'Oh, no. In Jeds, jaran men don't hurt women either.'
Bakhtiian laughed again. Tess had never seen him so jolly. It made her nervous. There was a moment's silence before he jumped to his feet. 'By the gods, I'm tired.'
'Was anyone hurt, of ours?'
'Ours?' She could not see his face but felt his grin. 'Ours, indeed.' He put out a hand and, when she took it, pulled her to her feet. She dropped his hand and brushed off her clothing. 'Josef Raevsky got a wound in the thigh, but it isn't serious. Kirill got a cut across the arm. By the gods, why are we standing here, woman?'
He set off for camp, Tess walking beside him.
'Bakhtiian.' They reached the crest and started down into the little camp, where a number of men lay tied up near the campfire, Bakhtiian's riders clustered around them. Gazing down at the prisoners, Bakhtiian had the grin of a satisfied and well-fed predator. He looked at her. 'What does this mean?' She said the name Doroskayev had called her.
He stopped quite short, and finally made a slight, coughing sound. 'Forgive me. No man will ever explain that to you.'
'My God.' She smiled. 'Then I'll have to ask Sonia.'
'No woman ought to know that word,' said Bakhtiian sternly, 'but if one does, then doubtless that one is Sonia.' They both laughed.
Descending to the camp, he guided her directly to her tent, avoiding the captives. 'It will be better if those men never know you are with us. My riders will say nothing.'
'But Doroskayev saw me.'
'One does not always believe what Doroskayev says. And perhaps you now understand why you must always wear your saber, and keep it by your side when you sleep. Now, if you will excuse me.' He gave her a curt bow, but the gesture was not entirely mocking.
She watched him fade into the night, and then knelt to enter her tent. A closed, private refuge seemed suddenly desirable, and safe. A foot scuffed the grass. She jumped back and whirled. A Chapalii stood behind her, not five paces from her. He bowed, formal.
'Cha Ishii,' she began, and then realized abruptly that this was not Ishii at all.
'Lady Terese. I beg your pardon for this rash intrusion. Perhaps you will condescend to allow me to introduce myself.'
She stared for a moment, amazed by his audacity. By his inflections, he ranked as a merchant's offspring, of that class one step below the nobility. Why had he come with Cha Ishii's expedition? The last dregs of fear and adrenaline from the skirmish melted away, seared into oblivion by her need to know what Ishii was doing here, and what it meant to her brother. 'You may.' She set her hands together, palm over palm, in that arrangement known as Imperial Patience.
He bowed, acknowledging her generosity. 'I am Hon Garii Takokan. I beg your indulgence.' She waited, curious. 'I was distraught to discover that these savages with whom we ride were to engage in violence this very night, but far more was I distressed to know that you, Lady Terese, perforce must face such dangers unarmed.'
'You are well spoken, for a merchant's son, Hon Garii.'
'I have studied to improve myself, Lady Terese,' he answered, slipping in two inflections that skirted the bounds of impropriety, hinting that he had, perhaps, some connection with noble blood in him. 'If I may be allowed to say as much.'
'You may.'
'Therefore.' He stopped short, glancing furtively behind and to each side. 'If you will condescend to permit me to present you with this gift.'
Tess considered. Giving gifts in the Chapalii culture was a gesture loaded with implied obligations and serious consequences. But her curiosity got the better of her, so she held out her hand to receive it.
He handed her a knife, bowed, and slipped quickly away, not even waiting for her thanks. She held it up. And stared.
This was not a knife. Certainly, it looked like a knife; it had a hilt and a blade. But twin points of light peeped from the crosshilts, and when she held the blade, it felt warm to her touch. This was something more, far more. That this was Chapalii-manufactured, a Chapalii weapon made to look like a native thing, she did not doubt for an instant. Like the tents. It took no great leap of imagination to guess that this was some kind of energy gun. No wonder Ishii was not concerned about these savages' petty little wars. With such a weapon, one person standing alone could obliterate Bakhtiian's jahar before they got close enough to put her in danger.
'But I wonder,' she said to herself, tucking the knife into her belt and crawling into the sanctity of her tent, 'I wonder if Ishii knows that Garii has given this to me.' It disturbed her very much to suspect that he did not.
CHAPTER EIGHT
'Thou shalt inquire into everything.'
Two days later they deposited Doroskayev in the middle of a stretch of featureless flat lands, the hills a dark billow to the northeast. Tess and Bakhtiian tracked him that afternoon as he walked back toward his comrades, who had been trussed and tied and left by the water hole to wait in sullen expectation for their release. Finally, Bakhtiian reined in his horse on a rise. Tess stared down at the solitary figure, whose face was indeed disfigured by an ugly scar over his right eye. It seemed a short enough time ago that she had stumbled, alone and scared and determined, through grass that scraped constantly at her legs. Now it merely brushed the soles of her boots. They turned their horses southwest and caught up with the jahar by evening.
It might have been dull, this riding day after day, week after week, across a land as routine as their daily tasks, but it was spring, and spring was a joy, and the life itself was new, like a language that needed learning. Tess could never resist the lure of an unknown tongue. The sky lifted far above. The land slipped by beneath horses' hooves. It rained once or twice, but it was no more than an inconvenience. Huge herds of antelopelike animals passed them, heading north in a frenzy of bawling and mewling, and on many days Fedya brought in a fresh kill. The other riders foraged for modhal, a tuber they mashed and shared equally between men and horses, and nekhal, a reedy grass whose shoots were edible. They mixed these with mare's milk and with the hard bread and dried meat brought from the tribe.
The Chapalii ate sparingly of this diet, and if they ate anything else in their tents at night, Tess was none the wiser.
So it was that when, one afternoon as Tess and Bakhtiian scouted the wake of a passing herd, they saw five women riding southward with their day's catch, Bakhtiian hailed the hunters and spoke with them while Tess hung back and watched.
'I know this tribe,' he said when he returned. 'We'll stop a few days with them.''
They returned immediately to the jahar. At the first good campsite, a small lake ringed with scrubby trees and a profusion of flowering bushes, Bakhtiian called a halt for the night.
'Why don't we just go on today if this tribe is so close?' Tess asked Yuri as they walked to the lake's edge. She batted away a swarm of insects, ducked her head as they returned, and retreated from the reedy shore.
Yuri laughed at her and strolled on. It had become the jahar witticism to call them dhal and khal, the twins, because they spent so much time together. Tess liked it because she saw in it an acceptance of her place in the jahar: she was one of them, not one of the pilgrims.
'There are courtesies,' Yuri explained when she caught up with him, 'when one tribe comes upon another. Some people might not observe them, but Bakhtiian is very traditional. Now they have warning to know we are coming.' He grinned. 'And Vladimir can polish his stones so his necklaces can gleam brighter and impress the young women.'
