“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.