Web of Frost

by Lindsay Smith

  “The palace is ours. The city is ours. It belongs to the people. As does the power of the saints.” Zhanna climbed the stairs behind Katza, impervious to the ice’s peril. “Your ways are over.”

  Katza scrabbled onto a landing and slid hard into the corner. Hot white light poured from her body. It was the cleansing fire she’d associated with Saint Ichischa when she’d dueled with Ravin before. The ice burned away, and Zhanna grimaced. She lost her grip on the stairs and slipped backward. The magical manifestations of ice burned up and vanished around them as Katza glowed.

  “Damn you!” Zhanna screamed. “Guards! We have an intruder!”

  In the back of her mind, all the points of light flashed and turned her way.

  Katza swore under her breath. She couldn’t hold all of the revolutionaries off herself—not in the way she’d hoped to. She’d promised herself she’d do her best to cause them no permanent harm.

  No visions yet, warning her. No flicker of blood on her hands. Surely she was on the right path. Katza climbed the stairs to the private wings and tried to peer down the darkened hall.

  Footsteps. Dozens and dozens of heavy boots, pounding down the marble corridors. People shushing one another, too-loose stolen uniforms rustling, rifles clattering together, rusty hinges cocking. Katza closed her eyes and waited for their flecks of light to converge; waited for the first row of protesters to crouch and aim their rifles, hands sweaty and trembling.

  She flung her hands out wide.

  In a rush of wind, the entire cluster of protesters split down the middle and were flung against either side of the corridor. Katza pulled her fingers down into fists, and their flickers dimmed until they fell into sleep. Blood hammered in Katza’s ears. If she could keep them unconscious, then she could send in the army to arrest them. Clear the rats out of her home. No need to shed blood.

  She could be a swift, decisive ruler without being a tyrant. A murderer. Isn’t that what they really wanted? Someone strong but compassionate. Someone dedicated to easing their suffering, not adding to it with countless deaths.

  Ravin didn’t see it that way, and she’d been so eager to believe him. She’d been seduced by his glorious images and whispers of control. How easy it seemed, on the surface, to crush people with a mere thought and tear boats in two and level an army of rebels. How enticing it had been, sweet and sinful as a stolen kiss.

  But when she took the people away, when she left them cowed and afraid, was it really Russalka that remained? Was it the great nation she’d sworn to protect? Or was it a broken, beaten thing, unable to progress?

  The people wanted Ulmarova, not Katarzyna I. Perhaps she could become something in between.

  Power crackled through Katza as she made her way down the halls. Her lip curled back, anger narrowing her vision, throbbing in her ears. Perhaps these agitators could serve as an example yet. She’d show what became of anyone who threatened order, who defied her will.

  She reached the doorway to her mother’s suite and found it sealed over with a thick wall of ice.

  Katza called on the power of Saint Ichischa, as she had with Zhanna. Had Zhanna been the prophet to seal it up, or were there more prophets ahead? The frost melted and evaporated. A hole opened up in the wall’s center and began to spread outward. Beyond the ice, the total darkness changed—someone was turning on the gas lamps.

  “Ahh, tsarika.” Ulmarova’s voice, simpering and smug, wafted from the opening as it spread. “I was wondering when you’d come.”

  Katza shoved herself through the opening. Ulmarova sat in her mother’s favorite reading chair, a rifle held flat in her lap. Katza charged for her, her earlier resolve gone. She longed to kill this woman—feel her hot blood pouring down her throat. Ulmarova lied and twisted words to sway the people to her side, she encouraged them to kill Katza’s father, and now she held her mother ransom in her own home.

  For what? A sense of power? It couldn’t be for Russalka’s sake. That was a vicious lie, one that Katza herself had so readily fallen prey to when Ravin told it.

  No. There was no good reason for it. Katza reached out, Marya’s vengeance crackling, and felt the wisps of power wrap themselves around Ulmarova. Prepared to squeeze—

  Agony tore up Katza’s arm and into her skull. She staggered back and tripped over an ottoman, spilling across the parlor floor. With a snarl, she shoved herself back to her feet. Reached for the well of power again to—

  The well was gone.

  “What have you done?” Katza snarled. “Where is it? What’s happening?”

  “They told me I was blessed, once.” Ulmarova watched Katza with a bemused gaze. “That Saint Pustyna spoke through me. That if I was very good and followed all the saints’ teachings, then Boj would grant me a small sliver of power I could use to aid Russalka.”

  Saint Pustyna. She was a prophet capable of neutralizing other blessings. Katza’s stomach sank. How could she draw enough power to block Ulmarova? Was there any way?

  “It was a lie, of course. I can draw upon Pustyna’s power no matter what I do. I learned that quickly enough. And so I decided the first thing I would do was turn it against the very church that lied to me, the monarchy that told them they could control me.”

  Katza grasped for the well, again and again. She could hear it, feel it rushing by, like an unseen stream babbling in the forest depths. But no matter which way she turned, she couldn’t find it. Tears needled at the corners of her eyes. What was she without her power? Who was she, without her palace, without the crown?

  If Ravin were here, he would know how to grasp it. And he would tell her to use it to its fullest. To slaughter Ulmarova and all the rest.

  But she couldn’t do it; even if she had her power, she wouldn’t do it. He didn’t care for the good of Russalka. He cared only for the power that Katza possessed, and for gaining it for himself.

  Who was she without her power? Perhaps she was nothing to him.

  For her people, though, for herself—she could be so much more.

  She strained, grasping desperately for the well of power that she knew was so close. She could feel its heat singeing at her fingertips, but Ulmarova’s wall pressed back. The harder Katza reached for it, the angrier she grew. She took a step toward Ulmarova. Damn the power source, damn the saints and their blessings. She would stop this woman by whatever means she had to.

  She lunged for Ulmarova, reaching for her rifle.

  It came away easily as Katza yanked. Ulmarova gasped, surprised; she’d been concentrating so hard on blocking Katza’s use of power that she had barely seen her approach. That smug grin of hers faded away as Katza leveled the rifle, cold and firm, against her shoulder.

  “Russalka belongs to me,” Katza said. “And it always will.”

  Ulmarova folded her hands in front of her. For all her strength in wielding Pustyna’s power, she knew not how to use any of the other blessings. She had no defenses left.

  “Tell your foolish revolutionaries to leave. Or I will be forced to send every last one of them to Temenok Island for imprisonment. I don’t care if it sinks under the weight of all the enemies of the crown I have to lock away in there—I’ll lock up every last one.”

  Ulmarova clucked her tongue. “I think that’d be a very foolish thing.”

  Katza cursed under her breath. There was a thread of truth in Ulmarova’s words. That nagging doubt that had followed her like a shadow as she carved her swath of destruction and control. If she was doing everything for her country—what good was it to treat her own people as the enemy?

  “Your brother and your friends knew that working with us was the only way to ensure your people’s love. You can’t control everyone, no matter how many blessings you use. Would you lock up the whole city? The whole country? Then what do you have left to rule?”

  Katza’s grip on the rifle faltered. She was not tending a garden,
now. She was salting and scorching the earth.

  She had to do better. And sometimes, that meant letting go.

  “I’m more useful to you alive,” Ulmarova said. “Your people obey you out of fear. But they follow me out of love.”

  If she killed Ulmarova, she’d make a martyr of her. A symbol for all of the agitators, all of the crown’s enemies to rally around. Whatever Ulmarova was, she had somehow been a beacon of hope to countless workers and farmers and peasants—a promise that the old system wasn’t the only way Russalka could be.

  Katza couldn’t snuff that beacon out. Not with offering them more hope in return.

  Someone pounded on the bedroom door. “Katza! Katza, you bloody fool, let me out of here!”

  “Mama,” Katza cried.

  Ulmarova stood up, but Katza swung the rifle back around to face her, not daring let her attention waver for one moment. “Stay put.”

  Ulmarova wrinkled her nose. “Yes, Your Highness,” she said, tone dripping with sarcasm.

  Katza sidestepped toward the bedroom door and fumbled with the lock. The moment it clicked open, her mother staggered out of the bedroom, dressed in a soiled nightgown, her hair tangled like a nest around her head. Katza shuddered at the sight of her. Blood—blood streaked her cheeks and arms in ragged, parallel lines, and a thick welt rose from her cheekbone.

  “Mama. What did they do to you?”

  “She did it to herself,” Ulmarova said. “Clawed at her arms, wouldn’t stop. Well . . .” Ulmarova grimaced. “I suppose the guards might have knocked her around a bit. But I made them stop.”

  Katza shook her head, but kept one eye trained on Ulmarova. “Why do they listen to you? Why are they willing to kill for you, to harm innocents, all at your suggestion?”

  “Because I have the answers,” Ulmarova said calmly. “All laid out in my pamphlets. If you’d bother to read them.”

  “I’ve read enough to know that they’re nonsense. They don’t even agree with one another.”

  Ulmarova shrugged. “When the crown gives them nothing, even a bad answer looks like a glittering gem.”

  “Kill her,” Katza’s mother murmured. “Kill her. She’ll rob us blind and take everything from us.”

  “I give the people what they truly need—someone to hear their concerns,” Ulmarova countered.

  Her mother hissed, teeth bared. “She’s got them all in her pocket, the guards, the soldiers, the factory workers and shopgirls and students and drivers and all the rest!”

  “Because I give them hope,” Ulmarova said.

  Katza’s hands were growing sweaty around the rifle’s stock. It would be so easy to pull the trigger. Let a ball of metal do the job.

  “You can kill me if it pleases you,” Ulmarova said. “The revolution is more than one woman, now. I’m just an old windbag. But the ideas have spread. Will you kill half of Russalka to kill my ideas? To kill the ideas catching even now without my suggestion? For that’s what’s happened. I’m nothing but a figurehead. They will listen to me. But without me, the revolution lives on.”

  Katza imagined Ravin in her ear, arms around her waist, silver tongue lapping at her skin. She shivered as if phantom-touched. He would tell her any cost was worth it to save Russalka. No matter the deaths, the cruelty. Russalka was what mattered.

  But Ulmarova was right. Russalka was against Katza, now. They were against the crown. They wanted a new way of life.

  A new path. The well of power unsealed. And total control, Ravin had said.

  Katza had told Ulmarova before that there could be no compromise. But maybe there was another way. The well could remain sealed, and Katza could strike a bargain with the revolutionaries. A middle ground. Like Rus and Salka found, so long ago. The earth, the sea, and the blood they spilled between them.

  Katza’s finger hovered over the trigger. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to spill some blood—

  And she saw her arms raised before her, drenched in red. Felt the cold whistle of wind against her flesh. Heard the shushing of leafless trees around her, twilight falling as the white wolf bled.

  No.

  This was the moment when her vision came true. This was the moment when she condemned Russalka to death. A bloody, tyrannical death at her hands as she tried to grasp at power, a power that crumbled in her touch.

  A vision she could not hold back if she drew the well into her. For it would burn and burn. As it always did when she succumbed to it—as Ravin always wanted her to be. Unthinking, unfeeling, devouring Russalka with her need for control. Devouring until there was nothing left but she and her prophet and that awful, hungering magic.

  Katza lowered the rifle with trembling arms.

  “You came to me once seeking a bargain,” Katza said. Her mother growled, but Katza paid her no heed. “Will you strike a bargain, still?”

  Ulmarova’s smile was sharp as knives. “I’m so glad you asked.”

  They walked toward the garrison with a strange processional trailing behind them. Palace guards, hands bound before them with ropes or rags; factory workers in their grease-stained uniforms, bouncing the whole way; palace servants, some captives, others captors; and men and women with dangerous gazes who had the look of professional mercenaries about them—from their well-oiled rifles to their thick leather armor. Katza clutched her mother’s hand, but couldn’t say for sure who was steadying whom. Ulmarova walked with a limp, but she kept her head high and her tight smile crisp as a banner.

  She also never relented in her wall of Pustyna’s blessing, blocking Katza from the well.

  “Let us put our agreement down in words. Sign on it before your witnesses,” Ulmarova said. “Then I’ll let you have your blessings back.”

  Katza gritted her teeth. “You have nothing to fear from me. I’ve already given you my word.”

  “Forgive me if experience has left me wanting more than words.”

  The garrison guards levied their weapons, gazes darting from Katza to Ulmarova and back. “Tsarika. Are you under duress?” the first guard asked.

  “No,” she said. Though the true answer was more complicated than she cared to explain. “Bring my commanders and whatever ministers are stationed here to the war room. We have much to discuss.”

  Ulmarova gestured to the parade of followers. “These people need to be clothed and fed. See to it that they receive treatment for their wounds, as well.”

  Katza bristled, but nodded. “They are all free people. Not a one of them is to be treated as a prisoner. Russalka is united, now; we must work together as one.”

  “As one,” Ulmarova echoed, something mocking in her tone. Katza chose to ignore it for now.

  Katza’s mother grabbed at her arm. “The ice is so cold, darling. Make it stop whispering to me.”

  Katza steered her inside the garrison yard, away from the surly stares of Ulmarova’s flock. “You’re safe now. No more prison of ice.” She cupped her mother’s cheek, careful not to disturb the dried streaks of blood where she’d clawed at her own face. “Let’s get you healed and cleaned up, all right?”

  “It won’t stop the words. They’ll keep coming and coming.”

  Katza pressed a kiss to her mother’s forehead. “I’ll hold them back for you.”

  In the crowd of prisoners from the palace, Katza found one of her mother’s attendants—Vera, the one who never lost her temper and shouted, no matter how her mother raged. She entrusted her with seeing Sabine tended to, and went to meet with what was left of her advisers and war staff.

  In the war room, she scanned the assembled court. Generals Kamenev, Kutuzov, and Tolchin; Admiral Akuliy and two of his top captains; Minister of Labor Lavrova; Minister of War Daniilov; Minister of Finance Ahmbulina. The chief of the city guard and his lieutenants. A few others whose titles she couldn’t recall.

  Her government, or enough of one to
witness what she must say. But in the crowd, she imagined her father, shaking his head, disappointed in her deeds. She imagined Ravin, dark eyes burning with hatred for Ulmarova and disappointment in her own weakness.

  She could not think on them. If she had to conjure up ghosts, it was better to think of Aleksei, who’d fought for something similar before the frostlung took hold. He’d wanted something like this. Not so drastic as this, but then, Ulmarova had never forced his hand. This was tending garden. This was giving Russalka another chance, not strangling it in her powerful grasp.

  “I have reached an agreement with Elena Ulmarova, leader of numerous factions within Russalka that have called for changes to how we rule.” Katza’s voice cracked as she spoke, exhaustion spilling into her tone. “While she has advocated for several different proposals over the past few years, this is what we’ve agreed upon. I will establish a provisional body comprised entirely of freely elected representatives from all walks of life in Russalka.”

  “No, Your Highness—”

  “You have chosen us from the nobility for a reason. We have the education, the experience—”

  “To invite the public into our debates is to invite madness! Tsarika, you cannot!”

  Katza raised her hand. She ached to reach for the power that was just out of her reach—instinct calling her to seize it. A habit she’d have to break, if she was to rule without causing greater harm.

  “We will have representatives from the factories and the universities, from the fields and the docks. And they will work hand in hand with my ministers, courtiers, and guards to shape Russalka’s course. Ulmarova will serve as my prime minister, overseeing elected and appointed officials both, and she and I will work together to settle matters crucial to Russalka’s fate.”

  General Kamenev shook his head. “I fear you are making a grave mistake, Your Highness.”

  “Fortunately, it is my mistake to make, and not yours.” She turned to Ulmarova. “Are you satisfied with these terms?”

  Ulmarova offered a brief nod. “I am.”