Rule of Wolves

by Leigh Bardugo

  Nikolai drew the demon back, and to his surprise, the thing didn’t fight. The shadow disappeared inside him, but it felt different now. He could sense its satisfaction; its thirst for blood and violence had been met. Its heart beat in time with his. It was frightening and yet, the satisfaction was his as well. He was meant to be the wise king, the good king, but right now, he didn’t know how to be wise or good, only angry, the wound inside him burning like the city below. The demon’s presence made it easier to bear.

  As the Peregrine descended, he tried to count the plumes of smoke rising from Os Alta. Only daylight would reveal the true extent of the destruction and the lives lost.

  He set the plane down on the lake and let it coast to shore. Without the thunder of the engine in his ears, there were only the sounds of fear in the night—the ringing of alarm bells, the shouts of men as they attempted to put out fires and pull friends from the rubble. They would need his help.

  Nikolai stripped off his jacket and broke into a run. He would gather Squallers, Sun Soldiers. They could aid with the search for survivors. He knew his flyers would already have departed from the Gilded Bog and Poliznaya to patrol the skies for more signs of the enemy. He would have to issue blackout warnings. They were in place at the shipyards and bases that could be considered military targets. But now every Ravkan town and village would have to snuff out their lanterns and find their way in the dark.

  As Nikolai approached the Little Palace, he saw the Fabrikator workshops and Corporalki laboratories had been completely obliterated, but whatever research they’d lost could be excavated or replicated. He spotted Tolya’s massive frame in the crowd. He was about to call out to him when he registered the tears in Tolya’s eyes, his hand pressed to his mouth.

  There were Squallers trying to clear the rubble. And Genya was with them. She was on her knees in her golden wedding gown.

  He muttered something about nose cones and then vanished.

  Dread crept into Nikolai’s heart.

  “Genya?” He went to his knees beside her.

  She clutched his sleeve. For a moment, she didn’t seem to recognize him. Her red hair was thick with dust, her face streaked with tears.

  “I can’t find him,” she said, her voice lost, bewildered. “I can’t find David.”

  THE MAKING AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD

  19

  MAYU

  MAYU WAITED. She was good at it. She’d had to be. A soldier’s job was to fight; a guard’s job was to remain watchful.

  “There’s an art to it,” her old commander had said. “Your human mind may wander, but the falcon’s eye remains keen.”

  She peered out the window of the airship. She couldn’t see much in the dark, and she didn’t know where Tamar and the princess had gone. They hadn’t seen fit to tell her the whole of their plan—another reminder that, though she’d played the part of royalty, she was no more than a bodyguard, valued as much for her loyalty and her willingness to obey as her talent with a sword or a pistol.

  Why the detour? she wondered. What if Queen Makhi made it back to the capital before them? But she’d always followed instructions, abided by the rules, so she sat, and she waited.

  “A teacher’s pet,” her brother Reyem had called her, and he was right. She loved praise, had thrived on any little bit of it. Because she’d always known Reyem was the better fighter.

  It wasn’t just that he was stronger and faster, but his instincts were more alive.

  “She can’t hear it,” their mother had said, watching Reyem and Mayu spar as children. It was meant to just be a play fight, meaningless, but Mayu knew her parents were watching and the knowledge made her clumsy. “See how Reyem doesn’t hesitate. Mayu is thinking; Reyem is listening. He hears the music of the fight.”

  I can listen too, she’d vowed to herself. But try as she might, she heard nothing, only her own thoughts, constant and noisy, seeking understanding.

  Mayu was no different now, her rebellious mind rattling with possible outcomes when it should remain quiet and ordered. She wished she had a watch or some way of telling the time.

  They had left Ravka two days before the wedding, the moment Tamar had received word from her spies that Queen Makhi’s airship had left the capital. Their transport was a Shu cargo vessel that had been intercepted by Ravkan forces months ago and redeployed with a new crew.

  She’d thought they would go straight to the palace in Ahmrat Jen, but apparently, Tamar and the princess had other plans. They’d set down in the dark, her only clue to their location the heavy scent of roses in the air, and Mayu had sat in silence, watching Tamar and Ehri disembark, accompanied by several Grisha: Heartrenders, Squallers, Inferni. Ten soldiers of the Second Army. King Nikolai could not have liked giving them up. And for what? So that Princess Ehri could be well guarded on some sentimental trip through a botanical garden?

  Sure enough, Ehri returned with her arms full of roses the bright orange of coral. Mayu kept her face blank, hiding her contempt. She knew Ehri was an emotional creature, but surely the princess didn’t think a few pretty flowers would sway Makhi’s ministers? If only Tamar and Ehri would tell her what they’d planned.

  They didn’t trust her. Why should they? Queen Makhi, whom Mayu was supposed to serve above all others, had tried to kill Princess Ehri twice. Mayu herself had tried to kill Tamar’s king—even if it hadn’t actually been King Nikolai. She was here because they needed her testimony, but she wasn’t a part of this, not really.

  Over the course of the journey, Mayu had listened to Tamar and Ehri talk and scheme, unwinding the different threads of their mission, then binding them up again, a bit cleaner, a bit tighter than they had been before. She knew she was only glimpsing a fraction of their plans, and she said little because she had little to say. She had never needed to take much interest in politics, and she wasn’t meant to eavesdrop on the conversations of her betters.

  But everything had changed now, and if she was going to survive, if she was going to find a way to save her twin, she had to learn. It wasn’t easy. The way Ehri and Tamar spoke of the players in the Taban court made her feel like she was looking through a foggy lens focusing, then blurring, then focusing again, as it showed her a picture she’d never quite been able to see before.

  “We will have no luck with Minister Yerwei,” Ehri said. “He’s the wiliest of Makhi’s advisers and her most valued confidant.”

  “Was he close to your mother as well?” Tamar asked, though Mayu had the sense she already knew the answer to this question, that she was testing Princess Ehri.

  “Oh yes. He was smart, very ambitious. He comes from a long line of doctors who serve the Taban queens.”

  “Doctors,” said Tamar flatly.

  Ehri nodded. “You’ve guessed rightly. Those same doctors who began the attempts to root out and harness Grisha power.” Ehri must have seen the way Tamar’s jaw set. “I know how it sounds and you’re not wrong, but it began innocently enough.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  Ehri spread her hands wide, the gesture graceful. She wore a green velvet traveling dress with a high neck and tiny buttons that ran all the way from her wrists to her elbow. The Grisha Healers and Genya Safin had done their job well. Her body was fully healed, her hair regrown. She would never be a great beauty like Makhi, but she had an easy elegance that made her look completely out of place in the hold of this airship, with its heaps of coiled rope and the crates of weapons Tamar’s crew had stockpiled. Mayu resisted the urge to stretch her legs, test the muscles in her arms. The king had been as good as his word and she’d had her strength restored. There wasn’t so much as a scar on her chest to mark the place where she’d tried to plunge the knife into her heart.

  “They began with autopsies performed on the dead,” said Ehri. “Attempts to study the organs and brains of Grisha, to see if there were biological differences between them and ordinary people.”

  “And when you couldn’t find any differences, yo
u thought, why not take a closer look at the living?”

  “You say ‘you’ as if these were my practices. I have played no part in my sister’s government.”

  Tamar folded her arms. “Is that your idea of an excuse? Turning away from atrocity isn’t something to be proud of.”

  Queen Makhi would have struck Tamar where she sat for such insolence—regardless of those silver axes slung at her hips like sickle moons. But Ehri looked only thoughtful. She didn’t have a queen’s pride.

  “It was an ugly practice,” she admitted. “My mother put an end to those experiments for a reason.”

  “Then where did the khergud come from?” asked Mayu, unable to hold her tongue any longer. It felt strange to speak this way to a Taban princess, and yet Ehri didn’t look scandalized or offended.

  “I don’t know. I had never heard of them until a few weeks ago.”

  “How can that be?” Mayu couldn’t keep the resentment from her voice. “You are a princess.”

  “You were a princess for a time,” said Ehri gently. “Did you find much meaning in it?”

  Mayu had no reply to that, but it did nothing to quell her anger. Nikolai, Makhi, all the kings and queens and generals made their grand decisions, decided who should live, who should die, who should suffer. She had never cared, not really. She’d been happy to follow, happy to have found her place in the world. Until she’d lost Reyem and then Isaak.

  Tamar unsheathed one of her axes, letting it spin in her palm. “The khergud hunted Grisha indentures in Ketterdam. They’ve attacked behind Ravka’s own borders. You’re saying you didn’t know about them?”

  “No,” said Ehri. “And I doubt most Shu did.”

  “And Makhi’s advisers?”

  “That I can’t be certain of.”

  That was part of the problem. There was too much Ehri didn’t know. Just how was she supposed to give Queen Makhi any kind of a fight?

  “Your sister is a bold one,” Tamar said, as if she’d read Mayu’s thoughts. “She had to have started up the labs before your mother’s death, before she was made queen.”

  Ehri frowned. “There was an incident … a scientist tried to defect to Kerch. He was captured by Fjerdans. I know there was an investigation. But my mother was already in poor health and couldn’t pursue it. She died not long after.”

  “Interesting timing,” said Tamar, and returned the axe to its holster.

  Mayu met her gaze. Was she implying Makhi had played some role in her mother’s death?

  The web was too tangled, full of too many threads and too many spiders. She and her brother were bound to be trapped and eaten.

  Mayu had cheated death once. She was meant to die by her own hand, the same night she had killed Isaak. His blood had still been on the knife blade when she’d driven it into her heart. Or that was what she’d intended. She’d missed the mark. An accident? Or in those vital seconds had her desire to live won out over her desire to free her brother and serve her queen?

  If she’d managed her own death, would Queen Makhi have honored their bargain? Mayu didn’t think so. And she didn’t really believe she’d ever see Reyem again.

  Mayu’s parents had encouraged her competition with her twin, thinking it was all a game, all in good fun.

  “Who will run up the hill to fetch water?”

  “I will!” they would each cry.

  “Who will land three strikes without getting hit?”

  “I will!” they would shout.

  But it was always Reyem who did. He was never smug about it. He would ruffle her hair and say, “Next time you’ll get me. Let’s go see if we can steal some green melon.”

  Mayu had almost wished he would be cruel, because then maybe she could hate him. But he was her best friend and her favorite companion. When they were running through the woods, she didn’t care that he was faster. When they were roaming through the muddy creek looking for tadpoles, she was the sharp-eyed one who somehow knew where to look. She could celebrate his victories and his gifts because they were kebben. And she knew he shared in her failures because he was her twin. She would have happily shared in his losses—if he’d ever had one.

  They’d been together in the marketplace when they’d spotted the poster advertising the arrival of the Royal Creance, who was coming to their city to find girls to train to join the Tavgharad. WHO WILL DARE TO SHOW HER SKILLS? the sign asked in tall red letters.

  I will, thought Mayu. They only wanted girls. It was something Reyem couldn’t try. She’d gone down to the pasture outside the academy and filled out the forms and joined the other hopefuls. She’d run and sparred and crawled on her belly, all the time chanting to herself, I will. I will. I will.

  And she had. She’d been chosen to travel to Ahmrat Jen and train.

  Her mother’s worry at the news had been like a slap to the face.

  “She isn’t ready! She isn’t good enough!”

  Her father had been more reasonable. “They wouldn’t have chosen her if she didn’t have a chance.”

  “They chose her because she is obedient, not skilled. What will become of her when she fails at her training?”

  “She’ll come home,” Mayu’s father said.

  “In shame? She’s not strong enough to survive such failure.”

  But they were wrong about that. Mayu had been failing her whole life. Her constant competition with Reyem had prepared her well for the trial she was about to endure. The other Eyases selected to train as Tavgharad had all been the very best of the best in the towns and villages they came from. They took their first losses hard.

  Not Mayu. She loved training. She loved the exhaustion that silenced her thoughts, the routine that gave order to her world. She loved being out of Reyem’s shadow. In his absence, in the fatigue of fighting, running, learning to disassemble and reassemble guns, climb walls and scamper along rooftops, her mind finally quieted. And in that silence she heard the music of combat at last. Becoming Tavgharad meant she had joined a dance that had begun centuries ago. The first Taban queen had traveled with an elite bodyguard of women and a fleet of trained falcons. She had trusted her guards and her raptors and no one else. Those guards had gone on to train other women, and their symbol had become the carnelian falcon. This was the tradition Mayu had become a part of, and she carried new pride with her every day to the temple fields, where they ran drills in the blazing sun or the pouring rain.

  That pride carried her home for the spring festivals. She missed Reyem more than she had ever believed possible. Her envy had been eaten away by achievement, and now she could feel the hollow in her heart left by her twin’s absence. At the first glimpse of him, she’d broken into a run, grateful for her brother, grateful for her commanders and the queen who had finally freed her from jealousy.

  Mayu and Reyem had sat together, decorating custard cakes, surrounded by clusters of anemones arranged in their mother’s white stone bowls, and she’d told her brother all about the palace, the temple fields, her instructors.

  “I’ll be given my post when I return,” she’d told him. “I won’t be home again for a very long time.”

  “Good,” Reyem said with a laugh. “Mother and Father can go back to fussing over me.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  Reyem wiped powdered sugar from his fingers. He had joined a military unit and was faring well, though he had yet to distinguish himself. “I know you deserve it. You worked hard for so long while I grew lazy on compliments. But … I think I may be jealous.”

  Mayu grinned. “Reyem, I cannot pity you. If you would try, if you would be willing to fail, you would learn. It’s good to do things you’re not good at.”

  Forever after, Mayu would curse those words. Because Reyem had started trying and he’d begun to succeed. She hadn’t understood how well until her father showed up at the Tavgharad barracks.

  “Your brother has gone missing,” he’d said. He looked frail, his skin nearly gray from worry and the hardships of travel. �
�They say he deserted and that he may be dead.”

  Mayu had known that couldn’t be. “Reyem would never do such a thing. And I would know if … if he were gone.”

  It had taken months, but Mayu had pieced together rumor and fact and finally discovered that her brother—her twin who had been happy to avoid notice in his regiment until she’d goaded him—had displayed such gifts as a soldier that he’d been drafted into the Iron Heart program. The khergud were half myth among the Tavgharad. No one could confirm that they really existed, and yet the stories of their abilities were legendary—as were the horrific tales of what they endured in the conversion and what they lost when it was complete. She had set out to find him, to free him, when she’d been called before Queen Makhi.

  Mayu thought her investigation had been discovered, that she would be banished or put to death.

  Instead the queen had said, “You’re from Nehlu, one of the larger towns. Is that why you have no country accent?”

  “My mother was a teacher, Your Majesty,” Mayu had said. “She wanted us to have every advantage as we tried to make our way in the world.”

  “There is little call for elocution in the Tavgharad. Your fists speak for you. Did she teach you a passable curtsy?”

  She had not, but Mayu could learn. That was her gift. She could always learn. The queen had offered her an opportunity to save her brother.

  Or so Mayu had believed at the time.

  Now, sitting in the cargo hold, she heard the Ravkan king’s voice in her head: You are Reyem Yul-Kaat’s sister, and he still lives. If there was any chance her brother might still be saved, she had to take it.

  “Where are we?” she asked as the airship began to descend a second time. “This isn’t the palace.”

  “The temple fields outside Ahmrat Jen,” said Tamar. She turned to Ehri and the remaining Grisha guards. “This place is too conspicuous by half. Stay alert.”

  She wasn’t wrong. The darkness provided cover, but Mayu’s instincts told her they were badly exposed. Maybe instead of finding her brother, she’d only succeed in getting herself killed.