by E. P. Clark
“It’s not very good, I’m afraid,” I said. “But bad beer is better than no beer, sometimes. So what’s troubling you?”
“How can you tell…How did you know, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“You’re wearing a different shirt than the past two days, one less suited for training, which suggests that either something is up at home, or that you forgot to change this morning before coming here. You’re distracted and not trying. You look tired. And you haven’t argued with me about coming here, even though you know it’s a bad idea.”
“Oh.” He took another sip of beer, made a face again, contemplated his mug, and then took a large swallow. “My mother is arriving tomorrow,” he said. “My mother and my stepfather. I got word last night that they were almost here. They should be here by tomorrow midday.”
“And you don’t want them to be here?”
He looked like he wanted to deny it, but then shrugged and took another swallow of beer. “Would it be very wrong of me to say yes, Valeriya Dariyevna?” he asked.
“No. I can understand why you wouldn’t want them around.”
“Really, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“I know them both. Rather well, in fact.”
“Oh.” He smiled involuntarily at that, and then smoothed out his face hastily and said seriously, “Of course, Valeriya Dariyevna, I had forgotten. I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be,” I said. “It’s not your fault, and I asked you what the problem was. So why don’t you want them to be here?”
“Well, Valeriya Dariyevna…” He looked down at the table for a while.
“Anything you say is unlikely to shock me,” I said, making him look back up in surprise.
“When I was your age, I took another woman’s betrothed for a lover, got with child off of him, and was thrown over and pretty much chased out of Krasnograd over the resulting scandal,” I said with a smile. “What have you done?”
He blushed so deeply I could see it even in the half-light of the back corner where we were sitting. “Nothing…nothing like that, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said. “Nothing at all, except…”
“Meet with me,” I finished for him.
“Yes, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said, looking supremely uncomfortable.
“Your mother will not be pleased.”
“No, Valeriya Dariyevna. In fact, I am sure she will demand that I…stop training with you.”
“I’m sure she will,” I said. “Are you going to?”
“I beg your pardon, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Are you going to stop training with me?” I asked.
“How could I…I mean, if she tells me directly to stop…”
“True,” I said. “But aside from the fact that you are a man grown now, or will be as soon as Midsummer arrives, what if the Tsarina tells you directly to keep going?”
“Why would she do that, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Oh, she has her reasons. Let’s say she would like to see more people trained in steppe fighting. Let’s say she would like to heal the enmity between me and your family.”
“I…I see, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said, looking as if he didn’t see but was beginning to suspect that something was up. He drank some more beer and stared at the table for a while.
“My mother will be arranging my marriage soon, I’m sure of it,” he said suddenly, blushing yet again. “Probably as soon as she arrives. She told me so in her letter. I’m to marry that Easterner, not the princess’s daughter I was promised.”
“And you’re not pleased about that?”
“I…I don’t know the woman she has in mind, Valeriya Dariyevna. Not at all. I mean, I’ve never met her. Neither has my mother, as far as I know. It was one thing when it was someone I’d met before, but a complete stranger…and it’s so soon…and…well, when I look at my stepfather…what if,” he looked up at me, his eyes wide and anxious, “I end up like him, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“That won’t happen,” I said.
“Why not, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Because I know him, and you’re not like him. You’re not going to end up like him.”
“Oh.” He looked down at the table some more, and then, prompted by curiosity, blurted out, “How am I not like him, Valeriya Dariyevna? If you don’t mind me asking,” he added hastily. “I just…even though I’ve known him for years, he’s always been a bit of a mystery to me.”
“You’re brave,” I said. He snorted in laughter before he could stop himself, and then looked very contrite.
“You’re hot-blooded,” I went on. “You like to act. He likes to think, and he lets his thoughts rule him.”
“How do you…What makes you think I’m,” he blushed so painfully my face ached in sympathy, “hot-blooded?”
“Other than the blush currently covering your face?” I asked, and then, seeing his hurt expression, regretted my jest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun of you. But in answer to your question, you got mad when I beat you. And instead of running off to cry, you decided to stay and try to beat me in turn. And you’re here now, aren’t you?”
“Yes, although…forgive me, Valeriya Dariyevna, but surely he must have…come to visit you too, and more than I have.”
“True enough,” I agreed. “But it was different. He was different. He was a very serious, studious boy, born to be a scholar, not a fighter, and when he met me…well, he said he didn’t know what he was doing, or what had happened to him, and that was obviously true. It was like he went mad for a little while. But then he got over it.”
“Oh.”
“It was like we were discovering whole new worlds in each other. I was a wild fighter, a steppe princess, and he lived in his head. And whenever we were together…it was intoxicating, like strong drink. Only now I don’t know how much of that was we ourselves, and how much was our situation. Now I wonder how much was because he thought I was exotic, and I thought I could win.”
“Win, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“I knew he was betrothed to…to another woman, and not only did I not care, I thought I could take him away from her. I was so sure of it…pretty much everything I’d ever done had been a struggle, but I’d always won that struggle in the end, I’d always been victorious in everything, and I was the heir to Stepnoye and all of Zem’ as well. How could I lose? And he was mad for me, so mad for me that he even…well. I was sure I would win, win him away from her, until the day he told me she had agreed to take him back, and he had agreed to go.
“At first I couldn’t believe it. Actually, the whole time the scandal was raging, and when Sera—when the Empress was trying to explain to me why it would be better for everyone if I just went back to the steppe for a little while, and the other princesses were spitting in my face, and the whole long ride back to the steppe, and the long months when I was carrying Mirochka…I just couldn’t believe I had lost. Maybe I never have been able to believe it.” I stopped. I had never said any of that to anyone, not even my mother, not even Sera. I was surprised at how easily it had come out with him. Like a long-infected splinter finally coming out in a gush of pus. Probably I didn’t need to share that image with him. It wasn’t exactly conducive to courting. But I felt better now, much as I would after having a nasty splinter removed. Everything was still hollow and burnt out inside, but it had survived that confession without crashing down around me, and it no longer felt as if it might collapse at any moment. Perhaps one day the grass and flowers would come rising through the ashes, and then one day later something could be built there in its place.
“I’m sorry, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said after a pause.
“So am I, but it’s not your fault, and there’s nothing either one of us can do about it,” I said. “So who’s this woman your mother has in mind for you?”
“Oh…” He had been looking at me with intent sympathy, but now he looked away. “Some Easterner.”
“So you said. From the mountains? There are some good families out there, although
it will be far away from home for you.”
“No.” He stopped for a moment, and then blurted out, “She’s not Zemnian at all.”
“Not Zemnian?” I asked. “Then who is she?”
“I believe,” he said, speaking slowly and reluctantly, “I believe that she is…well, apparently she is part Zemnian, or her father is Zemnian anyway, but her mother…I believe that her mother is from the Hordes. A Khan’s sister, or so my mother says. She is…my mother says she is a trader, a great trader, and richer and more powerful than any Zemnian princess, or at least any Zemnian princess who would be willing to take me into her family.”
“Is that so,” I said.
“I know you told me I should consider myself a prince, a real prince, Valeriya Dariyevna, but in some things I can’t,” he said defensively. “The circumstances of my birth…”
“To Princess Velikokrasnova,” I said. “I’m not sure what other birthright you need.”
“Yes, but my father…”
“Was a peasant?” I suggested. “There’s no shame in that. Lots of noblewomen take common-born lovers to get a child and bring in a little fresh blood. My family has a long history of it on both sides.”
“I don’t know, Valeriya Dariyevna. And…” he looked away for a while, and then, taking a deep breath, turned back to me and finished in a rush, “neither does my mother.”
I raised my brows. “The father of her only child is not normally the kind of thing that slips a person’s mind,” I said. “I speak from experience.”
“Yes, but…” He gave me a look of artless pleading that would have softened a much harder heart than mine. I could even feel something trying to stir to life in the ashes. “Are we speaking in confidence, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Of”—I had to cough and clear my throat—“course,” I said.
“She doesn’t like to talk of it. I don’t know how many people she’s told, but not many, I think. And I don’t even know if what she told me was the truth. But what she said, after I plagued her and plagued her about it a few years back, was that she was at a feast, a midwinter celebration.”
“Ah,” I said. “I believe I am familiar with these kinds of celebrations.”
“Really, Valeriya Dariyevna?” He looked startled at that, and also a little frightened, as if it had never occurred to him that someone he knew might participate in something that, for him, was monumental and terrifying. Then—I could tell—he realized how naïve that made him appear, and he added, somewhat sheepishly, “My mother would never hold such celebrations in her household, or allow me to go to them.”
“I can understand that. And you haven’t missed much, anyway.”
“Oh. Well, what she told me was that she was overwintering in Krasnograd, and she went to a midwinter celebration at some princess’s house—she wouldn’t tell me which one—and there was…revelry, which included masks, and vodka, and…and…”
“I get the picture,” I said when it became apparent he was unable to continue. “Revelry, masks, vodka…and the next day she didn’t remember what had happened, but a couple of months later it was obvious that you were on the way. She wouldn’t be the first to have that happen. I still don’t see what’s shameful about it. I know more than one woman who’s gotten a good child that way.”
“Well, you see, Valeriya Dariyevna…” he lowered his voice and leaned closer to me, “not only is she not sure whether he was a commoner or a nobleman, but there was…there was a delegation of Westerners in Krasnograd that winter, and some were at that feast.”
“Ah.”
“So she thinks…she thinks it is possible that my father was not Zemnian at all, but a Westerner, and maybe not even a nobly born one. He could have been one of the guards serving the delegation.”
“I see.” I hoped I had been able to suppress the shudder of distaste that had almost gone through me at that revelation. Scratch a steppelander, they said, and they’ll bleed Tribal blood from the Hordes. Interbreeding with our foes from the East had always been a common occurrence, and I bore the proof of that on my own cheekbones. But a Westerner…the Hordes were foreigners, and our long-standing enemies, but they were also kin, of a sort. Westerners were another thing entirely.
“From Seumi?” I asked hopefully. Seumi was the Western land closest to us. They were practically kin too, at least with the coastal families.
“You mean my father?”
I nodded.
“I don’t think they send delegations, do they?”
“Not normally,” I agreed. “They don’t have the money.” The Seumi mainly hunted and fished and farmed their own land, and left Zem’ alone as much as possible. It was generally understood that Zem’ could roll across Seumi and claim it as our own any time we wanted, but what would be the point? They were happy to sell us whatever they had that was worth selling at fair prices, and as it was they guarded our North-Western border without any effort on our part.
“So was he Rutsi, then?” I asked. “Or Tanskan?” The Rutsi and the Tanskans were from farther West than Seumi, holding little provinces and clans scattered up and down much of our Western border. They were fierce warriors and shrewd traders, yes, but ever since the steppe army had driven them back from Krasnograd and smashed all their pretentions to empire into a thousand shattered pieces, they were even more disorganized and fragmented than the Hordes. Some of the stronger clans did send us delegations from time to time, though.
Ivan shrugged, looking supremely uncomfortable. “He must have been, don’t you think? Rutsi or Tanskan. Unless it was someone from the Middle Sea…”
I looked him over as carefully as possible in the dim tavern light. Perhaps there were some Western features to his face, but that was the case with many people from the black earth district, who had rounder eyes and less prominent cheekbones—or maybe it was just that the black earth people had less Tribal blood in them, unlike those of us from farther East. Ivan’s face was square and even, his eyes were light brown or maybe hazel, his hair was thick and an unremarkable Zemnian light brown, and his skin was no paler or darker than any other black earth boy’s. There was nothing immediately striking about any one feature, but the overall impression was one of pleasing harmony combined with open-hearted honesty. A person could look on such a face for a long time without tiring of it, but also without finding any sign of foreignness. Certainly there was nothing there of the Middle Sea. I simply couldn’t tell if what Princess Velikokrasnova feared were true.
“So you see, Valeriya Dariyevna, she just can’t offer me on the marriage market…”
“Do you want to marry this Easterner?” I interrupted him.
“No, but I don’t know what else I can do, Valeriya Dariyevna.”
“What if you had another offer?”
“Another offer, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“What if someone else offered you a match, a good match? What would you do then?”
“I suppose it would depend on who offered it, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said, still sounding doubtful at the very possibility. “But what makes you think that that would happen?”
“I have my sources. So what would you do?”
“I suppose I would consider the offer, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he said, not sounding overly thrilled about it.
“Do you not want to get married at all, then?” I asked.
“I don’t want to be sold off to some stranger in order to seal an alliance that will only make my mother richer,” he snapped out, and then looked ashamed.
“Understandable,” I said. “But what do you want?”
“What do I want, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Yes, what do you want? If you could choose to do anything.”
“I…I don’t know, Valeriya Dariyevna.”
“Would you want to be a scholar? Or a brother in a sanctuary?”
“Oh no, certainly not!”
“A guard?”
“Maybe…” He thought about it for a moment. “It would depend. I think
…I think…” he looked away from me, as if ashamed of admitting to such a deep desire, “I think I want adventure, Valeriya Dariyevna. I want to…to be a hero.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Do you think your Eastern bride will give it to you?”
“I suppose…I would have to go East, which might be interesting…but I think I would just be yet another piece of goods in her mother’s caravan. I don’t think that’s the adventure I want, and I think there’d be little chance of heroism.”
“Well, maybe if you get another offer, you can arrange for something more pleasant to come of it,” I said.
“Why are you so sure there will be another offer?” he demanded, the temper that I knew was there flashing out for a moment, and then, softening his tone, added, “Valeriya Dariyevna.”
“Because,” I said, “I’m supposed to make it.”
Chapter Fifteen
He stared at me for a while in bewilderment. Then he suddenly understood the meaning behind my words, and blushed so deeply I thought his hair might turn red. I wondered how much of his body his blushes covered. Well, if things turned out the way Sera wanted, one day soon I would find out.
“Don’t look so surprised,” I said. “Did you think you wouldn’t be courted as soon as you came to Krasnograd? Despite what your mother may think, you’re a good match.”
“But…” he said, and trailed off.
“She must be an idiot. You’re worth more than some Eastern trader’s daughter, no matter how rich she is. No one cares if your father might have been some low-born Westerner. You’re Princess Velikokrasnova’s only child! And you have other good points as well.”
“Thank you, Valeriya Dariyevna, but…” The words came out as a painful croak, and soon died away completely.
“Come now,” I said. “Buck up. You’re a handsome man of marriageable age and noble birth. You’re certain to get attention, and probably offers. So let’s talk about this one.”
He swallowed. His face firmed. I could see the man that would one day soon emerge from what were still a boy’s features. “Why, Valeriya Dariyevna?” he asked bluntly.