The Novels of the Jaran (45 page)

The time until supper had all the tranquility of a windstorm. They were a lively enough bunch and good company. They made sure that she was thoroughly bewildered as to what their names were, showed her the spot where they would hold the dancing, and besieged her with so many questions that she could only laugh. At last Vera took her to supper.

The etsana’s tent shared a fire with Vera’s tent, and Tess saw immediately that the two tents were sited so as to receive equal standing. Indeed, it surprised her that so young a woman as Vera even possessed one of the great tents that usually housed a grandmother and her adult daughters and multitudinous kin. But Mother Veselov, though of the same fair-haired and slender stock as her cousin and niece, was utterly dwarfed by their personalities. She presided, as was proper, over the supper served by her daughter and son and his wife and assorted other relatives, but she never once spoke unless an opening was given her deliberately by Sergei Veselov or Vera. Besides three men who evidently acted as Veselov’s lieutenants, and Tess, five of the men from Bakhtiian’s jahar had been honored on this occasion. Bakhtiian, of course, and Niko and Josef—Tadheus having gone to his sister’s husband’s kin—and Yuri, because he was Bakhtiian’s cousin. And Kirill, who had astonishingly, and to Tess’s great dismay, been seated next to Mother Veselov.
The better to size him up,
Tess thought uncharitably, but she had to concede that given such blatant provocation, Kirill behaved circumspectly and Arina, moving around him frequently, did not flirt with him at all.

Bakhtiian and Veselov spoke together mostly. Tess, placed across the fire, could not join in but only listen. Vera had, of course, placed herself on the other side of Bakhtiian and banished her young husband to Yuri’s company, next to Tess. Yuri and Petya were reminiscing, oblivious to the others and, for that matter, to her.

“You have not yet explained to me, Bakhtiian,” Sergei Veselov was saying, “how you intend to feed so many jahars, all gathered into one army.”

“A fair enough question, Veselov,” replied Bakhtiian smoothly, letting the hostility in Veselov’s voice slip off him, “and one which I will return to you. Let us assume the situation. What would you do?”

And so, deferring with strength, in the end he got Veselov to agree it could be done. Bakhtiian seemed different to her here. He showed none of that arrogance that came from having the assurance of admiration. He was tactful, respectful, even clever, slipping gracefully past a question meant, possibly, to offend him, making one grim fellow laugh, arguing carefully and with good humor to a conclusion favorable to himself. Perhaps charisma and craft, strength and obsession, were not all that made up a leader. Perhaps you could have all of these, and still lack the sheer instinct for leadership that made Bakhtiian—that made Charles—the kind of men they were.

“Yet you rode into khaja lands and came out unscathed,” Veselov was saying. “I recall when Leo Vershinin took forty-five riders into those lands and—”

While Veselov went on, clearly beginning a long anecdote, Bakhtiian looked up across the fire directly at Tess, as if he had known she was watching him. Their eyes held a moment and dropped away together.

As soon as the anecdote ended, with Vershinin’s jahar reduced to five men, Vera said, “Aunt?” Recalled to her duties, Mother Veselov excused all the women to prepare for the dance, now that twilight was lowering in on them. Arina approached Tess, but Vera swept her away and Arina retreated back to her mother’s tent.

“Perhaps you would like to borrow some clothing?” Vera asked. “Some women’s clothing, I mean.”

“Oh, thank you. But I have some.”

“Well, then, if you would like, I will walk you to your tent.” Tess submitted to the escort and allowed Vera to lead her away to the other end of the camp, where her tent was pitched. “You know Bakhtiian well.”

“We’ve ridden together a long way.”

Vera put a long-fingered hand on Tess’s forearm. It was dim enough that this gesture was neither public nor particularly intrusive. “You have also lain with him?”

Tess turned her head away, pretending to look at the distant field where a great fire was being prepared. Broad-skirted figures moved back and forth, snatches of singing and laughter and the high, unfamiliar music of women’s voices punctuating the merriment within the camp. When she trusted herself, she turned back.

“No.”

Vera’s fingers lifted from her arm. “That’s too bad. I would have liked to compare what you knew of him with what I know.”

There was a pause, as if some reply was expected. Tess could not speak.

Vera brushed her thick hair back with one hand, a graceful, practiced gesture that drew the eye to the faultless line of her jaw and chin. “There are only three men I ever hoped would mark me. One is dead now, the second loved another, for which I cannot begrudge him his choice, but Bakhtiian—he knew he could have had me, but he stood by while that boy marked me.”

“Perhaps,” Tess began, faltering, almost stuttering, “perhaps he knew that Petya wanted you more.”

“Petya,” said his wife, uttering his name so dispassionately as to betray her complete disregard for her husband, “is a blind child. He is five years younger than I am.”

“I don’t understand. Women take lovers, but men take wives.”

“That,” said the beauty bitterly, “is the way of the jaran. I will kill the woman he marks.”

“Do you really think he will ever marry?”

“If you had lain with him, you would know. He is
diarin.
”

“What is that?”

Vera looked back toward the main cluster of tents. The men had gathered in groups by small fires to await the dancing. Her nose, which in her father and aunt was merely thin, gave her an aristocratic look of one to whom the world should surely do some obeisance. “You have been with men,” she replied, turning back to Tess. “This is a woman’s word.
Diarin,
a man who dishevels a woman’s hair. Passionate in bed. But perhaps Vasilley will kill him after all, and then he cannot marry.”

“Vasilley?”

“My brother. He rides with Dmitri Mikhailov.”

Vasil.
Vera’s brother. This was delicate ground indeed. “Ah,” said Tess, playing for time while she gathered her wits, “Do you want him to kill Bakhtiian?”

“I’m married to a man I do not want, and I want a man I cannot have. Why should anyone else have him?”

“If Petya dies,” said Tess ungraciously, “you could have him.”

“When he stood by,
stood by,
while Petya did this to me?” Her fingers lifted to touch the white scar that marred the perfect beauty of her face.

“You would have the mark whether it was Bakhtiian or Petya or any man.”

“No.” The grip of Vera’s fingers, closing on the sleeve of Tess’s shirt, was strong. “There is one other way given to the jaran to marry, but it is only for the bravest, for the most exceptional.” She tilted her head back to gaze up at the first spray of stars gracing the sky. “
Korokh.”

Korokh:
one who reached for the wind, Yuri had said. Tess touched the priest-rune engraved on the hilt of her saber. It felt very cold. “For a man to choose a woman?”

“The quiet road,” breathed Vera. Her lips stayed slightly parted. Her hair flowed down around her shoulders like strands of silk—she wore it as an unmarried girl might, not in the married woman’s tight braids. “The four-times-covered road from tree to stone.” Tess realized that it was very still, as if a hush had fallen in deference to Vera’s show of passion. “I wanted that road. I wanted that, not this.”

A sudden cheer and a swell of laughter interrupted them, the lighting of the great fire. Flames sparked up.

“But here, we’ll be late. I’ll let you go.” She left.

Tess stared after her. A group of young men hurried past her toward the fire, laughing and jesting, and a musician began a racing beat on a drum.

Tess ran to her tent and debated, briefly, whether to give up this attempt to change in the dark, but change she did, feeling with peculiar hindsight that Nadezhda Martov had known quite well what she was about, gifting this foreign stranger with decent women’s clothing. But whom was she trying to impress? That was the question that troubled her.

Coming out of her tent, she paused to try to get a glimpse of herself in her mirror. She was not sure that the beaded headdress over her braids was arranged correctly. She felt a presence come up beside her, and smelled a fleeting breath of cinnamon. She whirled.

“Cha Ishii!” He stood before her, straight, hands folded at his chest in ‘Lord’s Supplication.’

Unfolding his hands, he bowed. “Lady Terese, your most generous pardon, I beg of you, for this unexpected intrusion.”

“You surprised me.” She took one step back from him. “I did not expect to see you venturing out at this sort of—social occasion.”

“Lady Terese.” The color of his face was lost in darkness, no shade to his voice at all. “With greatest deference, I advise you to stay here with this tribe. Do not go with us in the morning. Please be so munificent as to believe me when I say I have no desire to see you come to any harm, even though you would have brought it on yourself should anything happen to you.”

“What would happen? Why should I stay here? Cha Ishii!”

But he simply turned and walked away, to be hidden swiftly by the night. Tess gaped after him.

“Tess?” It was Arina, tentative as always. “I thought you might—oh, I don’t know. Here, let me straighten that for you.” She adjusted the headpiece. “There. Would you like company, to go out?”

“Yes, I would,” said Tess, liking Arina very much, however much she wanted to dislike her.

It proved easy enough to lose herself in the festivities. She knew quite well that she ought not to dance more than the occasional dance with any of the riders of Bakhtiian’s jahar, so she turned her attention to the riders of Veselov’s tribe. She felt completely at ease as she flirted with them in the casual, straightforward manner that jaran women had. She danced twice with Petya because she felt sorry for him. Beneath the undeniably handsome exterior, beneath the self-effacing bashfulness devoid of conceit, beneath the quick, unpretentious smile and the delicate, pale blue of his eyes, Petya was desperately unhappy. She took Yuri aside to ask him about it.

“I think he knows she’ll never love him,” Tess said.

“Love him! She doesn’t even like him.” They walked together to the periphery of the light, choosing solitude for their conversation. “I doubt if she ever lets him forget it.”

“Can she really be so cruel?”

“Cruel? I don’t know if I would call Vera Veselov cruel. I think she is so blind to anything but what she wants that she cares not in the least if she hurts someone who has gotten in her way. That family is far too handsome for its own good.”

“Yes,” said Tess, remembering Vasil. “And her brother is the most beautiful of the lot, if only because he isn’t so arrogant.”

“Ah, yes, Vasil,” Yuri muttered. “I never could dislike him. But he’s as single-minded as the rest, and as selfish, in his own way.”

“Somehow I detect a long history of association between your tribe and this one.”

“Yes. It started in my great-grandmother’s time when her uncle insulted the Veselov etsana by refusing to marry her sister. And then just when the feud was at its worst, his daughter and the sister’s son ran off together, when it had all been arranged that they were to marry for alliances into other tribes.”

“Is this a long story?” Tess chuckled and, seeing Kirill strolling by, made eyes at him.

Kirill stopped dead, took her hand, and kissed it. “You are more beautiful than the stars, my heart.” He grinned at Yuri. “I will retreat before the wrath of the brother.” And did so.

“Tess, stop that. Do you want everyone to know?”

“Maybe I do. Oh, Yuri, you know very well that if Kirill was to stop flirting with me altogether that would be as good as shouting it to the world.”

“True enough. But I noticed he sat beside Mother Veselov tonight. Who has an unmarried daughter. Oho, Sister, what is this? You’re jealous! Do you
love
Kirill?”

The question stopped her cold. She forgot to be angry or jealous. Did she love him? “Gods, Yuri,” she said, and fell silent, unwilling to unravel the chaos that writhed through her heart.

“Yes,” said Yuri finally, “it is a long story. And I’m sure that the Orzhekov tribe and the Veselov tribe have not done yet with hating and loving one another. Poor Petya.” Poor Petya stood alone, watching as the dance swirled by him, never approached by any of the young women of his own tribe, though he was certainly one of the handsomest men there. “I’ve even heard her say
in front of him
that Ilya would have marked her if Petya hadn’t charged in first.”

“That can’t be true.”

“She doesn’t care in the least how much she hurts him.”

“No, that Ilya would have marked her.”

“Ilya’s a damned idiot sometimes, but he’s not
that
stupid.”

“She told me that she had only ever wished to marry three men.”

“Yes, that’s something else she tells everyone. The first was Khara Roskhel. He was darker than Ilya, twice as proud, but mean with it. He had that cruelty in him that Nature is afraid to give out to more than one man in each generation. He had better hands for the saber than our Vladimir. He was a plain-looking man, but he had a pull about him that made him seem as handsome as—as Petya. He supported Ilya at first but then he turned against him. No one knows why. His men killed Ilya’s father and nephew, but they always said that Roskhel himself murdered Ilya’s mother and sister.” He shuddered. “But it’s bad luck to speak of it. It was an ill-omened thing, all of it, that year.”

“Gods,” said Tess. “What happened to him?”

“Ilya killed him. He strangled him.”

A woman let out a shrill yell as she was tossed into the air in the dance and caught again. Three pipes pierced above the clapping. Tess rubbed her throat with one hand, feeling the smooth skin and, under that, the ridge of her windpipe.

“The year after his family died Ilya was more dangerous than the mountains in winter.”