'What about him?' Valye jerked her chin toward Hyacinth. 'Five times, then, for taking up with him.'
'No,' said Yevgeni in a low voice, not looking toward Hyacinth though he must know that Hyacinth could hear every word they were saying. 'Not for him. You don't understand what it's like to feel shame every time you look at a man with desire, to know you can never speak of your feelings to him. Oh, I thought for a while that Vasil might- but he needed a second in command, he needed men for a jahar, he used his beauty to make me think he might love me, but he never did, and then I felt ashamed for being a fool, for not knowing better. But he never made me feel ashamed. Because he never felt ashamed. That was a gift, Valye, but perhaps you can't understand that.'
Her throat worked. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She had pulled back her hair into a long braid, but the sunlight betrayed how dirty it was. Dirt encrusted the cuffs and hem of her tunic and caked the knees of her trousers and the palms of her hands. Not that Hyacinth was any cleaner. 'I'm sorry,' she said in a low voice. She offered a hand to Yevgeni and he accepted it, and she lifted him up and hugged him. 'You're all that I have, Yevgeni. I won't judge you.'
He smiled tremulously. 'You're the best sister any man ever had, even if you are wild, and won't listen when you ought to.' He kissed her on the cheek. A pang gripped Hyacinth's heart, seeing their true feeling for each other, seeing their bond. Like the one he had once had with the actors in the Company. Was this how Yevgeni felt, riding in the army, as if he was always on the outside looking in?
Yevgeni pushed her away. 'We'd better go. It's never wise to stay in any place too long.'
Except that they already had stayed too long. Or perhaps their fate had been tracking them all along and simply chosen this moment to strike.
One moment, the scene was all silence. It was bleak, true enough, but there was hope in the way the path wound up into the heights, suggesting freedom in the distance, and hope in the way Yevgeni turned and with a shy smile glanced toward Hyacinth and away, as if he flirted with him. Then he stopped in mid-stride. His expression shifted abruptly. He canted his head to one side, listening. Hyacinth heard something, a gentle ring, the echo of a sound like a voice's echo. Yevgeni drew his saber. Valye pulled her bow from its quiver. It was already strung; it was always strung. Hyacinth stared.
'Mount.' Yevgeni sprinted toward him.
Hyacinth heard a whoof, like air being expelled; heard the ring of bridle; heard the shout. Yevgeni called a warning. It all took place in a vast sink of time, drawn out so excruciatingly slowly that to experience it was painful. Valye staggered forward in the act of fitting an arrow to her bowstring. She half turned to raise and aim at the sudden clot of khaja riders on the ridge above them, but a strange shadow cut across her.
Two arrows stuck out of her back. She shot anyway. She shot again as the riders charged down toward them, and a man toppled from his horse. Yevgeni scrambled onto his horse and swung round to go back to her. His horse stumbled and staggered and crumpled to the ground, pierced through the neck with a mass of arrows. Thrown, Yevgeni tumbled down, landing at Valye's feet. She shot again. An arrow skewered her in the thigh. Still she did not go down. A trio of arrows pinned Yevgeni to the ground, but he tore free of them and struggled up to stand next to her.
They were going to die.
Then Hyacinth remembered his knife. What did he care what prohibitions he broke? He drew it and raised it and fired. He saw nothing but a shimmering in the air. But the effect was stunning, and immediate. Twelve riders closed in on them, a thirteenth left back on the ground with an arrow in his chest. Twelve khaja men fell like stones from their saddles. That fast. The horses faltered. One went down. The other horses pulled up short not six paces in front of Yevgeni, riderless, confused, and probably half stunned themselves by the concussion.
'Gods!' cried Valye, whether from her wounds or from astonishment Hyacinth could not know. She collapsed to the ground at Yevgeni's feet.
'Hyacinth, look after her!' Yevgeni cried. He ran forward, drawing his knife in his other hand, and knelt by the foremost khaja bandit. 'Gods, he's still breathing. So is he!' He glanced back toward Hyacinth, looking suspicious, looking apprehensive. Then, methodically, gruesomely, he slit each man's throat.
Hyacinth roused himself out of his stupor and dropped the reins and ran over to Valye. Mercifully, she was unconscious. Blood bubbled out of her mouth, welling in and out in time to her labored breathing. Hyacinth fumbled in the med kit and brought out the scanner and ran it over her. Then he flipped over his slate and read the results into it. They flashed RED RED RED: condition critical; advise moving subject to urgent care facility immediately; wounds to deep tissue in thigh; damage to internal organs; right lung has been pierced; do you wish a more detailed diagnosis?
'No,' said Hyacinth.
'She's going to die, isn't she?' said Yevgeni. Hyacinth jumped, startled, and turned. Yevgeni limped up to him. He bled from his leg, from his arm, and from a gash to his head. 'What is that?' He pointed with his bloodstained knife to the open slate.
'It's a hemi-modeler. Maybe you'd know it as a computer. Never mind. It doesn't matter what it is. Do you know how to get those arrows out?'
Yevgeni shrugged, staring at his young sister. 'Yes, but it doesn't matter. I've seen wounds. She's breathing blood. It's got her in the lungs. She won't live.'
'She can, if I can get help.'
Yevgeni gave him a look of complete incomprehension and then knelt beside Valye and began the slow process of turning the arrows out of her wounds. Blood gushed. Hyacinth had to turn away before he threw up. He grabbed his slate and went and crouched beside the horses. He lifted the knife, and held it up so that it could read his retinal print, and then he released its code. For five minutes, he knew, it would pulse silently, broadcasting the distress signal. He tried to gauge how long it would take for them to get a ship here. Could they get one here soon enough to save Valye?
'The horses,' said Yevgeni.
Hyacinth hobbled their horses, caught the strays and as many of the others as he could, and hobbled them as well.
Yevgeni's horse-well, it was suffering, that much was apparent.
'Kill it,' said Yevgeni.
What choice did he have? Force Yevgeni to leave his sister? The rider had two of the arrows out, by now, but the third came slowly, spiraling out along its tracks on the silk undershirt she wore, driven into the wound. Hyacinth hadn't a clue how to kill a horse. He used his knife to stun it into oblivion and hoped it would bleed to death before it woke up. Then he went back to Yevgeni and ran the scan over him. He set the med kit out and queried the modeler about first aid, and the slate began a stream of directions to him in clear Anglais.
Yevgeni started so badly that he almost twitched the arrow still lodged in Valye's side. He swore, and then again, seeing that Hyacinth wasn't speaking. He went white. 'What is that?' He was terrified. 'Who is that speaking?'
'Trust me,' said Hyacinth. 'Just trust me. Take that arrow out.' Listening to the directions, Hyacinth did as well as he could with the equipment in the med kit. He used a sonic cleaner to sterilize the various wounds and an antibiotic spray to prevent infection. The seamer stitched up Yevgeni's head wound, sealing it, and his leg wound as well, and Valye's thigh wound, but there was nothing he could do about the internal damage. He ran the emergency pulse again, or so he hoped; he could not hear anything. Yevgeni was in shock by this time. He stumbled away from Hyacinth and began to gather wood for a fire, refusing to be deflected from this task, so Hyacinth set up his tent by himself. They carried Valye into it and laid her on the floor. She did not regain consciousness. Her breath bubbled and subsided. Night fell. No one came.
All that long night Yevgeni sat beside her. Hyacinth set up the lantern, not caring now if its constant, fireless glow amazed Yevgeni, but Yevgeni sat so sunk in grief that he did not seem to care. Valye breathed. Night passed. No one came.
She died at dawn, slipping peacefully out of herself and away. Yevgeni readied the fire, evidently not caring that it would provide a beacon for any other khaja bandits passing by. He dressed her carefully and folded her hands over her chest; he laid her on the fire, and lit it. It blazed up. Soon smoke and flames concealed her from their view. Yevgeni flung himself on the ground and keened. He threw off his shirt and slashed himself with his knife, over and over, along his arms and on his chest. Blood, like tears, washed him.
Hyacinth stared at his transmitter. No one had come. They had abandoned him.
Morning passed. The pyre burned. The sun rose to its zenith, reminding Hyacinth bitterly that exactly one day
