by Kate Elliott
“It must be the rainy season,” said Diana, and then she laughed, because it was such a stupid comment.
“I must go.” He did not move.
“Marco. Are we going to become spies?”
He flung his head back, startled, and then he chuckled. He reached out and with one finger tilted her chin back and smoothed his finger over her lips. His skin was surprisingly warm. “Only if you wish it, golden fair.” He traced her cheek and jaw with his hand and as abruptly closed the hand into a fist and drew it away from her face. “Forgive me.”
“No.” She captured the hand in one of hers. “There’s nothing to forgive. It’s true, you know, that I have a right here to take a lover if I wish to.” His eyes flared slightly as he watched her. “How soon are we leaving?”
“I can’t say. We could leave anytime. Two days. Ten. Twenty. But it will be soon.”
“And the Company will go with Soerensen?”
“Yes. What will you do, Diana?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—” He did not try to free his hand, but she felt his fingers move within her grasp. “Anatoly—”
“The Company is my life, Marco. If they go, I go with them. Or did you think I was like Tess Soerensen? That I meant to stay with the jaran?”
“I didn’t think—I mean, I didn’t know—it’s not my business to ask, is it?”
She heard Hal and Ori at the entrance, and she dropped Marco’s hand, but neither of them came out. “Di!” called Hal from inside. “Did you want some tea? Goddess, this weather is disgusting.”
“Come to my tent tonight,” said Diana quickly, in an undertone.
“Di! Where are you?” The tent flap rustled aside. Hal stuck his head out. “Oh,” he said, and ducked inside again.
They stood in silence, serenaded by the incessant pounding of rain. One corner of the awning sagged down under an accumulating pool, and with a rush the balance tipped and a waterfall began a slow trickle out of the pool, flooded with a tearing splash, and emptied.
Diana sneezed. “I beg your pardon! As if I would want to live like this for the rest of my life anyway!”
“Diana.” His voice was taut. “Do you mean it?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it!”
“I beg your pardon. I only—”
“I know what I said before. I know it was only six days ago. But it’s over, Marco. I mean, what are we talking about now? We’re talking about touring into Chapalii space! We’re leaving Rhui. I can’t hang on to here forever. I’ll have to let go, I’ll have to let him go.”
“You might be able to get a dispensation from Charles to let him come with you.” He said it reluctantly.
“Come with me? Do you think he’d want to?”
“I don’t know. Diana, I’m not the best person to ask that of. I’m not exactly a disinterested party.”
“No, I’m sorry. That was cruel of me.”
“Not cruel.” He took in a breath and let it out. “I would—” He broke off, shook his head, and started again. “I would like to—Of course, I—Oh, Goddess, I’m making a hash of this. The answer is yes. Excuse me.” He jerked the thong of his hat up tight and strode out abruptly into the rain.
Diana stared after him. But it was just as well. Her chest had gone tight with a sudden pounding. She had asked him; he had said yes. And he was just as flustered as she was. She watched him slog away through the mud. A smaller figure, a child, ran toward them through the pelting rain, fair head bent under the onslaught. Marco paused as the child raced by him and then he trudged on in the direction Soerensen had disappeared. The child began a detour toward Diana’s tent, but when Diana raised her hand, the figure halted, slipping in the mud, and jogged toward her.
It was one of the girls from the Veselov tribe. She halted outside the awning.
“Oh, here,” said Diana. “Come underneath.”
The girl did so gratefully. “Mother Veselov sent me,” she said after she’d caught her breath. Her hair was soaked through, but the rain slid off her long felt coat and dripped onto the ground. “A messenger came in. From Anatoly Sakhalin’s jahar. They’ll be here today.”
Today.
Wind whipped a sheet of rain in under the cover of the awning, spraying Diana’s face. She tugged her cloak around her. “Haven’t you anything to wear on your head?” she demanded.
“Oh, of course I do, but it was all so fast, Mother Veselov calling me in, and so I just ran. It’ll dry. I don’t mind.”
I don’t mind. They none of them complained about the hardships. It was one thing to live under these conditions for a short time; that was endurable. But to live under them always. Diana could not imagine how Tess Soerensen could choose to live here, year after year. Or how she could even want to have a child under these conditions. But then, she wasn’t Tess Soerensen, and Anatoly, for all his undoubted charms, was nothing like Ilyakoria Bakhtiian.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Diana in Anglais.
The girl smiled up at her, blinking drops of water off her pale eyelashes.
But it was worse just to stand here undecided. “I’ll go with you,” Diana said abruptly. They forged out into the rain. It hammered on her head, and soon enough she regretted that she hadn’t thought to get the girl a hat. Mud slathered her boots. Few people moved about; wisely, they had chosen to stay in their tents.
“Mother Veselov said to take you to the Sakhalin encampment,” said the girl as they slogged along. “Anyway, the jahar will have to report in to Bakhtiian before anything else.”
“And Anatoly will have to report in to his grandmother.”
“Well, of course!”
Halfway through camp, they found themselves caught in a swirl of movement along the avenue that led from the outskirts of the camp straight in to the central encampments. A troop of horsemen rode by. They were spattered with mud and drenched by the rain, windblown and yet impressive, unbowed by the weather. In better weather, Diana thought they would have formed a triumphal procession, but as it was, only a handful of jarah ventured out to watch them go by. Where had they come from?
She saw the prisoners all at once, three cloaked women and a small child riding on caparisoned horses. Riders surrounded them, but the prisoners paid no heed to their presence or even, seemingly, to the camp through which they rode. They looked thoroughly dispirited. The eldest woman’s nose ran with mucus, streaking her face, and she coughed deep from her lungs as they passed where Diana stood. Mud sucked and squelched under the hooves of the horses.
Then Diana saw the king. He could be nothing else. Even brown with mud, his surcoat glinted with gold where the rain washed the mud away in patches. He wore a crown, too, fixed somehow to his head so that when he fell, stumbling, sliding in the mud, struggling up again, it did not fall off. It was more like a mockery of a crown, because of that. A belt of ropes at his waist tied him to the harness of two horses, which were ridden at a taut rope’s length on either side of him. Just in front of Diana he slipped and fell to his hands and knees, and the riders kept moving, so that the ropes dragged him on through the mud. He wept, scrabbling to gain purchase, but he could not get up.
She could not stand to watch him. Whatever else he might be, he did not deserve this kind of treatment; it was inhuman. She dashed forward and yelled at the riders to stop. They obeyed immediately, unthinkingly. They stared, astonished, as she bent down beside the man and laid a hand on his arm. He flinched away from her.
“Here, let me help you up,” she said in khush, though she doubted he could understand her. Perhaps her tone reassured him; perhaps her woman’s voice amazed him. Perhaps he had long since given up hope. In any case, he did not resist as she helped him to his feet.
Lines etched his face. White streaks ran through his hair and his beard, where it wasn’t splashed with mud. Tears and rain melded together on his face, so that it was impossible to tell one from the other. His nose was red. His mouth quivered. He stared at her. A s
trangled noise came from his throat, and more sound, like choked words, and when his lips parted to reveal red-stained teeth, she realized that his tongue had been cut out.
Like a wave, revulsion washed over her, revulsion for the act and pity for the man. The rain poured down. Water seeped into her boots. She felt chilled to the bone.
“What is going on? Who gave you permission to stop?”
The king cowered, ducking his head and lifting an arm to ward off a blow. Diana turned.
Standing, Anatoly was no taller than she was. On a horse, he loomed above her. The horse itself invested him with power. His saber, his spear, the weight of his armor, invested him with authority. Flanked by his captains, he glared down at her, and she knew, in that instant, what it felt like to be a woman—any person, indeed—trapped and cornered by the conquering nomads. Like savages, like devils, ruthless and driven, they stood ready to strike down anything or anyone that blocked their path.
“Diana!” Without looking away from her, he spoke to one of his captains. “Mirtsov, get a horse for my wife.”
It was done. Given no choice, she let go of the king and mounted up on a gray mare, next to Anatoly. “The girl—” she said, and faltered.
“Mirtsov, take the girl up behind you and escort her to her family. The rest of you—Go on!” His men started forward again. The king stumbled along between them. Anatoly waited, reining in his horse, until the others had splashed past them, and then he started forward as well. Diana rode beside him. He said nothing. He looked angry. She studied him, noting how he had grown a straggling beard, how his fair hair was caught back in a short braid to keep it out of his face. Of the leather segments hanging from his cuirass to protect his thighs, three looked new, as if his armor had been repaired recently; as if he had been in a battle not too long ago. His red silk surcoat was frayed at the hem and mended all down the left side. She saw no trace of the cheerful young man who had left her more than three months ago; this man looked like Anatoly Sakhalin, proud and handsome, but he looked aloof and heartless and hard as well, as if out there in the hostile territory he and his men had ridden through, hunting down the king, he had become a predator in truth.
They rode together in silence until they came to the ring of guards that surrounded Bakhtiian’s encampment. With an escort of ten riders, plus the prisoners and the king still bound by ropes, Anatoly passed through with Diana and they came to a halt on the muddy stretch of ground that fronted the awning of Tess Soerensen’s tent. Bakhtiian emerged from the tent.
“Bakhtiian, I have brought to you the coat, the crown, and the head of the Habakar king,” said Anatoly.
“Still attached, I see,” said Bakhtiian mildly. The king simply stood there, looking stupefied. “Who are these others?”
“They attended the king. Wife and sister and daughter, perhaps. The child belongs to the young woman. There were two other children, but they died along the way. They were already sick when we found them. He ran like a coward, Bakhtiian, and in the end, he tried to barter the life of every woman and man in his jahar in order to save his own. He wasn’t worth the trouble.”
Diana saw how Bakhtiian looked up from the king with a sharp glance to examine Anatoly. “That may be so, but he killed my envoys and blinded Josef. Thus must he and his city serve as an example to the rest. It was well done, Anatoly. You may hand him over to my riders. Send your captains to my niece immediately. She’ll want intelligence, all your observations, on the lands you passed through. You yourself may attend me tomorrow.” With that, Bakhtiian retreated back inside his tent.
Thus dismissed, Anatoly handed the prisoners over to Bakhtiian’s guards and dismissed his own men in their turn, to return to their camps and families.
“I must go pay my respects to my grandmother,” he said, only now turning to regard Diana. His steely expression made her nervous. The rain had slackened finally, and drops glistened in the exposed fur lining of his hat. His helmet hung on a strap from his belt. The armor made him look burly and thuggish. What on Earth had possessed her to marry him in the first place? Well, nothing on Earth, of course. The picture had seemed much more romantic at first. Now it merely seemed primitive and brutal.
He guided his horse around and they rode back through the ring of guards and crossed a narrow strip of field and came into the Sakhalin encampment. Clearly, someone had alerted Mother Sakhalin to their coming. She waited under the awning of her great tent. Anatoly dismounted, handed the reins over to an adolescent boy, and went to greet her with the formal kiss to each cheek. Diana swung down and followed, hesitating at the edge of the awning.
“Grandson. You are welcome back into camp. I’m not sure what your wife has arranged…”
Diana felt like an idiot, as she was sure Mother Sakhalin intended her to. “I didn’t know—I just found out that Anatoly had returned.”
“Ah. Well, then, Anatoly, I have water and a tub for you to bathe in. You look filthy. Your cousins will help you remove your armor, and they’ll see that it’s cleaned.” Several boys hovered anxiously off to one side; at her words, they hurried forward, evidently eager to help their famous cousin, the youngest man in the army to have a command of his own. Diana wrung her hands. Anatoly glanced at her once, twice, and all the while kept up an easy flow of small talk with his grandmother.
“… and the water is still hot, so you must beware. Mother Hierakis has shown our healers how if we boil all the water we’ll have fewer fevers in camp.”
“Have there been fewer fevers in camp?” he asked.
“The khaja die in greater numbers than we do, it is true, but they are weak in any case. Still, Mother Hierakis is a great healer, and one must not discount her words.”
Stripped down to his red silk shirt and black trousers and boots, Anatoly looked suddenly much more—human. He handed his saber and sheath away to one of the boys, and he looked suddenly much more—gentle. His clothes smelled of sweat and of grime, but the sodden scent of rain dampened even that, although Diana imagined that he hadn’t bathed in weeks. Not on such a journey as he had ridden.
“Boris and Piotr will help you with the bath, if you wish,” said Mother Sakhalin. Two boys waited, each bearing a saddle pack.
Anatoly’s gaze flashed to Diana and away. “If that is your command, Grandmother, of course, but I had hoped that you might allow Diana to attend me.”
“Your wife has her own tent, and if it was not ready for you—” She sighed.
“Grandmother.” The dread conqueror softened, settling a dirty hand on the old woman’s sleeve. “Please.”
She gave way at once, before his blue eyes and pleading expression. “For you, Anatoly, but for no one else would I allow it!”
“Of course, Grandmother. You’re too good to me.” He kissed her again on either cheek.
“Hmmph.” She stood aside and gestured for them to go past, into the tent. Anatoly grabbed the saddlebags from the boys and went inside. Diana had no choice but to go with him.
Mother Sakhalin’s tent was huge, twice the size of any other tent in camp. To the right of the entrance a rust-red curtain embroidered with three leaping stags screened off a spacious alcove. A metal tub sat on a pile of carpets within, and a weary-looking old man poured a last pitcher of streaming water into the tub. Seeing Anatoly, he ducked his head and limped hurriedly out of the alcove.
“He’s not jaran,” said Diana, staring after him. The curtain fell into place behind him, shielding them from the rest of the tent. On this side, a herd of horses raced over a golden field toward the rising sun.
“He was a Habakar general,” said Anatoly, glancing that way as well. “Now he is Grandmother’s servant. She is kind to him, considering that he deserted his army on the field.”
“Oh,” murmured Diana, not knowing what else to say. She clasped her hands at her waist and stood there.
Anatoly tossed down the saddlebags and stripped. Diana just watched him. He paused, between pulling off his shirt and unbuckling his belt,
and glanced at her, and grinned.
“Send one of the boys in to take these things away, if you can’t stand to touch them. Did you bring anything for me to wear?”
“No, I—I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“Oh, never mind it. Grandmother will have thought of it.”
“Yes,” said Diana bitterly, “she always does think of everything.”
“There’s much you could learn from her, Diana. No etsana runs her camp as well as my grandmother runs hers.” He stripped out of his trousers and tested the water with a foot. “Ah,” he said, in a way that made her suddenly, achingly aware that he was naked, and close by her. He slid into the tub, which was barely large enough for him to stretch out his legs. Diana took a step toward him without realizing it, halted, and then walked over and knelt beside the tub.
“Where’s the—” he began. Diana found the stuff they used for soap and started to hand it to him, then set it down, threw off her cloak, and rolled up the sleeves of her tunic. “Here, could you unbraid my hair? Gods, it’s gotten long. I used to wear it that way when I was younger, but not since I joined the army.”
“You all wear it like Bakhtiian, now.”
Even with his hair as filthy as it was, she could not help but tangle her fingers in it as she unwound the braid. He sighed and lay back against her hands. She dipped a hand in the hot water and started to wash him, his neck, his back, his arms.
