equipment and weapons we brought with us.'
'That happened to Tess Soerensen,' said Diana.
'And let her be a lesson to you, Hyacinth! Now. Go on, Diana, and why don't you take Gwyn, too?'
'Let me go,' begged Hyacinth.
'No,' added Ginny. 'Mother Veselov already gave you into our hands. They don't want you back. Owen's not going to take this at all well, my boy, if it means they'll forbid you performing as well. And we're supposed to do Caucasian Chalk Circle sometime in the next five days.''
'You can even think of that? With a life at stake?'
'Hyacinth, we all have our limits. I can't save the world. I can't stop this war. Maybe, just maybe, I can communicate a few things through art.'
He flung himself back into the chair and buried his face in his hands. The entire line of his body spoke agony.
'I'll go now,' said Diana, more to be rid of this scene than because she desired the next one.
CHAPTER FORTY
Trouble came in the guise of a woman. It always did, Jiroannes reflected. The guards snuck two whores into camp and he caught them at it. He was not sure whether the guards intended to pay the women or simply kill them afterward, but the women looked desperate enough, thin and dirty and ragged. One had a child with her, a wild- eyed little creature with weeping sores around its mouth and a red rash on its arms. Once, Jiroannes would have left his men to it. They deserved some reward for their months of service in these God-forsaken lands. Jiroannes had not touched Samae in twenty days, and already even the sight of the whores' scrawny thighs and grimy abdomens moved him to lust. The guards had gone much longer without women.
'Syrannus,' he said as the whores straightened their clothes and the guards rebound their sashes, 'chase the creatures away.''
'Yes, eminence. May I give them some food?'
'Give them food!'
'Eminence, in these lands, whores receive payment.'
'Do what you wish. Don't bother me with it.'
The next day, the guards mutinied. Politely, it was true, but they sent a delegation consisting of the captain and his two lieutenants to present their grievances to their master. This would never have happened in Vidiya.
Jiroannes received them on the carpet. Lal attended him, standing behind his chair with a large fan, which the boy worked up and down. Samae was out getting water from the river. She did the work Lal used to do, and the boy had quickly learned the more elaborate business of being a personal body servant.
''Your eminence.'' The captain knelt and bent to touch his forehead to the carpet.
'You may speak.'
'Eminence, you must know that the jaran women will have nothing to do with us. They call us names, eminence, foul names, and scorn us, and there are none who will accept coin or cloth or food for lying with us. Now you forbid us congress with these women who are willing enough to come into our camp. This is unjust. The Everlasting God has also decreed, eminence, that it is improper for a man to pass more than ten days without knowing a woman, for fear he will succumb to baser lusts.'
It was true, of course. Jiroannes sighed. 'I will consider your grievances, captain. I will have an answer for them tomorrow.''
The captain touched his forehead to the carpet again, rose, bowed, and backed away. His escort backed away as well, until they were far enough away from the tent that they could without deliberate insult turn their backs on their master.
'What are you going to do, eminence?' asked Syrannus.
Jiroannes smoothed out his trousers. The hot, stifling air made him sweat, even with the turgid breeze stirred into life by Lal's tireless fanning. 'I have no choice, Syrannus. I must take this matter before the jaran.'
'Ah,' said Syrannus, and nothing more.
Jiroannes sat, brooding. Smoke cast a pall over the air, adding to the stifling heat. Although the Vidiyan camp was now situated at the end of ambassadors' row, in the least desirable site, still the tents of the jaran army spread out beyond his camp. Farther, at the eye of the storm, a city bled smoke into the heavens. Jiroannes could see its wall from here, a distant line. He thought there might still be some fighting going on there, but he could not be sure. Now that Mitya was gone, Jiroannes had no inside source of information. For twenty days he and his party had drifted along in the wake of the army, moving at the right time, camping at the right time, and otherwise utterly at sea. He did not know the name of this city, or which general was in charge of this assault. The guards had heard a rumor that Bakhtiian was ill, that he was dead, that he had been witched by the Habakar priests and that his spirit had left his body to do battle in the Otherlands for this kingdom. It might be true, for all Jiroannes knew. He missed Mitya's information.
He missed Mitya's friendship.
What a strange thing it was, to think of having a friend. There had been other boys at the palace school whom he had liked, but one never trusted anyone at the palace. He sighed.
'Syrannus, you will attend me. Together with two of my guards.' He rose. Lal dropped down to kneel behind the chair.
'Where are we going, eminence?'
'I don't know. We must find Bakhtiian, I suppose, or if he isn't here, then whomever is in charge.' The two guards took their places at his back, and they walked together out of their huddle of tents. Syrannus went ahead to accost a pair of older jaran men who were repairing a shattered cart wheel. He spoke with them for a while and then returned to Jiroannes.
'Eminence, these men say that Mother Sakhalin is in charge of this camp.'
'Mother Sakhalin? A woman?' Jiroannes sighed again, but these days he felt only mild shock at such tidings. 'Where will we find her tent?'
'In the center of camp, eminence.'
'Bakhtiian is not here, then?'
'Eminence, the men say that it is true that Bakhtiian was witched, that he lies as one dead up in the pass. They say that until he wakes again, the army will lay waste to the countryside.'
Jiroannes shuddered. Fleetingly, he imagined this army trampling through the lush gardens of the Vidiyan palace, careless of the destruction they wrought to the fine architectural and decorative work that they certainly could never appreciate. But they could destroy it. It was easier to demolish than it was to build, especially for savages.
He hung his head and stared at the rings on his fingers. Topaz, that one, malachite, a thick band of plain gold, and a single diamond set in gold leaves bound with pewter. All along, it had been easier for him to scorn the jaran as the barbarians they definitely were than to try to understand them and build a bridge across which he and they could truly communicate.
'We will attend Mother Sakhalin,' he said softly.
Syrannus looked surprised, but he bowed his head and led Jiroannes to the center of camp. In the jaran camp, in the late morning, things were fairly quiet. Dawn and late afternoon were busiest, what with milking and watering and meals. A couple of boys pushed a handcart filled with dry dung through camp. Crippled men repaired harness. Two older girls churned milk to butter. Little children ran here and there, attended by the elderly. If the besieged city on the horizon disturbed them they did not show it.
At the center of camp they found a ring of guards, but just a single ring, nothing as elaborate as the triple shield that had surrounded Bakhtiian's tent. They waited here while a messenger was sent in. Some time later a young jaran woman arrived to escort them. Jiroannes swallowed this insult with no change of expression and followed her in, Syrannus alone attending him now.
Mother Sakhalin held court in much the same way Bakhtiian did, but she was rather more ruthless, Jiroannes decided. He recognized her immediately: the ancient crone he had seen watching the mounted archers at practice,
