Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Maks’s chest tightened. He had known Yevgeniy would ask, but he hadn’t known until this very moment what his answer would be. “Please,” he said.

  Yevgeniy smiled. He reached to one side and pulled the rope hanging next to him. The bell pealed long and loud, trailing away as the wind played among the belfry high above. Yevgeniy waited, his eyes closed, his arms spread wide.

  At last, when the sound had fallen away, he opened his eyes and regarded Maks with an expression that hid all. Or nearly all. For a moment there was concern, but it vanished and the placid expression Yevgeniy had shown to all the other supplicants returned.

  “You will do well in Constantinople, Maks. You and Savil, both. You will live out your life in peace, though in little prosperity. Savil will be by your side until the black sea burns red. And you... You will find in that city what you have ever searched for.”

  Maks listened to these words and let them settle over him like a blanket of soft, worsted wool. They filled him with hope, and it was a welcome change from a life that had been filled with so much misery these past years.

  He also knew that Yevgeniy was lying.

  But he didn’t care.

  He stepped forward and kissed Yevgeniy’s cheeks—a horrible breach of protocol—and then pulled him into a deep embrace.

  “Go well, Yevgeniy Udmanoslov.”

  “Go well, Maksim Vadimov.”

  That done, his heart lifted, and Maks left the temple.

  To the Towers of Tulandan

  As Khadija crawled along the dank sewer pipe, she allowed the freezing chill to fill her. Her breath billowed into the enclosed space ahead as her arms and belly and legs crunched over the filthy, ice-rimed water lining the trough. Wind scoured the streets of Kirishci somewhere above, and it felt no less brisk in this dark place as she forced her numb limbs to drag herself slowly along. It felt as though she would never reach the grate in time for the hanging, so slow was the going, but she forced herself to pull, one arm in front of the next—the fates would see to the rest.

  When she reached the grate at last, she pushed it up and out, then brought the grate into the sewer pipe with her. She pushed it forward and away from the clear opening, for it was made of iron and would foul her abilities were it too near. Bersuq had loosened the grate three nights prior, but he’d been spotted by the city’s oprichni while leaving, so they’d all agreed, including Khadija herself, that it was best if she entered the sewers through another route.

  She backed up into the darkness and waited, forcing herself to relax rather than shiver like one of the soft Landed nobles.

  When the sun rose at last, she saw a woman limp across the square. More of the Landed soon followed—peasants leading carts laden with bales of harvest hay over the snow-covered cobbles; children running and slipping along the snow and ice, laughing; the occasional soldier, one of Kirishci’s oprichni, wearing the long, dark cherkesskas and fur-lined kolpaks of Rhavanki—and finally, as the sun rose over the old stone buildings, people began to gather, crowding the gallows as a young boy in courtly clothes stepped onto the platform and rang a brass bell three times. Soon after, three men and two women were led onto the platform. Ten oprichni followed, six of them bearing flintlock muskets and berdische axes with their broad blades and long hafts.

  The remaining four held other implements at the ready, no less a weapon than the axes or muskets. They were dousing rods, circles of iron with long handles that allowed the oprichni to snuff any attempt by Maharraht qiram like Khadija to draw upon the powers of flame or wind or water. No matter to them that none of the condemned wore circlets or bracelets or anklets with stones set into them; the oprichni eyed them warily just the same, preparing against a summoned gust of wind or the release of a bolt of bright white lightning that might course through all of them at once.

  It’s good they’re scared. They deserve to be.

  The oprichni studied the crowd as well, expecting retribution, a thing the Maharraht had given them at many of the recent hangings around the islands of Rhavanki. They expected an attack, and that was exactly what was coming, though not for the reasons the oprichni might expect. The five gathered Maharraht, those condemned to die, had chosen to come here, to give themselves up that Khadija and the others could create a diversion for their leader, Soroush. Their bravery and sacrifice was a source of pride for them all, for a prize was being brought to Rhavanki this day. A boy. A very special boy. Why Soroush had chosen Rhavanki she didn’t know, but she knew enough to understand that the day when the Landed would be overthrown was nearing.

  Khadija wore an anklet with a stone of azurite set into it. As the leader of the oprichni, their desyatnik, read the transgressions of the condemned—transgressions no doubt fabricated by the High Magistrate of Kirishci—Khadija opened herself to the stone, allowed the chill of the water to suffuse her more fully. She felt the way it seeped through her clothes and stole her warmth, how it ran the length of the channel below her and met larger runnels of water as they trailed out from the city toward the nearby river and down toward the sea more than two leagues away. What she was doing would attract the notice of the Matri—the Duchess Katerina or one of her four daughters. After all, with a hanging taking place, they would have taken precautions, the Matri submerging themselves in their drowning basins and watching for signs of the Maharraht, which was precisely why Khadija had waited to forge her bond until now.

  Focus, Khadija.

  Spending undue thoughts on the Matri would foil her attempts to bond with a spirit, so she let her mind relax as nooses were slipped around the necks of the Maharraht. Her brothers and sisters stood stoically, confident in the sacrifices they’d made, preparing themselves for their next lives.

  Khadija reached out, calling upon nearby spirits. One approached quickly, young from the feel of it but powerful enough for her purposes. She offered herself to the jalahezhan, giving of her form that it might taste of the material world. She thought it might refuse her—they were mercurial, after all—but soon, the bond had coalesced.

  The nooses had now been tightened. The desyatnik, wearing a grey cherkesska and black boots and a golden medallion in his kolpak hat that gleamed in the otherwise grey morning, read the last of the writ as Khadija bid a tendril of water to snake up and out from the sewer pipe. It slithered forward, the snow melting where it touched, drawing still more water to its form, causing it to widen as it approached the edge of the gallows.

  As the desyatnik stepped back, rolling up the writ, many in the crowd looked up at a black rook as it flapped through the square, cawing wildly. “Maharraht!” it called. “Beware! Maharraht!”

  It was the Matra, speaking through the voice of the rook. The warning had come sooner than Khadija had hoped, but she was not unprepared, and neither would the others be.

  The tendril of water snaked up the nearest of the platform’s stout wooden posts. The wind picked up, blowing strongly across the square. The peasants began to scatter as the desyatnik bellowed orders and his oprichni brought their dousing rods to bear, pointing them into a growing wind that was now howling through the streets, pressing the crowd and the oprichni and the gathered Maharraht.

  The rook cawed violently as it was tossed by the gusting wind, and Khadija smiled bitterly. The wind, though it was now starting to die from the efforts of the oprichni and the effects of the black iron dousing rods, was only a diversion. Hers was the true assault.

  Drawing further upon her bonded hezhan, Khadija forced the stream of filthy water to divide. It split and split again until there were ten in all, enough for each of the ten gathered oprichni. Each stream held enough to fill a man’s lungs. As they gamboled along the planks like tiny brooks, a woman standing in the square shouted and pointed wildly at them, but the oprichni were occupied. Khadija did not revel in the death she was about to deal, but neither would she weep for the souls of these Landed men when they were gone.

  As the first of the cords of water began to snake up the leg of th
e nearest soldier, however, someone stepped into the square, a man set apart by the robes he wore—inner robes of ivory, outer robes the orange of the setting sun. Though nearly obscured by his mop of curly brown hair, she could see a golden circlet upon his brow, and within the circlet was a tourmaline gemstone that—like Khadija’s own stone of azurite would be doing now—was glowing under the morning sun. There was something familiar about him, even his gait, but he was too far away, the crowd too frenetic, for the half-formed memories to coalesce.

  On the platform, the soldier’s eyes widened as the water streamed up his leg to his chest, then his neck, and into his mouth and nostrils. He turned, gripping his musket, staring skyward as if the cawing rook could somehow help him. He was an older soldier, approaching fifty or more. He looked to be a petty man, his eyes like a rat’s, his small mouth loath to utter a kind word. As it dawned upon him what was happening, his eyes locked on one of the Maharraht still bound by her noose. Perhaps the soldier thought the Maharraht had done this, or perhaps he’d just grown angry, but as the water continued to pour down his throat and lungs, he pulled the trigger of his flintlock musket and fired pointblank into the chest of the staring woman.

  The woman blinked, blood flowing from the wound between her breasts. She slumped as some of the nearby oprichni turned. They saw the choking soldier fall to his knees, gripping his throat, they saw the water creeping across the planks toward their own black boots, and they turned to meet this new threat.

  But just then the Aramahn man spread his arms wide and the rest of the water Khadija had summoned flashed to steam, filling the air around the platform with a nearly impenetrable mist.

  At that moment, someone on the platform pulled the lever that would activate the trap doors beneath the Maharraht. As the mist spread, their forms dropped, jerking sharply as the ropes caught their weight. Then the snow around the platform began to steam as well, obscuring more of the surrounding square. Flashes of orange light came from within the mist like the cannon-fire Khadija had once seen in the mists of an early summer dawn. Moments later she heard bodies dropping. Fire had cut the ropes of the hanging Maharraht.

  This man was gifted, then. Gifted indeed, to wield both fire and water.

  Soon the entire scene was cast in a downy white fog so thick Khadija could see nothing. She felt the cool dampness enter the sewer as she climbed out and stood once again on solid ground. She was reluctant to release her jalahezhan, but the Matri could find her too easily if she didn’t, so she allowed the spirit to slip back across the veil to the world beyond.

  And suddenly she felt the cold much more deeply than she had only moments ago.

  The Matri had discovered them. There was nothing to do now but retreat and regroup. So she ran, though she’d not made it twenty paces before coming upon someone standing in the mist ahead. She cursed herself for releasing her jalahezhan so soon, but she was not unarmed. She pulled the curved khanjar from her belt and held it before her.

  “Fates be, Khadija,” a golden voice called, “would you take a knife to your kuadim?”

  Khadija held her ground as the mists began to part. There, standing before her… Could it be? By the fates who shine above, it was Ashan, the one who had taught her the ways of the Aramahn when she was young.

  “I thought my message might never reach you,” she said.

  “You said it was important.”

  “It is, son of Ahrumea.” She took Ashan by the hand and led him quickly down the road. “It is.”

  Ashan squatted near a fire, patting dough between his hands, forming it into a rough circle. After sprinkling it with salt and rosemary from a small wooden container by his side, he tossed it lightly onto a cooking stone. The bread sizzled for a moment, mixing with the sounds of the surf, and the smell filled the small seaside cave to which they’d retreated after the attack in Kirishci. It was the place she’d been assigned, the place Soroush would come to find her when all was well. A good enough place to introduce him to Ashan, she thought.

  For a time she and Ashan had been followed by the oprichni, but Ashan had summoned more steam before finally releasing his spirits as well. Khadija worried that the Matri were watching them even now from their drowning basins in Palotza Iyakar, but as time wore on and she and Ashan ate their simple meal of flatbread and black bean paste in silence, she began to worry less, not because the danger was not high, but because she’d promised herself long ago to never fear the Landed again. If the fates willed her to be taken and hung, she would accept it and welcome her next life and begin her long journey of penance from the violence she’d dealt in this one.

  “Where did my message find you?” Khadija asked him.

  Ashan smiled widely, showing his gapped and angled teeth. “Is that where you wish to begin?”

  “It’s a good enough place to start,” she replied.

  “I’ve come from Khazabyirsk, and before that Bolgravya, and before that the Towers of Tulandan, which was where”—he looked up from tending the cooking flatbread with a goggle-eyed expression—“your message found me.”

  Khadija closed her eyes. The Towers… How she wished she could go to that ancient place of learning and read their texts, perhaps share her stories with others and listen to theirs. But she’d chosen another life. Like an eclipse of the sun, the life she’d chosen had long ago stifled her will to learn, had in fact smothered it until the thirst for knowledge she’d once felt so keenly now felt instead like something that had never been hers; but when she came in contact with someone like Ashan, her desires were rekindled, at least until her next act of violence.

  “What made up your mind to come?” Khadija asked.

  While flipping the flatbread with practiced movements, he laughed, a joyous sound she’d nearly forgotten. “One would think you wished I hadn’t come.”

  “I don’t remember you being so circumspect.”

  His smile faded. “I don’t remember you being so violent.”

  Khadija ignored the jab. Behind the smiles, Ashan was shrewd, and he was trying to push her into revealing more than she wished. “Have you come to save me, then? To turn me back to the path of vashaqiram, to enlightenment?”

  Ashan had already lost his humor, but now he became gravely serious. When he spoke, he spoke in low tones. “It is a path you can always return to, daughter of Fassed. Even were you to be caught and hung tomorrow. Even”—he gave her that look again—“were you to kill everyone on this island.”

  At this, Khadija’s breath caught, and to her great shame Ashan saw. Not shame for the acts she and the others hoped to commit against the Duchy of Rhavanki, but for the life she’d left behind, the vows—to herself if no one else—she’d turned her back on.

  “Khadija, what happened to Mirilah does not have to happen to you.”

  “Do not speak to me of my sister!”

  Suddenly the message she’d sent so long ago seemed foolish indeed. What had she hoped in summoning Ashan here? He would never agree to help, or if he did, then Soroush would refuse him.

  “What made you come?” she finally snapped.

  Ashan pursed his lips. He looked strange, as if choosing his words with great care, but then there came a sound from the entrance to the cave, and Ashan turned toward it. A bear of a man with a long grey beard stooped low to enter the cave. Khadija grit her teeth and did her best to hide her disappointment. She’d hoped Soroush himself would come. He at least she could reason with. Bersuq, Soroush’s brother, was like a stone, rigid in his thinking and resolute that others should be the same.

  Bersuq could not come to full height when he reached the open space near the fire, so he crouched and sat on his heels, eyeing Ashan warily. Bersuq wore the clothes of the Maharraht, robes of rough woolen cloth, almond-shaped turban with a ragged tail that hung down his chest.

  Khadija motioned to Ashan. “This is Ashan Kida al Ahrumea.”

  “Ashan is known to me.” Bersuq’s greying beard waggled as he spoke.

  “Forgive me
,” Ashan said as he ripped some hot bread free and popped it into his mouth, “but I do not know you.”

  “And why would you?” Bersuq asked.

  “Ashan,” she waved to the man across from him, “may the fates smile as you meet Bersuq Wahad al Gatha.”

  “Peace be upon you,” Ashan said around his food, offering Bersuq his smile.

  Bersuq refused to return it, turning his head to Khadija instead. He said nothing, but his gaze demanded answers.

  “I summoned him here, Bersuq, for I’m running out of answers. In truth, I was running out long before we came here.”

  Bersuq’s face soured. He was not a forgiving man, nor a patient one, and he was beginning to show his anger, which meant surely that considerably more was bottled up inside him. “You imagine that an arqesh will help us?”

  “In this he might.”

  “Why?”

  “Allow me to ask him and you’ll see.”

  The muscles along Bersuq’s jaw worked. His reddened eyes looked her up and down, then they studied Ashan. “Are you Maharraht?”

  “I am not,” Ashan said matter-of-factly.

  Bersuq stood, hunching over, and stared down at Khadija. “Then he cannot come.”

  And with that he left the cave, leaving a dread feeling in the pit of Khadija’s heart.

  The sound of rushing water filled the valley walls. Khadija walked along a trail layered with fresh fallen snow. Two sets of footprints were nearly lost, but she could see them, dimples mirroring one another along the trail that hugged the steep right side of the valley. After a bend in the path the sound of rushing water rose dramatically. On the valley’s opposite face frothed a wide, white waterfall that issued from a gap in the black cliff face and fell to a churning pool below. Standing even with her on an outcropping of rock halfway down the course of the roaring water were a tall man and a young boy, both dressed in the ragged clothes of the Maharraht.