Siege and Storm (Shadow and Bone #2)(23)
She laughed. “I don’t blame him. To go up against the Darkling and his Grisha? Everyone knew it was suicide. The crew ended up drawing straws to see who got stuck with the honor.”
“And you and your brother are just unlucky?”
“Us?” Tamar paused in the doorway. Her hair was damp, and the lamplight glinted off her Heartrender’s grin. “We didn’t draw anything,” she said as she stepped through the door. “We volunteered.”
*
I DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE to talk to Mal alone until late that night. We’d been invited to dine with Sturmhond in his quarters, and it had been a strange supper. The meal was served by the steward, a servant of impeccable manners, who was several years older than anyone else on the ship. We ate better than we had in weeks: fresh bread, roasted haddock, pickled radishes, and a sweet iced wine that set my head spinning after just a few sips.
My appetite was fierce, as it always was after I’d used my power, but Mal ate little and said less until Sturmhond mentioned the shipment of arms he was bringing back to Ravka. Then he seemed to perk up and they spent the rest of the meal talking about guns, grenades, and exciting ways to make things explode. I couldn’t seem to pay attention. As they yammered on about the repeating rifles used on the Zemeni frontier, all I could think about were the scales in my pocket and what I intended to do with them.
Did I dare claim a second amplifier for myself? I had taken the sea whip’s life—that meant its power belonged to me. But if the scales functioned like Morozova’s collar, then the dragon’s power was also mine to bestow. I could give the scales to one of Sturmhond’s Heartrenders, maybe even Tolya, try to take control of him the way the Darkling had once taken control of me. I might be able to force the privateer to sail us back to Novyi Zem. But I had to admit that wasn’t what I wanted.
I took another sip of wine. I needed to talk to Mal.
To distract myself, I cataloged the trappings of Sturmhond’s cabin. Everything was gleaming wood and polished brass. The desk was littered with charts, the pieces of a dismembered sextant, and strange drawings of what looked like the hinged wing of a mechanical bird. The table glittered with Kerch porcelain and crystal. The wines bore labels in a language I didn’t recognize. All plunder, I realized. Sturmhond had done well for himself.
As for the captain, I took the opportunity to really look at him for the first time. He was probably four or five years older than I was, and there was something very odd about his face. His chin was overly pointy. His eyes were a muddy green, his hair a peculiar shade of red. His nose looked like it had been broken and badly set several times. At one point, he caught me studying him, and I could have sworn he turned his face away from the light.
When we finally left Sturmhond’s cabin, it was past midnight. I herded Mal above deck to a secluded spot by the ship’s prow. I knew there were men on watch in the foretop above us, but I didn’t know when I’d have another chance to get him alone.
“I like him,” Mal was saying, a little unsteady on his feet from the wine. “I mean, he talks too much, and he’d probably steal the buttons from your boots, but he’s not a bad guy, and he seems to know a lot about—”
“Would you shut up?” I whispered. “I want to show you something.”
Mal peered at me blearily. “No need to be rude.”
I ignored him and pulled the red book out of my pocket. “Look,” I said, holding the page open and casting a glow over Sankt Ilya’s exultant face.
Mal went still. “The stag,” he said. “And Rusalye.” I watched him examine the illustration and saw the moment that realization struck. “Saints,” he breathed. “There’s a third.”
CHAPTER
6
SANKT ILYA STOOD barefoot on the shore of a dark sea. He wore the ragged remnants of a purple robe, his arms outstretched, his palms turned upward. His face had the blissful, placid expression Saints always seemed to wear in paintings, usually before they were murdered in some horrific way. Around his neck he wore an iron collar that had once been connected to the heavy fetters around his wrists by thick chains. Now the chains hung broken by his sides.
Behind Sankt Ilya, a sinuous white serpent splashed in the waves.
A white stag lay at his feet, gazing out at us with dark, steady eyes.
But neither of these creatures held our attention. Mountains crowded the background behind the Saint’s left shoulder, and there, barely visible in the distance, a bird circled a towering stone arch.
Mal’s finger traced its long tailfeathers, rendered in white and the same pale gold that illuminated Sankt Ilya’s halo. “It can’t be,” he said.
“The stag was real. So was the sea whip.”
“But this is … different.”
He was right. The firebird didn’t belong to one story, but to a thousand. It was at the heart of every Ravkan myth, the inspiration for countless plays and ballads, novels and operas. Ravka’s borders were said to have been sketched by the firebird’s flight. Its rivers ran with the firebird’s tears. Its capital was said to have been founded where a firebird’s feather fell to earth. A young warrior had picked up that feather and carried it into battle. No army had been able to stand against him, and he became the first king of Ravka. Or so the legend went.