The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (87 page)

“What does Rusudani want sleeping herbs for?” Katerina asked.

“I don’t know.”

Katerina looked thoughtful and went to stare out the slit window, where she could see the distant streaks that marked the enemy campfires.

At midday Jaelle heard the clatter of boots and armor on the stairs. The door opened to admit Prince Janos and a flock of guards. Katerina rose slowly. Then she gasped and took a step forward. She spoke a word in khush.

Too late Jaelle saw the man surrounded by guards: a jaran soldier, his armor covered by a handsome red and gold surcoat. The next instant the guards had hustled him out, and the door thudded closed behind them, leaving Prince Janos alone with the two women.

“That was my uncle, Gennady Berezin,” said Katerina, surprised into the confession.

Janos circled her at a careful distance, but she kept turning to face him. “He agreed to enter the castle in order to identify you and your cousin, to take news of you back to the Prince of Jeds.”

“What of the other prisoners?”

Janos dismissed them with a wave of one hand. “They aren’t important. They remain in the dungeon.
You
are the one who matters.” He said it warily.

“Now what do you mean to do, Prince Janos?”

“Use your life to bargain for my own.”

Katerina smiled bitterly. “It is worth so little to you?”

With two swift strides he closed the gap between them and grasped her hands in his. She began to pull back, then stilled, reading a new emotion in his face. “It is worth that much to me. More than you wish to understand.” He struggled within himself, his voice thick with longing, for her. Jaelle stared, seeing him stripped away to nothing, naked, as if his desperate circumstance had brought him to reveal his weakness to the woman he evidently loved. Because it was always weakness in a man to reveal that he loved a woman. A man’s desire for her was the only power a woman had. “If I had only been more patient….”

“It is too late for regrets, Prince Janos. You have condemned yourself.”

Strange, Jaelle thought, that the woman, locked away, might seem more powerful at this moment than the man who had imprisoned her.

“Is there no hope for me?” he asked hoarsely.

She jerked her hands out of his. “I have my honor to uphold.”

“It is no dishonor to a woman to be taken in war. You are mine, and I have used you more kindly than any other man would have.”

“Than any khaja man, perhaps. Do not slander the men of my own people.”

“But you are mine.” He took hold of her shoulder with one hand and with the other caressed one of her braids, twining it through his fingers. “Is what the men of your people do when they marry, when they scar a woman’s face, any better than forcing her? Had I done that to you, had I taken a blade and cut your face, would you have come willingly to my bed?”

Pale, she twisted out of his grasp, and he let go of her. “I would have no choice.”

“Tell me how this is different, Katherine. We use different words, we have different customs, because we are what you call
khaja
, but for me to take you as my mistress is no different than for
a jaran
man to take you as his wife. You have as little choice in either.”

Katerina crossed to the window seat, but she did not sit down. Her posture was stiff, her expression bleak. “I pray to the gods that my aunt may come soon,” she said, and would not look at him as she said it.

“I fell into a rage,” said Janos softly. “It will not happen again. I will not touch you again without your consent. Is that enough?”

Jaelle had to sit down, she was so astonished to hear him say it.

But Katerina only said, “No.”

“I will draw up a contract—”

“I do not want your lands or your wealth.”

“What do you want, then?” he asked, growing exasperated.

“I want to be free.”

“Free to leave here and be scarred by a man of your own people?”

Now she turned. Her color was high. “Free even of that, Prince Janos. You are right enough, that I might as well be your mistress as another man’s wife, but I will not be either!”

It was a clear, cold day outside, and harsh lines of light striped the chamber and the rug. Katerina’s eyes were as cold as the sunlight, and Janos blazed, like the fire, answering her. “You will never forgive me for one night’s anger.”

“I can never forgive such a thing. Only a man would ask a woman to do so.”

He moved. Amazed, Jaelle watched as he knelt before Katerina and lifted one of her hands to his lips, kissing it tenderly before he let it go. “I remain your servant, Princess Katherine. Always, and forever.”

She looked taken aback. “Then I order you to let me go, to return to the army camped outside these walls.”

He smiled wryly and stood up. “Only a woman would ask a man to do so. My castle is besieged, Princess Katherine. A man in my position does not divest himself of his most prized possession except in dire need. And I confess to you, my pale rose, that your beauty and your fierce soul will be out of my reach if I am dead.”

While she stood, speechless and unmoving, he leaned into her and kissed her, then stepped back quickly, as if to avoid any blow she might throw at him. But she did not move. “No man will offer you what I do, Katherine, no man will cherish you as I will, nor will I cease my suit, so long as I live.” He placed a hand over his heart and bowed, slightly, as any man ought to a princess, and left the chamber.

Dust trailed down the beams of light as the afternoon sun sank low enough to slant in through the arrowslits. The fire popped in the hearth, and Jaelle jumped, startled, and added another log to the fire.

“No man has ever spoken to me in that way before,” said Katerina into the silence. Her voice trembled.

“He loves you,” said Jaelle, although it was hard for her to say the words. “That is not a luxury often given to princes, or so it is said. A prince must marry for lands and alliances, a merchant for what connection it can bring him and his family. A slave cannot marry at all, except at his master’s whim.”

“I will never marry.”

Jaelle made the sign of the knife. “Be careful what vows you make to God, Katerina. He might hold you to them.”

But Katerina fixed her gaze on Jaelle, so searing a gaze that Jaelle froze, afraid to move. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to marry. I don’t care for men in that way, not truly.” Her voice caught, but she lay a hand against the stone wall as if for support and went on. “Scorn me if you wish, but it is what I am. I could love you, Jaelle, but I will not burden you with what you do not want. I know you are fond of Stefan.” She paused. “Now you know my secret. You may betray me if you wish.”

Jaelle shut her eyes, then opened them, because it was cowardice not to look on Katerina, who had just offered her a glimpse of her inmost soul. “I will never betray you. I swear it, my lady.”

“Could you love me?”

Jaelle flushed. “I do love you.” It came out as a whisper. “But not, not as a woman loves a man. I cannot. I’m sorry.”

To her surprise, Katerina’s expression brightened. “Ah, gods, Jaelle, you have given me a precious gift, and I thank you for it.”

After that, Katerina seemed calmer. That evening she received Princess Rusudani and Lady Jadranka with equanimity. She even agreed to read aloud from
The Recitation
that had been translated into Taor, and Rusudani took advantage of the rapt attention given to Katerina’s reading to visit the screened-off chamber pot. Jaelle followed her, and there, trading places, she slipped the herbs into Rusudani’s waiting hands.

“I will remember this,” said Rusudani, and returned to the group seated so charmingly around Katerina.

Lady Jadranka lingered after the others had gone. “Lady Katherine,” she said in her calm way, “I hope you will remember, when all this is over, that my son has treated you kindly.”

“I am sorry, my lady,” said Katerina, and would say no more. Lady Jadranka sighed and left, and the guards closed and barred the door behind her.

“Blow out the lantern,” said Katerina, “so that our eyes may become accustomed to the dark.”

“Why?”

“Because whatever Rusudani means to do, she will do it tonight. And I, for one, do not mean to be caught unsuspecting.”

Gennady Berezin returned in late afternoon, none the worse for wear, and having seen but not spoken to Vasha and Katya. Too restless to sit still, Tess took a contingent of soldiers and rode a circuit of the walls.

White Tower was well placed, its west wall riding a bluff above a narrow river and the town growing out from its other sides. The docks lay within the great curve of the river out of which grew the bluff, but these river docks lay deserted now, abandoned because they had been built outside the ring of walls.

“If I had built this castle,” said Tess, “I would have carved a stairwell down to the river level from the castle, as a way to get supplies. Have you scouted out the land below the west wall?”

From here, just beyond catapult range and at the edge of the docks district, the castle loomed up into the heavens, a heavy slab limned by the light of the setting sun and by the sudden appearance of torches, like stars flickering to life.

One of the captains, an Arkhanov, replied. “We can’t scout there during the day. Our men are well within archery range. And at night… it’s steep, and impossible to see.”

Tess squinted at the sky. Clouds covered the east, drowning most of the sky, but a crescent moon lay just out of their reach. “As soon as there is the least bit of light, send men in. Try tonight, a preliminary expedition.”

“Will you make an alliance?”

“If I do not, will Prince Janos kill his hostages? I must think about it. We will hold a council tomorrow.”

In the last light of day, they rode back to camp. Tess ate mechanically, because she knew she ought to, but she was by now too tired to sleep. She sat in her chair under the awning until her hands got cold. But once inside the tent she felt choked, trapped, and so she grabbed a blanket and went outside again. She sat down again, nodded away into sleep, woke up with a start. Jumped to her feet. The night guards looked at her, questioningly.

“Gods, I need to walk.”

One of them fell into step beside her, and with his comforting presence, she walked through camp and out to the sentry line nearest the town. Here, in the concealing darkness of night, they stumbled across several interesting diversions, common enough in siegework: Among a contingent of Farisa Auxiliaries, they found two prostitutes from the town who had sneaked out to make a bit of coin.

“Send a man to follow them back in, as far as is safe,” said Tess to the embarrassed captain. “See if we might be able to get a group of men inside the town that way.”

A farmer was selling chickens, but he was not from the town; evidently he had been selling to the army for several days, coming in from the countryside. A robust herbwoman pushed a cart over the rough ground, peddling her wares, and in another jahar, farther on, the soldiers were good-naturedly trying to chase away a boy of about eleven years.

“He wants to hire himself out as a servant,” said the captain. “We think he came from town, but we’re not sure. There’re some straw tents down there by the river banks, with a few khaja left in them, those that didn’t run inside the walls. He might have come from there. No one wants the lad, poor thing. I don’t suppose he has any family left, or he’d not be wanting to leave his home.”

“Will anyone take him on?” Tess asked, feeling sorry for the scrawny child who lingered just within the glow of a fire. A soldier threw him a scrap of meat, and he wolfed it down.

“Just another mouth to feed,” said the captain, “and who knows if he can even ride? We don’t have any use for a khaja child like that.”

“There’s one more post beyond you?” Tess asked.

“One more, and then the river bank.”

A sentry’s voice broke the quiet. “Stanai!”

There was a general rustling all round as soldiers sprang up, and the captain and the night guard hustled Tess back a few steps. A male voice said, loudly, “Gods, another woman! Those khaja men must not truly be men if they keep their women so poorly satisfied that they all have to come out to us.”

“Aye. You don’t see jaran women running to
them
.”

But the voices stilled. Tess craned her neck and finally stepped out around the captain to see what had caused the sudden hush. Two fires down, a woman scrambled up a bank and into the circle of light lent by burning timbers. She was no prostitute, not gowned that richly, with her hair discreetly covered with a shawl. In one hand she clutched a small book. With the other—

Tess’s heart lurched. “Vladimir!” She said it loudly, but it came out a whisper. He looked like hell, but he was alive, setting the woman on her feet so that, as she turned to look behind her, Tess saw her face.

Princess Rusudani.

The sight galvanized Tess into action. She strode forward. “My lady! Princess Rusudani. What are you doing here?”
What is Vladi doing here? Who else… who else?

Rusudani shook out her skirts. Eyes drawn down by the action, Tess saw that the fabric was wet and muddy to the knees, as if she had slogged through stagnant water. But the khaja princess looked up without the least sign of distress at her disheveled appearance. Indeed, she looked positively triumphant.

“Your highness,” she said, but as a challenge. In the last months she had learned to speak rough but serviceable Taor. “I come to make alliance with you.”

“Your husband has already offered an alliance.”

“I am not interested in what Prince Janos offers. He took me by force. I drugged the guards and the guards in the dungeon and these men fight the guards at the river stair. So I come to you, as God has willed. I want alliance with the jaran that is of my own making.”

“There he is,” said Vladi. “Stefan has him.”

To Tess, seeing and hearing Vladimir was dreamlike. He didn’t seem real. He couldn’t be real. Along with the others, he was dead.

“They whipped him last night,” said Vladi matter-of-factly to Tess, as if to explain something she ought to understand, but she did not know what he was talking about. “Gods, the stubborn fool would always talk back. You must speak to him, Tess. No one else can. He isn’t himself.”