The pain was excruciating.
Cresana had known pain – or she thought she had – at The Institute, but this was pain of another level. It was a searing and relentless electric burn that ripped through the very center of her limbs, radiating out from her gut. No amount of training or mental preparation could have prepared her to withstand the pain. It triggered a primal part of her, the fear of a living thing so threatened as to be mortally dangerous, and Cresana found she could not override her instincts.
The first few treatments had been mild. Kirigan had told her as much. "It will start easy, but the tinctures increase in strength with subsequent doses. It will be terrible."
And it seemed he knew exactly what he was talking about. That fact alone – the detail with which Kirigan was able to explain the effects, the precision with which he delivered the treatments – was enough to confirm that Baghra's suspicions had been true. He had obviously seen this process many times before. He knew what Cresana would feel before she felt it, and he had not been even remotely misguided in any of his predictions.
The tincture had been difficult to stomach at first, not because of pain, but because of its taste. It was acrid and coated the inside of her mouth and throat in a gravelly mucous. It had taken Cresana a full day before she had been able to swallow a full dose and keep it down.
Just as Kirigan had predicted, the tincture grew easier to stomach with time.
The pain had begun as a dull throb in her gut and increased in intensity with each subsequent dose over the course of days.
Cresana had long lost count of what day she was on. Kirigan hadn't told her exactly how long the treatment would last. He had assured her that it would be easier for her if she didn't know. She had balked at this withholding of information at first, but he had been steadfast in his insistence. Yet again, Cresana knew he was correct. At this point, it was the hope that each successive tincture would be the last that kept her from going mad.
She hadn't slept in days, the pain was too great. Nor had she been able to eat. She could feel her body weakening but had been unable to hold down even the mildest of gruel that the terrified servants brought to her.
On the sixth day, Kirigan had ordered her restrained. Cresana quickly realized that the simplicity of her chamber had not been a gesture of goodwill from the General, but an act of necessity. She had lost all control of her bowels and vomit by day four, and soon most of the surfaces in the room had been covered in her sputum. After that came the fits. Cresana had experienced such a violent fit on the fifth night that her flailing had cracked one of the bed posts. To soil fine silk sheets and destroy hand-carved fine furniture would have been a needless waste.
At this point, on day ten, most of Cresana's time was passed in a delirious, feverish state. She was only vaguely aware of someone dabbing a cool cloth on her head as she thrashed about against the bare mattress. Her hair was drenched in sweat and clung to the sides of her face and neck; her robe similarly slick with perspiration. Her ankles and wrists strained constantly against the restraints, and the skin there had long since erupted in a series of bloody sores. She had cracked a tooth during one of her fits and she felt quite certain one of her shoulders was dislocated, although the pain from that injury was negligible compared to the rest of her body.
In her rare moments of lucidity, Cresana wondered if the treatment was working. She certainly didn't feel any change in her body, beyond the obvious pain and weakness induced by hunger and dehydration. She had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that something would have been different, although she wasn't sure what. It seemed too significant a metamorphosis not to have some sign of success at this point.
But the only thing there was pain.
*****
"General, she won't survive another treatment," Ivan commented from the doorway. Ivan had been stationed outside Cresana's chamber since the beginning of her treatment to ward away the servants whose curiosities got the better of them. It had been difficult to secure an empty wing of the Little Palace and keep Cresana's treatment from discovery, but the General had insisted on having her kept close to him so he could monitor her progress from moment to moment. With the others, the servants, he had been content to shackle them to the dungeon walls and receive progress reports from the Little Palace apothecary, who had paid to create the tinctures. Once the formula had been perfected, the General had dismissed the apothecary and sent him home to Udova in exalted praise for his many years of loyal service. Ivan had later learned that the apothecary had mysteriously died of natural causes on the road to the Fold in preparation for his crossing home. Ivan knew the General well enough to know that, while the apothecary's death may have appeared mysterious to outsiders, it was no mistake. The General was a careful man, and he did not abide loose ends.
The earlier attempts – "the experiments", as Kirigan called them – had been conducted in the utmost secrecy. Although Ivan begrudged Kirigan for withholding the plans from him, Ivan also recognized the necessity of such secrecy. If anyone, especially the King, had gotten wind of Kirigan's plans, the General would no doubt have ordered Kirigan's immediate execution. Most of the Second Army would have backed Kirigan, Ivan thought, although not all. The First Army would of course have sided with the King. Ravka would have been plunged into a civil war.
Kirigan had assured Ivan that the sensitive nature of the work demanded he keep it a secret even from his top advisor. The apothecary had been under the strictest supervision and threat of death throughout the process, and Kirigan only involved the man because he alone did not possess the knowledge of how to prepare such elaborate treatments. The apothecary had originally defied Kirigan's orders, threatening to expose his experiments to the King, but after Kirigan had paid a visit to the apothecary's home in Udova and returned to the Little Palace with the apothecary's whole family in chains "for insurance", his cooperation had been seamless.
That had been almost four years ago.
"She will," Kirigan replied simply, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, regarding the writhing woman with a cool indifference. Any hint of envy Ivan felt at not being selected to be crafted into Kirigan's Sun Summoner had long since dissipated, replaced only by a begrudging admiration for the Blade's endurance. Ivan felt certain that the woman's body would not last through the night, but the General was confident in his prediction and insisted that the treatment wasn't complete until her blood ran black.
When Ivan had first confronted Kirigan about the stories Baghra had revealed to him and the Blade, Ivan had expected Kirigan to have him executed. In retrospect, Ivan had allowed his emotions to get the better of him. As soon as he had returned to the Little Palace late that night from Baghra's hut, he had insisted that the General be awoken immediately.
Kirigan's temper was not overly reactive, but he had been incensed that night at being summoned out of bed like a commoner. Ivan had worried for a moment that Kirigan would use the Cut on him, slicing him in two like a loaf of bread.
Kirigan hadn't, but his rage had been awesome to witness.
Ultimately, it was the intensity of Kirigan's rage that convinced Ivan to confront him. To lie to the General in such a state would be perilous, and Ivan knew Kirigan's propensity for recognizing lies in others, especially those he knew well.
And so, Ivan had asked him.
"Why are you experimenting on Otkazat'sya?" he had blurted out, interrupting Kirigan in the middle of an outraged rant about the importance of knowing one's place in relation to your superiors.
Kirigan had fallen silent, turning to Ivan and fixing him with a penetrating gaze. The rage which had been bubbling over only moments before simmered and died out, replaced instead by an intense focus. Ivan knew that look: Kirigan was performing mental calculations, trying to determine how Ivan knew his secret and what to say next.
That was all the confirmation Ivan needed to know that the old woman had been right. Her son was trying to forge a Grisha out of an Otkazat'sya, a non-Grisha.
Ivan took a stuttering step at that moment, his body willing him to walk out of Kirigan's presence and never return. He had never heard of such a thing – forging a Grisha, let alone a Sun Summoner – and he wanted no part in it. The General's lust for power had long since exceeded Ivan's own ambitions for his people, but he had discontentedly stood behind Kirigan regardless out of respect for what Kirigan had done for the Grisha. He had liberated them from a life of persecution and raised their status in Ravka. The Grisha were now respected for their powers, not hunted or outcast. Ivan had no disillusions that the man standing before him was the sole reason for that.
And yet, despite that, this latest revelation was a bridge too far. There was a natural order to the world of Small Science, and it was that orderliness that Ivan had always loved about being Grisha. 'Like calls to like'. Grisha magic was an extension of the natural world, a connection between Grisha and the forces of life, death, earth, air, water, and fire. It was an inherited gift, occasionally an accident by birth, but it was never bestowed upon another. The very notion that Kirigan sought to give an Otkazat'sya Grisha magic was a violation of Ivan's most dearly held conviction: that there were Grisha, and there were non-Grisha, and there was no cross over.
As Ivan made to turn heel and leave, Kirigan spoke.
"Ivan, please. Let me explain."
It was the imploring tone in Kirigan's voice that stopped Ivan dead in his tracks. Never before had he heard his General speak to him with such humility, as an equal. The General was not an unfair commander, but he was a solidly superior commander. Ivan never resented Kirigan for that: his power to command darkness was, after all, the most powerful manifestation of Grisha Small Science ever known. It only made sense that Kirigan would expand to fill that role, a role only he could play. He had always commanded Ivan, on rare occasion he sought Ivan's input, but never had he asked or pleaded. But this was different.
And so, Ivan had let him explain. And just like he had done with Baghra, he listened.
It had been sunrise before Kirigan had finished. Baghra knew much of what her son had been doing, but she had missed one very important detail: why he did it.
At first Ivan didn't believe Kirigan when he said that the King was planning the mass genocide of all Ravkan Grisha. Ivan had never understood why so many Grisha feared the King. Ivan had met him on numerous occasions, and he was a strikingly effete man and an even more impotent regent. But Kirigan assured him, with much effort, that the King was shrewder than he let on, and that he had orchestrated an elaborate plot to systematically kill all the Grisha in Ravka, save perhaps a few noteworthy specimen who he planned to subjugate and keep for utility. Kirigan showed Ivan intercepted letters between the King and the Jarl of the druskelle, the elite army bred to kill Grisha in neighboring Fjerda, brokering a truce between their countries if the King agreed to allow the mass slaughtering of Grisha as soon as the truce was announced. In exchange, the Jarl agreed to join the King's military campaign to conquer the Shu kingdom to the south of Ravka.
Kirigan had stacks of these letters, and for months Kirigan had been secretly fashioning replies by his own hand disguised as replies from the Jarl. Kirigan assured Ivan that, although this deception played into the King's false sense of security and bloodlust for Grisha death, it had been a necessary evil to buy time and conceal his experiments.
The experiments, Kirigan went on, had been a painstakingly slow and ineffective process, but at long last the apothecary's tincture seemed to have stabilized. Although excruciating, Kirigan was certain that the treatment was effective, although he had not tested the final concoction. Along with the experiments, Kirigan detailed the process of selecting the perfect Otkazat'sya for the transition. The General had long ago settled on selecting a soldier, as opposed to a politician or religious figure, because the Sun Summoner would need to be more than a symbolic role. Kirigan felt certain that the King would launch an ill-advised war against the Grisha when he realized Kirigan's deceptions.
"The King would be a fool to try and fight against my powers and that of a Sun Summoner," Kirigan conceded. "But he will. He is a weak-minded, prattling old fool and he will be driven by blind rage. Whoever the Sun Summoner is, they will need to be prepared to fight, and kill. By the thousands."
Ivan didn't doubt Kirigan's assumptions on one point: the Sun Summoner would need to kill. That was one area in which the natural Sun Summoner, Alina Starkov, had been sorely lacking. Ivan had encountered the Starkov girl throughout her time at the Little Palace, and he had known her to be a flippant and weak-willed creature.
Ivan, like many of his Grisha companions, had hoped that she represented a new era for Grisha magic. Kirigan too, it seemed, had his own set of aspirations for Alina, but her limits had quickly revealed themselves and Kirigan had made quick work of putting a backup plan into place. When Alina had fled Ravka, supposedly for Novyi Zem, Ivan had dismissed any hopes he had for her as a savior of Grisha. She had abandoned her country, but more importantly her people. Even without the King's threatened genocide by druskelle swords, Ravkan Grisha were not safe. They certainly were not outcast or hunted to the same extent as they had been before the General's ascent to power, but they also were not welcomed, especially outside of the Second Army. It was an uneasy truce between the Ravkan Grisha and their Otkazat'sya counterparts, and it seemed to fray a bit more with each subsequent year of war.
So, although Ivan agreed with Kirigan's choice for a soldier, he categorically opposed the idea of a Blade. The Blades were a well-known and much respected battalion in the Second Army, but they were notoriously uncontrollable. Their code dictated a staunch opposition to being commanded, even though they were nothing more than glorified assassins in Ivan's eyes. Although fearsome opponents in hand-to-hand combat, Blades answered to their own sense of duty and lived outside the comings and goings of Ravkan politics. Ivan was entirely unconvinced that a Blade would ever fight for the Grisha the way another Grisha would.
It was at this point that Kirigan had recognized the train of thought Ivan was chasing.
"The treatment does not work on Grisha, Ivan," he announced, interrupting Ivan with a raised hand before he could form the words of his question. "I tried it. It kills us. There's no way to alter our powers, or change our powers, from those which we're born with into those of a Sun Summoner. I can only create those powers in a non-Grisha."
Ivan loathed this idea.
He also loathed the idea of the Sun Summoner-Blade being a woman. Not because he disliked women, or had an inherent bias against them. Ivan had long fought beside women in the Second and First Armies. But he knew Kirigan. The General was a complicated and mercurial man, and he had few weaknesses. But women were one.
Ivan had the same misgivings when he had first encountered the Starkov girl. Although she was young and plain, she had caught Kirigan's eye for her potential alone. The singularity with which Kirigan pursued her had been not only irritating, but at times downright dangerous. Ivan had watched Kirigan endanger – and in some cases, sacrifice – the lives of Second Army soldiers for no other reason than to protect Alina. As the Sun Summoner, she hardly needed protection. Alongside the Darkling, there was no other Grisha or Otkazat'sya weapon that could rival her powers. But Kirigan had insisted nonetheless. It had enraged Ivan to see his comrades turned into glorified bodyguards and sacrificed like cattle for Kirigan's flavor of the month. And it seemed that Ivan would be watching the same saga unfold shortly: Kirigan endangering and sacrificing Grisha for his precious Sun Summoner.
A particularly pained cry from the Blade interrupted Ivan from his embittered reverie. Kirigan had assured him that morning there were only a handful more tinctures before the treatment was complete, but Ivan had little faith – and rapidly diminishing – that the girl would live to the end of the transformation. Although Ivan didn't particularly like her, she looked pitiful and the pain she was in was difficult to watch. Ivan hoped she would live, it seemed a shame to put someone through so much just to die.
He watched as Kirigan tipped the tincture solution down the girl's throat. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her jaw clenched automatically at the taste (if it tasted half as bad as it smelled, it was no wonder she couldn't keep it down at first, Ivan thought). Although it had been near impossible to get her to accept the tinctures a few days ago, she was now so weakened that Kirigan was able to hold her head back with ease until she reflexively swallowed. He laid her gently down on the sweat-soaked mattress as she floated in and out of consciousness, her legs kicking angrily during the intermittent moments of lucidity.
"That's the last one." The General turned to Ivan, his dark eyes alight with something between hope and greed. "If she lives 'til dawn, we'll have our Sun Summoner."