Kacper slid down to the floor.
“Let’s figure out what they want first,” he said. He set the bottle down on the table, brushing away another moth.
Ostyia frowned, moving to the chaise and perching on the armrest. She yawned.
“We knew Ruminski would want answers eventually,” Serefin said.
“He’s been asking for months, Serefin. He simply got tired of waiting,” Kacper groaned.
Serefin lifted his shoulders in a weary shrug. “Perhaps they can be reasoned with? Surely there is something they want that I can give them.”
“Clandestine meetings by your enemies don’t suggest a list of demands that can be provided for,” Ostyia said.
“The entire court is my enemy,” Serefin muttered, throwing himself down into an upholstered chair. “That’s the problem.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
He had tried to win the court to his favor but nothing was working. There were too many rumors to combat that he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t reveal who had truly killed his father, and the whispers swirling through the underbelly of the court were starting to drift dangerously close to the truth.
A Kalyazi assassin. The Black Vulture. Treason. Disaster. A missing noble. A dead king. Titles from the common folk that Serefin could not shake: King of Moths, King of Blood. Serefin blessed by something no one could explain. What could the blood that fell from the sky that night be other than a blessing?
Serefin had nothing but questions and resistance from his nobility. The Kalyazi were pressing Tranavia’s forces back, and even if Tranavia did not know Kalyazin’s only cleric had killed the king, the Kalyazi surely did.
Renewed hope from Kalyazin was the last thing Serefin needed.
He couldn’t stop the war. He couldn’t answer his nobility’s questions unless he wanted Nadya hanged and he found he didn’t want that. She had done what he could not, and while she was still from an enemy territory and a force for something Serefin did not trust or believe in, he would not have her executed.
“What do we do?” Ostyia asked.
Serefin raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”
* * *
There was an obvious solution to appease Ruminski, but Serefin was uncertain of how to attempt Żaneta’s retrieval. From what he could discern, the Vultures had fractured significantly. He hadn’t seen many slinking around the palace, but he wasn’t about to go to the cathedral door and knock to see who answered.
He rubbed his eyes, tired. He wanted to sleep through the night, just once. Instead he sought out the cleric, holed up in the library as ever, because, as she put it, where else was she supposed to be?
“So his majesty has deigned to grace the poor boyar locked in her tower, wasting away,” she said when he found her. She was sitting in a high window alcove, one leg kicked off the edge. Her white-blond hair was loose around her shoulders. Serefin couldn’t recall a time when it had not been carefully braided.
He tensed, glancing through the gaps in the stacks to see if anyone was around to hear. But it was too early for any slavhki to be awake.
“It’s like you want me to be forced to hang you,” he muttered.
She snorted softly, dark brown eyes dismissive. She had dropped the act of the clueless, backwater slavhka and the girl who had appeared in Józefina’s place was sharp and witty and completely infuriating. The handsome Akolan boy she was constantly with, Rashid, had quietly given Serefin new paperwork to explain this girl—pale freckles, pale skin, pale hair but curiously dark eyes and eyebrows—a far cry from red-headed Józefina. The paperwork was forged; the explanation surprisingly solid. Road flooding from the lakes had plagued their journey and they had arrived too late for the Rawalyk but couldn’t yet return home. It would do. Her given name was functionally Tranavian enough to pass, if spelled differently.
She sighed, shifting to the corner of the alcove, and gestured for him to climb up. He settled in next to her and riffled through the stack of books she had piled up. Tranavian texts on the old religions that were so decrepit and brittle they might fall apart in her hands.
“Where on earth did you find these?” he asked.
“You don’t want me to answer that,” she said absently as she returned to her book. “But do warn the librarian. Wouldn’t want the old blood mage to die of shock when he finds his banned texts collection ransacked.”
“I didn’t know we had banned texts.”
She made a humming sound. “Of course you do. Have to keep all that heresy at the forefront of the kingdom somehow, yes?”
“Nadya—”
“I do have to say,” she continued, “I am surprised these weren’t burned. You lot seem like the book-burning type.”
He wasn’t going to take that particular bait.
They were quiet as Nadya read and Serefin paged through another book. He couldn’t quite figure out what she was studying.
“Have you seen any Vultures around recently?” Serefin finally asked.
She lowered her book and shot him an incredulous look. “Have I what?”
He supposed he hoped the answer would be yes and everything would be simple for him; a mess easily cleaned up.
“I should think the king of Tranavia would have more dealings with that cult than one captive peasant girl,” she said primly.
“I hope someone overhears you saying these things and forces my hand,” he replied.
That got a short laugh from her. She leaned back, dangling her legs out into the open air. He didn’t even know why he was asking her except she had shown up in Grazyk at the same time as Malachiasz and clearly knew him; he didn’t know what they’d had between them. He’d never asked. But Nadya had said enough offhand to suggest she and the Black Vulture had been more than strange allies and what he had done was more than a simple betrayal.
Why did he assume she knew more about the Vultures than he did? Her, the cleric from Kalyazin. It was ridiculous; this wasn’t getting him anywhere.
He leaned his head back on the wall.
“Why are you asking?” she asked.
“I don’t have to give you my reasoning,” he reminded her.
“Serefin, every day you make me regret not killing you a little bit more.” But there was no heat in her words. They had an uneasy truce, and though Nadya was furious he had kept her more or less trapped in Tranavia, she didn’t seem altogether eager to leave, either.
“Żaneta,” he said quietly.
Nadya paled.
He nodded curtly.
“What happened to her?” she asked delicately.
“Malachiasz took her.”
She tensed at his name and picked at a hangnail, refusing to meet Serefin’s gaze.
“She did betray you,” she said. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself that what Malachiasz had done was justified.
“And I died.”
“And you died.”
“Supposedly.”
“They’re starting to talk, you know,” Nadya said. Her hand went to her neck, falling when her fingers met nothing but air. An absent tic he had watched her perform countless times. She had worn a small, silver amulet for a bit, but that too had disappeared. “We weren’t the only ones in the cathedral that night. They say, ‘Not even death commands this new young king.’”