Nikandr watched as Fuad swallowed once, then again. “They are not my men.”
“Are they not?”
“I am a carpenter.”
“Perhaps you once were, yes.” Nikandr had noted his hands. They were large, and supple, and bore more than a few scars that looked similar to the cuts and scrapes a carpenter might receive from his tools. “Why the spires, Fuad?”
“I don’t know.”
Nikandr nodded to Styophan, who whipped Fuad across the shoulders twice. Fuad pulled himself back up from the whipping, staring fiercely into Nikandr’s eyes.
“How many ships has the Kamarisi set upon the wind?”
“I know only of the three that came here.”
Nikandr waited as Styophan whipped him again.
“Your Kamarisi would understand, were you to give us such simple things, Fuad. He would not want you to suffer, no matter what your station.”
Fuad licked his lips, pulled himself higher against the wall. He glanced at Styophan, but did not speak. His eyes were steel, and full of hate.
“I spoke with the boatswain at some length,” Nikandr said. “You may have heard it… Like you he was loath to speak of anything beyond his duties to the ship. But then I remembered something the men told me, the ones who took you. They said that Sayad was already on the skiff. They said that he leapt from within it despite your orders. Why would he do that, Fuad? Why would he have leapt to help you while the rest remained?”
“He is young,” Fuad said.
“Young indeed,” Nikandr replied. “I will admit that I don’t know much of the customs of Yrstanla. I’ve had little enough use for them. But those of the military? Those of ships? Those I have paid attention to.” He stood and began pacing in front of the bench. “It is said that many sailing men-kapitans, especially-will take their sons to war. On their own ships. They give them titles of coxswain or boatswain or quartermaster if they’re able men. It’s a right of passage, evet? If something like this war had come along, I wonder if a kapitan wouldn’t take his son along with him. It would be something difficult to pass up, I would imagine.”
Nikandr stopped and turned to face Fuad. “Had I a son, Fuad, I would have taken him on my ship.”
Fuad stared. No longer was there hatred in his eyes. No longer was there steel.
Now there was worry, though he was clearly trying to hide it.
“Shall I return to the other cell? Shall I speak again to Sayad?”
Fuad did not reply.
Nikandr made his way to the door, raised his hand, ready to knock so he and Styophan could leave. “Though I promise you, once Styophan and I enter his cell, only two men will be leaving it alive.”
Fuad was breathing more heavily. His nostrils flared as he looked between Nikandr and Styophan.
Nikandr knocked on the door.
The jingle of keys could be heard, the sound of a key rattling home.
“Fifty-seven.”
The words had come softly, like words spoken in the middle of the night.
“Pardon?” Nikandr said, still facing the door.
“The Kamarisi sent fifty-seven ships.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
As Atiana floats in the darkness of the aether, the storm rages around her. She doesn’t know how long it’s been. It feels like lifetimes, especially when she’s tossed by the hidden currents. The loss of the spires has made the aether more unpredictable than she’s ever seen, so much so that she can hardly control her thoughts. She feels the currents in the Sea of Khurkhan, feels the wind sighing through the meadows of Kiravashya, feels the roots of the oldest spruce on Galahesh. She feels the fear of a winds-man on the deck of his ship as he and his comrades fly toward battle, feels the hopelessness of a mother as she holds her frail, sickened child, feels the building of a man toward release as he clutches his lover’s hair and thrusts desperately into her.
But then, like the tides that drive the water through the Straits of Galahesh, time slows. The images of the world around her fade, and like honey on the steps of winter, time moves so slowly she wonders whether it will stop altogether.
She knows that this is a time most dangerous. It is a time when she runs the risk of becoming so attuned to the world-the islands, the water, the air itself-that she might soon release her hold on her body and float freely through the paths of the aether. She wonders whether her soul will cross the veil to Adhiya, or perhaps it will remain, forever trapped. Is this what happened to the Matri who became lost? Will she find them when her soul slips free? Will it take only moments to do so, or will it take years or centuries or eons? Perhaps when she returns they’ll be so foreign to her that she’ll never even sense them.
Her mind begins to dull. She feels the weight of the earth and little else. It presses down on her, forces her-slowly but with ever growing strength-to succumb, to leave the world she once knew behind. It tempts her. She recalls vaguely that she has a body, that blood runs through her veins, but she doesn’t care. She would rather feel the stone as it rests in layers, slowly shifting, supporting the weight of the world.
It is here, in this torpid state, that she first feels the signs of another. A woman. Her scent is immediately familiar, and she thinks that perhaps another of the women from the islands-she forgets their names-has been taken. But as the presence coalesces, she thinks not. This one is old-not as old as the earth, but certainly older than the children that have spread themselves throughout the islands.
The woman is not aware of her until she reaches out, and then, like a taper set to the wick of a candle, she brightens. It is through this act-the creation of light in another-that she is illuminated as well.
She remembers herself.
Atiana…
Atiana Radieva Vostroma.
She is a child of the islands, a child of the Grand Duchy, and she lies now in the bowels of the earth on the island of Galahesh.
She remembers the other as well.
Sariya, who once called herself Arvaneh.
Sariya Quljan al Vehayeh.
She is one of the Al-Aqim, a child of the desert wastes of the Gaji, and she lies now in her tower in the city of Baressa.
This realization strikes Atiana as strange.
She lies in her tower…
When Atiana last took the dark, she saw Nasim destroy another tower, a tower Sariya had built for herself in her years of exile on Ghayavand. And now, here she is, lost among the aether as Atiana is.
Was it the destruction of the tower that laid her low? Or was it the destruction of the spires?
Does it even matter?
Nyet. What matters is that she is lost.
And yet, in that glimpse she had of her only moments ago, Atiana saw something else. A plan. Sariya wishes to destroy the spires, not in preparation for Muqallad, but in defiance of him.
In defiance.
Why?
It is a question that needs answering.
She calls to Sariya, and receives nothing in return. She reaches out, feels for her. She finds her and draws her closer.
Sariya is weak, but she finally responds, and slowly the two of them buttress one another. The weight of the earth begins to recede. The islands come into focus, as does the sea, the air. And the life within it.
Only then does her sense of purpose return to her. For so long she had been little more than her senses, little more than the life that runs through this world and to the one beyond. She remembers now. She remembers that she was here not to help Sariya, but to murder her. These thoughts return to her, as does the feeling of desperation she had when she entered the cemetery.
Yet in remembering this, Sariya knows as well-they are too closely linked for it to be otherwise-and it sparks in Sariya memories of her own. She remembers the unfolding of her plans, and through their bond, Atiana remembers them too.
As Sariya waits in the dark of the aether, the last stones of the Spar are lowered into place. She assumes the form of a rook. She is new to such things, but she’s watched the Matri of the islands closely, and she’s learned from them how to control the simple beasts. She tells the windships lying in wait to the north-nearly three score in all-that it’s time. They approach the straits, the kapitans fearing what’s to come, but as she told them, they pass beyond the white cliffs with little more trouble than they’d have approaching the cliffs of an eyrie.