His Conquering Sword (52 page)

“These things, I grant between us, as long as there is peace between us: the borders as they stand now, to the full extent of the Habakar kingdom and her provinces; free trade over the pass south of the city of Targana; safe passage for merchants and envoys and couriers. To show your understanding of my decree, you may send to the jaran gifts, and ten young women and ten young men of noble birth to attend my court, so that our people and yours may come to know one another.”

Hostages.
Jiroannes noted that Bakhtiian said nothing about sending young jaran men or women to the Vidiyan court, though doubtless the Great King would be amused by a jaran concubine.

“For our part, as we honor our brother, we send to you—”

Bakhtiian paused, quite deliberately, and looked at Jiroannes, clearly expecting him, as ambassador, to suggest a suitable gift. Jiroannes glanced toward Laissa, and she gave him a slight nod, almost as if she was encouraging him. Well, probably it wouldn’t be wise to ask for a concubine. It must be a gift that honored the Great King, and yet a gift that Bakhtiian would not interpret as tribute, going from himself to Vidiya.

“Horses,” said Jiroannes abruptly, remembering the fine mare that Mitya rode. “A fine gray stallion for the Great King, and a gray mare for Her Royal Highness, his sister.”

“Yes,” said Bakhtiian. His wife wrote in with her own hand the decree, appending it to the letter.

Laissa nodded at Jiroannes. He even caught a glimpse of her smiling, under the gauze of her veil. Did she actually approve of his choice?

“… and a gray mare for Her Royal Highness, his sister,” Bakhtiian was saying, repeating the words his wife had written down. He took in a breath and looked up at the sky, clear and blue above them. “When by the power of the heavens the whole world from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun shall be at one in peace, then so shall we all be at peace. You may believe that your country is far away, but not so far away that we cannot ride there. You may believe that your mountains are high beyond measure, but not so high that we cannot cross them. You may believe that the seas are vast, but not so broad that our ships cannot sail them. The gods who live in the heavens will make what was difficult easy, and what was far away, near.”

He fell silent. The court fell silent, waiting on him. Like a faint echo of his words, Jiroannes heard the sound of falling rock; perhaps some wall had tumbled down, out there in the wasteland that was all that remained of Karkand.

Bakhtiian took the pen from his wife and signed the letter. He rolled it up absently. “I’ll send Venedikt Grekov and his jahar as envoy and escort, with the ambassador,” he said.

Half the court swiveled their heads to look at the fair young man who sat beside Nadine Orzhekov, then looked away. Bakhtiian’s niece smiled, but made no comment.

“Who is next?” said Bakhtiian, turning to his ministers. “Ah, the embassy from Parkilnous.”

Tess Soerensen glanced up. “Good. It’s the closest port. If we can manage it, I’d like to send the Company and the rest of Charles’s party back to Jeds from there.”

Bakhtiian regarded her for a moment, looking puzzled by her words.
If we can manage it.
How should they not manage it? Jiroannes thought. Bakhtiian was master here, and Parkilnous, however powerful and rich it might be, was simply an independent city-state, not a great kingdom like Habakar.

“Ambassador.” Bakhtiian leaned forward and offered the scroll to Jiroannes. “You may leave in the morning for Vidiya. I will send Venedikt Grekov to you at dawn. Treat him with honor. His nephew is my niece’s husband.”

Jiroannes bowed and retreated. Laissa, the bitch, remained where she was, beside Mitya, but Jiroannes had no choice but to leave court with Syrannus. On his way out, he passed the Parkilnous embassy coming in. They were so heavily laden with tribute that it took thirty strong men to carry all the gifts.

At dusk, Jat came in to him.

“Eminence, the prince has come and hopes to see you.”

Jiroannes leapt up at once. “Show him in. Bring us tea, and food, Jat. Syrannus, you will taste it for us today.”

Syrannus bowed. Jat bowed and left, and a moment later he showed Mitya in.

The boy still wore his court clothes, which were rich and looked heavy to wear. Jiroannes offered him a chair, and after hesitating, Mitya sat.

“I suppose I’ll have to get used to sitting in chairs,” he said. “I’m sorry you’re leaving.”

“I must go.”

“I know.” He brightened. “But the journey isn’t too long, is it? It won’t take you above two or three years to return, will it?”

“To return?”

“But the princess said that you were coming back to be my chief minister. After all, since she is staying in Habakar, of course you will have to return—”

“She is staying in Habakar!”

Together, as if by mutual consent, they lapsed into silence.

Jat brought tea and cakes and delicately carved slices of fruit, all arranged pleasingly on a silver tray. Then he retreated to the shadowed corner.

“I thought—it isn’t my right to ask—I wondered where—” Mitya broke off and stared at his hands. He murmured her name under his breath, so softly that if Jiroannes hadn’t been expecting it, he wouldn’t have heard it. “Samae.”

Laissa, with her usual expediency, had had her servants dispose of the body. These days, there were so many, it was easy to lose one. Jiroannes felt cold all through him, and a sudden pity for Mitya, whose face betrayed clearly enough that he had cared for Samae, slave though she was.

Hesitant, Mitya went on. “I asked Princess Laissa about her, but she said that—that Samae had displeased her and that she had been forced to give her to new masters. Is it true?”

“I’m sorry, Mitya,” Jiroannes said, stumbling over the words. How could he explain? He could not—especially since Laissa had managed to both lie and tell the truth at the same time. Clearly she was experienced in court intrigue. He forced himself to go on. “Once I married, the females in my house came under my wife’s jurisdiction. I cannot interfere.” The lie tore at his throat, he who had learned from the words of the prophets that lies were evil, who saw how terribly the words hurt Mitya. “You couldn’t have married her, my prince, and her presence—since she is not a jaran woman, and bound to laws not your own … it would only complicate your life.” The poor boy fought himself, trying to keep his expression controlled; Jiroannes ached to see him suffer so. “She is a slave, Mitya, and in her land, by the laws of her gods, she can never be anything but a slave.”

Mitya’s hands lay in fists on his thighs. He did not move except to bow his head so that shadows covered it. In the uncertain light of the lantern, Jiroannes could no longer read his expression.

“But she cared for you, Mitya…” He faltered.

Silence lay over them as heavy as sorrow.

From outside, he heard a woman laugh and a guard curse, and a goat bleat, and the ring of bridle as a troop of horsemen passed by.

Mitya stood up abruptly. “You’re not coming back,” he said.

“I don’t—I didn’t think—”

“No, I’m not accusing you. I’m not angry. Of course you want to return to your own land.” He strode to the entrance, but hesitated there, facing out toward the camp, as if he did not know how to say farewell.

Jiroannes was struck by a reckless urge. Of course he would want to return to his own land: Back to the endless, cruel intrigues at the Great King’s court, where his uncle lived on sufferance and he himself walked the veriest tightrope between royal favor and banishment to the provinces, where a man who did not die from swamp fever was in any case doomed to poverty, since banishment brought with it a ban on all the luxuries that made life worth living. Or he could leave Vidiya forever and come to live in Habakar, where his wife was regent and his patron and friend would be, in four short years, the reigning king.

Jiroannes rose from his chair and hurried over to the entrance. Mitya turned back, to face him, with his pale, young face and his unconsciously arrogant carriage. “I would be honored to act as your chief minister, Prince Mitya.” Then, on impulse, Jiroannes knelt in front of the boy, as any man kneels in front of his sovereign lord. “When this duty is discharged, I will leave my country and return here to serve you.”

T
HE RAINS BROUGHT A
second flowering to Habakar, turning the grass green and encouraging late flowers to bud and open, but frost soon killed it. The army left, in its wake, pasture eaten down to dirt and villages that would have been stripped of their winter stores if Tess had not forcefully pointed out to Bakhtiian that the legacy of such an action would be a revolt by the Habakar people against Mitya.

“I don’t understand,” said Ilya as they sat under the awning of her tent in the late afternoon, “not truly, why your brother would leave Jeds forever, forsake his power there, to return to a place where at best he might hope by the time he dies to make some incursions against a power he claims is far greater than his own, and at worst expect to be killed for his trouble.”

“Because Erthe is where his heart lies,” replied Tess. The towers of Birat caught the last golden rays of the sun, gleaming against a backdrop of snow-laden mountains to the west.

“But not yours.”

She sipped at her tea, cupping the ceramic mug—it was of Farisa make—in her hands and letting the steam that curled up from the depths warm her face. “Well, it is the land where I was born. But when I think of it now, I think of being ten years old with my parents dead. I think of being sent back to study there, by Charles, and being so lonely, and hating it. This is my home, here—well—” She squinted toward Birat and the mountains. “Not here, not Habakar, but Jeds, and the plains.”

He leaned across and touched her on the knee. “We’ll go back to the plains, my heart, once I’ve set things in order here. We can have a child there, Tess, on the plains.”

She bowed her head and lowered the mug to nestle in her lap. “I don’t know,” she whispered, not wanting to tell him that probably they could never have a child, knowing what it meant to him. Not wanting to say it aloud, knowing what it meant to her.

“It’s early still.” He withdrew his hand. “We won’t speak of it now.”

They sat in silence for a time. Birat’s fields lay at peace beyond, harvested. A few bore the green sprigs of winter wheat, growing apace already. Canals glittered in a net of pathways that crisscrossed in the fields, reminding Tess of the saboteur network that she and Rajiv and the others were going to build, here, in Jeds, in Morava. The army spread out around them, but it was halved in size, now; Mother Sakhalin had gone south to her nephew, and other troops had gone in other directions, south to aid Sakhalin, north to investigate word of a revolt. Kirill Zvertkov had led a troop ahead, west, toward Parkilnous, escorting the city’s embassy back and laying the ground for Bakhtiian’s arrival.

“Tess,” said Ilya, and stopped.

“What is it?” Then she looked at him.

He would not look at her, at first, like any modest jaran man would not, faced with a woman not of his own family, but finally he lifted his eyes to her face. “Do you think the gods know that I killed my own father? But if they do, then why would they still grant me their favor?”

“But he wasn’t your father.”

“Not by our laws. But by the laws you insisted I acknowledge in claiming Vasha as my son, I am certain that Khara Roskhel was my father.”

“I’m sorry, then, not for Vasha’s sake, but for yours. I’m sorry you killed anyone, that anyone has ever died and will ever die because of choices that other people make for them. But isn’t that the nature of war? I’m not sure it ever accomplishes anything but killing, and yet we turn to it again and again, even Charles, knowing that any rebellion he leads will in the end be no different in kind than what you’ve done in the coastal princedoms and in Habakar.”

“But once we unite the lands, and his rebellion succeeds, then there will be peace,” said Ilya reasonably. “I would like to visit Erthe someday. Your philosophers are very different from ours. Do they have an elixir for long life there?”

She started and almost spilled her tea. “What makes you ask that?”

“Oh, that Habakar philosopher the old king sent us as an ambassador, he said that while he had means of protecting life, he had none to prolong it, but that he had heard that there is a country that lies along the Golden Road where the magicians brew such an elixir. I thought perhaps the philosophers of Erthe knew something of it.”

“Ah. Well. Perhaps they do. I’m not a philosopher.” Now it was her turn to falter. “Ilya.”

He said nothing, only watched her, forcing her to speak.

“We can’t send a regent to Jeds. I have to go.”

At once, his expression shuttered.

“You know it’s true, Ilya. You know I have to go, to establish my power there, so that they can see me and acknowledge me. I haven’t been in Jeds for years and years. They’ll have no way to recognize me, not truly, except by this ring and the chain. Well, Baron Santer and some of the other officials at court will probably recognize me, but I was a child when they last saw me. Tell me you see that I have to go, Ilya.” Her voice broke on the last sentence.

“So your brother wins what he wanted, in the end.” He stood up, that abruptly, and walked off the carpet. Twenty paces away from the tent, two guards fell in on either side of him. They vanished into the camp.

“Oh, God,” said Tess, and started to cry, not just because of him but because ever since the baby had died everything made her cry easily.

Children’s laughter rang through the camp.

“Tess! Tess! Come quickly.”

Vasha and Katya and Galina raced into view and they halted, panting and giggling, on her carpet.

“Come
on!”
cried Katya, tugging at Tess’s arm and spilling the remains of the tea on Tess’s trouser leg and onto the carpet.

“Tess, why are you crying?” Vasha asked. At once the three children hushed and heaved themselves down beside Tess with such attitudes of attentive concern that Tess could not help but laugh at their grave faces.