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

Atiana harder, and was about to do so again, to slap her or shout at her or something—anything to wake her—when she said in a voice as cold as winter, “Men are coming.”
    She said this without moving, without looking at any of them.
    “Who’s coming?” Nikandr asked.
    “Men,” she repeated. “Armed men. Along the main road. And more are moving in from the desert.”
    At last she did turn, but she looked through Nikandr as if he wasn’t there. She looked through Goeh as well, and then walked past him, out and into the night.
    Goeh stared at her, clearly confused, but then he motioned for them to follow. As they left and began taking a slope upward through a grove of lemon trees, men resolved from the darkness.
    “These are mine,” Goeh said.
    There were six of them in all, spread out in a line ahead.
    Nikandr took Atiana’s arm, but she fended him away. “Do not touch me again, Nischka, and move slowly.”
    She followed him, with Ashan and Sukharam bringing up the rear, with a slow pace, like a woman sleepwalking. He dearly wished to speak to her of it, but it was clear she couldn’t. Not now. For the time being, they simply had to get out of this place before the Kamarisi’s men swooped in.
    With progress that felt painful, they hiked up the same rise Nikandr had climbed only minutes before, and then continued beyond it, along a gentle slope to a dry stream bed, a wadi, that ran through the easternmost section of the caravanserai. In the height of spring this trough in the land would be alive with rushing water, but now it was as dry and rocky as the surrounding terrain. More importantly, it was lower than the mostly flat ground, and a good way to reach the southern end of Andakhara with fewer eyes watching their passage.
    They heard little, only the sound of their own feet crunching over the dry soil, offset by the occasional bell of a goat and the rattle of the beetles flying among the scrub trees lining the wadi.
    “They’ve reached the inn,” Atiana said.
    She was using the aether, Nikandr knew. He just couldn’t understand how. She’d shown this ability only once before—on Galahesh while Sariya had held her spellbound—but those had been very special circumstances. What it was about this place that was allowing her to take the dark, he didn’t know. Perhaps Ishkyna was communicating with her in some way. Ishkyna, after all, had grown in her abilities since Galahesh. She’d dealt with the loss of her body and moved beyond it—or so Atiana had said—and this had allowed her to spread herself even further and do things never before seen in the history of the Matri.
    He scanned the skies for the gallows crow, the bird Ishkyna most often inhabited, but saw nothing, and he felt for her through his soulstone, but here too he felt nothing save Atiana’s presence, a warmth that suffused the center of his chest.
    They came to a halt at a copse of scraggly trees at the center of the wadi. Along the bank above them sat a large home with a high stone fence around it. It could be scaled, but surely there were men guarding it.
    “There are twelve men on the far side,” Atiana said, perhaps sensing his worry. She pointed with deliberate care to the corner of the fence twenty paces away. “Three stand just there. The others are spaced about the interior.”
    “Are Soroush and Ushai there?” Nikandr asked.
    “They’re being held within the home.” She pointed to the roof, which from their angle could barely be seen beyond the wall. “Two more men are inside. They’re janissaries, Nischka, and they’re well armed. All of them.”
    Nikandr felt his fingers go cold. Janissaries. There might be some stationed this far from the lands of the Empire proper, but it seemed out of the ordinary. It could only mean that the janissaries had somehow gotten wind of where they were headed. They had chosen their number carefully—as few as possible—in hopes of avoiding the notice of the Kamarisi and