Leigh Bardugo - Siege and Storm

“It was your shift,” Tolya rumbled, jabbing a finger at Mal’s chest. “You should have been with her.”

“I’m sorry,” Mal rasped, rubbing at his throat. “I must have fallen asleep. I was right next—”

“You were at the bottom of a bottle,” Tolya seethed. “I can smell it on you.”

“I’m sorry,” Mal said again, miserably.

“ Sorry? ” Tolya’s fists flexed. “I ought to tear you apart.”

“You can dismember him later,” I said. “Right now I need you to find Nikolai and tell him to meet me in the war room. I’m going to go change.”

I crossed to my room and closed the doors behind me, trying to pull myself together. So far today, I’d nearly died and possibly started a riot. Maybe I could set fire to something before breakfast.

I washed my face and changed into my kefta , then hurried to the war room. Mal was waiting there, slumped in a chair, though I hadn’t invited him. He’d changed clothes, but he still looked rumpled and red-eyed. There were fresh bruises on his face from the previous night. He glanced up at me as I entered, saying nothing. Would there ever be a time when it didn’t hurt to look at him?

I set the atlas on the long table and crossed to the ancient map of Ravka that ran the length of the far wall. Of all the maps in the war room, this one was by far the oldest and most beautiful. I trailed my fingers over the raised ridges of the Sikurzoi, the mountains that marked Ravka’s southernmost border with the Shu, then followed them down into the western foothills. The valley of Dva Stolba was too small to be marked on this map.

“Do you remember anything?” I asked Mal without looking at him. “From before Keramzin?”

Mal hadn’t been much older than I was when he came to the orphanage. I still remembered the day he’d arrived. I’d heard another refugee was coming, and I’d hoped it would be a girl for me to play with. Instead I’d gotten a pudgy, blue-eyed boy who would do anything on a dare.

“No.” His voice still sounded rough from the near choking he’d received at Tolya’s hands.

“Nothing?”

“I used to have dreams about a woman with long gold hair in a braid. She would dangle it in front of me like a toy.”

“Your mother?”

“Mother, aunt, neighbor. How should I know? Alina, about what happened—”

“Anything else?”

He contemplated me for a long moment, then sighed and said, “Every time I smell licorice, I remember sitting on a porch with a red painted chair in front of me. That’s it. Everything else…” He trailed off with a shrug.

He didn’t have to explain. Memories were a luxury meant for other children, not the Keramzin orphans. Be grateful. Be grateful.

“Alina,” Mal tried again, “what you said about the Darkling—”

But at that moment, Nikolai entered. Despite the early hour, he looked every inch the prince, blond hair gleaming, boots polished to a high shine. He took in Mal’s bruises and stubble, then raised his brows and said, “Don’t suppose anyone’s rung for tea?”

He sat down and stretched his long legs out before him. Tolya and Tamar had taken up their posts, but I asked them to close the door and join us.

When they were all assembled around the table, I said, “I went among the pilgrims this morning.”

Nikolai’s head snapped up. In an instant, the easygoing prince had vanished. “I think I must have misheard you.”

“I’m fine.”

“She was almost killed,” said Tamar.

“But I wasn’t,” I added.

“Are you completely out of your mind?” Nikolai asked. “Those people are fanatics.” He turned on Tamar. “How could you let her do something like that?”

“I didn’t,” said Tamar.

“Tell me you didn’t go alone,” he said to me.

“I didn’t go alone.”

“She went alone.”

“Tamar, shut up. Nikolai, I told you, I’m fine.”

“Only because we got there in time,” said Tamar.

“How did you get there?” Mal asked quietly. “How did you find her?”

Tolya’s face went dark, and he pounded one of his giant fists down on the table. “We shouldn’t have had to find her,” he said. “You had the watch.”

“Leave it alone, Tolya,” I said sharply. “Mal wasn’t where he should have been, and I’m perfectly capable of being stupid on my own.”

I took a breath. Mal looked desolate. Tolya looked like he was about to smash several pieces of furniture. Tamar’s face was stony, and Nikolai was about as angry as I’d ever seen him. But at least I had their attention.

I pushed the atlas to the center of the table. “There’s a name the pilgrims use for me sometimes,” I said. “Daughter of Dva Stolba.”

“Two Mills?” said Nikolai.

“A valley, named after the ruins at its mouth.”

I opened the atlas to the page I had marked. There was a detailed map of the southwestern border. “Mal and I are from somewhere around here,” I said, running my finger along the edge of the map. “The settlements stretch all along this area.”

I turned the page to an illustration of a road leading into a valley studded with towns. On either side of the road stood a slender spindle of rock.

“They don’t look like much,” grumbled Tolya.

“Exactly,” I said. “Those ruins are ancient. Who knows how long they’ve been there or what they might have been? The valley is called Two Mills, but maybe they were part of a gatehouse or an aqueduct.” I curved my finger across the spindles. “Or an arch.”

A sudden silence descended over the room. With the arch in the foreground and the mountains in the distance, the ruins looked exactly like the view behind Sankt Ilya in the Istorii Sankt’ya . The only thing missing was the firebird.

Nikolai pulled the atlas toward him. “Are we just seeing what we want to see?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But it’s hard to believe it’s a coincidence.”

“We’ll send scouts,” he suggested.

“No,” I said. “I want to go.”

“If you leave now, everything you’ve accomplished with the Second Army will be undone. I’ll go. If Vasily can run off to Caryeva to buy ponies, then no one will mind if I take a little hunting trip.”

I shook my head. “I have to be the one to kill the firebird.”

“We don’t even know it’s there.”

“Why are we even discussing it?” asked Mal. “We all know it’s going to be me.”

Tamar and Tolya exchanged an uneasy glance.

Nikolai cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Oretsev, you don’t quite seem at your best.”

“I’m fine.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“I think you do that enough for the both of us,” Mal shot back. Then he scrubbed a hand over his face, looking more weary than ever. “I’m too tired and too hungover to argue this. I’m the only one who can find the firebird. It has to be me.”

“I’m going with you,” I said.

“No,” he said with surprising force. “I’ll hunt it. I’ll capture it. I’ll bring it back to you. But you’re not coming with me.”

“It’s too risky,” I protested. “Even if you caught it, how would you get it back here?”

“Get one of your Fabrikators to rig something up for me,” he said. “This is best for everyone. You get the firebird, and I get free of this saintsforsaken place.”

“You can’t travel by yourself. You—”

“Then give me Tolya or Tamar. We’ll travel faster and draw less attention on our own.” Mal pushed his chair back and stood. “You figure it out. Make whatever arrangements you want.” He didn’t look at me when he said, “Just tell me when I can leave.”

Before I could raise another objection, he was gone.