The Novels of the Jaran (251 page)

The recording device pulled back to take in Imani sitting in Sojourner’s lap. Imani was about six months old, fat, happy, with a nap of curly black hair and a perfect mocha complexion.

“I know you heard the news about her birth, but I haven’t had time to send you a decent image of her yet, so here it is. We’re back on the flagship after a one month holiday with my clan, which was wonderful except there’s a running feud between my sister Candace and my cousin Buru over—”

As she kept talking, the frame broadened to include her husband Rene. He sat in a chair next to her, face composed with a diplomat’s polite interest. He wore a cranberry-colored cutaway jacket, unbuttoned to reveal a double-breasted striped waistcoat underneath. Rene was a dandy, not the kind of person Tess would ever have thought of Soje as handfasting with. Tess got a message from Sojourner about four times a year, always with Rene in tow, and Tess had learned that she could follow the current fashions by studying what Rene wore in the transmission. She had seen this waistcoat before, but the jacket was new.

“As it happened,” Sojourner was saying, “we had transferred for a three day stint onto the Echido barge
Usendi
, and since I was three weeks to due date we left the med-tech behind on the flagship, and there I was standing on the bridge when my water broke! You’ve never felt embarrassment until you’ve stood in a puddle of your own amniotic fluid among a crowd of polite aliens. The worst part was having to explain what was happening! Then you should have seen changes in their facial tints.” She chuckled. “They hustled me off to the female chambers and while we were sending for the med-tech a ke came in and—”

With Sojourner well launched on her anecdote, Tess focused in on Rene’s hands. That was the new sartorial addition: The tightness of the jacket sleeves was relieved at the wrist by four buttons, left open to reveal a hint of white ruffled shirtsleeve. He had fine hands; Tess had learned to admire them, although she had never yet met him in the flesh. Now, he began to tap on the arm of the chair, as if whiling away the time while Sojourner gossiped.

Tess opened her own screen and, concentrating on his fingers, began to take down the message he was sending to her in Morse Code. Primitive, but useful. Sojourner cheerfully talked on and Imani chimed in with occasional comments in fluent babble.

single level of encryption, message begins, transport codes delivered in tripartite sequences, top level unknown. second level public record, third level coded to house sequence. no further levels noted.

Dmitri woke up and began to fuss. Tess flipped off the message and bounced him a little, and he calmed down, but when she switched the message to run, he began to fuss again. So, giving up, she rewound to the beginning and stood rocking back and forth to keep Dmitri soothed and just listened to Sojourner’s gossip, which was, always, entertaining. She could come back later to decode the entire message.

By the end of the tape, Dmitri was fussing in earnest. Tess locked the message onto a cylinder and then left the library and took the northwest avenue that led to the marketplace. It was a dreary day, overcast and muggy. A great flank of clouds pushed in from the west. Despite that, the market was filled, and Tess pushed and squeezed through the crowd until she reached the bazaar of the cloth merchants. A crowd had gathered here to listen to a man in a plain gray robe who was, evidently, preaching.

Curious, Tess paused to listen, bouncing Dmitri on her hip to keep him quiet.

“…and when it comes to pass that the angels shall descend from the heavens, then, in the hour of the fourth book, all illness shall be razed from the land, and in the hour of the third book, all famine shall be razed from the land, and in the hour of the second book, all war shall be razed from the land, and in the hour of the first book, death itself shall be lifted by the glorious hand of God. So shall these signs be seen in the pilgrimage of His Daughter as She wanders, so do the smallest of miracles appear to mark Her wanderings: Has not the winter past been mild and the crops abundant? Has not the hand of war brought peace? Does the tiny babe not thrive that would have perished before? Those touched by Her mercy must thrive, even the heathen, who are themselves a sign of Her coming. How else would the jaran have conquered so much so swiftly if God had not granted them His Grace, for that they signal the coming of the Merciful Age once again? Is not their
bakhtiian
a man of a full hundred years of age who yet appears to be a young man of thirty?”

Tess started. She always made it a point to invite churchmen and holy men and women to audience, but this was an apocalyptic prophecy she had certainly not heard before. She studied the man’s plain robes and finally saw the tiny knife hanging from a chain around his neck: that and his lack of beard or mustache marked him as an adherent of what she called the Hristanic Church. She wondered what Brother Saghir, who had already founded a congregation of the True Church in Sarai, would think of this man’s prophesying.

“Tess!” Galina emerged out of the cloth merchants’ bazaar.

Tess slid away from the crowd and went to greet her.

Galina displayed several bolts of cloth. “See, isn’t this blue pretty? It came all the way from the Yarial Empire, across the Golden Road.”

“Or so the merchant claimed,” put in her more skeptical companion, a Danov granddaughter.

“No, look at this weave. Do you see how the thread is—”

The intricacies of weaving were too much for Tess, and evidently the two young women had argued over this point already.

“Dmitri is hungry,” Tess broke in.

Galina sighed. “Very well. Will you carry this back to camp for me, Aunt Tess? Elena is already weighted down with the rest of the cloth.”

Tess exchanged the baby for the cloth, and rather missed the warmth of the infant. She drifted back to listen to the preacher again.

“Just as you have come to this city that lies on the edge of the wilderness, so do we all live in the great city being built by God, at the edge of the time of the ending of the Accursed Age and the dawning of the Merciful Age. There will be much grief and sorrow, but there will also come the burning light of God that will cleanse us of all—”

A figure passed under the arches leading into the cloth merchants’ bazaar. Tess stepped away and peered after it. Those Habakar women who had come to Sarai with their husbands or fathers dressed modestly in public, but the same could be said for all the khaja women here. A few wore veils, many covered their hair, but most had adopted the jaran custom of free passage for women. This figure, unusually tall, was covered from head to foot in heavy veils.

What on earth was the ke doing out in so public a place?

Tess darted after her. She ducked and weaved through the crowd and managed to follow the ke all the way through the cloth merchant bazaar into the court of the spice merchants (where she sneezed at least three times) and passed into the dim arcade sheltering the Scribes Guild. The ke stood before a nondescript stall, but turned, anticipating Tess’s arrival.

“Here is a manuscript you will wish to acquire,” said the ke at once, as if she had known Tess was following her.

In the first Chapalii world Tess had learned, no Chapalii would have spoken before Tess, heir to a duke, did; it had taken her a long time to get used to the ke’s casual assumption of equality between them.
But that’s what I wanted
, she reminded herself, stepping forward to examine the stall.

The scribe looked nervous, sitting at a table illuminated by two candles protected by glass shutters and what light penetrated the inner depths: Scribes never worked out in the elements, but the outermost and innermost stalls were always reserved for the poorest or least established scribes.

“You’re new here?” Tess asked in Taor.

He nodded and glanced with superstitious distrust at the ke. “This holy one is known to the scribes here. She is interested in this scroll, which has recently come into my possession.” He fingered a leather sheath which, presumably, held the scroll. Tess nodded. He licked his lips and went on. “It is known as the
Byblene Gospel
, my lady.”

“That’s a heretical work, isn’t it?”

He pulled ink-stained fingers through his black beard. “I am a good Habakar merchant, my lady, trusting in God Almighty, in whom all mercy resides. This came to me through my cousin who had it from his brother-in-law, who had it from a Xiriki merchant who had it from a captain of the jaran army who claimed to have captured it from a merchant at the siege of Targana who in his turn claimed to have been given it by a scholar from Byblos.”

“What was a scholar from Byblos doing in Targana?”

“I do not know, my lady, or even if the Targana merchant received it in Targana or elsewhere. There are a few words in the Vidiyan script, here—” He helpfully held the scroll up toward one candle. “—which may be in the hand of the Targana merchant. Scrolls from Byblos are uncommon, my lady. This one has particular value because a translation of the Byblene script into Habakar has been interpolated between the lines.”

“Who did the translation?”

“I cannot answer that question, my lady, but I can only assume that the Targana merchant did so. It is a careful translation, worth more than jewels.”

“But then why would he have written this inscription in Vidiyan? Why not translate it into Vidiyan instead of Habakar?”

“I beg your pardon, my lady.” The scribe stood up suddenly, looking over her shoulder.

Tess turned to see that she and the ke had attracted a small but interested crowd, all men, some few of whom she recognized from her previous forays into this arcade.

The scribe slid past the table. Immediately one of the men came forward and there was a whispered conversation. Tess could interpret the drift of the conversation by the exaggerated expressions of shock and fear that coursed across the poor scribe’s face.

When he returned to the table, he bowed several times in a most obsequious fashion. “I beg a thousand pardons, my lady. Here, let this worthless scroll be yours as my gift.” He pushed it across to her.

“I’d like to see it first.” Setting down Galina’s cloth, Tess eased the scroll out of the sheath and unrolled it, peeling off the layer of oilcloth. It was good quality parchment, and the quality of the lettering was remarkable: elegant and clear. Even the interpolation had no smudges. “What is this worth?” Tess asked the ke in Chapalii.

The ke studied it. “In barter or in coin?”

“In coin.”

“Two
yekh
, by the standard devised by the civil administration here in Sarai.”

“That much?”

“It is a good quality of reproduction, for these primitive methods, and the text itself is both rare and has arrived here from a considerable distance.”

“You can be sure of that? Do you think it actually originated in Byblos?”

The ke extended a hand, gloved, of course, and the scribe took one step back, caught himself, but did not move forward. She ran two fingers down the parchment, which Tess still held open. “It is woven of different fibers. It is more sophisticated in manufacture, like the four other artifacts of Byblene manufacture which have come to the library.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to get a Habakar interpreter who can help me translate it into Rhuian. It will make a fine addition to the library.” Tess rolled the scroll back up carefully and tucked it into the sheath, rummaged in her pouch, and came up with two of the newly minted
yekhs.
She set them down in front of the startled scribe, smiled at him, and picked up the scroll and the cloth.

“That is not necessary, my lady. Your presence here is payment enough.”

“I trust the transaction is satisfactory?”

He bowed several more times. “May the Almighty God smile on your children, my lady. May he bring fortune to your—” He broke off, looking flustered. “You are most generous and gracious. May God grant you and your husband long life.”

Tess took pity on him and left, the ke keeping step beside her. “I didn’t know you came so often to the marketplace.”

“On occasion it is useful. Is there not a saying in the Habakar tongue: ‘A bird caged in luxury would rather the poverty of the wild wood’?”

Was there a wistful lilt to her voice? Tess could not tell. “Yet you chose exile knowing that it would bring isolation.”

The ke slipped into the deeper tongue, as if the answer was too important to voice in one of the lesser tongues of what she had once called “the superficies of the Empire.” “Out of exile comes true seeing.”

“ ‘It is only through many eyes that we can see ourselves,’ ” replied Tess in the lesser tongue. So few things translated easily into the deeper tongue, which as far as Tess could tell used no pronouns nor even truly recognized the existence of the existential individual.

But the reply evidently contented the ke, who said nothing as they walked down the avenue that led back to the library. They paused on the steps of the library to watch the clouds roll down over the north ridge. Tess heard the rumble of thunder in the distance.

“There will be a great storm.” The ke lifted her head as if to scent the air.

Tess smiled. “I can feel it in the air.”

“You can feel it?” The ke did not quite
sound
surprised, but she turned to regard Tess. Tess could just make out her eyes with their odd vertical lozenge through the thin slit in her veil. “Humans are not known for this capability.”

“Anyone can feel the electricity in the air at a time like this.” She paused, sorting out what the ke had said. “You can feel it as well?”

“I can see it,” said the ke. As if that ended the conversation, she went up the stairs to the door that led into her private chambers.

Tess just stood there, holding the cloth and the scroll. She stared at the clouds roiling down on them, trying to imagine what it would be like to see the fields of force emanating around the storm, at the pressure and the wind and the static charges shifting and building. But didn’t the Chapelii see in infrared? Last Tess had heard, most xenologists agreed that the Chapalii saw in degrees of heat. What if, like some marine creatures on Earth, they perceived electrical fields as well?