Kate Elliott - His conquering sword

Hesitant, Mitya went on. "I asked Princess Laissa about her, but she said that-that Samae had displeased her and that she had been forced to give her to new masters. Is it true?"

"I'm sorry, Mitya," Jiroannes said, stumbling over the words. How could he explain? He could not-especially since Laissa had managed to both lie and tell the truth at the same time. Clearly she was experienced in court intrigue. He forced himself to go on. "Once I married, the females in my house came under my wife's jurisdiction. I cannot interfere." The lie tore at his throat, he who had learned from the words of the prophets that lies were evil, who saw how terribly the words hurt Mitya. "You couldn't have married her, my prince, and her presence- since she is not a jaran woman, and bound to laws not your own… it would only complicate your life." The poor boy fought himself, trying to keep his expression controlled; Jiroannes ached to see him suffer so. "She is a slave, Mitya, and in her land, by the laws of her gods, she can never be anything but a slave."

Mitya's hands lay in fists on his thighs. He did not move except to bow his head so that shadows covered it. In the uncertain light of the lantern, Jiroannes could no longer read his expression.

"But she cared for you, Mitya…" He faltered.

Silence lay over them as heavy as sorrow.

From outside, he heard a woman laugh and a guard curse, and a goat bleat, and the ring of bridle as a troop of horsemen passed by.

Mitya stood up abruptly. "You're not coming back," he said.

"I don't-I didn't think-"

"No, I'm not accusing you. I'm not angry. Of course you want to return to your own land." He strode to the entrance, but hesitated there, facing out toward the camp, as if he did not know how to say farewell.

Jiroannes was struck by a reckless urge. Of course he would want to return to his own land: Back to the endless, cruel intrigues at the Great King's court, where his uncle lived on sufferance and he himself walked the veriest tightrope between royal favor and banishment to the provinces, where a man who did not die from swamp fever was in any case doomed to poverty, since banishment brought with it a ban on all the luxuries that made life worth living. Or he could leave Vidiya forever and come to live in Habakar, where his wife was regent and his patron and friend would be, in four short years, the reigning king.

Jiroannes rose from his chair and hurried over to the entrance. Mitya turned back, to face him, with his pale, young face and his unconsciously arrogant carriage. "I would be honored to act as your chief minister, Prince Mitya." Then, on impulse, Jiroannes knelt in front of the boy, as any man kneels in front of his sovereign lord. "When this duty is discharged, I will leave my country and return here to serve you."

The rains brought a second flowering to Habakar, turning the grass green and encouraging late flowers to bud and open, but frost soon killed it. The army left, in its wake, pasture eaten down to dirt and villages that would have been stripped of their winter stores if Tess had not forcefully pointed out to Bakhtiian that the legacy of such an action would be a revolt by the Habakar people against Mitya.

"I don't understand," said Ilya as they sat under the awning of her tent in the late afternoon, "not truly, why your brother would leave Jeds forever, forsake his power there, to return to a place where at best he might hope by the time he dies to make some incursions against a power he claims is far greater than his own, and at worst expect to be killed for his trouble."

"Because Erthe is where his heart lies," replied Tess. The towers of Birat caught the last golden rays of the sun, gleaming against a backdrop of snow-laden mountains to the west.

"But not yours."

She sipped at her tea, cupping the ceramic mug-it was of Farisa make-in her hands and letting the steam that curled up from the depths warm her face. "Well, it is the land where I was born. But when I think of it now, I think of being ten years old with my parents dead. I think of being sent back to study there, by Charles, and being so lonely, and hating it. This is my home, here-well-" She squinted toward Birat and the mountains. "Not here, not Habakar, but Jeds, and the plains."

He leaned across and touched her on the knee. "We'll go back to the plains, my heart, once I've set things in order here. We can have a child there, Tess, on the plains."

She bowed her head and lowered the mug to nestle in her lap. "I don't know," she whispered, not wanting to tell him that probably they could never have a child, knowing what it meant to him. Not wanting to say it aloud, knowing what it meant to her.

"It's early still." He withdrew his hand. "We won't speak of it now."

They sat in silence for a time. Birat's fields lay at peace beyond, harvested. A few bore the green sprigs of winter wheat, growing apace already. Canals glittered in a net of pathways that crisscrossed in the fields, reminding Tess of the saboteur network that she and Rajiv and the others were going to build, here, in Jeds, in Morava. The army spread out around them, but it was halved in size, now; Mother Sakhalin had gone south to her nephew, and other troops had gone in other directions, south to aid Sakhalin, north to investigate word of a revolt. Kirill Zvertkov had led a troop ahead, west, toward Parkilnous, escorting the city's embassy back and laying the ground for Bakhtiian's arrival.

"Tess," said Ilya, and stopped.

"What is it?" Then she looked at him.

He would not look at her, at first, like any modest jaran man would not, faced with a woman not of his own family, but finally he lifted his eyes to her face. "Do you think the gods know that I killed my own father? But if they do, then why would they still grant me their favor?"

"But he wasn't your father."

"Not by our laws. But by the laws you insisted I acknowledge in claiming Vasha as my son, I am certain that Khara Roskhel was my father."

"I'm sorry, then, not for Vasha's sake, but for yours. I'm sorry you killed anyone, that anyone has ever died and will ever die because of choices that other people make for them. But isn't that the nature of war? I'm not sure it ever accomplishes anything but killing, and yet we turn to it again and again, even Charles, knowing that any rebellion he leads will in the end be no different in kind than what you've done in the coastal princedoms and in Habakar."

"But once we unite the lands, and his rebellion succeeds, then there will be peace," said Ilya reasonably. "I would like to visit Erthe someday. Your philosophers are very different from ours. Do they have an elixir for long life there?"

She started and almost spilled her tea. "What makes you ask that?"

"Oh, that Habakar philosopher the old king sent us as an ambassador, he said that while he had means of protecting life, he had none to prolong it, but that he had heard that there is a country that lies along the Golden Road where the magicians brew such an elixir. I thought perhaps the philosophers of Erthe knew something of it."

"Ah. Well. Perhaps they do. I'm not a philosopher." Now it was her turn to falter. "Ilya."

He said nothing, only watched her, forcing her to speak.

"We can't send a regent to Jeds. I have to go."

At once, his expression shuttered.

"You know it's true, Ilya. You know I have to go, to establish my power there, so that they can see me and acknowledge me. I haven't been in Jeds for years and years. They'll have no way to recognize me, not truly, except by this ring and the chain. Well, Baron Santer and some of the other officials at court will probably recognize me, but I was a child when they last saw me. Tell me you see that I have to go, Ilya." Her voice broke on the last sentence.