arranged.'
'I meant, of course,' she added hastily, 'only songs that it is appropriate for a man to teach a woman.'
All four laughed, Yuri lowering his hands and cuffing Tess on the neck.
'Now, Tess,' said a voice above them, 'you don't suppose that Bakhtiian would ever do anything inappropriate, do you?''
All four looked up, startled. Kirill had surely chosen that direction to approach them from because the fire, behind him, made a halo about his form. The glow lit red highlights in the thick waves of his fair hair, shone through the angles of his elbows where they stood away from his body, and outlined his stance, easy, a little arrogant. He had his head cocked to the right and he smiled down at her. Nature had, unfortunately, endowed him with a smile as sweet as a girl's, one much at variance with the impudence in his eyes and his demeanor.
Bakhtiian stood up. He was no longer smiling.
'Hello, Kirill,' said Tess, because no one else was saying anything.
'I thought you were supposed to be on watch,' said Yuri.
'Well, Yuri, you must have been mistaken.'
The big fire sparked, flaming until a rider stamped it down to coals. 'As I remember-' Bakhtiian folded his arms on his chest.
'Fedya!' called Niko.
Fedya wandered over. His glance went first to Bakhtiian before skipping briefly back to Kirill. He gave them all his quick, unpretentious smile as a greeting. 'Tess,' he said in a quiet voice, 'I admired your singing.'
'Thank you, Fedya.'
'I admired your singing, too,' said Kirill. 'As well as the rest of you.'
Tess flushed.
'Kirill.' The lowness of Bakhtiian's voice made it more threatening. Yuri scrambled hastily to his feet.
'But it's true.' Kirill spread his palms upward in front of himself with such an expression of innocence in the face of false accusation that Tess could not help but giggle. Niko coughed.
'The men in my jahar have manners, Kirill.'
'Are you saying I don't, Bakhtiian?'
Bakhtiian's left hand moved to his saber hilt. Kirill's right hand brushed the sheath of his knife. Tess, caught in the middle, pushed herself back.
'You know, Ilya,' said Niko quickly, 'Fedya escaped without having to sing tonight.''
For a moment, all movement stopped. Bakhtiian's gaze moved to Niko. Some look Tess could not interpret passed between the two men.
'That is true, Niko.' Bakhtiian settled back on his heels, his left hand dropping to hang by his thigh, and he transferred his gaze smoothly to Fedya. 'You promised me once to teach me some more of your songs.'
Kirill was playing with the embroidery on one of his sleeves, his fingers pale in the dim light.
'Did I?' Fedya asked. 'I'm not sure I agreed to give them up so easily.' His audacity amazed Tess.
'Well, I don't intend to start pleading,' said Bakhtiian.
Fedya smiled. 'My lute is over by the small fire. We could go now.''
'Yes. If you will excuse us.' Bakhtiian nodded briefly at Tess, and he and Fedya left together. Tess sat forward with a long sigh, brushing off her palms.
Yuri rounded on Kirill. 'You don't have any manners.'
'Aren't you a little young to lecture me, Yuri?'
Yuri stiffened.
'I am not too young to lecture you,' said Niko. 'You provoke him deliberately.'
'What of it?'
'Kirill, I will not bother to answer that question. But I will say that your conduct is not always well considered.'
Kirill shrugged. 'We're well away from the sacred hill. I have nothing to fear here.'
'What does that have to do with it?' Tess asked, annoyed because there was some long-standing enmity here that she did not understand. Kirill and Bakhtiian were only five years apart in age, yet Kirill was clearly included with the youngest men of the jahar.
'On holy ground,' said Niko, 'the slightest misstep or misconduct, even accidental, may bring the wrath of the gods upon you. Even the khaja know this to be true. It is desecration.'
'The priests scared me enough when I was little. I'm not going near such places,' Kirill said, and he grinned when Niko chuckled. 'Yes, I know, and you'd advise me not to, for my own safety.'
'But what would happen?' asked Tess.
'It would be sacrilege,' said Niko.
Tess did not reply. The big fire burned down to coals, a dull red speckled with black.
'Kirill! Ho!' Konstans strolled up. 'Think to escape from your watch, do you? Nikita sent me. You're to relieve him.'
Kirill gave Tess a long-suffering look as if in apology and left.
'I thought so,' muttered Yuri.
'Niko.' Tess lifted her hands to blow on them and then lowered them to her lap. 'It isn't only misconduct at a holy place, is it?'
His hair seemed cast of starlight, a finer light than the coarse red of flames. 'Sacrilege away from holy places is limited to those few actions that are repulsive to the gods and which flout without shame their few direct prohibitions. But at a holy place, many things we do gladly in normal life are offensive to the gods.'
'At all holy places?'
'Not all. Only those the gods have left quiet. The shrine of Morava, for instance, is not quiet at all, and priests live there.'
'What do you mean by quiet?'
'Left to the birds and the animals.'
'The birds. Niko, what happened to the three men who tried to kill Bakhtiian at Sakhalin's tribe?'
'They were left for the birds.'
'Ah.' Tess decided she didn't really want to know. 'So some things, like the man in your tribe who killed a bird, those things are always sacrilege?'
Niko considered her. 'That shocks you.' He nodded. 'We have a story, Tess, of a hawk that warned the first tribe of jaran, who were camped against the mountains, of an avalanche, and saved them, and so saved the people.'
'That's in the tale Fedya sang about the first dyan.'
'Yes. Because of that hawk, all birds, who fly above and can therefore see farther, are sacred to the gods.'
'Do you believe that story?'
'My child.' Someone stirred the fire, covering most of the coals, killing their light. 'If the people did not believe in one way, then there would be no jaran.'
Tess could find nothing to say to that. The three of them sat in silence for a time. Tess finally rose and excused herself.
Her path led her near a small fire removed from the rest of the camp. She paused in the dark beyond it. Fedya and Bakhtiian sat there together, the light on their faces, Fedya bent over his lute. As she stood silently, watching, she heard Fedya sing a line and Bakhtiian sing it back to him. And she wondered, for there was something in this music not quite like the usual songs the jaran sang by the fire at night or with their tasks during the day. And she wondered at Bakhtiian, for his bearing as he sat beside Fedya gave to the younger man the status of an elder; she had seen Bakhtiian command the respectful attention of women and men twice his age. She stood for a long time, listening to the two voices, one a high, sweet tenor, one rich and full, but she did not approach them. It was late when she went to bed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
