“You can’t just lock me in my room and tell me I’m being a bad tsarevna,” Katya said, frustrated.
“The Matriarch warned you not to go into the dungeons,” Iryna said with the same calm indifference she did everything else.
There was no time for this. An entire city sector had been razed and they were still trying to determine how many lives had been lost. Throwing the king of Tranavia in a jail cell and planning his execution wasn’t the thing to be doing.
“They were all helping,” Katya argued.
“They brought the Vultures into our city,” a low prince, Kirill Balakin, said. “That’s an act of war.”
Katya was surrounded by boyar and low nobility. She was going to scream. She whirled on Kirill. “We’re at war with them already,” she snapped. “What are we supposed to do? Continued retaliation? Don’t you think it’s a little weird that the Vultures came to assassinate the Tranavian king?”
Made all the weirder by the Black Vulture showing up. Katya thought of the propaganda crumpled in her pocket and was so overwhelmed she was going to crumble into dust right there. She had to get her friends out before the Matriarch made her next move. And they were her friends, damn them. She didn’t trust Nadya, and she had to be careful with Serefin because of who he was, and, well, Malachiasz didn’t count because she hated him and wished he had remained dead, but she was aware that the truly pressing problems wouldn’t remotely be fixed unless she had all three.
Her life had been so much easier when she had no friends.
A soft-spoken nize’ravta tayzhirefta, Zinaida Nekrasova, approached Katya. The general handed Katya a folded missive, her dark eyebrows arched. Judging by the seal, this was a military note. Katya scanned it quickly before pocketing, giving Zinaida a brief nod.
How had the Tranavians moved an army into Kalyazin when they had no blood magic? Something must have gone wrong at the front. Someone had become complacent. But Katya had no time to worry about it because there was talk of a pyre and she knew exactly who it was for.
She extricated herself from the group as elegantly as she could, fleeing the room. She found Anna in the halls.
“You,” she said, grabbing the girl’s arm. “Are you ready to commit grand disobedience against the Church?”
“No,” Anna said. “Wait. Is Nadya all right?”
“She is not.”
“Oh, then yes.”
Katya couldn’t help but laugh. She needed to find the Akolans. She could only hope they were still with Viktor.
“What was that? What happened?”
“We were attacked by a fallen god,” Katya replied, “who was using Tranavia’s Vultures to a dubious end. It rather seems as if they were trying to assassinate Serefin. It’s all deeply convoluted. Nadya was a bit too forward, and now the Matriarch knows our dear friend is more monster than anything else. Adding insult to injury, the damn Black Vulture is back.”
“Wait—Malachiasz?”
“You know him, too?”
Katya ducked around servants and boyar, never letting go of the priestess’s arm.
“He gets around.”
“Apparently.”
She pushed through the guards at the palace gates, ignoring their protests. She wasn’t supposed to leave. Did they think another fallen god was going to drop out of the sky? Hardly.
Gods, this was a mess. She hadn’t anticipated things to go smoothly when she brought her pack of miserable disasters to Komyazalov, but this was worse than she’d expected. Before she had been confident that she could convince her father to hear Serefin out. Now she knew that would not be the case. Her father was too devout and trusted Magdalena far too much. While Katya had expected the Matriarch to be a slight point of difficulty, she hadn’t expected an enemy. She should have. How many conversations had she had with Nadya about the things the Church had withheld? She had been honest about her worries and Katya had brushed her off.
Had they known this whole time what Nadya was? Magdalena certainly made it sound like they had. But how? She’d grown up a world away in a monastery.
Katya pounded on Viktor’s door, pushing past a servant. Viktor stepped into the main hall, looking flustered.
“I don’t have time,” she said, holding up a hand. “Are the Akolans here?”
“Of course. Katya, love, what’s going on?”
“A mess. Parj! I need your help!”
Parijahan poked her head out of the sitting room, followed by Rashid. Katya explained as quickly as she could. Parijahan had been in a different part of the city during the attack, she hadn’t seen the hatred in the Matriarch’s eyes. They must beat her to Nadya.
Parijahan’s expression was wan. “I thought you had it handled!”
“Yes, well, not this time.”
Noticing Anna hovering at a distance, Rashid waved. Anna’s face broke out in a grin. Katya did not have time to consider that, either.
“We need to get them out and fast.”
Parijahan glanced at Rashid, a slow smile flickering on her face. “Well,” she said. “Ostyia and Rashid spent some time recently figuring out just what good Akolan magic can do.”
What? Katya frowned.
“They’re all together?” Rashid asked.
“In the same block, not the same room. We had to isolate the Black Vulture at the king’s request.”
“Malachiasz is here?”
“Why are we surprised?” Katya said wearily. “More importantly, you have magic? Do you want to be the distraction, then?” she asked Parijahan.
The Akolan girl grinned. “I would love to.”
“I’ll help,” Anna said.
Katya looked to Rashid. “Let me raid Viktor’s cabinets for the ingredients I’ll need. I’m going with you.”
He nodded, flipping a dagger between long brown fingers. He was entirely relaxed for someone who had unlocked his own magic that day.
“Well, then, time to make ourselves enemies of the Church.”