Ruin and Rising

^CHAPTER 4

I SAT UP WITH A GASP, sucking in the damp air of the alabaster chamber. I looked around guiltily. I shouldn’t have done it. What had I learned? That he was at the Grand Palace and in disgustingly good health? Paltry information.

But I wasn’t sorry. Now I knew what he saw when he visited me, what information he could or couldn’t cull from the contact. Now I had practice in one more power that had only belonged to him. And I’d enjoyed it. At the Little Palace, I’d dreaded those visions, thought I might be losing my mind, and worse, I’d wondered what they said about me. No longer. I was done being ashamed. Let him feel what it was to be haunted.

A headache was starting in my right temple. I sought Morozova’s amplifiers for you, Alina. Lies disguised as truth. He’d sought to make me more powerful, but only because he believed he could control me. He still believed it, and that scared me. The Darkling had no way of knowing that Mal and I knew where to start looking for the third amplifier, but he hadn’t seemed concerned. He hadn’t even mentioned the firebird. He’d seemed confident, strong, as if he belonged in that palace and on that throne. I know things about power that you can barely guess at. I gave myself a shake. I might not be a threat, but I could become one. I wouldn’t let him beat me before I’d had a chance to give him the fight he deserved.

A quick knock came at the door. It was time. I shoved my feet back into my boots and adjusted my scratchy golden kefta. After this, maybe I’d give myself a treat and stuff the thing in a stewpot.

The services were quite a spectacle. It was still a challenge to summon so far underground, but I threw blazing light over the walls of the White Cathedral, drawing on every reserve to awe the crowd that moaned and swayed below. Vladim stood to my left, his shirt open to display the brand of my palm on his chest. To my right, the Apparat held forth, and whether out of fear or real belief, he did a very convincing job of it. His voice rang through the main cavern, claiming that our mission was guided by divine providence and that I would emerge from my trials more powerful than ever before.

I studied him as he spoke. He looked paler than usual, a bit sweaty though not particularly chastened. I wondered if it was a mistake to leave him alive, but without the rush of fury and power guiding my actions, execution wasn’t a step I was prepared to consider seriously.

A hush had fallen. I looked down into the eager faces of the people below. There was something new in their exultation, maybe because they’d gotten a glimpse of my real power. Or maybe because the Apparat had done his work so well. They were waiting for me to say something. I’d had dreams like this. I was an actor in a play, but I’d never learned my lines.

“I will—” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I will return more powerful than before,” I said in my best Saint’s voice. “You are my eyes.” I needed them to be, to watch the Apparat, to keep each other safe. “You are my fists. You are my swords.”

The crowd cheered. As one, they chorused back to me, Sankta Alina! Sankta Alina! Sankta Alina!

“Not bad,” Mal said as I stepped away from the balcony.

“I’ve been listening to the Apparat go on for nearly three months. Something had to rub off.”

On my orders, the Apparat announced that he would spend three days in isolation, fasting and praying for the success of our mission. The Priestguards would do the same, confined to the archives and guarded by the Soldat Sol.

“Keep them strong in their faith,” I told Ruby and the other soldiers. I hoped that three days would give us plenty of time to get well away from the White Cathedral. But knowing the Apparat, he’d probably talk his way out before dinner.

“I knew you,” Ruby said, clutching my fingers as I turned to go. “I was in your regiment. Do you remember?”

Her eyes were wet, and the tattoo on her cheek was so black it seemed to float on top of her skin.

“Of course I do,” I said kindly. We hadn’t been friends. Back then, Ruby had been more interested in Mal than religion. I’d been nearly invisible to her.

Now she released a sob and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “Sankta,” she whispered fervently. Whenever I thought my life couldn’t get any stranger, it did.

Once I’d disentangled myself from Ruby, I took a final moment to speak to the Apparat in private.

“You know what I’m going after, priest, and you know the power I’ll wield when I return. Nothing happens to the Soldat Sol or to Maxim.” I didn’t like leaving the Healer on his own here, but I wouldn’t command him to join us, not knowing the dangers we might face on the surface.

“We are not enemies, Sankta Alina,” the Apparat said gently. “You must know that all I’ve ever wanted was to see you on Ravka’s throne.”

I almost smiled at that. “I know, priest. On the throne and under your thumb.”

He tilted his head to one side, contemplating me. The fanatical glint was gone from his eyes. He simply looked shrewd.

“You are not what I expected,” he admitted.

“Not quite the Saint you bargained for?”

“A lesser Saint,” he said. “But perhaps a better queen. I will pray for you, Alina Starkov.”

The strange thing was I believed him.

MAL AND I MET the others at Chetya’s Well, a natural fountain at the crossroads of four of the major tunnels. If the Apparat did decide to send a party after us, we’d be harder to track from there. At least that was the idea, but we hadn’t bargained on so many of the pilgrims turning out to see us off. They’d followed the Grisha from their quarters and crowded around the fountain.

We were all in ordinary travel clothes, our kefta stowed in our packs. I’d exchanged my gold robes for a heavy coat, a fur hat, and the comforting weight of a gun belt at my hip. If it hadn’t been for my white hair, I doubted any of the pilgrims would have recognized me.

Now they reached out to touch my sleeve or my hand. Some pressed little gifts on us, the only offerings they had: hoarded bread rolls gone tooth-breakingly hard, polished stones, bits of lace, a clutch of salt lilies. They murmured prayers for our health with tears in their eyes.

I saw Genya’s surprise when a woman placed a dark green prayer shawl around her shoulders. “Not black,” she said. “For you, not black.”

An ache began in my throat. It wasn’t just the Apparat who had kept me isolated from these people. I’d distanced myself from them as well. I distrusted their faith, but mostly I feared their hope. The love and care in these tiny gestures was a burden I didn’t want.

I kissed cheeks, shook hands, made promises I wasn’t sure I could keep, and then we were on our way. I’d been carried into the White Cathedral on a stretcher. At least I was leaving on my feet.

Mal took the lead. Tolya and Tamar brought up the rear, scouting behind us to make sure that no one followed.

Through David’s access to the archives and Mal’s innate sense of direction, they’d managed to construct a rough map of the tunnel network. They had started plotting a course to Ryevost, but there were gaps in their information. No matter how accurate they’d been, we couldn’t be sure of what we might be walking into.

After my escape from Os Alta, the Darkling’s men had tried to penetrate the network of tunnels beneath Ravka’s churches and holy sites. When their searches turned up empty, they’d begun bombing: closing off exit routes, trying to drive anyone seeking shelter to the surface. The Darkling’s Alkemi had created new explosives that collapsed buildings and forced combustible gases belowground. All it took was a single Inferni spark, and whole sections of the ancient network of tunnels collapsed. It was one of the reasons the Apparat had insisted I remain at the White Cathedral.

There were rumors of cave-ins to the west of us, so Mal led us north. It wasn’t the most direct route, but we hoped it would be stable.

It was a relief to be moving through the tunnels, to finally be doing something after so many weeks of confinement. My body was still weak, but I felt stronger than I had in months, and I pushed onward without complaint.

I tried not to think too hard about what it would mean if the smuggling station at Ryevost wasn’t active. How were we supposed to find a prince who didn’t want to be found, and do it while remaining hidden ourselves? If Nikolai was alive, he might be looking for me, or he might have sought alliance elsewhere. For all he knew, I had died in the battle at the Little Palace.

The tunnels grew darker as we moved farther from the White Cathedral and its strange alabaster glow. Soon our way was lit by nothing but the swaying light of our lanterns. In some places, the caverns were so narrow that we had to remove our packs and wriggle along between the press of walls. Then, without warning, we’d find ourselves in a giant cave wide enough to pasture horses.

Mal had been right: so many people traveling together were noisy and unwieldy. We made frustratingly slow progress, marching in a long column with Zoya, Nadia, and Adrik spread out along the line; in case of a cave-in, the air our Squallers could summon might provide valuable breathing time for anyone trapped.

David and Genya kept falling behind, but he seemed to be the one responsible for the lag. Finally, Tolya hefted the huge pack from David’s narrow shoulders.

He groaned. “What do you have in this thing?”

“Three pairs of socks, one pair of trousers, an extra shirt. One canteen. A tin cup and plate. A cylindrical slide rule, a chrondometer, a jar of spruce sap, my collection of anticorrosives—”

“You were only supposed to pack what you need.”

David gave an emphatic nod. “Exactly.”

“Please tell me you didn’t bring all of Morozova’s journals,” I said.

“Of course I did.”

I rolled my eyes. There had to be at least fifteen leather-bound books. “Maybe they’ll make good kindling.”

“Is she kidding?” David asked, looking concerned. “I can never tell if she’s kidding.”

I was. Mostly. I’d hoped the journals would give me insight into the firebird and maybe even into how the amplifiers could help me destroy the Fold. But they’d been a dead end, and if I was honest, they’d frightened me a little too. Baghra had warned me of Morozova’s madness, and yet somehow I’d expected to find wisdom in his work. Instead, his journals had provided me with a study in obsession, all of it documented in nearly indecipherable scrawl. Apparently genius didn’t require good penmanship.

His early journals chronicled his experiments: the blacked-out formula for liquid fire, a means of preventing organic decay, the trials that had led to the creation of Grisha steel, a method for restoring oxygen to the blood, the endless year he’d spent finding a way to create unbreakable glass. His skills extended beyond those of an ordinary Fabrikator, and he was well aware of it. One of the essential tenets of Grisha theory was “like calls to like,” but Morozova seemed to believe that if the world could be broken down to the same small parts, each Grisha should be able to manipulate them. Are we not all things? he demanded, underlining the words for emphasis. He was arrogant, audacious—but still sane.

Then his work on the amplifiers had begun, and even I could see the change. The text got denser, messier. The margins were full of diagrams and crazed arrows that referred back to earlier passages. Worse were the descriptions of experiments he’d performed on animals, the illustrations of his dissections. They turned my stomach and made me think Morozova had deserved whatever early martyrdom he’d received. He’d killed animals and then brought them back to life, sometimes repeatedly, delving deeper into merzost, creation, the power of life over death, trying to find a way to create amplifiers that might be used together. It was forbidden power, but I knew its temptation, and I shuddered to think that pursuing it might have driven him mad.

If he was led by some noble purpose, I didn’t see it in his pages. But I sensed something more in his fevered writings, in his insistence that power was everywhere for the taking. He had lived long before the creation of the Second Army. He was the most powerful Grisha the world had ever known—and that power had isolated him. I remembered the Darkling’s words to me: There are no others like us, Alina. And there never will be. Maybe Morozova wanted to believe that if there were no others like him, there could be, that he might create Grisha of greater power. Or maybe I was just imagining things, seeing my own loneliness and greed in Morozova’s pages. The mess of what I knew and what I wanted, my desire for the firebird, my own sense of difference had all gotten too hard to untangle.

I was pulled from my thoughts by the sound of rushing water. We were approaching an underground river. Mal slowed our pace and had me walk directly behind him, casting light over the path. It was a good thing too, because the drop came fast, so steep and sudden that I slammed right into his back, nearly knocking him over the edge and into the water below. Here, the roar was deafening, the river rushing past at uncertain depth, plumes of mist rising from the rapids.

We tied a rope around Tolya’s waist, and he waded across, then secured it on the other side so we could follow one by one, attached to the line. The water was ice cold and came all the way up to my chest, the force of it pulling me nearly off my feet as I held on to the rope. Harshaw was the last to cross. I had a moment of terror when he lost his footing and the tether nearly snapped free. Then he was up, gasping for breath, Oncat soaked to the skin and spitting mad. By the time Harshaw reached us, his face and neck were a patchwork of tiny scratches.

After that, we were all eager to stop, but Mal insisted we keep going.

“I’m drenched,” Zoya groused. “Why can’t we stop in this dank cave instead of the next dank cave?”

Mal didn’t break stride, but hooked a thumb back at the river. “Because of that,” he shouted over the din of rushing water. “If we’ve been followed, it will be too easy for someone to sneak up on us with that noise as cover.”

Zoya scowled, but we pushed on, until finally we’d outdistanced the river’s clamor. We spent the night in a hollow of damp limestone where there was nothing to hear but our teeth chattering as we shivered in our wet clothes.

FOR TWO DAYS, we carried on like that, moving through the tunnels, occasionally backtracking when a route proved impassable. I’d lost all sense of what direction we were heading, but when Mal announced that we were turning west, I noticed that the passages were sloping upward, leading us toward the surface.

Mal set an unforgiving pace. To keep contact, he and the twins would whistle to each other from opposite ends of the column, making sure no one had drifted too far behind. Occasionally, he’d fall back to check on everyone.

“I can tell what you’re up to,” I said once when he returned to the head of the line.

“What’s that?”

“You pop back there when someone’s lagging, start up a conversation. You ask David about the properties of phosphor or Nadia about her freckles—”

“I have never asked Nadia about her freckles.”

“Or something. Then gradually you start to pick up the pace so that they’re walking faster.”

“It seems to work better than jabbing them with a stick,” he said.

“Less fun.”

“My jabbing arm is tired.”

Then he was gone, pressing ahead. It was the most we’d spoken since we’d left the White Cathedral.

No one else seemed to have trouble talking. Tamar had started trying to teach Nadia some Shu ballads. Unfortunately, her memory was terrible, but her brother’s was nearly perfect and he’d eagerly taken over. The normally taciturn Tolya could recite entire cycles of epic poetry in Ravkan and Shu—even if no one wanted to hear them.

Though Mal had ordered that we remain in strict formation, Genya frequently escaped to the front of the column to complain to me.

“Every poem is about a brave hero named Kregi,” she said. “Every single one. He always has a steed, and we have to hear about the steed and the three different kinds of swords he carried and the color of the scarf he wore tied to his wrist and all the poor monsters he slew and then how he was a gentle man and true. For a mercenary, Tolya is disturbingly maudlin.”

I laughed and glanced back, though I couldn’t see much. “How is David liking it?”

“David is oblivious. He’s been babbling about mineral compounds for the last hour.”

“Maybe he and Tolya will just put each other to sleep,” Zoya grumbled.

She had no business griping. Though they were all Etherealki, the only thing the Squallers and Inferni seemed to have in common was how much they loved to argue. Stigg didn’t want Harshaw near him because he couldn’t stand cats. Harshaw was constantly taking offense on Oncat’s behalf. Adrik was supposed to stay near the middle of the group, but he wanted to be close to Zoya. Zoya kept slipping away from the head of the column to try to get away from Adrik. I was starting to wish I’d cut the rope and left them all to drown in the river.

And Harshaw didn’t just annoy me; he made me nervous. He liked to drag his flint along the cave walls, sending off little sparks, and he was constantly slipping bits of hard cheese out of his pocket to feed Oncat, then chuckling as if the tabby had said something particularly funny. One morning, we woke to find that he’d shaved the sides of his scalp so that his crimson hair ran in a single thick stripe down the center of his head.

“What did you do?” shrieked Zoya. “You look like a deranged rooster!”

Harshaw just shrugged. “Oncat insisted.”

Still, the tunnels occasionally surprised us with wonders that rendered even the Etherealki speechless. We’d spend hours with nothing to look at but gray rock and mud-covered lime, then emerge into a pale blue cave so perfectly round and smooth that it was like standing inside a giant enamel egg. We stumbled into a series of little caves glittering with what might well have been real rubies. Genya dubbed it the Jewelbox, and after that, we took to naming all of them to pass the time. There was the Orchard—a cavern full of stalactites and stalagmites that had fused together into slender columns. And less than a day later, we came across the Dancehall, a long cave of pink quartz with a floor so slippery we had to crawl over it, occasionally sliding to our bellies. Then there was the eerie, partially submerged iron portcullis we called the Angelgate. It was flanked by two winged stone figures, their heads bent, their hands resting on marble broadswords. The winch worked and we passed through it without incident, but why had it been put there? And by whom?

On the fourth day, we came upon a cavern with a perfectly still pool that gave the illusion of a night sky, its depths sparkling with tiny luminescent fish.

Mal and I were slightly ahead of the others. He dipped his hand in, then yelped and drew back. “They bite.”

“Serves you right,” I said. “‘Oh, look, a dark lake full of something shiny. Let me put my hand in it.’”

“I can’t help being delicious,” he said, that familiar cocky grin flashing across his face like light over water. Then he seemed to catch himself. He shouldered his pack, and I knew he was about to move away from me.

I wasn’t sure where the words came from: “You didn’t fail me, Mal.”

He wiped his damp hand on his thigh. “We both know better.”

“We’re going to be traveling together for who knows how long. Eventually, you’re going to have to talk to me.”

“I’m talking to you right now.”

“See? Is this so terrible?”

“It wouldn’t be,” he said, gazing at me steadily, “if all I wanted to do was talk.”

My cheeks heated. You don’t want this, I told myself. But I felt my edges curl like a piece of paper held too close to fire. “Mal—”

“I need to keep you safe, Alina, to stay focused on what matters. I can’t do that if…” He let out a long breath. “You were meant for more than me, and I’ll die fighting to give it to you. But please don’t ask me to pretend it’s easy.”

He plunged ahead into the next cave.

I looked down at the glittering pond, the whorls of light in the water still settling after Mal’s brief touch. I could hear the others making their noisy way through the cavern.

“Oncat scratches me all the time,” said Harshaw as he ambled up beside me.

“Oh?” I asked hollowly.

“Funny thing is, she likes to stay close.”

“Are you being profound, Harshaw?”

“Actually, I was wondering, if I ate enough of those fish, would I start to glow?”

I shook my head. Of course one of the last living Inferni would have to be insane. I fell in step with the others and headed into the next tunnel.

“Come on, Harshaw,” I called over my shoulder.

Then the first explosion hit.