The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [99]
He didn’t know how long he had been watching, but suddenly Atiana was pulling him away from the edge. She brushed dirt from the shoulder of his coat, and then looked up at him with a hardened expression.
He shrugged her away. “Did you tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“Of the wasting?”
“Nyet.” Her confused expression was so masterful Nikandr wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth or not. “I would not have, Nikandr. I told you so that night.”
“Then how would he know?”
She shook her head. “I do not know. Perhaps he guessed.”
“We have barely seen one another, Atiana, and I have been careful.”
Her face grew cross. “I am telling you the truth.”
“Da, something the Vostromas are very good at.”
“We aren’t the ones hiding a disease that should have been revealed months ago. We aren’t the ones secreting away Aramahn that should be handed over.”
“You side with your father, then?”
“Why should I not? His demands are reasonable.”
Nikandr paused, breathing heavily, weighing his words. He was angry now that he had shared his last few moments with Berza. He should have sent her away—he should send her away now to rot with the rest of her family and their traitorous allies—but he realized she was the one small link he still had to the Vostroma family. And more than that, she was not his enemy.
“Ashan is innocent, Atiana. The boy—I am not so sure, but if he was involved, it was as a tool. He would not do something so violent.”
“How can you be sure?”
He pulled out his soulstone and showed it to her. She cringed, though whether this was from concern of his well-being or embarrassment that she might still marry a man with a broken past, he wasn’t sure.“When I first met him, he noticed my stone even though he couldn’t see it. We are connected, he and I. I know not how, but I do know this—that boy is no murderer.” He motioned toward the nearby cliff. “He is as innocent as Berza.”
She stared at the stone a moment longer, then met his gaze. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
“Strange things are happening. The blight. The wasting. When I took the dark for your mother, I saw a young girl die in her mother’s arms, taken by a hezhan. Who would have thought to see such things in our lifetime? If you say there is a link between you and the boy, if you say he is innocent, then I believe you.”
He was so shocked he found himself unable to speak for a moment. “Thank you, Atiana.”
Her eyes went far away. It was a look he knew well. It meant she was scheming. Calculating.
“What is it?” he asked.
“If it’s proof my father needs, there is one way you could provide it.”
“How?”
“The Matra could assume him.”
Nikandr sat across from Father in his drawing room, waiting for Mother to join them. A black rook, which had been sitting idly on the nearby perch, suddenly launched into a fit of flapping wings and cawing. The display ceased as soon as it had begun, but now there was a look of intelligence in the eyes that hadn’t been present moments ago.
“Good day, Mother,” Nikandr said.
The rook arched its head back and cawed once. “Quickly, Nischka. I have little time.”
“I wish to discuss Nasim.” Father opened his mouth to speak, but Nikandr talked over him. “There is little enough to report, which is why I needed to speak to you both.”
“Go on,” Father said.
“I want Mother to assume Nasim’s form.”
The moment Atiana had said it, Nikandr knew they had to try it. He was surprised he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He was surprised his mother hadn’t, until he realized that she probably had. It was a dangerous thing to do, made no less dangerous by Nasim’s unpredictable nature. And there were other considerations as well. It was a practice that had been used long ago by the earliest of the Matri against the Aramahn—sometimes to gain information, sometimes to control them for short periods. It was a practice that had been forbidden as part of the Covenant between the fledgling Grand Duchy and the Aramahn. Were they to resume the practice and be discovered, there would be serious repercussions from Iramanshah.
The rook flapped its wings