King of Scars

by Leigh Bardugo

  “Well,” said the Apparat, making a great show of thinking. “Ulyosk and Ryevost are in need of new churches. The people need to know the king shares their faith, and such a gesture will help strengthen their faith in their ruler.”

  After a long moment, Nikolai bobbed his chin. “You will have your churches.”

  “They are the Saints’ churches, Your Highness.”

  “Then please inform the Saints.”

  “Does a king bow so easily to a man with no title?” Zoya asked as they rode away. She had said she would bite her tongue, and she had, but it had left her temper boiling. “You are helping the Apparat build his network of spies. You are making him stronger.”

  “At some point, you might consider treating me as something other than a fool. Trust me, Zoya. You may come to enjoy it.”

  “That’s what Tamar said about absinthe.”

  “And?”

  “It still tastes like sugar dipped in kerosene.”

  Zoya cast a glance over her shoulder and saw the priest watching them from the city gates, his eyes as dark as pits. Nikolai might joke all he liked, but every concession they made to the Apparat felt like a misstep. The old king, the Darkling, Alina Starkov—they’d all bargained with the priest, and all of them had paid in blood.

  * * *

  Zoya spent the rest of her day overseeing a new squadron of Squallers and sending orders to the outposts along the southern border. She hoped the Grisha forces there would be able to guard against a possible Shu attack. She dined in the Hall of the Golden Dome beside Genya and David, listening with one ear to Genya’s plans for the arrival of their international guests as she thumbed through a summary of David’s work with Kuwei Yul-Bo. The young Inferni sat at a table surrounded by other young Grisha. His late father had created parem, and Kuwei had done his best to share his knowledge of that work with David and the other Fabrikators attempting to alter the addictive side effects of the drug. But he was less a scientist than a soldier. Though Genya had tailored him slightly, Kuwei’s gifts as an Inferni were his greatest disguise; no one in the Shu Han had known of his abilities. He had chosen a new name when he’d come to the Little Palace: Nhaban. It meant “rising phoenix” in Shu. The boy was as pretentious as he was gifted.

  After dinner she managed another hour of work before she ventured to the Grand Palace to lock Nikolai in for the night and then allowed herself to retire to her chambers. They had once belonged to the Darkling. Genya and David had refused them when they’d assumed their duties in the Triumvirate, but Zoya had gladly occupied the spacious rooms. She was happy to take anything that had once been his, and she had swung the first hammer when it was time to tear down the old furnishings and remake the space to her liking. A gesture. She wasn’t about to let her hands get calloused and had left the real effort to the workmen. It had taken long months and considerable Fabrikator craft to fashion the rooms to her taste, but now the domed ceiling showed a sky thick with cloud, and the walls had been treated to look like a storm-swept sea. Few people noticed the little boat that had been painted into one of the six corners, or the flag it flew with two tiny stars. And no one who did would have known what it meant.

  Zoya washed and dressed for bed. There had been a time when she had been able to sleep deeply beneath the domes of the Little Palace, but that was before the Darkling’s coup. He had shattered her belief that nothing could touch this place, this home that had once been a haven. Now she slept lightly—and woke instantly at the sound of a knock on her chamber door.

  The monk, she thought. I knew we shouldn’t have let him into the palace.

  But as soon as Zoya slid the bolt and opened the door, Tamar said, “Nikolai is out.”

  “Impossible,” Zoya protested, though she was already reaching for her boots.

  Tamar’s brows rose as Zoya tossed a coat over her nightdress, cobwebs of silver silk that flickered like lightning in a storm cloud when the lamplight struck the sheer fabric just right. “Who did you dress for tonight?” she asked.

  “Myself,” snapped Zoya. “Do we know where he headed?”

  “Tolya saw him fly west toward Balakirev.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I don’t think so. No alarm sounded. But we can’t be sure. We’re lucky this didn’t happen in the summer.”

  When the sun never properly set and anyone would be able to see a monster in the skies.

  “How?” Zoya asked as she nudged a panel in the wall and it slid open to reveal a long flight of stairs. When she’d had her chambers refurbished, she’d had a tunnel dug to connect it to the network of passages beneath Os Alta. “Those chains are reinforced with Grisha steel. If he’s gotten stronger—”

  “They weren’t broken,” said Tamar from behind her. “They were unlocked.”

  Zoya stumbled and nearly toppled down the stairs. Unlocked? Then someone knew Nikolai’s secret? Had sought to sabotage their work to keep it undiscovered? The implications were overwhelming.

  Long moments later they were pushing into the basement of the Convent of Sankta Lizabeta. Tolya waited in the gardens with three horses.

  “Tell me,” Zoya said as she and Tamar mounted.

  “I heard glass breaking,” Tolya replied. “When I ran inside, I saw the king take flight from the window casement. No one had come or gone through his door.”

  Damn it. Then had the monster somehow managed to pick the locks? Zoya kicked her horse into a gallop. She had a thousand questions, but they could worry about how Nikolai had gotten free once they’d retrieved him.

  They rode hard over the bridge and through the streets of the lower town. At a signal to the guards, they thundered through the gates and Os Alta’s famous double walls. How far had Nikolai gotten? How far would he go? Better that he flew away from the city, away from anywhere heavily populated. Zoya reached for the invisible currents that flowed around them, higher and higher, seeking the disruption on the wind that was Nikolai. It was not only the weight and size of him but the very wrongness of him that brushed against her power. Merzost. Abomination. The taint of something monstrous in his blood.

  “He’s still headed west,” she said, feeling his presence bleed across her senses. “He’s in Balakirev.” A pretty little spot. One of the favored places for Grisha to visit for sleigh rides and festivals in better times.

  They slowed their horses as they approached the outskirts of town and the dirt roads gave way to cobblestones. Balakirev slept, its windows dark and houses quiet. Here or there Zoya saw a lantern lit through the glass, a mother tending to a fussy infant, a clerk working late into the predawn hours. She turned her awareness to the skies and gestured the twins forward. Nikolai was moving toward the town center.

  The main square was silent, lined by the courthouse, the town hall, the grand offices of the local governor. Stone paths radiated from a large fountain, where Zoya knew the women would come to do their washing. A statue of Sankt Juris stood at its center, his lance piercing the heart of a great dragon as water cascaded from the back of the beast’s wings. Zoya had always hated that particular story. The great warrior Juris seemed like a big bully.

  “The roof,” she whispered, pointing to the town hall. “I’ll watch the perimeter.”

  Tamar and Tolya slipped silently from their horses, shackles in hand, and disappeared into the building. If Nikolai took flight, she could try to bring him down or at least track him. But dawn was coming on. They had to move quickly.

  She waited in the shadows, eyes trained on the spires of the town hall. The night felt too still. Zoya had the uncomfortable sense that she was being watched, but the shops and buildings surrounding the square showed no signs of life. High above, the roofline of the town hall seemed to shift. A shadow broke from the roof, wings spread against the moonlit sky. Zoya lifted her hands and prepared to bring Nikolai down, but he circled once, then settled on the towering spike of the church’s bell tower.

  “Damn it.”

  Tolya and Tamar would be racin
g up the stairs of the town hall only to find their quarry escaped. If Zoya attempted the church stairs, Nikolai could well make another leap and be long gone before she reached the top. The sky was already turning gray, and if he broke for open countryside they might never catch him. There was no time to hesitate.

  She eyed the open notches in the stonework of the bell tower. Even with her amplifier, she’d never managed the control necessary for flight. Only Grisha flush with the effects of jurda parem could accomplish that feat.

  “This is going to hurt,” she muttered, and spun her hands in tight circles, summoning the current, then arced her arms. The gust hit her from behind, lofting her upward. It took all her will to resist the urge to pinwheel her arms and let the wind take her higher. She thrust her hand forward and the gust threw her toward the gap in the stone—too hard, too fast. There was no time to adjust her aim.

  Zoya covered her head and face, then grunted as her shoulder cracked against the edge of a column. She tumbled to the floor of the bell tower in a graceless heap and rolled to her back, trying to get her bearings.

  There, high above, perched in the eaves, she caught the glint of the monster’s eyes in the dark. She could just make out his shape. His chest was bare, his torn trousers slung low on his hips. His taloned feet curved over the beams of the bell tower.

  A low growl reached her, seemed to reverberate through the floorboards. Something was different tonight. He was different.

  Oh Saints, she realized. He’s hungry.

  In the past Zoya had been slower to find Nikolai, locating him after he had hunted and fed. He’s never killed a human before, she reminded herself. Then amended, That we know of. But she felt, in her bones, that tonight she was the prey.

  Like hell.

  She pushed to her feet and hissed in a breath at the throb in her shoulder. She’d dislocated it, maybe broken the bone. Pain rolled through her in a wave that set her stomach churning. Her right arm was useless. She’d have only her left arm to summon with, but if Adrik could do it, so could she.

  “Nikolai,” she said sternly.

  The growl stopped, then picked up again, lower and louder than before. A tendril of fear uncurled in her belly. Was this what it was to be a small creature pinned helpless in the wood?

  “Nikolai,” she snapped, not letting her terror enter her voice. She thought it might be a very bad thing if he knew she was afraid. “Get down here.”

  The growl rippled and huffed. Almost like a laugh.

  Before she could make sense of that, he launched himself at her.

  Zoya threw up her hand and a blast of wind pummeled the creature, but her attempt had only half the strength of her usual summoning. It drove him backward and he struck the wall, but with little force.

  She saw the monster register her injury, her weakness. It drew in a long breath, muscles tensing. How many nights had she kept it from its fun? How long had it been waiting for a chance to hurt her? She needed help.

  “Tolya!” she shouted. “Tamar!” But could they even hear her at such distance? Zoya eyed the bell.

  The monster lunged. She dove right and screamed as her injured shoulder hit the slats, but threw her other arm up with all the force she could muster, begging the storm to answer. Wind seized the bell and sent its massive metal shell swinging. The clapper struck, a reverberant clang that shuddered through her skull and made the monster snarl. The bell struck a second time, far more weakly, before it slowed its arc.

  Zoya was sweating now, the pain turning her vision black at the edges. She dragged herself toward the wall.

  Nikolai—the monster—was prowling toward her in a low crouch, its clawed feet silent over the slats of the floor, the movement eerily inhuman. It was Nikolai and yet it was not Nikolai. The elegant lines of its face were the same, but its eyes were black as ink. The shadows of its wings seemed to pulse and seethe.

  “Nikolai,” she said again. “I’m going to be furious if you try to eat me. And you know what I’m like when I’m mad.”

  Its lips drew back in a smile—there was no other word for it—revealing needle-sharp fangs that gleamed like shards of obsidian.

  Whatever was stalking her was not her king.

  “Captain,” she tried. “Sturmhond.” Nothing. It stalked closer. “Sobachka,” she said. Puppy, the nickname he’d had as a child, one she’d never used with him before. “Stop this.”

  From somewhere far below she heard a door slam. Tolya? Tamar? It didn’t matter. They weren’t going to make it in time. Zoya could summon lightning, but without both arms to control the current, she knew she would kill him.

  She raised her arm again. The gust drove the creature back, but its claws gripped the wooden floor and it plowed forward, wings pinned tight to its body, dark gaze focused on her.

  It batted her good arm aside, hard enough that she thought it might have broken that bone too. The wind fell away and the monster’s wings flared wide.

  It opened its mouth—and spoke.

  “Zoya.”

  She flinched. The monster did not speak. It could not. But it wasn’t even the shock of speech coming from the creature’s lips that so frightened her. That was not Nikolai’s voice; it was soft, cool as glass, familiar.

  No. It couldn’t be. Fear was clouding her mind.

  The creature’s lips parted. Its teeth gleamed. It seized her hair and yanked her head back as she struggled. It was going to tear her throat out. Its lips brushed the skin of her neck.

  A thousand thoughts crowded into her mind. She should have brought a weapon. She shouldn’t have relied on her power. She shouldn’t have believed she wasn’t afraid to die. She shouldn’t have believed that Nikolai would not harm her.

  The door to the bell tower slammed open and Tamar was there, Tolya behind her. Tamar’s axes flew. One lodged in the creature’s shoulder, the other in the meat of one of its wings. The thing turned on them, snarling, and Tolya’s hands shot out.

  Zoya watched, torn between lingering dread and fascination as the creature’s legs buckled. It growled, then fell silent as Tolya slowed its heart and sent the monster into unconsciousness.

  Zoya rose, cradling her dislocated arm, and looked down at the thing on the floorboards as its claws receded, the dark veins retracting and fading, its wings dissolving into shreds of shadow. The king of Ravka lay on the bell tower floor, golden hair disheveled, boyish and bleeding.

  “Are you all right?” asked Tamar.

  “Yes,” Zoya lied.

  Zoya. The sound of his voice in that moment, smooth as glass, neither human nor inhuman. Did that mean that whatever was inside him was not the mindless monster they’d assumed? It hadn’t just been hungry; there had been something vengeful in its desire. Would Nikolai have woken with her blood on his lips?

  “You know what this means,” said Tamar.

  They couldn’t control him. The palace was no longer safe, and Nikolai was no longer safe in it. And right now, ambassadors, dignitaries, noblemen, and wealthy merchants were packing their best clothes and preparing to travel to Os Alta—to say nothing of the eligible princesses and hopeful noblewomen who accompanied them.

  “We’ve invited emissaries from every country to witness this horror,” said Tolya. To watch Nikolai descend into bloodlust, to play audience as a king became more monster than man.

  Zoya had given her life to the Second Army, to a dream that they could build something better. She had believed that if her country was strong enough, the world might change for her kind. Now that dream was collapsing. Zoya thought of the stories Nina had told them of the prison at the Ice Court. She thought of the khergud emerging from the skies to steal Grisha from the safety of their lands. She remembered bodies littering the grounds of the Little Palace the night of the Darkling’s attack. She would not let it happen again. She refused.

  Zoya took a breath and slammed her shoulder back into place, ignoring the jolt of nausea that came with the pain.

  “We find a cure,” she said. �
��Or Ravka falls.”

  8

  NINA

  “I DON’T LIKE LEAVING LEONI BEHIND,” said Adrik, his solemn voice like the tolling of a particularly forlorn bell. “They’re hardly friendly at the convent, and she doesn’t speak the language.”

  Nina and Adrik had made their way out of the valley, the sledge pulled behind their two mounts, a hard wind at their backs. Nina rode sidesaddle, her heavy skirts gathered behind her. She wasn’t much of a rider to begin with, and this concession to Fjerdan sensibilities was one of the most challenging elements of her cover.

  As they traveled farther from the town, the whispers rose in her head as if in protest. Now that she knew the dead had brought her to Gäfvalle, the sound seemed to have grown clearer, the high, sweet voices of the lost tugging at her thoughts. She hadn’t told Adrik and Leoni about the graves at the factory yet. The incident by the eastern gate had left her too shaken.

  “Leoni will be fine,” said Nina, turning her attention to Adrik. “She’s resourceful and she knows how to lie low. Besides, we’ll be back by midday tomorrow.” Adrik said nothing, and Nina added, “Cosseting her isn’t going to win you any points.”

  The chill had made Adrik’s skin rosy beneath his freckles, and he looked a bit like a sulky actor whose cheeks had been rouged for a play. “She’s a soldier under my command. I would never cross that line.”

  “She won’t be under your command when this mission is over, Adrik, and it’s obvious she likes you.”

  “She does?” He sounded disconsolate over the news. Nina wasn’t fooled.

  She adjusted the straps of her pack. “To my great astonishment.”

  “You like me too, Zenik. Must be my sunny outlook.”

  “Adrik, if the choice is between taking orders from you or Zoya Nazyalensky, you’re always going to win.”

  His breath plumed in the cold air. “I used to be completely in love with her.”

  “Weren’t we all? Even when she’s slicing you in two with a few well-chosen words, it’s hard to focus on anything but how good she looks doing it.”