Earthly Crown (41 page)

“The human mechanism must seem horribly inefficient to the Chapalii,” Tess mused. “Naturally they’d tinker with it.”

“So speaks the woman who understands them so well. I can’t give more than a rough estimate of how long ago it happened. Not less than 5,000, not more than 40,000 years ago. I can’t prove it until I understand how they did it.”

“And once you understand how they did it—”

“Then their knowledge is my knowledge. I think I’m close to a serum that could well double the human life span.”

“Double it? Lord, what would we do with doubled life spans?”

“That’s not
my
question. Nor my answer to give. But surely you can find some clues in your language research on the time frame involved.”

“Which would also give us insight into the history of the Chapalii Empire, insight that we’re denied by the Chapalii Protocol Office. Philology wasn’t my specialty, but I’ll do my best.”

“When do you think that matrix will be done? Translation takes up far too much time for me. There’s a lot more basic information I can give the jaran healers on fundamental medical principles, and I’d like to communicate straight to them.”

Tess played with the screen, dividing it into three discrete parts and spinning one until a series of pathways arcing away toward an unseen horizon filled one side of the field. “A full-blown matrix would take months to construct, under better conditions than these. What I’m doing is a series of trees. They each contain a finite set, and instead of gaining the language pretty much entire, you simply accelerate the learning curve of what would otherwise be unenhanced acquisition. So you seem to be learning it quickly, and efficiently, but not too damn quickly.”

“So they won’t become suspicious when we all turn around one day speaking fluent khush? Very neat.”

“Cara.” Tess glanced up at the older woman. “Why can’t Charles see that I’m not the right person to be his heir?”

Cara patted her on the shoulder and walked back to her console. “Charles thinks strategically, Tess, not tactically. Other than that, I can’t tell you what’s in his mind.” From outside, a bell rang once, then twice. “Ah. We have a visitor. Close off the back half, Tess. I’ll go see who it is.”

Tess spoke two words and the field over the table vanished, leaving only the smooth black surface. Then she drew closed the curtain that screened off the back section of Cara’s tent—and the equipment laid out there—and tied it shut. A moment later, the entrance flap to the tent was twitched aside—it, too, tinkled, sewn all along its edge with warning bells—and Cara ducked back inside followed by—

“Ilya!” Tess grinned stupidly and threw her arms around him and kissed him soundly on the lips. “I thought you were days ahead of us.”

He glanced at Cara, who watched them with a smile, and disengaged himself from his wife. He frowned. “Has Vasil been bothering you?” he demanded.

Tess blinked. The question surprised her, as did his obvious anger. But she had to think back to recall how much she had seen Vasil over the past days. “I saw him tonight,” she began. His expression clouded. She went on hastily. “But only because we went over to the Veselov camp to see Arina and Kirill, and the baby.”

“Ah.” A pained expression chased the anger off his face. “They have two children already. And Vladi and Elena have a child.”

“Ilya.” Tess glanced at Cara and then back at her husband. She took his hand between hers and held it tightly. “I feel sure that we will have a child soon, too. Kirill and Arina’s new baby isn’t strong. It was born early. They may well lose it.”

Then he looked ashamed, as if by being jealous of their fortune in having two children where he had none, he had brought misfortune on them. “I hadn’t heard. I’ll go visit them tonight before I leave.”

“You’re riding south again tonight?” She lifted one hand to brush a smear of dirt from his face. He had a rather travel-worn look about him, as if he had not rested much during the seven days since she had seen him last. His hair was mussed, and the usually trim line of his beard had grown a little ragged. “Why did you come back?”

“I need more interpreters. I need you.”

“I’m not part of the army, Bakhtiian,” she said stiffly. “Or had you forgotten that?”

His gaze flicked to Cara and then back to Tess. “Excuse me,” he said to Cara. In khush he said, “I do not intend to argue with you in front of another person, Tess. I won’t let you ride with Yaroslav Sakhalin’s jahar. Not so far away from me.”

“And?” she demanded, not feeling much like compromising.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Cara slipped out of the tent. The bells chimed behind her and then stilled.

“Something your brother said to me—about envoys. Why not have a—a jahar of envoys?
Diplomats,
that’s the Rhuian word. Anatoly Sakhalin has married a khaja wife, so I’ll put him in command of half the jahar, of those who are primarily fighters, young men who will also learn how to communicate and deal with the khaja. Eventually, we will need governors from their ranks. We’ll have to be careful to make sure they marry well, marry a woman who can also learn about khaja ways and who will be willing to live among khaja for some time. That’s where you and Josef come in.”

“Josef and I? Josef Raevsky?”

“Yes. You know he’ll never fight again. How can he, blinded? But with his knowledge—and yours—you two will be my other commanders of this jahar.”

“Me?”
Tess sank down into the chair that conveniently caught her knees when they sagged beneath her. “Did Charles put you up to this?”

“I would be a fool not to use your skills.”

“And keep me out of battle.” But somehow, knowing that she was pregnant made her less anxious to prove herself in war. Not to lose her fighting skills, not at all, but the sense of urgency that she had felt before about putting them to the test was eased. And she did have other skills…“I don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “I might be good at that.”

“You already are, in camp. Now you will be my right hand as well as my heart.”

“I don’t know,” she repeated, but vaguely, already thinking about what she and Josef could do, building a kind of diplomatic corps for the jaran, to create—what? To create an empire. She did not doubt for a moment that Ilya could—that he would—forge one, the empire of the jaran. She could be instrumental in seeing not only that it would last and remain stable, but that it would hold to the rule of just law, a better rule, perhaps, than that many of the khaja lands bowed to now. Perhaps. Damn Charles, anyway. Certainly she could see his hand in this. He was grooming her to succeed him, by any means he could.

Ilya smiled brilliantly. “Then you will.”

Tess had to laugh, because Ilya was so transparently pleased that his little scheme had worked: he could give her a place in his army and give her authority of her own without putting her in the line of fire. She lifted a finger. “But. I want Aleksi.”

“Aleksi! Give up one of my finest fighters—?”

“He’s lost in your jahar, Ilya, and he’s unlikely to get a command of his own, even if he wanted one. But if he’s mine, and he chooses a select group of young riders to be my escort, then I’ll have the protection an envoy deserves, and a group of riders that Josef and I can call on at need.”

“Hmm. Kirill has such a group of young riders. Misfits, most of them, like Aleksi. I’ll give them to you. Now, Sonia has agreed to take Josef into our camp, and little Ivan will serve as his eyes. It’s another five days to the mountains at this pace. You and Josef can discuss your plans. When I see you there, you’ll tell me what you and Josef have decided.” He had been angry when he arrived, but Tess could detect no anger in him now, as if the emotion had evaporated once he had a new outlet for his energy. He paced to the inside curtain, and Tess jumped to her feet. If he even twitched it back a handbreadth, and saw what lay within…

But he twirled and strode back toward the entrance. He would never invade the private space of another person’s tent. He was jaran, after all. He bent, kissed Tess, and with no further word left the tent. Tess caught the flap before it could fall. The bells shuddered and faded.

“Well.” From outside, Cara watched Ilya stride away into the night. “What was that all about? Why did he ride back here?”

Tess stepped out beside her and let the tent flap chime closed behind. “There’s the obvious answer. A jahar of envoys. You know, Cara, that damned education of his is going to make him a rather different breed of barbarian conqueror. But I don’t think that’s the complete answer, and I can’t put the rest of the puzzle together yet.”

Six days brought the huge ungainly mass of the jaran camp into a broad valley at the foot of the mountains. A few fields had survived the invasion, but not many, Tess noted. She rode out with Aleksi, who had come back to take his place at her side, to view the burned city and the refugee town growing up all makeshift and scattered within the city’s half-ruined walls. They picked their way along the streets, the troop of fifty riders that Aleksi now commanded in neat lines behind them.

It had rained for the last two days, although this day was clear, and mud spattered their horses’ legs and choked the entry ways of the hovels built out of what wood and brick remained to the refugees. Mercifully, Tess saw no corpses and no men, either, but many women and hordes of children. A girl with sunken eyes and a swollen belly clutched a rag doll and stared as they rode past her. Two boys picked through the litter of a burned house, seeking treasure. They glanced over their shoulders at the riders, but hunger or familiarity had made them apathetic and they simply went on with their digging.

A thin young woman holding a thin baby looked up at them and then away. Tess wondered if she had tried to sell her body, to trade herself for food for the child, only to find herself scorned and ignored. What else could such a woman do, except scavenge in the ruins? But Tess had seen women working out in the fields; surely some kind of government still existed here.

“Let’s go back,” she said. They rode back past the row of tents Cara had appropriated for a hospital. Tess waved at Niko and Juli and rode on into the main camp. Aleksi took her mare, and she walked alone to the very center, where she found Ilya scolding Yaroslav Sakhalin’s second-in-command.

“Of course we don’t want to leave soldiers behind to regroup and attack us again, but it does us no good to kill all the farmers as well. Yes, the ones who sow the ground. Who is to supply our army once we reach lands where there isn't enough pasture for our herds? In future, farmers as well as artisans are to be spared. Otherwise, you did well. Now, all of this take on to Sakhalin, and tell him to send his nephew back to me. The Habakar general and his son?” Ilya looked up, saw Tess, and beckoned her over. “Yes, I will see Veselov now. You may go.” The man signed his obedience and hurried away.

“What general?” Tess asked. Ilya sat on a pillow below an awning strung out before her tent. “You’re looking angry again. I’m beginning to see a pattern here. This has something to do with Vasil, doesn’t it?”

“Would you sit down, please?” Since he sounded so irritated, she complied, though she didn’t feel much like sitting at the moment after being on horseback all morning. “What can I do, Tess? If I wish to keep the loyalty of my people, then I must abide by our traditions. If I abide by our traditions, then I must accept him as dyan of his tribe.”

“Then accept it, Ilya, and send him somewhere far away. To the coast, as you did Suvorin.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“Then keep him close by, so you can keep an eye on him.”

“That’s worse.”

“Why?”

His hands lay in tight fists, one on each knee, and he sat so straight that the line of embroidery on the sleeves of his shirt stretched unbroken by wrinkles or folds from shoulder to wrist. His saber rested on the ground to his left, hilt by his knee, and his horse-tail staff lay to his right, propped up on its wooden stand. “There he is. Stay by me.”

Vasil approached, flanked by men from the Veselov jahar. They escorted three men, a bedraggled-looking older man, a scarred, upright soldier, and a boy dressed in a rich surcoat who looked to be about Mitya’s age.

Vasil made a great show of halting before Ilya and beckoning the prisoners forward. Ilya neither moved nor reacted. He was so tense that Tess had to stifle an urge to place a reassuring hand on his thigh.

“I present these prisoners to you, Bakhtiian, as proof of my worthiness to succeed my father as dyan of the Veselov tribe. This is the Habakar nobleman Yalik anSiyal and his son Qushid anYalik. This captain fought courageously in defense of the boy and for his valor we spared his life.”

Ilya examined the prisoners. He did not look at Vasil at all, although Vasil gazed raptly on him. The general abased himself and a moment later the boy did as well. The captain knelt, but no farther did he bend.

“Very well,” Ilya said to the air. “I accept them. You are dismissed.” Vasil did not move. A few of the Veselov soldiers shifted nervously. “You are dismissed,” repeated Ilya in a cold voice.

Tess caught Vasil’s eye and nodded her head. Faced with her command, he had no choice but to go. The prisoners remained behind. Once Vasil vanished from sight, Ilya’s shoulders relaxed.

“Konstans. Take them away.”

“What should I do with them, Bakhtiian?”

“Gods. Confine them somewhere. I’ll deal with them later.”

“Ilya, I make this suggestion.” Tess examined the boy. “It’s children his age we can make the best use of. We should start a school, teach him khush. He can act as an interpreter.”

The tension brought by Vasil evaporated completely as Ilya considered her words. “He’s about Mitya’s age. If we make enough links between their people and ours, then when we rule them, we’ll rule the better for it. He is yours, Tess.”

“Mine!”

“It’s your school to establish, as an envoy.”

She laughed. “Very well. And leave the brave captain as his bodyguard, perhaps. I don’t know what you want to do with the father.”

“He fled the field, according to Sakhalin,” said Ilya. “Deserted his army.”

“Ilya.”