“That is enough! You will clear the road or we will—”
Boom. The first explosion rocked the mountain.
All eyes turned to the factory.
“That sounded a lot bigger than it was supposed to,” said Leoni.
Boom. Another blast, then another. Right on time.
“Sweet Djel,” the red-capped man said, pointing up toward the old fort. “The dam.”
“Oh Saints,” said Leoni. “Something’s wrong. My proportions must have been off, I—”
Another boom sounded, followed by a terrifying roar. All of a sudden people were screaming and running down the hill. The young fisherman took his sister in his arms and leapt from the back of the wagon.
“We have to get out of here!” he yelled.
“There’s no time,” said the man with the red cap.
Nina and Leoni clambered out of the back of the wagon. High above, dark columns of smoke rose from the flames at the factory. But far more frightening was the wall of water rushing toward them. The dam had shattered, and a snarling wave frothed and foamed down the mountain, uprooting trees and crushing everything in its path.
“Maybe it will lose momentum,” said the fisherman, hugging his sister close.
“Move!” shouted Leoni. “That water is loaded with poison! Anyone it touches is done for.” The guilt and fear on her face hurt Nina’s heart, but this was the way it had to be. Fjerda didn’t need mercy. It needed miracles.
“We did this,” said Hanne. “We have to stop it.”
Some of the townspeople were scrambling up the hillsides, but the wave was coming too fast.
“Get behind me!” Adrik yelled at the crowd.
“Now!” Nina commanded in Fjerdan when the people hesitated.
“Leoni,” Adrik said as the people crowded in, forming a wedge behind him. “Can you do it?”
She nodded, determined, touched her fingers to the jewels in her hair, lips moving in a whispered prayer. Nina could hear Leoni’s warning in her head: Poisons are tricky work.
The wave thundered toward them, churning with foam and bits of debris, so tall and wide it seemed to block out the sun.
“Get ready!” Adrik cried.
Leoni spread her arms.
Adrik thrust his hand forward, and the wave split, cleaved by the force of the gust he summoned, passing around the townspeople in an angry flood.
As the water passed, Leoni raised her hands and Nina saw a yellowy cloud appear in the air around her. She was drawing the poison from the water.
Grisha. Nina heard the word rise from the crowd. Drüsjen. Witches.
The cloud of poison grew above them as the water tumbled on and on. At last the tide had exhausted itself, but Leoni continued to draw the poison out until the flood had slowed to a trickle.
She stood with arms raised in the sudden silence as the crowd stared upward at the lethal mass of muddy yellow powder hovering over their heads.
“Pestijla!” they cried out. “Morden!” Poison. Death.
“No,” Nina murmured to herself. “Opportunity.” She reached into the waters of the flood, seeking the materials she needed, her power touching on the bones of girls lost in the dark. She grabbed hold.
Leoni’s arms were shaking, her lips pulled back in a grimace. Adrik whirled, focusing the wind, forming it into a tiny cyclone, gathering the poison and driving it into the empty guardhouse. With a twist of his wrist, the door slammed shut. He grabbed Leoni up against him before she could collapse.
In the new quiet, Nina could hear the babies wailing, people crying. She didn’t know how much damage the water might have done to the buildings below.
The crowd was staring at Adrik and Leoni. The soldiers raised their rifles. Nina prepared to call the corpses from the factory to protect them. But she hoped, she hoped …
“Look!” cried the man in the red cap.
In the wake of the water, a great ash tree stood in the center of the road, its white branches stretching to the sky, its thick roots sprawling in the mud.
“Djel and all his waters,” said the man from the tavern, beginning to weep. “It’s made of bone.”
The bones of the girls lost to the mountain, forged by Nina’s power into something new.
“Praise Djel,” said the young fisherman, and fell to his knees.
Nina was glad now that she could not hear Matthias’ voice, that he could not witness the way she had used his god. The trick she’d pulled wasn’t the act of a soldier with honor. It was a bit of theater, the low illusion of con men and thieves.
But she was not sorry. The work she and Adrik and Leoni had been doing, the work of the Hringsa, was not enough. No matter how many Grisha they saved, there would always be more they could not. There would always be Fjerda with its tanks and its pyres and men like Jarl Brum to light the match. Unless Nina found a way to change it all.
“Lay down your arms,” said the man in the red cap as the village of Gäfvalle went to its knees. “We have seen miracles today.”
“Praise Djel!” shouted Nina. She knelt before Adrik and Leoni in her Springmaiden pinafore. “And praise the new Saints.”
ZOYA SPED ACROSS THE SANDS, praying she was not too late. She had once thought only a Grisha in the grip of parem could fly. Now she arrived on the storm, borne aloft by thunderheads. It was almost as if she could feel Juris beneath her.
The sight that greeted her was horrifying.
Grigori had spread himself over the thorn wood in a great dome, built and rebuilt of sinew, trying to keep Elizaveta and Yuri away from Nikolai and his shadow self. Zoya saw Elizaveta’s thorns stabbing through Grigori’s flesh, her stalks writhing like serpents, lashing out to puncture him again and again.
But when the Bodymaker began to scream, Zoya realized it was not the thorns that had undone him, but the insects Elizaveta had set upon his body. Tiny holes and furrows began to appear on his flesh as burrowing insects consumed him. His body broke apart, trying to escape itself. He shook and trembled and then opened a thousand mouths to cry out as he was devoured.
Yuri stood behind Elizaveta, like a child hiding behind his mother’s skirts, his hands pressed to his lips as if to stifle his own terror. Stupid boy. Had he known what Elizaveta intended to unleash? Had his Starless Saint promised him less bloodshed, or did a fanatic not care?
The Bodymaker shuddered and collapsed. Elizaveta gave a shout of triumph and descended upon the pinned bodies of Nikolai and the shadow creature, both of them now held in place by the vines of the thorn wood.
Zoya took two broken pieces of obsidian from her sleeve and cracked them together. The spark was all she needed. A gout of flame roared toward Elizaveta, who reared back in surprise.
Then the Saint’s lips quirked in amusement. “I thought you were wise enough to run, Zoya. You’re too late. The Darkling’s spirit will soon reenter his body. There’s no reason for you to be a casualty of this battle.”
“My king lies bleeding. I am his subject and his soldier, and I come to fight for him.”
“You are Grisha, Zoya Nazyalensky. You need be subject to no one and nothing.”
Zoya could feel the pull of power even now. It would always be with her, this hunger for more. But she had made the acquaintance of tyrants before. “Subject to no one but you? The Darkling?”