by Kate Elliott
“The wise father wishes you to come forward and mark the contract,” Jaelle said. It had been written the night before. “It is usual for a young woman to have her father or brother sign the contract for her, transferring her into her husband’s protection. But because she is a widow Princess Rusudani may act on her own behalf.”
Vasha signed his name, to the surprise of the priest. That Rusudani could write as well did not surprise the khaja man; he knew she was convent educated.
So it was done.
Without speaking further to Vasha, Princess Rusudani left, escorted by the two ladies she had retained to accompany her on the journey. Tess looked over the contracts, tracing her fingers down the Yossian script and glancing at the Taor translation. She sighed, at last, and hugged Vasha, who felt numb more than anything, wishing that Rusudani had at least spoken more than the required words.
“I wish the best to you, my child,” Tess said, releasing him. “But now we really must all be leaving.”
And that was it.
Except for Stefan.
“I’m sorry,” Stefan said. “I’ll come to you as soon as I take Jaelle back to Sarai, but I can’t let her travel there alone.”
Vasha glanced toward Jaelle, who stood by the table with her hands folded together. Her cheeks bore a delicate blush on them as she looked up at Stefan and then, quickly, away again. She loved Stefan.
“I envy you, Stefan,” Vasha blurted out, then clapped his friend on the shoulder to cover his own embarrassment, to cover the words. “So you must come to Mircassia just as soon as you can, or I won’t ever forgive you.”
Stefan laughed and hugged him and he and Jaelle went away. They were riding north with a small escort, back to Sarai.
So Vasha was left alone in the chapel, except for the priest, who soon wandered out, still looking nervous.
Except for Katerina, who waited for him by the doors, great wooden doors carved with curlicues and two kneeling figures, holy men or women, Vasha could not be sure which because they wore voluminous robes and identical blank expressions.
“Like Rusudani’s expression,” Vasha said.
“You can’t expect her to thank you for this,” Katya said.
Troubled, he wandered back into the chapel and sat down on a bench. Katya sat down beside him. Restless, as always, she tweaked the sleeve of her blouse around and around, straightened it, and then began to tug at his clothes instead, smoothing out creases, lining the embroidery on his sleeves up so that it ran in a clean curve from his shoulder down to his wrist.
“Was it stupid, Katya? Shouldn’t I have done it?”
“She doesn’t love you.”
“She may come to.”
Katya shrugged. She hooked one boot up onto her knee and began fiddling with the laces. “I don’t know. Perhaps she can’t love.”
“She loves—”
“Huh. Being infatuated isn’t love, Vasha. You know that. You don’t truly love her either. You don’t know her well enough for that. How can you?”
He frowned at her, but her words didn’t make him angry because they were true. “Well, do you think she will come to like me? To be a good wife to me?”
Katerina was silent for a long while. Vasha just sat there, feeling comfortable with her, as he always did, even when he was fighting with her. “Perhaps she has learned something. Perhaps not. Perhaps she will discover that it is in her interest, that it will further her ambition, to be married to you. Perhaps she will always think of you as a captor. How can anyone know, Vasha? We can’t look into the future. But if you treat her fairly and with respect, perhaps she will not hate you and do to you what she did to Prince Janos.” Her voice shook a little on his name.
Vasha swallowed past a sudden thickening in his throat. He took hold of her hand. “Did you hate Janos?”
“I don’t know. I did at first. But what difference does it truly make to a woman if she is made a mistress by khaja custom or a wife by jaran? She has as little choice in either.”
“But—”
“But what? What choice did Princess Rusudani have to marry you? You or someone else, someone her grandfather chose for her.”
Vasha did not know what to reply. They sat there without speaking. The priest came in and began to light candles near the altar for the midday service. Seeing them, he started and hurried out again. Light streamed in through the high windows that surrounded the central nave of the chapel. Dust danced in the beams.
“You’ll be a good husband for her, though, if she chooses to accept you,” Katya said finally.
“Thank you,” he said sarcastically, and she made a face at him. “Where are you going? You haven’t told me. Back to Sarai?”
“No. I don’t know. I’ll go to Jeds. If I go back to Sarai, my mother will marry me off to some well-deserving Raevsky son.”
“You don’t want to get married.” He didn’t have to make it a question.
“Why should I want to? I don’t want to go back to Sarai. I don’t want to fight in the army anymore. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Exhausting this slim reservoir of repose, Katerina jumped to her feet and stalked up and down the aisle.
“Will you come with me?” he asked.
“Why?”
Vasha shrugged. “I don’t know. Because I love you, Katya. Come with me now, help me. You can go to Jeds afterward.”
She stopped dead. Suddenly and strangely, she looked sly. Like the Katya of old, who as a child loved lording secrets over the rest, loved having read a book her cousins hadn’t grown curious about yet and teasing them by suggesting that it contained hideous or wondrous stories; in fact, once Vasha laboriously read through them, such books usually proved to contain nothing more than yet another dry philosopher propounding about natural history or arguing a legalistic question to death.
“I had a long talk with Aunt Tess yesterday,” she said finally, her expression passing over into hesitancy, so at odds with her usual mood. “She said perhaps…she said she would talk to my mother…”
“So you do have to go back to Sarai.”
“No. She said I should go to Jeds with her and that somehow she would sort it out there. I don’t know, but she hinted, I think…” Her eyes lit, and Vasha was stricken suddenly by an awful sadness. He had lost her. He knew it with that instinct he shared with her. “I think she thinks I can sail over the seas to Erthe.”
“But no one comes back from there, Katya! I couldn’t bear to lose you forever.”
“I’m not yours, Vasha! If I have to do this, understand it and be happy for me!”
“Oh, Katya.”
She came back and sat down on the bench beside him, and he embraced her. They sat that way, silent, still, until Vladimir arrived, in full armor, and reminded them that the army was riding. Now.
For thirty-nine days they rode south, making good time even though it rained two days out of every three. They caught up with outriders of Yaroslav Sakhalin’s army on day forty and rode into Sakhalin’s encampment on day forty-two. Laid out in a neat spiral, the camp engulfed most of the fields that surrounded a Walled city. A pall of smoke lay over the city, but Vasha noticed at once that the gates lay open and a thin stream of people moved, in and out, cautiously going about their business.
Vasha helped Rusudani down from her horse—it was the one liberty she allowed him. Her waist was thickening noticeably in the middle. He hovered nervously beside the chair set up for her until her tent was erected and she could be installed within. She lay down at once.
“Is there anything I can get you?” he asked.
She shook her head, closing her eyes. “My waiting women will take care of my needs.”
She was pale, but not dangerously so. Mostly she looked tired. He left her lying there, one hand resting on her copy of The Recitation, and went to Tess’s tent.
Ilya sat on a pillow receiving Yaroslav Sakhalin’s report. Tess had her journal open on her knee and was, for some reason, taking notes. Mother Sakha
lin sat beside Tess, her intent gaze on her uncle; like her mother, Konstantina Sakhalin had mastered the art of sitting perfectly still, absorbing all that came before her.
“…I sent a detachment behind the khaja lines to this city, which is named Arhia in their tongue. The city elders tried to buy off the detachment, but when they got news of the battle fought on the Tarhan River, they wisely capitulated.” Yaroslav Sakhalin paused, and his gaze stopped on Vasha, who came in under the awning.
Vasha nodded coolly at him and sat down beside his father. Sakhalin glanced at Ilya, gauging his reaction, but Ilya did not react at all, waiting instead for Sakhalin to proceed. Without comment, Sakhalin went on.
“That battle took place five days ago. When the messenger you sent on ahead of you arrived, I decided we would wait here. We have enough casualties to warrant it.”
“I will tour the hospital,” said Ilya.
Sakhalin nodded curtly. “The Estaharin prince fell in the battle. He had assembled a decent force, including the last renegades and rebels from the Yossian principalities. Two princes, three prince’s sons, five dukes and eighteen lords died on the Estaharin side. He also had a detachment of Filis auxiliaries with him, but I haven’t been able to discover whether they were mercenaries he hired or if they represent an alliance he had worked out with the prince of Filis. As well, the prince of Tarsina-Kars had sent a detachment of men to the muster, but he withdrew his troops when I sent him word that we held his daughter. I now understand, from new intelligence, that she is one of two claimants to the throne of Mircassia, and the one favored by the king.”
“That is true,” said Ilya. “My son Vassily is betrothed to her. He will marry her once they reach Mircassia.”
Vasha admired how Yaroslav Sakhalin could contrive not to look surprised by this news. But Sakhalin was an old, canny soldier. He had not survived this long by letting startling news overset him.
“The main road through the pass in the eastern hills that leads into the heart of Mircassia branches off three days ride south of here, my scouts report.”
“Very well,” said Ilya.
“There is one other thing,” added Sakhalin, glancing at his niece. “Two days ago Kirill Zvertkov arrived in my camp, escorting my brother Andrei Sakhalin.”
Ilya was on his feet in an instant. He already had one hand on his saber hilt.
“No,” said Sakhalin quietly, standing only slightly more slowly. “If everything that Zvertkov says is true, then it is my right, and my duty, as his relative to kill him.”
“Damn it,” swore Ilya under his breath, but he did not argue.
“He must be allowed to speak,” said Mother Sakhalin calmly. She rose and shook out her skirts, waiting politely for Tess to finish scrawling in the journal, close the book, and toss it onto the pillow Ilya had vacated before standing herself.
“I’m not sure I want to see this,” said Tess under her breath to Vasha. She let the other three go ahead. “It’s going to be ugly.”
“He must be punished—” Vasha protested.
“I don’t mean that, not so much. I mean having to listen to the excuses he makes.”
And Andrei Sakhalin did make excuses. Zvertkov and his thousand soldiers had encamped in a tight circle around a single, small tent, isolated within the ring of guards. When Zvertkov saw them, he jumped to his feet and hurried over to give Bakhtiian a hearty embrace. He did not touch Tess, but Vasha caught the glance that passed between them, fraught with unspoken words. Tess’s eyes glittered with sudden tears. She wiped them away. Ilya could not tear his gaze away from the tent. His hands were clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white, and his lips were pale, set hard.
Yaroslav Sakhalin walked forward alone to the tent and twitched the entrance flap aside. He bent down, said something. After a long wait, a man emerged from the tent. Seeing Ilya, Andrei Sakhalin blinked dazedly at him, as if the sun, or Ilya’s presence, had blinded him momentarily.
“What do you have to say to me, Andrei Sakhalin?” Ilya demanded, not moving. Unable to move, Vasha realized, standing so close to his father that he could have touched him; if Ilya moved, it would be to kill the man who had betrayed him.
“Why am I being held here?” demanded Andrei. “I am relieved to see that you survived that khaja ambush, Bakhtiian.”
“You bastard. You set that ambush up. You betrayed me, and for what?”
“I set nothing up! Some of my own men were killed. I had gone in to see the priest—the presbyter—and we were attacked and I was cut off from you. I had no choice but to—”
“To run north to the court of the king of Dushan? Why not back to the army, to get help—”
“I had so few men left by then that I had to return to Dushan to collect the rest of my jahar. How was I to know if the country was rising against us? I couldn’t risk the rest of my riders.”
“He’s mocking you,” said Vasha, unable to stomach these grotesque excuses any longer. He strode forward to confront Andrei. What Rusudani had done was bad enough, betraying her own husband, but at least she had had cause to hate Janos for forcing her to marry him, for his own gain. How could Andrei Sakhalin stand there and let such barefaced lies spew from his mouth? “Have you no shame? I was taken prisoner by Prince Janos of Dushan, and he told me, and these are his very words, ‘I hold an alliance with a jaran prince from the greatest of the jaran tribes.’ ”
“Which rules out you, does it not, Kireyevsky?”
“Andrei!” Yaroslav’s voice cracked across them. “You are insolent, impenitent, and disrespectful! Answer the charge.”
Andrei spit at Vasha’s feet. “As if we ought to trust his word, a fatherless bastard, giving himself airs, thinking he’s as good as the rest of us. Gods, Yaroslav, you threw him out of your army because, he’s worthless.”
“Be careful how you speak of my son,” said Ilya softly.
But it was too late, Andrei was going on. “What has happened to you, Yaroslav? The Sakhalins should have been the ones leading the army, not him. What is he? A lover of men, you know it’s true, every one knew it, it was such a scandal. A man who would stoop to marrying a khaja woman for the territory she brought him. How can you stomach it, Konstantina? We are First among the tribes, how can you let the Orzhekov women lord it over you? You, who are now Mother Sakhalin by right? Ah, gods, the best soldier among us has already been thrown to the dogs, run out into khaja lands, never to be seen again. He could have done something, he could have been dyan over all tribes, that is why they drove him off, and gave me, like a sop, to the woman who will become Mother Orzhekov. So the rest of you Sakhalins would be content while they cut away our power from beneath us. How could you stand by and let it happen? Not just let it happen, but become part of it? You make me sick.”
“Bakhtiian had the vision—” cut in Yaroslav.
“Hah! His mother’s ambition, no doubt, foisted on an untried and untrustworthy son. Why shouldn’t she put it into her son’s head to make up a story, pretending it came from the gods? Everyone knew what a bitch she was, forced to marry that worthless Singer from a tribe no one had ever heard of and lusting all her life after a different man entirely—”
Ilya broke forward, drawing his saber.
But Yaroslav ran his brother through before Ilya could reach him. It was so sudden that Andrei’s collapse was the only sound, except for Ilya’s ragged breathing as he fought to control his rage.
“I beg your pardon,” said Yaroslav calmly. “I killed him so that you would not defile your saber with his tainted blood.” He dropped his bloody saber on top of his dead brother. The corpse twitched once more, then was still.
“Let him be buried beneath the earth,” said Konstantina Sakhalin, “so that his soul may never return to the jaran. Let his name never more be spoken within the tribes. Let it be known that there was no son of the Sakhalin tribe of this generation named Andrei. Let the memory of him cease to exist. So have I, Mother Sakhalin, spoken.”
“So is
it done,” echoed her dyan. He signed, and guards carried the body away.
“Poor Galina,” said Katya. “She was fond of him, I suppose because she saw him so rarely and because he was clever enough to be kind to her when he was with her, knowing he’d need her support to…whatever he meant to do once Bakhtiian was dead. To see that his sons by her became dyan over all the tribes.”
She lay on her stomach beside Vasha, and he lay on his side, one arm flung casually across her back, his fingers playing with her unbound hair.
“It was stupid,” said Vasha.
She turned her head to look at him. Hair spilled down over her shoulders, and he could see straight down the front of her shift to the curve of her breasts within. “Are you angry about what he said about you?”
“No. Why should I be? He’s dead, and I’m alive. I’m the one is going to marry the queen of Mircassia. My children are the ones who will rule, not his.”
“Don’t tempt the gods,” she said, chuckling.
“Katya…” He let a hand wander down her back, caressing her. “Oh, damn.” He pulled his hand back and got to his knees, ducking his head to avoid the lantern that hung from the pole above. “I always look in on Rusudani before she goes to sleep.”
“She won’t care if you don’t look in tonight. Or any night.”
He sighed. “I know that, but surely if she gets used to the attentions I pay her, she’ll come to expect them, even to miss them.”
“You’ve turned into a calculating little bastard, haven’t you, Vasha?”
He paused by the tent flap and grinned down at her. “You were born into your position, Katya. I have to fight for mine.” She only smiled back, forgiving him for his desertion. Then she adjusted the lantern and opened a book that Tess had just given her. Vasha could tell she was gone from him before he even left the tent.
Rusudani acknowledged him warily and allowed him to sit on a pillow at the foot of her couch.
“May I read aloud to you from The Recitation?” he asked. There were three copies of The Recitation in the tent: one in Yossian, one in Taor, and one in a language Vasha did not recognize. The interpreter told him that it was Mircassian. “Perhaps the princess would agree to teach me to read these words,” he said, opening the Mircassian book.
