Chapter Text
I. Zoya
Zoya Nazyalensky scanned the emerald hell that lay before her with equal measures of appreciation and disdain. The bright rolling hills and dark valley slopes were nothing more than sweet, traitorous bait. If one merely looked on at the steep meadows full of grazing sheep, they could never guess the horrors people have had to endure on this land. She gritted her teeth.
The horrors Grisha had to endure on this land.
Even almost a year after first hearing them, Harshaw’s words still sometimes rang in her ears, a tale of a brother being slaughtered and bled like nothing more than livestock.
She shrugged at her coat’s lapels, ignoring the way the thick material made her miss her kefta and took a breath of the humid air. Zoya scrunched her nose. Everything was so…green. And wet. This country had two types of weather: rain, and preparing to rain. The Wandering Isles reminded her of a petulant child constantly on the verge of tears. And when the dam broke…saints, it broke with inconsolable fervor. Just then, thunder roared in the distance, as if to prove a point. Like a tantrum. Or a warning.
Storm is still a few hours out , she thought, and glanced at her companion.
Nikolai Lantsov, the young king of Ravka stood beside her, assessing the scenery with similar interest. He was, of course, disguised, his face and hair changed to resemble that of Sturmhond, a pirate employed by the crown.
“I don’t like this,” Zoya said after a few moments of silence.
“During our times shared together I’ve come to the realization that the list of things you don’t like are quite long, so I could use some elaboration here, General,” Nikolai replied, amusement clear in his voice. She narrowed her eyes.
“Excuse me for not being ecstatic about putting the only king of my country in unnecessary danger,” she replied, then added “ Moi tsar,” like an afterthought.
They’ve shed the formalities within the first month or so of working together, leaving titles and flare for teasing private banter and public affairs. Nikolai had insisted from the moment their work began, but Zoya initially refused. She didn’t know what to make of her new king then. Truth be told she didn’t know what to make of the new king now either. His penchant of taking up roles made him quite the cunning diplomat but it didn’t help with settling her early distrust. She wasn’t a fan of these games of masquerade. She was good at them, if need be, true, but she found no enjoyment in faking smiles through palace banquets. Nikolai on the other hand excelled at them and she could never truly pinpoint when one act stopped or another began.
Yet, despite her best efforts, through long meetings that often continued into nights, shared meals, and visits to various forgotten towns and villages where he insisted on personally distributing aid, her reservations slowly ebbed away.
And now the sole sovereign of the country she swore an oath to protect and give her life for was just…Nikolai.
She took a scrutinizing look at his disguise once more. Or Sturmhond, depending on the circumstances.
“Besides,” she started “why would the pirate Sturmhond be interested in the isles anyway?”
Nikolai gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Privateer . And I’m not really Sturmhond right now…it’s just a familiar look and skin. He blends in with the locals, it’s a good cover.”
Except that neither of them spoke Kaelish. Zoya could only hope no one in their drunken stupor claimed Nikolai to be their long lost cousin who had owed them five sheep and a barrel of gruel. Or whatever passed as valuables around these parts.
But true enough, with his now rusted orange curls and sharp green eyes Nikolai wouldn’t stand out much. He even left his saintforsaken turquoise coat on board of their ship for which she was incredibly grateful for.
Zoya adjusted her shawl that loosely hung around her head, obscuring most of her hair. The weather provided a perfect excuse for it. Nikolai would not stand out, but unfortunately she might. She had been here a few weeks prior, collecting Grisha on the run and transporting them to safety. She didn’t want to take the chance of being recognized.
This mission wasn’t as high profile, it was more of a post operation check-in, really. Assure their contact they were still on the same side, learn as much about current affairs and leave. In and out, quickly, all in a day's worth without anyone taking notice.
Which is precisely why the rest of their crew stayed on the Volkvoln y, docked a few miles South the coast, keeping a healthy distance from the town’s port. The twins would have made too much of an impression around here, and Nadia and Adrik had little to none undercover field experience, despite the latter insisting to tag along specifically to learn.
After what happened last time though, Zoya wasn’t keen on letting anyone run around freely for a teaching moment, so Adrik would just have to deal with that for now.
Nikolai motioned towards her and they slowly made their way deeper into the town and towards the only tavern it housed. Their contact would already be waiting for them inside.
Zoya glanced up at the two storey wooden building. She couldn’t read its name, but the shield shaped sigil on its front was telling enough. It depicted a man cradling a severed head in his arms. Potentially his own, as he seemed to be missing one from his neck.
She sighed and shook her head slightly as they entered. Weird country.
---
They settled at a table near the far back corners of the tavern, mostly obscured from curious glances. Not that many looked. It was the beginning hours of the evening, and frankly most of the less than distinguished clientele of the establishment was already sloshed, or at the very least enjoying a certain buzz.
They spoke in Kerch and she made no effort to mitigate her heavy accent. She hated the language nearly as much as its country of origin. It lacked any sort of elegance or rhythm, and its syntax didn’t leave much room for creativity due to its rigid structures either. A language adapted for pre-negotiated terms and conditions. Indentures and contracts. It pained her how much they had to rely on Kerch loans. But Ravka was on the brink of financial destruction. Even before the civil war the royal coffers were stuffed with empty promises more so than vlachi . Now, they had to make due with what they had.
Nikolai took the lead in catching up with their contact and she happily let him. His Kerch was, unsurprisingly, much better than hers and he enjoyed playing these roles far more anyway.
The meeting itself didn’t take long, and by now they were simply lounging around so their abrupt departure wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Their attention was suddenly drawn to the door when a group of young men walked through, seemingly unversed in the art of subtlety. Their stocky builds and shock of near white blonde hair gave away their affiliations quickly, even without uniforms of black and silver. Fjerdans.
Zoya quickly adjusted her shawl. It wasn’t out of vanity, she was sure there were plenty of dark haired pretty faces roaming each continent, but she still couldn’t take any chances. Not here, and not now, after their… her failure the last time. Nikolai had called it a partial success. But she couldn’t bring herself to do the same. They returned to Ravka with more Grisha than they left with, sure, but the headcount was still missing someone. And she knew the drüskelle were behind it.
Nikolai’s voice brought her out of her self-deprecating stupor.
“Why do I have a feeling they are not here to enjoy the local cuisine?” He asked with a mischievous smile. She let out a quiet snort.
“What cuisine? You mean the undercooked meat drenched in blood and thick sauce that tastes like the color brown?” She loathed Kaelish food and was immensely glad they weren’t staying long enough to run out of their rations leaving them to rely on the local…delicacies.
She took a slow sip from her tankard. She had to admit that on the other hand, the Kaelish’s preference for alcohol, beoir they called it, wasn’t half bad. Maybe once their country wasn’t borrowing money to ward off mass starvation each month they could look into the ins and outs of brewing something similar.
Nikolai grinned at her. Even with Sturmhond’s crooked nose and patchy rust colored stubble anyone with half a working brain should have been able to tell those teeth did not belong on a pirate. Privateer. Whatever. Saints only knew how his disguise had held up for so long.
“Clearly you prefer salted herring from other people’s plates, right dear ?”
It snapped her attention back from her musings. He was looking straight at her still, his too-perfect-teeth-for-a-pirate glinting in the sparse light while his eyes sparkled with something akin to a challenge. Right, she almost forgot. They had a cover story to uphold should anyone raise suspicion towards them. A travelling merchant couple conducting business. It wasn’t the first, nor probably the last time they employed such a tactic. It also hadn’t escaped her attention how it was somehow always the two of them that ended up falling into these roles, and she still wasn’t sure what to make of that. But she was good at pretense…and two could play that game. So she put on her most saccharine smile and bat her lashes at him.
“Only if it's yours, schatje .” For good measure she even snaked her hand down his wrist and settled it on top of his gloved one resting on the table, interlocking their fingers.
If Nikolai was affected by her display of acting prowess he showed no signs of it. He kept looking at her with the same sparkling eyes as before. Normally, she would have been surprised. Men tended to fold by her feet before she would even speak a word. But by now, she was used to Nikola’s antics, and she had to admit the young tsar could at least give as much as he could take. It certainly made for far less boring meetings and assignments than she was used to. Even if he drove her up the walls sometimes in the process.
She moved closer then, swiftly depositing herself in his lap, her other hand coming to rest on his chest, as she whispered into his neck still in Kerch.
“So what do we plan to do about our esteemed Northern neighbours?”
From a distance they looked nothing more than a young couple, warmed by the alcohol as they enjoyed the cover the dimly lit tavern offered, murmuring about how to continue their outing.
Nikolai lifted her chin slightly so he could look into her eyes and brushed a stray piece of hair behind her ear as he spoke in a hushed tone.
“There isn’t much we can do, I’m afraid.”
Not the answer she wanted to hear, but it hadn’t surprised her either. She didn’t speak Fjerdan, and while Nikolai claimed his was at least passable Zoya sincerely had her doubts. They were definitely here to gather intel. Fjerdans stood out like a sore thumb anywhere other than…well, Fjerda. But they were definitely a questionable sight in a tavern. Or anywhere people could have an iota of fun.
Zoya sighed. Maybe she was worrying for nothing. Their contact assured them that all was quiet in the region since their last pick up of Grisha. Unfortunately, he also couldn’t tell them anything about the young heartrender that went missing during the very same excursion. The Fjerdans, likely, were wasting their time at this rundown damp tavern just as much as they were.
“So, love …,” the game was back on. “Shall we retreat to somewhere more…private?” Nikolai asked with a slight tilt of his head, playful smirk back in its place.
She leaned in just a tad bit closer sporting a similar expression.
“Why dear …I thought you’d never ask.”
Just as they were about to get up, someone from the nearby table raised their voice a little higher.
“... drüshire…”
Zoya and Nikolai locked eyes. Now that, they both understood.
---
Which was how they found themselves following the group late into the night, occasionally playing the part of a lovesick couple who may have had far too much at the local watering hole, leaning on each other and whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears. They eventually exited the town, and they kept following the group of four under the cover of darkness and an acoustic bubble lest they made a sound.
The deeper they creeped along the shoreline, nearing a field surrounded by woods, the more obsolete their bubble became. Zoya glanced at the sky. The storm was approaching faster than anticipated, heavy winds as well as roaring thunder helped them cover their approach. She navigated the air around the two of them, to escape at least the brunt of the storm. The drüskelle camp was located at the far end of the clearing, flanked by a rocky hillside covered in thicket and from their position it looked to be in disarray. The wind was already picking up speed, throwing around everything and anything it could grab a hold of. Tents, cooking utensils, clothes from hanglines, anything that wasn’t secured became part of a chaotic whirlwind, as people shouted around their struggling torchlights. Zoya and Nikolai crept closer to the camp, following the line of rocks and taking refuge in the dark and the bushes, eventually circling behind the camp, finally being able to take a closer look at it.
Dammit. Zoya cursed under her breath. A quick look at Nikolai confirmed her suspicion that he felt similarly. This camp was not suited to hold anyone captive, much less Grisha. It was far too small, far too unequipped. If anything, it was more of an outpost, and a fairly new one at that too. The drüskelle were still yelling, probably about grabbing whatever they could salvage and move closer inland, further away from the clearing and the rocky shores nearby.
It was worth a try at least, Zoya mused, as she and Nikolai turned to leave just as quietly as they arrived.
“ Ondetjärn !”
The voice came from mere inches behind them and Zoya turned on instinct, stealing the air right out of the accusing body. Not enough to kill, just to silence. Nikolai quickly grabbed hold of the falling man, threw him around his shoulder and bolted out of the camp, caution forgotten, Zoya right on his heels. They didn’t stop until they reached the edge of the clearing, panting and close to being drenched. The rain started sometime in the middle of their escape. Nikolai let out a guff of a laugh, as he put down their accidental acquisition, still unconscious. Zoya watched him procure a short set of ropes from his coat with slight amusement. Of course his pirate (privateer!) persona would keep ropes on him . But she didn’t comment, just watched as he tied the drüskelle’s hand behind his back. He turned back to her.
“Well, what now?”
They couldn’t just follow the path back and waltz through town dragging around a guy unconscious and hog tied. Maybe if they were in Ketterdam. But this wasn’t Ketterdam.
Looking behind them, the camp still seemed to be dealing with their own issues, oblivious of one less soldier trying to save their belongings from water and wind. They still needed to get out of their line of sight. In the end, they opted to go down the shoreline. It was less than ideal, being so out in the open and close to the sea, but at least they had a clear path to where the Volkvolny waited for them, just a mile or two up North.
Nikolai carried their prisoner as they descended to the shore line and started their walk back to their ship. All in all it could have gone worse. While they didn’t find a camp full of captured Grisha, they weren’t going home empty handed. It was hard to tell if they could extort any information out of him. But there was always the slight possibility that he was the relative of someone important enough to negotiate a prisoner exchange. Zoya shrugged in her soaked coat, feeling a little bit of cold seeping into her, the material being a lot less durable than her kefta normally was.
Suddenly Nikolai slightly stumbled next to her as the drüskelle was waking up, kicking and screaming before he was unceremoniously dropped into the wet sand. He was furious, that much was clear. What he was saying, less so.
Zoya looked at Nikolai expectantly.
“Umm…something, something…Djel…something, witches.” He ‘translated’ shooting a sheepish grin her way.
“Enlightening,” She deadpanned. “Truly, where would we be without your… passable , was it? Fjerdan knowledge.”
Nikolai shrugged, “Oh please, it’s not like they talk about much else anyway.”
She rolled her eyes. Fair enough .
Nikolai cleared his throat, signalling to the drüskelle to pay attention, who finally shut up, albeit begrudgingly.
“ Pe… ,” She watched dubiously as he started, uncertainty wavering in his voice, “ ...ver… uhm , baerjenger.”
Now he just looked at them angry and confused. Saints above.
“No wait. Perjenger! You are our perjenger!” Nikolai turned and grinned at her proudly. Before Zoya could tell him off the guy quickly leapt to his feet, knocked Nikolai over into the sand with his shoulders and took off towards the direction of the raging sea.
She pulled Nikolai up and they both watched, flabbergasted at the scene in front of them.
“Surely he’s not-”
“I think he is.”
The drüskelle , now waist deep in the water, hands still bound, took one last look at them, closed his eyes, and plunged himself under the crashing waves.
Zoya and Nikolai exchanged a horrified look before taking off towards the sea.
Their prisoner was trying to drown himself.
---
It took great pains to get him out of the water. Nikolai threw himself into the waves as Zoya tried to carve paths into the sea using air to cover as much ground as they could. Nikolai finally grabbed hold of the drüskelle’s heavy wool coat and together they dragged him to the shore.
She wasn’t sure why they did it in the first place. Of course they didn’t want to return empty handed after their efforts, but it wasn’t like they were dragging Jarl Brum himself back to Os Alta. Yet, his action to just take his own life like this shocked both Zoya and Nikolai into immediate action. She wasn’t about to admit that out loud, but Nikolai impressed her. As he sat across her in the damp sand drenched to the bone, face flushed and panting, he didn’t look like a king. Kings didn’t bother to save a dying enemy. Those feats were left for folk heroes.
She turned to their prisoner ignoring Nikolai’s mumblings about saltwater in veins or some similar nonsense.
This was the first time she truly looked at the drüskelle , as they had been mostly running through the darkness. But now, as lightning occasionally shone above and reflected off of the water’s surface, it struck her how young their prisoner actually looked. He wasn’t wearing the drüskelle uniform of black lined with silver. His clothes were less sophisticated, made of a thick gray material. While he was stocky in build and at least as tall as her, his face was boyish and round, with not even signs of a stubble on his chin. His reddened cheeks and bright pink lips enunciated his youthful features even more. He was just a kid.
Younger than Adrik. Younger than Nina.
And he also wasn’t breathing.
---
Before Nikolai was king, and Zoya his general, they were both soldiers.
And they used every ounce of the first aid training they had received, stopping the rhythmic pressure applied to the boy’s chest only for the brief seconds when they switched places. Exhaustion creeped upon them both but a sense of…duty? Pity? Whatever it was, kept them going.
Until Nikolai called it quits.
“So, what, we are just giving up?” Zoya huffed, continuing the compressions without fault.
They were both tired, cold, and dripping with water.
Nikolai locked eyes with her, and he spoke as gently as the sounds of the roaring storm around them allowed.
“You know I don’t want to, but this isn’t working. He is not coming back.”
She looked back at the boy under her hands who showed no signs of change. She knew . Of course she knew. It didn’t mean she wanted to admit it. She also knew it wouldn't be very productive to blame themselves. Had they met on the battlefield, it would have amounted to nothing knowing how young he was. His brethren took Grisha and burned them at the pyres. He was learning to do just the same and Zoya had no doubt that given the opportunity he would have done it to her as well. Just as they must have done to Nina.
Still, it had felt…wrong. And she could see it was weighing on Nikolai as much as it was weighing on her. They had both hoped that the age of child soldiers would be coming to an end soon. How wrong they had been.
Zoya lifted her hands, finally. She sighed as she watched a particularly bright bolt of lightning cross the clouds above them. They heard a loud boom nearby. It must have connected with something on the ground.
Her mind started quickly racing with thoughts as she kept glancing between the boy and the sky.
“What are you thinking about?” She heard Nikolai ask.
What was she thinking about?
Saints. Tales. Memories. Bits of conversations she had never once stopped to seriously consider before. She didn't pay much mind towards hagiography. The saints, she believed, had abandoned her a long time ago. But with such an abundance of stories, they must have had some basis in truth.
Storms had always terrified people. It was no wonder they were a phenomenon often connected with the saints. Some would ward off heavy rains and hail to protect crops. Some invoked them to aid people in battle with winds…thunder…and
Lightning.
Storms were nothing short of a mystery. Any Grisha well-versed in the Small Science knew they were dependent on pressurizing air the right way. Something any powerful Squaller could learn and achieve. But lightning? It seemed to be a different beast of its own.
She remembered back in Pachina. Before…way before everything. One of their neighbours, an old widow with a crooked back and a nose that always found itself in everyone’s business, had claimed she met a planétnyky . A demon who dressed as a raggedy old man travelling through the region. He knocked on her door, she said, in the wee hours of the night, asking for fresh milk and some hard boiled eggs for the journey ahead. She refused. In turn, the demon brought forth a bolt of lightning, killing her only cow in an instant.
Her mother had laughed in the old lady’s face, and sent her away with barbed words about no free charity, while her father sat in deep, quiet contemplation.
Later, when Zoya went outside with the other kids, there was a boy a year or two older than most that gathered around the bays of hale they had claimed as a playground. There, standing on top of the tallest square of bay, the one where they were all explicitly banned from playing with, he let them in on a secret that the adults wouldn’t dare tell. Planétnyky , he said no doubt using the best conspiratory tone he could muster, couldn’t just kill on whim. They could also make lightning strike the ground right where a person was buried, forcing them to climb to the surface and take their place among the living once more. The boy, whose name she had long forgotten, had enough of a dramatic bone in his body to end the story by jumping down and grabbing one of the girls screaming “ And he’s going to get you too !”. It sent half a dozen kids crying and running home, while the other half dozen engaged in a game of ‘demon tag’. Zoya stayed. She didn’t see the point in getting scared from stories.
But even so, the topic would raise its head again and again in the Little Palace as well. The Corporalki never made it a secret that they believed themselves to be the most superior order amongst Grisha. And few wanted to argue. They do, after all, possess control over the human body. Their conflicts though, were rarely with the Etherialki. They had enough of an incentive to avoid being squalled into a wall, or having their eyebrows charred off “by accident”. Instead, their preferred target was often the Materialki. Zoya recalled the arguments the two groups frequently had around the time she arrived at the Palace.
The Corporalki taunted the Materialki, claiming that their order would eventually become useless, and their skills replaceable by mere otkazat’sya tradesmen.
In turn, the Materialki talked about theory (as they often did). The knowledge of the human body was still sparse compared to the ways of metals and chemicals. The otkazat’sya could just as easily get ahead of Corporalki by relying on sheer knowledge. For example, one of them said, we know bodies contain surges of energy, which Corporalki can manipulate, directing and redirecting them to where their goals dictate. But what if someone were to harness and store surges of energy outside the body? In that case, even an otkazat’sya could achieve the same results if they knew enough about veins and circulation.
Like stopping a heart. Or restarting it.
And all one needed was a redirected surge of energy.
Like the static that accompanied lightning.
She slowly placed her right hand back onto the boy’s chest and turned to Nikolai.
“I may have an idea.”
---
“You want to use the lightning?”
He asked warily, but he seemed just as excited as bewildered.
Zoya hid her own surprise quickly. Nikolai may not have been a Grisha, but he was educated. More than that, he was curious and intelligent. In his own idiotic ways. Clearly, he was entertaining similar thoughts while observing the flashing lights above them.
She nodded.
“Have you ever done this before?”
“Seems like as good a time to try as any.”
If she hadn’t known any better, she would have thought she saw worry glint in his eyes for a second. But she didn’t have time to think about that. They had lost enough of that as is.
She exhaled. She was going to try and summon lightning. The how…was still a little questionable. She wasn’t entirely sure what lightning was, only what it left behind, but she knew it came with storms. She also knew it didn’t come with just any storm. Each kind was different and she could feel the disparity in the air.
The same way she could feel it now. She had a theory, at the very least.
She motioned for Nikolai to get further away from them. She had seen lightning strike trees before and it had a certain…area of effect. She didn’t want him caught up in that. And that was if she succeeded.
She raised her left hand towards the sky while keeping her right firmly on the boy’s chest, on top of his heart.
She started lowering the air pressure around them even more, focusing on creating a pathway of low pressurized air connecting from her left hand and ending at fingers of her right. In theory, the bolt would enter her, travel, and then strike into the boy’s chest, jumpstarting his heart.
She concentrated. Slowly, she could feel the insistent prickle of her skin. Her hair had also started to fizz and stand on edge. She took a deep breath. Through the sounds of the raging storm around them she could vaguely make out Nikolai yelling towards her.
“Zoya wait! Are you su-”
She saw a flash. Just before she was blinded by searing white light. She felt herself thrown, her legs leaving the ground. And there was a crash. Followed by intense heat. The blood under her skin boiled and spread, as if trying to escape. Rapid jabs and stings of pins and needles. Until that was all the feeling that remained.
---
The ants holding court in her veins finally came to a slow adjournment and a different, more familiar feeling took their place; the thumping sounds of her heart as blood pumped through its chambers. Had it always had this rhythm? It felt…wrong, Out of place.
Other than that, there were no sounds. A brief memory flashed before her eyes about their final stand against the Darkling and their trick to remain quiet. Perhaps she was in an acoustic anomaly again. That made sense. The air around her was fizzing, signs of the pressure being meddled with. A quick fix- really.
Except…no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to take control of her arms to raise them, or drum her fingers. Come to think of it, she couldn’t even…feel her limbs. They were attached, and they gave out an occasional burst of movement, that much she could see, but they might as well have been illusions. Phantoms and shadows of a time past playing a cruel joke on her.
She had a sinking feeling she should probably be more concerned. Afraid, even. This was obviously unnatural…something must have happened. But what? And when? It felt as if all she had ever known was nothing.
The air around her was…thick..and warm. Like standing near a bog in stifling heat that only ever visited Ravka in the height of summer. When even peasants ceased their work for a couple of days to retire into their cold rammed earth wall houses, or find similar relief in a nearby lake.
Was she near a lake now too? The air felt like it carried its currents nearby. It felt significant somehow but she couldn’t pinpoint why. Was she in the water? Was that why everything was so…muted? The colors, the sounds, the movements…like swimming sluggishly through something. Someone was drowning. Was she drowning ? For the first time since…she didn’t know how long ago this unscheduled journey into nothingness started, but she suddenly felt a surge of panic grip her throat.
She tried inhaling.
Regret hit her faster than a bullet leaving the rifle of a First Army soldier in their moments of desperation.
The pain that came with air expanding her lungs was near indescribable. As if someone threw her into a mortar and tried to grind her bones with a pester until only fine powder remained. But her bones wouldn’t give, and only the suffocating and searing pressure remained. A heavy weight settled on her chest that made each intake of breath harder than the last.
Darkness slowly seeped into her eyes from all sides, obstructing her vision, even though she knew they were still open. She saw a burst of color, blurs of various shades of red above her. And then the sweet embrace of nothing took her again.