"All things happen under the eye of the Yaochalii, Tai-en," replied Echido.

"What was the emperor's name? Was he related to the Yaochalii-en who now graces the throne? What princely house did the emperor of that time come from?"

"I beg your pardon, Tai-en. Once a prince becomes emperor, then he becomes the Yaochalii-en. He has no other name. What he was before is lost to him. All he had before is lost to him. He brings nothing with him, nor does he leave the throne with anything but his shroud. Thus is each emperor the same, and thus is the line of the Yaochalii unbroken."

"What about his family?" Maggie asked.

"The Yaochalii has no family. He is the Empire. All of us are his house."

"But—what if he was married? Had children? Siblings? A favored steward?"

"All that he had before," repeated Echido, as if it were catechism, "is lost to him."

Marco whistled under his breath. "That'll teach you to have ambition," he said softly. "There's not much advantage in it, is there, if you have to give up everything to become emperor?"

Maggie gestured with her right hand toward the glorious city shifting before them in the field, although the movement was lost to everyone but David and Marco, who sat on either side of her.

"Everything but that."

"Still," said David, much struck by this revelation, "I'll bet it's a lonely life, Mags."

"Very human of you, David, but how do you know they have the same motivations and emotions that we do?"

"Sorry. My stock in trade is anthropomorphism. What about the names for the towers? Sorrowing.

Reckless."

"It's a translation. Who knows what they really mean in Chapalii?"

"Spoilsport. Though it would be nice to have Tess—" But he broke off.

The scene changed. The city melted away into spinning fractals which then formed themselves into the heartachingly beautiful blue and white and muddied continental brown of a carbon-oxygen-nitrogen world: Rhui, rotating in the heavens.

"Though no male may know," contined Echido, "still, some say that it is here on this planet that the Tai-en Mushai meets his fate, dying before his years unroll into their fullness, holding to himself his secrets, and his shame, and his reckless heart."

"So we can't get a date?" asked Charles.

"A date. I beg pardon, Tai-en, but this term date is one whose meaning I am unfamiliar with. Perhaps you mean the sweet, oblong, edible fruit of the date palm, a tree named phoenix dactylifera in your scientific lexicon. It grows in tropical regions and bears clusters of dates as its fruit."

"Never mind. Ke, perhaps you understand my question."

The female had a peculiarly reedy voice with distinct tones whose cadences David found difficult to follow. "Tai-en, this low one does perceive the meaning you grasp for. This low one has assisted the craftsman Rajiv Caer Linn in reconstructing the data banks of the Tai-en Mushai's network, but as you are both males, this low one can proceed no further in the particular matter you explore now." On a whistling breath, her voice ceased. After a moment, it started up again. "If one of the females of your party wishes to discuss this particular matter with this low one, then this low one will broach with her subjects fit only for a female's constitution."

"What in hell is she talking about?" murmured Marco.

"Maggie?" said Charles.

"Yes." Maggie jumped to her feet and slipped away into the darkness. A breath of air brushed by David's face. Evidently Maggie and the ke had gone beyond the long chamber they all sat in now, back between the pillars into the white room that concealed the entrance to the control room. Above and around them hovered the field, projected out above and surrounding the two rectangular countertops that none of the humans had understood until now. They were field generators for the huge imaging three-dimensional field at which humans and Chapalii stared, watching Rhui turn and implode and reemerge as the palace of Morava, the Tai-en Mushai's secret retreat.

As if they walked themselves, they came up the avenue bounded on the sides by precise gardens of translucent statues and flowering vines and above by four jeweled arches. The great doors glided open—

David ached to know the mechanism by which their massive bulk swung so smoothly outward—to reveal the grand concourse. Along the upper half of the walls, a procession of creatures tangled with plants drew the eye along with it to the distant end. These reliefs seemed grown of some living crystal; they grew and changed as David walked down the concourse. A lion grew wings and a snake's tail and transmuted into a gryphon. A sinuous, tentacular alien Spai-lin curled in on itself and became a multifaceted snail wreathed in vervain. Through grand corridors and intimate salons they passed. All was alive as it must surely have been during the Mushai's residence. The dome lit when they entered, drowning them in the depths of a nameless sea populated with grotesque amphibious creatures. In a vast hall, a stellar map spread out along the floor in a mosaic of intricate tiling, and the map rose as light into the empty air. It was as if he walked as a god into the vast depths of space, as into an ocean as black, splintered with light and chasms of shadow, as the other had been sea-green. He strode through the spinning universe, and the music of the spheres hummed like a chorus of drowned bells in his ears.

With great relief, David came to a room where he could sit down and rest. Except, of course, he already sat cross-legged on the floor, next to Marco. Dizziness swept him as the movement and the stillness collided and merged. He let out all his breath and felt Marco slump at the same time, two sighs in concert. Glorious.

"Thank you," said Charles. His voice shook with emotion. Charles showed emotion so rarely in his voice, these days, that each time it startled David anew, to recall that Charles still lived in there; he had simply given up most of himself in order to assume the role he had to play.

"Rather like the emperor," said David softly.

"What?" whispered Marco.

David shook his head. The field shrank in until it encompassed only the boundaries of the innermost ring of counter. Rajiv spoke, and a bewildering array of charts and graphs and figures emerged in three dimensions and multiple blocks in the field.

"He keeps coming back to this," said Marco in a low voice, "all these figures, timetables. I think the Mushai must have stolen the contents of every data bank in the empire and compressed them into here.

Why?"

"Knowledge is power."

"Easy answer. Why does Charles keep coming back to this?"

"Easy question. Same answer."

"It's time," said Rajiv suddenly.

"End program," said Charles. The field broke into a thousand bright pinpricks and sparkled and faded and vanished. Charles rose. Echido hurried over to stand beside him, the Keinaba house steward at his heels. A moment later, the door between the two black megaliths that led into the buffer room opened to admit Maggie and the ke.

"Hon Echido." Charles acknowledged the Chapalii merchant with a nod of his head. "Marco Burckhardt will escort you and your party back to your ship. Tonight is the new moon. It will be necessary for you to leave the planet during this window."

"Tai-en." Echido bowed, hands folded at his chest. "May I be allowed to inquire about the other errand we spoke of?"

"Oh, yes. Indeed, I shall require your services in this other matter. You will retrieve the equipment Dr.

Hierakis has requested and stay in touch. We will arrange a rendezvous at some point along our journey south."

"Keinaba House would be honored, Tai-en, to transport you to these southern latitudes on our shuttle, thus sparing you the arduous physical journey."

"I hear your offer, Hon Echido, but you know that as this planet is interdicted, by my own order, we must travel in as unobtrusive a manner as possible."

"As you command, Tai-en. I await your word." He bowed, precise and low. His steward bowed. The ke was not of sufficient rank to be allowed to bow to a member of the nobility, but Charles glanced her way and acknowledged her with a nod. Marco led them away to the stables, where their horses waited.

"Well?" Charles asked, turning to look at Maggie in the now quiet room.

"I think I've just discovered something amazing," said Maggie. "Rajiv, can you call up that image of the Imperial palace? Not that big. Yes, mat's a manageable size." The field remained within the confines of the inner counter, and the five people loitering in the chamber walked forward to stand leaning at the outer counter, staring in. The sight was less overwhelming, confined in a-sphere of pale blue light.

"Li an sai," said Maggie, the code that instructed the banks to respond to her voice commands. "Show the Imperial palace as it existed in the days of the Tai-en Mushai." The image did not change. "Show the Imperial palace as it exists in the days of Tai-en Charles Soerensen."

The image did not change.

"Is this a trick question?" demanded David. "Is there some time paradox here? Jo says that her dating indicates that the Mushai must have lived a good ten thousand years ago, Earth standard."

"No time paradox." Maggie looked smug. "There's an essential point missing. The Chapalii always say, "time uncounted, years beyond years." "

"A phrase Tess once told me applies equally to past, present, and future," said Charles suddenly. "She said that the Chapalii live in the present. That they have no concept of past or future, in the sense that we do. No strong concept of history. The Mushai's revolt is more of a legend than a historical event."

"The Imperial city is the same as it always has been," agreed Maggie. "As it is now, so must it have always been. The same with the emperor. He's the same emperor now as he was ten thousand years ago, even though he's a different individual. But we thought that was the Chapalii psyche, or mind-set."

"Based on the language study Tess did, yes." Charles nodded. "Did Tess ever have access to Chapalii females?"

"Not that I know of. We never see Chapalii females on Earth. Or on Odys, for that matter."

"We never see them anywhere."

"I thought," said Rajiv, "that they were inferior citizens. Put in seclusion, purdah. You know. It's one of those primitive ancient Earth customs that human culture Finally outgrew. You still see it in places here on Rhui. That's one thing I'll grant the jaran, however barbaric they might otherwise be. There's a kind of shared authority between the women and the men. But anyway—"

"Damn it, Mags!" David laughed out of impatience and amusement at Maggie stringing them all along. "What did the ke tell you?"

"I think it's just the males. The Chapalii males. That live in the present. They don't deal with the concept of history, or past, or future. Because they're the face we see, the face we've always seen, of the Chapalii, we assumed it was the only one they had. The ke gave me a date for the Mushai. An imperial date. Rajiv, you'll have to run it through the computer, I can't calculate these things. I'm just a damned journalist. I deal in image and word, not in mathematics." She shut her eyes, concentrated, and then reeled off a string of numbers and strange sounding words.

Rajiv pulled out his slate and began some feverish work.

"Why not do it through the field?" Charles asked.

Rajiv glanced up. "If what Maggie says is true, then perhaps this field won't even acknowledge this kind of data. Anyway, I'd prefer to do the initial calcs on my own equipment."

Charles began to pace, looking thoughtful. "So there might be a whole strata of Chapalii life that we've missed? You know, I made Tess my heir because I thought with her language skills that she would then be allowed access to all levels of their culture, and thus she could penetrate deeper than we had yet managed into an understanding of their psyche. But now I wonder if by doing so, if by making her an honorary male, as it were, I limited her instead. History!" He lapsed into silence. "A whole other strata?"

Maggie asked. "I don't know.

All I got were the dates of the Mushai's rise and fall. The rest—" She shrugged.

David leaned on his elbows on the counter and stared into the tiny image of the palace. The image shifted and rotated, highlighting first this cluster of slender pagodalike towers, then that tiered garden, then that ten-kilometer-long concourse of seamless diamond roadway. "But they keep referring to the women who build the towers. And the Tai-en Naroshi offered his sister to design and oversee a mausoleum for Tess."

"Artists and craftsmen," said Jo suddenly. "There is a difference."

They all contemplated the difference for long minutes of silence while Rajiv's fingers brushed the keys of his hemi-slate and he muttered under his breath in a singsong voice.

Charles tapped his ear suddenly. "Incoming from Cara," he said. "Who has a—?"

David drew his slate out of its loop on his belt, unfolded it, and set it on the floor. He stepped back.

"Receive," he said into the air.

Cara's face materialized above the slate. Her image looked gritty and flat after the Chapalii display.

"Charles," she said. She smiled. He smiled back. "You're well?"

"I'm well," he acknowledged.

"Any news?"

He lifted both hands. "Much news. You'll hear about it when I get there."

"Ah. I'll look forward to it. Bakhtiian is sending his niece back to escort you. She's leaving tomorrow."

"As are we. We'll look for her on our way."

"Goddess," muttered Maggie, "how are we supposed to meet without any tracking equipment, over such a distance?"

"We'll have to trust that they know their way around," said David softly. "Anyway, I've been teaching her to make decent maps."

Maggie snorted, but said nothing more.

"I'll pay no mind to the peanut gallery," said Cara's image, but she looked amused. "Have you ordered my shipment?"

"Yes. Suzanne requisitioned it. Delivery downside is being arranged. I still think that given the potential for serious complications, Tess must at least return to Jeds for the remainder of her pregnancy."

"Charles, leaving aside questions of transport at this late date, I remind you that to remove her forcibly at this point would probably alienate her from you completely. You must trust to my judgment.

With the additional equipment, with the antigen solution, and with the studies I've done on Bakhtiian's chemistry and blood, I feel certain of a positive outcome even with complications."

David knew well what Cara's promises were worth. She had never been a person to offer what she could not deliver.

Charles frowned. "Perhaps if the experience is difficult and painful, then she won't be so sanguine about remaining in these conditions."

"Charles!" David was appalled.

Cara snorted. "I can't imagine why you keep underestimating her stubbornness, Charles, since she inherited it from the same two people you did."

"You don't understand, Cara. Maggie's overturned the boulder and we've found a whole new ecology lurking underneath. I need Tess."

"You're talking in riddles, my love. I'll wait for the report. Have you gotten that fix on Hyacinth yet?

Is it possible he's still alive?"

"Yes, in fact, Rajiv has the fix. It's moving steadily, if slowly, northeast. They'll make the plains soon."

A silence. "Well," said Cara at last, her expression a mask of relief, "bless the Goddess for that, at least. May I tell the actors?"

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"You're rather close with information sometimes."

"Only when it's vital. I'll do my best to swing our route south so that we can pick him up. Anything else?"

"Tess is fine. We're heading west tomorrow toward the royal city of Karkand. If we have to besiege it, then doubtless that's where you'll find us when you get here in—what—I don't know how fast you can travel."

"Not as fast as the messengers, but I'll encourage our escorts to push the pace. Out, here, then." "Out, here." The image flickered and dissipated. "I wonder why Bakhtiian decided to send his niece back?"

asked David.

"She's married now," said Maggie. "And her husband is with us. That sounds like a reason. Doubtless he trusts her in a way he doesn't necessarily trust a captain not of his own family. You're a valuable hostage, Charles. Too valuable to lose."

"Am I a hostage?" Charles looked amused. "Don't you think so? A hostage to force Tess's cooperation."

Charles quirked a smile at her and paced back to stand next to Rajiv. "I rather thought it was the other way around. That Tess was a hostage for my cooperation."

"Are we really going to pick up the actor?" asked David.

"If we can."

They all fell silent, waiting for Rajiv to finish. "Wow!" exclaimed Rajiv suddenly, Rajiv, who was not wont to indulge in vulgar or antiquated expressions of astonishment. "According to this, he flourished for five hundred years. Do you suppose they live that long?"

"How should we know?" asked Jo. "We don't know a damned thing about their physiology. They are clearly built for efficiency, though, or perhaps have engineered themselves to be so. Cara's studies of the Rhuian population indicate that the humans transported here were engineered as well, to make them disease resistant and to adapt them to the planet. So why shouldn't they live that long?"

"It might explain," said Charles slowly, "why their social structure is so static. Longevity might encourage stability, or even stagnation."

"Like the old folk stories of elves and the fairy kingdom?" asked Maggie. "Isn't that the analogy Cara used? Their world is static because it can't change." "Yes," said David, breaking in, "but we don't know if SO KATE ELLIOTT

five hundred years is a short life span or a long one, then, even if it's true. What if it refers to the amount of time the Mushai dukedom flourished? Not the individual?"

"No," said Rajiv. "I'm certain it's the individual. The famous. Our rebel Mushai. Hold on." He mumbled under his breath, talking to himself as he manipulated a three-dimensional matrix that floated above the surface of his slate.

David stared at the Imperial palace and wondered what it had really looked like in the Tai-en Mushai's time. Or had it looked the same? Was the empire so old and so unchanging? They did not know. And indeed, why should they, humanity, minor subjects of powerful alien masters, be granted access to such information?

Rajiv sighed. "All right. As far as I can calculate, the transportations from Earth to Rhui of human populations took place over a two hundred year period approximately fourteen thousand four hundred years ago. I've got three calendrical dates. Chapalii yaotiwaganishi-chichanpa-oten-li. Before League Concordance 14,185 to approximately 13,985. Let me see, or, archaeologically speaking, you could use the old Common Era dates of approximately 12,135 B.C.E. to 11,935 B.C.E. I'll get exact figures in a moment,"

"It jibes with Jo's dating." Charles nodded. "Remarkable, and that's from a Chapalii source."

"If she was telling the truth," said Maggie.

"If." Charles walked over to stand next to David, examining the glories of the imperial palace. "But I have no evidence to suggest that she is lying. Rajiv. Bring up the tables again. Everything."

Rajiv had ordered the sequence in some wildly confusing web, with spheres and cubes and flat tables displaying scrolling data bases. David found the spray of color and shifting symbols nauseating.

"Rajiv, what is your analysis of the material contained here?" asked Charles, seemingly unaffected by this dynamic.

Rajiv considered before he answered the question, because he preferred accuracy to speed. "The easiest analogy would be to imagine we had contained here all economic, political, transportation, and commercial schedules and statistics and timetables and—we!!, you get the idea—for all the planets contained within the League. Except it's far more complex than that, and not only because it contains this vast amount of information on the inner workings and structure of the Chapalii Empire. Timetables, calendrical dates within the year although not of the years themselves, economic indices, shipping charts and cargo information, freight schedules, census of house affiliations and house wealth, an atlas of all inhabited and uninhabited regions with reference to population, movement, available resources and potential resource exploitation—" He paused only to take in a breath.

"Complete and extensive."

"Encyclopedic and precise. Cross-referenced. Triple cross-referenced. Their referencing system is nothing like ours. It's neither linear nor hyper, but both, and something else as well. But extremely efficient."

"Of course. What do the Chapalii prize above everything else? Efficiency. Peace. Those two things.

So, what if we put a spoke into the smooth turning of their wheel? What if we disrupt their efficiency?

What if we disturb their peace? As the Tai-en Mushai did, fourteen thousand years ago."

"I record his death as 10,382 B.C.E," said Rajiv.

David felt a shudder of misgiving—no, more a premonition, a feeling that they stood on the edge of a momentous step, that once the word was spoken, once that first step was taken, once the reckless hand turned over the first card, that there was no going back. That their road would be chosen, for good or for ill. To the death, or to freedom.

"Sabotage," said Charles. "It's an old Earth strategy. Constant, unending, unexpected, disruptive. A campaign of sabotage."

"You mean terrorism," said David.

"No, I think that's a later accretion to the term. But use terrorism if you want to. These timetables, these charts, these merchant houses—have they changed significantly since the Mushai's time? Do we have reason to think the Empire is static enough, the Chapalii so addicted to stability, that they might still be—" Charles paused and abruptly grinned. "Still good?"

David and Maggie and Jo all laughed. "Does the eight twenty-nine still leave Rigel for Betelgeuse?"

said Maggie.

"That could take years to research," objected Rajiv. "We don't know enough about the Empire. But certainly many of the structural systems could have remained parallel, even pertinent to our situation now."

"We have years. We have eternity, if our heirs keep the torch burning. But I'm convinced of it. I'm convinced that this is why the Mushai accumulated this knowledge here. I'm convinced that this is how he broke the empire that he lived in. There is proof here that the borders of the Chapalii Empire were once larger than they are now. Rhui is proof. Before they absorbed the League, before they absorbed human space, Rhui and this system were not part of the Empire just as human space was not part of the Empire. But the Mushai's movements prove that they were once part of the Empire, long ago. How could they lose track of them? Of what they once had?"

"What if they had no history?" asked Maggie. "Or no access to historical records, at least. Or—I don't know. Given this lead to go on, and time to work, Tess could probably make some sense of it."

Charles bore that fixed expression on his face that meant he was absorbed in the genesis of a new idea. David was not even sure that he had heard Maggie. "For the sake of argument, let's say that those who administered did so as if every day was the present day. So they lost track, somehow. If we fix in our minds that they don't operate like we operate, that they don't think like we think, then it's possible. If all is in the present, and they are otherwise stable, why shouldn't the information in these banks be reliable? Why shouldn't we be able to use it in the same way he did?"

"You want to bring down the Empire?"

"I want to free humanity. I sincerely doubt we have a chance against them, main force against main force. But if we're persistent enough gadflies, perhaps they'll consider us too much trouble and let us go."

"Or crush us entire."

"There's always that chance. Every risk we take in life risks, as one of its consequences, oblivion. But the hand of the Yaochalii is gentle. I've never seen the least sign that they're as ruthless in war as, say, Bakhtiian is."

"Well," said David, encouraged by Charles responding to Maggie's comments, "and we've certainly seen more of the Chapalii in war than any other humans have. I don't know."

Charles shook his head impatiently. "We don't need to know, yet. We've got a lot of work to do, just to see if it's even feasible. We'll have to use the Keinaba house to spread out a gathering net. We'll need to apprentice more humans into that house, to give them wider access to Chapalii space. And to get the Chapalii used to humans running around Chapalii space. We'll need excuses for humans to travel extensively. Merchants. I doubt if they'll let linguists and xenospecialists move so freely—"

Maggie laughed. "Repertory companies."

"What!" David rolled his eyes, but he could not help but laugh with her. "Can't you just see Anahita playing Mata Hari?"

A light sparked in Charles's eyes. "Yes! Repertory companies. Musicians. Artists and craftsmen. They can gather information and have a perfectly legitimate excuse to be wandering around the Chapalii Empire."

"But, Charles," said Rajiv in his usual cautious manner, "all of this would have to proceed in utter secrecy. Where can we possibly find a secure base of operations?"

"Rhui," Charles said casually, and the dizzying array of the data banks hazed and melded to become the blue globe of Rhui, dazzling against the black veil surrounding her. For a moment, David thought that Charles had simply wanted to see the planet. It was a beautiful enough sight.

"What better base than Rhui?" Charles continued. His face was quiet, but David still knew him well enough to know that Charles was concealing a perfectly violent sense of triumph. "Rhui is interdicted already. It's off-limits to casual Chapalii observation, and any official delegations must come through me."

"What about covert operations?" David asked. "Like the one that brought Tess here in the first place?"

Rajiv lifted a hand from his slate. "We covered that. There won't be any more of those."

"Yes," Charles murmured, watching the rich globe turn. His globe, by the emperor's decree, to do with as he willed. "All the more reason to maintain the interdiction, to keep it in force for years, for decades, for as long as it takes us. Cara's been doing her research in Jeds all along for that reason. Why not this as well?"

Rhui. It made sense. It made perfect sense. The Mushai had planned and implemented his rebellion from here. Why not the Tai-en Charles Soerensen as well? Would the Chapalii expect it? And yet, how could they predict what the Chapalii would or would not expect? What other planet did humans control so completely? No other planet. There was no other choice, not really. And there was a certain pleasing symmetry to this resolution as well. As it was, so will it be.

Rhui spun in her halo of space, unaware of the destiny being visited upon her.

ACT FOUR

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up...."

—SHAKESPEARE,

The Life of King Henry V

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hyacinth was soggy, cold, and miserable. He shivered while he hammered a tent stake into the damnably hard ground with the butt of his knife. How stupid could he possibly be? he wondered for the thousandth time. He had neglected to take a mallet, or a hammer, or even a hatchet, so every night this farce had to be played out, and it took five times as long to set up his tent as it should have. At first they hadn't set up the tents at all, but with this awful rain, he couldn't endure sleeping out in the open in just a blanket, no matter what Yevgeni and Valye might say, no matter how tough they might be.

Rain fell. He was already soaked to the skin, although by now the precipitation had slackened enough that it didn't really qualify as rain. More of a mizzle, perhaps, a pathetic reminder of the storm that had blown through yesterday. Yevgeni sneezed and coughed, off to the left where he desperately tried to get a fire started with dry twigs and some dung he had scavenged. Valye was out hunting.

Four days ago they had eaten meat; since then, they had subsisted on berries and the tasteless tubers that they gathered when they paused to rest the horses. They saw no game, and certainly, in the ruined land they rode through, no stray livestock. It was as if the jaran army, sweeping through, had obliterated every living creature in its path: humans, livestock, wild animals, and all the grain that had once grown in the fields. Orchards still surrounded the occasional wreck of a village or town they passed, but Yevgeni refused point-blank to ride close in to khaja habitations, even the ones that looked deserted. It was hard enough avoiding the jaran patrols.

Hyacinth sighed and rested his forehead on a palm. He stared at the knife in his right hand. The single jewel buried in the hilt was not, as Yevgeni and Valye thought, a true jewel; it was a laser crystal, gleaming red to show that the emergency transmitter and stun pack disguised within the knife's shell was still powered. It would be so easy to trigger the transmitter and bring—something— some kind of help.

He still ached from the constant riding, but the intense pain of the first ten days had passed. Blisters covered his fingers and his palms, some worn at last to calluses. They had bled at first, and Yevgeni had bound them with a tenderness incongruous in a young man who could slaughter khaja with no sign of remorse.

He felt Yevgeni behind him a moment before the rider touched him on the neck. Yevgeni knelt beside him and leaned his dark head against Hyacinth's fair one. They just crouched there awhile, saying nothing. Hyacinth took comfort in Yevgeni's closeness and in his silence. A bird warbled in the twilit gloom, but otherwise only the rain sounded, muted, dying, and an occasional drip or shower of water from leaf-burdened branches.

"I'm sorry," said Yevgeni finally, in a soft voice, "that I have nothing better to give you, in return for what you gave up for me."

Hyacinth stared at the sodden ground. A trail of cold rain seeped under the collar of his tunic and raced down his spine. He shuddered. Yevgeni started back, and Hyacinth grabbed for him, staggering to his feet. "No. No, it's just the rain. Please." His heel turned in a sink of mud and he slipped on the slick ground.

Yevgeni had better footing. Catching Hyacinth, he pulled the actor close and buried his face in Hyacinth's neck. He was perfectly still.

Hyacinth held him. Yevgeni was shorter, and seemed slight, but he had broad shoulders and was, in fact, quite strong. Neither he nor his sister was particularly striking, but they were handsome in a proud way, resembling each other in their broad cheekbones and brown eyes and coarse, dark hair. They never complained, and they good-naturedly put up with Hyacinth's complaining in a way that made him ashamed of himself. He could, after all, be rescued at any time. They had nothing now but each other, and him, and he was an embarrassment to them. He was a constant reminder of why Yevgeni had been banished, and Hyacinth knew damn well that it was his own fault that he had been caught in Yevgeni's tent to begin with. If he hadn't been so careless, because, of course, he found nothing wrong with what he and Yevgeni shared together, and it was so easy to forget that for Yevgeni, with the jaran, it was an entirely different matter.

"It's I who should be sorry," said Hyacinth. Yevgeni's hair smelled of smoke. Behind, the fire smoked more than burned. "It's my fault. I should have left sooner. I—"

Yevgeni laid a finger over Hyacinth's lips. "It's done. We were outlaws anyway and only there on sufferance. If we can make it back to the plains ..."

"Then?"

Yevgeni sighed and embraced Hyacinth more tightly. Out here, quit of the tribe—and when his sister wasn't around—he had become freer with signs of affection. Then we'll find my aunt's tribe and throw ourselves on her mercy, and perhaps she'll take us in. Or at least Valye. We must convince Valye to go with her." He cocked his head back suddenly. "If you married Valye, then it might be perfectly respectable."

"If I married Valye!"

Yevgeni chuckled. That he could still find humor in anything, out in this rain, in this horrible situation, amazed Hyacinth. "I thought you didn't mind women."

"I don't, but—" Faced with the prospect of living out his days among these savages, married to one of their women, carrying on discreetly with her brother, and enduring, year after year after year, the rain and die dirt and the filthy tasks they engaged in—none of which he was suited for—Hyacinth found himself appalled. And trapped. He felt trapped. He had a pretty good idea that if they left him, he would die. Even in the time it would take for the transmitter to recall help, he could die. He was a drag on them; he knew it, and they knew it, and yet they had never once taxed him for it, and Yevgeni apologized to him for what he, Hyacinth, had given up for Yevgeni. Their generosity so eclipsed his that it shamed him.

"I love you," said Hyacinth, because in its own way it was true. Yevgeni made a strangled noise in his throat and no other response, only stood there, holding on. One of his hands clenched and relaxed. The rain ceased, finally. A wind came up.

"Oh, gods," said Yevgeni at last in a muffled voice, talking into the collar of Hyacinth's tunic, "I want to go there so badly, to this place where you come from, this Erthe, where there's no shame for a man to tell another man that he loves him."

"Of course there's no shame! Why should there be?" Hyacinth stroked Yevgeni's hair.

The sound of a horse crashing through brush stirred them. Yevgeni spun away and drew his saber. But it was only Valye, returning empty-handed from her hunt. She swung down and kissed her brother on the cheek and nodded to Hyacinth. Yevgeni went back to the fire, to try to spark it to life, but it smoldered and refused to give either flame or heat. Valye unsaddled her horse and rubbed it down and hobbled it with the others, under the shelter of a grove of scrub trees that ringed a little pond. Birds skittered across the water on the far side. Birds. But perhaps Valye wasn't a good enough shot to kill birds for dinner.

Valye cast a practiced eye up at the lowering sky. Darkness swept down on them. "I think it's going to rain again tonight," she said to her brother. "I'd better set up my tent."

Again. She kept setting up her tent, and Yevgeni always had to sleep there. Yevgeni didn't want to offend her sensibilities, even though she knew damn well what he had been banished for. "It's stupid,"

said Hyacinth suddenly, surprising even himself, "for you to set up your tent. Mine is warmer."

Valye flushed and drew up her chin. "It isn't proper."

"Hyacinth," said Yevgeni softly, "she's right, of course."

Of course he did anything his sister said. They went to bed that night on empty stomachs. Valye had first watch.

Hyacinth crawled alone into his own tent and set the perimeter alert. He took off his clothes and slid them into the drying pouch slung at the base of the tent. Then he dozed, until Valye woke him for his half of the watch.

At dawn, while the others still slept, Hyacinth walked down to the water. In the quiet, he watched birds swarming over the pond and along the shore. Such abundance, and he was so hungry. Yevgeni and Valye weren't around to see. He circled around to the far side of the pond, staying out at a safe distance, and then aimed his knife and fired.

It was like fishing for trout in a barrel—that was an old phrase his great-grandmother Nguyen always used. Within moments two dozen birds lay dead or stunned, some on the ground, some along the shore in and out of the reeds, most floating in the lake. He left the ones in the water and, with a great sense of pride and a fair measure of squeamishness, hoisted the others by their feet and carried them back to camp.

At camp, Valye and Yevgeni had woken up. Valye tended to the fire while Yevgeni tied Valye's rolled-up tent onto a packhorse. Yevgeni flung up his head and saw Hyacinth. A look of such overwhelming relief passed over his features that Hyacinth was embarrassed.

"Look what I got!" he said instead, displaying the half-dozen birds he had salvaged from the massacre. "Now we can eat for the next day or two."

Valye flung herself down on the damp ground and began to wail. Yevgeni simply stared. He looked as if he were in shock. He looked horrified.

Hyacinth actually turned around to see if some loathsome monster followed in his wake, but there was nothing there. A flight of birds erupted from the pond, driving up into the cloud-laden sky. A single hawk circled above, and abruptly, it folded its wings and dropped like a stone toward the ground.

"Build the fire," said Yevgeni suddenly in a hoarse voice. "Valye, build the fire, quickly. We'll give them back to her and beg her forgiveness. We'll release them into her hands."

"What about him?" Valye wailed. "Who will kill him?"

What, in the Lady's Name, were they talking about?

"No one, damn it!" snapped Yevgeni. "It's obvious he doesn't know. Go on."

"But she'll demand retribution!" Valye cried.

"Just do as I say!"

"What's going on?" demanded Hyacinth.

Yevgeni took in a deep breath, as if by main force of will he controlled himself, and strode over to Hyacinth. "Birds are sacred to us. Perhaps they aren't to you khaja." He put out his hand. "Give them to me."

Relieved to be free of the limp birds, Hyacinth handed them over. Only to watch in shock as Yevgeni carried them across to the fire and, once its flames had gathered force and heat, simply laid them over the pit.

"Aren't you supposed to pull the feathers off first, and maybe get rid of the heads and the feet?"

Hyacinth asked, utterly confused.

"Take down your tent unless you want us to leave it here," said Yevgeni in a voice so cold that Hyacinth abruptly knew that if he didn't obey, he would be left behind as well. He obeyed. As he worked, Yevgeni and Valye stoked the fire, feeding it, nursing it, encouraging it to consume the birds.

They chanted in singsong voices, sometimes together, sometimes separately, sometimes overlapping.

"Grandmother Night, forgive us for drawing ourselves to your attention. We beg your pardon. We draw back. It was a child's error, that your messengers, your holy ones, were taken from life this day.

Even you yourself did not blame your children when, all ignorant, they transgressed your laws. Spare us from your just retribution. Allow us to beg for your mercy. Look not upon us with your dreadful sight.

We are not strong enough to endure the terrible glance of your eye. We send these messengers back to you, in the old way, to grace your lands once more. Grant us mercy for our transgression."

They were praying. They were just going to burn the birds and leave them.

"How can you waste them like that?" demanded Hyacinth, stopping in the middle of his task and staring. "I'm hungry!"

"Valye." Yevgeni dropped out of the singsong chant and motioned with a turn of his head toward the horses. "Saddle and pack up. Go. Quickly." She glanced toward Hyacinth, but she obeyed her brother.

Yevgeni looked back over his shoulder at Hyacinth and then away. Hyacinth felt that he himself had somehow taken on the aspect of a loathsome monster, but he didn't understand what had happened.

Drawing a knife, Yevgeni opened his palm out flat over the fire and before Hyacinth realized what he meant to do, he cut his own skin. Blood welled up. Yevgeni turned over his hand and let the blood drip into the fire.

"Take this offering, Grandmother Night, whose name is terrible to hear, whose glance is terrible to suffer, and grant us mercy, grant us forgiveness, for the death of these, your holy messengers."

Blood scattered into the fire. Singed feathers poured an acrid odor into the air. Yevgeni rocked back on his heels and stood, clenching his hand tight to stop the bleeding.

"Get your tent down," Yevgeni said to Hyacinth, so harshly that Hyacinth felt his courage and his heart melt within him. But he obeyed.

They packed up and rode on. The clouds scudded away. It did not rain. A low range of mountains loomed before them, the next obstacle.

Valye would not talk to him. Yevgeni answered his comments, his questions, in curt monosyllables, and finally Hyacinth gave up talking. He had never felt more alone in his life.

They climbed by winding paths up into the hills. A packhorse went lame around midday, picking up a stone in its hoof. They halted in the lee of a copse of trees that straggled along the steep slope that bounded the north wall of the valley up which they rode. Hills loomed around them. The sun burned bright overhead. Here between the rocks, it grew warm. It was a gloomy countryside. A few green shoots sprouted up, encouraged by die recent rains, but otherwise the land lay rocky and barren. Their trail wound up into the heights, and Yevgeni seemed sure that it would lead them over the hills and into Farisa country, past which lay the plains and freedom.

Hyacinth stood beside the horses under the shade of a clump of trees. Yevgeni and Valye argued over whether to kill the injured horse for food or to nurse it along.

"We have little enough now to carry," said Valye.

"But if we get more, we'll need it. We need remounts, in any case." Yevgeni knelt and ran his hand along the horse's leg. The animal was a kind, patient beast and submitted to this care equably enough.

Yevgeni found the stone and drew it out, but the cut bled. He shook his head. "I've nothing to put on it for a compress."

"I've got a medical kit," said Hyacinth, tentatively, "but I don't know if it works for horses. I don't know—" He faltered, because Valye had turned her back on him. Yevgeni hung his head. "Oh, Goddess!

You won't even tell me what I've done, and it's just plain stupid not to see if what I've got can help!"

Yevgeni had one pretension to beauty. He had a mobile, prettily-shaped mouth. His lips twitched now, and Hyacinth could tell he was struggling inwardly. Finally he flung his head back. "Let me see."

Hyacinth rummaged in his saddlebags and brought out the med kit He fingered through its riches and brought out the things that he thought would be most recognizable to Yevgeni; and in the end, they worked out a rough compress and some salve and decided to nurse the horse along.

Valye watched with disapproval. "Do you think you should accept his khaja medicine? It was his khaja ways that brought down her enmity on us."

"We don't know if she's angry, yet," retorted Yevgeni.

"You're a fool if you think we won't pay for it, Yevgeni."

"I'm a fool four times over, then," he snapped, "once for leaving the tribe to ride with Dmitri Mikhailov, once for agreeing to bring you with me, once for riding away with Vasil Veselov when I should have stayed and begged for mercy."

"What about him?" Valye jerked her chin toward Hyacinth. "Five times, then, for taking up with him."

"No," said Yevgeni in a low voice, not looking toward Hyacinth though he must know that Hyacinth could hear every word they were saying. "Not for him. You don't understand what it's like to feel shame every time you look at a man with desire, to know you can never speak of your feelings to him. Oh, I thought for a while that Vasil might—but he needed a second in command, he needed men for a jahar, he used his beauty to make me think he might love me, but he never did, and then I felt ashamed for being a fool, for not knowing better. But he never made me feel ashamed. Because he never felt ashamed. That was a gift, Valye, but perhaps you can't understand that."

Her throat worked. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She had pulled back her hair into a long braid, but the sunlight betrayed how dirty it was. Dirt encrusted the cuffs and hem of her tunic and caked the knees of her trousers and the palms of her hands. Not that Hyacinth was any cleaner. "I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. She offered a hand to Yevgeni and he accepted it, and she lifted him up and hugged him. "You're all that I have, Yevgeni. I won't judge you."

He smiled tremulously. "You're the best sister any man ever had, even if you are wild, and won't listen when you ought to." He kissed her on the cheek. A pang gripped Hyacinth's heart, seeing their true feeling for each other, seeing their bond. Like the one he had once had with the actors in the Company.

Was this how Yevgeni felt, riding in the army, as if he was always on the outside looking in?

Yevgeni pushed her away. "We'd better go. It's never wise to stay in any place too long."

Except that they already had stayed too long. Or perhaps their fate had been tracking them all along and simply chosen this moment to strike.

One moment, the scene was all silence. It was bleak, true enough, but there was hope in the way the path wound up into the heights, suggesting freedom in the distance, and hope in the way Yevgeni turned and with a shy smile glanced toward Hyacinth and away, as if he flirted with him. Then he stopped in mid-stride. His expression shifted abruptly. He canted his head to one side, listening. Hyacinth heard something, a gentle ring, the echo of a sound like a voice's echo. Yevgeni drew his saber. Valye pulled her bow from its quiver. It was already strung; it was always strung. Hyacinth stared.

"Mount." Yevgeni sprinted toward him.

Hyacinth heard a whoof, like air being expelled; heard the ring of bridle; heard the shout. Yevgeni called a warning. It all took place in a vast sink of time, drawn out so excruciatingly slowly that to experience it was painful. Valye staggered forward in the act of fitting an arrow to her bowstring. She half turned to raise and aim at the sudden clot of khaja riders on the ridge above them, but a strange shadow cut across her.

Two arrows stuck out of her back. She shot anyway. She shot again as the riders charged down toward them, and a man toppled from his horse. Yevgeni scrambled onto his horse and swung round to go back to her. His horse stumbled and staggered and crumpled to the ground, pierced through the neck with a mass of arrows. Thrown, Yevgeni tumbled down, landing at Valye's feet. She shot again. An arrow skewered her in the thigh. Still she did not go down. A trio of arrows pinned Yevgeni to the ground, but he tore free of them and struggled up to stand next to her.

They were going to die.

Then Hyacinth remembered his knife. What did he care what prohibitions he broke? He drew it and raised it and fired. He saw nothing but a shimmering in the air. But the effect was stunning, and immediate. Twelve riders closed in on them, a thirteenth left back on the ground with an arrow in his chest. Twelve khaja men fell like stones from their saddles. That fast. The horses faltered. One went down. The other horses pulled up short not six paces in front of Yevgeni, riderless, confused, and probably half stunned themselves by the concussion.

"Gods!" cried Valye, whether from her wounds or from astonishment Hyacinth could not know. She collapsed to the ground at Yevgeni's feet.

"Hyacinth, look after her!" Yevgeni cried. He ran forward, drawing his knife in his other hand, and knelt by the foremost khaja bandit. "Gods, he's still breathing. So is he!" He glanced back toward Hyacinth, looking suspicious, looking apprehensive. Then, methodically, gruesomely, he slit each man's throat.

Hyacinth roused himself out of his stupor and dropped the reins and ran over to Valye. Mercifully, she was unconscious. Blood bubbled out of her mouth, welling in and out in time to her labored breathing.

Hyacinth fumbled in the med kit and brought out the scanner and ran it over her. Then he flipped over his slate and read the results into it. They flashed RED RED RED: condition critical; advise moving subject to urgent care facility immediately; wounds to deep tissue in thigh; damage to internal organs; right lung has been pierced; do you wish a more detailed diagnosis?

"No," said Hyacinth.

"She's going to die, isn't she?" said Yevgeni. Hyacinth jumped, startled, and turned. Yevgeni limped up to him. He bled from his leg, from his arm, and from a gash to his head. "What is that?" He pointed with his bloodstained knife to the open slate.

"It's a hemi-modeler. Maybe you'd know it as a computer. Never mind. It doesn't matter what it is. Do you know how to get those arrows out?"

Yevgeni shrugged, staring at his young sister. "Yes, but it doesn't matter. I've seen wounds. She's breathing blood. It's got her in the lungs. She won't live."

"She can, if I can get help."

Yevgeni gave him a look of complete incomprehension and then knelt beside Valye and began the slow process of turning the arrows out of her wounds. Blood gushed. Hyacinth had to turn away before he threw up. He grabbed his slate and went and crouched beside the horses. He lifted the knife, and held it up so that it could read his retinal print, and then he released its code. For five minutes, he knew, it would pulse silently, broadcasting the distress signal. He tried to gauge how long it would take for them to get a ship here. Could they get one here soon enough to save Valye?

"The horses," said Yevgeni.

Hyacinth hobbled their horses, caught the strays and as many of the others as he could, and hobbled them as well.

Yevgeni's horse—well, it was suffering, that much was apparent.

"Kill it," said Yevgeni.

What choice did he have? Force Yevgeni to leave his sister? The rider had two of the arrows out, by now, but the third came slowly, spiraling out along its tracks on the silk undershirt she wore, driven into the wound. Hyacinth hadn't a clue how to kill a horse. He used his knife to stun it into oblivion and hoped it would bleed to death before it woke up. Then he went back to Yevgeni and ran the scan over him. He set the med kit out and queried the modeler about first aid, and the slate began a stream of directions to him in clear Anglais.

Yevgeni started so badly that he almost twitched the arrow still lodged in Valye's side. He swore, and then again, seeing that Hyacinth wasn't speaking. He went white. "What is that?" He was terrified. "Who is that speaking?"

"Trust me," said Hyacinth. "Just trust me. Take that arrow out." Listening to the directions, Hyacinth did as well as he could with the equipment in the med kit. He used a sonic cleaner to sterilize the various wounds and an antibiotic spray to prevent infection. The seamer stitched up Yevgeni's head wound, sealing it, and his leg wound as well, and Valye's thigh wound, but there was nothing he could do about the internal damage. He ran the emergency pulse again, or so he hoped; he could not hear anything.

Yevgeni was in shock by this time. He stumbled away from Hyacinth and began to gather wood for a fire, refusing to be deflected from this task, so Hyacinth set up his tent by himself. They carried Valye into it and laid her on the floor. She did not regain consciousness. Her breath bubbled and subsided.

Night fell. No one came.

All that long night Yevgeni sat beside her. Hyacinth set up the lantern, not caring now if its constant, fireless glow amazed Yevgeni, but Yevgeni sat so sunk in grief that he did not seem to care. Valye breathed. Night passed. No one came.

She died at dawn, slipping peacefully out of herself and away. Yevgeni readied the fire, evidently not caring that it would provide a beacon for any other khaja bandits passing by. He dressed her carefully and folded her hands over her chest; he laid her on the fire, and lit it. It blazed up. Soon smoke and flames concealed her from their view. Yevgeni flung himself on the ground and keened. He threw off his shirt and slashed himself with his knife, over and over, along his arms and on his chest. Blood, like tears, washed him.

Hyacinth stared at his transmitter. No one had come. They had abandoned him.

Morning passed. The pyre burned. The sun rose to its zenith, reminding Hyacinth bitterly that exactly one day had passed since they had halted here before. The bodies of the dead khaja still lay on the ground, ravaged by night stalkers. Insects swarmed them. A bird circled down and settled with lazy grace on the corpse farthest from the horses. It began to feed. Soon another bird joined it.

Hyacinth walked forward and touched Yevgeni on the neck. "Yevgeni," he said softly, not trusting the other man not to jump up and threaten him with that knife. At least Yevgeni had stopped mutilating himself, though blood still seeped from the cuts scored all over his skin. "Shouldn't we move on? What if they come back? If someone else comes?"

"Ah, gods," said Yevgeni, his voice hoarse with rage and sorrow, "she trusted me. When did I bring her anything but grief?"

Hyacinth winced. Yevgeni's desolation was a palpable thing, like a blow. Yevgeni stared at the fire that consumed his sister's body. If he even noticed Hyacinth's hand on his neck, he gave no sign of it.

"Yevgeni, we should ride on. What if there are others around here?"

"What does it matter? Grandmother Night will have her revenge on us in the end." His voice sounded hollow and lifeless. "We killed her holy messengers, and the only punishment for that crime is death. It has already begun. Valye is dead. What does it matter if we die, too?"

Yevgeni had given up. Hyacinth shut his eyes. "Yevgeni, listen to me. I don't believe in grandmother night. I'm not going to die, not for grandmother night, not for you, and not for them!" He opened his eyes, shocked at his own vehemence. But it was true; now that they had lost everything, now that he had been abandoned by his own people, now he refused to give up.

Yevgeni lifted his head. His eyes were glazed, but a sudden gleam of fear lit them. "You mustn't speak of her with such disrespect," he said, but with no force behind the comment.

"And risk what? Valye is already dead. What else is there but our own lives? I'm going on, and you're coming with me." Hyacinth did not know what else to do, except to keep moving. Yevgeni rose, stiff with pain and drying cuts, but he would not let Hyacinth clean his wounds. Face drawn, he pulled his shirt on over the raw cuts. He hesitated. The pyre burned steadily now, but Hyacinth was not sure how much of Valye's body would actually be consumed by the time it went out. He didn't intend to wait around to see what khaja locals the fire attracted.

"Yevgeni, come on."

Yevgeni obeyed numbly. They strung the khaja horses on with the rest and set off northeast, up the valley.

That night, Hyacinth downed two birds with his knife and brought them back to camp. Yevgeni sat slumped over his knees, apathetic now in his grief. Hyacinth sighed and stared at the two birds. He steeled himself, going off a few paces away from the safety of the hobbled horses, and he began the disgusting, messy work of preparing them for supper. He hadn't a clue what to do with them. He plucked at the feathers, but they wouldn't come out cleanly. He had to hack and tear at the skin and peel it off entirely. It was horrible. He cut off their heads and feet, swore copiously, gutted them, and threw up once at the smell and sticky texture of the fluids that gushed out of them. But he did it.

Yevgeni just sat there. Hyacinth got out the little solar powered oven he had stolen from the Company's camp and roasted the two birds in it. That wasn't so bad, since the oven had all kinds of timing devices built into it according to weight and type of meat. He also heated water to boiling and while the meat cooked, he took a cloth and dabbed the cuts on Yevgeni's back with hot water. Yevgeni let him do it. He was otherwise listless. He shivered, and Hyacinth hoped that he wasn't going to get some kind of infection. He brought out the scanner again and ran it over Yevgeni, and the med program on his slate advised him to use the antiseptic mist.

"What are you doing?" Yevgeni asked at last, roused out of his stupor by the stinging of the mist.

"Keeping you well. Roasting some meat."

But Yevgeni wouldn't eat when Hyacinth brought him the roasted fowl.

Hyacinth crouched beside him and took Yevgeni's chin in his hand. "They've all abandoned you, Yevgeni, don't you see that? So what does it matter what you do?"

"It matters to the gods."

"Well, I don't believe in your gods. How did those twelve men fall off their horses?"

For the first time since Valye's death, Yevgeni lifted his gaze to look directly at Hyacinth. "I don't know," he whispered.

"I did that, and you know I'm no fighter."

"You're a Singer. A shaman. Perhaps you know sorcery."

"It's not sorcery either. Listen, Yevgeni. Maybe we have a way out of this. Do you know where the shrine of Morava is? Maybe Soerensen is still there."

The glaze of dullness that stiffened Yevgeni's expression lightened slightly. "Who is Soerensen?"

"The Prince of Jeds. If we can find him—"

"He would help us?" Yevgeni shook his head. "He can't help us. No woman or man can, now that Grandmother Night has settled her terrible gaze on us."

"Yes, he can. He's more powerful than grandmother night."

"Don't say that!" Yevgeni shrank away from him.

"But it's true. I made those men fall down, with this knife. I can heal your wounds with these simple instruments. That box is an oven that baked this meat without fire. I'm more powerful than grandmother night. Let me show you something."

He brought out his slate and unfolded it, so that it lay flat on the ground. In silence, Yevgeni watched.

"Do you remember the jaran tale we sang? The one about Mekhala, the woman who brought horses to the jaran?"

Yevgeni lowered his eyes. "Yes." He said it as if something shamed him about the memory. "I was with Valye. She liked to see your people's singing."

"Run Mekhala folktale, scene two. Meter field."

In scene two, Hyacinth played the khaja prince who had come to demand tribute from the rhan, as the jaran tribes had called themselves before they had gotten horses and become ja-rhan, the people of the wind. Above the slate, about a meter cubed, the play unfolded: Anahita as Mekhala and Diana as her sister, Hyacinth entering as the prince with his retinue of Quinn and Oriana.

Yevgeni stared openmouthed at the image, moving, playing out. He reached out and snatched his hand back before he touched it. "Sorcery," he murmured.

"No, it's not sorcery. It's a—oh, hell, there's no way to explain it to you. Run image of Morava."

The image melted away and re-formed into the gorgeous dome and towers of the Chapalii palace the jaran called Morava. Hyacinth had not seen Morava except through this program, and he was delighted to be able to pace around it and see the complex from all angles. He envied the duke's party for experiencing it firsthand.

"But how did it get so small?" Yevgeni demanded. "How did you capture it and bring it here?"

"It's just an image, Yevgeni, not the shrine itself. Look, do you know what a map is? Let me see.

Maybe I can reconstruct where we left the army, and where we are now. It's been thirty-five days since we left camp and if we've ridden northeast. . .. Goddess. I should have paid more attention in cartography tutorial."

"But no one is more powerful than Grandmother Night," said Yevgeni suddenly. "Even seeing these things and what you did to those khaja bandits, still... . She attends us at our birth and grants us a measure of days in which to live. She is the One with whom we may bargain for gifts, if we're willing to risk the bargaining, if we're desperate enough. She is death, Hyacinth. No person can escape death."

"How old do you think the Prince of Jeds is?"

Yevgeni shrugged. "Of an age with Bakhtiian, I suppose."

"He isn't. He's older than Mother Sakhalin."

"He can't be."

"He is. Why would I lie to you? Dr. Hierakis is older than he is. Owen is in his seventies, too, and Ginny is at least as old as that. Yet they are still young. My great-grandmother Nguyen is one hundred and sixteen years old, and I can expect to live at least as long as she has and stay young until I'm ninety or so. Grandmother night doesn't scare us. You've got to believe me, Yevgeni. You've got to want to believe me, you've got to want to live. If we can make it to the shrine, if we can find the duke—"

Yevgeni reached up abruptly and touched Hyacinth's cheek. "That's when I fell in love with you," he said in a low voice. "When I saw that song, the song you did about Mekhala. Valye said you were really the khaja prince and that it was a wind demon truly drawn down to walk among us, but I knew you were just a person singing two different songs. You were so beautiful."

Hyacinth shut his eyes. How Owen would have loved this scene: Yevgeni's voice blended grief and wonder and a shy yearning so perfectly, and the way he held his body reflected his longing and his sorrow and his actual physical pain. But this was real. Hyacinth knelt and put his arms around the other man. Yevgeni gasped, from the pain of the embrace, but he did not draw away.

"Oh, damn," murmured Hyacinth, "it must hurt."

"No, no," said Yevgeni into his hair, "never mind it. I gave it for her, who followed me to her death."

"We won't die. That way you can remember her. That way part of her will always live, with you."

Yevgeni sighed against him but said nothing. There was nothing he needed to say, not at that moment.

Hyacinth stroked his hair and held him carefully, tenderly.

After a little while, Hyacinth warmed up the meat in the oven and Yevgeni ate a sliver of it, though it was the flesh of the gods" sacred messengers. Not much, but by that small gesture, Hyacinth knew that Yevgeni had cast his lot with his khaja lover and abandoned his own people once and for all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

In the middle of the night, Tess woke to the sound of footsteps in the outer chamber. She heaved herself up and slipped on a silk robe, tying it closed just under her breasts and above her pregnant belly.

She pushed the curtain aside and walked into her husband.

He had been pacing. She could tell by the way his shoulders were drawn forward and one hand clenched up by his beard. He opened the hand and splayed it over one side of her belly. "The child is growing," he said. "And all of a sudden, it seems. I think you're twice the size you were at Hamrat, and it's only been sixteen days since we left there."

"Oh, gods, and it's all pressing on my bladder."

"Do you want me to walk with you?"

"No." She slipped on a pair of sandals, threw a cloak over her silk robe, and walked out to the freshly-dug pits sited at the edge of the Orzhekov encampment. At night, it was quiet and peaceful here, but she knew that about a kilometer away lay the royal city of Karkand, settled in for a long siege. She greeted guards, and they greeted her in return. They were used to her nightly peregrinations. The guards looked a little chilled, but she was never cold now, even in the middle of the night.

When she got back to the tent, Ilya was pacing again. "Here," she said, "stop that. It's moving again.

Sit down." She settled down cross-legged beside him and opened her robe. He rested both of his hands on her belly. "What's bothering you?"

He did not reply. He concentrated on her, on her belly, on his hands.

"There, did you feel that?" she asked. He shook his head. "It's mostly like a fluttering, now, like butterflies. When I get bigger, you'll feel it."

He sighed and withdrew his hands, and stood, and walked to the entrance of the tent and then back to her. "How does Ursula know so much?" he demanded. "Although she is always respectful, she speaks with the authority of Sakhalin himself. We rode a circuit of the city today and she pointed out where siege engines might be used to the greatest effect, and how the river might be dammed so that it could flood the walls and the citadel. She speaks as if she has seen and done all these things before, as if she has already ridden with an army like ours."

"She's read many books." Tess rose and poured two cups of water, and offered one to him. He ignored her. He went to the table and unrolled two pieces of parchment on the tabletop. One was Nadine's map of Habakar lands and beyond. The other was a rough map of Karkand and the surrounding countryside.

Karkand, like Jeds, was a walled city, but here the resemblance ended. Hovels and houses and palaces, poor and rich alike, lay crammed within the protecting walls of Jeds, and only the prince's palace and the university lay outside within their own ring of walls. Huts and shanties had sprouted up immediately outside the walls and along the road that led to the palace, but only the poorest people who could find no foothold inside the city lived out there.

In Karkand, the rich lived outside the inner city. They lived in a vast sprawl of villas along avenues spread out on the fertile plain that surrounded the two hills on which lay the citadel and the king's palace and the innermost city, which was itself as large as Jeds. The outer city was also protected by a wall, not as formidable as the walls ringing the twin hills but impressive for its sheer vast circumference. It took half a day to ride around the suburbs of Karkand.

"Sakhalin has ridden south," said Ilya, staring at the maps. "Reports have come in that the king's nephew has raised an army there. He is said to be courageous and an able leader."

"What news from Anatoly Sakhalin?"

"None. Grekov and Vershinin have reached the two cities west of here, by forced march—"

"Gods, that was fast."

"—and a courier just came in to say that one of the cities, Gangana, has already surrendered. Should I take the main army south?"

"What do your commanders advise? Has Sakhalin asked for your help?"

"Sakhalin has not asked. Yet. The council is divided. If it's true, and the main threat lies in the south....

The nephew could easily drive north and east and cut off our supply route back to the plains. We're losing forage here. And yet, and yet, Karkand is the king's city, and it is the king I must be seen to punish."

"Unless it is the nephew who has the people's hearts, and not the king."

Ilya turned and folded his arms over his chest, examining her with a frown on his face. "That's just what Ursula said. I thought—for an instant I thought it was as if she knew what was going to happen next. As if she'd heard this tale before." He shook the thought away with an impatient shrug of his shoulders. "No. I must stay here until the city is taken. I intend to sit in the king's throne, so that the Habakar people will know who rules here now."

He bent back over the table, poring over the two maps. Tess watched him. She could see that he was too agitated to sleep. His lips moved, sounding out names, but he did not speak aloud. With a finger, he traced lines of advance: Grekov's command driving west; Sakhalin riding south, and the army led by Tadheus Yensky swinging in a wide loop south and east. His hand found the cup she had set beside him.

He raised it to his lips and took a deep draught, then made a face, as if he had been expecting something else, not plain water.

"Ilya, come lie down with me."

He shrugged, as if to say: not now, I'm too busy.

Tess loved to just watch him. She thought he looked, if anything, a little younger these days. He glowed with health, or perhaps it was only the restless energy radiating off him. She had finally come to an understanding of how different he and Vasil were. They were both selfabsorbed, but Vasil was absorbed in knowing how he appeared to others while Ilya was absorbed in the vision that led him. Vasil always knew where he stood in relation to others. Ilya simply was, and he drew his thousand thousand followers along with him as does any juggernaut. And she, one of them. She smiled wryly and settled her hands on the curve of her abdomen.

"I know it's none of my business, but have you lain with any other women since we got married?"

His fingers halted midway down the map. His chin lifted. She could tell by the angle of his shoulders and the way his mouth twitched once, and then was still, that he was embarrassed. "It's none of your business."

Tess laughed and pushed up to stand. She went over and slid an arm around him. "You haven't, have you?"

"I've been busy. Very busy. And preoccupied."

"Yes, my love. Come lie down with me." He followed her in to their bed meekly enough. He might even have slept, but she woke later to find him gone,

In the morning, she woke to find him sleeping in his clothes next to her. She rose quietly and dressed and went outside. Konstans greeted her with a yawn.

"You look tired," she said.

"Gods. In the middle of the night, Bakhtiian made us ride out along the northwest prospect, to look over the walls, not that we could see them, but he was more interested in the orchards, anyway. Doesn't he ever sleep?"

Tess grinned. "As I hear it, he sleeps more now than he ever used to."

"That's true enough," agreed Konstans. "It's a good thing he married, for the rest of us, at least." He smiled at her, remembered that she was Bakhtiian's wife and not his old comrade-in-arms, and looked away.

"Oh, don't be shy with me, Konstans. We've known each other too long. Is there any word about the embassy from Parkilnous yet? Hello, Aleksi. Can you ride down to the ambassadors" camp and see if they've arrived?" Aleski nodded and left. Tess went over to greet Sonia and to send Kolia with hot tea to wake Ilya.

Karkand lay beyond, its vast sprawl of suburbs fortified by walls and its inner city grown up in rings around a hill that rose out of the flat land. On a second hill, a twin to the first, lay the acres of white and gleaming stone, festooned with pennants and banners, of the royal palace. Here on the flat, they saw the city mostly as two distant heights thrusting into the sky, the gray citadel crowning the first hill and a shining pair of towers crowning the second. The citizens of Karkand had not elected to defend the outer city, but Ilya had decreed that the fields and orchards and suburbs remain untouched except to feed the camp, and what farmers had not fled within the inner walls or away into the countryside were ordered to work their lands on pain of death. Sonia offered Tess some fresh melon, and Tess ate the sweet fruit gratefully.

"I rode through the outskirts of the city yesterday," said Sonia. "It's very handsome, and it's certainly bigger than any city I've ever seen. Why, there must be as many people living there as there are riders in Ilya's army. No, there must be far more."

Josef Raevsky came around the side of the tent, his left hand touching Vania's shoulder so that the boy could lead him in under the awning. Ivan led him to a pillow next to Tess and Katerina brought him a tray laden with meat and melon and sweet cakes.

"Do you think the embassy from Parkilnous has arrived yet?" Tess asked him.

Josef shook his head. "We've met only the merchant, who says one was sent. They won't understand yet what a threat we are to them. Like all the khaja, they believe that mountains and rivers can protect them,"

"And desert. There's a desert called the Al Dinn Kun, the Wailing Death, to the south. That's the one Tasha is riding through."

"No one will expect him on the other side. Well," Josef ate a bit of cake and considered, "I don't think the khaja princes are trustworthy in any case. If they'll cast off their loyalty to their own king, then who says they won't do the same to Bakhtiian?"

"Are you suggesting that there's no use in us receiving an embassy from Parkilnous, if one comes?"

"No, simply that I trust the word of a merchant better. Their first wish is for safe roads, so that they can continue to trade. They will serve us out of expediency, but serve us nevertheless."

"Here is Ilya," said Tess, but Josef only smiled. He already knew. Ilya ducked under the awning.

Ilya greeted Sonia, greeted Tess, greeted Josef and the children. He ate sparingly and paced off with Konstans and Vladimir and Mitya in attendance to oversee the first line of earthworks being built along the river. Cara stopped by to assure herself that Tess was well, and then she left. A while later Mitya returned.

"Aunt Tess," he said, "Bakhtiian is riding out, and he wishes to know if you'd like to ride with him."

Tess laughed. "No, certainly I'd prefer to sit in camp all day. I'm sure the countryside is very pretty."

Eventually, they left Katerina in charge of camp, and Sonia rode out with Tess and Mitya and Aleksi.

When they met up with Ilya's party, they found Anna Veselov in attendance with her husband, as well.

Kirill chuckled when he greeted Tess. "That's very handy, how you've slung your saber over your back. Don't you trust us?"

"Kirill, I learned long ago never to ride out without being armed. Let me see your hand."

With a grin, he lifted his left arm up as high as his shoulder and then lowered it again. He opened the hand, stretching it wide. Sweat broke on his brow, and he let the hand relax back into a loose curl. "It aches," he said. "It aches constantly. I never thought that pain could feel so sweet."

Tess glanced toward Arina, to share Kirill's triumph with her, but Arina had clenched her hands tightly on her reins and her mouth drew into a thin line.

"Do you think I'll be able to ride in the army again?" Kirill asked, and Tess saw Arina whiten about the mouth.

"You are riding with the army, Kirill. I notice that Ilya keeps you as one of his closest advisers."

"Many of whom are too old to ride to battle. I'm still young, Tess. I could have led the army down through the Al Dinn Kun with Tasha."

He could have, had he possessed two good arms. "You must be patient, Kirill, and remember, there are other ways to serve Bakhtiian besides fighting. Look at what Dr. Hierakis has done."

He studied his hand. It had color, and he could open and close it at will now. "It's true that she by herself serves Bakthiian as well as any general. But she's a healer, Tess. That's how she serves the gods.

All I've ever been was a rider."

"And a teacher." He shrugged, acknowledging the title but not embracing it, not now, when he could dream again of riding with the army. It was strange to see him shrug with both shoulders after growing used to the way he had moved before, one side lifeless and stiff. She sighed and did not know what else to say. Arina cast her a grateful glance and moved forward along the line to ride beside Sonia. The two women talked easily together. Tess trailed behind, falling back with Aleksi.

The party broke away from the fringe of camp and rode beside acres of lush fields. It was warm, and the air smelled fragrant and rich. Peace lay on the scene. A score of farmers toiled out in a field, harvesting. They started up, staring at the hundred riders picking their way along the edge of the field, and froze. After a bit one, then a second, then four more, then the rest, bent back to their task.

Farther out, the city growing pale against the sky behind them, another group of laborers sowed seeds, some kind of winter grain, Tess supposed. Ilya lifted a hand and the entire party came to a halt while he watched the farmers. His face was still. The sunlight cast its bright glow on his face, illuminating him.

Tess wondered what he was thinking as he watched the khaja farmers scattering their seed.

But stillness never lasted long, with him. All at once riders appeared, coming toward them at a breakneck pace. Immediately every rider drew his saber, and the guards shifted to form a ring around Bakhtiian. Aleksi drove Tess into the center and stationed himself beside her. Arina and Sonia drew their bows and nocked arrows to the strings. Behind them, Mitya calmed his restive mare.

"It's Veselov," said KiriH. But no man sheathed his saber. Neither did Tess.

The laborers had rushed together into a clump in the center of their field, but the troop of horsemen rode past without noticing them and drew up before Bakhtiian. Vasil rode forward. The guards parted to let him through. His hair was windblown and his face flushed with sun and air.

"There's been a sortie," he called, pulling his mount around next to Ilya. "At least two thousand men.

Heading southeast."

"This way?"

"Possibly. We can't tell if it's an attack or if they're trying to escape south. They carry the colors of the governor of the city, blue and white."

"If they're simply trying to escape, then why not ride out at night?" asked Ilya. "Well, we'll go back to camp." He addressed Vasil calmly, as if the blond man was just any of his commanders: loyal, trusted, true.

Vasil obeyed—how should he not?—but Tess thought he looked a little puzzled, as if expecting liya to be angry that he had come with this message. They started back at a fast clip.

A cloud of dust alerted them to the battle headed their way. Ilya reined his horse back beside Tess, so that she rode with him on her left and Aleksi on her right. Arina and Sonia rode behind them, and at their back, Kirill and Mitya. Ahead, she saw the blur of arrows. A troop of jaran archers rode parallel to the khaja fighters, firing into their ranks, but like an arrow sped forward from a strong bow, the blue and white governor's banner flew high and the army of men it heralded pressed south with determination.

Ilya swore under his breath. A rider broke away from the jaran unit harrying the khaja left flank and raced over to Bakhtiian's party. It was Anton Veselov.

"We left the one gate unguarded, as you ordered, Bakhtiian," he shouted as he pulled up beside them, flashing a glance back at his sister Arina and then returning his attention to Bakhtiian. "Sakhalin faced sorties before, by that gate, and a troop of one thousand horsemen escaped out of it one night, but this—!

We never expected an attack like this."

"Do you think they knew I rode out today?"

"How could they have known?" asked Anton.

How, indeed? What drove the governor to take flight in the afternoon? As the khaja troop closed, Tess could see that they were all heavily armored, presumably the pick of the garrison. Ilya spurred his horse to a gallop and the entire party raced to one side, to avoid the fray.

Somehow, a column of heavy horse coiled free of the khaja ranks and smashed into them. As if she stood at the eye of the storm, Tess watched the chaos from her still eddy in the very center. There rode Vladimir, parrying, cutting. A khaja horseman fell, dragging down a jaran rider with him. Vasil pressed forward into a gap with his riders ranged alongside him. Then, like a whip's snap, the trailing end of the column hit the center. At once, Tess knocked a thrown spear aside with her saber and saw it spin harmlessly to the ground. Three armored riders bore down on her and Ilya, and she set herself in the saddle, bracing for the impact; Ilya swore. All at once Aleksi drove through the riders; he forced one off his horse and grappled with the second from the saddle and then knifed him through the faceplate, and then Vladimir appeared and stuck the third through from behind before he could cut down Aleksi. Grim-faced and silent again, Ilya stuck next to Tess, shielding her, though twice at least the tide of the battle tried to tear him off to the left, and once he took a cut meant for her.

Then, as abruptly as it had struck them, the column was shorn off by the combined weight of the Veselov jahar and a reinforcement of men from the Raevsky command. The governor's flag receded southward, fighting its way away from the city.

Ilya wore a mask of fury. His hands shook. He looked at Tess. She nodded curtly, so he would know she was unhurt. Blood seeped from his left arm, but she could tell by the way he moved the arm that it wasn't a serious wound. She turned to look behind her. Sonia swore and ripped a swath of fabric from her fine tunic to bind Arina's ribs while Mitya held Arina upright on her horse. Kirill, white with anguish, could only watch. His lips moved, but whether he cursed the khaja or his own helplessness, Tess. could not be sure.

Aleksi pulled in beside her. "Thank you," Tess said to him. "That was very impressive." She felt like a fool, saying it, but her heart was pumping and her breath was ragged and she had to say something, no matter how foolish.

Vasil cantered up, flushed, looking terrified. "You're wounded!" he exclaimed, gaping at Ilya.

"Collect your men, Veselov, and go after them!" ordered Ilya. "Bring me their heads. If one man from that troop of riders escapes, I'll demote every commander of these units back into the ranks. How dare they threaten my wife!" He was pale with rage.

Without another word, Vasil rode away.

There were wounded in plenty. Tess took Vladi up behind her; others walked. Anna fainted halfway back to camp, and they had to stop. Ilya took her himself, on his horse; she was so slight a thing that she was no burden to him. Kirill looked not just afraid for her life but ashamed of having to watch while another man cared for his wife.

Cara came out to meet them, having already heard of the engagement. She took Arina immediately.

Niko tended to Ilya's arm. Tess sat in the shade of Cara's tent and sipped at juice brought to her by Galina and watched Kirill pace.

It took two days before Vasil came in at last, bearing the governor's head on his spear, The rest of the heads the jahar riders carried in, in baskets and bags. The jaran riders had taken heavy casualties, women and men both, and in the end it was the archers under Vera Veselov's command who had brought down the final two hundred fleeing soldiers. The collected commanders swore that not one khaja from the governor's party had escaped, and they begged for Bakhtiian's pardon that the entire episode had happened at all.

Working with captured engineers, Ursula had already made up a catapult as a model to demonstrate siege techniques to the commanders. Bakhtiian gave her all the heads to fling back into Karkand. Ursula was enchanted.

For only the second time in her pregnancy, Tess threw up. But she could see by the set expression on Ilya's face that this was one of those times when it was useless to argue with him.

CHAPTER MIME

Nadine loved the breakneck pace of a courier's life. Through Habakar lands she raced, stopping at the staging posts set up along the northeast road that led back to the plains. Some nights she rode straight through, dozing in the saddle, her way lit by men bearing lanterns on either side. Some nights she slept in the comfort of a tent and went on at dawn. She loved the music of the bells that accompanied her at every instant, whether riding or walking, that chimed her awake in the morning and serenaded her to sleep at night with each slight movement of her shoulders or her chest.

In eight days, she crossed out of Habakar lands and onto the farthest southern edge of the plains. Five days later, she rode into a tribe at midday to receive the information that the Prince of Jeds and his party had passed by the morning before, headed south. Out here, on the grass, the wind raked over the tents and already the people wore heavy outer tunics against the chill. Women and children greeted her cheerfully; there were a few young men, so few that the old men seemed numerous in proportion. But Nadine enjoyed just walking through camp. She felt at home, at her ease, here in a tribe going about its life out on the plains. The etsana hurried up, advised of her arrival, and led her to the great tent at the center of camp. The elderly woman sat her down and fed her and offered her milk while the etsana's own grandson saddled a new horse for her.

"Ah, you are Bakhtiian's niece," said Mother Kireyevsky. "Natalia Orzhekov's daughter."

"I am." Nadine accepted a second cup of fermented milk from a dark-haired boy about Katerina's age.

"Your mother was a fine weaver. She had few rivals among all the tribes, although she was young to be so accomplished."

"Thank you," said Nadine politely but coolly. She didn't like to talk about her mother because the memory of her death was still too painful, and the ache of her loss had never dulled.

"We have sixty-eight men riding under Vershinin's command," continued Mother Kireyevsky, sliding easily off the subject of Nadine's mother. "Perhaps you have news of them."

Nadine was happy to indulge Mother Kireyevsky with such news of Vershinin's movements as she had. The Kireyevsky tribe was a granddaughter tribe and thus neither particularly important nor very large, but Nadine remembered them from her childhood, back from the golden days when her mother had still been alive. In any case, it was only common courtesy, and wise strategy, to give her a firsthand account of Bakhtiian and the army. Relatives filtered in and settled down to hear the news. The grandson brought a new horse, but Nadine felt she could spare a little time, since she was only turning to go back the way she came. Since Feodor Grekov was less than a day's ride away from her, now. She had no desire to hasten their meeting and what must inevitably come of their marriage.

"So, Vershinin and Grekov were sent to the khaja cities off to the west, to pull a circle all around the royal tent."

Mother Kireyevsky nodded. "Very wise of them. Like a birbas, where we circle the game and drive it in to the center. Vasha, bring more sweet cakes."

The boy shot a glance at Nadine before he trotted off. He had dark hair, as dark as her own, and deep brown eyes, and there was something familiar about him that nagged at her. "Is he also one of your grandchildren?" she asked. "He's a nice looking boy."

There was a silence. Mother Kireyevsky gestured, and the knot of relatives hurried away, leaving the etsana alone with Nadine. "You don't know who that is?" she asked.

"Should I?"

"That is Inessa Kireyevsky's only child." Nadine shook her head. "I don't know her." "Oh, but you do.

Although I suppose you were only about Vasha's age the year that we rode beside your tribe for many months, so you might not recall. Certainly Bakhtiian would recall her."

"Would he?" Nadine felt suddenly that she was on the verge of an important discovery, rather like a mapmaker cresting a ridge to see virgin country beyond.

"Inessa Kireyevsky was my grandmother's sister's great-granddaughter. Inessa's mother was etsana before me, but when she died three years past, the elders refused to elect Inessa etsana and the position passed into our line of the family."

"Was she too young? Was there some other problem?" "She was young, it is true, but youth alone will not necessarily bar a woman from becoming etsana."

"No, Anna Veselov was very young when she became etsana. There was never any question with her."

The boy appeared, bearing a golden tray laden with sweet cakes. "Was Arina Veselov married?"

asked Mother Kireyevsky. "Ah, well, married soon after; it comes to the same thing. Vasha, set those there. Then you will sit beside me." The boy obeyed. He sank down beside the etsana and folded his hands in his lap. He had a quiet, muted air about him, which he utterly spoiled an instant later by looking up at Nadine. His gaze was scorching in its intensity. "Vasha." He dropped his gaze and stared at his hands. "Inessa Kireyevsky was not married when her mother died, although by this time she had an eight-year-old child." "Ah. Her first husband had died, then." "She had no first husband. She never married." "But then how—" Nadine faltered. The boy's cheeks burned red, but he kept his gaze fastened on his hands. Well, she knew how; it was just astonishing for a jaran woman to bear a child without being married. The unmarried girls were so careful with the herbs that stopped them from conceiving, because, of course, it was shameful for a child not to have a father and a child's father was the man who was married to its mother.

"Yes," agreed Mother Kireyevsky. "You can see that Inessa was too stubborn and too impulsive to be given the authority of etsana. The man she wanted to marry did not marry her. The rest, she avoided or insulted or drove off in one fashion or the other until in the end they all shunned her. Luckily, she died the winter after her mother died."

The boy sat perfectly still through this recital, but his hands betrayed his distress, one clenched in a fist, one wrapped around it, like a shield.

"Leaving her son." Nadine pitied the boy, his mother torn from him, leaving him among relatives who clearly thought him a shameful reminder of his mother's disgraceful behavior.

"Leaving a boy with no father, dead or otherwise, and no closer relatives than distant cousins. That line was not strong."

"Why are you telling me this?" asked Nadine suddenly.

"Will you have another sweet cake?" Mother Kireyevsky asked. Nadine accepted, and the etsana placed the tray back on the carpet beside her pillow. "Inessa claimed to know who the child's father was.

It was her last wish, as she lay dying of a fever, that the boy be sent to his father. The truth is, if it is at all possible that the child would be accepted as a servant, as a cousin, even, we would prefer to send him away. We would never have presumed ... but when you came, today, I can only believe that it is a sign from the gods, that what Inessa wished ought indeed to happen."

Nadine knew what was coming. Now, when she looked at the boy, she understood why he seemed familiar to her, why his features struck such a deep chord.

Mother Kireyevsky cleared her throat, coughed, and spoke. "She claimed that his father was Ilyakoria Orzhekov."

"My uncle. Bakhtiian." The resemblance was striking, once you looked for it. The boy had Ilya's eyes and forehead and stubborn mouth, and the same sharp chin that she—his cousin!—had. Nadine stifled an urge to laugh. Gods, not just laugh, but crow. After what Ilya had done to her, forcing her to accept the marriage to Feodor

Grekov, ordering her to have children, well, by the gods, she would bring this little bit of mischief home for him to face. What a scandal! Nadine was delighted. "Of course he must return with me. I'm riding back to the army now, as you know. I will take responsibility for his well-being myself."

The boy's head jerked up and he stared at her. Nadine saw light spark in his eyes. Evidently he wished to be rid of his relatives as much as they wished to be rid of him.

Mother Kireyevsky eyed Nadine's clothing and her saber, and then her keen gaze came to rest on Nadine's cheek. "You are recently married yourself."

"Yes. I also command a jahar. You may be assured that the child is safe with me. What is his name?

Vasha is short for—?"

"Vassily."

"Vassily!" Nadine was shocked right down to the core of her being. "How did he come by that name?"

To her surprise, the boy spoke in a gruff little voice. "My mama told me that that is the name he said to give me."

At once, Mother Kireyevsky cuffed Vasha across the cheek. "Don't mind him," she said hastily. "It's a story Inessa told the boy, that she told Bakhtiian that she was pregnant with a child by him, and he said that if it was a boy, to name it Vasil. As if any woman, even her, would do something so unseemly, and any man—especially not your uncle, of course—speak of such things so casually, even in jest. She told the boy many things, I'm afraid, and he's always been full of himself, thinking that he's the son of a great man. You needn't mind it. Of course Bakhtiian can't recognize him as his son—it's all quite ridiculous, of course, that an unmarried woman—of course he has no father, but we're grateful to you for taking him

—"

"He looks like him," said Nadine, cutting across Mother Kireyevsky's comments, "as I'm sure you must know." She was beginning to dislike the woman. She was beginning to dislike Inessa Kireyevsky, too, and wondered if she would dislike the boy just as much. Although it was rather late for that, now that she had already agreed to take him. "But in any case, I must go. I'll need a horse for him and whatever things are his, or that he got from his mother."

Mother Kireyevsky stood and shook out her skirts briskly. "Oh, he'll travel very light. He's got nothing, really, just her tent and a few trinkets."

"He gave my mother a necklace," said the boy. "It's gold with round white stones. He brought it from over the seas. From a khaja city called Jeds." He said the word as if it was a talisman, a mark identifying him as the true prince, the heir, because what common boy of the tribes, of a granddaughter tribe like this one, would have any reason to know of Jeds?

"Go get your things, Vasha," said Mother Kireyevsky curtly. Now that she had what she wanted, she sped Nadine's leave-taking along as swiftly as if she feared that Nadine would change her mind and leave her with the unwanted child.

They rode out in silence. After a while, seeing that his seat on his horse was sturdy and that he was minded to be quiet and obedient, Nadine spoke to him.

"How old are you, Vasha?"

"I was born in the Year of the Hawk."

"Oh, gods," she murmured under her breath. The Year of the Hawk. The year her mother died; the year her brother and her grandparents died; the year Bakhtiian killed the man who had murdered them.

The year Bakhtiian stood up before the assembled elders of the tribes—most of the tribes, in any case—

and persuaded them that the vision the gods had given him was the vision the tribes ought to follow.

Eleven years ago all this had taken place. In eleven years, much had changed. Everything had changed.

Nadine felt a sudden misgiving, wondering how Ilya might treat a child who reminded him so bitterly of those days. Eleven years ago Ilya had banished Vasil from his jahar; he had seen his mother's younger sister invested as etsana of the Orzhekov tribe and had himself become the most powerful dyan in the jaran. Perhaps he didn't want to be reminded of what he had paid to bring his dreams to fruition.

"Is it true?" asked the boy suddenly. Nadine looked at him and saw the aching vulnerability of his expression. "Is he really my father? My mama always said so, but ..." His face twisted with pain. "... but she lied, sometimes, when it suited her. She said it was true. She said he would have married her, but she never said why he didn't, so I don't think he ever would have. Only that she wanted him to. And then she always told me that he was going to come back for her. Every tribe we came to, she asked if they'd news, if he'd married. He never had, so she said he still meant to come back for her. Then after my grandmother died, the next summer we heard that he'd married a khaja princess. Mama fell sick and died. Both the healer and a Singer said she'd poisoned herself in her heart and the gods had been angry and made her die of it. No one wanted me after that."

Nadine stared amazed at him, until she realized that the stoic expression on his face as he recited this confession was his way of bracing to receive her disgust. Either he wanted it, or he was so used to being rejected that he wanted to get it out of the way early and go on from there.

"I think you're his son." Gods, what if she got his hopes up, only to have Ilya deny the connection?

And yet, how could he deny it?

"How can I be?" demanded Vasha. "He wasn't married to my mother."

Nadine sighed. "I'll let him explain that," she said, calling herself coward as she did so. Gods, what was Tess going to say? Well, who knew with the khaja; they had different notions of propriety than the jaran did. Maybe Tess would want to have the boy strangled; maybe she would welcome him. Who could tell? But Nadine had promised that he would be safe, and she'd hold to that promise, no matter what. She rather liked his brusque cynicism, although it was sad to see it in a child. And anyway, Vassily Kireyevsky's presence made no difference to her problems. Bakhtiian still needed an heir, and he still expected Nadine to provide him with one.

So it was with a troubled heart that she and the boy rode into the prince's camp at dusk the next day. A scout from her jahar greeted her enthusiastically and directed her to a copse of trees around a spring, where the prince and his party had pitched their tents.

She saw David first. His face lit up. He had a charming smile, made more so by the interesting contrast of white teeth against his odd black skin. He lifted a hand and called a greeting to her. Others turned, the other members of the party. David strode over toward her, grinning with undisguised happiness—and then stopped. Pulled up like a horse brought up tight against the end of its rope. His smile vanished.

Feodor appeared from around the screen of trees, mounted. He reined his horse aside and waited for her. Once he would have flushed to see her; he would have turned his gaze away and cast sidelong glances at her in a way she found provocative and enchanting. Now he stared straight at her in a way that annoyed her, knowing that he had a perfect right to look her straight in the eye in so public a place, now that he was her husband.

She dismounted and walked first to greet the prince. Soerensen came to meet her, looking pleased to see her. She gave him the news of Bakhtiian's recovery, and he took it calmly enough. Nadine found him impossible to read. She would almost have thought that he already knew, though she couldn't imagine how he would have found out so quickly. Perhaps he'd had the news at the Kireyevsky tribe.

"Oh, and this is Vassily Kireyevsky," she said. "Vasha, please, you can dismount now. Come to me."

The boy obeyed meekly enough. He stared at David's skin, recalled his manners, looked away only to glance at David again, and then turned his attention to the khaja prince. "This is the Prince of Jeds, Vasha. Make your greetings."

The boy made a creditable bow. "Well met," he said shyly. "I've heard of Jeds. It's a great khaja city, and it has a—" He faltered over the foreign word. "—a uyniversite. And craftsmen who make fine jewelry." The boy had good manners, Nadine was relieved to see. Ilya did not tolerate bad manners, so perhaps there was hope.

"Well met," replied the prince, looking amused. Nadine watched, impressed, as he asked the boy a few neutral questions about his age and the horse he'd ridden in on and managed not to ask anything the least controversial— like who his parents were, or why a child his age was riding with Nadine. Then, as neatly, the prince dismissed him into the care of his assistant, Maggie O'Neill. Vasha stared openmouthed at her red hair and followed her away as if mesmerized by her height and strange freckled coloring.

The prince regarded Nadine with interest and said not one more word on the matter. "You came back to us," he said instead, and mercifully did not glance toward her husband, who had dismounted and given his horse to one of her men to take away.

"Bakhtiian sent me to escort you back to the army," she said. "Tess is fine. She looked quite healthy when I left her." She shot a glance at David, who had inched forward next to Marco Burckhardt to listen in. "We've been making maps together."

Marco coughed into a hand. Nadine could tell he was hiding a smile, but she wasn't sure what he found amusing in the statement. David looked troubled.

"I'm pleased to hear about Tess, of course," said the prince without a flicker of emotion. "I hope you will let us offer you some tea and some supper."

Before she could reply, she felt Feodor come up beside her, right up next to her. "That would be most gracious of you," Feodor replied, "especially since we haven't had our wedding feast yet."

Every now and then, Nadine got so mad that she went blind with fury. Usually she had a strong enough rein on her self-control. Not now.

The shock of her anger, the sheer force of it, froze her for an instant. The world had gone dark, though a moment before she could see trees in the twilight and clouds roiling above, covering and uncovering stars. She felt the cool wind pull at her hair. She heard the prince murmur words and she felt more than knew that they had all retreated, leaving her atone with Feodor out beyond the trees. She heard a man ask a question, and a voice answering, but these were distant, distant from her.

Feodor's hand closed on her elbow.

She jerked away from the touch and swung wildly. Her palm connected with his cheek, the blow so hard across the cheek that he gasped with pain. He grabbed her arms. "Not out here in the open, by the gods," he hissed under his breath. "You won't shame our marriage by acting like this in public."

"How dare you speak for me!"

"I am your husband."

"Not by my choice."

"You have no choice in the matter, or did you think your journey to khaja lands made you different?"

Like light poured into a pitch-black room, her vision came back. She staggered, overwhelmed by the sudden shift, and he steadied her. This close, she saw the cleft in his chin, and the scar at the comer of his mouth, and the slight bump in his nose where it had been broken in a battle three years ago. She pulled back from him, but like all jaran men, his slightness disguised his true strength.

"Dina," he said more softly, "why are you fighting me? I never tried to mark you before, not as long as I thought you meant to stay in the army."

"I do mean to stay in the army. Bakhtiian promised me that he wouldn't take my command away from me." She could not keep the triumph from her voice. "And you know what Bakhtiian's promises are worth."

Feodor looked stunned by this information. Nadine rocked back, forward, broke out of his grip and took five swift steps away from him. Then halted. She was panting with anger, and her head pounded.

Stars flashed in her eyes and she was afraid that she was going to go blind again.

"But Mother Sakhalin said—" he began.

"Mother Sakhalin does not rule me!"

Gods, he had a mulish streak in him. She recognized it now for what it was, masked under that sweet, modest exterior she had mistaken for his true self. His mouth turned down. His fine eyes glinted with anger. "Perhaps she doesn't," he said softly, "but I am now your husband. Keep your command if you will. I'd be a fool twice over to contest Bakhtiian if he's already given his word. But nevertheless, I remain your husband. You may wish to be rid of me, Dina, but even if I die, you won't be free. You must have a child. You know it's true. If not with me, then with another man."

"Is that what Mother Sakhalin told you?" she asked scathingly.

"You may think as little of me as you wish," he replied, still speaking in a low voice, "you may think me a fool, as it pleases you. Mother Sakhalin came to my uncle and my aunt and pointed out that Bakhtiian must have an heir, more than one, to be safe, and that you are his sister's daughter and thus by right the woman who should be mother to his heirs. That much she said, within my hearing. The rest I managed to work out for myself."

Nadine had never suspected that Feodor Grekov, quiet, mild, shy Feodor Grekov, was capable of sarcasm. The revelation so amazed her that the shadow growing over her sight receded, and she watched him straighten his shirtsleeve self-consciously and wipe a bead of moisture from the corner of his right eye. She shivered in the wind. She wasn't dressed for the plains, for the night and the chill wind that tore across the endless horizon. In Habakar lands, heat still smothered the day and lingered far into the night.

"I beg pardon for insulting you," she said, though it pained her to say it.

"That was hard won," he said, with a toss of his fair hair. "Does your head hurt you?"

The reversal confused her, not least because her head did indeed pound furiously. She pressed fingers against her left eye, wondering if it was possible that an invisible knife was being driven into the flesh there.

"You need to rest." He did not move any closer to her, but the tone with which he addressed her irritated her. "You know very well," he added before she could respond, "that I've seen this happen to you before. I've already set up your tent. You should go lie down."

"You set up my tent!"

He shrugged. "Well, you left it with me."

"I left it with the jahar. That's not the same."

"But it's our tent now, or at least, I have every right to share it with you. Say what you will, Dina, but I know what obligations you have toward me, now that you're my wife."

"I had no idea that you were such an officious, stubborn, stiff-necked bastard, Feodor Grekov. I'd never have taken you for a lover if I'd known." He smiled. He usually had a surprisingly winsome smile; this wasn't it. This smile was smug and cocksure, and Nadine didn't like it one bit. "The boy needs a place to sleep tonight. I'll have to take him into my tent. I'm the only one he knows here."

"I'll make sure he has a place to sleep, but it won't be in your tent. Who is he, anyway?"

"None of your business."

He shrugged, not deigning to argue with her over so trivial a matter. "Do you want to eat first, or go straight to bed?"

The throbbing in her head had subsided to a steady, agonizing pulse. She did not want to go straight to her tent, but she knew she could not manage conversation with so illustrious a personage as the Prince of Jeds, and she did not want to face David and the others in this condition. She was ashamed.

"I'll take you to the tent," he said when she did not reply. What choice did she have? He knew what his rights were, and her obligations. But to her surprise, he left her outside the tent. She crawled in and flung herself down on the floor and just lay there in the darkness. After a while, the pounding in her head diminished to a dull, roaring throb. After a while, Feodor returned with hot tea, and Vasha, and a lantern to light them. The boy thanked her and begged leave to spend the night in the tent of the khaja lady with hair the color of fire. The entire speech had a rehearsed sound to it. Nadine didn't know the child well enough to know whether he was happy with the arrangement or resigned to his fate.

"You'll ride with me tomorrow," she insisted. Vasha agreed. Feodor sent him away. After a moment, Feodor crawled into the tent, hooked the lantern along the center pole, and took off his boots.

"Drink your tea," he said. He turned. He had long, pale eyelashes that never showed unless the light struck him just right, and lantern light usually struck him so as to bring out his most attractive features.

"Gods, Dina, don't refuse it just to spite me. It ought to make you feel better." He began to pull off his shirt, hesitated, and then shifted to pull off her boots instead. She let him. Then she sipped at her tea and he watched her, just watched her, until she had emptied the cup. She was not used to him watching her so closely, so openly. The sensation made her skin crawl. He moved, and she tensed, but he reached away from her and extinguished the lantern.

Darkness. She sighed and shut her eyes. "You will have children. I order you to." She could still hear Ilya's voice. Ilya was all that was left to her of her mother. Nataliia Orzhekov would have had many more children, and gladly, to help her beloved younger brother. Was her daughter going to do any less than she would have? Nadine knew her duty.

Feeder's hand came to rest on her brow. He stroked her forehead and the circle of bone around her left eye, and the pounding in her head faded to an ache. He was gentle, and patient, and tender. She ought to have guessed long ago, though, about that other side of his personality, the determined, brash side. He was bold enough once he got between her blankets. She would never have kept him for a lover for as long as she had if he hadn't been.

She sighed and her right hand strayed onto his thigh. He made a noise in his throat and all at once—

well, all at once. The change was so sudden that she only realized then how firmly he had clamped down on his feelings before. He shook with emotion, and she could not get him to take his hands off of her for even a moment, so she had a damned hard time getting him out of his clothes and he was a little rough with hers.

She was still angry, afterward, but much calmer. "Feodor," she began in a low voice, and then: "Oh, here, move over, will you? My back is up against the tent wall."

He shifted, and she shifted, and he traced her earlobe and the line of her jaw and her lips. "Hmm?"

"Feodor, you can't speak like that to me, like you did out there, before. It just makes me furious. And it isn't right."

"I can speak to you however I wish. I'm your husband."

"Yes, as you're forever reminding me."

There was silence. "No," he said finally, so low that she had to strain to hear, "perhaps it's myself I'm reminding. Gods, I dreamed, but I never thought—" He broke off. He turned his face into her cheek and just breathed. She felt like she didn't know him at all. "Anyway," he said, his lips moving against her skin, "I'll bet your head doesn't hurt anymore."

"Oh, gods," said Nadine to the air. She settled in against him. He began to hum under his breath: He was happy. Nadine sighed and resigned herself to her fate.

CHAPTER TEN

Anna had died once already by the time Diana got to Dr. Hierakis's tent. A boy from the Veselov tribe brought Diana the news—garbled, she prayed—at the Company encampment, and she ran all the way to the hospital grounds and into the doctor's tent, pitched in the center. She stopped at the edge of the carpet. Her ribs were in agony; she gulped air.

Tess sat cross-legged on a pillow, mending the torn hem of a tunic. Her eyes lifted once to watch Kirill, pacing in the distance, and then shifted to Diana. Her face lit. "Ah, thank goodness," she said in Anglais.

"What happened?" Diana fairly shrieked the words. Beyond the tent, Kirill opened and closed his good hand to the rhythm of his pacing. His face was white. Once a man paused to speak to him, but the exchange was brief and the man shook his head sadly and walked away.

"We got caught in a skirmish. Anna was wounded."

"But—she's dead—?"

Tess pinned the needle into the fabric, bound up the loose thread, and set down the torn tunic. "Her heart stopped. At that point, Cara threw every jaran out of the surgery and began—well, she's operating now."

"Operating!"

Kirill halted stock-still and looked their way, caught by the sound of Diana's voice. He strode over to them and flung himself down on the carpet, next to Tess. Tess embraced him. He accepted it. More than that—he buried himself against her as if he sought his comfort from her. Diana knew body language.

When acquaintances embrace, one can read the gap between them. When friends, when siblings embrace, no matter how close, there is still an infinitesimal distance, like a layer of molecules, separating them. When a mother hugs her child, they meet. But when lovers embrace, they don't just meet but join. Tess held Kirill against her as if he was her lover.

At this inopportune moment, Bakhtiian appeared. A bandage swathed his left arm. Tess's gaze lifted and met his. Diana watched an entire conversation pass between them, wordless and within seconds. A lifted eyebrow. A grimace. Eyes slanting toward the tent. The movement of a chin, signifying a nod. To Diana's astonishment, Bakhtiian grabbed a pillow, threw it down on the other side of Kirill, and settled down beside the other man. At once, Kirill broke away from Tess and sat up. He flushed.

"Here is something to drink." Bakhtiian offered the other man a cup of komis. Trapped between Tess and Bakhtiian, Kirill had to accept. He sipped once, twice, and then gulped the rest down like a man who has only just discovered that he is desperately thirsty. Then he sat, breathing hard, gaze fixed on his withered hand. He closed it into a fist, and opened it again. Closed it. Opened it.

"Do you want a command?" asked Bakhtiian, refilling Kirill's cup.

"Ilya—" began Tess.

Kirill flung his head back. "A command!"

"A general doesn't have to fight in every engagement. He only has to lead. I know your worth, Kirill.

And I know the worth of your loyalty to me. You and Josef and Niko are the three men I trust most in the whole world. You'll never be the fighter you were, but you've some use in that arm now. Enough to lead your own command, I think."

Diana was appalled. Was this how Bakhtiian consoled him for the death of his wife?

Kirill's expression underwent so many swift changes from one emotion to another that Diana could not read them all: anguish, exhilaration, hope, fear, ambition— Goddess! He was going to accept.

"You honor me, Bakhtiian," he said softly.

Bakhtiian snorted. "It's only to keep you away from my wife."

Kirill grinned. Yes, he was a distinctly attractive man, and he knew it. "I suppose it's unlikely that she won't succumb to my greater charms sooner or later."

"Perhaps," said Bakhtiian. His lips quirked.

"I find this conversation offensive, considering the circumstances." said Tess in a voice thick with emotion. "If you can't talk about something decent, then stop talking."

Immediately both men looked chastened. Into their silence, bells sang softly and Ursula emerged from the doctor's tent. Kirill jumped to his feet.

"Anna?"

"She'll live," said Ursula curtly. "Tess, Cara needs you—Ah, Diana. You'd be much better. Can you come in?"

"Can I—?" Kirill faltered. "May I see her?"

"No. Diana?"

"Yes," said Diana hurriedly. "I'll come." She nodded at the others and escaped inside.

In the inner chamber, Dr. Hierakis leaned over the foot of the scan-bed and stared at a pulsing graph configured on a flat screen. "Tess," she said without looking up, "I want to look over the other wounded.

Can you sit by—?" She glanced up. "Oh, hello, Diana. If you can spare the time, I'd be pleased to have you sit here and monitor her."

"Of course I can spare the time!" Diana hesitated, not sure how awful a scene she would discover. She edged closer, but Anna simply appeared to be deeply asleep. A stick transparent cap covered her hair, and her mouth gaped slightly open. A sheet draped her; warmth emanated from the bed on which she lay.

"Oh, there're no gaping wounds to see." Dr. Hierakis's attention had snapped back to the screen, but as usual she seemed able to read unvoiced thoughts. "All right and tight, and no scars except the ones they'd expect to see."

"What happened to her?"

"Spear or sword thrust shattered her rib cage and she got a bone chip in her heart. For one. Died twice on me, she did, but she'll be fine."

Diana crept forward and covered Anna's limp hand with her own. "Why did you bring her in here? If she'd been a man, you'd have let her die, wouldn't you?"

The doctor glanced up, surprised. She blinked. Without its frame of black curls, her face showed stark and strong in the soft light. "Why I suppose I would have. Probably ten men less badly wounded than her have died already, while I've been in here."

"Not to mention the Habakar soldiers."

The doctor snorted. "Don't mention them, please. I have enough on my conscience as it is. Though the jaran healers are saving ten times the number of wounded they would have before I came. Still." She pushed off from the bed and pulled off her surgery cap. Though her hair was bound back in a twist at the nape of her neck, stray wisps had escaped here and there, giving her an untidy appearance. "Goddess.

Maybe I'm biased. It just tore at me, though, when they brought her in that way. That, and Kirill's face."

"Doctor! You'd let a man's looks sway you?"

The doctor laughed. "I meant his fear and grief. But, yes, frankly, I would. Why not? There's little enough joy, and far too much pain, in a world like this not to appreciate the beauty that comes your way.

He has a kind heart, and kind hearts count for a great deal in my book." She peeled off gloves so sheer that Diana hadn't known she was wearing them. "She'll be out for eight more hours at least. I've got her under deep recovery. I'd like to keep her with me for another two days, and then I think she can be moved back to her camp. How long can you stay here?"

Diana hesitated. "I don't know. Rehearsals.... Can Kirill come in and just look at her, at least?"

"Not today." The doctor ran a cool towel over her face and then scrubbed her hands under the sonic decontaminant shelf. "I don't have time to disguise the equipment, and I understand there're mobs of wounded and more expected. I'll tell Kirill to see to his children." She swept out.

Diana stood in silence, holding onto Anna's cool hand. At the foot of the couch, projecting up, a faint three-dimensional image of Arina's body rotated slowly in the air. Angry red pulsed around the heart and scored a half-dozen other places around her midsection. She did not stir, only breathed. Diana found a stool and sat down to watch over her.

After a long while, bells chimed and Tess entered. "Do you want anything?" Tess asked, regarding Arina pensively. "I can send Aleksi to keep watch—oh, hell—no, I can't. It wouldn't be proper. There's no one but the actors, you, and Ursula, and myself."

"Can you send Owen a message?"

"Better yet, I'll go myself and ask him to release you for two days. Will that be—?"

"No." Diana winced, thinking of rehearsals, thinking of the parts she had yet to master. Quinn and Oriana had divided her old parts between them, leaving an odd combination of secondary roles for Anahita to fill in, but Anahita had collapsed once onstage already so she could no longer be relied on.

But this was Arina. "Yes. But could you bring my slate back, so I can study my parts? And a change of clothes?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

Tess explained about a sortie and how the trailing edge of the battle had slammed against their surveying party and then charged on.

"Dr. Hierakis said there were lots of casualties."

"Many," said Tess grimly. "And many more to come." She left.

Diana did not understand what Tess had meant by that final comment until three days later, when the hospital was full of jaran injured, many of them from the Veselov tribe. The Veselov jahar had been hit hard by the battle and the pursuit. The doctor designated a stretcher for Arina that morning, and Kirill arrived breathless to walk beside his wife as they carried her back to her own camp. Arina was conscious but pale and weak. Diana walked on Anna's other side.

They walked in silence for awhile. At last, Kirill spoke. "Arina, Bakhtiian is going to give me my own command."