'David!' The voice made him wince. He spun, to see that he had not been paying attention well enough. If he had seen her coming, he would have fled. She grinned down at him from her seat on her horse. Dusk shadowed her, but she seemed cheerful enough. 'Walking sentry duty tonight?' she asked. If she knew that her husband rode herd on the horses close by, she gave no sign of it. 'I just spoke with the prince. I don't suppose, since he insisted, that I can refuse the honor of a celebration given by him.'
'You don't want a celebration for your marriage?' David asked.
She shrugged and turned her face to one side. She had a fine profile, sharp and distinctive. He watched as her mouth twitched down into a frown, watched her rein herself in, watched her lips straighten and assume a smile again. 'It's fitting,' she said at last, in a toneless voice, 'that a marriage should be celebrated with a feast and dancing and drink. I don't suppose we can have dancing; there aren't enough women. And there's scarcely enough interesting food for a feast. But the prince promises a rare wine, that he wishes to share in honor of the marriage. That's generous of him.'
'Well,' said David awkwardly, 'we all like you, Dina.'
Her gaze flashed to him, and away. She wasn't usually so coy. 'You all like me,' she said softly, 'and pity me for what has happened.' Abruptly, she reined her horse aside and rode away, out toward the sentry line.
David watched her go. He swore under his breath and walked back to camp.
The next day they camped in the late afternoon on the outskirts of a burned-out village that huddled up against the low hills. The vast gap of land-more than a valley, less than a plateau-through which they rode on their way south to the Habakar heartlands spread out around them, bounded by steep hills to the east and west and mountains to the south. Rajiv calculated that the actor had made his camp 9.4 kilometers away from them, up in the western foothills. He mapped out a path from the village to the signal emitted by the actor's transmitter.
Charles poured the wine himself, pressing the jaran riders to drink from the bottles Jo had spiked. David managed to swallow his ill-feeling long enough to participate in one toast to the happy couple. Then he left the party and went out to the horse lines.
'Go on,' he said to the young man standing guard. 'I'll watch tonight.' The rider hesitated. They could both hear the distant sound of lusty singing. 'I can't stomach the celebration,' added David, appealing to the other man's sympathies, 'since I-well, you know. Now she's married to another man.'
The rider's expression softened. 'Well, and you being khaja and all, I don't suppose you'd any hope to marry her, since she's Bakhtiian's niece. If you don't mind… Just a sip, and then I'll come back.'
David waved at him to go on. Then he waited. He set me perimeter alert on his knife and paced up and down the lines. The singing grew louder and less tuneful, then quieted, and finally ceased altogether. Eventually, about two hours after midnight, Marco and Charles appeared. They saddled up four horses and slung packs on two of the pack animals; at Morava, they had loaded two of the animals with packs filled with extra odds and ends, so that once they made the pickup there wouldn't seem to be any change in the amount of gear they carried. Then they set off.
Once out of sight of camp, leading the horses, they switched on lanterns to light their way. The steady glare lent a gray color to the landscape as they wound their way up into the hills. Rajiv had coded a pathfinder into Charles's slate, and it guided them up dried-out streambeds and along the curve of the hills, gradually working up into the wilderness. A few wild animals tripped their perimeter alerts. Otherwise, nothing stirred. The isolation mirrored David's mood.
Just before dawn, with a faint glow rising in the east, they led their train down a defile and halted in the shadow of a copse of trees. With a word, Marco shut off their lamps, shuttering them in the half light of dawn. Beyond the trees, set out on a rocky slope, stood a tent. An off-world tent, that much was obvious by its cut and weave and by the tracery of filaments woven into the canvas, shining like dew-laden spiderwebs against the khaki fabric.
Marco cast a glance down at his slate, hanging open from his belt. 'There'a perimeter alert activated inside the tent. We've already triggered it.'
'Let's wait a moment,' said Charles. 'We've no guarantee that some bandit hasn't murdered Hyacinth and stolen his gear.'
David winced. No matter how stupid the actor had been, David could not believe that he deserved such an awful fate. He glanced at Charles, but in the dim light could not read Charles's expression-if indeed Charles let any emotion show at all on his face, anymore. 'It's true we ignored the emergency signal that came- what? — weeks ago,' he muttered. 'We don't know what happened to him after that, or if he even survived.'
'You know very well, David, that we couldn't send a shuttle down cold, without marking the ground first. He chose his exile. He knows what it means, that Rhui is interdicted. Marco. Alert the shuttle. I think this is an isolated enough spot for a safe landing.' Charles surveyed the sky, lightening ever more in the east, and then looked directly at David. 'You were going to say something?'
'You're a damned hypocrite, Charles.'
Charles nodded, looking thoughtful. 'It's true. So often people in my position are. I wonder if there's any remedy for it? I condemn that poor boy for a crime that I then turn around and commit myself.'
'Doesn't it bother you?'
'I do what I must.'
'Shhh,' hissed Marco. 'Someone's coming out of the tent.'
They watched as a man dressed in jaran clothing emerged from the tent, wary, holding his saber in front of him. He glanced all round and then stared straight at the copse of trees, although surely he couldn't see them. Perhaps he could hear or smell the horses. A moment later another man ducked out of the tent, holding a knife in his left hand.
'I don't recognize either of them,' said David in an undertone. The second man wore a dirty tunic over dirty trousers. What color the clothes had once been was impossible to tell. The man's hair was a coarse muddy blond.
'Look at those eyes,' said Marco in an undertone. 'I think that's Hyacinth. None of the natives in these parts have the epicanthic folds.'
David stared, trying desperately to match his memory of Hyacinth with this filthy, coarse-looking man. He looked altered beyond imagining from the glamorous, golden-haired actor who had played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream with such athletic and sensual flair. Then the man flipped open his slate and keyed into it. Lights flashed, and a sudden image projected out from the screen, suspended in midair. It was a heat projection of the surrounding area, betraying their presence. The man's jaran companion did not even start at this sorcerous apparition.
'What the hell?' muttered Marco. 'It looks like he's already broken the interdiction.'
'Call down the shuttle,' said Charles to Marco. He took five steps forward, out into the open, and raised his voice. 'I'm looking for the actor known as Hyacinth, legal name, Sven Rajput Nguyen.'
The man with the slate jerked his head around at the sound of Charles's voice. He staggered forward three steps and then collapsed onto his knees, signing himself with the Goddess's circle of grace. 'Oh, Goddess,' he wept. 'Oh, Goddess. I thought we would never find you.'
Charles gestured to David and Marco, and they came out onto the slope, the horses and pack animals behind them. Light rose in the defile. The sun had come up, although it had not yet breached the high walls to glare down on them directly. Hyacinth struggled to his feet, ran forward, and threw himself prostrate on the gravel in front of Charles.
The first thing David noticed, even from two meters away, was the smell. Hyacinth stank like he hadn't had a bath in months, or even changed his clothes.
Charles knelt and raised the young man up gently. Behind, by the tent, the jaran rider stood and watched, his expression guarded. He did not sheathe his saber.
'I knew that if we kept riding north, we'd come to you. I knew you wouldn't abandon us. I told Yevgeni that you'd rescue us. Oh, Goddess, why couldn't you have heard the transmitter? Maybe you could have saved Valye.' Hyacinth babbled on, one grimy hand gripping the sleeve of Charles's shirt as if he never meant to let it go-
Marco walked up beside them and pried Hyacinth loose. 'You look the worse for the wear,' he said mildly, letting go of the other man as soon as he had freed Charles.
'I hate this planet,' said Hyacinth with a hatred so implacable that his tone sent a shiver down David's back. 'I want to go home.'
