Free The Novels of the Jaran by Kate Elliott Page A

“Cousin, perhaps you would allow me to speak with your companion, Terese Soerensen?”
    “Well, Ilya, really, now that Mama has taken her in, you must approach Mama with that request, I think. Although Mama is out with the younger Kolenin girls today, since there was a herd of grazel seen by the scouts, so she’ll be gone until dark. But there will be supper in any case. Mama may be back by then.”
    It was not difficult, Tess reflected, to see that Bakhtiian was seething with fury, having had something he wanted denied him. She tried very hard not to smile. Sonia was being very earnest, but a mocking and almost scolding tone still crept through.
    “As you say, Sonia.” He gave a brusque bow. “Excuse me.” He left.
    “But, Sonia,” said Tess when she realized she was still breathing, “he just ordered Yuri to do what he wanted him to do.”
    “Yuri is a man. He cannot be so free with you.”
    “Are there people I should not talk with? Or approach? I hope you will be honest with me, Sonia. I would not want to—offend—anyone.”
    Sonia looked puzzled a moment, but then her expression cleared. “Of course, even while I speak Rhuian I forget you are of Jeds. Though Vania is right. You are taller than any woman of the tribes. You must remember that here, with us, because you are a woman you may speak with whomever you please. Now, kriye,” she said to her son, who had watched the proceedings with unblinking interest, “you will behave yourself with Tess.” He nodded and gripped his grimy hand more tightly around Tess’s fingers. “I wish he were always so well-behaved, but I am afraid that he takes after his uncle. But come, you will meet my sisters, and then this evening Mama will receive you into the family. Katerina and Stassia made welcome cakes just for the occasion.”
    She led Tess away into the haven of women’s company, a haven that was comprehensive in providing both companionship and work. Sonia’s mother arrived with a pair of adolescent identical twin girls with bronze-gold hair. The girls struggled along in her wake, each with a slender antelope slung over her shoulders and a bow and quiver of arrows strapped onto her belt. Mother Orzhekov was a small, thin woman of vast energy, whose features were easily as stern as her nephew’s. She welcomed Tess with sober grace and invested her into the family, all without a particle of discomfiture at their lack of any common language. But by the end of the evening, Tess had learned perhaps fifty words of khush and could thank the matriarch in her own tongue, a feat which pleased the entire family immensely: Mother Orzhekov, her three grown daughters and their husbands and ten children, her dead daughter’s husband and two children, and her son, Yuri, two great-nephews, three grand-nieces and a half dozen assorted other family members.
    Once accepted into the Orzhekov tent, Tess discovered quickly enough that her place in the tribe itself was established and unshakable. There was plenty of work for the women, but never too much because it was shared. If the men treated her with distant interest and an intense reserve, the women shamelessly enjoyed her company and monopolized her time. The children, of course, were always underfoot. Tess never had to be alone and never asked to be. However solitary she had lived at Univerzita Karlova in Prague, she had imposed it on herself because of her brother’s name and reputation. But what was the Chapaliian Empire to these people? They did not even know it existed. The Prince of Jeds was just a name; that Bakhtiian, Yuri, and Sonia had been to Jeds mattered little to anyone else, except as a curiosity. She felt free.
    Seven days after her arrival she felt confident enough with her khush to venture out alone at dusk. She first took the short side trip to survey the Chapalii tents. The Chapalii stayed inside, mostly, and she did not yet want to attempt to bully her way into their most intimate territory—after