As the Peregrine descended, he tried to count the plumes of smoke rising from Os Alta. Only daylight would reveal the true extent of the destruction and the lives lost.
He set the plane down on the lake and let it coast to shore. Without the thunder of the engine in his ears, there were only the sounds of fear in the night—the ringing of alarm bells, the shouts of men as they attempted to put out fires and pull friends from the rubble. They would need his help.
Nikolai stripped off his jacket and broke into a run. He would gather Squallers, Sun Soldiers. They could aid with the search for survivors. He knew his flyers would already have departed from the Gilded Bog and Poliznaya to patrol the skies for more signs of the enemy. He would have to issue blackout warnings. They were in place at the shipyards and bases that could be considered military targets. But now every Ravkan town and village would have to snuff out their lanterns and find their way in the dark.
As Nikolai approached the Little Palace, he saw the Fabrikator workshops and Corporalki laboratories had been completely obliterated, but whatever research they’d lost could be excavated or replicated. He spotted Tolya’s massive frame in the crowd. He was about to call out to him when he registered the tears in Tolya’s eyes, his hand pressed to his mouth.
There were Squallers trying to clear the rubble. And Genya was with them. She was on her knees in her golden wedding gown.
He muttered something about nose cones and then vanished.
Dread crept into Nikolai’s heart.
“Genya?” He went to his knees beside her.
She clutched his sleeve. For a moment, she didn’t seem to recognize him. Her red hair was thick with dust, her face streaked with tears.
“I can’t find him,” she said, her voice lost, bewildered. “I can’t find David.”
THE MAKING AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD
19
MAYU
MAYU WAITED. She was good at it. She’d had to be. A soldier’s job was to fight; a guard’s job was to remain watchful.
“There’s an art to it,” her old commander had said. “Your human mind may wander, but the falcon’s eye remains keen.”
She peered out the window of the airship. She couldn’t see much in the dark, and she didn’t know where Tamar and the princess had gone. They hadn’t seen fit to tell her the whole of their plan—another reminder that, though she’d played the part of royalty, she was no more than a bodyguard, valued as much for her loyalty and her willingness to obey as her talent with a sword or a pistol.
Why the detour? she wondered. What if Queen Makhi made it back to the capital before them? But she’d always followed instructions, abided by the rules, so she sat, and she waited.
“A teacher’s pet,” her brother Reyem had called her, and he was right. She loved praise, had thrived on any little bit of it. Because she’d always known Reyem was the better fighter.
It wasn’t just that he was stronger and faster, but his instincts were more alive.
“She can’t hear it,” their mother had said, watching Reyem and Mayu spar as children. It was meant to just be a play fight, meaningless, but Mayu knew her parents were watching and the knowledge made her clumsy. “See how Reyem doesn’t hesitate. Mayu is thinking; Reyem is listening. He hears the music of the fight.”
I can listen too, she’d vowed to herself. But try as she might, she heard nothing, only her own thoughts, constant and noisy, seeking understanding.
Mayu was no different now, her rebellious mind rattling with possible outcomes when it should remain quiet and ordered. She wished she had a watch or some way of telling the time.
They had left Ravka two days before the wedding, the moment Tamar had received word from her spies that Queen Makhi’s airship had left the capital. Their transport was a Shu cargo vessel that had been intercepted by Ravkan forces months ago and redeployed with a new crew.
She’d thought they would go straight to the palace in Ahmrat Jen, but apparently, Tamar and the princess had other plans. They’d set down in the dark, her only clue to their location the heavy scent of roses in the air, and Mayu had sat in silence, watching Tamar and Ehri disembark, accompanied by several Grisha: Heartrenders, Squallers, Inferni. Ten soldiers of the Second Army. King Nikolai could not have liked giving them up. And for what? So that Princess Ehri could be well guarded on some sentimental trip through a botanical garden?
Sure enough, Ehri returned with her arms full of roses the bright orange of coral. Mayu kept her face blank, hiding her contempt. She knew Ehri was an emotional creature, but surely the princess didn’t think a few pretty flowers would sway Makhi’s ministers? If only Tamar and Ehri would tell her what they’d planned.
They didn’t trust her. Why should they? Queen Makhi, whom Mayu was supposed to serve above all others, had tried to kill Princess Ehri twice. Mayu herself had tried to kill Tamar’s king—even if it hadn’t actually been King Nikolai. She was here because they needed her testimony, but she wasn’t a part of this, not really.
Over the course of the journey, Mayu had listened to Tamar and Ehri talk and scheme, unwinding the different threads of their mission, then binding them up again, a bit cleaner, a bit tighter than they had been before. She knew she was only glimpsing a fraction of their plans, and she said little because she had little to say. She had never needed to take much interest in politics, and she wasn’t meant to eavesdrop on the conversations of her betters.
But everything had changed now, and if she was going to survive, if she was going to find a way to save her twin, she had to learn. It wasn’t easy. The way Ehri and Tamar spoke of the players in the Taban court made her feel like she was looking through a foggy lens focusing, then blurring, then focusing again, as it showed her a picture she’d never quite been able to see before.
“We will have no luck with Minister Yerwei,” Ehri said. “He’s the wiliest of Makhi’s advisers and her most valued confidant.”
“Was he close to your mother as well?” Tamar asked, though Mayu had the sense she already knew the answer to this question, that she was testing Princess Ehri.
“Oh yes. He was smart, very ambitious. He comes from a long line of doctors who serve the Taban queens.”
“Doctors,” said Tamar flatly.
Ehri nodded. “You’ve guessed rightly. Those same doctors who began the attempts to root out and harness Grisha power.” Ehri must have seen the way Tamar’s jaw set. “I know how it sounds and you’re not wrong, but it began innocently enough.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Ehri spread her hands wide, the gesture graceful. She wore a green velvet traveling dress with a high neck and tiny buttons that ran all the way from her wrists to her elbow. The Grisha Healers and Genya Safin had done their job well. Her body was fully healed, her hair regrown. She would never be a great beauty like Makhi, but she had an easy elegance that made her look completely out of place in the hold of this airship, with its heaps of coiled rope and the crates of weapons Tamar’s crew had stockpiled. Mayu resisted the urge to stretch her legs, test the muscles in her arms. The king had been as good as his word and she’d had her strength restored. There wasn’t so much as a scar on her chest to mark the place where she’d tried to plunge the knife into her heart.