His Conquering Sword

  “Who ought to have died? Oh, you mean Nadine and the child, just like Tess almost did, with the early one? It’s true that she was sick for months after the birth. Everyone thought she was going to die, even Feodor. Even Bakhtiian. Tess was the only one who thought she might live. Bakhtiian sat at her bedside for twenty days straight and served her with his own hands, until he saw that she would live. He and Varia Telyegin nursed her through it. Even Dr. Hierakis says that Varia Telyegin is a great healer. But the baby was always strong. Feodor got the baby a wet nurse and then they had the worst arguments when Nadine recovered and he wanted her to nurse the child herself. I’ve never seen Nadine so weak and subdued. I think she only said one ill-tempered thing a day for an entire season. She’s much better now.”

  “Of course, it’s none of my business,” said Marco hastily, looking uncomfortable at hearing these revelations.

  “Why should Nadine have died, though?” Aleksi insisted.

  Marco dragged a hand back through his hair, looking like he was reminded of something he didn’t want to think about. “Because blood half of the earth and half of the heavens doesn’t mix easily,” he replied curtly. “May we go see Tess now?”

  So they climbed the butte, winding up the steep trail as the afternoon wind tore at their shirts. At each switchback, Marco paused and stared out at the view growing beyond and beneath them. From above, the spiral along which the camp was laid out showed clearly enough, although it was hard to distinguish the pattern from the ground. The southern mountains lay in a distant blue haze, tinged with pink from the sun’s long rays.

  “That’s where Habakar lies, that way, isn’t it?” Marco looked toward the distant south.

  “Yes. Mitya is still there. They’re building him a new city, west of Hamrat. The Princess Melatina and her brother have lived with Mother Orzhekov for six seasons now, and she’s not nearly as shy as she used to be. The princess, that is.”

  They climbed on. West lay the sea, hidden from their view, where the sun set, and north and east past the rolling line of hills stretched the vast golden blur of the plains.

  “East,” said Marco, pausing to catch his breath. Already the eastern horizon dimmed to a dusky blue, shadowed and mysterious. “East, on the Golden Road. But, Aleksi.” He paused. “What about Bakhtiian’s son?”

  Aleksi warded off the notice of Grandmother Night with a quick turn of his wrist. “Bakhtiian’s son died.”

  “No. His other son. The one who’s Katerina’s age. Vasha. He must be Bakhtiian’s son the same way Lara must be David’s daughter.”

  Aleksi sighed. “Marco, you khaja always care so much which man’s seed made which child on what woman. Vasha is Bakhtiian’s son because Tess adopted him as her son, and Bakhtiian is her husband. Just as she adopted me as her brother.”

  “But—” The wind whipped at them, tearing their hair away from their eyes, stinging and sharp and hot.

  “It’s true enough, I suppose, that Vasha is Bakhtiian’s son by khaja laws, too, and since his mother never married…well…” Aleksi shrugged. “It might even be true about David, by khaja laws, but still, Lara—”

  “—is Feodor Grekov’s daughter,” said Marco. “I understand. I suppose it’s better that David never hears about it. It would break his heart.”

  “But he isn’t married to Nadine—” Aleksi broke off and trudged on after Marco, who had started on up again. The conversation was pointless in any case. The khaja were very strange, all except Tess, of course, and even she—Then he grinned. Tess and her brother and the khaja from Erthe were the strangest ones of all, because they had come down from the heavens.

  They reached the summit and the wind skirled around them and then, as they crossed the flat ground scoured clean by years upon years of Father Wind’s rough touch, died altogether. A single tent stood on the plateau, staked down. The gold banner at its height hung limply, stirred as the wind fluttered the cloth, and stilled again. Clouds shone pale in the sky above, touched orange in the west where they feathered the horizon.

  Ilyakoria Bakhtiian knelt on the ground some twenty paces in front of the tent. His head was bent. Before him, in a semicircle, sat the ten etsanas and the ten dyans—well, only nine since Venedikt Grekov was still away on his expedition to Vidiya—listening intently. It was so quiet, with the sun’s rays bathing the plateau in a rich golden light, that even from twenty paces away, where they halted, they could hear Bakhtiian’s voice as he spoke.

  “… and I said to Grandmother Night, ‘I will give to you that which I most love if you will make me dyan of all the tribes.’ And I sealed the bargain with the blood of a hawk.”

  Aleksi noticed, at once, that Bakhtiian wore no saber. He had disarmed himself. His horse-tail staff lay over the knees of Mother Sakhalin, and his own aunt had laid his saber on the pillow on which the dyan of her tribe—which was him, of course—would otherwise be seated. From the tent, he heard a muffled, steady drumbeat, and he heard Svetlana singing, and then laughter. Steam boiled up from two great copper pots set over a fire to one side of the tent. Vasha, who was getting all gangly and overgrown these days, sat in mute attendance on the fire.

  “Afterward,” Bakhtiian continued into the silence, not looking at the women and men who in their turn watched him with unnervingly intent gazes, “I thought that she had cheated me, but then I realized that she had held to her end of the bargain. Vasil was not the person whom I most loved. I was the one who tried to cheat Grandmother Night. I paid dearly enough for my presumption.”

  There they sat, in silence, Sakhalin, Arkhanov, Suvorin, Velinya, Raevsky, Vershinin, Grekov, Fedoseyev, and last, Veselov and Orzhekov. Arina Veselov sat on a litter, since she had never regained enough strength to be able to walk very well. Her odd cousin sat next to her. Scars had obliterated the beauty of Vera’s face; her riders called her a hard dyan but a fair one, and she was known to be ruthless and aloof. Yaroslav Sakhalin had ridden two thousand miles in twenty days to come here, and the others had come long distances as well. Irena Orzhekov regarded her nephew gravely. Alone of all of them, she did not look particularly surprised by his confession.

  “And what,” asked Mother Sakhalin, “did you pay, Ilyakoria Bakhtiian?”

  He lifted his head to look directly at her. “These lives. The life of my mother, Alyona Orzhekov. The life of my father, Petre Sokolov. The life of my sister Natalia and of her son. Of my cousin Yurinya. Of the Prince of Jeds, Charles Soerensen, my wife’s brother. The life of my son.”

  The wind picked up again. The gold banner stirred and fluttered and spread, like a last ray of the sun, out against the vast arch of the sky. “The lives of those who followed me, and died, not knowing of the bargain I had made and then hidden.” He bent his head and ran his fingers up the embroidery on his shirt. His aunt watched him, her face stern. He looked up again, for the final time. “The life of the boy I once was, Ilyakoria Orzhekov.”

  Katerina ducked out of the tent and ran over to the pots. She dipped a kettle into water, whispered something to Vasha, glanced toward the assembly, and then hurried back inside. Very clearly, in the silence, they all heard a woman swear forcefully and fluidly. Arina Veselov hid her mouth behind a hand. Every gaze flashed toward the tent and then away. Every one but Bakhtiian’s. His gaze did not stray from Mother Sakhalin’s face.

  “Two more lives hang in the balance, Bakhtiian,” she said quietly. “As the gods judge you today, so will our judgment be.”

  Aleksi shuddered. He had seen how harsh the gods’ judgment could be. It wasn’t fair that their judgment should be passed through Tess. And yet, Aleksi trusted in Cara Hierakis maybe even more than in the gods.

  Marco crouched and settled in for a long wait, and Aleksi crouched beside him. He liked Burckhardt, really. He was an easy companion. He knew when to be silent and when to speak, when to act and when to be patient.

  So they waited. The sun set and its light died and gave birth to a darkness patched with stars. Yaroslav Sakhalin and Mikhai
l Suvorin rose and lit torches and posted them on lances thrust into the ground at either end of the semicircle. The wind picked up and battered at the sides of the tent. The drum beat. Inside the tent, Svetlana sang, and Aleksi closed his eyes and listened to her. She had a pleasant voice, a little thin, but it was strong and steady. Of course, compared to Raysia Grekov…but Svetlana was not Raysia Grekov; she wasn’t a Singer. She was a simple, hard-working, practical woman. She was his wife. The thought of that, of having a sister and a wife and her siblings and a daughter and a little one on the way, warmed him through to the core of his heart.

  Sakhalin and Suvorin replaced the torches with new ones. The stars wheeled around the sky, and the clouds chased away into the north to leave the black span above brilliant with light.

  They waited, and out of the darkness and the silence, they heard a baby’s sudden strong cry.

  Bakhtiian jumped to his feet, and spun, and stopped in his tracks.

  The baby cried again, and then cut off.

  Silence.

  Bakhtiian was shaking so hard that Aleksi could see it, even with the night and the distance between them. He was afraid. Aleksi rose then, and Marco with him, and all of them rose, the etsanas and the dyans. Vera Veselov slipped a strong arm around her cousin Arina and helped her to her feet, and Irena Orzhekov steadied Arina on her other side, and between them, Arina managed to stay upright. Aleksi felt how desperate they all were—they wanted the gods to judge in Bakhtiian’s favor not just for his sake, but for the sake of the jaran.

  Svetlana threw the entrance flap aside, and Katerina and Galina emerged, each girl bearing a torch. Blood streaked Galina’s hands, and she grinned hugely. Sonia ducked out behind them. She held a bundle in her arms, and it hiccuped a cry as the cold air hit its face and then it began to squall.

  Sonia laughed at something someone said behind her. She marched over and deposited the screaming bundle into Bakhtiian’s arms. At once, the child ceased crying. Ilya stared down at it. Alert but calm now, it stared up at him.

  “Tess says that her name is Natalia,” said Sonia. She crossed to kiss her mother, Irena Orzhekov, and then turned and hurried back inside the tent.

  “Natalia,” whispered Bakhtiian. He looked stunned.

  Svetlana drew aside the entrance curtains again, and Sonia and Dr. Hierakis helped Tess out of the tent. Tess moved gingerly, leaning heavily on the two women, but she smiled. Aleksi took in a breath, able to breathe again. Marco heaved his breath out abruptly in a relieved sigh.

  Bakhtiian’s expression blossomed into a smile that even darkness could not dim. He went to greet his wife. He kissed her on either cheek, and then he turned and regarded his audience. Aleksi had never seen him look more triumphant.

  Mother Sakhalin walked over to him and offered him the horse-tail staff. “It appears, Bakhtiian,” she said, “that the gods have forgiven you. Far be it from me to judge otherwise.”

  But, of course, with the baby in his arms—and a big, thriving child she appeared to be, too—he could not take the staff.

  “Vasha,” he said, and immediately the boy leapt up and ran over to him. “Hold the staff for me, if you please.”

  Mother Sakhalin hesitated for one instant. Then she gave Vassily Kireyevsky the horse-tail staff.

  The others came forward, one by one, and greeted the new child with a blessing and Tess with a kiss on either cheek. Last, Irena Orzhekov stopped before her nephew and held up his saber.

  “This is yours, I believe.”

  “Here,” said Tess, the first time she had spoken at all. “I’ll belt it on him.” Sonia still supported her, but Tess took the saber from Mother Orzhekov’s hands and secured it with her own hands onto her husband’s belt. Irena Orzhekov embraced her, and then Tess stepped back and turned to the doctor. She looked utterly exhausted, but pleased. “I’m going to go lie down now,” she announced.

  And that was that. The first pale line of light, heralding dawn, limned the eastern horizon.

  Smiling besottedly down at his daughter, Bakhtiian followed Tess inside. Sonia and the doctor went in behind him. Vasha placed the horse-tail staff reverently in its wooden holder, under the awning, and then Katya pushed him, and he shoved her back, and Galina huffed and rolled her eyes and they all laughed and raced away toward the trail.

  “Beat you there.”

  “No, I will.”

  “I’ll be first!”

  The two youngest dyans took either end of Arina Veselov’s litter and carried her away. Her cousin followed, and the other etsanas and dyans, with Mother Sakhalin steadying herself on her nephew’s arm. The morning sun made palest parchment of the old woman’s skin, and Aleksi saw clearly how very old she was, and how frail. The change had come suddenly on her, after her grandson had left.

  Sonia emerged from the tent. “Marco! It is you! I’m so very pleased to see you. Come in. Come in.”

  But once inside the tent, which smelled of blood and other musky things, Aleksi had only the chance to kiss Tess on either cheek before he had to move aside so that Marco could kneel beside her.

  “Marco! You arrived safely. Did you bring the maps?”

  “Yes. I—”

  “Oh, can’t it wait until tomorrow? I really—”

  He laughed. “Of course, Tess. I was just about to suggest that myself. We’ll go.”

  They went, he and Aleksi. Aleksi paused by the entrance to look back. All the curtains within had been thrown back, making one huge chamber of the whole. Tess reclined on a couch of pillows and Bakhtiian sat up against her, one arm over her shoulders and one cradling their baby. He looked, Aleksi decided, just as stupidly ecstatic as Feodor had when he had first held Lara.

  Svetlana met him outside, her belly swollen under her skirts. After he introduced her to Marco, she smiled and kissed Aleksi on the cheek. “Sonia and I are going to stay up here with the doctor. You don’t mind, do you?”

  He leaned his head against her hair and just breathed it in, for a moment. She always smelled of sweet things, of grass and flowers and fresh herbs and babies. “I’ll see things are made ready down in camp,” he said, “and send some men up with a litter for Tess.”

  She smiled at him and let him go.

  They went down. Dawn rose in the east, and light spread out over the lands.

  In the camp, a great celebration was being prepared for the birth of the child. Aleksi left Marco with Nadine, found Galina already preparing a childbed tent for Tess, and directed four riders with a litter up to the height. Then he wandered, just wandered around the camp, observing, as he liked to do. He felt deeply content.

  In the Grekov camp, Raysia Grekov was directing a rehearsal of her new telling of the “Daughter of the Sun.” She had picked out musicians, each of them with a good voice, and given them tabards to wear as costumes, and built out of the old tale as told by one Singer over ten nights a new tale sung by seven singers in a single afternoon. She herself sang the Daughter’s role, and Aleksi could not help but stay to watch.

  The singers did not move, as they walked and sang, with the fluidity of the actors, but perhaps Raysia did not want to create the same kind of story as the actors had. Here the song itself was preeminent, supported by slow, sweeping gestures and the long frozen poses taken by the singers. The plain, bold colors and simple lines of the tabards gave each singer a distinctive look. Mother Sun wore the yellow-orange, of fire. Her daughter wore the blue of the heavens, and the dyan Yuri Sakhalin wore red, which is the strength of earth and blood. One demon wore black and the other wore white. The woman who sang the sisters wore green, and the man who sang the riders of Sakhalin’s jahar wore the pale gold of grass.

  Raysia had used her own telling of the tale and wound it in on itself, and Aleksi found himself rooted to the spot and unable to move, listening to it, seeing it. Mother Sun exiled her daughter to the earth, and sent with her ten sisters to be her companions. These ten sisters bore the tribes of the jaran, and one day, the first dyan of the tribes fell in
love with the Daughter of the Sun. She refused him, as surely any heaven-born creature must. He led his jahar into battle, and fell to a grievous blow.

  Wounded unto death, he begged her for healing. Healing him, she loved him, and together they made a child. And she gave him a saber—the sword of heaven—because of which he could from then on never lose a battle.

  Just as Tess and her brother had given Ilya a sword, which not even he knew the strength of.

  Yuri Sakhalin never lost a battle after that, or at least, that is how the Singers sang the tale. No battle but the one every mortal being lost—that against Grandmother Night.

  Aleksi strolled back to his tent, feeling thoughtful, feeling … curious. He knew the art of moving without being seen; it had saved his life more than once, when he was an orphan. He slipped unnoticed into Dr. Hierakis’s tent, even keeping the bells from ringing, and he stood in front of her table and spoke the words he had memorized from hearing Tess say them: “Run League worlds.”

  Rhui he now recognized. He could recognize the broad pale expanse that marked the plains and the tiny tiny bay far to the south that marked the city of Jeds. Then the other worlds appeared, strange spheres with yet stranger names: Three Rings. Something unpronounceable. Cassie. Hydra. Eridanaia. Tau Ceti Tierce. Sirin Five. Ophiuchi-Sei. And last, her planet, the only one as heart-wrenchingly beautiful as Rhui, the only other one that wore as brilliant a coat of blue, symbolizing the heavens: Earth.

  Aleksi sank down into a chair and watched as the program ran on, showing paler worlds and fiercer stars, showing webs of light dangling against a black void and many-eyed globes of polished metal and ships like blunt arrows docked at piers built of sparkling gossamer threads. He watched as thousands upon thousands of towers rose up from a bleak plain and became invested with lights as numerous as the stars, or as the fires of the jaran army.

  No one disturbed him, hidden here in the doctor’s private chambers. Outside, the celebration had already begun. Inside, in the quiet of the tent, Aleksi discovered the universe.