execution. Though many grumbled at the wind and biting snow, Rehada thought nothing of it; it matched perfectly the bitterness and resentment deep in her heart.
From this ancient circle where the gallows stood, the seven major streets of Volgorod fanned out like cracks in a frozen lake. Along one of these clattered a flatbed wagon pulled by two stout ponies. A soldier dressed in the uniform of the Posadnik’s guard drove the wagon with a light hand, while another, holding onto the driver’s seat for balance, stood in the bed, watching the three young men chained securely behind him.
As the wagon turned onto the empty street surrounding the circle, tack and chains jingling, the soldiers gave little or no notice to the crowd that had gathered. The boys, however, stared wide-eyed, their faces growing increasingly nervous, until finally the wagon pulled to a halt near the gallows. Standing on the stage were no less than a dozen armed streltsi. Such a show of force was abnormal, but Council was upon them, and apparently there had been some scuffle between the Landed and the Maharraht during the launching of a new trade ship. Rehada gave the story little credence, however; she had received no word that Maharraht would be coming to the island. More than likely it was a drunken brawl that had grown with the telling.
The driver climbed over the bench to join his comrade. They looked calm and collected in their long woolen cherkesskas. Even their woolen hats with tassels of gold lent them a look of austerity, as if a hanging were something that came as easily to them as polishing their black leather boots.
The crowd-most of them Landed peasants-pressed forward, but Rehada stood her ground, studying the boys as they were led one by one from the rear of the wagon to the wooden platform where nooses swung lazily in the wind. The first two boys were scrawny, the sons of a peasant family that lived on the outskirts of the city. They wore simple leather shoes, roughspun trousers and patchwork coats. Socks with holes for fingers to poke through covered their hands. They fought to keep their balance as the streltsi forced them to their places at the gallows, and though they wore looks of remorse as the nooses were fit around their necks, to Rehada it seemed like an act; she doubted they harbored any feelings of true regret for the atrocity they had committed three days before. She didn’t doubt they regretted some things-stealing into the home of one of the city’s richer widows; killing her when they found her unexpectedly home; forcing the third boy, a boy she had come to love, to return with them in a lame attempt at blaming him for their crime-but she doubted very much that they regretted the actual killing or the life of the young man next to them that now stood forfeit.
They had been discovered by the nephew of the socialite widow while forcing the third boy, Malekh, back to the house. The Posadnik’s men had been alerted, and in short order all three of them had been taken for murder. For days Rehada had felt responsible; Malekh had been heading to Izhny after delivering a message to her. Worse, it was a mostly innocuous warning that a man named Ashan might be coming to her island, that he might have a boy with him, and that she should send word immediately if he were discovered. It was doubly frustrating because she knew Ashan, an arqesh among her people-she knew the boy the note was referring to as well-and so of course she would have sent word immediately upon hearing of their presence on Khalakovo.
She stared at Malekh, who was just now being led to the third and final position of the gallows. This was no peasant. He was a boy that had begun training as her disciple, a boy his mother-the fates treat her kindly-should be proud of. He wore the garb of the Aramahn: a simple woven cap, inner robes dyed the deepest ocean blue, outer robes only a shade lighter. There was fear and uncertainty in his eyes, but nothing like the simpering of the two next to him. He was facing his death with, if not bravery, contemplation, and it served to raise her already high estimation of him, even in these last few moments of his life.
When the news of his hanging had arrived yesterday she had gone to the city jail to petition for his release, but because she was not his mother, or any other form of relative, they refused to allow her to speak with him, or to vouch for him to the magistrate. The Landed still did not understand that the wandering people were one. Blood mattered little to them, but it was all important to those that ruled the duchies, and so she’d been forced to leave before they’d asked too many questions about their relationship. It was risky enough coming to the hanging-few Aramahn attended such things, and those that did were often labeled as suspect, as Maharraht, either in mind or in deed-but she could not find it in herself to leave him here to face death on his own. Her presence, at the very least, was something she owed him.
The shorter and older of the two streltsi began reciting transgressions from the records of the court. As he did, the boy scanned the crowd and finally met her eyes.
And he smiled.
He smiled, as if to console her.
Pain and regret and anger coursed through her. She felt her hardened core crack and fragment, but she did not let those emotions show on her face. Neither did she return his smile, for that would be disingenuous. Instead, she held his gaze with a reassuring look upon her face. She had decided before she came that she would meet his eyes as long as he wished it. She would not turn away, even though the sight of him dangling like a crow from a farmer’s belt would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Learn, she tried to say. Learn, even in death, and you will be rewarded in the next life.
The strelet finished by reading the judgment of the magistrate.
From the corners of her eyes, she saw the seven other Aramahn turn their backs on the gallows, not from any lack of courage, but in protest, as a sign of disapproval. She, however, refused to turn away no matter how much she might wish to do so.
The rest of the crowd had not brought rotten vegetables or mud, as she had seen happen so often in the cities of the Empire to the west, nor did they shout epithets. They merely watched in silent condemnation.
The plumes of breath from each of the boys came white upon the wind, but unlike the two next to him, Malekh’s face had transformed into a look of confusion, as if the things he had been sure about only moments ago had been brought into doubt.
Go well, she wished him, nodding once.
The strelet, his reading now complete, stepped back. As soon as he had, the other soldier pulled a thick wooden lever. The doors beneath the boys fell away with the clatter of wood. The rope snapped taut, and all three of them bounced once before swinging awkwardly in the wind.
When they came to rest, the crowd began to disperse, but Rehada remained, watching her young man swing for long moments, storing the image deep within her heart so that she might retrieve it when it was needed most. So lost in this effort was she that when two ponies entered the circle from a nearby street, breaking her trance, she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Even then, she watched them from the corner of her eye and paid them little mind.
This was a mistake.
She should have noted their courtly dress, should have noticed the train of children following them, hoping for a coin or two. When she did look, she realized one of them was staring at her. Nikandr. The Prince upon the Hill.
Her face burned as she turned away and walked toward the nearest street. He had been on the far side of the circle, and the wind had been blustery. She was wearing clothes that he wouldn’t be accustomed to seeing her wear. It was possible, just possible, that he hadn’t recognized her.
But she knew in her heart that he had, and it made her anger burn even higher. To be found out by Nikandr because she had, in one of her few acts of compassion, come to bid a friend farewell, was galling, not because she and Nikandr had lain together, but because she had worked so hard to conceal her true self from him.
No matter. If he discovered she was Maharraht, she would welcome it. She was sick of hiding it in any case, especially from him.
She turned and headed up one of the curving streets that led uphill toward the Bluff, the section of Volgorod that held her home. The street, as far as she could see, was empty. The light of the sun angled in between the tall stone buildings, leaving much of her path in shadow.
She stopped when she saw someone sitting at the entryway to an alley.
He wore two sets of robes: a black inner robe that was wrapped by a wide belt of gray cloth and an outer robe that fell to the tops of his brown leather boots. It was his turban and beard, more than anything, that marked him as one of the Maharraht. His beard was cut long and square. The turban was almond-shaped and ragged; its tail hung down along the front of his chest like a sash of honor.
It was dangerous to dress this way on Khalakovo, one of the most powerful of the Duchies, and downright foolish to come into the city. These were the clothes worn-not exclusively, but most often-by the Maharraht, the sect of the Aramahn that were bent on the destruction of the Grand Duchy and their Landed ways.
