by Kate Elliott
Rusudani hesitated, then answered. “I speak them,” she said. “You speak them after me.”
They read five pages in this fashion, until even Vasha was both exhausted by the effort and bored by it, even with her so close to him. He bade her a polite goodnight, and she accepted it dispassionately.
A light still shone in Tess’s tent, and the tent flap was thrown aside, revealing two figures seated within. Vasha greeted the guards, but he paused under the awning, eavesdropping.
Ilya sat erect in his chair, almost stiff, tapping his fingers on the table impatiently. “Damn it,” he was saying, “I can’t remember what the name of the nephew is who is the other claimant to the—”
“Here, Ilya.” Tess pushed an open book across the table toward him. “I wrote everything down for you, all the reports.”
Ilya grabbed the book and flung it across the room. It landed out of Vasha’s sight with a soft thud. Then he jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over. “It’s a khaja weakness, not to be able to remember things. Singers don’t need scratches on paper to—”
“Ilya,” said Tess patiently, although she looked grim, “you have received a shock. It might take some time for you to recover fully. This is just one way to tide yourself over until you have…”
He turned his back on her and stalked toward the entrance. Stopped, seeing Vasha outside. “What are you doing?”
“Spying.” Vasha walked past him, into the tent. “Since I’m leaving tomorrow, I thought I would come by and ask if you have any last advice for me.” He grinned at Tess and abruptly felt wobbly enough on his feet that he had to steady himself on the back of her chair. “I’m a little nervous.”
“Keep a cool head,” said Tess, “don’t give anything away, and watch your back. But you’ll have a jahar of ten thousand. I don’t think King Barsauma will try anything outright, anything direct. He’ll see that the wisest course is to let you marry Rusudani, since we have possession of her and enough power to lay his kingdom to waste if we’re angered. He’ll hope that you die young, or that jaran power will wane quickly enough that, in time, Rusudani can throw you over for a more suitable consort. He’ll hope that the jaran became embroiled in internal war, or wars with other kingdoms, and slowly leave Mircassia behind, forget about her, withdraw our troops from her because we need them elsewhere. He will bide his time, Vasha. It is up to you to insinuate yourself into Mircassian society so thoroughly, into the rule of the land, appointing the right people to the council or as governors in far-flung provinces…that in time you are indivisible from Rusudani’s power. It is how an etsana’s husband works. Although the authority is hers, within the circle of the tents, she needs him, and so does the tribe.”
“You don’t think jaran power will wane,” Vasha said. “Even though I have read of the rise of powerful dynasties that later collapse, as in Habakar.”
Tess glanced toward Ilya. “No. I don’t think it will. Not for a long time.”
Something in the way she said it puzzled Vasha. She sounded like a Singer speaking a prophecy. Except Tess wasn’t a Singer. Was she?
“Prince Lazi!” said Ilya triumphantly. “That’s his name. And his mother is Lady Apamaia. She is the half sister of Prince Basil of Filis. That is why he supports her and her son. More her, I suppose, since the nephew is evidently a half-wit.”
“Don’t you have anything to tell me?” Vasha asked.
His father just frowned at him. “Have your food tasted.”
“Oh, gods!”
Tess shook her head at him, warning.
“Well then,” said Vasha, swallowing his disappointment, his unease at his father’s bizarre behavior, “I’ll take my leave of you.”
Tess hugged him. Ilya seemed to come to himself for a moment. He stared at Vasha for an uncomfortable while, measuring him, then patted him awkwardly on the arm. “You’ll do, Vassily,” he said.
Vasha practically floated back to Katya’s tent.
The lantern was out. Inside, Katerina was asleep, her book clutched in one hand. Vasha stripped and lay down next to her, snuggling against her, listening to her breathing, and chuckled to himself. It was so rare to spend time with Katya when she was this quiet.
Vassily Kireyevsky led his jahar—his jahar!—southeast into the Hira Mountains. It took him thirty-three hard and mostly wet days of riding to traverse the mountains and the wild lands that surrounded them, and another twenty-four days to cross the populated lands, loose confederations of towns and manors and lord’s holdings that were in their turn ruled by King Barsauma from his palace at Kavad.
No one bothered them. Indeed, word soon ran before them, and, as they advanced farther into Mircassia, farmers and townspeople flocked to the side of the road to catch a glimpse of the princess who was to be their next queen. Lords sent offerings of food and wine, and grain for the horses, clearly bent on currying favor.
Vasha refused none of the food, but refused to let anyone hold audience with Rusudani. She rode in a kind of a trance, caught between one marriage, whose fruit still lay within her, and the next, and the promise of becoming queen. And perhaps, Vasha had to admit to himself, she was still furious, or grief-stricken, at Bakhtiian’s rejection of her. He accepted, on her behalf, several sons of noble families whose lands they rode through to serve as her pages, but he used them mostly to taste his food.
Each afternoon, after they had stopped, he would go to her tent and eat supper with her there, and they would read more of The Recitation. Soon he could pronounce Mircassian well, although he could by no means understand it. Slowly, after the first shock had worn off, she began to read alternating passages in Taor. Thus they passed the journey, reserved but not in open conflict. That was a beginning, Vasha supposed. Her cheeks grew plumper and her belly began to round under the folds of her gown. She appeared even more beautiful to him, perhaps only because, so close, she remained out of his grasp.
King Barsauma sent a party of ministers and courtiers to greet them. The city of Kavad looked odd to Vasha: It had no walls. Only the palace, a great citadel that blanketed the outcropping of rock that rose above Kavad, looked as if it was fortified.
Vasha conferred with his captain, and they decided it would be wisest to leave the jahar encamped outside the city and for Vasha to go in with Rusudani with a contingent of fifty men.
Escorted by khaja men old enough to be his grandfathers, this smaller group proceeded up a broad avenue lined with hordes of curious onlookers, passed through a double set of gates, and were at last trapped within a vast courtyard ringed by magnificent buildings. Mircassia was a rich kingdom, indeed.
King Barsauma waited for them in a sun-drenched courtyard. He sat in a chair padded with fine embroidered pillows. At his back a fountain splashed and played over crouching stone lions. He was so old that his skin was as delicate as aging parchment, all the veins showing through. A cap covered his head, which seemed to be hairless, and the finest wisps of white hair straggled down from his chin, barely making a beard. Even sitting, he had a stooped back, bent by age and illness, but his eyes were like steel.
“Is this the child?” he demanded, tapping his cane on the flagstones. As soon as he spoke, Vasha realized that half of his face was immobile. His words were slightly slurred, but understandable. “Come here, come here. Who are these barbarians? Which is the usurper who claims to be your husband?”
Vasha gulped. How such a frail old man could scare him, he wasn’t sure. But he did. Deliberately, Vasha took Rusudani’s elbow with a hand and escorted her up to her grandfather. Let it not be said that Vassily Kireyevsky shrank from confrontation.
Rusudani knelt before the old man, bowing her head. Vasha did neither. His interpreter hung at his back, so that he could whisper into his ear without seeming to intrude.
“Huh,” the king grunted, looking her over. “Pretty enough, but is she clever?”
At that, Rusudani lifted her head to look directly at him. “I trust I am clever enough, your highness.”
“Not clever enough to avoid getting with one man’s child and being betrothed within a day of his death to a second.”
“It is the fate of women, your highness, to be married whether they wish it or not. I had no authority, no army, nothing save my faith in God, to protect me. But I am here, am I not? Unencumbered, except by husbands and their get.”
King Barsauma began wheezing, which startled Vasha until he realized that the old man was laughing.
“Husbands are no great impediment once a woman becomes powerful enough. You are convent educated?”
“Yes, your highness.”
“You can read, write, and figure?”
“Yes, your highness, and recite the Eulysian Hymns, and I have read the Commentaries of Maricius, the Hermeneutics of Silas, and the tract, “Against the Elians,” by Hayyan of Sid Saffah.”
“Pah. Church learning will not help you rule a kingdom. You will start by reading the chronicles and then, let me see, Lord Tellarkus can show you the roll of taxes and Lady Tellarkina can show you the women’s quarters. I recommend you use her as your chatelaine; she’s old and has but the one living daughter left. She’ll know you can show that child favor, so she’ll be as faithful to you as she can be.” He gave his wheezing laugh again. “You can get a barbarian for her daughter, too. She’s, buried two husbands already.” Like a sword’s cut, his gaze hit Vasha.
Vasha stood his ground.
“Is this the lad? He’s a mere pup. I thought he would be an experienced man.”
Vasha inclined his head with what he hoped was regal disdain. “I am Vassily Kireyevsky, your highness. I am the son of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, who commands the jaran army.”
“Go away,” said the king suddenly. “You may attend me another day.”
He meant both of them, and his attendants briskly led them off. No doubt it was time for the old man to rest. Vasha glanced back as he left the courtyard, but Barsauma sat stiffly in the chair, not looking after them.
Vasha and his men were assigned to a suite of rooms that adjoined the women’s quarters but did not have immediate access to them. In order to see his wife, Vasha had to wait at the gate into a second courtyard and be escorted across by beardless men armed with spears and swords curved almost into a half moon.
Rusudani received him under an arcade of columns that opened onto a garden. A phalanx of women, dressed in gowns that draped rather revealingly along their figures, protected her. Flowers bloomed, and the drone of insects mingled with the soft rush of an unseen fountain. In the Yos principalities, autumn was rushing toward winter. Here it was still summer. It was like this, he recalled, in Jeds as well; always mild.
A servant brought a chair. He sat down beside her. The women eyed him from behind fans; they whispered to each other, and pointed.
“You are well?” Vasha asked.
“I am well.” Rusudani got the strangest look on her face. She glanced toward her attendants and, abruptly, ordered them to leave. When they had gone, she turned back to Vasha. Even though they were now essentially alone, with only his interpreter and the one jaran soldier allowed him, with her beardless guards and the Mircassian ladies out in the garden where they could see but not overhear, Rusudani still looked carefully around before speaking.
“He does not respect the Holy Church. They say he has not attended service in the chapel since his favorite son died. They say he cursed God for taking all his children from him, and that God punished him for his impiety by striking him down. That is why he can only move half of his face. But he has not repented from his blasphemy. What are we to do, Prince Vassily?”
Vasha could not reply for a long while. Rusudani was confiding in him! “Does it not say in The Recitation, that ‘he who dines at Wisdom’s table and drinks of her wine, will be brought to understanding through the excellence of her food’? You must strive by your own example to bring King Barsauma back to your church.”
“You speak wisely, Prince Vassily, but you yourself have not chosen to sit at God’s table, though you were betrothed by His laws and intend to be married by them.”
She waited. Vasha was for one intense instant tempted by the perfect blue of her eyes and the delicate blush on her cheeks to throw caution to the winds and tell her that he would take part in the ritual cleansing that initiated a man or woman in to the Hristanic Church.
He bowed his head instead, briefly. “I respect your God and your Church, Princess Rusudani, but I must remain faithful to my own gods.”
She did not reply at once. The sun crept in toward them from the garden, and the fountain splashed quietly.
“You have been gracious toward me,” she said finally, so faintly that it was almost lost within the fountain’s ripple and a breath of wind that sighed through the garden. Then she stood up and walked out into the garden. The interview was over.
By posting lookouts at all the windows in his suite of rooms, Vasha could keep an eye on most of Rusudani’s forays outside of the women’s quarters. In this way he managed to attend her on most of them, seeing where the chronicle was kept and where the steward had his offices, meeting the council of ministers and sitting beside her when, on their fifth day at the palace, she held an audience for the courtiers and was, perforce, compelled to acknowledge him to them all. Each night after supper he read with her, and after that he would go to the room where the great chronicle was kept, light candles, and pore through it, sounding out the words laboriously, turning again and again to his interpreter, who could speak but not read Mircassian, and together they puzzled out the heavy script and the history of Mircassia as written by its scribes.
He did not see King Barsauma nor, as far as he knew, did Rusudani. Old men dressed in elaborate court robes watched them, that was all.
On the sixth night he sat alone in the Hall of the Chronicle with the Interpreter and his favorite guard, a young Riasonovsky rider named Matfey who was, to Vasha’s amusement, a nephew of the Riasonovsky captain who had escorted Vasha to Sarai after his humiliating dismissal from Sakhalin’s army.
“What’s that?” asked Matfey suddenly.
Vasha stood up, hearing an odd rustling and thump from one dark corner of the room. A lantern’s glow traced out shadows, throwing them into long relief, and King Barsauma came around a screen. Leaning heavily on his cane, he shuffled forward until he got to within five steps of Vasha. He stopped there. For all that he stooped now, and dragged his left leg, Vasha could see that he had once been a tall, robust man, broad across the chest, shrunken now more by his infirmity than by age. A servant placed a chair carefully behind him and helped him to sit. Metal gleamed in the shadows: Barsauma’s guards.
“I could have you killed,” said Barsauma. “And no doubt would save myself some trouble by doing so.”
Vasha faced him without flinching. “I have my own guards posted outside, at the doors, of course.”
“Huh. Why do you come in here each night and stare at the chronicles? I would stop you looking at the tax rolls if I could without throwing all hell into the palace. I know you’re only looking to see what you can plunder, having this peshtiqi interpreter count it up for you. How did you get into the palace in the first place? How did you capture my granddaughter? What do you want, Prince Vassily? I can pay you off, a hundred filistri of gold, if you will release my granddaughter from the betrothal.”
“She’s worth much more than one hundred filistri of gold your highness.”
“Two hundred, then. Bandit. I hear that one of your little pages got sick yesterday. I hope it wasn’t the food.”
“I will be certain in future to eat only from my betrothed’s plate. It is an old custom among the jaran for a husband and wife to eat from the same platter.”
“Three hundred filistri.”
“My children by Rusudani on the throne of Mircassia, and that is the only offer I will accept.”
Barsauma thumped his cane several times, hard, on the floor. The noise resounded in the chamber, unmuted by tapestries. �
��Five hundred. I want no damned barbarian seated on my throne.”
“I will not sit in your throne, your highness, as long as you are alive.” Barsauma snorted, and Vasha, seeing that he had perhaps amused the old man, went on. “Your greatgrandchildren may sit on a greater throne even than your own.”
“Barbarians can’t hold together an empire.”
“What if they can? Already Bakhtiian has conquered a greater empire than any I have read of.”
“So you can read. That is what Lord Tellarkus claimed, but I didn’t believe him.” He motioned curtly to his servants and they scooted his chair up to the lectern that held the thick chronicle. “Read to me. Something…here, this passage.”
Vasha sounded it out, and Barsauma grew impatient with the interpreter’s slowness and began correcting Vasha’s pronunciation and then, evidently, the interpreter’s translation.
“Pah. A useless man. You may keep him, but I’ll get you a better.”
With that, he got up and shuffled out of the hall, his servants carrying the chair behind him.
In the morning, Vasha went to the women’s quarters and asked to see Rusudani. He had to wait a long while, but finally he was allowed in, to the same arcade bordering the garden, the only place she ever received him.
“You are well?” he asked.
“I am well.”
“I saw your grandfather last night. He tried to buy me off.”
She looked startled. “Buy you off?”
“He thinks that because I’m a barbarian that I can only be a bandit, and that I’d be as happy to have the gold as you.”
“You did not accept the gold.”
“Of course not.”
She thought for a while, sipping at a cup of tea, then signed to an attendant to bring Vasha tea as well, poured from a new pot. He did not touch it. If she noticed, she said nothing. “What do you want, Prince Vassily?” she asked finally.
The question took him unawares. What did he want? “I…I want to be like my father.”
