King of Scars

by Leigh Bardugo

  “And a woman who lived between here and Kejerut,” Hanne said slowly, as if fighting the words. “Sylvi Winther. She … she had just come through a bad illness. She was faring well. She and her husband just packed up and left.”

  Had this been one of the women Hanne had tended to in secret? Had she ridden out one cold afternoon and knocked on their door, only to find Sylvi and her husband gone?

  “I know you’ve been taught to hate Grisha, Hanne … to hate yourself. But what the Wellmother and those soldiers are doing to those women is unforgivable.”

  Hanne didn’t look angry anymore. She looked sick and frightened. “And what are we supposed to do about it?”

  Nina thought of Matthias lying bleeding in her arms. She thought of girls lined up like misshapen dolls in the gloom of the old fort. She thought of the way Hanne hunched her shoulders as if she could somehow make herself invisible.

  “Save them,” said Nina. “Save them all.”

  21

  ISAAK

  ISAAK SAT ON THE RAVKAN throne—crafted by the legendary Fabrikator Eldeni Duda from Tsibeyan gold, crowned by a looming double eagle, and host to the backsides of countless generations of Lantsovs. All he could think of was how badly he needed to go to the bathroom.

  They were two hours into the presentations, speeches, and gifts of the arriving delegations. He could tell that many of those present in the overheated throne room were flagging, weak from standing on their feet and bored by the proceedings. But Isaak would have been wide awake even without the menacing presence of Tolya Yul-Bataar to his left and Tamar Kir-Bataar to his right.

  He wasn’t expected to do much more than say “thank you” when handed an elegant pair of new revolvers from Novyi Zem or a lapis chest full of gemstone birds from Kerch. But despite the pretense of gifts and courtship, Isaak knew enemies lurked among this roomful of allies. Who was a potential asset to the king? Who wished to do him harm?

  Isaak smiled into the faces of the Fjerdan delegation—all tall, blond, and regal, their slim bodies arrayed in sparkling white and pale gray, as if they’d drifted in off the ice. He accepted their gifts of sea pearls and remembered the two Fjerdan bullets that had been taken from his thigh after Halmhend. The Fjerdans had backed the Darkling in the civil war. They’d been at least partially responsible for the death of the king’s older brother, Vasily. Each member of each delegation had been vetted, but they were still risks. At least Isaak’s work as a guard had prepared him for such threats.

  The Shu party was entirely female. Princess Ehri Kir-Taban wore emerald silks embroidered with silver leaves, her long dark hair caught up in jeweled combs. She was known as the least beautiful but the most beloved of the five royal sisters. The Tavgharad marched behind their charge, expressions fixed in the hard, empty gaze Isaak had mastered during his own tenure as a palace guard. But these were no ordinary soldiers. They were elite fighters, trained from childhood to serve the Taban dynasty. They wore black uniforms, the screaming beak of a falcon carved from garnet on the left epaulet, square black caps set at a sharp angle over their tightly bound hair. Tamar had said one of them intended to defect. But which? Isaak wondered, scanning their faces. They looked like falcons with their stern mouths and gleaming golden eyes. Why would one of them turn her back on her country and betray the women she’d been trained to protect? Did one of them really intend to defect, or was this some kind of trap for the king? The princess wobbled slightly in her curtsy, a light sheen of sweat on her upper lip, and Isaak saw the face of the guard directly behind her harden even further. He knew he shouldn’t, but he felt for the princess as she rose from her curtsy and gave him a tremulous smile. He had gotten the barest taste of what it meant to be royal, and he didn’t like it at all.

  Isaak hadn’t really understood what it would mean to wear the king’s face, to walk in his shoes. Tolya and Tamar had spirited Isaak out of the palace the previous night to the estate of the notorious Count Kirigin. He would have liked to see the grounds of the infamous Gilded Bog, but at dawn, with Isaak now dressed in the olive drab coat King Nikolai favored, they’d set him atop an exquisite white gelding, and the party had turned back to the city for a staged ride to the capital. They’d been joined by a group of guards and soldiers in military dress—the king’s retinue—and that had been Isaak’s first test. But no one had done more than bow to him or salute. He’d been safely tucked between the Bataar twins and a crew of Grisha soldiers, including Tamar’s wife, Nadia, as they rode through the countryside and then back through the lower town.

  He’d been reminded of the first time he had glimpsed Os Alta, how awed he’d been by its bustle and size. It looked no different now that he was seeing it through the eyes of a king.

  “Stop that,” whispered Tolya.

  “What?”

  “Gawking at everything like some kind of wide-eyed yokel,” said Tamar. “You must look at the world as if you own it.”

  “Because you are the king, and you do,” added Tolya.

  “As if I own it,” Isaak repeated.

  “You could order this city and every building in it burned to the ground.”

  Was that supposed to make him feel better? “I should hope someone would stop me?”

  “Someone might try,” said Tamar. “And he’d probably be hanged for it.”

  Isaak shuddered.

  “At least he can seat a horse well,” grumbled Tolya.

  But Isaak managed to get that wrong too, because a king did not leap from his horse and take his mount to the stables; he waited for the groom. A king tossed the reins to him with a smile and a bob of the head and a “Many thanks, Klimint” or a “How’s your cough, Lyov?” Because of course Nikolai Lantsov knew the names of every servant in the palace. If he’d been a lazier sovereign this might have been easier.

  The way everyone gazed at Isaak frightened him. Isaak had been a nobody, a First Army grunt and then a palace guard. In the lower town, people had addressed him with respect or resentment when they saw his uniform. He remembered the pride of putting on the white and gold for the first time, the bizarre experience of people stepping out of his way or offering him a free glass of kvas, while others spat in the street and swore beneath their breath when they saw him and his comrades pass. It had been nothing like this. Had he looked at the king the way these people did—full of open gratitude and admiration? And what about the others, who looked on the king with suspicion and, sometimes, outright fear?

  “Why do they stare so?” he whispered. “What do they expect to see?”

  “You are no longer one man,” said Tamar. “You are an army. You are the double eagle. You are all of Ravka. Of course people stare.”

  “And them?” Isaak said, bobbing his head toward one of the windows where girls had perched themselves, arrayed in their best dresses, hair curled, cheeks and lips pinked. “The king is not … he’s not one for dallying with commoners, is he?”

  “No,” said Tolya. “Nikolai is not a man to take advantage of his position.”

  “Then what do they hope to accomplish?”

  Tamar laughed. “You’ve read the old tales of princes falling in love with commoners and kings taking peasant queens. Nikolai is without a bride. Can you blame them for hoping one of them might catch his eye? That he might not fall instantly and unequivocally in love with a girl’s beauty or the curve of her neck or her auburn hair, as kings in stories are wont to do?”

  “You needn’t be quite so good a study of all the lower town has on offer,” said Nadia tartly.

  Tamar gave no apology, only flashed a knowing smile that sent the blood rushing to Nadia’s cheeks. “I may peruse the gaudy wares, but I recognize true quality when I see it.”

  Now Isaak looked out at the crowded throne room and wondered if he could just run back to the stables, get on that fine white horse, and ride until he was captured or shot at.

  Tolya gave the throne the lightest nudge of his toe, and Isaak realized it was his time to speak.

&n
bsp; He rose. “My friends—” His voice cracked, and he saw Genya close her eyes as if in pain. He cleared his throat and tried again. “My friends,” he began in Ravkan, repeating himself in Shu, Zemeni, and Fjerdan. “I welcome you to Ravka and thank you for taking this small step toward a peace that I hope will be profitable and fruitful for us all. In this moment, we are not nations; we are friends who will eat together—” Here Isaak paused just as he’d been instructed and let a bit of Nikolai’s rakish grin touch his lips. “And drink together. Let this night mark the start of a new age.” And let me get through dinner without choking on a lamb chop or causing a war.

  Isaak nodded, the doors on either side of the throne opened, and the crowd parted to let him pass.

  He hadn’t even made it inside the dining room before disaster struck. The footmen threw open the doors, and Isaak, focused on how sweaty his hands had become in his gloves, did what he had been trained to do and had done for years—he stepped aside, slipping into attention, eyes in the middle-focus stare that had been taught to him by his elders along with the method of shining his boots and the proper technique for sewing on a button, since “no servant need be troubled by the likes of us.”

  Guards always gave way for those of higher status, and in a palace, almost everyone was of higher status—including many of the more valued servants. But no one was of higher status than the king of Ravka.

  Isaak felt the gasp as much as he heard it and had the sudden lurching sensation that the floor had dissolved beneath him, that he would fall and keep falling until he struck hard ground. At which point, Genya would stand above him and kick him with her slippered toe.

  “Your Highness?” asked the Shu princess, who would enter the dining room first since her delegation had given their presentations last. She looked almost as panicked as he felt.

  Isaak’s first impulse was to search the room for someone, anyone, to help him, to tell him what to do. Don’t panic. Kings don’t panic. But you’re not a king. There’s still time to leap out a window.

  He sketched a shallow bow and used the seconds he gained to fix a confident smile on his face. “Tonight, I am first a host and then a king.”

  “Of course,” said the princess, though she appeared utterly flummoxed.

  The rest of the guests filed past, some of them looking amused, others pleased, others disapproving. Isaak stood there and kept his smile pasted on, his chin lifted as if this were all a test for Ravka’s next queen.

  When the last of the foreign dignitaries had filled the hall, Genya and David entered. Genya looked serene, but he could see the strain around the corners of her mouth. David seemed distracted as always.

  “No need to worry,” said Genya. “You’re doing marvelously.”

  David frowned, his face thoughtful. “So when you said This is a fiasco—”

  “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “But—”

  “Be silent, David.”

  “That bad?” whispered Isaak miserably.

  Genya offered him a brittle approximation of a smile. “At best, our visitors think Nikolai is eccentric, and at worst insane.”

  All over one tiny breach of etiquette? Isaak did his best not to show his distress as he took his seat and the meal began. There were a thousand rules to remember when it came to formal dining, but they’d sidestepped many of them this first night by serving their guests a Ravkan peasant feast, complete with fiddles and dancing.

  The evening passed uneventfully, and Isaak thanked all his Saints for it, though there was another tense moment when the Fjerdan ambassador asked after the extradition of Nina Zenik.

  Genya was quick to reply that the Grisha girl had been on a trade mission to Kerch for nearly two years.

  “An unlikely story,” the ambassador said mulishly.

  Genya poked Isaak under the table, and he smiled amiably at the ambassador. “My stomach is too full to digest diplomacy. At least wait for the sorbet.”

  At one point Tolya bent his head to Isaak’s ear and muttered, “Eat, Your Highness.”

  “Everything tastes like doom,” he whispered.

  “Then add salt.”

  Isaak managed to chew and swallow a few bites, and soon, to his great amazement, the dinner was over.

  The guests dispersed to their chambers, and Tolya and Tamar whisked him down the hall, through the back passages reserved for the king, to the royal quarters.

  But just as they were about to enter, Tolya put his huge hand on Isaak’s chest. “Wait.” He scented the air. “Do you smell that?”

  Tamar lifted her nose, cautiously approaching the door. “Garlic,” she said. “Arsine gas.” She signaled a guard. “Get a Squaller and David Kostyk. The door is rigged.”

  “Poison gas?” asked Isaak as the twins shepherded him away from the king’s chambers.

  Tolya clapped him on the back. “Congratulations,” he said with a grim smile. “You must have been convincing if someone’s already trying to kill you.”

  22

  NIKOLAI

  NIKOLAI WAS STRUGGLING to acclimate himself to his chambers, to the strange mix of sand and stone. They might have been a well-appointed if antiquated set of rooms in his own palace if not for the lack of color, the uniform texture. It was a place seen distantly through fog. The exception was his bed: an absurdly romantic bower of red roses that he assumed was Elizaveta’s work. He lay down on it, determined to rest, but could not find sleep. If he did, would the monster emerge? Would it try to hunt in this barren place?

  Nikolai was deeply tired, and yet it was as if his body had lost any sense of time. It had been late morning when they’d set out for the Fold, but in this permanent twilight, he wasn’t sure if days or hours had passed. He had the sense of time slipping away from him. We don’t eat. We don’t sleep. I don’t remember what it is to sweat or hunger or dream. The Saints—or whatever they were—had been trapped here for hundreds of years. How had they not lost their minds?

  Nikolai shut his eyes. Even if he couldn’t sleep, he could attempt to order his mind. The demon gnawed constantly at his sense of control, and the bizarre experience of being plucked out of his reality and thrust into this one wasn’t helping. But he was a king, and he had the future of a country to consider.

  Tolya and Tamar had seen Nikolai and Zoya vanish with Yuri in the sandstorm. What would they do? Conduct a search, then create a cover story, stick those junior Squallers somewhere they couldn’t tell tales. The twins would carry word of his disappearance back to Genya and David.… After that, his imagination failed him. What course of action would they choose? If he’d only had the chance to work with Isaak or one of the other candidates for his stand-in, they might have had an option. But to attempt such a thing with so little time to prepare? Well, Nikolai might have been daft enough to attempt it, but Genya and the others were far too sensible to court that kind of disaster.

  There was still time to salvage the festival, their leverage with the Kerch, all of it—if the Saints made good on their promises. And if Nikolai survived the Burning Thorn. Then he could at least give Ravka a fighting chance. He’d be himself again. His mind would belong to him alone.

  He would have to find a bride immediately, make the alliance Zoya had pushed so hard for. Marriage to a stranger. A performance of civility without true companionship. He would be acting for the rest of his life. He sighed. This place was making him morose.

  Nikolai sat up straight. He’d heard a noise outside, a soft snuffling. When he opened the door, he saw nothing—until he looked down: A bear cub was tugging gently at his trousers with shiny little claws. His fur was thick and glossy, and where his back legs should have been, he had two wheels, the spokes of which looked distinctly like finger bones. The effect was both enchanting and bizarre.

  The cub tugged again, and Nikolai followed, stepping into the central chamber. It was only then that he saw Grigori, his massive, shifting body huddled against the wall.

  “Forgive me,” Grigori said, three
mouths talking this time, appearing in vague faces and then dissolving. “We have been alone a long time here, and I cannot be comfortable in enclosed spaces.”

  Nikolai gestured to the gray sand walls. “Couldn’t you just change them?”

  “They are your rooms now. That seems … rude.”

  The snuffling bear wheeled around the perimeter, bumping against the doors to Zoya’s and Yuri’s chambers.

  “Your minion is charming.”

  “I find creation soothing, and I know how much easier it is for otkazat’sya to witness the monstrous in particular forms.”

  Nikolai paused, unsure of what protocol was expected around a Saint. “Is that why you’re huddling in the corner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please don’t do so on my account. Rumor has it I have a gift for the monstrous myself.”

  Grigori’s many heads chuckled softly, a jury of laughing Grigoris. “I can no longer control the form I take. I was once just myself and the bear, but now a thought enters my mind and my body races ahead to meet it. It is exhausting.”

  Grigori shrank, and for a moment, Nikolai glimpsed the shape of a man with gentle eyes and dark curly hair. He wore the skins of a bear around his shoulders, and the bear’s head as a mantle … but then the bear moved, and it was as if man and animal were one, standing together.

  “I don’t know whether I should mention this,” said Nikolai. “But I’ve been told the pelt of the bear that killed you is in the vault of the royal chapel in Os Alta. I wore it at my coronation.”

  “I’m afraid your priests have been sold a counterfeit,” said Grigori, the image of the mantle flickering over his shoulders again. “That bear never died, much as I never truly died.”

  “It became your amplifier?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” said Grigori as he split once again into a larger body, a tide of legs and arms.

  “I think I remember your story. You were a healer.” A young healer, renowned for his cures of the most hopeless cases. He had healed the son of a nobleman afflicted with some plague, and the nobleman’s doctor, most likely afraid he was about to be out of a job, had accused Grigori of trafficking in dark magic. Grigori had been sent into the woods to be torn apart by beasts, but he had fashioned a lyre from the bones of those who had trespassed in the wood before and played a song so soothing, the bears of the forest had lain down at his feet. The next day, when Grigori emerged from the woods unharmed, the nobleman’s soldiers bound his hands and sent him back into the forest. Unable to play his lyre, Grigori was savaged by the very bears who had slept at his feet the night before. Bloody reading for a young prince. It was a wonder Nikolai had slept at all as a child.