"For whom?"
"Come now, Tess. I have been to Jeds. I have ridden in the countryside and gone even as far as the city of Filis, where another prince rules. Your brother is rich and his merchants sail to the ends of the world, and he is a prince to be reckoned with, but Ilya's army is larger. Much larger. And it will grow." Sonia shook out the calf-length tunic and a pair of belled, striped trousers and then rummaged in the chest until she found a wide belt inlaid with cloissone" and gold. "Now, Aleksi. Out." Her own festival clothing lay draped over the chair, a tunic of vivid blue that matched her blue eyes and a headpiece of gold and gems. "We must dress. You might see if Galina needs a hand with the children."
Aleksi gave each woman a brotherly kiss on the cheek and retired from the fray. At Sonia's tent, her niece Galina sat with those few Orzhekov children who remained with the main army. Sonia had kept her three children with her, and Niko and Juli had two grandchildren with them. Other children, like Galina and her brother Mitya, were old enough to do adult work but not old enough yet to marry or to ride in the army.
' 'We saw the barbarians today.'' Galina greeted Aleksi with a kiss on the cheek. She looked much like her aunt and her mother, with a merry, round face, fair hair, and cerulean blue eyes. "Aunt Sonia brought five of them by. One of them had skin that was black. Really," she added, as if afraid that Aleksi wouldn't believe her. "Wasn't it, Katerina?"
"It was," agreed Katerina, Sonia's eleven-year-old daughter who, at two years younger than her cousin, was her shadow and champion. "We thought maybe she had painted it on, so we rubbed it, but it didn't come off."
"Then Aunt Sonia scolded you for being rude," finished Galina. "But the woman didn't mind. She was tall, too, taller than a man. And one of the other women had chestnut hair, like a horse has." She stifled a giggle under a hand. "And another one had funny eyes, like…" She grimaced, searching for a comparison.
"Like this," said seven-year-old Ivan, putting his index fingers on either side of his eyes and pulling the lids tight. All of the children burst into laughter.
"I liked her, though," said Katerina. "Her name was Yomi. She knows how to weave," she added, since this skill obviously placed the woman in a different, and superior, class from the others. "But they didn't have any men with them. Is it true their men act like women?"
"What do you mean?" asked Aleksi. "I escorted four of the men around the camp, and they seemed like men to me. They were very polite."
Katerina considered the question seriously, screwing her mouth up. She was a pretty girl, having inherited her looks from her grandfather, but she had as well the same vital intelligence that animated Sonia's otherwise undistinguished features. "They say khaja men use bows and arrows to fight other men with and that they haven't any manners toward women. And that they own their own tents, and they even say that the women don't own tents at all. How can that be?"
"You forgot the angel," said Mitya suddenly. He sat on a pillow at the back of the awning, too old to include himself in the younger children's activities but too young, at fifteen, to be an adult. Like most boys his age, he spent a small part of his day helping his grandmother, mother, or aunt and the rest of it with the adult men, doing chores, learning to fight, caring for the horses and the herds, and generally tagging along. Right now he was polishing one of Bakhtiian's sabers.
"What angel?" Aleksi asked. He knelt and helped four-year-old Kolia straighten his tunic and belt it with a girdle of gold plates.
"Anatoly Sakhalin's angel."
"Mitya," retorted Galina in a disdainful voice, "she is not Sakhalin's angel. And he showed bad manners, too, in following them around."
Aleksi settled down on his haunches, satisfied that he was about to get some good gossip. He loved these children, who had accepted him readily once they saw that the adults of their tribe acknowledged Tess's adoption of him. Although he had been Tess's brother for three years now, he still preferred the children's company to that of adults. They said what they thought, and they were not embarrassed by the fact that he had once been an orphan.
Like the foreign woman's coal-black skin, his peculiar status interested them more than it revolted them. "He followed Sonia and her party around camp?''
"Yes," said Galina. "That's what Aunt Sonia said. When they got here, he got Mitya to invite him in so that he could talk to her. She was very embarrassed by his behavior, as any woman would be. She flushed all red."
"Sonia did?" Aleksi asked, astounded.
"No, no," said Katerina. "The angel. Diana. But Sonia refused to translate for him so he just had to stand there. But he kept looking at her," she finished with disgust.
"He never looked at her straight," said Mitya.
"Oh," said Galina, "you're always defending him."
Mitya flushed at his little sister's superior tone of voice. "And why not? I want to ride in his jahar when I'm old enough. He's the best rider of all the young men."
"Mitya, everyone knows that Aleksi is the best rider. No one is as good with the saber as he is. Isn't that true, Aleksi?"
Aleksi grinned. "Anatoly is a good commander, and he deserves the command Bakhtiian gave him, though he's young to be granted such an honor."
"But you wouldn't ride in his jahar, would you?" asked Katerina, looking pleased with her sly question.
"Katya, I ride in Bakhtiian's own thousand. Why should I want to ride in anyone else's?" The girls laughed, and Mitya appeared mollified.
Sonia came out of Tess's tent. "Are you children still here?" she called. "Galina, Mitya, take them and go. Mother Sakhalin will have plenty for you to do before you start serving."
Galina and Katerina rounded up the little ones and marched them off. Mitya lingered. "Would you like to walk with me?" Aleksi asked the boy, and Mitya's face brightened, since this was clearly exactly what he had hoped for. The chance to stroll around camp beside the man everyone knew was the best saber fighter since the legendary Vyacheslav Mirsky, who had died of old age six years ago… Aleksi chuckled. Then he felt a pang of regret. He had never enjoyed such simple pleasures as a boy. No friends, no companions. Alone- He shut it off. No use thinking about it, no use remembering. He lived in the Orzhekov camp now. "Come on, then."
"Oh, wait," said Mitya. "Aunt Sonia," he called, "what shall I do with the saber?"
She had already gone back into Tess's tent, but came out again. "Here, give it to me." She took it, smiled at Aleksi with the warmth that she seemed to have an endless supply of, and carried the precious weapon back inside.
Aleksi walked on, and Mitya matched his pace to the older man's. Already he was Aleksi's height and would probably grow taller still. Now he was gangly and uncoordinated, coltish in an endearing way. It was a stage Aleksi had never gone through, so while he felt sympathy for the boy, he could not quite understand him. However awkward Mitya might be, he had time to grow and an enviable position to grow into. Grandson of Irena Orzhekov, who was etsana of the Orzhekov tribe, Mitya was thereby related to Ilyakoria Bakhtiian himself; his mother, Kira, and Ilya were cousins. The boy wore a golden torque around his neck and golden braces at his wrists and, like his little cousin Kolia, a belted girdle of golden plates. A heavy enough burden, Aleksi supposed, made doubly so by the fact that Mitya's father was a respected smith. It was no wonder that Mitya admired Anatoly Sakhalin, a young man with equally important relatives who had managed to gain respect on his own account and not simply because of whom he was related to.
They wandered through the late afternoon bustle of the camp. A child ran behind a wall of captured shields, hiding from her playmates. A blacksmith's forge smoked, and two soot-stained, sweating men pounded out lance heads. Their strokes beat out a rhythm to the late afternoon. Two adolescent boys repaired bridles, and they waved at Mitya as he walked by. A group of women turned carcasses on spits over four large fires. The smell of the meat was tantalizing. Fat dripped and blazed on the coals.