The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (92 page)

“We must go home,” Anatoly told his jahar. “We must consolidate our position before we attempt any campaigns.”

“Where is home?” Rachelle asked. “I mean, this ship is my home. Where is yours?”

“The plains,” he answered, but his own reply puzzled him. How could he govern his principality from the plains, unless he built a khaja tower with which to communicate with the universe beyond? “But I think it would be wise,” he added, temporizing, “to go first to Charles Soerensen.”

Branwen caught his eye and lifted her chin, which meant she agreed with him. He smiled back at her. He appreciated her gesture of the night before. He had no doubt it would be repeated, or at least he hoped it would. So few khaja women knew how a proper woman ought to behave.

“We’re being hailed.” Florien tapped one ear with the heel of a hand. “I’m not hearing this right. Isn’t a
Yao
a prince? We’ve got a prince wanting to come on board. Or at least, that’s what it says.”

“I will meet him…?” Anatoly looked questioningly at Branwen.

“Route them through the starboard lock. That’s the hold you first came in through, Anatoly. I’ll send Summer down with you, for brawn, and I’ll monitor from up here with Florien and Rachelle. Ben, you stay in reserve. Moshe, out of sight.”

Anatoly went down to the forward hold with Summer. After a long wait, the lock cycled open and two Chapalii stepped through. Anatoly hesitated, then noticed that they wore the tunic and trousers that identified them as stewards. They bowed to him. After a moment two robed Chapalii stepped through. He waited and they bowed to him as well. Last, a single Chapalii cleared the lock and halted to survey the plain metal hold. Anatoly could not, of course, read this creature’s expression, and in any case he had learned that the Chapalii did not have mobile enough facial muscles to express emotion through facial quirks and tugs. Nor did the Chapalii show the least trace of color on his pallid skin. All that distinguished him was his plain black robe and the teardrop pendant hanging from a chain around his neck. Anatoly waited, not wanting to make the mistake of bowing to a Chapalii of lower rank. He supposed that such a gesture would be fatal.

The Chapalii did not acknowledge him. Instead, it prowled the hold, touching every surface, picking up any loose objects and examining them closely. Only a noble of equal rank to his own would dare to be so rude.

“I am Anatoly Sakhalin,” said Anatoly into the silence. “Do you have a name or title by which I might politely address you?”

The prince did not bother to look at him. He was too busy trying to pry open one of Benjamin’s crates of sherry. “If you can discover it, you may use it.”

“Excuse me,” said Anatoly, irritated by this crass trespassing. “That crate contains valuable and fragile goods which are the property of one of my soldiers.”

The prince looked at him. He had an ovoid head and a single smear of permanent color on the left side of his hairless skull, where a human’s ear would have been. Except for that, he looked much like Naroshi: big-eyed, albino pale, with a slit mouth and three translucent ivory ridges lining his neck between his jaw and his shoulder.
Like gills
, Anatoly thought, recalling images of fish and newts from Portia’s animal program. Without replying, the prince headed for the door that led into the rest of the ship.

Anatoly moved to block him. “No. I’m not inviting you in.”

The prince inclined his head. Perhaps the gesture was meant as a compliment. Perhaps not. Behind him, his retainers stood in silence, fingers curled together in artful patterns. “The Tai-en Naroshi lies within my house. Now his daiga holdings have become yours. Don’t believe that I will forget this.”

Without waiting for Anatoly’s reply, he turned and walked back into the lock. His retainers followed him out, and the lock cycled shut.

“They’ve detached,” sang Florien’s voice over the ship’s com.

“Hell and blarney,” said Summer. “I’ve never seen one of those chameleons be just plain rude like that. How can
that
be a prince?”

Anatoly felt a shudder through the hull as the prince’s ship removed its grip from the
Gray Raven.
He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Only a prince can afford to be that ill mannered,” he said, and was abruptly reminded of some of his uncles.

“Now I remember why Earth got rid of this hereditary aristocracy business,” said Summer. “What a jerk!”

Anatoly chuckled.

Summer glanced at him. “Too bad you’re not my type,” she added, and with that ambivalent praise left hanging in the air, they left the hold.

They took the fastest route back to Odys, which meant four days to Crossover and a much slower eighteen days to Odys.

“If they’ve got shortcuts built in,” said Branwen, surveying the three dimensional chart of their progress, “then they only exist in old imperial space.”

“Or they only exist going to and from Chapal,” suggested Florien.

Anatoly said nothing, he only listened.

In orbit around Odys, he and Branwen transferred to a shuttle and were ferried downside. Anatoly flipped through the viewscreen, but Rhui was out of sight, far away around the ecliptic, on the other side of Mother Sun.

Charles Soerensen greeted him personally on the landing pad. As well he might. He looked…wary, as a man looks who is confronting an animal that he is not sure has been tamed. Anatoly greeted him politely and waited for him to make the first move. After all, Anatoly now held an insurmountable position on the board. And Soerensen knew it.

“We need to talk,” said Soerensen blandly, waving him toward a ground car. “But first, you have a visitor.”

He said no more, just made small talk, and when they reached the great shell of his palace, he led Branwen away and left Anatoly at the door of an informally furnished room, plain white couches overlooking two walls of windows that opened onto the flat vista of the tule marshes.

The woman and the child inside did not see him immediately. How tender the mother was, kneeling to let her daughter whisper in her ear, smiling fondly as she replied to the question; how sweetly the child kissed her on the cheek and led her by the hand to look out the great floor-to-ceiling windows that let in light and sky.

How beautiful they looked together. He could not help but fall in love with Diana all over again, seeing her framed against the heavens.

Portia turned. “Papa!” She ran into his arms.

He swung her around and kissed her a hundred times, until, squealing and giggling, she begged to be put down. But after he put her down, she wrapped her arms around his leg and clung to him, grinning with sweet ferocity.

Diana did not come over to him. She hesitated, and he just stood there, dumb with longing, stricken with foreboding.

A woman Anatoly vaguely recognized appeared in the doorway. “Here she is,” the woman said. “Portia, dear, did you want to come get that surprise you made for your father?”

Portia did not want to leave, nor did Anatoly want to relinquish her, but he could see that this was some elaborate play staged by Soerensen, by Diana, by this woman, and at last he pried her off and sent her on her way, promising to come straight to her. Thus fortified, she went willingly.

He turned to his wife. “No greeting?” he asked lightly. He wanted to embrace her, to wrap himself in her and let her, for a time, relieve him of the terrible burden that the emperor had placed on him. She did not move. She did not smile her glorious smile. She offered him no light, no warmth. She stood stiffly, as if willing him to ignore the curve of her body under her dress.

“I had to tell you myself,” she said haltingly. “Is it true? What they say of you? That what happened…? Are you really… named a prince by the emperor?”

“Yes.”

It was like talking to a well-meaning stranger.

“I’m sorry, then, to dump this on you now. But there’s no point in waiting. It’ll just make it harder for Portia later.” She let out a breath. Even at three body lengths from her, he felt its finality. “I’ve retained an advocate and she will be serving dissolution papers on our marriage in two days.”

“But, Diana…” Floundering, helpless, he could only stare at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he knew then that her decision was as irrevocable as the emperor’s.

J
AELLE SAT ALONE UNDER
an awning in the middle of the jaran camp. Soldiers had hustled her here last night, back through the ranks of jaran soldiers who were streaming into White Tower, and dumped her. She supposed she was now a prisoner of the jaran, rather than Prince Janos. What had happened to Katerina? Did Stefan still live?

With dawn, the stream of soldiers outward from the camp ceased, and a few casualties came in, but otherwise a hush fell with the sun’s rising. Jaelle shivered, pulled her cloak more tightly around herself, and shut her eyes. She could not sleep.

“Jaelle! You will attend me.”

Rusudani stood under the awning of a neighboring tent. Jaelle rose hastily and hurried over to her.

“Tell these guards that they are to escort me into the castle. I have spoken to them, but they cannot understand me. I do not speak Taor as well as you do. Yet.” A sharp glance from the princess served to remind Jaelle that Rusudani had not yet forgotten her former dependence on Jaelle’s translations, and how Jaelle had defied her.

“Yes, my lady.” But the jaran soldiers could not understand her, either. Evidently none of them spoke Taor. She attempted a few words in khush, but these also failed to produce any effect.

“I will go to the castle!” Rusudani proclaimed.

“Do you think it is safe, my lady? There may still be fighting.”

Rusudani gave her a scornful look, hoisted up the trailing edge of her gown, and began to walk. Her jaran guards had phlegmatic temperaments. They simply found horses, mounted everyone up, and in this way they went into the town, which lay deathly quiet in the morning sun. The gates were held by jaran soldiers. After a brief exchange, Rusudani’s guards escorted her straight up the embankment that led to White Tower. Rusudani dismounted in the outer ward and Jaelle followed her in to the great hall. There was gathered the remnants of the castle’s population. Lady Jadranka sat with austere dignity in her chair. She looked washed clean with grief, and her hair uncovered, had gone to white at its roots. Janos’s seat was empty.

Rusudani swept up the hall and mounted the two steps that led to the dais. She approached Janos’s chair and surveyed it. Jaelle, behind her, saw Lady Jadranka’s mouth tighten.

“You have no right to sit there,” said Lady Jadranka, her voice rimmed with frost.

Rusudani turned and examined her coolly. “I may do as I please. This castle is mine, now.”

Jadranka stood up slowly. Yesterday, she had moved like a much younger woman. Now she looked as frail of body as a crone. But her voice lacked no power. “It is not yours. It reverts to me. You gained none of his inheritance by marrying him.”

An odd expression colored Rusudani’s face. “Where is your son?”

“He is dead. I had supposed you had heard already, since it was by your hand that he was betrayed.”

The word hung in the air, proclaimed loudly enough that Jaelle cowered, expecting Rusudani to reply fiercely. Instead, voices swelled in the anteroom and a delegation clattered in: The jaran had returned from securing the town. At once, the Mircassian envoy rushed forward and knelt before Rusudani, watching her warily, head slightly bowed. She gestured to him to move aside.

“Jaelle, you will translate what I cannot understand. Mind that you do it faithfully, or I will have you killed.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Jaelle watched them come forward. They did not look like supplicants, although Rusudani pretended to receive them as such. To Jaelle’s surprise, Bakhtiian was not with them. Instead, the Prince of Jeds stopped before the dais, escorted by two jaran soldiers.

“I see you have taken possession of the castle, Princess Rusudani,” said the Prince of Jeds. She still wore armor, strips of leather and plate decorated with red ribbons, and had her helmet tucked under her right elbow. Without giving Rusudani time to reply, she turned deliberately to Lady Jadranka. “You are Lady Jadranka? My niece, Princess Katerina, has asked to be remembered to you, my lady. She begs for your forgiveness, and asked me to tell you that the insult to her honor dictated the outcome.”

Lady Jadranka inclined her head slightly. She swallowed, but it was a moment before she could speak. “It is too early to speak of forgiveness. I do not hold Princess Katherine responsible for the fall of White Tower.”

The words blew a chill through the hall.

“Where is Bakhtiian?” asked Rusudani, cutting into the conversation.

As if her question summoned him, he appeared, limping. He looked grim and rather wild. He, too, wore armor, more elaborate than that he had worn when Janos and his men had ambushed him at the monastery. It made him look like a prince. Prince Vassily attended him, hovering by his side like an overprotective father. Lady Jadranka’s eyes widened as she realized who he must be. But she said nothing.

Bakhtiian made a comment, curt, to the Prince of Jeds in the language of the jaran, and she flushed, so slightly that Jaelle would not have noticed it if she had not happened to be looking at her directly at that moment. Princess Rusudani had eyes only for Bakhtiian. She fairly drank him in.

“Who does this castle belong to now?” demanded Bakhtiian.

Lady Jadranka rose slowly. “It is mine, sir, inherited from my father, since I was his only child.”

Rusudani looked furious, but she held her peace. Prince Vassily glanced at her, away, and back at her again.

Bakhtiian inclined his head respectfully toward Lady Jadranka. “I have prisoners to give into your hands, my lady. If you will give me your oath and sign your name to a treaty letting there be no feud between your house and mine.”

“How can I promise that? Janos was my only son.”

“By what means will you make war on me, Lady Jadranka? You cannot. Out of respect for you and your grief, I will leave this castle standing. Otherwise I would burn it to the ground.”