CHAPTER FIVE

After Yaroslav Sakhalin left at dawn, to return to his siege of the royal city of Karkand, the council dragged on for the rest of the day. In the morning, they all sat out under the open sky. By noon, with the sun overhead, they moved onto carpets rolled out under a vast awning. Bakhtiian sat on a pillow at one end, and the council fanned out in a rough semicircle in front of him.

Aleksi swallowed a yawn. The talk had been going on since yesterday and, as usual, the discussion had reached that point where the councellors were talking at each other, not to Bakhtiian. Ilya often ran his councils this way: The councillors talked for so long over the greatest and least choice at issue that in the end they reached a consensus without him having to demand obedience.

The longest council Aleksi recalled was the one soon after the assembly on the khayan-sarmiia, which had lasted six days and included three days of vicious argument between Yaroslav Sakhalin and Mikhail Suvorin and their respective supporters. In the end, Bakhtiian's patience had worn them all down. Now that he had what he wanted-the loyalty of the jaran-he no longer had to be so impulsive. Before that long council had begun, Tess had told Aleksi in confidence what Ilya's hopes were for the council; and so it had fallen out-with a few changes wrought by good advice or prudent compromise-exactly as he wished, and it was the councillors themselves who agreed upon the issue, among themselves and not as a mere passive instrument to Bakhtiian's voice.

So Bakhtiian sat now, listening more than he spoke.

Tess sat at Bakhtiian's right hand, and Aleksi sat to Tess's right and back a bit, close to Josef Raevsky, whose lips moved soundlessly as he memorized the proceedings. The blind man canted his head from one side to the other, to catch a sentence here, a tone there, as the women and men seated in attendance on Bakhtiian spoke in their turn.

Now and again during the exhausting session, Tess rose and walked away-sometimes to relieve herself, sometimes just to stretch her legs, once to sleep for several hours-and returned to sink back down beside her husband. No one minded; she was half gone in pregnancy. The children of the Orzhekov tribe brought drink and food at intervals. Sonia sat in on the council, as her mother's representative.

Aleksi leaned forward and found an angle at which he could peer between Tess and Ilya and catch a good glimpse of the two parchment maps spread out flat in front of Nadine, who sat on her uncle's left. Mitya sat next to her, stifling a yawn with a hand. The poor boy had fallen asleep three times now, and Aleksi supposed he would probably be allowed to nap this time. Since the shock of Ilya's illness had forced everyone to realize that it was remotely possible that Bakhtiian might actually someday die, poor Mitya had been displayed prominently at every gathering and forced into a passive role, listening and learning about the duties and burdens of adulthood. Not that he hadn't been involved in such things before, but now it seemed he was at Ilya's side at every council, every assembly, and riding out with him to inspect jahars each morning. Often Galina went with them, since she would most likely become etsana of the Orzhekov tribe in time. Today Sonia had left Galina in charge of making sure that drink and food flowed freely.

"Twenty days ride to the south," Nadine was saying, shifting the maps she had so laboriously drawn over the last fifteen days, "according to the merchants and caravan masters Tess and I interviewed, there lies a great trading city called Salkh. From there the road leads to two more great cities, Targana and Khoyan, Targana about fifty days ride southeast and Khoyan about sixty days ride southwest. The caravan masters say that if you go along past Targana in the summer, there is a high narrow pass over the Heaven Mountains beyond which lies Vidiya, although there is another safer route to Vidiya lying much farther to the east. I imagine, Uncle, that Khoyan lies along the road that would eventually lead all the way down through southern lands to Jeds and the cities of the Rhuian peninsula. But I don't know."

Bakhtiian's tent lay pitched on a grassy knoll overlooking the river and the gleaming city beyond, called Hamrat by the Habakar and sarrod-nikaiia, Her Voice Is Merciful, by the jaran. Sakhalin had spared the city because it was here that he and his army had been encamped when the first messenger had ridden in with the news that Bakhtiian had woken from his sorcery-induced trance.

"Karkand lies about fifteen days ride to the west, and there is a city ten days ride to the northwest called Belgana which Sakhalin took before he rode on to Karkand. North beyond Belgana on the edge of a great forest stands another city, Niryan, which has already surrendered to us. West of Karkand lie two more cities, neither as great as Karkand, and a range of mountains, a forest, a great lake, and a river, and on that river a city called Margana by the Habakar merchants but Parkilnous by the people who live there."

Aleksi admired Nadine's maps. She admired them as well; she had worked diligently enough on them since her unexpected arrival about fifteen days ago. She said that one of the Prince of Jeds's men had taught her a great deal about maps and mapmaking. David ben Unbutu, that was it; the one who had been so hasty with Tess the day the prince and his entourage arrived at the jaran camp in the spring. Aleksi suspected that Nadine had taken him as a lover, but, of course, she never said as much.

Bakhtiian leaned forward and touched the map nearest him reverently. "And beyond this city called both Margana and Parkilnous?"

"They don't know. That's as far as they trade. At Parkilnous, other merchants take the goods and travel on with them, and trade goods from the south in return."

"So." Bakhtiian removed his hand from the map.

The discussion erupted again. Send the entire army to Karkand. No, that's stupid; the broader the net, the more game could be drawn in. Send ten thousand men to each city, then. That's doubly idiotic; if you only knew a tenth again as much as Yarosiav Sakhalin about strategy; many small forces are weak against a single large army, and it isn't impossible that the Habakar king might be drawing together an army for a final strike. The Habakar king is running like any damned coward into the west, with Anatoly Sakhalin at his heels-no longer a threat. How can the honored dyan possibly know that? Why, because only a beaten coward would abandon his own tent and family, of course. How else explain that he had deserted his own royal city? All this talk of fighting is all very well, but what about the camp? What are the water sources between here and the southern cities? How much forage? How bad are the winters here, and farther south? When do the caravans stop running? Can a large detachment winter off forage from the countryside, in the south? Will there be food enough for the wagon train? And so on.

Nadine had made many cunning little marks on her maps, each indicating information about water sources and forage and towns-insofar as the caravan masters and merchants knew or were willing to part with such information, insofar as any of it could be trusted. Of course, it was all hearsay. Still, Aleksi did not doubt that in the short time Nadine had been back with them, she and Tess between them had tripled jaran intelligence of the lay of the land. Aleksi wondered about Tess's sources of information, too, because now and again, during the interminable translation sessions between Tess and the interpreters and the Habakar merchants, Tess would make a sudden correction to something Nadine mapped in. Had Tess had access to maps in Jeds that were more accurate than the merchants" recollections? But why would they have such maps in Jeds? Jedan merchants never came here, as far as Aleksi knew.

Or perhaps, perhaps if that had not been Bakhtiian's actual spirit that Aleksi had seen hovering in the air, the night Bakhtiian had been witched away to the gods" lands-or to the heavens from which Dr. Hierakis claimed she and Tess had come-if it really had been an image of his spirit, of his body, then perhaps Tess knew how to make an image of the land that was equally accurate. Everyone knew that the land remained constant, that seen once, and remembered, you could ride that way again twelve years later and find your way. That was how the jaran navigated the endless plains. That, and by the stars and the winds. Along the Golden Road that ran east to the riches of Empire of Yarial there was said to be a country where the land did shift, where no traveler might walk without becoming lost, where mountains moved at night and rivers changed their course between the seasons. But Aleksi knew that such a place could only exist because every khaja in it, child, woman, and man, was a sorcerer born and bred, or else because the gods had put a curse on it.

The afternoon wore on. Fifty disagreements dwindled to ten, and ten to two. "But if we are agreed," said Venedikt Grekov, dyan of the Grekov tribe, "that Bakhtiian must direct the siege of Karkand personally, because of the insult given him by the king, then wouldn't it be wisest to send Sakhalin south to Saikh? If that city is so valuable?"

Heads nodded all around. Fifteen days ago, Venedikt Grekov would never had been so bold as to speak with this much authority this late in the council. Now, however, his nephew was going to be the father of Bakhtiian's heirs. The Grekov tribe, important as one of the Ten Elder Tribes, had just taken a sudden and impressive leap in status-though with Mother Sakhalin's blessing, of course. Nadine had a frown on her face. She did not look up at the speaker, which was impolite. Everyone knew she wasn't happy about the marriage.

"Surely," added Kirill Zvertkov, "we should secure the two cities west of Karkand, so no Habakar army can march from their protection on Karkand."

"Will it take so long for Karkand to surrender to us?" asked another dyan.

Mother Sakhalin cleared her throat. All fell silent. "My nephew assures me," she said, "that the stone tents of Karkand are built in such a fashion that simple force, even using the archers, cannot overcome the walls."

"Had we been forced to storm the walls of Qurat," said Kirill, "we would have suffered severe losses. Sakhalin said that Karkand is better placed."

"Then, as Zvertkov says," replied Grekov, "we had better ride a ring around Karkand and cut it off from the rest of the country. Then the khaja can starve or surrender."

Everyone nodded.

"If we take prisoners," said Vershinin, "then when we do attack, we can drive them before us as we did at Tashmar-you weren't there, Bakhtiian-up to the walls as the first wave."

"There are other ways," said Nadine suddenly, "to break a siege. The Prince of Jeds has an engineer with him who knows many tricks. I expect the prince's woman soldier Ursula el Kawakami does as well."

"What kind of tricks?" asked Bakhtiian.

"Well, if we can make the walls collapse, then they can't protect the khaja army, can they?"

"I will think on this," said Ilya. "Meanwhile," he glanced up to survey the council, "as you say, Sakhalin ought to ride south to Salkh, once I arrive at Karkand, and Grekov, Vershinin, you will double your jahars in numbers and ride on west, to the cities beyond Karkand. Nadine." He tapped a finger on her maps, but northward, now, at the edge where the Farisa city lay, the one the Habakar general had himself burned, at the northeastern boundary of Habakar lands where they bordered the plains. "You will return to Morava, to escort the Prince of Jeds back to me."

"Uncle!" Ah, but she looked angry.

"That would be best," said Mother Sakhalin smoothly, "since her husband is there." Everyone knew what she meant: that it was long past time for Nadine to start having babies.

Nadine rarely sat still. She did so now, but it was a stillness brought on by fury, not by peace. "Uncle, what if the prince has already left Morava?"

"You rode the same route, there and back, both you and Feodor Grekov. You will go." He set his hands, palms down and open, on his knees, and surveyed the council. "So will it be."

Rather than reply, Nadine made a great business of rolling up her maps. She was angry, but what could she do? Bakhtiian had spoken. She rose, excused herself, and left. Bakhtiian rose to follow her. The council, dismissed, broke up into a dozen disparate groups to gossip and stretch their legs. Kirill came by to speak for a few moments in a low voice to Tess; then he strode away into the lowering twilight.

Tess leaned back. "Aleksi, Cara wanted to see you."

"To see me?"

"About-don't you remember?" She dropped her voice to a whisper. "As you watched her do with me. She wants to look into your body with her machines. To-to map it."

Aleksi remembered. He wasn't sure whether to feel honored or nervous, but Tess wished him to do this, so he would. "I'll go," he said, not one to hesitate once he had made a decision. He kissed her on the cheek, bade farewell to Josef Raevsky, and went on his way. Passing between his tent and Tess's on his way to the hospital encampment, he heard Bakhtiian and Nadine arguing in Rhuian just out of sight behind Tess's great tent. He paused to listen.

"What right has she to interfere?" Nadine demanded, sounding quite intemperate. "I know she convinced Feodor to mark me. He would never have done it otherwise. He would never have had the nerve."

"Yes, and faced with the prospect of being married to you in this temper, Dina, can you blame him? In any case, you know very well what right she has to interfere. She is Mother of all the tribes."

"Yes, but we've been to Jeds. We're not bound by useless jaran customs. You and I should know better-"

"Listen to me, young woman. I know better, and I know that for all that I learned in Jeds, for all the knowledge that lies in these khaja universities, we jaran are stronger because of what we are and because of how we live. The khaja can't stand against us. They will never be able to. So the gods have gifted us. Would you like to have married in Jeds, instead?"

A fulminating silence. "You know very well how they treat women in khaja lands."

"Yes, I do."

"I don't want to marry at all. I want to ride."

"Then ride. You are already married, Dina. The nine days have passed."

"I wasn't in seclusion."

"That's true. If you wish to go through the ceremony-"

"I don't!"

"Then accept what you must. And you must have children. You know it as well as I do." There was another silence, but this one had more of a despairing edge to it. "Dina,! have already been advised to remove you from command of your jahar."

"Who-!"

"None of your business. Listen to me, damn you. You're worse than I was at your age." That brought a reluctant chuckle from her. "I won't do it. You're a good commander, and even if you weren't my niece, you would deserve such a command. You will remain a dyan. But there will be times when you can't ride."

"When I'm pregnant."

"Yes. Don't you see, Dina? The gods never give out unmixed blessings. They gifted women with the knowledge that is also a mystery, that of bringing children into the world, but knowledge is also a burden."

"A heavy one, in this case."

"If you only had a sister to bear children while you rode, then that would be well. But you have none."

"I want to explore, like the prince's man, Marco Burckhardt, does." Said stubbornly.

Bakhtiian sighed. "You have no choice, my niece. You will have children. I order you to. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"During such time as you can't leave camp, you will work with Tess. Her work is every bit as important as Yaroslav Sakhalin's." His voice dropped into a coaxing tone. "Those maps you made together are very fine."

"Thank you." Was there a slightly warmer edge to her voice? Was she melting. "Praise from Bakhtiian is as a blessing from the gods themselves-"

"Stop that! Don't mock me!"

"Uncle… I didn't mean… I only meant…" She faltered. Aleksi was amazed to hear her sound chastened.

"Never show such disrespect for the gods. You should know better, you who only by the gods" grace are alive today, when everyone else in our family died."

"My father didn't die. You didn't die."

"Go," said Bakhtiian.

Aleksi heard Nadine take in a breath to say something. Instead, she said nothing, and a moment later he saw her emerge from behind the tent and stride away out into camp, which he thought showed great wisdom on her part.

"Aleksi," said Bakhtiian, sounding no less curt. Aleksi started, and then walked around the corner to face Bakhtiian. Ilya turned from looking out after his niece to glare at Aleksi, and Aleksi wondered abruptly how many times he had been saved from a lecture-or worse-from Bakhtiian because of Tess's implicit protection. "I don't like it," Ilya said, and Aleksi knew that he meant Aleksi's habit of listening in. "Do it to others if you will. Don't do — it to me."

"I beg your pardon," said Aleksi. "An incurable habit from my youth. It saved my life more than once."

"No doubt," replied Bakhtiian. Aleksi could not tell whether he meant the comment to express sympathy or censure. "Nevertheless, not to me."

"I understand and obey, Bakhtiian." He bowed, as they did in Jeds; Tess had taught him how to do it.

"Go," said Bakhtiian, but the word wasn't as terse as it had been when he had ordered Nadine to leave. He might even have been amused.

Aleksi escaped and, whistling under his breath, he considered the world while he made his way to the doctor's tent. He decided that the world was a strange place, stranger than any one person ever might suspect, knowing only what she knew from the narrow path she rode through it. Aleksi felt sometimes that he himself rode more than one path, that there were two, or three or four of him, each scouting a different path, each in constant communication, as though belled messengers raced between the routes carrying intelligence from one to the next. And once you saw the world from three, or five, different roads, the view was never the same. The map changed and altered, and its details became more accurate. The landmarks receded or grew, depending on the angle from which you observed them, and at once, there might be an escarpment from which the astonished traveler would rendezvous with her selves and could suddenly comprehend the land as it truly was.

"Ah, Aleksi." Dr. Hierakis emerged from her tent, wiping her hands on a rag. "Come in. Come in." He followed her back inside. She had sewn tiny bells all along the entrance flap, and they tinkled as the flap fell down behind them. Aleksi understood the bells, now; just as the messengers wore bells to alert the next garrison or tribe to their coming, the doctor positioned bells around her tent so that no person might enter unannounced and surprise her at her machines. A lantern sat placed in the center of a table, but Aleksi knew this trick. Tentatively, he put out a hand toward it, touched it, and his finger passed right through it. It was only an image of a lantern, not a lantern at all, although it looked so true that he would never have known if Tess had not told him.

"Sit down." The doctor indicated first a chair and then a pillow, so that he might choose whatever was most comfortable. "Will you have some tea?"

Aleksi didn't like tea, but he was far too polite to refuse any drink offered him in a woman's tent. He sank down onto the pillow and received the hot tea from Dr. Hierakis. He sipped at the spicy drink cautiously and regarded the doctor from under lowered lids. She reached under the table with one hand and did something there with her fingers. The lantern grew a little brighter; otherwise he saw no change.

"Recording," she said into the air. Then to him: "Do you have a second name, Aleksi?"

"Soerensen," he said promptly.

"I meant, a jaran name, or a tribal name."

"Not one I remember."

"How old are you?" She stared at him with that gaze he recognized as impartial, measuring him against some pattern only she knew, not for any personal reason.

"I don't know."

"I mean, in which year were you born? Eagle? Rat? Lion? Horse, perhaps?"

"I don't know."

"But everyone knows that, here."

"I beg your pardon. I don't know. My tribe was massacred by khaja raiders when I was very young."

"Tess mentioned that. How did you escape?"

Aleksi shut his eyes and struggled to recall anything from that time. He shrugged. "All I remember is the dew on the grass, and lying half sunk in water in a little hollow of swamp. I lay there so still for so long that a frog crawled right up onto my right hand. It was a blessing, you see. The gods took pity on me, because the khaja had taken my family, so they sent the frog to gift me with speed for fighting."

"Why a frog?"

"Haven't you ever seen how fast a frog jumps? He sits perfectly still, and then he's gone."

She chuckled. "Yes, I suppose that's a fair analogy. But Aleksi, were they all killed?"

"Yes," he repeated patiently, "all but myself and-" Here he faltered. Always he faltered. "-my sister Anastasia." Her name came out hoarsely.

"No, I meant, is it possible that it was a slave raid? Or was everyone killed?"

Her question, like a blessing, allowed him to recover. His memories of the rest of his tribe were so dim that they had long since ceased to trouble him. "What is a slave raid? Oh, that they would take the people away to sell in other lands, to serve a khaja master. I don't know. I don't remember seeing any bodies except that of my father."

"Oh, Goddess. I'm sorry, Aleksi."

Aleksi found her sympathy interesting. He never told jaran as much as this; any respectable jaran listener would have been appalled that a child could lose his entire tribe and still go on living. The gods had cursed people for less. "It was a long time ago," he said, to reassure her.

"Then what happened?"

This was harder. He managed it by breaking each word off from the next. "Then Anastasia took us away from there. She took care of me for as long as she could. Three or four years, I think."

"What happened to her?"

Aleksi set the cup down and bowed his head. This one memory, he could not bear to look upon, but it flooded over him nevertheless. Anastasia had grown steadily weaker over that third-or was it fourth? — winter and then, with spring, she became feverish and unable to eat. The gods had spoken strange words through her mouth, and she had seen visions of creatures terrible to behold and creatures as sweet as flowers, and she had wept for fear of leaving him when he was still too young to take care of himself. Not that she had been so much older than he was, but her first course of woman's blood had come on her mat past autumn, so she was no longer a girl, although of course she had never received any of the rites investing her with her womanhood.

The doctor waited patiently. Aleksi's throat was thick with emotion, too choked to speak. Hands shaking, he lifted the cup to his lips and sipped at the tea. The gesture soothed him enough that he could force out a sentence. "The gods took her on a spirit journey, but she never came back."

"Ah," said the doctor. She poured more hot tea into his cup, and by that gesture Aleksi knew he had her friendship. "You love Tess very much, don't you?"

He glanced up at her, astonished. She smiled warmly at him; he did not need to reply, because she already knew the answer and the reason for it. With her, he was safe. How strange to know that. How strange to be safe at all. He felt dizzy.

"Goddess," she said, "you must have been-what? — eight or ten years old? Well, what did you do then?"

"I wandered. I got by. Eventually I came to the Mirsky tribe late one summer. Old Vyacheslav Mirsky's wife was very ill, but they had no children or grandchildren to help them. It was a terrible disgrace, how the tribe treated him. Everyone knew what a great rider he was, but they thought Stalia Mirksy ought to know that her time was through and simply remain behind on the grass so that she wouldn't slow the tribe down. Stalia kept telling Vyacheslav she ought to, but she was all he had, and he wouldn't let her do it. So I saw-well-I saw that if a small orphan boy helped bring in fuel and water and beat carpets and built fires and gathered food and went to get their share of the meat at slaughtering time, they might let that boy sleep on the ground next to their tent without driving him away."

"And did they?"

But while the memory of Anastasia always filled him with a horrible dread, a painful, dizzying fear that his heart had been torn out and dropped into a black abyss from which he could never retrieve it, the memory of Vyacheslav and Stalia always brought tears to his eyes. "No, they took me into their tent and treated me as their own grandchild. Stalia got better. They said I was their luck. Eight years I lived with them. Vyacheslav trained me in the saber. You've heard of him, of course." By her expression, he saw that she hadn't heard of Vyacheslav Mirsky. "You haven't! Well, everyone knows he had the finest hand for the saber in all the tribes, before he grew too old to ride in jahar. The Mirskys still brag about him, though they treated him badly once they had no more use for him."

"And then?"

"Then one winter they both died of lung fever. They were ancient by then. Stalia told me they both would have died far sooner if it wasn't for me. Perhaps it's true. But as soon as they died the Mirskys drove me out."

"Isn't there something about horse-stealing in here?"

Aleksi considered his cup. It was metal, but the heat of the tea did not burn his hands where he cupped the round surface between his palms. An etching of fronds edged the rim and the base. Steam rose from the tea, caressing his face. But he had already trusted her with so much, and Tess, with everything. "Stalia and Vyacheslav had given me things: his saber, a beautiful blanket she had woven, the tent that belonged to her only daughter, who had long since died, their komis cups and flask, some other things. I overheard the etsana-their own cousin's daughter! — speaking to her sons and daughters, saying that if they didn't throw me out of camp immediately I'd try to steal everything in the tent and run off with it. So that night I took what I could carry, and stole a horse, and rode away. Oh," here he glanced up at her, "I knew it was wrong. The penalty for stealing a horse is death, of course. But I couldn't bear to lose every little thing they'd given me, because everyone else in the Mirsky tribe was so petty and small-minded."

"Where did you ride to, then?"

"There was one jahar that would take men who didn't belong anywhere else. The arenabekh."

"The arenabekh. They were outlaws, weren't they?"

"Men who had left their tribes for one reason or another-for some crime, because they loved men more than women, because they no longer wanted to live with the tribes."

"Did you like it there?"

"Not at all. How can any person love a tribe where there are no children?"

"Wouldn't someone like that boy who was exiled- with the actor-wouldn't he seek out the arenabekh?"

"He would, if he could find them. Keregin, their last dyan, led the arenabekh into a hopeless battle in order to save Bakhtiian's life. But Tess would know about that. She was there."

"Was she, now? I haven't heard this story yet."

"Well, but with the arenabekh gone, Yevgeni Usova has nowhere to go, if he's even still alive."

"So there you were with the arenabekh."

"I stayed with them for almost two years, because there was nowhere else to go. Keregin was hard but fair, and he never treated me any differently from the others because I was an orphan-or a horse stealer. Then I heard about these training schools, where young men might go to train for jahar, and I thought I'd go and see if Kerchaniia Bakhalo, the man who ran one, would accept orphans. He did. When he discovered that Vyacheslav

Mirsky himself had trained me-well-he never said as much, but I knew I was his favorite pupil. But then, I was a better fighter than the rest. It was the frog, you know. And after that, Bakhalo brought us to the great camp that was growing up around Bakhtiian."

"Where you met Tess."

At the mention of Tess's name, he could not help but smile. "Yes. She trained with us. Although she was Bakhtiian's wife, she never treated those of us who were orphans any different from the rest. Of course, she is khaja, which accounts for it."

"How did she come to adopt you as her brother?"

"Every woman needs a brother, and hers had died- that was Yuri Orzhekov, Sonia's younger brother. She and I always got along well, and we liked each other right away. We felt-" He thought about it, two outsiders working and training together, both with quick minds and ready laughter, detached and yet involved in the jaran camp. "-linked, somehow. But then the Mirskys rode into camp. They were well within their rights to kill me, of course. In fact, they were in the process of doing just that-"

"How, in the Lady's Name, were they doing that?"

"Well, there were five of them, and they caught me in the dark coming out of a woman's tent, and then they beat me with sticks. But Tess happened to walk by and she stopped them."

"You're casual about it."

Aleksi laughed, recalling what Bakhtiian had said to his niece. "The gods never give out unmixed blessings. So who am I to complain about bruises and a broken arm and collarbone when it brought me Tess as a sister?"

One of the things Aleksi liked about Dr. Hierakis was that she could laugh compassionately. "Who, indeed?"

"You see, they demanded to know what right she had to stop them meting out the justice I did, after all, deserve, for stealing one of their horses, and she said, "the right of a sister." And so she adopted me."

"Did she consult Bakhtiian?"

"Why would she consult Bakhtiian? She brought me back to her tent and nursed me back to health and I became her brother and have been ever since, and always will be. Bakhtiian did take me into his jahar, then, but he might well have done so anyway-although, if Tess hadn't adopted me the Mirskys would have killed me sooner or later, so I suppose I'll never know if Bakhtiian took me into his jahar to give me his protection or because he admired my fighting."

"Perhaps both."

"Perhaps."

"Well, you've led a harrowing life, Aleksi."

He sipped at his tea. "I'm content." And he was.

"End recording," said the doctor to the air. "Will you come with me?" she asked. She passed through into the inner chamber. Respectfully, he followed after her.

In this miraculous den, many strange and wondrous machines cluttered the long narrow table and crowded into each other on the carpets. An image shimmered in the air. Aleksi recognized it immediately: the shrine of Morava, with its great shining dome and its twin towers framing the curved expanse of roof.

"That's where the prince is," he said in surprise.

Cara glanced at the shrine. The image was so lifelike that Aleksi could not believe that he himself was not standing some distance from the actual shrine, seeing it with his own eyes. Had she witched it and brought it here, making it small enough to fit in her tent? But no, Tess said that the machines called modelers made images of things, not the things themselves.

"Lie down there." The doctor patted a low couch with one hand. On this couch, Bakhtiian had slept through his coma. "I'm going to scan you. You saw when I did the same thing to Tess. Take off your saber first, and any gold or metal-yes, your belt buckle."

Aleksi did as he was told and gingerly lay down on the pallet. Tess had lain here without the slightest sign of nervousness. Now, the doctor spoke a few Anglais words he did not recognize and he felt the air hum around him. Then she took a little box, lit with jewels of light, into her right hand and, starting at his head, passed it down over his body. The humming air moved as well, like an invisible ring of pressure, down along his torso and his hips, down his legs, dissipating at last by his feet. It took a long time. Torn between awe and fear and curiosity, he watched his spirit drawn into the air at the foot of the couch. His spirit shone as brightly as Bakhtiian's and Tess's did, which surprised him a little, and yet, hadn't the gods gifted him with many blessings?

"Lady in Heaven. This is astonishing. You're a perfect specimen, Aleksi. No wonder you survived your hell of a childhood. I think you may well be one of the keys I need to crack the code. I think whatever tinkering those damned chameleons did to the humans they transplanted here bred true in you. Have you ever been sick, a day in your life?

Aleksi thought about this, since it was the only thing in her entire speech that he understood. "No, not that I remember."

"And your reflexes-I must find a way to test them. I'll just bet that they're part of the package. Aleksi, have you ever thought about having children?"

There were definitely times when Aleksi thought the doctor was a little mad. "Every man thinks of it at some time. But if I marry, I'll have to leave Tess, and I don't want to do that."

"Of course. The jaran are matrifocal. Still, I'd love to try a little selective breeding-" She broke off and coughed into one hand. "In any case, this is a needle. I'm going to take blood. You saw me do that to Tess as well."

"Yes." He watched with interest as she pricked his skin with the tiny blade. The viscous scarlet of his blood filled a tiny chamber of glass, a red as rich as the red of his silk shirt. She removed me needle and gave him a piece of fluff to press onto his skin, though the point of entry scarcely qualified as an injury. At the long table, she busied herself with some of the machines, but he could not see what she was doing because her back covered his view of the table. Instead, he regarded his spirit, turning in the air before him.

"Oh, you can sit up now," she said over her shoulder.

He sat up. His spirit still turned. He rose and walked closer to examine it. It seemed to emanate from the very base of the couch, like a rainbow emerging from the ground and arching up into the heavens to scatter its color across the rain-drenched sky. But it was him, clearly so. He reached to touch it, but just as his fingers met its surface, it sparked and vanished into a thousand flickering lights and then to nothing. He jumped back. The image appeared again: there, his narrow chin and thin face, in gold and white and blue; the curve of his throat a glittering, soft green; the relaxed slope of his shoulders in green and blue, with a hint of violet; his chest and hips, his legs, his feet fading into a cloud of deepest violet at their base, the exact curve of his kneecap, the knob in his left little finger, gold with a tracery of red, where it had never healed straight when it was broken many many years ago. He was crowned by a bright silver formless light, just as Bakhtiian's spirit had been, just as Tess's had been.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" asked the doctor from her table. He felt her move, without seeing her. He caught a movement in his peripheral vision; an instant later he shot his left hand up and caught a little ball she'd thrown at him. "Good reflexes," she said. "Squeeze that as hard as you can." He complied, then transferred it to his other hand and squeezed it again. The ball was made of some strange substance he did not recognize: not wood or metal, not ceramic or cloth. Little bumps nobbled its surface, and when he squeezed hard enough it gave slightly beneath his hand, and he felt warmth from inside of it.

The doctor came over to him and squinted at his eyes. She held up a black stick with a tight nestled in its tip. "Look at me. Straight at me. Don't mind this. They say the actor Gwyn Jones is a martial artist."

"What is that? Martial artist?"

"Someone who has studied the art of fighting, not just the craft of it. I'd like to see the two of you spar together. He won a number of tournaments, of-well-contests, say when you race a horse. Surely you fence together and see who comes out the winner?"

"I always did," Aleksi admitted humbly. "Come out the winner. That's what Vyacheslav often said to me, that most men are blind to the saber, that they only use it to cut with and kill with, but that the saber is like a Singer's lute, that it could itself sing. He said I was a Singer, that

I had made a long journey, but that my instrument wasn't tales and song but the saber itself, just as the saber had been his instrument in his time. So he taught me."

"You are a Singer? A shaman?"

He shrugged. "I never went to the gods" lands, if that is what you mean. But I learned from him as much as there was time to learn, about the-art-of saber." He grinned. "I like this word, martial artist. You khaja are always surprising me. I thought you weren't civilized."

Dr. Hierakis laughed and withdrew her light from his face. "That's all. What news from the council?"

Aleksi also liked her brusqueness and the way she came straight to the point and never hemmed and hawed about the least detail. "The main army, with Bakhtiian, rides to Karkand. Sakhalin rides south. Grekov and Vershinin ride west past Karkand. Nadine will ride north to escort the prince back here."

"Oh," said the doctor.

"Will he know this before she arrives?" Aleksi asked.

Dr. Hierakis laughed. "Yes. We have a way of talking that can send a message faster than the fastest horseman can ride. You see the image of Morava, there?" He nodded. "That isn't an image modeled out of the memory, but a real image, sent to us by Marco Burckhardt from half a kilometer away from the palace. He sent it this morning."

Aleksi regarded the image of Morava. The view looked down the long avenue that led to the front of the shrine. He could just make out the sweep of white stairs framed by thin black pillars that led to the huge doors embroidered with tracery and fine patterns. "But, Doctor," he said, "if you can send messages so quickly, why not show Bakhtiian how to do this thing as well? If his generals could speak together like this, then imagine what they could do."

"Oh, I can imagine it," said the doctor. "But we've done too much already. Casualties are high, of course, but deaths are low. We're saving and healing a much higher percentage of the wounded than would have survived without my training. And yet, and yet, I can't just stand by and watch them die, knowing that with a little knowledge they could be saved. What of the khaja living in the army's path? But I can't reach them. I can't reach everyone. Not yet."

The doctor often talked to herself like this, to him and yet to herself and to some unnamed audience which Aleksi supposed was both her conscience and the absent prince, with whom she shared more than simple friendship and loyalty. He knew some vital issue troubled her, but he had not yet puzzled out what it was. And if she and the prince did not want to share this swift messenger they hoarded between them, after all, why should they? They owed Bakhtiian nothing. Aleksi did not think they were Bakhtiian's enemies, but neither did he think they were Bakhtiian's friends. Allies, perhaps, because of Tess, but it was an uneasy truce. They were only here because Tess was here. Even Bakhtiian knew mat. They needed no alliance with Bakhtiian, and certainly with such machines, they had nothing to fear from him, however powerful and vast his army might be. Jeds was a long ride away, according to both Tess and Nadine, according to Bakhtiian himself.

But if Tess left, if the prince and Dr. Hierakis convinced her to go, Aleksi had long since promised himself that by one means or another, whatever he must do, he would go with her.

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