Earthly Crown (24 page)

Marco tucked his hands into his belt and whistled softly.

Charles pulled off his gloves and stood up. “Tess is married to Bakhtiian, under jaran law. Now, I’m going to bed.” He went inside. The tent flap slithered down after him.

“Sit down,” said Marco congenially. “You look awful.”

David sat down. He stared blankly at the night sky, at the stars. He could even trace a few constellations. Then he jumped to his feet. “She’s sleeping in
my
tent!”

Marco laid a hand on his arm and, firmly but inexorably, sat David back down again. “Don’t you see? Charles wants to make it clear that Tess is one of us, not one of them. Let her stay.”

“With me as the sacrificial victim? No thank you.”

“Goddess, David, do you think for a minute Charles has any intention of letting anyone in his party get hurt? How is Bakhtiian to know it’s your tent she’s sleeping in, anyway? Or that she’s sleeping here at all?”

“Why didn’t you tell me!” David demanded.

“Sorry, I was under oath. I really am sorry, David.”

Easy for him to say. “His wife.” David formed the words as if they were alien, and taboo. “His wife.”

“Go to bed,” said Marco kindly, and left him.

David slept soundly; and without dreams, but he woke at dawn. He crept out of Charles’s tent into the quiet of their camp. Beyond, the jaran camp was full of life. He went to use the portable and to wash: inside the little tent, beside the commode, he had rigged up a sterilizing and recycling unit for wash water. The water was bitterly cold, and he wandered outside into the cold dawn to pace out the size block he would need to set up the solar minis. How to disguise them? What water source was the jaran camp using? How did they remain supplied? Was this a permanent camp, or did it move?

Ursula el Kawakami came up, looking revoltingly awake at such an early hour.

“What do you think, Ursula?” he asked. “Do you think this is their permanent camp? Or that they move?”

“Of course they move. ‘They commonly feed many flocks of cows, mares, and sheep, for which reason they never stay in one place.’ That’s Marco Polo. And this can’t be the entire army, although I’ll get a better sense of their numbers when we tour the camp today. Foodstuffs and fodder for the animals alone would deplete any one area within weeks. Days, perhaps. This is a good site, though. Well chosen. Good grassland for the herds, and a river about half a mile to the south. Can you mock me up a map so I can get an estimate of how close we are to the settled agricultural lands to the south? My sense is that Bakhtiian has control over the western seaports and is consolidating his control over the southern borderlands now.”

David chuckled. “In other words, I shouldn’t build anything permanent here.”

Ursula surveyed the square tent that the actors called The Necessary. “Certainly I think this is elaborate enough. It isn’t as if we’re on some kind of safari vacation on Tau Ceti Tierce, after all. This
is
—”

“—an interdicted planet.” David settled his left hand on the back of his neck and contemplated the ring of canvas tents belonging to Soerensen’s party. His four tiny name braids, dangling from the nape of his neck down to brush his shoulder blades, tickled his knuckles. “Yes, I know. Well, if you’ll excuse me…” He escaped from Ursula’s uncomfortable presence and walked over to his tent to see if Tess was awake.

She was. She was lying on her stomach with the heels of her palms cushioning her eyes.

“Hello, Tess.” He crawled into the tent and knelt beside her.

“I have a headache,” she said without moving her hands. But her Anglais was precise and clear. “Where am I?”

“In my tent. Oh, ah, this is David.”

She made a disgusted noise in her throat. “I know it’s David. What am I doing here? Never mind, I know the answer, and I would be churlish not to thank you for taking care of me. I must have made a fool of myself.”

“A bit. Luckily some of the actors were drunk, so you weren’t alone. And you were among friends.”

“Thank you. So reassuring.” Tess slid her hands away from her eyes and flinched, even though the only light in the tent came through the open flap. “Lord, how late is it?”

“It’s early. Just after dawn.”

She wiggled out of the bag, pausing to let him unseal it for her, and got herself up on her knees. Considered. “Well, the damage isn’t too bad. My head pounds, but I don’t feel sick to my stomach.”

“Small favors. Tess.” He hesitated, wanting to ask her if it was true, and instead sealed up the sleeping pouch and rolled it up into a neat cylinder.

“Plumbing,” said Tess suddenly, not appearing to notice his unease. “Civilized plumbing. That’s what I remember from last night. Where is it?” She clambered out of the tent and stood. David hurried out behind her. “That’s what I miss more than anything. And hot showers. They’re remarkably clean, you know, the jaran, and practical about it, but still…”

She went on, but David did not hear her next words. She had her back to her brother’s tent. She could not see the little embassy that waited outside Charles’s awning. But the embassy could see Tess and David.

Eight people. All jaran. Three soldiers whose faces David recalled from the journey from the coast. The silver-haired man who had been at the healer’s conference yesterday. Three women, two young, one elderly. And Bakhtiian.

Who had just seen Tess and David emerge from the same tent.

“What’s wrong, David?” Tess asked. She turned.

David was calculating ground. About twenty meters separated Bakhtiian from him. How quickly could a man cover that ground?

“Oh,” said Tess. “That’s right. The tour. Of course you don’t want to miss it. Here, wait a minute.” She trotted off to the necessary.

David would have stared after her. He was appalled that she would desert him. But he had to keep his eye on the group. He had to keep his eye on Bakhtiian. A man who practiced summary execution for rape…Perhaps they hadn’t noticed. But they had. Of course they had. Even now, while they waited for Charles to come out, different individuals within the group glanced over at him and away. One of the women grinned. But Bakhtiian was not looking at him. Perhaps by some astounding piece of good luck, Bakhtiian had not noticed.

Tess jogged back up to him. “Are they still there? Oh, good. Come on.” She dragged him over to Charles’s tent.

Charles had just come outside, with Cara and Marco, and the actors had gathered in a clump, looking excited. Ursula, Jo, Maggie, and Rajiv waited as well.

“I have brought with me,” Bakhtiian was saying to Charles, “as many of my people as speak Rhuian, so that we can have sufficient translators. Six in all. That includes Tess, of course. If you prefer to go as a single group, that is acceptable.”

“Did you have another suggestion?” Charles asked politely.

Bakhtiian nodded. “A large group does not see as much as a small group. If you divide your party into six groups, each to go with a translator, then you can move quietly and with more ease through the camp.”

And by splitting them up, David thought, he could isolate the man be thought had just slept with his wife. He began to wipe his hands on his trousers, realized that would make him look nervous, and stopped. He’d stay in camp—but then he
would
be isolated, and easy prey.

Next to him, Tess said under her breath: “He’s showing off. He’s going to let the jaran charm Charles and the rest of you. Which they’ll do, given the chance to meet them as individuals. He’d never do this for any other foreign embassy. Those get full state, to cow them into submission.”

“—and I would be honored to escort you personally,” Bakhtiian finished, still speaking to Charles.

“The honor is mine,” replied Charles smoothly. “And the others?”

As smoothly, without any fanfare, Bakhtiian transferred his gaze from Charles to David. If a look had the physical edge of a saber, if a wish, an emotion, could manifest instantaneously into an act, then David ben Unbutu would have been dead at that moment. He knew it without a doubt.

Bakhtiian looked away. “As you wish,” he said graciously to Charles.

“The bastard,” muttered Tess. “Still trying to keep Charles and me apart. Excuse me, David.” She stalked off to stand next to Charles.

The silver-haired man appeared next to David at the same time Cara Hierakis did. “I am Nikolai Sibirin,” he said, in serviceable Rhuian. “We have not been introduced.”

David cast a pleading glance at Cara.

“This is David ben Unbutu,” said Cara, who already seemed on casual terms with this elderly jaran man. “Niko, I don’t know your customs, but I can assure you that Tess was only sleeping in David’s tent because she was drunk.”

Niko considered David. “Whatever mood she may have been in, I do wish you hadn’t been so hasty, young man. Still, please allow me to apologize for Ilya’s behavior. He thinks he doesn’t show his emotions, but he can’t help it. Of course he has no right to be angry, so if you humor him, he’ll calm down eventually.”

“No right to be angry?” David asked in a small voice. “But Charles—er, Soerensen—the prince said they are married.”

The old man smiled abruptly. “Of course. You khaja are barbarians. Sometimes I forget that. Jaran women may lie with whomever they wish. It is none of men’s business.”

“But—” David began, utterly confused.

“David,” said Cara in Anglais, “leave well enough alone.” She turned to Niko. “I had hoped that you might show me through camp, Niko. With your wife.” She turned to greet the elderly woman in the group. “Hello, Juli.” They kissed each other on the cheek like old friends. Juli responded with a jaran greeting. “David? Are you coming with us?”

“It is my belief,” said Niko gently, “that David ought to go with Bakhtiian and the prince.” David put a hand to his throat, lowered it, and swallowed. Niko looked him closely in the face and suppressed a grin. “Perhaps not. Would you like to come with us?”

With vast relief, David said yes.

S
ONIA ORZHEKOV REGARDED THE
khaja Singers with trepidation. Six of them at once! Few things daunted her, raised as an etsana’s daughter, cousin to Bakhtiian; there had been death aplenty in her family, but she came from a resilient line, and, the gods knew, there was no point in dwelling on things that had already come to pass. But Singers were touched by the gods, and everyone knew that they were a little crazy—not in a bad way, mind you, but that they looked at the world differently, that the gods spoke through them. Perhaps she should have brought Raysia Grekov with her, for Raysia was a Singer, and also daughter of the etsana of the Grekov tribe. Then, perhaps, Raysia could
translate
for her just as Sonia would translate for these women, these
actors,
as they walked through camp.

But even an etsana’s daughter and a cousin of Bakhtiian could not command a Singer, or even summon one. Sonia examined the six women and reminded herself that they were, after all, khaja like Tess, from the country called Erthe, across the seas. Perhaps, like Tess, their gods were distant and silent gods, not so prone to speak through them at awkward times or to give them fits and starts and odd moments of reticence. Certainly they were neither timid nor shy, unlike most khaja women she had come across, unlike the women of Jeds.

“How is it that you are called Tess’s sister?” asked the golden-haired one in a friendly manner, the one to whom Anatoly Sakhalin had given a necklace. Diana, that was it.

“My mother adopted her into our tribe, as her daughter, when she first came to us. I’ll take you to meet my children.”

The one called Helen muttered something in their tongue to the handsome black-haired woman named Anahita.

“Oh, don’t be rude, Helen,” whispered Anahita in Rhuian, but with such emphasis that Sonia wondered if she had intended that the whisper be heard.

Children of other tribes tagged along behind them as they walked slowly through camp. The children stared at the women. That was one thing about these khaja; they all of them looked different from the others, with skin ranging from pale to black, with eyes every color and shape, and so tall! They were all, except for Diana, as tall as men.

“You seem very young to have children,” said the one called Quinn.

Sonia chuckled. “Tess said much the same thing to me, when she first came to us. If a woman waits too many years, then how can she have children at all?”

The coal-black Oriana elbowed Quinn in the side and hissed something at her in another language. Quinn flushed; she had a light complexion, easy to see the changes in, and with her odd red-brown shade of hair, Sonia reflected, it would be difficult to find dye for cloth that would look good on her. Still, she wore a fine tunic neither blue nor green but some shade in between, and it looked well.

“It’s a beautiful weave,” Sonia said, nodding at the tunic. “And a lovely color. Have you weavers in your mother’s tent? Your mother’s house, that is. Perhaps you could show us the secret of the color, if you’re willing to give it up.”

The three younger women looked at each other, perplexed. Helen yawned. Anahita examined every man who came in sight and had obviously lost interest in the conversation. Sonia sighed.

Then, thank goodness, the woman with the funny eyes, Yomi, chimed in. “I weave,” she said. “Perhaps you could show me your looms.”

“How do you make dye for colors?” asked Diana quickly, and Sonia could not be sure whether she was truly interested or merely being polite. But then, with Singers, one never knew.

“This is all so quaint, and charming,” said Anahita suddenly, with a bright, false smile.

“I’m so pleased that it entertains you,” replied Sonia sarcastically, and then caught herself. But it had already been done. She had been impolite to a Singer.

Oriana snorted and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Oh, shut up, Anahita,” said Quinn. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to say something nice or nothing at all?”

“In which case she’d never speak,” muttered Helen.

“I’m going back to camp,” announced Anahita, and she gave them all a withering glare and stalked away.