“She had more than enough ships to do so.”
“Don’t be so sure. They were waiting for the winds to die down after the destruction of the lesser spires. Could she know that more ships would not arrive in time to aid us? Could she be sure they wouldn’t turn the tide?”
“There is still the matter of Muqallad.”
“Nikandr may worry of Muqallad, but I do not, not when there are so many threats that stand before us.”
“ Be not a fool, you say. Well, be not dismissive. Nikandr spoke the truth when he warned you of Muqallad. He could destroy us all. You need only look at Nasim to see the sort of destruction the Al-Aqim might cause. He was but a boy, Mileva, an echo of the man he once was, and he nearly destroyed Khalakovo.”
“Muqallad is still a man, and he will be found, little thanks to Sariya or the Kamarisi. Yrstanla must be neutered and driven beyond the shores of Oramka. Then and only then will we have hope of defeating Muqallad’s plans.”
“You’re playing with fire.”
“Something you’re all too familiar with. It’s time to return home, sister. It’s time to recover and gather our strength and begin the rebuilding. We have plenty to worry about.”
Atiana had known it would be difficult to convince Mileva, but now she knew it was impossible. “You’re right.” Atiana collapsed back into the chair, allowing the exhaustion she felt to show through on her face. “You’re right.”
The rook hopped and flapped its wings. “Just like that, Tiana?”
“I’m not happy, Mileva. I’m worried more than I can say, but what can I do?”
The rook stared, its eyes boring into her. In the end, it hopped down to the floor and flapped up to the windowsill. Using its beak it pushed the window open, which Atiana had left unlatched. “When you see the devastation on Kiravashya, you’ll not be so quick to speak lightly of Sariya.”
Atiana remained silent as the bird leapt out and into the night. She waited until she could no longer feel Mileva’s presence in her soulstone, and then she stood and returned to Ishkyna’s side. She took her sister’s hand in hers, hoping, however irrationally, that Ishkyna would wake with this one insignificant gesture, but her eyes remained shut, her hand cold, and Atiana was somehow sure that Ishkyna would never wake, would never find herself.
She had always thought-foolishly, she knew-that she would be able to say goodbye when the time came. But there had been no time at all, and now it seemed there would never be.
She slipped her soulstone from around her neck, held it in the palm of her hand. The stone itself and the stout chain felt incredibly light. She couldn’t keep it, not if she were to leave the kasir and have any hope of remaining hidden in the streets of Baressa or the hills of Galahesh.
She had to leave, for there was no other choice. She would find no allies to the south of Baressa, so she would look to Siha s, and perhaps the Aramahn if she dared to return to them.
She leaned forward and slipped the necklace around Ishkyna’s neck, hoping it would comfort her.
She kissed Ishkyna on the forehead and whispered into her ear, “Go well, sister.”
And then, through her tears, she left Ishkyna’s room.
Atiana watched the sleet fall against the stones of the courtyard. It was the worst storm since the spires had fallen. Warm wind blew in from the southwest, from the deserts of Yrstanla, which brought with it some warmth, but only enough at this time of year to alter the snow into something equally unpleasant.
She had been watching for nearly an hour and she feared that something had happened to Irkadiy. She waited for minutes more, eyeing the ramparts of the kasir’s inner keep for any signs of being watched. There were none, however; with so little to fear from within, every available man had been sent to the outer defensive wall.
Just as she was about to give up hope, a form resolved from the darkness. It moved quickly, threateningly. She opened the eye of her lantern and shined it ahead of her. She breathed a sigh of relief when she recognized Irkadiy’s face.
“Quickly,” he said, holding one hand up to block the light from her lantern. “The Kamarisi has stepped up the watch.”
“Then how will we escape?”
He held up an oiled canvas coat. “I told them I’d be bringing another, to help with the watch.”
As she slipped her arms into the heavy coat and pulled the hood over her hair, Irkadiy continued. “Don’t speak, even if spoken to. I told them you’re my countryman, a good man, though you lost your voice to a sliver of wood when the Maharraht attacked your ship years ago.”
“A pity.”
“Be quiet,” Irkadiy said.
He led her through an open sally port. As the sleet pattered against her canvas hood, they crossed a larger courtyard between the stables and something that smelled like an abattoir. She slipped in a pile of manure before they made it to the stairs leading up to the top of the rampart.
As they neared the last of the steps, Atiana felt something deep within her. She felt dizzy, and she was barely able to hold herself up against the wall.
Irkadiy came rushing back down the stairs. “What is it?” he whispered.
The feeling-not unlike the first few moments in the aether-was still present, but she was growing used to it. “I don’t know.”
“Can you go on?”
A spike of fear drove through her as the effect intensified. She stared out over the edge of the stairs, somehow feeling the wall itself and beyond it the steeply sloped hill that dropped down from Kasir Yalidoz to the city proper.
“My Lady,” Irkadiy whispered.
Her awareness began to expand even more, spreading beyond the borders of the Mount and into the city.
And then it struck her. She was slipping into the aether.
By the ancients, what was happening?
She didn’t understand, but she was no child dipping her toes into the icy waters of the dark for the first time; she was a Matra, and she had tamed worse than this.
She halted the outward progression and drew herself inward. She focused on the sound of sleet, on the way it crackled against the stones of the stairs, the way it splattered in the mud of the courtyard below. And slowly, she regained herself.
Irkadiy had just started leading her back down the stairs when she waved for him to stop. “It’s all right,” she said, holding his cold hand to ground herself even further. “Let’s go on.”
“My Lady, we can try another night.”
“ Nyet. It must be tonight.”
A sudden flapping of wings frightened her. She felt more than saw a large bird land on the crenelations near the top of the stairs. When she swung the lantern toward it, she found what she thought was a massive rook, the largest she’d ever seen, but then she noticed the bright white cowl that ran down its breast. When it flapped its wings, more white feathers were revealed.
It cawed once, the sound low and foreign to her ears. It stared at her, one eye blinking under the light of the lantern.
“Dim the light,” Irkadiy whispered harshly.
“One moment,” Atiana said.
She stepped forward. The feelings within her intensified, making it clear that this bird-or the one who controlled it-was the reason she’d been drawn into the aether.
“Who are you?” Atiana asked.
She took another step forward. The rook bobbed its head up and down. It twisted its neck, its beak opening and clacking shut several times. Atiana could tell it was trying to speak, but nothing came out.
Suddenly an alarm bell came from the inner keep. It rang insistently, over and over again, and the call was picked up by others.
The bird flapped its wings, and then it leaned out beyond the battlements and dove out of sight. The beating of its wings was the last thing she heard before several men came running along the wall. The first of them called out to Irkadiy, telling him to halt in Yrstanlan.
“It’s only me, Irkadiy.” He motioned to Atiana. “I’ve brought the help I promised.”
The Galaheshi soldier used a dim lantern to look Atiana up and down. He was about to say something when more men entered the courtyard below. “Wait here,” he said, motioning five of his men to remain. He nodded to the sixth, and together they went down to the courtyard.
Atiana couldn’t see the newcomers well enough, even by the lanterns they held, but when the first of them spoke, she knew immediately who it was.
It was Bahett.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
“T he Princess Atiana is missing,” Bahett shouted into the muddy, pattering courtyard below.
Atiana’s heart pounded in her ears. She was painfully aware of the soldiers standing just next to her. The nearest of them watched the scene play out in the courtyard below, but he was close enough to reach out and touch her.
“She’s most likely gone to the cemetery,” Bahett continued. “Ten have been sent already. Gather twenty more and join them. The rest will watch the walls.”
The soldier Bahett was speaking to bowed his head. “ Evet, Kaymakam.”
Bahett turned and strode away, his tall boots slurping in the slush and the mud. The men that had accompanied him followed, leaving only the two who had come down from the wall. The heavyset one spoke low to the other. He’d guessed her identity. Atiana was sure of it.
As they finished speaking and trudged toward the stairs, Atiana shifted her stance so that she was incrementally closer to Irkadiy. “I won’t return,” she said loudly enough for Irkadiy to hear. She didn’t care if the guardsmen heard. The only reason they didn’t already know was that their commander thought they could be caught with little or no bloodshed.
Irkadiy looked into her eyes. He was asking-for her sake-to reconsider.
She shook her head.
After one more pause, and a brief nod of his head, Irkadiy grabbed the lantern from her hand, swung it high over his head in a blur of movement. It came crashing down on the rampart. Fire blossomed across the stones, spreading quickly and engulfing the walkway.
Seeing Irkadiy’s intent, Atiana turned and ran, Irkadiy close on her heels.
“Stop them!” the commander called.
Upon passing a turret in the wall, Irkadiy called to her. “This is far enough.”
Atiana stopped and turned as Irkadiy unbuttoned his heavy canvas coat. He undid his cherkesska next, and finally he began unwinding the length of rope he had hidden there.
Far behind them, the flames were already beginning to subside. One of the guardsmen removed his coat and threw it down against the oil, creating a bridge for them to pass over. Three of them did, with ease. The fourth caught fire.
Irkadiy had finished unwinding the rope and was looping it around a battlement. He moved with quick hands. Sure hands. He was so calm, where her heart was beating so madly she thought it would burst.
“Quickly,” he said, taking her hands and forcing her to grab the rope.
The soldiers were nearing. “Halt!” they called.
Atiana would be able to make it down, but Irkadiy wouldn’t. There wasn’t enough time.
“Go!” he cried.
Atiana stepped up between the battlements-realizing only then she’d forgotten to wear gloves-and swung over the side. As she began to slide down, the sense of vertigo she’d experienced earlier returned. It was all she could do to hold on. She knew if she loosened her grip on the rope, she would fall to her death. She could do nothing but hold tight.
Above her, Irkadiy turned and drew his shashka.
Just as he was about to engage, a low, ragged caw cut through the night. By the light of the dying flames Atiana saw black wings streak between the two soldiers.
Both paused.
The feeling of dizziness intensified. The air filled with the sound of wings. Dark figures cut above the curtain wall. A dozen. A hundred. A thousand black, fluttering forms.
They chattered, their myriad voices collecting in a cacophony that forced Atiana to duck her head and hide her face against her shoulder.
She thought it would end quickly, a freak passage of birds over the kasir, but it did not. She felt them against her face, against her hands. They flew about her legs, some of them thudding against her coat before flying off again.
“Come, Irkadiy!” she managed to yell, though whether he heard her she wasn’t sure. “Irkadiy, follow me!”
She allowed herself to slip downward. She moved slowly at first, but then, blessedly, she felt the rope above her shift. Irkadiy was coming.
Hand over hand she moved as the wings beat around her and the birds continued to screech.
At last, bless the ancients, she found herself below the cloud of wings, and soon after that, her feet touched ground.
Her nausea began to ebb. Finally the effect brought on by the gallows crow was starting to pass.
As soon as Irkadiy slid down beside her, they moved away from the wall and slid down the steep slope. Standing in their way were an army of thickets and scrub trees and tall stands of wiry grass, making the going arduously slow. They hadn’t gone twenty paces when the sound of the birds faded into the distance.
“There’s a path ahead,” Irkadiy whispered.
They came to it as the sound of pursuit heightened. Again the bells were ringing among the kasir, but this time at a different pace and rhythm- clang, clang, CLANG… clang, clang, CLANG — no doubt calling help to this section of the curtain wall.
The path for a time seemed no less dangerous. They struck as many clawing branches as they had during the slide down from the wall, but they were more sure on their feet. They were adding distance between themselves and the guardsmen, but the location of this path was no secret. Their only hope was to reach the bottom of the hill and lose themselves in the city before Bahett’s men could find them.
Lights shone against the wall as the slope leveled off at last. They took one last look up as they reached a dirt road that continued downhill, but as they did they heard the first sound of approaching hooves.
She and Irkadiy ran, but they could already tell that dozens of ponies had been dispatched from the kasir. Bahett’s men knew where this path emptied into the streets of Baressa, and they would start their search there.
The sounds of hoofbeats echoed through the streets. The air was so cold it numbed Atiana’s fingers. It sapped her warmth through the dampness of her coat.
In an alley running between two rows of tall stone buildings, they huddled in a deep, arched doorway. The clop of ponies approached, and soon three men wearing Galaheshi uniforms-red coats with white turbans-came abreast of the mouth of the alley. They rode tall brown stallions, and each carried a lantern.
While Atiana and Irkadiy pressed themselves against the door and made themselves as small as possible, the guardsmen swung their lanterns along the alley.
The light had just fallen upon their archway when a cawing sound came. It was distant, and it echoed in the cramped spaces of the city, so Atiana could not tell the direction from which it had come.
“There!” one of the guardsmen called. A moment later, the ponies clopped further up the street.
As the sounds died away, punctuated by the cough of a pistol being fired, fluttering wings fell through the night and landed in the street. A low caw, loud enough for only them to hear, beckoned them. They approached, and the old gallows crow took flight, heading southwest over the nearest buildings.
They followed the course the crow had set for them. The sound of hooves approached, but each time they did a caw would come again, drawing the soldiers away from their trail. As they made their way toward the poorer sections of the city, the caws came again and again, steadily further away from their current location.
They heard it once more as they came to a large circle where six streets met.
“We should not go through here,” Irkadiy said.
Atiana, taking the circle in again, agreed-there were too many windows, too many eyes-but just as they were preparing to head back, the sound of ponies came again, this time
from the west, the direction of the kasir.
The rain had finally stopped and the moon shone down through thin clouds. The wings of the gallows crow flapped from the west. It cawed twice and then landed on the edge of the fountain at the center of the circle.
Atiana and Irkadiy hid among the shadows and watched as five men rode into the circle. They bore lanterns, and they shone them on the crow, making it seem as though they’d been following it for some time. The crow took wing, flying not away from Atiana, but toward her. It flew straight to their position and landed not five paces away.
The ponies approached.
The light from the lanterns darted toward them like hawks.
The crow hopped closer. It stood just before them now.
The desire to stand and run was overpowering, as was the desire to take a knife to the gallows crow.
“There!” one of the men called.
They pulled swords, and three kicked their ponies into action. All were well trained. The ponies had them surrounded in moments.
“My Lady Princess,” one of the men called in Anuskayan. “Please come with us.”
“Siha s?” Atiana asked, holding her hand up and squinting against the light of the lanterns.
“ Da, My Lady.”
Before Atiana could wonder why he would have been sent to find her, the gallows crow flapped its wings and hopped and cawed.
All eyes turned toward the spectacle. The bird swung its head back and forth in rhythmic patterns that seemed both painful and uncontrollable.
After one more caw, a single word escaped the bird’s throat.
“Hakan.”
No one moved. A chill ran down Atiana’s already-numb skin.
“Leave us,” Siha s said in Yrstanlan.
“My Lord,” one of his men replied.
“Go to the far side of the circle,” Siha s said, more insistently. “I’ll call you when needed.”
They complied, but Atiana could see by the grisly light shining against their faces that they were not pleased.
The Straits of Galahesh loa-2 Page 57
