by Kate Elliott
HE DID NOT LET go of her until they were inside the room that the priests had given him to sleep in. She was panting, dizzy from the pace he had set, the sudden halts, the fear of every blind corner. Her wrist ached where he held her. When he released her, she staggered backward. The bed frame caught her knees and she half-fell to the hard mattress. All of her breath sighed out of her. She sank back against the wall and rested her face in her open hands. Light flickered. She lifted her head. He set a candle on the little table midway along the wall.
His stare was so hard that she looked down. “What, did he try to kill you?” he said finally, as if he had thought of doing it once or twice. “If you will be caught spying, then you must expect to suffer the consequences.”
She stared stupidly at him. Half a meter to the right and the shot would have burned through her.
“I could not sleep,” said Ilya at last. “I saw you meet the pilgrim called Garii and go with him. He took you into the white room, but when I looked inside, you had vanished. Then Ishii came and went inside, yet the room remained empty—to my sight, at least. And you came out, running as if demons were after you. There is blood on your hand, by the way. Where did you go?”
There was blood on her hand. She wiped her face frantically but only the barest smear came off. There was not much, after all: a pale stripe across her knuckles and a few drops darkening her sleeve.
“You have done violence in the shrine,” he said.
Her head snapped up. “No! He tried to kill me. It was self-defense, damn you. I didn’t kill him. God, he killed Garii. He would have killed me!”
“Where did all this take place?”
“There’s a secret room, a secret door. Don’t you have anything I can clean this off with? It stings.”
He took a step toward her. She jerked up, but he was only turning to open the door. He went out. She was suddenly seized by a paralyzing terror: what if he had gone to find Ishii? Or Mother Avdotya? A hand rattled at the door—but it was Ilya. He tossed her a damp cloth and resumed his stance against the door, regarding her with his unrelenting gaze. She scrubbed at her hand and her cheek and then sat, staring at the rag until finally she dropped it on the floor next to his bed.
“You have no farther to retreat,” said Bakhtiian, “and I want an explanation.” The candlelight threw his shadow high up on the wall, arching over onto the ceiling, so that it seemed to lower down on her like the approach of a storm. “You had better be honest with me, because I am—completely—out of patience with you.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me! The penalty for violence—”
“You aren’t listening to me!” She pushed up to her feet. “He tried to—” Inside her shirt, the cylinder slipped down. She grabbed at her side.
“Tess!” he cried, starting forward. “He hurt you—”
“No.” She stepped back, half up onto the bed.
Ilya stopped short. “Let me see.”
“No.”
He walked forward. She backed up along the bed, standing on the mattress, until he had cornered her.
His shadow seemed to take up an entire wall. Under her hand, through her shirt, the cylinder felt hard and cold. He looked at her hand, cupped at her waist. Slowly he placed one foot up on the bed and, with a slight grimace, pushed up with the other, so that he, too, was standing on the bed. He placed a hand on either side of her, trapping her.
“What do you have?”
The implacability of his voice terrified her. “I can’t show you.”
“You will.”
Finally, she lowered her head in acquiescence. He stepped down. Too quickly, this time; he winced and with a marked limp moved back to the middle of the room.
“Oh, God,” she said under her breath. This was it. All her efforts for nothing: now he would know, and she could not begin to imagine what the knowledge would do to him.
She turned into the corner and retrieved the cylinder. With it in her hand, she stepped down from the bed and handed it to him.
He took it to the candle. “I see no writing. Is this some holy relic?”
She felt impelled to smile, thinking of what Ishii had said about archaeology. “Yes, the relic of a prince who is long since dead.”
He turned it in the light as if its black sheen fascinated him. “Whom ought this to belong to?”
“That depends on which one of us you talk to. Myself or Ishii.”
“Why do you want it?”
“My brother wants it. It represents—I can’t explain in a few words. Power and knowledge.”
“Why should your brother have it? It is the pilgrims, after all, who have come on this journey for holy purposes.”
“For their purposes.”
“Which are?”
“Bad ones.”
“While your brother’s are good? That is very easy, my wife, but rarely true.” She winced at his cutting tone. “Well?”
“How long do you want the explanation to be?” She rubbed at her eyes with her palms, then lowered them, taking in resolve with a deep breath. “Ilya. The khepellis will use that relic to enslave my people. Already they control most of the trade that enriches Jeds. And many other cities. But if my brother gets that relic, then he can work to free all those the khepelli have subjugated. Not just for his own sake. You have to believe me. He isn’t—his work is for other people not for himself.”
Her gaze on him worked like a fire. He took a step toward her, away from the table. Framed by light and shadow, he seemed to Tess a man in some half-remembered legend, a force in and of himself, caught between the new world and the old. “How could you read the inscription on the arch?”
“I have learned—” She broke off.
“You have learned the tongue the khepelli speak. You said it was their writing. Last night, after—” He jerked his gaze away from her suddenly, staring down at the lines of wax that laced a tangled pattern around the base of the candle.
“Last night,” he began again, “I went to the sacred fountain to—to reflect. But two of the pilgrims were in the room. They did not see me, but I saw them drink from the basin. Deeply. It did not harm them, Tess. They aren’t like us. I have always known that—only a blind man would not see it—but this…The water did not poison them. They aren’t—” He hesitated, as if once said, the words would alter his world forever.
Which they would. She could not look at him, stared instead at the candle burning down. Soon its flame would fail, having consumed everything that it could feed on. They aren’t from this planet.
“They aren’t human,” he said. “There are old stories about the ancient ones who lived here long ago, who were driven away by war or drought or sickness, or by us—those who are women and men, jaran and khaja both—never to be seen again. I think those stories are true. I think they fled away across the seas and founded a kingdom in lands far from here. And now they’ve come back to find what they left behind. Am I right? Did their ancestors build this place?”
In the silence she heard the clack of twigs as the wind stirred in the garden outside. “Yes.”
“And as they traded and grew strong, your brother must have sent you to watch them.”
“Not precisely, but…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“And you followed them here, to discover—you didn’t know either, did you? That they had once lived and ruled here.”
“No,” she said, a hoarse whisper. “No. We did not know.”
“They believe they have some right to this land?”
“I don’t know.” But the opening leapt full into her mind. “But if my brother gets this relic, then he will ensure that they never exploit these lands. Jaran lands. They will be forced into treaties. They will trade, or at least their trade will be circumscribed, that is—”
“You are either lying to me,” he said, “or else you haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. What will your brother do with this relic? How can his having it
help him in his good purposes?”
“I don’t know how he will use it, not to tell you details. Except that it will help him disrupt their trade. Help him keep them from ever claiming these lands, if that is their intent. Because it is proof entire that they did indeed once reside here.”
He lifted the cylinder, extending his arm so that the black shape marked the distance between them. As it did. How could she not have seen it before? He was bound by his world, bound still to Newton’s universe, which, like the idea of the Chapalii being not human, was wildly revolutionary to him. Farther than that—farther than that did not even exist for him. To him, Rhui was the universe.
“If I agree to help you,” he said, “what guarantee do you offer me that your actions, and mine in aiding you, will not harm my people? Will not prevent them from fulfilling their destiny?”
She crossed to him, halting a bare arm’s length away from him. He was not so much taller than she as she had at times thought. “Ilya,” she began, and she faltered. Meeting his gaze, she knew without a doubt that if she kissed him now, used passion, used her love for him as her guarantee, he would help her. But it would be no better than a weapon used to get what she wanted. As he had used her ignorance to make her his wife.
“Ilya. We have clasped friends, and I have given my honor into your hands. That is my guarantee. And by the honor you gave into mine, my right to ask your aid and protection.”
The room was still, like the hush before dawn, only two motionless figures in the fading glow of the candle.
“Damn you.” He jerked his gaze away from her, staring into the shadowed corner. “By my honor,” he murmured, as if to the gods themselves. As if he wished with all his heart that she had used any other argument but that.
She simply breathed, watching him, and the wind sighed and called outside. She could not read the expression on his face.
“Then you will help me?” she asked at last in a low voice.
He met her gaze. “I will not let them kill you,” he said with such simplicity that she knew that it was true. “I will get you to the coast and safe on a ship for Jeds. Will you let me keep this until then?” He turned the cylinder so that it winked in the candlelight. “Only to keep it safe. By your honor and mine.”
“Yes. By that guarantee, I trust you.”
“By my honor,” he said, so quietly that she scarcely heard it, “but not as my wife.” The he shook his head, as if he had not meant to say it, or her to hear it. “You look exhausted. I think it would be best if you didn’t go back to your room tonight.” He hesitated, then gestured to his bed. “No one will remark on your sleeping in the same room as your husband.”
She flushed, and her gaze strayed to the bed. She saw how neatly he had folded his blankets at the foot, how carefully he had hung his saddlebags over the endpost. Only a scrap of material sticking out from the opening suggested untidiness: a shirtsleeve, with a needle pierced through it, as if he had been interrupted in the middle of embroidery.
She simply nodded, afraid to venture words.
He picked up the candle. Darkness moved around him as he carried it to the door.
“But you must sleep—” she protested, seeing that he meant to leave.
“Someone must guard you.”
“Ilya…” She was not sure what she wanted to say to him. She was not sure what she wanted at all, except that, right now, she wanted him.
He blew out the candle abruptly, flooding her in darkness. The door opened and closed, and then the snick of the latch sounded as it fell into place outside.
She lay down on the bed and pulled the blankets up over her. The cloth felt coarse against her skin, scented of grass and the summer earth. He had lain under these blankets. She wrapped a corner of one under her, so that her cheek lay against it, and with that comfort, she slept.
Storm clouds raced in over the mud flats of Odys Massif. Charles Soerensen stood in the wind and the hard slap of rain, out on his balcony. Beyond, at the far towers of Odys Port, a ship had landed. Suzanne was on that ship, back from Paladia Major without Tess, without any indication that Tess had been on the Oshaki after it had left the Delta Pavonis system.
But Suzanne had not come back alone.
Charles turned and walked back inside. Jamsetji sat at Charles’s desk, manipulating graphs in the air above the flat screen. On the flat surface, the net burrowers dredged deep into the datanet, seeking any scrap of information on Chapalii protocol in the matter of transfers of fealty. Almost every tunnel led back, like a blind maze, to the hand of the Yaochalii, the emperor. By the emperor’s hand, thus will it be granted.
Jamsetji glanced up at Charles and shook his head but otherwise did not stir. A chime shattered their silence. The transparent wall sealed down across the balcony behind Charles. Jamsetji rose and moved aside so Charles could sit down at his desk.
A seam in the tiled wall peeled open, and Suzanne walked in, followed by four Chapalii. One was Hon Echido, flushed blue with distress. Two were also of the merchant class, by their robes, but they wore the wrist and neck torque of the Office of Protocol. And the fourth Chapalii—
Charles almost stood up. As quickly, he decided against it. “Tai-en,” he said, and inclined his head the merest degree, acknowledging an equal.
“Tai Charles,” said the duke. He was tall, awkwardly thin, and his skin was dead white.
Suzanne bowed to the precise degree. “Tai Charles,” she said in Anglais, “this is the Tai-en Naroshi Toraokii. He has come from Chapal with these officers from Protocol to arraign this fugitive member of the family Keinaba, whose name has been stained with dishonor and so must vanish from the sight of the emperor.”
Charles rose because he judged that it was now polite to do so, and answer enough to Suzanne’s words.
The Tai-en Naroshi examined the chamber, the tiled wall, the sweep of balcony, the sheen of the desktop, and, briefly, the still, silent figure of Jamsetji, waiting quietly at Charles’s right. Then he inclined his head toward Charles as to an equal, and spoke.
When he was finished, Suzanne translated. “The Tai-en states that if his honored peer desires a translation circuit to be installed, he can arrange for such, allowing the females of his house to return to their scholarly studies without having to waste their talents and valuable time translating mere words.”
“My honored peer is generous. I will consider his offer with great pleasure.”
Suzanne’s mouth quirked up, not into a smile, not quite, and she repeated his words to Naroshi. What he thought of them it was impossible to tell. Colors tinted the skin of the two Protocol officers. Echido was still flushed blue. Naroshi remained as pale as ice. He spoke again.
“The Tai-en states that he wishes to relieve his honored peer of the burden of the presence of this ke, this low one.” Suzanne glanced at Echido. The merchant clutched his hands together, saying nothing with them at all. “The rite of extinction has been completed for all of the possessions of the princely house that no longer exists, except for Keinaba. The emperor is restless that this matter remains unresolved. Thus, peace cannot be achieved until this ke is returned and his name obliterated with his family’s.”
“It is indeed benevolent of my honored peer to consider taking this burden from me.” Charles waited while Suzanne translated, and then he looked directly at the two Protocol Officers. “Did Keinaba take part in the offense that has tainted all who owed allegiance to that princely house?”
Naroshi blinked, but that was his only reaction.
Both officers bowed. One spoke at length, and Suzanne translated, but in Ophiuchi-Sei-ah-nai. “Charles, he basically says that whatever breach of protocol, whatever conspiracy, the prince and dukes and lords were involved in went no lower than that. But, of course, the merchants and all of their stewards and artisans are dishonored by the association. Everything, all their wealth, all their holdings, will revert to the emperor to be dispensed back by him to whatever princes he favors right now.”
> “I did a wee bit of checking,” said Jamsetji in a low voice, in the same language. “It cleared with what we thought. Given the information we have and our ability to calculate their markers of wealth, that princely house and holdings was the richest, or among the richest, in the empire.”
“Not least because of Keinaba,” replied Charles, also in Ophiuchi-Sei. “Yet I have a dispensation from the emperor’s hand. Yes, I see. I wonder if this is a coincidence or a test?” But his eyes had lit already. It had been too long since he had faced a real challenge.
In Anglais, he said, “Tell my honored peer that I have taken in the loyalty of Keinaba.” Suzanne translated.
The Protocol officers flushed a sickly hue of violet. Echido paled, and his hands rewove themselves into Merchant’s Bounty.
Not a flicker of color tainted Naroshi’s skin. His chin tilted the slightest degree before he spoke.
“The Tai-en states that he cannot act on this matter, merely do as his duty instructs: that is, return the merchant in question to the emperor. If his honored peer wishes to accompany him so as to bring this matter forward to the emperor’s discretion, he would be pleased to offer him passage on his ship back to Chapal.”
“My honored peer is munificent. I accept and will be pleased to accompany him to Chapal.”
Naroshi inclined his head. He was gratified at the Tai-en’s acceptance. His skin stayed white. They exchanged a few more compliments, a few last pleasantries, and then Naroshi took his leave. The Protocol officers begged leave to follow him, and Echido bowed as servant to master, to Charles, and accepted their escort. His skin was paler than theirs, as if he felt secure that he and his family would be spared. It was still not as dead pale as the duke’s had been. They left the room to silence.
“Goddess in Heaven and Earth,” swore Suzanne. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“I think the time is right,” said Charles softly. “I think it is something I had better do. It gives us a foothold in the cliff, rather than that bare toe’s width of ledge we’re clinging to now. What do you make of Naroshi? Have I made an enemy or an ally in that one? My God, he had exceptional facial control. Jamsetji, dig up everything you can about the Toraokii dukedom.” Charles moved to one side so that Jamsetji could sit down at his desk.
