“Saints,” he said, his tone somewhere between bewilderment and disgust. “I really don’t know.”
I slumped back in my chair. His admission should have made me furious, but instead I felt the anger drain out of me. Maybe it was his honesty. Or maybe it was because I’d begun to worry what I might be capable of myself.
We sat there in silence for a long minute. He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and slowly got to his feet. At the doorway, he paused.
“I’m ambitious, Alina. I’m driven. But I hope… I hope I still know the difference between right and wrong.” He hesitated. “I offered you freedom, and I meant it. If tomorrow you decided to run back to Novyi Zem with Mal, I’d put you on a ship and let the sea take you.” He held my gaze, his hazel eyes steady. “But I’d be sorry to see you go.”
He vanished into the hall, his footsteps echoing over the stone floors.
I sat there for a while, picking at my breakfast, mulling over Nikolai’s parting words. Then I gave myself a little shake. I didn’t have time to dissect his motives. In just a few hours, the war council would meet to talk strategy and how best to raise a defense against the Darkling. I had plenty to do to prepare, but first I had a visit to pay.
* * *
AS I FASTENED the sun-shaped buttons of my gold and blue kefta, I gave a rueful shake of my head. Baghra would waste no time mocking my new pretensions. I combed my hair, then slipped out of the Little Palace through the Darkling’s entrance and crossed the grounds to the lake.
The servant I’d spoken to said that Baghra had taken ill shortly after the winter fete and that, since then, she’d stopped accepting students. Of course, I knew the truth. The night of the party, Baghra had revealed the Darkling’s plans and helped me flee the Little Palace. Then she’d sought to buy me time by concealing my absence. The thought of his rage when he’d discovered her deception sat like a stone in my stomach.
When I’d tried to press the jittery maid for details, she’d bobbed a clumsy curtsy and gone scurrying from the room. Still, Baghra was alive, and she was here. The Darkling could destroy an entire town, but it seemed even he drew the line at murdering his own mother.
The path to Baghra’s hut was overgrown with brambles, the summer wood tangled and pungent with the smell of leaves and damp earth. I hastened my steps, surprised at how eager I was to see her. She’d been a hard teacher and an unpleasant woman on her best days, but she’d tried to help me when no one else had, and I knew she was my best chance of solving the riddle of Morozova’s third amplifier.
I climbed the three steps at the front of the hut and knocked. No one answered. I knocked again and then pushed the door open, wincing at the familiar blast of heat. Baghra always seemed to be cold, and entering her hut was like being stuffed into a cookstove.
The dark little room was just as I remembered it: sparsely furnished with only the barest necessities, a fire roaring in the tile oven, and Baghra huddled by it in her faded kefta. I was surprised to see that she wasn’t alone. A servant sat beside her, a young boy dressed in gray. He got to his feet as I entered, peering at me through the gloom.
“No visitors,” he said.
“By whose command?”
At the sound of my voice, Baghra looked up sharply.
She smacked her stick on the ground. “Leave, boy,” she commanded.
“But—”
“Go!” she snarled.
Just as pleasant as ever, I thought warily.
The boy scurried across the room and out of the hut without another word.
The door had barely shut when Baghra said, “I wondered when you’d make your way back here, little Saint.”
Trust Baghra to call me the one name I didn’t want to hear.
I was already sweating and had no desire to step closer to the fire, but I did it anyway, and crossed the room to sit in the chair the servant had vacated.
She turned toward the flames as I approached, showing me her back. She was in rare form today. I ignored the insult.
I sat silent for a moment, unsure of where to begin. “I was told you’d taken ill after I left.”
“Hmph.”
I didn’t want to know, but I made myself ask. “What did he do to you?”
She gave a dry laugh. “Less than he might have. More than he should.”
“Baghra—”
“You were meant to go to Novyi Zem. You were meant to disappear.”
“I tried.”
“No, you went hunting,” she sneered with a smack of her stick on the ground. “And what did you find? A pretty necklace to wear for the rest of your life? Come closer,” she said. “I want to know what I bought for my trouble.”
Obligingly, I leaned in. When she turned to me, I gasped.
Baghra had aged a lifetime since I’d seen her last. Her black hair was sparse and graying. Her sharp features had blurred. The taut slash of her mouth looked sunken and soft.
But that was not why I recoiled. Baghra’s eyes were gone. Where they should have been were two black pits, shadows writhing in their fathomless depths.
“Baghra,” I choked out. I reached for her hand, but she flinched away from my touch.
“Spare me your pity, girl.”
“What… what did he do to you?” My voice was little more than a whisper.
She gave another harsh laugh. “He left me in the dark.”
Her voice was strong, but sitting by the fire, I realized it was the only part of her that had remained unchanged. She’d been lean and hard, with the knife-sharp posture of an acrobat. Now, there was a slight tremor in her ancient hands, and her formerly wiry body just looked gaunt and frail.
“Show me,” she said, reaching out. I held still and let her run her hands over my face. The gnarled fingers moved like two white spiders, passing over my tears without interest, crawling down my jaw to the base of my throat, where they came to rest on the collar.
“Ah,” she breathed, her fingertips tracing the rough pieces of antler at my neck, her voice soft, almost wistful. “I would have liked to see his stag.”
I wanted to turn my head, to look away from the teeming black pools of her eyes. Instead, I pushed up my sleeve and grasped one of her hands. She tried to pull away, but I tightened my grip and laid her fingers over the fetter at my wrist. She went still.
“No,” she said. “It cannot be.”
She felt along the ridges of the sea whip’s scales.
“Rusalye,” she whispered. “What have you done, girl?”
Her words gave me hope. “You know about the other amplifiers.”
I winced as her fingers dug into my wrist. “Is it true?” she asked abruptly. “What they say he can do, that he can give life to shadow?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
Her hunched shoulders sagged even further. Then she cast my arm away as if it were something filthy. “Get out.”
“Baghra, I need your help.”
“I said, get out.”
“Please. I need to know where to find the firebird.”
Her sunken mouth trembled slightly. “I betrayed my son once, little Saint. What makes you think I would do it again?”
“You wanted to stop him,” I said hesitantly. “You—”
Baghra pounded the floor with her stick. “I wanted to keep him from becoming a monster! But it’s too late for that, isn’t it? Thanks to you, he is farther from human than he’s ever been. He’s long past any redemption.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But Ravka isn’t beyond saving.”
“What do I care what happens to this wretched country? Is the world so very fine that you think it worth saving?”
“Yes,” I said. “And I know you do too.”
“You couldn’t make a meat pie from what you know, girl.”
“Fine!” I said, my desperation overwhelming my guilt. “I’m an idiot. I’m a fool. I’m hopeless. That’s why I need your help.”
“You cannot be helped. Your only hope was to run.”
/>
“Tell me what you know about Morozova,” I begged. “Help me find the third amplifier.”
“I couldn’t begin to guess where to find the firebird, and I wouldn’t tell you if I could. All I want now is a warm room and to be left alone to die.”
“I could take away this room,” I said angrily. “Your fire, your obedient servant. You might feel more like talking then.”
The second the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back. A sick wave of shame washed over me. Had I really just threatened a blind old woman?
Baghra laughed that rattling, vicious chuckle. “You’re taking to power well, I see. As it grows, it will hunger for more. Like calls to like, girl.”
Her words sent a spike of fear through me.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said weakly.
“You cannot violate the rules of this world without a price. Those amplifiers were never meant to be. No Grisha should have such power. Already you are changing. Seek the third, use it, and you will lose yourself completely, piece by piece. You want my help? You want to know what to do? Forget the firebird. Forget Morozova and his madness.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I won’t.”
She turned back to the fire. “Then do what you like, girl. I’m done with this life, and I’m done with you.”
What had I expected? That she would greet me as a daughter? Welcome me as a friend? She’d lost her son’s love and sacrificed her sight, and in the end, I’d failed her. I wanted to dig in my heels and demand her help. I wanted to threaten her, cajole her, fall to my knees and beg forgiveness for everything she’d lost and every mistake I’d made. Instead, I did what she’d wanted me to do all along. I turned and ran.
I nearly lost my footing on the stairs as I stumbled from the hut, but the servant boy was waiting at the bottom of the steps. He reached out to steady me before I could fall.
I took grateful gulps of fresh air, feeling the sweat cool on my skin.
“Is it true?” he asked. “Are you really the Sun Summoner?”
I glanced at his hopeful face and felt the ache of tears in my throat. I nodded and tried to smile.
“My mother says you’re a Saint.”
What other fairy tales does she believe? I thought bitterly.
Before I could embarrass myself by breaking down in tears on his scrawny shoulder, I pushed past him and hurried down the narrow path.
When I reached the lakeshore, I made my way to one of the white stone Summoners’ pavilions. They weren’t really buildings, just domed shells where young Summoners could practice using their gifts without fear of blowing the roof off the school or setting fire to the Little Palace. I sat down in the shade of the pavilion’s steps and buried my head in my hands, willing my tears away, trying to catch my breath. I’d been so sure that Baghra would know something about the firebird and so positive that she’d be willing to help. I hadn’t realized just how much hope I’d invested in her until it was gone.
I smoothed the glittering folds of my kefta over my lap and had to choke back a sob. I’d thought Baghra would laugh at me, mock the little Saint all dressed up in her finery. Why had I ever believed the Darkling might show his mother mercy?
And why had I acted that way? How could I have threatened to take away her few comforts? The ugliness of it made me feel ill. I could blame my desperation, but it didn’t ease my shame. Or change the reality that some part of me wanted to march back to her hut and make good on those threats, haul her out into the sunlight and wrest answers from her sour, sunken mouth. What was wrong with me?
I took my copy of the Istorii Sankt’ya out of my pocket and ran my hands over the worn red leather cover. I’d looked at it so many times that it fell right open to the illustration of Sankt Ilya, though now the pages were waterlogged from the crash of the Hummingbird.
A Grisha Saint? Or another greedy fool who couldn’t resist the temptation of power? A greedy fool like me. Forget Morozova and his madness. I ran my finger along the curve of the arch. It might be meaningless. It might be some reference to Ilya’s past that had nothing to do with amplifiers, or just an artist’s flourish. Even if we were right and it was some kind of signpost, it could be anywhere. Nikolai had traveled most of Ravka, and he’d never seen it. For all we knew, it had fallen into rubble hundreds of years ago.
A bell rang at the school across the lake, and a gaggle of Grisha children rushed from its doors, shouting, laughing, eager to be out in the summer sunshine. The school had continued to run, despite the disasters of the last months. But if the Darkling was coming, I’d have to evacuate it. I didn’t want children in the path of the nichevo’ya.
The ox feels the yoke, but does the bird feel the weight of its wings?
Had Baghra ever really spoken those words to me? Or had I only heard them in a dream?
I stood up and brushed the dust from my kefta. I wasn’t sure what had shaken me more, Baghra’s refusal to help or how broken she seemed. She wasn’t just an old woman. She was a woman without hope, and I’d helped to take it from her.
CHAPTER 15
DESPITE ITS NAME, I loved the war room. The cartographer in me couldn’t resist the old maps wrought in animal hide and embellished in whimsical detail: the gilded lighthouse at Os Kervo, the mountain temples of the Shu, the mermaids that swam at the edges of the seas.
I looked around the table at the faces of the Grisha, some familiar, some new. Any one of them could be a spy for the Darkling, the King, the Apparat. Any one of them could be looking for the chance to get me out of the way and assume power.
Tolya and Tamar stood outside, just a shout away in case of trouble, but it was Mal’s presence that gave me comfort. He sat at my right in his roughspun clothes, the sunburst pinned above his heart. I hated to think of him leaving so soon for the hunt, but I had to admit a distraction might be a good thing. Mal had taken pride in being a soldier and, though he tried to hide it, I knew the King’s ruling weighed heavily on him. That he’d guessed I was keeping something from him didn’t help either.
Sergei sat to Mal’s right, his arms crossed sullenly over his chest. He wasn’t happy to be sitting next to an otkazat’sya guard, and he was even less pleased that I’d insisted on seating a Fabrikator directly to my left, in what was considered a position of honor. She was a Suli girl named Paja whom I’d never met before. She had dark hair and nearly black eyes, and the red embroidery at the cuffs of her purple kefta indicated that she was one of the Alkemi, Fabrikators who specialized in chemicals like blasting powders and poisons.
David sat further down the table, his cuffs emblazoned in gray. He worked in glass, steel, wood, stone—anything solid. David was a Durast, and I knew he was the best of them because the Darkling had chosen him to forge my collar. Then there was Fedyor, and Zoya beside him, gorgeous as always in Etherealki blue.
Across from Zoya sat Pavel, the dark-skinned Inferni who’d spoken so angrily against me the previous day. He had narrow features and a chipped tooth that whistled slightly when he talked.
The first part of the meeting was spent discussing the numbers of Grisha at the various outposts around Ravka and those who might be in hiding. Zoya suggested sending messengers to spread the news of my return and offer full and free pardon to those who swore their allegiance to the Sun Summoner. We spent close to an hour debating the terms and wording of the pardon. I knew I would have to take it to Nikolai for the King’s approval, and I wanted to step carefully. Finally, we agreed on “loyalty to the Ravkan throne and the Second Army.” No one seemed happy with it, so I was pretty sure we’d gotten it right.
It was Fedyor who raised the issue of the Apparat. “It’s troubling that he’s evaded capture this long.”
“Has he tried to contact you?” Pavel asked me.
“No,” I said. I saw the skepticism in his face.
“He’s been spotted in Kerskii and Ryevost,” said Fedyor. “He shows up out of nowhere to preach, then disappears before the King’s soldiers can c
lose in.”
“We should think about an assassination,” said Sergei. “He’s growing too powerful, and he could still be colluding with the Darkling.”
“We’d have to find him first,” observed Paja.
Zoya gave a graceful wave of her hand. “What would be the point? He seems bent on spreading word of the Sun Summoner and claiming she’s a Saint. It’s about time the people had some appreciation for the Grisha.”
“Not the Grisha,” said Pavel, jutting his chin truculently in my direction. “Her.”
Zoya lifted one elegant shoulder. “It’s better than them reviling us all as witches and traitors.”
“Let the King do the dirty work,” said Fedyor. “Let him find the Apparat and execute him and let him suffer the people’s wrath.”
I couldn’t believe we were calmly debating a man’s murder. And I wasn’t sure I wanted the Apparat dead. The priest had plenty to answer for, but I wasn’t convinced he was still working with the Darkling. Besides, he’d given me the Istorii Sankt’ya, and that meant he was a possible source of information. If he was captured, I could only hope the King would keep him alive long enough for questioning.
“Do you think he believes it?” asked Zoya, studying me. “That you’re a Saint risen and back from the dead?”
“I’m not sure it makes a difference.”
“It would help to know just how crazy he is.”
“I’d rather fight a traitor than a zealot,” Mal said quietly. It was the first time he’d spoken. “I may have some old contacts in the First Army who will still talk to me. There are rumors of soldiers defecting to join him, and if that’s the case, they must know where he is.”
I stole a glance at Zoya. She was gazing at Mal with those impossibly blue eyes. It seemed like she’d spent half the meeting batting her lashes at him. Or maybe I was imagining things. She was a powerful Squaller and, potentially, a powerful ally. But she’d also been one of the Darkling’s favorites, and that certainly made her difficult to trust.
I almost laughed out loud. Who was I kidding? I hated even sitting in the same room with her. She looked like a Saint. Delicate bones, glossy black hair, perfect skin. All she needed was a halo. Mal paid her no attention, but a twisting feeling in my gut made me think he was ignoring her a little too deliberately. I knew I had more important things to worry about than Zoya. I had an army to run and enemies on every side, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
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