Schenck just smiled. “Perhaps the wolves will have a few less teeth after a prolonged fight with their neighbor.”
“So you’re hoping we’ll weaken Fjerda. You just aren’t willing to help us do it. There are ships from the Kerch navy anchored off the northern coast. We have a flyer. There’s time to send a message.”
“We could rally our ships. If the Kerch had sent me here to offer aid to Ravka, that’s precisely what we would do.”
“But they didn’t.”
“No.”
“They sent you to waste our time and keep me from where I belong.”
“While I appreciate the wine and your charming company, I’m afraid I see no point to this meeting. You have nothing to bargain with, Miss—”
“General.”
“General Nazyalensky,” he said, like an uncle indulging his most precocious niece. “We have everything we want.”
“Do you?”
Schenck’s brow creased. “What does that mean?”
This was Zoya’s last gamble, her last opportunity to salvage this parlay.
“Our king has a gift for making the impossible possible, for building extraordinary machines that can conquer new frontiers. He has assembled some of the greatest scientific minds among Grisha and otkazat’sya. Are you sure you want to be on the opposing side of that?”
“We choose no sides, Miss Nazyalensky. I thought I made that clear. And we do not bargain against the future. Ravka may have a gift for inventions we have not yet seen, but Fjerda has a gift for brutality the world well knows.”
Zoya watched him for a long moment. “You were willing to wed your daughter to Nikolai Lantsov. You know he is a good man.” Simple words, but Zoya was too aware of how rare they were.
“My dear,” said Schenck, finishing his glass of wine and pushing back from the table. “Perhaps the Shu have lower standards, but I sought to wed my daughter to a king, not a bastard.”
“Meaning what?” Zoya retorted, feeling her composure fray. Was this wart of a man brazen enough to question Nikolai’s parentage openly? If that was the case, they were worse off than even she had thought.
But all Schenck did was smile slyly. “Only whispers. Only rumors.”
“Be careful whispers don’t become talk. It’s a good way to lose a tongue.”
Schenck’s eyes widened. “Are you threatening a delegate of the Kerch government?”
“I only threaten gossipmongers and cowards.”
Schenck’s eyes bugged out even farther. Zoya wondered if they would bolt from his skull.
“I am due for a meeting,” he said, rising and striding toward the door. “And I believe you are due on the losing side of a battlefield.”
Zoya dug her nails into her palms. She could almost hear Nikolai in her head, counseling caution. All Saints, how did he meet with these spineless, self-satisfied toads without committing murder once a day?
But she managed. Only after Schenck was gone did she release a gust of air, hurling that fine bottle of Caryevan wine into the wall with a gratifying smash.
“Schenck never meant to offer us any help, did he?” asked Kirigin.
“Of course not. Schenck’s only purpose was to humble us further.”
Her king would face the Fjerdans and there would be no help from Hiram Schenck and his ilk. Nikolai had known the endeavor was futile but he had sent her nonetheless. Do this gallows deed for me, Zoya, he’d said. And of course, she had.
“Should we send a message to King Nikolai?” Kirigin asked.
“We’ll deliver it ourselves,” said Zoya. There might still be time to meet the Fjerdan tanks and guns beside her soldiers. She strode outside, where a servant was waiting. “Go, get our pilot to ready the flyer.”
“Our bags?” Kirigin asked, hurrying after her down the hall.
“Forget the bags.”
They rounded a corner and headed down a flight of stairs, through the courtyard, and out onto the docks where they’d landed their sea flyer. Zoya was not made for diplomacy, for closed rooms and polite talk. She was made for battle. As for Schenck and Duke Radimov and every other traitor who sided against Ravka, there would be time to deal with them after Nikolai found a way to win this war. We are the dragon and we bide our time.
“I … I have never been in the air,” Kirigin said as they approached the docks where the flyer was moored. She should probably leave him here. He didn’t belong anywhere near combat. But she also didn’t want him under the influence of West Ravka’s nobility.
“You’ll be fine. And if you’re not, just vomit over the side and not into your lap. Or mine.”
“Is there any hope?” Kirigin asked. “For Ravka?”
She didn’t reply. She’d been told there was always hope, but she was too old and too wise for fairy tales.
Zoya sensed movement before she actually saw it.
She whirled and glimpsed light glinting off the blade of a knife. The man was lunging at her from the shadows. She threw up her hands and a blast of wind hurled him backward into the wall. He struck with a bone-breaking crunch, dead before he hit the ground.
Too easy. A decoy—
Kirigin sprang forward, knocking the second assassin to the ground. The count drew his pistol to fire.
“No!” Zoya shouted, using another hard gust of wind to redirect the bullet. It pinged harmlessly off the hull of a nearby ship.
She leapt onto the assassin, pressing his chest into the deck with her knees, and closed her fist, squeezing the breath from his lungs. He clawed at his throat, face turning red, eyes bulging and watering.
She opened her fingers, letting air flood into his lungs, and he gasped like a fish freed of a hook.
“Speak,” she demanded. “Who sent you?”
“A new age … is coming,” he rasped. “The false Saints … will be … purged.”
He looked and sounded Ravkan. Again she sucked the air from his lungs, then let it return in the barest trickle.
“False Saints?” said Kirigin, clutching his bloody arm.
“Who sent you?” she demanded.
“Your power … is unnatural and you will … be punished, Sankta Zoya.” He spat the last two words like a curse.
Zoya hauled back and punched him in the jaw. His head drooped.
“Couldn’t you have choked him unconscious?” asked Kirigin.
“I felt like hitting someone.”
“Ah. I see. I’m glad it was him. But what did he mean by ‘Sankta Zoya’？”
“As far as I know, I’ve worked no miracles nor claimed to.” Zoya’s eyes narrowed. She knew exactly who to blame for this. “Damn Nina Zenik.”
6
NIKOLAI
“BLESS NINA ZENIK,” Nikolai murmured as he walked the line of silent Ravkan troops camouflaged with mud and scrub. In the near dark before dawn, he’d taken his flyer up with Adrik—one of Zoya’s most skilled Squallers—on board to dampen the sound of the engine. Fjerda thought they had the element of surprise, and Nikolai wanted to keep it that way.
But he had to wonder if his enemy needed it. From his vantage in the skies, he’d watched the line of tanks rolling toward Ravka in the gray dawn light. He supposed he should be praying, but he’d never been much for religion—not when he had science and a pair of well-made revolvers to cling to. Right now, though, he hoped that each Ravkan Saint, Kaelish sprite, and all-powerful deity was looking down with some fondness in their hearts for his country, because he needed every bit of help he could get against these odds.