Web of Frost (Saints of Russalka Book 1)

by Lindsay Smith

  Katza set her glass down. “It wasn’t my choice, Sasha.” Her brother bristled at the nickname, but she didn’t care. “You died and left me. Father died. I’m in charge now, like it or not.”

  “But Katza! You’ve no business being in charge.” He shook his head. “You were always too afraid of the blessings. And you were never even taught . . .”

  “That wasn’t my fault! I’m learning whatever I can. I didn’t plan it this way. No one did. But here I am, right as our nation is on the brink of collapse.”

  Aleksei held up a hand. A deep cough shook him, wracking his features. Katza cringed at the familiar sound, the cough crunching as if his lungs were made of ice.

  “Oh. I see now. You don’t fear the blessings anymore, do you?” Aleksei asked. His mouth distorted in the chamber’s deep shadows. “You have no fear at all.”

  “Not much,” Katza admitted. It felt good to say it out loud.

  Aleksei shook his head. “A good ruler ought to be afraid.”

  “Ravin has shown me the error of my ways.” Katza sat up straight. “He showed me how the church’s corruption, the seals they placed on Boj’s power, holds us back—us, the Silovs, and anyone else with the ability to grasp power. He exposed me to the selfishness of the agitators, scrabbling for a thread of power so they can unravel the whole system. He told me the church sealed up some of the well of power, and that only I can wrench it free.” The chair groaned as she leaned toward him. “I’m the only hope Russalka has left.”

  Aleksei watched her with his face scrunched up and his eyes narrowed to points. “Don’t be so sure about that.”

  “I’m completely sure, Sasha. If I can draw on all of Boj’s power, if Ravin can help me, then no one, no agitator, no saint, no Boj can stop us.”

  Aleksei threw his hands in the air, his serious façade gone. “Oh! Well, if I’d known it were only so simple as all that! Brave talk from the little girl who used to balk at the sight of blood. Who ran and hid from her own mother the moment her true illness came out.”

  Katza flinched. “I cannot cure Mother. But I can ease her suffering. I look after her a good sight better than any of you ever did—Father included.”

  “Ease her suffering, or control it? Like you wish to control everything else?” Aleksei shook his head. “Your control cannot last forever.”

  His words hung in the air between them, crystalline with frost. Katza scooted back in her chair as the crystals fluttered to the ground.

  “You can only squeeze so tight,” he said, “until the country cracks.”

  He raised a fist to show her. But he was hardening, tinted blue with cold. His flesh stiffened and shattered, crumbling from his fingers, his hands, his arm.

  “The more you clench in your fist, the more you will find that the only thing you crush is your own people’s good will.”

  His shoulders crumbled now. His throat and his lips. Katza scrambled back from him, mouth covered in horror. “Aleksei!” she screamed. “Aleksei, no! Please, don’t leave me again!”

  “You are doing very well, Katza.” What remained of Aleksei lurched to its feet. His eyes, glimmering shards of ice, slid down and landed on the ground. Everything was cold, radiant with cold, pulling the warmth from Katza’s skin as she tried to back away. “But Russalka is deeply broken and hurting. It will not be enough.” Only his voice remained, glinting with frost. “Won’t you join me soon?”

  Katza turned and fled the basement tavern, her heart lodged in her throat.

  He was wrong, he was wrong. He was only a vision, after all—perhaps only a representation of her own fears. But she knew better. Control was the only way. And when she and Ravin unsealed the well, then she’d be able to stop the protesters and prove that it wasn’t too late. Russalka was broken, but it could be fixed. It could always be fixed.

  Katza’s boots pounded down the path, filling the same plugs in the snow that she’d trudged through before. Finally she reached the clearing, the fork in the path, and caught herself against the nearest birch. She couldn’t suck down enough air. Aleksei’s words stung at her ears like a bitter wind. But the silence, the deathly silence of the forest, pressed in all around her. Gradually, her breathing slowed.

  It must have been the wrong path, that was all. She’d tried to look back on her brother, but as the story of Saint Galina warned, you could never return home. Katza hoisted herself off of the birch trunk and rubbed the papery bark from her hands. She could mourn her brother, but she could not bring him back. She could only move forward. Was that this vision’s lesson?

  With a deep breath, Katza set down the other path.

  At first, the road was silent, and just as untouched as the other. But as Katza traveled further, she spotted tracks in the snow. Only a few at first, but then dozens of them—boot prints, hooves, narrow rail tracks from sleighs and wider lines from wheeled carts. And then she heard—singing?

  Singing. An evening petition to the saints, rich and echoing and vibrant, as if sung in a beautiful chapel.

  She stumbled from the path and onto a rustic village square.

  Everything was built from wood, in the curved, slatted style she’d seen in rural Russalkan towns. Homes with long porches wrapping them, a church with turnip domes, even a gathering hall, with a copper bell out front to ring for announcements. A farmer guided his oxen across the square, bundled up and wearing wide trousers and a loose sashed tunic beneath his embroidered coat. His wife, in a broad red embroidered skirt, tipped her head Katza’s way as she tied a scarf around her hair.

  Katza trudged through the square, drawn by the singing that emanated from the church. Their voices were so beautiful that for all the church’s plainness, surely Boj and the Saints’ Wheel must feel amply beseeched.

  Katza reached the churchyard and looked out across the graves peeking from the snow. Dozens and dozens of simple wooden Saints’ Wheels marked each gravesite. Katza made the sign of Boj and issued a blessing for them all. She reached for the latch on the churchyard gate, but then stopped.

  The singing had paused; inside, a priest’s voice rumbled with low prayer. Katza tilted her head to one side. There was another voice, but this one whispered to her as if carried on the wind. She looked to her left, and saw another path leading past the churchyard, deeper into the woods. Something in the path called to her, like the glimmer of a hearth.

  Katza left the fence and approached the other path.

  A simple wooden hut waited for her, tucked inside the woods, soft amber light trickling from its shuttered windows and doors. With the prayers at her back, Katza continued down the path, a smile creeping onto her face. She knew who awaited her here, and it made her heart race.

  The door opened. He stood in the entryway, backlit in golden light. Though his features were shadowed, she knew him at once.

  Ravin.

  He held a hand out to her to pull her inside. His arms slid around her waist and he kicked the door closed behind her. “Katza,” he murmured, crushing her to his chest.

  “Ravin.” She sank into him. “My prophet.”

  “I need you. I’ve waited for you for so long.” He reached up to cradle her head. “My blessed sun. I need you more than you know.”

  Katza’s lashes fluttered against his cheeks. “And I need you.”

  His mouth crushed against hers, lust and warmth and smoke all at once against her tongue, their lips moving as one. Katza tasted him and never wanted to taste anything else. He seared like vodok but filled her belly with a fire no liquor could match. He scorched her veins but left her yearning for more. He was strength and determination and hunger and delight, and every kiss, every last inch of him, belonged to her.

  As she belonged to him.

  He broke the kiss, and his lips trailed against her cheekbone, her earlobe, her neck. “I need you.” It was nearly a growl. “You are power and grace and decis
iveness, and you are mine.”

  Katza cried out as his teeth grazed her skin. But she wanted more. She wanted to be devoured by him, this temnost prophet, this feral creature, at once so restrained and so unbound. He slid his hands beneath the shoulders of her coat and coaxed it from her arms. The warm fire roared against Katza’s bared skin; she sucked in her breath, imagining him undressing her more. His mouth fell on hers again as he found the fasteners running down the back of her gown. Each click of one easing open sent a shiver down her spine.

  Yes. Yes. She wanted this. She wanted him. This was the right path, the path to unchained freedom, to pleasure unleashed, to power unchecked . . .

  As the dress slipped open around her, though, she was struck with a rush of cold.

  Katza gasped. Ravin held her firm against him, his arms strong as steel. His face contorted as the fire in the hearth guttered and flared out. Dark shadows twisted his expression; only his eyes, glittering with hunger, remained. Katza felt the warmth leaching out of her, replaced only by painful cold.

  “Thank you,” Ravin growled. He tossed his head back and laughed cruelly, clutching her still. His nails became claws, piercing her flesh. Robbing her warmth. Katza squirmed against him, but he held her fast. “Thank you for setting me free.”

  Katza awoke with a jolt. She was still in the troika—Ravin was gone. The furs had fallen from her, or maybe she’d shoved them away, and her skin was tight, numb. She burrowed deeper beneath the blankets, but the raking cold she’d felt in the vision wouldn’t leave. She exhaled, and her breath turned firm and white.

  He’d been trying to consume her—rob her power for himself. But it was only a vision, only a hint of what could have been—

  But it could have been a warning for the path she now treaded. The cold roared inside of her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she did not stop, he’d rip her strength from her until there was nothing left.

  It had to be wrong. He’d never hurt her so. He was the only one who believed in her, wholly, unconditionally. How could the vision be right?

  The troika was slowing. Nadika tossed a glance over her shoulder toward Katza, her face limned in moonlight, as the woods parted and the hill they’d been climbing evened out. Katza lifted her head. There, shadowy and looming, was the unlit Summer Palace at Zolotov. Its cheery yellow walls, framed in white columns, looked a deep, foreboding gray in the night.

  “We’re here,” Nadika said.

  Katza stepped out of the troika with shaky arms. She could puzzle over the vision’s message later. For now, she had to plan how to take her city back.

  Stolichkov went to rouse the groundskeeper and her husband from the small cottage attached to the estate while Katza and Nadika stepped inside the grand foyer. Though the Summer Palace was smaller than the main palace she enjoyed in Petrovsk, it was no less grandiose. Gold competed with lapis lazuli and granite and marble and precious gems, all clamoring for the eye as they swirled toward the foyer’s dome.

  A handful of sconces were already aglow with gaslight for the servants who occupied the palace year round. Katza turned from the foyer and headed down one of the side corridors, glancing at the covered furniture like she was surveying a battlefield. So many ghosts of memories danced around her—times with her father and brother; times with her mother, when her illness had not been so fierce. She stopped at the grand parlor and yanked the dustcloth from the round settee with a mechanical clock tower rising from its center. Her mother’s favorite piece. Katza traced her fingers over the clock’s front, but the hands had stopped.

  She turned to find Nadika watching her with a heavily lined face.

  “Apologies.” Katza shook her head and withdrew her hand. It was scarcely warmer inside than out. “I was only . . . remembering.”

  Nadika’s expression softened. “I’m sorry, tsarika.”

  “No need.” Katza strode toward the doorway to meet her. “We’re only staying for the night. To rest up and sort out a plan. We must return to the city tomorrow to meet with my military staff.”

  “Word’s already been dispatched to the garrison—one of the servants here is skiing down the frozen Zima tributary.” Nadika tilted her head. “They’ll come to meet you here, though. It isn’t safe for you.”

  Katza gritted her teeth. She wanted to go back to Petrovsk now, to expel the traitors from her home. “You’re certain the garrison is unharmed?”

  “If your soldiers let a single revolutionary into the garrison, then they’re hardly deserving of being your soldiers.”

  The words brought Katza little comfort.

  Nadika beckoned her to follow; as Katza stepped into the hall, she spied the groundskeeper, Olga, and her husband, Igor, standing in the hall, eyes bleary with sleep but otherwise at attention and ready to serve. “Shall we fix you a meal, Your Highness?” Olga asked.

  “For my guests, if they wish it.” She motioned to Nadika, Fahed, and Stolichkov. “For now, I’d just like to rest.”

  Olga dropped into a low curtsey. “I’ll have your rooms fixed up right away. Err—” She blushed. “Unless you’d rather the tsar’s rooms—”

  Katza shook her head. “My usual rooms will be quite acceptable.”

  They followed Olga to the grand staircase and up to Katza’s rooms. “The garrison is well-protected by the bay’s shape,” Nadika said, though Katza wasn’t sure whether she was reassuring Katza or herself. “They’ll send pigeon back tonight, then hopefully we can meet with them in the morning to be apprised of the situation in full.”

  Katza’s throat tightened. “What about my mother? What about . . . Ravin?”

  Nadika glanced down. “I’ll do whatever I can to find out.” Olga poked her head from the tsarika’s room, and Nadika nudged Katza in. “Go. Sleep. There is nothing more we can do tonight.”

  “What about you?” Katza asked. She smiled sadly at her friend, wind-chapped and weary as well. “You need sleep, too. Look at you, you’re exhausted.”

  Nadika shook her head. “Absolutely not. You have no other guards here, so I must stand watch. Just in case.” She mustered a faint smile. “I’ll sleep when you wake. I promise, tsarika.”

  Katza thought to protest, but the exhaustion that had been steadily threading through her limbs pulled tight. The awful vision of Ravin consuming her, draining her, flickered through her thoughts. “Saints watch over you,” she mumbled, and went to collapse into bed.

  She slept instantly, but not well.

  Katza awoke to a fresh round of snow dancing in her windows. She dismissed Nadika from her post and went to relieve herself in the privy, and by the time she’d freshened up and squeezed into a summer dress ill-suited to the palace’s chill, she heard a clamor of voices from downstairs.

  “Your Highness.”

  Admiral Akuliy and the generals Kutuzov, Kamenev, and Tolchin awaited her in the dining hall, where Olga and Igor had laid out an impressive spread of breakfast. They eyed her violet sleeveless gown and thin shawl for only a moment, and wisely kept their thoughts to themselves.

  Katza sat down and smeared a dollop of sour cream and caviar across a slice of black bread. She couldn’t even recall the last time she’d eaten. She certainly wasn’t expecting to find such a feast in Zolotov, but she was in no position to decline it. “Tell me,” Katza said, after swallowing down a few bites. “What awaits me in Petrovsk?”

  The generals exchanged glances at her wording. “Well,” Kamenev started, “as you may know, rioters have seized the Golden Palace . . .”

  “Yes, of course I know that.” Katza waved the sour cream spoon in the air. “How many shall I expect to fend off?”

  Another three-way look amongst the generals, as if they couldn’t fathom attempting such a thing. Admiral Akuliy, however, seemed to know precisely what Katza was capable of, and laced his fingers across his belly with a bemused look.

  “By
our estimate, there are at least two hundred of them in the palace right now.” Kutuzov looked to his peers for confirmation; they nodded. “Another three hundred around the perimeter, constructing barricades along the palace square and seizing weapons from the city guards.”

  “Your Highness . . .” General Tolchin leaned forward, expression grim. “The city guardsmen are defecting en masse. Some of our soldiers, too, though I assure you we are stepping up enforcement to prevent that. They claim to side with Ulmarova. And she has—she has prophets in her midst.”

  “False prophets,” Katza said.

  Tolchin blinked a few times. “How can they be false, if the saints are granting them their gifts?”

  “Ah.” Katza dismissed his concern with a flick of her hand. “A matter for another time. I’ll be sure they are robbed of them in due course.”

  Admiral Akuliy’s smile faded at that.

  The three generals consulted one another with wordless twitches of their bushy brows. Finally, Kamenev spoke. “We advise that you strike a bargain with the protesters.”

  “A bargain?” Katza laughed. “Now why in the devil would I want to do that?”

  “The Hessarians are returning, and with more forces than you encountered before. Perhaps if you promise the protesters that you’ll hold the Hessarians off once more, they’ll be willing to . . . to work with you, come to some sort of agreement . . . It might be a show of good faith.”

  Katza lowered the spoon to her plate and stared down at the intricate pattern. The plates were painted in the rustic peasant style: black lacquer splashed with flowers and animals in swirling, looping red and gold. “The Hessarians are returning?”

  “We received word from the Narrows last night,” Akuliy said. “The rest of the fleet that had been anchored at the bay’s mouth is headed east. For Petrovsk.”

  “And what’s more, a pigeon from Bintar warns us that Hessarian ground troops are gathering at the southern mouth of the Bintar mountain range.” General Kutuzov sighed. “I’ve studied this tactic before. The Texeirans employed it once to take land back from Bintar. A two-pronged attack designed to squeeze us between their flanks.”