Jaran

'That privilege is only given to those who die in battle, men in honorable war, women in childbirth. The fire releases you from all bonds to the earth, and the gods, alerted to your coming by the bitter herb ulyan, welcome you to the heavens. And your spirit is free forever from this world.'

'And everyone else…'

Bakhtiian said nothing for a moment. ' 'It is also an honorable death. Many choose it.'

'How can you choose to be left lying on the ground?'

'Old people, ill ones, those who can no longer keep up, often stay behind of their own choosing, knowing that their time has come.'

'You abandon them?' She had such a horrible vision of sitting alone among the grass and insects, figures growing smaller, gone, finally, the sun silent above, that for one wild instant she thought all this the dream and herself still far north, lost forever in grass.

'We move, always. We cannot wait.' His eyes, his whole expression, seemed remote, staring at something she could not see. 'That is how I intend to die, when the time comes, not seeking to prolong it.''

'You have no intention of dying in battle?'

'None at all.'

'But you carry ulyan.'

Now his gaze focused on her, but it made her feel quite isolated. 'But I don't. I want to come back.'

They rode the rest of the way in silence. The three men, hung out like leavings for the birds, and the half- buried plate of metal ran like loops through her mind, first one, then the other, then the first again, until she wished she could simply stop thinking. Bakhtiian planning war against the khaja; his enemies trying to start that war early to disrupt his plans. Or simply trying, one way or the other, to get him killed? Or simply enamored of killing-how was she to know? The moon was up when, having been challenged by three separate sentries, she and Bakhtiian trotted over a low hill and down into the scatter of tents.

Niko jogged up to them immediately and took the reins of Ilya's horse. 'So many sentries?' Bakhtiian asked.

' 'Tasha spotted a scout this morning and held on, but the fellow veered east. Josef got a glimpse of him this afternoon, but he slanted off again. Josef thinks he's solo.'

Bakhtiian nodded as he bent to check his mount's left foreleg. 'See here. It's swollen and hot.' Niko frowned with concern and examined the stallion's leg while Ilya watched. 'Let's see if we can lure this scout in tonight and capture him. I wonder if Mikhailov has at last picked up our trail or even joined up with Doroskayev? Gods, I can't believe Mikhailov would stoop so low.''

'Couldn't it be one of Doroskayev's men?' Niko asked.

Bakhtiian smiled slightly and, glancing up at Tess, moved decisively to hold Myshla's bridle so that she, too, could dismount. 'But we have news,' he said as Tess swung down, 'that will put things in quite a different light. Assemble the riders. Single sentry should be sufficient for now.'' Niko nodded and went off.

'Do I have to hear this?' Tess asked.

'No. Yuri will have put up your tent.' He led the black away.

Finding herself alone in the gloom, Tess allowed the tears to come, but the force of them overwhelmed her and she shut her eyes, leaning against the comforting bulk of Myshla. The image of the three mutilated bodies flared so vividly in her mind that she gasped.

'Tess?' She put out her hand and grasped substance, an arm, the silken sleeve of a shirt, ridged with embroidery.

'Fedya.' She opened her eyes.

'It will only be a short assembly.'

'Yes.' Her fingers slipped down his arm to grasp his hand. 'Afterward.'

'Past the horses is a spring and past that a copse.' He squeezed her hand, so gentle a pressure that the feeling it left vanished as quickly as he did, gone after Bakhtiian.

She unsaddled Myshla, checked her hooves doubly carefully, groomed her and hobbled her and set her out with the other horses under Pavel's care. Pavel nodded at her but he was busy plastering a cold compress of herbs on the foreleg of Bakhtiian's black, the fine khuhaylan stallion that no one wanted to lose to lameness. The saddle was an easier burden than her thoughts as Tess walked through camp, past the assembly to the very edge of the tents, where Yuri had pitched hers.

As she knelt to dump the saddle on the ground, she saw four Chapalii walk out over a low rise into the darkness. Making a quick tour back through camp, she realized there were no Chapalii anywhere, unless the rest were all in their tents. Surely they could not intend to trek all the way back to the crater by night? A ship, blowing up… What if it had been a Chapalii ship? But that was impossible. Whatever impact had made that crater had occurred millennia ago. Had there been an alien empire before the Chapalii? A greater one than theirs? A hundred possibilities presented themselves. She circled around toward the spring, passing Nikita on sentry duty, and then she was alone again.

She found the Chapalii past the copse, hidden by a rise. They had gathered in a tight clump in the declivity made by the joining of two rises. On her hands and knees, pausing just behind the crest, she could make out all eleven figures, shadowed by the moon. A tiny blue-white light gleamed softly from within their ranks. The night lay still around her. No breeze stirred the air. Voices drifted up to her, phrases broken by pauses and replies.

'… identified two previous… unsure whether the duke… Keinaba… constant surveillance… insufficient evidence to believe…'

A communication. They were communicating-with whom? A Chapalii ship? But none stayed in orbit around Rhui. How far could they transmit? How far did this conspiracy reach? She pulled the little knife Garii had given her from her belt, and hunkered down even more to conceal herself from them as she stared at it. White lights speckled the hilt. She hadn't a clue how to operate it, and either Garii had purposefully left her ignorant or he had simply not thought he needed to tell her. Tess stuck it back in her belt and lifted herself up carefully to watch again. The scene had not changed.

Wind moved the grass above them. Startled, Tess looked in that direction. In the instant before she really saw, she realized that a man was creeping down on them, was halfway down the hill opposite. Light-haired? Had Nikita followed her? But this man was stocky. My God! She stood up. Fedya must have come after her.

At that same moment one of the Chapalii said something, a slight cry. As if in sudden panic, another of the aliens whirled and crouched. Light streaked out soundlessly toward the man on the hill. He seemed to leap backward, half-rising. The thin line of light cut out through the night again, and the man fell, tumbling down the slope to land at the feet of the aliens. Tess cried out and ran down to him.

Ishii's voice. 'Do not shoot her, you imbeciles.'

She stopped short, facing four knives. Red beads of light shone sharply at their hilts. Armed. Lethal.

'Let me go to him.' Her voice broke on the edge of a sob.

'Let her go,' said Ishii. A path formed for her.

She stumbled past them, collapsing on her knees beside the body. The second shot had opened up his abdomen, a cleaner cut than those endured by Doroskayev's men, half cauterized by heat. Blood seeped onto the grass. 'Oh, God, Fedya,' she cried, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

Her touch jostled his head, and it rolled, back, staring at her, one eye strangely shut. One eye scarred shut. It was not Fedya at all, but Doroskayev. She jerked her hands back. The Chapalii clustered around her.

Ishii stood above her, seeming almost to touch the sky. 'How fortunate that it is not one of Bakhtiian's men. For a moment I feared that my man's rashness would be irreparable, but now I see he may have done Bakhtiian a service.'' Tess stood up slowly, still shaking. 'Excuse my impertinence in speaking without your leave, Lady Terese, but I saw that this situation needed a male's firmness. Please allow me to assure you again that we have never wished to do you any harm. You have only to say the word, and the suspicions that have grown between us shall be laid to rest.' He clasped his hands in that arrangement known as Lord's Supplication.

Tess stared at him. She shook. She did not dare look down at the body. She had not the slightest idea what to do with her hands. Ishii could have let his men kill her, could have buried her, and who would have known? Standing alone among them, their only witness the moon and the stars, she could not imagine any human set against her in such a delicate dance showing such forbearance. She outranked him; she was heir to a Chapalii dukedom; she was sacrosanct. Ishii gazed back at her. The moon washed his face so pale it seemed almost translucent. Like the plains beyond, the Chapalii mind had many aspects that seemed unchanging to an alien. Lost