deserves, and a group of riders that Josef and I can call on at need.'
'Hmm. Kirill has such a group of young riders. Misfits, most of them, like Aleksi. I'll give them to you. Now, Sonia has agreed to take Josef into our camp, and little Ivan will serve as his eyes. It's another five days to the mountains at this pace. You and Josef can discuss your plans. When I see you there, you'll tell me what you and Josef have decided.' He had been angry when he arrived, but Tess could detect no anger in him now, as if the emotion had evaporated once he had a new outlet for his energy. He paced to the inside curtain, and Tess jumped to her feet. If he even twitched it back a handsbreadth, and saw what lay within…
But he twirled and strode back toward the entrance. He would never invade the private space of another person's tent. He was jaran, after all. He bent, kissed Tess, and with no further word left the tent. Tess caught the flap before it could fall. The bells shuddered and faded.
'Well.' From outside, Cara watched Ilya stride away into the night. 'What was that all about? Why did he ride back here?'
Tess stepped out beside her and let the tent flap chime closed behind. 'There's the obvious answer. A jahar of envoys. You know, Cara, that damned education of his is going to make him a rather different breed of barbarian conqueror. But I don't think that's the complete answer, and I can't put the rest of the puzzle together yet.'
Six days brought the huge ungainly mass of the jaran camp into a broad valley at the foot of the mountains. A few fields had survived the invasion, but not many, Tess noted. She rode out with Aleksi, who had come back to take his place at her side, to view the burned city and the refugee town growing up all makeshift and scattered within the city's half-ruined walls. They picked their way along the streets, the troop of fifty riders that Aleksi now commanded in neat lines behind them.
It had rained for the last two days, although this day was clear, and mud spattered their horses' legs and choked the entry ways of the hovels built out of what wood and brick remained to the refugees. Mercifully, Tess saw no corpses and no men, either, but many women and hordes of children. A girl with sunken eyes and a swollen belly clutched a rag doll and stared as they rode past her. Two boys picked through the litter of a burned house, seeking treasure. They glanced over their shoulders at the riders, but hunger or familiarity had made them apathetic and they simply went on with their digging.
A thin young woman holding a thin baby looked up at them and then away. Tess wondered if she had tried to sell her body, to trade herself for food for the child, only to find herself scorned and ignored. What else could such a woman do, except scavenge in the ruins? But Tess had seen women working out in the fields; surely some kind of government still existed here.
'Let's go back,' she said. They rode back past the row of tents Cara had appropriated for a hospital. Tess waved at Niko and Juli and rode on into the main camp. Aleksi took her mare, and she walked alone to the very center, where she found Ilya scolding Yaroslav Sakhalin's second-in-command.
'Of course we don't want to leave soldiers behind to regroup and attack us again, but it does us no good to kill all the farmers as well. Yes, the ones who sow the ground. Who is to supply our army once we reach lands where there isn't enough pasture for our herds? In future, farmers as well as artisans are to be spared. Otherwise, you did well. Now, all of this take on to Sakhalin, and tell him to send his nephew back to me. The Habakar general and his son?' Ilya looked up, saw Tess, and beckoned her over. 'Yes, I will see Veselov now. You may go.' The man signed his obedience and hurried away.
'What general?' Tess asked. Ilya sat on a pillow below an awning strung out before her tent. 'You're looking angry again. I'm beginning to see a pattern here. This has something to do with Vasil, doesn't it?'
'Would you sit down, please?' Since he sounded so irritated, she complied, though she didn't feel much like sitting at the moment after being on horseback all morning. 'What can I do, Tess? If I wish to keep the loyalty of my people, then I must abide by our traditions. If I abide by our traditions, then I must accept him as dyan of his tribe.'
'Then accept it, Ilya, and send him somewhere far away. To the coast, as you did Suvorin.'
'I don't trust him.'
'Then keep him close by, so you can keep an eye on him.'
'That's worse.'
'Why?'
His hands lay in tight fists, one on each knee, and he sat so straight that the line of embroidery on the sleeves of his shirt stretched unbroken by wrinkles or folds from shoulder to wrist. His saber rested on the ground to his left, hilt by his knee, and his horse-tail staff lay to his right, propped up on its wooden stand. 'There he is. Stay by me.'
Vasil approached, flanked by men from the Veselov jahar. They escorted three men, a bedraggled-looking older man, a scarred, upright soldier, and a boy dressed in a rich surcoat who looked to be about Mitya's age.
Vasil made a great show of halting before Ilya and beckoning the prisoners forward. Ilya neither moved nor reacted. He was so tense that Tess had to stifle an urge to place a reassuring hand on his thigh.
'I present these prisoners to you, Bakhtiian, as proof of my worthiness to succeed my father as dyan of the Veselov tribe. This is the Habakar nobleman Yalik anSiyal and his son Qushid anYalik. This captain fought courageously in defense of the boy and for his valor we spared his life.'
Ilya examined the prisoners. He did not look at Vasil at all, although Vasil gazed raptly on him. The general abased himself and a moment later the boy did as well. The captain knelt, but no farther did he bend.
'Very well,' Ilya said to the air. 'I accept them. You are dismissed.' Vasil did not move. A few of the Veselov soldiers shifted nervously. 'You are dismissed,' repeated Ilya in a cold voice.
Tess caught Vasil's eye and nodded her head. Faced with her command, he had no choice but to go. The prisoners remained behind. Once Vasil vanished from sight, Ilya's shoulders relaxed.
'Konstans. Take them away.'
'What should I do with them, Bakhtiian?'
'Gods. Confine them somewhere. I'll deal with them later.'
'Ilya, I make this suggestion.' Tess examined the boy. 'It's children his age we can make the best use of. We should start a school, teach him khush. He can act as an interpreter.'
The tension brought by Vasil evaporated completely as Ilya considered her words. 'He's about Mitya's age. If we make enough links between their people and ours, then when we rule them, we'll rule the better for it. He is yours, Tess.'
'Mine!'
'It's your school to establish, as an envoy.'
She laughed. 'Very well. And leave the brave captain as his bodyguard, perhaps. I don't know what you want to do with the father.'
'He fled the field, according to Sakhalin,' said Ilya. 'Deserted his army.'
'Ilya.'
He glanced at her. 'It would be more merciful to kill him, I suppose. I'll give him to Mother Sakhalin as a servant. Konstans? Ah, here comes the embassy.'
Konstans led the prisoners away.
'What embassy?' Tess saw a troop of about twenty horsemen coming through camp, but then they parted to reveal a ragged group of women in their midst. Khaja women. 'Their men all dead or gone,' said Tess softly. 'Who is left to plead but the women?'
Ilya's gaze flashed her way, but he said nothing. Half the riders dismounted and herded the women forward, careful to keep themselves between the foremost woman and Bakhtiian himself. They let the embassy kneel some twenty paces from the awning. All of the women abased themselves, lowering their foreheads to the ground: all but one. She knelt at the front of the group, and she wore golden armbands and a rich golden surcoat. She bowed her head, but proudly, and it was she who spoke.
'I am named Viaka, daughter of Headman Karst of the Farisa people. We come, we women, to beg mercy of you.' Her khush was halting, but even when she begged mercy, she did it without meekness.
'How have you learned khush?' Ilya asked. His eyes narrowed, and he examined the surcoat intently.
'A man of your people taught me.' She flushed, a stain along her dark skin.
Ilya stood up. 'You say you are a woman of the Farisa people, yet you wear a Habakar nobleman's cloth.'
'It was given-' Her head jerked up, and she looked angry and defensive, as if she were afraid he would take it
