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

by Kate Elliott

  “Rather like the Hydra in Greek mythology,” offered David, realizing that it was true, that the two refugees had a dozen horses with them. “Where did you get all of them?”

  “We stole some from the army,” said Hyacinth. “The rest we—we took in payment for Valye’s life.” He seemed about to say more. Instead, he spun and hurried away to help Marco with the tent. Yevgeni hesitated and then turned to follow him.

  “Yevgeni,” said Charles. The young rider turned back. “You’re content to stay with him? You can return with us, to the army. Or we can leave you here.”

  “I can’t return to the army,” said Yevgeni. “I’ve nowhere else to go. I’m content.” But the look he cast toward Hyacinth betrayed the depth of his feeling, however offhandedly he might have replied.

  “Do you have any suggestions about what we might do with the horses?”

  Yevgeni looked puzzled. “But surely we’ll need the horses to ride?”

  “No. You’ll be leaving here by other means than horses.”

  “Not with you?”

  “Not with me. I can’t take the horses with me. But if I leave them here, free them—”

  “I don’t understand.” Yevgeni shook his head. “Horses are valuable. Why would you want to loose them? And anyway, they need us to care for them. Even if we—why can’t you—?” He stumbled to a halt, looking confused.

  “So it begins,” said Charles in Anglais. “Do you have any suggestions, David?”

  David raised his hands, palms out. “Don’t ask me. I’m only an engineer. I know how to saddle one, and I can ride, in a manner of speaking. Can they survive on their own in the wild? I don’t know.”

  “You’re no damned help,” muttered Charles, sounding both amused and irritated. “Well, I see no choice but to let them go and hope whatever refugees live in these hills find them.”

  “We can’t tell Nadine that we found them running loose in the hills?”

  Charles gave a curt nod, and Yevgeni, dismissed, hurried away to help Hyacinth and Marco. Charles regarded David, his lips quirking up. “Do you really think she’d accept that story? She’s no fool.”

  “She’s too damned smart,” murmured David, “to get stuck here on this planet. She’s the one who should be leaving, not him.”

  “What makes you think she’d be happier out in space?”

  “There’s so much to know, to learn, to discover…”

  “There’s so much to know, learn, and discover on Rhui, too. This is a rich planet, David.” He shrugged. “Well, in any case, whether in her lifetime or later, they’ll begin to leave, more and more of them.”

  David heard an odd note in Charles’s voice. “What do you mean? I thought you were going to keep the interdiction in place, so that we can maintain a protected safe house for growing and shielding the next rebellion.”

  “It’s only a matter of time. We’re already breaking the interdiction. We’re already affecting their development. ‘Their understanding begins to swell, and the approaching tide/Will shortly fill the reasonable shores/That now lie foul and muddy.’”

  “It sounds so awful, put like that. Is that another line from The Tempest?”

  Charles nodded. The wind came up, and a low moaning rode in on it, the dawn wind.

  Only it wasn’t the wind. David caught the silver glint of the shuttle, circling in. Yevgeni leapt back, his hand on his saber. Marco ran to calm the horses. Charles lifted a hand, in sign, and instead, Marco cut them all free. They scattered in fright. David ran back and pulled down the heads of the animals they’d brought, holding them in place, trying to calm them with soft words. From this distance, he watched the shuttle brake in the air and begin its descent.

  Marco and Hyacinth backed up, lugging Hyacinth’s gear. Yevgeni froze, unable to move as he stared at the hulk above him. What did he think? That it was a dragon? A metal bird? A sorcerer’s tame devil? A demon of the air? Hyacinth flung his rolled up tent on the ground and sprinted forward. By main force he dragged Yevgeni backward, out of the flash range. The poor man looked in shock, as well he might be.

  The shuttle landed, spraying gravel and dirt. Its engines whined high, canted sharply, and then cut off. The silence was deafening. With a pop, a hatch opened and a ramp extruded. A Chapalii male appeared. By his mauve robes, David guessed it was the merchant Hon Echido Keinaba. He descended and came forward to bow before Charles.

  Hyacinth had a hold on Yevgeni’s elbow. Only by that grip did the jaran rider stay upright. His face had gone dead pale. A deep, abiding pity filled David for the young man about to be thrown into a world he had not the slightest comprehension of.

  Behind Hon Echido, two stewards emerged carrying perfect replicas of the packs already on the pack animals in Soerensen’s train. David was too far away to follow the conversation that ensued, but the transaction was swift. The stewards deposited the packs at Charles’s feet and, at his direction, hurried back on board with Hyacinth’s gear. Hon Echido bowed to Charles and retreated back up the ramp.

  Hyacinth spoke rapidly and earnestly to Yevgeni. Haltingly, one slow footstep followed by another, Yevgeni allowed himself to be led. He faltered at the foot of the ramp and stared, back stiff and ramrod straight, up into the maw of the ship. He put a hand on his saber hilt. Hyacinth gestured, spoke. What a vast reservoir of trust it must take for Yevgeni to go up there—that or simple fatalism. David shook his head. Perhaps he was overestimating Nadine; not her intelligence, not her courage, not her curiosity, but her ability to absorb something so utterly outside of her experience.

  Yevgeni tested the ramp with one booted foot. He threw his head back and stared up at the blue dome of the sky, seeded with clouds, tinted by the rising sun, that arched above them. Then he turned right round and looked at Charles. He said something to Hyacinth. Hyacinth started, taken aback, and then abruptly grinned and replied. To David’s astonishment, the young jaran rider dropped to his knees and bowed his head toward Charles in obeisance. After a moment, he rose and without further hesitation walked with Hyacinth up the ramp and into the ship.

  The hatch closed. The engines sang to life. Flame singed the earth and the shuttle rose like light into the air. It yawed, steadied, turned, and circled up. David watched as it sped on its way, winking out at last just as the sun topped the far ridge and streamed bright light into the shadowed depths of the defile.

  Charles and Marco arrived, each man lugging one of the saddle packs. They threw the old ones off the pack animals and cinched on the new.

  “Shall we go?” asked Charles.

  “But what did he ask Hyacinth?” David demanded. “That’s what decided him in the end to get on the ship.”

  Charles grinned, looking like the old Charles, the Charles David had gone to university with. “He asked if I was one of the ten lords attendant on Father Wind, who rules Heaven.” He gathered reins into his hand and mounted.

  “Well, what did Hyacinth say?”

  Charles shrugged.

  Marco coughed into a hand, looking sly, enjoying himself. David felt a sudden camaraderie with these two men, the simple pleasure of their company, out on this secret adventure. Charles had a spark in his eyes, of mischief, of suppressed laughter. A horse neighed in the distance.

  “He said, ‘I and my fellows are ministers of fate.’”

  Which was true enough. Marco and Charles were still chuckling, but David found the quote disturbing. They rode away. Behind them, gravel and dirt lay scorched and scattered, but the first rains would obliterate all traces of the ship. Had Yevgeni truly understood that he was leaving forever? It was no less a sundering than death would have been; but Hyacinth was right, exile was death for a tribeless man like Yevgeni. He had chosen a new tribe. He had chosen to go with the ministers of fate, with the lords of heaven; he had thrown in his lot with Hyacinth’s people. He was no longer jaran.

  The next day, Nadine’s scouts picked up seven horses and brought them into camp that night when they swung in from their roun
ds. Three of the animals bore the clip in their right ear that marked them as jaran horses. If Nadine thought their sudden appearance strange, if she had any theories about them at all, she did not honor David with her confidence.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  VASIL DISCOVERED THAT HE could watch as many rehearsals as he wished, as long as he stood quietly to one side. Sometimes Ilyana came with him, but the hours wore on her, and she fled back to camp, to her mother, to her chores, to the other children. The Company usually attracted an audience, but it shifted as the day passed; no one stayed as long as he did.

  He watched. There, the tall, coal-black woman paced out a recurring movement, the same action over and over again. The young man with mud-colored skin tapped at his drums, finding a pulse, working it in with the scene being rehearsed in front of him. On the platform, five of the actors sang, with their bodies, a part of the old jaran tale of the Daughter of the Sun and the first dyan. The man, Owen Zerentous—Vasil thought of him as the dyan of the Company—measured their singing from the side, where he stood with his arms folded over his chest, squinting at the actors on the platform. Now and again he spoke, or they spoke or asked a question; after that the actors would pause, shift their stances, and go back through the same part again. But always, how they spoke, how they gestured, altered subtly at these times.

  Diana shone. She had the art of shining. Of the other four, Vasil could only recall the name of the man called Gwyn Jones, because Gwyn Jones was the best singer of them all. They were all fine singers. Vasil could see that; he had seen it. Diana was particularly good. But Gwyn Jones thought so completely with his body that impulse and action became one gesture. And all trained to a pulse that the musician heard and transmitted back to them.

  Owen Zerentous cocked his head to one side and abruptly turned to look at Vasil. Some thirty paces separated them, but Vasil felt that gaze beckon him. Zerentous lifted a hand. Clearly, he meant Vasil to come speak with him. Vasil walked over.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Zerentous politely but with a kind of detached presumption that Vasil would bow to his word, “you’re Veselov, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You’ve been interested in our work, I see. Perhaps you’d agree to help us for a moment.”

  “I’m not a Singer—” Vasil began, but Zerentous had already pulled his attention away from him.

  “Diana, call him up to you as if to an audience.”

  Diana did not need to speak. She lifted a hand imperiously, as the Daughter of the Sun would do, should Vasil ever have the misfortune to meet her. The dyan who had fallen in love with the Sun’s daughter had died an untimely death, of course; it was always dangerous to attract the attention of the gods. And yet, although the Daughter of the Sun beckoned him, she was also Diana. She was both. By such skill, by her ability to be both herself and the Sun’s daughter, did she show her mastery of her art.

  Vasil clambered up on to the platform and approached her, eyes lowered. Three paces from her he stopped. He gave her a glance sidelong, knowing he appeared to advantage with his eyes cast down, and then bent his head slightly, just slightly enough to show that he knew the respect due to a woman but without demeaning himself in any way, knowing his own power. They watched him, the actors and Zerentous, and whatever jaran audience lingered beyond. He enjoyed that they watched him.

  “There,” said Zerentous from the ground. “Did you get that, Gwyn? That’s what you’re missing. It’s the modesty without losing the strength. Thank you, Veselov.” Dismissed, Vasil retreated back down off the platform. “So, is it because she’s a goddess that you approach her so humbly, or because she’s a foreign woman?”

  “She’s a woman,” replied Vasil, puzzled by the question. “Whether she’s the Sun’s daughter or a mortal woman makes no difference.”

  “Ah.” Zerentous nodded, but the reaction mystified Vasil. “Run it again.”

  As Vasil watched, the actors sang again—no, they didn’t actually sing, they played their parts. They acted. This time, Gwyn Jones imitated Vasil’s own language of the body, his gestures, his stance, his lowered eyes, so expertly that Vasil was amazed.

  “Better,” said Zerentous. “But now make it your own, Gwyn.”

  They went on. After a bit, even standing so close, Vasil realized that they had forgotten him. Perhaps Zerentous was more like an etsana, truly, since an etsana often only noticed those of her people whom she had a special use for or those who shirked their duties. A dyan must know where each of his men rode, and where and how strongly they wielded their weapons that day. They called Zerentous a khaja word; director, that was it. Beyond, at the fringe of the Company camp, Ilyana appeared. She hopped impatiently, balancing first on one foot, then on the other, and when she saw that she had her father’s attention, she beckoned to him. A summons.

  He sighed and retreated. To one side of the platform, the tall woman paused and acknowledged his leaving with a nod of her head. Her notice heartened him. They had felt his presence. That was something.

  “What is it, Yana?” He bent to kiss her.

  “Mother Veselov wants to see you. Mama sent me to fetch you.” She tilted her head back and examined him with that clear-eyed sight that characterized her. Vasil suspected that she knew very well the kind of man he was, but that she loved him anyway. “They’re not pleased with you,” she added by way of warning him.

  “Oh?” That would have to be mended. It wouldn’t take much time. He took her hand in his and they set off together, back toward the Veselov camp.

  Yana shrugged. “You spend too much time here.”

  “Do you think so?”

  She had a bright face, unscarred by sulkiness. Like her mother, she had learned to accept what life brought her; unlike her mother, she never seemed resigned to her fate, and she did not let the jars and jolting of life bother her. Where her little brother Valentin saw only the clouds, she saw the sun waiting to break through. Everyone liked her; she was, as she ought to be, a charming, brilliant child. “Well, it isn’t so much what I think that matters, Papa, it’s what Mother Veselov thinks.”

  “But I care what you think, little one.”

  They walked ten steps in silence. “Is it true that, a long time ago, that you and Bakhtiian—?” She faltered and gave him a sidewise glance, gauging his reaction.

  Anger blazed up. How dare anyone disturb her with such rumors? But he did not let his anger show. “Who has said this?”

  She shrugged again. “Sometimes I hear things. Once, someone teased Valentin with it, and Valentin just got angry and cried, so I had to protect him.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told him—the boy, not Valentin—that his mother was as ugly as an old cow, that his father was as stupid as a khaja soldier, and then I gave him a bloody lip.”

  Amused, Vasil allowed himself a brief smile. “Well, I suppose that served the purpose, but really, Yana, outright insult is never as effective as more subtle methods. Who was the boy?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to tell you that! I can take care of myself. I always have, you know.”

  The words stung him. “Of course you can take care of yourself, but I’m here now, little one.”

  “Yes. But you might leave again.”

  He flinched. It hurt, the matter-of-fact way she spoke. He stopped her. “I won’t leave you or your mother or Valentin. Ever again. I promise.” He gripped her by the shoulders to make sure she understood. He could not bear for her not to believe in him. She had to.

  For an instant he thought she looked skeptical, but it wasn’t so. Like her mother, she must love him more than anyone else. She smiled her loyal little smile and stretched up to kiss him. “Yes, Father,” she said.

  At Arina’s tent, he had to wait outside for a time, cooling his heels, before Arina’s young sister admitted him. Karolla sat beside Arina, as she had for ten days now; Karolla had practically lived in Arina’s great tent ever since Arina had been carried back to camp on a litte
r, after being wounded in that skirmish. These days she paid more attention to Arina than she did to her own husband, and every now and then, when he thought about it, he resented it.

  Vasil knelt beside the etsana. Arina gestured with her right hand. Ilyana and Karolla left the tent, leaving Vasil alone with his cousin. She was as pale as the moon and scarcely more substantial than the high clouds that streak the sky on a summer’s day. But he recognized the set of her mouth and settled down for a good scolding.

  “Vasil, I am minded as etsana of this tribe to ask the Elders to reconsider your election as dyan. I have never heard any complaint about your actions as dyan, but in truth, these days, Anton is dyan in everything but name, and I refuse to allow you to continue to hold the honor if you don’t also accept the responsibility.”

  He bowed his head. Gods, how he hated these discussions.

  “Have you nothing to say?”

  He stared at his hands, which lay clasped on his thighs. Then he wondered if, by turning his right hand palm up, underneath the shield of his left hand, the arrangement might express a different emotion. Except the fingers of his right hand stuck out then, from under the left. Perhaps if he curled the right hand into a fist, hidden under the looser curl of his left hand—

  “You seem distracted, Vasil.” Though soft, her voice was sharp.

  “I beg your pardon.” He lifted his gaze. She lay propped on pillows with her braided hair snaking down along the curve of her tunic almost to her waist. His dear cousin. She had always supported him. He was glad she had not died.

  “I’ll permit you a few days to consider,” Arina added. “Come speak to me once you’ve made up your mind.”

  This was the time to insinuate himself into her good graces again; he knew it with every fiber of his being. But he wanted to go back and watch the acting. He nodded, allowed himself to be dismissed, and left the tent.

  Karolla waited for him outside. “Well?” she demanded. Then she took hold of his arm and led him aside. “Vasil! You’ve been infected by some madness. She’s going to make Anton dyan again.”