Tonight was going to cost him, so he was willing to accept such a gift. He lay down on the pillows as Rehada stepped between him and the fire and placed the tray carrying the shisha on the carpeted floor. The slosh of liquid came from the base until it had settled, and then all was silence save for the faint whuffle of the burgeoning fire.
After lighting the dokha in the bowl at the top of the shisha, Rehada offered him one of the silk-covered smoking tubes. He accepted it and for a time simply breathed in the heady smell of honey and vanilla and hay, wondering how long it had taken and by what route it had traveled along the thousands of leagues from its point of origin to Volgorod. How many wagons had brought it from the curing house to the edges of the Yrstanlan Empire? How many hands had carried it on its way to Khalakovo? How many ships had borne it? How many lungs had tasted of the same harvest?
“You look thin,” Rehada said, perhaps growing tired of the silence. She held two snifters of infused vodka, one of which she handed to Nikandr as she settled herself gracefully upon the nearby pillows.
“The work on the Gorovna…” Thankfully the wasting had given him a small reprieve-tonight he felt none of its effects.
“Ah, your other mistress.”
Nikandr, ignoring her gibe, drew upon the tube and held his breath before slowly releasing the smoke up toward the ceiling. “That was you at the hanging, was it not?”
The silence lengthened as Rehada took the second tube in one hand. Anyone else would have sucked from the mouthpiece, but not Rehada. She placed the ivory mouthpiece gently against her lips and drew breath like one of the rare, languorous breezes of summer. Her hair, like many of the Landless women, was cut square across the brow, not propped up in some complicated nest like the women of royalty. She held her breath-a good deal longer than Nikandr had-before exhaling the smoke through full, pursed lips. “There are those I would say farewell to before they depart these shores.”
Visions of the boy swinging in the wind next to the two peasants played within his mind. “Who was he?”
The space between Rehada’s thin, arching eyebrows pinched, but she did not otherwise show her annoyance. “What does it matter who he was?
I have witnessed the deaths of those who I’ve never met.” “If you had never met him, you wouldn’t have acted like you did.” “What makes you so sure?”
“The look you gave me.”
She regarded him levelly, the shisha tube held motionless near her mouth. “I knew that boy, but the look was not for him, nor was it for you.”
Nikandr paused. “Borund?” He searched his memory for the few times they had discussed her past, but he was unable to remember what connection she might have with the Prince of Vostroma. “I don’t understand…”
“Then perhaps your wife could explain it to you.” She pulled on the shisha tube and released her breath, much more forcefully than she had the last time.
And suddenly he understood. Borund, as Rehada well knew, was Atiana’s brother. Could it be she had been jealous? Or perhaps the juxtaposition of death and marriage had made her pause; she, like so many of her people, was always making emotional connections like that and contemplating them for days or weeks at a time.
“Now that she’s come…” Rehada allowed herself another long pull before setting the mouthpiece aside. “Now that you’re staring face-to-face with the prospect, will you marry her still?”
“There’s little choice. She’ll be my wife within the week whether I like it or not.” Nikandr smiled. “Though I may have delayed it by a day or two.”
“And how might you have done that?”
“I should be up at the palotza now, signing the wedding documents.”
“You’ve said how prickly the Duke of Vostroma can be.”
Nikandr nodded, and his smile widened. “ Da, he can be that…”
Rehada regarded him, the firelight and the shadows accentuating the features of her face. “You aren’t bound to her yet. You could go where you will.”
At this Nikandr’s smile faded. “You’re not so naive as that.”
“If anyone is naive, it is you. You tell me every time you come how much you love the wind. Surely you have enough money to buy a ship. You could take to the winds, travel the world…”
“I’m not Aramahn.”
“Meaning what, that you cannot bear to be parted from your precious family?”
“I may voice displeasure from time to time, but they are my life. They are my love.”
“If I had one rachma from every man that’s spoken those words…”
“You’d what, take to the winds?”
“I’ve done my traveling. I’ve found my place.”
Nikandr drew breath from the shisha as if it had somehow insulted him. “And I haven’t?” he said while forcing the smoke from his lungs.
Rehada raised her brow and tilted her mouth in a quirky smile. “ You’re the one running from your marriage.”
“I’m not running,” Nikandr said. Rehada was prodding him, but the effects of the smoke had already taken the edge from his anger and his feelings of being trapped on the Hill. Without willing it to, his mouth twisted into a smile that was a mirror image of hers. “Well, I suppose I am pulling at the tether a bit.”
“Why do you never speak of her?” Rehada asked. “Tell me what she’s like.”
As he downed half of his vodka, the lemon-infused liquor searing his mouth, throat, and finally his stomach, he turned to Rehada and admired the graceful curve of her eyebrows, her long eyelashes and full lips. The orange tourmaline held in the circlet glowed ever so softly. He knew good and well the sort of hezhan that gem granted, and he couldn’t wait for the heat of her to fill him, for the touch of her red hot skin, so unlike Atiana Vostroma’s, which was certain to be white as bone and cold as winter’s chill.
Rehada, perhaps feeling the effects of the smoke as well, smiled mischievously and poked Nikandr in the ribs with a slippered foot. “What is she like?”
Nikandr shrugged and leaned into the pillows, knowing he’d already smoked too much for his own good. Part of him wanted to answer Rehada’s question-the part that always wanted to please her-but he didn’t really know what Atiana was like. He couldn’t remember a single time he’d spoken to her when she wasn’t with Mileva and Ishkyna. He knew them only as a single, three-headed beast.
“You’re impossible.” Rehada threw the shisha tube aside and straddled him. Her muscled legs tightened against his waist as her long black hair fell across his chest. She didn’t grind her pelvis like a dock whore would, nor did she lean in and kiss him, though her dark eyes spoke of the desire. Instead she smiled. With the low-burning fire lending her already dark skin a ruddy glow, she was breathtaking. She lowered herself, her breasts pressing against his chest, her cheek brushing his. “Tell me something about her,” she said, her hot breath tickling his ear. She raised herself and regarded him. The gem upon her brow glowed brighter. Nikandr felt his loins and chest heat, and despite himself he began to harden. “Unless you’d rather return home to be alone with your thoughts.”
“I didn’t come to talk about my fiancee.”
“Then why did you come?” “To be with you.” She poked him in the center of his chest. “The truth…” Despite himself, he laughed. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“I know your moods, Nikandr, better than she ever will.”
He paused, wondering if she were right. “A man arrived on a ship today, one we thought lost to the Maharraht. His name is Ashan.”
Surprisingly, Rehada stiffened. “Ashan?”
“Ashan Kida al Ahrumea. He arrived with a curious boy on one of my father’s ships, a ship snatched from the jaws of the Maharraht.”
Rehada stared down at him seriously, saying nothing.
Nikandr chuckled and threw his arms behind his head. “ Now who’s avoiding questions?”
“I should hold your answers hostage until I get mine.”