Ruin and Rising (The Grisha Trilogy)(52)

“We’re done here, girl,” she said, turning back to the fire. “You’ve wasted your morning.”

“You told me once that you hoped for redemption for your son. This may be my last chance to stop him.”

“Ah, so you hope to save my son now? How forgiving of you.”

I took a deep breath.

“Aleksander,” I whispered. She stilled. “His true name is Aleksander. And if he takes this step, he’ll be lost forever. We may all be.”

“That name…” Baghra leaned back in her chair. “Only he could have told you. When?”

I’d never spoken of the visions to Baghra, and I didn’t think I wanted to now. Instead, I repeated my question. “Baghra, did you know Morozova?”

She was quiet for a long time, the only sound the crackle of the fire. Finally, she said, “As well as anyone did.”

Though I’d suspected as much, the fact was hard to believe. I’d seen Morozova’s writings, I wore his amplifiers, but he had never seemed real. He was a Saint with a gilded halo, more legend than man to me.

“There’s a bottle of kvas on a shelf in the corner,” she said, “out of Misha’s reach. Bring it and a glass.”

It was early for kvas, but I wasn’t going to argue. I brought down the bottle and poured for her.

She took a long sip and smacked her lips together. “The new King doesn’t stint, does he?” She sighed and settled back. “All right, little Saint, since you want to know about Morozova and his precious amplifiers, I’ll tell you a story—one I used to tell a little boy with dark hair, a silent boy who rarely laughed, who listened more closely than I realized. A boy who had a name and not a title.”

In the firelight, the shadowy pools of her eyes seemed to flicker and shift.

“Morozova was the Bonesmith, one of the greatest Fabrikators who ever lived, and a man who tested the very boundaries of Grisha power, but he was also just a man with a wife. She was otkazat’sya, and though she loved him, she did not understand him.”

I thought of the way the Darkling talked about otkazat’sya, the predictions he’d made about Mal and the way I’d be treated by Ravka’s people. Had he learned those lessons from Baghra?

“I should tell you that he loved her too,” she continued. “At least, I think he did. But it was never enough to make him stop his work. It couldn’t temper the need that drove him. This is the curse of Grisha power. You know the way of it, little Saint.

“They spent over a year hunting the stag in Tsibeya, two years sailing the Bone Road in search of the sea whip. Great successes for the Bonesmith. The first two phases of his grand scheme. But when his wife became pregnant, they settled in a small town, a place where he could continue his experiments and hatch his plans for which creature would become the third amplifier.

“They had little money. When he could be pulled away from his studies, he made his living as a woodworker, and the villagers occasionally came to him with wounds and ailments—”

“He was a Healer?” I asked. “I thought he was a Fabrikator.”

“Morozova did not draw those distinctions. Few Grisha did in those days. He believed if the science was small enough, anything was possible. And for him, it often was.” Are we not all things?

“The townspeople viewed Morozova and his family with a combination of pity and distrust. His wife wore rags, and his child … his child was rarely seen. Her mother kept her to the house and the fields around it. You see, this little girl had started to show her power early, and it was like nothing ever known.” Baghra took another sip of kvas. “She could summon darkness.”

The words hung in the heated air, their meaning settling over me. “You?” I breathed. “Then the Darkling—”

“I am Morozova’s daughter, and the Darkling is the last of Morozova’s line.” She emptied her glass. “My mother was terrified of me. She was sure that my power was some kind of abomination, the result of my father’s experiments. And she may well have been right. To dabble in merzost, well, the results are never quite what one would hope. She hated to hold me, could hardly bear to be in the same room with me. It was only when her second child was born that she came back to herself at all. Another little girl, this one normal like her, powerless and pretty. How my mother doted on her!”

Years had passed, hundreds, maybe a thousand. But I recognized the hurt in her voice, the sting of always feeling underfoot and unwanted.

“My father was readying to leave to hunt the firebird. I was just a little girl, but I begged him to take me along. I tried to make myself useful, but all I did was annoy him, and eventually he banned me from his workshop.”

She tapped the table, and I filled her glass once more.

“And then one day, Morozova had to leave his workbench. He was drawn to the pasture behind his home by the sound of my mother’s screams. I had been playing dolls and my sister had whined and howled and stamped her little feet until my mother insisted that I give over my favorite toy, a wooden swan carved by our father in one of the rare moments that he’d paid me any attention. It had wings so detailed they felt nearly downy and perfect webbed feet that kept it balanced in water. My sister had it in her hand less than a minute before she snapped its slender neck. Remember, if you can, that I was just a child, a lonely child, with so few treasures of my own.” She lifted her glass but did not drink. “I lashed out at my sister. With the Cut. I tore her in two.”