The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (55 page)

“She who was married to Bakhtiian while he lived.”

Vasha glanced at Katya, who lifted her chin infinitesimally. “She was.”

“And she tolerated a rival to her own children to live in Bakhtiian’s tents?”

“She adopted me,” said Vasha proudly.

“
She
adopted you? What does this mean?”

Vasha thought quickly. Wiser to downplay the connection, or magnify it? If Janos thought he was too important, would he kill him outright, or be more likely to treat him well?
Think like a Sakhalin
, he thought abruptly, and chose to risk the latter course. “She acknowledged me in the eyes of the tribe as Bakhtiian’s son.”

Janos said something in his own language to his captain before turning back to Vasha. “So your mother was a concubine?”

“What is
concubine
?”

“She was not Bakhtiian’s wife.”

Katya was chewing on her lower lip, and Vasha felt her alliance with him, her concentration, almost the physical act of willing him on, as a great well of strength. “She was not.”

“Then you
are
a bastard.”

“He is also,” said Katerina, speaking up suddenly, “Bakhtiian’s only adult son.”

Janos’s gaze leapt to her. She stared back, and Vasha could see her grow by degrees more angry as Janos examined her with immodest directness, not bothering to hide his interest. “What of you, Katerina Orzhekov? Are you also a bastard?”

She flung her head back. “Of course not! I am the daughter of Sonia Orzhekov and the granddaughter of Irena Orzhekov, who is chief etsana among all the tribes.”

“I have been told that the Sakhalin are chief among all the tribes.”

“They are First among the Tribes, it is true, but the Orzhekovs rule the tribes now.”

“Ha!” Janos turned and addressed a long comment to his captain, in which they heard the words “Sakhalin” and “Orzhekov” several times. He turned back to them. “I beg your pardon for putting you in chains, but you understand that you are too valuable to me to risk losing.”

“Among our people,” retorted Katya, “a woman would never be treated in this way.”

“I assure you that you will be better treated once we reach the safety of my court. Now. Is there anything you need? I will see that food and drink are brought.”

“I wish the rest of our companions to be brought here to us, and to travel with us,” said Katya.

“No. They are slaves now. They have a separate place.”

“We need to pray, in the manner of our people,” said Vasha quickly, because he could see that Katya was angry and likely to say something intemperate. “For this, I would request the presence of our priest.”

“If he is still alive, I will have him escorted here by Captain Maros.” Janos offered Katya a little bow—Vasha could not tell if it was meant to be ironic or respectful—and left.

Katerina took in a big breath and let it out. “That was clever of you,” she said into the darkness. “Of course you aren’t important, but how is he to know that? That is why the khaja are weak, that they pass everything through the male line. But if he thinks you are valuable, then you can negotiate with him.”

“The Kireyevsky tribe is important!”

“It’s a granddaughter tribe, you know that as well as I do. But this is something Andrei Sakhalin could not have expected: Prince Janos has an alliance with him, but Sakhalin won’t imagine that Janos thinks you are also a prince.”

“No doubt Sakhalin thinks I am dead along with all the rest of them, if he thinks of me at all, which I doubt. But Katya.” His voice dropped. “Do you suppose that Yaroslav Sakhalin is part of the plot?”

“No. Yaroslav Sakhalin never had to throw his support behind Ilya, but he did. Why should he withdraw it now? And in such a dishonorable way? He would never do such a thing, as you would know if you ever bothered to listen to him instead of just rebelling against him.”

“Let’s not start that again! I think I have learned my lesson. But what does Andrei Sakhalin have to gain?”

She hitched up against him and rested her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair, for comfort, and because with his wrists bound he could not embrace her. “I have thought about nothing else all day.”

“Nothing else except the revenge you intend to exact on the khaja prince.”

“It’s true,” she mused, “that he does not seem quite so horrible now, although he’s terribly immodest. But it must be Galina.”

“Galina? Oh. Of course. Sakhalin has the two sons by her, and because Nadine has no sons, Galina’s boys are as likely to inherit the dyanship as any other Orzhekov child.”

“Perhaps, more likely, because their father is a Sakhalin. Surely Yaroslav Sakhalin and Mother Sakhalin will not hesitate to suggest such a course, if Bakhtiian dies.”

“I don’t know,” said Vasha. “It seems so rash, to do what he did.”

“Andrei Sakhalin is not a thoughtful man.”

“Huh. I suppose you would know. You’re the one who took him for a lover, which is pretty disgusting if you ask me—”

She butted him with her head, knocking him over. “I may take any man I want as my lover. He’s no worse than any other.”

“In your blankets, you mean? I didn’t know one man was the same as another, but perhaps we all feel the same in the dark. Oof. Don’t kick me when I’m down.” He struggled up to sit, almost laughing. “Katya, I—” Leaning forward, his mouth brushed her cheek and he realized with a start that her skin was wet with tears. “Katya! What is it?”

“Oh, Vasha.” She said nothing more, just cried silently, and the tears ran down her face and slid into his mouth.

Voices sounded from outside. She pushed away from him just as the entrance flap was thrown aside and Ilya staggered in and promptly collapsed. Impassive soldiers, stepping over him, set a flask of wine, a loaf of bread, and a hank of freshly-cooked meat in front of Vasha and put a chamber pot down against the tent wall. They skirted Ilya and went out.

Vasha flipped over to his knees and hopped over to Bakhtiian. “Father! Father!” He put his hands on Ilya’s neck, careful to keep the chains from scraping his skin, and found a pulse. It raced, but Ilya’s eyes were shut. Katya managed to capture the flask of wine with her fingers and she struggled over as well, her skirts getting tangled in her manacled legs.

“Here. Give him this.”

They put a few drops of wine on his lips and after a moment he licked them off. They gave him a few drops more, and then he actually drank some. Katya laboriously hitched back over to the other food and pushed it back along the carpet. She tore off a hunk of bread and moistened it with wine. Without opening his eyes, Ilya ate it.

“Father,” said Vasha in a low voice. “Can you hear me? Did Stefan tend your wounds?”

Ilya’s lips were bled pale by the effort of eating. “Cold.” His voice was so faint that the rustling of the guards outside practically smothered it. He was so weak that the guards had not even bothered to bind him in any way.

“Here,” said Katya briskly, “eat some more bread.” She gave him more of the wine-soaked bread and he swallowed it. “Vasha, we’ll have to lie on either side of him. We don’t have any blankets, and I don’t think it would be wise to call attention to him.”

They ate the rest of the food, saving the last of the bread and wine for Ilya, for the morning, and lay down on either side of him. Bakhtiian shivered once, twice, and took in a sharp, hissed breath, then stilled. He was cool, but slowly Vasha felt him warm, felt his body against his back like comfort, although surely it was Vasha giving comfort to his father, not the other way around.

But he remembered long ago nights, when Natalia and Yurinya were still quite small, and how the babies, as he called them, would crawl in to share their parents’ blankets on stormy nights and cold nights. During the day the illusion might be maintained, that Vasha was truly part of the family, but on those nights, lying alone, knowing that Talia and Yuri could snuggle in to the safety and security of their father and their mother (Tess sometimes threw them back out; Ilya never did) and knowing that, somehow, he could not, he had cried sometimes. But now he pressed his back up against his father, giving him warmth, and Vasha felt, oddly enough, safe.

Across Ilya’s body, Katerina murmured to herself. The rise and fall of her voice reminded him of Rusudani praying, but Katya seemed to be talking reverentially to someone who wasn’t there; he couldn’t hear the words, but he caught a name once, and again: Mariya. Her voice soothed him. His father’s breathing slowed and gentled. Vasha slept.

Katya woke him before dawn. Together, fumbling in the darkness, they woke Ilya and got the last of the wine and the bread down him. When the guards came for them, Vasha drew himself up.

“This man will ride in the wagon with us,” he said imperiously, and refused to budge.

Captain Osman was summoned.

Vasha broke in before the captain could even ask what was going on. “It would be a grave insult to our gods to let a priest of our people fall behind in the dust. He will ride in the wagon with us until he is fit to ride himself.”

One of the guards objected.

“We don’t have time,” said Osman in Taor, cutting him off. “Throw him in the wagon.”

So Ilya rode with them, lying on the carpet with part of it thrown over him. Kriye allowed himself to be tied to the wagon on a long lead-line.

“They’re in a hurry,” said Vasha, watching as the tents were thrown down and piled into wagons.

“They fear pursuit.” Katya stroked Ilya’s hair, and he opened his eyes, focusing on her, and shut them again. “They know that jaran riders can easily catch up to infantry.”

“How soon will they come looking for us?”

Katya shrugged. “In a few days they’ll wonder why we haven’t returned yet and they’ll send a scouting force. After that, they’ll send a whole ten thousand to burn Urosh Monastery to the ground.”

“And find Prince Janos’s trail.”

“We have only to keep Ilya alive, and to survive ourselves, Vasha. The army will come for us.”

“And for the others, too.”

She squinted out down the line of wagons, which had begun to lurch along the road. “Yes. But we can protect Ilya best. The others must fend for themselves, for now.”

“Unless by protecting Ilya we bring him to the prince’s attention.”

Katerina looked down on Ilya, her face pinched with worry. Then her expression smoothed, infusing with purpose. “He’s not strong enough to survive any other way. Not yet.” She glanced up at Vasha. “You did well, this morning, getting him into the wagon. You acted very much the prince.”

Her praised heartened him. At midday he demanded wine and food, and they got it. That night, when they stopped to camp, he demanded blankets and more food, double the amount they had had last night, and wine more suitable to a prince’s taste. And they got it.

They traveled on through a wooded countryside leavened by villages and fields. Each day the army rose before dawn and marched until sunset. Prince Janos was intent on reaching the safety of his court and drove his men forward at a blistering pace. Vasha could not imagine walking for so long every day at such a pace. In the evenings he often glimpsed Stefan and Nikita and Mikhail in the distance, carrying water, setting up tents, currying horses, but after the first three days he stopped seeing Stanislav Vershinin. They never came close enough to speak with him, but now and again one would lift a hand, seeing him across camp, and he would wave back, to show that Ilya was still alive.

His father
was
still alive. For ten days he did not speak, barely moved, but progressively ate a bit more each day. Katya fussed over him in the privacy of the tent. She ripped her inner skirt into strips to change the dressing on his ribs, using some of the wine to daub clean me wound. In public, she ignored him, except to surreptitiously make sure he wasn’t being jarred too badly as the wagon jolted over the ruts in the ground that the khaja called a road.

“The Habakar had better roads,” Katya observed one day after a particularly bad jolt pitched Ilya into me side of the wagon. His lips thinned, but he did not cry out against the pain. Vasha admired his endurance.

“Damn it,” said Ilya suddenly, eyes still closed. His hands fumbled at his belt buckle. “Where is the ribbon?”

A breath caught in Vasha’s throat and he glanced toward Katya. His heart pounded fiercely. Ilya opened his eyes. Even clouded by pain, his gaze still had the power to sear Vasha through.

“I have it here, Cousin,” said Katya. Her voice shook. “It began to fray, with all the rubbing, so I tied it around my neck.”

“I want it,” gasped Ilya.

Katya glanced around. The soldiers driving the wagons had long since come to ignore her conversations with Vasha, conducted in a language foreign to them, but now, with the addition of a third, unfamiliar voice, the man not driving turned right round and looked straight at Ilya, whose eyes were still open. The khaja soldier grunted and said something to his companion, and a flurry of talk spread in the ranks of men surrounding the wagon. Katya glared helplessly as a number of soldiers broke ranks and came over to peer into the back of the wagon. Vasha saw coins changing hands, and he suddenly realized that the khaja soldiers had been betting on whether or not the jaran priest would live. Probably the odds had now changed. He almost laughed, the thought struck him as so funny; he almost wept, out of relief, seeing that some of the khaja soldiers were angry, thinking now that they would lose their bet.

When at last the interest died down and the new round of wagering took its course and quieted, Katya undid the green ribbon and gave it to Ilya. His fingers closed over it in a grip so strong that his skin went white at the knuckles. Finally, after ages, he relaxed and tried, without success, to lace the ribbon back into his belt buckle.

“Here, let me help you,” said Vasha, bending over him.

Ilya looked up and registered him, as if for the first time. “You weren’t killed.”

Vasha blinked back tears. “I wasn’t even scratched.”

“How many… are left?” The words came out staggered, as if it was hard for Ilya to voice them.

“Not many. Listen, Father—” Vasha leaned farther over him, twining the ribbon into the buckle and speaking in a whisper. “What do you remember?”