The Novels of the Jaran (6 page)

Charles nodded at the flats, shimmering, stilling as the tide settled and the last glow of the sun scattered out across the dull water. “Tomorrow,” he said.

Tess woke abruptly, to silence. She did not know how long she had slept. She sat up. Suddenly she heard two men arguing, fluid, foreign words, and a woman weeping, a constant undercurrent to their angry exchange. The conversation ended abruptly, but the weeping kept on, fading at last as if the woman had walked out of reach of Tess’s hearing. It was utterly, unnaturally quiet.

Tess groped forward and opened the flap that led into the front half of the tent. Light streamed in here, dappling her clothing, which was neatly folded next to a pouch of food and a tin pot of water. Quickly, she dressed, drank, and ate, and then ventured outside.

The sun lay low along the far rise, but she could tell by the quality of light that it was morning. The camp was empty. Tent flaps stirred in the dawn breeze, but not one single figure moved along the trails beaten down in the grass between the tents. Movement caught her eye, up along the rise, and she saw two figures disappear over the height, edged by the glare of the rising sun. She followed them.

The tribe had gathered in the shallow valley on the other side of the rise. They stood in shadow, the sun’s light creeping down toward them, and Tess stopped at the height, staring down, aware that some alien, serious ritual was taking place. To her left, she saw another solitary figure crest the rise into sunlight and then descend again into shadow. She recognized him by his walk, and the dark line of his beard: the man who had found her—Bakhtiian. The air, heavy with dew, felt soft and cold on her cheeks. She watched him descend, for a moment seduced from her other thoughts by the grace of his walk and bearing. Then she winced and went down to the right, where she could see and hear the proceedings but not be part of them.

The tribe stood silently in a rough semicircle. A baby cried and was hushed. One man, fair-haired, middle-aged, dressed in black, stood by himself beyond the crowd. He stared straight ahead—although the sun rose directly into his eyes—and his stance was stiff.

The crowd parted soundlessly to let Bakhtiian through their ranks. His stride was unhurried and smooth. Drops of dew glistened on the tops of his boots and on the hilt of his saber. He halted in front of the single figure.

The silence spread beyond them so that Tess was not aware even of the birds calling or the wind’s slow breath on her cheeks. Bakhtiian spoke. What he said had a rhythmic quality, like a spell or a poem, and it wrapped around Tess like a snake so that when he ceased speaking she pulled her arms close in against her chest. A single voice, unsure and weak in the silence left by his speech, answered him, followed by several more in a set way that made her realize that this
was
some kind of ceremony.

Bakhtiian addressed the man standing apart. He responded with one word. A second question, another single word. A third; the same word again. He was a pale figure, this man, alone against the blank sky and the endless grass. No one spoke. A high call came from above, and a lone bird swooped low, rose into the wind, and flew toward the sun.

Bakhtiian moved slightly, drawing his saber. A sigh spread through the crowd as though strewn by the wind. The point of the blade rested on the man’s forehead. The world seemed to stop, its only motion the movements of Bakhtiian. Tess could not look away. He looked to the sky and spoke a short invocation to the expanse above. Something awful was about to happen, but it was too late to run away.

In a kind of ghastly slow motion, the more terrible for the effortless beauty of his movement, he drew his saber up to his left shoulder, stepped left, and cut back to the right. Without meaning to, Tess clapped her hands over her eyes. Forced them down, only to see the man, covered with his own blood, collapse into a grotesque heap on the ground. Bakhtiian stepped forward, dropped the saber on the man’s body, and turned away and walked, without a word, back toward the camp.

There was a brief, horrified hush. People moved back to let him through and stared after him, hands hiding the sudden buzz of whispering.

Not even aware of her path, Tess fled—from the camp, the crowd, the dead man. She huddled in a little hollow, unable to weep or retch or rail, unable to do anything but bury her head against her knees and shudder, over and over, her arms clenching her knees so tightly that it felt as if bone was touching bone. How long she stayed like this she did not know.

After a time she began taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly, inhaling the musty sweetness of the grass. She rocked back and forth, relaxing her clenched muscles one by one until at last she could shut away the ghastly picture of the man collapsing, of his blood staining the grass—

She took another breath, let it out. Her neck ached. She lifted her head carefully, as if it were so delicate that the slightest jar would break it, and almost screamed. Bakhtiian stood not twenty paces away, watching her.

Chapter Three

“If God had not created yellow honey, they would say that figs were far sweeter.”

—
XENOPHANES OF COLOPHON

F
AR ABOVE, A BIRD
dove toward the earth, a bundle thrown from some high spot to be dashed to pieces against the ground. Abruptly it broke its plummet and jerked upward, wings spread. Tess’s hand was on her throat.

Bakhtiian walked toward her, slowly, each step measured and even. A saber swayed at his hip.

Tess forced herself to lower her hand and, knowing that it is always best to face your fears directly, she stood up—slowly, so as not to startle him—and looked him straight in the eye. He looked away; that fast, like a wild creature bolting; then, deliberately, he returned her gaze. His hesitancy gave her courage, and she found that her heart was no longer beating so erratically.

“I suppose you think us savage,” he said in a low voice.

He spoke such faultless Rhuian, enhanced rather than marred by a melodious accent, that it took her some full, drawn-out moments to even wonder why it ought to matter to him. “My God.” It was the only response that came to hand.

“Sonia says you come from Jeds.” She simply stared at him; when she did not reply, he went on. “I studied there myself, at the university, some fifteen years ago. I was very young.” He paused. “But even then I thought the architecture of the university, set out around such a fine square, was particularly remarkable.” The wind stirred the scarlet silk of his shirt. It reminded her of blood.

“Savage
is too kind,” she said hoarsely. Then, realizing that she had just insulted a man who could kill her as easily as he had his previous victim, she cast round desperately for a safer haven. “Anyone who’s been in Jeds knows that the university is unique because its buildings are set in the round.”

His expression, unrevealing, did not change. “I’ve seen men killed in more brutal ways in Jeds. And for less compelling reasons. You’re pale. You shouldn’t be alone.”

“Go away.” She deliberately turned her back on him. Five breaths later, she realized what she had done, and she whirled back. But he was gone.

“Tess.”

She bolted right into Yuri.

“Tess. Don’t be scared of me.”

She could not help herself. She gripped his shirt in her fists and sobbed onto his shoulder. He stood very still. After a bit she stopped crying and stepped a half pace away. She dried her eyes on her hand, feeling like a fool, and looked at him. “Your shirt is all wet.”

“I don’t mind.” He stared at her so earnestly that she looked away. “You are sad.”

“Oh, Yuri, that was awful.”

“It’s true that he got a more merciful death than he deserved. My mother and the other—elders—will be angry with Ilya now, I can tell you that.”

“Good Lord,” she murmured, utterly bewildered. “How could that be called merciful? How was he supposed to die? No, don’t tell me that.” She lapsed into silence.

“Tess, he had to die. He had broken the gods’ law. Otherwise his—crime, is that the word?—would have made the whole tribe suffer.”

“What did he do?”

Yuri looked shamed, and he hesitated, as if he was afraid to confess the magnitude of the man’s wrongdoing. “He shot a whistler.”

“A whistler?”

“It’s a bird.” Wrung from him, the admission seemed both anguished and, to Tess, utterly incongruous.

“A bird.” What kind of people had she fallen in with?

“He shouldn’t have been out hunting with women’s weapons anyway, and he was three times a fool to shoot into a thicket. He should have flushed out the game.” Yuri shrugged. “But it’s done now. The gods must have guided his hand. It was a just execution.”

He spoke so matter-of-factly that Tess was appalled, and not a little frightened. “Yuri. You’ll tell me, won’t you, if I’m about to do something that would offend, that would break your gods’ law?”

Now he looked shocked. “You don’t think we punish children? Or those who act in ignorance? We’re not savages!”

“No, no, of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” But Yuri could not maintain outrage for longer than a moment. He grinned at her consternation. “Well,” said Tess, “I appreciate you coming to find me. Did Bakhtiian send you?”

“Ilya? Why would he send me? No, Sonia did.” Abruptly he blushed. “She thought, if you were upset, that you might want—a man’s comfort.” The constrained tone of his voice left no question as to what Sonia meant by a man’s comfort.

For an instant, unable to look at Yuri, Tess was too embarrassed to speak. But then, glancing up at him, she realized that Yuri was far more embarrassed than she was. Their gazes met. Yuri covered his mouth with his hand, and they both laughed.

When Tess tentatively laid a hand on his arm, they sobered. “I don’t—I don’t need a lover, Yuri. Not right now. But a brother…” Had Charles received her computer slate already? Only to send a message to Jeds and find that she had never arrived? “I could use a brother, right now.”

He smiled, looking both relieved and honestly pleased, and grasped her hand with his. “Then I will be your brother, Tess. I would far rather be your brother, because a woman’s lovers come and go, but her brother she keeps always.” He studied her a moment, serious. “But you’d better wash your face. I’ll take you to the stream.”

They walked back through camp. Yuri led them wide around his family’s cluster of tents, where Tess could see a little gathering: Bakhtiian, standing as if he was on trial in front of a half circle of older women and men. On the far side of camp, they followed a stream past a low rise. The stream slipped down a smooth ladder of rocks and broadened into a pool. Yuri left her at the top of the rise, and Tess picked her way down the slope alone. Sonia, standing with a group of young women, saw her and waved.

“Tess.” She came to greet her. “Perhaps my brother does not interest you.” About twenty young women gathered around. They were not shy at all; they pointed to Tess’s clothing and even touched her brown hair, exclaiming over its color—theirs was either blonde or black, with no shade in between.

Under their scrutiny, Tess was amazed she could keep her composure. “No. No, I like him very much. But I am not looking for a lover.”

“Ah.” Sonia shooed the other women away and immediately began to undress. “Your heart has been broken. I can see it in your face.” She stripped down to a thin white shift. Around them, the other young women, naked now, plunged gasping and laughing into the pool. “A man has treated you badly. Here, let me help you take those off.”

Tess was not entirely sure she wanted to strip naked in what was after all no more than an early spring day, however fine, and swim in a stream that looked bitterly cold, but after the execution, she did not want to refuse. “Yes,” she agreed, to both statements.

“What fine undergarments you wear.” Sonia examined Tess’s underclothes without the least sign of self-consciousness. “Perhaps you can show us how to fashion some. Here, Elena, Marya—” Several of them splashed right out of the pool to exclaim over this new discovery, and when they had tired of that, they bullied Tess into stripping completely and coming back into the water with them.

It was like ice. But the company, and the energy with which they all splashed about, soon made her forget her goose bumps. Only Sonia spoke Rhuian; the others addressed her cheerfully in their own language and she quickly learned names and a few words. About half the women had scars on their left cheeks.

“So you are not married?” Sonia asked. “No? How old are you? Twenty-three? A widow, perhaps?”

“No. I…I was to be married, but…”

“Ah. This is the man who has broken your heart. Well.” Sonia dismissed the betrayer with a blithe wave of one hand, and a retaliatory splash in the direction of the gray-eyed, blonde girl she called Elena. “In Jeds the customs are different. I did not like them. We have many young men here who are polite as well as handsome.”

Tess could not help but laugh. “When I’m ready for a lover, I’ll ask your help in picking one out.”

“I sent you my brother. But perhaps—” She laughed. Her laugh gave color to the air and sparked her eyes and wrinkled up her nose. “When I know you better, Tess, then I can help you choose. But I think it is time you got a husband, for I see that you have no—what is it to say in Rhuian?—none of the Mother’s threads on your belly. As old as you are. I am twenty-four, and I have three children. You must not wait too long. Everyone knows the story of Agrafena’s aunt.”

The story of Agrafena’s aunt was not, it transpired, about anyone living in the tribe, but an old tale. Giggling and shivering, everyone hurried out of the pool, dried off, and dressed. They sat farther up on the slope, the pool dappled by shadows below, an untidy collection of bodies sprawled in the sun with Sonia and Tess at their center. By turns two or three of the young women took clothing to a stretch of flat stones below the pool and beat them clean in the water. As Sonia told the story, it took a fair while to tell, alternately in Rhuian and in
khush.
It was about a woman who waited so long to have children that when at last she married and wanted them, she was barren—having offended the spirits of earth and water by her stubbornness—and so had to send her niece on a long journey in order to find the holy woman who could restore her to favor.