I almost laughed out loud. Who was I kidding? I hated even sitting in the same room with her. She looked like a Saint. Delicate bones, glossy black hair, perfect skin. All she needed was a halo. Mal paid her no attention, but a twisting feeling in my gut made me think he was ignoring her a little too deliberately. I knew I had more important things to worry about than Zoya. I had an army to run and enemies on every side, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
I took a breath and tried to focus. The hardest part of the meeting was still to come. As much as I just wanted to curl up somewhere quiet and dark, there were things that needed to be addressed.
I looked around the table and said, “You need to know what we’re up against.”
The room fell silent. It was as if a bell had rung, as if everything that had come before was mere playacting, and now the real meeting had begun.
Piece by piece, I laid out what I knew about the nichevo’ya, their strength and size, their near invulnerability to bullet and blade, and most important, the fact that they did not fear sunlight.
“But you escaped,” Paja said tentatively, “so they must be mortal.”
“My power can destroy them. It’s the one thing they don’t seem able to recover from. But it isn’t easy. It requires the Cut, and I’m not sure how many I can handle at once.” I didn’t mention the second amplifier. Even with it, I knew I couldn’t withstand the onslaught of a fully formed shadow army, and the fetter was a secret I intended to keep, at least for now. “We only escaped because Prince Nikolai got us outside the Darkling’s range,” I continued. “They seem to need to be close to their master.”
“How close?” asked Pavel.
I looked to Mal.
“Hard to say,” he replied. “A mile. Maybe two.”
“So there’s some limit to his power,” Fedyor said, with no small amount of relief.
“Absolutely.” I was glad to be able to relate something that wasn’t completely dire. “He’ll have to enter Ravka with his army to get to us. That means we’ll have warning and that he’ll be vulnerable. He can’t summon them the way he summons darkness. The effort seems to cost him.”
“Because it’s not Grisha power,” David said. “It’s merzost.”
In Ravkan, the word for magic and abomination was the same. Basic Grisha theory stated that matter couldn’t just be created from nothing. But that was a tenet of the Small Science. Merzost was different, a corruption of the making at the heart of the world.
David fiddled with a loose thread at his sleeve. “That energy, that substance has to come from somewhere. It must be coming from him.”
“But how is he doing it?” asked Zoya. “Has there ever been a Grisha with this kind of power?”
“The real question is how to fight them,” said Fedyor.
Talk turned to defense of the Little Palace and the possible advantages of confronting the Darkling in the field. But I was watching David. When Zoya had asked about other Grisha, he’d looked directly at me for the first time since I’d arrived at the Little Palace. Well, not at me exactly, but at my collar. He’d gone right back to staring at the table, but if possible, he seemed even more uncomfortable than before. I wondered what he might know about Morozova. And I wanted an answer to Zoya’s question, too. I didn’t know if I had the training or the nerve to attempt such a thing, but was there a way to summon soldiers of light to fight the Darkling’s shadow army? Was that the power the three amplifiers might give me?
I meant to try to talk to David alone after the meeting, but as soon as we adjourned, he shot out the door. Any thoughts I had of cornering him in the Materialki workshops that afternoon were squelched by the piles of paper waiting for me in my chambers. I spent hours preparing the Grisha pardon and signing countless documents guaranteeing funds and provisions for the outposts the Second Army hoped to reestablish on Ravka’s borders. Sergei had tried to manage some of the Darkling’s duties, but much of the work had simply gone unattended.
Everything seemed to be written in the most confusing way possible. I had to read and reread what should have been simple requests. By the time I’d made a small dent in the pile, I was late for dinner—my first meal in the domed hall. I would have preferred to take a tray in my room, but it was important that I assert my presence at the Little Palace. I also wanted to make sure my commands were being followed, and that the Grisha were actually mixing the Orders.
I sat at the Darkling’s table. In an effort to get to know some of the unfamiliar Grisha and to avoid giving them any excuse to form a new elite, I’d decided that different people would dine with me every night. It was a nice idea, but I had none of Mal’s easy way or Nikolai’s charm. The conversation was stilted and pockmarked with awkward moments of silence.
The other tables didn’t seem to be faring much better. The Grisha sat side by side in a jumble of red, purple, and blue, barely speaking. The clink of silverware echoed off the cracked dome—the Fabrikators had not yet begun their repairs.