The Novels of the Jaran (301 page)

“Bakhtiian had the vision—” cut in Yaroslav.

“Hah! His mother’s ambition, no doubt, foisted on an untried and untrustworthy son. Why shouldn’t she put it into her son’s head to make up a story, pretending it came from the gods? Everyone knew what a bitch she was, forced to marry that worthless Singer from a tribe no one had ever heard of and lusting all her life after a different man entirely—”

Ilya broke forward, drawing his saber.

But Yaroslav ran his brother through before Ilya could reach him. It was so sudden that Andrei’s collapse was the only sound, except for Ilya’s ragged breathing as he fought to control his rage.

“I beg your pardon,” said Yaroslav calmly. “I killed him so that you would not defile your saber with his tainted blood.” He dropped his bloody saber on top of his dead brother. The corpse twitched once more, then was still.

“Let him be buried beneath the earth,” said Konstantina Sakhalin, “so that his soul may never return to the jaran. Let his name never more be spoken within the tribes. Let it be known that there was no son of the Sakhalin tribe of this generation named Andrei. Let the memory of him cease to exist. So have I, Mother Sakhalin, spoken.”

“So is it done,” echoed her dyan. He signed, and guards carried the body away.

“Poor Galina,” said Katya. “She was fond of him, I suppose because she saw him so rarely and because he was clever enough to be kind to her when he was with her, knowing he’d need her support to…whatever he meant to do once Bakhtiian was dead. To see that his sons by her became dyan over all the tribes.”

She lay on her stomach beside Vasha, and he lay on his side, one arm flung casually across her back, his fingers playing with her unbound hair.

“It was stupid,” said Vasha.

She turned her head to look at him. Hair spilled down over her shoulders, and he could see straight down the front of her shift to the curve of her breasts within. “Are you angry about what he said about you?”

“No. Why should I be? He’s dead, and I’m alive. I’m the one is going to marry the queen of Mircassia. My children are the ones who will rule, not his.”

“Don’t tempt the gods,” she said, chuckling.

“Katya…” He let a hand wander down her back, caressing her. “Oh, damn.” He pulled his hand back and got to his knees, ducking his head to avoid the lantern that hung from the pole above. “I always look in on Rusudani before she goes to sleep.”

“She won’t care if you don’t look in tonight. Or any night.”

He sighed. “I
know
that, but surely if she gets used to the attentions I pay her, she’ll come to expect them, even to miss them.”

“You’ve turned into a calculating little bastard, haven’t you, Vasha?”

He paused by the tent flap and grinned down at her. “You were born into your position, Katya. I have to fight for mine.” She only smiled back, forgiving him for his desertion. Then she adjusted the lantern and opened a book that Tess had just given her. Vasha could tell she was gone from him before he even left the tent.

Rusudani acknowledged him warily and allowed him to sit on a pillow at the foot of her couch.

“May I read aloud to you from
The Recitation
?” he asked. There were three copies of
The Recitation
in the tent: one in Yossian, one in Taor, and one in a language Vasha did not recognize. The interpreter told him that it was Mircassian. “Perhaps the princess would agree to teach me to read these words,” he said, opening the Mircassian book.

Rusudani hesitated, then answered. “I speak them,” she said. “You speak them after me.”

They read five pages in this fashion, until even Vasha was both exhausted by the effort and bored by it, even with her so close to him. He bade her a polite goodnight, and she accepted it dispassionately.

A light still shone in Tess’s tent, and the tent flap was thrown aside, revealing two figures seated within. Vasha greeted the guards, but he paused under the awning, eavesdropping.

Ilya sat erect in his chair, almost stiff, tapping his fingers on the table impatiently. “Damn it,” he was saying, “I can’t remember what the name of the nephew is who is the other claimant to the—”

“Here, Ilya.” Tess pushed an open book across the table toward him. “I wrote everything down for you, all the reports.”

Ilya grabbed the book and flung it across the room. It landed out of Vasha’s sight with a soft thud. Then he jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over. “It’s a khaja weakness, not to be able to remember things. Singers don’t need scratches on paper to—”

“Ilya,” said Tess patiently, although she looked grim, “you have received a shock. It might take some time for you to recover fully. This is just one way to tide yourself over until you have…”

He turned his back on her and stalked toward the entrance. Stopped, seeing Vasha outside. “What are you doing?”

“Spying.” Vasha walked past him, into the tent. “Since I’m leaving tomorrow, I thought I would come by and ask if you have any last advice for me.” He grinned at Tess and abruptly felt wobbly enough on his feet that he had to steady himself on the back of her chair. “I’m a little nervous.”

“Keep a cool head,” said Tess, “don’t give anything away, and watch your back. But you’ll have a jahar of ten thousand. I don’t think King Barsauma will try anything outright, anything direct. He’ll see that the wisest course is to let you marry Rusudani, since we have possession of her and enough power to lay his kingdom to waste if we’re angered. He’ll hope that you die young, or that jaran power will wane quickly enough that, in time, Rusudani can throw you over for a more suitable consort. He’ll hope that the jaran became embroiled in internal war, or wars with other kingdoms, and slowly leave Mircassia behind, forget about her, withdraw our troops from her because we need them elsewhere. He will bide his time, Vasha. It is up to you to insinuate yourself into Mircassian society so thoroughly, into the rule of the land, appointing the right people to the council or as governors in far-flung provinces…that in time you are indivisible from Rusudani’s power. It is how an etsana’s husband works. Although the authority is hers, within the circle of the tents, she needs him, and so does the tribe.”

“You don’t think jaran power will wane,” Vasha said. “Even though I have read of the rise of powerful dynasties that later collapse, as in Habakar.”

Tess glanced toward Ilya. “No. I don’t think it will. Not for a long time.”

Something in the way she said it puzzled Vasha. She sounded like a Singer speaking a prophecy. Except Tess wasn’t a Singer. Was she?

“Prince Lazi!” said Ilya triumphantly. “That’s his name. And his mother is Lady Apamaia. She is the half sister of Prince Basil of Filis. That is why he supports her and her son. More her, I suppose, since the nephew is evidently a half-wit.”

“Don’t you have anything to tell me?” Vasha asked.

His father just frowned at him. “Have your food tasted.”

“Oh, gods!”

Tess shook her head at him, warning.

“Well then,” said Vasha, swallowing his disappointment, his unease at his father’s bizarre behavior, “I’ll take my leave of you.”

Tess hugged him. Ilya seemed to come to himself for a moment. He stared at Vasha for an uncomfortable while, measuring him, then patted him awkwardly on the arm. “You’ll do, Vassily,” he said.

Vasha practically floated back to Katya’s tent.

The lantern was out. Inside, Katerina was asleep, her book clutched in one hand. Vasha stripped and lay down next to her, snuggling against her, listening to her breathing, and chuckled to himself. It was so rare to spend time with Katya when she was this quiet.

Vassily Kireyevsky led his jahar—
his
jahar!—southeast into the Hira Mountains. It took him thirty-three hard and mostly wet days of riding to traverse the mountains and the wild lands that surrounded them, and another twenty-four days to cross the populated lands, loose confederations of towns and manors and lord’s holdings that were in their turn ruled by King Barsauma from his palace at Kavad.

No one bothered them. Indeed, word soon ran before them, and, as they advanced farther into Mircassia, farmers and townspeople flocked to the side of the road to catch a glimpse of the princess who was to be their next queen. Lords sent offerings of food and wine, and grain for the horses, clearly bent on currying favor.

Vasha refused none of the food, but refused to let anyone hold audience with Rusudani. She rode in a kind of a trance, caught between one marriage, whose fruit still lay within her, and the next, and the promise of becoming queen. And perhaps, Vasha had to admit to himself, she was still furious, or grief-stricken, at Bakhtiian’s rejection of her. He accepted, on her behalf, several sons of noble families whose lands they rode through to serve as her pages, but he used them mostly to taste his food.

Each afternoon, after they had stopped, he would go to her tent and eat supper with her there, and they would read more of
The Recitation.
Soon he could pronounce Mircassian well, although he could by no means understand it. Slowly, after the first shock had worn off, she began to read alternating passages in Taor. Thus they passed the journey, reserved but not in open conflict. That was a beginning, Vasha supposed. Her cheeks grew plumper and her belly began to round under the folds of her gown. She appeared even more beautiful to him, perhaps only because, so close, she remained out of his grasp.

King Barsauma sent a party of ministers and courtiers to greet them. The city of Kavad looked odd to Vasha: It had no walls. Only the palace, a great citadel that blanketed the outcropping of rock that rose above Kavad, looked as if it was fortified.

Vasha conferred with his captain, and they decided it would be wisest to leave the jahar encamped outside the city and for Vasha to go in with Rusudani with a contingent of fifty men.

Escorted by khaja men old enough to be his grandfathers, this smaller group proceeded up a broad avenue lined with hordes of curious onlookers, passed through a double set of gates, and were at last trapped within a vast courtyard ringed by magnificent buildings. Mircassia was a rich kingdom, indeed.

King Barsauma waited for them in a sun-drenched courtyard. He sat in a chair padded with fine embroidered pillows. At his back a fountain splashed and played over crouching stone lions. He was so old that his skin was as delicate as aging parchment, all the veins showing through. A cap covered his head, which seemed to be hairless, and the finest wisps of white hair straggled down from his chin, barely making a beard. Even sitting, he had a stooped back, bent by age and illness, but his eyes were like steel.

“Is this the child?” he demanded, tapping his cane on the flagstones. As soon as he spoke, Vasha realized that half of his face was immobile. His words were slightly slurred, but understandable. “Come here, come here. Who are these barbarians? Which is the usurper who claims to be your husband?”

Vasha gulped. How such a frail old man could scare him, he wasn’t sure. But he did. Deliberately, Vasha took Rusudani’s elbow with a hand and escorted her up to her grandfather. Let it not be said that Vassily Kireyevsky shrank from confrontation.

Rusudani knelt before the old man, bowing her head. Vasha did neither. His interpreter hung at his back, so that he could whisper into his ear without seeming to intrude.

“Huh,” the king grunted, looking her over. “Pretty enough, but is she clever?”

At that, Rusudani lifted her head to look directly at him. “I trust I am clever enough, your highness.”

“Not clever enough to avoid getting with one man’s child and being betrothed within a day of his death to a second.”

“It is the fate of women, your highness, to be married whether they wish it or not. I had no authority, no army, nothing save my faith in God, to protect me. But I am here, am I not? Unencumbered, except by husbands and their get.”

King Barsauma began wheezing, which startled Vasha until he realized that the old man was laughing.

“Husbands are no great impediment once a woman becomes powerful enough. You are convent educated?”

“Yes, your highness.”

“You can read, write, and figure?”

“Yes, your highness, and recite the
Eulysian Hymns
, and I have read the
Commentaries of Maricius,
the Hermeneutics of Silas, and the tract, “Against the Elians,” by Hayyan of Sid Saffah.”

“Pah. Church learning will not help you rule a kingdom. You will start by reading the chronicles and then, let me see, Lord Tellarkus can show you the roll of taxes and Lady Tellarkina can show you the women’s quarters. I recommend you use her as your chatelaine; she’s old and has but the one living daughter left. She’ll know you can show that child favor, so she’ll be as faithful to you as she can be.” He gave his wheezing laugh again. “You can get a barbarian for her daughter, too. She’s, buried two husbands already.” Like a sword’s cut, his gaze hit Vasha.

Vasha stood his ground.

“Is this the lad? He’s a mere pup. I thought he would be an experienced man.”

Vasha inclined his head with what he hoped was regal disdain. “I am Vassily Kireyevsky, your highness. I am the son of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, who commands the jaran army.”

“Go away,” said the king suddenly. “You may attend me another day.”

He meant both of them, and his attendants briskly led them off. No doubt it was time for the old man to rest. Vasha glanced back as he left the courtyard, but Barsauma sat stiffly in the chair, not looking after them.

Vasha and his men were assigned to a suite of rooms that adjoined the women’s quarters but did not have immediate access to them. In order to see his wife, Vasha had to wait at the gate into a second courtyard and be escorted across by beardless men armed with spears and swords curved almost into a half moon.

Rusudani received him under an arcade of columns that opened onto a garden. A phalanx of women, dressed in gowns that draped rather revealingly along their figures, protected her. Flowers bloomed, and the drone of insects mingled with the soft rush of an unseen fountain. In the Yos principalities, autumn was rushing toward winter. Here it was still summer. It was like this, he recalled, in Jeds as well; always mild.