It took some time as Ishkyna looked toward the next chamber, toward the stairs, but she finally seemed to understand. There was a sound coming from above, something like the pop of a campfire filled with unseasoned wood. She stood and moved over to the basin, preparing to help Atiana out. “Nearly two full days.”
“N-not yet,” Atiana said, knowing that to pull her out now would cause her joints to flare in pain.
Ignoring her, Ishkyna slipped her hands under Atiana’s arms and began pulling her up. Even this small movement was excruciatingly painful.
“Not yet!”
“Can you not hear it?” Ishkyna asked.
The sound was louder now. It wasn’t the snap of burning wood, but the report of musket fire.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“I’ll wager you know a good deal more about it than I do, Tiana.”
Atiana grunted, stifling the pain as best she could, as Ishkyna pulled her out and onto the stairs that surrounded the basin. While Ishkyna used soft cloth to dry her off, Atiana tried to piece it all together. She remembered entering the crypt, remembered becoming lost in the winds of the aether, but little else.
Until she felt the stone in her hands.
With shaking arms she raised the Atalayina up. She stared at it. She felt, in the darkness beneath the earth, as though she could look through the stone, as if it were a window that gave her view of the aether. Indeed, she could feel Ishkyna much as she could in the aether. She could feel Irkadiy far above them, his men as well. She could feel the soldiers advancing through the cemetery toward them, firing their muskets as they began to outflank them on two sides.
“Sariya,” Atiana said.
Ishkyna helped her to pull on her clothes. “What of her?”
“She’s awoken.”
“She was asleep?”
Atiana shook her head. “She was lost. We need to get to the surface.”
“ Nyet. Not until the fighting is over. Irkadiy will lead them away.”
Atiana warded away her sister’s attempts to pull a coat over her frame and stumbled toward the stairs.
“Atiana!”
She ignored her calls as she took the winding staircase up toward the surface. Her knees and ankles and hips screamed from the abuse, but she pushed on, knowing there was little time left. She wouldn’t let them die, not these loyal men.
As she wound her way up, higher and higher, the sound of musket fire came clearer. She heard men screaming, others shouting orders.
At last she came to the cold metal doors. She unhinged the latch and pushed them open with a mighty heave.
“Stop!” she shouted in Yrstanlan. “I’m here!”
She stood in a row of mausoleums similar to hers. Snow was falling and drifting. Men wearing the uniform of the Kamarisi’s personal guard stood nearby, aiming weapons past the mausoleum entrance where she now stood, but at her shouts they all turned to her, several of them leveling muskets at her chest.
A musket shot cracked against the marble column of a mausoleum across from her.
“Irkadiy!” she shouted in Anuskayan. “Drop your weapons! Go with them peaceably!”
At last the firing stopped.
One of the Kamarisi’s guardsmen, the one wearing a dark brown turban, stepped forward and took a knee before Atiana. “My Lady Princess,” he said in heavily accented Anuskayan, “Arvaneh um Shalahihd would speak with you.”
Atiana stared at these hardened men, confused by the silence around her.
But then she understood.
“Take me to her,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
W ith the snow still falling and the bitter wind gusting, Atiana was led by twenty janissaries across the cobblestone expanse surrounding Sariya’s tower. The tower stood at the foot of the Mount. Ancient stone buildings created a ring around the tower. They stood shoulder to shoulder, frowning down at Atiana, as if they blamed her for what had befallen their city.
Atiana had forbidden Ishkyna and Irkadiy from accompanying her. She doubted the guardsmen would have allowed it in any case, but there had still been something about this meeting that felt as though it should be shared only between the two of them-Sariya, as strange as it seemed, felt like a sister of the aether, a Matra of sorts.
They came to the base of the tower. It felt odd to be here at last, a place that had occupied her mind both here in the material world and within the dark. She realized that this was not the same tower that she had built while on Ghayavand, but by the same token she knew that this tower, the physical tower that stood before her, had changed since Sariya’s arrival. It had been transformed-not only in Erahm but in the aether as well-into the seat of Sariya’s power.
As the guards knocked thrice and the doors were opened from within, Atiana wondered if there was an echo of this tower in Adhiya. Surely there was. Surely Sariya had found a way for it to reach into the spirit realm as well.
She stepped inside and found a wide room every bit as opulent as the kasir. There were granite floors and marble columns, gilded furniture, and rich portraits hanging from the curving interior wall. She was led to a set of stairs that climbed up into the cavernous darkness. As the doors boomed shut behind her, the guards motioned for her to continue up. Only after Atiana had taken the stairs did she realize that the guards would remain here.
The room on the second level was richly appointed, but not nearly so rich as the room below. The next several floors were simpler still, but the sixth was the one that startled Atiana. It had little more than patterned carpets upon the floor and ironwork trees that held siraj stones to light the dim interior. It felt as if she were in an Aramahn village.
She continued up to the seventh floor, and here she found a circular room with four windows set into it. When she saw the windows and the bed and the carpeting, she knew that she was no longer in a tower within the city of Baressa. She had entered another place entirely-a place of Sariya’s making. Nikandr had spoken of the tower he had entered in Alayazhar, and surely what she saw before her was little different from what he’d seen. She wondered about the tower’s nature, whether it was something that granted her strength or whether it was something else entirely. Perhaps it was necessary. Perhaps Sariya could no longer exist without such a thing.
Sariya stood by one of the windows, the one facing east. When she turned, Atiana was struck once again by her beauty. Her long golden hair swayed with her movement. Her blue eyes fixed on Atiana. Her expression was not one of amusement or thinly veiled disgust-as it had been when Atiana had first arrived in Baressa-but was instead something like respect or admiration.
“It’s interesting, is it not?” Sariya asked. “No matter how carefully we lay our plans, the fates toy with us.”
She meant, perhaps, how she’d become lost in the aether after years of planning. Atiana didn’t know how to respond, so she remained silent.
“Interesting as well how greed can be our undoing.” As she said these words, she glanced at Atiana’s belt, at the purse that hung by her left hip. It was where Atiana had placed the Atalayina.
Seeing no reason to keep it hidden, Atiana took it out and held it up for Sariya to see.
Sariya underwent an interesting transformation as she stared. She had been calm since Atiana’s arrival, but also reserved-perhaps guarded, unsure how the coming conversation would unfold-but as she stared at the glittering blue stone, a subtle fierceness overcame her, like an owl at dusk.
“May I hold it?” she asked.
Atiana was loath to do this, but she had known this request would come, or if it didn’t, that the stone would be taken by force. She nodded and held the stone out. When Sariya stepped forward, Atiana could smell the scent
