Earthly Crown (26 page)

Aleksi gave each woman a brotherly kiss on the cheek and retired from the fray. At Sonia’s tent, her niece Galina sat with those few Orzhekov children who remained with the main army. Sonia had kept her three children with her, and Niko and Juli had two grandchildren with them. Other children, like Galina and her brother Mitya, were old enough to do adult work but not old enough yet to marry or to ride in the army.

“We saw the barbarians today.” Galina greeted Aleksi with a kiss on the cheek. She looked much like her aunt and her mother, with a merry, round face, fair hair, and cerulean blue eyes. “Aunt Sonia brought five of them by. One of them had skin that was black. Really,” she added, as if afraid that Aleksi wouldn’t believe her. “Wasn’t it, Katerina?”

“It was,” agreed Katerina, Sonia’s eleven-year-old daughter who, at two years younger than her cousin, was her shadow and champion. “We thought maybe she had painted it on, so we rubbed it, but it didn’t come off.”

“Then Aunt Sonia scolded you for being rude,” finished Galina. “But the woman didn’t mind. She was tall, too, taller than a man. And one of the other women had chestnut hair, like a horse has.” She stifled a giggle under a hand. “And another one had funny eyes, like…” She grimaced, searching for a comparison.

“Like this,” said seven-year-old Ivan, putting his index fingers on either side of his eyes and pulling the lids tight. All of the children burst into laughter.

“I liked her, though,” said Katerina. “Her name was
Yomi.
She knows how to weave,” she added, since this skill obviously placed the woman in a different, and superior, class from the others. “But they didn’t have any men with them. Is it true their men act like women?”

“What do you mean?” asked Aleksi. “I escorted four of the men around the camp, and they seemed like men to me. They were very polite.”

Katerina considered the question seriously, screwing her mouth up. She was a pretty girl, having inherited her looks from her grandfather, but she had as well the same vital intelligence that animated Sonia’s otherwise undistinguished features. “They say khaja men use bows and arrows to fight other men with and that they haven’t any manners toward women. And that they own their own tents, and they even say that the women don’t own tents at all. How can that be?”

“You forgot the angel,” said Mitya suddenly. He sat on a pillow at the back of the awning, too old to include himself in the younger children’s activities but too young, at fifteen, to be an adult. Like most boys his age, he spent a small part of his day helping his grandmother, mother, or aunt and the rest of it with the adult men, doing chores, learning to fight, caring for the horses and the herds, and generally tagging along. Right now he was polishing one of Bakhtiian’s sabers.

“What angel?” Aleksi asked. He knelt and helped four-year-old Kolia straighten his tunic and belt it with a girdle of gold plates.

“Anatoly Sakhalin’s angel.”

“Mitya,” retorted Galina in a disdainful voice, “she is not Sakhalin’s angel. And he showed bad manners, too, in following them around.”

Aleksi settled down on his haunches, satisfied that he was about to get some good gossip. He loved these children, who had accepted him readily once they saw that the adults of their tribe acknowledged Tess’s adoption of him. Although he had been Tess’s brother for three years now, he still preferred the children’s company to that of adults. They said what they thought, and they were not embarrassed by the fact that he had once been an orphan. Like the foreign woman’s coal-black skin, his peculiar status interested them more than it revolted them. “He followed Sonia and her party around camp?”

“Yes,” said Galina. “That’s what Aunt Sonia said. When they got here, he got Mitya to invite him in so that he could talk to her. She was very embarrassed by his behavior, as any woman would be. She flushed all red.”

“Sonia did?” Aleksi asked, astounded.

“No, no,” said Katerina. “The angel.
Diana.
But Sonia refused to translate for him so he just had to stand there. But he kept looking at her,” she finished with disgust.

“He never looked at her straight,” said Mitya.

“Oh,” said Galina, “you’re always defending him.”

Mitya flushed at his little sister’s superior tone of voice. “And why not? I want to ride in
his
jahar when I’m old enough. He’s the best rider of all the young men.”

“Mitya, everyone knows that Aleksi is the best rider. No one is as good with the saber as he is. Isn’t that true, Aleksi?”

Aleksi grinned. “Anatoly is a good commander, and he deserves the command Bakhtiian gave him, though he’s young to be granted such an honor.”

“But you wouldn’t ride in his jahar, would you?” asked Katerina, looking pleased with her sly question.

“Katya, I ride in Bakhtiian’s own thousand. Why should I want to ride in anyone else’s?” The girls laughed, and Mitya appeared mollified.

Sonia came out of Tess’s tent. “Are you children still here?” she called. “Galina, Mitya, take them and go. Mother Sakhalin will have plenty for you to do before you start serving.”

Galina and Katerina rounded up the little ones and marched them off. Mitya lingered. “Would you like to walk with me?” Aleksi asked the boy, and Mitya’s face brightened, since this was clearly exactly what he had hoped for. The chance to stroll around camp beside the man everyone knew was the best saber fighter since the legendary Vyacheslav Mirsky, who had died of old age six years ago…Aleksi chuckled. Then he felt a pang of regret. He had never enjoyed such simple pleasures as a boy. No friends, no companions. Alone—He shut it off. No use thinking about it, no use remembering. He lived in the Orzhekov camp now. “Come on, then.”

“Oh, wait,” said Mitya. “Aunt Sonia,” he called, “what shall I do with the saber?”

She had already gone back into Tess’s tent, but came out again. “Here, give it to me.” She took it, smiled at Aleksi with the warmth that she seemed to have an endless supply of, and carried the precious weapon back inside.

Aleksi walked on, and Mitya matched his pace to the older man’s. Already he was Aleksi’s height and would probably grow taller still. Now he was gangly and uncoordinated, coltish in an endearing way. It was a stage Aleksi had never gone through, so while he felt sympathy for the boy, he could not quite understand him. However awkward Mitya might be, he had time to grow and an enviable position to grow into. Grandson of Irena Orzhekov, who was etsana of the Orzhekov tribe, Mitya was thereby related to Ilyakoria Bakhtiian himself; his mother, Kira, and Ilya were cousins. The boy wore a golden torque around his neck and golden braces at his wrists and, like his little cousin Kolia, a belted girdle of golden plates. A heavy enough burden, Aleksi supposed, made doubly so by the fact that Mitya’s father was a respected smith. It was no wonder that Mitya admired Anatoly Sakhalin, a young man with equally important relatives who had managed to gain respect on his own account and not simply because of whom he was related to.

They wandered through the late afternoon bustle of the camp. A child ran behind a wall of captured shields, hiding from her playmates. A blacksmith’s forge smoked, and two soot-stained, sweating men pounded out lance heads. Their strokes beat out a rhythm to the late afternoon. Two adolescent boys repaired bridles, and they waved at Mitya as he walked by. A group of women turned carcasses on spits over four large fires. The smell of the meat was tantalizing. Fat dripped and blazed on the coals.

“He must be very powerful,” Mitya said suddenly.

“Who?”

“The prince of Jeds. Tess’s brother. The ambassadors that come to us have greater retinues, and they bring gifts. What is an actor, anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” Aleksi admitted. “They tell stories, I think, but with their bodies, not with words and a song. Perhaps they will perform tonight.”

But they did not. On the circle of ground separating the inner group of tents from the outer ring, blankets were laid and awnings set up in a great ring. At the southwest of this compass a single wagon sat upended and shorn of its wheels, covered with leather drawn tight with ropes and laden with pillows. Before it, on the ground, lay carpets under an awning of golden silk. Large square pillows embroidered with flying birds or galloping horses littered the carpets, seating for the feasters. Now, waiting, the pillows were empty, except for a single figure sitting under the center of the awning, writing painstakingly in a book. He glanced up and saw Aleksi and Mitya and beckoned them over.

“Mitya,” he said, “surely Mother Sakhalin is expecting you.” Mitya murmured a few unintelligible words and retreated. Bakhtiian watched the boy flee. “His father says he’ll never be a blacksmith, so I hope he shows some promise for command. Here, Aleksi, sit down, if you please.”

Even Bakhtiian’s polite requests sounded like orders, but Aleksi was used to it. He sat down and nodded toward the book lying open on Bakhtiian’s right knee. “You’re writing.” Aleksi could read, with effort, and he could make letters, but the gift of reading and writing with ease eluded him, though Tess encouraged him to practice every chance she got.

“Yes.” Bakhtiian contemplated the open book, a page filled with neat lines in his precise script. His eyes moved over the last line, and Aleksi watched as his lips moved ever so slightly, forming the words he had written.

“That’s Tess’s book,” said Aleksi abruptly, recognizing the pattern of marbling on the leather binding as Bakhtiian closed it.

“Yes. She began to record our campaign three years ago. I write in it as well. You see.” He rifled through the pages. “It’s almost filled. We’ll have to start a second book.” He glanced at Aleksi, looked away, out at the near ring of tents, where women and men and children prepared the feast, and then back at Aleksi again. “Is Tess still angry?” he asked.

Aleksi considered the question. Whatever else Bakhtiian might be, he was fair, and when he asked a question he wanted a straightforward answer whether or not that answer was flattering to himself. “I expect she’s still angry at you. I wouldn’t have advised that you try to keep her away from her brother while you showed him around camp.”

Bakhtiian snorted. “And I did not, as it turned out. But perhaps it was for the best. Because she walked with us, he saw how well-loved she is and how much she has become jaran.” Then he hesitated. His fingers played with the clasps on the book. “This David ben Unbutu—” He trailed off.

“She has said nothing of him.”

“Ah,” said Bakhtiian, meaning by that comment nothing Aleksi could fathom. Then he looked up, and his whole face changed expression. It lit, like a smoldering fire that bursts into flame. He smiled.

Aleksi glanced that way to see Tess and Sonia approaching. Sonia looked glorious, the brilliant blue of her tunic studded with beads of every color and gold plates lining the sleeves. Her headdress of gold and silver chains linked and braided over her blonde hair shifted as she walked. Golden crescent moons dangled to her shoulders; tiny bronze bells shook with her stride. The wealth gained in three summers of war adorned her, and she was by no means the vainest woman of the tribes. Beside her, Tess’s wedding clothes looked subdued, although they had been rich enough at the time.

But Bakhtiian had eyes for no one but his wife. The force of his regard was both comprehensive and unnerving. A jaran man respected his wife; that went without saying. But to love her so openly, so entirely, so exclusively, that provoked criticism. It was not good manners. Except in Bakhtiian, who was beyond such criticism.

Bakhtiian rose and walked out to greet his wife. He took her hand and even, daringly, kissed her on the cheek, there in the open. Sonia raised her eyebrows, disapproving, but she said nothing.

“Aleksi.” Bakhtiian released his wife’s hand and turned to Aleksi as he strolled up. “If you could tell Mother Sakhalin that Tess and Sonia and I are going now to escort the prince here. Perhaps Raysia Grekov can be persuaded to sing.”

Sonia chuckled. “Yes, and if any man can persuade Raysia to sing, it is you, Aleksi.”

Aleksi’s cheeks flamed with heat. How he hated it when anyone drew attention to him. Raysia Grekov was not just a singer, but a Singer, a shaman, a poet, touched by the gods with the gift of telling the old tales and singing new ones. That she admired his ability with the saber was a running joke: like to like, both touched by the gods. But she was the daughter of the etsana of the Grekov tribe, niece of their dyan, and while her cousin Feodor might hope to marry Bakhtiian’s niece Nadine, with such relatives, she certainly could not look upon Aleksi as anything but a casual lover.

“Oh, don’t tease him,” said Tess, mercifully, and Aleksi escaped Sonia’s scrutiny and went to find Mother Sakhalin.

He did not seek out Raysia Grekov, but by the time he returned to the feasting ground, the meal was well under way. Bakhtiian sat with Charles Soerensen to his right and Cara Hierakis to his left, honoring her, Aleksi noted, as if she were the consort of a prince as well as a great healer. Mother Sakhalin sat between Dr. Hierakis and Marco Burckhardt, and Sonia sat on the other side of Burckhardt, flirting with him outrageously. Tess sat on Charles’s right, and next to her, Qures Tinjannat, the ambassador from the king of Habakar lands who also happened to be a philosopher. Next to him, Niko Sibirin, and so on, foreigner mixed in with jaran. The newest ambassador was not here, but, of course, he had not yet been formally received.

Aleksi prowled the back, sidestepping serious children bearing wooden platters mounted on broad bases that they set down in front of their elders. Young men from the army assisted. Aleksi steadied Kolia as the little boy stumbled over an uneven patch of ground; he was clutching a bronze cup filled with water, taking it to Bakhtiian.

“Yes,” Bakhtiian was saying to Soerensen, “but when Sister Casiara wrote of the idea of precedence, she included the idea of legal precedence as well.”

“You were establishing a legalistic precedence, then, when you wrote the letter to the coastal ports west of here and claimed that they had violated the peace by attacking a party of jaran?”

“My envoys.” Bakhtiian nodded, took the cup from Kolia, and patted the little boy on his golden head before sending him away. “Envoys are sacrosanct. Is it not thus in all civilized countries?”