The Novels of the Jaran (16 page)

He bowed, acknowledging her generosity. “I am Hon Garii Takokan. I beg your indulgence.” She waited, curious. “I was distraught to discover that these savages with whom we ride were to engage in violence this very night, but far more was I distressed to know that you, Lady Terese, perforce must face such dangers unarmed.”

“You are well spoken, for a merchant’s son, Hon Garii.”

“I have studied to improve myself, Lady Terese,” he answered, slipping in two inflections that skirted the bounds of impropriety, hinting that he had, perhaps, some connection with noble blood in him. “If I may be allowed to say as much.”

“You may.”

“Therefore.” He stopped short, glancing furtively behind and to each side. “If you will condescend to permit me to present you with this gift.”

Tess considered. Giving gifts in the Chapalii culture was a gesture loaded with implied obligations and serious consequences. But her curiosity got the better of her, so she held out her hand to receive it.

He handed her a knife, bowed, and slipped quickly away, not even waiting for her thanks. She held it up. And stared.

This was not a knife. Certainly, it looked like a knife; it had a hilt and a blade. But twin points of light peeped from the crosshilts, and when she held the blade, it felt warm to her touch. This was something more, far more. That this was Chapalii-manufactured, a Chapalii weapon made to look like a native thing, she did not doubt for an instant. Like the tents. It took no great leap of imagination to guess that this was some kind of energy gun. No wonder Ishii was not concerned about these savages’ petty little wars. With such a weapon, one person standing alone could obliterate Bakhtiian’s jahar before they got close enough to put her in danger.

“But I wonder,” she said to herself, tucking the knife into her belt and crawling into the sanctity of her tent, “I wonder if Ishii knows that Garii has given this to me.” It disturbed her very much to suspect that he did not.

Chapter Eight

“Thou shalt inquire into everything.”

—
PARMENIDES OF ELEA

T
WO DAYS LATER THEY
deposited Doroskayev in the middle of a stretch of featureless flat lands, the hills a dark billow to the northeast. Tess and Bakhtiian tracked him that afternoon as he walked back toward his comrades, who had been trussed and tied and left by the water hole to wait in sullen expectation for their release. Finally, Bakhtiian reined in his horse on a rise. Tess stared down at the solitary figure, whose face was indeed disfigured by an ugly scar over his right eye. It seemed a short enough time ago that she had stumbled, alone and scared and determined, through grass that scraped constantly at her legs. Now it merely brushed the soles of her boots. They turned their horses southwest and caught up with the jahar by evening.

It might have been dull, this riding day after day, week after week, across a land as routine as their daily tasks, but it was spring, and spring was a joy, and the life itself was new, like a language that needed learning. Tess could never resist the lure of an unknown tongue. The sky lifted far above. The land slipped by beneath horses’ hooves. It rained once or twice, but it was no more than an inconvenience. Huge herds of antelopelike animals passed them, heading north in a frenzy of bawling and mewling, and on many days Fedya brought in a fresh kill. The other riders foraged for
modhal,
a tuber they mashed and shared equally between men and horses, and
nekhal,
a reedy grass whose shoots were edible. They mixed these with mare’s milk and with the hard bread and dried meat brought from the tribe. The Chapalii ate sparingly of this diet, and if they ate anything else in their tents at night, Tess was none the wiser.

So it was that when, one afternoon as Tess and Bakhtiian scouted the wake of a passing herd, they saw five women riding southward with their day’s catch, Bakhtiian hailed the hunters and spoke with them while Tess hung back and watched.

“I know this tribe,” he said when he returned. “We’ll stop a few days with them.”

They returned immediately to the jahar. At the first good campsite, a small lake ringed with scrubby trees and a profusion of flowering bushes, Bakhtiian called a halt for the night.

“Why don’t we just go on today if this tribe is so close?” Tess asked Yuri as they walked to the lake’s edge. She batted away a swarm of insects, ducked her head as they returned, and retreated from the reedy shore.

Yuri laughed at her and strolled on. It had become the jahar witticism to call them dhal and khal, the twins, because they spent so much time together. Tess liked it because she saw in it an acceptance of her place in the jahar: she was one of them, not one of the pilgrims.

“There are courtesies,” Yuri explained when she caught up with him, “when one tribe comes upon another. Some people might not observe them, but Bakhtiian is very traditional. Now they have warning to know we are coming.” He grinned. “And Vladimir can polish his stones so his necklaces can gleam brighter and impress the young women.”

“Poor Vladimir.”

Yuri looked at her consideringly. “Have you ever really spoken with Vladimir?”

“No. I think he avoids me. But then, you and Kirill and the others scarcely make him welcome.”

“A horse ridden too hard,” said Yuri in khush, “is a horse ruined.” He added, in Rhuian, “If Vladimir is not welcome, look to him, not to us. We’d better teach you to dance, Tess. There’s sure to be a dance in Bakhtiian’s honor. It would look odd if we kept you to ourselves. Though how much we can teach you in one afternoon…”

“I’ve danced before,” said Tess, but the image that came to her, thinking of her folk dancing club at the university, was unwelcome: that night, when Jacques—so cowardly that he had to choose a public place, where pride constrained her from reacting with real emotion—had told her their engagement was over, broken, while they were dancing the last waltz of the evening.

“Are you all right?” Yuri touched her on the arm.

“No, I’m fine. Just hungry. Fedya didn’t bring in a kill today, did he? He shouldn’t be the only one who hunts. I want to practice archery while it’s light. We can dance with a fire. I’m going to get good enough with the bow to do some hunting.”

Yuri laughed at her vehemence. “You’ll ruin my good name. Very well. But you have to get Sonia’s bow. Meet me over there.”

The minutes she spent fetching the bow and arrows gave her time to regain her composure. Damn Jacques, anyway; he wasn’t worth agonizing over. But her anger carried over into her first course, and she shot poorly. Yuri sighed, fetched the arrows and readjusted the four ribbons tied for the target at varying heights around the tree trunk.

“You did better than that with Sonia,” he chided.

While he shot, Tess watched the water birds as they paddled aimlessly back and forth on the pond and with no warning upended and dove under the surface, vanishing, without even a ripple, for so long that one’s breath stopped until they suddenly resurfaced in a flurry of wings and water somewhere else. Submerged—that was the word that haunted her. She had been submerged in Charles’s life since the day she was born. She had never been herself, but always his sister, his heir, doing his work.

“Three out of five,” said Yuri proudly. “Let’s see you match that.” Returning with the arrows, he handed the bow to her. She aimed and hit.

“There. Is Doroskayev the only dyan riding against Bakhtiian?”

“He’s one of the few left. Roskhel is dead now. Veselov—Ilya won him over. Zukhov, Boradin, Makhov. They’re all dead, too. Boradin and Makhov died in the battle at the
khayan-sarmiia.
Ilya shouldn’t have won that battle because they outnumbered him, but he did. Doroskayev only hates Ilya because he hates Ilya, if you see what I mean. But his tribe is small. There is one dyan left, Dmitri Mikhailov, who commands a jahar large enough and dangerous enough to threaten us. But we haven’t seen him for two summers. I think he’s given up.”

Tess nocked another arrow and drew. “What about the tribal Elders? The women?”

“War is men’s business.”

“Meaning women are left to clean up.” She shot, missing the tree entirely.

“It’s your concentration.” Yuri rested one hand on the back of his neck. She drew again, steadying herself. “Ilya could never have united the jaran without the approval of the Elders. After all, his own mother was the first Elder he had to convince, and if he could convince her, he could convince anyone.” Tess shot and hit. “Do you know,” Yuri added, “when a person stands so still, you see them best. Like your eyes. I never knew eyes could be the color of
gorad
leaves. Such a green.”

Her fourth and fifth arrows hit true. Yuri shot and hit five times along the length of the tree. “You’re better at this than you think,” she said when he returned with the arrows.

“For a man. It comes of having four sisters. But I always liked archery better than saber.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Yuri!” Kirill called to them from the shore of the lake. He strode over and stopped to stare at the younger man. “You’re not actually practicing that, are you?”

Yuri hastily handed the bow to Tess, who turned to face Kirill with one hand on her hip. “If you practiced, we might eat fresh meat more often.”

Kirill had a careless air about him that belied his authority among the younger men. “It isn’t a man’s weapon, but it’s true, on such a long trip, we would eat better. I know.” He smiled. “We’ll have a contest.”

“I don’t like this,” muttered Yuri.

But the young riders took quickly to the idea: ten shots each. Mikhal immediately took the lead, with seven mid-hits, but this was blamed on his willingness when courting Sonia to go hunting with her.

Eventually Bakhtiian came up. Tess, finishing, found herself with five mid-hits, third behind Mikhal and Yuri. “Do you want a turn?” she asked Bakhtiian, made bold by her success.

“Gods, contest with the rest of us, and with a woman’s weapon?” asked Kirill.

Bakhtiian’s face shuttered as he looked past Tess at Kirill. Birds landed on the lake, wings skittering. Kirill returned Bakhtiian’s scrutiny with an even gaze. No one spoke.

“Very well.” Bakhtiian accepted the bow from Tess. “I would never disparage a woman’s prowess in archery, especially not if she had bow in hand. Not unless I had a very long head start.”

Everyone laughed except Kirill, who turned and left. Tess felt tension that she had not known was there leave her throat. Bakhtiian stood perfectly still, entirely concentrated. The dark waves of his hair matched his intense eyes and severe expression. With his arm drawn back, the curve of the bow framing him, he could have been the god of the hunt, caught forever in the instant before death. All ten shots hit between the middle ribbons.

Kirill returned, and he brought Fedya with him. Fedya was neither for nor against joining the contest. Kirill insisted.

“You don’t have to,” said Tess.

Fedya shrugged. “I don’t have the energy to refuse.” He was one of the shorter riders, stocky without stoutness, with long blond hair caught back in a single braid. Alone among the men he wore a second braid, a horse-tail pinned into his hair. He also habitually wore an expression that suggested that he knew the one, awful secret of man’s doom but was kind enough to hide it from everyone else. “I don’t mind. After all, I’m the only one here who can outshoot Bakhtiian.” The look he gave Kirill was ironic. But he also hit ten mid-shots.

It was growing dark. Tasha, at the fire, called to them that the food was ready. Tess did not follow the others, and Yuri sat with her, finding pebbles to toss into the pond.

“I like it here,” Tess said finally, watching the birds dive.

Yuri glanced at her but did not reply. The shifting greens and yellows of leaves stirred in the twilight breeze. Several birds flapped their wings, spraying water, and then settled.

“Fedya’s as good as some of the women. I thought men never practiced archery.”

“Fedya doesn’t need to practice. He sings to the bow, and it responds.”

“He looks as if he knows the wrongs of the world.”

“Fedya was touched by the gods as a child. What he knows, he’ll never tell.”

They rose and walked slowly toward the fire. This close, the breeze brought the spicy scent of Tasha’s vegetable stew to her. Stars bloomed one by one in the darkening sky. “Do you mean to say…” Tess hesitated, then began again in a lower voice. “That Fedya never boasts, or—”

“If you mean, does he talk about his lovers, no, he doesn’t. For all anyone knows, he hasn’t gone off with a woman since his wife died. If you made up to him, no one would ever find out through him.”

Tess halted, flushing. “You go so fast from start to finish.”

“Tess.” Yuri laid a hand on her shoulder. The ring of firelight faded into darkness a few meters in front of them, framing the men around the fire. “You’re having a hard time of it because of things inside you, and here you are, alone with twenty-seven men. I don’t count the pilgrims, you understand. It isn’t healthy.”

There was a silence.

“Forgive me.” Yuri removed his hand. “I didn’t mean to offend. As your brother I thought—”

Tess began to laugh. “Healthy!”

“Well, I don’t see what’s so funny. It’s true.”

“Oh, Yuri. I’m not laughing at you.”

“You’ll see I’m right.” He headed toward the fire.

“It’s when you’re being smug,” replied Tess, following him, “that I can really see the family resemblance between you and Bakhtiian.”

“I beg your pardon!”

Tess grinned. “Now, didn’t you say you would teach me some of your dances?”

“There.” Yuri pointed. The morning sun shone down on the spread of tents laid in neat lines beyond the edge of a narrow river. “I remember this tribe. Sakhalin is etsana here, and her sister’s son the dyan of their jahar. I was only a boy when we met with them last, but they are friends of our tribe. Bakhtiian says we will stay four nights with them.”

At the jahar’s appearance on the rise, two men and two women detached themselves from the camp and walked up to them. Bakhtiian and Niko dismounted and strode forward to meet them halfway. After what seemed to Tess a long, drawn-out conversation punctuated with elaborate gesturing, Bakhtiian returned, leaving Niko to walk back into camp with them.