His Conquering Sword (38 page)

“I lost my parents,” said Charles suddenly. “Do you ever wonder—” He broke off.

“I wonder a great deal,” said Ilya softly. “Most of it is fruitless, though.”

“Your wondering?” Charles asked. Bakhtiian did not answer, but the silence seemed as much of a reply as any words he could have spoken.

A slow, erratic drip sounded from outside, along one corner of the tent.

“Why did you allow her to marry me?” Bakhtiian asked suddenly.

“I didn’t. I’d have stopped it if I’d been able to. If I’d known. Not because of you, you understand. But because of who she is, and why I need her.”

“And if she dies?”

“She won’t die. Cara is taking care of her.” Charles turned his head to stare at the curtain, the veil that closed them off from Tess. “She won’t die. She can’t.”

“You don’t want her to.” Ilya bent his head and touched his face to the cloth that shrouded his child.

Charles did not move, but he shifted in his chair, restless, uneasy. “No, I don’t want her to,” he admitted.

“Well,” said Ilya, raising his head, “neither do I. Why is it that you and I suppose that if we want something, it must come to pass?”

Charles’s lips quirked up into a smile so colored by grief that it felt almost as if other people had been brought by that tiny expression into the hushed solitude of the chamber. “There’s an old saying: ‘be careful what you wish for; you might get it.’”

“Oh, gods.” A quaver shook Ilya’s voice. “The bargains we make with the gods never fall out as we think they will.”

Charles stood up abruptly and went over to the chest. Rummaging within, he drew out a bottle and two glass tumblers. “Here.” He returned to the table and poured out a round. “Have a drink.”

This time, when she woke, she saw the blurred edges of the lantern in the corner, illuminating an oval of plain canvas fabric. She saw a figure move, recognized it as Cara, and fell back under.

“…and then after the rebellion failed, I thought I would be executed. But they made me a duke—it’s a nobleman’s title within their imperial hierarchy—instead.”

“Is that so strange? If you want to unite an empire, and you only enslave the people you conquer, doesn’t it make sense that in time they’ll rebel against you? But if you make them part of your court, then in time they’ll become loyal to you. That’s why Mitya must marry the Habakar princess. Then her father will support us, to protect her, and her children will rule and yet be both jaran and khaja.”

“As your children will be—Oh, God, I beg your pardon. I’m so incredibly sorry.”

Ilya stared at the haze of lantern light. He felt lightheaded, with exhaustion, with alcohol, with grief, and the sensation gave the lantern a blurred, magical substance-less look to his eyes, as if it didn’t really exist at all. He tried to speak, once, but nothing came out. He tried again. “The gods will judge whether I may ever have a child, or whether I already bargained my children away.”

Charles shut his eyes. “I gave up the chance to have children before I knew I had done it. Only I didn’t know it until the day my parents were killed. They weren’t killed, I mean. They were murdered. It was made to look like an accident—a crash—they were traveling in a… carriage—but their agents left just enough evidence that I would know who was responsible. That I would know the emperor himself had ordered it, as a lesson. The only reason I didn’t lose Tess that day is that she happened to get the flu and stayed home with our aunt. How could I dare have a child under those conditions? I couldn’t protect a child, not against them. Maybe Tess
is
better off here. She’s safe here.”

“Safe,” said Ilya under his breath. He cupped his free hand over the round arc of the baby’s shrouded head.

“She will live,” said Charles. “You must believe me.”

“I want to believe you. The gods alone know how much I want to believe you. I’m sorry, about your parents.”

“Here. Have another drink. Do you ever wonder—? God, I don’t know what possessed me to tell you that. I must be getting drunk.”

“Because the khepellis killed your parents, because of you?”

“I killed them. Cause and effect. The blame lies nowhere else. I made the choice, knowing it would put them in danger. I risked them, and I lost them. They were wonderful people. They always supported me. They loved me.” He hesitated and went on haltingly. “I loved them. But I had to make the choice. I had to choose the rebellion, I had to choose the dukedom, I had to choose Jeds, and I have to choose to continue, now.”

“You told me because I understand,” said Ilya so softly that his words evaporated on the still air as a whisper of warmth vanishes in the cold of deep winter, out on the plains. “Eleven years ago, I bargained with the gods. I knew that my vision for the tribes was the right one, but I was young, and I wasn’t sure I could convince the Elders to follow me. Why should they listen to a dyan as young and inexperienced as I was? I was afraid—afraid they would reject me, and afraid of losing my vision. But I knew I was right. So I committed sacrilege.”

A scrape of shoe sounded from the inner chamber. Both men tensed, expectant, but nothing happened, no one emerged.

“I killed a bird.” His hands shielded his dead son’s body, although by now it was, of course, too late to shield the child from the fate he had brought on it. “I offered a hawk on the altar of Grandmother Night, She Who Will Bargain if you are desperate enough to call on her. I killed it, and I poured its blood on the soil. I offered her my dearest one, if she would make my vision succeed. But you see, I meant to offer Vasil, because I was willing to give him up. Not to kill him; I didn’t mean that, or maybe I did, but I told myself I meant only to send him away. To exile him.”

The lantern burned, constant, with only the barest flickering on the wick within its globe. “She agreed to the bargain. Grandmother Night never refuses a bargain. And then she took them all, one by one, everyone I loved best. My parents, my sister, my nephew. She only spared Nadine that day to mock me. She took my cousin, Yuri. And now my son. And She’ll take Tess, if She can get her. She’ll take her back to the gods’ lands, and we’ll have to burn her, and I’ll never—I’ll lose her forever. Do you ever wonder if the price was worth paying?”

Charles shook his head, just a little, eyes half closed. A sound caught in his throat. “I kept trying to ask you that. We’re so certain of our vision. But it is right. It is right. And yet, how many people will die? Some because they follow us, because they believe in us, and some on the other side of the conflagration we’ve started.”

“But what else can we do? The gods have called us to our path.”

They considered the path in silence. Nothing stirred. It was so quiet outside that they might as well have been camped in the middle of a wilderness, they two alone, fixed at some point no other woman or man had yet explored out to. Or in a clearing that some other, like them, had sat in, equally alone, and then turned back or forged on.

The urge to speak, to establish herself in the time-line, was so powerful that once she saw the lantern light again she opened her mouth and spoke. She spoke, she heard the words in her head, but her ears registered nothing. Her body existed, but nothing moved. She was aware but paralyzed.

“How long has it been?” she said. “How long was I out?”

Cara moved past her line of sight. Jo bent over a burnished counter, tapping her fingers on the modeler. Neither of them heard her. She couldn’t hear herself.

Everything faded out again.

“I don’t understand, though,” said Charles, pouring them out another tumbler of whiskey. “I thought your parents and family were killed by another dyan, a rival. Isn’t that—common? When there’s a war going on? How did the gods come into it?”

“We don’t harm women and children in the sanctity of camp! Gods, you khaja are savages! I beg your pardon.”

“No. No offense taken. I apologize if I offended you. It was poorly said, on my part.”

“No, I’m sorry. How could you understand? No one knows what happened that night. My aunt suspects, she alone, but we’ve never spoken of it. My mother discovered me, out there in the darkness, and she had Khara Roskhel with her. She often had him with her. They were lovers for as long as I could remember. And they found me, with the bird still struggling in its death throes, with its blood pooling on the ground.

“Well, Roskhel was outraged. Up until that moment, he had supported me. Then he saw what I was, what I was willing to give, that I had committed sacrilege, and all for my vision. Some already called me gods-touched, then. That night he called me cursed. He said to my mother, ‘Now you must repudiate him, because you see what he is.’ I knew at that moment that everything was in vain. I thought that Grandmother Night was laughing at me, by making me sacrifice myself and lose my vision, all at once, all together. Gods, we so foolishly think we understand the gods. Her price was much subtler and more cruel.

“You see, my mother smiled. She thought it was exciting that I was willing to break our holiest law in order to achieve my ambition. All the years of my childhood I had been a disappointment to her. Now, she was happy. She saw herself, her ambition, in me. And Roskhel said that he saw now that the taint spread through the entire family. He left. A few months later he rode into camp with his jahar and killed them, killed the corruption: my mother, who was the only woman he had ever loved; my father, whom the gods themselves had called to make a marriage that was never peaceful; my sister, who was the sweetest, most generous soul, and her little boy, who was far too young to be blamed for the rest of us. But he was my heir.

“So I tricked Roskhel down and I killed him myself, with my own hands.

“But my family was still dead. And yet, Grandmother Night kept her side of the bargain. The Elders listened to me. I united the jaran.” His voice dropped so low that Charles had to lean forward, straining, in order to hear him. “I have never lost a battle. My riders have taken terrible casualties; I’ve been wounded myself, and once we were forced to retreat, but even then, in losing, we won.” He stopped speaking abruptly and stared at nothing; at the past, perhaps, whose hand still worked in the present.

“It’s strange, how it works,” murmured Charles. “In leading a rebellion that failed, I gained a stronger position within the Empire. One that now might allow me to win Earth’s freedom. What we think is failure sometimes leads to success.”

“Perhaps. The gods aren’t yet done with us.” Ilya’s hand sought out the tumbler and he raised it to his lips and downed it. He shuddered. “Gods, this is strong.” He blinked. “But I don’t understand how both your parents could have been killed by the khepellis. You said they don’t yet know about Jeds—and wasn’t your father—? Your father was the Prince of Jeds, the nephew of the old Prince Casimund. How could he have been in Erthe? Wait.” He set down the glass and brushed his free hand impatiently through his hair. “Your father, the first Charles, was killed in Jeds. I know the story. They were laying the foundation for the university, and some quarried stones fell and killed him. But you said your parents were killed in a carriage accident in Erthe.”

“My mother was killed—” Charles broke off. He covered his eyes with a hand and swore under his breath. “I’ve forgotten what I told you. My mother was killed in that accident.”

“Tess said the same thing once, that her parents were killed—her mother and her father. And she didn’t mean the Prince of Jeds, only I just realized that now.” Ilya stood up suddenly, swaying a little, and took considered steps to the entrance. He pushed the flap aside with his free hand. Bells chimed softly. He stared out at the night. Two fires burned out beyond the tent, low now, almost coals, and the single figure tending them turned expectantly at the sound of the bells. It was Aleksi. The young rider waited patiently and then heaved his shoulders with resignation and turned away again, back to the kettles and the water simmering over the flames.

Ilya stepped out under the awning. The night wind hit him, a cold swell. The cloth in his arms stirred. Charles appeared.

“Well,” said Charles. “You’ve discovered our secret.” He staggered, just a step, and halted beside Bakhtiian.

“The Prince of Jeds wasn’t your father. But he was married to your mother. He acknowledged you as his children, you and Tess. Because he loved her, because he needed heirs—well, after all, a woman’s husband is the rightful father of her children.”

Charles was silent.

“But by Jedan law,” Ilya finished, “that means you’re not the rightful heir to the princedom. And neither is Tess.”

“No,” said Charles. “By right of birth, no, we’re not. But we needed Jeds, so we took it, when the opportunity came. That’s the plain truth. Old Prince Casimund had no heirs but his nephews. It had to go to someone. I’ve no excuses for what we did, except to say that we’ve been good stewards.”

For the first time, Ilya smiled, but it was a wry expression, filled with pain. “What, you don’t think I’m going to judge you, do you?”

“How did you guess?”

“It always pays to listen. Do you hear that? It’s very distant—a horse neighing. They don’t like being separated from the herd.”

The vista granted them from under Cara’s awning was of the sky, half clouded over now, and a dull red illumination along the western horizon. Darkness blotted out the camp, except for what few fires burned through the night, among the tents. “There’s an old story, an old legend,” said Ilya, “that the Singers tell, about why there are so many fair-haired jaran and so few dark ones. The Orzhekovs are a fair-haired family. All my cousins are fair-haired, and their children, their husbands, my aunt. My mother was fair-haired, and she married a fair-haired man—my father, Petre Sokolov, the Singer. My sister Natalia was fair-haired. She married a dark-haired man, her first husband, and their first child was dark—that is, Nadine. And I am dark. And this child has dark hair. Do you know who was a dark-featured man?”

“Oh,” said Charles in a low voice. “The boy, Vasha. He’s dark-haired. Tess told me that you acknowledged him as your son, even though by jaran law he isn’t—he can’t be.”