She had known that this was the price to pay, but a well of fear still opened up inside Rehada. “I can’t do that.”
“Do this, Rehada. Do it for Ahya.”
“Do not speak her name.” She said the words because they must be spoken. She was completing a ruse, but she found the same reluctance seething inside her. She did not wish for her child’s name to be spoken. Ahya was hers, no one else’s.
“There is no harm in a name.”
You lie, Rehada said to herself. If that were true, she wouldn’t be feeling the burning weight at the center of her chest. She had come fully prepared to take this step, but now she wanted to leave, to flee, to return to her home and forget all about this.
But she could not. She could not afford to alienate herself from Iramanshah.
Neh. These were rationalizations. The truth was that the link to Adhiya through her stone was the only time she felt any sort of comfort, any sort of release from the pain of losing her child and her never-ending anger against the Landed. She could not bear to have it ripped from her and to go on without it as Soroush did. It would be too painful.
And so she held Fahroz’s gaze and nodded.
“Say it, child.”
“I will confess my daughter’s death.”
There was a tentative satisfaction in Fahroz’s heavy, wrinkled eyes, but it was not a mocking glance. Then her gaze drifted to Atiana. “The fates can be cruel at times, daughter of Shineshka, but I think in this they are right.”
Rehada turned, confused, and looked at Atiana, who was studying the massive celestia atop the nearby hill. Atiana turned then, perhaps sensing that she was being watched, and the moment their eyes met, Rehada understood exactly what Fahroz meant for her to do.
“ Neh, Fahroz,” Rehada said quietly but firmly. “Anything but that. I will confess to you, to Hilal, to the entire village. Anything. But do not make me confess to her.”
Fahroz had already started shaking her head. “Those are my terms.”
The pain in her hands made Rehada realize just how tightly she had been gripping them. She stared at her palms, each of which now contained four crescent-shaped marks of blood. Rather than storm away, rather than hide, Rehada laughed. Fahroz was right. The Fates had finally caught up to her, as she knew it eventually would.
She breathed deeply and released it slowly. Finally she nodded, and Fahroz returned the gesture. And then the two of them hugged.
CHAPTER 47
Rehada held her arms at her side, conscious of her posture and bearing even though Atiana-standing nearly face-to-face with her-and Fahroz-watching from a comfortable distance-were the only ones witness to it. She grew conscious of the shaking in her hands and balled them into fists to cover it, but that might be interpreted by Fahroz as disobedience or lack of acceptance and so she relaxed them and simply hoped that Atiana wouldn’t notice.
She did, though. Atiana glanced down, and her face softened as if she were trying to comfort a cowardly child afraid of storm clouds and thunder. It made Rehada want to gouge her eyes from her face.
Fahroz had chosen for the confession one of the largest rooms in Iramanshah, a hall normally used for the immense meals during the solstice festivals, but this day it was entirely empty, the trestles and chairs stored away, leaving the three of them small and insignificant at its center. It was not something that would normally give Rehada pause, but this day it made her feel small, smaller than she had felt in a long, long time.
“Are you prepared to continue?” Fahroz asked in Anuskayan, her voice echoing in the immensity of the room.
“I am.” Those two simple words felt foul on her tongue. She hated that she was forced to speak in their language.
“Then tell the Lady Vostroma what you are confessing.”
“A hatred for the family Bolgravya.”
Her voice echoed away slowly as Atiana stared and Fahroz paced a circle around them.
Fahroz stopped for a moment while she was within Rehada’s periphery. “Come, Rehada…”
“A hatred for the Grand Duchy.”
Fahroz resumed her pacing. “For whom?”
Rehada closed her eyes and shook her head, but she opened them again immediately. “A hatred for the Landed.” “And why do you hold hatred?”
“Because of the death of my daughter.”
“Deaths happen every day, daughter of Shineshka. Why would this one, even though it was your daughter’s, cause anger?”
“Because she was murdered unjustly by the streltsi of Nazakhov.”
“Murdered…”
“ Da, murdered!”
“Tell Lady Vostroma what happened.”
Atiana had been prepared. She had been told, as would anyone that was to play the part of the witness, to stand still, to accept what was being told as the truth, and to speak only when spoken to. But her oh-so-sympathetic face spoke volumes, and it felt as if she were scoffing at a covenant that had been in place for eons-yet another affront the Landed would someday be held accountable for.
Rehada spoke of that day in cold terms, giving Atiana the facts, how she’d left Ahya with friends, how she’d returned to find her burning body among the wreckage of the home she’d left only hours before, but as she spoke it was not those images that played through her mind but the sights and sounds of the mountain where she had taken breath. The day had been cool, pleasant. The sky had held few clouds, but those that were present scudded across the sky, sending shadows to play over the landscape like trumpeting heralds. The wind had been brisk. It had brought a scent of Lion’s Foot-the pale, late-blooming flowers that grew along the highest ranges of the southern islands. She had felt, during those hours of meditation, as though she had come to know Nazakhov deeply, as though, like the bond between mother and daughter, she was a part of it and it was a part of her. It had been exhilarating, for this had never happened to her before. It had been something that every Aramahn hoped to find but few managed in their lifetimes.
But here Rehada had discovered the weight of an island upon her shoulders. She wondered when she came down from that mountain whether any such thing could really happen. It seemed that it had all been a figment, a self-fulfilling delusion, a trick of the mind perpetrated consciously by the breath-stealing air of the tallest mountain in Bolgravya. It must be so, for what else could explain her apparent oneness with her environment and her complete inability to sense that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong with her child, her blood, her one and truest love?
As she had come to rest before that house-the one that had been burned to the ground-she had stared at the burned skeleton that had been her daughter. Her precious child had been ripped from her world by the acts of the Maharraht who had been hiding there, the prevailing attitude of the Landed for the ruthless acts committed by them, but mostly-she had no doubt in her mind-by the overriding greed of the Landed aristocracy. It was a greed that had pushed them to claw for every scrap of land in the sea, and it had done so for so long that they could no longer see that their acts would one day instill and reinforce the resistance that they hoped so fervently to root out.
Perhaps Rehada’s voice contained more venom than she had realized. She had expected Atiana to soften even further, to paste a look upon her face that would force Rehada to claw at her, if only to remove the expression from that white skin for a moment or two. But instead Atiana was nearly emotionless, and then, in increments, her face hardened, as if she condoned the actions of the streltsi that day, as if she would have ordered the very same thing had she held the gavel of fate in her hand. Strangely, this did not upset Rehada in the least. It felt as though things had returned to balance-Atiana the oppressor, she the oppressed-and it allowed Rehada to complete her story to Fahroz’s satisfaction.
“What did you do after you discovered your daughter dead?”Atiana asked. Fahroz had prepared Atiana to ask certain questions at certain times, but still, Rehada was startled by her words.