The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (27 page)

“I don’t understand it,” he said to Stefan that evening when they halted for the night. “She really never did like him before.”

Stefan shrugged. “That’s how women act, Vasha. They don’t mean it.”

“No, really. When Galina married him, Katya really told me that she didn’t like him.”

“She’s free to change her mind.”

“Are you going to help Jaelle?”

“Yes.” Even Riasonovky’s riders had ceased teasing him, since he so faithfully went each night to help her and so stolidly refused to be baited by their jokes.

“I’ll come with you.”

So Vasha went. Rusudani had a second attendant now, the young priest, Brother Saghir. Together, Rusudani and Sister Yvanne had successfully petitioned Katerina for a Hristanic priest to be allowed to go to Sarai, and since Sister Yvanne was not robust enough for the long journey, Saghir had been sent in her place.

With the priest and Jaelle as chaperons, Vasha was allowed to sit five paces from Princess Rusudani and listen to her read from her holy book. He examined her profile surreptitiously and breathed in the scent of incense that hung over her.

So he went the next night, and the one after that, and the one after that, listening to them read in a language he could not understand. They crossed the length of Habakar, rising before dawn and keeping up a brisk pace, switching horses, straight to sunset. Every night by lantern light Princess Rusudani read from the holy book before she retired for the night. Her calm voice allowed him to forget everything else, to forget what they rode toward, to forget to whom they rode… and what might happen when they got there.

They passed the ruins of Karkand, a plain of tumbled, cracked stone and fields poisoned with salt. Even in so forbidding a wasteland, a village grew up in the ruins, pale brick houses roofed with thick reeds dried and bound together in sheets. Gardens patched the wilderness of stone and barren earth as flowers inhabit the wild, wide plains: Startling where they showed up, bright and flowering, their contrast gave the landscape its true character.

“Do you remember?” asked Vasha, boldly pulling his horse up alongside Katya’s. Now that they traveled through Habakar lands, she usually rode with the two khaja women, like an extra guard.

“There is the watchtower where Tess’s birthwaters flooded,” said Katerina, pointing. Somehow, the tower had survived the destruction, although the walls on either side had crumbled.

Vasha started. He hadn’t been thinking of the birth, and the baby who had died. He had been thinking of the great battle that ended several days later, and of the inferno that followed it, destroying the city.

“I beg your pardon,” said Jaelle to Stefan, using him as an intermediary as she now did when she wanted to initiate any conversation. “My mistress wishes to know what is this place?”

“It was a city,” said Katya.

“It was the Habakar king’s city,” said Vasha.

“It remains as a lesson to those who would defy Bakhtiian,” finished Katya.

Princess Rusudani regarded the ruins of Karkand tranquilly. She spoke, and Jaelle translated. “God shelters the righteous.”

Jaelle added, in an undertone, “And the blessed Pilgrim watches over those of humble estate.”

Riasonovsky rode up to investigate the delay. The soldier seemed uninterested in the dead khaja city; it evidently had no significance to him except as an unimportant marker of the course of Bakhtiian’s campaign. His tranquillity of purpose had much in common with Rusudani’s serenity.

They rode on. In the afternoon, they met up with a jahar sent by Prince Mitya to escort them the rest of the way to his court. In a matter of days, they arrived at Hamrat.

“I remember Hamrat from the first time I saw it eight years ago,” said Katya. “It was so beautiful. All the other cities we saw were either under siege or already burning.”

Vassily regarded the city with interest but without passion. “I don’t remember it at all, although I suppose we must have passed by it.”

“No,” agreed Katya, sounding almost like her old friendly self again. “You weren’t with us then.”

Once, the old city had been bounded by gleaming white walls. With its new prominence, Hamrat sprawled out from the walls along the river, new buildings erected on the path of the crossroads that led to the great gates. Vassily could see the city walls and the profusion of silver towers within, as well as the massive dome of the temple, looming above the sprawl of the outer city. No wall protected these villas and environs, as if the new residents of Hamrat felt that the presence of Prince Mitya was surety enough for their safety.

Mitya’s court lay slightly south of Hamrat. Called
sarrod-nikaiia
, “Her Voice is Merciful,” the palace’s foundation rested on the very spot where Yaroslav Sakhalin had been camping when he heard the news that Bakhtiian had won his contest with Habakar sorcerers and returned to the world of the living. Now, set out among fields gone to pasture for the prince’s horses, it was a new-looking place, with cold walls and a temple rising in stark white stone within the palace complex. A temple to the Habakar god.

Behind the temple lay a broad park that stretched all the way to the river. Horses grazed in the distance. In a little gazebo, painted white, Mitya waited for them, fanning himself against the heat. He sat on a wide couch, and next to him sat his wife, the Habakar princess Melatina. She wore white robes trimmed with blue crescents, her hair hidden by white cloth, but the silk veil that covered her face below the eyes was so sheer that one could see the rich rose of her lips. A small child played on a carpet at the foot of the couch, with a nurse hovering in attendance.

Mitya rose at once, seeing them. As soon as they dismounted he signaled to his guard to take the horses away. Then he came forward and kissed Katerina on either cheek, in the formal style.

“Vasha! What are you doing here? I thought you were riding with Sakhalin’s army.”

Vasha shook his head. Mercifully, Katya held her tongue.

“Sakhalin.” Mitya acknowledged Andrei Sakhalin gravely, as one prince acknowledges another, and the older man inclined his head in return. Mitya waved toward the park. “You may, of course, camp anywhere as long as you are here. And you are? Riasonovsky? Ah. You’ll find everything you need here, horses, supplies, if you’re to continue all the way to Sarai.”

“Thank you, Prince Mitya. We also, have a khaja princess to safeguard while we are here. We are taking her to Sarai.”

Mitya looked immediately toward Katya, thereby putting the matter in her hands.

“Set up the Princess Rusudani’s tent next to mine,” said Katya, “and maintain a guard as before.”

Thus dismissed, Riasonovsky took his men and Rusudani away. Stefan glanced at Vassily, then at his cousins, and finally followed the khaja women. Andrei Sakhalin lingered a few minutes more, but Mitya merely smiled blandly at him until, taking the hint, he left as well.

“I can’t stand him,” said Mitya as soon as the Sakhalin prince was out of earshot. “Prince” Mitya sloughed off him to reveal the mild and rather transparent cousin Vasha knew and loved best. The three of them stood together on a tile mosaic that fronted the gazebo. Princess Melatina still sat on the couch, watching them. “The Sakhalin princes are all proud bastards, but at least the others deserve it.”

“You’re getting fat,” said Katya.

“I am not!” retorted Mitya indignantly, although he was certainly thicker in the face. “Where is Anna?” He turned around to regard the gazebo. “Anna! Come here and greet your cousins!” The child on the carpet lifted her head, hesitated, and then, nudged by the nurse, got to her feet and carefully negotiated the stairs. “Katya,” Mitya said in a low voice, “I want you to ask my mother to send someone to care for my children.”

“Children?”

He flushed, looking pleased. “Melatina is pregnant again. But these khaja nurses are terrible. They tell Anna never to shout. They cover her hair and they weigh her down in khaja clothes so she can’t run. Even Melatina says that a little girl like Anna, because she is a princess, ought to go veiled in public. That’s not how a girl ought to behave!”

Katya regarded the child seriously. The girl hesitated again, was urged forward by her nurse, and slowly, then picking up speed, walked across the mosaic to her father. Reaching him, she wrapped her arms around one of his legs and clung there.

“I’d better take her back to the tribes with me,” said Katya. “There’ll be nothing but trouble for her if she’s raised by khaja women.”

At once, Mitya grew agitated. “Don’t take her away from me!” he pleaded, reaching down to lift her to his hip. Anna circled his neck with her arms, laid her cheek against his shoulder, and stared at Vasha and Katya with dark, Habakar eyes.

“It would be better for her to go, Mitya.”

“Oh, Katya, don’t be mean,” said Vasha. “A daughter wants to be with her father. By what right do you take her away from her mother and send her to her father’s kin?”

“At least there’s no doubt about who her father
is
,” retorted Katya.

Vasha flushed. Gods, that hurt.

“That was unkind,” said Mitya in a cool, un-Mitya-like voice, bristling with authority. “I invite you to apologize.”

“You can’t make me,” said Katya stubbornly, “nor should you speak to me that way. And anyway, it’s true.”

“I am your cousin. I am older than you. And I am right.”

Vasha lifted his gaze in time to see Katya wince. Very few people could make Katerina ashamed of herself.

“I apologize,” she mumbled. “It was an unkind thing to say.”

Vasha, still angry and embarrassed, said nothing, but Mitya seemed satisfied. “You haven’t greeted Melatina yet. Katya, you come first. Vasha, you wait here for a moment.” Mitya looked vexed. His voice dropped confidingly. “You went to Tess’s school with her. I remember that she used to sit out under the awning with everyone else, even if she still did always wear the veil. But ever since she came back to Habakar, she’s gone back to all her barbarian ways. The palace must have separate rooms for the women, and she and Princess Laissa keep separate audience rooms for women. Even though she rules as queen by law, she will not sit in open court with me and pass judgment, not even on things that by right a woman ought to rule on.”

“She won’t pass judgment at all?”

“Oh, she will pass judgment, but only—” He hesitated, as if the next words were too unbelievable to utter. “—only through me. Unless it is a matter she may hear and judge in the seclusion of the women’s chambers. Being king here isn’t anything like being an etsana’s husband. It’s as if I’m the etsana.” Having uttered the awful thought, he clamped his mouth shut, turned, and strode to the gazebo, briskly mounting the steps to the shaded platform within. A trellis hung with vines and sprays of purple flowers half-concealed the couch and the servant women waiting in attendance.

“Even if it isn’t right that a child go live with her father’s kin,” muttered Katya without looking at Vassily, “I still think we ought to take Anna with us. It would be worse to have her raised as a khaja.”

“What about the other children? Will you take them, too? If we can only rule the khaja by force, then our rule will not last long. That is why Bakhtiian married Mitya to Princess Melatina, and why Tess married Georgi Raevsky to Isobel Santer in Jeds.”

“I’m not going to marry a khaja!”

Surprised by her vehemence, Vasha laughed. For all that he was furious with her, Vasha could not help but see Katerina as the very model of what a young woman ought to be. Aware of her power, as all the Orzhekov women were, she could ride, weave, shoot with devastating accuracy, and organize the setting up and taking down of a camp. She wore eight lover’s bracelets on her ankle; the first one was the one he had given her four years ago. The only thing she had not yet shown was whether she could bear strong daughters and sons, but the evidence of her mother and aunts and cousins suggested that she would. Marriage to a khaja prince would bring no benefit to
her.

“None of them would have you,” he retorted, and was pleased to see her go red. She turned her back on him and stalked away, mounting the steps and sitting down hard on the couch between Mitya and Melatina, not waiting for an invitation. Mercurial as ever, she took Melatina’s hands in hers as if they were cousins and the two women began talking to one another.

After a moment Mitya got up and returned to Vasha, looking disgusted. He
was
getting thicker around the middle. “We’ll walk in the park. Katya has dismissed us.” They walked away from the gazebo along a path of smooth white pebbles that wound through a garden and toward the palace wall. “I thought you were to ride with Yaroslav Sakhalin’s army.”

Stones whispered under Vasha’s boots.

“Just tell me.” Mitya had always been a good listener.

Vasha could not resist his sympathy. “I
know
the boys coming to a jahar start by caring for the horses and then—but I’m older than them. I don’t think it’s right that I be treated like boys three and four years younger than me just because my—because Bakhtiian refused to send me away earlier. And Sakhalin never liked me. He didn’t want me with him, even though Bakhtiian sent me to him because Sakhalin is his best general. But it reminded me of—!” He broke off, unable to go further.

“Of what?” They reached a courtyard of red brick surrounded by a flowering hedge. In the center, a fountain splashed.

“Of when my mother died and then Mother Kireyevsky and all the others suddenly began treating me like a servant.”

“Ah.” Mitya led Vasha under the shade of a grape arbor. He sat down on a wood bench whose legs were themselves carved with clusters of grapes and leafy vines, but Vasha was too humiliated to sit down. He hadn’t known he was going to say that; it had just popped out. Now Mitya would scorn him. But Mitya put some grapes in his mouth and ate them, looking thoughtful. “What did you do to make Sakhalin send you back, then? You must know that Bakhtiian will be angry.”

Vasha paced. “Stefan and Arkady and Ivan and I went out and stole some khaja horses.”

Mitya snorted. “And?”

“And? That was enough.”