The Winds of Khalakovo loa-1 Read online

  “Were the Duke of Vostroma to be given the boy, believe me, he would find evidence, one way or another-the dukes that rally beneath his flag will allow nothing less. They will make the boy talk or they will hang him as a traitor to the Grand Duchy and fabricate the rest. Either way, your young charge will be dead, and you will never be able to say that you were powerless to prevent it.”

  “You know in your heart that Nasim is innocent.”

  “Innocent or not, Nasim was involved. Silence now leads to the gibbet. We have waited so long to give the dukes news that they believe Khalakovo was in league with you. They believe we arranged for the murder of Stasa.”

  “Preposterous.”

  “Not at all. Our history is rife with murder. It gives everyone pause that an arqesh would be involved, but you are a man, like they are. No matter how peaceful you prove yourself to be, they will always think you capable of it. The only way to help Nasim now is to give me answers so I might convince the other dukes that this was merely-”

  Nikandr stopped, for there was a feeling within his chest, a discomfort that felt like heartburn. He swallowed, unable to speak.

  Ashan stared, clearly confused.

  The feeling of discomfort intensified, and suddenly Nikandr knew unerringly the direction from which it came. Ashan glanced toward Nasim’s room and stood as Nikandr backed away toward the door. Ashan looked like he wanted to accompany him, but Nikandr stepped outside and ordered the guardsman to lock it. Then he rushed up the hall to Nasim’s room.

  Nasim was sitting on the floor, cross-legged. The carpet had been rolled up and sat against the bed. The floor was made of hard granite tile. Nasim was working a piece of the tile-pulling it upward, thinning it, shaping it like clay, until it was as thin as a cord. It pulled away from the floor when he gave it a sharp jerk. Then he placed it among dozens of others, all of them forming an impossibly complex sculpture made from the stuff of the floor itself. It was similar to the skills of the vanaqiram, the Aramahn stone masters-they altered the form of stone to recreate it in ways both practical and beautiful. These cords, however, when Nasim released them, did not remain still. They moved, flowing like strands of kelp in a calm sea.

  Nasim, apparently oblivious to Nikandr’s presence, sat up straighter and smiled as if he were an artisan completely lost in his work. He motioned one hand toward the center of the creation. And then, Nikandr felt a clutch at his heart as the center of it flared to life.

  Nikandr fell to his knees, grabbing his chest as pain blossomed from within.

  CHAPTER 26

  Khamal stands on a stony beach, watching the waves roll in. The day is cloudy, an omen not altogether unexpected. His relationship with Muqallad has always been this way. Why should this day be any different?

  The stones crunch as he squats, and while he runs his hand along the rocky shore, feeling the weight of it, the water mingles among the stones with gentle sighs.

  Out to sea, the water begins to swirl. It froths and boils, and Khamal can feel it as he touches the stone. A form can be seen moving up from the depths, and soon the surface of the water breaks, and Muqallad begins to rise.

  His hair is black and curly. His beard is braided with golden rings woven into the strands, making him look like a king from beneath the sea. His eyes are dark, and he is bare-chested. He stares at the island, failing to see Khamal from the shroud Khamal had placed over it long ago-when Muqallad had left.

  Khamal finds a single rock among the countless others, a rock of reddish hue, with striations of black and silver. He stands and holds it out at arm’s length.

  And Muqallad turns. He stares straight at Khamal, though surely he cannot yet see through the shroud.

  He has learned much. Perhaps too much.

  But what is there to do now?

  Khamal allows the stone to drop. And the shroud falls away.

  Together they walk toward the city. As they fall into step, neither he nor Muqallad leads the other. They talk, of their travels, of knowledge gained, of loves found and regrets discovered. It is as if the past five decades had never occurred, so easy is it to speak to him.

  As it was of old.

  But as they reach the edge of Alayazhar, they both go silent. Among the streets, though they cannot be seen, are the akhoz, the wanderers, the lost. The forgotten. It had been Muqallad’s idea long ago to shroud the city in illusion, painting it as whole and pristine when in reality it was a broken and tragic thing. Khamal allows the veil to fall away, only for a moment. There are three of them, all children once, standing nearby. They are naked. Their lips are black. Where their eyes once were is now smooth skin. They raise their noses to the sky, somehow still able to smell them despite all their attempts to mask their scent. As Muqallad and Khamal continue, the akhoz scrabble after, their noses to the sky, their lips pulled back in rictus grins.

  Khamal allows the illusion to fall back into place. He has never been able to look upon them for long.

  They approach a tower, a pinnacle of ivory that stands near the harbor. The air between them grows even more tense. Both of them know who awaits here. Both of them remember what happened.

  When they come to the black iron gates surrounding the tower, the wooden door at the tower’s base opens. There stands Sariya, she of the golden hair, she of the blue eyes and graceful face. She is a child of autumn, a child of the dying day. A child of indecision. Khamal should have thought of this when they agreed, together, to banish Muqallad from the island.

  Muqallad opens the gate and holds it for Khamal. As Khamal steps through, Sariya studies him, and the skin beneath her brow pinches. It is a momentary thing-there one moment and gone the next-but Khamal knows instantly that he has been betrayed.

  “My Lord Prince!” the guard stood at Nikandr’s side.

  Realizing where he was and what had happened, Nikandr waved him away and stood. Thankfully the pain was already beginning to subside.

  “My Lord?” He was staring at Nikandr’s chest.

  Nikandr looked down. Something was glowing beneath his shirt. He pulled out his stone, and found it to be glowing just as brightly as the light from within Nasim’s living sculpture.

  “Leave us,” Nikandr said to the guard. “And speak of this to no one.”

  “Of course, My Lord.”

  When the guard had stepped into the hall and closed the door, Nikandr met Nasim’s eyes. There was an awareness Nikandr hadn’t seen in him before, an awareness that spoke of a clear grounding in reality.

  “That was you, wasn’t it? You were Khamal.”

  Nasim’s face became tortured, and Nikandr felt fortunate that he couldn’t remember the things that seemed to haunt the boy so. “I was many people.”

  “Do you remember them all?”

  Nasim shook his head. “Not all.” He smiled, a fleeting thing. “Not yet.”

  “Does Ashan know these things?”

  “He may. He is wise. Wiser than I have ever been, I fear.” Nasim pulled his knees up to his chest, the position now eerily familiar. “Will you kill him?”

  Nikandr was confused at first, but quickly came to understand that he meant Ashan. “I would not wish it.”

  “But it is not in your hands.”

  He debated lying to Nasim, if only to calm him. This sudden clarity in the boy was an opportunity he did not want to waste. But the Aramahn valued honesty above almost everything-excepting perhaps the sanctity of life-and the boy seemed to know much more than Nikandr would have guessed only minutes ago.

  The light within the living sculpture, which had been sparkling white, shifted so that red was mixed in, and the fronds seemed to quiver rather than wave.

  “It could be. I need only discover what happened when the suurahezhan crossed to this world. Can you tell me about that day?”

  Nasim blinked several times. He looked lost in thought, perhaps recalling the events in his mind.

  “Please,” Nikandr urged. “Tell me what happened. Was it you that summoned the suurahe
zhan?”

  He was shaking his head, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of some growing discomfort or if it was in answer to his question. “She was there.”

  “Who was there?”

  Nasim’s face transformed from a boy deep in thought to the expression he’d worn so often since coming to the palotza, a blank expression that told Nikandr that this moment of lucidity had passed.

  “Nasim?”

  Nearby, the delicate structure of stone crashed to the ground. As the cords struck the floor, they shattered into hundreds of pieces. His soulstone dimmed until it was just as it had been before its sudden resurgence.

  “Nasim?” Nikandr prompted. “Nasim, can you hear me?”

  He tried for long minutes, but Nasim had gone back to whatever place so occupied his mind, and Nikandr, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out what any of this meant.

  He touched his chest-the pain still fading-and felt his flask. A numbness spread through him, the kind one feels when struck with something so certain that it didn’t seem possible.

  The elixir…

  He had used it each time he’d felt a connection with Nasim. The eyrie.

  The cliff. The frozen lake. Here in the donjon of Radiskoye. It had to be the reason, though why that could be he had no idea.

  Nikandr rode next to Borund on a well-worn trail along the southern border of Khalakovo’s largest forest. The ground tapered slowly down to the sea. The day was bright if not warm, and it was good to feel fresh wind upon his face again.

  The storm that had been raging over the island abated during the night. Nikandr suspected that it had had something to do with Nasim, but Mother said that she had felt no connection from him to a hezhan. With a storm the size of the one that had gripped the island for the past week, it would take a very ancient spirit indeed to sustain it, and though Mother said that she didn’t believe the boy capable of such a thing, Nikandr guessed that she was starting to form doubts. The boy had done what he had done without Mother even sensing it. The fact that she hadn’t known was cause for great concern, and Nikandr could tell even if she wouldn’t admit it that she was worried.

  “I was pleased to hear that you’d decided to join me,” Nikandr said as they crested a grass-covered knoll.

  They had both been awkwardly silent since leaving the palotza. For Nikandr’s part, he was angry with Borund but trying not to let it show. Father had told him early that morning that Mother had sensed ships coming from the south, ships meant to bolster the position of Vostroma and his allies.

  Borund, no doubt, was angry for his own reasons.

  “It was time to talk, da?”

  They approached a meadow, which was blooming with snapdragons and brightbonnets. Both Borund and Nikandr pulled their ponies to a stop. Berza, Nikandr’s mottled brown setter, had pulled up short and was standing stiff-crouching a bit, begging to be set free. Borund maneuvered his flintlock off of his lap, but Nikandr raised a finger, telling him to wait and see.

  Nikandr couched the stock up against his shoulder, sighted to the center of the meadow, and pulled the flintlock back. As soon as the striker clicked into place, Berza bolted into the meadow. She leapt gracefully over a small thicket of heather, scaring two red grouse into flight. Nikandr led the lead male and pulled the trigger. A moment later, sparks shattered against the pan. The musket kicked and the crisp air exploded.

  Black bits of tail feather splashed against the blue sky, but the bird continued with its mate beyond the forest-insulted, perhaps, but otherwise unharmed.

  Borund started laughing-a chest-heaving affair-but then recovered himself at Nikandr’s look.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve been to the fields,” Nikandr said.

  “No doubt! Even with that nifty trick you taught my dog, you managed to miss.”

  When they were young, Khalakovo’s master of hounds had gifted Borund with a puppy. He loved it and begged his father to let him take it home, but Zhabyn refused, and so Borund had had to settle for visiting with her during his rare visits to Khalakovo. The dog-no thanks to Borund-had grown up to be an excellent hunter, and she’d sired a progeny that all seemed to have the same excellent traits as their matriarch, but that didn’t stop Borund from claiming all of them as “his dogs.”

  “Laugh while you can,” Nikandr said, as he spurred his pony into action, “you’ll have your chance soon enough.” They galloped away, Berza jumping ahead through the meadow. Nikandr took a deep breath before speaking. “But we have more to speak of than grouse.”

  Borund rested his musket easily in the crook of his arm. “I was beginning to wonder if you had the nerve to speak of it.”

  “Atiana. I would like to extend my apology to you as well as your father, which I will when I see him again. I have acted the child. Had I acted as I should, Zhabyn might not have delayed the marriage.”

  “Such a change of heart… You could hardly stand the thought of marrying her a week past.”

  “I have had time to think on it, Bora. You, of anyone, should know how difficult it can be to accept the one chosen for you.”

  Borund’s face reddened, and Nikandr realized at once he had made a mistake. Borund had married Nataliya Dhalingrad, daughter of Duke Leonid, and it had not been Borund who had been unreceptive, but his new bride. Borund had confessed years ago how cold she had been in their wedding bed, and how it had continued until Borund had beat her in a fit of anger. She now accepted his affections, but little more than that.

  Nikandr continued, “Father is furious that he would be so taken to task in front of the entire Grand Duchy. He doesn’t deserve mistrust, especially when it was his wife who suggested the arrangement.”

  The color in Borund’s face slowly faded as he reined his pony around a heather bush. “Father is merely being cautious.”

  “Caution is all well and good, but his fears are unfounded.”

  “Are they? Then answer me this, Nischka. Do you or do you not have the wasting?”

  Nikandr felt his face go hot. Borund wasn’t even watching him, so sure was he of the answer. Nikandr wanted to deny it, but there was no point.

  Atiana must have told him.

  “I do, but that doesn’t mean our families cannot profit from this wedding.”

  “It is not the disease I care about, but that you felt it necessary to hide the fact from us. Was Khalakovo so desperate for these contracts?”

  Nikandr did not want to admit that that was true, even though both of them knew it was so. Vostroma needed it as well. Khalakovo had the deepest supply of windwood and alabaster among the islands-crucial to the flow of trade among the Duchies and to Yrstanla-but Vostroma had the shipping lanes. They needed one another, but they had been at odds for so many years that it had been difficult to overcome. If Nikandr wasn’t careful, he’d reopen those wounds.

  “I am in the early stages, Borund. I had hoped to find a way…”

  “To what? Cure it? When no one has so far been able to?”

  Nikandr shrugged, feeling foolish.

  “Set aside for the moment the wedding and your lies. There is the seat of a Grand Duchy to fill. Until that is resolved, there is little sense pursuing a union that would only get in the way.”

  “I wonder what it would be getting in the way of. You were hardly viewing your sister’s marriage as a nuisance when Ranos showed you the ships that came with it.”

  “Those wrecks with wings?”

  “You know which ships I mean.”

  “Ah, the ones you were so gracious in showing after making an ass of me in front of the entire eyrie.”

  “It wasn’t-”

  Borund pulled his pony to a stop and regarded Nikandr squarely. “Bolgravya is dead, Nikandr. There is treachery afoot, and my father is hardly unwise for waiting until we hear more of the affair. What I should be hearing instead of a shrill plea for the hand of Vostroma’s daughter is news on what you’ve found after your extensive enquiries.”

  “We have been working
diligently, Borund.”

  “To what end? Why haven’t we heard more about the Motherless qiram and his boy that were spirited into the bowels of Radiskoye?”

  Nikandr was not to give out any information of Ashan and Nasim, but this conversation had gone in the completely wrong direction. Borund was his oldest friend-at one time his best friend. If anyone in Vostroma’s camp would see sense, it was him.

  “We found them three days after the attack. The qiram is strong, but neither Mother nor Jahalan were abletodetect aguided crossing. Your own mother corroborates that, does she not?”

  Borund allowed himself a nod.

  “And the boy is just a boy, a boy that has no talent with hezhan.”

  As Borund stared, a cold wind passed over the meadow, making the grasses look like waves lapping against the taller heather. Even the tops of the pine trees swayed with a similar rhythm. Berza was sniffing along a rivulet-chasing a meadow mouse, perhaps.

  “If this is so why have you not yet freed them?”

  “Because of the seriousness. We have to be sure.”

  Borund’s face steeled and his eyes thinned. “Then give the boy to us. Let Ellayah question him.”

  “I told you, he is not the one. There is little talent within him, certainly none for an elder spirit.”

  “Then there is nothing for him to fear. It will take little time-days, a week at the most-and if all is as you say, the boy will be returned, none the worse for the wear.”

  Nikandr sat up in his saddle. “You are my friend, Borund, but be careful of your tongue. You are on Khalakovan ground, and our court rules here. Not your father’s. Not Leonid’s, nor his henchmen. Not even Stasa, ancients preserve him, could tell Khalakovo what to do. So, nyet, we will not give you the boy.”

  “I understand your father, Nikandr, better than you think. He was always one to ignore the tides around him, to ignore the signs brought to him on the wind. You, I thought, were different. I can see, though, that you have fallen too close to the tree. I was embarrassed for Iaros when I first heard of your offer to come hunting. Had my father not bid me to accept, I would have refused, and I would have spat upon Khalakovo’s table for sending his son when duke should have sat with duke.”