“The meeting was my idea,” Nikandr said.
Berza, a dozen yards away, had resumed her half-crouch. She was pointing her muzzle toward the open field, but her ears were swiveling toward Nikandr.
“Then he has lost control of his own house. And if you believe-”
Borund raised his musket to his shoulder and pulled the striker to full-cock. Berza sprinted away over the meadow.
“-that I would raise friendship above my own family’s interests-”
Three grouse, fifty paces away, fluttered into the air.
“Borund! Don’t!” Nikandr pulled his reins over and kicked his pony into action.
Sparks flew from the hammer.
The gun cracked.
A brief flash of red against Berza’s brown coat. A yelp. And then she was lost among the tall grasses.
“-then you are sadly mistaken.”
Nikandr, his breath loud in his ears, pulled his pony up short, unable to comprehend what had just happened. He studied the grass for any sign of Berza, but there was none. The shot had been all too accurate.
“Think, Nikandr.” Borund urged his pony into a walk. He held the gun up, waited for Nikandr to meet his gaze, then threw it onto the ground between them. It landed with a dull thump. “One Landless boy against the entire Duchy seems like an ill exchange to me.”
And then his pony trotted away as Nikandr dropped from his saddle and sprinted across the meadow.
CHAPTER 27
Nikandr, carrying Berza, took the path just inside Radiskoye’s western wall to the eyrie. The streltsi on guard, clearly confused, said nothing.
Berza was heavy in his arms, a limp weight. She hadn’t deserved this. She had been a faithful friend to Nikandr her entire life. She had been loving and devoted, and well mannered save for her penchant for finding rats in the stable and eating them at the foot of Radiskoye’s grand entrance. Nikandr had never been able to rid her of that one love. Perhaps it had come from her inability to down the grouse she’d been trained to chase.
He followed a trail to a quiet place along the cliffs-a place he used to come as a child to study the water far below. In the manner of his people he set Berza down and whispered words to her departing soul. For some reason he felt shamed more than betrayed. He should have sensed Borund’s mood. He should have charged Borund’s pony, fouled the shot.
He was preparing to drop her over the edge when he heard the crunch of footsteps coming his way. When he turned he hoped to see Victania-he needed a friend just now-but instead he found Atiana coming his way, and as soon as he had he turned away. She was just about the last person he wished to speak with now.
She either didn’t sense his mood or purposely ignored it. She squatted down next to him, her dress folding over his right knee as she stared at the body of Berza. “Oh, Nischka… I had hoped they were lies.” She rubbed his back, a gesture that was wholly infuriating.
“What did he say?” Nikandr asked.
“He joined us late for midday meal, boasting at how well the hunt had gone, how true his one and only shot had been. Father asked what he had felled. Borund looked at him and smiled and…”
“Don’t hide it from me.”
“Nischka-” “Tell me!”
Atiana shifted away, the stone crunching beneath her boots. “He barked like a dog. And then he set to eating his elk.”
Nikandr rubbed Berza’s coat tenderly, realizing he was powerless to avenge her death. There could be no repercussions. Not now. Not over a dog.
He wanted to ask Atiana to leave. He didn’t want the sister of the man who had done this to see his last farewell. But she had become more than that. She had come here when it was unwise to do so. If she wished to help him, then he would accept it gratefully, no matter what their future might be.
He picked Berza up, holding her in his arms while looking to the horizon. He heard Atiana whispering next to him, and when she was done, he tossed Berza from the edge of the cliff. He watched her fall, saw her splash into the white ocean waves, his eyes watering as the image of her running over the field and falling to a small spray of red played over and over within his mind.
He didn’t know how long he had been watching, but suddenly Atiana was pulling him away from the edge. She brushed dirt from the shoulder of his coat, and then looked up at him with a hardened expression.
He shrugged her away. “Did you tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“Of the wasting?”
“ Nyet.” Her confused expression was so masterful Nikandr wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth or not. “I would not have, Nikandr. I told you so that night.”
“Then how would he know?”
She shook her head. “I do not know. Perhaps he guessed.”
“We have barely seen one another, Atiana, and I have been careful.”
Her face grew cross. “I am telling you the truth.”
“ Da, something the Vostromas are very good at.”
“We aren’t the ones hiding a disease that should have been revealed months ago. We aren’t the ones secreting away Aramahn that should be handed over.”
“You side with your father, then?”
“Why should I not? His demands are reasonable.”
Nikandr paused, breathing heavily, weighing his words. He was angry now that he had shared his last few moments with Berza. He should have sent her away-he should send her away now to rot with the rest of her family and their traitorous allies-but he realized she was the one small link he still had to the Vostroma family. And more than that, she was not his enemy.
“Ashan is innocent, Atiana. The boy-I am not so sure, but if he was involved, it was as a tool. He would not do something so violent.”
“How can you be sure?”
He pulled out his soulstone and showed it to her. She cringed, though whether this was from concern of his well-being or embarrassment that she might still marry a man with a broken past, he wasn’t sure.“When I first met him, he noticed my stone even though he couldn’t see it. We are connected, he and I. I know not how, but I do know this-that boy is no murderer.” He motioned toward the nearby cliff. “He is as innocent as Berza.”
She stared at the stone a moment longer, then met his gaze. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
“Strange things are happening. The blight. The wasting. When I took the dark for your mother, I saw a young girl die in her mother’s arms, taken by a hezhan. Who would have thought to see such things in our lifetime? If you say there is a link between you and the boy, if you say he is innocent, then I believe you.”
He was so shocked he found himself unable to speak for a moment. “Thank you, Atiana.”
Her eyes went far away. It was a look he knew well. It meant she was scheming. Calculating.
“What is it?” he asked.
“If it’s proof my father needs, there is one way you could provide it.”
“How?”
“The Matra could assume him.”
Nikandr sat across from Father in his drawing room, waiting for Mother to join them. A black rook, which had been sitting idly on the nearby perch, suddenly launched into a fit of flapping wings and cawing. The display ceased as soon as it had begun, but now there was a look of intelligence in the eyes that hadn’t been present moments ago.
“Good day, Mother,” Nikandr said.
The rook arched its head back and cawed once. “Quickly, Nischka. I have little time.”
“I wish to discuss Nasim.” Father opened his mouth to speak, but Nikandr talked over him. “There is little enough to report, which is why I needed to speak to you both.”
“Go on,” Father said.
“I want Mother to assume Nasim’s form.”
The moment Atiana had said it, Nikandr knew they had to try it. He was surprised he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He was surprised his mother hadn’t, until he realized that she probably had. It was a dangerous thing to do, made no less dangerous by Nasim’s
unpredictable nature. And there were other considerations as well. It was a practice that had been used long ago by the earliest of the Matri against the Aramahn-sometimes to gain information, sometimes to control them for short periods. It was a practice that had been forbidden as part of the Covenant between the fledgling Grand Duchy and the Aramahn. Were they to resume the practice and be discovered, there would be serious repercussions from Iramanshah.
The rook flapped its wings several times.
“Impossible,” Father said as he reached up and stroked the black feathers of the bird’s breast. “Has Ranos not told you the steps Fahroz has taken?”
“All the more reason to do something now, before it’s too late.”
Aramahn were already refusing to work on Khalakovan ships. Some were still arriving, but word had already spread among the archipelago, and fewer ships bearing goods and food were arriving because of it. As hard as Volgorod had been hit by the blight, they could sustain no more than a few months without the Aramahn.
“That isn’t all,” Father said. “Zhabyn, as I feared, has delivered an ultimatum. Either we give him the boy by tomorrow morning or he and the traitor dukes leave to join the incoming fleet. He has threatened a blockade, allowing no ships to pass in or out until we give him up.”
“The same choice left to us by Fahroz.”
Father allowed himself a smile. He looked haggard, but then he turned casually toward Nikandr, a steely look in his eyes. “Barring a confession or conclusive evidence, we have two clear choices. We can give the boy to Fahroz or we can give him to Zhabyn, though the latter seems no choice at all. He will simply torture the boy to find the information he needs, and I have no doubt it will be skewed to his side of the conflict. Which leaves the Aramahn… It grates that they have demanded the boy, but they are in the right here. We have nothing to offer them for evidence, so if we assume the boy’s mind and word ever reached them that we had, we would be left with nothing.”
“It isn’t whether or not he had something to do with the crossing. It’s in what capacity. Who used him, and why? Can they do so again? And if so, when?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“No one will know. We’ll find an excuse to keep Jahalan and Udra away, and we can move Ashan to another cell. Even if Nasim understands what’s happening to him, he’ll most likely never tell a soul, and even if he does, it would be easy to deny.”
Father stared into Nikandr’s eyes, clearly doubting the soundness of this decision, but then the rook croaked and pecked at the crossbar it was standing on. “We will do it.”
Father looked shocked. “You are sure?”
The rook cawed. “You are right to worry over the threats we face from the dukes and the Aramahn, both, but I fear we have not been paying enough attention to what this boy might have done. What he might have leveraged here on Khalakovo to summon such a beast. If there is some small risk of giving offense, then I say the risk is worth it.”
Father considered this for a time, but then nodded. “It will be done. Tonight.”
CHAPTER 28
Rehada, flying high over the island under a bright and cloudless sky, adjusted her hold on the sail lines, maneuvering the skiff to a more westerly course. Unlike the larger Landed ships, the skiff had only a single keel running fore to aft that kept the craft aligned with the ley lines of the island below her. It was a simple craft, not so different from the ships used in the early days of exploration, granted life by the nature of the windwood hull and the dhoshaqiram shipwright who had cured and shaped it.
There was much to do today, but Rehada’s thoughts kept slipping back to her time with Nasim deep in the roots of Radiskoye. The heat. The pain. So intense. She had never been at the mercy of the elements in that manner. Always, even when she was young, even while she was learning, she had been in control. Even when she offered herself up to the flame in penance for her thoughts, she was in control. There, sitting with Nasim, she had been at his mercy.
And there was no doubt that he had been the one pulling the strings. The only question was whether or not he had understood what he was doing, whether it was malicious or not. She didn’t think so, mainly because of what had come before.
Over the years-especially when she was new to the ways of bonding-she had hoped through her bonding that she could understand more about the world beyond and so learn more about this life. She had hoped to learn what she could expect when she passed and how she might better prepare herself for her next life-all in hopes of one day reaching vashaqiram.
But she, like nearly all Aramahn who tried such things, had been disappointed. She had been unable to feel anything more than a vague sense of otherness that emanated from the hezhan she bonded with. Her time there would often evoke memories, especially ones she had long forgotten, and some she could not remember at all-memories from prior lives, or perhaps those she had yet to live-but never had she felt like she was experiencing Adhiya.
But there in Radiskoye, while allowing the suurahezhan to occupy her consciousness, she had felt another soul. Nasim. She bid the hezhan to approach him, and when it did, she felt something so unexpected that she nearly cried. He was so miserable in the real world. But there… There, he was in rapture. He was filled with joy, with wonder, with love beyond understanding. She had often wished she could see the world beyond, to touch it and taste it. Feeling some small amount of what Nasim felt, she knew these to be foolish urges. Who needed eyes when such heights of emotion were possible? Who needed to taste, to hear, to feel, when the mind could soar high along the firmament?
She craved to bask in his light, but she knew she had to speak with him, not for Nikandr’s benefit, but her own.
Nasim, she called.
His attention shifted. It felt as if a bright star had focused its rays upon her, and though it burned, she did not care.
Nasim, it was you that day, wasn’t it? You were there when I summoned the suurahezhan.
There was no response, but she could sense that he was listening. How many others had done what she was doing now? What had Ashan spoken to him about? And what had he learned?
We hope that you will join our cause. We wish to rid these islands of the taint from the Landed. She paused, but when she heard no response, she continued. We wish you to open the rift, the same rift used to allow the suurahezhan to cross.
She repeated these thoughts many times, but Nasim only continued to watch, to wait.
Did you know that men died that day?
A flare.
Dozens, Nasim.
She felt, at last, an emotional response.
Dozens of Landed died from one hezhan. Imagine what you could do were the rift to open wide.
And then her world was pulled out from underneath her. Her awareness had been fixated, pinpointed, but now it expanded so rapidly she felt lost. She felt the island, the currents that ran through it. It was a reflection of the material world as seen from Adhiya, and it was beautiful beyond description, the currents of life, shifting, slipping, mixing, reforming into innumerable combinations.
But it was not complete. A wound ran through it, so deeply that she knew it immediately for what it was. The rift that Soroush had discovered forming on Uyadensk, the place she had called home for the last seven years. The rift moved like the slow tide of magma on the active southern volcanoes. It drew life from everything around it. It was a corruption, a tear between the worlds, and it was affecting Adhiya as much as it was Erahm.
Yeh, Rehada said, this is what we wish you to-
Pain coursed through her like a river during springtime melt. She felt the misery of the island, the pain that the rift was wreaking on its slow trek across the landscape. It poisoned everything it touched, and though she realized the rift would one day close, she also knew another would replace it, and another, until the rifts became so large, so voracious, that they would consume everything.
She pleaded for Nasim to release her, but she realized with a growing horror that Nasim h
ad gone. He had left her to the devices of Adhiya, leaving the rift and the suurahezhan that now fed upon her to do with her what they would.
She railed, fighting the spirit with all the strength that remained. She thought surely it would take her, would draw her through the veil to Adhiya to begin her life beyond, but finally, after one last panicked surge, she felt it release her.
She had woken with Nikandr beating the flames from her clothes, staring at her with wild eyes. The stench of burned wool filled the air. The dying madness was at odds with Nasim, who sat emotionless on the floor nearby.
She had left Radiskoye with feelings of inadequacy and smallness in the face of what she had seen. She’d had terrible dreams, visions of Ahya being burned alive, of Gierten’s baby girl being swallowed by the earth, and when morning had finally arrived, she had known she would come to remove the stone she had placed beneath Evina. It was a small thing, she knew-Soroush would merely take another if not this one-but it was all she could think to do.
She pulled several of the small opals attached to the inside of the hull off, placing them in a bag affixed to the mast. As the skiff descended, she maneuvered it toward the water, landing it in a clearing between the trees. She headed off toward Gierten’s home. She could hear the sound of the surf to the south. The wind was pleasant, and it brought with it not only the loamy smell of the forest but also memories of the times she had spent with Ahya in places like this, running through the trees and laughing.
She reached the home a short while later. It was squat, with a thatched roof and a gravel path that led from the shoreline to the front of the home. She stepped onto the porch and squinted into the dim interior. With the sun directly overhead it was difficult to see into the room that had only a small window set high in the wall, but she could still see a hearth, a small table, and a rocking chair. “ Privyet?” she called.
When no one answered, she walked around to the rear and found Gierten kneeling on a piece of wood, tending to a sickly patch of garden twice the size of their modest home.
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