There were four cells in the tight space with a wide aisleway between them. All four were occupied, and in the dimness, Atiana was having trouble discerning where Nikandr was being held. Two crewmen occupied the leftmost cells. In the first cell on the right was an Aramahn man with a mop of curly brown hair and a short, ragged beard.
In the final cell, lying on the straw layering the cell floor, was Nikandr, but he did not rise as she approached.
“Stand, Khalakovo,” Atiana said.
He jumped as she spoke. Her stomach churned as he rolled slowly over. Grigory had not mentioned that he was in such a state, and she realized that the information had been withheld for a purpose-Grigory had wanted to see her reaction as she laid eyes on him. Beyond her initial shock-which she hoped Grigory had not been able to see so well in the darkness-she hid her emotions well. She kept a steely gaze on Nikandr as he made it first to all fours, then to his knees. He breathed deeply, coughing painfully several times, before summoning the energy to pull himself up to his feet.
His face was a mass of black and purple bruises. His lip was swollen and cut, and the blood that had leaked from a gash along the bridge of his nose ran down his face and into the stubble along his lip and chin and neck. She found it impossible not to let some emotion show while staring at him. She wondered how long it had taken them, how much it had hurt.
But more than this, Nikandr looked frail, sunken. His eyes were dark, and his cheeks had started to draw inward. The wasting had progressed quickly in the time since she’d last seen him. He had looked, not whole, but vibrant still, in that hallway of Radiskoye before he’d left on his ship. She had still harbored visions of their future together, but now… How could anyone envision a future with a man that looked like he would be dead in the span of months, perhaps weeks?
And yet she found, as she stared placidly into his eyes, that the feelings hadn’t diminished. They’d grown in strength. There was a certain fire within him, not unlike Victania, that one had to admire.
“I see there is little enough left for me to do.”
Nikandr staggered forward and grabbed the iron bars of the cell. He glared at her, then Grigory, without speaking.
“Come, Nischka,” Grigory said. “Don’t tell me you aren’t going to wish us a fruitful marriage…”
Atiana turned to Grigory. “I was under the impression that I was the one who would speak with him.”
Grigory smiled and then laughed, showing the imperfect canines that hung high above his otherwise flawless teeth. He bowed his head and flourished a hand toward Nikandr, clamping his mouth in an exaggerated fashion.
Atiana turned back to Nikandr and stepped up to the bars. Had she wanted to, she could have leaned forward and kissed his hands. “I had at one time thought our arrangement necessary.”
Nikandr stared, perhaps confused.
Atiana continued, “Perhaps in time I could have grown to stomach it, but after seeing how low your father will stoop, I have no doubt you’re already on your way to following in his footsteps. Grigory knew the day of the Grand Duke’s murder how gutless you were, but I had convinced myself it was otherwise.”
When Nikandr spoke, it was with a scratchy voice that sounded like it hadn’t been used in weeks. “Grigory, it seems, is very wise.”
“Do not jest, Khalakovo. As far as this war has come, there is little time left for such things.”
“I wasn’t aware we were at war.”
“Well you should have! It was inevitable, and you should have foreseen it-you as well as your mother and father.”
The look of betrayal and hurt on his face drove a spike of regret through her heart. “Perhaps we should have murdered all of you in your sleep as your father and brother tried to do to us.”
“If that had been his plan, Nischka, you would not be alive today.” She took a step forward and took his hand. He allowed her to take it, and she was glad, for it was the only thing she could think to do. She spit upon his hand, and, using a quick move, slipped the stone into his palm and closed his fingers around it.
Nikandr stared at his fist, confusion plain on his face.
“Surprised?” Atiana said. “Perhaps now you’ll run to your mother like you used to when we were children.” She turned and headed for the door. “I should have known even then, seeing how quick you were to beg for her help.”
Grigory’s eyes were full of amusement and deep satisfaction, but she didn’t spare him more than a glance for fear she would spit in his face.
She walked out, hoping Nikandr had the sense to keep the stone hidden until they were gone. Thankfully, Grigory followed, his lust for gloating apparently sated.
She was moved within the hour to a manor house far down the hill near a small village called Laksova. Her father and the other dukes were supposed to have arrived before evening meal, but they were late. She wondered, late at night while listening to the cannon fire coming from Oshtoyets, whether it was because there was movement afoot on the part of the Khalakovos. She worried for Nikandr-many things could go wrong in any attempt to free him from his prison.
Long after the sounds of cannon and musket fire had ceased, she lay awake, unable to find sleep. The morning sun began to brighten the window of the bedroom. She went down for a breakfast of cheese and apples, and though the cheese was sour and the apples withered, she wolfed them down, ravenous after how little she had eaten over the past few days. Borund and Grigory entered the narrow eating hall as she was finishing her still-steaming cup of tea.
Borund stood across the table from her, staring down at her as if she were still a little girl. “You should have been safe on Vostroma by now.”
“I will not be told where to go, Bora. Not any longer.”
“We are at war, Tiana. This is no time for your obstinate ways.”
“It seems to me the men are the obstinate ones. If the Matri had been allowed to discuss this before Father sanctioned this foolish plan, we would all be having tea in Radiskoye, laughing at our foolishness.”
Borund looked furious. “Is that what you think?”
“Can there be any doubt?”
“Perhaps, dear sister, you are thinking with your loins.”
Both Borund and Grigory were staring at her with judgmental looks. Clearly they were waiting for her to confess.
“If there’s something you wish to say, Borund, you ought to come out and say it.”
“Did you arrange for Nikandr’s rescue?”
With nonchalance, she raised her eyebrows and took a bite from the browned flesh of her half-eaten apple. “I wasn’t aware that he had been.”
“You surely were,” Grigory said. His face was red now, and it took all the concentration Atiana possessed not to stare at his neck, at the chain that had not so long ago held Nikandr’s soulstone.
“I most surely was not. It seems to me that he was in your charge, Grigory, not mine.”
He was desperate to accuse her, but he could not-to admit that she had taken Nikandr’s stone would be admitting his own failure, and he would not do so before Borund, so he set his jaw and remained silent, pointedly keeping his eyes fixed downward.
Borund noticed and nodded to the door. “I would speak with my sister alone, Griga.”
Grigory stared at Borund as if he’d been betrayed, but then he nodded and left, his boots echoing sharply against the cold stone floors.
“I can no longer arrange for you to be shipped home,” Borund said when the sounds had faded.
“Good. I don’t wish to go home.”
“But you will remain here until the hostilities have ended.”
“Hostilities?”
Borund paused, shifting his weight to the other leg. “We will attack today. There is no choice left to us.”