The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [156]
“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.
“He doesn’t love me?”
Rehada had smiled. “Of course he does, but perhaps not as much as he does his quest for understanding.”
Ahya had been quiet for days after that comment, and Rehada had felt terrible about it, but she refused to leave her child unprepared for her father’s departure as she had been when she was a child.
Ahya had confessed what she had said to Soroush, and Soroush had been deeply hurt. It became clear that he loved Ahya more than Rehada would have guessed, and her thoughts about his devotion to his daughter cut him deeply. He was a hard man, and he felt it was the best for her. It was his way of loving her, so that she would be prepared for the world to come, so that she would be ready to embrace the journey before her and move closer to vashaqiram.
Rehada had caught up to Ahya in the field and walked beside