She got no farther than six steps. A figure emerged from a megalith. Like the strike of a snake, a hand gripped her right wrist, twisting it so her saber fell, a brilliant clatter on the floor, and pulled her in. An arm closed around her back. Her hands were trapped, one in back, one in front of her, her legs constrained by space. Her hair rested against a head. Head. Neck. Throat. She ducked her head, got it under the chin, and pushed up; lunged with her teeth for the throat.
It happened so fast that she only knew that both her arms were jerked painfully up behind her back. A hand locked on her chin, holding her head bowed back, fingers pressed tight on her jaw. His face held a breath away from hers.
"Try that again," he said, his eyes two points of blackness, "and I'll have to-" Abruptly, he jerked her chin to one side, as if he could not stand to look at her. His beard tickled her cheek.
"Oh, God," said Tess. She would have fallen if he had not been holding her.
"By the gods." Bakhtiian looked past her to her saber, a gleam on the ebony floor. "I think it is time for you to tell me the truth."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"To protect it within your silent bosom."
He did not let go of her until they were inside the room that the priests had given him to sleep in. She was panting, dizzy from the pace he had set, the sudden halts, the fear of every blind corner. Her wrist ached where he held her. When he released her, she staggered backward. The bed frame caught her knees and she half-fell to the hard mattress. All of her breath sighed out of her. She sank back against the wall and rested her face in her open hands. Light flickered. She lifted her head. He set a candle on the little table midway along the wall.
His stare was so hard that she looked down. "What, did he try to kill you?" he said finally, as if he had thought of doing it once or twice. 'If you will be caught spying, then you must expect to suffer the consequences."
She stared stupidly at him. Half a meter to the right and the shot would have burned through her.
"I could not sleep," said Ilya at last. "I saw you meet the pilgrim called Garii and go with him. He took you into the white room, but when I looked inside, you had vanished. Then Ishii came and went inside, yet the room remained empty-to my sight, at least. And you came out, running as if demons were after you. There is blood on your hand, by the way. Where did you go?"
There was blood on her hand. She wiped her face frantically but only the barest smear came off. There was not much, after alclass="underline" a pale stripe across her knuckles and a few drops darkening her sleeve.
"You have done violence in the shrine," he said.
Her head snapped up. "No! He tried to kill me. It was self-defense, damn you. I didn't kill him. God, he killed Garii. He would have killed me!"
"Where did all this take place?"
"There's a secret room, a secret door. Don't you have anything I can clean this off with? It stings."
He took a step toward her. She jerked up, but he was only turning to open the door. He went out. She was suddenly seized by a paralyzing terror: what if he had gone to find Ishii? Or Mother Avdotya? A hand rattled at the door-but it was Ilya. He tossed her a damp cloth and resumed his stance against the door, regarding her with his unrelenting gaze. She scrubbed at her hand and her cheek and then sat, staring at the rag until finally she dropped it on the floor next to his bed.
"You have no farther to retreat," said Bakhtiian, "and I want an explanation." The candlelight threw his shadow high up on the wall, arching over onto the ceiling, so that it seemed to lower down on her like the approach of a storm. "You had better be honest with me, because I am-completely-out of patience with you."
"I can't tell you."
"You can't tell me! The penalty for violence-"
"You aren't listening to me!" She pushed up to her feet. "He tried to-" Inside her shirt, the cylinder slipped down. She grabbed at her side.
"Tess!" he cried, starting forward. "He hurt you-"
"No." She stepped back, half up onto the bed.
Ilya stopped short. "Let me see."
"No."
He walked forward. She backed up along the bed, standing on the mattress, until he had cornered her.
His shadow seemed to take up an entire wall. Under her hand, through her shirt, the cylinder felt hard and cold. He looked at her hand, cupped at her waist. Slowly he placed one foot up on the bed and, with a slight grimace, pushed up with the other, so that he, too, was standing on the bed. He placed a hand on either side of her, trapping her.
"What do you have?"
The implacability of his voice terrified her. "I can't show you."
"You will."
Finally, she lowered her head in acquiescence. He stepped down. Too quickly, this time; he winced and with a marked limp moved back to the middle of the room.
"Oh, God," she said under her breath. This was it. All her efforts for nothing: now he would know, and she could not begin to imagine what the knowledge would do to him.
She turned into the corner and retrieved the cylinder. With it in her hand, she stepped down from the bed and handed it to him.
He took it to the candle. "I see no writing. Is this some holy relic?"
She felt impelled to smile, thinking of what Ishii had said about archaeology. "Yes, the relic of a prince who is long since dead."
He turned it in the light as if its black sheen fascinated him. "Whom ought this to belong to?"
"That depends on which one of us you talk to. Myself or Ishii."
"Why do you want it?"
"My brother wants it. It represents-I can't explain in a few words. Power and knowledge."
"Why should your brother have it? It is the pilgrims, after all, who have come on this journey for holy purposes."
"For their purposes."
"Which are?"
"Bad ones."
"While your brother's are good? That is very easy, my wife, but rarely true." She winced at his cutting tone. "Well?"
"How long do you want the explanation to be?" She rubbed at her eyes with her palms, then lowered them, taking in resolve with a deep breath. "Ilya. The khepellis will use that relic to enslave my people. Already they control most of the trade that enriches Jeds. And many other cities. But if my brother gets that relic, then he can work to free all those the khepelli have subjugated. Not just for his own sake. You have to believe me. He isn't-his work is for other people not for himself.''
Her gaze on him worked like a fire. He took a step toward her, away from the table. Framed by light and shadow, he seemed to Tess a man in some half-remembered legend, a force in and of himself, caught between the new world and the old. "How could you read the inscription on the arch?"
"I have learned-" She broke off.
"You have learned the tongue the khepelli speak. You said it was their writing. Last night, after-" He jerked his gaze away from her suddenly, staring down at the lines of wax that laced a tangled pattern around the base of the candle.
"Last night," he began again, "I went to the sacred fountain to-to reflect. But two of the pilgrims were in the room. They did not see me, but I saw them drink from the basin. Deeply. It did not harm them, Tess. They aren't like us. I have always known that-only a blind man would not see it-but this… The water did not poison them. They aren't-" He hesitated, as if once said, the words would alter his world forever.