CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Confession

Jaelle sat alone under an awning in the middle of the jaran camp. Soldiers had hustled her here last night, back through the ranks of jaran soldiers who were streaming into White Tower, and dumped her. She supposed she was now a prisoner of the jaran, rather than Prince Janos. What had happened to Katerina? Did Stefan still live?

With dawn, the stream of soldiers outward from the camp ceased, and a few casualties came in, but otherwise a hush fell with the sun's rising. Jaelle shivered, pulled her cloak more tightly around herself, and shut her eyes. She could not sleep.

"Jaelle! You will attend me."

Rusudani stood under the awning of a neighboring tent. Jaelle rose hastily and hurried over to her.

"Tell these guards that they are to escort me into the castle. I have spoken to them, but they cannot understand me. I do not speak Taor as well as you do. Yet." A sharp glance from the princess served to remind Jaelle that Rusudani had not yet forgotten her former dependence on Jaelle's translations, and how Jaelle had defied her.

"Yes, my lady." But the jaran soldiers could not understand her, either. Evidently none of them spoke Taor. She attempted a few words in khush, but these also failed to produce any effect.

"I will go to the castle!" Rusudani proclaimed.

"Do you think it is safe, my lady? There may still be fighting."

Rusudani gave her a scornful look, hoisted up the trailing edge of her gown, and began to walk.

Her jaran guards had phlegmatic temperaments. They simply found horses, mounted everyone up, and in this way they went into the town, which lay deathly quiet in the morning sun. The gates were held by jaran soldiers. After a brief exchange, Rusudani's guards escorted her straight up the embankment that led to White Tower. Rusudani dismounted in the outer ward and Jaelle followed her in to the great hall. There was gathered the remnants of the castle's population. Lady Jadranka sat with austere dignity in her chair. She looked washed clean with grief, and her hair uncovered, had gone to white at its roots. Janos's seat was empty.

Rusudani swept up the hall and mounted the two steps that led to the dais. She approached Janos's chair and surveyed it. Jaelle, behind her, saw Lady Jadranka's mouth tighten.

"You have no right to sit there," said Lady Jadranka, her voice rimmed with frost.

Rusudani turned and examined her coolly. "I may do as I please. This castle is mine, now."

Jadranka stood up slowly. Yesterday, she had moved like a much younger woman. Now she looked as frail of body as a crone. But her voice lacked no power. "It is not yours. It reverts to me.

You gained none of his inheritance by marrying him."

An odd expression colored Rusudani's face. "Where is your son?"

"He is dead. I had supposed you had heard already, since it was by your hand that he was betrayed."

The word hung in the air, proclaimed loudly enough that Jaelle cowered, expecting Rusudani to reply fiercely. Instead, voices swelled in the anteroom and a delegation clattered in: The jaran had returned from securing the town. At once, the Mircassian envoy rushed forward and knelt before Rusudani, watching her warily, head slightly bowed. She gestured to him to move aside.

"Jaelle, you will translate what I cannot understand. Mind that you do it faithfully, or I will have you killed."

"Yes, my lady."

Jaelle watched them come forward. They did not look like supplicants, although Rusudani pretended to receive them as such. To Jaelle's surprise, Bakhtiian was not with them. Instead, the Prince of Jeds stopped before the dais, escorted by two jaran soldiers.

"I see you have taken possession of the castle, Princess Rusudani," said the Prince of Jeds. She still wore armor, strips of leather and plate decorated with red ribbons, and had her helmet tucked under her right elbow. Without giving Rusudani time to reply, she turned deliberately to Lady Jadranka.

"You are Lady Jadranka? My niece, Princess Katerina, has asked to be remembered to you, my lady.

She begs for your forgiveness, and asked me to tell you that the insult to her honor dictated the outcome."

Lady Jadranka inclined her head slightly. She swallowed, but it was a moment before she could speak. "It is too early to speak of forgiveness. I do not hold Princess Katherine responsible for the fall of White Tower."

The words blew a chill through the hall.

"Where is Bakhtiian?" asked Rusudani, cutting into the conversation.

As if her question summoned him, he appeared, limping. He looked grim and rather wild. He, too, wore armor, more elaborate than that he had worn when Janos and his men had ambushed him at the monastery. It made him look like a prince. Prince Vassily attended him, hovering by his side like an overprotective father. Lady Jadranka's eyes widened as she realized who he must be. But she said nothing.

Bakhtiian made a comment, curt, to the Prince of Jeds in the language of the jaran, and she flushed, so slightly that Jaelle would not have noticed it if she had not happened to be looking at her directly at that moment. Princess Rusudani had eyes only for Bakhtiian. She fairly drank him in.

"Who does this castle belong to now?" demanded Bakhtiian.

Lady Jadranka rose slowly. "It is mine, sir, inherited from my father, since I was his only child."

Rusudani looked furious, but she held her peace. Prince Vassily glanced at her, away, and back at her again.

Bakhtiian inclined his head respectfully toward Lady Jadranka. "I have prisoners to give into your hands, my lady. If you will give me your oath and sign your name to a treaty letting there be no feud between your house and mine."

"How can I promise that? Janos was my only son."

"By what means will you make war on me, Lady Jadranka? You cannot. Out of respect for you and your grief, I will leave this castle standing. Otherwise I would burn it to the ground."

"The prisoners knew, all of them, did they not?" she asked. "All but my son knew that you were Bakhtiian. He would have killed you otherwise."

"But he did not."

"But he held you prisoner." The barest smile creased her face, and Jaelle saw Bakhtiian whiten, as if at a blow. "With that memory, I will have to be content. I cannot forgive, Bakhtiian. But I will sign your treaty. Certain of my ladies have whispered to me that it is likely that Princess Rusudani is pregnant with my son's child. For that child's sake, I will swear an oath to hold you no further to blame, as long as I receive in my turn your oath to leave these lands alone and to give me the child, whether boy or girl, to raise in my son's place."

"I give you the child willingly," blurted out Rusudani. "I want nothing from your son, least of all his child."

Lady Jadranka's expression did not alter. "Then let it be so."

Prince Vassily touched Bakhtiian's elbow and whispered in his ear. Bakhtiian shook off the hand impatiently. He looked, to Jaelle's eye, quite transfigured from the man whom she had first seen at Sarai: There, he had reminded her of a steel sword, dangerous, sharp, but clean of line, and strong.

Now, he seemed brittle and on edge. Before he had overawed her, but his power had seemed tempered by a glint of humor and a deep sense of control. Now, he scared her, because she could not predict what he might do next.

"What about me?" demanded Rusudani. "You owe me your life."

"Are you sure you want me to—" Jaelle whispered.

"You will speak exactly the words I speak, Jaelle!"

But, like a man well used to deciphering many languages, he had already understood her.

"What do you want from me, Princess Rusudani?"

The Prince of Jeds stood stiffly. A gulf seemed to separate her from Bakhtiian and Rusudani, though there were scarcely three arm's lengths between them.

"I am King Barsauma's heir. Any alliance with me is worth a great deal."

"That is true."

"I can give you an army and passage into Filis, as well as control of caravan routes that lead into the lands south of Mircassia, past the great waste."

"Of course it is in my interest to want these things. But surely you must want something in return."

The silence drew out in the hall until even the soldiers shifting, nervous or bored, in the back stilled and waited.

Jaelle felt a chill envelop her. She had a sudden foreboding that Rusudani was going to say something foolhardy and perilous.

Rusudani had the wisdom to lower her voice, so that only the six of them closest to her could hear.

"I will be queen of a country greater than all of the Yos principalities together, greater than all the western merchant cities, greater than Filis, greater than Jeds. Why should I not have, as husband, the only prince as powerful as I am?" Deliberately, she did not look at the Prince of Jeds.

Nor did Bakhtiian. His gaze remained fixed on a point just behind Rusudani's head, crowned with a gold-threaded shawl that almost covered her thick black hair. His eyes blazed, as if seeing some vision of a great alliance sealed by a royal marriage, the beginning of a powerful dynasty that would rule a vast empire.

Prince Vassily looked like he had been struck.

The Prince of Jeds looked gray, but she said nothing. Rusudani clenched her left hand triumphantly.

Still, no one spoke. Like a storm rising, the tension rose until it engulfed the rest of the room.

Bakhtiian stirred. He glanced, curiously enough, at Vassily.

"I regret that I cannot give you myself, my lady," he said politely, quietly, and, continuing, spoke abruptly louder so that his voice filled the hall. "But you are right. It would be fitting if you married my son."

Rusudani shut herself away in the solar and would not be moved. Jaelle escaped her by simply staying behind in the hall, unnoticed and unasked for in the furor that arose after Bakhtiian's pronouncement.

"Tess?" Bakhtiian was casting about, searching for his wife, but she had vanished. "Tess! Where is she?" He sounded querulous and remarkably irritable. An instant later, he dismissed two of his guards and fell into an argument with his son.

Jaelle stood behind Janos's chair and tried to melt into the floor.

Bakhtiian looked up suddenly, right at her. "There is Jaelle," he said. She could not reply, she was so astonished that he remembered her name. "Vasha, take her back to camp."

Thus he ended the argument.

Vassily said one more thing to him, still angry, but Bakhtiian simply turned away and began conferring with someone else. Lady Jadranka had retired to her chamber, and the Mircassian envoy had gone upstairs with Princess Rusudani, her one loyal servant.

"I'm sorry," said Prince Vassily. "That was all very sudden."

Jaelle did not dare venture an opinion. He shrugged, led her out of the hall, and commandeered horses. Preoccupied, he did not speak. Ten jaran soldiers escorted them back to camp. There, dismounting, she found to her surprise that someone was waiting for her.

"Jaelle!" Katerina ran to her and hugged her for a long time. No one seemed to think her affection strange. "Come with me. Do come." She tugged on Jaelle's arm. "Stefan has paced a new ditch in the ground, he's been so worried, wondering where you are. Of course you can come, too, Vasha. What a stupid question." She asked her cousin something in khush, but he shook his head stubbornly and refused to answer.

Stefan was waiting. Somewhere in the tangle of tents that made up the camp they found him, working under an awning that sheltered injured soldiers. He wore clean clothes, the red and black of a jaran rider, and despite his youth he stitched up a wound with the confidence of a master healer, examined an unconscious man and shook his head with a frown, discussed a third case with an older man who seemed to defer to his judgment.

"You see," said Katerina, "Stefan will make you a fine husband. I don't expect he'll ever do much fighting. He's far too valuable for that. He will be as great a healer as his grandfather Niko Sibirin is.

Or no, Aunt Tess said that Niko died, didn't she? As his grandfather was. Not every man is so gifted by the gods."

Jaelle suddenly wondered if her face was clean, her hair in place. She became aware that her skirts were muddy, and her hands needed washing.

Stefan looked up and saw her. Before, his expression had been fittingly sober. Now, his face creased with a smile, with more than a smile, and Jaelle felt a rush of something—she did not know what it was, a melting, a sudden fire washing over her, a giddy numbness that fell away into sharp joy.

And was in an instant erased by agony.

"Marry me?" she stammered.

"He has been talking of nothing else since we were freed," said Vassily, looking sour as he said it.

Stefan wiped his hands off in a bucket, dried them, and hurried toward them. He practically bled happiness into the air.

"I can't marry," Jaelle gasped. She began to cry. "I can never marry. I have sinned, and God will never forgive me. Please. Take me away."

Stefan halted, looking hurt and perplexed, and that only made Jaelle cry the more. Finally, having mercy on her, Katerina led her away and soon enough she was enveloped in the dark tomb of a tent.

"But why?" Katerina demanded. "Why can't you marry him? He'll just mark you anyway. How can you object?"

"He must not. You must not let him be stained with my sin."

"But how—?"

Jaelle wiped her eyes dry. It did no good to cry. "I will tell you. Then you will understand. You will yourself shun me, but I beg you not to hate me. I will go back to the caravan trade. That is the price I pay for my sin."

"What is a sin?" Katerina demanded. "You khaja make no sense to me." She said it fiercely, grown out of fresh pain.

Jaelle bowed her head. She could not bear to speak, but it must be spoken. It was time to confess.

"I killed my baby child," she said, because it was easiest to start with the bare truth. She heard Katerina gasp, but she went doggedly on, determined to have it all out. "I was taken by men at the mines, many times, even before my courses began. I ran away when I realized that I had become pregnant, but life was worse on the streets. That town was called Orontis. The birth was hard, but the baby lived, though it was a tiny thing, so weak it could barely suckle. Then one day Kamarnos—he was a merchant—saw me. He saw others first, other women, he was haggling for a woman to be his companion all the way north to Parkilnous. In those days I didn't know how far that was, I only knew that it was away, that I would be fed every day and have a dry bed to lie in. But he wanted a woman who had no child to burden her. He saw me. He thought I was pretty, through the rags and the dirt.

He asked me. Ah, Lady, what was I to do? The child was sickly. She might not even have survived the month. That is what I told myself. I had no milk for her anyway. I wanted to live. I pinched her nose and mouth closed with my fingers, until she stopped breathing. It took only a moment. She just slipped away. God will never forgive me."

She fell silent. She was too tired to weep. She understood now that God was punishing her, by letting her glimpse safety but keeping it forever out of her reach.

"There was no one who would foster the baby?"

That surprised a harsh laugh from Jaelle. "No one wants a baby like that. At the mines, sickly babies were exposed on the hillside. No one wanted me. Why should they want a runaway slave's child? Why would they want a sick baby that would never be strong enough to work for them? Who would raise it? Feed it? You jaran are very strange." She said it bitterly. "My own mother stood by and watched while I was sold off to the mines. I had no mother, like you do, to watch over me. I had no tribe to care what happened to me, to send an army to rescue me. Only the Lady's mercy kept me alive in the mines at all. If only I had prayed to her more earnestly, I would never have gotten pregnant there."

"Katya?" That was Prince Vassily, from outside, sounding unsure.

"What is it?"

"Stefan is here with me. He wants to see Jaelle."

"Come back later," said Katerina. She put a hand on Jaelle's shoulder. "Do you love Stefan? Do you wish to marry him?"

"He won't wish to marry me, not after he knows what I did."

"It is not a man's right to judge. If you wish to marry him, then you must let my grandmother and his grandmother judge. How long ago did this happen?"

"I don't know. Five years ago? Seven?"

"How old were you?" Katerina sounded appalled, and Jaelle shrank away from her touch, aware that she must not allow her affection for Katerina, and Katerina's for her, to come between them and God's judgment.

"I don't know. Ten years old. Twelve. Thirteen, perhaps. That is the usual age for a girl to begin her courses, isn't it?"

"Gods. You khaja are savages. And there was no child after that? After that one?"

"I found out there were herbs that stop a woman from conceiving. Once I thought I got with child, so I took the seeds of the torise plant and was sick for weeks. If there was a child, it never came out.

Perhaps God made me barren. It would be just."

"What about this Lady, this Pilgrim, you speak of? Does she intend to punish you, too?"

"You must not speak of God and Our Lady that way." Jaelle made the sign of severing, clutching her talisman knife in one hand. "It was just. Surely you must think so, too, Katerina."

"It is true that it is a terrible act to kill a baby. But Aunt Tess says that our army has killed children simply by existing, by conquering and laying lands waste, by leaving children no food to eat over the winter. So is what you did worse than that? I don't know. I killed Prince Janos, and I could have granted him mercy. Who am I to judge you?"

"You killed Prince Janos? But Lady Jadranka said that Princess Rusudani killed him."

"Rusudani betrayed him. It was my hand that killed him."

"I did not know you hated him so much."

"I did not hate him," said Katerina, her voice trembling for the first time. "But I had sworn that he would die for what he did to me. And because I swore before the gods, I had no choice."

"I had no choice," whispered Jaelle. "I would have died, too, if Kamarnos had not hired me. That is the truth. I chose to let the baby die so that I could live."

Katerina sighed and, tentatively, put her arms around Jaelle. "I would be like a wife to you, like a husband to you, if you would let me, but I know you do not wish it. So it's better that you marry Stefan. That way I know you will be safe."

"But—"

"Do you wish to go out and see him now?"

"No. Yes. I don't know."

"If I were Mother Orzhekov, I would see what punishment the gods see fit to visit on you. I would let you lie with the man you wish to marry, with other men, and if the gods have forgiven you, they would show their mercy by letting you get pregnant. No woman in the tribes wants her son to marry a woman who cannot give him children. But if you conceive, then why not let you marry him? In the jaran, you will not be forced to behave so barbarously. You will become a jaran woman. It will be as if your other life is gone away. You will become a different woman, a woman who never has to make such a terrible choice, to live herself or die with her child."

"How can I become a jaran woman if I do not pray to your gods? That I can never do."

"Ah, gods, you khaja! No one says you must stop praying to your gods—"

"There is only one God—"

"But you speak of three. You speak of God, his son Hristain, and his daughter the Pilgrim. That is three. I can count."

But Jaelle was too wrung out to launch into a dispute about the nature of God and the holy mystery of three being one. She rested her head on Katerina's shoulder. "Is it true, that I might live with the tribes?"

"You must go back to Sarai with Stefan."

"And you will come with us?"

"I don't know," said Katerina.

"I won't wait any longer!" exclaimed Stefan from outside. A moment later he swept the tent flap aside and barged into the tent. "Jaelle, I don't know what Katerina has been telling you, and it's true that I'll never distinguish myself in the army, but healers are as honored among my people as soldiers and ..." Enough light showed through the flap that Jaelle caught the indignant look that he threw at Katerina. "Would you go away?"

"Your manners, Stefan," she scolded, but she left the tent.

Stefan developed an alarming attack of shyness. "If you were a jaran woman, I would not ask," he said, "but ... but you will marry me, won't you, Jaelle?"

She gathered up enough courage to look at him. "If your grandmother approves of me, of what I have been, then, yes, I will." Exhausting her reserves, she clasped her hands nervously in front of her chest and waited.

He fidgeted a moment, bouncing on the toes of his boots. "Damn good manners, anyway!" he swore, and crossed the chamber and embraced her and kissed her. She was quick to respond.

Tess hid in her tent for the rest of the day. She curled up in her sleeping furs and just lay there. Her nerves were wrung out. She could not bear to face one more person. For the first time in her marriage, she was afraid that something had happened to irrevocably alter the man she had married.

At twilight, Ilya came into the outer chamber of the tent, calling for her in his usual autocratic way.

She stirred, but then she heard Vasha's voice.

"Will you stop and let me talk to you?" Vasha demanded.

"What about?" Ilya's curt reply ought to have warned the young man.

"I am not happy about what you did in the hall."

"I didn't mean it. I meant to scare her off."

" I mean it."

"You mean what?"

"I mean to marry her."

Ilya snorted. "Then you'd better have someone taste your food."

"Father! Don't you understand what an alliance with Mircassia will mean for us?"

"Why should I merely ally with Mircassia when I could have her outright?"

"How many battles would that take you? How many soldiers would you lose? This is a much better way. If you and Katya hadn't been so stubbornly set on killing Janos—"

"Do not speak to me on that subject."

"I will speak to you! You're just angry that he held you prisoner. But he was a good man, he was intelligent, and he knew the worth of—"

"He raped Katerina, or have you forgiven him for that?"

For the first time, Vasha stumbled. "I don't know. I think he didn't mean to do .. . that he didn't know ... that he supposed that what he did was different than how Katya saw it. What are the laws in his country? Shouldn't he be judged by them, and not by ours?"

"Most khaja laws are unjust."

"Then expand just laws over all people, but do not throw out everything that is theirs. How do you expect to hold together an empire if you show no respect for the ways of the people you have conquered? If you don't give them a stake in holding your empire together, then they will simply revolt at the first opportunity. You cannot hold all these lands together by force indefinitely. You must hold them together by other means."

Ilya gave a bark of a laugh. "Now you sound like Tess." Tess winced, hearing him, because he sounded angry.

But Vasha's reply was calm. He sounded surer of himself than she had ever heard him. "Thank you. You could have given me no greater compliment. I had a great deal of time to think while I was Janos's hostage, and—"

"And you still want to marry Rusudani?"

"I do. It is the wisest course, now that Janos is dead. I'll ride to Mircassia with her."

"Who said I meant to let her go to Mircassia? She's worth more to me as a hostage."

"Mircassia is worth more to us as an ally. You're just being contrary. You know it's true."

There was a long silence. She heard little noises, Ilya pacing, Ilya unrolling a scroll, or at least she assumed that Ilya was the restless one, not Vasha. The furs in which she hid smelled musty. In the rains several days ago they had gotten damp and never been properly aired out.

"Then you'd better marry her before you go. Otherwise she'll have you killed once you get there, if she finds a more suitable consort."

"Father!"

"Do you approve of her killing her husband?"

"You would have killed him."

"That was different. He ambushed my guard and took me prisoner. A woman does not betray her husband. Nor a husband, his wife."

"He forced her to marry him."

"Women have no choice in marriage. Gods, boy, I forced Tess to marry me."

Now it was Vasha's turn to snort. "You did not!"

"I did! By the gods."

Tess sat up. She heard in his voice a touch of the old Ilya: smug and triumphant.

"I don't believe it. Not of Tess. Of a jaran woman, perhaps."

"Well ..." More rustling. Ilya was shifting around again. She could practically hear the admission being dragged out of him, however reluctantly. "She didn't accept it either and told me so."

Tess heard the oddest sound: Vasha trying to suppress laughter.

"I suppose she did," Vasha said finally. "That is why I can't marry Rusudani out of hand. She must come to see that it is in her interest to marry me, to ally with the jaran."

"Vasha." Now Ilya's voice changed, to something far more dangerous because it trembled on the edge of control. "Don't be a fool. She doesn't want you. She wants me. It is never wise for a man to marry a woman who sees him only as an obstacle in her way to what she truly wants. She will stay with the jaran as a hostage until her grandfather dies."

When Vasha replied, his voice was so low that Tess had to strain to hear it. And was sorry she did. "What, are you like Janos? You want a wife and a well-born concubine? I won't waste my time talking to you any more."

The tent flap soughed down, closing behind him. There was silence in the outer chamber. Tess wrapped the furs more tightly around herself.

"Damn it," said Ilya. A moment later a faint edge of light sprang into being around the curtain that separated the sleeping chamber from the outer chamber. "Nikita! Vladimir!"

It was Gennady Berezin who stuck his head in finally. "Yes, Cousin?" he asked in the formal style.

"Do you know where Tess is?"

"No. No one has seen her since this morning in the great hall."

"Or if they have," said Ilya sarcastically, "they're not going to tell me."

"Yes, Cousin," said Berezin mildly, and by that Tess knew that he was protecting her.

"Then go out and see if you can find her, damn it. Send her here."

"Send her here, Ilyakoria?"

"Ask her if she will deign to see me, then! Go!" Ilya kicked something—it could only be the table—swore, and fell to muttering to himself. Angels and blinding lights and a sword made in heaven

... Tess had heard this before. She got up on her hands and knees and swayed forward, twitching aside the back lower corner of the curtain and peeking through. By the light of a single lantern, sitting in the middle of the table, she watched him. She felt an inexplicable reluctance to go out to him, to speak to him; what if he had been changed forever? He never talked to himself like this before. Finally his mumbling trailed away. He sat in the chair, one hand on the table, holding open a scroll which he was not looking at. He was staring at the tent entrance, as if he expected a visitor momentarily.

One came. She pushed aside the entrance flap and paused, letting it slide shut behind her. She pulled her shawl down and let it drape over her shoulders, letting her thick dark hair tumble down around her shoulders. She wore no jewels, nothing to adorn her except her youth and her pretty face and her position as King Barsauma's acknowledged heir. She examined Ilya greedily. She practically licked her lips.

"What do you want?" Ilya snapped.

Tess flinched. She had never heard him be rude to a woman before.

Then, he recovered himself. "I beg your pardon," he said, standing up.

"You want Mircassia," she said, without moving.

"Yes."

"Then put aside your wife and marry me instead. Mircassia will be yours."

"Among the jaran, a man does not put aside his wife, my lady."

"Jeds is nothing compared to Mircassia. A few ships, that is all. I am a more suitable consort for a man of your power and ambitions."

He did not reply. They all knew it was true.

"An ambitious man would not hesitate. You served me faithfully enough while you were Prince Janos's prisoner. I spared you from worse indignities."

"I am not a lapdog, Princess Rusudani, an animal which I know khaja noblewomen like to pet and dandle and feed sweets to. Nor do I marry simply for the sake of land."

"Do you expect me to believe that? That is the only reason anyone of our station marries. The Prince of Jeds must have seemed a valuable enough alliance ten years ago, however paltry it may seem now."

"I invite you to leave, Princess."

"No," she said petulantly. "I am leaving on my own. I ride out tomorrow—"

"With what escort? How do you intend to break free of my army? You are under my control, Princess Rusudani. You will marry my son Vassily—"

"I will only marry in a ceremony in the true church!" But she sounded desperate now. She knew she had been outplayed.

"If that contents you. The boy is half khaja anyway; I doubt he will care. But be aware, Princess, that if he dies in mysterious circumstances, I will seek revenge."

She paled, and her hands tightened into fists. She bit down on one pretty lip and a tear squeezed out of one eye. Ilya remained unmoved by this display of emotion. She wiped off the tear and straightened her shoulders. "So I am to be sold off again to a man? To your empire? As if I were a common slave? Is this how you treat the women of your people? I once thought otherwise."

"This is how you expect to be treated. Janos was not a stupid man. You could have made a good marriage with him, but you chose to betray him instead."

For the first time, Tess saw Rusudani flinch.

"If you choose to act as if you are only a pawn in a game of castles, then that is how you will be treated. If you choose to act as an etsana, wielding power wisely and with the gods-granted authority given to women, then you will be respected. Nikita! Vladi, damn you!"

"Yes, Bakhtiian." Vladimir stuck his head in. His helmet gleamed in the lantern light. He glanced around the chamber

and Tess had a good idea that he knew where she was, that

she was spying.

"Take Princess Rusudani to a tent. Please remove her. Now. An escort of five thousand riders must be ready day after tomorrow to escort her to Mircassia, under the command of Vassily Kireyevsky."

"Under Vasha's command?"

"That's what I said, damn it!"

"Of course, Bakhtiian. And you—"

"I will continue south to Yaroslav Sakhalin's army. With them we will push on south toward Jeds.

Is there any news of Kirill Zvertkov?"

"I understand he was sent to the court of the king of Dushan to bring back Andrei Sakhalin. There is no news yet."

"Then go."

"Yes, Bakhtiian."

Rusudani went unresisting.

Ilya began to pace. He looked like he meant to wear a trail in the carpet, and gods he looked exhausted. But Tess knew he would not sleep until he saw her. So she stood up, took in a breath, straightened her clothing, and—to spare his riders from his temper—went out through the back flap so that she could come in through the front entrance, as if she was just returning. Berezin nodded at her but said nothing.

Ilya was still pacing, back to her. He turned and stopped dead. "Tess! Where were you? I've been looking ... you're avoiding me, aren't you? You're ashamed that I was stupid enough to let myself get ambushed, but I had to find out about the great blinding light sent from heaven. That was the angel...

no, that was the other story. His wing was as bright as the strike of lightning. Except I suppose that the heretic is dead and burned by now while I was walled away in stone like any khaja slave. I had to—

Kirill was with you, wasn't he? That's what they say. Are you already tired of me? Are you going to throw me over in favor of him? Ditches. I had to dig ditches. I don't know if they meant to flood them with water, that would have been the best defense unless they built a palisade. Now that Arina is dead—"

He was babbling. She walked over to him and he just grabbed hold of her as if he was afraid she would escape if he didn't hold on to her. Arms around her, face buried against her hair, he kept talking, on and on, and she let him talk. She let the words brush past her without listening to them, knowing they would make no real sense.

Because she saw now what had happened to him. Ilya could not abide, he could not sustain, the knowledge that another person controlled him, that he lay within a prison of another man's making. It had driven him a little mad. Sonia had been right: For all his strength, for all his visionary luminosity, Ilya was fragile. She had been right to protect him all along, however horrible that might seem now.

She herself had imprisoned him all these years, by walling him off from the knowledge of Earth, of her brother's true position as Duke and as suzerain over Rhui and all its peoples, of the Chapalii Empire itself against which the jaran empire was like a nest of mice hidden in a drawer, a world self-contained and yet inconsequential. Ilya could not bear to be inconsequential.

"Hush, Ilya, my heart," she said finally.

"Ah, gods," he murmured in the tone of a man who has only now found the courage to confess his worst shame, "I had to obey their laws and their commands. That is what it means to become a slave.

How could the gods punish me in this way? Oh, Tess, kill me rather than let it happen again."

It broke her heart to hear him. "Forgive me, Ilya," she whispered. "Forgive me."

He said nothing. She was not sure he had really heard her. He could not truly know what she was apologizing for, anyway, because she had made choices all along that imprisoned him. But she could no longer choose for him. He deserved the truth.

Twelve years ago Ilya had married her in the jaran way, giving her no choice in the matter. But he had learned that it was her choice as well, that he could not make the choice for her. Tess smiled wryly, pulling him closer against her, feeling him sigh, feeling his breath against her ear and the strength of his arms around her back. It had taken her twelve years to learn the same lesson.

He just stood there, holding her, as if he waited ... for what? For a tangible sign that she still believed in him, respected him, found him worthy, even simply found him desirable.

"I was so terrified when I thought I had lost you," she said finally, "first to death, then to Princess—"

"I hope you think I have better taste than that!" he retorted indignantly, pulling away from her.

"Such as?"

He turned his head away, refusing the bait. The flickering candlelight scored his face in light and shadow, like a painted mask. Not knowing what else to do, she kissed him. He shifted, just a little, against her, allowing himself to be coaxed. But he made her work at it. She kissed him again on the neck and moved up over the curve of his jaw to his cheek and his mouth, running one hand down his back and the other down his leg.

Abruptly, with an impatient curse, he hoisted her up bodily, carried her into the inner chamber, and dumped her on the sleeping furs. She thought, fleetingly, about what words to use when she told him the truth, what evidence to present, how to do what she knew now she would have to do. Then he dropped down beside her, and she thrust all those bothersome thoughts aside. They could wait. This couldn't.