well off—”
“Be honest, Parj,” Rashid said softly.
She sighed. “My family is one of the three high Travasha of Akola. My sister was murdered a month after her wedding, in a foreign land, for her dowry.”
“And Akola didn’t go to war over that?” Anna asked.
“There was never any proof the Tranavian did it. It looked like an accident, my sister drowned in one of Tranavia’s hundreds of lakes.” Parijahan laughed bitterly. “Of course, because Akola is a land of deserts, why would a prasīt know how to swim? But Taraneh was a fine swimmer; her favorite place in the world was the oasis near our family home.”
“So what are you doing here?” Nadya asked. And what are you doing with a Tranavian blood mage?
“There were some rash decisions made,” Rashid said.
“I took revenge,” Parijahan said matter-of-factly. “And now there is one less slavhka in the Tranavian court.”
“Why not return to Akola after? Why stay here?”
“I don’t want anything to do with a family that will not avenge the death of their daughter. Tranavia cannot win this war,” she said fiercely. “Let them live with their blood magic and their corrupt politicians in their own country, but they cannot be allowed to spread beyond their borders.”
Nadya thumbed at her necklace, searching for the god of truth—Vaclav’s—bead. She was bewildered when Vaclav confirmed that all three were being truthful with her. Even the Tranavian.
“None of this explains him,” Nadya said, pointing to Malachiasz.
“I’m an enigma,” Malachiasz replied archly. “There were rumors about you, towy d?imyka, on both sides of the war. The Kalyazi cleric come to save the country from the Tranavian scourge.”
A chill cut through Nadya. She couldn’t tell if he was goading her or not.
“What are you saying?”
“Tranavia knows you exist, clearly, why else would the High Prince himself—prodigy tactician of the war—attack a monastery in a location that provides no strategic advantage? And if Tranavia knows, then all of Kalyazin knows as well.”
There was something else he was saying and it took Nadya longer than she would have liked to catch up.
“You three are here … because of me?”
“Doesn’t that make you feel important?”
He was mocking her again. She sighed.
“We followed the rumors to this area, yes,” Parijahan said. “I didn’t think anything would come of them, but here you are.”
Nadya knew divine intervention when she saw it, but something still felt wrong. There was a path she was supposed to walk and this wasn’t it. Working with a heretic wasn’t it. It couldn’t be.
She ran her spoon around the now empty bowl. “I need time to consider this, to … pray. Do you have a plan for getting into Tranavia?”
“You can’t be serious,” Anna said.
“What choice is there?” Nadya retorted.
“They don’t have a plan,” Malachiasz answered, cutting off Rashid before he had a chance to reply. He closed his spell book with a loud snap. “Go pray,” he said to Nadya, putting the full weight of his loathing on the word pray. “Ask your gods to accomplish the impossible.”
* * *
A pathway led through the trees to the remains of a small stone altar. All that was left was a bench and a carving of a purposefully ambiguous figure meant to portray Alena. It was calm outside, early morning light flickering through the empty tree branches, striking the carving so that it drew the sunlight into itself. Nadya settled herself down cross-legged on the bench.
She tugged her necklace over her head, rubbing her fingers over the beads. She needed to refocus, to work through the trauma of losing her home and her friends. She only felt blank when she thought about the monastery, about Kostya. Where would she be when the agony of losing everything finally caught up with her; would she be in a place where she could handle it?
She had spent too many sleepless nights wishing she had some small part of her parents to hold on to. All she had was the knowledge her mother had always possessed that her daughter was touched by the gods. Her mother had shown up nine months pregnant on the monastery steps, staying only long enough to give Nadya her name before she was gone, so Father Alexei always told her.
Lapteva wasn’t even an uncommon surname. It was everywhere. It wasn’t until Nadya was fourteen when she realized no family was returning for her, that her fate lay within the monastery walls and nowhere else. The abbot was the closest thing to a father she would ever have.
Thinking about Father