The Novels of the Jaran (264 page)

“What were you doing there? Your coloring….” She broke off and glanced away, almost shyly, then looked back. “You look more like a northerner. Aunt Tess says that in the south where the sun is brighter it burns the skin and hair darker. I have seen women and men whose skin is as black as if they had rubbed themselves all over with coal. But your hair is light, like mine.”

Jaelle folded the gowns and replaced them in the chest. The silence dragged on, and Katerina regarded her with such rapt interest that finally Jaelle found herself feeling sorry for her. Jaelle had herself never lived as luxuriously as this. But a plush cage was still a cage, after all. Hesitantly, she began to talk.

“My mother’s father sold her to a merchant when she was a child. She was brought south, where light-haired children brought a better price, and bought by Lord Tacollo’s father, who died soon after. Some man in the villa where I was born got her with child, with me, that is. That is where I grew up, in a nobleman’s villa. She was the nurse for Lord Tacollo’s children. I was allowed to sit in on lessons with them for a time.”

“And then?”

Jaelle clasped her hands together and stared down at her knuckles. The scars on the backs of her hands told the story well enough. “Then other things happened, my lady. They wouldn’t interest you.”

“How can you know what would interest me? If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t ask!”

Jaelle’s gaze flew up to her. Even in broad daylight the room was dim because the windows were so narrow, but not dim enough that she could not see the pale drape of Katerina’s hair and the flow of her blouse and skirts down over the stone. She had taken off her boots, and her bare feet peeked out from under her skirts and the belled cuff of her striped undertrousers. A number of slender gold bracelets wreathed her left ankle, making a soft music every time she shifted her leg.

“Must I tell you, my lady? Do you command me to?”

“Of course not! I would only like to find a friend, here, and it is usual for friends to want to know something of each other. You do not belong here either, do you?”

“No, my lady.”

“I wish you would leave off calling me ‘my lady.’ I am usually called Katya. What would happen to you if you had not been sent here with me? Would you still serve Princess Rusudani?”

“I don’t think so, my la—. I don’t think so. It is not fitting that a common woman like me serve a princess.”

“Then what could you do?”

Jaelle shrugged. “All towns have a marketplace, and there are always men who will pay a woman to lie with them.”

“Do you like it?”

“Do I
like
it? I am free, my—That is, I
was
free, to make my own transactions. I would rather travel with the caravans and choose my own service than be a slave, even in the finest mansion, as my mother was.”

“I meant, what is it like to lie with a man when he pays you? Does he love you? Is the payment only to make him have pleasure, or is there any pleasure for yourself? It must be strange. My mother always said that a woman should never take a man into her blankets whom she would not care to speak with in the morning, and I suppose it was poorly done of me to take Andrei Sakhalin—” She spat suddenly on the stone floor. “His name soils my mouth. But still, it was only out of ill temper that I did it. I must say, he scarcely gave me any pleasure at all, he was so intent on telling me about how important he was. He talked the whole time!”

The words came quickly, and Jaelle found them confusing. “You are a widow?” she asked finally.

Katerina touched her own cheek. “No.”

“But you speak of having lain with men.”

Katerina shoved herself up from the bench and began to pace again. “I hate this room. Gods, I hate it. All these khaja things are so heavy and so imprisoning. Why shouldn’t a woman take a lover if she wishes to? A girl becomes a woman by taking a lover, isn’t that true with the khaja as well?”

“When a girl is married—”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“You see,” said Katerina triumphantly. “Your ways are not so different from ours. How could they be? Even if Aunt Tess says they are.”

Katerina’s pacing made Jaelle dizzy. “An unmarried girl who took a lover would be disgraced,” Jaelle said. “She would never find a husband. Her own people would cast her out on the street for bringing shame to her family.”

Katerina stopped pacing. Her expression altered. It took Jaelle a moment to recognize the emotion: Pity. “Is that what happened to you?”

Jaelle laughed harshly. “I beg your pardon, my lady, for speaking so freely, but I think your ways must be very different from ours. I never had any hope of being married. I was a slave, first in my master’s house and then for a time in the mines. I was whipped often enough for trying to run away. It was only by the grace of Our Lady the Pilgrim that I chanced to grow into a face pretty enough to attract the attention of an old merchant. I traveled north with him, and he taught me Taor and a few other languages, including Yos, which is the language spoken in all the princedoms in this region. He treated me decently and fed me well. When he died after an illness, I took some of his coin, only as much as I needed, and after that I was free to sell myself along the caravan routes. But free. It was a better life than the one I had before. May She be praised for Her mercy, for it was by Her will that I escaped the other life.”

“That is terrible,” said Katerina.

Jaelle did not know what to reply. Katerina’s sympathy troubled her. Below, she heard someone arrive, and she went to the door and opened it. Prince Janos came up the steps, carrying two books.

Katerina sprang up at once, her face alight—for the books, Jaelle thought, not for the man, but Janos watched her with greedy eyes and stood over her, one hand resting possessively on the back of the chair in which she sat down to examine these treasures.

“This is a copy of
The Recitation
,” Katerina said, opening its pages with reverence, drawing a hand down the parchment as if to caress it.

His fingers twitched on the back of the chair, but he did not touch her. “Princess Rusudani gave me this copy for you. She has asked if she may visit you, to discuss the word of God.”

“Of course. I would welcome her visits.” But Katerina said it absently, turning to the other volume. “What is this?” She read aloud, sounding out the script.
“The Description of Travels in the Lands of the Yossian Peoples?”

“You
can
read.”

She looked up over her shoulder at him. “Why should I lie about such a thing as
that
?”

He smiled down at her. “My mother spent some years in retirement, before I came of age and she came here to act as chatelaine of the lands I inherited from her. She translated this work.”

“Your mother did that? Then she must truly be an educated woman, my lord.”

He smiled further and ran a hand down one of her braids, twining it into his fingers. Her face stilled. She took hold of his wrist, pulled his hand away, and stood up, moving away from him. Janos looked startled.

A guard clattered up the stairs. “Lady Jadranka begs leave to address you, my lord,” he said.

Janos hesitated, then made polite good-byes to Katerina and took himself off. The guard loitered for a moment, eyeing Jaelle, and he patted the small purse looped to his belt meaningfully and winked at her, then hurried after the prince.

“Now I understand why my cousin Nadine dislikes khaja men,” said Katerina explosively. But she went back to the table and sat down in front of the books. “Will you teach me the language they speak here, Jaelle?”

“Of course, my la—Of course.”

“I could teach you how to read.”

“What use would it be for me to know how to read?” Jaelle blurted out, then thought better of it, seeing Katerina’s disappointed expression. Certainly the poor girl just wanted something to do to pass the time. “Of course.”

But even with this, and the books, to occupy them, there was still too much time to fill.

The next morning, Prince Janos came again, but this time he brought an unexpected visitor and an escort of four guards.

Katerina leaped to her feet, but said nothing, nor did she rush forward to greet the visitor. It was Bakhtiian. Jaelle thought he looked somewhat neater than he had at their other meeting, as if he had taken some pains to repair his clothing and at least wash his face and hands.

At once, he and Katerina began to speak to each other in khush.

Prince Janos casually slapped Bakhtiian with the back of a hand. “While I am here, you will speak in Taor.”

“I cannot pray in Taor,” retorted Bakhtiian, steadying himself from the blow, or perhaps for a new one. He did not flinch from the prince’s stare.

“Then you will pray silently, or not return here.”

“Do as he says,” said Katerina suddenly, and Janos’s gaze fastened on her. That gaze betrayed something to Jaelle, who had learned over the years to measure men’s desire carefully, in order to protect herself. Perhaps Janos feared the two jaran would communicate information to each other that might be dangerous, but that was not the real reason he laid down such prohibitions. He was jealous. He wanted no attention paid to her that he could not share in, no attention, at least, paid to her by another man. Jaelle shivered, abruptly afraid for Katerina.

“You have seen my cousin Vassily Kireyevsky and prayed with him as is fitting?” Katerina asked.

“I have.”

“You have not been treated ill, I trust, priest of my people.”

To this he did not reply, but his eyes flashed. “Prince Vassily asks after you,” he said instead.

“Tell my cousin that although I am confined here against my will, otherwise these khaja treat me with the honor that befits a woman.”

“I will do so.”

Their gazes met. Janos watched this communication avidly.

Katerina broke off the look first and glanced toward the prince. “We will pray now.”

She knelt. Never, in her time among the jaran, had Jaelle seen one of them kneel formally for prayer, but now both Katerina and Bakhtiian did so, side by side, hands resting on their thighs, and stared into the distance, into the stone which imprisoned them. Janos was patient. He waited them out. After a while they rose, and Janos signaled to the guards to take Bakhtiian away.

“I thank you,” said Katerina to Janos when Bakhtiian was gone. “How is my cousin, Vassily Kireyevsky?”

“Well enough.” He circled in closer to her, placing a hand on the table next to where hers rested. She looked at him deliberately and drew hers away. “You need not fear for him, Lady Katherine. I have a special interest in treating him courteously. We play dars, castles, and he is teaching me khot.”

“I can play castles.”

Janos chuckled. “Truly you are a woman of unusual parts. It is not a woman’s game.”

“What a stupid thing to say! Of course it’s a woman’s game, and a man’s game. It’s just a game.”

“Do you ever think that it might be unwise to insult me?” Janos asked quietly.

“Do you ever think it might be unwise to imprison me? My mother and grandmother will not take kindly to this.”

“You are only a woman, Lady Katherine. However much it may grieve them, what can they do?” With that, looking irritated, he left.

“You must not anger him,” said Jaelle.

“
I
must not anger him! Perhaps he should act like a proper man and not anger me. His immodesty is disgraceful!”

“My lady, I don’t think—”

“These khaja are all barbarians!”

“He could have you killed! Don’t you understand! You belong to him now!”

“I belong to the Orzhekov tribe, not to a man!”

Jaelle threw up her hands. “You aren’t with the jaran now. Listen to me, Lady Katherine. You are his concubine now. You must make him wish to treat you well.”

“What is a concubine?”

The depth of her ignorance astonished Jaelle. At times, it was possible to think of her like any other woman; many of the women on the caravan routes spoke Taor with accents, so that was nothing new. But now she reminded herself that Princess Katerina was truly a foreigner. “A woman who is kept by a man as a mistress, as a… wife, without marrying her.”

“How is that different from being a whore?”

“A whore is paid for her service.”

Katerina winced. “Well, he may think whatever he wishes of me. I am not taking him to my bed.”

“That may be, my lady, but he intends to take you into his.”

“Ha! Let him try. Barbarians!”

Jaelle opened her mouth to reply and thought better of it. She sighed and turned aside instead. “I will go down to the well to fetch water, Lady Katherine.”

A whole day passed with no visitors. The next morning proved busy, however. Princess Rusudani arrived with a train of elegant serving women, and Katerina listened politely while Rusudani read from
The Recitation
and one of the commentaries.

Later, Lady Jadranka came upstairs with servants carrying a loom, which was assembled while Katerina watched raptly. As soon as they had left, Katerina began to prepare the loom, singing happily to herself. Into this gentle domesticity, in the late afternoon, Prince Janos arrived with a servant behind him carrying a finely carved wooden box with enameled hinges.

Katerina chose to ignore him, so he watched her for a long while.

“I suppose,” he said at last, “that now that you have your weaving, you won’t wish to play castles.”

Katerina halted at once and came over to the table, where the servant had set down the box. Without asking for permission, she opened it and examined the pieces, laying them out in proper order on the white and red squares inlaid into the board. “Which side do you prefer?” she asked, sitting down in one of the chairs.

He smiled. “The choice is yours, Lady Katherine.”

She let him move first. The servant set out cups and wine, and Janos drank heavily, Katerina sparingly. She played with great concentration. He looked up too frequently, watched her too much. Indeed, Jaelle thought it amazing, the speed with which Katerina won the game.

“Where did you learn to play?” Janos asked, leaning back in his chair. Under the table, his boots crept up against Katerina’s legs, and she shifted her legs away.