He smiled, utterly guileless. 'I hadn't thought of it like that. And it wasn't right, about Aleksia. Anton tried to tell me but I wouldn't listen. I could have put a stop to it.' This realization hit him with some force, and he stopped speaking.
'Yes,' said Tess, feeling that Petya had as much to absorb as he was capable of for one evening. 'It's so late. Shall we go back?''
They strolled back in good charity with each other, and Petya told her about the pranks he and Yuri had played on the older boys, growing up. He left her at the edge of camp, and she devoutly hoped that he was not so fired up that he would charge straight over to his wife's tent because she knew very well who was in there with her. Bitch, she said to herself, and wandered out to watch the last coals of the great fire burn themselves down.
A pair of figures had come there before her, and she paused. 'Sibirin, he is no longer my son,' Sergei Veselov was saying in a cold voice, 'and when Dmitri Mikhailov took him in, that is when I broke with Mikhailov.'
Tess retreated and wandered back through camp, tired but not quite sleepy. Only to see Kirill, with that wonderful, provocative chuckle he had, emerge from Arina Veselov's little tent, pitched far behind her mother's. She stared, too shocked to move, and then, recalling herself, began to hurry away. But he was too quick for her and far too good a scout.
'Tess,' he called in a whisper, and he jogged after her. She had to stop. He came up to her and, glancing round once to see that no one else was about, flung his arms around her and kissed her, laughing.
She pushed him away.
'Tess, what's wrong?' He looked utterly bewildered and a little hurt.
'I'm just tired,' she said crossly. 'Good night.' She walked back to her tent and burrowed in under her blankets, throwing Bakhtiian's blanket outside. Knowing that Kirill had behaved as a jaran man ought did not make it easier to forgive him. Then, chastised by her own sense of justice, she reached outside and pulled the blanket back in again.
In the morning, Petya had gained so much in spirits that Vera actually looked twice at him as he helped Tess saddle Myshla, a task Vera had probably not ordered him to do.
When the time came for them to leave, Tess deliberately waited until everyone else had mounted before calling Petya back and, in front of the assembled jahar and the tribe, giving him the beautiful amber-beaded necklace that Vasil had given her.
'For luck,' she said softly, and kissed him on the cheek.
He flushed bright red but he looked delighted. Vera, caught in the crowd, looked furious. Arina Veselov was smiling with malicious pleasure. And then Tess mounted Myshla, blinking innocently under all their gazes, and drew Myshla into line next to Yuri's mount. For good measure she caught Cha Ishii's eye and acknowledged him with a cool, defiant nod. Bakhtiian made polite farewells, and they left, immediately driven by Bakhtiian's command to an unrelenting pace that kept up until midday.
'Tess, Tess,' said Yuri as they started out at a pace more reasonable for the horses after the break. 'You're wicked, my dear sister. Oh, her face, her face when you did it.'
'Serves her right, the bitch.'
'Well, she wasn't deserted last night, was she?' He screwed up his face, looking disgusted. 'Gods, Ilya hasn't said a word since we left. I hope he and Sergei Veselov didn't argue. They've never been easy together.'
'Perhaps he misses her, Yuri.'
'Oho, you're being nasty today, aren't you? Is it Kirill you're mad at, or is it Ilya? Or both of them?'
'You've gotten full of yourself.'
He laughed. 'I had a pleasant night, Tess. But please, don't argue with me. Petya looked so much better this morning. I don't know what you did-'
'I only talked with him.'
'Still-'
'Yuri.' Bakhtiian drew up beside them. 'North scout. You and Kirill.' Yuri opened his mouth, shut it, and rode away. Bakhtiian kept his horse even with Tess's. He rode at one with the animal, as always, but his back was so stiff that a board could have been nailed there to hold the shape. There was a tight, drawn edge to his mouth, dark smudges of sleeplessness under his eyes. He neither spoke nor looked at her.
They rode on for some time in this manner. Clipped, drying grass rustled under their horses' hooves. A golden brown haze marked the distant hills. His eyes remained fixed on some unmoving point situated just in front of Kriye's head. Now and again an irregularity in the ground interrupted the black's steady pace and she would see Bakhtiian's eyes tighten at the corners and his lips pale from the pain. Still he said nothing.
'Nice day, isn't it?' she asked finally.
His head turned. He fixed her with a stare so turbulent that she almost reined in Myshla to get away from him. 'When my aunt gave you that tent,' he said, his voice so level that a brimful glass would not have spilled a drop if set upon it, 'she expected you would behave properly. If you persist in flaunting your flirtations, especially with married men, so that you lose whatever reputation you have, you will no longer have the right to call it your own.'
'What I'm wondering,' said Tess, smiling, 'is who got the beauty and who got the beast last night. Why don't you come back when you've got something civil to say to me?''
Kriye shifted pace with a slight jolt. Bakhtiian's eyes went almost vacant. The moment passed, and he stared straight at her again.
'This is advice,' he said tonelessly, 'that you had better heed.'
'Had I?' She flipped her braid back over her shoulder with all the blithe unconcern of a very popular girl confronted with the plainest and least interesting of her rivals. 'Forgive me if I choose to consult with Sonia about such matters first.'
He continued to stare at her, his eyes fixed on her face with the intensity of a panther which, hidden in the grass, watches its prey.
'You'd better say what you want right now, Bakhtiian, because I'm going to go find more congenial company.'
His right hand tightened. Slowly, he moved it so that it came to rest on the hilt of his saber.
Her hand was on hers in an instant.
He opened his hand and reclosed it finger by finger around the hilt. 'I don't give advice lightly.'
'No one ever does.' She had tried to keep her tone light and sarcastic. Now she simply lost her temper. 'And how do you-by God! — how do you intend to make me heed your advice?'
She regretted it immediately. The color banished from his cheeks by her comments, he regarded her with the expression of a man who has that instant conceived a diabolical plan. He took his hand off his saber. Fear, receiving no answer to its knock, opened the door and walked in.
'By the gods,' said Ilya. 'I will.' He turned his horse and cantered to the back of the group.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
'Desire when doubled is love, love when doubled is madness.'
She caught Kirill looking at her over the campfire that evening, and he smiled at her, but it was a serious smile and rather sober. She smiled back and then he looked like Kirill again, and he went back to his supper, satisfied. Tess ate slowly, ignoring the Chapalii. But when she rose and walked out onto the plain, she saw a tall, thin, angular form shadowing her far to her right. She went back into camp.
'Walk with me, Yuri,' she said within Kirill's hearing.
Yuri obeyed. 'We're being followed,' he said as soon as they were out of sight of camp.
'I know.' She turned.
'I should have known,' said Yuri, seeing that it was Kirill coming up behind them. 'Somehow, I think I'm
