“Is something amusing?” Hilbrand asked.
“Just fighting a cold,” she lied. But even Hilbrand’s gruff manner put a pang in her heart. He was broad-shouldered and humorless and reminded her painfully of Matthias.
He’s nothing like me. What a bigot you are, Nina Zenik. Not all Fjerdans look alike.
“You know what Birgir did to those stowaways,” Hilbrand said. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful.”
“No, you don’t,” Nina said more sharply than she meant to. She was good at her job, and she knew exactly what was at stake. Her first morning at the docks, she’d seen Birgir and one of his favorite thugs, Casper, drag a mother and daughter off a whaler bound for Novyi Zem and beat them bloody. The captain had hung heavy chains around their necks weighted with signs that read drüsje—witch. Then he’d doused them in a slurry of waste and fish guts from the canneries and bound them outside the harbor station in the blazing sun. As his men looked on, laughing, the stink and the promise of food drew the gulls. Nina had spent her shift watching the woman trying to shield her daughter’s body with her own, and listening to the prisoners cry out in agony as the gulls pecked and clawed at their bodies. Her mind had spun a thousand fantasies of murdering Birgir’s harbor guards where they stood, of whisking the mother and daughter to safety. She could steal a boat. She could force a ship’s captain to take them far away. She could do something.
But she’d remembered too clearly Zoya’s warning to King Nikolai about Nina’s suitability for a deep-cover mission: “She doesn’t have a subtle bone in her body. Asking Nina not to draw attention is like asking water not to run downhill.”
The king had taken a chance on Nina, and she would not squander the opportunity. She would not jeopardize the mission. She would not compromise her cover and put Adrik and Leoni at risk. At least not in broad daylight. As soon as the sun had set, she’d slipped back to the harbor to free the prisoners. They were gone. But to where? And to suffer what horrors? She no longer believed that the worst terror awaiting Grisha at the hands of Fjerdan soldiers was death. Jarl Brum and his witchhunters had taught her too well.
As Nina followed Hilbrand into the cannery, the grind of machinery rattled her skull, the stink of salt cod overwhelming her. She wouldn’t be sorry to leave Elling for a while. The hold of the Verstoten was full of Grisha that her team—or Adrik’s team, really—had helped rescue and bring to Elling. Since the end of the civil war, King Nikolai had diverted funds and resources to support an underground network of informants that had existed for years in Fjerda with the goal of helping Grisha living in secret to escape the country. They called themselves Hringsa, the tree of life, after the great ash sacred to Djel. Nina knew Adrik had already received new intelligence from the group, and once the Verstoten was safely on its way to Ravka, Nina and the others would be free to head inland to locate more Grisha.
Hilbrand led her to his office, shut the door behind them, then ran his fingers along the far wall. A click sounded and a second, hidden door opened onto the Fiskstrahd, the bustling street where fishmongers did their business and where a girl on her own might avoid the notice of the harbor police by simply disappearing into the crowd.
“Thank you,” Nina said. “We’ll be sending more your way soon.”
“Wait.” Hilbrand snagged her arm before she could slip into the sunshine. He hesitated, then blurted out, “Are you really her? The girl who bested Jarl Brum and left him bleeding on a Djerholm dock?”
Nina yanked her arm from his grip. She’d done what she had to do to free her friends and keep the secret of jurda parem out of Fjerdan hands. But it was the drug that had made victory possible, and it had exacted an awful price, changing the course of Nina’s life and the very nature of her Grisha power.
If we’d never gone to the Ice Court, would Matthias still be alive? Would my heart still be whole? Pointless questions. There was no answer that would bring him back.
Nina fixed Hilbrand with the withering glare she’d learned from Zoya Nazyalensky herself. “I’m Mila Jandersdat. A young widow taking odd jobs to make ends meet and hoping to secure work as a translator. What kind of fool would pick a fight with Commander Jarl Brum?” Hilbrand opened his mouth, but Nina continued, “And what kind of podge would risk compromising an agent’s cover when so many lives are on the line?”
Nina turned her back on him and waded into the human tide. Dangerous. A man who lived his life in deep cover shouldn’t be so careless. But Nina knew that loneliness could make you foolish, hungry to speak something other than lies. Hilbrand had lost his wife to Brum’s men, the ruthless drüskelle trained to hunt and kill Grisha. Since then, he’d become one of King Nikolai’s most trusted operatives in Fjerda. Nina didn’t doubt his loyalty, and his own safety relied on his discretion.
It took Nina less than ten minutes to reach the address Hilbrand had given her, another cannery identical to the buildings bracketing it—except for the mural on its western side. At first glance, it looked like a pleasant scene set at the mouth of the Stelge: a group of fishermen casting their nets into the sea as happy villagers looked on beneath a setting sun. But if you knew what to look for, you might notice the white-haired girl in the crowd, her profile framed by the sun as if by a halo. Sankta Alina. The Sun Summoner. A sign that this warehouse was a place of refuge.
The Saints had never been popular among the people of the north—until Alina Starkov had destroyed the Fold. Then altars to her had begun to spring up in countries far outside Ravka. Fjerdan authorities had done their best to quash the cult of the Sun Saint, labeling it a religion of foreign influence, but still, little pockets of the faithful had bloomed, gardens tended in secret. The stories of the Saints, their miracles and martyrdoms, had become a code for those sympathetic to Grisha. A rose for Sankta Lizabeta. A sun for Sankta Alina. A knight skewering a dragon on his lance might be Dagr the Bold from some children’s tale—or it might be Sankt Juris, who had slain a great beast and been consumed by its flames. Even the tattoos that ran over Hilbrand’s forearms were more than they seemed—a tangle of antlers, often worn by northern hunters, but arranged in circular bands to symbolize the powerful amplifier Sankta Alina had once worn.
Nina knocked on the cannery’s side door, and a moment later it swung open. Adrik ushered her inside, his glum face pale beneath his freckles. His features were pleasant enough, but he maintained a relentlessly defeated demeanor that gave him the look of a melting candle. Instantly, Nina’s eyes began to water.
“I know,” said Adrik dismally. “Elling. If the cold doesn’t kill you, the smell will.”
“No fish smells like that. My eyes are burning.”