King of Scars

by Leigh Bardugo

  It was a shape of pure shadow that hovered in front of him as if suspended in a mirror. Its wings beat gently at the air. In the place where the creature’s heart would be, a slender shard of light glowed. The thorn. So this was the demon. The dark thing that had driven him, played with him, stolen his will. I am the monster and the monster is me. They were not as separate as he would have liked to pretend, but he remembered Elizaveta’s words: Only one of you will survive.

  It was time to slay the demon and put an end to this. He reached for his sword.

  But he could not move his arms, could not move his legs. The thorn wood had grabbed hold of him, its stalks clinging tightly to his limbs, its spikes digging into his flesh.

  Sap was still filling the golden sphere around Zoya despite the fact that he’d already called the monster. She was shouting and pounding her fists against its sides.

  Something was very wrong.

  He screamed as a sudden, searing bolt of pain shot through his hand. He looked to his left and saw a thorn impaling him through the palm. Another followed through his right hand and then each of his legs.

  “I know the pain is bad,” said Elizaveta as she drifted through the thicket. “But the thorns will keep you from forcing the darkness to recede.”

  “What is this?” Nikolai panted. Pain speared through him as he tried to break free.

  “I had hoped you might simply let the monster overtake you. That your demon would win. It would have made all of this easier.”

  Nikolai’s mind struggled to make sense of what Elizaveta was saying. “You’re a prisoner here,” Nikolai said. “After all this, you cannot mean to stay!”

  “Certainly not. The boundaries of the Fold will remain intact, and here my brethren will be held captive still. But I will be free because I will be bound to him.”

  Nikolai did not need to ask who she meant. “The Darkling.”

  She nodded once. “The true king of Ravka. His spirit lived on with his power. It is only in need of a vessel.”

  The thicket parted and Nikolai saw a pale body borne atop a bier of branches.

  It cannot be. He had stood on the shores of the Fold and watched the Darkling burn—and yet here his body was, whole and uncorrupted. It had to be some kind of illusion, or a brilliant facsimile.

  Yuri stood beside the bier, the pages of liturgical Ravkan discarded. He wore a robe of black roses emblazoned with the sun in eclipse. “Forgive me,” he said, his face contrite. “I wish it did not have to be so. I wish you could both survive this day. But the Starless One is Ravka’s greatest hope. He must return.” I find I do not know what to pray for.

  “Go on, Yuri,” Elizaveta said. “This honor is yours.”

  Nikolai remembered Yuri babbling when they had first come to the Saints’ Fold. All is as was promised. He thought of the curling vine Elizaveta had so soothingly laid across Yuri’s shoulders. She hadn’t been trying to comfort him. She’d been afraid of what else he might say. Yuri has his role to play in this too. He’d said the Darkling had come to him in a vision.

  Yuri approached the shadow beast and reached for the glowing shard wedged within its heart. Nikolai knew with sudden surety that if he pulled the thorn from the monster’s chest first, it would be an end to everything.

  “Don’t, Yuri.” He did not like the pleading in his voice. It did not become a king. “Don’t do this.”

  “You are a good man,” said Yuri. “But Ravka needs more than a man.” He reached up and grabbed the thorn.

  No. Nikolai would not allow it. He had opened the door. It was time to walk through. The monster was not the Darkling, not yet; it was something else still, something that longed for its own life, that had its own appetites, that he had lived with for three years.

  Why do you hide the demon? Because it was angry, hungry, full of broken animal longing. And though Nikolai might not like it, those things were all a part of him still. Like calls to like. He had fought the demon. Now he would feed it.

  Nikolai shut his eyes and did what that dark voice had told him to do. He let go of the perfect prince, the good king. He reached for all the wounded, shameful things he’d been so sure he had to hide. In this moment, he was not kind or merciful or just. He was a monster.

  He left his mortal body behind.

  When Nikolai opened his eyes, he was looking at Yuri from a different angle—close enough to see the smudge on his glasses, the wiry hairs of his scrabbly beard. Nikolai felt his wings beat the air, felt his demon heart race. He released a snarl and launched himself at the monk.

  31

  NINA

  THEIR TIMING HAD TO BE PRECISE. The Wellmother and her Springmaidens would see to their charges on the factory ward and return sometime in the hours after midnight. Nina did not want to risk crossing paths with them, but she also needed to make sure they would have time to retrieve the girls, set the explosives, and get through the checkpoint on the road leading into town. If the guards at the checkpoint got a sign that something was wrong at the factory, they might well decide to investigate the vehicles passing through. And if that happened, there would be nowhere to hide.

  Two hours before dawn, Hanne bound her breasts and pulled a pinafore over one of her stolen military uniforms. She kept a shawl wrapped around her head.

  She and Nina slipped out through the kitchens and went to meet Leoni and Adrik at the abandoned tanning shed where they were waiting with the enclosed wagon they’d secured. They helped Adrik into his uniform and stuffed his loose sleeve with cotton batting, pinning the end into his pocket to disguise his missing hand. Hanne tucked her pinafore away and took the driver’s seat with Adrik beside her, while Nina and Leoni, both attired as Springmaidens, climbed into the back.

  They were silent as they rode through the dark. Nina had laced her sleeves with bone shards, and she reached out to them now with her power, craving the peace they provided. She understood the risks she had asked the people around her to take, the danger she was putting them all in.

  When they rolled to a stop, Nina knew they’d reached the checkpoint at the base of the hill. She peered through the slats and saw Hanne flash the order they’d forged to the men at the guardhouse—it bore Brum’s stolen seal. Nina held her breath, waiting. A moment later, she heard a snap of the reins and they were moving once more.

  The road leading to the eastern entrance was straight but rocky, and Nina felt her heart pounding with the hoofbeats of their horses as they made slow progress up the hill. There was no turning back now. She had lied not only to Hanne but to Adrik and Leoni as well about what she intended to accomplish today. The idea had come to her during her long dinner with Jarl Brum. It might be madness. It might fail spectacularly, but Nina had started to wonder if they’d been trying to fix Fjerda with the wrong tool.

  Finally the horses slowed and Nina heard the voices of the guards. The wagon halted again. They had arrived at the eastern entrance to the fort. The whispers in her mind rose, guiding her on. Nina, they chorused. She shivered. The dead knew her name.

  Justice, they demanded. She thought of the graves that surrounded this place, all the women and girls and children who had been lost here.

  You will be the last, she promised.

  Matthias had once begged her to save some mercy for his country, and she had vowed she would. But the girls in that ward were Fjerdans. Their children were Fjerdans. They were citizens of Gäfvalle and Gjela and Kejerut. The people of this country needed to be reminded of that.

  The guards were looking over the order, taking their time. “Tell them to get moving,” whispered Adrik.

  “Sedjet!” Hanne barked. Hurry up. She’d lowered the timbre of her voice and for a moment she sounded chillingly like her father.

  “What’s the rush?” asked one of the guards. “Why do you need to move the prisoners now?”

  “Not everyone knows about the work Commander Brum has authorized here,” said Hanne, following the script Nina had laid out for her. “We got word the local go
vernors are coming to the factory to investigate complaints about poisons in the river. We don’t need more trouble.”

  “Bureaucrats,” grumbled the guard. “Probably just looking for another bribe.”

  Another bribe? Did that mean local officials had been paid to look the other way about the fouling of the river—or about the girls in the abandoned wing?

  A moment later the gate creaked open.

  “Leave it that way,” said Hanne. “Time is short.”

  “Wait a minute,” said the guard. He threw open the back doors of the wagon and peered at Leoni and Nina in their pinafores. “What are these two doing here?”

  “For Djel’s sake, do you think I’m going to take care of a bunch of crying women and shitting infants?” said Hanne. “Maybe you’d like to come along and wipe their asses?”

  Saints, she really was a natural.

  The guard looked utterly horrified. “No thank you.”

  He slammed the doors shut, and in the next second, they were rolling through the gate into what had once been the eastern loading dock for the factory.

  “Let’s go,” Adrik said, herding them to the big double doors. “That all took longer than it was supposed to.”

  Leoni dripped acid onto the locks to the ward and they fell with a hiss and a clang.

  Gently, Nina pushed the doors open. They moved into the darkness, down the hall, toward the dim glow of a lantern. She could smell bodies, the tang of sour milk, soiled diapers, the old industrial smells of grease and coal.

  The ward was full of the muzzy sounds of sleep, soft snores, the moan of a woman turning in her bed. A girl in a thin shift lay awake near the lantern, eyes hollow, skinny arms cradling her belly like a giant pearl.

  When she saw Nina and Leoni her face broke into a happy, hopeful smile. “You’re here early!” she cried. “Do you have my dose?”

  “Where’s my dose?” said another, rising from her blankets.

  “Saints,” muttered Adrik as lanterns were lit along the row of beds and the horror of the ward came into view.

  Adrik looked sick. Leoni’s eyes were full of tears.

  Hanne had clapped a hand over her mouth. She was shaking her head.

  “Hanne?” Nina murmured.

  “No.” She shook her head harder. “No. He didn’t do this. He couldn’t have. He must not have known.”

  A baby began to cry. The reality of the girls’ need, of their clumsy bodies, their hopeful expressions felt overwhelming. Why had Nina believed they could get away with any of this? But she had chosen this course—for all of them.

  “Sylvi,” Hanne said on a sob.

  Sylvi Winther, Nina remembered, one of the people Hanne had nursed in secret.

  The hollow-eyed girl looked up, but there was no recognition in her eyes. Hanne went to her side, but the girl shrank back, confused.

  “It’s me,” said Hanne. “I…” And then she remembered her uniform, her altered face. “I … I’m sorry.”

  “Come on,” Nina said. “We need to move.” From her pocket, she drew the sedative Leoni had mixed. It was milky white, boiled from the stalks of jurda plants instead of the leaves.

  “That doesn’t look like my dose,” said the girl by the lantern, frowning.

  “It’s something new,” said Nina soothingly. “We’re taking all of you to a new base.”

  “All of us?” one of the girls asked. “The babies too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does the new base have windows?” asked Sylvi.

  “Yes,” said Hanne, her voice raw. “And fresh food and sea breezes. It will be a hard journey, but we’ll make it as comfortable as possible.” At least that much was true.

  One by one they offered the girls their doses and began to lead them to the cart.

  Adrik consulted his watch. “Get going.”

  He raised his arm, and Nina’s ears popped as he dropped the pressure in the factory to create an acoustic blanket and mask their movements.

  Nina knew the layout of the factory floor best, so she would take Leoni to set the explosives while Adrik and Hanne finished loading the prisoners and their infants. She helped Leoni stack the makeshift bombs in a basket beneath a pile of soiled linen and they crept deeper into the heart of the fort. It was blessedly silent, the day not yet beginning, and thanks to Adrik, their footsteps made no sound to break the quiet.

  Nina dashed ahead to the main body of the factory and into the western wing, as close as she dared to the barracks and the kitchens. She didn’t want to risk running into any patrols. She set the small explosives along the wall as she headed back, all of them connected by a long fuse.

  Nina had just planted the last of her bombs when she heard a cry. Leoni. She raced back to the main hall on silent feet. As she entered, she heard voices and shrank up against a dusty vat, peering around it.

  Leoni stood with her back to Nina, arms raised. Jarl Brum had a pistol trained on her. Nina clung to the vat, staying as still as possible.

  “Who sent you?” he demanded. “You will give me answers or I will bleed them out of you.”

  “You disgust me,” Leoni said in Zemeni.

  Their voices had a strange, muffled quality. Did Brum hear it? Did he know Grisha power was at work? Slowly, Nina crept down the row of machinery. If she could get behind Brum, she could disarm him.

  “I don’t speak your ugly tongue,” he said. “And I know you understand more than you pretend to.”

  Leoni smiled, the expression startling in its beauty. “And you understand less than you will ever know.”

  “I knew you weren’t just traders. Where is your compatriot? And what about the guide, Mila Jandersdat? Does she know you’re spies?”

  “You’re so very bald,” Leoni said, still in Zemeni. “That won’t be the worst thing Mila Jandersdat does to you.”

  “Was she a part of this?” Brum growled in frustration.

  “How many girls?” Leoni said, switching to clumsy Fjerdan. “How many did you hurt?”

  “Those aren’t women,” Brum sneered. “They’re Grisha, and I’ll be happy to give you your first dose myself. The might of Fjerda is about to descend on you.”

  He reached for a lever in the wall, and Nina knew an alarm was going to sound.

  “Wait!” she shouted, unsure of what she intended—and at that moment Jarl Brum crumpled to the ground.

  Hanne stood behind him holding a wrench and breathing heavily. “He knew,” she said brokenly. “He knew.” Then she fell to her knees beside him and cradled his bleeding head. “Papa,” she said, tears sliding down her cheeks. “How could you?”

  “Come on,” said Nina. “We have to get the girls and get out of here.”

  Hanne ran a sleeve over her eyes. “We can’t leave him to die.”

  “You saw what he’s responsible for.”

  “What the government is responsible for,” said Hanne. “My father is a soldier. You said it yourself, this country made him this way.”

  Nina didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or scream. Jarl Brum was the commander of the drüskelle, the mind behind the torture of countless Grisha. He was not just a soldier. Save some mercy for my people.

  “We need to go,” said Leoni. “If we don’t light the first fuse soon, the bombs won’t go off in time. Assuming they go off at all.”

  “He’s my father,” said Hanne, her eyes full of that fierce determination Nina loved so much. “I won’t leave him.”

  Nina threw up her hands in exasperation. “Fine, help me lift him.”

  They hauled Brum’s body down the hall and through the ward. The man was enormous and Nina was tempted to drop him just for the satisfaction of it.

  “So Commander Brum did not leave town?” asked Adrik, letting his arm fall to his side. Nina’s ears crackled and sound bled back into the ward.

  “I guess he wanted to say goodbye,” she muttered as they dragged him into the back of the wagon. The girls looked at him with vague interest. The sedative had definite
ly set in.

  “What about your sister?” said Hanne.

  “She’s not here,” Nina said. “She must have been moved.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “We need to go,” insisted Nina. She hopped down and ran back to the ward to set the fuses.

  She lit the last of them and was about to join the others at the loading dock when a voice shouted, “Stop!”

  Nina turned. The Wellmother was racing down the ward, flanked by soldiers armed with rifles. Of course Brum hadn’t been alone.

  “You!” said the Wellmother, her face red with rage. “How dare you wear the attire of a Springmaiden? Where are the prisoners? Where is Commander Brum?”

  “Gone,” Nina lied. “Beyond your reach.”

  “Seize her!” said the Wellmother, but Nina was already raising her hands.

  “I wouldn’t,” Nina said, and the soldiers hesitated, confused.

  Around her, she felt the cold tide of the river, eddying in deep pools—the graves of the unnamed and abandoned, buried without ceremony, women and girls brought here in secret, who had suffered and died and been left to the dark with no one to mourn them.

  Come to me, Nina commanded.

  “She’s just one girl,” snapped the Wellmother. “What kind of cowards are you?”

  “Not just one girl,” said Nina. The whispering rose in her. Fjerdan women. Fjerdan girls, crying for justice, screaming in the silence of the earth. She opened her mouth and let them speak.

  “I am Petra Toft.” The words came from Nina’s lips, but she did not recognize her own voice. “You cut me open and took the child from my womb. You let me bleed to death as I pleaded for help.”

  “I am Siv Engman. I told you I had miscarried, that I could not carry a child to term, but you made me conceive again and again. I held each stillborn in my arms. I gave each one of them a name.”

  “I am Ellinor Berglund. I was your student, placed in your care. I trusted you. I called you Wellmother. I begged for your mercy when you discovered my powers. I died begging for another dose.”