Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  They walked back through camp. Yuri led them wide around his family’s cluster of tents, where Tess could see a little gathering: Bakhtiian, standing as if he was on trial in front of a half circle of older women and men. On the far side of camp, they followed a stream past a low rise. The stream slipped down a smooth ladder of rocks and broadened into a pool. Yuri left her at the top of the rise, and Tess picked her way down the slope alone. Sonia, standing with a group of young women, saw her and waved.

  “Tess.” She came to greet her. “Perhaps my brother does not interest you.” About twenty young women gathered around. They were not shy at all; they pointed to Tess’s clothing and even touched her brown hair, exclaiming over its color—theirs was either blonde or black, with no shade in between.

  Under their scrutiny, Tess was amazed she could keep her composure. “No. No, I like him very much. But I am not looking for a lover.”

  “Ah.” Sonia shooed the other women away and immediately began to undress. “Your heart has been broken. I can see it in your face.” She stripped down to a thin white shift. Around them, the other young women, naked now, plunged gasping and laughing into the pool. “A man has treated you badly. Here, let me help you take those off.”

  Tess was not entirely sure she wanted to strip naked in what was after all no more than an early spring day, however fine, and swim in a stream that looked bitterly cold, but after the execution, she did not want to refuse. “Yes,” she agreed, to both statements.

  “What fine undergarments you wear.” Sonia examined Tess’s underclothes without the least sign of self-consciousness. “Perhaps you can show us how to fashion some. Here, Elena, Marya—” Several of them splashed right out of the pool to exclaim over this new discovery, and when they had tired of that, they bullied Tess into stripping completely and coming back into the water with them.

  It was like ice. But the company, and the energy with which they all splashed about, soon made her forget her goose bumps. Only Sonia spoke Rhuian; the others addressed her cheerfully in their own language and she quickly learned names and a few words. About half the women had scars on their left cheeks.

  “So you are not married?” Sonia asked. “No? How old are you? Twenty-three? A widow, perhaps?”

  “No. I…I was to be married, but…”

  “Ah. This is the man who has broken your heart. Well.” Sonia dismissed the betrayer with a blithe wave of one hand, and a retaliatory splash in the direction of the gray-eyed, blonde girl she called Elena. “In Jeds the customs are different. I did not like them. We have many young men here who are polite as well as handsome.”

  Tess could not help but laugh. “When I’m ready for a lover, I’ll ask your help in picking one out.”

  “I sent you my brother. But perhaps—” She laughed. Her laugh gave color to the air and sparked her eyes and wrinkled up her nose. “When I know you better, Tess, then I can help you choose. But I think it is time you got a husband, for I see that you have no—what is it to say in Rhuian?—none of the Mother’s threads on your belly. As old as you are. I am twenty-four, and I have three children. You must not wait too long. Everyone knows the story of Agrafena’s aunt.”

  The story of Agrafena’s aunt was not, it transpired, about anyone living in the tribe, but an old tale. Giggling and shivering, everyone hurried out of the pool, dried off, and dressed. They sat farther up on the slope, the pool dappled by shadows below, an untidy collection of bodies sprawled in the sun with Sonia and Tess at their center. By turns two or three of the young women took clothing to a stretch of flat stones below the pool and beat them clean in the water. As Sonia told the story, it took a fair while to tell, alternately in Rhuian and in khush. It was about a woman who waited so long to have children that when at last she married and wanted them, she was barren—having offended the spirits of earth and water by her stubbornness—and so had to send her niece on a long journey in order to find the holy woman who could restore her to favor.

  Poor Agrafena had not yet found the holy woman when a little girl raced down from the direction of the camp and delivered a message to the group. Sonia rose and reached down to help Tess up. “The men are coming.”

  Slinging the damp clothes over their shoulders, the women walked in a straggling group back to camp. A path had been beaten down through the coarse grass, winding around the base of the hills, and they followed this. Elena, at the head of the line, whistled suddenly. The whole group quieted. A young man, then another, and another, came around a rise—the men going to the pool. All the girls straightened their shoulders, swaying their hips as the men did when they were wearing their sabers, and when the first of them passed the first young man, the entire group broke into song. The men, all young, stared silently at the ground; many were grinning. One had flushed a desperate, flaming red; another hid his eyes with his hands. Toward the end of the line, a young man with reddish-blond hair looked up as he passed Sonia and Tess, and winked. He had piercingly blue eyes. Sonia gasped, laughing, and looked back at Tess.

  “Did you see that? Did you? Trust Kirill!” The last of the men passed them. All the women were laughing now, breaking off their song. “Did you see?” Sonia addressed the whole group. “I want you all to know—” first in khush, then in Rhuian “—I want you all to know. He winked.”

  “Who?” called Elena from the front.

  “Who do you think?”

  A chorus, up and down the line, answered her. “Kirill!”

  “You see.” Sonia turned back to Tess again. “He’s terribly forward. He has no shame at all.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what happened.”

  Sonia swung her wet burden out in front of her and, with a quick turn of the wrist, made it snap in the air. Faint drops of water sprayed. “We sang a man’s song at them, which reminds them of the order of things. If a woman sings a man’s song, it makes fun of men, you see.”

  Tess did not see, but she was saved from having to answer by their arrival in camp. Whatever other consequences the execution might have had, it had no effect on the daily round of life: at dawn, the camp had been empty. Now it bustled with activity. A fair-haired young woman, weaving at a loom fastened at one end around her waist and at the other to an awning corner pole, paused in her work and smiled at Tess. At another tent, an elderly woman simply stopped scouring out a pot and stared at Tess. She called a question to Sonia, which the younger woman answered with a few words. The two toddlers at her skirts stared, wide-eyed but unafraid. Three men, standing next to hides pegged out over the ground, glanced up quickly at her and away before she could meet their eyes. Farther out, beyond the tents, children raced in from the fringes of the herds to stare at Tess and were chased back to shepherd again.

  Sonia’s tent was not actually Sonia’s tent, but the one belonging to her mother. The smaller tents that Mother Orzhekov had gifted each of her four daughters with lay pitched around the large tent. Tess helped Sonia hang the wet clothes up along the tent-lines to dry and then was given a board and a knife and a slab of meat to cut into strips for stew. Yuri strolled up with a baby on his hip and with a look of relief deposited the child on Sonia’s lap and turned to sit down beside Tess. He looked around rather furtively and, seeing no other young men in sight, drew his knife and helped her cut up the meat. Sonia took the baby away, and Tess and Yuri sat for some time in companionable silence. Occasionally young men passed by, and Yuri would hide his knife under his leg and lean back as if he were relaxing.

  “I do appreciate it, Yuri, but you don’t have to help me,” said Tess after the third time he had hidden the knife. “I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind. Now that I’m a rider it’s supposed to be beneath my dignity to do anything but practice saber and whatever work Uncle Yakhov needs done with the herds.”

  “But you helped Sonia with the baby.”

  “Everyone cares for the children. And, of course, a man does what his family asks of him.”

  �
�But I see men working at many things besides those who are out with the herds. Don’t those men fight?”

  “Every man can fight, Tess, but not every man rides in jahar. We’re almost done anyway.” Three men appeared suddenly from around the back of the tent, but after one startled glance, Yuri simply returned to slicing meat. One was Bakhtiian. Beside him walked an older, silver-haired man, and two steps behind followed a fair, pretty young man who wore a profusion of necklaces in a multitude of colors that clashed with the garish embroidery decorating the sleeves and yoke of his scarlet shirt. Tassels of gold and silver braid hung from his boot tops. Tess could not help but stare. Except for a brief, piercing glance, Bakhtiian ignored them. The young man copied Bakhtiian. But the older man met Tess’s eyes and inclined his head with a friendly smile before accompanying Bakhtiian on into camp.

  “Who was that?” Tess asked.

  “Who? Niko? Nikolai Sibirin. He’s the eldest rider in jahar. You’ll like him.”

  “Who was the other one?”

  “The other one? Oh.” Yuri shrugged dismissively. “Vladimir. He isn’t anybody. He’s an orphan that Ilya took in, because he had a good hand for the saber.”

  “He dresses—” She faltered.

  “He’d like to be noticed. I suppose women might find him attractive.” By his tone, Tess could tell that if women did, their taste was inexplicable to Yuri. “Sonia said that I should teach you khush, if you’d like.”

  “Yes, I would,” Tess replied, realizing that Vladimir was a subject completely uninteresting to Yuri.

  “Well, then, let’s start with naming things. Damn.” He hid the knife.

  Tess looked up. A young man sauntered toward them, saber swaying at his hips. He had blond hair, shot through with the red-gold of flames, and a light mustache above full lips. For an instant their gazes met. His head tilted to one side and, with the barest grin, he winked at her before looking as quickly away in a move both shy and flirtatious. Tess flushed.

  “Trust Kirill,” said Yuri under his breath. He stood up. “What do you want?”

  “Really, Yurinya.” Kirill halted before them, not at all abashed by Yuri’s tone. “Don’t you know Mikhal’s waiting for you to relieve him?” With another sidewise glance at Tess, he spun and almost too casually strolled away.

  Yuri squinted at the sun. “Not yet, he isn’t,” he muttered. He grinned suddenly, looking down at Tess. “He did that just to get a close look at you.”

  “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Kirill has no shame at all. If any other man were so forward, he would be run out of camp. I don’t know how Kirill gets away with it.”

  Tess bit down on her grin, hiding it. “He’s not unhandsome.”

  “I suppose not,” Yuri agreed glumly. “And he knows it.” Then his expression lightened. “But Maryeshka Kolenin showed him, though, when he tried to marry her.”

  Before Tess could ask for details of this intriguing event, Sonia came around the corner with the baby on one hip and a little girl holding on to her opposite hand. “Yuri! Are you still here? Misha must be waiting for you to relieve him.”

  “Not yet,” exclaimed Yuri, completely exasperated now.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Tess asked.

  The casual question brought much more of a reaction than she expected. Yuri blushed. “No. You can’t—”

  “Yuri.” Sonia set the baby down on the rug and let go of the girl.

  Yuri said nothing.

  “I can’t what?” Tess asked.

  “Ilya said not to tell her—”

  “Yuri,” said Sonia. She let out a sigh and dumped the cut meat into a gleaming copper pot. “You might as well say. I never thought it was right not to tell Tess, and you’ve said too much as it is.” She exchanged a glance with Tess and set a woven bag filled with wet tubers down next to the rug, taking the board from Tess. Then she and her daughter turned their backs on Tess and Yuri and with a fresh knife cut up the vegetables, although the little girl peeked back frequently.

  “What is it you weren’t supposed to tell me?”

  Yuri hesitated, glancing to the right, to the left, at Sonia, and finally back at Tess. “About the khepelli.”

  “The khepelli?” Tess felt like all the heat had flooded out of her body into the ground and the air. The late afternoon breeze was chill and damp, presaging rain.

  “They say you were on the same ship with them,” Yuri continued, apparently oblivious to her expression. “When Ilya told them you were following us, they were very surprised. They said you must have followed them from the coast. They said that you were a—a spy—is that the right word?”

  “You knew I was following your trail? And the Chapalii—khepelli—” The word, in his tongue, sounded strange and dangerous to her ears. “—they knew, too?”

  Yuri’s cheeks flushed pink.

  Pretending not to listen, Sonia nevertheless said in a low voice, “I call it dishonorable to leave a woman walking so long. How she made it alone from the coast I can’t imagine. She might have died. It’s a disgrace. And I told Ilya so myself.”

  Yuri grinned, glancing up from under long lashes at Tess. “She did, by the gods. You should have heard it.”

  Tess was too coldly furious to respond to the grin. “And just what do these khepelli say they’re doing here, that I should want to spy on them? And risk my life like that while I’m at it?” Abruptly, before Yuri could answer, she stood up and wiped her hands on her trousers. “No, don’t bother to answer. Just take me to them.”

  “I can’t. Ilya would…” He trailed off, unable to express what Ilya would do.

  “He wouldn’t—it isn’t—” Tess realized suddenly that she knew nothing at all about this culture, except that they practiced summary execution. “He wouldn’t kill you?”

  Yuri sighed. “Killing would probably be a mercy, compared to what he would say to me,” he replied, evidently having already forgotten the horrible act committed in front of his eyes that very morning. “Ah, Tess, you’ve never been on the sharp end of his tongue.”

  “Well, then, Sonia, will you take me?”

  Without hesitation, Sonia met her gaze. “I can’t, Tess. This is men’s business, not mine. But Yuri, on the other hand, ought to take you. Isn’t that so, Yuri?”

  Yuri sheathed his knife, adjusted the position of his saber on his belt, and ran a hand down the black and gold embroidered pattern that decorated the sleeves of his red shirt.

  “Yuri.”

  “Yes, Sonia. Come on, Tess.” He led Tess off in silence, but as soon as they were away from the camp, out walking up a rise, the grass dragging at their knees and thighs, he was voluble enough. “It isn’t fair, having four sisters, and all of them older than you. Well, three, since Anna died with the baby. But it’s always, Yuri do this and Yuri do that, and what am I to say? They don’t have to face Bakhtiian. He would never dare raise his voice to them, and if he ever did—although I can’t imagine him ever trying to—then Mother would find out, and then Ilya would hear about it.” He looked suddenly pleased with the image brought to him by this hypothetical turn of events. “I’d like to hear that. But then,” and he looked at Tess with an impish smile, “Ilya never makes mistakes, so it will never happen.”

  “Yuri, I promise you, if Bakhtiian tries to blame you for bringing me with you, I’ll deal with him.”

  Yuri regarded her skeptically but did not reply.

  It was a shorter walk than Tess expected to the huddle of tents standing next to a makeshift corral of banked earth, stakes, and ropes. Far enough away from the main camp to give privacy to the foreigners, but close enough, Tess judged, for easy access. She recognized the tall, thin silhouettes of the Chapalii immediately. They wore plain brown tunics and trousers, but as always, the clothing could not disguise their gauntness or their pallor. There were other men as well, men of the tribe, but by and large those men were engaged in riding and currying and otherwise examining—horses. />
  “Horses.” The word gusted out of her in a sharp breath. She stopped stock-still far enough away from the tents that no Chapalii ought to recognize her. These were nothing like the horses that Bakhtiian and Yuri, and she herself, had ridden. She knew without question, with that instinct carried down over millennia of Earth generations, that these were Earth horses. The horses from the shuttle’s hold.

  “They’re very fine, aren’t they?” said Yuri enthusiastically. “They are a breed called—khuhaylan. When Ilya saw the first one, two years back, and the khepelli traders told him that he could have a hundred more just for helping them search for the lost haven of their god, of course he agreed. They’re much stronger than they look. With such horses—” He went pale. “There he is. He’s seen us.”

  “Chapalii,” said Tess in Anglais, watching one dark figure detach itself from a cluster of men and start with a determined and menacing stride toward them, “don’t believe in a god. Just in commerce and rank.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Come on, Yuri.” She started for the nearest tent, where a lone Chapalii had stopped to stare at them.

  “But Ilya—” He trailed after her, glancing over his shoulder at the approach of his cousin.

  “I have business with these Chapalii, Yuri, not with Bakhtiian, who, need I remind you, let me walk for three days without food or water, and then—by God!—then the first time he spoke to me in Rhuian, asked me trick questions to see if I was really from Jeds.”

  Yuri murmured something indistinguishable behind her. Tess did not bother to ask him what it was.

  Chapter Four

  “Art is ever far better than strength.”

  —MUSAEUS

  “I GREET YOU WITH good favor, Cha Ishii Hokokul.” Tess halted in front of the Chapalii, whom she recognized as the one who had protested so vehemently against her presence on the Oshaki. A sickly shade of blue gave color to his face as he stared at her. Belatedly, he remembered to bow. Tess smiled. She was so angry at seeing him here, and at knowing that he had known all along of her plight, that she did not mind watching him squirm.