Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  PRAISE FOR KATE ELLIOTT’S JARAN SERIES

  “Elliott’s sure-handed and seductive blend of exotic locales, complex interstellar politics, intriguing cultures, realistic romance, and wonderfully realized characters is addictive. I want my next fix!” —Jennifer Robertson, author of the Novels of Tiger and Del

  “Sweeps the reader along like a wild wind across the steppes. Tell Kate to write faster—I want to read the whole saga NOW!” —Melanie Rawn, author of the Dragon Prince Trilogy

  “[Kate Elliott] spins a splendid web of a tale to trap the unwary and hold them in thrall until the tale is done. Here is another one . . . take care, for if you open these pages you’ll be up past dawn.” —Dennis McKiernan, author of Voyage of the Fox Rider

  “A new author of considerable talent . . . a rich tapestry of a vibrant society on the brink of epic change.” —Rave Reviews

  “A wonderful, sweeping setting . . . reminds me of C. J. Cherryh.” —Judith Tarr

  “Well-written and gripping. After all, with a solidly drawn alien race, galactic-scale politics, intrigue, warfare, even a crackling love story, all set in a fascinating world that opens out onto a vast view of interstellar history, how could anyone resist?” —Katharine Kerr

  Jaran

  A Novel of the Jaran

  Kate Elliott

  For my parents,

  who made it all possible,

  and for Carol Wolf

  who, against all my protests,

  made me do it right.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  The Letter

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  Preview: An Earthly Crown

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  JARAN NAMES HAVE BEEN transliterated into their Earth equivalencies. For instance, U’rhyinhias (pronounced You-rye-EEN-yas) has been simplified into Yurinya (pronounced You-RHEEN-ya or YOU-rhee). This has proved easier on the eye for those inexperienced in Xenolinguistics, as well as lending a certain flavor to the jaran culture because of this superficial similarity to a well-known archaic Earth language.

  “Bodies attract each other with a force that varies directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of the distance between them.”

  —Isaac Newton

  Earth, Nairobi Port

  A.L.C. 261 month 5 day 3

  Terese Soerensen to Charles Soerensen

  Dear Charles,

  Please don’t think I’m running away. I really did mean, when I decided to go to Dao Cee system, to visit you on Odys—but I need to be by myself right now, without you trying to give me well-meant advice or telling me that being your heir is just a technicality and that it doesn’t mean that much. Because it’s not true.

  Charles, I didn’t tell you that I got engaged six months ago. He insisted that we keep it a secret, and now I know why. Obviously he figured you would see through his “love” for me to his real motives. I made the mistake of telling him that under Chapaliian law a sister loses all right to her brother’s [INSERT: or her father’s] goods and titles upon marriage—that she assumes, totally, her husband’s position. That was one month ago.

  One month ago I was still engaged, and I didn’t know that humiliation could help a person do six month’s work in five weeks. I feel sick. I hate myself for being so stupid. And I can’t even tell you his name, because he’s studying Xenodiplomacy at the Sorbonne, and I’m afraid he’ll think I sabotaged his career. He’s one of those men who think women have no honor. Can you understand how I fell in love with him? Because I can’t.

  I thought that I had the courage to tell you to your face that I don’t want to be your heir, that I’m sick and tired of people implying that my success at Univerzita Karlova is due to your position and not to my talent, that I’m never seen as myself but only as an extension of you. Can’t I just abdicate being your sister and let you adopt? Or is it only death or marriage that will remove me from your title? Not, of course, that I’m likely to find either situation appealing. God, Charles, I feel like I have no direction, that I can’t trust my own judgment, that I’ve been abandoned in the middle of nowhere. And I hate being melodramatic.

  [ERASE DOCUMENT]

  Earth, Nairobi Port

  A.L.C. 261 .5.3

  Terese Soerensen to Charles Soerensen

  Dear Charles,

  I finished my thesis early (with honors, by the way) and Univerzita Karlova agreed to give me a leave of absence. I’ve let out my flat in Prague and I’m going to visit Dr. Hierakis at the palace in Jeds. I know I don’t have an official clearance for Rhui, but I do have a copy of the preserve regulations, and you know how well I speak Rhuian. I’m going to appropriate a place on the Rhuian cargo shuttle of the next ship headed to the Dao Cee system. I’m thinking of doing my dissertation on one of the Rhuian languages, so I’ll be researching as well. I’m not sure how soon I’ll get to Odys.

  Your loving sister,

  Tess

  Chapter One

  “I wept and I wailed when I saw the unfamiliar land.”

  —EMPEDOCLES OF AGRAGAS

  A SPARK FLEW, SPIRALING upward from the massive frame of the new Port Authority building. Its fiery light winked out against the heavy plastic pane that separated the deep pit of the construction bay from the temporary spaceport offices.

  Two young women sat on a padded bench by the huge overlook. One, black-skinned and black-haired, watched the work below. The second, looking pale and light-haired mostly in contrast to her companion, studied the words she had just typed into her hand-held computer slate. She frowned.

  “What are you writing, Tess?” asked the first, turning back to her friend. Then she grinned. “Sweet Goddess, what language is that in?”

  Tess tapped save and clear and the words vanished. “Just practicing.” She shrugged. “That was late American English. It’s only about 300 years old, so you could probably puzzle it out given time. I built in a translation program. Here’s how the same thing would look in classical Latin.” Words appeared again. “Ophiuchi-Sei.” The letters shifted to a fluid script. “And here’s court Chapalii. Formal Chapalii. And colloquial enscribed Chapalii. You’ll notice how the glyphs differ in written form only in the tails and in the angling of the curve—”

  “You are nervous, aren’t you? What if the captain refuses you passage?”

  “He won’t refuse,” muttered Tess. She brushed her hand across the screen, clearing it. “And steward class Chapalii of course has no enscribed counterpart at all, so I’ve transcribed it into Anglais characters. What do you think, Soje? It’s an act of rebellion, you know, for stewards to write.”

  Sojourner lifted her brows questioningly and glanced out at the new port building rising behind them along alien lines. Along Chapalii lines. “Is that why the chameleons think we humans are barbarians? Because we allow everyone to write?
”

  Tess laughed. “That doesn’t help. No, because our spoken tongue and written tongue are the same, and a standard. Because we’re too egalitarian. Because we’re so young, as a species, as a culture, compared to them.”

  “Because our physiological system is so inefficient, compared to theirs?” Sojourner waved toward the building behind them. “Just like our technology is primitive? I hate them.” She glanced around the waiting chamber. The walls, a muted orange in the fading daylight, curved in at the top; their dullness diminished the thirty meters between the ends of the room. The air smelled of heat and spices: cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom. It was an alien room, designed for the taste of Chapalii, not humans. “No. I don’t hate them. They’ve proven neither cruel nor harsh as our masters.”

  “Their grip is soft,” said Tess in an undertone.

  Sojourner gave her a sharp glance. “But it chafes,” she replied, quieter still. “Tess, are you sure you really want to go see your brother? Jacques isn’t worth this. He was a spoiled, pretty rich kid who wanted to get ahead without working for it. He’s not worth your running away—”

  Tess winced. “I’m not running away. I finished my thesis. I’ve got obligations to Charles now.”

  “What about your research? I know you don’t want to follow in Charles’s footsteps. Why go now?”

  “Soje, leave be.” The force of her comment silenced both of them. “As if I could follow in his footsteps anyway,” Tess murmured finally.

  Sojourner lifted up her hands in defeat. “Goddess, you’re stubborn. Go. Be miserable. Just remember I told you so. You’ve always hated Odys. You always say so, and that one time I went there with you, I can’t say as I blame you. Ugly planet.”

  “It wasn’t before the Chapalii got through with it,” said Tess so softly that Sojourner did not hear her.

  A chime rang through the room. A seam opened out of orange wall to reveal a nondescript man in police blues. His shoulders shrugged in an exaggerated sigh when he saw them.

  “Office is closed,” he said, obviously used to saying that phrase frequently. “And it’s off limits to humans at all times, except for the midday hour if you’ve got a dispensation.” He regarded them, measuring. What he saw, Tess could well imagine: two young women, only a single valise between them, dressed without any particular style that might mark them out as rich enough or important enough to rate a dispensation or otherwise be allowed entrance into the private corridors of humanity’s alien masters.

  “If you’ll allow me to escort you out,” he said, firmly but kindly.

  Sojourner looked at Tess expectantly. Tess felt frozen. Again it came down to this: retreat with meek dignity, as any other human on Earth would have to, or use her brother’s name like a weapon. How she hated that, having a name that meant something in four languages. Having a name that, through no work of her own, had become so identified with humanity’s one great rebellion against the Chapaliian Empire that the name was now synonymous with that rebellion. Charles had come so early to a realization of what he had to do in his life that surely he could never comprehend her struggle. But she had backed herself into a corner and had no choice but to go forward.

  “You must leave,” he said, coming briskly toward them.

  “My name is Terese Soerensen,” she said, despising herself as she said it. “My companion is Sojourner King Bakundi.”

  The second name did not even register. He stopped stock-still. His face changed. “The Soerensen? You’re his sister?” He hesitated. Then, of course, he looked both abashed and eager. “It is an honor. An honor, to meet you.” She extended her hand and he flushed, pleased, and shook it. “I have a cousin. She fought at Sirin Wild, with the last fleet, on the Jerusalem. She was lucky enough to escape the decompression.”

  “I’m glad,” said Tess sincerely. “Where is she now?”

  He grinned. “She’s a netcaster now. Ferreting information. For the long haul.”

  “For the long haul,” echoed Tess fiercely.

  Sojourner murmured, “Amandla.”

  A hum signaled a new parting of the wall. The guard, startled, spun to look. One of the ubiquitous Chapalii stewards entered the room. Like all the Chapalii serving class, he wore long, thick pants and a heavy tunic belted at his narrow waist. A hint of green colored the pale skin of his face—a sign of disapproval.

  “What is this intrusion?” he demanded. He spoke in the clean, clipped Anglais that those few stewards assigned to direct intercourse with humans used. “I insist these offices be cleared.” His gaze skipped from the guard to Sojourner. “Of these females.”

  Tess stood up. The Chapalii steward looked at her. Like an indrawn breath, the pause that followed was full of anticipated release.

  The green cast to his white skin shaded into blue distress. His thin, alien frame bent in the stiff bow Chapalii accorded only and always to the members of their highest aristocracy.

  “Lady Terese,” the steward said in the proper formal Chapalii. “I beg you will forgive my rash entrance and my rasher words.”

  Unable to trust her voice for a moment, Tess simply folded her hands together in her human approximation of that arrangement of hands called Imperial Clemency. The steward’s complexion faded from distress to blessed neutrality again, white and even. Sojourner rose to stand next to Tess.

  “I am here,” said Tess in strict formal Chapalii, high rank to low, “to advise the captain of the Oshaki that I will board his vessel and depart with it so far as my brother’s fief of Dao Cee.”

  He bowed again, obedient. “You would honor me, Lady Terese, if you granted me the privilege of showing you in to see Hao Yakii Tarimin.”

  “Await me beyond.” Tess waved toward the still open seam in the wall. The steward bowed to the exact degree proper and retreated. The wall shut behind him.

  “God, but it gives me pleasure to see them ordered around for a change,” muttered the guard. Tess flushed, and the man looked uncomfortable, as if he was afraid he had offended her.

  “Are they difficult to work for?” asked Sojourner quickly.

  “Nay. Not if you do the work you’re hired to do. They’re the best employers I’ve had, really.” He lifted his hands, palms up. “Which is ironic. Say, did you say Sojourner King?”

  Sojourner chuckled, and Tess watched, envying her friend’s easy geniality. “Yes. I was named after my great-grandmother, that Captain Sojourner King of the first L.S. Jerusalem.” She intoned the words with relish, able to laugh at her inherited fame in a way Tess had never managed. Then she sobered and turned to Tess. “I guess we part here, Tess. Take this, for luck.” She took an ankh necklace from around her neck and handed it to Tess. “Keep well.”

  “Oh, Soje. I’ll miss you.” Tess hugged her, hard and quickly, to get it over with, shook the hand of the guard, picked up her valise, and walked across the room. The wall opened before her, admitting her to forbidden precincts.

  “And don’t you dare forget to send me a message from Odys,” Sojourner called after her.

  Tess lifted a hand in final farewell as the wall seamed shut, sealing her in to the corridor with the silent, patient steward. He bowed again, took her valise, and turned to lead her through the branching corridors. His lank hair and achromatic clothing lent the monotonous bleached-orange walls color in contrast, or at least to Tess’s sight they did. She did not know what the walls looked like to his vision: like so much else, that was information not granted to humans.

  It was hot, so hot that she immediately broke out in a sweat. Her hand clenched the computer slate. She felt like a traitor. Because she had no intention of going to Odys. She was afraid to go there, afraid to tell her own and only sibling that she could not carry on in his place, that she did not want the honor or the responsibility—that she did not know what she wanted, not at all. She did not even have the courage to tell a good friend. And Sojourner had been a good friend to her, these past years.

  In the suite reserved for the captain, three
Chapalii stood as she entered, bowed in by the steward. He hung back, retraining his hold on her exalted valise, as the wall closed between them. Tess surveyed her audience with dismay. To interview the captain was bad enough. To face three of them…

  She refused to give in to this kind of fear. The captain, thank God, was easy to recognize, because he wore the alloy elbow clip that marked his authority as a ship’s master. She drew in her breath, lifted her chin, and inclined her head with the exact degree of condescension that a duke’s heir might grant a mere ship’s captain.

  Before the captain could bow, one of the other Chapalii stepped forward. “Who has allowed this interruption?” he demanded in formal Chapalii. “Our business here is private, Hao Yakii.” The Chapalii turned his gaze on Tess, but she knew her ground here; indeed, conduct was so strictly regulated in Chapalii culture that she usually had a limited number of responses. It made life much easier. Knowing he was at fault, she could regard him evenly in return. As he realized that the captain, and, belatedly, the other Chapalii, were bowing deeply to her, his skin hazed from white to blue.

  “I am honored,” said the captain, straightening, “to be the recipient of your attention, Lady Terese. May I be given permission to hope that your brother the duke is in good health and that his endeavors are all flourishing and productive?”

  “You may.”

  The slightest reddish tinge of satisfaction flushed the captain’s face. He bowed in acknowledgment and gestured to his companions, introducing them in the formal, long-winded Chapalii style, not only their names but their house and affiliation and title and station and level of affluence: Cha Ishii Hokokul, younger son of the younger son of a great lord, no longer well off, traveling back to the home world; Hon Echido Keinaba, a fabulously wealthy merchant traveling to Odys to negotiate several deals with the merchants of the esteemed Tai-en Soerensen’s household. Hon Echido bowed a second time, skin white, secure in his quick recognition of the duke’s sister and doubtless hoping that his acumen here would stand him in good stead in the haggling to come. Cha Ishii bowed as well, but it was not nearly as deep a bow as a duke’s heir merited.