Ashan must have felt Nikandr’s gaze. As he negotiated the plank, guiding the boy ahead of him, he smiled at Nikandr and nodded politely.
As a group, the Aramahn were ushered to one side of the perch by an immigration clerk. He took each of their names in a thick, leather-bound journal before allowing them to continue on. He questioned Ashan for some time, as he was clearly a qiram of some renown. He spent a good deal of effort on the boy as well but seemed to get nowhere-the boy ignored him entirely while hugging his gut and gritting his jaw and blinking as if he were staring into the sun. Each time the official asked him a question, Ashan would reply, perhaps making excuses.
Finally, his questioning complete, the official released them, at which point Nikandr dismissed Mladosh and fell into step alongside them. “I hear I have much to thank you for,” Nikandr said.
Ashan waved as if it were nothing. “It was self-preservation, Nikandr, son of Iaros.”
“Do I know you?”
“We have not met, but I know you, certainly.”
“Well, Ashan, son of Kida and Ahrumea, we owe you much. Never let it be said that the Khalakovos leave debts unpaid.”
Ashan picked up his pace. They were just short of the busy quays, where it would be more difficult to speak, so Nikandr took Ashan by the elbow and slowed him until he stopped.
“How may I repay you?”
“There is no need to repay me for saving lives”-Ashan smiled, showing a healthy grin full of crooked and yellowed teeth-“not the least of which was mine.”
The boy was still using his rail-thin arms to hold himself about the waist. He looked so miserable that Nikandr found himself wishing there was something he could do for him.
Nikandr bent down and looked him in the eye. His stomach chose that moment to become queasy. Before he could manage it, a cough escaped him, but then he breathed deeper and forced the feelings down. “Are you well, boy?”
Nikandr expected him to shrink and shy away, but he didn’t. If anything, he gained a certain sense of gravitas: the look of pain faded, and he began to stare into Nikandr’s eyes with a singular focus that was wholly discomforting.
“As I explained to your official,” Ashan said sharply, breaking the spell, “Nasim has been dumb since he was a young boy. He rarely speaks, even to me, and when he does it is with words that have no meaning.”
Nikandr stood, ignoring those staring eyes. “No meaning to you or to him?”
“Indeed”-Ashan’s smile brightened-“that is the question. I believe they have profound meaning to him, but he cannot communicate his thoughts. They come out sometimes over the course of days. I thought I was a patient man before coming to know him, but now, after learning to piece together one small thought over the course of weeks… The word has taken on new meaning.”
“He looks like he’s in pain.”
Ashan smoothed the boy’s hair. “He is in pain, but he doesn’t complain, do you, Nasim?”
Nasim was staring at Nikandr’s neck, and Nikandr realized that his expression was no longer one of wonder.
It was one of rapture.
Nikandr felt a tickling sensation in the center of his chest, just below the surface of the skin, and it took a presence of mind not to raise a hand and begin scratching it. Only as the boy began walking forward did Nikandr realize that it was his soulstone, hidden beneath coat and shirt, that had so caught Nasim’s attention. With a completely innocent look on his face, Nasim reached for it.
A vision comes. A vision of a grand city. It spreads wide and low near a crescent bay, tall towers and massive domes bright beneath a golden sun. It seems whole, but the streets lay empty and barren-lifeless-as if it has long been abandoned.
An unreasonable anger came bubbling up from somewhere deep inside Nikandr; before he knew it, he had slapped the boy’s hand away and shoved him backward. Immediately Ashan took Nasim by the shoulders and guided him to the nearby railing, whispering into his ear.
“My apologies,” Ashan said over his shoulder. “He can be a curious boy.”
“It is nothing,” Nikandr said, shaking his head to clear away the sudden vision and the confusion it had left in its wake. “Please,” he said, “there must be something I could offer. Gold…”
“What need have the Aramahn of gold?”
“Food, then, for Iramanshah if not for you.”
Ashan shook his head. “There is little enough to go around. Nasim and I will do fine, as will Iramanshah.”
“Access to our library. Gemstones. A discussion with our scholars. You have only to name the price.”
Ashan smiled once more and herded the boy away from the railing and up the perch. “There is most certainly nothing”-Ashan nodded, reverently it seemed to Nikandr-“but I wish prosperous times upon you and your family.” And then he turned and walked away.
Nikandr could have stopped him for the insult, but he didn’t. They had been through enough, these two, and it was unseemly for him to badger them now.
And the boy… He was strangely compelling, and not simply because of their shared and inexplicable exchange. When one sees someone around whom the world revolves, one knows it, and the boy, even more than Ashan, was just such a person.
CHAPTER 8
The Bluff lay in darkness, but there was enough light coming from the windows of the three-story homes lining the street that Nikandr could make his way. When he arrived at his destination-a home nearly indistinguishable from the others-he glanced along the lengths of the empty, curving street before removing the silver flask from inside his coat and taking a healthy swallow of the bitter tonic. His stomach felt strangely healthy, but he wasn’t about to take chances-not tonight. He took the steps up and knocked upon the door five times, a bitter wind pressing against his back.
He turned, holding the fur-lined collar of his coat tight against the gusting wind. Over the tops of the nearby homes the lights of Palotza Radiskoye could barely be seen on the mountain overlooking the city.
He knocked again, softer this time, wondering if he’d made a mistake, but just as he was about to walk away, the flickering light of a lantern shone through the thick, wavy glass of the door’s high window. The door opened, and there stood Rehada Ulan al Shineshka, wearing a thick nightgown and a circlet that held a softly glowing gem of tourmaline. When he saw her face-how beautiful she looked in the golden light of the lantern-he nearly made his apologies and headed back toward Radiskoye. And yet, there was-as there always seemed to be-a beckoning luster in Rehada’s dark eyes, even as tired as she must be, even dressed as she was.
Without a word being spoken, she stepped aside, allowing Nikandr to enter her home. They moved into a lush sitting room. A host of large pillows arcing around the hearth, and the air, beneath the faint smell of jasmine incense, was redolent of garlic and ginger.
From his coat Nikandr took a small leather bag filled with virgin gems and placed it on the mantel. Then he threw two logs from the cradle onto the remains of the evening’s fire and began stoking the flames. Rehada did not acknowledge her payment as she moved to a silver cart topped with an ornate shisha. Normally they would have smoked tabbaq, the most common of the smoking leaves, but she chose instead a cedar box from the cabinet built into the base of the cart and retrieved several healthy pinches of dokha, a mixture of tabbaq, herbs, and fermented bark that came from Yrstanla’s western coast. It was extremely rare among the islands, and for a moment Nikandr nearly refused her, but he knew enough to know that this was a privilege that Rehada bestowed upon precious few patrons.