Siege and Storm (36 page)

The twins had horses waiting. Tamar yanked a blanket from a market stall and threw it around my shoulders. I clutched it to my neck, hiding the collar. She leapt into her saddle, and Tolya tossed me up unceremoniously behind her.

We rode in harried silence all the way back to the palace gates. The unrest outside the city walls had not yet spread within, and all we garnered were a few questioning looks.

The twins didn’t say a word, but I could tell they were furious. They had every right to be. I’d behaved like an idiot, and now I could only hope that the guards below could restore order without resorting to violence.

Yet beneath the panic and regret, an idea had entered my mind. I told myself it was nonsense, wishful thinking, but I could not shake it.

When we arrived back at the Little Palace, the twins wanted to escort me straight to the Darkling’s rooms, but I refused.

“I’m safe now,” I said. “There’s something I need to do.”

They insisted on trailing me to the library.

It didn’t take me long to find what I wanted. I’d been a mapmaker, after all. I tucked the book under my arm and returned to my room with my scowling guards in tow.

To my surprise, Mal was waiting in the common room. He was seated at the table, nursing a glass of tea.

“Where were—” Mal began, but Tolya had him out of his chair and slammed against the wall before I could even blink.

“Where were
you
?” he snarled into Mal’s face.

“Tolya!” I shouted in alarm. I tried to pull his hand from around Mal’s throat, but it was like trying to bend a steel bar. I turned to Tamar for help, but she stood back, arms crossed, looking just as angry as her brother.

Mal made a choking sound. He hadn’t changed his clothes from last night. There was stubble on his chin, and the smell of blood and
kvas
hung on him like a dirty coat.

“Saints, Tolya! Would you just put him down?”

For a moment, Tolya looked like he had every intention of crushing the life out of him, but then he relaxed his fingers and Mal slid down the wall, coughing and gulping air.

“It was your shift,” Tolya rumbled, jabbing a finger at Mal’s chest. “You should have been with her.”

“I’m sorry,” Mal rasped, rubbing at his throat. “I must have fallen asleep. I was right next—”

“You were at the bottom of a bottle,” Tolya seethed. “I can smell it on you.”

“I’m sorry,” Mal said again, miserably.

“
Sorry?
” Tolya’s fists flexed. “I ought to tear you apart.”

“You can dismember him later,” I said. “Right now I need you to find Nikolai and tell him to meet me in the war room. I’m going to go change.”

I crossed to my room and closed the doors behind me, trying to pull myself together. So far today, I’d nearly died and possibly started a riot. Maybe I could set fire to something before breakfast.

I washed my face and changed into my
kefta
, then hurried to the war room. Mal was waiting there, slumped in a chair, though I hadn’t invited him. He’d changed clothes, but he still looked rumpled and red-eyed. There were fresh bruises on his face from the previous night. He glanced up at me as I entered, saying nothing. Would there ever be a time when it didn’t hurt to look at him?

I set the atlas on the long table and crossed to the ancient map of Ravka that ran the length of the far wall. Of all the maps in the war room, this one was by far the oldest and most beautiful. I trailed my fingers over the raised ridges of the Sikurzoi, the mountains that marked Ravka’s southernmost border with the Shu, then followed them down into the western foothills. The valley of Dva Stolba was too small to be marked on this map.

“Do you remember anything?” I asked Mal without looking at him. “From before Keramzin?”

Mal hadn’t been much older than I was when he came to the orphanage. I still remembered the day he’d arrived. I’d heard another refugee was coming, and I’d hoped it would be a girl for me to play with. Instead I’d gotten a pudgy, blue-eyed boy who would do anything on a dare.

“No.” His voice still sounded rough from the near choking he’d received at Tolya’s hands.

“Nothing?”

“I used to have dreams about a woman with long gold hair in a braid. She would dangle it in front of me like a toy.”

“Your mother?”

“Mother, aunt, neighbor. How should I know? Alina, about what happened—”

“Anything else?”

He contemplated me for a long moment, then sighed and said, “Every time I smell licorice, I remember sitting on a porch with a red painted chair in front of me. That’s it. Everything else…” He trailed off with a shrug.

He didn’t have to explain. Memories were a luxury meant for other children, not the Keramzin orphans.
Be grateful. Be grateful.

“Alina,” Mal tried again, “what you said about the Darkling—”

But at that moment, Nikolai entered. Despite the early hour, he looked every inch the prince, blond hair gleaming, boots polished to a high shine. He took in Mal’s bruises and stubble, then raised his brows and said, “Don’t suppose anyone’s rung for tea?”

He sat down and stretched his long legs out before him. Tolya and Tamar had taken up their posts, but I asked them to close the door and join us.

When they were all assembled around the table, I said, “I went among the pilgrims this morning.”

Nikolai’s head snapped up. In an instant, the easygoing prince had vanished. “I think I must have misheard you.”

“I’m fine.”

“She was almost killed,” said Tamar.

“But I wasn’t,” I added.

“Are you completely out of your mind?” Nikolai asked. “Those people are fanatics.” He turned on Tamar. “How could you let her do something like that?”

“I didn’t,” said Tamar.

“Tell me you didn’t go alone,” he said to me.

“I didn’t go alone.”

“She went alone.”

“Tamar, shut up. Nikolai, I told you, I’m fine.”

“Only because we got there in time,” said Tamar.

“How did you get there?” Mal asked quietly. “How did you find her?”

Tolya’s face went dark, and he pounded one of his giant fists down on the table. “We shouldn’t have had to find her,” he said. “You had the watch.”

“Leave it alone, Tolya,” I said sharply. “Mal wasn’t where he should have been, and I’m perfectly capable of being stupid on my own.”

I took a breath. Mal looked desolate. Tolya looked like he was about to smash several pieces of furniture. Tamar’s face was stony, and Nikolai was about as angry as I’d ever seen him. But at least I had their attention.

I pushed the atlas to the center of the table. “There’s a name the pilgrims use for me sometimes,” I said. “Daughter of Dva Stolba.”

“Two Mills?” said Nikolai.

“A valley, named after the ruins at its mouth.”

I opened the atlas to the page I had marked. There was a detailed map of the southwestern border. “Mal and I are from somewhere around here,” I said, running my finger along the edge of the map. “The settlements stretch all along this area.”

I turned the page to an illustration of a road leading into a valley studded with towns. On either side of the road stood a slender spindle of rock.

“They don’t look like much,” grumbled Tolya.

“Exactly,” I said. “Those ruins are ancient. Who knows how long they’ve been there or what they might have been? The valley is called Two Mills, but maybe they were part of a gatehouse or an aqueduct.” I curved my finger across the spindles. “Or an arch.”

A sudden silence descended over the room. With the arch in the foreground and the mountains in the distance, the ruins looked exactly like the view behind Sankt Ilya in the
Istorii Sankt’ya
. The only thing missing was the firebird.

Nikolai pulled the atlas toward him. “Are we just seeing what we want to see?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But it’s hard to believe it’s a coincidence.”

“We’ll send scouts,” he suggested.

“No,” I said. “I want to go.”

“If you leave now, everything you’ve accomplished with the Second Army will be undone. I’ll go. If Vasily can run off to Caryeva to buy ponies, then no one will mind if I take a little hunting trip.”

I shook my head. “I have to be the one to kill the firebird.”

“We don’t even know it’s there.”

“Why are we even discussing it?” asked Mal. “We all know it’s going to be me.”

Tamar and Tolya exchanged an uneasy glance.

Nikolai cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Oretsev, you don’t quite seem at your best.”

“I’m fine.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“I think you do that enough for the both of us,” Mal shot back. Then he scrubbed a hand over his face, looking more weary than ever. “I’m too tired and too hungover to argue this. I’m the only one who can find the firebird. It has to be me.”

“I’m going with you,” I said.

“No,” he said with surprising force. “I’ll hunt it. I’ll capture it. I’ll bring it back to you. But you’re not coming with me.”

“It’s too risky,” I protested. “Even if you caught it, how would you get it back here?”

“Get one of your Fabrikators to rig something up for me,” he said. “This is best for everyone. You get the firebird, and I get free of this saintsforsaken place.”

“You can’t travel by yourself. You—”

“Then give me Tolya or Tamar. We’ll travel faster and draw less attention on our own.” Mal pushed his chair back and stood. “You figure it out. Make whatever arrangements you want.” He didn’t look at me when he said, “Just tell me when I can leave.”

Before I could raise another objection, he was gone.

I turned away, fighting to hold back the tears that threatened. Behind me, I heard Nikolai murmuring instructions to the twins as they departed.

I studied the map. Poliznaya, where we’d done our military service. Ryevost, where we’d begun our journey into the Petrazoi. Tsibeya, where he’d kissed me for the first time.

Nikolai laid his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t know whether I wanted to swat it away or turn and fall into his arms. What would he do if I did? Pat my back? Kiss me? Propose?

“It’s for the best, Alina.”

I laughed bitterly. “Have you ever noticed people only say that when it isn’t true?”

He dropped his hand. “He doesn’t belong here.”

He belongs with me
, I wanted to shout. But I knew it wasn’t true. I thought of Mal’s bruised face, of him pacing back and forth like a caged animal, of him spitting blood and beckoning to Eskil for more.
Go on.
I thought of him holding me in his arms as we crossed the True Sea. The map blurred as my eyes filled with tears.

“Let him go,” said Nikolai.

“Go where? Chasing after some mythical creature that may not even exist? On some impossible quest into mountains crawling with Shu?”

“Alina,” Nikolai said softly, “that’s what heroes do.”

“I don’t want him to be a hero!”

“He can’t change who he is any more than you can stop being Grisha.”

It was an echo of what I’d said only hours ago, but I didn’t want to hear it.

“You don’t care what happens to Mal,” I said angrily. “You just want to get rid of him.”

“If I wanted you to fall out of love with Mal, I’d make him stay here. I’d let him keep soaking his troubles in
kvas
and acting like a wounded ass. But is this really the life you want for him?”

I took a shaky breath. It wasn’t. I knew that. Mal was miserable here. He’d been suffering since the moment we arrived, but I had refused to see it. I’d railed at him for wanting me to be something I couldn’t, and all the while, I’d demanded the same thing from him. I brushed the tears from my cheeks. There was no point to arguing with Nikolai. Mal had been a soldier. He wanted purpose. Here it was, if I would just let him take it.

And why not admit it? Even as I protested, there was another voice inside me, a greedy, shameful hunger that demanded completion, that clamored for Mal to go out and find the firebird, that insisted he bring it back to me, no matter the cost. I’d told Mal that the girl he knew was gone. Better for him to leave before he saw just how true that was.

I let my fingers drift over the illustration of Dva Stolba. Two mills, or something more? Who could say when there was nothing left but ruins?

“You know the problem with heroes and saints, Nikolai?” I asked as I closed the book’s cover and headed for the door. “They always end up dead.”

CHAPTER

22

M
AL AVOIDED ME
all afternoon, so I was surprised when he showed up with Tamar to escort me to Nikolai’s birthday dinner. I’d assumed he’d get Tolya to take his place. Maybe he was making amends for missing his previous shift.

I’d given serious thought to not attending the dinner myself, but there didn’t seem to be much point. I couldn’t think of a likely excuse, and my absence would just offend the King and Queen.

I’d dressed in a light
kefta
made of shimmering panels of sheer gold silk. The bodice was set with sapphires of deep Summoner’s blue that matched the jewels in my hair.

Mal’s eyes flickered over me as I entered the common room, and it occurred to me that the colors would have suited Zoya better. Then I had to wonder at myself. Gorgeous as she might be, Zoya wasn’t the problem. Mal was leaving. I was letting him go. There was no one else to blame for the rift between us.

Dinner was held in one of the sumptuous dining rooms of the Grand Palace, a chamber known as the Eagle’s Nest for the massive frieze on its ceiling depicting the crowned double eagle, a scepter in one talon and a cluster of black arrows bound by red, blue, and purple ribbons in the other. Its feathers had been wrought in real gold, and I couldn’t help but think of the firebird.

The table was crowded with the highest-ranking generals of the First Army and their wives, as well as all the most prominent Lantsov uncles, aunts, and cousins. The Queen sat at one end of the table looking like a crumpled flower in pale rose silk. At the opposite end, Vasily sat next to the King, pretending not to notice as his father ogled an officer’s young wife. Nikolai held court at center table, with me beside him, his charm sparkling as always.