Lal brought him a knee-length brocaded coat and helped him into it, then tied his turquoise sash around his waist in a casual style-not too formal, for this kind of meeting. Hands shaking, Jiroannes went outside. In the half-light of dawn, he recognized two of the riders: one was Anton, the brother of the princess. One was the brown-haired actor, the man who took the most demanding parts of the dance.
"Ambassador, I am Anton Veselov," said Veselov. "I beg your pardon for disturbing you at this hour, but we are conducting a search."
Jiroannes blanched. He thought wildly about what items he possessed that might get him executed. Lal appeared in the doorway of his tent, and immediately Jiroannes was convinced that they had come to accuse him of consorting with the boy, but no one remarked on the slave as he hurried off to wake Syrannus.
"One of the khaja Singers, the actors, has vanished. Perhaps you have seen him?"
The brown-haired actor chimed in. "His name is Hyacinth. He has bright yellow hair, and he's this tall." He used an expressive hand to measure a space above his own head. "Surely you were at the performance of the dream play. He played the spirit who causes so much mischief."
"I believe I know which you mean." Jiroannes discovered that his voice was shaking with relief. This matter had nothing to do with him at all.
"I do beg your pardon for disturbing you, ambassador," continued Anton Veselov, "but we're asking at every camp, to see if anyone heard anything last night."
"He stole some things, you see," added the actor. "From our camp.''
"And either he, or his confederates, stole horses as well."
"Ah," said Jiroannes, suddenly quite sure who his confederates had been. "No, I'm sorry, but I haven't seen or heard of him. But perhaps you'd like to question my people. They may have seen something I did not."
"Thank you," said Anton Veselov.
In the end, to Jiroannes's surprise, Syrannus provided them with the first scrap of information. The captain of the guards had asked Syrannus to ride with him down to the river, where a ragtag collection of refugees had gathered on a flat field next to an abandoned village, there to negotiate with the whores. While Syrannus had been waiting, with the unholy glare of distant fire and the luminous stars and the last gleam of the waning moon to attend him, he had seen three riders splash across the ford, riding north. At the time, he had thought nothing of it. Now, he recalled quite clearly that one had been a woman, and another very awkward in the saddle.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Tess heard the altercation in full flower as she and Aleksi rode up behind her tent.
"No, damn it! I won't rest! There's too much to do. We must move on at dawn tomorrow.''
"Bakhtiian, you aren't nearly strong enough to ride yet." This from Cara, sounding cool.
"I'll ride a gentle mare."
"Ilya, you're going too damned fast. You know better than to-"
"Out, Niko! Out!"
Tess dismounted and threw her reins to Aleksi along with a wry grin. Then she hurried around the corner of the tent to see Ilya, lying propped up on pillows under the awning of the tent, yelling at the combined forces of Niko, Cara, Sonia, and young Katerina. His personal guard stood with expressionless faces just beyond the carpet. Farther away, at the first ring of guards, Elders and dyans waited for their turn to see Bakhtiian. Like flowers turning toward the sun, Ilya's four victims shifted to look hopefully at Tess.
"Out," said Tess mildly. They left. "Vladi, Konstans, you too." They left. Ilya lay there glaring at her. He was pale and he looked exhausted. "You're going to bed," she said to him.
"I don't have time to-"
"I said, you're going to bed. Come on."
"Tess-!"
"You only woke up yesterday, my love. You were unconscious for fifteen days. You need to rest."
He heaved himself up to sit. His eyes flashed with anger, and his lips were white and drawn tight. "I need to order my army. According to the information I've received this morning, Sakhalin has given them orders to destroy everything. How are we to make use of a country that is ruined so thoroughly?''
She crouched and grabbed him around the back, under his arms, and hoisted him to his feet. "Let me rephrase that. You will rest. Now." He was thin, much too thin, and he still wasn't eating much. Although he swore at her, he was far too weak to resist her marching him into the tent and back to their bed. She eased him down and he collapsed. Then, taking pity on him, she lay down beside him and stroked his hair and talked to him soothingly about whatever news she had gotten in the past sixteen days. His left hand came to rest on the swell of her abdomen. He fell asleep. She stayed beside him for a while, continuing to stroke his hair and his face, filled with such impossibly intense elation that she thought she might well burst from the strength of it. She kissed him a final time on the forehead and went outside.
"My favorite type of convalescent," said Cara, who had returned to sit in the shade of the awning. "Irritable, unreasonable, and stubborn. You must stop him from pushing himself too hard."
Tess snorted. "Cara, he's going to push himself too hard no matter what any of us do or say. I'll do what I can. I wish we could get him to eat more."
"That will come in time. His body is still recovering from its molecular catharsis. He'd be much weaker if we hadn't managed that intravenous connection to feed him through the coma."
Tess picked up the pillows he had been lying on and shook them out. "Did it work?"
"It affected him. As for what its effect was-ask me in ten years. Now, if he's asleep, I'll go run some more tests on him." She rose and went inside.
Tess strolled over to see Sonia, who was supervising a general cleaning in preparation for their move the next day. "Are we really moving at dawn tomorrow?" Tess asked.
Sonia shrugged. "Unless you can talk him out of it. I don't think he's ready to ride yet."
"I know he isn't. Sonia, who is Grandmother Night?"
Sonia's whole expression became stiff. She paled. Grabbing Tess by the elbow, she dragged her out away from her tent, away from the children and relatives, out to the gap between their two tents where they could speak in privacy. "Tess! Never speak Her name in daylight. It's bad luck."
Tess was astounded. "But-"
"Who's been talking to you? Vasil?"
"Vasil! No, I heard Ilya say her name. It was the first thing I heard him say when he woke up."
"Gods," said Sonia, looking grim. "Is that where he's been? In Her lands?"
"But who is she? Why have I never heard of her in all the time I've been here?"
Sonia glanced around. The movement was almost comical, it was so broadly done, but Tess could not laugh because Sonia's expression was so horribly grave. "She is the Old One, the First One. She gave birth to us all, to the world, to the gods, to the animals, and then brought death in a fit of anger. She's jealous and angry and very, very powerful. There. I've said enough."
"But, Sonia, what did he mean? He said-"
"Don't say her name in daylight!"
Tess gulped. She had never in four years seen Sonia in this combination of anger and terror. "He said, ''She is laughing at me.' "
Sonia blanched. "Gods," she murmured again. "My mother once said that it was because of Her that his family died. But she's never spoken of it since. Perhaps it wasn't Habakar witchcraft that took him to the spirit lands. Perhaps She did. Perhaps he offended Her once. Gods, that would be an ill-omened thing. It all was, the death of his family.''
"Is that why no one speaks of it? I've never heard you or Ilya talk about his parents."
"Tess, I will say this now, but never again. They died badly. But what is worse, is that the man who killed them, Khara Roskhel, was my aunt's lover, and had been for many many years. Perhaps my mother suspects why he turned against Ilya and his mother. I don't know."