Читать книгу The Black Khan - Ausma Khan Zehanat - Страница 18

LARISA AND ELENA CLIMBED A TOWERING RED DUNE, FEELING THE SAND shift beneath their feet. Shapes loomed out of the darkness, their edges limned by the light cast down by thickly tangled stars. The strange shapes shifted against the patterns of the desert as if they crested gold-flamed waves.

To the north, a giant nothingness claimed the horizon, a vast black pit whose farthest edge was outlined by a wraithlike blue, starlight reflected in a surface that shimmered like a huge silver mirror. It was an improbable note of beauty against the bleak walls of the prison.

Both women had covered their faces to protect themselves from the grit of blowing sand. Now they lowered their scarves to speak.

“What are they?” Larisa asked. “Some kind of weapon?”

“Ships of the old world, run aground some time before the wars of the Far Range.”

“Ships? Then that blue—

“It was once a lake. Ruined by the wars. What do you think he does down there?”

Elena brought a spyglass to her eye and scanned the rusted hulks of the ships. As light skittered over the helm of one, she caught a trace of movement against the night, a black shadow that darted between the keels. A circular light flashed against the bulkhead of a ship. A tangle of dead vines ran down one side, and rusting underneath it was a baffling set of runes.

“It’s Russe,” Elena told her sister. “They used to name these ships.”

Larisa looked at her curiously. “How do you know this?”

“It took months of preparation to break you out of Jaslyk. The Crimson Watch was loose in its talk.” She frowned as the shadow dipped under the hulk of another ship. “I should be down there, not him. I know the sands of the Kyzylkum better than he ever will.”

“You don’t know that,” Larisa answered. She was weary of defending a man she barely knew, a man she relied on only because the Silver Mage had used his gifts at the Registan to assure her Illarion could be trusted. “We don’t know that,” she amended. “We don’t know who he is or where he came from, or whose purpose he serves.”

The gritty fall of sand warned her they were not alone. Illarion had returned. He held out a canteen, encouraging the sisters to drink. Larisa took it from him with thanks. Elena turned away, striking a timbaku root, sheltering its burning end with her palm.

“It was right where you said it would be—stowed in the hold of the ship closest to the lake. They haven’t discovered your cache.”

Ignoring his words, Elena drew smoke into her lungs. She had yet to speak a word to Illarion on their journey, communicating solely with her sister. The peppery scent of timbaku wafted over the dunes, too remote from Jaslyk to betray them.

The sisters made an exchange, the canteen for the roll of timbaku. Just as Elena had done, Larisa sheltered the tip of the roll from giving away their position.

“Do you smoke?” Larisa asked Illarion.

“No. You shouldn’t either. Timbaku is a poison. It just kills you slowly.”

He waited for Elena to pass him the canteen, though she looked as if she had no intention of ever considering his needs. Larisa prodded her sister. “Elena, I’m sure the captain would like to ease his thirst.”

Not bothering to look at him, Elena held out the canteen. She held herself still as he brushed her hand in the exchange. He drank with evident thirst, then offered it back to Elena.

“Thank you, Anya,” he murmured.

She glared at him. He knew her name was Elena—he was taunting her with a reminder of their first encounter. She demanded the roll from Larisa and took another puff.

“You will ruin your beauty,” he warned her.

“You said I have no beauty to ruin.”

“True,” he agreed with a smile.

Larisa watched them, disquieted. The tension between her sister and the Ahdath augured uncertainty for their attempt to rescue Sinnia, now at Jaslyk ten days. But she needed them both if their plan was to succeed—a paradox she’d have to reconcile.

Even if Elena and Illarion were in accord, the rescue could still go awry. She knew from her own experience that the Technologist would have been summoned, and if that had happened, Sinnia would be in no position to assist them. If she’d had the Claim at her disposal, she would already have freed herself.

“Will you present us as your captives?” Larisa asked Illarion. “Will you say you’ve brought the daughters of Salikh for the Technologist’s trials?”

“No.” With a casual movement of his hand, Illarion flicked the timbaku from between Elena’s fingers and ground it out beneath his boot. “I’m known as Araxcin’s second. They’d know I wouldn’t be escorting prisoners on my own—there’d be a full patrol with me. We should go under cover of night, if Anya is certain of the route. We can’t afford a mistake.”

“Worry for yourself, Ahdath. Whether you return from Jaslyk is of no importance to me.” She spoke to her sister, impatience rising in her voice. “I won’t show him the passages. We must protect the resistance at all costs, and I won’t risk the Basmachi on the word of an Ahdath who survived the fall of the Registan. I doubt he was even there.”

Derision colored her voice; Illarion stiffened at the imputation of cowardice. He turned to Larisa. “I don’t need you to guide me in. I’ll say I was sent by Araxcin to assess Jaslyk’s security after the attack on the Registan.”

“Impregnability, not security.” But Elena wasn’t speaking to him. The words were prodded from some distant memory. She brooded over the sight of the prison, its black walls rising like a cliff against the night. Here there were no traceries of stone or iron, no glazed tiles or patterned bricks. No vegetation grew along the high stone walls, no creepers abloom with desert flowers. Jaslyk was a place whose ugliness couldn’t be borne, a place of unremitting death. And she knew each watchtower, each guard, each passage the Basmachi had tunneled underground like others remembered a lover’s face. The memory of it was suffocating.

They discussed the plan once more. Finally Illarion said, “Let’s go.”

But as they picked their way down the dune, he was left in no doubt that it was Elena who was in charge.