An earthly crown

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The retching sound came from the straggle of bushes that edged the road. The line of wagons lurched to a halt, and Diana sighed and exchanged a glance with Arina Veselov. Arina took the reins from Diana and pulled them taut. The animals that pulled the wagons-Diana thought of them as oxen-stood with bovine stupidity and flicked flies from their backs with their tails.

The bushes crackled and Gwyn appeared, pushing through them. "Was that you?" Diana called, amazed at his appearance. Like an echo, the retching sounded again, worse this time, followed by a woman's moan.

Gwyn shook his head. "No. It's Anahita. This is the second day she's been sick. I don't know if she ate something, or if she's just overwrought."

"They stopped the wagons for her?" Diana demanded. Only after they had reached the mountains did Diana realize how truly easy the traveling was on the plains. Now they inched along. At the widest stretches they managed to fit three wagons abreast. Often, negotiating falls of rock on the high pass road, they had to drive single file. It was so damned slow. It was cold at night. Tempers were fraying, and Diana had two days since-four days out from the gate of the kingdom, the burned city-decided to ride during the day with her jaran family rather than with the Company. Arina and Kirill held a tight rein on those of their tribe accompanying the army and, perhaps, the egos they dealt with were not quite as weighty as the ones Owen and Ginny had to cope with.

Gwyn walked over to them. Dust had painted his boots and trousers a monotonous color that could only be termed a color at all by courtesy. His pleasant face was sunburned; dirty gloves encased his hands. He nodded a greeting to Arina and leaned against wooden slats beside Diana's feet. "No, I don't know what's holding us up this time. Anahita just took the opportunity to throw up in private."

"I'd feel more sympathy for her if she didn't complain so much."

Gwyn glanced back at the bushes, which were silent now. He lowered his voice. "Her work is suffering."

"Everybody's work is suffering."

"No. Be honest, Di. We're tired, we're displaced, and I can see the fatigue and a little fear in Quinn and, say, Phillippe. But even Hal is doing his usual best. It's only Anahita who can't stay the course. Tell me the truth. What do you think of the work you're doing now?"

Diana looked at Arina, feeling guilty about leaving the other woman out of the conversation, but Arina merely nodded at her, gave her the reins back, and clambered down from the wagon to walk back along the line to the wagon which held her two children. Diana shrugged and pulled the reins taut. "I think I'm stretching my technique. I think I'm learning."

"So do I. So do the rest, however grumpy we might be about these conditions. Anahita shouldn't be here."

"You've never liked her."

"That's true. You should be playing her roles, Diana."

Guilt and joy warred within her. Gwyn Jones was courting her. Goddess, of course she was ambitious. She would not have gotten so far so fast unless she was driven. "I know exactly how I would play Zenocrate," she said passionately, and then blushed.

He chuckled. "Now that you've seen Tess Soerensen? Do you suppose Owen will let us play Tamburlaine here?"

"Do you want to take the risk?"

"I don't know. You've spoken with Bakhtiian more than I have. Do you think he'd take offense at it?"

Up and down the line, oxen bawled. A horse neighed. A man shouted in khush, and Arina Veselov trudged back along the line, carrying her infant son bundled in her arms. A young man in soldier's red and black rode past, his bay mare kicking up dust.

"I don't know," said Diana. "He might, but maybe he wouldn't. Here, Arina, give me Lavrenti." This last in her halting khush. Arina handed the baby up to Diana and climbed back up onto the seat. Under the beaded design of her bodice were hidden ties, and Arina undid the front right side of her blouse to reveal a swollen breast. Diana handed the baby back and Arina settled Lavrenti against herself. He snuffled for a moment, half asleep, and then abruptly his eyes popped open and he latched on and sucked noisily.

"Oh, look!" cried Diana. "Look how well he's eating!" Arina smiled and cradled him a little closer. Ahead, wagons lurched forward and the line began to move again, painfully slow. Diana adjusted the reins, a little nervous.

"They let you drive?" asked Gwyn, standing back from the wagon.

"A little. On the straight stretches. It's better than just sitting here."

Anahita appeared from out of the bushes, looking wan and angry. "Gwyn? Gwyn! Where are you?" Her voice was shrill, and for an instant Diana felt sorry for her. "Damn you, Gwyn. The little slut can take care of herself. I told you-" Gwyn shrugged his apology and hurried back to her.

"That one," said Arina, "is full of herself."

The wagon ahead of theirs jerked forward and Diana clucked at her oxen and flicked the reins up and down and braced for the jolt, and then they were rolling again, up the pass.

That night they camped along the road. Most of them slept in the wagons, and because Mira was fretful, Diana took the little girl back with her to the Company's camp so that she wouldn't disturb her brother's sleep. In the morning Mira had a raging fever. Diana commandeered two of the young men attached to the Veselov tribe, and they carried Mira and Diana on their horses up to the front of the train, to Dr. Hierakis.

"What's this? Hello, Diana. Ah, a fever. Come inside." It was not much past dawn. The front wagons were being hitched and readied to go. The doctor took Diana and Mira up onto one of her wagons, which had a roof and walls. "Oh, hell, she's not old enough to tell her parents what really happened. I'll just check with real instruments." She brought out a scanner. Mira watched with wide-eyed interest as the doctor moved it around. "Well, it's nothing unusual, a bad ear infection, but I'm sure it hurts like hell. Get this timed-released capsule into a piece of-of something, bread, sweet, whatever she'll eat. It'll release antibiotics over a ten-day course."

"I shouldn't be doing this, should I? Giving her this special treatment? Bringing her to you?''

The doctor shrugged. "I happen to believe that it's criminal to let people suffer when we could prevent it."

"But-"

The doctor waved her out of the wagon. "Go on. Leave. I don't want to hear the whole litany about the fundamental hypocrisy of our presence here. How's the baby?"

"He seems stronger. He's eating."

"The Goddess is merciful."

Holding Mira in her arms, Diana paused at the back of the wagon. "Doctor, why did you stay? With us, I mean? I thought you would go with M. Soerensen."

"Very romantic of you, I'm sure, my dear, but remember that Charles and I are used to spending more time apart than together. Such is the nature of our work. Now get. We're leaving."

The next day they passed some kind of threshold. Suddenly the streams along the roadbed ran a different way-along with them, and not back the way they came. They had reached the summit. That night at dusk they creaked down onto a plateau, a miraculous place of flat ground and real vegetation. From the height, coming down, Diana saw thousands of fires burning all the way to the horizon, echoing the stars above. At the farthest edge of the horizon, a greater fire burned, spilling smoke and light into the lowering night.

In the morning, they traveled only until mid-morning and then set up camp near a river. An order came down the line to slaughter a tenth of the herd animals. That night Owen decided to give the first performance of the folktale, followed by the Brecht, as an interlude during the feasting.

The mood in the camp was triumphant and yet anticipatory. Diana could tell some event had happened that was gratifying to the jaran, but she was not sure what it was, and it had been days since anyone in the Company had had any contact with Tess Soerensen or any of the handful of jaran who spoke Rhuian. But Owen sent them along to the feasting ground to assemble the platform, and no one stopped them or even commented particularly on their industry.

"We're part of the army," said Diana to Hyacinth and Hal as they lifted one segment of the floor up onto the base and secured it with pegs. "They've accepted us."

"The court jesters," said Hal. He sniffed hard and then wiped his nose on his sleeve. "This air is wreaking havoc with my sinuses. I think the doctor has forgotten us."

"Go home then," said Hyacinth haughtily.

"As if I could. I don't want to anyway. Do you?"

"What? I haven't even slept through a tenth of the camp yet. I've decided that when we get back to Earth I'm going to get a grant to produce an interactive holie called, Thrust In Among The Savages or Discretion is the Better Part of Amour."

"You're disgusting," said Hal, laughing.

Diana snorted. "Sure to go down in the annals of literature with that awful holie Quinn acted in two years ago, that historical romance about the early computer industry-"

"What?" asked Hyacinth. "Access To Love? That wasn't so bad. At least they researched it accurately. Hal, could you stop laughing and come help me?"

"Hyacinth, how can you say so?" Diana helped them hoist the last segment of floor. "The dialogue was atrocious, and the acting was worse. Quinn was the only decent actor in the piece, except for that man who played her secretary." They dropped the floor into place and slid the pegs in.

Yomi jogged up. "Curtain in two hours. Owen wants as much of the light as possible. Eat your dinner first. Wait, first slide that screen one meter to the right…"

When all was settled to Yomi's satisfaction, they returned to their encampment. Diana ate sparingly and then layered her clothing for her double role: a skirt and blouse for the sister of the heroine of the folktale-Anahita took the role of the heroine Mekhala, of course-and a shift underneath for Grusha in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. She paced out her entrances and exits and some of her scenes on the ground, walking her stage directions, pausing to murmur the lines under her breath, and walking on. After a bit, Owen gathered up the Company and led them over together.

Somehow Owen had arranged on such short notice to give a command performance. The house was huge, seated in precise disorder out from the platform. People stood farther back, too far, really, to hear anything, and the open air would in any case suck the volume from the actors' voices, although Joseph had cunningly constructed the screens with chambered skeins that deflected the sound out into the audience.

Owen did not introduce them. Phillippe came out in stiff red and gold robes and struck first a bell, then a pattern on his drums, and then the bell again. The tone rang loudly and held long-but Diana knew it was augmented by a few tricky electronics built into a strip wound around the inside lip of the cup. The house stilled. Seshat led the women in-all but Quinn, who played one of the wind demons-mourning for their servitude to the khaja. This was the story of the girl Mekhala, who brought freedom to the jaran by trading her own freedom for the gift of horses.

The house talked all the way through it. Buzzed, more like, an intent, aggravating buzz that niggled at Diana's concentration through the entire piece. Anahita once dropped out of character and directed an angry glare toward the wings, as if expecting Owen to fix the problem. At last they finished.

Phillippe rang the bell again and retreated. As soon as he came through the screens he pulled a face. "What a disaster!''

"I said it would be." Anahita tossed her hair back over her shoulder. All the actors turned and listened: the buzz had increased to a dull roar. "But Owen wouldn't listen to me."

Owen appeared. He had a strange expression on his face. "Listen up. They want us to do it again."

"Again! And put up with that! You must be-"

"Anahita, shut up. Phillippe, on your cue." Owen retreated. They shrugged at each other and began again.

This time the house was dead silent. It took Diana two scenes into the pastiche to understand: This time they understood what was being told to them. Last time they had been busy figuring it out. The audience absorbed the piece, like a sponge sucking moisture, and the longer it went on, the more exhausted Diana felt, even though her part was only a secondary one. Gwyn sweated buckets again. His wind spirit clothes were damp with it. When they finished, the house gave them silence, as they had that very first time, but this had reverence in it that was above the simple respect for their craft.

Owen was delirious with satisfaction. "We reached them! We reached them!" he said over and over as if all other words had been erased from his memory.

"Go on," said Yomi. "We're canceling the Brecht for tonight. Get back to camp and get clean."

"No. No." Owen intervened before any of the actors could straggle away. "En masse. We go as a troupe. Let no one see us as who we really are. Let them think we have brought the tale to life, that who they saw were the real participants and we only the channel through which they manifested. Let them think there is magic in our craft."

"He's crazy," muttered Hal to Diana as they cut out behind the platform with Owen and Ginny and Yomi and Joseph as escorts. "I think it's dangerous to play with people's superstitions.''

Most of the jaran who had watched the performance remained in the area in front of the stage, and because they were well within the camp, no troops of horsemen impeded their progress, although the children raced to see them, providing an additional escort. Soon it would be twilight. A thick plume of smoke rose up on the western horizon, obscuring the sun, reddening the sky.

"We're under Soerensen's protection, Hal," said Diana. "Don't forget that. What do you think that smoke is?"

Hal shook his head, making a wry face. "What do you think it is, Diana? Or are you really that naive?"

But the answer was obvious, if ugly. Something burned, something large, like a town or a city. And the jaran camp celebrated. What else would they be celebrating but a victory? She shuddered. How easily they walked and feasted and watched the strange khaja art called theater. There three young men, two blond, one dark, walked along parallel to the actors, and they laughed and made jokes and recounted stories among themselves. She could imagine it: and how about those ten soldiers I killed? What, only ten? I killed twenty.

What of the wounded? Where were they? Had Dr. Hierakis seen the performance or had she been too busy patching up torn bodies? And the poor city folk, those who were still alive, had no such medical recourse. They could only suffer, or die.

The dissonance felt so strong that it was physical, a stone in her stomach, bile in her throat. These jaran soldiers could avidly watch a performance and think nothing of the battle-or had it been a massacre? — fought only a day, an hour, before. And they could laugh.

One of the blond men made an expansive gesture and turned his head so far to the side that she could see him full in the face. She stopped stock-still, and first Quinn, then Dejhuti, bumped into her.

"Diana!"

She pushed past Hal and ran, heedless of Yomi calling after her, toward the three jaran men. "Anatoly!" she cried.

He halted and stared at her. A second later he averted his gaze. Even when she halted in front of him, he did not recognize her. He glanced at his companions, but they simply shrugged and looked bewildered.

"Anatoly! It's Diana."

He drew back. His double take was so theatrical that she almost laughed, except she could not, because he still did not understand who she was. Exasperated, she grabbed his right hand and pulled his fingers across her left cheek, smearing her makeup. He stared at the residue on his fingers, hesitated, and, more gently, rubbed more makeup from her face. He looked astounded. He was also drunk.

"Go," he said to his companions. "Get." They excused themselves unsteadily and stumbled off.

Diana looked back over her shoulder to the company, but Owen had already herded them on, acquiescing to her defection. She turned back to Anatoly. "When did you get back?" she demanded in Rhuian. "I didn't even know you were in camp, damn you!" He didn't look as if he had just been in a battle. His clothes were clean and his face newly shaved. She ran a hand along his jawline, but he captured it and drew it away.

"Not here," he said slowly in khush. "We go to our tent. I missed you, Diana." Then he grinned his wonderful, captivating grin, and gestured to himself, to his face, his clothes, the gleam of his saber hilt in the fading light. "This…" He considered, using his hands to emphasize his words. "My grandmother-she washed me. She told me to wash."

"Before you came to see me," said Diana, bemused, and repeated it haltingly in khush.

"You speak khush!" He looked delighted. He took her by the elbow and pulled her along with him, toward their camp. "You were-" The sentence was difficult for her to understand, except for the name of the character she had played. "I think-it is she, there, Mekhala's sister, talking to us."

"No. It was me."

"But it was not you. It was her." Clearly, he did not comprehend the distinction between acting a part and being a part. Diana chuckled; she had inadvertently achieved what actors in representational theater so valiantly strove for: her audience had believed her. Owen would be so pleased.

"I became her. I acted her. I don't-" She broke off, frustrated, but he merely smiled at her. His hand caressed her inner arm, and his breathing shifted, catching, and her breathing changed, too, getting unsteady, and it was still a long walk to their tent.

He sighed and slid his hand off her arm. "I missed you," he said again, with more fervor than before.

The faint perfume of smoke and burning tinged the air. "Anatoly. Do you… did you… fight?"

Anatoly's face lit up. He launched into a long explanation of something Bakhtiian had done-or said-and how that had led to something else and then the horses had done something and something about arrows and sabers; and all in all, Diana was relieved that she only understood a tenth of it.