Mayu looked at the roses, then out the window to the sunny winter sky and the gardens beyond. She could only pray Ehri was right.
I’ll find you, Reyem, she vowed silently. I will.
20
ZOYA
THEY STOOD ON THE SHORE of the lake at the Little Palace, watching David’s body burn.
Inferni ignited the flames. Squallers protected the fire from the cold and damp. When the time came, Durasts would fashion a brick from David’s ashes. That was the ritual, the proper way of caring for the dead. When there was a body. When there was time. So many had been left on battlefields, had died in prisons or laboratories far from people who might tend to them, who might speak words of love and remembrance.
Who will speak for me? Zoya wondered. Nikolai? Genya? And what would they say? She was impossible and vain, bitter and poisonous as yewberries. She was brave. It didn’t add up to much.
Zoya watched the fire leap toward the night sky, the flames dancing as if they didn’t know this was a solemn occasion, their light reflected in the water. Ordinary soldiers had gathered on the lakeshore to pay their respects alongside the Grisha, palace guards, Nolniki—those special troops who had declared themselves neither Grisha nor First Army, who had toiled together, side by side, in solidarity forged by new technology and the Small Science, working for a future born of Nikolai’s vision and David’s ingenuity.
Zoya knew she had to preserve that future. She had to find a way to move forward with the war effort, figure out whom to choose from among the Materialki to join the Triumvirate in David’s place. She was a general. She was a soldier. That was her duty and she would fulfill it, but right now … Right now she couldn’t think, couldn’t find that solitary place inside her, that bunker that could survive any bomb blast or storm.
You cannot save them all.
Maybe Juris was eternal, maybe his dragon’s eyes could perceive that one death was nothing in the great sprawl of time. But Zoya couldn’t take flight with the dragon. She had never felt more mortal or more small.
“Stay with me,” Genya had whispered. “Stand with me.”
So Zoya was here, on this lakeside where they had all trained together, near the school where they’d sat for their lessons, Genya’s arm looped through hers. Nikolai stood on Genya’s other side, his arm around her shoulders, as if they could protect her from grief when they had failed to protect her from loss.
Zoya felt her friend’s body, swathed in a heavy red kefta, beside her. There was no Grisha color of mourning. They’d had too many lives to grieve.
Genya was trembling and her weight against Zoya felt insubstantial, as if she might be carried away with the sparks from the fire. But the heft of her sorrow clung to Zoya, heavy and dense, a sodden coat, dragging her down, pulling at her limbs. She wanted to cast it off, but the dragon wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t let her run from this pain.
“I can’t do this,” Genya whispered. Her face was swollen from crying. Her vibrant hair lay limp down her back.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Zoya said. “Just be here. Stay standing.”
“Not even that.”
“I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”
It felt like a lie. Zoya was breaking apart. She was shattered on the rocks. You are strong enough to survive the fall. Juris was wrong. But she owed Genya this and so much more.
“Nikolai,” Zoya said, “I don’t think she’s ready to speak.”
Nikolai nodded. He looked out at the crowd gathered in the dark, their faces lit by flames.
“David and I spoke in numbers,” he began. “Our deepest conversations were transcribed in blueprints for some new invention. I can’t pretend I understood him.”
Zoya had expected to hear the tones of a king rallying his troops, but Nikolai’s voice was raw and weary. He was just a man, grieving the loss of a friend.
“I wasn’t smart enough to keep up with his genius,” Nikolai continued. “All I could do was respect his intellect and his desire to do right with the gifts with which he was born. I relied on him to find answers I couldn’t, to blaze a path when I found myself lost. David saw things no one else did. He saw through the world to the mysteries on the other side. I know that he’s gone on to solve those mysteries.” A faint smile touched Nikolai’s lips. “I can see him in some great library, already lost in his work, head bent to some new problem, making the unknown known. When I enter the laboratory, when I wake in the night with a new idea, I will miss him…” His voice broke. “I miss him now. May the Saints receive him on a brighter shore.”
“May the Saints receive him,” the crowd murmured.
But David hadn’t believed in Saints. He’d believed in the Small Science. He’d believed in a world ordered by facts and logic.
What do you believe? Zoya didn’t know. She believed in Ravka, in her king, in the chance that she could be a part of something better than herself. But maybe she didn’t deserve that.
All eyes had turned to Genya now. She was David’s wife, his friend, his compatriot. She was expected to speak.
Genya stood straighter, lifted her chin. “I loved him,” she said, her body still trembling as if it had been torn apart and hastily stitched back together. “I loved him and he loved me. When I was … when no one could reach me … he saw me. He…” Genya turned her head to Zoya’s shoulder and sobbed. “I loved him and he loved me.”
Was there any greater gift than that? Any more unlikely discovery in this world?
“I know,” said Zoya. “He loved you more than anything.”
The dragon’s eye had opened and Zoya felt that love, the enormity of what Genya had lost. It was too much to endure knowing she could do nothing to erase that pain.
“Tell them, Zoya. I can’t … I can’t.”
Genya looked frail, curled in on herself, the frond of some delicate flower hiding from winter.
What could Zoya say to her? To any of them? How could she give them hope she didn’t have?
This is what love does. That had been one of her mother’s favorite sayings. When the larder was bare, when her husband couldn’t find work, when her hands cracked from taking in the neighbors’ washing. This is what love does.
Zoya could see Sabina, her hands red from lye, her beautiful face carved with lines, as if the sculptor who had wrought her loveliness had lost control, dug too deep beneath the eyes, the corners of the mouth. You cannot imagine how handsome he was, Sabina would say, looking at Zoya’s father, her voice bitter. My own mother warned me I would have no life with a Suli, that she and my father would turn their backs on us. But I didn’t care. I was in love. We met by moonlight. We danced to the music his brothers played. I thought love would be our armor, wings to fly with, a shield against the world. She’d laughed, the sound like bones rattling in a fortune-teller’s cup, ready to spill and show only disaster. Sabina spread her cracked hands, gesturing to their meager home, the cold stove, the piles of laundry, the earthen floor. Here is our shield. This is what love does. Her father had said nothing.
Zoya had seen her Suli uncles only once. They’d arrived after dark by her mother’s order. Sabina had already retired to bed and told Zoya to stay with her, but as soon as her mother had nodded off to sleep, Zoya had snuck out to see the strangers with their black hair and their black eyes, their brows thick and dark like hers. They looked like her father, but they didn’t. Their brown skin seemed lit from within. Their shoulders were straight and they held their heads high. Beside them, her father looked like an old man, though she knew he was the youngest brother.