The Novels of the Jaran (133 page)

“You see,” said Jiroannes in a low voice to Syrannus, impressed despite himself, “that will teach them to bother her with such trivial matters.”

A troop of horsemen rode in and dismounted, all but one of their number. This last, a dark-haired young man, remained seated on his horse as if he were somehow in disgrace. A girl armed with bow and arrows was called forward to stand in front of the queen. She threw herself down and began to plead in a high voice, but the queen silenced her with a wave of a hand.

“The punishment is exile,” said Mother Sakhalin. She turned to the pretty young woman beside her. “Your dyan will strip him of all that binds him to your tribe.”

“My dyan is not here,” said the princess. Her thick black hair was bound back in four braids and overlaid with a rich headpiece whose jeweled links hung to her shoulders. She regarded the scene gravely. The audience hushed. Glancing around, Jiroannes realized that in the course of moments the number of people attending had doubled. Stillness hung over them. “But my brother will act for him in this matter. Anton?”

One of the jaran soldiers came forward. If he were this woman’s brother, then surely he was a prince, but Jiroannes could see no difference between him and the other men by the way he dressed. He was much older than the princess. Perhaps he was a bastard child of an early concubine and thus not a legitimate heir to power. He inclined his head respectfully to the two women and then turned to the mounted man.

“You,” he said to the man, “whom we once knew as Yevgeni Usova, you will dismount.”

The man obeyed. His face was white but otherwise expressionless. The girl kneeling in front of the queen began to weep. His wife, perhaps?

The captain gestured to one of his men to lead the horse away. “This horse belongs to no man,” he said. He drew the young man’s saber from his sheath and handed it away as well. “This saber belongs to no man.” Then he drew his own knife. He laid it along the collar of the young man’s shirt and cut, down through the fabric. The silk did not cut easily, and it was messy work, but with a grim face and an unrelenting manner, the captain cut the shirt off the offender, piece by piece, and let it fall into the dust. The young man stood there, silent, unmoving, and the sun beat down on his pale body.

“This shirt belongs to no man.”

On the dais, the queen watched without the slightest sign of mercy on her face. But the princess had averted her eyes, as if the sight pained her.

“Yevgeni Usova is dead to us,” said the captain. He turned on his heel and walked back to his men. At this signal, all the watchers averted their eyes. Some actually physically turned away, to show their backs to the exiled young man. He hesitated, but only for one moment. The old crone glared at him. Her mouth was a tight line, her expression implacable. The man turned and, with his head high, he began to walk away into his exile.

“Yevgeni!” The girl sprang up from the ground in front of the queen. “I’m coming with you.”

He stopped. He was close to Jiroannes now, and Jiroannes saw his face whiten at the girl’s words. If before he had looked resigned, then now he looked terrified. He turned back. “No. I forbid it, Valye.”

She cast a defiant glance toward the queen and ran over toward him. “I don’t care. I’m coming with you.”

“Valye!” This from the princess, who flung up her head. Her eyes looked haunted. “You have a place here. You know that. You must stay.”

The girl stopped beside the man. She was young, very young, with dark brown eyes and black hair like his. All at once Jiroannes saw the resemblance: they had the same blunt nose and blunt chin and narrow foreheads, features that proclaimed them to be relatives. “I won’t stay. It’s death to send him out there with nothing, and you know it. At least with my bow we’ll have a chance to stay alive.”

“No,” Yevgeni whispered harshly, under his breath. “At least I’ll know you’re safe.”

The queen rose. She was not much taller standing than sitting, but her authority seemed to enlarge with the simple movement. “Valye Usova, your loyalty to your brother is commendable, but I forbid you to leave with him. He has condemned himself by his own choice. Let him go.”

“Please, Valye,” said the princess. “You know you must stay here. You know it’s what your brother would want.”

“No! No, I refuse. You all say one thing with your mouths, but you cover your eyes to stop from seeing what you know is true. You know what your own cousin is, Mother Veselov, and yet he still rides with the tribe.”

“He was banished once,” said the queen sternly.

“Then why isn’t he here with the tribe where he’s supposed to be? He’s still up there!” The girl pointed up, to the northeast, toward the distant mountains. Her voice rose higher, and it broke as she spoke again. “You all know why he’s there, but you all pretend you don’t know. You all know that whatever Yevgeni might have done, he’s done as well.”

“Young woman, you go too far.”

The girl spun to face the captain. “Anton, aside from this one thing, what fault has Yevgeni ever shown?” The older man only looked away and would not answer. “None. You know it’s true. He’s an exemplary rider.”

“He rode with Dmitri Mikhailov,” said the princess. “For that reason alone, he is untrustworthy.”

“And so did your cousin!” cried the girl triumphantly. “But you acclaimed him dyan as soon as he returned. Yevgeni was loyal to the dyan he followed, always. He is now, too; he’s loyal to Bakhtiian. But you’re punishing him because he was Vasil’s lover once. But now Vasil has Bakhtiian back—oh, yes, he told Yevgeni about that and Yevgeni told me, so don’t think you can keep it a secret—so Yevgeni is nothing but an embarrassment to you all—”

“That is enough!” The queen stepped down from her dais and marched over the dusty ground to confront the girl. “You will be silent, or you will leave this camp forever.”

The girl lifted her chin. Unshed tears sparkled in the sunlight.

“Please, Valye,” begged the brother. “Please, for my sake, stay.”

“I’m going.” With monumental disdain and appalling rudeness, she turned her back deliberately and insultingly on the queen. “Come, Yevgeni, let’s leave.” She took him by the arm and he had no choice but to go with her. The crowd parted to let them through and then, once they were gone, burst into a wild roar of exclamation.

The queen marched back to her dais and, with assistance from the two princesses, clambered back on. She turned to survey the crowd imperiously. “Quiet,” she said. In a circle radiating out from her presence the audience quieted, ring by ring, until all were silent again. She settled herself down on her pillow. Her eyes searched the crowd. Her gaze settled on Jiroannes. He flushed, sure suddenly that he was about to become the next victim, a fitting close to the disaster he had just witnessed.

“Ambassador. What brings you to my camp?”

For a moment he could not move. Syrannus poked him in the back, and he started and walked forward to kneel before her. It felt very strange to kneel before a woman, and yet, at this moment, it did not feel degrading.

“Madam,” he began, not sure by what title to address her.

“You may call me Mother Sakhalin.”

“Mother Sakhalin. I come to you because—” He faltered. Without Mitya, he had no one to practice khush with, and his facility with the language had suffered for it. But Syrannus was there, kneeling behind him, and using him as an interpreter, Jiroannes felt able to go on. “I arrived in your lands with twenty guardsmen, of whom one died of a fever at the last siege. They have complained to me recently that it is difficult for them to endure without the…comforts of women.”

“It is difficult for any man to endure that,” said the queen. A few people laughed, but the atmosphere remained somber, and Jiroannes had a fair idea now of why the young man Yevgeni had been exiled.

“But I know,” Jiroannes continued, more carefully still, “that your justice is strict. There are women of these lands, of Habakar lands, who would—ah—come to my men, but I did not know if this is allowed within the laws of this camp.”

The old queen considered him. The young princess stared at her hands and did not appear to be paying any attention to this conversation. “If these men do not have wives, then certainly it is unreasonable to deny them this comfort. Certainly jaran women are uninterested in khaja men. But as you are all khaja, there seems no reason that you can’t deal together well enough.”

“Then my guards may allow
khaja
women into their tents?”

She watched him. He felt the baleful intensity of her stare, and he felt that she meant to play some horrible trick on him that only she would find amusing. “It is also true that the khaja women here no longer have husbands. They may well desire to be married again. That is how I judge it, then. If these men wish to take wives, they may.” She paused and skewered him with a bright, malevolent glare. “You will see that they are treated as a wife deserves, will you not?”

Kneeling here at her feet, what else could he say? “Assuredly, Mother Sakhalin. You are kind, wise, and generous.”

She snorted. “You may go, ambassador. Now, Mother Grekov, did you say there was a dispute over the stud rights of that bay stallion?”

Thus dismissed, Jiroannes rose and went back to camp, his escort at his heels.

“What do you think, eminence?” Syrannus asked.

“I think the old woman is no fool,” said Jiroannes. “She must know that men will go to all lengths to find women, if they’re kept apart long enough. So she has given me a way to keep my men happy.”

“I meant, eminence, about the young man they exiled.”

“He was caught fornicating with a man, of course. Although I don’t know why the other man wasn’t exiled as well.”

“But the girl, she said—”

“She was overwrought, Syrannus. We must not listen to rumor. In any case, he will die, sent out alone like that.”

Syrannus sighed. They had reached their tents, now, and Jiroannes sank gratefully into his chair and accepted a cup of hot tea from Lal. “But, eminence, what if Bakhtiian dies?”

“Then we wait. If a successor emerges, we deal with him. If one does not, then we ride for home and hope we make it there without being killed. Tell my captain to attend me.”

He sipped at the tea. It was spicy, and it scalded his tongue. Lal really was very good, better than Samae had ever been, about making everything just as he liked it. Already, without being asked, the boy had begun fanning him against the afternoon heat. He recognized all at once that Samae had rebelled against him constantly, in subtle ways, primarily by never acting until he ordered her to act, so that her obedience was never a thing of her choosing but always a matter of her being forced to endure his commands.

The captain arrived and touched his forehead to the carpet in front of Jiroannes. “Eminence, you sent for me.”

“Captain.” He explained the terms that Mother Sakhalin had set them.

“But, eminence, many of us have wives, proper Vidiyan wives, at home. These foreign women are good enough for whores, it’s true, but they aren’t our kind.”

“Captain, I understand your reservations, but I am presenting you with a solution. Keep whores, but treat them as if they were wives and all will be well. I will see that you have enough rations to cover everyone.”

“But, eminence, what about their husbands?”

Jiroannes tilted his head back. Smoke rose in the distance. He wondered if the city had fallen yet. “I doubt they have husbands left. I doubt there are any men left alive in this land. I expect, captain, that many women will be grateful for such shelter as you and your men can provide them.”

“If they bring children, eminence?”

“As I said, captain, treat them as you would your own wives. As long as we do not antagonize the jaran, you may keep them here. Do you understand?” And because the captain was wise enough to have risen up through the ranks to his current command, he did.

“Are you hungry, eminence?” asked Lal.

“Why, yes, I am.” At the outskirts of his little camp, Samae appeared, trudging under the weight of two full buckets hung from a pole slung over her shoulders. Her face was still, bearing no expression. Why had she refused her freedom? The question nagged at him. It had bothered him for twenty days, now, but he could think of no answer.

“Eminence, here are some delicacies I made,” said Lal, breaking into Jiroannes’s reverie. He knelt before Jiroannes’s chair and held out a plate of chased pewter on which savory looking pastries were arranged in an artful pattern. “I hope they please you.”

Jiroannes wrenched his gaze away from Samae. He accepted the food. “Thank you, Lal,” he said. “These are very fine.”

The boy beamed and padded away to fetch warm water and a cloth to wash his master’s face and hands after he had finished.

At dawn, Jiroannes was woken by Lal. “Eminence. I beg pardon, eminence, but there are men here to see you.”

Jiroannes started awake and sat up. It was dark in the tent. A man shouted outside, answered by a whoop. A troop of horses pounded past. The rush of fear that hit him astounded him. What had he done? Whom had he offended? Had his guards raped some woman? Did his people, with their fine, superior Vidiyan blood and upbringing, treat their wives in a manner repugnant to the jaran? But they had no wives here, and no women in camp, not yet.

Lal brought him a knee-length brocaded coat and helped him into it, then tied his turquoise sash around his waist in a casual style—not too formal, for this kind of meeting. Hands shaking, Jiroannes went outside. In the half-light of dawn, he recognized two of the riders: one was Anton, the brother of the princess. One was the brown-haired actor, the man who took the most demanding parts of the dance.

“Ambassador, I am Anton Veselov,” said Veselov. “I beg your pardon for disturbing you at this hour, but we are conducting a search.”

Jiroannes blanched. He thought wildly about what items he possessed that might get him executed. Lal appeared in the doorway of his tent, and immediately Jiroannes was convinced that they had come to accuse him of consorting with the boy, but no one remarked on the slave as he hurried off to wake Syrannus.