The Straits of Galahesh loa-2

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Nikandr read it again before rolling it up and putting it back in the tube. No doubt ships had been sent with similar messages eastward for Dhalingrad, Lhudansk, and Khazabyirsk, and southward for Nodhvyansk and Bolgravya.

  “Have you more to deliver?” Nikandr called loudly to the other kapitan, holding up the tube.

  “I do, My Lord Prince,” he shouted back.

  “Then go. Bring news to Khalakovo and beyond.”

  “I will, My Lord.”

  The ship continued on, and Nikandr wondered about the wisdom of Andreya’s words. It made sense to band the ships together in defense of Vostroma’s largest island, her largest cities, and her seat of power, but Yrstanla didn’t seem interested in taking land. Their purpose was apparently only to destroy the spires, and if that were so, why would they take their forces into the teeth of the lion? Why wouldn’t they bypass Kiravashya altogether and take out as many spires as they could throughout the undefended islands?

  In only hours, Nikandr and his wing of ships might reach Alotsk, but in doing so they would leave Elykstava defenseless. What if Yrstanla had targeted the furthest of Vostroma’s islands? Were he after the spires, that’s where he would go.

  He looked to the southwest, toward Kiravashya, toward Galostina and his father.

  I’m sorry, Father.

  “Styophan,” he called.

  “ Da, Kapitan.” Styophan-as he had on the Chaika — was the ship’s acting master.

  “Send word. The four trailing ships will continue on and report to Kiravashya.”

  “And the lead ships?”

  “We head east to Elykstava,” Nikandr said. “If all goes well, we’ll return to Kiravashya shortly.”

  Styophan paused, but only for a moment. “ Da, Kapitan.”

  The Lihvyen turned and with the two trailing cutters-both of them small and ill-equipped but fast and maneuverable-headed east. Nikandr’s stomach churned as they sailed toward Elykstava and the small fort that stood upon her northern shores.

  It took hours, but eventually they saw her, a hard black jewel among the ocean blue. As they came closer, he could see a small fishing village along the southern shore. He could see farmland on the higher plateaus.

  And then the fort and her spire came into view.

  Still standing, Nikandr thought, and not another ship in sight.

  They’d come for nothing. They’d delayed their arrival to Kiravashya by as much as a day, all because he thought Yrstanla would send some token force here.

  “Shall we turn back, My Lord Prince?” Styophan called.

  “ Nyet,” Nikandr said. “Circle the island and let’s return.”

  “You’re sure?” Styophan said softly.

  “Call the orders, Styophan.”

  “ Da, Kapitan.”

  They continued around the northern side of the island. As they went, Nikandr felt his stone. It had felt dead before, but here-perhaps because of his proximity to the spire-he felt something at last. It was not the feeling that a presence was near, as he felt with the Matri, but instead a yawning emptiness, as if he stood near the edge of a great chasm, and the closer the Lihvyen came to the spire, the more pronounced it became.

  “Prepare for battle,” Nikandr said to Styophan.

  Styophan snapped his heels and bowed his head, and then left, giving hand signals to the crew that were quickly passed around the ship and to the trailing cutters.

  Nikandr met Jahalan at the mainmast. “Can you feel it?” he asked.

  “I feel something,” Jahalan said, “though I know not what. It feels strange here. My havahezhan is distant, and it grows more so the closer we come to this island.”

  “Anahid?”

  Anahid sat at the base of the mainmast, her arms out and her hands barely touching the surface of the windwood. It seemed as though she hadn’t heard him, but then she answered, her voice hoarse. “The same, son of Iaros”-she swallowed-“though for me it is much worse than Jahalan describes.”

  Nikandr moved to the fore of the ship and stared at the fort, which was now in easy view, and he realized that though the flag of Vostroma was flying, there were no signs of life within the keep.

  He raised his telescope to his eye and studied the fort closely. There was no one. Along her tall gray walls. On the road leading eastward. No one.

  He remembered a cove that was set into the northern shore of the island, a place surrounded by steep hills. It had harbored, he recalled, many ships during a famous battle during the War of Seven Seas.

  He swung the telescope along the coast, searching for it.

  He might not have found the cove as distant as it was if he hadn’t noticed the tops of the masts and rigging that could barely be seen above the hill that stood between the cove and the Lihvyen.

  “Rise!” Nikandr called. “Rise, and pass the signal!”

  No sooner had he said these words than the first puff of smoke came from the nearest of the fort’s cannons.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  A tiana was awakened by a hand on her shoulder.

  She sat up in her bed and found Siha s standing over her. “What?” she asked, rubbing her eyes and pulling the thin blanket off her.

  “The guards are coming this way.”

  Ishkyna, lying nearby, woke and groaned. “Let them come.”

  Atiana shoved Ishkyna’s backside with one foot. “Get up, unless you wish to wait for them alone.”

  “If it means I can sleep longer, I will.”

  Atiana kicked her again, harder. “Get up.”

  Ishkyna slapped her foot away and rolled up in bed until she could rest her head in her hands.

  Atiana pulled on her boots and raked her fingers through her grimy hair. She already wore the Galaheshi peasant dress she’d worn for the past week. It was properly grubby, to the point that she looked like half of the women that dared wander about the city.

  In little time all of them were ready. Ushai, Ishkyna, Atiana, plus Siha s and Irkadiy and two of their streltsi. The other streltsi had been quartered in a farm to the south. There had been no sense in keeping so many in one place-too much chance of discovery.

  They slipped out the back door and into the cold night wind. The street was filled with small homes built close to one another, most of them narrow and built to two or three stories. Atiana studied the windows closely, wondering who might be watching. In one she thought she could see the silhouette of a girl behind white curtains. When they came closer however, the silhouette was gone. Perhaps she’d gone to tell her parents, but that only made Atiana wonder whether her parents would suspect who was walking down their street, and, more importantly, whether they’d run and tell the city guard.

  They continued on, and the feeling of being watched grew until Atiana’s skin itched from it. In more and more homes she thought she saw faces, or watching eyes, and though she came to understand they were merely hallucinations brought on by too little sleep, it didn’t make her terror any less real.

  For seven days they’d been in this city, being woken at all hours, slipping from one section of the city to another, all in hopes of staying one step ahead of the Kamarisi’s men.

  Twenty minutes into their walk, one of Siha s ’s sentries returned to tell them that the guardsmen had come to the room they’d just left and were questioning the mason who owned it. Atiana prayed to the ancients that they would be spared. So far, the people that had sheltered them had come to no harm, but it was only a matter of time before one of them was taken to the city square at the base of the Mount and hung.

  In time they came to a servant’s home behind a large house in a section of Baressa that had once been affluent. Hard times had come and some of the buildings had fallen into disuse.

  Ishkyna dropped into a chair covered by a sheet and leaned back, closing her eyes immediately. Ushai sat on the floor, crossed her legs, and took long, measured breaths. Meditating. Again. It had begun to grow on Atiana’s nerves.

  Unable to watch her any longer
, Atiana investigated the small home. It was bare, but she could tell it had once been quaint, a place she would have been pleased to have tea in, to visit relatives in. Now it seemed lost and forgotten among the immensity of Baressa.

  They could not stay here, she knew-this had been planned only as a temporary hiding place-but she hoped it could shelter them for a few days at least. They were running out of places to go. The Shattering was off-limits to them now; it had been from the moment Sariya had discovered that they’d been hiding there, that they’d used it to attack her. Since then, they’d been wandering the neighborhoods of Baressa, never staying in one place for more than a night, biding their time until Siha s found a way to reunite them with his countrymen.

  The days after the keystone ceremony on the bridge had been brutal and bloody. Hakan had made examples of those he thought had been plotting against him. In some cases, he’d been right; in others, Siha s had said, he’d merely been using it as an excuse to right a wrong that had been festering in Hakan’s mind for years. And once Hakan’s bloodlust had taken hold of the Lords of Galahesh, it had spread like wildfire. Hangings and shootings had been commonplace in the days after the attack.

  Only after the fifth day of terror, when Hakan had lined seventy-two men and women along the tallest section of the kasir’s curtain wall and pushed them to their death one by one, had the killing subsided. For the past several days, things had been quiet, though whether this was due to a natural bleeding of tension or a simple dearth of anyone else to accuse and summarily hang Atiana didn’t know.

  Irkadiy and Siha s stood by the window, watching the empty row outside. There were no guardsmen visible, but the sentries Siha s had posted were good. They would have warning should the guard find them again.

  “Where will we go?” Atiana asked.

  Irkadiy turned to Atiana, his face haggard under the light of the lone lamp on the far side of the room. “My cousin has found a new home.”

  “We won’t be going there,” Siha s said.

  “We will,” Irkadiy said.

  “We will not. The homes your cousin finds have received too much attention.”

  “My cousin is worthy of our trust. I’d stake my life on it. I already have.”

  “That may be,” Siha s said, walking away and gathering up his woolen coat, cut long and straight in the style of Yrstanla, “but anyone he speaks to might sell our location to the guard.”

  “They wouldn’t do such a thing. Not for Hakan.”

  “They will if they think overly long on the bounty on our heads.”

  “I said”-Irkadiy took two long steps toward Siha s, squaring himself before he spoke again-“they would not.”

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  Irkadiy bristled, but before he could do anything foolish, Atiana put her hand on his chest. He looked angry enough to slap her hand away, but he did not, and slowly his anger drained. “Forgive me, My Lady Princess. The days…”

  “Have been long. And difficult, I know. Speak no more of it.” She turned to Siha s. “Where would you have us go?”

  “To the village.”

  This came not from Siha s, but Ushai, who still sat cross-legged on the floor. There was a village of the Aramahn deep beneath Baressa, near the straits. In fact, the northernmost ends of the tunnels-dozens of them-ended abruptly at the sheer cliffs. They looked down on the churning water, and gave an impressive view of the opposite cliff face. Ushai said they’d been little used in the last century, but there were still some that came there to study and to rest for a time before the winds took them elsewhere.

  Atiana sat in another chair. Dust rose from it, irritating her nose. She pulled from her coat the stone that had been given to her by Nasim. A piece of the Atalayina, a stone-Ushai had told her-that had been used by the Al-Aqim to open the rifts on Ghayavand.

  She looked up to Siha s, who still watched by the window. They had discussed the possibility of going to the village in the days following the battle. It had seemed like a foolish place to go. The wiser course of action had seemed to be to hide among the throngs of the people of Baressa so as to make it more difficult for Sariya to find them, but now-she held the heavy blue stone in her hands-it was becoming clear that they had to act. And soon. With no resistance, Sariya would have free reign to do as she would, and that was something that couldn’t be allowed.

  As she twirled the stone, it caught what little light there was and brightened it, made it glint.

  “We will go to the village,” she said.

  Within an artfully carved room of stone deep beneath the city of Baressa, Atiana sat with three Aramahn, the mahtar of this village, such as it was. There were less than thirty here now. Most Aramahn had stopped coming to Baressa, preferring to move on to the villages of the Grand Duchy and then westward on their journeys around the world. Those that did come spoke of discomfort in this place. When asked, they couldn’t say why-only that it felt as though the land here was not proper, as if it were a place that had somehow gone overlooked by the fates for too long. Some came here for that very reason. They chose to study not those things that brought peace, but those that brought pain or anguish. Such was the case with the two men and one woman that sat at the table, looking at the wondrous stone Atiana had given them.

  They had discussed its history, from its legendary history with the Al-Aqim and backward to its origin. In many things they disagreed heartily, one saying it had come from the wastes of the Gaji, another saying it had fallen from the heavens, the third saying it had been left behind when the first of the Aramahn-the first truly gifted in the ways of communion-passed from this world to the next.

  In the end, Atiana left them to discuss it unobstructed. She spoke Mahndi fairly well, but their rapid speech, using old terms she had trouble keeping up with, was beginning to give her a headache. And also, she felt that they were holding back because of who she was, and she would rather they discuss the stone without fearing what she might think.

  As she left to walk the halls of the village, she had a passing thought that the mahtar might work against her to keep the stone, to make sure it made it into the proper hands, but she rejected this out of hand. When she had brought the stone to them, and when they’d finally come to grips that it may indeed be one piece of the stone that had brought about the sundering, it was clear that they thought the fates had given it to her for a reason. Theirs was now to play their part in the stone’s history: to help Atiana along the path the fates had set for her. And so she left it with them to do so.

  She walked for a long while, and grew lost, but she didn’t care. It felt good to be in a place she’d never been before. It made her feel as though what was going on above in Baressa wasn’t really going on at all, and for a little while at least, that was a very comforting thing.

  She came to the sun-brightened end of a tunnel. It stopped at a short ledge-a natural ledge-that overlooked the straits. To the east towered the bulk of the Spar, stretching its way across the great expanse between the two tall cliffs that faced one another like enemies waging some long-forgotten war. At the center of the bridge were the wooden cranes that were used to drop the keystones to the centermost arch. It was the place where Father had met the Kamarisi, where he’d been betrayed.

  Where he’d been killed.

  She still didn’t know what had happened to the rest. Some said everyone from Anuskaya had been slaughtered on the Spar. Others said they had fled, but had been found shortly after and shot by the janissaries in the streets. Others reported hangings in the high gardens of the Mount. The most likely story, however, was the one that had been repeated most often-that Father’s retinue had been taken to the Mount after a short but bloody skirmish. Surely many of the streltsi in attendance had been killed by the Kamarisi’s guard, but beyond this it would be foolish to kill men that would be invaluable as bargaining chips.

  With Father now gone, who would the Grand Duchy rely on? Borund might be able to fill the void, but the other dukes would s
peak through the Matri to find a stand-in among those who held scepters, not a regent like Borund. So who? Certainly not Iaros Khalakovo. Despite working himself to a place of honor at her father’s side, too many in the south distrusted him, especially Leonid Dhalingrad. Most likely it would go to Leonid, if only for his age, though she hoped it wouldn’t be so. Among all the dukes, he was the most bellicose by far. He would have the Grand Duchy throw its resources against the might of Yrstanla, odds be damned.

  Atiana was pulled from her thoughts by the tunnels at the far side of the straits. There were more like the one in which she was standing. They were easy to see; the late morning sun was striking them brightly. In one of the dark tunnels she saw a figure robed in white. She wondered how many were on the far side. Probably no more than those on this side, but it still felt strange, a stark contrast, as if the far side were still visited by the Aramahn-alive, not dead like this side of the straits.

  A line of wagons making their way across the Spar drew her attention away from the cliffs, and by the time she turned her gaze back to those distant tunnels, the figure was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  W hen Atiana returned to the room with the mahtar, only Ushai remained. She sat at the long table in the cavernous room, studying Atiana as she entered. Atiana sat on the opposite side of the table so that the piece of the Atalayina lay between them.

  “What have you learned?” Atiana asked in Mahndi.

  “Much.” Ushai stared into the depths of the stone. “And little.” She smiled sadly, as if she didn’t really want to speak on the subject. “We discussed the origin of the stone at some length. As you may have already guessed, there is much that lies in the past that may now never be recovered.”

  “Is there no one who knows?”