His Conquering Sword (18 page)

At the outskirts of the Veselov encampment, Vasil appeared suddenly, mounted, leading a saddled horse. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said, greeting her with a sidelong glance. He smiled that brilliant smile of his. “It’s a long walk back across camp, and I have to deliver these horses … Would you prefer to ride?”

“Oh, I …” His presence flustered her. He was so intensely good-looking and so determined to make an impression on her. And it was a long walk. “That’s very kind of you. I’d be honored.”

“Not at all. The honor is mine.” He waited while she mounted. He did not once look at her straight on, and yet she felt that he looked at her constantly. They rode, and she knew that this was all somehow improper, but she wasn’t sure she cared. “Five nights ago you sang the story of the etsana who judged her daughters poorly. Who has written this story? Or did you write it yourselves? Is it an old story of your people? And how—well, when a Singer of the jaran sings, she tells a story in music and with her words. How did it happen that with your people you tell these stories by—by becoming the stories?”

All the rest of the way to the Company encampment Diana explained to Vasil, as well as she could, about acting and theater. Vasil drank in every word. He asked a hundred more questions.

At the camp, she thanked him and dismounted. He turned the horses away and paused. “You have only to ask,” he murmured, looking down at her from under lowered lids, demure and yet completely assured. He hesitated one instant longer. When she only gaped at him and did not reply, he rode away.

Quinn jogged out. “Well. Well, well. He’s a stunner. That your latest lover, Di?”

“No.” Diana stared at his retreating back. And a fine back it was, too, straight and even, with his golden hair lapping the collar of his scarlet shirt. “But I think he just told me that he was available to audition for the part. And I don’t think he was delivering those horses anywhere but here.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” She shook her head impatiently, as if sloughing off the last three days. “I’m back. What did I miss?”

Quinn launched into a long explication of how Ginny and Owen were disputing over whether translation hurt the text more than it helped the process of understanding, and what progress Ginny had made on crafting a telling of the jaran story about the Daughter of the Sun who came from the heavens to visit the earth and ended up falling in love with a dyan of the tribes.

“They’re going to risk that?”

“Oh, Di, the jaran will never suspect. How should they? It’s a wonderful story. Yomi said that Dr. Hierakis thinks that it’s Bakhtiian’s favorite story. Now they’re talking about actually doing
Tamburlaine.”

“Oh, I hope not,” said Diana with feeling. “I’ve had enough of war. What about
The Tempest?
Aren’t we going to do that? And the folktale about Mekhala. What about Ginny’s
Cyclopean Walls?”

“Ah, absence does make the heart grow fonder. We’ve had to listen to Anahita complain on and on about how sick she is. We’ve been working like dogs while you’ve been away.”

“I didn’t enjoy it!”

“I’m sorry.” Quinn backed down immediately.

“No, I’m sorry. I just—I don’t know. Never mind. I’m glad to be back. I like this place, and willingly could waste my time in it. Is there anything interesting to eat? Something—not what I could get in the camp?”

“You
are
out of sorts,” said Quinn thoughtfully.

“‘How weary are my spirits.’”

Quinn rested a hand on Diana’s arm. “Poor Di. Come home.”

“Gladly,” said Diana, and went with her into camp. Gladly she fell back into the routine. She went once a day to see Arina, who slowly grew stronger, but Arina’s own people took care of her. As the days wore on, Diana noticed Vasil frequently, here and there, running across her path now and again as if by accident, usually at the Veselov camp. And often, now, she saw him loitering in the background, at the outskirts of the audience that always gathered to watch them practice, watching their rehearsals with a look of hungry intensity on his face.

D
ESPITE HIMSELF, JIROANNES FOUND
the city of Karkand impressive. In its own foreign way, the city rivaled the Great King’s capital of Flowering Mountain in southern Vidiya. Two walls enclosed Karkand. The outermost wall ringed a huge expanse of land, fields, gardens, orchards, and suburbs watered by canals, but the Habakar had given these flats up for lost and most of the population had retreated inside the massive inner walls that fortified the twin hills of the main city.

Eight days after the army had besieged the city, Jiroannes rode with Mitya through these environs. Peasants from the lands surrounding Hamrat and from farther south had filtered in behind the army and taken the fields and the houses and now worked them for their jaran masters. Still, the place was half deserted, and the season was turning.

The triple arched gateway through the outer wall opened onto a broad square paved with stone. Beyond the square three tree-lined avenues thrust into the suburbs. To the right, a marketplace sprawled along the inner wall, farmers and merchants selling vegetables and grain. They stared at the fifty jaran riders, Mitya’s escort, but went about their business nonetheless. Traffic passed through the smaller of the three gateways, men trundling carts or leading donkeys laden with goods.

To the left, a marble fountain spilled water down a series of ledges. To Jiroannes’s surprise, a woman dressed in white sat alone and unveiled and unmolested by the pool at the foot of the fountain. She sat with her hands in her lap and a ceramic beaker at her right hand. Now and again a man halted before her, and she dipped the beaker into the pool and offered him water to drink. When the jaran riders paced by, she watched them apprehensively, but she did not move from her station beside the splashing fountain. Jiroannes noted that the skin of her hands was very fine, the mark of a woman who has not been forced to engage in any heavier labor than dipping water from a font. Her complexion was not as fine, sitting out in the sun as she was, but she looked far less sun-coarsened than did the jaran women, who without exception of rank or age worked at tasks fit only for a slave.

“She might as well be a jaran woman,” said Jiroannes. “I had not noticed that Habakar women were so immodest. But perhaps she is a prostitute.”

Bakhtiian had elevated the Habakar general’s son up from his status as prisoner and allowed him freedom as Mitya’s interpreter, because the boy had learned khush, and because the boy was about Mitya’s age. Qushid hid a look of horror behind one hand and after a moment uncovered his face again. He was tall, taller than Mitya, dark-complexioned with close-cropped black hair, but reserved to the point of seeming stupid. Bakhtiian’s chief wife conducted a school for those so favored by her husband, and this boy attended it by Bakhtiian’s order, learning khush and the ways of the jaran.

Mitya threw a glance back at Jiroannes. “You must learn not to speak so disrespectfully of women, Jiroannes,” he said mildly. “My Aunt Sonia still counsels Bakhtiian that you ought to be sent home in disgrace. He listens to her as closely as he would to my grandmother, who is Mother Orzhekov of our tribe.”

“I beg your pardon,” replied Jiroannes, not wanting to offend his friend. Mitya was too much a savage to understand how civilized women behaved. The Habakar boy doubtless possessed a finer education.

“She is a holy woman,” said Qushid haltingly. “The priests choose girls each year to serve as the Almighty God’s handmaidens. They are God’s brides and are not meant for men.”

“Ah.” Jiroannes nodded. “I see. Such holy women may not be touched by men.”

“Nor would any man touch one. To violate a holy woman is the worst crime any man might commit, except to forswear Almighty God Himself. They are sworn to serve Him, not man.”

Mitya looked mystified. “Do you mean to say those poor women aren’t allowed to get married? Or even to—?” He broke off, flushing. “That’s barbaric!”

“Don’t you have priests?” Qushid asked.

“Of course we have priests, a few, and Singers. Both women and men. But just as the gods granted death to us, so did they also grant us love. It’s not just foolish but dangerous to turn away from that with which the gods have gifted us.”

“It is true,” said Jiroannes thoughtfully, thinking of the captain of his guards and how he had pleaded with his master for permission to bring women into the camp, “that the Everlasting God enjoins a man not to go without a woman for more than ten days. But, of course, it is different for women.”

“It is?” Mitya looked dumbfounded. “How can it be different for women?”

Jiroannes felt unable to answer this question. Instead, he glanced at Qushid and had the pleasure of seeing that the Habakar boy bore a sympathetic look on his face—one sympathetic to Jiroannes. It was, quite simply, impossible to explain some things to the jaran, because they were too uncivilized to understand such sophisticated philosophical and spiritual concepts.

Mitya pulled his horse aside to admire a cart stacked with ripe melons that gleamed a pale rich green in the noonday sun. At once, the old man tending the cart leapt to his feet and presented the boy with the pick of the melons.

“Here,” said Mitya, turning to Qushid, “pay the man whatever is a fair price for these melons and tell him to deliver them to the Orzhekov camp. Aunt Tess loves melons. These look very fine.”

“Surely, your highness,” said Qushid, “you don’t need to pay for the melons. If you wish them, they are yours.”

Mitya blinked. The harsh summer sun of this climate had bleached his fair hair out to a coarse pale blond and tanned his skin until he was almost as dark as the Habakar natives. Over the summer, he had begun to grow a light down of hair along his chin, the first sign of his manhood. Unlike the young riders in the army, he did not follow the fashion and shave off this suggestion of a beard; doubtless, thought Jiroannes, he was hoping enough would grow that it would become noticeable from more than an arm’s length away.

“But if we mean to rule this country fairly, and if this man has already paid his tribute—his taxes—to our army, men we must act according to the law. By that law, it is robbery to take goods without paying for them. So you will pay him.”

At times like these, Jiroannes recalled quite clearly that Mitya was not his friend but a prince, and heir to the most powerful man in this kingdom. He was a sweet boy, charming and unspoiled, especially compared to the princes at the palace school in Vidiya, who had been uniformly conceited, hedonistic, and cruel. But he was also arrogant, as all the jaran were, and well aware of the extent of his power.

Qushid obeyed. How could he not? Jiroannes knew that the Habakar boy held a rank equal to Jiroannes’s own and that it was only cruel fate—or the Hand of the Everlasting God Himself—that had thrown him into the hands of the enemy and forced him to act as Mitya’s servant and chamberlain. It must gall him, to handle money like any steward; to translate words as Syrannus—Jiroannes’s own bond servant—had once done for Jiroannes before the Vidiyan ambassador had learned to speak khush himself. Jiroannes suspected that Mitya knew the rudiments of the Habakar language, but he would never stoop to using it in public. Why should the jaran speak the language of their subjects? It was fitting that their subjects learn to speak the language of their masters.

The transaction completed, their party rode on. Marble columns alternated with poplars and almond trees along the broad avenue they followed into the northwestern district. Here, villas sprawled, airy houses ringed with trees and manicured gardens, fronted by statues and elaborate fountains. Jiroannes noted that about half of the houses lay empty, stripped of their movable wealth. A few brave merchants had remained, casting their lot in with the jaran. Squatters had invaded some of the other houses, men dressed in homespun, rough clothing who looked quite out of place in these elegant homes. Or perhaps they were only slaves, left to tend their master’s possessions until such time as it was safe to return.

Jiroannes doubted it would ever be safe for them to return if they thought that safety consisted of the absence of the jaran. He believed firmly, by now, that Bakhtiian would succeed in conquering the Habakar kingdom utterly. Clearly Bakhtiian intended Mitya to rule the Habakar lands once Mitya came of age. Why else give the boy a general’s son as his interpreter? Why else betroth him to a Habakar princess?

Mitya pulled up his horse at a crossroads and stared down a broad avenue lined with great columns that led like an arrow’s shot to the far distant gate to the heart of the city. Behind those inner walls, Karkand’s population waited out the siege. Did they think their king was coming to relieve them? Or was it rumors of the king’s nephew riding north that comforted them as they waited, day by day, gazing from their highest towers out over the suburbs to the surrounding plain, where the jaran army invested their city?

“Do you like this country?” Jiroannes asked, watching Mitya as the boy rode up next to a column and traced its carved surface with his right hand.

Mitya did not answer immediately. He regarded the avenue and the distant city with a musing expression on his face. Then he reined his mount around and pulled in beside Jiroannes. “When I become king here, will you ask your king to send you as the ambassador to my court?”

Jiroannes didn’t know what to think. At first, he felt a thrill of elation, that he should be invited to serve as an ambassador, and not just as a common ambassador but as a personal one to a powerful king. But it might mean years and years spent in exile from his own land, and even if his success as an ambassador here won him the white Companion’s Sash, and admittance to the Companion’s Circle, what use was such influence if he did not live at court in order to exercise it?

“Well,” said Mitya, turning his horse around and starting back the way they had come, “it was just a thought. It’ll be four years yet before I’m of age. Bakhtiian won’t let any man, not even me, ride in the army before the age of twenty. It doesn’t seem fair, though, that girls can ride with the archers at sixteen. Anatoly Sakhalin’s sister Shura is only seventeen, and she’s fought in three skirmishes and one battle already. Then again, she’ll be married soon and having babies, so perhaps this is the only chance she’ll have to fight.” He considered this in silence.