The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [110]
“We should go.”
Rehada agreed. In little time they had reached the wagon trail that led from the house to the short pier. Atiana made to go after her pony, but Rehada stopped her.
“Leave it. We cannot remain on the ground, not when they could still find us, perhaps with reinforcements.”
“Then how—”Atiana stopped, for she had just realized how Rehada had spotted her, and how she hadn’t known. She had been on a skiff, the smaller windships the Landless use to fly between islands and ferry themselves from Volgorod to Iramanshah.
Once they had reached a thick copse of trees near the beach, Atiana saw it: a craft shaped like an overturned turtle with a single mast in its center. They entered, and once Rehada had placed several opals into the small brass fittings worked into the hull, the vessel lifted into the sky.
“Where will we go?” Atiana asked.
Rehada wore leather gloves. She used them—already looking completely at home—to hold the two ropes tied to the lower corners of the simple, triangular sail that billowed ahead of them. “I will take you to Iramanshah. A healer will look at your leg, and you can arrange transportation to Volgorod.”
As long as it was alone, Atiana thought.
Her earlier acceptance of Rehada was starting to wear thin; she wanted, at the moment, to be anywhere Rehada was not.
She tried to study the landscape for signs of pursuit, but the winds were playing with the ship, making her stomach turn, and so she kept her eyes on the horizon until the skiff had settled into the wind. The currents were easterly here, and they grew stronger the higher they rose into the sky, but the sail and the ship’s keel were guiding the ship northward.
The house was soon lost from view, but Atiana could see the beach where she and Rehada had fought with the vanahezhan.
“Why wouldn’t they follow in a skiff of their own?”
Rehada stared down at Atiana coldly. “I would think that was obvious.”
Atiana stared back, shivering. The wind was strong, especially this high up, and her clothes were still wet. She realized they were growing warm, and then she realized why.
“Nyet!”she shouted, refusing to allow this woman to warm her. She would freeze to death first.
Rehada, the tourmaline gem upon her brow still glowing, shrugged and returned her attention to the sails.
Immediately, the temperature plummeted.
“If they didn’t want to attract attention from the Matra,” Atiana said after a time, shivering once more, “they wouldn’t have summoned a vanahezhan on her doorstep.”
“That was different.”
“Why?”
“The place where it was summoned marked, I believe, a location where a vanahezhan had left this world.”
“You mean entered it.”
“Nyet. Left. The spirits are tied to this world as surely as we are tied to theirs. They hunger when they’ve been too long without it, and when they finally get a chance to experience it, it lingers with them, and they remain near the place where they exited our world and returned to theirs.”
“But how could a vanahezhan have entered our world?”
Rehada stared toward the horizon. “I do not know.”
The wind began to whistle louder in Atiana’s ears. She knew why the raiders had come. She knew how the vanahezhan had created a crease in the aether.
Rehada was pulled forward, nearly against the mast, but she regained her footing as the skiff tumbled through the air.
“Do the spirits hunger for us?” Atiana asked.
Rehada frowned. “Hunger?”
“For life, for our souls.”
“They thirst for a taste of this life, not for any particular part of it.”
“Perhaps they’ve changed.”
“Why would they?”
“The blight... It’s changed everything. Why not the spirits as well?”
“Nyet,” Rehada said flatly. “Hezhan do not do this. There is an imbalance, but it will heal.”
“That house back there”—Atiana motioned outside the skiff, back the way they had come—“I saw a babe