Earthly Crown (44 page)

At the edge of the hospital encampment, next to her own tent, appeared a troop of about twenty riders. She recognized Bakhtiian easily from this distance: of all the riders, he alone wore little armor and no gold or other adornment. One city and three towns on this plateau had fallen to the jaran advance in the thirty days since they had arrived here, and the wealth looted from those cities was not hoarded but passed out into the army and the camp to adorn women and men and children. Bakhtiian swung down from his horse and walked across the camp toward her. At the same time, the implant embedded below her right ear pulsed; Charles was trying to reach her. Cara tied her wide-brimmed hat tighter at her chin and waited. The sun glared down. As spring slid into summer, it had grown hot here, hot in the day although still cool at night.

“Doctor.” Bakhtiian halted before her, inclining his head with the respect and deference that Cara had not yet grown used to, not from him, at least. His personality was so strong and so forceful that these moments of modesty still surprised and amused her.

“Bakhtiian. Do you bring me news?”

He surveyed the encampment, the ordered busyness, the tents arrayed in neat rows and the pallets of wounded men convalescing in the sun. Cara had worried, at first, about finding enough attendants for the wounded beyond the healers and their apprentices. But for each wounded man brought in, a relative soon appeared to help nurse him.

“Are you sure, Doctor,” asked Bakhtiian, “that there is nothing that I can offer you to show how grateful I am for this gift of healing you have brought us?”

“Give me? Whatever might you give me?”

His smile was tight and ironic. Cara saw at once that she had offended him. “Yes, I had wondered that, since we possess nothing, not even with the wealth of these khaja cities, that seems to interest you. Truly, Jeds is as far beyond us as we are beyond these sorry khaja farmers.”

“Do you believe that?” Cara asked, startled. She could not read his expression.

“I stand helpless before you, Doctor. I have nothing you want, except for my wife, who was yours to begin with. While you—” He shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder if we have yet seen the tenth of your knowledge. I warn you, I want that knowledge.”

“The better to conquer Jeds?”

His expression changed. Now he was amused. “I am not yet ready to contest with Charles Soerensen, Doctor. Be assured of that. Let me conquer this Habakar kingdom first, and consider what to do with the Great King of Vidiya, who is, they say, as powerful as the sun on her rising and as rich as the earth giving forth gold.”

Cara could not help but smile. “Very polite of you, Bakhtiian, to give us fair warning.”

He laughed and bowed to her as the courtiers did at Jeds. “My respect for you, Dr. Hierakis, is as boundless as the heavens.”

“Your flattery is impressive as well. I thank you. Respect from you, Bakhtiian, is respect worth having. Where is Tess?”

“A city many days’ ride from here, called Puranan, has sent an embassy to our camp. Tess and Josef Raevsky are speaking with them now, over the terms of surrender.”

“You would give them terms?”

“Certainly. If they surrender, we will spare their lives.”

“Ah.” Cara examined the encampment again, wondering if Tess’s influence might mitigate the suffering bound to be visited upon those poor innocent khaja who were unfortunate enough to live in the line of the jaran advance.

“I thought to ask, Doctor, if you would have time to escort me around your hospital?”

“No battles today? No fighting? We’ve gotten few enough casualties in today.”

“No, although there was a skirmish out to the northwest. Sakhalin’s and Grekov’s jahars are riding west now, to the city that lies at the base of the pass. This fortress controls the road that leads on into the heart of Habakar territory, and to the royal city.”

“Is this fortress the city that wishes to surrender?”

“Not at all. I expect a battle.”

The implant continued to pulse, a slow, regular throb. Charles would know she could not be expected to reply immediately, and the pulse was not coded to the emergency signal. “I would be pleased to show you around, Bakhtiian. This way.”

What interested Cara most about Ilya Bakhtiian was the restless intelligence he brought to bear on whatever person or event or problem came to his attention. He discussed the treatment of wounds as if he wished to be a healer himself. He asked each injured soldier he talked to how he had received his injuries. He asked each soldier’s nurse—many of whom were children—how it went with their family and their tribe. All of them basked under the heat of his attention. His attendants fanned out, so that each wounded man received at least the reflected light of Bakhtiian. Cara noted that Kirill Zvertkov had at some point within the last thirty days been admitted into this inner circle of advisers who rode constant attendance on Bakhtiian. She noted as well Kirill’s lifeless arm, and the movement still left him in that injured shoulder.

Midday drifted into afternoon, and afternoon toward evening, and when Bakhtiian had at last made his rounds to his satisfaction, Cara invited him to her tent for supper. Of course he could not refuse. She invited Kirill as well, and the other men vanished out into the camp, to their own families.

“Here, Galina.” Cara called out as they came to the tent. Sonia Orzhekov had assigned her niece to act as Cara’s chatelaine and to provide the food and other necessities that Cara did not care to make time to provide for herself. The girl appeared from around the corner of the tent, smiling, with a baby on one hip and a companion—a girl about her age—in tow. “Some food, please, my dear.”

“Come, give me a kiss, little one,” said Bakhtiian. He kissed Galina on each cheek and asked her a few questions in khush that Cara could not quite follow. The girl answered forthrightly enough, without the least sign of being overawed by her formidable cousin. Then she and the other girl—a Sakhalin granddaughter, evidently—hurried off toward the greater sprawl of camp beyond.

“Please, gentlemen, be seated.” Cara offered them pillows and Scotch. The Scotch she laced with a low dose of tranquilizer. Then, between her tentative knowledge of khush, Kirill’s halting knowledge of Rhuian, and Bakhtiian translating the rest, she got a full description from Kirill of how he had ruined his arm. A skirmish—the Goddess knew these people had seen enough of that kind of thing—and to the best of his knowledge he had been trampled by a horse, and never regained any feeling in his arm or hand, although the shoulder was not entirely immobile.

“You were a damned sight slow getting to us, too, Bakhtiian,” said Kirill with a grin. “You ought to have known Mikhailov would try an ambush.”

Bakhtiian played with his glass, not drinking as quickly as Kirill. “I should never have split the jahar.”

“As if you had any choice. You’re not still blaming yourself for Tess getting wounded so badly, are you?” Kirill snorted. “But knowing you, you would be.”

“Tess was wounded?” Cara asked, immediately interested, and aware as well that Bakhtiian found the subject painful.

He downed the rest of the glass on one swallow. “She almost died. Niko saved her.”

“Her own stubbornness saved her,” said Kirill cheerfully. “Or isn’t that what you always claimed?”

“Ah,
that
scar.” Cara poured more adulterated Scotch into their glasses. “Very impressive. So she’s been in a fight, then? Did she handle herself well?”

“Dr. Hierakis,” said Kirill, “Tess is perfectly capable in my opinion of riding with the army as a soldier. And I’ve trained a fair number of young men in the last three years.”

“You always take her side against me,” said Bakhtiian in a low voice.

“I always will,” replied Kirill, lower still and with a remarkably malicious grin.

“Has she—” Bakhtiian stopped, flushed, and drank down the Scotch again. “No, I beg your pardon. It’s none of my business.”

Kirill laughed. “You’re not still jealous, are you? I ought to make you wonder, you damned officious bastard, but I’ll have mercy on you this time. The answer is no.”

“Here is Galina,” said Cara, enjoying this interplay immensely. She received the dishes—meat, of course, and warm milk, and some fruit—and shooed the girl away again. Galina was reluctant to go but obedient, and she left with many glances back over her shoulder. Twilight came. Cara rose to light one lantern, enough to make it seem she was hosting them but yet not too much light. Tonight she did not want too much light. She excused herself for a moment and went inside to get more Scotch. It was precious stuff, but in this case, the ends justified using so much. She also went all the way in to the inner chamber and pressed the code that would alert Ursula that Cara needed her. When she got back outside, Bakhtiian and Kirill were arguing good-naturedly over whether Tess had truly become jaran, or whether she was khaja still.

“Oh, Ilya,” said Kirill with disgust, “because you want it to be true doesn’t make it true. Tess will always be khaja in her heart. Just ask Arina or Sonia. Or your aunt. If you care to risk their opinion.”

“I am not afraid of their opinion,” said Bakhtiian. He looked moody and preoccupied. That streak of asceticism that Cara had noted in him before worked to her advantage now. The alcohol and drugs were having a more profound effect on him than on Kirill. She poured them more Scotch. Dusk lowered down, and stars spread across the sky. A few lanterns lit the hospital encampment, but otherwise the single light in their midst haloed them alone, as if the three of them were cut off from the rest of their world, torn apart, melding into some transitional state. An appropriate enough thought, considering what she meant to do.

“How old were you when you went to Jeds?” Cara asked.

He considered this question. “A full cycle of the calendar and four winters had passed. So I was sixteen. My sister married.” Bakhtiian paused, as if this event was so weighty that the world needed a moment of silence to absorb it.

“She married a man from the Suvorin tribe. He was the dyan’s brother,” added Kirill.

“I hated him,” said Ilya softly. The words made Cara shudder, they were said so quietly and with such calm venom.

“Whatever happened to him?” Kirill asked. “I never saw him again after she was killed. Gods, we saw him little enough once you returned from Jeds.”

“Kirill, I do not care to speak of him.”

“As you wish, Bakhtiian,” said Kirill with considerable irony. “Is there anyone else you don’t wish to speak of?”

Bakhtiian’s hand tightened on his glass. “Don’t try me too far, Kirill.”

“Gentlemen,” said Cara mildly, “I do hope you haven’t forgotten that I’m here.” They both apologized profusely. “But I’m still curious, Bakhtiian, about your time in Jeds. You studied at the university?”

“Yes. I desired knowledge.” Desired it very much, by the way his eyes burned when he spoke of it. “I desired to know the world.”

“But however did you survive there?”

He shrugged. “At first I sold the things I had brought from the plains: furs, gold, a necklace given to me by—” He broke off before he said the name. “Later, a woman named Mayana took me in.”

“Mayana! You don’t mean the courtesan!” Cara laughed out of pure astonishment.

“You know her?”

“My dear boy, the entire city knows her. That is—” For once, she found she could not contain her laughter. “—not in the biblical sense—” But, of course, the reference was entirely lost on Bakhtiian and Kirill. “She is famous, and justly so, for her beauty, her wit, and her learning. She was sold into a brothel at the age of ten, but she bought out her contract through—ah—hard work, and so gained her freedom. But surely you knew that.”

“She was eighteen when we met,” he said slowly, “the same age as I was, and she was still beholden to the old harridan’s tent.”

“What is a
courtesan?”
Kirill asked.

Bakhtiian shook his head. “I cannot begin to explain it to you, Kirill, and it would disgust you in any case. The khaja are savages. How do you know her, Doctor? Does the prince know her as well?”

“She is received everywhere. I find her delightful.” But several conversations she had had with the courtesan fell together in Cara’s mind. She leaned forward, feeling a little giddy and wondering if she herself had drunk too much Scotch, especially given the work she had to do tonight. “But surely—it must be—she told me once about a young man, her barbarian scholar, she called him, whom she discovered shivering on the street one winter night. He was a pretty boy, she said, with fire in his eyes, so she took him back to her room in the brothel and was astonished to find that he had no experience of women at all. None, although she always said with that marvelous smile of hers that he was the quickest student she had ever tutored. Then it transpired that he was so ignorant that he didn’t know that one paid the woman afterward. He had no money, only the clothes on his back and seven books. He had spent all his money on books. So she let him live in her room in trade for him teaching her to read and write. It’s a lovely little tale. She said she still sends the man books, by a roundabout route, all the way to the distant plains, to which he returned a few years later. Is it true, the story that she raised the money to buy herself free from her contract in just one night by performing an erotic dance built around a foreign tale called ‘The Daughter of the Sun’?” She broke off.

Kirill was leaning far forward, almost overbalanced, staring with glazed fascination at the sight of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian too mortified to speak.

“I beg your pardon,” said Cara.

“Oh, gods.” Bakhtiian covered his eyes with a hand. “Does the entire city know about that?”

“But she’s become a legend, Bakhtiian. Such stories are known by everyone. Do you mean to tell me that it
is
true? Oh, Goddess, and that it was
you.”
Despite his stricken expression, she simply could not stop laughing. “That’s simply too rich.”

“Ilya,” said Kirill. He looked dazed with astonishment. “I’ve never seen you embarrassed before. So it
is
true that you’d never lain with a woman before you went to Jeds. I never believed it.”