“Because he believed she could be more easily controlled,” said Nikolai.
“More fool him. But that’s something the Darkling and the Apparat had in common,” she said, her voice hardening. “They underestimated her. They underestimated every one of us. All the Darkling ever wanted was to be loved by this country, adored. He won’t side with the Apparat because the priest did the unforgivable: He turned the people against him.”
“Then what will he do?”
Genya’s fists crushed the material of her kefta. “The question is, what will we do?”
“Is there anything we can do?” asked Adrik, and for once his miserable tone was completely appropriate. “Even with support from the Shu and the Zemeni, do we have enough flyers or missiles to face Fjerda in the field?”
Nadia and Leoni exchanged a glance, and Leoni bit her lip. “If we had a new source of titanium, we’re ready to move into production immediately.”
Tolya took a deep breath. “I know we’re all angry and grieving. What the Fjerdans did is unforgivable, but—”
“But?” said Zoya.
He held her gaze. “What we do next will determine not only what kind of war this is, but what every war will look like after. Launching a rocket without ever needing to put a soldier or a pilot in harm’s way? War is meant to have costs. At what point are we as bad as the Fjerdans?”
“Maybe that’s what we need to be,” said Zoya. “This is a world where villains thrive.” Where men like David died buried beneath a heap of stone in their wedding clothes while the Darkling and the Apparat somehow still drew breath.
“Does that mean we become villains too?” Tolya asked, and Zoya could hear the pleading in his voice.
“You’ve never been the weakest person in the room, Tolya. Mercy means nothing if we can’t protect our own.”
“But where does it end?”
Zoya didn’t have an answer to that. Nikolai had said it enough times: Once the river was loosed, it could not be called back.
Genya touched her hand gently to Tolya’s arm. “David hated making war. He was an inventor, a creator. He dreamed of a time when he could build wonders instead of weapons.” She reached out to Zoya, and reluctantly Zoya took her hand, feeling an unwelcome ache in her throat. “But he also knew that we couldn’t forge peace alone. The Fjerdans have shown us who they are. It’s up to us to decide who we want to become.”
“And who is that?” Zoya asked, because she truly didn’t know. All she’d ever had was anger.
“We build the rockets,” said Genya. “We make them understand what we can do. We give them a choice.”
Zoya wondered who would get to make that choice. Parents who didn’t wish to send their children off to die? Jarl Brum and his hateful drüskelle? Royals eager to keep their position at any cost?
“This has always been about stopping a war,” said Nikolai. “If the Fjerdans don’t think we can hold back the tide, they’ll roll right over us.”
Nadia shifted in her chair. “But without titanium—”
“We’ll have the titanium,” said Nikolai.
Zoya couldn’t hide her surprise. “The Zemeni have agreed to provide it?”
“No,” he said. “They don’t have it to sell, not processed. But the Kerch do.”
Adrik snorted. “There’s no way they’ll sell it to us, not at any kind of price we can afford.”
“That’s why I don’t intend to ask. I happen to know someone who can help with this particular kind of negotiation.”
Tolya frowned. “Negotiation?”
“He means we’re going to steal it,” said Zoya.
Genya’s cup clattered in her saucer. “If the Kerch find out we’re involved in something like this, it will be a diplomatic disaster.”
Nikolai gave Genya’s shoulder a brief squeeze and stood. He looked less a king with a country to rule than a privateer about to unleash his cannons on an enemy ship.
“Maybe so,” he said. “But Ketterdam is the right place to gamble.”
21
THE MONK
HE DIDN’T KNOW WHERE TO GO. He hadn’t thought past the need to become whole again and finally return to himself. He hadn’t even been entirely certain his plan would work. But he had clung to that piece of the thorn wood, and the orphans had offered him the perfect chance to try.
Alina.
She’s alive. Yuri’s voice an echo in his head, a gnat he couldn’t quite seem to swat. Sankta Alina, Daughter of Dva Stolba, Alina of the Fold. She lives.
Yes, Alina Starkov was well and happy and living with her tracker. If you could call that living. Yuri’s babbling awe droned on and on.
Her questions had troubled him, but Alina always had a talent for getting under his skin. Why do you have to be the savior? The answer to her question was as obvious as it had always been: Who else could protect the Grisha and Ravka? A reckless boy who liked to play pirate? A vengeful girl too afraid of her own heart to master the tremendous power she’d been granted? They were dangerous. Dangerous to him, to his country, even to themselves. Children.
His shadow soldiers carried him through forest and glade as his mind wandered too, until at last he arrived in a town by a river. This place was familiar, but most places were. He knew every pebble and branch of Ravka. But the guns and tanks and flying machines that had overwhelmed this world were new to him and unwelcome. Had his plan succeeded, had he managed to weaponize the Fold with Alina by his side, Ravka never would have been vulnerable to this march of brutality.
She is alive. Sankta Alina who gave her life for Ravka.
“I gave my life for Ravka,” he snarled at no one but the trees, and Yuri, finally chastened, went silent.
He had the nichevo’ya deposit him by a high bridge over the river gorge and walked the rest of the way into the village, unsure of where he was headed. His feet were bare and he still wore Yuri’s ragged black robes and trousers, the fabric bloodied where a bullet had grazed him. He longed for a bath and clean clothes. Human things.
Shopkeepers stared worriedly at him from their doorways, but they had nothing to fear from him. At least not yet. It wasn’t much of a town, but he noted icons in nearly every window. Most of these backwaters were religious and had grown more so during the civil war. Alina was certainly popular, always shown with her white hair and lit as if she’d swallowed the sun. Very dramatic. He saw Juris too—a wartime Saint if there ever was one—and Sankta Marya, patron saint of those far from home. No signs of the Starless One.
All in due time, he told himself, and Yuri joined in. They could be of one mind about that.
Names crowded into his thoughts. Staski. Kiril. Kirigan. Anton. Eryk. An avalanche of memories. He’d been all of them, but who should he become now? He’d had plenty of time to consider such things in the isolation of his glass cell, but now that he was free, truly free to choose, he found that only one name suited. The oldest of them: Aleksander. He had no reason to hide his strangeness anymore. Saints were meant to live forever.
He passed into a muddy town square and saw a small church capped by a single whitewashed dome. Through the open door, he glimpsed the priest, tending to something by the altar, as a woman lit candles for the dead. It would do for sanctuary. They couldn’t very well turn a barefoot beggar away.