His conquering sword

CHAPTER THIRTY-MIME

"Winter isn't really that cold here, is it?" asked Yana on a January morning as she and Diana walked back from the greengrocer with their prize of Brussels sprouts, potatoes, and two dozen pathetic apples.

"Well, no," Diana admitted, "not compared to what you were used to, I suppose." Ilyana was the kind of girl who turned heads, her features were so perfect. She was not yet ten years old, innocent in many ways and yet a confirmed skeptic. "Will you come upstairs to have early tea with Hal and me? We have to leave for the theater in an hour."

"Can't," said Yana reluctantly. "Dr. Kinzer is coming for tea."

"But I thought you liked Dr. Kinzer."

"I do. I like her lots. But-" Then she clammed up.

Diana knew what she was going to say, anyway. It was her father's behavior that embarrassed her.

They arrived at the door to their building-an old nineteenth-century townhouse now split into five flats-at the same time as the doctor did. She had a boy of about Valentin's age with her. Yana lightened immediately. "Evan!" Yana cried, delighted. "I didn't know you were coming, too." She grabbed Evan's hand and tugged him after her though the door. Together, they pounded up the stairs, pushing past her father.

Even after a year, Diana had not gotten used to seeing Vasil whole and walking again, as lithe and charming as ever. He paused at the bottom of the stairs at the mirror set into the wall between the coat racks and lifted a hand to brush the flawless beauty of his face. Then he turned to Dr. Kinzer.

He bowed, took her hand, and kissed it. "Dokhtor, I am struck to the heart once again by the beauty of your eyes. Were they a gift to you from the gods, perhaps?"

The doctor held up pretty well under this onslaught. She smiled. "No, I got them from my grandfather." Then she winked at Diana and let Vasil escort her up the stairs to the flat in which he and his family lived. Diana did not pause to look in the mirror. She followed them up, waved to Evan through the open door of the flat, and kept going up the next flight of stairs to the flat she and Hal shared.

"Poor Karolla," she said to Hal as she dumped her bag on the tiny kitchen table. Hal was on his hands and knees in the sitting room, putting the finishing touches on a miniature stage set. "But at least it's a respectable visitor this time. Do you remember that fiasco when that producer and his friend-" She shuddered. "The kind of people who make you want to go wash after you've shaken hands with them."

Hal replied without looking up. "Valentin said it was Missy Kinzer and Evan coming over. And you know she comes more for Karolla's sake than Vasil's. What do you think?" He rocked back on his heels.

Diana studied the mockup. She sighed. Nana always said to be truthful even when you couldn't be honest. "Well, it's an improvement. I'm taking Yana and Valentin out to the farm on Monday. Do you want to come?" But he had already gone back to studying his model, and ignored her.

Two hours later, Diana propped her elbows on the counter and stared at herself in the Green Room mirror. A handsome enough face, if a little pale. She pulled her hair back tight to cover it with the wig cap, and then sighed and let it fall down around her face again. Out in the hallway, Ha! was arguing with his father.

"I don't care! This is it! This is the last time I play this part, or any part, for that matter. I quit!"

"How dare you speak to me in this fashion!"

"Oh, Dad, don't start your "ungrateful child" lecture, please. If you could see past your own nose you'd have known for years that I don't want to be an actor."

"But you are an actor. We made you so."

"Yes, you and Mother never did give me any choice in the matter-"

The door opened and Hyacinth slipped inside. "Goddess forgive me," he muttered, "and I beg your pardon for coming in here, but I can't get past them and Fm damned if I'm going to stand there and listen to them scream."

"What happened?"

"Oh, Prince Hal told Ginny that he wanted to go into scene design. You know what I think, Di?" He stared at himself in the mirror, smoothed the coarse hair of his black wig, and rubbed at the foundation in the hollows of his cheeks, "I hate that woman who designed the makeup. This always makes me look too thin."

Diana could not help but smile.

"And why shouldn't I go into scene design-!" from outside.

"What do you think, Hyacinth?" she asked.

Hyacinth glanced at her and then back at himself in the mirror. "I think Hal would make a damn good actor if he'd only stop thinking he can't be one because he has to rebel against his parents."

"I keep telling him he should quit the Company, but he won't."

"Well." Hyacinth sighed. "The costumes are gorgeous though, aren't they?" He straightened and admired his robes as they swayed around him. "Joseph did a wonderful job, blending styles. Look how he used the jaran embroidered patterns and the cut of their armor for Tamburlaine, and Habakar patterns for the robes. Did you go to his exhibit at the Globe Annex, where he's showing the models?"

"Hyacinth, did you have something you wanted to tell me?" She dipped her fingers in cold cream and smoothed it onto her face.

He sighed and sat down on the other stool. The Green Room was small but pleasant, with a carpet, the counter and mirror, a writing table and chair, and the two stools, and a modeler and theater readout built into the other wall. "Full house, my dear. And a real live Chapalii duke in attendance. Can His Royal Highness pull it off? Even with all of us covering for him?"

"Does it matter if he can't? Gwyn takes over the part next month. The audience didn't come to see how well Vasil can act. They came to see if he can act at all. You must admit his lack of accent is amazing." Then she recalled his greeting to Dr. Kinzer. Vasil put his accent on and off depending on where he thought the advantage lay.

"It's true that Veselov has a better memory even than you."

She laughed. "His memory is a hundred times better than mine."

"It's nice to see you smile, Di," said Hyacinth softly. "You've been so gloomy since the holidays." He rested a hand on her shoulder companionably.

She drew away from him, knowing what was coming next. "I've got to get ready," she said stiffly.

"Di, don't you think it's time to give it up-?"

Then he had the audacity to reach out and with one beringed finger brush her cheek where the scar ran diagonally from cheekbone to jawline, faint and white.

She rose. "I'm busy, Hyacinth."

A knock came on the door. It opened, and Yomi stuck her head in. "Sorry to bother you, Di, but-well, he says he has to leave London in two hours, and since we're doing the marathon today I said he could come see you now. I'll give him ten minutes. Hyacinth, go!"

"Your word is my command, oh bountiful Yomi," said Hyacinth, bowing extravagantly.

Yomi slapped him on the rear. "Out!" They left together.

Diana felt a sudden foreboding. She watched the doorway in the mirror. Soon enough a man appeared there. He hesitated, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him.

She gasped and whirled around. "Marco!" And took a step back, running up against the counter.

"Hello, Diana." He wore a simple thigh-length jacket over loose trousers, but even in the latest fashionable style he bore with him that air of suppressed wildness and incipient adventure that made him so attractive. "You're looking-well." His gaze darted to her cheek. He got pale all at once and then recovered. He was lying in any case. She wasn't looking particularly well and everyone knew it When she didn't reply, he went on. "I saw the preview last night. It didn't go badly at all. I keep wondering how you actors manage to memorize all those lines…" He lifted his hands up, wrung them together, and let them drop back to his side. "Goddess, that was a stupid thing to say. I'm sorry to disturb you."

"Why didn't you come backstage last night?" she asked. "This isn't a very good time for me."

"Oh. I thought I'd come tonight after the show, but I got called away unexpectedly…" He trailed off and paced over to the table and laid a hand flat on it, and stared at the hand. "No. The truth is I didn't have the nerve."

The thought of Marco Burckhardt not having the nerve to do something astounded her. "How long have you been in London?" she said instead of the words she should have said, the apology she needed to make to him.

"Two days."

"A short trip."

"Yes."

Together, they lapsed into silence.

He broke it. "Charles sent me to deliver a crystal wand-that's a summons wand-to Duke Naroshi. Did you know he's in your audience tonight?"

"Yes." She didn't much care about Duke Naroshi. He had attended performances before.

There was silence again.

"I've got to get my makeup on," she said finally. She sat down and dabbed on foundation with her fingers.

"It's amazing," said Marco. She watched him watch her in the mirror. "You'd never know to see Veselov now what terrible injuries he suffered. Even that awful facial scar is gone."

With a sponge, she blended the foundation on over her cheeks. Over her scar. "Yes," she replied.

The silence was worse than the talking, and there wasn't even Hal's argument with his father to cover it.

"Diana-"

She set down the damp sponge. "Marco. I'm sorry. I treated you horribly. I'm sorry. It wasn't deliberate, but still, that doesn't excuse it."

He lifted his hand from the table and closed it into a fist and, slowly, opened it again. Then he walked over and put his hands on her shoulders and met her eyes in the mirror. "Diana. I love you. I thought-I'm asking… we could handfast, just a trial, one year…" He faltered.

She stared at him, only she wasn't staring at him, she was staring at his reflection, as if that was all she had ever seen of him, of Marco Burckhardt, the reflection she had made of him in her own mind. Not the real Marco. She had never known the real Marco. Maybe she had never really tried to know him, preferring the legend to the man.

In that moment, the dam broke.

"I wanted him to die," she whispered. "I wanted him to die a clean romantic death. Then I wouldn't have had to leave him because he would have been dead. I'm ashamed. I'm so ashamed of that. Do you know that he thought he couldn't die as long as I was with him? By leaving him, I as good as sent him to his death."

"Diana, they're at war. People expect to die."

"That doesn't absolve me. It's all I can think about, wondering if I'll ever hear."

"It's been over a year. I thought you'd have-done all your grieving by now."

"I know. I know. I thought I had. We left the jaran at Winter Solstice, did you know that? Our calendar, not theirs." She put a hand to her bracelet and twisted it, twice around. It was the bracelet he had given her, opulent and showy enough that Joseph had given her permission to wear it as part of Zenocrate's costume. "That was my penance, to wear the mark for a year and then let him go. And now I'm afraid to do it. I'm afraid if I erase the mark, that I'll kill him."

He took his hands off her shoulders. "Do you miss him?"

"I don't know. We had nothing in common, really, except we were both pretty and blond." She laughed at that, and heard herself how false the laugh sounded. "And I liked him. That's what I realized finally, after it was too late. After I'd already left. Maybe it was never more than infatuation. Maybe I was just in love with him being in love with me. But I liked him, too. And, Goddess, every day, there are Karolla and the children, like a constant reminder. And poor Yevgeni, struggling to make sense of it all. And Vasil, who I'd like to strangle. He's got it into his head that since I'm one of the leads that he has to sleep with me in order to consolidate his position, but at least I know it's not just me. Gwyn has been fending him off, too. They're always there, reminding me."

"Then leave the Company."

"But, Marco, I don't want to leave the Company. We're doing repertory for six months, and then there's the chance that we'll get to tour out into Imperial space. You must know about that. Owen is hoping that we'll be the first humans ever allowed to perform before the emperor himself."

Marco snorted. "Owen has grandiose dreams."

"Someone must," she said bitterly.

She saw him swallow, saw the movement of his throat. His hand slid under his jacket and he drew out a thin rectangular slab-no, she recognized it an instant later. It was paper, all folded up.

"I brought this," he said in a low voice. "I thought maybe you wouldn't want to see it, but-" He tossed it on the counter and turned and paced back to stand by the table, setting his hand flat down on the surface and staring at it. "It's a letter from Tess Soerensen."

A letter from Tess Soerensen.

There was only one thing it could be. Tess Soerensen had taken pity on her and written to tell her of Anatoly's death. She stared at the creamy, stiff parchment. She did not have the courage to open it up and read the words, because set so baldly on the page, black ink on pale paper, such words could never be erased. Yet those words would allow her to rest. And anyway, she owed it to Anatoly to use the courage she had, to honor his memory.

Tears blurred her eyes as she opened it. It crackled as she unfolded it, and the noise of it opening resounded in the room. Tess Soerensen had a neat, readable hand, but then, she had doubtless had a great deal of practice writing by hand in the last five years.

"To Diana Brooke-Holt. From Terese Soerensen. Dear Diana, Anatoly Sakhalin is sitting with me and he asked me to write these words to you: My beloved Diana, I have tried for months now to get myself killed in battle, but it's no use, I can't seem to manage it. The gods watch over me too well. They know I married a Singer. After all, they sent you to me. Now they're punishing me for my arrogance in thinking I could let you leave and not suffer for it. Now my grandmother and the prince want me to marry a jaran noblewoman from Jeds, to act as regent there. But I am married to you for as long as I live or the mark of marriage remains on your face, and since the mark can never be erased from a woman's face and I am still alive, then therefore I am still married. It is true that I am a prince of the Eldest Tribe of the jaran, but there are other Sakhalin princes who can ride to war or act as regents. I am the only one married to a Singer. I would ask you, that if you desire it, that I leave the tribes and journey across the seas to return to you, my angel.

"/ have explained to Anatoly what he must give up in order to go. He will not be a prince there. His name, his grandmother's name, will make no difference to anyone, and the privileges he receives here as part of a princely family, which he never thinks of because he takes them so completely for granted, will all be missing there. I hope you realize how great a sacrifice that would be for him. You must remember that the other jaran who left the tribes and are now on Earth gave up nothing, because they had nothing to give up anymore, being what the jaran call arenabekh, black riders, which also means, the orphaned ones.

"As well, he can't read or write or use a modeler. He knows nothing about the world he would be living in, and you would be his only anchor. He could never return to Rhui, not as long as the interdiction holds, and since it would be cruel to withhold from him the life extension treatments, he would live, beside you, for a long long time. I myself can't recommend that you encourage him to leave the jaran. It will be hard for him to stay here, but

I trust that in time he'll see the wisdom of your choice, and our choice, and marry again. Anatoly has in any case agreed to abide by your decision. I hope this finds you well and flourishing. Regards, Tess.

Then, below this and written in an entirely different, almost painstakingly-precise handwriting, was another sentence, this one in Rhuian rather than Anglais. "7 beg your indulgence for addressing you in this impertinent fashion, Diana, but I hope you will at least for a moment look at this as a man would and not let that damned female practicality push aside the feelings of the heart. This was signed simply, Hyakoria Bakhtiian.

At the bottom, someone had traced onto the paper the outline of the earring Anatoly had given to her, and she back to him. It was like a signature. It was a promise.

The five minute call came up on the theater screen. "Oh, hell." Her hands shook, but she forced herself to put the letter down. She took in three breaths to steady herself and then started furiously applying makeup, eyes first. "I come on in scene two. Oh, damn."

The door burst open and Joseph charged in. "Di! Your hair! Where's your wig? You didn't give your ready call-" He jerked to a halt, seeing Marco. A look of quick sympathy passed over his face. "I will go out," he announced. "In sixty seconds I will come back in." The door shut behind him.

Diana set down her pencil and rose and turned to face Marco.

"What are you going to do?" he asked. "Tess told me what was in the letter, more or less. I agreed to deliver it because… well, because I was coming here, and we had to hand-deliver it. You'll have to burn it, you know. We can't leave any evidence that she's alive where the Chapalii might find it."

It was a grandiose dream she had had, two years ago, meeting him and wondering if he and she, the hardened explorer and the young adventurous actor-Goddess, it was a horrible cliche, and maybe that was why it had gone so badly. But he deserved honesty. And she had a play to perform.

"Marco, I don't know what I'm going to do. But don't wait for me. I can't promise you anything, not yet, maybe not ever." Then she crossed over and kissed him, once, lightly.

The door opened. "Scene over," said Joseph. "So sorry. Out. Di, damn it anyway." The wig mistress charged in and stuffed Diana's hair into the wig cap and men peeled the wig on over the cap. Joseph stood over Diana while she blended on the base to cover the seam and finished with her mouth and eyes, and did the rouge. At some point during this frantic activity she saw Marco move, in the mirror, and leave, that quietly. He left a single red rose behind him, on the table.

"Stand!" ordered Joseph. He dressed her in the swathes of robes that Zenocrate, the daughter of the Soldan of Egypt, wore on her first entrance, led in by the great conqueror Tamburiaine as his captive and intended mistress.

The cue light came on above the door.

"I'll guide you up the stairs," said Joseph.

In the darkness backstage, he gave her hand into Vasil Veselov's. They entered.

It was a good, attentive audience, eager to be enthralled by the story and patient enough, with both parts of Tamburiaine before them, to be forgiving of Vasil's novice errors, snags in the way the energy ran, a focus thrown the wrong way, a glance held too long, although never, ever, a missed line.

To be fair to Vasil, he performed well, very well, considering how short a time he had been acting. The part was made for him, of course. She knew who he was playing. He wasn't playing Tamburiaine, he was playing Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, the way he moved, the way he turned his head, the way the sword swayed at his hips, the way he looked toward the heavens when he spoke of his destiny-Vasil had studied Bakhtiian so closely that he had internalized Bakhtiian's bearing, his tone, almost his whole being. But for his fair hair and his beautiful, flawless face, he might have been Bakhtiian, crueler, even a little comic in his excesses, but a man bent on conquering the world. It was easy enough, as Zenocrate, to fall in love with his power.

They ate dinner backstage in the two-hour break between Part One and Part Two. Yevgeni came backstage. He always did. He as good as haunted Hyacinth wherever he went, except when he worked. Yomi had found the young rider employment at a cobbler's shop, building handcrafted boots, and he seemed happy enough there and proud of his work. But then, he came from a common family. Diana tried to imagine Anatoly making boots for a living, and could not.

"Places!" Yomi announced. They went back on, for Part Two.

Zenocrate dies.

"Black is the beauty of the brightest day,

The golden ball of heaven's eternal fire,

That danced with glory on the silver waves…

For amorous Jove hath snatched my love from hence,

Meaning to make her stately queen of heaven…

Behold me here, divine Zenocrate,

Raving, impatient, desperate and mad…

Come down from heaven and live with me again!"

In the end, Tamburlaine himself cannot triumph over his own mortality. He takes ill, he fights and wins his final battle, and when he admits at last that death is upon him, he calls on his men to bring in the hearse of Zenocrate.

From the hearse, lying still, visible to the audience and yet disguised somewhat by the frosted glastic walls, Diana watched Vasil give his final speech. She watched him cry. Not for himself. Tess Soerensen was wrong about one thing, at least: It wasn't true that Vasil hadn't given up anything. This much Diana had learned-obliquely- from Karolla. Vasil had simply given up the only thing- the only person-he had ever truly loved outside of himself.

"For Tamburlaine, the Scourge of God must die."

He died, and still tears leaked from his eyes as Hal spoke the final lines. "Let heaven and earth his timeless death deplore. For both their worths can equal him no more."

Vasil was crying for what he had lost, and for what Ilyakoria Bakhtiian would never know.

Diana cried, too, because Tess Soerensen was, after all, right. Anatoly couldn't come to Earth. It would be cruel, above all else. Anatoly belonged on Rhui, just as she belonged here. He had agreed to abide by her decision, and though so often he found some way to make the decision fall the way he wanted it to, this time she had to make the choice. She knew what her decision must be. It was time to let him go.