Bradley Beaulieu - The Straits of Galahesh

And that, Atiana thought, was as close to an admission that Mother wanted Atiana to return as she was going to get. But it was also a lie. No such thing would happen. First wife or not, a princess of the islands or not, once she was given to Bahett she would be an Yrstanlan wife, meaning she would remain in Baressa until the end of her days.

“I would like that,” Atiana said while fighting back tears.

Atiana, skin already prickling, breath releasing in a thin white fog, stepped into the drowning basin. The ice-cold water came up to her calves. The muscles of her legs tightened like cords drying in the summer sun. The muscles along the bottoms of her feet cramped until she was able to calm herself at last. She was thinking too much about Bahett and Nikandr and not about the task at hand. She forced her muscles to relax and she took in one long breath before accepting the breathing tube offered by her young handmaid, Yalessa. When she sat in the water, she was in control, and the drowning chamber once more felt like an old friend.

“Tea?” Yalessa asked. Her hair was plaited in a circle around her head, making it look like a crown of auburn hair and bright yellow ribbon. As a handmaid, Yalessa was attentive, but she was too free with her thoughts, a habit Atiana had been trying to rid her of.

“Rosehip, I think.”

Yalessa smiled, shivering in the cold of the stone room far below the lowest levels of Palotza Galostina. “Ovolla is making her squash biscuits. Would you like some?”

Atiana smiled, shivering and lowering herself further into the water. How she used to love those biscuits. “The tea will do.”

Yalessa was a good girl, and she thought she was helping, offering Atiana something to comfort her when she returned to the world, but in reality it was dispiriting. Atiana had avoided the dark when she was young, thinking she would never come to love it, but in the years since she’d become a Matra, in name and spirit both. She had come to love the aether, and the tea upon awakening, however grounding it might be, was also a reminder of how long she would be away from the aether once more.

She lowered herself completely, allowing the water to rush over her. She did not enjoy this transition-her body still stiffened to the point of pain-but she had long since grown accustomed to it, and she had learned how to relax herself once completely submerged.

She exhaled through the tube, releasing all the breath she could manage before drawing air with a slow, measured pace. After her lungs were full near to bursting, she exhaled again and drew breath with a pace that was slower still. She repeated this several times, breathing in and out, in and out, and soon… Soon…

She drifts. Drifts from her body in the basin. Allows the currents of the aether to take her. She watches Yalessa as she frets about the room, but the souls of those scattered around the palotza, especially those she touched stones with recently, draw her upward, outward, until the entirety of the palotza-even nearby structures-fills her mind. They dance blue in the black of the aether.

The currents shift. It feels distant, however, and ancient, as if the bones of the earth are calling her from some hidden, faraway vale.

Like a spider along its web, she shifts her perception, moves subtly and swiftly toward the disturbance. Soon she finds Sayyesh, her father’s most trusted qiram, adjusting the winds to drive a skiff toward the palotza’s small, northern eyrie.

As she looks upon him, his drawing of the winds causes tufts of white smoke to drift against the deep, dark blue of the aether. The color is a telltale sign of a havaqiram. The disturbance she felt must have been him, but it didn’t feel that way.

But she can no longer sense it. Only Sayyesh.

It must have been him, she thinks.

She pulls herself away, expanding her mind and drawing upon the currents that run toward and away from the spire. She aligns herself with the spire’s tone, its pitch. Like pulling a rope taut she strengthens it, aligns the currents with the other islands in the archipelago and even beyond, to Nodhvyansk, to Dhalingrad, to Khalakovo. And to the spire at the southern end of Galahesh.

Her tasks take hours, and when she is done, she is tired, but there is time now to wander, to watch. She pulls her consciousness home, dragging herself away from the immensity of the islands. It is discomforting-such is the lure of the aether-but the aether is no child to be trifled with. She cannot linger when her mind is spread so wide. If she does she risks becoming lost, no matter how many years of experience she has in the drowning basin.

As the bulk of Galostina looms before her, she cannot help but think of Lord Bahett and his mission and the pending marriage that lies between them like a gauntlet. There are parallels with her journey to Khalakovo five years ago, but that was a marriage within the Grand Duchy-she knew from an early age to expect such things. Her pending marriage to Bahett is a thing of her own making, and yet she feels foolish, as if she is making a grave mistake, despite the benefits the marriage would bring.

She wanders to the wing the men from Yrstanla have been given. Mother declared them off-limits-they have ways of telling if they’re being spied upon, she said-but she doesn’t care. Whether it was her decision or not, she would see what sort of man he is.

As she draws closer to his room-the walls only subtly visible in the darkness of the aether-she finds him awake. He sits at a desk, a quill in his hand, but he isn’t writing, at least not at the moment. He merely taps the quill against the paper, over and over again, in a distinct rhythm, as if a concerto is playing absently in his mind.

She comes closer and reads not the flowing script of Yrstanla, but of Anuskaya. As the words register, she becomes cold-more chill than the drowning basin could ever make her.

How many nights must I wait? the words on the paper said. Come, Atiana. We must speak.

Before the words can sink in, Atiana senses another Matra nearby. She recognizes the presence immediately as Saphia. Atiana isn’t sure how long Saphia has been here, but there can be no doubt she’s read the note as well.

Atiana reaches out, strengthens their bond. Saphia could stop it at any time, but she allows it. As much as Atiana has grown over these years, Saphia has grown stronger. She was the strongest of the Matri already, but her time in the lake deep in the village of Iramanshah has somehow tempered her even further. At times, her powers seem to dwarf Atiana’s. And yet, as strong as her mind is, her body has grown frail. Just as Atiana can faintly feel her own body in the drowning chamber of Galostina, she can feel Saphia’s in the lake of Iramanshah. She is thin, weak, barely able to remain awake when she allows herself to leave the cold depths of the water.

A beautiful man, is Bahett, Saphia says.

You should not have come, Atiana replies. The others may sense you.

So you always say, but they have not once sensed me, not when I’ve meant them to look past. They are ham-fisted children, Atiana, and it’s best you come to realize that. Now come. There is something else you must see.

Atiana feels a pull on her soul. She is drawn away from Galostina, away from Kiravashya, away from Vostroma. She is pulled northward toward Galahesh. She had seen the city from the aether only once before, years ago, and only at the behest of her mother. She did not stay long because it was difficult then, but now, she is at relative ease.

There is danger, however. The aether swirls here, and the closer she comes to the straits that run through the center of the island, the more difficult it becomes, until at last she can go no further.