The kindjal had plunged down into the mattress so that by and large it was hidden. She shot forward, onto his chest, covering the knife with her belly as she kissed him passionately. She slid the knife up and underneath her now-vacant pillow as she climbed higher, allowing her breasts to brush against his arm and then his naked chest.
He grimaced in pain and pulled away, looking at her, not unkindly, but certainly not with the fervor of their one and only time between the sheets. He closed his eyes tightly and shook them open. “How long have I been asleep?”
She smiled the smile of the love-struck while searching delicately but with a growing sense of urgency for Nikandr’s stone, which had slipped away in her attempts to divert Grigory’s attention. “Who cares?”
“Atiana, please. Your father’s men should be arriving sometime today to transfer your one-time fiance to a manor house down the hill.”
“Nikandr is here?”
He pulled the covers away and sat up, looming over her as she lay there. From the corner of her eye she saw the stone slip down into the depression his right knee was creating. She reached up and scratched his stomach to keep his attention riveted to her.
He nearly doubled over-a ticklish man-and climbed over her to reach the floor. Immediately she released her hold of the knife, trusting that a man like Grigory wouldn’t adjust the pillows, and placed herself squarely on top of the stone.
“Would that interest you?”
Now that he was gone from the bed and pulling his clothes on, she allowed the expression upon her face to slip to one of concern, and then to anger. “Perhaps you didn’t hear what happened on Radiskoye’s eyrie, Griga, but a gun was held to my head, and Nikandr’s father had his finger on the trigger. I know in my heart the craven nearly ended a woman’s life because his son had been taken from him. I have words for his son-words about his father, words about Nikandr himself-that I would say to him before all of this is over.”
“Then come, and we will visit him-”
“They are words for Nikandr alone…”
Grigory stopped as he was pulling on his belt. She thought he had noticed his knife missing, but he was staring directly at her. “ Nyet,” he said with a satisfied smile. “Anything you wish to say to Nikandr you can say in front of your future husband.”
She slipped from the bed as he was pulling his shirt over his head. In one smooth motion she positioned the stone beneath the pillow and pulled the knife out from underneath it. She embraced Grigory before he could fully pull the shirt on and slipped the kindjal into its sheath while hugging him tightly. “Fair enough,” she said, kissing him on the mouth as his head emerged from the confines of his shirt.
“Enough.” He pulled away, favoring his wounded shoulder. “I have much to do. Get yourself dressed and meet me outside.”
As he opened the door, two streltsi further up the hall looked in their direction. Grigory didn’t make an attempt to block their view of the room-or more importantly, Atiana standing naked within it. He closed the door behind him like a wolf who had just won his bitch… Nyet, she thought, like a young, impudent aristocrat who’d claimed the prize no one thought him capable of winning.
She turned to the bed and spit upon it.
And then she retrieved Nikandr’s stone before pulling on her clothes.
The door before her clanked as the gaoler turned the keys. The immense door-after a hard shove from the gaoler-opened with a horrible groan. Atiana stepped inside. Dim light came from small windows worked into the stone walls.
There were four cells in the tight space with a wide aisleway between them. All four were occupied, and in the dimness, Atiana was having trouble discerning where Nikandr was being held. Two crewmen occupied the leftmost cells. In the first cell on the right was an Aramahn man with a mop of curly brown hair and a short, ragged beard.
In the final cell, lying on the straw layering the cell floor, was Nikandr, but he did not rise as she approached.
“Stand, Khalakovo,” Atiana said.
He jumped as she spoke. Her stomach churned as he rolled slowly over. Grigory had not mentioned that he was in such a state, and she realized that the information had been withheld for a purpose-Grigory had wanted to see her reaction as she laid eyes on him. Beyond her initial shock-which she hoped Grigory had not been able to see so well in the darkness-she hid her emotions well. She kept a steely gaze on Nikandr as he made it first to all fours, then to his knees. He breathed deeply, coughing painfully several times, before summoning the energy to pull himself up to his feet.
His face was a mass of black and purple bruises. His lip was swollen and cut, and the blood that had leaked from a gash along the bridge of his nose ran down his face and into the stubble along his lip and chin and neck. She found it impossible not to let some emotion show while staring at him. She wondered how long it had taken them, how much it had hurt.
But more than this, Nikandr looked frail, sunken. His eyes were dark, and his cheeks had started to draw inward. The wasting had progressed quickly in the time since she’d last seen him. He had looked, not whole, but vibrant still, in that hallway of Radiskoye before he’d left on his ship. She had still harbored visions of their future together, but now… How could anyone envision a future with a man that looked like he would be dead in the span of months, perhaps weeks?
And yet she found, as she stared placidly into his eyes, that the feelings hadn’t diminished. They’d grown in strength. There was a certain fire within him, not unlike Victania, that one had to admire.
“I see there is little enough left for me to do.”
Nikandr staggered forward and grabbed the iron bars of the cell. He glared at her, then Grigory, without speaking.
“Come, Nischka,” Grigory said. “Don’t tell me you aren’t going to wish us a fruitful marriage…”
Atiana turned to Grigory. “I was under the impression that I was the one who would speak with him.”
Grigory smiled and then laughed, showing the imperfect canines that hung high above his otherwise flawless teeth. He bowed his head and flourished a hand toward Nikandr, clamping his mouth in an exaggerated fashion.
Atiana turned back to Nikandr and stepped up to the bars. Had she wanted to, she could have leaned forward and kissed his hands. “I had at one time thought our arrangement necessary.”
Nikandr stared, perhaps confused.
Atiana continued, “Perhaps in time I could have grown to stomach it, but after seeing how low your father will stoop, I have no doubt you’re already on your way to following in his footsteps. Grigory knew the day of the Grand Duke’s murder how gutless you were, but I had convinced myself it was otherwise.”
When Nikandr spoke, it was with a scratchy voice that sounded like it hadn’t been used in weeks. “Grigory, it seems, is very wise.”
“Do not jest, Khalakovo. As far as this war has come, there is little time left for such things.”
“I wasn’t aware we were at war.”
“Well you should have! It was inevitable, and you should have foreseen it-you as well as your mother and father.”
The look of betrayal and hurt on his face drove a spike of regret through her heart. “Perhaps we should have murdered all of you in your sleep as your father and brother tried to do to us.”
“If that had been his plan, Nischka, you would not be alive today.” She took a step forward and took his hand. He allowed her to take it, and she was glad, for it was the only thing she could think to do. She spit upon his hand, and, using a quick move, slipped the stone into his palm and closed his fingers around it.
Nikandr stared at his fist, confusion plain on his face.
“Surprised?” Atiana said. “Perhaps now you’ll run to your mother like you used to when we were children.” She turned and headed for the door. “I should have known even then, seeing how quick you were to beg for her help.”
Grigory’s eyes were full of amusement and deep satisfaction, but she didn’t spare him more than a glance
for fear she would spit in his face.
She walked out, hoping Nikandr had the sense to keep the stone hidden until they were gone. Thankfully, Grigory followed, his lust for gloating apparently sated.
She was moved within the hour to a manor house far down the hill near a small village called Laksova. Her father and the other dukes were supposed to have arrived before evening meal, but they were late. She wondered, late at night while listening to the cannon fire coming from Oshtoyets, whether it was because there was movement afoot on the part of the Khalakovos. She worried for Nikandr-many things could go wrong in any attempt to free him from his prison.
Long after the sounds of cannon and musket fire had ceased, she lay awake, unable to find sleep. The morning sun began to brighten the window of the bedroom. She went down for a breakfast of cheese and apples, and though the cheese was sour and the apples withered, she wolfed them down, ravenous after how little she had eaten over the past few days. Borund and Grigory entered the narrow eating hall as she was finishing her still-steaming cup of tea.
Borund stood across the table from her, staring down at her as if she were still a little girl. “You should have been safe on Vostroma by now.”
“I will not be told where to go, Bora. Not any longer.”
“We are at war, Tiana. This is no time for your obstinate ways.”
“It seems to me the men are the obstinate ones. If the Matri had been allowed to discuss this before Father sanctioned this foolish plan, we would all be having tea in Radiskoye, laughing at our foolishness.”
Borund looked furious. “Is that what you think?”
“Can there be any doubt?”
“Perhaps, dear sister, you are thinking with your loins.”
Both Borund and Grigory were staring at her with judgmental looks. Clearly they were waiting for her to confess.
“If there’s something you wish to say, Borund, you ought to come out and say it.”
“Did you arrange for Nikandr’s rescue?”
With nonchalance, she raised her eyebrows and took a bite from the browned flesh of her half-eaten apple. “I wasn’t aware that he had been.”
“You surely were,” Grigory said. His face was red now, and it took all the concentration Atiana possessed not to stare at his neck, at the chain that had not so long ago held Nikandr’s soulstone.
“I most surely was not. It seems to me that he was in your charge, Grigory, not mine.”
He was desperate to accuse her, but he could not-to admit that she had taken Nikandr’s stone would be admitting his own failure, and he would not do so before Borund, so he set his jaw and remained silent, pointedly keeping his eyes fixed downward.
Borund noticed and nodded to the door. “I would speak with my sister alone, Griga.”
Grigory stared at Borund as if he’d been betrayed, but then he nodded and left, his boots echoing sharply against the cold stone floors.
“I can no longer arrange for you to be shipped home,” Borund said when the sounds had faded.
“Good. I don’t wish to go home.”
“But you will remain here until the hostilities have ended.”
“Hostilities?”
Borund paused, shifting his weight to the other leg. “We will attack today. There is no choice left to us.”
“It seems that things are well in hand.”
“ Nyet, Atiana, they are not in hand. All of our rooks have been driven mad or have flown off.”
“All of them?”
“All. Clearly the other Matri are crippling us so that we are blind. Now promise me that you won’t cause any more trouble.”
She was about to chide him, but this was the most serious she had seen Borund in a very long time. “Dear brother, I do believe you care for me.”
“I care little, Tiana. There are two more should some unforeseen fate befall you. It’s only that it would be difficult afterward to explain things to Mother.” He took one step back, glancing toward the door. “And poor Grigory will be heartbroken. You wouldn’t want to disappoint him, would you?”
“Never,” she said, though in truth part of her was terrified to be left alone with Grigory now that he knew what she’d done. Still, she was willing to risk it; it was the only way she could find her way back to Nikandr-back to Volgorod-so she could help.
“Keep well,” Borund said as he strode away.
Grigory was gone for some time, escorting Borund back to his windship, perhaps requesting that he-as the sole remaining voice of Bolgravya-be allowed to join the battle. Part of her wished that he would leave, but he returned shortly after midday.
An unseasonable snowfall had begun outside, a terrible omen for the day ahead. Grigory had a dusting of it on his hair and long gray cherkesska when he came into the sitting room. He ordered the skinny old peasant woman who was cleaning the mantel around the fireplace from the room. When she was gone, he rounded on Atiana, who sat in a chair holding a book of poems, more to give him the illusion that she was at ease than for any form of entertainment. She hadn’t read a single word since she’d picked up the book an hour before.
From around his neck Grigory pulled the chain that had once held Nikandr’s soulstone. He held it out for her to see, waiting for her to respond.
“Whatever is that?” she asked, holding the book upright as if she were ready to return to it the moment Grigory proved himself dull.
Grigory stepped forward and stood over her. “Why would you give him his stone?”
She knew it was unwise, she knew Grigory’s penchant for lashing out, but she couldn’t help but allow a broad smile to spread across her face. “What stone?”
He snatched the book from her grip and backhanded her before she had a chance to react. The sound-wood striking stone-played loudly in her ears as pain blossomed across the left side of her face. Grigory, shaking his hand as if it had been unexpectedly painful, looked for a moment as if he regretted what he had done, but then his eyes hardened. “Why would you betray all of us for him, a man who’s done nothing but work to undermine your father since the moment he landed?”
She could not speak. He was still standing over her, his breath coming rapidly, his face red and the pulse of his neck beating strongly. The look in his eye made it clear that he would simply strike her again no matter what she said.
When he did raise his hand, she cowered. “I owed him, Grigory. I owed him. That is why I gave him the stone.”
“What could you owe him?”
“I owed him his life, as his father had granted me mine.”
“Iaros nearly slew you in cold blood!”
“Dozens of his men had died, Grigory. That is hardly cold blood.”
“But the daughter of a duke…”
“Is just as legitimate a target as a son. Had the same thing happened in Galostina, I would not have thought twice about putting a gun to Victania’s pretty little head-and I tell you this, I would have pulled the trigger.”
Grigory’s face was still red, his forehead still pinched with emotion, but he was watching her with a calculating eye now. “You would have me believe that you gave Nikandr his stone in repayment for Iaros choosing to spare your life.”
“I don’t care what you believe-”
He slapped her again before she could say more. She held her cheek, unable to see the room clearly now through the tears forming in her eyes. When she had once again summoned the courage to look up, his face was not filled with rage, as she had thought it would be. Rather, he appeared proud, perhaps vindicated.
“Bolgravya is too good for a woman like you.” He turned and walked to the door. He opened it and nodded to someone outside her field of vision. A moment later a tapping came against the polished wooden floor. An old rook limped into the room. She recognized it immediately as Brunhald, the oldest of Bolgravya’s rooks and the one that Alesya preferred above all others-ancestors only knew why. One of its legs ended in a stump instead of a clawed foot, and it was this leg that tapped as it walked.
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br /> Borund had said that all of the rooks had been chased away. She wondered if he had known then about Brunhald. Most likely not. Most likely Alesya had told Grigory to keep this secret to himself. All the better to keep her precious child safe, to enact her plans as she saw fit-regardless of whatever agreement the men had made amongst themselves. It was with this realization that Atiana understood, for the first time, the position in which Alesya had found herself when her husband the Grand Duke had been killed. She was a thousand leagues from her son, the only voice of her family now that Stasa was gone. She would feel rudderless, adrift on the winds that had so quickly risen with the death of her husband. It was no surprise, then, that she would take steps to protect not only her son-the rightful heir of their Duchy-but also to position their interests for maximum gain, or, more accurately, minimum loss, with the mantle of Grand Duke sure to pass to one of the other duchies.
Brunhald opened her crooked beak and released a long, ragged caw. “Do not fret, child. My son has spoken with rashness. With haste. There may yet be room for a union.”
“I fear,” Atiana said, still holding her cheek tenderly against the pain of speaking, “that when my father discovers what your son has done, it will be difficult for him to keep his head.”
The old rook arched her neck far back and then pecked the floor three times. “We shall see, Atiana Radieva. We shall see.”
She pecked twice more, and Atiana felt herself go dizzy. She could feel, as she had in the aether from time to time, Alesya’s presence, but unlike the aether, where the Matri felt distant, it now felt as if Alesya were staring down upon Atiana with a hand upon her throat, refusing to allow her to move.
“What are you doing?”
This is what comes of betrayal such as yours, girl.
The intensity of the feelings grew, as did the sensation that she was being choked. She began to sense Alesya’s emotions-a seething anger at Atiana’s allegiance to Khalakovo and pure satisfaction that she would now be forced to pay for it.
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