“As I said before, I was lost, but there was one who saved me. His name is Nikandr Iaroslov Khalakovo, a prince of the Grand Duchy. Five years ago he healed me on Khalakovo, but it was not complete.” Nasim reached up and placed his palm over his heart. “I can feel him still. I owe him much, but it was the way in which I was saved that keeps me grounded to this world. In fact, it grounds me so fully I cannot touch Adhiya on my own. I can see it, I can feel it, but I can’t touch it, not without the help of another qiram.”
“You cannot commune with hezhan on your own?”
“I cannot.”
“Then we are lost before we’ve begun.”
“ Neh,” Nasim said. “With the Atalayina, I will find a way. Of this I am sure.”
“Perhaps we can wait, find a way to heal you before we leave.”
“I would wait, Sukharam, but the rifts have grown worse. The islands have felt it the worst, but surely you have felt it even here, and soon it will encompass the world. And so we must go. We must go to the island of Ghayavand to heal the rift that was forged on her shores. Too long has it infected Erahm, and it is time it was closed.”
Sukharam was silent and pensive for a time. “Will we return?”
Nasim shook his head sadly. “We will not. When you make your decision to come, it will be knowing that you give your life to our cause.”
“There were others, weren’t there?” Sukharam asked. “There must have been if you’ve been looking for years.”
“There have been others. I found three besides Rabiah that I thought worthy to the task.”
“And they all declined.”
“One declined,” Nasim said. “The others agreed for the wrong reasons, so I sent them away.”
This was the moment they’d been working toward. Sukharam had enough to make his decision, and there was nothing left but for Sukharam to weigh his choices. Nasim would not press. He would not manipulate. Those who would follow him would come willingly or he would have no one at all.
The wind rustled the thin bushes along the sides of the hill. Sukharam pulled his arms around his waist. He looked small and lost, and Nasim began to doubt whether Sukharam were made of stern enough stuff to come.
“Take your time, Sukharam, son of Hadir and Dahanan. Make your decision before the sun rises. Return to us if you will. If not, fare you well.”
Nasim stepped down the hill, wending his way along the path, his feet crunching against the flaked stone, but before he had gone ten paces, Sukharam called out to him. “I would come, Nasim. I would join you.”
“Even knowing what you know?”
“Especially knowing what I know.”
“Tell me why.”
“My parents were taken from me when I was young. My mother died from the wasting. My father was hung by the courts of Aleke s ir for refusing a summons. I was taken and sold to the orphanage two days later. I do not remember my father well, my mother even less, but I remember this. We are ephemeral, here in Erahm and in Adhiya, both. There is so little time for us to do something great. Sometimes there is no time at all.” Sukharam paused. “If there is something I can do to help us-to help all of us-then I would do it, or die in the trying. This is what my parents left me-the notion that in giving, we receive-and I cherish it.”
Nasim smiled, for his words rang true. “Then come.”
They left before dawn the next morning.
CHAPTER THREE
The sun hung low over the western end of Ivosladna in the Duchy of Mirkotsk. Long shadows stretched over the capital square that sprawled near the old stone wall of the posadnik’s mansion. The weather had already turned cold in the northern islands, but the last few days had brought with it a small reprieve from the bitter winds and early snows.
Still, Nikandr Iaroslov Khalakovo pulled the collar of his cherkesska up. Two young streltsi wearing the gold-and-red tassels of Mirkotsk walked along the stone cobbles of the square, the echoes of their boot heels clicking among the monstrous buildings surrounding it. They glanced at Nikandr, but he stumbled and caught himself, as a man too deep into his cups might do, and they laughed and kept on moving.
He waited as a pair of ponies clopped past the street in front of him and then ducked into a narrow lane that led down a steep slope toward the river. When he came to the first intersection, he waited, but not for long. To his right, from a doorway not far down the alleyway, a bearded man with a wine-colored kaftan waved to him. It was Anatoliy, the nephew of Duke Yevgeny Mirkotsk.
Nikandr made his way into his home. Only after the door was closed did Nikandr step in to hug him. They kissed cheeks and held one another by the shoulders, slapping each other several times.
“You look well, Nischka.” Anatoliy’s long black beard waggled as he spoke. He was thin-practically emaciated-and despite his warm greeting, his eyes were sunken and dark and filled with worry.
“And you look miserable, Toliy.”
Anatoliy smiled, ignoring the gibe. “I’m grateful you could come.” He motioned to the next room, and the two of them stepped into his sitting room, where a small fire lay dying in the fireplace. Nikandr unwrapped his scarf and took off his coat. After setting it onto the back of one of the two chairs, he sat while Anatoliy poured two healthy servings of vodka into wide pewter mazers. He handed one to Nikandr before lowering himself carefully into the other chair, as if his body had only enough energy left to perform this one final act.
“Where is Kseniya?” Nikandr asked carefully.
“She could not bear to be here.”
Nikandr thought that statement through. “Does she not approve?”
Before Nikandr had finished speaking, Anatoliy was already shaking his head. “She stands with me in this, but she cannot be here when you… When you try.”
“And Mirketta? How is she?”
Anatoliy glanced up toward the second floor, where his daughter would be resting. “Not well.”
“You gave her the elixir?”
“ Da.”
“When?”
“An hour ago, as you instructed.”
Nikandr looked through the wavy glass of the nearby window. He could see little more than the building across the street, lit by the pale light of the dying sun. “We’ll give her some time yet.”
Anatoliy released a deep breath, and with it some of the tension he was clearly harboring was released. “Thank you for coming. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d decided not to.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Nikandr said. “But what of Yevgeny?”
Anatoliy’s smile in the darkness of the room was grim. “My uncle, the duke, would not wish to hear of your presence in this house, but he will not ask me of it, nor protest if he learns of Ketta’s sudden return to health.”
Nikandr shook his head. “I fear the same cannot be said of Borund. He will protest when he hears of it. And loudly.”
“Borund can go fuck a goat.”
Nikandr laughed, raising his glass and taking a healthy swallow of vodka. “ Da. He can do that, and sooner rather than later.”
Anatoliy laughed ruefully, sitting deeper in his chair. He looked defeated as he stared into the fire. “It is unfortunate what has become of us,” he said, though he seemed to be saying it more to the darkness of the room than he was to Nikandr. “But what are we to do? The empire looms to the west, and here we are five years after the conflict, weaker than we were before.”
The conflict was how most referred to the Battle of Uyadensk and the blockade that preceded it. Most had never heard of Nasim or what he’d done, or if they had they didn’t believe that he’d saved Khalakovo from ruin. All they knew was that they were worse off. Hungrier. Less safe.
Nikandr swirled his vodka and clacked the mazer down on the arm of his chair. “It would not be so if Zhabyn did not tax our coffers bare and demand every stone we mined.”