When the sun rose on Nikandr’s fifth day on the wind, he saw near the horizon-as he had on the four previous mornings-the telltale sign of Ashan’s skiff. He had come to understand that Ashan was allowing himself to be followed. Three times on the first day Jahalan had summoned all the winds he dared in an attempt to catch up to the skiff, but every time they closed in, the winds would push them away. They had tried again the following day, hoping Ashan was tiring, but the same thing happened, and by this time Jahalan was nearing exhaustion. Nikandr thought they would lose the skiff, but it always stayed just on the edge of sight, a dark speck on the cloudy white horizon.
“Are we to make another go, My Lord?”
This came from Viggen, a spry old sailor taking a turn at the helm. Nikandr had flown with him several times. He was an able sailor. More than able. Nikandr counted himself lucky that he’d been among those helping on the eyrie, but he hadn’t counted on how superstitious the man would be. Sailors were a superstitious lot to begin with, but Viggen was worse than most. He hadn’t taken the attack by the Maharraht lightly, and he considered it unlucky to take sail with so many having just died and the ship still steaming from the fire that had only just been put out.
Viggen and the crew grumbled about how bad it was the entire next day-never to Nikandr directly, but amongst themselves and within earshot. Their fears, it seemed, were confirmed near sundown. A twinkling along the eastern horizon had drawn Udra’s attention.
“That is a ship,” she said simply, “or I am an old gray gull.”
A chill went down Nikandr’s frame as Viggen and the five other men who weren’t sleeping belowdecks spit downwind over the gunwale. Somehow, despite their precautions and the relative darkness, they had been spotted leaving the island. Nikandr looked up to the Gorovna’s starward mainmast. Its sails had been burned beyond repair. Even with them gone they might have foiled the pursuit, but they were chasing Ashan, and he had kept a steady course, west by southwest. There was really no choice in direction, and the trailing ship would know this by now.
So the chase continued.
“We’ll make another go,” Nikandr said to Viggen, “though I doubt the outcome will be any different.”
Viggen lowered his voice so that only Nikandr could hear. “Begging your pardon, My Lord Prince, but do you still think it’s worth it?”
“There are grand things at work,” Nikandr said just as softly, “things neither of us understand.”
“As you say, My Lord.”
Nikandr glanced toward the bow with purpose and waited until Viggen did the same. “That boy is at the center of them.” Nikandr coughed. “Better if we find the storm before it descends upon us unannounced.”
He started to cough, hoping to stem the tide that would surely follow, but just as it had at random times over the past three days, the cough devolved into a fit that gripped his chest tightly until he felt like he could give no more. Only then did it recede, leaving him exhausted for hours on end, and just when he thought he had recovered, it would happen again.
Udra did him a favor without knowing it. She said it was because of the fire, that it would soon pass, and Viggen agreed. “My brother was caught in a fire like that when he was a child. He coughed every day of his life until he died at fourteen.”
Nikandr thanked him not to repeat the story. He knew, of course, that it was the wasting, but it had grown markedly worse since leaving Khalakovo. Shortly before the coughing began he would feel a constriction upon his heart. It would skip a beat, perhaps two, and the coughing would begin. As the fit progressed, he could feel the noose tightening around his heart until finally it was released. Soon after the coughing would cease.
He pulled out his soulstone and stared into its cracked, smoky depths. He knew that the progression of the disease and the state of his stone were somehow related. He had thought for a long time that the stone was merely a canvas, painted with the events of his life, but now he knew differently. The stone, more and more over the years, was becoming a part of him-little different than his heart, his stomach, his liver. He also knew that the blight was in some way related. Things had grown progressively worse over the past decade, and this phenomenon, he had no doubt, would not have been possible in years past. The world was changing. And Nasim was the key to unlocking that riddle.
On the sixth day, with the sun high but occasionally hidden by passing clouds, Nikandr sat on deck, his back to the gunwale, biting into the hardtack biscuits that were their only provisions besides weak ale. Jahalan had been summoning the winds, coaxing them into the right direction, perhaps attempting to feel for the location of the trailing ship, which had shown itself several hours ago, closer than it had been in the morning. Nikandr realized he could no longer see Ashan’s skiff. He took the telescope from the helm and moved to the bowsprit. He scanned the horizon, but found nothing.
“Jahalan, where is he?”
Jahalan opened his eyes. He was nearly sleeping on his feet. He rushed to the bow and took the telescope from Nikandr. “I don’t know,” he said after sweeping the horizon.
They thought perhaps he was hiding among the clouds, but Ashan had never veered from his straightforward course. Had Nikandr been wrong all along? Had Ashan been toying with them in order to more easily lose them later?
Nyet. That made no sense. Ashan was arqesh; had he wanted to he could have lost them that first night.
Perhaps, then, he had changed his mind. Or perhaps he had finally realized that the Gorovna had been followed and it was too risky to lead Nikandr any further.
“Ship, ho!”
No sooner had the words come from the boatswain than the sound of a cannon broke across the stillness of the afternoon. Nikandr heard the whine of the grapeshot beneath the ship and a tight cluster of audible pops as it punctured one of the seaward sails. A moment later, the ship twisted counterclockwise, the telltale sign that the shot had ripped a sizable hole in the canvas.
Abaft and above, exiting a thick bank of white clouds, was the Vostroman ship. How it had gained on them so much Nikandr didn’t know, but they were in for it now. Their position gave the Vostroman ship many options and the Gorovna few.
Nikandr took over the helm’s controls. Udra was already sitting ahead of the controls, cross-legged, eyes closed and palms flat against the decking.
“Bring us down, Udra. Quickly. Viggen, prepare the cannon. Jahalan…”
“ Da,” Jahalan said as he moved to the mainmast. Once there, he opened his arms, and the alabaster gem on his brow glowed brighter. The winds gathered strength as another cannon shot rang out. This one crashed into the hull, a poor shot-they had most likely been told to take the Gorovna intact, along with her crew.
Nikandr tilted the ship downward. With Udra suppressing the windwood’s ability to stay afloat and Jahalan’s winds, they were already picking up considerable speed, but the trailing ship-Nikandr recognized it now as the Kavda, a swift eight-masted caravel-was already closing the distance.
Viggen and the boatswain manned the cannon at the bow. They trained it upward, and it roared to life, but even as Nikandr heard a satisfying crunch as the shot tore into their hull, two more blasts ripped into the Gorovna’s landward mainsail.
“Give them wind, Jahalan!”
“They have two havaqiram.” Jahalan’s voice was calm, but his words were clipped, the muscles along his neck straining.
The wind-heading strong two points off the bow-swirled about the ship.
“I can’t stop them!” Jahalan said, his face becoming red, his hands bunched now into tight fists.
The ship was slowing. The winds were too unpredictable to capture. Soon they would be dead in the wind, helpless to stop the Kavda as they lowered grappling hooks and took the Gorovna in for the kill.
Suddenly the air began to mist, and the temperature dropped from cool to frigid. In mere moments Nikandr was drenched.
“What are you doing?”
“It isn’t me,” Jahalan replied.
He thought at first it was the qiram aboard the Kavda, but their wind masters wouldn’t do such a thing-the effect would be too debilitating to their line of sight.
A frigid gust cut windward across the ship, and then-as suddenly as it had come-it was gone. It blew again, and vanished. Nikandr could barely see Jahalan, who stood only four paces away, but he could still see the look of confusion on his face.
“I think we are beckoned,” Nikandr said.
“Ashan?”
“Who else?”
Another cannon blast cut through the fog and tore into the decking at the stern. A man screamed, the sounds cutting through the fog like a knife.
Another shot came moments later, and Nikandr realized the Kavda was using the sound to target them.
“All quiet!” Nikandr shouted. “Viggen, shut that man up!”
“Aye, My Lord.”
The gust came again, blowing in the same direction, as a cannon shot ripped through the landward foresail.
Nikandr stared down at the levers that allowed him to guide the bearing of the ship. He knew the situation was untenable. Even with the mist, the Kavda would soon correct their speed, they would close, and it would all be over.
His breath came slowly, and he felt his fingers tingle as he realized what the wind was telling him to do. He could release the ship’s controls. The wind would carry them northward, toward uncharted territory. It was a decision that would wrest them from the jaws of the Kavda, but it was one that could ruin them just the same. If he did this, the Gorovna would slip free of the currents that ran between the islands, the currents that had been meticulously groomed and guided by the spires and by the delicate hand of the Matri over centuries. Outside of these shipping lanes, the aether swirled and eddied as unpredictably as it did at the base of the eyrie’s cliffs. Worse-the effect was often stronger, the aether swirling into unforgiving maelstroms that would rip the ship to pieces were Nikandr to engage the ship’s controls once more.
Once free of the stream that ran between the Khalakovan and Vostroman archipelagos, they would be forced to rely on the abilities of Jahalan to guide the ship like the Aramahn did in their tiny skiffs.
But really, despite his fears, there was no choice in this. If he didn’t, the Kavda would have them.
Before he could change his mind, he pushed all three levers forward until they locked into place, and the ship began to turn and drift windward.