Siege and Storm (Shadow and Bone #2)(72)
Standing in the war room before the Grisha council, Nikolai gestured to one of the massive maps along the wall. “We took back most of this territory in the last campaign,” he said, pointing to Ravka’s northern border with Fjerda. “It’s dense forest, almost impossible to cross when the rivers aren’t frozen, and all the access roads have been blockaded.”
“Are there Grisha stationed there?” asked Zoya.
“No,” Nikolai said. “But there are lots of scouts based out of Ulensk. If he comes that way, we’ll have plenty of warning.”
“And he would have to deal with the Petrazoi,” said Paja. “Whether he goes over or around them, it will buy us more time.” She’d come into her own over the last few weeks. Though David remained silent and fidgety, she actually seemed glad to have time away from the workrooms.
“I’m more concerned with the permafrost,” Nikolai said, running his hand along the stretch of border that ran above Tsibeya. “It’s heavily fortified. But that’s a lot of territory to cover.”
I nodded. Mal and I had once walked those wild lands together, and I remembered how vast they’d felt. I caught myself looking around the room, seeking him out, even though I knew he’d gone on another hunt, this time with a group of Kerch marksmen and Ravkan diplomats.
“And if he comes from the south?” asked Zoya.
Nikolai signaled Fedyor, who rose and began to walk the Grisha through the weak points of the southern border. Because he’d been stationed at Sikursk, the Corporalnik knew the area well.
“It’s almost impossible to patrol all the mountain passes coming out of the Sikurzoi,” he observed grimly. “Shu raiding parties having been taking advantage of that fact for years. It would be easy enough for the Darkling to slip through.”
“Then it’s a straight march to Os Alta,” said Sergei.
“Past the military base at Poliznaya,” Nikolai noted. “That could work to our advantage. Either way, when he marches, we’ll be ready.”
“Ready?” Pavel snorted. “For an army of indestructible monsters?”
“They’re not indestructible,” Nikolai said, nodding to me. “And the Darkling isn’t either. I know. I shot him.”
Zoya’s eyes widened. “You shot him?”
“Yes,” he said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t do a very good job of it, but I’m sure I’ll improve with practice.” He surveyed the Grisha, looking into each worried face before he spoke again. “The Darkling is powerful, but so are we. He’s never faced the might of the First and Second Armies working in tandem, or the kinds of weapons I intend to supply. We face him. We flank him. We see which bullet gets lucky.”
While the Darkling’s shadow horde was focused on the Little Palace, he would be vulnerable. Small, heavily armed units of Grisha and soldiers would be stationed at two-mile intervals around the capital. Once the fighting began, they would close on the Darkling and unleash all the firepower that Nikolai could muster.
In a way, it was what the Darkling had always feared. Again, I remembered how he’d described the new weaponry being created beyond Ravka’s borders, and what he’d said to me, so long ago, beneath the caved-in roof of an old barn: The age of Grisha power is coming to an end.
Paja cleared her throat. “Do we know what happens to the shadow soldiers when we kill the Darkling?”
I wanted to hug her. I didn’t know what might happen to the nichevo’ya if we managed to put the Darkling down. They might vanish to nothing, or they might go into a mad frenzy or worse, but she’d said it: When we kill the Darkling. Tentative, frightened, but it still sounded suspiciously like hope.
*
WE FOCUSED THE MAJORITY of our efforts on Os Alta’s defense. The city had an ancient system of warning bells to alert the palace when an enemy was in sight. With his father’s permission, Nikolai had installed heavy guns like those on the Hummingbird above the city and palace walls. Despite Grisha grumbling, I’d had several placed on the roof of the Little Palace. They might not stop the nichevo’ya, but they would slow them.
Tentatively, the other Grisha had begun to open up to the value of the Fabrikators. With help from the Inferni, the Materialki were trying to create grenatki that might produce a powerful enough flash of light to stall or stun the shadow soldiers. The problem was doing it without using blasting powders that would level everyone and everything around them. I sometimes worried that they might blow up the entire Little Palace and do the Darkling’s work for him. More than once, I saw Grisha in the dining hall with burnt cuffs or singed brows. I encouraged them to try the more dangerous work by the lakeside with Tidemakers on hand in case of emergency.
Nikolai was intrigued enough by the project that he insisted on getting involved in the design. The Fabrikators tried to ignore him, then pretended to indulge him, but they quickly learned that Nikolai was more than a bored prince who liked to dabble. Not only did he understand David’s ideas, he’d worked long enough with the rogue Grisha that he slipped easily into the language of the Small Science. Soon, they seemed to forget his rank and his otkazat’sya status, and he could often be found hunched over a table in the Materialki workshops.
I was most disturbed by the experiments taking place behind the red-lacquered doors of the Corporalki anatomy rooms, where they were collaborating with the Fabrikators to try to fuse Grisha steel with human bone. The idea was to make it possible for a soldier to withstand nichevo’ya attack. But the process was painful and imperfect, and often, the metal was simply rejected by the subject’s body. The Healers did what they could, but the ragged screams of First Army volunteers could sometimes be heard echoing through the halls of the Little Palace.