by Kate Elliott
Anatoly kept his gaze fixed on the horses. “Any man would be honored to be your daughter’s tsadokhis choice.”
“I beg your pardon for speaking of these things so baldly. But you have seen as well as I that Yana has lived too much in the khaja world and has had no older girls to emulate. It is wrong that a girl should reach her age and not arrange with her aunt for her flower night. So I must act.”
They had come close enough to the horses now that by mutual unspoken consent they both halted. The stallion circled warily, but the lead mare lifted her ears and ambled toward them.
“Of course,” said Anatoly softly, watching the mare, “no man would wish a girl to feel that he was forced on her.”
“She admires you,” said Karolla flatly, “but she acts as a boy would act admiring an older woman, shying away, waiting for her to approach him.”
The mare had a black mane and a chestnut coat, and she halted six paces from them and eyed the humans curiously but without fear. Anatoly knew an invitation when he saw one. Karolla calmly handed him an apple she had evidently taken from the gardens, and with it he approached the mare. She deigned to take the offering and to let him introduce himself. He let her sniff the halter and then he pulled it on over her head. Clearly she had been ridden before. A half grown filly came up and shied away, skittish, and the other mares cropped at the grass. Anatoly heaved himself up onto her back and swung a leg over. Waited. She shifted but seemed content.
Karolla had another apple and a bridle. Now she walked over to the nearest of the other mares. Soon enough, she, too, was mounted. Anatoly grinned. Together they rode back toward the tent. The rest of the herd followed at a distance, except for the stallion, who trumpeted his displeasure at this desertion. Anatoly’s mare merely quirked her ears.
“It’s no wonder you prefer me to him,” said Anatoly to her. “I’m much better-looking.”
She flattened her ears briefly, and he chuckled.
Karolla came up beside him. “If I arrange her tsadokhis night, will you agree to act as if she had already lain flowers beside your saddle?”
The children saw them. Portia leaped up, shouting, “Papa! Papa!” and Valentin hoisted her up and shushed her. Ilyana stood up as well, her face alight with pleasure.
“Oh, Mama! Let me ride!” she called. “No, I’ll go first, Evdi, and then I’ll take you.”
She disappeared inside the tent and came out a moment later with a saddle. Karolla dismounted. Anatoly watched as Ilyana swiftly made the acquaintance of the mare, a compact roan, and saddled her and mounted.
She shot a glance toward Anatoly. “Race you!” Urging the mare forward, she put it through its paces, getting acquainted. After a bit, she encouraged it to run. Like any jaran girl, she knew how to ride. Her braid bounced on her back and she laughed with joy.
Anatoly sighed and dismounted. He tossed the reins to Karolla. “Let me get my saddle. We’ll let the children ride.”
“Do you agree?” asked Karolla quietly.
Gods, it was tempting. Any man would be tempted. But what Karolla suggested went too far. He could just imagine what his grandmother would say about it. “If she places flowers beside my saddle, I would be honored by her choice. But if she does not wish it, then even by your request I cannot act. I beg your pardon.”
Karolla simply nodded.
They let the children ride for a while, then turned the horses loose.
It rained in the afternoon, so they were all stuck inside the warren of rooms that made up the caravansary. There were many arguments, mostly about rehearsal space and if anyone knew when they were expected to perform. Portia splashed in puddles in the courtyard until Diana yelled at her to come in under shelter, and David ben Unbutu found some kind of interface to a map of the palace under the gazebo in the center of the courtyard.
But only three people could stand out of the rain under the tiny gazebo roof, and so many of the actors began quarreling about right of place that David told them all to go away. He did not precisely lose his temper, Anatoly noted; instead he spoke so softly that they had to stop talking in order to hear him. Anatoly sat on a bench and watched the spectacle. Most Earth khaja were quite patient—it was something he admired in them—but many of the actors were not just young but nervous, and that made them irritable and quick to take offense.
Diana took Portia to bed. The rain slackened and gave out, and Anatoly walked into the courtyard and leaned over the gazebo railing. The map looked like a mosaic made of thin lines of light, but each time David touched an intersection of lines an image rose out of the floor, mist rising and solidifying into a tiny model of a building.
“It’s clever,” muttered David to what was left of his audience: Anatoly, Gwyn Jones, Yomi, Hyacinth, and the woman Wingtuck. “But not very illuminating. We’ll have to copy each individual item into our modeler and then assemble it as a whole.”
Nevertheless, they watched with interest as, one by one, insubstantial edifices formed on the mosaic and melted again. Much later, Anatoly went back to Diana’s room, half expecting to find flowers beside his saddle. There were none, of course. He was surprised at how disappointed he was.
He took off his boots and his clothes and lay down on a cot. He heard Diana shift, so attuned to her that he could practically feel the blanket slipping over her skin.
“I couldn’t believe it when you walked right up to the rim of that platform,” she whispered suddenly. “I thought I was going to have heart failure. Aren’t you scared of anything?”
“Only of losing you,” he murmured.
“What? I couldn’t hear you.”
“Why should I be afraid of anything here? If I died, no one would miss me.”
“Oh, Goddess, now you’re feeling sorry for yourself again.” She shifted to turn her back toward him.
“Diana!”
“Shhh. You’ll wake Portia.”
He got up and she stiffened, but he went instead to the window. The clouds had blown off. Three small moons chased after them across the sky. Earth had never seemed quite as different as this. He felt lighter, almost buoyant, something to do with gravity and the size and density of this moon. He stood there until she fell asleep.
He woke when the first slivers of light pierced through the window. Going outside, he caught and saddled the chestnut mare and rode toward the distant rose wall, toward the dark slash that marked, perhaps, a gate. It loomed greater and ever greater, much farther away than he had first judged. When he reached the base at last, it blocked out half the sky; it practically seemed to curve inward at the top. The mare grew skittish, so he dismounted, hobbled her, and walked the rest of the way. The air hummed, a tingling on his skin.
The dark slash was not a gate but an opaque window, a huge block of ebony stone. The wall itself was translucent, and through it he saw another world colored rose by the substance of the wall. Beyond, in that other world, it rained. Tentatively, he reached out and touched the wall. Hard. Still, the material had some quality that made him feel as if with the right kind of pressure he could push his way through.
“Anatoly!”
He turned.
Two riders approached. One was khaja; he could tell by the seat. As they neared, he recognized David by his profusion of black braids. The other rider was Ilyana. Anatoly cursed under his breath. He was too old to become infatuated with a girl half his age. He knew very well that part of it was a reaction to Diana’s turning away from him, and yet, he was perfectly within his rights to admire a beautiful young woman and even to hope that she might honor him by choosing him as her first lover. It wasn’t unknown for a man to find more gratifying love with a lover than with his wife, but, gods, at least he expected his wife to respect him.
“How do you know the map in the courtyard is a real map of the palace?” Ilyana was asking as they came within earshot.
“We don’t, of course. Find anything interesting? Did you do a scan for the composition of the wall?”
“No,” s
aid Anatoly. “I wouldn’t understand the figures. See how the wall curves. It’s raining on the other side.”
“I think we’re under a dome,” said David. “It would make sense, given that they would have a different composition of air to breathe—close to what we’re used to, I’d guess, since they can exist in Earth’s atmosphere without any evident aids. That doesn’t explain the trick with the platform yesterday, though.”
“The air is singing.” Ilyana put out both hands and touched the wall. She shut her eyes as if to listen better. “It’s just like that trellis in the ship: It’s as if something is pouring through this. I almost feel like it’s talking to me.”
She shrieked and jerked back her hands.
“What’s wrong?” David demanded, taking hold of her arms. All three of them took quick steps backward. The wall remained. Beyond, it rained, while the air remained clear and warm on this side of the wall.
Ilyana gulped down air. She leaned her head unselfconsciously against David’s chest, and it was David who, a moment later, let go of her and stepped away.
“It was so odd,” she said finally, turning to look at the wall. “It was hard like stone when I touched it. Then when I began to listen I really did feel like I could just hear what it was saying if I focused right. I felt like I could hear this tone. I thought it was the beat of a drum, and the wall began to melt away under my hands, like I could all of a sudden push through to the other side.” She paused and smiled apologetically. “It scared me.”
David pulled on his braids—’locks, he called them—and frowned. He turned and walked over to the wall, placed both hands on it, and shut his eyes. After a while he opened them, “I feel a humming. That’s it. Anatoly?”
“Just the humming. But when I touched it, I felt as if I should be able to push through, if only I could understand it.”
Ilyana cast him a grateful glance. He forced himself to meet her eyes and smile reassuringly at her. Gods, she was scarcely more than a child.
“Well, Yana,” said David, “do you want to try it again?”
She smiled nervously. “Do I… do I have to?”
“Of course not!”
“No. Not right now.” She hesitated. “You know what else?” Her words were tentative, groping. “It was like I had started opening a door into a room, only just as I looked I realized that the room was way bigger on the inside than it could be from the outside.” She faltered. “Does that make sense?”
Anatoly exchanged a glance with David. “We could ride the wall,” Anatoly said. “If it is the wall of a dome, it must circle around until we reach this spot again.”
“Yana?”
She bit her lower lip, shook her head. “I have to go back. Mama is expecting me.”
“Tell the others where we went, then,” said David as she went back to her horse. As she rode away, he turned to Anatoly, and for an instant Anatoly thought he was about to say something about the girl, but he did not.
Instead, the two men began their ride. Anatoly enjoyed being out here, exploring. He taught David some songs, and they discussed how to take readings on the slate and why the rose wall might appear to run in a straight line, from a distance, and yet prove, as they rode, to be curved.
It took them the rest of the day, riding at a steady clip and stopping several times to rest and water the horses at streams which were too convenient to be natural, to circumnavigate the dome, for that was what it proved to be. The distant, craggy mountains were simply part of the barrier, steep cliffs that from a distance gave the illusion of naturally sloped hills.
At dusk they reached the slab of ebony stone again. It was night by the time they got back to the caravansary. Two moons lit their way, and as they dismounted and unsaddled the horses, rubbing them down and turning them loose, a third and a fourth moon broached the horizon and rose into the starry sky.
“What do you think?” asked Anatoly.
“I don’t know,” admitted David. “It could be that Duke Naroshi is protecting us in some way, from other Chapalii, from a poisonous atmosphere, from getting lost. It could be that we are prisoners. It could be he just doesn’t want us wandering around in his palace without his knowing where we are. He knows we’ll try to spy on him. Why shouldn’t he try to stop us?”
“Then what did Yana hear?”
David just smiled wryly and shook his head. “That one I won’t even guess at.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Leavetaking
“I’M NOT GOING WITH you,” said Tess. She braced herself for Ilya’s reaction, but he merely glanced at her. He had been preoccupied and moody ever since Vassily’s return, but he refused to discuss it. At times like this Tess found his autocratic nature especially exasperating. Then she chuckled.
He stopped packing his saddlebags. His look was question enough: Why are you laughing at me?
Tess knew it would be impolitic of her to tell him that she didn’t mind him acting autocratically toward others, only toward herself. “Take The Recitation,” she offered helpfully. “I’ve read it.”
He hefted the book in his left hand. Princess Rusudani had presented it to him as a gift. It was an ordinary looking book except for the gilt lettering on the cover. “You’ve read it?”
“I read it in Jeds.” And as an intellectual exercise, she’d drafted an essay comparing elements of the Church of Hristain with elements of Mediterranean religions: It was almost as if three puzzles, of the ancient religions of Christ, Isis, and Mohammed, had been mixed together and reassembled in a new form. “Of course I’ve read the commentary by Sister Casiara on the nature of the Pilgrim.”
Ilya thrust the holy book into one of the saddlebags. “Then I will be able to debate its finer points with Princess Rusudani.”
“Ah. So you are taking her with you.”
“When we defeat the King of Mircassia, I must have a claimant to put on the throne in his place.”
“She is not necessarily a partisan for our cause, Ilya.”
“Not necessarily. But she is now under my control.”
Tess hesitated, then broached the subject she and Sonia had once discussed. “You could marry her to a jaran prince.”
“I will do that, naturally,” he said without looking at her. “But I’m in no hurry. Mircassia must fall first.”
“Marry her to Vasha.” There. Now she’d said it.
“I do not choose to discuss Vassily Kireyevsky.”
“Stubborn bastard. You’re very annoying when you’re in this unreasonable mood.”
He finished packing his bags. Finally, he spoke. “We should have let Nadine foster him.”
“He’s your son, Ilya.”
“He has no father.”
“You know I’m right.”
“Gods, Tess! Must we have this argument again? He was spoiled by his mother and he expects the same treatment now that he is a man. A prince! He’s worse than Andrei Sakhalin.”
“I resent that! He is not worse than Andrei Sakhalin. Nor have I seen to his education for eight years and had him turn out that badly. Do you know what is wrong here? You! You could never make up your mind, and so you always treated him too gently. You have to treat him as you would any son of yours.”
“If any son of mine behaved as he has behaved, this is how I would treat him! He will act as my servant until I turn him over to Zvertkov.”
“After what he went through as a boy! That’s cruel. He’ll hate it.”
“His behavior is a disgrace to this tent! He will obey me.”
The passion of his statement took Tess aback. Abruptly, she felt optimistic, and she hid a smile from him. He could not appreciate humor when he was angry. If Ilya was this angry with Vasha, there was hope for the boy. Because the truth was, Vasha would never be accepted as a soldier on her say-so. He must have a man’s sponsorship, and without uncles or cousins, he had only his father, problematic as that relationship was. Just as a girl became a woman through the agency of her female relatives, so a boy bec
ame a man with the support of his male relatives. That was why there was no worse fate for a child in the jaran than to be orphaned, to lose not just parents but the entire kin-group.
“Once you’ve completed the campaign,” she said, changing the subject, “I will sail south with the children and meet you in Jeds.”
He kissed her absently and hunted around the tent for something he was missing. Of course such a separation seemed natural to him. Jaran men rode away from the tribes all the time, to go to war. They had themselves been separated for months at a time on three occasions in the last eight years. I should be used to it by now, thought Tess, but somehow it always felt like a foretaste of death to her. She would never get used to it.
But Ilya was, in a sense, already gone. Once he had made the decision to launch the final assault on Mircassia and Filis, his mind had gone to the war. Now his body would follow. Anyway, she had received two more cylinders from Charles. This would give her the freedom to explore them. She felt guilty at once for thinking it, as if she wished to be rid of him.
From the inner chamber, she heard him voice a soft exclamation: He had found whatever he was looking for. Curious, she pushed aside the curtain and looked in to see him weaving one of her hair ribbons into his belt buckle. He glanced up at her and suddenly looked self-conscious. Gods, he hated being caught out. But Ilya was never one to stall or retreat when attack would serve just as well.
“Where are the children?” he asked.
“Katya took them out on a little birbas, out in the park.”
“Well, then.” He crossed to her and firmly pulled her into the inner chamber, letting the curtain fall closed behind her. “Since we leave at dawn tomorrow, and there will be a late and public celebration tonight….”
“You don’t have to make excuses to me, my heart. I think it’s very sweet that you’re taking one of my hair ribbons with you as a token.” He ignored her, intent on undoing her belt. “Lest you’ve forgotten, you have to take my boots off first.”
In answer, he picked her up and dropped down onto the pillows with her. She kissed him, and partway through the kiss she was struck as if physically with a premonition that something horrible was going to happen to him, that she would never see him again. She broke off the kiss and cupped his face in her hands, staring into his eyes for so long that he stilled to match her silence.
