Web of Frost

by Lindsay Smith

  She reached the heart of the sanctuary and dropped to kneel on the cushion there. It was so worn her knees pressed into the earth beneath, but she didn’t mind. Saint Millionov. She scanned the grid of icons. Saint Pechalnya. Saint Sergei. I am here, beseeching you, ready to hear Boj’s will stream through your mouths.

  Show me the way.

  Visions fluttered like moths at the edge of her thoughts, yet nothing overtook her. If the saints had more to tell her, they weren’t ready to share it yet.

  An old priest shuffled into the narthex. His simple black robe dragged in the dirt as he stooped forward. “Welcome. Oh—welcome. Blessed one.” He halted before Katza and clasped her hands in his own veined, trembling palms. “Your power. How closely Boj’s mouth hovers toward your ear . . . You honor us deeply with your presence, tsarechka.”

  Katza lowered her head. She had never considered herself powerful before. Yet she had no one to hide from here. Something about the old priest’s smile told her he wouldn’t scold her for using her blessings like Patriarch Anton did.

  She let him kiss her fingers before she rose to her feet. “Father. The saints have guided me to your order, yet I’m afraid I do not know your purpose.”

  A smile creased his face, and he stood as straight as his bowed spine would allow. “We are the Order of the Mouth of Boj. While we cherish the saints and their blessings, we believe that Boj’s will can be granted to all with ears to hear it.”

  Katza tilted her head to one side. That certainly wasn’t what Patriarch Anton would say. “The saints serve as intermediaries, because Boj’s words are too powerful for us to hear directly,” Katza said, recalling her lessons. “Even my family, with our affinity for all their blessings—”

  “Oh, yes. Your blood is Silov, and you above all others are suited to hear Boj’s will directly. To act as Boj’s conduit.” The old priest smiled. “Yet there are plenty of other prophets who could use the saints’ blessings well, too. If the patriarch’s office did not scold them for being bold.”

  “You disagree with the church’s teachings, then,” Katza said.

  The priest offered her a flat smile. “We encourage all who are blessed by the saints to use those blessings to the fullest. To do so is to bring them nearer to Boj.”

  “But to rely on the saints too much is to invite chaos. Like the first tsars did—they became dependent and desperate for more power.” Katza thought of Patriarch Anton’s warnings, and the many times her father could have called on more and more of the saints. But they’d warned against it, for fear of the trouble it could invite. The tsar had seen firsthand the way the blessings could go awry.

  And then there was Katza’s recurring vision. The blood still warm on her hands—

  “You said a vision drew you here.” The priest blinked at Katza as the sunlight started to dim. “What does Boj wish from you, tsarechka?”

  “I’m searching for one of your prophets.” She lowered her gaze as she said it, fearing the color in her cheeks might betray her. “He had dark, wavy hair and an intense gaze. The way he showed me how to use the saints’ blessings, it was like . . . Well, it was nothing I’d ever had courage before to do.”

  The priest’s face went slack, as if all the vigor had drained out of him. “No. I’m sorry, tsarechka. You do not wish to deal with this man.”

  Katza frowned. “But he is one of your order. Father, he is very gifted—”

  “No—he is of our order no more. He is forsaken to us now. Temnost.” The priest took a step back, into the shadowed depths of the altar. “Please, tsarechka, I beg you. Do not speak to this man.”

  Nadika stepped forward. “Tsarechka, the sun is setting. We really must go.”

  “Please, give me a minute.” She stepped toward the priest, but he had moved behind the altar. “Father, you don’t understand. He helped me.” Her chest ached. She knew what the young prophet had done for her. He’d taken her lifelong fear away and allowed her to turn it into something good. Surely that couldn’t be wrong in the eyes of the saints. In the eyes of Boj.

  “No. You must not seek him out.”

  Her frustration swelled—she’d been so certain her vision had steered her this way. “If he can’t show me how to better use my blessings—then who can?”

  The priest trembled. “I—we were wrong, perhaps, to listen to this man.” He closed his eyes, a pained expression on his face. “We thought it was a message from Boj in heaven, but I think it was something else.”

  “But you said he was temnost.” Forsaken. Like the tsars that Boj turned away from. “Why is he still a prophet, then?” And why, she wondered, did the saints still answer his call?

  Even Saint Lechka. Especially Saint Lechka, who had ignored Katza’s prayers to the last.

  “His ideas are dangerous. He seeks to reforge all of Russalka, my tsarechka, and we could not bear that.”

  “Reforge?” she asked. Nadika shifted her weight at Katza’s back, impatient. But she needed to know.

  “He would take all the saints’ blessings for himself, strip Boj from the sky. Leash them to his sled like draft horses to do his will.” The priest lapsed into a coughing fit. “Tsarechka, please.”

  He couldn’t be right. The boy she’d met had offered wondrous things, a command over the blessings that Katza could only dream of.

  He’d known the warning in her vision. And he’d helped her shake off its grip.

  “Go, tsarechka,” the old priest said. “Before he leashes you, too.”

  The old priest must have been mistaken. Katza’s head thrummed with his words all the way back to the palace and long into the night. The prophet she’d met could not be this monster, trying to pull Boj from the sky. She’d seen the good his deeds had done—the wounds stitched closed, the tempers calmed. How could he wish to hurt her, or Russalka? He’d given Katza strength.

  Yet over the next few days she had little more time to ponder it. All too soon, the palace was stirred into madness by the imminent arrival of her betrothed, the Bintari prince. Down came the funerary trappings with a haste that made Katza’s head spin. Instantly the courtiers stopped offering her condolences, and began congratulating her instead. But I haven’t done anything, she wanted to scream. All I am is a piece on the board.

  She hadn’t asked for Aleksei to die, and she hadn’t asked to be wed. She’d always known it was coming, but it was a distant ship on the horizon. She thought there would be time to prepare—to be an aunt to the children Aleksei would never have now; to learn beside him at court. To muster up the courage to stand beside a stranger and yoke her life to his.

  She always thought there would be more time.

  The morning of the prince’s arrival, Katza bathed, and then Sveta, her attendant, shook out her curls and began to pin them carefully around her head. “Are you nervous, my lady?” Sveta asked. “I would be. What if he looks frightful?”

  “What if he is frightful?” Katza asked.

  But as Sveta’s eyes widened in the mirror, she realized too late that she could not speak freely this way. She swallowed down the bitter taste that had been in her mouth ever since her father first announced she would be wed. Katza forced a pained smile to her face. It was too much, too fast—too soon after she’d lost Aleksei, and she was chasing after all the wrong things, when what she ought to be doing was learning how to take Alekei’s place. It meant holding her grief, her fear, her resentment even closer to her heart, where no one could see. Right now, ruling meant doing as her father commanded.

  “I have heard wonderful things about Prince Fahed. He will make a fine husband, I am sure.”

  Sveta seemed to relax. “I heard he is arriving by train—the new line that connects Petrovsk directly to the Bintari capital. Can you imagine? A prince riding the train, among the commoners.”

  “I am sure he has a private car,” Katza said, “just as we do when w
e travel to the countryside. Perhaps a whole train to himself.” She bristled unexpectedly, recalling the taverners’ harsh words for the Silovs and their waste, but forced the thought aside.

  Sveta draped a bib necklace of jewels around Katza’s throat—diamonds and aquamarine, dazzling and fierce as the sun. Katza thought they far outshined her own face, though Sveta had done her best to put some rose in her cheeks and lips. “You never know, tsarechka. I understand the Bintari are very different from us. They are very . . . open with their people.” By the strange twist of her lips, Katza couldn’t tell if she meant it as a compliment or a slight.

  “They ally with us against Hessaria. They can’t be too different.”

  Sveta clasped Katza’s shoulders, and their eyes met in the vanity mirror. Her smile was like a door slamming shut: a firm reminder that for all the time they spent together, Katza should never count her as a friend. “Flawless as ever, tsarechka. Saints bless you today.”

  But the saints had not blessed Katza with any further visions. Not since the old priest’s ominous words.

  Temnost. To be temnost was to be lost in darkness, beyond the saints’ reach, scorned by Boj. Katza sometimes wondered if she was temnost herself. It would explain why Saint Lechka had never answered when she prayed to cure Aleksei’s illness, or why her every other vision warned her against seeking the saints’ aid. But the young prophet had shown her that she was not forsaken. How could he be forsaken himself?

  There was no time to consider it. Nadika and all the other tsarechka’s guards had arrived to escort her to the palace square. Tsar Nikilov had insisted on making the prince’s arrival a massive production, complete with a military parade and a performance from the Mozgai cavalry. After a quick bow from Nadika, Katza was led to the dais built within the opened palace gates in a flurry of silk and fur.

  The palace square formed a half circle where all of Petrovsk’s major boulevards terminated, like spokes on a wheel coming together. As they exited the palace, Katza saw the square’s entrances teeming with what must be half of Petrovsk. Normally the sight cheered Katza, but now a new fear gnawed at her with the insistence of a starved dog: the agitators she’d overheard when she’d explored the city in disguise.

  Were they among the teeming crowds, pouring from each boulevard’s mouth? Hidden among the ranks of black-robed prophets and priests standing on the steps of the Cathedral of Saint Kirill? Disguised in the columns of soldiers who marched forth onto the vast square, or the cavalrymen conducting drills with their ribboned and armored steeds?

  “Nadika.” Katza looked away from the processional. “Did you inform the palace guards—”

  “And the city guard and the police besides.” Nadika rested her hand on her ceremonial sword’s pommel. “No need to fear, tsarechka. You need only worry about what’s in that carriage.”

  Katza tried to smile, but her nails dug into the velvet arms of her chair as the Bintari processional pulled into view.

  The crowds pressed in around the entourage, following it into the square with whoops and shouts. The Bintari procession was small, but no less extravagant than the royal family’s: horses in costume; soldiers in loose-legged trousers and helmets who wielded unsheathed sabers. Women and men in gauzy, brightly-colored tunics and pants vaulted forward and performed an acrobatic display, leaping, flipping, climbing atop one another and then leaping anew. Petrovsk was renowned for its circus performers, but the Bintari gymnasts performed an altogether different style that seemed to value speed and agility just as much as execution. When one gymnast misstepped, she laughed it off and flung herself eagerly into a new routine. A Russalkan performer would have been mortified and slunk away in disgrace.

  The crowds were shouting now, words unintelligible, but their voices bright and delighted. Katza permitted herself to relax, though her heart felt clenched in a fist. She did not begrudge this prince, whoever he was—like herself, he was only a piece of machinery like the massive equipment in the factories. A means of political will. All her life she’d known she was fated for this, and he likely had known the same. Aleksei’s death had changed nothing except that instead of being sent away, she could remain in Russalka. It was this Prince Fahed, instead, who’d been uprooted from his home—if anything, she should be the one pitying him.

  And then the carriage door opened, its gem-covered door sparkling in the weak winter sun, and Prince Fahed of the Bintari Emirate emerged.

  Katza’s heart lurched into her throat and stayed there.

  Fahed was tall, but not overly so; muscled without looking like a brawler. He wore a simple cream tunic made lovely with its golden and pearled trim that perfectly complemented his light brown skin. His loose trousers tapered into gleaming boots. He walked with an easy, unpracticed gait that followed no schedule, no taskmaster, and he tossed out waves to whoever shouted to him from the crowd. As he approached the dais, Katza could make out his features: sharp cheekbones, trim black beard that sketched his jawline, loose hair that almost reached his shoulders, and a smile that twisted like it was forever holding back a sly remark.

  He dropped to one knee before Katza, and she rose and laid her hands upon the crown of his head. His black hair was like thick, roughly spun silk; he smelled of sunlight and warmth. Quickly he tipped his head back to look upon her face and her hands tumbled away.

  “Katarzyna, the tsarechka.” His Russalkan was flawless, sparkling as champagne. “You are even more beautiful than they say.”

  As was Fahed, but looking at him left her with a cold, hollowed-out feeling all the same. “There are more important qualities in a ruler than beauty.”

  He laughed as he rose to his feet. His hands gripped hers, and he brought them to his lips for a kiss. “So there are,” he murmured. “But it is never a poor start.”

  She had made him laugh. Hadn’t Aleksei always said laughter was the most crucial ingredient in a happy marriage? Aleksei had always been laughing, whether with Annika or anyone else. Katza ached to know she would never hear that bright sound again.

  The tsar stood to address the crowd. Today, he wore his military dress: a thick coat of downy white with golden epaulets and cuffs, and a breast full of medals from his youth and his heroic acts in the Five Days’ War with Hessaria. A pale blue sash, the same color as Katza’s, draped from his right shoulder to his left hip, and the basket of his saber mimicked the Saints’ Wheel design.

  “Thank you, citizens of Russalka, for welcoming Prince Fahed to our home! Soon, he shall marry my daughter, the tsarechka Katarzyna Nikilovna, heir to the Golden Throne. The wedding feast shall be a day of joyous celebration for all!”

  Katza received a somewhat milder response from the gathered crowd, though she could hardly expect to hear them for as far as the palace guards had pushed them back behind multiple barricades. A dull, throbbing chant arose in the distance, but it was blunted. Nadika took a step forward, hand clutching the pommel of her saber.

  “Is something the matter?” Fahed asked, dropping Katza’s hand.

  Katza bit her lower lip. If the prophet were here, he would tell her to trust in her gifts—perhaps even use them to quell the crowd. But Katza did not yet have the courage for that. Maybe at the least, she could hear their complaints. Then perhaps she could urge her father to say something to soothe them.

  Saint Tikhona, she prayed. Quiet the air around me, and draw their words to me.

  The shouts amplified, yet they seemed to come from inside Katza’s head rather than the square.

  The saints are a lie.

  Russalka must die.

  Death to the tsar!

  Katza released the blessing like it were a burning ember. “Father.” She brushed her fingers against his coat sleeve. “We should head inside.”

  He nodded, mouth hanging dumbly open. “Yes. Yes, let’s adjourn. It is nearly time for the Golden Court to convene.” He turned to Fahed. “I’m sure yo
u are tired from your journey . . .”

  “Nonsense. I wish to see how Russalka is run.” Fahed smiled, straight teeth gleaming as white as birches, and offered an arm to Katza. Only the slight tension in his shoulders gave any hint that he’d heard the protesters’ shouts. Somehow, the fact that he was trying to ignore it only made Katza all the more embarrassed. “Shall we, my love?”

  “Foreign interloper,” Katza’s mother muttered, still seated on the dais. “Scheming wraith.”

  Katza cringed. The last thing they needed today was another of her mother’s episodes. “Mother, this is Prince Fahed.” She spoke in a measured tone, though it sounded so strained to her ears she feared it would snap. “He and I are to be wed.”

  “Won’t bring back your brother. Stuck me with his bitch wife.” Her mother rocked back and forth. “Saints won’t save us. They’ll let these rats kill us. Eat the meat right off our bones.”

  Katza’s mouth twitched. “Mother, I—”

  “Don’t you mother me. Don’t you know who I am? I’m Konte Sabine. I belong in Hessaria, not turning to ice and sticks!” She hissed a sharp laugh as she rose from her seat. “What do I care? It can all burn away! I’ll be here laughing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

  Katza took a step back and motioned to her mother’s attendants, careful not to meet Fahed’s eyes. “Please,” she whispered. “Get the tsar-consort inside. I’m afraid she’s about to have another episode.”

  Sabine’s fleet of attendants descended upon her, but too late. Already she was screeching, spittle swelling at the corners of her mouth. Even Prince Fahed looked completely lost, unable to charm his way through what was happening before him. Something in his stunned expression brought Katza a bitter taste of satisfaction. So his perfect countenance could be shaken after all. She took his arm and steered him decisively toward the palace entrance.