Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  “I’m leaving,” said Tess, and did so. Kirill caught up with her outside. “How was that settled?” she asked.

  “I reminded Yuri that I am his senior and twice the scout he is as well.”

  “That was low of you.”

  “But true nevertheless. Tess, if you want to follow the pilgrims, they went that way not this way.”

  “Oh.” She laughed. “Very lowering to think that Yuri is twice the scout I am. Yes, there they are. Cha Ishii.”

  Cha Ishii stopped, but he made a fleeting sign with his hand and the others went on while he waited. They vanished around a corner, leaving Tess to face him alone. Kirill stood silently at her back.

  “Lady Terese.” He bowed. She glanced at his belt and saw that he was not wearing his knife.

  Dumb, my girl, that is what we play now. “The shrine is indeed beautiful, Cha Ishii,” she continued in court Chapalii, “but I do not understand why you came so far under such brutal conditions merely to survey such an alien place.” Humans had necessarily to learn to speak the language of their emperor but few had occasion or opportunity to master the complex symbology that made up the written tongue and governed the decorative arts. Few understood how interrelated they were. Perhaps he would actually believe she did not recognize this place as Chapalii.

  Pink spread up his cheeks. “You could not be expected to, Lady Terese, though you had already discerned that we were not priests.” He placed his hands in that arrangement known as Lord’s Supplication. “If I may be allowed to acquaint you with our work?” She nodded, and he turned and conducted her into the most opulent sections of the palace. Kirill trailed three steps behind them. Ishii ignored him as thoroughly as he would ignore one of his own stewards. “We are, in fact, archaeologists.” Color shifted in subtle patterns on his face.

  “Indeed! Archaeologists. Why masquerade as priests, then?”

  He clasped his hands behind his back. “In the Earth form I believe this word translates as ‘the study of antiquity,’ and it therefore demands some perspective of time and culture which these people cannot possess, being of a more primitive stamp. To their understanding, a religious expedition is comprehensible and not so far removed that our activities in systematic measurement cannot be construed as a form of worship.”

  “I understand your concern, but surely, Cha Ishii, you might have applied to the duke for permission to conduct your study.” She smiled, enjoying this fencing, and glanced back at Kirill. He returned her gaze blandly since he could not understand a word they were saying.

  “This did precipitate embarrassment, Lady Terese. It was deemed necessary to continue our investigations in secret because we feared that your brother would forbid the expedition.”

  “Was there such a pressing need to continue it?”

  He directed her along a whitewashed hallway and thence into a magnificent salon decorated with a tile pattern on floor and ceiling and walls that, seeming to repeat, never quite repeated itself. “We have been investigating the relics of this particular civilization for many years now.”

  “On this planet?”

  “No, indeed, Lady Terese. This is a star-faring civilization which predates our current Empire. We were greatly surprised to find traces of it here.”

  I’ll just bet you were, she thought. This confession rang truer than anything he had ever told her before. They must have been dismayed to find relics of Chapalii provenance here on the planet of the human duke who, of all their enemies, would surely use any information he acquired against them. “I am intrigued. Perhaps you can enlighten me further.”

  Whether he believed that she had been misled by these confidences or whether he tacitly agreed to continue their little fencing match she could not be sure. Perhaps he hoped for the best. In any case, he began a vague discourse on the supposed attributes and history of this civilization, all of which sounded plausible, none of which sounded too betrayingly Chapalii. But it was when they were standing under the dome, staring upward, that Ishii said unexpectedly:

  “You were right to wonder why I would conduct an expedition that my rank and birth ought to render repulsive to me. If my father’s father had not precipitously died, leaving his affairs in the hands of his wife for one year before his heir could return to take things into order—There were grave losses. Our family was inevitably and immediately cast down from the status we had so long held. What could we expect, having left to us only five estates and two merchant fleets? And I, younger son of the youngest son—” Was there a trace of wry humor in his words? She could not tell. “—was chosen to accept this task. Much will be restored to us, Lady Terese. You see that I could not refuse my duty.”

  “Indeed, I see,” replied Tess, quite shocked. They went on as if he had said nothing.

  Coming out into a little courtyard of slender pillars engulfed in green vines, she saw a lone Chapalii disappear into the garden. Ishii was looking at the palace, examining some design on the wall, and had not seen him.

  “I will walk alone now,” said Tess, dismissing him. She waited for him to retreat inside. “Which way did he go, Kirill?” she asked in khush as soon as Ishii was gone.

  “What, the other one? This way.”

  He led her into the garden. It was a clear day for autumn. A breeze cooled her cheeks, stirring the ends of her braided hair. He stopped on the edge of a grassy sward and gestured to a little fountain burbling merrily on the other side, up against a fringe of trees. Hon Garii stood there alone, one hand in the water.

  “Stay here,” said Tess in an undertone. She marched across the grass.

  Garii turned. He flushed pink and bowed deeply. “Lady Terese.”

  “Hon Garii. We have created certain obligations between us. Is this not true?”

  “You honor me with your acknowledgment, Lady Terese. I alone rashly instigated these obligations. That you have chosen to indulge me in this matter reflects only credit to you.”

  “Yet your family is pledged to Ishii’s house.”

  “This is true. And to pledge myself to you, Lady Terese, must seem to a Tai-endi like yourself the grossest and most repugnant of behaviors. But I have observed and studied, and I have reflected on this man, Bakhtiian, and seen that by his own efforts he creates opportunity for himself. I am clever. I am industrious. Yet my emperor decrees that I must toil in the same position as my father’s father’s father, and suffer the consequences of an act committed by an ancestor I could not even know. Does this seem fair to you?”

  “No, truly it does not. But Hon Garii, to work for me is to work for my brother, the duke. You must know what this means.”

  He bowed again. “I am yours, Lady Terese. Command me as you wish.”

  This was it, then. She took in a deep breath. “I must see the maintenance rooms. I must know the truth of this palace, why it is here, and why Cha Ishii was ordered to investigate. Will you meet me tonight in the eating hall after the rest are asleep?”

  His skin remained white, colorless. So easily did he betray his emperor. “As you command, Lady Terese.”

  She nodded. “Then return to your duties now, and say nothing of this to anyone.” He bowed and walked past her back to the shrine. She let out a long sigh and tested the water in the fountain with her finger. It stung. She wiped her finger on her sleeve and turned, hearing Kirill behind her.

  “What an unmelodious language they speak,” he said, looking after Garii’s retreat. He hesitated and considered the grass, a peculiar expression on his face. “Tess, what does it mean that your brother is this prince in Jheds?”

  Coming from Kirill, it seemed a puzzling question. “It means that he rules a great city and a great deal of farm and pasture and woodland lying all around it and supervises a port with many ships and rich trading from lands close by and lands far away across the seas.”

  “When you go back to Jheds, what will you do? If you are his heir, then—then you would become like an etsana, wouldn’t you? You would have your own tent, and eventuall
y children. You would need a husband, or a man to act as your husband—” He pulled his hand through his red-gold hair. “Tess, no one ever said—Bakhtiian can never go back there. He has given himself to this work now. Whatever he wants from you, he can’t go with you.” He looked at her finally, hope sparking in his eyes. “But—” He broke off, took in a deep breath, and went on. “But I could.”

  Foliage covered the verdant height of the surrounding hills, wreathed here and there with a curl of cloud, like some half-forgotten thought. An insect chirruped and fell silent. “Oh, Kirill,” she said, and stopped.

  He smiled a little wryly. “I know very well, my heart, that your brother probably already has some alliance arranged.”

  “No,” she said in an undertone. “He doesn’t. I won’t lie to make that my excuse. I can’t take you with me.”

  You can you can you can. Her thoughts raced wildly. His leaving would not alter anything; his knowing the truth about where she really came from would never matter. But what would life be like for him? She would be his only anchor in the bewildering confusion of space, of Earth, of the Empire. He would be utterly dependent on her. The kind of love they had was not strong enough to weather that sort of relationship, was not meant to. One or the other of them would soon fall out of love; one or the other would grow to resent their circumstances. And once he had left, Kirill could never return. She could not tear him apart from every seam that bound him to the fabric of life. Kirill loved her sincerely, she believed that, but she also believed that Kirill loved and had loved and would love other women as well. That was the real difference between Kirill and Ilya: Kirill was far more resilient.

  “Gods, Kirill,” she said, moved by his asking, by his offering. “Believe me, if I could, I would take you.”

  He hung his head, and she grimaced and went to hug him. He allowed this freedom, he put his arms around her, but after a moment he disengaged himself gently. “I believe you. Tess, I will always respect you most of all for your honesty.” He kissed her chastely on the cheek, hesitated, and then walked away.

  There was a stone bench beside the fountain. Tess sat on it and leaned her head back, letting the weak heat of the sun beat on her face.

  And I used to think my life was complicated. Life as Charles’s heir was beginning to seem like child’s work now. She felt thoroughly exhausted and yet she had an uncanny feeling that she was waiting for someone else to accost her. Get it all over with in one long, miserable scene. King Lear must have felt like this, battered by one storm after the next. Then, because the comparison was so ludicrous, she chuckled.

  Boots scuffed leaves. She looked around. “Hello, Vladimir. You startled me.”

  “You were here with one of the khepelli,” he said accusingly. “Ilya has said all along you were a spy.”

  Tess examined Vladimir. His vanity was the vanity of the insecure. He had taken great pains with his appearance, had trimmed his hair, and shaved his face so no trace of beard or mustache showed. Jewelry weighed him down: rings, bracelets, necklaces—were all of them from lovers? He had a deft hand for embroidery but no taste at all, so that the design adorning his sleeves and collar was merely garish. The ornately-hilted saber that Ilya had gifted him, the legacy of the arenabekh, simply capped the whole absurd ensemble.

  “So I am, Vladimir,” she agreed amiably, “which is why I sent Kirill after him.”

  He blinked. “But—” He shrugged suddenly, a movement copied from Bakhtiian, and sat down carefully on the grass. “Why did you come here, then?”

  “I’m traveling to Jeds. I thought you knew that.”

  “I know what you say. Josef told Niko that you can read the writing here. But no one can read that, not even Mother Avdotya.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was born here,” he replied without visible emotion. “Or at least they say that I was.”

  “You must know Yeliana. You must have grown up with her.”

  “She was very young when I left.” Behind him, through a ragged line of bushes, she saw the slender lines of a statue, something human, its features worn away so that there were only depressions for the eyes and a slight rise to mark the lips. “She is as much of a sister as I have ever had. But I did not want to become a priest.”

  “So what did you do?”

  He shrugged again, that childlike copy of Bakhtiian. “I rode to join Kerchaniia Bakhalo’s jahar-ledest. Ilya found me there.” So, thought Tess, your life began when Ilya found you. “I’m very good with saber,” he offered by way of explanation for this inexplicable action on the part of the great Bakhtiian. “And Ilya had lost his family.”

  Had lost a nephew, Tess reflected, who might well have been around Vladimir’s age now. Perhaps this was one way of atoning.

  “You knew about the shrine,” said Vladimir abruptly. “You came here, planning all along to trick him down the Avenue.”

  The accusation was so preposterous that Tess laughed. “You think I sailed across wide seas from a far distant land, risked my life, all for the express purpose of marrying Bakhtiian? Whom I had, incidentally, never heard of.”

  “Everyone has heard of him,” said Vladimir stiffly.

  “But Vladimir,” she said, deciding that the only fair throw here would be one equally wild, “why should I want to marry Bakhtiian? I am a great heir in my own right, and anyway, everyone knows that Bakhtiian has never loved anyone since—”

  “It’s not true,” he cried, jumping to his feet. “You’ll never make me believe that of him.” He stalked away.

  Since she had been about to say, “since his family died,” she wondered what Vladimir had thought she was about to say. By God, he was afraid that once Bakhtiian had a legitimate family, he, Vladi, would be cast off again. Poor child, to have to live so dependent on one person’s whim.

  A flight of birds caught her eye as they wheeled and dove about some far corner of the park. She heard their faint calls, laughable things, like the protests of the vacillating. A rustling sounded from a bush, and a small, rust-colored animal, long-eared and short-legged, nosed past a crinkled yellow leaf and scrambled out to the center of the sward, huffing like a minute locomotive. It froze. The tufts of hair in the inside of its ears were white, but its eyes were as black as the void.

  She felt inexplicably cheered. However hard it had been—and still was—it had been right to tell Kirill that he could not come with her. It had been honest, and it had been true. She shifted on the bench. The little animal shrieked, a tiny hiccup, and it fled back into the bush, precipitating a flood of rustling around her and then silence. She smiled.

  On Earth she had learned to walk without hearing, to look without seeing. She had surrounded herself with a wall. Here she listened: to the wind, to the horses, to the voices of the jaran as they spoke, wanting to be heard, to hear. On Earth she had taught herself to deal with people as if they weren’t there; only to protect herself, of course. Yet how many times had she spoken to people, only to realize later that she had never once looked them in the eye? In this land, one saw, one looked, and the lowering of eyes was as eloquent as their meeting.

  She ran one hand over the case that protected her mirror, over the enameled clasps. In this land, the austerity of the life demanded that every human exchange, however ambiguous, be thorough and complete. There was nothing to hide behind. In this land, a mother’s first gift to her daughter was a mirror in which the daughter could see her own self.

  Of course, they didn’t have showers. This was a considerable drawback. Or any kind of decent information network. That she missed. She had borrowed Sister Casiara’s legal tract from Niko, and read it through twice now, and the second time it had bored her almost to tears. But there were other things and other ways to learn. Tasha was the most accurate meteorologist she had ever come across. Josef could analyze his surroundings with a precision and an accuracy that would make a physical scientist blush with envy, and he could follow a cold trail with astonishing skill. Yuri understo
od more about the subtle shadings of the human heart than he probably knew he did. And if she had felt more pain here, then she had also felt more joy, more simple happiness. It was a trade worth making. Here, in the open lands, where the spirit wandered as freely as the wind, it was hard to be miserable.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “An enemy is not he who injures, but he who wishes to do so.”

  —DEMOCRITUS OF ABDERA

  THAT NIGHT AFTER SUPPER, Tess went back to her room and waited. When the moon had set, she strapped on her saber and both her knives and slipped out into the corridor, closing the door carefully behind her. The latch clicked softly into place.

  She stood for a moment, one hand resting against the cool stone of the wall, until her eyes adjusted to the new blend of shadows. Then she set off.

  In the eating hall, Garii waited for her in the shadows. A soft, dreaming silence lay over the shrine, lulled by the distant swell and ebb of a melodic chant sung over and over by a wakeful priest. Garii turned and, even in the darkness, he bowed, knowing it was she. He crossed the hall to her, bowed again, and led her into the maze of the palace.

  Tess was soon lost. Had he abandoned her, she could not have retraced her path. For all she knew, he was leading her in circles. Then they passed through the entry hall, walked down a broad flight of steps, rounded a corner, and she found herself in a room she knew she had not seen before. A pale light washed it, the barest gleam. About the same size as the eating hall, the room had ebony floors and was ringed with two rectangular countertops, one inside the other, freestanding within the room. By this door and next to the door at the far end stood two tall megalithic structures that reminded her abruptly of the transmitter out on the plains.

  Garii walked across the hall to the far door. She followed him, and he slid the panel aside and waited for her to pass through first. She hesitated. Should she trust him? But what choice had she now?

  She found herself in a blank, white-walled room that was unfurnished, empty. The walls were as smooth as glass, and it was bitterly cold. She rubbed her arms and turned, only to see Garii removing his knife from his belt. She grabbed for hers—but he pointed the knife at the far wall. A sigh shuddered through the air, and the far wall fell away before them.