“At some point, you might consider treating me as something other than a fool. Trust me, Zoya. You may come to enjoy it.”
“That’s what Tamar said about absinthe.”
“And?”
“It still tastes like sugar dipped in kerosene.”
Zoya cast a glance over her shoulder and saw the priest watching them from the city gates, his eyes as dark as pits. Nikolai might joke all he liked, but every concession they made to the Apparat felt like a misstep. The old king, the Darkling, Alina Starkov—they’d all bargained with the priest, and all of them had paid in blood.
Zoya spent the rest of her day overseeing a new squadron of Squallers and sending orders to the outposts along the southern border. She hoped the Grisha forces there would be able to guard against a possible Shu attack. She dined in the Hall of the Golden Dome beside Genya and David, listening with one ear to Genya’s plans for the arrival of their international guests as she thumbed through a summary of David’s work with Kuwei Yul-Bo. The young Inferni sat at a table surrounded by other young Grisha. His late father had created parem, and Kuwei had done his best to share his knowledge of that work with David and the other Fabrikators attempting to alter the addictive side effects of the drug. But he was less a scientist than a soldier. Though Genya had tailored him slightly, Kuwei’s gifts as an Inferni were his greatest disguise; no one in the Shu Han had known of his abilities. He had chosen a new name when he’d come to the Little Palace: Nhaban. It meant “rising phoenix” in Shu. The boy was as pretentious as he was gifted.
After dinner she managed another hour of work before she ventured to the Grand Palace to lock Nikolai in for the night and then allowed herself to retire to her chambers. They had once belonged to the Darkling. Genya and David had refused them when they’d assumed their duties in the Triumvirate, but Zoya had gladly occupied the spacious rooms. She was happy to take anything that had once been his, and she had swung the first hammer when it was time to tear down the old furnishings and remake the space to her liking. A gesture. She wasn’t about to let her hands get calloused and had left the real effort to the workmen. It had taken long months and considerable Fabrikator craft to fashion the rooms to her taste, but now the domed ceiling showed a sky thick with cloud, and the walls had been treated to look like a storm-swept sea. Few people noticed the little boat that had been painted into one of the six corners, or the flag it flew with two tiny stars. And no one who did would have known what it meant.
Zoya washed and dressed for bed. There had been a time when she had been able to sleep deeply beneath the domes of the Little Palace, but that was before the Darkling’s coup. He had shattered her belief that nothing could touch this place, this home that had once been a haven. Now she slept lightly—and woke instantly at the sound of a knock on her chamber door.
The monk, she thought. I knew we shouldn’t have let him into the palace.
But as soon as Zoya slid the bolt and opened the door, Tamar said, “Nikolai is out.”
“Impossible,” Zoya protested, though she was already reaching for her boots.
Tamar’s brows rose as Zoya tossed a coat over her nightdress, cobwebs of silver silk that flickered like lightning in a storm cloud when the lamplight struck the sheer fabric just right. “Who did you dress for tonight?” she asked.
“Myself,” snapped Zoya. “Do we know where he headed?”
“Tolya saw him fly west toward Balakirev.”
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t think so. No alarm sounded. But we can’t be sure. We’re lucky this didn’t happen in the summer.”
When the sun never properly set and anyone would be able to see a monster in the skies.
“How?” Zoya asked as she nudged a panel in the wall and it slid open to reveal a long flight of stairs. When she’d had her chambers refurbished, she’d had a tunnel dug to connect it to the network of passages beneath Os Alta. “Those chains are reinforced with Grisha steel. If he’s gotten stronger—”
“They weren’t broken,” said Tamar from behind her. “They were unlocked.”
Zoya stumbled and nearly toppled down the stairs. Unlocked? Then someone knew Nikolai’s secret? Had sought to sabotage their work to keep it undiscovered? The implications were overwhelming.
Long moments later they were pushing into the basement of the Convent of Sankta Lizabeta. Tolya waited in the gardens with three horses.
“Tell me,” Zoya said as she and Tamar mounted.
“I heard glass breaking,” Tolya replied. “When I ran inside, I saw the king take flight from the window casement. No one had come or gone through his door.”
Damn it. Then had the monster somehow managed to pick the locks? Zoya kicked her horse into a gallop. She had a thousand questions, but they could worry about how Nikolai had gotten free once they’d retrieved him.
They rode hard over the bridge and through the streets of the lower town. At a signal to the guards, they thundered through the gates and Os Alta’s famous double walls. How far had Nikolai gotten? How far would he go? Better that he flew away from the city, away from anywhere heavily populated. Zoya reached for the invisible currents that flowed around them, higher and higher, seeking the disruption on the wind that was Nikolai. It was not only the weight and size of him but the very wrongness of him that brushed against her power. Merzost. Abomination. The taint of something monstrous in his blood.
“He’s still headed west,” she said, feeling his presence bleed across her senses. “He’s in Balakirev.” A pretty little spot. One of the favored places for Grisha to visit for sleigh rides and festivals in better times.
They slowed their horses as they approached the outskirts of town and the dirt roads gave way to cobblestones. Balakirev slept, its windows dark and houses quiet. Here or there Zoya saw a lantern lit through the glass, a mother tending to a fussy infant, a clerk working late into the predawn hours. She turned her awareness to the skies and gestured the twins forward. Nikolai was moving toward the town center.
The main square was silent, lined by the courthouse, the town hall, the grand offices of the local governor. Stone paths radiated from a large fountain, where Zoya knew the women would come to do their washing. A statue of Sankt Juris stood at its center, his lance piercing the heart of a great dragon as water cascaded from the back of the beast’s wings. Zoya had always hated that particular story. The great warrior Juris seemed like a big bully.
“The roof,” she whispered, pointing to the town hall. “I’ll watch the perimeter.”
Tamar and Tolya slipped silently from their horses, shackles in hand, and disappeared into the building. If Nikolai took flight, she could try to bring him down or at least track him. But dawn was coming on. They had to move quickly.
She waited in the shadows, eyes trained on the spires of the town hall. The night felt too still. Zoya had the uncomfortable sense that she was being watched, but the shops and buildings surrounding the square showed no signs of life. High above, the roofline of the town hall seemed to shift. A shadow broke from the roof, wings spread against the moonlit sky. Zoya lifted her hands and prepared to bring Nikolai down, but he circled once, then settled on the towering spike of the church’s bell tower.