Earthly Crown

  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 from her. “Fair spoils for my help.”

  “I command the spoils in this army,” he said, his voice low but so threatening that the woman collapsed in fear onto the ground, abasing herself with the others.

  “Forgive me,” she said into the dirt.

  “Who gave it to you?” he demanded.

  “A rider. His name was Vasil.”

  Ilya swore under his breath. “Of course,” he muttered. “Of course it would be Vasil.” He turned on his heel and stalked back inside the tent.

  No one moved for a moment. Some of the other women glanced up, terrified and yet desperately wanting to know what was going on. Viaka stayed prone in the mud. One of the women had a pack on her back that wiggled suddenly: a baby. Tess sighed. Someone had to dispose of them.

  “Come now,” she said briskly. “It was ill done, and I think, Viaka, daughter of Headman Karst, that you’d do best to simply give all your spoils back to me. Yes, starting with the tunic. That’s right. There you are, Aleksi. Take the coat from her, and the armbands.” All the women looked up, gaping at the sight of a woman giving orders and a man taking them from her. “Now. What have you come here for?” Tess was not sure what to expect. Would they ask for blankets? Medicine? Food for their children? Passage to somewhere else?

  Viaka, stripped down to a dirty tunic and drab skirt, was
too humiliated and frightened to speak. An older woman finally raised her head, regarding Tess with an expression composed mostly of terror and with little enough hope. She spoke in a voice roughened by privation and whatever horrors she might have seen in recent days.

  After she finished, Viaka lifted her mouth a hands-breadth from the ground and spoke just loud enough for Tess to hear. “We ask that you spare our lives.”

  And that was all.

  Tess was shocked, down to the core of her being. “Of course you won’t be harmed!” she exclaimed, but even as she said it she knew that the harm was already done—that those who survived the summer would have to last out next winter. Perhaps in a year, next spring, those left might hope to build anew. “If you build faithfully and—pay the tribute due to the jaran, then Bakhtiian will treat you justly. Have you—where are your men?”

  No one answered her at first. Perhaps they took her silence for a threat, since at last one spoke. “Those of our men the Habakar did not kill are in hiding, princess.”

  “They’ve nothing to fear from us!” Tess exclaimed, and then she wondered if it was true.

  “Ilya,” Tess said that night after they had gone to bed. A single lantern burned, hanging from the center pole. “Who burned the city?”

  “The Habakar general, the one taken prisoner. The Farisa ruled here before them, and once we struck into the country the Habakar rulers were willing to devastate the land rather than lose it. The Farisa people are eager to embrace our rule, having suffered under the rule of the Habakar King since their grandparents’ time. Or at least, that’s what the scouts and some of the artisans left from the city tell us. I have it in mind to recruit Farisa men for an auxiliary unit of foot-soldiers. Infantry. We’ll need infantry when we besiege the Habakar cities.”

  “Would you burn a city to the ground like they did?” The sight of the devastated city and the children picking through its ruins still haunted her.

  “If necessary.” He said it casually and turned to pull his shirt off over his head. He held a sleeve out in the dim light, examining a fraying edge on the embroidery. “Damn,” he said to himself, and he rummaged in his saddlebags to find a needle and yarn to repair the damage.

  Light and shadow mixed on his torso, blending him to a pale, sheeny gray. His hair seemed darker even than the shadows, and his saber hilt gleamed, caught at just the right angle by the lantern’s glow. Tess propped her chin on her hands and watched him, and he smiled without looking up at her, knowing that she watched him. He was precise with his needlework, pulling out the frayed threads and winding new ones in among them, strengthening the pattern. He was equally precise in finishing off the ends and rolling the needles and yarn back up in their cloth bag and replacing it in the saddlebags.

  “Haven’t you anything better to do than watch me?” he asked.

  She chuckled, and stood, and stripped. “Gods, it’s cold.” She covered herself with the blankets and fur, and quickly enough he slid in beside her. She yelped. “Your hands are cold!”

  He laughed.

  A wind stirred the tent. It was a slight shudder, and then Tess heard the distinct sound of a footfall, soft, on the carpet in the outer chamber.

  “Kolia, is that you?” said Ilya sternly, but he grinned and shook his head at Tess, who sat up. “Haven’t I told you—?”

  The hanging parted, and Vasil stepped through into the inner chamber. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said cheerfully. He looked at Tess, but only briefly and without a trace of lascivious interest in her nakedness. All avid, his gaze fastened on Ilya. “I could join you,” he offered.

  Tess was so astounded by Vasil’s audacity that she gaped at him and did not even attempt to cover herself up. It took her that long to register Ilya’s stillness. An instant later, he was out from under the blankets with his saber drawn. Vasil stared at him, drinking in the sight, frozen, unheeding.

  All at once Tess realized that Ilya was taking a step forward. One step—it registered, as if at a slower pace than she usually thought, and yet all their movements were slow: Ilya was going to kill him. Right now. No mercy.

  She dove in front of him and Ilya had to sidestep to avoid her. He cursed. She jumped to her feet and slapped Vasil across the face as hard as she could. Vasil came back to himself with a snap, and in the instant when his attention was not quite off Ilya and not quite on her, she shoved him backward, back through the slit in the hanging, back into the outer chamber.

  “And stay out, you damned interfering bastard!” she yelled, hoping that Aleksi would hear.

  A moment later, Aleksi’s voice came from outside. “Tess?”

  “Escort him back to his camp, Aleksi.” Her voice shook because she was now breathing so hard, panting. Adrenaline raced through her. Her hands trembled. “Don’t tell anyone.” Vasil, damn him, hesitated. He gazed at the curtain as if wondering whether to risk going back in, or if Ilya might come out. “Out,” she said, “or I’ll kill you myself.” She grabbed a knife from a sheath hanging along one wall and held it up. “Or don’t you believe I could do it? Or better yet, scar that pretty face of yours.”

  Vasil’s gaze leapt to her. He smiled. “You’re glorious, my sweet. Especially with no clothes on.”

  “Get out.”

  He got out.

  Tess spun and went back into the inner chamber. Ilya sat on the floor, saber cast away to one side of the chamber, his face buried in his hands. Tess knelt beside him and embraced him, wrapping her arms around him.

  “Ilya? Can you believe he—?” She broke off her laugh. “Ilya!” She might as well not have been there, for all he responded to her. As if he could not bear to look at the chamber, at what he had almost done. “My sweet love, he’s gone. I chased him off by threatening to cut up that handsome face of his, which would have served him right and probably made all of our lives a bit easier. But I didn’t think it was a good idea to kill him. He’s shameless, it’s true, but I don’t think he’s worth killing.” She faltered. “Ilya?”

  Oh, God, this ran deep. The old wound had just reopened, except—she could see it now—it had never truly healed. So ugly a wound that Ilya would kill to keep it closed.

  A worse thought hit her. Was it hatred that had made him want to strike? Or was it fear, that what Vasil so obviously wanted he wanted too and was not, by jaran laws, allowed to have. I don’t want to know. But she had to know.

  “Ilya,” she whispered. Broke off. You and Vasil were lovers once, weren’t you? She could not make herself ask it, not about a person who was that much more beautiful than she ever would be, not about a person he might still love more than he had ever loved her.

  “Ilya,” she said, and her voice shook on his name. “Come to bed. Please?”

  But he would not answer her, nor did he sleep that night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE RETCHING SOUND CAME from the straggle of bushes that edged the road. The line of wagons lurched to a halt, and Diana sighed and exchanged a glance with Arina Veselov. Arina took the reins from Diana and pulled them taut. The animals that pulled the wagons—Diana thought of them as oxen—stood with bovine stupidity and flicked flies from their backs with their tails.

  The bushes crackled and Gwyn appeared, pushing through them. “Was that you?” Diana called, amazed at his appearance. Like an echo, the retching sounded again, worse this time, followed by a woman’s moan.

  Gwyn shook his head. “No. It’s Anahita. This is the second day she’s been sick. I don’t know if she ate something, or if she’s just overwrought.”

  “They stopped the wagons for her?” Diana demanded. Only after they had reached the mountains did Diana realize how truly easy the traveling was on the plains. Now they inched along. At the widest stretches they managed to fit three wagons abreast. Often, negotiating falls of rock on the high pass road, they had to drive single file. It was so damned slow. It was cold at night. Tempers were fraying, and Diana had two days since—four days out from the gate of the kingdom, the
burned city—decided to ride during the day with her jaran family rather than with the Company. Arina and Kirill held a tight rein on those of their tribe accompanying the army and, perhaps, the egos they dealt with were not quite as weighty as the ones Owen and Ginny had to cope with.

  Gwyn walked over to them. Dust had painted his boots and trousers a monotonous color that could only be termed a color at all by courtesy. His pleasant face was sunburned; dirty gloves encased his hands. He nodded a greeting to Arina and leaned against wooden slats beside Diana’s feet. “No, I don’t know what’s holding us up this time. Anahita just took the opportunity to throw up in private.”

  “I’d feel more sympathy for her if she didn’t complain so much.”

  Gwyn glanced back at the bushes, which were silent now. He lowered his voice. “Her work is suffering.”

  “Everybody’s work is suffering.”

  “No. Be honest, Di. We’re tired, we’re displaced, and I can see the fatigue and a little fear in Quinn and, say, Phillippe. But even Hal is doing his usual best. It’s only Anahita who can’t stay the course. Tell me the truth. What do you think of the work you’re doing now?”

  Diana looked at Arina, feeling guilty about leaving the other woman out of the conversation, but Arina merely nodded at her, gave her the reins back, and clambered down from the wagon to walk back along the line to the wagon which held her two children. Diana shrugged and pulled the reins taut. “I think I’m stretching my technique. I think I’m learning.”

  “So do I. So do the rest, however grumpy we might be about these conditions. Anahita shouldn’t be here.”

  “You’ve never liked her.”

  “That’s true. You should be playing her roles, Diana.”

  Guilt and joy warred within her. Gwyn Jones was courting her. Goddess, of course she was ambitious. She would not have gotten so far so fast unless she was driven. “I know exactly how I would play Zenocrate,” she said passionately, and then blushed.

  He chuckled. “Now that you’ve seen Tess Soerensen? Do you suppose Owen will let us play Tamburlaine here?”