Earthly Crown (14 page)

Jiroannes cast it a cursory glance, expecting nothing less. “Now some opening pleasantries, a synopsis of the journey since Eberge, with perhaps an anecdote or two—but leave off at the difficult part.”

As Syrannus began to write again, Jiroannes lifted one hand. His concubine padded forward and gave him a cup of bitter, hot tea before kneeling in silence behind his chair. When Syrannus at length finished, the younger man read the words and nodded. “Very well. Now.” He sighed, twisting the ends of his mustache between thumb and forefinger. “How can I introduce this subject without offending him? ‘I was shocked—’ No. What impossible barbarians these jaran are. I suppose all their women go about unveiled and in men’s clothing.”

“Surely not, eminence,” interposed Syrannus. “Do not forget that Her Most Benevolent Highness, the Princess Eriania, is allowed by Her Most Gracious Brother privileges which all other women would never desire. Perhaps these females also have an exalted position of some kind. Their boldness is indeed shameful and certainly humiliating for them, but they are discreet.”

“Discreet? Not a word I would have chosen. If you mean they don’t display themselves like the whores one sees at ports—that may be true, but this woman, Nadine Orzhekov, shows such a complete lack of true womanly modesty, of that humility which is proper in a female, that she disgusts me far more than any prostitute. Samae. More tea.” The concubine rose and took the cup away. “But perhaps we misinterpret Bakhtiian’s motives. Perhaps he meant these two women to be an offering to me. Certainly the Orzhekov woman is not at all to my taste, but the other one—I have seen her gaze on me once or twice. Should I take that as an invitation? It would be a pleasant diversion from Samae, and she is certainly attractive—”

“Your eminence,” hissed Syrannus, warning.

A figure appeared at the edge of the tent. At Syrannus’s nod it moved forward into the light and resolved into a dark-haired young woman. “Your eminence,” she said, but the tone mocked him.

Jiroannes eyed her with vast dislike. He had quickly ceased trying to spare her womanly virtue by not looking at her directly, since he was sure she had none. “To what do I owe the honor of this late visit?” he asked, neither rising nor honoring her with a title.

Nadine Orzhekov gave the barest of smiles, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that the slight was not lost on her. “As commander of your escort, I feel it my duty to warn you—no, to
inform
you about some jaran customs that may seem strange to you.”

“Indeed. Has some special occasion brought on this generosity?”

“Indeed,” echoed Nadine. “I understand, your eminence, that you come from a society very different from ours. I even know a little about it, having read of Vidiya at the university in Jeds. Because of that knowledge, I have endured your rudeness to me, but if you persist in expecting the women of the jaran to act as Vidiyan women do, and in scorning them because they do not, I can assure you that Bakhtiian will have nothing to do with you or your mission. You had better learn to be polite, since I doubt you’ll ever learn proper deference. Otherwise you will be sent home a failure.” She paused. Behind her, hidden by darkness, a musician played a melancholy tune on a high-pitched pipe.

Jiroannes, lips tight, said nothing. Syrannus looked shocked.

“I will venture a more personal observation,” added Nadine, noting her speechless audience with what Jiroannes knew was malicious satisfaction, “because I’m not the only one to have noticed it. If I were you, I would not watch Terese Soerensen as if I were measuring her to see if she would fit in my bed.”

It was too much to bear, such insolence. “Certainly I may look at whom I please!”

“In fact,” she went on, ignoring his words as if they were a child’s outburst, “you would be well served to moderate the way you look at jaran women in general. It isn’t
becoming
in a man to stare.” Then, having said it, she had the effrontery to grin.

“Are you quite finished?” he demanded.

She shrugged. “We have tribute to collect, so we must return to the main camp roundabout. We’ll be some days before we arrive there.” She hesitated as the concubine came back to the edge of the circle of light furnished by Syrannus’s lantern. Her dark eyes met Samae’s almond-shaped ones for the barest instant, and then Samae placed the cup into Jiroannes’s waiting hand and retreated to kneel behind his chair.

Nadine’s mouth had pulled tight, and Jiroannes was gratified to see that she felt compelled for whatever reason to suppress her anger. He hoped the act caused her pain. “I thought,” she said, her anger betrayed by the hoarseness of her voice, “that a message was sent that you only bring men.”

Jiroannes dismissed Samae’s presence with an airy wave of his free hand. “She is dressed as a boy. Surely that will suffice.”

“Only a fool would take her for a boy.”

Now he stood. “And for what reason am I expected to answer to you?”
A mere woman!
“In any case, she is nothing. Only a slave, if you know what that is.”

Her voice dropped, softening with an emotion he did not recognize. “I know what a slave is. Send her back to your lands, eminence. I will provide an escort for her.”

“No.” It came out petulant, but he was furious by now. “I will not.”

For a moment she stared, most brazenly and contemptuously, at him. Then she turned on her heel and left, without a word or a sign or the merest polite valediction. His hands shook. He touched the tea to his lips, coughed, and threw it down so that the hot liquid spattered the rug.

“Fresh-brewed tea, girl! I do not expect this swill!” The concubine started up and, retrieving the cup, hurried away. “Syrannus. I am too tired to compose. Write what you see fit. I cannot possibly explain this to my uncle. He would never believe me. Samae!” She appeared out of the small tent pitched next to his. “Attend me.” He stormed over to his tent, paused, watching her. She inclined her head, acquiescing, and lifted the veil that draped down over her shoulder up and across her face, concealing all but her coal-black eyes.

Satisfied, he went into the tent. She followed him, but at the tent flap she hesitated and looked back, out into the darkness of the jaran camp, her eyes glittering in the lantern light, her expression hidden by the veil. Syrannus had begun to write, the precise flow of his hand right to left, left to right, across the white page, filling it in with his supple calligraphy. The flap sighed down behind her as she went in. Syrannus wrote on, blowing on his hands now and again to warm them. Out in the darkness, by a far campfire, a man sang, a wistful melody that wound itself round the chill air and somehow seemed to soften it.

T
HE FIRST TWO DAYS,
heading away from the port with their escort, Diana endured the jolting of the wagons and watched, with careful interest, the landscape and the jaran riders. On the afternoon of the third day, when they halted for the night, she left Quinn to set up their tent and ventured out to patrol the outskirts of the ring of tents that marked out Soerensen’s party.

Soon enough she came across a strange and remarkable sight. The great lord of the plains, conqueror of one kingdom, three princedoms, and uncounted lesser territories, sat in front of his small tent and embroidered a pattern onto the sleeve of a red shirt. At a tent pitched across from him, equally intent, sat another man, but David ben Unbutu held in his hand not a needle but a pencil. As the one stitched, the other sketched. Diana settled down beside David and observed.

Bakhtiian was a perfect subject, since he scarcely moved except for the shifting of his wrists and hands. Diana would have thought him oblivious to them, except for the one time she lifted her eyes to study him and found him staring directly at her. It was so disconcerting that she jerked back and David, startled, fudged a line on the sketch. But when Diana’s eyes met Bakhtiian’s, he averted his gaze immediately. Just like, she thought inconsequently, the shy heroine in a Victorian melodrama. The comparison struck her as so incongruous that she smiled.

“Are you admiring David or his drawing?” said a voice above her. “I wasn’t aware that you actors had interests off the stage.”

Diana did not look up for a moment, because she knew she was blushing. She waited, a beat, a second beat, for the heat to fade from her cheeks. Then she looked up over her shoulder. “Hello, Marco. In fact, I’m admiring David’s subject.”

Marco crouched beside Diana, and she could feel the heat, the weight, of his body next to hers. His sleeve brushed her arm. “You’ve caught exactly the set of his mouth, David,” he said, studying the sketch from this vantage point.

David grunted, but did not otherwise reply.

“A passionate mouth,” intoned Diana. “Made for kisses.”

“Made for kisses?” Marco laughed abruptly, and she forced herself to look straight at him, to meet his gaze, feeling bold and breathless together. Thinking of what had almost come about between them. But Marco looked, if anything, a little annoyed. “Have you forgotten our little banquet at Abala Port? I find it hard to imagine a man responsible for so much violence and killing as
kissing.”

Evidently he was still angry about Soerensen’s decree. “I haven’t forgotten it. But it’s not hard for me to imagine
him,
that flesh and blood person sitting there, kissing. It can be hard sometimes to separate an actor from a role offstage. Onstage it’s impossible, or it should be. Do you suppose he’s onstage or off right now?”

“Do you think it’s a role, the great conqueror?”

“I don’t know,” said Diana. “I gave up a long time ago trying to decide whether we’re ever ourselves or are only playing roles. And who could tell which the role was, the passionate kisser or the ruthless conqueror? Maybe they both are roles. Or maybe they’re both true. Can’t two contradictory things exist inside one person?”

“Are they necessarily contradictory?” Marco leaned forward again, examining the sketch. His shoulder brushed hers, and his hand caught itself, straying, on her thigh. “David, David, David. Have I ever told you how much I admire your ability to draw?” David grinned and flashed a look toward Marco, there on the other side of Diana. As if he knew that Marco was using the entire episode as a way to cozy up to her.

Diana flushed, well aware of Marco’s hand on her leg.

“Look at that,” Marco continued, ignoring these undercurrents. Diana doubted he was unaware of them. “Like the pattern on the shirtsleeve. That kind of thing fascinates me. Those elements add depth to our understanding of a culture. Is this pattern symbolic? Individual? Related to a clan, if indeed these people have clans. Even the material of their tents has a pattern. Are the two related? There are so many things to record, and words can only record so much. Even Maggie’s photography can’t record everything. It misses that essence.”

“Do I detect a note of disapproval for Maggie’s photography?” David asked without looking up. “She’s absurdly careful about it, and in any case, her equipment is all disguised.” He examined his sketch and penciled in a few more lines of the interwoven spiral pattern embroidered on the sleeve of the shirt the great conqueror wore.

“This
is
an interdicted planet,” Diana said.

Marco took his hand off her thigh, as if the comment made him remember prudence. “The truth is, I’ve never been able to risk anything covert, traveling the way I have these past years. And I’ve no hand for sketching, so I’ve missed recording much of what I’ve seen. Now I’m so accustomed to traveling that way that I never bothered to request any such equipment for this trip. I’m not sure I want to, anyway. What if one of the natives discovers it?”

“But, Marco,” said Diana, “you traveling all that time broke the quarantine. Certainly the Bharentous Repertory Company having spent three months in Jeds and now coming out here is a contamination, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“You don’t approve, do you?” Diana fell silent and together they watched as David, with economy and grace, used a few simple lines to expand the pattern that flowed down the shirtsleeve in his sketch. “I think it’s a road,” she said suddenly. “A winding road.”

“What is? The evolution of cultures?” Marco examined the sprawl of camp around them, the tidy expanse of tents losing color as the afternoon light deepened into dusk. “I suppose Charles would say so, that no culture is pure, that it is always adulterated by contact with any other culture, as it must be. That our contact with it, if we’re careful and discreet, will be scarcely more contaminating than that. But I’m not sure I agree. There’s a stronger force behind us. Broader knowledge. Won’t that take its toll?” Sitting on his haunches, the deep tan of his skin set off by the blanched gold of his linen tunic, he appeared to Diana not much more civilized than the jaran riders themselves.

“I think she meant the pattern on his shirt,” said David dryly. “Artist’s fancy, I guess.”

“How old do you suppose he is?” Diana asked.

“Who can tell?” said Marco. “Not too old, I’d judge.”

“I never saw naturally aged people until Jeds,” Diana confided.

“The commonplace made quaint,” said Marco drily. He set his chin on a fist and pondered the distance.

Embarrassed, Diana turned her attention back to David and watched as he finished filling in the sleeve of the right arm. Across the camp rang a low, trembling sound, like a muffled gong being struck. The great conqueror did not even look up, but Marco rose.

“There’s supper. Are you coming?”

David shook his head without looking up. “I just want to finish this while there’s still light.”

Diana was torn between accepting Marco’s escort and her real fascination with watching David work. After all, it wouldn’t do for Marco Burckhardt to think that she hung on his every word. “I’ll be there in a bit. Save some for me.”

He hesitated as if taken aback at her refusal. But he recovered quickly. “You have my word on it, golden fair.” Marco left.

David sketched for a few minutes undisturbed. Red-shirted men moved back and forth between tents. Laughter swelled in a distant corner. A man’s voice, a pleasant baritone, sang a simple song in a language she had identified as khush, the native tongue. Farther away, identifiable only because she knew the voice so well, Diana heard Henry Bharentous shouting at someone, but she could not make out his words. Prince Hal rebelling again. Beside her, David held the sketch out at arm’s length to scrutinize it.