chapter seventeen.
The Fall of a Grisha
DAVID HAD MANAGED TO SLIP AWAY AGAIN after the last council meeting, and it was late the following evening before I had a free moment to corner him in the Fabrikator workrooms. I found him hunched over a pile of blueprints, his fingers stained with ink.
I settled myself on a stool beside him and cleared my throat. He looked up, blinking owlishly. He was so pale I could see the blue tracery of veins through his skin, and someone had given him a very bad haircut.
Probably did it himself, I thought with an inward shake of my head. It was hard to believe that this was the supposed boy Genya had fallen so hard for before I came into the picture.
His eyes flickered to my hand. He began to fidget with the items on his work table, moving them around and arranging them in careful lines: a compass, graphite pencils, and pots of ink in different colors, pieces of clear and mirrored glass, a hard-boiled egg that I assumed was his dinner, and page after page of drawings and plans that I couldn't begin to make sense of.
"What are you working on?" I asked.
He blinked again. "Dishes."
"Ah."
"Reflective bowls," he said. "Based on a parabola."
"How... interesting?" I managed.
He scratched his nose, leaving a giant blue smudge along the ridge. "It might be a way to magnify Alina's power."
"Like the gloves?" Alina had asked that the Durast remake them. With the power of the stag, she probably didn't need them. But the gloves would allow focus and pinpoint light.
"Sort of," said David. "If I get it right, it will be a much bigger way to use the Cut."
"And if you get it wrong?"
"Either nothing will happen, or whoever's operating it will be blown to bits."
"Sounds promising."
"I thought so too," he said without a hint of humor, and bent back to his work.
"David," I said. He looked up, startled, as if he'd completely forgotten I was there. "I need to ask you something."
His gaze darted to my hand again, then back to his work table.
"What can you tell me about Ilya Morozova?"
David twitched, glancing around the nearly empty room. Most of the Fabrikators were still at dinner. He was clearly nervous, maybe even frightened. He looked at the table, picked up his compass, and put it down.
Finally, he whispered, "They called him the Bonesmith."
A quiver passed through me. I thought of the fingers and vertebrae lying on the peddlers' table in Kribirsk.
"Why?" I asked. "Because of the amplifiers, he discovered?"
David looked up, surprised. "He didn't find them. He made them."
I didn't want to believe what I was hearing. "Merzost?"
He nodded. So that was why David had looked at Alina's collars and my hand when Zoya asked if any Grisha had ever had such power. Morozova had been playing with the same forces as the Darkling. Magic. Abomination.
"How?" I asked.
"No one knows," David said, glancing over his shoulder again. "After the Black Heretic was killed in the accident that created the Fold, his son came out of hiding to take control of the Second Army. He had all of Morozova's journals destroyed."
His son? Again, I was faced with the knowledge of how few people knew the Darkling's secret. The Black Heretic had never died— there had only ever been one Darkling, a single powerful Grisha who has ruled the Second Army for generations, hiding his true identity. As far as I knew, he'd never had a son. And there was no way he would destroy something as valuable as Morozova's journals. Aboard the whaler, he'd said not all the books prohibited the combination of amplifiers. Maybe he'd been referring to Morozova's own writings.
"Why was his son hiding?" I asked, curious as to how the Darkling had managed to frame such deception.
This time David frowned as if the answer were obvious.
"A Darkling and his heir never live at the Little Palace at the same time. The risk of assassinations is too great."
"I see," I said. Plausible enough, and after hundreds of years, I doubted anyone would question such a story. The Grisha did love their traditions, and Genya couldn't have been the first Tailor the Darkling had kept in his employ. "Why would he have had the journals destroyed?"
"The documented Morozova's experiments with amplifiers. The Black Heretic was trying to re-create those experiments when something went wrong."
The hair rose on my arms. "And the result was the Fold."
David nodded. "His son had all of Morozova's journals and papers burned. He said they were too dangerous, too much of a temptation to Any Grisha. That's why I didn't say anything at the meeting. I shouldn't even know they ever existed."
"So how do you?"
David looked around the almost empty workshop again. "Morozova was a Fabrikator, maybe the first, certainly the most powerful. He did things that no one's ever dreamed of before or since." He gave a sheepish shrug. "To us, he's kind of a hero."
"Do you know anything else about the amplifiers he created?"
David shook his head. "There were rumors of others, but the stag was the only one I'd ever heard of."
It was possible David had never even seen the Istorii Sankt'ya. The Apparat had claimed that the book was once given to all Grisha children when they arrived at the Little Palace. But that was long ago. The Grisha put their faith in the Small Science, and I'd never known them to bother with religion. Superstition, the Darkling had called the red book. Peasant Propaganda. David hadn't made the connection between Sankt Ilya and Ilya Morozova. Or he had something to hide.
"David," I said, "why are you here? You fashioned the collar and the coin. You must have known what he intended."
He swallowed. "I knew he would be able to control Alina, but I never thought, I never believed he'd actually take your power and claim it... all those people." He struggled to find the words. Finally, he held out his ink-stained hand and said, almost pleasingly. "I make things. I don't destroy them."
I wanted to believe that he had underestimated the Darkling's ruthlessness. I'd certainly made the same mistakes. But he might be lying or he might just be weak. Which is worse? asked a harsh voice in my head. If he can change sides once, he can do it again. Was it Nikolai's voice? The Darkling's? Or was it just the part of me that had learned to trust no one?
"Good luck with the dishes," I said as I rose to leave.
David hunched over his papers. "I don't believe in luck."
Too bad, I thought. We're going to need some.
❂♕
I went straight from the Fabrikator workrooms to the library and spent most of the night there. It was an exercise in frustration. The Grisha histories I searched had only the most basic information on Ilya Morozova, despite the fact that he was considered the greatest Fabrikator who ever lived.
He had invented Grisha steel, a method of making unbreakable glass, and a compound for liquid fire so dangerous that he destroyed the formula just twelve hours after he created it. But any mentions of amplifiers or the Bonesmith had been expunged.
That did stop me from returning the next evening to bury myself in religious texts and any reference I could find to Sankt Ilya. Like most Saints' tales, the story of his martyrdom was depressingly brutal: One day, a plow hand overturned in the fields behind his home. Hearing the screams, Ilya ran to help, only to find a man weeping over his dead son, the boys body torn open by the blades, the ground soaked through with his blood. Ilya had brought the boy back to life— and the village had thanked him for it by clapping him in irons and tossing him into a river to sink beneath the weight of his chains.
The details were hopelessly muddy. Sometimes Ilya was a farmer, sometimes a mason or a woodworker. He had two daughters or one son or no children at all. A hundred different villages claimed to be the site of his martyrdom. Then, there was the small problem of the miracle he'd performed. I had no problem believing that Sankt Ilya might be a Corporalnik Healer, but Ilya Morozova was supposed to be a Fabrikator. What if they weren't the same person at all?
At night, the glass-domed room was lit by oil lamps, and the hush was so deep that I could hear myself breathe. Alone in the gloom, surrounded by books, it was hard not to feel overwhelmed. But the library seemed like my best hope at finding what I could for Alina's sake, so I kept at it.
Tolya found me that evening, curled up in my favorite chair, struggling to make sense out of a text in ancient Ravkan.
"You shouldn't come here at night without one of us," he said grumpily.
I yawned and stretched. I was probably more in danger of a shelf falling on me than anything else, but I was too tired to argue. "Won't happen again."
"What is that?" Tolya asked, lowering himself down to get a closer view of the book in my lap. He was so huge that it was a bit like having a bear join me for a study session.
"I'm not sure. I saw the name Ilya in the index, so I picked it up, but I can't make sense of it."
"It's a list of titles."
"You can read it?" I asked surprised.
"We were raised in the church," he said, skimming the page.
I looked at him. Lots of children were raised in religious homes, but that didn't mean they could read liturgical Ravkan.
"What does it say?"
He ran a finger down the words beneath Ilya's name. His huge hands were covered in scars. Beneath his rough spun sleeve, I could see the edge of a tattoo peeking out.
"Not much," he said. "Saint Ilya the Beloved, Saint Ilya the Treasured. There are a few towns listed, though, places where he's said to have performed miracles."
I sat up straighter. "That might be a place to start."
"You should explore the chapel. I think there are some books in the vestry."
I had walked past the royal chapel plenty of times, but I'd never been inside. I'd always thought of it as the Apparat's domain, and even with him gone, I wasn't sure I wanted to visit.
"What's it like?"
Tolya lifted his huge shoulders. "Like any chapel."
"Tolya," I asked, suddenly curious, "did you ever even consider joining the Second Army?"
He looked offended. "I wasn't born to serve the Darkling."
I wanted to ask what he had been born for, but he tapped the page and said, "I can translate this for you, if you like."
He grinned. "Or maybe I'll just make Tamar do it."
"All right," I said. "Thanks."
He bent his head. It was just a bow, but he was still kneeling beside me, and there was something about his pose that sent a shiver up my spine. I felt as if he were waiting for something. Tentatively, I reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. As soon as my fingers came to rest, he let out a breath. It was almost a sigh.
We stayed there for a moment, silent in the halo of lamplight. Then he rose and bowed again.
"I'll just be outside the door," he said, and slipped away into the dark.
❂♕
Mal returned from the hunt the next morning, and Alina was very eager to tell him everything—about what I'd told her I learned from David, the plans for the new Hummingbird, and strangely my encounter with Tolya.
"He's an odd one," Mal agreed. "But it still couldn't hurt to check the chapel."
All three of us decided to walk over together, and on the way, Alina pressed him to tell about the hunt.
"We spent more time every day playing cards and drinking kvas than doing anything else. And some duke got so drunk he passed out in the river. He almost drowned. His servants hauled him out by his boots, but he kept wading back in, slurring something about the best way to catch trout."
"Was it terrible?" I asked, laughing.
"It was fine." He kicked a pebble down the path with his boot. "There's a lot of curiosity about you two."
"Why do I doubt I'm going to like any of this?" Alina said.
"One of the royal trackers is sure your powers are fake."
"And just how would we manage that?"
"I believe there's an elaborate system of mirrors, pulleys, and possibly hypnotism involved. I got a little lost."
Alina and I started laughing. "It wasn't funny, girls. When they were in their cups, some of the nobles made it clear they think all Grisha should be rounded up and executed."
"Saints," Alina breathed.
"They're scared."
"That's no excuse," I said, feeling anger rise. "We're Ravkans, too. It's like they forget everything the Second Army has done for them."
Mal raised his hands. "I didn't say I agreed with them."
I sighed and swatted at an innocent tree branch. "I know."
"Anyways, I think I made a bit of progress."
"How'd you manage that?" asked Alina.
"Well, they liked that you served in the First Army, and that you saved their prince's life."
"After he risked his own life rescuing us?"
"I may have taken some liberties with the details."
"Oh, Nikolai will love that. Is there more?"
"Not really. But I did tell them you love plum cake."
"Why?" asked Alina.
"I wanted to make you sound more human," he said. "All they see when they look at you is the Sun Summoner."
"It's nice to know people think I'm scary. Maybe that's why nobody comes around us because they're scared we might use the cut to scare them off." Alina said.
"Why do you think I did what I did, girls? And yes before you comment, they asked about you too Freya."
I shook my head and said, "Who wouldn't have guessed."
The chapel was the only remaining building of a monastery that had once stood atop Os Alta, and it was said to be where the first Kings of Ravka had been crowned. Compared to the other structures on the palace grounds, it was a humble building, with whitewashed walls and a single bright blue dome.
It was empty and looked like it could use a good cleaning. The pews were covered in dusts, and pigeons were roosting in the eaves. As we walked up the aisle, Mal took Alina's hand.
We didn't waste much time in the vestry. The few books on its shelves were a disappointment, just a bunch of old hymnals with crumbling, yellowed pages. The only thing of real interest in the chapel was the massive triptych behind the altar. A riot of colors, its three huge panels showed thirteen saints with benevolent faces. I recognized some of them from the Istorii Santyt'ya: Lizabeta with her bloody roses, Petyr with his still-burning arrows. And there was Sankt Ilya with his collar and fetters and broken chains.
"No animals," Mal observed.
"From what I've seen, he's never pictured with the amplifiers, just with the chains. Except in the Istorii Sankt'ya." I just didn't know why.
Most of the triptych was in fairly good condition, but Ilya's panel had sustained bad water damage. The Saints' faces were barely visible under the mold, and the damp smell of mildew was nearly overpowering. I pressed my nose to my sleeve.
"There must be a leak somewhere," said Alina. "This place is a mess."
My eyes traced the shape of Ilya's face beneath the grime. Another dead end. I didn't like to admit it, but I'd gotten my hopes up. Again, I sensed that pull, that emptiness at my wrist.
What was it? If Alina is to have the firebird, then is there any good chance that I might have another one? What was this emptiness?
"We can stand here all day," Mal said. "but he's not going to start talking."
We knew he was teasing, but for some reason, I felt a prickle of anger. We turned to go back down the aisle and I stopped short. The Darkling was waiting in the gloom by the entrance, seated in a shadowy pew.
"What is it?" Alina asked, following my gaze.
I waited, perfectly still. See him, I begged silently. Please see him, Alina.
"Freya? Is there something wrong?"
I dug my finger into my palm. "No," I said. "Do you think we should check the vestry again?"
"It didn't seem very promising," commented Mal.
I made myself smile and walk. "You're probably right. Wishful thinking."
As we passed the Darkling, he turned his heels to watch us. He pressed a finger to his lips, then bent his head in a mocking imitation of prayer.
I felt better when we were outside in the fresh air, away from the moldy smell of the chapel, away from him. My mind and body began racing. My heart rate picked up and I felt my fingers begin to throb at how tightly I was holding myself.
The Darkling's face had been unscarred. Mal and Alina hadn't seen him. That must mean it wasn't real, just some kind of vision. But he'd touched me that night in his room. I'd felt his fingers on my cheek. What kind of hallucination could do that?
I shivered as we passed into the woods. Was this some kind of the Darkling's new power? I was terrified by the prospect that he might have somehow found a way into my thoughts, but the other possibility was far worse.
You cannot violate the rules of this world without a price. I pressed my arms to my sides, feeling the sea whips' scales chafe against my skin. Forget Morozova and his madness. Maybe this has nothing to do with the Darkling at all. Maybe I was just losing my mind.
"Alina," I began, not certain what I intended to say, "the third amp—"
A snap was heard from behind us. I stopped and turned on my heels. Alina and Mal never stopped walking. Hadn't they heard it too?
I almost screamed when the Darkling walked out from behind a post, he just stood there watching me. The trace of a smile on his lips.
"My Freya," His voice rang in my head. "Come to me."
My hands outstretched into position to attack.
"You won't hurt me, dear Freya. I can sense it from the very pit of your well-being. You don't want to hurt me."
I shook my head, whispering shakily, "Your wrong." I said. "I would. I wouldn't hesitate to kill you. I've grown stronger since I've last seen you. Alina and I both have. You won't withstand."
Even from our distance, the long stretch seemed to close in on me. He was closer now, I wanted to back away, but it was as if I was frozen in place.
"Maybe so. But I know that when the time comes, when you fail— you will stand by me. It's how it was meant to be. You will betray Alina, she will turn against you."
Fear prickled me, but I pushed it down. "I won't though, that's the thing. You say you see me through your eyes. The ache of my loneliness. But you know what I think... I think that you can't stand the thought of me with Genya, with anyone who is close enough to be as powerful as you. You can't stand the thought of Alina with Mal. What hurts worse? Two girls rejecting affection and love from you? Or them denying to give in to acceptance of power?"
He went still. I could feel his hot breath from where I stood. I could feel him trembling. I'd gotten to him.
"You think I care about power but it's only ever been you, Freya. I see you in my dreams, in my future. And the funny thing is, Alina's not a part of it. You don't stand a chance with Genya. You know why? She doesn't exist in your universe when I kill her."
Every fiber in my body tenses, and my heartbeat feels like it's stopped, but when I feel cold fingers on my cheek does it stop. I snap back into reality.
"You wouldn't kill her. Because if you do, you know I'll never forgive you."
I knew I was right but how much? Have I underestimated him? Would he? Regardless of my ever-growing hate for him.
"For now she lives, dear Freya. But let this be a lesson, you are mine. You will always be mine and you cannot stop me from killing the ones you love."
He leaned in close enough that I could feel his breath fanning my neck.
"I will take away everything that at which you love, all that you know until you have no shelter but me."
A chill went up my back. I turned and looked around, only to find Alina and Mal gone. I was gripping my arms again, and the ache at my hand throbbed so bad that I wanted to cry.
I looked around again for clearance. I didn't know whether to feel fear or pride that I'd seen the Darkling again— well pride as in I'd managed to get to him. That I'd spoken to him without flinching away and crawling back into a hole.
I stood there for I don't know how long before reality seemed to come back. Once more, I looked around before walking in the direction of the Little Palace.
Where it was safe.
『Authors note』
Another chapter up! Let me know how you like some of the things I added.
Words written:
3,702