Page 7 of Rule of Wolves

Brum stomped back to them, his face a mask of rage. It was hard to take him too seriously when he was soaked to the bone and it looked like a fish might wriggle out from one of his boots. Still Nina kept her head down, her eyes averted, and her face expressionless. Brum was dangerous now, a mine waiting to detonate. It was one thing to be hated or confronted, quite another to be laughed at. But that was what Nina wanted, for Fjerda to stop seeing Brum and his drüskelle as men to be feared and to acknowledge them for what they were: scared bullies worthy of scorn, not adulation.

“I’ll see my family back to the Ice Court,” he muttered to his soldiers. “Get names. All of the performers, everyone who was in the marketplace.”

“But the crowd—”

Brum’s blue eyes narrowed. “Names. This stinks of the Hringsa. If there are Grisha in my streets, in my capital, I will find out.”

There are Grisha in your house, Nina thought gleefully.

“Don’t get cocky,” murmured Hanne.

“Too late.”

They climbed into the roomy coach. The king and queen had gifted Brum one of the noisy new vehicles that didn’t require horses, but Ylva preferred a coach that didn’t belch black smoke and wasn’t likely to break down on the steep climb to the Ice Court.

“Jarl,” Ylva attempted once they were ensconced in the velvet seats. “What is the harm? The more you react to these theatrics, the more emboldened they will be.”

Nina expected Brum to explode, but he was silent for a long time, staring out the window at the gray sea below.

When he spoke again, his voice was measured, his anger leashed. “I should have held my temper.” He reached out and clasped Ylva’s hand.

Nina saw the effect that small gesture had on Hanne, the troubled, guilty look that clouded her eyes. It was easy for Nina to hate Brum, to see him as nothing but a villain who needed to be destroyed. But he was Hanne’s father, and in moments like these, when he was kind, when he was reasonable and gentle, he seemed less like a monster than a man doing his best for his country.

“But this is not a matter of a few people making trouble in the marketplace,” Brum continued wearily. “If the people begin to see our enemies as Saints—”

“There are Fjerdan Saints,” offered Hanne, almost hopefully.

“But they are not Grisha.”

Nina bit her tongue. Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t. Sënj Egmond, the great architect, was said to have prayed to Djel to buttress the Ice Court against the storm. But there were other stories that claimed he’d prayed to the Saints. And there were some who believed that Egmond’s miracles had nothing to do with divine intervention, that they had simply been the result of his Grisha gifts, that he had been a talented Fabrikator who could manipulate metal and stone at will.

“The Fjerdan Saints were holy men,” said Brum. “They were favored by Djel, not … these demons. But it’s more than that. Did you recognize the third Saint flouncing across that stage? That was Zoya Nazyalensky. General of the Second Army. There is nothing holy or natural about that woman.”

“A woman serves as a general?” Hanne asked innocently.

“If you can call a creature like that a woman. She is everything repugnant and foul. The Grisha are Ravka. Fjerdans worshipping these false Saints … They are giving their allegiance to a foreign power, a power with whom we are about to be at war. This new religion is more of a threat than any battlefield victory could be. If we lose the people, we lose the fight before it even begins.”

If I do my job right, thought Nina.

She had to hope that the common people of Fjerda didn’t hate Grisha more than they loved their own sons and daughters, that most of them knew someone who had vanished—a friend, a neighbor, even a relative. A woman willing to leave livelihood and family behind for fear of having her power discovered. A boy snatched from his home in the night to face torture and death at the hands of Brum’s witchhunters. Maybe with her little miracles, Nina could give Fjerda something to rally around, a reason to question the hate and fear that had been Brum’s weapons for so long.

“The Apparat’s presence here undermines all we’ve worked for,” Brum went on. “How can I purge our towns and cities of foreign influence when there is a heretic at the very heart of our government? We look like the worst of hypocrites, and he has spies in every alcove.”

Ylva shuddered. “He has a most unnerving way about him.”

“It’s all for show. The beard. The dark robes. He likes to terrify the ladies with his strange pronouncements and his skulking, but he’s little more than a squawking bird. And we need him if we’re to put Demidov on the throne. The priest’s backing will matter to the Ravkans.”

“He smells of graveyards,” said Hanne.

“It’s only incense.” Brum drummed his fingers on the windowsill. “It’s hard to tell what the man really believes. He says the Ravkan king is possessed by demons, that Vadik Demidov was anointed by the Saints themselves to rule.”

“Where did Demidov come from anyway?” Nina said. “I so hope we’ll get to meet him.”

“We keep him safe in case any Ravkan assassins have a mind to take a shot at him.”

Pity that.

“Is he really a Lantsov?” she pushed.