by Kate Elliott
“He’d be a fool to do it. Bakhtiian will gather an army and ride right back here and kill him. He has to.”
“But what if we can make him an ally?”
Stefan just shook his head. “Sometimes I think you’re half khaja yourself, but I suppose that must be because of Tess. Such an insult can never be forgiven.”
“But it doesn’t have to be that way!” Vasha insisted, and then gave up. The door opened. Vasha turned toward it eagerly, hoping it was the guardsmen to take him to the solar, but it was Mikhail, come to take the tray away.
To his great disappointment, Vasha was not summoned that evening, nor the next. Nor did Stefan manage to meet Jaelle at the well. But Stefan did gather up pebbles from outside and they used charcoal sticks to draw a grid onto the floor near the fireplace, and there they sat and played, Vasha against Stefan and then against Mikhail, and then Stefan against Mikhail while Vasha watched impatiently and whispered suggestions to Stefan until Mikhail, laughing, objected that it gave Stefan too great an advantage to have Vasha’s advice.
It was here, the third evening after Ilya’s visit, that Prince Janos found them. Vasha judged it better to allow Janos to approach to observe the game rather than to attempt an undignified scramble to his feet. In any case, he was simply so much better a khot player than Stefan that it didn’t take him long to finish engulfing Stefan’s stones.
“I have seen the other slaves playing this as well,” said Janos, “but I still don’t understand the point of the game.”
Now that Janos had addressed him, Vasha stood. “The purpose of the game is to take control of as much of the board as possible.”
“Ah.”
“We must play again, you and I.”
“I had hoped for a game of castles this evening.”
“I would be honored.”
In this way, Vasha played to the other game, the game that Janos himself had introduced: That Vasha was, not a prisoner, but an honored guest. Together they went to the solar, and here, where the lighting was better, Vasha noticed that the prince’s face looked rather battered. His lower lip bore a fresh scab, still healing over and somewhat swollen, and a greenish-yellow bruise peeped out from under his hair up against his left ear. They sat down at the table and a steward set out the game.
They began to play.
“Back when I still lived at my father’s court, I was noted as a man who could defeat men twice and even three times my own age at this game,” said Janos. Vasha glanced up at him. It seemed unlike Janos to feel obliged to brag about himself, and in any case, the women had not yet entered the room. Besides his stewards and Mikhail, who had come along as Vasha’s attendant, there was certainly no one to impress. “You are also a shrewd player, Prince Vasil’ii.”
They played for a while in concentrated silence. Then Vasha moved a knight to threaten Janos’s castle, and said, “Andrei Sakhalin may not have as much backing as you think, Prince Janos, whatever he’s told you.”
Janos grinned without looking up. “Which game are we playing, Prince Vasil’ii?”
“The game of princes, Prince Janos. Is it not said of castles that a king’s son should learn it who wishes to learn the art of ruling?”
“The philosopher said, ‘Any game played by princes must teach strategy.’ Who is this Sakhalin you speak of?”
“Only Andrei Sakhalin could have given you the information that Bakhtiian rode to Urosh Monastery. Sakhalin also administers the territory of Dushan for the tribes, and often resides near your father’s court. You are indeed a shrewd player, Prince Janos, among the best I have played, but I hope you have not been misled by the Sakhalin prince into thinking he can deliver on promises he may have made to you.”
“What brings on this sudden solicitude, Prince Vasil’ii? My abbot takes your knight.”
“My lion shield takes your abbot.”
“ ‘Act not in haste what you may later repent,’ as my mother has often advised me,” said Janos, with an odd catch in his voice that Vassily could not interpret. He moved his gryphon shield forward.
Vasha realized immediately that he had been rash to drive his knight so far over to the other side. He chuckled. “I would hate to lose a good opponent, Prince Janos. Shrewd players are not so easy to find.”
Janos glanced up at him, and again Vasha glimpsed an unfathomable emotion in his expression that he concealed quickly. “Do you know other shrewd players, Prince Vasil’ii?”
“The Prince of Jeds is a shrewd player, Prince Janos, and she supports me.”
The door opened, bringing the smell of cold air trapped within the stone walls of the stairwell into the warm chamber. Lady Jadranka and Princess Rusudani entered with their entourage. Janos rose to greet them, and Vasha rose as well but did not approach them. The ladies settled down onto their couches and chairs, and various stewards and guardsmen took up stations around the room. Ilya and Vladimir came in toward the end of the procession, and Rusudani beckoned them over to take up a station near her. She seemed, Vasha thought, to be sending some kind of signal—to whom? To her husband, that she would choose her own guards? To the others, that these foreign slaves somehow distinguished her? Or to Vasha himself? He tried to catch her eye, but she had already bent over her reading.
The presence of the women was like an overpowering perfume in the room, they came in so laden with scent, and the soft murmuring of their voices made Vasha long for home. Home. For the Orzhekov tribe, for his cousins and aunts, if he could truly call them that; for Yuri curled up asleep in his lap and Natalia chewing on her lower lip as she considered her letters or what move to make next when he taught her khot.
“Even if it is true that you have the backing of the Prince of Jeds, her husband is dead. What power is truly left her?”
The comment surprised a laugh from Vasha. “What power is left her? The power she inherited from her brother when she became prince of Jeds. The power lent her by the support of my grandmother and aunts. She is the one who built Sarai. I don’t think—” Vassily was not used to thinking so much so deeply and to having revelations so often. “She wears it lightly, but I don’t think there is anyone in the tribes as powerful as she is. Gods, Andrei Sahkalin has no power except what his marriage to my cousin Galina brings him! But that is true of any man.” He looked up to meet Janos’s gaze only to find Janos gazing at him with a look of complete incomprehension on his face. After a moment, Vasha judged it polite to turn his attention away and study the board. In fact, Janos had not beaten him, but a series of six or seven moves, if not countered, would render Vasha helpless on the left flank. “The priest of cups moves two squares.”
Janos propped his chin on his hands and stared at the board. Without looking up, he said, “Are you married?”
“No.” Vasha tried to but could not stop himself from glancing over at Rusudani. She came to a break in the verse and, to his surprise, beckoned Ilya over to her. Ilya knelt before her.
Janos glanced toward this affecting scene. “Your priest refused to kneel before me, but I see him there, now, kneeling in front of my wife.”
“She is a woman.”
Rusudani handed Ilya her copy of The Recitation, the one that had been translated into Taor, and, evidently, bade him read it aloud. Without demur, Ilya settled cross-legged onto the floor in front of her and took the book in his lap. The women murmured and stilled. When he began to read, they hushed completely and leaned forward in unison rather like a stand of grass grazed by a stiff wind. His voice was steady and rich.
“ ‘So it came to pass in those spring days that Ammion the Shepherd took the flocks to the hills, where the streams ran cold from the winter snows, and left his wife and her son alone to care for the garden and the hearth.’ ”
“I have heard that the jaran take more than one wife,” said Janos.
“Certainly not. A man may marry again if his wife dies, but taking more than one wife is a khaja custom.”
“Khaja?”
“A person who i
s not jaran.”
“Ah. But I am khaja, and we do not take more than one wife. It is enjoined in the holy book that each man must cleave to one woman so that from their union may come children blessed by the covenant of God.”
Vasha smiled wryly.
“But in truth,” added Janos, “it is as easy for a man like my father to shed a wife if she has no one to speak for her as it is for you or me to shed our clothes before we lay down into bed at night.”
“Ha! I knew you were barbarians. Begging your pardon, Prince Janos. The gods have enjoined my people that once the mark is made on a woman’s face by a man, only death can sunder their partnership.”
“What mark?”
“When a man chooses a woman to marry, he puts the mark on her. He cuts her, on the cheek.” Vasha drew a line down his own cheek, to demonstrate.
Janos looked faintly horrified. He coughed. “Begging your pardon, Prince Vasil’ii, but I scarcely think you can call us barbarians if you perform such acts of mutilation on your own women.”
“ ‘Now there came in those days to that country a storm brought forth from the strife of men. Death came to that country as the scythe harvests the wheat, as the wolf strikes down the lamb. Death came to the valley where the garden and hearth of Ammion were tended by his wife and her son. There came to her in those days an angel, and under his wing she sheltered. His wing was as bright as the strike of lightning and where it hung over the garden and the hearth like a pall of incandescent smoke no army dared approach.’ ”
“Knight takes cups,” added Janos.
Vasha moved his priest of swords three squares, without comment. He was still smarting. It had never before occurred to him that it might seem barbaric to mark a woman for marriage.
“What happens to a woman of your people if she never marries?” asked Janos suddenly.
Vasha knotted his fingers together, knowing the answer to this question all too well. “It is a shameful thing for a woman never to marry, unless she becomes a priest. She can have no children… or if she does have a child because she has not listened to the wisdom of the mothers, then that child is forever shamed for not having a father.”
“Ah,” said Janos, as if Vasha’s reply answered some question for him. He studied the board in silence for a long while. “I left court when my father put aside my mother,” he said at last, in a soft voice, “because I could not bear to see her shamed, and because my brothers ridiculed me for being no better than a bastard. I swore then that I would never put aside the woman I married, even for a great prize.”
“I would think that there is no greater prize in khaja lands than Princess Rusudani.” Vasha fingered the pieces he had taken from Janos and judged it politic to add to this comment, in case he had somehow betrayed himself. “Her grandfather is the king of Mircassia, and by blood right can she not claim that throne for herself, even in khaja lands?”
Janos glanced toward his wife, who was modestly watching Ilya’s hands tracing a slow zigzag path down the text of the holy book.
“ ‘It came to pass when the harvest was brought in and Ammion returned from the hill-country, that he found his garden and hearth untouched by war but those of his neighbors shorn to the ground. He found his wife giving of their harvest to his neighbors, and she was great with child. ‘Whence came this harvest and this child,’ he asked. ‘For I have been gone all those days when I might have sown the fields, nor in all the years of our marriage have you conceived, but brought me only this branch from another tree and now a new acorn swells.’ And she replied, ‘I have sheltered under an angel’s wing, and of his bounty do I bring the harvest of God to all those who reach for it with empty hands.’ ”
“Only a fool,” said Janos, “would wish to put aside a woman whose birth and inheritance are as providential and as crucial as hers.” He seemed almost to be talking to himself. Vasha agreed, taking advantage of this opportunity to look at Rusudani, but dared not say so aloud. Janos sat back abruptly and tossed his head, shaking something off, and with a finger he worried at his wounded lip. “How does a man make this mark on the woman he marries?”
“With his saber.”
“Your women do not object to this?”
“Women have no choice in marriage.” Vasha did not choose to remind Janos that Rusudani had also had no choice.
“Prince of swords advances two squares,” said Janos.
Vasha bit down on a smile. He moved his remaining knight so that he cut off Janos’s prince from his castle. “Do not trust the prince who rides without an army behind him, Prince Janos. Just as your gracious mother could be put aside, as you said yourself, because she had no family to protect her, so can a man claim to be more powerful than he is. It will go hard on his allies when his weakness is revealed.”
Janos saw at that moment the feint Vasha had planned, and the way he was trapped; it would take several moves yet, but his prince was hopelessly out of position now to protect the castle. But he only smiled. “You are a rare player, Prince Vasil’ii.”
“I thank you,” said Vasha lightly, “but the fact is, my cousin Katerina is much better than I am. If you brought her here in the evenings, you and I might test our skills against her.”
Janos’s expression startled Vasha. For an instant Vasha thought he had offended the khaja prince. Then, horrified, he wondered if Ilya’s suspicions had been correct.
“That is not possible,” he said curtly. “She is too valuable…” He broke off and seemed to reconsider his words. “She must remain in seclusion. If my father was to get word that I held a jaran princess here, he would send men to take her away, and I could not stop him without declaring war on him outright.”
“I beg your pardon.” But the confession made Vasha’s heart pound, and not just because it confirmed his belief that Janos was, in his own way, an honorable man. Janos was so close to rebellion against his father as made no real difference. That was a weakness that could be exploited. Ilya just did not understand. Now that Janos was married to Rusudani, who had that strong claim to the Mircassian throne, it would be foolhardy not to lure Janos into an alliance with them.
“ ‘When the first snows came, she brought forth the child, and Ammion repented of his anger, for he saw that his wife had spoken the truth. He begged God for forgiveness. They named the child Loukios, for he wore the light of God on his brow. And the angels came in hosts, and the heavens about the garden and the hearth rang with light.’ ”
“However,” said Janos, “you have forgotten your center and let it weaken. Prince of swords advances two squares and places your castle in siege.”
Vasha swore at himself inwardly, but in the end he had to concede the game to Janos.
“We will go hunting together, Prince Vasil’ii,” said Janos when the guards arrived to take him away to his tower prison.
The next day, Stefan and Mikhail were sent out to dig ditches, and Ilya brought him his food. Ilya was in one of his stubborn moods, unwilling to talk except to annoy Vasha with some sharp questions about Katya, and whether Stefan or Mikhail had caught even a single glimpse of her or her servant. He seemed disinclined to appreciate Janos’s efforts to shield Katya from his father. Finally, Vasha convinced Ilya to play khot. In this way, undisturbed, they whiled away the afternoon.
But the truth was, Ilya was only a decent player, not truly any better than Mikhail or most of the other men in the army, who played khot habitually but without the concentration and patience necessary to make one a master of the game. Vasha was a trifle disappointed in his father.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Bearding the Lion
ANATOLY STOOD WITH A chasm under his boots. The walls of the observation pod were so clear that he could not perceive them except for their solidity. He crouched and ran a hand along the gently sloping floor, curving up all around him to the shimmer of light that rimmed the entry lock. His other hand strayed away from his body and he pulled it back and hooked his fingers into his belt. Below, hanging in no
thingness with the spray of stars as its backdrop, the shadow of the transfer station flashed and came to life as the sun rose around the planet Devi. Everywhere he saw ships locked into ports sewn into the skin of the great rings that circled the station. They winked at him, creatures of plastic and steel and other substances he had no name for; unlike horses, he could not name their breeds.
The lock coughed open and a woman stepped through, reoriented herself, and with her sticky boots squelched down around the curve of the pod, halting two strides from him. She looked slightly ridiculous because her thick curly hair floated in all directions around her face, but she grinned companionably at him, and Anatoly reflected ruefully that he probably looked much the same. As was proper for a soldier on campaign he was letting his hair grow out in the traditional manner, but it wasn’t yet long enough to braid properly.
“There’s actually a way to gravitize these pods,” she said, as if she had read his mind, “but people like the old-fashioned romanticism of zero-gee. Of course, microgravity technology is all borrowed technology and some people would rather keep our pristine but backward methods. No one’s ever seen a chameleon in zero-gee.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Branwen Emrys, by the way. I’m captain of the yacht that’ll be taking you to Paladia Major, and the emperor.”
Anatoly knew his khaja customs, or at least some of them. He shook her hand, noting her straightforward manner with relief. Like a jaran woman, she expected to be treated with respect; he could see it in her eyes and in her bearing. “Thank you. I am Anatoly Sakhalin. Can you pick out your ship from the herd?”
She laughed at that, but in a pleased way. “Oh, yes. I’d know Gray Raven anywhere.” She opened the pouch on her belt and pulled out a pair of binoculars, handing them to him. “Wind the strap around your wrist so it doesn’t float away from you. I always forget that, myself.” She crouched down, pressing a finger against the clear floor. “I’ll point at her.”
