Jaran

'Where the hell did he come from?' asked Charles. 'When did you get back?'

'One hour past, on the same ship as Echido. I rather like him, as much as I like any of them. Charles, Tess has vanished.'

'Explain.'

'The reason I came back in person instead of sending a bullet is that it only took me one day to establish without any doubt in my own mind that Tess finished her thesis, left Prague, and boarded the Oshaki with the intent to come to Odys. I have a holo interview with her friend Sojourner, with a security police officer from Nairobi Port, with a Port Authority steward, and a confirmed retinal print from the boarding access tunnel on Lagrange Wheel.'

'And?'

Suzanne shrugged. She slipped her hand into an inner pocket on her tunic and handed a thick, palm-sized disk to Charles. 'My feeling? Sojourner had the distinct impression Tess didn't want to come to Odys, but that she was running from an unhappy love affair.''

'Lord,' said Marco.

'Don't kid yourself, Burckhardt. She evidently thought the boy was in love with her, but he was in love with her position and what she was and dumped her when he found out about the inheritance laws.'

'Do you mean to say,' Charles asked quietly, 'that Tess was planning on getting married?''

'Looks like it.'

Charles's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. 'She didn't tell me. And then?'

'No other ports of call, according to Echido, except Rhui and Odys. I picked him up on Earth. He did not in fact go back to Chapal, despite what that message said. He debarked from the Oshaki at Hydri and went back to Earth to get a ship back here. But he was very clear that he had met Tess. He said they talked about Rhui and the interdiction and Rhui's rich resources.'

Charles considered the pattern of subtly shaded stones set in linked chevrons between twisting statues carved from black rock. 'Suzanne, you will follow the trail of the Oshaki, as far as Chapal, if need be. Marco, to Jeds.'

Suzanne nodded. 'I've already made arrangements for the Lumiere to run a shipment of musical instruments to Paladia Major. We can leave in two hours.'

Charles held out the disk. 'This is a full report?'

'Of course.'

'Then go.' Suzanne said nothing more, but simply left, walking briskly on the path. Pebbles whispered under her shoes.

Marco coughed into his fist. 'Charles, what if she doesn't want to be found? What if she needs some time alone, to be away from you, from-from everything? You ride her pretty damned hard.'

'She would have sent me a message.' Charles turned the disk in his hand over, and over again. 'In any case, she and I haven't the luxury of time away. It's hard, but that's where it stands. Tess must be found. Do you really suppose that I trust the Chapalii in a matter like this? The captain of the Oshaki lied to me. He knew she was on his ship. Even if he colluded with her, if her intent was to hide on Rhui, still… still… she's leverage over me, and they know it.'

'They made you a duke.'

'And we still don't understand how their damned alien minds work. Start in Jeds, Marco. You or Suzanne will find her.'

Marco watched Soerensen walk away, back to his duties at the reception which he would perform without the slightest visible sign that he had just discovered that his only sibling, his heir, had disappeared. Charles was about as yielding as the stone in this garden. Sun dappled the path where it wound underneath the granite arch, cut by the lacy filigree into twisting and subtly chaotic patterns that blended with the shapes of the pebbles. Perhaps the stone was more flexible. If Tess was missing by some machination of the Chapalii, there would be hell to pay, although Marco could not for the moment imagine what Charles could actually do about it. Chapalii did not harm their superiors, and very few Chapalii outranked Tess. She would be in no physical danger, at least, however small a consolation that was. And if Tess had run, and was hiding, and he found her and brought her back where she did not want to be: well, that might be worse.

Cloth brushed her back, and Tess started awake and lay still, cursing herself for her dreams. Jacques again, damn him. She felt flushed all along her skin, up and down her body, and she sighed, resigned, recalling the dream more clearly now. Jacques's presence had not been the important element in this dream; what they were doing together was.

Outside, bells jingled softly, muffled by distance, and one of the herd beasts lowed, sounding more like a cow than the goat it resembled. A bird trilled once, twice, and then ceased. It must be nearly dawn. Yuri had taught her that trillers heralded dawn, whistlers noon, and hooters dusk.

'This isn't his tent,' said a man, his voice pitched so low that Tess would not have heard him if he hadn't been standing a hand's breadth away from her, separated from her only by the cloth of her tent. 'This is a woman's pattern.'

A foot dragged along the fabric, pushing the wall in ever so slightly. Grass rustled, the barest sound, as he crept away. A word exhaled, farther away, so she heard the breath but not the meaning. She reached to pull her tent flap aside to look out.

'Stahar linaya!''

The force of the words-Battle! Night! Treachery! — ringing out in-in Fedya's voice? — sent her forward without thinking, responding to his piercing cry for help. She tumbled out of her tent and ran right into a body crouched outside. The figure stumbled forward, reaching for his saber. She caught a flash of white face as she reached for her own saber, only to recall that she was in women's clothing. The man took off running.

A confusion of figures clustered around Bakhtiian's solitary tent. A man screamed in rage. Suddenly, sabers winked pale in the hazy predawn dimness.

Two men-Vladimir and Fedya-faced off against three, their shapes shifting in a delicate dance around Bakhtiian's tent.

'Get back, Tess!' A hand pressed her back against her tent, and she looked up to see Kirill beside her. He clutched a blanket around his waist with one hand. His torso was utterly naked, and for a wildly improbable moment, she simply stared, at his arms, at the pale down of fine hair on his chest-

'— your saber!' he hissed urgently.

She swallowed hard and reached back into her tent and pulled out her saber. He grabbed it from her one- handed, slipping the blade free with a deft twist, and ran forward into the fight. 'Vladi! Disarm him now! Fedya, to me. Yuri, Konstans, to their backs.'

With a blur of strokes, Vladimir disarmed one man and then without pausing flung himself on the other and wrestled him to the ground. Faced with Fedya and Kirill, and the appearance of several other men in various stages of undress, the third man threw down his saber. Yuri darted forward and picked up the three sabers. He wore only trousers and no boots. A man cried out in pain, and then Bakhtiian appeared at the same moment as the first swell of light, the disk of the sun cresting the horizon, flooded the scene with dawn's pale light. He was, of course, impeccably dressed, shirt tucked in, trousers straight, saber held with light command in his right hand-but he was barefoot.

'Vladi,' he said in a calm voice that carried easily in the hush of the moment, 'let him up.'

Vladi sat atop the second man, knife pressed against the edge of the man's eye. Blood welled and trickled down the man's cheek, and he whimpered in fear. Some of the older riders had taken over, holding the other two men captive. Now many of the tribe filtered in to form a rough circle around this altercation. Vladi sat back reluctantly and withdrew his knife. The man did not move from the ground, but he lifted a hand to cover his eye.

'What is this?' Elizaveta Sakhalin and her nephew arrived. 'What men have breached the peace of this tribe?'

Niko and Josef yanked the man from the ground and hustled him over to stand by his compatriots. In the light, the raiders looked a sorry bunch, ill-fed, sallow, and peevish.

'I don't recognize them,' said Bakhtiian.

One man lifted his head and spat in Bakhtiian's direction. 'I'm only sorry we didn't kill you.'