CHAPTER TWENTY
W hen Atiana returned to the kasir, she summoned Bahett’s seneschal, a wizened old man who seemed as likely to trip on the hem of his robes as take another step. She spoke with him for two hours, and he was nearly ready to pull Bahett from the masquerade, but Atiana begged him not to. She didn’t want anything to seem amiss, especially since she and Yalessa hadn’t been harmed.
When she finally made it back to her rooms, she downed a small carafe of warmed vodka to calm herself before bed. She did manage to fall asleep, but when she awoke a short while later the effects of the liquor had passed and she found herself wide awake. The words of the man from the willow kept playing through her mind. They had been laced with truth, and yet each time she worked it through, she decided he was lying. Clearly he was an agent of the Kamarisi, or Arvaneh herself, set to turn her against Bahett and his allies.
And still-
A knock came at the door to Atiana’s apartments. Any trace of sleep vanished in an instant.
The knock came again.
In the outer chamber, Yalessa stirred and moved to the door. A soft click came, and the sounds of whispers drifted in to her. A moment later, Yalessa, carrying a lit taper, slipped inside her room and rushed to her bed.
“Bahett wishes to speak with you.”
Atiana swallowed, remembering the words of the tall man from the cemetery. She maneuvered herself down from the bed and pulled on her night coat as Yalessa lit another taper. They moved to the outer chamber, and Atiana settled herself at a table with several opulent, padded chairs.
“Send him in,” Atiana said, “and take my room. We may be a while.”
“Of course, My Lady.”
The dark form of Bahett slipped into the room. Yalessa retreated to Atiana’s bedroom, closing the door behind her.
“I’m most sorry.” Bahett moved to the table, his handsome face filled with regret. “Janissaries were stationed at all the entrances to the cemetery, but it is large. It’s a mistake that won’t be made again.” He sat down, his face lit in soft, golden light. “The guardsman at the southern entrance said he heard fighting among the tombs. Did you hear it as well?”
She nodded. “Just as we were leaving through the break in the wall.”
“And you saw no one?”
And now it came to it. She had told the seneschal nothing about the men near the willow, only that she had heard sounds of battle among the tombs, but she had debated ever since what she would tell Bahett. She did not trust the tall, dark man she’d spoken to, but he hadn’t said anything that ran counter to what she knew of the Kamarisi and the Lady Arvaneh.
Atiana had always been good at trump, and one of the things she’d learned was not to play her high cards early. Not unless you knew you could run the trick. And she certainly couldn’t do that, so for now she would protect what cards she did have.
“Ancients preserve me, I did not,” she said to him.
Bahett’s face relaxed. He lifted her hands and kissed them. It was a warm and tender gesture. “I’m so relieved, Atiana. I don’t know what I would have done had they found you.”
“Who were they?”
Bahett’s eyes went faraway. “I wish I knew, but trust me when I say that no effort will be spared.”
“And what of the servant, the eunuch?”
He focused on her once more. “An impostor. We found the one who should have been sent in his bed, his throat cut.” He leaned forward until he was sitting at the edge of his chair, and then he reached out and took her left hand in his. It was not Nikandr’s hand, but it was nice all the same. “Atiana, I will be blunt. It may be best that we abandon our plan. I would not put you in deeper danger, and the chances that Arvaneh will discover our plans are now too great. Clearly she suspects something, enough that she is willing to have you killed before you can learn more about her.”
Atiana had been ready for him to say something completely different. She thought he would urge her to continue her efforts, no matter what the danger might be, but this was a side of Bahett she hadn’t counted on. He had been so adamant in Vostroma, and now, here he was, asking her to back down.
“I have a duty to my family, Bahett, to the Grand Duchy as well.”
“It may be that the Kamarisi will see reason. He may, perhaps, still be led out from under the shadow of Arvaneh’s influence. I still haven’t had the chance to speak to him at length, but when I do-”
“You said Arvaneh is the one pulling the strings. You said the Kamarisi is powerless. There’s something strange happening, and I would learn its nature, danger or not.” He looked as though he was about to speak again, but she talked over him. “My father arrives in less than a week. In order to protect him, to protect all our interests here, I will take the dark, as soon as can be arranged.”
He smiled, the candlelight making him even more handsome than he was in the daylight. “My brave princess.”
She felt herself blush as she pulled her hand away. “Go,” she said, more strongly than she’d meant.
The following morning, Atiana went early to a terrace overlooking an expansive garden. Bahett was hosting a social for the Kamarisi and his retinue to meet the first of the dignitaries from the Grand Duchy who’d come. Atiana would be among the guests, of course, but so would Vaasak Dhalingrad, the younger brother of Duke Leonid and the man Father had chosen to act as his negotiator in the week before his arrival.
For Atiana’s part, she was to meet Bahett’s wives, or at least most of them. Some would be gone, tending to Bahett’s estates around the island of Galahesh. But the most important, including Bahett’s current ilkadin, would be in attendance.
Atiana met them, seventeen in all. They were all pretty, though in markedly different ways. Some were tall with bright eyes. Others had lustrous dark hair and strong cheekbones. Others still had full lips and fuller hips. Atiana felt strange upon exchanging pleasantries with them. They were real women, all of them. She had expected them to have nary a thought in their pretty little heads, but they were refined. They were well spoken. They knew much of the political landscape, if their subtle yet polite hints about her reasons for wedding Bahett were any indicator.
The last to come was Meryam, Bahett’s ilkadin. When it was her turn to speak with Atiana, she clapped her hands. The other women, who had up until this point been sitting at intimate tables with mosaic inlays, stood and with their plates and cups in hand left the terrace.
In moments, Atiana was alone with Meryam at a single table, each of them sipping the strong coffee with the grounds still at the bottom of the cup. Meryam was a mature woman-she would be forty in three days, she told Atiana-and she was beautiful, a woman in her prime, a woman who commanded attention. Many of Bahett’s wives wore bright dresses and jewelry at their wrists and ankles and throats. Meryam wore a ring in her nose, more in her eyebrows, more still in her ears. Her eyes were rimmed with kohl, and her dress was the color of her eyes, a brown so rich and bright it made Atiana think of beaten copper. The skin along the backs of her hands and wrists were marked with beautiful tattoos in the shapes of stars and whorls and bold, angular shapes that highlighted the landscape of her hands.
Meryam asked Atiana of Vostroma, of life among the islands. In return she spoke of Yrstanla and Aleke s ir, her capital. They spoke of life on Galahesh, what the food was like, where the best cheese could be found. They spoke almost nothing of the thing that stood squarely between them: the fact that Atiana, once she was married to Bahett, would take the title that Meryam now claimed as her own.
The time was growing near when the social would begin, and still Meryam choose to speak of nothing but pleasantries.
Soon the other wives returned to the terrace-this time bearing trays with glasses and plates and silverware and food. Meryam stood and nodded toward them. “Ebru will be best to teach you.”
Atiana stood. She felt dismissed and confused, both. She recalled Ebru as the short woman with the saucy tongue. “Forgive me, ilkadin, but wouldn’t it be better if you taught me?”
“It might,” she said, smiling, “but in two weeks I’ll be gone.”
“I don’t understand.”
