Earthly Crown (59 page)

“It’s been worse,” said Gwyn softly, “these last fourteen days. They must be taking revenge for that curse they say the Habakar priests put on Bakhtiian.”

Ahead, the city lay lit with fire, but as they came closer, Diana could see figures on the walls. She could see a pall like smoke sheeting the air between the walls and the vast army stretched out below. This time arrows shot out from the jaran side, too. A billow of black cloud rose up from inside the city, tinged with the stench of burning.

A crowd huddled out beyond them, in a field flattened by the advance of the jaran army. “At least there are some survivors,” said Diana, and then she saw what they were doing: jaran riders were slaughtering their captives. Mercifully, it was too far away for her to see what they were doing in detail, and she averted her eyes in any case. The wagons trundled on. Ahead, the jaran camp grew up out of range of missile fire from the city walls, but they did not stop. Their line, of wagons went on, circling the city at a safe distance and heading on. Everywhere was devastation. The army had swept through with a scythe of utter destruction, leaving nothing in its wake. Once or twice they passed a pitiful huddle of refugees, exclusively women and small, terrified children, but mostly they saw no one, as if this fertile land were uninhabited. Once a small troop of mounted women passed, herding a great mob of bleating goats and cattle and sheep—not the kind the jaran kept, but different breeds—and once again they saw a troop of riders killing prisoners. Mostly the land was empty, and emptied.

By dusk, the city was a glow on the horizon behind them. If it did not fall tomorrow, then it would fall next week, or the week after. They made camp alongside a sweetly-flowing river. Diana went down to the river to wash, as if she could somehow wash the day’s horrors from her.

A number of jaran women had flocked to the river’s edge, and many of them simply stripped and waded into the water while others took clothing downstream to wash.

“Diana!” Arina beckoned to her from the shore, where she stood watching a naked Mira splash in the shallow water.

Diana stumbled over to her, catching her boots on rocks, unsure of her footing in the dim light, unsure she could face Arina with any friendship at all. Across the river stood a village. Well, what was left of a village: it was burned out, of course. A large scrap of cloth—a shirt, perhaps—fluttered in the breeze and tumbled down an empty lane as if some unseen spirit animated it. Otherwise, the village was deserted, inhabited only by ghosts—if even ghosts had the courage to haunt it.

Arina held Lavrenti. Diana could not help herself. As she came up to the young etsana, she put out her arms for the infant. Arina handed him over. Lavrenti had grown; he wasn’t thriving, not that, but he was growing, and his tiny mouth puckered up and he gave Diana his sweet, open-mouthed, toothless smile. Diana cradled him against her chest and stood there, rocking him side to side and talking nonsense to him. He chuckled and made a bubble and reached up to grab for her silver earrings.

“A messenger came from Sakhalin’s army,” said Arina, “to his aunt. She sent her granddaughter to tell me that Anatoly sent a message to you.”

“To me!” Diana flushed, feeling ecstatic and terrified at once. Lavrenti gave up on her earrings, which were out of his reach, and turned his attention to tugging on the bronze buttons at the neck of her tunic instead.

Arina frowned, looking very like a stern etsana, and then grinned, which spoiled the whole effect. “He said to say that he loves you, which was most improper of him. He should be able to wait until you are private.” She paused. Diana could not help but wonder, bitterly, when that event was ever likely to take place. “He sent this to you.” Arina drew a necklace out of her pouch.

Diana gasped. It was made of gold, and of jewels cunningly inlaid in an ornate geometric pattern, and it was as heavy as it was rich. Then Arina drew out and displayed to Diana a pair of earrings, and two bracelets, all done in the same alien, lush style, gold and emeralds and chalcedony.

Loot. Anatoly had sent her loot from some far palace where probably two-thirds of the inhabitants were dead by now, and the rest likely to starve when winter came. And did he have a mistress there, some khaja princess who had begged him for mercy? The spoils of war. For the first time it struck her: what if Bakhtiian died, what if the khaja army regrouped and conquered this camp? Would she become one of the spoils of war? Or would she simply be killed?

“Are you cold?” Arina asked with concern. “I hope you aren’t coming down with a fever.”

“No. Just tired.” She did not want to say it, but she had to. “It was so horrible, today. Ever since we came down on this plain, it’s been horrible.”

Arina drew herself up. It was easy to forget that this pretty, petite young woman was headwoman of a tribe, an authority in her own right. “It is true that these khaja scarcely deserve as much mercy as the army has extended them. Not when their priests have witched Bakhtiian. But if he dies, I assure you that I will counsel the commanders to show no mercy at all.”

At first Diana was confused because she thought Arina was rendering her an apology. Then, an instant later, she realized that it was true: Arina
was
apologizing, because Arina thought that what Diana thought was horrible was the mercy the army was showing. Which as far as she could tell was no mercy at all.

“But—” she began, and faltered. “Then there’s still no word about Bakhtiian? He’s still the same?”

“He is still there, up on the pass. Tess refuses to move him, and she is right. He will fight best when he lies closest to the heavens. Ah, Mira, are you done, then?” She called to an older girl to come dress Mira and turned back to Diana, dressing Diana with the jewelry much as Joseph helped her when she got into a particularly elaborate costume. The gold gleamed in the dusk. Lavrenti batted at the gold earrings while Arina tucked the silver earrings into Diana’s belt-pouch. “You must wear these gifts often, Diana, so that everyone will know that your husband is fighting bravely and well.”

“Damn him,” said Diana under her breath, and she burst into tears.

V
ASIL WOKE BEFORE DAWN.
Every morning, now, he woke even before his wife, so that he could go to Bakhtiian’s tent as soon as it was decent and stay, there until dusk, when it was no longer proper for Tess to accept male visitors not of her family—not while her husband was there, at any rate. It was dim, in the tent, and warm. In her sleep, Karolla had thrown an arm carelessly across his bare chest, and he shifted just enough to slide out from under its weight. She opened her eyes.

And just looked at him. He dropped his gaze away from hers and rummaged for his clothes.

“It’s wrong,” she said in a low voice. “It’s wrong that we didn’t go on with the tribe. The children and I are alone here, Vasil.”

He flushed, half with anger, half with shame. “They aren’t unkind to you.”

“No, they aren’t unkind to us. But they all know that I am Dmitri Mikhailov’s daughter. If Sonia Orzhekov is polite to me, it is only out of pity. I am tired of living with their pity.”

He flinched away from her tone. He had never heard her so—not angry, Karolla never raised her voice—but so stubborn.

“If you will give all the burdens of being dyan into Anton’s hands so that you can linger here, then you must by right give him back his authority. It’s wrong.” She hesitated. He turned back to kneel beside her, but her gaze did not soften. She sat up, and the covers slipped down to reveal her breasts and her belly. Her breasts were swelling again; he knew the signs—she was probably pregnant, although it was too early to be sure. “Everyone knows why you have stayed, Vasil. Have you no pride?”

He gripped a corner of the blanket and squeezed it tight into a ball. “I never lied to you, Karolla. Not before we married, and never afterward. You know that he must come first with me.”

“You will be exiled again. Then what is to become of us? You have children now, a son who will neither speak to you nor obey you, and a daughter who will obey no one but you. Or can you even think of someone besides yourself?”

The pain hit then, the overwhelming, shattering pain of his fear that Ilya was going to die. Now. Today, perhaps, or tomorrow, or the next day. “I think of
him
every moment I am awake,” he said in a choked voice.

She turned her face away and shielded her eyes from him with one hand. Her shoulders tensed. A shudder passed through her body.

“Oh, gods. Karolla, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He flung his arms around her and pulled her down with him back onto the pillows. “My sweet, you must know that you are the only woman I care for. You’re the only woman I ever wanted to marry.”

She stayed stiff in his arms. “Because you needed the refuge my father could offer you. Because you wanted my father to kill Bakhtiian for you.” Tears streaked her face. She had never been one of those women who cried well. Crying simply made her skin blotchy.

“Have I ever been unkind to you?” he demanded.

“No, not unkind. But you left us.”

“To save my own life. And I came back.”

She went still and ceased struggling to free herself from his embrace. “I know why you came back.”

“Do you?” He hated seeing her like this, suspicious, bitter. She had always loved him so unreservedly before. He was the center of her life, just as he had been the center of his mother’s life. He could not bear to lose that. He kissed her. At first she did not respond, but he knew how to persist. “Karolla. My sweet Karolla.”

She murmured something deep in her throat, a curse or a prayer, and strained against him. He rolled onto his back and swung her up on top of him. There was a rustle at the curtain.

“Mama?”

“Valentin!” snapped Vasil. “Out.”

“Won’t,” retorted Valentin.

“You get out of there or I’ll drag you,” said Ilyana from the outer chamber.

“Valentin,” said Karolla softly. “Do as your father says.”

“Yes, Mama.” It was said sullenly, but the curtain dropped back into place and swayed and stilled.

Karolla’s face had shuttered, and Vasil cursed his son silently for breaking the mood. Valentin resisted him every step of the way and grew more intransigent each day they stayed here. He should have sent the child on with the Veselov tribe and just kept Karolla and Ilyana with him.

Karolla sighed and pushed away from him. “You’d better go. They’ll be expecting you.”

But he caught her back. He could not, he would not, leave with her in this mood. He could not stand to see her devotion to him so shaken that she would begin to question him like this. And anyway, he knew how to make her love him; he always had.

“My heart, how can I leave with you hating me like this?”

She paled. “I don’t hate you. You know that!”

“Look how you turn away from me. You’re all that I have, Karolla, you and the children.” Already she was melting, she hesitated, she turned back toward him. “And you alone, my own dear wife, you are the only person in all the lands who I can trust. I can give myself into your hands and know that you won’t shun me, or curse me, or drive me away. But I have nothing to bring to you, nothing. That is my shame.” And thus she embraced him, caressed him, to prove that it was not true. Although it was true: he had the right to be dyan but it was a position which he neither wanted nor was suited for.

“It isn’t true,” she insisted, laying him back on the pillows. “It was never true.” She smoothed his hair back from his brows and kissed his perfect lips. Vasil knew they were perfect; he had been told so often enough. All that was left him was his beauty, and the ability to make people love him. For his beauty was still pure, and it was his beauty that Karolla had first loved. Just as Ilya had, those long years ago.

So it was rather later than he had planned when he approached the great tent in the midst of its ring of warriors. He knew they hated and despised him, the riders who let him through each guard post, but he could not muster up the energy right now to win them over. Even the women of the Orzhekov tribe, many of whom he had once charmed, hated him now, ignored him, and called their children away from his path.

He saw Tess. She walked at a brisk pace in a sweeping circle, accompanied by the sharp-faced orphan she had adopted. Vasil paused, waiting for her. The young man—what was his name? Vasil could not recall it—strode with the lithe and easy swing of a man who is entirely comfortable in and confident of his body. Arina had told Vasil that he had been the last and best student of the old rider Vyacheslav Mirsky, and that many of the older men said that he surpassed even his master in his skill with the saber. He had a hand cupped beneath Tess’s elbow, and they spoke easily together, closely, like any brother and sister. Had Bakhtiian approved this relationship? Was he jealous?

Tess looked up and saw Vasil. Her expression closed, and she grew grave and troubled. Her brother shifted, without looking at Vasil, but his stance became protective, shielding. They came up and halted before Vasil.

Vasil stared at her. Out here in the open, with the light on her face, she looked tired and drawn and yet still handsome enough that any man might be excused if he fell in love with her. But it was Bakhtiian who had married her. That was all that mattered. He smiled. Her face lit, absorbing the heat of his regard, and she smiled back. The brother arched an eyebrow. Vasil could not read him, and it bothered him that he couldn’t tell whether the brother liked him or despised him.

“Aleksi and I are going riding,” Tess said. Her voice sounded rough from disuse. “But I suppose—” She faltered. “Well, Cara will be there.”

The thought of going any longer without seeing Ilya made Vasil ache. But he dropped his chin in feigned obedience. “Of course, it’s not proper—”

“Oh, go on,” she said impatiently, as he knew she would, because he had discovered that she
was
in fact impatient with the disapproval with which everyone else treated him. The jaran knew that his presence here was improper.
He
knew that his presence here was improper. He was like a reflection of Bakhtiian, but a reflection that showed what Bakhtiian might have become: corrupt and self-serving. He knew what they thought of him, and he did not blame them for thinking it. But the gods had made him this way. Was he to fight against what the gods had wrought? And anyway, Tess Soerensen rebelled against their strictures. She disliked their censure, and she favored him because he suffered under it. He allowed himself a broader smile, feeling that he had scored a triumph. She touched his arm, briefly, warmly, and then excused herself and left, escorted by the brother.