“I left that very night and traveled Erahm another full circuit before landing on Uyadensk.”
“You didn’t see your daughter buried?” Atiana asked.
Rehada smiled the way she would for a child. “She had gone. Her funeral pyre had already burned whether I liked it or not.”
Atiana’s face pursed. “I do not question your judgment-I know the ways of the Aramahn are not my own-I only wondered why you would not grieve over your child.”
“I grieve as I grieve!”
Fahroz stopped near Rehada’s side, her arms across her chest. “A question was posed.”
Rehada shook her head. “I cannot do this.”
“You cannot even speak of your child?”
“Not to her. Nyet.”
Fahroz stared at her for a long time, hoping Rehada would change her mind. But she would not. “You leave me no choice.”
Fahroz strode toward the doors to Rehada’s left. As her soft footsteps faded, a vision of Ahya leaping over the edge of a skiff came to Rehada. It had happened when they’d reached Nazakhov. Both of them had been in good spirits. Her hair trailed behind her as she ran ahead to the edge of the nearby cliff and looked down upon the ocean and the city of Bastrozna. Rehada had come to her side and held her tight to her hip as the wind tugged at their hair and their ankle-length robes. “Will Father meet us here?” Ahya had asked. Rehada had smiled. “ Neh, child. Not here.” “Where?” “The next island. Or the one beyond that. I do not know.” “Will you teach me to touch Adhiya?”
“You are too young, yet.”
Ahya had looked up at her with those bright green eyes. Her face was sad, but resigned. “You are always holding me back.”
Rehada had laughed at the notion-a child of six complaining that she could not learn as an adult. Rehada had done the same to her own mother, but the difference here was how close to right Ahya was. She was very strong. Rehada had known it for several years, ever since she had noticed the spirits with which Rehada had been communing. She had felt them as a girl of twelve would have trouble doing, and she had been only five.
When she had come down from the mountain that day, she had decided that she would begin Ahya’s training. Perhaps not that day; perhaps not in a month; but soon.
How had she forgotten such a thing? She had remembered Ahya’s burgeoning abilities-that had always been a thing of pride-but she had completely forgotten, until the point where Fahroz began walking away, that she had been ready to walk with her daughter toward a higher consciousness.
The answer came almost as quickly as had the question: the pain in thinking of how her daughter’s promise had been snuffed from the world had eclipsed many things. It had been too painful to consider, and so she had buried it, hoping it would never resurface again.
Suddenly she realized that she was on the ground, and that Atiana and Fahroz were kneeling next to her.
There was a keening in the room-a long wail of pain, and it took her long moments of rocking slowly back and forth to realize that it came from her. No one else. Her. Cries of regret for a child so pure.
“I did not grieve because it was something I could not face,” she said through her sobs.
Fahroz combed her hair away from her face. “That’s right, child.” She helped Rehada to her feet, and when Rehada had composed herself to some small degree, she motioned for Atiana to take her place once more.
“Why did you come to Uyadensk?” Atiana asked.
“I came because I wished to know a place-another place-as well as I had known Nazakhov.”
“But why Uyadensk?”
Rehada shrugged. “It is as good a place as any to know.”
“By those standards, Nazakhov would be even better since you knew it so well already.”
“I will never face Nazakhov again.”
“You give it more meaning than it has,” Fahroz interrupted. “It is only an island.”
“It is a storehouse of misery.”
Fahroz shook her head. “That is why you have been here for so long, is it not? You hope that Uyadensk will replace Nazakhov, that it will heal those wounds that never properly closed and have been festering ever since.”
Rehada shivered. Fahroz had come extremely close to the mark, and it was less than comforting.“I wish to know a place and to move on with my life. Moving from island to island no longer held any allure.”
“What is the name of your daughter’s father?” Atiana asked.
“Soroush Wahad al Gatha.”
“He is Maharraht, is he not?”
Rehada nodded. “He is.”
“What do you feel toward Anuskaya?”
“Anger, and resentment.”
Her words echoed off into the immensity of the room. When all was silence, Fahroz stopped her pacing next to Atiana and faced Rehada. “Come, daughter of Shineshka.”
“I know I can never have her back, but I want in my heart for the Duchy to provide that for me. In my heart of hearts I hope to dismantle the islands, one by one. I wish to watch every single Landed man, woman, and child drown in the seas, swallowed whole, for what they have done to my child.”
“Ahya will be reborn,” Fahroz said.
“But what will she be then? Half of what she was? Less? She could have been great.”
“She will be. As will we all one day.”
Rehada wanted to stalk forward and beat the knowing look from her face. “Forgive me, daughter of Lilliah, but it is difficult at times to look beyond this life. Even more so to the one beyond that.”
“Are you Maharraht?” Atiana blurted into the ensuing silence.
Her words echoed in the chamber- aharraht, harraht, rraht.
Everything she had said up to this point had been the truth. All of it. And she had debated with herself nearly every moment since agreeing to come here and confess: would she reveal this secret? Much rode upon this one answer, and in truth it pained her to think of lying at a time when she was speaking of her daughter so intimately. It felt too much like betrayal, a thing she could live with in almost anyone. Anyone but Ahya.
But the way Atiana had spoken those words. So sharp. So demanding. She wondered whether Fahroz had asked her to speak it thus. She doubted it now. Such traits were ingrained in the aristocracy of the islands from their birth onwards. Atiana could no more escape it than Rehada could her past. And so, though it was a betrayal, she lied.
“ Nyet.”
“Are you Maharraht?” Fahroz repeated, perhaps displeased with the pause.
“ Nyet,” Rehada repeated.
A time passed where Rehada refused to move her gaze from Atiana. She did not attempt to force a certain expression, as so many people do when they lie; she simply stared and allowed some small amount of the contempt she held for this woman to show through.
Fahroz seemed appeased, for she asked Atiana to step closer. When they were close enough to touch, to hug, she said, “Now forgive her.”
This was the thing she had feared ever since her daughter’s death. She had told herself that whatever happened, she would not forget what they had done. She would not allow the Landed to be free of their responsibility in this, and in forgiving Atiana, she was doing just that. But now that she had come this far she had no choice.
“I forgive you,” Rehada said softly.
“Again.”
“I forgive you.”
Fahroz stood behind Atiana and regarded Rehada.“Do you feel her words, daughter of Radia?”
“I do not,” Atiana replied.
“I forgive you,” Rehada said, pouring as much feeling into her voice as she could.
“If you do not wish to forgive, Rehada, then perhaps we should stop this now.”
“ I forgive you.”
“Hold her,” Fahroz replied.
Rehada stepped forward and put her arms around Atiana. She tried to hug her warmly, but it was impossible. She would rather strangle her.
“Now say it again.”
Rehada did. Over and over, and she found herself tightening her hold of the Vostroman princess. As she did, as she called out those words, a memory came to her that she had not thought of for years-possibly since it had happened. Ahya, not quite six years old, was walking over a snow-swept field running her hands over the tips of the winterdead grass. Her head hung low, and her shoulders wracked rhythmically. Rehada had known all too well why she was crying. She had told Ahya a secret about her father, Soroush, who would in two months’ time be taking to the winds once more. Rehada had said that he was a man that found it difficult to love and that her mother would be her guardian until her fifteenth birthday, when she would be free to take the winds as she chose.