“You see, Jarl,” said Ylva. “No lewd japes. A properly patriotic tale.”

Brum seemed distracted, checking his pocket watch. What are you waiting for? Nina wondered. Diplomatic talks between Fjerda and Ravka were still proceeding, and Fjerda had not yet declared war. But Nina felt sure battle was inevitable. Brum would settle for nothing less. She’d passed on what little intelligence she’d been able to gather eavesdropping at doors and over dinners. It wasn’t enough.

Cymbals crashed to start the tale of Egmond, the prodigy who had designed and built extraordinary castles and grand buildings when he was only a child. The acrobats pulled at long skeins of silk, creating a towering mansion of gray spires and glittering arches. The audience clapped enthusiastically, but an actor with a haughty face—a nobleman who didn’t want to pay for his fanciful new home—cursed Egmond, and the handsome young architect was bound in chains, to be dragged off to the old fort that had once stood on the cliff top above the harbor.

The scene changed to Egmond in his cell as a great storm arrived on a roll of thundering drums. Blue ripples of silk cascaded over the stage, embodying the flood that had engulfed the fort with the king and queen of Fjerda inside it.

Working undercover wasn’t simply a question of mastering a language or learning a few local customs, so Nina knew her Fjerdan myths and legends well. This was the part of the story where Egmond was meant to place his hand on the roots of a tree that had poked through his cell wall, and with Djel’s help, use the strength of the sacred ash to buttress the walls of the fort, save the king and queen, and build the foundation for the mighty Ice Court.

Instead three figures walked onto the stage—a woman engulfed in red paper roses, a young girl in a white wig with antlers around her neck, and a woman with black hair in a blue gown.

“What is this?” growled Brum.

But the gasp from the audience said it all: Sankta Lizabeta of the Roses, the Sun Saint Alina Starkov, and—an excellent touch if Nina did say so herself—the Stormwitch, Zoya Nazyalensky, had entered the play.

The Saints placed their hands on Egmond’s shoulders, then against the prison cell walls, and the twisted bits of fabric meant to symbolize Djel’s ash began to expand and unfurl, like roots uncoiling through the earth.

“No more of this,” Brum said loudly, his voice carrying over the crowd. He sounded calm enough, but Nina heard the edge in his voice as he stepped forward. The two drüskelle followed, already reaching for the clubs and whips at their belts. “The weather is turning. The play can continue later.”

“Leave them be!” shouted a man from the crowd.

A child began to cry.

“Is this part of the play?” asked a confused woman.

“We should go,” Ylva said, trying to herd Hanne and Nina away.

But the crowd was too close around them, pushing toward the stage.

“You will disperse,” Brum said with authority. “Or you will be arrested and fined.”

Suddenly, thunder sounded—real thunder, not the tinny drums of the performers. Dark clouds moved in over the harbor so quickly it seemed as if dusk was falling. The sea was suddenly alive, the water forming whitecaps, rolling in swells that set the ships’ masts swaying.

“Djel is angry,” said someone in the crowd.

“The Saints are angry,” called someone else.

“You will disperse!” Brum said, shouting over the rumble of the oncoming storm.

“Look!” a voice cried.

A wave was racing toward them from the harbor, looming higher and higher. Instead of breaking against the sea wall, it leapt the quay. It towered over the crowd, a wall of seething water. The people screamed. The wave seemed to twist in the air, then crashed down onto the quay—directly into Brum and his soldiers, sending them sprawling across the cobblestones in a rush of water.

The crowd gasped, then burst into laughter.

“Jarl!” cried Ylva, trying to go to him.

Hanne held her back. “Stay here, Mama. He will not want to be seen as weak.”

“Sankta Zoya!” someone yelled. “She brought the storm!”

A few people in the crowd went to their knees.

“The Saints!” another voice said. “They see and they protect the faithful.”

The sea roiled and the waves seemed to dance.

Brum stumbled to his feet, his face red, his clothes soaked with seawater. “Get up,” he snarled, yanking his young soldiers to their feet. Then he was in the crowd, pulling the penitent up by the collars of their shirts. “Get off your knees or I will arrest you all for sedition and heresy!”

“Do you think we went too far?” Hanne whispered, sliding her hand into Nina’s and giving it a squeeze.

“Not far enough,” murmured Nina.

Because the performance and even the wave had only been a distraction. The play had been staged by the Hringsa network. The wave had arrived courtesy of a Tidemaker undercover in one of the harbor boats. But now as Jarl Brum and his men rampaged through the crowd, the honeywater vendor, who had slipped into an alley when the play began, gave a quick wave of his hands, parting the clouds.

Sunlight poured from the sky onto the butcher shop that had been raided a few nights before. The wall looked blank at first, but then the vendor uncorked the bottle Nina had slipped into his cart. He gusted a cloud of ammonia at the paint and a message appeared, as if by magic, scrawled across the storefront: Linholmenn fe Djel ner werre peje.

The Children of Djel are among you.

It was a cheap party trick, one she and the other orphans had used to send each other secret messages. But as Nina had learned not so long ago in Ketterdam, a good con was really about spectacle. All around her she could see the people of Djerholm gaping at the message emblazoned on the storefront, pointing to the sea that had now calmed, to the clouds that were rolling back into place as the honeywater vendor casually wiped his hands and returned to his stall.

Would it matter? Nina didn’t know, but little miracles like these had been happening all over Fjerda. In Hjar, a damaged fishing boat had been about to sink when the bay froze solid and the sailors were able to walk safely back to shore, their catch intact. The next morning, a mural of Sankt Vladimir’s sacred lighthouse had appeared on the church wall.

In Felsted, an apple orchard had burst into full fruit despite the cold weather, as if Sankt Feliks had laid a warming hand upon the trees. The branches had been found festooned with ash boughs—a symbol of the blessing of Djel.