The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran)

  Not until they came out into the marketplace to find at least fifty of Janos’s men, forming into ranks around the central well, the pivot on which the market commons was fixed. By then it was too late. By then, they were surrounded. Vasha smiled and then bit the smile back, ducking his face to hide it.

  When at last the torches and lanterns marched out from the streets and alleys that poured into the market square, when the shifting mass that was the jaran army settled into a circle around them, Captain Maros jerked Vasha over to him and laid his sword along Vasha’s throat.

  “Shall I kill him, my lord?” he asked. He sounded, finally, angry.

  “No,” said Janos. “That would be the coward’s way.”

  Arrows came. Vasha threw himself to his knees, but the arrows thudded harmlessly on the shields that had been thrown up to protect Prince Janos. Farther out, the soldiers were not so lucky, but they struggled to regain their formation. After that, Vasha could not see, but he felt the khaja soldiers tense, felt and heard the rumbling advance of the jaran army, felt the impact, crushing him from all sides, as the two groups engaged.

  Caught in the very center, he pushed himself up again, so that he would not get crushed. He set his feet against the ground, letting the shifting of bodies move him one way two steps, back three, two staggered steps to the left and a sway back to the right. Sword struck sword. Men cried out, small grunts and surprised cries, and now and again a horse screamed in pain. He felt the sheathed tip of a knife brush his fingers and vanish, tantalizing but out of reach. He was helpless. Somehow, being helpless made him less scared. All he had left was his dignity.

  A strange hush fell. Out of the feral silence came a voice, clear, muted by distance and the shifting ring and clank of armor on the soldiers surrounding Vasha.

  “Where is my cousin Vassily Kireyevsky?”

  It was Katerina.

  “Put down the shields,” said Janos.

  “But, my lord—”

  “Put them down. I wish to see her.”

  As if a scythe had cut through them, the shields came down, and looking past Janos’s shoulder, Vasha could see—

  Gods! Not just Katya, but Ilya, and Tess, too, exposed in front of the circle of riders. At least Ilya and Tess wore armor and helms, although their faces were, of course, plain to see; a coif of mail protected their ears and the back of their necks. Katerina had nothing but cloth to protect her. She moved in her saddle and reached behind her back, pulling out a bow, then an arrow. She lay them across her thighs with the sure ease of a competent archer.

  “Kneel,” said Janos. The front rank knelt so that he could see Katerina more clearly. He had already taken off his helm. Vasha dared not move. He simply stood, trying not to think what could possibly happen now. Rope dug into his wrists.

  “I hold Prince Vasil’ii here beside me, Princess Katherine,” he shouted. “Better that it were you.”

  “Let him go free,” cried Katerina, “and I promise you that I alone will have the killing of you.”

  A murmur broke out through the ranks, stilled.

  “What of my men?” Janos shouted, but his face shone.

  “They have served you faithfully. For that, if Prince Vassily goes free, they shall live.”

  “No, my lord,” said Captain Maros at once. “It would be our shame—”

  Janos lifted a hand. Maros fell silent. “Prince Vasil’ii, why is the priest with her? Who is the other—is that the Prince of Jeds?”

  Vasha did not answer. Nor did he need to. Janos looked back at him and at once the obscuring piece on the board was taken, leaving the last position exposed.

  “Ah,” said Janos. “Now I understand. So I had him in my grasp the whole time.” Vasha said nothing. “Are you truly his son, or was that a lie also?”

  “I am his son,” said Vasha, knowing it was true.

  Janos turned back to face the jaran army, to face Katerina. “Very well. I accept, but on one condition.”

  She nodded, either accepting the condition unsaid or allowing him to continue, Vasha could not be sure. Yet that nod seemed to seal the bargain between them. Even across such a gap, they communicated without words, playing out a different game, one that Vasha did not understand.

  “One arrow,” cried Janos.

  She lifted the arrow that lay across her thighs, lowered it, like a promise. “Let him go!”

  “Let him go,” said Janos to his men. No one moved. “Let him go!”

  “Your highness!” protested Captain Maros.

  “My lord,” murmured Lord Belos.

  “We are dead otherwise,” said Janos harshly. “She may even wound me, with one arrow, but even if she could kill me, it is more likely that pity, or even love, will stay her hand. Our bargain is already sealed.”

  Maros laughed. “Do you trust this barbarian woman, my lord?”

  “I do,” said Janos. “I trust her to keep her word. Let him go.”

  They shoved Vasha forward, and he came out from the front ranks and saw his father glaring at him. Pulling his shoulders back, Vasha did not deign to run; he walked deliberately, not looking back until he had come almost to Katya’s horse. There he paused, half turned, in time to hear her speak.

  “One arrow will be enough.”

  “What if you miss?” Tess asked, sounding, Vasha thought, curious more than anything. Ilya looked brittle with anger.

  Katerina just smiled, but she did not take her eyes from Prince Janos. Nor did he take his eyes from her. He watched her, lifting his chin, as a brave man stares down his fate.

  She drew. She aimed. She fired.

  His head snapped back. Fletchings protruded from his throat. His body, shorn of its animating force, collapsed to the ground like an empty cloak.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The Law of Becoming

  ANATOLY SAKHALIN SAT IN the lounge of the Gray Raven and stared at the wall. The wall stared back at him, mute. It did not actually stare, of course. He only imagined it did, knowing that it contained images inside it, scenes in three dimensions, messages from people remote both in distance and time, an encyclopedia of human history encapsulated into a cylinder the size of his index finger. It even contained a nesh port, although on the Gray Raven, drifting in space, any neshing he might do was limited to the net space available shipboard.

  But the wall remained mute because it contained no answers for him. Not any more. Information. Questions. Communications. That was all. That was no longer enough.

  For two days he had shut himself off here in the lounge. Moshe left food four times a day. The small door in the corner led into a smaller lavatory. The crew of the Gray Raven allowed him his privacy. On a Chapalii ship he could have commanded privacy; here he could only request it. For some reason, the distinction comforted him.

  At first, returning from his audience with the emperor, he had tried to make sense of what he now ruled. All daiga holdings. In addition, three dukes, known as Tai, and all that they possessed; five independent lords, known as Cha, and all that they possessed. Star systems on a map, diagrammatic models of cities and warehousing capabilities and charts of mining projections and designated routes along the net of singularities.

  Individually, he could make sense of each one. Together, they overwhelmed him. After twenty hours of that he had slept for ten. He had tried other ways of organizing his holdings, of compressing them to manageable proportions, but after eight more hours he had given up and spoken the word that snapped off the wall.

  He set a plate on his lap, broke a square of crumbly corn bread in half, and spread butter on it. It was a little dry. It had been sitting on the side table for hours. But the butter was sweet.

  “Oh, gods,” he said to the wall, which as usual refused to reply. As miraculous as these modellers, these computers, these imagers and recorders and encyclopedias and nesh worlds were, in the end, they were only tools. Like a sword, you had to know how to use them. Like a needle, they only served to pull the thread through the clo
th: The pattern you embroidered had to come out of your own mind. Like a loom, they were of themselves empty until the human hand, the Chapalii hand, the hand guided by intelligence, strung the warp and wove the weft.

  He missed his daughter. In some ways Portia was the only tangible thing he could trust, a part of himself without being his possession. And she loved him freely, fully, and without the least duplicity, as only a child can. He missed his sister Shura. She and Portia were the only creatures in the universe that he loved simply because they existed. Without them, he felt alone.

  “Put a call through to Captain Emrys,” he said to the wall.

  “Yes?” she answered immediately, as if she had been waiting for him. Probably she had. What else was there for her to do, here in orbit around Chapal, suspended while she waited for him to act?

  “I would like to meet with you and the others.”

  “When?”

  “Now, if you can.”

  Which of course they could. They assembled quickly. Benjamin brought freshly baked apple fritters, fried to a golden brown, crunchy and sweet. No one ventured to sit on the couch beside Anatoly. Rather, they arranged themselves in a semicircle in front of him. Summer sat cross-legged on the floor and worked on a basket, weaving reeds together; able to sit still, she could not abide quiet hands. Rachelle draped herself dramatically over a chair, pretending tranquility, but he could see how tense she was. Florien sat on one arm of the couch, eyes shifting all over the room as if he was looking for something he had lost and would spring up in one moment to get it. Benjamin finished a fritter, licked his fingers, and began on another. Moshe stood, fidgeting, by the door. Branwen flopped down on the other couch. He watched her longest; she was relaxed, comfortable in her body, but alert.

  They knew what he was. He had told them. At first they had not quite believed him, but after the flood of messages and the arrival of over a dozen Chapalii craft in parallel orbits begging for instructions or for a visitation from the great lord, they had to accept it. Now they surveyed him warily, except for Branwen who, thank the gods, merely looked patient.

  “You know what I have become,” he began. “But I don’t know what to do now. What I knew, what I learned, with the jaran has taught me many valuable lessons, but only some of them apply here. I can’t know everything. I can’t oversee everything. I can’t make every decision. All I know is that my first loyalty lies to my own people, to the jaran, and every action I take must be to their benefit.”

  “What about the rest of the human race?” asked Rachelle. “I’m not working for Charles Soerensen because I like being a lapdog to the Chapalii, you know.”

  “Rachelle,” scolded Summer. “At least let him state his case.”

  Anatoly leaned forward, bracing his hands on his thighs. “What benefits the jaran will most likely also benefit all humans, certainly more than it will the Chapalii. But for me to make any great plans now would be hasty, to say the least. To act rashly in war is to invite disaster.”

  “Are we at war?” asked Summer.

  “I meant it as a…as a…an old saying…?” He glanced toward Branwen for help.

  “An aphorism?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  She smiled. The lift of her mouth calmed his nerves.

  “But that isn’t what I need to say,” he went on. “No prince remains prince without a court. No dyan remains a dyan without a jahar. I don’t have a jahar any more, and, gods, I need one now desperately. I have to protect myself by surrounding myself with people I trust, who will trust me, who will give me sincere and truthful advice whether or not they think I might like hearing it, and who I know will not betray me, for any price, at any cost. Where can I get such people?”

  He let the question hang for a minute before answering it himself. “I would like to start with the Gray Raven. With you.”

  “What’s in it for us?” asked Rachelle.

  “Could I get access to even more Chapalii nodes?” asked Florien.

  Benjamin took two fritters and bit down hard on them.

  “Where do you stand on the rebellion?” asked Summer. “It’s not necessarily in your interest anymore to support freedom for us daiga, not if you’re a prince among the Chapalii and can rule us all however you like.”

  Moshe gaped, gulping down an exclamation.

  Branwen said nothing, just watched him.

  “I did not seek this,” said Anatoly. “You know that’s true. But now that I have it, I must use it wisely. Surely, if you think you have cause not to trust me, you would rather put yourselves close enough to watch what I do rather than having to suffer my decisions secondhand? I would ask that you make an oath to me, as I would make one to you in your turn, for your service, your knowledge, your life if necessary—”

  “What duration?” asked Rachelle.

  “For the rest of your life would be best, of course, but I could only ask that of jaran. Ten years, to start? Twenty would be better. But I will only take your oaths if they are given freely, if you give yourselves to my service freely. In return, I will rely on you, I will take your advice, I will see to it that you are taken care of. But if I ever find that you have betrayed me, I will kill you.”

  Benjamin coughed down his last mouthful of fritter. “You can’t do that! There’s a law against murder. There’s due process….” He trailed off, wiping powdered sugar off his mouth with a cloth napkin.

  “That is true.” Anatoly lifted both hands, palms up. “I will study these laws further, and leave them in place, and respect them, but Summer is right. They do not apply to me.”

  “Shit,” said Rachelle. “The little bastard’s right. He can do whatever he damned well pleases.” But then, deliberately, she winked at him.

  Anatoly grinned, knowing that he had one on his side. “Of course, by only accepting your freely given oaths, I accept also that you may freely leave, so long as you tell me openly and we fix between us any due compensation and an agreement about what you may and may not do afterward which might jeopardize the security of my position.”

  “Hey, Florien, no selling tech secrets to the competition.”

  Florien blinked in his absentminded way. “Rachelle, someday the evil spirits will get you.”

  “I hope so.”

  “We’ll have to discuss it,” said Branwen suddenly, cutting into this interchange. “We vote on things here.”

  “I know that,” said Anatoly. “I’ll go back to my cabin and wait for your decision.”

  In his cabin, he took off his boots, lay down on the narrow bunk, hooked his hands under his head, and stared at nothing. After a while, he rolled onto his right side and fished out the castle piece, setting it on the floor.

  “Show me the board.” At once the flat black game board flowered into existence, contained in its grid of glowing white lines. The horseman had moved two intersections away from the emperor’s throne. The piece shaped like a teardrop had moved closer to him, and another piece, shaped like a blade, had moved farther away. The others had not changed their position from the last time he had looked.

  All daiga holdings. Should he simply go down to Rhui and report in to Bakhtiian, handing these lands over to him, as was his duty? Or should he claim them for the Sakhalin tribe, as was his right? Except without Bakhtiian and his vision, without Ilya’s marriage to Tess Soerensen and the intervention of Charles Soerensen, Anatoly would never have left Rhui at all, never left the jaran, never known that khaja lands flourished beyond the plains, that worlds and stars existed beyond Rhui and Mother Sun.

  A bell rang at his door. He closed his hand over the castle piece, concealing it, and the game board vanished. Lifting his hand, rolling up to sit, he said, “Enter.” The door slid open and Branwen walked in. That was one of the many things he liked about her: She never hesitated. She knew this was her ship, and however powerful he might be now, prince of the Sakhalin, prince in the Chapalii Empire, it was still her ship. Like an etsana, she understood where her power lay, and that she
alone could wield it.

  She sat down on the end of his bunk. Like a woman, she did not ask for permission. His feet brushed her hips, but she did not move away from their touch. Her brown hair curled down over her shoulders. The soft white light emanating from the bunk’s ceiling washed the red highlights to silver.

  “It was unanimous,” she said. “Rachelle tried to vote twice, to make sure she won.” She grinned.

  Anatoly liked her grin. “You’re teasing me. You didn’t tell me which way they voted.”

  “Someone has to make sure you don’t fuck up. We just appointed ourselves. Ten years, barring catastrophic changes, as long as you keep to your end of the bargain. To be reconsidered at the end of that time.”

  She stretched her long, lean legs out in front of her and rested a hand just below his knee, as if balancing herself there.

  “That is acceptable.” He was almost painfully aware of the warmth and pressure of her hand on his leg. It had been so long since a woman had shown him spontaneous physical affection.

  “I don’t normally do this,” added Branwen, “and I know you’re married, but you’ve sustained a shock. And you look like hell.”

  “I do?”

  But those were the last words he said for a while, because she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.

  Valentin died three hours after Diana and Portia left Naroshi’s palace. Both events came abruptly, as if an unseen communication had triggered them. Ilyana had not gone to see Diana off; she had been too busy consoling Evdokia for the loss of her best friend. And anyway, an undercurrent of hushed arguments and frowning looks had swirled through the company since planetrise. As usual, no one bothered to tell Ilyana what was going on, but she heard enough to guess, eavesdropping.

  “She would cut out like that with only two performances left.”

  “Give her a break, Annet. Gives you a chance to shine, don’t it?”

  “That’s true. Though playing Zenocrate to Veselov’s Tamberlaine is more like punishment.”