Zoya dropped his hand and slumped back in her chair. So much for pleasant. “War or not, if I ever hear another amorous word or invitation leave your mouth, I will knock you unconscious and let a street urchin steal your boots, understood?”
“My boots?”
Hiram Schenck breezed through the doors without knocking, his cheeks florid and what looked like hard-boiled egg crumbled over the lapels of his staid black merchant’s suit. His pride struck Zoya like a blow, his confidence bright and buoying.
“Good morning,” he declared, clapping his hands together. “By Ghezen’s hand, this room is frigid.”
“You’re late.”
“Am I? Duke Radimov serves a very fine lunch. A most excellent host indeed. Your king might take a page from his book.”
Radimov and the other West Ravkans were entertaining Kerch’s dignitaries in style. There had been rumblings of secession ever since the Fold had been destroyed and Ravka had been reunified. The west resented being saddled with the east’s debts, and the threat of war with Fjerda had unraveled much of the diplomatic work Nikolai had done to woo them to his side. They didn’t want to send their children to the front, and they didn’t want their taxes going to a war they doubted the king could win.
“While you dine, Ravkan soldiers may be marching to their deaths.”
Schenck patted his stomach, as if his digestion was essential to the war efforts. “Most distressing, of course.”
Diplomacy, she reminded herself. Pleasant. Zoya met Kirigin’s eye and gestured for him to pour the wine, an extraordinary vintage that had come straight from Kirigin’s legendary cellars, one that was almost impossible to get in Schenck’s home country.
“Join us for a glass, won’t you?” said Kirigin. “This is a Caryevan wine, aged in clay.”
“Is it really?” Schenck’s eyes lit and he seated himself at the table. The Kerch Merchant Council preached restraint and economy, but Schenck had a clear taste for luxury. Zoya waited for him to drink and endured the nearly obscene look of pleasure that overtook the merchant’s face. “Exceptional!” he declared.
“Isn’t it?” said Kirigin. “I have several casks of it if you’d like me to send one your way. I’ll have to get one of my servants to deliver it by hand, otherwise the travel will ruin it.”
Zoya was grateful for the count’s merry aptitude for small talk. It gave her a moment to gather her wits and resist the urge to slap the glass from Schenck’s hand. If Ravka needed her to be gracious, she would damn well be gracious.
“I’ve heard tell Novyi Zem’s sea routes have been all but obliterated,” Zoya said, “their shipping interrupted, their ability to defend their ships undone.”
“Yes, terrible. I hear their vessels have been reduced to little more than sticks upon the waves, nothing found but splinters. No survivors.” Schenck was struggling to keep his face solemn, his glee straining his voice like an eager dog on a leash. “Pirates, you know.”
“Of course.” But these tragedies had not been the work of pirates. They had been the work of the Kerch, using Ravkan technology the Merchant Council had demanded for the courtesy of extending Ravka’s loans. It allowed them to attack Zemeni ships without risk or concern for discovery, never emerging from beneath the waves to reveal themselves or become targets.
“The Zemeni economy must be suffering,” Zoya noted. “I imagine the price of jurda and sugar must be at an all-time high.”
At this, Schenck frowned. “No, not yet. The Zemeni have shown no signs of financial strain, and every attempt to raise the price of jurda has been met with resistance by our customers abroad. It’s simply a matter of time before they capitulate.”
“To pirates?”
Schenck fiddled with a button on his waistcoat. “Yes. Exactly. To pirates.”
“You continue to trade jurda with Fjerda and the Shu Han,” Zoya said. “Even though you know that jurda is being converted to parem and used to torture and enslave Grisha.”
“We know no such thing. Idle speculation, colorful tales. The Kerch have always maintained a policy of neutrality. We cannot allow ourselves to be drawn into the squabbles of other nations. We trade with all, fair coin for fair purchase. The deal is the deal.”
Zoya knew he was not just talking about the trade of jurda. He was making his country’s stance clear.
“You won’t come to Ravka’s aid.”
“I’m afraid that is impossible. But please know our thoughts are with you.”
Zoya slanted him a glance. To a certain extent, she knew that was true. The Kerch didn’t like war because it tended to disrupt shipping routes, and peaceful, prosperous countries made for better trade partners. But the Kerch could just as easily make their profits in weapons and ammunition, in the selling of steel and gunpowder, lead and aluminum.
“If Fjerda invades Ravka, are you sure the Shu will be able to keep them in check?” Zoya asked. The Shu had a massive land army, but no one knew the true extent of Fjerda’s military might. Kerch might be next on their list of acquisitions.
Schenck just smiled. “Perhaps the wolves will have a few less teeth after a prolonged fight with their neighbor.”
“So you’re hoping we’ll weaken Fjerda. You just aren’t willing to help us do it. There are ships from the Kerch navy anchored off the northern coast. We have a flyer. There’s time to send a message.”
“We could rally our ships. If the Kerch had sent me here to offer aid to Ravka, that’s precisely what we would do.”
“But they didn’t.”
“No.”
“They sent you to waste our time and keep me from where I belong.”
“While I appreciate the wine and your charming company, I’m afraid I see no point to this meeting. You have nothing to bargain with, Miss—”
“General.”
“General Nazyalensky,” he said, like an uncle indulging his most precocious niece. “We have everything we want.”
“Do you?”
Schenck’s brow creased. “What does that mean?”
This was Zoya’s last gamble, her last opportunity to salvage this parlay.
“Our king has a gift for making the impossible possible, for building extraordinary machines that can conquer new frontiers. He has assembled some of the greatest scientific minds among Grisha and otkazat’sya. Are you sure you want to be on the opposing side of that?”
“We choose no sides, Miss Nazyalensky. I thought I made that clear. And we do not bargain against the future. Ravka may have a gift for inventions we have not yet seen, but Fjerda has a gift for brutality the world well knows.”
Zoya watched him for a long moment. “You were willing to wed your daughter to Nikolai Lantsov. You know he is a good man.” Simple words, but Zoya was too aware of how rare they were.
“My dear,” said Schenck, finishing his glass of wine and pushing back from the table. “Perhaps the Shu have lower standards, but I sought to wed my daughter to a king, not a bastard.”
“Meaning what?” Zoya retorted, feeling her composure fray. Was this wart of a man brazen enough to question Nikolai’s parentage openly? If that was the case, they were worse off than even she had thought.
But all Schenck did was smile slyly. “Only whispers. Only rumors.”
“Be careful whispers don’t become talk. It’s a good way to lose a tongue.”
Schenck’s eyes widened. “Are you threatening a delegate of the Kerch government?”
“I only threaten gossipmongers and cowards.”
Schenck’s eyes bugged out even farther. Zoya wondered if they would bolt from his skull.
“I am due for a meeting,” he said, rising and striding toward the door. “And I believe you are due on the losing side of a battlefield.”
Zoya dug her nails into her palms. She could almost hear Nikolai in her head, counseling caution. All Saints, how did he meet with these spineless, self-satisfied toads without committing murder once a day?
But she managed. Only after Schenck
was gone did she release a gust of air, hurling that fine bottle of Caryevan wine into the wall with a gratifying smash.
“Schenck never meant to offer us any help, did he?” asked Kirigin.
“Of course not. Schenck’s only purpose was to humble us further.”
Her king would face the Fjerdans and there would be no help from Hiram Schenck and his ilk. Nikolai had known the endeavor was futile but he had sent her nonetheless. Do this gallows deed for me, Zoya, he’d said. And of course, she had.
“Should we send a message to King Nikolai?” Kirigin asked.
“We’ll deliver it ourselves,” said Zoya. There might still be time to meet the Fjerdan tanks and guns beside her soldiers. She strode outside, where a servant was waiting. “Go, get our pilot to ready the flyer.”
“Our bags?” Kirigin asked, hurrying after her down the hall.
“Forget the bags.”
They rounded a corner and headed down a flight of stairs, through the courtyard, and out onto the docks where they’d landed their sea flyer. Zoya was not made for diplomacy, for closed rooms and polite talk. She was made for battle. As for Schenck and Duke Radimov and every other traitor who sided against Ravka, there would be time to deal with them after Nikolai found a way to win this war. We are the dragon and we bide our time.
“I … I have never been in the air,” Kirigin said as they approached the docks where the flyer was moored. She should probably leave him here. He didn’t belong anywhere near combat. But she also didn’t want him under the influence of West Ravka’s nobility.
“You’ll be fine. And if you’re not, just vomit over the side and not into your lap. Or mine.”
“Is there any hope?” Kirigin asked. “For Ravka?”
She didn’t reply. She’d been told there was always hope, but she was too old and too wise for fairy tales.
Zoya sensed movement before she actually saw it.
She whirled and glimpsed light glinting off the blade of a knife. The man was lunging at her from the shadows. She threw up her hands and a blast of wind hurled him backward into the wall. He struck with a bone-breaking crunch, dead before he hit the ground.
Too easy. A decoy—
Kirigin sprang forward, knocking the second assassin to the ground. The count drew his pistol to fire.
“No!” Zoya shouted, using another hard gust of wind to redirect the bullet. It pinged harmlessly off the hull of a nearby ship.
She leapt onto the assassin, pressing his chest into the deck with her knees, and closed her fist, squeezing the breath from his lungs. He clawed at his throat, face turning red, eyes bulging and watering.
She opened her fingers, letting air flood into his lungs, and he gasped like a fish freed of a hook.
“Speak,” she demanded. “Who sent you?”
“A new age … is coming,” he rasped. “The false Saints … will be … purged.”
He looked and sounded Ravkan. Again she sucked the air from his lungs, then let it return in the barest trickle.
“False Saints?” said Kirigin, clutching his bloody arm.
“Who sent you?” she demanded.
“Your power … is unnatural and you will … be punished, Sankta Zoya.” He spat the last two words like a curse.
Zoya hauled back and punched him in the jaw. His head drooped.
“Couldn’t you have choked him unconscious?” asked Kirigin.
“I felt like hitting someone.”
“Ah. I see. I’m glad it was him. But what did he mean by ‘Sankta Zoya’?”
“As far as I know, I’ve worked no miracles nor claimed to.” Zoya’s eyes narrowed. She knew exactly who to blame for this. “Damn Nina Zenik.”
6
NIKOLAI
“BLESS NINA ZENIK,” Nikolai murmured as he walked the line of silent Ravkan troops camouflaged with mud and scrub. In the near dark before dawn, he’d taken his flyer up with Adrik—one of Zoya’s most skilled Squallers—on board to dampen the sound of the engine. Fjerda thought they had the element of surprise, and Nikolai wanted to keep it that way.
But he had to wonder if his enemy needed it. From his vantage in the skies, he’d watched the line of tanks rolling toward Ravka in the gray dawn light. He supposed he should be praying, but he’d never been much for religion—not when he had science and a pair of well-made revolvers to cling to. Right now, though, he hoped that each Ravkan Saint, Kaelish sprite, and all-powerful deity was looking down with some fondness in their hearts for his country, because he needed every bit of help he could get against these odds.
“At least I only have one arm to lose,” Adrik said glumly. For all his Grisha talent, he had to be the most depressing person Nikolai had ever encountered. He had sandy hair and a boyish freckled face, and he was the human equivalent of a head cold. Nikolai had no idea what Leoni saw in him. That woman was a delight and a hell of a Fabrikator too.
“Cheer up, Adrik,” Nikolai had called back from the cockpit. “We may all be dead soon, and then it will be up to your disembodied spirit to make gloomy prognostications.”
To avoid giving away their location, they’d set down on a makeshift airstrip two miles south of camp and ridden the rest of the way to join the Ravkan forces.
“How many?” asked Tolya as he approached and handed Nikolai a rifle, another slung over his enormous shoulders. They’d already had reports from their scouts, but Tolya still had hope. The same hope Nikolai had let himself entertain before his own eyes had been cruel enough to dash it.
“Too many,” he said. “I was hoping it was a trick of the light.” The ranks of Fjerdan war machines were far larger than their intelligence had suggested.
Tamar and Nadia greeted them silently, Nadia giving her brother a nod of acknowledgment. She and Adrik were both Squallers, both green-eyed and wiry. But Nadia was an optimist, and Adrik was a member of the doomsayers club—the one they didn’t allow at meetings because he brought the mood down.
Nikolai checked the sight on his repeating rifle. It was the right weapon for when they needed to engage, but the revolvers at his hips gave him more comfort.
Fjerda and Ravka had been at odds for hundreds of years, sometimes meeting in outright conflict, sometimes skirmishing when treaties were in place. But this was the war Fjerda meant to win. They knew Ravka was outnumbered and without reinforcements. They intended to tear through the northern border in surprise attacks at Nezkii and Ulensk. After swift victories, they would push south to the capital, where Nikolai’s meager army would be forced to retreat and make some kind of heroic stand.
Nikolai looked out over the field. The land north of Nezkii was little more than a shallow, muddy basin, a sad stretch of nothing stuck in a state between swamp and pasture, impossible to farm and bearing a strong odor of sulfur. It was known as the Pisspot, and it was not the stuff of which glorious battle songs were written. It offered little cover and miserable soil for his foot soldiers, who were already up to their ankles in the muck. But he doubted it would stop Fjerdan tanks.
Nikolai’s commanders had erected wooden platforms and towers to get a better view of the battlefield—all of it camouflaged behind the straggly scrub and low, twisted trees the Pisspot was known for.
The sun was barely visible in the east. From the north, Nikolai heard a sputtering sound like some great beast clearing its throat—Fjerda’s war machines firing their angry engines to life. Black smoke rose on the horizon, an orchard of columns, a promise of the invasion to come.
The tanks sounded like thunder rolling over the horizon, but they looked like monsters that had crawled out of the mud, their gray hides glinting dully, their giant treads eating up earth. It was a disheartening sight, but if not for Nina, their blessed termite eating at the heart of Fjerda’s government, Ravka never would have seen them coming at all.
Nina’s note had given them the two points on the border where their enemies planned to launch their surprise invasion. Ravka had barely had time to mobilize their forces and put up some ki
nd of defense.
Nikolai could have chosen to meet the enemy in the field, banners up, troops in plain sight. A show of force. It would have been the honorable thing, the brave thing. But Nikolai figured his soldiers were more interested in surviving than looking noble before the Fjerdans shot them full of holes, and he felt the same.
“Do you think they know?” Tolya asked, peering through binoculars that looked like a child’s toy in his huge hands.
Tamar shook her head. “If they did, they’d be staying very, very still.”
Boom. The first explosion echoed over the basin, seeming to shake the mud they stood in.
A silent signal moved down the ranks: Hold your position.
Another explosion ruptured the air around them. Then another. Another.
But those weren’t the sounds of tank guns firing. They were mines.
The first Fjerdan tank burst into flames. The second capsized, rolling onto its side, its huge treads whirring helplessly. Boom. Another exploded in a plume of fire as its driver and crew tried to escape.
Fjerda had assumed their tanks would roll through the basin, that their attack would be quick and decisive, that Ravka would have no chance to mount any real opposition. They would occupy key northern cities and drive the front south as Nikolai’s troops scrambled to meet them in the field.
They would have done just that—if not for Nina Zenik’s warning. Hours before dawn, Fjerdan bombs had begun to fall on Ravkan military targets, places where they believed Ravkan flyers were grounded, a munitions factory, a shipyard. There had been nothing Nikolai could do about the shipyard; there simply wasn’t time. But everywhere else, flyers and airships and personnel had been moved to new locations.
And while the Fjerdans were unleashing their bombs, Nikolai’s special soldiers, his Nolniki—Grisha and First Army troops working together—had crept through the darkness of Nezkii and Ulensk, planting anti-tank mines under cover of night, an ugly surprise for an enemy who had believed it would face no resistance. The mines had been carefully mapped. One day Nikolai hoped they could call the Fjerdans friends, and he didn’t want to render all their borderlands useless.
Rule of Wolves Page 6