Elliott, Kate - Sword of Heaven 02 - His Conquering Sword

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Kate Eliott
The Sword of Heaven 2
His Conquering Sword
CHAPTER ONE
Aleksi could no longer look at the sky without wondering. On clear nights the vast expanse of Mother
Sun's encampment could be seen, countless campfires and torches and lanterns lit against the broad
black flank of Brother Sky. Uncle Moon rose and set, following his herds, and Aunt Cloud and Cousin
Rain came and went on their own erratic schedule.
But what if these were only stories? What if Tess's home, Erthe, lay not across the seas but up there,
in the heavens? How could land lie there at all? Who held it up? Yet who held up the very land he stood
on now? It was not a question that had ever bothered him before.
He prowled the perimeter of the Orzhekov camp in the darkness of a clear, mild night. Beyond this
perimeter, the jaran army existed as might any great creature, awake and unquiet when it ought to have
been resting; but the army celebrated another victory over yet another khaja city. And in truth, the camp
still rejoiced over the return of Bakhtiian from a terrible and dangerous journey. The journey had
changed him from the dyan whom they all followed in their great war against the khaja into a gods-
touched Singer through whom Mother Sun and Father Wind themselves spoke.
And yet, if it was true that Tess and Dr. Hierakis and Tess's brother the prince and all his party came
from a place beyond the wind and the clouds, beyond the moon and the sun, then to what land had
Bakhtiian traveled? To whom had he spoken? By whom was he touched? And how could a land as large
as the plains lie up there in the sky, and Aleksi not be able to see it?
The stars winked at him, mute. They offered no answers, just as Tess had offered no answers before
he had discovered that there was a question to be asked.
From here he could see the hulking shadow of Tess's tent at the very center of the camp—not just at
the center of the Orzhekov tribe but at the heart of the entire army. Another, smaller shadow moved and
he paused and waited for Sonia to catch up to him.
She rested a hand on his sleeve and he could tell at once—although he could not see her face clearly—
that she was worried. "Aleksi," she said, whispering although they were already private. "Have you seen
Veselov?" She hesitated, and he heard more than saw her wince away from continuing. But she went on.
"Vasil Veselov. He came through camp earlier. He said he came to ask Niko about one of his rider's
injuries, but I don't believe—" She faltered.
Aleksi was shocked at her irresolution. "No one has seen him leave," Sonia continued. "And Ilya just
came back. ..." She trailed off and flashed a look around to make sure no one was close enough to hear,
despite the fact that they both knew that they were well out of earshot, and that no one walked this way
in any case. This part of camp, unlike the rest of the huge sprawl of tents extending far out into the
darkness, was quiet and subdued. "The guards didn't see him, but you never miss anything, Aleksi." She
waited.
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A discreet distance beyond the awning of Tess's tent stood the ever-present guards, these a trio who
had ridden in with Ilya, Aleksi had seen him arrive with a larger train and then dismiss most of them.
Bakhtiian had gone into his tent alone.
"Oh, I saw Veselov leave camp," Aleksi lied in a casual voice. It wasn't true, of course. But Aleksi
knew when to trust his instincts. Better that no one else realize where Veselov actually was.
"Thank the gods," murmured Sonia on a heartfelt sigh, and she gave Aleksi a sisterly kiss on the
cheek and returned, presumably lighter in spirit, to her own tent.
It made Aleksi feel sick at heart, to lie to her like that, but he had learned long ago that orphans,
outcasts, and all outsiders could not always live by the truth, though they might wish to. He trusted Tess
to know what she was doing, just as she trusted him to protect her. No greater bond existed than love
sealed by trust.
Aleksi touched his saber hilt and glanced up at the stars again. He wondered if Tess had not become
like a weaver whose threads grow tangled: If the damage is not straightened and repaired soon enough,
the cloth is ruined. Wind brushed him, sighing through camp. Songs drifted to him on the breeze, a
distant campfire flared and, closer, a horse neighed, calling out a challenge. Above, in the night sky, the
campfires of Mother Sun's tribe burned on, too numerous to count, too distant to smell even the faintest
aroma of smoke or flame from their burning.
"We come from a world like this world," Dr. Hierakis had said, "except its sun is one of those stars."
Could there possibly be another Mother Sun out there, giving her light to an altogether different tribe of
children? He shook his head impatiently. How could it be true? How could it not be true? And what, by
the gods, did Tess think she was doing, anyway? Did she truly understand what trouble there would be if
it was discovered that Bakhtiian and Veselov had met together, secretly, even with her serving as an
intermediary?
He cast one last glance at the silent tent and then began to walk the edge of camp again.
CHAPTER TWO
Ilya lay in elegant disarray beside her, breathing deeply, even in sleep marked by a harmonious
attitude that drew the eye to him. A soft gloom suffused the lent. The lantern burned steadily, but its
light did little more than blur the edges of every object in the chamber.
Vasil was one such object: the light burnished his hair and accentuated the planes of his handsome
face. He lay on his side with his eyes shut, but Tess knew he was only pretending to be asleep.
Somehow, not surprisingly, she had ended up between the two men. She traced her fingers up his bare
arm to his shoulder.
"Vasil," she whispered, so as not to wake Ilya, "you have to leave."
He did not open his eyes. "If you were a jaran woman," he said, no louder than her, "you would have
repudiated him, and never ever done such a thing as this. What is it like in the land where you come
from?"
"In the land where I come from, there are marriages like this."
His eyes snapped open. He looked at her suspiciously. "Two men and a woman?"
"Yes, and sometimes two women and a man, sometimes two of each. It's not common, but it exists."
"Gods," said Vasil. He smiled. "Ilya must conquer this country."
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"No," said Tess, musing. "It's a long way away."
"I never heard of such a thing in Jeds," said Ilya.
"I thought you were asleep! It isn't Jeds, anyway. It's Erthe."
"Ah," said Ilya. He shifted. She turned to look over her shoulder at him, but he was only moving to
pull the blankets up over his chest. "Tess is right. You have to go, Vasil."
Lying between them, Tess was too warm to need blankets. Vasil reached out to draw a hand over her
belly, casual with her now that they had been intimate.
"Not much here. You must be early still, like Karolla."
Tess chuckled. "Dr. Hierakis says I'm not quite halfway through. She says with my build that I carry
well."
"Dokhtor Hierhakis? Ah, the healer. She came from Jeds."
"From Erthe, originally, but she lives in Jeds now."
"How can she know, Tess?" asked Ilya suddenly.
For once, there was a simple, expedient answer, and she didn't have to lie to him. "Because you got
me pregnant after you came back from the coast with Charles. I know I wasn't pregnant before that. Ilya,
if you think back, you know as well as I when it happened."
"I'm sorry I—" began Vasil, and then stopped. He withdrew his hand from her abdomen and sat up
abruptly.
"You're sorry about what?" Tess asked.
"Nothing." He shook his head. Tess watched, curious. She had never seen Vasil at a loss for words
before.
"You're sorry you weren't there," said Ilya in a low voice, "and you're sorry to think that I might have
a life with my own wife that doesn't include you."
Vasil did not reply. He rose and dressed without saying anything at all. Tess could tell that he was
troubled. She watched him dress, unable not to admire his body and the way he moved and stood with
full awareness that someone—in this case she—was watching him. She could feel that Ilya watched him,
too, but she knew it was prudent not to turn to look. Vasil did not look at either of them. He pulled on
his boots and bent to kiss her. Then he stood and skirted the pillows, only to pause on the other side,
beside Ilya. Tess rolled over.
The light shone full on Vasil's face. "Are you sorry I came here tonight?" he asked, his attention so
wholly on Ilya that Tess wondered if Vasil had forgotten she was there.
Ilya regarded him steadily. "No." His gaze flicked toward Tess and away. His voice dropped to a
whisper." No, I'm not sorry." Vasil knelt abruptly and leaned forward and kissed him. Lingered, kissing
him, because Ilya made no move, neither encouraging him nor rejecting him, just accepted it.
Simple, ugly jealousy stabbed through Tess. And like salt in the wound, the brush of arousal.
Ilya shifted and suddenly he changed. All this night he had been astonishingly passive, going along
with the choice Tess and Vasil had made as if he followed some long-set pattern, pursued acquiescing to
his pursuer. As if that was how it had been before, between him and Vasil. Now he placed a hand on
Vasil's chest and gently, with finality, pushed him away. "But it can't happen again," he said quietly.
"You know that."
Startled, Vasil glared at him. "Why not? She said there were marriages like this, in that khaja land."
He reached out to Ilya's face and splayed his fingers along the line of Ilya's jaw. With his thumb, he
traced the diagonal scar up Ilya's cheek. "You are the only man marked for marriage in all the tribes."
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"Oh, God," said Tess, recalling that moment vividly now. "And I was wearing your clothes and using
your saber when I did it."
"So it is true," said Vasil triumphantly. "Can you deny it?"
Ilya closed a hand over Vasil's wrist and drew Vasil's hand away from his face, then released it. "It is
also true that not twelve days ago a rider named Yevgeni Usova was banished from the army for lying
with another man, with one of the actors. Shall I judge myself less severely than he was judged?"
"I was sorry to hear about Yevgeni," said Vasil carelessly. "But he was stupid enough to get caught."
"So we are to be allowed to continue as long as we are not caught? I think not, Vasil. I must be more
holy than the riders I command, not less. Nothing else is just."
Vasil looked annoyed, as if he had not expected this turn of events. "So that is why after your family
was killed, after the tribes agreed to follow you, you threw me out? That is why you stopped getting
drunk? I remember after you came back from Jeds, how many women used to ask you to their beds and
how very often you went. It is true, what I heard later, that you rarely lay with women afterward? After
your family was killed? After I was banished? Were you punishing yourself? Is there a single piece of
gold in this tent from any of the khaja cities your army has conquered? Once you questioned everything,
you demanded to know why the jaran had to live as our grandmothers and grandfathers and their
grandparents had lived, as the First Tribes had lived. Now you are the most conservative of all. Do you
know who you remind me of? You remind me of the man who killed your mother and sister. You
remind me of Khara Roskhel."
For an instant Ilya's anger blazed off him so strongly that he seemed to add light to the room. Then, as
suddenly, he jerked his head to one side, to stare at the curtained wall that separated the inner from the
outer chamber. "He was pure," he said in a low voice.
"And you are not? Because of me?" Vasil's tone was scathing.
Ilya hesitated. Tess had a sudden instinct that Ilya wanted to say "Yes, because of you," but that
because he did not believe it himself, he could not bring himself to lie.
"Roskhel always supported you, Ilya," said Vasil, his voice dropping. "When we got to the great
gathering of tribes, that summer eleven years ago, when we rode in to the encampment, he supported
you. And then, the day you stood up in front of the elders of the tribes to tell them of your vision, he was
gone. What happened there to turn him against you? Did he and your mother quarrel?"
The silence following this question became so profound that Tess heard, from outside, the bleating of
startled goats. Tess realized that she was cold, and she wrapped a blanket around her torso. Vasil did not
move, staring at Ilya.
"Yes," said Ilya in a clipped tone. He would not look at either of them. "Go, Vasil. You must go."
"Ilya." Vasil extended a hand toward Ilya, tentatively, like a supplicant. The gesture seemed odd in
him, and yet, seeing it, Tess felt heartened. "You have always had such great visions, ever since you
were a boy. What I want seems so small beside it."
"Yet what you want is impossible."
"It is because I'm dyan? I'll give it back to Anton. I never wanted it except to get close to you."
"You know that's not the reason."
"But I have children, and a wife. You have a wife, and soon you'll have children as well. What is to
stop us continuing on like this?"
"You will never understand, Vasil. Only what I granted to the gods and to the jaran, that I lead us to
the ends of the earth if need be, if that is our destiny. You aren't part of that vision. You can't be, by our
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own laws. I banished you once. I've already made that choice. Don't force me to do it again. Because I
will."
"Damn you." Vasil rose abruptly, anger hot in his face. "I would have made a different choice."
Ilya's weight of authority lent him dignity and a sheer magnitude of presence that so eclipsed Vasil's
beauty and charisma that Tess suddenly understood the desperate quality in Vasil's love for Ilya. "You
are not me. The gods have touched me. Through my father and my mother, the gods chose to bring me
here, so that I might act as their instrument. My first duty will always be to their calling."
"What about her?" Vasil asked bitterly, gesturing with a jerk of his head toward Tess.
"Tess knows the worth of my love for her."
"Yes," said Tess in a quiet voice, seeing how Ilya's shoulders trembled with emotion, and fatigue. "I
do know the worth of his love for me. Vasil, you know what the answer is. You must have always
known it. Why couldn't you have taken this night as a gift and let it go?"
She could not tell if Vasil heard her. But then, whenever Ilya was near him, the greatest part of his
attention had always been reserved for Bakhtiian, no matter how much he might seem to be playing to
others. "Let it be my curse to you, then," said Vasil, "that you always know that I have always and will
always love you more than anything." He spun on his heel and strode out, thrusting the curtain aside so
roughly that it tumbled back into place behind him.
"Oh, gods," said Ilya, not moving. He watched the curtain sway.
"You don't think he'll try to get caught on purpose—?"
"No. He knows I'll have to kill him. Whatever he may say, he loves his own life more than he loves
me."
"Ilya." She reached for him. He flinched away from her. She stopped dead, and then pulled back her
hand. He had never rejected her before, not like this. God, what if he really did love Vasil more than he
loved her? What if she had misinterpreted the brief scene played out between them? But watching him
as he sat there strung as tight as a bow, edged as sharp as any saber, she knew beyond anything else that
he hurt. His pain distressed her more than the knowledge—which could no longer be denied— that he
did in fact love Vasil and had for many years. Ilya was not rejecting her; he was rejecting himself, and
thus anything that loved him and might yet scorn him for what he had revealed himself to be.
"I'm a damned hypocrite," he said in Rhuian. The curtain had ceased swaying, but he still stared at it.
Tess made a brief laugh in her throat. "Ah, Bakhtiian returns to the lands of the mortals. How unique
you are. I'm sure you're the only person afflicted with hypocrisy."
He twisted around to glare at her. "You don't understand what that means!"
"What? That you're not perfect? But I've known that for a long time." She could see by his expression
that she was offending him, so she continued gleefully. "Of course! Why didn't I ever see it before? Yuri
always said so, that you thought you had to be the best. Kirill said it, too: that you always had to win. I
didn't see then that it also meant that you had to be the purest one, the one with no flaws, no stain on
your spirit, the one who never committed the slightest offense or the least impolite exchange. Do you
know how boring that kind of person is? Why, I'm relieved to see that you're flawed like the rest of us.
Even if it's only with so common a sin as hypocrisy."
"How dare you laugh at me!" He looked livid with anger.
"Because you won't laugh at yourself. Someone must. Since I'm your wife, I've been granted that
dubious honor."
"The gods do not grant their gifts lightly, Tess," he said stiffly, "and with that gift comes a burden."
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"Yes, a burden greater than that any other person has to bear. I'm well aware of it. I'm aware of it
constantly, and it's beginning to weary me. It may even be true, but that still doesn't mean that you're any
different than the rest of us. That you're any better."
"No," he said softly, still not looking at her, "I am worse."
"Oh, Ilya." This time when she leaned across to touch him, he sat motionless under her hands, neither
responding to her nor retreating from her. As he had with Vasil. "You must know that I don't think it's
wrong for you to love him. Only that I—" She hesitated. Their bed was a wild landscape of rumpled
blankets, stripes and patterns muted in the lantern light, of furs thrown into topographical relief,
mountains and valleys and long ridges and the far mound of her toes, of pillows, one shoved up against
the far wall, two flung together at the head of the bed, more scattered beyond Ilya, and of his clothing,
littering the carpet beyond. One boot listed against a stray pillow. His belt curled around the other boot,
snaring it.
He said nothing, but his silence was expectant, and courageous, too; how easily he might think it
would be natural for her to repudiate him, based on the morals of his culture, faced with what she now
knew of him.
"He's just so damned beautiful," she said at last, afraid to say it, "that I can't help but think that—that
anyone would love him more than ... me...." She faltered.
"Tess!" He spun back to her, upsetting her balance. She tumbled over and landed on her back, half
laughing, half shocked, in the middle of the bed. "You're jealous of him!"
"Why shouldn't I be?" she demanded, rolling up onto her side. He rested on his elbows a handbreadth
from her, staring astonished at her. "You've known him a long time, much longer than you've known me.
It's obvious you still love him. All that keeps you apart is that the jaran don't recognize, don't accept, that
kind of love."
"That is not all that keeps us apart, my heart," he replied gravely, but humor glinted in his eyes as
well. "I loved him with a boy's awkward, headlong passion. But you," his gaze had the intensity of fire
on a bitter cold night. "You I love like...." He shook his head, impatient with words. When he spoke
again, he spoke in his autocratic tone, one that brooked no disagreement. "You, I love." As if daring her
to take issue with the statement or the nakedly clear emotion that burned off of him.
Tess was wise enough simply to warm herself in the blaze, and vain enough to be gratified by it. She
had heard what she had hoped to hear, and she knew him well enough by now to know he spoke the
truth. Vasil was certainly more beautiful than she was, or could hope to be, but he was also the most self-
centered person she had ever met. And she suspected that Vasil's attraction to Ilya was likely not so
much to Ilya as a person, as Ilya, but to Ilya as the gods-touched child, to Bakhtiian, the man with fire in
his heart and a vision at the heart of his spirit.
"Still," she asked suddenly, "if it was possible, would that tempt you? A triad marriage?"
He rolled his eyes and sat up, sighing with exasperation. "All you women ever think about is lying
with men." He surveyed the remains of the bed with disgust and rose and set to work straightening out
the blankets and placing the pillows back in their appointed spots.
"But would it?"
His lips twitched. "I don't know," he said at last, flinging the last stray pillow at her, which she caught.
He picked up his boots and his belt and folded his clothes in exactly die same order and with the same
precise corners that he always folded them. She admired him from this angle, the clean lines of his body,
the length of thigh, his flat belly and what lay below, the curve of his shoulders, his lips, the dark
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shadow of his luxuriant hair, tipped with sweat. He was a little thin yet, from the sickness, but that
would pass. He sank down beside her, cross-legged, and considered her with a frown. "Does it tempt
you?"
She sat up as well and shrugged. "Not really. I wonder if there's anything there, in him, past his
undoubted beauty. Tell me about him."
He considered her. After a moment he slid in under the blankets and covered them both up. She lay on
her right side, angling one leg up over his legs. But her belly, not yet large enough to need a pillow for
support, still needed something. She shifted and grimaced; he turned by degrees until she found a
comfortable position. She sighed and slid her shoulder in under his arm and rested her head on his warm
shoulder. He lay on his back, with one hand tucked under his head and the other curled up around her
back, fingers delicate on her skin.
"I was a singularly unattractive boy," he said at last, musing. "I was awkward. I was a dreamer, and I
had strange ideas and stranger curiosities. I was also afflicted with—" He sighed. She had one hand
tucked down under her belly, knuckles brushing his hip; her other hand rested on his chest, so she felt
the force of the sigh under her fingers. "—very sudden and very strong desires, that winter, and no girl in
any tribe we met that season had the least interest in me. Why should they? I was odd, and ugly. Then
Vasil arrived. We were both passionate in our youthful desires."
"What was yours? Or was it only—"
He chuckled. "No, no, it was both. The physical craving was strong enough, but never as strong as the
other I wanted to know everything."
"Then what was Vasil's?"
"I suppose I was. Vasil was radiant. He was beautiful. Girls followed him. They asked him everything
they never asked me. They paid him as much attention as they paid the young men who had made a
name for themselves riding with the jahar. I don't know why he chose me."
"Perhaps he saw what you would become."
Silence shuttered them. Tess felt as if she could hear the sound of the blankets settling in around them,
caving in with excruciating slowness to fill the empty space left by the curves and angles of their
intertwined bodies.
"He believed in me when no one else did," said Ilya, almost wonderingly, as if that moment of
revelation, of the adolescent boy revealing with reckless daring his wild vision only to find that his
listener did not scorn or laugh but rather embraced him, had set its mark so fast and deep upon his spirit
that it had branded him forever.
"Not even your father?"
"My father rode out a lot in those days. He was a Singer. The gods called him at strange times, on
strange journeys."
"Your sister?"
"Natalia's first husband had just been killed in a feud with the Boradin tribe, while she was still
pregnant with her first child."
"Was that Nadine?"
"Yes. Oh, Natalia was fond enough of me, and kind to me, considering what an embarrassment I must
have been to her, but she was busy and preoccupied. Riders were already beginning to come round, to
see what they could see of her, to ask if she was ready to marry again."
"But, Ilya, women have no choice in marriage."
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He tilted his head to look directly at her. His lips quirked up. "Nor should they," he said, and grinned.
Then he yelped, because she pinched him.
"That for you, and don't think I'll ever forgive you for taking me down the avenue without me
knowing what it meant, either."
"Perhaps it was rash—"
"Perhaps!"
"But, by the gods, I'd do it again. Tess." He pressed her against him, as close as he might, and kissed
her long and searchingly.
There came a cough. There stood Vasil, framed in the entrance by curtain and striped wall. "If you
will talk about me, then I wish you'd do so in a language I can understand. And, Ilya, my love, I don't
know how you can expect me to leave here unseen if you post guards at the entrance to your tent."
Ilya swore.
"Wait," said Tess in khush. "Ilya, it's true he can't get out by the front entrance without being seen.
They all saw you come in here. You'll have to go out front and distract them with something, and he can
sneak out the back."
"You have a back entrance?" Vasil asked, looking interested.
"Go on," said Tess, forestalling what Ilya was about to say, which she guessed would be ill-
considered and rude. Vasil stared at him as he dressed, but he dressed quickly and pushed past the other
man without the slightest sign of the affection he had shown earlier. A moment later, Tess heard voices
outside, engaged in some kind of lively conversation. "Here," she said, standing up with a blanket pulled
around her. She went to the back wall of the tent and twitched the woven inner wall aside to reveal the
felt outer wall. Here, low along the ground, the felt wall overlapped itself and, drawing the extra layer
aside, Tess revealed a gap in the fabric just large enough to crawl through. She knelt and peered out.
Vasil laid a hand on her bare shoulder. His fingers caressed the line of her neck. "Here, I'll look. I've
done this before."
Tess made a noise in her throat and stood up, and away. "I have no doubt of it."
He hesitated, and bent to kiss her. Then he knelt and swayed forward. Paused, surveying his ground.
A moment later he slid outside. Tess knelt and looked out after him, but he had already vanished into the
gloom. She twitched the fabric back, let the inner wall fall into place, and called for Ilya. After a little
bit, he came back in, swearing under his breath.
"Well, you can hardly blame him," she began.
"I can do what I like," he said peevishly. "He's so damned charming that it's easy to forget how much
trouble he causes."
"I think I'd better sew that back entrance shut."
He cocked his head at her. "Probably." He stripped and snuggled in beside her. And sighed. "It was a
stupid thing to do."
"What? Letting him get out of here unseen?"
"No." By the constraint in his voice, she could tell he was embarrassed. "What—we did—tonight."
"No, it was the right thing to do. It never does any good to run away from what you're afraid of. I
should know. I've done it often enough."
"What was I afraid of?"
"I don't know. But I don't think you're afraid of Vasil anymore."
His face rested against her hair. He stroked her along the line of her torso and down along her hips,
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and up again, and down, while he considered. "No," he replied, sounding surprised, "I don't think I am."
"So. Is there anything else you haven't told me?"
His hand stopped. "I've kept no more hidden from you," he said indignantly, "than you've kept hidden
from me."
Shame overwhelmed Tess. Gods, he didn't know the tenth of it. Yet what could she say? There was
nothing she could say.
"It wasn't Natalia they were asking, anyway," said Ilya, "it was my mother and my aunt. It's decent to
observe a period of mourning before marrying again"
It took Tess a moment to recall where they had left off their other conversation: with his sister,
Natalia. "But she did marry again?"
"Yes." Although she wasn't looking at him, she felt him tense. "That's when I left for Jeds. I hated
him."
"Why?"
Ilya let go of a shuddering breath, and he clutched her tighter to him. "He mocked me. He scorned me.
Gods, he tried to rape me once. He knew about Vasil; he caught us together, one time, and he held the
knowledge of it over me like a saber. He used to fence with the boys, those of us who aspired to be
riders, and he'd torment me. He'd cut me up, fine cuts all along my arms and my chest."
"But, Ilya, how could your sister ever have married someone like that?"
"Oh, no one else knew. He made sure of that. He was charming to everyone else, a good rider, a fine
fighter, good with horses and the herds. No one believed me. They all thought I was just jealous. They
said I was too attached to Natalia. They said—" He broke off. "Anyway, I left."
"And you went to Jeds. It's strange, now that I think of it, how much I know about your journey to
Jeds, and how little I knew of the reasons you left the tribes to go there. But, Ilya." She laughed a little,
into his shoulder. "Does that mean that the courtesan Mayana was the first woman you ever slept with?"
"Yes." He didn't sound amused; defensive, perhaps.
"She's so famous, though. I remember that she used to come have tea with Cara once a week. She
must have been young, even though she seemed old to me. I was only—what?—ten. She'd just recently
bought her freedom from the brothel she was indentured to, so it couldn't have been long after you left
Jeds that I arrived there from Erthe. So it wasn't only a university education you got at Jeds."
"Are you complaining about the education I got at Jeds?"
She canted her head back to grin at him. "Not at all. Then you came back to the tribes. Was Vasil still
with your tribe?"
"No. He appeared about two winters later. He'd heard that I had returned. My mother had already
made me dyan, so no one wondered at first when I took him into my jahar. Josef left his tribe at about
the same time, to ride with me. The Roskhel tribe traveled alongside of us many seasons during that
time."
"Why did Khara Roskhel turn against you? Gods, what brought him to murder your whole family?"
But the question evoked only silence. His left hand ran a pattern, up and down, along her lower back.
She felt as if the gesture, repeated obsessively, was itself the answer, but in a language she did not speak.
"Ilya?"
"No." He lay the index and middle fingers of his right hand on her lips, gently. "No more, Tess.
There's been enough today, and tonight. I'm exhausted."
As well he might be. She sighed, knowing that if he would not confide in her now, as vulnerable as he
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was because of all that he had laid bare this night, he probably never would confess the truth of the
troubling mystery of Roskhel's defection and subsequent horrible revenge.
She shifted until she was comfortable. His breathing slowed and gentled, and he slept. From outside,
she heard the night guards conversing, the murmur of their words but not their meaning. Or perhaps it
was just one of them, reciting an old story to keep them company on a dark night.
CHAPTER THREE
Boredom afflicted Jiroannes. He had nothing better to do than to interest himself in the goings-on in
his guard-men's encampment. At dawn each day, he sent Syrannus to request an audience with
Bakhtiian. Each day Syrannus returned with a polite refusal. In the mornings Jiroannes inspected the
camp, ostensibly to make sure the women and children were being treated well by their keepers but in
fact because the simple human contact with people other than Syrannus and the two slave-boys was as
salve to him, who was otherwise alone.
There was something pathetic about how gratefully the women greeted him, eyes cast down, knowing
as they did that it was on his sufferance they were allowed to be there. Sleeping with men of another
race, soon to be pregnant with their children; and yet, most of them would otherwise have starved to
death, or met a worse fate. They knew they were the lucky ones. The little children sucked on their
fingers and stared at him. The older ones attempted to help out around the guards" camp. A few bold
children even assisted Lal and Samae and the other slave-boy—whose name was Jat—in hauling water
and beating carpets and collecting fuel for the benefit of Jiroannes himself. The guardsmen's camp
tripled in size in ten short days. By the time Bakhtiian made his triumphal entry into camp, Jiroannes felt
that he was master of an entire little tribe of his own.
When the citadel fell, his men went out searching for refugees. This time they brought back a
princess. Waiting women and peasant women had been sheltering her, but the delicacy of her
complexion and hands and the fine gold-braided shift she wore underneath the filthy gown her protectors
had given her to camouflage herself in betrayed her high station. The captain brought her directly to
Jiroannes as dusk lowered around them. Trembling, the woman knelt before him, hands crossed on her
chest, head bent so that it almost touched the carpet, and begged him for mercy.
He took her to his bed. She was a virgin, which proved how great a prize she was. She wept a little
afterward, silently; he was annoyed to discover that her grief made him uncomfortable. She was a
handsome woman, insofar as any of the Habakar women could be called handsome, and she had a
pleasingly full figure and soft, yielding flesh. A few drops of blood stained her inner thighs, but he had
been gentle—as gentle as he could be, considering how long it had been since he had lain with a woman.
But now that he had satisfied his craving, he wondered if the jaran women, if Mother Sakhalin, would
consider this night's work as any different from a rape. Still, the woman had begged him for mercy, and
she had given herself into his hands of her own free will. This was war, after all, and in war, the
conquered must expect to become servants. Yet his captain had remarked that he had yet to see jaran
riders carrying off any khaja women.
Jiroannes tried to talk with her, but they spoke no language in common and she seemed either stupid
or so frightened as to be stupid, so he soon grew bored with die effort. She called herself Javani, but
whether that was her name, or a title, or a word describing her feelings he could not tell. He called Lal to
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