Leigh Bardugo - Shadow and Bone

“Don’t they need light to… do their work?”

“Skylights,” she said. “In the roof, like the library dome. They prefer it that way. It keeps them and their secrets safe.”

“But what do they do in there?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“Only the Corporalki know. But there are rumors that they’ve been working with the Fabrikators on new… experiments.”

I shivered and was relieved when we turned another corner and the windows began again. Through them I saw bedrooms like my own, and I realized I was seeing the downstairs dormitories. I was grateful that I’d been given a room on the third floor. I could have done without all those stairs to climb, but now that I had my own room for the first time, I was glad that people couldn’t just walk by my window.

Genya pointed to the lake I’d seen from my room. “That’s where we’re going,” she said, pointing to the little white structures dotting the shore. “To the Summoners’ pavilions.”

“All the way out there?”

“It’s the safest place for you sort to practice. All we need is some overexcited Inferni to burn the whole palace down around us.”

“Ah,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“That’s nothing. The Fabrikators have another place all the way outside the city where they work on blast powders. I can arrange for you to have a tour there, too,” she said with a wicked grin.

“I’ll pass.”

We descended a set of steps to a gravel path and made our way to the lake. As we approached it, another building became visible on the far shore. To my surprise, I saw groups of children running and shouting around it. Children in red, blue, and purple. A bell rang, and they left off their playing and streamed inside.

“A school?” I asked.

Genya nodded. “When a Grisha’s talent is discovered, the child is brought here for training. It’s where nearly all of us learned the Small Science.”

Again I thought of those three figures looming over me in the sitting room at Keramzin. Why hadn’t the Grisha Examiners discovered my abilities all those years ago? It was hard to imagine what my life might have been like if they had. I would have been catered to by servants instead of working side by side with them at chores. I never would have become a cartographer or even learned to draw a map. And what might it have meant for Ravka? If I’d learned to use my power, the Shadow Fold might already be a thing of the past. Mal and I would never have had to fight the volcra. In fact, Mal and I would probably have long forgotten each other.

I looked back across the water to the school. “What happens when they finish?”

“They become members of the Second Army. Many are sent to the great houses to serve with noble families, or they’re sent to serve with the First Army on the northern or southern front, or near the Fold. The best are chosen to remain at the Little Palace, to finish their education and join the Darkling’s service.”

“What about their families?” I asked.

“They’re compensated handsomely. A Grisha’s family never wants.”

“That’s not what I meant. Don’t you ever go home to visit?”

Genya shrugged. “I haven’t seen my parents since I was five. This is my home.”

Looking at Genya in her white and gold kefta , I wasn’t quite convinced. I’d lived at Keramzin for most of my life, but I’d never felt I belonged there. And even after a year, the same had been true for the King’s Army. The only place I’d ever felt I belonged was with Mal, and even that hadn’t lasted. For all her beauty, maybe Genya and I weren’t so different after all.

When we reached the lakeshore, we strolled past the stone pavilions, but Genya didn’t stop until we reached a path that wound from the shore into the woods.

“Here we are,” she said.

I peered up the path. Hidden in the shadows, I could just make out a small stone hut, obscured by trees. “There?”

“I can’t go with you. Not that I’d want to.”

I looked back up the path and a little shiver ran up my spine.

Genya gave me a pitying look. “Baghra’s not so bad once you get used to her. But you don’t want to be late.”

“Right,” I said hastily, and scurried up the path.

“Good luck!” Genya called after me.

The stone hut was round and, I noted apprehensively, didn’t seem to have any windows. I walked up the few steps to the door and knocked. When no one answered, I knocked again and waited. I wasn’t sure what to do. I looked back up the path, but Genya was long gone. I knocked once more, then screwed up my courage and opened the door.

The heat hit me like a blast, and I instantly began to sweat in my new clothes. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I could just make out a narrow bed, a basin, and a stove with a kettle on it. At the center of the room were two chairs and a fire roaring in a large tile oven.

“You’re late,” said a harsh voice.

I looked around but didn’t see anyone in the tiny room. Then one of the shadows moved. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Shut the door, girl. You’re letting the heat out.”

I closed the door.

“Good, let’s have a look at you.”

I wanted to turn and run in the other direction, but I told myself to stop being stupid. I forced myself to walk over to the fire. The shadow emerged from behind the oven to peer at me in the firelight.

My first impression was of an impossibly ancient woman, but when I looked closer, I wasn’t sure why I’d thought that at all. Baghra’s skin was smooth and taut over the sharp angles of her face. Her back was straight, her body wiry like a Suli acrobat, her coal-black hair untouched by gray. And yet the firelight made her features eerily skull-like, all jutting bones and deep hollows. She wore an old kefta of indeterminate color, and with one skeletal hand she gripped a flat-headed cane that looked like it had been hewn from silvery, petrified wood.

“So,” she said in a low, guttural voice, “you’re the Sun Summoner. Come to save us all. Where’s the rest of you?”

I shifted uneasily.

“Well, girl, are you mute?”

“No,” I managed.

“That’s something, I suppose. Why weren’t you tested as a child?”

“I was.”

“Hmph,” she said. Then her expression changed. She looked on me with eyes so unfathomably bleak that a chill rippled through me, despite the heat of the room. “I hope you’re stronger than you look, girl,” she said grimly.

A bony hand snaked out from the sleeve of her robes and fastened hard around my wrist. “Now,” she said, “let’s see what you can do.”

IT WAS A COMPLETE DISASTER. When Baghra fastened her bony hand around my wrist, I realized instantly that she was an amplifier like the Darkling. I felt the same jolting surety flood through me, and sunlight erupted through the room, shimmering over the stone walls of Baghra’s hut. But when she released me and told me to call the power on my own, I was hopeless. She chided me, cajoled me, even hit me once with her stick.

“What am I supposed to do with a girl who can’t call her own power?” she growled at me. “Even children can do this.”

She slid her hand around my wrist again, and I felt that thing inside me rising up, struggling to break the surface. I reached for it, grasping, sure I could feel it. Then she let go, and the power slipped away from me, sinking like a stone. Finally, she shooed me away with a disgusted wave of her hand.

The day did not improve. I spent the rest of the morning at the library, where I was given a towering stack of books on Grisha theory and Grisha history and informed that this was just a fraction of my reading list. At lunch, I looked for Genya, but she was nowhere to be found. I sat down at the Summoners’ table and was quickly swarmed by Etherealki.