An earthly crown

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The first day, Yomi told the actors to stay within their little enclave of tents and on no account to venture out into the confusion of the jaran camp. Ever the slave driver, Owen led them in a round of exercises until midday and after lunch put them to work setting up the screens and the carpets and the portable platform at the edge of the enclave. He had chosen the space carefully. The ground sloped up here, providing a natural amphitheater. He fussed over the placement of the screens, of the carpets, of the platform, until he drove all the actors crazy. Yomi finally sent them to supper.

Diana escaped to the enclave bordering the Company's cluster of tents, that of the Soerensen party. To her eye, Charles Soerensen's tent had also been set up carefully, facing the outskirts of the jaran camp as if inviting envoys to visit this acre of earth that he claimed as his by right of possession. Dr. Hierakis's large tent stood beside his, more a companion than an attendant, and behind them the smaller tents of his party formed a semicircle around the back, enclosing a patch of ground as a kind of private courtyard.

Here she found David and Maggie, crouching beside a fire pit dug into the earth.

"It's cold today," said Maggie as Diana came up, "but at least it didn't rain. Hello there, Diana. I heard you all hooting and howling over yonder. What on earth were you doing?"

"Vocal exercises. I hope we didn't spook anyone." Diana glanced past the straight edge of Soerensen's tent toward the vast camp sprawled beyond.

"Oh, they already think the good doctor is some kind of otherworldly visitor.''

"Good Lord," muttered David.

"I didn't mean it like that," added Maggie. "Not literally, that is. She's been very careful to make sure that all the medicine she does is technologically within their limits. There's an entire conclave of old men and women in the doctor's tent right now. I gather that they were tremendously impressed by her healing skills after that battle five days ago."

Diana shivered. She knelt beside the fire and gratefully accepted a mug of hot tea from David. That afternoon and night seemed surreal to her now. She could almost believe it had never happened, except that they had had to repack the wagons and convey some of their goods on horseback in order to leave room in the wagons for the wounded who could not ride. "Gwyn said that only one man died on the trip here."

"Two, I think," said David. "But one of them Cara called a courtesy death. You acquitted yourself well, Diana, that night." He shuddered. "I couldn't have done what you did. I hate blood."

"Handsome necklace." Maggie reached out and traced her fingers over the gold beads. "I'll bet these are solid gold. Do you know what this is worth for the metal alone?" Diana blushed. Maggie grinned. "Ah, going native already, are you? I hear the young man who gave this to you is one of their nobility. Or at least, of an important family. I'm not sure our concept of nobility is quite the right word."

Diana studied the steam rising out of her mug. It rose into the air and dissipated, wafted into nothingness by the cold breeze. She had not seen Anatoly Sakhalin since that night, and by now he was probably swallowed up in the jaran camp. Never to be seen again. "It seems like once Bakhtiian and his army-his soldiers-got back to us, that we weren't allowed anything to do with the wounded. Except for Dr. Hierakis, of course."

"Can you blame them? We are foreigners, after all. Perhaps they have some kind of taboo. Or perhaps they just prefer to take care of their own. Why should they trust us?"

Marco ducked out from the back entrance to Soerensen's tent and glanced up. Diana saw him register her presence, she even caught his eye, but he turned around and slipped back inside the tent. As if he was avoiding her. Which he was. Which he cursed well ought to. "Did you ever find out what the big fire was that they lit after we left?"

"Oh, you mean from the pond? A cremation pyre. They burn their dead."

David shuddered again. "Just heaped them on and burned them. Why did I come? Or did I ask that already? ''

Maggie laughed. "A thousand times. Don't repeat yourself, David, you'll get boring."

"I wonder what they think of us," Diana mused.

"They think you're an angel," said Maggie, and laughed again when Diana turned red. "Which seems ironic enough, when you think of it."

"When will we be allowed to go out into their camp?" David asked. "I'd like to do some drawing."

"I don't know," admitted Maggie, "but I imagine His Nibs is going to be cautious."

"Very cautious," echoed David. "What's going on out there?"

Diana rose with the other two and followed them out alongside Dr. Hierakis's tent. Under the awning of her tent, Dr. Hierakis sat cross-legged on a pillow surrounded by about twenty women and men of various ages, mostly elderly.

Diana stared. She had not yet seen a jaran woman. They looked, well, rather ordinary. They wore long tunics dyed in bright colors over striped trousers and soft leather boots. Some wore simple beaded headpieces draped over their braided hair; others wore a round fur cap shaped like the men's helmets. The men here wore gold or blue shirts, not red, and there was less embroidery on their shirts. A few men in the scarlet worn by the soldiers loitered in the background. One man was seated in the middle, his back to Diana and her companions, and he was clearly the object of the conversation: his shirt lay at his hips, revealing a handsome expanse of bare back. An older silver-haired jaran man was crouched beside him, drawing patterns on his shoulder that traced the line of his scars and injuries.

"Look," said Diana, nodding toward the silver-haired man. "He speaks Rhuian, too. If you listen to the interchange between him and Dr. Hierakis, you can tell he's translating for the others. I wonder where an old man like that learned Rhuian."

"Lady in Heaven," said David in a hushed voice. "It can't be." He sounded so odd that Diana turned to him in alarrn. But he was looking beyond her, beyond the gathering under the doctor's awning, beyond Soerensen's tent, toward the outskirts of the jaran camp.

Three jaran soldiers came cantering around the outer fringes of the vast encampment. An instant later, Diana realized that although they all were dressed in the red shirts and black trousers of the jaran soldier, two were female. The man was the one called Aleksi. Of the women, one had the black hair and olive complexion of those of the jaran who were dark, but the other had, not blonde hair and a fair complexion, but something in between. They pulled up thirty meters in front of Sorensen's tent and dismounted. The brown-haired woman was half a head taller than her female companion, as tall as the male, as tall as many of the jaran men; as tall as the women in Soerensen's party. She wore a saber at her belt and carried herself with the kind of unconscious authority of those who are used to an exalted position in life.

"Tess!" The exclamation came, unexpectedly, from Dr. Hierakis. She stood up abruptly, disrupting her conference.

As if on cue, the entrance to Soerensen's tent swept aside and Soerensen walked out, deep in conversation with Marco. He took two steps, glanced toward the doctor and the more distant clump that was Diana and David and Maggie, and stopped. For a beat, he did nothing. Then he looked straight up, along the converging lines of their sight, at his sister.

"Charles!" The name burst out of Terese Soerensen as if by accident. She clapped her hands over her mouth in a gesture that looked utterly spontaneous and after a moment lowered them. She had the kind of stupid grin on her face that afflicts people who are overwhelmingly nervous and excited together. A few words passed between her and her companions; then she ran forward and hugged her brother.

He, too, was smiling. They separated, and Tess turned to greet Marco. She laughed at him and slapped him with some amusement on the chest. He grinned. Diana could not hear what they were saying. Dr. Hierakis waded around the sea of healers and put out her arms.

This time, Tess Soerensen's smile looked more confident and more genuine. She embraced Dr. Hierakis firmly, and her smile as they parted was easy and cheerful. Skilled as Diana had become at reading body language, she could tell that the doctor's greeting was warmer than Charles Soerensen's; not more heartfelt, perhaps, but less constrained.

"My God, she's different," breathed David.

"Well well well," said Maggie.

"She's… she's…"

"I'd never heard she was quite that handsome as a girl. I always heard she was shy, awkward, and headstrong. But then, I've never met her, and by the time I signed on with His Nibs, she was at university and then absconded to Rhui."

"Reserved, not shy," corrected David, still gaping. Tess Soerensen glanced their way, and her eyes rounded suddenly, recognizing David. She hesitated, then waved him over.

"Invited to the presence," said Maggie.

"Damn you, Mags. Come with me. I'm not doing this alone. You, too, Diana."

"Cold feet?" Maggie asked.

"You cold-hearted bitch. Mags, please."

Maggie chuckled. "Well, come on, then, Diana. Our womanly presence will support the poor besotted fool."

'' 'What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue? I cannot speak to her, yet she urg'd conference.' "

"Lord," moaned David. But he straightened his shoulders and set off to cross the gap. Maggie followed, grabbing Diana by the wrist and tugging her along behind. The jaran healers sat quietly, patiently, and watched this little scene with interest. The silver-haired man smiled at Diana as she passed. The next instant, she realized that the young man sitting in the center, just now struggling to get back into his shirt, was Anatoly Sakhalin. As his head emerged through the collar, he glanced up, saw her, and averted his gaze from her as swiftly as if her presence stung him. Maggie dragged her to a stop behind David, and she had to wrench her attention back to the matter at hand.

"David!" Tess Soerensen was saying. "What are you doing here? Did Charles drag you along?''

It took Diana a moment to figure out what was strange about her speech: the cadences of her Anglais were slightly altered, as if she had not spoken it for some time.

"I had sufficient inducements," replied David. "I'm interested in ancient engineering, after all. Tess, you haven't met Maggie O'Neill."

"Honored," said Tess Soerensen, shaking Maggie's hand.

"Likewise," replied Maggie with her usual aplomb. "I'm Charles's assistant, recorder, and official historian. This is one of the actors, Diana Brooke-Holt."

Diana smiled at Tess Soerensen. Tess had fine green eyes and a sincere smile, but nothing of her brother's quietly formidable bearing. "Honored," Diana said, feeling all at once that she might like this woman and not feeling at all overawed by her. "I understand you're doing linguistics fieldwork here, M. Soerensen."

"Tess, please." Soerensen blinked, looking confused for a moment. She glanced at her brother and immediately an expression of comprehension flashed over her features. "Of course," she said, sounding a little simpleminded. "My linguistics research. Of course. And you're one of the-actors?"

"The Bharentous Repertory Company," put in Dr. Hierakis. "Surely you've heard of them, Tess. They've come along to do some fieldwork themselves."

"Of course I've heard of them. I saw them in Berlin, performing the Mahabharata. I don't recall if you were with them then." She considered a moment and as if by habit glanced back toward her two jaran companions, still waiting fifty paces out. "Oh, hell," she said under her breath.

Charles Soerensen was a quiet man, holding his power in reserve, hoarding it, concealing it from a power greater than his own-the power of the Chapalii Empire. Waiting for a chance to strike again, to free humanity from the yoke of the alien Empire. Even his entrances, such as the one Diana had just witnessed, were subtle, small entrances, perfectly timed but not showy, and never ostentatious.

From the camp, entering stage left, came an altogether different kind of leader. He walked with only two attendants, and yet the two could as well have been one hundred, they endowed him with so much state.

Bakhtiian looked furious. His fury radiated so far that even though Diana could barely distinguish his features, she could read anger in every line of his body.

"Excuse me," said Tess, turning to leave.

"Where are you going, Tess?" asked her brother quietly.

Tess cast a rueful grin back over her shoulder. "To head him off at the pass."

"No," said Charles.

Tess halted as if she had been pulled short by a rope. She did not move at all for a moment, then she spun back. "Charles, let me go." She sounded-angry? scared? shocked? — Diana could not tell.

"We will wait here," he replied calmly.

Tess dropped her chin and stared at the ground, for all the world like a scolded child.

Bakhtiian paused for long enough beside Aleksi and the female soldier to add them to his train. Their obedience, like Tess's to her brother, was absolute and immediate. Bakhtiian advanced on Soerensen's tent. Diana looked behind, to see the jaran healers and Anatoly Sakhalin watching also.

With curt politeness, Bakhtiian halted five paces outside the awning of the tent and inclined his head toward Charles Soerensen. "I trust you have set up your camp to your satisfaction," he said in Rhuian. He did not look at Tess Soerensen. No, it was more than that. He was forcefully not looking at her, as if the action of not looking at her was as deliberate as if he had chosen to look at her.

"Indeed, we have," replied Charles Soerensen. "It is a good stretch of ground, and suitable to our purpose here. The actors are especially pleased with the terrain, since it provides them with a natural amphitheater.''

"I hope my people will be able to enjoy their performances soon. We will have a proper celebration to honor your arrival at our camp tomorrow evening. I would be pleased to escort you and any of your party around our camp tomorrow morning, if it pleases you. Now, if you will excuse me, there are military matters which I must discuss with my generals."

He took one step back, turned, and then turned back. "Soerensen?" he said, to Tess. It meant: of course you will attend me as well. Now.

Standing with one foot on, one foot off, the carpet, at the edge of the awning, Tess stood equidistant between the two men. Everyone was watching her. They were waiting for her decision.

She lifted her chin finally, clearly aware that she was the focus of all attention. She looked angry and embarrassed and irresolute and even slightly amused. But she did not say anything. The silence stretched out until it became painful.

Soerensen waited. Bakhtiian waited. In fact, Diana realized, they were both waiting for Tess to capitulate to them, knowing that she could not capitulate to both. In a sudden rush of insight, of compassion, Diana realized that Tess could not make that decision. Not now, at any rate. What had led her to wear jaran clothing and ride with jaran soldiers Diana did not know. What led Bakhtiian to order her around as if she were one of his people was also a mystery. Even if Tess wanted to disobey her brother's deceptively mild command, Diana was not sure that she could.

Murmuring rose in the huddle of jaran healers only fifteen paces to their backs. Marco Burckhardt slipped a hand inside his belt, reaching for something. David took an impulsive step forward, blindly trying to protect-Tess? Or Charles? Anatoly Sakhalin appeared to the side, stepping into the group flanking Bakhtiian. Although his arm still rested in a sling, he wore a saber. His good hand brushed its hilt.

Things were going to get ugly very quickly. Battle lines had been drawn, and if someone didn't intervene-well, Diana now knew what the aftermath of a battle looked like. And neither Bakhtiian nor Soerensen looked ready or willing to back down.

So Diana did the first thing that came to mind. She gave a gasp, flung the back of her left hand up to her forehead, and collapsed to the carpet in a faint.