The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (44 page)

“I’m returning these to you,” Anatoly said, and held them out to her.

She froze.

“It is a great honor for a man to be a young woman’s first chosen,” he went on, his voice as soft and caressing as the breeze, “and a great responsibility.” He sounded as if he had said these words before. But what girl wouldn’t want a man like Anatoly Sakhalin as her first lover?

She lifted her eyes finally from the flowers, white with a center of red, and he dropped his gaze away from her at once. A moment later he looked at her.

She had an instant of blistering revelation, that washed over her like heat. He
desired
her.
He
desired her. She simply could not move.

He smiled, slightly, the merest uplifting of his lips, as if he understood something she did not. He took a step toward her, a second, and lifted a hand, brushed it along her shoulders and settled it around her, comforting, except that now his whole side touched her and he was warm and solid and she was utterly terrified. It had been safe to become infatuated with him when he was on the other side of a room. This wasn’t safe.

“Look there,” he murmured. “A fourth moon is rising.”

When she looked up, he kissed her. It was the briefest touch, gentle, not insistent. Her heart pounded in her chest. She wanted to kiss him again. She
wanted
him.

And why not?

Even though she knew who must have put the flowers by his saddle, why not? Everyone else was gone. What better night than this night? The actors had said the summons translated as “flower night” also. She summoned up every bit of courage she had and tilted her chin up and kissed him. And he responded.

Ilyana had such a vivid flash of her father, intertwined with that awful khaja man dressed up in jaran clothing, kissing him, caressing him, that she started back, shaking.

“Yana?” Anatoly did not reach for her. He just stood there, quiet, steady. The moons illuminated his face, a handsome face for a man as old as he was. She suddenly wondered if her father had ever tried to seduce him. Flinched to even think of it, knowing that her father surely wouldn’t be that stupid. Anatoly Sakhalin came out of the old traditions, schooled by the strictest taskmaster of all: Mother Sakhalin. He scarcely spoke to Hyacinth and Yevgeni, except to be scathingly polite. Like Karolla, he held to the old ways even in the new land. The old ways, like flower night.

Except that now all she could think of was her father. She could not get him out of her mind, him and that man, him, the way his body moved. She gulped down air. Her cheeks burned. She had to say something, anything.

“I’m sorry.” Her breathing came in ragged bursts. “I didn’t—I mean, if I did, it would be you, but—” She broke off.

He glanced down at the bouquet and up again at her. His expression changed to the stiff arrogance of a Sakhalin prince; he looked mightily annoyed. “You didn’t put these flowers there.” Then he swore.

Mortified, she fled.

But no matter where she fled, it didn’t matter. In the end she had to go back to her mother’s tent.

She stopped under the awning. The younger children were asleep, and Valentin lay on a pillow with the baby snuffling on his chest. Nipper was gone. Karolla looked up at her blandly.

“I want to talk to you alone,” said Ilyana in a low voice.

Valentin shut his eyes and pretended to be asleep, making little snoring sounds.

“You put those flowers by his saddle!” Tears came, hot, to her eyes. “How could you?”

“It is past time—”

“I don’t
care
if you think it’s past time. It’s
my
time. It’s my choice.”

“You don’t want to lie with Anatoly Sakhalin?”

“Not tonight! I wanted to go with the actors. I wanted to go with David!”

“David ben Unbutu?” Karolla considered this, frowning. “He’s not jaran, but if you won’t have Anatoly Sakhalin, I suppose he’ll do well enough. He is one of Soerensen’s trusted captains, and I suppose if he was good enough to be Nadine Orzhekov’s lover, then he is good enough for you, Yana.”

Yana shrieked in wordless fury. “That isn’t what I meant! How could you? How could you? I hate you!” She burst into tears and despised herself for doing so. She wanted to run anywhere, as long as it was away, only there wasn’t anywhere to go.

“Unnatural child,” said Karolla calmly. “It is selfish of you not to be done with what other girls celebrated long before. The baby needs a name, and I have not yet offered blood to Grandmother Night.”

“All you think about is yourself! Papa would never have done something like this to me!”

Valentin snorted.

Ilyana would have slapped him, except he had the baby, who had woken up and was beginning to complain.

“That is enough, Valentin,” admonished Karolla. “Ilyana you will apologize to me.”

“I will not! You’re the one who should apologize to me.”

They stared each other down. Finally, Ilyana spun and ran away around the tent. Except there really was nowhere to go. She sat down, arms wrapped around her knees, out in the midst of the gardens, praying that no one—gods, especially not Anatoly Sakhalin—would come looking for her.

Two moons set and a fifth rose up over the horizon by the time the Company returned. She saw a glow in the distance and then heard them, laughing and singing, their celebration like a scent on the wind. She swallowed sobs and pressed her fingers into her eyes to stop more tears from coming. She had never felt more alone in her life.

“I want to go home,” she said in a small voice, except she could see her mother’s tent as a hulking shadow not one hundred paces from where she huddled. That was all that she had of home. Before that, they had been outsiders living with the Veselov tribe, on the sufferance of Arina Veselov, and before that, a dimmer memory, outlaws, riding with a tribe that was not truly a tribe, only a collection of people united in their goal to kill Ilyakoria Bakhtiian. Before that—but there was nothing before that. Karolla Arkhanov had turned her back on her mother and aunt’s tribe before Ilyana had been born. She had turned her back on them to follow her father and her husband, and so sundered her children forever from their true home.

“I’ll never forgive you for that,” muttered Ilyana fiercely and buried her head against her knees, shuddering, clutching herself against herself, holding on.

Rain misted the ground and swept away, leaving its cool touch like a distant memory.

“Oh, dear,” a woman said. Ilyana jerked her head up. David and Diana stood not ten paces from her.

“What are you doing out here?” David asked kindly.

She burst into tears.

He took a step toward her, hesitated, and looked at Diana. “I’d better get her father.”

Ilyana was crying too hard to protest.

Diana knelt beside her, embracing her. “Dear child. Do you want to talk about it?”

Ilyana could only bawl. “I can’t,” she gasped out. “I’m so unhappy.”

“Oh, Yana.” Diana sighed deeply. “So many of us are. I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

They stayed that way until Vasil came. Diana retreated quickly, leaving them alone. Vasil pulled Ilyana to her feet unceremoniously and studied her while she gulped down sobs and wiped her nose with the back of one hand.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t want to get your costume wet.”

He hugged her. “Yana! Someone can clean it. Why are you crying, little one?”

She shrugged in his arms.

“Next time I’ll see that you come with us. You can stay backstage with the techs. It was marvelous, Yana. The house had perfect acoustics. I walked all through it before the audience arrived, except for the boxes that were sealed off, and I even saw the box set aside for Duke Naroshi. I took off one of my rings and left it in his chair.”

“Papa!” Appalled, she pulled back and stared up at him.

“Yana,” he said gravely, “you must learn the basic lesson that those who have power will use it, and those who don’t must learn to control those who do. You and I have nothing—”

“We’re pretty,” she said bitterly, choking down sobs. “Everyone says so.” Anatoly Sakhalin had thought so, staring at her in the moonlight.

“No, we’re
beautiful.
Never forget that. That’s what sets us apart from others and makes them desire us. Duke Naroshi is a powerful man—”

“He isn’t a
man
, Papa. He’s an alien.”

“It doesn’t matter. People are the same everywhere. They want the same things.”

“Charles Soerensen didn’t want you, did he?” she asked suddenly. “Or you wouldn’t care about Duke Naroshi. Papa, that’s disgusting.”

“That Soerensen wasn’t interested? I admit it puzzles me, but it isn’t worth dwelling on. Naroshi must have better connections with the Empire. Perhaps I can even be introduced to the emperor himself.”

“And then what?” Ilyana asked, curious despite her heavy heart. “What would you do?”

But he got that look on his face and he let go of her and stared at the stars. One of those stars probably was the star around which Rhui orbited. “I would have him give me Rhui,” he whispered, “and everything on it, to do with as I wish.”

He fell silent. She did not interrupt him.

After a long time, he looked down at her. “Why were you crying, Yana! You shouldn’t be unhappy.”

“Do you think I’m too old to be—? I didn’t know and then—” She broke off, bit her lip, and could not go on.

“You’re not making any sense.”

But she just couldn’t tell him. The words choked in her throat and she knew it wasn’t right. A girl wasn’t supposed to speak of these things to a man. She should have an aunt to confide in, a grandmother, a cousin. Gods, she couldn’t confide in Diana about
this.

A memory struggled up from the depths, of Arina Veselov’s good-natured and thoughtful brother Anton, who had died in the battle at Karkand: She could have confided in him. He had been like an uncle to her. She could trust him. As she looked at her beautiful father, who watched her with what was truly sincere concern, insofar as he was capable of feeling concern for people other than himself, she understood that she could never trust him or confide in him.

“I’m just lonely sometimes, Papa, here.”

“We’re going to be here a while longer. We might even be able to tour farther into the Empire after this. Perhaps we could send to your friend Kori’s parents and see if she wanted to come spend some time with you. Would you like that?”

Ilyana wondered suddenly if Kori had had her flower night yet, in the time she’d been away, even though she knew it was done differently with Kori’s people. Would Kori, given the chance, choose someone like Anatoly Sakhalin as her first lover?

“I’d like that,” she said.

“Perhaps Duke Naroshi would like a dance troupe to perform here,” mused Vasil. He took her hand and together they walked back to the caravansary.

Anatoly waited until Ilyana had vanished into the darkness before he moved. Impulsively, he flung the bouquet into the air and flowers scattered down around him, flecking the dry earth. He walked back to Diana’s chamber, stripped, and threw himself on his cot, tossing and turning, furious with Karolla Arkhanov. Furious with himself. Poor Ilyana was just a pawn tossed between them. It wasn’t right. It
was
right; any man accounted himself honored to be a girl’s first chosen lover. But it wasn’t right that he, Anatoly, should put his frustrated love for Diana onto Yana. She was a beautiful girl, unspoiled, hardworking. In the tribes, a hundred young men would be competing for her attention by now, and her mother would have to be careful that some reckless young rider didn’t just mark her out of hand. But she was little more than a child. Truly, she was still like a child in some ways. However beautiful she might be, she was not a Singer. She was not Diana.

Thinking of his wife, it almost seemed that he had made her flesh. The Company had returned. He heard their gay laughter and the bright sound of their singing, a tribe unto themselves, rejoicing in a victory. He refused to go out and join them—an outsider—in their celebration.

After a long long time, Diana pushed aside the curtain and slid into the room, giggling, disheveled, sounding drunk. The sleeves of her gown had slipped so far down that he could see the gleam of her shoulders, pale, inviting, in the moonlit chamber.

“Are you awake?” she whispered, and then went on, either knowing he was awake or not caring. “It went wonderfully. The Duke built a wonderful theater, just for us! Do you know that there were separate boxes for the males and the females I’d guess of highest rank and the female boxes were shielded so we couldn’t see them, but they could see us or at least they must have been able to and the house was just filled with Chapalii, although I suppose they must have been all males in the house because they don’t mix, do they?” She laughed under her breath and leaned down over him. “Anatoly, you’re naked! Ummm. Here, help me off with this—”

He needed no more invitation than that. He drowned himself in her.

“You’re serious tonight,” she said later, still brilliant with her Singer’s glory.

“I love you,” he said desperately.

“Oh, Anatoly.”

But her expression betrayed everything. She did not truly love him anymore, as a wife loves a husband. She pitied him. He shut his eyes, as if that could obliterate the awful knowledge. And he made love with her anyway, because it was all he had.

“Oh, Goddess,” said Diana in the morning, tucked in close beside him. “I have a headache.” She smiled at him, bleary-eyed in the bright shafts of sunlight that streaked the chamber. “I’d forgotten how much I like you,” she added, and rolled up on top of him and kissed him, brushing his hair back from his temples.

“I am content,” he replied softly.

“Are you? You have to be bored here. I’m sorry you ever left the tribes.”

He winced.

“No, I don’t mean it like that. I wish you would stop feeling sorry for yourself all the time. I know we… don’t always get along now. But with the tribes you had something to do, you
knew
who you were and what part you played.”

“Even if it was a part you despise? That of a soldier?”