All around the Lady Alexandra---piled in corners of the Dyuni great hall, mounted the open spaces---stood the packaged freight of their lives: boxes, trunks, cartons, cases---some partially unpacked. She could hear the cargo handlers from the Guild shuttle depositing another load in the entry.
Alexandra stood in the middle of the hall. She moved in a slow turn, looking up and around at the shadowed carvings, crannies and deeply recessed windows. This giant anachronism of a room reminded her of the Sisters' Hall at her Bala Garrasaid school. But at the school the effect had been one of warmth. Here, all was bleak stone.
Some canny architect had reached far back into history for these buttressed walls and dark hangings, she thought. The arched ceiling stood two stories above her with great crossbeams she felt sure had been imported here to Dyuna across space at a monstrous cost. No planet of this system grew trees to make such beams---unless the beams were of imitation wood.
She didn't think so.
This had been the government mansion in the days of the Old Empire. Costs had been of less significance in those days. It had been before the Seppanens and their new megalopolis of Mur Eldhe----a cheap brassy place some two hundred kilometers northeast across the Ron-Land. Nicholas had been smart enough to choose this place for his seat of government. The name, Mat E'trov, had a good sound, rich in tradition. And this was a smaller city, easier to sterilize and defend.
There now came the clatter of boxes being unloaded in the entry. Alexandra sighed.
Against a carton to her right stood the painting of the Duke's father. Wrapping twine hung from it like a frayed decoration. A piece of the twine was still clutched in Alexandra's left hand. Beside the painting lay a black bull's head mounted on a polished board. The head was a dark island in a sea of wadded paper. Its plaque lay on the floor, and the bull's shiny muzzle pointed at the ceiling as if the beast were ready to bellow a challenge into this cavernous room.
Alexandra wondered what compulsion had brought her to uncover those two things first---the head and the painting. She knew there was something symbolic in the action. Not since the day when the Duke's buyers had taken her from the school had she felt so frightened and unsure of herself.
The head. The picture.
They heightened her feelings of confusion. She shuddered, glanced at the slit windows high overhead. It was still early afternoon here, and in these latitudes the sky looked black and cold---so much darker than the warm blue of Eser. A pang of homesickness throbbed through her.
So far away, Eser.
"Here we are!"
The voice was Duke Alexander's.
She whirled. Saw him striding from the arched passage to the dining hall. His black working uniform with red armorial eagle crest at the breast looked dusty and rumpled.
"I thought you might have lost yourself in this dreadful place," he said.
"It is a cold house," she said. She looked at his tallness, at the dark skin that made her think of olive groves and golden sun on blue waters. There was woodsmoke in the gray of his eyes, but the face was predatory: thin, full of sharp angles and planes.
A sudden fear of him tightened her breasts. He had become such a savage, driving person since the decision to bow to the Sultan's command.
"The whole city feels cold," she said.
"It's a dirty, dusty little garrison town," he agreed. "But we'll change that." He looked around the hall.
"These are public rooms for state occasions. I've just glanced at some of the family apartments in the south wing. They're much nicer." He stepped closer, touched her arm, admiring her stateliness.
And again, he wondered at her unknown ancestry---a renegade House, perhaps? Some black-barred royalty? She looked more regal than the Sultan's own flesh-and-blood.
Under the pressure of his stare, she turned half away, exposing her profile. And he realized there was no single and precise thing that brought her beauty to focus. The face was oval under a cap of hair the color of polished brass. Her eyes were set wide, as green and clear as the morning skies of Eser. The nose was small, the mouth wide and generous. Her figure was good but scant: tall and with its curves gone to slimness.
He remembered that the lay sisters at the school had called her skinny, so his buyers had told him.
But that description oversimplified. She had brought a regal beauty back into the Romanov line. He was glad that Alexei favored her.
"Where is Alexei?" he asked.
"Someplace around the house taking his lessons with Rasputin."
"Probably in the south wing," he said. "I thought I heard Rasputin's voice, but I couldn't take time to look. He glanced down at her, hesitating. "I came here only to hang the key of Castle Eser in the dining hall.
She caught her breath, stopped the impulse to reach out to him. Hanging the key---there was a finality in that action. But this was not the time or place for comforting. "I saw our banner over the house as we came in," she said.
He glanced at the painting of his father. "Where were you going to hang that?"
"Oh, somewhere in here, I think."
"No!" The word rang flat and final, telling her she could use trickery to persuade, but open argument was useless. Still, she had to try, even if the gesture served only to remind herself that it would not deceive him.
"My Lord," she said, "if only you'd...."
"The answer stays no. I indulge you shamefully in most things, but I will not in this. I've just come from the dining hall where there are..."
"My Lord! Please!"
"The choice is between your digestion and my ancestral dignity, my dear," he said. "They will hang in the dining hall."
She sighed. "As my lord wishes."
"You may resume your custom of dining in your rooms whenever possible. I shall expect you at your proper position only on formal occasions."
"Thank you, my Lord."
"And don't go all cold and formal on me! Be thankful that I never married you, my dear. Then it'd be our duty to join me at the table for every meal."
She held her face rigid, nodded.
"Botkin already has our own poison sniffer over the dining table," he said. "There's a portable in your room."
"You anticipated this---disagreement," she said.
"My dear, I think also of your comfort. I've engaged servants. They're local, but Botkin has cleared them---they're Szganys all. They'll do until our own people can be released from their other duties."
"Can anyone from this place be truly safe?"
"Anyone who hates Sepannens. You may even want to keep the head housekeeper, the Hudtap El-Geff."
"Hudtap," Alexandra said. "A Szgany title?"
"I'm told it means 'well-dipper,' a meaning with rather important overtones here. She may not strike you as a servant type, although Botkin speaks highly of her on the basis of Grady's report. They're convinced she wants to serve---specifically that she wants to serve you."
"Me?"
"The Szganys have learned that you are a Bala Garrasaid," he said. "There are legends here about the Bala Garrasaid."
The Zashchitnyye Missii, Alexandra thought. No place escapes their notice.
"Does this mean Grady was successful?" she asked. "Will the Szganys be our allies?"
"There's nothing definite," he said. "They wish to observe us for a while, Grady believes. They did, however, promise to stop raiding our outlying villages during a truce period. That's a more important gain than it might seem. Botkin tells me the Szganys were a deep thorn in the Sepannen side, that the extent of their ravages was a carefully guarded secret. It wouldn't have helped for the Sultan to learn of the ineffectiveness of the Seppanen military."
"A Szgany housekeeper," Alexandra mused, returning to the subject of the Hudtap El-Geff. "She'll have the all-blue eyes."
"Don't let the appearance of these people fool you," he said. "There's a deep strength and healthy vitality in them. I think they'll be everything we need."
"It's a dangerous gamble," she said.
"Let's not go into that again," he said.
She forced a smile. "We are committed, no doubt of that. She went through the quick regimen of calmness---the two deep breaths, the ritual thought, then: "When I assign rooms, is there anything special I should reserve for you?"
"You must teach me someday how you do that," he said, "the way you thrust your worried aside and turn to practical matters. It must be a Bala Garrasaid thing."
"It's a female thing," she said.
He smiled. "Well, assignment of rooms: make sure I have a large office space next to my sleeping quarters. There'll be more paperwork here than on Eser. A guard room, of course. That should cover it. Don't worry about security of the house. Botkin's men have been over it in depth."
"I'm sure they have."
He glanced at his wristwatch. "You might also see that all our timepieces are adjusted for Dyuni local. I've assigned a tech to take care of it. He'll be along shorty." He brushed a strand of her hair back from her forehead. "I must return to the landing field now. The second shuttle's due any minute with my staff reserves."
"Couldn't Botkin meet them, my Lord? You look so tired."
"The good Eugene is even busier than I am. You know this planet's infested with Seppanen intrigues. Besides, I must try persuading some of the trained spice hunters not to leave. They have the option, you know, with the change of fief---and this planetologist the Sultan and the Paarlament installed as Judge of the Change cannot be bought. He's allowing the option. About eight hundred trained heads expect to go out on the spice shuttle and there is a Guild cargo transjumper standing by."
"My Lord..." She broke off, hesitating."
"Yes?"
He will not be persuaded against trying to make this planet secure for us, she thought. And I cannot use my tricks on him.
"At what time will you be expecting dinner?" she asked.
That's not what she was going to say, he thought. Ah-h-h-h-h, my Alexandra, would that we were somewhere else, anywhere away from this horrible place---alone, the two of us, without a care.
"I'll eat in the officer's mess at the field," he said. "Do not expect me until very late. And---Ah, I'll be sending a groundcar for Alexei. I want him to attend our strategy conference."
He cleared his throat as if to say something else, then, without warning, he turned and strode out, headed for the entry where she could hear more boxes being deposited. His voice sounded once from there, commanding and disdainful, the way he always spoke to servants when he was in a hurry. "The Lady Alexandra's in the Great Hall. Join her there at once."
The outer door slammed.
Alexandra turned away, faced the painting of Nicholas's father. It was done by the famous artist Ivanov, during the Old Duke's middle years. He was portrayed in a kolchuga-mail shirt-for body armor; with a mech- long straight sword- as an offensive weapon and shelm-a round, hemispherical iron cap-for his helmet; and the famous long, almost shaped "kite" shield of the knights of Ancient Russia. The face looked young, barely older than Nicholas's now, and with the same classic Slavic features, the same gray stare. She clenched her fists at her sides, at the painting.
"Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!" she whispered.
"What are your orders, Noblewoman?"
Alexandra whirled, stared down at a knobby, gray-haired woman, a shapeless sack dress of buckskin brown. The woman looked as wrinkled and desiccated as any member of the mob that had greeted them along the way from the landing field that morning. Every native he had seen on this planet, thought Alexandra, looked pruned and malnourished. But Nicholas said they were strong and vital. And there were the eyes, of course---that wash of deepest, darkest blue without any white---secretive, mysterious. Alexandra forced herself to refrain from staring at her.
The woman gave a stiff-necked nod, said, "I am called the Hudtap El-Gaff, Noblewoman. What are your orders?"
"First, you must refer to me as 'my Lady," Alexandra said. "I'm not a noblewoman. I am the bonded concubine of the Duke Nicholas."
That strange nod again, and the woman peered upward at Alexandra with a sly questioning. "There's a wife, I assume."
"There is not, nor has there ever been. I am the Duke's only companion, the mother of his heir-apparent."
Even as she spoke, Alexandra laughed inwardly at the pride behind her words. What was it St. Vladimir said? she asked herself. "The mind commands the body, and the body obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance." Yes---I am meeting more resistance lately. I could use a quiet retreat by myself.
A strange cry sounded from the road beyond the house. It was repeated: "Soo-soo-Sook! Soo-soo-Sook!" Then: "Ikhut-assa! Ikhut-assa!" And again: "Soo-soo-Sook!"
"What is that?" Alexandra asked. "I heard it several times as we drove through the streets this morning."
"It is but a mere water-dealer, my Lady. But you've not need to interest yourself into such as they. The cistern here holds fifty thousand liters and it's always kept full." She glanced down at her dress. "Why, you know, my Lady, I don't even have to wear my stillsuit here!" She cackled. "And me not even dead!"
Alexandra hesitated, wanting to question this Szgany woman, needing data to guide her. But bringing order of the confusion in the castle was vital. Still, she found the thought unsettling that water was a major mark of the wealth here.
"My husband told me about your title, Hudtap," Alexandra said. "I recognized the word. It's a very ancient word."
"You know the ancient tongues, then?" El-Gaff asked, and she waited with an odd intensity.
"Tongues are the Bala Garrasaid's first learning," Alexandra said. "I know the Bhotani-Strela and the Chakobsa, all the hunting languages."
El-Gaff nodded. "Just as the legend says."
And Alexandra wondered: Why do I play out this sham? But the Bala Garrasaid ways were devious and compelling.
"I know the Dark Things and the ways of the Great Baba," Alexandra said. She read the more obvious signs in El-Gaff's actions and appearance, the petty betrayals. "Preija Doamna," she said in the Cakobasan tongue. "Andral Tre pere! Trada click buscaki rateaza Perri...."
El-Gaff took a backwards step, appeared poised to flee.
"I know many things," Alexandra said. "I know that you have borne children, that you have lost loved ones, that you have hidden in fear and that you have done violence and will yet do more violence. Oh, yes, I know many things."
In a low voice Maps said: "Forgive me, my Lady. I meant you no offense."
"You speak of the legend and seek answers," Alexandr said. "Beware of the answers you may find. I know you came prepared to do violence with a weapon in your bodice."
"My Lady, I...."
"There's a remote chance you could draw my life's blood," Alexandra said, "but in so doing you'd bring down more ruin than your wildest fears could imagine. There are worse things than dying, you know---even for an entire race."
"My Lady!" El-Gaff pleaded. She seemed about to fall to her knees. "The weapon was sent as a gift to you should you prove to be the One."
"And as the means of my death should I prove otherwise," Alexandra said. She waited in the seeming relaxation that made the Bala Garrasaid-trained so horrifying in combat.
Now we see which way the decision tips, she thought.
Slowly, Maps reached into the neck of her dress, brought out a dark sheath. A black handle with deep finger ridges protruded from it. She took the sheath in one hand and the handle in the other, withdrew a milk-white blade, held it up. The blade seemed to shine and glitter with a light all its own. It was two-edged like a kindjal, and the blade was maybe twenty centimeters long.
"Do you know this, my Lady," El-Gaff asked.
It could only be one thing, Alexandra knew, the fabled crysnozh of Dyuna, the blade that had never been taken off the planet, and was known only by rumor and wild gossip.
"It's a crysnozh," she said.
"Say not it lightly," El-Gaff said. "Do you know its significance?"
And Alexandra thought: There was an edge to that question. Here's the reason this Szgany has taken service with me, to ask that one question. My answer could precipitate violence or---what? She seeks an answer from me: the meaning of a knife. She's called the Hudtap in the Chakobsa tongue. Nozh, that's "Death Maker" in Chaksoba. She's getting restive. I must answer now, for to delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.
Alexandra said: "It's a maker..."
"Eighe-e-e-e-e-e!" El-Gaff wailed. It was a sound of both grief and elation. She trembled so hard the knife blade sent glittering shards of reflection shooting all around the room.
Alexandra waited, poised. She had intended to say the knife was a maker of death and then add the ancient word, but every sense warned her now, all the deep training of alertness that exposed meaning in the most casual muscle twitch.
The key word was...maker.
Maker? Maker.
Still, El-Gaff held the knife as if ready to use it.
Alexandra said, "Did you think that I, knowing the mysteries of the Great Mother, would not know the Maker?"
El-Gaff lowered the knife. "My Lady, when one has lived with a prophecy for so long, the moment of revelation is a shock."
Alexandra thought about the prophecy---the Shariat and all the panoplia prorocheskoye, a Bala Garrasaid of the Zashchitnyye Missii dropped her long centuries ago---long dead, no doubt, but her mission accomplished: the protective legends implanted in these people against the day of a Bala Garrasaid's need.
Well, that day had come!
El-Gaff returned the knife to its sheath, said; "This is an unfixed blade, my Lady. Keep it near you. More than a week away from flesh and it begins to disintegrate. It's yours, a tooth of shay-khulud, for as long as you live."
Alexandra reached out her right hand, risked a gamble. "El-Gaff, you've sheathed the blade unbloodied."
With a gasp, El-Gaff dropped the sheathed knife into Alexandra's hand, tore open the brown bodice, wailing: "Take my life-water!"
Alexandra withdrew the blade from its sheath. Oh, how it glittered! She directed the point towards El-Gaff, saw a fear greater than death-panic come over the woman. Is there poison in the point? Alexandra wondered. She tipped up the point, drew a delicate scratch with the blade's edge above El-Gaff's left breast. There was a thick welling of blood that stopped almost right away. Ultrafast coagulation, Alexandra thought. Could that be a moisture-conserving mutation?
She sheathed the blade, said: "Button your dress, El-Gaff."
El-Gaff obeyed, trembling. The eyes without whites stared at Alexandra. "You are ours," she muttered. "You are the One."
There came another sound of unloading in the entry. Swiftly El-Gaff grabbed the sheathed knife, hidden in Alexandra's bodice. "Whosoever lays eyes upon that knife must be cleansed or slain!" she snarled. "You know that, my Lady!"
I do now, thought Alexandra.
The cargo handlers left without intruding on the Great Hall.
El-Gaff composed herself and said: "The uncleansed who have seen a crysnozh may not leave Dyuna alive. Never forget that, my Lady. You've been entrusted with a crysnozh." She took a deep breath. "Now the thing must take its course. It cannot be hurried." She glanced at the stacked boxes and piled goods around them. "And there's work aplenty to while the time for us here."
Alexandra hesitated. "The thing must take its course." That was a specific catchphrase from the Zashchitnyye Missiii's stock incantations---The coming of the Mother Baba to free you.
But I'm not a Mother Baba, thought Alexandra. And then: Great Mother! They planted that one here! This must be a hideous place!
In matter-of-fact tones, El-Gaff said: "What'll you be wanting me to do first, my Lady?"
Instinct warned Alexandra to match that casual tone. She spoke. "The painting of the Old Duke over there, it must be hung on one side of the dining hall. The bull's head must go on the wall opposite the painting."
El-Gaff crossed to the bull's head. "What a great beast it must have been to carry such a head," she said. She stopped. "I'll have to be cleaning this first, won't I, my Lady?"
"No."
"I must. Can you not see the filth caked upon its horns?"
"It's not filth, El-Gaff. It's the blood of our Duke's father. Those horns were sprayed with a transparent fixative within hours after the beast killed the Old Duke."
El-Gaff stood up. "Ah, I see!" she said.
"It's only blood," Alexandra said. "Old blood at that. Get some help hanging these things now. The beastly things are heavy."
"Did you think the blood bothered me?" El-Gaff asked. "I am of the desert and have seen blood aplenty."
"I....do not doubt you," Alexandra said.
"And some of it my own," El-Gaff said. "More than you drew with your puny scratch."
"Did you want me to cut deeper?"
"Ah, no! The body water's scant enough without gushing a wasteful lot of it into the air. You did the ritual right."
And Alexandra, noting the words and manner, caught the deeper implications in the phrase, "the body's water." Again, she felt a sense of oppression at the importance of water on Dyuna.
"On which side of the dining hall shall I hang which one of these beauties, my Lady?" El-Gaff asked.
Ever the practical one, this El-Gaff, Alexandra thought. She said, "I'll leave that up to you, El-Gaff. It makes no real difference to me."
"As my Lady wishes." El-Gaff stooped, began clearing wrappings and twine from the head. "Killed an old duke, did you?" she crooned.
"Should I summon a handler to assist you?" Alexandra asked.
"I'll get along just fine without one, my Lady."
Yes, she'll manage, Alexandra thought. There's tat about this Szgany creature; the drive to manage.111Please respect copyright.PENANANZu8cGSSqS
Alexandra felt the cold sheath of the crysnozh beneath her bodice, thought of the long chain of Bala Garrassaid scheming that had forged another link here. Due to that scheming, she had survived a deadly crisis. "It cannot be hurried," El-Gaff had said. Yet there was a tempo of headlong rushing to this place that filled Alexandra with foreboding. And not all the preparations of the Zashchitnyye Missii nor Botkin's suspicious inspection of this castellated rock-pile could dispel the feeling.
"When you're through hanging those, start unpacking the boxes," Alexandra said. "One of the cargo men at the entry has all the keys and knows where things ought to go. Get the keys and the list from him. If there are any questions, I'll be in the south wing."
"As you will, my Lady," El-Gaff said.
Alexandra turned away, thinking: Botkin may have passed this residency as safe, but there's something about the place that's----not right. I can feel it.
An urgent need to see her son gripped Alexandra. She began walking towards the arched doorway that led into the passage to the dining hall and the family wings. She walked faster and faster, until she was nearly running.
Behind her, El-Gaff paused in clearing the wrappings from the bull's head, looked at the retreating back. "She's the One all right," she muttered. "Poor thing."
111Please respect copyright.PENANAi7ay780tjg
111Please respect copyright.PENANA1BTBpdfh62
111Please respect copyright.PENANA4IaLMcJ6J4
111Please respect copyright.PENANAsmZXxlf7ZI
111Please respect copyright.PENANANzF1qhYRos
111Please respect copyright.PENANADSbZlhHJCC
111Please respect copyright.PENANAFD8afJ6fYh