by Kate Elliott
“Naturally,” she echoed, missing him already. But this, too, was part of the life she had chosen.
“I beg your pardon.” Konstans’s voice broke into their conversation. “Mother Orzhekov has sent a message.” Tess spun to look behind her, but Konstans stayed discreetly out of view. “Mother Veselov’s baby is coming, and it isn’t going well.”
“Oh, hell,” said Tess, leaping up. “I’ll come at once.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Prince of the Blood
ANDREI SAKHALIN LIKED TO talk.
“We have passed into the kingdom of Dushan, another of the Yos lands, although King Zgoros of Dushan has less power and less land than Prince Sigismar of Hereti-Manas, and was himself a vassal of Prince Dragos of Zara before he became our vassal.”
“How can a king be a vassal to a prince?” asked Stefan.
Vasha and Stefan flanked Andrei Sakhalin, one on each side, while they watched the merchants’ train of wagons ford a river, carts bucking and heaving over the shallow rocky bed.
“The khaja are not like us,” said Andrei. “They give themselves names, king or prince or priest, but the names mean nothing unless they hold land to themselves and have soldiers enough to keep others from stealing it.”
Stefan snorted. “You can’t steal land.”
“But they’re bound to the land,” interposed Vasha, feeling a flicker of interest in the conversation, “because they are farmers.”
“They’re not all farmers,” objected Stefan. “Some of them are merchants.”
“What Vassily means to say is that their wealth is bound into the land they hold,” said Andrei, “and so without land, even a mighty king will rule nothing, and his mother’s name will be forgotten. That is why they cannot stand against us. We do not forsake the names the gods gave us. The Sakhalin will always be First of the Elder Tribes, even if Mother Sakhalin has only one tent and ten grazel.”
On the far bank, the princess and her escort appeared, and Vasha watched as Princess Rusudani and her servant and her ten guards picked their way across the ford. Vasha could not help but notice what a good seat on her horse Rusudani had, especially compared to Jaelle, who still after all these weeks rode with the uneasiness of a person who distrusts horses. He envied the khaja, suddenly; by khaja law, his position was assured.
Sakhalin began talking again, and Vasha let the words wash over him, drowning his fear in noise. “But King Zgoros of Dushan was grateful to ally himself with us, since his own father had been forced to kneel before the prince of Zara. When the younger Prince Dragos of Zara was killed fighting at the River Djana last year, King Zgoros sent an envoy to Bakhtiian to ask that his youngest son Prince Janos be granted the Zaran throne, since in his great-grandfather’s time the prince of Zara was the nephew of the Dushan king and subordinate to him. In those days, the Dushan king was preeminent over all the princes in Yos lands, Zara, Hereti and Manas, Gelasti, and Tarsina-Kars, and allied as an equal with Mircassia. But an ambitious nephew of a younger line stole the land and put in a claim for himself, and the other princes supported him, so Zara was again torn from Dushan’s grasp. That is why—” Sakhalin broke off.
Vasha jerked his gaze away from Princess Rusudani and looked over at the Sakhalin prince.
Andrei, too, was studying Rusudani, his eyes narrowed. His face bore a calculating look, which surprised Vasha, since Andrei seemed to chatter more than to think.
“Is it true that the khaja princess has no brothers or uncles?” Andrei asked suddenly.
“As far as we can tell. The two brothers died at the Salho River, and there must be the one uncle left, who would be King Barsauma of Mircassia’s heir.”
“I heard a different rumor, in Dushan, that all of King Barsauma’s sons had died, the last only recently, and that he has but a nephew left, a boy who is feebleminded and crippled.”
“How do you know so much about the khaja?” asked Stefan, who returned his attention to the Sakhalin prince as soon as the women passed down the road and out of view.
“It is my duty to know a great deal about the khaja, and it should be yours, as well. You come from a good family, Stefan Danov, and your grandfather Nikolai Sibirin is a respected healer, a man of influence. If you fight bravely and listen well, there is no reason you could not command a jahar in time.”
“I’m going to be a healer,” said Stefan quietly, but Andrei had already turned to Vasha.,
“What do you think, Vassily Kireyevsky? Should such a valuable khaja princess be allowed to marry back into the khaja lines, or should some clever young jaran prince marry her to keep her power within the tribes?”
Vasha flushed. It was as if Andrei, like a Singer who can divine the words of the gods, had known his ambition. “I think any jaran man who wishes to marry her had better speak with Mother Orzhekov and Mother Sakhalin before he marks her,” he stammered. “What if she refuses to marry any man who does not dwell in the same church as she does?”
Andrei rolled his eyes. “Women do not have a choice in marriage. Why should it matter to them in any case? They may pray to their gods as they wish. When Prince Mitya’s khaja wife brought in builders and priests to lift up a temple to her god in their new city, no one spoke against her.”
Vasha smiled, thinking of Mitya, the one bright spot in this whole gloomy journey. “I think the Habakar do not mind so much, because so many people of different lands travel through their kingdom, and their kings and rulers marry women from so many different places. But I think the khaja who follow Hristain’s church think differently.”
Andrei smiled indulgently. “Well, my boy, it does not matter what these khaja think, since they are subject to us. They will follow the laws we set down.” He urged his horse forward and fell in with the rearguard as it cleared the river and headed down the road. A few ramshackle old wagons and clots of travelers on foot trailed behind them, khaja stragglers who were not part of the official party but who crept along in their wake, hoping to find safety by sticking as close as possible to Riasonovsky’s soldiers.
Andrei went on talking, as always, telling them old stories about the mischief he and his brothers and cousins used to get into and newer stories about the skirmish he had recently fought in and the story of the Djana River battle (for the third time) and how Yaroslav Sakhalin’s army had routed the combined forces of the Zaran and Gelasti princes and their allies.
In this way, Vasha reflected, Andrei was refreshingly different from Ilya and Tess. Tess rarely told stories. Mostly she taught, but even then the words she used and the knowledge she related seemed more characterized by the silences between the words than by the words themselves. When Ilya spoke, even the most casual remarks bore so much weight that one could not afford to miss any least syllable he uttered. But Vasha did not want to think about his father.
Katya had used to be like Andrei Sakhalin, just going on and on and not seeming to care if you were listening with your full attention all the time, but since their last fight, she did not speak to Vasha except when civility demanded.
He sighed. But even as the last bit of air escaped his lips, a thought struck him with such force that he gulped in air again. Had Andrei Sakhalin been suggesting to him that he take matters into his own hands and mark Princess Rusudani? Just like that? A woman could not erase the mark from her face, nor could a man withdraw a stroke of the saber once it was cut. And once he had married her, he would hold position and power through her that could not be taken away from him.
Then he imagined what his father would say.
Even so, the idea nagged at him for the rest of the day. When they stopped for the night, Vasha went along with Stefan who every evening without fail helped Jaelle with her most onerous chores. Tonight the young woman handed Stefan four buckets without a word, as if she now expected his help. Rusudani sat on a stool outside her tent, sewing. Vasha wanted to linger, to see if she would possibly, just possibly, ask Jaelle to talk to him, but it wasn’t fair to make Stefan go down to
the river by himself. Once they were out of sight of the tent, Vasha took two of the buckets from Stefan.
They walked down to the river, batting away flies and underbrush on the overgrown path that led down to the bank, shrouded in bushes and overhanging trees. It was sticky hot this evening, and there was no breeze to move the air.
Vasha slapped his neck and cursed. “I don’t understand why you do this every night.”
“I don’t know,” mumbled Stefan in a voice that made it obvious that he did know.
“Has she asked you to lie with her yet?”
Stefan flashed him an angry glance. “Be quiet! Didn’t you ever listen to Tess? I’ve been thinking a lot about what she told us about khaja women. I didn’t believe it then. Who could believe that people could be such barbarians?”
He trailed off where the path gave out. They slid down a ragged slope and knelt to fill the buckets with water. The river burbled along. On the dim bank opposite, trees bent down over the waters and the sky rose, night-gray with clouds, above the vegetation.
Stefan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “If it’s true that khaja women are taught not to take lovers, then why should Jaelle ask me to lie with her? And if she is a whore, then if I show my interest in her by giving her a gift, as I would with no shame if she was a jaran woman like Katya, then she will think I am buying her. So I wish you would stop asking me about it.”
“I’m sorry.” Vasha felt like an idiot. He should have seen how upset Stefan was. “If you feel that strongly for her, you could… marry her.”
Stefan snorted. He hung the buckets from notches on a heavy pole and stood up underneath them, balancing the weight on his shoulders. “Everyone knows that Anatoly Sakhalin made a fool of himself by marking that khaja Singer impulsively. Gods, I’ve even heard Grandfather Niko say that same thing about Bakhtiian.”
“You did not!”
“Did, too!” Stefan scrambled back up the slope. Water sloshed in the buckets but only a tiny wave splashed over and spilled. “Even if it was possible, I would talk to my sister and mother and grandmother first. She would have to come live with us, wouldn’t she? It wouldn’t be fair to a khaja woman if she had to come to live with the tribes for the rest of her life, if her new sisters and aunts didn’t want her.”
“Well, it isn’t true about my father, anyway.”
Stefan paused two steps up the path and looked back. “Is, too,” he said in an undertone. “Grandfather Niko says that everyone knows that he was desperately in love with Tess, but she wouldn’t have him. Or at least, not until later.”
“Is not.”
Wind stirred in the trees, bringing with it the sound of harness, a ring so faint it almost drowned under the noise of the river.
“But, Vasha, they all saw—” Stefan broke off. The ring of bridle sounded again, closer now. Vasha leapt up the path and stopped in the shadows beside Stefan. There was only silence and darkness, but then they heard the noise again. A shadow moved. A man appeared, dismounted, out of the trees. He looked up and down the bank. He had the bulky shape of a man dressed in chainmail. He was not jaran.
A hissed whisper drifted out, and he quickly retreated back into the bushes. A horse snorted and stilled. Then nothing, only the rush of river water flowing by.
Stefan bent his knees to set the buckets on the ground silently. Twigs snapped. They froze.
A figure formed in the shadows along the path leading back to the jaran camp. Andrei Sakhalin halted beside the two young men. He lifted his chin and indicated the opposite shore.
“Those are khaja soldiers. You two, go back to the princess’s camp and stay there all night. I will let Riasonovsky know.” His voice was the merest shadow, scarcely audible. “Take the buckets, so they won’t know anything is amiss. We don’t want her to try to escape again.” He stepped aside to let them pass, and they went quickly, heeding his urgency.
As they came out of the woody bank and into sight of the camp fires, Stefan gulped in air, as if he had forgotten to breathe. “Do you think they’ve come to steal Princess Rusudani?”
“I don’t know. We couldn’t even tell how many men there are.”
They crossed through the unobtrusive ring of guards that surrounded Rusudani’s tent.
Vasha paused by the old veteran Zaytsev. “Be on alert,” he said. “We saw some khaja soldiers across the river.”
Zaytsev took in this information without batting an eye. “Does Riasonovsky know?”
“Yes. Sakhalin went to warn him.”
Zaytsev grunted, and Vasha hurried to follow Stefan, who had set the buckets down beside the smaller tent. From here, the two young men could see the princess sitting within the halo of lantern light, reading aloud from a book while Jaelle sat at her feet, mending a torn blouse. It was so quiet that Vasha heard Rusudani’s words clearly, each syllable, although he understood none of them. She recited more than read, and her voice was clear and plain. He admired her for sitting with such composure, a hostage in an enemy camp. She could not know what fate awaited her, but she did not seem to fear it.
Not like he did.
Abruptly she looked up, straight at them, although surely it was too dark to make them out clearly. The lantern’s gleam gave her eyes a lustrous cast, and her face was fair, her expression tranquil, perhaps a little stern. Vasha’s heart lurched, and his knees felt weak. He could not help himself. He stared at her, even though it was the worst manners, and unseemly behavior for a man.
She dropped her gaze and spoke a few words to Jaelle. The servant rose and picked her way across the ground toward them. Vasha felt Stefan go tense beside him.
When Jaelle reached them, she flashed a glance at Stefan first and then regarded Vasha. This close, Vasha saw that she too, did not look frightened; resigned, perhaps. Where Rusudani carried with her a kind of uncanny calm, Jaelle looked more exhausted in spirit than anything, as if she had ceased fearing the jaran not because they couldn’t hurt her, but because she was used to being hurt. All at once he wondered what Jaelle thought of them, of him, of Stefan, who every night came dutifully to help her simply because he had fallen in love with her pretty face and quiet manners.
“The princess wishes to speak with you,” she said finally.
Vasha stood rooted to the ground. She wanted to speak with him. With a last glance toward Stefan, Jaelle walked back toward the princess. Vasha followed her reflexively and Stefan, not to be left out, practically trod on his heels.
Because Rusudani was sitting, it was polite to sit, cross-legged on the ground three strides from her. Jaelle knelt equidistant between the two and Stefan hovered, undecided, and then took up a position a step behind Vasha, kneeling as well. Vasha smelled the faintest aroma of incense, or perhaps it was her scent, the exhalation of a khaja perfume. He felt dizzy, she was so close beside him. The rest of the world vanished, and Rusudani regarded him steadily, with interest but without fear.
She spoke, and Jaelle translated. “Princess Rusudani wishes to know who you are, and what your name is, and why you led the expedition that rescued her from the Lord of Sharvan.”
Words caught in his throat and he could not speak. He dropped his gaze to stare at the hem of her skirt. Stitched along the hemline ran a series of sigils, embroidered in pale gray thread against the plain dark blue of the fabric, a practical color quite at variance with the wealth of jewels she wore. Her feet stirred, shapes molding the curve of the skirt into a new contour. His elbow, shifting, caught on the hilt of his saber, and he realized with a flush so strong that it made his heart pound that he could mark her right now and with that mark make her his wife.
By jaran law. Lifting his eyes to look at her, at her lucid expression, at her right hand resting lightly on the tiny knife suspended from a gold chain around her neck, he experienced a revelation: Marking her would be an incredibly stupid thing for him to do.
Even by becoming the husband of a powerful khaja princess, he could not force the Orzhekov tribe to look more kindly on him
. He could not make Ilya Bakhtiian love him as a son.
Still, he succumbed to temptation. He wanted to impress her. “Tell Princess Rusudani,” he said, proud that his voice barely shook, “that my name is Vassily Kireyevsky, and I am the son of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian.”
The world had long ago ceased holding any surprises for Jaelle. She had, by necessity, learned how to measure men: Some wanted companionship on the long road, others a hard-working, uncomplaining girl to do their washing and bring them wine; a few cared mostly about their pleasure in bed, but those rarely expected her to do any other work. Once she had taken a hard slap from a merchant rather than hire herself to him; later, along the train of gossip that passed down through the women who followed the caravans, she had heard that he had beaten a girl to death.
But to have this slender, unexceptional jaran man sit down modestly beside her and quietly announce that he was the son of the great and terrible leader of the barbarian hordes… that shocked her so completely that she forgot to translate his words.
“What did he say?” asked Rusudani in her cool, hard voice.
“I beg your pardon, mistress,” stammered Jaelle, selfconsciously pushing a strand of hair back under her scarf. The two young men smelled of horse and grass and sweat, but otherwise seemed clean, and that, too, surprised her. “He says he is named Vasil’ii Kir’yevski, and that he is the son of the Bakhtiian.”
Rusudani’s expression, always impassive, did not change.
“Do you think he is telling the truth, my lady?”
Rusudani examined the young man, who stared in his turn at her feet. The princess had the same huge, dark, lovely eyes that adorned the images of Our Lord’s sister, the blessed Pilgrim, in the frescoes that told of Her life and journey. Here in the lands where the False Church reigned, there were, of course, no frescos, no images at all to spread the story of Hristain and His Sundering. But Jaelle remembered them vividly from her childhood, when she had knelt for hours in the chapel and stared at the brightly painted people on the walls.
