Earthly Crown (57 page)

“Kirill Zvertkov.” It was Katerina. “My mother wants to see you. You haven’t paid your respects to her yet.”

He grinned. “Of course, little one.”

“I’m not so little anymore,” she said tartly.

“Quite right,” he agreed. “Tess.” He walked with Katerina over to the other tent.

“Tess,” said Aleksi, “you’re rather free with how you act in public with married men, and you married, too.”

“Oh, go to hell,” said Tess in Anglais. He grinned, but she did not smile. “Let’s go back.” But even as she ducked inside the tent, that one phrase of Kirill’s came back to haunt her: Like his own father. Ilya never talked about his parents. Never. His own father had been a Singer—a shaman, really, since the Singers of the jaran shared this trait, that they had fallen into a trance or a desperate illness at some stage in their lives and come back to tell about it. Their spirits had gone to the gods’ lands and there wrestled with demons or consorted with angels, and then been sent back to this world; that is what the jaran said. Her first lover in the jaran had been a Singer. Fedya had been a little fey, as well as a fine musician, and he had also received a respect from jaran of every age that went far beyond his years and his family’s status. How little she had known then, how little she had understood, to think he had merely been a quiet, perceptive young man and an amiable, unpossessive lover. He had been far more than that, but she had never known it until long after he was dead.

Aleksi halted in the outer chamber and let her go in alone. Cara, seeing her enter, rose and retreated. Tess sank down beside the low bed on which Ilya rested. She touched his dark hair. She traced his brows and the still centers of his lidded eyes and his fine cheekbones and the dark line of his beard. Damn him. Now and again he had spoken of his sister. But he never spoke of his parents. How dare he not trust her with that? Had he hated them?

She laid her head on his chest, her ear turned to hear the slow steady beat of his heart. His chest rose and fell, and if she ran her hand under the wooden frame of the couch, she could find the control panel for the scan unit hidden away beneath a carved wooden strut. Its surface was cool, but heat bled off from its edges.

No, he had not hated them. He had loved his family, he had loved them deeply and passionately because Ilya loved deeply and passionately. It was the only way he knew how to give his heart. Perhaps he had loved them too well, as he perhaps loved her too well. If she left him, would he cease speaking of her because the memory was too painful?

She kissed his limp fingers, one by one, and then she talked to him, just talked. She told him about her own parents, who were kind and quiet and humorous and loving. Although their only son could have supported them, they had continued their own work, she as a lab tech, he as a teacher. They liked to argue about religion and politics and the modern fashion of wearing only clothes grown from vegetable matter, and that last year they spent months debating the merits of the production of Shakespeare’s
Henry V
they had taken Tess to see, the one in which all the setting and costume details, and all the business, were thinly veiled references to Charles and to humanity’s hope that he would one day succeed in defeating the power of the Chapalii Empire. They were rude to people who tried to insinuate themselves into their lives or their house because of Charles. They spoke to Charles every day at noon, without fail. They protected and prized their privacy above all, and the privacy of their little daughter.

And they had died in a flitter crash when that daughter was ten years old. Once, when she was fifteen, Tess had found a scan image of the crash site, and she had spent one month poring over the image from all angles, trying to make sense of what had happened. She had never managed to.

“Tess,” said Cara softly from the curtain, “will you come eat? It’s dark. When did you last eat?”

It was dark. Tess sat passively while Ursula lit a lantern. The glow lent Ilya a corpselike color, pale and waxy. Tess hurried out of the room, and there was Sonia, with food. Sonia took one look at her face and hugged her, just held her. They stood that way for a long time.

Tess ate. Later, she slept. In the morning, early, Sonia woke her with a kiss and some milk. “Mother Sakhalin has come,” she said. “She wishes to speak with you alone.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Tess, but she rose and straightened her clothing and ate. Sonia left to escort Mother Sakhalin in, and Tess rearranged the blankets over Ilya and smoothed them out, and stroked his slack face. She could see the imperfections in his face more clearly with him lying here unconscious. He was a good-looking man, but he was not blazingly handsome, not like Anatoly Sakhalin or Petya. Not like Vasil. It was his spirit that drew the eye to him, that burned from his eyes and from his face, that made him as glorious and as hot and as attractive as the sun. Now, just lying there, flaccid, lacking any of the vitality that lit him, he looked rather ordinary, and she could not recall why it was she thought him the most beautiful man she knew.

“Tess Soerensen.” Mother Sakhalin eased the curtain aside and took four steps into the inner chamber. The etsana stopped and stared at Ilya.

“Mother Sakhalin.” Tess inclined her head, giving the old woman the respect she warranted. “You honor me with your presence.”

Sakhalin circled the couch, examining Bakhtiian from all angles. “I have seen this condition before. He has been drawn away into the gods’ lands, and we must wait for the gods to send him back.” She halted beside Tess and considered the younger woman. “Or to keep him in their lands. Who will lead the army after he is gone, if he dies?”

“Your nephew,” said Tess, without thinking. “Yaroslav Sakhalin. He is Ilya’s chief general. His army has given Bakhtiian his greatest victories.”

“My nephew is a brilliant general,” agreed Mother Sakhalin. “A better general than Bakhtiian, and it is to Bakhtiian’s credit that he long since recognized that. But he does not have Bakhtiian’s vision.”

Tess put a hand to her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m feeling dizzy.”

“Sit down,” ordered the etsana. Tess sank down. Mother Sakhalin sat down beside her, and now Tess did not feel as if she towered over the old woman, “You are pregnant, but there is no guarantee the child will also possess this vision, and in any case, the child will inherit through your line. Both Bakhtiian’s sister’s son and aunt’s son are dead, which leaves only his cousin’s son.”

“Mitya? But he’s only—what?—fifteen?”

“There are younger boys as well. Do any of them have this vision?”

“No one has the vision. No one but Bakhtiian.”

“Then what is to become of us if he dies?”

Here in the tent, the air retained night’s coolness. From outside, Tess heard Aleksi talking to little Ivan about milking the glariss. Katerina and Galina complained in loud voices about the lack of water to wash clothes. Tess could hear the tension in their voices; they knew what was going on, and they knew—not what it meant if Bakhtiian died, but that it meant that their world would be shattered.

It was too much to cope with. It was all her fault. “I don’t know,” said Tess. “I don’t know.”

“You are the sister of the prince of Jheds.” Mother Sakhalin’s face was creased and lined with age, and her mouth was pursed with disapproval. “You are the adopted daughter of Irena Orzhekov, who is etsana of the Orzhekov tribe. And you are Bakhtiian’s wife. You must act.”

“I don’t understand,” said Tess, feeling helpless and inadequate under Mother Sakhalin’s eye, “how he became what he is. Where did it come from?”

“His father was a Singer. His mother was a proud and ambitious woman who became etsana very young, too young, I think.”

“Like Arina Veselov?”

“Arina Veselov is not ambitious, nor is she proud in the sense I mean. And she married well.”

“Ilya’s mother did not marry well?”

“Alyona Orzhekov was marked by an orphan named Petre Sokolov, whom no one dared kill for his effrontery because he was a Singer. He said that the gods had given him a vision that she was the woman he must marry. Surely the gods must have known that they would have this child”—she gestured with a wrinkled hand toward the unconscious Ilya—“together. But Alyona Orzhekov loved another man. Everyone thought that this other man would marry her. He was a Singer, too, but he was also the dyan of his tribe, young, proud, and ambitious. And virtuous, and pious in his devotion to the laws of the gods.” Tess had always felt overawed by Mother Sakhalin, who was old and wise and impatient with folly. Now Sakhalin smiled, and Tess caught a glimpse of what the younger woman must have been like: shrewd and patient and sharp-tongued. “I never liked him.”

“What was his name?”

“Khara Roskhel.”

“But he’s the man who killed Ilya’s family! Isn’t he? How could he—? How could—? Yuri once told me that he was cruel.”

“The most devout are often the cruelest. Yes, he was cruel, and he had visions as well. He never married, you know. They say he wanted no woman but Alyona. Such possessiveness is a very ugly trait in a man.” She glanced again toward Ilya. Was Sakhalin thinking that Bakhtiian himself possessed this ugly trait? “They were lovers,” the etsana went on, “always, through the years that followed, and openly so; what Petre Sokolov thought of this, no one ever knew. He was not a good husband for her. She needed a man who would rein back her worst impulses, one she could respect, one she would listen to.”

“He did none of these things?”

Sakhalin shrugged. “What he did or did not do, I can’t say, since I don’t know. But an etsana ought not install her own son as dyan of her tribe, especially when that son is only twenty-three years old.”

“Even if that son is Ilyakoria Bakhtiian?”

“Even so.”

“I never had the honor of meeting your husband, Mother Sakhalin. But I feel sure that he was a good husband.”

For this impertinence, Tess was rewarded with a smile and a brief, acknowledging nod. “Of course he was. My mother and my aunt chose him very, carefully. He was the kind of man your brother Yurinya Orzhekov would have grown into, had he lived.”

“Ah,” said Tess. “Then he must have been a very fine man, indeed.” She folded her hands in her lap and stared at her knuckles.

“It is true, though,” added Sakhalin, musing, “that I never understood why Roskhel turned against them. He was one of Bakhtiian’s earliest and strongest supporters. No one remarked it at the time; the connection between the two tribes was so close because of his liaison with Alyona Orzhekov. But it was at the great gathering of tribes in the Year of the Hawk that he turned his face against Bakhtiian, and later that year that he rode into the Orzhekov camp and killed the family. That is the mystery, you see, that he killed the two women and the child. He was a pious man—none more so—and it is against all of our laws, both of the gods and of the jaran, to harm women and children in the sanctity of the camp, even in the midst of war.”

Someone was arguing violently outside. There was a shriek, then, closer, in the outer chamber, Cara exclaimed in surprise. A moment later the curtain swept aside and Vasil Veselov strode in. He stopped stock-still and stared, horrified, at Ilya. Mother Sakhalin rose briskly to her feet. Although Vasil stood a head taller than she did, she clearly held the weight of power. Tess stared.

“Your presence here is
most
improper,” snapped Mother Sakhalin.

As if he were in a dream, Vasil took a step forward, then another one, then a third, and he sank down to kneel at the foot of the couch. His agony was palpable in every line of his body.

“He exiled you,” said Mother Sakhalin. Her voice shook with anger. “How dare you walk unannounced and unasked into his presence?”

“Leave him be,” said Tess suddenly, surprising even herself. “Look at him.” In the dim chamber, with his head bowed and his hair gleaming in the lantern light, Vasil looked like an angel, praying for God’s Mercy. She felt his pain like heat, and it soothed her to know that someone else suffered as she suffered.

“I knew,” said Sakhalin in a cold, furiously calm voice, “that the weaver Nadezhda Martov was Bakhtiian’s lover. That she first took him to her bed soon after he returned from Jheds, and that he never refused her when our two tribes came together.” Each word came clear and sharp, bitten off, in the hush of the tent. “Had I not known that, you can be sure that I would have forbidden my nephew to ever give his support to Bakhtiian’s vision. Because of this one.” She said the last two words with revulsion. There was no doubt what she meant by them.

Vasil’s head jerked up. “I did nothing most other boys didn’t try.”

Mother Sakhalin strode across the carpet and cupped her hand back. And slapped him.

The sharp sound shocked Tess out of her stupor. True, and confirmed by Vasil’s words and Mother Sakhalin’s action, what Tess had only suspected. She stared at them, unable to speak.

“An adolescent boy ought to be wild and curious,” replied Sakhalin in a voice both low and threatening. “Then he grows up to become a man. Which is something you never did, Veselov. Your cousin Arina is within her rights as etsana to allow you to remain in the Veselov tribe. But from Bakhtiian’s presence you were long ago banished, and that is as it should be.”

“I did not ask to love him,” said Vasil in a hoarse voice. “The gods made me as I am.”

With her left hand, Mother Sakhalin took hold of his chin and held him there, staring down at him, examining his face and his eyes. “The gods made your body and face beautiful. I have no doubt that your spirit is black and rotting. It is wrong, and it will always be wrong. Go home to your wife.”

She released him. He bowed his head. Tears leaked from his eyes and slid unhindered down his cheeks. He rose and turned to go, slowly, as if the weight on him, compelling him, dragged him both forward and back. And there lay Ilya, perhaps dying, whom he clearly loved.

“Let him stay,” said Tess in a low voice. Her anger welled up from so deep a source that she did not understand it. Vasil froze, but he did not look at her.

Sakhalin’s gaze snapped to Tess. “Do you know, then, that Bakhtiian almost lost everything because of this one? That they said that the reason Bakhtiian never married was because of this one? That the etsanas and dyans were forced to go to Nikolai Sibirin and Irena Orzhekov after the death of Bakhtiian’s family, and to tell them that they could not support a man who acted as if he was married to another man?”