by Sarah Ash
“She was never a slut!”
“No. Afimia may have lacked one grain of sense in her pretty head, but she was never a bad girl. Sweet-natured, yes. But irresponsible, foolish—”
“So why did they call her that? Just to provoke me?”
Sosia looked up at Kiukiu. The expression in her eyes made Kiukiu shiver.
“You had to know the truth one day. And now that Lord Volkh is dead, maybe it’s time to tell it. Your mother wasn’t raped by the Arkhels. She met your father by chance in the forest and—silly girl—she fell in love with him.”
“With Lord Arkhel?” Kiukiu whispered.
“With one of his followers, Kiukiu; pay attention!” snapped Sosia. “His name was Malkh. That’s all I know.”
“Malkh.” Kiukiu repeated the unfamiliar name to herself. She was the daughter of a man called Malkh.
“They found him in her bed one night. Dragged him out, put him to the torture. To make him betray his master, Lord Stavyor. Then they killed him. They made her watch. I’ll never forget his screams . . . or hers.” Sosia’s eyes had gone cold and dark as moorland mists. “I thought she would miscarry. But though her wits never returned, she carried you to nine months. After you were born, she just faded away. She would sit singing to you in a strange, soft voice, singing and smiling, smiling and singing . . . my poor sweet-natured Afimia. When the winter snows came, she wandered out into the forest, saying she was going to meet your father. No one thought to stop her, they just thought she was talking her usual nonsense. They found her the next day, frozen to death. You were just a few months old.”
Kiukiu sat staring at Sosia. She could feel tears prickling in her eyes, but they would not come. She was numb, cold as her long-dead mother. She could see the endless canopy of snow-laden forest branches, feel the sting of the bitter cold, the crunch of hard-frozen snow beneath her trudging feet . . .
“I had to fight for you, Kiukiu. For your life.”
“What?” Kiukiu blinked away the white chill of the snow-mantled forests.
“The druzhina wanted you dead.”
“Because I was an Arkhel bastard child?”
“They urged Lord Volkh to have you killed.”
“A baby. What harm could a little baby have done?”
“Babies grow up.”
“So why did Lord Volkh spare me?”
“He said a curious thing. It was late at night and you were kicking and cooing in your crib near the fire when he came in. His face was dark as thunder. I was so terrified I didn’t know what to do. His hand was outstretched and I feared, I feared he was about to—”
“To do what?” Kiukiu could see terror gleaming in her aunt’s eyes, pale as the glow of the long-ago firelight.
“Be thankful, child, that you never had to see the Drakhaon wield his powers.” Sosia gave a dry little shudder.
The last time Lord Volkh had tried to summon his powers, Kiukiu thought, shuddering too, he had been so weakened by poison that they had failed him.
“But all he did was touch your face. Those powerful fingers gently stroking the cheek of a child in a cradle. And he said . . . I’ve never forgotten what he said.”
Kiukiu found she had been unconsciously touching her cheek, as if trying to recall that long-ago firelit night. Strange benediction . . .
“What did he say, Auntie?”
“He said, ‘There will be no more songs for the House of Arkhel. But one day, perhaps, this child will use her inheritance for the good of my House.’”
“My inheritance?” Kiukiu shook her head, utterly puzzled. “What inheritance? What did he mean?”
“Does one question the Drakhaon?” Sosia said sharply. “I did not dare then; I would not dare to presume now. It was not often in Lord Volkh’s nature to show mercy. Never forget that he spared your life. You have a debt of loyalty to the House of Nagarian. . . .”
“To Lord Gavril,” Kiukiu murmured, almost to herself.
“But there are members of his household with long memories, Kiukiu. Now that Lord Volkh is gone, there is no one to protect you. There are those in the druzhina who still regard you as a threat.”
“Me?” Kiukiu stared at Sosia, astonished. “A threat?”
“Bogatyr Kostya still suspects you. He thinks you sympathize with the Arkhels.”
“How can I?” The unfairness of the suspicion astounded Kiukiu. “I didn’t know!”
“So I told him when he came storming round after Lord Volkh’s death, looking for you.”
“Kostya c-came looking for me?” Kiukiu felt her throat go dry with fear. The druzhina, enraged beyond reason with grief for their lord’s death, could have imprisoned her, tortured her—and all because she had Arkhel blood in her veins.
“He has a long memory. That’s why I’ve had to go on telling the lies.” Sosia began to weep again. “Dishonoring your father’s memory. Saying he violated your mother. When he was just a reckless young fool, head over heels in love with the wrong girl. With my poor Afimia.”
Kiukiu could only nod her head, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions. It was a kind of consolation to know now that she was not the product of a random act of violence but a child of love, doomed love. But she could not begin to take in the full import of Sosia’s tale. She only knew nothing would ever be the same.
“And now you must forget everything I’ve told you.” Sosia wiped her eyes on the edge of her apron.
“Forget?” Dismayed, Kiukiu rose to her feet. “Why must I forget?”
“Because of Bogatyr Kostya. And all the others who hate the very name of Arkhel.”
“But I would never have harmed Lord Volkh!” Kiukiu cried. “You know that, Auntie Sosia, you know I—”
“I know it,” Sosia said. “But if you want to stay here, you’ll have to work extra hard to prove your loyalty. No slipping out for a quick kiss and a cuddle. That sort of carrying-on can be misinterpreted. Besides, after what became of your mother,” she said sternly, “I hope you have the sense to stay well away from young men, Kiukiu.”
Kiukiu hung her head. She hoped Sosia would assume she was ashamed. She hoped there would be no more questions about where she’d been and who she’d been with.
“Yes, Auntie, I promise. I’ll go back to the kitchens now.”
“One more word of warning,” Sosia said, catching hold of her by the wrist. “That Ilsi’s a tricky piece of work. I’d have dismissed her months ago if she weren’t such a good little cook. She doesn’t like to be crossed. I’m not saying she didn’t speak out of turn; she had no business to talk to you like that. But you attacked her, Kiukiu. She won’t forget that in a hurry. She’ll do all she can to get back at you. Be on your guard, girl. I won’t always be around to defend you.”
Kiukiu dazedly stared at her aunt. Ilsi had never been her friend—but her enemy? Would Ilsi be watching her all the time now, waiting to catch her? A feeling of dread seeped into her stomach. She didn’t want to have to face the other servants in the kitchens. She wanted to go and hide in her room, to burrow into her bed and pull the covers up over her head.
Little light filtered into the basement, even at midday. In the perpetual gloom of the scullery, Kiukiu found it hard to tell whether the piles of plates she had been set to wash were clean or not. Her hands were wrinkled and swollen with repeated plunging into the greasy water. But she endured Sosia’s punishment without complaining; at least being confined to scullery duties meant she did not have to meet Ilsi or Ninusha . . . just yet.
Malkh. I am the daughter of a man called Malkh. She tried to push what Sosia had told her last night out of her mind but his name kept returning, like a monotonous refrain. She wished Sosia had not told her. For every time she remembered his name, she remembered that he had died in agony, tortured by the druzhina into betraying his own clan. . . .
I am the daughter of a traitor called Malkh.
She scrubbed angrily at the trencher she was holding. Why wouldn’t the dried-on stains of sauce come off?
“There will be no more songs for the House of Arkhel . . .”
She plunged the trencher back into the water.
“Ugh.” Now the water was not just greasy, it was cold. She would have to pour it away and carry in the bucket of hot water she had set to heat on the scullery range. She would have to grate some more soap into flakes, trying not to skin her sore and swollen knuckles.
What had her father been to Lord Arkhel? Had he held some special position of trust in the Arkhel clan? Why had Lord Volkh spared her life? What was this inheritance of hers he had been so at pains to preserve?
That’s quite enough! she told herself. Her head had begun to ache with unanswered questions. Time to think later. Just finish the dishes.
The tread of feet on the courtyard gravel put all thoughts of her father out of her mind. Visitors? Sosia had not mentioned visitors. They could not have come on horseback, for she could hear no jingle of harnesses or grate of shod hooves.
She stood on tiptoe at the sink, craning her neck to peer up out of the scullery window.
Sandaled feet. Long, gray robes the color of dusk.
“Monks?” she said out loud. And at least a dozen of them, all wearing the cowled habits of the Monastery of Saint Sergius. Had they come to bid welcome to Lord Gavril?
A cold draft suddenly chilled her. One of the scullions must have come in with another pile of washing.
“Close the door!” she called without turning round.
The chill intensified. The twilight shadows darkened.
Someone was there, darker than the clustering twilight shadows.
“Kiukirilya.” The voice shivered in her mind, harsh as winter frost.
“M—my lord Volkh?” She was trembling as if with intense cold. And now she dared not turn around. She dared not look on the face of the revenant.
“The monks have come to send me back.”
“What do you mean, my lord?” she whispered, her face still averted.
“Exorcism, Kiukirilya. Don’t let them do it. Once I am gone, who will protect my son?”
“H—how can I stop them?”
“You were born with the gift.”
“The gift? I d—don’t even know what it is, let alone how to use it.”
“Your father’s gift. In you it is raw, untrained. But even an untrained Guslyar is more powerful than a whole choir of chanting monks.”
“Guslyar?” The unfamiliar title meant nothing to her. “What is a Guslyar?”
“Praise Singer. Ghost Singer. You come from an unusual family, Kiukirilya. Your forebears could spin songs that bridge this world and the Ways Beyond. They could summon the souls of dead warriors to possess the bodies of the living. Sing for me, Kiukirilya.”
“Sing?” Kiukiu was stupefied. “I can’t sing.”
“You brought me back. Make me powerful. Sing me into a living, breathing body.”
A stab of fear pierced Kiukiu, sharp as an icicle. “I . . . can’t do that.”
“Kiukiu?” shrilled Sosia from the corridor. “We’re out of serving platters!”
Kiukiu blinked. With one convulsive shudder, the revenant had vanished. She was alone, staring into empty air.
“Where are those clean platters, Kiukiu?” Sosia came in, banging the door open. Then she stopped, hugging her arms to herself. “Brrr! Have you had a window open? It’s freezing in here. Cold as the grave.”
The distant sound of chanting wove its way like drifting smoke down into the kitchens.
Kiukiu stopped scrubbing, up to her elbows in greasy water, to listen.
The monks’ chant was so calm, so remote that it lulled her tired mind into a trance. She felt as if she were floating upward, far above the dark branches of the forest, up into the gray twilit skies toward the great expanse of white ice.
Ice. So pure, so cold . . .
A rattle of pots broke the trance. Kiukiu plummeted rudely back down to earth. Little Movsar had come struggling in with his arms full of cooking pans.
“How many more?” Kiukiu asked in disbelief. She wiped the back of her hand across her face. The fingers were red and swollen. In the morning the skin would be cracked and chapped.
“Sosia says this is the last.”
“About time, too,” Kiukiu grumbled.
“Monks have big appetites.”
“And I thought they were supposed to be frugal.”
“Chanting’s hungry work,” Movsar said with a wink before he scurried off.
Kiukiu looked at the pans. She looked at the dirty water.
The distant singing still wreathed through the autumn dusk.
“Your forebears could spin songs that bridge this world and the Ways Beyond. . . .”
She started, checking guiltily behind her.
But there was no wraith chill to the air, only the crisp tang of twilight.
“Make me powerful. Sing me into a living, breathing body.”
What had Lord Volkh meant? What had he intended? Had he wanted to possess one of the household, to live again in a new body? How could such a thing happen? And what, Kiukiu wondered wearily, became of the original owner of the repossessed body? Where did that spirit go?
It was rapidly becoming too dark to see what she was doing. Snowcloud must be starving by now. He was always hungry, gobbling up in beakfuls the little scraps Kiukiu brought each day. A good sign, she supposed. A keen appetite must mean he was building up his strength. But how was she to get him his scraps if she was still confined to scullery duties? The stacks of dirty pots and dishes had all arrived scraped clean of food debris.
She went to the door and peeked out into the passageway.
All clear.
She edged out, back to the lime-washed wall, making for the slop bin at the kitchen entrance. All scraps of food not deemed suitable for the soup pot were thrown in here and carted away to be fed to the kastel pigs.
Shadows moved across the wall, distorted by the flickering flames in the range. Ilsi was complaining in a thin, strident voice. Kiukiu took a breath and plunged her hand into the slop bin. Her fingers closed on the cold fatty slime of bacon rinds. Grabbing the biggest handful she could, she fled before anyone noticed her in the doorway.
The twilight air was already tainted with frost. She paused a moment on the doorstep to check that no one had seen her, and then hurried out over the slippery cobblestones.
The autumn moon was rising. Kiukiu looked up as she pushed open the rusted iron gate to the gardens and shuddered; the slender crescent glinted copper, like dried blood on steel. When the moon cast a bloodstained light on Azhkendir, it was said to presage a terrible disaster.
Guided by the coppered moonlight, she flitted silently down through the overgrown gardens toward the summerhouse.
“Dinner’s on its way, Snowcloud.”
And then just as she reached the warped summerhouse door, she heard a woman’s voice.
“What are you doing here? Do you want to get yourself killed?”
Kiukiu hesitated. She knew she should not eavesdrop, yet she was desperately anxious to make sure her beautiful Snowcloud was not discovered.
“I had to see you again, Lilias.” It was a man’s voice answering, young and hoarse with emotion.
Lilias. Kiukiu froze. What was Lilias doing out here in the dark, keeping a secret tryst with a man whose every nuance of voice betrayed his love for her?
“Why didn’t you go back to Swanholm, Jaro? As we agreed?”
Jaro? Kiukiu repeated to herself. Who was Jaro? No one in the kastel bore that name.
“You saw what he did to me. I crawled out into the forest. A charcoal burner found me and took me to the monastery. If it hadn’t been for the good brothers, I would have died. By the time I reached Arkhelskoye, the port was icebound.”
“And so you came back here? Are you quite mad?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Lilias. If that’s a kind of madness, then yes.”
“Our business is concluded.” Lilias’
voice was cold as frost. “You got what you wanted. And so . . . so I thought . . . had I.”
“You told me the son was no real threat. A painter, not a soldier. You told me his mother had poisoned his mind against his father. You said he would never come to Azhkendir.”
“Kostya had other ideas,” Lilias said.
The son. Up till now Kiukiu had not understood what was being discussed so furtively. Now she began to realize she had stumbled on something so treacherous that she had endangered her life just by listening. Crouched down in the frosty garden, clutching the cold, coagulating scraps of bacon fat for Snowcloud, she badly wanted to run away—but dared not.
“So you and the child—”
“Have been awarded a paltry pension. Paid off like a common whore. Thank you for your services, Madame Arbelian, which are no longer required.” Lilias spat out the last words.
“And all our plans—”
“He’ll come looking for you. The druzhina are working on him already, wearing his resistance down. Sooner or later the Drakhaon blood will prevail. So you have a choice. Kill him now, before he gains his full powers, or go. Leave Azhkendir. Never come back.”
“Kill him now?” the young man echoed. Kiukiu heard the uncertainty in his voice.
“There’s another passageway that will take you directly to his bedchamber. Remember?”
Kiukiu clapped one hand to her mouth, trying to keep from gasping aloud.
“There . . . there has to be another way,” the young man said eventually.
“There is no other way. You destroyed the serpent; now you must destroy its young before it learns to bite.”
Kiukiu began to back away over the frost-brittle grass, one step at a time. The food scraps dropped from her hand, and she turned and started to run.
Halfway up the overgrown path she stopped. She was shaking, but whether from the intense cold or from fear she could not tell. The garden shimmered with hoarfrost under the blackness of the star-powdered sky.
Her word against Lilias’. Who would believe her? By the time she had brought help, Lilias and her accomplice would have disappeared from the summerhouse. Dysis would vouch that her mistress had spent all evening reading in front of the fire. Kostya would punish her for wasting his time. But Lilias, secure with her alibi, would know. The instant she accused Lilias she was as good as dead.