“We need to bury them,” Nina said.
“The ground’s too hard, and we don’t have the time. The Shu team is still moving towards Djerholm. We don’t know how many other Grisha they may have, and Pekka’s team could already be inside.”
“We can’t just leave them for the wolves,” she said, her throat tight.
“Do you want to build them a pyre?”
“Go to hell, Brekker.”
“Do your job, Zenik,” he shot back. “I didn’t bring you to Fjerda to perform funeral rites.”
She lifted her hands. “How about I crack your skull open like a robin’s egg?”
“You don’t want a look at what’s inside my head, Nina dear.”
She took a step forward, but Matthias moved in front of her.
“Stop,” he said. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you dig the grave.” Nina stared at him. He took a pick from his gear and handed it to her, then took another from Jesper ’s pack. “Head due south from here,” he said to the others. “I know the terrain, and I’ll make sure we catch up to you by nightfall. We’ll move faster on our own.”
Kaz looked at him steadily. “Just remember that pardon, Helvar.”
“Are we sure it’s a good idea to leave them alone?” Wylan asked as they moved down the slope.
“No,” replied Inej.
“But we’re still doing it?”
“We trust them now or we trust them later,” Kaz said.
“Are we going to talk about Matthias’ little revelation about Nina’s loyalties?” asked Jesper.
Nina could just make out Kaz’s reply: “Pretty sure most of us don’t have ‘stalwart’ or ‘true’
checked off on our résumés.” For all that she wanted to pummel Kaz, she couldn’t help being a bit grateful, too.
Matthias walked a few steps away from Nestor ’s body. He heaved the pick into the icy earth, wrenched it free, plunged it in again.
“Here?” Nina asked.
“Do you want him elsewhere?”
“I … I don’t know.” She gazed out at the fields of white, marked by sparse groves of birch. “It all looks the same to me.”
“You know our gods?”
“Some,” she said.
“But you know Djel.”
“The wellspring.”
Matthias nodded. “The Fjerdans believe all the world is connected through its waters – the seas, the ice, the rivers and streams, the rain and storms. All feed Djel and are fed by him. When we die, we call it fel?t-objer, taking root. We become as roots of the ash tree, drinking from Djel wherever we are laid.”
“Is that why you burn Grisha instead of burying them?”
He paused, then gave a brief nod.
“But you’ll help me lay Nestor and the Squaller to rest here?”
He nodded again.
She took hold of the other pick and attempted to match his swing. The ground was hard and unyielding. Every time the pick struck the earth it sent a rattling jolt up her arms.
“Nestor shouldn’t have been able to do that,” she said, her thoughts still churning. “No Grisha can use power that way. It’s all wrong.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Do you understand a little better now? What it’s like to face a power so alien? To face an enemy with such unnatural strength?”
Nina tightened her hold on the pick. Nestor in the grip of parem had seemed like a perversion of everything she loved about her power. Was that what Matthias and the other Fjerdans saw in Grisha?
Power beyond explanation, the natural world undone?
“Maybe.” It was the most she could offer.
“You said you had no choice at the harbour in Elling,” he said without looking at her. His pick rose and fell, the rhythm unbroken. “Was it because I was drüskelle? Were you planning it all along?”
Nina remembered their last real day together, the elation they’d felt when they’d crested a steep hill and seen the port town spread out below. She’d been shocked to hear Matthias say, “I am almost sorry, Nina.”
“Almost?”
“I’m too hungry to really be sorry.”
“At last, you succumb to my influence. But how are we going to eat without any money?” she asked as they headed down the hill. “I may have to sell your pretty hair to a wig shop for cash.”
“Don’t get ideas,” he’d said with a laugh. His laughter had come more easily as they’d travelled, as if he were becoming fluent in a new language. “If this is Elling, I should be able to find us lodging.”
She’d stopped then, the truth of their situation returning to her with terrible clarity. She was deep in enemy territory with no allies but a drüskelle who’d thrown her in a cage only a few weeks earlier.
But before she could speak, Matthias had said, “I owe you my life, Nina Zenik. We will get you safely home.”
She’d been surprised at how easy it was to trust him. And he’d trusted her, too.
Now she swung her pick, felt the impact reverberate up her arms and into her shoulders, and said,
“There were Grisha in Elling.”