The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [189]
Borund stood across the table from her, staring down at her as if she were still a little girl. “You should have been safe on Vostroma by now.”
“I will not be told where to go, Bora. Not any longer.”
“We are at war, Tiana. This is no time for your obstinate ways.”
“It seems to me the men are the obstinate ones. If the Matri had been allowed to discuss this before Father sanctioned this foolish plan, we would all be having tea in Radiskoye, laughing at our foolishness.”
Borund looked furious. “Is that what you think?”
“Can there be any doubt?”
“Perhaps, dear sister, you are thinking with your loins.”
Both Borund and Grigory were staring at her with judgmental looks. Clearly they were waiting for her to confess.
“If there’s something you wish to say, Borund, you ought to come out and say it.”
“Did you arrange for Nikandr’s rescue?”
With nonchalance, she raised her eyebrows and took a bite from the browned flesh of her half-eaten apple. “I wasn’t aware that he had been.”
“You surely were,” Grigory said. His face was red now, and it took all the concentration Atiana possessed not to stare at his neck, at the chain that had not so long ago held Nikandr’s soulstone.
“I most surely was not. It seems to me that he was in your charge, Grigory, not mine.”
He was desperate to accuse her, but he could not—to admit that she had taken Nikandr’s stone would be admitting his own failure, and he would not do so before Borund, so he set his jaw and remained silent, pointedly keeping his eyes fixed downward.
Borund noticed and nodded to the door. “I would speak with my sister alone, Griga.”
Grigory stared at Borund as if he’d been betrayed, but then he nodded and left, his boots echoing sharply against the cold stone floors.
“I can no longer arrange for you to be shipped home,” Borund said when the sounds had faded.
“Good. I don’t wish to go home.”
“But you will remain here until the hostilities have ended.”
“Hostilities?”
Borund paused, shifting his weight to the other leg. “We will attack today. There is no choice left to us.”
“It seems that things are well in hand.”
“Nyet, Atiana, they are not in hand. All of our rooks have been driven mad or have flown off.”
“All of them?”
“All. Clearly the other Matri are crippling us so that we are blind. Now promise me that you won’t cause any more trouble.”
She was about to chide him, but this was the most serious she had seen Borund in a very long time. “Dear brother, I do believe you care for me.”
“I care little, Tiana. There are two more should some unforeseen fate befall you. It’s only that it would be difficult afterward to explain things to Mother.” He took one step back, glancing toward the door. “And poor Grigory will be heartbroken. You wouldn’t want to disappoint him, would you?”
“Never,” she said, though in truth part of her was terrified to be left alone with Grigory now that he knew what she’d done. Still, she was willing to risk it; it was the only way she could find her way back to Nikandr—back to Volgorod—so she could help.
“Keep well,” Borund said as he strode away.
Grigory was gone for some time, escorting Borund back to his windship, perhaps requesting that he—as the sole remaining voice of Bolgravya—be allowed to join the battle. Part of her wished that he would leave, but he returned shortly after midday.
An unseasonable snowfall had begun outside, a terrible omen for the day ahead. Grigory had a dusting of it on his hair and long gray cherkesska when he came into the sitting room. He ordered the skinny old peasant woman who was cleaning the mantel around the fireplace from the room. When she was gone, he rounded on Atiana, who sat in a chair holding a book of poems, more to give him the illusion that she was at ease than for any form of entertainment. She hadn’t read a single word since she’d picked