The Novels of the Jaran (289 page)

But it was from the man who had killed Ilya in an ambush.

Tess stood up so abruptly that her chair tipped over. A soldier caught it before it could hit the carpet and set it upright again.

“We will begin our attack at dawn tomorrow,” she said, one hand clenched, “if Prince Janos does not surrender himself to us by that time. Take that message back to him.”

“Do not speak in haste, your highness,” said the envoy, bolder now that she had granted him immunity. “Prince Janos holds two hostages. He is willing to trade them for an alliance.”

Her heart skipped a beat. At first she could not force the words past her throat. “What hostages might I be interested in?”

He took an hour to reply, a second, a million years. Now would come the name. She waited, but he did not speak, and then at last when she thought she would freeze, would burn, would dissolve into nothing because she could not bear to wait one more instant to hear, his mouth moved. He spoke.

“Prince Vasil’ii and Princess Katherine, your highness.”

At first, a spike of warmth, the unspoken reply:
Thank God Vasha and Katya are alive.
Then, she plunged into the darkest depths. Not Ilya, and any man whether shrewd or foolish would know enough to bargain for his own life with the life of Bakhtiian.

She wanted to turn and walk into her tent. She wanted to shut herself away and scream. But she could not.

“Are there others?”

“A few soldiers, your highness, servants, nothing more.”

“How can Prince Janos prove that these hostages exist, and are alive? One of my own soldiers must go with you into the castle and identify them.”

“I cannot agree to this without Prince Janos’s permission, your highness.”

He was stalling, of course. But Janos had played his strongest card, Tess was sure of it. She still had a fresh army. She could afford to wait one more day. “Tell him what I have said, then. Return to me at dawn tomorrow.”

He bowed.

Even after he left, she did not retreat into her tent. Out here, in the daylight, under the eyes of the whole army, she had no choice but to stay composed, to look strong, to keep in control. She was afraid of what would happen if she was alone.

Jaelle left just after dawn to go down to the marketplace. It was easier than she had expected to get past the guards, who had either been bribed or cozened by Rusudani, and she was surprised to find the market in full spate, as though the people crammed within the town chose to pretend that no army sat outside the walls, waiting to break through. She found Mistress Kunane and her cart. This time, without the doubtful presence of guards, Mistress Kunane was eager to take an overgenerous payment of coin in return for the herbs Rusudani had asked for.

“It’s for the little ones,” Jaelle explained, slipping the bundle of herbs into the pouch she wore at her belt. “They cry all night, they’re so frightened.”

“Give it to them in wine,” said Mistress Kunane, counting through the coin carefully. “That will make it work better.”

Another customer came forward, and Jaelle escaped, relieved that the herbwoman was too busy to question her closely, as she had done last time.

Only one man could now be spared to stand guard outside Widow’s Tower, and he was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to do more than take the coin she offered him when he let her back in.

“What does Rusudani want sleeping herbs for?” Katerina asked.

“I don’t know.”

Katerina looked thoughtful and went to stare out the slit window, where she could see the distant streaks that marked the enemy campfires.

At midday Jaelle heard the clatter of boots and armor on the stairs. The door opened to admit Prince Janos and a flock of guards. Katerina rose slowly. Then she gasped and took a step forward. She spoke a word in khush.

Too late Jaelle saw the man surrounded by guards: a jaran soldier, his armor covered by a handsome red and gold surcoat. The next instant the guards had hustled him out, and the door thudded closed behind them, leaving Prince Janos alone with the two women.

“That was my uncle, Gennady Berezin,” said Katerina, surprised into the confession.

Janos circled her at a careful distance, but she kept turning to face him. “He agreed to enter the castle in order to identify you and your cousin, to take news of you back to the Prince of Jeds.”

“What of the other prisoners?”

Janos dismissed them with a wave of one hand. “They aren’t important. They remain in the dungeon.
You
are the one who matters.” He said it warily.

“Now what do you mean to do, Prince Janos?”

“Use your life to bargain for my own.”

Katerina smiled bitterly. “It is worth so little to you?”

With two swift strides he closed the gap between them and grasped her hands in his. She began to pull back, then stilled, reading a new emotion in his face. “It is worth that much to me. More than you wish to understand.” He struggled within himself, his voice thick with longing, for her. Jaelle stared, seeing him stripped away to nothing, naked, as if his desperate circumstance had brought him to reveal his weakness to the woman he evidently loved. Because it was always weakness in a man to reveal that he loved a woman. A man’s desire for her was the only power a woman had. “If I had only been more patient….”

“It is too late for regrets, Prince Janos. You have condemned yourself.”

Strange, Jaelle thought, that the woman, locked away, might seem more powerful at this moment than the man who had imprisoned her.

“Is there no hope for me?” he asked hoarsely.

She jerked her hands out of his. “I have my honor to uphold.”

“It is no dishonor to a woman to be taken in war. You are mine, and I have used you more kindly than any other man would have.”

“Than any khaja man, perhaps. Do not slander the men of my own people.”

“But you are mine.” He took hold of her shoulder with one hand and with the other caressed one of her braids, twining it through his fingers. “Is what the men of your people do when they marry, when they scar a woman’s face, any better than forcing her? Had I done that to you, had I taken a blade and cut your face, would you have come willingly to my bed?”

Pale, she twisted out of his grasp, and he let go of her. “I would have no choice.”

“Tell me how this is different, Katherine. We use different words, we have different customs, because we are what you call
khaja
, but for me to take you as my mistress is no different than for
a jaran
man to take you as his wife. You have as little choice in either.”

Katerina crossed to the window seat, but she did not sit down. Her posture was stiff, her expression bleak. “I pray to the gods that my aunt may come soon,” she said, and would not look at him as she said it.

“I fell into a rage,” said Janos softly. “It will not happen again. I will not touch you again without your consent. Is that enough?”

Jaelle had to sit down, she was so astonished to hear him say it.

But Katerina only said, “No.”

“I will draw up a contract—”

“I do not want your lands or your wealth.”

“What do you want, then?” he asked, growing exasperated.

“I want to be free.”

“Free to leave here and be scarred by a man of your own people?”

Now she turned. Her color was high. “Free even of that, Prince Janos. You are right enough, that I might as well be your mistress as another man’s wife, but I will not be either!”

It was a clear, cold day outside, and harsh lines of light striped the chamber and the rug. Katerina’s eyes were as cold as the sunlight, and Janos blazed, like the fire, answering her. “You will never forgive me for one night’s anger.”

“I can never forgive such a thing. Only a man would ask a woman to do so.”

He moved. Amazed, Jaelle watched as he knelt before Katerina and lifted one of her hands to his lips, kissing it tenderly before he let it go. “I remain your servant, Princess Katherine. Always, and forever.”

She looked taken aback. “Then I order you to let me go, to return to the army camped outside these walls.”

He smiled wryly and stood up. “Only a woman would ask a man to do so. My castle is besieged, Princess Katherine. A man in my position does not divest himself of his most prized possession except in dire need. And I confess to you, my pale rose, that your beauty and your fierce soul will be out of my reach if I am dead.”

While she stood, speechless and unmoving, he leaned into her and kissed her, then stepped back quickly, as if to avoid any blow she might throw at him. But she did not move. “No man will offer you what I do, Katherine, no man will cherish you as I will, nor will I cease my suit, so long as I live.” He placed a hand over his heart and bowed, slightly, as any man ought to a princess, and left the chamber.

Dust trailed down the beams of light as the afternoon sun sank low enough to slant in through the arrowslits. The fire popped in the hearth, and Jaelle jumped, startled, and added another log to the fire.

“No man has ever spoken to me in that way before,” said Katerina into the silence. Her voice trembled.

“He loves you,” said Jaelle, although it was hard for her to say the words. “That is not a luxury often given to princes, or so it is said. A prince must marry for lands and alliances, a merchant for what connection it can bring him and his family. A slave cannot marry at all, except at his master’s whim.”

“I will never marry.”

Jaelle made the sign of the knife. “Be careful what vows you make to God, Katerina. He might hold you to them.”

But Katerina fixed her gaze on Jaelle, so searing a gaze that Jaelle froze, afraid to move. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to marry. I don’t care for men in that way, not truly.” Her voice caught, but she lay a hand against the stone wall as if for support and went on. “Scorn me if you wish, but it is what I am. I could love you, Jaelle, but I will not burden you with what you do not want. I know you are fond of Stefan.” She paused. “Now you know my secret. You may betray me if you wish.”

Jaelle shut her eyes, then opened them, because it was cowardice not to look on Katerina, who had just offered her a glimpse of her inmost soul. “I will never betray you. I swear it, my lady.”

“Could you love me?”

Jaelle flushed. “I do love you.” It came out as a whisper. “But not, not as a woman loves a man. I cannot. I’m sorry.”

To her surprise, Katerina’s expression brightened. “Ah, gods, Jaelle, you have given me a precious gift, and I thank you for it.”

After that, Katerina seemed calmer. That evening she received Princess Rusudani and Lady Jadranka with equanimity. She even agreed to read aloud from
The Recitation
that had been translated into Taor, and Rusudani took advantage of the rapt attention given to Katerina’s reading to visit the screened-off chamber pot. Jaelle followed her, and there, trading places, she slipped the herbs into Rusudani’s waiting hands.

“I will remember this,” said Rusudani, and returned to the group seated so charmingly around Katerina.

Lady Jadranka lingered after the others had gone. “Lady Katherine,” she said in her calm way, “I hope you will remember, when all this is over, that my son has treated you kindly.”

“I am sorry, my lady,” said Katerina, and would say no more. Lady Jadranka sighed and left, and the guards closed and barred the door behind her.

“Blow out the lantern,” said Katerina, “so that our eyes may become accustomed to the dark.”

“Why?”

“Because whatever Rusudani means to do, she will do it tonight. And I, for one, do not mean to be caught unsuspecting.”

Gennady Berezin returned in late afternoon, none the worse for wear, and having seen but not spoken to Vasha and Katya. Too restless to sit still, Tess took a contingent of soldiers and rode a circuit of the walls.

White Tower was well placed, its west wall riding a bluff above a narrow river and the town growing out from its other sides. The docks lay within the great curve of the river out of which grew the bluff, but these river docks lay deserted now, abandoned because they had been built outside the ring of walls.

“If I had built this castle,” said Tess, “I would have carved a stairwell down to the river level from the castle, as a way to get supplies. Have you scouted out the land below the west wall?”

From here, just beyond catapult range and at the edge of the docks district, the castle loomed up into the heavens, a heavy slab limned by the light of the setting sun and by the sudden appearance of torches, like stars flickering to life.

One of the captains, an Arkhanov, replied. “We can’t scout there during the day. Our men are well within archery range. And at night… it’s steep, and impossible to see.”

Tess squinted at the sky. Clouds covered the east, drowning most of the sky, but a crescent moon lay just out of their reach. “As soon as there is the least bit of light, send men in. Try tonight, a preliminary expedition.”

“Will you make an alliance?”

“If I do not, will Prince Janos kill his hostages? I must think about it. We will hold a council tomorrow.”

In the last light of day, they rode back to camp. Tess ate mechanically, because she knew she ought to, but she was by now too tired to sleep. She sat in her chair under the awning until her hands got cold. But once inside the tent she felt choked, trapped, and so she grabbed a blanket and went outside again. She sat down again, nodded away into sleep, woke up with a start. Jumped to her feet. The night guards looked at her, questioningly.

“Gods, I need to walk.”

One of them fell into step beside her, and with his comforting presence, she walked through camp and out to the sentry line nearest the town. Here, in the concealing darkness of night, they stumbled across several interesting diversions, common enough in siegework: Among a contingent of Farisa Auxiliaries, they found two prostitutes from the town who had sneaked out to make a bit of coin.

“Send a man to follow them back in, as far as is safe,” said Tess to the embarrassed captain. “See if we might be able to get a group of men inside the town that way.”