chapter eleven.
The Fall of a Grisha
WE DIDN'T LEAVE FOR OS ALTA RIGHT AWAY, but spent the next three days transporting shipments of goods across the Fold. We operated out of what was left of the military encampment at Kribirsk.
Most of the troops had been pulled back when the Fold started expanding. A new watch owner had been erected to monitor the black shores of the Unsea, and only a skeleton crew stayed on to operate the dry docks.
Not a single Grisha remained at the encampment. After the Darkling's attempted coup and the destruction of Novokribirsk, a wave of anti-Grisha sentiments had swept through Ravka and the ranks of the First Army.
It wasn't surprising.
An entire town was gone, its people food for monsters. Ravka wouldn't soon forget. Neither could I.
Some Grisha had fled to Os Alta to seek the protection of the King. Others had gone into hiding. Nikolai suspected that most of them had sought out the Darkling and defected to his side. But with the help of Nikolai's rogue Squallers, we managed two trips across the Fold on the first day, three on the second, and four on the last.
Sand skiffs journeyed to West Ravka empty and returned with huge cargos of Zemeni rifles, crates full of ammunition, parts for repeating guns similar to those Nikolai had used aboard the Hummingbird, and a few tons of sugar and jurda— all courtesy of Sturmhond's smuggling.
"Bribes," Mal said as we watched giddy soldiers tear into a shipment being unloaded on the docks, hooting and marveling over the glittering array of weaponry.
"Gifts," Nikolai corrected. "You'll find the bullets work, regardless of my motives." He turned to Alina and me. "I think we can fit in one more trip today. Game?"
I wasn't, but we nodded anyway. He smiled and clapped us on the back. "I'll give the orders."
I could feel Mal watching us as I turned to look into the shifting darkness of the Fold. There hadn't been a recurrence of the incident aboard the Hummingbird. Whatever I'd seen that day— vision, hallucination, I couldn't name it— it hadn't happened again. Still, I spent each moment on the Unsea alert and wary, trying to hide how frightened I really was.
Nikolai wanted to use the crossings to hunt volcra, but I and Alina refused. Alina told him she still felt weak and that she wasn't sure enough about using her power to guarantee our safety.
Our fear was alive, but the rest was a lie. Her power was stronger than ever.
Mal accompanied us on all the crossings, staying close by our side, rifle at the ready. I knew he sensed our anxiousness, but he didn't press us for an explanation. I still didn't know if Alina was being honest with me about what she saw in the Fold that day, had she seen what I saw?
The morning we decamped for the capital, Alina searched the crowd for Mal, terrified that he might decide not to show up. When she did her shoulders relaxed. He was straight-backed and silent in his saddle, waiting to join the column of riders.
We set out before dawn, a twisting procession of horses and wagons that wended its way out of camp on the broad road known as the Vy. Nikolai had obtained two plain blue Keftas for Alina and me, but were tucked away in the luggage. Until he had more of his own men in place to guard us, we were just two more soldiers in the prince's retinue.
As the sun crested the horizon, I felt a small flutter of hope. The idea of trying to take the Darkling's place, of attempting to resemble the Grisha and command the Second Army, still felt impossibly daunting. But at least I was doing something instead of just fleeing from the Darkling or waiting for him to snatch Alina and me up.
We had two of Morozova's amplifiers, and we were heading to a place where we might find answers that would lead us to the third. Mal was unhappy and it didn't settle well with me either but Alina did her best to reassure me and hoped that Mal would come around to it eventually.
My mood didn't survive the journey through Kribirsk. We'd passed through Ramshackle port town after the crash on the lake, but I'd been too shaken and distracted to really take note of the way the place had changed. This time, it was unavoidable.
Though Kribirsk had never had much beauty to recommend it, its sidewalks had teemed with travelers and merchants, King's men, and dockworkers. Its bustling streets had been lined with busy stores ready to outfit expeditions into the Fold, along with bars and brothels that catered to the soldiers at the encampment. But these streets were quiet and nearly empty. Most of the inns and shops had been boarded up.
The real revelation came when we reached the church. I remembered it as a tidy building capped by bright blue domes. Now the whitewashed walls were covered in writing, row after row of names written in red paint that had dried to the color of blood. The steps were littered with heaps of withered flowers, small painted icons, and the melted stubs of prayer candles.
I saw bottles of kvas, piles of candy, the abandoned body of a child's doll. Gifts for the dead. I scanned the names:
Stephan Ruschkin, 57
Anya Sirenka, 13
Mikah Lasky, 45
Rebeka Lasky, 44
Petyr Ozerov, 22
Marina Koska, 19
Valentin Yomki, 72
Sasha Penkin, 8 months
They went on and on. My fingers tightened on the reins as a cold fist closed over my heart. Memories came back to me unbidden: a mother running with a child in her arms, a man stumbling as the darkness caught him, his mouth open in a scream, an old woman, confused and frightened, swallowed by the panicked crowd. I'd seen it all. Alina and I had seen it all.
These were the people of Novosibirsk, the city that had once stood directly across from Kribirsk on the other side of the Fold. A sister city full of relatives, friends, business partners. People who had worked the docks and manned the skiffs, some who must have survived multiple crossings. They'd lived on the edge of horror, thinking they were safe in their own homes, walking the streets of their little port town. And now they were all gone because Alina and I'd failed to stop the Darkling.
Alina brought her horse up beside mine.
"Freya," she said softly. "Come away."
I shook my head. I wanted to remember. Tasha Stol, Andrei Bazin, Shura Rychenko. As many as I could. They'd been murdered by the Darkling. Did they haunt his sleep the way they haunted mine?
"We have to stop him, Alina," I said hoarsely. "We have to find a way."
I don't know what I hoped she'd say, but she only nodded and remained silent.
Eventually, Alina ended up by Mal, in silence as I stayed behind. I forced myself to read every single name and age, most were older people, but even the youngest aged children were on the list. It shattered my heart and my eyes welled with tears.
A bit of life seemed to return to Kribirsk as we moved farther away from the Fold. A few shops were open, and there were still merchants hawking their wares on the stretch of the Vy known as the Peddlers' Way. Rickety tables lined the road, their surfaces covered in brightly colored cloth and spread with a jumble of merchandise: boots and prayer shawls, wooden toys, shoddy knives in hand-tooled sheaths.
Many of the tables were littered with what looked like bits of rock and chicken bones.
"Provin'ye osti!" the peddlers shouted. "Autchen'ye osti!"
Real bone. Genuine bone.
As I leaned over my horse's head to get a better look, an old man called out, "Freya! Alina!"
I looked up In surprise. Did he know us?
Nikolai and Alina were suddenly beside me. Nikolai nudged his horse close to mine and snatched my reins, giving them a hard yank to draw me away from the table.
"Net, spasibo," he said to the old man.
"Alina! Freya!" the peddler cried. "Autchen'ye Alina and Freya!"
"Wait," I said, twisting in my saddle, trying to get a better look at the old man's face. He was tidying the display on his table. Without the possibility of a sale, he seemed to have lost all interest in us.
"Wait," I insisted. "He knew us."
"No, he didn't."
"He knew our names," I said, angrily grabbing the reins back from him.
"He was trying to sell you relics. Finger bones. Genuine Sankta Freya."
I froze, a deep chill stealing over me. My oblivious horse kept steadily on. I glanced over at Alina whose face two had seemed to whiten.
"Genuine Alina," Alina said numbly.
Nikolai shifted uneasily. "There are rumors that you two died on the Fold. People have been selling off parts of you all over Ravka and West Ravka for months. You're quite the good luck charms."
"Those are supposed to be our fingers?"
"Knuckles, toes, fragments of ribs." Nikolai listed.
I felt sick.
"Of course," Nikolai continued, "if half of those were really your toes, you'd have about a hundred feet. But superstition is a powerful thing."
"So is faith," said a voice from behind us, and when I turned, I was surprised to see Tolya there, mounted on a huge black warhorse, his broad face solemn.
It was all too much. The optimism I'd felt only an hour ago had vanished. It suddenly seemed as if the sky were pressing down on me, closing in like a trap. I kicked my horse into a canter. I'd always been a clumsy rider, but I held tight and did not stop until Kribirsk was far behind me and I no longer heard the rattling of bones.
❂♕
That night we stayed at an inn in the little village of Vernost, where we met up with a heavily armed group of soldiers from the First Army. I soon learned that many of them were from the Twenty-Second, the regiment Nikolai had served with and eventually helped lead in the northern campaign.
Apparently, the prince wanted to be surrounded by friends when he entered Os Alta. I couldn't blame him.
He seemed to relax in their presence and, once again, I noticed his demeanor change. He'd transitioned effortlessly from the role of glib adventurer to the arrogant prince, and now he became a beloved commander, a soldier who laughed easily with his companion and knew each other's commoner's name.
The soldiers had a lavish coach in tow. It was lacquered in pale Ravkan blue and emblazoned with the King's double eagle on one side. Nikolai had ordered a golden sunburst added to the other, and it was drawn by a matched team of six white horses. As the glittering contraption rumbled into the inn's courtyard, I had to roll my eyes, remembering the excesses of the Grand Palace. Maybe bad taste was inherited.
I had hoped to eat dinner alone with Alina and Mal in my room, but Nikolai had insisted that we all dine together in the inn's common room. So instead of relaxing by the fire in peace, we were jammed elbow to elbow at a noisy table packed with officers. Mal and Alina hadn't said a word throughout the entire meal, but Nikolai talked enough for all three of us.
As he dug into a dish of braised oxtail, he ran through a seemingly endless list of places he intended to stop on the way to Os Alta. Just listening to him wore me out.
"I didn't realize 'winning the people' meant meeting every single one of them," Alina grumbled beside me. "Aren't we in a hurry?"
"Ravka needs to know it's best Summoners have returned."
"And its wayward prince?"
"Him too. Gossip will do more than royal pronouncements. And that reminds me," he said, lowering his voice. "From here on out, you two need to behave as if someone is watching every minute."
Alina and I exchanged glances of question and Nikolai gestured between Alina and Mal with his fork. "What you do in private is your own affair. Just be discreet."
Alina nearly choked on her wine. "What?" she spluttered.
"It's one thing for you to be linked with a royal prince, quite another for people to think you're tumbling a peasant."
"I'm not— it's nobody's business!" Alina whispered furiously. I did my best to cover up my own surprise, but like Alina, I failed miserably.
I stole a glance at Mal who was seemingly very much listening because his teeth were clenched, and he was gripping his knife a little too tightly.
"Power is alliance," said Nikolai. "It's everyone's business." He took another sip of wine as Alina glared at him in disbelief. "And you should be wearing your own clothes."
Alina shook her head, thrown by the change of subject. "Now you're choosing our clothes?" We were both wearing the blue Kefta's, but clearly, Nikolai wasn't satisfied.
"If you two intend to lead the Second Army and take the Darkling's place, then you need to look the part."
"Summoners wear blue," I said irritably.
"Don't underestimate the power of the grand gesture, Freya. The people like spectacle. The Darkling understood that."
"We'll think about it."
"Might I suggest gold?" Nikolai went on. "Very regal, very appropriate—"
"Very tacky?"
"Gold and black would be best. Perfect symbolism and—"
"No black," I said settling down my fork and gripping the edge of my chair. "I can't tell if you're deliberately making trouble or if you're just an ass."
The prince took another bite of his dinner and shrugged. "What you don't like black?"
"It's the color of the man that killed two of my friends for knowing me and regularly takes me and Alina hostage. My sworn enemy?"
"All the more reason to claim the color as your own."
I swallowed and craned my neck in Alina's direction who had gone silent and was trying to look anywhere but in my direction.
I looked back at Nikolai. "No. Black."
"As you wish," Nikolai replied. "But choose something for yourselves and your guard."
I sighed. "Do we really need guards?"
Nikolai leaned back in his chair and studied me, his face suddenly serious. "Do you know how I got the name Sturmhond?"
"I thought it was some kind of joke, a play on Sobachka."
"No," he said. "It's a name I earned. The first enemy ship I ever boarded was a Fjerdan trader out of Djerholm. When I told the captain to lay down his sword, he laughed in my face and told me to run home to my mother. He said Fjerdan men make bread from bones of skinny Ravkan boys."
"So you killed him?"
"No. I told him foolish old captains weren't fit meat for Ravkan men. Then cut off his fingers and fed them to my dog while he watched."
"You...what?"
The room was packed with rowdy soldiers singing, shouting, telling stories, but it all fell away as I stared at Nikolai in stunned silence. It was as if I was watching him transform again, as if the charming mask had shifted to reveal a very dangerous man.
"You heard me. My enemies understood brutality. And so did my crew. After it was over, I drank with my men and divvied up the spoils. Then I went back to my cabin, vomited up the very dinner my steward had prepared, and cried myself to sleep. But that was the day I became a real privateer, and that was the day Sturmhond was born."
"So much for 'puppy'" I said, feeling a bit nauseated myself.
"I was a boy trying to lead an undisciplined crew of thieves and rogues against enemies who were older, wiser, and tougher. I needed them to fear me. All of them. And if they hadn't, more people would have died."
I tightened my grip on the chair. "Just whose fingers are you telling me to cut off?"
"I'm telling you that if you and Alina are to be leaders, it's time you started thinking and acting like ones."
"I've heard this before, you know, from the Darkling and his supporters. Be brutal. Be cruel. More lives will be saved in the long run."
"Do you think I'm like the Darkling?"
I studied him—the golden hair, the sharp uniform, those too-clever hazel eyes.
"No," I said slowly. "I don't think you are." I rose from my chair. "But I've been wrong before."
I walked back to my room.
❂♛
The journey to Os Alta was less a march than a slow, excruciating parade. We stopped at every town along the Vy, at farms, schools, churches, and dairies. We greeted local dignitaries and walked the wards of hospitals. We dined with war veterans and applauded girls' choirs.
It was hard not to notice that the villages were mostly populated by the very young and the very old. Every able body had been drafted to serve in the King's Army and fight in Ravka's endless wars. The cemeteries were as big as the towns.
Nikolai handed out gold coins and sacks of sugar. He accepted handshakes from merchants and kisses on the cheek from wrinkled matrons who called him Sobachka, and charmed anyone who came within two feet of him. He never seemed to tire, never seemed to flag.
No matter how many miles we'd ridden or people we'd met, he was ready to meet another. He always seemed to know what people wanted from him, when to be the laughing boy, the golden prince, the weary soldier. I supposed it was the training that came with being born a royal and raised at court, but it was still unnerving to watch.
He hadn't been kidding about spectacle. He always tried to time our arrivals at dawn or dusk, or he'd stop our procession in the deep shadows of a church or town square—all the better to show off the Sun Summoner and Tidemaker.
When he caught me rolling my eyes, he just winked and said, "Everyone thinks you and Alina are dead, lovely. It's important to make a good show."
So I held up my end of the bargain and acted my part. I smiled graciously and summoned up water to overcast the people as Alina called the light to shine over rooftops and steeples and bathe every awestruck face in warmth. People wept. Mothers brought me their babies to kiss, and old men bowed over my hand, their cheeks damp with tears. I felt like a complete fraud, and I said as much to Nikolai.
"What do you mean?" he asked, genuinely puzzled. "The people love you."
"You mean they love your two prized goats," I grumbled as we rode out of one town.
"Have you actually won any prizes?"
"This isn't funny," I whispered angrily. "You've seen what the Darkling can do. These people will be sending their sons and daughters off to fight Nichevo'ya, and Alina and I won't be able to save them. You're feeding them a lie."
"We're giving them hope. That's better than nothing."
"Spoken like a man who's never had nothing," I said, and wheeled my horse away.
❂♕
Ravka in summer was at its most lovely, its fields thick with gold and green, the air balmy and sweet with the scent of warm hay. Despite Nikolai's protests, I insisted on forgoing the comforts of the coach. My bottom was sore, and my thighs complained loudly when I eased from the saddle every night, but sitting my own horse meant fresh air and the chance to seek out Mal and Alina on each day's ride. Alina told me he didn't talk much, but seemed to be thawing a bit.
Nikolai had circulated the story of how the Darkling had tried to execute Mal on the Fold and how he had taken my friend's lives. It had earned Mal instant trust among the soldiers, even a small measure of celebrity— for me it was pity. I didn't like thinking about Rebecca and Aliya's death, it brought back so many memories, so much pain— and the worst part about remembering them was the nightmares from the Fold— their screams and pleas for help haunting me every-time I thought of them.
On the road out of Sala, we were passing through a stand of white elms when Nikolai cleared his throat and said, "Who were they?"
I sat up straight and gave him my full attention. "What?"
"Those friends you lost in the Fold." he said.
"Ooh," I said and shifted and slumped down a little on the saddle, tightening my hold on the reins. "What would you like to know?"
Nikolai shrugged and bit at his cheek, "Why'd the Darkling take them hostage?"
I stiffened before releasing a breath. If Nikolai wanted to know more about them and the Darkling's reason for taking them— well I'd tell him although I'm not sure why.
"It was because they were the first real friends I had when I joined the First Army. They were both in the same training group as me and really that's how the friendship started— don't get me wrong I was and still am more of an introvert than they were and I kept my distance a lot but that didn't stop the fun we had." I chuckled, "Honestly they were the only two friends that I actually really had in my time as a tracker of course until I was taken to the Little Palace and met Alina."
"To answer your question about the Darkling taking them hostage. It was because he knew that if he took something or someone important away it would get me to be more obedient. I didn't think he'd actually kill them—"
Nikolai reached out and rested his hand on my shoulder, "What he did to you and Alina was cruel and I vow to keep the two of you safe."
I blinked up at him in surprise, "You must know that me and Alina are struggling with trusting strangers right now— I don't know wether I believe you or not..."
"I'm no stranger to you though, am I?"
I looked him over, "I'm still trying to figure that out."
His lips twitched, "Tell me some more about them."
And I did.
『Author's note』
Let's just ignore the fact that I went M.I.A for a whole month and get right back into it yeah? Enjoy!
Words written:
3,800