The Straits of Galahesh: Book Two of The Lays of Anuskaya (55 page)

With the stone lending her its strength, she stands—still coughing, still unable to catch her breath—and shambles forward, knowing she must get inside before the tower crumbles completely.

Larger pieces of stone, and even sections of the tower’s wall, fall away, striking the ground before her. Scree bites into her skin, drawing blood along her arms, her forehead, her cheeks. A larger piece cuts into her shoulder and knocks her down. She gets up, realizing she has lost the blue stone.

She looks for it frantically, feeling faint and afraid, until she sees a glimpse of it beneath a heavy stone.

She pushes it, but it is too heavy, and she cannot move it.

Nyet!
she screams.

She gathers herself and tries again. And slowly the stone tips.

As the sound of the crumbling tower reaches new heights, she grabs the stone and sprints for the tower door. The door twists unnaturally. The supports buckle as she leaps toward the frame.

And then she is through.

Atiana knows immediately she has returned to Baressa. No longer is she caught by the spells that surround Sariya’s tower.

She cannot for the moment feel Ishkyna’s presence, nor can she feel Ushai’s. She reaches out for them, but as she does she senses a disturbance near the Spar.

The ceremony.

The ceremony Father is attending.

She rushes toward it and is relieved to find that little has taken place since she left. Either the ceremony has crawled at a glacial pace or little time has passed since she entered Sariya’s tower. Whichever the case, dozens are still gathered beneath the pavilion. The keystones have been set into place, and the Kamarisi is speaking to the assemblage on a platform carpeted in red and trimmed in gold.

Father stands at the front of the crowd. Vaasak Dhalingrad and the men of their retinues stand patiently behind him. Near the back of these gathered men and women, spaced along the balustrade, are the men of the Kiliç
Ş
aik, the Kamarisi’s personal guard. They stand at attention, legs spread, arms behind their backs, the plumes attached to their rounded turbans tossed wildly by the winds.

The Kamarisi seems to be finishing. Many begin to clap, and in the manner of Yrstanla, Hakan raises the back of one hand to all who stand before him.

Near the balustrade, one of the guardsmen steps forward toward those who stand at the rear of the tent—the streltsi of Vostroma and Dhalingrad. Before Atiana can understand what is happening, the lone guardsman has pulled his sharply curved kilij sword. This seems to be a signal of sorts, for in a flash, all of his men—a score of them—have pulled their kilij as well.

Father, behind you!

Her father reaches for his chest, grasping for his soulstone, which lies hidden beneath his coat.

Turn, Father, now!

But it is too late.

The men of Yrstanla cut the streltsi from behind.

Many in the crowd scatter, their eyes wild and their mouths wide with shock. Father pulls his shashka, as does Vaasak and many of the men of Anuskaya, but the streltsi have already fallen, and they are faced with impossible odds.

Do not fight!
Atiana urges.

She doesn’t know if her father heard her, but he lowers his sword at the command of the Kamarisi’s guard.

Most of those who ran are herded back into the pavilion. All are relieved of their weapons.

And then Father is led away from the pavilion by three guardsmen. Hakan follows. His face is serene, as if this all has gone according to plan.

Father is brought to his knees with a sharp strike from the flat of one of the guardsmen’s blades. It is the one who first drew his sword, a man who Atiana saw with Siha
ş
in the kasir but does not otherwise know.

As the two other guardsmen pull Father’s arms wide, holding him in a kneeling position, the first steps to Father’s left side.

Hakan watches this. He speaks, eyes closed, as if reciting a chant.

Or rendering judgment.

And then Atiana realizes. Father has been positioned over the keystones. He’s been positioned over the centermost of them, the one that lies at the true center of the Spar.

This is not a simple act of war. This is a sacrifice.

They are
consecrating
the bridge.

Father, fight them! Do not allow this!

But he makes no move against them.

She assails Hakan’s mind, trying to assume him as she would a rook, but the currents of the aether are too wild. Each time she tries, she nearly slips from the aether.

Vaasak!
she calls.
Save him!

She calls to others, but she already knows it is too late.

The sword is lifted high.

Hakan finishes his speech.

And the sword swings low.

Atiana sees the sword strike home, sees it sever the neck of her father. Sees his head roll across the stones.

His blood spills, staining the central keystone.

In the aether, Atiana stares. The world, so often wide and expansive in the dark, focuses tightly on her father’s body, on the blood still pumping from his neck, on his
head
as it rocks to a stop.

Atiana is frozen. The scene before her is frozen, imprinted on her mind like blood upon stone. Shock gives way to horror. A thousand implications swirl through her mind, but she can focus on none of them. She can only think of one thing.

Her father is dead. Gone forever. Taken from her by the whims of a sick and twisted emperor, the lord of a slowly dying state.

And then Atiana’s mind fills with rage. Her emotions—vengeful and primal and brutal—make it more and more difficult to remain.

She wants to stay, wants to rend Hakan’s mind to shreds, but in the end, her emotions run too high, and she is thrust from the aether as if it were repulsed.

T
he clack and thunder of stones falling, the tower rumbling, woke Atiana from a deep sleep.

She sat up, the water of the pool splashing around her.

Her entire body clenched. She knew she should relax, but she couldn’t.

She gripped her legs tight, shivering. She was colder than she had ever been.

Another boom shook the building. And another.

By the ancients who watch over, what was happening?

The tower... The tower had been crumbling...

She looked around, eyes wide.

There was no tower here. She was in a pool of water. A young woman wearing the dress of a servant stood at the edge of it. “Can you hear me, My Lady Princess?”

Atiana stared, unable to understand how she’d come to be here. Two soldiers wearing the stripes of Vostroma stood by an open doorway leading outside.

“My Lady,” the woman said again, her voice more urgent. She waded into the pool in her black boots and rich wool dress and took Atiana by the shoulders and helped her to her feet.

Only then did Atiana realize that there were others in the pool. They were submerged, naked, their breathing tubes still in place. For the life of her she couldn’t remember their names.

“
Please
, My Lady, come.”

As Atiana prepared to stand, she realized that she held something small and hard and smooth in one hand. She looked down and found the stone. The stone Nasim had liberated from the monolith. The stone Sariya had wanted at all costs. And here it was, with her.

The events that had occurred outside Sariya’s tower came clear. She didn’t understand how it could have been, but she did know that it had been no dream. That had been Nasim himself, drawn, as she had been, into a world of Sariya’s making. And he had wrested from Sariya the thing she most desired.

It did not sit well with Atiana that he could do such a thing—it seemed like too much power to rest within one soul—but Nasim was a special child. He’d spent years straddling the aether, walking between worlds. Could he not then walk the dark as she did? Perhaps he would even be better at it, as gifted as he had been with hezhan.

She stared down at the blue stone. It was both beautiful and terrifying.

When she looked up she saw the woman staring at it. Yalessa... Her name was Yalessa.

Atiana palmed the stone—making it clear it was something not to be questioned—and took Yalessa’s hand to step with shaking legs from the pool. As she did it registered with her how broken this building was. She knew this place. It was the very same building where she’d first seen Ushai in the Shattering.

Another boom shook the building. Atiana allowed Yalessa to put Atiana’s thick winter coat around her shoulders, and then she walked toward the open doorway. The streltsi held their muskets and berdische axes at the ready. They bowed their heads as Atiana approached and stepped outside ahead of her, both with their muskets resting at the top of their axes, ready to set them down and fire should the need arise.

“My Lady,” Yalessa said, “don’t go outside!”

“Wake them,” Atiana replied calmly. “It’s time we leave.”

Yalessa seemed relieved by this. She bowed and moved to comply as Atiana stepped outside and into the adjoining courtyard. Within it were withered trees and a disused garden. Above, there was gray sky, the monotony broken only by the dark forms of windships sliding below the clouds. A dozen circled about one another. Almost directly overhead, cannon smoke belched from the side of one of them. Windwood flew from the hull of the ship it had targeted, the sound of the blast falling upon her moments later.

Debris rained down over the courtyard, and the streltsi pushed her back beneath the overhang.

As chunks of wood pattered onto the stones, Atiana remembered the events she’d seen from within the aether.

Father.

The ceremony at the Spar.

Dozens of her countrymen had been there along with the Kamarisi and his courtiers. Father… Father was dead, but what about the rest? Had they all been killed?

Six streltsi came running into the courtyard, boots stomping, bandoliers rattling in time. Two stopped at the archway that led to the streets of the Shattering. The remaining four continued with Irkadiy at their lead.

“My Lady Princess, we must go. Now.”

“The others aren’t ready.”

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

Atiana turned and found Ishkyna standing in the shadow of the doorway. Ushai was there as well. Both of them looked as if they hadn’t slept in days.

“My Lady,” Yalessa said, holding Atiana’s clothes and motioning to the interior.

No sooner had Atiana nodded her head than musket fire broke out from the archway.

The leg of one of the streltsi standing there buckled. He grunted in pain, aiming and firing his musket. Blood stained his pant leg where it was tucked into his tall leather boot, and then it began to spurt.

“The Kamarisi’s men have come, My Lady.” Irkadiy’s face was hard, but as he glanced toward his man, she saw the pain and worry that roiled just below the surface.

Atiana took time only to pull her boots on. The coat would have to do for now. She pulled it tight around her and cinched the belt and they were off, running toward the courtyard’s other exit.

As they ran into the Shattering, Atiana looked back and saw a dozen janissaries dressed in the red turbans and the black coats of the Kamarisi’s personal guard. One of the soldiers spotted their escape, but he did not shout. He merely whistled and pointed, and his comrades ran up the street, half of them peeling away, heading southward to cut them off.

Irkadiy led them into a round building, a scriptorium. They took the stairs that were just inside the foyer and went up three levels. Shelves were built into the walls, and were visible in many other rooms they saw as they ran. The shelves were largely empty, but every so often she would see a thick book, dusty with mold, and she wondered distantly why those particular books had been abandoned, why they had survived the scavenging that had taken place over the course of generations.