The Novels of the Jaran (270 page)

“Knight takes cups,” added Janos.

Vasha moved his priest of swords three squares, without comment. He was still smarting. It had never before occurred to him that it might seem barbaric to mark a woman for marriage.

“What happens to a woman of your people if she never marries?” asked Janos suddenly.

Vasha knotted his fingers together, knowing the answer to this question all too well. “It is a shameful thing for a woman never to marry, unless she becomes a priest. She can have no children… or if she does have a child because she has not listened to the wisdom of the mothers, then that child is forever shamed for not having a father.”

“Ah,” said Janos, as if Vasha’s reply answered some question for him. He studied the board in silence for a long while. “I left court when my father put aside my mother,” he said at last, in a soft voice, “because I could not bear to see her shamed, and because my brothers ridiculed me for being no better than a bastard. I swore then that I would never put aside the woman I married, even for a great prize.”

“I would think that there is no greater prize in khaja lands than Princess Rusudani.” Vasha fingered the pieces he had taken from Janos and judged it politic to add to this comment, in case he had somehow betrayed himself. “Her grandfather is the king of Mircassia, and by blood right can she not claim that throne for herself, even in khaja lands?”

Janos glanced toward his wife, who was modestly watching Ilya’s hands tracing a slow zigzag path down the text of the holy book.

“ ‘It came to pass when the harvest was brought in and Ammion returned from the hill-country, that he found his garden and hearth untouched by war but those of his neighbors shorn to the ground. He found his wife giving of their harvest to his neighbors, and she was great with child. ‘Whence came this harvest and this child,’ he asked. ‘For I have been gone all those days when I might have sown the fields, nor in all the years of our marriage have you conceived, but brought me only this branch from another tree and now a new acorn swells.’ And she replied, ‘I have sheltered under an angel’s wing, and of his bounty do I bring the harvest of God to all those who reach for it with empty hands.’ ”

“Only a fool,” said Janos, “would wish to put aside a woman whose birth and inheritance are as providential and as crucial as hers.” He seemed almost to be talking to himself. Vasha agreed, taking advantage of this opportunity to look at Rusudani, but dared not say so aloud. Janos sat back abruptly and tossed his head, shaking something off, and with a finger he worried at his wounded lip. “How does a man make this mark on the woman he marries?”

“With his saber.”

“Your women do not object to this?”

“Women have no choice in marriage.” Vasha did not choose to remind Janos that Rusudani had also had no choice.

“Prince of swords advances two squares,” said Janos.

Vasha bit down on a smile. He moved his remaining knight so that he cut off Janos’s prince from his castle. “Do not trust the prince who rides without an army behind him, Prince Janos. Just as your gracious mother could be put aside, as you said yourself, because she had no family to protect her, so can a man claim to be more powerful than he is. It will go hard on his allies when his weakness is revealed.”

Janos saw at that moment the feint Vasha had planned, and the way he was trapped; it would take several moves yet, but his prince was hopelessly out of position now to protect the castle. But he only smiled. “You are a rare player, Prince Vasil’ii.”

“I thank you,” said Vasha lightly, “but the fact is, my cousin Katerina is much better than I am. If you brought her here in the evenings, you and I might test our skills against her.”

Janos’s expression startled Vasha. For an instant Vasha thought he had offended the khaja prince. Then, horrified, he wondered if Ilya’s suspicions had been correct.

“That is not possible,” he said curtly. “She is too valuable…” He broke off and seemed to reconsider his words. “She must remain in seclusion. If my father was to get word that I held a jaran princess here, he would send men to take her away, and I could not stop him without declaring war on him outright.”

“I beg your pardon.” But the confession made Vasha’s heart pound, and not just because it confirmed his belief that Janos was, in his own way, an honorable man. Janos was so close to rebellion against his father as made no real difference. That was a weakness that could be exploited. Ilya just did not understand. Now that Janos was married to Rusudani, who had that strong claim to the Mircassian throne, it would be foolhardy not to lure Janos into an alliance with them.

“ ‘When the first snows came, she brought forth the child, and Ammion repented of his anger, for he saw that his wife had spoken the truth. He begged God for forgiveness. They named the child Loukios, for he wore the light of God on his brow. And the angels came in hosts, and the heavens about the garden and the hearth rang with light.’ ”

“However,” said Janos, “you have forgotten your center and let it weaken. Prince of swords advances two squares and places your castle in siege.”

Vasha swore at himself inwardly, but in the end he had to concede the game to Janos.

“We will go hunting together, Prince Vasil’ii,” said Janos when the guards arrived to take him away to his tower prison.

The next day, Stefan and Mikhail were sent out to dig ditches, and Ilya brought him his food. Ilya was in one of his stubborn moods, unwilling to talk except to annoy Vasha with some sharp questions about Katya, and whether Stefan or Mikhail had caught even a single glimpse of her or her servant. He seemed disinclined to appreciate Janos’s efforts to shield Katya from his father. Finally, Vasha convinced Ilya to play khot. In this way, undisturbed, they whiled away the afternoon.

But the truth was, Ilya was only a decent player, not truly any better than Mikhail or most of the other men in the army, who played khot habitually but without the concentration and patience necessary to make one a master of the game. Vasha was a trifle disappointed in his father.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Bearding the Lion

A
NATOLY STOOD WITH A
chasm under his boots. The walls of the observation pod were so clear that he could not perceive them except for their solidity. He crouched and ran a hand along the gently sloping floor, curving up all around him to the shimmer of light that rimmed the entry lock. His other hand strayed away from his body and he pulled it back and hooked his fingers into his belt. Below, hanging in nothingness with the spray of stars as its backdrop, the shadow of the transfer station flashed and came to life as the sun rose around the planet Devi. Everywhere he saw ships locked into ports sewn into the skin of the great rings that circled the station. They winked at him, creatures of plastic and steel and other substances he had no name for; unlike horses, he could not name their breeds.

The lock coughed open and a woman stepped through, reoriented herself, and with her sticky boots squelched down around the curve of the pod, halting two strides from him. She looked slightly ridiculous because her thick curly hair floated in all directions around her face, but she grinned companionably at him, and Anatoly reflected ruefully that he probably looked much the same. As was proper for a soldier on campaign he was letting his hair grow out in the traditional manner, but it wasn’t yet long enough to braid properly.

“There’s actually a way to gravitize these pods,” she said, as if she had read his mind, “but people like the old-fashioned romanticism of zero-gee. Of course, microgravity technology is all borrowed technology and some people would rather keep our pristine but backward methods. No one’s ever seen a chameleon in zero-gee.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Branwen Emrys, by the way. I’m captain of the yacht that’ll be taking you to Paladia Major, and the emperor.”

Anatoly knew his khaja customs, or at least some of them. He shook her hand, noting her straightforward manner with relief. Like a jaran woman, she expected to be treated with respect; he could see it in her eyes and in her bearing. “Thank you. I am Anatoly Sakhalin. Can you pick out your ship from the herd?”

She laughed at that, but in a pleased way. “Oh, yes. I’d know
Gray Raven
anywhere.” She opened the pouch on her belt and pulled out a pair of
binoculars
, handing them to him. “Wind the strap around your wrist so it doesn’t float away from you. I always forget that, myself.” She crouched down, pressing a finger against the clear floor. “I’ll point at her.”

He stuck the instrument to his eyes but saw only black.

She coughed. “There’s a button under the left thumb that triggers the lenses, and you can adjust for distance and focus with your forefingers on the left and right stem. It’s already pretty well adjusted for these conditions.”

Suddenly, a ship sprang into being, so close that Anatoly started and at once was looking at a different ship, a blocky looking gray hulk that bore two distinct scars on its hull. He scanned along the ring, marking several different ships until the yacht appeared again. She was neither large nor blocky, like many of the other ships docked here, but like the finest horses in Bakhtiian’s army she looked sleek, beautiful, and strong.

“She comes of good stock,” he said finally, lowering the binoculars and giving them back to Branwen. “But I don’t understand why these ships must look each so different from the other, most of them anyway, and why some are so ugly.”

“It depends on what they’re used for, who makes them, how much you’re willing to pay for advanced modifications, and how vain the owner is. A ship in a merchant fleet needs to be utilitarian, to have a large cargo capacity relative to crew and engine space, and possess reliability over looks and in some cases speed. Courier ships need speed above all else, and fail-safes. Yachts need speed, with comfortable interiors as a usual premium, and in my case with downside capabilities.” She paused. “That is, they need to be able to land on planet if necessary. That means they need a different kind of design. Most of the ships here are only spaceworthy. It’s always nice to have a look at her from the outside first. Shall we go?”

He followed her, squelching, to the entry lock and heaved himself over into the press of gravity. He was awkward, crawling up and over onto the entry deck, a little dizzy with the shift, but as he took off his boots he watched her surreptitiously. With a neat twist, she landed on her feet. He admired her grace. She took off her boots and put on a pair of shoes that looked more like slippers than anything. When he had put on his boots and hoisted his saddle and saddlebags up on his shoulder, he looked at her expectantly.

“Where’s the rest of your gear?” she asked.

“This is everything.”

“Oh. There are weight limits, but so few of us manage that level of efficiency. Is that a saddle?”

“Yes.”

They stood alone in the entry deck, sealed off from the pod and from the station by doors. She seemed hesitant to leave.

“Listen,” she said finally, “the truth is I arranged to meet you here in order to warn you. No one else was going to do it, but I, well, anyway, I didn’t think it was right to let you walk into that mess without knowing what you were heading into.”

“What mess? I beg your pardon, M. Emrys, but I just disembarked two of your hours ago from Duke Naroshi’s ship and found your message waiting for me at the docking portal, so I came right here.”

“Please call me Branwen. We go by first names on my ship out of courtesy to the pilot, who doesn’t have a surname. But no one caught you on your way over here?”

“Was someone trying to?” Put on his guard by this conversation, he began to wish he had belted on his saber instead of strapping it, as was polite, to the saddle bags.

“You’re a bit of a celebrity, in certain circles, those that have gotten word of what happened.”

“I sent word to no one.”

“Word got sent to Charles Soerensen, so that he could arrange transport for you, and he by law, by human law, had to divulge the information to certain councils, all of whom have sent representatives to get a piece of you.”

“Get a piece of me?” It occurred to Anatoly that Duke Naroshi’s behavior, alien though he might be, was more comprehensible than the behavior of these khaja.

She chuckled. “As big a piece as possible. You’ve just become very very important, Anatoly Sakhalin.”

Branwen had not exaggerated. Anatoly smelled them before he saw them. Like most transfer stations, Karana Station had an exterior ring of docks, with warehousing and living quarters in the tubes that led in to the central sphere. They took the slidewalk out the “z” axis to the quarter ring where
Gray Raven
was docked. When they passed through the seals onto the lofty ring concourse, Anatoly scented a crowd even over the dry taint of recycled air and the tang of ship fluids. Where the ring curved up, he saw seven knots of people arranged in a semicircle around one of the pier entrances.

“Why did none of these people meet me when I arrived, if they’re so eager to see me?” he asked.

“The ‘x’ ring is restricted to Chapalii traffic only. None of these people can get in there. And they didn’t have any way of knowing when or where you’d arrive.”

“You knew when.”

“Not when. But I figured out where.”

“How?”

Branwen smiled. “That’s what Charles Soerensen hires me for.”

“You aren’t part of his tribe?”

“Of his tribe?” She thought that one over. “No. Gray Raven is a freelancer. We’ve just been working for Soerensen for a long time now.”

“And you are working for Soerensen now?”

She nodded and waved him forward into the crowd.

Khaja were very rude. There was a moment when he and Captain Emrys forged through the crowd in silence. A moment later someone recognized her, made some connections, and then everyone began to talk at once, mostly
at
him. This would never have happened in the tribes, where people knew to respect a man’s silence. They jostled his saddle, and some idiot even made a grab for his saber, as if to find some leverage with which to stop him. Anatoly pressed through ruthlessly and grinned when he heard a few yelps of pain. Then, mercifully, they escaped the crowd through the pier doors and Anatoly relaxed.