Tess followed Yuri out of the corral the next morning and walked with him behind the herd of horses as they were driven down to water at a pool. There was a skirmish, biting, a kick, and then the horses at the fore settled down to drink. Watchful young men patrolled the fringe of the herd, mounted on sturdy tarpans.
'It looks like they're fighting over precedence,' Tess said, 'but I suppose that's just me wanting to make them like people. Or Chapalii,' she added to herself in Anglais.
Yuri glanced at her. 'You don't know much about horses, do you?'
'They have four legs, two ears, and a tail. That about covers it. Surely these aren't all the horses your tribe owns?'
'Of course not. We keep the herd out on the grass. But we'll keep the khuhaylans in close so that they can get to know us and trust us.' He called a greeting to an adolescent boy who rode by, and then turned and started back to camp.
'Yuri,' said Tess as she walked beside him, 'can you teach me to ride?''
'Why?'
'Because I'm coming with you, when you leave.'
Now he lifted his head to stare at her. 'But Tess, women don't ride. I mean, not that women can't ride horses, of course. They often ride out to hunt, but they never ride with the jahar.''
'I have to get to Jeds. I have to travel with the pilgrims.'
He examined her. Unlike the other young men, he was not shy with her, because of his status as her adopted brother. His expression was always a mirror of his thoughts, and right now he was troubled and thinking hard. 'Are you a spy, as the priest Ishii says you are?' he asked finally.
'No, I'm not.'
'I believe you, Tess, but you must tell Ilya something convincing in order to get him to change his mind about letting you go with the jahar. It's a very serious matter, riding. Ilya has enemies.'
'If Cha Ishii requests that I accompany you, then surely Ilya must agree.'
'I don't think the priest Ishii wants you to go.'
'He doesn't, but he will do as I say.'
'I think Ilya will be very curious to know why the priest will do as you say, Tess. You are alone, you have no saber, no horse, no tent, no family. Why should the priest obey you when he does not want to?'
Over the last seven days, Tess had developed a story, of sorts, to satisfy the women's interest in her past. Now seemed the appropriate time to spin it further. 'You know my brother is a merchant, Yuri. But I haven't said-he has trade agreements, treaties, with the khepellis, and has recently suspected that they are not adhering to these treaties. So he sent me to their empire, their lands, to discover-well, I followed this party, I came over the seas with them, on the same ship. According to these treaties, they ought not to be here, and-and I need to know what they are looking for.'
Yuri rubbed his lower lip with one finger. 'I never liked Jeds,' he said at last. 'I never understood it. This is not Jeds, and this is not the land where the khepellis come from. So how can you have a treaty that says which of you may travel here?'
The question took Tess aback for a moment, but her training in Chapalii culture-more mercantile even than Earth's-saved her. 'Trade rights. Who gets to trade where.'
The answer evidently satisfied Yuri. 'Well, I suppose Mama can spare you from the work for some time each day. If she agrees, then I will teach you.'
'And Bakhtiian?'
'If my mother gives you permission, then there is no reason for him to object. Why should he anyway? You'll need to know how to ride whether you travel with the tribe or the jahar.'
'How many days will I have?''
'To learn? Until Eva Kolenin's baby comes, I think. Ten days, perhaps, or twelve. But I warn you, Tess, no matter how well you can ride, you will have a hard time convincing Ilya.'
'Bakhtiian won't have a choice. I'm going, Yuri.'
Yuri simply shook his head and refrained from comment.
Mother Orzhekov proved amenable, as long as Tess did her share of the work. It had not taken Tess many days to discover that there was leisure as well as work in this culture, and that a handful of women washing clothes were as likely to pause for an hour to gossip or play with the children as to work straight through and hurry on to another task. No one hurried except Bakhtiian, who was commonly said to have breathed too much southern air than was good for him when he had left, seventeen years ago, an impetuous, serious child of sixteen, and returned from Jeds five years later, just as serious and not one whit less impetuous. That journey had made him hasty and reckless, although Mother Orzhekov could be heard to mutter that Ilyakoria had always been hasty and reckless. But even she treated him with a respect that no thirty-three-year-old man, that not even Nikolai Sibirin, twenty years his senior and a healer as well, came close to receiving. He was a visionary-he was their visionary. Bakhtiian had great plans, and the tribe would follow him, even to the ends of the earth. The name he had earned on that trip-bakh-tiian, he-who-has-traveled-far-was as much a mystical as a physical appellation, and it now superseded his own deceased mother's name of Orzhekov, which by birth he ought to be called.
And when Eva Kolenin went into labor and all the men were chased out of camp until the babe was safely born, for fear their presence might attract malignant spirits, Bakhtiian went only as far as his own small tent, set somewhat in back of the cluster that marked his aunt's family.
Sent to get water from the stream, Tess and Sonia and Elena, the handsome gray-eyed girl who was still somehow unmarried, walked through the camp. Tent awnings flapped over empty ground cloths; men's work, a shirt half-embroidered, a knife getting a new hilt, a saddle half made, lay abandoned, left in neat piles. The low trembling of drums accompanied their walk. A lulling chant rose and fell in time with the rhythm. A group of children ran by, giggling. They hushed suddenly, overborne by a swell in the chanting, and escaped in a rush out into the high grass. Alone at this end of camp, Bakhtiian sat in front of his tent, stitching at a pair of boots. He glanced up as the three women passed. Elena smiled at him, but his impassive eyes swept across them without pausing before he went back to his work. Elena frowned. Tess looked back and saw that he had, for a moment, looked after them.
'Why may he stay in camp?' she asked, slowly, in khush.
'You've the ending wrong,' said Sonia, correcting her. Her baby, Kolia, was asleep in a sling on her back. 'This way.' She repeated it twice, and then went on. 'Bakhtiian has his own tent, so there is no one to make him leave.'
Elena glanced back, and when she spoke, she measured her words carefully so that Tess could understand most of them. 'They say that in some tribes, by the settled lands, the men own the tents. Do you suppose that is true? I would not want to live in such a tribe.'
'But not every woman has a tent,' said Tess.
'No.' said Sonia. 'A woman who is marked for marriage is gifted a tent by her mother or her aunt.'
'Marked for marriage?'
Sonia lifted one hand to brush at the diagonal scar that ran from her cheekbone to her jawline. 'When a man chooses to marry you, he marks you.'
'He marks you-with what?'
Sonia and Elena looked at each other. Elena had no scar. 'With his saber,' said Sonia, as if it ought to be obvious.
Tess was appalled. She could not imagine Sonia allowing a man to mutilate her like that. But she was not about to say so. 'And-ah-is that the only way to be married? To be-marked?'
'Yes,' said Elena.
'No.' Sonia shrugged. Grass dragged against the hems of their bright tunics. 'There is another. 'The long road to the setting sun, the binding of the four arches.' But that is a path held by the gods. Few people wish-or dare-to ride it.'
Elena sniffed. 'Better marked than bound.'
'I see,' said Tess, not understanding at all. She hesitated. 'Does it hurt?'
Sonia smiled. 'Yes. At first. But it is not a very deep cut. Bearing a child hurts far more. The small pain
