'This is not the Tess I know,' Sonia went on. 'Of course Jeds is a fine city. Do you forget that I have been there? Perhaps they scorn us because we don't live in stone tents, but I will never forget how filthy everything was there. Although I admit,' she added, in a placating tone of voice, 'that everyone of your brother's party seems clean.'
Tess clapped a hand over her mouth and her shoulders shook. She was laughing. 'Oh, Sonia.' She reached out and hugged the blonde woman. 'I'm not ashamed of you. I just-' She hesitated, then shrugged. 'I think too much.'
'You worry too much,' retorted Sonia. 'These khaja don't teach their daughters to become women. You had no mother or aunt to give you a tent, but must live beholden to your brother and now your husband. Why do you think I stayed in Jeds only a year, though Ilya wanted me to stay longer? I know we have no university here, no books, no writing, but still, they are the barbarians, not us.'
'But Sonia,' said Aleksi, 'the women of Soerensen's party aren't like other khaja women, any more than Tess is. They don't veil their faces when they see us and avert their eyes. They wear proper clothing, even if it is ugly, and they walk with pride and not fear.''
'That is true. But they're from another country, the country where Tess's mother was born.'
'Erthe, ' said Aleksi, trying the unfamiliar sound out on his tongue.
Tess leaned over the chest and lifted out the jade headpiece, weighing it in her hands. 'Dr. Hierakis came from Erthe, as well as the acting company. Women are-well, women own their own tents there. But so do men.'
'Yes, and from what you've told us, they don't seem nearly as barbaric as the people of Jeds.' Sonia lifted out the gold headpiece and laid it down on the green tunic. 'This looks better, Tess. I'd like to visit there someday.''
'It's a long voyage. A very long voyage.' Tess placed the jade headdress back inside the chest and settled back on her heels. 'No, you're right, Sonia. Even though I didn't precisely need my brother's consent to marry, still, I married without it.'
'If you have the courage to make a decision, then you must learn to have the courage to stand by it. Perhaps Ilya's power doesn't seem so impressive to your brother now. In ten years, he will be happy to have such a brother by marriage. You must tell him you are thinking ahead. It is an advantageous alliance.'
'For whom?'
'Come now, Tess. I have been to Jeds. I have ridden in the countryside and gone even as far as the city of Filis, where another prince rules. Your brother is rich and his merchants sail to the ends of the world, and he is a prince to be reckoned with, but Ilya's army is larger. Much larger. And it will grow.' Sonia shook out the calf-length tunic and a pair of belled, striped trousers and then rummaged in the chest until she found a wide belt inlaid with cloissone' and gold. 'Now, Aleksi. Out.' Her own festival clothing lay draped over the chair, a tunic of vivid blue that matched her blue eyes and a headpiece of gold and gems. 'We must dress. You might see if Galina needs a hand with the children.'
Aleksi gave each woman a brotherly kiss on the cheek and retired from the fray. At Sonia's tent, her niece Galina sat with those few Orzhekov children who remained with the main army. Sonia had kept her three children with her, and Niko and Juli had two grandchildren with them. Other children, like Galina and her brother Mitya, were old enough to do adult work but not old enough yet to marry or to ride in the army.
' 'We saw the barbarians today.'' Galina greeted Aleksi with a kiss on the cheek. She looked much like her aunt and her mother, with a merry, round face, fair hair, and cerulean blue eyes. 'Aunt Sonia brought five of them by. One of them had skin that was black. Really,' she added, as if afraid that Aleksi wouldn't believe her. 'Wasn't it, Katerina?'
'It was,' agreed Katerina, Sonia's eleven-year-old daughter who, at two years younger than her cousin, was her shadow and champion. 'We thought maybe she had painted it on, so we rubbed it, but it didn't come off.'
'Then Aunt Sonia scolded you for being rude,' finished Galina. 'But the woman didn't mind. She was tall, too, taller than a man. And one of the other women had chestnut hair, like a horse has.' She stifled a giggle under a hand. 'And another one had funny eyes, like…' She grimaced, searching for a comparison.
'Like this,' said seven-year-old Ivan, putting his index fingers on either side of his eyes and pulling the lids tight. All of the children burst into laughter.
'I liked her, though,' said Katerina. 'Her name was Yomi. She knows how to weave,' she added, since this skill obviously placed the woman in a different, and superior, class from the others. 'But they didn't have any men with them. Is it true their men act like women?'
'What do you mean?' asked Aleksi. 'I escorted four of the men around the camp, and they seemed like men to me. They were very polite.'
Katerina considered the question seriously, screwing her mouth up. She was a pretty girl, having inherited her looks from her grandfather, but she had as well the same vital intelligence that animated Sonia's otherwise undistinguished features. 'They say khaja men use bows and arrows to fight other men with and that they haven't any manners toward women. And that they own their own tents, and they even say that the women don't own tents at all. How can that be?'
'You forgot the angel,' said Mitya suddenly. He sat on a pillow at the back of the awning, too old to include himself in the younger children's activities but too young, at fifteen, to be an adult. Like most boys his age, he spent a small part of his day helping his grandmother, mother, or aunt and the rest of it with the adult men, doing chores, learning to fight, caring for the horses and the herds, and generally tagging along. Right now he was polishing one of Bakhtiian's sabers.
'What angel?' Aleksi asked. He knelt and helped four-year-old Kolia straighten his tunic and belt it with a girdle of gold plates.
'Anatoly Sakhalin's angel.'
'Mitya,' retorted Galina in a disdainful voice, 'she is not Sakhalin's angel. And he showed bad manners, too, in following them around.'
Aleksi settled down on his haunches, satisfied that he was about to get some good gossip. He loved these children, who had accepted him readily once they saw that the adults of their tribe acknowledged Tess's adoption of him. Although he had been Tess's brother for three years now, he still preferred the children's company to that of adults. They said what they thought, and they were not embarrassed by the fact that he had once been an orphan.
Like the foreign woman's coal-black skin, his peculiar status interested them more than it revolted them. 'He followed Sonia and her party around camp?''
'Yes,' said Galina. 'That's what Aunt Sonia said. When they got here, he got Mitya to invite him in so that he could talk to her. She was very embarrassed by his behavior, as any woman would be. She flushed all red.'
'Sonia did?' Aleksi asked, astounded.
'No, no,' said Katerina. 'The angel. Diana. But Sonia refused to translate for him so he just had to stand there. But he kept looking at her,' she finished with disgust.
'He never looked at her straight,' said Mitya.
'Oh,' said Galina, 'you're always defending him.'
Mitya flushed at his little sister's superior tone of voice. 'And why not? I want to ride in his jahar when I'm old enough. He's the best rider of all the young men.'
'Mitya, everyone knows that Aleksi is the best rider. No one is as good with the saber as he is. Isn't that true, Aleksi?'
Aleksi grinned. 'Anatoly is a good commander, and he deserves the command Bakhtiian gave him, though he's young to be granted such an honor.'
'But you wouldn't ride in his jahar, would you?' asked Katerina, looking pleased with her sly question.
'Katya, I ride in Bakhtiian's own thousand. Why should I want to ride in anyone else's?' The girls laughed, and Mitya appeared mollified.
Sonia came out of Tess's tent. 'Are you children still here?' she called. 'Galina, Mitya, take them and go. Mother Sakhalin will have plenty for you to do before you start serving.'
Galina and Katerina rounded up the little ones and marched them off. Mitya lingered. 'Would you like to walk with me?' Aleksi asked the boy, and Mitya's face brightened, since this was clearly exactly what he had hoped for. The chance to stroll around camp beside the man everyone knew was the best saber fighter since the legendary
