“You look well rested,” she said sourly.
“I barely slept, and I woke with a crick in my back that feels like Tolya played lawn tennis with my spine. But a king does not hunch, Zoya dear. Are you eating my herring?”
She popped the last bite into her mouth. “No, I have eaten your herring. Now—”
Before Zoya could begin to address the business of the day, the door flew open and Tamar entered, followed by her brother, golden eyes glinting, both of them fully armed.
“Tell me,” Nikolai said, all hint of his easy manner gone.
“There’s trouble with the pilgrims camped outside the city walls. The Apparat doesn’t like anything this new cult has to say. He’s called the Priestguard to the lower town.”
Zoya was on her feet in an instant. The Apparat was meant to serve as spiritual counselor to the king, but he was a traitor and a troublemaker through and through.
Nikolai took a quick swig of his tea and rose. “Are our people in position?”
Tolya nodded. “We have Heartrenders in plain dress interspersed throughout the crowd and snipers in position along the walls and the nearest hillside. There’s not much cover, though.”
“You knew this would happen?” Zoya asked Nikolai as she followed him and the twins back through the palace corridors.
“I had a feeling.”
“And you made no move to stop him?”
“How?” said Nikolai. “By barricading him in the chapel?”
“I’ve heard worse ideas. He has no standing.”
“But he has the means, and he knows I won’t challenge him outright with armed troops.”
Zoya scowled. “The Priestguard should have been disbanded long ago.” They were warrior monks, both scholar and soldier, and there was no question their loyalty lay with the Apparat, not their king.
“Unfortunately, that would have caused riots among the common people, and I’m not keen on riots. Unless they involve dancing, but I believe those are usually referred to as parties. What kind of party is this, Tamar?”
“We’ve had our people circulating with the pilgrims every day and reporting back. They’ve been mostly peaceful. But this morning one of their preachers got them riled up, and the Apparat must not have liked what he heard.”
The king’s soldiers were waiting by the double-eagle fountain with additional horses in tow.
“No uniformed soldiers will move past the lower wall without my say-so,” Nikolai commanded. “The Grisha are only there for crowd control unless I give the signal. Keep the snipers in position, but absolutely no one is to act without direct orders from me, understood?”
The king had the right to command his forces as he saw fit, and Zoya trusted the twins to make the best possible use of their Heartrenders to protect the crown, but Zoya’s temper still bristled at the fact that they’d been put in this position. Nikolai was too fond of compromise. The Apparat had betrayed everyone who’d ever been foolish enough to trust him. He was a snake, and if she’d had her way, he and his Priestguard lackeys would have been offered two choices after the civil war—execution or exile.
They mounted and were headed through the gates when Nikolai said, “I need you calm, Zoya. The Apparat isn’t fond of the Grisha Triumvirate to begin with—”
“I weep.”
“And outright hostility from you won’t help. I know you don’t approve of allowing the priest to remain in the capital.”
“Of course you should keep him here. Preferably stuffed above my mantel.”
“A stirring conversation piece, no doubt, but we can’t afford to make him a martyr. He has too much sway among the people.”
Zoya ground her teeth. “He is a liar and a traitor. He was instrumental in deposing your father. He tried to keep Alina and me captive beneath the earth. He never lent you support during the war.”
“All true. If I ever need to study for a history exam, I know who to come to.”
Why wouldn’t he listen? “The priest is dangerous, Nikolai.”
“He’s more dangerous if we can’t see what he’s doing. His network is far-reaching, and his sway with the people is something I can do nothing to combat directly.”
They passed through the gates and on to the streets of the upper town. “We should have held a trial after the war,” Zoya said. “Made his crimes known.”
“Do you really believe it would have mattered? Even if Alina Starkov herself rose from the Fold ensconced in sunlight to denounce him, the Apparat would still find a way to survive. That’s his gift. Now put on your most devout face, Zoya. You make a darling heretic, but I need you looking pious.”
Zoya ordered her features into a facsimile of calm, but the prospect of dealing with the Apparat always left her caught between rage and frustration.
Nikolai had rebuilt the royal chapel on the palace grounds after the war and had it consecrated by the Apparat himself—a gesture of reconciliation. It was the site of Nikolai’s coronation, where the Lantsov crown had been set upon his head and the moth-eaten but supposedly sacred bearskin of Sankt Grigori had been laid upon his shoulders. The painted triptych panels of the Saints had been pulled from the rubble and refurbished, the gold of their halos burnished brightly—Ilya in Chains, Lizabeta of the Roses. Alina had been added to their number with her white hair and antler collar so that now fourteen Saints watched over the altar, assembled like a serene choir.
Zoya had barely made it through the coronation. She couldn’t help but think of the night the old chapel had fallen, when the Darkling had slaughtered most of the Second Army, the very Grisha he had spent his life claiming he would protect. If not for Tolya and Tamar, the war would have ended that night. And Zoya could admit that the Apparat’s forces had played their part too, holy warriors known as the Soldat Sol, young men and women dedicated to the worship of the Sun Saint, many of whom had been endowed with her power in the final battle with the Darkling on the Shadow Fold. That little miracle had cemented Alina’s legacy—and unfortunately bolstered the power of the Apparat as well. It was hard not to suspect he had something to do with the bone bridge at Ivets and the spate of strange happenings throughout Ravka.
As they passed over the bridge and into the streets of the lower town, Zoya could hear the crowds outside the double walls, but it was only when they’d dismounted and reached the top of the battlements that she got a good look at the people gathered below. She heard her own gasp, felt shock travel through her like a slap. These were not the ordinary pilgrims who journeyed across the country to pay homage to their Saints; they were not the sun cult that had grown up around Alina Starkov and that often came to the palace walls to honor her. These people wore black. The banners they raised were emblazoned with the sun in eclipse—the Darkling’s symbol.
They’d come here to praise the man who had torn Zoya’s life apart.