The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (21 page)

“I wish—” began Tess, and broke off. Irena regarded her evenly. Tess finally produced a lopsided smile. “I wish you wouldn’t tell me things I don’t want to hear.”

Irena stopped, placed a hand on each of Tess’s shoulders, and kissed her on either cheek. Then, without another word, she walked into the great tent, leaving Tess standing outside.

Ilya strolled up, as if he had been waiting for her. “And?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard the worst from Kira, and there isn’t any better news to replace that with. Let’s go see if the baths truly are finished.”

“You and your baths. I think the only reason you wanted Sarai founded was so that you could have those baths built.”

Tess smiled, because David had accused her of the same thing, six years ago.

They went in relative solitude: an escort of only twenty riders. She walked, the better to inspect the foundations of the fountain being built in the center of the great plaza. About a dozen men were digging here, installing pipes, and they ceased work immediately and knelt, bowing their heads, when she approached. Their subservience made her uncomfortable, but Ilya climbed right down into the pit and inspected the workings with interest. Tess watched the laborers eyeing him from under the brim of their caps, but none spoke a word except in answer to his direct questions.

“Very clever,” he said finally, climbing out. They strolled on across the oval, which was already paved in smooth stone. Tess had insisted that David site the archives, which she called the library, directly opposite the Orzhekov tent, so that the two faced each other across the white expanse of the plaza, although the Orzhekov tent was set back so far in the park that only the gold banner and the slope of the roof were visible above the screen of new trees that would eventually grow to hide it entirely from view.

Jaran guards stood impassively at the great double doors that led into the main reading room. Tess set a foot on the stairs and gazed up. The library had been the first building they had built, and they had built it in unseemly haste, taking only five years to do it. And she had business within, important business. Of all the buildings here, of all the buildings dreamt of, it was her favorite.

She withdrew her foot from the stairs. “No, I want to see the baths first.”

“You want to see the
khepelli
priestess,” said Ilya.

Tess shot him a glance but did not reply. Instead she kept walking, circling the elegant marble dome, a smaller version of the Pantheon, and its ringed portico and meeker octagonal annex, the scriptorium.

Behind the library stood the huge baths complex. They were a vile luxury, and Tess found them utterly enchanting. They were divided into four sections: the cold pool (which stretched outdoors), the Greater Baths, the Lesser Baths, and the Imperial Baths, together with the annexes, the lavatories and (the most obscene addition) a bank of showers.

The Imperial Baths were reserved for jaran, but at midday, except for the guards, they were empty. They paused in the foyer.

“I will wait out here, then,” said Ilya, “or perhaps go back to the archives.”

“You will not!”

Ilya glanced at their escort. “Tess,” he said in an undertone, “it is unseemly for a man and a woman to bathe together.”

“It is not. Your aunt need never know in any case.” He looked unconvinced but he hesitated, so she turned to Konstans. “Konstans. Take the men outside and place a ring around the building.”

Konstans looked amused. “Does this mean I may bring my wife here some evening?”

Ilya flushed.

“If you move swiftly, now, and don’t say anything about this to anyone else. Out.”

They went.

“I don’t—” began Ilya.

“Yes, you do. We’ve been traveling for ten days to get here. There you stand in all your dust, and the truth is, the only thing that stops you from going in with me and enjoying these miraculous baths is your own embarrassment. Ilya, your armies have swept through more princedoms than I can count, and you’re afraid that back at camp they’re going to gossip about you because you bathed with your wife!”

“You have never been scolded by my aunt for improper behavior.”

“I have, too! She doesn’t scare me. Much.” She threw up her hands. “I’m going in. You may follow or not, as you wish.”

She passed through the vestibule and walked across the silent exercise court that fronted the baths themselves. Inside, in the dressing room, she stripped. She had just taken off the last of her clothes when Ilya appeared.

“I was thinking—” he began, and broke off, seeing her naked.

Tess rolled her eyes. “You aren’t this shy in my blankets.”

Crossing into the warm baths chamber, she eased herself into the circular pool and just floated there a while, enjoying the lap of gentle waves against her arms and chest. Then she swam a slow lap, luxuriating in the warmth and the sensuous slipperiness of the water against her skin. She dove under and surfaced next to the stairs, to find Ilya sitting on the steps, half in the water, looking… uncomfortable.

“I forgot,” said Tess, suddenly illuminated. “You don’t know how to swim.” She caught back a laugh, because she could tell he was in an uncertain mood.

“Damn you.” He took her by the arm and hauled her in against him, and Tess instantly revised her evaluation of his mood.

“Mmmm.” said Ilya after a while. “It is no wonder the khaja are so weak. We bathe in cold streams and rivers, where we certainly aren’t tempted to linger on doing this sort of thing.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Not at all.”

Even the floor was warm, because of the hollow pipes running underneath that conducted hot air from the furnace. The finest grade of stone had been chosen for these rooms, so that although the floor was hard, it had an almost silken smoothness rather akin to the flow of Ilya’s skin under her hands.

“You were thinking,” she said later, lying half on top of him, idly tracing the curves of his face with a finger, studying its lines, as she liked to. He shifted his hips, easing away from where her knee pushed hard against his thigh.

“I was thinking,” he said slowly, “that it is time for me to return to the army. The horses are fat from the spring grass, and if Kirill can push west quickly enough, we can catch the king and army of Mircassia between two pincers and so make an end to him. Then only Filis and its prince will remain between us and Jeds. We could reach Jeds by midwinter, if all went well.”

Tess froze. All of her pleasure evaporated. She rolled off him and plunged into the pool, swam across it, and clambered out the opposite side, dripping water, and hurried away under an archway and into the chamber with the cold pool, which was likewise deserted. She dove in. The numbing cold of the water stung her, and she surfaced, gasping. Waves surged out from her and swelled out under the arches that opened onto the outdoor portion of the pool, where they dissipated under the sun. She heaved herself up and sat on the lip of the pool. After a little bit, Ilya came in.

“I’m sorry,” she said before he could say anything. “You’re right, of course.”

He sat down beside her, dipped a foot in the water, and hid a wince. Then he threw himself in, shattering the surface into a thousand drops of spray. He came up, sputtering, and wiped his eyes. “Naturally you and the children will come to Jeds as soon as the way is clear.”

“Naturally,” she echoed, missing him already. But this, too, was part of the life she had chosen.

“I beg your pardon.” Konstans’s voice broke into their conversation. “Mother Orzhekov has sent a message.” Tess spun to look behind her, but Konstans stayed discreetly out of view. “Mother Veselov’s baby is coming, and it isn’t going well.”

“Oh, hell,” said Tess, leaping up. “I’ll come at once.”

A
NDREI SAKHALIN LIKED TO
talk.

“We have passed into the kingdom of Dushan, another of the Yos lands, although King Zgoros of Dushan has less power and less land than Prince Sigismar of Hereti-Manas, and was himself a vassal of Prince Dragos of Zara before he became our vassal.”

“How can a king be a vassal to a prince?” asked Stefan.

Vasha and Stefan flanked Andrei Sakhalin, one on each side, while they watched the merchants’ train of wagons ford a river, carts bucking and heaving over the shallow rocky bed.

“The khaja are not like us,” said Andrei. “They give themselves names, king or prince or priest, but the names mean nothing unless they hold land to themselves and have soldiers enough to keep others from stealing it.”

Stefan snorted. “You can’t steal land.”

“But they’re bound to the land,” interposed Vasha, feeling a flicker of interest in the conversation, “because they are farmers.”

“They’re not all farmers,” objected Stefan. “Some of them are merchants.”

“What Vassily means to say is that their wealth is bound into the land they hold,” said Andrei, “and so without land, even a mighty king will rule nothing, and his mother’s name will be forgotten. That is why they cannot stand against us. We do not forsake the names the gods gave us. The Sakhalin will always be First of the Elder Tribes, even if Mother Sakhalin has only one tent and ten grazel.”

On the far bank, the princess and her escort appeared, and Vasha watched as Princess Rusudani and her servant and her ten guards picked their way across the ford. Vasha could not help but notice what a good seat on her horse Rusudani had, especially compared to Jaelle, who still after all these weeks rode with the uneasiness of a person who distrusts horses. He envied the khaja, suddenly; by khaja law, his position was assured.

Sakhalin began talking again, and Vasha let the words wash over him, drowning his fear in noise. “But King Zgoros of Dushan was grateful to ally himself with us, since his own father had been forced to kneel before the prince of Zara. When the younger Prince Dragos of Zara was killed fighting at the River Djana last year, King Zgoros sent an envoy to Bakhtiian to ask that his youngest son Prince Janos be granted the Zaran throne, since in his great-grandfather’s time the prince of Zara was the nephew of the Dushan king and subordinate to him. In those days, the Dushan king was preeminent over all the princes in Yos lands, Zara, Hereti and Manas, Gelasti, and Tarsina-Kars, and allied as an equal with Mircassia. But an ambitious nephew of a younger line stole the land and put in a claim for himself, and the other princes supported him, so Zara was again torn from Dushan’s grasp. That is why—” Sakhalin broke off.

Vasha jerked his gaze away from Princess Rusudani and looked over at the Sakhalin prince.

Andrei, too, was studying Rusudani, his eyes narrowed. His face bore a calculating look, which surprised Vasha, since Andrei seemed to chatter more than to think.

“Is it true that the khaja princess has no brothers or uncles?” Andrei asked suddenly.

“As far as we can tell. The two brothers died at the Salho River, and there must be the one uncle left, who would be King Barsauma of Mircassia’s heir.”

“I heard a different rumor, in Dushan, that all of King Barsauma’s sons had died, the last only recently, and that he has but a nephew left, a boy who is feebleminded and crippled.”

“How do you know so much about the khaja?” asked Stefan, who returned his attention to the Sakhalin prince as soon as the women passed down the road and out of view.

“It is my duty to know a great deal about the khaja, and it should be yours, as well. You come from a good family, Stefan Danov, and your grandfather Nikolai Sibirin is a respected healer, a man of influence. If you fight bravely and listen well, there is no reason you could not command a jahar in time.”

“I’m going to be a healer,” said Stefan quietly, but Andrei had already turned to Vasha.,

“What do you think, Vassily Kireyevsky? Should such a valuable khaja princess be allowed to marry back into the khaja lines, or should some clever young jaran prince marry her to keep her power within the tribes?”

Vasha flushed. It was as if Andrei, like a Singer who can divine the words of the gods, had known his ambition. “I think any jaran man who wishes to marry her had better speak with Mother Orzhekov and Mother Sakhalin before he marks her,” he stammered. “What if she refuses to marry any man who does not dwell in the same church as she does?”

Andrei rolled his eyes. “Women do not have a choice in marriage. Why should it matter to them in any case? They may pray to their gods as they wish. When Prince Mitya’s khaja wife brought in builders and priests to lift up a temple to her god in their new city, no one spoke against her.”

Vasha smiled, thinking of Mitya, the one bright spot in this whole gloomy journey. “I think the Habakar do not mind so much, because so many people of different lands travel through their kingdom, and their kings and rulers marry women from so many different places. But I think the khaja who follow Hristain’s church think differently.”

Andrei smiled indulgently. “Well, my boy, it does not matter what these khaja think, since they are subject to us. They will follow the laws we set down.” He urged his horse forward and fell in with the rearguard as it cleared the river and headed down the road. A few ramshackle old wagons and clots of travelers on foot trailed behind them, khaja stragglers who were not part of the official party but who crept along in their wake, hoping to find safety by sticking as close as possible to Riasonovsky’s soldiers.

Andrei went on talking, as always, telling them old stories about the mischief he and his brothers and cousins used to get into and newer stories about the skirmish he had recently fought in and the story of the Djana River battle (for the third time) and how Yaroslav Sakhalin’s army had routed the combined forces of the Zaran and Gelasti princes and their allies.

In this way, Vasha reflected, Andrei was refreshingly different from Ilya and Tess. Tess rarely told stories. Mostly she taught, but even then the words she used and the knowledge she related seemed more characterized by the silences between the words than by the words themselves. When Ilya spoke, even the most casual remarks bore so much weight that one could not afford to miss any least syllable he uttered. But Vasha did not want to think about his father.