Either Viktor was fabulously wealthy, or Kalyazi boyar could afford more than one home. Rashid suspected the former. And he did not like it here one bit.
There was something deeply wrong with the air in Komyazalov. Not like in Grazyk … or maybe, possibly, exactly like in Grazyk.
Rashid had never believed Nadya when she’d insisted the Kalyazi did not experiment with magic like the Tranavians. The tsarevna was proof enough that Nadya had been drastically misinformed.
He flopped onto a chair in Viktor’s sitting room while Parijahan tossed a log onto the fire before someone could scold her. The servants didn’t like when the two Akolans did everyday tasks. Parijahan should have been used to it thanks to her position in Akola, but she liked being self-sufficient. Meanwhile Viktor kept getting dragged away by a seemingly constant stream of people requiring his attention.
Parijahan watched him leave for what was possibly the fourth time before she said, “Why would anyone want that?”
“Money to not starve,” Rashid said softly.
Her expression twisted, like it always did at the reminder that she’d always had everything, and he had been effectively sold into her household as a boy. It wasn’t slavery, but it was close.
“I don’t like it here,” he said.
“No,” Parijahan replied, eyeing the fire. “I don’t, either. And I don’t like Nadya being on her own.”
“If anyone can handle herself, it’s Nadya,” Ostyia said from where she was sitting on a lush rug, her back to a chair. Parijahan stepped over her to get to the chair. Ostyia was idly leafing through her spell book. “Also, she’s supposed to be on her way here. Viktor gave me a very panicked message from her that said something about being eaten by dogs and getting lost in a maze of icons.”
“So, she’s doing fine?”
Ostyia shrugged.
“Even if she can handle herself,” Parijahan said, “she didn’t want to come here.”
Ostyia tilted her head back to shoot Parijahan a quizzical look.
Nadya appeared soon after, ushered in by one of Viktor’s servants and very frazzled by it. She yanked her scarf off the second the servant left, leaving her white-blond hair messy. She collapsed facedown on the rug next to Ostyia. She mumbled something unintelligible.
“What was that, darling?” Ostyia asked.
She flipped onto her back. “We’re in over our heads.”
“True enough.”
“Katya didn’t tell anyone who I am, though, so I live another day.”
Rashid’s arms were itchy under his sleeves. The flowers came and went on their own now. It was wildly inconvenient. But Nadya had suggested he talk to Ostyia about it … He rubbed at them absently.
Parijahan climbed back over her to sit on the arm of the chair Rashid was in. He leaned his head against her side.
Nadya continued staring fixedly at the ceiling.
“I hate feeling like this,” he whispered.
“I know,” she replied, weaving a hand through his hair.
Maybe if he hadn’t buried his power so deep, it wouldn’t have clawed its way to the surface, tearing him apart in its wake. Maybe they could still be in Akola and everything would be all right.
But that wasn’t true. He’d known, the night Parijahan had stolen into his rooms and shaken him awake, whispering that they had to go, how she was going to get revenge and they had to leave, what he was getting into. He hadn’t realized she was saving him. He hadn’t thought he was important at all.
“Don’t you ever want to go back?” he asked.
She sighed, tilting her head against his. “Sometimes. I don’t think it would feel like home anymore, though.”
“No?”
She made a thoughtful noise. “Only if you were there, but if you ever go back…”
Locked away. Burned out.
“Magic doesn’t work that way here,” he said with a frown. “Why is it like that in Akola?”
Ostyia’s head perked up. “Stop whispering when I’m trying to eavesdrop.”
“Is it eavesdropping when you’re in the same room?” Parijahan asked.
“Was it supposed to be a secret, that the two of you have magic?” she asked. “I’ve known for months.”
Parijahan’s eyes widened and Rashid swallowed thickly, shivering as everything in him went cold. Nadya finally sat up, leaning back against the chair.
“What?” Parijahan asked, voice strained.
Ostyia tilted her head.
“How did you know?”
“You hide it well, but it’s my job to make sure that no one with particularly strong magic is around Serefin that I don’t know about.”
“So, you deemed us harmless.”
“You weren’t going to be a threat on his life, from what I could gather. It’s nebulous”—she waved a hand—“imperfect. I figured that if you never used or spoke of it, you didn’t want anyone to know, so I kept it to myself. I can’t say I’m not curious, though. We don’t see many Akolan mages.”
Rashid scowled. He wasn’t entirely pleased at being referred to as harmless. “Because there aren’t many Akolan mages,” he said. “They burn out.”
Ostyia frowned slightly. “What does that mean?”
Nadya straightened with interest.
Rashid glanced between the two of them, mages both. “They’re tools. When the Travash have used them to their full extent, they die.”
Ostyia glanced at Nadya. “Can that happen to clerics?”
“The gods only give the amount of magic a cleric can handle,” Nadya said. “Though we can always reach for more…” She winced. “But it’s a channel, and the gods can stop the flow of power. I don’t think clerics generally die because of magic.”
Ostyia nodded. “If, say, Kacper were to cast from my spell book, he would probably get a headache and the spells would fail. I couldn’t cast from Serefin’s spell book, he’s stronger than both of us. I don’t think there’s a blood mage alive who could cast from Malachiasz’s spell book.”
The sickly expression that passed over Nadya’s face did not escape Rashid’s notice.
“There’s a reason we buy our spell books with the spells already written. The writers construct the spells to control the flow of power so you don’t try to cast one that will, well, kill you.”
“So, it’s not that the concept is unfamiliar, it’s that we have different words for it,” Nadya said.
“We have different ways to handle it, yes. We try to avoid it. But magic can still kill you if you overextend yourself. Do you know what it is you can do?” Ostyia asked him.
Rashid hesitated and shook his head. “She influences things.” He pointed at Parijahan, who scowled at him.
“In a good way?” Ostyia asked.
“It’s rather hard to determine,” Parijahan said.
“Do you think you were counteracting the Black Vulture’s madness?”
Rashid lifted an eyebrow. Nadya looked like a brick had been dropped on her head.
“Everything truly bad with him happened when I wasn’t around,” she said. “But it’s impossible to know.”
“It would be interesting to test,” Ostyia said thoughtfully.
Parijahan rolled her eyes. “Every damn Tranavian is the same.”
Rashid snorted softly, though he didn’t disagree with Ostyia. He supposed this was the reason that Nadya had suggested he talk to her. Ostyia was never as loud about her magic as the other Tranavians, but Rashid knew she was particularly adept.
“What about you?” she asked Rashid.
“I would like to test the perimeters,” he said slowly. “Carefully, because I don’t know how it will truly manifest.”
Ostyia nodded. She gazed down at her book for a long moment, something sad in her blue eye. Nadya reached out and took her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
It was hardly something that could be apologized for, and she seemed aware of that.
Rashid rolled his sleeves back. He moved to sit across from Ostyia on the floor.
“But you can’t remember how magic works,” he said uncertainly.
“Blood magic. And it’s not that I can’t remember. It’s … it’s like the path has been ruined.”
Parijahan slid down into Rashid’s chair. “Magic works in different avenues.”
“And the one I know isn’t viable anymore. It could be a matter of finding a different branch—I have an affinity for magic, but in Tranavia no other way of using it matters.”
“Do you know other ways?”
She shrugged. “I was taught by an old Vulture who found whispers of Akolan and Aecii magic fascinating. Who was constantly paying exorbitant sums to have books from Rumenovać smuggled across the borders. It’s all out there. But in Kalyazin, everything else is heresy, and in Tranavia, well, why use anything else when we know how far you can take blood magic if you’re really trying? We have the Vultures; we have proof of how far you can grasp. Maybe other countries have their Vultures as well.”
It was impossible to know. The war had locked these two countries together so long that any hope of learning without bloodshed had been lost.
Ostyia closed her spell book. “I doubt Viktor will appreciate us doing this here, but if you’d like, we can see what it is you have hiding away.”
Rashid glanced at Parijahan. He couldn’t help it. It was his decision to make, but he had walked this road with her for so long that he wanted to make sure she was ready for whatever this meant.
Her expression was carefully blank, but she slipped. He saw the fear cut through her that she did her very best to shutter away.
“I’ll hardly stop you,” Parijahan said. “I knew this day would come. I just … I worry you’ll attract attention that we don’t want.”
Ostyia tucked a black lock behind her ear and adjusted her eye patch. “We’re out of time for that way of thinking,” she said. “Don’t act as if we haven’t all seen Nadya”—she gestured—“scrambling because her and those damn boys did something too big for any of us to stop. Do you truly think Akola would send people out here when the threat of cosmic annihilation is on the horizon?”
“You underestimate how far Akola is willing to go for resources that they think belong to them.”
“But which part of Akola?” Ostyia returned. “You’re from different territories, I can tell by your accents. And I can’t say I’m afraid of Tehran.”
Rashid had always thought Ostyia was more astute than she led everyone to believe, but he was still surprised she was aware of his and Parijahan’s differences. It was … rare someone from the north ever noticed. It stood to reason, though. She was the king’s right hand. Her games of flirting with girls and caring very little about the world were only a mask to keep people from suspecting everything she saw.
“Paalmidesh,” Parijahan replied with a slight frown. “He’s from Yanzin Zadar.”
Ostyia’s eyebrows lifted. “Really?”
“Frankly, I’m shocked that our particular tensions have made it all the way up here.”
“We share enough of a border with Akola that we aren’t going to ignore when one part of the country moves against the other,” Ostyia pointed out. “Besides, what are you worried about? It would take them a good year to get this far west.”
Parijahan did not look reassured. Ostyia turned back to Rashid.
“Close your eyes,” she ordered.
Rashid sighed and let them flutter shut.
“All right, we need to do this gently. I don’t want to blow up this snotty boyar’s—well, actually, who gives a shit if we do. Let’s go.”