CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The Law of Becoming

Anatoly Sakhalin sat in the lounge of the Gray Raven and stared at the wall. The wall stared back at him, mute. It did not actually stare, of course. He only imagined it did, knowing that it contained images inside it, scenes in three dimensions, messages from people remote both in distance and time, an encyclopedia of human history encapsulated into a cylinder the size of his index finger. It even contained a nesh port, although on the Gray Raven, drifting in space, any neshing he might do was limited to the net space available shipboard.

But the wall remained mute because it contained no answers for him. Not any more. Information.

Questions. Communications. That was all. That was no longer enough.

For two days he had shut himself off here in the lounge. Moshe left food four times a day. The small door in the corner led into a smaller lavatory. The crew of the Gray Raven allowed him his privacy. On a Chapalii ship he could have commanded privacy; here he could only request it. For some reason, the distinction comforted him.

At first, returning from his audience with the emperor, he had tried to make sense of what he now ruled. All daiga holdings. In addition, three dukes, known as Tai, and all that they possessed; five independent lords, known as Cha, and all that they possessed. Star systems on a map, diagrammatic models of cities and warehousing capabilities and charts of mining projections and designated routes along the net of singularities.

Individually, he could make sense of each one. Together, they overwhelmed him. After twenty hours of that he had slept for ten. He had tried other ways of organizing his holdings, of compressing them to manageable proportions, but after eight more hours he had given up and spoken the word that snapped off the wall.

He set a plate on his lap, broke a square of crumbly corn bread in half, and spread butter on it. It was a little dry. It had been sitting on the side table for hours. But the butter was sweet.

"Oh, gods," he said to the wall, which as usual refused to reply. As miraculous as these modellers, these computers, these imagers and recorders and encyclopedias and nesh worlds were, in the end, they were only tools. Like a sword, you had to know how to use them. Like a needle, they only served to pull the thread through the cloth: The pattern you embroidered had to come out of your own mind. Like a loom, they were of themselves empty until the human hand, the Chapalii hand, the hand guided by intelligence, strung the warp and wove the weft.

He missed his daughter. In some ways Portia was the only tangible thing he could trust, a part of himself without being his possession. And she loved him freely, fully, and without the least duplicity, as only a child can. He missed his sister Shura. She and Portia were the only creatures in the universe that he loved simply because they existed. Without them, he felt alone.

"Put a call through to Captain Emrys," he said to the wall.

"Yes?" she answered immediately, as if she had been waiting for him. Probably she had. What else was there for her to do, here in orbit around Chapal, suspended while she waited for him to act?

"I would like to meet with you and the others."

"When?"

"Now, if you can."

Which of course they could. They assembled quickly. Benjamin brought freshly baked apple fritters, fried to a golden brown, crunchy and sweet. No one ventured to sit on the couch beside Anatoly. Rather, they arranged themselves in a semicircle in front of him. Summer sat cross-legged on the floor and worked on a basket, weaving reeds together; able to sit still, she could not abide quiet hands. Rachelle draped herself dramatically over a chair, pretending tranquility, but he could see how tense she was. Florien sat on one arm of the couch, eyes shifting all over the room as if he was looking for something he had lost and would spring up in one moment to get it. Benjamin finished a fritter, licked his fingers, and began on another. Moshe stood, fidgeting, by the door. Branwen flopped down on the other couch. He watched her longest; she was relaxed, comfortable in her body, but alert.

They knew what he was. He had told them. At first they had not quite believed him, but after the flood of messages and the arrival of over a dozen Chapalii craft in parallel orbits begging for instructions or for a visitation from the great lord, they had to accept it. Now they surveyed him warily, except for Branwen who, thank the gods, merely looked patient.

"You know what I have become," he began. "But I don't know what to do now. What I knew, what I learned, with the jaran has taught me many valuable lessons, but only some of them apply here.

I can't know everything, I can't oversee everything. I can't make every decision. All I know is that my first loyalty lies to my own people, to the jaran, and every action I take must be to their benefit."

"What about the rest of the human race?" asked Rachelle. "I'm not working for Charles Soerensen because I like being a lapdog to the Chapalii, you know."

"Rachelle," scolded Summer. "At least let him state his case."

Anatoly leaned forward, bracing his hands on his thighs. "What benefits the jaran will most likely also benefit all humans, certainly more than it will the Chapalii. But for me to make any great plans now would be hasty, to say the least. To act rashly in war is to invite disaster."

"Are we at war?" asked Summer.

"I meant it as a ... as a ... an old saying. . . ?" He glanced toward Branwen for help.

"An aphorism?"

"Yes. Thank you."

She smiled. The lift of her mouth calmed his nerves.

"But that isn't what I need to say," he went on. "No prince remains prince without a court. No dyan remains a dyan without a jahar. I don't have a jahar any more, and, gods, I need one now desperately.

I have to protect myself by surrounding myself with people I trust, who will trust me, who will give me sincere and truthful advice whether or not they think I might like hearing it, and who I know will not betray me, for any price, at any cost. Where can I get such people?"

He let the question hang for a minute before answering it himself. "I would like to start with the Gray Raven. With you."

"What's in it for us?" asked Rachelle.

"Could I get access to even more Chapalii nodes?" asked Florien.

Benjamin took two fritters and bit down hard on them.

"Where do you stand on the rebellion?" asked Summer. "It's not necessarily in your interest anymore to support freedom for us daiga, not if you're a prince among the Chapalii and can rule us all however you like."

Moshe gaped, gulping down an exclamation.

Branwen said nothing, just watched him.

"I did not seek this," said Anatoly. "You know that's true. But now that I have it, I must use it wisely. Surely, if you think you have cause not to trust me, you would rather put yourselves close enough to watch what I do rather than having to suffer my decisions secondhand? I would ask that you make an oath to me, as I would make one to you in your turn, for your service, your knowledge, your life if necessary—"

"What duration?" asked Rachelle.

"For the rest of your life would be best, of course, but I could only ask that of jaran. Ten years, to start? Twenty would be better. But I will only take your oaths if they are given freely, if you give yourselves to my service freely. In return, I will rely on you, I will take your advice, I will see to it that you are taken care of. But if I ever find that you have betrayed me, I will kill you."

Benjamin coughed down his last mouthful of fritter. "You can't do that! There's a law against murder. There's due process...." He trailed off, wiping powdered sugar off his mouth with a cloth napkin.

"That is true." Anatoly lifted both hands, palms up. "I will study these laws further, and leave them in place, and respect them, but Summer is right. They do not apply to me."

"Shit," said Rachelle. "The little bastard's right. He can do whatever he damned well pleases." But then, deliberately, she winked at him.

Anatoly grinned, knowing that he had one on his side. "Of course, by only accepting your freely given oaths, I accept also that you may freely leave, so long as you tell me openly and we fix between us any due compensation and an agreement about what you may and may not do afterward which might jeopardize the security of my position."

"Hey, Florien, no selling tech secrets to the competition."

Florien blinked in his absentminded way. "Rachelle, someday the evil spirits will get you."

"I hope so."

"We'll have to discuss it," said Branwen suddenly, cutting into this interchange. "We vote on things here."

"I know that," said Anatoly. "I'll go back to my cabin and wait for your decision."

In his cabin, he took off his boots, lay down on the narrow bunk, hooked his hands under his head, and stared at nothing. After a while, he rolled onto his right side and fished out the castle piece, setting it on the floor.

"Show me the board." At once the flat black game board flowered into existence, contained in its grid of glowing white lines. The horseman had moved two intersections away from the emperor's throne. The piece shaped like a teardrop had moved closer to him, and another piece, shaped like a blade, had moved farther away. The others had not changed their position from the last time he had looked.

All daiga holdings. Should he simply go down to Rhui and report in to Bakhtiian, handing these lands over to him, as was his duty? Or should he claim them for the Sakhalin tribe, as was his right?

Except without Bakhtiian and his vision, without Ilya's marriage to Tess Soerensen and the intervention of Charles Soerensen, Anatoly would never have left Rhui at all, never left the jaran, never known that khaja lands flourished beyond the plains, that worlds and stars existed beyond Rhui and Mother Sun.

A bell rang at his door. He closed his hand over the castle piece, concealing it, and the game board vanished. Lifting his hand, rolling up to sit, he said, "Enter." The door slid open and Branwen walked in. That was one of the many things he liked about her: She never hesitated. She knew this was her ship, and however powerful he might be now, prince of the Sakhalin, prince in the Chapalii Empire, it was still her ship. Like an etsana, she understood where her power lay, and that she alone could wield it.

She sat down on the end of his bunk. Like a woman, she did not ask for permission. His feet brushed her hips, but she did not move away from their touch. Her brown hair curled down over her shoulders. The soft white light emanating from the bunk's ceiling washed the red highlights to silver.

"It was unanimous," she said. "Rachelle tried to vote twice, to make sure she won." She grinned.

Anatoly liked her grin. "You're teasing me. You didn't tell me which way they voted."

"Someone has to make sure you don't fuck up. We just appointed ourselves. Ten years, barring catastrophic changes, as long as you keep to your end of the bargain. To be reconsidered at the end of that time."

She stretched her long, lean legs out in front of her and rested a hand just below his knee, as if balancing herself there.

"That is acceptable." He was almost painfully aware of the warmth and pressure of her hand on his leg. It had been so long since a woman had shown him spontaneous physical affection.

"I don't normally do this," added Branwen, "and I know you're married, but you've sustained a shock. And you look like hell."

"I do?"

But those were the last words he said for a while, because she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.

Valentin died three hours after Diana and Portia left Naroshi's palace. Both events came abruptly, as if an unseen communication had triggered them. Ilyana had not gone to see Diana off; she had been too busy consoling Evdokia for the loss of her best friend. And anyway, an undercurrent of hushed arguments and frowning looks had swirled through the company since planetrise. As usual, no one bothered to tell Ilyana what was going on, but she heard enough to guess, eavesdropping.

"She would cut out like that with only two performances left."

"Give her a break, Annet. Gives you a chance to shine, don't it?"

"That's true. Though playing Zenocrate to Veselov's Tamberlaine is more like punishment."

"Yeah, he is flat. I don't see why everyone says he used to be such a promising actor. He's just a slut."

"He'll go back to the acties, I bet."

"We can hope."

And another pair, in another place.

"It's about time she did something, instead of just sneaking around with Yassir. I feel sorry for that poor husband of hers."

A snort. "Serves him right, the arrogant tvut. He's so polite he'd freeze your blood to ice, and all like he's doing you a favor. D'you think it's true he saw the emperor? Nah. Why him, and not anyone else?"

"Cos' he's a—what—a prince?"

Gales of laughter, which annoyed Ilyana more than the comments about her father had. But they broke off soon enough. "They got a message in this morning something urgent. That's why La Brooke left."

Only two performances left. Sitting beside Valentin's couch, she shut her eyes and tranced out on his breathing. Monitored by the bed, his exhalation and inhalation soothed her because of its regularity.

His body had curled even farther into a fetal position, and his right hand had ceased twitching, as it had been all yesterday.

She didn't want to leave. She didn't want to go back to London, not really, except to see Kori and her other friends, but that's where they would go, if he could get around M. Pandit. But wherever they ended up, she could not bear going on day after day like this with her parents, even with an advocate in tow, to monitor their psychological health.

Valentin let out a breath. There was silence. She thought at first that she had dozed off, but she hadn't. He had stopped breathing.

She jumped to her feet and bolted for the curtained door. When her hand touched the cloth, she froze. They would come soon enough. An alarm must be going off on Yomi's slate. But why hurry them? They would just force Valentin's heart to start up again; they would plug his brain stem into an artificial stimulator, and he would live, mindless, against his will, through the machine. She turned and stared down at him.

His face was slack, empty. All the mobility of expression that made him Valentin, little pest, favorite brother, had vanished when their father had severed him from his soul. His lips still had the pale rose tint of a delicate shell, but even that seemed to drain out of him as she watched, as he cooled. His life slipped away, and she let it go. When they all came running, it was too late to try to bring him back.

"I fell asleep," she lied, starting to cry. She did not have to lie about her grief. They left her alone to weep while they conferred over the body. She went out to sit in the courtyard. The sun warmed her, and she took off her boots and let its heat linger on her toes, on her ankles, on her knees.

"Yana!"

She flinched and tugged her trouser legs back down to her ankles.

"It is unbecoming to expose yourself so shamelessly," snapped her mother. "But I suppose that now that you have gone to live in ... a man's tent, that you no longer feel constrained to behave like a good woman."

"I'm not sleeping in a man's tent! I'm just using David's cot. He sleeps somewhere else."

Karolla hefted Little Rose up onto her shoulder. The baby's presence was itself an accusation.

Unnamed still, because of her sister's stubbornness. But Karolla said nothing more. She walked over to the group gathering outside the room where Valentin lay.

They were arguing over what to do with the body. Ilyana spotted David's thick crown of braids in the throng and sidled over to his side, squeezing past some of the others to reach him. She used his body as a shield from her father, who stood next to his wife, confronting Yomi.

"He must be left on the plains," Karolla was saying in her pedantic way, "so that he can be born again into the world."

Into which world? Ilyana thought. This world? What would he become, born back onto an alien moon? An alien himself? A ghost crying for its true home?

"He must be taken back to the plains," repeated Karolla stubbornly.

"To Rhui?" Yomi asked. "You know that is impossible."

"Then at least back to Earth. Surely even you barbarians have places where you lay out your dead so that Father Wind may cleanse their souls and return them to living."

Someone whispered: "What does she mean, cleanse them?"

"I don't think he wants to go back to Earth," said Ilyana suddenly, stepping out from behind David.

Everyone else started, except David, who had known she was there. "He hated it there. I think you should burn him. He wants to be released."

"That is not our way," said Karolla. "He has not earned release."

Vasil just looked at Ilyana, as if she was a stranger to him.

"I don't care about your way. It's what he wants. Your way is what killed him."

"Who gave you the right to speak such accusations? His body must be given to the wind so that his soul may be returned to the earth."

"Let him go! Why won't you just let him go? You don't care about him, only about yourself."

David grabbed Ilyana and dragged her back before her mother could slap her.

Karolla whitened. In khush, she said: "I cast you out of my tent. You are no longer my daughter."

Ilyana gasped. She looked toward her father, but Vasil's face was cast of stone. He deliberately looked away from her.

Karolla went on, inexorably but with a weird dignity, her words spoken almost by rote, as if memorized from some similar ceremony she had witnessed, she had endured, many many years before. "I declare you tribeless, motherless, kinless. Wander where you will, you shall find no welcome by this fire."

Stunned, Ilyana could not move. David led her away, and she simply walked with him, nerveless, numb. Like rock, she felt nothing, but a sharp blow would crack her.

David sat her down on a bench in the sun. "What did she say?" he asked.

She shook her head. She could still see the knot of people, shifting nervously now that an explosion had occurred that they could not interpret. She could still see her father's golden head, turned away from her.

David pulled her to her feet and guided her out of the caravansary. "What was that all about?" he demanded when they came out onto the dusty road that led to only one destination—to the ruined caravansary. A road that led nowhere. The planet loomed in copper glory in the sky. The sun splintered its rays through one of the outer rings, scattering light in odd fragments over the flat landscape. Out in the grass, the horses grazed peacefully, calm in the golden haze of the sun.

Ilyana broke away from David and ran. At first, anywhere, away. He came after her, but she was younger, not as fast in a sprint, but she had more endurance and she had a head start.

"Genji!" she called into the drowsy air. "Help me."

The barge came for her. She clambered in, slipping once on the stairs in her frantic haste, and the hatch closed behind her to the sound of David cursing her in at least three different languages. Then she left him far behind. The craft slipped through the rose wall and rain poured over it, coursing down its ribs, splattering the dense glass. Clouds obscured the sky, as they always did. Here, in Naroshi's palace—in Genji's palace—it was always raining.

The barge halted and she tumbled out. She had never seen this place before. Rain drenched her, but it was a relief because the air stifled her with its heat and humidity. She stood in front of a small tile-roofed cottage in the middle of a clearing surrounded by jungle. She was soaked to the skin before she finally worked up enough courage to go inside.

She had to push the door open. She stood dripping on a mosaic entryway. What had she expected? A magical hut that, tiny on the outside, opened up into vast ballrooms on the inside? It was just a single room, about fifteen meters square, with no furnishings except a single shell-like chair placed in the center of the mosaic floor. The tiles in the floor had an odd quality of shifting every time Ilyana blinked, like the pattern of stars as seen by a ship in transit.

Genji sat in the chair. Her eyes were open, but she didn't seem to be inside them. Ilyana waited.

Water puddled at her feet and, slowly, dried up, sucked away into the tile floor. Her clothes lightened as the moisture evaporated out of them. It was oppressively hot. Ilyana looked up to the high beams that straddled the open room, beams as dark as ebony wood. When she looked back, Genji was watching her.

Ilyana opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

"I have been traveling with your cousin," said Genji. She did not rise from the chair. Ilyana realized abruptly that fine filaments bound her to the chair, wispy strands as delicate as a spider's web.

"My cousin?"

"Prince Anatoly. Why have you come, my child?"

She had enough strength left to take three steps forward before she collapsed into a heap on the floor. The mosaic was cool against her skin, but as hard as her mother's heart. Ilyana had no tears left.

"I have no mother," she whispered, staring at her hands. She lifted her gaze to take in the smooth cascade of Genji's night-blue robes, her pale shining alien hands curved lightly over the arms of her chair. "I have no tribe."

"You will stay with me."

Eyes wide, Ilyana stared up into her face. Not a human face, not even precisely a face by human standards, but no longer completely strange. A chill struck her, and she shivered, but it passed, soaked up by the heat. "Forever?" she asked, and her voice quavered, lost, and vanished. For an instant, she was terrified. She passed through to resignation and then at last, because she was young, threw away all her fears, consumed by an intense curiosity.

" 'Every change is merely part of a mystical pattern,' " said Genji. "You will stay for as long as need be."

"We must go home," Anatoly told his jahar. "We must consolidate our position before we attempt any campaigns."

"Where is home?" Rachelle asked. "I mean, this ship is my home. Where is yours?"

"The plains," he answered, but his own reply puzzled him. How could he govern his principality from the plains, unless he built a khaja tower with which to communicate with the universe beyond?

"But I think it would be wise," he added, temporizing, "to go first to Charles Soerensen."

Branwen caught his eye and lifted her chin, which meant she agreed with him. He smiled back at her. He appreciated her gesture of the night before. He had no doubt it would be repeated, or at least he hoped it would. So few khaja women knew how a proper woman ought to behave.

"We're being hailed." Florien tapped one ear with the heel of a hand. "I'm not hearing this right.

Isn't a Yao a prince? We've got a prince wanting to come on board. Or at least, that's what it says."

"I will meet him... ?" Anatoly looked questioningly at Branwen.

"Route them through the starboard lock. That's the hold you first came in through, Anatoly. I'll send Summer down with you, for brawn, and I'll monitor from up here with Florien and Rachelle. Ben, you stay in reserve. Moshe, out of sight."

Anatoly went down to the forward hold with Summer. After a long wait, the lock cycled open and two Chapalii stepped through. Anatoly hesitated, then noticed that they wore the tunic and trousers that identified them as stewards. They bowed to him. After a moment two robed Chapalii stepped through. He waited and they bowed to him as well. Last, a single Chapalii cleared the lock and halted to survey the plain metal hold. Anatoly could not, of course, read this creature's expression, and in any case he had learned that the Chapalii did not have mobile enough facial muscles to express emotion through facial quirks and tugs. Nor did the Chapalii show the least trace of color on his pallid skin. All that distinguished him was his plain black robe and the teardrop pendant hanging from a chain around his neck. Anatoly waited, not wanting to make the mistake of bowing to a Chapalii of lower rank. He supposed that such a gesture would be fatal.

The Chapalii did not acknowledge him. Instead, it prowled the hold, touching every surface, picking up any loose objects and examining them closely. Only a noble of equal rank to his own would dare to be so rude.

"I am Anatoly Sakhalin," said Anatoly into the silence. "Do you have a name or title by which I might politely address you?"

The prince did not bother to look at him. He was too busy trying to pry open one of Benjamin's crates of sherry. "If you can discover it, you may use it."

"Excuse me," said Anatoly, irritated by this crass trespassing. "That crate contains valuable and fragile goods which are the property of one of my soldiers."

The prince looked at him. He had an ovoid head and a single smear of permanent color on the left side of his hairless skull, where a human's ear would have been. Except for that, he looked much like Naroshi: big-eyed, albino pale, with a slit mouth and three translucent ivory ridges lining his neck between his jaw and his shoulder. Like gills, Anatoly thought, recalling images of fish and newts from Portia's animal program. Without replying, the prince headed for the door that led into the rest of the ship.

Anatoly moved to block him. "No. I'm not inviting you in."

The prince inclined his head. Perhaps the gesture was meant as a compliment. Perhaps not. Behind him, his retainers stood in silence, fingers curled together in artful patterns. "The Tai-en Naroshi lies within my house. Now his daiga holdings have become yours. Don't believe that I will forget this."

Without waiting for Anatoly's reply, he turned and walked back into the lock. His retainers followed him out, and the lock cycled shut.

"They've detached," sang Florien's voice over the ship's com.

"Hell and blarney," said Summer. "I've never seen one of those chameleons be just plain rude like that. How can that be a prince?"

Anatoly felt a shudder through the hull as the prince's ship removed its grip from the Gray Raven.

He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. "Only a prince can afford to be that ill mannered," he said, and was abruptly reminded of some of his uncles.

"Now I remember why Earth got rid of this hereditary aristocracy business," said Summer. "What a jerk!"

Anatoly chuckled.

Summer glanced at him. "Too bad you're not my type," she added, and with that ambivalent praise left hanging in the air, they left the hold.

They took the fastest route back to Odys, which meant four days to Crossover and a much slower eighteen days to Odys.

"If they've got shortcuts built in," said Branwen, surveying the three dimensional chart of their progress, "then they only exist in old imperial space."

"Or they only exist going to and from Chapal," suggested Florien.

Anatoly said nothing, he only listened.

In orbit around Odys, he and Branwen transferred to a shuttle and were ferried downside. Anatoly flipped through the viewscreen, but Rhui was out of sight, far away around the ecliptic, on the other side of Mother Sun.

Charles Soerensen greeted him personally on the landing pad. As well he might. He looked ...

wary, as a man looks who is confronting an animal that he is not sure has been tamed. Anatoly greeted him politely and waited for him to make the first move. After all, Anatoly now held an insurmountable position on the board. And Soerensen knew it.

"We need to talk," said Soerensen blandly, waving him toward a ground car. "But first, you have a visitor."

He said no more, just made small talk, and when they reached the great shell of his palace, he led Branwen away and left Anatoly at the door of an informally furnished room, plain white couches overlooking two walls of windows that opened onto the flat vista of the tule marshes.

The woman and the child inside did not see him immediately. How tender the mother was, kneeling to let her daughter whisper in her ear, smiling fondly as she replied to the question; how sweetly the child kissed her on the cheek and led her by the hand to look out the great floor-to-ceiling windows that let in light and sky.

How beautiful they looked together. He could not help but fall in love with Diana all over again, seeing her framed against the heavens.

Portia turned. "Papa!" She ran into his arms.

He swung her around and kissed her a hundred times, until, squealing and giggling, she begged to be put down. But after he put her down, she wrapped her arms around his leg and clung to him, grinning with sweet ferocity.

Diana did not come over to him. She hesitated, and he just stood there, dumb with longing, stricken with foreboding.

A woman Anatoly vaguely recognized appeared in the doorway. "Here she is," the woman said.

"Portia, dear, did you want to come get that surprise you made for your father?"

Portia did not want to leave, nor did Anatoly want to relinquish her, but he could see that this was some elaborate play staged by Soerensen, by Diana, by this woman, and at last he pried her off and sent her on her way, promising to come straight to her. Thus fortified, she went willingly.

He turned to his wife. "No greeting?" he asked lightly. He wanted to embrace her, to wrap himself in her and let her, for a time, relieve him of the terrible burden that the emperor had placed on him.

She did not move. She did not smile her glorious smile. She offered him no light, no warmth. She stood stiffly, as if willing him to ignore the curve of her body under her dress.

"I had to tell you myself," she said haltingly. "Is it true? What they say of you? That what happened... ? Are you really ... named a prince by the emperor?"

"Yes."

It was like talking to a well-meaning stranger.

"I'm sorry, then, to dump this on you now. But there's no point in waiting. It'll just make it harder for Portia later." She let out a breath. Even at three body lengths from her, he felt its finality. "I've retained an advocate and she will be serving dissolution papers on our marriage in two days."

"But, Diana ..." Floundering, helpless, he could only stare at her.

"I'm sorry," she said, and he knew then that her decision was as irrevocable as the emperor's.