Nikandr moved to his father’s side, kissed his forehead, and took the empty chair.
When Father spoke, it was with a soft voice, contemplative. “Zhabyn came to me today. He was more than passing curious over the ways in which you mean to honor Atiana.”
“Father?”
“He is concerned that his future son will be flying among the islands, chasing after meaningless pursuits.”
Suddenly, Zhabyn’s purpose became clear. The conversation he’d had with Borund where he’d told him about his desire to understand the blight-he must have shared it with his father. “Borund doesn’t understand.” “Neither, it seems, does his father.” “But you do,” Nikandr said. “I do, but we have seen few enough results.” “That will come.”
“How soon, Nischka? This year? The next? Ten years?”
Nikandr wanted to laugh. He wouldn’t be alive in ten years if he didn’t find a cure for the wasting. “We knew it would take time.”
“And by then the blight might have moved on, as it has done with Rhavanki.”
“Can you deny that things are becoming worse, that the next time it returns it may well destroy us?”
“In truth, I know not. What I do know is that we have to protect our family now. This year. And to do that I had to seal your marriage.”
Nikandr shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“Zhabyn and I signed the papers today.”
His words were heavy, and it was clear there was more to the story than this. “And what might have changed Vostroma’s mind so easily?”
For the first time, Father turned to Nikandr. The wiry beard framing the lower half of his face and running down his gold-threaded kaftan gave him a truculent look. “The Malva will be given to them.”
“ My ship?” The Malva was the ship he and Jahalan and Udra had been sailing the last two years to investigate the blight.
“ My ship, Nischka, and I will do with it as I please.”
“I have many things planned.”
Father shook his head, his beard swaying back and forth over his kaftan. “ Nyet. The Malva will be returned to us when the Gorovna is delivered to Vostroman shores, but when it does, you will no longer be given leave to go where you will. I need you to command a wing of the staaya. The Maharraht have become too bold.”
Nikandr’s stomach, which had been fine the entire day, chose that moment to wake itself from slumber. Like a yawning hole in the ground, nausea spread through Nikandr’s gut and chest, but the feelings were nothing compared to the sense of foreboding over what might be lost. “I will not shirk my duty if that is what you ask of me, but please do not ignore what Jahalan and I have done.”
“You have done well, Nischka, but the Malva is already his. You will sign your papers tomorrow, and then you will ensure that you spend more time with the Vostromas.”
“There is little choice.”
“And yet you found time to visit your woman in Volgorod, twice in the past week.”
Nikandr stared up at his father, angry over being watched so. “Father, forgive me, but I will see whom I please.”
Father smiled. “You are not your own man, Nischka. You have never been, and the sooner you get that into your head, the better off we’ll all be.” He stood, staring down at Nikandr. “In time, such things can be overlooked, but not now, and especially not during Council. All it will take is one more perceived insult-one more-and Zhabyn will take his contracts and grant them to another Duchy, no matter that it makes him poorer in the end.”
He made his way to the door, his slippered feet falling against cold marble tile. In the fireplace, a pile of coals crumbled, sending the sparks flying upward.
“Mark my words.” The door clicked open. “If I find that you’ve been visiting that Motherless whore again”-he stepped into the hall before turning, his expression so grim it made Nikandr cold-“she will not live to see another sunrise.”
CHAPTER 9
Rehada lay on her pillows, the redolence of Nikandr’s musky scent fading but still present. The embers in the nearby hearth crumbled, creating the faintest of sounds as sparks flew upward, and it reminded her of just how long she had been lying there, lamenting. She rose and threw three logs onto the nearly dead fire, lighting it with a simple summons of the spirit bound to her. She stared into the burgeoning flames, yearning for the freedom to be in Nikandr’s arms, knowing that such a thing could never be.
As these emotions played themselves out she realized she had allowed herself more fantasies than she had been willing to admit. Years ago, when she had arranged for their first encounter, she had hated him just as much as she hated all the Landed, perhaps more. He had been childish and full of himself, but his time among the winds and the growing blight had somehow tempered him, and she had found him to be interested in the ways of the Aramahn, more than she would have guessed. It had never occurred to her that she would have feelings for him, but like ivy, growing slowly but steadily, he had found a way into her heart.
And she hated herself for it, even more so now that Soroush had returned. She felt weak, as if she’d allowed the vines to creep between the mortar of her resolve, until the wall she’d thought so impregnable years ago was ready to crumble before her very eyes. What was worse was the fact that-even knowing how weak it was-she was unsure whether she wanted to repair it. Soroush had ordered her to come two days hence, surely to work against the interests of the Grand Duchy-or at the very least of Radiskoye-and she would go, but she found herself, more and more often, wishing that the fates would resolve these disputes so that her people might move closer to their destiny. So that she might.
After removing her robe, folding it carefully, and setting it on the carpet nearby, she retrieved the small leather bag Nikandr had placed on the mantel. Inside were a dozen tourmaline stones-the price they had agreed upon long ago. The stones would keep her for a season, perhaps more, and though it was relieving to have her supply doubled, it was still galling to find herself at the mercy of the Landed, even though she was also in a position to use them.
She released her bonded suurahezhan, an act as simple as a sigh. Like most of the Aramahn gifted with the ability to commune with spirits, she could not keep them for weeks or months at a time. She needed to release her bond after several days or a week, lest it grow too hungry and begin feeding off of her unnaturally.
After removing the old stone and fixing a new one into the hinged setting of her circlet, she sat before the fire and opened her mind to Adhiya, the world beyond. She ran her hands over the fire, giving herself to the flame to lure a hezhan closer. For a long time, she felt nothing except pain as the flames licked her skin, but eventually she felt a keening, a yearning for life that she coaxed toward her. It took time-it always did-but eventually the suurahezhan came close enough for her to offer herself to it.
It readily agreed, allowing itself to be bonded so that it could taste life. Erahm was the place from which it had come, the place to which it would one day return; it thirsted for the stuff of life that it was otherwise deprived of. As the bond was forged, the flames in the fireplace lost their hold on her until they felt like little more than the kiss of the sun on a warm, windless day.
The ritual was complete, but she did not stand. There was still work to be done.
She created a bond between herself and the fire, allowed it to run the length of her body, allowed the heat to lick her thighs, her stomach, her breasts, her lips. It suffused her frame, some of it pooling in the place between her thighs at the mere remembrance of Nikandr. She grit her jaw, angry over her lack of will, and lay down close enough to the fire so that she could feel the heat not only through her tourmaline, but through her natural senses as well.
When her mind was once more clear, she placed her feet into the flames. “I give of myself,” she said, “that I might be cleansed.”
And with that she lay back and closed her eyes. At first, she felt only gentle warmth on the soles of her feet, but like the sun upon the obsidian shores of the north the heat built steadily, her link to the fire preventing her flesh
