CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Tess heard the altercation in full flower as she and Aleksi rode up behind her tent.
'No, damn it! I won't rest! There's too much to do. We must move on at dawn tomorrow.''
'Bakhtiian, you aren't nearly strong enough to ride yet.' This from Cara, sounding cool.
'I'll ride a gentle mare.'
'Ilya, you're going too damned fast. You know better than to-'
'Out, Niko! Out!'
Tess dismounted and threw her reins to Aleksi along with a wry grin. Then she hurried around the corner of the tent to see Ilya, lying propped up on pillows under the awning of the tent, yelling at the combined forces of Niko, Cara, Sonia, and young Katerina. His personal guard stood with expressionless faces just beyond the carpet. Farther away, at the first ring of guards, Elders and dyans waited for their turn to see Bakhtiian. Like flowers turning toward the sun, Ilya's four victims shifted to look hopefully at Tess.
'Out,' said Tess mildly. They left. 'Vladi, Konstans, you too.' They left. Ilya lay there glaring at her. He was pale and he looked exhausted. 'You're going to bed,' she said to him.
'I don't have time to-'
'I said, you're going to bed. Come on.'
'Tess-!'
'You only woke up yesterday, my love. You were unconscious for fifteen days. You need to rest.'
He heaved himself up to sit. His eyes flashed with anger, and his lips were white and drawn tight. 'I need to order my army. According to the information I've received this morning, Sakhalin has given them orders to destroy everything. How are we to make use of a country that is ruined so thoroughly?''
She crouched and grabbed him around the back, under his arms, and hoisted him to his feet. 'Let me rephrase that. You will rest. Now.' He was thin, much too thin, and he still wasn't eating much. Although he swore at her, he was far too weak to resist her marching him into the tent and back to their bed. She eased him down and he collapsed. Then, taking pity on him, she lay down beside him and stroked his hair and talked to him soothingly about whatever news she had gotten in the past sixteen days. His left hand came to rest on the swell of her abdomen. He fell asleep. She stayed beside him for a while, continuing to stroke his hair and his face, filled with such impossibly intense elation that she thought she might well burst from the strength of it. She kissed him a final time on the forehead and went outside.
'My favorite type of convalescent,' said Cara, who had returned to sit in the shade of the awning. 'Irritable, unreasonable, and stubborn. You must stop him from pushing himself too hard.'
Tess snorted. 'Cara, he's going to push himself too hard no matter what any of us do or say. I'll do what I can. I wish we could get him to eat more.'
'That will come in time. His body is still recovering from its molecular catharsis. He'd be much weaker if we hadn't managed that intravenous connection to feed him through the coma.'
Tess picked up the pillows he had been lying on and shook them out. 'Did it work?'
'It affected him. As for what its effect was-ask me in ten years. Now, if he's asleep, I'll go run some more tests on him.' She rose and went inside.
Tess strolled over to see Sonia, who was supervising a general cleaning in preparation for their move the next day. 'Are we really moving at dawn tomorrow?' Tess asked.
Sonia shrugged. 'Unless you can talk him out of it. I don't think he's ready to ride yet.'
'I know he isn't. Sonia, who is Grandmother Night?'
Sonia's whole expression became stiff. She paled. Grabbing Tess by the elbow, she dragged her out away from her tent, away from the children and relatives, out to the gap between their two tents where they could speak in privacy. 'Tess! Never speak Her name in daylight. It's bad luck.'
Tess was astounded. 'But-'
'Who's been talking to you? Vasil?'
'Vasil! No, I heard Ilya say her name. It was the first thing I heard him say when he woke up.'
'Gods,' said Sonia, looking grim. 'Is that where he's been? In Her lands?'
'But who is she? Why have I never heard of her in all the time I've been here?'
Sonia glanced around. The movement was almost comical, it was so broadly done, but Tess could not laugh because Sonia's expression was so horribly grave. 'She is the Old One, the First One. She gave birth to us all, to the world, to the gods, to the animals, and then brought death in a fit of anger. She's jealous and angry and very, very powerful. There. I've said enough.'
'But, Sonia, what did he mean? He said-'
'Don't say her name in daylight!'
Tess gulped. She had never in four years seen Sonia in this combination of anger and terror. 'He said, ''She is laughing at me.' '
Sonia blanched. 'Gods,' she murmured again. 'My mother once said that it was because of Her that his family died. But she's never spoken of it since. Perhaps it wasn't Habakar witchcraft that took him to the spirit lands. Perhaps She did. Perhaps he offended Her once. Gods, that would be an ill-omened thing. It all was, the death of his family.''
'Is that why no one speaks of it? I've never heard you or Ilya talk about his parents.'
'Tess, I will say this now, but never again. They died badly. But what is worse, is that the man who killed them, Khara Roskhel, was my aunt's lover, and had been for many many years. Perhaps my mother suspects why he turned against Ilya and his mother. I don't know.'
'Perhaps Ilya knows why.'
'Perhaps he does. Do you truly want to ask him?'
No. But there was wanting, and there was necessity. ' 'I have to ask him. How long after their deaths was Vasil banished?''
'Vasil? A few months, not more than that. It was all a great scandal. Roskhel hated Vasil. He thought it was an offense against the gods that a man would love another man so openly.'
'What do you think?'
Sonia shrugged, evading the question. 'Vasil was always charming to us. He wanted us to like him, and we did. I never saw the harm in him riding with Ilya's jahar.'
'Were they lying together, too? After Ilya came back from Jeds?'
Sonia flushed. 'I don't know. I–Ilya slept with many women. Everyone knew that.'
'But you think they were.'
Sonia stared away from Tess, at their tents, at the ring of guards out beyond, at the tents beyond them, the Orzhekov camp. Wind trembled through the camp, agitating awnings and pots. People were already packing, readying to leave the next morning. 'Everyone thought they were,' said Sonia in a low voice. 'That's why he was forced to banish Vasil. Otherwise no one would have followed him.''
'Hmm,' said Tess. The puzzle did not yet make a coherent picture.
Sonia stared at her. 'Don't you care?' she demanded.
'Don't I care about what?'
'That he and Vasil might have-!'
'Of course I care! But what can I do about it?'
'Gods, Tess. I'm so sorry.'
'Sorry for what? That you think Ilya still loves him?'
'That he loved a man at all-' Just saying it made Sonia flinch.
'What do I care whether it's a man or a woman? I can never be beautiful, not in that way. I haven't known Ilya since he was a boy, I didn't ride in his jahar for three years side by side with him while he united the jaran. I never believed in him when no one else did, because I didn't know him then. How can I compete with that? Or with the memory of that?'
There was a long silence. 'Sometimes,' said Sonia softly, 'I forget you aren't jaran. I loved a man once, but he left to join the arenabekh. He loved men more than women. I could never forgive him for that. And why should I?'
