"Yes, I would," Tess replied, realizing that Vladimir was a subject completely uninteresting to Yuri.
"Well, then, let's start with naming things. Damn." He hid the knife.
Tess looked up. A young man sauntered toward them, saber swaying at his hips. He had blond hair, shot through with the red-gold of flames, and a light mustache above full lips. For an instant their gazes met. His head tilted to one side and, with the barest grin, he winked at her before looking as quickly away in a move both shy and flirtatious. Tess flushed.
"Trust Kirill," said Yuri under his breath. He stood up. "What do you want?"
"Really, Yurinya." Kirill halted before them, not at all abashed by Yuri's tone. "Don't you know Mikhal's waiting for you to relieve him?" With another sidewise glance at Tess, he spun and almost too casually strolled away.
Yuri squinted at the sun. "Not yet, he isn't," he muttered. He grinned suddenly, looking down at Tess. "He did that just to get a close look at you."
"I guess I'll take that as a compliment."
"Kirill has no shame at all. If any other man were so forward, he would be run out of camp. I don't know how Kirill gets away with it."
Tess bit down on her grin, hiding it. "He's not unhandsome."
"I suppose not," Yuri agreed glumly. "And he knows it." Then his expression lightened. "But Maryeshka Kolenin showed him, though, when he tried to marry her."
Before Tess could ask for details of this intriguing event, Sonia came around the corner with the baby on one hip and a little girl holding on to her opposite hand. "Yuri! Are you still here? Misha must be waiting for you to relieve him."
"Not yet, " exclaimed Yuri, completely exasperated now.
"Do you want me to come with you?" Tess asked.
The casual question brought much more of a reaction than she expected. Yuri blushed. "No. You can't-"
"Yuri." Sonia set the baby down on the rug and let go of the girl.
Yuri said nothing.
"I can't what?" Tess asked.
"Ilya said not to tell her-"
"Yuri," said Sonia. She let out a sigh and dumped the cut meat into a gleaming copper pot. "You might as well say. I never thought it was right not to tell Tess, and you've said too much as it is." She exchanged a glance with Tess and set a woven bag filled with wet tubers down next to the rug, taking the board from Tess. Then she and her daughter turned their backs on Tess and Yuri and with a fresh knife cut up the vegetables, although the little girl peeked back frequently.
"What is it you weren't supposed to tell me?"
Yuri hesitated, glancing to the right, to the left, at Sonia, and finally back at Tess. "About the khepelli.
"The khepelli?" Tess felt like all the heat had flooded out of her body into the ground and the air. The late afternoon breeze was chill and damp, presaging rain.
"They say you were on the same ship with them," Yuri continued, apparently oblivious to her expression. "When Ilya told them you were following us, they were very surprised. They said you must have followed them from the coast. They said that you were a-a spy-is that the right word?''
"You knew I was following your trail? And the Chapalii-khepelli-" The word, in his tongue, sounded strange and dangerous to her ears. "-they knew, too?"
Yuri's cheeks flushed pink.
Pretending not to listen, Sonia nevertheless said in a low voice, "I call it dishonorable to leave a woman walking so long. How she made it alone from the coast I can't imagine. She might have died. It's a disgrace. And I told Ilya so myself.''
Yuri grinned, glancing up from under long lashes at Tess. "She did, by the gods. You should have heard it."
Tess was too coldly furious to respond to the grin. "And just what do these khepelli say they're doing here, that I should want to spy on them? And risk my life like that while I'm at it?" Abruptly, before Yuri could answer, she stood up and wiped her hands on her trousers. "No, don't bother to answer. Just take me to them."
"I can't. Ilya would…" He trailed off, unable to express what Ilya would do.
"He wouldn't-it isn't-" Tess realized suddenly that she knew nothing at all about this culture, except that they practiced summary execution. "He wouldn't kill you?"
Yuri sighed. "Killing would probably be a mercy, compared to what he would say to me," he replied, evidently having already forgotten the horrible act committed in front of his eyes that very morning. "Ah, Tess, you've never been on the sharp end of his tongue."
"Well, then, Sonia, will you take me?"
Without hesitation, Sonia met her gaze. "I can't, Tess. This is men's business, not mine. But Yuri, on the other hand, ought to take you. Isn't that so, Yuri?"
Yuri sheathed his knife, adjusted the position of his saber on his belt, and ran a hand down the black and gold embroidered pattern that decorated the sleeves of his red shirt.
"Yuri."
"Yes, Sonia. Come on, Tess." He led Tess off in silence, but as soon as they were away from the camp, out walking up a rise, the grass dragging at their knees and thighs, he was voluble enough. "It isn't fair, having four sisters, and all of them older than you. Well, three, since Anna died with the baby. But it's always, Yuri do this and Yuri do that, and what am I to say? They don't have to face Bakhtiian. He would never dare raise his voice to them, and if he ever did-although I can't imagine him ever trying to-then Mother would find out, and then Ilya would hear about it." He looked suddenly pleased with the image brought to him by this hypothetical turn of events. "I'd like to hear that. But then," and he looked at Tess with an impish smile, "Ilya never makes mistakes, so it will never happen."
"Yuri, I promise you, if Bakhtiian tries to blame you for bringing me with you, I'll deal with him."
Yuri regarded her skeptically but did not reply.
It was a shorter walk than Tess expected to the huddle of tents standing next to a makeshift corral of banked earth, stakes, and ropes. Far enough away from the main camp to give privacy to the foreigners, but close enough, Tess judged, for easy access. She recognized the tall, thin silhouettes of the Chapalii immediately. They wore plain brown tunics and trousers, but as always, the clothing could not disguise their gauntness or their pallor. There were other men as well, men of the tribe, but by and large those men were engaged in riding and currying and otherwise examining-horses.
"Horses." The word gusted out of her in a sharp breath. She stopped stock-still far enough away from the tents that no Chapalii ought to recognize her. These were nothing like the horses that Bakhtiian and Yuri, and she herself, had ridden. She knew without question, with that instinct carried down over millennia of Earth generations, that these were Earth horses. The horses from the shuttle's hold.
"They're very fine, aren't they?" said Yuri enthusiastically. ' 'They are a breed called-khuhaylan. When Ilya saw the first one, two years back, and the khepelli traders to him that he could have a hundred more just for helping them search for the lost haven of their god, of course he agreed. They're much stronger than they look. With such horses-He went pale. "There he is. He's seen us."
"Chapalii," said Tess in Anglais, watching one dark figure detach itself from a cluster of men and start with determined and menacing stride toward them, "don't believe in a god. Just in commerce and rank."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Come on, Yuri." She started for the nearest tent, where a lone Chapalii had stopped to stare at them.
"But Ilya-" He trailed after her, glancing over his shoulder at the approach of his cousin.
"I have business with these Chapalii, Yuri, not with Bakhtiian, who, need I remind you, let me walk for three days without food or water, and then-by God! — then the first time he spoke to me in Rhuian, asked me trick questions to see if I was really from Jeds."