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“In this world below the dome of heaven, nothing that is or does can be eternal, for the law of the harvest is the law of becoming. All that is sown must be reaped, and all that is reaped must be sown again back into the world from which it sprang. Thus every change becomes another turn in the great wheel of years.”
—from The Revelation of Elia
PROLOGUE
1
The Plains
HE WOKE BEFORE DAWN and snuck away from the tents to watch the sun rise, both of them solitary—he and the sun. He had done so every morning since his mother died. On cloudy days only the light changed, paling into day. When it rained, the night leached away reluctantly, spilling into the soil. In the deep winter blizzards snow settled like a blanket over everything. But on other mornings, clean, sharp mornings like this one, the sun rose like a splintering blow, sundering day from night all at once and with the promise of brilliance to come. The promise was for him. At least, that was how he thought of it; he lived here in night, but someday that would change. It had to.
“Vasha! Come here at once!”
Vassily turned away from the east and the light and trudged back into camp. Mother Kireyevsky cuffed him on the ear. “Have you milked Tatyana’s goats yet?” she demanded. “Uncle Yakalev needs your help this instant! Lazy boy! You’re a disgrace!”
A chill edged the morning, but it was no worse than the looks he got from old Tatyana and her son when he caught up with the flock. They spoke not one word to him, not even to greet him. He settled down to milk the goats. When he had finished, he slung four heavy flasks of warm milk over his shoulders and carried them back in toward camp. Passing the herd of glariss yearlings, he made the mistake of looking straight at the Vysotsky cousins where they stood watching over the herd.
“Watch your eyes, pest!” shouted the elder, who was only three years older than Vasha himself.
“Bastard!” The younger casually picked up a rock and threw it at Vasha, and he ducked away, but not in time. The rock stung his cheek. The Vysotsky cousins jeered and laughed. “Thought you were better than us, didn’t you?” they called, the familiar refrain. “Now you’re the lowest one of all.”
The fire flared within his heart, but Vasha hunkered down and walked on, fighting it back. It did no good to scrap with them. He had learned that quickly enough: His punishment from Mother Kireyevsky would be severe and swift. Tears of shame burned in his eyes, shame that they all despised him, shame that he had to act like any common servant, shame that he had never made any friends before, when his mother still lived. She had closed him off from everyone else. She had wrapped herself around him, and she had told him over and over again that he was special, that it was the others who were less than he was. It wasn’t fair that she had lied to him.
He swallowed the tears, forcing them down as he came back into camp. His throat choked on them. Never cry, his mother had said, you are a prince’s son. Don’t play with those Vysotsky boys; they aren’t good enough for you. When your father comes, then they’ll understand exactly who you are and how much power you have. Well, they did understand who he was: He was a bastard, the only child in the tribe who had no father and who never had had a father, despite what his mother claimed. They understood exactly how much power he had, which was none.
Mother Kireyevsky used him as a servant, and the elders themselves had refused to make his mother headwoman of the tribe, as she should have been after her own mother, his grandmother, had died. Because they had all despised his mother as well. They had rejoiced when she had died two winters ago. And he had learned how to survive their contempt and to endure alone.
As he crossed behind Mother Kireyevsky’s tent, he heard messenger bells and saw, out beyond the other tents, a figure swinging down from a spent horse. He would have liked to stop and look, but he knew someone would tell on him if he faltered at all, so he walked on.
“Vassily!” His cousin Tamara called to him. “Give me those flasks. Go to Mother Kireyevsky at once!” Her face was flushed.
He was too shocked to do anything but obey, but as he circled the tent and ducked under the awning a sudden foreboding washed over him. Now what had he done wrong? What was she going to punish him for?
“Aha!” said Mother Kireyevsky, catching sight of him. “You will attend me here, Vasha. You will do exactly as I say, you will not speak one single word, and you will serve komis to our guest. Do you understand?”
He nodded, mystified. She hurried away, and he knelt down and waited. What could this be about? When guests came to visit at Mother Kireyevsky’s tent, he was banished from the family circle because he represented a shameful stain on the Kireyevsky line.
Mother Kireyevsky soon returned, bringing with her the messenger—who was a woman! Dressed in soldier’s clothing, too! Vasha dutifully offered the woman a cup of komis, which she accepted without looking at him. Tamara brought her food, and she ate with relish and politely complimented his cousin on the meat and the fine texture of the sweet cakes.
Then, just as Vasha moved to offer her a second cup, Mother Kireyevsky said the fateful words. “Ah, you are Bakhtiian’s niece.”
Vasha almost dropped the cup, but the woman took it from him as if she did not notice his shaking hands. As the rest of the cousins and aunts and old uncles filtered in to listen, they lapsed into a long discussion of the disposition of the Kireyevsky riders in the great jaran army, the army led by the great general and prince, Ilyakoria Bakhtiian. This dragged on endlessly while Vasha stared surreptitiously at Bakhtiian’s niece—Nadine Orzhekov—from under the screen of his dark hair. As if by examining her he could divine something—anything—about the man who was the greatest leader the jaran had ever had, the man who commanded the combined jaran tribes in their war against their ancient enemies, the khaja, the settled peoples.
“Vasha!” said Mother Kireyevsky tartly, no doubt divining his purpose in her turn and deciding now, at last, to dismiss him. “Bring more sweetcakes.”
For an instant, Vasha’s gaze met that of Nadine Orzhekov. She had a sharp, penetrating eye, but she did not appear to scorn him. Of course, she did not yet know the truth. He hurried away.
When he returned, Mother Kireyevsky did an unheard of thing. “Vasha, set those down. Then you will sit beside me.”
Sit beside her! Stunned by this sign of favor, he obeyed, sinking down beside her and folding his hands in his lap. He risked another look at their visitor. Bakhtiian’s niece! She looked no different, really, than other women, except that she dressed and walked like a soldier. Her black hair was caught back in single braid and her cheek bore a recent scar. Again her gaze met his, measuring, keen, but this time he forgot himself enough that he did not drop his away immediately.
“Vasha!” scolded Mother Kireyevsky. He stared at his hands. Then the horrible truth came out. “Inessa Kireyevsky was not married when her mother died, although by this time she had an eight-year-old child. She had no husband. She never married.”
“But then how—” Nadine Orzhekov broke off, looking at him. How could she then have a child?
Shame writhed through Vasha. He felt it stain his cheeks, a visible mark of the disgrace that his mother had brought on her tribe.
“Luckily,” Mother Kireyevsky was saying, “she died a year after her mother died.”
“Leaving her son,” said Orzhekov. Vasha could not bear to look up now, knowing he would see contempt, not curiosity, in her gaze.
“Leaving a boy with no father, dead or otherwise, and no closer relatives than distant cousins. That line was not strong.” Mother Kireyevsky’s voice rang like hammer blows, unrelenting. Gods, why was she humiliating him like this? What was the point? Hadn’t he been brought low enough already, that she had to make sure that Bakhtiian’s niece knew of the scandal as well? Would she never be satisfied?
Like a spark, like his thoughts had triggered the words in her, Nadine Orzhekov sp
oke. “Why are you telling me this?” Then, secure as he could never be, she carelessly took another sweetcake.
Vasha felt more than heard Mother Kireyevsky take in a breath for the momentous pronouncement. “Inessa claimed to know who the child’s father was. It was her last wish, as she lay dying of a fever, that the boy be sent to his father. If it is at all possible….” His hearing hazed over as a roar of fear and hope descended on him, claiming him. Mother Kireyevsky continued to speak, but he did not hear her words, not until she pounded the final strokes: “She claimed that his father was Ilyakoria Orzhekov.”
Into the silence, Nadine Orzhekov’s reply was so light-hearted, caught on a laugh, that it seemed false. “My uncle, Bakhtiian.”
Vasha hunkered down. He knew what must come next. Now Nadine Orzhekov would repudiate the connection. She would laugh.
“Of course he must return with me,” said Orzhekov cheerfully, as if she had just been offered a prime stud. “I’m riding back to the army now. I will take responsibility for his well-being myself.”
Shocked, he looked up right at her. Did she mean it? Nadine Orzhekov eyed him coolly, disapprovingly.
“You are recently married yourself,” said Mother Kireyevsky, eyeing the scar on Orzhekov’s cheek.
“Yes,” replied Orzhekov in a cold voice. “I also command a jahar. You may be assured that the child is safe with me. What is his name? Vasha is short for—?”
“Vassily.”
“Vassily!” Now she looked astounded, where none of the rest of his sordid history had shocked her. “How did he come by that name?”
Stung, he forgot himself. “My mama told me that that is the name he said to give me.”
Mother Kireyevsky slapped him, and he hunched down, berating himself. Idiot twice over, for speaking at all and for giving Nadine Orzhekov any reason to think ill of him, to think he might actually believe the fiction that his mother had claimed was the truth: not just that Ilyakoria Bakhtiian was his father, but that Bakhtiian had known of her pregnancy and even told her what name to give the child. Only he did believe it. It was all he had to believe in.
“…and he’s always been full of himself,” Mother Kireyevsky was saying, “thinking that he’s the son of a great man. You needn’t mind it. Of course Bakhtiian can’t recognize him as his son—it’s all quite ridiculous, of course, that an unmarried woman…” Mother Kireyevsky was practically babbling, fawning over Bakhtiian’s niece in her desperation to be rid of him. “Of course he has no father, but we’re grateful to you for taking him—”
“He looks like him,” said Orzhekov curtly, cutting her off. “As I’m sure you must know.” She sounded disgusted, and in a blinding moment of insight, Vasha realized that she was disgusted with Mother Kireyevsky, not with him. “But in any case, I must go. I’ll need a horse—”
A horse! He was leaving!
“He’s got nothing,” said Mother Kireyevsky. “Her tent and a few trinkets.”
“He gave my mother a necklace,” said Vasha abruptly, emboldened by Orzhekov’s sympathy. Because he so desperately wanted her to believe him, to prove to her that it was all true, that it must be, because he knew things that a common boy would never know. “It’s gold with round white stones. He brought it from over the seas. From a khaja city called Jeds.”
“Go get your things, Vasha,” snapped Mother Kireyevsky, and he flinched, but she did not hit him again.
And when a horse was saddled and his pathetic handful of belongings and his tattered blanket tied on behind the saddle, and he mounted up and waited for Nadine Orzhekov, he realized all at once that Mother Kireyevsky would never hit him again. The thought terrified him. He had never in his life strayed farther than herd’s distance from his tribe. He was scared to leave, and yet he wanted nothing more than to go. No one came to see him off. That quickly, they rid themselves of him and went back to their lives, free of the burden of his presence.
They rode out in silence, he and Bakhtiian’s niece. He concentrated on his riding, and on keeping his hands steady and his mind clear, because fear threatened to engulf him, fear and excitement together.
Finally, she spoke. “How old are you, Vasha?”
He took heart at her straightforward question. “I was born in the Year of the Hawk.”
“Oh, gods,” she murmured, as if she was talking to someone else. “Eleven years old. Eleven years old.”
“Is it true?” he asked. “Is he really my father? My mama always said so, but… but she lied, sometimes, when it suited her. She said he would have married her, but she never said why he didn’t, so I don’t think he ever would have. Only that she wanted him to.” He knew that, like Mother Kireyevsky, he was babbling out of desperation, but he couldn’t stop himself. He recalled his mother so clearly, her pretty face, her warmth, her scent, her cutting words to her cousins and the others in the tribe, to men who courted her, to women who tried to befriend her, her constant harping on the man she had loved and borne a child to—a man who had never in all the years afterward returned or even sent a message. “Every tribe we came to, she asked if they’d news, if he’d married. He never had, so she said he still meant to come back for her. Then after my grandmother died, the next summer we heard that he’d married a khaja princess. Mama fell sick and died. Both the healer and a Singer said she’d poisoned herself in her heart and the gods had been angry and made her thetile of it.” He gulped in air, it hurt so badly to think of her, of her dead, of being alone. “No one wanted me after that.”
And why should the Orzhekov tribe want him? Why should Nadine Orzhekov take responsibility for him? Perhaps she needed another servant in her camp. Better to know the worst now.
“I think you’re his son,” she said so calmly he thought at first he had heard her wrong.
“But how can I be?” he demanded. “He wasn’t married to my mother.”
She sighed. “I’ll let him explain that.”
Him. It hung before him like a talisman, and though their journey was a strange one for a boy who had never before traveled outside of his tribe, that him hung before Vasha as a fog disguises the land, all through the days that they rode, with strange companions and into khaja lands, toward him.
Their party came at last to a vast army camped before a huge, gleaming khaja city, and Nadine took Vasha beside her, riding forward alone to come into camp at sunset. He had never seen so many tents, so many horses, so many people—women and children and countless men armed for war—all in one place. They dismounted at the very center of camp, and two men led their horses away. Nadine herded him forward toward the great tent that loomed before them. Terror clutched hold of him, and he slunk back behind Nadine when she stopped under the awning of the tent. She greeted the two guards and rang a little bell three times. The guards eyed him curiously but said nothing.
A cool, commanding voice answered from inside the tent. “Send them in.”
A shudder shook through Vasha, so hard that at first he thought he could not walk. But Nadine Orzhekov was all he had. When she swept the entrance flap aside and ducked in, he followed tight against her, practically hugging her side. Vasha had never felt more afraid in his life.
Two men stood on either side of a table in the outer chamber. In that first instant, glimpsing them—one dark and stern, one fair and breathtakingly handsome—either one could have been the man he had dreamed of all these years. Dressed simply, and yet gifted with the commanding presence a general and great leader must have. Both tall. Both of them radiant. He could have fallen at the feet of either of them, and been happy to gain their notice. He clenched his hands and fought back tears. And remembered that his mother had always spoken of Bakhtiian as a dark-featured man.
Like an answer to his thought, the dark man started forward and embraced Nadine. “Dina! Have you just ridden in? Where is the prince?”
“About two days behind us, with the pack train. I rode ahead, Uncle.”
Oh, gods. Bakhtiian looked past her. It took every ounce
of courage that Vasha possessed to hold his ground against that severe gaze. Bakhtiian had dark hair, a beard, and eyes that pierced right through him. “Who is this?” he demanded of his niece, without taking his eyes off of Vasha.
“I see I’ve come at just the right time,” replied Nadine sarcastically. “Where is Tess?”
“Come here. What’s your name?”
Vasha gulped down a breath and stepped out from behind Nadine, into the full force of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian’s stare.
“Vasha, this is Bakhtiian,” said Nadine brusquely. “Pay your respects.”
All the years of waiting and dreaming weighed on him. He had never believed it would come to this. How badly he wanted to make a good impression. “I am Vassily Kireyevsky,” he said softly, because it was all the volume he could manage. “My mother was Inessa Kireyevsky.”
“Inessa Kireyevsky! Gods.” Bakhtiian stared at him, and Vasha wanted only to drown, to spin away into the air, into nothing. The haze descended once again, and although he knew the others went on talking, he paid no attention to them, he only stared at Bakhtiian, memorizing him, the man he had never seen and yet knew as well as … his own father. But a spark rose burning within, fighting his paralysis: Bakhtiian remembered Inessa Kireyevsky. That was hopeful.
The curtain into the inner chamber stirred and opened, and a woman stepped out. “Isn’t Inessa Kireyevsky the one you lay with out on the grass, under the stars?” Her voice was low, touched with a kind laughter, generous and full.
Bakhtiian did not shift his gaze from Vasha, and the boy felt smothered under the weight of his stare. “You’ve a good memory, my wife,” he said in that same even voice that smothered the turmoil in its depths.
“For some things,” she replied.
An odd accent graced her voice, light, even pleasing, but obvious. Vasha tore his gaze away from Bakhtiian and stared at her: at her brown hair and her fine, exotic features. Her calves and feet were bare, but a silken robe of gold covered the rest of her. The fine sheen of the fabric caught the light, shimmering as she moved forward through the chamber. She was pregnant. She was not a jaran woman.