The Novels of the Jaran (152 page)

That night, Hyacinth downed two birds with his knife and brought them back to camp. Yevgeni sat slumped over his knees, apathetic now in his grief. Hyacinth sighed and stared at the two birds. He steeled himself, going off a few paces away from the safety of the hobbled horses, and he began the disgusting, messy work of preparing them for supper. He hadn’t a clue what to do with them. He plucked at the feathers, but they wouldn’t come out cleanly. He had to hack and tear at the skin and peel it off entirely. It was horrible. He cut off their heads and feet, swore copiously, gutted them, and threw up once at the smell and sticky texture of the fluids that gushed out of them. But he did it.

Yevgeni just sat there. Hyacinth got out the little solar powered oven he had stolen from the Company’s camp and roasted the two birds in it. That wasn’t so bad, since the oven had all kinds of timing devices built into it according to weight and type of meat. He also heated water to boiling and while the meat cooked, he took a cloth and dabbed the cuts on Yevgeni’s back with hot water. Yevgeni let him do it. He was otherwise listless. He shivered, and Hyacinth hoped that he wasn’t going to get some kind of infection. He brought out the scanner again and ran it over Yevgeni, and the med program on his slate advised him to use the antiseptic mist.

“What are you doing?” Yevgeni asked at last, roused out of his stupor by the stinging of the mist.

“Keeping you well. Roasting some meat.”

But Yevgeni wouldn’t eat when Hyacinth brought him the roasted fowl.

Hyacinth crouched beside him and took Yevgeni’s chin in his hand. “They’ve all abandoned you, Yevgeni, don’t you see that? So what does it matter what you do?”

“It matters to the gods.”

“Well, I don’t believe in your gods. How did those twelve men fall off their horses?”

For the first time since Valye’s death, Yevgeni lifted his gaze to look directly at Hyacinth. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

“I did that, and you know I’m no fighter.”

“You’re a Singer. A shaman. Perhaps you know sorcery.”

“It’s not sorcery either. Listen, Yevgeni. Maybe we have a way out of this. Do you know where the shrine of Morava is? Maybe Soerensen is still there.”

The glaze of dullness that stiffened Yevgeni’s expression lightened slightly. “Who is Soerensen?”

“The Prince of Jeds. If we can find him—”

“He would help us?” Yevgeni shook his head. “He can’t help us. No woman or man can, now that Grandmother Night has settled her terrible gaze on us.”

“Yes, he can. He’s more powerful than grandmother night.”

“Don’t say that!” Yevgeni shrank away from him.

“But it’s true. I made those men fall down, with this knife. I can heal your wounds with these simple instruments. That box is an oven that baked this meat without fire. I’m more powerful than grandmother night. Let me show you something.”

He brought out his slate and unfolded it, so that it lay flat on the ground. In silence, Yevgeni watched. “Do you remember the jaran tale we sang? The one about Mekhala, the woman who brought horses to the jaran?”

Yevgeni lowered his eyes. “Yes.” He said it as if something shamed him about the memory. “I was with Valye. She liked to see your people’s singing.”

“Run Mekhala folktale, scene two. Meter field.”

In scene two, Hyacinth played the khaja prince who had come to demand tribute from the rhan, as the jaran tribes had called themselves before they had gotten horses and become ja-rhan, the people of the wind. Above the slate, about a meter cubed, the play unfolded: Anahita as Mekhala and Diana as her sister, Hyacinth entering as the prince with his retinue of Quinn and Oriana.

Yevgeni stared openmouthed at the image, moving, playing out. He reached out and snatched his hand back before he touched it. “Sorcery,” he murmured.

“No, it’s not sorcery. It’s a—oh, hell, there’s no way to explain it to you. Run image of Morava.”

The image melted away and re-formed into the gorgeous dome and towers of the Chapalii palace the jaran called Morava. Hyacinth had not seen Morava except through this program, and he was delighted to be able to pace around it and see the complex from all angles. He envied the duke’s party for experiencing it firsthand.

“But how did it get so small?” Yevgeni demanded. “How did you capture it and bring it here?”

“It’s just an image, Yevgeni, not the shrine itself. Look, do you know what a map is? Let me see. Maybe I can reconstruct where we left the army, and where we are now. It’s been thirty-five days since we left camp and if we’ve ridden northeast… Goddess. I should have paid more attention in cartography tutorial.”

“But no one is more powerful than Grandmother Night,” said Yevgeni suddenly. “Even seeing these things and what you did to those khaja bandits, still… She attends us at our birth and grants us a measure of days in which to live. She is the One with whom we may bargain for gifts, if we’re willing to risk the bargaining, if we’re desperate enough. She is death, Hyacinth. No person can escape death.”

“How old do you think the Prince of Jeds is?”

Yevgeni shrugged. “Of an age with Bakhtiian, I suppose.”

“He isn’t. He’s older than Mother Sakhalin.”

“He can’t be.”

“He is. Why would I lie to you? Dr. Hierakis is older than he is. Owen is in his seventies, too, and Ginny is at least as old as that. Yet they are still young. My great-grandmother Nguyen is one hundred and sixteen years old, and I can expect to live at least as long as she has and stay young until I’m ninety or so. Grandmother night doesn’t scare us. You’ve got to believe me, Yevgeni. You’ve got to
want
to believe me, you’ve got to want to live. If we can make it to the shrine, if we can find the duke—”

Yevgeni reached up abruptly and touched Hyacinth’s cheek. “That’s when I fell in love with you,” he said in a low voice. “When I saw that song, the song you did about Mekhala. Valye said you were really the khaja prince and that it was a wind demon truly drawn down to walk among us, but I knew you were just a person singing two different songs. You were so beautiful.”

Hyacinth shut his eyes. How Owen would have loved this scene: Yevgeni’s voice blended grief and wonder and a shy yearning so perfectly, and the way he held his body reflected his longing and his sorrow and his actual physical pain. But this was real. Hyacinth knelt and put his arms around the other man. Yevgeni gasped, from the pain of the embrace, but he did not draw away.

“Oh, damn,” murmured Hyacinth, “it must hurt.”

“No, no,” said Yevgeni into his hair, “never mind it. I gave it for her, who followed me to her death.”

“We won’t die. That way you can remember her. That way part of her will always live, with you.”

Yevgeni sighed against him but said nothing. There was nothing he needed to say, not at that moment. Hyacinth stroked his hair and held him carefully, tenderly.

After a little while, Hyacinth warmed up the meat in the oven and Yevgeni ate a sliver of it, though it was the flesh of the gods’ sacred messengers. Not much, but by that small gesture, Hyacinth knew that Yevgeni had cast his lot with his khaja lover and abandoned his own people once and for all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I
N THE MIDDLE OF
the night, Tess woke to the sound of footsteps in the outer chamber. She heaved herself up and slipped on a silk robe, tying it closed just under her breasts and above her pregnant belly. She pushed the curtain aside and walked into her husband.

He had been pacing. She could tell by the way his shoulders were drawn forward and one hand clenched up by his beard. He opened the hand and splayed it over one side of her belly. “The child is growing,” he said. “And all of a sudden, it seems. I think you’re twice the size you were at Hamrat, and it’s only been sixteen days since we left there.”

“Oh, gods, and it’s all pressing on my bladder.”

“Do you want me to walk with you?”

“No.” She slipped on a pair of sandals, threw a cloak over her silk robe, and walked out to the freshly-dug pits sited at the edge of the Orzhekov encampment. At night, it was quiet and peaceful here, but she knew that about a kilometer away lay the royal city of Karkand, settled in for a long siege. She greeted guards, and they greeted her in return. They were used to her nightly peregrinations. The guards looked a little chilled, but she was never cold now, even in the middle of the night.

When she got back to the tent, Ilya was pacing again. “Here,” she said, “stop that. It’s moving again. Sit down.” She settled down cross-legged beside him and opened her robe. He rested both of his hands on her belly. “What’s bothering you?”

He did not reply. He concentrated on her, on her belly, on his hands.

“There, did you feel that?” she asked. He shook his head. “It’s mostly like a fluttering, now, like butterflies. When I get bigger, you’ll feel it.”

He sighed and withdrew his hands, and stood, and walked to the entrance of the tent and then back to her. “How does Ursula know so much?” he demanded. “Although she is always respectful, she speaks with the authority of Sakhalin himself. We rode a circuit of the city today and she pointed out where siege engines might be used to the greatest effect, and how the river might be dammed so that it could flood the walls and the citadel. She speaks as if she has seen and done all these things before, as if she has already ridden with an army like ours.”

“She’s read many books.” Tess rose and poured two cups of water, and offered one to him. He ignored her. He went to the table and unrolled two pieces of parchment on the tabletop. One was Nadine’s map of Habakar lands and beyond. The other was a rough map of Karkand and the surrounding countryside.

Karkand, like Jeds, was a walled city, but here the resemblance ended. Hovels and houses and palaces, poor and rich alike, lay crammed within the protecting walls of Jeds, and only the prince’s palace and the university lay outside within their own ring of walls. Huts and shanties had sprouted up immediately outside the walls and along the road that led to the palace, but only the poorest people who could find no foothold inside the city lived out there.

In Karkand, the rich lived outside the inner city. They lived in a vast sprawl of villas along avenues spread out on the fertile plain that surrounded the two hills on which lay the citadel and the king’s palace and the innermost city, which was itself as large as Jeds. The outer city was also protected by a wall, not as formidable as the walls ringing the twin hills but impressive for its sheer vast circumference. It took half a day to ride around the suburbs of Karkand.

“Sakhalin has ridden south,” said Ilya, staring at the maps. “Reports have come in that the king’s nephew has raised an army there. He is said to be courageous and an able leader.”

“What news from Anatoly Sakhalin?”

“None. Grekov and Vershinin have reached the two cities west of here, by forced march—”

“Gods, that was fast.”

“—and a courier just came in to say that one of the cities, Gangana, has already surrendered. Should I take the main army south?”

“What do your commanders advise? Has Sakhalin asked for your help?”

“Sakhalin has not asked. Yet. The council is divided. If it’s true, and the main threat lies in the south… The nephew could easily drive north and east and cut off our supply route back to the plains. We’re losing forage here. And yet, and yet, Karkand is the king’s city, and it is the king I must be seen to punish.”

“Unless it is the nephew who has the people’s hearts, and not the king.”

Ilya turned and folded his arms over his chest, examining her with a frown on his face. “That’s just what Ursula said. I thought—for an instant I thought it was as if she knew what was going to happen next. As if she’d heard this tale before.” He shook the thought away with an impatient shrug of his shoulders. “No. I must stay here until the city is taken. I intend to sit in the king’s throne, so that the Habakar people will know who rules here now.”

He bent back over the table, poring over the two maps. Tess watched him. She could see that he was too agitated to sleep. His lips moved, sounding out names, but he did not speak aloud. With a finger, he traced lines of advance: Grekov’s command driving west; Sakhalin riding south, and the army led by Tadheus Yensky swinging in a wide loop south and east. His hand found the cup she had set beside him. He raised it to his lips and took a deep draught, then made a face, as if he had been expecting something else, not plain water.

“Ilya, come lie down with me.”

He shrugged, as if to say: not now, I’m too busy.

Tess loved to just watch him. She thought he looked, if anything, a little younger these days. He glowed with health, or perhaps it was only the restless energy radiating off him. She had finally come to an understanding of how different he and Vasil were. They were both self-absorbed, but Vasil was absorbed in knowing how he appeared to others while Ilya was absorbed in the vision that led him. Vasil always knew where he stood in relation to others. Ilya simply
was,
and he drew his thousand thousand followers along with him as does any juggernaut. And she, one of them. She smiled wryly and settled her hands on the curve of her abdomen.

“I know it’s none of my business, but have you lain with any other women since we got married?”

His fingers halted midway down the map. His chin lifted. She could tell by the angle of his shoulders and the way his mouth twitched once, and then was still, that he was embarrassed. “It’s none of your business.”

Tess laughed and pushed up to stand. She went over and slid an arm around him. “You haven’t, have you?”

“I’ve been busy. Very busy. And preoccupied.”

“Yes, my love. Come lie down with me.” He followed her in to their bed meekly enough. He might even have slept, but she woke later to find him gone.

In the morning, she woke to find him sleeping in his clothes next to her. She rose quietly and dressed and went outside. Konstans greeted her with a yawn.

“You look tired,” she said.

“Gods. In the middle of the night, Bakhtiian made us ride out along the northwest prospect, to look over the walls, not that we could see them, but he was more interested in the orchards, anyway. Doesn’t he ever sleep?”