Ranos saluted in turn, but then noticed Rehada. His face frowned as recognition dawned on him, and then he looked up and found Victania standing just inside the gates. He spoke quickly to the polkovnik with the hanging white beard, and immediately all of the cavalry rode in through the gates, leaving Ranos alone with Rehada.
Victania strode forward as Ranos heeled his pony closer.“Why have you come?” he asked plainly.
“I need to speak with your father.”
He laughed. “The Duke, if you haven’t noticed, is occupied.”
“All the more reason he should speak with me.”
Victania stepped past Rehada to reach Ranos’s side. “Don’t listen to her. She’s already lied to get this close to you.”
“Tell me what you’re after,” Ranos said to Rehada, “or I’ll ask you to leave.”
She could tell by the tone of his voice that he was weary, that he would simply leave if her rationale wasn’t convincing enough, so she poured all of the emotion bottled up inside her into one simple statement: “If you wish for your precious Duchy to see another day, son of Iaros, then you’ll listen to what I have to say.”
“Ridiculous,” Victania snapped.
Ranos looked down at his sister and then to Rehada, perhaps weighing her words.
“Go on,” he said.
The mask over Rehada’s eyes and the rope binding her hands were the least of her worries. The boat in which she sat was tumbling over the tall waves in merciless cycles, and without her sight, she was completely unable to anticipate any of it. She had already heaved up the contents of her stomach four times, and as another tall wave struck, she found herself dry heaving between her legs.
“Please,” she said to the sotnik sitting on the next thwart forward, “I only need a small amount of time to recover.”
“You heard my orders,” the strelet said.
Six oars struck the water in synchronized time as the spray pelted her face. The wind was high, and the weather had turned bitterly cold toward the end of the day, and despite the fact that Rehada wore a heavily oiled canvas coat, she was soaked from head to foot and almost completely numb.
Though Victania had tried diligently to get him to cast her out, Ranos had agreed to Rehada’s demands. There was a significant problem, however-communication with the Matra had been sporadic at best. They hadn’t been able to speak with her in several days. Of the three rooks that were kept permanently at the mansion, two had apparently been killed by the third, which had flown out of its cage when their keeper had come to investigate the swath of blood and black feathers that lay inside their cage. Three days prior, another rook had flown down from the palotza, but the moment it had landed it began rolling on the ground, cawing, and then it flew back into the air and was never seen again. Clearly the other Matri were in league, working to prevent effective communication between Radiskoye and Volgorod, which presented Ranos with a difficult task: he agreed that his father needed to hear what Rehada had to say, but he saw no easy way to make that happen.
In the end, he had arranged for her to be ferried away by a hand-selected crew of oarsmen. Their mission was to take her to the cliffs below Radiskoye and to guide her into the cavern that held a passage leading up to the palotza. The only issue was that Rehada could not be allowed to see the route. She argued that it would be night, that she would be able to see very little in any case, but Ranos would not budge.
And so she found herself fighting to keep herself from sliding along the thwart, fighting to stay warm, fighting to prevent herself from heaving again, an action that brought only pain.
“How much longer?” she asked between waves of nausea.
“You know I cannot tell.”
“Please.”
“Knowing won’t make it any shorter or longer. Just sit and breathe deeply.”
As he spoke, something thudded against the boat. She thought at first they had struck bottom, but it happened again a moment later, and the boat began to slip sideways.
She heard the thump and clatter of wood, and the sotnik sitting ahead of her stood. “Pull, men, pull!”
“What is it?” she asked as a cold spike of fear slid deep inside her chest. The boat slid further and was tugged downward momentarily. “ What is it?”
“Be quiet!”
A moment later the crack of a musket went off just above her head, making her cringe with fear.
The boat was pulled sharply to port, and something splashed into the water just over the starboard gunwale.
“ Kozyol!” the sotnik swore. “Pull harder!”
Then something heavy and wet fell across Rehada’s lap.
CHAPTER 59
Sharp pain shot through Rehada’s thighs. She placed her hands over the cold, slimy tentacle, knowing immediately what sort of creature had attacked the boat. There were several types of squid that wandered the oceans, but only one of them, the goedrun, was large enough and aggressive enough to attack ships. A smaller ship such as theirs was particularly attractive, as it could be tipped over, instantly turning its inhabitants into prey. Given the diameter of the tentacle, she guessed the goedrun was still young, but it was more than a match for the ship if it could get enough tentacles around to capsize it.
“Cut them!” the sotnik shouted, and she heard two of the men moments later sawing at the tentacle as the ship tilted sharply to port.
“Let me free,” Rehada shouted, putting as much command into her voice as she could muster.
She was ignored as another tentacle slipped over the crown of her head and into the laps of the streltsi behind her. The two men screamed and she could hear them sawing at this tentacle as well.
“My circlet!” Rehada screamed.
“Give it to her, Goran!” one of the soldiers behind her shouted.
After a moment’s pause, she could feel the sotnik’s kindjal against the rope at her wrist. An instant later, her hands were free. She pulled the mask off of her face and by the dim light of the quarter moon found the grim-faced sotnik rummaging through a burlap sack at his feet. He pulled her circlet out, but it dropped as the boat tilted sharply upward and he grabbed the gunwales for balance.
Rehada snatched up her circlet, but had already noticed that the stone was dark. Even before she placed it upon her head she knew the truth of it: the suurahezhan she had bonded with had abandoned her, leaving her utterly defenseless. It may have been because of the trip over the water, it may have simply been its time, but something told her it was yet another manifestation of the rift, the rift that Soroush was ready to rip wide open if given the chance.
The streltsi shifted aft, ready to hack at the massive tentacle that had grabbed the boat. As they searched the water, shashkas raised, an arm of the goedrun whipped up out of the water and wrapped around two of them before they had a chance to duck out of its path.
One was able to pull away, but the other was wrapped up tight and was pulled off the boat in a blink, splashing into the dark waves before the shock could even register upon his face.
“Give me your gunpowder,” Rehada said to the sotnik.
He complied without question, unfastening and handing her one of the wooden cartridges hanging from leather cords along the front of his bandolier.
“All of them,” she said while pouring the contents into her lap.
He handed the cartridges as quickly as he could, and Rehada added their contents-ten cartridges’ worth-to the one in her lap, hoping it would be enough.
“A spark,” Rehada said.
From a small leather bag on his bandolier he pulled out a piece of flint and held out his kindjal. “Run the knife-”
“I know,” she snapped, snatching both of them away as the boat tipped upward. There were no tentacles above the water, but by the silver light of the moon she could see many-two dozen or more-floating alongside the
