“I cannot turn back,” Nikandr said when Jahalan finally reached his side. The winds were in their favor, so there was no need for Jahalan to guide them.
“You can. You just won’t admit it to yourself. Soroush will never turn, and neither will anyone else on the island.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“About the Maharraht?”
“About Soroush. He is a hard man, but above all he is loyal to his people.”
“ Nyet. He would sacrifice every last one of them if he could rid the islands of the Grand Duchy.”
“This is my point. He is no closer to that than he was when he joined them, and if he loses more of his people, his goals are even further away, perhaps even unattainable. As much as he hates me, as much as he loathes the notion of helping one of the Landed, he will join us.”
The ship was beginning to lower. Nikandr studied the smaller island they approached. It was still several leagues out from Rafsuhan, and it was an excellent place to hide the Chaika for the time they’d be on the island. It was craggy, with several small inlets where they could moor the ship.
“Even if you’re right,” Nikandr continued, “we cannot ignore the chance to learn more about the rift.”
“Small chance of doing that if you’re dead.”
“You don’t long for a chance to speak with them?”
“To what end? I don’t approve of the Maharraht or their methods, and given the chance, I will admit that I yearn to learn more of them, but I’m a realist. It may be that none of them will learn in this life, or even the next. A dozen cycles may pass before they’ve undone the damage they’re doing in this life.”
“So you’ve said, but is it ever too late to start?”
“I see,” Jahalan said. “You wish to be considered noble before you die.”
“I merely wish to do what I can.” Nikandr turned, trying to read his old friend’s mood. “If you’re so convinced this is the wrong path to take, why did you agree to come?”
Jahalan merely stared out toward Rafsuhan, a coal black rock against the indigo horizon.
“Jahalan?”
He turned then and looked Nikandr in the eye. “When one knows someone as well as I know you, and they see how the winds of fate swirl around them, they wish to watch, and perhaps learn.”
“The winds of fate care not about me.”
Jahalan smiled. “There you are wrong, son of Iaros.” He turned and walked back to ward the starward mainmast, his leg thumping against the deck. “Come, we have work to do.”
The small island was much closer now. “Pull in the topsails,” Nikandr said to the boatswain, “and prepare to moor.”
“ Da, Kapitan!”
The following morning, under a gray and cheerless sky, Nikandr sat near the bow of the skiff as it bucked in the bitterly cold wind. They flew low to the water-so low that they were often struck by the salty spray. Nikandr refused to order them higher, though. He would not give the Maharraht warning if he could avoid it. Of the Maharraht, though, there had been no sign.
Jahalan and Anahid, one of Jahalan’s distant cousins, guided the skiff. Neither seemed on edge, but the streltsi that had come were watching the island with something akin to horror in their eyes. He didn’t much blame them. These were seasoned men, handpicked by Nikandr himself, and they had all seen battle, but it was one thing to fight the Maharraht in the shallows of home or another friendly duchy; it was quite another to search the Maharraht out on their own island, where they would defend it with a brutality and fierceness rarely seen, even among such ruthless folk.
Soroush sat aft, his hands tied to the thwart he was sitting upon. He wore a turban-something Nikandr saw no need to deny him-in the style of the Maharraht, the cloth ragged, the tail hanging down along his chest. His long black beard was more ragged than it had been after Mirashadal, and Nikandr wondered if he had been growing it in self-imposed penance. Perhaps he thought Nikandr’s arrival, and his subsequent release, had been the fates shining upon him once more. That was fine with Nikandr so long as it didn’t embolden him overly much. Nikandr watched him for some time, but not once did he look up. Instead, he kept his gaze locked on the island with an intensity that made Nikandr nervous.
They reached the rocky shores of Rafsuhan an hour after launching from the Chaika. They moored the skiff in a vale with a stream running down from the stark highlands. It was as good a place as any to begin their trek eastward toward Siafyan. It was one of two outposts on the island. Ashdi en Ghat was the larger of the two, but it was also the more militant. It was said that the leadership of the Maharraht were housed there. Those in Siafyan were still dedicated to the Maharraht cause, but they had come to realize that it may take years, generations, for them to reach their goal, and in that light they had forged from this cold, rocky island a village where they could raise their young, grow crops, and learn while they waited for their leaders to push the Landed from the islands once and for all.
Nikandr levered himself over the gunwales and down to the uneven terrain, watching himself carefully lest he twist an ankle on the sharp rocks. The beach, and much of the land leading uphill toward the peaks of Rafsuhan, was bleak and gray. It looked as if a host of drakhen had clawed their way up, the stone yielding and fracturing until all that remained was a sharp and deadly slope.
Soroush stared dispassionately as Nikandr approached the rear of the skiff. “Release him,” Nikandr said to Styophan, his most trusted man and the sotnik of the streltsi.
Styophan, a tall, well-muscled man, reached inside and began untying the ropes around Soroush’s wrists. With the cold wind gusting against the gray fur of his kolpak hat, Styophan worked at the knots. He did it casually while staring at Soroush, as if he wanted him to attack. Styophan’s father and brother had both been murdered in the same week, in two separate and largely unrelated attacks, one in the shipping lanes north of Khalakovo, the other in the shallow fishing grounds east of Ishal. Styophan had eagerly accepted the post when Nikandr had offered it to him, and Nikandr had nearly withdrawn it-he needed clear-thinking men on this mission, not those whose only goal was to taste the blood of the Maharraht-but in the end he’d decided to keep him. Styophan was too good of a soldier to leave behind.
While Styophan was somehow eager and calm, the five other streltsi were tense. They held pistols at the ready, alternating glances between Soroush and the boulders that loomed on the hillside above, as if at any moment the whole of the Maharraht would storm down to retrieve their leader.
“Easy,” Nikandr said to them.
The expressions on their faces softened, and their shoulders lost some of their pent-up tension, but it was clear they were still wound tightly.
Soroush waited to be untied, and then he looked to Nikandr.
“Please,” Nikandr said, “come.”
He swung himself over the gunwales and down to the stones, steadying himself before facing Nikandr. It was strange to see him with no stone in his turban. It made him seem impotent, somehow, unmanned, yet when Nikandr looked him in the eyes, there was a completely different story to behold. Gone was the man who had seemed out of balance during their conversation on the Strovya. In his place was a man who seemed sure of himself, as if he had been the one who had summoned Nikandr to these shores.
“I have not changed my mind,” Soroush said.
“I know,” Nikandr replied.
Soroush blew several times into his cupped hands, warming them. “Then why? Why bring me here where I’m so close to those who would kill you at but a word from me?”
“Because I must.” Nikandr turned and made his way toward the others, but when he heard no sounds of movement behind him, he turned. “Are you coming?”
Soroush stared, glancing toward the other skiff and then toward the harsh peaks above them. “I will not help.”
“As you’ve said.” Nikandr wanted Soroush to come, he was desperate for it, but in the end he could not force him. Soroush would come or he would not. Either way, there were many things to do while here, and he would prefer to be about it, one way or the other.