Kate Elliott - Jaran

"So, Yuri," asked Tess as they rode out of the tribe, "how did you find Konstantina Sakhalin?"

Yuri blushed crimson.

"Poor Kirill. He's sorry to be going." Kirill was half turned in his saddle, gazing back at the cluster of women who had gathered to bid them heartfelt farewells. "Are you?"

Yuri set his lips and refused to be drawn.

"Soerensen." Bakhtiian pulled in beside them. He did not glance back at the tribe. "We'll be riding forward scout."

Tess laughed.

"Why are you laughing?" he asked suspiciously.

"I don't know," she said truthfully, but she whistled as she urged Myshla forward to ride out with him.

The sweep of grass, the clear air, the high sun; these were her day. Summer surprised them. Now the plain flowered a second time, the stalks of the flowering plants hidden, engulfed in the grass, only the petals showing like brilliant spots of emerald and turquoise, ruby and amethyst. Occasionally it rained. Herds of khey, deerlike animals that proved more placid than the migrating antelopes, provided meat.

One day, when they stopped early to take advantage of a good campsite, Tess convinced Fedya to take her hunting and was rewarded with her first kill, though she made Fedya cut its throat once she had brought it down. Together they brought back her kill and the one Fedya brought down, and so great a fuss was made over her that Tess finally escaped all the attention by going to pitch her tent with Yuri, an act no man but a brother would ever suggest overseeing.

"Fedya is almost as good a hunter as the women," Tess said as she rolled out her tent. "Is that why he rides scout so often? Even Bakhtiian doesn't ride scout every day."

Yuri shrugged. "He likes to be alone. And he has sharp eyes."

"Yes." Tess paused in her work to gaze at the distant fire and the figures gathered around it. "He's so melancholy, but not sorry for himself. And he's kind."

Yuri smiled but said nothing.

Bakhtiian now spoke very little Rhuian with her as they rode scout, using khush almost exclusively. But when they talked about Jeds and the disciplines studied at the University there, he lapsed back into Rhuian. Tess began to appreciate the breadth of his learning: conversant with all the things a jaran man must know, he had also taken full advantage of his three years at the University in Jeds. Gallio and Oleana, Narronias and the great legalist, Sister Casiara of Jedina Cloister, these Tess knew because she had read their works on Earth in order to keep her Rhuian fresh. But Bakhtiian's knowledge took surprising turns at times.

"Aristotle!"

"Well, you pronounce it rather differently. Surely you've read his works on natural history?"

"I suppose you've read Plato, too?"

"Pla-? Oh, yes, Playtok. But I never found his arguments convincing. I find his dialogue form too self-conscious."

"Ah," said Tess wisely, beginning to wonder what her brother had been up to these past ten years since she had last set foot on Rhui. But then, she had been too young those three years she had spent in Jeds with Charles and Dr. Hierakis, too shocked by the death of her parents, to be aware of what they might have been doing in the midst of the burgeoning renaissance of the city.

"But perhaps…" He hesitated, and then, decisively, he reached into his saddlebag and withdrew a leather-bound volume and opened it. "Perhaps you can help me understand this." He read aloud. " 'Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state-' "

"Let me see that," she demanded, and he handed the book to her without a word. "My God. This is Newton's Principia.''

"So you have heard of him."

"Ah, yes, I have. I suppose you have a volume of Descartes back there as well."

"Dhaykhart? No, I have not heard of this philosopher."

"Thank God. Where did you get this?" She gave the book back to him, and he tucked it neatly back into his pouch.

"I have a-a friend in Jeds. We arranged, before I left, that this friend would send books to a certain port and a certain inn proprietor. Every other year or so, we journey near that port-this year, we will put the khepelli to ship there-and then I collect the books."

"Oh. I wondered how you and Niko got books. But where did that book come from, the Newton?"

He shrugged, mystified by the intent of her question. "One of the printing houses in Jeds. I have only had it one year. My friend writes that this Newton lives overseas, but Jedan traders have brought in many new philosophic volumes to the University in recent years."

"Overseas," muttered Tess. "Of course."

' 'I beg your pardon?''

"No, I was merely surprised because I studied overseas near… where this man lives-"

"Have you met him?"

"Ah, no, no, but I was simply surprised because his works were so swiftly translated and sent to Jeds."

"Perhaps your brother was the one responsible," said Bakhtiian, watching her far too closely. "Soerensen… the name is familiar, but I can't place it. He must trade extensively to have chosen to send his only sister so far away to study."

"Perhaps he was," said Tess, not liking the measuring way in which Bakhtiian examined her. It was easy enough to forget that the Chapalii had accused her of spying, and that Bakhtiian had told Sonia he thought Tess was lying about herself, about her merchant brother and her reasons for being here, about how much else, she could not guess. "But," she added a little sharply, "he is not the only man to have sent his relatives a great distance to go to a university. ''

And Bakhtiian remembered that he was, after all, speaking with a woman, and he looked away from her to scan the level plain and the arching sky.

"Look," said Tess suddenly, "look there! A khoen."

"You are learning to use your eyes." They brought their horses up next to it, a small mound layered with an elaborate arrangement of rocks, mostly hidden in the grass. He stared down. His shoulders tensed and his lips thinned. "Damn them," he said softly, followed by a word Tess did not know. He twisted his reins twice around one fist, unsheathed his knife, looked at it, sheathed it again. Tess waited. He untwisted the reins and his horse put its head down to graze. "So." He squinted briefly at the horizon.

"The last three dyans are combining forces against me. Now that I'm on a long journey with a small jahar, they think this time they can kill me because they know that once I have those horses, it will be too late. You chose a poor time to accompany us."

"Who's combining? Isn't Doroskayev's group behind us? Yuri says you still don't know which dyan those men call loyalty to, the ones who tried to kill you in Sakhalin's tribe. And how can you read all that from these rocks?"

"Why are women always so damnably curious?" asked Bakhtiian. He smiled.

"Because men keep everything from them, of course."

He laughed. "Very well. I relent. I'll show you." He glanced around before dismounting to explain the intricacies of this language of stone and stick and earth. When they were riding again, he said, "The jaran have no language that is set down, unlike Rhuian. Our poetry and songs live in all our memories. Only the stone mounds have meaning."

"No written language at all?"

"Some priests carve in stone, but few know the secret of that tongue."

"Do you?"

"I cannot say."

"Then you do."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not."

"Why are men always so damnably evasive?" asked Tess. She smiled.

"Because of women," said Bakhtiian.

For some reason, this produced a silence. A bird called loudly overhead. Tess gazed up at the sky. It had a slate color, a tinge of gray, as if one storm cloud had been ripped to pieces and mixed in with the blue. In Jeds it had the blue of turquoise, but in Jeds the other colors had not seemed so bright. A torn wisp of cloud clung to the horizon.