“I came,” Sukharam shot back, “because the world is torn. Is it not so?”
Nasim was taken aback by his fierceness. “It is so, but it is bigger than you or I.”
“ Neh, you were right, Nasim. You are bound to Muqallad and Sariya. You are bound to the tear that runs through Galahesh. And you must be the one to overcome it.”
Nasim wanted to dismiss him, but at that moment, he seemed wiser than his years. He reminded him more than a little bit of Rabiah, and it shamed him that another was pushing him to do what must be done.
He could feel Sukharam’s connection to Adhiya. He could feel those of the vanaqiram and dhoshaqiram who guided the ship as well. He could even feel, as weak as it was, Soroush’s, who had had his abilities burned from him by the Aramahn years ago. And yet he could not feel his own. He could not find his way to Adhiya. It had, through the misfortune of his return to this earth, been lost to him. Surely it had to do with the spells Muqallad and Sariya had cast upon Khamal in their haste to prevent him from escaping Ghayavand. Or perhaps it was his own lack of confidence, which had begun on Mirashadal but had since only grown. Or it might have been Khamal’s plan all along, his condition somehow vital to his connection to the rift or the Atalayina.
There was one more possibility that Nasim didn’t really want to consider, but consider it he did-refusing to do so would not only be cowardly, it would be a grave disservice to the world. His limitations might very well have something to do with the ritual that had saved him on Oshtoyets. He could feel Nikandr standing somewhere on the deck of the Chaika. Perhaps a piece of the puzzle lay with him. Why, after all, had he connected to him so strongly on Uyadensk? Nikandr’s broken soulstone was coincidence, but there was something there that seemed to be planned.
If only he could unravel how…
He thought of speaking with Ashan, of speaking with Fahroz, or even Nikandr, but the truth was he was sick to death of talking. It only seemed to confuse things further.
The wind gusted, twisting the ship until the pilot corrected their course.
His thoughts pushed him deeper and darker. “You should not follow me, Sukharam.”
“Why?”
“Because I know not where I go.”
After a pause-a pause that felt as long as the day-Sukharam turned and walked away.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Within the kapitan’s quarters of the Chaika, Nasim sat behind a large desk in the swiveling kapitan’s chair. The sun had set over an hour before. A brass whale oil lantern hung by a chain from the beams running along the ceiling, lighting the cabin in a golden glow.
The ship twisted slightly in the wind. The calls of windsmen could be heard outside the cabin door. Men walked about the ship, footsteps thumping against the deck.
Nasim could feel Nikandr striding across the deck, his soulstone a bright flame. He had brought Nasim to the cabin himself, but just as he was readying to close the door the boatswain had come to tell him of a shape they’d spotted along the horizon. Fearing the Hratha, Nikandr had gone to investigate.
Nasim had wondered why Nikandr hadn’t summoned him sooner, but the conversation with Soroush had made things clear. Nikandr had asked for Nasim, and Soroush had declined. Why Soroush had declined to allow Nikandr access to Nasim, and why he had eventually relented, Nasim didn’t know. Nasim wasn’t even sure he wanted to speak with Nikandr, but Sukharam, with his disappointed, sidelong glances, had made his mind up for him.
Nasim leaned forward, the chair creaking beneath him. A number of maps lay across the surface of the desk. Thanks to Fahroz he could read Mahndi, but Anuskayan was still beyond him. The letters were strange and the endless combinations and rules surrounding them made no sense to him. Still, he had seen many maps in Mirashadal, and he knew the islands of the Grand Duchy well. He could point out all of them on the largest of the maps before him. In the upper right corner was Rafsuhan, and though he also had trouble with leagues, he could judge distance well enough from the shape of the islands and the relative distances from others he knew, like Samodansk in the archipelago of Rhavanki, and Uyadensk in Khalakovo. And Ghayavand.
What was clear to him by looking at these maps was that he had traveled thousands of leagues with Kaleh. Thousands. She’d somehow opened up a tunnel between the village in Ghayavand and the outskirts of Ashdi en Ghat. But how? It was something he’d been asking himself over and over since they’d left Rafsuhan.
There were some clues. She was gifted in many of the same ways he was. She needed no stones to commune with Adhiya. She could control any of the hezhan, as he could. It may be as simple as finding the right child. After all, if Nasim had found gifted children, why couldn’t they? It seemed improbable, but not impossible.
In the end, it didn’t much matter how they’d found Kaleh. What mattered was that they had her, an ally to… do what?
Nasim stared at the map, tracing the line between Rafsuhan and Ghayavand.
Why did Muqallad need Kaleh? And what did it mean that she’d helped Nasim escape? Was there now some hope that she would turn away from Muqallad’s path of violence? Or had it simply been a moment of weakness?
A tapping behind Nasim made him start. He turned in the chair, but could see nothing beyond the rectangular window but the blackness of the night.
He moved to the window and levered it open. With the bitterly cold wind blowing, a rook hopped inside. It flapped over to a wrought-iron perch in the corner of the room behind the desk, where it walked along and beat its wings and pecked at the crossbar. Nasim stared at the golden band about its ankle, wondering which of the Matri had come.
“Are you still dumb, child?”
Nasim shook his head, confused. “Nikandr isn’t here.”
“And that’s well. We have things to talk about, you and I.”
There was no doubt now that this was Saphia Khalakovo. Not only could he hear it in the way she spoke, he could feel her distantly in the aether. He was curious to know what she wished to speak about, but more than anything he was worried that she would try to assume him if he didn’t cooperate. It hadn’t worked out well for her the last time, but neither had it worked out well for him. He’d been struck by vivid, debilitating dreams in the days that followed, and he had often wondered whether something different might have happened on Ghayavand had he not been so incapacitated on his arrival.
The rook cawed. “You’re sure you’re well…”
“I am,” he answered simply, waiting for her to get to the point.
“Then tell me how you came to Rafsuhan.”
“Why?”
The rook arched its neck and flapped its wings. “Don’t be impertinent, boy. You’re better than that, unless I’ve missed the mark…”
Nasim took a deep breath and released it noisily. He didn’t wish to speak to this woman, but he saw no reason to withhold the information, so he told her what he could of his arrival on Ghayavand, his battles with Sariya and Muqallad, and his eventual flight. He glossed over Rabiah’s tale-those memories were his and his alone-but he told her of Alayazhar and Sariya’s tower and the akhoz. He told her of his flight through the village of Shirvozeh. He told her of Kaleh as well, a girl he wasn’t sure just how to measure. Was she friend or foe? And did it even matter now that he’d left Ghayavand?
“And what of the stones, the Atalayina?”
“What of them?”
The rook cawed again and flapped over to the desk. It turned its dark eye on him. It was not an easy thing to look at, that staring, unblinking eye. “You may be angry with me, Nasim, for what I did to you those years ago, but I don’t care. I did what I thought was right for my family, for my Duchy, and for Anuskaya.” Finally the rook blinked. “This is important. Vostroma is set upon by the forces of the empire. Galostina may not last the week. The woman, Sariya, was close to having a piece of that stone, but thanks to you it has fallen into the hands of Vostroma’s
