The Novels of the Jaran (292 page)

“Put on this helm, my lord.” A soldier handed a battered helmet to Prince Janos. The strap was broken, sheared through, but he stuck it on his head anyway. A flight of arrows pattered over them from the castle walls, but whoever was shooting was shooting into the dark, and although one man cursed, he was only grazed in the arm.

“No lights,” said Captain Maros. A soldier extinguished the last torch.

In darkness, they forged forward. They were not looking for a glorious death. These grim men wanted to get their prince out of here, away. Vasha understood irony. Janos’s soldiers were as devoted to him as Ilya’s were devoted to their Bakhtiian. It was the ultimate test of a prince’s stature, that his men would rather die than betray or abandon him, even in such hopeless circumstances. Yet someone had betrayed them.

Janos whispered to Lord Belos, and Vasha heard Lady Jadranka’s name twice, and that of Rusudani only once, but said with a bitter anger.

“This way.” Captain Maros led them into a pitch-black alley. Vasha stumbled over the rough stones. His guard grabbed his elbow and heaved him up.

“Shall I kill him, my lord?” asked the soldier.

“No,” said Janos.

“Hsst.” Captain Maros halted them. “Riders, that way. We’ll go left.”

They went left, down a broader street, and Captain Maros tried to find a route up to the rooftops but the first man to the roof was shot, suddenly, an arrow piercing him from several houses on, where torches illuminated a pitched roof and several dark forms.

“Cursed by the moon,” said Captain Maros, for the clouds had uncovered the crescent moon, and there was just enough light to see figures, however shadowy they might appear against the night sky. Farther, toward the town wall, smoke rose, licked upward by flames.

“Riders,” hissed another soldier, one of the pair bringing up the rear. “Behind us.”

“We must take shelter in one of the houses,” said Lord Belos.

“We’ll be trapped,” said Captain Maros.

“We must go forward,” said Janos. “We must break free of the town. At the docks we can get a boat.” So it was decided.

They slanted right and almost ran into a line of jaran auxiliaries. Leaving four men to fend them off, they ducked into a narrow lane, fetid with garbage and urine. Vasha’s shoulder scraped along the wooden frames of houses, burning his skin under his shirt until blood welled up. Once they ran into a second group of Janos’s men, who related how they had escaped from the town gates, words Vasha could not follow.

While they talked, Vasha inched sideways, toward a break in the alley, but a soldier nudged him with the flat of his sword. These weren’t careless men.

Left with nothing else to do, Vasha cocked his head and listened. Somewhere, out there, the jaran army fought its way into the town. He wondered if they had rescued Katerina. He wondered about his father. Was Ilya still alive? Was it safer for him, chained down in the dungeons? Or would he simply be an easy target for a guard seeking a last act of revenge? Had Stefan died with him? What had happened to Rusudani?

There was, for a time, a restless surging noise all about them, the inconstant swell and ebb of battle, but it faded away, as if the battle had gone elsewhere or ceased altogether. More men joined them as they edged farther into town, but these were poorly-armored townsmen. He caught snatches of conversation in frantic Yossian, not enough to place it together. Evidently most of the townspeople had barricaded themselves inside their homes, trusting to their wood and stone tents to grant them safety from attack. What else could they do?

“Move left,” said Captain Maros. “No. Back. Riders ahead.”

Slowly, Vasha realized that it was unlikely, if so many jaran soldiers infested this town, that they would glimpse but not engage so many successive troops of jaran soldiers.

“If we can get through the marketplace,” said Lord Belos hopefully, “then there are only four streets to the dock gates.”

In one direction, always, the way was free. They were being driven. Vasha lifted his head and watched the others, watched Janos, his face dim in the night, watched Captain Maros, whose pale surcoat moved like a ghost through the dark streets, hugging the walls, seeking safe passage. They did not suspect.

Not until they came out into the marketplace to find at least fifty of Janos’s men, forming into ranks around the central well, the pivot on which the market commons was fixed. By then it was too late. By then, they were surrounded. Vasha smiled and then bit the smile back, ducking his face to hide it.

When at last the torches and lanterns marched out from the streets and alleys that poured into the market square, when the shifting mass that was the jaran army settled into a circle around them, Captain Maros jerked Vasha over to him and laid his sword along Vasha’s throat.

“Shall I kill him, my lord?” he asked. He sounded, finally, angry.

“No,” said Janos. “That would be the coward’s way.”

Arrows came. Vasha threw himself to his knees, but the arrows thudded harmlessly on the shields that had been thrown up to protect Prince Janos. Farther out, the soldiers were not so lucky, but they struggled to regain their formation. After that, Vasha could not see, but he felt the khaja soldiers tense, felt and heard the rumbling advance of the jaran army, felt the impact, crushing him from all sides, as the two groups engaged.

Caught in the very center, he pushed himself up again, so that he would not get crushed. He set his feet against the ground, letting the shifting of bodies move him one way two steps, back three, two staggered steps to the left and a sway back to the right. Sword struck sword. Men cried out, small grunts and surprised cries, and now and again a horse screamed in pain. He felt the sheathed tip of a knife brush his fingers and vanish, tantalizing but out of reach. He was helpless. Somehow, being helpless made him less scared. All he had left was his dignity.

A strange hush fell. Out of the feral silence came a voice, clear, muted by distance and the shifting ring and clank of armor on the soldiers surrounding Vasha.

“Where is my cousin Vassily Kireyevsky?”

It was Katerina.

“Put down the shields,” said Janos.

“But, my lord—”

“Put them down. I wish to see her.”

As if a scythe had cut through them, the shields came down, and looking past Janos’s shoulder, Vasha could see—

Gods! Not just Katya, but Ilya, and Tess, too, exposed in front of the circle of riders. At least Ilya and Tess wore armor and helms, although their faces were, of course, plain to see; a coif of mail protected their ears and the back of their necks. Katerina had nothing but cloth to protect her. She moved in her saddle and reached behind her back, pulling out a bow, then an arrow. She lay them across her thighs with the sure ease of a competent archer.

“Kneel,” said Janos. The front rank knelt so that he could see Katerina more clearly. He had already taken off his helm. Vasha dared not move. He simply stood, trying not to think what could possibly happen now. Rope dug into his wrists.

“I hold Prince Vasil’ii here beside me, Princess Katherine,” he shouted. “Better that it were you.”

“Let him go free,” cried Katerina, “and I promise you that I alone will have the killing of you.”

A murmur broke out through the ranks, stilled.

“What of my men?” Janos shouted, but his face shone.

“They have served you faithfully. For that, if Prince Vassily goes free, they shall live.”

“No, my lord,” said Captain Maros at once. “It would be our shame—”

Janos lifted a hand. Maros fell silent. “Prince Vasil’ii, why is the priest with her? Who is the other—is that the Prince of Jeds?”

Vasha did not answer. Nor did he need to. Janos looked back at him and at once the obscuring piece on the board was taken, leaving the last position exposed.

“Ah,” said Janos. “Now I understand. So I had him in my grasp the whole time.” Vasha said nothing. “Are you truly his son, or was that a lie also?”

“I am his son,” said Vasha, knowing it was true.

Janos turned back to face the jaran army, to face Katerina. “Very well. I accept, but on one condition.”

She nodded, either accepting the condition unsaid or allowing him to continue, Vasha could not be sure. Yet that nod seemed to seal the bargain between them. Even across such a gap, they communicated without words, playing out a different game, one that Vasha did not understand.

“One arrow,” cried Janos.

She lifted the arrow that lay across her thighs, lowered it, like a promise. “Let him go!”

“Let him go,” said Janos to his men. No one moved. “Let him go!”

“Your highness!” protested Captain Maros.

“My lord,” murmured Lord Belos.

“We are dead otherwise,” said Janos harshly. “She may even wound me, with one arrow, but even if she could kill me, it is more likely that pity, or even love, will stay her hand. Our bargain is already sealed.”

Maros laughed. “Do you trust this barbarian woman, my lord?”

“I do,” said Janos. “I trust her to keep her word. Let him go.”

They shoved Vasha forward, and he came out from the front ranks and saw his father glaring at him. Pulling his shoulders back, Vasha did not deign to run; he walked deliberately, not looking back until he had come almost to Katya’s horse. There he paused, half turned, in time to hear her speak.

“One arrow will be enough.”

“What if you miss?” Tess asked, sounding, Vasha thought, curious more than anything. Ilya looked brittle with anger.

Katerina just smiled, but she did not take her eyes from Prince Janos. Nor did he take his eyes from her. He watched her, lifting his chin, as a brave man stares down his fate.

She drew. She aimed. She fired.

His head snapped back. Fletchings protruded from his throat. His body, shorn of its animating force, collapsed to the ground like an empty cloak.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The Law of Becoming

A
NATOLY SAKHALIN SAT IN
the lounge of the
Gray Raven
and stared at the wall. The wall stared back at him, mute. It did not actually stare, of course. He only imagined it did, knowing that it contained images inside it, scenes in three dimensions, messages from people remote both in distance and time, an encyclopedia of human history encapsulated into a cylinder the size of his index finger. It even contained a nesh port, although on the
Gray Raven
, drifting in space, any neshing he might do was limited to the net space available shipboard.

But the wall remained mute because it contained no answers for him. Not any more. Information. Questions. Communications. That was all. That was no longer enough.

For two days he had shut himself off here in the lounge. Moshe left food four times a day. The small door in the corner led into a smaller lavatory. The crew of the
Gray Raven
allowed him his privacy. On a Chapalii ship he could have commanded privacy; here he could only request it. For some reason, the distinction comforted him.

At first, returning from his audience with the emperor, he had tried to make sense of what he now ruled.
All daiga holdings.
In addition, three dukes, known as Tai, and all that they possessed; five independent lords, known as Cha, and all that they possessed. Star systems on a map, diagrammatic models of cities and warehousing capabilities and charts of mining projections and designated routes along the net of singularities.

Individually, he could make sense of each one. Together, they overwhelmed him. After twenty hours of that he had slept for ten. He had tried other ways of organizing his holdings, of compressing them to manageable proportions, but after eight more hours he had given up and spoken the word that snapped off the wall.

He set a plate on his lap, broke a square of crumbly
corn bread
in half, and spread butter on it. It was a little dry. It had been sitting on the side table for hours. But the butter was sweet.

“Oh, gods,” he said to the wall, which as usual refused to reply. As miraculous as these modellers, these computers, these imagers and recorders and encyclopedias and nesh worlds were, in the end, they were only tools. Like a sword, you had to know how to use them. Like a needle, they only served to pull the thread through the cloth: The pattern you embroidered had to come out of your own mind. Like a loom, they were of themselves empty until the human hand, the Chapalii hand, the hand guided by intelligence, strung the warp and wove the weft.

He missed his daughter. In some ways Portia was the only tangible thing he could trust, a part of himself without being his possession. And she loved him freely, fully, and without the least duplicity, as only a child can. He missed his sister Shura. She and Portia were the only creatures in the universe that he loved simply because they existed. Without them, he felt alone.

“Put a call through to Captain Emrys,” he said to the wall.

“Yes?” she answered immediately, as if she had been waiting for him. Probably she had. What else was there for her to do, here in orbit around Chapal, suspended while she waited for him to act?

“I would like to meet with you and the others.”

“When?”

“Now, if you can.”

Which of course they could. They assembled quickly. Benjamin brought freshly baked apple fritters, fried to a golden brown, crunchy and sweet. No one ventured to sit on the couch beside Anatoly. Rather, they arranged themselves in a semicircle in front of him. Summer sat cross-legged on the floor and worked on a basket, weaving reeds together; able to sit still, she could not abide quiet hands. Rachelle draped herself dramatically over a chair, pretending tranquility, but he could see how tense she was. Florien sat on one arm of the couch, eyes shifting all over the room as if he was looking for something he had lost and would spring up in one moment to get it. Benjamin finished a fritter, licked his fingers, and began on another. Moshe stood, fidgeting, by the door. Branwen flopped down on the other couch. He watched her longest; she was relaxed, comfortable in her body, but alert.