by Kate Elliott
Sakhalin rode beside the wagon that his much younger cousin drove. Konstantina Sakhalin was Mother Sakhalin of her tribe in all but name: Her grandmother was still etsana, but she had been failing for years now, ever since her favorite grandson had left the tribes, and Konstantina had taken over most of her duties. Worse, far worse, on the other side of the wagon with her bow and quiver rode Katerina Orzhekov. Vasha’s cousin, more or less. Ivan’s sister.
“Ivan!” Katerina exclaimed, seeing them approach.
Sakhalin sighed, looking exasperated. “Where have you been? I do not recall giving you permission to scout. But perhaps you decided to override my authority?”
Vasha rode out in front of the others, to spare them the worst cutting edge of Sakhalin’s anger. Yaroslav Sakhalin was not a man worth angering. “I just—” he began, and faltered. The whole expedition seemed incredibly stupid, now.
“What is that behind you on the horse?” demanded Konstantina Sakhalin.
“Oh, Vasha!” cried Katerina. “What are you doing with a khaja woman? It’s bad enough you’d ride off like an idiot, but this! Ever since Tess took you to Jeds with her, it’s as if you want to be khaja yourself.”
Vasha flinched. “We didn’t steal her! Gods, Katya, you can’t possibly think that—”
He broke off when the khaja woman moved. She slipped off the horse and flung herself down before the wagon. Not before the men, of course, but before Konstantina Sakhalin. She spoke, a flood of words. Vasha was mortified to hear how light and youthful her voice sounded and yet how collected.
“Can you understand her?” Konstantina asked Katya.
“I don’t know this language,” said Katya, but she dismounted and went over to the khaja woman and put out her hand. “But of course we must offer her sanctuary. I feel sure,” she added scathingly, “that Vasha will explain himself.”
As if Katya’s hand bore a promise, the khaja woman sat back on her heels. She pulled aside her scarf, and all four boys gasped. She was young, no older than they or Katya, and, in an exotic khaja fashion, pretty. She was also laden with gold jewelry, as if she bore her own ransom with her. They stared, until Konstantina sharply reminded them to mind their manners.
“Well,” said Yaroslav Sakhalin curtly. “That’s settled then. My men will take the horses. Kireyevsky, I’ve had enough of you and your insubordination. I’ll give you one hundred riders as escort. I’m sending you back.”
Vasha felt the world go white. He thought his heart would stop. “But you can’t!”
“I can and I will!” snapped Sakhalin. “I don’t have time for any boy’s nonsense, especially not yours.” The words cut like a red-hot blade. “Your companions will stay with me. Perhaps they’ll do better without your bad example, since you always seem to be the ringleader.” His gaze rested briefly on the seven stolen horses. “The prize looks pretty damned worthless in any case.” Not even Arkady, rash though he was, was unthinking enough to protest Sakhalin’s judgments.
But Stefan said quietly, “If Vasha goes back, then so do I.”
“Stefan!” protested Vasha. “Don’t ruin it for yourself. Or you other two, either.” Looking guilty, Arkady said nothing.
“I will go back with you,” said Stefan stubbornly.
Sakhalin shrugged. “So be it.” He turned back to Vasha. “I told Bakhtiian you weren’t ready to ride with the army. I’m not sure you ever will be. Despite what you may have hoped to gain, I don’t find that this little raid of yours has convinced me otherwise.”
“You may go,” echoed Konstantina, whose word was equally law. “Who can you spare to ride with him, Cousin?”
Sakhalin was a brilliant general. Everyone knew that. But he also had an uncanny instinct for how to handle men, either by rewarding them or by making sure their shame was complete. “Riasonovsky’s jahar deserves a rest from the front. I’ll send a rider to call him back in. He can escort the boy back to his—” There, always, the hesitation. He could not bring himself to say the word, father. “To Bakhtiian.”
At that moment, Vasha thought, there was nothing, nothing, that could make the situation worse.
Ivan made a choking noise in his throat. He turned paler than pale, swayed and, fainting, fell from his horse.
CHAPTER THREE
Earth: There
ILYANA TILTED HER HEAD back and blinked twice, and at once she was out of the funerary chamber and back walking—floating more, since neither she nor the vision of Egypt she walked within were real—along the terrace colonnade of the temple of Hatshepsut, where huge painted statues of the Queen stood in front of square pillars. Myrrh trees graced the terrace, and the pink-stained limestone cliffs of Deir el-Bahri rose into the stark sky above. The Valley of the Nile lay beyond and below, and farther, the river itself stretched north and south like the trail of some great beast.
Ilyana descended both of the stairways and at a dizzying speed raced out along the causeway across the flood plain toward Karnak. Her bare feet slapped down on the coarse dusty stone of the avenue that led to the great temple of Amon. Ram-headed sphinxes gazed into and beyond her, quiescent but aware. She passed the first great pylon, through a courtyard, and into the great hypostyle hall. Row upon row of huge columns supported the stone and wood roof, all of them covered with the carved and painted reliefs of gods and pharaohs, beasts and birds and cartouches swollen with hieroglyphs. Dust glimmered and swam where light filtered through the stone window gratings.
Around her, the temple unbuilt itself. Columns vanished, and the complex lost parts of itself to the slippage of time running backward until she stood before the vague outlines of the Middle Kingdom temple, square and simple.
And rebuilt. First the architect Ineny under Tuthmosis I, who enclosed the old temple with a wall, added two of the great pylons to serve as monumental gateways, added an entrance court and statues of Osiris. Then, to the east, Tuthmosis III constructed the Festival Hall and a small temple to Amon-Re, and finally a great hypostyle hall where the New Kingdom pharaohs were crowned was added, as well as two other temple groups, one to the local deity and one to the goddess Mut.
Ilyana turned and walked back out into the blast of the noonday sun to follow the procession of Amon’s boat along the avenue of the sphinxes that led to the temple of Amon-Re at Luxor. Ahead of her, the boat sailed on the shoulders of the priests. Their hawk and jackal masks muted their voices, but she could see the pale linen of their robes slide around their bodies and the sere brown skin of their hands, holding up the god’s boat. She let herself feel the sun searing her back and the dry heat of the air, the parching dust, and the distant breath of the river.
Ten years ago she had not even known that this fantastic complex of temples existed. She had never heard of an ancient land called Egypt, nor had she known such marvels—such tools, such technology—existed that she, not the real Ilyana but an ephemeral construct of herself, might walk through these buildings without actually being there.
A sphinx yawned and reared itself up, stone limbs crackling, and regarded her quizzically. “Yana,” it said, “it’s past time to go home. The system is going down in five minutes.”
“Thanks, Kori,” she said. She reached out, farther, farther, toward the great gateway, through the fading priests and Amon’s boat, and dove through. Egypt whirled away in a great blaze of light and she veered, flying, for the metal gleam of the docking bay, the artificial construct embedded in the teaching programs so that children would learn to make the transition from there to here as safely as possible.
On the farthest rose-tinged rim of the horizon, a red light winked on and off. She leapt, closing in on it. It was, of course, the portal she had long ago built so that she could spy on Valentin. Right now it stood on a spinelike ridge of rock, a corbeled arch lined with flashing neon whose other side hovered over the brink of an abyss. Frowning, she slowed and stepped cautiously through. She never knew where she would find her little brother. Usually it was no place good. Cold pierced her to
the bone, and she clamped her eyes shut against a stab of wild color. Abruptly, there was no ground beneath her feet. She opened her eyes, caught in an instant of stillness.
From a great height, she plunged. Wind screamed past her and the fall thrust pressure against her flesh. It was painfully hot. Each breath stung. Hills undulated out on all sides, a rich golden haze. Nothing but gold, as if the ground were plated with gold leaf. A dark filigree wound over a distant curve, the only break in the monotony.
As the ground neared, she recognized her surroundings: an endless desert of sand dunes. She caught a glimpse of the tail end of a caravan swaying away over a dune. The ground rose to meet her. Of course, in Valentin’s construct, she had no ability to manipulate. She was herself a kind of artificial intruder. When she slammed into the sand, would she be wrenched back into her body? Would her construct-self, her nesh, be obliterated? If she was lucky, the worst thing that would happen would be that she would return from there to here and throw up all over the couch. But she had heard of more horrible fates.
A sharp gust of wind pulled her free of gravity and with a disorienting twist she landed lightly on her feet.
“Ah! Gods!” she yelped and began jumping back and forth from foot to foot. The sand burned. The heat baked her.
At once a whole crowd of camels, spitting and slobbering, materialized around her. They reeked. They were disgusting. Valentin always was obsessed by sensory detail.
“Valentin!” she shrieked, more horrified by them than by the prospect of smashing into the dunes. The camels honked and chewed and farted. A thick yellow gobbet of spit landed on the skirt of her tunic, staining it dark, and remains of it slid down and fell toward her feet. She yelped and jumped to one side to avoid it. “Valentin! You worm! Stop this right now! They’re closing the system in five minutes!”
A low haze swelled on the horizon. The sky darkened. The sun turned in an instant from brilliant white to a bloody ball of fire smothered in a rising wall of dust. A howl rose like the scream of a thousand agonized animals from the sands, pierced by a whistle.
The storm hit. Ilyana collapsed to her knees and covered her head. Sand battered her. Sharp waves of pebbles flung hard by the wind pelted her on her bare arms and through the thin weave of her tunic. The wind roared and the stones rattled and clashed in a perfectly hellish din.
And was silent.
Ilyana spit sand out of her mouth and cracked her eyes open. Sand leaked from her hair and weighted down her braids. Grit coated her tongue. It tasted stale and metallic. The camels, thank the gods, were gone, but now instead of the curve of dunes she saw only a rock-strewn flat plain, empty of life. The raw blue of the sky hurt her eyes. There was no sun, but it was as light as day.
On a six-legged beast, a rider approached across the flat. Ilyana clambered to her feet and brushed off her tunic, the sleeveless shoulders, the fitted waist, the culotte skirt. But even though the cloth was navy blue, encrusted by sand she just looked clothed in brown.
A demon rode the six-legged creature. It had bulging eyes and red-rimmed tusks and an inventive assortment of claws on its four arms. It pulled up its beast in front of her. Its curled hair gleamed like iron. Fire licked out from its tongue.
“Valentin,” said Ilyana in disgust, “as you know, this doesn’t impress me. Now come on. The system is closing down for the day. You know that. If you break the rules again, they’re gonna suspend you from guising completely. You’re already on limited runs.”
Flames licked threateningly from the demon’s mouth.
Ilyana sighed, exasperated. Valentin was never a person in his constructs. His nesh was always an animal or some strange animalistic demon, like this one, culled from mythology or from his own nightmares, which were plentiful. Ilyana had experimented as most children did with other guises, guising as different animals and real or imagined aliens, even just in other human bodies, but for the last year, as she had grown more and more interested in exploring the great monuments of Earth and Ophiuchi-Sei and the other human planets, she had mostly stayed herself.
“And anyway,” she added, “we have to go to that reception for Father tonight.”
“I won’t,” said the demon petulantly, and it vanished in a swirl of smoke. She caught a glimpse of Valentin’s unguised nesh, a slight, sallow-eyed boy of thirteen, but his image faded and with a jolting wrench and a tear in her chest she found herself back on the other side of the archway. Bells rang, echoing up from the abyss. She dove for the docking bay, sealed herself through the lock, and felt the shift of pressure, the reorientation to the gravity of the real world. The inner lock unsealed and M. Lissagaray popped the seals off her eyes and she shook the gel tips off of her hands and swallowed bile.
“That was a bit close,” said M. Lissagaray tartly. “Chasing your brother again?”
On the other side of the aisle, Kori had already grabbed her duffel from underneath her couch and stuffed all her tack into it. “Heyo, Yana. You wanna go blading this afternoon? You look green.”
Reflexively, Ilyana checked the skirt of her tunic, but, naturally, no gobbet of camel spit stained it. It looked crisp and clean, unrumpled by her sojourn on the couch. “I can’t,” she said reluctantly.
Kori made a face but said nothing. M. Lissagaray moved away to untangle Zaid from his wires and tips; Zaid was one of those unfortunates who twitched constantly while in nesh. Ilyana sighed and regarded Kori enviously. Kori was also sixteen, but she was perfect. She was smart and tall and strong, she wore her coarse black hair in gorgeous locks, and she had a flawless mahogany complexion every bit the equal of Jane Zhe, the actress who played Infinity Jilt, girl pirate of the never-never, on the interactives. Ilyana hated her own paleness. She stuck out here.
Kori sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Valentin; again?” she asked. “Maybe your mother is gonna take him to see a physician.”
“Yeah,” said Ilyana sarcastically. “A brain doctor. Gods, Kori, I think he’s gone loony.”
Kori shrugged. “You wanna come over after supper? We can do our trig homework together.”
Yana bent out from under Kori’s arm and stuffed her tack into her duffel: It was not a true duffel, of course, with shiny gray or black sides, but an old carpet her mother had sewn into a bag. It embarrassed her. Especially because all the other kids thought it was new just because they’d never seen anything like it before.
“No, I really can’t.” Ilyana laced the bag shut. “My…my dad, I gotta go to a reception tonight….”
“Neh. Sounds terrible. My cousin Euterpe said yesterday she’d seen something on the net about it. All kinds of important people—maybe even Charles Soerensen. Heyo. How about tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” agreed Ilyana. “Now I gotta go see what trouble Valentin’s gotten himself into.”
“I’ll come with.”
Ilyana glanced at her friend, but she knew better than to think Kori’s offer came from anything but compassion and a simple desire to help. Kori had been the first friend she’d made, eight years ago, moving into this neighborhood. “Thanks,” she said.
They waved good-bye to M. Lissagaray, who was decelerating the nesh-drives, and went down to the school courtyard, where the other kids hurried out the gates, heading home. They cut through the maze to the junior wing. The door wafted open into the junior nesh-pods, and the smell of vomit hit the two girls. Kori gagged audibly and choked it down, looking apologetic.
“Oh, gods,” muttered Ilyana, washed by humiliation. “This is so embarrassing.” But she was also terrified. Kori followed her as she wound to the back, where M. Tioko, with infinite patience, swabbed down a deathly pale Valentin. He had thrown up all over everything. Luckily there was no one else in the room.
M. Tioko did not look up as he wiped Valentin’s mouth clean. “There’s a spare set of clothes in the closet.” Kori dropped her duffel and headed for the closet.
“Valentin,” said Ilyana. His eyes were shut. “This is the fourth
time this month!” He did not respond.
Now M. Tioko did glance up. He was a good, decent person and Ilyana trusted him. And anyway, he was about the only person besides her who really cared about Valentin anymore. “He’s overdosing,” he said in a tired voice. “He’s got to be guising at home, or some time away from school, because I’ve got him on a strict schedule here.”
“But I made Mama get rid of the nesh-drives,” Ilyana protested.
“What about the two other families in your house?”
“They’re actors. They don’t nesh at all. And anyway, I…I talked to them about it. You can’t cut off his time here?”
M. Tioko tossed the wet cloth into a hamper, which immediately sucked it into the cleaning tubes. “He’ll go into withdrawal, which will be worse, and we can’t deal with that unless your parents agree to put him under medical supervision.”
Which they never would. Ilyana flushed, feeling cold with worry. Valentin just lay there, breathing shallowly. He looked so sick. He looked so young. Most of the nesh addicts that the nets did those awful docuwraps about were mid-aged, in their seventies or eighties. Valentin was barely thirteen. It just wasn’t fair.
Kori returned with the clothes. “All right, girls,” said M. Tioko with a resigned half-smile. “Thanks. I’ll send him out when he’s changed and cleaned up his couch.”
Valentin cracked an eye, tilting his head back like a one-eyed bird to squint at his sister. “I won’t go,” he muttered. “I’m gonna stay late at school and do my leftover geo homework. So there.”
“Can you send him out to me as soon as he’s done?” Ilyana begged, hating the sound of her voice.
M. Tioko nodded and waved them away. As they left the room, they heard him start in. “Now, Valentin, stop that shamming and get into these clean clothes—”
Ilyana blinked away tears brought on by the sudden light of the courtyard.
“Heyo, look, it’s Uncle Gus!” Kori whooped, grabbed Ilyana’s hand, and tugged her along after.
