His Conquering Sword (56 page)

“As you command, Tai-endi.”

“Oh, and Cara, let her come to the audience with the baron. Perhaps if she sees the way he treats me, she’ll understand that I’m female, too.”

Cara paused by the small door set into the wall on the dais which led into the private apartments beyond. “What? Are you saying that you think Baron Santer treats you differently than he did Charles?”

Tess gave a short bark of laughter. “I suspect that the baron believes that if he could only bed me, he could take control of Jeds back into his own hands. It’s time he and I had a little talk.”

“I’ll be sure to be there,” said Cara, and she led the ke into the private quarters.

Aleksi sauntered up from the far door. He had changed, Tess reflected, watching him. He had grown, or refound, his confidence. To her surprise, she liked him better this way, and at times she felt a little embarrassed at the way she had treated him before, using him for her own purposes, her own needs, rather like Charles used her.

“I don’t think Baron Santer likes taking orders from you, or running your errands,” he said now.

“I don’t either,” said Tess. “Let’s go find Niko and Juli. We need to plot out our tactics.”

In the end, she met with the baron in her private salon, a setting intimate enough to suggest that she wished to confide in him and yet provided with a curtained gallery from which Cara and the ke might observe the scene. She kept Juli with her, like a chaperone.

Shown in by her chatelaine, the baron bowed, remarked the elderly jaran woman with his eyes but without a greeting, and seated himself in a chair opposite Tess at the only table in the room. It was cool enough this evening that Tess had built a fire in the fireplace, and candles burned on the mantelpiece, echoing the lanterns set at intervals into the whitewashed walls. “Cakes, Baron?” Tess asked, offering him the platter with her own hands. He took one, and thanked her. “You have administered Jeds wisely, Baron,” she remarked casually as he nibbled at the cake. “I commend you. But it is past time that we discuss how Jeds must be administered in the future.”

Coolly, he finished the cake and then regarded her with his flat gaze. “Your wish is my command, your highness.”

“But surely, Baron, you must know that your understanding of the minutiae of Jedan governance far exceeds mine. I rely on you to continue to administer wisely together with the governor I have brought from my husband’s empire. I, of course, have only my inheritance from my brother, may he rest in peace, what trifling knowledge I learned at the university I attended in Erthe, and my husband’s army to sustain me.”

Startled by this last addition, he flashed a gaze up at the two portraits hanging side by side over the mantle, the portraits David had painted: one of her, one of Ilya. Tess was inordinately fond of Ilya’s portrait. “Your husband’s army?”

“I have this map—” She lifted a hand, and Juli brought the map over to her, took away the platter of cakes, and brought a lantern. Tess rose. The baron rose at once. Smoothing out the map, Tess spread it over the surface of the table and placed the lantern on one corner. Its glow spread out over the parchment like the favor of God, bright nearest the flame and fading to darkness at the margins. “You see, Baron, that even with the new information I have added to my map, gleaned from Jedan merchants, I can’t be sure how long it will take for Bakhtiian’s army to reach Filis, given the ground he must cover and secure in between.” She covered Filis, the principal city of the great princedom that lay to the north and east of Jeds, with her index finger.

“An army can meet many obstacles,” said the baron cautiously.

Tess smiled and looked up to see him staring straight at her. He lowered his gaze at once, reminding her incongruously of a jaran man, although in his case modesty had nothing to do with it. “Yes,” she agreed. “That is why I feel inclined to install your son as head of the Jedan force that will, slowly and cautiously, of course, push our sphere of influence northward, in order to prepare the ground for the advance of the jaran army. Better that they stable their horses in Filis than in Jeds.”

He blanched. “My son? But he just turned twenty!”

So there
was
something he cared about beyond himself and his power. “It is a great honor for your son, Baron, and may he bring your house glory by his exploits. You have a daughter by your first wife as well, a bit older, I believe, than the boy and sadly enough, unwed, is she not?”

This time he went gray. “Yes,” he said stiffly. A certain fire sparked in his eyes. The daughter was as old as his second wife, and while not a beauty, neither was she a horror; perhaps sentiment had kept her by her father’s side all these years.

“There are few families, Baron, who will have the opportunity of marrying into the princely houses of the jaran. I know you will welcome this chance to marry her to a jaran prince. Certainly, from all I have heard, she is worthy of the honor.” She rolled up the map and tied it closed with a thin strip of leather. She did not sit down. “It will mean she must travel north. I will take her with me when I return to the plains.”

For a long moment, he said nothing. Juli watched in the background. The windows here looked down on the prince’s private garden, a riot of buds and blossoms during the day, now that it was spring. A sliver of moon shone through the windows, and the garden lay dense and shadowed beneath, the gray walls of the farther apartments rising on the other side, locking her in. A sudden pang struck Tess. Gods, how she missed the plains. How she missed Ilya. And Sonia, and the children. The jaran.

“What if I refuse?” asked the baron softly.

“Baron, your daughter will be safe with me as long as you administer Jeds wisely in my name. Your mother was old Prince Casimund’s only niece, and by such lineage you were granted the regency. And you have proven your worth to me. I would prefer to keep you as regent. That way your daughter’s children may come to govern Jeds in time.”

“My
daughter’s
children!”

Even in the coldest fish there lurked surprising heat. She could see that the idea, shocking as it might seem, attracted him. “Your daughter’s children, sired by a jaran prince.”

He hesitated. But she already had him. “Do you have a prince in mind, your highness?”

“Why, yes,” said the Prince of Jeds. “I do. His first wife, ah, died recently. He comes from the eldest house of the jaran.”

There was a long silence. It was very quiet here, muted by walls. The wind could not move freely within the palace, and in some ways, that was what she missed the most.

“Even before you arrived,” said Baron Santer suddenly, “we heard reports of a great general in the north, leading his hordes against ancient and civilized lands. It seems that every kingdom he has met has fallen before him.” He paused and touched the end of the map. “But you and I both know how far away that is.”

“Do not forget, Baron,” she replied softly, “that a part of that army has already come to Jeds.” In deference to the customs of Jeds, she wore now, as she always did in public, a gown, but in the four months since she had arrived, black and red had quickly become the most fashionable colors and the cut of the gowns had altered from a high, loose waist to a lower, more fitted one. Because she also wore her saber. “You are wise enough to make your own judgment.”

He bowed. “You flatter me, your highness.”

“I don’t think so,” said the Prince of Jeds. “I feel sure that you understand where your advantage lies.” She did not add, as an important and well connected governor in a growing empire or as a minor, and threatened, prince of a small trading city. If he could even usurp the throne. He could bide his time and wait to see what happened. Doubtless he would. But meanwhile, Jeds would remain stable under his—and Niko and Juli’s—guiding hands.

“I understand,” he said, and bowed in the florid style that was usually reserved for the audience hall.

“Thank you, Baron. You may go. Have your daughter call on me tomorrow.”

He met her eyes one last time. He had banked it all down again, concealing himself. “As you command,” he replied. Juli showed him out.

“How in hell,” said Tess to the air, “did Marco ever make a friend of
that?”

“Not bad,” said Cara from the balcony, drawing the curtain aside, “though perhaps a little overplayed. Baron Santer was a notorious ladies man when he was young. He and Marco got along famously. You’d never guess it now, but when Marco as the first Prince Charles instituted those odd sumptuary laws that helped reform the horrible brothels, the baron was one of his great supporters. There was even a rumor that his first wife was barren, and that the two children were actually the children of a girl off the streets, a courtesan he fell in love with who was later murdered by his wife.”

“Oh, God.” Tess walked back to the stairway that led up, behind an arras, to the gallery above. She laughed, just a little. “It’s an endless tangled web, isn’t it?” Then she stopped stock-still, holding the arras aside with one hand, because there, in the dimness at the top of the steps, stood the ke.

Unveiled.

Tess stared. Then she chuckled. The ke looked like a Chapalii, only its skin was scalier, more alienlike. Had Tess expected a revelation, like the visitation of an angel? “I am pleased,” she said carefully to the ke, “that you trust me.”

The ke descended the steps, and Cara followed behind her. Tess backed up to give them room to come through into the salon. The ke examined the chamber for a long while. Tess only watched.

“It is true,” said the ke suddenly, “that these humans are quite primitive. Scarcely better than animals.”

Tess felt her mouth drop open. She snapped it shut. The ke had addressed her in common Chapalii, without one single honorific.

“I beg your pardon,” added the ke, “for addressing you in the
che-lin
tongue, but surely you cannot know the deeper tongue.”

It took Tess a moment to answer because she thought her heart would burst, she was so excited. “I do not know of such a tongue—but what may I call you? And how did you come to realize that I am female?”

“Are
you female?” asked the ke. Her voice, like that of the males, was colorless, and because of her skin, Tess could not tell at all what emotions she felt.

“Yes, I am. But then why unveil yourself? I don’t understand.”

“By your own testimony you are married to one of these humans. Thus you have become a nameless one, just as I am. The Tai-endi is dead, just as the Protocol Office has proclaimed.” The ke wandered over to stare at the fire as if the lick and spit of flame engrossed or appalled her. “It is no wonder that the Tai-en has kept you in exile here on this planet.”

Tess looked at Cara. Cara shrugged. The ke lifted a hand to the candles and held it close, as if testing their heat. Kept her in exile to spare himself the shame? Or to protect her? Or for some other, alien reason that Tess could not guess? And at the same time, Tess felt an odd exhilaration, as if the extinction of the Tai-endi—in this ke’s mind, at least—granted her a sudden, reckless freedom. “You may call me Tess. Is there some—name—some
word,
that I might call you?”

The ke touched two fingers to the cherubs carved into the mantlepiece and drew her hand along the frieze, studying its heights and valleys. “By decree older than the eldest of the emperor’s towers did ten of the first families lose their names because of their rashness and their pride.” She turned. Tess walked closer. The ke was tall, as all Chapalii were, but layers of robes disguised her thinness. Her eyes gleamed, golden irises slit vertically by lozenge-shaped pupils. “So they became the nameless ones, and so did other names become extinct as time passed, as years turned back on themselves and followed the same course again, and again. Without a name there is no true existence, and yet, without a name, existence is boundless. So must the prince who becomes emperor lose his name. So must the ke live without names.”

“But the Tai-en Mushai lost his name, and yet he is still remembered.”

The ke wandered over to the table and unrolled the parchment, using her hands as much as her eyes to explore it. “So is he imprisoned in Sorrowing Tower forever,” she replied.

“Well,” said Tess in Anglais. “But is it possible that I might learn the—” She hesitated, shot through with hope and the fear of disappointment, riddled with it, like the very pain of the wound itself. “That I might learn the deeper tongue?”

The ke rolled up the map and tied it exactly as Tess had tied it before. “You might. But you must master
che-lin
first.”

Cara raised her eyebrows. Tess had to smile. How blithely they all praised her for speaking Chapalii so well. But that did not mean that by Chapalii standards she was fluent. “With your help,” said Tess humbly, “I will endeavor to do so.”

The ke nodded, like master to pupil. “When do you wish to begin?” she asked.

D
IANA COULD NOT HELP
but compare the two modes of travel: the constant jarring sway of the wagons in the army’s train against the luxurious appointments of Soerensen’s ducal yacht. On this yacht, the Company returned to Earth.

Vasil was in a foul temper, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw his scarred face. He even yelled at Yana one day, when she came to show him the three-dimensional picture she had drawn on a demi-modeler under Hal’s supervision. Yana burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Karolla, for the first time in that long trip, came to life. “You selfish beast!” she cried, standing up. Anton lay cradled in her arms. “How dare you speak that way to her!” Diana, sitting with her, rose at once.

Vasil practically snarled. “Leave me alone,” he said, and turned his face toward the wall.

At that moment, the door whisked open to reveal Yana, crying noisily in the passageway, and Dr. Kinzer. “Aha!” said Dr. Kinzer tartly, tapping her fingers on her slate. “Feeling sorry for himself again, is he? M. Veselov, you really are going to have to learn some patience. Now, I beg your pardon, M. Arkhanov, but I do need a few moments alone with my patient.”