Rule of Wolves

by Leigh Bardugo

  “A moment please,” he said, and headed into the hall.

  He returned pushing a wheeled chair.

  “Mayu!” Ehri exclaimed.

  Nikolai had deliberately kept them separated in the weeks since Mayu Kir-Kaat’s attempt to assassinate him. Until last night, there had been no little chats with Mayu or attempts to win her to his side. It had been impossible for him to feel sympathy for the girl who had killed Isaak. His own guilt was too overwhelming. Commanding armies had meant sending countless men to their deaths. Being a king meant knowing there would be more. But Isaak had died pretending to be Nikolai, wearing Nikolai’s face, protecting Nikolai’s crown.

  “They said you were near death!” said the princess.

  “No,” Mayu whispered. She had been kept under restraint, and the Grisha Healers had not allowed her to return to full health. She was simply too much of a threat. Mayu Kir-Kaat had tried to kill the king, and the women of the Tavgharad were some of the best-trained soldiers in the world.

  “Last night, I showed Mayu the letter your sister sent,” said Nikolai.

  “It’s just a letter! An answer to an invitation!”

  Nikolai settled back into his chair and gestured for Mayu to speak.

  “I recognized the poem she quoted.”

  “‘Let them be as deer freed from the hunt,’” said Ehri. “I remember one of my tutors taught it.”

  “It’s from ‘The Song of the Stag’ by Ni Yul-Mahn,” said Mayu. “Do you remember how it ends?”

  “I don’t recall. I’ve never had a taste for the new poets.”

  A sad smile touched Mayu’s lips, and Nikolai wondered if she was thinking of Isaak, who had consumed poetry the way other men drank wine.

  “It tells the story of a royal hunt,” she said. “A herd of deer are pursued through the woods and countryside by a relentless pack of hounds. Rather than let themselves be slaughtered by the pack, the deer hurl themselves off a cliffside.”

  Ehri’s brow furrowed. “The Tavgharad killed themselves … because of a poem?”

  “Because of a queen’s command.”

  “And they tried to kill you too,” said Nikolai.

  “Why?” Ehri said. She opened her mouth, closed it, trying to find some argument to make, some logic. In the end the same word escaped her. “Why?”

  Nikolai sighed. He could say that Queen Makhi was ruthless, but she wasn’t any more ruthless than she’d had to be. “Because when I sent that invitation, I forced her hand. Queen Makhi doesn’t want us to marry. She doesn’t want a Ravkan-Shu alliance. Ask yourself this: If Mayu was sent to impersonate you, to murder me and herself, then why put you in harm’s way at all? Why not let you rest comfortably at home while Mayu Kir-Kaat did the dirty work?”

  “I was meant to be here to help Mayu, to answer questions, coach her through matters only royalty could understand. Then when it was … over, I would return home.”

  “Did your sister’s ministers know about the plot to assassinate me?” How coolly he spoke of his own death. He really was getting good at this. Is it the demon? he wondered. The constant proximity to the darkness of the void? Or was he just getting reckless?

  Ehri made nervous folds in the sheets with her pink fingertips. “I … assume they did.”

  He looked to Mayu, who shrugged and said, “It was not for me to ask.”

  “My sister told me to keep silent,” Ehri said slowly, smoothing out the folds she’d just made. “She said … she said the people would not approve of her … of our plot.”

  Nikolai had to respect that she didn’t try to lay full blame for the assassination attempt at her sister’s door.

  “I should think not,” he said. “The people love you. They wouldn’t want you in danger.” He sat forward and clasped his hands. “She was counting on their love for you. If you had perished with the Tavgharad the other day, I would have no way to prove that they had died by their own hand or that you had been their victim. When your death became known, the Shu people would have risen up, demanding action, and Queen Makhi would have what she wants: an excuse for war.”

  “The queen doesn’t know I’m alive, does she?” asked Mayu as realization struck.

  “No, indeed.”

  Mayu looked at Ehri. “We are the last witnesses. Only we know of the plot she formulated against the king. We have both been her pawns.”

  Nikolai stood and began wheeling Mayu’s chair back toward the hall. But before they reached the door, Ehri said, “Mayu Kir-Kaat.” She was sitting up, her frame silhouetted against the glass, her back erect, her bearing every inch the princess. “I am sorry for what my sister asked of you … and for what I asked of you.”

  Mayu looked up, startled. For a long moment they stared at each other, princess and commoner. Mayu bobbed her head. Nikolai didn’t know if it was a thank-you or just an acknowledgment.

  “Why did you bring us together?” Mayu asked as he wheeled her down the corridor, past the guards.

  “I like to keep all of my potential assassins in one room.” It wasn’t much of an answer. He knew he was taking a chance in allowing these women to speak, to find common ground. They had both been part of the plot to kill him. They were both responsible for Isaak’s death. They were both bound to the Shu throne through ties of tradition and blood. But Mayu’s voice meant more than Nikolai’s ever could. He decided to opt for the truth. “I’m not sure why. My gut told me it was right you should talk. I suppose I’m hoping you’ll help me keep my crown and keep our countries from going to war.”

  They entered Mayu’s room. It had no windows, no view of the gardens. It was more like a prison cell.

  “If Queen Makhi wants war, then that is what the Tavgharad want.”

  “Are you so sure you’re still Tavgharad?” he asked.

  That arrow struck its mark. Mayu looked at her lap and said, “You’re nothing like Isaak. If any of us had so much as glimpsed you before, we never would have been fooled by a pretender.”

  “And if it had been me you met, your plot would have ended before it began. I never would have been deceived by a bodyguard in fancy gowns.”

  “You’re so sure?”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “But Isaak was trained to be a soldier, not a king.”

  When Mayu looked up, her golden eyes were full of rage. “You are a glib, vain fool. You are everything Isaak was not.”

  Nikolai held her gaze. “I would argue we were both fools.”

  “He was a better man than you’ll ever be.”

  “On that we can agree.” Nikolai sat down on the edge of her bed. “You fell in love with him.”

  Mayu looked away. She was a soldier. She would not weep, but her voice was ragged when she spoke. “I thought I loved a king. I thought it could never be.”

  “One of those things was true.” Did it help to know how much she regretted Isaak’s loss? That they both grieved for the sacrifice he’d made? Even if it did, he couldn’t spare her now. “Mayu, my spies have found word of your brother.”

  Mayu covered her face with her hands. Nikolai remembered what Tolya and Tamar had told him about the kebben, about the bond between twins. He’d understood what this information would mean to her.

  “He’s alive,” Nikolai said.

  “I know. I would know if he was dead. I would feel it. Have they hurt him?”

  “He’s a part of the khergud program.”

  “Queen Makhi swore she would free him.” Mayu released a bitter laugh. “But why would she keep her word? I failed. The king lives.”

  “Thank you for that.” Nikolai watched her carefully. “You’re thinking of taking your own life.”

  Her expression showed the truth of it. “I am a prisoner in a foreign country. Your Grisha keep my body weak. My brother is having his soul tortured out of him and I can do nothing to stop it.” She cast her eyes up to the ceiling. “And I murdered an innocent man, a good man, for nothing. I am not Tavgharad. I am not a princess. I am not anyone.”


  “You are Reyem Yul-Kaat’s sister, and he still lives.”

  “But as what? The khergud … The things they endure, they lose their humanity.”

  Nikolai thought of the demon lurking inside him, the power of it. “Maybe the gift of being human is that we do not give up—even when all hope is lost.”

  “Then maybe I’m the one who isn’t human anymore.” A grim thought, but her look was speculative when she asked, “Will you force Princess Ehri to wed you?”

  “I don’t think I’ll have to.”

  Mayu shook her head in disbelief. And perhaps in grief for the humble boy she’d met in a king’s clothes. “You’re that charming?”

  “I have a gift for persuasion. I once talked a tree out of its leaves.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Well, it was autumn. I can’t take full credit.”

  “More foolishness. You think to persuade Ehri and me to turn against Queen Makhi.”

  “I think the queen has made the argument for me. She nearly cost both of you your lives.”

  “Tell me you would have spared my life or even Isaak’s, if your nation’s future hung in the balance.”

  There was no room for lies now. “I can’t.”

  “Tell me you wouldn’t sacrifice my life and Princess Ehri’s to save your crown.”

  Nikolai rose. “I can’t do that either. But before I put anyone to death and we all go merrily to the next world, I’d ask you to stay alive and try to entertain a bit of hope.”

  “Hope for what?”

  “That there is never only one answer to a question. You’re alive today, Mayu Kir-Kaat, and I’d prefer you kept it that way. And Isaak, that brave, besotted martyr, would want the same.”

  She closed her eyes. “Though I put a knife in his heart?”

  “I think so. Love is not known for making men reasonable. I think that’s one of the few things Isaak and I had in common—an inability to stop loving whom we should not. Give me a chance to show you what might be.”

  He’d spoken almost those same words to Zoya. Give me a chance. Give me time. Every day he prayed he might find a way to keep his country from destruction, to make peace a possibility. But he couldn’t do it alone.

  He strode to the door. “I will tell my Healers to restore your strength.”

  “You … you will?” She didn’t believe him.

  “Friend or foe, Ravka will have you at your best, Mayu Kir-Kaat. I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge.”

  * * *

  Nikolai had planned to ride to Lazlayon to meet with David and the other Fabrikators, but he needed to clear his head, and the sky was the best place to do it. Instead of returning to the Grand Palace, he walked down to the lake. He released the tethers that bound his favorite flyer to the dock and slipped into the cockpit of the Sparrowhawk, engaging the propellers. He pulled on his goggles, and in moments, the flyer was bouncing over the water of the lake like a skipping stone, then rising into the air.

  The demon liked to fly. Nikolai could feel it turn its face to the wind, longing to be free to ride the clouds. He soared past the walls of Os Alta, and northeast, sailing over miles of farmland. Up here, the world felt wide and he felt less like a king than the privateer he’d once been. We need a king, not an adventurer. A shame.

  He’d had to be a king when he spoke to Ehri and Mayu. He had needed to seem confident and assured, just human enough. But being around them, talking about Isaak, had left him shaken. Nikolai had been the one to bring Isaak to the palace and make him one of his guards. They were the same age and yet, how little of the world had Isaak had a chance to see? He would never be at home with his sisters again, his mother. He would never translate another poem or greet another day. Nikolai knew guilt would only cloud his judgment, slow him down, keep him from making the difficult choices he would need to make in the days to come. It wasn’t useful, but he couldn’t shrug it off like some kind of mood. Isaak had trusted him, and that trust had gotten him killed.

  Too quickly, he saw the glittering rooftops of the Gilded Bog, Count Kirigin’s estate and pleasure gardens, the secret home of Ravka’s weapons development base. He cut his engines and let the Sparrowhawk glide gently down through the cloud cover, the rumble of the flyer replaced by the rush of the air, the heavy silence of the sky. He thought he heard a low whistle from somewhere below. His mind understood what it was a bare second too late.

  Boom.

  Something struck the Sparrowhawk’s right wing. It caught fire instantly, smoke billowing from the little craft.

  All Saints. He’d been fired upon.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. David and his team thought he was arriving on horseback, and they were in the middle of weapons testing. Nikolai had essentially flown his plane into a missile. He really was a fool. Glad I got to see the rockets working before I die in a fiery blaze.

  Nikolai strummed the engine to life again, trying to right the little flyer, but he was already going into a spin, hurtling toward the ground at terrifying speed.

  The demon tore at his mind, wild and thrashing within him, screaming to be free.

  But Nikolai would not give up control. If this is the end, then you die with me. Maybe this was the way he would liberate his country from the Fold. Zoya would be free to kill the Darkling after all.

  Think.

  Nikolai had lost track of where the ground was. The noise from the engine rattled his skull. The controls in his hands were useless. This is it, he thought, desperately trying to pull back on the throttle.

  The demon shrieked, but Nikolai would not release it. I will die a king.

  He was yanked backward against the seat. His stomach lurched. It felt as if a huge hand had seized the flyer and thrust it upward.

  A moment later the craft was gently set upon the mist-shrouded waters of the Gilded Bog. Nikolai heard shouting, and then he was being pulled from the cockpit.

  “I’m fine,” he said. Though he had cracked his skull against the seat at some point. He touched the back of his head. He was bleeding. And there was a very good chance he might vomit. “I’m fine.”

  “David,” said Genya. “You almost killed the king.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to be there!”

  “It was my fault,” said Nikolai. He took a woozy step on the dock, then another, trying to get his bearings. “I’m fine,” he repeated. Nadia and Adrik must have summoned wind to stop his descent. David, Genya, and Leoni were staring at him, along with a group of First Army engineers. A weapons test, just as he’d thought. He only wished he’d thought it sooner rather than later. “It was good practice,” he said, trying to ignore the throbbing in his skull. “In case I’m ever shot down.”

  “If you’re ever shot down, there won’t be Squallers there to save you,” Adrik said. “Why didn’t you eject?”

  “He wasn’t wearing a parachute,” Genya said, glowering at him.

  “I didn’t think I would need one,” Nikolai protested. “This wasn’t supposed to be a dogfight. More importantly, does this mean the rockets work?”

  “Absolutely not,” said David.

  “Sort of,” said Leoni.

  “Show me,” said Nikolai.

  Genya planted her hands on her hips. “You will sit yourself down and let me make sure you don’t have a concussion. Then you will have a cup of tea. And then, if I’m feeling generous, you can talk to David about things that explode.”

  “You do realize I’m the king?”

  “Do you?”

  Nikolai looked to David for help, but David just shrugged. “I don’t argue with my wife when she’s right.”

  “Oh, fine,” said Nikolai. “But I want a cookie with my tea.”

  They descended to the laboratories in the clanking brass elevator. The dark rooms and narrow hallways didn’t make for the most healing atmosphere, but they did guarantee privacy. He was grateful for a few minutes to gather his thoughts. He’d been fired at plenty of times, shot more than once, turned into a sh
adow creature, and stabbed with a letter opener by an otherwise lovely young lady who had been insulted by his attempt at a romantic sonnet. But really, how many things rhymed with “tremulous nests”? He was also fairly sure his older brother had tried to poison him when he was twelve. But this was the closest he’d ever come to dying. The demon was still writhing inside him. It had felt the nearness of death too, and it had been trapped, powerless as they plummeted toward the earth.

  What would have happened if Nikolai had let the demon break free? Would it have helped him? Could he have controlled it? It was too steep a wager.

  They settled around a table in one of the blueprint rooms as Genya tended to the back of Nikolai’s head and David brewed tea.

  “Why is my lead scientist fussing with a kettle?” Nikolai asked.

  “Because he doesn’t like the way anyone else makes it,” said Adrik, pulling a tin of chocolate biscuits from a drawer and setting it on the table.

  “I wrote out instructions,” David said, brushing the messy brown hair from his eyes. He looked even paler in the dim light of the lab. As much as Nikolai appreciated David’s work ethic, the Fabrikator could use a holiday.

  “My love,” Genya said gently. “It doesn’t take seventeen steps to brew tea.”

  “It does if you do it properly.”

  “Talk to me about my rockets,” said Nikolai.

  Nadia set down a tray of mismatched cups and saucers, most of them chipped, though the pattern of golden hummingbirds was exquisite. Nikolai suspected they were the castoffs from Count Kirigin’s collection, victims of his often rowdy guests.

  David and Nadia looked to Genya, who gave a gracious nod. “You may proceed.”

  “Well,” said David, “a rocket can be very simple.”

  “Like a cup of tea?” asked Leoni innocently.

  “A bit,” said David, oblivious to the glint in her eye. “Any child can build one with a little sugar and some potassium nitrate.”

  Genya cast Nikolai a suspicious glance. “Why do I think you did just that?”