Earthly Crown

  “I’m sorry,” said Charles, but whether for her pain or for the specter of Ilya’s premature death, by their standards, she could not be sure.

  Cara and Ilya returned. “But surely you’ll ride with the army,” Ilya was saying. “There is so much more you can teach my healers.”

  “I don’t know. Charles?” Cara sat down again, but Ilya remained standing.

  “I need to go to the shrine of Morava,” said Charles.

  Ilya’s gaze flicked from Charles to Tess and back to Charles. “I can send a small jahar with you, if you wish to ride north now. Then you can follow us south, if you will, or return to the coast and sail back to Jeds, if that is your desire.”

  “I need to take Tess with me to the shrine.”

  “That is impossible.”

  Charles stood up. “Of course it is not impossible. I need her to translate.”

  “I remind you that you are in my camp.” Ilya’s voice dropped and its very mildness was threatening.

  Charles smiled.

  Tess had a horrible premonition that Charles was about to say something rash—something like, I remind you that you are on my planet—and she jumped to her feet and placed herself between the two men. “Stop it. Damn you two, stop it. I’ll make my own choice. Sit down.”

  Neither sat. No one spoke. Tess did not know what to say, so she simply stood there, feeling the force of them one on each side. Like Jiroannes through the bonfires, she felt the pressure of their attention on her, the force of their equally strong personalities brought to bear on her, and she was caught in the middle. If she had ever thought for an instant that these two men could compromise, then she had been sorely mistaken.

  “Someone’s coming,” said Cara.

  Ilya turned. A man ran toward them. He halted beyond the carpet, outside the awning’s overhang. “Bakhtiian. A messenger has come in from Sakhalin.”

  “I’ll come.” Ilya nodded at Dr. Hierakis. “Doctor. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Of course.”

  “Tess?” He put out his hand.

  She did not move. “I’m not done here yet. I’ll come along in a while.”

  He froze, tensing, then jerked himself around and strode off with the soldier, vanishing into the darkness.

  “Tess,” said Charles, “sometimes I think I would be doing you a service simply to take you forcibly out of here.”

  “Don’t you dare! You’re no better than him, you’re just a damned sight cooler about it. And if you’re so damned righteous, then why are you flouting your own interdiction laws?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Francis Bacon. Or had you forgotten so quickly? And you let the Bharentous Repertory Company come here. However much you claim to be preserving Rhuian cultures, you’re already corrupting them.”

  Charles blinked, looking surprised at the vehemence of her attack. “Tess, inevitably Rhui’s interdiction will be lifted. In a cautious way, I’m trying to prepare for that.”

  “Gods, you’ve already thought about it. You’re doing it on purpose. Do you have a timetable set, too? When do the sea gates open?” She was so angry that tears came to her eyes.

  His voice cooled to a chill. “If I hadn’t intervened, Rhui would have been raped. Which do you prefer? Quick and ugly, or giving them a chance to meet the change on their own terms?”

  “Oh, hell,” said Tess, wiping at her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Charles.” Cara stood up. “I want to talk to Tess a bit, alone, and take a few tests. If you’ll excuse us.”

  He muttered a word under his breath, then turned and stalked into his tent.

  “That’s one thing that always encourages me about humanity,” said Cara, taking Tess’s arm and leading her across to her tent, “that in the midst of all our nobility we can be so incredibly foolish. And petty. And otherwise damned asses.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cara snorted, amused. “The comment wasn’t actually meant for you, my dear.” She guided Tess into the tent and snapped her fingers. A light flicked on, hidden in the ceiling. Cara pushed through into the back compartment of the tent, where a diagnostic table stood next to a counter laid out in neat lines with a field laboratory, a lacework of metal and plastine and glass. “Now. We have some serious discussing to do, my girl, and I need to do a full diagnostic on you. Sit.”

  Tess sat obediently on the table. “Cara, is it too late? Can you give Ilya treatments to make him live longer?”

  Cara turned from the counter and regarded Tess. Something lit in her face and was, as quickly, smothered. “Ah,” she said, and turned back without replying, busying herself with the equipment.

  “But can you?” Tess demanded.

  “I’ve had to relearn a good deal about the human life span, a great deal we’ve forgotten these last one hundred years, now that we live out a full one hundred twenty years, all of us. Did you know, Tess, that with their year being longer than ours, Rhuians normally live longer lives than Earth humans did before the advent of decent medicine in the twenty-first century? I once thought they were some kind of amazing parallel evolution.”

  “But the cylinder I got at the shrine of Morava—”

  “Yes. It proved that they are descendants of Earth, brought thousands of years ago from Earth to Rhui by the Chapalii duke, the Tai-en Mushai, to populate this planet. One wonders if he killed off some developing intelligent indigenes in order to make room for our kind. But in any case, he altered the humans he brought. He made them more—efficient.”

  “But they still age more rapidly than we do.”

  “Indeed. Bakhtiian can expect to live another thirty or forty years, all else being equal, but you can expect to live another ninety, and you won’t age appreciably for a long long time. As in the old folktales of elves and humans, we would seem eternally young to them.”

  “Then you’re saying there’s nothing you can do?” Her voice caught with fear and grief.

  “This planet, and whatever the Mushai’s engineers did to them, has altered their chemistry from ours. The techniques given us to extend our lives might work for them, but they might not. It would be…experimental, Tess. Risks go together with experiments.”

  “Oh, God. But I’m so scared of losing him. Or of him getting old while I’m still young.”

  “There is another question. Ought I to interfere? It would clearly breach the interdiction.”

  “Which Charles has already breached.”

  “Yes. But knowledge works slowly, and Bakhtiian, my dear, may well change the face of this continent very quickly indeed. How long do we want it to go on?”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Tess asked bitterly. “Either way, we play god. Either way, we choose for Rhui.”

  “That is the burden of greater knowledge. But there are two other factors, Tess. One only Charles knows of, and now you: there are clues, here on Rhui, that there may be a way to alter the human life span, to extend it past the one hundred twenty years given us by the Chapalii, to double it or more. I intend to break the code. I believe that I’m close to doing so. In fact, with your cooperation, I need some subjects from the jaran, although I’ve had some luck studying them since I arrived here.”

  “The wounded,” said Tess under her breath. “God, that’s cold, Cara.”

  “If I save them as well, why not let them benefit all of us? Lie down, I’m going to take some blood and run the scanner over you.” Tess lay down. “I want Bakhtiian. Perhaps I’ll make you a trade: let me examine him, take tissue and blood from him, and I’ll see what I can do about some kind of basic serum to retard his aging.” Her expression grew distant. “And if I can manage it,” she said, more to herself than to anyone, “it will mean I possess Rhui’s code.”

  It was an odd, unsettling experience, to see Cara wear the look that Ilya wore when he contemplated lands he did not yet control.

  “But don’t answer me now,” added Cara, crashing back to earth. “I can’t quantify the risks for you, on
ly say that there will be risks. I can’t predict how his chemistry will react. You’ll feel a pinch here; that’s the needle. Now breathe normally and lie still.”

  Tess shut her eyes. A low hum filled her ears. A breath of air puffed on her face and drifted down over her body, followed by the slight tingle of some kind of pressure and field. “I’ll risk it. I have to. Though I don’t know how you can study Ilya without betraying all this.”

  “Shhh. Don’t move. Tess.” Her voice lowered, becoming grave. “There’s a more serious problem. Why did you remove your implant? To get pregnant, I know. But it’s too risky. I have four recorded deaths, three many years ago and one recent, of women who died in childbirth from a reaction to the—well, once it was an Earth woman who got pregnant by a Rhuian male and died, in the others it was the opposite. It’s an antigenic reaction to blood types and antibodies that no longer mesh well. I don’t want you to get pregnant, Tess. No, one more minute.”

  The silence drew out.

  “There, we’re done.”

  Tess pushed herself up. “But Cara—”

  “No, I have no recorded instances of women who survived cross breeding.”

  “What about the children?”

  “In one instance the child lived, because I arrived immediately after birth.”

  “Then there must be—”

  “Tess, as soon as a woman gets pregnant, she is inundated with hormonal changes. My research shows that the risk is immediate and acute. I suppose—” She broke off.

  “What?”

  “You did start puberty here, on Rhui. That might—”

  “That might what? God, Cara, you must know how badly Ilya wants children.”

  “What about what you want?”

  Tess hung her head, and her voice shook. “I want something of him, after he’s dead. But that’s only part of it. I never thought about children before. There was never any urgency in it. But I want children with him, Cara. Can’t you understand that?”

  “Since I have no children of my own?”

  “I didn’t mean it as an accusation.”

  Cara finished transferring blood from one tube to another and pressed a few buttons, and then came to sit on the table beside Tess. She put an arm around Tess, and Tess felt safe with her. Tess trusted her. “Tess, I will study the matter. When did you take the implant out?”

  “Three months ago.”

  “That should give us time. It usually takes a year until ovulation resumes. Meanwhile, I want you to take some of this rather primitive birth control method I have with me. Goddess, child, I will take no chances with you. Do you understand that?”

  “But, Cara—”

  “No. No chances with you. I’ll run a fuller test on you once I’ve gone through these preliminary results, and once I do a study of Bakhtiian, I’ll see if I can make any kind of prediction based on blood type and other factors. That’s as far as I’ll go, Tess. If you won’t promise me now to use this contraception, then I will forcibly insert an implant in you where you can’t dig it out. Do you understand me?”

  There was no compromise in Cara’s voice, and little enough hope. Tess’s throat felt all choked, and a moment later she felt the rush of tears. She buried her face in her hands to cover the tears, to hide them. She squeezed her eyes, as if that could stop them, but the devastation she felt was stronger than her self-control.

  “Oh, Tess.” Cara wrapped both arms around her and held her as if she were a child. “I’m sorry.”

  A foot scuffed at the entrance. “Cara? Tess?” It was Charles. Tess looked up in time to see him push the inner hanging aside and stand there in the gap, watching her. “Ah. You’ve told her about the dangers of pregnancy, haven’t you?”

  “You’re glad of this, aren’t you?” Tess broke out of Cara’s embrace and jumped to her feet. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I won’t leave him anyway.”

  Charles stiffened. “I hope you think better of me than that.”

  Tess stared at him, smitten with the sudden and astonishing realization that he actually cared what she thought of him. That it mattered to him.

  A beep sounded, low and brief, from the counter behind them.

  “What the hell?” muttered Cara. She slipped off the table and hurried around to the counter.

  “I’m sorry, Charles,” said Tess slowly. “I didn’t mean it. You aren’t petty.”

  “Thank you.” He chuckled. “But don’t overestimate me, Tess. Sainthood is a heavy burden to bear. However, I don’t think my pettiness extends to that.” He hesitated. “Knowing what it means to you.”

  The words came hard to him. She could hear that and it touched her that he would open up to her like this. “Charles,” she began tentatively, “I know—we’ve always been far apart in years, but—”

  “Oh. Shit.” Cara turned. In the glare of artificial light, she looked grim, angry, and scared. “Damn you, girl. What have you done?”

  Tess looked at Charles, but he simply shrugged, puzzled. “What have I done?” she asked.

  “This alters things considerably,” said Cara. “Clearly, whatever else may happen, I’m not leaving your side for the next nine months.”

  Tess went white and sank down onto the table, clutching at the edge with her hands to steady herself.

  “What’s going on?” asked Charles. An instant later, his face altered as the realization hit him. “But surely, if it’s so dangerous—Cara!” The expression of helplessness on his face looked totally out of place. “Perhaps a surgical abortion—”

  “No!” yelled Tess, even as she realized she might have no choice.

  Cara shook her head. “No. We’d still have an antigenic reaction to deal with.”

  “She’s all I have left, Cara,” he said, his voice so low that Tess barely heard him. She didn’t know how to respond; Charles wasn’t supposed to be so vulnerable.

  “I’m well aware of that, Charles,” said Cara coolly, as if she were offended. “I think it would be safer if I instead applied my skills and some testing to bring her safely to term.”

  The vulnerability in Charles’s expression vanished, smoothing into the mask worn by a duke in the Empire. “Very well,” he said, and he left the tent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  JIROANNES PACED FROM ONE edge of the carpet to the other, turning with precise anger at the very fringed border, right before he would otherwise step out onto the grass, and then stalking back to the other side. Above him, the awning sighed lazily in the breeze.

  “What are they doing?” he demanded of Syrannus. “Obviously they are breaking camp. Is everyone going? Only some of them?” Off in the distance, a contingent of jaran soldiers rode by, their red shirts gleaming like blood in the early morning sunlight. “Why weren’t we told? This is a deliberate insult to me, and thus to the Great King, may his sons multiply to the ends of the earth. It is intolerable. Samae, I said that I wanted my green sash now.” He cuffed her across the cheek. She dipped her head and vanished with ethereal grace into his tent.

  His guards sat watching the upheaval in the jaran camp. Usually they sat at their ease, gambling, polishing their swords and armor, mending blouses and trousers and boots, gossiping among themselves. But now they sat uneasily. Once or twice they glanced his way, and that annoyed him. Didn’t they trust him? Did they think he was unequal to this task?

  He sank down into his chair and regarded the six gold and jeweled rings that studded his fingers. Anger boiled inside him, at this impossible situation, at these primitive and squalid surroundings, at these savages. And yet, at the same time, deep down inside himself, he was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t true: perhaps he was unsuited for the role of an ambassador. Wouldn’t a better man have been called before Bakhtiian again and not left waiting here for ten interminable days? Wouldn’t an older man have made a better impression in that one brief audience he had been allowed? Had he really lost his temper? Had it showed? Had Bakhtiian scorned him? Or worse, dismissed him as an inexperienced and
ridiculous boy?

  Samae appeared. She knelt before him, head bowed, her arms extended with the emerald sash laid out across them for his approval. Her coarse black hair was pulled back tightly today, just long enough now to twine the ends into a short braid.

  A braid? When had she ever worn a braid? Before he had made her cut it, she had worn it in many exotic styles, but never like this. Where had she gotten such a notion, to wear her hair in a braid? The innovation irritated him. He slapped the sash to the ground.

  “No. Not that one. You are impossible.” He stood so quickly that he clipped her leg with his stride, and she shrank away from him and then straightened as he paced out to the edge of the carpet again. Another troop of horsemen rode by, heading south. “Syrannus.”

  “Yes, eminence,” Syrannus knelt before him.

  “I must know what is going on. What they mean for us to do. Surely they don’t intend to leave us here?” But even as he said it, he looked out along the row of tents that housed the other ambassadors and envoys, and he could see that they, too, were striking their camps. Knowledge had been granted them but denied him. Clearly, the snub was deliberate. One set of features leapt to mind immediately: Bakhtiian’s arrogant niece was surely responsible for this, influencing her uncle to insult him despite the fact that he was the ambassador of the Great King himself. If she and her uncle only understood the power of the Great King, they would not dare to treat his ambassador in this fashion. Then, as if by thinking of her he made her flesh, he saw her ride past with a troop of about one hundred horsemen, but she neither paused nor looked his way.

  “Your eminence,” said Syrannus, warningly. The old man stood up. Jiroannes turned.

  A boy approached them. Not yet old enough to wear soldier’s clothing, still, he wore riches: a blue shirt and gold necklaces and a girdle of golden plates. He bore no trace of beard on his cheek. A child, sent as envoy. Jiroannes was furious, knowing how deep the insult ran, and he began to turn away again, to ignore the boy. But Syrannus put a hand on his elbow, daring much, and in that instant Jiroannes remembered caution, and waited.