Web of Frost (Saints of Russalka Book 1) Read online

  “You and your accursed visions and saints. All your talk of Boj’s will.” Fahed sneered. “No. What you call Boj’s will, we call fate. And fate is meant to be rewritten. Shaped into what we prefer. I suppose that’s the fundamental difference between our nations—you follow fate blindly, while we make fate follow us.”

  Katza’s eyes were slits; red tainted the edge of her vision. “Well, you are Russalkan now, so perhaps you ought to fall into step.”

  Fahed gritted those perfect teeth. “I suppose I am.”

  Katza turned away from him to look toward the window. The physicker had drawn her curtains, sealing her inside this chamber. But she needed to get out. She needed, at the very least, to get away from this man. He was charming, yes, and clever, but she couldn’t bear the contemptuousness with which he regarded her. As if she were some simpleton, a backward tsarechka in her backward nation. She couldn’t believe she’d ever let him make her feel embarrassed by her people. He was the one with no clue what it really meant to rule.

  “I don’t like the idea of you training with this prophet,” Fahed said. “Ravin, or whoever he really is. I don’t think his motives are honorable.”

  Now it was Katza’s turn for a bitter laugh. “What, are you afraid he’ll try to seduce me?” But she was glad to not be facing him as a faint blush crept across her face.

  “No.” Fahed’s tone was firm. “I’m afraid he’ll make you into something even worse than all the tsars who have come before you.” He began to pace, wood floor creaking beneath him. “If it was truly your idea to visit these horrors upon your own people, to scatter them as if they were rats—”

  “Forgive me, my prince.” Katza twisted back toward him. “Just how many nations have you managed? When you were in Bintar, did you conduct the emirate’s affairs, soothe your people?”

  Fahed’s face turned plum. “Well, of course as one of the emirate’s princes, I was called upon to advise—”

  “Advise? Ah. So you spent your time there as you do here—passing judgment on those who make the final say.”

  Fahed glowered at her, undisguised now in his hate.

  “I was like you once. Idealistic. Always second-guessing my father’s plans.” She exhaled. “But I see the world now for how it really is. Someone must make hard choices. Please, though.” She gestured toward the chair. “Continue to sit back and make your cruel comments.”

  “If that is all you deem me useful for, then I shall. Tsarechka.” He spat the word like it was filth. “For now. Things shall be different though, I think, once we are wed. If you still wish to secure Bintar’s aid guarding the southern pass.”

  Katza’s nostrils flared as she tried to think of a sharp retort, but none came to her. If the Hessarians were coming for Russalka, they needed Bintar’s aid more than ever. The weight of that need pressed down on her. O, Boj, and she was the only way to secure it.

  “You’ll see soon enough.” He dropped into a curt bow. “Rest well, my love.”

  As soon as the door slammed closed behind them, Nadika melted out of the chamber’s corner and rushed to Katza’s side. “My tsarechka—”

  “I’m fine.” Katza fell back into her pillows with a weary sigh. “I’m quite all right, I promise.”

  Nadika pressed her lips together. “Well, I’m glad to see you’ve found your spine, at least.”

  Katza knew that perhaps she should take offense, but she couldn’t argue. She had spent most of her life accepting whatever garbage others wished to pile upon her. No longer. Except for this cursed marriage, and the need for Bintar’s aid—

  But she couldn’t think about that now. “Is it true? Katza asked. “What he said about the Hessarians setting sail?”

  Nadika nodded, her expression dark. “I’m afraid so.”

  Katza stifled a cry.

  “We’ve endured it before,” Nadika said carefully. “In the Five Days’ War. Surely we can endure it again.”

  “Unless Hessaria has learned some new tricks.” Katza clenched her jaw. “What was it like, during the Five Days’ War? I was too young to recall. They sent me away to the summer palace in Zolotov and didn’t bring me back until the victory parades began.”

  “There isn’t much to tell. It all happened so fast.” Nadika perched on the edge of Katza’s mattress. “I was only sixteen myself, freshly reassigned to the palace guard. By the time we knew the Hessarians were coming, they were already nearly upon us. Fortunately the Bintari had been running their annual military exercises in the southern mountains, and your father and Aleksei were more willing to draw on the saints back then.”

  Katza frowned. The patriarch was more willing to allow them to do so, more likely.

  “While the Bintari held back the southern flank of Hessaria’s army, the tsar ordered what was present of our army and navy to guard the Petrovsk Bay. They called upon Saint Morozov to freeze the harbor and halt the Hessarians’ progress—right there, in the middle of summer. All of the citizens of Petrovsk had been ordered to shelter in their homes until it was over. Once the Hessarians found themselves unable to breach the bay further, they retreated, our own navy dogging them all the way back to their shores.”

  “And what about the southern flank?” Katza asked. “Did my father use blessings to help repel them?”

  “No, the Bintari fought them back. It was somewhat bloodier on that front, but they retreated as soon as the Hessarian generals sent word of what had happened in Petrovsk.”

  Katza worried her teeth with her tongue. “It changed my father, didn’t it? What he did. It’s why he’s reluctant to call on the saints now.”

  Nadika winced—quickly enough Katza almost missed it. “When your father rode back to us from the far edge of the harbor, his horse atop the sheet of ice that had spawned from his feet, he looked a decade older, I swear it. Like a man who had confronted a terrible darkness. I don’t quite understand it, myself—it was nearly bloodless, at least on the Russalkan side. But he must have paid some price in the act of being blessed.”

  Perhaps it had been Boj’s will, that he bargain something away for so great a gift. That fit with everything Katza had seen thus far in the saints and their fickle blessings. When she was blessed, it always came with the aftertaste of guilt, as when she had punished the dressmaker’s assistant. And when the saints had refused to bless her—as when she’d tried to heal Aleksei—

  Well, she still hadn’t found the purpose in that. But she had to trust that it was Boj’s will. If fate was truly as tamable as Fahed claimed, then Katza couldn’t see how to tame it. Perhaps it wasn’t tamable at all—or else she was even blinder than she thought.

  “Rest up.” Nadika patted Katza’s calf over the heavy blankets. “If you’re well tomorrow, then your father has agreed to let you train with the prophet Ravin.”

  Katza smiled, unable to contain it. A chance for answers. A chance to carry out Boj’s will.

  And maybe she could do so at less a cost than her father paid.

  Nadika and two additional palace guards accompanied Katarzyna and Ravin to the troika sleigh the next morning. Katza tried to ignore her nerves, but she was shaking, both frightened and eager for her training. No Patriarch Anton looking doubtfully at her as she struggled to petition the saints. No one to judge her but Ravin, who only wanted to see her realize her gifts.

  Tsar Nikilov himself came to see them off before he had to rush to another meeting at the admiralty. “You’ll return before darkness falls?” he asked, clutching his daughter’s hands.

  “Yes, of course.” She squeezed his fingers in response.

  “Good. You know how I worry.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheeks. “And you’re certain you’re well enough for this.”

  “I promise, Papa.” She glanced toward the bay. “You’re certain you’re prepared for whatever is coming our way?”

  The tsar’s smile dimmed
. “I should certainly hope so. I’ve beaten the Hessarians once before.” He laughed, but there was a high cant to it. “It’s our own subjects I worry about.”

  “As do I.”

  “I’m tempted to take your betrothed’s advice.” He guided her to the troika and helped her up onto the deep bench. “Put an end to the heightened state of infiltration and arrests we’ve been carrying out. It seems to spark up more embers each time we stamp our foot down. Especially when they have this Ulmarov fellow to rally around. Better they rally behind me if Hessaria comes our way.”

  Katza burrowed into the heavy furs on the troika’s bench. “Sometimes we must endure temporary discomfort to transform into something better,” she said, but her father’s dubious look made her shrink back. “I—I just think it may still bear more fruit, is all. But if you need your agents’ aid in preparing for a possible invasion . . .”

  “I’ll give it more consideration after I speak with the admiralty.” He gave her hand one last squeeze, then stepped back from the troika. “Saints bless your path.” The tsar patted the side of the sleigh and returned to his secretary, Stolichkov, who was impatiently drumming his stack of notes.

  Ravin swung into the troika from the other side, so silent Katza barely noticed him save for the subtle shift of the bench from his weight. She turned toward him, unsure how to react to his sudden nearness. The scent of warm incense cloaked him again, sparking Katza’s senses. As he tugged the fur blankets up over his lap, he tipped his head toward her.

  “Tsarechka.” He spoke her title with the solemnity of prayer.

  She fought to keep the smile from her lips. “Prophet Ravin.”

  She didn’t understand it. Something ran deep beneath his placid surface. She could glimpse at it in his gaze, but nothing more—on the outside, he was smooth and calm and refined. Which Ravin, then, was the true one? The one who’d sneered with disgust at being made to use his gifts like he were someone’s pet? Or the Ravin who spoke so softly of impossible, wonderful things?

  “Your new coat suits you,” she said instead, gesturing toward his double-breasted long coat. It was dark gray, trimmed at the collar with black fur, and with black embroidery on the lapels and cuffs. He also wore a fur cap with flaps that tied up, but could be unlaced to warm his ears and the back of his neck if he wished.

  “A gift from your father,” he said. “You don’t think it too extravagant?”

  Katza looked at her own coat of thick wool, fur-lined, and her fur-lined gloves and boots besides. “I may not be the best judge of extravagance.”

  Ravin laughed once, faintly, at that. The driver cracked the whip, and they were off, Nadika and her fellow guards trotting on horseback just behind.

  As soon as they passed the gates of Petrovsk, the city fell away into the rocky hills that curved north and east around the bay. Dark, ancient pines and fingerlings of birch lined their path as the horses churned up fresh, soft snow. All the world felt hushed around them, a held breath of anticipation to see what Boj might will next. Katza felt it too, burning in her lungs, itching in her gloved fingertips. It crackled in her arm and thigh where she pressed up against Ravin.

  She shifted her weight, trying not to crowd him, but the bench was short enough that she was bound to be touching him no matter what. He glanced at her with an embarrassed laugh.

  “You may sit as close or as far as you like, tsarechka,” he said.

  She made a strangled noise, which only made his smile grow, but she decided to stay where she was, their thighs just brushing against one another beneath the furs. “My family vacations in Zolotov in the summer,” she said, mostly to change the subject, though as soon as she spoke, she felt foolish. She sounded like a child, bragging to impress a new friend.

  Ravin smiled, though, humoring her. “I feel closer to Boj when out in nature. The snow, the cliffs, the trees, and the sea beyond.” He glanced at the landscape gliding past. “Maybe it’s silly, but . . . I like to imagine I can hear it, living around me.”

  “And what does it sound like?”

  Katza watched him sidelong as he considered. It was safer this way, she decided, to watch him at a remove. Better than drawing the full force of his gaze down upon her, where it drove the thoughts from her head like a hot poker. Here she could admire the crisp line of his brow, his nose, his chin and jaw without being examined in return. Here, she could stare at those soft lips . . .

  Ravin exhaled and turned back toward her, dark eyes heavy. “It sounds like peacefulness.”

  Katza stilled beneath the furs. He said it like it was forever just out of his grasp. She knew the feeling all too well.

  “Are you from near Petrovsk?” she asked, after a few moments’ silence. He might have been content to travel in quiet. But after she’d yearned so long to have his company, she felt suddenly desperate to fill the quiet. To learn whatever she could of this strange young man.

  “No.” Ravin shrugged deeper into his coat. “I’m from a dirt speck of a village. Nowhere you would have ever heard of.”

  “You must have left at a very young age.”

  “I did.” His words carried weight: a finality. “I had no other choice.”

  Katza blinked at him, now hungry to hear whatever tale lay beyond those words. But she could not bring herself to ask, and he didn’t offer.

  Another dozen verosts along the gently sloping path, and Ravin leaned forward to bid the driver halt. “This is the place,” he said, then turned to Katza. “We should be safe to practice here.”

  The driver signaled to Nadika, and she whistled sharply to her fellow guards. The troika driver steered them onto a path through the trees, virgin snow churning beneath the horses’ hooves and spraying up around them. Katza spied a clearing ahead. An old simple wooden chapel peeked from the snow, the gold edging of its turnip dome long since worn away to reveal bare cedar shingles. The steps leading to the chapel sagged beneath the weight of countless winters; the door was pushed ajar by fallen drifts. Along the church’s right side, the very tops of what must have been Saints’ Wheel headstones peeked from the blanket of white.

  “What is this place?” Katza asked, as the driver came to a stop. “Where are the villagers?”

  “Long since gone, and their homes with them. The saints favor this place, even though the people have left.” Ravin unfolded from the furs and leapt, limber, from the sleigh. “No one is around who might be harmed if our practice goes awry.”

  Katza frowned. “What exactly do you intend for me to practice?”

  His laugh hung in the air, a tuft of white. “I want you to master your gift.”

  Ravin climbed the steep, lopsided steps, picking his way up them with care. He seemed to know where to step to avoid the rotted boards. Katza wondered how often he’d been here. He held a hand out toward her to help her up. She nestled her gloved hand in his, and his grip stayed firm as she swayed to and fro. She had difficulty navigating the stairs in her heeled snow boots and the numerous skirts beneath her traveling dress and heavy coat. Once she was on the porch before the church, he released her with a sly smile and went to the chapel door.

  “One moment,” he said. He heaved his shoulder into the wooden door. Snow crunched and wood groaned, and finally the door yielded to him. He stepped inside, vanishing into the deep shadows within, then reappeared in the crack. “All right, it’s safe. Watch the ice.”

  Katza hoisted up her skirts and stepped carefully over the shattered ice pooled around the entrance. Inside, the chapel was badly damaged—dust coated it in thick sheaves over the pews, the candelabras, the rotted wooden floors. Weak sunlight poked through holes in the roof, shedding more illumination on the debris floating through the air than the chapel proper.

  As Katza’s eyes adjusted, though, she could finally discern the faded, splintered wood of the icons that lined the narthex. She stepped toward the altar, transfixed by the st
artling gaze of Saint Pechalnya, the saint of grief and sorrow. Though everything around her was faded, blues and reds and greens long wilted into tans and browns, Pechalnya stared with a vivid, intense sorrow as the waves danced around her. Katza pulled off her glove and reached out to trace the smooth arc of Pechalnya’s cheek.

  Your grief knows no bounds, o Pechalnya. Thank you for bearing mine.

  Katza withdrew her hand and touched it to her lips. She almost imagined she could hear a whisper of music.

  Ravin brushed snowdrifts and dust away from the candelabras and pulled a pack of matches from his pockets. In no time, he’d unearthed candles from his satchel and set them ablaze. The light played tricks as it danced over the saints’ faces—some water-stained and wood-warped from snow, others, like Pechalnya, stark and mostly untouched. The bobbing light seemed to awaken life in their dark eyes, and Katza wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly watched.

  “Tell me.” Ravin walked around her in a slow circle. Drifts of snow that had fallen through the roof creaked beneath his heavy boots, and the air was as still as a held breath. “When do you feel closest to the saints?”

  Katza did not have a good answer for him right away. She only knew for certain when she did not. Sitting beside Aleksei’s sickbed, his clammy hand cold in hers and his breath rasping as the frostlung hardened his chest. Watching the protesters mill outside the palace gates, words twisted into blades with the hunger and pain that radiated from them. In the dreary echo of silence when she’d prayed for some relief—for her brother, for her mother, for herself.

  “When I—when I surrender.” She exhaled, surprised by her own words. But she knew they were true once they came to her. “When I am in the depths of despair, or need, or helplessness, then I surrender myself to Boj’s will.”