had passed since they had halted here before. The bodies of the dead khaja still lay on the ground, ravaged by night stalkers. Insects swarmed them. A bird circled down and settled with lazy grace on the corpse farthest from the horses. It began to feed. Soon another bird joined it.
Hyacinth walked forward and touched Yevgeni on the neck. 'Yevgeni,' he said softly, not trusting the other man not to jump up and threaten him with that knife. At least Yevgeni had stopped mutilating himself, though blood still seeped from the cuts scored all over his skin. 'Shouldn't we move on? What if they come back? If someone else comes?'
'Ah, gods,' said Yevgeni, his voice hoarse with rage and sorrow, 'she trusted me. When did I bring her anything but grief?'
Hyacinth winced. Yevgeni's desolation was a palpable thing, like a blow. Yevgeni stared at the fire that consumed his sister's body. If he even noticed Hyacinth's hand on his neck, he gave no sign of it. 'Yevgeni, we should ride on. What if there are others around here?'
'What does it matter? Grandmother Night will have her revenge on us in the end.' His voice sounded hollow and lifeless. 'We killed her holy messengers, and the only punishment for that crime is death. It has already begun. Valye is dead. What does it matter if we die, too?'
Yevgeni had given up. Hyacinth shut his eyes. 'Yevgeni, listen to me. I don't believe in grandmother night. I'm not going to die, not for grandmother night, not for you, and not for them!' He opened his eyes, shocked at his own vehemence. But it was true; now that they had lost everything, now that he had been abandoned by his own people, now he refused to give up.
Yevgeni lifted his head. His eyes were glazed, but a sudden gleam of fear lit them. 'You mustn't speak of her with such disrespect,' he said, but with no force behind the comment.
'And risk what? Valye is already dead. What else is there but our own lives? I'm going on, and you're coming with me.' Hyacinth did not know what else to do, except to keep moving. Yevgeni rose, stiff with pain and drying cuts, but he would not let Hyacinth clean his wounds. Face drawn, he pulled his shirt on over the raw cuts. He hesitated. The pyre burned steadily now, but Hyacinth was not sure how much of Valye's body would actually be consumed by the time it went out. He didn't intend to wait around to see what khaja locals the fire attracted.
'Yevgeni, come on.'
Yevgeni obeyed numbly. They strung the khaja horses on with the rest and set off northeast, up the valley.
That night, Hyacinth downed two birds with his knife and brought them back to camp. Yevgeni sat slumped over his knees, apathetic now in his grief. Hyacinth sighed and stared at the two birds. He steeled himself, going off a few paces away from the safety of the hobbled horses, and he began the disgusting, messy work of preparing them for supper. He hadn't a clue what to do with them. He plucked at the feathers, but they wouldn't come out cleanly. He had to hack and tear at the skin and peel it off entirely. It was horrible. He cut off their heads and feet, swore copiously, gutted them, and threw up once at the smell and sticky texture of the fluids that gushed out of them. But he did it.
Yevgeni just sat there. Hyacinth got out the little solar powered oven he had stolen from the Company's camp and roasted the two birds in it. That wasn't so bad, since the oven had all kinds of timing devices built into it according to weight and type of meat. He also heated water to boiling and while the meat cooked, he took a cloth and dabbed the cuts on Yevgeni's back with hot water. Yevgeni let him do it. He was otherwise listless. He shivered, and Hyacinth hoped that he wasn't going to get some kind of infection. He brought out the scanner again and ran it over Yevgeni, and the med program on his slate advised him to use the antiseptic mist.
'What are you doing?' Yevgeni asked at last, roused out of his stupor by the stinging of the mist.
'Keeping you well. Roasting some meat.'
But Yevgeni wouldn't eat when Hyacinth brought him the roasted fowl.
Hyacinth crouched beside him and took Yevgeni's chin in his hand. 'They've all abandoned you, Yevgeni, don't you see that? So what does it matter what you do?'
'It matters to the gods.'
'Well, I don't believe in your gods. How did those twelve men fall off their horses?'
For the first time since Valye's death, Yevgeni lifted his gaze to look directly at Hyacinth. 'I don't know,' he whispered.
'I did that, and you know I'm no fighter.'
'You're a Singer. A shaman. Perhaps you know sorcery.'
'It's not sorcery either. Listen, Yevgeni. Maybe we have a way out of this. Do you know where the shrine of Morava is? Maybe Soerensen is still there.'
The glaze of dullness that stiffened Yevgeni's expression lightened slightly. 'Who is Soerensen?'
'The Prince of Jeds. If we can find him-'
'He would help us?' Yevgeni shook his head. 'He can't help us. No woman or man can, now that Grandmother Night has settled her terrible gaze on us.'
'Yes, he can. He's more powerful than grandmother night.'
'Don't say that!' Yevgeni shrank away from him.
'But it's true. I made those men fall down, with this knife. I can heal your wounds with these simple instruments. That box is an oven that baked this meat without fire. I'm more powerful than grandmother night. Let me show you something.'
He brought out his slate and unfolded it, so that it lay flat on the ground. In silence, Yevgeni watched. 'Do you remember the jaran tale we sang? The one about Mekhala, the woman who brought horses to the jaran?'
Yevgeni lowered his eyes. 'Yes.' He said it as if something shamed him about the memory. 'I was with Valye. She liked to see your people's singing.'
'Run Mekhala folktale, scene two. Meter field.'
In scene two, Hyacinth played the khaja prince who had come to demand tribute from the rhan, as the jaran tribes had called themselves before they had gotten horses and become ja-rhan, the people of the wind. Above the slate, about a meter cubed, the play unfolded: Anahita as Mekhala and Diana as her sister, Hyacinth entering as the prince with his retinue of Quinn and Oriana.
Yevgeni stared openmouthed at the image, moving, playing out. He reached out and snatched his hand back before he touched it. 'Sorcery,' he murmured.
'No, it's not sorcery. It's a-oh, hell, there's no way to explain it to you. Run image of Morava.'
The image melted away and re-formed into the gorgeous dome and towers of the Chapalii palace the jaran called Morava. Hyacinth had not seen Morava except through this program, and he was delighted to be able to pace around it and see the complex from all angles. He envied the duke's party for experiencing it firsthand.
'But how did it get so small?' Yevgeni demanded. 'How did you capture it and bring it here?'
'It's just an image, Yevgeni, not the shrine itself. Look, do you know what a map is? Let me see. Maybe I can reconstruct where we left the army, and where we are now. It's been thirty-five days since we left camp and if we've ridden northeast… Goddess. I should have paid more attention in cartography tutorial.'
'But no one is more powerful than Grandmother Night,' said Yevgeni suddenly. 'Even seeing these things and what you did to those khaja bandits, still… She attends us at our birth and grants us a measure of days in which to live. She is the One with whom we may bargain for gifts, if we're willing to risk the bargaining, if we're desperate enough. She is death, Hyacinth. No person can escape death.'
'How old do you think the Prince of Jeds is?'
Yevgeni shrugged. 'Of an age with Bakhtiian, I suppose.'
'He isn't. He's older than Mother Sakhalin.'
'He can't be.'
'He is. Why would I lie to you? Dr. Hierakis is older than he is. Owen is in his seventies, too, and Ginny is at least as old as that. Yet they are still young. My great-grandmother Nguyen is one hundred and sixteen years old, and I can expect to live at least as long as she has and stay young until I'm ninety or so. Grandmother night doesn't scare us. You've got to believe me, Yevgeni. You've got to want to believe me, you've got to want to live. If we can make it to the shrine, if we can find the duke-'
Yevgeni reached up abruptly and touched Hyacinth's cheek. 'That's when I fell in love with you,' he said in a low voice. 'When I saw that song, the song you did about Mekhala. Valye said you were really the khaja prince and that it was a wind demon truly drawn down to walk among us, but I knew you were just a person singing two
