Aleksander studied Brother Azarov in the dark room. “You’re a soldier—”
“I was a soldier.”
“Very well. You were once a soldier and you would walk onto a battlefield with nothing but your faith to protect you?”
“If that is what our Saint requires.”
Aleksander should be glad of that faith, that all it had taken was a bit of shadow play to get these people to march into a war with him. So why was he left uneasy?
Will you protect them?
He could. He would if need be. His powers had returned to him. He could form nichevo’ya to fight on his behalf. His pilgrims could enter the field with picks and shovels and they would still emerge victorious.
And yet, his mind was troubled.
They packed up the few weapons that looked like they might be of use and rode back toward Adena in silence. Since they had the cart, they would meet with Brother Chernov and some of the others outside the village to help them transport supplies from the market.
Aleksander couldn’t help but think of the first army he’d built. Yevgeni Lantsov had been king then, and he’d been at war with the Shu for the entirety of his reign. He couldn’t hold the southern border and his forces were stretched to their very limit. Aleksander had gone by a different name then. Leonid. The first Darkling to offer his gifts in service to the king.
His mother had warned him not to go. They’d been living near an old tannery, the stink of the chemicals and the offal always thick in the air.
“Once you are known, you cannot be unknown,” she’d warned him.
But he’d been waiting for a ruler like Yevgeni—practical, forward-thinking, and desperate. Aleksander traveled to the capital and sought an audience with the king, and there he’d let his shadows unfurl. The Grand Palace hadn’t even been built then, only a ramshackle castle of rickety wood and ragged stone.
The king and his court had been frightened. Some had called him a demon, others had claimed he was a trickster and a fraud. But the king was too pragmatic to let such an opportunity pass him by.
“You will take your talents to the border,” he’d told Aleksander. “Be they true sorcery or mere illusion, you will use them against our enemies. And if our army finds victory, you will be rewarded.”
Aleksander had marched south with the king’s soldiers, and when they’d faced the Shu in the field, he’d unleashed darkness upon their opponents, blinding them where they stood. Ravka’s forces had won the day.
But when Yevgeni had offered Aleksander his reward, he had refused the king’s gold. “There are others like me, Grisha, living in hiding. Give me leave to offer them sanctuary here and I will build you an army the likes of which the world has never seen.”
Aleksander had traveled throughout Ravka, to places he and his mother had visited before, to distant lands where he’d gone on his own to study. He knew the secret ways and hiding places of Grisha, and wherever he went, he promised them a new life lived without fear.
“We will be respected,” he’d vowed. “Honored. We will have a home at last.”
They hadn’t wanted to come with him to the capital at first. They’d been sure it was some kind of trick and that once they were within the city’s double walls, they would be killed. But a few were willing to make the journey with him, and they had become the soldiers of the Second Army.
There had been objections from noblemen and priests, of course, accusations of dark magic, but as their military victories had continued, the arguments grew weaker.
Only King Yevgeni’s Apparat continued to campaign against the Grisha. He railed that the Saints would forsake Ravka if the king continued to harbor witches beneath his roof. Each day he would stand before the throne and rant until he was short of breath and red in the face. One day, he simply keeled over. If he’d been helped to his death by a Corporalnik posted by a shaded window, no one was the wiser.
But the next Apparat was more circumspect in his objections. He preached the tale of Yaromir and Sankt Feliks at the First Altar, a story of extraordinary soldiers who had helped a king unify a country, and two years later, Aleksander began work on the Little Palace.
He had thought he’d accomplished his task, that he’d given his people a safe haven, a home where they’d never be punished for their gifts.
What had changed? The answer was everything. Kings lived and died. Their sons were honest or corrupt. Wars ended and began again—and again and again. Grisha were not accepted; they were resented in Ravka and hunted abroad. Men fought them with swords, then guns, then worse. There was no end to it, and so he had sought an end. Power that could not be questioned. Might that could not be reckoned with. The result had been the Fold.
His first soldiers were dead now. Lovers, allies, countless kings and queens. Only he continued on. Eternity took practice, and he’d had plenty of it. The world had changed. War had changed. But he had not. He’d traveled, learned, killed. He’d met his half sister, who had herself passed into legend and Sainthood. He’d searched the world for his mother’s other children, hungry for kinship, for a sense of himself in others. He’d discarded his past lives like a snake shedding its skin, becoming sleeker and more dangerous with every new version of himself. But maybe he’d left some part of who he was behind in each of those lives.
Brother Azarov startled awake as Aleksander brought the cart to a stop on the sloping road that led into Adena. The monk yawned and smacked his lips. It was early morning, and Aleksander could see it was market day in the little town. Even from a distance, he could tell the mood was somber, the threat of war creeping ever closer, but the square was still full of people stocking up on provisions, children playing or working the stalls with their parents, neighbors calling their greetings.
Aleksander hopped down to stretch his legs and make sure the weapons were secure at the back of the wagon.
“Have you been to Adena before?” Brother Azarov asked.
“Yes,” he replied before he thought better of it. Yuri had never been. “No … But I always wanted to visit.”
“Oh?” Azarov peered at the town as if expecting it to suddenly unfold into a more interesting version of itself. “Why? Is there something special about it?”
“There’s a very fine mural in its cathedral.”
“Of Sankta Lizabeta?”
Was this her town? Yes, he remembered now. She’d performed some kind of miracle here to lure the young king to the Fold. But there was no mural in the church. “I meant the statue,” he said. She’d made it bleed black tears and covered it in roses.
“Who are you?”
Aleksander looked up from the cartridges of ammunition he was sorting. “I beg your pardon?”
Brother Azarov was standing beside the cart. His yellow hair was mussed from the night’s adventure and his eyes were narrowed. “Whoever you are, you’re not Yuri Vedenen.”
He made himself chuckle. “Then who am I?”
“I don’t know.” Azarov’s face was grim, and Aleksander realized too late that his show of confusion over Adena had been an act. “An impostor. An agent of the Lantsov king. One of the Apparat’s men. The only thing I’m sure of is that you’re a charlatan and no servant of the Starless One.”
Aleksander turned slowly. “A servant? No. I will serve no one again in this life or any other.” He considered his options. Could Brother Azarov be made to understand what he was, who he was? “You must listen closely, Azarov. You are on the precipice of something great—”
“Do not come near me! You are a heathen. A heretic. You would lead us into battle and see us murdered on the field.”
“The Starless One—”
“You have no right to speak of him!”
Aleksander almost laughed. “No man should be forced to grapple with irony so furiously.”
“Brother Chernov!” Azarov called.
Down in the market square, Chernov looked up and waved. He and the other pilgrims carried baskets and crates full of food and suppl
ies.
Aleksander yanked Brother Azarov behind the cart and clapped a hand over the pilgrim’s mouth. “You have asked for miracles and I have brought you miracles. You don’t understand the forces at work here.”
Azarov thrashed in his grip. He had the strength of the soldier he’d once been. He wrenched his head free. “I know evil when I see it.”
Now Aleksander had to smile. “Maybe so.”
He let a nichevo’ya form behind Azarov, towering and bewinged. Calling on merzost was painful, like a breath torn from his lungs, a moment of terror as his life was ripped away to form another. Creation. Abomination. But he was used to it by now.
Azarov’s eyes widened as he saw the shadow of the monster behind him. He never had a chance to turn. A whimper squeaked from his lips as the nichevo’ya’s clawed hand burst through his chest. He looked down at it—black talons curled around his still-beating heart. Then he crumpled.
Murderer! Yuri’s distress was like an alarm ringing in his skull. You had no right!
Be silent. Azarov was willing to die for me and he did.
Aleksander glanced around the wagon. The pilgrims were still approaching. He had mere moments to decide what to do with the body. The nichevo’ya could carry it away but would be seen taking flight with Azarov. He would have to bury the pilgrim beneath the weapons and hope to retrieve the body when they returned to camp.
He heard shouting from the market square. Some kind of storm was moving in, the clouds casting dark shadows over the town.
No, not a storm. It was moving too fast for that, a blot of darkness spreading over the houses. Everything it touched turned to shadow, seeming to hold its shape for the barest moment, then dissolving into smoke. Kilyklava. The vampire. Had he somehow drawn the blight to Adena, or was it mere coincidence?
People scattered, screaming, trying to outrun it, trying to hurl themselves from its path.
Aleksander couldn’t look away. The shadow raced toward him. Brother Chernov and the others dove from the road, abandoning their bread and cabbages.
Run.
He knew he should. But it was too late. What would death feel like the second time around? The old horse had time to release a startled whinny, before it and the cart were swallowed by the darkness.
The shadow surged toward him—and parted. It coursed around him in a rush of night. It was like gazing into the black waters of a lake. Then it was gone. Aleksander turned and saw the blight pour over the road and meadow before somewhere on the distant horizon it seemed to stop.
It had come on silently, swiftly, an arrow shot from some invisible bow, and it vanished just as fast. In the town square—or what was left of it—people were weeping and crying out. Half the town was just as it had been—full of color, the market stalls packed with cured meats, heaps of turnips, bolts of wool. But the other half was simply gone, as if a careless hand had wiped it away, leaving nothing but a gray smudge, a swath of oblivion where life had been moments before.
The pilgrims were staring at him as they lurched to their feet, climbing from the ditch they’d rolled into.
Aleksander looked down at the ground. Between his boots, he saw mud, pebbles, a scraggly patch of grass. To his left, to his right, nothing but dead gray sand. The cart was gone, all the weapons. And Brother Azarov.
Brother Chernov’s round face was full of wonder as he approached. “It spared you.”
“I don’t understand it,” Aleksander said, doing his best to sound dismayed. “Brother Azarov was not so lucky.”
The pilgrims didn’t seem to care. They were gazing at him with awe in their eyes.
“Truly, you have the Starless One’s blessing.”
A scrawny young pilgrim looked back at the town. “But why would the Starless One save Brother Vedenen from the blight and not those innocent people?”
“It’s not for us to question his ways,” said Brother Chernov as they began their long walk back to camp. “When the Darkling returns and is made a Saint, the blight will trouble us no more.”
Yet another thing Chernov was wrong about.
Aleksander glanced back at the town. He had done worse to Novokribirsk at the start of the civil war. But he had been in control. The vampire had no master. It could not be reasoned with or seduced. Why had it spared him? Perhaps it recognized the power that had created the Fold. Or maybe the blight was drawn to life and it had sensed something unnatural in him, something it did not thirst for.
The rest of the day was spent on the Fold, making a new plan for their travel north and where to acquire weapons and supplies. They trained, they prayed, they ate their meager supply of hardtack and salt pork, and lay down to sleep.
“Rest,” he told them. “Rest and we will await the sign.” When the right moment came on the battlefield, he would release his nichevo’ya and they would all know the Starless One had returned.
These people were outcasts, he realized, as he picked his way among the sleeping pilgrims. Just as the Grisha had once been.
It’s not too late for you. So Alina had said. Or was it his mother? Or the gnat? It didn’t matter. All his long life he’d been guided by clarity of purpose. It had let him kill without remorse and had given him the daring to seize power that should have been beyond his grasp. It had brought him back from the dead. That was the clarity he needed now.
Aleksander lay down in the blankets that had been set aside for him. They smelled powerfully of horse. He picked up a handful of the Fold’s dead sands and let them drift through his fingers. Was this his legacy? This wound where nothing would grow? A blight that spread even as his nation marched to war?
He looked up at the stars spread like spilled treasure across the night sky. The Starless One. His followers spoke his name in tones of reverence, and in the days to come, their numbers would grow. But people didn’t turn their eyes to the heavens in search of the dark. It was the light they sought.
All that will change, he vowed. I will give them salvation until they beg me to stop.
34
NIKOLAI
THE MOOD AT LAZLAYON was bleak. Nikolai had wanted to speak to Adrik before they landed, but he hadn’t seen the Squaller. There was little room not to bump into each other on a ship like the Cormorant—and that meant Adrik was avoiding him.
“A word,” Nikolai said as they disembarked at the misty landing strip beside the secret entrance to the labs.
Adrik looked wary but said only, “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“If you don’t feel you can serve any longer, you may put in your resignation. We’re desperate for trained Grisha, but I can’t afford a soldier whose heart isn’t in this fight.”
“I have no interest in resigning.”
“You’re sure? Think before you answer.”
Adrik was younger than Nikolai, but his consistently miserable demeanor made that easy to forget. Now he looked like a boy—the boy whose body had been savaged by the Darkling’s monsters and who had fought on when others had lost their will.
“Are you … how much of you is you and how much is that thing?”
“I don’t know,” Nikolai answered honestly. “But the demon isn’t the Darkling’s to command. It’s mine.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Nikolai had no reason to be. And yet he was. Maybe the darkness inside him had once belonged to the Darkling, a demon born of his enemy’s power. But they’d begun to make their peace when they’d faced each other in the thorn wood. It was his monster now.
“I’m sure,” Nikolai said. “If I weren’t, I think you know I’d never let myself lead an army.”
Adrik eyed him speculatively. “I’m still on your side, Korol Rezni. For now. After the war, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll be killed in action and I won’t have to worry about it.”
“That’s the Adrik I know.”
Adrik shrugged, his gloom descending over him like a well-worn cloak. “This country’s always been cursed,” he said as he headed toward the labs. “Maybe it deserves
a cursed king.”
“He’ll come around,” said Zoya, approaching with a stack of correspondence in her hands. “Reports from our commanders. Speculation from our scouts about where and when the Fjerdans will attack.”
It was hard to be grateful for a war, but he was glad that he and Zoya had plenty to talk about that wasn’t what he’d said on the airship. Would he unsay it, if he could? He hated the skittishness he sensed in her, the way she seemed to be keeping her distance. But war was unpredictable. He might not survive the fight to come. He couldn’t be sorry for speaking his heart, or at least some part of it.
“Where would you put your money?” he asked.
Zoya considered. “The permafrost. It’s perfect terrain for Fjerdan tanks, and the cloud cover hurts our flyers.”
“Not Arkesk?”
“It would make sense for the Fjerdans except for the little matter of Sturmhond’s blockade. They won’t get any support from the sea. Besides, we know they’re in secret talks with West Ravka. You think they’ll invade on western soil anyway?”
“Maybe,” said Nikolai. If the talks were a sham, Fjerda might do just that. Arkesk was closer to the Fjerdan capital, and its rocky topography was rough but manageable. “The trees would slow them down. That could work to our advantage.”
“Saints’ teeth,” Zoya swore.
Nikolai looked up and saw Count Kirigin bustling toward them in a remarkable orchid coat and breeches.
“So sorry to interrupt, but there’s been a disturbance at the gate. There’s a man asking to see the king.”
Nikolai frowned. The Cormorant had flown directly to Lazlayon under cover of mist. There was no reason for anyone to think he was visiting Kirigin’s estate.
“Who is he?” Zoya asked.
“No idea,” said Kirigin. “He’s a bit of a mess. You might mistake him for a pile of rags. I can have the guards send him packing.”
“No,” said Zoya. “I want to know why he came looking for the king here. Have him searched for weapons and brought to the house.”
“He won’t come in. He says he wishes to speak to the king alone.”
Rule of Wolves Page 39