Earthly Crown (67 page)

“I’m sorry.” Nadine lay back down. “It’s none of my business.”

Which only made him feel worse. He went back and kissed her, and left, thankful that she was both sensible and understanding. He padded down the hallway to Charles’s room. The door was latched shut. He knocked twice, a pause, and twice more. Jo opened the door. He slipped inside. Inside, Cara Hierakis’s image stared at him without seeing him.

“—preliminary signs show that he’s no worse for the wear. He’s weak, as might be expected after almost sixteen days in a coma, and he’s a damned difficult convalescent, if you ask me, but I don’t at this time expect a relapse.”

“How is Tess?” asked Charles.

“She’s ecstatic. Hello, David.” The image raised its eyebrows and glanced behind itself, toward nothing they could see. “Her health is fine. I must go.”

“Off here,” said Charles. The image snapped and dissipated into nothing. A cold light illuminated the room, a steady gleam that seemed alien to David’s eyes after the flickering lantern light he was growing used to.

“What happened?” David asked.

“Bakhtiian came out of the coma and seems fine, if weak.”

David put a hand to his chest. He felt—relieved, and was surprised to find himself so happy. Certainly he had no reason to care about Bakhtiian and perhaps good reason to wish him dead. “That’s good news to give to Nadine,” he began, and then remembered that Nadine didn’t know that her uncle had even been in a coma.

“We’ve got the landing scheduled for three hours from now,” said Charles, dismissing the momentous news as if it was of trivial importance. “We’ll split the party. Marco and Rajiv and Jo to the landing site. Marco, you’ll stay with the shuttle for as long as they stay on-site. Rajiv and Jo will escort the technicians back here. David, you’ll run interference with the jaran, since you have the best excuse to be able to speak khush well. Did you come up with any ideas on keeping them out of the way?”

David sighed. “I’ll run a survey tomorrow of the north and west walls and gardens, a real old-fashioned kind with string and survey markers, and I’ll ask for help. I can use quite a few of them doing that, and perhaps keep the rest entertained.”

“Maggie?” Soerensen asked.

“Mother Avdotya has already agreed to let me observe the worship services and also I have her and a few of the older priests willing to let me interview them tomorrow about their myths and the history of the palace as they know it. I’ll make it all last as long as possible.”

“That will have to do. I’m most concerned about Mother Avdotya and Nadine Orzhekov, since they seem consistently to be the ones who are most likely to notice anomalies in our behavior. Do your best.”

“Nadine will be interested in survey methods,” said David. He glanced at Marco, who lounged casually against one wall, arms crossed on his chest. “She said she admires you, Marco, because you’re an explorer.”

Marco chuckled. “What? Does she want to join me?”

“Yes. I rather think she would, if she could.”

Marco shrugged. “And why not? She’s quick on her feet, a better fighter than I am, smart, and curious.” He cast an inquiring glance toward Charles. “Why not?”

“One bridge at a time,” said Charles. “She is also Bakhtiian’s niece, and I believe his closest living relative. She has a duty to him.”

“A woman’s duty in this kind of culture,” said Maggie, “is usually to get married and produce heirs. Neither of which I see her doing. I like her. I wish we could take her back with us.”

The comment produced silence that was sudden and uncomfortable.

“Fair trade,” said Marco with a twist of his lips that wasn’t quite a smile. “The sister for the niece.”

“I don’t think so,” said Charles smoothly. “Now. You’d better go. You’ve got a long ride, and it’s dark out there.”

Rajiv gathered up his hemi-slate and the six long tube-lights they were going to use for trail lights and landing markers. Marco shrugged on his cape. Jo pulled a second, heavier tunic on over her clothing and belted it at her waist. Without further ado, they left. Maggie went with them, to escort them down to the stables and run interference, as Charles called it, in case anyone came investigating this nocturnal exodus.

“Is there a problem, David?” Charles asked abruptly.

“A problem?” The question took David aback.

Charles sat down on his bed and considered David with that level, bland gaze that had come to characterize him. However busy he might be, however many pans he might have frying in the fire, he never did two things at once. If he spoke to a person, singling that person out, then all his attention focused on the conversation. Even his hands sat at rest, folded neatly in his lap. David knew how deceptively mild his expression was.

“You’re upset about something,” said Charles, “and I don’t keep sycophants around because they don’t do me any good.”

Thus neatly forcing David to speak his mind, even if he was reluctant to. “It’s this damned interdiction. It’s hypocrisy and you know it. I’m tired of lying to Nadine—well, to all of them, if it comes to that, but to her in particular. Don’t you think they know we’re holding things back? Aren’t we harming them more by being here than—?”

“Than if we hadn’t come at all? No doubt about that. But Tess came here, and so here we are. Think of it as damage control.”

“It’s not damage control,” said David. “Oh, Goddess, you mean that message that came in this morning.”

“About the actor running away? Yes, in part that.”

“What are you going to do about him?”

“Rajiv is hunting down the code on that transmitter. We’ll likely get a fix on him within five or ten days. If he’s still alive by then.”

“You’re cool about it.”

“David, you know me better than that.”

“You’ve changed, Charles. I say that as one of your two oldest friends.”

Charles regarded him evenly. “What choice? No choice. I do what I must.” He gave a short laugh and grinned, looking for an instant so much like the young man David had met at university that David might almost have thought they were the same person again, and that the gulf that had grown between the old Charles and the new one had suddenly closed. “Bakhtiian confided in me before we left the army that he couldn’t tell what he could and couldn’t believe out of all the things Tess had told him.”

“If he expected you to enlighten him, then I’m sure he was disappointed.”

“You
are
angry.”

“It’s disrespectful, beyond anything else,” said David. “Treating them like children—as if we know better, as if we have to protect them.”

“The interdiction did protect them.”

David sank down into the single chair and rested his forehead on a palm. “Which is true. Oh, hell, Charles, it’s just an untenable situation.”

“Yes,” Charles agreed without visible emotion. “Remember as well, David, that this is the only planet we have any real control over, because of that interdiction. Chapalii can’t come here without my permission—or, if they do, as that party that Tess fell in with did, they must do it covertly. We can’t afford to lose that power. Cara can run her lab in Jeds precisely because the Chapalii can’t investigate it at their whim. This is our—our safe-house. Our priest hole. Our hideaway. Not to mention the entire philosophical issue of whether it would be ethical to ram our culture and technology down their throats in the name of progress. So it’s to my advantage to keep the interdiction in force.”

“Even if you break it yourself.”

“Even so. I’m not a saint, David.”

“However much you try to be?”

Charles chuckled, a refreshingly and reassuringly human sound. “I only try to be because I know that whatever I do wrong will come back to haunt me tenfold. I don’t like this situation any better than you do. If we took Tess away, we’d be quit of it.”

David lifted his head off his hand. “Would you force her to go? Could you?”

“Of course I could. I control this planet, David. Would I?” He thought about it. The little room the priests had given him to sleep in mirrored him in many ways: simple, plain, without obvious character. But David knew that behind the plain whitewashed walls ran a complex network of filaments and power webs and ceramic tiling for strength and the Chapalii alone knew what other technological miracles and contrivances, hidden from sight but always present, there where they couldn’t be seen. “I don’t know. I haven’t been forced to make that decision yet.”

“Goddess help them both when you do.”

“Both?” asked Charles.

“Both Tess and Bakhtiian. And his people. And the countries in the path of his conquest. He’s a madman. You could stop him.”

“I could kill him physically. I could tell him, show him, the truth, which Tess believes would kill him spiritually. What’s so strange about him, though? Earth has had such men in her past.”

“Does that make it right? Knowing we could intervene?”

“I don’t know. Is intervening right? Will it make any difference in the long run? Does this argument have anywhere to go except around in circles? He’s better than most, David. He thinks, he’s open-minded and curious, he cares about law and legal precedence, and I believe he cares enough about what Tess thinks of him that he’ll temper brutality with mercy.”

“Like that man he executed for rape? He did it himself, and he didn’t look one whit remorseful about the act to me.”

“Who knows? Perhaps killing him on the spot like that
was
a merciful punishment, compared to what he might have received.”

“Without a trial?” David demanded.

“He had a confession. But I can’t help thinking about the actor. Three of them alone in hostile territory.”

“And horse-stealers, too. That must be punishable by death, under nomad law.”

“Do you think their deaths will be easy, or quick?” Charles asked.

“Don’t forget, the actor has a weapon with him—one of our weapons. And other equipment. That gives him an advantage.”

“And it breaks the interdiction in exactly the way I did not want it broken,” Charles added.

“In fact, it might well be easier if the poor boy did die, and his companions with him.”

“It might well. But then there’d be all that equipment out there to be recovered. Either way…” Charles shrugged.

David felt suddenly heartened. He chuckled. “You know, Charles, I don’t envy you. I’m perfectly happy to be sitting here, and you sitting there.”

Charles’s pale blue gaze met David’s brown one. His lips quirked up. “As well you might be. Now, I’m going to get some sleep.”

David realized that that was as close to a confession of the burdens weighing on him as Charles was ever likely to give him, or to give anyone. Perhaps Charles could no longer afford to be vulnerable. Perhaps Charles regretted what he had lost but knew well enough that the loss was permanent, that there was nothing of his old self that could be recovered, even if he wanted to.

“Yes,” said David on a sigh. “That’s a good idea.” He stood up and left Charles to his solitary state. Back in his own tiny room, he managed to nap on the hard bed for the few hours until dawn. He woke when the first light bled through the window, and he rose and dressed quickly and hurried downstairs to the eating hall in order to make it in time for breakfast. Maggie was there, although Charles wasn’t. She signaled with one hand—“all okay, going as planned.” That meant that the riders ought to come in mid-morning, escorting their “party from the coast.” What would the jaran make of this Chapaliian visitation? Mother Avdotya had mentioned the khepelli priests who had visited four summers past. Their stay had been short and uneventful with a single exception: they had left with one fewer member of their party than they had come with. This mystery had never been solved, nor had any remains been found of the missing priest. The jaran knew of blood sacrifices, both human and animal, but as far as David could tell, they did not indulge in them except under the most pressing need. He had asked Nadine about it, but she seemed to think such an act shameful, although he could not tell whether that response came from her jaran upbringing or her Jedan education.

What would they think of a Chapalii coming in with Soerensen’s escort? With his blessing? Under his authority? Nadine would be sure to be suspicious, and she would give a full report to her uncle. David did not for one instant doubt her loyalty to Bakhtiian, or doubt that she put her loyalty to him and to her people above all else, however much she did not follow their customs in other ways.

Well, it was hopeless. As Charles had said, the argument could run around in a circle and never get anywhere. He saw Nadine and went to sit beside her. She greeted him with a smile and he set to work on the food while discussing with her his plans for a survey of the north front.

“But tell me, David,” she said after he had told her of his plans, “I see how you can use this method to measure accurately the dimensions of the shrine. Is there a way to measure greater distances, using the same methods? I can draw out a map with rough accuracy—Josef Raevsky taught me how to do that, and I learned more about maps at the university in Jeds, but still, there must be more accurate methods. Mostly, the jaran measure distances by how long it takes a rider, or a wagon, to get from one place to another. But that’s not a good measure. How fast is the rider? Is it a jahar that’s foraging as it goes? Is it a wagon train? Is it a messenger, who changes horses frequently and so can ride as far in one day as wagons cover in ten?”

“I’ll show you some more about that today,” replied David. “If you have two angles and one side, you can calculate the rest of the triangle. That’s why I use a staff that’s a set length; in my case two
meters.”

“Yes, I know about triangles. They’re one of the gods’ mysteries.”

David chuckled. “Yes, there is a certain magic to them. Now, look.” He took his knife and held it point down, perpendicular to the table. “If you know the height of your measuring staff—this knife—and you know the angle—”

“But I understand that,” said Nadine impatiently. “I helped you survey the grounds of the shrine. But what about really long distances? Do you have to measure each stretch of ground you ride over? Add them together, perhaps? How can you reckon distances off to each side, as well? And bring them all together to make an accurate map?”