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stone openly.”
    “Why?” Nikandr asked, disliking the way he had said that stone .
    “Zhabyn is ready to bolt at the first sign of weakness. He’s looking for excuses to demand more out of your wedding or to call it off. We can afford neither.”
    “I have always worn my stone openly.”
    “And there are plenty who don’t. I trust you’ll be able to explain it away to anyone bold enough to speak of it. Now go. Your mother and I have much to discuss.”
    Nikandr left, feeling like a boy dismissed from dinner. There was sense in his father’s words, but when he tucked the pendant inside his shirt and felt the chain tickle his skin as it settled into place, the stone felt weighty, obscene, as if the sign of a coward had now been hung around his neck.

CHAPTER 4
    The next day a bitterly cold snowstorm swept over the islands, leaving behind a cheerless sun and weather that drew warmth from the very marrow of the bones. Wind howled among the cobblestone streets of Old Volgorod, lifting the dusting of snow and creating whorls and eddies among the meager crowd that had gathered to watch the execution. Though many grumbled at the wind and biting snow, Rehada thought nothing of it; it matched perfectly the bitterness and resentment deep in her heart.
    From this ancient circle where the gallows stood, the seven major streets of Volgorod fanned out like cracks in a frozen lake. Along one of these clattered a flatbed wagon pulled by two stout ponies. A soldier dressed in the uniform of the Posadnik’s guard drove the wagon with a light hand, while another, holding onto the driver’s seat for balance, stood in the bed, watching the three young men chained securely behind him.
    As the wagon turned onto the empty street surrounding the circle, tack and chains jingling, the soldiers gave little or no notice to the crowd that had gathered. The boys, however, stared wide-eyed, their faces growing increasingly nervous, until finally the wagon pulled to a halt near the gallows. Standing on the stage were no less than a dozen armed streltsi. Such a show of force was abnormal, but Council was upon them, and apparently there had been some scuffle between the Landed and the Maharraht during the launching of a new trade ship. Rehada gave the story little credence, however; she had received no word that Maharraht would be coming to the island. More than likely it was a drunken brawl that had grown with the telling.
    The driver climbed over the bench to join his comrade. They looked calm and collected in their long woolen cherkesskas. Even their woolen hats with tassels of gold lent them a look of austerity, as if a hanging were something that came as easily to them as polishing their black leather boots.
    The crowd—most of them Landed peasants—pressed forward, but Rehada stood her ground, studying the boys as they were led one by one from the rear of the wagon to the wooden platform where nooses swung lazily in the wind. The first two boys were scrawny, the sons of a peasant family that lived on the outskirts of the city. They wore simple leather shoes, roughspun trousers and patchwork coats. Socks with holes for fingers to poke through covered their hands. They fought to keep their balance as the streltsi forced them to their places at the gallows, and though they wore looks of remorse as the nooses were fit around their necks, to Rehada it seemed like an act; she doubted they harbored any feelings of true regret for the atrocity they had committed three days before. She didn’t doubt they regretted some things—stealing into the home of one of the city’s richer widows; killing her when they found her unexpectedly home; forcing the third boy, a boy she had come to love, to return with them in a lame attempt at blaming him for their crime—but she doubted very much that they regretted the actual killing or the life of the young man next to them that now stood forfeit.
    They had been discovered by the nephew of the socialite widow