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

by Kate Elliott

  “Tai-en,” said Charles into the silence. “I have a proposition for you.”

  Naroshi regarded him steadily.

  “Just as you have brought this to me—” He gestured toward the edifice, now curling into mist at the edges as it faded away. “—I propose to bring a human art to you. We humans create an art form that is transitory, played out each night once in a way that can never be duplicated, and yet, played out the next night in the same way that is, still, different from what it was before. It is called theater. I would bring this theater into Imperial space, if you would be willing to sponsor its travel.”

  “Theater,” said Naroshi. The human word sounded strange and ominous on his lips. “I know what this art is.” He inclined his head. “I would be pleased to sponsor a—ah, I know the word. The tour.”

  Charles inclined his head in reply. David could not imagine how Charles could keep his face so straight as he recruited a Chapalii duke, all unknowing, to start the wheel spinning, to start the first corruption, the first step, the first wedge into the edifice of diamond and steel that was the Empire. To introduce the first tendrils of the saboteur network into the heart of Chapalii space.

  Or did Naroshi know? Did he suspect? Knowing that his own agents had been in Charles’s territory—knowing that Charles knew—did Naroshi then accept Charles’s agents into his? Like any great dance, whirling along in brilliant colors across a ballroom floor, the movement and countermovement that flowed naturally from the interaction of the dancers seemed merely bewildering to an inexperienced bystander. On neither duke could David read the slightest expression or color.

  “I will send the Bharentous Repertory Company to your palace, Tai-en,” said Charles.

  “I will receive it,” said Naroshi.

  He rose. Charles rose. The edifice dissolved into steam and vanished into air between them, where they stood at either end of their respective sofas. They made polite farewells. Naroshi left, with his steward trailing behind. David and Suzanne stared at each other. Charles sat down and drained his whiskey in one shot.

  “Well,” said Suzanne. “I wasn’t expecting that. Getting him to sponsor the tour.” She walked over and sat down where Naroshi had just been sitting.

  “Neither was I,” admitted Charles. “It just came to me.” He grinned. “Did you see that design? It practically shouted my link to Rhui and to the Mushai and from there, I suppose, to all rebels.”

  “Or Tess’s link,” said Suzanne, “since Naroshi must know that she was last seen alive there.”

  “How can you risk it?” David demanded. He thought of Diana as he said it. Of Diana and her husband, who must surely end up following her wherever she went. “Putting the actors into Naroshi’s hands?”

  “‘I’ll deliver all,’” said Charles. He leaned back into the cushions. “How can I not risk it?”

  David sighed and went to lean on the lectern, but he watched the sun sink down over the horizon. The polished black surface of the table stared blankly at him.

  “Earth,” said Charles, and a flat map of Earth and her continents flowered into being on the table. He went on, through the planets bound together by the League covenant, by their human heritage, by the many space stations and mining colonies and frozen outposts linking them along the shipping lanes. “Ophiuchi-Sei. Sirin Five. Tau Ceti Tierce. Eridanaia. Hydra. Cassie. The unpronounceable one. Three Rings.” He did not say Odys. Odys was not a human planet, only the seat of his ducal authority.

  Maggie strode in, poured herself a drink at the bureau, and walked across the room to sprawl out on the sofa next to Charles. “I got rid of Marco,” she said. “What a relief. He needs a vacation. But you know—” She sipped from her glass and set it down on the end table. “I almost asked him to greet Ursula from me. It’s still hard to believe that she’s dead. What a terrible way to die.”

  “She wasn’t the first. She won’t be the last,” said Charles.

  Maggie had evidently come through the greenhouse, because David could smell the perfume of newly-mown grass on her. Suzanne sighed. Under David’s elbows, the screen shifted again, to show the ongoing design and work index for Concord, the great space station that housed the League offices and the League Parliament. The Chapalii Protocol Office allowed the work to continue, as long as it did not interfere with whatever quotas and taxes their human subjects must pay to the emperor. David ran a finger along a hatched grid. Nadine would have loved this, this table, with its cornucopia of maps stored within, each one available at the touch of a finger or with a single spoken word, each one a discovery, a new journey, a fresh path to explore.

  “Where did you get that sword?” Maggie asked. “That saber? That’s a jaran saber.”

  “Bakhtiian sent it to me,” said Charles, “together with the armor and a beautifully embroidered red shirt.”

  David looked out at the armor. He hadn’t noticed the shirt before, but it was there, under the cuirass, sleeves flowing out in a pattern of red interlaced with a golden road and silver eagles. And David had to smile. As if, by giving him the shirt, Bakhtiian had made Charles a member of his army.

  Charles caught David’s eye and smiled. Then he said, “Rhui,” and the surface of the table flowed again, becoming Rhui.

  Maggie got up and went over to stare more closely at the saber. She made a comment, more of a grunt, really, that meant nothing except perhaps, “Oh, how interesting.” The only color in the room came from her teal shirt, and from the Rhuian artifacts arranged artfully along the wall. The display itself seemed to flow right out onto the balcony, encompassing the suit of armor and moving beyond it to the horizon. As the sun set over the quiet waters, the evening star woke and burned in the sky, so that it, too, seemed part of the room. The evening star, which was Rhui.

  “I miss him,” said Charles. “It’s strange, knowing I’ll probably never see him again.”

  David wiped the table clear with a sweep of his arm and went and sat down next to Suzanne. After a moment, Maggie retreated to her place. The four of them sat there in companionable silence. Night bled down over them. The bureau light snapped on, illuminating the wall, spraying a fan of soft white light up onto the saber and the robe.

  “‘I long to hear the story of your life,’” said Suzanne, “‘which must take the ear strangely.’ That’s what comes before that line.”

  “What line?” demanded Maggie.

  Rhui blazed in the sky, and around her, the other stars appeared, thousands upon thousands of them like the fires of the jaran army, like the torch-burdened walls of Karkand, like lights burning in the forest of towers that surrounded the emperor’s palace on Chapal.

  “‘I’ll deliver all.’” said Charles, “‘And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales/And sail so expeditious that shall catch Your royal fleet far off.’”

  “Oh,” said Maggie. “That line.”

  David felt at peace. Not for the past, not for the future, but for this moment. For now.

  EPILOGUE

  “We’ll lead you to the stately tent of war.

  Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine

  Threatening the world in high astounding terms

  And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

  View but his picture in this tragic glass,

  And then applaud his fortunes as you please.”

  —Marlowe,

  Tamburlaine the Great

  THE RIDERS LEFT THE SPRAWL of the jaran camp at dawn, a pack of fifty soldiers, lightly armed, and one khaja man dressed in a drab tunic, carrying a heavy wooden tube strapped along his back. They rode that day across grassy plains transformed into pale gold by the summer sun. They camped, tentless and fireless, under the cloud-streaked sky, and stars and the full moon watched over them.

  The next day they came to a low range of hills and a khaja village with tumbled-down walls, and through this they rode without a passing glance, and the khaja villagers trudged on about their tasks with scarcely a look in their directi
on. In the afternoon they saw a great butte looming before them.

  “Goddess in Heaven,” said Marco, “that’s an impressive thing.”

  “It is the khayan-sarmiia,” explained Aleksi, “Her Crown Fallen from Heaven to Earth.”

  “Whose crown?”

  “Mother Sun’s crown. There’s the camp.”

  Five and a half years ago, Aleksi had ridden here bringing the news of Sergei Veselov’s death to the army. Now he delivered a messenger from a dead man. No army camped now in the shadow of the huge rock, and yet the camp pitched here was large, riders and archers and women cooking and children carrying water. Set out in a great spiral at the northeastern corner of the butte stood the ten great tents of the ten etsanas of the Eldest Tribes. Two tents shared the middle ground: that of Mother Sakhalin and that of Mother Orzhekov, Bakhtiian’s aunt.

  “I don’t see Bakhtiian’s tent,” said Marco as they rode into the Orzhekov encampment.

  Aleksi pointed up, toward the heavens. “His tent is pitched up there,” he said.

  Marco tilted his head back and stared up at the grainy cliffs that blocked off half the southern horizon from this angle. The sun was already hidden behind it, and its shadow made a cooling screen for the camp against the summer heat. Aleksi dismounted and gave his mount to one of his riders. Marco did the same.

  “Papa!” An instant later, a small but fierce object hit Aleksi broadside, and he grunted and laughed and grabbed his daughter under her arms and swung her around. “Dania, you imp,” he scolded, setting her down. She wore a little bow and quiver strapped on her back, and a curved stick thrust in her belt. “Marco, this is my daughter Dania.”

  Marco eyed the child with distrust. She folded her arms across her chest and regarded him with disdain. “Your daughter?” he asked, clearly puzzled.

  “Yes,” said Aleksi, taking pity on him, khaja that he was, for not understanding immediately how Aleksi could be the father of a child too old to have been born to his wife in the nearly two years since he had seen Marco Burckhardt last. “I married her mother, Svetlana, some months after you left us.”

  “Papa,” Dania announced, “Kolia got into trouble again. He burnt his fingers because he was trying to—”

  “Hush. I don’t want to hear about it. Did Tess have the baby yet?”

  “No, but the doctor sent a runner down today and called Mama and Aunt Sonia to attend, so perhaps she’s having it now.”

  Marco gaped up at the rock. It towered up into the heavens, its flat peak seeming to scrape the pale down of clouds that streaked the sky. “Tess is up there having a baby?” he exclaimed.

  “She got so huge, and the baby still hadn’t come, so she decided that since she wanted to stay with Bakhtiian anyway, through the council, that she might as well walk up with him and try to start her labor that way.”

  A sudden gleam lit Marco’s eyes. Aleksi recognized it: Nadine got the same gleam in her eyes when it came time to scout a new path. “There’s a path that goes up to the top? Can we hike up there?”

  “No, you can’t,” said Dania severely. “Only the etsanas and the dyans have walked up. They’re speaking to the gods.”

  “Yes, you can,” said Aleksi mildly, bending down to kiss the girl on either cheek. “Go on, little one. Go find your Aunt Nadine and send her to us.” He straightened up to regard Marco, who still had his head thrown back, gazing up at the height. “Tess said we should come up, you and I, once we arrived. But it’s true that it’s a holy place, and that the gathering going on there now is not for any eyes and ears but those of the Ten Elder Tribes.”

  “What is going on?” demanded Marco. “Are they all overseeing the birth, or something? To make sure it’s legitimate?”

  “What is legitimate?” asked Aleksi. “Well, never mind. Let’s go to Nadine’s tent. She’ll want to see the maps.”

  Nadine arrived at her tent at the same time as they did, and she greeted Marco with every show of sincerity. While he unsealed the tube and drew out the maps, she asked him a string of questions about the voyage and what the great seas were like to sail on and if it was true that there were monsters sunk in the deeps. Nadine had furnished her outer chamber in a khaja manner, with a table and chairs and a cabinet built and carved in Jeds. Marco unrolled the maps on the table and she gasped and leaned beside him, smoothing her hand out over the heavy parchment.

  “David did these, didn’t he?” she said in a low voice.

  “David and Rajiv Caer Linn, yes,” answered Marco. “David is well.”

  Nadine glanced up at him, at these innocuous words, and then down at the map again. “They’re beautiful maps, and so detailed. How comes it, Marco, that you can sail over the far seas and back again, and yet none of the others can?”

  Marco grinned. “I don’t ask permission, for one, and for the other, I’m willing to take the risks onto myself.” Then his face changed abruptly, and he turned to stare at the curtain that separated the outer chamber from the sleeping chamber. “I’ve no one waiting for me, back there, in any case.”

  Nadine traced a warren of chambers in a finely detailed corner of the map of the shrine of Morava, and her finger came to rest on one particular room, a tiny little chamber that bore no distinguishing mark to separate it from the rest, nothing except what lay in her memory. “Kirill Zvertkov is taking a jahar of twenty thousands and riding east along the Golden Road, to scout it,” she said, sounding casual. But Aleksi knew her well enough—and had been privy to the arguments—to know how badly she had wanted to go on that expedition, and how firmly Bakhtiian had refused her request. One daughter was not enough to secure the succession.

  “East from the plains?” asked Marco. “I haven’t been that way. The Empire of Yarial lies on the eastern shore, they say.”

  “There’s a country that lies athwart the Golden Road in the midst of an empty desert,” said Nadine, her voice becoming rich with eagerness, “where the lands shift, where no traveler can walk without becoming lost, where the mountains move at night, and the rivers change their course between the seasons.”

  “But, Dina,” said Aleksi, “a country like that could only exist if the khaja there were all sorcerers, or if the gods had put a curse on it.”

  “That may be,” said Nadine tartly, “but I’d still like to see it for myself.”

  “When did you say that Zvertkov is riding east?” Marco asked.

  “In a few days,” answered Nadine. “Are you going to go with him?”

  “I just might, at that,” murmured Marco.-”I just might.” Then, to his credit, he read her expression. “I promise to send you reports by every courier who returns to the army.”

  Nadine sighed and placed her hands on two corners of the maps, holding them down and staring at them. The entrance flap got pushed aside. A baby announced its presence in a long musical trill, complete with a babble of meaningless but perfectly sweet syllables. “Hello, Feodor,” Nadine said to the table.

  Aleksi turned. It was Feodor, of course. Grekov was so proud of his fat baby daughter that the whole camp made fun of him, but then, a father was meant to spoil his daughters. Lara sat propped on his hips, riding on his belt, her chubby little hands gripping his shirt tightly. She had a smile on her face, and she gurgled happily, recognizing Aleksi and her mother. But then, she always had a smile on her face. She was the most easy-natured child that Aleksi had ever met, so sweet-tempered that everyone joked that she must not be Nadine’s.

  “Hello, Aleksi,” said Feodor, but his gaze jumped straight to Marco. Aleksi had long since divined that Feodor did not, on the whole, like khaja of any sort, but perhaps that was only because Nadine often seemed half khaja herself. “Well met,” Feodor added politely, addressing Marco.

  Marco looked stunned. He stared at Feodor and then at the baby and then back at Feodor again. Finally, thank the gods, he recalled his manners. “Well met,” he replied, equally polite. “I’m Marco Burckhardt.”

  “Yes,” said Feodor, “I remember
you, of course.” His face softened all at once. “This is our daughter, Lara. She was born last year.”

  Marco took one step and then a second, and fetched up in front of the baby. He put out a hand to touch her cheek, and she batted at his hand and laughed. Feodor smiled fondly on her. Marco looked back and at that moment Nadine lifted her head to gaze at him, and at her daughter. Their eyes met, hers and Marco’s, and some message passed between them that Aleksi could not read and Feodor, tickling Lara’s chin, was not even aware of. He set her down and steadied her, and she took a step, another step, a third, and more by dint of forward motion than of balance crossed the space to her mother. Nadine scooped her up in her arms. The contrast was greatest with Feodor, of course, with his fair hair and complexion, but even next to Nadine and her dark hair, Lara looked quite dusky, like twilight, with her creamy brown skin and her coarse black ringlets.

  “She’s hungry,” said Feodor. He looked at Aleksi, and Aleksi looked at Marco, and the three men left the tent, leaving Nadine to her daughter and her maps.

  Outside, Feodor excused himself and went off to mediate a dispute that had erupted between two packs of children.

  “Does he know?” Marco demanded.

  “Does he know what?” Aleksi asked, mystified by Marco’s sudden fierce expression.

  “Does David know he has a child?”

  “David ben Unbutu, do you mean? How should I know? Does he have a child?”

  “Aleksi, you’d have to be blind not to see that that child isn’t Feodor Grekov’s daughter, not with that coloring. She’s David’s.”

  The comment puzzled Aleksi. “I beg your pardon, Marco, but she is Feodor Grekov’s daughter. Perhaps no one has told you, but there is nothing more insulting you could ever say to a man, except to insult his mother or sister, of course. I thought even the khaja knew that.”