"He would help us?" Yevgeni shook his head. "He can't help us. No woman or man can, now that Grandmother Night has settled her terrible gaze on us."
"Yes, he can. He's more powerful than grandmother night."
"Don't say that!" Yevgeni shrank away from him.
"But it's true. I made those men fall down, with this knife. I can heal your wounds with these simple instruments. That box is an oven that baked this meat without fire. I'm more powerful than grandmother night. Let me show you something."
He brought out his slate and unfolded it, so that it lay flat on the ground. In silence, Yevgeni watched. "Do you remember the jaran tale we sang? The one about Mekhala, the woman who brought horses to the jaran?"
Yevgeni lowered his eyes. "Yes." He said it as if something shamed him about the memory. "I was with Valye. She liked to see your people's singing."
"Run Mekhala folktale, scene two. Meter field."
In scene two, Hyacinth played the khaja prince who had come to demand tribute from the rhan, as the jaran tribes had called themselves before they had gotten horses and become ja-rhan, the people of the wind. Above the slate, about a meter cubed, the play unfolded: Anahita as Mekhala and Diana as her sister, Hyacinth entering as the prince with his retinue of Quinn and Oriana.
Yevgeni stared openmouthed at the image, moving, playing out. He reached out and snatched his hand back before he touched it. "Sorcery," he murmured.
"No, it's not sorcery. It's a-oh, hell, there's no way to explain it to you. Run image of Morava."
The image melted away and re-formed into the gorgeous dome and towers of the Chapalii palace the jaran called Morava. Hyacinth had not seen Morava except through this program, and he was delighted to be able to pace around it and see the complex from all angles. He envied the duke's party for experiencing it firsthand.
"But how did it get so small?" Yevgeni demanded. "How did you capture it and bring it here?"
"It's just an image, Yevgeni, not the shrine itself. Look, do you know what a map is? Let me see. Maybe I can reconstruct where we left the army, and where we are now. It's been thirty-five days since we left camp and if we've ridden northeast… Goddess. I should have paid more attention in cartography tutorial."
"But no one is more powerful than Grandmother Night," said Yevgeni suddenly. "Even seeing these things and what you did to those khaja bandits, still… She attends us at our birth and grants us a measure of days in which to live. She is the One with whom we may bargain for gifts, if we're willing to risk the bargaining, if we're desperate enough. She is death, Hyacinth. No person can escape death."
"How old do you think the Prince of Jeds is?"
Yevgeni shrugged. "Of an age with Bakhtiian, I suppose."
"He isn't. He's older than Mother Sakhalin."
"He can't be."
"He is. Why would I lie to you? Dr. Hierakis is older than he is. Owen is in his seventies, too, and Ginny is at least as old as that. Yet they are still young. My great-grandmother Nguyen is one hundred and sixteen years old, and I can expect to live at least as long as she has and stay young until I'm ninety or so. Grandmother night doesn't scare us. You've got to believe me, Yevgeni. You've got to want to believe me, you've got to want to live. If we can make it to the shrine, if we can find the duke-"
Yevgeni reached up abruptly and touched Hyacinth's cheek. "That's when I fell in love with you," he said in a low voice. "When I saw that song, the song you did about Mekhala. Valye said you were really the khaja prince and that it was a wind demon truly drawn down to walk among us, but I knew you were just a person singing two different songs. You were so beautiful."
Hyacinth shut his eyes. How Owen would have loved this scene: Yevgeni's voice blended grief and wonder and a shy yearning so perfectly, and the way he held his body reflected his longing and his sorrow and his actual physical pain. But this was real. Hyacinth knelt and put his arms around the other man. Yevgeni gasped, from the pain of the embrace, but he did not draw away.
"Oh, damn," murmured Hyacinth, "it must hurt."
"No, no," said Yevgeni into his hair, "never mind it. I gave it for her, who followed me to her death."
"We won't die. That way you can remember her. That way part of her will always live, with you."
Yevgeni sighed against him but said nothing. There was nothing he needed to say, not at that moment. Hyacinth stroked his hair and held him carefully, tenderly.
After a little while, Hyacinth warmed up the meat in the oven and Yevgeni ate a sliver of it, though it was the flesh of the gods" sacred messengers. Not much, but by that small gesture, Hyacinth knew that Yevgeni had cast his lot with his khaja lover and abandoned his own people once and for all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the middle of the night, Tess woke to the sound of footsteps in the outer chamber. She heaved herself up and slipped on a silk robe, tying it closed just under her breasts and above her pregnant belly. She pushed the curtain aside and walked into her husband.
He had been pacing. She could tell by the way his shoulders were drawn forward and one hand clenched up by his beard. He opened the hand and splayed it over one side of her belly. "The child is growing," he said. "And all of a sudden, it seems. I think you're twice the size you were at Hamrat, and it's only been sixteen days since we left there."
"Oh, gods, and it's all pressing on my bladder."
"Do you want me to walk with you?"
"No." She slipped on a pair of sandals, threw a cloak over her silk robe, and walked out to the freshly-dug pits sited at the edge of the Orzhekov encampment. At night, it was quiet and peaceful here, but she knew that about a kilometer away lay the royal city of Karkand, settled in for a long siege. She greeted guards, and they greeted her in return. They were used to her nightly peregrinations. The guards looked a little chilled, but she was never cold now, even in the middle of the night.
When she got back to the tent, Ilya was pacing again. "Here," she said, "stop that. It's moving again. Sit down." She settled down cross-legged beside him and opened her robe. He rested both of his hands on her belly. "What's bothering you?"
He did not reply. He concentrated on her, on her belly, on his hands.
"There, did you feel that?" she asked. He shook his head. "It's mostly like a fluttering, now, like butterflies. When I get bigger, you'll feel it."
He sighed and withdrew his hands, and stood, and walked to the entrance of the tent and then back to her. "How does Ursula know so much?" he demanded. "Although she is always respectful, she speaks with the authority of Sakhalin himself. We rode a circuit of the city today and she pointed out where siege engines might be used to the greatest effect, and how the river might be dammed so that it could flood the walls and the citadel. She speaks as if she has seen and done all these things before, as if she has already ridden with an army like ours."
"She's read many books." Tess rose and poured two cups of water, and offered one to him. He ignored her. He went to the table and unrolled two pieces of parchment on the tabletop. One was Nadine's map of Habakar lands and beyond. The other was a rough map of Karkand and the surrounding countryside.
Karkand, like Jeds, was a walled city, but here the resemblance ended. Hovels and houses and palaces, poor and rich alike, lay crammed within the protecting walls of Jeds, and only the prince's palace and the university lay outside within their own ring of walls. Huts and shanties had sprouted up immediately outside the walls and along the road that led to the palace, but only the poorest people who could find no foothold inside the city lived out there.
In Karkand, the rich lived outside the inner city. They lived in a vast sprawl of villas along avenues spread out on the fertile plain that surrounded the two hills on which lay the citadel and the king's palace and the innermost city, which was itself as large as Jeds. The outer city was also protected by a wall, not as formidable as the walls ringing the twin hills but impressive for its sheer vast circumference. It took half a day to ride around the suburbs of Karkand.