Web of Frost

by Lindsay Smith

  The ministers and counts and duchesses and guards fell silent. Even Fahed, with his clever tongue, could for once conjure up no words.

  Katza burrowed her face into her hands. Aleksei had once spoken of leading Russalka as if it were a garden he needed to tend. As leader, it would be his duty to tear out the weeds, cast aside the rocks, trim what needed trimming and replant what demanded it. He could water it and feed it and nurture it all he liked, but he could not make it grow—that was for the plants themselves.

  But Katza felt she had inherited no garden. Instead, she had only a rotted patch of dead earth, and no means to coax life from it. Her father and Aleksei—they’d tried in fits and starts to grow it, but their hesitance, their weakness, had only been her burden in the end. How could she start anew?

  “I know why it is so.”

  Ravin strode down the central aisle of the court to the center of the dim chamber. The golden shaft of light from overhead slid over his shoulders and face like a cape as all eyes turned toward him.

  “There is one institution to blame. One group above all else who poisons Russalka with their acts. They are the root of every evil we see blossoming today. And if you wish for Russalka to thrive, tsarika, you must rip them out.”

  The secretary of the patriarch leapt to his feet. “Temnost! Be gone and darken our proceedings no more!” He whirled toward Katza. “This man has no place amongst our discussions. Cast him out with the shadows. He seeks to command the saints and all their blessings where he has no right to do so!”

  “Silence.” Katza raised one hand.

  She wanted nothing more than to bury her face in Ravin’s chest and weep; to succumb to his warm embrace. But for now, she had to continue to play the tsarika. Katarzyna I. Only later could she be Katza, the scared and vulnerable girl who lurked inside of her.

  “The prophet Ravin has the right to speak, for I say that he does.” Katza rolled her hand to turn an open palm to Ravin. “Please, prophet, continue.”

  Ravin’s look drew Katza in, and for a moment, she was lost. She felt snowflakes kissing her cheeks and the rush of cool air coiling around them, as if they stood alone in a wintry forest. She smelled the sea, pulling her in, and felt his dark, thick hair tangled in her hands. She tasted his skin, that taste like spiced wine, and felt that knot in her stomach tie itself once more.

  Soon, there would be no need to hide. Once she coaxed her garden to life again, no one could speak ill of them.

  “I have every right,” Ravin said, “to use the saints’ blessings. Anyone with the will and the courage to harness that power has the right. But I know this is not what you would teach in all your orders, in your patriarchal vows.”

  Ravin’s smile glinted like a peasant’s scythe.

  “You are poison.” Ravin strode toward the secretary of the patriarch. “Your church is what is holding Russalka back from the greatness she deserves. You keep the people subservient—warn them not to ever deviate from the path of Boj’s will. And for fear of you, they will wither and die.”

  “Madness.” The secretary trembled as he spoke. “You speak heresy!”

  Ravin laughed, a dark and biting noise. “The truth is a cruel blade, secretary—I’m aware. But your way is crueler. You see someone with a small gift, a talent for harnessing this power source. You tell them they are chosen, and if they are very well-behaved and follow all of Boj’s teachings, then maybe they too can become a saint one day. But you are not teaching them. You are breaking them. You break down their will to resist, until they will only use their gift when you tell them, how you tell them. And those who refuse? You brand them and cast them aside.”

  The secretary pounded his fist against the wood bannister before him. “What would you rather we do, heretic? Let everyone run about, claiming all the blessings for their own? You saw the devastation one well-trained tsarika wrought upon the Hessarian fleet yesterday. How could we possibly control an entire nation of such people?”

  “How would you, indeed? We may never have the chance to find out. Russalka is dying because of your fear.” Ravin’s face twisted, sharp and unrecognizable. The sunlight through the oculus cast him in gold and deep shadow. “I will not submit, and your tsarika will not, either.”

  “Heresy!” the secretary cried. “Boj will strike us down for your words!”

  Fahed laid a hand gently on Katza’s arm. She was squeezing the wood railing so hard that splinters dug beneath her nails. With a forced swallow, she relaxed her grip.

  “Betrothed,” Fahed said gently. “You must stop him. These lies will help no one, in the end.”

  “Lies?” Ravin laughed. “I am blessed by Saint Volkov. The one they call the saint of lies. For I can part the veil to the truth.” Ravin tilted his head, studying Fahed as if he were a curiosity. “I see every truth.”

  Fahed rushed over the railing, charging straight for Ravin.

  “Fear not.” Ravin raised his hand. “I won’t tell your truths just yet.”

  Katza jumped to her feet as Fahed stopped in his tracks. “Prophet. Please,” Katza said. “You know I believe you, truly I do. But let us discuss this in private—”

  “With Volkov’s blessing, I saw through the greatest lie of all. That goldcloth lie spun by your church.” He peered down at the secretary. “Russalka will never be great so long as you keep us in fetters. Russalka can never be free.”

  The steady cacophony of gasps and shouts rose around the chamber, swirling like a vortex. And Katza stood in its center, unable to move or speak. Ravin was telling the truth—she wanted desperately to believe that. She had seen it for herself in the way the patriarch had steered her away from the blessings and forced her father and Aleksei to withhold their most miraculous acts.

  But there was no reason for them to do so maliciously—was there? Surely the priests benefited from Russalka’s greatness as much as anyone else. She could see no gain for them in keeping the workers suffering, the peasants starved, the aristocracy in bitter wars of rumor and hate . . . They had no motive for it. At least, none that Katza could discern.

  Katza was faced with a growing sense that there was much, however, that she had failed to discern about the way Russalka worked.

  A messenger entered the court, nearly tripping over his feet. He wore the thick fur hat, pressed wool coat, and sashed tunic of the palace servants, and snow nestled in the crevices of his clothes. “Tsarika. Tsarika, I bring you word.”

  Katza drew a steadying breath. Please, Boj, let it not be warning of another invasion.

  “A woman is at the palace who wishes to speak with you. I think you’ll agree you wish to meet with her very much.”

  “What woman?” Katza asked. She glanced at the courtiers bickering all around her. “I’m afraid we’re otherwise occupied—”

  “You’ll want to make time for this one. Your guard, Nadika, confirmed it.” The messenger tugged at his collar. “The woman says that she is the real Ulmarov. And she wishes to bargain with you.”

  So Ulmarov is actually Ulmarova,” Katza said, following her messenger through the palace halls. Stolichkov, Fahed, and Ravin were close in tow, though Katza didn’t recall inviting them to join her. They’d left the rest of the court in heated debate, everyone arguing with everyone else about Ravin’s words and the fallout of their fight with the Hess. It reminded Katza of the naval battle: noise and fire and unchoreographed madness that afterward made one side look like they knew what they’d been doing all along.

  “A clever ploy,” Stolichkov said. “We assumed it must have been a man, and never even spared the women agitators a second glance.”

  “I’ve noticed Russalka has a habit of doing that,” Katza said.

  Stolichkov straightened his vest with a huff.

  They reached the study were Ulmarova was being detained. Nadika and a few other palace guards stood out front. Nadika snapped to a salute
as Katza approached, but Katza waved her friend off.

  “Your Highness. We are holding the violent criminal here for now, but at your word, I will gladly escort her to the cells.” Nadika’s mouth twisted with distaste. “Or the firing squad, if you so desire.”

  Katza felt the crackle of vengeance inside her, but forced herself to calm. “Let’s hear what she has to say for herself first.”

  “I searched her thoroughly for weapons,” Nadika said. “Nothing I could find, but I advise you to be careful. She’s certainly crafty, if she is who she claims.”

  “This may present a rare opportunity, beloved, if you play it carefully.” Fahed reached for Katza’s hand. “If this woman is your direct line to the agitators and the other discontents, then it might do well to treat her respectfully.”

  “Respectfully?” Katza drew back from him. “This woman called for my father’s death.”

  “And she has the power to call for yours, too. Not through her words, but by how you treat her. She needn’t do so out loud. If you are cruel to her, then your people may respond in force.” Fahed winced. “But if you are gracious, if you hear her out . . .”

  “She is in no position to bargain with me,” Katza said.

  “I understand your feelings toward her. But remember—when she speaks, the people listen. You cannot always say the same.”

  Katza’s face burned, but she had to admit there was some truth in his words. “I will keep it in mind.”

  Ravin leaned toward Katza’s ear. “Please show caution, blessed sun. We can’t know for certain what she intends.”

  Katza took a deep breath. Her skin prickled where his breath had kissed it. She called on Boj’s power to fill her: no petition to the saints, no calling for a specific blessing. Only the raw and unfiltered magic that was her right. As Ravin had taught her. It warmed her, flared through her, promised her great things . . . And she was all too happy to consider their promises.

  “I’ll protect myself.” Katza’s smile was not her own—no, she corrected herself, that wasn’t quite true. It was not the smile of a frightened tsarechka. It was the smile of a powerful ruler. “Let’s hear what the traitor has to say.”

  The guards opened the doors. Nadika, Ravin, and Stolichkov followed Katza into the room, a well-appointed parlor draped in brocade and dipped in gold and lapis lazuli. The woman seated at the room’s heart looked neither out of place nor totally comfortable with her surroundings; she wouldn’t look like much of anything at all, were it not for the crescent of guards surrounding her with pistols at the ready. She was perhaps forty years old, around Katza’s mother’s age, but she was neither particularly ground down by Russalka’s harshness nor fresh-faced. Neither fat nor thin, she wore her medium brown hair pulled back from her face and a tidy but unremarkable tunic and trousers in the style of the artists and intellectuals who frequented Petrovsk’s cafés.

  Katza grabbed a side chair and whirled it around to face Ulmarova. Ulmarova, for her part, showed little interest nor concern in Katza’s approach. Katza gathered up her skirts and settled down across from her.

  “Which do you prefer, then?” Katza asked. “Ulmarov or Ulmarova?”

  The woman pursed her lips. “My peers call me Elena. Do you wish to be my peer?”

  Katza’s temper flashed like lightning, and she reached for Marya’s vengeance. But no—she couldn’t afford to lose her temper. Not yet. She smiled wanly and folded her hands in her lap, feeling electricity dance across her palms. “Tell me, Elena Ulmarova, why did you kill my father?”

  Ulmarova laughed politely, as if Katza had told a stale joke. “You think I killed him? Please. I’m a coward. Besides, I am clumsy.” She held up her wind-chapped hands. “I’ve no skill for bomb-making.”

  “But you encouraged your followers to kill him,” Katza said. She clenched a fist; the crackle was growing inside her.

  “Oh, no. No, I see how a simple tsarechka like yourself might not understand the distinction.” Elena smiled, baring her incisors. “You’ve only ever been raised to spread your legs for the Bintari prince. You can’t be expected to know things like the finer points of intellectual discourse or leading a country, after all.”

  Katza’s nails bit into her palm with an electric jolt. “You’re the one who put this crown on my head.”

  “I never encouraged killing.” Elena spread her hands. “I encouraged the underpaid workers and starving peasants to rise up and end their royal enslavement. There is a distinction, little girl. If you or anyone else has misinterpreted it, then I’m not to blame.” She arched one eyebrow. “Or are you to blame for when your soldiers and agents rape and pillage the countryside?”

  Katza trembled, the crackling reaching fever pitch. She could use Marya’s vengeance right now and crush this woman’s throat. Relish the way her hot blood would run cold as Morozov’s frost spread through her veins. She sensed Ravin like a shadow at her back, willing to do the same if she asked him. He would understand. Nadika would understand. Every last one of her courtiers, she thought, would understand.

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t be the monster Ulmarova expected her to be. Not yet. Not just yet.

  “Very well. You only incite people to violence you are too cowardly to commit yourself.” Katza pried her fingers apart, and her nails came away lined with blood. “Why don’t you begin, then, by telling me—”

  “No.” Ulmarova’s word had a weight behind it like heavy machinery, decisive and crushing. “I did not come to you willingly to tell you what you want to hear. I came to give you a chance to convince me.” She tilted her head. “This isn’t an interrogation, after all. You’d have dragged me down to the cells already if it were that. So I’m afraid you must shut your royal mouth and listen for once.”

  Ravin lurched forward, bristling with raw power. Katza held up her hand to stop him. His chest pressed into her palm; instinctively, Katza curled her fingers. When she glanced back at Ulmarova, the woman had an unsettling arch to her brow.

  “Then you have my attention.” Katza spoke quickly—too quickly. She didn’t like the idea of this awful woman knowing anything about what was between her and Ravin. “Say what it is you’ve come to say.”

  Ulmarova pressed her lips together, considering her words, then settled back in her chair. “The Silov lineage is nothing but despots and thieves,” she said calmly. “You’ve made slaves of every last one of your subjects—”

  “There is no slavery in Russalka,” Katza interjected. “We are not like Texeira or the Mozgai of old.”

  “Only in name,” Ulmarova said. “You require all to work to survive, but there’s no livelihood to be made. They subsist, and rarely even that. They make nothing of value. No meaning to their work but to line the now-meager pockets of your courtiers and to drench this bloody palace in gold.”

  Her words stung with the force of truth, and Katza knew it. Perhaps Fahed was right; it was best to look for common ground with this woman. Even if they did throw her in Temenok Prison at the end, Katza should challenge her views of the Silovs, first. It might rattle her resolve.

  “You think I’m unaware of these issues? I’ve only been tsarika for a handful of days. I’m doing what I can.” Katza spread her hands across her knees. “I did not know the extent of our country’s ills. My brother sought to change them, however, and I mean to continue his work. I want the workers to be better educated. Better paid. I want better conditions, and for Russalka to be something respected once more.”

  Ulmarova smiled again. “Yes, as I expected. But I’ve seen the way you try to bring these things about, tsarika. You seek the same thing so many despots and thieves before you have sought to keep Russalka tamed.” She leaned forward. “You seek control.”

  “And you think you could control it better?” Katza snapped.

  “No.” She sat back. “And that is the difference between us. I seek to strip contro
l away.”

  Katza exhaled, some of the fire snuffing out in her. She was more bewildered than anything else.

  “I want to return the power to the people. Promise them certain freedoms, safe from the patriarch’s dictates and your arbitrary laws. I believe they should be the ones to direct their factories, their cities and villages, their lives.”

  Katza shook her head. Fear was stretching inside her, untenable. She’d seen what unchecked liberties could do. That was how they ended up with bombs on bridges and the Hessarians in the bay. Wasn’t it?

  “I don’t mean for my people to suffer,” Katza said. “I wish to let them live their lives—but the best possible lives. Ones without fear that the Hessarians will come to slaughter their loved ones or fear of the frostlung running rampant. I have seen the chaos that people too often fall to when given the first chance.”

  And yet it was so exhausting to rule. To be in control. There had to be some balance she could find. She turned toward Ravin again. He always had the answers.

  His mouth was a dark line as he studied her. “You know in your heart what is right, tsarika,” he said softly. “You know what it takes to rule. To share it with too many is to stretch Russalka until it tears.”

  Yes. Yes, he was right. She could not give even an inch of that power to someone else. It was all she could do to use it justly herself. The church had the right idea, but the wrong execution. Power belonged to those with the strength to seize it, but also the mandate. Together, she and Ravin had the power and the Silov blood and the will to set Russalka aright.

  Only they could be trusted with Russalka’s fate.

  “I appreciate your ideas,” Katza said—remembering to temper her words, as Fahed had suggested. “But I already know the course Russalka must take to better herself.”

  “Are you so sure?” Ulmarova asked.

  Katza smiled. “I have seen it.”

  The moment the words left Katza’s mouth, she realized she was lying. She had not meant to do so, but it seemed a safer thing to say. In truth, she had seen plenty of warnings that she wasn’t on the right path. But she was staving them off, for now—she simply had to see it through.