“He did not.”
His smiled deepened. “Then we’ll keep it between us. A secret between east and west.”
“ Evet.” Atiana smiled. “A secret.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“I t’s time you take the dark,” Ishkyna said as she burst into Atiana’s room four days after the meeting with the Kamarisi.
Atiana was penning a letter to Mother, but she looked up in annoyance. “What are you talking about?”
“The Lady Arvaneh, she’s retreated to her tower.”
Atiana returned to her writing. “What of it?”
“I’ve been watching her. She goes there often. At times she looks haggard when she enters and she returns refreshed. Other times she seems drained.”
“You’re making no sense.”
Ishkyna flopped down into the chair across from Atiana’s writing desk.
“Set down your quill.”
Her voice was so serious that Atiana complied. Ishkyna, so often ready to nip at her heels with a snide remark, was looking at her with a deadly serious expression.
“Go on,” Atiana said.
“I may avoid taking the dark, Tiana, but it’s provided me a certain amount of perspective that you and Mileva may lack. I can see the way Arvaneh is after her time in her tower. Often her eyes are dulled. Her words come more slowly. And her card play is, frankly, disastrous.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’ve taught Bahett’s wives trump. Arvaneh joined us one day. She’s become quite enamored of it. I think at first she only wanted to learn more about you, but over the days she’s become more and more wily at laying her cards, not unlike Mileva.”
“What does this have to do with me taking the dark?”
“I didn’t see her this morning, but Ebru did. She said that Arvaneh looked not just exhausted, but pale, her skin ashen, her eyes haunted, as if she’d aged thirty years in a week. She’s done this before and returned rejuvenated, resplendent, as we saw her on our arrival here. I don’t know what she does in the tower when she’s like this, but she isn’t taking the dark. It would be too dangerous, and besides, she would return looking even worse if that was the case. If there was ever a time to watch her, Atiana, it would be now.”
Atiana considered this. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Ishkyna smiled a mischievous smile. “ Nyet. It doesn’t.”
Although there were times that Ishkyna was too impetuous for her own good, Atiana would never deny that she was not sly, that she didn’t know people. She knew them. She knew how to read their moods with but a word.
“Bahett wanted me to wait until his return from the hunt.”
Ishkyna raised one eyebrow, her smile turning to genuine amusement.
“Wipe that grin off your face,” Atiana said as she stood, “and tell Yalessa to begin preparations.”
Ishkyna stood and sketched an elaborate bow.
When Atiana finally found Bahett, he was in the stable yard, preparing to leave with a dozen other men for a stag hunt in the forest south of Baressa. Before Atiana had even finished explaining, Bahett interrupted her. “It wouldn’t do well to go now,” Bahett said, looking over Atiana’s shoulder to the servants, who were loading the last of the provisions to the coach that would accompany the men.
“You brought me here to help, did you not?”
He took her hands in his. “I did. Of course I did. But Atiana, I’ll be too far away to help if anything goes awry.”
She chose not to say that he didn’t help the last time-the man at the willow did. “It’s important to find her when she’s in her tower. You said so yourself.”
“I did, but not now. We’ll return in three days. And we’ll find a time-the proper time-on my return.” He squeezed her hands, as a father might to a daughter he was trying to talk down from a foolish decision. “As we planned.”
“Bahett-”
He squeezed her hands. Hard. “Atiana, I forbid it.”
She stared into his eyes. His face was as calm and pleasant as ever, but his eyes… They were not only fierce. They were fearful. He was afraid of what would happen were Atiana to take the dark.
Ishkyna’s instincts were good, but Atiana hadn’t been sure, up until that point, that she was right.
“Of course,” she said, swallowing hard to make as if she were cowed by his actions. “Of course you’re right. Please, forgive my eagerness. It’s only that the islands…”
“Say no more.” He stepped in and gave her a warm kiss on her cheek, one she immediately wanted to wipe off. “We’ll speak soon.”
She nodded and waved as he left to complete his preparations.
And then she returned to her apartments to make final preparations. They would go as soon as everything could be arranged.
That night, she left, though this time with Ishkyna instead of Yalessa. “You need proper looking after,” Ishkyna had said, though it seemed more likely that she had only agreed to come because Siha s had already left for the hunt.
She chose a man from her father’s guard as well. His name was Irkadiy. Irkadiy Adienkov. And he was a man who had been in her father’s service for fifteen years. He was a trustworthy soldier, and she felt far better for having him with her-not to mention foolish for thinking she could do without such protection the other night.
Bahett’s servants were easy to manipulate, especially when they knew she would soon be his first wife. Bahett would find out upon his return, but that gave her three days to investigate.
A different servant came this time, of course-the impostor who’d taken her had never been found, and Atiana was sure he never would be. This one-small, bald, soft of voice-looked nearly the same as the first had, which gave her no comfort whatsoever. He led her through the kasir and out once more through the rear door.
As soon as she and Ishkyna stepped from the kasir and onto the lawn behind it, she scanned the sky and saw a rook flying in the air. The rook, spotting them, winged away, and was lost in the cemetery.
Atiana felt better knowing that Mileva was watching over them. Her sister had become quite proficient in the aether, and though taking the dark was dangerous so near to the straits, the danger was muted while taking the form of a rook. The animals had a way of deadening the ill effects that could come from treading the aether’s currents.
Together, the four of them-the eunuch, Atiana, Ishkyna, and Irkadiy-wove through the cemetery, and soon they came to a different section than they had the previous night. Far off, she heard the caw of the rook, the signal that all was well.
Ishkyna couldn’t apparently keep herself from a look of disgust as they walked past row upon row of mausoleums. “Isn’t it dreadful?” she asked loudly enough for the servant to glance back at them.
For the moment, Atiana didn’t care if he heard. “ Da.”
At a large marble tomb at the end of a row, he knocked thrice upon a heavy copper door thick with bright green patina. A moment later the door swung open on creaking hinges. Inside was a woman as old as Atiana’s mother, dressed in white robes.
The woman glanced at them over the eunuch’s head. She leaned forward and whispered softly, after which the eunuch bowed his head and left.
“Come,” the woman said, and retreated into the darkness.
Ishkyna looked at Atiana seriously. “Pray to the ancients you never marry that man, Tiana.”
For some reason that struck Atiana as funny. She laughed long and hard, and it did not ebb until they had made their way inside the darkened tomb, which was lit only with a small lantern held by the old woman. She stood
