The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) by Bradley Beaulieu Page A

girl slipped off through the smokehouse crowd and Dahud turned back to them. “But a moment… Now, where were we?”
    “The boy,” Ashan said. “You’ll ask after him?”
    Dahud nodded. “You’ll stay for a day or two, won’t you?”
    “We leave in the morning,” Nikandr replied.
    For the first time Dahud gave Nikandr serious consideration. “Why, if you’ll forgive the question, are two from the islands here in the desert? This boy must owe you much to come searching so far.”
    “ Neh ,” Nikandr replied. “It is I who owe him much.”
    “Ah.” Dahud’s face became more serious. “I’ve some of those debts myself.” Dahud rose in one smooth motion and bowed deeply to them, doffing his embroidered cap as he did so. “Let me find what I can while you take your rest and prepare for the days ahead.”
    Ashan stood and hugged him. “We would be grateful.”
    “One of my boys will take you to your room.” And with that he left.
    Nikandr looked back to the corner where the large, scarred man had been sitting, but he was no longer there. A boy of twelve or thirteen came to them a short while later and led them outside and to the back of the long building. With the din of the smoke room now filtering softly into the night air, he opened a creaking door to a large room with several pallets. In one corner was a pedestal and a washbasin and above that a beaten mirror hanging from a bent nail. The boy grabbed a fluted, patina-green ewer sitting next to the pedestal and headed for the door. “I’ll bring water.”
    They closed the door and settled themselves. Everyone but Nikandr.
    “We can’t stay here.”
    “I suspect we won’t be staying long,” Ashan said.
    “Why?”
    But before Ashan could answer, a knock came at the door.
    Nikandr thought the boy had forgotten something, but he found instead the hulking man from the smokehouse. Nikandr reached for his shashka, but the man darted forward and grabbed Nikandr’s wrist. He did not attack, however. He merely put one finger to his lips and shook his head.
    “Who are you?” Nikandr asked.
    “I am Goeh,” he replied, releasing Nikandr’s wrist and stepping inside, “and I’m the closest thing you have to a friend in this place.”
    “What’s happening?”
    “Dahud has gone to fetch the Kamarisi’s men. They’ve been stationed at the southern edge of Andakhara, awaiting a summons.”
    “You’re Dahud’s man, are you not?”
    Goeh turned to spit on the dusty wooden floorboards. “There are men who have no love for the Kamarisi, even less for the lackeys he sends to the desert, or those that serve them.”
    Nikandr looked to the door, which was still cracked open. “Dahud would have this place watched, would he not?”
    “The room is being watched, but not by Dahud’s men.” Goeh smiled grimly. “Not any longer.”
    From outside their room a low whistle came, a trilling call like a desert finch.
    Goeh’s eyes hardened. “There’s no time. If you want to find the two who came before you, you must come now.”
    Nikandr looked to Ashan, who nodded back to him. “The desert, as much as they like to think differently, is still under the Kamarisi’s rule, and if that’s so, then Dahud, who is essentially the lord of this place, cannot be trusted.”
    Nikandr turned to Atiana, ready to ask her the same question, but she was staring at the opposite wall, her eyes vacant and half-lidded.
    “Atiana?”
    She didn’t respond.
    Again the call of the desert finch came, louder this time.
    “Atiana?” Nikandr called again, shaking her shoulder lightly. “Atiana, hear me.”
    And still she didn’t move.
    He felt the pulse at her neck. It was slow, like it was when the Matri removed themselves from their drowning chambers.
    “We must hurry,” Goeh said.
    But Nikandr couldn’t. His whole body was suddenly tense, and he was frozen in place, for it was clear there was something deeply, deeply wrong with Atiana.

CHAPTER SIX

    Nikandr shook