“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.