Kate Elliott - Jaran

"What were the khaja doing so far out on the plain?"

Bakhtiian curled the stem around one finger and snapped the finger up, splitting the fibers. "I was also wondering that." He touched his tongue to the moisture left on his finger. "I wonder who built the shrine."

"Which shrine?"

"The shrine of Morava. I wonder who she thinks built it."

Vladimir grimaced. "I'm glad I don't have to go to this Uynervirsite in Jheds that everyone talks about. It's madness, wondering so much."

"It might be, at that," said Ilya, sitting straighter and staring at something in the distance. "But don't be so sure you won't have to go."

"Ilya! You wouldn't. Here I've finally got a place and-oh, damn you. I never know when you're joking. Is that Yuri and Niko? Why did you tell the others to send them back?"

Ilya stood and walked down the slope to meet them. They pulled up and dismounted, the horses snuffling and blowing.

"Mikhailov's jahar?" asked Niko.

"Josef and Kirill are still tracking them. Tasha brought me the last report. I think we're rid of them. For now."

Yuri had been looking about. "Ilya, you've got Myshla. Where is Tess?"

"Get her and bring her to the new camp. She's up-" He motioned.

' 'I know.'' Yuri led his horse over to Myshla and then, taking both leads in his hands, walked away up into the hills.

"She's been up there all this time?" Niko demanded. "After she saw Fedya? Damn it, Ilya! You know better. Why didn't you go up?"

Bakhtiian looked up at the sky, down at the ground, and, finally, out of the corners of his eyes at the old man. "Because I'm a damned coward."

"Ilya."

Bakhtiian colored, turning quickly to walk over to Vladimir. "Ah, thank you, Vladi." He took the reins Vladimir offered him. "Shall we go?"

Tess watched silently as Yuri left the horses below and climbed the rocky slope. She did not rise as he reached her, but when, wordlessly, he put out a hand, she gave him hers and let him pull her to her feet. They paused a moment, frozen there.

"Oh, Tess," he said, the barest whisper, but his eyes held a grief surely greater than her own. She turned in to him, hugged him for a timeless while. He was alive, he was here with her, solid and comforting. She did not want to think, but her thoughts wound around viciously nonetheless: what if she had been given the choice, to save Yuri or Fedya? Was it wrong of her to be glad that Yuri was alive? Not glad that Fedya was dead, never that, but she could not help but feel that her preference for Yuri, given the inevitability of the death of someone she cared for, had somehow influenced the outcome.

Moisture cooled her face. She pulled back to look at him; tears wet his cheeks. He wiped at them quickly, the movement made jerky by his embarrassment. "Don't tell anyone," he said in a low voice that caught even as he spoke.

"Oh, Yuri, I'm sorry. You knew him better than I did."

He shook his head, unable to reply. In the sun, his hair had the same dull gold cast as the grass.

His sorrow so eclipsed hers as to make her ashamed, and doubly ashamed that where she might be allowed her grief, he must hide his. "Oh, God," she said, directing her shame into self-loathing, "I slept through it. How can anyone sleep while someone else dies?"

"Gods. Tess. I hope you never see battle."

"No. I'd rather have seen it. He was here, and then I woke up, and he'll never come back. I don't want to live like that. I want to see the things affecting me."

"You don't want to see that."

But I do, she thought, but she did not say it. Yuri's face was white and strained. Below, Myshla pawed restlessly at the ground and pulled at the tether. "Where is everyone else?" she asked.

"They've gone on to the new camp."

"Do you mean Bakhtiian has entrusted me to you?"

He rallied. "Just for the afternoon, dear Sister. And we've got a long ride to camp. If we don't get there before dark, Bakhtiian will skin me and use my hide for a tent.''

"How revolting, Yuri. And what did the Chapalii think of all this?"

He shrugged, clearly not much interested in the Chapalii. "Lord Ishii is as cold as a stone in winter. He's never the least bit afraid. But the younger one, Garii-he offered to Niko to help him tend the wounded."

"Garii offered to help tend the wounded?"

Yuri nodded.

"And Ishii did not forbid it?"

"Why should he forbid it, Tess? If Garii has some knowledge of healing… Any man would do the same."

"Any man," Tess muttered under her breath, wondering what game Garii was playing now. "Come on." She took two steps down the slope, heading for the horses.

"What's wrong?" he asked when she paused.

"Wait." She hesitated, turning back to regard the entrance to the overhang. With resolve, she crawled back inside where the blanket still lay. She brought it back out, shook it as Yuri stared, and rolled it up neatly. "It's Fedya's blanket," she said at last, when he still did not speak.

"He has a sister," he said finally.

A sister who would mourn him. A sister who did not even know yet that he was dead. Tears filled her eyes, and she wiped at them impatiently, as if that would make them stop.

Yuri took her hand. "Come, Tess," he said softly. They went down together.

If they treated Tess more and more like one of their own, she scarcely noticed it because it seemed to flow naturally from her time among them. The ways of the jaran lay in her hands: she examined each one and let it settle within her until her strange hybrid of customs grew so complex and interwoven that, at odd moments, she forgot where one left off and the other began. The days removed her from Fedya's death; he became increasingly the inhabitant of a sequestered dream.

For months now she had become accustomed to the swell and flow of the plain, a grand monotony alleviated by hills and the occasional watercourse slicing through it. But the plains do not continue forever, just as happiness and sorrow both eventually come to an end. Their first hint of the highlands was a rough stretch of land pitted with gorges and rugged valleys that were barren of cover and composed of rock as stubborn and sharp and unyielding as a saint. The jaran playfully called it krinye-tom, the little mountains; Tess called it hell and wondered what the big mountains were like.

They slowed their pace to a crawl and ranged wide to find enough fodder for the horses. The dirt clung to Tess. The heat baked the walls of hard stone, and sweat plastered her shirt to her back. The men veiled their heads in cloth to protect themselves from the sun. Tess's scalp itched, but she did not dare undo her braided hair, having no water to wash it in. The horses got the greatest share of the water. Was there a point past which one could not become clean again?

She dreamed of showers. At least the others looked as filthy as she felt, and they joked about it constantly, liking it as little as she did. Only the Chapalii, who did not appear to sweat at all, appeared unaffected; Tess knew that this heat was doubtless a relief to them, being closer to their natural climate.

At long last, they came out onto the watershed of the mountains, grass and shrubs and a scattering of trees on level land. Not a lush land, by any means-that would be far far south, across the great range-but a breeze cooled her cheeks and her shirt dried. They came to an isolated khaja village, and Bakhtiian traded gold trinkets and two tarpans for grain.

Two days' ride out from the village, Bakhtiian called an entire day's halt when they came to a deep-bedded stream. Tess found a pool upstream from the horses, stripped, and washed herself and her hair-that twice-and every piece of clothing in her possession, for the dirt had contaminated even the saddlebags. Surely this stream of all streams was blessed by the gods, for the clearness of its water and the lazy trickle of its flow. She spread her damp blanket over a smooth-surfaced rock and, naked, stretched out on it to dry.