The Novels of the Jaran (273 page)

“What message did he send you? He spoke of Anatoly Sakhalin.”

Tess sighed and sat down next to her. The ke, silent, un-moving, remained standing by the door. “A strange message, in truth. The Chapalii emperor has sent for Anatoly Sakhalin to appear before him.”

“Ah,” said Sonia wisely. “He has learned that a prince of the Sakhalin resides in his country.”

“Uh, well, it’s not quite that… simple.”

Sonia chuckled. “Is it ever? Does Ilya know that your brother sends you messages that are carried on Father Wind? No, of course he does not.”

“I can’t—”

“You needn’t make excuses to me, Tess. If this is some kind of khaja magic—”

“It isn’t
magic
.”

“If this is some kind of khaja tool, a way to send messages faster even than our post riders, then it is perhaps no wonder that you keep it to yourselves.”

“You have kept nothing to yourselves,” said Tess miserably, “not from me, at any rate.”

“We don’t need to.”

Tess had to laugh, because even Sonia wore arrogance like another suit of clothes, as all the jaran did. “Can you forgive me, Sonia?”

“For what? I have never forgotten you are khaja. That does not mean I love you any less.”

“For lying to you.”

“Have you lied to me?”

“More or less. I’m not really from Jeds. I
am
from Erthe, but she doesn’t truly lie across the seas. Or at least, not the ocean as you know it.”

“Are you sure you want to tell me this?”

“Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know. I’m just tired of hiding the truth.”

Sonia looked up, examining the ke. “As the holy one is hidden, in plain sight, but concealed by her robes.”

“Huh. Perhaps.”

“You are with us, but part of you remains unseen.”

“Not all the threads in a rug are visible.”

“Ah. You mean to best me at my own game. If Erthe does not lie across the ocean, then there are only two other places it can lie, if it truly exists: in the high mountains that lie south and east of the plains or else in the heavens, where the gods live.”

“It does not lie in the mountains.”

Sonia crossed her arms over her chest and for a long, uncomfortable moment examined Tess skeptically. “Are you saying that you come from the gods’ land?”

“Are you saying that you find that unlikely?” Tess demanded, and could not help but laugh.

Sonia smiled. “Yes. Why should the gods disturb themselves in our affairs, in any case? Why would they look like us?”

“You have your own story, of Mother Sun sending her daughter to the plains—”

“Tess. That is a story. I have read enough to know that peoples in other lands have each their own story, about how they came to be. I would be as likely to believe the Hristanic story of how God allowed his only son to be mutilated and dismembered and strewn about the land like any piece of offal, and then appeared to lift him up to heaven afterward on a beam of light.”

“You don’t believe in the story of Mother Sun?”

“Of course I believe it. But not in what you khaja would call the literal truth, not like a child believes, not like even Ilya himself believes—” She stopped suddenly. Her eyes widened. “Gods!” Sticking her little finger in her mouth, she worried at it while she squinted at Tess. Finally she withdrew her finger and wiped it dry on her skirts. “Do you believe in that story, Tess?”

Tess let out a great sigh and sank her weight onto her knees, hunching over. “No. And yes. Mother Sun sent her daughter down from the heavens and that daughter fell in love with a dyan of the tribes and brought him great victory. Well, it isn’t that far from the truth. If you leave out Mother Sun.”

“I would never leave out Mother Sun, having a great respect for the power of the gods. If this is true, or a way of telling the truth, using what words we have, then it is no wonder you have concealed the truth from Ilya. He would be furious.”

As answer, Tess kept her gaze fixed on her hands, wrapped in a tight knot between her knees.

“Are there truly lands in the heavens?”

Tess nodded.

“Is that where your brother went? What kind of lands could they be? How could you travel there? It is said the zayinu have great powers, but I always supposed these to be hidden tools. The only magic I have ever seen truly work is the magic performed by the Singers. Are your people very powerful? Does this empire of zayinu really exist? Well, that is a stupid question, I suppose, since this holy woman stands here with us now. I beg your pardon.” This last addressed to the ke. “I can understand that you would not tell Ilya, Tess, but why not
me
?”

Tess’s throat was choked too closed for her to speak, and only after a few tears ran down her cheeks could she manage to get out a handful of words. “I’m sorry.”

Sonia put an arm around her. “Oh, don’t cry. What’s done is done. And I suppose the threat to Ilya is worse.”

“I’m not threatening Ilya!”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant that if you threw this knowledge at Ilya’s feet, he would take it as a threat. Ilya does not like to feel that there are others who are as powerful as he is. If he cannot reach them, then he might feel… diminished.”

Tess was sniffling steadily now, feeling quite sorry for herself even while another part of her writhed in confusion. Was it right to tell Sonia? Would Sonia not tell Ilya? Now that Sonia knew, was it right not to tell Ilya? Now that the Interdiction was breached, where would it end? “I feel dizzy.”

Sonia removed her arm and patted Tess’s hands reassuringly. Except shouldn’t it have been the other way around: Shouldn’t Tess have needed to comfort poor Sonia, who ought to have been shocked to hear that her sister had descended to the tribes from the heavens? “There, there. You need not tell me everything. I am patient. But in the meantime, may I come in here now and again and see what else is hidden within this table? You spoke words to make this message from your brother appear. Look how like him that picture is, and yet it cannot be him. It has no substance. It isn’t solid. If I put my hand up to touch it, I think I could reach right through him to the wall.”

“There is a lot in that console,” said Tess lamely. “You may come, with me or with the ke. But only you, Sonia. I’m not ready for more than that now. Well, and Aleksi, when he is here, or with Dr. Hierakis.”

Sonia rose and walked over to stand in front of the console. “Or any of your people, I would guess, those that come from Erthe?”

“Yes. Oh, Sonia, what am I going to do about Ilya?”

Sonia shrugged, looking more interested in the console and its secrets than in the fate of her cousin. “Ilya is not a fool.”

Panic flooded Tess. Her heart raced. “Do you mean he’s asked you about me? Said things? That he doesn’t trust—”

“No. I only meant that Ilya can add up in his own mind the sum of all your stories. He must come in his own time to a decision to face the mysteries that you have not yet explained to him. When he does, he will make it obvious to you that he is ready to hear them. I see no need to hurry him. Ilya is a very powerful man, as you and I both know. That does not mean he is not, in his own way, fragile.”

“What if he hates me for it, when he learns the truth?”

“Tess!” Sonia turned right round and regarded Tess with no little disgust. “My dear sister, you are wise in many ways, but sometimes you are no better than a tiny child who thinks the camp centers always on her. But at least there is hope the child will grow out of it! Now, you will tell me how I may find what else is hidden in this table. Does it only make pictures? No, Charles spoke as well, so it must also make words.”

Feeling meek and chastised, Tess heaved herself up from the couch. “Let me start with a map. Call up a map of this continent.” Charles vanished, to be replaced by a rounded map of the continent on which the plains and Jeds lay. “Here are the plains. Here is Sarai. Here is Jeds. You have sailed to Jeds. You can see how these lines—”

“I know what a map is.”

“I beg your pardon! Call up Rhui.” The map receded and became the planet, wrapped in blue waters and mottled with three continents. It rotated slowly. “Here is that same continent on the planet my people call Rhui. A planet is a non-luminous body that revolves around a star. Show the Delta Pavonis solar system. Here is Rhui, and there is the sun, and here are other planets, like Rhui. And beyond even that, there are other solar systems like this one, including the one I come from.”

“This is not like the model of the universe that Aristoteles or the Praetor Sivonis propose. But it is rather like the one I read of in Newton. Why should I believe you, Tess? It is very strange. How can these
planets
hang there without falling? What are they resting on? Who stokes these fires in the
stars
?”

Tess cracked a smile and wiped the last moisture off her cheeks. “Actually, there’s no reason at all for you to believe me.”

“I can see only three possible explanations. You are mad, and truly believe what you are saying. You are so thoroughly deceitful that you hope to deceive me, but in that case, why attempt such a wild story? It would almost be easier for me to believe that you had been dismembered and sewn back together. Or you could be telling the truth.”

“You have not asked about the ke. Why she is veiled.”

Sonia inclined her head respectfully toward the ke. “I beg your pardon, holy one, for ignoring you. I have not asked about the holy priestess because it is not within my rights to ask about her. If her gods demand that she cover herself, then who am I to gainsay them?”

“It is not her gods. It is I. It is the interdiction imposed on Rhui by my brother. The ke remains veiled because—well—” She lifted a hand along her face, as if lifting away a piece of cloth.

“Do you wish the veil lifted?” the ke asked in her uncanny voice. Tess nodded. The ke lifted the veil away from her scaly face.

Sonia started and looked embarrassed. “I beg your pardon, holy one,” she said finally. “You look very… different.” She glanced at Tess. “She cannot be the same sort of zayinu as the khepelli priests. Her skin is gray, and theirs…is more like ours, except for the colors.”

“She is of the same kind. She is also Chapalii. The males and the females are shaped differently.”

“That is not precisely correct,” interposed the ke fluidly. “The difference does not lie in the male/female axis, as you daiga seem to think it always does.”

Because they were speaking in Rhuian, Sonia could understand them. She looked from the ke to Tess, from Tess to the image of Rhui and its sun floating above the console. “If you are not from this
planet
, then why should the zayinu be? Why should they be even from your
planet
? They could be from somewhere else, and you might know as little about them as I know about you.”

Struck by an odd tone in Soma’s voice, Tess tapped the mute bar and the room dimmed down. The ke pulled the veil across her face. “That’s quite true, actually, but you almost sound pleased by the prospect”

“I’m only human, Tess. Of course I forgive you, but that doesn’t mean I’m not also angry, a little hurt, and I’m not so noble that I don’t mind seeing you caught in your own trap.”

“Ouch. The arrow hits its mark.”

“As it was meant to.” Sonia smiled, but not enough to take the sting out of the words.

“It’s the middle of the night. Do you suppose I might go back to bed?”

“No doubt it is more pleasant there than here,” said Sonia provocatively, and by that Tess saw that she was forgiven.

They left. The ke stayed behind, and Sonia walked with Tess across the plaza. Both women were too sunk in their own thoughts to say much, a commonplace about the cold weather, a question about Stassia’s plans for supper the next day. On such rocks the ships of thought borne out onto tumultuous seas foundered. Sonia kissed her on either cheek and left her to go into her tent, alone.

Kirill woke up when she slid into the blankets beside him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sensing her mood. He curled an arm around her. He was warm.

“What would you say if I told you right now that I’d lied to you about where I came from? And what I came here for?” Tess felt as if she was flinging herself off a cliff blindfolded, hoping there would be a soft landing underneath to cushion her fall.

His breath tickled her ear. “I would ask you what your reason was, to tell a false story in place of the true one.”

“You would.” Tess smiled wryly into the darkness. “Let’s go to sleep.”

“As you wish,” he said, amused or curious she could not tell. Kirill never let things he could not help bother him. That was one of the things she loved him for.

He fell asleep far more quickly than she did, and when she finally did sleep, she slept so soundly that she did not notice him leaving.

In the morning, she threw herself into the most mundane chores because it helped her calm her thoughts. It was too much to assimilate, too much to accept, that Sonia had stood in her private office and seen the planet Rhui revolving around its sun.

The messenger found her by the far stream, washing clothes, pounding them clean against the rocks. It was good, mindless hard work. It soothed her, and she could do it alone. She heard the bells and straightened up.

It was Gennady Berezin, son-in-law to Mother Orzhekov, one of the old guard in Ilya’s personal jahar. One of the guards. Her heart clenched in fear. Only the worst news would drive a soldier in Ilya’s personal guard to leave Bakhtiian and ride the long road north. She could not make herself ask for the message. He gave it to her anyway.

She didn’t even remember his words. She could see his face as he spoke, the words must have registered somewhere, but she became fixated on one bell, silver where the others were bronze, out of place but signifying a message from the highest quarters. He stood so still that the bell did not even shift, not at all, until the wind picked up or was that only her swaying on her feet?

Five hundred men had been ambushed and killed. That was a shame, certainly. But it happened in war. People were killed in war. Who was killed? she asked, but that was only a memory of asking, long ago, twelve years ago now when Ilya had come, the messenger, to tell her that Fedya had been killed in a battle, in an ambush. This was nothing like that. This was nothing like that.