Nina hurried after. If Hanne did decide to come to class, Nina didn’t want to be late. Adrik had already sent word to the Hringsa network in Hjar to make sure a ship would be waiting—assuming they somehow managed to get the women out of the factory. But if Hanne didn’t come today, Nina would have to seek her out and find a way back into her good graces. She needed Hanne for the plan she had in mind, and, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t much like the idea of Hanne being mad at her.

She had written out half of the day’s lesson in Zemeni vocabulary on the board and was starting to feel like the whole endeavor was futile, when Hanne appeared at the classroom door. Nina wasn’t quite prepared for the anger radiating off of her. She stood in silent fury as Nina clutched the chalk in her hands and tried to think of something conciliatory to say. Hanne’s copper eyes looked like vivid sparks against her cheeks, but Nina knew from experience that You’re beautiful when you’re angry was never a great place to start.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” she began.

“The Wellmother says I may continue my lessons, since she doesn’t want me left idle.”

“That’s won—”

“I didn’t say I wanted to continue,” Hanne whispered furiously. “What were you doing at the factory? I want the truth.”

And I wish I could give it to you. All of it. But despite what she’d learned from the girl in the woods, she didn’t trust Hanne that much. Not yet.

Nina gestured her inside and shut the door. She leaned against it. She’d spent last night thinking about how to answer Hanne’s questions. “Do you remember the sister I told you about?” Nina asked. “The one who married and lives in the south?” Hanne nodded. “She was caught.”

Hanne’s fists bunched. “But you said—”

“I don’t know how it happened, but she was caught using her Grisha power, and she was taken by the drüskelle.”

“What became of her husband?”

“He was taken too. And put to death for harboring her secrets. I think they brought Thyra here.”

“They brought your sister to a munitions factory?”

“The factory is only part of the story. Soldiers are keeping Grisha girls in the abandoned wing of the fort. They’re experimenting on them. The Wellmother is helping, along with some of the Springmaidens.”

Hanne folded her arms. “They wouldn’t do that. Discovered Grisha are taken to the Ice Court for trial.”

Trials at which they were never found innocent, at which they were always sentenced to death. But the sentences were rarely carried out. Instead, Jarl Brum had secretly imprisoned those Grisha and subjected them to doses of parem.

“Don’t cover your ears and pretend you don’t know what men are capable of, Hanne. Tell me something: Have girls and women gone missing from Kejerut? From Gäfvalle? From all of the river cities?”

“Gone missing?” Hanne scoffed.

“How have they explained the disappearances?” Nina persisted. “Sickness? A sudden decision to take a trip? Wild animals? Brigands?”

“All of those things happen. That’s what living out here is like. Fjerda has hard ways.” Her voice was defensive but also proud.

Still, Nina didn’t think she’d imagined the slight hesitation, the quick flash of fear on Hanne’s face.

“You’ve seen the Ice Court, Hanne.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you really believe it was built by human hands? What if it was Grisha craft? What if Fjerda needs Grisha as much as it hates them?” And as Nina said it, she thought of the new weapons the Fjerdan military had been developing, the sudden leap in their progress. As if they were working with Fabrikators. Maybe they hadn’t managed to weaponize parem, but they’d certainly found new ways to exploit Grisha slaves.

Hanne bit her lip and gazed out the classroom window. She had a smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose, not golden like Adrik’s, but rosy, the color of ripe persimmon. “There was a girl here,” she said hesitantly, “Ellinor, a novitiate. She always kept to herself. One morning she was just gone. The sisters told us that she’d secured an offer of marriage and gone to Djerholm. But when I snuck into the woods to ride that day, I saw the Wellmother. She was burning Ellinor’s things.”

Nina shivered. Was Ellinor in that ward? Or was she already in a grave on the mountain?

“And a woman who lived between here and Kejerut,” Hanne said slowly, as if fighting the words. “Sylvi Winther. She … she had just come through a bad illness. She was faring well. She and her husband just packed up and left.”

Had this been one of the women Hanne had tended to in secret? Had she ridden out one cold afternoon and knocked on their door, only to find Sylvi and her husband gone?

“I know you’ve been taught to hate Grisha, Hanne … to hate yourself. But what the Wellmother and those soldiers are doing to those women is unforgivable.”

Hanne didn’t look angry anymore. She looked sick and frightened. “And what are we supposed to do about it?”

Nina thought of Matthias lying bleeding in her arms. She thought of girls lined up like misshapen dolls in the gloom of the old fort. She thought of the way Hanne hunched her shoulders as if she could somehow make herself invisible.

“Save them,” said Nina. “Save them all.”

ISAAK SAT ON THE RAVKAN throne—crafted by the legendary Fabrikator Eldeni Duda from Tsibeyan gold, crowned by a looming double eagle, and host to the backsides of countless generations of Lantsovs. All he could think of was how badly he needed to go to the bathroom.

They were two hours into the presentations, speeches, and gifts of the arriving delegations. He could tell that many of those present in the overheated throne room were flagging, weak from standing on their feet and bored by the proceedings. But Isaak would have been wide awake even without the menacing presence of Tolya Yul-Bataar to his left and Tamar Kir-Bataar to his right.

He wasn’t expected to do much more than say “thank you” when handed an elegant pair of new revolvers from Novyi Zem or a lapis chest full of gemstone birds from Kerch. But despite the pretense of gifts and courtship, Isaak knew enemies lurked among this roomful of allies. Who was a potential asset to the king? Who wished to do him harm?

Isaak smiled into the faces of the Fjerdan delegation—all tall, blond, and regal, their slim bodies arrayed in sparkling white and pale gray, as if they’d drifted in off the ice. He accepted their gifts of sea pearls and remembered the two Fjerdan bullets that had been taken from his thigh after Halmhend. The Fjerdans had backed the Darkling in the civil war. They’d been at least partially responsible for the death of the king’s older brother, Vasily. Each member of each delegation had been vetted, but they were still risks. At least Isaak’s work as a guard had prepared him for such threats.

The Shu party was entirely female. Princess Ehri Kir-Taban wore emerald silks embroidered with silver leaves, her long dark hair caught up in jeweled combs. She was known as the least beautiful but the most beloved of the five royal sisters. The Tavgharad marched behind their charge, expressions fixed in the hard, empty gaze Isaak had mastered during his own tenure as a palace guard. But these were no ordinary soldiers. They were elite fighters, trained from childhood to serve the Taban dynasty. They wore black uniforms, the screaming beak of a falcon carved from garnet on the left epaulet, square black caps set at a sharp angle over their tightly bound hair. Tamar had said one of them intended to defect. But which? Isaak wondered, scanning their faces. They looked like falcons with their stern mouths and gleaming golden eyes. Why would one of them turn her back on her country and betray the women she’d been trained to protect? Did one of them really intend to defect, or was this some kind of trap for the king? The princess wobbled slightly in her curtsy, a light sheen of sweat on her upper lip, and Isaak saw the face of the guard directly behind her harden even further. He knew he shouldn’t, but he felt for the princess as she rose from her curtsy and gave him a tremulous smile. He had gotten the barest taste of what it meant to be royal, and he didn’t like it at all.

Isaak hadn’t really understood what it would mean to wear the king’s face, to walk in his shoes. Tolya and Tamar had spirited Isaak out of the palace the previous night to the estate of the notorious Count Kirigin. He would have liked to see the grounds of the infamous Gilded Bog, but at dawn, with Isaak now dressed in the olive drab coat King Nikolai favored, they’d set him atop an exquisite white gelding, and the party had turned back to the city for a staged ride to the capital. They’d been joined by a group of guards and soldiers in military dress—the king’s retinue—and that had been Isaak’s first test. But no one had done more than bow to him or salute. He’d been safely tucked between the Bataar twins and a crew of Grisha soldiers, including Tamar’s wife, Nadia, as they rode through the countryside and then back through the lower town.

He’d been reminded of the first time he had glimpsed Os Alta, how awed he’d been by its bustle and size. It looked no different now that he was seeing it through the eyes of a king.

“Stop that,” whispered Tolya.

“What?”

“Gawking at everything like some kind of wide-eyed yokel,” said Tamar. “You must look at the world as if you own it.”

“Because you are the king, and you do,” added Tolya.

“As if I own it,” Isaak repeated.

“You could order this city and every building in it burned to the ground.”

Was that supposed to make him feel better? “I should hope someone would stop me?”

“Someone might try,” said Tamar. “And he’d probably be hanged for it.”

Isaak shuddered.

“At least he can seat a horse well,” grumbled Tolya.

But Isaak managed to get that wrong too, because a king did not leap from his horse and take his mount to the stables; he waited for the groom. A king tossed the reins to him with a smile and a bob of the head and a “Many thanks, Klimint” or a “How’s your cough, Lyov?” Because of course Nikolai Lantsov knew the names of every servant in the palace. If he’d been a lazier sovereign this might have been easier.