Leigh Bardugo - Siege and Storm

“They’ll come around in time,” he said. “That’s why you need to be there, to reassure them and to help them understand that the Darkling isn’t like other enemies.”

“You think they don’t know that?” I asked incredulously.

“They don’t want to know it. If they can maintain the belief that the Darkling can be bargained with or brought to heel, then they don’t have to face the reality of the situation.”

“I can’t say I blame them,” I said gloomily. It was all well and good to talk about troops and walls and warnings, but I doubted it would make much difference against the Darkling’s shadow soldiers.

When we emerged from the tunnel, Nikolai said, “Walk with me down to the lake?”

I hesitated.

“I promise not to drop to one knee and start composing ballads to your beauty. I just want to show you something.”

My cheeks went red, and Nikolai grinned.

“You should see if the Corporalki can do something about that blush,” he said, and strolled off around the side of the Little Palace to the lake.

I was tempted to follow just for the pleasure of pushing him in. Although… could the Corporalki fix my blushing? I shook the ridiculous thought from my head. The day I asked a Corporalnik to tend to my blushes was the day I’d be laughed out of the Little Palace.

Nikolai had stopped on the gravel path, halfway down to the lake, and I joined him there. He pointed to a strip of beach on the far shore, a short distance from the school. “I want to construct a pier there,” he said.

“Why?”

“So I can rebuild the Hummingbird .”

“You really can’t keep still, can you? Don’t you have enough on your plate?”

He squinted out at the glittering surface of the lake. “Alina, I’m hoping we can find a way to defeat the Darkling. But if we can’t, we need a way to get you out.”

I stared at him. “What about the rest of the Grisha?”

“There’s nothing I can do for them.”

I couldn’t quite believe what he was suggesting. “I’m not going to run.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” he said with a sigh.

“And you?” I said angrily. “Are you just going to fly away and leave the rest of us to face the Darkling?”

“Come now,” he said. “You know I’ve always wanted a hero’s funeral.” He looked back at the lake. “I’m happy to go down fighting, but I don’t want my parents left to the Darkling’s mercy. Will you give me two Squallers to train?”

“They’re not gifts, Nikolai,” I said, thinking of the way the Darkling had made a present of Genya to the Queen. “But I’ll ask for volunteers. Just don’t tell them what it’s for. I don’t want the others to get discouraged.” Or start vying for places aboard the craft. “And one more thing,” I said. “I want you to make room for Baghra. She shouldn’t have to face the Darkling again. She’s been through enough.”

“Of course,” he said, then added, “I still believe we can win, Alina.”

I’m glad someone does , I thought dismally, and turned to go inside.

DAVID HAD MANAGEDto 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 boy Genya had fallen so hard for.

His eyes flicked to the collar at my neck. He began to fidget with the items on his worktable, moving them around and arranging them in careful lines: a compass, graphite pencils, pens 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 your power.”

“Like the mirrors in my gloves?” I’d asked that the Durasts remake them. With the power of two amplifiers, I probably didn’t need them. But the mirrors allowed me to focus and pinpoint light, and there was something comforting in the control they gave me.

“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 the collar again, then back to his worktable.

“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, 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’ tables 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 Morozova’s collar 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 had 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 in hiding?” I asked, curious as to how the Darkling had managed to frame such a 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 assassination 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?”

“They 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.”