by Kate Elliott
“No wonder she has such a fat head,” said Vasha.
“What? Are you still angry with her?”
“What do you think! I have every right to be!”
“No need to be angry with me, too,” retorted Stefan. “I know how much she loved you before, Vasha, but she has been two years with the army. Surely she must prefer to spend her time with the women.” He paused, and then said it anyway. “And with older men, now.”
“Not with a rash, stupid boy like me? Well, I don’t care what she thinks about me.”
“Of course you don’t.”
But Vassily waited, anyway, while Katerina finished her conversation with the two merchants and walked back to them. She had developed a kind of saunter that he detested.
“So,” she said, coming up beside them, “Bathori’s wife has gone to be handmaiden to the princess. But maybe Bathori can find a new wife there.” With her chin, she indicated a section of the bazaar where a cluster of khaja women with uncovered hair loitered around a circle of small wagons, each wagon crowned with a tent over the bed of the wagon.
The wagons had come over from Manas the Smaller, Vasha supposed to cart goods back into town. He hadn’t seen the little tents go up, and now he realized that a fair number of jaran riders stood around there as well, drinking hot kava and oilberry wine from Merchant Larenin’s wagons and flirting, most of them with discreet good manners, with the khaja women. Vassily knew about khaja women: It was commonly believed among the tribes that khaja women covered their faces, kept their eyes cast down, and in general were afraid of men, quite the opposite of how real women were supposed to behave. It was just another example of what barbarians the khaja were. But these khaja women were much more like jaran women. A horrible suspicion took hold of Vasha.
“Do khaja really marry again so quickly?” Stefan asked. “Does he even know those women, or anything of their families? How can he? I suppose without the mark on a woman’s face the khaja have no real respect for marriage, then, if it can be given up so easily….”
Katerina’s look silenced him. Vasha could tell, anyway, that Stefan was babbling, something he never did except when a powerful emotion took hold of him. “I’m going to bed,” said Katerina, and left them.
Meanwhile, Merchant Bathori excused himself from Sister Yvanne and strode purposefully over to the clot of khaja women. They clustered around him while he talked. As he finished, all but three of the women laughed and filtered back to flirt with the soldiers once again. Bathori himself dismissed a pale-haired older woman in favor of the two younger ones, one raven-haired, the other with features similar to those of his former wife, although her complexion was not as fine. The three of them began to haggle.
Suddenly, the raven-haired girl unlaced her blouse and bared her breasts, right there in front of everyone. Stefan choked. Vasha could not help but stare. The other khaja women went on with their talking and flirting without blinking an eye, but every man within sight of her—every jaran man, that is—stopped stock-still in shock. Well, she had fine, full breasts and ample, pleasing flesh. Bathori examined her the way a man would examine a horse he was planning to acquire. He squeezed her breasts, then her buttocks through her skirt, and patted her briskly as if to pronounce himself satisfied.
The blonde woman looked disappointed but shrugged and walked away. Without any sign that she cared one whit that every man there was trying not to stare at her—or perhaps even pleased that it was so—the raven-haired girl laced up her blouse and began haggling with Bathori again.
“I will never understand the khaja,” said Stefan. The words caught in his throat. He looked mortified.
“She’s a whore,” said Vasha.
“What’s a whore?”
“A woman who sells having sex with men for coins or goods. I saw them in Jeds.”
“No. You’re lying. I don’t believe it. I know khaja are barbarians, but—” He broke off. Like the other children in Tess Soerensen’s school, Stefan had received a rigorous education. It wasn’t khaja he couldn’t believe it about. It was the conclusion he must then draw about Jaelle, the pretty young woman he admired. “But she couldn’t be,” he finished plaintively. “What would drive a woman to behave like that? How could her mother and aunts ever let her come to such a pass?”
“Tess says that many khaja lands don’t even have etsanas.”
“I hate the khaja,” said Stefan suddenly. He turned and stalked away.
But Vasha did not move. It was true that the khaja were barbarians. It was no wonder that the gods had given Bakhtiian a vision, that their favorite children, the jaran, must rule over these less-favored lands. But still, now that the jaran ruled khaja lands, it did no good simply to condemn, simply to sneer, at khaja ways. A ruler must set down true and good laws, of course, and hold to them, but simply crushing the khaja would not make them good subjects.
But he shied away from thoughts that might lead him to think too keenly about his father.
Most of the riders had abandoned the whores, shocked by the raven-haired girl’s display. The few left looked quite drunk. Vasha wandered back by Sister Yvanne’s wagons and paused there to peer at the silver knives. He had seen these in Jeds, too, had even been in the great holy church there, but he had never gotten a satisfactory explanation for them. Tess had an annoying habit of only answering those questions she wanted to. Why would anyone want a tiny image of a knife rather than a real knife, which was useful?
By the light of two lanterns, Sister Yvanne and her two assistants were carefully bundling up their wares and putting them away.
“The jaran may be barbarians,” Sister Yvanne was saying tartly to one of her boys, a black-haired young man dressed in gray robes similar to those the Sister wore, “but at least Hristain has granted them a proper sense of modesty, though I fear they are sadly lacking in humility. But we may yet be successful, Brother Saghir, in our mission, if God favors us.”
“What is Hristain?” Vasha asked. “Isn’t that the name of your god?” He started because they both started, surprised that he could understand them.
“You speak Taor, most honorable young man?”
“Yes, my lady,” replied Vasha, uncomfortable now. He didn’t like the way she fixed her eye on him. It reminded him too much of the way she had looked at the poor woman Jaelle, disapproving but also, in a perverse way, hopeful.
“We speak of our Lord, the Anointed One,” she went on, making a funny little gesture with one hand in front of herself. “Hristain is one of His titles. Indeed, in the language of the true church, it is His name. In this book is written the recitation of His word. May I tell you of His sundering?”
“Uh, no, I thank you.” Vasha backed away. She had a light in her eyes that reminded him of his father, and he didn’t want to think about his father.
He fled back to the jahar’s camp, and found Stefan easily enough, standing morosely in the darkness beyond the firelight outside Rusudani’s tent. Both of the khaja women knelt outside the tent. Rusudani was speaking, but in such a low voice that Vasha could only just see her lips move, not hear her words—which he couldn’t have understood in any case, since she did not speak Taor. She held her little knife in her right hand and with her left clutched a book. Vasha thought that she was, perhaps, praying.
And while Rusudani spoke, her new servant, Jaelle, lifted the tiny knife she had just acquired and brought it to her lips and kissed it ardently. She had tears on her cheeks.
CHAPTER FIVE
Home
ILYANA SKATED HOME FROM Kori’s house with her duffel banging against her back. Her homework was done, it was fine summer weather, and she held a bouquet of fresh flowers from Kori’s mother’s garden in one hand. She paused at the Cornwall Gardens playing field to watch a group of rebellious university students, probably from Imperial College, playing soccer. As university students liked to do during the summer, they were flouting the dress protocols, marking their teams with shirts-and-skins rather than arm flags.
And
sure enough, a bystander called out, “quisling peep!” There was a pause in the action, but none of the skins players made any move back to their shirts until the protocol ʼcar drifted into view, humming down to hover about twelve feet above the center of the field. Even from the edge of the street, Ilyana could feel the uncomfortable pressure of the air field. No one moved for a moment. Finally the young women and men sauntered back to the sidelines to pull on their shirts. Ilyana admired their insouciance. It lent the trivial nature of their defiance some excitement.
She tugged self-consciously at the hem of her shorts. Her knees and calves were showing, but she was still classified as a child, so it ought not to matter. And the protocol ʼcar didn’t have Chapalii stripes, which meant it was human officers, and especially in the summer they tended to go easy on people. The ʼcar banked, skipped on an air current, and moved away, and the game resumed, with arm flags now. Ilyana peeled a wet leaf off her left blade and skated on.
Coming down Kensington Court Place, she called a greeting to a neighbor and stopped in front of her door. She unsealed her blades, caught them under an elbow, and placed her left hand on the doorplate. The front door opened. At once she knew that her good mood was not to last. As if she had really believed it could.
Valentin sat on the bottom step, feet planted on the entry-way tile. He looked cross. Way, way up at the top of the flight of steps that angled around and around, she saw a face peering down from the third level, withdrawn quickly when it saw her movement below.
“Who’s that?” she asked, jerking upward with her chin. “It wasn’t Hyacinth or Yevgeni.”
Valentin shrugged. “Hopeful actor, probably. How should I know? Why should I care?”
“Just that they’re spying!” said Ilyana in a loud voice, hoping the person upstairs could hear her. “What are you doing down here?”
He shrugged again, but said nothing.
“Answer me!”
He had dark shadows under his eyes, set off by the pallor of his face, and he was thinner than ever. Ilyana bit down on adding: You’ve got to eat more! because she had learned that to draw attention to that problem only made it worse. Valentin made a face and stared down at his bare feet. He had grown prettier with puberty, maybe because he was just undernourished enough that he hadn’t quite yet grown into that awkward half-man stage, but it was an unhealthy, waiflike prettiness. It attracted the wrong kind of attention.
“Oh, gods,” said Ilyana, feeling a sick thread of doubt claw through her. “Dad didn’t invite over that awful groping old woman again, did he?”
Valentin shut his left eye and squinted at her through his right one. “Neh. I didn’t mind her. I made her pay for it with nesh time.”
“Valentin!” Ilyana shrieked. She wanted to punch him and protect him, at the same time. Somehow, her father managed to attract the most horrible old perverts, maybe just because he was willing to do anything he had to in order to get better acting parts and more access to the people who held the reins of power in the entertainment tribe. “Or are you just joking me?”
For a second she thought he was going to say: “Oh, what do you care?” But the last time he’d tried that she’d slapped him once hard. Finally he traced the red curlicues fired into the tile with a toe. But he didn’t answer.
Like a winter storm blasts in, bleakness hit. “Oh, Valentin,” she whispered. “Did you really?”
His toe moved, but none of the rest of him did. “I just gotta have the nesh time, Yana,” he said finally without looking at her. “I don’t care anymore what I have to do to get it.”
She sat down next to him, and he made room so she could. She set her blades to one side and slipped the duffel off to sit on the step above. The marble felt cold through her shorts. She put an arm around his thin shoulders. “Valentin, you don’t got to. I don’t know—I could ask Diana. She’ll take you to see a doctor. If I go, too, and explain, they’ll have to waive the consent. Everyone knows both our parents are crazy—”
“Then they’ll take Anton and Evdokia and the new baby away from Mother.”
“It would serve her right,” muttered Ilyana fiercely.
“How can you say so?” demanded Valentin, flaring. “It would kill her.”
“It will kill you—!”
“I don’t care! It’s better than here. I hate it here!”
They both heard the exhale of the door opening on the landing above. Ilyana started and twisted to look up, but Valentin did not move. He had the ability to remain utterly still, like a statue, like a body unanimated by soul.
There, on the landing, looking down on them as an angel regards mortals from on high, stood their beautiful father. The most beautiful man on Earth. Everyone said so. Well, he never said so, but he didn’t have to. And his reputation was all the more astonishing because golden-blond hair and a pale complexion and that peculiarly piercing blue of the eyes hadn’t really been fashionable for a hundred years or more. He had made it so, or at least, for himself.
“Hello, heartling, you’re back early.” His expression, severe, softened as he regarded her.
Always, she betrayed herself. Always, she smiled, and her heart melted. “Heyo, Daddy,” she said, just like a little girl again, wanting to make him proud of her. “We finished all week’s homework, too. Kori and I are gonna apply to go Frejday to see the rehearsals of her Uncle Gus’s new piece, the one about Shiva and Parvati.”
He didn’t have to say anything. He could simply radiate approval. She basked in it. Then his gaze shifted to Valentin’s back. The world darkened. Her fingers, still cupping Valentin’s shoulder, tightened, as if with this shield she could protect him.
“You must apologize to your mother, Valentin,” said Vasil emotionlessly.
“Come on,” said Ilyana to her brother in a low voice, nudging him with a knee. She didn’t have the strength right now to play spectator to this endless battle of wills. “You can take the baby out to the garden while I make dinner.”
There was a long hesitation, but finally Valentin stood up. As if that was his cue, Vasil disappeared back inside the flat and the door inhaled shut behind him.
“What did you say?” Ilyana whispered as they climbed the seven steps together, pausing on the landing. Valentin shrugged. She growled at him, then snaked her foot forward toward the toe panel. Hesitated. Always, that split second hesitation before going inside. Always, she had to consciously press the panel with her foot, rather than reflexively tapping it, because she dreaded what was inside. The door whisked open.
Scent and smell and sight, all conspired in this wave that swelled over her every time she came home. Humiliation and loathing together.
All the internal walls in the flat had been torn down, leaving it a single space. In this space her mother had put up her great circular felt tent, surrounding that tent with two smaller tents as well as a cunningly devised fire pit that really wasn’t one but looked like one. Not one transparent window looked onto the street or onto the garden and the alley. Not one stretch of plain white wall betrayed that they lived in a khaja building, in a great khaja city, on a planet far distant from the planet and the lands which had given them—well, all of them but the two littlest ones—birth. Because her father was a famous actor, they had resources to draw on. Her mother liked to think it was because he was a Veselov and she an Arkhanov, princely scions of the most important tribes in the jaran, that they had access to such tribute, but Ilyana knew better. Because her father was rich and courted by the rich, he had done what his wife wished: He had paid or bartered to have projection walls installed in place of the windows and the regular walls. So that when you stepped into the flat, you stepped into another world: You walked into a jaran camp.
Other tents sprawled out on two sides, and occasionally a person moved between the tents. Beyond the tents, herds of animals grazed. On the other two sides, instead of looking at the street below or at the blank wash of wall, you looked out at an endless horizon of grass and hill, and the w
ind brushed the grass in wave upon wave upon wave, sweeping layers of bright and dark across the plains in a pattern that never repeated itself. The distance was so real, so four dimensional, that even knowing better Ilyana still caught herself at times on the verge of walking out into it.
The carpet she stood on had been handwoven of grass. It gave beneath her feet just as a mat of trampled grass would, and its dry scent stirred in her nostrils. The ceiling lofted above, disguised by an infinite projection of sky, sometimes cloudy, sometimes bright, and always with a sun different than Earth’s sun, and with a moon larger than Earth’s moon.
Vasil’s patrons and flunkies loved this flat. It was part of his reputation. Even Valentin, entering, relaxed, but Ilyana tensed. She hated it. She despised her mother for hiding here. Because of the fire codes, one old-fashioned latched window had been left in the streetside wall. A seamless holo projection covered it, but now and again, when everyone else was asleep or out, Ilyana would sneak it open, as if to let in a whiff of London—the curved, supple roofs, the unearthly lights, the breath of here and now.
“Your mother is resting,” said Vasil as the door shut behind them. He ducked inside one of the small tents; Ilyana shared the other small tent with Valentin. By the fire pit, little Evdokia crouched next to a pot of water in which she washed vegetables with four-year-old solemnity. Anton stood by the corral, the stretch of wall that disguised the door into the bathroom, beating on a pillow with a piece of wood shaved to look like a saber. One of the flunkies was here, in the corner where the big carpet loom was tacked down on the ground; she was an aspiring actress who had decided instead that she had been given a mystical calling to apprentice at traditional weaving with the great actor’s wife. Ilyana thought the sloe-eyed young woman looked ridiculous dressed in cast-off jaran clothing, but her presence meant that Ilyana didn’t have to spend hours every night weaving and spinning.
“Here,” said Ilyana, giving her duffel to Valentin. Then she went into the great tent. The projection walls were fantastic, of course; it was practically impossible not to believe in the illusion. But inside the tent even Ilyana could forget for an instant that she had ever left the tribes.
