He turned, holding the fur-lined collar of his coat tight against the gusting wind. Over the tops of the nearby homes the lights of Palotza Radiskoye could barely be seen on the mountain overlooking the city.
He knocked again, softer this time, wondering if he’d made a mistake, but just as he was about to walk away, the flickering light of a lantern shone through the thick, wavy glass of the door’s high window. The door opened, and there stood Rehada Ulan al Shineshka, wearing a thick nightgown and a circlet that held a softly glowing gem of tourmaline. When he saw her face-how beautiful she looked in the golden light of the lantern-he nearly made his apologies and headed back toward Radiskoye. And yet, there was-as there always seemed to be-a beckoning luster in Rehada’s dark eyes, even as tired as she must be, even dressed as she was.
Without a word being spoken, she stepped aside, allowing Nikandr to enter her home. They moved into a lush sitting room. A host of large pillows arcing around the hearth, and the air, beneath the faint smell of jasmine incense, was redolent of garlic and ginger.
From his coat Nikandr took a small leather bag filled with virgin gems and placed it on the mantel. Then he threw two logs from the cradle onto the remains of the evening’s fire and began stoking the flames. Rehada did not acknowledge her payment as she moved to a silver cart topped with an ornate shisha. Normally they would have smoked tabbaq, the most common of the smoking leaves, but she chose instead a cedar box from the cabinet built into the base of the cart and retrieved several healthy pinches of dokha, a mixture of tabbaq, herbs, and fermented bark that came from Yrstanla’s western coast. It was extremely rare among the islands, and for a moment Nikandr nearly refused her, but he knew enough to know that this was a privilege that Rehada bestowed upon precious few patrons.
Tonight was going to cost him, so he was willing to accept such a gift. He lay down on the pillows as Rehada stepped between him and the fire and placed the tray carrying the shisha on the carpeted floor. The slosh of liquid came from the base until it had settled, and then all was silence save for the faint whuffle of the burgeoning fire.
After lighting the dokha in the bowl at the top of the shisha, Rehada offered him one of the silk-covered smoking tubes. He accepted it and for a time simply breathed in the heady smell of honey and vanilla and hay, wondering how long it had taken and by what route it had traveled along the thousands of leagues from its point of origin to Volgorod. How many wagons had brought it from the curing house to the edges of the Yrstanlan Empire? How many hands had carried it on its way to Khalakovo? How many ships had borne it? How many lungs had tasted of the same harvest?
“You look thin,” Rehada said, perhaps growing tired of the silence. She held two snifters of infused vodka, one of which she handed to Nikandr as she settled herself gracefully upon the nearby pillows.
“The work on the Gorovna…” Thankfully the wasting had given him a small reprieve-tonight he felt none of its effects.
“Ah, your other mistress.”
Nikandr, ignoring her gibe, drew upon the tube and held his breath before slowly releasing the smoke up toward the ceiling. “That was you at the hanging, was it not?”
The silence lengthened as Rehada took the second tube in one hand. Anyone else would have sucked from the mouthpiece, but not Rehada. She placed the ivory mouthpiece gently against her lips and drew breath like one of the rare, languorous breezes of summer. Her hair, like many of the Landless women, was cut square across the brow, not propped up in some complicated nest like the women of royalty. She held her breath-a good deal longer than Nikandr had-before exhaling the smoke through full, pursed lips. “There are those I would say farewell to before they depart these shores.”
Visions of the boy swinging in the wind next to the two peasants played within his mind. “Who was he?”
The space between Rehada’s thin, arching eyebrows pinched, but she did not otherwise show her annoyance. “What does it matter who he was?
I have witnessed the deaths of those who I’ve never met.” “If you had never met him, you wouldn’t have acted like you did.” “What makes you so sure?”
“The look you gave me.”
She regarded him levelly, the shisha tube held motionless near her mouth. “I knew that boy, but the look was not for him, nor was it for you.”
Nikandr paused. “Borund?” He searched his memory for the few times they had discussed her past, but he was unable to remember what connection she might have with the Prince of Vostroma. “I don’t understand…”
“Then perhaps your wife could explain it to you.” She pulled on the shisha tube and released her breath, much more forcefully than she had the last time.
And suddenly he understood. Borund, as Rehada well knew, was Atiana’s brother. Could it be she had been jealous? Or perhaps the juxtaposition of death and marriage had made her pause; she, like so many of her people, was always making emotional connections like that and contemplating them for days or weeks at a time.
“Now that she’s come…” Rehada allowed herself another long pull before setting the mouthpiece aside. “Now that you’re staring face-to-face with the prospect, will you marry her still?”
“There’s little choice. She’ll be my wife within the week whether I like it or not.” Nikandr smiled. “Though I may have delayed it by a day or two.”
“And how might you have done that?”
“I should be up at the palotza now, signing the wedding documents.”
“You’ve said how prickly the Duke of Vostroma can be.”
Nikandr nodded, and his smile widened. “ Da, he can be that…”
Rehada regarded him, the firelight and the shadows accentuating the features of her face. “You aren’t bound to her yet. You could go where you will.”
At this Nikandr’s smile faded. “You’re not so naive as that.”
“If anyone is naive, it is you. You tell me every time you come how much you love the wind. Surely you have enough money to buy a ship. You could take to the winds, travel the world…”
“I’m not Aramahn.”
“Meaning what, that you cannot bear to be parted from your precious family?”
“I may voice displeasure from time to time, but they are my life. They are my love.”
“If I had one rachma from every man that’s spoken those words…”
“You’d what, take to the winds?”
“I’ve done my traveling. I’ve found my place.”
Nikandr drew breath from the shisha as if it had somehow insulted him. “And I haven’t?” he said while forcing the smoke from his lungs.
Rehada raised her brow and tilted her mouth in a quirky smile. “ You’re the one running from your marriage.”
“I’m not running,” Nikandr said. Rehada was prodding him, but the effects of the smoke had already taken the edge from his anger and his feelings of being trapped on the Hill. Without willing it to, his mouth twisted into a smile that was a mirror image of hers. “Well, I suppose I am pulling at the tether a bit.”
“Why do you never speak of her?” Rehada asked. “Tell me what she’s like.”
As he downed half of his vodka, the lemon-infused liquor searing his mouth, throat, and finally his stomach, he turned to Rehada and admired the graceful curve of her eyebrows, her long eyelashes and full lips. The orange tourmaline held in the circlet glowed ever so softly. He knew good and well the sort of hezhan that gem granted, and he couldn’t wait for the heat of her to fill him, for the touch of her red hot skin, so unlike Atiana Vostroma’s, which was certain to be white as bone and cold as winter’s chill.
Rehada, perhaps feeling the effects of the smoke as well, smiled mischievously and poked Nikandr in the ribs with a slippered foot. “What is she like?”
Nikandr shrugged and leaned into the pillows, knowing he’d already smoked too much for his own good. Part of him wanted to answer Rehada’s question-the part that always wanted to please her-but he didn’t really know what Atiana was like. He couldn’t r
emember a single time he’d spoken to her when she wasn’t with Mileva and Ishkyna. He knew them only as a single, three-headed beast.
“You’re impossible.” Rehada threw the shisha tube aside and straddled him. Her muscled legs tightened against his waist as her long black hair fell across his chest. She didn’t grind her pelvis like a dock whore would, nor did she lean in and kiss him, though her dark eyes spoke of the desire. Instead she smiled. With the low-burning fire lending her already dark skin a ruddy glow, she was breathtaking. She lowered herself, her breasts pressing against his chest, her cheek brushing his. “Tell me something about her,” she said, her hot breath tickling his ear. She raised herself and regarded him. The gem upon her brow glowed brighter. Nikandr felt his loins and chest heat, and despite himself he began to harden. “Unless you’d rather return home to be alone with your thoughts.”
“I didn’t come to talk about my fiancee.”
“Then why did you come?” “To be with you.” She poked him in the center of his chest. “The truth…” Despite himself, he laughed. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“I know your moods, Nikandr, better than she ever will.”
He paused, wondering if she were right. “A man arrived on a ship today, one we thought lost to the Maharraht. His name is Ashan.”
Surprisingly, Rehada stiffened. “Ashan?”
“Ashan Kida al Ahrumea. He arrived with a curious boy on one of my father’s ships, a ship snatched from the jaws of the Maharraht.”
Rehada stared down at him seriously, saying nothing.
Nikandr chuckled and threw his arms behind his head. “ Now who’s avoiding questions?”
“I should hold your answers hostage until I get mine.”
“But you’re not petty, like me.”
“Few people are…” Before Nikandr could reply, she continued. “I met Ashan once, years ago.”
“The kapitan of the Kroya said he was very powerful. He summoned the winds for days straight to save the ship.”
She nodded. “He is arqesh.”
Nikandr jerked back involuntarily. “He has mastered all five hezhan?”
Rehada stared down with a look that made it clear he had disappointed her. “He has also come to terms with this life and the one that has come before and the one that will come next. He has traveled the world and seen every one of its mysteries. Among all the islands, there are only six like Ashan.”
“You’re saying you would expect no less from a man like him?”
“I’m saying Ashan is closer to vashaqiram than I will ever be, and that I have no right to judge him.”
Vashaqiram was the state of mind all Aramahn searched for. It was complete calm, understanding, forgiveness, and many more things Nikandr did not yet comprehend. It was why they roamed the world as they did, moving constantly from place to place.
Rehada had taken on a look of introspection, one he’d rarely seen from her. She often talked of having given up her quest of wandering the world, of having learned enough to be comfortable on Khalakovo. But he knew better. She too often became like this when faced with tales of travel to the other archipelagos or to the Motherland, Yrstanla.
Rehada’s expression darkened. “Why do you come to me late at night to ask me of a wanderer?”
“I saw him only today, mere hours ago, and I wondered-”
She rolled off of him and set her glass of vodka aside. “There was a time when you came here for me…”
Nikandr stared, confused. “I only thought you might-”
“Your thoughts…” She stood, her face cross. “I see where your thoughts are, son of Iaros. They are not here, nor are they on an arqesh. They are on the Hill, a place you should be now.” She glanced meaningfully at the entrance to her home, waiting for Nikandr to take her meaning.
“I would stay, Rehada.”
“Your wife wouldn’t think so well of that.”
“She’s not my wife.”
“A point she, I fear, would beg to differ.”
He nearly protested, but he had come here for solace, not to fight with a woman he paid for her company. He gathered his things and left without another word, but as Rehada shut the door behind him and the wind howled through the city streets, he found himself not just alone, but lonely-lonelier than he had ever been.
Nikandr treaded through the cavernous hallways of Radiskoye toward his room. The faint and familiar creaks of movement could be heard somewhere in the floors above-Radiskoye in slumber.
When he reached the second floor he paused, seeing light coming from beneath the door of his father’s drawing room. He went to it and opened the door, finding Father seated in a padded armchair, one leg crossed over the other. He was holding the wooden bowl of an ivory-tipped pipe with a stem as long as his forearm. He puffed on it, staring into the dying embers in the nearby fireplace. He looked weary and old, words rarely leveled against him.
An oil painting of Nikandr’s great-great-grandfather stared down from the mantel, his serious face cast with heavy shadows. Gold leaf decorated the room, especially along the wainscoting border and the carved wooden columns above the mantel. To say that it felt ostentatious, especially after the lush simplicity of Rehada’s home, was an understatement, and to Nikandr it felt foreign and familiar, both.
Nikandr moved to his father’s side, kissed his forehead, and took the empty chair.
When Father spoke, it was with a soft voice, contemplative. “Zhabyn came to me today. He was more than passing curious over the ways in which you mean to honor Atiana.”
“Father?”
“He is concerned that his future son will be flying among the islands, chasing after meaningless pursuits.”
Suddenly, Zhabyn’s purpose became clear. The conversation he’d had with Borund where he’d told him about his desire to understand the blight-he must have shared it with his father. “Borund doesn’t understand.” “Neither, it seems, does his father.” “But you do,” Nikandr said. “I do, but we have seen few enough results.” “That will come.”
“How soon, Nischka? This year? The next? Ten years?”
Nikandr wanted to laugh. He wouldn’t be alive in ten years if he didn’t find a cure for the wasting. “We knew it would take time.”
“And by then the blight might have moved on, as it has done with Rhavanki.”
“Can you deny that things are becoming worse, that the next time it returns it may well destroy us?”
“In truth, I know not. What I do know is that we have to protect our family now. This year. And to do that I had to seal your marriage.”
Nikandr shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“Zhabyn and I signed the papers today.”
His words were heavy, and it was clear there was more to the story than this. “And what might have changed Vostroma’s mind so easily?”
For the first time, Father turned to Nikandr. The wiry beard framing the lower half of his face and running down his gold-threaded kaftan gave him a truculent look. “The Malva will be given to them.”
“ My ship?” The Malva was the ship he and Jahalan and Udra had been sailing the last two years to investigate the blight.
“ My ship, Nischka, and I will do with it as I please.”
“I have many things planned.”
Father shook his head, his beard swaying back and forth over his kaftan. “ Nyet. The Malva will be returned to us when the Gorovna is delivered to Vostroman shores, but when it does, you will no longer be given leave to go where you will. I need you to command a wing of the staaya. The Maharraht have become too bold.”
Nikandr’s stomach, which had been fine the entire day, chose that moment to wake itself from slumber. Like a yawning hole in the ground, nausea spread through Nikandr’s gut and chest, but the feelings were nothing compared to the sense of foreboding over what might be lost. “I will not shirk my duty if that is what you ask of me, but please do not ignore what Jahalan and I have done.”
“You have done well,
Nischka, but the Malva is already his. You will sign your papers tomorrow, and then you will ensure that you spend more time with the Vostromas.”
“There is little choice.”
“And yet you found time to visit your woman in Volgorod, twice in the past week.”
Nikandr stared up at his father, angry over being watched so. “Father, forgive me, but I will see whom I please.”
Father smiled. “You are not your own man, Nischka. You have never been, and the sooner you get that into your head, the better off we’ll all be.” He stood, staring down at Nikandr. “In time, such things can be overlooked, but not now, and especially not during Council. All it will take is one more perceived insult-one more-and Zhabyn will take his contracts and grant them to another Duchy, no matter that it makes him poorer in the end.”
He made his way to the door, his slippered feet falling against cold marble tile. In the fireplace, a pile of coals crumbled, sending the sparks flying upward.
“Mark my words.” The door clicked open. “If I find that you’ve been visiting that Motherless whore again”-he stepped into the hall before turning, his expression so grim it made Nikandr cold-“she will not live to see another sunrise.”
CHAPTER 9
Rehada lay on her pillows, the redolence of Nikandr’s musky scent fading but still present. The embers in the nearby hearth crumbled, creating the faintest of sounds as sparks flew upward, and it reminded her of just how long she had been lying there, lamenting. She rose and threw three logs onto the nearly dead fire, lighting it with a simple summons of the spirit bound to her. She stared into the burgeoning flames, yearning for the freedom to be in Nikandr’s arms, knowing that such a thing could never be.
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