The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [139]
She is not experienced in navigating the dark, and yet she knows what she is seeing has not been noticed before—at least by the Matri. There is an imprint of Nasim in Adhiya and an echo in Erahm. He walks between worlds...
Such a thing cannot be—she knows this—and yet here it is.
And it explains much. His confusion. How else would a boy grow up when struggling to understand the very world that holds him? His pain. How could he not be torn? His attraction to Nikandr, a lodestone, a raft among the waves.
It is because of Nasim that Saphia was attacked. It is because of him that Atiana is attacked now. He has allowed the hezhan to follow—or perhaps he doesn’t even realize. Either way, they feed upon her, as they do the Matra. If she could draw him closer to Adhiya, the hezhan may not be so easily able to follow.
She pushes with all her might, as she did with the babe. She has little strength, but she feels it working. The worlds, at least in this one small place, are pushed further apart. Nasim slips toward Nikandr and toward the physical world.
And then her strength is lost.
She woke once, though she was unable to open her eyes. She lay there on the edge of sleep, on the edge of waking, for a long time, and she heard people speaking—most likely of her—but try as she might she was unable to rouse herself to wakefulness.
She dreamed of storms wracking the island. At first she thought it was Kiravashya, where she had been born and raised, but she came to realize it was Khalakovo’s largest island, Uyadensk. The storms were so fierce that they wiped the island clean. Gone was the city; gone was Palotza Radiskoye; gone was Iramanshah and the tiny fishing village of Izhny; everything was gone, and afterward it felt how the beginning of the world must have felt: pristine and full of hope.
As she had hours or days before, she woke several more times, and again she was unable to wake fully. She tried. She railed, but whenever she did she would slip backward into her dreams, and her screams of impotent rage would be directed toward Mileva or Ishkyna or Father for leaving her here.
And then the cycle would begin anew.
She shivered as something brushed the skin along her forearm. She had difficulty opening her eyes, but when she saw who sat next to her bed, her lethargy faded.
“Matra,” Atiana said, pulling herself up in her bed.She took in the room, realizing she had been returned to her cell deep beneath the palotza.
Saphia studied her with sharp eyes. Her skin was pink and healthy. She leaned to one side in her chair, perhaps to ease her pain, but otherwise she seemed more hale than she’d been in years. “Are you well, child?” she asked. Her voice was not scratchy, an indication that she had been awake and free of the aether for some time.
“I am tired. Nothing more. May I ask what news?”
“The blockade continues. My husband has been treating with your father, to no avail.”
Atiana shook her head. “He won’t back down, not with Bolgravya and Dhalingrad pushing him so, but neither will he go to war over me.”
“Over you, nyet, but there is more in the balance. The failed abduction of Nasim. The wounded and dead. But more than anything, the reasons behind your marriage. We are all of us in trouble, and I think it strikes your father worst of all.”
Not wishing to admit the truth of it, Atiana didn’t respond.
“You don’t have to reply—I know how dire the situation is on Vostroma—but now that a wall has been erected between north and south, it will be difficult to tear down.”
“Has my father asked of me?”
“Through your mother he has demanded your return, and for the death of the Grand Duke he has asked for the ships that were promised as well as the alabaster.”
Atiana couldn’t help but chuckle ruefully. “For the good of Bolgravya, of course.”
“Of course.”
She wanted to ask if her father had asked of her well-being, but she knew better. She was still—no matter how well the Khalakovos might be treating her—in the awkward position of political prisoner, and Father was