The ship directly ahead of theirs, a ten-masted barque, broke free of its mooring lines and floated out toward sea, but then the wind brought it rushing back again.
“Hold!” Nikandr yelled.
Just before the barque smashed into their ship.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
A tiana sat in a hard, unforgiving chair with a pillow beneath her and a blanket across her lap. Ishkyna lay in the nearby bed, her skin pale, her breathing shallow. Atiana leaned forward and took her sister’s hand in her own. Ishkyna’s fingers were so cold-colder, it seemed, than the evening winds blowing outside the kasir.
Atiana held Ishkyna’s hand tighter, willing her to warm, as the memories of those few precious moments in the aether haunted her. She should have sensed what was happening. She should have tried harder to save her sister, but Ishkyna had never been strong in the ways of the dark, and she had paid for the inexperience. She was lost now, perhaps forever.
Atiana wondered if she had joined the other Matri that had become lost over the centuries. Many believed that those who became lost never died, even if their bodies perished. Atiana hoped not. The idea of living in such a state forever was not a pleasant one.
As she’d done every waking hour, Atiana pulled the soulstone necklace out from beneath Ishkyna’s nightdress and touched it with her own. She felt nothing-no momentary brightness, no glimpse of emotion, no sense of Ishkyna at all. It had been the same ever since their return from the tower, but that hadn’t kept Atiana from performing this one small ritual. It might be the very beacon Ishkyna needed to return to herself.
She held Ishkyna’s stone tenderly, ran her hand over its smooth, glasslike surface. It was not dark like Nikandr’s had been years ago, but instead dim, as if she were merely lost and would one day find her way home. Such stones would remain this way forever, except in those rare cases where its owner would return. This was yet another possibility Atiana hoped would not come to pass, for most who returned were never the same.
It had happened to Atiana’s great-great-grandmother. She’d become lost for eight days and seven nights. She’d returned, screaming and thrashing in her bed for hours until finally she’d fallen asleep for two days straight. When she’d woken again, she could speak, but no more than a child of three. She was petulant, emotional, her moods swinging wildly between exuberance and rage. Often when the moon was full she would become inconsolable, and once she’d even taken a knife to her wrist. She’d been found, bloody and near death, crying to herself softly on the floor of her room.
She had been confined to a wheeled chair after that, and was rarely allowed outside her room in one of the high towers of Galostina.
Atiana took Ishkyna’s hand again, struggling with this cold reality. To be lost among the aether forever or to return a shell of what she once was seemed no choice at all. If it had to be one of these, she silently hoped Ishkyna would simply pass.
She watched the bedcover’s rise and fall slowly, wondering if the ancients would take her right then as punishment for such thoughts. The very thought- hoping for her sister’s death-shamed her greatly, but she also knew it was the very thing she would wish for in Ishkyna’s place.
Atiana shivered as a tapping came at the window.
She turned and saw by the golden light from the lantern at Ishkyna’s bedside the silhouette of a rook and the barest gleam from its eye. It tapped again and she heard a muffled caw, nearly lost among the sound of the wind scouring the towers of the kasir. It was Mileva. Atiana could feel her, even from this distance. It was not only an indicator that the storm was finally dying, but of just how strong Mileva had become. It had been only two days since her time in Sariya’s tower, and though the storm had abated somewhat, Atiana still wouldn’t have thought that Mileva could make her way here.
Atiana moved to the window and levered it open. The frigid wind entered the room as the rook flapped in noisily and dropped to the floor. It hopped forward and with three swift beats of its wings flew up to Ishkyna’s bed.
“How did you know?” Atiana asked.
“Vaasak told me.”
Of course, Atiana thought. Of course she would have spoken to Vaasak first. She fell into a nearby chair, the exhaustion she’d managed to stave off these past many days catching up to her at last.
The rook hopped along Ishkyna’s chest, swiveled its head to look closely at her soulstone, and then Ishkyna’s face. “How does she fare?”
“You saw her in the aether,” Atiana replied. “You would know better than I.”
“In the aether she is lifeless, as black as the bed she lies upon.”
“And yet she breathes, and her soulstone glows.”
“Of her stone I see little, but you are right. There is something, a single ember in a long-dead fire, and when I focus upon it, there are times when I feel as though I can sense her, as if she’s calling to me somewhere in the fog.”
Atiana felt her emotions getting the better of her. Being here with Mileva and Ishkyna both-one in the form of a rook, the other not really present at all-only served to remind her of brighter times. Always when they came together after being apart they slipped into a comfortable routine that felt-despite the biting remarks and rows that inevitably arose-like a comfortable blanket on a cold winter night. And now one of them had been taken away, perhaps never to return.
She’d been hiding these feelings since returning to Sariya’s tower, but now it was too much, and she broke down, sobbing uncontrollably into the palms of her hands.
Mileva said nothing. The rook remained on Ishkyna’s blankets, blinking those deep black eyes and watching.
“Have you no heart?” Atiana asked.
“It’s too soon to give up hope, and there’s little time to grieve.”
Little time, Atiana thought. Little time, indeed. There was still a host of ships sitting far off the coast of Kiravashya. “You have kapitans to speak to, do you not?”
“I do. More than you might guess.”
Atiana paused. She didn’t care for the way Mileva had spoken those words, nor the not-so-subtle meaning behind them. She was supposed to have spoken to the Kamarisi’s ships, to pass them messages that could only have come from the Kamarisi himself. But if she were speaking to more than just them, it could only mean one thing.
“You will betray the Kamarisi,” Atiana said softly.
“I made no promise to the Kamarisi.”
“ Vaasak did. He guaranteed them safe passage.”
“They cannot be allowed safe return, Atiana. You should know that.”
“I know no such thing.”
The rook arched its neck back and released a series of mighty caws. “You speak of Sariya’s lies.”
“You know they’re not lies.”
“What I know is that Sariya is Al-Aqim. She is one of the three who broke the world. She, like no other Aramahn since, has found the way into the thoughts and emotions of men and women, both. There’s no telling how slyly she might place a thought or command into any one of us.”
“Including me.”
“Of course you!”
“She was lost in the aether, Mileva. When I found her, she didn’t know herself. She was spread as thinly as Ishkyna is now. She knew not who she was, nor where she was. She was laid bare.”
“Be not a fool, Tiana. Can you say for sure she wasn’t lying in wait? Can you say for sure she didn’t do this so that you would find the thoughts she wanted you to see? She desires the destruction of our spires. What better way to do it than if we were to lay down arms?”
“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?”