by Sarah Ash
He had even begun to wonder if the scientist had unintentionally poisoned his father. Kazimir had been working for a wealthy, intimidatingly powerful patron desperate for a remedy for a fast-worsening condition. The temptation to hurry the process, to experiment and take risks, must have been overwhelming. But the entries in the ledger did not read like the writings of a man with a grudge.
The passage that had intrigued him most described an experiment using “Drakhaon’s blood.” But acid or rot had eaten away one side of the page, leaving a tantalizingly incomplete account. It seemed that Kazimir had been using his father’s blood—but in what quantities and to what precise purpose, he could not be certain.
Eyes aching from trying to decipher the blurred text, Gavril laid the ledger down. The only one who could help him was Kazimir himself. And no one knew where he had gone. Except maybe . . .
“Lilias,” he said aloud.
It was time to accept her invitation to tea.
“Welcome, my lord.” Dysis ushered Gavril into an oriel-windowed room, lit by the low, rich light of the dipping sun. “My mistress is waiting to receive you.”
The walls were hung with subtly dyed silks in peony shades of cream, rose, and moss. There was no trace here of savage hunting tapestries. Little cushions, fringed and tasseled, were strewn over the long, low sofas. Porcelain bowls, white, gold, and pink, filled with sugared almonds and crystallized rose and violet petals, were placed on the mosaic tops of little tables; Lilias obviously had a sweet tooth. And a volume or two lay open beside the bowls of sweets, as if Lilias had been disturbed at her reading; the uppermost book was the fashionable Autumn Leaves of the Muscobar poet and philosopher Solovei.
“Please sit, my lord.” Lilias was reclining on a sofa. She was wearing a long, loose-fitting gown of turquoise silk intricately embroidered with peacock eyes and fantails. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Gavril remembered salons like this in Vermeille: bowls of scented tea, almond petits fours, witticisms, discreet laughter drifting from the shaded terraces. In Vermeille he would have been able to relax and enjoy the flirtatious glances, the clever wordplay. But this was Azhkendir and there was too much at stake; he had hazarded a great deal on the outcome of this meeting.
“I have jasmine tea or vervain. Which would you prefer?”
“Jasmine.”
Lilias lifted a little teapot and poured the pale, fragrant tea into a porcelain bowl. Leaning forward, she handed the bowl to Gavril.
“Take care. It’s very hot.” Her fingertips brushed his as he took the bowl from her. A single jasmine flower floated on the surface of the steaming liquid.
“We need to talk, Madame Arbelian,” he said.
“I’m glad you see it that way too.” Lilias smiled at him. The strident, needy tone he had heard at the reading of the will had been smoothed away. “But please don’t be so formal. Call me Lilias.”
“Only if you will call me Gavril.” He had learned how to play these little exchanges of gallantry on summer evenings at the soirées of Elysia’s friends. He had enjoyed their gently seductive teasing, their playfully adoring looks and sighs. There it had all been a flattering, pleasurable game. But now he was in no mood for playing games.
“So, Gavril,” she said, “where shall we start?”
He took in a deep breath. “How did my father come to employ Altan Kazimir?”
“Your father was in Mirom on state business. To sign the Treaty of Accord with Muscobar. He met Kazimir at the university, I believe. They shared a passion for astronomy. The nights are so clear in Azhkendir and the constellations are, they tell me, easier to chart.” She had shown no reaction to the name of Kazimir. “Have you ever been to Mirom, Gavril?”
Gavril shook his head.
“Oh, you must visit Mirom. It is such a beautiful city. But then, it’s my home; for me it is the most beautiful place in the world. I imagine you feel the same way about Vermeille?” Lilias smiled at him again. “Your father attended a reception at the Winter Palace. I happened to be there with Count Velemir, an old friend of mine. When I was introduced to your father there was . . . an instant rapport. When he asked me to come back to Azhkendir with him, naturally I accepted.”
Velemir. He had heard that name before. But where?
“You gave up Mirom society to come here?”
“One can grow tired of so many balls, ballets, concerts,” she said lightly. But Gavril saw that though her lips smiled, her eyes were shadowed, giving nothing away. Had she left Mirom to escape a tiresome relationship . . . or a court scandal? There was more, so much more to Lilias Arbelian than she was prepared to reveal to him.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” she said. “You and I, both strangers in a strange land.”
The sun was setting, its red light burning through the oriel windows like autumn bonfires.
“I want to find Kazimir, Lilias.”
“And you think I know where he is?” One plucked eyebrow rose eloquently upward. “Kostya’s been slandering me again, hasn’t he? Oh, I was lonely, I don’t deny it. Altan Kazimir was lonely too, so far from his friends and colleagues in Mirom. You’ve only been here a few days, Gavril. When the winter sets in, this drafty kastel can feel like a prison.” Her eyes brimmed with sudden tears. “Was it so wrong to spend time together? To have a friend of my own to talk of happier times in Mirom?”
“So you have no idea where he went?” Gavril was determined not to let her distract him from the purpose of his visit.
“My guess is he returned to Mirom. He was lucky to escape with his life. Kostya sent the druzhina after him.”
“Mirom.” The mood of despair was descending again, dark as a winter fog. Mirom was—if Kostya was to be believed—as inaccessible as Vermeille until the thaw came.
“And Kazimir never talked of his work with you?” He could feel a muscle had begun to twitch to the side of his mouth. No one else must ever know. Recklessly, he ignored his father’s warning. “He never discussed the elixir?”
“With me?” Lilias set down the little bowl of tea. A sudden horrible thought crossed Gavril’s mind. She had not even tasted her tea, and it was so exotically perfumed that the strong flavor could easily have disguised the bitterness of poison. “Why?”
He swallowed hard, his mouth dry with apprehension. Was this how the assassin had disabled his father, leaving him weak, vulnerable to attack? And hadn’t Lilias—for all her pleasant small talk—stated quite openly that she expected her child to inherit?
“I—I need the elixir,” he said hoarsely.
“But I thought you knew. Your father destroyed it,” she said, staring at him. “The night of the . . . the misunderstanding. He went storming into Kazimir’s laboratory and smashed every bottle, every phial. He accused Kazimir of trying to poison him.”
Gavril stared at her, speechless. So it was his father who had destroyed the elixir in a fit of jealous rage. His last hope of finding a cure in Azhkendir was gone.
“Ah,” she said softly. “Now I understand. It’s started, hasn’t it?”
“How can you tell?” he asked, as softly as she.
“Oh, little things that remind me of Volkh. It’s not just your hands, your hair, your eyes. There’s a kind of . . . darkness about you.”
“You must be mistaken,” he said coldly.
“Why fight it, Gavril?” Her voice had become softer, almost seductive. “Think of the power you have inherited. Power that could make you master of the whole continent.”
“I don’t want that kind of power!” Gavril cried.
“Then you are as much of a fool as your father.” For a single moment, all pretense melted away, and he glimpsed an unmistakable glint of contempt in her languorous green gaze. “Volkh could have conquered Tielen, Khitari, Muscobar; he could have crushed the Grand Duke and ridden into Mirom in triumph. But what did he do? He denied his true nature, he denied his powers. And that was his weakness. The fatal weakness that led to his downfall.”
“But he was a monster.”
“Power can be quite an aphrodisiac, Gavril.”
Gavril stared at Lilias, at a loss for words. If he was not mistaken, his father’s mistress was making him some kind of sexual overture. There was nothing more to be gained from this meeting. If he had hoped to forge some kind of truce between them, he had failed.
“More tea, madame?” Dysis appeared in the doorway.
“Did I ask for more tea? I think not!” Lilias snapped.
Gavril, grateful for the distraction, curtly thanked Lilias for her hospitality and withdrew.
“You must excuse my mistress, my lord,” Dysis whispered as she opened the outer door for him. “These last days of pregnancy have made her very irritable. She says things she would not normally dream of saying. . . .”
Outside, a servant was lighting oil lamps in the shadowed passageway. Autumn nights came fast in Azhkendir.
A stormwind had begun to whine outside the kastel, rattling shutters and gusting spatters of sleet against the windowpanes. Gavril stopped at a narrow window and gazed out into the rapidly darkening night, his breath clouding the cold glass.
A few streaks of bloodred light still gashed the night sky, casting a lurid glow across the distant ridge of jagged mountain peaks. The prospect chilled his spirit.
“There’s a kind of darkness about you . . .”
Was it true? Was it so obvious? Was it already too late to stop it happening?
Back in his chamber, he poured water from the jug into the bowl and splashed his face. As he plunged his hands into the clear water, the darkness of his fingernails caught his eye. The stains of blue were still there, dark as bruising.
He thrust his hands into the water again, frantically scrubbing at his nails with a sliver of soap. When he raised his fingers from the bowl, he saw that all his efforts had been to no avail: each fingernail was still as blue as ground cobalt.
With a cry of frustration, he took up the empty water jug and brought it crashing down on the floor. Fragments of pottery and drops of water spattered the dressing room.
Shaking with rage, he stood staring down at the shattered jug. What was happening to him?
Gavril leaned his burning forehead against the cold, rough stone of the wall, trying to conjure up memories of Astasia Orlova, her voice, the scent of her hair. . . .
Memories of a time when he had never heard of Azhkendir.
“Astasia,” he whispered.
By the light of a little lantern, he sketched swiftly, several times stopping to dash down his pen and crush the paper in his hand and start again.
But at last the obsessive penstrokes began to shape a portrait that pleased him: the outline of her face; her sweet, dark eyes with their silky lashes; her mouth, gravely smiling—then curving upward with spontaneous pleasure when she spoke of dancing. . . .
If Kazimir had gone back to Mirom, then Mirom was the place he must go.
He piled on extra layers of clothes against the bitter cold and lay down on the bed to wait for midnight.
“Gavril . . .”
The air in the bedchamber had turned freezingly cold. Gavril blinked in the darkness, knowing he was no longer alone.
“You still do not understand, my son.”
The stern voice shivered through his mind. The tall spirit-wraith materialized at his bedside, a shadow towering over him, limned in silver moonlight.
“Watch—and learn.”
And then, as if a dark gauze has been peeled away from his vision, Gavril sees he is in the hall of the East Wing. The oriel window is whole; vast gold-framed paintings hang on the walls.
Smoke begins to drift into the hall below.
Men are shouting, women screaming.
“They’re in! They’ve broken in!”
“Where’s Volkh? Get him to safety! For God’s sake get him out of here!”
Two women come running into the hall. One carries a little child in her arms.
“Volkh! Where are you?” cries the other. “Dear God—where is he? Have they found him?” Her voice breaks with anguish.
“Drakhys, you must hide.”
The little child starts to cry. The woman clutches him closer to her.
“Please come with me, Drakhys. Come now.”
“I can’t go without Volkh. I must know he is safe.”
The glass in the oriel window shatters. Men clamber in, men with torches and bloodstained sabers. In a blizzard of wings, great white owls swoop into the hall, screeching and shrieking.
“Go, my lady!” begs the woman with the child.
Men of the druzhina hurry in, wielding sabers and axes. Metal blades clang and clash. The great owls come scything down on them, tearing at their heads and shoulders with hooked claws and beaks.
Smoke billows into the hall. The invaders have set torches to the tapestries, and the glow of flames reddens the smoky air.
The druzhina are falling back now, outnumbered. One warrior starts to scream, a horrible, shrill sound, as a snow owl claws his face, beak pecking at his eyes till the blood streams down like crimson tears.
“Make it stop, Father,” Gavril pleads. “I’ve seen enough.”
“No, not enough, not nearly enough.” The harsh voice is suddenly choked with emotion.
A man stands in the broken frame of the great window, watching as, one by one, the druzhina fall. His hair glints in the torchlight, burnished dark gold. With a curling whistle, he raises his arm and the owls fly to him, perching on his wrist, his shoulders. Now their white feathers are bloodied and tattered, but their great golden eyes gleam like burning stars through the smoke.
Gavril cannot take his eyes off the man. There is a radiance about him, an unnatural golden glimmer. When he moves forward, Gavril sees that his eyes gleam with the same blank, gold light as the owls’. He moves like a man possessed.
“Where is your son, Drakhys?” he asks. His voice echoes with the cold, cruel ring of metal. With a shock, Gavril sees that he is no scarred warlord but young, scarcely older than himself. “Give him to me and I will spare your household.”
The Drakhys, who has stood immobile with shock, suddenly bends down and seizes a pike from the hands of one of her dying druzhina.
“Give my son to you, Stavyor Arkhel?” Her words burn with scorn. “I would rather kill him myself.”
From elsewhere in the kastel come distant screams and the crackle of flames.
“It is not your fault you have borne a monster, Drakhys. But monsters must be destroyed. I cannot allow your boy to grow to manhood. He must die.”
“Do what you want with me,” the Drakhys flings back, “but you will never make me betray my son.”
“So be it. Kill them. Kill them all.”
And Stavyor Arkhel turns away with a shrug.
Smoke billows up, clouding Gavril’s sight. By the flamelight he sees the Drakhys retreating, trying to defend herself and her companion from the advancing Arkhel warriors, fiercely jabbing and swinging the pike like a scythe. But they are outnumbered. And when the Arkhels seize the child from the mother, when she begins to scream, he cannot look anymore and, tears streaming down his cheeks, hides his face in his hands.
Then comes the silence.
Reluctantly, Gavril forces himself to look, peering between his fingers.
The two women lie sprawled on the tiles below, the child beside them. A little boy, Gavril sees now, with barley-fair hair. Daylight illuminates a scene of carnage: cinders and smoke choke the air, bodies lie stiffening in their own blood . . .
“No more,” he says again, his voice breaking. “Please, Father.”
“Watch,” comes back the inexorable reply.
A man hurries into the hall below, stumbling in his haste, a young soldier, one of the druzhina, with barley-fair hair. When he sees the women and the child, he drops to his knees. He picks up the child in his arms, cradling it, hugging it to his breast, weeping, crying. But although Gavril can see his mouth working, shouting out word
s of grief and fury, he can no longer hear a sound. The ghost images begin to waver, to evaporate like moorland mist. When Gavril blinks his own tears away, he sees nothing below but darkness and the faint, fast-fading traces of moonlight.
“Who were they?” he asks aloud, his voice still unsteady, although he has already guessed the half of it.
Beside him he can still sense the stern presence of his father’s spirit-wraith, a glimmering shadow.
“Marya Nagarian, my mother. And her companion Zabava Torzianin.”
“Torzianin? But isn’t that Kostya’s name?”
“Zabava was his wife. The boy was little Kostya, Kostyusha, his only son. Now do you understand?”
Gavril nods miserably. “And you?”
“I ran back from the safety of the passageway to call to my mother, to beg her to hurry. But I was too late.”
The bitterness in his father’s voice makes his heart ache.
“They murdered her, Gavril. The Arkhels murdered my mother.”
“No more, Father.”
“You know Jaromir Arkhel is alive. Seek him out. Kill him. Before he kills you.”
“Enough!” Gavril cries, his voice echoing, raw in his own ears. “No more Seeings. Let me be. Let me be!”
After a while he raised his head. He was alone. It was well past midnight. The only sounds still audible in Kastel Drakhaon now were the whine of the wind from the moors and the distant, monotonous tread of the sentries on night watch.
If he was to get away before the kastel woke to a new dawn, he must hurry. Taking a lantern, he raised the hunting tapestry and opened the secret door.
Darkness entombed him, smelling of dust and mold. He faltered a moment. And then, by his lantern candle, he saw the traces of his and Kiukiu’s footprints in the dust on the floor of the secret passageway.
A rush of chill air hit him as he entered the cavernous hallway of the East Wing. A faint trace of moonlight, pale as phosphorus, outlined the great window, shining through the broken panes onto the tiled floor beneath.
The light from his lantern illuminated traces in the dust below. Footprints . . . and stains. A telltale little trail of brown spots leading away into the gloom. Old bloodstains?