Earthly Crown (25 page)

Gods. Now she had offended a Singer. Sonia stopped walking and took in a breath to apologize to the others, though it was an unpardonable offense.

“I do apologize for her,” said Diana. “I don’t—we’re not—I beg your pardon. That was terribly rude of her.”

“Patronizing little bitch,” said Quinn. “I wish she hadn’t come. And the rest of you do, too, only you won’t admit it.”

“Girls,” said Yomi reasonably, “that’s enough. I beg your pardon, Sonia. We’ve had a long and sometimes trying journey together, and that rather puts people at odds after a while, don’t you think?”

“We always travel,” said Sonia gently.

Yomi chuckled. “Well, then, perhaps you can offer us some advice.”

“Was it not Democritus of your own country who said, ‘Well-ordered behavior consists in obedience to the law, the ruler, and the woman wiser than oneself’? Although in the text I read the words were written as, ‘the
man
wiser,’ but I can only suppose the scribe wrote the word wrong or meant it to be ‘Elder.’”

“Who is Democritus?” whispered Quinn.

“I think he was a Greek philosopher,” muttered Diana.

“But of course,” added Sonia, “it’s also true that we have our own quarrels. As do any people, I suppose.”

Yomi smiled and wisely guided the conversation back to weaving. In this way they came to the Orzhekov encampment, where Ilya had arrived before them.

Tess stood between her husband and her brother, and Sonia was distracted from her guests by the striking way in which Tess seemed caught between the two men, not mediating but wavering. Oh, it looked very bad, indeed. A woman must keep peace between her husband and her brother, not make it worse by letting each man pull her in a different direction. Ilya could never accept that Tess might hold her brother first in her heart, that Charles Soerensen had every right to expect his sister to cleave to him and to her mother’s tent. But if Tess, khaja that she was, truly wished to stay with her husband and her husband’s people, then she damned well ought to tell her brother so straight out and not leave poor Ilya hanging there never knowing what she intended to do. As for Charles Soerensen himself, Sonia simply could not tell if he loved his sister. But he would never have journeyed so far if he did not want her back very badly. For an instant Sonia wished that her mother was here. Irena Orzhekov would know what to do. Ilya deferred to many people, because he had good manners, but there were few who could make him stop dead in his tracks and change his mind.
Mama is one. And I must become another.

“Bakhtiian is your cousin?” asked Diana into the silence, pulling Sonia back to the Singers with a wrench.

“His mother and my mother are sisters, yes.”

“And are they here also?” asked Yomi.

“His mother is dead.” Sonia paused one second, flicking her wrist out to deflect the notice of Grandmother Night. “My mother remains out on the plains, the true plains, with the rest of our tribe.” She watched as Katya and Ivan and Kolia came running with their cousins to greet Ilya and Tess with hugs and questions. Tess introduced the children to her brother, and Sonia approved of the way in which the prince acknowledged each child in turn.

“Are they all yours?” asked Diana. “What sweet-looking children!” Said with such honesty that Sonia felt at once that she liked this young Singer who had been blessed with beauty as well as song. “May we meet them?”

Ilya, seeing their party come up, guided his on. He had with him as well several others of the prince’s party, including a man who stared in the most unseemly fashion at Diana as they left.

“There’s Marco Burckhardt,” said Quinn in an undertone, and Oriana said, “Oh, don’t tease Diana.”

Then Marco Burckhardt caught Sonia looking at him and he smiled at her as if to say that here was a man who could appreciate a mature and confident woman. Well! Clearly he was as impudent as Kirill Zvertkov, but then again, he was khaja, and khaja men did not have very good manners, on the whole. Still, he had a pleasant way of admiring a woman. Sonia watched him go, even as he hastily returned his attention to his party, which had gotten a ways ahead of him.

Leaving, he almost bumped into another man.

Both men halted. A glare flashed between them, like two stallions who accidentally cross paths, and then Marco hurried on after his own party. Which left the other man standing outside the awning of her tent. And just what
was
Anatoly Sakhalin doing in her camp?

Except she knew the answer. She watched Diana register his presence, watched the Singer’s hand as it lifted to touch the golden necklace and then, self-consciously, dropped. She watched, with disgust, as Anatoly insinuated himself in with the children and thus was standing with them when she brought the Singers over to meet them.

“And these are the children of my family. Mitya and Galina are Kira’s eldest two, and Katerina and Ivan and Kolia are my own. There are also four girls and two boys still with the tribe.”

“You have more?” Quinn asked, looking astounded.

“No, just those eleven.”

“You have eleven children?” asked Yomi.

“My sisters and I have eleven children, yes. Last I heard, Stassi was pregnant, so soon there will be twelve again.”

“Oh my,” said Yomi abruptly, “look at that loom.”

Galina led her over to the loom, and at once the girl and the khaja woman became engrossed, though they could not speak any words to each other. Truly, weaving was a common language in and of itself.

Sonia looked back at the others. “Katya! Stop that! It doesn’t come off. Show respect for a Singer.”

“It’s all right,” said Oriana with a laugh, clearly not minding at all that the children were licking their fingers and rubbing at her skin. She crouched down and regarded them with a grave face. “It comes from being out in the sun too much.”

“It does not!” said Katya once her mother had translated. “Does it, Mama? There are other khaja with you who have skin like this. Mama says it’s because you’re from a place where the sun is hotter. But if that’s true, and if all of you are from the same country, then why don’t you all have black skin?”

“Good question,” said Oriana with another laugh. “Why do you have blonde hair and your uncle—well, I suppose he’s not your uncle, but your mother’s cousin, so I don’t know what that makes him to you—why does he have black hair? My skin is this color because my mother and my father had skin of this color.”

Helen regarded the children with resignation. Quinn allowed Ivan to show her every knife and saber that he could find; he was showing off, but at his age, one had to expect it. Mitya, of course, strayed no farther than an arm’s length from his hero, Sakhalin. Diana, crouching down, admired little Kolia’s first, awkward efforts at embroidery on a torn hank of sleeve. Slowly, slowly, Anatoly sidled over to stand between Sonia and the young woman. When his shadow darkened the sleeve Kolia held, Diana glanced up. Both of them looked away from one another as quickly as a horse bolts from a loud noise.

Anatoly, at least, had enough decorum not to look back down at her. “Please, Cousin Orzhekov,” he asked Sonia, keeping his eyes carefully fixed on a neutral spot between the carpet and the tent flap, “could you ask her, for me, what she thinks of the camp?”

Diana’s gaze lifted to examine him more boldly now.

“Does your grandmother know where you are?” demanded Sonia in khush. “Your manners are appalling, Sakhalin, and I hope I never see this sort of behavior from you again.”

Diana rose to her feet, ruffling Kolia’s hair absently. But she looked at Anatoly. “What did he say?” she asked, and hearing her voice he glanced at her, and she smiled at him.

Damn it anyway. It would only encourage Anatoly, but Sonia did not dare refuse to answer a Singer’s question. “Anatoly wonders what you think of the camp,” she said in Rhuian. “But he really has to go now.” And switched to khush. “Go on, Anatoly.”

Bowing to her superior authority, he left, but reluctantly. Really, his grandmother had spoiled him; it was deplorable, and yet he
was
at an age when men are most likely to be brash. A boy would be overawed; an older man would know better. But at twice twelve years and just honored with a command of his own, he had come into the first flush of his power.

“Oh, dear,” said Diana quietly. Tentatively, she touched Sonia on the arm and then smiled and withdrew her hand. “I hope I haven’t done something that offends you. Or him.”

“Of course not! I must apologize for
his
behavior.”
There are some things I will never understand about the khaja,
Sonia thought,
for all that I have read their books and lived with them.
Singers who apologized, as if they could offend anyone but the gods! Women who acted with the modesty that was really only proper for men!

“Oh,” said Diana, bewildered. “Perhaps Tess Soerensen can tell us more about your laws and ways of doing things.”

“A very fine idea,” agreed Sonia, and not just because Diana was a Singer. If these khaja were to travel a long way with the tribes, maybe it wasn’t Raysia Grekov who needed to translate, maybe it was Tess, who had grown up in one land and embraced the other, who was the only one of all of them who truly stood halfway between. “But I had hoped to show you the herds, if you’d like, or if you’d rather, other parts of the camp.”

“Oh, both, if it can be managed,” said Yomi, coming back with Galina. “This is fascinating.”

So they went on. Soon enough Sonia saw Anatoly Sakhalin again. Diana saw him, too, and now and again her gaze would jump away from the group to seek him out: He dogged them all the rest of the morning, like any good scout, vanishing when Sonia’s attention was turned directly on him, coming closer when he could, never being so forward that she could in fairness castigate him. Still, she would definitely have to discuss his behavior with his grandmother.

A
LEKSI SAT CROSS-LEGGED ON
the table, watching Tess and Sonia where they knelt before the wooden chest.

“This one, then.” Sonia draped a cloth-of-gold coat over her arms, displaying it for Tess to examine.

“No. Too gaudy.”

“Tess, barbarians are impressed by gaudy things. Gold and riches. Surely this Vidiyan ambassador will recognize that this coat came from the Gray Eminence’s lands across the sea and feel fear that such a prince sends gifts to Bakhtiian.”

“But Sonia, Nadine brought that coat back from Jeds.”

“He doesn’t have to know that, does he? Here, what about—”

“No, those are my marriage clothes.”

“Yes, and this shade of green does look particularly well on you. This, and the jade headdress. No, the golden one.”

“Sonia, I—”

“Or should I go to your brother’s encampment and ask if he has any of these ugly clothings the women of his people wear? Are you embarrassed of us, now that your own people have come?”

Tess hung her head and did not reply. Aleksi watched her face. Unlike her brother, Tess had an expressive face that showed emotion clearly. She
was
embarrassed, and this perplexed Aleksi. After all, if the gods meant for the jaran to rule all other peoples, then the jaran would do so. Why should Tess feel shame to be seen as one of the gods’ chosen people?

“This is not the Tess I know,” Sonia went on. “Of course Jeds is a fine city. Do you forget that I have been there? Perhaps they scorn us because we don’t live in stone tents, but I will never forget how filthy everything was there. Although I admit,” she added, in a placating tone of voice, “that everyone of your brother’s party seems clean.”

Tess clapped a hand over her mouth and her shoulders shook. She was laughing. “Oh, Sonia.” She reached out and hugged the blonde woman. “I’m not ashamed of you. I just—” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I think too much.”

“You worry too much,” retorted Sonia. “These khaja don’t teach their daughters to become women. You had no mother or aunt to give you a tent, but must live beholden to your brother and now your husband. Why do you think I stayed in Jeds only a year, though Ilya wanted me to stay longer? I know we have no university here, no books, no writing, but still, they are the barbarians, not us.”

“But Sonia,” said Aleksi, “the women of Soerensen’s party aren’t like other khaja women, any more than Tess is. They don’t veil their faces when they see us and avert their eyes. They wear proper clothing, even if it is ugly, and they walk with pride and not fear.”

“That is true. But they’re from another country, the country where Tess’s mother was born.”

“Erthe,”
said Aleksi, trying the unfamiliar sound out on his tongue.

Tess leaned over the chest and lifted out the jade headpiece, weighing it in her hands. “Dr. Hierakis came from Erthe, as well as the acting company. Women are—well, women own their own tents there. But so do men.”

“Yes, and from what you’ve told us, they don’t seem nearly as barbaric as the people of Jeds.” Sonia lifted out the gold headpiece and laid it down on the green tunic. “This looks better, Tess. I’d like to visit there someday.”

“It’s a long voyage. A very long voyage.” Tess placed the jade headdress back inside the chest and settled back on her heels. “No, you’re right, Sonia. Even though I didn’t precisely need my brother’s consent to marry, still, I married without it.”

“If you have the courage to make a decision, then you must learn to have the courage to stand by it. Perhaps Ilya’s power doesn’t seem so impressive to your brother now. In ten years, he will be happy to have such a brother by marriage. You must tell him you are thinking ahead. It is an advantageous alliance.”

“For whom?”

“Come now, Tess. I have been to Jeds. I have ridden in the countryside and gone even as far as the city of Filis, where another prince rules. Your brother is rich and his merchants sail to the ends of the world, and he is a prince to be reckoned with, but Ilya’s army is larger. Much larger. And it will grow.” Sonia shook out the calf-length tunic and a pair of belled, striped trousers and then rummaged in the chest until she found a wide belt inlaid with cloisonné and gold. “Now, Aleksi. Out.” Her own festival clothing lay draped over the chair, a tunic of vivid blue that matched her blue eyes and a headpiece of gold and gems. “We must dress. You might see if Galina needs a hand with the children.”