'Nothing.' He shook his head. Tess watched, curious. She had never seen Vasil at a loss for words before.
'You're sorry you weren't there,' said Ilya in a low voice, 'and you're sorry to think that I might have a life with my own wife that doesn't include you.'
Vasil did not reply. He rose and dressed without saying anything at all. Tess could tell that he was troubled. She watched him dress, unable not to admire his body and the way he moved and stood with full awareness that someone-in this case she-was watching him. She could feel that Ilya watched him, too, but she knew it was prudent not to turn to look. Vasil did not look at either of them. He pulled on his boots and bent to kiss her. Then he stood and skirted the pillows, only to pause on the other side, beside Ilya. Tess rolled over.
The light shone full on Vasil's face. 'Are you sorry I came here tonight?' he asked, his attention so wholly on Ilya that Tess wondered if Vasil had forgotten she was there.
Ilya regarded him steadily. 'No.' His gaze flicked toward Tess and away. His voice dropped to a whisper.' No, I'm not sorry.' Vasil knelt abruptly and leaned forward and kissed him. Lingered, kissing him, because Ilya made no move, neither encouraging him nor rejecting him, just accepted it.
Simple, ugly jealousy stabbed through Tess. And like salt in the wound, the brush of arousal.
Ilya shifted and suddenly he changed. All this night he had been astonishingly passive, going along with the choice Tess and Vasil had made as if he followed some long-set pattern, pursued acquiescing to his pursuer. As if that was how it had been before, between him and Vasil. Now he placed a hand on Vasil's chest and gently, with finality, pushed him away. 'But it can't happen again,' he said quietly. 'You know that.'
Startled, Vasil glared at him. 'Why not? She said there were marriages like this, in that khaja land.' He reached out to Ilya's face and splayed his fingers along the line of Ilya's jaw. With his thumb, he traced the diagonal scar up Ilya's cheek. 'You are the only man marked for marriage in all the tribes.'
'Oh, God,' said Tess, recalling that moment vividly now. 'And I was wearing your clothes and using your saber when I did it.'
'So it is true,' said Vasil triumphantly. 'Can you deny it?'
Ilya closed a hand over Vasil's wrist and drew Vasil's hand away from his face, then released it. 'It is also true that not twelve days ago a rider named Yevgeni Usova was banished from the army for lying with another man, with one of the actors. Shall I judge myself less severely than he was judged?'
'I was sorry to hear about Yevgeni,' said Vasil carelessly. 'But he was stupid enough to get caught.'
'So we are to be allowed to continue as long as we are not caught? I think not, Vasil. I must be more holy than the riders I command, not less. Nothing else is just.'
Vasil looked annoyed, as if he had not expected this turn of events. 'So that is why after your family was killed, after the tribes agreed to follow you, you threw me out? That is why you stopped getting drunk? I remember after you came back from Jeds, how many women used to ask you to their beds and how very often you went. It is true, what I heard later, that you rarely lay with women afterward? After your family was killed? After I was banished? Were you punishing yourself? Is there a single piece of gold in this tent from any of the khaja cities your army has conquered? Once you questioned everything, you demanded to know why the jaran had to live as our grandmothers and grandfathers and their grandparents had lived, as the First Tribes had lived. Now you are the most conservative of all. Do you know who you remind me of? You remind me of the man who killed your mother and sister. You remind me of Khara Roskhel.'
For an instant Ilya's anger blazed off him so strongly that he seemed to add light to the room. Then, as suddenly, he jerked his head to one side, to stare at the curtained wall that separated the inner from the outer chamber. 'He was pure,' he said in a low voice.
'And you are not? Because of me?' Vasil's tone was scathing.
Ilya hesitated. Tess had a sudden instinct that Ilya wanted to say 'Yes, because of you,' but that because he did not believe it himself, he could not bring himself to lie.
'Roskhel always supported you, Ilya,' said Vasil, his voice dropping. 'When we got to the great gathering of tribes, that summer eleven years ago, when we rode in to the encampment, he supported you. And then, the day you stood up in front of the elders of the tribes to tell them of your vision, he was gone. What happened there to turn him against you? Did he and your mother quarrel?'
The silence following this question became so profound that Tess heard, from outside, the bleating of startled goats. Tess realized that she was cold, and she wrapped a blanket around her torso. Vasil did not move, staring at Ilya.
'Yes,' said Ilya in a clipped tone. He would not look at either of them. 'Go, Vasil. You must go.'
'Ilya.' Vasil extended a hand toward Ilya, tentatively, like a supplicant. The gesture seemed odd in him, and yet, seeing it, Tess felt heartened. 'You have always had such great visions, ever since you were a boy. What I want seems so small beside it.'
'Yet what you want is impossible.'
'It is because I'm dyan? I'll give it back to Anton. I never wanted it except to get close to you.'
'You know that's not the reason.'
'But I have children, and a wife. You have a wife, and soon you'll have children as well. What is to stop us continuing on like this?'
'You will never understand, Vasil. Only what I granted to the gods and to the jaran, that I lead us to the ends of the earth if need be, if that is our destiny. You aren't part of that vision. You can't be, by our own laws. I banished you once. I've already made that choice. Don't force me to do it again. Because I will.'
'Damn you.' Vasil rose abruptly, anger hot in his face. 'I would have made a different choice.'
Ilya's weight of authority lent him dignity and a sheer magnitude of presence that so eclipsed Vasil's beauty and charisma that Tess suddenly understood the desperate quality in Vasil's love for Ilya. 'You are not me. The gods have touched me. Through my father and my mother, the gods chose to bring me here, so that I might act as their instrument. My first duty will always be to their calling.'
'What about her?' Vasil asked bitterly, gesturing with a jerk of his head toward Tess.
'Tess knows the worth of my love for her.'
'Yes,' said Tess in a quiet voice, seeing how Ilya's shoulders trembled with emotion, and fatigue. 'I do know the worth of his love for me. Vasil, you know what the answer is. You must have always known it. Why couldn't you have taken this night as a gift and let it go?'
She could not tell if Vasil heard her. But then, whenever Ilya was near him, the greatest part of his attention had always been reserved for Bakhtiian, no matter how much he might seem to be playing to others. 'Let it be my curse to you, then,' said Vasil, 'that you always know that I have always and will always love you more than anything.' He spun on his heel and strode out, thrusting the curtain aside so roughly that it tumbled back into place behind him.
'Oh, gods,' said Ilya, not moving. He watched the curtain sway.
'You don't think he'll try to get caught on purpose-?'
'No. He knows I'll have to kill him. Whatever he may say, he loves his own life more than he loves me.'
'Ilya.' She reached for him. He flinched away from her. She stopped dead, and then pulled back her hand. He had never rejected her before, not like this. God, what if he really did love Vasil more than he loved her? What if she had misinterpreted the brief scene played out between them? But watching him as he sat there strung as tight as a bow, edged as sharp as any saber, she knew beyond anything else that he hurt. His pain distressed her more than the knowledge-which could no longer be denied- that he did in fact love Vasil and had for many years. Ilya was not rejecting her; he was rejecting himself, and thus anything that loved him and might yet scorn him for what he had revealed himself to be.
'I'm a damned hypocrite,' he said in Rhuian. The curtain had ceased swaying, but he still stared at it.
Tess made a brief laugh in her throat. 'Ah, Bakhtiian returns to the lands of the mortals. How unique you are. I'm sure you're the only person afflicted with hypocrisy.'
He twisted around to glare at her. 'You don't understand what that means!'
'What? That you're not perfect? But I've known that for a long time.' She could see by his expression that she was offending him, so she continued gleefully. 'Of course! Why didn't I ever see it before? Yuri always said so, that you thought you had to be the best. Kirill said it, too: that you always had to win. I didn't see then that it also meant that you had to be the purest one, the one with no flaws, no stain on your spirit, the one who never committed the slightest offense or the least impolite exchange. Do you know how boring that kind of person is?
