Rule of Wolves

by Leigh Bardugo

  You see, Yuri. Your age of miracles has begun.

  He gusted through the church, disguising himself in a whirling cloud of shadow, and the congregants screamed.

  Aleksander couldn’t simply appear again, resurrected. There were too many old grudges and there would be too many questions. No, there was a better story here. He would become Yuri, let the boy do the talking for him, and when the time came, the monk would be his chosen one—a boy who came from nothing, endowed with great power. They’d loved Alina’s little fairy tale. They’d love this one too.

  He would go to the Fold. He would find those who followed the Starless Saint.

  He would teach the world awe.

  22

  NINA

  NINA DIDN’T WANT TO MOVE from her bed. Hanne had told her parents that she was ill, that the oysters at the previous day’s breakfast hadn’t agreed with her.

  “I forget she’s not used to the luxuries of the Ice Court,” Brum had said, his voice carrying through the gap in the door. “But she must join us to celebrate.”

  That should make me angry.

  The thought came and went. She felt like she was drowning, but she didn’t want to fight to surface. She wanted to lie here, in this bed, the covers heavy like the weight of water. She didn’t want to think and she couldn’t pretend she was all right.

  She felt as if someone had cracked open her chest and carved the heart right out of her. The Fjerdans had bombed Os Alta. They’d bombed houses where children slept in their beds, markets where innocent people did their business. They’d bombed Nina’s home, the place she’d found joy and acceptance as a little girl. How many of her friends had died? How many had been injured? She had been in Brum’s office, she had seen the map of Ravka’s capital, but she hadn’t understood. If she had … Nina sank deeper, down, down.

  The news had come during a party, just days after the royal hunt. She’d been with the Brums in the ballroom, the same room where the prince had collapsed. She was holding a plate of smoked fish and roe, idly contemplating that no spy had ever been so well fed. Word had spread that Prince Rasmus had not been permitted to join the royal hunt, but the damage to his reputation was somewhat tempered by reports of how handsome he’d looked in his riding clothes and how much stronger he seemed every day.

  “We’ll see,” Brum muttered. “Padding the shoulders on his jacket won’t make him any more a king.”

  The grizzled Redvin had merely let out a snort. “Let’s get him up on a horse and see what happens.”

  “That’s cruel,” Hanne had said quietly. “You mock him for his weakness and then punish him when he dares to change.”

  Redvin had laughed. “Your girl has a fondness for that whey-faced whelp.”

  But Brum’s face had been cold. “There is no punishment for a prince, Hanne. And you would do well to remember it. Rasmus may favor you now, but if his opinion turns sour, I will be unable to protect you.”

  Those words had sent a shiver through Nina, remembering Rasmus with the crop in his hand, the blood on Joran’s cheek.

  But Hanne had refused to drop her chin, returning her father’s stare with hard determination. Nina knew she should give her a nudge, a gentle touch of the hand, a reminder that they were meant to show vulnerability and softness here so no one would guess at their strength, but she couldn’t. This was the true Hanne, a girl with the heart of a wolf. Healing the prince hadn’t just made Rasmus stronger; it had reminded Hanne of who she could be, who she might become if Fjerda weren’t in the grip of men like her father.

  Their standoff had been broken by some kind of clamor in the throne room, a buzz that had risen to a roar, then cheers, applause.

  “What’s happening?” Ylva had asked.

  Nina would never forget the smile that split Brum’s face in that moment, a look of pure pleasure.

  “The Ravkan capital burns!” someone shouted.

  “We bombed Os Alta!”

  “We have them on the run now!”

  Nina couldn’t quite tell where the voices were coming from. People were shaking Brum’s hand, clapping him on the back. She felt like she was standing on the shore of a wild sea, the waves striking her again and again, as she tried to find her balance.

  Hanne took hold of her hand.

  “What is this?” Nina whispered. She heard her own voice as if from a great distance.

  “It sounds like there was a raid,” Hanne replied. “Fjerdan bombers struck Os Alta.”

  “But that’s … It’s impossible. The city is too far away.” The floor was tilting beneath her feet.

  “Are you all right, Mila?” Ylva asked.

  “You must rally,” Hanne whispered in Nina’s ear. “My father will see.”

  Nina summoned every bit of her strength and forced an expression of wide-eyed surprise onto her face. “Then is Nikolai Lantsov dead?” The words tasted foul in her mouth. She could feel cold sweat on the back of her neck.

  “No,” Brum said bitterly. “The little bastard wormed free this time.”

  This time. What about Adrik and Leoni? Zoya? All of the others?

  “One of the pilots came back with a bizarre report of monsters in the skies above the city,” Brum continued. “I think he’s shell-shocked.”

  “Help me,” Nina begged Hanne. “Get me out of here.”

  And Hanne had, letting the flood of well-wishers envelop her father and mother, herding Nina out of the room.

  Nina hadn’t known what was happening to her. She had faced battle. She had held her beloved as he died, and yet now her whole world felt like it was crumpling around her, as if it were made of paper. Her heart was racing. Her gown felt too tight. How many had died while she was playing at spy? She’d seen the targets; she just hadn’t understood. She wanted to scream, to weep. But Mila Jandersdat could not do anything like that.

  By the time they reached the Brums’ chambers, her clothes were soaked through with sweat. Trembling, Nina seized hold of the washbasin and vomited into it, then slid down to the floor. Her legs wouldn’t hold her any longer.

  Bless Hanne’s strength, because she must have dragged Nina to her bed and gotten her into a nightgown. Nina knew she was going to pass out. She had seized Hanne’s hand.

  “Make him sick,” she demanded.

  “What?”

  “Hanne, go back to the party and act as if nothing is wrong. I need you to weaken the prince.”

  “But Rasmus—”

  “Please, Hanne,” Nina begged, clutching her fingers. “Do this for me.”

  Hanne brushed the hair back from Nina’s sweat-slicked face. “All right,” she said. “All right. Just promise me you’ll rest.”

  Only then had Nina let herself sink beneath the waves. And that was where she had remained, buried beneath the covers, all through the night and the following day. Hanne came and went. She tried to get Nina to eat. But it was as if Nina heard her from far away. She was floating somewhere quiet and she wanted to stay there, wrapped in silence. There was too much pain waiting on land.

  Until she’d heard Brum’s voice outside her room.

  “I don’t care if she’s ill. I don’t care if she’s on her deathbed. If the queen wishes to see her, then that fishmonger’s wife will drag herself out here.”

  Queen Agathe. Dimly, Nina remembered what she’d said to Hanne. Her instincts had taken over and she’d had the sense to set this new deception working. But she had to pull herself together to capitalize on it.

  “Surely if it’s something she ate, she’s feeling better?” said Ylva. “She must see the queen.”

  “I don’t have time for this. I have to be outside the ringwall in a half hour for Drokestering. I won’t keep my men waiting for the sake of a simpleton with a weak constitution.”

  Drokestering. Nina tried to remember the word. It was old Fjerdan, a drüskelle celebration of victory in war. It was held in the woods, usually for an entire night.

  “I’ll get her,” said Hanne. “Just … just gi
ve me a moment to make her ready.”

  Nina pushed herself to a sitting position. Her skin had the sour smell of sweat and fear on it. Her hair was tangled, and she was dizzy from lack of food and water.

  “You’re up!” Hanne said, rushing to Nina’s bedside. “Djel’s grace, I thought you might slip away from me forever.”

  “I’m up,” Nina croaked.

  Hanne poured her some water. “Nina, the queen’s servants are here. They’ve brought a litter. She says she heard you were taken ill and wishes for you to see her personal doctor.”

  Nina highly doubted that was what the queen wanted.

  “Do you have anything to eat?” she asked.

  “I can get you some broth or some dry toast. Did you hear me? The queen—”

  “I heard you. A cup of broth, please.”

  “You should wash too.”

  “Rude.”

  “Honest.”

  Nina didn’t have time for a bath, so she rinsed as best she could with cold water from the basin and dabbed her body with perfume. She didn’t mind the chill. She needed anything that would wake her.

  She ran a brush through her hair, but there was nothing she could do about the sallow color of her skin or the circles beneath her eyes.

  “Hanne, can you help me?” Nina asked when she returned with the broth. “I need you to tailor me. Can you make me look…”

  “Less like a corpse?”

  “Better. Saintly.”

  Hanne moved her over to the window for better light. Her hands traced Nina’s face in soft strokes.

  “You don’t have to hold your breath,” Hanne said.

  Nina bit her lip.

  “Stop that!” said Hanne, grabbing her chin. “You’ll ruin my work.”

  “Sorry.”

  Hanne’s cheeks flushed and she released Nina’s chin. She focused on her hair instead.

  “Has your father said anything about the missing letters?” Nina asked.

  “I haven’t heard him mention them to anyone, and they haven’t instituted new security protocols as far as I know.”

  Then Brum couldn’t have realized they were missing yet, but he would as soon as that safe was opened.

  “There!” Hanne said a moment later. “Done.”

  “So fast?”

  Hanne handed her a mirror. “See for yourself.”

  Nina looked into the glass. Her skin shone like polished marble, a faint rose-petal flush on her cheeks. Her hair gleamed silvery blond. She looked like she’d been dipped in moonlight. “You really have been practicing.”

  Hanne looked almost guilty. “Quite a bit. On myself. Why does the queen want to see you?”

  “Her son’s health is failing.”

  “Because of me.”

  “Because I begged you to help me, to help both of our countries.”

  “How is the prince’s suffering supposed to help Ravka or Fjerda?”

  “I need you to trust me,” said Nina. “And Rasmus could use a little suffering after what he did to Joran in the hunters’ tent.”

  “He doesn’t like to feel weak,” said Hanne.

  “No one does. But he can’t just be kind when he’s feeling strong.”

  A knock came at the door.

  “Hanne.” Ylva’s voice was quiet but urgent. “Mila must come. Now.”

  They draped Nina in Hanne’s dressing gown and placed a shawl around her face and hair so Ylva and Brum wouldn’t see the effects of Hanne’s tailoring.

  Leaning heavily on Hanne, Nina let herself be steered down the hall and onto the litter the queen’s servants carried.

  “She’s heavy,” complained one of the guards.

  “She’s more trouble than she’s worth,” Brum grumbled.

  “Papa!” cried Hanne.

  “Jarl, that’s enough,” said Ylva. “She’s clearly unwell.”

  Nina lay back and stared at the ceiling as she was carried down the hallways of the White Island. She shut her eyes and reached out to the spirits in the graveyard, to Linor Rundholm, the queen’s former lady-in-waiting. Tell me what I need to know. Tell me what you want.

  The answer was clear and harsh: An end to the Grimjer line.

  Nina couldn’t promise that. Given the choice between Jarl Brum’s brutality and Prince Rasmus’ petty violence, she would have to choose the prince. Fjerda and fate had conspired to offer her truly rotten options.

  All I can promise is revenge. Now speak to me.

  The litter was brought to the same throne room where the queen had received Nina before.

  “Do you need to see my doctor?” demanded the queen from her alabaster throne.

  Nina sat up straight, her shawl slipping back, letting light from the windows fall on her freshly tailored face. “I need no doctor. And what good has he ever done your son?”

  The queen drew in a sharp breath. “Put her down,” she commanded. “Leave us.”

  A moment later, the servants had departed and they were alone, the queen on her throne and Nina standing before her.

  “You were not ill?” asked the queen.

  “I fell into a trance,” Nina lied smoothly. “Where is your son, Queen Agathe?”

  “He cannot rise from his bed. He … he has been coughing blood for days. What is happening to him? I have prayed every day, twice a day, I—”

  “Your warmongering has angered Djel.”

  Queen Agathe’s brow pinched. “The attack on Os Alta?”

  “It was a Grisha who saved your son and brought him Djel’s blessing.”

  “The bombing was a great military victory for Fjerda!”

  Of course it was. Nina could still see Brum’s triumphant face in the ballroom, hear the cheering of the crowd. But she couldn’t just tell the queen what she needed her to do. Agathe had to find her way there herself.

  Nina lifted her head, knowing the light was gilding the contours of her face. “Do you know what stands between the Grand Palace and the Little Palace in Ravka’s capital?”

  Agathe tugged at the buttons of her silver gown, as if the bodice was too tight. “The royal chapel.”

  “The site of the First Altar. Where the first prayers to the first Saints were said.”

  “A false religion.” But the reply was slow, tentative.

  “This was where Fjerda rained fire.”

  “That was Jarl Brum’s directive, not my son’s.”

  “Do you not rule this country? Was it not done in the Grimjer name?”

  Agathe licked her lips. “In … in Djerholm, they whisper that Grisha are the children of Djel.”

  Finally. She’d made the leap. “Djel is a good father. He protects his children. Just as any loving parent would.”

  The queen clutched the sides of her head, as if the very thought of Grisha carrying divine blessing might split her skull. “This is heresy.”

  Nina spread her hands wide, helpless. “I cannot explain these things.”

  “You are a liar and a heretic. You are unnatural with your trances and your predictions. You—”

  Nina threw back her head, letting her eyes roll white in their sockets. “You bled and bled. You knew you were going to lose this child like all the others. You sent sweet Linor to the dungeons and had a Grisha Healer brought to you. Her name was Pavlina. You promised her freedom. But you never intended to set her free. She sat with you for hours, long into the night. She stayed with you, day after day, healing you, healing your princeling, even in the womb. She told you stories when you were restless. And when you wept, she sang you a lullaby.”

  “No.” The word emerged as a moan.

  Nina had a terrible singing voice, but she did her best to follow the melody of the dead woman crooning to her. “Dye ena kelinki, dya derushka, shtoya refkayena lazla zeya.” It was an old Ravkan folk song. Up in the mountains, high in the trees, the firebird sleeps on a golden bough.

  “You … you know Ravkan?”

  “I have never spoken a word before now. I know only what Djel shows me.
Pavlina told you she had a daughter, a little girl you promised she would see again.”

  The queen released a sob. “I needed her help!”

  “Djel forgives you all of it.” I don’t, thought Nina. Your tree god is far more magnanimous. “But he will not forgive the murder of more Grisha. Not when your son owes his life to one.”

  “I … how am I to stop it? Our people want war.”

  “Is that what you’ve been told or what you know? Your generals want war. The people want their sons and daughters to live. They want to sleep in their beds and tend the crops in their fields. Will you listen to your generals or to Djel? The choice is yours.” Nina remembered a line from one of the Saints’ stories she’d read in an old children’s book: You can choose faith or you can choose fear. But only one will bring you what you long for.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You do. Listen closely. The water hears and understands.” She bowed and made to leave.

  “You dare turn your back on me?”

  A bold move, but Nina needed to show Agathe she wore the armor of faith. She couldn’t afford to show fear.

  “It is Djel you should be worried about, my queen,” she said. “Take care lest he turn his back on you.”

  She slipped out of the throne room and hurried down the hall. Had she gone too far or just far enough? Would the seeds she’d planted yield a move toward peace? Or had she only endangered herself and maybe Hanne too?

  She couldn’t contemplate that now. She’d made her choices and there was more work to be done tonight. Earlier, she’d been too bleary to make sense of what she’d heard Brum say outside her room, but now the word rang through her head—Drokestering. The drüskelle would be in the woods tonight, far from the Ice Court, celebrating the sneak attack on Ravka.

  This was her chance to break Magnus Opjer out of the drüskelle sector. Ravka was bleeding, and she was powerless to undo the damage their enemies had wrought. But Nikolai Lantsov still lives. That meant there was still hope. She could deal Fjerda a blow and maybe give her king a small advantage in this fight.

  It was time to make some trouble.