Ashan smoothed the boy’s hair. “He is in pain, but he doesn’t complain, do you, Nasim?”
Nasim was staring at Nikandr’s neck, and Nikandr realized that his expression was no longer one of wonder.
It was one of rapture.
Nikandr felt a tickling sensation in the center of his chest, just below the surface of the skin, and it took a presence of mind not to raise a hand and begin scratching it. Only as the boy began walking forward did Nikandr realize that it was his soulstone, hidden beneath coat and shirt, that had so caught Nasim’s attention. With a completely innocent look on his face, Nasim reached for it.
A vision comes. A vision of a grand city. It spreads wide and low near a crescent bay, tall towers and massive domes bright beneath a golden sun. It seems whole, but the streets lay empty and barren-lifeless-as if it has long been abandoned.
An unreasonable anger came bubbling up from somewhere deep inside Nikandr; before he knew it, he had slapped the boy’s hand away and shoved him backward. Immediately Ashan took Nasim by the shoulders and guided him to the nearby railing, whispering into his ear.
“My apologies,” Ashan said over his shoulder. “He can be a curious boy.”
“It is nothing,” Nikandr said, shaking his head to clear away the sudden vision and the confusion it had left in its wake. “Please,” he said, “there must be something I could offer. Gold…”
“What need have the Aramahn of gold?”
“Food, then, for Iramanshah if not for you.”
Ashan shook his head. “There is little enough to go around. Nasim and I will do fine, as will Iramanshah.”
“Access to our library. Gemstones. A discussion with our scholars. You have only to name the price.”
Ashan smiled once more and herded the boy away from the railing and up the perch. “There is most certainly nothing”-Ashan nodded, reverently it seemed to Nikandr-“but I wish prosperous times upon you and your family.” And then he turned and walked away.
Nikandr could have stopped him for the insult, but he didn’t. They had been through enough, these two, and it was unseemly for him to badger them now.
And the boy… He was strangely compelling, and not simply because of their shared and inexplicable exchange. When one sees someone around whom the world revolves, one knows it, and the boy, even more than Ashan, was just such a person.
CHAPTER 8
The Bluff lay in darkness, but there was enough light coming from the windows of the three-story homes lining the street that Nikandr could make his way. When he arrived at his destination-a home nearly indistinguishable from the others-he glanced along the lengths of the empty, curving street before removing the silver flask from inside his coat and taking a healthy swallow of the bitter tonic. His stomach felt strangely healthy, but he wasn’t about to take chances-not tonight. He took the steps up and knocked upon the door five times, a bitter wind pressing against his back.
He turned, holding the fur-lined collar of his coat tight against the gusting wind. Over the tops of the nearby homes the lights of Palotza Radiskoye could barely be seen on the mountain overlooking the city.
He knocked again, softer this time, wondering if he’d made a mistake, but just as he was about to walk away, the flickering light of a lantern shone through the thick, wavy glass of the door’s high window. The door opened, and there stood Rehada Ulan al Shineshka, wearing a thick nightgown and a circlet that held a softly glowing gem of tourmaline. When he saw her face-how beautiful she looked in the golden light of the lantern-he nearly made his apologies and headed back toward Radiskoye. And yet, there was-as there always seemed to be-a beckoning luster in Rehada’s dark eyes, even as tired as she must be, even dressed as she was.
Without a word being spoken, she stepped aside, allowing Nikandr to enter her home. They moved into a lush sitting room. A host of large pillows arcing around the hearth, and the air, beneath the faint smell of jasmine incense, was redolent of garlic and ginger.
From his coat Nikandr took a small leather bag filled with virgin gems and placed it on the mantel. Then he threw two logs from the cradle onto the remains of the evening’s fire and began stoking the flames. Rehada did not acknowledge her payment as she moved to a silver cart topped with an ornate shisha. Normally they would have smoked tabbaq, the most common of the smoking leaves, but she chose instead a cedar box from the cabinet built into the base of the cart and retrieved several healthy pinches of dokha, a mixture of tabbaq, herbs, and fermented bark that came from Yrstanla’s western coast. It was extremely rare among the islands, and for a moment Nikandr nearly refused her, but he knew enough to know that this was a privilege that Rehada bestowed upon precious few patrons.
Tonight was going to cost him, so he was willing to accept such a gift. He lay down on the pillows as Rehada stepped between him and the fire and placed the tray carrying the shisha on the carpeted floor. The slosh of liquid came from the base until it had settled, and then all was silence save for the faint whuffle of the burgeoning fire.
After lighting the dokha in the bowl at the top of the shisha, Rehada offered him one of the silk-covered smoking tubes. He accepted it and for a time simply breathed in the heady smell of honey and vanilla and hay, wondering how long it had taken and by what route it had traveled along the thousands of leagues from its point of origin to Volgorod. How many wagons had brought it from the curing house to the edges of the Yrstanlan Empire? How many hands had carried it on its way to Khalakovo? How many ships had borne it? How many lungs had tasted of the same harvest?
“You look thin,” Rehada said, perhaps growing tired of the silence. She held two snifters of infused vodka, one of which she handed to Nikandr as she settled herself gracefully upon the nearby pillows.
“The work on the Gorovna…” Thankfully the wasting had given him a small reprieve-tonight he felt none of its effects.
“Ah, your other mistress.”
Nikandr, ignoring her gibe, drew upon the tube and held his breath before slowly releasing the smoke up toward the ceiling. “That was you at the hanging, was it not?”
The silence lengthened as Rehada took the second tube in one hand. Anyone else would have sucked from the mouthpiece, but not Rehada. She placed the ivory mouthpiece gently against her lips and drew breath like one of the rare, languorous breezes of summer. Her hair, like many of the Landless women, was cut square across the brow, not propped up in some complicated nest like the women of royalty. She held her breath-a good deal longer than Nikandr had-before exhaling the smoke through full, pursed lips. “There are those I would say farewell to before they depart these shores.”
Visions of the boy swinging in the wind next to the two peasants played within his mind. “Who was he?”
The space between Rehada’s thin, arching eyebrows pinched, but she did not otherwise show her annoyance. “What does it matter who he was?
I have witnessed the deaths of those who I’ve never met.” “If you had never met him, you wouldn’t have acted like you did.” “What makes you so sure?”
“The look you gave me.”
She regarded him levelly, the shisha tube held motionless near her mouth. “I knew that boy, but the look was not for him, nor was it for you.”
Nikandr paused. “Borund?” He searched his memory for the few times they had discussed her past, but he was unable to remember what connection she might have with the Prince of Vostroma. “I don’t understand…”
“Then perhaps your wife could explain it to you.” She pulled on the shisha tube and released her breath, much more forcefully than she had the last time.
And suddenly he understood. Borund, as Rehada well knew, was Atiana’s brother. Could it be she had been jealous? Or perhaps the juxtaposition of death and marriage had made her pause; she, like so many of her people, was always making emotional connections like that and contemplating them for days or weeks at a time.
“Now that she’s come…” Rehada allowed herself another long pull before setting the mouthpiece aside. “Now
