Siege and Storm (Shadow and Bone #2)(26)

“Well, Summoner,” said Sturmhond, a slight wobble to his voice, “you certainly know how to put on a show.”

Mal bracketed my face with his hands. He kissed my brow, my nose, my lips, my hair, then drew me tight against him once again.

“You’re all right?” he asked. His voice was rough.

“Yes,” I replied.

But that wasn’t quite true. I felt the collar at my throat, the pressure of the fetter at my wrist. My other arm felt naked. I was incomplete.

*

STURMHOND ROUSED HIS CREW, and we were well on our way as dawn broke. We couldn’t be sure how far the light I’d created might have stretched, but there was a good chance I’d given away our location. We needed to move fast.

Every crewman wanted a look at the second amplifier. Some were wary, others just curious, but Mal was the one I was worried about. He watched me constantly, as if he was afraid that at any moment, I might lose control. When dusk fell and we went belowdecks, I cornered him in one of the narrow passageways.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do. I can feel it.”

“You didn’t see what I saw. It was—”

“It got away from me. I didn’t know what to expect.”

He shook his head. “You were like a stranger, Alina. Beautiful,” he said. “Terrible.”

“It won’t happen again. The fetter is a part of me now, like my lungs or my heart.”

“Your heart,” he said flatly.

I took his hand in mine and pressed it against my chest. “It’s still the same heart, Mal. It’s still yours.”

I lifted my other hand and cast a soft tide of sunlight over his face. He flinched. He can never understand your power, and if he does, he will only come to fear you. I pushed the Darkling’s voice from my mind. Mal had every right to be afraid.

“I can do this,” I said gently.

He shut his eyes and turned his face toward the sunlight that radiated from my hand. Then he tilted his head, resting his cheek against my palm. The light glowed warm against his skin.

We stood that way, in silence, until the watch bell rang.





CHAPTER


7





THE WINDS WARMED, and the waters turned from gray to blue as the Volkvolny carried us southeast to Ravka. Sturmhond’s crew was made up of sailors and rogue Grisha who worked together to keep the ship running smoothly. Despite the stories that had spread about the power of the second amplifier, they didn’t pay Mal or me much attention, though they occasionally came to watch me practice at the schooner’s stern. I was careful, never pushing too hard, always summoning at noon, when the sun was high in the sky and there was no chance of my efforts being spotted. Mal was still wary, but I’d spoken the truth: The sea whip’s power was a part of me now. It thrilled me. It buoyed me. I didn’t fear it.

I was fascinated by the rogues. They all had different stories. One had an aunt who had spirited him away rather than let him be turned over to the Darkling. Another had deserted the Second Army. Another had been hidden in a root cellar when the Grisha Examiners arrived to test her.

“My mother told them I’d been killed by the fever that had swept through our village the previous spring,” the Tidemaker said. “The neighbors cut my hair and passed me off as their dead otkazat’sya son until I was old enough to leave.”

Tolya and Tamar’s mother had been a Grisha stationed on Ravka’s southern border when she met their father, a Shu Han mercenary.

“When she died,” Tamar explained, “she made my father promise not to let us be drafted into the Second Army. We left for Novyi Zem the next day.”

Most rogue Grisha ended up in Novyi Zem. Aside from Ravka, it was the only place where they didn’t have to fear being experimented on by Shu doctors or burned by Fjerdan witchhunters. Even so, they had to be cautious about displaying their power. Grisha were valued slaves, and less scrupulous Kerch traders were known to round them up and sell them in secret auctions.

These were the very threats that had led so many Grisha to take refuge in Ravka and join the Second Army in the first place. But the rogues thought differently. For them, a life spent looking over their shoulders and moving from one place to the next to avoid discovery was preferable to a life in service to the Darkling and the Ravkan King. It was a choice I understood.

After a few monotonous days on the schooner, Mal and I asked Tamar if she would show us some Zemeni combat techniques. It helped ease the tedium of shipboard life and the awful anxiety of returning to West Ravka.

Sturmhond’s crew had confirmed the disturbing rumors we’d picked up in Novyi Zem. Crossings of the Fold had all but ceased, and refugees were fleeing its expanding shores. The First Army was close to revolt, and the Second Army was in tatters. I was most frightened by the news that the Apparat’s cult of the Sun Saint was growing. No one knew how he’d managed to escape the Grand Palace after the Darkling’s failed coup, but he had resurfaced somewhere in the network of monasteries spread across Ravka.

He was circulating the story that I’d died on the Fold and been resurrected as a Saint. Part of me wanted to laugh, but turning through the bloody pages of the Istorii Sankt’ya late at night, I couldn’t summon so much as a chuckle. I remembered the Apparat’s smell, that unpleasant combination of incense and mildew, and pulled my coat tighter around me. He had given me the red book. I had to wonder why.