An earthly crown

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Cara Hierakis surveyed her kingdom and was satisfied. Or as satisfied as she could be, given the circumstances. A wagon trundled in, bearing wounded, and three young women-hardly more than girls, really-looked over the wounded under the supervision of elderly Juli Danov and sent the injured men off in various directions to be cared for.

At the edge of the hospital encampment, next to her own tent, appeared a troop of about twenty riders. She recognized Bakhtiian easily from this distance: of all the riders, he alone wore little armor and no gold or other adornment. One city and three towns on this plateau had fallen to the jaran advance in the thirty days since they had arrived here, and the wealth looted from those cities was not hoarded but passed out into the army and the camp to adorn women and men and children. Bakhtiian swung down from his horse and walked across the camp toward her. At the same time, the implant embedded below her right ear pulsed; Charles was trying to reach her. Cara tied her wide-brimmed hat tighter at her chin and waited. The sun glared down. As spring slid into summer, it had grown hot here, hot in the day although still cool at night.

"Doctor." Bakhtiian halted before her, inclining his head with the respect and deference that Cara had not yet grown used to, not from him, at least. His personality was so strong and so forceful that these moments of modesty still surprised and amused her.

"Bakhtiian. Do you bring me news?"

He surveyed the encampment, the ordered busyness, the tents arrayed in neat rows and the pallets of wounded men convalescing in the sun. Cara had worried, at first, about finding enough attendants for the wounded beyond the healers and their apprentices. But for each wounded man brought in, a relative soon appeared to help nurse him.

"Are you sure, Doctor," asked Bakhtiian, "that there is nothing that I can offer you to show how grateful I am for this gift of healing you have brought us?''

"Give me? Whatever might you give me?"

His smile was tight and ironic. Cara saw at once that she had offended him. "Yes, I had wondered that, since we possess nothing, not even with the wealth of these khaja cities, that seems to interest you. Truly, Jeds is as far beyond us as we are beyond these sorry khaja farmers."

"Do you believe that?" Cara asked, startled. She could not read his expression.

"I stand helpless before you, Doctor. I have nothing you want, except for my wife, who was yours to begin with. While you-" He shrugged. "Sometimes I wonder if we have yet seen the tenth of your knowledge. I warn you, I want that knowledge."

"The better to conquer Jeds?"

His expression changed. Now he was amused. "I am not yet ready to contest with Charles Soerensen, Doctor. Be assured of that. Let me conquer this Habakar kingdom first, and consider what to do with the Great King of Vidiya, who is, they say, as powerful as the sun on her rising and as rich as the earth giving forth gold."

Cara could not help but smile. "Very polite of you, Bakhtiian, to give us fair warning."

He laughed and bowed to her as the courtiers did at Jeds. "My respect for you, Dr. Hierakis, is as boundless as the heavens."

"Your flattery is impressive as well. I thank you. Respect from you, Bakhtiian, is respect worth having. Where is Tess?"

"A city many days' ride from here, called Puranan, has sent an embassy to our camp. Tess and Josef Raevsky are speaking with them now, over the terms of surrender."

"You would give them terms?"

"Certainly. If they surrender, we will spare their lives."

"Ah." Cara examined the encampment again, wondering if Tess's influence might mitigate the suffering bound to be visited upon those poor innocent khaja who were unfortunate enough to live in the line of the jaran advance.

"I thought to ask, Doctor, if you would have time to escort me around your hospital?"

"No battles today? No fighting? We've gotten few enough casualties in today.''

"No, although there was a skirmish out to the northwest. Sakhalin's and Grekov's jahars are riding west now, to the city that lies at the base of the pass. This fortress controls the road that leads on into the heart of Habakar territory, and to the royal city.''

"Is this fortress the city that wishes to surrender?"

"Not at all. I expect a battle."

The implant continued to pulse, a slow, regular throb. Charles would know she could not be expected to reply immediately, and the pulse was not coded to the emergency signal. "I would be pleased to show you around, Bakhtiian. This way."

What interested Cara most about Ilya Bakhtiian was the restless intelligence he brought to bear on whatever person or event or problem came to his attention. He discussed the treatment of wounds as if he wished to be a healer himself. He asked each injured soldier he talked to how he had received his injuries. He asked each soldier's nurse-many of whom were children-how it went with their family and their tribe. All of them basked under the heat of his attention. His attendants fanned out, so that each wounded man received at least the reflected light of Bakhtiian. Cara noted that Kirill Zvertkov had at some point within the last thirty days been admitted into this inner circle of advisers who rode constant attendance on Bakhtiian. She noted as well Kirill's lifeless arm, and the movement still left him in that injured shoulder.

Midday drifted into afternoon, and afternoon toward evening, and when Bakhtiian had at last made his rounds to his satisfaction, Cara invited him to her tent for supper. Of course he could not refuse. She invited Kirill as well, and the other men vanished out into the camp, to their own families.

"Here, Galina." Cara called out as they came to the tent. Sonia Orzhekov had assigned her niece to act as Cara's chatelaine and to provide the food and other necessities that Cara did not care to make time to provide for herself. The girl appeared from around the corner of the tent, smiling, with a baby on one hip and a companion-a girl about her age-in tow. "Some food, please, my dear."

"Come, give me a kiss, little one," said Bakhtiian. He kissed Galina on each cheek and asked her a few questions in khush that Cara could not quite follow. The girl answered forthrightly enough, without the least sign of being overawed by her formidable cousin. Then she and the other girl-a Sakhalin granddaughter, evidently-hurried off toward the greater sprawl of camp beyond.

"Please, gentlemen, be seated." Cara offered them pillows and Scotch. The Scotch she laced with a low dose of tranquilizer. Then, between her tentative knowledge of khush, Kirill's halting knowledge of Rhuian, and Bakhtiian translating the rest, she got a full description from Kirill of how he had ruined his arm. A skirmish-the Goddess knew these people had seen enough of that kind of thing-and to the best of his knowledge he had been trampled by a horse, and never regained any feeling in his arm or hand, although the shoulder was not entirely immobile.

"You were a damned sight slow getting to us, too, Bakhtiian," said Kirill with a grin. "You ought to have known Mikhailov would try an ambush."

Bakhtiian played with his glass, not drinking as quickly as Kirill. "I should never have split the jahar."

"As if you had any choice. You're not still blaming yourself for Tess getting wounded so badly, are you?" Kirill snorted. "But knowing you, you would be."

"Tess was wounded?" Cara asked, immediately interested, and aware as well that Bakhtiian found the subject painful.

He downed the rest of the glass on one swallow. "She almost died. Niko saved her."

"Her own stubbornness saved her," said Kirill cheerfully. "Or isn't that what you always claimed?"

"Ah, that scar." Cara poured more adulterated Scotch into their glasses. "Very impressive. So she's been in a fight, then? Did she handle herself well?"

"Dr. Hierakis," said Kirill, "Tess is perfectly capable in my opinion of riding with the army as a soldier. And I've trained a fair number of young men in the last three years."

"You always take her side against me," said Bakhtiian in a low voice.

"I always will," replied Kirill, lower still and with a remarkably malicious grin.

"Has she-" Bakhtiian stopped, flushed, and drank down the Scotch again. "No, I beg your pardon. It's none of my business."

Kirill laughed. "You're not still jealous, are you? I ought to make you wonder, you damned officious bastard, but I'll have mercy on you this time. The answer is no."

"Here is Galina," said Cara, enjoying this interplay immensely. She received the dishes-meat, of course, and warm milk, and some fruit-and shooed the girl away again. Galina was reluctant to go but obedient, and she left with many glances back over her shoulder. Twilight came. Cara rose to light one lantern, enough to make it seem she was hosting them but yet not too much light. Tonight she did not want too much light. She excused herself for a moment and went inside to get more Scotch. It was precious stuff, but in this case, die ends justified using so much. She also went all the way in to the inner chamber and pressed the code that would alert Ursula that Cara needed her. When she got back outside, Bakhtiian and Kirill were arguing good-naturedly over whether Tess had truly become jaran, or whether she was khaja still.

"Oh, Ilya," said Kirill with disgust, "because you want it to be true doesn't make it true. Tess will always be khaja in her heart. Just ask Arina or Sonia. Or your aunt. If you care to risk their opinion."

"I am not afraid of their opinion," said Bakhtiian. He looked moody and preoccupied. That streak of asceticism that Cara had noted in him before worked to her advantage now. The alcohol and drugs were having a more profound effect on him than on Kirill. She poured them more Scotch. Dusk lowered down, and stars spread across the sky. A few lanterns lit the hospital encampment, but otherwise the single light in their midst haloed them alone, as if the three of them were cut off from the rest of their world, torn apart, melding into some transitional state. An appropriate enough thought, considering what she meant to do.

"How old were you when you went to Jeds?" Cara asked.

He considered this question. "A full cycle of the calendar and four winters had passed. So I was sixteen. My sister married." Bakhtiian paused, as if this event was so weighty that the world needed a moment of silence to absorb it.

"She married a man from the Suvorin tribe. He was the dyan's brother," added Kirill.

"I hated him," said Ilya softly. The words made Cara shudder, they were said so quietly and with such calm venom.

"Whatever happened to him?" Kirill asked. "I never saw him again after she was killed. Gods, we saw him little enough once you returned from Jeds."

"Kirill, I do not care to speak of him."

"As you wish, Bakhtiian," said Kirill with considerable irony. "Is there anyone else you don't wish to speak of?"

Bakhtiian's hand tightened on his glass. "Don't try me too far, Kirill."

"Gentlemen," said Cara mildly, "I do hope you haven't forgotten that I'm here." They both apologized profusely. "But I'm still curious, Bakhtiian, about your time in Jeds. You studied at the university?"

"Yes. I desired knowledge." Desired it very much, by the way his eyes burned when he spoke of it. "I desired to know the world."

"But however did you survive there?"

He shrugged. "At first I sold the things I had brought from the plains: furs, gold, a necklace given to me by-" He broke off before he said the name. "Later, a woman named Mayana took me in."

"Mayana! You don't mean the courtesan!" Cara laughed out of pure astonishment.

"You know her?"

"My dear boy, the entire city knows her. That is-" For once, she found she could not contain her laughter, "-not in the biblical sense-" But, of course, the reference was entirely lost on Bakhtiian and Kirill. "She is famous, and justly so, for her beauty, her wit, and her learning. She was sold into a brothel at the age of ten, but she bought out her contract through-ah-hard work, and so gained her freedom. But surely you knew that."

"She was eighteen when we met," he said slowly, "the same age as I was, and she was still beholden to the old harridan's tent."

"What is a courtesan?" Kirill asked.

Bakhtiian shook his head. "I cannot begin to explain it to you, Kirill, and it would disgust you in any case. The khaja are savages. How do you know her, Doctor? Does the prince know her as well?''

"She is received everywhere. I find her delightful." But several conversations she had had with the courtesan fell together in Cara's mind. She leaned forward, feeling a little giddy and wondering if she herself had drunk too much Scotch, especially given the work she had to do tonight. "But surely-it must be-she told me once about a young man, her barbarian scholar, she called him, whom she discovered shivering on the street one winter night. He was a pretty boy, she said, with fire in his eyes, so she took him back to her room in the brothel and was astonished to find that he had no experience of women at all. None, although she always said with that marvelous smile of hers that he was the quickest student she had ever tutored. Then it transpired that he was so ignorant that he didn't know that one paid the woman afterward. He had no money, only the clothes on his back and seven books. He had spent all his money on books. So she let him live in her room in trade for him teaching her to read and write. It's a lovely little tale. She said she still sends the man books, by a roundabout route, all the way to the distant plains, to which he returned a few years later. Is it true, the story that she raised the money to buy herself free from her contract in just one night by performing an erotic dance built around a foreign tale called 'The Daughter of the Sun'?" She broke off.

Kirill was leaning far forward, almost overbalanced, staring with glazed fascination at the sight of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian too mortified to speak.

"I beg your pardon," said Cara.

"Oh, gods." Bakhtiian covered his eyes with a hand. "Does the entire city know about that?"

"But she's become a legend, Bakhtiian. Such stories are known by everyone. Do you mean to tell me that it is true? Oh, Goddess, and that it was you." Despite his stricken expression, she simply could not stop laughing. "That's simply too rich."

"Ilya," said Kirill. He looked dazed with astonishment. "I've never seen you embarrassed before. So it is true that you'd never lain with a woman before you went to Jeds. I never believed it."

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.