Rule of Wolves

by Leigh Bardugo

  The man really couldn’t resist a jab at the Ravkan king.

  “Oh, Papa,” said Hanne. “Mila is so disappointed, and it’s so much colder out here than we expected. Can’t you have one of your soldiers take us back to the kennels?”

  “Hanne, you should have dressed for the weather.”

  “I told you Mila needed a new cloak, didn’t I?”

  “I’m f-fine,” Nina said, offering a brave, trembling smile as she shivered.

  “Silly girls,” said Brum, his gaze lingering on Nina in a way that made her stomach turn. “I’ll take you back myself.”

  Hanne stiffened. “Won’t it be perceived as an insult to the prince’s hunt?”

  “The prince isn’t riding. Why should I?”

  So he wanted to insult the crown. Seeing the prince embarrassed by his mother had emboldened him.

  Nina tried to gather her focus as she and Hanne followed Brum back to the ringwall. Was Rasmus a lost cause? She’d thought healing the prince was a good thing, that a strong Rasmus might find it easier to stand against Fjerda’s drive toward war. She wanted to believe that could still be the case. There had to be an alternative to Brum’s violence. But she couldn’t stop seeing the red marks on Joran’s cheek, the ferocity in his eyes. There had been rage there, shame, and something else. Nina didn’t know what.

  Get your head on straight, Zenik, she told herself. She would have one opportunity to find the letters in Brum’s office, and she’d need her wits about her to make the most of this chance.

  It was even colder in the shadow of the ringwall, and Nina didn’t have to pretend to shiver as they approached the drüskelle gate. She’d never stood at the base of the Ice Court walls before. She’d been brought in hooded as a prisoner once, and she’d left by an underground river—nearly drowning in the process. She looked up and saw gunmen guarding the huge portcullis gate. She could hear the wolves in their kennels, their howls rising. Maybe they were like those Shu soldiers engineered to sniff out Grisha. Maybe they knew she was coming.

  You’ve been living beneath the roof of the country’s most notorious witchhunter for months, she reminded herself. But this felt different, as if she were willingly walking into a cell and she’d have only herself to blame when the door slammed shut behind her.

  They passed beneath the colossal arch and into the courtyard lined with kennels.

  “Tigen, tigen,” Brum crooned as he approached the cages on the right, where the largest of the white wolves leapt and snapped at the air. Wolves trained to fight alongside their masters, to help them hunt down Grisha. The animals took no notice of Brum’s soothing words, growling and snarling, pressing against the wire fences. “You can smell the hunt, eh, Devjer? Don’t be afraid, Mila,” he said with a laugh. “They can’t get you.”

  She thought of Trassel, Matthias’ wolf, with his scarred eye and huge jaws. He’d saved her life and she’d helped him find his pack.

  She took a step toward the fences, then another. One of the wolves began to whine and then the animals fell silent, going to their bellies, resting their heads on their paws.

  “Strange,” said Brum, his brow furrowing. “I’ve never seen them do that before.”

  “They must not be used to having women here,” said Hanne hurriedly, but her eyes were startled.

  Do you know me? Nina wondered as the wolves whimpered softly. Do you know Trassel watched over me? Do you know I walk with death?

  Brum knelt by the cages. “Even so—”

  An alarm began to ring, a high, staccato sound that rattled the air.

  A shout came from the guardhouse. “Commander Brum! Red protocol!”

  “Where was it triggered?” demanded Brum.

  “Prison sector.”

  Sector breach. And right on time. The night she’d hatched her plans with Hanne, she’d tossed a handful of special salts into the fire, so that they would send a burst of red smoke into the sky above the Ice Court—a signal to the Hringsa lookout posted nearby. The network hadn’t been able to get a servant into Brum’s quarters, but Nina was able to pass information to one of the gardeners, who had served as a messenger and informant. She needed a distraction, a big one, at just after ten bells. They’d delivered, but she couldn’t be certain how much time she had.

  Brum’s men lined up behind him, rifles in hand, clubs and whips at the ready. “Stay here,” he told Hanne. “The guards will remain posted on the ringwall.”

  “What’s happening?” Nina cried.

  “There’s some kind of disturbance. Most likely it’s nothing. I’ll be back in no time.”

  Nina forced tears to fill her eyes. “You can’t just leave us here!”

  “Calm yourself,” Brum snapped. Nina flinched and pressed her hand over her mouth, but she felt like laughing. Jarl Brum, the great protector. But he only liked his women weak and wailing when it was convenient for him. The prison sector had been breached before and Jarl Brum had been made a fool. He didn’t intend to let that happen again.

  “You can’t leave us defenseless,” Hanne said. “Give me a gun.”

  Brum hesitated. “Hanne—”

  “You can abide by propriety or put a weapon in my hand and let me defend myself.”

  “Do you even know how to use a revolver?”

  With a sure hand, Hanne spun the barrel to make sure it was loaded. “You taught me well.”

  “Years ago.”

  “I didn’t forget.”

  Brum’s expression was troubled, but all he said was, “Be careful.” He and his men vanished through the gate.

  Two guards remained on the battlements, but they had their attention turned outward, rifles raised and pointed at whoever might seek to breach the ringwall.

  “Go,” said Hanne. “But be quick.”

  Nina hurried across the courtyard past the kennels and the wolves, who stared at her silently despite the commotion. She had never regretted her heavy skirts more. Maybe that’s why Fjerdans like to keep their women swimming in wool, she considered, slipping inside the building Hanne had marked on her map of the sector. So they can’t get away too fast.

  She tried to keep Hanne’s map in her head as she sped down a long corridor. She glimpsed a huge dining room on the right, beneath a pyramid-shaped skylight. There were long mess hall tables and an immense tapestry hung on the back wall, woven in blue, red, and purple. Her footsteps faltered as her mind caught up to what she’d seen. That tapestry that covered nearly the entirety of the wall—it was made out of scraps of kefta. Blue for Etherealki, a smattering of purple for Materialki, and row after row of red for Corporalki, her order. The Order of the Living and the Dead. They were trophies taken from fallen Grisha. Nina felt sick. She wanted to set the damn thing on fire. Instead she pushed her anger aside and made her feet move. Vengeance would come, retribution for Brum and his minions. But not until she saw this mission through.

  Up the stairs—the newel posts capped by snarling wolves—then down another gloomy hallway. She counted the doors: third on the left. This should be Jarl Brum’s office. She grasped the handle of the door and jammed in the key she’d taken from Brum’s key ring that morning.

  Nina hurried inside. It was an elegant room, though windowless. The mantel was crowded with medals, awards, and souvenirs that made Nina’s heart hurt—spent bullet cartridges, what might have been a child’s jawbone, a dagger with a woman’s name engraved on the handle in Ravkan: Sofiya Baranova.

  Who were you? Nina wondered. Did you survive?

  An old-fashioned musket hung above the hearth beside one of the whips Brum had innovated for restraining Grisha.

  She made herself focus on Brum’s desk. The drawers and cabinets weren’t locked. They had no reason to be; this was the safest, most secure place in the Ice Court. But Nina wasn’t sure where to begin searching for Queen Tatiana’s letters. She combed through schedules and ship manifests, and set aside entire files of what looked like trial transcripts. There were coded messages she didn’t know how t
o decipher, as well as detailed plans of the military base at Poliznaya and a city plan of Os Alta. There were markings on both that she couldn’t make sense of. She touched her finger briefly to the squares labeled as the Little Palace, the grounds, the school. Home. Move, Zenik.

  But the letters weren’t in the desk. So where were they? She looked behind the portrait of a blond man in antiquated armor—Audun Elling, she suspected, the founder of the drüskelle. Then she felt along the walls, knocking softly, forcing herself to slow down, to be thorough. The Elderclock sounded the quarter chime. She’d been gone for almost fifteen minutes. How much longer did she have before Brum returned or the guards noticed Hanne was alone?

  She knocked gently against the wall beside the mantel—there, a hollow thunk. She trailed her fingers over the panels, looking for some slot or indentation, pressing carefully. A fur hat hung from a hook at just above eye level. She pulled gently on it. The panel slid to the right. A safe. The letters had to be inside. She was definitely not a safecracker and hadn’t bothered to study the art while in Ketterdam. But she’d anticipated that the letters might be locked away. She removed the bottle of scent from her coat pocket, opened it, and poured in a few drops from the second vial the gardener had handed her. No more than three drops, he’d whispered, or it will eat through the walls of the safe too. And Nina didn’t want there to be any visible damage. When she was done, all that would remain was the scent of roses.

  She pulled a slender rubber tube from her pocket and fitted one end over the nozzle of the bottle, then wiggled the other end through the narrow space between the door of the safe and the wall. She pumped the bulb attached to the bottle, forcing air through the tube, listening closely. A faint hissing came from behind the safe’s door. Whatever treasures lay inside were slowly disintegrating.

  A sudden sound made her go still. She waited.

  It came again—a low moan. Oh Saints, what now? Was a drüskelle dozing in the room next door? Or was something worse waiting? Had Brum brought Grisha here to torture and interrogate?

  She yanked out the tube and returned the whole contraption to her pocket. Time to get out of here.

  She should run down the stairs, back to the courtyard, back to Hanne. But hadn’t Hanne said it was her job to get carried away?

  Nina drew a bone dart into her hand, feeling it vibrate there, waiting only for her command to find a target. Slowly, she opened the door.

  It was a cell. Not one of the new modern enclosures built to contain and control Grisha, but a cell for an ordinary man. Except the man gripping the iron bars didn’t look ordinary. He looked like King Nikolai.

  His hair was golden, though streaked with gray, his beard unkempt. His fine clothes were rumpled and stained. He’d been gagged and chained to the cell bars to give him a limited range of movement. There was nothing in the tiny cell but a cot and a chamber pot.

  Nina stared at him, and the man looked back at her with frantic eyes. She knew who this was.

  “Magnus Opjer?” she whispered.

  He gave a single nod. Magnus Opjer. The Fjerdan shipping magnate who was supposedly Nikolai’s true father. Jarl Brum had him locked away in a cell. Did Prince Rasmus know? Did anyone but the drüskelle know?

  She pulled the gag from the prisoner’s mouth.

  “Please,” Opjer said, his voice ragged. “Please help me.”

  Nina’s mind was whirring. “Why are they keeping you here?”

  “They kidnapped me from my home. I’m their insurance. They need me to authenticate the letters.”

  The letters from Queen Tatiana throwing King Nikolai’s parentage into doubt.

  “But why would they keep you prisoner?”

  “Because I wouldn’t speak publicly against my son or Tatiana. I wouldn’t vouch for the letters. Please, whoever you are, you must free me!”

  My son. So Nikolai Lantsov really was a bastard. Nina Zenik realized she didn’t care.

  The Elderclock chimed the half hour. She had to get out of here. But how was she supposed to take Magnus Opjer with her? She had nowhere to hide him, no plan to get a fugitive out of the Ice Court.

  You could kill him. The thought came to her with cold clarity. There was no mistaking Opjer’s resemblance to Nikolai. This was the true father of the Ravkan king. And that meant he was a threat to her country’s future. She needed to think.

  “I have no way to get you out.”

  Opjer clenched the bars. “Who are you? Why have you come here if not to rescue me?”

  Yet another reason to kill him. He had seen her. He could tell the drüskelle, could easily describe her. He grabbed her sleeve with his bony fingers. They hadn’t been feeding him well.

  “Please,” he begged. “I never meant to hurt my son. I would never speak against him.”

  Nina knew he was desperate, but his words had the ring of truth. “I believe you. And I’m going to help you get out of here. But you need to give me time to plan.”

  “There isn’t time, they—”

  “I’ll return as soon as I can. I promise.”

  “No,” he said, and it was not the refusal of a weakened prisoner. It was a word of command. In it she heard the echo of a king. “You don’t understand. I must get a message to—”

  Nina yanked his gag back into place. She needed to get to the courtyard. “I’ll return,” she vowed.

  Opjer seized the bars, grunting as he attempted to shout around his gag.

  She closed the door and hurried down the hall, trying not to think of the terror in his eyes.

  17

  ZOYA

  “SOLDIERS!” ZOYA SHOUTED into the darkness.

  “Where is he?” Misha cried.

  Zoya heard footsteps, the door opening. She whirled and saw the Darkling silhouetted in the day’s sunlight, the snowy hill behind him, the Sun Soldiers running toward him.

  She threw her hands forward, unleashing a gust of wind that knocked him down the stairs. The Sun Soldiers blasted him with light, but he was already on his feet, darkness surging from his body like water overflowing a dam.

  Zoya summoned the storm, the clouds rolling in on a crash of thunder. Lightning spiked through the sky, bright daggers in her hands. But the bolts never reached the Darkling.

  In a shower of sparks, the lightning broke against two writhing heaps of shadow—the nichevo’ya, shadow soldiers summoned from nothing in violation of all the rules of Grisha power. Merzost. Abomination.

  “Thank you for bringing me here, Zoya,” the Darkling said as his winged soldiers took shape and lifted him from the ground. “My resurrection is complete.”

  It had all been a ruse. His apology. His desire to see Alina. Even his wish to reenact the obisbaya. Were the monks and their thorn-wood seeds a lie too? Just another fairy tale he’d concocted to feed to them like bedtime stories? He was right. They were children, grasping for understanding, stumbling along, learning to walk as the Darkling sprinted ahead of them. They had been fools to think they could predict or control him. He had never intended to drive Yuri out. He needed Alina and Mal: the Sun Summoner who had slain him, and the amplifier who carried the blood of his ancestors. He’d felt no guilt, no shame. She’d been so wrong about what he wanted here.

  “Signal the flyers!” she shouted to the Sun Soldiers, then turned her wrath on him. If only she’d had time to master the gifts Juris had granted her. “You have nowhere to go. The king’s soldiers will hunt you to the ends of the earth and so will I.”

  Gunshots shattered the air as the flyers overhead opened fire on the Darkling from above. One found its target, and the Darkling gave a yelp of rage and pain. He can still bleed.

  But the nichevo’ya swarmed around him in a mass of wings and writhing bodies, absorbing bullets as if they were nothing at all.

  Two of the shadow soldiers surged skyward, and a moment later the flyers were plummeting toward the earth.

  Zoya screamed, hurling her power in a wave of wind to break their fall.

  Not one
more, she vowed. She would not lose a single soldier more to this man.

  “I have bested many kings and survived many foes greater than you,” said the Darkling. The shadows leapt and dove around him as he rose into the sky. “And now I will become what the people most desire. A savior. When I am done, they will know what a Saint can do.”

  Darkness swirled around him, as if the shadows were glad in their dancing, returned to their beloved keeper. The Sun Soldiers pushed against the darkness with their light. But Zoya saw his hands in motion—the Darkling was going to use the Cut. He would kill them all.

  We are the dragon. Juris’ consciousness tugged at hers, pulling her toward something more, even as her own heart refused it. No. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  She threw her arms out in a circle of wind that flattened the trees and threw the Sun Soldiers off their feet but away from harm. Not one more. She drew a bolt of pure crackling lightning from the sky, a spear of fire to end the Darkling as they should have ended him years ago.

  But darkness enveloped her, and in the next minute, when the shadows cleared, he was gone.

  Alina stood at the top of the sanatorium steps, her face ghostly in the gray light. Her right hand was bleeding. Misha was screaming, his anguish like the cry of something born wild as Mal held him back. Oncat looked on, unmoved, tail twitching, as if there was nothing a cat hadn’t seen.

  “Let him go,” Alina said softly.

  Misha shot down the stairs, angry tears spilling from his eyes, and stumbled into the woods in the direction the Darkling had gone. Mal’s hand was bleeding too.

  The Sun Soldiers slowly climbed to their feet. They looked dazed, frightened.

  “You’re all right?” Zoya asked.

  They nodded.

  “No broken bones?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Then prepare the coach. I need to get back to the airship. We’ll get messages to the nearest base to send sorties out to track him.”

  “You won’t find him,” said Alina. “Not until he wants you to. He has the shadows for refuge.”

  “I can damn well try,” Zoya said. “We have to get you out of here. We can evacuate you to—”