by Sarah Ash
Maltheus turned to him, one eyebrow slightly raised.
“Now what?”
“We send our sincerest condolences to his widow and family. We assure Madame Vassian that she shall want for nothing. I suspect that an imperial visit would seem somewhat insensitive under the circumstances.”
“Kyrill Vassian is dead?” shrieked Sofia. She collapsed onto a sofa, weeping noisily. “A suicide?”
“Mama, Mama, please don’t upset yourself.” Astasia was as shocked as her mother at the news, but Sofia’s loud cries drove all other thoughts from her head.
“What will your father say? It will undo him utterly. He had such faith in Vassian.”
“Mama—” This uncontrollable weeping would surely lead to a fit of the hysterics, and Astasia did not want Eugene to come in and see her mother in such a state. She began to back away toward the bellpull, ready to summon help.
“And poor, dear Elizaveta, she must be quite distracted with grief. What a disgrace for the family. That handsome boy of hers, Valery, now all his prospects are ruined. Why didn’t Kyrill think of such a thing? Why?” Sofia had begun to breathe too fast, taking in little hiccups of air between sobs. Astasia hastily tugged the bellpull and hurried back to her mother’s side.
“Remember what the physician told you, Mama,” she said, “you must breathe slowly. Inhale—then let the breath out steadily.”
Nadezhda appeared.
“Smelling salts, quick!” Astasia said, seeing her mother’s lashes fluttering rapidly, her eyes sliding upward.
Nadezhda swiftly reappeared with a little silver and crystal bottle, which Astasia waved beneath her mother’s nostrils. Sofia wrinkled her nose in disgust and let out a sharp sneeze. Her sobs slowly calmed and she fumbled for Astasia’s hand, gripping it in her own. Astasia patted her mother’s hand as soothingly as she could.
“Fetch my mother some brandy, please, Nadezhda.”
Nadezhda gave Astasia a little glance of sympathy and knelt down beside the Grand Duchess, placing the glass firmly in her shaking hand, steering it to her lips.
All the while she was trying to calm her mother, Astasia had had no time to examine her own feelings. But now she could imagine all the horrible little details: the sound of a shot from the stables, Elizaveta hurrying out, the stableboy trying to hold her back, knowing what a terrible sight lay within . . .
And Valery Vassian . . . How would his father’s suicide damage his career? He had been one of Andrei’s close circle of cadet friends from the Military Academy, often the butt of practical jokes, but good-natured enough to laugh them off. She felt ashamed of the times she had teased him. Now that Andrei was not here to protect his friend, she must take on that role herself. She would speak to Eugene as soon as possible.
Sofia let out another sob.
“Oh, Mama.” Astasia settled herself on the sofa next to her mother. “You and Papa need a little rest, a change of air. It will do you both good.”
“Smarna’s so far,” sniffed Sofia. “Couldn’t we come to stay at Swanholm with you?”
Mama in Swanholm, ordering everyone about, taking charge before Astasia had had a chance to establish herself as mistress of the palace? “The Straits can be very rough at this time of year,” she said hastily. “And you know how you hate storms at sea, Mama. What about Erinaskoe? You haven’t been there in over a year. The valley’s so pretty in the spring. Papa can potter in his glasshouses and you can walk in the Orangery. Why not send word to the housekeeper to air the rooms?”
All the flags in Mirom were lowered to half-mast to honor the late First Minister. Most of the court and Senate put on mourning bands, though Eugene heard some mutter that they could not respect a man who had taken his own life.
Eugene made a strategic retreat to his study and called Chancellor Maltheus to join him for a late lunch. Gustave arranged for a cold collation to be served, with several bottles of Maltheus’s favorite Tielen beer.
“And if things had gone as we had planned,” Maltheus said, draining his glass, “I’d be on my way back to Tielborg with the morning tide to ask the Tielen council to fund and support your plans for Muscobar.”
Eugene studied the little bubbles slowly rising through the clear liquid to the top of his glass. He was still mulling over the consequences of Vassian’s suicide.
“Do you anticipate much resistance?”
“Only from the nationalist contingent. I’ll remind ’em we’re all part of one empire now,” said Maltheus with a broad smile, “and that there are benefits to be reaped for Tielen as well as Muscobar from this investment.”
“And then there’s Smarna . . .”
“Smarna!” Maltheus let out a derisive guffaw. “What an extraordinary lack of diplomacy: calling back their ambassador, staying away from the coronation. Everyone was talking about it.”
“Precisely so. When we should have been celebrating the union of the five princedoms, one was notable by its absence.”
Gustave knocked and announced, “The directors of the Mirom Charitable Society and the School Board are here to meet with you, imperial highness. I’ve shown them into the Nieva Room.”
“Still on your mission to educate the poor?” Maltheus asked.
“A man should be able to write his own name—and read. How else can he hope to better himself? Come, Maltheus,” Eugene said, placing his arm around Maltheus’s broad shoulders, “come and help me start a small revolution of my own in Muscobar.”
Men and women of the Charitable Society had gathered in the long reception room that overlooked the river and the river gardens. Eugene moved among them informally, listening to their suggestions, making a few of his own. Soon he realized there was considerable resistance to his plans.
“And where will we find the teachers for all these schools?” one woman asked in disapproving tones.
“Surely you can’t intend to include the street children?” added another. “Not without delousing and bathing them all first.”
“Especially the street children,” Eugene said. “And the school day will start with a nourishing meal for them all just as it does in Tielen. No one can work efficiently on an empty stomach.”
This information was received with astonished silence.
“A good barley soup costs little enough to prepare,” volunteered a third woman, who had kept silent until now. The other two turned on her, lapsing into the Muscobite tongue, so that Eugene could not follow their argument.
At that instant, Astasia came into the room. The arguing charity workers stopped in midflow and sank into curtsies. Eugene looked at Astasia with gratitude over their bowed heads; perhaps she would be able to sway them with her winning smile and enthusiasm.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt.” She walked up to him and said softly, “Can I ask a favor of you?”
Surprised, he nodded, wondering what request she was about to make.
“Vassian’s son, Valery. He was a friend of my brother’s. Could you find some way to give him a position so that he can support his mother and sisters?”
Why had she chosen this moment to make her request? It was just the kind of spontaneous, inappropriate interruption he might have expected from Karila.
“We will talk of it later,” he said, trying not to show his annoyance. He took her by the hand and addressed the visitors. “The Empress is, I believe, very interested in our proposed education program.”
He could sense that she was looking askance at him. He pressed her hand, saying, “I am so pleased to have your support, my dear.”
And suddenly the unreceptive throng was smiling and applauding.
What magic had she wrought to persuade them?
Beyond the smiling faces, he saw Gustave in the doorway. He left Astasia to the appreciative reception and went to see what was the matter.
“Refreshments will be served now, as you ordered, highness,” Gustave said in a loud voice, flinging the doors wide to admit liveried servants carrying silver trays of sweet wi
ne and cakes.
Then he continued quietly, “I thought you might be interested to learn that a detachment of the Northern Army has just entered the city. They have an Azhkendi prisoner with them. They are taking him, as you ordered, to the Naval Fortress on Gunwharf Island.”
Eugene left the Winter Palace by the River Gate and, accompanied only by two of his most trusted bodyguard, crossed to Gunwharf Island.
They arrived as a small, curious crowd gathered to watch the coach with its barred windows pass under the archway of the forbidding fortress.
“Do you wish to interrogate the prisoner yourself, imperial highness?” asked the commanding officer.
Eugene shook his head. All he wanted was to look again on the face of the man who had bested him and nearly brought all his plans to nothing.
He stood a little apart from his soldiers, to watch the prisoner emerge from the carriage.
The prisoner descended slowly, awkwardly, to the cobbles, hampered by his shackles. Pale and unkempt, with several days’ growth of stubbled beard, he looked around him, blinking dazedly in the daylight.
The last time they had met, those blue eyes had stared at him, filled with hatred and anger as the Drakhaon swept down on him and his men from the wintry sky.
Now all he saw was a bewildered young man, alone and bereft of his powers.
He would almost have felt pity for his enemy had the rain not started to fall, the cold drops stinging his burned skin. He had to live with the pain of the injuries the Drakhaon had inflicted, to the end of his days.
Now Gavril Nagarian would learn what it was to suffer the bitterness of defeat.
CHAPTER 8
“Stop moping around, Kiukiu, and fetch me some beeswax.”
Kiukiu started. Where did her grandmother keep the beeswax? In the earthernware jar next to the honeypot? Or alongside the wood varnish in the row of tarnished little glass bottles on the high shelf? As she stood staring up at the rows of jars and pots on the shelf she could think of only one thing.
Gavril Nagarian.
He had promised he would come for her as soon as the work on the Kalika Tower was complete.
“Do you want me to mend this gusly for you in this life or the next?”
Malusha was regaining her strength by the day, and as her strength increased, her tongue grew more tart. Kiukiu went up on tiptoe to reach a little black pot on the end of the shelf. Uncorking it, she smelled the pungent richness of the deep ochre beeswax gathered from her grandmother’s hives.
“Here it is.” She brought the pot to Malusha, who was bending over the wooden frame of the damaged instrument, fiddling with pliers and wisps of wire.
“If you want to call yourself a proper Guslyar, you’ll have to learn to do all this for yourself. I won’t be here forever and I want some peace and quiet in the Ways Beyond. I can’t have you popping up whenever you’ve broken a peg or snapped a string. . . .”
Kiukiu slipped back into the shadows. It was best to let Grandma mutter and complain to herself while she carried out the repairs.
The heat from the fire was becoming stifling in the little cottage. She felt muzzy-headed. She needed fresh air.
She crossed the courtyard, stepping over the hens as they skittered around on the frozen earth. As she passed underneath the archway that led out onto the moorlands, she murmured the secret words Malusha had finally taught her. Mists parted in a swirl . . . then formed again behind her, concealing the cottage from view.
Malusha had insisted on maintaining the charmed skein of invisibility she spun around the cottage to hide it from passersby—not that there were any, Kiukiu reasoned, so close to the desolation of the Arkhel Waste.
Kiukiu stood for a while, dazzled by the paleness of the daylight. The moors were still white with snow, and the horned peak of Arkhel’s Fang was half-hidden by a wreath of woolly snowclouds. But the air tasted sweeter and the wind that blew from the mountains had lost its keen bite. And here and there, spines of gorse and lingonberry protruded from the snow, darkly green. High overhead, a skein of grey-winged geese flew, returning to their summer nesting grounds.
Winter was slowly dying.
How long had it been since Gavril had kissed her good-bye? His absence had cast her life into shadow. The first spring light seemed muted; the slight hint of warmth in the air brought her no pleasure.
Kiukiu set out, her worn leather boots squishing through the slushy snow, tramping away from the cottage.
“I will come for you. . . .”
Kiukiu frowned up at the cloudy sky. How long did it take to finish work on the Kalika Tower? She had thought it would be a matter of days. Now the days had become weeks.
But he had promised. He had promised he’d come back for her. Unless . . .
Another skein of grey geese skimmed past overhead, startling Kiukiu with their forlorn cries.
“Why can’t I fly like you?” she cried. “Why can’t I fly straight to Kastel Drakhaon and find out for myself what’s happening?”
At this rate of thaw, travel by sleigh would be impossible in a few days. And then the journey would turn into a long, dreary trudge across the moors, skirting the treacherous marshlands and quagmires that still lay icebound.
If only I didn’t have this sick, sore feeling around my heart . . .
She turned and marched back into the cottage. Her grandmother glanced up at her from the coil of wire she was twisting to make a new string.
“I’m going back to Kastel Drakhaon,” Kiukiu announced, “and nothing you say can stop me.”
Something was wrong at the kastel. Very wrong.
Kiukiu pulled on the reins, standing up in the sleigh as Harim slowed to a halt.
The main road leading to the kastel was trampled to the bare earth as though many horses and heavy carts had passed over it. No fresh snow had fallen for several days now. She would have to dismount and lead Harim.
“What’s happened here, Harim?” she whispered.
Looking down from the high road among the trees, she saw flags fluttering from the kastel towers, flags of grey and blue.
The colors of Tielen.
And now she noticed men at work on the scarred earth of the escarpment where Lord Gavril had attacked the besieging army. She let the reins drop and hurried to the edge of the road, peering down through the low-hanging branches of fir and pine.
What were the Tielens doing? Building new fortifications? Great mounds of raw earth had been piled up. They seemed to be tunneling deep into the ground; she could see shafts lined with planks of wood, pulleys from which swung huge buckets filled with earth. Sentries armed with carbines patrolled the perimeter.
Kiukiu felt a cold, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
The Tielens had taken the kastel. Where was Lord Gavril?
“Hey, you up there!” A sentry had spotted her. He pointed his carbine directly at her. “Come down! Identify yourself.”
“P-please don’t shoot. I’m coming, I’m coming . . .”
The Tielen soldiers guarding the gate took charge of Harim and brought Kiukiu before their commanding officer, Captain Lindgren.
The captain had installed himself in the Great Hall. All the Nagarian portraits had been taken down. Where Lord Volkh had once stared sternly down from the dais, a new picture in an ornate gilded frame had been hung, garlanded with Tielen colors. Kiukiu kept gazing at it, recognizing the tall, imposing figure as Eugene of Tielen. A flash of memory jolted her back to the barren, burned battlefield—and her first sight of Eugene, lying horribly burned outside the kastel . . . though this portrait depicted him clean-skinned and unscarred, staring proudly out as though scanning the world for new countries to conquer.
Beneath his royal master’s portrait sat Captain Lindgren, engrossed in reading a sheaf of dispatches. He glanced up at Kiukiu and spoke in Tielen to the soldiers who had brought her in. Then he set the dispatches down.
“Who are you and what is your business here?” he said in the comm
on tongue. He did not speak brusquely, yet Kiukiu felt her knees trembling.
“My name—Kiukirilya. I-I work here.” She saw him reach for a brown-bound ledger, open it, and scan a list of names.
“Your name is not on this list. Can you explain why?”
“I’ve been away. Caring for my grandmother.”
He shut the ledger with a snap and looked up at her, unsmiling.
“Can anyone here vouch for you?”
Her mind was in a turmoil. All she could think was: “What’s happened to Lord Gavril? Where is he?”
“Anyone in the kastel?”
“My aunt. Sosia.”
“The housekeeper?” He clicked his fingers to the soldiers. “Bring her here.”
One of them left the Hall and returned with Sosia—a subdued Sosia, who followed him without a word of protest.
“Auntie?” Kiukiu cried, relieved to see her alive.
Sosia’s eyes widened on seeing her. She shook her head as if in disbelief.
“Whyever did you come back, Kiukiu? You should have stayed with Malusha!” she cried in Azhkendi.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know—”
“Please identify this young woman for me,” interrupted Captain Lindgren.
“This,” Sosia said, her manner suddenly meek and cowed, “is my niece, Kiukiu.”
“Please confirm her role in the kastel household.”
“Maidservant.”
“Why was I not given her name before?”
“She was given leave to go care for her grandmother. I didn’t expect her back so soon.”
“If she is to stay, she must earn her keep,” the captain said. “We have too many mouths to feed here as it is. I will not tolerate idlers. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Captain,” Sosia said. “She can take up her old duties in the kitchens again.”
“Young woman, please inscribe your name on the household role here.”
“M-my name?” Kiukiu shot Sosia an agonized glance.