The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [16]
And he smiled.
He smiled, as if to console her.
Pain and regret and anger coursed through her. She felt her hardened core crack and fragment, but she did not let those emotions show on her face. Neither did she return his smile, for that would be disingenuous. Instead, she held his gaze with a reassuring look upon her face. She had decided before she came that she would meet his eyes as long as he wished it. She would not turn away, even though the sight of him dangling like a crow from a farmer’s belt would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Learn, she tried to say. Learn, even in death, and you will be rewarded in the next life.
The strelet finished by reading the judgment of the magistrate.
From the corners of her eyes, she saw the seven other Aramahn turn their backs on the gallows, not from any lack of courage, but in protest, as a sign of disapproval. She, however, refused to turn away no matter how much she might wish to do so.
The rest of the crowd had not brought rotten vegetables or mud, as she had seen happen so often in the cities of the Empire to the west, nor did they shout epithets. They merely watched in silent condemnation.
The plumes of breath from each of the boys came white upon the wind, but unlike the two next to him, Malekh’s face had transformed into a look of confusion, as if the things he had been sure about only moments ago had been brought into doubt.
Go well, she wished him, nodding once.
The strelet, his reading now complete, stepped back. As soon as he had, the other soldier pulled a thick wooden lever. The doors beneath the boys fell away with the clatter of wood. The rope snapped taut, and all three of them bounced once before swinging awkwardly in the wind.
When they came to rest, the crowd began to disperse, but Rehada remained, watching her young man swing for long moments, storing the image deep within her heart so that she might retrieve it when it was needed most. So lost in this effort was she that when two ponies entered the circle from a nearby street, breaking her trance, she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Even then, she watched them from the corner of her eye and paid them little mind.
This was a mistake.
She should have noted their courtly dress, should have noticed the train of children following them, hoping for a coin or two. When she did look, she realized one of them was staring at her. Nikandr. The Prince upon the Hill.
Her face burned as she turned away and walked toward the nearest street. He had been on the far side of the circle, and the wind had been blustery. She was wearing clothes that he wouldn’t be accustomed to seeing her wear. It was possible, just possible, that he hadn’t recognized her.
But she knew in her heart that he had, and it made her anger burn even higher. To be found out by Nikandr because she had, in one of her few acts of compassion, come to bid a friend farewell, was galling, not because she and Nikandr had lain together, but because she had worked so hard to conceal her true self from him.
No matter. If he discovered she was Maharraht, she would welcome it. She was sick of hiding it in any case, especially from him.
She turned and headed up one of the curving streets that led uphill toward the Bluff, the section of Volgorod that held her home. The street, as far as she could see, was empty. The light of the sun angled in between the tall stone buildings, leaving much of her path in shadow.
She stopped when she saw someone sitting at the entryway to an alley.
He wore two sets of robes: a black inner robe that was wrapped by a wide belt of gray cloth and an outer robe that fell to the tops of his brown leather boots. It was his turban and beard, more than anything, that marked him as one of the Maharraht. His beard was cut long and square. The turban was almond-shaped and ragged; its tail hung down along the front of his chest like a sash of honor.
It was dangerous to dress this way on Khalakovo, one of the most powerful of the