Rule of Wolves

by Leigh Bardugo

  “My Ravkan is rusty.”

  Even if that were true, Nikolai had no doubt Brekker knew exactly what the izmars’ya could do. But if he wanted to play, they would play.

  “They’re submersible warships that travel beneath the sea. They can attack any vessel unseen, and are almost impossible to evade. Some very powerful people in Kerch possess this technology. If the Wraith’s enemies convince the Kerch government to use these weapons against her, the Wraith and her crew could be blown from the water at any time.”

  “A dire situation for her, no doubt.” Kaz’s voice was even, but Nikolai saw the way his gloved hand gripped the silver crow’s head of his cane. “And perhaps for the person who invented such a menace.”

  The threat was obvious.

  “No doubt. But it so happens that when this technology was granted to the Kerch, the very wise king of Ravka—have you met him? Unusual for someone to be so smart and so good-looking—had the hulls of the izmars’ya imbued with bits of rhodium, so that with the help of a Fabrikator and a certain device in his keeping, a ship could receive early warning of any submersible within a three-mile radius and take evasive maneuvers. If said ship was so inclined.”

  “An early warning system.”

  “Precisely.”

  Brekker reached for the handle of the door. “And you have this clever invention in your possession?”

  “Not on my person,” said Nikolai. “I know better than to fill my pockets with valuable merchandise around a thief known as Dirtyhands. But the device is well within reach.”

  Brekker gave the handle on the iron door a spin. “Come with me, Sturmhond. If we’re going to pull this off, we’ll need some very particular help.”

  28

  ZOYA

  THEY EMERGED FROM THE TUNNEL in an unfamiliar part of the city, and Zoya wondered if Brekker was deliberately trying to disorient them.

  “We’re in the Geldin District,” Nikolai murmured. “The favored neighborhood of wealthy merchants.”

  Leave it to Nikolai to have an accurate map in his head. It was as if they’d traveled to a different country, not a different part of town. The streets were tidy and lovely, all neat cobblestones and clean brick facades. Zoya noted the curtains in the windows, a woman walking home with her groceries, a housekeeper sweeping a stoop. Ordinary people, living ordinary lives. They did their shopping, ate their meals, lay down at night thinking of the health of their children or the work waiting to be done in the morning. Could they find a way to give this peace, this ease, to Ravka? Would there ever be a time when Grisha were free to choose their paths instead of living as soldiers? It was something worth fighting for.

  They arrived at an elegant mansion with red tulips painted over the entry. Brekker rapped twice on the front door with the head of his cane.

  Zoya recognized the young man who popped his head out—Jesper Fahey. They’d met him when they’d last been forced to work with Brekker’s crew. He was brown-skinned and gray-eyed and wore his hair shaved close to the scalp. If memory served, he was some kind of expert sharpshooter.

  “I’m not supposed to let you in,” Jesper said.

  Brekker seemed unperturbed. “Why not?”

  “Because every time I do, you ask me to break the law.”

  A voice from behind Jesper said, “The problem isn’t that he asks, it’s that you always say yes.”

  “But look who he brought,” Jesper said, gazing at Nikolai with delight. “The man with the flying ships. Come in! Come in!”

  Jesper threw open the door, revealing a grand entryway and his shockingly bright combination of turquoise waistcoat and hounds- tooth trousers. The ensemble shouldn’t have worked, but Zoya was forced to admit it did. He could give Count Kirigin some lessons.

  “I’ve been keeping up on your exploits, Captain Sturmhond,” Jesper whispered conspiratorially.

  Kaz Brekker had sussed out Nikolai’s real identity at their first meeting long ago, but Zoya didn’t think he’d shared it with his crew. They all still believed they were dealing with the legendary Sturmhond, rather than Ravka’s king.

  “You should join up with us sometime,” Nikolai said smoothly. “We can always use a sharpshooter aboard.”

  “Really?”

  “Are you forgetting how much you hate the open sea?” asked a slender boy with ruddy gold curls and luminous blue eyes. Wylan … something. She couldn’t remember his last name, only that Genya had helped to tailor him as part of their plan to secure Kuwei Yul-Bo and his knowledge of jurda parem.

  “I can change,” said Jesper. “I’m extremely adaptable.”

  They followed Wylan and Jesper across a cluttered parlor strewn with musical instruments in various states of repair and a desktop littered with what looked like tiny piles of gunpowder. Through the tall windows, Zoya glimpsed a garden and a woman painting at an easel, and beyond her the slow-moving gray waters of the Geldcanal.

  The house had the starchy lines and precision of any rich merchant household in Ketterdam, but it felt as if it had been taken over by a combination of circus performers, street hooligans, and mad scientists. The dining room table was laden with paints and newly strung canvases as well as what seemed to be the bits and pieces of some kind of chemistry experiment.

  Zoya picked up a swatch of fabric that looked like the color had been bled from it. “Is there a Fabrikator living here?”

  “A friend of ours,” said Jesper, throwing his lanky frame down in a chair. “An indenture who likes to pop by for meals. Quite the sponger.”

  “Has he never been trained? The work seems rudimentary.”

  Jesper sniffed. “I thought it had a certain rustic elegance.”

  “No,” said Wylan. “He hasn’t been trained. He’s stubborn that way.”

  “Independent,” corrected Jesper.

  “Pigheaded.”

  “But stylish.”

  Kaz rapped his cane on the floor. “And now you know why I don’t visit more often.”

  Jesper folded his arms. “No one asked you to visit more often. And I don’t remember issuing an invitation for lunch.”

  “I have a job that requires both of your skill sets.”

  “Kaz,” Wylan said, carefully collecting some of the half-full glasses around the room. “We’d prefer not to do anything illegal.”

  “That’s not strictly true,” said Jesper. “Wylan would prefer it, and I want to keep Wylan happy.” He paused, unable to hide his interest. “Is it illegal?”

  “Highly,” said Kaz.

  “But the pay is excellent,” offered Nikolai.

  “We don’t need money,” said Wylan.

  “Isn’t it glorious?” Jesper sighed happily.

  Kaz smoothed a gloved hand over his lapel, looking at no one. “It’s for Inej.”

  Wylan set down the dirty glasses. “Why didn’t you say so? What do you need?”

  “To break into the base at Rentveer and misappropriate a very large supply of titanium.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” said Jesper, clearing a space on the table, as Wylan rolled out a long sheet of paper beside a map of the Kerch coastline. “Their security is terrible.”

  Nikolai raised a brow. “Mister Brekker led us to believe the job was nearly impossible.”

  Zoya scowled. “He wanted to drive up his rate.”

  “Thank you, Jesper,” said Kaz sourly.

  Jesper shrugged. “What can I say? I have a naturally honest disposition.”

  “And I have a golden top hat,” grumbled Kaz.

  “If you did, I would borrow it,” said Jesper. “Now, the first question is how we move that many pounds of metal.”

  Nikolai nodded. “We have an airship docked on Vellgeluck.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “It’s equipped with cables and winches and can manage a big cargo load.”

  Kaz pointed to the map. “The base is located on a scrawny spit of land that juts out into the sea. The weather there is perpetually bad.
High winds, rain.”

  “I can manage that,” said Zoya. She could silence a storm as easily as she could summon one.

  “The problem is getting any boots on the ground inside the base. There’s an armed checkpoint blocking the road in, and we don’t have time to gin up fake credentials.”

  “Not to mention, we’re all extremely recognizable,” Wylan said.

  Kaz lifted a shoulder. “One of the unfortunate side effects of success.”

  “Is there any chance we can approach by sea?” asked Nikolai.

  “There’s no safe place to land even if you’re flying Kerch flags. Our only way in is to create a distraction for the guards and disable the spotlights in the towers. Then we just cut through the fence.”

  “Sounds like an opportunity to be noisy,” said Jesper, fingers tapping the table in an eager rhythm.

  “Like I said,” Kaz continued, “we have need of your particular skill sets. Once we enter, we can locate the titanium and signal our people in the air. But we’ll need a way to cover the sound of the airship moving into place.”

  “I can provide some rolling thunder,” said Zoya. “How is it you know so much about how to get into this place?”

  Nikolai grinned. “Because he was thinking about stealing the titanium himself.”

  “Truly? What possible use could you have for so much titanium?”

  Kaz’s gaze was cool. “If someone wants it, I can sell it. It’s as simple as that.”

  Maybe, thought Zoya. Or maybe Kaz was like Nikolai, a boy with an unquiet mind, a man in perpetual need of challenge. He’d decided the base was a puzzle and he couldn’t resist finding its solution.

  “One question,” said Wylan. “What are you going to use the titanium for?”

  “Why does it matter?” asked Nikolai.

  “Because unlike Kaz, I have a conscience.”

  “I have a conscience,” said Kaz. “It just knows when to keep its mouth shut.”

  Jesper snorted. “If you have a conscience, it’s gagged and tied to a chair somewhere.”

  “This is a lot of metal,” said Wylan, unwilling to let the subject go. “You’re going to use it to build a weapon, aren’t you?”

  Zoya waited. It was up to Nikolai to decide what to disclose to this little band of monsters.

  To her surprise, he reached into his coat pocket and tossed a sheaf of papers onto the table. David’s rocket schematics.

  Wylan unrolled them, his eyes moving rapidly over the plans. “These are missiles. You need the titanium to improve their range.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to build something bigger.”

  Now Nikolai looked surprised. “Yes. Maybe.”

  “This is for Ravka. Because of the bombing at Os Alta. You blockaded Fjerda for them and now you’re helping them build a weapon.”

  “That bombing was a test. It was meant to provoke. If Ravka doesn’t respond, Fjerda will know they can’t. They’ll march and they’ll keep marching until every Ravkan is under Fjerdan rule and every Grisha has been thrown into a cell.”

  “Or worse,” added Zoya.

  Jesper went to the sideboard and pulled a gun belt from the drawer. He slid twin pearl-handled revolvers into their holsters. “When do we leave?”

  But Wylan looked less sure.

  “This titanium could stop a war,” Nikolai said.

  Wylan ran a finger over one of the schematics. “And you can really arm and aim these things?”

  “We can. Mostly. Hopefully.”

  “I have some ideas,” said Wylan. “The problem is the nozzles, right?”

  “Nozzles?” said Jesper.

  “Yes,” said Nikolai. “For launching and directing the rocket.”

  “That is a ridiculous word,” said Jesper.

  “It’s an accurate word,” objected Wylan. “And slightly ridiculous. May I?”

  Nikolai nodded, and Wylan began to sketch something onto the schematic.

  Zoya felt a sudden sharp sting to her heart. It was too easy to imagine David in this room, his head bent over those plans, the pleasure he would have felt encountering another person who could speak his language. She knew from the look in Nikolai’s eyes that he was thinking the exact same thing. The knowledge of what they’d lost was like a tether between them, a hook in both of their hearts. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked to be reassigned to Os Kervo. She wanted to work with him for the future they both dreamed of. She wanted to build a peace with him. Even when he married, she could stay at the palace, serve by his side. That was the right choice, the noble one—and the thought of it made her feel like snatching a bottle of whiskey from the sideboard and downing the whole thing. It didn’t help that the idea of losing her hadn’t seemed to bother Nikolai a bit. That’s good, she told herself. That’s the way it should be. And what was there to lose, really? They were compatriots, friends; anything else was illusion, as cheap and false as the performances on East Stave.

  “We should get started,” she said briskly. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  It took another few hours to hash out what they intended, get the supplies they needed, and message the Cormorant. The plan seemed easy enough, and that made Zoya nervous. Wylan and Jesper would ride ahead to gather ground intelligence, then meet them at a bay only a few miles from the base. It was the easiest place for Zoya to board the Cormorant so that she and her Squallers could guide it into position over the base once Kaz and Nikolai were inside. Sturmhond’s Volkvolny would remain docked at Fifth Harbor lest any accusations fly after the robbery. Though if all went according to plan, there would be no outcry, no alarm. They would be in and out of the base without anyone knowing, and the stockpile of titanium would appear as plentiful as before. Only now, most of it would be aluminum.

  “I don’t think it’s fair that I don’t get to ride in the airship,” Jesper said as Kaz hustled them out of the dining room.

  Nikolai winked. “The king of Ravka will be grateful for what you’re doing, and he has plenty of airships. Os Alta’s gates will always open to you.”

  “To all Grisha,” Zoya murmured as she drifted past. If Jesper wanted to hide his gift, that was his business, but the dragon had smelled his power the minute they’d entered the house. Zoya couldn’t blame him for wanting to keep his abilities secret, to live his life full of love and misadventure without forever looking over his shoulder. Maybe someday being Grisha wouldn’t mean being a target.

  * * *

  Kaz, Zoya, and Nikolai traveled to the bay by oxcart. Jesper had told them there were new motorized trucks that had appeared among some of the wealthier merchant families, but they were useless in the narrow streets of the city. Besides, they wanted to be as quiet and inconspicuous as possible.

  As soon as they arrived at the cliffs Kaz had proposed for their meetup with the Cormorant, Zoya felt something was off. In the distance, she could see the lights of the naval base twinkling through the fog. But here on the cliff tops, there was an eerie quality to the mist rolling in, and her dragon’s mind stirred as if recognizing danger. She could only hope that ancient intelligence would stay quiet. She couldn’t afford the emotional cost of the dragon’s eye opening, not when they had a mission to complete.

  Far below, the beach was little more than a sliver of sand, bright and slender as a crescent moon. Waves broke against thickets of white rocks, jagged, hulking phantoms gathered at the shore as if to stand vigil. They’re guarding this place, Zoya thought. No boat was meant to find safe harbor here. And we’re not meant to be here either. If the beach outside the naval base was anything like this, Zoya could see why no one attempted to approach from the water. The wind howled over the cliffs, a mournful chorus.

  “Going to be tough to bring the airship over the base and have it hover,” said Kaz. “There’s no way we’ll be able to get cargo up and down the lines.”

  Zoya lifted a hand, settling warmth and calm around them as the wind stilled. “That won’t be a problem once I’m aboard
.”

  “Be as subtle as you can,” instructed Nikolai. “We don’t want the guards realizing they’re in the eye of a storm.”

  “Somehow I’ll manage it.”

  Hoofbeats signaled the arrival of two riders.

  “We have a problem,” said Jesper, sliding from his horse with ease. Wylan dismounted slowly, clearly less accustomed to the task. “They’ve locked down the goods.”

  “How?” asked Kaz.

  “There’s some kind of new metal shell they’ve installed, protects cargo from the elements.”

  Zoya frowned. “Titanium doesn’t rust.”

  “But there’s other cargo in the yard on base,” said Kaz. “Iron. Potentially lumber that will rot if it gets wet. They used to just secure everything with tarps, but I guess the military is getting more particular.”

  “This wasn’t part of the intelligence you gathered?” Zoya asked, her temper rising.

  “It must have been installed in the last three weeks. And when you rush a job, you don’t get to complain when the job goes wrong.”

  “You take your time or you take your chances,” said Jesper.

  “And I don’t take chances,” added Kaz.

  Zoya flicked her braid over her shoulder. “You’re telling me you can’t get past a metal roof?”

  “Of course I can. But with a bigger crew. This isn’t a bank vault, it’s a military base. If Jesper and Wylan are handling the watch- towers, I’ll need to get inside, locate whatever mechanism opens the shell, and get it to work without anyone in the base noticing. We don’t know where the guards are posted inside or what kind of alarms are rigged up. Assuming we could even get inside, we’d need time to suss it out and at least two lookouts.”

  “Surely the greatest thief in Ketterdam can outthink such a problem,” said Nikolai.

  “I’m not susceptible to flattery, only stacks of cash. This can’t be done, not if you want it quiet and bloodless. If you’re willing to take out a few guards or let Wylan blow a hole in this thing—”

  “No,” said Nikolai firmly. “Ravka’s relationship with Kerch is strained enough. I don’t want to give them an excuse to ditch their neutrality and use the izmars’ya to help Fjerda break my blockade.”