After a bit, Tess opened her eyes. She broke off the kiss. "Ilya, everybody is watching."
He whirled, separating himself from her so abruptly that she had to take a step back to maintain her balance. Yes, twelve men, with Niko; men from his jahar. They were all grinning. Only a few attempted to look away. Ilya took three steps toward them, halted, and fixed his stare on Niko.
"Sibirin! Don't these men have anything to do?"
Niko swung up on his horse. "Yes, Bakhtiian. Of course they do."
"Gods! Then see that they make themselves busy. Do you understand me?"
"Certainly, Ilya. Of course. We were just leaving." They rode away.
Ilya muttered under his breath.
' 'Does that mean what I think it does?''
"Forgive me. Oh, Tess, it's been such a long day." He took a step back toward her, halted. His mouth thinned, and his voice dropped until it was so low she could barely hear him. "Where did you get those clothes?" He closed the distance between them and reached to touch the embroidery on the sleeve of the shirt. "This is Vasil's. Where did you get this?''
"Vasil gave them to me. He cut me free when I was tied up in Mikhailov's tent, and he gave me his saber."
"What happened to him?" She could not interpret the expression in his voice.
"He-he was badly wounded and had no choice but to retreat."
"You are lying to me. If I know Vasil, he ran."
"He was wounded."
' 'Are you defending him? What happened to the clothing Nadezhda Martov gifted you?''
"It's in the wagon. With your tent."
If he noticed her emphasis, he ignored it. "Is that how you treat things given you in friendship? Cloth of Martov's dye and weave is precious, and I expect you to remember that. As soon as we get to camp you will take those clothes off. And that saber. Give them to Vera. I don't care what you do with them but I will not have them in my tent."
"You have no right to order me in this way. Whatever happened between you and Vasil has nothing to do with me."
He was furious now. "It has everything to do with you. Why do you suppose he gave you that, knowing you would wear it? Knowing you are my wife? You will obey me in this."
"I will not-" she began, enraged. And then she saw that she had plunged into a morass far beyond her knowledge, that her anger was solely for the way in which he so blithely and unthinkingly ordered her to do as he wished, while his-his anger spilled out from some old wound that had never healed. "I will not," she said again, lowering her voice abruptly, "give anything to Vera. But I will ask his wife if she wants them."
"His wife!" His expression changed so swiftly, through so many competing emotions, that she could put a name to no one of them.
"Yes. Perhaps you did not know. He marked Mikhailov's daughter some years past. There are two children as well, a little girl and a younger one. A boy, I think."
He controlled himself, and now she could not interpret his expression at all. "Why are you walking back here?" he asked again. "Mother Yermolov said you rode some distance in the wagon with her and then got out."
"Ilya, you never asked me how I wanted to return to camp. You simply left."
"But, of course-"
"— I would travel with the women? With Vera? With Karolla Arkhanov, whose father I begged you to kill? With children whose fathers and brothers are dead? Killed by your men? And them all knowing me as your wife. You never asked me."
He regarded her in silence. His face was still. "Well, Tess," he said finally, a little awkwardly, "will you ride with me back to camp?''
"I accept your apology," said Tess. He swung onto Kriye and offered her his hand gravely. She laughed suddenly, unsteadily.
"Tess," he said, immediately concerned. "What's wrong?"
"Don't you remember? When you found me on the hillside. Gods, it seems long ago."
Though she expected him to, he did not smile. "I will never forget it."
She took his hand and mounted behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and leaned her head against him. Then, smiling, she kissed him on the neck, once, twice.
"Stop that."
Wind moved in the grass. She laughed into his hair. "Is something wrong, my husband?"
He urged Kriye forward and did not reply for a long while. She simply rested against him, content for now.
"There is one mare," he said at last. "A beautiful creature though rather bad-tempered. But I think you can handle her."
"Bad-tempered?"
"No, I chose the wrong word. She is high-spirited. She has mettle. Rather like-well, she's a fine horse. She will be yours, if you wish her."
"Rather like me, were you going to say? Thank you, Ilya. I thought you were going to stop complimenting me."
"I will never stop complimenting you. And if you continue to complain about it, I will simply compliment you twice as often."
"That sounds like a threat."
"It is. Tess, two days ago you were about to tell me whether Yuri was right. Right about what?"
Tess shut her eyes, leaning against him, and thought of Yuri. Her sweet Yuri, gone now, but not lost to her as long as she remembered him. Though memory could never be a substitute for his presence. She tightened her arms around Ilya. "It was the last thing he said to me, almost. He said that if I left for Jeds in the spring, I could still choose to come back, or I could stay a few years here and then go. He said that it didn't have to be so final."
They rode so long in silence that they came into sight of the line of wagons, and farther, the first outlying tents of the great camp ahead and the thin line of trees that marked the river.
He pulled Kriye up. She dismounted, and he swung down next to her. First he simply looked at her. The gods knew, she understood him well enough by now to know how difficult it was for him to accept that the world did not simply bend to his will, that what he chose might not always come to pass, that some decisions were not his to make.
Then he sighed. "Does it have to be final, Tess? Will you go and never come back?''
Tess just shook her head. She rested her hand on his cheek a moment, and then reached up to dishevel his hair. "You are, you know."
"I am what?" he asked, suspicious.
"Diarin. I'm not leaving in the spring, Ilya. Though that doesn't mean I can stay here forever."
Something flashed in his eyes. "Well, then." He drew his saber. "I'm tired of having to explain how it is you are my wife."
Tess raised her chin. His blade came to rest on her cheekbone. With the lightest of movements he pulled it across her cheek. The cut stung. A thin line of blood welled up, and a few drops flowed like tears down her skin.
She drew Vasil's saber.
"Tess." He took a step backward. Slowly, deliberately, his eyes on her hand, he lowered his saber.
The brilliance of the sun lit his face. With her eyes fixed on the blade, her wrist unaccountably steady, she marked him swiftly and lightly, leaving a cut scarcely deeper than the one on her own cheek. He touched the mark with his free hand, staring down at the blood on his fingertips. Then he lifted his hand to brush his lips, tasting the blood.
"Well, my wife," he said in a voice so calm that she could tell it covered some extreme emotion, "now we are doubly bound." Then he smiled.
"You smug bastard, you're pleased with yourself."
"Of course I am. I have what I wanted."
Tess could not help but laugh because he said it without the slightest conceit but rather as a simple statement of fact. "But I feel it only fair to warn you, Bakhtiian, that I am going to continue to practice saber.''