His Conquering Sword (62 page)

“Where did you get that sword?” Maggie asked. “That saber? That’s a jaran saber.”

“Bakhtiian sent it to me,” said Charles, “together with the armor and a beautifully embroidered red shirt.”

David looked out at the armor. He hadn’t noticed the shirt before, but it was there, under the cuirass, sleeves flowing out in a pattern of red interlaced with a golden road and silver eagles. And David had to smile. As if, by giving him the shirt, Bakhtiian had made Charles a member of his army.

Charles caught David’s eye and smiled. Then he said, “Rhui,” and the surface of the table flowed again, becoming Rhui.

Maggie got up and went over to stare more closely at the saber. She made a comment, more of a grunt, really, that meant nothing except perhaps, “Oh, how interesting.” The only color in the room came from her teal shirt, and from the Rhuian artifacts arranged artfully along the wall. The display itself seemed to flow right out onto the balcony, encompassing the suit of armor and moving beyond it to the horizon. As the sun set over the quiet waters, the evening star woke and burned in the sky, so that it, too, seemed part of the room. The evening star, which was Rhui.

“I miss him,” said Charles. “It’s strange, knowing I’ll probably never see him again.”

David wiped the table clear with a sweep of his arm and went and sat down next to Suzanne. After a moment, Maggie retreated to her place. The four of them sat there in companionable silence. Night bled down over them. The bureau light snapped on, illuminating the wall, spraying a fan of soft white light up onto the saber and the robe.

“‘I long to hear the story of your life,’” said Suzanne, “‘which must take the ear strangely.’ That’s what comes before that line.”

“What line?” demanded Maggie.

Rhui blazed in the sky, and around her, the other stars appeared, thousands upon thousands of them like the fires of the jaran army, like the torch-burdened walls of Karkand, like lights burning in the forest of towers that surrounded the emperor’s palace on Chapal.

“‘I’ll deliver all.’” said Charles, “‘And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales/And sail so expeditious that shall catch Your royal fleet far off.’”

“Oh,” said Maggie.
“That
line.”

David felt at peace. Not for the past, not for the future, but for this moment. For now.

“We’ll lead you to the stately tent of war.

Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine

Threatening the world in high astounding terms

And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

View but his picture in this tragic glass,

And then applaud his fortunes as you please.”

—Marlowe,

Tamburlaine the Great

THE RIDERS LEFT THE SPRAWL
of the jaran camp at dawn, a pack of fifty soldiers, lightly armed, and one khaja man dressed in a drab tunic, carrying a heavy wooden tube strapped along his back. They rode that day across grassy plains transformed into pale gold by the summer sun. They camped, tentless and fireless, under the cloud-streaked sky, and stars and the full moon watched over them.

The next day they came to a low range of hills and a khaja village with tumbled-down walls, and through this they rode without a passing glance, and the khaja villagers trudged on about their tasks with scarcely a look in their direction. In the afternoon they saw a great butte looming before them.

“Goddess in Heaven,” said Marco, “that’s an impressive thing.”

“It is the khayan-sarmiia,” explained Aleksi, “Her Crown Fallen from Heaven to Earth.”

“Whose crown?”

“Mother Sun’s crown. There’s the camp.”

Five and a half years ago, Aleksi had ridden here bringing the news of Sergei Veselov’s death to the army. Now he delivered a messenger from a dead man. No army camped now in the shadow of the huge rock, and yet the camp pitched here was large, riders and archers and women cooking and children carrying water. Set out in a great spiral at the northeastern corner of the butte stood the ten great tents of the ten etsanas of the Eldest Tribes. Two tents shared the middle ground: that of Mother Sakhalin and that of Mother Orzhekov, Bakhtiian’s aunt.

“I don’t see Bakhtiian’s tent,” said Marco as they rode into the Orzhekov encampment.

Aleksi pointed up, toward the heavens. “His tent is pitched up there,” he said.

Marco tilted his head back and stared up at the grainy cliffs that blocked off half the southern horizon from this angle. The sun was already hidden behind it, and its shadow made a cooling screen for the camp against the summer heat. Aleksi dismounted and gave his mount to one of his riders. Marco did the same.

“Papa!” An instant later, a small but fierce object hit Aleksi broadside, and he grunted and laughed and grabbed his daughter under her arms and swung her around. “Dania, you imp,” he scolded, setting her down. She wore a little bow and quiver strapped on her back, and a curved stick thrust in her belt. “Marco, this is my daughter Dania.”

Marco eyed the child with distrust. She folded her arms across her chest and regarded him with disdain. “Your daughter?” he asked, clearly puzzled.

“Yes,” said Aleksi, taking pity on him, khaja that he was, for not understanding immediately how Aleksi could be the father of a child too old to have been born to his wife in the nearly two years since he had seen Marco Burckhardt last. “I married her mother, Svetlana, some months after you left us.”

“Papa,” Dania announced, “Kolia got into trouble again. He burnt his fingers because he was trying to—”

“Hush. I don’t want to hear about it. Did Tess have the baby yet?”

“No, but the doctor sent a runner down today and called Mama and Aunt Sonia to attend, so perhaps she’s having it now.”

Marco gaped up at the rock. It towered up into the heavens, its flat peak seeming to scrape the pale down of clouds that streaked the sky. “Tess is up there having a baby?” he exclaimed.

“She got so huge, and the baby still hadn’t come, so she decided that since she wanted to stay with Bakhtiian anyway, through the council, that she might as well walk up with him and try to start her labor that way.”

A sudden gleam lit Marco’s eyes. Aleksi recognized it: Nadine got the same gleam in her eyes when it came time to scout a new path. “There’s a path that goes up to the top? Can we hike up there?”

“No, you can’t,” said Dania severely. “Only the etsanas and the dyans have walked up. They’re speaking to the gods.”

“Yes, you can,” said Aleksi mildly, bending down to kiss the girl on either cheek. “Go on, little one. Go find your Aunt Nadine and send her to us.” He straightened up to regard Marco, who still had his head thrown back, gazing up at the height. “Tess said we should come up, you and I, once we arrived. But it’s true that it’s a holy place, and that the gathering going on there now is not for any eyes and ears but those of the Ten Elder Tribes.”

“What is going on?” demanded Marco. “Are they all overseeing the birth, or something? To make sure it’s legitimate?”

“What is
legitimate?”
asked Aleksi. “Well, never mind. Let’s go to Nadine’s tent. She’ll want to see the maps.”

Nadine arrived at her tent at the same time as they did, and she greeted Marco with every show of sincerity. While he unsealed the tube and drew out the maps, she asked him a string of questions about the voyage and what the great seas were like to sail on and if it was true that there were monsters sunk in the deeps. Nadine had furnished her outer chamber in a khaja manner, with a table and chairs and a cabinet built and carved in Jeds. Marco unrolled the maps on the table and she gasped and leaned beside him, smoothing her hand out over the heavy parchment.

“David did these, didn’t he?” she said in a low voice.

“David and Rajiv Caer Linn, yes,” answered Marco. “David is well.”

Nadine glanced up at him, at these innocuous words, and then down at the map again. “They’re beautiful maps, and so detailed. How comes it, Marco, that you can sail over the far seas and back again, and yet none of the others can?”

Marco grinned. “I don’t ask permission, for one, and for the other, I’m willing to take the risks onto myself.” Then his face changed abruptly, and he turned to stare at the curtain that separated the outer chamber from the sleeping chamber. “I’ve no one waiting for me, back there, in any case.”

Nadine traced a warren of chambers in a finely detailed corner of the map of the shrine of Morava, and her finger came to rest on one particular room, a tiny little chamber that bore no distinguishing mark to separate it from the rest, nothing except what lay in her memory. “Kirill Zvertkov is taking a jahar of twenty thousands and riding east along the Golden Road, to scout it,” she said, sounding casual. But Aleksi knew her well enough—and had been privy to the arguments—to know how badly she had wanted to go on that expedition, and how firmly Bakhtiian had refused her request. One daughter was not enough to secure the succession.

“East from the plains?” asked Marco. “I haven’t been that way. The Empire of Yarial lies on the eastern shore, they say.”

“There’s a country that lies athwart the Golden Road in the midst of an empty desert,” said Nadine, her voice becoming rich with eagerness, “where the lands shift, where no traveler can walk without becoming lost, where the mountains move at night, and the rivers change their course between the seasons.”

“But, Dina,” said Aleksi, “a country like that could only exist if the khaja there were all sorcerers, or if the gods had put a curse on it.”

“That may be,” said Nadine tartly, “but I’d still like to see it for myself.”

“When did you say that Zvertkov is riding east?” Marco asked.

“In a few days,” answered Nadine. “Are you going to go with him?”

“I just might, at that,” murmured Marco.-”I just might.” Then, to his credit, he read her expression. “I promise to send you reports by every courier who returns to the army.”

Nadine sighed and placed her hands on two corners of the maps, holding them down and staring at them. The entrance flap got pushed aside. A baby announced its presence in a long musical trill, complete with a babble of meaningless but perfectly sweet syllables. “Hello, Feodor,” Nadine said to the table.

Aleksi turned. It was Feodor, of course. Grekov was so proud of his fat baby daughter that the whole camp made fun of him, but then, a father was meant to spoil his daughters. Lara sat propped on his hips, riding on his belt, her chubby little hands gripping his shirt tightly. She had a smile on her face, and she gurgled happily, recognizing Aleksi and her mother. But then, she always had a smile on her face. She was the most easy-natured child that Aleksi had ever met, so sweet-tempered that everyone joked that she must not be Nadine’s.

“Hello, Aleksi,” said Feodor, but his gaze jumped straight to Marco. Aleksi had long since divined that Feodor did not, on the whole, like khaja of any sort, but perhaps that was only because Nadine often seemed half khaja herself. “Well met,” Feodor added politely, addressing Marco.

Marco looked stunned. He stared at Feodor and then at the baby and then back at Feodor again. Finally, thank the gods, he recalled his manners. “Well met,” he replied, equally polite. “I’m Marco Burckhardt.”

“Yes,” said Feodor, “I remember you, of course.” His face softened all at once. “This is our daughter, Lara. She was born last year.”

Marco took one step and then a second, and fetched up in front of the baby. He put out a hand to touch her cheek, and she batted at his hand and laughed. Feodor smiled fondly on her. Marco looked back and at that moment Nadine lifted her head to gaze at him, and at her daughter. Their eyes met, hers and Marco’s, and some message passed between them that Aleksi could not read and Feodor, tickling Lara’s chin, was not even aware of. He set her down and steadied her, and she took a step, another step, a third, and more by dint of forward motion than of balance crossed the space to her mother. Nadine scooped her up in her arms. The contrast was greatest with Feodor, of course, with his fair hair and complexion, but even next to Nadine and her dark hair, Lara looked quite dusky, like twilight, with her creamy brown skin and her coarse black ringlets.

“She’s hungry,” said Feodor. He looked at Aleksi, and Aleksi looked at Marco, and the three men left the tent, leaving Nadine to her daughter and her maps.

Outside, Feodor excused himself and went off to mediate a dispute that had erupted between two packs of children.

“Does he know?” Marco demanded.

“Does he know what?” Aleksi asked, mystified by Marco’s sudden fierce expression.

“Does David know he has a child?”

“David ben Unbutu, do you mean? How should I know? Does he have a child?”

“Aleksi, you’d have to be blind not to see that that child isn’t Feodor Grekov’s daughter, not with that coloring. She’s David’s.”

The comment puzzled Aleksi. “I beg your pardon, Marco, but she
is
Feodor Grekov’s daughter. Perhaps no one has told you, but there is nothing more insulting you could ever say to a man, except to insult his mother or sister, of course. I thought even the khaja knew that.”

The speed with which Burckhardt backed down surprised Aleksi. “No, you’re right. But—how did she—? She ought to have died.”

“Who ought to have died? Oh, you mean Nadine and the child, just like Tess almost did, with the early one? It’s true that she was sick for months after the birth. Everyone thought she was going to die, even Feodor. Even Bakhtiian. Tess was the only one who thought she might live. Bakhtiian sat at her bedside for twenty days straight and served her with his own hands, until he saw that she would live. He and Varia Telyegin nursed her through it. Even Dr. Hierakis says that Varia Telyegin is a great healer. But the baby was always strong. Feodor got the baby a wet nurse and then they had the worst arguments when Nadine recovered and he wanted her to nurse the child herself. I’ve never seen Nadine so weak and subdued. I think she only said one ill-tempered thing a day for an entire season. She’s much better now.”

“Of course, it’s none of my business,” said Marco hastily, looking uncomfortable at hearing these revelations.