CHAPTER FOUR

A Transaction

Hills and forest broken by fields and villages and an occasional town—such were the khaja lands that Vassily and his escort rode through, day after day after day, heading north. Some of these Yossian princes and dukes had mustered armies and fought Sakhalin; most of them had died or fled, and two, with their captured children and wives, had been sent north to pledge loyalty to Bakhtiian.

Rather like he was being sent north, except that Bakhtiian was probably more merciful to the khaja princes than he would be to Vasha.

But that was too distressing to think about for long. Vasha knew how to hunker down and go on without staring his worst troubles in the face.

The land lay quiet. More, Vasha thought, because the khaja were still shocked by the sudden and devastating appearance of the jaran army than because they were now at peace. Sakhalin sacked cities that resisted and spared those that surrendered immediately. More and more, the khaja surrendered. He ought to have taken that tack with Sakhalin, he ought to have just obeyed, but to be sent out to groom horses with fifteen-year-olds! It was too much to endure.

"Shall we go over to the merchants' camp?" Stefan asked, his question a welcome relief. They'd done with watering the horses and had hobbled them for the night, and it wasn't their duty this evening to stand guard.

Vasha sighed, glancing back toward the jahar's camp, where the captured khaja woman's tent had been set up by older riders. Her name was Rusudani, and she was evidently a daughter or niece or cousin of Prince Zakaria of the Yos princedom of Tarsina-Kara. That was all he knew about her or was, at this rate, ever likely to know.

"You can't talk to her anyway," added Stefan, reading his mind.

"And you can't talk to Merchant Bathori's wife, either," retorted Vasha, stung, "even if you do make eyes at her shamelessly."

"Can too talk to her. She speaks Taor. So there."

"But you never have, so what difference does it make?"

Stefan punched at him, and Vasha punched back, and they sparred a bit until they both broke off, laughing and out of breath.

"Come on, let's go," said Vasha. "The merchants' camp is the only interesting place here, since we can't go into that town."

"We could sneak out ..." suggested Stefan, but Vasha only shook his head. Riasonovsky had laid down strict rules for his charges, and Vasha did not intend to get into any more trouble.

They skirted the horses and started off along the river. At dusk, the river bank melded with the water and the moon's reflection swam on the rippling current. On this side of the river lay the princedom of Hereti-Manas, across it that of Gelasti, but the land looked exactly the same to Vassily.

A ford lay down at the bend in the river, and on the other bank stood the town of Manas the Smaller, itself a kind of younger cousin to the city of Greater Manas, the prince's seat.

Here where they camped, the merchants' wagons covered a whole grassy area, bounded by trees on one side and on the other by the high grass and reeds of the damp ground nearest the river. Insects riddled the air, except where fire and smoke drove them away. Riasonovsky had a third of his men on watch, but many of the rest had wandered over to the little bazaar the merchants had set up. A fair number of people, mostly women and old men, had forded the river from Manas the Smaller to come to bargain and barter and buy.

Even the newest boy sent to the army from the plains could have as many copper coins as he could carry, so Vasha and Stefan had money. They paid two copper coins each to the merchant from Parkilnous who doled out kava in tin cups. They lingered at the edge of his stall, sipping at the hot, bitter drink while they surveyed the makeshift bazaar, which they had come to know well in the twenty days since Riasonovsky had agreed to let the little caravan of five merchants and their entourages and goods travel with the jahar.

Master Larenin, the Parkilnese merchant, sold spices and seeds and nuts and beans, as well as salt, and the exotic smells alone were reason enough to linger by his stall. A Jedan man, Benefract, displayed his usual array of utensils and pots. Skins and worked leather and furs, some of which were traded for local varieties, came from the stall of the Yossian merchant Hunyati, who hailed from the Yos kingdom of Dushan.

But Vasha found Sister Yvanne's tables most interesting. Sister Yvanne sat, as she usually did, in a heavy brocaded chair and supervised while two young men (Vasha wasn't sure if they were her sons, her nephews, her apprentices, or her slaves) did a brisk business in what Katerina had condescendingly informed him were religious goods. Tiny silver knives, pendants to hang from gold and silver chains, rested on cloth. There were boxes, too, some of them small enough to hang on necklaces, other, larger ones made and decorated in different styles: cloisonne enameling, painted wood, even one that appeared to be carved from black bone. Once Vasha had seen Sister Yvanne open one (they each had some secret way of opening) for a customer; he could have sworn there was a bit of frail yellowed bone tucked inside, a fingerbone, perhaps. There were also leatherbound books in any one of several languages, stamped with gold leaf titles. The ones in Rhuian and Taor read The Recitation. Strangely, Sister Yvanne only sold this one particular book, and commentaries on it. She did not have a whole sampling of books such as a book merchant in Jeds might have.

"Look," said Stefan, elbowing Vasha. "There she is." He hastily handed his empty cup back to Master Larenin's apprentice and sidled over toward Sister Yvanne's tables.

She was the very young and very pretty wife of Merchant Bathori, a fat, middle-aged man who always seemed to Vasha to have been recently dipped in lard. She stood staring at the tiny silver knives, wringing her hands together and biting prettily at her lower lip, while Sister Yvanne eyed her with evident disapproval. Each woman wore a scarf to hide her hair, but while Sister Yvanne's drab gray scarf matched her shapeless robes and covered her hair entirely, the young woman's scarf was gaily bright. Wisps of pale hair escaped from under it to curl around her face.

"How can she stand to be married to that horrible old man?" Stefan whispered. "I didn't think the khaja men marked women."

"No, but a girl's parents might sell her to a rich man, or a rich girl might be sent with some of her riches to a noble one. That's how the khaja do it."

"Oh." Stefan looked mollified. "Poor woman. At least it wasn't any of her choice. Still, it must be awful. Can you imagine—?" But he broke off, unable to voice what he didn't want to imagine, or at least, what he did want to imagine, only for himself. He blushed and finally looked away from her, recalling proper manners. At least enough people moved about the bazaar that no one bothered to notice two young men loitering. Or if they did, they noticed Stefan, who was not just good-looking but had enough healer's training to warrant respect. No one bothered to notice Vasha; he was just another dark-haired, slender boy a bit too old to still be helping with the horses. Surely that was what the khaja travelers thought of him. It galled.

At last Merchant Bathori ambled over, leaving his own stalls where he sold cloth. The way he casually rested a hand where the back of her skirt curved out over her buttocks, the way he publicly patted and squeezed her, made Vasha's skin crawl. Stefan, glancing over, jerked his gaze away. She did not seem to mind, however. Perhaps she had grown used to it.

Vasha watched the transaction. The young woman wanted one of the tiny silver knives. But the odd thing was not that Bathori did not want to buy it for her—he seemed amenable—but that Sister Yvanne did not seem to want to sell it to her. They were the only two women in the merchants' train.

Surely as women they would have befriended one another. And what merchant refused a sale?

The khaja were very confusing.

"Vasha! What are you doing out here?"

Vasha started and turned around, tensing. Even since he had arrived at Sakhalin's army six months ago and seen Katerina again, he had felt awkward and stupid around her. She had been his dearest cousin, and his first lover, before she had left two years ago to ride with a jahar of archers in Sakhalin's army. At first she had been happy to see him, but that had all changed. Now he wished she had stayed with Sakhalin instead of choosing to act as Rusudani's escort back to the main camp.

"What are you doing here?" he retorted.

"I may go where I please, which is more than I can say for you!"

"No doubt you're still feeling clever because Sakhalin gave you the imperial staff."

"Oooh. That still rankles, does it? But why should Sakhalin vest authority for the journey in your hands when he won't even trust you in his army? Because he's sending you home in disgrace?"

"Thank you for reminding me, since I'd obviously forgotten it."

"Oh, Vasha," she said plaintively, her mood changing abruptly, as it often did. "Why did you have to act so stupidly?"

But Vasha was too angry with her to listen to her sympathy now. He pointedly turned his back on her and looked back at the dispute going on between Sister Yvanne and Merchant Bathori. To his astonishment, a new party had entered the fray: Rusudani. She no longer concealed her face, but like all the women in Yos lands, she covered her hair with a scarf. She had a softer, rounder face than Bathori's wife, and she was small, with plump hands, a delicate olive complexion, and dark eyes. The sight of her always made Vasha horribly embarrassed; not just that he thought her so pretty, but that he remembered what it was like to have her holding on to him so very very closely when they had ridden together away from the bandit raid, escaping back to the army. She had not so much as looked at him once since coming under Katerina's wing.

"She wanted to visit the bazaar," said Katerina, sounding disgruntled, "so of course I came with her, since we're the only women here. One never knows how the khaja will treat a woman alone." But with her long knife at her belt and her quiver with arrows and unstrung bow, Katerina looked like a woman any person, even a khaja, would treat with respect. "Even if she is a princess."

"A noblewoman," he replied, "but you can't know she's a princess. She could just be a lesser relation to Prince Zakaria." He trailed off because Katerina gave him such a superior look.

"She has a prince's manners, Vasha, as you ought to know."

"Because I have them myself?"

"At the most inappropriate times."

"Thank the gods I'm not as meek and humble as you are!"

"You two!" said Stefan. "My ears hurt."

"Anyway," Vasha added quickly, wanting to change the subject, "why shouldn't she be safe? There are other women riding with us, Sister Yvanne and Merchant Bathori's wife."

Katerina snorted. "Bathori's wife?" She blinked several times in quick succession. "Don't you know anything?"

"But she rides in the finest painted wagon, over there," protested Stefan, abruptly defensive, "which must be hers, and Bathori goes in to her every night."

"I have no doubt he does," said Katerina rudely. Both Vasha and Stefan blushed furiously, and Stefan, abashed, looked down at his boots.

"Katya!" exclaimed Vasha. "What's happened to you?" Her coarseness shocked him more than her disdain for everything he did and said.

"You couldn't understand," she said bitterly. Then, like lightning, her mood shifted, and he saw tears in her eyes. Her lower lip trembled, and for an instant he thought she was going to start crying.

Once, he would have been her first and most precious confidant.

"No doubt I'm too stupid to know," he snapped, annoyed that she had abandoned him.

Her face stiffened at once. She brushed the ends of her braids back over her shoulder and strode away, over to the table.

"Oh, Vasha!" said Stefan, exasperated.

"Be quiet." Vasha crossed his arms and stared after her, unwilling to admit to any wrongdoing. She had started it, after all.

And there was enough to distract him. At Sister Yvanne's table, a strange spectacle unfolded.

Rusudani pulled back the sleeve of her long tunic and displayed her wrist to the Sister. The change this small gesture wrought was miraculous. At once, Sister Yvanne agreed to give up one of the tiny silver knives, and Merchant Bathori exchanged coins with her.

But then the transaction changed yet again: Rusudani turned and addressed Bathori's wife, and soon Bathori joined in until all three of them were, evidently, haggling over something. By degrees, Stefan inched closer to the conversation, and Vasha followed him, grateful to have any chance to see Rusudani.

Bathori was a great haggler. In the twenty days the merchants had traveled with them, Vasha had watched him wear down his customers with sheer volume of words. This time, he spoke infrequently and deferred more and more to Rusudani. After a bit, nodding her head, she reached into the complicated layers of robe, skirt, and trousers that she wore and brought out a purse. From that purse she removed five coins. Four she gave to Bathori and the fifth to Bathori's wife.

Bathori's wife curtsied and said, in clear Taor, "Lady, I am called Jaelle." Then the two khaja women walked away together, Jaelle trailing three steps behind Rusudani.

Katerina still stood by the table. She glanced at Vasha and Stefan, turned her back toward them, and spoke briefly with Bathori and Sister Yvanne in Taor, the trade language many of the children of the Orzhekov tribe had learned during their time in Tess's school. Toward Katerina, the khaja merchants' demeanor was not just deferential but fawning.

"No wonder she has such a fat head," said Vasha.

"What? Are you still angry with her?"

"What do you think! I have every right to be!"

"No need to be angry with me, too," retorted Stefan. "I know how much she loved you before, Vasha, but she has been two years with the army. Surely she must prefer to spend her time with the women." He paused, and then said it anyway. "And with older men, now."

"Not with a rash, stupid boy like me? Well, I don't care what she thinks about me."

"Of course you don't."

But Vassily waited, anyway, while Katerina finished her conversation with the two merchants and walked back to them. She had developed a kind of saunter that he detested.

"So," she said, coming up beside them, "Bathori's wife has gone to be handmaiden to the princess.

But maybe Bathori can find a new wife there." With her chin, she indicated a section of the bazaar where a cluster of khaja women with uncovered hair loitered around a circle of small wagons, each wagon crowned with a tent over the bed of the wagon.

The wagons had come over from Manas the Smaller, Vasha supposed to cart goods back into town. He hadn't seen the little tents go up, and now he realized that a fair number of jaran riders stood around there as well, drinking hot kava and oilberry wine from Merchant Larenin's wagons and flirting, most of them with discreet good manners, with the khaja women. Vassily knew about khaja women: It was commonly believed among the tribes that khaja women covered their faces, kept their eyes cast down, and in general were afraid of men, quite the opposite of how real women were supposed to behave. It was just another example of what barbarians the khaja were. But these khaja women were much more like jaran women. A horrible suspicion took hold of Vasha.

"Do khaja really marry again so quickly?" Stefan asked. "Does he even know those women, or anything of their families? How can he? I suppose without the mark on a woman's face the khaja have no real respect for marriage, then, if it can be given up so easily...."

Katerina's look silenced him. Vasha could tell, anyway, that Stefan was babbling, something he never did except when a powerful emotion took hold of him. "I'm going to bed," said Katerina, and left them.

Meanwhile, Merchant Bathori excused himself from Sister Yvanne and strode purposefully over to the clot of khaja women. They clustered around him while he talked. As he finished, all but three of the women laughed and filtered back to flirt with the soldiers once again. Bathori himself dismissed a pale-haired older woman in favor of the two younger ones, one raven-haired, the other with features similar to those of his former wife, although her complexion was not as fine. The three of them began to haggle.

Suddenly, the raven-haired girl unlaced her blouse and bared her breasts, right there in front of everyone. Stefan choked. Vasha could not help but stare. The other khaja women went on with their talking and flirting without blinking an eye, but every man within sight of her—every jaran man, that is—stopped stock-still in shock. Well, she had fine, full breasts and ample, pleasing flesh. Bathori examined her the way a man would examine a horse he was planning to acquire. He squeezed her breasts, then her buttocks through her skirt, and patted her briskly as if to pronounce himself satisfied.

The blonde woman looked disappointed but shrugged and walked away. Without any sign that she cared one whit that every man there was trying not to stare at her—or perhaps even pleased that it was so—the raven-haired girl laced up her blouse and began haggling with Bathori again.

"I will never understand the khaja," said Stefan. The words caught in his throat. He looked mortified.

"She's a whore," said Vasha.

"What's a whore?"

"A woman who sells having sex with men for coins or goods. I saw them in Jeds."

"No. You're lying. I don't believe it. I know khaja are barbarians, but—" He broke off. Like the other children in Tess Soerensen's school, Stefan had received a rigorous education. It wasn't khaja he couldn't believe it about. It was the conclusion he must then draw about Jaelle, the pretty young woman he admired. "But she couldn't be," he finished plaintively. "What would drive a woman to behave like that? How could her mother and aunts ever let her come to such a pass?"

"Tess says that many khaja lands don't even have etsanas."

"I hate the khaja," said Stefan suddenly. He turned and stalked away.

But Vasha did not move. It was true that the khaja were barbarians. It was no wonder that the gods had given Bakhtiian a vision, that their favorite children, the jaran, must rule over these less-favored lands. But still, now that the jaran ruled khaja lands, it did no good simply to condemn, simply to sneer, at khaja ways. A ruler must set down true and good laws, of course, and hold to them, but simply crushing the khaja would not make them good subjects.

But he shied away from thoughts that might lead him to think too keenly about his father.

Most of the riders had abandoned the whores, shocked by the raven-haired girl's display. The few left looked quite drunk. Vasha wandered back by Sister Yvanne's wagons and paused there to peer at the silver knives. He had seen these in Jeds, too, had even been in the great holy church there, but he had never gotten a satisfactory explanation for them. Tess had an annoying habit of only answering those questions she wanted to. Why would anyone want a tiny image of a knife rather than a real knife, which was useful?

By the light of two lanterns, Sister Yvanne and her two assistants were carefully bundling up their wares and putting them away.

"The jaran may be barbarians," Sister Yvanne was saying tartly to one of her boys, a black-haired young man dressed in gray robes similar to those the Sister wore, "but at least Hristain has granted them a proper sense of modesty, though I fear they are sadly lacking in humility. But we may yet be successful, Brother Saghir, in our mission, if God favors us."

"What is Hristain?" Vasha asked. "Isn't that the name of your god?" He started because they both started, surprised that he could understand them.

"You speak Taor, most honorable young man?"

"Yes, my lady," replied Vasha, uncomfortable now. He didn't like the way she fixed her eye on him. It reminded him too much of the way she had looked at the poor woman Jaelle, disapproving but also, in a perverse way, hopeful.

"We speak of our Lord, the Anointed One," she went on, making a funny little gesture with one hand in front of herself. "Hristain is one of His titles. Indeed, in the language of the true church, it is His name. In this book is written the recitation of His word. May I tell you of His sundering?"

"Uh, no, I thank you." Vasha backed away. She had a light in her eyes that reminded him of his father, and he didn't want to think about his father.

He fled back to the jahar's camp, and found Stefan easily enough, standing morosely in the darkness beyond the firelight outside Rusudani's tent. Both of the khaja women knelt outside the tent.

Rusudani was speaking, but in such a low voice that Vasha could only just see her lips move, not hear her words—which he couldn't have understood in any case, since she did not speak Taor. She held her little knife in her right hand and with her left clutched a book. Vasha thought that she was, perhaps, praying.

And while Rusudani spoke, her new servant, Jaelle, lifted the tiny knife she had just acquired and brought it to her lips and kissed it ardently. She had tears on her cheeks.