Part 41 (1/2)

They rode into camp and immediately Bakhtiian was besieged. He excused himself and rode off with a trio of men: one of the Vers.h.i.+nin cousins, the Raevsky dyan, and Anton Veselov.

”Now what do I do?” Tess asked of Aleksi. ”They have no need of me with the wounded. Mother Sakhalin runs the camp, and Sonia our tents. I don't have enough experience for any council of war. What use am I?”

Aleksi could hear how upset she was, as if she had turned her fear into disgust at herself. ”If this was your brother's army, what would you be doing?''

Tess glanced at him, startled. She had not been expecting him to reply. Then she laughed. ”You're right, of course. Let's see if there are any Habakar prisoners. I've got a start on their language, and I need to develop my understanding of their legal system as well. Let me see. Aleksi, go to-who is handling prisoners?”

”Raevsky.”

”Well, that seems appropriate. We'll go sort out a few and take them to my tent.

Josef and I can work on this together.''

”You must not forget to eat, Tess.”

”With you here, and Sonia? I won't.”

On through the afternoon Tess and Josef sat side by side on pillows, under the awning of her tent. Five Habakar prisoners-two n.o.blemen, three priests-knelt out in the sun in front of them, and ten archers and ten riders stood at guard around them.

Tess was writing something down in her book when Dr. Hierakis hurried into camp and stopped ten paces away to survey Tess with a skeptical eye. The doctor strode over to Aleksi.

”Has she rested?” she demanded of Aleksi. ”Eaten? Has she gotten enough to drink?”

Aleksi nodded. ”Sonia and the children have brought us everything we need.”

Tess turned. ”Cara.” She switched to Rhuian. ”I've made up my mind about the-” She said a word Aleksi did not recognize. ”I want you to prepare the-” She stopped, glanced at Aleksi, and went on in her other language, the one she called Anglais. Aleksi went very still, and he concentrated. He was quick with language, quicker than anyone suspected, even Tess, and he had learned long ago that in order to survive he had to be one step ahead of everyone else. Something about Ilya, and a drink; something about growing old, or not growing old-that was confusing; the doctor objected, Tess insisted, and between them they reached an agreement. The doctor looked-not reluctant, but as though she had to make a show of being reluctant. Tess did not look triumphant that she had won out over the doctor's objections; she looked stubborn and defensive.

The doctor excused herself and left. Tess turned back to her discussion of the general outlines of Habakar legal doctrine. Josef, who wore his empty eye sockets as if they were a badge of pride, brushed Tess's sleeve with a hand, verifying her presence, and she edged closer to him. Kolia brought them milk. The little boy stared hard at the foreigners baking out under the heat of the sun, at their outlandish clothing and their olive-dark complexions and the sharp line of their black beards. It was a drowsy heat, stifling and dry. Aleksi listened to the voices of the priests droning on, punctuated here and there by a question from Tess or Josef, or a monosyllabic reply from one of the terrified n.o.blemen. Eventually he dozed.

He started awake when Bakhtiian arrived.

”Send them away.” Bakhtiian gestured toward the Habakar prisoners. ”I'm hungry.” He vanished into the tent, reappeared a moment later with a pillow, and threw it on the ground beside Josef. Then he sank down beside the blind man and took one of Josef's hands in his own. Rapidly and in a low voice, he began to tell him in detail about the battle.

Tess rose and went to help Sonia and the children with the food. It was getting dark. Aleksi got up and lit the lanterns, hanging them around the tent poles so that they gave off a soft glow of light that penetrated out beyond the awning. Venedikt Grekov and his nephew Feodor came by with an intelligence report about the pa.s.s and the flight of the Habakar king. Sakhalin's jahar was hard on the king's heels and they had overtaken so many khaja soldiers that they had simply killed them rather than be burdened with prisoners. With Grekov also came his niece, Raysia. She offered to stay and sing for them.

Dr. Hierakis came back in time to eat with them, and she brought with her the stocky khaja woman Ursula, who was flush with accounts of the battle. Other members of the Orzhekov tribe came, Vladimir and Konstans and other riders-some with their wives and children, those who had them along-and Niko Sibirin and Juli Danov and their grandchildren. Everyone was in a fine humor, as well they might be.

Raysia sang. Between each song she looked long and hard at Aleksi before beginning her next piece. He was gratified by her attention, but worried by it, too.

What if Raysia Grekov told her mother that she wanted Aleksi to marry her? A Singer did not have to concern herself with pleasing anyone but herself. The G.o.ds had touched her, everyone knew that, and with the G.o.ds' touch came not only great responsibilities and burdens but great freedom as well. Raysia was also an outsider, in a way. At the age of twelve her spirit had been borne away by the G.o.ds to visit their realms, and her body had lain for days, empty, in her mother's tent. When she returned, she was a Singer, her sight altered forever. She was shunned and feared by some, but respected by everyone, and she had the gift to see what was hidden from others. Aleksi sometimes wondered if he had been touched by the G.o.ds in that way, but the curse he had brought down first on his tribe and then on his beloved sister Anastasia was surely a punishment for his presumption. If Raysia Grekov wanted him, how could he refuse her, though it was properly a man's choice in marriage? He did not want to leave Tess, even to go to live with Raysia. He had lost Anastasia already, those many years ago. He did not intend to lose his new sister, Tess. It would be better not to marry, or perhaps to marry another orphan, one Tess and Bakhtiian and Sonia were willing to admit into the family. Valye Usova was a nice girl . . . but she would bring her brother Yevgeni with her, a brother whose loyalty was still suspect, since he had ridden with Vasil Veselov for so many years.

It was too painful to contemplate. Aleksi shut off these thoughts and tried to concentrate on the singing, but his heart was not in listening this night. Next to him, Tess s.h.i.+fted restlessly. She kept glancing over at Dr. Hierakis with a questioning gaze, and the doctor nodded each time, a.s.suring her of something, Aleksi was not sure what. Bakhtiian listened keenly to the music, drank sparingly from the cup refilled by his wife, and spoke closely to Josef in the intervals between songs.

That night, after Aleksi had gone to bed, Raysia came to his tent and he let her in.

G.o.ds, but she was sweet. And yet, lying awake after she had gone, he knew that he could not leave Tess, and not just for his own sake.

In the morning a deputation emerged from Qurat to seek terms, but Bakhtiian refused to see them. Instead, he left Josef behind with the rearguard and the Veselov and Raevsky tribes, and told Josef to leave the Qurat envoys waiting for a few days and then strip the wealth from the city in return for its complete and utter submission to jaran rule. They broke camp and started up into the pa.s.s. Bakhtiian rode at the head of the army, next to his wife. He looked pale. At midday he called a halt and sat, just sat for a time, rubbing at his forehead with his hands. They camped along the road that night and set out again in the morning. This day Bakhtiian was clearly ill. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, and his skin had a mottled, pasty color. Once, and only once, Tess suggested he ride in a wagon. But he did switch mounts at midday, choosing a placid little bay mare for the rest of the day's ride instead of his restive stallion.

Late that afternoon they reached the summit, a broad, windy height. From here, Aleksi saw the hazy outlines of land far below, fields, a miniature city, and the endless spread of land out to the blue horizon. Up here it was clear and hot, and the wind buffeted Aleksi where he stood on an outcropping staring down, far down, to the Habakar lands. Smoke rose in patches scattered across the countryside. Evidently Sakhalin's army had already arrived.

He walked back to the front rank of wagons to find Sonia ordering that Tess's great tent be set up, although the rest of the army was on marching orders and sleeping under wagons or out in the open for the night. The cloth walls shook and rippled, torn by the heavy wind, and Aleksi ran over to help. It took fifteen people to battle the tent into place and secure it, and even then the wind boomed and tore at the walls. They could not set up the awning at all. The gold banner, raised on the center pole, snapped loudly in the gale.

Bakhtiian watched the proceedings from horseback. He was white and his hands shook, but he did not dismount until Tess came to lead him inside. Her face, too, was white, but with an agony of the heart not of the physical body. They disappeared inside the tent. Dr. Hierakis strode up soon after and went inside. Sonia followed her in and emerged moments later.

”Aleksi! Set up your tent just beside here, and don't leave camp.”

”What's wrong with him?” Aleksi asked in a low voice, aware of people milling around, asking questions.

Sonia shrugged. ”Vladimir says one of the Habakar priests cursed him. Perhaps it's witchcraft.”

”Perhaps,” said Aleksi. But what if it wasn't Habakar witchcraft? He had seen Dr.

Hierakis at work, had seen that she knew how to heal wounds that even the finest jaran healers would have given up on. Everyone got sick, at times. Plagues might race through a tribe, and during the siege of Qurat, many of the jaran had gotten fevers.

Children had died, as well as some of the men weakened by wounds. Why should Tess look so anguished? Bakhtiian was strong. There was no reason to think a simple fever would kill him. Unless this was not a simple fever.

Aleksi unsaddled his mare and hobbled her for the night, and set up his tent alongside Tess's. At dusk, the wind died down. Fires were built, but with night came the strong winds again, ripping at the camp, at the tents, at the fires. Most people hunkered down to wait it out. Dr. Hierakis emerged out of the tent, alone.

Aleksi lit a lantern, s.h.i.+elding the flame with his body until it steadied and then sliding the gla.s.s back into place, and he offered to escort her back to her wagons.

She shook her head. ”You stay here. Galina is waiting-there she is.”

”Bakhtiian?”

”He's ill. But he seems stable. I think he'll have a few rough days before he feels better.''

”Is it the river fever?”

She glanced at him, measuring, curious. ”No, I don't think it's the river fever.''

”Ah,” said Aleksi. ”Neither did I.”

The light spread a glow across her front, illuminating her face and the strong line of her jaw. Her black hair faded into darkness, and her plain tunic was washed gray.

”You're a strange one. Sometimes I think you see more than we know you do.”

”You speak khush very well now. You learned it quickly. The actors did, too.

Have you noticed how many of their-what do they call them? Songs?''

”Plays.”

”-plays that they've begun to say in khush?”

”No, I hadn't. I haven't seen any of their performances. Good night, Aleksi.”

”Good night, Doctor.”

She gave him a brusque but sympathetic nod and went off with Galina. Aleksi wondered how old she was. She did not look any older than, say, Bakhtiian, but she carried herself like an Elder. She carried herself like Mother Sakhalin or Niko Sibirin, and the Elders treated her like one of their own. Perhaps she, too, was a Singer, a G.o.ds-touched mortal, granted knowledge beyond her years. That might explain the Elders' respect for her, and her own strange way of carrying on, of looking at things from afar, of measuring and watching. Like he did.