Earthly Crown (10 page)

Soerensen blinked, once. When he spoke, it was without inflection. “She told me, in a letter, that she would meet me at the port.”

“She may well have,” replied the conqueror of half a dozen kingdoms and principalities, “but she could not come.” He removed his hand from his saber hilt and began to turn away, to lead the group up into town, since the matter was now obviously settled.

Soerensen did not move. “Why is that?” he asked, as easily as if he were commenting on the weather.

Half turned away, Bakhtiian froze, paused, and swung back. The force of his stare, antagonistic and unforthcoming, would have cowed any other man. He did not reply.

“Why could she not come?” repeated Soerensen.

For an instant, Bakhtiian looked taken aback that a living being questioned his authority. For an instant only. “Because she could not leave camp.”

For the first time, a sudden, intense energy radiated off of Soerensen. Abruptly, Diana saw in him the man who had dared to challenge humanity’s alien masters. He was powerful, and frightening. His jaw tightened; his lips thinned; he took in a breath.

The storm was about to hit. The charge of emotion washed over her like fire. She burned with it, fear and exhilaration together. Marco took a step back, putting a hand out to push Diana back behind him. Maggie gasped. Without thinking, Diana reached out to grasp Maggie’s hand. Maggie glanced at her, pale skin flushed with alarm, and neither let go. The scarlet-shirted riders nearest the group stirred, and horses minced under tense hands.

Dr. Hierakis stepped forward into the breach. “I am sorry to hear that she is ill,” she said with astonishing smoothness. “However, we had better be sure we have accommodations for the next two nights, since the rest of our party are coming in from the ship and will need to be directed as to where they can stow their baggage.”

Soerensen said nothing, but as quickly as it had shone forth, his light was buried again. Evidently he approved of the doctor’s intervention. But Bakhtiian’s response was more startling: she looked directly at him, as one does when addressing a person, and he immediately dropped his gaze away from hers and stepped back. “Of course,” he said obediently. “I have arranged for two inns for your party. I hope they will be adequate.”

“I am sure they will be.” She seemed taken aback by Bakhtiian’s sudden deference.

Marco looked astounded. Maggie let go of Diana’s hand and nervously straightened her tunic. Diana was not sure where she ought to look, like an actor with no lines, on stage but not given direction. She felt a wee bit disappointed.

“I am Doctor Hierakis, by the way,” Hierakis added. “And may I introduce Diana Brooke-Holt and Margaret O'Neill…” With stunning aplomb, Bakhtiian gave a curt but gracious bow to each of the women in turn, like any accomplished courtier, managing to acknowledge them fully without looking either in the eye. “This is Marco Burckhardt.”

But now Bakhtiian looked up, directly at Marco. A smile appeared and vanished on his lips so quickly that Diana was not sure she had actually seen it. “We have met.”

Marco’s smile was more ghostly than humorous. “Indeed.” He inclined his head. Bakhtiian swept their group with a comprehensive gaze, looked out past them at the ship, and with a terse command to his two attendants, he turned and began the long walk up the hill into town. Soerensen did not hesitate but followed, and by some unspoken communication the two men paced their speed so that within five steps they walked together, if not in harmony. Dr. Hierakis paused only long enough to check Marco, Diana, and Maggie in turn, and then she hurried after them—doubtless, Diana thought, to make sure no blood was spilled.

“Mary Mother of God,” said Maggie as soon as the two men were out of earshot. The two men who had served as Bakhtiian’s escorts waited patiently, hands light on their horses’s reins. “Where did you meet him, Marco?”

“It’s a long story. Tupping hell, I thought we were done for.”

“He spoke perfect Rhuian.” Diana glanced up at the two escorts, and when they flicked their gaze away from her, she knew that they were trying very hard not to stare at her. If in a cosmopolitan city like Jeds, where trade was commonplace to ports an ocean voyage away, the contrast between her pale and flawless complexion and Oriana’s coal-black skin had been the cause of much comment, she could well imagine that this company of visitors would look doubly exotic to these northerners. “How did he learn to speak such perfect Rhuian? And that bow!”

“Very easily.” Marco grinned. “He was educated at the university in Jeds.”

“You’re joking,” said Maggie.

“No, actually, I’m not. But don’t worry, Diana. From my previous experience—nothing extensive, I might add—I can make a shrewd guess that it’s all surface gloss. He’s as barbaric as you please underneath. At least,
I
wouldn’t cross him.”

“Coming from you, Marco,” said Maggie tartly, “and having seen the scars you have, I do not find that one bit reassuring.”

Marco shrugged, and he grinned up at the two waiting riders. Hesitantly, they grinned back at him.

Diana sighed with pleasure. Until this journey, her childhood dream of having a true adventure had seemed unattainable. Marco Burckhardt glanced back at her, and he winked. She folded her hands together, in front of herself, and smiled, feeling a delicious sense of anticipation.

N
EWS TRAVELED LIKE THE
wind. For many reasons did the khaja fear the jaran armies, and for this reason as much as any. No matter how quickly khaja princes or khaja towns sent messages or made alliances or maneuvered troops to stem the jaran tide, more quickly still did the jaran respond. It was as if the wind itself was the ally of the nomads, a silent, swift messenger on whom the horsemen alone could rely.

At midday a jaran rider came galloping out of the north into sight of a town. The sod walls here had been too high to level; they had been breached at frequent intervals instead, and by the main gate a troop of some hundred horsemen rode drills in the flat space beyond the remains of the two wooden gate doors, which had been thrown down and partially burnt.

The harness of the messenger’s horse shook with bells, and the sound, as well as the lance tipped with a gold pennant borne by the rider, alerted the garrison. Within moments, a second rider emerged from the tents of the garrison leading a saddled horse. The men met at the edge of the drilling ground.

“Vanya!”

The garrison soldier pulled up and helped the messenger swing his saddlebags onto the new mount. “Feodor Grekov! What brings you here?”

“Sibirin sent me. A message for Nadine Orzhekov.”

“Oho! I’ll wager I know what it concerns, and I wish you luck when you deliver it.”

“What, she
is
here, then?”

“No, just left with her jahar for Basille. That’s the khaja town where they’re to collect the barbarian ambassador and bring him back to camp.”

Feodor shook his head, fair hair stirring in a breeze that curled down from the heights. “Her jahar?”

“Orzhekov’s jahar.”

“That’s not who I meant—”

“I know who you meant.” Vanya grinned, an engaging smile made no less merry by the fact that his right eye was scarred shut by an old wound. “As I said, I wish you luck. She was in a foul mood.”

“Nadine?”

“Oh,
Nadine,
is it, now? When did you leave off addressing her as
tsadra?”

Feodor blushed.

Vanya laughed again. “Still that way with you? I won’t tease you, then. Why don’t you just mark her and be done?”

“Would you?”

“Gods, no! She’s too good with that saber. No, Orzhekov has been full of mischief since she got here. She has the khaja Elders dancing this way and then that, with her clever words. It’s not
her
who’s in the foul mood.” A red-shirted man appeared, on foot, at the gate, and hallooed toward them, waving. “You’d better go on,” said Vanya, sobering. “You can catch them in two spans.” The transfer completed, Vanya took the reins of the blown horse.

“Gods,” said Feodor. His blush had faded. “Why did Sibirin send
me?”

Vanya grinned again. “Oh, he knows Orzhekov has an eye for you, that’s it. He thinks it will soften the blow.”

“Gods,” murmured Feodor.

Nadine Orzhekov called her jahar to a halt as soon as the scouts brought word that a messenger had been sighted following them. “Look,” she said to Tess Soerensen as the rider came in, flanked on either side by scouts, “it’s Feodor Grekov. He must have come all the way from the main camp. I wonder what he wants.”

“You know damn well what he wants,” said Tess irritably. “Sibirin sent him to take me back.”

“You can’t know that,” protested Nadine, but her eyes lit with unholy glee. “You don’t suppose Bakhtiian got back already?”

“I hope so.” The surge of anger that coursed through Tess at the mention of
his
name was so strong that it shocked her. Gods, where had it all come from?

“Tess. Tess.” Nadine shook her head. “For shame.” But her expression belied the words, and she chuckled. “Poor Feodor. He looks terrified.”

Feodor’s escorts peeled away from him and galloped off from the troop, leaving him to approach Nadine and Tess alone. The other riders, all men, watched surreptitiously but with piercing interest as Feodor drew his horse up beside the two women. Tess felt sorry for him because she knew Nadine would treat him badly. Nadine possessed her own stores of hidden anger.

“Well met, Grekov,” said Nadine. “What brings you here?”

He kept his eyes lowered. “Sibirin sent me. With a message.”

“Ah, a message,” said Nadine wisely, drawing out the pause by fiddling with the closes on the leather pouch strung in front of her saddle. She reached inside, pulled out a rolled-up bundle of yellow parchment, examined it without opening it, and then replaced it.

Tess sighed heavily beside her and said, in Rhuian, “Oh, let the poor man out of his misery, Dina.”

Feodor glanced up at her words, hearing their tone but not knowing their meaning, and looked away again as her gaze settled on him.

“You’re losing your sense of humor, Tess,” replied Nadine in Rhuian.

“Never that!”

Nadine grinned. She turned back to Feodor. “Well enough, Grekov,” she said in
khush,
the language of the jaran. “I can guess what your message is. I suppose you’re to return to camp with Tess?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll have to stay with us.”

He was surprised enough to look straight at her, eyes widening. “But Sibirin said—”

“Yetra,
Niko Sibirin does not order me.”

“But Bakhtiian himself ordered—”

“Bakhtiian,” said Tess viciously, before she knew she meant to say it, “can go to hell.”

Feodor’s expression of surprise glazed over, freezing an instant from pure shock, and then he shook it off and addressed Nadine again. As if, thought Tess wryly, what she had just said was beyond response. “Forgive me, tsadra. But Sibirin said that I was to bring your cousin—” He glanced from under lashes at Tess, who knew that her brown hair and green eyes did not resemble Nadine’s black hair and eyes at all. “—back to camp before Bakhtiian returned from the coast. And not to return without her.”

“I won’t force her to go back now. She doesn’t intend to go back until I do. There you are. Will you come with us, then?”

“I have no choice.”

Nadine dismissed him with a shrug and signaled the troop to ride. Feodor turned his horse aside to fall in with the ranks as they started forward. Tess looked back to see the young man staring at Nadine. Everyone knew he was in love with her.

Were her own feelings so transparent? With one hand, she traced the curve of her mirror. It took no great skill to see that she had married into an impossible situation, that the confrontation that was bound to come was of her own making. Mostly she was angry at herself; sometimes she felt as if she was constantly holding up that mirror and staring at her own flaws, and she was getting a little tired of it.

“Brooding?” asked Nadine, mocking her, but Tess laughed in reply because she knew Nadine showed affection by being caustic.

And abruptly, the thought triggered in Tess an upwelling of the love, of the heart’s warmth, she felt for her family—for Sonia and Katerina and Ivan and Kolia, for Niko and Juli, for Irena Orzhekov, for Nadine; for Aleksi, the brother she had adopted. And, God damn him to hell, for Ilya.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” said Tess when Nadine halted her jahar in sight of the township of Basille. “I shouldn’t have come with you.”

“Losing your nerve?”

Tess chuckled. “What do you think? But perhaps the dramatic gesture wasn’t the wisest one.”

“It will certainly get Ilya’s attention, though.”

“Damn it, it was just one last thing too many. Yaroslav Sakhalin himself picked me out. He told both Bakhalo and Zvertkov that he wanted me in his jahar. You know what an honor that is! And then before I was ever consulted, Ilya goes around behind my back and tells Sakhalin that I’m to be left where I am: still in training. Still in reserve. He never lets me out of camp except if I’m with him or maybe, maybe, on a safe scouting expedition with Ilya’s picked thousand and Aleksi at my right hand.”

Nadine looked at Tess’s scarlet shirt and black trousers, and then at her own, similar except in the stiff leather shoulder pieces and the pattern of quilting and embroidery running up the sleeves. “It’s true,” she mused, “that Sakhalin is not the kind of dyan to pick you out in order to curry favor with Ilya. He chose you on your merits, nothing else.”

“Thank you.”

“Still angry? It
was
an honor.”

“An honor I’m never to receive the fruits of.”

“Do you want to fight in battle that much?”

Tess regarded her companion with a rueful smile. Behind Nadine’s left ear, where her black hair pulled away into a waist-long braid, began the scar that followed parallel to the line of the braid, all the way down. Nadine’s bronze helmet hung from her saddle and her lamellar cuirass was tied on behind, although most of her men wore cuirasses or scale girdles and belts. But then, Nadine preferred to keep her reputation for being reckless.