"If I may?" asked Kirill, looking at his wife.
She nodded. Kirill motioned to Vasil and led him aside. A moment later Anton joined them. The baby whimpered and Kirill shifted it deftly in his arm, and it quieted. Behind them, Arina ruthlessly dispersed the crowd. Karolla, with stunning aplomb, went back to her spinning. Yana trailed after the men, loitering just far enough from them that they would have no reason to shoo her away. Her face was bright with joy. A gorgeous child, she was, prettier than her brother, but only because his features were blemished by his fretful, sullen expression.
"Well, Vasil," said Zvertkov. "I'm surprised to see you."
"I heard my father died."
"It's true, but quite a while back. Don't think, Veselov, that I don't have a good idea of why you've really come back."
Vasil blinked innocently. "Why is that?"
Zvertkov smiled mockingly. "I don't think it's anything we need talk of publicly, do you?'' Vasil recalled him as a young and rather foolish man, the kind of overgrown boy who attaches himself to a powerful man out of love and loyalty without having much personality himself. He revised this estimate quickly. Kirill Zvertkov had evidently become a rather more formidable man since they'd last met, and not just because he was now an etsana's husband. "Personally, I'd as soon you were gone for good, meaning no offense to your person, of course. But Karolla has missed you bitterly." He glanced to one side. "As has little Yana there, and for their sake, I'll counsel my wife to let you stay.''
Vasil laughed. "I think Arina loves me rather more than you realize."
"I am sure she does, and if this were the times before, I would not be talking to you now. But it isn't. Bakhtiian has changed everything we are."
' 'Is that why I see khaja weapons in camp?''
"You can't take cities on horseback, Veselov. We have learned that, and other things. We're going to conquer the khaja lands, as the gods have meant us to all along, and nothing will interfere with that. Especially not you."
"What is this, Kirill? Don't forget I knew you when you were young. I always thought your infatuation with Ilya was only a boy's admiration for a stronger man-well, but perhaps I was wrong."
Kirill's lips tightened, and he shifted. The baby mewled. "I don't think you have any power over him anymore, Vasil. Perhaps you've forgotten that he is married."
"I have never forgotten it," said Vasil softly. "But what makes you think I returned because of Bakhtiian? I, too, have married. And now that my father is dead, I am dyan by right.''
Now Kirill was startled. "What? Anton-"
Anton shrugged. "What's past is past, Kirill. It's true enough that Vasil is the proper dyan."
And since it was true, Kirill did not reply.
Vasil smiled and nodded. "Excuse me," he said. "My daughter is waiting." The moment he turned away from them, Yana dashed across to grab his arm. Clearly she did not mean to let go, but the weight did not distress Vasil. He kissed her on the brow and mussed her golden hair, and let her lead him back to his wife's tent where Karolla waited, patient, solemn, and just as desperately in love with him as she had been from the very first, when he had marked her in order to make her father, Dmitri Mikhailov, take him into his jahar. He sat down beside her as if he had never been gone and helped her wind yarn.
When Vasil woke the next morning, he could hear Karolla singing softly to herself outside as she went about her work. Occasionally she broke off her song to speak to one of the children, or to someone passing by, and Vasil marveled at how sweet and pleasant her voice was, as if all the beauty had been poured into it instead of into her face.
"Mama, can I go in and wake him up?"
"Yes. Tell him that Arina said that the scouts for the main army have already ridden by.''
Vasil was half-dressed in the clothes Karolla had laid out for him by the time Yana got all the way back to the sleeping alcove. "Oh," she said, almost disappointed, ''you're already awake.''
He kissed her on each cheek. "Not truly awake until I'd seen your sweet face, little one." She beamed. "Here, hand me my saber, will you?" She shyly held it out to him. "Come, take my hand and we'll go outside."
Outside, he greeted Karolla by kissing both of her palms and then by offering to go fetch water. "No, no." She shook her head. "Yana will go with the other girls. You'd better go see Anton and Kirill. The vanguard of the army will be coming by soon. I don't know-Vasil." She hesitated.
Vasil kissed Yana on the forehead and sent her off to her chores. "Karolla, you must never hesitate to tell me what you think. I would be a poor husband if I did not listen to my wife's wisdom."
She blushed with pleasure. "Vasil, if it is your dearest wish to become dyan, then I will support you. Although I have little standing in this tribe-Arina was very generous to take me in at all, and everything I have here I owe to her. I can't go back to my mother's tribe. Not now.''
"All the more reason, then, that I become dyan. I don't intend that my wife and children live beholden to others. Once I am dyan, then you are by right a member of this tribe, and you will not be here only on Arina's sufferance."
"Arina has been kind. You must not think she has ever treated us badly."
"What about my sister? I haven't even seen her."
Karolla returned her attention to the copper pot she was scouring clean. "Vera disgraced herself. You must know that."
"Since she did what she did at my bidding, I can hardly consider her fairly treated."
Karolla looked up, angry. ' 'She betrayed her own tribe.
She violated the sanctity of the camp. It is true that I left my mother and my aunts, but I never betrayed them. What you did-trying to kill Bakhtiian-well, you did that at Mikhailov's bidding."
"Is that what people say?"
Karolla shrugged. "I have long since given up listening to what people say. But if you go to see Anton, you'll see Vera. She serves the Telyegin family now." She glanced away, looking shamed. "Valentin is there."
"Yes, I had noticed that he wasn't here."
"Don't be angry with him, Vasil. It was a shock, to have you come back so suddenly. He was so young when you left."
Vasil kissed her on her hair and straightened his saber. "How could I be angry with him, Karolla? He will come to love me."
"Of course he will," agreed Karolla, but Vasil could see that she only half believed it.
"There is one other thing, my love," he said, and he ran a hand down the sleeve of the shirt he had put on this morning. "These are my old clothes. Where did you get them?"
She paled, looking distressed. "Tess Soerensen gave them to me. And your old saber, it is here, too."
"Is it now?" he said thoughtfully. He left, pausing first to see if Arina was at her tent, which was sited to one side of his wife's tent, but Arina was out and a young woman he did not recognize told him that she was out with Uncle Marenko looking at the herds. So he strolled across camp, taking his time, greeting any person who greeted him, pausing to ask them questions about how they had been and what they were doing now and exclaiming over how very tall their children or grandchildren had grown. He discovered a few things along the way: that the Veselov tribe was inordinately proud of the fact that of all the tribes, it alone had been chosen by Bakhtiian to shelter those young men who for whatever reason were not part of any official jahar and who were training to find a place in the army. As they told it, Bakhtiian had insisted that one of his most trusted lieutenants marry their beloved etsana in order to cement the closeness between the two tribes. And they believed utterly and passionately that the jaran tribes were meant by the gods to conquer the khaja lands, and would do so, led by Bakhtiian.
Vasil had just come within sight of the cluster of tents that marked the Telyegin family when he saw Vera. She was still remarkably handsome, though she wore only a plain blue tunic with neither beading nor embroidery, over striped trousers, and she wore her golden hair in a simple braid with no ornamentation in it at all. She bent over a fire, stirring cloth in a kettle filled with green dye. Her face had flushed red from the heat. She wore only one earring, and that in her left ear, signifying that she was bonded to a family as a servant. One of the Telyegin sisters came out and called something to her, cheerfully and without any sense of nasty glee at Vera's misfortune, and a moment later spotted Vasil. The woman's eyes widened. Vera looked up. She went white.