His Conquering Sword

by Kate Elliott

  “Di? Are you all right?” Quinn whispered.

  “I just need some air,” she said, rising abruptly. “No, I’ll be fine. No one needs to come with me.”

  “Let her go,” Gwyn said. She pushed past the others and out underneath the awning. At long last the wind was dying, though ash still pattered quietly onto the cloth above her, a light, shushing sound. What did it matter, anyway, if the ash fell on her? What if some fragment of it was his remains, come to touch her one final time? She headed out into it, walking back to her tent through the darkness.

  And there he was, the rider, standing beside his horse outside her tent, waiting to give her the news of her husband’s death. She hadn’t expected the message so soon.

  “There’s no point in even washing,” he said, seeing her approach, “under all this dirt. Of course, the khaja would pour filth down on us.” He took off his helmet, shook out his hair, and drew his fingers through the plume. “Everything, just everything is covered with it. Grandmother is going to move her camp south. The winds are blowing north and east, so it ought to be clear a day’s ride in that direction. And anyway, Bakhtiian will have to send part of his army south to Salkh soon enough, to my uncle.”

  Diana stopped dead.

  “Where did those boys go off to?” Anatoly continued. “They were just here. Can you light the lantern?”

  She could not speak.

  “Oho, there they are. Viktor! You imp. Come get this damned stuff off me. Bring that lantern!” He laughed. “Look at them. They grabbed some khaja shields. No, no, you idiots. You can’t cut as if you’re on horseback when you’re on foot.”

  The two boys panted up with a younger boy in tow. They threw down their shields and helped Anatoly out of his armor and stowed it under the shields to protect it from further ashfall. Then Anatoly took the lantern from them and ordered them away. He went into the tent.

  Diana could not move.

  A moment later, he ducked out again. “Diana?” He walked over to her. “Come on.” He grabbed her hand and tugged her in, and she went. His grip was firm enough. He wasn’t a ghost.

  “Is there something for me to drink?” he asked as he tugged off his boots. “I’m famished. I came straight from the field here, as soon as I could. I would have sent a message, but—oh, Diana, I’m sorry if you were worried. But you know I can’t be hurt in battle. The gods sent you to me.”

  This once, thank the Goddess, there was food and drink for him in the tent, although not, of course, anything as elaborate as his grandmother would have served him. But he was content.

  He was content. She watched him eat. Obviously he was starving, but he ate neatly and efficiently. When he sighed, replete, and reclined on the carpet, smiling at her, she felt wretched.

  “Diana?” His face changed at once. “You’ve heard, then, haven’t you? About the Prince of Jeds?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Who else? One of the Vershinin sons died. Anton Veselov is dead, too, and the amazing thing is that Mother Veselov asked that their cousin Vera be named dyan. But the Veselov riders demanded it! Evidently she took the staff of command out of her cousin’s hand as he died and led them wisely enough through the rest of the battle. It was my men who brought the madwoman’s body in. They found her up on the walls.”

  “The madwoman?” She was too stupefied by his presence to understand, what he was talking about.

  “The prince’s soldier—”

  “Ursula el Kawakami is dead?” The conversation seemed unreal to her. Anatoly was dead; it was impossible that he was here, now, not one meter from her, regarding her with his beautiful, expressive eyes.

  “You hadn’t heard? Diana.” He reached out and caught her wrist and drew her down beside him. He was warm and solid. She pressed her face against his chest. He smelled of smoke. “It’s all right, Diana. I know what you’re thinking. The prince’s entourage must return to Jeds, and your Company with them. I know that you have to go with them. Grandmother still thinks I married beneath me, but she doesn’t understand that you’re a Singer, that the gods have called you. How else could you be both yourself and the Daughter of the Sun? Or Mekhala, or Mekhala’s sister, or the youngest daughter of the headwoman? Or the mother who saves her child? So I understand that the greater honor is mine, for gaining you. But you don’t need to worry, Diana. I know what we can do. I’ll ask Bakhtiian to send me and my jahar to Jeds. Someone must protect his wife’s possessions until she can come to claim them. Someone must act as regent. Grandmother likes the idea. It’s an honor well due to our family. Then you and I can stay together, in Jeds.”

  She tilted her head back. He looked so damnably optimistic, like they all did, because they thought that their gods had granted them the right to rule their world. And who was to say that it wasn’t true? Certainly, Tess Soerensen and her brother had come down from the heavens and now even more than before were prepared to push the balance in favor of the jaran.

  “But we’re not going back to Jeds. We’re going far away, far across the ocean, back to Erthe, where we came from. Anatoly.” Already she felt stripped to the bone with misery. It hurt to have to tell him, while he was holding her this close. He looked bewildered by her anguish. He was so sure there was some solution when there wasn’t one and never could have been one. “That journey can’t be taken twice, Anatoly. Once I go, I can never come back.”

  “But, Diana—”

  “Oh, you could go with me, perhaps, if Tess Soerensen agreed, but you’d have to leave the tribes forever.” Her chest was so tight, her throat so choked with emotion, that she found herself breathing hard. She could not catch her breath. But she had to make him understand how final it was, that there was no hope. That she had no choice. “You’d have to leave your jahar. You could never come back either. You’re right, about the gods. They called me to be an actor. I can’t turn away from that, no matter how much I might want to stay with you here.” She faltered, because his expression frightened her.

  Suddenly he embraced her and held her hard against him. She tightened her arms around him and just hung on, for the longest time, forever.

  “You mean it,” he said finally, but she could not see his face as they lay together on the carpet. “There is nothing I can say, nothing I can suggest, that will change your mind. I can’t come with you. You can’t stay here. There’s no hope even of finding a place between your land and mine, in Jeds.”

  “No hope,” she whispered, wanting never to let him go. He broke free of her and gently pulled away from her grasp. Standing up, he pulled on his boots and sorted out his clothes from the chest and rolled them up in a blanket with a few odds and ends and his scraps of embroidery. She scrambled up to stand beside him. “Anatoly—?”

  “Then let it be a clean break, and a swift one.” He took her by the shoulders and kissed her once on each cheek, in the formal style. “Good-bye, Diana. I will always love you. But you must do as the gods have called you to do, and so must I.”

  And he left.

  All that night, all she did was walk from her tent to the main tent and back again; from her tent to the main tent and back again. Quinn came out and walked two circuits with her without speaking a word, and then left to go to bed. Later, in the middle of the night, Gwyn appeared and walked beside her for a time, and before dawn, Hal, from her tent to the main tent and back again.

  At dawn, she took down her tent and stowed what she had brought from Earth in a single chest. Gwyn came over, and in the end he persuaded her to let him help carry the rolled-up tent and chest and pillows. They arrived at the Sakhalin encampment just in time: Mother Sakhalin was checking all the wagons. She turned, seeing Diana, and beckoned her over.

  “Mother Sakhalin,” said Diana. She did not want to play this scene, but she had to. She made herself play it as if she was on the stage. “Because I must leave the jaran, and your grandson, I thought it only right to return these things to you.” She risked a glance around and prayed that she would
not see him. If she saw him, then everything would go for nothing. If she saw him, she would break down into tears and beg him to give up everything he knew and loved and come with her to Earth.

  “Anatoly and his jahar rode out last night,” said Mother Sakhalin in a cold voice. “With Bakhtiian’s blessing. They rode south, to join up with my nephew’s army.”

  Ah, Goddess, he had meant what he said, that the clean, swift break was the best one. She felt sick to the very core of her heart. She did not know what to say, but Gwyn, good soul that he was, asked Mother Sakhalin in a polite voice which wagons the tent and chest and pillows ought to go in.

  She pointed. “In the jaran,” she said to Diana as Gwyn carried the other things away, “a woman is married to a man for as long as the mark remains on her face, or he lives. What am I to tell my grandson?”

  Diana felt crushed under the weight of Mother Sakhalin’s withering stare. The old woman hated her, that was clear, for breaking her favorite grandchild’s heart. And why shouldn’t she hate her? Mother Sakhalin had known all along that Anatoly should never have married her.

  “Tell him,” she said, and choked on the words, “tell him that I love him still.” She meant to say more, but her voice failed.

  Gwyn returned. He held in his hand a small, supple leather pouch. “Di.” He faltered. “These fell out of the pillows.” He opened the flap to show her the loot, the necklace, bracelet, and earrings that Anatoly had sent her.

  “Those you must keep,” said Mother Sakhalin. “I insist upon it. It would be rude beyond belief and forgiving to return them to him, who risked his life to gain them for you.”

  “But—” Diana fished in the pouch and drew out one of the earrings. “Give this to him. Please. To remember me by. So he’ll have one, and I’ll have one. I—” She cast an anguished glance at Gwyn, pleading for help.

  But it was Mother Sakhalin who had mercy on her. “Go on, then. We’re leaving now. There’s no more time for this. I’ll take the earring and I’ll see that he gets it.” She took the earring and turned away, just like that.

  “Come on, Di,” said Gwyn gently. “We may as well go. I’m so sorry.”

  And that was it. That was the end.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THEY LAID URSULA’S BODY, shrouded in a simple linen winding-cloth and topped by her beloved helmet and her torn, bloodied surcoat, on the pyre at the feet of the man she had followed here. It was fitting that Ursula be burned. She had died in battle, fighting for the jaran. As for the other corpse—well, Sonia hoped the gods would forgive them for the impiety.

  He had, at least, been a soldier, and he had died fighting for his people—khaja though they might be; that ought to satisfy the gods. She only hoped his spirit would not take offense at the substitution. She had made sure that the necklace of gold beads he wore had been left with him, so that he might go to the heavens with something familiar and not just the shroud of the Prince of Jeds.

  One of the actors sang a haunting song in farewell. David ben Unbutu spoke a long prayer. Most of them wept, even though Sonia did not think they had loved Ursula overmuch. More than anything, she thought they were simply shocked that Ursula had died. As if they thought that Ursula couldn’t die, that none of them could die. Sonia made a sign against Grandmother Night, for even contemplating such a blasphemous thought. Certainly they did not weep for the prince, All of them knew, as she knew, as Ilya knew, that Charles Soerensen had not died but simply given up Jeds in order to return to his mother’s homeland of Erthe.

  Dry-eyed, Tess put the torch to the wood, and it caught. Farther off, ambassadors attended, and etsanas and dyans, out of respect for the dead prince, and behind them, farther still, a knot of soldiers, riders and a few Farisa auxiliaries, who attended out of respect for the woman who had led them. Karkand smoldered behind them and, in some places, still burned.

  Flames leapt up the pyre and engulfed the two bodies. The scent of ulyan permeated the air. Tess moved back to stand beside Ilya, and Sonia went over to her and put an arm around her, supporting her. Tess still suffered from exhaustion; she had not yet gotten over her ride of two days past.

  “Poor Ursula,” said Tess to the air. “I hope it was quick.”

  They stood there for a while longer. The fire fanned heat over them in waves, and at last the smoke drove them back.

  “We’ll go home,” said Sonia.

  “Yes,” said Tess. Together, they walked a few paces. First Sonia halted, then Tess. Beyond, others moved away as well, seeing that the formal ceremony was over. The actors walked off en masse. The golden-haired Singer wept copiously, and three of the others surrounded her as guards might, fending off the world. Ambassadors trailed away. David and the remaining members of Soerensen’s party circled the pyre a final time and left without looking back.

  “Are you coming?” asked Sonia, since Ilya had not moved.

  “No,” he said, watching the flames. “Not yet.”

  And it was true, Sonia reflected, that for Ilya this was a farewell to Charles Soerensen. He could hardly expect to see him again. Certainly Tess did not expect her brother to ever return, and even with the Jedan fleet, Sonia doubted that Ilya would ever have the opportunity or the means to sail across the vast oceans to a land as distant as Erthe.

  “Given more time,” said Tess softly, “I think they would have become friends. At least, they understood each other.”

  “Understanding,” said Sonia, “is truly one of the most precious gifts. You look tired, Tess.”

  “I am.”

  “Well, then, leave him here to do what he must.”

  “It reminds me,” said Tess, and her voice cracked just a little, “of the baby.”

  “If the gods are merciful,” said Sonia, “then they will grant you many children.”

  “Are the gods merciful?” Tess asked, an odd note in her voice.

  “The gods are just,” said Sonia, “and their justice is sometimes harsh, but it is their mercy which sustains us.”

  Ilya still had not moved: The pyre seemed to fascinate him, or else it merely gave a focus for his thoughts—whatever they might be. Sonia drew Tess forward, and they left him there alone to say farewell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  BAKHTIIAN HELD COURT IN the ashes of Karkand.

  “An impressive show,” said Laissa, drawing aside the curtain of her litter. She gazed out on the desolation that had once been the royal city of the kingdom of Habakar and at the white tent staked out and surrounded by carpets and, beyond the carpets, a flat stretch of ground that had once been a marketplace. Bakhtiian and his wife—now the Prince of Jeds—sat under the awning, elevated on a dais. One by one, they called embassies before them. One by one, embassies knelt at the base of the dais and gave gifts and were sent away with scrolls bound with gold braid, signed by the hand of Bakhtiian himself.

  Six days after the final assault, the city lay stark and ruined under a clear sky. Karkand had seemed huge before, but burned and razed its endless fields of ash and shattered masonry and blackened walls and broken towers just seemed to stretch on and on and on. Yesterday it had rained, and the drizzle had chased the last pall of smoke from the air. It still smelled of smoke and ash and burnt things, here in the city, but a chilly dampness overlaid it. The cold season was sweeping down on Habakar.

  “Why impressive?” asked Jiroannes, turning away from this depressing scene to look at his wife. Beneath her sheer veil she looked impossibly serene.

  “Every ambassador who comes before Bakhtiian today will see this, and know that he and his people must fear Bakhtiian’s wrath. You would do well, Jiroannes, to consider wisely when it comes time to accept whatever treaty Bakhtiian offers to your Great King.”

  “Your King as well, now that you are my wife,” he snapped.

  “I may place my allegiance where I please,” she said, untroubled by his outburst, “since that is the right of every man or woman born into the House of the Lion and the Moon, the most noble of
all royal lines of Habakar. Mother Sakhalin came to me last night and said that she and Bakhtiian had come to an agreement, that they would ask me and my cousin, who is father to the child Melatina—the girl who is to marry Prince Mitya—to act as regents in Habakar in concert with two jaran Elders until the young prince and his bride come of age.”

  Jiroannes had a sudden sinking feeling that there was a great deal going on in the camp that he was not privy to. He had not seen Mitya for days and days, not since before Laissa had poisoned Samae. Did Bakhtiian truly think so little of the Great King of Vidiya that he would snub the King’s ambassador like this, and take this Habakar princess into his confidence and his trust? Did Bakhtiian’s intelligence net spread so wide that he knew that in truth the Great King did little more than hunt and luxuriate in the women’s quarters, overseeing not his lands and his army but the innumerable petty quarrels that erupted every day in the kennels and the harem? The Great King did not want to go to war. Indeed, Jiroannes doubted he was capable of leading an army, or even of presiding over one. His mother had poisoned or strangled all of his half brothers and male cousins, to leave him free of that sort of intrigue, but the Queen Mother was dead now, and upon her death he had banished all of the ministers she had so carefully chosen for him and installed his cronies, each and every one of them young princes and noblemen of similar dissipated habits to his own. His one living sibling, Her Highness the Princess Eriania, he indulged shamelessly, going so far as to let her ride out to the hunt with him and his entourage, and everyone knew she kept her own harem in imitation of the men, but for all that, she was more of a man than he was. Which man did Jiroannes respect more, Bakhtiian or the Great King? It was no contest.