Shadow and Bone: Chapters 8–13

“The Corporalki sit there,” she said with a disdainful glance at the table opposite ours, where a glowering Sergei and a few other red-robed figures were eating breakfast.

The Grisha seemed obsessed with emulating serf ways, right down to the clothes we wore beneath our kefta. But there was something a little silly about eating “hearty peasant fare” off porcelain plates, beneath a dome inlaid with real gold.

The Duke’s library had seemed so grand to me, but compared to this place it was a hovel.

Healers...and Heartrenders. They had to practice somewhere, but I hated to think what that practice might entail.

David looked up, blinked, gave a curt nod, and bent back to his work.

Genya took my arm and led me outside onto an arched wooden arcade that overlooked a rolling green lawn.

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

Hidden in the shadows, I could just make out a small stone hut, obscured by trees.

The stone hut was round and, I noted apprehensively, didn’t seem to have any windows.

Her back was straight, her body wiry like a Suli acrobat, her coal-black hair untouched by gray.

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?”

She looked on me with eyes so unfathomably bleak that a chill rippled through me, despite the heat of the room.

She chided me, cajoled me, even hit me once with her stick.

Our instructor, Botkin Yul-Erdene, wasn’t Grisha; he was a former Shu Han mercenary who had fought in wars on every continent for any army that could afford his particular gift for violence.

Ivan emerged and sauntered over to the Summoners’ table, seemingly oblivious to the stares of the other Grisha.

He pointed to a narrow door set unobtrusively into the wall.

He studied me for a long moment, and I wished fervently that I’d kept my mouth shut.

The work Genya had done on me had worn off, and my cheeks were once again sallow, my eyes shadowed, my hair dull and limp.

Grisha steel wasn’t endowed with magic, but by the skill of Fabrikators, who did not need heat or crude tools to manipulate metal.

The title was embossed in gold on the cover: Istorii Sankt'ya.

I missed the easy rhythm of the Documents Tent, the comforting monotony of my life as a cartographer, when nothing more was expected of me than a few drawings and a tidy worktable.

Her words stayed with me the rest of the day, through another botched lesson with Baghra and an interminable lunch during which Zoya held forth on the journey from Kribirsk, the state of the towns bordering the Fold, and the exquisite lubok woodcuts she’d seen in one of the peasant villages.

I thought of the graveyard at Keramzin, the crooked headstones, the peasant women keening over new graves.

“It is a blessing, Alina Starkov. A benediction.”

The sun was bright, the air cold on my cheeks, and I wasn’t looking forward to the stuffy, windowless confines of Baghra’s hut.

When he looked at me, there was a rueful smile on his lips, and his hair was going every which way.

“Don’t patronize me, boy!”

“The horse has speed. The bear has strength. The bird has wings. No creature has all of these gifts, and so the world is held in balance. Amplifiers are part of this balance, not a means of subverting it, and each Grisha would do well to remember this or risk the consequences.”

When she started railing at me, I just shrugged. She was right. I was tired of trying and failing.

She’d been barred from the training rooms, and I’d heard she would be returning to Kribirsk after the winter fete.

I know that we are different from one another. Terribly, irrevocably different.

My lessons with Baghra were still difficult and I never actually enjoyed them. But I did relish any chance to use my power, and I felt like I was making progress.

I loved to hear all the court gossip, and even better were the tales of the opulent parties at the Grand Palace.

Every noble family and high court officer would be there, along with military heroes, foreign dignitaries, and the tsarevitch, the King’s eldest son and heir to the throne.

“Probably drunk,” said Genya, stirring her tea. “He devotes all his time to hunting, horses, and imbibing. Drives the Queen mad.”

She just wants him to find a bride instead of gallivanting around the world spending mounds of gold buying up ponies.

She laughed, and I felt a sudden niggle of guilt. Genya talked so easily about David, but I’d never confided in her about Mal.

He looked so weary that I felt instantly contrite.

Ana Kuya had always told us that the banya was barbaric, an excuse for peasants to drink kvas and engage in wanton behavior.