The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [198]
The door ahead of her opened, and she heard only one set of footsteps enter the room. She thought at first it was the man who had led her up, but she smelled on the air the scent of myrrh, which the aristocracy of the Grand Duchy had seemed to favor in recent years, so she knew it must be someone of import, and since the footsteps had sounded heavy, like a man’s, she could only assume it would be one in particular.
“I hope you are well, Iaros son of Aleksi.”
There came a soft chuckle. Footsteps approached and finally the blindfold was pulled away.
She squinted momentarily, even though the only light was from a small copper lamp sitting on a nearby bench. There was a wooden rack with pegs that held several woolen sweaters and oiled canvas coats. Thick leather boots sat jumbled in one corner.
Iaros, strangely enough, wore a wool cherkesska, and not of the sort a duke would wear. It was simple and weatherworn, the kind of no-nonsense garb a traveling merchant might use. He looked the same as he had several years before, the only time she had seen him up close. He had a gray beard with a sprinkling of brown still remaining, trimmed so that it hung partway down his chest. He was balding, but there were tufts of hair on the very top of his head.
The strange thing was how composed he looked, how free of care even after everything that had happened. His palotza was besieged, his Duchy at grave risk and had been for weeks, but one would wonder whether he was going out for a ride in the countryside as little as he seemed to show it.
There were two doors. From behind the one Iaros had used to enter the room she could hear men gathering and talking softly.
“You were my son’s lover,” Iaros said, pulling her attention back to him.
She smiled, wondering whether he was trying to put her off balance. “I was not aware that our relationship had ended.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “and discuss it with Nikandr when I see him again.”
“And when might that be?”
She hoped that if he had any information about Nikandr that he would share it, but instead he simply frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “When the ancestors see fit to reunite us. Now you’ve come a terribly long way and through more than a little bit of danger to speak with me. What is it you want?”
She was hesitant at first—it felt like speaking with the enemy—but once she started, she found the floodgates opening wide. She told him of her knowledge of Nasim and how he had come to land on Khalakovo, how Ashan had stolen him away from the Maharraht, how he had summoned the suurahezhan and her assumptions as to why it had happened. She told him that Nasim would now have been recovered by the Maharraht. She told him of the grave danger Khalakovo was now in, and the ritual that Soroush would perform this very day at sunset. She knew that she was giving up more information than a woman like her should have, but she didn’t care.
Iaros’s expression changed little during the entire exchange, and when she was done, he combed his beard with his fingers, studying her face as the silence lengthened.
“You are Maharraht?” he asked plainly.
So conditioned was she to hide the truth that a denial nearly came from her lips before she could prevent it, but instead she took a deep breath and looked him in the eye and replied, “Da.”
“Then tell me, why should I believe a word of this? Why shouldn’t I stand the gibbet in the courtyard above and let you hang from it?”
This was the moment she had feared the most—the point at which Iaros would have to decide if she was telling the truth. She had thought long and hard on how to convince him, but she knew that any profession of honesty would fall upon deaf ears. So she said the only thing she could.
“Because