The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) by Bradley Beaulieu Read Free Book Online Page A

be free of it, she realized. He might yearn for the touch of Adhiya for the rest of his life.
    He pulled her close, and she laid her head against his chest. He breathed easier after that, and at last they fell asleep.

CHAPTER THREE

    Styophan stood at the helm of the galleon Vayetka , one of the ships taken from Yrstanla after the Battle of Galahesh nearly two years ago. Theirs was the lead ship. Behind, trailing by an eighth-league, was the Graaza , another galleon, as were the three others in his wing that he’d flown all the way from Khalakovo’s great eyrie.
    He’d stood upon the decks of all five ships over the course of their three-month journey here, and he’d come to hate their design. They were slow to maneuver and too heavy by far. The shipwrights of the Empire knew little of building windworthy ships, but he had to admit that they were good for flying over land. The obsidian keels were larger than the ones used in the ships of the islands, which made them slow to turn but more capable of picking up the weaker ley lines over land.
    “Yvan, take the helm.”
    Yvan, a broad-shouldered streltsi from Duzol, turned from the gunwales and snapped his heels. “ Da , Kapitan.”
    Styophan relinquished control and moved to the forecastle, telescope in hand. When he brought the scope to his eye, he brought it to his right by accident. There were still dozens of things like this, things he used to do with his right eye and still tried to do even though the right side of his face was now little more than a ruined landscape of scars.
    He adjusted and scanned the horizon ahead. They were flying to the western side of a long range of mountains, the Kuvvatli range. The mountains were tall and black with white caps and sheer cliffs, but they would soon dwindle and widen until they gave way to more open land and tall, rolling hills. This was the land of the Haelish and their tribal kings. They had for long centuries been loosely gathered bands, with many kings throughout their territories, and though there had been wars among them, there had also been peace.
    Perhaps too much peace.
    When Kamarisi Alhamid, Hakan’s great-great-grandfather, reached their lands, he found them ripe for the picking. Yrstanla had ruled over them for a century and a half, but the Haelish did not forget the ruthless way in which they’d been subjugated, nor had they ever taken well to being yoked. They’d learned from the janissaries sent by the Kamarisi to rule their lands, and they’d overthrown them. At least for a time.
    The Kamarisi had come again, this time Hakan’s father, Ayeşe. He brought war to Haelish lands once more, this one a long, protracted conflict that he left to his son to finish. It was a war Hakan had twice thought won, but each time the Haelish had retreated into the highlands and had come back years later to overthrow the Kamarisi when they took their troops to other fronts and other wars.
    And now Hakan’s son, Selim, had inherited the war. He was too young to sit the throne, and so had been given a regent—Bahett ül Kirdhash, a man who had fought ruthlessly for the title and had eventually been granted it by Selim’s uncles on the promise that Bahett knew the men of Anuskaya best, knew the way they fought and how to weaken them. Whether or not Bahett could deliver on his promises, Styophan didn’t know. He was of half the mind that Bahett had simply said anything he could to gain the title and power he craved, but secretly he worried that Bahett was right. He did know the islands well, especially those among the south, and if he were any sort of strategist, he would know how weak Leonid had left them to the south. Grand Duke Leonid had piled so many resources along Oramka and the coastal cities.
    Bahett didn’t have Matri to find these things out for him, but he certainly had spies, and he’d have prisoners before too long. It was only a matter of time before he discovered just how soft Anuskaya’s flanks