Who is the older man?” Tess asked.
“Who? That is my uncle, of course, Sergei Veselov. Vera’s father.”
Tess was finding the undercurrents in this tribe more and more interesting. “I beg your pardon for seeming stupid, Arina, but if he is her father, how can he have the same name? Who is her mother? And isn’t he—he must be the dyan of this tribe.”
Arina sighed and led Tess out of the chaos attending the arrival, over to a quiet corner where she helped her set up her tent. A few young women strayed by, pausing hopefully to watch, but Arina gestured them away with more authority than Tess would ever have guessed she would have based on first impressions.
“Cousins, of the same grandmother, through sisters. Everyone knows they oughtn’t to have married, but they never cared for anything but to please themselves. And they say,” she added, lowering her voice ominously, “that the children of cousins possess all their worst traits twice over. Six children they had before she died bearing the last one, and only two are still alive today. And look at them.”
“Ah,” said Tess, feeling terribly embarrassed.
Arina looked up at her with unexpected and acute understanding. “I’m sorry.” She smiled and again appeared like a perfectly harmless and unusually diffident young jaran woman, black-haired, petite, and charming. “What must you think of me? But I really hoped to get you aside to ask you about Kirill Zvertkov. I see he is with the jahar. Has he married again?”
Tess felt as if she had been slapped. She bent to busy herself unrolling her blankets, desperate to hide her reaction. “No.” She stuck her head into the tent to at least attempt to disguise the sound of her voice. All the while, her thoughts raced wildly. Hoist with your own petard, my heart, she said to herself, and not a damned thing you can do about it because it would be the worst of ill-bred behavior, and you’re the guest here, not she.
“Oh,” said Arina, with a flash of that unexpected acuteness. “He’s your lover.”
Tess withdrew from the tent, blushing madly, and grasping for every shred of dignity and graciousness she could muster. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “I beg your pardon. I know it isn’t—isn’t seemly to be—” She trailed off, feeling like an idiot.
Arina sighed and suddenly looked very sad. “Is he going to marry you, do you think?” she asked, without anger or jealousy.
“No,” said Tess, feeling firm enough on that score. “I’m traveling south. I won’t be here past the winter.”
Arina brightened. “Oh, well, that’s all right, then. I can speak with Mama, who can speak with Bakhtiian, who can speak with Kirill. And then when we meet up with them again…” She hesitated. “If you’d rather I not approach him at all while you’re here—”
“No, no,” Tess lied, not wanting to get a bad reputation. “I couldn’t possibly be so selfish.” Oh, yes, you could, her heart muttered, but she found it impossible to dislike Arina Veselov, especially after her selfless offer to leave Kirill alone. Arina was playing fairly; by God, she would, too. After all, Kirill could damned well refuse her offer, couldn’t he?
“Arina!” Vera marched up to them, leading a trail of young women like a host of worshipers in her wake. “Are you keeping our guest to yourself? For shame. Here, girls, you see, she does have brown hair. I beg your pardon, Tess, but Aleksia refused to believe me. Come, we’ll show you the camp.” With no discernible expression on her face, Arina retreated to the background.
The time until supper had all the tranquility of a windstorm. They were a lively enough bunch and good company. They made sure that she was thoroughly bewildered as to what their names were, showed her the spot where they would hold the dancing, and besieged her with so many questions that she could only laugh. At last Vera took her to supper.
The etsana’s tent shared a fire with Vera’s tent, and Tess saw immediately that the two tents were sited so as to receive equal standing. Indeed, it surprised her that so young a woman as Vera even possessed one of the great tents that usually housed a grandmother and her adult daughters and multitudinous kin. But Mother Veselov, though of the same fair-haired and slender stock as her cousin and niece, was utterly dwarfed by their personalities. She presided, as was proper, over the supper served by her daughter and son and his wife and assorted other relatives, but she never once spoke unless an opening was given her deliberately by Sergei Veselov or Vera. Besides three men who evidently acted as Veselov’s lieutenants, and Tess, five of the men from Bakhtiian’s jahar had been honored on this occasion. Bakhtiian, of course, and Niko and Josef—Tadheus having gone to his sister’s husband’s kin—and Yuri, because he was Bakhtiian’s cousin. And Kirill, who had astonishing
ly, and to Tess’s great dismay, been seated next to Mother Veselov. The better to size him up, Tess thought uncharitably, but she had to concede that given such blatant provocation, Kirill behaved circumspectly and Arina, moving around him frequently, did not flirt with him at all.
Bakhtiian and Veselov spoke together mostly. Tess, placed across the fire, could not join in but only listen. Vera had, of course, placed herself on the other side of Bakhtiian and banished her young husband to Yuri’s company, next to Tess. Yuri and Petya were reminiscing, oblivious to the others and, for that matter, to her.
“You have not yet explained to me, Bakhtiian,” Sergei Veselov was saying, “how you intend to feed so many jahars, all gathered into one army.”
“A fair enough question, Veselov,” replied Bakhtiian smoothly, letting the hostility in Veselov’s voice slip off him, “and one which I will return to you. Let us assume the situation. What would you do?”
And so, deferring with strength, in the end he got Veselov to agree it could be done. Bakhtiian seemed different to her here. He showed none of that arrogance that came from having the assurance of admiration. He was tactful, respectful, even clever, slipping gracefully past a question meant, possibly, to offend him, making one grim fellow laugh, arguing carefully and with good humor to a conclusion favorable to himself. Perhaps charisma and craft, strength and obsession, were not all that made up a leader. Perhaps you could have all of these, and still lack the sheer instinct for leadership that made Bakhtiian—that made Charles—the kind of men they were.
“Yet you rode into khaja lands and came out unscathed,” Veselov was saying. “I recall when Leo Vershinin took forty-five riders into those lands and—”
While Veselov went on, clearly beginning a long anecdote, Bakhtiian looked up across the fire directly at Tess, as if he had known she was watching him. Their eyes held a moment and dropped away together.
As soon as the anecdote ended, with Vershinin’s jahar reduced to five men, Vera said, “Aunt?” Recalled to her duties, Mother Veselov excused all the women to prepare for the dance, now that twilight was lowering in on them. Arina approached Tess, but Vera swept her away and Arina retreated back to her mother’s tent.
“Perhaps you would like to borrow some clothing?” Vera asked. “Some women’s clothing, I mean.”
“Oh, thank you. But I have some.”
“Well, then, if you would like, I will walk you to your tent.” Tess submitted to the escort and allowed Vera to lead her away to the other end of the camp, where her tent was pitched. “You know Bakhtiian well.”
“We’ve ridden together a long way.”
Vera put a long-fingered hand on Tess’s forearm. It was dim enough that this gesture was neither public nor particularly intrusive. “You have also lain with him?”
Tess turned her head away, pretending to look at the distant field where a great fire was being prepared. Broad-skirted figures moved back and forth, snatches of singing and laughter and the high, unfamiliar music of women’s voices punctuating the merriment within the camp. When she trusted herself, she turned back.
“No.”
Vera’s fingers lifted from her arm. “That’s too bad. I would have liked to compare what you knew of him with what I know.”
There was a pause, as if some reply was expected. Tess could not speak.
Vera brushed her thick hair back with one hand, a graceful, practiced gesture that drew the eye to the faultless line of her jaw and chin. “There are only three men I ever hoped would mark me. One is dead now, the second loved another, for which I cannot begrudge him his choice, but Bakhtiian—he knew he could have had me, but he stood by while that boy marked me.”
“Perhaps,” Tess began, faltering, almost stuttering, “perhaps he knew that Petya wanted you more.”
“Petya,” said his wife, uttering his name so dispassionately as to betray her complete disregard for her husband, “is a blind child. He is five years younger than I am.”
“I don’t understand. Women take lovers, but men take wives.”
“That,” said the beauty bitterly, “is the way of the jaran. I will kill the woman he marks.”
“Do you really think he will ever marry?”
“If you had lain with him, you would know. He is diarin.”
“What is that?”
Vera looked back toward the main cluster of tents. The men had gathered in groups by small fires to await the dancing. Her nose, which in her father and aunt was merely thin, gave her an aristocratic look of one to whom the world should surely do some obeisance. “You have been with men,” she replied, turning back to Tess. “This is a woman’s word. Diarin, a man who dishevels a woman’s hair. Passionate in bed. But perhaps Vasilley will kill him after all, and then he cannot marry.”
“Vasilley?”
“My brother. He rides with Dmitri Mikhailov.”
Vasil. Vera’s brother. This was delicate ground indeed. “Ah,” said Tess, playing for time while she gathered her wits, “Do you want him to kill Bakhtiian?”
“I’m married to a man I do not want, and I want a man I cannot have. Why should anyone else have him?”
“If Petya dies,” said Tess ungraciously, “you could have him.”
“When he stood by, stood by, while Petya did this to me?” Her fingers lifted to touch the white scar that marred the perfect beauty of her face.
“You would have the mark whether it was Bakhtiian or Petya or any man.”
“No.” The grip of Vera’s fingers, closing on the sleeve of Tess’s shirt, was strong. “There is one other way given to the jaran to marry, but it is only for the bravest, for the most exceptional.” She tilted her head back to gaze up at the first spray of stars gracing the sky. “Korokh.”
Korokh: one who reached for the wind, Yuri had said. Tess touched the priest-rune engraved on the hilt of her saber. It felt very cold. “For a man to choose a woman?”
“The quiet road,” breathed Vera. Her lips stayed slightly parted. Her hair flowed down around her shoulders like strands of silk—she wore it as an unmarried girl might, not in the married woman’s tight braids. “The four-times-covered road from tree to stone.” Tess realized that it was very still, as if a hush had fallen in deference to Vera’s show of passion. “I wanted that road. I wanted that, not this.”
A sudden cheer and a swell of laughter interrupted them, the lighting of the great fire. Flames sparked up.
“But here, we’ll be late. I’ll let you go.” She left.
Tess stared after her. A group of young men hurried past her toward the fire, laughing and jesting, and a musician began a racing beat on a drum.
Tess ran to her tent and debated, briefly, whether to give up this attempt to change in the dark, but change she did, feeling with peculiar hindsight that Nadezhda Martov had known quite well what she was about, gifting this foreign stranger with decent women’s clothing. But whom was she trying to impress? That was the question that troubled her.
Coming out of her tent, she paused to try to get a glimpse of herself in her mirror. She was not sure that the beaded headdress over her braids was arranged correctly. She felt a presence come up beside her, and smelled a fleeting breath of cinnamon. She whirled.
“Cha Ishii!” He stood before her, straight, hands folded at his chest in ‘Lord’s Supplication.’
Unfolding his hands, he bowed. “Lady Terese, your most generous pardon, I beg of you, for this unexpected intrusion.”
“You surprised me.” She took one step back from him. “I did not expect to see you venturing out at this sort of—social occasion.”
“Lady Terese.” The color of his face was lost in darkness, no shade to his voice at all. “With greatest deference, I advise you to stay here with this tribe. Do not go with us in the morning. Please be so munificent as to believe me when I say I have no desire to see you come to any harm, even though you would have brought it on yourself should anything happen to you.”
“What would happen? Why shou
ld I stay here? Cha Ishii!”
But he simply turned and walked away, to be hidden swiftly by the night. Tess gaped after him.
“Tess?” It was Arina, tentative as always. “I thought you might—oh, I don’t know. Here, let me straighten that for you.” She adjusted the headpiece. “There. Would you like company, to go out?”
“Yes, I would,” said Tess, liking Arina very much, however much she wanted to dislike her.
It proved easy enough to lose herself in the festivities. She knew quite well that she ought not to dance more than the occasional dance with any of the riders of Bakhtiian’s jahar, so she turned her attention to the riders of Veselov’s tribe. She felt completely at ease as she flirted with them in the casual, straightforward manner that jaran women had. She danced twice with Petya because she felt sorry for him. Beneath the undeniably handsome exterior, beneath the self-effacing bashfulness devoid of conceit, beneath the quick, unpretentious smile and the delicate, pale blue of his eyes, Petya was desperately unhappy. She took Yuri aside to ask him about it.
“I think he knows she’ll never love him,” Tess said.
“Love him! She doesn’t even like him.” They walked together to the periphery of the light, choosing solitude for their conversation. “I doubt if she ever lets him forget it.”
“Can she really be so cruel?”
“Cruel? I don’t know if I would call Vera Veselov cruel. I think she is so blind to anything but what she wants that she cares not in the least if she hurts someone who has gotten in her way. That family is far too handsome for its own good.”
“Yes,” said Tess, remembering Vasil. “And her brother is the most beautiful of the lot, if only because he isn’t so arrogant.”
“Ah, yes, Vasil,” Yuri muttered. “I never could dislike him. But he’s as single-minded as the rest, and as selfish, in his own way.”
“Somehow I detect a long history of association between your tribe and this one.”
“Yes. It started in my great-grandmother’s time when her uncle insulted the Veselov etsana by refusing to marry her sister. And then just when the feud was at its worst, his daughter and the sister’s son ran off together, when it had all been arranged that they were to marry for alliances into other tribes.”