Mikhailov would try an ambush.'
Bakhtiian played with his glass, not drinking as quickly as Kirill. 'I should never have split the jahar.'
'As if you had any choice. You're not still blaming yourself for Tess getting wounded so badly, are you?' Kirill snorted. 'But knowing you, you would be.'
'Tess was wounded?' Cara asked, immediately interested, and aware as well that Bakhtiian found the subject painful.
He downed the rest of the glass on one swallow. 'She almost died. Niko saved her.'
'Her own stubbornness saved her,' said Kirill cheerfully. 'Or isn't that what you always claimed?'
'Ah, that scar.' Cara poured more adulterated Scotch into their glasses. 'Very impressive. So she's been in a fight, then? Did she handle herself well?'
'Dr. Hierakis,' said Kirill, 'Tess is perfectly capable in my opinion of riding with the army as a soldier. And I've trained a fair number of young men in the last three years.'
'You always take her side against me,' said Bakhtiian in a low voice.
'I always will,' replied Kirill, lower still and with a remarkably malicious grin.
'Has she-' Bakhtiian stopped, flushed, and drank down the Scotch again. 'No, I beg your pardon. It's none of my business.'
Kirill laughed. 'You're not still jealous, are you? I ought to make you wonder, you damned officious bastard, but I'll have mercy on you this time. The answer is no.'
'Here is Galina,' said Cara, enjoying this interplay immensely. She received the dishes-meat, of course, and warm milk, and some fruit-and shooed the girl away again. Galina was reluctant to go but obedient, and she left with many glances back over her shoulder. Twilight came. Cara rose to light one lantern, enough to make it seem she was hosting them but yet not too much light. Tonight she did not want too much light. She excused herself for a moment and went inside to get more Scotch. It was precious stuff, but in this case, die ends justified using so much. She also went all the way in to the inner chamber and pressed the code that would alert Ursula that Cara needed her. When she got back outside, Bakhtiian and Kirill were arguing good-naturedly over whether Tess had truly become jaran, or whether she was khaja still.
'Oh, Ilya,' said Kirill with disgust, 'because you want it to be true doesn't make it true. Tess will always be khaja in her heart. Just ask Arina or Sonia. Or your aunt. If you care to risk their opinion.'
'I am not afraid of their opinion,' said Bakhtiian. He looked moody and preoccupied. That streak of asceticism that Cara had noted in him before worked to her advantage now. The alcohol and drugs were having a more profound effect on him than on Kirill. She poured them more Scotch. Dusk lowered down, and stars spread across the sky. A few lanterns lit the hospital encampment, but otherwise the single light in their midst haloed them alone, as if the three of them were cut off from the rest of their world, torn apart, melding into some transitional state. An appropriate enough thought, considering what she meant to do.
'How old were you when you went to Jeds?' Cara asked.
He considered this question. 'A full cycle of the calendar and four winters had passed. So I was sixteen. My sister married.' Bakhtiian paused, as if this event was so weighty that the world needed a moment of silence to absorb it.
'She married a man from the Suvorin tribe. He was the dyan's brother,' added Kirill.
'I hated him,' said Ilya softly. The words made Cara shudder, they were said so quietly and with such calm venom.
'Whatever happened to him?' Kirill asked. 'I never saw him again after she was killed. Gods, we saw him little enough once you returned from Jeds.'
'Kirill, I do not care to speak of him.'
'As you wish, Bakhtiian,' said Kirill with considerable irony. 'Is there anyone else you don't wish to speak of?'
Bakhtiian's hand tightened on his glass. 'Don't try me too far, Kirill.'
'Gentlemen,' said Cara mildly, 'I do hope you haven't forgotten that I'm here.' They both apologized profusely. 'But I'm still curious, Bakhtiian, about your time in Jeds. You studied at the university?'
'Yes. I desired knowledge.' Desired it very much, by the way his eyes burned when he spoke of it. 'I desired to know the world.'
'But however did you survive there?'
He shrugged. 'At first I sold the things I had brought from the plains: furs, gold, a necklace given to me by-' He broke off before he said the name. 'Later, a woman named Mayana took me in.'
'Mayana! You don't mean the courtesan!' Cara laughed out of pure astonishment.
'You know her?'
'My dear boy, the entire city knows her. That is-' For once, she found she could not contain her laughter, '-not in the biblical sense-' But, of course, the reference was entirely lost on Bakhtiian and Kirill. 'She is famous, and justly so, for her beauty, her wit, and her learning. She was sold into a brothel at the age of ten, but she bought out her contract through-ah-hard work, and so gained her freedom. But surely you knew that.'
'She was eighteen when we met,' he said slowly, 'the same age as I was, and she was still beholden to the old harridan's tent.'
'What is a courtesan?' Kirill asked.
Bakhtiian shook his head. 'I cannot begin to explain it to you, Kirill, and it would disgust you in any case. The khaja are savages. How do you know her, Doctor? Does the prince know her as well?''
'She is received everywhere. I find her delightful.' But several conversations she had had with the courtesan fell together in Cara's mind. She leaned forward, feeling a little giddy and wondering if she herself had drunk too much Scotch, especially given the work she had to do tonight. 'But surely-it must be-she told me once about a young man, her barbarian scholar, she called him, whom she discovered shivering on the street one winter night. He was a pretty boy, she said, with fire in his eyes, so she took him back to her room in the brothel and was astonished to find that he had no experience of women at all. None, although she always said with that marvelous smile of hers that he was the quickest student she had ever tutored. Then it transpired that he was so ignorant that he didn't know that one paid the woman afterward. He had no money, only the clothes on his back and seven books. He had spent all his money on books. So she let him live in her room in trade for him teaching her to read and write. It's a lovely little tale. She said she still sends the man books, by a roundabout route, all the way to the distant plains, to which he returned a few years later. Is it true, the story that she raised the money to buy herself free from her contract in just one night by performing an erotic dance built around a foreign tale called 'The Daughter of the Sun'?' She broke off.
Kirill was leaning far forward, almost overbalanced, staring with glazed fascination at the sight of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian too mortified to speak.
'I beg your pardon,' said Cara.
'Oh, gods.' Bakhtiian covered his eyes with a hand. 'Does the entire city know about that?'
'But she's become a legend, Bakhtiian. Such stories are known by everyone. Do you mean to tell me that it is true? Oh, Goddess, and that it was you.' Despite his stricken expression, she simply could not stop laughing. 'That's simply too rich.'
'Ilya,' said Kirill. He looked dazed with astonishment. 'I've never seen you embarrassed before. So it is true that you'd never lain with a woman before you went to Jeds. I never believed it.'
Bakhtiian's expression shifted with lightning swiftness from chagrin to anger. He started to rise, collapsed, and glared at Kirill instead, since his legs refused to hold him up. 'How dare you mention Vasil's name to me! It is only because I refuse to contest Arina's authority that-'
'But Ilya,' said Kirill reasonably. 'I never mentioned Vasil's name. You did.'
Bakhtiian lapsed into a brooding silence. His eyelids fluttered, down, down, and snapped up. 'Kirill. Why is it that you have two children and I have none?''
'Three,' Kirill corrected. Luckily, the drink had the effect of making him mellower. 'You're forgetting Jaroslav. It's your own damned fault, Bakhtiian. The gods cursed you with getting the woman you wanted. I should have gotten her, you know, but she wouldn't marry me.'
'She loved you,' said Bakhtiian accusingly.
'She still does. But she loves you more and she always will. Sometimes I wish I could hate you for that, but I don't. Gods, I'm drunk. I beg your pardon, Doctor.'
