Tess leaned back. "Aleksi, Cara wanted to see you."
"To see me?"
"About-don't you remember?" She dropped her voice to a whisper. "As you watched her do with me. She wants to look into your body with her machines. To-to map it."
Aleksi remembered. He wasn't sure whether to feel honored or nervous, but Tess wished him to do this, so he would. "I'll go," he said, not one to hesitate once he had made a decision. He kissed her on the cheek, bade farewell to Josef Raevsky, and went on his way. Passing between his tent and Tess's on his way to the hospital encampment, he heard Bakhtiian and Nadine arguing in Rhuian just out of sight behind Tess's great tent. He paused to listen.
"What right has she to interfere?" Nadine demanded, sounding quite intemperate. "I know she convinced Feodor to mark me. He would never have done it otherwise. He would never have had the nerve."
"Yes, and faced with the prospect of being married to you in this temper, Dina, can you blame him? In any case, you know very well what right she has to interfere. She is Mother of all the tribes."
"Yes, but we've been to Jeds. We're not bound by useless jaran customs. You and I should know better-"
"Listen to me, young woman. I know better, and I know that for all that I learned in Jeds, for all the knowledge that lies in these khaja universities, we jaran are stronger because of what we are and because of how we live. The khaja can't stand against us. They will never be able to. So the gods have gifted us. Would you like to have married in Jeds, instead?"
A fulminating silence. "You know very well how they treat women in khaja lands."
"Yes, I do."
"I don't want to marry at all. I want to ride."
"Then ride. You are already married, Dina. The nine days have passed."
"I wasn't in seclusion."
"That's true. If you wish to go through the ceremony-"
"I don't!"
"Then accept what you must. And you must have children. You know it as well as I do." There was another silence, but this one had more of a despairing edge to it. "Dina,! have already been advised to remove you from command of your jahar."
"Who-!"
"None of your business. Listen to me, damn you. You're worse than I was at your age." That brought a reluctant chuckle from her. "I won't do it. You're a good commander, and even if you weren't my niece, you would deserve such a command. You will remain a dyan. But there will be times when you can't ride."
"When I'm pregnant."
"Yes. Don't you see, Dina? The gods never give out unmixed blessings. They gifted women with the knowledge that is also a mystery, that of bringing children into the world, but knowledge is also a burden."
"A heavy one, in this case."
"If you only had a sister to bear children while you rode, then that would be well. But you have none."
"I want to explore, like the prince's man, Marco Burckhardt, does." Said stubbornly.
Bakhtiian sighed. "You have no choice, my niece. You will have children. I order you to. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"During such time as you can't leave camp, you will work with Tess. Her work is every bit as important as Yaroslav Sakhalin's." His voice dropped into a coaxing tone. "Those maps you made together are very fine."
"Thank you." Was there a slightly warmer edge to her voice? Was she melting. "Praise from Bakhtiian is as a blessing from the gods themselves-"
"Stop that! Don't mock me!"
"Uncle… I didn't mean… I only meant…" She faltered. Aleksi was amazed to hear her sound chastened.
"Never show such disrespect for the gods. You should know better, you who only by the gods" grace are alive today, when everyone else in our family died."
"My father didn't die. You didn't die."
"Go," said Bakhtiian.
Aleksi heard Nadine take in a breath to say something. Instead, she said nothing, and a moment later he saw her emerge from behind the tent and stride away out into camp, which he thought showed great wisdom on her part.
"Aleksi," said Bakhtiian, sounding no less curt. Aleksi started, and then walked around the corner to face Bakhtiian. Ilya turned from looking out after his niece to glare at Aleksi, and Aleksi wondered abruptly how many times he had been saved from a lecture-or worse-from Bakhtiian because of Tess's implicit protection. "I don't like it," Ilya said, and Aleksi knew that he meant Aleksi's habit of listening in. "Do it to others if you will. Don't do — it to me."
"I beg your pardon," said Aleksi. "An incurable habit from my youth. It saved my life more than once."
"No doubt," replied Bakhtiian. Aleksi could not tell whether he meant the comment to express sympathy or censure. "Nevertheless, not to me."
"I understand and obey, Bakhtiian." He bowed, as they did in Jeds; Tess had taught him how to do it.
"Go," said Bakhtiian, but the word wasn't as terse as it had been when he had ordered Nadine to leave. He might even have been amused.
Aleksi escaped and, whistling under his breath, he considered the world while he made his way to the doctor's tent. He decided that the world was a strange place, stranger than any one person ever might suspect, knowing only what she knew from the narrow path she rode through it. Aleksi felt sometimes that he himself rode more than one path, that there were two, or three or four of him, each scouting a different path, each in constant communication, as though belled messengers raced between the routes carrying intelligence from one to the next. And once you saw the world from three, or five, different roads, the view was never the same. The map changed and altered, and its details became more accurate. The landmarks receded or grew, depending on the angle from which you observed them, and at once, there might be an escarpment from which the astonished traveler would rendezvous with her selves and could suddenly comprehend the land as it truly was.
"Ah, Aleksi." Dr. Hierakis emerged from her tent, wiping her hands on a rag. "Come in. Come in." He followed her back inside. She had sewn tiny bells all along the entrance flap, and they tinkled as the flap fell down behind them. Aleksi understood the bells, now; just as the messengers wore bells to alert the next garrison or tribe to their coming, the doctor positioned bells around her tent so that no person might enter unannounced and surprise her at her machines. A lantern sat placed in the center of a table, but Aleksi knew this trick. Tentatively, he put out a hand toward it, touched it, and his finger passed right through it. It was only an image of a lantern, not a lantern at all, although it looked so true that he would never have known if Tess had not told him.
"Sit down." The doctor indicated first a chair and then a pillow, so that he might choose whatever was most comfortable. "Will you have some tea?"
Aleksi didn't like tea, but he was far too polite to refuse any drink offered him in a woman's tent. He sank down onto the pillow and received the hot tea from Dr. Hierakis. He sipped at the spicy drink cautiously and regarded the doctor from under lowered lids. She reached under the table with one hand and did something there with her fingers. The lantern grew a little brighter; otherwise he saw no change.
"Recording," she said into the air. Then to him: "Do you have a second name, Aleksi?"
"Soerensen," he said promptly.
"I meant, a jaran name, or a tribal name."
"Not one I remember."
"How old are you?" She stared at him with that gaze he recognized as impartial, measuring him against some pattern only she knew, not for any personal reason.
"I don't know."
"I mean, in which year were you born? Eagle? Rat? Lion? Horse, perhaps?"
"I don't know."
"But everyone knows that, here."
"I beg your pardon. I don't know. My tribe was massacred by khaja raiders when I was very young."
"Tess mentioned that. How did you escape?"
Aleksi shut his eyes and struggled to recall anything from that time. He shrugged. "All I remember is the dew on the grass, and lying half sunk in water in a little hollow of swamp. I lay there so still for so long that a frog crawled right up onto my right hand. It was a blessing, you see. The gods took pity on me, because the khaja had taken my family, so they sent the frog to gift me with speed for fighting."