He took my hand and pressed his moist mouth to my knuckles. “Until then, Alina Starkov.”
I stifled a gag. As he strode off, I wiped my hand surreptitiously on my kefta.
Mal was waiting for me at the edge of the woods.
“What was that about?” he asked, his face worried.
“Oh, you know,” I replied. “Another prince, another proposal.”
“You can’t be serious,” Mal said with a disbelieving laugh. “He doesn’t waste any time.”
“Power is alliance,” I intoned, imitating Nikolai.
“Should I offer my felicitations?” Mal asked, but there was no edge to his voice, only amusement. Apparently the heir to the throne of Ravka wasn’t quite as threatening as an overconfident privateer.
“Do you think the Darkling had to deal with unwanted advances from wet-lipped royals?” I asked glumly.
Mal snickered.
“What’s so funny?”
“I just pictured the Darkling being cornered by a sweaty duchess trying to have her way with him.”
I snorted and then I started to laugh outright. Nikolai and Vasily were so different, it was hard to believe they shared any blood at all. Unbidden, I remembered Nikolai’s kiss, the rough feel of his mouth on mine as he’d held me to him. I shook my head.
They may be different, I reminded myself as we headed into the palace, but they both want to use you just the same.
CHAPTER
17
SUMMER DEEPENED, bringing waves of balmy heat to Os Alta. The only relief to be found was in the lake, or in the cold pools of the banya that lay in the dark shade of a birchwood grove beside the Little Palace. Whatever hostility the Ravkan court felt toward the Grisha, it didn’t stop them from beckoning Squallers and Tidemakers to the Grand Palace to summon breezes and fashion massive blocks of ice to cool the stuffy rooms. It was hardly a worthy use of Grisha talent, but I was eager to keep the King and Queen happy, and I’d already deprived them of several much-valued Fabrikators, who were hard at work on David’s mysterious mirrored dishes.
Every morning, I met with my Grisha council—sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours—to discuss intelligence reports, troop movements, and what we were hearing from the northern and southern borders.
Nikolai still hoped to take the fight to the Darkling before he’d assembled the full strength of his shadow army, but so far Ravka’s network of spies and informants had been unable to discover his location. It was looking more and more likely that we’d have to make our stand in Os Alta. Our only advantage was that the Darkling couldn’t simply send the nichevo’ya against us. He had to stay close to his creatures, and that meant he would have to march to the capital with them. The big question was whether he would enter Ravka from Fjerda or from the Shu Han.
Standing in the war room before the Grisha council, Nikolai gestured to one of the massive maps along the wall. “We took back most of this territory in the last campaign,” he said, pointing to Ravka’s northern border with Fjerda. “It’s dense forest, almost impossible to cross when the rivers aren’t frozen, and all the access roads have been blockaded.”
“Are there Grisha stationed there?” asked Zoya.
“No,” Nikolai said. “But there are lots of scouts based out of Ulensk. If he comes that way, we’ll have plenty of warning.”
“And he would have to deal with the Petrazoi,” said Paja. “Whether he goes over or around them, it will buy us more time.” She’d come into her own over the last few weeks. Though David remained silent and fidgety, she actually seemed glad to have time away from the workrooms.
“I’m more concerned with the permafrost,” Nikolai said, running his hand along the stretch of border that ran above Tsibeya. “It’s heavily fortified. But that’s a lot of territory to cover.”
I nodded. Mal and I had once walked those wild lands together, and I remembered how vast they’d felt. I caught myself looking around the room, seeking him out, even though I knew he’d gone on another hunt, this time with a group of Kerch marksmen and Ravkan diplomats.
“And if he comes from the south?” asked Zoya.
Nikolai signaled Fedyor, who rose and began to walk the Grisha through the weak points of the southern border. Because he’d been stationed at Sikursk, the Corporalnik knew the area well.
“It’s almost impossible to patrol all the mountain passes coming out of the Sikurzoi,” he observed grimly. “Shu raiding parties having been taking advantage of that fact for years. It would be easy enough for the Darkling to slip through.”
“Then it’s a straight march to Os Alta,” said Sergei.
“Past the military base at Poliznaya,” Nikolai noted. “That could work to our advantage. Either way, when he marches, we’ll be ready.”
“Ready?” Pavel snorted. “For an army of indestructible monsters?”
“They’re not indestructible,” Nikolai said, nodding to me. “And the Darkling isn’t either. I know. I shot him.”
Zoya’s eyes widened. “You shot him?”
“Yes,” he said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t do a very good job of it, but I’m sure I’ll improve with practice.” He surveyed the Grisha, looking into each worried face before he spoke again. “The Darkling is powerful, but so are we. He’s never faced the might of the First and Second Armies working in tandem, or the kinds of weapons I intend to supply. We face him. We flank him. We see which bullet gets lucky.”
While the Darkling’s shadow horde was focused on the Little Palace, he would be vulnerable. Small, heavily armed units of Grisha and soldiers would be stationed at two-mile intervals around the capital. Once the fighting began, they would close on the Darkling and unleash all the firepower that Nikolai could muster.
In a way, it was what the Darkling had always feared. Again, I remembered how he’d described the new weaponry being created beyond Ravka’s borders, and what he’d said to me, so long ago, beneath the caved-in roof of an old barn: The age of Grisha power is coming to an end.
Paja cleared her throat. “Do we know what happens to the shadow soldiers when we kill the Darkling?”
I wanted to hug her. I didn’t know what might happen to the nichevo’ya if we managed to put the Darkling down. They might vanish to nothing, or they might go into a mad frenzy or worse, but she’d said it: When we kill the Darkling. Tentative, frightened, but it still sounded suspiciously like hope.
* * *
WE FOCUSED THE MAJORITY of our efforts on Os Alta’s defense. The city had an ancient system of warning bells to alert the palace when an enemy was in sight. With his father’s permission, Nikolai had installed heavy guns like those on the Hummingbird above the city and palace walls. Despite Grisha grumbling, I’d had several placed on the roof of the Little Palace. They might not stop the nichevo’ya, but they would slow them.
Tentatively, the other Grisha had begun to open up to the value of the Fabrikators. With help from the Inferni, the Materialki were trying to create grenatki that might produce a powerful enough flash of light to stall or stun the shadow soldiers. The problem was doing it without using blasting powders that would level everyone and everything around them. I sometimes worried that they might blow up the entire Little Palace and do the Darkling’s work for him. More than once, I saw Grisha in the dining hall with burnt cuffs or singed brows. I encouraged them to try the more dangerous work by the lakeside with Tidemakers on hand in case of emergency.
Nikolai was intrigued enough by the project that he insisted on getting involved in the design. The Fabrikators tried to ignore him, then pretended to indulge him, but they quickly learned that Nikolai was more than a bored prince who liked to dabble. Not only did he understand David’s ideas, he’d worked long enough with the rogue Grisha that he slipped easily into the language of the Small Science. Soon, they seemed to forget his rank and his otkazat’sya status, and he could often be found hunched over a table in the Materialki workshops.
I was most disturbed by the experiments taking
place behind the red-lacquered doors of the Corporalki anatomy rooms, where they were collaborating with the Fabrikators to try to fuse Grisha steel with human bone. The idea was to make it possible for a soldier to withstand nichevo’ya attack. But the process was painful and imperfect, and often, the metal was simply rejected by the subject’s body. The Healers did what they could, but the ragged screams of First Army volunteers could sometimes be heard echoing through the halls of the Little Palace.
Afternoons were taken up by endless meetings at the Grand Palace. The Sun Summoner’s power was a valuable bartering chip in Ravka’s attempts to forge alliances with other countries, and I was frequently asked to put in appearances at diplomatic gatherings to demonstrate my power and prove that I was, in fact, alive. The Queen hosted teas and dinners where I was paraded out to perform. Nikolai often dropped by to dole out compliments, flirt shamelessly, and hover protectively by my chair like a doting suitor.
But nothing was as tedious as the “strategy sessions” with the King’s advisers and commanders. The King rarely attended. He preferred to spend his days hobbling after serving maids and sleeping in the sun like an old tomcat. In his absence, his counselors talked in endless circles. They argued that we should make peace with the Darkling or that we should go to war with the Darkling. They argued for allying with the Shu, then for partnering with Fjerda. They argued every line of every budget, from quantities of ammunition to what the troops ate for breakfast. And yet it was rare that anything got done or decided.
When Vasily learned that Nikolai and I were attending the meetings, he put aside years of ignoring his duties as the Lantsov heir and insisted on being there as well. To my surprise, Nikolai welcomed him enthusiastically.
“What a relief,” he said. “Please tell me you can make sense of these.” He shoved a towering stack of ledgers across the table.
“What is this?” Vasily asked.
“A proposal for repairs to an aqueduct outside of Chernitsyn.”
“All this for an aqueduct?”
“Don’t worry,” said Nikolai. “I’ll have the rest delivered to your room.”
“There’s more? Can’t one of the ministers—”
“You saw what happened when our father let others take over the business of ruling Ravka. We must remain vigilant.”
Warily, Vasily lifted the topmost paper from the pile as if he were picking up a soiled rag. It took everything in me not to burst out laughing.
“Vasily thinks he can lead as our father did,” Nikolai confided to me later that afternoon, “throwing banquets, giving the occasional speech. I’m going to make sure he knows just what it means to rule without the Darkling or the Apparat there to take the reins.”
It seemed like a good enough plan, but before long, I was cursing both princes beneath my breath. Vasily’s presence ensured that meetings ran twice as long. He postured and preened, weighed in on every issue, held forth at length on patriotism, strategy, and the finer points of diplomacy.
“I’ve never met a man who can say so much without saying anything at all,” I fumed as Nikolai walked me back to the Little Palace after a particularly wretched session. “There’s got to be something you can do.”
“Like what?”
“Get one of his prize ponies to kick him in the head.”
“I’m sure they’re frequently tempted,” Nikolai said. “Vasily’s lazy and vain, and he likes to take shortcuts, but there’s no easy way to govern a country. Trust me, he’ll tire of it all soon enough.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’ll probably die of boredom before he does.”
Nikolai laughed. “Next time, bring a flask. Every time he changes his mind, take a sip.”
I groaned. “I’d be passed out on the floor before the hour was up.”
* * *
WITH NIKOLAI’S HELP, I’d brought in armaments experts from Poliznaya to help familiarize the Grisha with modern weaponry and give them training in firearms. Though the sessions had started out tensely, they seemed to be going more smoothly now, and we hoped that a few friendships might be forming between the First and Second Armies. The units of Grisha and soldiers who had been assembled to hunt down the Darkling when he approached Os Alta made the fastest progress. They returned from training missions full of private jokes and new camaraderie. They even took to calling each other nolniki, zeroes, because they were no longer strictly First or Second Army.
I’d been worried about how Botkin might respond to all the changes. But the man seemed to have a gift for killing, no matter the method, and he delighted in any excuse to spend time talking weaponry with Tolya and Tamar.
Because the Shu had a bad habit of taking a scalpel to their Grisha, few survived to make it into the ranks of the Second Army. Botkin loved being able to speak in his native tongue, but he also loved the twins’ ferocity. They didn’t rely only on their Corporalki abilities the way Grisha raised at the Little Palace tended to. Instead, Heartrending was just one more weapon in their impressive arsenal.
“Dangerous boy. Dangerous girl,” Botkin commented, watching the twins spar with a group of Corporalki one morning while a clutch of nervous Summoners waited their turn. Marie and Sergei were there, Nadia trailing behind them as always.
“She’f worf than he if,” complained Sergei. Tamar had split his lip open, and he was having trouble talking. “I feel forry for her hufband.”
“Will not marry,” said Botkin as Tamar threw a hapless Inferni to the ground.
“Why not?” I asked, surprised.
“Not her. Not brother either,” said the mercenary. “They are like Botkin. Born for battle. Made for war.”
Three Corporalki hurled themselves at Tolya. In moments, they were all moaning on the floor. I thought of what Tolya had said in the library, that he wasn’t born to serve the Darkling. Like so many Shu, he’d taken the path of the soldier for hire, traveling the world as a mercenary and a privateer. But he’d ended up at the Little Palace anyway. How long would he and his sister stay?
“I like her,” said Nadia, looking wistfully at Tamar. “She’s fearless.”
Botkin laughed. “Fearless is other word for stupid.”
“I wouldn’t fay that to her fafe,” grumbled Sergei as Marie dabbed his lip with a damp cloth.
I found myself starting to smile and turned aside. I hadn’t forgotten the way the three of them had welcomed me to the Little Palace. They hadn’t been the ones to call me a whore or try to throw me out, but they certainly hadn’t spoken up to defend me, and the idea of pretending friendship was just a little too much. Besides, I didn’t quite know how to behave around them. We’d never been truly close, and now our difference in status felt like an unbridgeable gap.
Genya wouldn’t care, I thought suddenly. Genya had known me. She’d laughed with me and confided in me, and no shiny kefta or title would have kept her from telling me exactly what she thought or slipping her arm through mine to share a bit of gossip. Despite the lies she’d told, I missed her.
As if in answer to my thoughts, I felt a tug on my sleeve, and a tremulous voice said, “Moi soverenyi?”
Nadia stood shifting from foot to foot. “I hoped…”
“What is it?”
She turned to a murky corner of the stables and gestured to a young boy in Etherealki blue whom I’d never seen before. A few Grisha had begun to trickle in after we’d sent out the pardon, but this boy looked too young to have served in the field. He approached nervously, fingers twisting in his kefta.
“This is Adrik,” Nadia said, placing her arm around him. “My brother.” The resemblance was there, though you had to look for it. “We heard that you plan to evacuate the school.”
“That’s right.” I was sending the students to the one place I knew with dormitories and space enough to house them, a place far from the fighting: Keramzin. Botkin would go with them, too. I hated to lose such a capable soldier, but this way the younger Grisha would still be able to learn from him—and he’d be able t
o keep an eye on them. Since Baghra wouldn’t see me, I’d sent a servant to her with the same offer. She’d made no reply. Despite my best attempts to ignore her slights, the repeated rejections still stung.
“You’re a student?” I asked Adrik, pushing thoughts of Baghra from my mind. He nodded once, and I noted the determined thrust to his chin.
“Adrik was wondering … we were wondering if—”
“I want to stay,” he said fiercely.
My brows shot up. “How old are you?”
“Old enough to fight.”
“He would have graduated this year,” put in Nadia.
I frowned. He was only a couple of years younger than I was, but he was all bony elbows and rumpled hair.
“Go with the others to Keramzin,” I said. “If you still want to, you can join us in a year.” If we’re still here.
“I’m good,” he said. “I’m a Squaller, and I’m as strong as Nadia, even without an amplifier.”
“It’s too dangerous—”
“This is my home. I’m not leaving.”
“Adrik!” Nadia chastised.
“It’s okay,” I said. Adrik seemed almost feverish. His hands were balled into fists. I looked at Nadia. “You’re sure you want him to stay?”
“I—” began Adrik.
“I’m talking to your sister. If you fall to the Darkling’s army, she’s the one who will have to mourn you.” Nadia paled slightly at that, but Adrik didn’t flinch. I had to admit he had mettle.
Nadia worried the inside of her lip, glancing from me to Adrik.
“If you’re afraid to disappoint him, think what it will be like to bury him,” I said. I knew I was being harsh, but I wanted them both to understand what they were asking.
She hesitated, then straightened her shoulders. “Let him fight,” she said. “I say he stays. If you send him away, he’ll just be back at the gates a week from now.”
I sighed, then turned my attention back to Adrik, who was already grinning. “Not a word to the other students,” I said. “I don’t want them getting ideas.” I jabbed a finger at Nadia. “And he’s your responsibility.”
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