by Sarah Ash
“They would never dare harm the baby. They still believe Artamon to be my father’s son.”
“And you?”
“The druzhina will track me down,” Gavril said, ignoring Jaromir’s question. “They’ll find me.”
Jaromir shrugged.
“Let them come. If they want you alive, my lord, they’ll have to let me go.”
Gavril felt too weak to argue. He lay back, closing his eyes.
“You should eat.” Jaromir went to the pot and spooned some of the contents into a bowl. Gavril could smell herbs mingled with the stronger savors of leek, celery, and onion.
“Shall I help you?” Jaromir set down the bowl and unfastened the restraints. Then he hoisted Gavril up into a sitting position, lifting a spoonful of broth to his lips.
I won’t be spoon-fed like a baby. Gavril glowered at Jaromir. “Let me do it myself.”
“As my lord wishes.” Jaromir placed the spoon in Gavril’s left hand.
The broth, with pearly grains of swollen barley and chunks of potato, tasted delicious, even if in his clumsiness he spilled some down his chin.
“So,” Gavril said, to the shadowy figure who sat staring into the flames, “why did you do it? Why did you kill my father?”
Slowly Jaromir turned his head around to look at Gavril, but did not reply.
“I know it was you. I’ve known it was you since the night he died—although I didn’t guess your name until Kostya told me what my father did to your family.”
“How?” Jaromir said at last. His voice was hoarse. “How could you know?”
“A kind of . . . vision.” Gavril did not want to say the name of the Drakhaoul aloud, for fear of waking it.
“And did your vision also show what your father did to my family?”
“No.”
“I was at Saint Sergius’ the night it happened. Suddenly the sky was filled with a glittering blaze of blue fire, too bright to look upon. It was so beautiful—as if a star had burst in the sky and rained down its glittering dust on the land beneath. The mountains trembled. And as the monks and I ran outside, I saw . . .”
“What did you see?”
“A great winged daemon, blacker than shadow, wheeled over the forest, swooping low over the monastery towers and spires, as if seeking me out to destroy me. To sear me with its fire.”
“My father,” Gavril said under his breath.
“I flung myself on the ground. I was so terrified I thought I would die of fear.” Jaromir drew his knees close to him, as if hugging in the years of hurt. He seemed unwilling to continue. Eventually he said, “If Yephimy had not stood over me, defending me with his staff, I would have been destroyed that night. And many times afterward I wished I had been.” His voice dropped to the ghost of a whisper. “I still hear the sound of the beating of its wings in my dreams. I still see the blue, inhuman gleam of its eyes, blue—and gold.”
Blue . . . flecked with gold . . . Like his own. Gavril had seen just such eyes in the mirror.
“Though those dreams are not the worst. The dreams that are hardest to bear are the ones where I hear my sisters laughing as they play, and my mother comes running to greet me, arms wide, smiling, as though all was as it had been . . .”
Gavril looked at Jaromir; his face was little more than a shadowed blur in the dying fireglow, but Gavril thought he saw a single tear roll silently down his cheek.
“And when the shadow of its passing had lifted from the valley, when the clouds of smoke had rolled away, my father’s great kastel was a smoldering ruin, filled with a gray, poisonous dust. They were all dead, my mother, my father, my little sisters. . . . Our lands were charred to cinders. Not one living creature survived.”
Jaromir let his head drop forward until his forehead rested on his knees.
“You had motive enough to kill my father,” Gavril said in the silence. “But Lilias—what does Lilias Arbelian have to do with it all?”
Jaromir did not answer.
“And why didn’t you use her pistol? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to shoot my father than to have to confront him, man-to-man?” There had been plenty of time to think as his shoulder mended. And there was still so much that Jaromir had not told him.
The fire was burning low. Jaromir jabbed suddenly, angrily, at the glowing cones, setting off an explosion of sparks.
“I wanted to see him face-to-face. I wanted him to know whom he was dealing with. I wanted him to die knowing who had killed him—and why.”
There was such a bitter ferocity in Jaromir’s voice that Gavril was stunned into silence.
“Or perhaps I was seeking something else. To die by Drakhaon’s Fire, like the others . . .”
A branch snapped in two, sinking into the embers with a sighing hiss. The room grew darker still; the snowchill seemed to be slowly seeping up through the cold flagstones.
Jaromir stood up, shivering in the sudden draft.
“We need more wood.” He went outside, his shadow flickering along the fire-stained wall.
Gavril lay back, listening to the moan of the wind. As his eyelids began to close, he wondered how far he could trust Jaromir. His instincts told him that Jaromir was a man of integrity, an educated man who had lived abroad, far from Azhkendir’s malign influence.
An uneasy kind of understanding was developing between the two of them which—had they not been born into opposing clans—might have ripened into a strong and enduring friendship.
But then there was the matter of Lilias. . . .
The last cones on the fire fizzed, sending up a shower of cindersparks.
He opened one eye and saw that Jaromir was bending over the fire, feeding it with fresh kindling.
Then he straightened up and began to shrug off his jacket, deftly using his left hand to untie the fastenings. He took up a small earthenware pot and pulled out the stopper, releasing a waft of a clear, aromatic smell, sharp as wintergreen.
Feigning sleep, Gavril watched with half-closed lids, curious to know what he was doing.
Peeling off his loose shirt, Jaromir began to dab the contents onto his arm, wincing as the healing unguent seeped in. And in the dying firelight Gavril saw the terrible burns that had shriveled his right arm and hand, searing the skin to a dark, angry crust.
The assassin drops, screaming, to his knees. His hand that holds the goblet is burning, bright with blue fire. Drakhaon’s Fire.
Jaromir had suffered for his crime—and would continue to suffer every day of his life. Maimed, burned, he would carry the scars to the end of his days. Wasn’t that, in its own way, punishment enough?
Jaromir seemed ill at ease next morning, restless, constantly going outside the log hut to scan the valley below.
“They should have traced you by now,” he said, coming in again, snowflakes melting to waterdrops in his dark gold hair.
“The druzhina?” Gavril forced himself up into a sitting position. He had slept badly, and the constant nagging pain in his shoulder had made him irritable, edgy. “Don’t you think I would have called them if I knew how? If there’s a way to do it, Kostya has not taught me.” And perhaps Kostya is dying, he thought, and they are rudderless, divided, with Drakhaon and Bogatyr gone. . . .
“There’s been fresh snow. Our prints have been covered up. I hope they haven’t concerned themselves with . . . other matters first.”
“Lilias?” Gavril said.
Jaromir did not reply.
Realizing he had touched on a sensitive nerve, Gavril said, “You think they’ve caught her? They’re interrogating her?”
Suddenly Jaromir snatched up his greatcoat, saying, “I’m going to Yephimy. He will negotiate with your druzhina.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Gavril said from his pallet, “You and I. Equal now. Left-handed. What a fine duel to the death that would make.”
Jaromir turned back. His face was drawn.
“Call them,” he said, “your druzhina. I don’t want your death. I just want to know she
and the child are safe.”
“And I told you, I don’t know how to call them,” Gavril snapped. He had been trying to ease himself into a more comfortable position, but whichever way he shifted, the shattered shoulder bone only ached more.
“You’re still in pain.” Jaromir reached for the earthenware bottle, pulling the stopper out with his teeth. “Let me give you some more of the monks’ draft.”
“So you can keep me half-drugged? No, thank you.” Gavril shook his head. “I want my wits about me.”
Jaromir shrugged and pushed the stopper back in.
“You and Lilias.” Gavril stared at the firelit shadows flickering across the hut roof. “How did that come about?”
“We were passengers on the same ship bound for Arkhelskoye. There were terrible storms and our ship ran aground. We ended up in a little fishing port to the north of Smarna, waiting for the storms to subside.”
“My father’s mistress. Rather an unlikely form of revenge?”
“Revenge?” Anger glimmered in Jaromir’s eyes. “Is that how it seems to you? That I merely used her to get to him?”
“Isn’t that what it was?”
“Maybe that’s how it started. But then we found we had so much in common. Her early life was hard, a constant struggle against poverty, a merchant father who drank his family into debt and the workhouse. There’s a resilience about her. . . .”
“And she is also remarkably beautiful.”
A whirling gust of wind rattled the turfs on the roof and made the fire splutter.
“It’s started to snow again,” said Jaromir, piling more pinecones on the fire. Gavril sensed that he was unwilling to discuss his feelings for Lilias.
A sudden, insistent tapping began on the shutter. Jaromir tensed, his sound hand closing around the stout mountaineer’s staff he kept beside the fire.
“What can that be?” Gavril said uneasily.
Jaromir moved silently to the shutter, peering cautiously through a crack to see what was outside. “Well, well . . .” he said under his breath, reaching up to unlatch the shutter, letting in a blast of cold air. “Look what the storm’s blown us.”
On the sill perched a large snow owl, ragged and weather-beaten, its white feathers bedraggled.
“Snowcloud?” Gavril said in disbelief. He forced himself up off the pallet and went across to the owl. Now he could see that one of the owl’s legs was crooked, as though it had been broken and had mended a little awry.
“Is it you, Snowcloud?” Gavril murmured, remembering the forest clearing—and Kiukiu, eyes ablaze with anger, trying to protect the owl from Oleg’s club. “Have you come to find me?”
“You recognize this creature?”
“I rescued him from a trap.”
And still the owl lingered on the sill, staring at him with unblinking golden eyes.
“You, a Nagarian, rescuing an Arkhel’s Owl?” Jaromir asked drily.
“The name I grew up with is Andar,” Gavril said brusquely. “Not Nagarian.”
With a screech, Snowcloud suddenly launched himself off the sill and flew straight at Gavril, knocking him off balance.
Gavril flung up his sound arm to protect his face.
Snowcloud came at him again in a flurry of white feathers, strong wingbeats beating against his head, forcing him down onto his knees. Furious screeches of anger tore from the owl’s throat.
“Snowcloud!” Gavril cried. “Don’t you remember me? I saved your life!”
Hooked claws locked into his sound shoulder as Snowcloud gripped hold and began to peck at his head with an iron-sharp beak.
Anger and pain seared through Gavril, and he felt the sudden warning flare of the Drakhaoul awakening deep inside him.
“Get—him—off me!” he shouted, rolling onto the floor of the hut. White feathers flew about the hut like blizzarding snow.
Jaromir seized the mountaineer’s staff and struck at the frenzied owl. It dropped to the floor of the hut and went limp, great wings splaying out like a white feather cloak, carelessly flung down.
“Thank you.” Gavril pulled himself to his feet, leaning on the table with his sound hand.
“I fear I may have killed your owl.” Jaromir knelt down beside the owl and reached out his hand to touch it.
Snowcloud’s limp body twitched, spasmed violently. Jaromir gave a hoarse cry and fell flat on his back, as if some invisible force had knocked him over.
The owl lay still again.
“What happened?” Gavril asked uncertainly. “Jaromir!”
Jaromir groaned and a convulsive shudder, violent as an epileptic fit, shook his whole body.
“Jaro. Are you all right?”
The fit ceased.
Jaromir sat up. His eyes blazed golden in the dimness of the hut.
“At last,” he said. But his lips hardly moved—and the voice that issued from his throat was harsh and unnatural.
Gavril took a step back.
“Who are you?” he said in a whisper.
“I know you. You are Volkh’s son,” Jaromir said in the unnatural voice. “I should have had you killed at birth.” The golden eyes gleamed, cruel and predatory.
“Jaromir?” Gavril cast around for a weapon, any weapon with which to defend himself.
“I am Stavyor. Stavyor Arkhel. Come back from the dead to send you to hell, Drakhaon’s child.”
CHAPTER 29
“It’s no good, Lady Iceflower.” Kiukiu sank down on a boulder. Her lungs ached, her head spun. And it had begun to snow again. She could go no farther without a rest.
Lady Iceflower fluttered down onto a nearby boulder and made chattering noises of impatience.
“It’s all right for you, you can fly.”
Kiukiu had been trudging up this winding, treacherous mountain path all morning. Iceflower had seemed so certain they were on Snowcloud’s trail that she had been flapping around Kiukiu’s head, hooting excitedly.
“If we were back down in the forest, you’d be mobbed,” Kiukiu told her sternly. “Daring to show your owl face in daylight, indeed!”
The owl twisted her head right around and gave her a defiant stare.
Kiukiu turned her back on her and gazed out at the dreary landscape, half-gauzed in a thin veil of falling, sleety snow. She had never ventured up into the mountains before. Indeed, she had never been farther than the Nagarian estates in her whole life until Lilias had turned her out. Up here in the mountains, she sensed the desolation of the snow-crusted wilderness as if the taint of the Drakhaon’s poison breath still lingered in the air, dulling her spirit, diminishing her will to go on.
And if Snowcloud’s trail led her to Jaromir Arkhel, what would she say to him? “Hello, I’m Malkh’s daughter. Yes, that’s right, Malkh who betrayed your father. Malkh who broke under torture and blabbed all the battle plans to Lord Volkh . . .”
Such thoughts seemed unworthy, a betrayal of her father’s memory.
She reached into her woven bag and took a swig from the precious flask of cloudberry brandy Malusha had given her. The sharp, sweet taste refreshed her a little. She stood up, hefting the gusly in its rough-woven cloth bag onto her back again.
“Must keep going,” she said, more to herself than to Iceflower. After all, this journey was nothing but a matter of physical endurance. She was sturdy, strong, and she could tramp on for hours. The real test of her courage would come when they tracked down Snowcloud.
No. Must put that out of mind. Deal with Lord Stavyor when I find him. One problem at a time.
Iceflower launched herself off her rock and floated out above the valley on ghost-feather wings.
Kiukiu gazed upward at the low clouds—and the shadow of the mountain peaks that loomed behind—and tramped off after her, up the stony, slippery path.
The gusly weighed heavily now, the straps cutting into her shoulder. From time to time, if Kiukiu put a foot wrong or slithered on loose scree, the strings gave a metallic shudder, as if offended at this rough treatment
. And in spite of the intense cold, her face felt as if it glowed with the effort of toiling on upward.
This search was taking far longer than she had planned. It was well past noon now, she judged, and soon it would be getting dark. Where would she find shelter on this bleak mountainside? She should have come better prepared.
Hope I’ve left Harim enough fodder. She had left the pony in a sheltered gully, with his blanket tucked over his shaggy coat to keep out the worst of the night’s wintercold.
Her back ached from carrying the gusly. She was going slower and slower now. She knew she must stop soon, if only to put down her load and stretch the stiffness out of her spine. She was well-used to hard work and heavy burdens; she’d carried enough heaped coal scuttles, flour sacks, and buckets of water in her time at Kastel Drakhaon. But she’d never been obliged to carry one uphill in the freezing cold for mile after endless mile.
She swung the gusly bag off her shoulder and lowered it onto the snow-covered path. Fresh snow—on compressed snow. No prints. What was she expecting? She gave a little snort.
Who would be stupid enough but me to come all the way up here on a fool’s errand into nowhere?
Iceflower suddenly swooped down and alighted on her shoulder. Kiukiu staggered and righted herself.
“Don’t startle me like that!” she cried. Her own voice echoed back to her, brittle with the chill resonance of ice.
Iceflower gave her a resentful little nip—not sharp enough to draw blood, but sharp enough to hurt.
“Ow! And don’t peck me.”
Iceflower nipped her again, no less sharply.
“What is it?”
Iceflower flew up into the air, spiraling round above her head.
“You’ve traced Snowcloud?” Kiukiu forgot all about titles in her excitement. “Up here? Where? Show me.”
Iceflower flapped off into the fast-gathering gloom.
“Wait!” cried Kiukiu. She bent down and heaved the gusly bag back up onto her shoulders. “And this’d better not be a false alarm,” she muttered, setting off after the owl.
There it stood, a little mountain hut constructed of tarred wood and stone, its low turfed eaves almost reaching down to the ground. A thin trail of woodsmoke wisped upward into the dusk from the chimney. It was the first sign of human habitation she had seen for days.