Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  “No one…no one ever says things like that to Bakhtiian.”

  “Why not? It was a warning. I remember when he told you to go look after the horses. I’d never seen anything so rude.”

  “Oh, Tess. The look—on his face when you said it.” He bit at his hand to stop himself from giggling.

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “Oh, oh.” Tears sparkled on his cheeks. He was still laughing, one hand pressed to his abdomen. “Oh, Tess, make me stop laughing. My stomach hurts.”

  Tess began to wipe at her eyes, recalled the kohl, and stopped. “Listen, Yuri. I need your advice. About Vladimir.

  Yuri stopped laughing.

  “I’ve done something wrong, haven’t I?” she whispered. From the fire came a swell of laughter.

  “No.” He reached for her. She avoided his hand. “Vladimir’s behavior—as if anyone could blame you—”

  “Oh, Lord.” She broke past him and ran away, skirting the clusters of tents, until she found her own, pitched in solitary splendor at the very edge of camp. She flung herself down, crawled inside, and covered her face with her hands.

  Once again, she had made a fool of herself with a man. She never knew what to do. She always did it wrong. She snuffled into her palms but could not force tears. Voices, angry voices, interrupted her, and she froze, scarcely breathing.

  “By the gods,” said Bakhtiian. He sounded furious beyond measure. “If I ever see such an exhibition as that again, Vladimir, then you will leave my jahar. Perhaps Elena Sobelov might keep you as her lover, a kinless man without even a dyan to call loyalty to, but her brothers will kill you if you ever try to mark her.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Vladimir’s voice was sullen.

  Tess squirmed forward and peered out the front flap of her tent. She could see neither of them.

  “Not even Kirill would flaunt himself like that in front of a woman. Not even Kirill, by the gods, would put himself forward so, without any shame at all, and as a guest in this tribe. I expect my riders to behave as men, not as khaja savages.”

  Out a little farther, and she could see them, standing by the glow of the fire around which Bakhtiian and Niko had spoken with men from this tribe the night before. Bakhtiian stood stiff and straight, anger in every line of his body. Before him, bowed down by his bitterly harsh words, Vladimir stood hunched, cowed. Tess felt sorry for him suddenly, the recipient of Bakhtiian’s ill humor.

  “She’s just a khaja bitch,” said Vladimir petulantly. “She doesn’t matter.”

  Bakhtiian slapped him. Vladimir gasped. Tess flinched.

  “Never speak of women that way.” Bakhtiian’s voice was low but his words burned with intensity. “Have you no shame? To throw yourself at her, there at the dance? What do you think Sakhalin must think of me, of our jahar? That we are so immodest that we make advances to women?”

  A muffled noise had started that Tess could not immediately identify. The shadowy figure that was Vladimir lifted a hand to his face. He was crying.

  “None of the women, none of them…came up to me…”He faltered. “She is khaja. I thought it wouldn’t matter.”

  “Oh, gods, Vladi,” said Bakhtiian awkwardly, his voice softening. “Go to bed.”

  Vladimir turned and fled into the safe arms of the night. Bakhtiian sighed ostentatiously and kicked at the fire, scattering its coals. The last flames highlighted his fine-boned face.

  “Ah, Bakhtiian.” The woman’s voice was low and pleasant. She strode into the fire’s glow with confidence. “I was looking for you, Ilyakoria.”

  He glanced up at her and looked down again. “Nadezhda. We have had so little time to talk since I arrived.”

  “To talk?” She turned to rest a hand on his sleeve. She was older, a handsome woman dressed in long skirts and belled trousers washed gray by the night. “Talk is not precisely what I had in mind.”

  He shifted so that his arm brushed hers, but still he did not look at her. “You flatter me.” She laughed, low and throaty, and lifted a hand to touch his face.

  His diffidence astonished Tess and she felt suddenly like a voyeur, spying on a scene not meant for her eyes and ears. She shimmied backward into the tent, covered her ears with her hands, and curled up in her blankets. Eventually, she even went to sleep.

  Light shimmered through the crystal panes that roofed and walled the Tai-en’s reception hall. Rainbows painted the air in delicate patterns, shifting as the sun peaked and began its slow fall toward evening.

  Marco sat on a living bench, grown from polished ralewood, growing still, shaded by vines. He watched as Charles Soerensen moved through the crowd. Worked the crowd, really; Marco had always liked that use of the word. Each new cluster of Chapalii bowed to the same precise degree at Charles’s presence. The humans shook his hand, except for the Ophiuchi-Sei, who met him with a palm set against his palm, their traditional greeting. A handful of individuals from alien species under Chapalii rule also graced the reception, but Charles was always armed with interpreters of some kind, and he had the innate ability to never insult anyone unknowingly. Marco studied the crowd, measuring its tone, measuring individuals and family affiliations among the mass of Chapalii honored enough to receive this invitation, enjoying the consternation in the Chapalii ranks at the carousing of a score of human miners in from the edge of the system on holiday, marveling for the hundredth time over how the Chapalii architect responsible for this chamber had managed to coordinate the intricate pattern of the mosaic floor with the shifting rainbows decorating the loft of air above.

  At the far end of the hall, under the twin barrel vaults that led out into the stone garden, Suzanne appeared.

  Marco did not jump to his feet. He never did anything hastily or blindly, except for that one time in the frozen wastelands far to the south of Jeds, when he had run for his life with a spear through his shoulder, an arrow through his neck, and his dead guide left behind in a spreading pool of blood.

  Suzanne did not move from the entrance. She merely stood to one side, shadowed by a pillar, and waited. After a few minutes, Marco rose and strolled aimlessly through the crowd, making his spiral way toward Charles. When he at last touched the sleeve of Charles’s shirt, he noted that Suzanne had vanished from the hall. Charles shook the hand of a ship’s master, exchanged a few easy words with her mate, and followed Marco out through the narrow side corridor that led to the efficiency and thence through a nondescript door to a hall that circled back and led out onto a secluded corner of the stone garden.

  Suzanne waited there, standing under the shade of a granite arch cut into a lacework of stone above. A Chapalii waited with her. Seeing Charles, he bowed to the precise degree.

  “Charles,” said Suzanne, “this is Hon Echido Keinaba. He has come to Odys on behalf of his family to negotiate shipping and mineral rights. I hope you will be able to find time to discuss this matter in detail with him tomorrow.” Then she repeated her speech in halting formal Chapalii, for Keinaba.

  Charles nodded.

  Keinaba bowed, his skin flushed red with satisfaction. “Tai Charles,” he said, speaking slowly, more as if he were choosing his words carefully than making sure the duke could understand him, “I am overwhelmed by your generosity to me and to Keinaba in this matter. I was most gratified to meet and converse with your esteemed heir the Tai-endi Terese on the shuttle from Earth up to the Oshaki, and I can only hope that her influence has helped bring your favor onto our family.” He bowed again, hands in that arrangement known as Merchant’s Bounty.

  Charles did not move or show any emotion on his face. He simply nodded again.

  “Perhaps, Hon Echido,” said Suzanne, “you would like to see the reception hall.”

  “It is my fervent desire,” replied Echido. He bowed again and retreated.

  “Where the hell did he come from?” asked Charles. “When did you get back?”

  “One hour past, on the same ship as Echido. I rather like him, as much as I like any of them
. Charles, Tess has vanished.”

  “Explain.”

  “The reason I came back in person instead of sending a bullet is that it only took me one day to establish without any doubt in my own mind that Tess finished her thesis, left Prague, and boarded the Oshaki with the intent to come to Odys. I have a holo interview with her friend Sojourner, with a security police officer from Nairobi Port, with a Port Authority steward, and a confirmed retinal print from the boarding access tunnel on Lagrange Wheel.”

  “And?”

  Suzanne shrugged. She slipped her hand into an inner pocket on her tunic and handed a thick, palm-sized disk to Charles. “My feeling? Sojourner had the distinct impression Tess didn’t want to come to Odys, but that she was running from an unhappy love affair.”

  “Lord,” said Marco.

  “Don’t kid yourself, Burckhardt. She evidently thought the boy was in love with her, but he was in love with her position and what she was and dumped her when he found out about the inheritance laws.”

  “Do you mean to say,” Charles asked quietly, “that Tess was planning on getting married?”

  “Looks like it.”

  Charles’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “She didn’t tell me. And then?”

  “No other ports of call, according to Echido, except Rhui and Odys. I picked him up on Earth. He did not in fact go back to Chapal, despite what that message said. He debarked from the Oshaki at Hydri and went back to Earth to get a ship back here. But he was very clear that he had met less. He said they talked about Rhui and the interdiction and Rhui’s rich resources.”

  Charles considered the pattern of subtly shaded stones set in linked chevrons between twisting statues carved from black rock. “Suzanne, you will follow the trail of the Oshaki, as far as Chapal, if need be. Marco, to Jeds.”

  Suzanne nodded. “I’ve already made arrangements for the Lumiere to run a shipment of musical instruments to Paladia Major. We can leave in two hours.”

  Charles held out the disk. “This is a full report?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then go.” Suzanne said nothing more, but simply left, walking briskly on the path. Pebbles whispered under her shoes.

  Marco coughed into his fist. “Charles, what if she doesn’t want to be found? What if she needs some time alone, to be away from you, from—from everything? You ride her pretty damned hard.”

  “She would have sent me a message.” Charles turned the disk in his hand over, and over again. “In any case, she and I haven’t the luxury of time away. It’s hard, but that’s where it stands. Tess must be found. Do you really suppose that I trust the Chapalii in a matter like this? The captain of the Oshaki lied to me. He knew she was on his ship. Even if he colluded with her, if her intent was to hide on Rhui, still…still…she’s leverage over me, and they know it.”

  “They made you a duke.”

  “And we still don’t understand how their damned alien minds work. Start in Jeds, Marco. You or Suzanne will find her.”

  Marco watched Soerensen walk away, back to his duties at the reception which he would perform without the slightest visible sign that he had just discovered that his only sibling, his heir, had disappeared. Charles was about as yielding as the stone in this garden. Sun dappled the path where it wound underneath the granite arch, cut by the lacy filigree into twisting and subtly chaotic patterns that blended with the shapes of the pebbles. Perhaps the stone was more flexible. If Tess was missing by some machination of the Chapalii, there would be hell to pay, although Marco could not for the moment imagine what Charles could actually do about it. Chapalii did not harm their superiors, and very few Chapalii outranked Tess. She would be in no physical danger, at least, however small a consolation that was. And if Tess had run, and was hiding, and he found her and brought her back where she did not want to be: well, that might be worse.

  Cloth brushed her back, and Tess started awake and lay still, cursing herself for her dreams. Jacques again, damn him. She felt flushed all along her skin, up and down her body, and she sighed, resigned, recalling the dream more clearly now. Jacques’s presence had not been the important element in this dream; what they were doing together was.

  Outside, bells jingled softly, muffled by distance, and one of the herd beasts lowed, sounding more like a cow than the goat it resembled. A bird trilled once, twice, and then ceased. It must be nearly dawn. Yuri had taught her that trillers heralded dawn, whistlers noon, and hooters dusk.

  “This isn’t his tent,” said a man, his voice pitched so low that Tess would not have heard him if he hadn’t been standing a hand’s breadth away from her, separated from her only by the cloth of her tent. “This is a woman’s pattern.”

  A foot dragged along the fabric, pushing the wall in ever so slightly. Grass rustled, the barest sound, as he crept away. A word exhaled, farther away, so she heard the breath but not the meaning. She reached to pull her tent flap aside to look out.

  “Stahar linaya!”

  The force of the words—Battle! Night! Treachery!—ringing out in—in Fedya’s voice?—sent her forward without thinking, responding to his piercing cry for help. She tumbled out of her tent and ran right into a body crouched outside. The figure stumbled forward, reaching for his saber. She caught a flash of white face as she reached for her own saber, only to recall that she was in women’s clothing. The man took off running.

  A confusion of figures clustered around Bakhtiian’s solitary tent. A man screamed in rage. Suddenly, sabers winked pale in the hazy predawn dimness.

  Two men—Vladimir and Fedya—faced off against three, their shapes shifting in a delicate dance around Bakhtiian’s tent.

  “Get back, Tess!” A hand pressed her back against her tent, and she looked up to see Kirill beside her. He clutched a blanket around his waist with one hand. His torso was utterly naked, and for a wildly improbable moment, she simply stared, at his arms, at the pale down of fine hair on his chest—

  “—your saber!” he hissed urgently.

  She swallowed hard and reached back into her tent and pulled out her saber. He grabbed it from her one-handed, slipping the blade free with a deft twist, and ran forward into the fight. “Vladi! Disarm him now! Fedya, to me. Yuri, Konstans, to their backs.”

  With a blur of strokes, Vladimir disarmed one man and then without pausing flung himself on the other and wrestled him to the ground. Faced with Fedya and Kirill, and the appearance of several other men in various stages of undress, the third man threw down his saber. Yuri darted forward and picked up the three sabers. He wore only trousers and no boots. A man cried out in pain, and then Bakhtiian appeared at the same moment as the first swell of light, the disk of the sun cresting the horizon, flooded the scene with dawn’s pale light. He was, of course, impeccably dressed, shirt tucked in, trousers straight, saber held with light command in his right hand—but he was barefoot.

  “Vladi,” he said in a calm voice that carried easily in the hush of the moment, “let him up.”

  Vladi sat atop the second man, knife pressed against the edge of the man’s eye. Blood welled and trickled down the man’s cheek, and he whimpered in fear. Some of the older riders had taken over, holding the other two men captive. Now many of the tribe filtered in to form a rough circle around this altercation. Vladi sat back reluctantly and withdrew his knife. The man did not move from the ground, but he lifted a hand to cover his eye.

  “What is this?” Elizaveta Sakhalin and her nephew arrived. “What men have breached the peace of this tribe?”

  Niko and Josef yanked the man from the ground and hustled him over to stand by his compatriots. In the light, the raiders looked a sorry bunch, ill-fed, sallow, and peevish.

  “I don’t recognize them,” said Bakhtiian.

  One man lifted his head and spat in Bakhtiian’s direction. “I’m only sorry we didn’t kill you.”

  “You will be sorrier when we are done with you,” said Elizaveta Sakhalin, favoring the three captives with a withering stare.
r />   “This is men’s business,” the bold one snapped.

  “Conducted within our tents? I think not. Yaroslav.” She nodded to her nephew. “You will confine them until the Elders have discussed their fate.”

  “There,” said Konstantina, startling Tess by coming up quietly beside her. “You see, Tsara.” She angled her neck to include her cousin, who had trailed after her, both hands holding a blanket demurely around herself. “I was right. There is Nadezhda Martov.”

  Tess was distracted from watching the captives being led away by the sight of Martov arriving some steps behind Bakhtiian, decently dressed in a shift and skirt. Bakhtiian glanced back at her, aware of her presence, and then moved forward to speak with Niko and Fedya and Vladimir.

  “And get some clothes on,” he said to the other men.

  Konstantina chuckled. “You see. All the women have arrived to take a look.”

  Glancing around, Tess realized that a disproportionate number of the younger women of the tribe had arrived. A few whistled as Kirill came back over to her tent. His eyes were lowered in a becoming fashion, but there was no doubting the slight sauntering display in his walk.

  “You, too, Kirill,” said Bakhtiian. “Fedya, was it you caught the intruders? I thought as much. And you did well, Vladi.”

  “Thank you,” said Kirill as he returned Tess’s saber. Tsara laid a hand on his arm and led him away, looking smug.

  “What will happen to the captives?” Tess asked Konstantina, who still hovered at her elbow. Sakhalin and her nephew reappeared to consult with Bakhtiian.

  “Oh, I should think that we’ll leave them for the birds. Ah, there he is. If you’ll excuse me.” Konstantina strode away straight toward Yuri, Tess noted with interest, as he retreated hastily from the fray.

  “No,” Bakhtiian was saying, “I take full responsibility for this act. Had I not been here, this would never have happened. I do not want to bring further trouble for your tribe, Mother Sakhalin. We will leave today.”