Earthly Crown

  “I don’t agree—” began Tess, and then stopped. In jaran society, where there was no place for them, perhaps they were better off leaving, for the arenabekh, for death, for somewhere else. Was that why Ilya had gone to Jeds, at sixteen? Cara had told her yesterday evening what Vasil had confessed to her. If Ilya had thought there was no place for someone like him with the jaran, because he loved another male, then he might have been willing to risk such a dangerous journey, knowing he might never return.

  “Sonia,” said Tess finally, “you must remember one thing. When Ilya left your tribe to go to Jeds, he left everyone behind. Everyone. Nothing, and no one, has ever been as important to him as the vision that drives him. Not even Vasil. Even if Ilya did still want him, he can’t go back to him now.”

  “You’re forgiving,” murmured Sonia.

  “What is there to forgive? I know Ilya loves me. Hell.” She gave a wry, unsteady laugh. “He married me twice. But I don’t think Vasil has changed. Ilya must face him, or he’ll never heal.”

  Sonia jerked her head up and glared at Tess. “Don’t let Vasil get too close to him! That would be idiotic.”

  Tess laughed. “I’m not afraid of Vasil.” But it was a lie. She was afraid of Vasil. And she could not help it, but she was beginning to wonder what it would be like to lie with him.

  “You should be,” said Sonia, and for a wild instant Tess could not tell if Sonia was saying that Tess should be afraid, or should be wondering.

  Ilya slept all afternoon. That evening he insisted on taking reports out under the awning. After the stifling heat of the daytime, the cool evening air proved refreshing. Tess watched him eat and drink—not enough, but more than he had managed before—and she sat beside him as scouts and riders came forward and spoke with him. Josef sat on his other side, listening, remembering everything with that astonishing memory he possessed. Now and again Ilya asked him for a piece of information or to clarify something someone had said. Tess could see how weak Ilya was: normally he would never have needed to ask; he had a formidable memory himself. Now it was all he could do to sit there and receive visitors.

  And it was just as well he did, she soon realized, even as their reports droned past her and she forgot every word they said. Ilya wanted the reports so that he could feel that he was in control of his army again. But his army also needed to see him. It was no wonder the army was laying waste to Habakar lands. They thought Habakar priests had killed him. Now, these men could see he was alive, and they would pass that message down the lines. Their faces reflected their joy and their relief. Because Ilya lay on pillows, they knelt, each one, to speak with him, so as not to tower over him, but as the night wore on, Tess felt that they were kneeling to Ilya out of duty and love and fealty. And though he was exhausted, their presence and their devotion gave him strength.

  It grew late.

  “Ilya,” she said, when a scout made his farewells and walked away into the darkness, “you should go to bed. You must rest.”

  Ilya shut his eyes. “Yes,” he said.

  Josef nodded and rose, and little Ivan leapt up to escort Josef back to his tent. Cara had gone to her own tent. They sat alone under the awning.

  “I traveled a long journey,” he said in a low voice. “I saw my own spirit. It is a thing of bright colors and twisting lines. It is brilliant, Tess, like fire. The gods touched it and made it burn, and I saw that they have given their favor to my dreams.”

  “Of course they have, my love.” She covered his hands with her own and just held them, strangely moved by his recital.

  His voice slipped so low that she had to bend to hear him. “How much more will She demand that I pay her?”

  “Who?”

  A guard hailed them. A moment later, a small party was escorted out of the gloom. “Ilya.” The guard was Vladimir. “He insisted, but if you want me to send them away…”

  Vasil stood before them with his family in tow. Karolla looked nervous, Ilyana looked curious. Valentin trailed behind, clutching his mother’s tunic, his pretty mouth turned down in a sullen frown.

  In the stillness, Tess heard singing coming from the farthest reaches of the camp, a cheerful noise.

  “No,” said Ilya softly. His gaze locked on Vasil. “Let them stay.”

  Tess rose swiftly and beckoned to Karolla and the children to come closer. “Have you met Karolla? This is Karolla Arkhanov. This is her daughter Ilyana.” An awkward silence, while the man and his namesake regarded each other doubtfully. “And this is Valentin.” Valentin peered out at Bakhtiian and then, after a moment, came out from behind his mother and sat down on a pillow. Tess offered him a sweet cake. He accepted gravely.

  Vasil sat down. No one spoke.

  Tess offered cakes to Karolla and Ilyana, and then to Vasil, and under the cover of this nicety they all passed a few more minutes.

  “You must miss Arina,” said Tess, to say something.

  “Yes,” said Karolla.

  The conversation lapsed again. Tess passed around the cakes a second time.

  “You’re Dmitri Mikhailov’s daughter,” said Ilya suddenly.

  “Yes.”

  Sitting next to each other, Karolla and Vasil were a study in contrasts: her soft, plain face next to his beauty; her resigned expression next to his bright one.

  Ilya turned his gaze back to Vasil. Tess could not read his expression, except to see that he was very tired. “I banished you,” he said quietly.

  “Yes,” agreed Vasil, watching him avidly. Tess wondered what Karolla felt like, sitting there, knowing that Vasil loved this man better than he loved her. Was Karolla wondering the same thing, about her and Ilya?

  “Why are you here?” asked Ilya.

  “I am dyan of the Veselov tribe now, and I am also married.” Vasil smiled slightly, and he transferred his gaze from Ilya to Tess. The warmth and brilliance of his smile caught Tess quite off guard, and it rendered her breathless for an instant. She smiled back at him. She could not help herself.

  Ilya looked white. One hand clenched tight around the tassels of a pillow. “I mean here, now,” he said in an undertone. “You know damn well what I mean, Veselov.”

  It was almost embarrassing to see Vasil as he absorbed Ilya’s attention. What did it matter what Ilya said to him, as long as he said something? He glowed with it, but like the moon, Tess saw suddenly, his was all reflected glow. He did not have heat enough to burn within himself, not like Ilya. She felt all of a sudden that she teetered on the edge of an answer, about him, about them.

  “You know why,” said Vasil.

  “You are forbidden my presence.”

  “Yet I am here.” Vasil drew in a great, shuddering breath. He opened his hands. His eyes had a beautiful shape, rounded with a hint of a pull at their ends. His lips were as pretty as his son’s, but on him, with all the life and mobility of expression he bore with him, all the features that might otherwise have seemed weak and effeminate were strong and bold instead. “Tell me to leave, to never look on you again, and I will obey.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “But I will.” He said it so sincerely, but Tess knew he was lying. Everyone here knew he was lying, except perhaps Ilyana, who sat loyally at her father’s side. He dropped his voice to an intimate whisper. “You don’t want me to go.”

  Ilya shut his eyes. He was exhausted.

  “Vasil,” said Tess firmly, “he needs to rest. I must ask you to leave.” She rose and made polite farewells to the children and to Karolla. She had to give Vasil a shove to get him on his way. “Go.” Then she turned back to Ilya. He was already asleep. She found Aleksi and together they carried Ilya back into the tent and took his clothes off and laid him on the bed. Aleksi left, and Tess stripped and lay down beside him. He sighed and turned into her, draping an arm over her, tangling his legs in with hers.

  “Ilya, why is Grandmother Night laughing at you?”

  He did not reply. She thought perhaps he was still asleep, but a moment later his ha
nd moved to rest possessively, protectively, on her belly. He stroked the swollen curve and sighed deeply into her hair.

  “Why was Nadine spared?” she asked suddenly. “The rest were killed, even her brother, who couldn’t have been very old. Why didn’t they kill Nadine, too?”

  He stiffened in her arms. “She wasn’t there,” he said hoarsely. “She and my aunt’s youngest daughter—the one who died—were like Katerina and Galina are now—as close as twins. She was with Arina, out doing chores, I suppose. Out getting water, probably.”

  “What about Natalia’s husband? Where was he?”

  It took her a moment to realize why he had gone so hot so suddenly; he was sweating. “With me, of course. With the jahar.”

  “He rode with your jahar?” she asked stupidly.

  “Of course he did. He married into the tribe, of course he rode with my jahar.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He left,” he said curtly. “I was glad to see him go. I hated him.”

  “What was your mother like, Ilya?”

  She didn’t expect him to answer, but he did. “Proud. Arrogant. Impulsive. Vain.”

  Tess laughed a little. “She sounds rather like you.”

  “No,” he said softly, “I am like her. She never liked me, not until I came back from Jeds.”

  “That can’t be true!”

  “You never knew my mother,” he said bitterly.

  “No, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  “Don’t be. You wouldn’t have liked her, and she’d have made your life miserable.”

  “Ilya!” The force of his anger and pain stunned her. “Didn’t you like her?”

  “I loved her.” He said it gratingly, as if he were ashamed of it.

  She hesitated, but she had never found him in such a forthcoming—in such a vulnerable—mood before, so she went on. “What about your father?”

  He laughed. It was a fragile sound, brief enough, but it heartened her. “My father was a strange man. He was an orphan. Did you know that? He was a Singer. He never said much. He never tried to counsel my mother, and she dearly needed counseling, sometimes. Not in all things. She negotiated with other tribes skillfully enough. They all said so, and it was true. But her own headstrong desires…those she never learned to control, and he never tried to help her. I’m not sure he cared. But he loved me. He only stayed because of me. He said the gods had told him that he would have a child who would have fire in his heart. He said the gods had told him that this child would change forever what the jaran were, that the gods would take the child on a long journey, a Singer’s journey, to show him what he must do to bring the light of the gods’ favor onto their chosen people.”

  “And that child was you.”

  “That child was me.” His words were slurred, now. “And now I have gone on the Singer’s journey twice, once in body, once in spirit. That makes me a Singer, like my father.” He lay heavy on her, where an arm and leg were draped over her, and he sighed and shut his eyes again.

  “Go to sleep, my heart.” She stroked his hair. A Singer. He was now a Singer. It seemed a doubly heavy burden to bear.

  He slept soundly all that night. The next morning he insisted they start out down toward the Habakar heartlands. He rode a placid mare, but by mid-morning he was so exhausted that, given the choice between halting the train of wagons on the trail so that he could rest or riding in a wagon instead, he agreed to ride in a wagon. Tess sat next to him, one arm around him, propping him up. On his other side, Sonia drove. A constant stream of riders—women and men both—passed them, just to catch sight of him, just to see if it was true, that he had defeated the Habakar sorcery and come back victorious and alive.

  By mid-afternoon he trembled as if with a palsy. Tess and Sonia overruled his objections and halted the wagons and made camp. He was so tired that Tess practically had to hand-feed him, and then he fell asleep before he could hold an audience. Vasil came by that evening.

  “He’s asleep,” she said. She sat under the awning in the cool evening breeze, reading by lantern light from Cara’s bound volume of the complete works of Shakespeare.

  “You look tired,” said Vasil. Without being asked, he sank down beside her. “Karolla is pregnant, too.”

  That startled her. “A third child. You must be very pleased, Vasil.”

  He smiled. “I love my children. Is he really asleep?”

  She closed the book and set it to one side. “Vasil, what do you want? Or do you even know?”

  All at once his expression lost its casual self-assurance. “Oh, gods, I thought he was going to die. I couldn’t have borne that. At least, even banished from him, I knew he yet lived.”

  His vehemence shook her. “Why did you come back? You must know that he can’t see you, that it will never be acceptable.”

  “I had no choice,” he muttered. He dropped his gaze away from her shyly, forcing her to stare at his profile. The lantern light softened him, giving him the lineament of an angel.

  Tess sighed. She had long since discovered that she was susceptible to brash men who hid behind modesty. She leaned over and took his hand. “Vasil.” Then she faltered. She did not know what she needed to say.

  Daringly, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, and then turned her hand over and kissed her palm once, twice, thrice. She shivered, and not from the cold. “You’d better go,” she said, and was shocked to hear how husky her voice sounded.

  Without a word, without looking at her, he placed her hand back in her lap and left.

  “Oh, God,” she said to herself as she watched him walk away. As she watched him as any woman watches a man she is attracted to, measuring the set of his shoulders and the line of his hips and the promise of his hands. No wonder Sonia had warned her against him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  TESS REFUSED TO GO on the next day. Ilya raged at her, but she simply smiled and kissed him, and Sonia backed her up. So he rested. The day after, she agreed to go on only if he would ride in the wagon all day. Furious but trapped, he submitted.

  That day they came down onto the Habakar plain, and scouts and patrols came by in increasing numbers just to get a look at him. The next day, and the next, and the next, he grew stronger in stages. They journeyed at a leisurely pace, attended by his jahar and visited by an ever-growing number of riders. Bakhtiian, they would say, pointing at him from a distance. Some came forward to pay their respects. He gave brief audiences in the evening. Tess always had to cut them short before he was ready to quit, but he was pushing himself constantly, and Cara shook her head and disapproved.

  Tess was shocked at the wasteland the army had made of these lands. She could tell they had been rich, once, that they had been rich just a month before—before the jaran army had descended on them. They passed no village, no city, that was not torn by war or deserted. They passed no field that was not trampled into dust. Once they passed a pasture strewn with corpses rotting in the sun. Tess saw not one living person, except for the jaran. Ilya muttered to himself and that evening he sent messengers forward to prepare the main camp to receive him. He sent a messenger to Mother Sakhalin, asking that he and she hold an audience once he had arrived.

  Riders lined the path of their train’s progress, to watch him go by. The closer they came to the main camp, each day that passed, the more riders appeared along their route. Three more days passed. At midday on the fourth day—twelve days after he had emerged from his coma—they made their triumphal entrance to the main camp.

  It was noisy, both the camp and their reception. Over the protests of almost everyone, Ilya mounted his black stallion and rode at the head of the procession, Tess on his left, Josef and Mitya on his right. Tess knew well enough that Josef’s presence served to remind them all of why they were here in Habakar territory, and Mitya’s to remind them that Bakhtiian had heirs. Vladimir, bearing the gold banner, rode behind, and after him came Bakhtiian’s personal guard, the members of the Orzhekov jahar
, resplendent in their armor. After them came Sonia, driving a cart in whose back sat the other Orzhekov children who were with the tribe. Then rode the rest of his jahar, followed by the wagon train and the rearguard.

  The members of the camp and the army had assembled, making an avenue between them down which Bakhtiian rode. The way was straight and clear through the huge camp, angling in to the center where lay the Sakhalin encampment and a broad empty field reserved for the Orzhekov tribe. Sonia had sent a wagon ahead in the night, with Aleksi and Ursula, containing the great tent. Now it stood alone in the center of the field. Ilya was glad enough to dismount and recline on the pillows lying there for his use. He was tired, but not as tired as he had been, and his face shone. Tess sank down beside him. They watched as the wagons trundled in and made their spiraling ring around the central tent. The camp grew up around them.

  Mitya and Galina brought them food and drink. Ilya dozed a little. When he woke, he gazed at Tess with a quizzical look in his eyes.

  “What is it?” she asked. She smiled. She felt deliriously happy. She had gambled, and it had paid off. It made her feel reckless. He looked stronger already, In another ten or twenty days, it would seem as if the entire episode had not happened at all.

  “I haven’t seen you wear jahar clothes since—” He shrugged. “Since I don’t know when.”

  “Men’s clothes don’t fit a pregnant belly.”

  He smiled suddenly, “A child, Tess. Think of it.”

  “My bladder thinks of it constantly. We need better plumbing.”

  “What you wish, you shall have, my wife. But, ah, do you have any designs in mind?”

  “I wish David was here. He’s the engineer. He could design something simple and efficient.”

  His eyes narrowed. “David ben Unbutu. Tess.” He hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind.” He shook his head. “I’m hungry.”

  “Still?”

  But his expression changed, and an entirely new gleam lit his eyes as he examined her. “Just now.” He reached out to take her hand, caught it up, and hastily dropped it again. “Tess. We’ll go to our bed early tonight.”