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.
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.
Then the pain quickly became too much, and Atiana’s world went dark.
CHAPTER 58
When Rehada neared the cliffs that housed Volgorod’s massive eyrie, she heard the boom of cannon fire. It blasted the air as she spurred her pony onward along the plateau that would lead her past the eyrie and on toward Volgorod. A dozen windships crisscrossed the island in an attempt to intimidate and to search for signs of organized resistance. She knew she had been seen along her journey from the northwestern part of the island-it was impossible not to be-but she had stopped in a house she kept in Izhny to retrieve a set of peasant clothes for her ride east. She hoped that the men in the windships would consider one lone woman riding on a sickly pony beneath their notice, and so far that had held true.
From Izhny she had made a calculated choice: take the slower northern route and avoid any potential conflict or take the more navigable southern one and put herself within reach of the forces of the traitor dukes that held the eyrie. She knew that the eyrie had been taken, knew that their men would be stationed there in force to protect the jewel they had seized, and yet she still did not consider it an unwise decision until she was surprised by the sound of hoof beats coming fast behind her. She was on a slow decline, the wind driving the tall grasses around her like waves upon the sea, and she could see from this vantage neither the eyrie ahead nor the decline toward Izhny behind. It was the blindest part of the journey, and her assailants must have known this as well.
There were five of them-mounted men bearing muskets and black cherkesskas and brown kolpak hats cut in the shorter style of the southern Duchies. They had tall, strong ponies, which were probably fresh. One of the streltsi raised his weapon and waved it back and forth above his head, a signal for her to stop.
Stopping was not something she could afford. They would undoubtedly take her to the eyrie for questioning.
She spurred her pony to a full gallop. Her loosely tied babushka was pulled from her head by the wind, revealing the circlet upon her brow. The men shouted as she summoned the spirit bonded to her through the tourmaline gem. She felt the warmth upon her brow first, then through her cheeks and scalp and neck. It quickly suffused her frame as her pony-already breathing heavily-galloped on.
The thrill of her bond ran through her from the pit of her stomach to the knot in her throat. She turned in her saddle and cast her hand over the landscape. In a tight line over the grass that lay between her and her pursuers, fire blazed.
The men were well trained. The flames had jumped over the well-traveled trail, allowing the streltsi a path through the fire. They continued on with little drop in pace and leveled their muskets once they were beyond the wall of flame. The first of them fired a moment later. A musket ball struck the earth ahead of her. Another shot whizzed by. The next struck her pony in the chest.
