Vyacheslav Mirsky, who had died of old age six years ago… Aleksi chuckled. Then he felt a pang of regret. He had never enjoyed such simple pleasures as a boy. No friends, no companions. Alone- He shut it off. No use thinking about it, no use remembering. He lived in the Orzhekov camp now. 'Come on, then.'
'Oh, wait,' said Mitya. 'Aunt Sonia,' he called, 'what shall I do with the saber?'
She had already gone back into Tess's tent, but came out again. 'Here, give it to me.' She took it, smiled at Aleksi with the warmth that she seemed to have an endless supply of, and carried the precious weapon back inside.
Aleksi walked on, and Mitya matched his pace to the older man's. Already he was Aleksi's height and would probably grow taller still. Now he was gangly and uncoordinated, coltish in an endearing way. It was a stage Aleksi had never gone through, so while he felt sympathy for the boy, he could not quite understand him. However awkward Mitya might be, he had time to grow and an enviable position to grow into. Grandson of Irena Orzhekov, who was etsana of the Orzhekov tribe, Mitya was thereby related to Ilyakoria Bakhtiian himself; his mother, Kira, and Ilya were cousins. The boy wore a golden torque around his neck and golden braces at his wrists and, like his little cousin Kolia, a belted girdle of golden plates. A heavy enough burden, Aleksi supposed, made doubly so by the fact that Mitya's father was a respected smith. It was no wonder that Mitya admired Anatoly Sakhalin, a young man with equally important relatives who had managed to gain respect on his own account and not simply because of whom he was related to.
They wandered through the late afternoon bustle of the camp. A child ran behind a wall of captured shields, hiding from her playmates. A blacksmith's forge smoked, and two soot-stained, sweating men pounded out lance heads. Their strokes beat out a rhythm to the late afternoon. Two adolescent boys repaired bridles, and they waved at Mitya as he walked by. A group of women turned carcasses on spits over four large fires. The smell of the meat was tantalizing. Fat dripped and blazed on the coals.
'He must be very powerful,' Mitya said suddenly.
'Who?'
'The prince of Jeds. Tess's brother. The ambassadors that come to us have greater retinues, and they bring gifts. What is an actor, anyway?'
'I'm not sure,' Aleksi admitted. 'They tell stories, I think, but with their bodies, not with words and a song. Perhaps they will perform tonight.'
But they did not. On the circle of ground separating the inner group of tents from the outer ring, blankets were laid and awnings set up in a great ring. At the southwest of this compass a single wagon sat upended and shorn of its wheels, covered with leather drawn tight with ropes and laden with pillows. Before it, on the ground, lay carpets under an awning of golden silk. Large square pillows embroidered with flying birds or galloping horses littered the carpets, seating for the feasters. Now, waiting, the pillows were empty, except for a single figure sitting under the center of the awning, writing painstakingly in a book. He glanced up and saw Aleksi and Mitya and beckoned them over.
'Mitya,' he said, 'surely Mother Sakhalin is expecting you.' Mitya murmured a few unintelligible words and retreated. Bakhtiian watched the boy flee. 'His father says he'll never be a blacksmith, so I hope he shows some promise for command. Here, Aleksi, sit down, if you please.'
Even Bakhtiian's polite requests sounded like orders, but Aleksi was used to it. He sat down and nodded toward the book lying open on Bakhtiian's right knee. 'You're writing.' Aleksi could read, with effort, and he could make letters, but the gift of reading and writing with ease eluded him, though Tess encouraged him to practice every chance she got.
'Yes.' Bakhtiian contemplated the open book, a page filled with neat lines in his precise script. His eyes moved over the last line, and Aleksi watched as his lips moved ever so slightly, forming the words he had written.
'That's Tess's book,' said Aleksi abruptly, recognizing the pattern of marbling on the leather binding as Bakhtiian closed it.
'Yes. She began to record our campaign three years ago. I write in it as well. You see.' He rifled through the pages. 'It's almost filled. We'll have to start a second book.' He glanced at Aleksi, looked away, out at the near ring of tents, where women and men and children prepared the feast, and then back at Aleksi again. 'Is Tess still angry?' he asked.
Aleksi considered the question. Whatever else Bakhtiian might be, he was fair, and when he asked a question he wanted a straightforward answer whether or not that answer was flattering to himself. 'I expect she's still angry at you. I wouldn't have advised that you try to keep her away from her brother while you showed him around camp.'
Bakhtiian snorted. 'And I did not, as it turned out. But perhaps it was for the best. Because she walked with us, he saw how well-loved she is and how much she has become jaran.' Then he hesitated. His fingers played with the clasps on the book. 'This David ben Unbutu-' He trailed off.
'She has said nothing of him.'
'Ah,' said Bakhtiian, meaning by that comment nothing Aleksi could fathom. Then he looked up, and his whole face changed expression. It lit, like a smoldering fire that bursts into flame. He smiled.
Aleksi glanced that way to see Tess and Sonia approaching. Sonia looked glorious, the brilliant blue of her tunic studded with beads of every color and gold plates lining the sleeves. Her headdress of gold and silver chains linked and braided over her blonde hair shifted as she walked. Golden crescent moons dangled to her shoulders; tiny bronze bells shook with her stride. The wealth gained in three summers of war adorned her, and she was by no means the vainest woman of the tribes. Beside her, Tess's wedding clothes looked subdued, although they had been rich enough at the time.
But Bakhtiian had eyes for no one but his wife. The force of his regard was both comprehensive and unnerving. A jaran man respected his wife; that went without saying. But to love her so openly, so entirely, so exclusively, that provoked criticism. It was not good manners. Except in Bakhtiian, who was beyond such criticism.
Bakhtiian rose and walked out to greet his wife. He took her hand and even, daringly, kissed her on the cheek, there in the open. Sonia raised her eyebrows, disapproving, but she said nothing.
'Aleksi.' Bakhtiian released his wife's hand and turned to Aleksi as he strolled up. 'If you could tell Mother Sakhalin that Tess and Sonia and I are going now to escort the prince here. Perhaps Raysia Grekov can be persuaded to sing.'
Sonia chuckled. 'Yes, and if any man can persuade Raysia to sing, it is you, Aleksi.'
Aleksi's cheeks flamed with heat. How he hated it when anyone drew attention to him. Raysia Grekov was not just a singer, but a Singer, a shaman, a poet, touched by the gods with the gift of telling the old tales and singing new ones. That she admired his ability with the saber was a running joke: like to like, both touched by the gods. But she was the daughter of the etsana of the Grekov tribe, niece of their dyan, and while her cousin Feodor might hope to marry Bakhtiian's niece Nadine, with such relatives, she certainly could not look upon Aleksi as anything but a casual lover.
'Oh, don't tease him,' said Tess, mercifully, and Aleksi escaped Sonia's scrutiny and went to find Mother Sakhalin.
He did not seek out Raysia Grekov, but by the time he returned to the feasting ground, the meal was well under way. Bakhtiian sat with Charles Soerensen to his right and Cara Hierakis to his left, honoring her, Aleksi noted, as if she were the consort of a prince as well as a great healer. Mother Sakhalin sat between Dr. Hierakis and Marco Burckhardt, and Sonia sat on the other side of Burckhardt, flirting with him outrageously. Tess sat on Charles's right, and next to her, Qures Tinjannat, the ambassador from the king of Habakar lands who also happened to be a philosopher. Next to him, Niko Sibirin, and so on, foreigner mixed in with jaran. The newest ambassador was not here, but, of course, he had not yet been formally received.
Aleksi prowled the back, sidestepping serious children bearing wooden platters mounted on broad bases that they set down in front of their elders. Young men from the army assisted. Aleksi steadied Kolia as the little boy stumbled over an uneven patch of ground; he was clutching a bronze cup filled with water, taking it to Bakhtiian.
'Yes,' Bakhtiian was saying to Soerensen, 'but when Sister Casiara wrote of the idea of precedence, she included the idea of legal precedence as well.'
'You were establishing a legalistic precedence, then, when you wrote the letter to the coastal ports west of
