CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

By Right

According to the khaja priest at White Tower, a formal betrothal was as binding as a marriage.

"It makes sense not to marry until we reach Mircassia," said Vasha to his father. It was dawn. The army was ready to leave. They waited in front of the crushed grass where the great tent had stood.

Behind them, guards rolled up the awning. "But I need a binding agreement so that I can't be thrown over once we reach there."

"Marry her and be done with it," snapped Bakhtiian, "if you mean to do it at all."

Vasha felt a flash of irritation, but he quelled it. He knew he was right; he could not help that his father felt impelled to disagree, to dislike new ways of doing things, khaja ways of doing things. He could practically hear his father add: That is how the jaran would do it. In any case, Vasha did not think Ilya had recovered yet from his captivity. "Let me at least tell you my reasons. First, it will give me a chance to become acquainted with her, and her with me, without being thrown at once into the intimacy of marriage. Second, if we are married in Mircassia before her grandfather and the court, the marriage will appear to have the king's sanction. Third, if we marry before the child is born, then by jaran law that child is mine. It makes no difference to me, of course. But Princess Rusudani will hate the child, if we keep it. So there will be no other objection to sending the child to Lady Jadranka to raise. She will raise it well. It will have an inheritance."

"All good points," said Tess reasonably.

Fuming, Ilya glared at her. He looked back at Vasha, and Vasha was heartened to see that the worst edge of his anger had been blunted by Vasha's words. "If you can gain Mircassia, then I don't care what means you use."

"Will you attend, then?" Vasha asked hopefully. "The betrothal ceremony? You won't be in Mircassia for the wedding."

Tess closed a hand firmly over Ilya's wrist. "Of course we will attend."

Faced with a direct order from his wife, Bakhtiian did not dare disobey, or even protest.

So, a short while later, Vasha knelt on a white cloth trimmed with gold braid before the altar in the castle chapel. His father and Tess stood behind him, as witnesses, and farther back, Katerina sat beside Stefan on a bench. Vasha did not need to turn his head to know how Katya would look, watching this: tense, impatient with her own curiosity, forcing herself to keep silent and still within the stone walls that must remind her of her captivity. But she had come to witness because he had asked her to.

Rusudani knelt beside him, her hair covered by a lace shawl and her eyes cast down toward the floor. She held her hands in front of her as if she was praying, but her lips did not move. No expression showed on her face that he could interpret.

The priest set out the written contract on a side table and had first Vasha and then Rusudani repeat the words that bound them to the contract. Vasha did not understand much of what he said, but it was short, and he repeated the phrase "bound by God's law," twice. Watching Rusudani, who did not look at him as she spoke the words in her turn, her voice so soft that it died into the loft of the chapel, Vasha was satisfied. Rusudani believed faithfully and sincerely in her God. If she swore to be bound by God's law, then she would keep her word.

Last, they exchanged rings, simple gold rings which the priest had nervously donated before the ceremony.

The priest called forward the interpreter—Jaelle, as Vasha had also requested. The khaja here gave him everything he wanted, of course.

"The wise father wishes you to come forward and mark the contract," Jaelle said. It had been written the night before. "It is usual for a young woman to have her father or brother sign the contract for her, transferring her into her husband's protection. But because she is a widow Princess Rusudani may act on her own behalf."

Vasha signed his name, to the surprise of the priest. That Rusudani could write as well did not surprise the khaja man; he knew she was convent educated.

So it was done.

Without speaking further to Vasha, Princess Rusudani left, escorted by the two ladies she had retained to accompany her on the journey. Tess looked over the contracts, tracing her fingers down the Yossian script and glancing at the Taor translation. She sighed, at last, and hugged Vasha, who felt numb more than anything, wishing that Rusudani had at least spoken more than the required words.

"I wish the best to you, my child," Tess said, releasing him; "But now we really must all be leaving."

And that was it.

Except for Stefan.

"I'm sorry," Stefan said. "I'll come to you as soon as I take Jaelle back to Sarai, but I can't let her travel there alone."

Vasha glanced toward Jaelle, who stood by the table with her hands folded together. Her cheeks bore a delicate blush on them as she looked up at Stefan and then, quickly, away again. She loved Stefan.

"I envy you, Stefan," Vasha blurted out, then clapped his friend on the shoulder to cover his own embarrassment, to cover the words. "So you must come to Mircassia just as soon as you can, or I won't ever forgive you."

Stefan laughed and hugged him and he and Jaelle went away. They were riding north with a small escort, back to Sarai.

So Vasha was left alone in the chapel, except for the priest, who soon wandered out, still looking nervous.

Except for Katerina, who waited for him by the doors, great wooden doors carved with curlicues and two kneeling figures, holy men or women, Vasha could not be sure which because they wore voluminous robes and identical blank expressions.

"Like Rusudani's expression," Vasha said.

"You can't expect her to thank you for this," Katya said.

Troubled, he wandered back into the chapel and sat down on a bench. Katya sat down beside him. Restless, as always, she tweaked the sleeve of her blouse around and around, straightened it, and then began to tug at his clothes instead, smoothing out creases, lining the embroidery on his sleeves up so that it ran in a clean curve from his shoulder down to his wrist.

"Was it stupid, Katya? Shouldn't I have done it?"

"She doesn't love you."

"She may come to."

Katya shrugged. She hooked one boot up onto her knee and began fiddling with the laces. "I don't know. Perhaps she can't love."

"She loves—"

"Huh. Being infatuated isn't love, Vasha. You know that. You don't truly love her either. You don't know her well enough for that. How can you?"

He frowned at her, but her words didn't make him angry because they were true. "Well, do you think she will come to like me? To be a good wife to me?"

Katerina was silent for a long while. Vasha just sat there, feeling comfortable with her, as he always did, even when he was fighting with her. "Perhaps she has learned something. Perhaps not. Perhaps she will discover that it is in her interest, that it will further her ambition, to be married to you. Perhaps she will always think of you as a captor. How can anyone know, Vasha? We can't look into the future. But if you treat her fairly and with respect, perhaps she will not hate you and do to you what she did to Prince Janos." Her voice shook a little on his name.

Vasha swallowed past a sudden thickening in his throat. He took hold of her hand. "Did you hate Janos?"

"I don't know. I did at first. But what difference does it truly make to a woman if she is made a mistress by khaja custom or a wife by jaran? She has as little choice in either."

"But—"

"But what? What choice did Princess Rusudani have to marry you? You or someone else, someone her grandfather chose for her."

Vasha did not know what to reply. They sat there without speaking. The priest came in and began to light candles near the altar for the midday service. Seeing them, he started and hurried out again.

Light streamed in through the high windows that surrounded the central nave of the chapel. Dust danced in the beams.

"You'll be a good husband for her, though, if she chooses to accept you," Katya said finally.

"Thank you," he said sarcastically, and she made a face at him. "Where are you going? You haven't told me. Back to Sarai?"

"No. I don't know. I'll go to Jeds. If I go back to Sarai, my mother will marry me off to some well-deserving Raevsky son."

"You don't want to get married." He didn't have to make it a question.

"Why should I want to? I don't want to go back to Sarai. I don't want to fight in the army anymore.

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know." Exhausting this slim reservoir of repose, Katerina jumped to her feet and stalked up and down the aisle.

"Will you come with me?" he asked.

"Why?"

Vasha shrugged. "I don't know. Because I love you, Katya. Come with me now, help me. You can go to Jeds afterward."

She stopped dead. Suddenly and strangely, she looked sly. Like the Katya of old, who as a child loved lording secrets over the rest, loved having read a book her cousins hadn't grown curious about yet and teasing them by suggesting that it contained hideous or wondrous stories; in fact, once Vasha laboriously read through them, such books usually proved to contain nothing more than yet another dry philosopher propounding about natural history or arguing a legalistic question to death.

"I had a long talk with Aunt Tess yesterday," she said finally, her expression passing over into hesitancy, so at odds with her usual mood. "She said perhaps ... she said she would talk to my mother

..."

"So you do have to go back to Sarai."

"No. She said I should go to Jeds with her and that somehow she would sort it out there. I don't know, but she hinted, I think ..." Her eyes lit, and Vasha was stricken suddenly by an awful sadness.

He had lost her. He knew it with that instinct he shared with her. "I think she thinks I can sail over the seas to Erthe."

"But no one comes back from there, Katya! I couldn't bear to lose you forever."

"I'm not yours, Vasha! If I have to do this, understand it and be happy for me!"

"Oh, Katya."

She came back and sat down on the bench beside him, and he embraced her. They sat that way, silent, still, until Vladimir arrived, in full armor, and reminded them that the army was riding. Now.

For thirty-nine days they rode south, making good time even though it rained two days out of every three. They caught up with outriders of Yaroslav Sakhalin's army on day forty and rode into Sakhalin's encampment on day forty-two. Laid out in a neat spiral, the camp engulfed most of the fields that surrounded a walled city. A pall of smoke lay over the city, but Vasha noticed at once that the gates lay open and a thin stream of people moved, in and out, cautiously going about their business.

Vasha helped Rusudani down from her horse—it was the one liberty she allowed him. Her waist was thickening noticeably in the middle. He hovered nervously beside the chair set up for her until her tent was erected and she could be installed within. She lay down at once.

"Is there anything I can get you?" he asked.

She shook her head, closing her eyes. "My waiting women will take care of my needs."

She was pale, but not dangerously so. Mostly she looked tired. He left her lying there, one hand resting on her copy of The Recitation, and went to Tess's tent.

Ilya sat on a pillow receiving Yaroslav Sakhalin's report. Tess had her journal open on her knee and was, for some reason, taking notes. Mother Sakhalin sat beside Tess, her intent gaze on her uncle; like her mother, Konstantina Sakhalin had mastered the art of sitting perfectly still, absorbing all that came before her.

"... I sent a detachment behind the khaja lines to this city, which is named Arhia in their tongue. The city elders tried to buy off the detachment, but when they got news of the battle fought on the Tarhan River, they wisely capitulated." Yaroslav Sakhalin paused, and his gaze stopped on Vasha, who came in under the awning.

Vasha nodded coolly at him and sat down beside his father. Sakhalin glanced at Ilya, gauging his reaction, but Ilya did not react at all, waiting instead for Sakhalin to proceed. Without comment, Sakhalin went on.

"That battle took place five days ago. When the messenger you sent on ahead of you arrived, I decided we would wait here. We have enough casualties to warrant it."

"I will tour the hospital," said Ilya.

Sakhalin nodded curtly. "The Estaharin prince fell in the battle. He had assembled a decent force, including the last renegades and rebels from the Yossian principalities. Two princes, three prince's sons, five dukes and eighteen lords died on the Estaharin side. He also had a detachment of Filis auxiliaries with him, but I haven't been able to discover whether they were mercenaries he hired or if they represent an alliance he had worked out with the prince of Filis. As well, the prince of Tarsina-Kars had sent a detachment of men to the muster, but he withdrew his troops when I sent him word that we held his daughter. I now understand, from new intelligence, that she is one of two claimants to the throne of Mircassia, and the one favored by the king."

"That is true," said Ilya. "My son Vassily is betrothed to her. He will marry her once they reach Mircassia."

Vasha admired how Yaroslav Sakhalin could contrive not to look surprised by this news. But Sakhalin was an old, canny soldier. He had not survived this long by letting startling news overset him.

"The main road through the pass in the eastern hills that leads into the heart of Mircassia branches off three days ride south of here, my scouts report."

"Very well," said Ilya.

"There is one other thing," added Sakhalin, glancing at his niece. "Two days ago Kirill Zvertkov arrived in my camp, escorting my brother Andrei Sakhalin."

Ilya was on his feet in an instant. He already had one hand on his saber hilt.

"No," said Sakhalin quietly, standing only slightly more slowly. "If everything that Zvertkov says is true, then it is my right, and my duty, as his relative to kill him."

"Damn it," swore Ilya under his breath, but he did not argue.

"He must be allowed to speak," said Mother Sakhalin calmly. She rose and shook out her skirts, waiting politely for Tess to finish scrawling in the journal, close the book, and toss it onto the pillow Ilya had vacated before standing herself.

"I'm not sure I want to see this," said Tess under her breath to Vasha. She let the other three go ahead. "It's going to be ugly."

"He must be punished—" Vasha protested.

"I don't mean that, not so much. I mean having to listen to the excuses he makes."

And Andrei Sakhalin did make excuses. Zvertkov and his thousand soldiers had encamped in a tight circle around a single, small tent, isolated within the ring of guards. When Zvertkov saw them, he jumped to his feet and hurried over to give Bakhtiian a hearty embrace. He did not touch Tess, but Vasha caught the glance that passed between them, fraught with unspoken words. Tess's eyes glittered with sudden tears. She wiped them away. Ilya could not tear his gaze away from the tent. His hands were clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white, and his lips were pale, set hard.

Yaroslav Sakhalin walked forward alone to the tent and twitched the entrance flap aside. He bent down, said something. After a long wait, a man emerged from the tent. Seeing Ilya, Andrei Sakhalin blinked dazedly at him, as if the sun, or Ilya's presence, had blinded him momentarily.

"What do you have to say to me, Andrei Sakhalin?" Ilya demanded, not moving. Unable to move, Vasha realized, standing so close to his father that he could have touched him; if Ilya moved, it would be to kill the man who had betrayed him.

"Why am I being held here?" demanded Andrei. "I am relieved to see that you survived that khaja ambush, Bakhtiian."

"You bastard. You set that ambush up. You betrayed me, and for what?"

"I set nothing up! Some of my own men were killed. I had gone in to see the priest—the presbyter

—and we were attacked and I was cut off from you. I had no choice but to—"

"To run north to the court of the king of Dushan? Why not back to the army, to get help—"

"I had so few men left by then that I had to return to Dushan to collect the rest of my jahar. How was I to know if the country was rising against us? I couldn't risk the rest of my riders."

"He's mocking you," said Vasha, unable to stomach these grotesque excuses any longer. He strode forward to confront Andrei. What Rusudani had done was bad enough, betraying her own husband, but at least she had had cause to hate Janos for forcing her to marry him, for his own gain. How could Andrei Sakhalin stand there and let such barefaced lies spew from his mouth? "Have you no shame? I was taken prisoner by Prince Janos of Dushan, and he told me, and these are his very words, 'I hold an alliance with a jaran prince from the greatest of the jaran tribes.' "

"Which rules out you, does it not, Kireyevsky?"

"Andrei!" Yaroslav's voice cracked across them. "You are insolent, impenitent, and disrespectful!

Answer the charge."

Andrei spit at Vasha's feet. "As if we ought to trust his word, a fatherless bastard, giving himself airs, thinking he's as good as the rest of us. Gods, Yaroslav, you threw him out of your army because he's worthless."

"Be careful how you speak of my son," said Ilya softly.

But it was too late, Andrei was going on. "What has happened to you, Yaroslav? The Sakhalins should have been the ones leading the army, not him. What is he? A lover of men, you know it's true, every one knew it, it was such a scandal. A man who would stoop to marrying a khaja woman for the territory she brought him. How can you stomach it, Konstantina? We are First among the tribes, how can you let the Orzhekov women lord it over you? You, who are now Mother Sakhalin by right? Ah, gods, the best soldier among us has already been thrown to the dogs, run out into khaja lands, never to be seen again. He could have done something, he could have been dyan over all tribes, that is why they drove him off, and gave me, like a sop, to the woman who will become Mother Orzhekov. So the rest of you Sakhalins would be content while they cut away our power from beneath us. How could you stand by and let it happen? Not just let it happen, but become part of it? You make me sick."

"Bakhtiian had the vision—" cut in Yaroslav.

"Hah! His mother's ambition, no doubt, foisted on an untried and untrustworthy son. Why shouldn't she put it into her son's head to make up a story, pretending it came from the gods? Everyone knew what a bitch she was, forced to marry that worthless Singer from a tribe no one had ever heard of and lusting all her life after a different man entirely—"

Ilya broke forward, drawing his saber.

But Yaroslav ran his brother through before Ilya could reach him. It was so sudden that Andrei's collapse was the only sound, except for Ilya's ragged breathing as he fought to control his rage.

"I beg your pardon," said Yaroslav calmly. "I killed him so that you would not defile your saber with his tainted blood." He dropped his bloody saber on top of his dead brother. The corpse twitched once more, then was still.

"Let him be buried beneath the earth," said Konstantina Sakhalin, "so that his soul may never return to the jaran. Let his name never more be spoken within the tribes. Let it be known that there was no son of the Sakhalin tribe of this generation named Andrei. Let the memory of him cease to exist. So have I, Mother Sakhalin, spoken."

"So is it done," echoed her dyan. He signed, and guards carried the body away.

"Poor Galina," said Katya. "She was fond of him, I suppose because she saw him so rarely and because he was clever enough to be kind to her when he was with her, knowing he'd need her support to ... whatever he meant to do once Bakhtiian was dead. To see that his sons by her became dyan over all the tribes."

She lay on her stomach beside Vasha, and he lay on his side, one arm flung casually across her back, his fingers playing with her unbound hair.

"It was stupid," said Vasha.

She turned her head to look at him. Hair spilled down over her shoulders, and he could see straight down the front of her shift to the curve of her breasts within. "Are you angry about what he said about you?"

"No. Why should I be? He's dead, and I'm alive. I'm the one is going to marry the queen of Mircassia. My children are the ones who will rule, not his."

"Don't tempt the gods," she said, chuckling.

"Katya ..." He let a hand wander down her back, caressing her. "Oh, damn." He pulled his hand back and got to his knees, ducking his head to avoid the lantern that hung from the pole above. "I always look in on Rusudani before she goes to sleep."

"She won't care if you don't look in tonight. Or any night."

He sighed. "I know that, but surely if she gets used to the attentions I pay her, she'll come to expect them, even to miss them."

"You've turned into a calculating little bastard, haven't you, Vasha?"

He paused by the tent flap and grinned down at her. "You were born into your position, Katya. I have to fight for mine." She only smiled back, forgiving him for his desertion. Then she adjusted the lantern and opened a book that Tess had just given her. Vasha could tell she was gone from him before he even left the tent.

Rusudani acknowledged him warily and allowed him to sit on a pillow at the foot of her couch.

"May I read aloud to you from The Recitation?" he asked. There were three copies of The Recitation in the tent: one in Yossian, one in Taor, and one in a language Vasha did not recognize.

The interpreter told him that it was Mircassian. "Perhaps the princess would agree to teach me to read these words," he said, opening the Mircassian book.

Rusudani hesitated, then answered. "I speak them," she said. "You speak them after me."

They read five pages in this fashion, until even Vasha was both exhausted by the effort and bored by it, even with her so close to him. He bade her a polite goodnight, and she accepted it dispassionately.

A light still shone in Tess's tent, and the tent flap was thrown aside, revealing two figures seated within. Vasha greeted the guards, but he paused under the awning, eavesdropping.

Ilya sat erect in his chair, almost stiff, tapping his fingers on the table impatiently. "Damn it," he was saying, "I can't remember what the name of the nephew is who is the other claimant to the—"

"Here, Ilya." Tess pushed an open book across the table toward him. "I wrote everything down for you, all the reports."

Ilya grabbed the book and flung it across the room. It landed out of Vasha's sight with a soft thud.

Then he jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over. "It's a khaja weakness, not to be able to remember things. Singers don't need scratches on paper to—"

"Ilya," said Tess patiently, although she looked grim, "you have received a shock. It might take some time for you to recover fully. This is just one way to tide yourself over until you have ..."

He turned his back on her and stalked toward the entrance. Stopped, seeing Vasha outside. "What are you doing?"

"Spying." Vasha walked past him, into the tent. "Since I'm leaving tomorrow, I thought I would come by and ask if you have any last advice for me." He grinned at Tess and abruptly felt wobbly enough on his feet that he had to steady himself on the back of her chair. "I'm a little nervous."

"Keep a cool head," said Tess, "don't give anything away, and watch your back. But you'll have a jahar of ten thousand. I don't think King Barsauma will try anything outright, anything direct. He'll see that the wisest course is to let you marry Rusudani, since we have possession of her and enough power to lay his kingdom to waste if we're angered. He'll hope that you die young, or that jaran power will wane quickly enough that, in time, Rusudani can throw you over for a more suitable consort. He'll hope that the jaran became embroiled in internal war, or wars with other kingdoms, and slowly leave Mircassia behind, forget about her, withdraw our troops from her because we need them elsewhere. He will bide his time, Vasha. It is up to you to insinuate yourself into Mircassian society so thoroughly, into the rule of the land, appointing the right people to the council or as governors in far-flung provinces ... that in time you are indivisible from Rusudani's power. It is how an etsana's husband works. Although the authority is hers, within the circle of the tents, she needs him, and so does the tribe."

"You don't think jaran power will wane," Vasha said. "Even though I have read of the rise of powerful dynasties that later collapse, as in Habakar."

Tess glanced toward Ilya. "No. I don't think it will. Not for a long time."

Something in the way she said it puzzled Vasha. She sounded like a Singer speaking a prophecy.

Except Tess wasn't a Singer. Was she?

"Prince Lazi!" said Ilya triumphantly. "That's his name. And his mother is Lady Apamaia. She is the half sister of Prince Basil of Filis. That is why he supports her and her son. More her, I suppose, since the nephew is evidently a half-wit."

"Don't you have anything to tell me?" Vasha asked.

His father just frowned at him. "Have your food tasted."

"Oh, gods!"

Tess shook her head at him, warning.

"Well then," said Vasha, swallowing his disappointment, his unease at his father's bizarre behavior,

"I'll take my leave of you."

Tess hugged him. Ilya seemed to come to himself for a moment. He stared at Vasha for an uncomfortable while, measuring him, then patted him awkwardly on the arm. "You'll do, Vassily," he said.

Vasha practically floated back to Katya's tent.

The lantern was out. Inside, Katerina was asleep, her book clutched in one hand. Vasha stripped and lay down next to her, snuggling against her, listening to her breathing, and chuckled to himself. It was so rare to spend time with Katya when she was this quiet.

Vassily Kireyevsky led his jahar— his jahar!—southeast into the Hira Mountains. It took him thirty-three hard and mostly wet days of riding to traverse the mountains and the wild lands that surrounded them, and another twenty-four days to cross the populated lands, loose confederations of towns and manors and lord's holdings that were in their turn ruled by King Barsauma from his palace at Kavad.

No one bothered them. Indeed, word soon ran before them, and, as they advanced farther into Mircassia, farmers and townspeople flocked to the side of the road to catch a glimpse of the princess who was to be their next queen. Lords sent offerings of food and wine, and grain for the horses, clearly bent on currying favor.

Vasha refused none of the food, but refused to let anyone hold audience with Rusudani. She rode in a kind of a trance, caught between one marriage, whose fruit still lay within her, and the next, and the promise of becoming queen. And perhaps, Vasha had to admit to himself, she was still furious, or grief-stricken, at Bakhtiian's rejection of her. He accepted, on her behalf, several sons of noble families whose lands they rode through to serve as her pages, but he used them mostly to taste his food.

Each afternoon, after they had stopped, he would go to her tent and eat supper with her there, and they would read more of The Recitation. Soon he could pronounce Mircassian well, although he could by no means understand it. Slowly, after the first shock had worn off, she began to read alternating passages in Taor. Thus they passed the journey, reserved but not in open conflict. That was a beginning, Vasha supposed. Her cheeks grew plumper and her belly began to round under the folds of her gown. She appeared even more beautiful to him, perhaps only because, so close, she remained out of his grasp.

King Barsauma sent a party of ministers and courtiers to greet them. The city of Kavad looked odd to Vasha: It had no walls. Only the palace, a great citadel that blanketed the outcropping of rock that rose above Kavad, looked as if it was fortified.

Vasha conferred with his captain, and they decided it would be wisest to leave the jahar encamped outside the city and for Vasha to go in with Rusudani with a contingent of fifty men.

Escorted by khaja men old enough to be his grandfathers, this smaller group proceeded up a broad avenue lined with hordes of curious onlookers, passed through a double set of gates, and were at last trapped within a vast courtyard ringed by magnificent buildings. Mircassia was a rich kingdom, indeed.

King Barsauma waited for them in a sun-drenched courtyard. He sat in a chair padded with fine embroidered pillows. At his back a fountain splashed and played over crouching stone lions. He was so old that his skin was as delicate as aging parchment, all the veins showing through. A cap covered his head, which seemed to be hairless, and the finest wisps of white hair straggled down from his chin, barely making a beard. Even sitting, he had a stooped back, bent by age and illness, but his eyes were like steel.

"Is this the child?" he demanded, tapping his cane on the flagstones. As soon as he spoke, Vasha realized that half of his face was immobile. His words were slightly slurred, but understandable. "Come here, come here. Who are these barbarians? Which is the usurper who claims to be your husband?"

Vasha gulped. How such a frail old man could scare him, he wasn't sure. But he did. Deliberately, Vasha took Rusudani's elbow with a hand and escorted her up to her grandfather. Let it not be said that Vassily Kireyevsky shrank from confrontation.

Rusudani knelt before the old man, bowing her head. Vasha did neither. His interpreter hung at his back, so that he could whisper into his ear without seeming to intrude.

"Huh," the king grunted, looking her over. "Pretty enough, but is she clever?"

At that, Rusudani lifted her head to look directly at him. "I trust I am clever enough, your highness."

"Not clever enough to avoid getting with one man's child and being betrothed within a day of his death to a second."

"It is the fate of women, your highness, to be married whether they wish it or not. I had no authority, no army, nothing save my faith in God, to protect me. But I am here, am I not?

Unencumbered, except by husbands and their get."

King Barsauma began wheezing, which startled Vasha until he realized that the old man was laughing.

"Husbands are no great impediment once a woman becomes powerful enough. You are convent educated?"

"Yes, your highness."

"You can read, write, and figure?"

"Yes, your highness, and recite the Eulysian Hymns, and I have read the Commentaries of Maricius, the Hermeneutics of Silas, and the tract, "Against the Elians," by Hayyan of Sid Saffah."

"Pah. Church learning will not help you rule a kingdom. You will start by reading the chronicles and then, let me see, Lord Tellarkus can show you the roll of taxes and Lady Tellarkina can show you the women's quarters. I recommend you use her as your chatelaine; she's old and has but the one living daughter left. She'll know you can show that child favor, so she'll be as faithful to you as she can be."

He gave his wheezing laugh again. "You can get a barbarian for her daughter, too. She's buried two husbands already." Like a sword's cut, his gaze hit Vasha.

Vasha stood his ground.

"Is this the lad? He's a mere pup. I thought he would be an experienced man."

Vasha inclined his head with what he hoped was regal disdain. "I am Vassily Kireyevsky, your highness. I am the son of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, who commands the jaran army."

"Go away," said the king suddenly. "You may attend me another day."

He meant both of them, and his attendants briskly led them off. No doubt it was time for the old man to rest. Vasha glanced back as he left the courtyard, but Barsauma sat stiffly in the chair, not looking after them.

Vasha and his men were assigned to a suite of rooms that adjoined the women's quarters but did not have immediate access to them. In order to see his wife, Vasha had to wait at the gate into a second courtyard and be escorted across by beardless men armed with spears and swords curved almost into a half moon.

Rusudani received him under an arcade of columns that opened onto a garden. A phalanx of women, dressed in gowns that draped rather revealingly along their figures, protected her. Flowers bloomed, and the drone of insects mingled with the soft rush of an unseen fountain. In the Yos principalities, autumn was rushing toward winter. Here it was still summer. It was like this, he recalled, in Jeds as well; always mild.

A servant brought a chair. He sat down beside her. The women eyed him from behind fans; they whispered to each other, and pointed.

"You are well?" Vasha asked.

"I am well." Rusudani got the strangest look on her face. She glanced toward her attendants and, abruptly, ordered them to leave. When they had gone, she turned back to Vasha. Even though they were now essentially alone, with only his interpreter and the one jaran soldier allowed him, with her beardless guards and the Mircassian ladies out in the garden where they could see but not overhear, Rusudani still looked carefully around before speaking.

"He does not respect the Holy Church. They say he has not attended service in the chapel since his favorite son died. They say he cursed God for taking all his children from him, and that God punished him for his impiety by striking him down. That is why he can only move half of his face. But he has not repented from his blasphemy. What are we to do, Prince Vassily?"

Vasha could not reply for a long while. Rusudani was confiding in him! "Does it not say in The Recitation, that 'he who dines at Wisdom's table and drinks of her wine, will be brought to understanding through the excellence of her food'? You must strive by your own example to bring King Barsauma back to your church."

"You speak wisely, Prince Vassily, but you yourself have not chosen to sit at God's table, though you were betrothed by His laws and intend to be married by them."

She waited. Vasha was for one intense instant tempted by the perfect blue of her eyes and the delicate blush on her cheeks to throw caution to the winds and tell her that he would take part in the ritual cleansing that initiated a man or woman in to the Hristanic Church.

He bowed his head instead, briefly. "I respect your God and your Church, Princess Rusudani, but I must remain faithful to my own gods."

She did not reply at once. The sun crept in toward them from the garden, and the fountain splashed quietly.

"You have been gracious toward me," she said finally, so faintly that it was almost lost within the fountain's ripple and a breath of wind that sighed through the garden. Then she stood up and walked out into the garden. The interview was over.

By posting lookouts at all the windows in his suite of rooms, Vasha could keep an eye on most of Rusudani's forays outside of the women's quarters. In this way he managed to attend her on most of them, seeing where the chronicle was kept and where the steward had his offices, meeting the council of ministers and sitting beside her when, on their fifth day at the palace, she held an audience for the courtiers and was, perforce, compelled to acknowledge him to them all. Each night after supper he read with her, and after that he would go to the room where the great chronicle was kept, light candles, and pore through it, sounding out the words laboriously, turning again and again to his interpreter, who could speak but not read Mircassian, and together they puzzled out the heavy script and the history of Mircassia as written by its scribes.

He did not see King Barsauma nor, as far as he knew, did Rusudani. Old men dressed in elaborate court robes watched them, that was all.

On the sixth night he sat alone in the Hall of the Chronicle with the Interpreter and his favorite guard, a young Riasonovsky rider named Matfey who was, to Vasha's amusement, a nephew of the Riasonovsky captain who had escorted Vasha to Sarai after his humiliating dismissal from Sakhalin's army.

"What's that?" asked Matfey suddenly.

Vasha stood up, hearing an odd rustling and thump from one dark corner of the room. A lantern's glow traced out shadows, throwing them into long relief, and King Barsauma came around a screen.

Leaning heavily on his cane, he shuffled forward until he got to within five steps of Vasha. He stopped there. For all that he stooped now, and dragged his left leg, Vasha could see that he had once been a tall, robust man, broad across the chest, shrunken now more by his infirmity than by age. A servant placed a chair carefully behind him and helped him to sit. Metal gleamed in the shadows: Barsauma's guards.

"I could have you killed," said Barsauma. "And no doubt would save myself some trouble by doing so."

Vasha faced him without flinching. "I have my own guards posted outside, at the doors, of course."

"Huh. Why do you come in here each night and stare at the chronicles? I would stop you looking at the tax rolls if I could without throwing all hell into the palace. I know you're only looking to see what you can plunder, having this peshtiqi interpreter count it up for you. How did you get into the palace in the first place? How did you capture my granddaughter? What do you want, Prince Vassily? I can pay you off, a hundred filistri of gold, if you will release my granddaughter from the betrothal."

"She's worth much more than one hundred filistri of gold your highness."

"Two hundred, then. Bandit. I hear that one of your little pages got sick yesterday. I hope it wasn't the food."

"I will be certain in future to eat only from my betrothed's plate. It is an old custom among the jaran for a husband and wife to eat from the same platter."

"Three hundred filistri."

"My children by Rusudani on the throne of Mircassia, and that is the only offer I will accept."

Barsauma thumped his cane several times, hard, on the floor. The noise resounded in the chamber, unmuted by tapestries. "Five hundred. I want no damned barbarian seated on my throne."

"I will not sit in your throne, your highness, as long as you are alive." Barsauma snorted, and Vasha, seeing that he had perhaps amused the old man, went on. "Your great-grandchildren may sit on a greater throne even than your own."

"Barbarians can't hold together an empire."

"What if they can? Already Bakhtiian has conquered a greater empire than any I have read of."

"So you can read. That is what Lord Tellarkus claimed, but I didn't believe him." He motioned curtly to his servants and they scooted his chair up to the lectern that held the thick chronicle. "Read to me. Something ... here, this passage."

Vasha sounded it out, and Barsauma grew impatient with the interpreter's slowness and began correcting Vasha's pronunciation and then, evidently, the interpreter's translation.

"Pah. A useless man. You may keep him, but I'll get you a better."

With that, he got up and shuffled out of the hall, his servants carrying the chair behind him.

In the morning, Vasha went to the women's quarters and asked to see Rusudani. He had to wait a long while, but finally he was allowed in, to the same arcade bordering the garden, the only place she ever received him.

"You are well?" he asked.

"I am well."

"I saw your grandfather last night. He tried to buy me off."

She looked startled. "Buy you off?"

"He thinks that because I'm a barbarian that I can only be a bandit, and that I'd be as happy to have the gold as you."

"You did not accept the gold."

"Of course not."

She thought for a while, sipping at a cup of tea, then signed to an attendant to bring Vasha tea as well, poured from a new pot. He did not touch it. If she noticed, she said nothing. "What do you want, Prince Vassily?" she asked finally.

The question took him unawares. What did he want? "I ... I want to be like my father."

"You look a little like him," she said, as if to say, but are otherwise utterly unlike. "What about Mircassia?"

"I wanted you before I wanted Mircassia. I swear by my own gods that that is the truth. But it is nevertheless beside the point, Princess Rusudani. You must marry me, or another man."

"You do not treat women so in the jaran."

"All woman marry in the jaran as well."

"How can you claim that the women of your people are not ruled by men?"

"What does marriage have to do with that? A woman can marry and still wield the power that is rightfully hers."

She set down her cup on the table that separated them and touched, like a reflex, the tiny knife that hung on a gold chain around her neck. "I am to meet with my grandfather this afternoon. Lady Tellarkina says that my grandfather has a Mircassian lordling in mind to marry me, a grandson of an old retainer of his, after we have gotten rid of you. But I know nothing about this man. He will be loyal to his grandfather and to my grandfather, to the council of ministers who have agreed to his elevation.

He will become their tool. He will not care about me."

"What are you suggesting, Princess Rusudani?"

She met his gaze, clearly and cleanly, for the first time. "That we marry at once."

"The baby—"

"It is Janos's child, no matter what your barbaric customs say. As soon as it can travel, I will send it north to Lady Jadranka. I will not suffer Janos's child to live by me. She wants it. She may have it. But you and I will marry now, Prince Vassily. I will not become their pawn. Better that I ally with the jaran, who will give me a power base outside of this court, where I am the outsider, the interloper, than be isolated within the net of their intrigues."

"Once you no longer need me, will you betray me as you did Janos?"

"He forced me to marry him. I had no choice. Now I do have a choice, between you and this Lord Intavio. You have no power here except through me, and if I had you killed and the jaran invaded and conquered Mircassia, if they could, they would force me to marry another jaran prince, one I didn't know."

"I suppose," said Vasha bitterly, "that I needn't have asked that question, because you betrayed me once already, to Janos, when we were first captured."

Now she looked away from him. A flush stained her cheeks. "I did that to protect Bakhtiian."

Embarrassed, jealous, he almost took a drink of the tea just to do something with his hands. But he caught himself in time. She saw his hesitation.

"Here, child," she called to an attendant, "bring a new pot, and pour into both our cups from it."

She emptied her cup onto the stone paving. She smoothed a hand down over the curve of her stomach. "Once I was content to devote my life to God, to prayer, but God did not mean me to follow such a destiny. I am ambitious, too, Prince Vassily."

Deliberately she leaned forward, having to stand up to get her abdomen over the table, and kissed him chastely on each cheek. "We will go to meet my grandfather together."

King Barsauma heard Rusudani out in silence. Vasha could not tell if he was disgusted, infuriated, or pleased. When she was finished, he coughed. A servant hurried forward and wiped a drop of spittle from the drooping side of his mouth.

"Are you in love with him, granddaughter?" he demanded.

"No."

He grunted. "That is good. No fit marriage was ever founded on infatuation." He turned his head to glare at Vasha. His stare reminded Vasha of a vulture's, waiting until the dying animal stopped thrashing. "There are two provinces in eastern Filis that by right ought to belong to Mircassia."

"I'm sorry to hear that, your highness."

"Hmph. When your father conquers it, and has killed that heretic Basil and that puerile half sister of his, I want those provinces returned. That is the only offer I will accept."

"Then we have a bargain, your highness. But I will keep the pages."

"Ah, God," muttered Barsauma, "what has it come to, that I lose my fine sons and have to endure seeing a convent-bred child and a barbarian take my place?" He thumped his cane on the floor many times, his face getting red. Vasha wondered if he was about to collapse with a fit of apoplexy.

Rusudani reached up from where she knelt before him and took his withered hand in hers. "It is God's will, Grandfather. You will not be disappointed in us."

He settled down slowly, and his servant gave him a sip of spirits and wiped the sweat off his face and straightened his collar. Still breathing heavily, the old man measured first his granddaughter and second, Vasha. "Pah," he said scornfully. "A mere girl and a bandit." But he did not thump his cane.

"Well. Qiros, come here, come here. Bring more glasses, pour all round. From the same bottle."

By that gesture, Vasha saw that he now had an alliance with the Mircassian king.

Ten days later, Rusudani was invested as the heir to the throne of Mircassia, the ceremony taking place in the great cathedral of Kavad.

Here, in the south, bordering on the heretic realm of Prince Basil, the huge windows in the church were laced with colored glass, and the afternoon sun streamed in through the windows and illuminated the interior with dazzling light.

The presbyter read the service with great flourish, and King Barsauma managed with every steely bit of will that he possessed to crown her all by himself, with one weakened and one withered arm.

Then the queen of Mircassia, her pregnancy showing through the heavy robes of state, turned to look toward her future husband. Vasha, knees trembling beneath equally heavy robes, mounted the steps and halted beside her.

So it was that Vasha came to be married in a khaja church by a khaja ceremony, to a khaja queen.

He became a prince, as his mother had long ago promised him, but in the khaja manner, by right of paternity, by right of marriage to a woman, the ways that khaja measured rank. Not by jaran custom.

But he could hear the whisper of his father's words: You'll do, Vassily.

He was content.