Bradley Beaulieu - The Winds of Khalakovo

Gravlos’s smile faded. He led them away from the doors toward the wooden ponies and workbenches. “It’s been getting worse.” He glanced meaningfully at Nikandr. “Not that I’m complaining. I know the people on the Hill have to eat as well. But some don’t see it that way. They say too much is taken from the city, more than a fair share.”

“Our share is what we take,” Borund said before Nikandr could reply.

Gravlos dropped his gaze. “That’s as may be, My Lord Prince, but there’s enough grumbling stomachs to go about, of that I can assure you.”

Borund opened his mouth to reply, but Nikandr raised his hand. “The blight isn’t something we’ll solve by talking, and we have other things to discuss.”

Gravlos nodded and motioned them toward one of his workbenches, upon which sat a complicated mass of wood and iron. Six cylindrical sections of wood, each of which looked like they’d been sawed cleanly from a windship mast, were connected with an arrangement of iron levers and hinges. It looked like two logs laid across one another with a third skewering them both. A complicated mass of hinges at the very center allowed for free movement of each spar. Nikandr knew it was the Gorovna’s rudder, the very same one he’d shown them on the ship two days earlier.

A healthy rudder, when fixed properly in the center of a ship, would align with the keels, and by using the levers at the helm, the rudders would divert the flow of the aether that ran along them, thus turning the ship in the desired direction. The key was not the outer casing of wood, but the obsidian core enclosed within it.

Nikandr could already see that something wasn’t right. Lying on the table, just beneath one of the exposed pieces, was a pile of black powder and stone that looked to have been purposefully chipped away.

He bent over to inspect it. “Why did you do this?”

“Run your finger over the stone.”

Nikandr had no more than touched one of the exposed faces than a section of it crumbled away, adding to the small pile.

Borund did the same to another section. “Was it inferior?”

Gravlos looked insulted. “ Nyet, My Lord, it was not. I chose the blocks myself and inspected each section carefully after milling.”

Borund seemed less than convinced. “Then what happened?”

Gravlos shrugged. “Rudder stone can crack, but that’s after many years, and typically there are only a handful of fractures. Nothing like this.”

The stone hanging from Nikandr’s neck-hidden beneath his shirt-felt suddenly heavier. Clearly whatever had happened to the rudder had also affected his stone; at the very least they were loosely related. He nearly pulled it out to show Gravlos, to get his opinion, but his father’s words felt like they made more sense now-Borund was an old friend, but he couldn’t be trusted to keep word of it quiet-and so he left the stone where it was. “Could it have been the hezhan?”

“Perhaps.” Gravlos ran one hand over his bald head and shrugged. “Who would know?”

Borund rubbed the obsidian powder between his fingers and stared intently at the sparkle that remained. “Were the keels damaged?”

“ Da, which is why the repairs will take so-”

“We cannot accept a ship such as that, Nikandr.”

“The damage did not travel far,” Gravlos continued. “Less than the length of your hand. We’ll be able to cut the keel and lengthen the rudder to-”

Gravlos was cut off by sounds from the crowd. Their grumbling had grown steadily during their conversation, but it had spiked considerably; men were shouting and several women could be heard screaming over them.

They moved quickly to the front of the workshop to see what was happening. No sooner had Gravlos pulled one of the doors open than the crowd pressed backward. A half-dozen people were forced onto the shallow ramp leading up to Gravlos’s doors.

With his high vantage, Nikandr could see that the streltsi had fanned out around the royal wagon and were using their axes to ward off the crowd. Their breath, coming quickly, blew as smoke upon the cold breeze of the harbor.

“Back!” shouted the desyatnik.

“He stabbed me!” a man screamed. He was bent over, perhaps nursing his leg, but when he pointed to one of the soldiers, steam rose from his blood-coated hand.

Several women continued to shout, shaking their fingers right under the officer’s nose. The crowd pressed in. More joined in, demanding that the rest of the fish be left alone.

It was then that Nikandr realized that there were only five crates on the wagon. Five crates from a ship that would have hauled four dozen only a few years ago.

“Best we stay inside, My Lords,” Gravlos said as he began swinging the door closed.

As soon as he’d said the words, however, one of the streltsi fired his musket into the crowd. A young man with a barrel chest was propelled backward into the older man behind him, his face a look of shock and wonder.

“My son!” screamed the man holding the wounded one. It was a cry that brought the entire scene to a stunned silence.

And then the quay was madness.

Peasants were a hard people, and they weren’t accustomed to asking for handouts, but eventually the strain had become too great, and once it had, they became insistent. They had asked, then begged, then demanded that the city’s Posadnik provide them relief.

With the farmers’ fields stricken as they were, and the fishing so poor, the obvious choice was to buy food from the Empire, but the grain and rice from Yrstanla was by common agreement spread among all the Duchies. Little enough was rationed to each of the nine Duchies; it was cut again for each of Khalakovo’s seven islands, and then again for each of the cities on those islands. Volgorod was Khalakovo’s largest city by far, and so it got the lion’s share, but still, the sacks went quickly as more and more families came for their dole.

The incoming aid-however inadequate it might be-stemmed the tide of discontent, but everyone knew that it would build again, however slowly. And now, here, as the peasants bore witness to the palotza’s hording, Nikandr could feel their anger bubble up and boil over. They stared wide-eyed at the strelet who had fired his musket into the chest of one of their own. They shouted, demanding he set his weapon down and give himself over. Those further back joined in, then further still, the sound of it deafening as the entire crowd began pumping their fists at the sky, screaming for justice.

The meager perimeter the streltsi had managed to maintain collapsed. The desyatnik ordered his men to hold fire, but as the shouting intensified and the man wailed over his dying son, two more shots rang out. One of the streltsi tried to stab with his berdische, but it was grabbed by a pair of men and he was pulled viciously into the crowd.

“Halt!” Nikandr shouted. “By order of your Prince!” But no one heard him. He nearly drew his pistol, but rejected the idea when he realized that firing it would only serve to heighten the chaos.

“Nikandr, come!” Gravlos waited at the doors, motioning for Nikandr to get inside. “There’s nothing we can do here!”

Behind Gravlos stood Borund, pistol in hand, eyeing the crowd warily.

Nikandr stood impotently as another strelet struggled to break away from two men who had grabbed his musket.

And then he turned to the weathered old tun.

“Help me!” he said to Borund and Gravlos as he pushed the left door open. He pulled at the edge of the tun, using all his weight, but it wouldn’t budge. Even with Borund and Gravlos helping, it was clear it wouldn’t tip over.

He ran into the workshop as another shot was fired and the excited commands of the desyatnik were cut short. He scanned the workbenches and the tools hanging on the walls behind them, knowing Gravlos had an axe but not sure where-