Who were you? Nina wondered. Did you survive?
An old-fashioned musket hung above the hearth beside one of the whips Brum had innovated for restraining Grisha.
She made herself focus on Brum’s desk. The drawers and cabinets weren’t locked. They had no reason to be; this was the safest, most secure place in the Ice Court. But Nina wasn’t sure where to begin searching for Queen Tatiana’s letters. She combed through schedules and ship manifests, and set aside entire files of what looked like trial transcripts. There were coded messages she didn’t know how to decipher, as well as detailed plans of the military base at Poliznaya and a city plan of Os Alta. There were markings on both that she couldn’t make sense of. She touched her finger briefly to the squares labeled as the Little Palace, the grounds, the school. Home. Move, Zenik.
But the letters weren’t in the desk. So where were they? She looked behind the portrait of a blond man in antiquated armor—Audun Elling, she suspected, the founder of the drüskelle. Then she felt along the walls, knocking softly, forcing herself to slow down, to be thorough. The Elderclock sounded the quarter chime. She’d been gone for almost fifteen minutes. How much longer did she have before Brum returned or the guards noticed Hanne was alone?
She knocked gently against the wall beside the mantel—there, a hollow thunk. She trailed her fingers over the panels, looking for some slot or indentation, pressing carefully. A fur hat hung from a hook at just above eye level. She pulled gently on it. The panel slid to the right. A safe. The letters had to be inside. She was definitely not a safecracker and hadn’t bothered to study the art while in Ketterdam. But she’d anticipated that the letters might be locked away. She removed the bottle of scent from her coat pocket, opened it, and poured in a few drops from the second vial the gardener had handed her. No more than three drops, he’d whispered, or it will eat through the walls of the safe too. And Nina didn’t want there to be any visible damage. When she was done, all that would remain was the scent of roses.
She pulled a slender rubber tube from her pocket and fitted one end over the nozzle of the bottle, then wiggled the other end through the narrow space between the door of the safe and the wall. She pumped the bulb attached to the bottle, forcing air through the tube, listening closely. A faint hissing came from behind the safe’s door. Whatever treasures lay inside were slowly disintegrating.
A sudden sound made her go still. She waited.
It came again—a low moan. Oh Saints, what now? Was a drüskelle dozing in the room next door? Or was something worse waiting? Had Brum brought Grisha here to torture and interrogate?
She yanked out the tube and returned the whole contraption to her pocket. Time to get out of here.
She should run down the stairs, back to the courtyard, back to Hanne. But hadn’t Hanne said it was her job to get carried away?
Nina drew a bone dart into her hand, feeling it vibrate there, waiting only for her command to find a target. Slowly, she opened the door.
It was a cell. Not one of the new modern enclosures built to contain and control Grisha, but a cell for an ordinary man. Except the man gripping the iron bars didn’t look ordinary. He looked like King Nikolai.
His hair was golden, though streaked with gray, his beard unkempt. His fine clothes were rumpled and stained. He’d been gagged and chained to the cell bars to give him a limited range of movement. There was nothing in the tiny cell but a cot and a chamber pot.
Nina stared at him, and the man looked back at her with frantic eyes. She knew who this was.
“Magnus Opjer?” she whispered.
He gave a single nod. Magnus Opjer. The Fjerdan shipping magnate who was supposedly Nikolai’s true father. Jarl Brum had him locked away in a cell. Did Prince Rasmus know? Did anyone but the drüskelle know?
She pulled the gag from the prisoner’s mouth.
“Please,” Opjer said, his voice ragged. “Please help me.”
Nina’s mind was whirring. “Why are they keeping you here?”
“They kidnapped me from my home. I’m their insurance. They need me to authenticate the letters.”
The letters from Queen Tatiana throwing King Nikolai’s parentage into doubt.
“But why would they keep you prisoner?”
“Because I wouldn’t speak publicly against my son or Tatiana. I wouldn’t vouch for the letters. Please, whoever you are, you must free me!”
My son. So Nikolai Lantsov really was a bastard. Nina Zenik realized she didn’t care.
The Elderclock chimed the half hour. She had to get out of here. But how was she supposed to take Magnus Opjer with her? She had nowhere to hide him, no plan to get a fugitive out of the Ice Court.
You could kill him. The thought came to her with cold clarity. There was no mistaking Opjer’s resemblance to Nikolai. This was the true father of the Ravkan king. And that meant he was a threat to her country’s future. She needed to think.
“I have no way to get you out.”
Opjer clenched the bars. “Who are you? Why have you come here if not to rescue me?”
Yet another reason to kill him. He had seen her. He could tell the drüskelle, could easily describe her. He grabbed her sleeve with his bony fingers. They hadn’t been feeding him well.
“Please,” he begged. “I never meant to hurt my son. I would never speak against him.”
Nina knew he was desperate, but his words had the ring of truth. “I believe you. And I’m going to help you get out of here. But you need to give me time to plan.”
“There isn’t time, they—”
“I’ll return as soon as I can. I promise.”
“No,” he said, and it was not the refusal of a weakened prisoner. It was a word of command. In it she heard the echo of a king. “You don’t understand. I must get a message to—”
Nina yanked his gag back into place. She needed to get to the courtyard. “I’ll return,” she vowed.
Opjer seized the bars, grunting as he attempted to shout around his gag.
She closed the door and hurried down the hall, trying not to think of the terror in his eyes.
17
ZOYA
“SOLDIERS!” ZOYA SHOUTED into the darkness.
“Where is he?” Misha cried.
Zoya heard footsteps, the door opening. She whirled and saw the Darkling silhouetted in the day’s sunlight, the snowy hill behind him, the Sun Soldiers running toward him.
She threw her hands forward, unleashing a gust of wind that knocked him down the stairs. The Sun Soldiers blasted him with light, but he was already on his feet, darkness surging from his body like water overflowing a dam.
Zoya summoned the storm, the clouds rolling in on a crash of thunder. Lightning spiked through the sky, bright daggers in her hands. But the bolts never reached the Darkling.
In a shower of sparks, the lightning broke against two writhing heaps of shadow—the nichevo’ya, shadow soldiers summoned from nothing in violation of all the rules of Grisha power. Merzost. Abomination.
“Thank you for bringing me here, Zoya,” the Darkling said as his winged soldiers took shape and lifted him from the ground. “My resurrection is complete.”
It had all been a ruse. His apology. His desire to see Alina. Even his wish to reenact the obisbaya. Were the monks and their thorn-wood seeds a lie too? Just another fairy tale he’d concocted to feed to them like bedtime stories? He was right. They were children, grasping for understanding, stumbling along, learning to walk as the Darkling sprinted ahead of them. They had been fools to think they could predict or control him. He had never intended to drive Yuri out. He needed Alina and Mal: the Sun Summoner who had slain him, and the amplifier who carried the blood of his ancestors. He’d felt no guilt, no shame. She’d been so wrong about what he wanted here.