by Sarah Ash
She knelt down and began to pick up the discarded clothes. Until now she had not wanted to touch anything, to maintain the illusion that Gavril had only just left the room and would—at any moment—return.
Now, without thinking, she found herself stroking a crumpled shirt against her cheek.
The collar betrayed a rim of grime, and the cuffs were frayed.
“Where are you, Gavril?” she whispered.
As her barouche swept into the grounds of the Villa Orlova, Elysia found herself surrounded by chaos and confusion; servants and guards swarmed to and fro, carrying luggage in and out of carriages.
Elysia climbed out onto the gravel drive and stared about her, perplexed.
“Madame Andar!” A young officer in a dazzling white uniform came hurrying up. Not till he had reached her did she recognize Andrei Orlov, his wild dark curls slicked down with pomade, plumed helmet tucked under one arm.
“What is going on, altesse?”
“I am afraid you find us in some disarray, Madame Andar. We have had to alter our travel plans. We shall be returning to Muscobar overland.”
“Oh?” Elysia said, unsure if this were good news or not.
“You may have heard that Prince Eugene’s fleet has been on maneuvers in the Straits? There’s been a little misunderstanding over the matter of the herring grounds.” How reassuringly he spoke, Elysia thought, already well-trained in the use of the gilded lies of diplomacy. “A disputed treaty. I’m sure it will all be settled soon.”
Elysia nodded. Somewhere out in the Straits, the navies of Tielen and Muscobar were blasting each other to matchwood with cannon.
“Such a silly business.” The Grand Duchess appeared on the steps, leaning on Astasia’s arm. “And for this we have to bundle ourselves into carriages. In this heat!”
“Never mind, Mama, you know how you hate the sea,” said Astasia.
“But it’s so humiliating,” complained the duchess, “to be obliged to alter one’s plans all because of herring. And you, Andrei, now you tell me you’re going to join the fleet? How could you upset your poor mother so?”
“I must do my duty, Mama!” Andrei said gaily.
“But this isn’t a game. You could get killed.” The Grand Duchess dabbed at her eyes with a tiny lace handkerchief.
“There’s always been an Orlov in the navy, Mama. Besides, the uniform of rear admiral impresses all the girls!” And, flashing his mother a wicked grin, Andrei swung nimbly up into the saddle.
“If only we could arrange a match for you with Prince Eugene, Astasia,” murmured the Grand Duchess, “and bring all this unpleasantness to an end.”
Astasia pulled a face behind her mother’s back.
Gilded carriages, drawn by teams of six white-plumed horses, clattered along the stony roads through the fields and olive trees, escorted by a troop of the White Guard, harnesses jingling, their helmets and breastplates dazzling in the sun.
It was hot, dusty, and very dry. Elysia gazed listlessly through the window of the carriage and saw the farmworkers in the fields sweating to bring in the last of the harvest. As the road climbed slowly into the foothills, the charred cornfields and olive groves gave way to vineyards. But the dust still blew into the carriage, drying her mouth and throat, making her eyes sting.
There had been some confusion in etiquette as to where to place Elysia in the ducal party. As portrait painter, her place was with the servants—yet as wife to the late Drakhaon, she was only a little lower in rank to the Grand Duchess herself. Eventually they had put her in the second carriage with Astasia, her governess Eupraxia, and the ancient Countess Ilyanova who was deaf as a post.
“Look, Tasia, there goes your brother,” Eupraxia exclaimed for the third time, pointing out of the window and waving. “Yoo-hoo, Andrei! Now he’s saluting us. How handsome he looks in his uniform.”
“I don’t see why he should be allowed to ride and not me,” complained Astasia.
“My dear, it is not seemly.” Eupraxia began to dab at her temples and neck with a handkerchief impregnated with a sickly sweet floral water.
“Seemly,” repeated Astasia in disgusted tones. “A word I place in the same category as obligation and filial duty.”
Elysia turned her head to look out of the window, hoping Eupraxia would not attempt to bring her into the conversation.
“Especially the kind of filial duty that could compel me to marry a pompous bore from Tielen.”
“Is that any way to speak of a prospective husband? And in front of Countess Ilyanova?”
“She can’t hear a word,” Astasia said. “Can you, countess?”
“Oppressively hot, my dear,” said the countess, nodding her wizened head and smiling.
“Why did Mama suggest Prince Eugene? He’s killed off one wife already.”
“The poor woman died in childbirth,” Eupraxia protested.
“And he must be well past thirty. Middle-aged. I’ll bet he has a receding hairline and a paunch by now.” Astasia turned to Elysia, pleading. “Oh, dear Madame Andar, couldn’t you make my portrait exceedingly ugly? Give me a squint and a dowager’s hump? And a gap in my front teeth?”
“Have you ever been introduced to Prince Eugene?” Elysia asked, unable to prevent herself from smiling.
“Three or four years ago.”
“So he might wonder how you had come to acquire so many imperfections in so short a time.”
“But suppose Mama persuades Papa to approach Prince Eugene? Why must I be a pawn in this game of strategy?”
“It isn’t your place, Tasia, to question your parents’ decisions,” Eupraxia said sternly.
The carriage wheels encountered a pothole and they were all flung violently to one side.
“And I hear that Tielen is infested with mosquitoes every summer,” Astasia said, righting herself. “Didn’t the prince have the marshlands drained for the building of his palace at Swanholm? And didn’t hundreds of workers die of the sweating sickness? How could I live in a place that’s been the cause of so much misery?”
But Eupraxia had closed her eyes and appeared to be sound asleep. Elysia wondered how many times the governess had resorted to this strategy to avoid Astasia’s awkward questions.
Astasia gave a sharp sigh.
“Madame Andar,” she said after several minutes’ silence. “Do you truly believe your son has been kidnapped?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Elysia said, startled at the sudden change of conversation. “But I hope that the Grand Duke will use his influence to help him.”
Astasia was gazing at her, her dark eyes intense.
“But you think he is still alive?”
“My husband had many enemies who wished him dead. But Gavril . . .” Her voice faltered in spite of herself.
The girl put out one delicate hand, laying it on her arm in a gesture of sympathy. “My dear Madame Andar, I’m so sorry, that was insensitive of me.”
Elysia saw with a shock of surprise that Astasia’s eyes were brimming with unshed tears. Now she was sure of it: Astasia Orlova entertained genuine feelings for Gavril.
“I promise you,” Astasia said in a low voice that burned with emotion, “that I will persuade Papa to do all in his power to ensure your son’s safety.”
Elysia nodded, biting her lip. But in her heart a little voice whispered, If it is not already too late . . .
CHAPTER 7
Gavril took the little key Avorian had given him, turned it in the lock, and opened the lid of his father’s wooden casket.
No glint of gold or jewels met his eyes. Only a paper, carefully folded, tied with silken ribbons and sealed.
And when he tore open the seal and unfolded the paper, he saw that it was not meticulously penned by an anonymous legal clerk, but written in hurried, erratic strokes that were difficult to decipher, as though dashed off in desperate haste:
To my only son, Gavril.
If I am dead when you read this letter, Gavril, you will alr
eady be becoming Drakhaon. Look at your nails. Can you see blue ridges thickening above the quick?
Gavril glanced down at his hands. He placed the letter down on the bed and raised his hands to the oil lamp, intently examining his fingernails. There were the faint, darkish shadows Kostya had shown him, barely discernible above the quicks . . . but ridges?
Gavril picked up the letter again.
Look closely in the mirror. Your brows. Are they thicker? Are there stray hairs that are more blue than black? Examine your moods of the last few weeks. Have you lost your temper? Have you felt surges of irrational anger? Have the dark dreams begun yet? If you have experienced any of these, my son, it has begun. And there is no reversing it.
Gavril wanted to stop reading—but he could not drag his eyes from the page. And as he read on, he began to hear again in his mind that hoarse voice speaking the words, chill as a winter’s night:
You may have dismissed as merely fanciful the stories my people tell of dark wings beating overhead in the night or the mist that settled over the Arkhel lands, the mist that sparkled like shattered stars and withered all who breathed in its poisonous vapors, both man and beast alike. But it is the gift and the curse of the Drakhaons to wield such devastating forces, and my people will fear and respect you for the burning Nagarian blood that runs in your veins and the Drakhaoul that inhabits the darkest recesses of your soul.
What they will not tell you is that there is a terrible price to pay. Every time you let the Drakhaoul within you take possession, you will become less human. Poisons are released into your blood: poisons that will change you, both in body and soul.
Have they told you the legend of the Drakhaon’s Brides? Monstrous though the tale may seem to you, there is a horrible truth in it. For the only way to retain our human appearance is to accept the Drakhaon’s traditional tribute and ingest fresh human blood. Innocent blood. At first, Gavril, I confess that I was forced to comply with tradition. And then, sickened by the inhuman practice, I refused to continue.
No matter what pressures and persuasions my people may use upon you, you must resist with all your strength the urge to use your powers.
I captured one of the Spirit Singers, the Guslyars of the House of Arkhel, in the hope that he might be persuaded to exorcise the creature. But, blinded by clan loyalty, he refused to comply with my wishes. He paid the ultimate price for his obstinacy.
I have spent these last years searching for a cure, for a way to halt the cruel degeneration that has altered me—even as it did with my father and his father before him—while I still have some shreds of humanity left. So that I can bequeath to you, my son, a possibility of hope that things may be changed for you and your children.
To this end, I have brought Doctor Altan Kazimir to Azhkendir. Doctor Kazimir is a distinguished doctor of science with a reputation in Mirom for using unconventional methods. To him and him alone I have entrusted the secrets of my powers—and my weakness. Together we are working to determine if the degenerative effects of the Nagarian blood can be arrested—or at least, effectively repressed.
No one else must ever know. Because of this, I have taken the precaution, as has Doctor Kazimir, to encrypt the results of his experiments and observations. When he has completed his work, the results and the code to break the encryption will be given to my lawyer Oris Avorian, and sealed with these papers in this casket.
Codes? Encryptions? Gavril held the letter up to the lamp, looking for hidden script that remotely resembled scientific formulae or encoded writings. But there was nothing to be seen but his father’s handwriting.
Pools of early morning sunlight, emerald and blood-ruby, glimmered on the polished wooden floor of the tower room from diamond-paned windows, each ornamented with borders of painted glass: twisting garlands of ivy and wild rose.
“This is the Kalika Tower,” Kostya said as he ushered Gavril in. “Your father liked to work here undisturbed. We’ve left it just as he left it . . . that night.”
Papers tied in neat bundles were piled on one corner of the desk. A map lay spread out, pens, rulers, and an open inkwell close by, as if Lord Volkh had just walked out of the room and might return at any moment.
Gavril went to the desk and feverishly started to leaf through the papers, hoping to discover Doctor Kazimir’s encryptions. But all he found was page after page of estate accounts.
Where could his father have left them, if not in his study?
There were books too, ancient volumes with yellowed pages. Gavril picked one up, shaking it to see if any hidden papers fell out. The title proclaimed it to be Through Uncharted Seas: A Sailor’s Account of a Perilous Voyage of Exploration. Another book was entitled Travels in the Westward Isles, and a third, with a red ribbon used as a page marker, Ty Nagar: Land of the Serpent God.
“What was my father doing in here?” he asked, distracted from his search. “Was he planning a journey?”
“Maybe.”
“And this, what’s this?” Gavril bent over the outspread map. “A star chart?”
The penmanship on the map was intricate, neat and skillful. Differently colored inks marked out constellations and planets. So his father had been in the process of making a detailed map of the skies above, the winter skies of Azhkendir? This scholarly activity seemed strangely at odds with Volkh Nagarian the savage warlord.
“Why was my father making this chart?”
Kostya shrugged. “What your father did here was his own business. Although of late, he and Doctor Kazimir liked to watch the stars from the roof. The telescopes are still up there, behind the battlements.”
Kazimir. The Mirom doctor of science mentioned in his father’s letter.
“I don’t believe I’ve met Doctor Kazimir yet,” he said as casually as he could.
Kostya’s face darkened.
“We’re still searching for him. God knows why your father brought him here all the way from Mirom. He was reputed to be a great scholar. Scholar!” Kostya spat. “He turned out to be a great drinker. And womanizer.”
“And what was Doctor Kazimir’s area of expertise?”
Kostya shrugged again. “Making foul smells and smoke. Sometimes the East Wing stank like a latrine. And then there were the noises. Whistlings. Bangs. As if he’d let loose all the fiends from hell.”
“East Wing? I haven’t been shown an East Wing.”
“It’s been empty since the last Arkhel raid,” said Kostya cryptically. “That was why your father gave it to Doctor Kazimir. So he could work there undisturbed.”
“But what was he doing in there?”
“It was good enough for me that my lord chose to employ him. I never questioned my lord’s motives. All I know is that things went from bad to worse when Kazimir came.”
“What things?” Gavril would not be fobbed off this time by Kostya’s hints and allusions.
“Lord Volkh’s temper, for one. At first he spent long hours with Kazimir, doors locked, no one to be admitted. Then one day, everything changed. There was a quarrel. A terrible quarrel. He told Kazimir to go before he set the hounds on him. Before he strangled him with his bare hands.”
“And Kazimir went?”
“Ah, but did he?”
“You think he’s still here in Azhkendir? Why would he stay here?”
“She has friends. Allies.”
“She? Lilias? They quarreled over Lilias?”
“He was seen. Leaving her chambers. She denied it, of course. But once my lord found out . . .”
Gavril nodded. He had not missed the unspoken allegation in Kostya’s words. Whose child was Lilias carrying? His father’s? Or the absent Kazimir’s?
“So Doctor Kazimir is a suspect in my father’s murder?”
“He had motive enough.”
“How old is he, this Kazimir?” Gavril asked, trying to make the question sound casual.
“Somewhere between thirty and forty,” Kostya said, scowling. “Difficult to tell with these scholars. All that peering
at books in libraries gives them a pallid, unhealthy look.”
Not a young man, then. Certainly not that gold-haired young man from his vision, with eyes seared with hatred and fear. But his unseen accomplice, maybe . . .
“And have his rooms been searched?”
“They were one of the first places we looked. No trace, of course. We searched her rooms as well. She wasn’t pleased.”
“Show me the roof.”
As soon as Kostya’s back was turned, Gavril swiftly slipped pen, ink, and paper into his jacket. At least he now had the means to write a letter.
A little arched doorway led to a winding spiral stair. The steps were narrow, uneven and worn smooth. It was necessary to lean into the wall against the roughness of the stone to avoid slipping.
A draft of cold wind slapped Gavril in the face as Kostya opened the door at the top. Breathless from the climb, Gavril stepped out onto the landing—and gasped at what he saw.
They were on the roof of the tallest of all the kastel towers, and spread beneath them, stretching far into the cloudy distance, was a dizzying prospect of Azhkendir.
“Your father’s lands, Lord Gavril,” Kostya said. “And now all this is yours.”
Gavril went to the high battlements and leaned his elbows on the gnarled stone, gazing out at his inheritance.
“All this?”
It was a wilderness. Mountain and moorland, forest and fell, with little sign of human habitation. Overhead, wind-driven clouds scudded through a gray and lowering sky.
Even as he stared out, a feeling of desolation overwhelmed him, chill as the wind, gray as the colorless sky. How could he ever hope to live here? Where were the vivid colors of the Smarnan landscape, the constantly shifting play of the sunlight on the sea? There might be some technical challenge for a painter in charting the earthy tones of the outcrops of craggy stone or mountain screes—or the pine greens of the forests—but the wintry bleakness of the scene repelled him.