The Law of Becoming

PROLOGUE

1

The Plains

HE WOKE BEFORE DAWN and snuck away from the tents to watch the sun rise, both of them solitary—he and the sun. He had done so every morning since his mother died. On cloudy days only the light changed, paling into day. When it rained, the night leached away reluctantly, spilling into the soil. In the deep winter blizzards snow settled like a blanket over everything. But on other mornings, clean, sharp mornings like this one, the sun rose like a splintering blow, sundering day from night all at once and with the promise of brilliance to come. The promise was for him. At least, that was how he thought of it; he lived here in night, but someday that would change. It had to.

Vasha! Come here at once!

Vassily turned away from the east and the light and trudged back into camp. Mother Kireyevsky cuffed him on the ear. Have you milked Tatyana’s goats yet? she demanded. Uncle Yakalev needs your help this instant! Lazy boy! You’re a disgrace!

A chill edged the morning, but it was no worse than the looks he got from old Tatyana and her son when he caught up with the flock. They spoke not one word to him, not even to greet him. He settled down to milk the goats. When he had finished, he slung four heavy flasks of warm milk over his shoulders and carried them back in toward camp. Passing the herd of glariss yearlings, he made the mistake of looking straight at the Vysotsky cousins where they stood watching over the herd.

Watch your eyes, pest! shouted the elder, who was only three years older than Vasha himself.

Bastard! The younger casually picked up a rock and threw it at Vasha, and he ducked away, but not in time. The rock stung his cheek. The Vysotsky cousins jeered and laughed. Thought you were better than us, didn’t you? they called, the familiar refrain. Now you’re the lowest one of all.

The fire flared within his heart, but Vasha hunkered down and walked on, fighting it back. It did no good to scrap with them. He had learned that quickly enough: His punishment from Mother Kireyevsky would be severe and swift. Tears of shame burned in his eyes, shame that they all despised him, shame that he had to act like any common servant, shame that he had never made any friends before, when his mother still lived. She had closed him off from everyone else. She had wrapped herself around him, and she had told him over and over again that he was special, that it was the others who were less than he was. It wasn’t fair that she had lied to him.

He swallowed the tears, forcing them down as he came back into camp. His throat choked on them. Never cry, his mother had said, you are a prince’s son. Don’t play with those Vysotsky boys; they aren’t good enough for you. When your father comes, then they’ll understand exactly who you are and how much power you have. Well, they did understand who he was: He was a bastard, the only child in the tribe who had no father and who never had had a father, despite what his mother claimed. They understood exactly how much power he had, which was none.

Mother Kireyevsky used him as a servant, and the elders themselves had refused to make his mother headwoman of the tribe, as she should have been after her own mother, his grandmother, had died. Because they had all despised his mother as well. They had rejoiced when she had died two winters ago. And he had learned how to survive their contempt and to endure alone.

As he crossed behind Mother Kireyevsky’s tent, he heard messenger bells and saw, out beyond the other tents, a figure swinging down from a spent horse. He would have liked to stop and look, but he knew someone would tell on him if he faltered at all, so he walked on.

Vassily! His cousin Tamara called to him. Give me those flasks. Go to Mother Kireyevsky at once! Her face was flushed.

He was too shocked to do anything but obey, but as he circled the tent and ducked under the awning a sudden foreboding washed over him. Now what had he done wrong? What was she going to punish him for?

Aha! said Mother Kireyevsky, catching sight of him. "You will attend me here, Vasha. You will do exactly as I say, you will not speak one single word, and you will serve komis to our guest. Do you understand?"

He nodded, mystified. She hurried away, and he knelt down and waited. What could this be about? When guests came to visit at Mother Kireyevsky’s tent, he was banished from the family circle because he represented a shameful stain on the Kireyevsky line.

Mother Kireyevsky soon returned, bringing with her the messenger—who was a woman! Dressed in soldier’s clothing, too! Vasha dutifully offered the woman a cup of komis, which she accepted without looking at him. Tamara brought her food, and she ate with relish and politely complimented his cousin on the meat and the fine texture of the sweet cakes.

Then, just as Vasha moved to offer her a second cup, Mother Kireyevsky said the fateful words. Ah, you are Bakhtiian’s niece.

Vasha almost dropped the cup, but the woman took it from him as if she did not notice his shaking hands. As the rest of the cousins and aunts and old uncles filtered in to listen, they lapsed into a long discussion of the disposition of the Kireyevsky riders in the great jaran army, the army led by the great general and prince, Ilyakoria Bakhtiian. This dragged on endlessly while Vasha stared surreptitiously at Bakhtiian’s niece—Nadine Orzhekov—from under the screen of his dark hair. As if by examining her he could divine something—anything—about the man who was the greatest leader the jaran had ever had, the man who commanded the combined jaran tribes in their war against their ancient enemies, the khaja, the settled peoples.

Vasha! said Mother Kireyevsky tartly, no doubt divining his purpose in her turn and deciding now, at last, to dismiss him. Bring more sweetcakes.

For an instant, Vasha’s gaze met that of Nadine Orzhekov. She had a sharp, penetrating eye, but she did not appear to scorn him. Of course, she did not yet know the truth. He hurried away.

When he returned, Mother Kireyevsky did an unheard of thing. Vasha, set those down. Then you will sit beside me.

Sit beside her! Stunned by this sign of favor, he obeyed, sinking down beside her and folding his hands in his lap. He risked another look at their visitor. Bakhtiian’s niece! She looked no different, really, than other women, except that she dressed and walked like a soldier. Her black hair was caught back in single braid and her cheek bore a recent scar. Again her gaze met his, measuring, keen, but this time he forgot himself enough that he did not drop his away immediately.

Vasha! scolded Mother Kireyevsky. He stared at his hands. Then the horrible truth came out. Inessa Kireyevsky was not married when her mother died, although by this time she had an eight-year-old child. She had no husband. She never married.

But then how— Nadine Orzhekov broke off, looking at him. How could she then have a child?

Shame writhed through Vasha. He felt it stain his cheeks, a visible mark of the disgrace that his mother had brought on her tribe.

Luckily, Mother Kireyevsky was saying, she died a year after her mother died.

Leaving her son, said Orzhekov. Vasha could not bear to look up now, knowing he would see contempt, not curiosity, in her gaze.

Leaving a boy with no father, dead or otherwise, and no closer relatives than distant cousins. That line was not strong. Mother Kireyevsky’s voice rang like hammer blows, unrelenting. Gods, why was she humiliating him like this? What was the point? Hadn’t he been brought low enough already, that she had to make sure that Bakhtiian’s niece knew of the scandal as well? Would she never be satisfied?

Like a spark, like his thoughts had triggered the words in her, Nadine Orzhekov spoke. Why are you telling me this? Then, secure as he could never be, she carelessly took another sweetcake.

Vasha felt more than heard Mother Kireyevsky take in a breath for the momentous pronouncement. Inessa claimed to know who the child’s father was. It was her last wish, as she lay dying of a fever, that the boy be sent to his father. If it is at all possible…. His hearing hazed over as a roar of fear and hope descended on him, claiming him. Mother Kireyevsky continued to speak, but he did not hear her words, not until she pounded the final strokes: She claimed that his father was Ilyakoria Orzhekov.

Into the silence, Nadine Orzhekov’s reply was so light-hearted, caught on a laugh, that it seemed false. My uncle, Bakhtiian.

Vasha hunkered down. He knew what must come next. Now Nadine Orzhekov would repudiate the connection. She would laugh.

Of course he must return with me, said Orzhekov cheerfully, as if she had just been offered a prime stud. I’m riding back to the army now. I will take responsibility for his well-being myself.

Shocked, he looked up right at her. Did she mean it? Nadine Orzhekov eyed him coolly, disapprovingly.

You are recently married yourself, said Mother Kireyevsky, eyeing the scar on Orzhekov’s cheek.

Yes, replied Orzhekov in a cold voice. I also command a jahar. You may be assured that the child is safe with me. What is his name? Vasha is short for—?

Vassily.

Vassily! Now she looked astounded, where none of the rest of his sordid history had shocked her. "How did he come by that name?"

Stung, he forgot himself. "My mama told me that that is the name he said to give me."

Mother Kireyevsky slapped him, and he hunched down, berating himself. Idiot twice over, for speaking at all and for giving Nadine Orzhekov any reason to think ill of him, to think he might actually believe the fiction that his mother had claimed was the truth: not just that Ilyakoria Bakhtiian was his father, but that Bakhtiian had known of her pregnancy and even told her what name to give the child. Only he did believe it. It was all he had to believe in.

…and he’s always been full of himself, Mother Kireyevsky was saying, thinking that he’s the son of a great man. You needn’t mind it. Of course Bakhtiian can’t recognize him as his son—it’s all quite ridiculous, of course, that an unmarried woman… Mother Kireyevsky was practically babbling, fawning over Bakhtiian’s niece in her desperation to be rid of him. Of course he has no father, but we’re grateful to you for taking him—

He looks like him, said Orzhekov curtly, cutting her off. "As I’m sure you must know. She sounded disgusted, and in a blinding moment of insight, Vasha realized that she was disgusted with Mother Kireyevsky, not with him. But in any case, I must go. I’ll need a horse—"

A horse! He was leaving!

He’s got nothing, said Mother Kireyevsky. Her tent and a few trinkets.

He gave my mother a necklace, said Vasha abruptly, emboldened by Orzhekov’s sympathy. Because he so desperately wanted her to believe him, to prove to her that it was all true, that it must be, because he knew things that a common boy would never know. "It’s gold with round white stones. He brought it from over the seas. From a khaja city called Jeds."

Go get your things, Vasha, snapped Mother Kireyevsky, and he flinched, but she did not hit him again.

And when a horse was saddled and his pathetic handful of belongings and his tattered blanket tied on behind the saddle, and he mounted up and waited for Nadine Orzhekov, he realized all at once that Mother Kireyevsky would never hit him again. The thought terrified him. He had never in his life strayed farther than herd’s distance from his tribe. He was scared to leave, and yet he wanted nothing more than to go. No one came to see him off. That quickly, they rid themselves of him and went back to their lives, free of the burden of his presence.

They rode out in silence, he and Bakhtiian’s niece. He concentrated on his riding, and on keeping his hands steady and his mind clear, because fear threatened to engulf him, fear and excitement together.

Finally, she spoke. How old are you, Vasha?

He took heart at her straightforward question. I was born in the Year of the Hawk.

Oh, gods, she murmured, as if she was talking to someone else. Eleven years old. Eleven years old.

Is it true? he asked. Is he really my father? My mama always said so, but… but she lied, sometimes, when it suited her. She said he would have married her, but she never said why he didn’t, so I don’t think he ever would have. Only that she wanted him to. He knew that, like Mother Kireyevsky, he was babbling out of desperation, but he couldn’t stop himself. He recalled his mother so clearly, her pretty face, her warmth, her scent, her cutting words to her cousins and the others in the tribe, to men who courted her, to women who tried to befriend her, her constant harping on the man she had loved and borne a child to—a man who had never in all the years afterward returned or even sent a message. Every tribe we came to, she asked if they’d news, if he’d married. He never had, so she said he still meant to come back for her. Then after my grandmother died, the next summer we heard that he’d married a khaja princess. Mama fell sick and died. Both the healer and a Singer said she’d poisoned herself in her heart and the gods had been angry and made her die of it. He gulped in air, it hurt so badly to think of her, of her dead, of being alone. No one wanted me after that.

And why should the Orzhekov tribe want him? Why should Nadine Orzhekov take responsibility for him? Perhaps she needed another servant in her camp. Better to know the worst now.

I think you’re his son, she said so calmly he thought at first he had heard her wrong.

But how can I be? he demanded. He wasn’t married to my mother.

She sighed. "I’ll let him explain that."

Him. It hung before him like a talisman, and though their journey was a strange one for a boy who had never before traveled outside of his tribe, that him hung before Vasha as a fog disguises the land, all through the days that they rode, with strange companions and into khaja lands, toward him.

Their party came at last to a vast army camped before a huge, gleaming khaja city, and Nadine took Vasha beside her, riding forward alone to come into camp at sunset. He had never seen so many tents, so many horses, so many people—women and children and countless men armed for war—all in one place. They dismounted at the very center of camp, and two men led their horses away. Nadine herded him forward toward the great tent that loomed before them. Terror clutched hold of him, and he slunk back behind Nadine when she stopped under the awning of the tent. She greeted the two guards and rang a little bell three times. The guards eyed him curiously but said nothing.

A cool, commanding voice answered from inside the tent. Send them in.

A shudder shook through Vasha, so hard that at first he thought he could not walk. But Nadine Orzhekov was all he had. When she swept the entrance flap aside and ducked in, he followed tight against her, practically hugging her side. Vasha had never felt more afraid in his life.

Two men stood on either side of a table in the outer chamber. In that first instant, glimpsing them—one dark and stern, one fair and breathtakingly handsome—either one could have been the man he had dreamed of all these years. Dressed simply, and yet gifted with the commanding presence a general and great leader must have. Both tall. Both of them radiant. He could have fallen at the feet of either of them, and been happy to gain their notice. He clenched his hands and fought back tears. And remembered that his mother had always spoken of Bakhtiian as a dark-featured man.

Like an answer to his thought, the dark man started forward and embraced Nadine. Dina! Have you just ridden in? Where is the prince?

About two days behind us, with the pack train. I rode ahead, Uncle.

Oh, gods. Bakhtiian looked past her. It took every ounce of courage that Vasha possessed to hold his ground against that severe gaze. Bakhtiian had dark hair, a beard, and eyes that pierced right through him. Who is this? he demanded of his niece, without taking his eyes off of Vasha.

I see I’ve come at just the right time, replied Nadine sarcastically. Where is Tess?

Come here. What’s your name?

Vasha gulped down a breath and stepped out from behind Nadine, into the full force of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian’s stare.

Vasha, this is Bakhtiian, said Nadine brusquely. Pay your respects.

All the years of waiting and dreaming weighed on him. He had never believed it would come to this. How badly he wanted to make a good impression. I am Vassily Kireyevsky, he said softly, because it was all the volume he could manage. My mother was Inessa Kireyevsky.

Inessa Kireyevsky! Gods. Bakhtiian stared at him, and Vasha wanted only to drown, to spin away into the air, into nothing. The haze descended once again, and although he knew the others went on talking, he paid no attention to them, he only stared at Bakhtiian, memorizing him, the man he had never seen and yet knew as well as … his own father. But a spark rose burning within, fighting his paralysis: Bakhtiian remembered Inessa Kireyevsky. That was hopeful.

The curtain into the inner chamber stirred and opened, and a woman stepped out. Isn’t Inessa Kireyevsky the one you lay with out on the grass, under the stars? Her voice was low, touched with a kind laughter, generous and full.

Bakhtiian did not shift his gaze from Vasha, and the boy felt smothered under the weight of his stare. You’ve a good memory, my wife, he said in that same even voice that smothered the turmoil in its depths.

For some things, she replied.

An odd accent graced her voice, light, even pleasing, but obvious. Vasha tore his gaze away from Bakhtiian and stared at her: at her brown hair and her fine, exotic features. Her calves and feet were bare, but a silken robe of gold covered the rest of her. The fine sheen of the fabric caught the light, shimmering as she moved forward through the chamber. She was pregnant. She was not a jaran woman.

You’re the khaja princess! he blurted out.

Yes. She examined him. What’s your name again? Vasha?

Her interest seemed benevolent enough, although he was not sure he could trust her. Vassily Kireyevsky.

How old are you, Vasha?

I was born in the Year of the Hawk.

And you’ve no father? Did your mother never marry?

He hung his head in shame. Again, the truth had to be told. He wanted so desperately for them to like him. My mother never married. That’s why my cousins wished to be rid of me.

Inessa never married? said Bakhtiian, sounding skeptical. I find that hard to believe.

To Vasha’s surprise, it was Nadine Orzhekov who came to his defense. She rested a hand on his shoulder. He hadn’t even known if she liked him. They treated him poorly enough. They didn’t want him. That’s why I thought he’d be better off here. Especially since Inessa claimed up until the day she died that you were the boy’s father.

Bakhtiian flung his head back. He looked astonished. He fairly crackled with life. How can I be his father? I never married her!

Vasha, commanded the khaja princess. Come here. He obeyed, walking over to her. She placed a finger under his chin and gently tilted his head back, the better to examine his face. She was—not beautiful like his mother, but strong, with her odd khaja features, and she measured him kindly, with compassion in her eyes such as he had not seen since his grandmother died.

At that moment, he fell in love with her.

It could be, she said generously. There’s a strong enough resemblance, once you look for it.

But, Tess—

She cut off her husband ruthlessly. Don’t be stupid, Ilya. Then she lifted a hand and brushed Vasha’s dark hair lightly. Vasha, do you know why your mother never married?

He risked a look at Bakhtiian, who stood glowering at them. He swallowed, but knowing the princess expected him to speak, he managed to. Because she thought that Bakhtiian was coming back to marry her. But he never did. And she never wanted anyone else. All at once he realized that these words might offend the princess. He flushed, sick with worry. Bakhtiian’s fixed expression cowed him, and he was too afraid to look at the princess.

But the princess, when she spoke, merely sounded puzzled. Surely this was inevitable? she asked the others. Her hand traced a path down Vasha’s neck and came to rest on his shoulder. He melted against her, seeking shelter, and she gave it to him, tightening her arm around him.

Bakhtiian just stared. Gods, I didn’t think she meant it when she told me she was pregnant.

Is it just a coincidence that he’s named Vassily? asked the princess calmly.

In reply, the other man came to life, the fair one who stood over to one side of the princess, saying nothing, only watching. Given an instant’s choice between them, Vasha would have guessed that the fair man—on beauty alone—must be Bakhtiian, but he was someone else and thus did not count. Until now. Do you mean to say, he asked hoarsely, that you told her to name the child after me?

Frightened by this outburst, Vasha huddled closer in against the princess. As if in answer, she looked down at him. Vasha. Is that what you wish? To be our son?

The ground dropped out from under his feet. He could not speak, not even to beg for what he wanted more than anything in the world.

Like a slap, bringing him back to earth, Bakhtiian snapped at his wife. Tess! We can’t take him in. That’s absurd. I’ll raise no objection if Nadine wishes to foster him, but—

You already made the choice, Ilya. You lay with her. She bore a child.

But, Tess—

Gods, Ilya, just look at him. By the laws of Jeds, this boy would be recognized as your son.

Bakhtiian stiffened, and Vasha recognized, even through his stupor and the pain of his hope, the bearing of the general who had united the jaran tribes. This isn’t Jeds, he said in a taut, threatening voice, and neither are the laws of Jeds my laws.

Gulping in air, Vasha recovered himself. That was that, of course. As he had known it must be. But still….

That may be, said the princess with terrible gravity, but by the laws of Jeds, and by the laws of Erthe, I acknowledge him as your son, and by that connection, as my son as well. Her hand tightened on his shoulder, claiming him, and the world seemed to go white in deference to the fierce passion of her words, each one a force in and of itself. And by the law of the jaran, by my stating it in front of witnesses, it becomes true.

She had just claimed him as her son.

She had just claimed him as her son! Which made him, by the laws of the jaran, Bakhtiian’s son as well.

He burst into racking sobs and collapsed to his knees in front of her.

A little while later, she knelt down beside him, stroking his hair, murmuring soothing words. Vasha. Shhh. Don’t cry. Come now, stand up. Here’s something to drink.

His nose was running, and he wiped at it, at his cheeks, with his sleeve and hid his face with his arm until the worst of it was gone. Then, on unsteady legs, he rose.

Only to face a worse apparition: that of Bakhtiian standing, looking angry and perplexed, holding out to him a cup filled with steaming tea. Vasha hesitated.

Take it, snapped Bakhtiian.

Long used to obedience, Vasha obeyed. His hands trembled as he took the proffered cup from the hands of his—from him. He shook so badly that a little bit of liquid slopped over the side, stinging his hand. Thank you, he murmured.

For some reason the comment made Bakhtiian give an exasperated sigh. I need to go— he began.

No, you don’t, said the princess mildly. You need to stay here.

He grunted, annoyed, and turned his back on them to go stand at the table. He lit another lantern and rolled out a thick slab of parchment that bore many little marks on it, and stared grimly at it, ignoring them.

Vasha drank down the tea. Gods, he was thirsty! The lantern light shadowed the man, but the thing studied lay illuminated. He gathered up his courage. Is that a map? he asked softly of the princess.

Bakhtiian glanced back at him. Vasha flinched, afraid he had said something he oughtn’t. Despair swamped him. Now that he was here, he could see how foolish dreams were: He had what he wanted, what his mother had told him was his rightful place, only Bakhtiian didn’t want the unwanted child any more than the Kireyevskys had.

Yes, said Bakhtiian curtly. It is a map.

There was a long pause.

Grudgingly, Bakhtiian spoke again. Come look at it.

Vasha took one step and halted. The princess took his arm, and thus encouraged by her closeness, he went to stand next to his…to his father. Together they examined the map.

2

Earth: One Year Later

ANATOLY SAKHALIN SAT ON a pillow and stared out the window. His hands lay open on his knees, but it was only by main force of will that he kept his body relaxed. On the street below, bordered by flowers and divided into two paths by a line of scrubby trees running down the middle of the paved surface, women and men passed at odd intervals, intent on their own business but greeting each other as they passed. Close to the trees other people flew by, legs pumping the strange two-wheeled creatures called bicycles. Here in the vast city called London, they all wore such strange clothing that Anatoly could not always be sure which were women and which were men. The sun shone down, and squares of light patched the rug on which he sat.

The flat lay quiet behind him. That had been their first fight. Twenty days ago he had walked off the ship into Diana’s arms, and since that time she had kept him next to her every instant. For the first eight days, they had stayed at her family’s house, and although he liked her rather loud and enthusiastic relatives, they had all, it seemed to him, conspired with her to keep him always under her eye. Then Diana had returned to the city and he, of course, went with her. When she rehearsed, he sat in the theater and watched. When she performed, he did the same thing, or waited in her dressing room. She ate with him, slept with him, stuck next to him as a father dogs his daughter’s first steps or as anyone leans over a new-built fire, coaxing it to burn on a windy day.

Gods, it infuriated him. She was sheltering him, damn her. Today he had refused to go with her to the theater. And when she had protested, when she had scolded him, he had finally said what he had known in his heart at that first embrace on the transfer station, twenty days past.

You don’t want me here!

Any fool could read the look that crossed her face. But you are here, Anatoly, she had said, not denying it, damn her twice, and I’m responsible for you.

In reply, he had seated himself on the pillow, turning his back to her, and refused to be budged. Eventually she had left.

He felt no triumph in the act, but, by the gods, a prince of the Sakhalin was not a child to be watched over! And yet, the bitter fact remained: Not one soul out there in London, except the members of the repertory company who had spent a year with the jaran, cared or even knew about the Sakhalin tribe, Eldest Tribe of the jaran. None of these khaja had heard of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, who even now led the jaran army on a gods-inspired mission to unite jaran and khaja lands. Anatoly had left that army to follow his wife to her country, and a damned strange country it was, too.

He had taken a long and confusing and often inexplicable journey to get here to this city called London, to this province (or was it a kingdom?) called England, to this planet (that had been explained to him, but he remained skeptical about the truth of the explanation since he was well aware that the khaja honored different gods and thus must believe a different story of the world and of creation than the jaran did) called Earth. And the worst of it was, for all his skill at tracking, for all that he had chased the Habakar king a hundred days’ ride into unknown territory and found his way back with no trouble to Bakhtiian’s army and known lands, he did not know where he was. As terrible as it was to admit it, he did not think that, if he wanted to return, he could find his way back to the plains by himself.

But he refused to return, because it would give his grandmother and Tess Soerensen the satisfaction of knowing they had been right to counsel him not to follow his wife.

These khaja were like grazel, he reflected as he examined the scene outside with distaste. They preferred to clump together in huge herds rather than roaming in smaller, freer groups as did wild horses and the jaran tribes. He felt closed in. And it smelled funny, too.

Like an echo of his thoughts, a familiar scent caught at him, and he turned his head to look back into the flat. While not a particularly large room, it had been furnished with little enough furniture that it almost gave the illusion of a tent as spacious as his grandmother’s. In the doorway leading into the hall, a vision appeared, a woman dressed as any proper, well-born jaran woman would dress. Standing there, she seemed a sudden and stark reminder of what he had left behind.

I beg your pardon, said Karolla Arkhanov. May I come in?

He rose at once. Cousin, he said, acknowledging her in the formal style.

She walked into the room, skirted the couch, and sat down on a pillow opposite him on the rug. Her children trailed after her, the fair-haired, sullen, small boy and the gorgeous daughter who carried the infant Anton in her arms.

Mama, said Ilyana in an undertone, shifting her baby brother in her arms as he squirmed to get free and down on the carpet, we’re supposed to be in school.

Hush, said Karolla, slanting a quick glance at her daughter. The girl did not look like her mother at all. Karolla was a pale, undistinguished, weary-looking woman, and Anatoly found it odd and rather disturbing that she acted more like her husband’s servant than his wife. "It’s a khaja thing, this school. There’s no reason you need to go."

The girl set her lips tight, but to Anatoly’s surprise, she did not protest. The boy flung himself down on the carpet and stared at the flowered wall, or at nothing.

Anatoly got up and went over to Ilyana. Here, I’ll take the little one, he offered. Anton was a robust boy, not quite walking yet; solemn, a little grumpy, but coaxable. Anatoly liked holding him. He set the baby on his knee and turned back to Karolla, careful not to look at her directly. Cousin, I apologize for… my impertinence, but as my wife says, the children must learn khaja ways as well as jaran ways if they are to get along here. He pretended not to see the grateful glance Ilyana threw his way. Valentin stared dreamy-eyed into the air and did not appear to hear him. Anton wiggled off his lap and crawled over toward his mother, thought better of it, sat up, and began chewing on his fat fist.

Watching him, Anatoly conceived the first element of his campaign to win his wife back. They must have a child, preferably three or four.

Go on, then, if you want to, said Karolla suddenly into the silence.

Ilyana leapt to her feet, grabbed Valentin’s wrist and yanked him up, and tugged him out of the room before he seemed aware that his feet were moving. Anatoly heard their feet pound down the stairs. "At their defection, Anton broke into hiccupping little sobs, and at once Karolla pulled him to her lap and let him nurse.

We shouldn’t be here, she said in a confiding voice. The gods cannot approve.

Irritated, Anatoly nevertheless was far too well-bred to show it. The two situations were scarcely comparable. He had, as was fitting, followed his wife to her people’s tribe. That his wife was also a Singer and thereby touched by the gods (although here on Earth they called her an actor) had made his duty all the more clear, and indeed, while the pressure for him to stay with the jaran had become intense, once decided he had not faltered from his choice to follow her.

We are here, he said mildly, finally, and surely that is the duty the gods have given us.

To live exiled from our people? asked Karolla bitterly. Then she answered herself. But I have always lived in exile from my tribe, since I chose to follow my father and my husband.

Unnatural acts both, thought Anatoly, but he did not voice the thought aloud, not wishing to hurt her feelings. These khaja are strange, he said instead. Stranger even than the Habakar and the Xiriki-khai.

What will you do here? she asked.

I will study the lay of the land, he replied. And thus was born the second element of his campaign, the second prong of attack.

Karolla glanced toward the window and away. I don’t like it out there, she said softly.

Anatoly didn’t think he would like it much out there either, but the longer he sat here, the clearer it became that he must go.

But as long as Bakhtiian can never come here, added Karolla in a whisper, then I am content.

Anatoly risked a glance at her, puzzled by her odd comment, but he could not read her expression.

Karolla excused herself finally and left. Anatoly rose at once and strapped on his saber.

Then he thought better of it, and took it off. He would rather go outside without his shirt than without his saber, but Diana had told him time and again that on no account was he to wear it outside of the flat. He had yet to see anything that looked like a weapon on any of these khaja, indoors or out.

He went down the stairs, touched his hand to the door panel, and flinched back slightly when the door opened. Then he descended the five stone steps to the path. He was outside, alone in the great khaja city.

It was noisy. It smelled. But he had thought the same thing about every other khaja city he had been in. It was time to look for the differences, the things that made Diana’s people, Diana’s land, different from the cities of Karkand and Salkh and Jeds.

No horses. No wagons pulled by draft animals. The broad paved paths nearer to the houses were meant for foot traffic. In the center of the street (Diana had made him memorize the name: Kensington Court Place) the bicyclists pedaled past. He walked, although he still found it strange to walk and not ride.

On the greater road, next to the huge expanse of trees and short green grass called Kensington Gardens, huge red wheelless wagons called buses hummed along above the paved road at a sprinting clip, disgorging and engulfing riders, while the boxier lorries seemed, like merchant’s wagons, mostly to be transporting goods. These great wagons puzzled Anatoly because they had no wheels and no scent. Diana called them solar powered, and had explained that Mother Sun (only she also claimed that this was a different Mother Sun from the one the jaran knew, so how was he to know whether this was more khaja superstition or the truth?) gifted them with the power to move, and that Father Wind granted them an air cushion on which they floated above the ground. He kept walking.

Fruits and vegetables lay in bins, smelling sweet and earthy. At another shop, slabs of meat hung open to the air, but as he approached, confused by their lack of smell, he felt the warning tingle of a field generator; Diana had explained to him that, like glass, it protected objects from the open air. He stepped back quickly, not trusting khaja sorcery. Well, he knew it wasn’t sorcery, but he still didn’t trust it. Above awnings, huge images of people and things lay flat against the buildings, holding on by some agency he did not understand (Diana called them projections or billboards) and here and there, in shop windows and in little tableaus and often moving around, he saw people—whole and living and breathing like himself—that he could see right through. It seemed to him that there were far too many things in Diana’s country that weren’t solid, that didn’t have weight. Once he caught the smell of horses, from somewhere out in the park, but they had the close, pungent scent of khaja horses, boxed into stables. He did not choose to investigate that way…yet.

It was just past midday, hot, a little sticky. A few clouds obscured the sky, and now and again they drew a welcome blanket over Mother Sun’s bright face. Farther along, where the park gave out onto more (more!) buildings, an arch and a statue of a soldier mounted on a horse graced the corner of the park. Pausing here, he felt the ground tremble deep beneath his feet, the dull rumble of the subterranean creatures called the Underground that swallowed and disgorged travelers. But he wanted to go on, not down. He could not read any of the signs, but he could manage to cross the great roads alongside other people. That was the other thing: London was an inconceivably great city, filled with people, many of whom walked briskly along beside him or passed beside the walkers on their bicycles or clambered on and off buses or climbed up stairs into the light from the passages below. Yet it did not have the intense, galloping pace of Jeds, whose streets had been crowded with wagons and horses and animals and people in a hideous roar of activity that had reminded Anatoly of the chaos of the attack on Karkand.

He followed a straight broad avenue down past what could only be a palace—although compared to the graceful, light palaces of the Habakar kingdom, this one seemed heavy, dense, and drab—circling past a monument boasting a golden winged woman at the top, and farther yet, to a square guarded by stone lions where some poor soldier stood frozen in stone so high up on a column that Anatoly supposed him sick from the height. At last he came to the river.

Boats passed quietly on the waters which lapped at stone banks. A path led along the bank. He followed it. It smelled of water here. The sun played light over the slow course of the waves. Passengers on a barge waved at him, and he lifted a hand in greeting, felt at once awkward, and then cheered when a child called out an incomprehensible but perfectly friendly greeting. A breeze lifted off the waves and laughed in his hair, which he had cut short again. He had sheared off his braids on the day he had boarded the thick iron arrow that had lifted far above the land and brought him (in time and taking him to other metal ships along the voyage) here. One of the braids he had sent back to the jaran, hoping it would reach his sister. One he had given to Diana. The third he kept with him, to give in time to his firstborn daughter.

He was alone in the middle of a great khaja city. Yet he was not lost. He knew exactly how to make his way back to Diana’s tent—to her flat. So it was possible physically to explore. Now he must learn the khaja language. Although from all he had seen, he wondered if he would ever understand them. They seemed completely indifferent to his foreign-ness. They carried hand-sized thin slates called modelers, or computers, with them everywhere as if they were holy charms. But it was the total absence of weapons that puzzled him most, as if they either knew nothing of weapons or were prohibited from carrying them, and Anatoly knew very well that only khaja slaves or the lowliest jaran servants were forbidden to carry weapons.

Coming out from underneath a bridge that spanned the river with massive grace, he saw a great bridge that looked like a fortress. And there, closer, almost beneath its feet, stood a real fortress.

The river shouldered up against a wharf and bled into the moat that surrounded the castle’s outer walls. He stopped dead and examined it. Here stood something he understood.

He ventured out along the wharf. Water lapped at an arched gate set into the wall below, but a bridge led him across the greenish moat waters which smelled of dense rotting vegetation. Walls enclosed him. Passing through an inner archway, he found himself on a broad green lawn shaded by trees. In the middle of this ward stood a white-bricked tower capped with a rounded turret at each corner. Like any citadel, it looked imposing. Wooden stairs led up, and openly, into the tower. Why would they build such a thing and yet let people pass in and out so freely? Here and there on the grounds he marked uniformed men, dressed in brilliant red and gold or somber black and red, who stood with the posture of soldiers, but they carried no weapons, although one of them held a burnished black staff.

Anatoly wove in and out among other people who seemed, like him, merely to be looking. He followed a clump of them up the stairs, and suddenly he came into a cluster of rooms where he felt, at last, at home. Armor and weapons stood displayed along the walls. He knew better than to touch anything. Yet just the sight of it eased his worries. These khaja knew and understood war, that much was obvious. He understood vaguely from things Diana and the Prince of Jeds (no longer the prince, but still alive) had said to him that there were people, not human people but zayinu, the ancient ones, who ruled Diana’s people. Diana called them aliens; the Prince called them Chapalii. Perhaps these Chapalii had forced the humans to lay aside their weapons—it would make sense, if they had conquered them—but let them keep a few here for some strange zayinu reason.

It was dusk by the time he went back outside, pondering all that he had seen. Glowing lanterns without flame lit the streets, so it was no trouble to find his way back, although by the time he turned the corner onto Kensington Court Place his legs ached from so much walking. A man ought not to walk so far. He ought to ride.

He placed his palm on the panel, and as the door opened he heard her voice and then her feet pounding down the steps.

Anatoly! Diana jerked to a halt at the base of the steps. He stilled, watching her. Her expression passed from fear to relief and straight into anger. Where were you? she demanded.

At the door above, Ilyana peeked out.

Anatoly brushed carefully by Diana and took the steps at a dignified pace up past Ilyana and on to their own flat. Another actor, Hal, lived here also, but he had gone to stay with a friend for the month, to give them privacy. Diana practically trod on his heels following him up.

I was terrified! she yelled at him even before the door shut behind her. How dare you go out like that on your own! You could have gotten lost! Anything could have happened!

He went all the way forward to the sitting room, to the window, and laid a hand on the cool glass, staring down at the lamplit street below. He felt… satisfied. Fuming, she stood behind him.

Finally, he turned. But I did not get lost. And why should I not go out? Is there some law that prevents me?

No, but—

Then I don’t understand why you are angry, he added, understanding full well. Unless you want me never to do anything on my own.

Her blue eyes shone even brighter, sparkling with unshed tears. She made a face, grimacing, and looked wretched, and for an instant he felt guilty, making her feel this bad, but restrained himself, knowing that to hesitate in attack is always fatal.

Oh, Anatoly, she said, throwing her arms around him. I was so worried.

Anatoly decided it wouldn’t hurt his cause to embrace her back.

What are we going to do with you? she murmured into his ear. Unlike so much of her world, Diana was solid; she had weight. She had warmth. But he said nothing, just held her. After a bit she pushed away from him, sniffed once, and regarded him pensively. She had tied her hair back with a ribbon, and he reached up and unbound it, liking it better when it flowed around her face and along her shoulders. She hesitated, then went on. Yevgeni Usova thinks he can get you work at the cobbler shop.

I think not! he retorted. A prince of the Sakhalin does not make boots for other people. And certainly not side by side with an arenabekh, and a lover of men, at that.

Anatoly! That is one thing you will not say in my tent. Do you understand?

Yes, my wife, he said meekly.

She sighed and folded her arms on her chest. I don’t know what to do with you.

But he already had some ideas. Do you khaja mean to go to war with the zayinu, the Chapalii? he asked. She started, looking guilty, but did not answer. Did the Prince of Jeds—not Tess Soerensen, but her brother—not give up Jeds in order to come here to fight the Chapalii?

She shrugged. We want our freedom, it’s true.

Well, then, I’m trained to fight. Why shouldn’t I offer my services to Charles Soerensen?

Diana sighed and rested a hand on his sleeve and stared out at London, at the gently glowing streetlamps, at the steady light glimmering through windows, at the distant lambent glow above the rooftops of a million more lights of the vast khaja city. The way we will train to fight and the way the jaran fight, well, Anatoly, they aren’t very alike any more.

But her words heartened him. She was a Singer, an artist, touched by the gods to perform her art. But as much more as she knew of this art called acting, he knew of war. He had seen the khaja weapons. They looked the same. Even supposing they had other weapons, ones that weren’t solid, that didn’t have weight, still, he could learn to use them. And if, as slaves, these khaja had not used weapons in a long time, then they would need a person trained as a soldier.

Every campaign must have an objective. Bakhtiian and Charles Soerensen had an alliance of some sort. Soerensen had told him as much. Just as Anatoly had gone ahead into Habakar territory, hunting down the Habakar king and gathering intelligence for the army, now here, too, he would act as Bakhtiian’s scout, as the vanguard of Bakhtiian’s army in alliance with Charles Soerensen in his revolt against humanity’s alien masters.

PART ONE

The Web of Fate

Seven Years Later

CHAPTER ONE

With the Jaran

SONIA HAD A NEW loom. She had strung the warp, taut vertical lines of coarse thread that striped the distant horizon and the lightening expanse of the sky. Seen through the warp, the rolling hills and endless grass of the southern plains did not look fractured but rather like a promise of the weaving to come. As she did with every new weaving, Sonia had sited the loom so that the weaver and the unadorned warp faced east, to catch the rising of Mother Sun.

Tess Soerensen watched as the sun rose, splintering its glory into the yarn. The grass turned gold. A wandering river, twisting and turning through the land like a child’s careless loops, flooded with gold briefly before shading to a humbler tone of murky blue. In the distance, a solitary rider approached camp at a gallop, eerie for the sight as yet untouched with sound. The quiet that permeated these vast plains was in itself a kind of sound, a note of expectation combined with a deep abiding peace. Although, Tess reflected, perhaps what people heard as peace was only nature’s monumental indifference to the tides of history that rose and fell on its shores.

Sonia poured a cupful of milk onto the ground and threw a handful of earth into the air, where the wind caught it for an instant before it sprayed in a hundred hissing droplets into the grass. Then she took her shuttle out of its case and knelt to begin the weaving. Tess sat beside her, helping when necessary.

In the long ago time, Sonia began, telling a story to help pass the time as she threaded the weft through the warp, beating it down, a pregnant woman began to weave a blanket for her unborn child. And as she wove, she pulled down threads of moonlight and sunlight, threads of the wind and threads of river water and of earth, and patterned the blanket as her child’s life, as she wanted her child’s life to become. But soon enough she was no longer content just to weave the new child’s life but began to weave the lives of all of her children and of her husband and her sisters and mother and father and aunts and uncles and at last of her entire tribe. And because such a blanket can never be finished, the child could not be born.

Tess listened distractedly. In the end, after many trials, the weaver’s ancient grandmother had to unravel the weaving for her, and thus was the child delivered, to live its own life.

Tess felt like that weaver. With a net of invisible threads, she wove the destiny of the jaran. Her loom had no substance, except perhaps for the implant embedded in her cranium that allowed her access to a vast network of information and structural ramparts on which and out of which she could build the matrix—weave the pattern—that had become her task. Her warp, strong and straight, was the tribes of the jaran. Across it she wove the strands of human space, of the Chapalii Empire, of the rebellion against the Empire that Tess’s brother even now laid the groundwork for, of the infinite twists and turns any event might take as it became part of the texture.

But she could never be sure that what she was doing was right.

You’re quiet, said Sonia.

Unquiet, retorted Tess, in my heart.

Sonia smiled without faltering as she wove. My sister, you think too much. You must accept the task the gods have given you to do, and then do it.

They had had this conversation a hundred times before over the twelve years they had known one another. No doubt they would repeat it a thousand times more in the years to come. But Sonia knew only part of the truth.

The threads of starlight Tess used in the weave were invisible to the jaran. She kept them that way. She had devised a complicated web that concealed and revealed the true nature of her life, her origins, her purpose here, in alternating strands, so that no one strand was so weak, foundering on half-truths, that it might break and thus collapse the entire fragile edifice.

Strand One (revealed): Tess Soerensen was the sister of Charles Soerensen, formerly Prince of Jeds, a flourishing city-state far to the southwest of the plains, and now a fugitive in his mother’s country of Erthe, far across the seas. Having given up his princely seat, Charles had gone to fight against the Empire that had conquered and subjugated Erthe, hoping in time to free his mother’s land from the Chapalii yoke.

Strand Two (concealed): Earth was not a country far across the seas, but a planet orbiting a distant star, up in the heavens. Far from giving up any pretense to power, Charles had indeed passed the princedom of Jeds into Tess’s hands, but only to resume with full force the dukedom granted him by the same conquering Chapalii.

Strand Three (revealed): The Chapalii were not human. They were zayinu, the ancient ones.

Strand Four (concealed): The Chapalii were aliens. Their interstellar Empire had swallowed Earth and her sister planets a hundred years before, bringing a period of peace and stability and a number of technological advances to the mostly human population of the amalgam of planets known as the League. But Earth and the League were subject states. They were not free.

Strand Five (revealed): Charles Soerensen meant to lead a rebellion against the Chapalii Empire, and so Tess (as Prince of Jeds) had allied herself with Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, the leader of the united jaran tribes.

Strand Six (concealed): The jaran, Jeds, the lands the jaran had already conquered, all lay on an interdicted planet called Rhui, in the Delta Pavonis system. Charles needed the mostly untapped resources of Rhui for his rebellion. To this end, he and Tess had agreed to do what they could to aid the jaran in uniting as much of the western continent of Rhui under one authority—jaran authority—as possible, so that when they needed the resources of Rhui a decade or a century from now, these resources could be swiftly commandeered.

Strand Seven (revealed): Tess was married to Ilya Bakhtiian.

Strand Eight (concealed): Well, she really was married to him. That had happened before the rest of the plan sprang to life. But she had concealed her true origins from him. He didn’t know she came from another planet. He didn’t even know that he lived on a planet, much less that there were other planets with other life or that the universe existed on any but an abstract, philosophical scale even as it rested within the hands of the gods themselves.

By what right did she keep from him, from Sonia, from all of them, knowledge of the stars? She could list the rationales easily enough, one, two, three:

If she hadn’t come here, accidentally, in the first place, they would never have known or suspected anyway; their technology was medieval and their mind-set, however flexible, however laudable in many ways, was primitive.

If Ilya, the greatest leader his people had ever known, knew the truth and how inconsequential it made the vision that had driven him, even before Tess had arrived, to unite the jaran and begin his conquest of khaja—of settled—lands, it would destroy him; it would cut out his heart.

And anyway, now that she and Charles and the rest of the cabal were set on this plan, they had to proceed in complete secrecy; they could not afford to arouse Chapalii interest in any fashion; and so, since Rhui was interdicted, it must stay that way, and there must be no awkward questions asked or betraying traffic to and from the planet other than that initiated years before when Charles had first established a foothold here as a kind of sanctuary from his duties as the first human duke, the first and only human to be granted a rank within the labyrinthine imperial Chapalii hierarchy.

But she still wondered. Should she tell them the truth? And if so, when? And if not, how long could she stay with them, truly? Because in the end she would have to return to Earth.

Mama! Mama!

Tess smiled, turning to greet her son. Yuri’s enthusiastic hug almost bowled her over. She laughed and steadied herself with one hand on the grass. With an impish grin, Yuri untangled himself from her and regarded Sonia gravely.

I beg your pardon, Aunt Sonia, he said, but Sonia merely smiled in answer and kept weaving. Yuri squatted down to watch her shuttle, and Tess just studied him, this wonderful boy whom she loved with an unsettlingly fierce passion, he and his older sister. Yuri was a sturdy five-year-old, still growing out of his baby fat. He had the world’s most equable temperament, quite unlike either of his parents, and a penchant for silliness. Sitting so still, though, his gentle child’s profile showed him serious and intent.

Where is Natalia? asked Tess.

I don’t know, he replied with a younger child’s blithe irresponsibility. What pattern are you weaving, Aunt Sonia?

The Moon’s Horns, she answered.

He grunted, content, and slipped onto his knees in order to watch her more closely. The rising sun shone gold lights through his brown hair. He fit there, beside Sonia, with uncanny ease. At five, he had greater patience for weaving than Tess had, but she was used to patterns taking shape more swiftly, nets and structures that she could build and dismantle at whim. She was trying to learn patience, but she hadn’t mastered it yet.

Instead, Tess rose, touched Sonia on the shoulder and gave Yuri a kiss, and walked down the hill toward camp. The wind fled in waves along the grass, great ripples darkening the ground for a moment as they spread and, at last, faded into the distance. Far off, she saw the amorphous mass of the horse herd and farther still, a glint of white marked the edge of the grazing line of sheep.

A hundred sounds drifted on the breeze, plaiting her footsteps into a greater whole. Tess hummed to herself. She smelled meat cooking. A hawk screamed above, and she tilted her head