“It’s lye. Vats of it. Apparently they preserve fish in it as some kind of local delicacy.”
She could almost hear Matthias’ indignant protest: It’s delicious. We serve it on toast. Saints, she missed him. The ache of his absence felt like a hook lodged inside her heart. The hurt was always there, but in moments like these, it was as if someone had seized hold of the line and pulled.
Nina took a deep breath. Matthias would want her to focus on the mission. “They’re here?”
“They are. But there’s a problem.”
She’d thought Adrik seemed more morose than usual. And that was saying something.
Nina saw Leoni first, bent over a makeshift crate desk beside a row of vats, a lantern near her elbow, her ordinarily cheerful face set in hard lines of determination. The twists of her hair were knotted in the Zemeni style, and her dark brown skin was sheened with sweat. On the floor next to her, she’d cracked open her kit—pots of ink and powdered pigments, rolls of paper and parchment. But that made no sense. The emigration documents should have been long since finished.
Understanding came as Nina’s eyes adjusted and she saw the figures huddled in the shadows—a bearded man in a muskrat-colored coat and a far older man with a thick thatch of white hair. Two little boys peeked out from behind them, eyes wide and frightened. Four fugitives. There should have been seven.
Leoni glanced up at Nina, then at the fugitive Grisha, offering them a warm smile. “She’s a friend. Don’t worry.”
They didn’t look reassured.
“Jormanen end denam danne n?skelle,” Nina said, the traditional Fjerdan greeting to travelers. Be welcome and wait out the storm. It wasn’t totally appropriate to their situation, but it was the best she could offer. The men seemed to relax at the words, though the children still looked terrified.
“Grannem end kerjenning grante jut onter kelholm,” the older man said in traditional reply. I thank you and bring only gratitude to your home. Nina hoped that wasn’t true. Ravka didn’t need gratitude; it needed more Grisha. It needed soldiers. She could only imagine what Zoya would make of these recruits.
“Where are the other three?” Nina asked Adrik.
“They didn’t meet their handler.”
“Captured?”
“Probably.”
“Maybe they had a change of heart,” said Leoni, opening a bottle of something blue. She could always be counted on to find a positive outcome, no matter how unlikely. “It isn’t easy to leave all you love behind.”
“It is when all you love smells of fish and despair,” Adrik grumbled.
“The emigration papers?” Nina asked Leoni as gently as she could.
“I’m doing my best,” Leoni replied. “You said women don’t travel alone, so I wrote up the indentures as families, and now we’re short two wives and a daughter.”
Not good at all. Especially with kalfisk crawling all over the docks. But Leoni was one of the most talented Fabrikators Nina had met.
In recent years, the Fjerdan government had begun to watch their borders more closely and prohibit travel for their citizens. The authorities were on the lookout for Grisha attempting to escape, but they also wanted to slow the tide of people traveling across the True Sea to Novyi Zem seeking better jobs and warmer weather, people willing to brave a new world to live free of the threat of war. Many Ravkans had done the same.
Fjerda’s officials especially didn’t like to let able-bodied men and prospective soldiers emigrate and had made the necessary papers almost impossible to fake. That was why Leoni was here. She was no ordinary forger but a Fabrikator who could match inks and paper at a molecular level.
Nina pulled a clean handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed Leoni’s brow. “You can manage this.”
She shook her head. “I need more time.”
“We don’t have it.” Nina wished she didn’t have to say so.
“We might,” Leoni said hopefully. She had spent most of her life in Novyi Zem before traveling to Ravka to train, and like many Fabrikators, she had never seen combat. Fabrikators hadn’t even been taught to fight until Alina Starkov had led the Second Army. “We can send word to the Verstoten, ask them to wait until—”
“It’s no good,” Nina said. “That ship has to be out of port by sunset. Captain Birgir is planning one of his surprise raids tonight.”
Leoni let out a long breath, then bobbed her chin at the man in the muskrat-colored coat. “Nina, we’ll have to pass you off as his wife.”
It wasn’t ideal. Nina had been working at the harbor for weeks now, and there was a chance she’d be recognized. But it was a risk worth taking. “What’s your name?” she asked the man.
“Enok.”
“Those are your sons?”
He nodded. “And this is my father.”
“You’re all Grisha?”
“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 G?fvalle. 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?