The Novels of the Jaran (293 page)

They knew what he was. He had told them. At first they had not quite believed him, but after the flood of messages and the arrival of over a dozen Chapalii craft in parallel orbits begging for instructions or for a visitation from the great lord, they had to accept it. Now they surveyed him warily, except for Branwen who, thank the gods, merely looked patient.

“You know what I have become,” he began. “But I don’t know what to do now. What I knew, what I learned, with the jaran has taught me many valuable lessons, but only some of them apply here. I can’t know everything. I can’t oversee everything. I can’t make every decision. All I know is that my first loyalty lies to my own people, to the jaran, and every action I take must be to their benefit.”

“What about the rest of the human race?” asked Rachelle. “I’m not working for Charles Soerensen because I like being a lapdog to the Chapalii, you know.”

“Rachelle,” scolded Summer. “At least let him state his case.”

Anatoly leaned forward, bracing his hands on his thighs. “What benefits the jaran will most likely also benefit all humans, certainly more than it will the Chapalii. But for me to make any great plans now would be hasty, to say the least. To act rashly in war is to invite disaster.”

“Are we at war?” asked Summer.

“I meant it as a…as a…an old saying…?” He glanced toward Branwen for help.

“An aphorism?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She smiled. The lift of her mouth calmed his nerves.

“But that isn’t what I need to say,” he went on. “No prince remains prince without a court. No dyan remains a dyan without a jahar. I don’t have a jahar any more, and, gods, I need one now desperately. I have to protect myself by surrounding myself with people I trust, who will trust me, who will give me sincere and truthful advice whether or not they think I might like hearing it, and who I know will not betray me, for any price, at any cost. Where can I get such people?”

He let the question hang for a minute before answering it himself. “I would like to start with the
Gray Raven.
With you.”

“What’s in it for us?” asked Rachelle.

“Could I get access to even more Chapalii nodes?” asked Florien.

Benjamin took two fritters and bit down hard on them.

“Where do you stand on the rebellion?” asked Summer. “It’s not necessarily in your interest anymore to support freedom for us daiga, not if you’re a prince among the Chapalii and can rule us all however you like.”

Moshe gaped, gulping down an exclamation.

Branwen said nothing, just watched him.

“I did not seek this,” said Anatoly. “You know that’s true. But now that I have it, I must use it wisely. Surely, if you think you have cause not to trust me, you would rather put yourselves close enough to watch what I do rather than having to suffer my decisions secondhand? I would ask that you make an oath to me, as I would make one to you in your turn, for your service, your knowledge, your life if necessary—”

“What duration?” asked Rachelle.

“For the rest of your life would be best, of course, but I could only ask that of jaran. Ten years, to start? Twenty would be better. But I will only take your oaths if they are given freely, if you give yourselves to my service freely. In return, I will rely on you, I will take your advice, I will see to it that you are taken care of. But if I ever find that you have betrayed me, I will kill you.”

Benjamin coughed down his last mouthful of fritter. “You can’t do that! There’s a law against murder. There’s due process….” He trailed off, wiping powdered sugar off his mouth with a cloth napkin.

“That is true.” Anatoly lifted both hands, palms up. “I will study these laws further, and leave them in place, and respect them, but Summer is right. They do not apply to me.”

“Shit,” said Rachelle. “The little bastard’s right. He can do whatever he damned well pleases.” But then, deliberately, she winked at him.

Anatoly grinned, knowing that he had one on his side. “Of course, by only accepting your freely given oaths, I accept also that you may freely leave, so long as you tell me openly and we fix between us any due compensation and an agreement about what you may and may not do afterward which might jeopardize the security of my position.”

“Hey, Florien, no selling tech secrets to the competition.”

Florien blinked in his absentminded way. “Rachelle, someday the evil spirits will get you.”

“I hope so.”

“We’ll have to discuss it,” said Branwen suddenly, cutting into this interchange. “We vote on things here.”

“I know that,” said Anatoly. “I’ll go back to my cabin and wait for your decision.”

In his cabin, he took off his boots, lay down on the narrow bunk, hooked his hands under his head, and stared at nothing. After a while, he rolled onto his right side and fished out the castle piece, setting it on the floor.

“Show me the board.” At once the flat black game board flowered into existence, contained in its grid of glowing white lines. The horseman had moved two intersections away from the emperor’s throne. The piece shaped like a teardrop had moved closer to him, and another piece, shaped like a blade, had moved farther away. The others had not changed their position from the last time he had looked.

All daiga holdings.
Should he simply go down to Rhui and report in to Bakhtiian, handing these lands over to him, as was his duty? Or should he claim them for the Sakhalin tribe, as was his right? Except without Bakhtiian and his vision, without Ilya’s marriage to Tess Soerensen and the intervention of Charles Soerensen, Anatoly would never have left Rhui at all, never left the jaran, never known that khaja lands flourished beyond the plains, that worlds and stars existed beyond Rhui and Mother Sun.

A bell rang at his door. He closed his hand over the castle piece, concealing it, and the game board vanished. Lifting his hand, rolling up to sit, he said, “Enter.” The door slid open and Branwen walked in. That was one of the many things he liked about her: She never hesitated. She knew this was her ship, and however powerful he might be now, prince of the Sakhalin, prince in the Chapalii Empire, it was still
her
ship. Like an etsana, she understood where her power lay, and that she alone could wield it.

She sat down on the end of his bunk. Like a woman, she did not ask for permission. His feet brushed her hips, but she did not move away from their touch. Her brown hair curled down over her shoulders. The soft white light emanating from the bunk’s ceiling washed the red highlights to silver.

“It was unanimous,” she said. “Rachelle tried to vote twice, to make sure she won.” She grinned.

Anatoly liked her grin. “You’re teasing me. You didn’t tell me which way they voted.”

“Someone has to make sure you don’t fuck up. We just appointed ourselves. Ten years, barring catastrophic changes, as long as you keep to your end of the bargain. To be reconsidered at the end of that time.”

She stretched her long, lean legs out in front of her and rested a hand just below his knee, as if balancing herself there.

“That is acceptable.” He was almost painfully aware of the warmth and pressure of her hand on his leg. It had been so long since a woman had shown him spontaneous physical affection.

“I don’t normally do this,” added Branwen, “and I know you’re married, but you’ve sustained a shock. And you look like hell.”

“I do?”

But those were the last words he said for a while, because she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.

Valentin died three hours after Diana and Portia left Naroshi’s palace. Both events came abruptly, as if an unseen communication had triggered them. Ilyana had not gone to see Diana off; she had been too busy consoling Evdokia for the loss of her best friend. And anyway, an undercurrent of hushed arguments and frowning looks had swirled through the company since planetrise. As usual, no one bothered to tell Ilyana what was going on, but she heard enough to guess, eavesdropping.

“She would cut out like that with only two performances left.”

“Give her a break, Annet. Gives you a chance to shine, don’t it?”

“That’s true. Though playing Zenocrate to Veselov’s Tamberlaine is more like punishment.”

“Yeah, he
is
flat. I don’t see why everyone says he used to be such a promising actor. He’s just a slut.”

“He’ll go back to the acties, I bet.”

“We can hope.”

And another pair, in another place.

“It’s about time she did something, instead of just sneaking around with Yassir. I feel sorry for that poor husband of hers.”

A snort. “Serves him right, the arrogant
tvut.
He’s so polite he’d freeze your blood to ice, and all like he’s doing you a favor. D’you think it’s true he saw the emperor? Nah. Why him, and not anyone else?”

“Cos’ he’s a—what—a prince?”

Gales of laughter, which annoyed Ilyana more than the comments about her father had. But they broke off soon enough. “They got a message in this morning something urgent. That’s why La Brooke left.”

Only two performances left. Sitting beside Valentin’s couch, she shut her eyes and tranced out on his breathing. Monitored by the bed, his exhalation and inhalation soothed her because of its regularity. His body had curled even farther into a fetal position, and his right hand had ceased twitching, as it had been all yesterday.

She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to go back to London, not really, except to see Kori and her other friends, but that’s where they would go, if he could get around M. Pandit. But wherever they ended up, she could not bear going on day after day like this with her parents, even with an advocate in tow, to monitor their psychological health.

Valentin let out a breath. There was silence. She thought at first that she had dozed off, but she hadn’t. He had stopped breathing.

She jumped to her feet and bolted for the curtained door. When her hand touched the cloth, she froze. They would come soon enough. An alarm must be going off on Yomi’s slate. But why hurry them? They would just force Valentin’s heart to start up again; they would plug his brain stem into an artificial stimulator, and he would live, mindless, against his will, through the machine. She turned and stared down at him.

His face was slack, empty. All the mobility of expression that made him Valentin, little pest, favorite brother, had vanished when their father had severed him from his soul. His lips still had the pale rose tint of a delicate shell, but even that seemed to drain out of him as she watched, as he cooled. His life slipped away, and she let it go. When they all came running, it was too late to try to bring him back.

“I fell asleep,” she lied, starting to cry. She did not have to lie about her grief. They left her alone to weep while they conferred over the body. She went out to sit in the courtyard. The sun warmed her, and she took off her boots and let its heat linger on her toes, on her ankles, on her knees.

“Yana!”

She flinched and tugged her trouser legs back down to her ankles.

“It is unbecoming to expose yourself so shamelessly,” snapped her mother. “But I suppose that now that you have gone to live in… a man’s tent, that you no longer feel constrained to behave like a good woman.”

“I’m not sleeping in a man’s tent! I’m just using David’s cot. He sleeps somewhere else.”

Karolla hefted Little Rose up onto her shoulder. The baby’s presence was itself an accusation. Unnamed still, because of her sister’s stubbornness. But Karolla said nothing more. She walked over to the group gathering outside the room where Valentin lay.

They were arguing over what to do with the body. Ilyana spotted David’s thick crown of braids in the throng and sidled over to his side, squeezing past some of the others to reach him. She used his body as a shield from her father, who stood next to his wife, confronting Yomi.

“He must be left on the plains,” Karolla was saying in her pedantic way, “so that he can be born again into the world.”

Into which world? Ilyana thought. This world? What would he become, born back onto an alien moon? An alien himself? A ghost crying for its true home?

“He must be taken back to the plains,” repeated Karolla stubbornly.

“To Rhui?” Yomi asked. “You know that is impossible.”

“Then at least back to Earth. Surely even you barbarians have places where you lay out your dead so that Father Wind may cleanse their souls and return them to living.”

Someone whispered: “What does she mean, cleanse them?”

“I don’t think he wants to go back to Earth,” said Ilyana suddenly, stepping out from behind David. Everyone else started, except David, who had known she was there. “He hated it there. I think you should burn him. He wants to be released.”

“That is not our way,” said Karolla. “He has not earned release.”

Vasil just looked at Ilyana, as if she was a stranger to him.

“I don’t care about
your
way. It’s what he wants.
Your
way is what killed him.”

“Who gave you the right to speak such accusations? His body must be given to the wind so that his soul may be returned to the earth.”

“Let him go! Why won’t you just let him go? You don’t care about him, only about yourself.”

David grabbed Ilyana and dragged her back before her mother could slap her.

Karolla whitened. In khush, she said: “I cast you out of my tent. You are no longer my daughter.”

Ilyana gasped. She looked toward her father, but Vasil’s face was cast of stone. He deliberately looked away from her.

Karolla went on, inexorably but with a weird dignity, her words spoken almost by rote, as if memorized from some similar ceremony she had witnessed, she had endured, many many years before. “I declare you tribeless, motherless, kinless. Wander where you will, you shall find no welcome by this fire.”

Stunned, Ilyana could not move. David led her away, and she simply walked with him, nerveless, numb. Like rock, she felt nothing, but a sharp blow would crack her.

David sat her down on a bench in the sun. “What did she say?” he asked.

She shook her head. She could still see the knot of people, shifting nervously now that an explosion had occurred that they could not interpret. She could still see her father’s golden head, turned away from her.