Why, I'm relieved to see that you're flawed like the rest of us. Even if it's only with so common a sin as hypocrisy.'
'How dare you laugh at me!' He looked livid with anger.
'Because you won't laugh at yourself. Someone must. Since I'm your wife, I've been granted that dubious honor.'
'The gods do not grant their gifts lightly, Tess,' he said stiffly, 'and with that gift comes a burden.'
'Yes, a burden greater than that any other person has to bear. I'm well aware of it. I'm aware of it constantly, and it's beginning to weary me. It may even be true, but that still doesn't mean that you're any different than the rest of us. That you're any better.'
'No,' he said softly, still not looking at her, 'I am worse.'
'Oh, Ilya.' This time when she leaned across to touch him, he sat motionless under her hands, neither responding to her nor retreating from her. As he had with Vasil. 'You must know that I don't think it's wrong for you to love him. Only that I-' She hesitated. Their bed was a wild landscape of rumpled blankets, stripes and patterns muted in the lantern light, of furs thrown into topographical relief, mountains and valleys and long ridges and the far mound of her toes, of pillows, one shoved up against the far wall, two flung together at the head of the bed, more scattered beyond Ilya, and of his clothing, littering the carpet beyond. One boot listed against a stray pillow. His belt curled around the other boot, snaring it.
He said nothing, but his silence was expectant, and courageous, too; how easily he might think it would be natural for her to repudiate him, based on the morals of his culture, faced with what she now knew of him.
'He's just so damned beautiful,' she said at last, afraid to say it, 'that I can't help but think that-that anyone would love him more than… me…' She faltered.
'Tess!' He spun back to her, upsetting her balance. She tumbled over and landed on her back, half laughing, half shocked, in the middle of the bed. 'You're jealous of him!'
'Why shouldn't I be?' she demanded, rolling up onto her side. He rested on his elbows a handbreadth from her, staring astonished at her. 'You've known him a long time, much longer than you've known me. It's obvious you still love him. All that keeps you apart is that the jaran don't recognize, don't accept, that kind of love.'
'That is not all that keeps us apart, my heart,' he replied gravely, but humor glinted in his eyes as well. 'I loved him with a boy's awkward, headlong passion. But you,' his gaze had the intensity of fire on a bitter cold night. 'You I love like…' He shook his head, impatient with words. When he spoke again, he spoke in his autocratic tone, one that brooked no disagreement. 'You, I love.' As if daring her to take issue with the statement or the nakedly clear emotion that burned off of him.
Tess was wise enough simply to warm herself in the blaze, and vain enough to be gratified by it. She had heard what she had hoped to hear, and she knew him well enough by now to know he spoke the truth. Vasil was certainly more beautiful than she was, or could hope to be, but he was also the most self-centered person she had ever met. And she suspected that Vasil's attraction to Ilya was likely not so much to Ilya as a person, as Ilya, but to Ilya as the gods-touched child, to Bakhtiian, the man with fire in his heart and a vision at the heart of his spirit.
'Still,' she asked suddenly, 'if it was possible, would that tempt you? A triad marriage?'
He rolled his eyes and sat up, sighing with exasperation. 'All you women ever think about is lying with men.' He surveyed the remains of the bed with disgust and rose and set to work straightening out the blankets and placing the pillows back in their appointed spots.
'But would it?'
His lips twitched. 'I don't know,' he said at last, flinging the last stray pillow at her, which she caught. He picked up his boots and his belt and folded his clothes in exactly die same order and with the same precise corners that he always folded them. She admired him from this angle, the clean lines of his body, the length of thigh, his flat belly and what lay below, the curve of his shoulders, his lips, the dark shadow of his luxuriant hair, tipped with sweat. He was a little thin yet, from the sickness, but that would pass. He sank down beside her, cross-legged, and considered her with a frown. 'Does it tempt you?'
She sat up as well and shrugged. 'Not really. I wonder if there's anything there, in him, past his undoubted beauty. Tell me about him.'
He considered her. After a moment he slid in under the blankets and covered them both up. She lay on her right side, angling one leg up over his legs. But her belly, not yet large enough to need a pillow for support, still needed something. She shifted and grimaced; he turned by degrees until she found a comfortable position. She sighed and slid her shoulder in under his arm and rested her head on his warm shoulder. He lay on his back, with one hand tucked under his head and the other curled up around her back, fingers delicate on her skin.
'I was a singularly unattractive boy,' he said at last, musing. 'I was awkward. I was a dreamer, and I had strange ideas and stranger curiosities. I was also afflicted with-' He sighed. She had one hand tucked down under her belly, knuckles brushing his hip; her other hand rested on his chest, so she felt the force of the sigh under her fingers. '-very sudden and very strong desires, that winter, and no girl in any tribe we met that season had the least interest in me. Why should they? I was odd, and ugly. Then Vasil arrived. We were both passionate in our youthful desires.'
'What was yours? Or was it only-'
He chuckled. 'No, no, it was both. The physical craving was strong enough, but never as strong as the other I wanted to know everything.'
'Then what was Vasil's?'
'I suppose I was. Vasil was radiant. He was beautiful. Girls followed him. They asked him everything they never asked me. They paid him as much attention as they paid the young men who had made a name for themselves riding with the jahar. I don't know why he chose me.'
'Perhaps he saw what you would become.'
Silence shuttered them. Tess felt as if she could hear the sound of the blankets settling in around them, caving in with excruciating slowness to fill the empty space left by the curves and angles of their intertwined bodies.
'He believed in me when no one else did,' said Ilya, almost wonderingly, as if that moment of revelation, of the adolescent boy revealing with reckless daring his wild vision only to find that his listener did not scorn or laugh but rather embraced him, had set its mark so fast and deep upon his spirit that it had branded him forever.
'Not even your father?'
'My father rode out a lot in those days. He was a Singer. The gods called him at strange times, on strange journeys.'
'Your sister?'
'Natalia's first husband had just been killed in a feud with the Boradin tribe, while she was still pregnant with her first child.'
'Was that Nadine?'
'Yes. Oh, Natalia was fond enough of me, and kind to me, considering what an embarrassment I must have been to her, but she was busy and preoccupied. Riders were already beginning to come round, to see what they could see of her, to ask if she was ready to marry again.'
'But, Ilya, women have no choice in marriage.'
He tilted his head to look directly at her. His lips quirked up. 'Nor should they,' he said, and grinned. Then he yelped, because she pinched him.
'That for you, and don't think I'll ever forgive you for taking me down the avenue without me knowing what it meant, either.'
'Perhaps it was rash-'
'Perhaps!'
'But, by the gods, I'd do it again. Tess.' He pressed her against him, as close as he might, and kissed her long and searchingly.
There came a cough. There stood Vasil, framed in the entrance by curtain and striped wall. 'If you will talk about me, then I wish you'd do so in a language I can understand. And, Ilya, my love, I don't know how you can expect me to leave here unseen if you post guards at the entrance to your tent.'
Ilya swore.
'Wait,' said Tess in khush. 'Ilya, it's true he can't get out by the front entrance without being seen. They all
