"Katerina has befriended him, yes. But then, she's a generous girl, like her mother."
"Unlike me?"
Tess grinned suddenly and walked across to him. She took his hand. "I know it was abrupt of me to adopt him like that. But he looked so bedraggled and so pathetic. He's so young. Was his mother dark-featured as well?"
Ilya nodded absently, attention on the entrance flap, not on her. Outside, they heard Katerina calling out: "Vasha! Vasha! Come here!"
"But what are we going to do with him?" he asked at last.
"Raise him as our child."
"Our child? But it goes against all our traditions… by no custom of the jaran would he ever come to me. Even so, we can never know if he is truly my child."
"Do you doubt that he is? I don't. Oh, it's moving."
He spread both hands over her belly and they just stood there. A smile caught on his lips and he closed his eyes. "Yes, I feel it. Our child, Tess." He sighed, content, and drew his hands up to enclose both her hands between his. "Tess." He hesitated, glanced toward the entrance, and then back at her. When he spoke, she could barely hear him. "We traveled alongside their tribe for five months, and every night I slept in her tent. It was stupid of me, to show any woman such exclusive attention, but-"
"But?"
"Roskhel's tribe rode alongside ours for those same months, and I wanted away from my mother's tent. I hadn't a tent of my own, and anyway, Inessa was very pretty, so it was no hardship for me to lie with her every night. By the time we left them, she knew she was pregnant. Vasha is my child by the laws of Jeds, where such lines are followed through the man whose seed makes a woman pregnant. But we are not in Jeds. Nor do I rule there. By the laws of the jaran he is not my child, nor am I his father, except that I'm married to you, and that you adopted him as a foster-son."
He released her abruptly. A moment later Katerina burst into the tent. "Aunt Tess! Vasha, come here!"
The boy pushed through the opening hesitantly and halted right on the threshold as if he did not want to intrude, the heavy flap caught on his shoulders. Katerina grabbed his wrist and jerked him forward.
"Look. Vasha, show them!"
"Little one," said Ilya sternly, "he needn't show us anything he doesn't want to." He turned a steady gaze on Vasha, and the boy stared up at him,
Oh, yes, the resemblance was strong enough that anyone might guess just by looking at them together that they were father and son. And Vasha had the eyes, the same fire there, burning. He stared at his father as much with awe as with apprehension. Ilya looked vexed. Finally,
Vasha uncurled his right hand to display a finely-carved bone clasp, the kind one would use to close a saddlebag or a pouch.
"By the gods," Ilya murmured. He lifted it up and examined it. It was long and narrow, like a finger, curved, with a small hole at one end for a leather strip to lace through. He laughed out of sheer surprise. "My father gave me this. He carved it for me, as a present, when my first cycle of years had passed. Do you see the eagle, here? How his wings curl and drape around the clasp, as if he's embracing the winds?" Katya hung on her uncle's arm, staring. Vasha did not move, did not even close his hand or withdraw it. "Where did you get it?"
Vasha shrugged, dipping his chin down, staring at the carpet.
"Vasha! When I ask a question, I expect an answer."
The boy mumbled something.
"Gods, boy! I'm not going to punish you for it. I thought I'd lost this years ago, but I see that your mother merely stole it from me."
His gaze leapt up to Ilya. He glared. "She did not! She said you gave it to her!"
"I never gave it to her! And it happened more than once, that she'd take things from me and tell people I'd given them to her-" His voice dropped suddenly, in the face of Vasha's humiliated anger. "But perhaps I merely dropped it somewhere, and she found it and kept it to give to me again."
"Only you never came back," said the boy in a muted tone, looking down again.
"No, I never did. Well, here. I give it back to you, then."
"To me!" His gaze flashed up to Ilya and down again.
"As my father gifted me with it, so do I gift it to you."
"Oh," said Katerina.
Vasha did not move. liya placed the clasp on the boy's palm and closed his fingers over it. "Vasha, you are with us now. Let this be the seal between you and me, then, that… that we'll raise you as we would any son of ours." Still Vasha did not speak. Ilya glanced at Tess. "Well?" he demanded, as if she could help him.
"I have to go. Katya, I'm going to make a shirt for Vasha out of this cloth. Take it over to your mother and show it to her, please."
"Of course, Aunt Tess." Katya rolled up the cloth and hurried away.
Tess straightened her clothes over her belly. "Give me a kiss, little one," she said to Vasha. He started and came to kiss her, once on each cheek, in the formal way. She kissed him on the forehead as well, kissed Ilya on the cheek, and went to the entrance. There she paused on the threshold.
Ilya examined the boy as if he hadn't the least idea what to do with him. He coughed, glanced at Tess, and frowned. "Well. Do you know how to ride, Vasha?"
"Of course I know how to ride! How do you think I got here? Oh, I beg your pardon, I'm sorry. That was ill-mannered of me. Yes, I know how to ride."
Ilya sighed. He put out a hand as if to pat the boy on the shoulder, withdrew it, and then reached out again and awkwardly touched Vasha on the arm. "You'll ride out with me today, then. We'll go find you a mount."
Satisfied, Tess left them. She stopped to consult with Sonia about the shirt and then went on to Charles's encampment. She enjoyed the walk; she much preferred walking to riding these days, although she sometimes had to stop when her belly tightened up, all the muscles tensing, practicing for the event scheduled to occur in about seventy days. She was seven months pregnant now, with two months to go, more or less, Earth-time, although the year and month were longer here on Rhui.
Sometimes, especially late at night, she really thought the best thing would be to return to Jeds. But Cara could care for her as well here as at Jeds, really, especially with the new equipment Charles had brought with him, and it was too late by now to get her off-planet. What if she died?
But there was no point in worrying. She couldn't turn back now. What would come, would come. And she did have Cara, after all. Somehow, with Cara here, she couldn't imagine anything going wrong.
So what would happen after the baby came? These days it seemed like a veil lay drawn between her here, now, and what lay after the baby's arrival. What did she want out of life anyway? Mostly she wanted to be finished with the pregnancy, which weighed on her like a kind of mental torpor, as if all the activity in her body, mental or otherwise, had been channeled into her womb. Yet for two days now the thought of the female Chapalii had nagged at her. All this time humanity had read old human patterns onto Chapalii culture: males who possessed all the status and did everything important and females who lived in seclusion, as second-class citizens. Now it appeared that they had been wrong; now it appeared that the Chapalii possessed two cultures. Yet surely the two cultures intertwined somehow. Surely the pattern was readable, if only the right person, with the right skills, could investigate. Jess knew quite well who the right person was.
Yet she did not want to leave Rhui. She did not want to leave the jaran. Charles lived in a world made cold by his obsession; by joining with him, her world, her surroundings, would be cold as well. She would have to leave the warmth of her family behind. Because the jaran were her family, now. Somehow, she had to find a way to work with Charles and yet remain on Rhui.