The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [40]
Nikandr’s appetite was not strong, but with so many people watching he forced himself to eat. It probably wasn’t a good idea, considering the dance that would immediately follow dinner, but Atiana was eating healthily, and something in him wouldn’t let her beat him, even at something as simple as that.
When dinner finally ended, the center of the room was cleared. As was custom, Nikandr walked out to the empty floor and held his hand out as the crowd gathered round. The rook on its perch seemed to be watching intently now—Mother had joined the festivities, however briefly.
A lute and a harp and a skin drum took up a dancing song as Atiana stood and made her way toward him, pulling pins from her hair as she came. The crowd whooped as her long hair fell about her shoulders, giving her a wild and most unladylike look. Her words from the eyrie rushed back to him. I look forward to it, she’d said. As simple as that. But the words had dripped with meaning.
She arrived at the center of the floor, but rather than take Nikandr’s hand and wait meekly for the dance to begin, she pulled him into a tight embrace, the typical pose dancers took for this particular song.
The crowd laughed. Nikandr felt his cheeks flushing, partly from the embarrassment of Atiana taking the lead, but more so from the sheer surprise of this woman—who had always been the meekest of the three—taking charge of the situation. He found himself not only impressed, but attracted to her. She was turning out to be vastly different than the girl from his memories.
“Are you so eager to dance?” Nikandr said as the dance began.
The scent of jasmine and facial powder laced the air as she leaned into him, chest to chest, and whispered, “Not to dance, Nikandr Iaroslov, but to teach you a lesson.”
“And what lesson is that?”
“That a Vostroma is no woman to be ignored.”
“Were you ignored?”
“Avoided. Snubbed. Choose the word you wish.”
He found a smile coming to his lips, but he suppressed it. “And a dance will even the ledger?”
“Nyet.” As they stalked in the opposite direction, she leveled upon him a steely gaze. “It merely begins to tip the scales, Khalakovo.”
As the drum sounded a heavy beat, she spun on one heel and stood straight as a sword, her hair flaring before falling about her shoulders. All was silence. The preliminaries were over, and now the real dance would begin. The story the song painted was one of a young man and woman—two people that had wandered through life, searching for love but never finding it. It detailed a defining moment in their lives, one in which each of them saw through to the heart of the other for the first time, and their love began to blossom.What followed between the two lovers was grand, and the music played it so, slowly at first but with a steadily quickening rhythm.
Atiana spun in a circle and took one step forward. She kicked her outer leg in a high arc, over Nikandr’s head as he dropped to a crouch. He balanced on the balls of his feet as she stared down at him.
And there came that wicked little smile. The one she used when she wanted him to know that she’d tricked him. No one else would even notice, but Nikandr knew it all too well. The smile he’d suppressed earlier returned, and this time there was nothing he could do to stop it. Atiana had come to dance, and he had not been tested in a very long time indeed.
As the lute and harp strummed a heavy chord, the crowd collectively clapped. In time, Atiana spun and brought one leg low over the ballroom floor, her dress flourishing as it did so. Nikandr jumped into the air, clearing her sweeping leg, and kicked both legs out, touching his toes with the tips of his fingers.
A collective gasp filled the room. Nikandr had jumped very high, partially to impress, but also to let Atiana know that he had accepted her challenge.
The second chord came, the crowd clapped, and Atiana repeated the low sweep of her leg. She was very good, Nikandr realized,