Quiet descended on the camp.
"Where is Aleksi?" asked Sonia, coming up beside Tess and taking hold of her hand.
Tess leaned into Sonia, letting Sonia's warmth and strength be her comfort. "I sent him out to escort Charles along the lines. It's beautiful to watch them go, isn't it? Yet what they'll bring will be terrible."
They stood for a time in silence. Their years together had brought them that as much as anything: the ability to find peace in each other, and the contentment of a friend who judged you solely on yourself, and nothing more, and nothing less.
"Well," said Sonia at last, "there's much to do. I brought Svetlana Tagansky to visit, but now Aleksi is gone."
"Sonia. I'm sorry I snapped at you yesterday."
"Oh, Tess. I understand."
Tess smiled and brushed away a tear. "I know you do. Ilya and I started to make our peace with him, the little one-" She thought of him as Yuri, but she never dared say it aloud; a child born dead was never given a name, among the jaran, but it comforted Tess to know he had one, if only in her own heart. It consoled her to give the baby that link to the other Yuri, whom she had also lost. "Well. Let me meet Svetlana. Oh, look, here is Rajiv." Rajiv came up then, with Maggie and Gwyn Jones in tow. "Sonia, I'll come to your tent soon."
Sonia greeted the others, excused herself, and left.
Tess turned to the newcomers. "Hello, Rajiv. Maggie." She paused and regarded Gwyn Jones dubiously.
"He's clear," said Rajiv. "He knows what we're doing. He had a few clever ideas, too. I thought we'd bring him in at the first iteration."
"You have some ideas?" Tess asked. "I don't mean to be-"
"Skeptical?" Jones grinned. "But I am just an actor? No, it's all right. I was in prison before I studied acting, and-well, let's just say I've learned a few things that might be of use. Consider me a recruit for the cause."
"Rajiv, do you have the modeler with you?" Tess asked. Rajiv nodded. "Then go on in, but you'll have to use the inner chamber. If you can rig a perimeter alert and track it for-well, you'll know what to do. I've one more duty to perform, and then I'll come in." Thus dismissed, they disappeared inside the tent.
The camp was empty of soldiers now except for a single circle of guards around the Orzhekov encampment and a series of guards and scouts around the main camp itself, stretching out into the countryside so that no force might come upon camp or army unaware.
Under the awning of Sonia's tent stood a young woman, a child, and two adolescents, one girl, one boy. The young woman chatted easily with Josef Raevsky, seeming unembarrassed by his disfigurement, and Tess liked her for that at once. The dawn wind stilled. A thin streak of clouds paled the western horizon, but Tess could not be sure yet if they were true clouds, or smoke. Faintly, far off, she heard the steady thunk of the artillery, firing on Karkand.
Tess rubbed her arms across her breasts, they ached so badly, and then regretted it immediately, because it made the milk let down. She swore under her breath and just stood there for a while, pressing hard against the nipples with her forearms. Tears brimmed in her eyes and spilled down. The leakage stopped quickly; already it had diminished, and soon it would dry up altogether.
"Oh, God," she said on a long sigh, wiping her face yet again. She gathered together her self-possession and went to meet the woman whom Sonia had chosen for Aleksi to marry.
Aleksi passed by the Veselov jahar riding out, Anton Veselov in the lead, his cousin Vera leading the archers at the back. Ambassador's row was quiet as its tenants waited for the outcome of the battle. In the Company encampment, no one stirred, although he saw the woman, the playwright, sitting under the awning of her tent, writing furiously. She did not even look up as he rode past and crossed a trampled margin and came into the encampment belonging to the Prince of Jeds.
Charles Soerensen waited for him, outfitted this day in a light cuirass of leather, with a smooth round khaja helmet strapped onto his head. Marco Burckhardt stood beside him, wearing a felt coat instead of a cuirass. Seeing Aleksi, they mounted the fine Arabian mares that Bakhtiian had given them.
"You'll escort us to Bakhtiian?" Charles asked.
Aleksi nodded. "But we'll have to hurry if we want to catch up with him"
"Hold on," said Marco curtly. He blinked three times and tilted his head. "Incoming," he said at the same time as Soerensen abruptly dismounted and threw the reins to Marco before darting inside his tent.
Ten heartbeats later he stuck his head out. "Aleksi. I need you."
Like Bakhtiian, Soerensen did not give orders unless he meant them to be obeyed instantly. Aleksi gave his horse over to Marco and, with only the briefest hesitation at the threshold, went into the prince's tent.
A woman he had never seen before sat at the table. She had black hair and pale brown skin set off by the shimmering blue shirt she wore: Aleksi stopped and gaped. She had no body below the waist. She only seemed to be sitting at the table. The prince stood bent over the table, marking words on a piece of paper.
"Repeat that charge for me," he said.
The woman spoke, and Aleksi realized all at once that she was not there any more than the lantern illuminating Dr. Hierakis's tent was there. She was an illusion. She did not exist. Yet the prince acted as though she did. "The Protocol Office has detained Hon Echido and other representatives from the Keinaba house for breaking the interdiction of Rhui on four charges: the lesser charges of trespass and of impersonating Rhuian natives and the greater charges of taking with them a female and the actual act of violating the Interdiction order of their own overlord."
"Where the hell-?" muttered the prince. "And who instigated this, do you have any idea?"
The woman moved her eyes and to Aleksi's horror he realized that she was looking at him. "Who is this?" she asked.
It was like being under the scrutiny of the gods. Maybe she was one of the gods, manifesting from the heavens to oversee her children on the earth.
"That," said the prince, not looking up, "is Tess's brother Aleksi."
"Oh," said the woman. "Hello, Aleksi. I'm Suzanne. Pleased to meet you." Then she grinned, betraying her humanity. Aleksi did not think that gods introduced themselves.
"Well met," he said reflexively, and was rewarded by a second smile before her attention moved back to the prince.
"The Protocol Office can, of course, act on the emperor's behest or even its own behest, but in this case it seems to have been the officers stationed on Earth who moved against Keinaba, in which case-"
"In which case," interrupted Soerensen, "it was Naroshi who put them up to it."
The woman shrugged. "He did say he would keep an eye on you."
The prince smiled suddenly, an ironic quirk of the lips. "So I can't say that he didn't warn me? This is all very well, but I'm going to have to come back now."
"Yes," Suzanne agreed, looking quite serious. "You must. You're the only one who can extricate them."
"And the information Echido alone holds, not to mention that ke, is far, far too valuable to fall into Naroshi's hands, since we don't know how much he knows, or how much he learned when his agents were at Morava, or whether they even got hold of a cylinder like Tess did. Suzanne, think of the consequences!"
"I'm thinking," she said gravely.
"This could destroy everything we've started to build. Aleksi." He straightened up. He looked, to Aleksi, somehow brighter and more vital than he had before this strange communication, as if the challenge animated him. As if this sort of challenge was what he lived for. "I have two notes here, one for Cara and one for Tess. Find a courier, someone trustworthy, to take the messages to them- there should still be actors in the Company camp, if need be. I'll need you back at once, because we have to leave now. Suzanne, how will you pick me up?"