CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
From nothing, she could suddenly hear.
"Signs are stable. We pulled her through, Jo, at least through the worst of it."
"Should I go tell-"
"No. Remember, to Bakhtiian, we'd have no way of telling until she woke up."
"Ah. Not that I want to go out there anyway. Cara, he won't let go of the child. He's been holding on to it for over four hours. Don't you find that a little macabre?"
"Let him sit, Jo. Charles is sitting with him. He needs to mourn it before he can let it go."
"David went out to-"
Their voices faded.
"I went through this once before," said Ilya into the shuttered silence.
"You lost a child?"
Ilya glanced at Charles, startled. "Yes, that, too-a child. Not my own. My sister's." He did not look down at the still bundle cradled in his left arm. "I meant with Tess. Forty-five days I went not knowing whether she had lived or died. She was wounded in a skirmish-"
"The scar on her abdomen."
"Yes, that's right. I had to take the khepellis to the coast, to the port, so I had to leave her before I knew if she would live. Forty-five days." He lapsed into silence again.
The lantern on the tabletop burned. Cara had in her tent one luxury: three pillows with soft satin coverings that could be tied together to form a hedonistic reading cushion. The light caught the fabric at such an angle that the satin gleamed. A single leather-bound book, Shakespeare: The Complete Works lettered in gold on its spine, lay on one of the pillows, tossed casually down. Otherwise, the chamber was spartan: a chest for clothes, a table, two wooden folding chairs, and a small cabinet for cooking utensils and odds and ends. Silence hung over them, dense. An occasional word or phrase drifted through from the inner chamber and once the sound of a short laugh being swallowed into a cough. What transpired in there might otherwise have been a thousand kilometers away, it remained so distant from the two waiting men.
"I lost my parents," said Charles suddenly. "Do you ever wonder-" He broke off.
"I wonder a great deal," said Ilya softly. "Most of it is fruitless, though."
"Your wondering?" Charles asked. Bakhtiian did not answer, but the silence seemed as much of a reply as any words he could have spoken.
A slow, erratic drip sounded from outside, along one corner of the tent.
"Why did you allow her to marry me?" Bakhtiian asked suddenly.
"I didn't. I'd have stopped it if I'd been able to. If I'd known. Not because of you, you understand. But because of who she is, and why I need her."
"And if she dies?"
"She won't die. Cara is taking care of her." Charles turned his head to stare at the curtain, the veil that closed them off from Tess. "She won't die. She can't."
"You don't want her to." Ilya bent his head and touched his face to the cloth that shrouded his child.
Charles did not move, but he shifted in his chair, restless, uneasy. "No, I don't want her to," he admitted.
"Well," said Ilya, raising his head, "neither do I. Why is it that you and I suppose that if we want something, it must come to pass?"
Charles's lips quirked up into a smile so colored by grief that it felt almost as if other people had been brought by that tiny expression into the hushed solitude of the chamber. "There's an old saying: "be careful what you wish for; you might get it." "
"Oh, gods." A quaver shook Ilya's voice. "The bargains we make with the gods never fall out as we think they will."
Charles stood up abruptly and went over to the chest. Rummaging within, he drew out a bottle and two glass tumblers. "Here." He returned to the table and poured out a round. "Have a drink."
This time, when she woke, she saw the blurred edges of the lantern in the corner, illuminating an oval of plain canvas fabric. She saw a figure move, recognized it as Cara, and fell back under.
"… and then after the rebellion failed, I thought I would be executed. But they made me a duke-it's a nobleman's title within their imperial hierarchy-instead."
"Is that so strange? If you want to unite an empire, and you only enslave the people you conquer, doesn't it make sense that in time they'll rebel against you? But if you make them part of your court, then in time they'll become loyal to you. That's why Mitya must marry the Habakar princess. Then her father will support us, to protect her, and her children will rule and yet be both jaran and khaja."
"As your children will be- Oh, God, I beg your pardon. I'm so incredibly sorry."
Ilya stared at the haze of lantern light. He felt lightheaded, with exhaustion, with alcohol, with grief, and the sensation gave the lantern a blurred, magical substance-less look to his eyes, as if it didn't really exist at all. He tried to speak, once, but nothing came out. He tried again. "The gods will judge whether I may ever have a child, or whether I already bargained my children away."
Charles shut his eyes. "I gave up the chance to have children before I knew I had done it. Only I didn't know it until the day my parents were killed. They weren't killed, I mean. They were murdered. It was made to look like an accident-a crash-they were traveling in a… carriage-but their agents left just enough evidence that I would know who was responsible. That I would know the emperor himself had ordered it, as a lesson. The only reason I didn't lose Tess that day is that she happened to get the flu and stayed home with our aunt. How could I dare have a child under those conditions? I couldn't protect a child, not against them. Maybe Tess is better off here. She's safe here."
"Safe," said Ilya under his breath. He cupped his free hand over the round arc of the baby's shrouded head.
"She will live," said Charles. "You must believe me."
"I want to believe you. The gods alone know how much I want to believe you. I'm sorry, about your parents."
"Here. Have another drink. Do you ever wonder-? God, I don't know what possessed me to tell you that. I must be getting drunk."
"Because the khepellis killed your parents, because of you?"
"I killed them. Cause and effect. The blame lies nowhere else. I made the choice, knowing it would put them in danger. I risked them, and I lost them. They were wonderful people. They always supported me. They loved me." He hesitated and went on haltingly. "I loved them. But I had to make the choice. I had to choose the rebellion, I had to choose the dukedom, I had to choose Jeds, and I have to choose to continue, now."
"You told me because I understand," said Ilya so softly that his words evaporated on the still air as a whisper of warmth vanishes in the cold of deep winter, out on the plains. "Eleven years ago, I bargained with the gods. I knew that my vision for the tribes was the right one, but I was young, and I wasn't sure I could convince the Elders to follow me. Why should they listen to a dyan as young and inexperienced as I was? I was afraid-afraid they would reject me, and afraid of losing my vision. But I knew I was right. So I committed sacrilege."
A scrape of shoe sounded from the inner chamber.
Both men tensed, expectant, but nothing happened, no one emerged.
"I killed a bird." His hands shielded his dead son's body, although by now it was, of course, too late to shield the child from the fate he had brought on it. "I offered a hawk on the altar of Grandmother Night, She Who Will Bargain if you are desperate enough to call on her. I killed it, and I poured its blood on the soil. I offered her my dearest one, if she would make my vision succeed. But you see, I meant to offer Vasil, because I was willing to give him up. Not to kill him; I didn't mean that, or maybe I did, but I told myself I meant only to send him away. To exile him."
The lantern burned, constant, with only the barest flickering on the wick within its globe. "She agreed to the bargain. Grandmother Night never refuses a bargain. And then she took them all, one by one, everyone I loved best. My parents, my sister, my nephew. She only spared Nadine that day to mock me. She took my cousin, Yuri. And now my son. And She'll take Tess, if She can get her. She'll take her back to the gods" lands, and we'll have to burn her, and I'll never-I'll lose her forever. Do you ever wonder if the price was worth paying?"