His conquering sword

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Sitting on the edge of the platform as day slid into evening, Diana unplaited her hair and combed her fingers through it. The Evening Star-which of the planets was it? she never could remember-pierced the darkening blue of the sky, and one by one other stars appeared. Rehearsal had tired her today, but she never minded that; it was a satisfying sort of fatigue.

"Di!" Quinn jogged up, breathless with excitement, and grabbed her hand. "Come with me!" Quinn yanked her forward, and Diana laughed and went with her to the Company tent.

"Look!" Quinn pointed. At first Diana only saw Owen, speaking quietly with Dejhuti and Seshat and Yomi. Joseph wandered up. Ginny arrived, notebook in one hand, pen in the other. Phillippe helped Anahita to a chair. Helen and Jean-Pierre gossiped with Gwyn over on the other side. Oriana stood in the entrance to the huge tent, half-hidden in its shadow.

"Am I missing something?" asked Hal, walking up beside Diana and Quinn. "Everyone's here."

"Except Hyacinth," murmured Diana. Then she spotted two figures crossing toward them from the main camp. At first the dusk disguised them, but then they emerged into the glow of the lanterns fixed at intervals around the camp.

Quinn squeezed Diana's hand. "Look, here comes the duke."

" "With his eyes full of anger," replied Diana automatically.

Quinn rolled her eyes. "Are you quoting again?"

"That's As You Like It, you idiot."

"It may be, but unlike you, I don't retain entire plays in my memory for years at a time."

"Charles!" exclaimed Ginny. "How good to see you again. Hello, Marco. Did you just ride in? This afternoon? You made good time. Though I must say, you look none the worse for the wear."

With one thought, Diana and Quinn and Hal sidled closer toward the center of the scene.

"I don't suppose," said Yomi quietly, "that you have any news of Hyacinth, poor lad."

"In fact, I do."

He told them. The entire Company listened intently. Diana found her attention straying to Marco, who stood silently beside Soerensen. He glanced once at her and away as quickly, an exchange that reminded her incongruously of jaran men. Except that he looked nothing like jaran men. By League standards he was not a particularly tall man, but here his height and the breadth of his shoulders marked him as big.

"Thank goodness Hyacinth is safe," said Ginny at last. "I suppose that under the circumstances you couldn't have brought him back."

"No. I thought it best to simply remove him and his companion from Rhui altogether."

Owen sighed. "Which still leaves us one actor short. Well, we've managed so far, by the skin of our teeth."

"Remember, too," added Soerensen in his mild voice, "that we'll be leaving soon."

"Leaving soon!" Anahita roused herself, straightening up in her chair. "Thank goodness. I wish I'd gone with Hyacinth. I'd be quit of here now."

There was a short, embarrassed silence which Soerensen covered by going on. "Autumn's coming on. In order to maintain the charade, we must return to a port before ships stop sailing for the winter. Or else winter here, which I've no leisure to do."

"What about your sister?" asked Ginny.

"In any case," added Soerensen, "we might be leaving anytime within the next two or ten weeks, and possibly abruptly. Just so you can be prepared."

"Excuse me," said Diana in a low voice to Quinn and

Hal, and she escaped the assembly. She wandered back to her own tent and simply stood there, outside, staring at nothing. Two weeks, or ten weeks. What if they left before Anatoly returned? What if she never saw Anatoly again? She shivered. After the long hot nights of the summer, she had forgotten that it could get cold at night. But the season did turn, eventually; eventually, the year turned, and what had been young grew old, and what had sprouted fresh and green in the spring withered and died to make way for winter.

"Diana?"

Somehow, it didn't surprise her that Marco had followed her here. "Hello." She managed to say it without her voice shaking.

"I beg your pardon, if I'm disturbing you."

"No. No. I'm just- No, you're not."

He stood three paces from her. "I thought- You're well? You look well."

"Thank you. I'm well. I hope you are, too? I mean, we got a few reports, not much, but- Everything went as you hoped it would?"

"Better. It's nothing I can speak of, right now, but, yes, it went well."

"No, I understand. Of course, I understand. Was Hyacinth all right?"

"He was traumatized. I think he'll recover."

"Thank the Goddess for that. He took his jaran lover with him? Well, I don't envy him for that. Neither of them, really."

A sudden, awkward silence fell. "You don't-you don't mean to take Anatoly with you, when you go back?" He jerked a hand up, warding off any comment. "No, I beg your pardon. It's none of my concern."

"No, don't apologize. Please! Thank you for asking. You don't know what it's like. No one in the Company speaks of him anymore, not to me, at least. It's as if they think I'm embarrassed of him, or that I don't want him mentioned anymore, now that he's gone. And in the jaran camp, why, it's hardly worth mentioning, it's nothing unusual to them."

"He's gone?" Marco faltered on the question. "He didn't-"

"Oh, no, he's not dead. At least, I don't think he is. How can a person know, with the communications they have here? He went off months ago-months ago! — and he hasn't come back yet. I don't know when he'll come back. For all I know, we'll leave before he comes back."

He took a single step toward her, and halted.

"It just doesn't seem fair. And it makes me so damned angry. Why can't I know? How can the women stand to live this way? They could be separated for months, for years! There are tribes out on the plains that haven't seen their riders for years. Although in all fairness, I mink there's some kind of a leave system, that after two or three years serving in the army, a man gets to go back to his tribe for a year. Or something, I'm not sure about the details." She broke off and felt a flush rise in her cheeks. "Goddess, I'm sorry. I'm babbling. It just seems like no one else cares. I don't want to bore you."

"You don't bore me, Diana."

Diana shut her eyes, wilting under the heat of that simple utterance. He could have said any words, those words, other words, nonsense words, and she would have known what he meant by them. What a stupid little infatuation she had had for him, before. Then he had seemed wild and strong and half a barbarian himself. Oh, the attraction remained. It had never eased. But she desired him as much now because he seemed familiar and safe to her, standing here on die outskirts of a truly barbarian encampment, as because of what he had once represented to her, an adventurer who had wandered in wild landscapes and faced death and fear with equal self-possession. And she was lonely, and she felt alone. She opened her eyes when she felt him take another step. He loomed before her.

"Diana? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the stupid things I said to you. I'm sorry you hurt now."

It took only a half step to move into his embrace, because his momentum still carried him forward into hers. They kissed.

Diana ceased feeling the cold, or the night breeze, or anything except his hands on her back, and her thigh and hip pressed up against his, and the unsteady catch of his breathing against her chest. She was warm everywhere.

A dull ache prodded her ankle. After a moment, she identified it. One of the guide ropes of her tent cut across the skin. She shifted and, shifting, Marco sighing and gathering her back into him, she heard the distant echo of bells. Messenger bells. What if they brought news of Anatoly?

"Marco," she murmured into his lips. He drew his head back and lifted a hand to cup her chin.

"Golden fair," he whispered.

"I can't." It hurt, not the movement, because she moved gently, but the cold and the emptiness. "I can't, Marco. You must know that I want to, but I can't."

"Because you love him?" His voice cracked on the word "love."

She could not reply.

"Do you?" he demanded.

She could not say yes. She could not say no. She said nothing.

"If you don't know by now- Goddess, Diana, any fool could see that you only married him to get back at me or at best because you were infatuated with the idea of marrying a romantic native prince."

She flared, angry and embarrassed together. "Whatever it was," she said, stumbling over the words, "I just feel that I have to stay loyal to Anatoly until I know what's going to happen to him, and to me."

"Well, then," he pressed on stubbornly, "jaran women take lovers. It's accepted-it's even expected-in their culture."

"I know that now. And it's no wonder, if the men are always off riding for months at a time. I'm not surprised that they take lovers when they're always left behind. But I'm not jaran. I don't want to be jaran. I have to do what's true to me. It isn't you I'm rejecting, Marco. Please tell me you see that."

"Then if you don't want to be jaran, why in hell did you marry him?" He flinched away from her suddenly. "Oh, hell. I'm sorry," It hurt her worse to see him in pain than it had to feel herself alone again, not knowing if Anatoly would even return before she left. He dipped his chin down, like he was containing words he wished to say but refused to say. "I will respect your decision. I'll stay away from you."

"I didn't mean- Don't feel you have to stay away from me. At least come to see me. We can talk."

"Don't you understand, Diana? I love you. I can't pretend to be your friend. I can hardly stand to be this close to you as it is."

Diana had never imagined that Marco Burckhardt might be vulnerable. He had always seemed so self-contained, so confident. It shook her horribly to see him wounded.

"Good-bye," he said, and he walked away.

"Marco! Wait. I-do you remember, that handkerchief you loaned me? When you left for Morava? I never returned it to you. I still have it."

"Keep it," he said without turning around, and he vanished into the darkness that ringed the camp.

She hurt.

She just stood there and let it wash over her, as if that alone would do justice to his feelings, to what she'd done to him. Or had she done anything to him at all? They'd done nothing to each other that they hadn't done to themselves; made mistakes, behaved stupidly, acted without thinking through the consequences of the action. Maybe Marco had made an image of her, mat first meeting, that proved just as false as the one she had made of him. She had let herself fall in love-or into an infatuation, at least-with Marco before she had the slightest knowledge of who he really was. And if mat was true about Marco, how much more true it was about Anatoly. She couldn't even talk to Anatoly when she married him. She hadn't known him at all. The choice had seemed not rash but adventurous and brave at the time. Now, with clearer sight, it just seemed reckless. A true explorer treads cautiously and with a deep respect for the unknown land. She had charged blithely in, all unconscious of danger. Well, and had she suffered so much? Only in her heart. She tried to imagine Hyacinth, straying through the wilderness, seeing one of his companions die, and could not compare her suffering to his.

"Di? Di!" There came Quinn, of course. "You left so quickly. Soerensen invited us to his camp. They're having a little party, a reunion party, I suppose. Are you coming?"

"No, sorry, I'm not in the mood."

For once, Quinn gave up immediately and went away.

Diana ducked into her tent and stripped and lay down. She was tired, realty tired now, in the heart as well as the body. But every time she shut her eyes she saw, not Anatoly, not Marco, but Vasil Veselov coming up to her on the stage, dropping his eyes, waiting there-acting- and it suddenly came to her die one element Gwyn hadn't caught yet, the one that would allow him to subsume completely the character of the dyan who loved the Sun's daughter. She threw on her clothes and scrambled out of the tent and ran.

The others had already left camp, but by the single lantern left lit for their return, she saw a shadow blurring the deeper shadows on the stage, and she knew it was him, practicing, still practicing.

"Gwyn! Gwyn, I've got it." She hopped up on the platform and he paused to listen to her. "It's not just what Owen said, about showing the modesty without losing the strength. It's about power contained. It's about the promise of power unleashed. It's as if, through her, you can reach your true power, just as somehow she can reach her true power through you, and the exchange is as much about that recognition of each other…" She lapsed into silence, puffing, out of breath, she was so excited. "Do you see what I'm trying to say?"

Gwyn considered. He never did rash things, not Gwyn. That remained one of his strengths, that he tread cautiously, that he considered, and when he did move, he placed his feet on the firmest ground. But he wasn't afraid to take chances.

"Let's try it," he said.