here?”
The Landless woman jerked her arm free and stared down at Atiana. Atiana hadn’t realized how tall she was until just then.
She resumed walking, forcing Atiana to keep pace. “You were foolish to follow them.”
Atiana’s mind swam with questions. “How did you come to be there on the shore?”
“I followed you.”
“From Volgorod?”
“From the eyrie. I was taking breath in the hills above it.”
Taking breath was the Aramahn term for meditation. It was possible that she had met newcomers on the eyrie-the Aramahn often did so to acclimate those who had arrived-but something in her story smelled foul.
“I was nowhere near the eyrie.”
“You were near enough.”
“I saw no one.”
“Nevertheless, I saw you.”
“Then tell me why you followed me.”
They had nearly reached the house. Rehada stopped and faced Atiana after taking a good long look behind for signs of pursuit.
“You know who I am.” She stated it flatly, barely a question at all.
Atiana nodded.
“I was curious.”
“Curious…”
Rehada swallowed. This tall, beautiful woman was somehow cowed. “I should not be speaking of this.”
Atiana remained silent, a demand that Rehada continue.
“Your husband has spoken of you, and… I know my place in the world.
I know it is not with Nikandr. He will be with you. But I was curious to see the one who would take him away from me.”
It felt strange hearing these words from a woman who had bedded the man who would be her husband. If anyone had asked her the day before how she would have reacted, she would have said she’d have the woman’s eyes put out. But here, standing before her, there was a strange sense of camaraderie that she would never in a thousand years have predicted. She could not be angry with a woman who was jealous of her. But neither could she speak to her of Nikandr-it made her stomach feel queasy just thinking about it.
“We should go.”
Rehada agreed. In little time they had reached the wagon trail that led from the house to the short pier. Atiana made to go after her pony, but Rehada stopped her.
“Leave it. We cannot remain on the ground, not when they could still find us, perhaps with reinforcements.”
“Then how-”Atiana stopped, for she had just realized how Rehada had spotted her, and how she hadn’t known. She had been on a skiff, the smaller windships the Landless use to fly between islands and ferry themselves from Volgorod to Iramanshah.
Once they had reached a thick copse of trees near the beach, Atiana saw it: a craft shaped like an overturned turtle with a single mast in its center. They entered, and once Rehada had placed several opals into the small brass fittings worked into the hull, the vessel lifted into the sky.
“Where will we go?” Atiana asked.
Rehada wore leather gloves. She used them-already looking completely at home-to hold the two ropes tied to the lower corners of the simple, triangular sail that billowed ahead of them. “I will take you to Iramanshah. A healer will look at your leg, and you can arrange transportation to Volgorod.”
As long as it was alone, Atiana thought.
Her earlier acceptance of Rehada was starting to wear thin; she wanted, at the moment, to be anywhere Rehada was not.
She tried to study the landscape for signs of pursuit, but the winds were playing with the ship, making her stomach turn, and so she kept her eyes on the horizon until the skiff had settled into the wind. The currents were easterly here, and they grew stronger the higher they rose into the sky, but the sail and the ship’s keel were guiding the ship northward.
The house was soon lost from view, but Atiana could see the beach where she and Rehada had fought with the vanahezhan.
“Why wouldn’t they follow in a skiff of their own?”
Rehada stared down at Atiana coldly. “I would think that was obvious.”
Atiana stared back, shivering. The wind was strong, especially this high up, and her clothes were still wet. She realized they were growing warm, and then she realized why.
“ Nyet!”she shouted, refusing to allow this woman to warm her. She would freeze to death first.
Rehada, the tourmaline gem upon her brow still glowing, shrugged and returned her attention to the sails.
Immediately, the temperature plummeted.
“If they didn’t want to attract attention from the Matra,” Atiana said after a time, shivering once more, “they wouldn’t have summoned a vanahezhan on her doorstep.”
“That was different.”
“Why?”
“The place where it was summoned marked, I believe, a location where a vanahezhan had left this world.”
“You mean entered it.”
“ Nyet. Left. The spirits are tied to this world as surely as we are tied to theirs. They hunger when they’ve been too long without it, and when they finally get a chance to experience it, it lingers with them, and they remain near the place where they exited our world and returned to theirs.”
“But how could a vanahezhan have entered our world?”
Rehada stared toward the horizon. “I do not know.”
The wind began to whistle louder in Atiana’s ears. She knew why the raiders had come. She knew how the vanahezhan had created a crease in the aether.
Rehada was pulled forward, nearly against the mast, but she regained her footing as the skiff tumbled through the air.
“Do the spirits hunger for us?” Atiana asked.
Rehada frowned. “Hunger?”
“For life, for our souls.”
“They thirst for a taste of this life, not for any particular part of it.”
“Perhaps they’ve changed.”
“Why would they?”
“The blight… It’s changed everything. Why not the spirits as well?”
“ Nyet,” Rehada said flatly. “Hezhan do not do this. There is an imbalance, but it will heal.”
“That house back there”-Atiana motioned outside the skiff, back the way they had come-“I saw a babe two nights ago, taken by a vanahezhan.”
“ You have taken the dark?” She said it as if she didn’t believe Atiana could do so in a hundred years.
“I did,” Atiana said, pulling herself upright.
Rehada’s eyes thinned. “Then you were mistaken.”
“I was not. I was there in that woman’s home when the vanahezhan drew the life from the wailing babe she held in her arms.”
“Was the babe sick?”
“I don’t know.”
Rehada pulled a strand of hair from her mouth. “Perhaps the hezhan was simply curious. Perhaps the babe was near death and was close to crossing the aether to reach their world. Perhaps that’s what drew it to the babe and not some ridiculous explanation such as yours.”
