The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Nikandr’s neck, and Nikandr realized that his expression was no longer one of wonder.
    It was one of rapture.
    Nikandr felt a tickling sensation in the center of his chest, just below the surface of the skin, and it took a presence of mind not to raise a hand and begin scratching it. Only as the boy began walking forward did Nikandr realize that it was his soulstone, hidden beneath coat and shirt, that had so caught Nasim’s attention. With a completely innocent look on his face, Nasim reached for it.
    A vision comes. A vision of a grand city. It spreads wide and low near a crescent bay, tall towers and massive domes bright beneath a golden sun. It seems whole, but the streets lay empty and barren—lifeless—as if it has long been abandoned.
    An unreasonable anger came bubbling up from somewhere deep inside Nikandr; before he knew it, he had slapped the boy’s hand away and shoved him backward. Immediately Ashan took Nasim by the shoulders and guided him to the nearby railing, whispering into his ear.
    “My apologies,” Ashan said over his shoulder. “He can be a curious boy.”
    “It is nothing,” Nikandr said, shaking his head to clear away the sudden vision and the confusion it had left in its wake. “Please,” he said, “there must be something I could offer. Gold...”
    “What need have the Aramahn of gold?”
    “Food, then, for Iramanshah if not for you.”
    Ashan shook his head. “There is little enough to go around. Nasim and I will do fine, as will Iramanshah.”
    “Access to our library. Gemstones. A discussion with our scholars. You have only to name the price.”
    Ashan smiled once more and herded the boy away from the railing and up the perch. “There is most certainly nothing”—Ashan nodded, reverently it seemed to Nikandr—“but I wish prosperous times upon you and your family.” And then he turned and walked away.
    Nikandr could have stopped him for the insult, but he didn’t. They had been through enough, these two, and it was unseemly for him to badger them now.
    And the boy... He was strangely compelling, and not simply because of their shared and inexplicable exchange. When one sees someone around whom the world revolves, one knows it, and the boy, even more than Ashan, was just such a person.

CHAPTER 8
    The Bluff lay in darkness, but there was enough light coming from the windows of the three-story homes lining the street that Nikandr could make his way. When he arrived at his destination—a home nearly indistinguishable from the others—he glanced along the lengths of the empty, curving street before removing the silver flask from inside his coat and taking a healthy swallow of the bitter tonic. His stomach felt strangely healthy, but he wasn’t about to take chances—not tonight. He took the steps up and knocked upon the door five times, a bitter wind pressing against his back.
    He turned, holding the fur-lined collar of his coat tight against the gusting wind. Over the tops of the nearby homes the lights of Palotza Radiskoye could barely be seen on the mountain overlooking the city.
    He knocked again, softer this time, wondering if he’d made a mistake, but just as he was about to walk away, the flickering light of a lantern shone through the thick, wavy glass of the door’s high window. The door opened, and there stood Rehada Ulan al Shineshka, wearing a thick nightgown and a circlet that held a softly glowing gem of tourmaline. When he saw her face—how beautiful she looked in the golden light of the lantern—he nearly made his apologies and headed back toward Radiskoye. And yet, there was—as there always seemed to be—a beckoning luster in Rehada’s dark eyes, even as tired as she must be, even dressed as she was.
    Without a word being spoken, she stepped aside, allowing Nikandr to enter her home. They moved into a lush sitting room. A host of large pillows arcing around the hearth, and the air, beneath the faint smell of jasmine incense, was redolent of garlic