King of Scars

by Leigh Bardugo

  “What did you do to her?” the young fisherman cried, his cheeks wet, his face nearly purple with rage.

  “She is Grisha and a prisoner of the—”

  “She’s my sister,” he roared.

  “Is that Idony Ahlgren?” the man in the red cap asked, craning his neck.

  “I thought she went to Djerholm to serve as a governess,” said a woman.

  Nina glanced up at the factory. How much time had elapsed? “Ellinor Berglund,” she said. “Petra Toft. Siv Engman. Jannike Fisker. Sylvi Winther. Lena Askel.”

  “They took Cille!” cried the young fisherman. “They took all of them!”

  A shot rang out. The checkpoint guard stood holding his rifle in the air.

  “That is enough! You will clear the road or we will—”

  Boom. The first explosion rocked the mountain.

  All eyes turned to the factory.

  “That sounded a lot bigger than it was supposed to,” said Leoni.

  Boom. Another blast, then another. Right on time.

  “Sweet Djel,” the red-capped man said, pointing up toward the old fort. “The dam.”

  “Oh Saints,” said Leoni. “Something’s wrong. My proportions must have been off, I—”

  Another boom sounded, followed by a terrifying roar. All of a sudden people were screaming and running down the hill. The young fisherman took his sister in his arms and leapt from the back of the wagon.

  “We have to get out of here!” he yelled.

  “There’s no time,” said the man with the red cap.

  Nina and Leoni clambered out of the back of the wagon. High above, dark columns of smoke rose from the flames at the factory. But far more frightening was the wall of water rushing toward them. The dam had shattered, and a snarling wave frothed and foamed down the mountain, uprooting trees and crushing everything in its path.

  “Maybe it will lose momentum,” said the fisherman, hugging his sister close.

  “Move!” shouted Leoni. “That water is loaded with poison! Anyone it touches is done for.” The guilt and fear on her face hurt Nina’s heart, but this was the way it had to be. Fjerda didn’t need mercy. It needed miracles.

  “We did this,” said Hanne. “We have to stop it.”

  Some of the townspeople were scrambling up the hillsides, but the wave was coming too fast.

  “Get behind me!” Adrik yelled at the crowd.

  “Now!” Nina commanded in Fjerdan when the people hesitated.

  “Leoni,” Adrik said as the people crowded in, forming a wedge behind him. “Can you do it?”

  She nodded, determined, touched her fingers to the jewels in her hair, lips moving in a whispered prayer. Nina could hear Leoni’s warning in her head: Poisons are tricky work.

  The wave thundered toward them, churning with foam and bits of debris, so tall and wide it seemed to block out the sun.

  “Get ready!” Adrik cried.

  Leoni spread her arms.

  Adrik thrust his hand forward, and the wave split, cleaved by the force of the gust he summoned, passing around the townspeople in an angry flood.

  As the water passed, Leoni raised her hands and Nina saw a yellowy cloud appear in the air around her. She was drawing the poison from the water.

  Grisha. Nina heard the word rise from the crowd. Drüsjen. Witches.

  The cloud of poison grew above them as the water tumbled on and on. At last the tide had exhausted itself, but Leoni continued to draw the poison out until the flood had slowed to a trickle.

  She stood with arms raised in the sudden silence as the crowd stared upward at the lethal mass of muddy yellow powder hovering over their heads.

  “Pestijla!” they cried out. “Morden!” Poison. Death.

  “No,” Nina murmured to herself. “Opportunity.” She reached into the waters of the flood, seeking the materials she needed, her power touching on the bones of girls lost in the dark. She grabbed hold.

  Leoni’s arms were shaking, her lips pulled back in a grimace. Adrik whirled, focusing the wind, forming it into a tiny cyclone, gathering the poison and driving it into the empty guardhouse. With a twist of his wrist, the door slammed shut. He grabbed Leoni up against him before she could collapse.

  In the new quiet, Nina could hear the babies wailing, people crying. She didn’t know how much damage the water might have done to the buildings below.

  The crowd was staring at Adrik and Leoni. The soldiers raised their rifles. Nina prepared to call the corpses from the factory to protect them. But she hoped, she hoped …

  “Look!” cried the man in the red cap.

  In the wake of the water, a great ash tree stood in the center of the road, its white branches stretching to the sky, its thick roots sprawling in the mud.

  “Djel and all his waters,” said the man from the tavern, beginning to weep. “It’s made of bone.”

  The bones of the girls lost to the mountain, forged by Nina’s power into something new.

  “Praise Djel,” said the young fisherman, and fell to his knees.

  Nina was glad now that she could not hear Matthias’ voice, that he could not witness the way she had used his god. The trick she’d pulled wasn’t the act of a soldier with honor. It was a bit of theater, the low illusion of con men and thieves.

  But she was not sorry. The work she and Adrik and Leoni had been doing, the work of the Hringsa, was not enough. No matter how many Grisha they saved, there would always be more they could not. There would always be Fjerda with its tanks and its pyres and men like Jarl Brum to light the match. Unless Nina found a way to change it all.

  “Lay down your arms,” said the man in the red cap as the village of Gäfvalle went to its knees. “We have seen miracles today.”

  “Praise Djel!” shouted Nina. She knelt before Adrik and Leoni in her Springmaiden pinafore. “And praise the new Saints.”

  34

  ZOYA

  ZOYA SPED ACROSS THE SANDS, praying she was not too late. She had once thought only a Grisha in the grip of parem could fly. Now she arrived on the storm, borne aloft by thunderheads. It was almost as if she could feel Juris beneath her.

  The sight that greeted her was horrifying.

  Grigori had spread himself over the thorn wood in a great dome, built and rebuilt of sinew, trying to keep Elizaveta and Yuri away from Nikolai and his shadow self. Zoya saw Elizaveta’s thorns stabbing through Grigori’s flesh, her stalks writhing like serpents, lashing out to puncture him again and again.

  But when the Bodymaker began to scream, Zoya realized it was not the thorns that had undone him, but the insects Elizaveta had set upon his body. Tiny holes and furrows began to appear on his flesh as burrowing insects consumed him. His body broke apart, trying to escape itself. He shook and trembled and then opened a thousand mouths to cry out as he was devoured.

  Yuri stood behind Elizaveta, like a child hiding behind his mother’s skirts, his hands pressed to his lips as if to stifle his own terror. Stupid boy. Had he known what Elizaveta intended to unleash? Had his Starless Saint promised him less bloodshed, or did a fanatic not care?

  The Bodymaker shuddered and collapsed. Elizaveta gave a shout of triumph and descended upon the pinned bodies of Nikolai and the shadow creature, both of them now held in place by the vines of the thorn wood.

  Zoya took two broken pieces of obsidian from her sleeve and cracked them together. The spark was all she needed. A gout of flame roared toward Elizaveta, who reared back in surprise.

  Then the Saint’s lips quirked in amusement. “I thought you were wise enough to run, Zoya. You’re too late. The Darkling’s spirit will soon reenter his body. There’s no reason for you to be a casualty of this battle.”

  “My king lies bleeding. I am his subject and his soldier, and I come to fight for him.”

  “You are Grisha, Zoya Nazyalensky. You need be subject to no one and nothing.”

  Zoya could feel the pull of power even now. It would always be with her, this hunger for more. But she ha
d made the acquaintance of tyrants before. “Subject to no one but you? The Darkling?”

  Elizaveta laughed. “We will not be rulers. We will be gods. If it’s a crown you want, take it. Sit the Ravkan throne. We will hold dominion over the world.”

  “I saw his body on the pyre. I watched him burn.”

  “I stole him from the sands of the Fold and left a facsimile in his place. It was well within my power.” Just as Zoya had suspected. And she didn’t care about the particulars. But she wanted to keep Elizaveta talking.

  “You preserved his body?”

  “In the hopes that he might be resurrected. I stored him in my hives. Yes, I know you were ready to believe my little story about my wound, my weariness. But you didn’t dare walk down that dark corridor, did you? No one wants to look too closely at another person’s pain. Did you really believe I would sacrifice an age of knowledge and power to become a mortal? Would you, Zoya?”

  No. Never. But the power she was tied to now did not need to be seized or stolen. “And what will you do with the world once you possess it?”

  “Is this where I present my grand vision for peace? For a unified empire without border or flag?” Elizaveta shrugged. “I could make that speech. Perhaps the Starless One will make that our endeavor. I know only that I want to be free and that I want to feel my power once more.”

  It was a need Zoya understood, and she knew the questions to ask, the same questions she had posed to herself when the dark crept in.

  “You don’t have enough of it?” Zoya asked, moving slowly around the circle of the wood. The shadow creature’s chest no longer glowed—so someone had managed to remove the thorn. Its shape was leeching slowly into the Darkling’s supine body. Nikolai lay dying, impaled on the thicket as his blood drained into the soil.

  “What is power without someone to wield it over? I have lived in isolated splendor for too many lifetimes. What is it to be a god without worship? A queen without subjects? I was the witch in the wood, the queen on her throne, the goddess in her temple. I will be once more. I will savor fear and desire and awe again.”

  “You’ll get none from me,” said Zoya. She raised her hands and her sleeves fell back. Black scales glittered in the twilight.

  Elizaveta gave a beleaguered sigh. “I should have known Juris would hold on long enough to do something noble and misguided. Well, old friend,” she said, “it will not matter.” With a sweep of her arm, two iron-colored stalks shot toward Zoya, their thorns gleaming like the barbed tail of a sea creature.

  Zoya drove her hands upward, and a ferocious whirlwind caught the stalks, twisting them around each other and yanking them from the thorn wood by the root. Zoya flung them back at Elizaveta.

  “How fierce you are,” said the Saint. “Juris was right to make you his student. I’m sorry his knowledge will die with you.”

  This time half the wood seemed to rise up, a snarling mass of fat, thorny stalks. Zoya pulled moisture from the air in a cold wave, coating the stalks in frost, freezing their sap from the inside out. With a rumbling gust of air, she shattered them on the wind.

  “Such power. But you cannot defeat me, Zoya. I have the advantage of eternity.”

  “I’ll settle for the advantage of surprise.”

  Zoya raised the sands for cover and let herself plummet in a flash to the thorn wood. As Elizaveta had talked, Zoya had drifted to the far side of the circle, to the bier on which the Darkling’s perfectly preserved body rested. She had the briefest moment to take in the beautiful face, those elegant hands. Zoya had loved him with all the greedy, worshipful need in her girlish heart. She had believed he prized her, that he cared for her. She would have done anything for him, fought and died for him. And he had known that. He had cultivated it as he had cultivated his own mystery, as he had nurtured Alina Starkov’s loneliness and Genya’s desire to belong. He used us all, just as he is using Elizaveta now. And I let it happen.

  She would not let it happen again. She lifted her arms.

  “No!” cried Elizaveta.

  “Burn as you were meant to,” Zoya whispered. She thrust her arm down, and, as easily as if she were summoning a soft breeze, lightning flowed in a precise, earsplitting crack. It struck the bier in a blaze of sparks and blooming flame. Zoya saw a shadow emerge from the fire, as if trying to flee the heat.

  “What have you done?” Elizaveta screamed. She hurtled at the Darkling as the thorn wood tried to lift him to safety, away from the blaze.

  But Zoya focused the heat of her flames until they burned blue as Juris’ dragon fire. The thorn wood began to collapse in on itself.

  Stalks twisted around Zoya’s ankles, but she gathered her sparks and burned them away, singeing herself in the process. Fire was going to take some practice.

  Elizaveta had thrown herself on the pyre to try to retrieve what was left of the Darkling’s body. Zoya knew that though the flames might cause Elizaveta pain, they would not stop her. Only Elizaveta’s own power turned against her would be enough to end a Grisha that ancient. Zoya had just a few minutes to act.

  She found Yuri running from the flames and snatched the glowing thorn from his hand. “I’ll deal with you later,” she snarled, swiping two dunes to surround him in a strong gust. They buried him to the neck.

  The remnants of the shadow creature hovered between Nikolai and the blaze of the Darkling’s bier as if unsure. It was barely visible now, its wings shredded, its clawed hands hanging limply by its sides. She drove the glowing thorn back into the place where its heart should be.

  Nikolai came to consciousness with a gasp. “Take it out of me,” he rasped, ducking his head toward his chest where the real thorn was lodged. “End him.”

  And what if I end you too? There was no time to hesitate. Zoya yanked free the thorn. Nikolai howled as black blood poured from his chest. Zoya was slammed backward by the lashing trunk of a tree.

  All around her, the thorn wood burst into bloom as Elizaveta rose shrieking from the Darkling’s final funeral pyre. She was a swarm of bees. She was a meadow in blossom. She was a woman mad with grief. The thorn wood twisted around Zoya’s wrists, binding her tight as Elizaveta hurtled toward her, locusts streaming from her mouth, her hands extended, reaching for Zoya’s throat.

  It’s all right, Zoya thought. I saved Nikolai. I kept Elizaveta confined to the Fold. She had stopped the Darkling at last. Let Elizaveta take her heart. But Juris’ voice roared within her, and she could almost see his sneer: I gave up my scales for this? We are the dragon. We do not lie down to die.

  Zoya felt the branches squeeze tighter. The thorn wood was Elizaveta’s creation. But the sap within it flowed like blood, like a river moved by tides.

  Elizaveta screamed her rage, and the buzz of insects filled Zoya’s ears.

  Zoya focused on the sap running through the branches of the thorn wood, the sap that had drowned her again and again, and she pulled.

  The stalks turned, the vicious spikes of their thorns jutting toward Elizaveta too quickly for her to change course or shift form. Her body struck the lances of the thorns with a dull, wet thud. She hung, bare inches from Zoya, impaled on the claws of her own creation.

  Zoya twisted the thorns and watched the light vanish from Elizaveta’s eyes. She could have sworn she heard the dragon snarl his approval.

  Ravka might fall. The Grisha and the Second Army might scatter. But the world would be safe from Elizaveta and the Starless One.

  She thought of the cubs in the snow, of Liliyana shelling hazelnuts by the fire, of the Hall of the Golden Dome back at the Little Palace, crowded with Grisha, laughter echoing off its walls before the Darkling attacked. She thought of Nikolai facing the demon, the thorn like a dagger in his hands.

  This time I saved you, she thought as she collapsed. This time, I got it right.

  35

  NINA

  IT WOULDN’T BE SAFE FOR THE GRISHA women and their children, or for Adrik and Leoni, to remain in Gäfvalle, no matter how the townspeople felt
. The surviving soldiers at the factory would rally. Troops would be sent to impose order in the aftermath of the disaster. They all had to be gone before then.

  In the chaos, Hanne returned to the convent to restore her features and change back into her pinafore, pretending to be just as startled as the others at the terrors visited upon the town. No one could find the Wellmother, so it was easy for Hanne to slip away once more and return to the crossroads, where she found Nina instructing a young fisherman who had agreed to drive the wagon to port.

  Nina had known this reckoning was coming, and as soon as the fisherman had gone to see his sister resettled in the wagon, she turned to face Hanne’s anger.

  But Hanne was calm. Her voice was steady. “I haven’t been asking the right questions, have I? I asked what you were, not who.”

  Nina had changed back into one of Mila’s dresses. She smoothed her hands over the heavy skirts. “I think you know.”

  “Nina Zenik.” Hanne’s copper eyes were hard. “The girl who maimed my father. The Corpsewitch.”

  “Is that what the Fjerdans are calling me now?”

  “Among other things.”

  “I’m an agent working for the Ravkan government. I came to this country to free people like you, people with Grisha power living in fear.”

  “Why didn’t my father recognize you?” Hanne asked.

  “I was tailored before I came here. This,” Nina said, gesturing to herself, “isn’t me.”

  “Is anything about you real?”

  “The skills I taught you. Everything I told you about the way this country works, about the corruption at its core.” Nina took a breath and tapped her hand to her heart. “This is real, Hanne.”

  Hanne looked away. “You used me.”

  “I did,” said Nina. “I won’t deny it.”

  Hanne’s gaze swung back to Nina. She folded her arms. “You’re not sorry, are you?”

  “I’m sorry for the hurt I caused. I’m sorry to have lost your trust. But we are soldiers, Hanne, warriors born. And we do what has to be done. There were lives at stake. There still are. I don’t believe this is the only place where your father’s men are experimenting on Grisha.”