His Conquering Sword: 3 (The Novels of the Jaran)

by Kate Elliott

  “You want to bring down the Empire?”

  “I want to free humanity. I sincerely doubt we have a chance against them, main force against main force. But if we’re persistent enough gadflies, perhaps they’ll consider us too much trouble and let us go.”

  “Or crush us entire.”

  “There’s always that chance. Every risk we take in life risks, as one of its consequences, oblivion. But the hand of the Yaochalii is gentle. I’ve never seen the least sign that they’re as ruthless in war as, say, Bakhtiian is.”

  “Well,” said David, encouraged by Charles responding to Maggie’s comments, “and we’ve certainly seen more of the Chapalii in war than any other humans have. I don’t know.”

  Charles shook his head impatiently. “We don’t need to know, yet. We’ve got a lot of work to do, just to see if it’s even feasible. We’ll have to use the Keinaba house to spread out a gathering net. We’ll need to apprentice more humans into that house, to give them wider access to Chapalii space. And to get the Chapalii used to humans running around Chapalii space. We’ll need excuses for humans to travel extensively. Merchants. I doubt if they’ll let linguists and xenospecialists move so freely—”

  Maggie laughed. “Repertory companies.”

  “What!” David rolled his eyes, but he could not help but laugh with her. “Can’t you just see Anahita playing Mata Hari?”

  A light sparked in Charles’s eyes. “Yes! Repertory companies. Musicians. Artists and craftsmen. They can gather information and have a perfectly legitimate excuse to be wandering around the Chapalii Empire.”

  “But, Charles,” said Rajiv in his usual cautious manner, “all of this would have to proceed in utter secrecy. Where can we possibly find a secure base of operations?”

  “Rhui,” Charles said casually, and the dizzying array of the data banks hazed and melded to become the blue globe of Rhui, dazzling against the black veil surrounding her. For a moment, David thought that Charles had simply wanted to see the planet. It was a beautiful enough sight.

  “What better base than Rhui?” Charles continued. His face was quiet, but David still knew him well enough to know that Charles was concealing a perfectly violent sense of triumph. “Rhui is interdicted already. It’s off-limits to casual Chapalii observation, and any official delegations must come through me.”

  “What about covert operations?” David asked. “Like the one that brought Tess here in the first place?”

  Rajiv lifted a hand from his slate. “We covered that. There won’t be any more of those.”

  “Yes,” Charles murmured, watching the rich globe turn. His globe, by the emperor’s decree, to do with as he willed. “All the more reason to maintain the interdiction, to keep it in force for years, for decades, for as long as it takes us. Cara’s been doing her research in Jeds all along for that reason. Why not this as well?”

  Rhui. It made sense. It made perfect sense. The Mushai had planned and implemented his rebellion from here. Why not the Tai-en Charles Soerensen as well? Would the Chapalii expect it? And yet, how could they predict what the Chapalii would or would not expect? What other planet did humans control so completely? No other planet. There was no other choice, not really. And there was a certain pleasing symmetry to this resolution as well. As it was, so will it be.

  Rhui spun in her halo of space, unaware of the destiny being visited upon her.

  ACT FOUR

  “The gates of mercy shall be all shut up….”

  —SHAKESPEARE,

  The Life of King Henry V

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HYACINTH WAS SOGGY, COLD, and miserable. He shivered while he hammered a tent stake into the damnably hard ground with the butt of his knife. How stupid could he possibly be? he wondered for the thousandth time. He had neglected to take a mallet, or a hammer, or even a hatchet, so every night this farce had to be played out, and it took five times as long to set up his tent as it should have. At first they hadn’t set up the tents at all, but with this awful rain, he couldn’t endure sleeping out in the open in just a blanket, no matter what Yevgeni and Valye might say, no matter how tough they might be.

  Rain fell. He was already soaked to the skin, although by now the precipitation had slackened enough that it didn’t really qualify as rain. More of a mizzle, perhaps, a pathetic reminder of the storm that had blown through yesterday. Yevgeni sneezed and coughed, off to the left where he desperately tried to get a fire started with dry twigs and some dung he had scavenged. Valye was out hunting.

  Four days ago they had eaten meat; since then, they had subsisted on berries and the tasteless tubers that they gathered when they paused to rest the horses. They saw no game, and certainly, in the ruined land they rode through, no stray livestock. It was as if the jaran army, sweeping through, had obliterated every living creature in its path: humans, livestock, wild animals, and all the grain that had once grown in the fields. Orchards still surrounded the occasional wreck of a village or town they passed, but Yevgeni refused point-blank to ride close in to khaja habitations, even the ones that looked deserted. It was hard enough avoiding the jaran patrols.

  Hyacinth sighed and rested his forehead on a palm. He stared at the knife in his right hand. The single jewel buried in the hilt was not, as Yevgeni and Valye thought, a true jewel; it was a laser crystal, gleaming red to show that the emergency transmitter and stun pack disguised within the knife’s shell was still powered. It would be so easy to trigger the transmitter and bring—something—some kind of help. He still ached from the constant riding, but the intense pain of the first ten days had passed. Blisters covered his fingers and his palms, some worn at last to calluses. They had bled at first, and Yevgeni had bound them with a tenderness incongruous in a young man who could slaughter khaja with no sign of remorse.

  He felt Yevgeni behind him a moment before the rider touched him on the neck. Yevgeni knelt beside him and leaned his dark head against Hyacinth’s fair one. They just crouched there awhile, saying nothing. Hyacinth took comfort in Yevgeni’s closeness and in his silence. A bird warbled in the twilit gloom, but otherwise only the rain sounded, muted, dying, and an occasional drip or shower of water from leaf-burdened branches.

  “I’m sorry,” said Yevgeni finally, in a soft voice, “that I have nothing better to give you, in return for what you gave up for me.”

  Hyacinth stared at the sodden ground. A trail of cold rain seeped under the collar of his tunic and raced down his spine. He shuddered. Yevgeni started back, and Hyacinth grabbed for him, staggering to his feet. “No. No, it’s just the rain. Please.” His heel turned in a sink of mud and he slipped on the slick ground.

  Yevgeni had better footing. Catching Hyacinth, he pulled the actor close and buried his face in Hyacinth’s neck. He was perfectly still.

  Hyacinth held him. Yevgeni was shorter, and seemed slight, but he had broad shoulders, and was, in fact, quite strong. Neither he nor his sister was particularly striking, but they were handsome in a proud way, resembling each other in their broad cheekbones and brown eyes and coarse, dark hair. They never complained, and they good-naturedly put up with Hyacinth’s complaining in a way that made him ashamed of himself. He could, after all, be rescued at any time. They had nothing now but each other, and him, and he was an embarrassment to them. He was a constant reminder of why Yevgeni had been banished, and Hyacinth knew damn well that it was his own fault that he had been caught in Yevgeni’s tent to begin with. If he hadn’t been so careless, because, of course, he found nothing wrong with what he and Yevgeni shared together, and it was so easy to forget that for Yevgeni, with the jaran, it was an entirely different matter.

  “It’s I who should be sorry,” said Hyacinth. Yevgeni’s hair smelled of smoke. Behind, the fire smoked more than burned. “It’s my fault. I should have left sooner. I—”

  Yevgeni laid a finger over Hyacinth’s lips. “It’s done. We were outlaws anyway and only there on sufferance. If we can make it back to the plains…”

  “Th
en?”

  Yevgeni sighed and embraced Hyacinth more tightly. Out here, quit of the tribe—and when his sister wasn’t around—he had become freer with signs of affection. “Then we’ll find my aunt’s tribe and throw ourselves on her mercy, and perhaps she’ll take us in. Or at least Valye. We must convince Valye to go with her.” He cocked his head back suddenly. “If you married Valye, then it might be perfectly respectable.”

  “If I married Valye!”

  Yevgeni chuckled. That he could still find humor in anything, out in this rain, in this horrible situation, amazed Hyacinth. “I thought you didn’t mind women.”

  “I don’t, but—” Faced with the prospect of living out his days among these savages, married to one of their women, carrying on discreetly with her brother, and enduring, year after year after year, the rain and the dirt and the filthy tasks they engaged in—none of which he was suited for—Hyacinth found himself appalled. And trapped. He felt trapped. He had a pretty good idea that if they left him, he would die. Even in the time it would take for the transmitter to recall help, he could die. He was a drag on them; he knew it, and they knew it, and yet they had never once taxed him for it, and Yevgeni apologized to him for what he, Hyacinth, had given up for Yevgeni. Their generosity so eclipsed his that it shamed him.

  “I love you,” said Hyacinth, because in its own way it was true. Yevgeni made a strangled noise in his throat and no other response, only stood there, holding on. One of his hands clenched and relaxed. The rain ceased, finally. A wind came up.

  “Oh, gods,” said Yevgeni at last in a muffled voice, talking into the collar of Hyacinth’s tunic, “I want to go there so badly, to this place where you come from, this Erthe, where there’s no shame for a man to tell another man that he loves him.”

  “Of course there’s no shame! Why should there be?” Hyacinth stroked Yevgeni’s hair.

  The sound of a horse crashing through brush stirred them. Yevgeni spun away and drew his saber. But it was only Valye, returning empty-handed from her hunt. She swung down and kissed her brother on the cheek and nodded to Hyacinth. Yevgeni went back to the fire, to try to spark it to life, but it smoldered and refused to give either flame or heat. Valye unsaddled her horse and rubbed it down and hobbled it with the others, under the shelter of a grove of scrub trees that ringed a little pond. Birds skittered across the water on the far side. Birds. But perhaps Valye wasn’t a good enough shot to kill birds for dinner.

  Valye cast a practiced eye up at the lowering sky. Darkness swept down on them. “I think it’s going to rain again tonight,” she said to her brother. “I’d better set up my tent.”

  Again. She kept setting up her tent, and Yevgeni always had to sleep there. Yevgeni didn’t want to offend her sensibilities, even though she knew damn well what he had been banished for. “It’s stupid,” said Hyacinth suddenly, surprising even himself, “for you to set up your tent. Mine is warmer.”

  Valye flushed and drew up her chin. “It isn’t proper.”

  “Hyacinth,” said Yevgeni softly, “she’s right, of course.”

  Of course he did anything his sister said. They went to bed that night on empty stomachs. Valye had first watch. Hyacinth crawled alone into his own tent and set the perimeter alert. He took off his clothes and slid them into the drying pouch slung at the base of the tent. Then he dozed, until Valye woke him for his half of the watch.

  At dawn, while the others still slept, Hyacinth walked down to the water. In the quiet, he watched birds swarming over the pond and along the shore. Such abundance, and he was so hungry. Yevgeni and Valye weren’t around to see. He circled around to the far side of the pond, staying out at a safe distance, and then aimed his knife and fired.

  It was like fishing for trout in a barrel—that was an old phrase his great-grandmother Nguyen always used. Within moments two dozen birds lay dead or stunned, some on the ground, some along the shore in and out of the reeds, most floating in the lake. He left the ones in the water and, with a great sense of pride and a fair measure of squeamishness, hoisted the others by their feet and carried them back to camp.

  At camp, Valye and Yevgeni had woken up. Valye tended to the fire while Yevgeni tied Valye’s rolled-up tent onto a packhorse. Yevgeni flung up his head and saw Hyacinth. A look of such overwhelming relief passed over his features that Hyacinth was embarrassed.

  “Look what I got!” he said instead, displaying the half-dozen birds he had salvaged from the massacre. “Now we can eat for the next day or two.”

  Valye flung herself down on the damp ground and began to wail. Yevgeni simply stared. He looked as if he were in shock. He looked horrified.

  Hyacinth actually turned around to see if some loathsome monster followed in his wake, but there was nothing there. A flight of birds erupted from the pond, driving up into the cloud-laden sky. A single hawk circled above, and abruptly, it folded its wings and dropped like a stone toward the ground.

  “Build the fire,” said Yevgeni suddenly in a hoarse voice. “Valye, build the fire, quickly. We’ll give them back to her and beg her forgiveness. We’ll release them into her hands.”

  “What about him?” Valye wailed. “Who will kill him?”

  What, in the Lady’s Name, were they talking about?

  “No one, damn it!” snapped Yevgeni. “It’s obvious he doesn’t know. Go on.”

  “But she’ll demand retribution!” Valye cried.

  “Just do as I say!”

  “What’s going on?” demanded Hyacinth.

  Yevgeni took in a deep breath, as if by main force of will he controlled himself, and strode over to Hyacinth. “Birds are sacred to us. Perhaps they aren’t to you khaja.” He put out his hand. “Give them to me.”

  Relieved to be free of the limp birds, Hyacinth handed them over. Only to watch in shock as Yevgeni carried them across to the fire and, once its flames had gathered force and heat, simply laid them over the pit.

  “Aren’t you supposed to pull the feathers off first, and maybe get rid of the heads and the feet?” Hyacinth asked, utterly confused.

  “Take down your tent unless you want us to leave it here,” said Yevgeni in a voice so cold that Hyacinth abruptly knew that if he didn’t obey, he would be left behind as well. He obeyed. As he worked, Yevgeni and Valye stoked the fire, feeding it, nursing it, encouraging it to consume the birds. They chanted in singsong voices, sometimes together, sometimes separately, sometimes overlapping.

  “Grandmother Night, forgive us for drawing ourselves to your attention. We beg your pardon. We draw back. It was a child’s error, that your messengers, your holy ones, were taken from life this day. Even you yourself did not blame your children when, all ignorant, they transgressed your laws. Spare us from your just retribution. Allow us to beg for your mercy. Look not upon us with your dreadful sight. We are not strong enough to endure the terrible glance of your eye. We send these messengers back to you, in the old way, to grace your lands once more. Grant us mercy for our transgression.”

  They were praying. They were just going to burn the birds and leave them.

  “How can you waste them like that?” demanded Hyacinth, stopping in the middle of his task and staring. “I’m hungry!”

  “Valye.” Yevgeni dropped out of the singsong chant and motioned with a turn of his head toward the horses. “Saddle and pack up. Go. Quickly.” She glanced toward Hyacinth, but she obeyed her brother. Yevgeni looked back over his shoulder at Hyacinth and then away. Hyacinth felt that he himself had somehow taken on the aspect of a loathsome monster, but he didn’t understand what had happened. Drawing a knife, Yevgeni opened his palm out flat over the fire and before Hyacinth realized what he meant to do, he cut his own skin. Blood welled up. Yevgeni turned over his hand and let the blood drip into the fire.

  “Take this offering, Grandmother Night, whose name is terrible to hear, whose glance is terrible to suffer, and grant us mercy, grant us forgiveness, for the death of these, your holy messengers.”

  Blood scatter
ed into the fire. Singed feathers poured an acrid odor into the air. Yevgeni rocked back on his heels and stood, clenching his hand tight to stop the bleeding.

  “Get your tent down,” Yevgeni said to Hyacinth, so harshly that Hyacinth felt his courage and his heart melt within him. But he obeyed.

  They packed up and rode on. The clouds scudded away. It did not rain. A low range of mountains loomed before them, the next obstacle.

  Valye would not talk to him. Yevgeni answered his comments, his questions, in curt monosyllables, and finally Hyacinth gave up talking. He had never felt more alone in his life.

  They climbed by winding paths up into the hills. A packhorse went lame around midday, picking up a stone in its hoof. They halted in the lee of a copse of trees that straggled along the steep slope that bounded the north wall of the valley up which they rode. Hills loomed around them. The sun burned bright overhead. Here between the rocks, it grew warm. It was a gloomy countryside. A few green shoots sprouted up, encouraged by the recent rains, but otherwise the land lay rocky and barren. Their trail wound up into the heights, and Yevgeni seemed sure that it would lead them over the hills and into Farisa country, past which lay the plains and freedom.

  Hyacinth stood beside the horses under the shade of a clump of trees. Yevgeni and Valye argued over whether to kill the injured horse for food or to nurse it along.

  “We have little enough now to carry,” said Valye.

  “But if we get more, we’ll need it. We need remounts, in any case.” Yevgeni knelt and ran his hand along the horse’s leg. The animal was a kind, patient beast and submitted to this care equably enough. Yevgeni found the stone and drew it out, but the cut bled. He shook his head. “I’ve nothing to put on it for a compress.”

  “I’ve got a medical kit,” said Hyacinth, tentatively, “but I don’t know if it works for horses. I don’t know—” He faltered, because Valye had turned her back on him. Yevgeni hung his head. “Oh, Goddess! You won’t even tell me what I’ve done, and it’s just plain stupid not to see if what I’ve got can help!”