“You may offer all the fine talk you like,” said Brum. “It won’t change the size of your army or the odds that favor us.”
“Forgive my indelicacy,” said Hiram Schenck, the Kerch delegate, who had drunk Count Kirigin’s excellent wine and denied Ravka aid. “But can you even speak for Ravka, Nikolai … well, whoever you are?”
A gasp went up from the crowd. This was not the polite allusion to Nikolai’s parentage some had expected. It was a blatant insult—reprisal for preserving Zemeni trade routes and handing the Kerch what amounted to worthless technology.
Nikolai only smiled. “I’m the man who still wears the double-eagle crown and the demon who just tore apart a battlefield. Let me know if you need your memory refreshed.”
Brum seized his chance. “We reject this pretender, the bastard king, as the true ruler of Ravka. He cannot speak for his country when he has no right to hold the throne.”
“That may well be,” the Zemeni ambassador said grimly. “But who are you to speak for Fjerda? Why do we not hear from Fjerda’s crown prince?”
Oh friend, thought Nikolai ruefully, we’ll find no luck in that quarter.
There was a long pause as all eyes turned to Prince Rasmus. He had a strong, sharp jaw and unusually full lips.
The prince shrugged. “Who rules Ravka will be decided by Ravkans,” he drawled. “I came here to make peace.”
“What?” Nina said, stunned.
The prince gave her the faintest smile and—it was so fast Nikolai thought he might have imagined it—reached out to brush his hand against hers. Nina recoiled. She had managed the impossible: She had delivered the prince and a promise of peace. So why did she look so shocked?
Her surprise was nothing compared to the confounded fury on Brum’s face.
“That is not … We agreed—”
“We?” the prince asked, turning hard blue eyes on him. “We are Fjerda. You are a military commander who cannot control his own men. Tell me, if we return to the battlefield, are you so sure your soldiers will take up arms against a woman they call Saint?”
Brum’s nostrils flared alarmingly. “They will or I will cut their hearts from their chests.”
“All on your own?” Prince Rasmus surveyed the drüskelle, then bobbed his chin at the bodyguard beside him. “Joran, will you take up arms against your brothers then? Will you cut out their hearts for Fjerda?”
The young drüskelle shook his head. “Never.”
Brum stared. “You are a traitor and will die as such at the end of a rope.”
Despite his height, the boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Yet he didn’t flinch.
“I deserve nothing less,” said the prince’s bodyguard. “I committed horrible crimes for the sake of my country, because I believed I was doing what had to be done to save Fjerda’s soul. So hang me. I will die with more honor than I’ve lived.”
Brum’s face flushed dark red. “I will not cede my country’s right to protect its borders and its sovereignty just because a few naive boys have had their minds tampered with by Grisha witches.” He wagged a finger at Zoya. “That woman is not a Saint. She is corruption walking. And this man,” he seethed, whirling on Nikolai, “is just as unnatural. Let the dowager queen give testimony. She is witness to the fact that he is not royal born.”
“We will hear what she has to say,” said Hiram Schenck.
“No,” said Nikolai. He’d known the conversation would come to this. He’d understood that he was out of options as soon as he’d seen his parents enter the audience chamber with the “pretender.” He thought of Magnus Opjer, dressed as a beggar but still standing proud, who had journeyed all the way to the capital to try to save his son and a city full of innocent people. He was an inventor, a builder. Like Nikolai.
I’ve never been a king, he realized. It was never the throne or a crown he had sought. All he’d wanted was to fix his country, and now, at last, he thought he knew how.
He caught his mother’s faded blue eyes and smiled. “There’s no reason to put Queen Tatiana through this ordeal. You will have the proof you seek in my confession. I am a bastard. I have always known it and I am not sorry. I have never wanted to be a Lantsov.”
“What are you doing?” Zoya whispered furiously.
“What I must,” said Nikolai.
“The Lantsovs are descended of the blood of the first kings!” seethed his father. “Of Yaromir himself!”