Rule of Wolves

by Leigh Bardugo

  “Our grandmother should be careful in the garden,” said Makhi. “Accidents happen.”

  “I know,” said Ehri. “That’s why we left an entire cadre of Grisha guards with her along with her own Tavgharad.”

  “How solicitous.”

  “I didn’t tell her everything,” said Ehri. “But I certainly could. You will take us to the labs, Makhi, or our grandmother will know why.”

  “I’ll think on it,” said the queen, and without another word, she turned on her heel and departed.

  “Do you think she took the bait?” Tamar asked when the queen and her guards were gone.

  Ehri pulled one of the roses from its arrangement and replaced it in another spot, just so. “Yes. She can’t help herself.”

  Mayu looked at the roses, then out the window to the sunny winter sky and the gardens beyond. She could only pray Ehri was right.

  I’ll find you, Reyem, she vowed silently. I will.

  20

  ZOYA

  THEY STOOD ON THE SHORE of the lake at the Little Palace, watching David’s body burn.

  Inferni ignited the flames. Squallers protected the fire from the cold and damp. When the time came, Durasts would fashion a brick from David’s ashes. That was the ritual, the proper way of caring for the dead. When there was a body. When there was time. So many had been left on battlefields, had died in prisons or laboratories far from people who might tend to them, who might speak words of love and remembrance.

  Who will speak for me? Zoya wondered. Nikolai? Genya? And what would they say? She was impossible and vain, bitter and poisonous as yewberries. She was brave. It didn’t add up to much.

  Zoya watched the fire leap toward the night sky, the flames dancing as if they didn’t know this was a solemn occasion, their light reflected in the water. Ordinary soldiers had gathered on the lakeshore to pay their respects alongside the Grisha, palace guards, Nolniki—those special troops who had declared themselves neither Grisha nor First Army, who had toiled together, side by side, in solidarity forged by new technology and the Small Science, working for a future born of Nikolai’s vision and David’s ingenuity.

  Zoya knew she had to preserve that future. She had to find a way to move forward with the war effort, figure out whom to choose from among the Materialki to join the Triumvirate in David’s place. She was a general. She was a soldier. That was her duty and she would fulfill it, but right now … Right now she couldn’t think, couldn’t find that solitary place inside her, that bunker that could survive any bomb blast or storm.

  You cannot save them all.

  Maybe Juris was eternal, maybe his dragon’s eyes could perceive that one death was nothing in the great sprawl of time. But Zoya couldn’t take flight with the dragon. She had never felt more mortal or more small.

  “Stay with me,” Genya had whispered. “Stand with me.”

  So Zoya was here, on this lakeside where they had all trained together, near the school where they’d sat for their lessons, Genya’s arm looped through hers. Nikolai stood on Genya’s other side, his arm around her shoulders, as if they could protect her from grief when they had failed to protect her from loss.

  Zoya felt her friend’s body, swathed in a heavy red kefta, beside her. There was no Grisha color of mourning. They’d had too many lives to grieve.

  Genya was trembling and her weight against Zoya felt insubstantial, as if she might be carried away with the sparks from the fire. But the heft of her sorrow clung to Zoya, heavy and dense, a sodden coat, dragging her down, pulling at her limbs. She wanted to cast it off, but the dragon wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t let her run from this pain.

  “I can’t do this,” Genya whispered. Her face was swollen from crying. Her vibrant hair lay limp down her back.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Zoya said. “Just be here. Stay standing.”

  “Not even that.”

  “I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”

  It felt like a lie. Zoya was breaking apart. She was shattered on the rocks. You are strong enough to survive the fall. Juris was wrong. But she owed Genya this and so much more.

  “Nikolai,” Zoya said, “I don’t think she’s ready to speak.”

  Nikolai nodded. He looked out at the crowd gathered in the dark, their faces lit by flames.

  “David and I spoke in numbers,” he began. “Our deepest conversations were transcribed in blueprints for some new invention. I can’t pretend I understood him.”

  Zoya had expected to hear the tones of a king rallying his troops, but Nikolai’s voice was raw and weary. He was just a man, grieving the loss of a friend.

  “I wasn’t smart enough to keep up with his genius,” Nikolai continued. “All I could do was respect his intellect and his desire to do right with the gifts with which he was born. I relied on him to find answers I couldn’t, to blaze a path when I found myself lost. David saw things no one else did. He saw through the world to the mysteries on the other side. I know that he’s gone on to solve those mysteries.” A faint smile touched Nikolai’s lips. “I can see him in some great library, already lost in his work, head bent to some new problem, making the unknown known. When I enter the laboratory, when I wake in the night with a new idea, I will miss him…” His voice broke. “I miss him now. May the Saints receive him on a brighter shore.”

  “May the Saints receive him,” the crowd murmured.

  But David hadn’t believed in Saints. He’d believed in the Small Science. He’d believed in a world ordered by facts and logic.

  What do you believe? Zoya didn’t know. She believed in Ravka, in her king, in the chance that she could be a part of something better than herself. But maybe she didn’t deserve that.

  All eyes had turned to Genya now. She was David’s wife, his friend, his compatriot. She was expected to speak.

  Genya stood straighter, lifted her chin. “I loved him,” she said, her body still trembling as if it had been torn apart and hastily stitched back together. “I loved him and he loved me. When I was … when no one could reach me … he saw me. He…” Genya turned her head to Zoya’s shoulder and sobbed. “I loved him and he loved me.”

  Was there any greater gift than that? Any more unlikely discovery in this world?

  “I know,” said Zoya. “He loved you more than anything.”

  The dragon’s eye had opened and Zoya felt that love, the enormity of what Genya had lost. It was too much to endure knowing she could do nothing to erase that pain.

  “Tell them, Zoya. I can’t … I can’t.”

  Genya looked frail, curled in on herself, the frond of some delicate flower hiding from winter.

  What could Zoya say to her? To any of them? How could she give them hope she didn’t have?

  This is what love does. That had been one of her mother’s favorite sayings. When the larder was bare, when her husband couldn’t find work, when her hands cracked from taking in the neighbors’ washing. This is what love does.

  Zoya could see Sabina, her hands red from lye, her beautiful face carved with lines, as if the sculptor who had wrought her loveliness had lost control, dug too deep beneath the eyes, the corners of the mouth. You cannot imagine how handsome he was, Sabina would say, looking at Zoya’s father, her voice bitter. My own mother warned me I would have no life with a Suli, that she and my father would turn their backs on us. But I didn’t care. I was in love. We met by moonlight. We danced to the music his brothers played. I thought love would be our armor, wings to fly with, a shield against the world. She’d laughed, the sound like bones rattling in a fortune-teller’s cup, ready to spill and show only disaster. Sabina spread her cracked hands, gesturing to their meager home, the cold stove, the piles of laundry, the earthen floor. Here is our shield. This is what love does. Her father had said nothing.

  Zoya had seen her Suli uncles only once. They’d arrived after dark by her mother’s order. Sabina had already retired to bed and told Zoya to stay with her, but as soon as her mother had nodded off to slee
p, Zoya had snuck out to see the strangers with their black hair and their black eyes, their brows thick and dark like hers. They looked like her father, but they didn’t. Their brown skin seemed lit from within. Their shoulders were straight and they held their heads high. Beside them, her father looked like an old man, though she knew he was the youngest brother.

  “Come away with us,” Uncle Dhej had said. “Now. Tonight. Before that shrew wakes.”

  “Don’t speak of my wife that way.”

  “Then before your loving wife wakes to claim you. You will die here, Suhm. You’re nearly dead already.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “We’re not meant to live among them, locked up in their houses, wilting beneath their roofs. You were meant for the stars and open skies. You were meant for freedom.”

  “I have a child. I cannot just—”

  “The mother is spoiled fruit and the daughter will grow up sour. I can see the sorrow hanging around her already.”

  “Be silent, Dhej. Zoya has a good heart and will grow up strong and beautiful. As her mother might have. In a different life. With a different husband.”

  “Then bring her with us. Save her from this place.”

  Yes. Take me away from here. Zoya had clapped her hands over her mouth as if she’d spoken the words aloud, released some kind of curse into the world. Guilt flooded her, choking her, bringing tears to her eyes. She loved her mother. She did, she did. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. She didn’t want to leave her alone to fend for herself. She’d crept back into Sabina’s bed and hugged her close and cried herself to sleep. But she’d dreamed she was riding in a Suli wagon and she’d woken the next morning, confused and disoriented, still sure she could smell hay and horses, still certain she could hear the happy chatter of sisters she didn’t have.

  She’d never seen her uncles again.

  This is what love does.

  Love was the destroyer. It made mourners, widows, left misery in its wake. Grief and love were one and the same. Grief was the shadow love left when it was gone.

  I’ve lived too long in that shadow, Zoya thought, gazing out at the lakeshore, at the soldiers huddled against the cold, waiting for someone to say something.

  “Please,” Genya whispered.

  Zoya racked her brain for a message of hope, of strength. But all she had was the truth.

  “I used to…” Her voice was husky with unshed tears. She hated that sound. “I used to believe there was one kind of soldier. The kind of soldier I aspired to be. Ruthless and unrelenting. I worshipped at the altar of strength—the storm, the Heartrender’s blow, the Cut. When I was chosen to lead the Triumvirate, I…” Shame washed over her, but she made herself keep speaking. “I resented the people selected to lead alongside me. I was the most powerful and the most dangerous, and I thought I knew how to lead.” Zoya felt memories crowd in on her, long nights arguing with Genya and David. When had they begun scheming together instead of squabbling?

  “I knew nothing. David didn’t set out to teach me the power of silence, but he did. Genya didn’t try to convince me to be kinder, she showed me what kindness could do every day. David wasn’t … He wasn’t an easy person. He didn’t tell jokes or crack smiles or try to make you comfortable. He hated small talk and he could fall so deeply into his work, he forgot to eat or sleep. The only distraction he ever had was Genya. When he looked at her, you could see that he had found his perfect equation.” She shrugged, unable to make her own figures tally. “David was a different kind of soldier. His strength came from his brilliance but also from his silence, his willingness to listen, his belief that every problem had a solution. All over Os Alta today, there are funerals. People are grieving. We are facing a new and terrible challenge, a different kind of enemy and a different kind of war, but just as we grieve together, we’ll face this new enemy together. We will fight just as we grieve, side by side. We’ll march forward as soldiers—and aspire to be the kind of soldier that David was—not driven by revenge or rage but by a desire to know more and do better. David Kostyk returns to the making at the heart of the world. He will always be with us.”

  Most of the soldiers didn’t know the traditional reply, but the Grisha did. “As he returns, so will we all.”

  There was some small comfort in those words, in that murmured reply. Could she be a soldier like David? Zoya didn’t know. She was afraid of what might happen when this moment of quiet was over, when David’s ashes had been gathered and interned in the white walls that circled the palace grounds. A space beside him would be left for Genya. Thousands of bodies, thousands of bricks, thousands of ghosts standing watch over generations of Grisha. For what?

  The Fjerdans had shoved them all into uncharted territory. Zoya knew her rage was waiting on the other side of this sorrow, and when it was unleashed, she wasn’t certain what she would do.

  “I need to go to him,” Genya whispered. “One last time.”

  She had pulled a notebook from her pocket, the pages held open. It took Zoya a moment to understand what it was. She glimpsed a few words in David’s scrawl: Ideas for compliments—hair (color, texture), smile (causes and effects), talents (tailoring, tonics, sense of style—inquire on “style”), teeth? size of feet?

  “His journal,” Zoya said. Where David had written down all his little reminders for how to make Genya happy.

  Genya looked out at the lake. “I need to get across.”

  Zoya could signal a Tidemaker, but the dragon was near and she wanted to be the one who held Genya in this moment. She lifted her arms, moving her palms slowly together. Are we not all things? If the science is small enough. There’d been no time to hone her gifts or shape the power Juris had granted Zoya with his life. But her Squaller talents were not so far from the abilities of a Tidemaker. I need to give her this. The dragon demanded it. Zoya’s grieving heart required it.

  Ice formed on the surface of the lake, a shimmering white path that spread with each step Genya took, leading her from the shore to David’s pyre. She stood before the flames, her red hair gleaming like the feathers of a firebird. She pressed a kiss to the cover of the notebook.

  “So you’ll remember when I meet you in the next world,” she said softly. She tossed the notebook onto the fire.

  Zoya shouldn’t have been able to hear the words, not at this distance. She didn’t want to know this private thing, this painful thing. But she saw with the dragon’s eyes, heard with its ears. For every life Zoya had grieved, the dragon had grieved a thousand.

  How? How do you survive a world that keeps taking?

  There was no answer from the dragon, only the crackle of flames and the cold silence of the stars, lovely, bright, and uncaring.

  * * *

  After the ceremony ended, Zoya intended to escort Genya back to her rooms, but Genya refused.

  “I can’t be alone. Are you meeting with the king?”

  “I am, but—”

  “I can’t be alone,” Genya repeated.

  “Leoni and Nadia will be there.”

  “I know. The Fjerdans won’t wait for us to mourn our dead. We’ll need to select someone to represent the Materialki on the Triumvirate.”

  “We have time.”

  Genya’s eyes were haunted. “Do we? I keep seeing the way he looked when they pulled him from the rubble. He was still dressed in his wedding clothes and … he had a pen in his hand. His fingertips…” Genya held up her own hand, touched her fingers to her lips. Fresh tears filled her eyes. “They were stained with ink.”

  Zoya hadn’t been there. She had returned to Os Alta too late to help, too late to fight. “If you don’t feel ready to—”

  Genya wiped away her tears. “I’m a member of the Triumvirate, not just a grieving widow. I need to be there. And I can’t sit alone with my thoughts.”

  That much Zoya understood.

  Everyone gathered in her sitting room, at the table where the Darkling’s oprichniki and then Alina’s guards had once sat. Th
e king’s chambers were still intact, but the halls around them weren’t yet cleared of rubble.

  Tolya wrapped a shawl around Genya’s shoulders and settled her by the fire while Zoya paced, unsure of what came next. Nadia and Leoni had brought a stack of files with them, most likely the work they’d been doing on the missiles. Adrik was there too. Zoya wondered if Nikolai intended to demote her and give Nadia’s little brother her command. He had every right to.

  “Forgive the delay,” Nikolai said when he entered at last. “It’s hard to keep up with correspondence since … Well.” He poured a cup of tea and brought it to Genya, placing it on a saucer in her hands. “Are you hungry?”

  She shook her head.

  He moved a chair so that he could sit beside her. No one said anything for a long time.

  At last, the king sighed. “I don’t know where to begin.”

  There had been funerals held all over Os Alta in recent days, once the danger had passed and the bodies could be found, some burned, some buried. The king had attended as many as he could, slipping into churches where prayers were spoken to the Saints, helping to move families out of areas of the city that had become unsafe. Zoya had seen little of him since she’d returned to the capital, and she was glad of that. Facing him would mean facing her failure. Instead she’d tried to help make sense of the chaos that had followed the bombings, setting up new protocols for blackouts across Ravka, lodging formal diplomatic protests with Fjerda, joining the Grisha in the lower town to help with cleanup and rescue efforts, grateful to be busy.

  She hadn’t been ready for the terrible quiet of the funeral, or this moment that required an accounting of what they’d suffered. No one wanted to add it up.

  “Where else was hit?” asked Tolya. Better to speak of war than of love lost.

  “Poliznaya took the brunt of it,” said Nikolai. “We lost over half our flyers, most of our airships. Our stores of titanium are gone.”

  He delivered the news with little emotion, a man reporting on the weather. But Zoya knew him too well. The look in his eyes was as unmistakable as it was unfamiliar: He looked defeated.