His conquering sword

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hyacinth was soggy, cold, and miserable. He shivered while he hammered a tent stake into the damnably hard ground with the butt of his knife. How stupid could he possibly be? he wondered for the thousandth time. He had neglected to take a mallet, or a hammer, or even a hatchet, so every night this farce had to be played out, and it took five times as long to set up his tent as it should have. At first they hadn't set up the tents at all, but with this awful rain, he couldn't endure sleeping out in the open in just a blanket, no matter what Yevgeni and Valye might say, no matter how tough they might be.

Rain fell. He was already soaked to the skin, although by now the precipitation had slackened enough that it didn't really qualify as rain. More of a mizzle, perhaps, a pathetic reminder of the storm that had blown through yesterday. Yevgeni sneezed and coughed, off to the left where he desperately tried to get a fire started with dry twigs and some dung he had scavenged. Valye was out hunting.

Four days ago they had eaten meat; since then, they had subsisted on berries and the tasteless tubers that they gathered when they paused to rest the horses. They saw no game, and certainly, in the ruined land they rode through, no stray livestock. It was as if the jaran army, sweeping through, had obliterated every living creature in its path: humans, livestock, wild animals, and all the grain that had once grown in the fields. Orchards still surrounded the occasional wreck of a village or town they passed, but Yevgeni refused point-blank to ride close in to khaja habitations, even the ones that looked deserted. It was hard enough avoiding the jaran patrols.

Hyacinth sighed and rested his forehead on a palm. He stared at the knife in his right hand. The single jewel buried in the hilt was not, as Yevgeni and Valye thought, a true jewel; it was a laser crystal, gleaming red to show that the emergency transmitter and stun pack disguised within the knife's shell was still powered. It would be so easy to trigger the transmitter and bring-something- some kind of help. He still ached from the constant riding, but the intense pain of the first ten days had passed. Blisters covered his fingers and his palms, some worn at last to calluses. They had bled at first, and Yevgeni had bound them with a tenderness incongruous in a young man who could slaughter khaja with no sign of remorse.

He felt Yevgeni behind him a moment before the rider touched him on the neck. Yevgeni knelt beside him and leaned his dark head against Hyacinth's fair one. They just crouched there awhile, saying nothing. Hyacinth took comfort in Yevgeni's closeness and in his silence. A bird warbled in the twilit gloom, but otherwise only the rain sounded, muted, dying, and an occasional drip or shower of water from leaf-burdened branches.

"I'm sorry," said Yevgeni finally, in a soft voice, "that I have nothing better to give you, in return for what you gave up for me."

Hyacinth stared at the sodden ground. A trail of cold rain seeped under the collar of his tunic and raced down his spine. He shuddered. Yevgeni started back, and Hyacinth grabbed for him, staggering to his feet. "No. No, it's just the rain. Please." His heel turned in a sink of mud and he slipped on the slick ground.

Yevgeni had better footing. Catching Hyacinth, he pulled the actor close and buried his face in Hyacinth's neck. He was perfectly still.

Hyacinth held him. Yevgeni was shorter, and seemed slight, but he had broad shoulders and was, in fact, quite strong. Neither he nor his sister was particularly striking, but they were handsome in a proud way, resembling each other in their broad cheekbones and brown eyes and coarse, dark hair. They never complained, and they good-naturedly put up with Hyacinth's complaining in a way that made him ashamed of himself. He could, after all, be rescued at any time. They had nothing now but each other, and him, and he was an embarrassment to them. He was a constant reminder of why Yevgeni had been banished, and Hyacinth knew damn well that it was his own fault that he had been caught in Yevgeni's tent to begin with. If he hadn't been so careless, because, of course, he found nothing wrong with what he and Yevgeni shared together, and it was so easy to forget that for Yevgeni, with the jaran, it was an entirely different matter.

"It's I who should be sorry," said Hyacinth. Yevgeni's hair smelled of smoke. Behind, the fire smoked more than burned. "It's my fault. I should have left sooner. I-"

Yevgeni laid a finger over Hyacinth's lips. "It's done. We were outlaws anyway and only there on sufferance. If we can make it back to the plains…"

"Then?"

Yevgeni sighed and embraced Hyacinth more tightly. Out here, quit of the tribe-and when his sister wasn't around-he had become freer with signs of affection. Then we'll find my aunt's tribe and throw ourselves on her mercy, and perhaps she'll take us in. Or at least Valye. We must convince Valye to go with her." He cocked his head back suddenly. "If you married Valye, then it might be perfectly respectable."

"If I married Valye!"

Yevgeni chuckled. That he could still find humor in anything, out in this rain, in this horrible situation, amazed Hyacinth. "I thought you didn't mind women."

"I don't, but-" Faced with the prospect of living out his days among these savages, married to one of their women, carrying on discreetly with her brother, and enduring, year after year after year, the rain and die dirt and the filthy tasks they engaged in-none of which he was suited for-Hyacinth found himself appalled. And trapped. He felt trapped. He had a pretty good idea that if they left him, he would die. Even in the time it would take for the transmitter to recall help, he could die. He was a drag on them; he knew it, and they knew it, and yet they had never once taxed him for it, and Yevgeni apologized to him for what he, Hyacinth, had given up for Yevgeni. Their generosity so eclipsed his that it shamed him.

"I love you," said Hyacinth, because in its own way it was true. Yevgeni made a strangled noise in his throat and no other response, only stood there, holding on. One of his hands clenched and relaxed. The rain ceased, finally. A wind came up.

"Oh, gods," said Yevgeni at last in a muffled voice, talking into the collar of Hyacinth's tunic, "I want to go there so badly, to this place where you come from, this Erthe, where there's no shame for a man to tell another man that he loves him."

"Of course there's no shame! Why should there be?" Hyacinth stroked Yevgeni's hair.

The sound of a horse crashing through brush stirred them. Yevgeni spun away and drew his saber. But it was only Valye, returning empty-handed from her hunt. She swung down and kissed her brother on the cheek and nodded to Hyacinth. Yevgeni went back to the fire, to try to spark it to life, but it smoldered and refused to give either flame or heat. Valye unsaddled her horse and rubbed it down and hobbled it with the others, under the shelter of a grove of scrub trees that ringed a little pond. Birds skittered across the water on the far side. Birds. But perhaps Valye wasn't a good enough shot to kill birds for dinner.

Valye cast a practiced eye up at the lowering sky. Darkness swept down on them. "I think it's going to rain again tonight," she said to her brother. "I'd better set up my tent."

Again. She kept setting up her tent, and Yevgeni always had to sleep there. Yevgeni didn't want to offend her sensibilities, even though she knew damn well what he had been banished for. "It's stupid," said Hyacinth suddenly, surprising even himself, "for you to set up your tent. Mine is warmer."

Valye flushed and drew up her chin. "It isn't proper."

"Hyacinth," said Yevgeni softly, "she's right, of course."

Of course he did anything his sister said. They went to bed that night on empty stomachs. Valye had first watch.

Hyacinth crawled alone into his own tent and set the perimeter alert. He took off his clothes and slid them into the drying pouch slung at the base of the tent. Then he dozed, until Valye woke him for his half of the watch.

At dawn, while the others still slept, Hyacinth walked down to the water. In the quiet, he watched birds swarming over the pond and along the shore. Such abundance, and he was so hungry. Yevgeni and Valye weren't around to see. He circled around to the far side of the pond, staying out at a safe distance, and then aimed his knife and fired.

It was like fishing for trout in a barrel-that was an old phrase his great-grandmother Nguyen always used. Within moments two dozen birds lay dead or stunned, some on the ground, some along the shore in and out of the reeds, most floating in the lake. He left the ones in the water and, with a great sense of pride and a fair measure of squeamishness, hoisted the others by their feet and carried them back to camp.

At camp, Valye and Yevgeni had woken up. Valye tended to the fire while Yevgeni tied Valye's rolled-up tent onto a packhorse. Yevgeni flung up his head and saw Hyacinth. A look of such overwhelming relief passed over his features that Hyacinth was embarrassed.

"Look what I got!" he said instead, displaying the half-dozen birds he had salvaged from the massacre. "Now we can eat for the next day or two."

Valye flung herself down on the damp ground and began to wail. Yevgeni simply stared. He looked as if he were in shock. He looked horrified.

Hyacinth actually turned around to see if some loathsome monster followed in his wake, but there was nothing there. A flight of birds erupted from the pond, driving up into the cloud-laden sky. A single hawk circled above, and abruptly, it folded its wings and dropped like a stone toward the ground.

"Build the fire," said Yevgeni suddenly in a hoarse voice. "Valye, build the fire, quickly. We'll give them back to her and beg her forgiveness. We'll release them into her hands."

"What about him?" Valye wailed. "Who will kill him?"

What, in the Lady's Name, were they talking about?

"No one, damn it!" snapped Yevgeni. "It's obvious he doesn't know. Go on."

"But she'll demand retribution!" Valye cried.

"Just do as I say!"

"What's going on?" demanded Hyacinth.

Yevgeni took in a deep breath, as if by main force of will he controlled himself, and strode over to Hyacinth. "Birds are sacred to us. Perhaps they aren't to you khaja." He put out his hand. "Give them to me."

Relieved to be free of the limp birds, Hyacinth handed them over. Only to watch in shock as Yevgeni carried them across to the fire and, once its flames had gathered force and heat, simply laid them over the pit.

"Aren't you supposed to pull the feathers off first, and maybe get rid of the heads and the feet?" Hyacinth asked, utterly confused.

"Take down your tent unless you want us to leave it here," said Yevgeni in a voice so cold that Hyacinth abruptly knew that if he didn't obey, he would be left behind as well. He obeyed. As he worked, Yevgeni and Valye stoked the fire, feeding it, nursing it, encouraging it to consume the birds. They chanted in singsong voices, sometimes together, sometimes separately, sometimes overlapping.

"Grandmother Night, forgive us for drawing ourselves to your attention. We beg your pardon. We draw back. It was a child's error, that your messengers, your holy ones, were taken from life this day. Even you yourself did not blame your children when, all ignorant, they transgressed your laws. Spare us from your just retribution. Allow us to beg for your mercy. Look not upon us with your dreadful sight. We are not strong enough to endure the terrible glance of your eye. We send these messengers back to you, in the old way, to grace your lands once more. Grant us mercy for our transgression."

They were praying. They were just going to burn the birds and leave them.

"How can you waste them like that?" demanded Hyacinth, stopping in the middle of his task and staring. "I'm hungry!"

"Valye." Yevgeni dropped out of the singsong chant and motioned with a turn of his head toward the horses. "Saddle and pack up. Go. Quickly." She glanced toward Hyacinth, but she obeyed her brother. Yevgeni looked back over his shoulder at Hyacinth and then away. Hyacinth felt that he himself had somehow taken on the aspect of a loathsome monster, but he didn't understand what had happened. Drawing a knife, Yevgeni opened his palm out flat over the fire and before Hyacinth realized what he meant to do, he cut his own skin. Blood welled up. Yevgeni turned over his hand and let the blood drip into the fire.

"Take this offering, Grandmother Night, whose name is terrible to hear, whose glance is terrible to suffer, and grant us mercy, grant us forgiveness, for the death of these, your holy messengers."

Blood scattered into the fire. Singed feathers poured an acrid odor into the air. Yevgeni rocked back on his heels and stood, clenching his hand tight to stop the bleeding.

"Get your tent down," Yevgeni said to Hyacinth, so harshly that Hyacinth felt his courage and his heart melt within him. But he obeyed.

They packed up and rode on. The clouds scudded away. It did not rain. A low range of mountains loomed before them, the next obstacle.

Valye would not talk to him. Yevgeni answered his comments, his questions, in curt monosyllables, and finally Hyacinth gave up talking. He had never felt more alone in his life.

They climbed by winding paths up into the hills. A packhorse went lame around midday, picking up a stone in its hoof. They halted in the lee of a copse of trees that straggled along the steep slope that bounded the north wall of the valley up which they rode. Hills loomed around them. The sun burned bright overhead. Here between the rocks, it grew warm. It was a gloomy countryside. A few green shoots sprouted up, encouraged by die recent rains, but otherwise the land lay rocky and barren. Their trail wound up into the heights, and Yevgeni seemed sure that it would lead them over the hills and into Farisa country, past which lay the plains and freedom.

Hyacinth stood beside the horses under the shade of a clump of trees. Yevgeni and Valye argued over whether to kill the injured horse for food or to nurse it along.

"We have little enough now to carry," said Valye.

"But if we get more, we'll need it. We need remounts, in any case." Yevgeni knelt and ran his hand along the horse's leg. The animal was a kind, patient beast and submitted to this care equably enough. Yevgeni found the stone and drew it out, but the cut bled. He shook his head. "I've nothing to put on it for a compress."

"I've got a medical kit," said Hyacinth, tentatively, "but I don't know if it works for horses. I don't know-" He faltered, because Valye had turned her back on him. Yevgeni hung his head. "Oh, Goddess! You won't even tell me what I've done, and it's just plain stupid not to see if what I've got can help!"

Yevgeni had one pretension to beauty. He had a mobile, prettily-shaped mouth. His lips twitched now, and Hyacinth could tell he was struggling inwardly. Finally he flung his head back. "Let me see."

Hyacinth rummaged in his saddlebags and brought out the med kit He fingered through its riches and brought out the things that he thought would be most recognizable to Yevgeni; and in the end, they worked out a rough compress and some salve and decided to nurse the horse along.

Valye watched with disapproval. "Do you think you should accept his khaja medicine? It was his khaja ways that brought down her enmity on us."

"We don't know if she's angry, yet," retorted Yevgeni.

"You're a fool if you think we won't pay for it, Yevgeni."

"I'm a fool four times over, then," he snapped, "once for leaving the tribe to ride with Dmitri Mikhailov, once for agreeing to bring you with me, once for riding away with Vasil Veselov when I should have stayed and begged for mercy."

"What about him?" Valye jerked her chin toward Hyacinth. "Five times, then, for taking up with him."

"No," said Yevgeni in a low voice, not looking toward Hyacinth though he must know that Hyacinth could hear every word they were saying. "Not for him. You don't understand what it's like to feel shame every time you look at a man with desire, to know you can never speak of your feelings to him. Oh, I thought for a while that Vasil might-but he needed a second in command, he needed men for a jahar, he used his beauty to make me think he might love me, but he never did, and then I felt ashamed for being a fool, for not knowing better. But he never made me feel ashamed. Because he never felt ashamed. That was a gift, Valye, but perhaps you can't understand that."

Her throat worked. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She had pulled back her hair into a long braid, but the sunlight betrayed how dirty it was. Dirt encrusted the cuffs and hem of her tunic and caked the knees of her trousers and the palms of her hands. Not that Hyacinth was any cleaner. "I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. She offered a hand to Yevgeni and he accepted it, and she lifted him up and hugged him. "You're all that I have, Yevgeni. I won't judge you."

He smiled tremulously. "You're the best sister any man ever had, even if you are wild, and won't listen when you ought to." He kissed her on the cheek. A pang gripped Hyacinth's heart, seeing their true feeling for each other, seeing their bond. Like the one he had once had with the actors in the Company. Was this how Yevgeni felt, riding in the army, as if he was always on the outside looking in?

Yevgeni pushed her away. "We'd better go. It's never wise to stay in any place too long."

Except that they already had stayed too long. Or perhaps their fate had been tracking them all along and simply chosen this moment to strike.

One moment, the scene was all silence. It was bleak, true enough, but there was hope in the way the path wound up into the heights, suggesting freedom in the distance, and hope in the way Yevgeni turned and with a shy smile glanced toward Hyacinth and away, as if he flirted with him. Then he stopped in mid-stride. His expression shifted abruptly. He canted his head to one side, listening. Hyacinth heard something, a gentle ring, the echo of a sound like a voice's echo. Yevgeni drew his saber. Valye pulled her bow from its quiver. It was already strung; it was always strung. Hyacinth stared.

"Mount." Yevgeni sprinted toward him.

Hyacinth heard a whoof, like air being expelled; heard the ring of bridle; heard the shout. Yevgeni called a warning. It all took place in a vast sink of time, drawn out so excruciatingly slowly that to experience it was painful. Valye staggered forward in the act of fitting an arrow to her bowstring. She half turned to raise and aim at the sudden clot of khaja riders on the ridge above them, but a strange shadow cut across her.

Two arrows stuck out of her back. She shot anyway. She shot again as the riders charged down toward them, and a man toppled from his horse. Yevgeni scrambled onto his horse and swung round to go back to her. His horse stumbled and staggered and crumpled to the ground, pierced through the neck with a mass of arrows. Thrown, Yevgeni tumbled down, landing at Valye's feet. She shot again. An arrow skewered her in the thigh. Still she did not go down. A trio of arrows pinned Yevgeni to the ground, but he tore free of them and struggled up to stand next to her.

They were going to die.

Then Hyacinth remembered his knife. What did he care what prohibitions he broke? He drew it and raised it and fired. He saw nothing but a shimmering in the air. But the effect was stunning, and immediate. Twelve riders closed in on them, a thirteenth left back on the ground with an arrow in his chest. Twelve khaja men fell like stones from their saddles. That fast. The horses faltered. One went down. The other horses pulled up short not six paces in front of Yevgeni, riderless, confused, and probably half stunned themselves by the concussion.

"Gods!" cried Valye, whether from her wounds or from astonishment Hyacinth could not know. She collapsed to the ground at Yevgeni's feet.

"Hyacinth, look after her!" Yevgeni cried. He ran forward, drawing his knife in his other hand, and knelt by the foremost khaja bandit. "Gods, he's still breathing. So is he!" He glanced back toward Hyacinth, looking suspicious, looking apprehensive. Then, methodically, gruesomely, he slit each man's throat.

Hyacinth roused himself out of his stupor and dropped the reins and ran over to Valye. Mercifully, she was unconscious. Blood bubbled out of her mouth, welling in and out in time to her labored breathing. Hyacinth fumbled in the med kit and brought out the scanner and ran it over her. Then he flipped over his slate and read the results into it. They flashed RED RED RED: condition critical; advise moving subject to urgent care facility immediately; wounds to deep tissue in thigh; damage to internal organs; right lung has been pierced; do you wish a more detailed diagnosis?

"No," said Hyacinth.

"She's going to die, isn't she?" said Yevgeni. Hyacinth jumped, startled, and turned. Yevgeni limped up to him. He bled from his leg, from his arm, and from a gash to his head. "What is that?" He pointed with his bloodstained knife to the open slate.

"It's a hemi-modeler. Maybe you'd know it as a computer. Never mind. It doesn't matter what it is. Do you know how to get those arrows out?"

Yevgeni shrugged, staring at his young sister. "Yes, but it doesn't matter. I've seen wounds. She's breathing blood. It's got her in the lungs. She won't live."

"She can, if I can get help."

Yevgeni gave him a look of complete incomprehension and then knelt beside Valye and began the slow process of turning the arrows out of her wounds. Blood gushed. Hyacinth had to turn away before he threw up. He grabbed his slate and went and crouched beside the horses. He lifted the knife, and held it up so that it could read his retinal print, and then he released its code. For five minutes, he knew, it would pulse silently, broadcasting the distress signal. He tried to gauge how long it would take for them to get a ship here. Could they get one here soon enough to save Valye?

"The horses," said Yevgeni.

Hyacinth hobbled their horses, caught the strays and as many of the others as he could, and hobbled them as well.

Yevgeni's horse-well, it was suffering, that much was apparent.

"Kill it," said Yevgeni.

What choice did he have? Force Yevgeni to leave his sister? The rider had two of the arrows out, by now, but the third came slowly, spiraling out along its tracks on the silk undershirt she wore, driven into the wound. Hyacinth hadn't a clue how to kill a horse. He used his knife to stun it into oblivion and hoped it would bleed to death before it woke up. Then he went back to Yevgeni and ran the scan over him. He set the med kit out and queried the modeler about first aid, and the slate began a stream of directions to him in clear Anglais.

Yevgeni started so badly that he almost twitched the arrow still lodged in Valye's side. He swore, and then again, seeing that Hyacinth wasn't speaking. He went white. "What is that?" He was terrified. "Who is that speaking?"

"Trust me," said Hyacinth. "Just trust me. Take that arrow out." Listening to the directions, Hyacinth did as well as he could with the equipment in the med kit. He used a sonic cleaner to sterilize the various wounds and an antibiotic spray to prevent infection. The seamer stitched up Yevgeni's head wound, sealing it, and his leg wound as well, and Valye's thigh wound, but there was nothing he could do about the internal damage. He ran the emergency pulse again, or so he hoped; he could not hear anything. Yevgeni was in shock by this time. He stumbled away from Hyacinth and began to gather wood for a fire, refusing to be deflected from this task, so Hyacinth set up his tent by himself. They carried Valye into it and laid her on the floor. She did not regain consciousness. Her breath bubbled and subsided. Night fell. No one came.

All that long night Yevgeni sat beside her. Hyacinth set up the lantern, not caring now if its constant, fireless glow amazed Yevgeni, but Yevgeni sat so sunk in grief that he did not seem to care. Valye breathed. Night passed. No one came.

She died at dawn, slipping peacefully out of herself and away. Yevgeni readied the fire, evidently not caring that it would provide a beacon for any other khaja bandits passing by. He dressed her carefully and folded her hands over her chest; he laid her on the fire, and lit it. It blazed up. Soon smoke and flames concealed her from their view. Yevgeni flung himself on the ground and keened. He threw off his shirt and slashed himself with his knife, over and over, along his arms and on his chest. Blood, like tears, washed him.

Hyacinth stared at his transmitter. No one had come. They had abandoned him.

Morning passed. The pyre burned. The sun rose to its zenith, reminding Hyacinth bitterly that exactly one day had passed since they had halted here before. The bodies of the dead khaja still lay on the ground, ravaged by night stalkers. Insects swarmed them. A bird circled down and settled with lazy grace on the corpse farthest from the horses. It began to feed. Soon another bird joined it.

Hyacinth walked forward and touched Yevgeni on the neck. "Yevgeni," he said softly, not trusting the other man not to jump up and threaten him with that knife. At least Yevgeni had stopped mutilating himself, though blood still seeped from the cuts scored all over his skin. "Shouldn't we move on? What if they come back? If someone else comes?"

"Ah, gods," said Yevgeni, his voice hoarse with rage and sorrow, "she trusted me. When did I bring her anything but grief?"

Hyacinth winced. Yevgeni's desolation was a palpable thing, like a blow. Yevgeni stared at the fire that consumed his sister's body. If he even noticed Hyacinth's hand on his neck, he gave no sign of it. "Yevgeni, we should ride on. What if there are others around here?"

"What does it matter? Grandmother Night will have her revenge on us in the end." His voice sounded hollow and lifeless. "We killed her holy messengers, and the only punishment for that crime is death. It has already begun. Valye is dead. What does it matter if we die, too?"

Yevgeni had given up. Hyacinth shut his eyes. "Yevgeni, listen to me. I don't believe in grandmother night. I'm not going to die, not for grandmother night, not for you, and not for them!" He opened his eyes, shocked at his own vehemence. But it was true; now that they had lost everything, now that he had been abandoned by his own people, now he refused to give up.

Yevgeni lifted his head. His eyes were glazed, but a sudden gleam of fear lit them. "You mustn't speak of her with such disrespect," he said, but with no force behind the comment.

"And risk what? Valye is already dead. What else is there but our own lives? I'm going on, and you're coming with me." Hyacinth did not know what else to do, except to keep moving. Yevgeni rose, stiff with pain and drying cuts, but he would not let Hyacinth clean his wounds. Face drawn, he pulled his shirt on over the raw cuts. He hesitated. The pyre burned steadily now, but Hyacinth was not sure how much of Valye's body would actually be consumed by the time it went out. He didn't intend to wait around to see what khaja locals the fire attracted.

"Yevgeni, come on."

Yevgeni obeyed numbly. They strung the khaja horses on with the rest and set off northeast, up the valley.

That night, Hyacinth downed two birds with his knife and brought them back to camp. Yevgeni sat slumped over his knees, apathetic now in his grief. Hyacinth sighed and stared at the two birds. He steeled himself, going off a few paces away from the safety of the hobbled horses, and he began the disgusting, messy work of preparing them for supper. He hadn't a clue what to do with them. He plucked at the feathers, but they wouldn't come out cleanly. He had to hack and tear at the skin and peel it off entirely. It was horrible. He cut off their heads and feet, swore copiously, gutted them, and threw up once at the smell and sticky texture of the fluids that gushed out of them. But he did it.

Yevgeni just sat there. Hyacinth got out the little solar powered oven he had stolen from the Company's camp and roasted the two birds in it. That wasn't so bad, since the oven had all kinds of timing devices built into it according to weight and type of meat. He also heated water to boiling and while the meat cooked, he took a cloth and dabbed the cuts on Yevgeni's back with hot water. Yevgeni let him do it. He was otherwise listless. He shivered, and Hyacinth hoped that he wasn't going to get some kind of infection. He brought out the scanner again and ran it over Yevgeni, and the med program on his slate advised him to use the antiseptic mist.

"What are you doing?" Yevgeni asked at last, roused out of his stupor by the stinging of the mist.

"Keeping you well. Roasting some meat."

But Yevgeni wouldn't eat when Hyacinth brought him the roasted fowl.

Hyacinth crouched beside him and took Yevgeni's chin in his hand. "They've all abandoned you, Yevgeni, don't you see that? So what does it matter what you do?"

"It matters to the gods."

"Well, I don't believe in your gods. How did those twelve men fall off their horses?"

For the first time since Valye's death, Yevgeni lifted his gaze to look directly at Hyacinth. "I don't know," he whispered.

"I did that, and you know I'm no fighter."

"You're a Singer. A shaman. Perhaps you know sorcery."

"It's not sorcery either. Listen, Yevgeni. Maybe we have a way out of this. Do you know where the shrine of Morava is? Maybe Soerensen is still there."

The glaze of dullness that stiffened Yevgeni's expression lightened slightly. "Who is Soerensen?"

"The Prince of Jeds. If we can find him-"

"He would help us?" Yevgeni shook his head. "He can't help us. No woman or man can, now that Grandmother Night has settled her terrible gaze on us."

"Yes, he can. He's more powerful than grandmother night."

"Don't say that!" Yevgeni shrank away from him.

"But it's true. I made those men fall down, with this knife. I can heal your wounds with these simple instruments. That box is an oven that baked this meat without fire. I'm more powerful than grandmother night. Let me show you something."

He brought out his slate and unfolded it, so that it lay flat on the ground. In silence, Yevgeni watched. "Do you remember the jaran tale we sang? The one about Mekhala, the woman who brought horses to the jaran?"

Yevgeni lowered his eyes. "Yes." He said it as if something shamed him about the memory. "I was with Valye. She liked to see your people's singing."

"Run Mekhala folktale, scene two. Meter field."

In scene two, Hyacinth played the khaja prince who had come to demand tribute from the rhan, as the jaran tribes had called themselves before they had gotten horses and become ja-rhan, the people of the wind. Above the slate, about a meter cubed, the play unfolded: Anahita as Mekhala and Diana as her sister, Hyacinth entering as the prince with his retinue of Quinn and Oriana.

Yevgeni stared openmouthed at the image, moving, playing out. He reached out and snatched his hand back before he touched it. "Sorcery," he murmured.

"No, it's not sorcery. It's a-oh, hell, there's no way to explain it to you. Run image of Morava."

The image melted away and re-formed into the gorgeous dome and towers of the Chapalii palace the jaran called Morava. Hyacinth had not seen Morava except through this program, and he was delighted to be able to pace around it and see the complex from all angles. He envied the duke's party for experiencing it firsthand.

"But how did it get so small?" Yevgeni demanded. "How did you capture it and bring it here?"

"It's just an image, Yevgeni, not the shrine itself. Look, do you know what a map is? Let me see. Maybe I can reconstruct where we left the army, and where we are now. It's been thirty-five days since we left camp and if we've ridden northeast… Goddess. I should have paid more attention in cartography tutorial."

"But no one is more powerful than Grandmother Night," said Yevgeni suddenly. "Even seeing these things and what you did to those khaja bandits, still… She attends us at our birth and grants us a measure of days in which to live. She is the One with whom we may bargain for gifts, if we're willing to risk the bargaining, if we're desperate enough. She is death, Hyacinth. No person can escape death."

"How old do you think the Prince of Jeds is?"

Yevgeni shrugged. "Of an age with Bakhtiian, I suppose."

"He isn't. He's older than Mother Sakhalin."

"He can't be."

"He is. Why would I lie to you? Dr. Hierakis is older than he is. Owen is in his seventies, too, and Ginny is at least as old as that. Yet they are still young. My great-grandmother Nguyen is one hundred and sixteen years old, and I can expect to live at least as long as she has and stay young until I'm ninety or so. Grandmother night doesn't scare us. You've got to believe me, Yevgeni. You've got to want to believe me, you've got to want to live. If we can make it to the shrine, if we can find the duke-"

Yevgeni reached up abruptly and touched Hyacinth's cheek. "That's when I fell in love with you," he said in a low voice. "When I saw that song, the song you did about Mekhala. Valye said you were really the khaja prince and that it was a wind demon truly drawn down to walk among us, but I knew you were just a person singing two different songs. You were so beautiful."

Hyacinth shut his eyes. How Owen would have loved this scene: Yevgeni's voice blended grief and wonder and a shy yearning so perfectly, and the way he held his body reflected his longing and his sorrow and his actual physical pain. But this was real. Hyacinth knelt and put his arms around the other man. Yevgeni gasped, from the pain of the embrace, but he did not draw away.

"Oh, damn," murmured Hyacinth, "it must hurt."

"No, no," said Yevgeni into his hair, "never mind it. I gave it for her, who followed me to her death."

"We won't die. That way you can remember her. That way part of her will always live, with you."

Yevgeni sighed against him but said nothing. There was nothing he needed to say, not at that moment. Hyacinth stroked his hair and held him carefully, tenderly.

After a little while, Hyacinth warmed up the meat in the oven and Yevgeni ate a sliver of it, though it was the flesh of the gods" sacred messengers. Not much, but by that small gesture, Hyacinth knew that Yevgeni had cast his lot with his khaja lover and abandoned his own people once and for all.