CHAPTER 18

Kuzko and Andrei sailed the Swallow into harbor at Varangaya, close to the wide mouth of the Nieva estuary.

The port was famous for its flourishing leather and fur trade—and yet there, among the merchantmen anchored in the harbor, towered a Tielen warship, a standard of sky-blue and gold glittering from its topmost mast in the gusting sea wind.

“See that?” Kuzko jerked his thumb toward the ship. “That’s the flag of the new empire. Though it looks like the old Tielen flag to me.”

They tied up with other little boats at the far end of the quay, well away from the big ships. The sun was setting beneath a low-hanging canopy of dark grey cloud, and the last streaks of green and gold lit the harbor buildings with a strange, lurid glow.

“Wind’s on the turn,” said Kuzko, sniffing the air. “You can only smell the tanneries when it’s blowing from the north.”

The stink of rotting herring mingled with the raw reek of hides from the tanneries made Andrei’s eyes water.

“Ever been to Gadko’s?” asked Kuzko. Andrei shook his head. “That’s where we’re bound with our little ‘delivery.’ ”

 

At last, Kuzko’s business was concluded and the barrels handed over with a nod, a wink, and a secret handshake.

The taproom at Gadko’s was dark and overheated, the air a dingy yellow fug of tobacco smoke. Andrei followed Kuzko as the stocky old man elbowed his way through the throng of drinkers: shaven-headed merchants from Khitari, traders, Tielen sailors on shore leave. In his worn coat and seaboots, he was indistinguishable from any other fisherman.

He was tired. So tired his bones ached. He had overestimated his stamina, and the limp in his shattered leg had become more pronounced as the day wore on. He slumped down in a darkened alcove away from the firelight and rubbed it hard, as if the friction would lessen the dragging, bone-deep ache.

“Here you are, lad.” Gadko placed a frothing mug of hot cumin-spiced ale in front of him. “On the house. That’ll set you right.”

“Thanks.” Andrei drank it down, feeling the heat seep into his body, dulling the nagging pain.

In the corner closest to the fire, an old man started to croon a Muscobar love song, tapping out a rhythm with the bowl of his pipe against his mug. Another took up a balalaika and began to strum along. One by one, others set down their mugs and joined in; even Kuzko added his rusty bass to the refrain until the smoky air vibrated with their voices.

“Silence in the name of the Emperor!”

A gust of wet night air blew in. Andrei glanced up and saw that five burly Tielen sailors had entered the tavern. They all brandished clubs.

“I said silence!”

The balalaika chords stopped abruptly, but the singers continued on for a bar or two before their voices trailed away.

A man in a neat grey uniform came forward into the firelight. He carried a gold-tipped officer’s baton.

“Shore leave is canceled. All crewmen are to return to the Olava straightaway.”

A general groan arose. The five heavies began to push their way into the crowd, clubs raised menacingly.

“The Emperor has promised extra rum rations for every man who is on board within the hour. . . .”

One by one, Tielen sailors emerged, making their way reluctantly toward the open door.

“I’ve plenty of rum here!” came a slurred voice from near the fire. “Tell the Emperor what he can do with his extra rations—”

Jostling ensued. A man suddenly went flying across the floor, to land in an ungainly tangle of arms and legs near the door. Two of the Tielen crewmen scooped him up and dragged him out into the night; Andrei could hear him swearing and protesting as they hustled him across the quay.

The Tielen sailors made one last tour of the tavern, glowering at anyone who stood in their way.

“Shore leave canceled?” Andrei had sensed tension in the air. “Is Muscobar under attack?”

“Careful, lad,” cautioned Kuzko.

But Andrei no longer cared who heard him. “What’s going on?” He slammed his ale mug down on the table. Heads turned. Suddenly he became aware that everyone was staring at him.

“Time to go, Tikhon.” Kuzko rose and began apologizing loudly. “You’ll have to excuse my boy. He was injured in the recent fighting. He gets confused sometimes. . . .”

 

Eugene woke with a start. It was not yet dawn, but his soldier’s instincts told him it was time to rise. He went to the window and drew back the heavy folds of blue velvet to gaze out at the wide Nieva, a faint glimmer in the fading night.

The Southern Fleet had set sail for Smarna. The rebellion would be crushed before it had a chance to spread. He had ordered that no news of the uprising be published in Muscobar until the citadel was back under Tielen command and Armfeld released. He had little doubt that the rebels, poorly armed and untrained, would soon surrender under the barrage of Tielen cannon.

So why did he feel this continuing sense of unease about the whole affair? Gustave, pragmatic as ever, had murmured to him that his misgivings were a natural reaction to this first challenge to his rule as Emperor.

“There will always be a few who resist your authority,” Gustave had said calmly, “and you must be prepared for such rebellions. Even the Great Artamon had to put down the uprising in Khitari when Khan Konchak sacked his garrison at Lake Taigal and executed his tax collectors. . . .”

But he needed Smarna. In his father’s day, Smarna had proved a vital defensive link in driving back the Francian war fleet.

He went back to the window. A fresh, pale spring light sheened the eastern horizon. The spires of the city churches glimmered like spears of gold piercing the rising mists. The sun would shine on Mirom today—but what was the weather like out in the treacherous Straits where the fleet was assembling?

“So when do we set sail?” asked a sleepy voice from the bed. Astasia had woken up.

Eugene stopped pacing a moment. “ ‘Set sail’?” The question came out more irascibly than he had intended, and he saw her blink almost as if he had shouted at her.

“For Karila’s party.”

He had forgotten Karila’s birthday! He had been so preoccupied with the worsening situation in Smarna that it had slipped his mind. He saw that Astasia was looking at him, waiting for his reply, and he felt a stab of guilt.

I promised Kari we would come home to Swanholm. She was too ill to attend the coronation; how can I break my word now?

“She’s expecting us to be there.”

My only daughter is growing up, and I have not been there to share these precious weeks with her. A deeper-buried fear still nagged him. And if her health continues to give cause for concern, these weeks may become all the more precious. . . .

 

“Wind’s tricky this morning,” Kuzko said as they left the shelter of the harbor and ventured into open sea. “Weather’s on the turn.”

The waves were choppy, flecked with milky foam.

“Shall we wait for fair weather?” Andrei glanced uneasily up at the cloudy sky.

“Na,” said Kuzko. “I’ve handled my Swallow in worse.”

A strong gusting crosswind suddenly caught in the patched sail and tilted the little Swallow, lifting her prow right out of the water. A great Tielen warship was sailing toward them and they were being blown right into her path.

“Tikhon!” yelled Kuzko, leaping to tug on the ropes.

The tall warship’s ironclad prow cut a swirling furrow through the grey-green water, towering high above them, drenching them with cold spray. Andrei grabbed hold of the tiller and pulled with all his strength.

“Harder!” Kuzko roared through the din of the churning waters.

“The wind’s against us,” Andrei yelled back. All his efforts seemed in vain. They were being driven right beneath the warship’s prow; they would be smashed to matchwood.

“No use,” he cried. “I can’t control her! I can’t—”

A jagged flicker, lightning-blue, burst in his brain and went fizzing down into his arms, his hands. Suddenly he felt his muscles pulsing with strength. He tugged at the tiller.

The Swallow bucked and yawed wildly. The cresting wake caught her and spun her aside.

“Hold fast!” Kuzko’s voice carried faintly to him as a wave drenched the deck. Blinded by the water, Andrei gripped the tiller, leaning into it with the weight of his whole body until he could shake the wetness from his hair, his stinging eyes.

“I’ve got her!” he cried, voice raw with triumph. “We’ve made it! We’ve—”

Only then did he see the second shadow looming up to their left. Another warship in full sail, bearing down on them fast. To the lookouts on high, the little fishing boat beneath their bows would be invisible in this wind-whipped sea.

Kuzko stood, mouth agape, staring up at the mighty ship.

“Jump, old man!” Andrei let go the tiller and flung himself at Kuzko, trying to push him over the side into the sea.

The second warship smashed into the Swallow. Andrei was flung into the sea even as he grabbed at Kuzko. Splintered timbers flew up into the air. And then there came the hollow roar of the sea as Andrei went under. Freezing water squeezed the breath from his body. Blackness flooded his mind. He came up again, choking on the salt-bitter water, arms flailing, gasping for air.

“Kuzko! Kuzko!” Against the crash of the waves, his voice was as thin as a seagull’s cry. He trod water, trying to stay afloat as the wash from the great ships came billowing back toward him. Now he saw there was a third—and a fourth approaching close behind. A war fleet. If they weren’t drowned, they’d be crushed by the heavy vessels.

“An—drei . . .” The cry was so faint he scarcely heard it. Turning his head, he caught sight of Kuzko clinging to a plank, grey head just above the water.

“I’m coming!” He took in a lungful of salty air and struck out toward him. “Hang on!”

 

Skar tramped up the winding stair in the Iron Tower to check on the progress of his patient. Twenty-One’s condition had been giving him some cause for concern. He had developed a slow-burning fever since the operation, and had been alternately mumbling and shouting out incoherently. Often he pawed at the dressings on his head, picking at them, then tearing them off as if they were some kind of infected scab.

Skar unlocked the cell door and placed a lantern on the table.

“Bright. Too bright.” Twenty-One rolled away from the light, muttering and hiding his eyes.

“I’ve brought your medicine,” Skar said.

“No—more—medicine.” His speech was badly distorted.

“I’ve mixed it with honey to make it taste good,” Skar said patiently, as if humoring a child.

Twenty-One peered out at him suspiciously from behind his fingers. His skin glistened with a feverish sheen and his eyes burned overbright in their darkened sockets. With his shaven head, crisscrossed with half-healed scars, and sunken cheeks, he looked to Skar like one of the damned.

“Here. Drink it all down.”

Twenty-One’s hands shook so much that Skar took back the glass and held it to the man’s lips himself. He still seemed unable to drink properly, and some of the willow-bark infusion dribbled out down the side of his chin.

“Bitter,” he mumbled.

And then his head jerked up and his whole body went rigid. He seemed to be listening with great concentration.

“Help me!” he cried out. He lurched off the bed and half-fell, half-shambled, one leg dragging, head raised toward the barred window.

Skar watched, fascinated. He had heard nothing.

Twenty-One raised one shaking hand toward the bars.

“Can you—hear me?” His body, exhausted by the effort, gave way and he fell to the floor.

“It—is—close by,” he said as Skar tried to hoist him back onto the bed. “Why doesn’t it answer me? It is—so close.”

And then he started to weep: great gulping sobs. “I—cast it out. It—will never come back. Never. Never.”

Skar found himself embarassed by this uncontrolled display of emotion. He picked up the lantern and withdrew, leaving the damaged man wailing and cursing.

 

Andrei struggled against the pull of the current and the dragging undertow from the wake of the Tielen fleet. He did not ask where this extraordinary burst of strength came from; he just fought the waves. He had nearly drowned once before. He was not going to let the sea claim him again.

Kuzko’s head bobbed closer. Andrei made a grab for him. Kuzko’s face was pallid with cold and fear and his eyes rolled wildly in his head.

“Catch hold of me!” Andrei tried to roll onto his back so that he could begin to pull Kuzko along with him, his face tipped upward, out of the freezing water. But Kuzko clung grimly to his plank. “Let go.”

“My Swallow,” Kuzko gasped.

“Let her go.” A wave smacked into them and they went under. Andrei dragged Kuzko back up, coughing out a lungful of seawater. Glancing behind he saw a fifth warship sailing toward them, white sails filled with the wind, cutting through the bucking waves.

“Help me.” Andrei closed his eyes, not knowing to what power he was praying, only that he could see no way to swim clear of the clean, cruel might of the metal-clad prow, churning the waves to foam.

Deep within him, he felt something stir. His heart twisted then cracked open within his breast. Stars exploded across his vision. A wordless cry burst from his mouth as a dark whirlwind enveloped him.

The warship ploughed on toward them, carving its foaming furrow through the waves. Andrei gave one last desperate tug at Kuzko’s waterlogged body, trying to lift him from its path.

And suddenly they were rising, water cascading from their sodden clothes, rising from the sea as the great ship’s prow hit the plank.

Andrei found himself hovering above the waves, clinging onto Kuzko’s dangling body.

“Make for land.”

Land. He cast around—and saw a flat grey shoreline beneath a rugged headline a mile or so away.

“I can’t; it’s too far—”

“Don’t fight me!”

The voice urged him onward.

Wingbeats echoed in his head, throbbed through his whole body. Dark wings bore him upward, onward across the sea. His dazed mind was dazzled with a sparkle of stars. Was he drowning—and dreaming with his last conscious thoughts before the sea took his life from him? Or had a dark angel swooped down to bear him and Kuzko to the Ways Beyond?

 

“So how is he?” Baltzar asked, sliding back the observation shutter in Twenty-One’s door and peering in.

“Worse,” Skar said bluntly.

Twenty-One lay unmoving on the bed.

“Since his last outburst, he’s lapsed into a stupor. Nothing seems to rouse him. It’s almost as if he’s given up the will to live.”

Baltzar frowned at the prisoner.

“And the infection?”

“The wounds are healing cleanly on the outside. But I fear the infection has gone deep and invaded his brain.”

Baltzar snapped the shutter closed.

“And what will we tell his imperial highness if he dies on us?”

“Would his imperial highness care?” said Skar with a shrug. “Plenty of prisoners die before their sentences are up. Prison air is not so wholesome. Diseases spread too rapidly for us to control.”

Baltzar had been biting his lip. He knew this prisoner was different from the rest, life sentence or no. He knew the Emperor was still interested in his progress. Had his medical experiments gone too far this time?

“He could have caught typhus,” Skar said.

“Yes,” Baltzar said, nodding. “An outbreak of typhus. Tell the other warders to avoid this part of the tower and tell them why. We can’t have a major outbreak on our hands. We’ll keep this one in quarantine. Then if the inevitable happens—”

“A lime burial to avoid the infection spreading.”

“A hygienic necessity.”

 

Two passengers on the deck of the Francian ship following close in the wake of the Tielen war fleet saw the little fishing boat crushed by the man-o’-war. As the captain dispatched a rescue party and the Francian sailors lowered a rowboat, the passengers watched from the rail of the upper deck.

“Jagu.” The woman clutched at her companion’s arm, pointing. “Look. What in God’s name is that?”

Jagu raised the eyeglass he had been using to observe the Tielen fleet and focused it on the wreck of the fishing boat.

“Whatever it is, it’s not of this world.” He passed her the glass.

“There were two men in the water. Now I see only one—and that abomination.”

The sailors were gaining on the wreckage now.

“The angelstone,” urged the woman. “Use the angelstone.”

Jagu pulled out a crystal pendant from inside his shirt and held it up high. The clear crystal muddied and turned black as ink.

“A warrior-daemon,” the woman whispered, “from the Realm of Shadows. This could be the one. If only Abbot Yephimy had not been so stubborn, we could have had Sergius’s Staff . . .”

“Turn back!” yelled Jagu to the rowers, but they were too far away to hear his voice.

 

“Twenty-One. Can you hear me?” Skar bent over the prisoner. There was no response. He lifted the man’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. When he found it, it was so faint and irregular it was hardly there. He looked so gaunt, his skin grey and pallid, his eyes sunken in their bruised sockets. Days of fever had exhausted him; his weakened body had no resources left to fight the infection in his brain.

Skar stood up and gazed at his patient. That rattling, wheezing sound in the throat did not bode well at all.

Twenty-One was dying. He must alert Director Baltzar.

And then he thought he heard the prisoner whisper something through cracked, dry lips. At first it sounded like nothing more than a guttural sigh. But then he thought he heard a name, though it was no name he recognized. Probably nothing more than the last jumbled utterances of a fractured mind.

“Drakhaoul . . . help me . . .”

 

The black-winged daemon halted in midair as though listening. It shuddered.

Suddenly it let out a wailing cry, inhuman and desolate. Then it began to plummet toward the waves, losing its hold on its human burden.

“Does it sense us?” Jagu said. “Does it know we are near?”

For a moment daemon and man disappeared below the surface. Then a whirlpool began to churn the waves. The sailors shouted out and cursed, gripping the sides of the rowboat as it was thrown sideways, almost capsizing. And out of the spinning water, Jagu and Celestine saw a shadow rise, dark as smoke, and speed away, low across the waves.

 

Andrei hit the water. The force of the impact knocked the breath from his body.

Blackness.

And then he was being lifted by many hands, strong hands, and let down onto the wooden boards of a ship.

He dragged himself to his knees, retching up a lungful of briny water. He was freezing, drenched to the skin, shivering till his teeth clacked together—but somehow still alive.

His rescuers returned, carrying someone else. They laid their burden down beside him. Pushing his wet hair out of his eyes, he saw Kuzko lying next to him, inert, limp, unbreathing.

“Kuzko!” Andrei prized the old man’s mouth open and tried to blow his own warm breath into him. After a while, exhausted with the effort, he sat back on his heels and pressed on Kuzko’s still rib cage in the hope of forcing it into some semblance of movement. The old sailor’s head lolled back, mouth gaping.

“Come on, Kuzko!” Andrei laid his head against the damp chest, listening for a heartbeat. “Don’t desert me now, old man!”

It was no use. Somewhere between the sea and the ship, Kuzko’s spirit had fled its body. All his frantic efforts had been in vain.

Andrei laid Kuzko’s body down on the deck and with clumsy, numbed fingers, closed his eyes.

One of the sailors came up and wrapped a blanket around Andrei’s shoulders. Andrei’s heart felt as though drenched with a cold and bleak despair. Kuzko had saved him from the sea. Why had he not been able to save him in return? And how could he break the news to Irina? First the sea had taken her son, and now her husband.

He crouched down beside Kuzko’s still body and wept.

 

Shadow-wings, fast beating outside the Iron Tower . . .

“Who’s . . . there?”

Eyes glimmered in Gavril’s cell, blue as starlight. And something blacker than darkness itself reared up, towering above his bed.

“You called to me, Gavril Nagarian.”

“Dra—khaoul?” So many times he had dreamed this, and now he was so weak he could hardly whisper the words he wanted to say. He tried to lift one hand to welcome his banished daemon, but the effort was too great and his hand flopped back uselessly onto the bed.

“What have they done to you?”

“I—don’t know. So weak. So wrong—”

“You could not live with me—and now you cannot live without me.”

“Take me. Take me away from this terrible place.”

The Drakhaoul enfolded him—close, closer—until he was drowning in an ecstasy of shadows.

“Now you are mine again, Gavril. Now we act, we think, as one.”

His sight blurred, then cleared. He could see again.

“Where shall we go?”

“Home . . .” Gavril’s heart burned with a sudden longing. “My home.”

“To Azhkendir?”

“No . . . to Smarna.”

 

Skar was crossing the inner courtyard on his way to check on his dying patient when he saw the skies darken. Stormclouds were blowing toward them across the Iron Sea. A sudden cold wind whined about the asylum walls. Then blue lightning shivered across the sky and struck the Iron Tower.

Skar felt the shock as if it had pierced his body. He dropped to one knee, gasping.

Director Baltzar ran out into the courtyard. He gripped Skar by the shoulders, pulling him to his feet. “What in God’s name—” he shouted above the whine of the wind, pointing to the tower.

Skar looked up. Stormclouds, black and electric-blue, swirled about the top of the tower. Little crackles of energy lit the darkness. “A lightning ball?” he shouted back.

A sudden explosion rocked the tower. The iron bars burst asunder and stones rained down into the courtyard. Skar pushed the astonished Baltzar out of the way just as a huge block of masonry crashed down where they had been standing. Other warders hurried out into the yard, roused by the commotion.

Skar raised his eyes to gaze at the broken tower. For a moment he saw—or thought he saw—a great winged creature, darker than the rolling stormclouds, launch itself from the jagged top of the tower and go skimming off across the dark sea.

He blinked, rubbing his lightning-dazzled eyes.

The clouds were dispersing, blowing away as swiftly as they had come.

“The p-prisoner,” stammered Director Baltzar. “Twenty-One. No one could have survived a direct lightning strike.”

The tower stair was strewn with rubble. Twenty-One’s door had been blown off its hinges. Through the doorway they could see daylight and feel the fresh breeze off the sea.

Skar gingerly entered the room and found himself staring at the open sky through a great gaping hole blasted in the tower wall. All the roof tiles had gone and only a few broken beams remained overhead. Scorch marks blackened the stones. Wind whistled through the gap.

“Where is he, Skar?” asked Director Baltzar, gripping hold of the doorframe. His face was pale as gruel. “Where is our prisoner?”

 

The imperial barque lay at anchor on the River Gate quay; Eugene could see the New Rossiyan standard fluttering from her topmast. All was ready for the voyage to Tielen. And yet he still lingered here in his study, reluctant to leave for no good reason that he could explain to himself.

If we don’t sail soon, we’ll be late for Kari’s birthday celebrations. But sending her birthday greetings through the Vox Aethyria would prove a poor substitute. What kind of father am I?

If only there was some news from Smarna. If only he had been able to take command of the whole operation himself. It was not that he didn’t trust Janssen; it was just that he preferred to be with his troops, in the heart of the action. And then there was this odd sense of foreboding that had troubled him all day. Premonition, or seasoned soldier’s intuition? Whichever, it had never deceived him in the past.

“Highness.”

Eugene did not even turn from the window; he recognized Gustave’s voice.

“Yes, yes, they’re waiting for me. I’m on my way.”

“There’s some new intelligence just arrived. From Arnskammar.”

“Arnskammar?” Eugene spun abruptly around. “Let me see.”

It was a letter, sealed with the official seal of the Asylum Director. Eugene cracked open the seal and hastily scanned Director Baltzar’s neat handwriting:

To his imperial highness, Eugene, Emperor of New Rossiya.

It is with the utmost regret that I write to inform you of the demise of the prisoner known as Twenty-One. A terrible storm hit the coast and lightning made a direct strike on the Iron Tower in which the prisoner was confined.

Eugene lowered the paper slowly, not bothering to read the rest.

“Gavril Nagarian, dead?” he said softly. “Can this be true? Or is this some new piece of Azhkendi spirit-mischief, designed to deceive us?” He looked at Gustave, who stood patiently waiting for instructions.

“No one must know of this,” he said, “not until I have had it verified by independent investigators. Send a letter to Baltzar informing him that no one in the prison is to breathe a word of this on pain of death.”

Gustave bowed and hurried away.

But if what Baltzar writes is true, then I have lost the last surviving link to the Drakhaoul and its arcane origins. . . .

“I need verification,” he said aloud. “Proof that Nagarian is truly dead. Proof, if need be, from the Ways Beyond.”