Bradley Beaulieu - The Winds of Khalakovo

Rehada, perhaps feeling the effects of the smoke as well, smiled mischievously and poked Nikandr in the ribs with a slippered foot. “What is she like?”

Nikandr shrugged and leaned into the pillows, knowing he’d already smoked too much for his own good. Part of him wanted to answer Rehada’s question-the part that always wanted to please her-but he didn’t really know what Atiana was like. He couldn’t remember a single time he’d spoken to her when she wasn’t with Mileva and Ishkyna. He knew them only as a single, three-headed beast.

“You’re impossible.” Rehada threw the shisha tube aside and straddled him. Her muscled legs tightened against his waist as her long black hair fell across his chest. She didn’t grind her pelvis like a dock whore would, nor did she lean in and kiss him, though her dark eyes spoke of the desire. Instead she smiled. With the low-burning fire lending her already dark skin a ruddy glow, she was breathtaking. She lowered herself, her breasts pressing against his chest, her cheek brushing his. “Tell me something about her,” she said, her hot breath tickling his ear. She raised herself and regarded him. The gem upon her brow glowed brighter. Nikandr felt his loins and chest heat, and despite himself he began to harden. “Unless you’d rather return home to be alone with your thoughts.”

“I didn’t come to talk about my fiancee.”

“Then why did you come?” “To be with you.” She poked him in the center of his chest. “The truth…” Despite himself, he laughed. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“I know your moods, Nikandr, better than she ever will.”

He paused, wondering if she were right. “A man arrived on a ship today, one we thought lost to the Maharraht. His name is Ashan.”

Surprisingly, Rehada stiffened. “Ashan?”

“Ashan Kida al Ahrumea. He arrived with a curious boy on one of my father’s ships, a ship snatched from the jaws of the Maharraht.”

Rehada stared down at him seriously, saying nothing.

Nikandr chuckled and threw his arms behind his head. “ Now who’s avoiding questions?”

“I should hold your answers hostage until I get mine.”

“But you’re not petty, like me.”

“Few people are…” Before Nikandr could reply, she continued. “I met Ashan once, years ago.”

“The kapitan of the Kroya said he was very powerful. He summoned the winds for days straight to save the ship.”

She nodded. “He is arqesh.”

Nikandr jerked back involuntarily. “He has mastered all five hezhan?”

Rehada stared down with a look that made it clear he had disappointed her. “He has also come to terms with this life and the one that has come before and the one that will come next. He has traveled the world and seen every one of its mysteries. Among all the islands, there are only six like Ashan.”

“You’re saying you would expect no less from a man like him?”

“I’m saying Ashan is closer to vashaqiram than I will ever be, and that I have no right to judge him.”

Vashaqiram was the state of mind all Aramahn searched for. It was complete calm, understanding, forgiveness, and many more things Nikandr did not yet comprehend. It was why they roamed the world as they did, moving constantly from place to place.

Rehada had taken on a look of introspection, one he’d rarely seen from her. She often talked of having given up her quest of wandering the world, of having learned enough to be comfortable on Khalakovo. But he knew better. She too often became like this when faced with tales of travel to the other archipelagos or to the Motherland, Yrstanla.

Rehada’s expression darkened. “Why do you come to me late at night to ask me of a wanderer?”

“I saw him only today, mere hours ago, and I wondered-”

She rolled off of him and set her glass of vodka aside. “There was a time when you came here for me…”

Nikandr stared, confused. “I only thought you might-”

“Your thoughts…” She stood, her face cross. “I see where your thoughts are, son of Iaros. They are not here, nor are they on an arqesh. They are on the Hill, a place you should be now.” She glanced meaningfully at the entrance to her home, waiting for Nikandr to take her meaning.

“I would stay, Rehada.”

“Your wife wouldn’t think so well of that.”

“She’s not my wife.”

“A point she, I fear, would beg to differ.”

He nearly protested, but he had come here for solace, not to fight with a woman he paid for her company. He gathered his things and left without another word, but as Rehada shut the door behind him and the wind howled through the city streets, he found himself not just alone, but lonely-lonelier than he had ever been.

Nikandr treaded through the cavernous hallways of Radiskoye toward his room. The faint and familiar creaks of movement could be heard somewhere in the floors above-Radiskoye in slumber.

When he reached the second floor he paused, seeing light coming from beneath the door of his father’s drawing room. He went to it and opened the door, finding Father seated in a padded armchair, one leg crossed over the other. He was holding the wooden bowl of an ivory-tipped pipe with a stem as long as his forearm. He puffed on it, staring into the dying embers in the nearby fireplace. He looked weary and old, words rarely leveled against him.

An oil painting of Nikandr’s great-great-grandfather stared down from the mantel, his serious face cast with heavy shadows. Gold leaf decorated the room, especially along the wainscoting border and the carved wooden columns above the mantel. To say that it felt ostentatious, especially after the lush simplicity of Rehada’s home, was an understatement, and to Nikandr it felt foreign and familiar, both.

Nikandr moved to his father’s side, kissed his forehead, and took the empty chair.

When Father spoke, it was with a soft voice, contemplative. “Zhabyn came to me today. He was more than passing curious over the ways in which you mean to honor Atiana.”

“Father?”

“He is concerned that his future son will be flying among the islands, chasing after meaningless pursuits.”

Suddenly, Zhabyn’s purpose became clear. The conversation he’d had with Borund where he’d told him about his desire to understand the blight-he must have shared it with his father. “Borund doesn’t understand.” “Neither, it seems, does his father.” “But you do,” Nikandr said. “I do, but we have seen few enough results.” “That will come.”

“How soon, Nischka? This year? The next? Ten years?”

Nikandr wanted to laugh. He wouldn’t be alive in ten years if he didn’t find a cure for the wasting. “We knew it would take time.”

“And by then the blight might have moved on, as it has done with Rhavanki.”

“Can you deny that things are becoming worse, that the next time it returns it may well destroy us?”

“In truth, I know not. What I do know is that we have to protect our family now. This year. And to do that I had to seal your marriage.”

Nikandr shook his head. “What do you mean?”

“Zhabyn and I signed the papers today.”

His words were heavy, and it was clear there was more to the story than this. “And what might have changed Vostroma’s mind so easily?”

For the first time, Father turned to Nikandr. The wiry beard framing the lower half of his face and running down his gold-threaded kaftan gave him a truculent look. “The Malva will be given to them.”

“ My ship?” The Malva was the ship he and Jahalan and Udra had been sailing the last two years to investigate the blight.

“ My ship, Nischka, and I will do with it as I please.”

“I have many things planned.”

Father shook his head, his beard swaying back and forth over his kaftan. “ Nyet. The Malva will be returned to us when the Gorovna is delivered to Vostroman shores, but when it does, you will no longer be given leave to go where you will. I need you to command a wing of the staaya. The Maharraht have become too bold.”