Earthly Crown (49 page)

She regarded him with amusement. This always happened to men when their wives were pregnant with the first child. “I am sorry, Ilya, to tell you that most women eat poorly, sleep a great deal, and grow irritable when they are first pregnant.”

He glanced up at her. He did not want to admit that that was what he was worried about. “I am not an idiot, Sonia,” he said, sounding as ill-tempered as if he himself were pregnant.

“No,” she agreed. “But you’re scared.”

She expected him to snap at her for saying it, but instead, he set the book down. “It’s true. What if the gods mean to take her from me?”

“Ilya! You must not speak so rashly about the gods. You are no more a Singer than I am, although we have both made long journeys and returned, to talk about what the gods mean to do.”

“But the gods granted me a vision.”

“That is true,” she said with reluctance and with pride. “Perhaps I’m not sure what you ought to be called: not a Singer, and yet not simply a dyan either.”

He sighed.

“Mama.” It was Katerina. “Mother Sakhalin has come to visit. What shall I do with her?”

“Ah. Chase everyone else away and bring her into the outer chamber. We will speak with her there. Come, Ilya.”

“Perhaps she wishes only to speak to you, Sonia.”

“If she wishes only to speak with me, then she will say so, Cousin. It is fitting that the dyan of this tribe sit with me to greet another etsana.”

She preceded him into the outer chamber and tidied it up a bit, throwing three pillows down in the center, on the best carpet, next to the little bronze oven chased with does. She surveyed the chamber with a critical eye and decided that it would do, for Mother Sakhalin’s visit, to keep things spartan as a reflection of the knowledge that they all were traveling at an army’s pace through khaja lands toward a goal of Ilya’s making. Certainly the Orzhekov tribe was by now as rich as the Sakhalin, but compared to the riches of a khaja city like Jeds, they were all of them poor. It was not by such a measure that one judged the jaran. Their wealth lay in greater things, in their horses and their herds, in the beauty of their weaving and the fine tempered steel of their sabers in the multitude of tents that made up each tribe and in the strong children that they bore. Mother Sun succored them, and Father Wind whispered to them, his favorite children, his secrets. Certainly the khaja had their own secrets, but they wrote them down in books and then anyone who wished might learn them.

Ilya emerged from the back, having put his boots back on. He was supposed to be riding with the main army, out in front of the wagon train, but for the last three days—ever since Tess’s announcement that she was pregnant—he had stayed with the camp, sticking close by Tess.

“You will have to go back to the army, you know,” Sonia said to him, and he had no chance to reply since at that moment Katya showed Mother Sakhalin in. Galina followed at her heels—just as she should—with a tray laden with tea and sweet cakes. Sonia watched as Katya settled the etsana onto a pillow and Galina offered her tea, all with the very best manners. Then Sonia sat and Ilya sat, and Galina poured them tea as well, and the two girls retreated to sit by the front curtain, heads bowed. That way they could serve, if need be, but they could also listen and learn about the responsibilities they would take up in time.

Mother Sakhalin began by asking about each Orzhekov child and grandchild. Then Sonia asked in her turn about each Sakhalin child and grandchild.

“I am not sure, however,” said Mother Sakhalin finally, “if it is wise to keep Anatoly’s jahar with the camp and not with the army.”

“I thought it time,” said Ilya quietly, “that Anatoly have a command of his own and not simply ride with my jahar. I judge him young enough and intelligent enough to understand what I am trying to do with my new jahar, with my envoys.”

“Your envoys, who will go out and learn khaja ways,” replied Mother Sakhalin. She frowned as she said it. “But, of course, Anatoly has a khaja wife.”

Aha.
Sonia could see that the sparks were about to fly.

“I
have a khaja wife,” said Ilya even more quietly.

“Your wife is not at issue here, Bakhtiian,” replied Mother Sakhalin, defusing his anger with her tartness, “since we all know her worth. I fear that Anatoly married a woman who has nothing to recommend her but her looks.”

“Mother Sakhalin,” said Sonia mildly, “whatever else she may or may not have to recommend her, you must agree she acted bravely and saved jaran lives when the train was attacked by the khaja soldiers.”

“Hmph.” But since it was true, the etsana could not gainsay it. Sonia doubted if Elizaveta Sakhalin would ever accept Diana, but she could not tell if it was the fact that Diana was a khaja woman, that she was of no distinguished family, or simply that Anatoly had not consulted his grandmother in his marriage, that had so set her against the match. “Well,” Mother Sakhalin finished, “it is pleasant enough for her, I am sure, to have his devotion now, but she will leave him because she cares nothing for our ways, not truly, and who will comfort him then?” She nodded decisively to show that she did not wish to discuss the matter any further.

Galina rose and lit another lantern and sat back down. The shadows shrank and re-formed into different patterns. From outside, Sonia heard Josef Raevsky telling, in his strong voice, the litany of clouds, and Ivan and some of the other young boys repeating it back to him so that they, too, would learn how to read from clouds and sky and wind and air the patterns of the weather. Mother Sakhalin ate a sweet cake as a prelude to what she intended to say next.

“My granddaughter Shura wishes to fight with the army,” she said at last. “She says that if men can fight with the saber, then women ought to be able to fight with the bow.”

“We do not use archery in battle,” said Ilya. “Everyone knows it is dishonorable to fight from a distance when one ought to face one’s enemy eye to eye.”

“Dishonorable for men,” said Mother Sakhalin, “but women may defend themselves with the bow if it becomes necessary.”

“Are you suggesting, Mother Sakhalin,” asked Sonia, “that women join the army and fight?” Both Katya and Galina glanced up, looking startled, and then recalled themselves and looked down again.

Mother Sakhalin ate another sweet cake. “I am simply repeating what my granddaughter said to me, and what other girls are saying, who fought in the skirmish three days ago.”

“It is true,” said Ilya slowly and cautiously, “that archery turned the tide of that battle.”

“It is true,” agreed Mother Sakhalin, “that our women know how to shoot, as they ought to. It is true that the khaja now fear jaran archers. But I am not sure that the gods will approve. If women leave the sanctity of the tribe, then why should the gods protect our tents?”

“But Mother Sakhalin,” said Sonia, “the khaja will not respect the sanctity of our tents.”

Mother Sakhalin’s sharp eyes rested on Sonia’s face for a moment and then flicked over to the two girls, and then to Ilya, “How do you know this?”

“They did not respect the women and children in the Farisa city. They killed the children, and the women, any they could find. Why should they treat jaran children differently?”

“That is true. Then I ask this: What if a girl rides to war before she is married, and she is killed and thus bears no children for her mother’s tent? This has already happened. What if a woman with no sisters rides to war, and she is killed, and thus leaves her children with no tent at all? What if a woman rides to war and is captured by the khaja? Will they respect her as a woman ought to be respected, or will they treat her as they would a man?”

Sonia looked at Ilya, but he simply folded his hands in his lap and waited for her. Just like a man! Wait at the side for the women to argue over the difficult points. And yet, he was wise to do so. He knew, and she knew, and Mother Sakhalin knew, that adding archers to his army would only strengthen it. Better that he not push a course of action that benefited him so obviously. Better that he wait and let others make the decision that needed to be made.

“Out on the plains,” said Sonia finally, “the old ways protected us. They will protect us still, but to win this war we must learn new ways as well.”

“The old ways made us strong,” retorted Mother Sakhalin. “What if the new ways make us weak? What if our grandchildren’s children forget the old ways? Then they will no longer be jaran.”

There was a hush, a sudden quiet in the tent, and Sonia felt all at once that the gods were about to speak. Only she did not know how, or where.

“There will always be jaran,” said Ilya into the silence, his voice filled with an eerie resonance, a conviction, that seemed to emanate from both inside and outside of him at once. “If we stay as we have been, then we will die, just as a pool dries up in the summer if there is no rain. We must change if we want to live. But we must also remain who we are and who the gods gifted us to be.”

Out of respect for his words, Mother Sakhalin allowed the silence to stretch out before she replied. “What you ask is difficult, Bakhtiian.”

“I
do not ask it,” he said. “I only tell you what the gods have given me to see.”

Mother Sakhalin snorted, and then she sipped some tea and ate two more sweet cakes. Galina rose and took the teapot and went outside to replenish it. Katya looked thoughtful, sitting with her back to the woven entrance flap where red and black wolves ran over a gold background, twined into each other just as the tribes were wrapped so tightly each around the next that, in the end, they were all of one piece and yet each different.

“I suppose,” said the etsana, “that in the end you will have a jahar of archers. You may as well start now.”

Ilya inclined his head, acquiescing to her judgment. She rose, made polite farewells, and let Katya show her out. Ilya watched the flame of one of the lanterns, studying it as if some answer lay within the twisting red lick of fire.

“She’s right, though,” said Sonia reflectively, into the silence. “We can’t know how we will change, if it will be better for us, or worse. We can’t know what the gods have chosen for us. We can’t see what lies ahead, not truly.”

He lifted a hand to her shoulder and rested it there, as a cousin might, to show his affection and his respect. “We have already changed, Sonia. It is too late to go back now.”

“It is too late,” she agreed. The wolves danced in the lantern light, racing toward an unseen prey.

S
IEGES WERE DULL,
dirty, and thoroughly unpleasant business. Jiroannes had plenty of time to reflect on this truth as the days dragged on and the camp remained ensconced below the fortress of Qurat without the city showing any signs of surrender. But the food was better: the army foraged, took tribute, pillaged—whatever they wanted to call it—from the lands surrounding, and they were rich enough lands in midsummer to supply jaran needs. There was entertainment, too. He had gone to this
theater
that the foreigners had brought to the army four times now; each time the players had enacted something different. It reminded him of the Hinata dancers of his own land, who paced out in measures and with a drummed accompaniment stories and legends from the Age of Gods. He had even learned to listen to the jaran singers, with their sonorous, exotic melodies and endless tales set to music. With Mitya’s tutoring, he could now understand some of the language.

“Your eminence?”

He sighed and set aside the tablet and stylus that lay idle on his lap. He simply did not have anything to write to his uncle that he had not already set down in his last letter twenty days past, when the train had arrived at Qurat. As tedious as the army’s constant travel had been, sitting here in one place in these primitive conditions was worse. “Yes, Syrannus?”

“Eminence, if I might have your permission, I would like to send Samae out for water. Half of the guardsmen are down with the flux, and the others are engaged in various work. It would be convenient for me if Samae could go with Lal.”

“Lal? Who is Lal?”

“The slave-boy with the scar under his right eye, eminence. Of course I will send a guard along to escort her.”

Jiroannes sighed again and stretched his legs out, resting the heels of his supple boots on the thick carpet. The pillow on the seat of his chair slid beneath him; he braced his elbows on the carved arms. “Why are you bothering me with this?”

Syrannus hesitated, looking prim for a moment. “The girl has never been outside of this camp, eminence.”

“Great heavens, Syrannus, I should hope we have allowed her the seclusion which befits her female nature. What woman would want such freedom?” Then he stopped, because here in the jaran camp, however little they had to do with the jaran themselves on a daily basis, even he could see that the statement was ridiculous. He waved the problem away with his right hand. “Whatever you think best, Syrannus. I suppose there is no other choice.”

“If you think it wise, eminence. I only suggest it because of necessity.”

“Do what you wish.” Syrannus bowed and retreated. Because there was nothing else to do, Jiroannes picked up the tablet again. Then, with pleasure, he saw Mitya striding toward his tent. He rose with a smile to greet the boy. “Well met,” he said in khush. He bowed with just the right degree of condescension due a prince’s cousin, and Mitya echoed the movement, with a grin. He was really quite a likable boy, for a barbarian.

“Here,” said Mitya, “do you want to come see the drills? There’s a slope from which we can watch.”

Jiroannes had yet to see the jaran riders in action—he had never been near the scene of any of their battles—and in any case, he was bored. A guard saddled his gray gelding and he rode out with Mitya, with two guards as escort behind them. But it was not the jaran riders at all: not the men, at any rate. These were women riding complex drills and firing sheets of arrows at various targets. It was startling, but impressive.

A line of riders watched the maneuvers from a hillside above the flat field on which the archers and their mounts drilled. They greeted Mitya with enthusiasm, and Jiroannes with polite reserve, but shifted to make room for them.