Читать книгу The Black Khan - Ausma Khan Zehanat - Страница 10

ELENA WAITED IN THE NEAR DUSK THAT ENVELOPED THE HAZING. A member of the Usul Jade had left a message for her at the house across from the crumbling blue dome, telling her Larisa needed her. She wasn’t used to ignoring her sister’s commands or to being away from Larisa’s side. But she’d returned to the Gur-e-Mir to see what had become of Ruslan’s body. She’d found her entrance at the pishtaq to the tomb. Ruslan’s head was on a spike, his body dismembered, his limbs littering the courtyard. The Ahdath had forced his jade green bracelets into his mouth, which gaped open in a perfect round.

The sight of him was like a blade cutting deep into the bone, exposing the marrow of her grief, yet Elena didn’t cry. She couldn’t cry, no matter how deep the wound. She had learned to guard herself through practiced dissociation, but now her emotions raged wildly. Would everything she loved be taken from her with such brutal and cold finality? She removed the bracelets from Ruslan’s mouth and slipped them onto her wrists. Then she kissed both his cheeks with a tenderness she had never expressed before.

I should have buried you, spared you from this. I should have chosen you above any emissary of the Black Khan’s, any Companion of Hira. As Larisa should have also.

What didn’t you do for us, Ruslan?

She wanted to ignore Larisa’s summons—her rage, her grief were still too new. But if Ruslan was lost to her, Larisa was all she had left.

She would return and bury her beloved, but time was against her now. It was foolish of Larisa to have summoned her to the Hazing. The streets around the Gur-e-Mir were swarming with Ahdath. After the First Oralist’s sundering of the Registan, the Ahdath had doubled their patrols. They hunted the Usul Jade with a singular determination. She hadn’t forgiven Larisa, but she needed to get her sister out of the necropolis of the Hazing. She had already sent orders to the Basmachi to retreat, knowing Marakand was lost. She’d told them to regroup at the ruins of the Summer Palace. Its rugged surroundings would shelter them until Larisa returned. Then they would be able to get word to the warriors of the Cloud Door in the mountains. The time to strike at the Wall was almost upon them now. She knew Zerafshan’s men were ready, just as she knew that without Larisa’s support, she could not prod them into action.

It was time for Larisa to remember that she led the Usul Jade—her duty was to the women behind the Wall and to the people who still upheld the teachings of their father. As the daughters of Mudjadid Salikh, they bore a responsibility unlike any other: resist until the battle was won or until their resistance atrophied into dust.

As leaders of the Basmachi, she and Larisa were not tools to be used by the First Oralist, no matter the nature of the bargain Larisa had struck with the Black Khan. The First Oralist may have dismantled the Registan, but she’d also delivered Ruslan to his fate at the gates of the Gur-e-Mir. Ruslan, her dearest companion, the one who’d rescued her from Jaslyk, risking agonies greater than hers. She closed his eyes with her fingers, his bracelets softly striking hers. Then she spat out her rage on the ground.

She was on the hunt for the First Oralist.

And she would take her measure of blood.