It was like ice. But the company, and the energy with which they all splashed about, soon made her forget her goose bumps. Only Sonia spoke Rhuian; the others addressed her cheerfully in their own language and she quickly learned names and a few words. About half the women had scars on their left cheeks.
"So you are not married?" Sonia asked. "No? How old are you? Twenty-three? A widow, perhaps?"
"No. I… I was to be married, but…"
"Ah. This is the man who has broken your heart. Well." Sonia dismissed the betrayer with a blithe wave of one hand, and a retaliatory splash in the direction of the gray-eyed, blonde girl she called Elena. "In Jeds the customs are different. I did not like them. We have many young men here who are polite as well as handsome."
Tess could not help but laugh. "When I'm ready for a lover, I'll ask your help in picking one out."
"I sent you my brother. But perhaps-" She laughed. Her laugh gave color to the air and sparked her eyes and wrinkled up her nose. "When I know you better, Tess, then I can help you choose. But I think it is time you got a husband, for I see that you have no-what is it to say in Rhuian? — none of the Mother's threads on your belly. As old as you are. I am twenty-four, and I have three children. You must not wait too long. Everyone knows the story of Agrafena's aunt."
The story of Agrafena's aunt was not, it transpired, about anyone living in the tribe, but an old tale. Giggling and shivering, everyone hurried out of the pool, dried off, and dressed. They sat farther up on the slope, the pool dappled by shadows below, an untidy collection of bodies sprawled in the sun with Sonia and Tess at their center. By turns two or three of the young women took clothing to a stretch of flat stones below the pool and beat them clean in the water. As Sonia told the story, it took a fair while to tell, alternately in Rhuian and in khush. It was about a woman who waited so long to have children that when at last she married and wanted them, she was barren-having offended the spirits of earth and water by her stubbornness-and so had to send her niece on a long journey in order to find the holy woman who could restore her to favor.
Poor Agrafena had not yet found the holy woman when a little girl raced down from the direction of the camp and delivered a message to the group. Sonia rose and reached down to help Tess up. "The men are coming."
Slinging the damp clothes over their shoulders, the women walked in a straggling group back to camp. A path had been beaten down through the coarse grass, winding around the base of the hills, and they followed this. Elena, at the head of the line, whistled suddenly. The whole group quieted. A young man, then another, and another, came around a rise-the men going to the pool. All the girls straightened their shoulders, swaying their hips as the men did when they were wearing their sabers, and when the first of them passed the first young man, the entire group broke into song. The men, all young, stared silently at the ground; many were grinning. One had flushed a desperate, flaming red; another hid his eyes with his hands. Toward the end of the line, a young man with reddish-blond hair looked up as he passed Sonia and Tess, and winked. He had piercingly blue eyes. Sonia gasped, laughing, and looked back at Tess.
"Did you see that? Did you? Trust Kirill!" The last of the men passed them. All the women were laughing now, breaking off their song. "Did you see?" Sonia addressed the whole group. "I want you all to know-" first in khush, then in Rhuian "-I want you all to know. He winked."
"Who?" called Elena from the front.
"Who do you think?"
A chorus, up and down the line, answered her. "Kirill!"
"You see." Sonia turned back to Tess again. "He's terribly forward. He has no shame at all."
"I'm not sure I understand what happened."
Sonia swung her wet burden out in front of her and, with a quick turn of the wrist, made it snap in the air. Faint drops of water sprayed. "We sang a man's song at them, which reminds them of the order of things. If a woman sings a man's song, it makes fun of men, you see."
Tess did not see, but she was saved from having to answer by their arrival in camp. Whatever other consequences the execution might have had, it had no effect on the daily round of life: at dawn, the camp had been empty. Now it bustled with activity. A fair-haired young woman, weaving at a loom fastened at one end around her waist and at the other to an awning corner pole, paused in her work and smiled at Tess. At another tent, an elderly woman simply stopped scouring out a pot and stared at Tess. She called a question to Sonia, which the younger woman answered with a few words. The two toddlers at her skirts stared, wide-eyed but unafraid. Three men, standing next to hides pegged out over the ground, glanced up quickly at her and away before she could meet their eyes. Farther out, beyond the tents, children raced in from the fringes of the herds to stare at Tess and were chased back to shepherd again.
Sonia's tent was not actually Sonia's tent, but the one belonging to her mother. The smaller tents that Mother Orzhekov had gifted each of her four daughters with lay pitched around the large tent. Tess helped Sonia hang the wet clothes up along the tent-lines to dry and then was given a board and a knife and a slab of meat to cut into strips for stew. Yuri strolled up with a baby on his hip and with a look of relief deposited the child on Sonia's lap and turned to sit down beside Tess. He looked around rather furtively and, seeing no other young men in sight, drew his knife and helped her cut up the meat. Sonia took the baby away, and Tess and Yuri sat for some time in companionable silence.
Occasionally young men passed by, and Yuri would hide his knife under his leg and lean back as if he were relaxing.
"I do appreciate it, Yuri, but you don't have to help me," said Tess after the third time he had hidden the knife, "I wouldn't want you to get into trouble."
"Oh, I don't mind. Now that I'm a rider it's supposed to be beneath my dignity to do anything but practice saber and whatever work Uncle Yakhov needs done with the herds."
"But you helped Sonia with the baby."
"Everyone cares for the children. And, of course, a man does what his family asks of him."
"But I see men working at many things besides those who are out with the herds. Don't those men fight?"
"Every man can fight, Tess, but not every man rides in jahar. We're almost done anyway." Three men appeared suddenly from around the back of the tent, but after one startled glance, Yuri simply returned to slicing meat. One was Bakhtiian. Beside him walked an older, silver-haired man, and two steps behind followed a fair, pretty young man who wore a profusion of necklaces in a multitude of colors that clashed with the garish embroidery decorating the sleeves and yoke of his scarlet shirt. Tassels of gold and silver braid hung from his boot tops. Tess could not help but stare. Except for a brief, piercing glance, Bakhtiian ignored them. The young man copied Bakhtiian. But the older man met Tess's eyes and inclined his head with a friendly smile before accompanying Bakhtiian on into camp.
"Who was that?" Tess asked.
"Who? Niko? Nikolai Sibirin. He's the eldest rider in jahar. You'll like him."
"Who was the other one?"
"The other one? Oh." Yuri shrugged dismissively. "Vladimir. He isn't anybody. He's an orphan that Ilya took in, because he had a good hand for the saber.''
"He dresses-" She faltered.
"He'd like to be noticed. I suppose women might find him attractive." By his tone, Tess could tell that if women did, their taste was inexplicable to Yuri. "Sonia said that I should teach you khush, if you'd like."