“No.” The word emerged as a moan.
Nina had a terrible singing voice, but she did her best to follow the melody of the dead woman crooning to her. “Dye ena kelinki, dya derushka, shtoya refkayena lazla zeya.” It was an old Ravkan folk song. Up in the mountains, high in the trees, the firebird sleeps on a golden bough.
“You … you know Ravkan?”
“I have never spoken a word before now. I know only what Djel shows me. Pavlina told you she had a daughter, a little girl you promised she would see again.”
The queen released a sob. “I needed her help!”
“Djel forgives you all of it.” I don’t, thought Nina. Your tree god is far more magnanimous. “But he will not forgive the murder of more Grisha. Not when your son owes his life to one.”
“I … how am I to stop it? Our people want war.”
“Is that what you’ve been told or what you know? Your generals want war. The people want their sons and daughters to live. They want to sleep in their beds and tend the crops in their fields. Will you listen to your generals or to Djel? The choice is yours.” Nina remembered a line from one of the Saints’ stories she’d read in an old children’s book: You can choose faith or you can choose fear. But only one will bring you what you long for.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You do. Listen closely. The water hears and understands.” She bowed and made to leave.
“You dare turn your back on me?”
A bold move, but Nina needed to show Agathe she wore the armor of faith. She couldn’t afford to show fear.
“It is Djel you should be worried about, my queen,” she said. “Take care lest he turn his back on you.”
She slipped out of the throne room and hurried down the hall. Had she gone too far or just far enough? Would the seeds she’d planted yield a move toward peace? Or had she only endangered herself and maybe Hanne too?
She couldn’t contemplate that now. She’d made her choices and there was more work to be done tonight. Earlier, she’d been too bleary to make sense of what she’d heard Brum say outside her room, but now the word rang through her head—Drokestering. The drüskelle would be in the woods tonight, far from the Ice Court, celebrating the sneak attack on Ravka.
This was her chance to break Magnus Opjer out of the drüskelle sector. Ravka was bleeding, and she was powerless to undo the damage their enemies had wrought. But Nikolai Lantsov still lives. That meant there was still hope. She could deal Fjerda a blow and maybe give her king a small advantage in this fight.
It was time to make some trouble.
23
NIKOLAI
NIKOLAI HAD MEANT TO SLEEP, and when he had tossed and turned sufficiently to determine that he could not, he rose from his unfamiliar bed in the Iris Suite with every intention of working. But he had no success with that either. He had penned a message to Ketterdam and there was nothing to do but wait for a reply. Though he tried to focus on the rocket schematics he’d had brought to him from Lazlayon, it was impossible to look at the plans David had drawn, the notations in his cramped handwriting filling the margins, and not lose his thoughts to sadness, to the endless what-ifs that might have saved his friend’s life. He couldn’t stop seeing David’s broken body being pulled from the rubble, the blood and dust on his crushed chest.
Nikolai walked to the window. The palace grounds were covered in snow. From this vantage point, none of the damage from the bombing was visible. The world seemed quiet, ordinary, and at peace. He had sent word to Tamar to see if she could find out if the Shu queen had known about the bombing, if the Shu and the Fjerdans had come together to forge an alliance against Ravka—the bone they’d been fighting over for centuries. But he didn’t think that was the case. Makhi had her own agenda. She’d seen Ravka as weak and she’d moved to claim it through subterfuge before Fjerda could claim it by force. If not for Isaak’s courage and fate’s love of a good plot twist, the Shu queen might have done just that. But while Makhi had failed with a scalpel, Fjerda might well succeed with a hammer. They would celebrate the buildings they’d crushed, the ships and flyers they’d destroyed, never knowing the true death blow they’d dealt Ravka: David Kostyk was gone.
Nikolai’s friendship with David hadn’t been a loud one. There had been few shared confidences, no raucous nights spent singing dirty drinking songs. Most of their time together had been spent in silence, grappling with difficult engineering problems, reviewing each other’s work, pushing each other forward. With David, Nikolai’s power and charm had been meaningless. He’d only cared about the science.
He should have been safe here, tucked away in his workshop, far from enemy lines. But there was no safety anymore. Somewhere to the north, the Fjerdans were toasting their surprise attack and waiting to see how Ravka would respond. When Ravka couldn’t answer, they would wait no longer. They would invade. But where? When?
Movement in the gardens below caught his eye. He glimpsed dark hair, a cloak of blue wool. Zoya. She passed beyond the hedges and fountains to the shadow of the woods.
He hadn’t had a chance to speak to her since she’d returned. He couldn’t blame her for avoiding him. He’d sent her into the field without proper backup. He’d let enemies violate their home. But where was she going now? Nikolai hadn’t let himself think too much on Zoya’s late-night excursions across the grounds. He hadn’t wanted to. If she had a lover, it was none of his business. And yet his mind spun possibilities, each somehow worse than the last. A member of the royal guard? A handsome Inferni? She was friendly with General Pensky, and that was Nikolai’s own fault. He’d forced them to work closely together. Of course, the general was twenty years her senior and had what could only be described as an effusive mustache, but who was Nikolai to question her taste?
He yanked trousers over his nightshirt, lunged for his coat and boots, and was out the door and down the hallway in seconds, ignoring concerned glances from the palace guards.
“Everything’s fine! As you were,” he called. They were all on edge after the Fjerdan attack, and there was no reason to panic anyone as he raced off to act like an infatuated schoolboy.
What exactly was he going to say to her? I see you’re headed to an assignation, stop in the name of the king?
Her boots had left tracks in the snow, and he followed her into the woods. But it was dark beneath the trees, hard to find the trail. This is a mistake. She had a right to her privacy. And he damned well didn’t want to find her in the embrace of another man.
He caught a flash of movement between the branches. Zoya stood facing the thicket that bordered the western side of the gardens, her breath pluming in the night air, her face framed by the silver fox fur of her hood. Where the hell could she be going out here?
She was following a wall on the far side of the water gardens, where he’d played as a child and where the secret tunnel to Lazlayon was located. He opened his mouth to call out to her—then stopped as Zoya pushed aside a heavy mass of vines to reveal a door in the wall.
He couldn’t help but take offense. That Zoya had kept secrets from him was no surprise, but that the palace should?