The Healer nodded.
“Give her your kefta,” Ivan said to her.
The woman frowned but hesitated only a moment before she shrugged out of her red kefta and handed it to me.
“Why do I need this?” I asked.
“Just take it,” Ivan growled.
I took the kefta from the Healer. She kept her face blank, but I could tell it pained her to part with it.
Before I could decide whether or not to offer her my bloodstained coat, Ivan tapped the roof and the coach began to slow. The Healer didn’t even wait for it to stop moving before she opened the door and swung outside.
Ivan pulled the door shut. The oprichnik slipped back into the seat beside me, and we were on our way once more.
“Where is she going?” I asked.
“Back to Kribirsk,” replied Ivan. “We’ll travel faster with less weight.”
“You look heavier than she does,” I muttered.
“Put on the kefta,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s made with Materialki corecloth. It can withstand rifle fire.”
I stared at him. Was that even possible? There were stories of Grisha withstanding direct gunshots and surviving what should have been fatal wounds. I’d never taken them seriously, but maybe Fabrikator handiwork was the truth behind those peasant tales.
“Do you all wear this stuff?” I asked as I pulled on the kefta.
“When we’re in the field,” said an oprichnik. I nearly jumped. It was the first time either of the guards had spoken.
“Just don’t get shot in the head,” Ivan added with a condescending grin.
I ignored him. The kefta was far too large. It felt soft and unfamiliar, the fur lining warm against my skin. I chewed my lip. It didn’t seem fair that oprichniki and Grisha wore corecloth while ordinary soldiers went without. Did our officers wear it, too?
The coach picked up speed. In the time it had taken for the Healer to do her work, dusk had begun to fall and we had left Kribirsk behind. I leaned forward, straining to see out the window, but the world outside was a twilight blur. I felt tears threatening again and blinked them back. A few hours ago, I’d been a frightened girl on my way into the unknown, but at least I’d known who and what I was. With a pang, I thought of the Documents Tent. The other surveyors might be at their work right now. Would they be mourning Alexei? Would they be talking about me and what had happened on the Fold?
I clutched the crumpled army-issue coat I had bundled up on my lap. Surely this all had to be a dream, some crazy hallucination brought on by the terrors of the Shadow Fold. I couldn’t really be wearing a Grisha’s kefta, sitting in the Darkling’s coach—the same coach that had almost crushed me only yesterday.
Someone lit a lamp inside the coach, and in the flickering light I could better see the silken interior. The seats were heavily cushioned black velvet. On the windows, the Darkling’s symbol had been cut into the glass: two overlapping circles, the sun in eclipse.
Across from me, the two Grisha were studying me with open curiosity. Their red kefta were of the finest wool, embroidered lavishly in black and lined in black fur. The fair-haired Heartrender was lanky and had a long, melancholy face. Ivan was taller, broader, with wavy brown hair and sun-bronzed skin. Now that I bothered to look, I had to admit he was handsome. And knows it, too. A big handsome bully.
I shifted restlessly in my seat, uncomfortable with their stares. I looked out the window, but there was nothing to see except the growing darkness and my own pale reflection. I looked back at the Grisha and tried to quash my irritation. They were still gawking at me. I reminded myself that these men could make my heart explode in my chest, but eventually I just couldn’t stand it.
“I don’t do tricks, you know,” I snapped.
The Grisha exchanged a glance.
“That was a pretty good trick back in the tent,” Ivan said.
I rolled my eyes. “Well, if I plan on doing anything exciting, I promise to give fair warning so just… take a nap or something.”
Ivan looked affronted. I felt a little snap of fear, but the fair-haired Corporalnik let out a bark of laughter.
“I am Fedyor,” he said. “And this is Ivan.”
“I know,” I replied. Then, picturing Ana Kuya’s disapproving glare, I added, “Very pleased to meet you.”
They exchanged an amused glance. I ignored them and wriggled back in my seat, trying to get comfortable. It wasn’t easy with two heavily armed soldiers taking up most of the room.
The coach hit a bump and jolted forward.
“Is it safe?” I asked. “To be traveling at night?”
“No,” Fedyor said. “But it would be considerably more dangerous to stop.”
“Because people are after me now?” I said sarcastically.
“If not now, then soon.”
I snorted. Fedyor raised his eyebrows and said, “For hundreds of years, the Shadow Fold has been doing our enemies’ work, closing off our ports, choking us, making us weak. If you’re truly a Sun Summoner, then your power could be the key to opening up the Fold—or maybe even destroying it. Fjerda and the Shu Han won’t just stand by and let that happen.”
I gaped at him. What did these people expect from me? And what would they do to me when they realized I couldn’t deliver? “This is ridiculous,” I muttered.
Fedyor looked me up and down and then smiled slightly. “Maybe,” he said.
I frowned. He was agreeing with me, but I still felt insulted.
“How did you hide it?” Ivan asked abruptly.
“What?”
“Your power,” Ivan said impatiently. “How did you hide it?”
“I didn’t hide it. I didn’t know it was there.”
“That’s impossible.”
“And yet here we are,” I said bitterly.
“Weren’t you tested?”
A dim memory flashed through my mind: three cloaked figures in the sitting room at Keramzin, a woman’s haughty brow.
“Of course I was tested.”
“When?”
“When I was eight.”
“That’s very late,” commented Ivan. “Why didn’t your parents have you tested earlier?”
Because they were dead, I thought but didn’t say. And no one paid much attention to Duke Keramsov’s orphans. I shrugged.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Ivan grumbled.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” I leaned forward, looking desperately from Ivan to Fedyor. “I’m not what you think I am. I’m not Grisha. What happened in the Fold… I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t do it.”
“And what happened in the Grisha tent?” asked Fedyor calmly.
“I can’t explain that. But it wasn’t my doing. The Darkling did something when he touched me.”
Ivan laughed. “He didn’t do anything. He’s an amplifier.”
“A what?”
Fedyor and Ivan exchanged another glance.
“Forget it,” I snapped. “I don’t care.”
Ivan reached inside his collar and removed something on a thin silver chain. He held it out for me to examine.
My curiosity got the best of me, and I edged forward to get a better view. It looked like a cluster of sharp black claws.
“What are they?”
“My amplifier,” Ivan said with pride. “The claws from the forepaw of a Sherborn bear. I killed it myself when I left school and joined the Darkling’s service.” He leaned back in his seat and tucked the chain into his collar.
“An amplifier increases a Grisha’s power,” said Fedyor. “But the power must be there to begin with.”
“Do all Grisha have them?” I asked.
Fedyor stiffened. “No,” he said. “Amplifiers are rare and hard to obtain.”
“Only the Darkling’s most favored Grisha have them,” Ivan said smugly. I was sorry I’d asked.
“The Darkling is a living amplifier,” Fedyor said. “That’s what
you felt.”
“Like the claws? That’s his power?”
“One of his powers,” corrected Ivan.
I pulled the kefta tighter around me, feeling suddenly cold. I remembered the surety that had flooded through me with the Darkling’s touch, and that strangely familiar sensation of a call echoing through me, a call that demanded an answer. It had been frightening, but exhilarating, too. In that moment, all my doubt and fear had been replaced by a kind of absolute certainty. I was no one, a refugee from an unnamed village, a scrawny, clumsy girl hurtling alone through the gathering dark. But when the Darkling had closed his fingers around my wrist, I’d felt different, like something more. I shut my eyes and tried to focus, tried to remember that feeling of certainty, to bring that sure and perfect power into blazing life. But nothing happened.
I sighed and opened my eyes. Ivan looked highly amused. The urge to kick him was almost overwhelming.
“You’re all in for a big disappointment,” I muttered.
“For your sake, I hope you’re wrong,” said Ivan.
“For all our sakes,” said Fedyor.
I LOST TRACK OF TIME. Night and day passed through the windows of the coach. I spent most of my time staring out at the landscape, searching for landmarks to give me some sense of the familiar. I’d expected that we would take side roads, but instead we stuck to the Vy, and Fedyor explained that the Darkling had opted for speed over stealth. He was hoping to get me safe behind Os Alta’s double walls before rumor of my power spread to the enemy spies and assassins who operated within Ravka’s borders.
We kept a brutal pace. Occasionally, we stopped to change horses and I was allowed to stretch my legs. When I was able to sleep, my dreams were plagued by monsters.
Once, I awoke with a start, my heart pounding, to find Fedyor watching me. Ivan was asleep beside him, snoring loudly.
“Who’s Mal?” he asked.
I realized I must have been talking in my sleep. Embarrassed, I glanced at the oprichniki guards flanking me. One stared impassively forward. The other was dozing. Outside, the afternoon sun shone through a grove of birchwood trees as we rumbled past.
“No one,” I said. “A friend.”
“The tracker?”
I nodded. “He was with me on the Shadow Fold. He saved my life.”
“And you saved his.”
I opened my mouth to disagree, but stopped. Had I saved Mal’s life? The thought brought me up short.
“It’s a great honor,” said Fedyor. “To save a life. You saved many.”
“Not enough,” I murmured, thinking of the terrified look on Alexei’s face as he was pulled into the darkness. If I had this power, why hadn’t I been able to save him? Or any of the others who had perished on the Fold? I looked at Fedyor. “If you really believe that saving a life is an honor, then why not become a Healer instead of a Heartrender?”
Fedyor considered the passing scenery. “Of all Grisha, Corporalki have the hardest road. We require the most training and the most study. At the end of it all, I felt I could save more lives as a Heartrender.”
“As a killer?” I asked in surprise.
“As a soldier,” Fedyor corrected. He shrugged. “To kill or to cure?” he said with a sad smile. “We each have our own gifts.” Abruptly, his expression changed. He sat up straight and jabbed Ivan in the side. “Wake up!”
The coach had stopped. I looked around in confusion. “Are we—,” I began, but the guard beside me clapped a hand over my mouth and put a finger to his lips.
The coach door flew open and a soldier ducked his head in.
“There’s a fallen tree across the road,” he said. “But it could be a trap. Be alert and—”
He never finished his sentence. A shot rang out and he fell forward, a bullet in his back. Suddenly, the air was full of panicked cries and the teeth-rattling sound of rifle fire as a volley of bullets struck the coach.
“Get down!” yelled the guard beside me, shielding my body with his own as Ivan kicked the dead soldier out of the way and pulled the door closed.
“Fjerdans,” said the guard, peering outside.
Ivan turned to Fedyor and the guard beside me. “Fedyor, go with him. You take this side. We’ll take the other. At all costs, defend the coach.”
Fedyor pulled a large knife from his belt and handed it to me. “Stay close to the floor and stay quiet.”
The Grisha waited with the guards, crouching by the windows, then at a signal from Ivan they leapt from either side of the coach, slamming the doors behind them. I huddled on the floor, clutching the knife’s heavy hilt, my knees to my chest, my back pressed against the base of the seat. Outside, I could hear the sounds of fighting, metal on metal, grunts and shouts, horses whinnying. The coach shook as a body slammed against the glass of the window. I saw with horror that it was one of my guards. His body left a red smear against the glass as he slid from view.
The coach door flew open and a man with a wild, yellow-bearded face appeared. I scrambled to the other side of the coach, the knife held out before me. He barked something to his compatriots in his strange Fjerdan tongue and reached for my leg. As I kicked out at him, the door behind me opened and I nearly tumbled into another bearded man. He grabbed me under the arms, pulling me roughly from the coach as I howled and slashed out with the knife.
I must have made contact, because he cursed and loosened his grip on me. I struggled to my feet and ran. We were in a wooded glen where the Vy narrowed to pass between two sloping hills. All around me, soldiers and Grisha were fighting with bearded men. Trees burst into flames, caught in the line of Grisha fire. I saw Fedyor throw his hand out, and the man before him crumpled to the ground, clutching his chest, blood trickling from his mouth.
I ran without direction, clambering up the nearest hill, my feet slipping on the fallen leaves that covered the forest floor, my breath coming in gasps. I made it halfway up the slope before I was tackled from behind. I fell forward, the knife flying from my hands as I put my arms out to break my fall.
I twisted and kicked as the yellow-bearded man grabbed hold of my legs. I looked desperately down to the glen, but the soldiers and Grisha below me were fighting for their lives, clearly outnumbered and unable to come to my aid. I struggled and thrashed, but the Fjerdan was too strong. He climbed on top of me, using his knees to pin my arms to my sides, and reached for his knife.
“I’ll gut you right here, witch,” he snarled in a heavy Fjerdan accent.
At that moment, I heard the pounding of hooves and my attacker turned his head to look down at the road.
A group of riders roared into the glen, their kefta streaming red and blue, their hands blazing fire and thunder. The lead rider was dressed in black.
The Darkling slid from his mount and threw his hands wide, then brought them together with a resounding boom. Skeins of darkness shot from his clasped hands, snaking through the glen, finding the Fjerdan assassins, then slithering up their bodies to swathe their faces in seething shadow. They screamed. Some dropped their swords; others waved them blindly.
I watched in mingled awe and horror as the Ravkan fighters seized the advantage, cutting down the blinded, helpless men with ease.
The bearded man on top of me muttered something I did not understand. I thought it might be a prayer. He was staring, frozen, at the Darkling, his terror palpable. I took my chance.
“I’m here!” I called down the hillside.
The Darkling’s head turned. He raised his hands.
“Nej!” bleated the Fjerdan, his knife held high. “I don’t need to see to put my knife through her heart!”
I held my breath. Silence fell in the glen, broken only by the moans of dying men. The Darkling dropped his hands.
“You must realize that you’re surrounded,” he said calmly, his voice carrying through the trees.
The assassin’s gaze darted right and left, then up to the crest of the hill where Ravkan soldiers were emerging, rifles at the ready. As the Fjerdan
looked around frantically, the Darkling edged a few steps up the slope.
“No closer!” the man shrieked.
The Darkling stopped. “Give her to me,” he said, “and I’ll let you scurry back to your king.”
The assassin gave a crazed little giggle. “Oh no, oh no. I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head, his knife held high above my pounding heart, its cruel point gleaming in the sun. “The Darkling doesn’t spare lives.” He looked down at me. His lashes were light blond, almost invisible. “He will not have you,” he crooned softly. “He will not have the witch. He will not have this power, too.” He raised the knife higher and yowled, “Skirden Fjerda!”
The knife plunged down in a shining arc. I turned my head, squeezing my eyes shut in terror, and as I did, I glimpsed the Darkling, his arm slashing through the air in front of him. I heard another crack like thunder and then… nothing.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and took in the horror before me. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound would come. The man on top of me had been cut in two. His head, his right shoulder, and his arm lay on the forest floor, his white hand still clasping the knife. The rest of him swayed for a moment above me, a dark wisp of smoke fading in the air beside the wound that ran the length of his severed torso. Then what remained of him fell forward.
I found my voice and screamed. I crawled backward, scrambling away from the mutilated body, unable to get to my feet, unable to look away from the awful sight, my body shaking uncontrollably.
The Darkling hurried up the hill and knelt beside me, blocking my view of the corpse. “Look at me,” he instructed.
I tried to focus on his face, but all I could see was the assassin’s severed body, his blood pooling in the damp leaves. “What… what did you do to him?” I asked, my voice quavering.
“What I had to do. Can you stand?”
I nodded shakily. He took my hands and helped me to my feet. When my gaze slid back to the corpse, he took hold of my chin and drew my eyes back to his. “At me,” he commanded.
I nodded and tried to keep my eyes trained on the Darkling as he led me down the hill and called out orders to his men.
“Clear the road. I need twenty riders.”
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