Somewhere near the Shadow Fold...
Mal, Alina, Baghra and I galloped on our horses to a forest near the Shadow Fold, where we slowed to a walk. Alina, Baghra and I dismounted and led the horses just behind us, whereas Mal still sat on his horse, riding behind us.
'I know that look,' Baghra remarked to Alina. 'You plan on killing him.'
'Genya thinks he's dying already.'
'Yes, polluted with merzost,' I chimed in. 'The price of creating those monsters.'
'I'd like to speed his end, but he is your son,' Alina said to Baghra. 'And your brother.'
'My brother is dead to me,' I snarled.
'I'd like to be clear about my intentions,' Alina continued.
'You're taking to power well, I see,' Baghra remarked.
'I won't deny it. I want the Firebird. The power of all three. Tearing down the Fold won't kill Kirigan, but I can't get to him unless I can destroy his nichevo'ya. Nikolai's commissioned a hunt for a blade so sharp that it can cut shadow.'
'The Neshyenyer Blade,' I said. 'Yes?' Alina nodded at me. 'Good,' I added with an approving nod.
'If I made an army similar to his, only of light, then -' Baghra stopped in her tracks.
'To create such a thing, you'll have to use merzost. Foolish. Swear to me you'll never use it.'
'I swear.'
'Mean it, girl,' Baghra said, her voice filled with foreboding. 'Merzost creates matter where there was none before. It is magic; it's not the Small Science. You will not know what price it demands until it is too late.' We kept walking.
'I need a weapon. If not merzost, then the Cut, but I tried before, and -'
'You mean to kill him in your tethered space,' Baghra spoke.
'Only this time I can strike harder. He won't trust me if I go to him, but if he comes to me -'
'He'll kill you first and the chance to save Ravka will die with you,' I spoke.
'There's nothing to teach with the Cut. It's already there when you want it,' Baghra said. 'It does require practice, though. After we find the Firebird. Besides... it seems you can do damage enough without it.' The three of us looked back to see Mal, morose and silent, riding just behind us as he had done for several hundred paces now.
Later that evening...
'Lucky rabbit was just a rabbit. No power in that bone,' Baghra grumbled, eyeing the bone in her hands as the four of us sat around the fire in the forest, the horses tethered to logs nearby. She tossed the bone into the embers. 'Ridiculous. This notion of amplifiers. If it wasn't for Morozova and his rapacious notions, I might still have my little finger.' She woefully looked down at the stump where her finger once was. She looked at Mal. 'You were very fast catching that rabbit.'
'Mal can make rabbits out of rocks,' Alina said softly. He eyed her and said nothing.
'You're very good at tracking things,' Baghra remarked. 'Rabbits... and more miraculous creatures. The Stag. The Sea Whip.'
'Yeah. I'm not having much luck with the Firebird though, am I?'
'We'll find it once we reach Morozova's workshop,' Alina spoke, attempting to reassure him. 'I don't know where his amplifier is, but it's strange to think he was a real person, not just a myth.'
'I'm going to tell you a story I used to tell a little boy and a little girl, both filled with shadow,' Baghra said. I looked up at her, and she looked at me, then she began her tale. 'Morozova was the greatest Fabrikator who ever lived. Obsessed with the boundaries of Grisha power. He used merzost and his finger bones to resurrect the Stag and the Sea Whip to act as amplifiers for the Grisha, who would find them, kill them, and take their power as their own.'
'Then he completed the triumvirate by creating the Firebird,' Alina chimed in.
'No,' Baghra spoke. 'And then... his wife became pregnant. While he made plans for the Firebird, the girl who was born started to show a power like nothing ever known. She could summon darkness.' Baghra raised her hand, shadows snaking around her fingers like thin black ropes.
'Morozova was your father?' Alina asked.
'The Bonesmith?' Mal chimed in.
'In the Istorii Sankt'ya, he's known as Sankt Ilya, bound in chains and drowned in the river for his sins after he resurrected a village boy cut in half by a plow blade,' I spoke up, and both Mal and Alina looked at me. 'That's the version everyone's been taught. Only some of it is true.' Baghra touched Alina's hand gently.
'All families have secrets,' she said warmly. 'Some more than others.' Mal began to rise from his seat.
'Should get back on it, while we have light,' he remarked.
'What of your family, boy?' Baghra asked, making him stop what he was doing. 'What do you know?'
'My family are all gone. I was orphaned by the war in Dva Stolba.'
'You'd have passed through Caryeva and its three orphanages on your way,' Baghra mused.
'I just kept on going until - until I found one that felt like home.' Mal and Alina met each other's eyes.
'Home,' Alina mused. 'So much of it defines who you become.'
'Yes, it does,' Baghra replied. 'I had a sister there, ten years younger. An otkazat'sya girl who should have lived a boring otkazat'sya life. My father had made this little clay swan for me, in a moment when he still thought of me, before she was born. I cherished it the way he cherished her. One day when she was six, she broke its neck. I lashed out with the Cut. Tore her small body in two.'
'Surely it was an accident,' Alina replied, attempting to comfort the older woman.
'What did it matter?' Baghra snapped. 'The damage was done, and I was banished. This isn't a return home. It's a return to the scene of the crime.' She got up from her seat by the fire and walked away, Alina staring after her in worried contemplation.
We trekked some more before coming to a stone door carved in the side of a hill. Baghra picked up her skirts and walked to the door.
'This was abandoned after Morozova's death,' Alina remarked.
'Do you think steel chains could have held him in the river?' Baghra replied.
'You think he survived?' Alina asked.
'I moved on from this place,' Baghra said, leaning down and picking up some wildflowers. 'Other journals have surfaced. Merzost teachings Aleksander used to create the Fold. A legacy of wrongdoing never made right.' We paused in front of the stone door. 'Boy, clear us a way in.' Mal handed the lantern he was holding to Alina, and walked up to the door, withdrawing his long knife and cutting the thin, wiry branches around the area. Mal turned to us.
'Do I push it, or -'
'Help me up,' Baghra said, and both Alina and Mal helped her up. I came up to the door with my mother. 'Give me your blade,' she said. 'Only a Morozova can open it.' Mal gave her the blade, and she cut her thumb, pressing it to one of the stone letters, which filled with blood, and promptly opened. Baghra stepped inside, now holding the lantern, and we went in after her.
'Light the torches, boy,' Baghra hissed to Mal. We walked through the cave into an antechamber, of which held two stone caskets.
'Your sister?' Alina asked.
'And my mother. Died of the pox before I was banished.' She took the wildflowers from Alina and placed them on the stone coffin. 'How my mother feared me. She always told me I was one of my father's abominations.' She took the lantern back from Alina.
'She was wrong,' Alina said, attempting to comfort the older woman, but it was in vain.
'She was right,' Baghra snapped. 'Have you not been paying attention?' She walked ahead of the two, and I followed next to Baghra, the Sun Summoner and the tracker following just behind us. We entered a much larger room, with desks all around and papers and tools scattered about the place, with writing scrawled on the stone walls, complete with diagrams and drawings. 'Morozova was corrupted with merzost. Seeped into everything he created.'
'Are you sure the Firebird was made here?' Mal asked. 'With the Stag and the Sea Whip, there was a frequency I could hear. I don't hear anything in this place.'
'Follow me,' Baghra called to both Mal and me. 'You, stay,' she added to Alina. 'Start sorting through his journals for any mention of the Firebird.' I walked away with my mother, but not before I heard Alina call out for Mal.