"The prince is dead," said Marco, his voice almost obliterated by the ship's voice. "God save the prince."

"Marco," said Maggie. "Go to hell."

"No doubt I will."

The ship coughed. Only it didn't cough. Its mouth opened and a golden glow penetrated the night, washing into the hard white glare that illuminated Tess and her brother. A ramp pushed out from the maw of the beast, a bridge linking the heavens and the earth. A figure appeared in the glow and hurried down the ramp. An angel? One of Father Wind's attendants?

It resolved into a man like any man, except for the strange cut of his clothes and the blithe way he strode out of the ship and ignored its screaming howl and the battering wind. Marco hailed him, and the two men shook hands—that strange Erthe greeting—and he came over to Soerensen.

"Ah, Javier, how are you?" said Soerensen. "This is Tess. I don't believe you've ever met. Javier Lu Shen." Formal greetings were exchanged.

"Hold on," said Tess, turning first to look at the horses and then back to the new man. "Javier, can you ride?"

"Ride?" Soerensen turned to his sister. "What are you thinking about, Tess?"

"Charles, I have to tell Ilya something. He'll never believe you're dead unless he has more witnesses and a credible story of how you—God, it's impossible. But what if I tell him the truth, in terms he'd understand? You already laid down half the smokescreen, you know, by pretending to ride into the battle. So if I tell Ilya that you're dying here, as Prince of Jeds, in order to go back to Earth—to Erthe—

to fight the khepelli, and if Ilya tells the army that you're dead, who will question him?"

"Yes. I had thought that far. But what has this to do with whether Javier can ride?"

"A horse?" Javier demanded. "Do you mean a horse? One of those things? I've never ridden one."

"You'll learn," said Tess with a brief smile. "I did." She turned back to her brother. "Charles, you have to go on the shuttle. But if Marco and Javier ride north and swing back to Abala Port, where you came in last spring, and sail to Jeds, then they can go out on the shuttle through Jeds."

"Which means that Marco can deliver the news of my death to Baron Santer."

"Yes! And meanwhile, Ilya will get the report that two khaja men, you and Marco, rode through jaran territory and left by ship. For Erthe."

"This is all very convoluted, Tess," protested Charles.

Poor Javier looked appalled.

"How else can I explain it to Ilya? I've got the messenger bells and messenger seal—they'll provide Marco and Javier with safe passage, new mounts, and supplies. They can ride as quickly as—well, as Javier learns. Speed and secrecy. Isn't that what we need? To prepare Rhui for the rebellion? You leave, Ilya knows enough to satisfy him,

knows that he's part of the conspiracy, and he can say you died in the battle today. Cara can confirm it. We can burn some poor nameless soul as your body, and it's done."

"But what about Marco?" asked Charles. "Does Marco want to ride all that way?"

"What about me?" wailed Javier.

"I don't mind," said Marco in a low voice, barely audible above the roar of the ship. "Pm leaving camp anyway. What do I care? It has to be done. I think it's a good idea."

"Javier doesn't look anything like me," said Charles.

"That's true, but you're both khaja." Tess dismissed this objection with a wave of her hand. "If he wears a hood and none of the patrols ever gets a close look at him, and they pass along quickly, then how much of the physical description will ever get back to us? None of the patrols or tribes you'll pass will have seen you before anyway. It will do. It's the best we can do. Trade clothes. You'll be fine. I'm right in this, Charles. You know I am."

He considered her. The trees tossed in the wind, and leaves tore free from branches and swirled away into the night. "Convoluted," said Soerensen, "and worthy of a Chapalii duke's heir. We'll see if you can pull it off."

"But, Charles," said Tess sweetly, with a wicked gleam in her eyes, "you don't really have a choice, do you? By this ring, you've given me authority on this planet. So I order you to do as I say. Damn you, anyway. We're just pawns to you, Ilya and I, aren't we?"

His lips quirked up, and he laughed. "Don't forget how chess is played. With patience and cunning and wit, as well as the right strategy, a pawn can become the most powerful piece in the game."

He bent and kissed her, once on each cheek, in the formal jaran style. He said farewell to the others, to Aleksi, and then he and Javier turned and walked back to the ship. Aleksi watched as he vanished into the golden light of the interior.

Tess's legs gave out, and she collapsed to the ground. Aleksi dropped down beside her immediately, scared for her, but she nodded her head against him and just sat there, breathing shallowly.

"Tess!" Maggie exclaimed.

Tess shook her head and lifted—with great effort—one hand as a signal that she was all right.

Soerensen emerged from the ship, except it wasn't Soerensen but the other man, dressed in his clothes and in his jaran armor, helmet strapped awkwardly onto his head. The maw closed behind him. The white light snapped off, bathing them in darkness.

"Why me?" he asked as he came up to them. Then he saw Tess. "Oh, my. M. Soerensen, are you—?"

A high-pitched whine pierced the roar of the beast, and the ground trembled under Aleksi's feet. The horses pulled away, and Maggie and Marco tugged them down and tried to reassure them with their voices, only the ship howled and all at once bucked up and as slow as if Father Wind's invisible hand lifted it, it rose up into the night, jewel eyes winking open and closed, open and closed.

Tess tucked her head down. The wind washed over her, where she sat huddled on the ground. Maggie fought her two horses, dragging on them as they whinnied and tried to jerk free, to bolt, even though they couldn't bolt because they were hobbled. The hot breath of the ship slapped Aleksi's face, and the creature spun and showed a new face to him, gleaming pale in the starlight, and rose up into the night, blinking, blotting out stars, and rumbled and roared, and the wind howled down, and the trees bent under its force, and dust clotted the air, and he choked on the grit and shut his eyes and held onto Tess.

And the roar lightened and faded and the wind dropped and a low moan rang through the night air.

Stars winked in and out, and then only the wind blew and the night lay silent under the stars. The canopy of clouds grew in the west. The horses calmed.

"Now what?" asked Marco, his voice a ringing shout in the quiet.

"You'd better go now," said Tess, her voice as soft as Marco's had been inadvertently loud. Aleksi showed Marco how to bind on the vest of bells. Tess roused herself for long enough to discuss with Marco routes and strategies, and at last the two men left, leading their horses up the confining slope, heading northeast. The muted ring of bells faded into the night.

Weakly, Tess brushed dry grass off her trousers. She lifted her hand and squinted at the ring on her middle finger. "My God," she said, to no one.

"Is that how the gods travel in the heavens?" Aleksi asked, looking from her up into the sky. Were any of those stars the ship? Were all of them ships? But, no, the doctor had said they were worlds—or not worlds, but suns. He shook his head. He was too tired to sort it all out now.

Tess sighed. "They're just machines, Aleksi."

"I've got a perimeter alert," said Maggie. "Horses and men."

Aleksi leapt to his feet and drew his saber. Maggie pulled a knife from her belt. Slowly, Tess drew her saber and rested it on her knees, but anyone could see she hadn't the strength to wield it.

But it was only a group of jaran riders, twelve of them, picking their way down the western slope. It didn't surprise Aleksi to see how astounded they looked when they discovered that they had stumbled upon a daughter of Mother Orzhekov, the woman who was also, of course, Bakhtiian's wife.

"We saw a strange light in the sky," said their captain.

"I saw it, too," said Tess, without moving from the ground. "It was an omen."

"We'll escort you back to camp, then."

"Tomorrow," she said. "I just can't go any farther tonight."

So they spent the night in the little valley, Tess sleeping on coats and under blankets provided by the riders, guarded by a ring of fires, and in the morning they remarked on the strange burn on the ground in the center of the valley and saddled their horses and formed up around Tess. If they thought it strange to have found her out here, practically alone, they did not discuss their thoughts with Aleksi. Tess was pale and still horribly tired. They rode back toward Karkand slowly, stopping frequently. The day was overcast, and the light had an eerie yellow quality to it.

Soon enough they began to pass refugees from the city. At first clumps of them, cowering away from the patrol. A woman carried a baby on her back and held another child by the hand. An old woman stumbled along, weak and crying, and a little boy dragged a bundle behind him and followed in her wake. Larger groups, families, trudged along the road. Children wailed. A broken-down old horse bore an injured woman slumped over its neck, her thigh a bloody mass of tissue, open to the air. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs, and a few of the lucky ones, a handful of possessions wrapped in cloth, whatever they had grabbed before being driven from the city. A gray-haired woman walked under the weight of a silk bundle. A tall woman with a strong, dark face stopped to shift a pack of roughspun cloth to a better position on her back. A baby shrieked. A woman clad in rich damask linen sobbed with each step, holding a hand to her throat. Two girls held a limping crone between them, helping her along.

Most kept their heads bowed. An adolescent girl, her face veiled, balanced a large ceramic vase on her head, walking steadily, only her eyes showing dark and angry as she watched the riders pass.

Tess wept, to see them struggling along.

As they rode on, as morning passed to midday and midday into afternoon, the trickle became a stream, the stream a flood. Hordes of them; Aleksi had not known so many people, even khaja, could live together in one place. No wonder they were weak, crammed like insects into a rotted stump or an old hollow log. They walked, heads bowed. A layer of ash covered their clothes, and at their backs smoke rose into the heavens, a dark blot against the gray clouds far above. As the riders neared the jaran camp, they could see Karkand burning.

"My God," said Tess. "Isn't there a rise, where we can lookr It was a relief to veer away from the road and along a trampled field until they reached a low ridge which gave them a vantage of the city.

Karkand burned. A huge black funnel of smoke marked it, and spits of flame. Aleksi watched the lines of refugees, like tiny insects, leaving the city along the roads and out through the fields. He saw the riders, moving among them, and wagons trundling away toward the jaran camp. In the middle of the blazing city, the huge dome of the temple glowed red with fire. Clouds of heat shimmered out from it, and the intense glow of the flames cast a hot, violent light up into the sky. As they watched, the dome collapsed into a monstrous cloud of ash and smoke that billowed into the air and shrouded the western horizon so that they could not even see the setting sun.

"Goddess save us," murmured Maggie. "Why did he order this? The whole city is going, all of it, even the suburbs are in flames. And it was so beautiful. Now it looks like a funeral pyre."

Tears streaked Tess's face. "Don't you see?" she asked, shaking her head. "It is a funeral pyre. For our son. For everyone who died today, for everyone who will die. For Charles." She wiped her face with the back of one hand, but it only streaked grime over her cheeks, blending with her tears. "For Rhui."

"Look." Aleksi pointed at the same time that the patrol captain did. "There is Bakhtiian's banner. He must be riding out to look for you."

"We'll wait for him here," said Tess.

So they met on the ridge, Tess and Bakhtiian, he with the pall of the dying city at his back, she with her face to it.

He said nothing, only drew his horse in beside her and raised one eyebrow, questioning. He looked remarkably neat for a man who had just destroyed a city and defeated an entire kingdom, with his armor newly polished and his surcoat untorn and marked only by a fine layer of ash. He wore his victory with pride but without gloating.

Tess lifted her right hand, to show him the ring. "I am now the Prince of Jeds."

He regarded her measuringly, as he might measure any threat to his power. "Where is your brother?"

"He's dead."

He took the news with no change of expression. "We still have no treaty between your lands and mine," he said quietly.

"That's true." She looked beyond him, toward Karkand. "I have seen what you and I must do: We must unite all the lands against the coming of the khepelli, whether while we live or when our grandchildren rule. What can you offer me, Bakhtiian, in return for my alliance?"

His mouth lifted, not quite into a smile. He twisted for the first time and cast a glance back toward the conflagration. Then he turned back to gaze on her again.

He drew his saber and held it up between them. "My army, which is my sword. And my vision, which was granted to me by the gods. That is all I have, and everything I have."

Tess stared at the inferno that was Karkand. Over the night and on that day's journey, she had seemed to Aleksi to change somehow, as if the ring her brother had given her had altered her forever. She was still Tess, but she was also a prince now, invested with a greater power than anyone here but Aleksi and Maggie, and she herself, knew. It was almost as if Karkand was her own pyre, burning away what she once was and creating her anew.

"Your army and your vision," she said, meeting her husband's gaze. "That will do."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Fine ash rained down on David's head. He brushed at his hair, but it was useless. It coated everything, fine white ash and grittier black chunks. His boots crunched on it, and the beautiful woven patterns of the jaran tents lay hidden beneath it. He coughed, and coughed again, and finally gave up and held a scrap of cloth over his mouth and nose.

Although it was late afternoon, some of the encampments were breaking up, loading their goods into wagons and heading south to escape the constant shower. He arrived at their own camp just as Maggie rode in, looking soot-stained and tired.

"David!" She swung down from her horse and beckoned him over. A jaran boy ran up and took the horse from her, and Maggie wiped her nose with the back of her hand and sneezed. "Goddess, this is terrible. David. Have you heard about Charles?"

David blinked through his exhaustion. "What about Charles? I've been gone from camp since yesterday dawn, since they launched the assault."

"Charles left."

He thought he had heard her wrong. "Left?"

Heavy clouds covered the sky, but the quality of sunlight was peculiar, a warm yellow light instead of the silvery gray of the usual overcast day. The air was dry and smelled of burning. "He left Rhui."

"Is there a chair?" David asked, sure that he was simply so tired that he was hallucinating. "I think I need to sit down. Why?"

"Duke Naroshi had Hon Echido and a few other members of Keinaba House detained for breaking the interdiction. Only Charles can sort it out. But if Naroshi is watching him, then he can't risk returning to Rhui. He doesn't want there to be any chance that the Chapalii catch on to what we're doing, at least not by trailing him. So he handed his signet ring over to Tess, and he left on a shuttle last evening."

"On a shuttle?" David retreated under the awning of Charles's tent, and there, groping, he found a chair and sank down into it. "Oy vey," he muttered. "So much for the interdiction."

"Oh, the Rhuians don't know about the shuttle. He's officially dead, as far as the Rhuian natives are concerned. And Tess remains officially deceased off-planet. But on Rhui, Tess is now Prince of Jeds.

We have to make our own way back to Jeds—damn him, I wish I could have gone with him. And the actors. They'll have to know as well. I'm not sure what Tess intends, but I think Charles wants her and Bakhtiian to centralize as much of the planet—or at least this continent, I suppose—as they can, so that when he begins the new rebellion he'll be able to bring Rhui wholesale into the League with little resistance."

"All the same," said David. "So much for the interdiction. Maybe it was a vain hope." Even under the awning, the breeze wafted flakes and fine chunks of charcoal along to land on the carpet. A singed scrap of parchment rolled in on a gust of wind and sank and came to rest against David's boot. Reflexively, he picked it up. "Look at this, Maggie," he said, raising it up for her to see.

It was a page from a book or a manuscript: a gorgeously painted miniature of a hunting scene, lions and gazelles in flight and horsemen in pursuit, their mounts lovingly portrayed; a piebald, two chestnuts, three blacks, and a dappled gray harnessed with gold bridles and saddles. Through the rocks and bushes behind the mounted men trudged servants bearing two fringed litters in which sat veiled women in rich damask robes. Stylized rows of the angular Habakar script bordered the edge of the painting, where they hadn't been burned away.

"We are going to destroy her in the end." As he said it, he felt the truth of the words, and he felt a deep and abiding sadness for what was bound to be lost.

Maggie took the parchment page from him and smoothed it out. "I'll preserve this," she said. "I'd say that the jaran army is already well on its way to destroying Karkand, and the kingdom, too, I suppose, although they did leave Hamrat and some other cities unmolested."

"No," said David softly. "I meant Rhui."

She grunted. "Well, it's too late to have regrets now. Oh, David. It was bound to happen. At least they'll have a running start. And it will take decades to build up the saboteur network. Where is Ursula, anyway?"

"I haven't seen her since yesterday dawn."

"Let her know, if you see her. I'm going to see Cara and give her the details." She strode away.

With the heavy cloud cover and the screen of smoke along the western horizon, afternoon hazed early into twilight. David cleaned himself up as best he could and crawled into his tent. The camp was deserted. He supposed that Cara and Jo were still at the hospital; certainly they had enough to do. Rajiv

—well, wasn't Rajiv having an affair with one of the actors? He leaned back on his bedroll and shut his eyes, but instead of peace he saw the beautiful painting, curled black at the edges, smudged by grit.

What had Charles said? "And the approaching tide/ Will shortly fill the reasonable shores/That now lie foul and muddy." But who was to say which was more contaminated, the swelling tide or the waiting shoreline?

"David?" Her voice, a whisper.

"Dina!" The next instant, she had ducked inside the tent. Then, checking her movement, she paused and crouched at the entrance. There was no light in here. He saw her only as a dark shadow against the paler wall of canvas. "Dina. What are you doing here?"

"I don't know." But she shifted and sat, blocking the entrance. "I wanted to see you. My uncle says that the Prince of Jeds is dead."

David swallowed. When he spoke, he found that his voice shook. "Yes. Yes, he's dead. Tess is prince now."

"Tess reigns there, Ilya here," Nadine murmured. "How long until they want to unite their princedoms and all the lands that lie between? David, are you leaving, then? You and the others?"

"I—it's all very abrupt. Yes, we'll have to, as soon as we can get to a port, get ship to Jeds."

"Tess, too? Will she leave for Jeds?"

"I don't think so. I don't know—it's all so sudden."

Even within the tent, the smell of soot and fire and smoke permeated everything. Yet he felt her presence just as strongly, not a meter from him, as still and silent as she sat. It was so unlike her to be so subdued.

When she spoke at last, her voice was so quiet he barely heard it. "May I stay, tonight? And on other nights, now and again, until you've gone?"

He wanted to ask about her husband, but he dared not. He wanted to ask, but he didn't want to know, and in any case, weren't jaran women free to take lovers if they wished to? He wanted her to stay.

Tonight especially, after the horrible two days he had spent; for the comfort, yes, but for her more than anything, because he cared for her.

No, it was worse than that. He loved her, but he could not admit it, not to her, not to anyone; barely to himself. So wouldn't a clean break be easiest? Wouldn't it be harder, dragging it out like this, however many days or weeks they, spent with the army, with her, until he left for good?

Even as he sat there, torn, she scooted forward. As soon as she touched him, her fingers brushing up his arm to his shoulder and curving around to die base of his neck, to touch, each one separately, his four name braids, he spoke without meaning to.

"Yes."

By the evening of the second day, Diana was relieved and more than relieved when Dr. Hierakis dismissed her from her duties and told her to go back to the Company camp and sleep. Two days and a night of an unremitting stream of casualties had worn her down to a thread.

Gwyn walked with her through camp, his right hand light on her elbow. "This ash is disgusting," he said, just to talk, she suspected, to have a normal conversation after hour upon hour of tending to bloodied and mutilated soldiers. Karkand lit the western horizon, a dull, ugly glow.

"Yes," Diana agreed, playing into the part, "it's terrible."

"Hey! Wait for me!" Hal jogged up behind them, falling in beside Diana.

"Is there anyone else?" Diana asked.

"No," said Hal. "We're the only ones who can stomach it for that long. Why should they anyway, if they don't want to?"

"How can they not?" demanded Diana. "How can they stand and watch when there's something they could be doing?"

"Di." Hal hesitated.

At once, she knew he'd had news of Anatoly. "What is it?"

"No, I just heard, from a rider—"

"Go on."

"Just a rumor. It's probably not true."

"Go on!"

"That Sakhalin led a charge in through the main gates of the city, and his jahar got caught behind the lines and massacred. But you know it's all confused. Half the army is still out in the city."

Gwyn glanced toward the western horizon. "Surely not in the city still."

"I don't know. Goddess, I didn't want to tell you, but I thought you ought to know what people were saying. What the reports were."

"Thank you," said Diana grimly. But it was what she had expected all along. All day she had wailed for this news. She accepted it bleakly, without surprise. Gwyn's hand tightened on her elbow, and a moment later Hal closed in beside her and rested a hand on her back, so that it was as if they two supported her, the grieving widow. It was some comfort.

At camp, Owen and Ginny had called a meeting inside the big tent, although it was mild outside. Only inside the tents were they free from the constant fall of ash. Gwyn and Hal made a little shield around Diana that only Quinn was allowed to penetrate. Quinn sank down beside Diana and draped an arm over Diana's shoulders, and Diana sighed and leaned her head on Quinn's tunic.

Owen was all on fire. He was focused, and pacing.

"We have two important pieces of news," said Ginny, after Yomi had called everyone to order.

"Charles Soerensen left Rhui abruptly, by shuttle, last night."

Anahita, sitting in her usual sullen silence, flared to life. "And he didn't offer to take us with him? The selfish bastard."

"Anahita, shut up," said Ginny mildly. "So, the Company line is that he's dead, and that his sister is now prince. Owen and I just spoke with her in her camp. Poor thing. She'd ridden quite a ways, and her just having lost the baby." She frowned, glanced at her son, and paused.

"We're starting a new experiment," said Owen into her silence, in his fiercest voice, which Diana knew betokened some great roiling plan. "I want your cooperation. I'm bringing a new actor into the troupe. A jaran man. I got a dispensation from less Soerensen to take him and his family off planet with us. I want to see how he adapts to theater, coming from the background that he does."

"What?" Hal murmured, "like a rat negotiating a maze? Dad, don't you think that's a little cruel?"

Owen blinked. "Cruel? What curious words you use, Henry. Well, there's nothing for him here. He'll be crippled for life if he stays here. Why shouldn't he come with us? He'll be wonderful. It will take work, and you'll all have to be very generous for a while—"

"But who is it?" asked Quinn.

"It's Vasil Veselov, isn't it?" asked Diana. She looked at Gwyn, and he at her, and they both nodded, together.

"Hold on," said Ginny. "We haven't done with the first bit, yet. Tess Soerensen will be escorting us to a port, so that we and those of Soerensen's party who didn't leave with him can return to Jeds and thence to Earth. Oh, and Veselov's family will be joining us once we leave this area. He has a wife and two small children."

"Ginny," said Diana, "did anyone ask Karelia if she wanted to leave the tribes?"

"Karolla? Who is Karolla?"

"She's Veselov's wife."

Ginny shrugged. "I don't know, but Tess said that she had cleared it all with the headwoman of the Veselov tribe. Let me see. Burckhardt left with Soerensen, or not with him precisely—never mind.

Yomi, what other details do they need?"

Yomi discussed logistics for a while, but Diana could not concentrate. She felt a kind of numb relief that Marco Burckhardt was gone, insofar as she could feel anything. Mostly she felt hollow. Someone would come, tomorrow, the day after, a week from now, bringing Anatoly's body. Then she felt faint, sick with horror. What if they had already burned him? What if the jaran dead had just been left in Karkand, if Bakhtiian had used the city itself for the funeral pyre for his soldiers? She tried desperately to picture Anatoly exactly as she had last seen him, proud and confident as he rode away into battle, but she could not bring the image into focus.

"Di? Are you all right?" Quinn whispered.

"I just need some air," she said, rising abruptly. "No, I'll be fine. No one needs to come with me."

"Let her go," Gwyn said. She pushed past the others and out underneath the awning. At long last the wind was dying, though ash still pattered quietly onto the cloth above her, a light, shushing sound. What did it matter, anyway, if the ash fell on her? What if some fragment of it was his remains, come to touch her one final time? She headed out into it, walking back to her tent through the darkness.

And there he was, the rider, standing beside his horse outside her tent, waiting to give her the news of her husband's death. She hadn't expected the message so soon.

"There's no point in even washing," he said, seeing her approach, "under all this dirt. Of course, the khaja would pour filth down on us." He took off his helmet, shook out his hair, and drew his fingers through the plume. "Everything, just everything is covered with it. Grandmother is going to move her camp south. The winds are blowing north and east, so it ought to be clear a day's ride in that direction.

And anyway, Bakhtiian will have to send part of his army south to Salkh soon enough, to my uncle."

Diana stopped dead.

"Where did those boys go off to?" Anatoly continued. "They were just here. Can you light the lantern?"

She could not speak.

"Oho, there they are. Viktor! You imp. Come get this damned stuff off me. Bring that lantern!" He laughed. "Look at them. They grabbed some khaja shields. No, no, you idiots. You can't cut as if you're on horseback when you're on foot."

The two boys panted up with a younger boy in tow. They threw down their shields and helped Anatoly out of his armor and stowed it under the shields to protect it from further ashfall. Then Anatoly took the lantern from them and ordered them away. He went into the tent.

Diana could not move.

A moment later, he ducked out again. "Diana?" He walked over to her. "Come on." He grabbed her hand and tugged her in, and she went. His grip was firm enough. He wasn't a ghost.

"Is there something for me to drink?" he asked as he tugged off his boots. "I'm famished. I came straight from the field here, as soon as I could. I would have sent a message, but—oh, Diana, I'm sorry if you were worried. But you know I can't be hurt in battle. The gods sent you to me."

This once, thank the Goddess, there was food and drink for him in the tent, although not, of course, anything as elaborate as his grandmother would have served him. But he was content.

He was content. She watched him eat. Obviously he was starving, but he ate neatly and efficiently.

When he sighed, replete, and reclined on the carpet, smiling at her, she felt wretched.

"Diana?" His face changed at once. "You've heard, then, haven't you? About the Prince of Jeds?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Who else? One of the Vershinin sons died. Anton Veselov is dead, too, and the amazing thing is that Mother Veselov asked that their cousin Vera be named dyan. But the Veselov riders demanded it!

Evidently she took the staff of command out of her cousin's hand as he died and led them wisely enough through the rest of the battle. It was my men who brought the madwoman's body in. They found her up on the walls."

"The madwoman?" She was too stupified by his presence to understand what he was talking about.

"The prince's soldier—"

"Ursula el Kawakami is dead?" The conversation seemed unreal to her. Anatoly was dead; it was impossible that he was here, now, not one meter from her, regarding her with his beautiful, expressive eyes.

"You hadn't heard? Diana." He reached out and caught her wrist and drew her down beside him. He was warm and solid. She pressed her face against his chest. He smelled of smoke. "It's all right, Diana. I know what you're thinking. The prince's entourage must return to Jeds, and your Company with them. I know that you have to go with them. Grandmother still thinks I married beneath me, but she doesn't understand that you're a Singer, that the gods have called you. How else could you be both yourself and the Daughter of the Sun? Or Mekhala, or Mekhala's sister, or the youngest daughter of the head woman?

Or the mother who saves her child? So I understand that the greater honor is mine, for gaining you. But you don't need to worry, Diana. I know what we can do. I'll ask Bakhtiian to send me and my jahar to Jeds. Someone must protect his wife's possessions until she can come to claim them. Someone must act as regent. Grandmother likes the idea. It's an honor well due to our family. Then you and I can stay together, in Jeds."

She tilted her head back. He looked so damnably optimistic, like they all did, because they thought that their gods had granted them the right to rule their world. And who was to say that it wasn't true?

Certainly, Tess Soerensen and her brother had come down from the heavens and now even more than before were prepared to push the balance in favor of the jaran.

"But we're not going back to Jeds. We're going far away, far across the ocean, back to Erthe, where we came from. Anatoly." Already she felt stripped to the bone with misery. It hurt to have to tell him, while he was holding her this close. He looked bewildered by her anguish. He was so sure there was some solution when there wasn't one and never could have been one. "That journey can't be taken twice, Anatoly. Once I go, I can never come back."

"But, Diana—"

"Oh, you could go with me, perhaps, if Tess Soerensen agreed, but you'd have to leave the tribes forever." Her chest was so tight, her throat so choked with emotion, that she found herself breathing hard. She could not catch her breath. But she had to make him understand how final it was, that there was no hope. That she had no choice. "You'd have to leave your jahar. You could never come back either. You're right, about the gods. They called me to be an actor. I can't turn away from that, no matter how much I might want to stay with you here." She faltered, because his expression frightened her.

Suddenly he embraced her and held her hard against him. She tightened her arms around him and just hung on, for the longest time, forever.

"You mean it," he said finally, but she could not see his face as they lay together on the carpet. "There is nothing I can say, nothing I can suggest, that will change your mind. I can't come with you. You can't stay here. There's no hope even of finding a place between your land and mine, in Jeds."

"No hope," she whispered, wanting never to let him go-He broke free of her and gently pulled away from her grasp. Standing up, he pulled on his boots and sorted out his clothes from the chest and rolled them up in a blanket with a few odds and ends and his scraps of embroidery. She scrambled up to stand beside him. "Anatoly—?" "Then let it be a clean break, and a swift one." He took her by the shoulders and kissed her once on each cheek, in the formal style. "Good-bye, Diana. I will always love you. But you must do as the gods have called you to do, and so must I." And he left.

All that night, all she did was walk from her tent to the main tent and back again; from her tent to the main tent and back again. Quinn came out and walked two circuits with her without speaking a word, and then left to go to bed. Later, in the middle of the night, Gwyn appeared and walked beside her for a time, and before dawn, Hal, from her tent to the main tent and back again.

At dawn, she took down her tent and stowed what she had brought from Earth in a single chest. Gwyn came over, and in the end he persuaded her to let him help carry the rolled-up tent and chest and pillows.

They arrived at the Sakhalin encampment just in time: Mother Sakhalin was checking all the wagons.

She turned, seeing Diana, and beckoned her over.

"Mother Sakhalin," said Diana. She did not want to play this scene, but she had to. She made herself play it as if she was on the stage. "Because I must leave the jaran, and your grandson, I thought it only right to return these things to you." She risked a glance around and prayed that she would not see him. If she saw him, then everything would go for nothing. If she saw him, she would break down into tears and beg him to give up everything he knew and loved and come with her to Earth.

"Anatoly and his jahar rode out last night," said Mother Sakhalin in a cold voice. "With Bakhtiian's blessing. They rode south, to join up with my nephew's army."

Ah, Goddess, he had meant what he said, that the clean, swift break was the best one. She felt sick to the very core of her heart. She did not know what to say, but Gwyn, good soul that he was, asked Mother Sakhalin in a polite voice which wagons the tent and chest and pillows ought to go in.

She pointed. "In the jaran," she said to Diana as Gwyn carried the other things away, "a woman is married to a man for as long as the mark remains on her face, or he lives. What am I to tell my grandson?"

Diana felt crushed under the weight of Mother Sakhalin's withering stare. The old woman hated her, that was clear, for breaking her favorite grandchild's heart. And why shouldn't she hate her? Mother Sakhalin had known all along that Anatoly should never have married her.

"Tell him," she said, and choked on the words, "tell him that I love him still." She meant to say more, but her voice failed.

Gwyn returned. He held in his hand a small, supple leather pouch. "Di." He faltered. "These fell out of the pillows." He opened the flap to show her the loot, the necklace, bracelet, and earrings that Anatoly had sent her.

"Those you must keep," said Mother Sakhalin. "I insist upon it. It would be rude beyond belief and forgiving to return them to him, who risked his life to gain them for you."

"But—" Diana fished in the pouch and drew out one of the earrings. "Give this to him. Please. To remember me by. So he'll have one, and I'll have one. I—" She cast an anguished glance at Gwyn, pleading for help.

But it was Mother Sakhalin who had mercy on her. "Go on, then. We're leaving now. There's no more time for this. I'll take the earring and I'll see dial he gets it." She took the earring and turned away, just like that.

"Come on, Di," said Gwyn gently. "We may as well go. I'm so sorry."

And that was it. That was the end.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

They laid Ursula's body, shrouded in a simple linen winding-cloth and topped by her beloved helmet and her torn, bloodied surcoat, on the pyre at the feet of the man she had followed here. It was fitting that Ursula be burned. She had died in battle, fighting for the jaran. As for the other corpse—well, Sonia hoped the gods would forgive them for the impiety.

He had, at least, been a soldier, and he had died fighting for his people—khaja though they might be; that ought to satisfy the gods. She only hoped his spirit would not take offense at the substitution. She had made sure that the necklace of gold beads he wore had been left with him, so that he might go to the heavens with something familiar and not just the shroud of the Prince of Jeds.

One of the actors sang a haunting song in farewell. David ben Unbutu spoke a long prayer. Most of them wept, even though Sonia did not think they had loved Ursula overmuch. More than anything, she thought they were simply shocked that Ursula had died. As if they thought that Ursula couldn't die, that none of them could die. Sonia made a sign against Grandmother Night, for even contemplating such a blasphemous thought. Certainly they did not weep for the prince. All of them knew, as she knew, as Hya knew, that Charles Soerensen had not died but simply given up Jeds in order to return to his mother's homeland of Erthe.

Dry-eyed, Tess put the torch to the wood, and it caught. Farther off, ambassadors attended, and etsanas and dyans, out of respect for the dead prince, and behind them, farther still, a knot of soldiers, riders and a few Farisa auxiliaries, who attended out of respect for the woman who had led them.

Karkand smoldered behind them and, in some places, still burned.

Flames leapt up the pyre and engulfed the two bodies. The scent of ulyan permeated the air. Tess moved back to stand beside Ilya, and Sonia went over to her and put an arm around her, supporting her.

Tess still suffered from exhaustion; she had not yet gotten over her ride of two days past.

"Poor Ursula," said Tess to the air. "I hope it was quick."

They stood there for a while longer. The fire fanned heat over them in waves, and at last the smoke drove them back.

"We'll go home," said Sonia.

"Yes," said Tess. Together, they walked a few paces. First Sonia halted, then Tess. Beyond, others moved away as well, seeing that the formal ceremony was over. The actors walked off en masse. The golden-haired Singer wept copiously, and three of the others surrounded her as guards might, fending off the world. Ambassadors trailed away. David and the remaining members of Soerensen's party circled the pyre a final time and left without looking back.

"Are you coming?" asked Sonia, since Ilya had not moved.

"No," he said, watching the flames. "Not yet."

And it was true, Sonia reflected, that for Ilya this was a farewell to Charles Soerensen. He could hardly expect to see him again. Certainly Tess did not expect her brother to ever return, and even with the Jedan fleet, Sonia doubted that Ilya would ever have the opportunity or the means to sail across the vast oceans to a land as distant as Erthe.

"Given more time," said Tess softly, "I think they would have become friends. At least, they understood each other."

"Understanding," said Sonia, "is truly one of the most precious gifts. You look tired, Tess."

"I am."

"Well, then, leave him here to do what he must."

"It reminds me," said Tess, and her voice cracked just a little, "of the baby."

"If the gods are merciful," said Sonia, "then they will grant you many children."

"Are the gods merciful?" Tess asked, an odd note in her voice.

"The gods are just," said Sonia, "and their justice is sometimes harsh, but it is their mercy which sustains us."

Ilya still had not moved. The pyre seemed to fascinate him, or else it merely gave a focus for his thoughts— whatever they might be. Sonia drew Tess forward, and they left him there alone to say farewell.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Bakhtiian held court in the ashes of Karkand,

"An impressive show," said Laissa, drawing aside the curtain of her litter. She gazed out on the desolation that had once been the royal city of the kingdom of Habakar and at the white tent staked out and surrounded by carpets and, beyond the carpets, a flat stretch of ground that had once been a marketplace. Bakhtiian and his wife—now the Prince of Jeds—sat under the awning, elevated on a dais.

One by one, they called embassies before them. One by one, embassies knelt at the base of the dais and gave gifts and were sent away with scrolls bound with gold braid, signed by the hand of Bakhtiian himself.

Six days after the final assault, the city lay stark and ruined under a clear sky. Karkand had seemed huge before, but burned and razed its endless fields of ash and shattered masonry and blackened walls and broken towers just seemed to stretch on and on and on. Yesterday it had rained, and the drizzle had chased the last pall of smoke from the air. It still smelled of smoke and ash and burnt things, here in the city, but a chilly dampness overlaid it. The cold season was sweeping down on Habakar.

"Why impressive?" asked Jiroannes, turning away from this depressing scene to look at his wife.

Beneath her sheer veil she looked impossibly serene.

"Every ambassador who comes before Bakhtiian today will see this, and know that he and his people must fear Bakhtiian's wrath. You would do well, Jiroannes, to consider wisely when it comes time to accept whatever treaty Bakhtiian offers to your Great King."

"Your King as well, now that you are my wife," he snapped.

"I may place my allegiance where I please," she said, untroubled by his outburst, "since that is the right of every man or woman born into the House of the Lion and the Moon, the most noble of all royal lines of Habakar. Mother Sakhalin came to me last night and said that she and Bakhtiian had come to an agreement, that they would ask me and my cousin, who is father to the child Melatina—the girl who is to marry Prince Mitya—to act as regents in Habakar in concert with two jaran Elders until the young prince and his bride come of age."

Jiroannes had a sudden sinking feeling that there was a great deal going on in the camp that he was not privy to. He had not seen Mitya for days and days, not since before Laissa had poisoned Samae. Did Bakhtiian truly think so little of the Great King of Vidiya that he would snub the King's ambassador like this, and take this Habakar princess into his confidence and his trust? Did Bakhtiian's intelligence net spread so wide that he knew that in truth the Great King did little more than hunt and luxuriate in the women's quarters, overseeing not his lands and his army but the innumerable petty quarrels that erupted every day in the kennels and the harem? The Great King did not want to go to war. Indeed, Jiroannes doubted he was capable of leading an army, or even of presiding over one. His mother had poisoned or strangled all of his half brothers and male cousins, to leave him free of that sort of intrigue, but the Queen Mother was dead now, and upon her death he had banished all of the ministers she had so carefully chosen for him and installed his cronies, each and every one of them young princes and noblemen of similar dissipated habits to his own. His one living sibling, Her Highness the Princess Eriania, he indulged shamelessly, going so far as to let her ride out to the hunt with him and his entourage, and everyone knew she kept her own harem in imitation of the men, but for all that, she was more of a man than he was. Which man did Jiroannes respect more, Bakhtiian or the Great King? It was no contest.

"Thought becomes you," said Laissa.

He hated her at that moment, for her mocking superiority and her patronizing way of talking to him.

"Jiroannes," she said on a sigh, "you are scarcely more than a boy. It's no wonder the young prince likes you. Don't bridle up at me like that. You're intelligent. Certainly you're ambitious, or you would never have thought to marry me. Surely you and I can work together, rather than at odds, despite all the years there are between us and the difference in our stations. I must have a husband. Clearly, you need an older head than your own to guide your actions until you've grown a few years wiser than you are now."

"How dare you address me in this impertinent fashion!" he demanded, and faltered, seeing that his anger did not frighten her anymore. She was secure. Oh, she might have to endure his attentions in the bed, but that lasted but a small part of each day. The servants obeyed her; the jaran honored her; she was free of her servitude to her God, although she still prayed three times each day with apparent piety.

Maybe Laissa was right.

"I will never care for your attentions in bed," she added, as if she had read his mind, "but I will accept them as I must, and once I have borne you a healthy son, we can negotiate for secondary wives, and certainly choose a few pretty concubines for your pleasure."

He did not trust her in this placating mood. Why should he, indeed, after what she had done to Samae? She could as easily poison him, he supposed, though he had Jat tasting all his food these days, before he ate anything. Of all his entourage, he trusted only Syrannus now. Even his guards showed a partiality for Laissa, because she had busied herself about their camp in her managing way, setting it all into an order that pleased her and presumably them as well.

She leaned out a little farther. A net woven with tiny jewels and silver thread covered her hair and from it draped the veil and a shawl of fine embroidered citron silk, falling down over her shoulders to her hips. Her robes slid around her, revealing the curve of a breast and then concealing it again as the fabric shifted and she bent forward.

"Syrannus," she said. "Announce us. We will be seen now."

We will be seen now. As if she could simply dictate to Bakhtiian that he interrupt his business in order for her to come before him. As if they would not have to wait, just as the other ambasssadors had always to do, as Jiroannes had always done; as embassies did now, shivering in their robes and cloaks as a damp wind blew, shuffling their feet in the black ash that coated the ground and their shoes. They all looked nervous. Well might they be nervous. Now that Bakhtiian had so thoroughly defeated the armies of powerful Habakar—though it was rumored that in the far south the Xiriki-khai province still held out against one of his generals—no one knew where he meant to turn his eyes and his sword next.

Syrannus padded back to them, escorted by one of Bakhtiian's personal guard. "Bakhtiian sends his greetings, princess," he said, "and hopes you will honor him with your presence."

Astounded, Jiroannes could only follow silently in Laissa's wake. Syrannus walked beside him.

Mercifully, the old man kept his thoughts to himself.

They stepped off ash and onto the bright carpets surrounding the court. The gold banner rode on the wind at the top of a single column, standing to the left of the tent. At the center, raised on a dais draped with cloth embroidered with birds and horses, Bakhtiian and his wife sat on silk pillows. Mitya sat next to Bakhtiian, attended by his aunt, and next to Tess Soerensen sat Bakhtiian's niece Nadine Orzhekov, looking as bad-tempered as always. A fair young man sat beside her; Jiroannes did not recognize him, but he was clearly a prince, prettily decked out in a beautifully embroidered shirt caught in at the waist with a belt of embossed gold plates, his neck wreathed in gold necklaces. Even the hilt and sheath of his saber were plated with gold.

To Jiroannes's shock, Bakhtiian rose and stepped down from the dais to come forward and greet Laissa. "Your highness," he said. A jaran woman came forward and offered Laissa a hand, to help her out of her litter. She accepted the hand gravely and climbed out gracefully enough, and thanked the woman, who then retreated.

"Where is Mother Sakhalin?" she asked. "I haven't seen her for several days."

"She has ridden south."

"Ah.

"I hope, your highness, that you will sit beside Mitya."

"I would be honored," replied Laissa.

For one wild moment, Jiroannes had the improbable idea that she actually liked and respected these barbarians. But surely not. She was no fool, he knew that well enough, and she could see where her interests lay: with the jaran, of course.

Bakhtiian escorted her back to the dais and two women helped her up- Mitya sat with his head bowed, blushing faintly. Poor boy. Was she truly to be his regent? Jiroannes hoped Bakhtiian would employ a slave to taste the boy's food. On the other hand, surely Laissa would not do anything so stupid. If she poisoned Mitya, she would have Bakhtiian's wrath to face, and she herself could see right here, around her, how ruthless Bakhtiian was willing to be.

"Ambassador."

Jiroannes started. Bakhtiian still stood there, regarding him with an amused expression on his face. On the level, Jiroannes was surprised to find that they were of equal height. Presiding over his court, riding out with his army, Bakhtiian seemed much—bigger.

"You will attend me now," finished Bakhtiian. He returned to the dais. Jiroannes followed him forward and waited. "Ah, thank you, Kirill." Bakhtiian took a scroll from one of his captains. He handed it to his wife, who unrolled it and smoothed it out. Jiroannes risked a glance at her. She was pale, but her face was set and strong, and she wore a signet ring on her middle left finger and a heavy gold chain around her neck.

"To my brother, the Great King of Vidiya," said Bakhtiian, appearing to read from the scroll, "I send this message. By the power that Mother Sun and Father Wind have invested in us throughout our own realms and through the realms of the great world, let this be known: that we wish only to live in peace and to rejoice in the good things of life and to act for good, and that those who speak to us of war will find war, and those who speak to us of peace will find peace.

"These things, I grant between us, as long as there is peace between us: the borders as they stand now, to the full extent of the Habakar kingdom and her provinces; free trade over the pass south of the city of Targana; safe passage for merchants and envoys and couriers. To show your understanding of my decree, you may send to the jaran gifts, and ten young women and ten young men of noble birth to attend my court, so that our people and yours may come to know one another."

Hostages. Jiroannes noted that Bakhtiian said nothing about sending young jaran men or women to the Vidiyan court, though doubtless the Great King would be amused by a jaran concubine.

"For our part, as we honor our brother, we send to you—"

Bakhtiian paused, quite deliberately, and looked at Jiroannes, clearly expecting him, as ambassador, to suggest a suitable gift. Jiroannes glanced toward Laissa, and she gave him a slight nod, almost as if she was encouraging him. Well, probably it wouldn't be wise to ask for a concubine. It must be a gift that honored the Great King, and yet a gift that Bakhtiian would not interpret as tribute, going from himself to Vidiya.

"Horses," said Jiroannes abruptly, remembering the fine mare that Mitya rode. "A fine gray stallion for the Great King, and a gray mare for Her Royal Highness, his sister."

"Yes," said Bakhtiian. His wife wrote in with her own hand the decree, appending it to the letter.

Laissa nodded at Jiroannes. He even caught a glimpse of her smiling, under the gauze of her veil. Did she actually approve of his choice?

"... and a gray mare for Her Royal Highness, his sister," Bakhtiian was saying, repeating the words his wife had written down. He took in a breath and looked up at the sky, clear and blue above them. "When by the power of the heavens the whole world from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun shall be at one in peace, then so shall we all be at peace. You may believe that your country is far away, but not so far away that we cannot ride there. You may believe that your mountains are high beyond measure, but not so high that we cannot cross them. You may believe that the seas are vast, but not so broad that our ships cannot sail them. The gods who live in the heavens will make what was difficult easy, and what was far away, near."

He fell silent. The court fell silent, waiting on him. Like a faint echo of his words, Jiroannes heard the sound of falling rock; perhaps some wall had tumbled down, out there in the wasteland that was all that remained of Karkand.

Bakhtiian took the pen from his wife and signed the letter. He rolled it up absently. "I'll send Venedikt Grekov and his jahar as envoy and escort, with the ambassador," he said.

Half the court swiveled their heads to look at the fair young man who sat beside Nadine Orzhekov, then looked away. Bakhtiian's niece smiled, but made no comment.

"Who is next?" said Bakhtiian, turning to his ministers. "Ah, the embassy from Parkilnous."

Tess Soerensen glanced up. "Good. It's the closest port. If we can manage it, I'd like to send the Company and the rest of Charles's party back to Jeds from there."

Bakhtiian regarded her for a moment, looking puzzled by her words. If we can manage it. How should they not manage it? Jiroannes thought. Bakhtiian was master here, and Parkilnous, however powerful and rich it might be, was simply an independent city-state, not a great kingdom like Habakar.

"Ambassador." Bakhtiian leaned forward and offered the scroll to Jiroannes. "You may leave in the morning for Vidiya. I will send Venedikt Grekov to you at dawn. Treat him with honor. His nephew is my niece's husband."

Jiroannes bowed and retreated. Laissa, the bitch, remained where she was, beside Mitya, but Jiroannes had no choice but to leave court with Syrannus. On his way out, he passed the Parkilnous embassy coming in. They were so heavily laden with tribute that it took thirty strong men to carry all the gifts.

At dusk, Jat came in to him.

"Eminence, the prince has come and hopes to see you."

Jiroannes leapt up at once. "Show him in. Bring us tea, and food, Jat. Syrannus, you will taste it for us today."

Syrannus bowed. Jat bowed and left, and a moment later he showed Mitya in.

The boy still wore his court clothes, which were rich and looked heavy to wear. Jiroannes offered him a chair, and after hesitating, Mitya sat.

"I suppose I'll have to get used to sitting in chairs," he said. "I'm sorry you're leaving."

"I must go."

"I know." He brightened. "But the journey isn't too long, is it? It won't take you above two or three years to return, will it?"

"To return?"

"But the princess said that you were coming back to be my chief minister. After all, since she is staying in Habakar, of course you will have to return—"

"She is staying in Habakar!"

Together, as if by mutual consent, they lapsed into silence.

Jat brought tea and cakes and delicately carved slices of fruit, all arranged pleasingly on a silver tray.

Then he retreated to the shadowed corner.

"I thought—it isn't my right to ask—I wondered where—" Mitya broke off and stared at his hands. He murmured her name under his breath, so softly that if Jiroannes hadn't been expecting it, he wouldn't have heard it. "Samae."

Laissa, with her usual expediency, had had her servants dispose of the body. These days, there were so many, it was easy to lose one. Jiroannes felt cold all through him, and a sudden pity for Mitya, whose face betrayed clearly enough that he had cared for Samae, slave though she was.

Hesitant, Mitya went on. "I asked Princess Laissa about her, but she said that—that Samae had displeased her and that she had been forced to give her to new masters. Is it true?"

"I'm sorry, Mitya," Jiroannes said, stumbling over the words. How could he explain? He could not—

especially since Laissa had managed to both lie and tell the truth at the same time. Clearly she was experienced in court intrigue. He forced himself to go on. "Once I married, the females in my house came under my wife's jurisdiction. I cannot interfere." The lie tore at his throat, he who had learned from the words of the prophets that lies were evil, who saw how terribly the words hurt Mitya. "You couldn't have married her, my prince, and her presence— since she is not a jaran woman, and bound to laws not your own ... it would only complicate your life." The poor boy fought himself, trying to keep his expression controlled; Jiroannes ached to see him suffer so. "She is a slave, Mitya, and in her land, by the laws of her gods, she can never be anything but a slave."

Mitya's hands lay in fists on his thighs. He did not move except to bow his head so that shadows covered it. In the uncertain light of the lantern, Jiroannes could no longer read his expression.

"But she cared for you, Mitya... ." He faltered.

Silence lay over them as heavy as sorrow.

From outside, he heard a woman laugh and a guard curse, and a goat bleat, and the ring of bridle as a troop of horsemen passed by.

Mitya stood up abruptly. "You're not coming back," he said.

"I don't—I didn't think—"

"No, I'm not accusing you. I'm not angry. Of course you want to return to your own land." He strode to the entrance, but hesitated there, facing out toward the camp, as if he did not know how to say farewell.

Jiroannes was struck by a reckless urge. Of course he would want to return to his own land: Back to the endless, cruel intrigues at the Great King's court, where his uncle lived on sufferance and he himself walked the veriest tightrope between royal favor and banishment to the provinces, where a man who did not die from swamp fever was in any case doomed to poverty, since banishment brought with it a ban on all the luxuries that made life worth living. Or he could leave Vidiya forever and come to live in Habakar, where his wife was regent and his patron and friend would be, in four short years, the reigning king.

Jiroannes rose from his chair and hurried over to the entrance. Mitya turned back, to face him, with his pale, young face and his unconsciously arrogant carriage. "I would be honored to act as your chief minister, Prince Mitya." Then, on impulse, Jiroannes knelt in front of the boy, as any man kneels in front of his sovereign lord. "When this duty is discharged, I will leave my country and return here to serve you."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The rains brought a second flowering to Habakar, turning the grass green and encouraging late flowers to bud and open, but frost soon killed it. The army left, in its wake, pasture eaten down to dirt and villages that would have been stripped of their winter stores if Tess had not forcefully pointed out to Bakhtiian that the legacy of such an action would be a revolt by the Habakar people against Mitya.

"I don't understand," said Ilya as they sat under the awning of her tent in the late afternoon, "not truly, why your brother would leave Jeds forever, forsake his power there, to return to a place where at best he might hope by the time he dies to make some incursions against a power he claims is far greater than his own, and at worst expect to be killed for his trouble."

"Because Erthe is where his heart lies," replied Tess. The towers of Birat caught the last golden rays of the sun, gleaming against a backdrop of snow-laden mountains to the west.

"But not yours."

She sipped at her tea, cupping the ceramic mug—it was of Farisa make—in her hands and letting the steam that curled up from the depths warm her face. "Well, it is the land where I was born. But when I think of it now, I think of being ten years old with my parents dead. I think of being sent back to study there, by Charles, and being so lonely, and hating it. This is my home, here—well—" She squinted toward Birat and the mountains. "Not here, not Habakar, but Jeds, and the plains."

He leaned across and touched her on the knee. "We'll go back to the plains, my heart, once I've set things in order here. We can have a child there, Tess, on the plains."

She bowed her head and lowered the mug to nestle in her lap. "I don't know," she whispered, not wanting to tell him that probably they could never have a child, knowing what it meant to him. Not wanting to say it aloud, knowing what it meant to her.

"It's early still." He withdrew his hand. "We won't speak of it now."

They sat in silence for a time. Birat's fields lay at peace beyond, harvested. A few bore the green sprigs of winter wheat, growing apace already. Canals glittered in a net of pathways that crisscrossed in the fields, reminding Tess of the saboteur network that she and Rajiv and the others were going to build, here, in Jeds, in Morava. The army spread out around them, but it was halved in size, now; Mother Sakhalin had gone south to her nephew, and other troops had gone in other directions, south to aid Sakhalin, north to investigate word of a revolt. Kirill Zvertkov had led a troop ahead, west, toward Parkilnous, escorting the city's embassy back and laying the ground for Bakhtiian's arrival.

"Tess," said Ilya, and stopped.

"What is it?" Then she looked at him.

He would not look at her, at first, like any modest jaran man would not, faced with a woman not of his own family, but finally he lifted his eyes to her face. "Do you think the gods know that I killed my own father? But if they do, then why would they still grant me their favor?"

"But he wasn't your father."

"Not by our laws. But by the laws you insisted I acknowledge in claiming Vasha as my son, I am certain that Khara Roskhel was my father."

"I'm sorry, then, not for Vasha's sake, but for yours. I'm sorry you killed anyone, that anyone has ever died and will ever die because of choices that other people make for them. But isn't that the nature of war? I'm not sure it ever accomplishes anything but killing, and yet we turn to it again and again, even Charles, knowing that any rebellion he leads will in the end be no different in kind than what you've done in the coastal princedoms and in Habakar."

"But once we unite the lands, and his rebellion succeeds, then there will be peace," said Ilya reasonably. "I would like to visit Erthe someday. Your philosophers are very different from ours. Do they have an elixir for long life there?"

She started and almost spilled her tea. "What makes you ask that?"

"Oh, that Habakar philosopher the old king sent us as an ambassador, he said that while he had means of protecting life, he had none to prolong it, but that he had heard that there is a country that lies along the Golden Road where the magicians brew such an elixir. I thought perhaps the philosophers of Erthe knew something of it."

"Ah. Well. Perhaps they do. I'm not a philosopher." Now it was her turn to falter. "Ilya."

He said nothing, only watched her, forcing her to speak.

"We can't send a regent to Jeds. I have to go."

At once, his expression shuttered.

"You know it's true, Ilya. You know I have to go, to establish my power there, so that they can see me and acknowledge me. I haven't been in Jeds for years and years. They'll have no way to recognize me, not truly, except by this ring and the chain. Well, Baron Santer and some of the other officials at court will probably recognize me, but I was a child when they last saw me. Tell me you see that I have to go, Ilya." Her voice broke on the last sentence.

"So your brother wins what he wanted, in the end." He stood up, that abruptly, and walked off the carpet. Twenty paces away from the tent, two guards fell in on either side of him. They vanished into the camp.

"Oh, God," said Tess, and started to cry, not just because of him but because ever since the baby had died everything made her cry easily.

Children's laughter rang through the camp.

"Tess! Tess! Come quickly."

Vasha and Katya and Galina raced into view and they halted, panting and giggling, on her carpet.

"Come on!" cried Katya, tugging at Tess's arm and spilling the remains of the tea on Tess's trouser leg and onto the carpet.

"Tess, why are you crying?" Vasha asked. At once the three children hushed and heaved themselves down beside Tess with such attitudes of attentive concern that Tess could not help but laugh at their grave faces.

"It's nothing," she said, wiping her eyes.

"Well, then!" exclaimed Katya, leaping up again. "You must come now!"

"Where is—?" Vasha faltered. He never called Ilya anything, not Uncle, not Ilya, not Bakhtiian and certainly never Father, except to leave a pause where his name went.

Tess waved vaguely in the direction Ilya had gone, not trusting her voice.

"I'll find him," said Galina, and jumped up and ran away.

Tess allowed Vasha and Katya to tug her up and drag her toward Sonia's tent. "But what's going on?"

Tess demanded.

On the other side of Sonia's tent, out of sight of Tess's own awning, Josef Raevsky stood with his saber drawn and little Ivan's hand covering his own on the hilt. Ilya arrived just in time to watch with the others as Josef, with Vania's hand guiding his, marked Sonia with his saber, drawing the line of marriage down her cheek, parallel to the scar that had marked her first marriage to Mikhal Yakhov.

Tess burst into tears. A moment later she felt Ilya beside her.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, sliding an arm around her back. "I'm sorry, Tess. It isn't your brother's fault or even his victory, but my own fault, and Her victory, who has paid me back in my own coin."

"Oh, you idiot!" she said through her tears. "I just said I had to go there. I didn't say I wasn't coming back!" She broke away from him and went forward to hug Sonia.

"Well, you don't have to cry!" exclaimed Sonia, laughing at her until her tears stopped. "After all, since I must go into seclusion, you'll have to be in charge of the camp for the next ten days."

"But I don't know how to run the camp—"

"If you'd encouraged Aleksi to marry, you'd have more help, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, thank you," said less, laughing. "Where is Aleksi? He was just here."

"He took one of the guard's horses," said Vasha, "and rode out that way." He pointed, and Tess knew that in that direction lay the Veselov encampment.

"He isn't going to mark her if I'm not there to see, is he? We'd better go."

Sonia laid a hand on Tess's arm, restraining her. "Tess. I think if he'd wanted you there, he would have asked you to come with him. Look how dark it is already. I don't think Aleksi wants a public marking.

There'll be enough celebration in ten days."

"Well," said Tess, not knowing whether to be offended or pleased. Aleksi had been her shadow for three years, a steady, reliable presence but in his own way still insecure about his place in the Orzhekov tribe. It was encouraging to see him act on his own at last, and yet it felt odd as well. "Josef." She kissed the blind rider on eitiier cheek. Then she went to consult with Galina and Juli Danov about running the camp. Tonight it was not Aleksi, but Ilya, who shadowed her, sticking close by her, saying little but never letting her out of his sight.

Aleksi returned, alone, much later, but he had a smile on his face.

So they stayed outside Birat for ten days. There was a sudden flood of markings, many of them unmarried riders marking widowed women, and a great celebration at the end of that time, observed by the Habakar from their walls and their fields with apprehension and by the jagged western mountains with supreme indifference.

Aleksi astounded Bakhtiian by demanding his share of the treasure gained from the Habakar kingdom for his services to Bakhtiian, and he sent so much gold and jewels to the Veselov camp that when Svetlana was carried out to the fire to meet her new husband, she was almost as heavily laden in riches as was Sonia Orzhekov. Arina

Veselov had gifted Svetlana with a good tent, much larger than Aleksi's, and Svetlana herself gave wedding gifts to all the children and a beautiful carpet to Tess and Ilya that she and her sister had made, as her wedding gift to them.

"I don't know," said Cara late that evening, while dancing went on around three bonfires, "if I approve of this business of marking the women."

"Oho," said Tess, lifting a hand to touch her own cheek, where she was marked. "Do I detect the superior note of advanced civilizations in your words, Cara?"

"Probably," said Cara. "I suppose we've just found less obviously violent ways to alter our bodies.

Tess, do you want to try again for a child?"

"Try again!"

"Charles suggested it, in fact. I think you and Ilya can have a child, with some help from me. A little additional lab work on you, but since you're coming to Jeds, we can do it there. And you'll need a communications implant, too, and Rajiv suggests a mini-chip demi-modeler straight into the cranium with a retinal scan trigger. Charles will send a technician down for that."

"When did Charles suggest that? About me trying again for a child?"

"The morning before he left."

"Hmm." Tess broke away from Cara to go forward and greet and kiss Arina Veselov, who was being carried by on a litter, and then came back. "What scheme is Charles hatching now?"

"Tess! Maybe Charles just acted out of pure sentiment."

Tess considered the possibility. She realized that she had a hard time imagining Charles acting out of anything but expediency. "Well," she admitted, "maybe I'm not always fair to him."

Cara snorted. "How often are we ever fair, to others and even to ourselves? Do you want to put a call in to Charles?"

"No. I know he's safe on Odys. I'll wait until we can get a safe channel from Jeds. He's a damned bastard anyway. Ilya is right. Charles accomplished what he wanted—me to leave the jaran and to accept my duties as his heir whether I wanted to or not—"

"Are you leaving the jaran?" Cara asked without a blink.

"Of course not! I mean, only to go to Jeds for as long as I have to, and I'll have to take jaran with me, a jahar, probably—but I'll come back to the plains as soon as I can."

"Then, my dear, I would advise you not to exaggerate the case. Of course, you must go to Jeds temporarily, but it's become equally important that you return to the jaran."

"Maybe Yuri was right," said Tess, musing.

"Yuri?"

"My brother Yuri. He said that the gods had brought me to the jaran to find him, to reunite us, who were brother and sister in another life. But maybe the gods had other plans. Maybe Yuri was the jaran, what they were before I came, untouched and—oh, I don't want to say innocent. Uncorrupted. And so in the end he died, because of what I brought to him and to them." She shook her head. "He would have hated this."

"The gods usually do," replied Cara, looking grave and amused at the same time.

"Do what?"

"Have other plans."

At first, Tess laughed, but as she stared out at the fires and the musicians and the dancing, the whirl of skirts, the flashing gleam of gold and bronze, the distant torches that rimmed the walls of Birat, she thought of Ilya, who had by his own lights and by the laws of his people already begun the corruption, long before she came. And yet, who was to say if that corruption hadn't begun while Ilya was in Jeds, a Jeds already deeply influenced by Charles? And yet, who was to say if it hadn't begun when a fair-haired Singer named Petre Sokolov marked an ambitious woman who didn't want him, driven by a vision that he was granted from the heavens, of the gods-touched child that he was meant to father?

It took them ten days to cross the mountains over a high pass already coated with snow. Down they rode, into a great forest that stretched endlessly out on all sides. Through this watershed they passed and in fifteen days farther on came to a great river and the fortified city of Parkilnous.

Neither Parkilnous nor its people had any of the grace and light and elegant trappings of Habakar lands. They were a somewhat lighter race in coloring, more akin to the black-haired jaran than to their darker Habakar neighbors to the east. The river streamed by, sluggish and especially filthy downstream from the great walls that rimmed its bank. There were no suburbs spread out in harmonious lines around the inner city. All the houses and markets, palaces and great merchants" mansions and hordes of poor, lay crammed in together within the confining walls. Hovels sprawled out beyond the gates, out on the dumping grounds for the city's refuse and into the marshlands that bordered a tributary stream where it fed down from the forest and into the great river itself. Farther out, fields spread, each one ringed by a rough wall of stone.

The governor of Parkilnous had already opened his gates to Zvertkov's jahar, and he came himself, barefooted and bareheaded like a penitent, to greet Bakhtiian and usher him into the city.

Parkilnous stank. Unlike the Habakar, the Parkilnese evidently had no concept of sanitation, however primitive. Tess could not bring herself to eat much of the feast laid out in her and Bakhtiian's honor in the great hall of the palace, and the entertainment—dancing girls, jugglers, and a poor emaciated bearlike creature that a burly one-eyed man wrestled—was not much better. Then the merchants came, a representative from each house, many of them elder women, and one by one they piled gifts in front of the great conqueror and the Prince of Jeds. Tess wondered if the old women really headed their families or if the Parkilnese were simply canny enough to have seen the power Mother Sakhalin had in the jaran camp and use it now to their own advantage. Obviously, they planned to buy their way to safety. Give the barbarians enough tribute, and they would leave.

It was a relief to return to the camp at dusk, where the air didn't reek of refuse and urine and rot, and the tents were airy and the carpets clean.

Ilya sat down with Nadine on pillows in the outer chamber, and they studied her maps.

"You see," Nadine was saying as Galina brought in komis and tea and Tess paced back and forth along the inner wall of the tent, "David helped me get a fair measurement of the mountain pass and the forest, and I managed to talk to a ship's captain today and got a sense of how far it is down this river to the sea and thence to Jeds."

"By sea," said Ilya. He drew a hand across the vast blank reaches of the parchment, south, to where Nadine judged that Jeds lay. "Jeds has many ships, that can sail up and down the coast. But ships alone or land alone will not make an empire."

"Send me to scout it, then," said Nadine, as if daring her uncle.

"When you've given me heirs," he said calmly.

Tess almost laughed, to see Nadine's expression change so swiftly from smugness to anger. She might as well have had sparks flying off of her. But as quickly, Tess's amusement turned to pity. Nadine wasn't suited to be a brood mare. Well, no woman was, to be prized for nothing but the children she could bear.

"Perhaps Nadine could be regent, in Jeds, together with Baron Santer," Tess said into their silence.

"Dina?" Ilya frowned and considered his niece. He sighed. "I wanted to install Anatoly Sakhalin as regent. He is a prince in his own right, and it would have pleased Mother Sakhalin, and I had thought that the Company meant to stay in Jeds—poor boy. Mother Sakhalin said he was heartbroken when he rode away to his uncle. That he couldn't bear to stay, knowing his wife would leave him soon." He cast a recriminatory glance toward Tess.

"Ilya! His sort always recovers quickly. Surely he can marry again."

"I think," said Ilya slowly, "that women give pretty men like Anatoly Sakhalin too little credit for intelligence and feeling. We shall see."

"What about Jeds?" demanded Nadine.

"No." Ilya shook his head. "Nowhere, my girl, until you've done your duty to me." Fuming, Nadine rolled up her parchments and jumped to her feet. "Ah," said Ilya, raising a finger. "You may leave if you wish, but I'll keep the maps here for tonight."

Nadine was too solicitous of her maps to treat them roughly. She set them gently on the table, and then stormed out of the tent.

"I don't think Feodor is a good husband for her," said Ilya mildly. "I have it in mind to send Niko and Juli as co-regents, to watch over Jeds with Baron Santer. Niko has always wanted to visit Jeds."

"Niko Sibirin is a wise choice," she agreed. She circled back to stand behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder, running her other hand through his hair. "But you could come to Jeds, Ilya. We could establish our reign, and you could strike north from Jeds. And send your armies south from here...."

He rose, went over to the table, and unrolled one of the maps. "Across lands we know nothing of? No.

We're not prepared for that yet. We need a greater army than the one I have now. I must consolidate here and then move forward. There is the Xiriki-khai province still to be won in the south, and the outlying desert cities beyond it. We must not just fight wars but build, a city for Mitya to rule from, armies of Farisa and Habakar soldiers as well as our own. We may not unite the lands between Parkilnous and Jeds while we yet live, Tess, but our heirs—" The sheen of the parchment glowed in the lantern light. He looked young, in the soft light, and all unbeknownst to him he would stay young, perhaps even for long enough to reach Jeds with his army, with all the lands between under his authority. She could not bring herself to regret the decision, what she had begged Cara to do to him, but she wondered if it had been wise. "Still, though," Ilya continued, so focused on the map that he was oblivious to her stare, "we must send merchants and envoys south from here, and with their intelligence we can trace the route along which we can march our armies."

"But, Ilya, if it was only for a year, why couldn't you come with me?"

For the longest time, he stared at the table, as if its swirling grain fascinated him. At first, he spoke to it, not to her. "No. I—Tess—" He took in a deep breath and turned to her. "I have to make my peace with the tribes, with the Elders, with Mother Sakhalin and my own aunt. I have to tell them the truth. I have to stand before them as I wasn't willing to or brave enough to eleven years ago, or even three years past at the great gathering of tribes at the khayan-sarmiia. I must tell them of the bargain I made with Grandmother Night. They alone can judge me, and choose whether they wish to follow me any farther."

Ilya always managed to stand so that the light lent him grace and power, as if the light itself existed on this earth in order to illuminate him. He had radiance, which quality can never be learned but only given.

It was hard for Tess to imagine that the tribes might repudiate him now, but then, he had broken more than one of their holiest laws.

"Your father was right, you know, about his vision," she said. "About you." She crossed to him and laid her hands on his chest. "When I come back, we'll have a child."

"Two," he said instantly, and then embraced her and just held her. He was warm and so close that they might almost as well have been one person. "Tess," he whispered, "haven't two new moons passed since you were delivered of the baby?"

"Yes. Why?" But she laughed even as she asked the question, knowing what he meant by it. "Yes, Ilya," she said, and kissed him.

Two days later, they boarded the ship: Tess and Aleksi and his new family; the Bharentous Repertory Company; and what was left of Charles's party: Cara and Jo and Maggie and Rajiv. Hal Bharentous and Gwyn Jones carried between them the litter on which Vasil Veselov lay, his face drawn with pain and his beauty forever mutiliated by an ugly scar. Until he got to space, of course, where it could easily enough be repaired.

Poor Karolla walked behind her husband, her face set. She was hugely pregnant. A great argument had ensued over whether Karolla could bring her tent. In the end, Tess had told Owen she would herself pay for any extra weight charges and that Karolla might bring anything she damned well pleased. The gods alone knew how difficult life was going to be for her, torn away from the tribes, without stripping her of all her worldly goods that might anchor her in the strange new world she was going to. Tess wondered if Karolla had had a choice whether to go; a real choice, that is, not just Vasil convincing her that, of course, she would go with him. But Tess was glad Vasil was leaving, for Ilya's sake. For her own peace of mind. Diana Brooke-Holt came after, holding the hands of the two children. Diana looked pallid and fragile. Tess noted how solicitous many of the other members of the Company were toward her.

On the other shallow river ship, Niko and Jult and two of their grandchildren and various of their train and one hundred riders boarded. The horses, disliking it, were led below. On the shore, David huddled over a map with Nadine. Maggie hailed him, and he started and glanced up. There was an awkward moment, one could tell by the way he stared at Nadine, and then they said good-bye without touching and he hurried up the ramp, hands clenched. He came and stood beside Tess on the deck.

On the shore, Ilya waited, he with his jahar arrayed gloriously behind him and his gold banner whipping in the breeze that skirled in off the river, rising with the dawn. What words did they need here?

They had said what was in their hearts many times.

She watched him. He watched her. The captain of the ship bellowed orders. The ramps scraped up over rails. Ropes were cast free, and with poles they thrust themselves away from the dock, and then the stroke for the oars called out, a steady, pleasing pattern.

The docks receded. Beside her, David wiped a tear from his cheek and farther along, Diana clutched the railing and stared at the gap opening between her and the jaran. Karolla Arkhanov knelt beside her husband, not looking back, but her children did.

Tess turned away from the railing, finally, leaving David and Diana and the others to stare until a broad curve in the river hid Parkilnous and the jaran army from their sight. She went to help Karolla.

What need had she to linger there, to mark for one final time all that was being left behind?

After all, she was coming back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Karolla gave birth to a healthy son the day after they sailed into Jeds. She named the child Anton. Her husband was too wracked by pain and the agony of the voyage to be aware of much beyond the fact that she had delivered the child. Diana also suspected that Dr. Hierakis had Vasil drugged, but she was not privy to the councils of the Prince of Jeds and her retinue.

They spent forty days in Jeds, and Diana had, thank the Goddess, no time to dwell on anything except work. Owen drove them through rehearsals and arranged a series of performances that included "The Jaran Diptych," as he and Ginny called the folktales. When Diana wasn't rehearsing, she took care of Valentin and Ilyana, who were not as overawed by Jeds as Diana had feared they might be. On the other hand, they had seen Hamrat and Karkand, so they knew now what a city was. Only in that small space of time between winding down from the night's performance or rehearsal and actually falling asleep did she have leisure to brood.

"Diana, my dear," said Dr. Hierakis one night, "whatever are you doing out here?"

Jeds had a mild climate, and even at midnight in winter, with the winds blowing in off the bay, Diana did not need a cloak to walk the battlements. Although a cloak might have lent more drama to her situation. "I can't sleep," she said as she turned to greet the doctor and her companion.

"Ah," said the doctor, and Diana wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or grateful for the tone of the word. "You haven't met Dr. Kinzer. She just arrived."

Dr. Kinzer was a heavyset woman with wicked blue eyes. Diana shook her hand reflexively. "How do you do?"

"Glad to get off that choppy bay," said Dr. Kinzer with a laugh. "I don't have sea legs."

"I'm afraid I don't know your connection here.. . ." Diana trailed off, feeling stupid.

"Owen Zerentous brought me in to look at a trauma case. Spinal injury. Quite a mess, from the preliminary imaging I've seen."

"Oh," said Diana. "Owen brought you in to look at Vasil. Can you—fix him?"

Kinzer smiled easily. "I imagine so. I can only do a preliminary operation in these conditions, though.

The reconstruction work will come later, on Earth."

"Dr. Kinzer," said Dr. Hierakis dryly, "is one of our foremost experts on spinal cord trauma. Owen is spending a good deal of credit on Vasil Veselov. I hope he appreciates it."

"Who, Owen? I'm sure he does, but then, when he's in the grip of an obsession like this one ... oh, you meant Vasil."

Dr. Hierakis nodded. "Yes, I meant Vasil, who will probably never think but that he deserved it. Are you going to stay with the Company, Diana?"

"Of course!" The anger hit with the force of storm waters. "What point is there in anything if I don't stay with the Company? Oh, I know what you meant—if we tour out into Chapalii space, but as long as it's theater, what do I care? As long as I'm working, as long as we're touring, it doesn't matter where I am, and I'm used to Owen and Ginny, and we do marvelous work and—" She broke off, aware all at once of how strident her voice had become.

There was a pause,

"It's an odd view, in a way," said Dr. Kinzer kindly, walking over to the battlements. "I'm not used to the lack of lights. And it's remarkably quiet." Together, they listened.

Diana could hear the lap of the waters on the rocks below and not much else. A woman was singing in the palace, in a room that opened out onto the battlements. In a pleasant if rather thin voice, she sang the words to a jaran song, something cheerful and tender about a baby's laughter and a brand new foal.

"That's Svetlana," continued the doctor, as if aware that Diana would rather not think, much less talk.

"She helps poor Karolla at night. What a pleasant, capable young woman she is. I'm so pleased, for Aleksi's sake." Then she paused and peered through the darkness at Diana. The moon gave pale light to her face, framing her dark curls against the night-gray of her skin. "I'm sorry, Diana."

Diana had taught herself to close up the instant she began to think of—anything but what was safe to think of. "Poor Karolla," Diana repeated. "What do you think of Jeds, Dr. Kinzer?"

"I really did just arrive. The palace is nice—what I've seen of it."

Again they lapsed into silence, and into their silence a voice called out from the darkness. "Cara? Are you out here?" It was Tess Soerensen. "Marco and Javier just got in, can you believe it? And here I thought they'd get here first!" Then, fainter, her voice floated out as she evidently turned her head and spoke in a different direction. "Yes, Marco, the Company is still here. They can't leave until Veselov is able to travel." The voice grew louder, and Diana heard footsteps as well, more than one set. "He almost died twice on the voyage here, and then there's the baby, too, now."

"You still haven't told me," said Marco Burckhardt, his voice clear and carrying on the night air, "how Baron Santer reacted when you arrived with your escort of savages."

Diana felt her blood run cold. "I don't want to see him!" she whispered, suddenly frantic.

Dr. Hierakis's hand settled fleetingly on Diana's arm and then the doctor moved away from her. "Here I am!" Dr. Hierakis called out cheerfully enough. "And Melissa Kinzer has arrived as well. But let's do go inside. I'm sure Missy has had enough sea air for the day, and if you've been on a ship, Marco, I can't imagine you want to stare at whitecaps any longer either. Was Javier horribly seasick?"

"Horribly," said Marco, and laughed. "Who's that out there?"

"Oh, one of the serving girls, frightened that she's going to lose her employment here because her father wants her to marry some old goat. She's better off in the prince's service, and she knows it. Tess, let's take some tea up to Svetlana. She's still awake with the baby."

Their voices receded. Diana stood alone again on the battlements. The sea beat on the rocks below.

She buried her face in her hands and managed by sheer force of will not to cry.

The days passed, and Diana stayed busy. She did not see Marco again.

The night they premiered "The Daughter of the Sun," all the actors were aware of an additional buzz in the audience. It was annoying, as if the audience had their attention half on the stage and half somewhere else. At the Royal Court Theater, it had become the tradition that the lead actress visit the prince's box at the intermission if the prince was in attendance.

"When the first Charles commissioned and built the theater," explained Baron Santer as he escorted Diana in all her makeup and costume up the steep flight of private back stairs that led to the royal box,

"he insisted on the tradition." The baron was an elderly gentleman who looked mild and had the eyes of a shark. "Some say the better to view every beautiful actress who played here. He was quite a ladies man."

"You knew him?" Diana asked politely, and then recalled with a jolt that the first Charles had been Marco.

"I was a young man, and I had the honor of counting myself his friend." He surveyed Diana in the dim light, and for an instant such a light came into his eyes that Diana hoped she wouldn't have to do anything drastic, like shove him down the stairs. "He would have approved of you," he finished, as if he thought she cared about his approval.

"I'm sure he would have," she replied glacially.

The baron bowed. Then he led her on by a private door into the prince's box, where Tess Soerensen sat with the Baroness Santer, a woman considerably younger than her husband, and Niko and Juli.

Aleksi and a young captain of the Jedan militia stood on guard.

"Diana," said Tess, but did not rise to greet her. She merely extended her hand, and Diana knew the part expected of her here. She curtsied deeply and kissed Tess's hand, on the signet ring.

"Your highness," she murmured and glanced up in time to catch a spark of humor in Tess's face.

There came a knock on the public door. "Ah," said the Prince of Jeds. Diana noted for the first time that Tess held in her other hand a folded square of paper. Perfume wafted from it, a sweet, rich scent.

"Show her in."

The captain went to the door and opened it. Baron Santer raised his eyebrows, and the Baroness hid her mouth behind her fan.

A woman swept in. At once, Diana realized that she, Diana, had not done justice to her own entrance into the box. A moment later, she realized that the audience had turned its attention here, and that it must have been this woman all along with whom the actors were competing.

"Your highness," said the woman, curtsying even more deeply than Diana had and thus displaying a generous amount of white bosom from her low cut gown. She kissed the signet ring, and then promptly destroyed the illusion by lifting her head and smiling straight at Tess Soerensen, meeting her eyes.

"So you're Mayana," said Tess.

"So you're Tess," said the famous courtesan, for it was indeed she. Even Diana and the other actors had heard of her. She was a legend in Jeds, and now, this close, Diana could see that she was gorgeous, but more by self-assurance and ready laughter than from physical beauty.

"How do you know who I am?" Tess asked.

"Ilyakoria writes me letters, of course. Didn't he tell you?"

Tess laughed. "I had hoped to meet you sooner," she said, "but the affairs of state .. . Still, I'm not surprised to find you here, at the performance of this particular tale."

Mayana bowed her head in acknowledgment, as if the comment was somehow a tribute to her. She had hair more bronze than gold in color, perfectly curled, and whereas the box itself was decorated in a spare Florentine style, the courtesan's gown was simply cut but floridly ornamented in a manner reminiscent of jaran embroidery, and yet the contrast was not unflattering to Mayana.

"Come to see me at the palace," said the prince.

"Is that a command, your highness?"

Tess smiled. "No, I ask it as any woman might ask another, whom she hopes will become her friend."

Baron Santer coughed into his hand. Through the sheer, painted fan, Diana saw the Baroness smirking. Or maybe not, because at that instant Mayana cast a sidewise glance at the Baroness and the two women's eyes met in some kind of communication: Diana could not be sure what.

The private door opened. "I beg your pardon," said Yomi, sticking her head through. "But I've got to call places for the second act. Diana?"

Diana curtsied again and made her exit.

Eighteen days later they made their farewells at court. Tess Soerensen sat on her throne and received them formally. She spoke with each of them, most briefly, Owen and Ginny longest, and when Diana knelt before her, she bent to take Diana's hands in her own.

"I hope, Diana, that you will keep well. I'm sorry about Anatoly."

Diana kept her gaze fixed on the pillow on which she knelt, on the sleek ship painted on the fabric and the eagle rising, wings elevated and displayed, emblazoned on the ship's sail, the heraldic device of the Jedan princely line. She could not bear to look at Tess, who had made a choice so different from her own. Who had been able to.

Tess sighed and released her hands. "Good luck, Diana." And let her go.

They boarded a sloop at the harbor and set sail out into the bay on a calm winter morning. The actors crowded the rail, waving and calling out to their admirers, to their friends and lovers from the jaran who had come this far with them, to Tess and Dr. Hierakis and Jo Singh, who were staying behind. David and Maggie and Rajiv, who had his arm around Quinn, lined the rail as well. Diana held the baby for Karolla while she helped her husband drink some water. Vasil looked strangely frail, but he had movement in his legs again. Dr. Kinzer had gone with the others to the rail to watch the city recede from their sight. Even the children had gone to look, everyone except the man too weak to move from his pallet, the baby too young to understand, and the two women who refused to look back at what they were leaving behind.

They sailed out through the islands and that evening put into the tiny fishermen's port on a windswept beach. Wagons met them, and a handful of Earth staffers, bearing torches. The mood of the actors was contagiously cheerful. They sang obscene drinking songs, and Oriana remarked that she missed Hyacinth's falsetto. Even Anahita smiled. Karolla, carrying the baby, trudged along behind the wagon on which her husband rode. Diana held onto Valentin's hand. Ilyana walked at her mother's side, staring wide-eyed around her.

The girl's eyes grew even wider when she saw the shuttle, its lean bulk gleaming silver in the little valley as the last tight faded away into the chalk hills. Dr. Kinzer had Vasil deeply drugged.

"What is that?" Yana asked. Her mother looked up, and faltered.

"It's an arrow," said Valentin.

"It's a ship," said Diana, "a ship like the one we sailed to Jeds on, only this one will take us even farther away, up there, into the heavens." She pointed to the sky, where even now stars came into view as night fell.

"But only the gods live in the heavens," said Yana reasonably, "and you can't be gods, because that woman died, the one who was a soldier. And the prince died. Gods can't die."

"Well," said Diana. She did not know what else to say.

"Come on! Come on!" called Owen impatiently from up ahead. "Let's get loaded up."

Yomi hurried back down along the line. "Di! Are you having any trouble? We've only got a short window here, so we must get everyone onboard quickly."

"Karolla." Diana took hold Karolla's free hand. "This will all seem very strange to you, but you must trust me. It's only there, up there in the heavens, that your husband can be made well again. It will be as if

—he was never injured." Karolla looked down at the horrible scar disfiguring Vasil's face. He slept, unconscious of her stare, and Karolla brushed her fingers along the scar and then traced his lips, and then drew her hand away self-consciously. "You'll always be with us, Karolla. We're your tribe now."

"Yes," said Yomi, taking her cue, "and we need you, too, Karolla. We need a woman who can sew and weave and—cook and—there are many chores to be done, isn't that always so?"

"Here, I'll take Valentin on," said Gwyn, coming up. "Will you walk with me, little one?" Valentin thought about this and finally deigned to hold Gwyn's hand, although he would not stray more than ten steps from his mother.

"Your father and mother need you to be brave, little one," said Diana to Ilyana, and then Hal and Quinn trotted up.

"Here, Yana," said Hal. "I'll carry you on my shoulders, if you want."

"Can I help with anything?" Quinn asked.

Oriana and Joseph carried the litter on, bearing Vasil between them, and Karolla walked on one side and Dr. Kinzer on the other. Karolla glanced once round the passenger cabin and then sat where she was told and stared at her husband as Dr. Kinzer secured him into the larger of the two stress tanks. Valentin and Yana crept around the cabin and touched everything until at last they had to sit as well and strap in.

The baby did not cry at all until the doctor took him and secured him in the smaller stress tank. Then he squawled mightily with that awful frantic infant wail through the entire lift-off and most of the trip from the surface into orbit. But at least his crying distracted his siblings and his mother from the other noises, from the pressures, and the odd sensations that surely disoriented them. At least his crying linked them to what they knew, what they were sure of—which was, that baby Anton was very very unhappy.

In orbit, the shuttle docked with a yacht sent out from Odys. Crossing the lock threshold, Diana felt as if her last physical link to Rhui had been severed. She had spent a year and a half on Rhui, and almost a year with the jaran. It seemed like a terribly long time; it seemed like no time at all. A deep sadness weighed her down, and yet, when she saw the gleaming, sterile passageway of Charles Soerensen's yacht, her spirits lifted. She was going home.

David loved the iris beds in Charles's greenhouse. He escaped from the inevitable commotion brought on by their arrival and fled to the quiet of the gardens. He sat on a bare patch of turf and just breathed in the scent of Earth. But he recalled the smell of the grass, whipped by the wind on the plains, and a whiff of smoke on the breeze wrenched him back to Karkand, that night after the siege when Nadine had come to his tent, her scent mingled with the smell of burning that had permeated the air. That night. Other nights.

David sighed. Then he heard voices, and there came Charles, leading a tour of the greenhouse for Owen and Ginny and several of the actors. Ah, well, one never could escape the world. One way or another, it always intruded. There was no point in dwelling on things that couldn't be changed. He got to his feet and went over to the others.

"Look," he said, by way of greeting. "Is that a group of Chapalli coming in? They look like protocol officers." He pointed toward the southwest entrance, beyond the vegetable flats.

"That was fast," said Charles. "If you'll excuse me," he said to his guests. "David?"

David went with him, circling the roses and the rhododendrons and crossing carefully through the neat lines of daffodils. They met the officials under the grape arbor.

"Tai Charles." The protocol officers bowed and folded their hands together. Behind them stood two Chapalii in mauve robes, three stewards, and a heavily veiled female ten steps back. Leaves curled down, framing them in green. It smelled of growing things here, heavy and rich.

"You have acted swiftly, as I ordered," said Charles, "to restore to me these members of my house."

One of the officials flushed red, the other blue. "Tai Charles." Blue faded from the official's skin, and he folded his hands into a different arrangement. "We have restored these of your retainers, as you ordered, but charges still endure on the protocol lists. As well, it is written that any ke who violates an interdiction must face the rite of extinction." Both protocol officials turned to look toward the veiled female.

David hissed softly on an exhalation.

"I will see that justice is done on the matter of the ke," said Charles. "As to the other, I order that all the charges be withdrawn."

This time, both officials flushed blue. "I beg your pardon, Tai-en, but only the Tai-en Naroshi may remove these charges from the notice of the Protocol Office, since he tendered them. If he does not wish to remove them, then they will be brought to the notice of the emperor."

"Ah," said Charles, expressionless. "I see. You may go-"

They had to go, of course. Charles watched them, and when they were out of earshot, he said. "An interesting legal concept, that he can define how I choose to interdict my own planet."

David shrugged. "Come now, Charles. Be fair. They did break the interdiction, you know."

A smile caught on Charles's lips and vanished. He turned to regard Hon Echido and his retinue. "Hon Echido. Your presence is welcome."

Echido bowed. "You are magnanimous, Tai-en. I will dispose of this nameless one immediately, so that you need not be bothered with such a trivial matter."

Dispose of the ke. It suddenly occurred to David that since the ke had no name to lose, she must therefore lose the only other thing she possessed: her life. She did not move, and he could see nothing of her under the veil. Was she glad of the thought of death? Resigned? Rebellious?

"I have other plans for this ke," said Charles, and he paused. "If she so wishes."

There was a long silence. The female stirred and was silent. Both Echido and the other merchant flushed green, the color of mortification.

"Nameless ones have no wishes, Tai-en," said Echido, and what his colorless voice could not betray, his skin did. David wondered if they had ever before encountered a Chapalii lord who cared what a ke wished for.

"Nevertheless," said Charles, "this ke has acted to serve my house, and I will not allow her to be killed unless she herself prefers death to exile. Good Lord, Rajiv would never forgive me, for one, and for the other, she's too good at what she does for us to lose her."

"What about Duke Naroshi?" asked David, suddenly fiercely glad that Charles could save one life, at least. It was a tiny victory, but a victory nonetheless.

"Hmm." No evidence showed on Charles's face that his flying in the face of Chapalii convention bothered him one whit. David could practically see the wheels beginning to turn in his head. "The Tai-en Naroshi and I will have to have a meeting."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

"On this day comes the Tai-en Mushai to Sorrowing Tower."

Tess blinked twice, but she could not get the field of vision to narrow in. A wilderness of towers grew out beyond her eyes, and like a faint tracery beneath them she could see the parquet flooring of the minor audience hall in the palace in Jeds.

"Damn," she muttered. The towers blurred and began to coalesce, and Tess chuckled and said,

"Terminate." A whitish haze spread over her vision and faded, and she looked out over the audience hall, empty now except for herself, Aleksi standing guard at the far door, and Cara sitting on the steps beside her, reading a book.

"Hmm?" Cara asked, looking up.

"It's very disorienting," said Tess. "Looking at two things at once."

"Evidently that's one reason that particular technology has never become widespread. See what you can do with it. It seemed the best solution to you needing access to a modeler without any awkward physical presence."

"No, just me sitting and staring into space and muttering to myself while people wonder what I'm doing."

Cara smiled. "They'll think you're wise, or mad."

"Or both." Tess jumped to her feet suddenly and paced over to the arched windows which looked out onto the loggia which in turn opened up onto the central courtyard. Beyond the courtyard lay the greater audience hall, with its elaborate arcade fronting the great avenue that led into Jeds proper. "Ah" she said, watching as two carriages escorted by twenty Jedan militia rolled up on the paved bricks below. A swallow-tailed pennon emblazoned with a falcon rising fluttered from the first carriage. "There is the baron, finally." She practically ran back to the dais and threw herself into the prince's seat. "What are you reading?" she demanded of Cara, who closed her book in a leisurely fashion, stood, and came to stand beside Tess.

"The new tract by Sister Casiara. She seems to be formulating a legalistic argument against slavery, of all tilings, based on the principle of the spiritual equality of man."

"Good Lord," said Tess mildly. The far doors swung open and four guardsmen entered, bowed, and retreated.

"But she is a bit of an iconoclast," added Cara, "so I'm not sure if this argument will fire the church or Jedan society at large."

Tess tapped one foot impatiently on the fired tile on which the prince's throne sat; the tile lapped up against the low steps that led down to the parquet floor. It was stuffy in here, since the windows had not yet been opened for the summer, but Tess preferred the minor hall to the greater one since the huge mural celebrating the triumph of philosophy that decorated one wall of the greater hall made her feel as if Charles was watching her. Finally, a second set of guards appeared. They marched in and knelt before her, resplendent in polished breastplates embossed with the prince's eagle. Behind them walked Baron Santer in his court robes, gray hair crowned by a soft cap, and behind him, a figure veiled from head to toe. Not even its hands showed.

"Your highness," said the baron, bowing. He looked at her. Every time Tess looked in his eyes, she thought of some creature that had been dead and was now reanimated; his gaze was cold and flat, his expression bland. "I have delivered this emissary from the docks, as you desired me to do."

It was a little test. They both knew it. She ran him through hoops these days, keeping him busy, reminding him that she now held power in Jeds. He had given over his regency gracefully enough, but she did not trust him.

"You may withdraw, Baron," she said. "Attend me this evening."

He bowed again and left. Tess dismissed the guards to the loggia beyond the doors. With mounting excitement, she regarded the veiled figure. "You are safe now," she said finally, in formal Chapalii.

"You may unveil."

The ke stirred but did not remove her heavy veil. "Tai-endi." Her voice had a strange sibilance, an eerie echoing quality, that sent pure thrilling shivers up and down Tess's spine. A Chapalii female, at last, "Once already has this nameless one violated an interdiction. Only before another nameless one or a female am I allowed to reveal myself."

"But I am a female!" said Tess, standing up.

"You are Tai-endi, heir to the Tai-en Charles," replied the ke.

Tess sighed, exasperated. "And therefore I must be male. But I'm not—" She broke off and switched to Anglais. "Oh, hell, Cara, now what? How do I convince her?"

"Maybe you let her get her bearings, Tess. Like Yevgeni Usova, she has just been exiled to strange climes, away from everything she once knew. I'll take her back to my quarters. I'm not burdened with a title."

"Yes, Doctor," said Tess. She turned back to the ke. "You may go with Cara Hierakis. She is a female, and in our lands, females do not go veiled in front of anyone."

"As you command, Tai-endi."

"Oh, and Cara, let her come to the audience with the baron. Perhaps if she sees the way he treats me, she'll understand that I'm female, too."

Cara paused by the small door set into the wall on the dais which led into the private apartments beyond. "What? Are you saying that you think Baron Santer treats you differently than he did Charles?"

Tess gave a short bark of laughter. "I suspect that the baron believes that if he could only bed me, he could take control of Jeds back into his own hands. It's time he and I had a little talk."

"I'll be sure to be there," said Cara, and she led the ke into the private quarters.

Aleksi sauntered up from the far door. He had changed, Tess reflected, watching him. He had grown, or refound,

his confidence. To her surprise, she liked him better this way, and at times she felt a little embarrassed at the way she had treated him before, using him for her own purposes, her own needs, rather like Charles used her.

"I don't think Baron Santer likes taking orders from you, or running your errands," he said now.

"I don't either," said Tess. "Let's go find Niko and Juli. We need to plot out our tactics."

In the end, she met with the baron in her private salon, a setting intimate enough to suggest that she wished to confide in him and yet provided with a curtained gallery from which Cara and the ke might observe the scene. She kept Juli with her, like a chaperone.

Shown in by her chatelaine, the baron bowed, remarked the elderly jaran woman with his eyes but without a greeting, and seated himself in a chair opposite Tess at the only table in the room. It was cool enough this evening that Tess had built a fire in the fireplace, and candles burned on the mantelpiece, echoing the lanterns set at intervals into the whitewashed walls. "Cakes, Baron?" Tess asked, offering him the platter with her own hands. He took one, and thanked her. "You have administered Jeds wisely.

Baron," she remarked casually as he nibbled at the cake. "I commend you. But it is past time that we discuss how Jeds must be administered in the future."

Coolly, he finished the cake and then regarded her with his flat gaze. "Your wish is my command, your highness."

"But surely, Baron, you must know that your understanding of the minutiae of Jedan governance far exceeds mine. I rely on you to continue to administer wisely together with the governor I have brought from my husband's empire. I, of course, have only my inheritance from my brother, may he rest in peace, what trifling knowledge I learned at the university I attended in Erthe, and my husband's army to sustain me."

Startled by this last addition, he flashed a gaze up at the two portraits hanging side by side over the mantle, the portraits David had painted: one of her, one of Ilya. Tess was inordinately fond of Ilya's portrait. "Your husband's army?"

"I have this map—" She lifted a hand, and Juli brought the map over to her, took away the platter of cakes, and brought a lantern. Tess rose. The baron rose at once. Smoothing out the map, Tess spread it over the surface of the table and placed the lantern on one corner. Its glow spread out over the parchment like the favor of God, bright nearest the flame and fading to darkness at the margins. "You see, Baron, that even with the new information I have added to my map, gleaned from Jedan merchants, I can't be sure how long it will take for Bakhtiian's army to reach Filis, given the ground he must cover and secure in between." She covered Filis, the principal city of the great princedom that lay to the north and east of Jeds, with her index finger.

"An army can meet many obstacles," said the baron cautiously.

Tess smiled and looked up to see him staring straight at her. He lowered his gaze at once, reminding her incongruously of a jaran man, although in his case modesty had nothing to do with it. "Yes," she agreed. "That is why I feel inclined to install your son as head of the Jedan force that will, slowly and cautiously, of course, push our sphere of influence northward, in order to prepare the ground for the advance of the jaran army. Better that they stable their horses in Filis than in Jeds."

He blanched. "My son? But he just turned twenty!"

So there was something he cared about beyond himself and his power. "It is a great honor for your son, Baron, and may he bring your house glory by his exploits. You have a daughter by your first wife as well, a bit older, I believe, than the boy and sadly enough, unwed, is she not?"

This time he went gray. "Yes," he said stiffly. A certain fire sparked in his eyes. The daughter was as old as his second wife, and while not a beauty, neither was she a horror; perhaps sentiment had kept her by her father's side all these years.

"There are few families, Baron, who will have the opportunity of marrying into the princely houses of the jaran. I know you will welcome this chance to marry her to a jaran prince. Certainly, from all I have heard, she is worthy of the honor." She rolled up the map and tied it closed with a thin strip of leather.

She did not sit down. "It will mean she must travel north. I will take her with me when I return to the plains."

For a long moment, he said nothing. Juli watched in the background. The windows here looked down on the prince's private garden, a riot of buds and blossoms during the day, now that it was spring. A sliver of moon shone through the windows, and the garden lay dense and shadowed beneath, the gray walls of the farther apartments rising on the other side, locking her in. A sudden pang struck Tess. Gods, how she missed the plains. How she missed Ilya. And Sonia, and the children. The jaran.

"What if I refuse?" asked the baron softly.

"Baron, your daughter will be safe with me as long as you administer Jeds wisely in my name. Your mother was old Prince Casimund's only niece, and by such lineage you were granted the regency. And you have proven your worth to me. I would prefer to keep you as regent. That way your daughter's children may come to govern Jeds in time."

"My daughter's children!"

Even in the coldest fish there lurked surprising heat. She could see that the idea, shocking as it might seem, attracted him. "Your daughter's children, sired by a jaran prince."

He hesitated. But she already had him. "Do you have a prince in mind, your highness?"

"Why, yes," said the Prince of Jeds. "I do. His first wife, ah, died recently. He comes from the eldest house of the jaran."

There was a long silence. It was very quiet here, muted by walls. The wind could not move freely within the palace, and in some ways, that was what she missed the most.

"Even before you arrived," said Baron Santer suddenly, "we heard reports of a great general in the north, leading his hordes against ancient and civilized lands. It seems that every kingdom he has met has fallen before him." He paused and touched the end of the map. "But you and I both know how far away that is."

"Do not forget, Baron," she replied softly, "that a part of that army has already come to Jeds." In deference to the customs of Jeds, she wore now, as she always did in public, a gown, but in the four months since she had arrived, black and red had quickly become the most fashionable colors and the cut of the gowns had altered from a high, loose waist to a lower, more fitted one. Because she also wore her saber. "You are wise enough to make your own judgment."

He bowed. "You flatter me, your highness."

"I don't think so," said the Prince of Jeds. "I feel sure that you understand where your advantage lies."

She did not add, as an important and well connected governor in a growing empire or as a minor, and threatened, prince of a small trading city. If he could even usurp the throne. He could bide his time and wait to see what happened. Doubtless he would. But meanwhile, Jeds would remain stable under his—

and Niko and Juli's—guiding hands.

"I understand," he said, and bowed in the florid style that was usually reserved for the audience hall.

"Thank you, Baron. You may go. Have your daughter call on me tomorrow."

He met her eyes one last time. He had banked it all down again, concealing himself. "As you command," he replied. Juli showed him out.

"How in hell," said Tess to the air, "did Marco ever make a friend of that?"

"Not bad," said Cara from the balcony, drawing the curtain aside, "though perhaps a little overplayed.

Baron Santer was a notorious ladies man when he was young. He and Marco got along famously. You'd never guess it now, but when Marco as the first Prince Charles instituted those odd sumptuary laws that helped reform the horrible brothels, the baron was one of his great supporters. There was even a rumor that his first wife was barren, and that the two children were actually the children of a girl off the streets, a courtesan he fell in love with who was later murdered by his wife."

"Oh, God." Tess walked back to the stairway that led up, behind an arras, to the gallery above. She laughed, just a little. "It's an endless tangled web, isn't it?" Then she stopped stock-still, holding the arras aside with one hand, because there, in the dimness at the top of the steps, stood the ke.

Unveiled.

Tess stared. Then she chuckled. The ke looked like a Chapalii, only its skin was scalier, more alienlike. Had Tess expected a revelation, tike the visitation of an angel? "I am pleased," she said carefully to the ke, "that you trust me."

The ke descended the steps, and Cara followed behind her. Tess backed up to give them room to come through into the salon. The ke examined the chamber for a long while. Tess only watched.

"It is true," said the ke suddenly, "that these humans are quite primitive. Scarcely better than animals."

Tess felt her mouth drop open. She snapped it shut. The ke had addressed her in common Chapalii, without one single honorific.

"I beg your pardon," added the ke, "for addressing you in the che-lin tongue, but surely you cannot know the deeper tongue."

It took Tess a moment to answer because she thought her heart would burst, she was so excited. "I do not know of such a tongue—but what may I call you? And how did you come to realize that I am female?"

"Are you female?" asked the ke. Her voice, like that of the males, was colorless, and because of her skin, Tess could not tell at all what emotions she felt.

"Yes, I am. But then why unveil yourself? I don't understand."

"By your own testimony you are married to one of these humans. Thus you have become a nameless one, just as I am. The Tai-endi is dead, just as the Protocol Office has proclaimed." The ke wandered over to stare at the fire as if the lick and spit of flame engrossed or appalled her. "It is no wonder that the Tai-en has kept you in exile here on this planet."

Tess looked at Cara. Cara shrugged. The ke lifted a hand to the candles and held it close, as if testing their heat. Kept her in exile to spare himself the shame? Or to protect her? Or for some other, alien reason that Tess could not guess? And at the same time, Tess felt an odd exhilaration, as if the extinction of the Tai-endi—in this ke's mind, at least—granted her a sudden, reckless freedom. "You may call me Tess. Is there some—name— some word, that I might call you?"

The ke touched two fingers to the cherubs carved into the mantlepiece and drew her hand along the frieze, studying its heights and valleys. "By decree older than the eldest of the emperor's towers did ten of the first families lose their names because of their rashness and their pride." She turned. Tess walked closer. The ke was tall, as all Chapalii were, but layers of robes disguised her thinness. Her eyes gleamed, golden irises slit vertically by lozenge-shaped pupils. "So they became the nameless ones, and so did other names become extinct as time passed, as years turned back on themselves and followed the same course again, and again. Without a name there is no true existence, and yet, without a name, existence is boundless. So must the prince who becomes emperor lose his name. So must the ke live without names."

"But the Tai-en Mushai lost his name, and yet he is still remembered."

The ke wandered overdo the table and unrolled the parchment, using her hands as much as her eyes to explore it. "So is he imprisoned in Sorrowing Tower forever," she replied.

"Well," said Tess in Anglais. "But is it possible that I might learn the—" She hesitated, shot through with hope and the fear of disappointment, riddled with it, like the very pain of the wound itself. "That I might learn the deeper tongue?"

The ke rolled up the map and tied it exactly as Tess had tied it before. "You might. But you must master che-lin first."

Cara raised her eyebrows. Tess had to smile. How blithely they all praised her for speaking Chapalii so well. But that did not mean that by Chapalii standards she was fluent. "With your help," said Tess humbly, "I will endeavor to do so."

The ke nodded, like master to pupil. "When do you wish to begin?" she asked.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Diana could not help but compare the two modes of travel: the constant jarring sway of the wagons in the army's train against the luxurious appointments of Soerensen's ducal yacht. On this yacht, the Company returned to Earth.

Vasil was in a foul temper, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw his scarred face. He even yelled at Yana one day, when she came to show him the three-dimensional picture she had drawn on a demi-modeler under Hal's supervision. Yana burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Karolla, for the first time in that long trip, came to life. "You selfish beast!" she cried, standing up.

Anton lay cradled in her arms. "How dare you speak that way to her!" Diana, sitting with her, rose at once.

Vasil practically snarled. "Leave me alone," he said, and turned his face toward the wall.

At that moment, the door whisked open to reveal Yana, crying noisily in the passageway, and Dr.

Kinzer. "Aha!" said Dr. Kinzer tartly, tapping her fingers on her slate. "Feeling sorry for himself again, is he? M. Veseiov, you really are going to have to learn some patience. Now, I beg your pardon, M.

Arkhanov, but I do need a few moments alone with my patient."

Diana took Karolla by the arm and they went out together. Anton hiccuped, stirred, and went back to sleep. Seeing her mother, Yana gulped down her tears and ran away down the corridor. Karolla looked white,

"Here," said Diana. "We'll go rest in the chapel." It was the most peaceful place she could think of.

They found David praying in the chapel, but he rose when he saw them, made a final circle of grace with his right hand, and retreated to leave them alone. "I hope you don't mind," Diana continued, taking Karelia down to sit on the front row of benches that ringed the altar.

"Why should I mind?" asked Karolla in a choked voice.

"Well, it isn't a temple to jaran gods, but it's still a holy place."

"Our gods aren't jealous," murmured Karolla, and suddenly she flushed bright red. "If only I were as worthy."

"Karolla!" This was too much. "How can you be unworthy? To leave everything you knew, everyone you loved, and all for—him. I think you are the most selfless person I know."

Karolla stared at baby Anton's downy head, not seeming to see the soft glowing lights in the walls, the pale dome that enclosed them, the seamless benches, and the doors that opened without a touch. It was, Diana reflected, how Karolla dealt with things: She pretended she did not see them.

"If I truly loved him," Karoila said, "then I wouldn't care about—" She broke off. "But I want him to love me more. And he never will."

"Love you more than—what?" Or whom?

Karolla threw back her head. At first, Diana had wondered why a man as handsome and as vain as Vasil had married a woman who was, truly, as plain as Karolla, since she doubted Vasil cared about Karolla's finer qualities, but now she supposed he had done it because it ensured him an acolyte.

"But this place," said Karolla, seemingly at variance, "it isn't a place he can ever come, is it? He can't follow Vasil here. Vasil must have known that. Either Bakhtiian threatened to exile him again or else Vasil chose to leave him."

"Bakhtiian?" asked Diana haltingly. Still half asleep, Anton stuck two fingers in his mouth and sucked quietly on them.

"He wouldn't have left if it wasn't for the scar to his face. He would never have let Bakhtiian see him with that scar. Is it true that this dokhtor can take the scar away?"

Diana lifted a hand slowly and traced the scar of marriage on her cheek. "Yes," she said. "It's true. The doctor can make his face look as if it was never scarred in the first place."

"Then I am content," said Karolla.

They made landfall at Nairobi Port and took the train to London. Half the time Diana was thrilled to be back. The other half, she felt as if she weren't there at all. She felt as if she were someone else, watching through her eyes.

At Victoria Station, a familiar face waited on the platform to greet them.

"Hyacinth!" Oriana whooped and ran to hug him.

Hyacinth basked in their welcome. He looked wonderful, but then, Hyacinth always looked wonderful. He was aware also, of course, of the number of passersby who paused to stare at the commotion before recalling their manners and walking on. But when he had hugged them all, he turned to regard Owen.

"Well, Owen," he said in a tone that Diana had never heard from him before. "I'm sorry for the trouble I caused you. It was rash and stupid, what I did, and it caused more grief than you can ever know." He glanced to his left, and all at once Diana saw the slight, black-haired young man loitering twenty steps away.

She felt sick with envy.

And a second later, relief that she stood here unburdened of any awkward jaran presence. And then terrible guilt.

"How is Yevgeni adjusting?" asked Yomi in a low voice.

"Well." Hyacinth sighed, and he looked abruptly tired and discouraged. "It hasn't been easy. We take each day as it comes. I got your message, On, about them." He glanced toward the floating litter and the little family huddled around it, still in their alien clothing, like painted barbarians escaped from their cage. Vasil Veselov had his eyes open, and he squinted at the other man, across the distance. Diana watched as Yevgeni caught sight of the other jaran. His eyes widened and he took two steps forward and then halted, unsure of his welcome.

"Owen," Hyacinth continued, returning his focus to the director, "I'd like to audition again, for the Company, if you'll have me."

"Can't get work, huh?" said Owen.

"Owen!" scolded Ginny.

Hyacinth grinned. "Quite the contrary. I made good use of all the publicity I could get, and I have my pick of parts, by and large, though mostly in the vids." He cleared his throat. "But I miss the work. If you think there will be openings ..." He trailed off, not bothering to hide his hope. The old Hyacinth would never have shown that kind of vulnerability so openly.

"Hmph," said Owen. "We will have openings." He glanced toward Anahita, but she had already left the group and they saw her striding purposefully down the platform toward the exit. "And more openings even than you might expect. There's something new afoot." Ginny kicked him. But she couldn't kick the light out of his eyes.

Hyacinth's face opened up. "Thank you. We need something new, Yevgeni and I." Then he made a great, exasperated sigh. "Damn it anyway, he always does this, lurking in the background. I hate it!

Yevgeni! Come over here!"

Reluctantly, Yevgeni walked over. Hyacinth draped an arm around the other man. "Now. You haven't met anyone, so let me introduce you."

They made the rounds. Most of the actors even kissed him in the jaran style, formally, on each cheek.

Yevgeni stopped at last beside the litter. He stared at the man lying there.

"Yevgeni?" Vasil asked in a hoarse voice. "I thought you were dead."

"We are dead, Veselov," said Yevgeni, low, in khush, so that Diana realized that he had been speaking Anglais to the rest of them. Then he turned away and retreated back to Hyacinth.

No," said Vasil softly. "It's we who are alive, and they who are dead."

"They're not dead, Father," said Yana tremulously. "Are they?" She clutched Valentin's hand and lifted her head to stare at the wild bustle of Victoria Station, which surely must seem unimaginably strange to her. "I thought they were all just—left behind."

"Dead to me," said Vasil. No one answered him. He did not seem to expect a reply.

"Diana! Di!"

The shout carried across half the station. Diana turned. There, late as usual, came her family, all pell-mell and haphazard and swarming the other travelers on the platform: her mother, her father, two sibs, one niece, darling Nana, an aunt, three uncles, and four cousins. She laughed with joy just as her father reached her and scooped her up and spun her around. At last, she was home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

At the tail end of summer, Tess came home. She had sent no message before her, only a courier from the coast, and she rode into camp with her escort in the late afternoon, hard on the messenger's heels, having made good time herself.

"You might have warned me," said Sonia grumpily, hugging her. "I've no celebration prepared to welcome you home."

Tess kissed her on either cheek. "You are my welcome, Sonia. Oh, gods, look how much Katya has grown. Is that Vasha?" She laughed. "And who are you, young man?" she said to Ivan. "I scarcely recognize you." Tess shone with happiness. Sonia felt, to be truthful, unutterably relieved to have her back. She had been gone for almost nine months, and at times, Sonia had worried that she might simply decide to stay in Jeds or even to follow her brother back to Erthe. Now, Sonia saw that she had worried needlessly. This was Tess's home now.

Tess caught sight of a figure wavering under an adjoining awning. "Good God, is that Nadine?" She broke away from Sonia and strode over. She could not embrace Nadine very well, since Nadine was by now so incredibly pregnant that her belly overwhelmed every other feature. "Dina! How are you?"

Nadine flushed just as Sonia hurried up to forestall the explosion. But she was too late. "I hate mis!"

Nadine exclaimed. "I just hate this!" She pushed Tess away and turned and waddled back into her tent.

Tess turned to Sonia. At once, her happy glow subsided. She looked guilty. "Oh. Is that the way it's been with her?"

"Let me tell you," said Sonia, drawing Tess away from Nadine's tent, "that pregnancy has made her even more foul tempered than usual."

Tess cast a glance back at the tent. The entrance flap stilled and hung there, heavy, cutting Nadine off from the rest of her family. "Can that be possible? Poor Nadine."

"Tess, my dear, you ought to save your sympathy for those of us who deserve it. And Feodor Grekov is impossible. If he's not fighting with her, then he spoils her. I can't imagine why I ever agreed with Mother Sakhalin that he would make a good husband for Dina."

"You agreed!"

Sonia arched an eyebrow. "Certainly Mother Sakhalin consulted me since my mother was not available. To be frank, there were other young men I preferred—a very well-mannered and clever young Raevsky son, for instance—but it might have proven difficult to persuade any of them to marry her."

Tess snorted. "Well, then, you got what you deserved." She grinned, surveyed the camp, and sighed, happy again. Kolia went up to Svetlana Tagansky's daughter and the two children circled each other like two horses getting acquainted. In her competent manner, Svetlana oversaw the unpacking and the rolling out of tents, and Aleksi took the horses out to the herd. Farther back, a young woman in a Jedan gown sat stiffly in a wagon, hands clasped in her lap and her hair covered by a loose white scarf.

"Who is that?" Sonia asked.

"She's my hostage," said Tess lightly. "A Jedan noblewoman. Baron Santer's daughter. I thought I might marry her to Anatoly Sakhalin."

"Anatoly Sakhalin!" Sonia surveyed the young woman, who seemed unremarkable except perhaps for the calm with which she regarded the jaran camp. She appeared to be an extremely self-possessed young woman. "Have you asked Anatoly about this?"

"I thought I would discuss the matter with his grandmother."

"Well," said Sonia, with deep misgivings, "I will see that a messenger goes out to them. Not that I don't think it's a good idea. Of course, I know who Baron Santer is.

But keep in mind that there are other young men—Georgi Raevsky, for instance—"

Tess gave her such a look. "You're showing a sudden partiality for the Raevsky tribe, aren't you?"

"I am giving my husband the honor he deserves. In any case, I suggest you speak with Anatoly first.

He just returned from the south, from his uncle's army, two hands of days ago."

"Hmph," said Tess, and then grinned hugely and hugged Sonia again. "Oh, I missed you so much."

She broke away and swept her gaze around the camp. It halted on her tent, sitting there, looking silent and alone at the heart of the camp. "But where is Ilya?" she asked, sounding rather plaintive.

"Sulking in the tent." Sonia laughed. "Or pacing, more like. The truth is, I think he's afraid he'll embarrass himself if he meets you in public."

"Wise of him, I'm sure," Tess replied, but her face had already lit. "If you'll excuse me." She had enough dignity not to run, but she vanished into her tent swiftly enough.

The next day, Mother Sakhalin and her grandson arrived from the Sakhalin encampment a half-day's ride downriver. Tess received them under the awning of her tent, and Sonia saw how unconsciously Tess carried authority with her now, as if she had grown used to wielding it in Jeds. It made her at once more formidable and yet more easygoing. Ilya sat beside her, looking remarkably subdued. Sonia reflected that it had not, on the whole, been an easy nine months, what with Nadine pregnant and Ilya's moods swinging wildly from day to day. They had traveled slowly back through Habakar, de-marking territories, installing governors, and sending Kirill Zvertkov to the south to reinforce Yaroslav Sakhalin in the Xiriki-khai province. Gangana had revolted and, quite rightfully, Ilya had laid the city to waste as an example to the rest. All in all, Sonia had been relieved when they reached the plains again at the beginning of summer and Ilya had announced that he intended to remain on the plains for at least a year.

For almost five years he had been fighting; it was time to rest while others consolidated and pressed forward.

"Mother Sakhalin," said Tess, "your presence honors me. Anatoly, I am pleased to see you as well."

Mother Sakhalin looked tired. Her grandson looked nothing like the expressive young man of almost two years ago who had won by his own exploits the right to command a jahar. He looked a little unkempt. He had let his hair grow, tied off in three braids, and his eyes had a hard, cold gleam to them now, echoed by the set of his mouth. There were stories—that he had covered himself in so much glory in the past year, fighting in the worst skirmishes and the fiercest battles, throwing himself always to the front of the engagement, that one could scarcely recount all of the tales in one evening. His jahar took the worst casualties, and every man who fought beside him had either been killed or badly wounded, and yet Anatoly came through every engagement without a scratch. And then, ten days ago, like a horse bolted for home, he had turned up at his grandmother's camp.

Now he regarded Tess Soerensen, his expression so masked that Sonia could not read his feelings. "I want to go to Erthe," he said without preamble.

Shocked, Sonia looked at Mother Sakhalin, and what she saw there dismayed her further. Mother Sakhalin looked not just tired but frail and old. A month ago she had not looked like this.

"But that's impossible, Anatoly," exclaimed Tess.

"It can't be impossible," said Anatoly stubbornly, "if others have gone before me."

"It is impossible," said Tess so coldly that Anatoly shrank back from her and, abruptly, hung his head to hide his face. "She is gone. She left you by her own choice."

"Only because I would not go with her," he said to the carpet. His hands lay perfectly still on his lap, except for his right forefinger, which twitched as he spoke.

"Tess," said Ilya in his most reasonable voice, "perhaps this is not your decision to make." Tess shot him a look filled with venom. He smiled, unruffled by her anger. "I suggest you allow Anatoly to address a letter to Diana, to ask her."

"That could take months!" Tess objected. "A year! More!"

"If Anatoly is willing to wait," said Ilya, "then I see no reason a letter should not be sent."

Anatoly's head jerked up. A light sparked in him, and Sonia realized that the coldness stemmed not from lack pf feeling but from too much feeling. She had thought it the mark of a new-found cruelty.

Now she thought he was just in pain. "I am willing," he said hoarsely, and Mother Sakhalin aged ten years in that moment.

Tess stewed. "Very well," she said finally. "You may tell me what words you wish to write to Diana, Anatoly. I will write them myself and I will send the letter. But if she says she does not want you, then you must agree to consider yourself a widower and abide by my wishes."

"Very well," he echoed meekly. He paused. "What are your wishes?"

She contemplated him a moment, and Sonia could see that Tess found this changed Anatoly a bit puzzling, as if he was both more, and less, than she expected. "I wish you to marry a Jedan noblewoman and together with her act as regents in Jeds under our suzerainty."

At these words, Mother Sakhalin rallied. "It would be a good marriage, Anatoly," she said firmly.

"And a proper position for you. And for the tribe."

The light still burned in Anatoly's face, but it was as if it had been shuttered by glass now. "It would be a good marriage," he agreed in a soft voice. "And one due my position. But how can I know what to think of Jeds if I have never been there? Perhaps I would rather ride with the army instead."

Well! Anatoly had certainly learned something from his grandmother. He had learned how to negotiate. In time, Sonia thought, he might surpass even Yaroslav Sakhalin as a general.

Tess considered. Ilya settled his chin on a fist and watched her, a trifle bemused by a negotiation going on in which he had no real say.

"So be it, then," said Tess finally. "I will send you to Niko in Jeds. You can carry the letter that far and give it to Dr. Hierakis, who will see that it is put on a ship to Erthe. You already speak some Rhuian.

Now you can see how the khaja rule there, and you can learn how to live among them and guard our interests."

Anatoly inclined his head obediently. "As you command."

Mother Sakhalin did not look happy, but she looked satisfied.

"Come back this evening," said Tess to the young man, "and I will write the letter for you."

He nodded, and he and his grandmother took their leave.

"You terrify me, my wife," said Ilya. "I am relieved that you are my ally and not my enemy."

Tess still looked angry, but she laughed curtly. "How like Charles I am," she murmured, "to push him toward an end which I have already devised."

"Anatoly is no fool," said Sonia. "He will do what is best for the Sakhalin tribe."

"No doubt," said Ilya dryly, "he will do what his grandmother wishes. But what will you do, Tess, if Diana asks him to come to her?"

But already Tess's anger had subsided into an odd ruefulness. "She won't," said Tess with such certainty that even Sonia was taken aback. Ah, well. Tess's heart might belong to the jaran, but her soul would always remain khaja.

Sonia rose and shook out her skirts. "Come, Tess. If you can manage to leave your husband for a moment, I thought we might just walk through camp for a little while, so you can see everyone again.

They all want to greet you."

"I will languish here until your return," said Ilya with a smile. He looked more at ease than he had for

—well, for years, really—but there was still an edge on him beyond the pure, stark vision that drove him on.

"I brought him six books," said Tess to Sonia as they walked away.

"Six!" But Tess was prince now. No wonder she possessed such riches.

"And four books for you. And three colloquies for the children."

This bounty struck Sonia to silence. They walked together through the sprawl of the camp, greeting children, women, and men, all the members of the Orzhekov camp.

"Aleksi says that a zayinu holy woman came from across the seas to Jeds," said Sonia at last. "That she wears heavy veils, since it is a grave offense to her gods if folk like us look upon her. Is that true?

Why would a zayinu holy woman come to you, Tess? Especially if your brother wars against her kind?"

"Her own people sent her into exile. I wanted to bring her with me here, because there is much much more she can teach me, but—" She faltered. A fire lived in Tess as well, Sonia knew, a fire kindled out of a desire to seek and to know, a kind of discontent that wore away at her constantly as if she feared that too much contentment might kill her own seeking spirit. "But that will have to wait. I thought it better to leave her with Cara in Jeds. For now."

"You and Uya are very like, you know," mused Sonia. "I saw that long ago, when you first came to us."

"You have a wise soul, Sonia, just as your brother did."

Sonia pressed a hand over her heart. She smiled sadly. "I am sure the gods will send him back to us, Tess." They walked a little while in silence. But Sonia had a restless, inquisitive spirit as well. "Ilya plans to call a great meeting of tribes," she said after a while. "Do you know what he is about?"

"Yes." Tess shaded a hand to stare up at the sky, toward the sun, and her mouth turned down. She was troubled.

"And you won't tell me!

"You must ask Ilya."

"I have asked Ilya. He is certainly no more maddening than you are!"

"I beg your pardon," said Tess with a laugh.

Sonia stopped suddenly, overwhelmed by a feeling of great contentment. Knowing, too, that because she was not afraid of contentment, she could embrace it. "I'm so glad you came back to us."

"Where else would I go?" Tess asked quietly.

Where else, indeed? Ann in arm, they walked on together.

CHAPTER THIRTY-MIME

"Winter isn't really that cold here, is it?" asked Yana on a January morning as she and Diana walked back from the greengrocer with their prize of Brussels sprouts, potatoes, and two dozen pathetic apples.

"Well, no," Diana admitted, "not compared to what you were used to, I suppose." Ilyana was the kind of girl who turned heads, her features were so perfect. She was not yet ten years old, innocent in many ways and yet a confirmed skeptic. "Will you come upstairs to have early tea with Hal and me? We have to leave for the theater in an hour."

"Can't," said Yana reluctantly. "Dr. Kinzer is coming for tea."

"But I thought you liked Dr. Kinzer."

"I do. I like her lots. But—" Then she clammed up.

Diana knew what she was going to say, anyway. It was her father's behavior that embarrassed her.

They arrived at the door to their building—an old nineteenth-century townhouse now split into five flats—at the same time as the doctor did. She had a boy of about Valentin's age with her. Yana lightened immediately. "Evan!" Yana cried, delighted. "I didn't know you were coming, too." She grabbed Evan's hand and tugged him after her though the door. Together, they pounded up the stairs, pushing past her father.

Even after a year, Diana had not gotten used to seeing Vasil whole and walking again, as lithe and charming as ever. He paused at the bottom of the stairs at the mirror set into the wall between the coat racks and lifted a hand to brush the flawless beauty of his face. Then he turned to Dr. Kinzer.

He bowed, took her hand, and kissed it. "Dokhtor, I am struck to the heart once again by the beauty of your eyes. Were they a gift to you from the gods, perhaps?"

The doctor held up pretty well under this onslaught. She smiled. "No, I got them from my grandfather." Then she winked at Diana and let Vasil escort her up the stairs to the flat in which he and his family lived. Diana did not pause to look in the mirror. She followed them up, waved to Evan through the open door of the flat, and kept going up the next flight of stairs to the flat she and Hal shared.

"Poor Karolla," she said to Hal as she dumped her bag on the tiny kitchen table. Hal was on his hands and knees in the sitting room, putting the finishing touches on a miniature stage set. "But at least it's a respectable visitor this time. Do you remember that fiasco when that producer and his friend—" She shuddered. "The kind of people who make you want to go wash after you've shaken hands with them."

Hal replied without looking up. "Valentin said it was Missy Kinzer and Evan coming over. And you know she comes more for Karolla's sake than Vasil's. What do you think?" He rocked back on his heels.

Diana studied the mockup. She sighed. Nana always said to be truthful even when you couldn't be honest. "Well, it's an improvement. I'm taking Yana and Valentin out to the farm on Monday. Do you want to come?" But he had already gone back to studying his model, and ignored her.

Two hours later, Diana propped her elbows on the counter and stared at herself in the Green Room mirror. A handsome enough face, if a little pale. She pulled her hair back tight to cover it with the wig cap, and then sighed and let it fall down around her face again. Out in the hallway, Ha! was arguing with his father.

"I don't care! This is it! This is the last time I play this part, or any part, for that matter. I quit!"

"How dare you speak to me in this fashion!"

"Oh, Dad, don't start your "ungrateful child" lecture, please. If you could see past your own nose you'd have known for years that I don't want to be an actor."

"But you are an actor. We made you so."

"Yes, you and Mother never did give me any choice in the matter—"

The door opened and Hyacinth slipped inside. "Goddess forgive me," he muttered, "and I beg your pardon for coming in here, but I can't get past them and Fm damned if I'm going to stand there and listen to them scream."

"What happened?"

"Oh, Prince Hal told Ginny that he wanted to go into scene design. You know what I think, Di?" He stared at himself in the mirror, smoothed the coarse hair of his black wig, and rubbed at the foundation in the hollows of his cheeks, "I hate that woman who designed the makeup. This always makes me look too thin."

Diana could not help but smile.

"And why shouldn't I go into scene design—!" from outside.

"What do you think, Hyacinth?" she asked.

Hyacinth glanced at her and then back at himself in the mirror. "I think Hal would make a damn good actor if he'd only stop thinking he can't be one because he has to rebel against his parents."

"I keep telling him he should quit the Company, but he won't."

"Well." Hyacinth sighed. "The costumes are gorgeous though, aren't they?" He straightened and admired his robes as they swayed around him. "Joseph did a wonderful job, blending styles. Look how he used the jaran embroidered patterns and the cut of their armor for Tamburlaine, and Habakar patterns for the robes. Did you go to his exhibit at the Globe Annex, where he's showing the models?"

"Hyacinth, did you have something you wanted to tell me?" She dipped her fingers in cold cream and smoothed it onto her face.

He sighed and sat down on the other stool. The Green Room was small but pleasant, with a carpet, the counter and mirror, a writing table and chair, and the two stools, and a modeler and theater readout built into the other wall. "Full house, my dear. And a real live Chapalii duke in attendance. Can His Royal Highness pull it off? Even with all of us covering for him?"

"Does it matter if he can't? Gwyn takes over the part next month. The audience didn't come to see how well Vasil can act. They came to see if he can act at all. You must admit his lack of accent is amazing." Then she recalled his greeting to Dr. Kinzer. Vasil put his accent on and off depending on where he thought the advantage lay.

"It's true that Veselov has a better memory even than you."

She laughed. "His memory is a hundred times better than mine."

"It's nice to see you smile, Di," said Hyacinth softly. "You've been so gloomy since the holidays." He rested a hand on her shoulder companionably.

She drew away from him, knowing what was coming next. "I've got to get ready," she said stiffly.

"Di, don't you think it's time to give it up—?"

Then he had the audacity to reach out and with one beringed finger brush her cheek where the scar ran diagonally from cheekbone to jawline, faint and white.

She rose. "I'm busy, Hyacinth."

A knock came on the door. It opened, and Yomi stuck her head in. "Sorry to bother you, Di, but—

well, he says he has to leave London in two hours, and since we're doing the marathon today I said he could come see you now. I'll give him ten minutes. Hyacinth, go!"

"Your word is my command, oh bountiful Yomi," said Hyacinth, bowing extravagantly.

Yomi slapped him on the rear. "Out!" They left together.

Diana felt a sudden foreboding. She watched the doorway in the mirror. Soon enough a man appeared there. He hesitated, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him.

She gasped and whirled around. "Marco!" And took a step back, running up against the counter.

"Hello, Diana." He wore a simple thigh-length jacket over loose trousers, but even in the latest fashionable style he bore with him that air of suppressed wildness and incipient adventure that made him so attractive. "You're looking—well." His gaze darted to her cheek. He got pale all at once and then recovered. He was lying in any case. She wasn't looking particularly well and everyone knew it When she didn't reply, he went on. "I saw the preview last night. It didn't go badly at all. I keep wondering how you actors manage to memorize all those lines...." He lifted his hands up, wrung them together, and let them drop back to his side. "Goddess, that was a stupid thing to say. I'm sorry to disturb you."

"Why didn't you come backstage last night?" she asked. "This isn't a very good time for me."

"Oh. I thought I'd come tonight after the show, but I got called away unexpectedly...." He trailed off and paced over to the table and laid a hand flat on it, and stared at the hand. "No. The truth is I didn't have the nerve."

The thought of Marco Burckhardt not having the nerve to do something astounded her. "How long have you been in London?" she said instead of the words she should have said, the apology she needed to make to him.

"Two days."

"A short trip."

"Yes."

Together, they lapsed into silence.

He broke it. "Charles sent me to deliver a crystal wand—that's a summons wand—to Duke Naroshi.

Did you know he's in your audience tonight?"

"Yes." She didn't much care about Duke Naroshi. He had attended performances before.

There was silence again.

"I've got to get my makeup on," she said finally. She sat down and dabbed on foundation with her fingers.

"It's amazing," said Marco. She watched him watch her in the mirror. "You'd never know to see Veselov now what terrible injuries he suffered. Even that awful facial scar is gone."

With a sponge, she blended the foundation on over her cheeks. Over her scar. "Yes," she replied.

The silence was worse than the talking, and there wasn't even Hal's argument with his father to cover it.

"Diana—"

She set down the damp sponge. "Marco. I'm sorry. I

treated you horribly. I'm sorry. It wasn't deliberate, but still, that doesn't excuse it."

He lifted his hand from the table and closed it into a fist and, slowly, opened it again. Then he walked over and put his hands on her shoulders and met her eyes in the mirror. "Diana. I love you. I thought—

I'm asking ... we could handfast, just a trial, one year... ." He faltered.

She stared at him, only she wasn't staring at him, she was staring at his reflection, as if that was all she had ever seen of him, of Marco Burckhardt, the reflection she had made of him in her own mind. Not the real Marco. She had never known the real Marco. Maybe she had never really tried to know him, preferring the legend to the man.

In that moment, the dam broke.

"I wanted him to die," she whispered. "I wanted him to die a clean romantic death. Then I wouldn't have had to leave him because he would have been dead. I'm ashamed. I'm so ashamed of that. Do you know that he thought he couldn't die as long as I was with him? By leaving him, I as good as sent him to his death."

"Diana, they're at war. People expect to die."

"That doesn't absolve me. It's all I can think about, wondering if I'll ever hear."

"It's been over a year. I thought you'd have—done all your grieving by now."

"I know. I know. I thought I had. We left the jaran at Winter Solstice, did you know that? Our calendar, not theirs." She put a hand to her bracelet and twisted it, twice around. It was the bracelet he had given her, opulent and showy enough that Joseph had given her permission to wear it as part of Zenocrate's costume. "That was my penance, to wear the mark for a year and then let him go. And now I'm afraid to do it. I'm afraid if I erase the mark, that I'll kill him."

He took his hands off her shoulders. "Do you miss him?"

"I don't know. We had nothing in common, really, except we were both pretty and blond." She laughed at that, and heard herself how false the laugh sounded. "And I liked him. That's what I realized finally, after it was too late. After I'd already left. Maybe it was never more than infatuation. Maybe I was just in love with him being in love with me. But I liked him, too. And, Goddess, every day, there are Karolla and the children, like a constant reminder. And poor Yevgeni, struggling to make sense of it all.

And Vasil, who I'd like to strangle. He's got it into his head that since I'm one of the leads that he has to sleep with me in order to consolidate his position, but at least I know it's not just me. Gwyn has been fending him off, too. They're always there, reminding me."

"Then leave the Company."

"But, Marco, I don't want to leave the Company. We're doing repertory for six months, and then there's the chance that we'll get to tour out into Imperial space. You must know about that. Owen is hoping that we'll be the first humans ever allowed to perform before the emperor himself."

Marco snorted. "Owen has grandiose dreams."

"Someone must," she said bitterly.

She saw him swallow, saw the movement of his throat. His hand slid under his jacket and he drew out a thin rectangular slab—no, she recognized it an instant later. It was paper, all folded up.

"I brought this," he said in a low voice. "I thought maybe you wouldn't want to see it, but—" He tossed it on the counter and turned and paced back to stand by the table, setting his hand flat down on the surface and staring at it. "It's a letter from Tess Soerensen."

A letter from Tess Soerensen.

There was only one thing it could be. Tess Soerensen had taken pity on her and written to tell her of Anatoly's death. She stared at the creamy, stiff parchment. She did not have the courage to open it up and read the words, because set so baldly on the page, black ink on pale paper, such words could never be erased. Yet those words would allow her to rest. And anyway, she owed it to Anatoly to use the courage she had, to honor his memory.

Tears blurred her eyes as she opened it. It crackled as she unfolded it, and the noise of it opening resounded in the room. Tess Soerensen had a neat, readable hand, but then, she had doubtless had a great deal of practice writing by hand in the last five years.

"To Diana Brooke-Holt. From Terese Soerensen. Dear Diana, Anatoly Sakhalin is sitting with me and he asked me to write these words to you: My beloved Diana, I have tried for months now to get myself killed in battle, but it's no use, I can't seem to manage it. The gods watch over me too well. They know I married a Singer. After all, they sent you to me. Now they're punishing me for my arrogance in thinking I could let you leave and not suffer for it. Now my grandmother and the prince want me to marry a jaran noblewoman from Jeds, to act as regent there. But I am married to you for as long as I live or the mark of marriage remains on your face, and since the mark can never be erased from a woman's face and I am still alive, then therefore I am still married. It is true that I am a prince of the Eldest Tribe of the jaran, but there are other Sakhalin princes who can ride to war or act as regents. I am the only one married to a Singer. I would ask you, that if you desire it, that I leave the tribes and journey across the seas to return to you, my angel.

"/ have explained to Anatoly what he must give up in order to go. He will not be a prince there. His name, his grandmother's name, will make no difference to anyone, and the privileges he receives here as part of a princely family, which he never thinks of because he takes them so completely for granted, will all be missing there. I hope you realize how great a sacrifice that would be for him. You must remember that the other jaran who left the tribes and are now on Earth gave up nothing, because they had nothing to give up anymore, being what the jaran call arenabekh, black riders, which also means, the orphaned ones.

"As well, he can't read or write or use a modeler. He knows nothing about the world he would be living in, and you would be his only anchor. He could never return to Rhui, not as long as the interdiction holds, and since it would be cruel to withhold from him the life extension treatments, he would live, beside you, for a long long time. I myself can't recommend that you encourage him to leave the jaran. It will be hard for him to stay here, but

I trust that in time he'll see the wisdom of your choice, and our choice, and marry again. Anatoly has in any case agreed to abide by your decision. I hope this finds you well and flourishing. Regards, Tess.

Then, below this and written in an entirely different, almost painstakingly-precise handwriting, was another sentence, this one in Rhuian rather than Anglais. "7 beg your indulgence for addressing you in this impertinent fashion, Diana, but I hope you will at least for a moment look at this as a man would and not let that damned female practicality push aside the feelings of the heart. This was signed simply, Hyakoria Bakhtiian.

At the bottom, someone had traced onto the paper the outline of the earring Anatoly had given to her, and she back to him. It was like a signature. It was a promise.

The five minute call came up on the theater screen. "Oh, hell." Her hands shook, but she forced herself to put the letter down. She took in three breaths to steady herself and then started furiously applying makeup, eyes first. "I come on in scene two. Oh, damn."

The door burst open and Joseph charged in. "Di! Your hair! Where's your wig? You didn't give your ready call—" He jerked to a halt, seeing Marco. A look of quick sympathy passed over his face. "I will go out," he announced. "In sixty seconds I will come back in." The door shut behind him.

Diana set down her pencil and rose and turned to face Marco.

"What are you going to do?" he asked. "Tess told me what was in the letter, more or less. I agreed to deliver it because ... well, because I was coming here, and we had to hand-deliver it. You'll have to burn it, you know. We can't leave any evidence that she's alive where the Chapalii might find it."

It was a grandiose dream she had had, two years ago, meeting him and wondering if he and she, the hardened explorer and the young adventurous actor—Goddess, it was a horrible cliche, and maybe that was why it had gone so badly. But he deserved honesty. And she had a play to perform.

"Marco, I don't know what I'm going to do. But don't wait for me. I can't promise you anything, not yet, maybe not ever." Then she crossed over and kissed him, once, lightly.

The door opened. "Scene over," said Joseph. "So sorry. Out. Di, damn it anyway." The wig mistress charged in and stuffed Diana's hair into the wig cap and men peeled the wig on over the cap. Joseph stood over Diana while she blended on the base to cover the seam and finished with her mouth and eyes, and did the rouge. At some point during this frantic activity she saw Marco move, in the mirror, and leave, that quietly. He left a single red rose behind him, on the table.

"Stand!" ordered Joseph. He dressed her in the swathes of robes that Zenocrate, the daughter of the Soldan of Egypt, wore on her first entrance, led in by the great conqueror Tamburiaine as his captive and intended mistress.

The cue light came on above the door.

"I'll guide you up the stairs," said Joseph.

In the darkness backstage, he gave her hand into Vasil Veselov's. They entered.

It was a good, attentive audience, eager to be enthralled by the story and patient enough, with both parts of Tamburiaine before them, to be forgiving of Vasil's novice errors, snags in the way the energy ran, a focus thrown the wrong way, a glance held too long, although never, ever, a missed line.

To be fair to Vasil, he performed well, very well, considering how short a time he had been acting.

The part was made for him, of course. She knew who he was playing. He wasn't playing Tamburiaine, he was playing Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, the way he moved, the way he turned his head, the way the sword swayed at his hips, the way he looked toward the heavens when he spoke of his destiny—Vasil had studied Bakhtiian so closely that he had internalized Bakhtiian's bearing, his tone, almost his whole being. But for his fair hair and his beautiful, flawless face, he might have been Bakhtiian, crueler, even a little comic in his excesses, but a man bent on conquering the world. It was easy enough, as Zenocrate, to fall in love with his power.

They ate dinner backstage in the two-hour break between Part One and Part Two. Yevgeni came backstage. He always did. He as good as haunted Hyacinth wherever he went, except when he worked.

Yomi had found the young rider employment at a cobbler's shop, building handcrafted boots, and he seemed happy enough there and proud of his work. But then, he came from a common family. Diana tried to imagine Anatoly making boots for a living, and could not.

"Places!" Yomi announced. They went back on, for Part Two.

Zenocrate dies.

"Black is the beauty of the brightest day,

The golden ball of heaven's eternal fire,

That danced with glory on the silver waves....

For amorous Jove hath snatched my love from hence,

Meaning to make her stately queen of heaven. ...

Behold me here, divine Zenocrate,

Raving, impatient, desperate and mad. . ..

Come down from heaven and live with me again!"

In the end, Tamburlaine himself cannot triumph over his own mortality. He takes ill, he fights and wins his final battle, and when he admits at last that death is upon him, he calls on his men to bring in the hearse of Zenocrate.

From the hearse, lying still, visible to the audience and yet disguised somewhat by the frosted glastic walls, Diana watched Vasil give his final speech. She watched him cry. Not for himself. Tess Soerensen was wrong about one thing, at least: It wasn't true that Vasil hadn't given up anything. This much Diana had learned—obliquely— from Karolla. Vasil had simply given up the only thing— the only person—he had ever truly loved outside of himself.

"For Tamburlaine, the Scourge of God must die."

He died, and still tears leaked from his eyes as Hal spoke the final lines. "Let heaven and earth his timeless death deplore. For both their worths can equal him no more."

Vasil was crying for what he had lost, and for what Ilyakoria Bakhtiian would never know.

Diana cried, too, because Tess Soerensen was, after all, right. Anatoly couldn't come to Earth. It would be cruel, above all else. Anatoly belonged on Rhui, just as she belonged here. He had agreed to abide by her decision, and though so often he found some way to make the decision fall the way he wanted it to, this time she had to make the choice. She knew what her decision must be. It was time to let him go.

CHAPTER FORTY

David liked Meroe Transfer Station because he had designed it. Together with his two codesigners, he had worked in a unifying motif of huge pyramidal chambers and buttresses in the open concourses that resembled giant wings, all linked by an enclosed stream that ran through most of the station. He had managed to weasel out enough money from the design budget to commission fifty artists from varying disciplines to decorate the interior, with serpents and rams and giraffes, groves of date palms and acacia trees, sandstone statues and intricate mosaics of fused glass inlaid into gold.

Twenty years later, he still liked it, he decided as he strolled through Concourse Axum on his way to the gate from which he would take ship back to Odys, and Charles.

He wished Nadine could see it. He would have liked to share it with her, to show her how it interlocked, how the architecture and the ornamental motifs reflected each other, how the dimensionality of building in space both freed and limited the engineer. Had it really only been eighteen months since he had left her? It seemed like one month, she remained so clear in his mind. It seemed like a hundred years.

Impatient with himself and these pointless reflections, he tapped his one piece of luggage against his leg. The plastine tube thudded gently against his thigh, light but sturdy. It contained three hand-drawn maps that David and Rajiv had done together, to send on to Rhui, to Tess. They were ostensibly a map of the principality of Jeds, a detailed map of the city, and a detailed map of the palace of Morava and its grounds, based on his survey, but coded into the key was a secondary matrix on which Tess would build a secondary architecture for the saboteur network based on the architecture and layout of the palace of Jeds, the palace of Morava, and—although this wasn't mapped—the traditional spiral layout of a jaran camp, which made the arrangement of tents look haphazard until one divined the pattern by which they were set up.

Under a winged buttress, he paused to admire his second favorite sculpture, this one done in light, in three dimensions, by the famous artist Surya Neve Lao. It depicted the Meroite queen, the Candace Amanirenas, as she directed a dawn attack on the Roman garrison at Syene together with her son, Prince Akinidad. Silhouetted against the flames rising within the garrison walls, David recognized a woman as she tipped back her head and stared up at the sculpture curling back along the concourse wall.

"Diana!" he cried.

She turned and blinked at him for a moment. Behind her, the battle raged endlessly on, never to be lost, never to be won.

"David!" She smiled suddenly and it seemed that the whole concourse was brightened by her. She hurried over to him, and they embraced.

"Where are you off to?" he asked. "When I left Rajiv, he said the Repertory Company was in Bangkok. You haven't left them, have you?"

"No, I—"" She hesitated and glanced behind at the sculpture, then back at him. To his surprise, she still wore the scar of marriage on her face. Right now, she looked nervous, and even a little embarrassed.

"I'm meeting someone. At Scarab Gate."

"Oh, I'll walk you. I'm leaving through Antelope Gate, and it's right next door. Anyway, my favorite sculpture is at Scarab Gate."

"Your favorite sculpture? Do you go through Meroe often? You must be quite the traveler."

David grinned. Oh, well. He was proud of his work, and it was worth being proud of. "I designed it."

"This station!"

One of the things David loved about Diana was that her emotions were so wonderfully distinct. He laughed.

"But it's wonderful! Why did you make the buttresses like that, like they're wings?"

"Because they are wings. They're the wings of the Goddess." So they walked to Scarab Gate and he told her about the design and the arguments and compromises and the choices that had gone into building Meroe Transfer Station.

A beautiful bronzed arch made of huge linked scarabs bridged the concourse wall that led into the steep, four-walled chamber that was Scarab Gate and a lounge for departing and arriving passengers. A second scarab arch, smaller and less ornate, sealed off the port tube that led to the pier and the locks.

"Where are you going?" Diana asked finally.

"I'm going to Odys. Business for Charles."

Diana smiled. "His Nibs. That's what Maggie O'Neill always .called him. Where is she?"

"There. On Odys."

"Ah," said Diana, and that was another thing David liked about her. She knew when he had said as much as he could say.

"Here it is. My favorite sculpture."

She stopped. "It's very simple."

It was simple, a simple gray sandstone statue of a young Candace, a queen, a resolute soldier bearing a sword and wearing a crown. To David, that statue was Nadine; not that it looked anything like her, but that it captured her spirit.

"I like the way the sculptor has suggested hair just by using hatching," said Diana.

"Are you coming to meet family?" David asked.

Her mouth tightened. She held in some overwhelming emotion. "Tess Soerensen told me once that it's easy to act on impulse and much harder to think about what the consequences might be. But the consequences will show up sooner or later, and then you must prepare yourself to deal with them." She looked up at him. A man could drown in the blue of her eyes. Despite himself, he found his gaze darting down to the scar. It looked oddly fresh.

"It's what we've done to Rhui, isn't it?" she asked bitterly. "We walked blithely in and watched how it changed us, but we never thought about how it might change them. They're the ones who will suffer the most."

He had thought the same thing many times. "Who are you meeting?" he asked, but by the expression on her face, he could guess who it was. So this was her guilt talking, that she had wanted Anatoly and had somehow managed to persuade Charles or Tess to let him come to her, and only now did she realize how hard the transition would be for her husband.

The boards lit. The familiar monotone announcement began, detailing the arriving ship and its coordinates. Diana's hands flew to her cheeks. She had gone suddenly pale.

"It was so good to see you, David," she said, lowering her hands with conscious embarrassment. "But I have to go. Please. Please, come and visit me when you come back, or if you see us, if we tour, come and see me backstage."

"I will. I wish you the best of luck, Diana."

She kissed him on each cheek, in the formal jaran style, and smiled, and left him.

Thus dismissed, he had no choice but to simply stand there and watch as she ran over toward the small gate and then jerked to a halt at the waist-high wicker fence that blocked off the egress. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, too nervous to stand still.

Passengers streamed out. Diana waited. David watched.

The floor was sloped so that he could see farther into the port tube than Diana could, so he saw the uniformed attendant first, and her companion, a shell-shocked looking young man. Next to the attendant's dark uniform and olive skin and robust build, the young man looked almost fragile, he was so fair and so slight. But he was here.

David felt sick with envy.

It was a little scene, complete in itself. Diana wiped a tear from her face, and then she saw him. The attendant jostled his arm—what need had she to know Diana? It was apparent who was waiting for the young man—and Anatoly looked up and saw Diana.

David turned away. He could not bear to watch any more. It was too painful.

He skirted the sandstone statue and trudged back through Scarab Gate and on down the concourse to the gentler lines of Antelope Gate. Thank the Goddess, there was no delay for his flight. He boarded, found his cabin, locked the door, stowed the precious tube between his leg and the bunk wall, and plugged straight into hibersleep for the voyage.

He had no dreams.

But he did wake up with the usual horrible nausea and vertigo. Maggie was sitting on the pull-down chair, squeezed into the tiny cabin, regarding him with a frown on her face. Her freckles were prominent today for some reason, making her red hair seem all the more red. Or maybe it was just his eyes adjusting to the lights.

"You don't usually do hibersleep, do you, David? I thought it made you sick as a—Aha!" She jerked the siphon out. of the wall and caught most of the phlegm that was all he had to throw up, and then wiped his face with a cool towel.

"You're a peach, Mags," he said. His mouth felt like it had a thousand-year-old growth of fungus in it.

"I don't dare sit up."

"No sympathy from me," she retorted. "I hate the fumes of that stuff. Here." She bent over and extracted the tube of maps. "Do you want me to wait for you to recover, or just take this downside?"

"Maggie!"

"Oh, David." She sat down beside him and smoothed his hair with a hand. "You look rotten. Why did you do it?"

"I didn't want to think for that long, cooped up on a ship."

She regarded him thoughtfully. "Oh," she said at last. "I don't suppose you crossed paths with Diana Brooke-Holt, did you?" He didn't need to reply. Maggie knew him well enough to read his face.

"Poor Diana," she said.

"Poor Diana!"

"No, you're right. Poor Anatoly's more like it. You know she sent him back a message saying he should stay on Rhui, didn't you?"

"What?" David felt utterly confused. "But it was already too late. The damned scheming boy had evidently planned it all along. He got himself sent to Jeds and by one means or the other—no one is willing to take responsibility for it—he buffaloed his way onto one of the sloops by claiming he had a dispensation from Tess to go to Erthe, and by the time they realized their mistake, he'd seen a shuttle. So what could they do? They sent him to Odys. We never gave him Diana's message. So maybe it is poor Diana after all. She was wise enough to see that he ought to have stayed on Rhui." She broke off. "Oh, David," she said on a sigh. She bent and kissed him on the cheek. "David, she never could have left the planet. You know it's true."

"I know. I know." But it still hurt. "Has there ever— been any news of her?"

She opened her mouth and then shut it again. "Well. We did hear that she had a baby, a daughter, recently. Tess is pregnant again. Did you hear that?"

"No, I—I haven't been much in touch with Rhui lately," he said, and realized how stupid the comment sounded, considering the maps he carried with him. "I've tried to put it behind me, that year." But he thought of Nadine, holding a little child who probably looked like her fair-haired father. "Damn it," he murmured. "It's so stupid to dwell on something that wasn't meant to be."

"Oh, my dear friend, I didn't know you still missed her that much. Let me get you something to drink to settle that stomach of yours. Charles is waiting for you. And I'm always glad to see you, I missed you."

David felt comforted, knowing he had the solace of friendship waiting for him here on Odys.

At the palace, Charles sat in conference with Hon Echido Keinaba in the domed audience chamber that overlooked the massive greenhouse wing.

Suzanne, seated next to Charles at the ralewood table, saw David and Maggie at the door and beckoned to them to come in. Evidently Echido was by this time used to the casual way in which humans came and went, although he did stand and acknowledge the new arrivals with a pallid nod.

". .. and when I officially open the female wing here on Odys, Hon Echido, I hope your family will be able to provide me with suitable females with whom I can extend my staff. Ah, hello, David. Sit down.

Maggie, can you deliver—the gifts—and then go and make sure the reception room is ready? I'm expecting Tai Naroshi Toraokii anytime now."

"Naroshi?" asked David.

"In response to my summons."

"It took him long enough," said Suzanne tartly.

"Only by our standards," replied Charles. He turned back to the merchant. "So is it well with you and the Keinaba elders, Hon Echido, that I send twenty-seven apprentices into your service to learn the craft of commerce from your masters?"

"At your command, Tai-en. The proper arrangements have been made. As well, we have chosen three chay-hon, nine sendi-nin, and eighty-one ke di to enter your female house."

Charles glanced at Suzanne, who said in a low voice, "Three of the merchant class, nine of the steward, and eighty-one ke, all female."

"I beg your pardon, Tai-en." Echido flushed blue about the cheeks.

"It is granted," said Charles impatiently. He looked at Suzanne, who looked at her slate and shook her head. Charles frowned. "He's late. Well. Now, Hon Echido, about the other matter."

"Tai-en. Neither I nor the Keinaba House have the authority to allow these disciplines you call The Arts free movement along transport lines or, indeed, access to ports of call. But if I may be allowed to take an orchestra back with me to Keinaba Mansion on Paladia Major, I would be triply honored by your magnanimity."

"Umm." Charles turned to look out at the greenhouse that sparkled in the pale sunlight, a swath of brightness thrust out across the curry-colored massif flats. "That will do. Perhaps once guests at your mansion hear the orchestra, they, too, will wish such human artisans to grace their homes and mansions."

"Indeed, Tai-en, if it is considered a sign of ducal pleasure, many will be eager for such a mark of distinction."

"Aha!" Suzanne jumped to her feet. "Incoming."

Hon Echido rose as well, and he bowed to the precise degree due a duke being honored by his least worthy servant. "I will withdraw, with your permission, Tai Charles."

"It is granted."

Hon Echido withdrew.

"You know what I think," said Suzanne, "I think he's beginning to read us."

"Read us?" David asked.

"I think he's beginning to get a sense of how we work, we humans. Frightening thought."

"Good thing he's on our side," said David. "If he is. If any of them can be. Why is Naroshi coming in?"

"I asked him to," said Charles. "Maggie is going to send the maps on to Rhui."

"Is she going to take them down herself?"

"No. Marco wants to go back downside."

"You're letting him?"

"We need more survey. Tess needs more intelligence, especially in Rhui's other hemisphere. He'll transfer over the maps to her and then head east, as far as he can go."

"Until he comes around back to the other side? Wait. Does this have something to do with Diana Brooke-Holt and the sudden appearance of her interdicted jaran husband on Meroe Transfer Station?"

"What do you think?" asked Suzanne sourly. "I told him he was being a fool."

"Which comment," said Charles dryly, "he appreciated greatly. In part to do with her, yes, but mostly to do with Marco. He'll be circling that globe for the rest of his life, because he's too damn restless to settle in any one place, and he always has to be testing himself."

"And seeing how close he can come to getting himself killed, without ever quite managing it."

Suzanne snorted and wiped her hands together briskly, brushing them off.

"I wash my hands of trying to improve him and his miserable life."

Charles and David burst out laughing together, and Suzanne set her hands on her hips, glared at them, and then stalked out of the room. It wasn't a particularly effective exit, if only because it took so long for her to cross the tiled floor that the drama of her affronted expression had long since expired by the time she reached the far door. When she glanced back at them, David saw that she was smiling.

"Only twenty-seven apprentices? That's not very many," David said to Charles.

"David, I have three yachts in my private fleet, which are allowed to ferry on the shipping lanes between human regions and Paladia Minor and Major. Each one is manned by a crew of twenty-four, more or less. Of these twenty-four, two of each crew, the captain and the purser, are allowed to disembark at either port. As well, Tess's old friend Sojourner and her husband Rene are in residence on the Keinaba flagship. And I have one human representative who sits as my shadow in the Hall of the Nobles, in the outermost circle of the emperor's palace, just as all the other dukes have such shadow markers— well, only theirs are Chapalii, of course. Then again, that one representative changes every three months so the poor soul doesn't go stark raving mad."

Charles walked over to the field that separated the inside air from the outside air and set his hands, palms out and open, against it, and regarded the luxuriant growth within the greenhouse. David could not tell whether he was a nobleman surveying his domain, or a prisoner staring out from his cell.

"That's it. That is the entire sum of the human presence within Imperial space. Twenty-seven apprentices is a big jump, compared to that. I don't want to move too fast."

He peeled his hands away from the field and sniffed, dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief. "My hay fever is acting up again. I don't know how it carries from there into the main building."

David chuckled. "That's the thing about weeds. No matter how hard you try, you can never get rid of them."

Charles grinned. "It's good to have you back, David. I hope this time you'll stay longer. Oh. Hell. Let's go."

David had deduced one thing about the Chapalii. They loved grandeur. They loved huge, towering spaces and masses of intricate and floridly-overwhelming decoration. So Charles had built a new reception room, a small, intimate reception chamber set into one of the corner towers and furnished to his own taste.

It was David's favorite room in the entire palace.

Two walls were windows, opening out onto a balcony that looked out over the tule flats and the far green glint of the greenhouse wing. David sat on one of the two sofas while Charles went to the bureau and rummaged for drinks.

"Canadian or Martian?" Charles asked, setting out two bottles of whiskey.

"Three of those pieces are new," said David, nodding toward the white wall above the bureau, where Charles displayed his favorite art. He stood up and walked diagonally across the room, skirting the cartograph-lectern, to the opposite corner and stared at the full suit of lamellar armor that stood out on the balcony. The lacquered leather strips and polished iron segments gleamed in the long light of the setting sun. "This is new, too. That's jaran armor."

"Yes, it is." Charles handed him his whiskey.

Suzanne came in. "He's here."

Charles walked back to sit down on the other sofa, so that he could look both out the window and at the plain teak double doors that opened into the room. David remained where he was.

Suzanne opened both doors, and Tai-en Naroshi entered, followed by one of his ubiquitous stewards.

The duke held a crystal wand in his right hand.

"Tai-en," said Charles.

"Tai-en," said Naroshi.

The room itself was pale, lit by the two walls of windows and by the two white walls and by the furniture, all of it a light teak. Even the accents, the throw rug and the linen cushions on the sofas, were white. Even so, Naroshi's skin was paler still.

He examined the room, and Charles allowed him silence in which to do so. He paced slowly along the wall against which the bureau stood, looking at each piece of art in turn: the tapestry of birds; the woven doormat of green and red stripes; a saber sheathed in a gold case studded with pearls and emeralds; a silk robe embroidered with the lion and the moon of the Habakar royal house; the embossed bronze teapot and the enameled vase set on the bureau; a painting of Jeds, seen from the harbor, which was in fact the only piece of art along the wall. The other things functioned, on Rhui, as utilitarian objects, however beautiful they might appear displayed here.

Naroshi circled back, paused beside the tilted podium which was Charles's cartographer's table, and crossed the room to sit on the other sofa. Suzanne and the steward stood silently on either side of the open doors.

"I received your summons," Naroshi said. He placed the wand carefully across both knees.

"I am distressed, Tai-en," said Charles, "by these charges which the Protocol Office has brought against members of my house,"

"It would sadden the emperor, indeed," replied Naroshi, "to have this matter brought to his attention.

If only I could be assured that such a transgression had not occurred."

Which it had, of course. David glanced at Suzanne, but she was watching the two dukes.

Charles placed a hand on each knee, echoing the placement of Naroshi's hands. "My people would never have gone down to Rhui of their own volition because they know the strength of the interdiction, and, indeed, the only reason they would ever have been forced to go down there would be because another house, other Chapalii under another lord, had violated the interdiction and thus forced these, my own people, to investigate."

Naroshi's pallor did not alter. But David waited, breathless, to see how he would respond. It was a classic gambit, of course: I know you sent your people down; yes, but I know you sent your people down.

"I am certain," said Naroshi finally, "that it would take considerable provocation for any lord to break an interdiction approved by the emperor himself. I must be mistaken. I will inform the Protocol Office that they must erase all charges on their list."

"We are agreed, then," said Charles. Now they knew exactly where each of them stood—more or less.

Did Naroshi know that Tess was still alive? Did he guess? Did he know that Tess had transferred to her brother the cylinder from the Mushai's banks? Did Naroshi have such a copy himself? David hid a cough behind his hand. He decided that less had the advantage over more.

"But that is not the only reason I requested your presence here, Tai-en," added Charles.

Naroshi lifted his chin, acknowledging the comment. "I am honored beyond measure that you would allow my sister to design the mausoleum for your departed heir. I have brought her design with me, for you to view."

"You are generous, Tai-en. May I hope that we can view it now?"

The two sofas sat perpendicular to each other, one with its back to a windowed wall, one with its back to the bookshelves that lined the rest of the wall out from the doors. Up from the rug that lay between them, an edifice rose.

David caught a gasp back in his throat. It was a clever insult. Or perhaps not an insult at all, but a tacit acknowledgment of their shared crime. It was the palace of Morava, clearly, in its essential design, but twisted and turned in on itself, crossed with the starker classical lines of the Parthenon and made feminine by a profusion of bright frescos of elegant ladies in belled skirts and fitted jackets surrounded by flowers, and by the tiers of columns surrounding the central dome. The design was a clear reminder of the rebel duke, the Tai-en Mushai, and yet it was also uniquely itself. It was stunning.

Charles rose and paced once around the edifice and sat back down again.

"What site have you procured?" he asked.

Naroshi inclined his head. "We have received a dispensation from the emperor's Chamberlain of the Avenue of the Red Blossom to build the mausoleum along the Field of Empty Hands."

David had not a clue what or where the Field of Empty Hands was, and he wondered if Charles did, either, but Charles certainly did not show any uncertainty in his reply.

"That would be well, Tai-en. I am honored by your interest, and by your sister's skill."

"We all mourn, when a member of one of the great families dies, whether by the cessation of breath or the act of extinction, of leaving, that forever separates them from their kin."

Charles bowed his head, perhaps the better to shadow his expression. It was true that, by Chapalii law, now that Charles had acknowledged Jess's marriage to Bakhtiian, Tess did indeed lose her position as Charles's heir. So ran the Chapalii inheritance laws, and laws of marriage: a female upon marriage takes her husband's status exclusively. Presumably Naroshi's own sister was unmarried, else she would not still remain in his house. Naroshi might believe Tess was dead—Bakhtiian had told his agent that. But Cara had also told David that Tess's original marriage had taken place at Morava; did Naroshi know about that? Or was his comment not about Tess at all but simply a reference to the emperor, who severed all ties of kinship, all ties with his past, on the day he stepped up to the imperial throne? There were a hundred other possibilities, all of them too damned convoluted for David's taste.

"Tai-en," said Charles into the silence. "I have a proposition for you."

Naroshi regarded him steadily.

"Just as you have brought this to me—" He gestured toward the edifice, now curling into mist at the edges as it faded away. "—I propose to bring a human art to you. We humans create an art form that is transitory, played out each night once in a way that can never be duplicated, and yet, played out the next night in the same way that is, still, different from what it was before. It is called theater. I would bring this theater into Imperial space, if you would be willing to sponsor its travel."

"Theater," said Naroshi. The human word sounded strange and ominous on his lips. "I know what this art is." He inclined his head. "I would be pleased to sponsor a—ah, I know the word. The tour."

Charles inclined his head in reply. David could not imagine how Charles could keep his face so straight as he recruited a Chapalii duke, all unknowing, to start the wheel spinning, to start the first corruption, the first step, the first wedge into the edifice of diamond and steel that was the Empire. To introduce the first tendrils of the saboteur network into the heart of Chapalii space.

Or did Naroshi know? Did he suspect? Knowing that his own agents had been in Charles's territory—

knowing that Charles knew—did Naroshi then accept Charles's agents into his? Like any great dance, whirling along in brilliant colors across a ballroom floor, the movement and countermovement that flowed naturally from the interaction of the dancers seemed merely bewildering to an inexperienced bystander. On neither duke could David read the slightest expression or color.

"I will send the Bharentous Repertory Company to your palace, Tai-en," said Charles.

"I will receive it," said Naroshi.

He rose. Charles rose. The edifice dissolved into steam and vanished into air between them, where they stood at either end of their respective sofas. They made polite farewells. Naroshi left, with his steward trailing behind. David and Suzanne stared at each other. Charles sat down and drained his whiskey in one shot.

"Well," said Suzanne. "I wasn't expecting that. Getting him to sponsor the tour." She walked over and sat down where Naroshi had just been sitting.

"Neither was I," admitted Charles. "It just came to me." He grinned. "Did you see that design? It practically shouted my link to Rhui and to the Mushai and from there, I suppose, to all rebels."

"Or Tess's link," said Suzanne, "since Naroshi must know that she was last seen alive there."

"How can you risk it?" David demanded. He thought of Diana as he said it. Of Diana and her husband, who must surely end up following her wherever she went. "Putting the actors into Naroshi's hands?"

"" Til deliver all," " said Charles. He leaned back into the cushions. "How can I not risk it?"

David sighed and went to lean on the lectern, but he watched the sun sink down over the horizon. The polished black surface of the table stared blankly at him.

"Earth," said Charles, and a flat map of Earth and her continents flowered into being on the table. He went on, through the planets bound together by the League covenant, by their human heritage, by the many space stations and mining colonies and frozen outposts Unking them along the shipping lanes.

"Ophiuchi-Sei. Sirin Five. Tau Ceti Tierce. Eridanaia. Hydra. Cassie. The unpronounceable one. Three Rings." He did not say Odys. Odys was not a human planet, only the seat of his ducal authority.

Maggie strode in, poured herself a drink at the bureau, and walked across the room to sprawl out on the sofa next to Charles. "I got rid of Marco," she said. "What a relief. He needs a vacation. But you know—" She sipped from her glass and set it down on the end table. "I almost asked him to greet Ursula from me. It's still hard to believe that she's dead. What a terrible way to die."

"She wasn't the first. She won't be the last," said Charles.

Maggie had evidently come through the greenhouse, because David could smell the perfume of newly-mown grass on her. Suzanne sighed. Under David's elbows, the screen shifted again, to show the ongoing design and work index for Concord, the great space station that housed die League offices and the League Parliament. The Chapalii Protocol Office allowed the work to continue, as long as it did not interfere with whatever quotas and taxes their human subjects must pay to the emperor. David ran a finger along a hatched grid. Nadine would have loved this, this table, with its cornucopia of maps stored within, each one available at the touch of a finger or with a single spoken word, each one a discovery, a new journey, a fresh path to explore.

"Where did you get that sword?" Maggie asked. "That saber? That's a jaran saber."

"Bakhtiian sent it to me," said Charles, "together with the armor and a beautifully embroidered red shirt."

David looked out at the armor. He hadn't noticed the shirt before, but it was there, under the cuirass, sleeves flowing out in a pattern of red interlaced with a golden road and silver eagles. And David had to smile. As if, by giving him the shirt, Bakhtiian had made Charles a member of his army.

Charles caught David's eye and smiled. Then he said, "Rhui," and the surface of the table flowed again, becoming Rhui.

Maggie got up and went over to stare more closely at the saber. She made a comment, more of a grunt, really, that meant nothing except perhaps, "Oh, how interesting." The only color in the room came from her teal shirt, and from the Rhuian artifacts arranged artfully along the wall. The display itself seemed to flow right out onto the balcony, encompassing the suit of armor and moving beyond it to the horizon. As the sun set over the quiet waters, the evening star woke and burned in the sky, so that it, too, seemed part of the room. The evening star, which was Rhui.

"I miss him," said Charles. "It's strange, knowing I'll probably never see him again."

David wiped the table clear with a sweep of his arm and went and sat down next to Suzanne. After a moment, Maggie retreated to her place. The four of them sat there in companionable silence. Night bled down over them. The bureau light snapped on, illuminating the wall, spraying a fan of soft white light up onto the saber and the robe.

" "I long to hear the story of your life," " said Suzanne, " "which must lake the ear strangely." That's what comes before that line."

"What line?" demanded Maggie.

Rhui blazed in the sky, and around her, the other stars appeared, thousands upon thousands of them like the fires of the jaran army, like the torch-burdened walls of Karkand, like lights burning in the forest of towers that surrounded the emperor's palace on Chapal.

" Til deliver all." " said Charles, " "And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales/And sail so expeditious that shall catch Your royal fleet far off." "

"Oh," said Maggie. "That line."

David felt at peace. Not for the past, not for the future, but for this moment. For now.

EPILOGUE

"We'll lead you to the stately tent of war. Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world in high astounding terms And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. View but his picture in this tragic glass, And then applaud his fortunes as you please."

—Marlowe,

Tamburlaine the Great

The riders left the sprawl of the jaran camp at dawn, a pack of fifty soldiers, lightly armed, and one khaja man dressed in a drab tunic, carrying a heavy wooden tube strapped along his back. They rode that day across grassy plains transformed into pale gold by the summer sun. They camped, tentless and fireless, under the cloud-streaked sky, and stars and the full moon watched over them.

The next day they came to a low range of hills and a khaja village with tumbled-down walls, and through this they rode without a passing glance, and the khaja villagers trudged on about their tasks with scarcely a look in their direction. In the afternoon they saw a great butte looming before them.

"Goddess in Heaven," said Marco, "that's an impressive thing."

"It is the khayan-sarmiia," explained Aleksi, "Her Crown Fallen from Heaven to Earth."

"Whose crown?"

"Mother Sun's crown. There's the camp."

Five and a half years ago, Aleksi had ridden here bringing the news of Sergei Veselov's death to the army. Now he delivered a messenger from a dead man. No army camped now in the shadow of the huge rock, and yet the camp pitched here was large, riders and archers and women cooking and children carrying water. Set out in a great spiral at the northeastern corner of the butte stood the ten great tents of the ten etsanas of the Eldest Tribes. Two tents shared the middle ground: that of Mother Sakhalin and that of Mother Orzhekov, Bakhliian's aunt.

"I don't see Bakhtiian's tent," said Marco as they rode into the Orzhekov encampment.

Aleksi pointed up, toward the heavens. "His tent is pitched up there," he said.

Marco tilted his head back and stared up at the grainy cliffs mat blocked off half the southern horizon from this angle. The sun was already hidden behind it, and its shadow made a cooling screen for the camp against the summer heat. Aleksi dismounted and gave his mount to one of his riders. Marco did the same.

"Papa!" An instant later, a small but fierce object hit Aleksi broadside, and he grunted and laughed and grabbed his daughter under her arms and swung her around. "Dania, you imp," he scolded, setting her down. She wore a little bow and quiver strapped on her back, and a curved stick thrust in her belt.

"Marco, this is my daughter Dania."

Marco eyed the child with distrust. She folded her arms across her chest and regarded him with disdain. "Your daughter?" he asked, clearly puzzled.

"Yes," said Aleksi, taking pity on him, khaja that he was, for not understanding immediately how Aleksi could be the father of a child too old to have been born to his wife in the nearly two years since he had seen Marco Burckhardt last. "I married her mother, Svetlana, some months after you left us."

"Papa," Dania announced, "Kolia got into trouble again. He burnt his fingers because he was trying to

—"

"Hush. I don't want to hear about it. Did Tess have the baby yet?"

"No, but the doctor sent a runner down today and called Mama and Aunt Sonia to attend, so perhaps she's having it now."

Marco gaped up at the rock. It towered up into the heavens, its flat peak seeming to scrape the pale down of clouds that streaked the sky. "Tess is up there having a baby?" he exclaimed.

"She got so huge, and the baby still hadn't come, so she decided that since she wanted to stay with Bakhtiian anyway, through the council, that she might as well walk up with him and try to start her labor that way."

A sudden gleam lit Marco's eyes. Aleksi recognized it: Nadine got the same gleam in her eyes when it came time to scout a new path. "There's a path that goes up to the top? Can we hike up there?"

"No, you can't," said Dania severely. "Only the etsanas and the dyans have walked up. They're speaking to the gods."

"Yes, you can," said Aleksi mildly, bending down to kiss the girl on either cheek. "Go on, little one.

Go find your Aunt Nadine and send her to us." He straightened up to regard Marco, who still had his head thrown back, gazing up at the height. "Tess said we should come up, you and I, once we arrived.

But it's true that it's a holy place, and that the gathering going on there now is not for any eyes and ears but those of the Ten Elder Tribes."

"What is going on?" demanded Marco. "Are they all overseeing the birth, or something? To make sure it's legitimate?"

"What is legitimate?" asked Aleksi. "Well, never mind. Let's go to Nadine's tent. She'll want to see the maps."

Nadine arrived at her tent at the same time as they did, and she greeted Marco with every show of sincerity. While he unsealed the tube and drew out the maps, she asked him a string of questions about the voyage and what the great seas were like to sail on and if it was true that there were monsters sunk in the deeps. Nadine had furnished her outer chamber in a khaja manner, with a table and chairs and a cabinet built and carved in Jeds. Marco unrolled the maps on the table and she gasped and leaned beside him, smoothing her hand out over the heavy parchment.

"David did these, didn't he?" she said in a low voice.

"David and Rajiv Caer Linn, yes," answered Marco. "David is well."

Nadine glanced up at him, at these innocuous words, and then down at the map again. "They're beautiful maps, and so detailed. How comes it, Marco, that you can sail over the far seas and back again, and yet none of the others can?"

Marco grinned. "I don't ask permission, for one, and for the other, I'm willing to take the risks onto myself." Then his face changed abruptly, and he turned to stare at the curtain that separated the outer chamber from the sleeping chamber. "I've no one waiting for me, back there, in any case."

Nadine traced a warren of chambers in a finely detailed corner of the map of the shrine of Morava, and her finger came to rest on one particular room, a tiny little chamber that bore no distinguishing mark to separate it from the rest, nothing except what lay in her memory. "Kirill Zvertkov is taking a jahar of twenty thousands and riding east along the Golden Road, to scout it," she said, sounding casual. But Aleksi knew her well enough—and had been privy to the arguments—to know how badly she had wanted to go on that expedition, and how firmly Bakhtiian had refused her request. One daughter was not enough to secure the succession.

"East from the plains?" asked Marco. "I haven't been that way. The Empire of Yarial lies on the eastern shore, they say."

"There's a country that lies athwart the Golden Road in the midst of an empty desert," said Nadine, her voice becoming rich with eagerness, "where the lands shift, where no traveler can walk without becoming lost, where the mountains move at night, and the rivers change their course between the seasons."

"But, Dina," said Aleksi, "a country like that could only exist if the khaja there were all sorcerers, or if the gods had put a curse on it."

"That may be," said Nadine tartly, "but I'd still like to see it for myself."

"When did you say that Zvertkov is riding east?" Marco asked.

"In a few days," answered Nadine. "Are you going to go with him?"

"I just might, at that," murmured Marco. "I just might." Then, to his credit, he read her expression. "I promise to send you reports by every courier who returns to the army."

Nadine sighed and placed her hands on two corners of the maps, holding them down and staring at them. The entrance flap got pushed aside. A baby announced its presence in a long musical trill, complete with a babble of meaningless but perfectly sweet syllables. "Hello, Feodor," Nadine said to the table.

Aleksi turned. It was Feodor, of course. Grekov was so proud of his fat baby daughter that the whole camp made fun of him, but then, a father was meant to spoil his daughters. Lara sat propped on his hips, riding on his belt, her chubby little hands gripping his shirt tightly. She had a smile on her face, and she gurgled happily, recognizing Aleksi and her mother. But then, she always had a smile on her face. She was the most easy-natured child that Aleksi had ever met, so sweet-tempered that everyone joked that she must not be Nadine's.

"Hello, Aleksi," said Feodor, but his gaze jumped straight to Marco. Aleksi had long since divined that Feodor did not, on the whole, like khaja of any sort, but perhaps that was only because Nadine often seemed half khaja herself. "Well met," Feodor added politely, addressing Marco.

Marco looked stunned. He stared at Feodor and then at the baby and then back at Feodor again.

Finally, thank the gods, he recalled his manners. "Well met," he replied, equally polite. "I'm Marco Burckhardt."

"Yes," said Feodor, "I remember you, of course." His face softened all at once. "This is our daughter, Lara. She was born last year."

Marco took one step and then a second, and fetched up in front of the baby. He put out a hand to touch her cheek, and she batted at his hand and laughed. Feodor smiled fondly on her. Marco looked back and at that moment

Nadine lifted her head to gaze at him, and at her daughter. Their eyes met, hers and Marco's, and some message passed between them that Aleksi could not read and Feodor, tickling Lara's chin, was not even aware of. He set her down and steadied her, and she took a step, another step, a third, and more by dint of forward motion than of balance crossed the space to her mother. Nadine scooped her up in her arms.

The contrast was greatest with Feodor, of course, with his fair hair and complexion, but even next to Nadine and her dark hair, Lara looked quite dusky, like twilight, with her creamy brown skin and her coarse black ringlets.

"She's hungry," said Feodor. He looked at Aleksi, and Aleksi looked at Marco, and the three men left the tent, leaving Nadine to her daughter and her maps.

Outside, Feodor excused himself and went off to mediate a dispute that had erupted between two packs of children.

"Does he know?" Marco demanded.

"Does he know what?" Aleksi asked, mystified by Marco's sudden fierce expression.

"Does David know he has a child?"

"David ben Unbutu, do you mean? How should I know? Does he have a child?"

"Aleksi, you'd have to be blind not to see that that child isn't Feodor Grekov's daughter, not with that coloring. She's David's."

The comment puzzled Aleksi. "I beg your pardon, Marco, but she is Feodor Grekov's daughter.

Perhaps no one has told you, but there is nothing more insulting you could ever say to a man, except to insult his mother or sister, of course. I thought even the khaja knew that."

The speed with which Burckhardt backed down surprised Aleksi. "No, you're right. But—how did she

—? She ought to have died."

"Who ought to have died? Oh, you mean Nadine and the child, just like Tess almost did, with the early one? It's true that she was sick for months after the birth. Everyone thought she was going to die, even Feodor. Even Bakhtiian. Tess was the only one who thought she might live. Bakhtiian sat at her bedside for twenty days straight and served her with his own hands, until he saw that she would live. He and Varia Telyegin nursed her through it. Even Dr. Hierakis says that Varia Telyegin is a great healer.

But the baby was always strong. Feodor got the baby a wet nurse and then they had the worst arguments when Nadine recovered and he wanted her to nurse the child herself. I've never seen Nadine so weak and subdued. I think she only said one ill-tempered thing a day for an entire season. She's much better now."

"Of course, it's none of my business," said Marco hastily, looking uncomfortable at hearing these revelations.

"Why should Nadine have died, though?" Aleksi insisted.

Marco dragged a hand back through his hair, looking like he was reminded of something he didn't want to think about. "Because blood half of the earth and half of the heavens doesn't mix easily," he replied curtly. "May we go see Tess now?"

So they climbed the butte, winding up the steep trail as the afternoon wind tore at their shirts. At each switchback, Marco paused and stared out at the view growing beyond and beneath them. From above, the spiral along which the camp was laid out showed clearly enough, although it was hard to distinguish the pattern from the ground. The southern mountains lay in a distant blue haze, tinged with pink from the sun's long rays.

"That's where Habakar lies, that way, isn't it?" Marco looked toward the distant south.

"Yes. Mitya is still there. They're building him a new city, west of Hamrat. The Princess Melatina and her brother have lived with Mother Orzhekov for six seasons now, and she's not nearly as shy as she used to be. The princess, that is."

They climbed on. West lay the sea, hidden from their view, where the sun set, and north and east past the rolling line of hills stretched the vast golden blur of the plains.

"East," said Marco, pausing to catch his breath. Already the eastern horizon dimmed to a dusky blue, shadowed and mysterious. "East, on the Golden Road. But, Aleksi." He paused. "What about Bakhtiian's son?"

Aleksi warded off the notice of Grandmother Night with a quick turn of his wrist. "Bakhtiian's son died."

"No. His other son. The one who's Katerina's age. Vasha. He must be Bakhtiian's son the same way Lara must be David's daughter."

Aleksi sighed. "Marco, you khaja always care so much which man's seed made which child on what woman. Vasha is Bakhtiian's son because Tess adopted him as her son, and Bakhtiian is her husband.

Just as she adopted me as her brother."

"But—" The wind whipped at them, tearing their hair away from their eyes, stinging and sharp and hot.

"It's true enough, I suppose, that Vasha is Bakhtiian's son by khaja laws, too, and since his mother never married . .. well...." Aleksi shrugged. "It might even be true about David, by khaja laws, but still, Lara—"

"—is Feodor Grekov's daughter," said Marco. "I understand. I suppose it's better that David never hears about it. It would break his heart."

"But he isn't married to Nadine—" Aleksi broke off and trudged on after Marco, who had started on up again. The conversation was pointless in any case. The khaja were very strange, all except Tess, of course, and even she— Then he grinned. Tess and her brother and the khaja from Erthe were the strangest ones of all, because they had come down from the heavens.

They reached the summit and the wind skirled around them and then, as they crossed the flat ground scoured clean by years upon years of Father Wind's rough touch, died altogether. A single tent stood on the plateau, staked down. The gold banner at its height hung limply, stirred as the wind fluttered the cloth, and stilled again. Clouds shone pale in the sky above, touched orange in the west where they feathered the horizon.

Ilyakoria Bakhtiian knelt on the ground some twenty paces in front of the tent. His head was bent.

Before him, in a semicircle, sat the ten etsanas and the ten dyans— well, only nine since Venedikt Grekov was still away on his expedition to Vidiya—listening intently. It was so quiet, with the sun's rays bathing the plateau in a rich golden light, that even from twenty paces away, where they halted, they could hear Bakhtiian's voice as he spoke.

"... and I said to Grandmother Night, "I will give to you that which I most love if you will make me dyan of all the tribes." And I sealed the bargain with the blood of a hawk."

Aleksi noticed, at once, that Bakhtiian wore no saber. He had disarmed himself. His horse-tail staff lay over the knees of Mother Sakhalin, and his own aunt had laid his saber on the pillow on which the dyan of her tribe— which was him, of course—would otherwise be seated. From the tent, he heard a muffled, steady drumbeat, and he heard Svetlana singing, and then laughter. Steam boiled up from two great copper pots set over a fire to one side of the tent. Vasha, who was getting all gangly and overgrown these days, sat in mute attendance on the fire.

"Afterward," Bakhtiian continued into the silence, not looking at the women and men who in their turn watched him with unnervingly intent gazes, "I thought that she had cheated me, but then I realized that she had held to her end of the bargain. Vasil was not the person whom I most loved. I was the one who tried to cheat Grandmother Night. I paid dearly enough for my presumption."

There they sat, in silence, Sakhalin, Arkhanov, Suvorin, Velinya, Raevsky, Vershinin, Grekov, Fedoseyev, and last, Veselov and Orzhekov. Arina Veselov sat on a . litter, since she had never regained enough strength to be able to walk very well. Her odd cousin sat next to her. Scars had obliterated the beauty of Vera's face; her riders called her a hard dyan but a fair one, and she was known to be ruthless and aloof. Yaroslav Sakhalin had ridden two thousand miles in twenty days to come here, and the others had come long distances as well. Irena Orzhekov regarded her nephew gravely. Alone of all of them, she did not look particularly surprised by his confession.

"And what," asked Mother Sakhalin, "did you pay, Ilyakoria Bakhtiian?"

He lifted his head to look directly at her. "These lives. The life of my mother, Alyona Orzhekov. The life of my father, Petre Sokolov. The life of my sister Natalia and of her son. Of my cousin Yurinya. Of the Prince of Jeds, Charles Soerensen, my wife's brother. The life of my son."

The wind picked up again. The gold banner stirred and fluttered and spread, like a last ray of the sun, out against the vast arch of the sky. "The lives of those who followed me, and died, not knowing of the bargain I had made and then hidden." He bent his head and ran his fingers up the embroidery on his shirt. His aunt watched him, her face stern. He looked up again, for the final time. "The life of the boy I once was, Ilyakoria Orzhekov."

Katerina ducked out of the tent and ran over to the pots. She dipped a kettle into water, whispered something to Vasha, glanced toward the assembly, and then hurried back inside. Very clearly, in the silence, they all heard a woman swear forcefully and fluidly. Anna Veselov hid her mouth behind a hand. Every gaze flashed toward the tent and then away. Every one but Bakhtiian's. His gaze did not stray from Mother Sakhalin's face.

"Two more lives hang in the balance, Bakhtiian," she said quietly. "As the gods judge you today, so will our judgment be."

Aleksi shuddered. He had seen how harsh the gods" judgment could be. It wasn't fair that their judgment should be passed through Tess. And yet, Aleksi trusted in Cara Hierakis maybe even more than in the gods.

Marco crouched and settled in for a long wait, and Aleksi crouched beside him. He liked Burckhardt, really. He was an easy companion. He knew when to be silent and when to speak, when to act and when to be patient.

So they waited. The sun set and its light died and gave birth to a darkness patched with stars. Yaroslav Sakhalin and Mikhail Suvorin rose and lit torches and posted them on lances thrust into the ground at either end of the semicircle. The wind picked up and battered at the sides of the tent. The drum beat.

Inside the tent, Svetlana sang, and Aleksi closed his eyes and listened to her. She had a pleasant voice, a little thin, but it was strong and steady. Of course, compared to Raysia Grekov ... but Svetlana was not Raysia Grekov; she wasn't a Singer. She was a simple, hard-working, practical woman. She was his wife.

The thought of that, of having a sister and a wife and her siblings and a daughter and a little one on the way, warmed him through to the core of his heart.

Sakhalin and Suvorin replaced the torches with new ones. The stars wheeled around the sky, and the clouds chased away into the north to leave the black span above brilliant with light.

They waited, and out of the darkness and the silence, they heard a baby's sudden strong cry.

Bakhtiian jumped to his feet, and spun, and stopped in his tracks.

The baby cried again, and then cut off.

Silence.

Bakhtiian was shaking so hard that Aleksi could see it, even with the night and the distance between them. He was afraid. Aleksi rose then, and Marco with him, and all of them rose, the etsanas and the dyans. Vera Veselov slipped a strong arm around her cousin Anna and helped her to her feet, and Irena Orzhekov steadied Arina on her other side, and between them, Arina managed to stay upright. Aleksi felt how desperate they all were—they wanted the gods to judge in Bakhtiian's favor not just for his sake, but for the sake of the jaran.

Svetlana threw the entrance flap aside, and Katerina and Galina emerged, each girl bearing a torch.

Blood streaked Galina's hands, and she grinned hugely. Sonia ducked out behind them. She held a bundle in her arms, and it hiccuped a cry as the cold air hit its face and then it began to squall.

Sonia laughed at something someone said behind her. She marched over and deposited the screaming bundle into Bakhtiian's arms. At once, the child ceased crying. Ilya stared down at it. Alert but calm now, it stared up at him.

"Tess says that her name is Natalia,"" said Sonia. She crossed to kiss her mother, Irena Orzhekov, and then turned and hurried back inside the tent.

"Natalia," whispered Bakhtiian. He looked stunned.

Svetlana drew aside the entrance curtains again, and Sonia and Dr. Hierakis helped Tess out of the tent Tess moved gingerly, leaning heavily on the two women, but she smiled. Aleksi took in a breath, able to breathe again. Marco heaved his breath out abruptly in a relieved sigh.

Bakhtiian's expression blossomed into a smile that even darkness could not dim. He went to greet his wife. He kissed her on either cheek, and then he turned and regarded his audience. Aleksi had never seen him look more triumphant.

Mother Sakhalin walked over to him and offered him the horse-tail staff. "It appears, Bakhtiian," she said, "that the gods have forgiven you. Far be it from me to judge otherwise."

But, of course, with the baby in his arms—-and a big, thriving child she appeared to be, too—he could not take the staff.

"Vasha," he said, and immediately the boy leapt up and ran over to him. "Hold the staff for me, if you please."

Mother Sakhalin hesitated for one instant. Then she gave Vassily Kireyevsky the horse-tail staff.

The others came forward, one by one, and greeted the new child with a blessing and Tess with a kiss on. either cheek. Last, Irena Orzhekov stopped before her nephew and held up his saber.

"This is yours, I believe."

"Here," said Tess, the first time she had spoken at all. "I'll belt it on him." Sonia still supported her, but Tess took the saber from Mother Orzhekov's hands and secured it with her own hands onto her husband's belt. Irena Orzhekov embraced her, and then Tess stepped back and turned to the doctor. She looked utterly exhausted, but pleased. "I'm going to go lie down now," she announced.

And that was that. The first pale line of light, heralding dawn, limned the eastern horizon.

Smiling besottedly down at his daughter, Bakhtiian followed Tess inside. Sonia and the doctor went in behind him. Vasha placed the horse-tail staff reverently in its wooden holder, under the awning, and then Katya pushed him, and he shoved her back, and Galina huffed and rolled her eyes and they all laughed and raced away toward the trail.

"Beat you there."

"No, I will."

"I'll be first!"

The two youngest dyans took either end of Arina Veselov's litter and carried her away. Her cousin followed, and the other etsanas and dyans, with Mother Sakhalin steadying herself on her nephew's arm.

The morning sun made palest parchment of the old woman's skin, and Aleksi saw clearly how very old she was, and how frail. The change had come suddenly on her, after her grandson had left.

Sonia emerged from the tent. "Marco! It is you! I'm so very pleased to see you. Come in. Come in."

But once inside the tent, which smelled of blood and other musky things, Aleksi had only die chance to kiss Tess on either cheek before he had to move aside so that Marco could kneel beside her.

"Marco! You arrived safely. Did you bring the maps?"

"Yes. I—"

"Oh, can't it wait until tomorrow? I really—"

He laughed. "Of course, Tess. I was just about to suggest that myself. We'll go."

They went, he and Aleksi. Aleksi paused by the entrance to look back. All the curtains within had been thrown back, making one huge chamber of the whole. Tess reclined on a couch of pillows and Bakhtiian sat up against her, one arm over her shoulders and one cradling their baby. He looked, Aleksi decided, just as stupidly ecstatic as Feodor had when he had first held Lara.

Svetlana met him outside, her belly swollen under her skirts. After he introduced her to Marco, she smiled and kissed Aleksi on the cheek. "Sonia and I are going to stay up here with the doctor. You don't mind, do you?"

He leaned his head against her hair and just breathed it in, for a moment. She always smelled of sweet things, of grass and flowers and fresh herbs and babies. "I'll see things are made ready down in camp,"

he said, "and send some men up with a litter for Tess."

She smiled at him and let him go.

They went down. Dawn rose in the east, and light spread out over the lands.

In the camp, a great celebration was being prepared for the birth of the child. Aleksi left Marco with Nadine, found Galina already preparing a childbed tent for Tess, and directed four riders with a litter up to the height. Then he wandered, just wandered around the camp, observing, as he liked to do. He felt deeply content.

In the Grekov camp, Raysia Grekov was directing a rehearsal of her new telling of die "Daughter of the Sun." She had picked out musicians, each of them with a good voice, and given them tabards to wear as costumes, and built out of the old tale as told by one Singer over ten nights a new tale sung by seven singers in a single afternoon. She herself sang the Daughter's role, and Aleksi could not help but stay to watch.

The singers did not move, as they walked and sang, with die fluidity of the actors, but perhaps Raysia did not want to create the same kind of story as the actors had. Here the song itself was preeminent, supported by slow, sweeping gestures and the long frozen poses taken by the singers. The plain, bold colors and simple lines of the tabards gave each singer a distinctive look. Mother Sun wore the yellow-orange of fire. Her daughter wore the blue of the heavens, and the dyan Yuri Sakhalin wore red, which is the strength of earth and blood. One demon wore black and die other wore white. The woman who sang the sisters wore green, and the man who sang the riders of Sakhalin's jahar wore the pale gold of grass.

Raysia had used her own telling of the tale and wound it in on itself, and Aleksi found himself rooted to the spot and unable to move, listening to it, seeing it. Mother Sun exiled her daughter to the earth, and sent with her ten sisters to be her companions. These ten sisters bore the tribes of the jaran, and one day, the first dyan of the tribes fell in love with the Daughter of the Sun. She refused him, as surely any heaven-born creature must. He led his jahar into battle, and fell to a grievous blow.

Wounded unto death, he begged her for healing. Healing him, she loved him, and together they made a child. And she gave him a saber—the sword of heaven— because of which he could from then on never lose a battle.

Just as Tess and her brother had given Ilya a sword, which not even he knew the strength of.

Yuri Sakhalin never lost a battle after that, or at least, that is how the Singers sang the tale. No battle but the one every mortal being lost—that against Grandmother Night.

Aleksi strolled back to his tent, feeling thoughtful, feeling ... curious. He knew the art of moving without being seen; it had saved his life more than once, when he was an orphan. He slipped unnoticed into Dr. Hierakis's tent, even keeping the bells from ringing, and he stood in front of her table and spoke the words he had memorized from hearing Tess say them: "Run League worlds."

Rhui he now recognized. He could recognize the broad pale expanse that marked the plains and the tiny tiny bay far to the south that marked the city of Jeds. Then the other worlds appeared, strange spheres with yet stranger names: Three Rings. Something unpronounceable. Cassie. Hydra. Eridanaia.

Tau Ceti Tierce. Sirin Five. Ophiuchi-Sei. And last, her planet, the only one as heart-wrenchingly beautiful as Rhui, the only other one that wore as brilliant a coat of blue, symbolizing the heavens: Earth.

Aleksi sank down into a chair and watched as the program ran on, showing paler worlds and fiercer stars, showing webs of light dangling against a black void and many-eyed globes of polished metal and ships like blunt arrows docked at piers built of sparkling gossamer threads. He watched as thousands upon thousands of towers rose up from a bleak plain and became invested with lights as numerous as the stars, or as the fires of the jaran army.

No one disturbed him, hidden here in the doctor's private chambers. Outside, the celebration had already begun. Inside, in the quiet of the tent, Aleksi discovered the universe.