midst of the burgeoning renaissance of the city.
'But perhaps…' He hesitated, and then, decisively, he reached into his saddlebag and withdrew a leather- bound volume and opened it. 'Perhaps you can help me understand this.' He read aloud. ' 'Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state-' '
'Let me see that,' she demanded, and he handed the book to her without a word. 'My God. This is Newton's Principia.''
'So you have heard of him.'
'Ah, yes, I have. I suppose you have a volume of Descartes back there as well.'
'Dhaykhart? No, I have not heard of this philosopher.'
'Thank God. Where did you get this?' She gave the book back to him, and he tucked it neatly back into his pouch.
'I have a-a friend in Jeds. We arranged, before I left, that this friend would send books to a certain port and a certain inn proprietor. Every other year or so, we journey near that port-this year, we will put the khepelli to ship there-and then I collect the books.'
'Oh. I wondered how you and Niko got books. But where did that book come from, the Newton?'
He shrugged, mystified by the intent of her question. 'One of the printing houses in Jeds. I have only had it one year. My friend writes that this Newton lives overseas, but Jedan traders have brought in many new philosophic volumes to the University in recent years.'
'Overseas,' muttered Tess. 'Of course.'
' 'I beg your pardon?''
'No, I was merely surprised because I studied overseas near… where this man lives-'
'Have you met him?'
'Ah, no, no, but I was simply surprised because his works were so swiftly translated and sent to Jeds.'
'Perhaps your brother was the one responsible,' said Bakhtiian, watching her far too closely. 'Soerensen… the name is familiar, but I can't place it. He must trade extensively to have chosen to send his only sister so far away to study.'
'Perhaps he was,' said Tess, not liking the measuring way in which Bakhtiian examined her. It was easy enough to forget that the Chapalii had accused her of spying, and that Bakhtiian had told Sonia he thought Tess was lying about herself, about her merchant brother and her reasons for being here, about how much else, she could not guess. 'But,' she added a little sharply, 'he is not the only man to have sent his relatives a great distance to go to a university. ''
And Bakhtiian remembered that he was, after all, speaking with a woman, and he looked away from her to scan the level plain and the arching sky.
'Look,' said Tess suddenly, 'look there! A khoen.'
'You are learning to use your eyes.' They brought their horses up next to it, a small mound layered with an elaborate arrangement of rocks, mostly hidden in the grass. He stared down. His shoulders tensed and his lips thinned. 'Damn them,' he said softly, followed by a word Tess did not know. He twisted his reins twice around one fist, unsheathed his knife, looked at it, sheathed it again. Tess waited. He untwisted the reins and his horse put its head down to graze. 'So.' He squinted briefly at the horizon.
'The last three dyans are combining forces against me. Now that I'm on a long journey with a small jahar, they think this time they can kill me because they know that once I have those horses, it will be too late. You chose a poor time to accompany us.'
'Who's combining? Isn't Doroskayev's group behind us? Yuri says you still don't know which dyan those men call loyalty to, the ones who tried to kill you in Sakhalin's tribe. And how can you read all that from these rocks?'
'Why are women always so damnably curious?' asked Bakhtiian. He smiled.
'Because men keep everything from them, of course.'
He laughed. 'Very well. I relent. I'll show you.' He glanced around before dismounting to explain the intricacies of this language of stone and stick and earth. When they were riding again, he said, 'The jaran have no language that is set down, unlike Rhuian. Our poetry and songs live in all our memories. Only the stone mounds have meaning.'
'No written language at all?'
'Some priests carve in stone, but few know the secret of that tongue.'
'Do you?'
'I cannot say.'
'Then you do.'
'Perhaps. Perhaps not.'
'Why are men always so damnably evasive?' asked Tess. She smiled.
'Because of women,' said Bakhtiian.
For some reason, this produced a silence. A bird called loudly overhead. Tess gazed up at the sky. It had a slate color, a tinge of gray, as if one storm cloud had been ripped to pieces and mixed in with the blue. In Jeds it had the blue of turquoise, but in Jeds the other colors had not seemed so bright. A torn wisp of cloud clung to the horizon.
'Why did your brother send you overseas?' he asked.
She turned, astonished and irritated, to stare directly at him. 'You don't trust me.'
His lips tightened, and he reined his horse away from her so abruptly that it shied under the hard rein. He turned it downslope and let it have its head, Tess trailing behind.
She retreated immediately to the company of the young men that evening, and sat at the fire watching Mikhal and Fedya across from her as they sang a riddle song to an appreciative audience.
'Yuri, I'm hungry,' she said peevishly, still annoyed and troubled by her afternoon's conversation. 'Why can't we eat?'
Yuri sat with his arms curled around his one upright knee, staring morosely into the fire. 'Didn't Ilya tell you? Tomorrow we come to zhapolaya, the sacred hill. We have many laws that we must follow at a holy place.'
'Including starving? Have the khepelli been out of their tents at all since you set up camp?'
'How should I know? Do you think I care?'
'Well at least you're hungry, too.' Yuri made a face at her, but it was a half-hearted attempt. 'What is this zhapolaya?'
'The stone that crowns the sacred hill. Something the gods left us.'
'How nice of Bakhtiian to tell me,' Tess muttered.
'What?'
'Is this one of the sacred places the khepelli want to see?'
'Yes. I think so.'
'Wait. Are you saying that they knew it was here?'
'But everyone who knows this land knows of it. Why shouldn't they?'
Of course they would have asked Bakhtiian to direct them to holy sites. Something the gods had left. Could it be the relic of some star-faring civilization? But this planet had been discovered by the League Exploratory Survey, annexed at the same time the League had been annexed by the Chapalii Empire, and then deeded to her brother when the emperor had honored him with the dukedom. Perhaps some ancient Rhuian empire had laid tracks across this trackless plain and then vanished. Perhaps. It was the easiest explanation.
Tess followed the shifting red of flame up and across and found that her gaze had drawn and met Fedya's where he sat next to Mikhal. He smiled in return and looked away, the smile lingering on his face as if he had forgotten it. Tess ran her knuckles over her lips thoughtfully, focusing on the darkness beyond so that her knuckles separated into two exact duplicates, one solid, one shadow. She rose, bidding
Yuri good night, and wandered out toward the Chapalii tents.
But what if Yuri had meant his comment literally-what if the Chapalii had known exactly where they wanted to go and had chosen this way, riding cross-country, to get there as unobtrusively as possible?
The four tents stood isolated beyond the fire and the casual clutter of the jahar. Three stood dark against the night sky. In the second, the tent of Hon Garii and his companion, Hon Rakii Makokan, another son of a merchant house, a low gleam of steady light filtered from the tent. But shouldn't a light inside canvas reveal silhouettes? This
