'Javier doesn't look anything like me,' said Charles.
'That's true, but you're both khaja.' Tess dismissed this objection with a wave of her hand. 'If he wears a hood and none of the patrols ever gets a close look at him, and they pass along quickly, then how much of the physical description will ever get back to us? None of the patrols or tribes you'll pass will have seen you before anyway. It will do. It's the best we can do. Trade clothes. You'll be fine. I'm right in this, Charles. You know I am.'
He considered her. The trees tossed in the wind, and leaves tore free from branches and swirled away into the night. 'Convoluted,' said Soerensen, 'and worthy of a Chapalii duke's heir. We'll see if you can pull it off.'
'But, Charles,' said Tess sweetly, with a wicked gleam in her eyes, 'you don't really have a choice, do you? By this ring, you've given me authority on this planet. So I order you to do as I say. Damn you, anyway. We're just pawns to you, Ilya and I, aren't we?'
His lips quirked up, and he laughed. 'Don't forget how chess is played. With patience and cunning and wit, as well as the right strategy, a pawn can become the most powerful piece in the game.'
He bent and kissed her, once on each cheek, in the formal jaran style. He said farewell to the others, to Aleksi, and then he and Javier turned and walked back to the ship. Aleksi watched as he vanished into the golden light of the interior.
Tess's legs gave out, and she collapsed to the ground. Aleksi dropped down beside her immediately, scared for her, but she nodded her head against him and just sat there, breathing shallowly.
'Tess!' Maggie exclaimed.
Tess shook her head and lifted-with great effort-one hand as a signal that she was all right.
Soerensen emerged from the ship, except it wasn't Soerensen but the other man, dressed in his clothes and in his jaran armor, helmet strapped awkwardly onto his head. The maw closed behind him. The white light snapped off, bathing them in darkness.
'Why me?' he asked as he came up to them. Then he saw Tess. 'Oh, my. M. Soerensen, are you-?'
A high-pitched whine pierced the roar of the beast, and the ground trembled under Aleksi's feet. The horses pulled away, and Maggie and Marco tugged them down and tried to reassure them with their voices, only the ship howled and all at once bucked up and as slow as if Father Wind's invisible hand lifted it, it rose up into the night, jewel eyes winking open and closed, open and closed.
Tess tucked her head down. The wind washed over her, where she sat huddled on the ground. Maggie fought her two horses, dragging on them as they whinnied and tried to jerk free, to bolt, even though they couldn't bolt because they were hobbled. The hot breath of the ship slapped Aleksi's face, and the creature spun and showed a new face to him, gleaming pale in the starlight, and rose up into the night, blinking, blotting out stars, and rumbled and roared, and the wind howled down, and the trees bent under its force, and dust clotted the air, and he choked on the grit and shut his eyes and held onto Tess.
And the roar lightened and faded and the wind dropped and a low moan rang through the night air. Stars winked in and out, and then only the wind blew and the night lay silent under the stars. The canopy of clouds grew in the west. The horses calmed.
'Now what?' asked Marco, his voice a ringing shout in the quiet.
'You'd better go now,' said Tess, her voice as soft as Marco's had been inadvertently loud. Aleksi showed Marco how to bind on the vest of bells. Tess roused herself for long enough to discuss with Marco routes and strategies, and at last the two men left, leading their horses up the confining slope, heading northeast. The muted ring of bells faded into the night.
Weakly, Tess brushed dry grass off her trousers. She lifted her hand and squinted at the ring on her middle finger. 'My God,' she said, to no one.
'Is that how the gods travel in the heavens?' Aleksi asked, looking from her up into the sky. Were any of those stars the ship? Were all of them ships? But, no, the doctor had said they were worlds-or not worlds, but suns. He shook his head. He was too tired to sort it all out now.
Tess sighed. 'They're just machines, Aleksi.'
'I've got a perimeter alert,' said Maggie. 'Horses and men.'
Aleksi leapt to his feet and drew his saber. Maggie pulled a knife from her belt. Slowly, Tess drew her saber and rested it on her knees, but anyone could see she hadn't the strength to wield it.
But it was only a group of jaran riders, twelve of them, picking their way down the western slope. It didn't surprise Aleksi to see how astounded they looked when they discovered that they had stumbled upon a daughter of Mother Orzhekov, the woman who was also, of course, Bakhtiian's wife.
'We saw a strange light in the sky,' said their captain.
'I saw it, too,' said Tess, without moving from the ground. 'It was an omen.'
'We'll escort you back to camp, then.'
'Tomorrow,' she said. 'I just can't go any farther tonight.'
So they spent the night in the little valley, Tess sleeping on coats and under blankets provided by the riders, guarded by a ring of fires, and in the morning they remarked on the strange burn on the ground in the center of the valley and saddled their horses and formed up around Tess. If they thought it strange to have found her out here, practically alone, they did not discuss their thoughts with Aleksi. Tess was pale and still horribly tired. They rode back toward Karkand slowly, stopping frequently. The day was overcast, and the light had an eerie yellow quality to it.
Soon enough they began to pass refugees from the city. At first clumps of them, cowering away from the patrol. A woman carried a baby on her back and held another child by the hand. An old woman stumbled along, weak and crying, and a little boy dragged a bundle behind him and followed in her wake. Larger groups, families, trudged along the road. Children wailed. A broken-down old horse bore an injured woman slumped over its neck, her thigh a bloody mass of tissue, open to the air. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs, and a few of the lucky ones, a handful of possessions wrapped in cloth, whatever they had grabbed before being driven from the city. A gray-haired woman walked under the weight of a silk bundle. A tall woman with a strong, dark face stopped to shift a pack of roughspun cloth to a better position on her back. A baby shrieked. A woman clad in rich damask linen sobbed with each step, holding a hand to her throat. Two girls held a limping crone between them, helping her along. Most kept their heads bowed. An adolescent girl, her face veiled, balanced a large ceramic vase on her head, walking steadily, only her eyes showing dark and angry as she watched the riders pass.
Tess wept, to see them struggling along.
As they rode on, as morning passed to midday and midday into afternoon, the trickle became a stream, the stream a flood. Hordes of them; Aleksi had not known so many people, even khaja, could live together in one place. No wonder they were weak, crammed like insects into a rotted stump or an old hollow log. They walked, heads bowed. A layer of ash covered their clothes, and at their backs smoke rose into the heavens, a dark blot against the gray clouds far above. As the riders neared the jaran camp, they could see Karkand burning.
'My God,' said Tess. 'Isn't there a rise, where we can lookr
It was a relief to veer away from the road and along a trampled field until they reached a low ridge which gave them a vantage of the city.
Karkand burned. A huge black funnel of smoke marked it, and spits of flame. Aleksi watched the lines of refugees, like tiny insects, leaving the city along the roads and out through the fields. He saw the riders, moving among them, and wagons trundling away toward the jaran camp. In the middle of the blazing city, the huge dome of the temple glowed red with fire. Clouds of heat shimmered out from it, and the intense glow of the flames cast a hot, violent light up into the sky. As they watched, the dome collapsed into a monstrous cloud of ash and smoke that billowed into the air and shrouded the western horizon so that they could not even see the setting sun.
'Goddess save us,' murmured Maggie. 'Why did he order this? The whole city is going, all of it, even the suburbs are in flames. And it was so beautiful. Now it looks like a funeral pyre.'
Tears streaked Tess's face. 'Don't you see?' she asked, shaking her head. 'It is a funeral pyre. For our son. For everyone who died today, for everyone who will die. For Charles.' She wiped her face with the back of one hand, but it only streaked grime over her cheeks, blending with her tears. 'For Rhui.'
'Look.' Aleksi pointed at the same time that the patrol captain did. 'There is Bakhtiian's banner. He must be riding out to look for you.'
'We'll wait for him here,' said Tess.
So they met on the ridge, Tess and Bakhtiian, he with the pall of the dying city at his back, she with her face
