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.”
“The meeting was my idea,” Nikandr said.
Berza, a dozen yards away, had resumed her half-crouch. She was pointing her muzzle toward the open field, but her ears were swiveling toward Nikandr.
“Then he has lost control of his own house. And if you believe-”
Borund raised his musket to his shoulder and pulled the striker to full-cock. Berza sprinted away over the meadow.
“-that I would raise friendship above my own family’s interests-”
Three grouse, fifty paces away, fluttered into the air.
“Borund! Don’t!” Nikandr pulled his reins over and kicked his pony into action.
Sparks flew from the hammer.
The gun cracked.
A brief flash of red against Berza’s brown coat. A yelp. And then she was lost among the tall grasses.
“-then you are sadly mistaken.”
Nikandr, his breath loud in his ears, pulled his pony up short, unable to comprehend what had just happened. He studied the grass for any sign of Berza, but there was none. The shot had been all too accurate.
“Think, Nikandr.” Borund urged his pony into a walk. He held the gun up, waited for Nikandr to meet his gaze, then threw it onto the ground between them. It landed with a dull thump. “One Landless boy against the entire Duchy seems like an ill exchange to me.”
And then his pony trotted away as Nikandr dropped from his saddle and sprinted across the meadow.
CHAPTER 27
Nikandr, carrying Berza, took the path just inside Radiskoye’s western wall to the eyrie. The streltsi on guard, clearly confused, said nothing.
Berza was heavy in his arms, a limp weight. She hadn’t deserved this. She had been a faithful friend to Nikandr her entire life. She had been loving and devoted, and well mannered save for her penchant for finding rats in the stable and eating them at the foot of Radiskoye’s grand entrance. Nikandr had never been able to rid her of that one love. Perhaps it had come from her inability to down the grouse she’d been trained to chase.
He followed a trail to a quiet place along the cliffs-a place he used to come as a child to study the water far below. In the manner of his people he set Berza down and whispered words to her departing soul. For some reason he felt shamed more than betrayed. He should have sensed Borund’s mood. He should have charged Borund’s pony, fouled the shot.
He was preparing to drop her over the edge when he heard the crunch of footsteps coming his way. When he turned he hoped to see Victania-he needed a friend just now-but instead he found Atiana coming his way, and as soon as he had he turned away. She was just about the last person he wished to speak with now.
She either didn’t sense his mood or purposely ignored it. She squatted down next to him, her dress folding over his right knee as she stared at the body of Berza. “Oh, Nischka… I had hoped they were lies.” She rubbed his back, a gesture that was wholly infuriating.
“What did he say?” Nikandr asked.
“He joined us late for midday meal, boasting at how well the hunt had gone, how true his one and only shot had been. Father asked what he had felled. Borund looked at him and smiled and…”
“Don’t hide it from me.”
“Nischka-” “Tell me!”
Atiana shifted away, the stone crunching beneath her boots. “He barked like a dog. And then he set to eating his elk.”
Nikandr rubbed Berza’s coat tenderly, realizing he was powerless to avenge her death. There could be no repercussions. Not now. Not over a dog.
He wanted to ask Atiana to leave. He didn’t want the sister of the man who had done this to see his last farewell. But she had become more than that. She had come here when it was unwise to do so. If she wished to help him, then he would accept it gratefully, no matter what their future might be.
He picked Berza up, holding her in his arms while looking to the horizon. He heard Atiana whispering next to him, and when she was done, he tossed Berza from the edge of the cliff. He watched her fall, saw her splash into the white ocean waves, his eyes watering as the image of her running over the field and falling to a small spray of red played over and over within his mind.
He didn’t know how long he had been watching, but suddenly Atiana was pulling him away from the edge. She brushed dirt from the shoulder of his coat, and then looked up at him with a hardened expression.
He shrugged her away. “Did you tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“Of the wasting?”
“ Nyet.” Her confused expression was so masterful Nikandr wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth or not. “I would not have, Nikandr. I told you so that night.”
“Then how would he know?”
She shook her head. “I do not know. Perhaps he guessed.”
“We have barely seen one another, Atiana, and I have been careful.”
Her face grew cross. “I am telling you the truth.”
“ Da, something the Vostromas are very good at.”
“We aren’t the ones hiding a disease that should have been revealed months ago. We aren’t the ones secreting away Aramahn that should be handed over.”
“You side with your father, then?”
“Why should I not? His demands are reasonable.”
Nikandr paused, breathing heavily, weighing his words. He was angry now that he had shared his last few moments with Berza. He should have sent her away-he should send her away now to rot with the rest of her family and their traitorous allies-but he realized she was the one small link he still had to the Vostroma family. And more than that, she was not his enemy.
“Ashan is innocent, Atiana. The boy-I am not so sure, but if he was involved, it was as a tool. He would not do something so violent.”
“How can you be sure?”
He pulled out his soulstone and showed it to her. She cringed, though whether this was from concern of his well-being or embarrassment that she might still marry a man with a broken past, he wasn’t sure.“When I first met him, he noticed my stone even though he couldn’t see it. We are connected, he and I. I know not how, but I do know this-that boy is no murderer.” He motioned toward the nearby cliff. “He is as innocent as Berza.”
She stared at the stone a moment longer, then met his gaze. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
“Strange things are happening. The blight. The wasting. When I took the dark for your mother, I saw a young girl die in her mother’s arms, taken by a hezhan. Who would have thought to see such things in our lifetime? If you say there is a link between you and the boy, if you say he is innocent, then I believe you.”
He was so shocked he found himself unable to speak for a moment. “Thank you, Atiana.”
Her eyes went far away. It was a look he knew well. It meant she was scheming. Calculating.
“What is it?” he asked.
“If it’s proof my father needs, there is one way you could provide it.”
