The Novels of the Jaran (232 page)

“Their women!” M. Unbutu chuckled. He seemed different. Ilyana thought him the most unpretentious adult she had ever met, diffident without being dithering, but after all these years with her father she had learned to read lines of authority, and it was clear that he sat at the focus of this conversation. Although, of course, the flurry of energy stirred around Anatoly. “We’re not sure their females have any position at all, any status, any real power, in their culture.”

“Is it not women who run the camp and the wagon train? It is on the strength of its supply lines that an army can move. Everyone knows that my grandmother knows how to organize a camp better than any other woman of the tribes, and it is true as well that Mother Orzhekov built the great system of logistics and supply on which Bakhtiian feeds and maintains his armies.”

“ ‘I have gone free. It is the truth sustains me.’ ”

M. Unbutu set a brown hand on the table and stared at his nails. “I saw that myself. But that doesn’t mean that it is the same everywhere. We do know that Chapalii females are secluded, and that under their law a Chapalii woman who marries loses her birth status and takes on her husband’s status completely and irrevocably. The judgment xenologists have drawn from that is that Chapalii females have a lesser and markedly unimportant status, compared to the males.”

Anatoly digested this information in silence. “You khaja are very strange,” he said at last. “It is no wonder you have fallen to the armies of these khepelli, if everything I have read about your history is true. It seems to me that you think they are khaja like you, but they might not be.” He frowned.

“If only Bakhtiian and the tribes could breed horses that could sail the seas of night….”

“ ‘Are you tempting me?’ ”

Jones laughed. “Now there’s a thought.”

“You’ll have to fill me in on the joke,” said Wingtuck caustically.

“Which doesn’t bring us to a consensus,” added M. Unbutu mildly.

“I mean to say this,” said Anatoly, now addressing himself to M. Unbutu. “The khepelli must know we will seek intelligence about their Empire and their emperor. If we do not seem to be seeking such information, then they will become even more suspicious. So there must always be one person who is clearly a spy. That will be me.”

“That puts you in a vulnerable position,” said M. Unbutu.

Anatoly shrugged. Ilyana admired the lack of concern with which he greeted the prospect of such danger. On the other hand, he had put himself in as great a danger years before, riding, as he was now, into enemy-held lands.

In the quiet, she heard Dejhuti.

“ ‘You child of endless night! You cannot hurt me or any other man who sees the sun!’ ”

Her father’s voice was oddly calm.
“ ‘True: it is not from me your fate will come.’ ”

At that moment, Sakhalin turned and looked straight at her. Instantly, she realized that her thin nightshirt exposed her arms, and that the lace trim at the neck drew attention… but as quickly as he saw who it was, he looked away. By then the others had all seen her.

“Yana!” M. Unbutu beckoned to her. “Come here.” He said it so pleasantly. But however easygoing the words, and his expression, might appear, he expected to be obeyed.

She crossed her arms over her chest and slid around the obsidian lattice, and stood there, shifting from one foot to the other while the three khaja examined her and Anatoly Sakhalin looked at her obliquely.

“Damn,” said Wingtuck. “She does look like her father. Is she past the age of consent?”

“Mother’s Tits, Wing,” snapped Gwyn Jones. “Shut up.”

“Were you looking for someone?” asked M. Unbutu.

Ilyana was struck by revelation. Looking at M. Unbutu, who had, by the evidence of two empty cups sitting by his right hand, been here for some time, she knew where Valentin was.

“ ‘But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind.’ ”

Ilyana gulped. “I…I was just looking for Valentin. He said he wasn’t feeling well, but I guess he must have gone to… the infirmary.”

“Go on,” said M. Unbutu gently. “If you need any help with him….”

“No! No.” Freed, she backed away, bumping into the lattice. It felt warm. A hum like distant singing throbbed through her. She stepped away, smiling stupidly, knowing they were all still looking at her, hugged herself even more tightly, and sidestepped toward the door.

“Vasil,” said Owen in a voice that combined patience, disgust, and excitement, “you’ve picked up so many bad habits in the last four years that I don’t know
what
I’m going to do with you. Maybe I should have left you on that Mother-forsaken planet. I don’t know where your mind is right now, but I want it here with
me
! Go on.”

As Ilyana paused by the door, she saw her father direct his next line not at Dejhuti but at Owen.
“ ‘I would not have come at all if you had not asked me.’ ”

She fled into the anonymity of the corridor. There, she took in three deep breaths. She knew where M. Unbutu’s cabin was. She and the children had escorted him there just hours before, while she had peppered him with more questions about suspension bridges, elasticity, and plasticity. He had only escaped because it was dinnertime. She ran. Once she had to slow down to a walk and, breathing hard, she smiled blandly at two of the actors—new ones, whom she didn’t know—who were evidently headed down to the lounge for their scene. She crossed into the sleeping ring and counted doors until she stopped in front of a door as unremarkable as the rest. Not knowing what else to do, she touched the wall panel. To her shock, it was not locked. It opened immediately.

She groaned. Remembered where she was, and darted inside. The door closed behind her.

Valentin had a look of bliss on his face and a trail of spittle running down his chin. He was curled into a fetal position on the bunk, two transparent patches covering his eyes so that she could see the movement of his eyeballs underneath. Spasmodically, his hands clutched an egg-shaped control sponge that was slightly smaller than his head.

Ilyana felt sick and furious at the same time. This was the kind of stuff kids were not allowed to use. She didn’t even know how to work it. Worse, Valentin had broken in here and was stealing time, blundering into places he wasn’t supposed to be. She wasn’t an idiot. David ben Unbutu worked for Charles Soerensen. What if there was top secret information on here? What kind of awful trouble could Valentin get in if they were discovered?

Strewn on the bed were two additional pairs of eye patches. Not knowing what else to do, she sealed one set over her eyes. It was odd to be able to see the room through the patches, even mottled with a distant, because tiny, grid. She knelt on the bed beside Valentin and twined her fingers between his, and touched the sponge.

She fell. From clear to opaque to blinding light, her sight vanished. First she felt. Wind tore at her skin and sand blasted her hands and fingers. Then she saw, first her hand and the sleeve of her school tunic, then the yellow screen of sand whipped into a wild dance. Her nostrils choked on it. When she opened her mouth to breathe, her tongue was instantly parched by the grit. Last, the sound: howling, howling. She had been here before.

“Valentin!” She didn’t really say it, but the shout emanated out from her. “Valentin!”

Like a ship pitched on stormy seas, he stumbled and fought forward not twenty paces in front of her. Except it wasn’t quite him. The wind had flayed the skin from the muscle and scoured through layers of tissue until bone gleamed like a beacon against the overpowering blizzard of sand. His hair was black and twisting, and as she struggled nearer, she saw it was snakes, hissing and writhing like an echo of the storm.

He turned, although he couldn’t have heard her frail voice over the roar of the wind and the clashing din of earth cast up into the air. He had no face, only a skull.

“Valentin! What are you doing here? Where are you going?”

“I’m trying to get there! I’m trying to get there! Let me go home!”

She grabbed for his arm before he could walk on. Her fingers oozed through his flesh as if through butter, closing at last on dry bone. “Come home with me!”

A blast of wind caught her in the face, blinding her. The force of it scraped her skin raw. Blood welled and dripped onto the sleeve of her blouse, mixing with the layer of grime that contaminated the pristine white cotton. Droplets of blood spun away into the storm, and she focused on one, fixed her gaze on it no matter how much it hurt as the wind screamed against her face, and willed it to wink into existence as a portal. The blood flashed scarlet, and grew, and there was an arch, the plain white gateway of the Memory Palace. She threw her body to one side, twisting, and with that torque spun them down into it.

They tumbled down the great entrance hall spanned by a barrel vault and landed in the courtyard where the fountain’s cool spray bathed them and washed away the grime and washed away Valentin’s horrible guise until he became Valentin again. Looking sulky, and queasy.

“Oh, gods, don’t throw up,” said Ilyana.

“Much you care. Why can’t you just let me alone?”

“Stupid question.” She stood up, keeping a firm grip on him. There were only four arches on each side of the quadrangular courtyard, but the number was deceptive. Each one split into multiple archways, so that depending on the angle at which you passed through any individual archway, you found yourself at a different destination, at a different wing of the Memory Palace. “Where’s the room you built. Valentin?”

“We have to go upstream.”

She let him lead her. Gods, he knew this place well. Passageways branched off into vast warrens; chambers flew past, and then at a dock they clambered onto a barge. Towed by horses up a torpid river, the barge breasted the current and sent a lazy wake flurrying out from its stern. Wings of the palace lined the river, and suddenly they swung onto a side channel, passed under a bridge, and were back inside the palace, in a dark chamber that rang with the lulling slap of water against a stone jetty. The barge bumped placidly up against a piling.

Valentin scrambled up onto the jetty. Utterly lost, Ilyana climbed out and followed Valentin down a wainscoted corridor whose windows looked out onto the ocean. They turned a corner and walked into their flat in London, with the great etsana’s tent and the walls that masked the real world and pretended to show a false one instead. At once, her stomach clenched with the old familiar loathing, the awful feeling of being trapped.

“Now,” she said. “We’re going back to the ship.”

“I don’t want to,” said Valentin, straining against her. “Just let me go, Yana.”

“Don’t you have any idea what kind of trouble you could get us into?”

He looked about to say, “I don’t care,” but he didn’t. She dragged him over to the panel that opened the door into the hallway.

Aloud, she said, “I don’t know how this program works, but when we step through this door we’re going to be back in the cabin. In M. Unbutu’s cabin. And the program will be over. End run.”

She opened the door and stepped through.

And jerked her hands back from the sponge and yanked Valentin’s hands off, but he was already blinking, awake.

“Are you going to throw up?”

He gagged. “No. Why did you have to go so fast?”

“Oh, like I want to be found here when M. Unbutu comes back. You may not care about getting tutorials, but I do!” She pulled the patches off their eyes, and stood over Valentin while he replaced everything exactly as he had found it. “Hurry! Hurry! No, you idiot. Smooth out the bed. Any fool can see someone’s been lying there. Now come on.”

They got out the door into the corridor. No one was around. The dim lights made her feel safer.

“How did you get the door open?”

“It was unlocked.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care whether you believe me. So there.”

Voices sounded from the right.

“Come on!” She grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him in the opposite direction.

“Slow down, slow down,” he gasped. “I feel sick.”

He was shaking. His forehead and neck were wet with sweat, and he felt hot. She stopped and put her arms around him, holding him.

“Valentin, why do you have to do this?”

He did not reply, just rubbed his face against her shoulder, back and forth, like he was trying to wipe something off.

David ben Unbutu came around the corner. He was alone. He pulled up, surprised. “Well. Hello. I see you found him.” His eyes widened, taking in the scene. “Is he all right?”

“Yeah, fine. I mean, no, he’s sick, but everything is fine. I’m just taking him back to the cabin now.”

“Oh, well. Maybe we won’t be able to meet tomorrow.” Was it her imagination, or did he sound a little disappointed?

“Of course we will! No, really, everything will be fine tomorrow.”

“I hope so.”

“Good night,” said Ilyana firmly.

“Good night.” He walked on, looking back once over his shoulder.

Ilyana waited until he had curved away out of sight. “I’ll get you nesh time somehow,” she said in a low voice. “But you gotta do it legally. You can’t sneak in—”

“Just let me go home,” he muttered, so she took him back to the cabin. He fell asleep at once.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

BIRBAS

T
ESS WOKE SUDDENLY.
Ilya breathed beside her. He was, and always had been, an extremely quiet sleeper. A curtained alcove screened off the tiny chamber in which the children slept. She listened, but she heard nothing. It was too early for the camp to be stirring, even on the day that the women and the army would ride out to the great hunt, the birbas.

The noise came again. A cough. Tess pushed back the blankets, stood, and deftly lit the lantern hanging from an overhead pole. She looked in on the two children. Natalia slept with her limbs all akimbo, Yuri more compactly, but both of them with such angelic faces in repose that Tess’s heart ached just to look at them. Yuri shifted and coughed again.