All Hanne had been able to do was nod and squeeze Nina’s hand.
“Oh, Jarl,” Ylva said to her husband now. “I’m sure it will be perfectly wholesome.”
“Very well.” Brum relented and they made their way toward the stage, leaving the disappointed wool seller behind. “But you’d be surprised at the turn this place has taken. Corruption. Heresy. Right here in our capital. You see?” He pointed to a burned-out storefront as they passed. It looked like it had once been a butcher shop, but now the windows were broken and the walls stained with soot.
“Only two nights ago, this shop was raided. They found an altar to the supposed Sun Saint and one to … what’s her name? Linnea of the Waters?”
“Leoni,” Hanne corrected softly.
Nina had heard about the raid through her contacts in the Hringsa, a network of spies dedicated to liberating Grisha throughout Fjerda. The butcher’s wares had been thrown into the street, the cupboards and shelves stripped to unearth hidden relics—a finger bone from the Sun Saint, an icon painted in an amateurish hand that clearly showed beautiful Leoni with her hair in coiled braids, arms raised to pull poison from a river and save a town.
“It’s worse than just the worship of the Saints,” Brum continued, jabbing a finger at the air as if it had personally offended him. “They’re claiming Grisha are the favored children of Djel. That their powers are actually a sign of his blessing.”
Those words put an ache in Nina’s heart. Matthias had said as much. Before he died. Her friendship with Hanne had helped to heal that wound. This mission, this purpose had helped, but the pain was still there and she suspected it always would be. His life had been stolen from him, and Matthias had never had the chance to find his own purpose. I served it, my love. I protected you. To the very end.
Nina swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat and forced herself to say, “Hanne, should we get a honeywater?” She would have preferred wine, maybe something stronger, but Fjerdan women weren’t permitted alcohol, certainly not in public.
The honeywater seller smiled at them, his jaw dropping when he caught sight of Brum’s uniform. “Commander Brum!” he said. “Some hot drinks for your family? To fortify you on this chilly day?”
The man was broad-shouldered and thick-necked, with a long ginger mustache. His wrists were tattooed with circles of waves that might have indicated a former sailor. Or something more.
Nina felt a strange sense of doubling as she watched Jarl Brum shake the vendor’s hand. Nearly two years ago, only a few yards from where they stood now, she had fought this man. She had faced the drüskelle commander as her true self, as Nina Zenik, the drug jurda parem thick in her blood. That drug had allowed her to take on hundreds of soldiers, had made her impervious to bullets, and had forever altered her Grisha gift, granting her power over the dead rather than the living. She had spared Brum’s life that day, though she’d taken his scalp. Nina was the reason for his bald head and the scar that ran across the base of his skull like the fat pink tail of a rat.
Matthias had pleaded mercy—for his people, for the man who had been a second father to him. Nina still wasn’t sure if she’d done the right thing by granting it. If she had killed Brum, she would never have met Hanne. She might never have come back to Fjerda. Matthias might still be alive. When she thought too much about the past, she got lost in it, in all the things that might have been. And she couldn’t afford that. Despite the false name she bore and the false face she wore thanks to Genya’s expert tailoring, Nina was Grisha, a soldier of the Second Army, and a spy for Ravka.
So pay attention, Zenik, she scolded herself.
Brum tried to pay the honeywater vendor, but the man refused to take his coin. “A gift for Vinetk?lla, Commander. May your nights be short and your cup always full.”
A cheerful burst of flutes and drums sounded from the stage, signaling the start of the performance, and the curtain lifted, revealing a painted cliff top and a miniature marketplace below. The crowd burst into delighted applause. They were looking at Djerholm, the very city where they stood, and a banner that read THE STORY OF THE ICE COURT.
“You see, Jarl,” said Ylva. “No lewd japes. A properly patriotic tale.”
Brum seemed distracted, checking his pocket watch. What are you waiting for? Nina wondered. Diplomatic talks between Fjerda and Ravka were still proceeding, and Fjerda had not yet declared war. But Nina felt sure battle was inevitable. Brum would settle for nothing less. She’d passed on what little intelligence she’d been able to gather eavesdropping at doors and over dinners. It wasn’t enough.
Cymbals crashed to start the tale of Egmond, the prodigy who had designed and built extraordinary castles and grand buildings when he was only a child. The acrobats pulled at long skeins of silk, creating a towering mansion of gray spires and glittering arches. The audience clapped enthusiastically, but an actor with a haughty face—a nobleman who didn’t want to pay for his fanciful new home—cursed Egmond, and the handsome young architect was bound in chains, to be dragged off to the old fort that had once stood on the cliff top above the harbor.
The scene changed to Egmond in his cell as a great storm arrived on a roll of thundering drums. Blue ripples of silk cascaded over the stage, embodying the flood that had engulfed the fort with the king and queen of Fjerda inside it.
Working undercover wasn’t simply a question of mastering a language or learning a few local customs, so Nina knew her Fjerdan myths and legends well. This was the part of the story where Egmond was meant to place his hand on the roots of a tree that had poked through his cell wall, and with Djel’s help, use the strength of the sacred ash to buttress the walls of the fort, save the king and queen, and build the foundation for the mighty Ice Court.
Instead three figures walked onto the stage—a woman engulfed in red paper roses, a young girl in a white wig with antlers around her neck, and a woman with black hair in a blue gown.
“What is this?” growled Brum.
But the gasp from the audience said it all: Sankta Lizabeta of the Roses, the Sun Saint Alina Starkov, and—an excellent touch if Nina did say so herself—the Stormwitch, Zoya Nazyalensky, had entered the play.
The Saints placed their hands on Egmond’s shoulders, then against the prison cell walls, and the twisted bits of fabric meant to symbolize Djel’s ash began to expand and unfurl, like roots uncoiling through the earth.
“No more of this,” Brum said loudly, his voice carrying over the crowd. He sounded calm enough, but Nina heard the edge in his voice as he stepped forward. The two drüskelle followed, already reaching for the clubs and whips at their belts. “The weather is turning. The play can continue later.”
“Leave them be!” shouted a man from the crowd.
A child began to cry.
“Is this part of the play?” asked a confused woman.
“We should go,” Ylva said, trying to herd Hanne and Nina away.
But the crowd was too close around them, pushing toward the stage.
“You will disperse,” Brum said with authority. “Or you will be arrested and fined.”
Suddenly, thunder sounded—real thunder, not the tinny drums of the performers. Dark clouds moved in over the harbor so quickly it seemed as if dusk was falling. The sea was suddenly alive, the water forming whitecaps, rolling in swells that set the ships’ masts swaying.