Siege and Storm (11 page)

Every crewman wanted a look at the second amplifier. Some were wary, others just curious, but Mal was the one I was worried about. He watched me constantly, as if he was afraid that at any moment, I might lose control. When dusk fell and we went belowdecks, I cornered him in one of the narrow passageways.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do. I can feel it.”

“You didn’t see what I saw. It was—”

“It got away from me. I didn’t know what to expect.”

He shook his head. “You were like a stranger, Alina. Beautiful,” he said. “Terrible.”

“It won’t happen again. The fetter is a part of me now, like my lungs or my heart.”

“Your heart,” he said flatly.

I took his hand in mine and pressed it against my chest. “It’s still the same heart, Mal. It’s still yours.”

I lifted my other hand and cast a soft tide of sunlight over his face. He flinched.
He can never understand your power, and if he does, he will only come to fear you.
I pushed the Darkling’s voice from my mind. Mal had every right to be afraid.

“I can do this,” I said gently.

He shut his eyes and turned his face toward the sunlight that radiated from my hand. Then he tilted his head, resting his cheek against my palm. The light glowed warm against his skin.

We stood that way, in silence, until the watch bell rang.

CHAPTER

7

T
HE WINDS WARMED,
and the waters turned from gray to blue as the
Volkvolny
carried us southeast to Ravka. Sturmhond’s crew was made up of sailors and rogue Grisha who worked together to keep the ship running smoothly. Despite the stories that had spread about the power of the second amplifier, they didn’t pay Mal or me much attention, though they occasionally came to watch me practice at the schooner’s stern. I was careful, never pushing too hard, always summoning at noon, when the sun was high in the sky and there was no chance of my efforts being spotted. Mal was still wary, but I’d spoken the truth: The sea whip’s power was a part of me now. It thrilled me. It buoyed me. I didn’t fear it.

I was fascinated by the rogues. They all had different stories. One had an aunt who had spirited him away rather than let him be turned over to the Darkling. Another had deserted the Second Army. Another had been hidden in a root cellar when the Grisha Examiners arrived to test her.

“My mother told them I’d been killed by the fever that had swept through our village the previous spring,” the Tidemaker said. “The neighbors cut my hair and passed me off as their dead
otkazat’sya
son until I was old enough to leave.”

Tolya and Tamar’s mother had been a Grisha stationed on Ravka’s southern border when she met their father, a Shu Han mercenary.

“When she died,” Tamar explained, “she made my father promise not to let us be drafted into the Second Army. We left for Novyi Zem the next day.”

Most rogue Grisha ended up in Novyi Zem. Aside from Ravka, it was the only place where they didn’t have to fear being experimented on by Shu doctors or burned by Fjerdan witchhunters. Even so, they had to be cautious about displaying their power. Grisha were valued slaves, and less scrupulous Kerch traders were known to round them up and sell them in secret auctions.

These were the very threats that had led so many Grisha to take refuge in Ravka and join the Second Army in the first place. But the rogues thought differently. For them, a life spent looking over their shoulders and moving from one place to the next to avoid discovery was preferable to a life in service to the Darkling and the Ravkan King. It was a choice I understood.

After a few monotonous days on the schooner, Mal and I asked Tamar if she would show us some Zemeni combat techniques. It helped ease the tedium of shipboard life and the awful anxiety of returning to West Ravka.

Sturmhond’s crew had confirmed the disturbing rumors we’d picked up in Novyi Zem. Crossings of the Fold had all but ceased, and refugees were fleeing its expanding shores. The First Army was close to revolt, and the Second Army was in tatters. I was most frightened by the news that the Apparat’s cult of the Sun Saint was growing. No one knew how he’d managed to escape the Grand Palace after the Darkling’s failed coup, but he had resurfaced somewhere in the network of monasteries spread across Ravka.

He was circulating the story that I’d died on the Fold and been resurrected as a Saint. Part of me wanted to laugh, but turning through the bloody pages of the
Istorii Sankt’ya
late at night, I couldn’t summon so much as a chuckle. I remembered the Apparat’s smell, that unpleasant combination of incense and mildew, and pulled my coat tighter around me. He had given me the red book. I had to wonder why.

Despite the bruises and bumps, my practices with Tamar helped to dull the edge of my constant worry. Girls were drafted right along with boys into the King’s Army when they came of age, so I’d seen plenty of girls fight and had trained alongside them. But I’d never seen anyone, male or female, fight the way Tamar did. She had a dancer’s grace and a seemingly unerring instinct for what her opponent would do next. Her weapons of choice were two double-bit axes that she wielded in tandem, the blades flashing like light off water, but she was nearly as dangerous with a saber, a pistol, or her bare hands. Only Tolya could match her, and when they sparred, all the crew stopped to watch.

The giant spoke little and spent most of his time working the lines or standing around looking intimidating. But occasionally, he stepped in to help with our lessons. He wasn’t much of a teacher. “Move faster” was about all we could get out of him. Tamar was a far better instructor, but my lessons got less challenging after Sturmhond caught us practicing on the foredeck.

“Tamar,” Sturmhond chided, “please don’t damage the cargo.”

Immediately, Tamar snapped to attention and gave a crisp, “
Da, kapitan
.”

I shot him a sour look. “I’m not a package you’re delivering, Sturmhond.”

“More’s the pity,” he said, sauntering past. “Packages don’t talk, and they stay where you put them.”

But when Tamar started us on rapiers and sabers, even Sturmhond joined in. Mal improved daily, though Sturmhond still beat him easily every time. And yet, Mal didn’t seem to mind. He took his thumpings with a kind of good humor I never seemed able to muster. Losing made me irritable; Mal just laughed it all off.

“How did you and Tolya learn to use your powers?” I asked Tamar one afternoon as we watched Mal and Sturmhond sparring with dulled swords on deck. She’d found me a marlinspike, and when she wasn’t pummeling me, she was trying to teach me knots and splices.

“Keep your elbows in!” Sturmhond berated Mal. “Stop flapping them like some kind of chicken.”

Mal let out a disturbingly convincing cluck.

Tamar raised a brow. “Your friend seems to be enjoying himself.”

I shrugged. “Mal’s always been like that. You could drop him in a camp full of Fjerdan assassins, and he’d come out carried on their shoulders. He just blooms wherever he’s planted.”

“And you?”

“I’m more of a weed,” I said drily.

Tamar grinned. In combat, she was cold and silent fire, but when she wasn’t fighting, her smiles came easily. “I like weeds,” she said, pushing herself off from the railing and gathering her scattered lengths of rope. “They’re survivors.”

I caught myself returning her smile and quickly went back to working on the knot that I was trying to tie. The problem was that I liked being aboard Sturmhond’s ship. I liked Tolya and Tamar and the rest of the crew. I liked sitting at meals with them, and the sound of Privyet’s lilting tenor. I liked the afternoons when we took target practice, lining up empty wine bottles to shoot off the fantail, and making harmless wagers.

It was a bit like being at the Little Palace, but with none of the messy politics and constant jockeying for status. The crew had an easy, open way with each other. They were all young, and poor, and had spent most of their lives in hiding. On this ship, they’d found a home, and they welcomed Mal and me into it with little fuss.

I didn’t know what was waiting for us in West Ravka, and I felt fairly sure it was madness to be going back at all. But aboard the
Volkvolny
, with the wind blowing and the white canvas cutting crisp lines across a broad blue sky, I could forget the future and my fear.

And I had to admit, I liked Sturmhond, too. He was cocky and brash, and always used ten words when two would do, but I was impressed with the way he led his crew. He didn’t bother with any of the tricks I’d seen the Darkling employ, yet they followed him without hesitation. He had their respect, not their fear.

“What’s Sturmhond’s real name?” I asked Tamar. “His Ravkan name?”

“No idea.”

“You’ve never asked?”

“Why would I?”

“But where in Ravka is he from?”

She squinted up at the sky. “Do you want to go another round with sabers?” she asked. “We should have time before my watch starts.”

She always changed the subject when I brought up Sturmhond. “He didn’t just drop out of the sky onto a ship, Tamar. Don’t you care where he came from?”

Tamar picked up the swords and handed them over to Tolya, who served as the ship’s Master of Arms. “Not particularly. He lets us sail, and he lets us fight.”

“And he doesn’t make us dress up in red silk and play lapdog,” said Tolya, unlocking the rack with the key he wore around his thick neck.

“A sorry lapdog you’d make.” Tamar laughed.

“Anything’s better than following orders from some puffed-up cully in black,” Tolya grumbled.

“You follow Sturmhond’s orders,” I pointed out.

“Only when he feels like it.”

I jumped. Sturmhond was standing right behind me.

“You try telling that ox what to do and see what happens,” the privateer said.

Tamar snorted, and she and Tolya began stowing the rest of the weapons.

Sturmhond leaned in and murmured, “If you want to know something about me, lovely, all you need to do is ask.”

“I was just wondering where you’re from,” I said defensively. “That’s all.”

“Where are
you
from?”

“Keramzin. You know that.”

“But where are you from?”

A few dim memories flashed through my mind. A shallow dish of cooked beets, the slippery feel of them between my fingers as they stained my hands red. The smell of egg porridge. Riding on someone’s shoulders—maybe my father’s—down a dusty road. At Keramzin, even mentioning our parents had been considered a betrayal of the Duke’s kindness and a sign of ingratitude. We’d been taught never to speak of our lives before we arrived at the estate, and eventually most of the memories just disappeared.

“Nowhere,” I said. “The village I was born in was too small to be worth a name. Now, what about you, Sturmhond? Where did you come from?”

The privateer grinned. Again I was struck by the thought that there was something off about his features.

“My mother was an oyster,” he said with a wink. “And I’m the pearl.”

He strolled away, whistling an off-key tune.

*   *   *

TWO NIGHTS LATER,
I woke to find Tamar looming over me, shaking my good shoulder.

“Time to go,” she said.

“Now?” I asked blearily. “What time is it?”

“Coming on three bells.”

“In the morning?” I yawned and threw my legs over the side of my hammock. “Where are we?”

“Fifteen miles off the coast of West Ravka. Come on, Sturmhond is waiting.” She was dressed and had her canvas ditty bag slung over her shoulder.

I had no belongings to gather, so I pulled on my boots, patted the inner pocket of my coat to make sure I had the red book, and followed her out the door.

On deck, Mal stood by the ship’s starboard rail with a small group of crewmen. I had a moment of confusion when I realized Privyet was wearing Sturmhond’s garish teal frock coat. I wouldn’t have recognized Sturmhond himself if he hadn’t been giving orders. He was swaddled in a voluminous greatcoat, the collar turned up, a wool hat pulled low over his ears.

A cold wind was blowing. The stars were bright in the sky, and a sickle moon sat low on the horizon. I peered across the moonlit waves, listening to the steady sigh of the sea. If land was nearby, I couldn’t see it.

Mal tried to rub some warmth into my arms.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“We’re going ashore.” I could hear the wariness in his voice.

“In the middle of the night?”

“The
Volkvolny
will raise my colors near the Fjerdan coast,” said Sturmhond. “The Darkling doesn’t need to know that you’re back on Ravkan soil just yet.”

As Sturmhond bent his head in conversation with Privyet, Mal drew me over to the portside rail. “Are you sure about this?”

“Not at all,” I admitted.

He rested his hands on my shoulders and said, “There’s a good chance I’ll be arrested if we’re found, Alina. You may be the Sun Summoner, but I’m just a soldier who defied orders.”

“The Darkling’s orders.”

“That may not matter.”

“I’ll make it matter. Besides, we’re not going to be found. We’re going to get into West Ravka, meet Sturmhond’s client, and decide what we want to do.”

Mal pulled me closer. “Were you always this much trouble?”

“I like to think of myself as delightfully complex.”

As he bent to kiss me, Sturmhond’s voice cut through the dark. “Can we get to the cuddling later? I want us ashore before dawn.”

Mal sighed. “Eventually, I’m going to punch him.”

“I will support you in that endeavor.”

He took my hand, and we returned to the group.

Sturmhond gave Privyet an envelope sealed with a blob of pale blue wax, then clapped him on the back. Maybe it was the moonlight, but the first mate looked like he might cry. Tolya and Tamar slipped over the railing, holding tight to the weighted ladder secured to the schooner.

I peered over the side. I’d expected to see an ordinary longboat, so I was surprised at the little craft I saw bobbing alongside the
Volkvolny.
It was like no boat I’d ever seen. Its two hulls looked like a pair of hollowed-out shoes, and they were held together by a deck with a giant hole in its center.