Zoya wrapped the bottles in cotton and placed them gently in the trunk, but as she moved to lock the lid, Genya laid a hand over hers.
“We’ve made the sedative as strong as possible,” she said. “But we don’t really understand what we’re trying to control. Zoya, you may not be safe with him.”
Zoya knew that better than anyone. She’d seen the horror that lurked inside Nikolai too closely to deny it. “What would you suggest I do?”
To Zoya’s surprise, Genya said, “I could go.”
David pressed his lips into a hard line, and Zoya knew that they’d discussed it, that Genya meant it. An unwelcome lump rose in her throat, but all she did was raise a brow. “Because you’re so good in a fight? Nikolai needs warriors with him.”
“The nichevo’ya left their mark on me too, Zoya. I understand the pull of this darkness.”
Zoya shook her head and drew her hand away, pocketing the key. “You aren’t prepared for this kind of fight.”
A knock came and they turned to see Tolya’s massive frame filling the doorway to the common room. “The coach is ready.” He called back over his shoulder, “And Tamar is late!”
“I am not late,” said Tamar from behind him. “My wife is just in a sulk.”
Zoya peered past Tolya’s shoulder and saw Tamar holding Nadia’s hand, clearly trying to coax her out of her gloom.
“I have every right to a sulk,” Nadia said. “You’re leaving. My brother is somewhere in Fjerda, and I’m being asked to build a prototype of a submersible that doesn’t work for a party I don’t want to attend.”
“I’ll be back before you know it,” said Tamar. “And I’ll bring you a present.”
“It had better be new goggles,” said Nadia.
“I was thinking of something more romantic.”
David frowned. “What’s more romantic than goggles?”
“We’re ready,” said Zoya. She handed Tolya the trunk. “Genya, report to me frequently on the replies we receive from the hopefuls and the preparations for security. I’ll send messages through our network on the road.” She hesitated. She had the awful urge to hug Genya … and for once she indulged it.
She felt Tolya’s disbelieving stare, felt Genya stiffen in surprise, then hug her back.
“Be safe,” Zoya whispered. Be safe. As if those words could cast some kind of spell.
“The only danger to me will be an overabundance of menu planning,” said Genya with a laugh. She drew back, and Zoya was both horrified and touched to see tears in Genya’s amber eye. “Do you really believe a cure is possible?”
“I have to. Ravka can’t endure another power grab, another coup, another war. Nikolai is insufferable, but he’s the only option we have.”
“He’s a good king,” Genya said. “I know the difference. Bring him back to us whole.”
“I will,” Zoya promised, though she didn’t know if it was a promise she could keep.
“And be careful, Zoya. Ravka needs you too.”
Zoya felt a suspicious prickling behind her eyes and hurried out the door before the situation became more maudlin than she could abide.
They traveled in luxury, surrounded by outriders and soldiers who carried the double-eagle flag. Yuri was kept in the coach, sequestered with Tolya as they scoured old scrolls and religious texts for information on the obisbaya. Another coach had been devoted to the books they’d gathered from the libraries at the Grand Palace and the Little Palace—and a few Tamar had obtained by stealth from the catacombs of the Priestguard—scholarly treatises bound in leather, crumbling hymnals, even old children’s books, illustrations of what might have been a thorn wood curling at the borders of their yellowing pages.
Though Yuri had wrung his hands and protested in querulous tones, he had been convinced to set aside his black robes for the brown roughspun of an ordinary monk so he could travel with them anonymously. He’d given in readily enough. Yuri believed that the secret agenda of this trip—the visits to the miracle sites and the Fold—was to determine whether the Starless One should be made a Saint and a church built on the site of his martyrdom.
“But for that to happen,” Nikolai had warned, “I need to know everything you can determine about the obisbaya—the ritual, the location of the thorn wood, this whole notion of purification.”
Yuri’s eyes had lit at that last word. “Purification,” he’d repeated. “A return to true belief. The faith of the people restored.”
Zoya knew Nikolai hoped the monk’s research would lead them to a ritual that might purge him of the monster, but even if they were somehow successful, she had to wonder where all of it would end.
“What are you going to do with him when this is over?” she’d asked Nikolai. “The people will revolt outright if you actually try to make the Darkling a Saint. You could start a holy war and give the Apparat the perfect chance to challenge you outright—and he’ll do it beneath Alina’s banner.”
“We’ll find a way to compromise,” Nikolai had said. “We’ll set Yuri up in a nice snug hermitage to prepare a treatise on the Darkling’s good works with all the books he wants. We’ll tell him the matter has to be put before the people. We’ll send him to the Wandering Isle to spread the gospel of the Starless One.”
“That sounds suspiciously like exile.”
“You say exile, I say extended holiday.”
“We should send him to Ketterdam to preach to Kaz Brekker and the rest of those reprobates,” suggested Zoya.
Nikolai winced. “He’d certainly get his martyrdom.”
The king hadn’t toured the country since immediately after the Darkling had been vanquished, when he’d stepped into the gap left by his exiled parents and onto the throne. Instead of remaining in the capital as the aristocracy had expected, Nikolai had taken to the roads and the skies, traveling without rest. Zoya had barely known the king then, and she certainly hadn’t trusted him. She’d understood that he was their fractured country’s best hope of survival, and she could admit that he’d shown ingenuity during the civil war, but he was also a Lantsov, and his father had brought nothing but misery to Ravka. For all Zoya knew at the time, the new king might be little more than a handsome, fast-talking catastrophe in the making.