The Novels of the Jaran (260 page)

Diana was giggling as she stepped off onto the island, her cheeks flushed, and David looked both amused and bemused. They followed him up the gently sloping path to the center of the island. No one was there. The belvedere was only an open, roofed gallery, decorated with lush trails of hanging flowers. It contained one chair, a mat woven of long, broad leaves stamped with the pattern of the golden flowers, and nothing else.

Anatoly sat in the chair, decided he didn’t like it, and sat down on the mat instead in the traditional jaran style.

“Uh, shouldn’t you stand?” David asked. “It wouldn’t be polite for us to be sitting when Duke Naroshi arrives.”

“I will sit here,” said Anatoly. Portia came and sat on his lap. Diana walked over to brush a hand over the flowers, which grew up to the edge of the belvedere.

David paced. Halted. “Look!”

A procession emerged from the distant palace and came toward them at a bewildering speed, growing so quickly that it was as if the island moved, too. The vessel seemed at first to Anatoly like a chariot not pulled by horses. Three figures stood in it. David, coming to stand by him, grew increasingly agitated, and Diana flushed, went pale, tried to grab Portia away from him, then retreated to stand just behind him.

The vessel halted at the opposite end of the belvedere and Duke Naroshi and his two attendants stepped out.

Naroshi came forward at once. Anatoly had never seen a Chapalii nobleman at such close range before. He examined him intently: skin so white that it seemed to possess no color at all; long-fingered hands interlaced in an odd fashion; height that was not, strangely enough, matched by bulk but rather seemed suspended on a fragile frame. Naroshi halted five steps before him and went down on one knee.

David gasped.

It took Anatoly two breaths to sort out what he was seeing: Duke Naroshi was doing obeisance before him. A faint hint of blue chased across those pallid cheeks and vanished. Anatoly raised his right hand. “You may rise, Duke Naroshi, and sit in the chair.”

“You are generous, Prince of the Sakhalin, but I do not deserve your pardon. It is my shame that I did not grant you the honor due to you when you arrived here.”

He was speaking in khush, too, or at least, Anatoly reminded himself, that was how he heard it. The duke’s voice was soft and eerie, like wind whistling down a hall.

“I did not wish to be known,” said Anatoly. Naroshi’s deference made him uncomfortable. “Please sit.”

Naroshi sat in the chair, tangled his fingers together into a new arrangement, and regarded Anatoly with an impassive expression. Anatoly remembered that the Chapalii, being alien, did not have expressions that a human could read, if indeed they showed facial expressions at all.
They aren’t like us
, Diana had once explained to him. But they didn’t seem that different now.

“Each petal that falls into the lake of mirrors,” continued Naroshi, “is like to a word of apology fallen from my tongue for this oversight.”

“You could not have known.” He tucked Portia more tightly against him and glanced swiftly up at David, as if to say,
I could not have known.
David, looking glazed, just stared at Naroshi.

“The emperor did not choose to let his messengers cast the recital of your visit into the waters so that I, drawing out the net of intelligence, might know of it. Such is his will.”

Anatoly blinked. “I have never met the emperor.”

Blue chased green chased pink across Naroshi’s alien countenance. “The emperor has never brought you before him?”

“No.”

Naroshi rose out of the chair, and for an instant Anatoly felt that some other force lifted him, not muscle and bone. “Then it is my duty, my honor, to send you on to him.”

Confused, Anatoly hesitated, and David nudged him with a foot. “On to him? On to his… palace. Ah, on Chapal?” A sudden wild excitement seized him, and he swallowed it back, so that he wouldn’t betray himself. Portia hooked her little fingers in among his and began to turn the ring on his right hand around and around and around.

“You may leave at once. I will see that all is made ready for you.” Naroshi took a step back and, clearly, paused, waiting to be dismissed.

“Wait.” Anatoly stood as well, settling Portia at his waist. “Certainly I will go to meet the emperor.” He heard Diana’s intake of breath, but chose to ignore it. “First I want to make sure that this will have no effect on the repertory company’s tour here.”

“The repertory company? Ah. The theater.”

“They will stay here as you had already arranged with Duke Charles, and leave only at the appointed time. I would not want to interfere with their work.”

Naroshi inclined his head, as to a superior. “As you wish, Prince of the Sakhalin. All will be done as you will it.”

He dipped his shoulders down, retreated to the edge of the belvedere, and, flanked by his attendants, got into the chariot. It lifted without a sound and moved backward off the island and over the lake, so that Naroshi continued to face him.

“Fucking hell!” David burst out. “They
do
have some kind of universal translator, the bastards, which means that all this time we thought they couldn’t understand us when we were speaking in some of our more obscure languages, they probably could!
Merde
!”

“Anatoly,” said Diana in a small voice. “He bowed to you.”

“He
is
only a duke.” Anatoly lifted Portia up and kissed her on either cheek. She giggled and pinched his ears. “I will have to leave you, little one,” he said to her.

“Oh, Papa!” She pulled a long face. “Will you be back tomorrow?”

“Longer than that, sweet one. But I will be back as soon as I can.”

“Okay,” she said with a four-year-old’s disregard for abstract time, and she squirmed until he let her down. She ran over and crouched down to sniff at the flowers.

“Don’t touch anything!” said Diana.

“They think you’re a prince,” said David as if he was repeating something he had already said.

Anatoly looked at him, puzzled. “I
am
a prince.”

“You’re really going to go?” Diana demanded.

“Of course I’m going to go. Think of what valuable intelligence I can bring back!”

“This is very strange,” said David. “To say the least.”

“You think I shouldn’t go?”

“By no means! By no means! It’s an incredible unlooked-for opportunity. I’m just, well, I’m just a little shocked.” David stepped outside the belvedere and stood in the rain, as if the warm drops could clear his head. Rain rolled down his nose and he wiped it off his face only to get wet again. “It’s raining harder,” he observed.

“Well, then,” said Anatoly, “what are we waiting for?” He scooped up Portia and headed down the path to the shoreline.

“The turtles! The turtles! I want to be a turtle, and you can be the Daddy Turtle and Mama can be the Mommy Turtle….”

“You’re just going to go?” Diana said to his back. “Just like that?”

Like a courtier, David answered for him. “Of course, Di. That’s his job.”

She said something else, but he couldn’t hear the words. He only heard that she was upset. But Anatoly already felt himself half gone, mounted and setting off at a brisk pace on this fresh campaign into unfamiliar territory.

“But I’m not male.” Feeling mutinous, Ilyana crossed her arms and sat down on the gazebo bench. Adults got to do all the exciting things. “She said that the hall is forbidden to males.
I
could go.”

David glanced around the courtyard, but here, in the cool haven of dawn, it was empty. There had been a party last night for Anatoly’s leavetaking, and evidently all the adults had some kind of hangover. All except David, who together with Diana had been the only ones to see Sakhalin off at planetrise.

“You could not go,” he said now. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Nothing bad happened to Anatoly Sakhalin.”

“Nothing happened to him! How would you like to be sent before the Chapalii emperor all by yourself?”

“I think it would be interesting. No human has ever mapped the Imperial Palace. You said so yourself. And it would be away from here!”

“Yana! Lots of places are away from here. I don’t think you quite understand. How would
you
like to be summoned before the emperor? It’s not just perilous, but troublesome, and perhaps inappropriate.”

“
You
don’t understand about the Sakhalin. Why shouldn’t he be summoned? Everyone knows that they’re first among the tribes. Naturally the emperor would—”

“—would have an interest in him,” David interrupted. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard that before, about ten times. Ilyana, I don’t think he’s being shown any kind of favor….”

“Of course he’s not being shown favor.” Gods, these khaja could be obstinate. “They’re just giving him his due. And he won’t be nervous. He’s ridden into enemy territory before.”

“With a jahar.”

“Well, won’t he be traveling in on a human ship? He’ll have someone to guide him.”

“That’s true. Charles will probably lend him Branwen Emrys. She’s actually an old acquaintance of Gwyn’s, and our most experienced captain on that run.”

“So you see!” exclaimed Ilyana triumphantly. “That’s exactly why I have to go explore that hall. Someone has to. Isn’t it still important for us to understand about Chapalii architecture? Anatoly Sakhalin thought that the Chapalii he met was female. Shouldn’t we find out more about her, too?”

“Goddess!” David threw up his hands. “You’re impossible. No, we should not. We should proceed with caution.”

“
You
wouldn’t.”

“Yana, I am eighty-one years old. I’m middle-aged. You’re just sixteen. We don’t send children into danger.”

“I should have gone through with my flower night. Then I’d be a woman, and you couldn’t use
that
argument against me.” She chewed on her knuckles. “Hmm. I could still…” She slanted a glance up at David. Without quite looking at him, she could see that he was growing uncomfortable. Wind sighed through the open gate of the caravansary, drifting in to rustle her knee-length tunic. David stared steadfastly at the red tile roof. The sun breached the roof’s peak and spilled down over her, bringing with it a new swell of wind bearing dust, and an echo in her ears, the memory of Anatoly Sakhalin saying her name, that night. David was uncomfortable because he found her attractive. He was afraid she would ask
him.
Ilyana felt a breathtaking surge of confidence. She lifted her chin and tilted her head to one side, and smiled straight at him, knowing suddenly what it meant to be able to use beauty to get one’s own way.

“Damn it!” David exploded. He jumped to his feet, stalked down the gazebo steps, and halted on the sun-bleached stone of the courtyard, his back to her. From the caravansary hall, where the actors rehearsed, Ilyana heard Yomi calling out to someone—Yassir, the lighting designer—and she caught the sound of two women laughing in the bathroom and the splash of water into the tile cistern. On the breeze she smelled the faint aroma of the smoke of her mother’s cook fire.

“There’s a word for this,” said David without turning around. “Blackmail.”

Ilyana giggled. She felt bold. She felt powerful. And she felt a little nervous. “But, David.” Her voice shook. “We
have
to do this. You know we do.”

He still didn’t turn around. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that I agree. First, you will go together with Wingtuck Lien, and I’ll go as well but only to the entrance into the hall as described by Anatoly. Second.” He turned slowly round, like a leaf spun gently in the wind. His expression was harsh. “You will never again manipulate me like that. It isn’t right. Yana, you’re a beautiful girl and I don’t think you truly realize that yet, or the kind of trouble it’s going to cause you. I’m not blind. I can appreciate your beauty. I can even wish I was eighteen again, to have a chance to be the boy you pick on your flower night. But. I’m old enough to be your grandfather. So we will resolve right now that you will treat me as if I was your… your aged uncle, and you will consider yourself as a niece to me. You will respect me and obey me as your teacher, and I will respect you as a serious and promising student. Is that clear?”

Abashed, Ilyana glared at the pale mosaic floor of the gazebo, memorizing the thin lines that demarcated the individual tiles one from the other. She gulped down air past a lump in her throat. “Yes,” she said in a strangled voice.

There was a long silence.

From out of the shadowed colonnade, Portia padded into the sunlit courtyard on bare feet, her well-worn pillow clutched under one arm. “Where’s Papa?” Portia asked forlornly.

That evening David agreed to a practice run, going into the map room and returning to the place he and she had been to before: the mosaic courtyard that fronted the domed, painted palace. Ilyana climbed the steps to the latticework door and, carefully, leaned against it to peer in, to see if she could see the distant statue of Lord Shiva in the dim interior.

Squinting, she saw, perhaps, a faint anthropomorphic outline, perhaps…a faint rustling touched her ears, like a snake sliding through grass, like the whining of insects on a summer’s night. Startled, she pushed back from the lattice door, only it gave in against her hands instead, opening away from her. Unbalanced, she tumbled inside.

David shouted behind her, but she stood in the cool, shadowed interior of the entry hall, took in a deep breath, and sneezed. The air had a rancid odor.

“Air doesn’t smell in nesh,” she reminded herself.

Like an echo, another voice spoke.

“Who are you?”

The shadows moved. Ilyana caught a glimpse of a smooth, lucent surface that vanished as quickly. All was still.

“I am named Ilyana Arkhanov,” she replied, folding her hands in front of her in the polite fashion. “I beg your pardon if I’ve come in somewhere I shouldn’t have.”

“I have been watching you,” said the voice, and the shadows rustled. “You are the first female of your kind I have encountered.”

“How can you tell I’m female?”

“I study what comes before me. In your language you might say that I study structure and function, and then I classify according to design, proportions, and ornamentation.”