Siha s seemed suddenly disinterested in his meal. He merely pushed it around his plate with his fork. “I know what you plan to do tomorrow night as well.”
“Then you also know a trap has been laid for me.”
His silence was telling.
“You were willing to let me walk into it,” Atiana said.
“I wish you no harm, but there is more to consider.”
“Such as?”
“We must know Arvaneh’s plans. It was decided that you would be allowed to go, and that we would watch.”
“With no intervention from those who claim to be mindful of Hakan’s true purpose.”
Bahett’s wives had reached the center of the room. There, they began a slow but complex ritual, moving around one another, hooking arms and spinning about, as men standing at the corners of the room beat large skin drums. The beat was thunderous at times and subtle, almost tender at others. It was a rhythm that felt deep as the ocean or light as summer rain, and the dancers echoed it well.
“In truth, I hope that you will come to no harm, but there are casualties in war, My Lady.”
“This is why we need to speak, Siha s. I will not offer myself as a sacrifice.”
“I cannot help you in the dark.”
At those words, Atiana glanced over to the head table, the same point at which the drumbeat quickened and the intensity of the dancing increased. Arvaneh seemed transfixed by it.
“That isn’t the sort of help I require,” Atiana continued.
“Then what?”
“I need protection, both during and once it’s done.”
“You have your streltsi.”
“Hakan has allowed few enough in the kasir, Siha s. You know this. We need others to watch over us as we study Arvaneh.”
“If you do it in secret, there will be no need.”
“It will hardly be in secret. In all likelihood Arvaneh will know we have come.”
“It is not the time for boldness, My Lady.”
“It is, My Lord. My father has arrived on these shores, and there is something afoot. I can smell it. And Arvaneh is the key. Isn’t this what you’ve been searching for as well?”
“ Evet, but we are not ready. Hakan has begun to fear those close to him. He sent a kaymakam away from the kasir two days ago, and we found out this morning that he has been lost on the road to Ramina. He was one of our most careful, and still Hakan found him out.”
The beat of the drum had become frenetic, even ardent. The dancers swung about, dresses flaring, legs arcing. They had surrounded Ebru in her red dress, she with the bell and the rings of gold. They began to lean in and scratch at her. Only one or two at first, but as Ebru tried to escape the circle, the others pulled her back in and more began to feed upon her. She fought, rising above the tide, but there were too many, and she was drawn back down. She fell to the floor, and as she did, the men, who had been beating their drums furiously, raised their mallets up and struck once. The note reverberated around the room. All eyes were fixed on the dance.
“You must be ready,” Atiana said. “There is no time to wait.”
The drums beat again, and one of the remaining women-the women in white-fell to the floor.
“Two more days, My Lady Princess. That’s all I ask.”
Another beat, and another woman fell.
“I cannot delay. We go tomorrow night.”
The drumbeats continued. Each one, each collapse of a dancer, felt like a heartbeat, like blood dripping upon the floor, like her last chance was slipping from her grasp.
“Then you go alone.”
Atiana stared at the floor, where not a single dancer remained standing. “So be it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
N asim stares into Sariya’s deep blue eyes.
“Why would you not think to find me here?” she asks.
“Because you were not on Ghayavand.”
She motions to the forest, and Nasim falls into step alongside her. Unlike Sariya, who moves like a bee over a field of wildflowers, the going is difficult for him. He trudges, the deep snow thumping as each footstep breaks the surface.
She glances down-no more than this-and Nasim’s steps are light upon the snow. Yadhan, however, continues to struggle, and she appears more and more uncomfortable with this exchange. Sariya pays so little attention to her that Nasim wonders if Sariya knows she’s there.
With a simple but elegant motion, Sariya sweeps the air with one hand, as if to indicate the entirety of this place they walk within. “Does the aether stop at the borders of Ghayavand? Is it bound by land or sea?”
Nasim takes in the terrain once more. He thought this a place that Sariya carved from her dreams, made real by her will over the course of centuries and the peculiarities of the aether that Sariya had managed to uncover, but now that he looks, he realizes how similar it is to the land of dreams that embraced him in his younger years. The aether is the land of dreams, after all, the place where Adhiya and Erahm touch. If Sariya tried hard enough, could she not have unraveled its secrets?
“Where are you?”
“Why, do you wish to join me?”
“I don’t know where I wish to go.”
Sariya smiled. “Then come.”
They continue into the woods. They pass well into the trees before Nasim realizes Yadhan has not followed. She watches from the edge of the forest, ducking beneath the lowest branches to watch him, unwilling to take even a single step into the trees.
Nasim doesn’t want to continue alone, but he cannot allow Sariya to sense his worry. If she senses weakness, all will be lost.
They come to a rise, and soon the trees part, revealing a white monolith standing tall and proud, as if it considers itself the lord of all it surveys. It is taller than any of the trees that stand outside the clearing.
Sariya considers the stone, for the time being ignoring Nasim.
And then Nasim realizes.
The stone. The piece of the Atalayina. The one he’d hidden in Sariya’s tower. He feels it within the strata of rock that forms the monolith, and he is sure that Sariya feels the same. He is confused, for his memories tell a different story. Khamal dropped it onto the floor of Sariya’s bedroom within her tower. How, then, had it become trapped within the monolith that stands before him?
But of course, this place, its nature… He stands in the aether, true, but he also stands in a place of Sariya’s making. This is her demesne. By Sariya’s hand it would have been formed and reformed until-as improbable as it seems-the tower and everything within it would have expanded, bringing into being all that surrounds him, including this monolith.
Now it is a riddle to be solved. Sariya has isolated the Atalayina, separated it from the rest, giving her time to remove the stone without damaging it. Surely she sensed the stone in the weeks after her awakening. Had she the power, she would already have retrieved it, making it clear she hasn’t yet unraveled Khamal’s spell. This is why she brought him here, to retrieve the Atalayina for her.
But of course, this is also a trap. Sariya will not let him have it. “I must return the stone to Ghayavand,” Nasim says.
“Ghayavand is Muqallad’s now. Take the stone and come with me to Galahesh.”
Nasim turns in the snow and looks back through the trees the way they’d come. “There are those on Ghayavand who need me.”
