The Novels of the Jaran (242 page)

Returning to the awning, he was brought up short by the sight of Katerina sitting perfectly at ease between her Cousin Ilya and Andrei Sakhalin. He swore under his breath. But, gods, he didn’t intend to let her defeat him. Taking in a deep breath, he walked forward and without meeting anyone’s eyes got out cups and poured komis all round. Then he sat down in his usual place and went back to the bridle.

“I am surprised to see you here, Sakhalin,” Ilya was saying, “but I am overjoyed to hear that the gods have granted Galina another healthy child.”

“Even if it was only another boy,” added Katya.

“A boy may do his part by riding in the army.” Sakhalin sipped at his komis, unnettled by Katya’s remark. “I rode to Sarai to witness the child’s birth. Now I am returning to my garrison in Dushan. I have received word of a revolt being instigated by the king’s younger son, Prince Janos, and I think I had better get there quickly and execute him. That should discourage any others.”

Vasha risked a glance at his father to see how Ilya would take this remark, but Ilya said nothing. The lantern light cast him into high relief, and Vasha wished fiercely, painfully, that he, too, might be able to sit so still and without comment or action invest his surroundings with the weight of his authority, as his father could.

“What do you intend, Katya?” Bakhtiian asked instead.

“I am returning to my jahar.”

“Your mother says it is time for you to get married.”

“Marry me to Prince Janos of Dushan, who is about to be executed. That would please me.”

“A not unthinkable idea.”

Katya’s features underwent a swift change. She leapt to her feet and stalked away from the gathering without a word.

“Surely you can’t mean it?” asked Sakhalin, sounding almost nervous.

“I know nothing about Prince Janos of Dushan. If he is a troublemaker, then certainly you must execute him. But he may have other motives. A son without prospects who has strong feelings might be amenable to other kinds of alliances.”

“Ah,” replied Andrei Sakhalin in an odd tone. “Well, I will ride with you as far as Parkilnous. After that we will ride west to Dushan.”

“You honor us by your company,” said Ilya so blandly that Vasha could not tell whether he was being polite, sincere, or sarcastic.

Sakhalin made his good-byes and left.

“You don’t mean it, do you?” asked Vasha into the silence. “That you would let a khaja prince marry Katya?”

“Why not?” Ilya did not look at him. He opened up his copy of the holy book Princess Rusudani had given him. He always started at the same place: the account of the ascension of Hristain into the heavens. “It might prove to be a worthwhile alliance.”

“Aunt Sonia would never agree. Mother Orzhekov would be furious. It is one thing to say that women have no choice in marriage, but quite another to force a jaran woman to accept the attentions of a khaja man, prince or not.”

“Have you fixed that bridle yet?”

Vasha winced. Ilya went back to reading. After a bit, another commander came back. Vasha was glad of the excuse to leave, but he had no sooner gotten out of earshot than he was waylaid by Katerina.

“What are you doing? Acting as Bakhtiian’s servant? How can you stand it?”

Vasha stiffened. “I survived two years as the most despised member of the Kireyevsky tribe. I can survive this.”

“It’s disgraceful how he treats you.”

“He may treat me any way he wishes! It’s his right—”

“—as your father? Do you think anyone acknowledges the connection?”

“Katerina Orzhekov, I politely request that you
leave me alone
.” He brushed past her and kept walking. To his vast surprise, and disappointment, she left him alone.

Indeed, as they rode on, one day passing into the next, she kept herself to herself. Eleven days later they rode into Parkilnous, and the city elders begged Bakhtiian to allow them to present him with gifts and to lay down a feast in his honor. Vasha served his father at the feast and managed to overhear one elder whispering to another about a traveling friar who had been imprisoned for preaching a false gospel about the imminent end of the world, in which God would obliterate the sun in a blinding flash of light and bring Heaven to earth.

He related this information to his father when they rode back to camp that night. In the morning, Ilya sent a message to the elders asking that he be allowed to speak with the arrested man. Andrei Sakhalin arrived to make his farewells just as the messenger returned with the elders’ reply.

“They’ve sent him where?” Ilya asked, annoyed.

“He was sent away two days since, Bakhtiian,” said the messenger, one of Konstans Barshai’s guardsmen, “in a cart, bound for a place called Urosh Monastery, where the khaja priests will pass judgment on him.”

“You are interested in this khaja criminal, Bakhtiian?” asked Andrei Sakhalin, sitting down suddenly.

“I am interested in certain words it is reported that he has said, yes. I would like to interview him.”

Sakhalin took his quirt out of his belt and drew it through his hands. “Urosh Monastery lies about seven days’ ride off the main road that the army is taking south, but it does lie in territory I control, and I am riding that way in any case.”

“Why would he be taken there?”

“The dyan of their priests lives there. He is named in their tongue a
presbyter.
He came to the king’s city to give his respects to me, which he did with proper humility. He was an old man, but my interpreter said that he had no sons or grandsons to follow after him, that it is their way to elect a new presbyter from among the ranks of the most worthy after he is gone.”

“I must think about this.”

Sakhalin rose. “I will ride with the army one more day, then, before I turn west.”

Ilya gave him a curt nod but scarcely noticed his leaving. He saddled Kriye himself, forgetting that usually he had Vasha do it for him, and rode that day tight-lipped and preoccupied. That evening when they halted for the night, he sent Konstans Barshai to ask Princess Rusudani to attend him.

“You’re still thinking about the khaja priest, aren’t you?” asked Vasha.

“I am thinking about the bright light that appeared from heaven. Here, give me that carpet. I’ll unroll it.”

“Tess taught us that the khaja might think the words our gods have spoken to us equally strange to what we think of theirs.”

“Certainly that is true. But eight years ago the captain of a group of jaran riders who found my wife wandering out in me hills beyond Karkand saw a bright light in the sky which vanished just before he found her. That same night Tess’s brother Charles disappeared. I thought nothing of the captain’s report, until I read these words.”

Vasha could see that his father was in the grip of one of his obsessions, and he knew him well enough to know that he would be impatient and cross until he had found some satisfaction. Aunt Sonia had once told Vasha that Ilya had gone for years in this state, until the tribes had united utterly behind him. But more importantly, Ilya was talking to him. “Do you think the khaja god came down and lifted Charles Soerensen up into heaven?”

“No.” Having unrolled the carpet, Ilya rose and began pacing, slapping his gloves against one thigh. “I think he went to Erthe.”

“What was the bright light?”

“I thought the captain who gave me the report saw the city burning from a distance, and mistook it. Now… I don’t know. He also said there was a freshly burned patch of ground in the valley in which he found Tess.”

Princess Rusudani arrived, attended by a jaran girl who now helped her around camp. Jaelle, who had been given her own tent by Bakhtiian in recognition of her status as a valued interpreter, arrived a moment later. The two khaja women glanced at each other, and Vasha was surprised to see the princess look away first. Ever since the awful scene many days ago, when the princess had fallen into a rage and screamed words Vasha did not understand at her poor servant, Princess Rusudani had seemed less calm, less sure of herself, but Jaelle had oddly enough become more confident, and had even (according to one of the archers whom Vasha lay with occasionally) begun working very hard to learn khush.

Stefan appeared and threw himself down beside Vasha. He touched Vasha on the shoulder and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Is there something wrong with Katerina? She asked me to lie with her last night.”

Anger shot through Vasha. He hooked his fingers into his belt, a better choice, he thought, than slugging his best friend. “And?”

“But all she did was cry and hold on to me. She told me that you said you never wanted to talk to her again. Is that true? It made her very unhappy.”

Princess Rusudani and Ilya exchanged formal greetings, translated through Jaelle. While Rusudani spoke, Jaelle glanced up once, swiftly, to mark Stefan’s presence.

Vasha shoved Stefan away. “You’re too ugly for any woman to want to lie with anyway, except as a brother,” said Vasha in a low voice, weirdly happy about the story Stefan had just told him.

Stefan snorted. “That isn’t what Valisa Savko told me.”

“I don’t believe it. Why should
she
bother with you? You’re not even a soldier.”

Stefan smirked.

“Liar!”

Ilya glanced back at them. Vasha clamped his lips shut over his next words: Why should beautiful Valisa Savko, whose prowess with the bow was legendary and who was famous for having single-handedly killed ten khaja soldiers with ten successive arrows, want to lie with
Stefan
? Many young women had approached his father on this journey south. Only Valisa had actually gotten inside Bakhtiian’s tent.

Stefan merely looked smug.

Vasha wrenched his attention back to Princess Rusudani.

“I lived for ten winters in the house of God,” she was saying, and Jaelle translated.

“You were sent there as a child,” Ilya said.

“I was.”

“I have seen that you are wise in the ways of your church, because of your education. You can read and write?”

“These things I was taught at the convent. But God has not yet granted me the glory of being invested as a sister in the faith. My knowledge is insignificant next to God’s glory.”

“But you have heard of the
Gospel of Isia of Byblos
.”

She made a gesture with one hand over her chest and shot an angry glance at Jaelle. “It is a heretical text. The Accursed One seduces men with false words and false prophets.”

“Yet there are some who believe it is truth?”

“They have strayed from the True Church.”

“ ‘They have strayed from the True Church,’ ” Jaelle translated, “So speaks Princess Rusudani, but it is not so, my lord. “The Anointed Church follows the word of God faithfully. The northerners have broken with His covenant by refusing to acknowledge—”

Rusudani began to speak harshly, drowning out Jaelle’s words.

“Silence! I do not care to listen to you disparage one another. You will translate my words faithfully.”

“I will, my lord,” said Jaelle meekly.

“I wish to hear about the
Gospel of Isia of Byblos
.”

Rusudani touched the knife that hung on a chain at her neck. “I have not read it, my lord, only heard of it so that I might not fall into error.”

“You heard the story of the man who was taken away to Urosh Monastery, Jaelle. Is there such a story, of a great blinding, in Isia’s gospel?”

“Not as it was read to me, my lord, but I am not educated.”

“Ask Princess Rusudani.”

Rusudani hesitated before she spoke. “The heretical gospel speaks only of Hristain’s ascension and his sister’s ministry. But in recent years a new heresy has spread northward from the lands where the apostate church holds sway, speaking of a light that flares in the western oceans and of angels whose glowing wings track across the sky, and how these are signs presaging the second coming of Our Lord, the Son of God.”

“Those words Princess Rusudani speaks,” added Jaelle. “But I have also heard it said among the caravan women that His sister, the Blessed Pilgrim, has already descended from Heaven and walks the earth even now, preparing us for His coming and the final days.”

Ilya considered for a long time. He took a sip of komis, and Vasha refilled his cup. “I will go to Urosh Monastery and speak with this prophet.”

“Let me go as well,” said Rusudani instantly, “so that I may guard you from his lies.”

The passion of her plea took Vasha aback.

But Ilya had withdrawn his attention, wrestling with new preoccupations. “Stefan, escort the women back to their tents. Kireyevsky, you will attend me.” He rose and walked away through camp.

Vasha hurried after him. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait? When we reach Jeds, we could ask that the holy women admit us to the great library in Jedina Cloister. Surely they will have books that would answer your question. They might even have this gospel that Jaelle speaks of.”

“Men aren’t allowed to set foot in the cloister, and I do not intend to force my way into a women’s sanctuary. But I can enter Urosh Monastery.”

The idea sprang to mind easily and pleasantly. “Princess Rusudani can gain admittance to Jedina Cloister for us, if it is true that she lived for many years in such a cloister in her own land. Or Tess could.”

Ilya fixed him with such a look, suddenly, that Vasha shrank back. “I will speak with Andrei Sakhalin. Send Konstans to me as well. Then brush down my string. Look Kriye over particularly. He was off on his right foreleg today.”

Stung, fuming, Vasha walked away, not too fast but not too slow, either. But he went and found Konstans Barshai, and made excuses to himself that he would care for the horses after he escorted the captain over to Andrei Sakhalin’s tent.

Konstans did not like Ilya’s idea either.

“I will take five hundred men,” said Ilya.

“You should take one thousand, the whole guard,” argued Konstans.

“Why not the whole army, then?” Ilya retorted.

“No need for that,” Andrei Sakhalin said, smoothing over the tension. “I have already sent word ahead to my garrison that I am riding through this territory. I travel with only a jahar of one hundred. My men control this area. There will be no trouble.”