Earthly Crown (45 page)

Bakhtiian’s expression shifted with lightning swiftness from chagrin to anger. He started to rise, collapsed, and glared at Kirill instead, since his legs refused to hold him up. “How dare you mention Vasil’s name to me! It is only because I refuse to contest Arina’s authority that—”

“But Ilya,” said Kirill reasonably. “I never mentioned Vasil’s name. You did.”

Bakhtiian lapsed into a brooding silence. His eyelids fluttered, down, down, and snapped up. “Kirill. Why is it that you have two children and I have none?”

“Three,” Kirill corrected. Luckily, the drink had the effect of making him mellower. “You’re forgetting Jaroslav. It’s your own damned fault, Bakhtiian. The gods cursed you with getting the woman you wanted. I should have gotten her, you know, but she wouldn’t marry me.”

“She loved you,” said Bakhtiian accusingly.

“She still does. But she loves you more and she always will. Sometimes I wish I could hate you for that, but I don’t. Gods, I’m drunk. I beg your pardon, Doctor.”

“You are pardoned. Here. Drink this.” Obediently, he drank. Cara handed another glass to Bakhtiian, but he turned the glass around and around in his hands and then, clumsily, dropped it. He apologized curtly, trying to pick up the glass, but his hands kept slipping on the smooth surface of crystal. Kirill’s head sagged. Cara paced to the edge of the carpet and peered out into the darkness, and there—thank the Goddess—she saw Ursula striding across the ground toward the tent.

“Do you suppose the gods
have
cursed me?” Bakhtiian asked suddenly, softly but clearly. “That I’ll never have a child? The gods know it is true, what I offered her—” He stopped speaking abruptly. He had passed out as well, without revealing what he had, in fact, offered to “her,” or who she was, or what he had offered it for.

“Ursula. Come quickly.”

Ursula halted at the edge of the carpet and surveyed the two men. “Cara—?”

“Help me carry them inside. Quickly, please.” Ursula picked up Kirill’s limp form in her arms and carried him inside, then came back to help Cara hoist up Bakhtiian. “Bakhtiian on this table. Kirill on the surgery.” She sprayed each man with a light anaesthetic mist and trained the monitor on them. Blips appeared in one corner of the computer display, tracking their vital signs. “Now, can you do me a full diagnostic on Bakhtiian? You know the equipment, and I’ll need a full blood and tissue sample and an immediate cycle through the physiology matrix. Then I want you to go find Tess, so she can take him back to her tent, and I’ll need—hmm.”

Ursula surveyed the proceedings with her usual imperturbability. “How will you get this other one back to his camp?”

“Yes, that’s a problem. It must be another man, but—no, I must trust Tess in this. Have her bring her brother Aleksi. Are you clear on everything?”

“Yes.” Ursula arranged Bakhtiian’s limbs on the table and set the scanner on its path. “What
are
you doing, Doctor, if I may ask?”

“Additional subjects for my research. You know about Tess’s pregnancy.”

“Yes. But what about the other one?”

“I’m doing a favor. And indulging my curiosity.” As Cara spoke, she stripped Kirill of his blue overblouse and the fine linen undershirt beneath. Freed from its coverings, his withered arm looked ghastly in the bright light, a horrible deformity compared to the fine, strong lines of the rest of his body. “And seeing if there’s anything I can do for this poor boy.” She began the sterilization process and set up the sealing walls and fine netting on the surgical table. She set the deep tissue scanner over his shoulder and began to image. “Oh, Ursula, put a callback in to Charles.”

Ursula obeyed. Cara studied the pattern emerging on the screen, the shoulder developing shape and texture, rotating to show all angles, the splintered collarbone, the muscles and nerves, the atrophied tissue beginning at
this
point. “Ah, there it is. The lateral, posterior, and medial cords are all damaged. Comprehensive, I must say.”

“Can it be repaired?”

“In our hospitals, certainly. Repair on a molecular level, some regrowth, perhaps, but here…” A blip appeared on the console, flashing red and blue in a rhythmic pattern. The bells on the outer entrance flap of the tent rang out as someone swept them aside.

“Cara?” It was Tess. A moment later she ducked into the inner chamber. “Galina said Ilya was here. Do you know where he went—?” She stopped dead and stared.

“Do reply to the console, will you, love?” Cara asked. “Ursula, leave him for a moment and do a full sterilize and come assist me.” She laid out tiny instruments along the gleaming surface of the surgery table and made a single, centimeter-long incision just below Kirill’s collarbone. Blood welled up and was immediately sucked away into a tiny holding chamber.

Tess started visibly and went to the console. “Reading,” she said. Charles’s face materialized in the air.

“Hello, Tess,” he said. “You are well, I take it?”

“I’m well. Where are you?”

“Bogged down by terrible weather. Nadine keeps apologizing, not that it’s any of her fault.” He turned his head to one side, showing his profile. “Rajiv, take a location reading. Now.” He turned back. “All right. I’ve got you marked. Is Cara there?”

“Yes.”

“But she’s busy right now,” said Cara loudly, “and I’ve nothing to report. I’m running tests. Tess can open the field if you wish to observe.”

His image smiled. “No, thank you. You know how I hate the sight of blood. I received a full report from Suzanne, filed on Odys, and there is nothing to tell. All is quiet in the Empire. Very well, no further communication unless an emergency. I will call through once we reach the shrine. Off.” The image froze.

“Off,” echoed Tess. His face vanished, to be replaced by the rotating image of Kirill’s injured shoulder. “That’s awful,” she said, watching it. “Can you fix it?”

“We’ll see. Ursula, hand me the probe.”

Tess jerked her gaze away from the screen, where strange instruments invaded the image, and she strayed across the chamber to stand beside Ilya. “It’s just so undignified, somehow.”

“Tess, you may assist or you may leave. In fact, you may go get Aleksi. We need someone to take Kirill back to his tent later, someone who can cheerfully lie and say that Kirill fell while drunk and reinjured his shoulder.”

“But what will I tell Aleksi?”

“Tell him whatever you wish, Tess. You know how far he can be trusted. Where do his loyalties lie?”

“He is loyal to me.”

“Before all else? Before even Bakhtiian?”

“Yes. He is my brother, after all. And I saved his life. Very well. I can’t stand to see Ilya lying there like that.” She left. A moment later the bells tinkled, and Cara and Ursula were left alone to their work.

In the morning, tired but pleased with herself, Cara visited Tess’s tent. Tess sat outside holding a half-full cup in her hand, eyes half shut. Aleksi lay asleep on a heap of pillows near her feet. He had a sharp, intelligent face that in repose looked more innocent than Cara supposed he really was. Sonia ducked under the awning, greeted Cara, and handed Tess a bowl of fruit, then left again. Kolia ran in and begged for food. Tess laughed and gave him some and chased him off again.

“You're tired,” said Cara. “I didn’t expect you to come back after you’d put Bakhtiian to bed. Is he up yet?”

“No.” Tess picked at the fruit.

“He’ll have the devil of a hangover. You didn’t have to come back and sit through the entire operation with Kirill.”

“I wanted to.” Tess looked up at Cara, a desperately hopeful expression on her face that shuttered in almost immediately. “Do you think he’ll ever use the arm again?”

“It was very interesting to listen to Bakhtiian and Kirill talk together when they were both drunk. You haven’t told me much about the first year you spent here, Tess.”

“Kirill is very special to me,” said Tess in a low voice.

“So I divined from their conversation. Tess, I just came from the Veselov camp. Kirill’s arm is back in a sling, and it’s hurting him like hell, which is a good sign, but it will probably be days, even weeks, before we'll know if he can expect to use it again. But as for regaining full use—that you must not expect. If we could take him to a real hospital—”

“I know. I know.” Tess hesitated and glanced at the entrance flap of her tent, cocked half up so that a slice of the interior was visible: the wooden table and chair, and one corner of a carved chest. “And Ilya?”

“I’ll have to study the results.”

“Cara. What about—? Gods, seeing him lying there I kept thinking that that’s what he’ll look like when he’s dead.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Can you treat him?”

Yes!
Cara wanted to say, because she wanted nothing more than to try. Yet the risks…she forced herself to show caution. “Are you certain this is what you wish, Tess? You must consider the consequences if we succeed, not just for yourself and for him but for everyone.”

“I won’t age, not in their life spans. There’s nothing I can do about that except learn how to make myself up from the actors, I suppose. Last night—he was still half drunk when I brought him back here—he told me how young I looked. No, he said, ‘You look no older than the day I met you.’” Her lips set tight. Dark circles of exhaustion showed under her eyes, giving her an anguished look. “I know it’s selfish—”

“As well as dangerous.”

“Yes. But he puts himself in danger every day. He could die any day, Cara.”

“As could you.”

“As could any of us, despite our vaunted knowledge. We may live longer, but we’re not immortal.”

“And may we never be,” breathed Cara devoutly.

“But you’re—”

“It’s true I’d like to extend our life span, but I’m not seeking the philosopher’s stone, Tess. The fountain of youth, perhaps, and yet in the end I don’t think this physical human form is capable of sustaining eternal life. That’s for the next evolutionary stage. Which I hope I won’t be around to see.”

Tess set the empty bowl down on the carpet and drained the last of the milk in her mug. “You’re braver than I am, Cara. I can’t bear to see him age so quickly. He already looks older than when we met. Gods, I hate it.”

Cara sighed and laid a hand on Tess’s shoulder, squeezing it. “I’ll do what I can, Tess. Which reminds me, can I do tests on Aleksi as well?”

Tess stared for a long moment at the sleeping Aleksi, then lifted her gaze to watch Sonia busy over at her own tent, Kolia in equal parts hindering and helping her. Ivan sat working with severe concentration on embroidery. Katerina and Galina had gone off together to get water. “I want to save all of them,” she said softly.

“And the burden is harder on you knowing that you cannot.”

“It isn’t right.”

“That we leave them in ignorance? But Charles is right in one thing, Tess. If we bring down our gifts en masse, we will obliterate them, their culture, and their lives. Is the trade worth it? For them? For us, even? Perhaps they wouldn’t care to live as we live. How can we choose for them?”

“The same argument,” said Tess bitterly, “run over and over and over again. Either way, we are right. Either way, we are wrong.”

“Do you wish you had never come here, then?”

At that moment, footfalls sounded from inside the tent, followed by a curse. Bakhtiian pushed out from inside, fumbling with the entrance flap, and emerged out under the awning, blinking furiously, bleary-eyed and pale.

“No,” said Tess as she rose to greet him.

“Gods,” he said. “My head pounds.” He stumbled over Aleksi, waking the other man, apologized, and then saw Cara. “Doctor.” Even in this condition, he recalled his manners. “I thank you for your hospitality last night.” He blinked again, against the sunlight. “I think.”

Cara laughed. “Drink as much water as you can, Bakhtiian. I promise you’ll feel better in a day or two.”

He bowed, then winced at the movement. “You are gracious, as well as wise.”

She laughed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Doctor, we’ll be marching at dawn tomorrow.”

“Ah. Thank you for the warning.” She kissed Tess on the cheek and left them.

“T
ESS,” SAID ALEKSI, REINING
his horse aside and waiting with her as the line of wagons trundled past, “are you pregnant?”

Her startled glance betrayed the truth. “How did you know?”

“You stopped eating
glariss
milk and cheese, but nothing else.”

“I can’t stomach it. It’s strange, though. None of the other food bothers me, just that.”

“Does Ilya know?”

“No.”

He nodded, understanding her perfectly. “You must be early still. Does Sonia know?”

“No one knows.”

“Not even the healer?”

“Yes, she knows.”

Aleksi smiled. “You meant, no jaran knows. Does your brother know?”

“Of course he—” She broke off. “How could he know, Aleksi? It’s been over twelve hands of days since I’ve seen him.”

“I thought as much,” said Aleksi with that maddeningly knowing smile that he had.

Tess pulled a face at him and urged her mare forward as the last of the wagons in this segment of the train passed them by. The wagons climbed steadily through the range of hills, heading for the fortress that blocked the pass that led on into the heart of the Habakar kingdom. The main army had passed this way the day before, and Tess could read the signs of their passage still, here in the vanguard of the great train of wagons and horses and herds that made up the jaran camp as it moved. Such signs had not yet been churned away beneath the obliterating tread of uncounted wheels and hooves and feet. Riders from Anatoly Sakhalin’s jahar, augmented by the recruits for Bakhtiian’s jahar of envoys, rode up and down the line at intervals, watching the hills, watching for breakdowns, urging any recalcitrant oxen along with whips. All in all, the mood of the camp was positive. They traveled incessantly in any case, Tess reflected; it was only the change of scenery that made this journey different. That and the families they had left behind on the plains.

At a broad stretch of track, she and Aleksi cantered up alongside the wagons to the head of the train. They passed the Bharentous Repertory Company, and then the wagons of the Veselov tribe.