The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (93 page)

“The prisoners knew, all of them, did they not?” she asked. “All but my son knew that you were Bakhtiian. He would have killed you otherwise.”

“But he did not.”

“But he held you prisoner.” The barest smile creased her face, and Jaelle saw Bakhtiian whiten, as if at a blow. “With that memory, I will have to be content. I cannot forgive, Bakhtiian. But I will sign your treaty. Certain of my ladies have whispered to me that it is likely that Princess Rusudani is pregnant with my son’s child. For that child’s sake, I will swear an oath to hold you no further to blame, as long as I receive in my turn your oath to leave these lands alone and to give me the child, whether boy or girl, to raise in my son’s place.”

“I give you the child willingly,” blurted out Rusudani. “I want nothing from your son, least of all his child.”

Lady Jadranka’s expression did not alter. “Then let it be so.”

Prince Vassily touched Bakhtiian’s elbow and whispered in his ear. Bakhtiian shook off the hand impatiently. He looked, to Jaelle’s eye, quite transfigured from the man whom she had first seen at Sarai: There, he had reminded her of a steel sword, dangerous, sharp, but clean of line, and strong. Now, he seemed brittle and on edge. Before he had overawed her, but his power had seemed tempered by a glint of humor and a deep sense of control. Now, he scared her, because she could not predict what he might do next.

“What about me?” demanded Rusudani. “You owe me your life.”

“Are you sure you want me to—” Jaelle whispered.

“You will speak exactly the words I speak, Jaelle!”

But, like a man well used to deciphering many languages, he had already understood her.

“What do you want from me, Princess Rusudani?”

The Prince of Jeds stood stiffly. A gulf seemed to separate her from Bakhtiian and Rusudani, though there were scarcely three arm’s lengths between them.

“I am King Barsauma’s heir. Any alliance with me is worth a great deal.”

“That is true.”

“I can give you an army and passage into Filis, as well as control of caravan routes that lead into the lands south of Mircassia, past the great waste.”

“Of course it is in my interest to want these things. But surely you must want something in return.”

The silence drew out in the hall until even the soldiers shifting, nervous or bored, in the back stilled and waited.

Jaelle felt a chill envelop her. She had a sudden foreboding that Rusudani was going to say something foolhardy and perilous.

Rusudani had the wisdom to lower her voice, so that only the six of them closest to her could hear.

“I will be queen of a country greater than all of the Yos principalities together, greater than all the western merchant cities, greater than Filis, greater than Jeds. Why should I not have, as husband, the only prince as powerful as I am?” Deliberately, she did not look at the Prince of Jeds.

Nor did Bakhtiian. His gaze remained fixed on a point just behind Rusudani’s head, crowned with a gold-threaded shawl that almost covered her thick black hair. His eyes blazed, as if seeing some vision of a great alliance sealed by a royal marriage, the beginning of a powerful dynasty that would rule a vast empire.

Prince Vassily looked like he had been struck.

The Prince of Jeds looked gray, but she said nothing. Rusudani clenched her left hand triumphantly. Still, no one spoke. Like a storm rising, the tension rose until it engulfed the rest of the room.

Bakhtiian stirred. He glanced, curiously enough, at Vassily.

“I regret that I cannot give you myself, my lady,” he said politely, quietly, and, continuing, spoke abruptly louder so that his voice filled the hall. “But you are right. It would be fitting if you married my son.”

Rusudani shut herself away in the solar and would not be moved. Jaelle escaped her by simply staying behind in the hall, unnoticed and unasked for in the furor that arose after Bakhtiian’s pronouncement.

“Tess?” Bakhtiian was casting about, searching for his wife, but she had vanished. “Tess! Where is she?” He sounded querulous and remarkably irritable. An instant later, he dismissed two of his guards and fell into an argument with his son.

Jaelle stood behind Janos’s chair and tried to melt into the floor.

Bakhtiian looked up suddenly, right at her. “There is Jaelle,” he said. She could not reply, she was so astonished that he remembered her name. “Vasha, take her back to camp.”

Thus he ended the argument.

Vassily said one more thing to him, still angry, but Bakhtiian simply turned away and began conferring with someone else. Lady Jadranka had retired to her chamber, and the Mircassian envoy had gone upstairs with Princess Rusudani, her one loyal servant.

“I’m sorry,” said Prince Vassily. “That was all very sudden.”

Jaelle did not dare venture an opinion. He shrugged, led her out of the hall, and commandeered horses. Preoccupied, he did not speak. Ten jaran soldiers escorted them back to camp. There, dismounting, she found to her surprise that someone was waiting for her.

“Jaelle!” Katerina ran to her and hugged her for a long time. No one seemed to think her affection strange. “Come with me. Do come.” She tugged on Jaelle’s arm. “Stefan has paced a new ditch in the ground, he’s been so worried, wondering where you are. Of course you can come, too, Vasha. What a stupid question.” She asked her cousin something in khush, but he shook his head stubbornly and refused to answer.

Stefan was waiting. Somewhere in the tangle of tents that made up the camp they found him, working under an awning that sheltered injured soldiers. He wore clean clothes, the red and black of a jaran rider, and despite his youth he stitched up a wound with the confidence of a master healer, examined an unconscious man and shook his head with a frown, discussed a third case with an older man who seemed to defer to his judgment.

“You see,” said Katerina, “Stefan will make you a fine husband. I don’t expect he’ll ever do much fighting. He’s far too valuable for that. He will be as great a healer as his grandfather Niko Sibirin is. Or no, Aunt Tess said that Niko died, didn’t she? As his grandfather
was.
Not every man is so gifted by the gods.”

Jaelle suddenly wondered if her face was clean, her hair in place. She became aware that her skirts were muddy, and her hands needed washing.

Stefan looked up and saw her. Before, his expression had been fittingly sober. Now, his face creased with a smile, with more than a smile, and Jaelle felt a rush of
something
—she did not know what it was, a melting, a sudden fire washing over her, a giddy numbness that fell away into sharp joy. And was in an instant erased by agony.

“Marry me?” she stammered.

“He has been talking of nothing else since we were freed,” said Vassily, looking sour as he said it.

Stefan wiped his hands off in a bucket, dried them, and hurried toward them. He practically bled happiness into the air.

“I can’t marry,” Jaelle gasped. She began to cry. “I can never marry. I have sinned, and God will never forgive me. Please. Take me away.”

Stefan halted, looking hurt and perplexed, and that only made Jaelle cry the more. Finally, having mercy on her, Katerina led her away and soon enough she was enveloped in the dark tomb of a tent.

“But why?” Katerina demanded. “Why can’t you marry him? He’ll just mark you anyway. How can you object?”

“He must not. You must not let him be stained with my sin.”

“But how—?”

Jaelle wiped her eyes dry. It did no good to cry. “I will tell you. Then you will understand. You will yourself shun me, but I beg you not to hate me. I will go back to the caravan trade. That is the price I pay for my sin.”

“What is a
sin
?” Katerina demanded. “You khaja make no sense to me.” She said it fiercely, grown out of fresh pain.

Jaelle bowed her head. She could not bear to speak, but it must be spoken. It was time to confess. “I killed my baby child,” she said, because it was easiest to start with the bare truth. She heard Katerina gasp, but she went doggedly on, determined to have it all out. “I was taken by men at the mines, many times, even before my courses began. I ran away when I realized that I had become pregnant, but life was worse on the streets. That town was called Orontis. The birth was hard, but the baby lived, though it was a tiny thing, so weak it could barely suckle. Then one day Kamarnos—he was a merchant—saw me. He saw others first, other women, he was haggling for a woman to be his companion all the way north to Parkilnous. In those days I didn’t know how far that was, I only knew that it was away, that I would be fed every day and have a dry bed to lie in. But he wanted a woman who had no child to burden her. He saw me. He thought I was pretty, through the rags and the dirt. He asked me. Ah, Lady, what was I to do? The child was sickly. She might not even have survived the month. That is what I told myself. I had no milk for her anyway. I wanted to live. I pinched her nose and mouth closed with my fingers, until she stopped breathing. It took only a moment. She just slipped away. God will never forgive me.”

She fell silent. She was too tired to weep. She understood now that God was punishing her, by letting her glimpse safety but keeping it forever out of her reach.

“There was no one who would foster the baby?”

That surprised a harsh laugh from Jaelle. “No one wants a baby like that. At the mines, sickly babies were exposed on the hillside. No one wanted me. Why should they want a runaway slave’s child? Why would they want a sick baby that would never be strong enough to work for them? Who would raise it? Feed it? You jaran are very strange.” She said it bitterly. “My own mother stood by and watched while I was sold off to the mines. I had no mother, like you do, to watch over me. I had no tribe to care what happened to me, to send an army to rescue me. Only the Lady’s mercy kept me alive in the mines at all. If only I had prayed to her more earnestly, I would never have gotten pregnant there.”

“Katya?” That was Prince Vassily, from outside, sounding unsure.

“What is it?”

“Stefan is here with me. He wants to see Jaelle.”

“Come back later,” said Katerina. She put a hand on Jaelle’s shoulder. “Do you love Stefan? Do you
wish
to marry him?”

“He won’t wish to marry me, not after he knows what I did.”

“It is not a man’s right to judge. If you wish to marry him, then you must let my grandmother and his grandmother judge. How long ago did this happen?”

“I don’t know. Five years ago? Seven?”

“How old were you?” Katerina sounded appalled, and Jaelle shrank away from her touch, aware that she must not allow her affection for Katerina, and Katerina’s for her, to come between them and God’s judgment.

“I don’t know. Ten years old. Twelve. Thirteen, perhaps. That is the usual age for a girl to begin her courses, isn’t it?”

“Gods. You khaja
are
savages. And there was no child after that? After that one?”

I found out there were herbs that stop a woman from conceiving. Once I thought I got with child, so I took the seeds of the
torise
plant and was sick for weeks. If there was a child, it never came out. Perhaps God made me barren. It would be just.”

“What about this Lady, this Pilgrim, you speak of? Does she intend to punish you, too?”

“You must not speak of God and Our Lady that way.” Jaelle made the sign of severing, clutching her talisman knife in one hand. “It was just. Surely you must think so, too, Katerina.”

“It is true that it is a terrible act to kill a baby. But Aunt Tess says that our army has killed children simply by existing, by conquering and laying lands waste, by leaving children no food to eat over the winter. So is what you did worse than that? I don’t know. I killed Prince Janos, and I could have granted him mercy. Who am I to judge you?”

“
You
killed Prince Janos? But Lady Jadranka said that Princess Rusudani killed him.”

“Rusudani betrayed him. It was my hand that killed him.”

“I did not know you hated him so much.”

“I did not hate him,” said Katerina, her voice trembling for the first time. “But I had sworn that he would die for what he did to me. And because I swore before the gods, I had no choice.”

“I had no choice,” whispered Jaelle. “I would have died, too, if Kamarnos had not hired me. That is the truth. I chose to let the baby die so that I could live.”

Katerina sighed and, tentatively, put her arms around Jaelle. “I would be like a wife to you, like a husband to you, if you would let me, but I know you do not wish it. So it’s better that you marry Stefan. That way I know you will be safe.”

“But—”

“Do you wish to go out and see him now?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“If I were Mother Orzhekov, I would see what punishment the gods see fit to visit on you. I would let you lie with the man you wish to marry, with other men, and if the gods have forgiven you, they would show their mercy by letting you get pregnant. No woman in the tribes wants her son to marry a woman who cannot give him children. But if you conceive, then why not let you marry him? In the jaran, you will not be forced to behave so barbarously. You will become a jaran woman. It will be as if your other life is gone away. You will become a different woman, a woman who never has to make such a terrible choice, to live herself or die with her child.”

“How can I become a jaran woman if I do not pray to your gods? That I can never do.”

“Ah, gods, you khaja! No one says you must stop praying to your gods—”

“There is only one God—”

“But you speak of three. You speak of God, his son Hristain, and his daughter the Pilgrim. That is three. I can count.”

But Jaelle was too wrung out to launch into a dispute about the nature of God and the holy mystery of three being one. She rested her head on Katerina’s shoulder. “Is it true, that I might live with the tribes?”

“You must go back to Sarai with Stefan.”

“And you will come with us?”

“I don’t know,” said Katerina.

“I won’t wait any longer!” exclaimed Stefan from outside. A moment later he swept the tent flap aside and barged into the tent. “Jaelle, I don’t know what Katerina has been telling you, and it’s true that I’ll never distinguish myself in the army, but healers are as honored among my people as soldiers and…” Enough light showed through the flap that Jaelle caught the indignant look that he threw at Katerina. “Would you go away?”