Nina brought Leoni back to the dormitories before nightfall and got her tucked into bed. Her fever had broken and she was already feeling better—further proof that whatever she’d found in the water was not parem. So what was wrong with those wolves, and what had been in their bite? And what had killed the novitiate?
She took a plate of kitchen scraps out to the woods and set them at the base of a tree in the silly hope that Trassel might find his way to her again. They’d probably be eaten by some ungrateful rodent.
Standing at the edge of the forest, Nina looked up at the factory, its lights glowing gold in the gathering dusk, the windows of the eastern wing dark. She thought of the twisting roots of Djel’s ash, carved into the walls of the reservoir.
There’s poison in this place. She could almost taste it, bitter on her tongue. But just how deep does it go?
* * *
The next morning, Nina was pleased to find a summons to the Wellmother’s office had been slid beneath their door. Nina was to meet with her and Hanne after morning prayers to discuss the possibility of language lessons. So Hanne did want to learn more about her Grisha gifts—even if it was only to control them.
Of course, Adrik had been wary of her plan.
“We’re better off using our time to gather intelligence here and in the neighboring towns,” he complained. “Fjerda is gearing up for something. With the right information, our forces may be able to waylay a wagon or shipment or shut this place down entirely, but not if the Fjerdans catch wind of our activities and move their operations. You don’t know how easy it is to ruin your cover, Nina. This is a dangerous game.”
Nina wanted to scream. She’d been a spy for Zoya Nazyalensky on the Wandering Isle. She’d spent a year on her own in Ketterdam doing jobs for Kaz Brekker. She’d infiltrated the Ice Court as a girl from the Menagerie. She might be new to this particular game, but she’d played for high stakes plenty of times.
“I can manage this, Adrik,” she said as calmly as she could. “You know she’s our best possible asset. We can find out what’s happening in that factory. We don’t need someone else to do it.”
“What do we really know about this girl?”
“She’s Grisha and she’s miserable. Aren’t we here to save people exactly like her?”
“From what you’ve told me, she doesn’t want rescue.”
“Maybe I’ll change her mind. And in the meantime, I can get access to the rest of the convent.” Nina and Leoni were quartered in a room abutting the kitchens and locked off from the bulk of the building and the dormitories. “The Springmaidens are the only locals allowed into the factory. I may actually be able to figure out a way to get us inside.”
“You’ll take no action without my say-so,” said Adrik. “And first you have to get past the Wellmother.”
Nina left Adrik and Leoni in the stables and crossed the courtyard to the chapel, passing through the heavy door covered in its elaborate knots of ash bough. The sweet, loamy scent of the timber walls enveloped her, and she took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the gloom. The air was cold and still, the pews lit by the glow of lanterns and weak sunlight from a few slender windows set high above the transept. There was no altar, no painted scene of Saints—instead a massive tree sprawled across the apse of the chapel, its roots extending to the first row of pews. Djel’s ash, fed by the Wellspring.
Whose prayers do you hear? Nina wondered. Do you hear the words of soldiers? Of Fjerdan Grisha locked in Jarl Brum’s cells? The whispers in her head seemed to sigh—in regret? In longing? She didn’t know. She smoothed her skirts and hurried down the side aisle to the Wellmother’s office.
“Enke Jandersdat,” the older woman said when Nina entered, addressing her by the title widow. “Hanne tells me you’re willing to offer lessons in Zemeni. I hope you realize the convent cannot provide a tutor’s fees.”
Hanne remained silent, dressed in her pale blue pinafore and tidy white blouse, eyes on her impractical felt slippers. Her ruddy brown hair had been neatly braided and twisted into a tight corona on her head. The uniform didn’t suit her. Nina had the urge to seize the pins from Hanne’s braids and see all that glorious hair come down again.
“Of course,” said Nina. “I would require no payment. All I ask is that you let us partake of your hospitality a bit longer and, if you have a copper cookpot, that my employers might have the loan of it.” Leoni felt sure she could continue her experiments safely now that she knew what she was dealing with, but copper instruments would be a help.
“It seems a too-generous offer,” said the Wellmother, her lips pressed into a suspicious line.
“You’ve caught me,” said Nina, and saw Hanne’s eyes widen. Saints, if Hanne intended to continue living in this wretched country, she was going to need an education in deception. Maybe an internship in Ketterdam. Nina hadn’t been caught at anything, but she could tell the Wellmother thought she had some kind of angle, so she intended to give her one. “The truth is that I cannot continue my work as a guide much longer. The travel is a hardship, and at some point I need to seek a more permanent position to provide for myself.”
“We do not hire outside of the order—”
“Oh no, of course, I understand. But a reference from the Wellmother of Gäfvalle would mean so much to other Fjerdans seeking a teacher for their children.”
The Wellmother preened, her chin lifting. Piety was little defense against flattery. “Well. I can see how that might be a boon. We shall see what good you can do with our Hanne. It’s a bit late for her to be taking up a new language. But to be frank, it’s a relief to see her interested in anything that doesn’t involve a muddy romp in the woods.”
The Wellmother escorted them to an empty classroom and told them they were free to work until lunchtime. “I expect you to keep up with your other work, Hanne. Your father will not like it if you become a burden to this institution.”
“Yes, Wellmother,” she replied dutifully. But as the older woman departed, Hanne cast a black look at the door and slumped into one of the desks.
“She agreed to the lessons,” said Nina. “It could be worse.”
“She considers me one of her failures. Unmarried at nineteen, with no prospects and no signs of a true calling to Djel.”
“Are all of the Springmaidens supposed to be called?” Nina asked as she picked up a piece of chalk and began to conjugate a Zemeni verb on the slate board that covered most of one wall.
“I don’t know. Some say they are, claim to have visions. But I’m not sure Djel is interested in girls like me. Do you really mean to give up your life as a guide?”
“No,” said Nina, trying to keep her chalk letters straight. “I’m not ready to live in one place just yet.” Only when she said the words did she realize that might be true. She’d been restless in Ravka, and now she wondered if she might be restless anywhere she tried to settle.
Nina took a sheaf of papers from her pocket. “These are rudimentary Zemeni lessons. You’ll need to copy them into your notebook so it looks like we’re actually doing some work.”
“You mean I’m really going to have to learn Zemeni?”
“A little. You don’t have to be good at it.” She gestured to the board. “We’ll start with this verb: bes adawa.” She raised her hands and planted her legs in the first stance each Grisha was taught. “To fight.”
* * *
The lesson lasted two hours. Nina started just as her own education had begun at the Little Palace: by teaching Hanne to use her Heartrender power on herself.
“Have you ever tried it?” Nina asked.
“No … I’m not sure. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I’ll think of my heart slowing—”
Nina winced. “You’re lucky you didn’t put yourself into a coma.”
Nina talked her through rudimentary breathing techniques and basic fighting stances. She had Hanne slow her own heart, then make it race. She touched only briefly on Grisha theory and how amplifiers worked, and she s
teered well clear of any talk of jurda parem.
“How do you know all of this?” Hanne said. Her cheeks were flushed from using her power, and her hair had escaped her braids to curl at her temples. “You really learned everything from your sister’s teacher?”
Nina turned her back to erase the board and to hide her expression. It was possible she’d gotten carried away. You don’t know how easy it is to ruin your cover, Nina. She could just imagine Adrik’s singsong What did I tell you?
“Yes,” she said. “I paid close attention. But you’re also a natural. You’re picking up on the work very quickly.” That at least was true. Hanne had an ease with her power that was something special. But her face was troubled. “What is it?” Nina asked.
“That word. Natural.” Hanne ran her finger over one of the sheets where she’d scrawled the conjugation of another Zemeni verb. Her penmanship was tragic. “When I was younger, my father took me everywhere. To ride. To hunt. It was unorthodox, but he longed for a son, and I think he believed there was no harm in it. I loved it. Fighting, horsemanship, running free. But when I got older and it was time to present me at court … I couldn’t shake it off.”
And why should you have to? Nina thought. She didn’t have any great love for horses and preferred not to run anywhere unless being chased, but at least she was allowed those opportunities.
Hanne folded her arms, her shoulders hunching, looking like she wanted to crumple into herself. “Unnatural, they called me. A woman’s body is meant to be soft, but mine was hard. A lady is meant to take small, graceful steps, but I strode. I was a laughingstock.” Hanne gazed up at the ceiling. “My father blamed himself for corrupting me. I couldn’t sing or paint, but I could clean a deer and string a bow. I could build a shelter. All I wanted was to escape to the woods. Sleep beneath the stars.”
“That sounds … well, that sounds horrible,” admitted Nina. “But I think I can understand the appeal.”
“I tried to change. I really did.” Hanne shrugged. “I failed. If I fail again…”
Her gaze was bleak, and Nina wondered what grim future she was seeing. “What happens if you fail again?”
“The school was supposed to make me presentable. Good marriage material. If the Wellmother can’t fix me, I’ll never be allowed to go home, never be presented at court. It should have happened two years ago.”
“Would it be so bad not to go back?”
“And never see my parents? Live like an exile?”
“Are those the choices?”
“I find a way to fit in, or I take vows and live the rest of my life out here, in service to Djel among Women of the Well.” She scowled. “I wish I was an Inferni instead of a Heartrender.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nina said without thinking, her pride bristling. How could anyone want to be a Summoner instead of Corporalki? Everyone knows we’re the best Order. “I mean … why would anyone want to be an Inferni?”
Hanne’s bright eyes flashed as if in challenge. “So I could melt the Ice Court from the inside out. Wash the whole big mess into the sea.”
Dangerous words. And maybe Nina should have pretended to be scandalized. Instead she grinned. “The grandest puddle in the world.”
“Exactly,” said Hanne, returning her smile, that wicked edge curling her lips
Suddenly, Nina wanted to tell Hanne all of it. My friends and I blew a hole in the Ice Court wall! We stole a Fjerdan tank! All Saints, did she want to brag? Nina gave her head a shake. This is a chance to gain her confidence, she told herself. Take it.
She sat down at the desk next to Hanne’s and said, “If you could go anywhere, do anything, what would you choose for yourself?”
“Novyi Zem,” Hanne said instantly. “I’d get a job, make my own money, hire myself out as a sharpshooter.”
“You’re that good?”
“I am,” Hanne said without a hint of hesitation. “I think about it every time I ride out. Just disappearing. Making everyone believe I was lost in a storm or that I was carried away by the river.”
Beastly idea. Come to Ravka. “Then why not do it? Why not just go?”
Hanne stared at her, shocked. “I couldn’t do that to my parents. I couldn’t shame them that way.”
Nina narrowly avoided rolling her eyes. Fjerdans and their honor. “Of course not,” she said swiftly. But she couldn’t help but think of Hanne riding into the clearing, rifle raised, braids loose, a warrior born. There was gold in her, Nina could see it, the shine dimmed by years of being told there was something wrong in the way she was made. Those glimpses of the real Hanne, the Hanne who was meant to be, were driving her to distraction. You’re not here to make a new friend, Zenik, she chastised herself. You’re here for information.
“What if the Wellmother casts you out?” she asked.
“She won’t. My father is a generous donor.”
“And if she catches you flouncing about in men’s trousers?” Nina prodded.
“She won’t.”
“If my friends and I had been less generous, she might have.”
Now Hanne leaned back and grinned with easy confidence. There you are, thought Nina. “It would have been your word against mine. I would have been dressed neatly in my pinafore and back behind the convent walls before you’d knocked on the Wellmother’s door.”
Interesting. Nina put all the condescension she could summon in her tone and said, “Of course you would have.”
Hanne sat up straighter and jabbed her finger into the surface of the desk. “I know every step that creaks in this place. I know just where the cook stashes the key to the west kitchen door, and I have pinafores and changes of clothes stowed everywhere from the chapel to the roof. I don’t get caught.”
Nina held up her hands to make peace. “I just think you might consider more caution.”
“Says the girl teaching me Grisha skills in the halls of Djel.”
“Maybe I have less to lose than you do.”
Hanne raised a brow. “Or maybe you just think you’re better at being bold.”
Try me, thought Nina. But all she said was, “Back to work. Let’s see if you can make my heart race.”
14
ZOYA
ZOYA HAD SPENT LITTLE TIME IN Kribirsk since the war. There wasn’t much cause, and it held too many bad memories. In the days when Ravka had been split from its western coastline by the Shadow Fold, Kribirsk had served as the last place of safety, a town where merchants and bold travelers outfitted their journeys and where soldiers might spend a final night drinking away their terror or paying for comfort in a lover’s arms before they boarded a sandskiff and were launched into the unnatural darkness of the Fold. Many never returned.
Kribirsk had been a port, but now the dark territory known as the Unsea was gone, and Kribirsk was just another small town with little to offer but a sad history.
Vestiges of the town’s former glory remained—the jail and barracks, the building that had once housed officers of the First Army and where the Triumvirate had first met with Ravka’s new king. But the sprawling encampment of tents and horses and soldiers was no more. It was said you could still find unspent bullets in the dust, and occasionally scraps of silk from the black pavilion where the Darkling had once held court.
Though the darkness of the Fold and the monsters that populated it were gone, the sands were not, and the shifting ground could be tricky for wagons to navigate. Merchants traversing Ravka still came to the drydocks to book passage on sandskiffs, but now guards were hired to protect cargo from marauders and thieves, not from the threat of the flesh-eating volcra that had once terrorized travelers. The monsters had vanished, and all that remained was a long, barren stretch of gray sand, eerie in its emptiness. Nothing could grow in the lifeless terrain that the Darkling’s power had left behind.
The businesses of Kribirsk were the same as they’d always been—inns, brothels, outfitters—there were just fewer of them. Only the church had changed. The simple whitewashed bui
lding with its blue dome had once been dedicated to Sankt Vladimir. Now a blazing golden sun hung over the entry, a sign that the building had been reconsecrated to Sankta Alina of the Fold.
It had taken a long time for Zoya to think of Alina as anything other than a rival. She’d resented the orphan girl’s gifts, envied her position with the Darkling. She hadn’t understood what power meant then or the price that any of them would be forced to pay for it. After the war, Alina had chosen a life of peace and anonymity, bought with the charade of her death, but her name and her legend had only grown. Zoya was surprised to find she liked seeing Alina’s name on churches, liked hearing it spoken in prayers. Ravka had given too much of its love to men like the Darkling, the Apparat, even the Lantsov kings. They owed a little of it to an orphan girl with no dress sense.
Though the symbol crowning the church’s entry had changed, its outer walls remained the same. They were covered in the names of the dead, victims of the Darkling’s slaughter of Novokribirsk, Kribirsk’s sister city, the town that had once lain almost directly across the Shadow Fold. Sun and time had faded the painted script so that it would be nearly illegible to anyone who did not hold the names of the lost in their hearts.
One day those words will fade to nothing, Zoya thought. The people who mourned the dead would be gone too. I’ll be gone. Who will remember them then? Zoya knew that if she walked to the southwest corner, she would find the names of Liliyana Garin and her ward. But she would not make that walk, would not trace those clumsy letters with her fingertips.
After all this time, she still had not found an end to her grief. It was a dark well, an echoing place into which she’d once cast a stone, sure that it would strike bottom and she would stop hurting. Instead, it just kept falling. She forgot about the stone, forgot about the well, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. Then she would think Liliyana’s name, or her eye would pause on the little boat painted on her bedroom wall, its two-starred flag frozen in the wind. She’d sit down to write a letter and realize she had no one to write to, and the quiet that surrounded her became the silence of the well, of the stone still falling.
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