His Conquering Sword (54 page)

“Your father was right, you know, about his vision,” she said. “About you.” She crossed to him and laid her hands on his chest. “When I come back, we’ll have a child.”

“Two,” he said instantly, and then embraced her and just held her. He was warm and so close that they might almost as well have been one person. “Tess,” he whispered, “haven’t two new moons passed since you were delivered of the baby?”

“Yes. Why?” But she laughed even as she asked the question, knowing what he meant by it. “Yes, Ilya,” she said, and kissed him.

Two days later, they boarded the ship: Tess and Aleksi and his new family; the Bharentous Repertory Company; and what was left of Charles’s party: Cara and Jo and Maggie and Rajiv. Hal Bharentous and Gwyn Jones carried between them the litter on which Vasil Veselov lay, his face drawn with pain and his beauty forever mutilated by an ugly scar. Until he got to space, of course, where it could easily enough be repaired.

Poor Karolla walked behind her husband, her face set. She was hugely pregnant. A great argument had ensued over whether Karolla could bring her tent. In the end, Tess had told Owen she would herself pay for any extra weight charges and that Karolla might bring anything she damned well pleased. The gods alone knew how difficult life was going to be for her, torn away from the tribes, without stripping her of all her worldly goods that might anchor her in the strange new world she was going to. Tess wondered if Karolla had had a choice whether to go; a real choice, that is, not just Vasil convincing her that, of course, she would go with him. But Tess was glad Vasil was leaving, for Ilya’s sake. For her own peace of mind. Diana Brooke-Holt came after, holding the hands of the two children. Diana looked pallid and fragile. Tess noted how solicitous many of the other members of the Company were toward her.

On the other shallow river ship, Niko and Juli and two of their grandchildren and various of their train and one hundred riders boarded. The horses, disliking it, were led below. On the shore, David huddled over a map with Nadine. Maggie hailed him, and he started and glanced up. There was an awkward moment, one could tell by the way he stared at Nadine, and then they said good-bye without touching and he hurried up the ramp, hands clenched. He came and stood beside Tess on the deck.

On the shore, Ilya waited, he with his jahar arrayed gloriously behind him and his gold banner whipping in the breeze that skirled in off the river, rising with the dawn. What words did they need here? They had said what was in their hearts many times.

She watched him. He watched her. The captain of the ship bellowed orders. The ramps scraped up over rails. Ropes were cast free, and with poles they thrust themselves away from the dock, and then the stroke for the oars called out, a steady, pleasing pattern.

The docks receded. Beside her, David wiped a tear from his cheek and farther along, Diana clutched the railing and stared at the gap opening between her and the jaran. Karolla Arkhanov knelt beside her husband, not looking back, but her children did.

Tess turned away from the railing, finally, leaving David and Diana and the others to stare until a broad curve in the river hid Parkilnous and the jaran army from their sight. She went to help Karolla. What need had she to linger there, to mark for one final time all that was being left behind?

After all, she was coming back.

K
AROLLA GAVE BIRTH TO
a healthy son the day after they sailed into Jeds. She named the child Anton. Her husband was too wracked by pain and the agony of the voyage to be aware of much beyond the fact that she had delivered the child. Diana also suspected that Dr. Hierakis had Vasil drugged, but she was not privy to the councils of the Prince of Jeds and her retinue.

They spent forty days in Jeds, and Diana had, thank the Goddess, no time to dwell on anything except work. Owen drove them through rehearsals and arranged a series of performances that included “The Jaran Diptych,” as he and Ginny called the folktales. When Diana wasn’t rehearsing, she took care of Valentin and Ilyana, who were not as overawed by Jeds as Diana had feared they might be. On the other hand, they had seen Hamrat and Karkand, so they knew now what a city was. Only in that small space of time between winding down from the night’s performance or rehearsal and actually falling asleep did she have leisure to brood.

“Diana, my dear,” said Dr. Hierakis one night, “whatever are you doing out here?”

Jeds had a mild climate, and even at midnight in winter, with the winds blowing in off the bay, Diana did not need a cloak to walk the battlements. Although a cloak might have lent more drama to her situation. “I can’t sleep,” she said as she turned to greet the doctor and her companion.

“Ah,” said the doctor, and Diana wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or grateful for the tone of the word. “You haven’t met Dr. Kinzer. She just arrived.”

Dr. Kinzer was a heavyset woman with wicked blue eyes. Diana shook her hand reflexively. “How do you do?”

“Glad to get off that choppy bay,” said Dr. Kinzer with a laugh. “I don’t have sea legs.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know your connection here …” Diana trailed off, feeling stupid.

“Owen Zerentous brought me in to look at a trauma case. Spinal injury. Quite a mess, from the preliminary imaging I’ve seen.”

“Oh,” said Diana. “Owen brought you in to look at Vasil. Can you—fix him?”

Kinzer smiled easily. “I imagine so. I can only do a preliminary operation in these conditions, though. The reconstruction work will come later, on Earth.”

“Dr. Kinzer,” said Dr. Hierakis dryly, “is one of our foremost experts on spinal cord trauma. Owen is spending a good deal of credit on Vasil Veselov. I hope he appreciates it.”

“Who, Owen? I’m sure he does, but then, when he’s in the grip of an obsession like this one … oh, you meant Vasil.”

Dr. Hierakis nodded. “Yes, I meant Vasil, who will probably never think but that he deserved it. Are you going to stay with the Company, Diana?”

“Of course!” The anger hit with the force of storm waters. “What point is there in anything if I don’t stay with the Company? Oh, I know what you meant—if we tour out into Chapalii space, but as long as it’s theater, what do I care? As long as I’m working, as long as we’re touring, it doesn’t matter where I am, and I’m used to Owen and Ginny, and we do marvelous work and—” She broke off, aware all at once of how strident her voice had become.

There was a pause.

“It’s an odd view, in a way,” said Dr. Kinzer kindly, walking over to the battlements. “I’m not used to the lack of lights. And it’s remarkably quiet.” Together, they listened.

Diana could hear the lap of the waters on the rocks below and not much else. A woman was singing in the palace, in a room that opened out onto the battlements. In a pleasant if rather thin voice, she sang the words to a jaran song, something cheerful and tender about a baby’s laughter and a brand new foal.

“That’s Svetlana,” continued the doctor, as if aware that Diana would rather not think, much less talk. “She helps poor Karolla at night. What a pleasant, capable young woman she is. I’m so pleased, for Aleksi’s sake.” Then she paused and peered through the darkness at Diana. The moon gave pale light to her face, framing her dark curls against the night-gray of her skin. “I’m sorry, Diana.”

Diana had taught herself to close up the instant she began to think of—anything but what was safe to think of. “Poor Karolla,” Diana repeated. “What do you think of Jeds, Dr. Kinzer?”

“I really did
just
arrive. The palace is nice—what I’ve seen of it.”

Again they lapsed into silence, and into their silence a voice called out from the darkness. “Cara? Are you out here?” It was Tess Soerensen. “Marco and Javier just got in, can you believe it? And here I thought they’d get here first!” Then, fainter, her voice floated out as she evidently turned her head and spoke in a different direction. “Yes, Marco, the Company is still here. They can’t leave until Veselov is able to travel.” The voice grew louder, and Diana heard footsteps as well, more than one set. “He almost died twice on the voyage here, and then there’s the baby, too, now.”

“You still haven’t told me,” said Marco Burckhardt, his voice clear and carrying on the night air, “how Baron Santer reacted when you arrived with your escort of savages.”

Diana felt her blood run cold. “I don’t want to see him!” she whispered, suddenly frantic.

Dr. Hierakis’s hand settled fleetingly on Diana’s arm and then the doctor moved away from her. “Here I am!” Dr. Hierakis called out cheerfully enough. “And Melissa Kinzer has arrived as well. But let’s do go inside. I’m sure Missy has had enough sea air for the day, and if you’ve been on a ship, Marco, I can’t imagine you want to stare at whitecaps any longer either. Was Javier horribly seasick?”

“Horribly,” said Marco, and laughed. “Who’s that out there?”

“Oh, one of the serving girls, frightened that she’s going to lose her employment here because her father wants her to marry some old goat. She’s better off in the prince’s service, and she knows it. Tess, let’s take some tea up to Svetlana. She’s still awake with the baby.”

Their voices receded. Diana stood alone again on the battlements. The sea beat on the rocks below. She buried her face in her hands and managed by sheer force of will not to cry.

The days passed, and Diana stayed busy. She did not see Marco again.

The night they premiered “The Daughter of the Sun,” all the actors were aware of an additional buzz in the audience. It was annoying, as if the audience had their attention half on the stage and half somewhere else. At the Royal Court Theater, it had become the tradition that the lead actress visit the prince’s box at the intermission if the prince was in attendance.

“When the first Charles commissioned and built the theater,” explained Baron Santer as he escorted Diana in all her makeup and costume up the steep flight of private back stairs that led to the royal box, “he insisted on the tradition.” The baron was an elderly gentleman who looked mild and had the eyes of a shark. “Some say the better to view every beautiful actress who played here. He was quite a ladies man.”

“You knew him?” Diana asked politely, and then recalled with a jolt that the first Charles had been Marco.

“I was a young man, and I had the honor of counting myself his friend.” He surveyed Diana in the dim light, and for an instant such a light came into his eyes that Diana hoped she wouldn’t have to do anything drastic, like shove him down the stairs. “He would have approved of you,” he finished, as if he thought she cared about his approval.

“I’m sure he would have,” she replied glacially.

The baron bowed. Then he led her on by a private door into the prince’s box, where Tess Soerensen sat with the Baroness Santer, a woman considerably younger than her husband, and Niko and Juli. Aleksi and a young captain of the Jedan militia stood on guard.

“Diana,” said Tess, but did not rise to greet her. She merely extended her hand, and Diana knew the part expected of her here. She curtsied deeply and kissed Tess’s hand, on the signet ring.

“Your highness,” she murmured and glanced up in time to catch a spark of humor in Tess’s face.

There came a knock on the public door. “Ah,” said the Prince of Jeds. Diana noted for the first time that Tess held in her other hand a folded square of paper. Perfume wafted from it, a sweet, rich scent. “Show her in.”

The captain went to the door and opened it. Baron Santer raised his eyebrows, and the Baroness hid her mouth behind her fan.

A woman swept in. At once, Diana realized that she, Diana, had not done justice to her own entrance into the box. A moment later, she realized that the audience had turned its attention here, and that it must have been this woman all along with whom the actors were competing.

“Your highness,” said the woman, curtsying even more deeply than Diana had and thus displaying a generous amount of white bosom from her low cut gown. She kissed the signet ring, and then promptly destroyed the illusion by lifting her head and smiling straight at Tess Soerensen, meeting her eyes.

“So you’re Mayana,” said Tess.

“So you’re Tess,” said the famous courtesan, for it was indeed she. Even Diana and the other actors had heard of her. She was a legend in Jeds, and now, this close, Diana could see that she was gorgeous, but more by self-assurance and ready laughter than from physical beauty.

“How do you know who I am?” Tess asked.

“Ilyakoria writes me letters, of course. Didn’t he tell you?”

Tess laughed. “I had hoped to meet you sooner,” she said, “but the affairs of state…Still, I’m not surprised to find you here, at the performance of this particular tale.”

Mayana bowed her head in acknowledgment, as if the comment was somehow a tribute to her. She had hair more bronze than gold in color, perfectly curled, and whereas the box itself was decorated in a spare Florentine style, the courtesan’s gown was simply cut but floridly ornamented in a manner reminiscent of jaran embroidery, and yet the contrast was not unflattering to Mayana.

“Come to see me at the palace,” said the prince.

“Is that a command, your highness?”

Tess smiled. “No, I ask it as any woman might ask another, whom she hopes will become her friend.”

Baron Santer coughed into his hand. Through the sheer, painted fan, Diana saw the Baroness smirking. Or maybe not, because at that instant Mayana cast a sidewise glance at the Baroness and the two women’s eyes met in some kind of communication: Diana could not be sure what.

The private door opened. “I beg your pardon,” said Yomi, sticking her head through. “But I’ve got to call places for the second act. Diana?”

Diana curtsied again and made her exit.

Eighteen days later they made their farewells at court. Tess Soerensen sat on her throne and received them formally. She spoke with each of them, most briefly, Owen and Ginny longest, and when Diana knelt before her, she bent to take Diana’s hands in her own.

“I hope, Diana, that you will keep well. I’m sorry about Anatoly.”

Diana kept her gaze fixed on the pillow on which she knelt, on the sleek ship painted on the fabric and the eagle rising, wings elevated and displayed, emblazoned on the ship’s sail, the heraldic device of the Jedan princely line. She could not bear to look at Tess, who had made a choice so different from her own. Who had been able to.