'Diana? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the stupid things I said to you. I'm sorry you hurt now.'
It took only a half step to move into his embrace, because his momentum still carried him forward into hers. They kissed.
Diana ceased feeling the cold, or the night breeze, or anything except his hands on her back, and her thigh and hip pressed up against his, and the unsteady catch of his breathing against her chest. She was warm everywhere.
A dull ache prodded her ankle. After a moment, she identified it. One of the guide ropes of her tent cut across the skin. She shifted and, shifting, Marco sighing and gathering her back into him, she heard the distant echo of bells. Messenger bells. What if they brought news of Anatoly?
'Marco,' she murmured into his lips. He drew his head back and lifted a hand to cup her chin.
'Golden fair,' he whispered.
'I can't.' It hurt, not the movement, because she moved gently, but the cold and the emptiness. 'I can't, Marco. You must know that I want to, but I can't.'
'Because you love him?' His voice cracked on the word 'love.'
She could not reply.
'Do you?' he demanded.
She could not say yes. She could not say no. She said nothing.
'If you don't know by now- Goddess, Diana, any fool could see that you only married him to get back at me or at best because you were infatuated with the idea of marrying a romantic native prince.'
She flared, angry and embarrassed together. 'Whatever it was,' she said, stumbling over the words, 'I just feel that I have to stay loyal to Anatoly until I know what's going to happen to him, and to me.'
'Well, then,' he pressed on stubbornly, 'jaran women take lovers. It's accepted-it's even expected-in their culture.'
'I know that now. And it's no wonder, if the men are always off riding for months at a time. I'm not surprised that they take lovers when they're always left behind. But I'm not jaran. I don't want to be jaran. I have to do what's true to me. It isn't you I'm rejecting, Marco. Please tell me you see that.'
'Then if you don't want to be jaran, why in hell did you marry him?' He flinched away from her suddenly. 'Oh, hell. I'm sorry,' It hurt her worse to see him in pain than it had to feel herself alone again, not knowing if Anatoly would even return before she left. He dipped his chin down, like he was containing words he wished to say but refused to say. 'I will respect your decision. I'll stay away from you.'
'I didn't mean- Don't feel you have to stay away from me. At least come to see me. We can talk.'
'Don't you understand, Diana? I love you. I can't pretend to be your friend. I can hardly stand to be this close to you as it is.'
Diana had never imagined that Marco Burckhardt might be vulnerable. He had always seemed so self- contained, so confident. It shook her horribly to see him wounded.
'Good-bye,' he said, and he walked away.
'Marco! Wait. I-do you remember, that handkerchief you loaned me? When you left for Morava? I never returned it to you. I still have it.'
'Keep it,' he said without turning around, and he vanished into the darkness that ringed the camp.
She hurt.
She just stood there and let it wash over her, as if that alone would do justice to his feelings, to what she'd done to him. Or had she done anything to him at all? They'd done nothing to each other that they hadn't done to themselves; made mistakes, behaved stupidly, acted without thinking through the consequences of the action. Maybe Marco had made an image of her, mat first meeting, that proved just as false as the one she had made of him. She had let herself fall in love-or into an infatuation, at least-with Marco before she had the slightest knowledge of who he really was. And if mat was true about Marco, how much more true it was about Anatoly. She couldn't even talk to Anatoly when she married him. She hadn't known him at all. The choice had seemed not rash but adventurous and brave at the time. Now, with clearer sight, it just seemed reckless. A true explorer treads cautiously and with a deep respect for the unknown land. She had charged blithely in, all unconscious of danger. Well, and had she suffered so much? Only in her heart. She tried to imagine Hyacinth, straying through the wilderness, seeing one of his companions die, and could not compare her suffering to his.
'Di? Di!' There came Quinn, of course. 'You left so quickly. Soerensen invited us to his camp. They're having a little party, a reunion party, I suppose. Are you coming?'
'No, sorry, I'm not in the mood.'
For once, Quinn gave up immediately and went away.
Diana ducked into her tent and stripped and lay down. She was tired, realty tired now, in the heart as well as the body. But every time she shut her eyes she saw, not Anatoly, not Marco, but Vasil Veselov coming up to her on the stage, dropping his eyes, waiting there-acting- and it suddenly came to her die one element Gwyn hadn't caught yet, the one that would allow him to subsume completely the character of the dyan who loved the Sun's daughter. She threw on her clothes and scrambled out of the tent and ran.
The others had already left camp, but by the single lantern left lit for their return, she saw a shadow blurring the deeper shadows on the stage, and she knew it was him, practicing, still practicing.
'Gwyn! Gwyn, I've got it.' She hopped up on the platform and he paused to listen to her. 'It's not just what Owen said, about showing the modesty without losing the strength. It's about power contained. It's about the promise of power unleashed. It's as if, through her, you can reach your true power, just as somehow she can reach her true power through you, and the exchange is as much about that recognition of each other…' She lapsed into silence, puffing, out of breath, she was so excited. 'Do you see what I'm trying to say?'
Gwyn considered. He never did rash things, not Gwyn. That remained one of his strengths, that he tread cautiously, that he considered, and when he did move, he placed his feet on the firmest ground. But he wasn't afraid to take chances.
'Let's try it,' he said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
'Husband!'
Jiroannes flinched at the sound of his bride's voice. Samae jerked her hand away from his feet, which she had been massaging, and sank back to kneel at the foot of the couch. Jiroannes rose from his cushions and signaled to Lal to bring him a robe. As the boy tied the robe closed with a sash, she who had once been Javani entered through the enclosed walkway that now linked her tent with his. She wore the emerald silk peacock gown and a tiered gold headdress, like a conical cap, with an embroidered shawl draped from it down over her shoulders and a veil of silk covering her lower face. The silk was so sheer that he could see her expression through it; she wanted something. Again.
'Wife.'
Her interpreter hovered anxiously three steps behind her.
'Husband, it is impossible that I continue to live in these vulgar conditions. I have sent my steward to find a suitable house within the suburbs, near the vegetable and fruit market. Meanwhile, my handmaiden has gone to purchase silks for my wardrobe. These peacocks are very pretty, I'm sure, but the quality of the weave is mediocre.'
'Those silks were woven and embroidered in the women's quarters of my father's house!'
'Then I see that we will have to import Habakar weavers as well as the perfumer and the three cooks I have been forced to engage in order to afford a decent quality of living in this household.'
'And how are we to travel with this city of retainers?
And pay for them? Lal, go tell Syrannus to send guards after the steward and the girl. None of these orders can go through.'
Lal nodded and slipped out, leaving Jiroannes alone with his wife. He braced himself.
'The orders must go through! I demand it. It is insupportable that I live out here among these barbarians. There are decent houses lying empty within the outer walls, not what one of my birth expects, but they will do until
