Ruin and Rising (The Grisha Trilogy)(53)

I tried not to picture it, but the image rose up sharp in my mind, a muddy field, a dark-haired little girl, her favorite toy in pieces. She’d thrown a tantrum, as children do. But she’d been no ordinary child.

“What happened?” I finally whispered.

“The villagers came running. They held my mother back so that she could not get at me. They couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. How could a little girl have done such a thing? The priest was already praying over my sister’s body when my father arrived. Without a word, Morozova knelt down beside her and began to work. The townspeople didn’t understand what was happening, but they sensed power gathering.”

“Did he save her?”

“Yes,” said Baghra simply. “He was a great Healer, and he used every bit of his skill to bring her back—weak, wheezing, and scarred, but alive.”

I’d read countless versions of Sankt Ilya’s martyrdom. The details of the story had been distorted over time: He’d healed his child, not a stranger’s. A girl, not a boy. But I suspected one thing that hadn’t changed was the ending, and I shivered at the thought of what came next.

“It was too much,” Baghra said. “The villagers knew what death looked like—that child should have died. And maybe they were resentful too. How many loved ones had they lost to illness or injury since Morozova had come to their town? How many could he have saved? Maybe it was not just horror or righteousness that drove them, but anger as well. They put him in chains—and my sister, a child who should have had the sense to stay dead. There was no one to defend my father, no one to speak on my sister’s behalf. We had lived on the outskirts of their lives and made no friends. They marched him to the river. My sister had to be carried. She had only just learned to walk and couldn’t manage it with the chains.”

I clenched my fists in my lap. I didn’t want to hear the rest.

“As my mother wailed and pleaded, as I cried and fought to get free from some barely known neighbor’s arms, they shoved Morozova and his youngest daughter off the bridge, and we watched them disappear beneath the water, dragged under by the weight of their iron chains.” Baghra emptied her glass and turned it over on the table. “I never saw my father or my sister again.”

We sat in silence as I tried to piece together the implications of what she’d said. I saw no tears on Baghra’s cheeks. Her grief is old, I reminded myself. And yet I didn’t think pain like that ever faded entirely. Grief had its own life, took its own sustenance.

“Baghra,” I said, pushing on, ruthless in my own way, “if Morozova died—”

“I never said he died. That was the last I ever saw of him. But he was a Grisha of immense power. He might well have survived the fall.”

“In chains?”

“He was the greatest Fabrikator who ever lived. It would take more than otkazat’sya steel to hold him.”

“And you believe he went on to create the third amplifier?”

“His work was his life,” she said, and the bitterness of that neglected child edged her words. “If he’d had breath in his body, he would not have stopped searching for the firebird. Would you?”

“No,” I admitted. The firebird had become my own obsession, a thread of compulsion that linked me to Morozova across centuries. Could he have survived? Baghra seemed so certain that he had. And what about her sister? If Morozova had managed to save himself, might he have rescued his child from the grasp of the river and used his skill to revive her once more? The thought shook me. I wanted to clutch it tightly, turn it over in my hands, but there was still more I needed to know. “What did the villagers do to you?”

Her rasping chuckle snaked through the room, lifting the hair on my arms. “If they’d been wise, they would have thrown me in the river too. Instead they drove my mother and me out of town and left us to the mercy of the woods. My mother was useless. She tore at her hair and wept until she made herself sick. Finally, she just lay down and wouldn’t get up, no matter how I cried and called her name. I stayed with her as long as I could. I tried to make a fire to keep her warm, but I didn’t know how.” She shrugged. “I was so hungry. Eventually, I left her and wandered, delirious and filthy, until I came to a farm. They took me in and put together a search party, but I couldn’t find the way back to her. For all I know, she starved to death on the forest floor.”

I stayed quiet, waiting. That kvas was beginning to look very good.

“Ravka was different then. Grisha had no sanctuary. Power like ours ended in fates like my father’s. I kept mine hidden. I followed tales of witches and Saints and found the secret enclaves where Grisha studied their science. I learned everything I could. And when the time came, I taught my son.”

“But what about his father?”

Baghra gave another harsh laugh. “You want a love story too? There’s none to be had. I wanted a child, so I sought out the most powerful Grisha I could find. He was a Heartrender. I don’t even remember his name.”

For a brief moment, I glimpsed the ferocious girl she had been, fearless and wild, a Grisha of extraordinary ability. Then she sighed and shifted in her chair, and the illusion was gone, replaced by a tired old woman huddling by a fire.

“My son was not … He began so well. We moved from place to place, we saw the way our people lived, the way they were mistrusted, the lives they were forced to eke out in secrecy and fear. He vowed that we would someday have a safe place, that Grisha power would be something to be valued and coveted, something our country would treasure. We would be Ravkans, not just Grisha. That dream was the seed of the Second Army. A good dream. If I’d known…”