The crowd made way for the streltsi and the wagon, but did so grudgingly. Many would go away hungry, Nikandr knew. There simply wasn’t enough to go around. The fishing beds that had been so reliable in years past had gone dry; add to that the pitiful yield the crops were looking to have and one could easily predict outright famine this year.
Nikandr and Borund stopped short of the crowd and tied their ponies near a ramp leading up to the doors of an immense workshop. An ancient figurehead of a man gripping a hammer in one hand and a large pearl in the other hung above the doors, one of which was propped open. They found Gravlos within, walking alongside a fresh spar, a curl of wood falling free from the plane he was using to smooth the rounded but still-raw shape of it. His wooden leg thumped softly as he went. When he realized someone was standing in his doorway he stood and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his forearm. His face was severe, but he managed a kindly smile when he recognized them.
“Lose your way?” He set his plane on a nearby worktable, winking as he did so.
Nikandr’s entire body tightened as something splashed to his left. Borund backed up as well, staring at a large tun that stood just inside the workshop doors. It was as tall as Nikandr’s chest and was filled nearly to the top with water. Nikandr approached, but it was with a sickly sense of dread, like when he’d played find-me-if-you-can as a child late at night with Ranos and Victania in the dark and mysterious halls of Radiskoye. When he finally came close enough to look down into it, he saw something folded over, as if a random bolt of weathered canvas had been tossed into the tun and then forgotten. The canvas rippled, and Nikandr saw what looked to be a jaundiced eye.
“I bought it from a fisherman this morning.” Gravlos picked up a stick that had been resting against the door and poked the thing. It rippled again, and an enormous jaw unfolded itself, revealing a triple row of thorn-sharp teeth. A thin tongue whiter than fresh-fallen snow slithered out and glowed momentarily.
Nikandr laughed from the sheer horror of the thing.
“The old sailors call them tarpfish,” Gravlos continued. “It was caught off the coast of Duzol, only three leagues out to sea.”
“Excluding Nikandr,” Borund said with a distinct note of awe, “that is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Gravlos began poking the fish again. “Wait, it gets worse.”
Only a moment later, the fish belched out a stream of shit-colored ink and began flapping around the tun. Water sprayed everywhere. All three men backed away, laughing and holding their sleeves against the fierce smell of rotted cabbage.
Nikandr couldn’t help but think of the wasting, of the rot that was growing within him, but to laugh with Borund felt good. It felt like the days of old, and he wasn’t about to feel sorry for himself at a time like this.
Borund pointed at it, still laughing. “What in the wide great seas made you buy such a thing?”
Gravlos nodded toward Nikandr. “You’ve not heard?”
Borund looked between Nikandr and Gravlos. “Heard what?”
Gravlos caught Nikandr’s eye, waiting for permission. When Nikandr nodded, he said, “I thought My Lord Prince would want to see it. He’s been flying around the islands, every spare moment he’s had outside of our work on the Gorovna, searching for clues.”
“Clues to what?”
“To the blight,” Nikandr answered.
Borund chuckled, but stopped when he realized Nikandr was serious. “We should have asked for more ships if you have so many to go about.”
“Easy words for you, Bora. Vostroma has not been hit so hard as Khalakovo.”
“And Rhavanki is worse off than you.”
“But that’s all changing. Rhavanki’s hauls have been better. Their first plantings look to be healthier than years past.”
“This is my point, Nischka. Nature will do what it will. It matters not what attention you might pay to it.”
This was a thought that came to Nikandr every day, but he refused to believe it. “Did you know that when herds of goats become sick, we have found hordes of black fleas on them?”
“Not surprising with diseased animals.”
Nikandr shook his head. “When we take them in and wash them with vinegar, the goats become well again.”
Borund laughed. “You should have told us. We could have brought you a herd.”
“The potatoes,” Nikandr continued, “if we discover mold in the roots, we know which fields should go untended. I can tell you by looking at a pack of wolves which are infected and how many days it will be before the pack devours them. If I watch the coast of an island for a day, I can tell by the flights of the gulls which shoals will yield the most herring.”
“And by the time the ships get there, things will have changed.”
“That isn’t the point. We learn more all the time, and someday we hope to understand the blight. Perhaps the wasting as well.”
Borund’s expression turned to sadness. “Nischka, the news of your sister’s illness was tragic, but do you really think you can unlock the secrets of her disease?”
Let’s hope so, Nikandr thought. “I’ll never know unless I try.”
Borund shook his head. “The blight and the wasting are unpredictable workings of the world, and nothing you do will change that.”
Suddenly the sounds of a grumbling crowd grew, making it clear the business of unlading the haul had gotten underway. It also made it clear that it was a smaller catch than the crowd had been hoping for-with so many visiting Khalakovo for Council, the palotza would need the ship’s entire catch and most likely several more beyond it.
Gravlos’s smile faded. He led them away from the doors toward the wooden ponies and workbenches. “It’s been getting worse.” He glanced meaningfully at Nikandr. “Not that I’m complaining. I know the people on the Hill have to eat as well. But some don’t see it that way. They say too much is taken from the city, more than a fair share.”
“Our share is what we take,” Borund said before Nikandr could reply.
Gravlos dropped his gaze. “That’s as may be, My Lord Prince, but there’s enough grumbling stomachs to go about, of that I can assure you.”
Borund opened his mouth to reply, but Nikandr raised his hand. “The blight isn’t something we’ll solve by talking, and we have other things to discuss.”
Gravlos nodded and motioned them toward one of his workbenches, upon which sat a complicated mass of wood and iron. Six cylindrical sections of wood, each of which looked like they’d been sawed cleanly from a windship mast, were connected with an arrangement of iron levers and hinges. It looked like two logs laid across one another with a third skewering them both. A complicated mass of hinges at the very center allowed for free movement of each spar. Nikandr knew it was the Gorovna’s rudder, the very same one he’d shown them on the ship two days earlier.
A healthy rudder, when fixed properly in the center of a ship, would align with the keels, and by using the levers at the helm, the rudders would divert the flow of the aether that ran along them, thus turning the ship in the desired direction. The key was not the outer casing of wood, but the obsidian core enclosed within it.
Nikandr could already see that something wasn’t right. Lying on the table, just beneath one of the exposed pieces, was a pile of black powder and stone that looked to have been purposefully chipped away.
He bent over to inspect it. “Why did you do this?”
“Run your finger over the stone.”
Nikandr had no more than touched one of the exposed faces than a section of it crumbled away, adding to the small pile.
Borund did the same to another section. “Was it inferior?”
Gravlos looked insulted. “ Nyet, My Lord, it was not. I chose the blocks myself and inspected each section carefully after milling.”
Borund seemed less than convinced. “Then what happened?”
Gravlos shrugged. “Rudder stone can crack, but that’s after many years, and typically there are only a hand
ful of fractures. Nothing like this.”
The stone hanging from Nikandr’s neck-hidden beneath his shirt-felt suddenly heavier. Clearly whatever had happened to the rudder had also affected his stone; at the very least they were loosely related. He nearly pulled it out to show Gravlos, to get his opinion, but his father’s words felt like they made more sense now-Borund was an old friend, but he couldn’t be trusted to keep word of it quiet-and so he left the stone where it was. “Could it have been the hezhan?”
“Perhaps.” Gravlos ran one hand over his bald head and shrugged. “Who would know?”
Borund rubbed the obsidian powder between his fingers and stared intently at the sparkle that remained. “Were the keels damaged?”
“ Da, which is why the repairs will take so-”
“We cannot accept a ship such as that, Nikandr.”
“The damage did not travel far,” Gravlos continued. “Less than the length of your hand. We’ll be able to cut the keel and lengthen the rudder to-”
Gravlos was cut off by sounds from the crowd. Their grumbling had grown steadily during their conversation, but it had spiked considerably; men were shouting and several women could be heard screaming over them.
They moved quickly to the front of the workshop to see what was happening. No sooner had Gravlos pulled one of the doors open than the crowd pressed backward. A half-dozen people were forced onto the shallow ramp leading up to Gravlos’s doors.
With his high vantage, Nikandr could see that the streltsi had fanned out around the royal wagon and were using their axes to ward off the crowd. Their breath, coming quickly, blew as smoke upon the cold breeze of the harbor.
“Back!” shouted the desyatnik.
“He stabbed me!” a man screamed. He was bent over, perhaps nursing his leg, but when he pointed to one of the soldiers, steam rose from his blood-coated hand.
Several women continued to shout, shaking their fingers right under the officer’s nose. The crowd pressed in. More joined in, demanding that the rest of the fish be left alone.
It was then that Nikandr realized that there were only five crates on the wagon. Five crates from a ship that would have hauled four dozen only a few years ago.
“Best we stay inside, My Lords,” Gravlos said as he began swinging the door closed.
As soon as he’d said the words, however, one of the streltsi fired his musket into the crowd. A young man with a barrel chest was propelled backward into the older man behind him, his face a look of shock and wonder.
“My son!” screamed the man holding the wounded one. It was a cry that brought the entire scene to a stunned silence.
And then the quay was madness.
CHAPTER 6
Peasants were a hard people, and they weren’t accustomed to asking for handouts, but eventually the strain had become too great, and once it had, they became insistent. They had asked, then begged, then demanded that the city’s Posadnik provide them relief.
With the farmers’ fields stricken as they were, and the fishing so poor, the obvious choice was to buy food from the Empire, but the grain and rice from Yrstanla was by common agreement spread among all the Duchies. Little enough was rationed to each of the nine Duchies; it was cut again for each of Khalakovo’s seven islands, and then again for each of the cities on those islands. Volgorod was Khalakovo’s largest city by far, and so it got the lion’s share, but still, the sacks went quickly as more and more families came for their dole.
The incoming aid-however inadequate it might be-stemmed the tide of discontent, but everyone knew that it would build again, however slowly. And now, here, as the peasants bore witness to the palotza’s hording, Nikandr could feel their anger bubble up and boil over. They stared wide-eyed at the strelet who had fired his musket into the chest of one of their own. They shouted, demanding he set his weapon down and give himself over. Those further back joined in, then further still, the sound of it deafening as the entire crowd began pumping their fists at the sky, screaming for justice.
The meager perimeter the streltsi had managed to maintain collapsed. The desyatnik ordered his men to hold fire, but as the shouting intensified and the man wailed over his dying son, two more shots rang out. One of the streltsi tried to stab with his berdische, but it was grabbed by a pair of men and he was pulled viciously into the crowd.
“Halt!” Nikandr shouted. “By order of your Prince!” But no one heard him. He nearly drew his pistol, but rejected the idea when he realized that firing it would only serve to heighten the chaos.
“Nikandr, come!” Gravlos waited at the doors, motioning for Nikandr to get inside. “There’s nothing we can do here!”
Behind Gravlos stood Borund, pistol in hand, eyeing the crowd warily.
Nikandr stood impotently as another strelet struggled to break away from two men who had grabbed his musket.
And then he turned to the weathered old tun.
“Help me!” he said to Borund and Gravlos as he pushed the left door open. He pulled at the edge of the tun, using all his weight, but it wouldn’t budge. Even with Borund and Gravlos helping, it was clear it wouldn’t tip over.
He ran into the workshop as another shot was fired and the excited commands of the desyatnik were cut short. He scanned the workbenches and the tools hanging on the walls behind them, knowing Gravlos had an axe but not sure where-
He spotted it on the far end of a long workbench. He grabbed it and sprinted back. The crowd was feeding on its own blood frenzy as he cocked the axe and swung with a heavy grunt. It cut deep, and a thin stream of water began leaking from the cut. He swung again and again, more water sluicing between the staves with each strike. On the sixth, three of the staves gave way, and water gushed out.
Along with the tarpfish.
The deluge splashed into the crowd, surprising many. A moment later, the fish was carried down the ramp, flipping and flapping as it swung its great bat-like wings about. The talons at the end of its wings sunk deeply into an old woman’s leg. She shouted in pain and fright as she staggered into two younger women. The fish hooked someone else with its other wing, and as the two separated from one another, the thing flipped, squirting brown ink. A moment later it was lost among a sea of legs.
“Back!” Nikandr shouted as he drew his flintlock pistol and fired it into the air. “Back, by order of the Duke!”
Borund followed suit. Finally some in the crowd recognized them while many more retreated from the putrid, writhing mass of skin and bone and teeth.
“Back!”
The crowd eyed him and the streltsi warily as the tarpfish flipped closer to the edge of the quay. Finally it fell into the water with a hollow splash.
It was with that one simple sound, from an animal few had ever seen, that the winds were released from the sail. Those at the edges of the crowd-the realization of what they’d done clear on their faces-retreated, and then ran. Soon the area was clear save for the wounded and the soldiers.
After reaching the Boyar’s mansion in the center of Volgorod, they spoke briefly with Ranos, but he soon put them off to deal with the wounded streltsi as well as two women who claimed their husbands had been shot “without provocation.”
“Wait here,” Ranos said as he grabbed his coat of office and opened the door of the drawing room. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m able, and then we’ll go to the eyrie together.”
Without waiting for a response he closed the door, leaving Nikandr and Borund in a room that held little to occupy their time. Ranos’s wife-cold in her choice of decor-had left it without so much as a deck of cards. By the time they had finished their second mazer of vodka, it was clear Ranos had been delayed.
Nikandr set his ivory mazer down with a clack and stood. He could feel his nose and cheeks and ears flush from the alcohol. “Come, good Vostroma, and we shall see what the eyrie holds for us.”
Borund, his rounded cheeks still red-more from the vodka than the cold-surveyed the room as if it were his last hope at warmth, but then he raise
d his lips in a wry smile and downed the last of his drink. “ Da. Fuck Ranos.”
Nikandr smiled. “Fuck Ranos.”
Soon they were back on their ponies and headed uphill from the city along Eyrie Road, the wide, gravel trail that climbed up to the highlands and then west to the eyrie. After they passed the first rise, the wind picked up, and both of them buttoned their long cherkesskas up to their neck. As the trail led them above the expanse of Volgorod, they spotted the tall white cliffs of the eyrie and the great pillared rocks that withstood the churning green seas to the south of them.
Traffic along the road was high. Laden carts and wagons clattered toward Volgorod, while empty ones returned. Far ahead, a wagon had pulled onto the grass. Two men were changing the rear wagon wheel.
“Don’t you think it’s time we discussed my sister?” Borund asked as he pulled the collar of his coat up.
Nikandr stared at the men repairing the wagon as their ponies trotted onward. “I’m sorry the ship was damaged, Borund. I know it has caused difficulties with your father-”
“That’s not what I mean, Nischka.”
Nikandr didn’t know what to say, not without causing insult.
Borund’s thick eyebrows bunched together. “My sister is not so terrible.”
“She was always the worst of them, Borund.”
Borund laughed. “That may be true, but she’s grown into a fine woman.”
Perhaps, Nikandr thought, but the churning in his gut he got every time he thought about being married to her was still as strong as ever. Yet despite that, despite all his fears-founded or not-he would have buried his discontent and prepared for the wedding with diligence-if not passion-had it not been for the Aramahn woman he had seen near the gallows. Rehada. Had they come from slightly different places, he would have already asked for her hand in marriage. As it stood, however, such a thing was out of the question. Impossible. But it didn’t stop his heart from yearning for such a thing, even more so with the knowledge that he had little time left.
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