Ashan guessed his next question. “The rift over Uyadensk is not so different than here on Ghayavand. What began here centuries ago is now spreading.”
Nikandr shook his head, confused. “The blight?”
“Can there be any doubt? I don’t know how the rift that formed here remained in check for so many years. I don’t know what caused it to change. But I know that it has. A chain of events has begun, and we must learn the way to reverse it, before it is too late.”
Despite the warmth of this place, Nikandr shivered. “And if we do not?”
“Then I fear the entire world will become like this island. Inhospitable. Wild. The only reason Ghayavand hasn’t devolved into utter madness is because of the will of Muqallad, and to a certain degree Sariya.”
“What will happen when one of them dies?”
Ashan was silent as they reached the edge of the plateau they walked upon. Nikandr stopped and looked. And his mouth fell open.
The land descended quickly and reached out into the dark sea with two long and verdant arms. Nestled in the deep valley where the two arms met was a city-a city every bit as large as Volgorod. Rounded towers vaulted into the sky, and dozens-hundreds-of smaller buildings hugged the form of the mountain, creating a crescent of pale brown stone against the bright green landscape.
The size of the city was a shock, but it was the state of it that was more alarming. The towers, the buildings, even from this distance, looked like broken and empty husks, as if each had been systematically dismantled from within. It was not unlike a wasp nest would look after carrion beetles had finished devouring the interior, wasps and all.
“What happened?”
“Hubris, son of Iaros. Hubris.”
CHAPTER 46
When Rehada and Atiana reached the Valley of Iramanshah, the crack of a cannon cast itself over the valley walls, echoing faintly after that first startling report. In the sky above, two ships were gliding toward an Aramahn skiff. The skiff surely could have outmaneuvered the ships, could have outraced them as well, but they would not risk the guns of the Landed ships-neither the ones on the ships chasing them nor the ones that would harry Iramanshah were they to escape.
The soldiers aboard the schooner lashed the skiff to the larger ship as they turned northward to return to the long line of ships further out to sea.
“Why do they take them?” Rehada asked Atiana, who rode nearby on a dun pony.
“As a warning to Khalakovo: no one will be allowed to land, nor to leave.”
“As if a handful of Aramahn could change the balance.”
“They could be spies or messengers, bringing word to Khalakovo’s allies.”
“Your mother would bring word to them, would she not?”
“It might be too dangerous. The other Matri could interfere with or listen to their communication. Or worse, they might attack. I have a feeling all of the Matri are taking great care while treading the dark.”
“Even the Duchess Khalakovo? She is the strongest, is she not?”
“She is, but that doesn’t mean she could fend off a concerted attack from the others. She runs herself ragged in peacetime.” Atiana glanced up at the ships, which were small against the background of the high gray clouds. “It will be worse now.”
They continued to the village in silence, and they were met by two unarmed men at the gates. As she had been instructed, Rehada asked to speak with Muwas, at which point one went to fetch him. They were led to the courtyard outside the tall doors. They waited for some time, but at last Muwas stepped through the doors and guided Rehada away from Atiana to speak quietly by the fountain. Atiana watched them warily, with no little amount of anxiety in her eyes.
“What has happened?” Rehada asked as she motioned to the water within the fountain, which-normally a sign of life and vibrancy-lay still.
Muwas’s expression was dour. “There have been deaths. One mahtar and two children were taken by the wasting. All three died early this morning.”
Rehada shook her head. “You are sure?”
“There is no room for doubt.”
This was unexpected. Muwas’s mood was perfectly understandable now, for Rehada was feeling the same thing. She had viewed the rift and the wasting as the vengeful will of Adhiya coming to right the wrongs perpetrated against the Aramahn for these many years, but if they were taking even the chosen ones and innocent children, then what were they to think? This could no longer be viewed as a sword, ready to be taken up by the Maharraht.
Muwas stared at Atiana coldly. “As for the princess, I will take her to the lake.”
“I was to take her.”
“Soroush no longer considers that wise, and I agree. You have not been welcome inside these walls for some time, Rehada, something you should have corrected long before now.”
“Speak not of what you do not know.”
Muwas’s expression hardened. “We all lose in this. We have known since the day we joined. Why should your anger over your daughter’s death be different?”
A fury welled up inside Rehada so quickly that she nearly struck him, if only to wipe that self-righteous look off his face, but if she did she would lose her chance to accompany Atiana inside. She needed to see this through, if only because she had spared Atiana that day on the beach. She would know more. She would know all there is to know before giving Atiana up so that Soroush could have his fourth stone.
“I have come prepared,” she said to him finally.
“Fahroz will see through you.”
“She will not.”
Muwas shook his head. “This is not what Soroush-”
“Soroush is not here. I am. And the princess will come with me.”
Muwas was a stubborn man, but he knew their position here was a tenuous one. He could not raise objections-not if they wanted any hope of succeeding.
“Then you will answer to Soroush.”
Rehada bowed her head and turned away. She found Fahroz walking across the courtyard toward her. An ornate, golden circlet wrapped her brow and at its center were three azurite gems. She wore an outer robe of white, an inner of yellow. Her dire expression warred with her bright clothes. “Excuse me, Muwas, I would speak with Rehada alone.”
Muwas nodded and left, retreating through the tall doors to the interior of the village. Fahroz turned to Rehada, her arms crossed over her breast. “I have just come from speaking with Hilal, and there are questions you must answer, daughter of Shineshka.” Before Rehada could speak, Fahroz continued. “Was Soroush one of the men you saw in Izhny?”
“ Yeh,” Rehadasaid without hesitation. There was no choice. Fahroz knew the answer already.
“Why did you not tell us this?”
“One Maharraht or another. It matters little to me.”
“Come, Rehada. This is no Maharraht. You had a child with this man.”
“And that child is dead.”
The wrinkled skin along Fahroz’s cheeks worked as she ground her jaw. “Play me not for a fool. This is more serious than you can imagine. Would you like to know Hilal’s advice?” Again she continued without allowing Rehada to speak. “It was to burn you with no chance to defend yourself. Maharraht cannot be trusted with the truth, he said.”
Rehada stared, refusing to answer the unspoken question.
“Are you Maharraht?”
“ Neh,” Rehada said.
Fahroz shook her head. “I would like to believe you, Rehada.”
Rehada steadied herself, but she displayed what she felt was the proper amount of alarm. “I would never join them, Fahroz. You must believe me. My daughter’s death was tragic. I am scarred, but I would not turn to violence to avenge something that can never be changed.” Visions of the suurahezhan came to Rehada, shaming her even as she stared into Fahroz’s eyes.
Fahroz weighed Rehada’s words carefully as her jaw worked. “I defended you to Hilal. I told him that you would not do such a thing. Am I a fool, Rehada?”
“You are not.”
>
“Then you will do me the favor of providing a small token of your earnestness.”
Relief swept over Rehada. “Anything.”
“You will confess your daughter’s death, and you will do it today. Now.”
She had known that this was the price to pay, but a well of fear still opened up inside Rehada. “I can’t do that.”
“Do this, Rehada. Do it for Ahya.”
“Do not speak her name.” She said the words because they must be spoken. She was completing a ruse, but she found the same reluctance seething inside her. She did not wish for her child’s name to be spoken. Ahya was hers, no one else’s.
“There is no harm in a name.”
You lie, Rehada said to herself. If that were true, she wouldn’t be feeling the burning weight at the center of her chest. She had come fully prepared to take this step, but now she wanted to leave, to flee, to return to her home and forget all about this.
But she could not. She could not afford to alienate herself from Iramanshah.
Neh. These were rationalizations. The truth was that the link to Adhiya through her stone was the only time she felt any sort of comfort, any sort of release from the pain of losing her child and her never-ending anger against the Landed. She could not bear to have it ripped from her and to go on without it as Soroush did. It would be too painful.
And so she held Fahroz’s gaze and nodded.
“Say it, child.”
“I will confess my daughter’s death.”
There was a tentative satisfaction in Fahroz’s heavy, wrinkled eyes, but it was not a mocking glance. Then her gaze drifted to Atiana. “The fates can be cruel at times, daughter of Shineshka, but I think in this they are right.”
Rehada turned, confused, and looked at Atiana, who was studying the massive celestia atop the nearby hill. Atiana turned then, perhaps sensing that she was being watched, and the moment their eyes met, Rehada understood exactly what Fahroz meant for her to do.
“ Neh, Fahroz,” Rehada said quietly but firmly. “Anything but that. I will confess to you, to Hilal, to the entire village. Anything. But do not make me confess to her.”
Fahroz had already started shaking her head. “Those are my terms.”
The pain in her hands made Rehada realize just how tightly she had been gripping them. She stared at her palms, each of which now contained four crescent-shaped marks of blood. Rather than storm away, rather than hide, Rehada laughed. Fahroz was right. The Fates had finally caught up to her, as she knew it eventually would.
She breathed deeply and released it slowly. Finally she nodded, and Fahroz returned the gesture. And then the two of them hugged.
CHAPTER 47
Rehada held her arms at her side, conscious of her posture and bearing even though Atiana-standing nearly face-to-face with her-and Fahroz-watching from a comfortable distance-were the only ones witness to it. She grew conscious of the shaking in her hands and balled them into fists to cover it, but that might be interpreted by Fahroz as disobedience or lack of acceptance and so she relaxed them and simply hoped that Atiana wouldn’t notice.
She did, though. Atiana glanced down, and her face softened as if she were trying to comfort a cowardly child afraid of storm clouds and thunder. It made Rehada want to gouge her eyes from her face.
Fahroz had chosen for the confession one of the largest rooms in Iramanshah, a hall normally used for the immense meals during the solstice festivals, but this day it was entirely empty, the trestles and chairs stored away, leaving the three of them small and insignificant at its center. It was not something that would normally give Rehada pause, but this day it made her feel small, smaller than she had felt in a long, long time.
“Are you prepared to continue?” Fahroz asked in Anuskayan, her voice echoing in the immensity of the room.
“I am.” Those two simple words felt foul on her tongue. She hated that she was forced to speak in their language.
“Then tell the Lady Vostroma what you are confessing.”
“A hatred for the family Bolgravya.”
Her voice echoed away slowly as Atiana stared and Fahroz paced a circle around them.
Fahroz stopped for a moment while she was within Rehada’s periphery. “Come, Rehada…”
“A hatred for the Grand Duchy.”
Fahroz resumed her pacing. “For whom?”
Rehada closed her eyes and shook her head, but she opened them again immediately. “A hatred for the Landed.” “And why do you hold hatred?”
“Because of the death of my daughter.”
“Deaths happen every day, daughter of Shineshka. Why would this one, even though it was your daughter’s, cause anger?”
“Because she was murdered unjustly by the streltsi of Nazakhov.”
“Murdered…”
“ Da, murdered!”
“Tell Lady Vostroma what happened.”
Atiana had been prepared. She had been told, as would anyone that was to play the part of the witness, to stand still, to accept what was being told as the truth, and to speak only when spoken to. But her oh-so-sympathetic face spoke volumes, and it felt as if she were scoffing at a covenant that had been in place for eons-yet another affront the Landed would someday be held accountable for.
Rehada spoke of that day in cold terms, giving Atiana the facts, how she’d left Ahya with friends, how she’d returned to find her burning body among the wreckage of the home she’d left only hours before, but as she spoke it was not those images that played through her mind but the sights and sounds of the mountain where she had taken breath. The day had been cool, pleasant. The sky had held few clouds, but those that were present scudded across the sky, sending shadows to play over the landscape like trumpeting heralds. The wind had been brisk. It had brought a scent of Lion’s Foot-the pale, late-blooming flowers that grew along the highest ranges of the southern islands. She had felt, during those hours of meditation, as though she had come to know Nazakhov deeply, as though, like the bond between mother and daughter, she was a part of it and it was a part of her. It had been exhilarating, for this had never happened to her before. It had been something that every Aramahn hoped to find but few managed in their lifetimes.
But here Rehada had discovered the weight of an island upon her shoulders. She wondered when she came down from that mountain whether any such thing could really happen. It seemed that it had all been a figment, a self-fulfilling delusion, a trick of the mind perpetrated consciously by the breath-stealing air of the tallest mountain in Bolgravya. It must be so, for what else could explain her apparent oneness with her environment and her complete inability to sense that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong with her child, her blood, her one and truest love?
As she had come to rest before that house-the one that had been burned to the ground-she had stared at the burned skeleton that had been her daughter. Her precious child had been ripped from her world by the acts of the Maharraht who had been hiding there, the prevailing attitude of the Landed for the ruthless acts committed by them, but mostly-she had no doubt in her mind-by the overriding greed of the Landed aristocracy. It was a greed that had pushed them to claw for every scrap of land in the sea, and it had done so for so long that they could no longer see that their acts would one day instill and reinforce the resistance that they hoped so fervently to root out.
Perhaps Rehada’s voice contained more venom than she had realized. She had expected Atiana to soften even further, to paste a look upon her face that would force Rehada to claw at her, if only to remove the expression from that white skin for a moment or two. But instead Atiana was nearly emotionless, and then, in increments, her face hardened, as if she condoned the actions of the streltsi that day, as if she would have ordered the very same thing had she held the gavel of fate in her hand. Strangely, this did not upset Rehada in the least. It felt as though things had returned to balance-Atiana the oppressor, she the oppressed-and it allowed Rehada to complete her story to Fahroz’s satisfaction.
“I left that very night and traveled Erahm another full circuit before landing on Uyadensk.”
“You didn’t see your daughter buried?” Atiana asked.
Rehada smiled the way she would for a child. “She had gone. Her funeral pyre had already burned whether I liked it or not.”
Atiana’s face pursed. “I do not question your judgment-I know the ways of the Aramahn are not my own-I only wondered why you would not grieve over your child.”
“I grieve as I grieve!”
Fahroz stopped near Rehada’s side, her arms across her chest. “A question was posed.”
Rehada shook her head. “I cannot do this.”
“You cannot even speak of your child?”
“Not to her. Nyet.”
Fahroz stared at her for a long time, hoping Rehada would change her mind. But she would not. “You leave me no choice.”
Fahroz strode toward the doors to Rehada’s left. As her soft footsteps faded, a vision of Ahya leaping over the edge of a skiff came to Rehada. It had happened when they’d reached Nazakhov. Both of them had been in good spirits. Her hair trailed behind her as she ran ahead to the edge of the nearby cliff and looked down upon the ocean and the city of Bastrozna. Rehada had come to her side and held her tight to her hip as the wind tugged at their hair and their ankle-length robes. “Will Father meet us here?” Ahya had asked. Rehada had smiled. “ Neh, child. Not here.” “Where?” “The next island. Or the one beyond that. I do not know.” “Will you teach me to touch Adhiya?”
“You are too young, yet.”
Ahya had looked up at her with those bright green eyes. Her face was sad, but resigned. “You are always holding me back.”
Rehada had laughed at the notion-a child of six complaining that she could not learn as an adult. Rehada had done the same to her own mother, but the difference here was how close to right Ahya was. She was very strong. Rehada had known it for several years, ever since she had noticed the spirits with which Rehada had been communing. She had felt them as a girl of twelve would have trouble doing, and she had been only five.
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