Ruin and Rising (30 page)

Tolya frowned. “There’s no way we’d get into camp and free them without being noticed. Some of those kids are younger than Misha.”

“Kribirsk will be too complicated,” said David. “Lots of people, interrupted sight lines. If Alina had more time to practice—”

“We have five days,” I repeated.

“So we attack on the Fold,” said Genya. “Alina’s light will keep the volcra at bay—”

I shook my head. “We’d still have to fight the Darkling’s
nichevo’ya.
”

“Not if they can’t see us,” said Genya.

Nadia grinned. “We’d be hiding in plain sight.”

“He’ll have
oprichniki
and Grisha too,” said Tolya. “They won’t be short on ammunition like we will. Even if they can’t see their targets, they may just open fire and hope they get lucky.”

“So we stay out of range.” Tamar moved her plate to the center of the table. “This is the glass skiff,” she said. “We place marksmen around the perimeter and use them to thin the Darkling’s ranks.
Then
we get close enough to sneak onto the skiff, and once we get the kids to safety—”

“We blow it to bits,” said Harshaw. He was practically salivating at the prospect of the explosion.

“And the Darkling with it,” Genya finished.

I gave Tamar’s plate a turn, considering what the others were suggesting. Without the third amplifier, my power was no match for the Darkling’s in a head-on confrontation. He’d proved that in no uncertain terms. But what if I came at him unseen, using light for cover the way others used darkness? It was sneaky, even cowardly, but the Darkling and I had left honor behind long ago. He’d been in my head, waged war on my heart. I wasn’t interested in a fair fight, not if there was a chance I could save Mal’s life.

As if he could read my mind, Mal said, “I don’t like it. Too many things can go wrong.”

“This isn’t just your choice,” said Nadia. “You’ve been fighting beside us and bleeding with us for months now. We deserve the chance to try and save your life.”

“Even if you’re a useless
otkazat’sya
,” added Zoya.

“Careful,” said Harshaw. “You’re talking to the Darkling’s … wait, what are you? His cousin? His nephew?”

Mal shuddered. “I have no idea.”

“Are you going to start wearing black now?”

Mal gave a very firm “
No.
”

“You’re one of us,” said Genya, “whether you like it or not. Besides, if Alina has to kill you, she may go completely crazy
and
she’ll have the three amplifiers. Then it will be up to Misha to stop her with the power of awful dancing.”

“She is pretty moody,” said Harshaw. He tapped his temple. “Not totally
there
, if you know what I mean.”

They were kidding, but they might also have been right.
You were meant to be my balance.
What I felt for Mal was messy and stubborn and might leave me heartbroken in the end, but it was also human.

Nadia reached out and nudged Mal’s hand. “At least consider the plan. And if it all goes wrong—”

“Alina gets a new bracelet,” finished Zoya.

I scowled. “How about I slice
you
open and see how your bones fit?”

Zoya fluffed her hair. “I bet they’re just as gorgeous as the rest of me.”

I gave Tamar’s plate another turn, trying to imagine what this kind of maneuver might require. I wished I had Nikolai’s mind for strategy. One thing I was sure of. “It will take more than an explosion to kill the Darkling. He survived the Fold and the destruction of the chapel.”

“Then what?” asked Harshaw.

“It has to be me,” I said. “If we can separate him from his shadow soldiers, I can use the Cut.” The Darkling was powerful, but I doubted even he could bounce back from being torn in half. And though I had no claim to Morozova’s name, I was the Sun Summoner. I’d hoped for a grand destiny, but I would settle for a clean kill.

Zoya released a brief, giddy laugh. “This actually might work.”

“It’s worth thinking about,” I said to Mal. “The Darkling will expect an attack, but he won’t expect this.”

Mal was silent for a long moment. “All right,” he said. “But if it does go wrong … we all agree what has to happen.”

He looked around the table. One by one they nodded. Tolya’s face was stoic. Genya dropped her gaze. Finally, only I remained.

“I want your word, Alina.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’ll do it.” The words tasted like iron on my tongue.

“Good,” he said. He grabbed my hand. “Now, let’s show Misha how bad dancing’s done.”

“Kill you, dance with you. Any other requests?”

“Not at the moment,” he said, pulling me close. “But I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

I tucked my head against Mal’s shoulder and breathed in his scent. I knew I shouldn’t let myself believe in this possibility. We didn’t have an army. We didn’t have the resources of a king. We only had this ragged crew.
I will strip away all that you know, all that you love.
If he could, I knew the Darkling would use these people against me, but it had never occurred to him that they might be more than liabilities. Maybe he’d underestimated them, and maybe he’d underestimated me too.

It was stupid. It was dangerous. But Ana Kuya used to tell me that hope was tricky like water. Somehow it always found a way in.

*   *   *

WE STAYED UP LATE
that night, talking through the logistics of the plan. The realities of the Fold complicated everything—where and how we would enter, whether or not it was even possible for me to cloak myself, let alone the others, how to isolate the Darkling and get the students clear. We had no blasting powders, so we’d have to make our own. I also wanted to ensure that the others had some way out of the Fold if anything happened to me.

We left early the next morning and crossed back through Dva Stolba to retrieve the
Bittern
from the quarry. It was strange to see it sitting where we’d left it, tucked safely away like a pigeon in the eaves.

“Saints,” said Adrik as we clambered into the hulls. “Is that my blood?”

The stain was nearly as big as he was. We’d all been so tired and beaten after our long escape from the Spinning Wheel that no one had even thought to deal with it.

“You made the mess,” said Zoya. “You clean it up.”

“Need two hands to swab,” Adrik retorted, taking a place at the sails instead.

Adrik seemed to relish Zoya’s taunts over Nadia’s constant fussing. I’d been relieved to learn that he could still summon, though it would take some time for him to be able to control strong currents with just one arm.
Baghra could teach him.
The thought came at me before I remembered that was no longer possible. I could almost hear her voice in my head:
Should I cut off your other arm? Then you’d have something to whine about. Do it again and do it better.
What would she have made of all of this? What would she have made of Mal? I pushed the thought away. We’d never know, and there was no time for mourning.

Once we were in the air, the Squallers set a gentle pace and I used the time to practice bending the light as I camouflaged the ship from below.

The journey took only a few hours, and we landed in a marshy pasture west of Caryeva. The town was the site of the summer horse sales every year. It wasn’t known for anything but its racing track and its breeding stables, and even without the war, this late in the year, it would have been all but deserted.

The missive to the Apparat had proposed that we meet at the racecourse. Tamar and Harshaw would scout the track on foot to make sure we weren’t walking into a trap. If anything felt wrong, they’d circle back to meet us, and we’d decide what to do from there. I didn’t think the Apparat would turn us over to the Darkling, but there was also the possibility that he’d struck some kind of new bargain with the Shu Han or Fjerda.

We were a day early, and the pasture was the perfect place to practice cloaking moving targets. Misha insisted on being first.

“I’m smaller,” he said. “That will make it easier.”

He ran out into the center of the field.

I raised my hands, gave a twist of my wrists, and Misha disappeared. Harshaw gave an appreciative whistle.

“Can you see me?” Misha shouted. As soon as he started waving, the light around him rippled and his skinny forearms appeared as if suspended in space.

Focus.
They vanished.

“Misha,” instructed Mal, “run toward us.”

He appeared, then disappeared again as I adjusted the light.

“I can see him from the side,” Tolya called from across the pasture.

I blew out a breath. I had to think about this more carefully. Disguising the ship had been easier because I’d only been altering the reflection of the light from below. Now I had to think about every angle.

“Better!” said Tolya.

Zoya yelped. “That little brat just kicked me.”

“Smart kid,” said Mal.

I lifted a brow. “Smarter than some.”

He had the good grace to blush.

I spent the rest of the afternoon vanishing one, then two, then five Grisha at a time in the field.

It was a different kind of work, but Baghra’s lessons still applied. If I concentrated too hard on projecting my power, variables overwhelmed me. But if I thought about the light being everywhere, if I didn’t try to prod it and just let it bend, it got much easier.

I thought of the times I’d seen the Darkling use his power to blind soldiers in a battle, taking on multiple enemies at once. It was easy for him, natural.
I know things about power that you can barely guess at.

I practiced that night, then started up again the next morning after Tamar and Harshaw set out, but my concentration kept faltering. With more marksmen, our attack on the Darkling’s skiff might actually stand a chance. What would be waiting at the racecourse? The priest himself? No one at all? I’d imagined a serf army, protected by three amplifiers, marching beneath the banner of the firebird. That wasn’t the war we were waging anymore.

“I can see him!” Zoya singsonged at me. And sure enough, Tolya’s big shape was flickering in and out as he jogged to my right.

I dropped my hands. “Let’s break for a bit,” I suggested.

Nadia and Adrik unfurled one of the sails so she could help him learn to manage updraft, and Zoya sprawled lazily on the deck to offer less than helpful critique.

Meanwhile, David and Genya bent their heads over one of his notebooks, trying to figure out where they could extract the components for a batch of
lumiya
. It turned out Genya didn’t just have a gift for poisons. Her talents had always lain somewhere between Corporalnik and Materialnik, but I wondered what she might have become, what path she might have chosen, if not for the Darkling’s influence. Mal and Misha headed to the far side of the field with arms full of pinecones and set them along the fence as targets so Misha could learn to shoot.

That left me and Tolya with nothing to do but worry and wait. He sat down beside me on one of the hulls, legs dangling over.

“Do you want to practice some more?” he asked.

“I probably should.”

A long moment passed and then he said, “Can you do it? When the time comes?”

I was eerily reminded of Mal asking me if I could bring down the firebird. “You don’t think the plan will work.”

“I don’t think it matters.”

“You don’t—”

“If you defeat the Darkling, the Fold will remain.”

I kicked my heels against the hull. “I can deal with the Fold,” I said. “My power will make crossings possible. We can eliminate the volcra.” I didn’t like to think about that. As monstrous as they were, the volcra had once been human. I leaned back and studied Tolya’s face. “You’re not convinced.”

“You asked me once why I didn’t let you die in the chapel, why I let Mal go to you. Maybe there was a reason you both lived. Maybe this is it.”

“It was a supposed Saint who started all of this, Tolya.”

“And a Saint will end it.”

He slid from the hull to the ground and looked up at me. “I know you don’t believe as Tamar and I do,” he said, “but no matter how this ends, I’m glad our faith brought us to you.”

He headed off across the field to join Mal and Misha.

Whether it was coincidence or providence that had made Tolya and Tamar my friends, I was grateful for them. And if I was honest with myself, I envied their faith. If I could believe I had been blessed by some divine purpose, it might make the hard choices easier.

I didn’t know if our plan would work, and if it did, there were still too many unknowns. If we bested the Darkling, what would become of his shadow soldiers? And what about Nikolai? What if killing the Darkling caused his death? Should we be trying to capture the Darkling instead? If we survived, Mal would have to go into hiding. His life would be forfeit if anyone learned what he was.

I heard the sound of hoofbeats. Nadia and I climbed up on the captain’s platform to get a better look, and as the party came into view, my heart sank.

“Maybe there are more, back at the racecourse,” said Nadia.

“Maybe,” I said. But I didn’t believe it.

I made a quick count. Twelve soldiers. As they drew closer, I saw they were all young and most bore the sun tattoo on their faces. Ruby was there, with her pretty green eyes and blond braid, and I saw Vladim among them with two other bearded men I thought I recognized from the Priestguards.

I hopped down from the platform and went to greet them. When the party spotted me, they slipped from their horses and each dropped to one knee, heads bowed.

“Ugh,” said Zoya. “This again.”

I cast her a warning look, though I’d had the exact same thought. I’d nearly forgotten how much I dreaded the burden of Sainthood. But I took on the mantle, playing my part.

“Rise,” I said, and when they did, I gestured Vladim forward. “Is this all of you?”

He nodded.

“And what excuse does the Apparat send?”

He swallowed. “None. The pilgrims say daily prayers for your safety and for the destruction of the Fold. He claims that your last command was for him to watch over your flock.”