He sat at the end of a table in the beer hall, ate tough rye bread and strips of lamb stewed so long they tasted like they’d already been chewed. This was what it meant to be alive. Elizaveta should count herself lucky. To think Zoya had been the one to kill her. He supposed it saved him the trouble of doing it himself. And if Zoya ever learned to harness the power she’d been given? She was still vulnerable, still malleable. Her anger made her easy to control. When this war was done and the casualties counted, she might once more be in need of a shepherd. She had been one of his best students and soldiers, her envy and her rage driving her to train and fight harder than any of her peers. And then she’d turned on him. Like Genya. Like Alina. Like his own mother. Like all of Ravka.

She will return to you.

He didn’t want Yuri’s sympathy. He drank sour beer and listened to the customers gossip. All the talk was of the war, the bombing of Os Alta, and of course, the blight that had vexed the king and his general so.

“Pilgrims camped in Gayena. They tried to set up their blasted black tents here, but we drove them out. We’ll have none of that unholy talk.”

“They say the blight’s a punishment for not making the Darkling a Saint.”

“Well, I say make him a Saint if it will bring that pasture back to life. Where am I supposed to graze my cattle?”

“If he can get my lazy husband out of bed, I’ll make a pilgrimage to the Fold myself.”

Gayena. At last he had word of the Starless. He finished his awful meal and ducked out of the beer hall, but not before he’d used his shadows to help him snatch a pair of spectacles from one of the tables. As he walked, he let Yuri’s features return to the fore, the long face, the weak chin. No beard, of course. He was no Tailor. And the weak body would remain in exile too. Aleksander would need every bit of his strength. He placed the spectacles on his nose. He would have to look over the lenses. Yuri’s faulty eyesight from all those years bent over books was another thing he didn’t care to restore.

He could feel the boy’s elation at the prospect of rejoining the faithful. This is my purpose. This is the reason for all of it.

Yuri wasn’t wrong. Everyone had a part to play.