“Commander Brum … he would never. He would not force—”
“He has no need to resort to force. He prefers a different kind of submission.” At that, Joran’s expression changed. He knows it’s true. He’s seen Brum’s love of power. “A woman in my position has no language for refusal. Without Commander Brum’s generosity, I would be lost. And if a man like Jarl Brum chose to impugn my reputation…”
Joran’s eyes darted left and right. She could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He was at the crossroads. He didn’t know what was true or right anymore; the altar behind him made that perfectly clear. He nodded once as if in debate with himself, then again.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll help you.”
Nina felt an ache in her throat. There was honor in Joran, the honor she’d hoped to see in Prince Rasmus. He didn’t want to be a killer. He didn’t want to be cruel. Brum’s hatred hadn’t twisted him completely yet. Save some mercy for my people. For this boy, still striving for some kind of goodness, she could.
“We have to go now,” said Joran. He hesitated, noticing her attire for the first time. “Why are you wearing riding clothes?”
“He told me to. He wished to chastise me.”
Joran’s face went crimson at the possibilities. Nina almost blushed at that one herself. She could hear Hanne whisper in her ear, Shameless.
“Where did you enter the sector?” he asked.
“The secret door,” she lied.
Joran shook his head, disgusted that Brum would give up the mysteries of the drüskelle for a tawdry affair. “I can get you back there.”
He tidied up his altar, locking everything away inside the trunk, and disappeared into the hallway. A moment later, she heard voices, Joran saying something to whoever was there. For a moment Nina was certain he would sound the alarm and give her up to his brothers, that his sympathy had all been a ruse. Then he pushed the door open and waved her along.
At the end of the hall, he lifted a tapestry of a white wolf with an eagle in its bloody jaws and pressed one of the stones. The wall slid back, revealing a narrow, winding staircase carved into the rock. Nina hid her surprise. She was supposed to have come this way.
At the base of the dark stairs, she heard scraping sounds. The door opened, bringing with it a gust of cold air. From here, it looked as if the ice moat was nothing but a sheer skin of frost and freezing water lurking below it. But Nina knew there was a transparent glass bridge beneath it. She glanced up in time to see Hanne’s startled face disappear high above, and the rope rapidly vanishing up onto the roof.
“I will go on my own from here,” Nina said.
“You’ll be all right?”
“I would not ask you to risk capture for my sake.”
Joran’s face was pained. “He’ll punish you for not waiting. For not doing as he bid.”
“I know,” she said, lowering her eyes.
“You must find a way out of his household.”
She would. When her work was done and not before. “I will, but I cannot leave Hanne.” As she said the words, she knew they were true.
Joran hesitated. “It would be better if you kept her away from the prince. He’s not … he’s weak.”
“He grows stronger every day.”
Joran gave a sharp shake of his head. “I’ve known plenty of wounded men, people who have lost limbs, who live with pain or sickness. They bear their suffering without ever playing the games that Rasmus does. The flaw is not in his body. It’s in his soul.”
“He’s been nothing but good to Hanne.” Flimsy words after what she’d seen Rasmus do to Joran. “At the hunt, he was humiliated—”
“That wasn’t the first time he lashed out. I saw him knock a boy from his horse and claim it was a joke. The child split his skull on the cobblestones, but no one said a word, because Rasmus is a prince.”
Could it have been an accident? A bit of fun gone wrong? Nina couldn’t quite make herself believe it.
“He’s changing,” she said with more hope than she felt. “The stronger he feels, the less he’ll need to prove his strength.”
“He was testing his new strength,” said Joran, “waiting to see who will stop him. And you know no one will.”
Nina set her foot on the invisible path, feeling the cold of the water through her boots. She made herself go slowly, carefully, when all she wanted was to run from the drüskelle sector and the truth in Joran’s words.
She clutched her coat tight against the chill in the air. There was nothing else to do but keep moving forward. You chose your path. You walked it. You hoped to find a way home again.
26
THE MONK
ALEKSANDER STOLE CLOTHES and shoes from the back of a wagon on his way into Polvost. Finding the Starless had been more difficult than he’d anticipated, and he was growing weary of the march. He bent beside a stream to drink, but he didn’t need to waste time hunting. He wasn’t hungry. He remembered how Elizaveta had craved sensation—the taste of wine, the touch of skin, the feel of soft earth beneath her feet. Aleksander cared for none of this. He only wished that it wasn’t winter. He wanted to turn his face to the sun and feel it warm him. The cold frightened him now. It felt like death, like the long silence of not being, without sense of time or place, only the understanding that he must hold on, that someday, there would be an end to the terrible stillness. He’d been a long time in the dark.
But eventually he realized that he was growing weak. Yuri’s body needed sustenance, and so he made his way to a beer hall in Shura. Aleksander had no money, but he offered to chop wood and fix the roof in exchange for a meal. The young men of the town were already gone, back in uniform, readying to face the Fjerdans.
“And what do you think of the king’s war?” he asked a group of old men gathered on the porch.
The gray grandfather who answered was so wizened he looked more walnut than man. “Our Nikolai didn’t ask for a war, but if it’s what them cold northern bastards want, he’ll give it to them.”
His wrinkled companion spat onto the wooden slats. “You’ll be kissing the icy asses of those northern bastards when they march through. We don’t have the tanks and guns the Fjerdans have, and sending our children to die won’t change that.”
“You saying we should just let them drop bombs on our cities?”
On and on it went, the same old story. But they did love their king.
“You’ll see, he’ll find a way out of this trap, same as the last. The too-clever fox always does.”
Aleksander wondered if they’d actually read that particular story. He seemed to recall it had a very bloody end. The fox had lost his hide to the hunter’s knife. Or maybe he’d been rescued? Aleksander couldn’t recall.
He sat at the end of a table in the beer hall, ate tough rye bread and strips of lamb stewed so long they tasted like they’d already been chewed. This was what it meant to be alive. Elizaveta should count herself lucky. To think Zoya had been the one to kill her. He supposed it saved him the trouble of doing it himself. And if Zoya ever learned to harness the power she’d been given? She was still vulnerable, still malleable. Her anger made her easy to control. When this war was done and the casualties counted, she might once more be in need of a shepherd. She had been one of his best students and soldiers, her envy and her rage driving her to train and fight harder than any of her peers. And then she’d turned on him. Like Genya. Like Alina. Like his own mother. Like all of Ravka.