NINA CLUTCHED HER KNIFE and tried to ignore the carnage that surrounded her. She looked down at her victim, another body splayed out helpless before her.
“Sorry, friend,” she murmured in Fjerdan. She drove her blade into the fish’s belly, yanked up toward its head, seized the wet pink mess of its innards, and tossed them onto the filthy slats where they would be hosed away. The cleaned carcass went into a barrel to her left, to be cleared by one of the runners and taken off for packaging. Or processing. Or pickling. Nina had no idea what actually happened to the fish, and she didn’t much care. After two weeks working at a cannery overlooking the Elling harbor, she didn’t intend to eat anything with scales or fins ever again.
Imagine yourself in a warm bath with a dish full of toffees. Maybe she’d just fill the bathtub with toffee and be really decadent about the endeavor. It could become quite the rage. Toffee baths and waffle scrubs. Nina gave her head a shake. This place was slowly driving her mad.
Her hands were perpetually pruned, the skin nicked by tiny cuts from her clumsy way with the filleting knife; the smell of fish never left her hair; and her back ached from being on her feet in front of the cannery from dawn until dusk, rain or shine, protected from the elements by nothing but a corrugated tin awning. But there weren’t many jobs for unmarried women in Fjerda, so Nina—under the name Mila Jandersdat—had gladly taken the position. The work was grueling but made it easy for their local contact to get her messages, and her vantage point among the fish barrels gave her a perfect view of the guards patrolling the harbor.
There were plenty of them today, roaming the docks in their blue
uniforms. Kalfisk, the locals called them—squid—because they had their tentacles in everything. Elling sat where the Stelge River met the Isenvee, and it was one of the few harbors along Fjerda’s rocky northwest coast with easy access to the sea for large vessels. The port was known for two things: smuggling and fish. Coalfish, monkfish, haddock; salmon and sturgeon from the river cities to the east; tilefish and silver-sided king mackerel from the deep waters offshore.
Nina worked beside two women—a Hedjut widow named Annabelle, and Marta, a spinster from Djerholm who was as narrow as a gap in the floorboards and constantly shook her head as if everything displeased her. Their chatter helped to keep Nina distracted and was a welcome source of gossip and legitimate information, though it could be hard to tell the difference between the two.
“They say Captain Birgir has a new mistress,” Annabelle would begin.
Marta would purse her lips. “With the bribes he takes he can certainly afford to keep her.”
“They’re increasing patrols since those stowaways were caught.”
Marta would cluck her tongue. “Means more jobs but probably more trouble.”
“More men in from Gäfvalle today. River’s gone sour up by the old fort.”
Marta’s head would twitch back and forth like a happy dog’s tail. “A sign of Djel’s disfavor. Someone should send a priest to say prayers.”
Gäfvalle. One of the river cities. Nina had never been there, had never even heard of it until she’d arrived with Adrik and Leoni two months ago on orders from King Nikolai, but its name always left her uneasy, the sound of it accompanied by a kind of sighing inside her, as if the town’s name was less a word than the start of an incantation.
Now Marta knocked the base of her knife against the wooden surface of her worktable. “Foreman coming.”
Hilbrand, the stern-faced foreman, was moving through the rows of stalls, calling out to runners to remove the buckets of fish.
“Your pace is off again,” he barked at Nina. “It’s as if you’ve never gutted fish before.”
Imagine that. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I’ll do better.”
He cut his hand through the air. “Too slow. The shipment we’ve been waiting for has arrived. We’ll move you to the packing room floor.”
“Yes, sir,” Nina said glumly. She dropped her shoulders and hung her
head when what she really wanted to do was break into song. The pay for packing jobs was considerably lower, so she had to make a good show of her defeat, but she’d understood Hilbrand’s real message: The last of the Grisha fugitives they’d been waiting for had made it to the Elling safe house at last. Now it was up to Nina, Adrik, and Leoni to get the seven newcomers aboard the Verstoten.
She followed close behind Hilbrand as he led her back toward the cannery.
“You’ll have to move quickly,” he said without looking at her. “There’s talk of a surprise inspection tonight.”
“All right.” An obstacle, but nothing they couldn’t handle. “There’s more,” he said. “Birgir is on duty.”
Of course he is. No doubt the surprise inspection was Captain Birgir’s idea. Of all the kalfisk, he was the most corrupt but also the sharpest and most observant. If you wanted a legal shipment to get through the harbor without being trapped forever in customs—or if you wanted an illegal bit of cargo to avoid notice—then a bribe for Birgir was the cost.
A man without honor, said Matthias’ voice in her head. He should be ashamed.
Nina snorted. If men were ashamed when they should be, they’d have no time for anything else.
“Is something amusing?” Hilbrand asked.
“Just fighting a cold,” she lied. But even Hilbrand’s gruff manner put a pang in her heart. He was broad-shouldered and humorless and reminded her painfully of Matthias.
He’s nothing like me. What a bigot you are, Nina Zenik. Not all Fjerdans look alike.
“You know what Birgir did to those stowaways,” Hilbrand said. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful.”
“No, you don’t,” Nina said more sharply than she meant to. She was good at her job, and she knew exactly what was at stake. Her first morning at the docks, she’d seen Birgir and one of his favorite thugs, Casper, drag a mother and daughter off a whaler bound for Novyi Zem and beat them bloody. The captain had hung heavy chains around their necks weighted with signs that read drüsje—witch. Then he’d doused them in a slurry of waste and fish guts from the canneries and bound them outside the harbor station in the blazing sun. As his men looked on, laughing, the stink and the promise of food drew the gulls. Nina had
spent her shift watching the woman trying to shield her daughter’s body with her own, and listening to the prisoners cry out in agony as the gulls pecked and clawed at their bodies. Her mind had spun a thousand fantasies of murdering Birgir’s harbor guards where they stood, of whisking the mother and daughter to safety. She could steal a boat. She could force a ship’s captain to take them far away. She could do something.
But she’d remembered too clearly Zoya’s warning to King Nikolai about Nina’s suitability for a deep-cover mission: “She doesn’t have a subtle bone in her body. Asking Nina not to draw attention is like asking water not to run downhill.”
The king had taken a chance on Nina, and she would not squander the opportunity. She would not jeopardize the mission. She would not compromise her cover and put Adrik and Leoni at risk. At least not in broad daylight. As soon as the sun had set, she’d slipped back to the harbor to free the prisoners. They were gone. But to where? And to suffer what horrors? She no longer believed that the worst terror awaiting Grisha at the hands of Fjerdan soldiers was death. Jarl Brum and his witchhunters had taught her too well.
As Nina followed Hilbrand into the cannery, the grind of machinery rattled her skull, the stink of salt cod overwhelming her. She wouldn’t be sorry to leave Elling for a while. The hold of the Verstoten was full of Grisha that her team—or Adrik’s team, really—had helped rescue and bring to Elling. Since the end of the civil war, King Nikolai had diverted funds and resources to support an underground network of informants that had existed for years in Fjerda with the goal of helping Grisha living in secret to escape the country. They called themselves Hringsa, the tree of life, after the great ash sacred to Djel. Nina knew Adrik had already received new intelligence from the group, and once the Verstoten was safely on its way to Ravka, Nina and the others would be free to head inland to locate more Grisha.
Hilbrand led her to his office, shut the door behind them, then ran his fingers along the far wall. A click sounded and a second, hidden door opened onto the Fiskstrahd, the bustling street where fishmongers did their business and where a girl on her own might avoid the notice of the harbor police by simply disappearing into the crowd.
“Thank you,” Nina said. “We’ll be sending more your way soon.” “Wait.” Hilbrand snagged her arm before she could slip into the
sunshine. He hesitated, then blurted out, “Are you really her? The girl who bested Jarl Brum and left him bleeding on a Djerholm dock?”
Nina yanked her arm from his grip. She’d done what she had to do to free her friends and keep the secret of jurda parem out of Fjerdan hands. But it was the drug that had made victory possible, and it had exacted an awful price, changing the course of Nina’s life and the very nature of her Grisha power.
If we’d never gone to the Ice Court, would Matthias still be alive? Would my heart still be whole? Pointless questions. There was no answer that would bring him back.
Nina fixed Hilbrand with the withering glare she’d learned from Zoya Nazyalensky herself. “I’m Mila Jandersdat. A young widow taking odd jobs to make ends meet and hoping to secure work as a translator. What kind of fool would pick a fight with Commander Jarl Brum?” Hilbrand opened his mouth, but Nina continued, “And what kind of podge would risk compromising an agent’s cover when so many lives are on the line?” Nina turned her back on him and waded into the human tide.
Dangerous. A man who lived his life in deep cover shouldn’t be so careless. But Nina knew that loneliness could make you foolish, hungry to speak something other than lies. Hilbrand had lost his wife to Brum’s men, the ruthless drüskelle trained to hunt and kill Grisha. Since then, he’d become one of King Nikolai’s most trusted operatives in Fjerda. Nina didn’t doubt his loyalty, and his own safety relied on his discretion. It took Nina less than ten minutes to reach the address Hilbrand had given her, another cannery identical to the buildings bracketing it— except for the mural on its western side. At first glance, it looked like a pleasant scene set at the mouth of the Stelge: a group of fishermen casting their nets into the sea as happy villagers looked on beneath a setting sun. But if you knew what to look for, you might notice the white-haired girl in the crowd, her profile framed by the sun as if by a halo. Sankta Alina. The Sun Summoner. A sign that this warehouse was
a place of refuge.
The Saints had never been popular among the people of the north— until Alina Starkov had destroyed the Fold. Then altars to her had begun to spring up in countries far outside Ravka. Fjerdan authorities had done their best to quash the cult of the Sun Saint, labeling it a religion of foreign influence, but still, little pockets of the faithful had bloomed, gardens tended in secret. The stories of the Saints, their miracles and
martyrdoms, had become a code for those sympathetic to Grisha. A rose for Sankta Lizabeta. A sun for Sankta Alina. A knight skewering a dragon on his lance might be Dagr the Bold from some children’s tale— or it might be Sankt Juris, who had slain a great beast and been consumed by its flames. Even the tattoos that ran over Hilbrand’s forearms were more than they seemed—a tangle of antlers, often worn by northern hunters, but arranged in circular bands to symbolize the powerful amplifier Sankta Alina had once worn.
Nina knocked on the cannery’s side door, and a moment later it swung open. Adrik ushered her inside, his glum face pale beneath his freckles. His features were pleasant enough, but he maintained a relentlessly defeated demeanor that gave him the look of a melting candle. Instantly, Nina’s eyes began to water.
“I know,” said Adrik dismally. “Elling. If the cold doesn’t kill you, the smell will.”
“No fish smells like that. My eyes are burning.”
“It’s lye. Vats of it. Apparently they preserve fish in it as some kind of local delicacy.”
She could almost hear Matthias’ indignant protest: It’s delicious. We serve it on toast. Saints, she missed him. The ache of his absence felt like a hook lodged inside her heart. The hurt was always there, but in moments like these, it was as if someone had seized hold of the line and pulled.
Nina took a deep breath. Matthias would want her to focus on the mission. “They’re here?”
“They are. But there’s a problem.”
She’d thought Adrik seemed more morose than usual. And that was saying something.
Nina saw Leoni first, bent over a makeshift crate desk beside a row of vats, a lantern near her elbow, her ordinarily cheerful face set in hard lines of determination. The twists of her hair were knotted in the Zemeni style, and her dark brown skin was sheened with sweat. On the floor next to her, she’d cracked open her kit—pots of ink and powdered pigments, rolls of paper and parchment. But that made no sense. The emigration documents should have been long since finished.
Understanding came as Nina’s eyes adjusted and she saw the figures huddled in the shadows—a bearded man in a muskrat-colored coat and a far older man with a thick thatch of white hair. Two little boys peeked
out from behind them, eyes wide and frightened. Four fugitives. There should have been seven.
Leoni glanced up at Nina, then at the fugitive Grisha, offering them a warm smile. “She’s a friend. Don’t worry.”
They didn’t look reassured.
“Jormanen end denam danne näskelle,” Nina said, the traditional Fjerdan greeting to travelers. Be welcome and wait out the storm. It wasn’t totally appropriate to their situation, but it was the best she could offer. The men seemed to relax at the words, though the children still looked terrified.
“Grannem end kerjenning grante jut onter kelholm,” the older man said in traditional reply. I thank you and bring only gratitude to your home. Nina hoped that wasn’t true. Ravka didn’t need gratitude; it needed more Grisha. It needed soldiers. She could only imagine what Zoya would make of these recruits.
“Where are the other three?” Nina asked Adrik. “They didn’t meet their handler.”
“Captured?” “Probably.”
“Maybe they had a change of heart,” said Leoni, opening a bottle of something blue. She could always be counted on to find a positive outcome, no matter how unlikely. “It isn’t easy to leave all you love behind.”
“It is when all you love smells of fish and despair,” Adrik grumbled. “The emigration papers?” Nina asked Leoni as gently as she could. “I’m doing my best,” Leoni replied. “You said women don’t travel
alone, so I wrote up the indentures as families, and now we’re short two wives and a daughter.”
Not good at all. Especially with kalfisk crawling all over the docks.
But Leoni was one of the most talented Fabrikators Nina had met.
In recent years, the Fjerdan government had begun to watch their borders more closely and prohibit travel for their citizens. The authorities were on the lookout for Grisha attempting to escape, but they also wanted to slow the tide of people traveling across the True Sea to Novyi Zem seeking better jobs and warmer weather, people willing to brave a new world to live free of the threat of war. Many Ravkans had done the same.
Fjerda’s officials especially didn’t like to let able-bodied men and
prospective soldiers emigrate and had made the necessary papers almost impossible to fake. That was why Leoni was here. She was no ordinary forger but a Fabrikator who could match inks and paper at a molecular level.
Nina pulled a clean handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed Leoni’s brow. “You can manage this.”
She shook her head. “I need more time.”
“We don’t have it.” Nina wished she didn’t have to say so.
“We might,” Leoni said hopefully. She had spent most of her life in Novyi Zem before traveling to Ravka to train, and like many Fabrikators, she had never seen combat. Fabrikators hadn’t even been taught to fight until Alina Starkov had led the Second Army. “We can send word to the Verstoten, ask them to wait until—”
“It’s no good,” Nina said. “That ship has to be out of port by sunset.
Captain Birgir is planning one of his surprise raids tonight.”
Leoni let out a long breath, then bobbed her chin at the man in the muskrat-colored coat. “Nina, we’ll have to pass you off as his wife.”
It wasn’t ideal. Nina had been working at the harbor for weeks now, and there was a chance she’d be recognized. But it was a risk worth taking. “What’s your name?” she asked the man.
“Enok.”
“Those are your sons?”
He nodded. “And this is my father.” “You’re all Grisha?”
“Just me and my boys.”
“Well, lucky you, Enok. You’re about to acquire me as a wife. I enjoy long naps and short engagements, and I prefer the left side of the bed.”
Enok blinked and his father looked positively scandalized. Genya had tailored Nina to look as Fjerdan as possible, but the demure ways of northern women were far more exhausting to master.
Nina tried not to pace as Leoni worked and Adrik spoke quietly to the fugitives. What had happened to the other three Grisha? Nina picked up the discarded emigration documents, priceless sets of papers that would never be used. Two women and a girl of sixteen missing. Had they decided a life in hiding was better than an uncertain future in a foreign land? Or had they been taken prisoner? Were they somewhere out there, scared and alone? Nina frowned at the papers. “Were these women really from Kejerut?”
Leoni nodded. “It seemed simpler to keep the town the same.”
Enok’s father made a sign of warding in the air. It was an old gesture, meant to wash away evil thoughts with the strength of Djel’s waters. “Girls go missing from Kejerut.”
Nina shivered as that strange sighing filled her head again. Kejerut was only a few miles from Gäfvalle. But it all might mean nothing.
She rubbed her arms, trying to dispel the sudden cold that settled into her. She wished Hilbrand hadn’t mentioned Jarl Brum. Despite all she’d been through, it was a name that still had power over her. Nina had defeated him and his men. Her friends had blown Brum’s secret laboratory to bits and stolen his most valuable hostage. He should have been disgraced. It should have meant an end to his command of the drüskelle and his brutal experiments with jurda parem and Grisha prisoners. And yet somehow, Brum had survived and continued to thrive in the highest ranks of the Fjerdan military. I should have killed him when I had the chance.
You showed mercy, Nina. Never regret that.
But mercy was a luxury Matthias could afford. He was dead, after all.
It seems rude to mention that, my love.
What do you expect from a Ravkan? Besides, Brum and I aren’t done. Is that why you’re here?
I’m here to bury you, Matthias, she thought, and the voice in her head went silent, as it always did when she let herself remember what she’d lost.
Nina tried to shake the thought of Matthias’ body, preserved by Fabrikator craft, bound up in ropes and tarp like ballast, hidden beneath blankets and crates on the sledge that waited back at their boardinghouse. She’d sworn she would take him home, that she would bury his body in the land he loved so that he could find his way to his god. And for nearly two months they had traveled with that body, dragged that grim burden from town to town. She’d had countless opportunities to lay him to rest and say her goodbyes. So why hadn’t she taken them? Nina knew Leoni and Adrik didn’t want to raise the issue with her, but they couldn’t be thrilled to be members of a months-long funeral procession.
It has to be the right place, my love. You’ll know it when you see it.
But would she? Or would she just keep marching, unable to let him go?
Somewhere in the distance, a bell rang, signaling the end of the
workday.
“We’re out of time,” said Adrik.
Leoni didn’t protest, just stretched and said, “Come dry the ink.”
Adrik waved his hand, directing a warm gust of Squaller air over the documents. “It’s nice to be useful.”
“I’m sure you’ll come in very handy when we need to fly kites.”
They exchanged a smile, and Nina felt a stab of irritation, then wanted to kick herself for being so unfair. Just because she was miserable didn’t mean everyone else should be.
But as they all set out toward the docks with the fugitives in tow, Adrik began giving them instructions, and Nina felt her temper spike again. Though he was her commanding officer, she’d lost the habit of taking orders during her time in Ketterdam.
Leoni and Adrik led the way to the Verstoten. They were conspicuous but in a way that fit with the tumult of the harbor—a Zemeni woman and her husband, a merchant couple with business on the docks. Nina slipped her arm through Enok’s and hung back slightly with her new family, keeping a careful distance.
She rolled her shoulders, trying to focus, but that only served to sharpen the edge of her tension. Her body felt wrong. Back in Os Alta, Genya Safin had tailored her to the very brink of what her skills would allow. Nina’s new hair was slick, straight, and nearly ice white; her eyes were narrower, the green of her irises changed to the pale blue of a northern glacier. Her cheekbones were higher, her brows lower, her mouth broader.
“I look uncooked,” she’d complained when she’d seen the milky depth of her new pallor.
Genya had been unmoved. “You look Fjerdan.”
Nina’s thighs were still solid, her waist still thick, but Genya had pushed back Nina’s ears, flattened her breasts, and even changed the set of her shoulders. The process had been painful at times as the bone was altered, but Nina didn’t care. She didn’t want to be the girl she’d been, the girl Matthias had loved. If Genya could make her someone new on the outside, maybe Nina’s heart would oblige and beat with a new rhythm too. Of course, it hadn’t worked. The Fjerdans saw Mila Jandersdat, but she was still Nina Zenik, legendary Grisha and unrepentant killer. She was still the girl who craved waffles and who cried herself to sleep at night when she reached for Matthias and found
no one there.
Enok’s arm tensed beneath her fingers, and she saw that two members of the harbor police were waiting at the gangway that led onto the Verstoten.
“It’s going to be fine,” murmured Nina. “We’ll see you all the way onto the ship.”
“And then what?” Enok asked, voice trembling.
“Once we’re out of the bay, I’ll take a rowboat back to shore with the others. You and your family will travel on to Ravka, where you’ll be free to live without fear.”
“Will they take my boys? Will they take them away to that special school?”
“Only if that’s what you wish,” said Nina. “We’re not monsters. Not any more than you are. Now hush.”
But part of her wanted to turn around and stride right back to the safe house when she saw that one of the guards was Birgir’s champion thug, Casper. She tucked her face into her coat collar.
“Zemeni?” Casper asked, glancing at Leoni. She nodded in reply. Casper gestured to Adrik’s missing arm. “How’d you lose it?” “Farming accident,” Adrik replied in Fjerdan. He didn’t know much of
the language, but he could speak bits and pieces without a Ravkan accent, and this particular lie was one he’d told many times. Nearly everyone they met asked about his arm as soon as they saw the pinned sleeve. He’d had to leave the mechanical arm David Kostyk had fashioned for him back in the capital because it was too recognizable as Grisha handiwork.
The guards asked them the usual series of questions—How long had they been in the country? Where had they visited during their stay? Did they have knowledge of foreign agents working inside Fjerda’s borders?
—then waved them through with little ceremony.
Now it was Enok’s turn. She gave his arm a squeeze and he stepped forward. Nina could see the sweat beading at his temple, feel the slight tremor in his hands. If she could have snatched the papers away and given them to the guards herself, she would have. But Fjerdan wives always deferred to their husbands.
“The Grahn family.” Casper peered at the papers for an uncomfortably long time. “Indentures? Where will you be working?”
“A jurda farm near Cofton,” said Enok.
“Hard work. Too hard for the old father there.”
“He’ll be in the main house with the boys,” said Enok. “He’s gifted with a needle and thread, and the boys can be runners until they’re old enough for the fields.”
Nina was impressed by how easily Enok lied, but if he’d spent his life hiding as a Grisha, he must have had plenty of practice.
“Indentures are difficult to come by,” mused Casper. “My uncle secured them for us.”
“And why is a life breaking your back in Novyi Zem so preferable to one spent doing honest work in Fjerda?”
“I’d live and die on the ice if I had my way,” said Enok with such fervor Nina knew he was speaking the truth. “But jobs are scarce and my son’s lungs don’t like the cold.”
“Hard times all around.” The guard turned to Nina. “And what will you do in Cofton?”
“Sew if I’m able, work the fields if need be.” She dipped her head. She could be subtle, damn it. No matter what Zoya thought. “As my husband wishes.”
Casper continued to look at the papers, waiting, and Nina nudged Enok with her elbow. Looking as if he might be sick all over the docks, Enok reached into his pocket and drew out a packet stuffed with Fjerdan currency.
He handed it to Casper, who lifted a brow. Then the guard’s face broke into a satisfied smile. Nina remembered him watching the gulls tear at the Grisha chained in the sun, their beaks bloodied with bits of skin and hair.
Casper waved them through. “May Djel watch over you.”
But they hadn’t set foot on the gangway when Nina heard a voice say, “Just a moment.”
Birgir. Couldn’t they catch a bit of luck? The sun hadn’t even set. They should have had more time. Enok’s father hesitated on the gangway next to Leoni, and Adrik gave Nina the barest shake of his head. The message was clear: Don’t start trouble. Nina thought of the other Grisha fugitives packed into the hold of the ship and held her tongue.
Birgir stood between Casper and the other guard. He was short for a Fjerdan, his shoulders sloped like a bull’s, and his uniform fit so impeccably that Nina suspected it had been professionally tailored.
She kept behind Enok and whispered to the boys, “Go to your grandfather.” But they didn’t move.
“It was a hard day’s travel for all of us,” Enok said to Birgir amiably. “The boys are eager to get settled.”
“I’ll see your papers first.”
“We just showed them to your man.” “Casper’s eyes aren’t nearly as good as mine.” “But the money—” protested Enok.
“What money was that?”
Casper and the other guard shrugged. “I don’t know about any money.”
Reluctantly, Enok handed over the papers.
“Perhaps,” said his father, “we could reach a new arrangement?” “Stay where you are,” ordered Birgir.
“But our ship is about to depart,” Nina tried from behind Enok’s shoulder.
Birgir glanced at the Verstoten, at the boys tugging restlessly on their father’s hands. “They’re going to be a handful cooped up for a sea journey.” Then he looked back at Enok and Nina. “Funny the way they cling to their father and not their mother.”
“They’re scared,” said Nina. “You’re frightening them.”
Birgir’s cold eyes traveled over Adrik and Leoni. He smacked the indenture papers against his gloved palm. “That ship isn’t going anywhere. Not until we’ve seen every inch of it.” He gestured to Casper. “There’s something off here. Signal the others.”
Casper reached for his whistle, but before he could draw breath to blow, Nina’s arm shot out. Two slender bone shards flew from the sheaths sewn into the forearms of her coat—everything she wore was laced with them. The darts lodged in Casper’s windpipe, and a sharp wheeze squeaked from his mouth. Nina twisted her fingers and the bone shards rotated. The guard dropped to the dock, clawing at his neck.
“Casper!” Birgir and the other guard drew their guns.
Nina shoved Enok and the children behind her. “Get them on the boat,” she growled. Don’t start trouble. She hadn’t, but she intended to finish it.
“I know you,” Birgir said, training his gun on her, his eyes hard and bright as river stones.
“That’s a bold statement.”
“You work at the salmon cannery. One of the barrel girls. I knew there was something wrong about you.”
Nina couldn’t help but smile. “Plenty of things.”
“Mila,” Adrik said warningly, using her cover name. As if it mattered now. The time for bribes and negotiations was over. She liked these moments best. When the secrets fell away.
Nina flicked her fingers. The bone shards dislodged from Casper’s windpipe and slid back into the hidden sheaths on her arm. He flopped on the dock, his lips wet with blood, his eyes rolling back in his head as he struggled for breath.
“Drüsje,” Birgir hissed. Witch.
“I don’t like that word,” Nina said, advancing. “Call me Grisha. Call me zowa. Call me death, if you like.”
Birgir laughed. “Two guns are pointed at you. You think you can kill us both before one of us gets a shot off?”
“But you’re already dying, Captain,” she crooned gently. The bone armor the Fabrikators had made for her in Os Alta was a comfort and had proven useful more times than she could count. But sometimes she could feel death already waiting in her targets, like now, in this man who stood before her, his chin jutting forward, the brass buttons on his fine uniform gleaming. He was younger than she’d realized, his golden stubble patchy in places, as if he couldn’t quite grow a beard. Should she be sorry for him? She was not.
Nina. Matthias’ voice, chiding, disappointed. Perhaps she was doomed to stand on docks and murder Fjerdans. There were worse fates.
“You know it, don’t you?” she went on. “Somewhere inside. Your body knows.” She drew closer. “That cough you can’t shake. The pain you told yourself was a bruised rib. The way food has lost its savor.” In the day’s fading light she saw fear come into Birgir’s face, a shadow falling. It fed her, and that strange sighing inside her grew louder, a whispering chorus that rose, as if in encouragement, even as Matthias’ voice receded.
“You work in a harbor,” she continued. “You know how easy it is for rats to get into the walls, to eat a place up from the inside.” Birgir’s pistol hand dipped slightly. He was watching her now, closely—not with his sharp policeman’s eyes but with the gaze of a man who didn’t want to listen, but who had to, who must know the end to the story. “The enemy is already inside you, the bad cells eating the others slowly, right there in
your lungs. Unusual in a man so young. You’re dying, Captain Birgir,” she said softly, almost kindly. “I’m just going to help you along.”
The captain seemed to wake from a trance. He raised his pistol, but he was too slow. Nina’s power already had hold of that sick cluster of cells within him, and death unfurled, a terrible multiplication. He might have lived another year, maybe two, but now the cells became a black tide, destroying everything in their path. Captain Birgir released a low moan and toppled. Before the remaining guard could react, Nina flicked her fingers and drove a shard of bone through his heart.
The docks were curiously still. She could hear the waves lapping against the Verstoten’s hull, the high calls of seabirds. Inside her the whispering chorus leapt, the sound almost joyful.
Then one of Enok’s boys began to cry.
For a moment, Nina had stood alone with death on the docks, two weary travelers, longtime companions. But now she saw the way the others were watching her—the Grisha fugitives, Adrik and Leoni, even the ship’s captain and his crew leaning over the railing of the ship. Maybe she should have cared; maybe some part of her did. Nina’s power was frightening, a corruption of the Heartrender power she had been born with, twisted by parem. And still it had become dear to her. Matthias had accepted the dark thing in her and encouraged her to do the same—but what Nina felt was not acceptance. It was love.
Adrik sighed. “I’m not going to miss this town.” He called up to the ship’s crew. “Stop staring and help us get the bodies on board. We’ll dispose of them when we reach open water.”
Some men deserve your mercy, Nina.
Of course, Matthias. Nina watched Enok and his father lift Birgir’s body. I’ll let you know when I meet one of them.
Adrik held his tongue until they were in the little rowboat headed back to shore. They would make land in one of the coves north of Elling and hike back to their lodgings to collect their things.
“There’s going to be trouble when those men are discovered missing,” he said.
Nina felt like a child being scolded, and she didn’t appreciate it. “Good thing we’ll be long gone.”
“We won’t be able to operate out of this port anymore,” added Leoni. “They’re going to tighten security.”
“Don’t take his side.”
“I’m not taking sides,” said Leoni. “I’m just making an observation.” “Did you want to give up the whole ship? Did you want to give up the
Grisha in the hold?”
Adrik adjusted the rudder. “Nina, I’m not angry at you. I’m trying to figure out what we do next.”
She leaned into her oars. “You’re a little angry with me.”
“No one’s angry,” said Leoni, matching Nina’s pace. “We freed a ship full of Grisha from that horrible place. And it’s not like Birgir and his kalfisk goons didn’t have plenty of enemies on the docks. They could have run into trouble with anyone during their surprise inspection. I call this a victory.”
“Of course you do,” said Adrik. “If you can find a way to put a sunny spin on something, you will.”
It was true. Leoni was like cheer in a bottle—and not even months in Fjerda had dimmed her shine.
“Are you actually humming?” Adrik had once asked incredulously when they’d been forced to spend an hour digging their sledge out of the mud. “How can you be so relentlessly optimistic? It isn’t healthy.”
Leoni had stopped humming to give the question her full consideration as she tried to coax their horse to pull. “I suppose it’s because I almost died as a child. When the gods give you another look at the world, best enjoy it.”
Adrik had barely raised a brow. “I’ve been shot, stabbed, bayoneted, and had my arm torn off by a shadow demon. It’s done nothing for my disposition.”
It was true. If Leoni was sunshine walking, Adrik was a doleful storm cloud too put-upon to actually rain.
Now he cast his eyes at the spangle of stars above them as he steered the rowboat toward shore. “The Verstoten will have to be repainted, given new documentation and a new history. We’ll have to shift our operations to another port. Maybe Hjar.”
Nina gripped her oars. King Nikolai had sent the Verstoten to dock and trade in Elling for the better part of a year before Adrik’s team had begun their mission. It was a familiar vessel that had drawn scarce attention. A perfect cover. Had she acted too hastily? Captain Birgir had been a greedy man, not a righteous one. Maybe she’d wanted to see him dead a little too much. But she’d been like this since Matthias died—fine one
moment, then ready to snarl and snap like a wild thing.
No, like a wounded animal. And like a wounded animal, for a time, she had gone to ground. She’d spent months at the Little Palace, rekindling old friendships, eating familiar food, sitting by the fire in the Hall of the Golden Dome, trying to remember who she’d been before Matthias, before a glowering Fjerdan had disrupted her life with his unexpected honor, before she’d known that a witchhunter might shed his hate and fear and become the boy she loved. Before he’d been taken from her. But if there was a way back to the girl she had been, she hadn’t found it. And now she was here, in Matthias’ country, in this cold, hostile place.
“We’ll go south,” Leoni was saying. “It’s only going to get colder. We can work our way back here in a few months, when good old Captain Birgir has been forgotten.”
It was a reasonable plan, but the whispering chorus in Nina’s head rose, and she found herself saying, “We should go to Kejerut, to Gäfvalle. The fugitives who didn’t make it to the safe house didn’t just change their minds.”
“You know they were most likely captured,” said Adrik.
Tell them the truth, my love.
“Yes, I do,” said Nina. “But you heard what that old man said. Girls go missing from Kejerut.”
Tell them you hear the dead calling. You don’t know that, Matthias.
It was one thing to hear her dead lover’s voice, quite another to claim she could sense … what exactly? She didn’t know. But she didn’t think the whispering in her head was just imagination. Something was pulling her east to the river cities.
“There’s another thing,” said Nina. “The women I worked with claimed the river up near Gäfvalle had gone sour, that the town was cursed.”
Now she had Adrik’s attention. What had she once said to Jesper back in Ketterdam? Do you know the best way to find Grisha who don’t want to be found? Look for miracles and listen to bedtime stories. Tales of witches and wondrous happenings, warnings about cursed places—they were signposts to things that ordinary people didn’t understand. Sometimes there was little more to it than local lore. But sometimes there were Grisha hiding in these places, disguising their powers, living
in fear. Grisha they could help.
Tell them the truth, Nina.
Nina rubbed her arms. You’re like a dog with a bone, Matthias.
A wolf. Did I ever tell you about the way Trassel would destroy my boots if I didn’t tie them up in a branch out of his reach?
He had. Matthias had told her all kinds of stories to keep her distracted when she’d been recovering from the influence of parem. He’d kept her alive. Why hadn’t she been able to do the same for him?
“Curses, spoiled rivers,” continued Nina. “If it’s nothing, we head south and I’ll buy you both a good dinner.”
“In Fjerda?” said Adrik. “I won’t hold you to it.” “But if I’m right …”
“Fine,” Adrik said. “I’ll send word to Ravka that we need to establish a new port, and we’ll head to Gäfvalle.”
The whispers quieted to a gentle murmur.
“Nina …” Leoni hesitated. “There’s open land out there. Beautiful country. You could find a place for him.”
Nina looked out at the dark water, at the lights glittering on shore. Find a place for him. As if Matthias were an old armoire or a plant that needed just the right amount of sun. His place is with me. But that wasn’t true anymore. Matthias was gone. His body was all that remained, and without Leoni’s careful maintenance, it would have long ago given way to rot. Nina felt the press of tears in the back of her throat. She would not cry. They’d been in Fjerda two months. They’d helped nearly forty Grisha escape Fjerdan rule. They’d traversed hundreds of miles of barren field and snowy plain. There had been plenty of places to lay Matthias to rest. Now it had to be done. It would be done. And one of her promises to him would be fulfilled.
“I’ll see to it,” she said.
“One more thing,” said Adrik, and she could hear the command in his voice, so different from his usual dismal tone. “Our job is to find recruits and refugees. Whatever we discover in Gäfvalle, we are not there to start a war. We gather intelligence, open communication, provide a path to escape for those who want it, and that’s all.”
“That’s the plan,” said Nina. She touched her fingers to the spikes of bone in her gloves.
But plans could change.
