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Chapter Text

Acts of Good Faith

~sciathan_file~

***

“Darling, can't you see
I'm a broken man
With addictive tendencies?
And I think I love you.
But I don't ever think I can
Ever learn how to love just right.
So, run away from me,
Run as far as your
Dark brown eyes can see
Just as soon as you know.

That I don't ever think I can
Ever learn how to love you right.
Oh, and all the ways that you won't bend
Are the only ways I live my life”

~ Matt Maeson, “Tribulation” 

***

i.  Concessions

Aleksander does not ask to whom the body that she burns in his place actually belongs.  Nor does he ask how it came to look like him.

(And, even if he was so inclined, by her terms he cannot even ask.)

Nor does he ask why she had insisted (because he knows who this display benefits, knows who she has surrounded herself with, and knows she is the only one who could have insisted and won this particular battle), that the Sun Saint and the Darkling burn together.

However, he expects it probably took several outright lies to plan a funeral for the both of them when neither is, in fact, actually dead. 

The fact that she orchestrated this farce gives him a modicum of hope for her future.  That someday she will shed the façade of the saintly mouse she has wrapped herself in and give up on her grief over what will amount to motes of dust in the eternity he has bet on for her.

(It also makes him wonder if she explained under what circumstances they were burning a body that was not, actually, the Darkling.  Perhaps she didn’t see fit to explain this to her supposed comrades.)

But he will abide by her terms for now:  Until the last of her miserable comrades coalesces into the dust they already are for practical purposes (he already chalks it up to waiting on Zoya.  She will outlive everyone based on the potent combination of power and spite.), he will pursue no thrones and no power within the borders of Ravka. 

And Aleksander knows that is a pity.

Because Ravka could use him in the coming hundred or so years.

(Though he has little hope they will appreciate him or appreciate the power vacuum that is left in his wake.  No matter what clever invention the bastard of the Lantsov line will throw at the hounds who come to gnaw at the wounded corpse of the country he now will try to lead, the jackals at his door no longer need to fear the Black Demon.

It is a strategic disadvantage he thinks will be largely discounted.)

Within his mind’s eye he can already see what the sobachka has likely not yet anticipated, because Aleksander understands that the large scale actions of humanity don’t change no matter how many centuries pass and armies are just the mechanizations of those same actions.  And one by one, he can see where the pieces will fall, like so many carved pawns on his war table.

He knows what he has known all along: with the Fold gone now Ravka is nothing but a gaping wound.

First there will be West Ravka, whose distant proximity from Os Alta and insulation provided by the Fold has no doubt stoked more feelings of independence than loyalty to a largely absent monarch.  Especially when that same distance and insulation makes it impossible for the sobachka’s apparent charms to erase the memory of his parents who spent more money in the country’s coffers on the delicacies for their endless fetes than on the rations and uniforms for the soldiers who will have to fight against their own countrymen.

That will be the first domino.

Fjerda will, in all likelihood, ally themselves with the splintered off revolutionaries, now that the chief Demon of the drüjse is no longer there threatening to make their mountains shorter.  This tangled knot will light up the border and the pretext of liberating West Ravka will allow the Fjerdans to pose as liberators rather than conquerors, and the flames of burning Grisha on pyres will light their path towards invasion.

That would almost certainly be the second domino.

Which left Shu Han and the Taban queens to take advantage of the expenditures of money, soldiers, and the people’s capacity for mercy to carve up the rest of Ravka’s bones.  Then, when the Shu Han vultures descended, that would be the straw to break Ravka’s back without someone to turn the tide of the game.

Aleksander had turned many such tides in his long life.  Sometimes merely existing as a threat for the last several centuries proved a deterrent to such tides washing over Ravka’s shores.  For the other times, actively being a threat sufficed.

Turning back to where the image of a corpse that is not him smolders beside the image of a girl who has given him, despite all he has given her, deeply unequal terms, he contemplates what will amount to be a brief span in his long existence.

He had conceded to Alina this once because she had given him no other choice that was not shortsighted and destructive.

(And in him, he can only find his mother’s voice appraising that moment of his life:  Foolish boy.  And, if he were inclined to think about it, he might agree with his dear Madraya this one time.  But he finds he is not inclined to think about that moment.

For several reasons.)

However, he hopes she finds the next hundred years worthwhile, as there are few things he has ever encountered that would make him concede to the same extent a second time.

And although Aleksander knows she intends him to be the mouse she will pretend to be until she learns, he has no such intentions.

West Ravka, according to her terms, is off the table and dealings with Fjerda will likely funnel themselves into Ravka before a century is over.  So, in the spirit of cooperation, he decides perhaps he will makes his way to Shu Han for the foreseeable future.

(A list already forming, he realizes he cannot go around as a newly dead man, so he makes it a priority to acquire some sort of Tailor enroute.  In the meantime he’ll grow a beard.  But memories are short and such things will be a temporary inconvenience.)

So, moving away from the gibbering masses who both exalt a saint who has not been martyred and revile a monster who still walks among them, he muses on what must be done to topple a generations long line of hereditary queens who are known for vivisecting his Grisha.

Given a century, he knows he has done more complicated things.

***

He is pouring over maps of the area around Bhez Ju, when she sees her.  Her hair is bound up, and she is turned away from him.  Ravka, he knows, is alight along its northern border, and the sobachka is employing all sorts of toys to combat the combined forces of Fjerdans and a splinter group of Ravkan successionists that have named themselves Osvobozhdennyy (1).

But, it is hard to raise morale when the coffers are empty and the stomachs of your soldiers are empty.  He wishes the sobachka well. 

Mostly.

If not, he’ll pick up the shattered pieces when he can.  After he deals with her.

He ignores her until she speaks.

“Do you know what connects us now?” she begins without preamble.  With an unmistakable tone of resentment in her question.

Ah, he thinks, mourning.

She’s obviously still mired in fruitless grief over things she never could have held onto in the first place.  But he has a dim memory of what it is to be foolish, so he simply finishes with his task.  Then he sits down facing her, unbothered.

“I did not ask to be stabbed, Alina,” he says dryly.  He crosses one leg over the other and reclines in his chair.  “And even if you tiresomely blame me for any number of your own decisions, even you must admit I didn’t deserve death for my particular actions towards you that day.”

She ignores him, juvenile emotion overwriting all sense of logic and responsibility, as usual.  He indulges in a slightly weary sigh.

“Mal,” she says sharply, like a sob.  “His blood—”

Aleksander refuses to show any of the fury that wells within him in more than a narrowing of his eyes and a hint of a scowl.  He knows that, in any other person, it looks like mere irritation.

And he is irritated.  That the stag is gone and now, to be rid of the Tracker is to, in many ways, be rid of her.  It is a reminder he does not want for eternity.  He rests his cheek on his hand, fixing his gaze on the woman in front of him who won’t even do him the decency of looking at him with all of her baseless accusations.

“I must admit,” he says coldly.  “I’ve never would have dreamed a dead otkazat’sya would provide such use to me.”

He is unsurprised as the Cut flashes and slices through him, and she is gone, leaving only the liquid hot echo of her fury in her wake.

Leaning heavier on his fist, he indulges in a sigh again.

No, none of it had remotely surprised him: Alina has never been particularly graceful at facing the consequences of her own actions, after all.

***

They move around each other with the force of a whirlpool, always spiraling towards confluence, in the end, he knows.  But, in the meantime the swirls and eddies of their progress bring them within one’s orbit, only for the other—usually her, almost always her—to slip away again.

He is content to weather these times when they come into sudden abrupt collision.  When she decides she will turn from her naivety and sentimentality (she does not yet own “lonely” like he does, because she strikes against the notion that he has carved into his being:  There are only three forms of permanence.  Him, her, and Ravka).

He is patient.

Because Aleksander knows that everything gets old eventually: the faithlessness of humanity, a belief in kindness, the anticipation of hope, even the dependability of anger.

One day she will swirl to the confluence on eternity’s inexorable tide.

And he will have her at last.

***

He’s heard rumors of peasant uprising against the Grisha queen that rules on, with an “unnatural” longevity, after the death of the Lantsov sobachka.

Ah, how different it is to rule, he wants to tell her.

Shu Han, of course, has found that it has other problems.

(One of which he knows, with some satisfaction, the weak Taban queen has named Hēisè Tiānzāi (2).  It is a problem she can find no concrete evidence that she actually has. 

… How sad that her ranting reflects so poorly on her credibility.  How she jumps at shadows…)

If his sources are correct—and he has gone to some pains to make sure they are—she has only Genya and Zoya now.

***

He feels her as he sits in what will shortly become a smoking ruin of a laboratory.  The emotion that washes towards him is so different from his own, that it is unmistakably her.

Aleksander knows it all too well.

She does not come and he knows she will not.

But there, throbbing between them, is the terribly sour taste of loneliness.

Yet he knows—oh, he knows—it’s not to the potency yet that will draw her out.

But soon

Soon.

***

When he sees her again finally, she’s sitting, perched on the edge of his bed.

The news is slightly old, as it has difficulty penetrating the interior of Shu Han where he resides in a rebel camp.  But he knows Genya has died recently.

“You’re here,” he comments, sitting down next to her, not touching her.

(Now, now, he can taste the acrid potency of her loneliness.  Like the same bitter gall that, on occasion, sits on his own tongue.).

She leaves before answering.  Or even turning to look at him.

***

A Grisha sits on the throne of Shu Han.  A Heartrender.

He contents himself with this.  It is not yet an alliance.  But it is a foregone conclusion that it will either become one eventually, if he can depend on Zoya to have any modicum of the intelligence he once credited her with.  Or, perhaps equally as likely, the whole country of Shu Han will erupt into a civil war.  Either way, it will cease to trouble Ravka.

Aleksander decides he will go back to Ravka and plant the seeds of it.

He thinks… one more lifetime.  Then he will rise again.

Already the Fold fades into memory.  A place that used to be marked on maps as the Tula Valley, then the Unsea, is renamed.  When he hears the name of the chief town that has sprung up he knows who has named it.

It is simply, “Oretsev.”

And there is a small church in it painted with her images: wildly inaccurate depictions of gold and sunbursts and halos.  There’s even a statue, all white marble and a simpering expression as she holds cold, marble suns in her hands as an offering to those who do not deserve it.  Because a dead Grisha has been rendered a safe Grisha.  A Sankta safe as a statue.  Safe in death.

Safe as a mouse.

Seeing all this evidence of her lingering sentimentality, he decides.  He decides that he will start here and send a message that will come to her ears eventually.

“A miracle,” he hears, later, when he drinks cheap vodka in a cheap tavern and attunes his ears for just this acknowledgment. 

The statue of Sankta Alina in her church in Oretsev is crying tears of shadowy obsidian.

Ah, he thinks, that improves the faithfulness of the likeness immensely.

He gave her his word that he would not rise in this life.  But, he has made no promises of the one yet to come.  From there, he decides he will pay for his next life with the coinage of rumor and mysticism.

It had worked so well for her. 

***

Two months later, she speaks to him for the first time in almost a century.

She sits perched on the side of his dingy bed in his small tavern room.  He once again ignores her as he sits beside her.

She, as usual, does not speak.  Nor does she look at him. And in observing her profile, he suddenly feels weary of the games eternity forces him to play.

Even so, his own voice is a sinuous thing:  “Hello, Alina.  Why are you here?”

Starting at her own name, he observes grimly that her years have stripped away none of her guilelessness.

“Stop,” she spits out, getting up and staring straight ahead.

A corner of his mouth draws up.  Because this is what she has for him now?  How rich the hypocrisy is.

“Tell me… Have I violated our agreement in any way?  Stirred a finger towards a throne?”

She turns to him, looking down, fury in her face.  Because he knows he has only made preparations and has violated none of the terms she set down that day when he held her in the palm of his hand and irrefutably, even to her, demonstrated his mercy.

And now, Zoya and only Zoya is left alive.  And though she is powerful—for a Squaller—even she will only last so long.  Which means she will have no more say in their ridiculous arrangement.  Knowing she has only taken one other name to his unnumerable ones, though, he doesn’t say this.  Instead, he reminds her: “Our set terms will soon expire.”

She looks hard at the floor before finally casting aside her quiet and allowing her anger to fly at him.

“You—you’re setting yourself up as a Saint, Aleksander.”

Because she has used his name, shooting it from her mouth like a bullet from a gun, he knows she will count this among the litany of his perceived sins against her.  It is more than vaguely irritating.  But having lost his own guilelessness before he can even remember ever having possessed it, he merely arches a brow at her in a show of amusement.

“It was quite useful for you, Sankta Alina, Destroyer of the Fold.”  She stands and strides away from him at this.  “A title which, as you know, shows that saints don’t necessarily merit the reputations they are granted.”

She turns sharply away, as he has hit a nerve and they both know it.  What happened with the Shadow Fold is not something she can admit to herself even now.

How… small of her.

How small and very like the mouse-girl she pretends to be that she jeers at him for his well-placed “miracles.”  That thanks to these occurrences in churches across Ravka dedicated to Sankta Alina of the Fold, rumors of her companion and equal—the Starless Saint—have spread amongst otkazat’sya to whom the Shadow Fold is a distant memory from the times of their Great-Grandparents.  Already, from whispering into the right ears—monks, preachers, wandering ascetics, the new religion of duality, of balance, is spreading.

“You made the Fold,” she tosses her white hair and spits at him.  “You—”

“I also unmade the Fold, if memory serves,” he says evenly.  She becomes entirely taut at the mere mention of that day.  But, still she gives him no credit.  “But remember, Alina.  Memory is short.  Memory is short for everyone but us.”

“Memory is as short as is necessary when it serves you,” she bites out.

Weariness settles into him at her childish outburst, her denial of everything he has done.  So, not betraying his more extensive thoughts, keeping his tone uninflected, he tells her, once again, “You’ll learn.”

As always, though, she seems intent on not learning.

“Stop, Aleksander.”

This time his name as it falls from her lips is a different tone.  It is not agreeable—no, he would wish it to be in a much different tone.  But this time she is at least imploring him rather than wielding it like a weapon.

The tone he chooses to adopt in response is anything but agreeable, too.

“I don’t think you have the right to ask that of me, Alina.”

At last she turns fully towards him and her lip curls in something between frustration and anger.  Because he has violated none of her terms and she knows it.  Knows that she will need to offer something else to persuade him this time.  Knows she will not be able to wring such a concession out of him again without giving him exactly what he has always wanted.

And Aleksander is under no delusion that she is ready to give him that. 

But he gives her credit: she knows if she will not offer herself, Ravka will have to do.

What she will do with the calculus of that calculation he is leaving entirely up to her.

“The number of border skirmishes with Fjerda is increasing after their failed bid to free West Ravka.  The fall of the Grimjer line and widespread famine has offered their new, precariously placed ruling family the same temptations their betters have succumbed to—they look to distract from their internal strife by focusing their people externally.”  He pauses, wondering if she will offer something to dispute his assessments.  She remains glaring at him, so he takes this as leave to continue on.  “Our only saving grace to the south is the fact that Shu Han has fallen into civil war between the new ruling monarch and a ‘newly discovered’ Taban heir.”

She scoffs disdainfully.

“And you had nothing to do with that, of course.”

He crosses one leg over the other and folds his hands together.

“You already know I had everything to do with that.”

As it was, Shu Han could no longer gnaw at the southern border and, from the current level of damage being inflicted by both sides in their internal conflict, they would not have the resources to bother their northern neighbor for quite some time.  That the last Taban Queen, who had begun to overtly round up Grisha for experimentation had been unseated sweetened the victory.  Even should her successor prove victorious against the new regime, in the rebuilding efforts she would certainly lack the resources to continue the expensive scientific programs and drug experiments of her predecessor.  And, in the meantime, he had it on good authority that Shu Hanese Grisha had been arriving at the Little Palace in larger numbers than usual, disguised as the refugees who streamed in to escape the violence erupting in their own country.  Several people he had met during his last seventy two years in Shu Han were well placed to assist in these efforts to make Shu Han’s loss Ravka’s gain.

She considers none of this and instead resorts to the cowardice of sarcasm:  “Well, I suppose we should all thank you for your efforts then.”

He chuckles darkly.

“Though I certainly don’t expect thanks, if you’re offering some token of appreciation on their behalf, Alina, I will take it from you.”

She scowls.

“No, you just expect them all to canonize you.”

He places a hand directly over his heart, in the place where she had attempted to stab him on that day and only left a small, puckered scar as evidence of her failure.  He says with mocking levity, “An honor, I’ll confess, I did not expect.”

“But one you nevertheless engineered.”

He smiles coldly at her and dips into a mock bow.

“When Zoya meets her end, such efforts might help me lead the people of Ravka to further holiness.”  She looks down murderously at the floor and does not reply.  “And, Alina, as always, I have provided for you to rise with me—the Starless Saint in harmonious balance with the Sun Saint—just as the stories say.”

She glares, although Aleksander is not sure what she expected to get from the negotiation if she offers him nothing but spite.  You do not win a game of chess with pawns alone.

“You neglect to own that you’re writing the stories,” she snaps.  “And I’m busy.”

He leans back, consciously adopting the posture of a sympathetic listener.

“Please tell me, what has Sankta Alina blessed with her patronage?”

She looks him in the eye.

“Agriculture.”

His smile broadens.

“Ah, the allure of the life of the otkazat’sya peasant, how busy you must—”

“Durasts,” she says, lifting her chin.  “Alkemi.”

He is curious despite himself.

“And what are you implying you have you done with my Grisha, little saint?”

She scoffs.  “Your Grisha?  Their memories are longer than is likely convenient for you.  You’re no saint to them.”

With one elegant hand he makes a vaguely dismissive gesture.

“Soon enough.”

She comes very close to him, and down at him.  He focuses up at her expression—the flash in her eyes and the smirk that drifts over her face when she feels as if she has won.

“You’re not the reason why the Fjerdan famine hasn’t spread to Ravka, Aleksander.”  She holds his gaze.  “I am.”

Then, because he has been focusing elsewhere, he does not realize she’s unleashed the Cut until he is once again alone in his grubby room above a noisy tavern near Caryeva.

***

Chapter Text

ii.  Ketterdam

News that the Storm Queen, consort of the last of the long-dead Lantsov Tsars (although this is truly fiction, as sources tell Nikolai was a Lantsov in name only), has died floods even the forgotten, dusty villages that lie on the fringes of what used to be the Unsea.

What meets the death of the first and only Grisha Queen is so predictable to him that it is practically banal.

It goes without saying that in death Zoya is not quite so honored as in life.

In death the whispers of her unnaturally long life and criticisms of her remarkably pro-Grisha policies are safe to utter at normal volumes.  And, because the actions of humanity are as boring and unchanging to him as the lines of his own face in a mirror, he knows the cowardly vultures will gnaw at the bones of all of her careful plans until there is nothing left.

This, of course, leaves opportunity.

The question only becomes what form the opportunity presented will take.

***

She has learned enough, both about him and about the world, that it does not surprise Aleksander in the slightest when she appears to him that night, quietly sitting in the one chair his current hovel has.

She pillows her chin on a fist quietly, her hair white and flowing over her shoulders, her expression still utterly painted with all of her obvious thoughts.

As ever, Alina does not even glance at him.

“Stay out of Ravka,” she says.

“You can’t demand that any longer,” he says lightly.  “Our terms have expired.”

Her chin lifts in defiance.

“Then I’ll offer new terms.”

He approaches her, so she understands what her statement means and extends one finger and holds it under her chin so that she will eventually be forced to meet his eyes.

“And what are you offering?”

Her eyes are hardened, glinting things.

“Less than you’d like.”

He raises her face to his and her eyes still dart away.

Although at least this time she is at least offering something. 

Which, he notes, is more than she has ever offered previously.  He knows and she knows—less is not nothing.  But this is a negotiation and he won’t call attention to her lack of leverage just yet.

She has precisely one thing he wants and he does not believe she will be giving into him entirely.

(Not yet.)

He lifts the finger and, with all her glorious stubbornness, she still won’t look at him.

He straightens himself, looking down at her proud form.

“I ask again—what exactly are you offering?”

She doesn’t say “me” because they both know that is not strictly true, and he, with a thrill of something within him that goes unexamined, knows she will not concede so easily.

“Ketterdam,” she says instead.  “Come to me, Aleksander.”

***

He sets some plans in motion that will move on without his shepherding them with a careful hand.  They will, however, no doubt be useful in time.

(He hears news of a boy with dubious ties to the Lantsovs.  A puppet no doubt.  He can find who controls his strings easily enough.  The question will be if he chooses to cut them or not.)

He thinks about denying her.  Teaching her in the way only he can that he will not be conceding anymore.

This time, he does not want to give in.

(But, already, in the center of him, in the very heart, the wanting stirs.  Wanting of an entirely different breed.)

***

Whatever name he adopts when he will pull on his gloves and be forced to endure the Kerch, the concession he will ring from her for this is that with her, when they are alone, he will just be Aleksander.

Even when if it means living among the Kerch, if she makes this concession, he is willing to accept her less than desirable terms.

(There is time for other opportunities.

His thought is followed with another, spoken with resignation borne of weariness:  There is always time.)

Ravka is sorting out a ruler.  Some weak being that will be of no consequence.  Currently it has its pick between a mob and a boy and a Duke—so power in the usual permutations.

He has time there, as well.

(What does he have but time?)

So, he goes to her.

***

After several weeks of remembering in painstakingly enumerated detail why he loathes the Kerch in general and Ketterdam specifically, and wending his way amongst various taverns and gambling halls, listening for both rumors of what is happening to Ravka (which he hears plenty of) and rumors of her (which he, unsurprisingly, doesn’t hear any of), he finds her by accident.

He has lived three lives in Ketterdam and its filthy surroundings, though the names he took during those times allude him (he has taken and discarded so many).  But as there is no one alive to point out he has apparently come back from various ignominious ends several times, he doesn’t bother to try to figure it out.

Finally, he sees her come out of the university, her hair a mousy brown that shows she does not value of the gift of her summoning as much as he might have hoped.  Her clothes are simple and bordering on dirty and she walks with an armful of books that do not fit with the ones already in her threadbare bag.

Hurrying only enough to catch up to her, he draws alongside her and matches her stride.  They walk side by side amongst the fishmongers barking about their wares and the occasional desperate woman showing off her own wares from the confines of dark alleys.

She finally gives him a sidelong glance and says simply, “You came.”

He does not look at her.  Not yet.

“Would you believe I missed you?”

“No,” she says.  Too quickly.

“I must have come, then, for the charms of—” he makes a sweeping gesture around them.  “—Ketterdam.”

No response comes from her immediately.  But after they walk, side by side, in silence for some time, she finally looks directly at him and frowns.  Finally, she says, “What did you bring with you?”

He finds he is amused by the question.

“Myself.”

She sighs, obviously less than amused.

“I suppose that is more than enough.”  Then, she shifts her books and shoves them towards him.  “Make yourself useful.”

He accepts the books—mostly comprised of a series of heavy dictionaries for Shu and Fjerdan.

“I believe you are underestimating my utility a great deal.”

She gives a derisive snort.

Together, they venture farther and farther from the populous areas that surround the university with its signature grimy shops, markets filled with pick pockets, and humanity sitting in little cafes arguing about pretentious scenarios that eschew the pragmatic.  Where she leads him is grimier and dirtier—a warren of dark, forking streets, and crooked houses which are populated by the half-starved dregs of humanity.

Softly, still without having looked at her, he asks, “Why have you come here, Alina?”

(This is when he discovers, rather sharply, that in Ketterdam she has become “Vera.”)

“I’m catching up.”

She does not say to whom or to what, but he is nothing if not a master of reading between the lines.

He shifts the Shu dictionary in his hand—it is clearly secondhand, the leather of the spine has worn to shininess and the faux gilt of the letters emblazoning the title has evaporated and just left wells in the cover where it used to be.

“It would please me to teach you Shu, though some aspects of my Fjerdan are… slightly antique by now,” he offers, knowing that she will do with this offer what she has basically done with all of his previous offers.

“I’m aware,” she says, her tone more than slightly irritated and her gaze trained forward.  Then, her steps—slightly heavier than they have cause to be—stray to a rickety stairwell that clings to an equally rickety building and, as they climb—him following her—she says,  “The tuition at the university is significantly cheaper than what you would expect me to pay.”

They arrive in a living area padded by carpets that might have one day been a color other than brown with walls only a shade darker.  Except for its proximity to actual people, it reminds him of several of the places he spent his earlier centuries in.

She takes out a heavy key from the pocket of her coat and puts her shoulder into opening the heavy door.  The room is thin and only has one thin piece of furniture on which the word “bed” can be pinned.

This time, after all, she is playing at being a student and so, apparently, she must also live in a student’s penury.

“Where will I sleep?” he asks her in amusement after he follows her in.

She gives the barest shrug.

“The blankets are thin, the room is cold… very cold,” she says, looking past him to the window and the equally threadbare curtains.  “There won’t be much room.”

She never makes an invitation.

And, just like that, the cold calculus of her arrangement is revealed: she’ll give him something neither of them entirely wants under terms neither of them find entirely agreeable.

Now that he’s come, she’s asking him to accept an unvoiced compromise.

A compromise that’s just as thin a part of her as the space allows.

(Even though compromise is not in his nature, he observes her profile, and, since it is her and she is here, finally, he does not so much as accept as decide to stay.)

Scraps, he knows.  She’s only willing to throw him scraps of nights and threadbare cloth and stilted, half-angry conversations.

And for now, he’ll subsist on them.  He’s had less.

They have time for more later.  And he’s turned less into much, much greater.

***

He asks his own concession after two weeks in the relative discomfort of her terms.  But this is not the most uncomfortable arrangement he has had in his life, by far.  For one, at least he is indoors.

And, there is someone else with him.  Like him.

(Additionally, the Rules of his early life don’t apply: He can be touched.  He can be Aleksander.

He is known.)

Looking up for the plank that amounts to the room’s desk, she asks with suspicion, “That’s all you want?”

He does not look up from the book he is reading.

“It’s rare enough.”

She hums, and he pretends not to notice she’s blotted the page and pretends not to notice the ink staining her fingers.

“How often have you…” there is the barest hesitation.  She is still so young.  But he notices. “…had that?”

He turns the page of his own book and answers with complete nonchalance.  Although he contemplates laughing.

How long has it been since he has been just Aleksander to someone?

“Not in my living memory.”

This, too, is a lie, as the answer is closer to “Never.”  That there have been times when he is a ghost to himself.  But she need not know this.

(He wonders, briefly, if she thinks of her own name and her own life.  Who, besides him, knows she is Alina Starkova, former mapmaker?)

She doesn’t say anything and soon the room is filled only with the quiet scratching sound of a pen being put to paper and the occasional turn of a page.

(Distantly, long after the exchange is over, he hopes that one day this arrangement might simply be a fact instead of a term).

***

Three months.

(Three months, 2 weeks, 3 days.)

She plays at being a scholar.

He makes tea.

(She is visibly surprised when he first does so.  More so when she sees him make a loaf of bread.  He can only imagine her shock if she were to figure out he could make shoes for his own horse if he had the correct tools.  And a horse to shoe.)

Her moth-bitten room is every bit as cold as she had intimated.  So, discovering that he had been Anton Volkov in his last Kerch incarnation, he becomes Lev Volkov, his great-great-grandson, and draws a modest amount of kruge from the “familial” account.

He uses it to purchase more firewood than she can apparently afford.  When she returns from her classes (“I’m studying languages,” she says, absently, even when he doesn’t ask and already knows) to see the neatly stacked birch next to a brazier that is so far failing to provide enough heat even for the moths, her eyes narrow.

She’s perhaps right to be suspicious of what seems to be something akin to an overt act of kindness.  She knows him a little, after all, and he is not a kind man.

(He does not tell her that, as winter wends its way through the streets of Ketterdam and very easily into their closet of a room, the firewood is absolutely a form of self-defense.)

In three months (three months, 2 weeks, 3 days), they’ve slept in the pathetic piece of furniture that somehow passes for a bed, side by side.  She, for what seems like a small eternity (although he is very much aware isn’t), has insisted on sleeping turned away from him, generally wrapped in most of the only threadbare blanket she owns.  The only time she so much as grazes him, even in these narrow confines, is during nightmares he does not ask about.

(This is why the firewood had been a necessity.  To buy his own blanket would have been a further concession.) 

After these three interminable months, he feels like his mere presence here is a concession in and of itself.

He makes others, mentally adding them to her tally.

He buys more firewood.  She wears a bemused expression at his gesture.

When, after a month (and one week and one day), he simply replaces the entire brazier with something that will warm, at least, a mouse, it elicits the first laugh from her that he can remember.

She had turned to where he was, now ever so slightly warm and reading one of her castoff books in Shu, the blanket draped around his legs in what is meant to appear to be a casual fashion, and arching an eyebrow at him had quipped, “I warned you it would be cold.”

He had made a show of his non-response, as he turned the page and kept every ounce of his considerable focus on the book in front of him.

(As the winter sets in, he contemplates throwing an arm around her using the cold as an excuse.  But he has waited this long.  It is not in him to make further concessions.

And when she laughs at him for buying a new winter coat—thick and black—that he throws over himself in the night, he will not answer her when she asks, archly, “For the cold?”).

***

Quietly, as she bends over her papers and books at what passes for a desk, two months in, she begins to ask him questions. 

(One day, mostly because he is amused that such things still exist, he dredges up a volume from some shadowy corner of the Library of Ketterdam, a copy of a copy of a copy with some, to his memory, transcription errors from the intervening centuries.

“Poetry?” she asks with honest confusion when she sees it neatly laid in the middle of the desk.

“Mine,” he says casually.  “From my first stint in the university.”

She laughs at him for the second time.

“From your youth?”

“I was… younger,” he concedes.  Still older than she is now by centuries.  When was someone like him considered a “youth”?  It sounded like an irrelevant argument to have that would only serve a university student.

She reads it nonetheless and offers her opinion: “Better than I thought.”  He raises an eyebrow at what, from her, is something like effusive praise.  But she doesn’t stop there, because she is not yet capable of that, “But you clearly were not meant to be a poet.”

“You were not allowed to deviate from established forms in those days.  I might do better now.”

The look on her face is something he is unaccustomed to seeing.  Almost playfully she asks, “Is that a threat?”

He chuckles at this, too.  And she is surprised that he does.

He, too, is surprised sometimes, in Ketterdam, he is allowed to be like this.)

Usually this is the substance of their discussions, as most of her questions are of the pedestrian type: where he has lived (A vague gesture.  “Everywhere.”), what languages does he know (most of them, in multiple dialects and forms, some of which have no tongues to speak them anymore but his), professions he’s had (“I’ve been a soldier” more often than not is an explanation that avoids a very, very lengthy list).  Sometimes she asks about what, to her, is history: the personalities of tsars and kings and queens (That she starts by asking about Anastas perhaps discourages him from answering her further inquiries).

Oftentimes, though, he won’t answer at all and, after a lengthy period of silence, she gives up with a huff of indignation because it is not his fault that their lives run so contrary to one another: he knows practically every nuance of her history and her bare spark of a life compared to what she may ever know about the conflagration that is his.  And, for her sake, it might be better that way.

(Once she asks, “And exactly are you planning to do here?”

He does answer her that time:  “There is not much more to do than read and sleep.”

She had looked absolutely skeptical at this.

Leisurely, he opened a book he had picked up for a few kruge.

“I haven’t had time for either in several lifetimes.”

She had shaken her head and gone back to her piles of Fjerdan and Shu dictionaries.)

She is mumbling in Fjerdan about Djel only knew what—finally he catches a recitation of verbs “att vilja, jag vill, jag ville” (1)—a glass of cheap kvas in her hand, when she asks one night, “Have you ever had any children?”

He levels a look at her over an ancient tome on Shu court politics, and asks a question of his own, “Do I seem fool enough to allow that?”

She lifts the glass to her lips.  She goes back to her book.

“Your mother did.  That’s why you exist.  Was she a fool?”

Know it wasn’t enough.

(And when was it ever?)

He hides the rage that prickles under his skin under a mere turning down of his lips. 

He sets his book down on the rickety table beside him and says with the calm of a snake before a strike, “There are only two like us.  And there only ever will be.”

She laughs lightly, and merely recites:  “kämpar, kämpade, har kämpat…” (2)

She doesn’t even seem to notice his glare boring into her.  She merely drinks another swallow of kvas and says all too casually, “She told me that you’re the son of a Heartrender,” then trails off before starting the conjugations of a new verb: “avskyr, avskydde, har avskytt.” 

(Halfway through he recognizes it’s meaning:  “To despise.”

He hears, too, another voice:  Foolish boy.)

She continues on, just as conversationally, “If there was someone sufficiently powerful, there might be a chance—”

“Alina.”

Her name leaves his mouth with all the force of the Cut, and the shadows rise higher on the walls, writhing as they do.

She turns around at last, her eyes glinting, though she looks at his shadows and does not look directly at him.

(Don’t they all.)

“You could be wrong, you know. But you won’t admit that because being wrong means I may not need—”

She cuts off abruptly, as he does not hide the look of fury on his face nor the way the shadows rise around him like a dark tide, blocking out all light and warmth from the already pitiful brazier.

His words slide out like ice as he completes her thought:  “You mean you might not need me.”  His elegant hands make a smooth dismissive gesture, and the book falls away.  “You want to be Baghra, then.”  His hands settle over his lap again.  “Model yourself after my… dearest madraya.”

She stills in her chair, carved from marble, not disavowing his claim, not taking back her own absurdity—never doing that.  A Sankta who will not look upon the stuff of her own foolish martyrdom.

He will not spare her now.  Not this time.

Not when she’s proposing… this.

“Well, Alina, you might need to know some pertinent details about my dear madraya you would’ve not been privy to in your very, very brief acquaintance.”  Then, with iron restraint, he stills himself, too, into her dark image.  “First, you might ask how many children she buried.  Or, at least tried to.  Did she tell you how many times she had to discard her own flesh and blood, dear, tender Alina?  Do you realize what they did to Grisha children in my youth?  And for those that were spared… such things, do you want to know how many she watched wither before she got me?  And after?  Could you, too, do what she did?  Losing them to time and outright murder or just losing them until somehow, maybe, you ended up with something like you and I?”

He knits his hands together and the pale knuckles of his hands become even whiter.  And finally she is looking at him, her chin still lifted defiantly.  How unbreakable she thinks she is, when he has known and seen better.  How fantastically, naively young.

Then, ever the farce of the university student playing at theory, she bites back, “Then you admit it is theoretically possible.”

She says this as if he hasn’t seen her break with his own eyes.  Hasn’t seen exactly how little she has inured herself to the exacting price immortality will ask of her.  Doesn’t know how loss after loss after loss with no prospect of holding anything in your hands hollows you out and becomes a gnashing thing where your heart used to be.  As if she doesn’t understand he is the only one alive who knows intimately what it means to feel such things beyond any simplistic understanding of “theoretic possibility.”

Let her, when her life runs its course, let her try to distill it all down to theory.

(For a moment the whole notion of her almost repulses him.)

“Come Alina,” he continues, “Tell me.  Just how many children are you willing to sentence to death when it is in your power not to do so?  How many can you endure turning to dust in your motherly embrace?  How many graves will you weep by?”  He pauses, and she does not speak still.  So he invites her, “Why don’t you put a number on your foolish plans.”

And then, when her expression breaks—the tiniest chink in her armor against him revealing itself—for the first time since he has come to this mousehole of a fantasy she has constructed for herself here, he outright laughs.

The sound fills the room, dark and rich and mirthless.  And still, she sits mute before the truth of the world.

“And, how like my dear madraya could you be, Alina?  You saw yourself how motherly her own endeavors left her.  Did you know, even as a boy, even in my earliest memories, she was the same?  But in the end, she owned that she had birthed and suckled a monster—” Know that it was not enough. “—so you hope for like us, when what you mean is like you.”  Her expression hardens again.  “You mean like you.  And, like you as you are now.  When you do not know theoretically what you will become.  Imagine if, after all that grief, watching the children of your hypothetical, pathetic Heartrenders die, you got one, to your eternal disappointment, like me.” 

His face becomes a mask and there is a pulsating silence between them.  She still does not speak, so he speaks her fears into the world for her to lash out at, as she has always made him do.

“Would it be enough?” 

He doesn’t ask for whom and, sitting alongside the ghosts in himself he refuses to recognize, she remains silent.

“Could you love a monster, Alina?”

She looks at him then, her hands still in her lap, and she doesn’t break the cool glass of her stare.  Slowly, without answering, she rises and still, with that defiant lift of her chin, she comes towards him.

When she closes the short space between what she calls a desk and the bed, without hesitation, she puts one hand over his and from a simple touch of skin on skin, he can feel her power absolutely boiling beneath her skin.  The other hand she places on his chest and, and, despite the fact that what he knows is fury paints her face, not roughly, she pushes him back towards the pillow.  He allows it.  Just as he allows her to climb up on his sliver of a bed that she has not touched for three months two weeks and three days, straddling his body in the process.

He allows it all.

Her eyes are burning as she looks down at him, an inferno of emotion accompanying the fury that he does not wish to decipher.  She bends down, her lips hovering over his.

“Ask me again, Aleksander.  Ask me again if I can love a monster.”

(It’s the last time that night she says his name.)

Aleksander does not ask her again.

(Mostly because he is not certain what her answer will be.  He does not like to ask questions to which he doesn’t already know the answer.)

Instead, he kisses her.

But even so, he does not ask her again.

(Not that night.)

***

There is nothing of devotion or emotion that he can identify in it at all.

Even as he thrusts into her, as she lets him, at long last, his mother mocks him.

Know that it was not enough.

Aleksander knows.  Oh, he knows.

Even as he releases into her, the bond between them flaring, incandescent, with a rage and resentment and loneliness so tangled that he cannot tell where what is in him stops and she begins.  He knows.

***

The next morning, still naked, she reaches over him to the little table beside the makeshift bed and draws a vial out of the drawer—an unlabeled little thing that has sat there for months next to a spare bar of strong smelling lye soap.

Taking the threadbare blanket around her shoulders, she carefully maneuvers around him to the small corner of the room that passes for something of a kitchen.  From under the minimal warmth of his winter coat—drawn up from the floor in the middle of the night—he watches her make tea.  Then, when it has been poured into her cup, aware that he is watching her, she deliberately tips the small vial into the steaming liquid and picks it up to drink.  The first sip leaves her wincing at the apparent bitterness.  Then, throwing him one spare glance, she downs the remainder.

He realizes why she has felt the need to make this particular… display, when she explains into the now empty cup softly, “We wouldn’t want any foolishness, now would we?”

Then, without another word, she dresses quickly and leaves the blanket in a heap as far of a distance from the bed as she can.  She leaves without a word, nudging the swollen door shut with her shoulder on her way out.  Finally, long after the thud of it closing has ceased to echo, he, too, gets up and does the same. 

He doesn’t see her for three days and when she returns nothing seems to have overtly changed.

***

Three months, 2 weeks, and 5 days later.

He still doesn’t venture across the tiny, unoccupied sliver of the bed to touch her.

But he can no longer tell himself it is because she will deny him.

***

He tells himself this:

He lets her come to him.

Then it all feels like something.

Then it is not a concession wrung, but a triumph.

She’s come to him.

(And some nights she inexplicably does.)

***

“I’m going to teach,” she announces one day, the pale expanse of her back to him and a blanket that barely keeps out the cold slung low over her hips.

She keeps her hair brown—mousy and ordinary, instead of, at the very least, a rich mahogany.

Always hiding.

He leans forward.

“Here?” he says with obvious disdain, the word exhaled on a cloud of warmth into her shoulder blade.  Outside the threadbare curtains, the squalor and mayfly humanity mill about.  And Aleksander sees no difference between those who become indentures, those who use the indentures, and those who seek to dress up their small little lives with the trappings of the university.  She still tiresomely makes distinctions.

He’s made only one comment about Alina’s stacks of books and how she scrawls away into the night under a guttering candle, as he watches her from her student-pauper’s bed, biding his time in a different way than she bides hers.

It is restraint, he thinks, for him to say just one thing to her as she throws herself into conjugating Fjerdan verbs and navigating the intricacies of the changes in verbs for the various degrees of Shu politeness.

But, he makes only one comment about how she is using her eternity (admittedly, that afternoon some pimpled child of a boy, weighed down with inane scholarly tracts amounting to little real knowledge, had followed her back and upon spotting him in the shadows of her room had asked in surprise, “Is that your husband?”

She had smirked.

“Him?”

Then, she had laughed.

“Not at all.”)

(He knows, too, that the fact that neither her threadbare blanket nor her tables of Shu verb conjugations see much use that night has little to do with him and irritatingly has to do with her continued sentimentality over people who are a blink of her eyes.

And if the boy had ended up dying as the accidental casualty of a tavern brawl some months later?  Well, she need not know that at all had anything to do with him…).

So, several weeks later, when she is writing some ridiculous treatise on grammatical concepts from a centuries old dialect of Fjerdan he is fairly certain only lives on in him (Although speaking it to her garners the glowing compliment that he sounds like a “Medieval peasant” which was precisely what he had been when he had actually used it.  Although he does not divulge this and she does not ask), he makes an offhand comment about how long she intends to dither about on things that don’t matter.

She raises an eyebrow at him, feeling a deeply rooted satisfaction that each of her movements is a very obvious unconscious reflection of him. 

(He is, however, less than fond of her accompanying words.)

“Nothing is keeping you here, Aleksander.”

(A lie.  Couched in truth.  Oh, she is an apt pupil.  In more ways than the University of Ketterdam could ever appreciate.)

Months later, as she often did when they had eddied together and the whirl of eternity was on the point of separating them briefly, she had declared her intention to teach at the Little Palace.

This notion amuses him even more.

“As an Etherealki Intructor?  As if you’re a common Squallor or Tidemaker?” he asks, the smooth, winter tones of his voice at odds with the buttery sunlight streaming through the threadbare curtains.

She pulls the threadbare blanket entirely around her and rolls over to direct one of her looks at him, leaving him lounging naked next to her.

“As Baghra,” she says decisively.

There’s a prick of something beneath the rage that surfaces that he decides can burn in his anger.  He can’t tell if she is seriously considering such foolishness or, like his dearest madraya, she has just learned to get under his skin.

His judgement is absolute:  “It won’t suit you, Alina.”

She doesn’t heed him.  As ever.

Instead, she sits up, one hand holding the blanket to her collarbone.

“I’ll be Mariya,” she says, setting her shoulders and raising her chin.  “And whether it suits me or not, I expect you to stay away.”

***

Alina notes how carefully he watches her as she leaves for the university that day.  Since that day on the Fold, the day Mal’s blood coursed between her fingers, since the day he held the sun, the day she held a knife that was awash with the red of the Firebird’s blood to the flesh of the man called the Darkling and gouged a purple scar over his heart that still remains, Aleksander has watched her like this on occasion.

He’s not watching her when she returns.

Because he is gone.

He does not come to claim his narrow slice of life next to her for three nights.  And even though he has taken nothing but the clothes he had on, she knows very well he is not coming back.

(It is the first time he leaves first.  It proves he can.

That fact allows her to breathe a sigh of relief.)

***

Chapter Text

iii.  Education

She’d brought the letter that Zoya had given her to the Head Instructor, since the polite fiction of the Little Palace these days was that it was an educational institute more than a military training facility.  The petite woman, in Etherealki blue—a Squaller, who had worked with Zoya in the last years of her life—peered over her large glasses.

“You’re a Summoner,” she says curtly. 

Alina nods and braces herself for the inevitable question.

“The Queen told me not to ask you, if you came—not to ask what kind of Etherealki you are.”  She hand flaps in a flippant gesture.  “So, not that I’m not immensely curious why the dead Storm Queen is sending me a Summoner of unknown providence—” she adjusted her glasses again.  “—But she also said if you were questioned you were likely going to leave.  Which would be, and I quote, ‘A brainless mistake that you would be entirely and idiotically responsible for.’”

Alina’s emotions felt tugged in two directions—amusement, because the sentiment was so very Zoya and also a tinge of grief because it was also… so very Zoya.

The woman glanced down at the paper on her desk.

“She’s hard to disappoint even in death.  And—” she frowned deeply, “So many would be disappointed with what they’ve done to her policies.  To her… everything.”

(As she had wound her way through the streets of Os Alta, she herself had seen a group of rag clad peasants burn a flag with the joined dragon and double eagle partially out of anger and partially for warmth.).

Shaking her head, she gestured to a chair and took a seat behind her desk.

“You’re well aware that anti-Grisha sentiment is rising?” 

Alina is not well-aware.  Anti-Grisha sentiment is a well-entrenched thing in Ravka.  Like cold winters, military service, and grim acceptance of all of those things with a dry understatement and a glass of kvas.  But she nods as if she aware of the new swing of the pendulum, thankful the woman is not a Heartrender.

The woman stretches her hands behind her head and leans back.

“Not that there is ever a good time to be Grisha.  Or even to be Ravkan.  And being a Ravkan Grisha is, excepting the period after the Great Liberation, usually a poor proposition.  I guess we can congratulate ourselves that we’re not Fjerdan Grisha, though… The new Tsar—which is to say the new Tsar’s handler—the Duke Kirigan, is already talking about reinstating the compulsory draft for Grisha into the army and increasing the age of retirement.  If not just taking it away.  Again.”  Alina takes note of these things.  Of being back on the fringes of this world and its politics.  The woman gives a bitter laugh, “Then there are the religious fanatics for whom the only good Grisha is a dead Grisha.  Some are even ridiculously prophesizing that the Sun Saint and the Darkling will rise again.  The Shu Hanese we’ve been processing lately are particularly convinced of the last one.”

She gives a further bark of laughter (although Alina finds nothing amusing about these declarations) and, raising an eyebrow, the woman—Agafya (1)—turns back to her.

“You know, I can simply ask you lots of personal questions and you have an opportunity to avoid all of this?”

Alina considers what she will say.  Because if things have gotten to where they have, the Darkling and the Sun Saint may very well be making another appearance.  And she does not relish dealing with that.  Mostly because one will likely drag out the other.  And she will not be the one doing the dragging, unless it is to drag him back from the precipice of some terrible thing he’s decided is for the best.

“I’ve dealt with worse,” she says lightly.

The woman sighs, “Of course you have.  You’re Ravkan.  You know very well it can always get worse.”

***

As she gets older, as she returns to places where she had other lives, she operates by one principal, generally:  Some things change, most things don’t.

The Little Palace is no different.  Most of the architecture still vaults over her head in the same understated elegance she remembers from 19.  Students eat under the same golden dome in the same kind of groups.  The people in charge still live in the same wing.  Students still graduated and went into the army, though it was now the New Ravkan Army which was there is definitely nothing new about for most practices and purposes.

There is no more herring, thankfully. 

There is also no more Genya or Marie or Nadia.

There are more ghosts.

Baghra’s hut is the same, except it is not Baghra’s but hers, and it has been largely rebuilt in the intervening years.  She never keeps it as hot as it had been when Baghra had been here, though.  Nor did she use a stick on any of her students. 

(Or bees.)

After the barely insulated room in Ketterdam (which she had given up some scant months after he had left after sleeping far too long in the small strip of her bed which she couldn’t seem to move out of, even if, when the winter had set in again, she had pulled on a discarded black coat over her blanket), it was warm enough.  And to be, at long last, back in the familiarity of the Little Palace made something in her calm and ache all at once.

She finally moves in a comfortable arm chair, a worn settee, and a battered table in front of the hearth and these join a rickety bed in doubling the number of possessions she brings with her.

The students and instructors still wore their brightly jeweled kefta, though it is an affectation on the school’s part as Grisha who graduated wore the standard uniform of the army these days with only a thin layer of army standard core cloth and colored cuff and collar to distinguish them, as per Nikolai and Zoya’s policies.

Summoning is still summoning.  Students are still students.  Humans are still humans. 

(Loneliness is still loneliness.)

Idly, she wonders if Aleksander practiced clawing his way up hierarchies for so long over his long life just for something to do to alleviate his boredom.

Even in Ketterdam, even with the fact that desire and want had rested plainly on his features in a way that she had not observed in just about any other context with him, she wonders if, for him, she will ultimately just be a dalliance of all his dalliances.  She’ll be pursued until he realizes that she cannot be kept.

(If he ever does realize this.

Their disagreement over this is what keeps him more than anything.)

Darkly, she wonders if even his devotion to a Ravka of his own creation is only him taking and abstracting a concept as far as it can go.  Until he can put it in the palm of his hand. Until he can keep it.

Even though that is something he never could keep either.

She wonders, too, if one day she ever allows him to keep her, what he might do.

Though he is not so simple of a man, there are times when she wonders if she could peel all of his layers back and just find nothing but a sense of eternal boredom.  Because she has it in her, too.  The knowledge that things get old just as she does.

(The knowledge that she will likely understand at least part of Aleksander all too well, someday, unsettles her.  Knowing there are some days when she understands what used to seem alien and other in him much better now.  Because she has seen that the gap between them is one made of time and weariness, as much as it is a function of age and experience).

In Ketterdam, when she had been concentrating on Shu and Fjerdan—easy conjugations, and simple university timetables—she had not expected him to take her up on her offer.  She had definitely not expected to learn a different dialect of him.  She had also not expected that his only term upon arriving there would be that she would call him by his name in private.

(Which she still did sparingly, for all it was a term.  If he made a term it was something he wanted badly.

She’d learned it was generally poor strategy to give him things he wanted badly easily.)

The Darkling, surrounded by oprichniki and Grisha, in his black, richly embroidered kefta, had never made tea.  Or cooked.  Or sat in a bed in a white, loose shirt, with his coat draped artfully over his legs so it didn’t look as if he was freezing his ass off (which he most definitely had been).  And, although the Darkling might have wanted to, she never would have let him whisper “mine” into her neck—the word hot and not an entire untruth in those moments—as he moved inside of her.

Those things seemed to belong to the man who had declared that the only thing he would expect from her was that, “Here—call me by my name.”

(She was also pretty sure that the Darkling would have forced the issue when she had not called him, well, anything.  Most of the time.  Aleksander was still a strange being that she did not understand and maybe wouldn’t be allowed to.  Aleksander was a man who shared her bed, lived parallel to her life, read, slept, and then left.)

And now, she’d come to claim his mother’s house in the place he had built as a sanctuary for his—their—people.

Some days, despite her telling him in no uncertain terms not to come, she finds herself contemplating their bond, this thing she had reforged between them with merzost and Mal’s blood.  And thinking about it in those terms makes her think twice about going to him.

(It gives her pause, too, that since that day—the day the Fold had been destroyed and she’d taken a third amplifier—that she had, maybe, been placed in the Darkling’s—no, Aleksander’s debt.  Or, at the very least her acquisition of the third amplifier had… placed them on somewhat more equal footing—though he had never once used it to come to her.)

But, she leaves off her musings.  Mostly because a timid Squallor—one that Zoya would have eaten alive and Baghra might have set bees on—has arrived at her door.  And, since Alina will do nothing but encourage him and refine his technique, she has to focus.

***

He lets himself be “discovered” by what is tantamount to the Second Army (although he understands that, under Zoya’s reign, it has simply become “The New Ravkan Army”—which was effective, if boring, propaganda.) for the fourth time since Anastas.

He lets the weight of the narrative he seeded long ago carry him to his desired place and, in the hovel of Oretsev with its distasteful name, on the Feast of the Miracle of the Starless Saint when a statue of Sankta Alina of the Fold cried tears of obsidian, a young man who becomes embroiled in a tavern brawl who takes a punch to his right cheek suddenly manifests shadows all around him and, according to several conflicting reports, levels much of several buildings and injures over a dozen people with his sudden manifestation of power.

With the help of a Heartrender he has paid well for the purpose (and will silence more permanently later), he “passes out” from a minimally taxing use of his powers and awakens in his least favorite variety of place, although it is not an entirely surprising one given the circumstances: a cell.

His hands are bound, which is not an obstacle for a Grisha of his abilities, but he allows them to believe he is not a threat.  Indeed, his discovery warrants the appearance of a man in a blue kefta, who is surrounded by several people whose bearing, though not their clothing, reveals them to be soldiers.  The embroidery and arrogance of the individual indicates that the discovery of a possible Shadow Summoner is worthy of a visit from a member of the ridiculous Grisha Triumvirate who tried to fill in the gap he had left.

The man crouches down next to him and, giving him a long evaluating look, says, “Boy, are you aware of what you’ve done?”

Aleksander laughs, internally.  He has not been a “boy” in centuries.  And he is definitely not “boy” enough to realize that not bringing a Heartrender to this meeting is a mistake.  But, such are the follies of youth.

Ever the picture of the simpering, emaciated adolescent they expect him to be, Aleksander holds his head in his hands and gives a raspy whisper of, “I don’t know.”

The man throws an arm over his shoulders and says, more gently than he expects for the crime of leveling a town, “You are Grisha, boy.  Do you know what that means?”

His mother’s voice answer in his stead, an old familiar refrain:  “To be hunted, to be Other, boy.”

(When he really had been a boy.)

Instead, his own words come back to him, falling easily from a new mouth, spoken by him to generations who have rotted in the grounds at his feet: “It means you are not alone.”

Aleksander feels a pang of something he discards almost immediately at the man’s reply, and he continues on with his own charade by replying with a shellshocked whisper, “From my hands.  There were shadows.  They—”

The man takes his arm from around his now considerably bonier shoulders.  He has purposefully spent time since Ketterdam not eating more than what would barely sustain him and not summoning.

“What is your name, boy?”

“Stepanov,” he says, a quaver injected into the smooth tones of his voice as he speaks the carefully chosen name into existence.  “Mikhail Stepanov.”

The man goes to release the bonds on his hands and, on touching skin to skin, he draws back.  The boy who has become Mikhail Stepanov jerks his head up in alarm, and jerks his hand back.  With a squawk of surprise and discomfort, he carefully allows himself to be caught again by a man who thinks he is of superior strength and combat training.

“Stepanov,” he marvels, as Aleksander can feel his natural ability as an amplifier rise to the surface without any willful aid on his part. 

Aleksander jerks his arm back and says, with real discomfort—because the power this man holds is weak and yet he has been elevated to someplace of authority despite it—“What are you doing with—?”

And there it is.  What Aleksander had been anticipating.  The man is looking at him with something just shy of reverence.  It has been a long, long time since he has felt satisfaction at someone interrupting him.

“You’re a living amplifier.”

“What—?” he starts.  Truly shocked that it has taken this long to recognize this about him.  He’d even left his gloves off for the occasion.

“What do you know of the Darklings, Stepanov?”

A sly thing in Aleksander smiles and, with an honesty even a Heartrender could not have faulted, he answers, “I-I’ve heard of… them.  They call the last one the Liberator… But—what does they have to do with… me?”

An infinitely satisfied grin also slides onto the lips of the man in front of him and he says, “Would it be an impertinence to call you by your given name?”

Yes, he thinks.  That’s something only she has.

But, his eyes wide, he nods in what he knows will be construed as permission.

“Mikhail… I am Maksim Zaitsev.” (2)  He draws in a breath, as if he thinks he is going to say something that will shift the world as Mikhail Stepanov knows it.  “You’re about to become very important, Mikhail.”

But he already knows this.

Oh, he knows this far better than this self-important fool.

***

Even though the daily herring is, blessedly, a thing that no one remembers but her, Alina does not often take meals with others.  The Little Palace is a place where she lives and works for this life, molding Grisha and listening for disturbances in greater Ravka she might need to stop, rather than the coin of rumor that runs through meal times amongst the students.

During lessons, she and her students talk of little but summoning techniques, although sometimes, with those she is slightly closer to, she will occasionally ask a little of their families and where they are from.  Since Zoya’s rule, students are allowed contact with their families during their stay at the Little Palace, although there are still distressingly many who give her a polite nod or, the angrier ones, a less polite glare at some of her more polite inquiries.

By now, though, she has a reputation for being rather exacting instructor and Maksim Zaitsev, who represents the Etherealki in the Triumvirate, has a habit of sending her summoners he thinks have unrealized potential, both at the top and bottom of the Etherealki cohort.

(Not once has she sent bees after any of them, either.  Or hit them.)

And, mostly because it still makes her heart painfully twist and think of Genya and David and Nikolai, and Mal, and the easiness that used to come with relating to everyone, all of her students know she doesn’t abide gossip.

Which is why she is surprised to see Zaitsev himself at her door, a small bag of kartoshka (3) in hand.

Zaitsev is an affable enough Tidemaker, given to moral platitudes and occasional bouts of too much vodka, which have a tendency to make him hug others into submission with his barrel shaped chest.  Somehow, Agafya—the woman in charge of instructing students at the Little Palace—had persuaded him never to ask Alina what her particular expertise was and even soaked in vodka he honors this.

Unceremoniously, he plunks himself down in the chair across from her and then, just as unceremoniously, plunks the kartoshka down on her table, shaking much of the powdered coating off and into the bag they’re encased in.

“I thought you’d be beating down the walls of Agafya’s office when you’d heard.  I admit, I would take him myself if I didn’t have all of—” he makes an expansive gesture.  Then, forgetting himself, he gives a small startled movement and offers her a kartoshka.  Alina gives him a look and then, confused, takes one of the sweets and pops it into her mouth.  He continues, despite her.  “Very, very… monumental.  It has been… what—nearly a century?  A century and a half—and you know I don’t give any truck to all that Saints-forsaken religious fervor, the religion of so-called Duality the otkazat’sya peddle these days, but the timing!  I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t found him and taken him to the Little Palace myself.”

She finishes chewing and then begins the somewhat longer than anticipated process of waiting for Zaitsev to stop for breath so she can get a word in edgewise.

“Zaitsev,” she says emphatically, waving away another sweet, so as not to lose her chance.  “What are you talking about?”

He stills and looks at her, momentarily stunned.  Then, his large body seems to slump in on itself as he lets out an overly dramatic sigh.

“Mariya (4),  how you survive out here at all—how haven’t you heard?  Saints, he’s twenty, and half-emaciated.  I don’t know how he survived.  Wasting sickness.  Orphan.  From Oretsev of all places.”

Alina feels a sense of dread fall into the pit of her stomach at this list and, a sense of anger, too.  She somehow knew what he would tell her before he said it.

Maksim pops a kartoshka in his mouth and says through a mouthful of crumbs, “A Shadow Summoner has emerged.”  Further fury floods into her, even as Zaitsev sticks one of his sausage-like fingers into his mouth and sucks off the residual cocoa powder.  Obliviously, he continues on, “The boy survived the wasting sickness, somehow—we think because he’s a living amplifier.”

“What is his name?” she says sharply, knowing the “boy’s” name better than anyone living.  Knowing, too, he is as far from an innocent boy as it is possible to be.

“Mikhail,” he says, absently.  “Mikhail Stepanov.”

A thrill of anger goes through her at his new name.  As she knows where he has picked it over from.  And, likely, why.  She does not, however, let her anger show.

“You’re here to say you’ll be sending him to me.”

With another full mouth he nods.

“Good,” she says, her voice falsely cheerful.  “There are many things I would like to teach Mikhail.”

Maksim gives her a long look before swallowing the last of the little pastry.

“Good,” he mumbles, regarding his cocoa powder covered fingers again, “I, too, have a mind to teach him what it will take to make him a great man.  He’ll be important—quite important.”

She does not want to comment on what a terrible instructor Maksim would be for making this particular student into “a great man.”  He has definite opinions on the matter already and will not be tutored in a craft he thinks he’s mastered.  If Maksim is going to tangle with him, the Tidemaker be the one to be taught a lesson he likely doesn’t want to be taught in the long run.  She, herself, has learned such lessons from the “student” she is going to get.  So, already annoyed, she starts by deciding to immediately ruin what is likely the first of Aleksander’s plans.

“Maksim,” she says, more warmly than she had the rest of the conversation, “Make sure his kefta is blue, so he is not singled out as being any different than any other Etherealki.”

He frowns and lowers the next sweet he is on the point of eating.

“Agafya was planning on black.  She’s rather enamored with the history and… stories.”

Alina schools her features in a way she is certain only the person whose wardrobe color scheme she is currently ruining might find fault with.  If she knows that person, she also knows he is certainly planning on both the history and the stories giving him precisely what he wants.

Thoughtfully, playing with the ends of a tendril of her hair, she says, “The weight of stories is likely heavier than one thinks, Maksim.  And those pertaining to the Darkling aren’t always…”. She trails off meaningfully.  His frown deepens, but, he makes the concession of a nod after a moment.  She continues, “We best make sure that the boy’s… exceptional nature doesn’t go to his head, as well.”  Zaitsev nods more assuredly this time. She ends with a blatant lie:  “And, being an orphan boy from a small town, well—he might not like the attention…”

Zaitsev chews another kartoshka and ponders this.  Alina sips her tea and wishes she had something entirely stronger.

“You might be right, Mariya,” he says when his mouth is thankfully free, for once.  “We’ve kept this as… secret as possible.  But even so, some in the high-ups are already calling him Blessed of the Starless Saint.  So, you are likely right.  Better not to put too much focus on the boy.”  He pauses.  “He’s actually rather shy.”

Alina nearly spits out her tea at this observation.  Aleksander has been many things in his long, long life.  She is pretty sure none of them are and have ever been “shy.”

Zaitsev stands, oblivious.

“We live in extraordinary times, Mariya.”

He makes one further attempt at straightening his kefta, glancing at the single kartoshka left in the bag, before, with a barely perceptible nod, deciding to leave it.  The man chuckles, brushing some crumbs off the front of his kefta.

“Just think, Mariya—he could be like the Darklings of old… When Grisha had recognized authority and power.”  Alina gives a thought to Zoya and history and crimes against both.  Maksim merely pulls down the front of his kefta, trying in vain to make himself look somewhat orderly again.  “Like…” he says with a kind of reverence she remembers from a man who smelled of freshly turned graves, “The Liberator.”

Alina certainly hopes not.  Because the Liberator wasn’t very liberating if you lived through him.  But, no matter what history remembers them as, she vows that he will get to be nothing like the Darklings of old.

She will stop him before it comes to that.

He flashes a smile, and says, “What’s next, eh?  A Sun Summoner?”

Alina thinks it best to put her tea cup down before she inadvertently waters either her furniture or the Etherealki member of the current Grisha Triumvirate with a spray of her beverage.

He leaves her with a single kartoshka and a singular thought: Aleksander really is trying to make her contemplate killing him for the third time.

***

She does not seek him out.

That would only encourage him.

And she knows he needs no encouragement in whatever it is he is scheming.

***

Some things have changed in the Little Palace, but some have not.

(Which largely describes most of the times he returns here.  And most places he returns to, in general.).

He had been amused by the fluxuating policies of the Storm Queen’s era, all the whispers that wound their way into Shu Han from his small network.  How she had finally implemented all of the policies he had whispered in her ear but had been thwarted in by the Lantsovs: Grisha’s army tenures ended at 25 then, under the threat of peasant revolt and Fjerdan invasion, went back to thirty, leading to disquiet among those with short memories of the policies regarding the Second Army.  Then there was no more Second Army, at all.  It was simply the New Ravkan Army, so no one could be accused of favoritism and all of the supplies were equally low-grade in the way of Ravkan military spending when it was controlled by Ravka’s rulers for as long as he could remember.

He can imagine the lines of Zoya’s face, lovely in its ruthless calculation (which is still fresh enough in his own memory that he can recall it), and hear her declaring, “At least they end now.”

Oh, Zoya, he wants to tell her shade.  It is not so easy to be poised on the knife’s edge between pragmatism and idealism.  It is not so easy to both want and do.

In truth, her almost 140 years is an exceptionally long life for a normal Grisha.

But, in his experience, not quite long enough to rip out the roots of unnecessary idealism root and bulb. 

Very few have adequate time for such things.  Two, in fact, that remain alive.

(Although she has not yet come to his way of thinking yet.  But that, too, is a matter of time.)

He is also glad photographs had not been invented the last time he was a primary resident of the Little Palace.  The insufferable Tidemaker, though, plays nice with him and hands him a kefta of a color he will soon change and makes him sit for a photograph, extolling the importance of his arrival constantly.

Aleksander nearly laughs the first time he sits for a lesson in “History” he largely helped write.  It is such a near thing that his instructor, a gruff Inferni who has only weathered the tides of the Storm Queen’s peace and who takes issue with the exceptionality of his summoning, notices and barks, “Stepanov.”

He schools his features into a contriteness that he does not feel.  He is about 700 years too old to be scolded like a school boy.

To practice his meagre summoning abilities, he is sent to a familiar hut beside the lake, and made to follow a boy the pompous idiot of a Tidemaker who had “discovered” him had assigned him to “show him around.”  Even though what spreads within him as he approaches the solitary building is quickly smothered by the void within him that is the annihilating power of time and eternity, he feels some uncharacteristic trepidation at his approach.

His mother’s former abode is not quite the same (but it is similar enough for him to feel as if he must mentally fortify himself for a battle as his steps draw closer).  Someone has made improvements over the last century and as he opens the door, there is no accompanying rush of heat towards him.

But he knows who will be waiting for him on the other side of the door, doing her best to fit into a series of other people’s lives rather than own hers.

As usual.

***

There is a knock at the door.  From where she is sitting and reading a report from the Alkemi in the greenhouses about soil renewal, which is targeted at further developing the region where the Fold used to occupy, she raises her voice as she does with her students and tells them to come in.

The door swings open and she sees the tall, spare figure of a brash Inferni named Feliks.  He steps in, followed, at a distance, by someone who seems, at first, like a totally alien entity.  Part of the strangeness, she realizes, is in his clothing: he’s dressed in the blue kefta of an Etherealki.  Although someone, likely Zaitsev, had ultimately given in on some point and the embroidery of his kefta is glossy black, it is currently partially obscured by several thick books that are clasped in his hands.  His graceful, absolutely considered posture, too, has been replaced by the slouch of a stoop shouldered youth, who is looking self-consciously at the ground somewhere near her shoes.

Startlingly, almost, for the second or third time she has known him, his facial expression is marked by utter uncertainty.  So much so that even she almost believes he might be what he is pretending to be.  Even though she knows much, much better.

Setting down her report and balling her hands into fists at her sides, keeping her composure more for Feliks—who is looking at the “boy” he has apparently been tasked with showing around with a look of ill-disguised irritation—Alina forces herself to fold her hands in her lap and prompts him, “And who have you brought me today, Feliks?”

“Mikhail Stepanov,” he says crisply, all trace of emotion vanishing.  Then, one of his eyebrows rises fractionally, “The Shadow Summoner.”

Then, turning her attention to the “boy” he has been escorting, Feliks addresses him high-handedly with more impunity than she has ever heard anyone address him with outside of his enemies in a war:  “As discussed, Mariya will dismiss you after your lesson.  You will then make your way back to the hall for dinner.”

Then, without so much as waiting for a reply, giving her a small nod of acknowledgement, Feliks turns to leave her alone with a stranger who wears a very familiar face.

He shuffles his way into the small hut, placing the stack of tomes on her table.  As soon as the sound of the door shutting finishes echoing in the small room, though, his posture straightens, his stride lengthens, and he sits down on the battered settee across from her with the absolute grace of a tsar presiding over his court, shedding the skin of Mikhail Stepanov entirely.

His expression in response to her frown is one of amusement.  Because, even though the kefta he is wearing is blue now, and his frame is unhealthily thin, and there are the beginnings of a shadow of a beard on the sharp planes of his face, here with her, Aleksander has become unmistakably himself again.

“Hello, Alina.”

She leans on the arm of her chair.

“I thought I told you not to come here.”

A corner of his mouth draws up and he practically drawls, “There was nothing to keep me away.”

She levels a look at him, wanting to remind him that the last time he had been here in any significant capacity he had annihilated half of the Ravkan Grisha supposedly under his protection.  He just calmly looks back.  Batting away gruesome memories, she takes in his gaunt frame and how his long, elegant hands have practically become skeletal.

“Saints, have you eaten since Ketterdam?”

Disconcertingly, his face takes on the strange uncertainty of the boy he is pretending to be and he says, “They say it was summoning sickness.”

Alina rolls her eyes.

“If only your particular sickness could be explained away so easily.”

He takes in his surroundings, lounging in his chair as if he owns the world once more.

“I see you were serious in your bid to become Baghra.”

She draws her lips into a thin line and says, “I could hit you with a stick, but I’m afraid you’d like it too much.”

He glowers at her for a fraction of a second, unamused by her joke, prior to hiding his initial reaction.  She raises her chin and makes an exaggerated show of looking at him.

“Blue is not your color,” she observes.

She doesn’t entirely keep the hint of smugness out of her voice.

He, though, is annoyingly unbothered.  He cocks his head to the side, gives a half smile, and makes a dismissive gesture with one black gloved hand.

“It is temporary.  Like most of this.”

She ignores his usual scheming.  It comes as natural to him as breathing.  She’d almost forgotten after all his reading and sleeping in Ketterdam.  And the sight of his mussed hair, the feel of his breath on her skin, the curve of his hip hidden under his coat when he refused to give into the human need for basic warmth because of his own silly pride.

Perhaps she had forgotten a bit of what he actually is.

“Mikhail Stepanov,” she says, discovering some of her anger at him again.  He raises an eyebrow.  “From Oretsev.  An orphan.  Someone missed by the testing.”

Saints, she wants to punch his face when he merely arches an eyebrow and says, as if the information is all inconsequential, “Yes?”

She suddenly doesn’t feel like playing his games.

“It’s me,” she bursts out.  “You’ve taken me!”

“It worked quite well for you,” he says easily, as if her life is something she’s conjured for the amusement of others.  As if each element was something she had chosen for maximum effect.  As if she wanted to be an orphan whose food tasted like dust for most of her life.  As if she wanted to be his pawn.  “And now…” he makes a dramatic gesture with his hand, “there’s symmetry.”

He does not look in the least bit repentant.  Not that she expects him to even try.

“Besides,” he adds, his voice cold, “That isn’t your life anymore, Mariya.”

If she had had a stick, this is the moment she absolutely would have hit him.

She matches his tone as best as she can, “What are you doing here, Mikhail?”

“Do you think I will simply tell you?” he asks archly.

“Maybe if I ask very, very nicely,” she says with an annoyed bite.

He smirks.

“We both know you will not do that.”

And he is right.  She is in no mood to do that at all.  And she may very well never be in such a mood.

He changes the subject casually:  “Do you like being back?”  The corner of his mouth turns up.  “I was just recently reminded of the last time I came here…”

He is baiting her.  And she is in such a mood that she rises to it despite knowing this.

“Oh, did they fail to clean up some of the blood stains on the marble somewhere from where you removed half of the Second Army from existence?”

The other corner of his mouth rises and now he is smiling quite unpleasantly.

“I removed traitors to the cause.”

Her lips draw into a tight line.

“And what cause was that…?  The soothing of your own ego?”

His expression remains irritatingly calm and unbothered.

“You’re aware that that’s not how history remembers anything.”  An eyebrow rises and he says, “And while history is often written by the victors, I doubt even you could accuse me of writing that particular chapter.” 

She does not speak, mostly because she has read exactly one “historical” account of that time and after she finished, she had flung the book against the wall.  Then she had picked it up and done it again out of spite. 

That had been several decades ago.

He lounges back, crossing his long legs.

“Or perhaps you are upset with your portrayal?  I find there are often… inaccuracies.”  He is not wrong.  In her opinion, what they have to say about Sankta Alina has both been inaccurate and unflattering—at best.  But… how history had portrayed him had been worse.  The last known Darkling had attained the status of a cult hero and went by the title of the Great Liberator.  He was no doubt waiting to lord this over her in his usual manner.  As if to emphasize this, he folded his elegant hands in his lap.  However, as if he is the one teaching the lesson, he says instead, “Or perhaps you have already left behind many of your youthful pretensions and are ready to have a serious discussion?”  She simply glares.  He continues to look placidly at her, and continues obligingly, “But level your accusations anyways.”

“You didn’t liberate anyone,” she starts, emphatic.

“Ultimately, no,” he says, “But not for want of trying.  What I have always done has been for Ravka and for Grisha.  But that’s not the point of the title.”  He raises an eyebrow at her, “Do you think anyone would have followed me if I had—how did you put it?—done it to soothe my own ego?”

“You trained them to have blind loyalty to you.  Like you tried to do with me.”

He leans forward, his folded hands pressing together just slightly more.

“And how did I do that?”

“They had no alternatives.  You took them at eight, you brought them up in the Little Palace, took them from their parents—you—”

He frowns and says, “So I am still the villain, I see.  And no one seems to have disabused you of the notion that my powers were not limitless.  Let’s start there in what I hope will be a civil discussion.”  He draws in a breath, and she resolves to be civil just to prove his implications incorrect, and he starts, “Why testing at eight?”

She remembers the taste of ashes for years.  The weakness.  The sickness.  The cold.

“Wasting sickness.”

“Best case scenario,” he says, almost bored.  He raises a lazy, skeletal hand, “More.”

She remembers Sergei burning down his own town.  “Damage,” she says.  An understatement.

“Almost always Inferni,” he sighs, a hint of irritation coming into his voice.  A wave of his hand:  “More.”

She is not naïve enough to discount the countries that surround them either.  In the first blush of her short career as a Sun Summoner she’d watched him Cut a Drüskelle in half.

“Kidnapping and death.”

“…And indentures and experimentation.  I’d say Shu Han, Kerch, the Wandering Isle, and Fjerda all make an excellent argument for the utility of the Little Palace on their own without me adding to the argument.” His eyes narrow, as if he is remembering something unpleasant—and he likely is—and he asks,  “Please—enlighten me as to the viable alternatives you might propose to counter these.”

Alina frowns.  Then, since it has always seemed like the most obvious path in the world, she says with a tone laced with sarcasm, “Careers and education?”

Aleksander laughs outright as if the very notion is hilarious.  Then, his expression still faintly amused, he uncrosses his legs, and sits up. 

“Have you ever actually read the Royal Charter of the Second Army?”

She blinks.

“No…?”

“Funny, seeing as you became it’s General after me—not knowing the tenets and policies that guide your position.”  He tsks and then his face breaks into a smirk as hers blanches.  “It’s been policy since Vasily Petrovich Lantsov III that a Grisha’s military tenure ends in death.”  Alina does a quick calculation… finding this to be almost 400 odd years in the past.  She grows more uneasy as he continues, “The retirement age, budget, and the stipend sent home were only finally revised by the sobachka and Zoya—neither of whom happened to be Lantsovs.  And even then, as you are likely aware, even they met with a good deal of resistance.”  She does not respond—because what can she say?  He takes her silence as confirmation and asks, the smooth glass of his tones surprisingly neutral, “The world is not so cut and dry as it was when you were 19, is it solnyshka?”

She simply glowers at him.  It is better than admitting there is some truth to what he is saying.  So, instead, she tries to duck to a new topic.

“The Grisha were always better provisioned than any First Army outfit I knew of…” she comments.  “They were hardly badly off.”

Aleksander scoffs.

“Odd considering the budget of the Second Army was always a third that of the First.”  Alina’s eyebrows rose incredulously.  But he simply went on, in a tone of mocking regret, “Alas, I was the sole person overlooking the funds and if they found their way to my soldiers rather than to the dacha in Balakriev (5) I was not allowed to own since I was Grisha or my many mistresses whom I could keep but not marry because I was Grisha—regardless of my rank.”

Alina chews on what she is telling him—during her tenure in the same position, she had only the faintest interaction with the budgets for the army requisitions.  Nikolai—who had far more experience from being a royal, from being a soldier, and from being a privateer, respectively—had handled the financial aspects of her job without her knowledge and with minimal input.

Probably because the only money she had ever managed had been her laughably small stipend when she had been a Cartographer—and that had been largely irrelevant when she had arrived at the Little Palace.  Not wanting to give him additional ammunition for whatever argument he is constructing, she doesn’t tell him she did anything different as a General than he did—though she rather suspects he knows.

Instead, she asks, “Grisha weren’t allowed to own property?”

His smile turns sour.

“Did it never strike you as strange that all I officially have to show for all of my lives of service is a single suite of rooms at the Little Palace?”

She had never thought of it.  Never thought about how far the coinage of his power—as the most powerful of their kind—went.  And now, she notes, that is not even his anymore.  Arguably, those rooms never were.

“They were nice rooms,” she says.

He chuckles darkly.  “The nicest I’ve ever had.”  He makes a gesture towards where the Little Palace stands outside the one window she possesses in her little hut.  “It was all most of us would ever have.  I did what I could.”

She feels a knot in her stomach sicken—mostly because there is logic and sense to what he says.  But she also knows him and he always presents lies with the glamor of truth.

“And marriage?”

He takes a long look at her.

“Done without witnesses and largely unrecognized by the government—that was our way for as long as I can remember.  Zoya changed that out of… personal necessity.” 

He says nothing more and neither does she.

He levels another look at her and says, “Any more sins you want to lay at my feet alone?  I have never pretended to be a good man, Alina.  And I would be an outright liar—” she nearly laughs at this statement, “—if I said I would apologize for any of my actions.”

“We both know what you’ve done.”

He arches an eyebrow and rejoins, “You know a very limited scope, certainly.”  He looks away momentarily as he continues, “Sometimes history recognizes that it is rather… complicated when you work for people who are in every way more lazy, incompetent, and wasteful than you are, and whose corruption and greed is masked beneath a thick veneer of bloodlines and fetes.”  He fixes his cold grey stare on her, “And that is who you chose over me, Alina.  Or, since this is a civil conversation, we’ll put it thusly: as history notes, the Sun Saint aligned herself with the dying gasp of the corrupt Lantsov Dynasty and became their… how did someone word it?  I believe it was their ‘barely competent’ General.”  His smirk returns and broadens.  “I always wanted to see how that appointment went… I had somewhat hoped Vasily might trip over himself to propose to you in the same breath as making you an unwise military appointment—the utter fool.”

She feels rage flare within her at how flippantly he says all of these things.  As if he does not recognize that he had given her no choice.

“I wasn’t appointed,” she blurts out.  His smirk is swallowed by a rare look of surprise at this piece of information.  “I asked for it.”

Because she meant to go after him.

His eyes widen and then, unexpectedly, he full on laughs, the sound echoing off the small confines of the room.  He is still chuckling to himself when he says, “I have been a General more times than I can count and not once—once—have I ever asked to be in the position.”  His grin is practically mocking.  “You really just asked and it was granted?”  His mirth still hasn’t ended.  “You had a single year of education at the Little Palace and a stint as a Cartographer of the First Army… what qualifications could you have possibly demanded such a position on…?”

He knows (and now she knows, too), that she did not possess anything like qualifications for her position that wasn’t predicated on her own false saintliness.  His smirk of superiority answers her silent frown.

“Is it surprising that history has made you no General, solnyshka?” he asks, softly.  “In less inept hands you might have been another pawn or a prize.  In the hands you did land yourself in, you became a figurehead and, ultimately, a scapegoat.”

His analysis is brutal and pointed.  And, in many ways correct.  He’s not the only person who has arrived at it.  Mostly because in the lens of history, with the particular biases of Ravkan politics these days, he had been the one to turn away from the corruption of the rulers.  She had endorsed them with her saintly stamp.

History leaves out that she was fighting him.  That it was personal.  That she was the only one who could have fought him on any even grounds.

But she still has her pride:  “I still beat you with all your experience and your qualifications.”

His eyes flash and his too-thin hands still in his lap.

“You are well aware I am not infallible,” he says quietly. 

“I became sharply aware of that when you put a collar around my neck,” she says bitterly.

His expression almost turns bored, and he plants an elbow on the arm of the chair and sets his cheek upon his palm, looking strange with how the strands his wispy beard and his slightly unkempt hair mar his usually flawless appearance.

“That was not the moment when you should have become aware of that,” he says and she bristles at him, feeling the anger rise within her until a dull glow paints her skin.  He observes her impassively.  “Although I can see that you still haven’t lived long enough to appreciate the nuances of my decisions then regarding you.”

“By all means, Darkling,” she nearly spits the word, “explain.  Explain each and every nuance.  Explain where you went wrong.”

He shifts himself up again, taking her full measure with his cut glass gaze.

“Very well,” he starts, sounding tired.  “I was under no illusion you’d be pleased with me.”

Pleased with him.  She wants to snort, it’s such an understatement if she ever heard one.

“You had eternity to be forgiven, after all?” she bites out, making a flippant gesture.

He sighs.

“You still assume it was personal, Alina.  All this time you’ve been quite mistaken in your assumption it was at all personal.”

She holds his gaze, straightening up.

“Wasn’t it?  Did you not burn down my childhood home and kill the people important to me?  Or… am I perhaps remembering a different person?”

There’s a glint in his eye.  He shows no remorse.  She doesn’t know if he’s capable of that emotion.

“I am not saying it did not become personal when forcing you to stop was tantamount to putting down the entirety of the Lantsovs’ ridiculous pretensions and I was unwilling to kill you to do so.”  He pauses, looking away again.  “But… with the stag, I still regarded myself as a General first and foremost,” he states icily.  “And what did that make you?”

“Your slave, evidently,” she mutters, the anger building in her again.

He ignores her.  As he usually does.

“Let’s speak tactically: You were my subordinate.  No matter how rare your abilities, you were an unpolished, largely untrained, liability who happened to be a unique military asset.”  His tone hardens.  “But at that point, if you’ll recall, you and your tracker were both deserters.  As a General, in the strict scope of the charter, do you know what I should have done with you, Alina?”

“Controlled me, evidently,” she spits. 

“No, Little Saint.  Your tracker should have been delivered to the firing squad of the First Army and you to justice under my discretion.”

“And had I not been your Sun Summoner what would you have done?”

His grey eyes darken.

“I take deserters quite personally, as you can imagine.”  His smile turns wolfish and she knows exactly what he would do even before he confirms it.  “You’re well aware of my proficiency with the Cut.”

She knows how he thinks.  She knows what he is going to argue before he does it.  Mostly because it is the same sort of argument they always have.

“So, I suppose you’ll tell me next that controlling me was an act of your mercy and that it had to be done.”

He flattens out his hand and makes a dismissive gesture before he says with a tone of utter condescension, “Your words indicate your understanding, though your tone belies some… reluctance.”

“I still don’t forgive you, Aleksander.  You used me to annihilate an entire city—thousands of—”

He interrupts her neatly:  “I used you to avoid a long protracted ground war we could not afford in many senses—both in of the cost of both Grisha and otkazat’sya soldiers, but also because most of the coffers were and still are, I imagine, leveraged to Kerch merchants so Tatiana Lantsov and her ilk could have daily, imported caviar on their blinis.”  He pauses and some of the irritation he evidently feels leeches out of his tone.  “And I used you because you were one of my subordinates and I was your General.”

He wants to punch him.  Still.  Mostly because the smooth planes of his expression show he is still unrelentingly certain about his decision.

“And the fact that you sacrificed me to do it—is that where you reminded yourself you make mistakes?”

“No,” he says pointedly, and he looks over at the dead embers at the bottom of her fireplace.  “In terms of you and I personally—I was well aware of what the ramifications of that decision would be.”

She lets go a short, mirthless laugh.

“So, you just decided to wait on eternity and your charms?”

He cocks his head to the side, as if he is deciding weighing his words.  As if there is anything in them that he could weigh.

“I’ve always put aside my personal…” he pauses and then says, disdainfully, “feelings in order to do my duty.  What I’ve done I’ve done for Ravka.  And what I did then was also for Ravka.  Eternity offers me very few benefits, generally.  I’ve learned to take them when they present themselves.”

She realizes this is a kind of confession and suddenly, as he is done at other moments, the man in front of her splinters in front of her into several things harmonizing and contradictory all at once: he came in as Mikhail the Shadow Summoner, but also as the Darkling, the Black Heretic, and maybe, maybe, whoever Aleksander is under or even amidst all those splinters.

“On the Fold,” she whispers, putting the pieces suddenly together.  After Mal, she does not say.  But she thinks it.  “That’s when—”  She trails off.  “You didn’t choose to be a Ravkan General there.”

His expression alters, though not in a way that overly gives away any sense of his thoughts or an overt rationale for what he did.  His reply is a non-answer: “That should have been obvious given my actions.”

The words fly out of her mouth before she can consider them:  “Do you regret it?”

His grey eyes pierce her.  Again, though, his answer is not quite one, and it comes in a low voice that, she suspects, echoes the ghosts these walls hold for him:  “Have you not learned?  Wanting makes you weak.”

She does not look away from him.

“And do you want now, Aleksander?”

Nor does he look away from her.  The marble of his gaze is steady and certain.

“I am not in Ketterdam anymore.  I believe now I have to…” his entire posture alters again and he becomes something completely other than himself for a moment, his voice becoming shy and simpering, “…find my way to dinner, Mariya.”  He rises.  The corner of his mouth draws up into an enigmatic half smile, though, that Mikhail Stepanov would never be capable of and out peeks Aleksander once more.  “So you shall have to see.”

***

After this, their “lessons” are variable.

Sometimes they play chess.  Sometimes she ignores him completely and he will sit in silence on her settee for the entire duration of their allotted time.  Sometimes, when Agafya or Maksim comes by, she makes a show of teaching and he makes a show of learning, the waves of shadow wavering in his palm and the same slack shouldered stance he adopts elsewhere worn like a coat on his frame.

Nothing has been like Ketterdam.  She does not know what he does during the day.  Nor has she cared to ask where he sleeps and he does not approach her outside of these prearranged times.

After all, the cold is different here.

***

She, however, is not simply content to let him be. 

She knows him too well, for one, to just leave him to his own devices.

So, one night she makes her way under the golden dome where dinner is served and the ghosts of other times sit alongside the present.  She sits next to a surprised Agafya at the head table and, although the other members of the Triumvirate are absent, Maksim Zaitsev sits on her other side and asks, eyebrows raised, “To what do you owe this august occasion of having you join us, Mariya?”

She smiles.

“Sometimes even I like company,” she says cheerfully.

Maksim smiles and elbows her a bit.

“Is that all?”

“All what?” she says, slightly irritably.

Then her gaze where he is not so subtly directing her focus with a jerking of his head.

She finds “Mikhail’s” head tipped just high enough to observe the high table, but it darts down as soon as she looks in his direction and, irritatingly, a blush covers his cheeks.  The utter absurdity of this image is compounded by the fact that a sandy-haired boy on the other side of him, dressed in the kefta of a Alkemi, whips his head between her and back to him and then laughs uproariously and smacks him on the back like he is a friend.

Aleksander having… friends.  How… unthinkable.

His poor “friends.”

“Mr. Stepanov’s settling in quite nicely,” says Agafya, a small laugh in her voice, which she hides behind a dainty daubing of a napkin at her lips.

Maksim winks at her.

“Very, very nicely, I’d say,” he says.

“Were you worried, Mariya?” Agafya says, amusement still clear in her tone.

“I was hungry,” she says, wanting to absolutely throttle Aleksander the next time she sees him.

Maksim shoves in a spoon full of stew, and says, his mouth still full, “Evidently, so is Mikhail.”

Briefly, she contemplates throttling Maksim, too.

“I’m never eating here again,” she says with irritation that isn’t entirely feigned.  Maksim outright laughs at her, mistaking it for a joke.

“He’s young yet, Mariya,” says Agafya gently.  “It will pass.”

Alina doesn’t bother to tell her she is absolutely and completely wrong on both counts.  And, in petty retaliation, she ignores him entirely for the next week of lessons.  By the second day, he brings a book and smirks whenever she glances over at him.

By the end of the week, despite him saying and doing nothing, she announces, “You’re insufferable” and throws him out.

It solves precisely none of her problems.  But at least she doesn’t have to look at him lording over the fact that she can’t do anything about it without reconsidering the wisdom of throttling him.

***

Maksim comes in, as he does more frequently since “Mikhail” has arrived, bringing with him several vatrushka (6) that remind her of Butter Week at Keramzin (which, in turn, makes her think of Mal and, by turns, the blood of the Firebird which courses through her still).  So, his well-intentioned gift starts him, quite unintentionally, off on the wrong foot.  That he comes in and sits down directly before her lesson with “Mikhail,” makes his intentions even more obvious.

So, when Aleksander does come in she notices how he takes in the situation with just one flick of his grey eyes and he remains the stoop shouldered, shy stranger he pretends to be everywhere but here.

And, as Maksim shares with him a vatrushka, which he bashfully accepts and eats, wearing a simpering expression, as if he is unworthy of a pastry, and answers Maksim’s questions about his academics and how he is settling into life at the Little Palace with tentative, nervous responses, Alina has to work not to mightily roll her eyes.

Then, he sets the little packet of remaining pastries onto the table and pulls himself up.

“Shall we see your progress, then?”

Aleksander flicks his eyes up to her, nonverbally asking her permission for probably the first and only time in his existence, and she says, as if this is anything but a farce, “You may begin.”

He drags off his gloves, having to swipe at the right one twice to pull it off, and then, holding his hands together, knots his brow in concentration, and produces an orb of writhing shadow between his hands.

Then, doing her part in this farce, she says, “Now, concentrate and work on splitting it into two.”

Now, in a approximation of effort, he sets his jaw and, after several apparent attempts manages to split it.

“Now,” she says to the man who has several centuries of summoning experience on her and has done things both with his natural power and with merzost probably no one else has, “increase the size of both.”

He does and, somehow, his effort—maybe in holding himself back too intently—produces a fine sheen of sweat over his brow before the orbs become slightly less than controlled wispy balls of darkness.

She thinks, absurdly for a moment, of Baghra and what she might have said, had any of this been more than an elaborate charade.

“Not enough darkness to scare an infant,” perhaps?

Seemed too nice.  For Baghra.

She’d be more pointed:  Are you so eager to show weakness, boy?  By all means, disabuse everyone of the notion that you might do something right.

It’s not something she can get away with, though.

Instead, she instructs, “Now amplify it.”

He claps his hands together and the darkness expands, explodes, and writhes around them in a startling loss of control.  She wonders if he is considering choking Maksim under the cover of his lack of control for making him undergo this farce.  And, although she wouldn’t normally have sympathy with this sentiment, she does today.

“Enough,” she says sharply.

And then, taking her cues from him, she says, “You keep losing your control when you amplify your powers.”

He hangs his head in some shallow approximation of a shame she’s pretty sure he doesn’t have the capacity to feel.

The long string of theory laden advice she is about to give that he will pretend to listen to and, perhaps, argue with later—it would not be the first time—is interrupted when Maksim rises, clapping his hands and saying, “Ah, very well done, very well done!  Such progress!  Such progress, my boy!”

He stands up and wraps his arm around Aleksander’s shoulders and is saying several encouraging things about his progress in all patronizing paternal tones.  Alina somehow knows that he is now reconsidering not “accidentally” losing control and killing Maksim moments prior.

“It will do!” he says, patting Aleksander’s back in an overly familiar manner.

“Do for what, Maksim?” she says more sharply than she intends.

He straightens his kefta and draws himself up.

“The Tsar has requested an audience with our Mikhail.”

(He’s definitely not hers.  Whatever he thinks.)

Alina frowns and says, “So, what you mean to say is Duke Kirigan has demanded an audience with Mikhail.  Probably to evaluate what a threat he is…?”

Maksim’s eyes narrow and he clicks his tongue and says, “Mariya, no matter how true what you say is, it isn’t done to say it so plainly in these times.  Especially with tensions as they are.”

Alina ignores him and says, “And, as you know very well what Mikhail is capable of showing Duke Kirigan, you, Maksim, are here for another reason entirely.”

He shows himself back to a chair and takes his own vatrushka and nibbles on the creamy, fruit filled center.  He makes a show of swallowing and then says, “As you know, anti-Grisha sentiment is… running high and the Triumvirate isn’t on the most…” he clears his throat noisily, “friendly terms with the Tsar.”

Alina sits in her own usual chair and makes Aleksander stay standing, feigning awkwardness between Maksim and her.

“The Tsar is eight and would rather be playing with his toys,” she says dryly.  “What you mean is Duke Kirigan fears losing control of the army to the Triumvirate.”

Zaitsev clears his throat disapprovingly at the ugly, true things she is saying.  Alina merely grabs one of the vatrushka and takes a moody bite, letting the sweet filling roll over her tongue as a consolation prize for the rest of her afternoon thus far.

Then, Mikhail—a puppet whose existence is more dubious than even the boy Tsar—asks in a deeply quiet and anxious voice, “But… I still don’t understand.”  Still?  She notes.  “Why would they need to talk to me?  I’m hardly a threat.”

Maksim laughs softly to himself.  Alina does internally—and slightly hysterically—for reasons that are completely different than Maksim’s.

“Mikhail, my boy,” he says, and inwardly Alina cringes at his form of address, “As I’ve already said, you can hardly be unaware of the Darklings of the past.”

“I’m—I’m not one of them!” he protests.

Liar.  She thinks.  You’re all of them.  Alina crams the vatrushka into her mouth again—to keep from laughing or gagging she does not know—but suddenly, the pastry seems cloying in its very sweetness.  Because she suddenly has a very good inkling about where this is all going.  And she does not want it at all.

He nods at Maksim, who smiles wanly and making a gesture with his sticky hands, says, “In our times, the history is enough to frighten… certain highly placed individuals.”

Aleksander’s eyebrows both shoot up into the slightly unkempt fringe of his hair.

The next thought is torn from Mikhail/Aleksander with the force of a revelation:  “Like… Duke Kirigan!”

Maksim hums paternally.  Proudly.  Alina simply regards her pastry and wishes she would choke on it so she won’t have to endure this farce. 

Maksim continues in a patient explanation that is several centuries too late for who he is talking to:  "Associating those two fears—the power of a living Darkling and the power of the Triumvirate—would be... unwise.  Politically speaking.  So, while this would normally fall to me," he makes a vague gesture of helplessness with his hand, "...Well, I suppose I should just ask."

He sees him give a furtive glance over at Mikhail—who she has to think of as Mikhail because, even if they look identical, for Aleksander to look the way he does right now is unthinkable—like he is attempting to take up as little space as is at all possible in light of their discussion.  Like he’s the mouse he used to tell her she was.

(The thought makes her think of her at 19 and the unwanted vatrushka sits leaden in her stomach.  Especially as Maksim looks over at Mikhail/Aleksander for some sort of acknowledgement he doesn’t get.)

"We've discussed this, Mariya, but we were hoping you might... well, guide Mikhail through the process of an audience.  Escort him.  You're likely..." He takes a bite of pastry and chews, likely finding a synonym for "inoffensive" "... Politically neutral enough.  And," he takes another bite, though he keeps talking, not sparing a glance to the individual standing between them, "Mikhail trusts you.  Don’t you?"

Aleksander sees clearly the man is not paying attention to him because, although it's Mikhail's voice that answers, it is Aleksander's smirk which plasters his face.  "O-Of course!"

“Maksim,” she starts, caught off guard, “Perhaps we can—” talk about this alone.

She doesn’t even finish.  Mostly because she knows he will not allow it.

And, though he is still the man that has too much vodka and embraces her far too tightly when he drinks it, the man who eats pastries in her hut and is surprisingly informed in terms of his gossip while dropping crumbs all over his kefta, she has the sudden disconcerting feel of the floor being pulled out from under her.

Which is ridiculous.  Because she is an apt pupil.  Of the man whose cool grey eyes are evaluating her, even as the rest of him maintains the guise of a shy, slightly dense 21 year old.

But Maksim has absolutely played her in this request.  There is a reason that he has brought the vatrushka.  Brought Mikhail.  It’s theater and there are props and there’s an audience.

And Zaitsev, like the “boy” standing next to him, and the “politically neutral” woman in front of him, is a consummate actor.  You do not get to be on the Triumvirate these days  without being one.

She changes tack, mostly to confirm what she knows:  “I don’t know that my court etiquette will be up to the task.”

Zaitsev turns his attention from his pastry and fixes an appraising look at her.

"Agafya told me your spent time with the Storm Queen—which is not common enough knowledge to damage you, I assure you.  So, given that, I assume your court etiquette is up to snuff?"

She doesn't spare a glance over to where the proxy of Aleksander stands.  He had distracted her enough as of late from what should have been obvious.  

"You ask that like I've agreed," she says evenly, thinking about the way Aleksander makes himself smaller in front of them.  Thinking about the last time a man such as this had tried to require things of her.

(And she is not a mouse anymore.)

Zaitsev puts down the pastry and looks at her, and Alina has the strange feeling that he is seeing her for the first time at just this moment.  Then, deliberately, he grabs the last of the vatrushka and, picking it up, takes a slow bite, ripping into it with his teeth and chewing the entire bite before speaking again.

The confirmation comes:  "I can make it an order, if you like, Mariya.  But Mikhail and I both think you are the best suited to this."

And from the depths of her mind, Genya’s voice giving the most basic of advice about this world, comes in back to her:  Beware of powerful men.  But she is not a mouse and she is not 19.  Nor is she inoffensive, politically neutral, Mariya Baranova.

In actuality, she is Alina Starkova, the Sun Summoner.  A powerful woman.

And she has gotten very, very good at playing games of political chess with powerful men in her long, long life.  Mostly because she plays with a chess master known for political bullshit, who currently is standing at her hearth, rather often.  And he is far more dangerous than anyone else.

So she softens the look on her face—the portrait of demure submission, exactly like what they expect of her—and says softly, “That won’t be necessary, of course, Maksim.”

He settles back into the chair and into the farce of his own performance, lured back by her obedience.

She bets no one has ever given him advice to beware powerful women.

Maybe she will, in time.

After some banal pleasantries, he leaves her with Aleksander, who straightens into being as soon as Maksim is gone, taking up his usual chair with an ease and command that Maksim Zaitsev would do well to study.

She decides she will deal with the threat in front of her first before considering the other.

“What are you playing at with him?”

Aleksander folds his elegant hands in front of him and says silkily, “I’m seeing what he is playing at with me.”

“I’m sure you’ll report back,” she says dryly.

The corner of his mouth turns up and he asks, with what might actually be sincerity (not that she just hasn’t had a jarring reminder that she shouldn’t trust just about anything he says or does), “Would you like me to?”

She is too irritated to be anything but frank with him.

“I’d like to know what you’re doing, certainly.  Then I might have time to figure him out for myself.”

He chuckles, rich and low, the sound reminding her of Kerch stew and the curling smell of birch smoke from a brazier.

“In time,” he says.

She’ll just have to see if he means it.

***

Chapter Text

iv.  Canonization

Today for their lesson they are playing chess on multiple levels.

Casually, Aleksander says:  “They do not know what you are.”

She looks significantly at the blue of his kefta.  The one that reflects her own, when she chooses to wear it—which is seldom, and never when he has taken “lessons” with her.  The only difference is that the embroidery on hers is an ambiguous blue on blue. 

“Like you, I am Etherealki,” she answers simply.

He makes a move, capturing one of her pieces.  For all of his years and cleverness, he is consistently a fraction worse than she is at the game.

His next inquiry sounds genuinely curious:  “How did you manage that?”

She captures one of his.

“I didn’t.  Zoya did.”

He studies the board from a moment, his face contemplative.  She does not know if it is over his next move or over the information she’s just handed him.

“It won’t last,” he says, making a move with his queen.  “It never does.”

She captures his queen, too.

“I don’t expect it to,” she says.  Although there is a small bit of bitterness that seeps into her tone despite herself.  The grey of his eyes flicks up, although his expression is unreadable.  That he notices but does not comment might be an act of mercy.  She is not sure.

“When they ask at last?”  He moves a piece, then, the reason he sacrifices his queen becomes clear, as he announces, “Check.”

“Then I’ll leave.”

She moves her queen, protecting her king and, in response to her escaping his threat, he cocks his head to the side, indicating he’s thinking.

“What do you know about Duke Kirigan?” she asks.

“Ah, a sudden interest in politics,” he says, moving his piece at last.  “How… novel.”

“I’d merely like to know what you’re making me walk into.”

He waits for her to make her own move, grey eyes passively observing her.

“I said nothing.  Pointedly.  Even Zaitsev didn’t order you.  You were asked.”

“You said nothing to me.  You managed it with Zaitsev beforehand, apparently.”  She evaluates the board.  “And you’re pointedly not answering my question.  As usual.”

He leans back and watches her closely as she makes her move.

“It’s a story so old, it’s boring,” he opines, his eyes turning ancient.  “Count Kirigan—the great-grandfather of the good duke—was one of the sobachka’s favorites—did you know him?”

Alina has a brief memory of wine and debauchery and distaste.  Nikolai had used him, or rather his reputation—to shield his more creative inventions.  The Golden Bog or something.  After a while, history blurs.  And during Nikolai’s brief reign she hadn’t wanted to be involved in the specifics.  Nikolai had respected that until the day he died.

She sets her piece down with a thunk on the board.

“Vaguely,” she owns.

“Count Kirigan was, by all respects, a good man and loyal to the sobachka and later, Zoya.  The problem, as I know you’ve realized, is always with the descendants.  They have money.  Privilege.  Less incentives towards use or excellence.  A certain… predisposition to the politics of Count Kirigan’s less than esteemed father.  A certain… resistance to the deprivations that make men good and great.”  He makes his own move.  His face takes on a caste of boredom as he talks.  “No matter how good, just, or talented a man is—his descendants will almost certainly be some brand of lazy, incompetent, or malicious.”

She keeps her tone light.  “Is that why you haven’t had children?”

He doesn’t even look at her. 

“No,” he says without elaboration.

“So, Duke Kirigan?”

He arches at eyebrow at her.

“Are you asking my advice, Alina?” he asks.

“No,” she says, more sharply than she intends.  She makes a very carefully considered move.  “You’re in more danger than I am from him.”

His smile arcs wider.

“They know what I am,” he says.

“I’m of no interest to them because they know nothing about me.”  She watches as he studies the board.  “That’s the point of me.”

He makes his move—and she has predicted it perfectly.

He responds lightly, “For now.”

She practically mashes down her next move. 

“Check,” she says pointedly.  He moves a piece and she knocks his king over on the board with something like satisfaction.  “Checkmate.”

He strokes the sparse beard he’s grown in contemplation.

“For such a smart man, you are not as good at this as I would expect.”

He merely smirks.

“I’ve put my considerable energies towards other things.”

Their time together is drawing to a close and she is still irritated with him over his part in the ploy to drag her to the Grand Palace and whatever he is planning with or without Zaitsev.

“I learned in my childhood.  Not much choice in what you put your energies towards when you’re actually an orphan.”  She stops short, because she knows how to watch her flanks with him.  Knows that bringing up Keramzin will bring up other things—like Mal and why Keramzin doesn’t exist anymore—that for some reason he feels he has the right to poke at.  But, because she knows exactly how to attack him, too, and he has taught her that, in many ways a good defense is offensive knowledge of your opponent before they have ever made a move, she adds casually, “I suppose, though, that you’re a real orphan now, too.”  She sits back in her chair in his mother’s house, knowing he will feel the phantom warmth from the fire and picture someone else momentarily in her place.  “I sometimes forget.”

The look on his face tells him he does not forget and will not forget this particular exchange.  Languidly, feeling petty since she has gotten two victories over him this session, she regards the clock on her mantle and says, as if she has just noticed it, “Ah, I believe I must dismiss you now, Mikhail.”

He rises and takes a long, evaluating look at her.  Then, uncharacteristically, without a parting shot, he goes.

***

He finds that, after a while stuck in his guise, Mikhail’s posture tends to make his shoulders hurt.  He rolls them, briefly, but does not resume something more dignified yet—that he only did with her, unspooling much of what he is only in her presence and nowhere else.

(Some of this he knows is temporary.  Some of it he knows, too, he chooses to only have that way.)

He has cultivated everything about Mikhail with his usual attention to detail.  When Mikhail had been given a private suite of rooms next to that of the Triumvirate (“For security,” the Corporalki Triumvirate member whose name he hadn’t deigned to learn had sniffed), he had gratefully accepted something “far better than he has had in this life.”  He pretends until Anton and Lev, discardable boys who had befriended Mikhail, tell him otherwise and Mikhail has the sudden revelation what an honor such a room assignment is.

In one of the events of his life which continues to repeat in strange iterations that are only inflected with the barest hints of personality of the actors, he finds he is going to be presented at court again.

(It occurs so frequently that he only bothers to retain the memory of a few such occasions—Anastas, for one, since he was the first of the long line of Lantsovs.  The sobachka’s first namesake, Nikolai I, who had a Fjerdan wife who threw a cup of wine at him while accusing him of being a Ravkan witch, Vasily the II, who had immediately made him a General… those are the only ones which spring immediately to mind.)

There is a knock and Mikhail’s nervous simper—spoken too quietly for the words to carry, just loudly enough to tell he has spoken—brings in the man who he had betting would make an appearance, carrying a folded garment over the crook of his arm. 

(Simply by the color, he knows moves are being made).

“Mikhail, my boy,” he greets, as usual.  Aleksander forcibly curves his lips into a small smile of acknowledgement despite the usual wave of revulsion which moves through him at Maksim Zaitsev’s appearance.  “I’ll help you into your kefta,” he says, smugly pleased as he holds up the black garment.

“It’s…” he hesitates for dramatic effect.  “Black.  Isn’t that…?”

Zaitsev’s smile spreads over his face, an almost sickening paternal affection that is the same when Mikhail “sorts” his personal correspondence and tells him he “recognizes” Shu verbs from his studies in the Little Palace’s language courses.

“The Darkling’s color, yes,” the fool says, his smile curling even further.

Almost as if he afraid of the cloth, he touches the Fabrikator-made silver clasps of the garment, and he says with Mikhail’s mousey tone, “Mr. Zaitsev,” he hesitates again, noticeably, the farce going interminably on, “I thought the point was that they wouldn’t see me as a-a—”

“Mikhail, hold out your arms,” he says with amused authority.  He does, making a show of ungainly limbs not quite mastered by their owner, enriching the fiction with every nuance added, as the black fabric of the kefta is put on him.  Clumsily, as if he could not do the same action with his eyes closed in darkness as black at pitch, he does up the silver buttons and then smooths out the black embroidery as if it is the finest garment he has ever worn.  Then Zaitsev comes around and, reaching up—since “Mikhail” is taller—puts his hands solidly and presumptuously on both his shoulders, before gazing at him in an evaluating manner and saying, “That will do.”

Very unfortunately—for him—the boy does not remove his hands and lectures him, as if he knows something of power, “There are far more subtle things going on here, Mikhail, my boy… the boy Tsar and his handler need a reminder, if you will, of what we Grisha are.  At the moment, though, the Triumvirate must trust you with this reminder, because they cannot afford to appear to be… threatening,” he releases one of his shoulders and waves a hand flippantly in the air, “With how things are and all.”

He sees Zaitsev’s point very quickly: he agrees, a show of power is necessary—to remind them that his Grisha are not to be trifled with.  Dear, foolish Mikhail, though, beams, as if this statement and this kefta are no doubt a mark of the trust and confidence that his betters have placed in him.

Had he been in charge, he would have marched half a regiment of his senior Grisha into the throne room of the Grand Palace as a not so subtle reminder, since, drawing on his intelligence network and Zaitsev’s personal correspondence (which is always written in a simplistic  Shu cipher on the subject), he knows Duke Kirigan and his likely pretender-Lantsov dolly, do not have the command of the military or the love of the people they need to prop them up without Grisha support.  He would also have never let a unique and valuable asset go into the viper’s nest of the Grand Palace without his personal protection.

Because Aleksander knows the way power flows and twists and he sees quite clearly what Zaitsev is not expecting untutored Mikhail to see—that in dressing up his pawn in the traditional black of the General of the long-defunct Second Army and the trappings of stories and legends, he is whispering the baited lie, “You will command him” to the Tsar’s handlers.  And, absent of anyone but his “unremarkable” instructor (what he had dared call her when the topic of his escort had been broached and, with some amusement, Zaitsev had not so subtly hinted “Mariya” would be the best choice, obviously trying to make the idea seem like Mikhail’s.), absent an escort endorsed by the members of the Triumvirate, there would be no liability if the royals did not rise to the bait.

The gullible boy who styled himself as a Darkling of old could simply be blamed.  So, what seemed like trust is actually absolute liability for the mechanizations of others.

It wasn’t an entirely elegant move—as it did endanger their Shadow Summoner in a shortsighted manner.  And the fact that the calculation had to be made in the first place is likely also revealing: either the Triumvirate had no sway or control with the Crown or they had no cause to be worried because the Crown could not make a move against them.

A smile rises to Mikhail’s lips and, taking in a deep breath as if the saccharine sentiment costs him something, he straightens up, temporarily stretching out his shoulders in the process, and says, “I will not let you down.”

(After all, it would not be the first time he would have to slaughter royalty, if it came to it.  If the idiot Tidemaker wanted a Darkling, he might very well get his wish.)

He is spared further interactions with the vaguely odious man when there is another knock at his door and Zaitsev barks permission to enter in his stead.

Agafya, dour faced and unsmiling, steps in trailed by Alina.

Ever the picture of impulsive, optimistic youth, he preens, “Mariya, are you getting a new kefta, too?”

They’ve dressed her to be unremarkable and politically inoffensive in a matronly dress that swallows her frame in a darker shade of blue than the usual Etheralki kefta.  And his Sun Summoner, a woman who should be dressed in black silks and crown jewels, does not have a single piece of embellishment or adornment.

Fools.

Zaitsev greets her far too familiarly, putting his hand on her shoulder, and asking if she is up to the task.

(He watches the clod and notes every single infraction, concealing his rage.)

She says, “I think I can more than handle this” and, smacking his hand from her shoulder lightly in a way that he also finds annoys him, she ushers him out, giving him a single significant look while Zaitsev is distracted that he might construe as something of a warning, if he had a mind to interpret it so.

Agafya inspects him and, finding no fault, nods and says—not to him, but to Alina—“I asked for a Tailor for you both, for the record.”

She chuckles, lingering at the door, and only he likely recognizes she is unwilling to draw farther into a place he temporarily calls his own, “Better we look like harmless waifs?”

“As much as any Grisha can,” Agafya says, adjusting her glasses.  Then she looks at him more critically, “You’re less thin than you once were, though.  The Little Palace has done you some good. “  She sighs, “Apparently it does us well that we appear human?”

Alina scoffs.  Mostly because she has likely recognized by now that, for the both of them, sometimes it is very easy to only appear human.

“Saints forbid we appear as something that we actually are.”

Agafya smiles and, properly turning to him, says, “Mr. Stepanov—as daunting as they are, the royals, too, are just humans in fancy clothing.  Just follow Miss Baranova and say and do only exactly as much as they ask and you should be just fine.”

She cocks her head to the side and suddenly frowns, turning to Alina, who still has not come farther into his rooms than the few feet directly in front of his door.

“…Although there is one change from the Storm Queen’s court.  You know not to turn your back to the Tsar, correct?”

Aleksander keeps his face expressionless, mostly because he has seen enough court protocol to know exactly what ridiculously humiliating thing is going to be asked of them.  He knows, too, without even an exhaustive review of the Tsars he has served, that it is something only asked of subjects by the worst representations of the type.

His musings are interrupted as Agafya demonstrates the idiotic movement that will be asked of them to finish out their audience today.

And then, as the rage builds in him, “Mariya” and Agafya have a forgettable conversation that he is not made part of, and then the woman who looks older withdraws and leaves them by themselves.

As soon as the door closes, he straightens his posture and rolls his shoulders, the black of his kefta settling neatly onto his frame like it was meant to.  He strides towards her and shows absolute restraint when he does not reach for her himself after that fool deigned to touch her. 

“You should have a kefta,” he says, regarding her for a long time.  “A gold one.”

“I prefer you in blue,” she says lightly.

“Liar,” he says, echoing her tone precisely.  “You just prefer me not to have things as I like.”

She arches one eyebrow at him.  “Like me?”

He decides to do the opposite of what she likely expects and to take her up on her bait.  Indulging his earlier whim, he hooks the finger of his hand under her chin and angles her head up to look at him.  He leans forward and whispers in her ear, “I believe I have already had you.”

She does not withdraw, so the heat of her breath mists his own skin momentarily.

“I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted… Mikhail.”

He thinks it is unlikely that he has ever found the sound of his own assumed name so displeasing.  Almost as displeasing as the knock at the door that forces him back into another skin and away from hers.

A servant informs him that the oprichniki assigned to him for the day’s… festivities are ready to escort them to the Grand Palace before shutting the door and leaving him alone with her once more.

She smooths out the fabric of her drab gown, and sighing, as if nothing of any note has just taken place.  She looks up at him and says sourly, “I had to wear a politically neutral lampshade the last time we did this.  How unfair.”

“I hope you don’t still expect fairness from the world, Alina.”

“I certainly don’t expect it from you,” she says, before opening the door and going out.

***

The Grand Palace is fractionally less hideous than the last time he was subjected to its confines.  He recalls, in one of the rare instances in Ketterdam when he had managed to get her to speak of such things, that she had told him the sobachka had continued his own work and taken many of the gaudy decorations down to melt into something with which to pay off the Crown’s many creditors.

The subtractions, unfortunately, do not add to the overall attraction of the place.

And there are further, likely intended subtractions, not yet filled as, here and there are odd gaps and a certain roughness of the stone work that belies missing crests—likely those with eagles and dragons.

The new regime is likely ripping Zoya out by the roots, to avoid reminding themselves that the Lantsovs are not the unbroken line they pretend to be or that a Grisha has ruled more successfully than most of them.  They are likely unable to completely pay for this with what remains in the coffers and also feed their armies to maintain a sense of control and morale.

Ravka, in some ways, never changes.

At this point, when he occupies this place, he might just raze it and sow the ground with salt and shadow in order to show them something new, at last.

He walks just behind Alina, Little Palace oprichniki and his kefta the only signal of who and what they are.  They are received with as little fanfare as he expects.

They wait until the Lord Steward—a tired, old man—announces their presence with a wheeze and a stamping of his overly elaborate staff on the ground.  The Lantsovs—which likely are completely unrelated to any actual Lantsovs he’s served—never do change, after all.  And around them are assembled the usual toady members of the Ravkan nobility, simpering in all their frippery.

He walks three steps in, stopping with the barest shuffle right past Alina’s sure steps and then, somewhat shakily, drops into a bow that is a fraction shallower than it need be.  Then, they approach a dais where he once sat and he notices that, though there is but one Tsar, both thrones on the dais are filled.

A child occupies one of them, kicking out his feet in boredom, his small crown askew on his curls.

The other, a steely haired middle-aged man with a permanently embedded scowl on his face, lounges in his throne with exaggerated disregard.  Such is his air of boredom that he does not so much as look in their direction.

“What brings you into our presence?” lisps the child playing at being a king who reads his lines well.

Next to him, her voice soft, but commanding—an imitation, he realizes, of him: “As ordered, I’ve brought Mikhail Stepanov, the Shadow Summoner, your Majesty.”

Internally, he curls his lips up into a smile (his face, though, remains frozen in a reliable imitation of fear) at the two words “as ordered.”  Alina, ever his queen, has used a great economy of expression to undo much of Zaitsev’s subtle persuasion.  She’s made the point that the Grisha serve only when ordered.  But, with a Darkling in front of them, cloaked in a Darkling’s history, they both know this is not an infallible reality.

(His lovely, bold, still slightly foolish Alina.  Who they are so unwisely pushing aside because they have made the mistake of not yet understanding who and what she is.)

Duke Kirigan speaks for the first time.

"Not you," drawls the Duke, still without looking at either of them. "I assume his Excellency, the Darkling, has his own mouth."

The edges of his smile show again. “Your Excellency” is a styling he's never been accorded by a sitting monarch.  Mostly because it recognizes an equal and a Head of State.  It would have been a grievous error to accord him such power in one of his other lives.  Prior to Zoya, who rose on his feigned corpse with a Lantsov who had a modicum of intelligence because he was, in reality, no Lantsov at all, no Grisha had been given such an honor.

"Ah," comes out his own strangled and stylized exhalation: the picture of terrified bewilderment. "I’m Milkhail Stepanov," he manages, just audibly before bowing again, the lapse in etiquette earning him a tittering laughter from the ranks of the nobility.

"And you're a Darkling?" the Duke asks, turning to him, at last.

Aleksander wants to laugh at the question. He doesn't of course. He has to pretend to be the child he is, after all.  So, Mikhail opens his mouth, then closes it. Then, in a small voice, he manages, "I am just a Shadow Summoner."  He stumbles, and corrects himself, “The Shadow Summoner.”

Mostly because he is the Darkling, a title he has taken as his own throughout the centuries.

The Duke's expression is unamused.  He slumps into his throne as the boy Tsar next to him sits on both of his hands and continues to kick his legs out—one after another in the rhythm of a bored child.

"Is there even a difference?"

“Mikhail” noticeably hesitates. "Yes?" Then, softening it as this immediately causes the man to pull himself upright, he draws his eyes down to the glistening marble, and mutters, "To my understanding..."

The assembled ranks of the nobility snigger behind their hands again.

"Is that your purpose then?"

His gaze drifts over to where Alina has made herself as small as she is able, but he is pleased to see that, though her hands are folded demurely and her head is cast down slightly, her feet remain apart and there is something thoroughly indomitable in the way she holds herself.

A lion playing at being a mouse.

"If it pleases your Grace to learn of Ravkan history, that may be my purpose here."

Ah, she will be his magnificent queen yet.

"Ravkan history?" He drawls.

She looks up and says with quiet steel, "Grisha are as Ravkan as you, are they not?"

There is no doubt that she has found out a good deal about Duke Kirigan on her own since if she is asking this question in open court. Such behavior is exactly what he suspected of her when Zaitsev had suggested that she accompany him. However, it is likely not at all what Zaitsev and his ridiculous Triumvirate expected from her.

A pity.

The Duke reveals much when he sidesteps such an easy question. And—ah, how easily centuries of progress come undone on the words and silences of one ignorant man. He's seen it so many times that even such blatant bigotry simply bores him.

It will be over soon enough, after all.  One way or another.

"My question, if you'll remember—" there's a distinct edge of threat in Duke’s voice, "—was definitional... Miss...?"

"Baranova (1), your Grace," she says, her voice even and unbothered.

"Well, Miss Baranova, my council," he emphasizes the words, "has made me aware that a Sankt has graced us."

Not the one you're aware of, though...

The Duke looks at him meaningfully. Aleksander looks at the floor meaningfully. Alina looks back, undaunted.

"I'm aware of many Saints, your Grace. To which one do the members of your council direct their prayers?"

"Sankt Milkhail, the Starless!" Chirps the boy Tsar, earning him a censorious look from his puppeteer.

Aleksander jerks his head up and then snaps it down in two deliberate manifestations of his feigned terror. As if he hadn't known this.

(As if he hasn't planned this since before the Duke was even a twinkle in his mother’s childish eye).

And his regent—acting as if, to Aleksander he can ever be anything but a squalling child of a boy, no matter his titles and his power—can't outright rebuke him. In clipped tones he spits, "Thank you, Vasily," before utterly ignoring the boy again.

"Well, Miss Baranova, is your pupil," he gives the word the feel of accusation without breathing a word of the actual manner, "a Sankt who has graced us with his presence?"

She does not hesitate: "That is not my belief," she says, then pauses, her tone shifting just barely, "I cannot control the beliefs of your councilors, though, your Grace."

And, always the apt pupil, she, too, gives a definitive answer while not answering, causing a brief flurry of conversation among the assembled nobility again. The Duke sharply raises his hand and the thrum of vapidity silences.

"Saints have an unfortunate habit of being martyred," he says, the words heavy with implied threat.

Her response is said with the feel of a platitude, "As your Grace knows well, the Istorii Sankt’ya is filled with stories of the wicked martyring the holy.  Such incidences are almost always to Ravka’s detriment."

The Duke's lips draw into a thin line, although Aleksander knows, to challenge this particular orthodoxy in open court will make far more enemies than challenging an Instructor of unknown providence from the Little Palace on a point of ego is worth.  The Ravkan Church with all its dead Grisha is not an enemy he should be willing to fight.  Duke Kirigan is, apparently, not entirely stupid.

"The last Darkling martyred Sankta Alina," he rejoins, instead.

Her own name has no power over her, he is almost proud to note.  Perhaps because they both know something far more complex than martyrdom occurred between the Darkling and Sankta Alina of the Fold.  Something no history book will ever know or account for.

"Or the Shadow Fold itself, did. Records from the period are inconclusive, your Grace."

The Duke scoffs. It's the response of a man who has left himself no other recourse but disdain.  Aleksander’s own little saint has outplayed him.

Then he orders, "Fetch me Gusev!"

There’s a brief shuffling and a man drops a bow to the seated individuals (the Tsar plays with his crown in response) and then moves to stand alongside the Duke's throne, facing towards them. Aleksander can tell at a glance that he's received military training, though he is dressed in the guise of a servant in a cream and blue uniform. He has an immediate suspicion about him that he cannot yet substantiate. He can do no more now than attempt to send a ripple of warning through their shared bond towards Alina about him. The only indication that she may have received this, though, is the slight shifting from foot to foot of her regal bearing.

"Now, how is this Darkling not a Darkling, Miss Baranova?"

The man at his side looks impassively on.

Alina merely answers, in the objective tone of one giving a lesson, "Ravkan history dictates that a Darkling, by definition, is a descendant of one singular bloodline, going back to the individual known as the Black Heretic, who created the Shadow Fold."

The Duke does not give any immediate response. Rather, he confirms Aleksander's suspicions when he looks over and gets a barely noticeable nod from Gusev. He is confident she knows the signs well enough that she should have drawn the same conclusions, too.

"And are you, Mikhail Stepanov, not a descendant of the Darkling known by the erroneous title of 'The Liberator'?"

He looks up and blinks. "No," he bleats. "I’m an orphan.  How could I be his descendant?"

The Darklings are all, after all, Aleksander Morozov. And he is Aleksander Morozov. And even the Duke's hypocritical Heartrender who has sold his own heart out from his chest to work against his own people will find no lie in the statement that he is not his own descendant.

"Gusev?" He says.

The man does not relax his stance whatsoever.

"He is not lying, your Grace."

There's a pause and suddenly the boy Tsar whines petulantly, "I was told he would do magic."  Then, suddenly imperious, he sits up and fixes his watery gaze on Aleksander and asks, “When will he do magic?”

The sentiment and the ignorance it represents makes Aleksander itch to use Grisha "magic" in the form of his Nichevo'ya.  Such is the magic these fools deserve.

Alas, he cannot.

"That will be enough, Gusev."

The Heartrender bows crisply and, never once turning his back to the boy Tsar and his boy handler, backs out of the room in a smooth execution of a ridiculous walk.

Then he turns back and says, "Very well, Not-Darkling, show us what you can do."

He looks over at Alina, who meets his eyes, and she gives him a small nod, seemingly of permission. Then, deliberately, he carefully takes off his gloves and puts them in a pocket of his kefta.

Putting a stiffness into the oiled and thoughtless practice of centuries, he claps his hands together and there is something slightly less impressive than the usual thunderclap, but, nonetheless, the darkness, bit by bit, answers his call and rolls towards him, blackening the throne room and his audience in its progress. This darkness, though, is merely a toy of his powers—a toothless, clawless call to the simplest, gentlest form of his shadows.

Because it is not yet time to remind them that in most of the stories there are monsters in the darkness. And that is certainly true here, as well, as even under the dark caress of these seemingly harmless shadows, there are likely at least two monsters lurking and biding their time.

The boy Tsar is not so enthusiastic about his display when it is actually happening, as he cries out and there's an immediate rush of the court machinery bumbling in the darkness to comfort the boy. It gives him some satisfaction to hear that the Duke is not so unaffected either, as evidenced by the recognizable quaver in his command when it comes: "That's enough. "

Clumsily and slowly, defying centuries of control, he draws the darkness back into him, a bit at a time. When the shadows withdraw, the Duke is on his feet and his expression is stormy.

"Is that all he can do?" He bites towards Alina, whose proud stance has not faltered in his darkness, though the denizens of the court around her are in a state of alarmed chaos.

And why would she? She could fight his darkness with a flick of her own hands.

She, yet again, though, does not hew the cautious route: "Yes," she acknowledges, before pausing and adding, now that the Heartrender is gone and she is able to lie audaciously, "But he is but young and untrained yet."

The Duke doesn't even bother to hide the burst of alarm that crosses his face. Rather, suddenly extinguishing it, coldly, the Duke pulls himself up straight in a throne that will not belong to him for long and intones, "Very well. You are dismissed."

Alina curtsies to those who are far inferior to her and he deigns to bow. Hopefully for the last time. Then, in a move deliberately intended to humiliate and intimidate—he remembers every child-king who has forced his subjects to debase themselves for their amusement—and backing up, he remains bowing and extends his long legs behind him in an elaborate kicking gesture, a step at a time, so that those who would inevitably destroy Ravka never have to see his back.

(Rage roars in him with every step. Rage that makes him vow the last thing they will see is a Grisha's back as they choke on darkness and blood.

But even such an end would be too good for them.)

***

They do not speak until they reach the confines of her hut on the grounds of the Little Palace, though, as soon as they leave the grounds of the Grand Palace, she allows her body to reflect the incandescent rage in it that is in him.  He finds he has calmed, somewhat, during the journey, his rage cooling in the utter predictability of the whole affair, but she gestures for him to come in and then gives the door a satisfying bash closed behind his back.

“Saints!” she exclaims.  “Shall we crawl on our bellies for them, too?”

She is a beautiful thing in her rage.  He covets the rarity of it.

“Did you ponder charring their royal skins?”

“Worse,” she sniffs, plopping herself into her accustomed chair with a sigh.  “I need kvas before Maksim inevitably barges in to ask me how it went.  And I need ‘politically inoffensive’ ways to say ‘Badly’ and ‘What the hell is the Triumvirate doing leaving us out to dry there?’”

He knows where it is and pours them both a glass, sitting with far more dignity across from her.  She drinks half of hers down in one go.

“How did you not just… Cut them?”  She drinks the rest.  “Every time?”

He takes a sip and lets the liquor burn satisfyingly down his throat.

“I certainly imagined it.”  He takes another sip.  “Many times.  As is usual during my audiences with royalty.”  Then casually, assessing her resolve, he says, “It is not too late to change your mind.”

She gives an audible growl of frustration and then exhales, “Saints, Aleksander.  Don’t tempt me.  Nothing good would come of simply annihilating the entire royal court.”

“Our satisfaction,” he says, arching an eyebrow, “is not immaterial.”

“Except that,” she spits.  “Except that.”  She drinks more of her kvas and then sighs, “I’ve come to the point where I can calmly discuss regicide with you over a glass of kvas.”  She sighs again, “How have I come to this?”

He leans his head on a hand and takes another sip from his own glass and spreads his long legs out comfortably before him.

“You did not use to believe me that eternity gives you a… different kind of conscience.”

Her lips draw up into a scowl.  “I don’t want your conscience.  He’s… eight!”

His lips draw up.

“And he is a puppet you are well aware will only grow worse as his puppeteer does.”

“Saints, I miss Nikolai,” she mumbles, pouring herself another glass.  “And Zoya.”  She drinks again.

He takes a leisurely sip of his own glass despite the prickly irritation this comment elicits.

“There are alternatives,” he proposes, knowing full well that she has not come to the point where she will wish to take them.

Especially when they wear his face, he thinks sourly.

“By all means,” she frowns, “Let’s take those that don’t involve using the Cut on children.  Or putting you anywhere near a throne.”

“You cannot hold me responsible for what fate you imagined for them, Alina.”

She does not dispute this.  She merely puts her glass down and kneads her temples.  They sit is silence for a while and he allows her to calm her fury and allow herself to form a response in a far more articulate manner.

As he now expects from her, she brings up the far more thorny issue than royal incompetence:  “…The real problem is that Heartrender,” she says with a sigh.  “Well, before you get ideas, which you should most definitely not indulge, the problem is more what that Heartrender represents.”

Aleksander looks towards the fire and finishes his glass of kvas in one last sip.

“In some ways, the Royal Charter of the Second Army’s very… limited options made things simpler.  No Grisha could choose to make the foolish error of betraying their own kind without consequences.”

She gives him a significant look.  “Of course, Great Liberator.”

“Says the woman who sided with the royals,” he shoots back easily.

“Not one’s as bad as these,” she mutters.

“Would you believe they’re not even bad?” he asks.

“Saints,” she says again, collapsing bonelessly into her chair.  “Do I want to know what rates at ‘bad’ to you?”

“Likely not,” he drawls.  “In fact, I expect your opinion of me might change if you simply studied history.”

She rolls her eyes.

“They haven’t annihilated a city yet.”

He makes a lazy gesture.

“Give them time—though, I expect they don’t have the power to do it all at once.”  He pauses, feeling suddenly weary in the knowledge he is right.  “They’ll do the same through starvation, neglect, and sheer incompetence.”  He pauses, “Or through Grisha executions.”

Her only form of reply is to sigh in utter exasperation.

“At least I have the courage to own my sins,” he says softly.

She looks away from him and then, sighing, gets up to put a new log on her fire.  Then, she sits down and he can see eternity’s weight bog her down.  She simply closes her eyes.  Then, wearily, without even the effort of her usual ill-considered malice, she says, “You need to get out.”

He is reluctant to admit she is correct.

“Make sure no one sees you.  You’ll create more rumors.”

He smirks.

“Perhaps that’s what I intend.”

She sighs again, her eyes still closed.

“There is always that possibility with you.”  Then, without opening her eyes, she lazily waves a hand towards her door.  “Just get out.”

Smirking for one last moment, before enduring the shoulder pain that comes with Mikhail’s slouch, he complies.

***

He does not see her except for “lessons” for some time, and she never allows herself to relax as much as she had in his presence during these times.

He would bet it has something to do with Zaitsev’s dictate to him when he is “sorting” his private correspondence, as usual, that he should “Distance yourself from Mariya.  Except for lessons.”

Mikhail asks, “Why?”

The only answer he receives—one which Mikhail would deem too complex to wade into further—is, “It is a matter of politics.”  He waves a lazy hand.  “Temporary.”

Aleksander is anything but content with this, however.

***

The fragile mundanity of her interactions with Aleksander (with the exception of their visit to court and its aftermath) abruptly ends when late one night, without so much as knocking, he opens the door and leans on the frame, waiting for her.

She is in a heavy dressing gown, sitting in front of the fire, reading several disquieting reports about several topics.  He’s in black again—his black trousers beneath a jacket that is tailored to be as close to one of his kefta as possible.

Simply to needle him, she does not move.  Instead, she says, “You’re letting all of the heat out.”

His eyes narrows and she knows her taunt has worked somewhat.  Especially when he shuts the door and, coming inside, says, “Baghra doesn’t suit you.”

“Nor does freezing to death.”

“Ketterdam was colder,” he observes smoothly.

She arches an eyebrow over the report she is reading.

“Dress,” he commands.

Unluckily for him, she’s in no mood to obey anything that comes out of his mouth.

“You’ve seen me in less,” she says.

“I’ve seen you in nothing,” he rejoins easily.  “But wearing nothing where we are going would be unwise, to say the least.”

She snorts.

“At least I know this isn’t your idea of some kind of midnight tryst.”

His voice is silky, “Are you lonely, then, Alina?”

She doesn’t even look up from what she is reading to acknowledge him.

“Not that lonely.”

There’s a slightly odd tone to his voice—one she doesn’t like, because it has a tang of hurt to it and it makes him feel more human—when he says, “One day you will have to explain what exactly you were thinking in Ketterdam, then.”

She is unlikely to ever do that.  Mostly because it didn’t entirely work as she envisioned.

Instead, lying in the same way he always does, she says, “You already said it was cold.”

He does not respond, and he is no more than a tall darkness at the periphery of what she is reading until, finally, she puts it down.

“Interesting reading?” he asks, his tone amused.

“Very,” she says, not moving from her chair. 

He smiles.

“What does dear Maksim have to tell you about the Cult of the Twin Saints?” he asks.

She frowns, as she had just put down Zaitsev’s report of a religious sect that was springing up across Ravka—one that has the potential to foment several populist rebellions against the boy Tsar.

He comes to the fireplace and makes a show of warming his black gloved hands and he continues, “And I am sure you are disquieted by the news coming out of Shu Han, as well.”

Alina does not ask him how he knows the content of her communications.  While she should want to know, she is not sure she wants to at just this moment.

“Why are you here, Aleksander?”

His smile this time is of a different nature.  It has at least a degree less of a predator standing before his prey in it.  He turns back from the fire to look at her, something besides the light of the flames glittering in the dark depths of his grey eyes.

“You’ve wanted to know why I came here.”

He doesn’t elaborate and she knows he won’t.  This is like any of their exchanges—unspoken terms and conditions, an incessant push and pull of his will and hers.  It always leads to neither of them being satisfied.  But perhaps neither of them is capable of being satisfied by the other.  Maybe they’re simply meant to fight across eternity until one gives the other enough provocation to finally kill the other.

She rises and lets the dressing gown fall until it is half on her armchair and half on the floor in front of it.  The nightgown under it she strips off without a second thought, draping it over the chair’s back so it will be warm from the fire’s flames whenever it is she returns from wherever it is she is going to let him take her.

Even though she will not give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it, she feels his eyes on her just as she feels the heat from the fire on her bare skin.  She steps into a pair of her own thick trousers and buttons up a shirt.

“Kefta?” she asks idly.

“Corecloth,” he responds, matching her tone precisely.  “No kefta.”

She translates:  They’re going somewhere dangerous enough to warrant protection, but not to a place where they will want to be anything but otkazat’sya.

“People will have questions if they see us together.”

She remembers the incident at dinner several weeks back, and the strange game he is playing.

She mentally amends her statement to say there will be more questions.

There’s a flicker of movement as she pulls out a dark, unassuming garment from her bureau.  She realizes he’s crossed his arms over his chest.  Still ignoring him, she pulls on the corecloth over her shirt, and then buttons up a coat over the top.

“They did not see me come.  They will not see me go.”  The faint sliver of amusement in the upturning of his lips persists as she throws her scarf around her.  “Have you confused my own skills with Mikhail’s?”

She gives him a sharp look.

“You seem to keep confusing me with Baghra.”

His frown sharpens and he straightens.

“Come,” he just says at last.

Alina follows him out into the winter night.  She does not know what this is—long ago she decided that it is unlikely he will ever let her die.  Aleksander has demonstratively proved that once.  However, even if outright murder has been removed from the table, and even if she is safer from him than anyone else in the world, he is far from safe.  

It’s a fact she sometimes forgets—mostly when he is reading with his coat over his feet, as if he is immune even to the cold.  It is harder to forget when he is wearing black and the shadows pool around them as they walk.

There’s a horse outside which he mounts easily, giving her a hand up.  She accepts, and she settles in front of him with only the faintest hint of suspicion in the curve of her lips.  His smirk tells her that he will not be explaining even should she ask.

Hot against the chill of the night, he breathes into her ear, “Bend the light.”

Annoyed, she snaps, “Ask nicely.”

There’s a beat of silence and he gives her one of the most disdainful and exasperated “pleases” she has ever had the pleasure of hearing in her long life.  The very fact, though, that she’s wrenched it from him indicates this is no idle adventure.  Sighing, she raises her hands and the horse and its riders disappear and they ride out of the Little Palace and into Os Alta leaving only the clatter of phantom hooves and a spooked oprichniki guard in their wake.

Feeling his warmth against her back, riding to somewhere unknown at his request, his cold attempt at a semblance of politeness… she wonders if this is what something like trust looks like between them.

Alina supposes she will evaluate that strange thought when they get to wherever they are going and see “why he came.”

In a dark part of the less savory parts of the lower city, on a deserted street, he instructs her to stop her summoning.  She gives him one brief look and, still uncertain about this, complies.  He knocks on the door of what can generously be called a house and a man, who is rubbing his eyes as he answers the door, answers and straightens as he sees who it is.

Aleksander gives one clear instruction:  “See to the horse.”

The man nods and comes out and takes the reigns from him.  Then, as if they have done this a thousand times, he offers her his arm and, giving him a brief glare as he persists in whatever charade this is, she takes it.  They walk like this through the midnight slums of Os Alta.  It is almost dawn, by now, and the horizon behind the tall walls has acquired a dull glimmer that mixes with the light.

It is only a short walk to the outer walls which ring the city.  The street ends in a neglected staircase leading into the city walls.  A man in a raggedy uniform declaring him a member of the Army of Ravka stands up straighter when he sees Aleksander.

He nods and then, deferentially, waves them up.

“You’ve been busy making friends,” she mutters.

He hums an acknowledgement and moves his hand to her back as they walk up the staircase.  They are nearly to the top—Alina can see the sky with its tentative streaks of light—when he asks, “Bend the light again.”

She clears her throat and gives him a look, demanding the concession of his surly politeness, but this time, with a coldness in his voice, “Or we could just reveal ourselves on top of the wall.”

A sudden wave of trepidation rolls through her.  If this is trust, it is perhaps more than she is comfortable giving him.

“Reveal ourselves to whom?”

He gives a brief, mirthless scoff and simply repeats, “Bend the light.”

She removes her arm from his, none too gently, and does.  They exit on top of the walls of Os Alta.  Without pausing, he continues on his way to the weathered walls, pockmarked with the damage of weapons probably only he remembers being used.

Beyond is a vast field of tents and, though the hour is early, people are emerging from them.  She has seen the refugees from the Shu Han revolution and the Fjerdan famines, but there is nothing obvious that is uniting them and no international crisis that she knows of, at the moment.  Ravka is as peaceful as it ever is, even as its borders are gnawed.

The people, who are, by and large, clothed in rags, are emerging from tents and sleeping rolls under the fading stars and facing towards the west.  Aleksander, too, does not say anything, he just stands, unnaturally still, watching out of the sea of humanity before him, as if waiting for something.

Finally, when he has made his point—which is at least what she is thinking he probably is doing—she sighs and asks, “What are we waiting for?”

He gives her a sidelong look, face otherwise expressionless, before looking out at the increasing activity in the encampment below.

“Dawn,” he answers simply.

Then, a slim sliver of sun crests the horizon and there is a ripple in the field in front of them.  Then, as the sun rises, so do the banners—hundreds of hand-stitched things with two familiar devices, some individual, some layered one on the other: the sun in eclipse half overshadowed by the yellow, golden, and white threads of the sun ascendent.

“They are most active when dark and light mix become blended—the dawn and the dusk.”  He gives her a significant look, something longing flickering in the grey of his eyes.  His summation is succinct:  “Poetic.”

She nearly makes a comment on his poetry, but refrains as Alina knows, then, precisely what he is showing her:  “That is the Cult of the Twin Saints,” she breathes.

All of it—except for the fact that they have literally camped outside of the walls of Os Alta—is in Maksim’s report.  How the combined popularity of the Sun Saint and the Starless Saint have spawned a new cult.  And since the Fold has been forgotten, and Sankta Alina has passed out of history and has shattered into a hundred improbable stories, the religious version of herself has been merged with the Starless Saint, whose legacy has been on the fringes of Ravkan society since the Darkling’s body burned.

The narrative of the cult is so simple, even Maksim does not bungle it.  The Cult of the Twin Saints seeks to find those in the darkness and lead them into the light of the sun.

(The author of this story stands next to her and she does not wonder that he gave up on poetry.  He writes governments and discord with an enviably deft hand.)

“No, that is not a cult,” he leans against the outer wall, casual in the same way he used to correct her Fjerdan verb conjugations or nonchalantly move a chess piece, “that, Alina, is an alternative.”  He pauses, and then clarifies: “A revolution.” 

Then he smiles, and she knows that he has been playing what, to most people, is a very long game.  Then, he turns to her, a look that she can only describe as hunger in his face, and says, “I will no longer offer you a throne.  The time of the tsars is over.”  He looks at her in silence for a while and, only now that she has been inured to it over the centuries, does she not want to flinch at the intensity of his gaze.

“I can give you much more than a throne, Alina.”

She frowns and turns away from the tents and the banners and the absolute fervor of adoration that he has written into being beneath them.  Then, without even bothering to reach for anger—because it will most likely amuse him—she turns back to the stairs.

“Not now you won’t.  I have lessons soon.”

Not even a flicker of disappointment crosses the planes of his face at this response.  Rather, surprisingly, just as he had on the way there, he offers her his arm and, for a moment, they are just a man and a woman together on the early morning streets of Os Alta.  It prickles with a strange intimacy she is not sure she likes.

They ride back to the Little Palace in silence and stealth.

Only in their lesson later, one of the ones where she ignores him, drinks her tea, and he pretends he doesn’t take one of the pastries she already knows he likes and she pretends not to notice that he does, does she comment, “You don’t seem surprised by my refusal.”

This, more than anything she said on the walls earlier that morning, earns her a frown.

Then he asks, “Do you not think I know you by now?”

The question, as with many things during the last day or so, has a hint of sincerity about it.

There is no sincerity in her answer, “Don’t think you haven’t given me cause to wonder.”

His frown does not ebb away.  Rather, he crosses one leg over the other and says contemplatively, “I know you well enough to know I will not convince you.”

She sets down her tea cup and raises an eyebrow.

“But someone else will?”

He leans his cheek upon a palm and looks into the fire in the grate.

“Time and history are far more convincing to you than my own arguments.”  He takes a bite of a pastry that today he does not even hide.  “We have enough of one and I can shape the other.”

She shakes her head. 

“Why did you bring me there then?”

His expression becomes unreadable. 

Then softly, the same sense of sincerity from earlier spreading over his tone like soft butter over a warm roll, he says, “Because you asked.”

(Only that night, when she is re-reading Maksim’s report, does she think about him beyond his grand manipulations of power. 

Mostly she thinks about him writing a story and the kind of story he is writing into the blood-soaked earth of a country that has never loved him back.  She thinks about his poetry in Ketterdam.  She thinks about how he has written a story about those in darkness seeking for the light.

When stripped of saints and summoners, she wonders if he is writing something of a love story in a language she still doesn’t know and he doesn’t speak well.

Or he’s writing the same lies with the mouth of a kind of truth.)

When a bag of Kerch toffees shows up on her table the next day while she is down by the lake working with a struggling Tidemaker, she is even less sure what to make of a man who mixes sweets with bids for power as if they are all merely different answers to the same question.

***

Chapter Text

v.  Rebellion

He shows much of his hand to her about what will be the future: the Cult of the Twin Saints.

Unsurprisingly, she remains unconvinced of the opportunity.

He had not expected her to be, and his plans already reflect that.  It is a matter of time before she steps into her position as his equal.  She is farther away than he would like, content with her current charade, although the cracks of her discontent are showing in ways she does not quite appreciate.  He’d felt the same… several centuries ago.

But, as he has spent more than a handful of his lifetimes as a military commander, he decides that, with regard to her, no matter what Zaitsev has implied, a change of tactics might be required.

(His adaptability, even in the midst of his immutability, is why he has survived as long and as well as he has, after all.)

The first time, he leaves a small box of toffees, imported from Ketterdam, which he leaves on the small table as far from the fireplace as can be managed.  The only evidence of his gesture that later remains is a single, forgotten golden wrapper on her table when he comes to her for his “lessons.”

(He has not come to expect thanks for his gifts.  And he does not receive one.)

A bouquet of irises is more conventional, he supposes.  He leaves it after their scheduled lesson when she has gone somewhere at the same spot as the toffees.

The next time he sees her, they’re arranged on her desk.

He doesn’t ask and she doesn’t say.

So, things proceed as expected.

***

As Aleksander changes the substance of his schemes in a way she can’t completely fathom, Maksim seems to simply go on with whatever his are.

It’s enough to give Alina a headache.

“An unusually agile mind,” he says appraisingly.  “He is truly representative of all the benefits that an education from the Little Palace can reap in young Grisha.”

Alina tries not to roll her eyes.  Mostly because he is educating a man who laid out the foundations for what is taught at the Little Palace.  It’s hardly fair.

Maksim goes on, “When he was sorting my correspondence he was so proud of his rudimentary command of Shu, he began translating bits and pieces to me.”  He laughs to himself as, horrified, Alina realizes exactly what game Aleksander—who does not in any way have a merely rudimentary understanding of Fjerdan or Shu or even High Liturgical Ravkan from 500 years prior—is playing.  “We are fortunate in that he is nothing like the Darklings of old.  Mikhail has no thought for ambitions beyond what is set for him.”

Alina sips her tea and translates this:  Mikhail—which is a distinct entity Maksim has not discovered is distinctly fictional, does not seem to want to go beyond the ambitions that Maksim is setting for him.

Aleksander is something he could not predict at his best.

And, like the universe, Aleksander’s greed can be infinite.

Then, surprisingly, Maksim takes a sip of the tea she politely offered him.  “Did you enjoy the toffees, Mariya?”

The question is so surprising, that she stiffens obviously.  Maksim pretends not to notice.

“You had best be careful with him now,” he says casually.  Far, far too casually.

Especially since he could not possibly understand exactly how careful she is with him.  Especially since he likely only knows this information because, for some reason, Aleksander wants him to know about it.

Maksim should very much take his own advice.

***

“Thanks”—such that it is—comes from her, in the form of an odd acknowledgement.  Which is really, as it is, a question about his plans.

The fire is lit in his mother’s hut, and he feels like, except for the people and the furniture, it is one of the strange constants in his life—this place.  There is always, it seems, the bitter cold of the Ravkan winter, the fire, and a person in this room he cannot entirely let go of and who will not entirely let go of him, either.  So he comes to her at night, finding her still awake.

The acknowledgement begins, as it often does with her, as a question.

She leans on her fist, looking away from him.

“And what will you offer me now, Aleksander?”  He keeps his expression level, wondering what she intends to do with this.  When his only answer is to mirror her posture and observe her, she continues, “I’ve refused a throne and will refuse again, whatever guise it comes in.”

He has already set his sights higher than a throne, so this is of little consequence.

“I suppose I already have immortality, too,” she says with carefully practiced nonchalance.

As he arguably did give this to her, although neither of them will likely be able to understand what took place between them that day, or, beyond the obvious, what was exchanged or sacrificed, he does not comment.

He wonders idly, if she blames him for giving it back to her.  If she resents it.  Resents him.

It is immaterial.  Because she has it.

He leans back and then, curious despite himself, as they both already know the answer to her question, he asks, “What would you have of me?”

She turns to him and says, without an actual modicum of sincerity, “I was thinking of a nice pair of earrings.”

“Earrings,” he repeats, absolute cold contempt freezing the word between them.  She has the nerve to smirk, and he scowls momentarily at the flippancy of her response.  Then, within the space of a breath, he feels weariness settle into the marrow of his bones.

Mostly because she knows what it is he could offer but won’t.  In Ketterdam she had his body, to which he is generally indifferent and which he has given to others strategically many a time.  His time is both precious and plentiful, but she is the one who he directs most of it towards, for better or worse.  That she has his given name is far less trivial.  It is, arguably, the second most carefully guarded thing in his possession.

He cannot, especially given her response in this current conversation, trust her with the last thing.  Cannot give her the shadowed thing to which his name adheres.

Not yet.

So, as ever, in their slow spanning dance over the centuries, he grants her a temporary concession.

“I could give you my name.”

She frowns and, in an almost child-like gesture, squishes her fist into her cheek, distorting half of her expression.

“I have that.”

“You don’t,” he replies, before clarifying, “You know it, but you don’t have it.”  Her hand travels back down into her lap and her frown tightens as she, perhaps, realizes exactly what he is proposing.  He stretches his legs out in front of him. “Since I was not talking about my given name.”

Her eyes widen before she manages to cobble together some semblance of a mask.  She shifts her focus to the fire and once again does not look at him.

He watches carefully, as several things dance over her expression.

After a while she makes what reply she will:  “I’d rather the earrings.”  Then, though it is long past the time for lessons, she stands and says brusquely, “You are dismissed Stepanov.”

***

According to several reports—both official and unofficial—Ravka starts burning.  And, like the Firebird that represents it, it burns itself.

The cause is predictable and ancient and oh so Ravkan that he knows it like his own bones and the darkness and the shadows.

He recalls flickering fires centuries ago where they would speak of Winter the Great Reaper and his wife, Famine.

Aleksander Morozov knows, too, that when the larder runs out, when the last of the emaciated stock are slaughtered for their gristle, when parents grow rail thin to feed their young who don’t survive anyways, when still Winter rages, sending knives of frost and icicles unrelentingly, that men and women have no allegiance to anyone or anything outside of the bloat of their empty bellies.

While Ravka starves, he is ordered to attend the Winter Féte—and he notes that, inside the Grand Palace, there are blinis made with wheat that fetches five times the cost it did last year at this time and can only be found on the black market which is sprinkled with caviar imported from Kerch.  The only shadows that mar the event are the ones he summons, momentarily inconveniencing the nobility.

These Lantsovs have not learned the lessons of the forebears.

Because it is a fundamental rule of power he has seen taught over and over in his long life:  No pomp or crown can command hunger.

In such times, power becomes the providence of intangibles.

And in Ravka, when Winter the Great Reaper and his wife, Famine, long overstay their welcome, Aleksander knows that means that people throw themselves at the feet of the Saints.

***

A week later, she finds a small, black box on her table, set between the settee and her armchair, in the same place as the other objects had been placed.  She misses it at first, reading over reports of the famine she had put off some decades ago spreading in the northwest, like a miasma, out of Fjerda.  But then she puts it in her hand, sighing, and pulls the black satin ribbon.

She draws in a sharp intake of breath when she sees, inside the box, a pair of earrings—silver, delicate metalwork that ends in dark, almost black, iridescent stones.  She leaves the box open on the table that stands between their two chairs, her chess board next to it.

The next day brings not Aleksander, but Maksim and another bag of kartoshka.

They do not talk of the famine as Maksim eats his pastries and Alina refuses them.  She knows that, to many extents, the Little Palace with its greenhouses and Alkemi and Durasts are insulated from most of the effects of the famine that the otkazat’sya face.  Agafya, in fact, had told her, in passing, that recruitment into the army had risen and that the Triumvirate had decreed rations could be sent home in lieu of the normal stipend.  Rather, his teeth sinking into the cream at the center of the kartoshka, Maksim informs her that Mikhail Stepanov has accepted an officer’s commission and will now be trained with the upper ranks of the Ravkan Military near Ryevost.

Maksim shoves a small sweet into his mouth and says, chewing all the while: “He’s become—” a spray of crumbs “—quite strong.  You’ve—” he momentarily coughs as he chokes on the kartoshka, before pounding on his chest and finishing, “You’ve done well with him, Mariya.”

He puts down the bag on the table, somewhat reluctantly.

“He said so himself—Mikhail, that is.  That your instruction him made all the difference.”

He eyes the earrings, left sitting on the table and his eyes go wide.

“Are these from—an admirer of yours?”

Internally, Alina sighs.  Then, as in some ways she supposes that is one of the simpler explanations for him, she gives a soft acknowledgement.  He asks her permission and, wiping one hand on his trousers, he picks one of the earrings up and holds it aloft, where it reflects the light of the fire in dark glimmers.

“Alexandrite,” he says, his voice impressed despite itself.  “Rare and very expensive.  An elegant design, too.”

He nestles the earring back down carefully in the box next to its mate.

“It’s a shame Mikhail hasn’t done quite so well with you.”  Then, his tone still slightly awed, he says appraisingly, “Those must be from… quite the admirer.”

She leans her head on her hand and looks into the fire, carefully avoiding looking at the jewels on her table.

Rare and beautiful Alexandrite, indeed.

Maksim clears his throat slightly and then, they sit in a silence only interrupted by the sound of chewing food.

“Tell me, Mariya,” he says after a long period of silence for Maksim, “Are we going to lose you to matrimony?”

She doesn’t turn away, but she knows what the earrings mean.

“There’s not much chance of that.”

There are other things she has to think about, after all.  She wonders if he does, but he simply laughs, crumbs falling from his kefta as he does.

“Perhaps our Mikhail has a chance after all!”

***

She debates doing it for a week, procrastinating by making several discreet inquiries to well-placed people.  Although, when answers return to her she has the dismaying inkling that he may have been thinking of the same thing.

Perhaps longer than she has.

Finally, late one night, she decides she will just find out.  He is, as she expected, not sleeping (she still doesn’t know if he sleeps with any regularity outside of Ketterdam), but studying a series of documents spread over a make-shift table. 

From what she can see through their blurred connection, he is staying in a familiar tent—not as large as the one she had met him in at Kribirsk, but it struck her that, in the intervening years, nothing much changed in the military. Uniforms changed, names of people in charge changed, borders shifted, but encampments remained encampments and, since Zoya and Nikolai had unified the army, now the comparative luxury of military standards outside of the Little Palace had fallen as those of what had one day been the First Army had risen. As was typical in Ravka, they were below what one might expect.

He is not dressed in a kefta. Rather, he is dressed in the grey of the standard uniform, distinguished only by the black on black embroidery of his high collar and the cuffs of his uniform jacket.  He remains focused on the papers in front of her, turned away."Hello, Alina," he says, without turning towards her.

“I’ve heard you have been made an officer with unprecedented speed, Captain Stepanov.”

“Come to offer your congratulations?”  He makes some notes on a piece of paper and moves on to another typed communique.  He drawls, “How rare.”

“Ravka is burning,” she says, without preamble.

His response is not inflected with any concern:  “It happens.”

“They have plans for you,” she says carefully.

He turns back to her, his eyes glittering and his lips drawn into an enigmatic half smile of amusement.

“Are you concerned for me, solnyshka?”

“Absolutely not,” she responds calmly.  “I’m concerned for the Grisha.”

His smile broadens, and he finally finds their conversation worth turning his chair around to face her.  He stretches his long legs in front of him and then folds the long, elegant fingers of his hands into his lap.

“Ever the apt pupil,” he says.  “Tell me, Alina, what has merited your… concern?”

She frowns, not willing to play his usual games.

“Who is better to put down the rebellions they caused than Sankt Mikhail the Starless?” she asks, raising her eyebrow.

“Indeed.”  He gives a small shrug.  “And I don’t even have to be martyred.  It was a more elegant solution than I would expect from the likes of Duke Kirigan,” he says.

She comes and sits on the edge of his field cot, close, but not too close.

“Have they given the order yet?”

He gives a low chuckle of amusement.

“Yes,” he says simply.  “We leave tomorrow for Ulensk.”

“What exactly was the order—the wording?” she asks.

“I am to…” he frowns in distaste, “Put down the rebellion by any means necessary.”

“You mean the ‘food riots’?” she says archly. We 

“Semantics.”  He makes a dismissive gesture.  “A privilege of the powerful.”

A privilege she wants to usurp.  With him.  Knowing what he has done with power before.

Alina takes a deep breath.

“Do you have control over who is included in your company?”

He cocks his head to the side and she knows that, despite himself, he is actually interested in what she has to say.

“It… could be arranged.”

“Kuznetsov, Abramova, Sokoloff, and Bugrov,” she says, tipping her hand somewhat.  “I believe you’re acquainted with them.”

His smile has an air of pride in it.

“Quite,” he says.  Because this strange bunch of Alkemi and Durasts are who Mikhail has primarily befriended at the Little Palace, along with a Tidemaker named Gurin and a Healer named Mochalina.  The few times she had hazarded the golden domed room to eat, she had seen him at the center of this motley group.  Now, she suspects, that Tidemaker and the Healer were distractions and he had been up to something she should have noticed much, much sooner.

Saints, this man.

Because she should have noticed that the group of Materialki he had found were all personally mentored directly by Nadezhda Cheplieva, the woman she primarily works with on the soil reclamation projects in the area the Fold occupied.  She had been mentored, in turn, by Sonechka Orlova, the woman she had worked with to stave off the famine that had devastated Fjerda for the last two generations.

“You’ve been ordered to do so ‘by all means necessary,’” she quotes.  “That means you have been given discretion to not use military force.”

He gives a dark chuckle.

“You’re well aware that is not how the Duke and his ilk will interpret it.”  She mirrors his own slightly ominous smile back to him.  “It might seem like something dangerously close to… revolution.”

He says the word lightly, as if he is suggesting they have tea together or go riding.  But, although he will not tip his hand in the same way to her, she is fairly sure: he, too, has planned something like this for a long time.

“I’m merely offering you an alternative, Aleksander.”

He draws himself up.

“Since I assume all of the risk from this… alternative—” he drawls out the word.  “What are you giving me in exchange?”

She yawns.  Because it is late and pretending that he is doing this all out of anything but his own self-interest is exhausting.

“We both know you’d do this even without me—because it benefits you, oh Starless One.  I just am in the position to provide you with more resources and contacts than you’d otherwise have.”

His lips curve into a smile that should make Duke Kirigan tremble in his boots.  Mostly because she expects that’s the way he’s smiled before he’s calmly toppled monarchs and empires in the past.

“But doing it with you is so much more rewarding, my dear Alina.”

She simply frowns.

“I’m not doing it for you.”

He leans back into his chair, infinitely unbothered by her protest.  But still, if he tries to exact a price later, she can say her aid was the cost and remind him of this exact conversation.

“Of course you aren’t, solnyshka.”  He crosses his legs.  “Of course you aren’t.”

Then, before she has to endure any more of his smugness on the matter, she severs the connection, finding only her own hearth, worn down to dying embers.  She chucks off the thick dressing gown she had dawned just for her… meeting and slides into the cold sheets of her bed to attempt to sleep.

***

Zaitsev comes with walnut rugelach (1), putting crumbs all over her floor and seemingly oblivious to the fact that half of one of his pastries would cause a riot in the northern regions of Ravka right now.

She puts up a hand to refuse it when he offers it.  He smiles.

“Have you had a letter from Mikhail?”

She can truthfully confirm that she has not gotten a letter.

He gives a strange laugh and then says, “Well, that certainly explains some things.”

She has come to realize that this is part of the games Maksim plays: he wants her to request an explanation.

But, she’s played more difficult games with a far more difficult opponent, so Maksim often finds that, as with his pastries, she does not entirely rise to follow after the crumbs he leaves for her.

He recovers, though, and says brightly, “He does write me frequently.”

(She will not tell him that writing a letter is a waste of both of their time.

She, in fact, expects he is quite busy.  She came to him once more, after receiving evidence through her own network that he had successfully “suppressed” the rebellion in the first moderately sized town outside of Ulensk that he had been commanded to “subdue.”

Strangely, perhaps by design—she is never certain where the line between Aleksander and “Mikhail” blurs—he looks drawn and tired.  Dark circles are under his eyes.

This is clearly not a lifetime where he allowing himself to sleep.

He is bent over the same table as last time, though the tent has moved and the documents are now in piles, the strange blue light of a Fabrikator made lamp illuminating them.

She walks right up to the back of him.  He keeps working without looking up.

“How is the alternative?” she asks.  Because she will not ask how he is.

“My little rebellion?” he responds, with dry amusement.  “Straightforward, as far as these things go.”

“You’ll have to tell me about your… un-straightforward rebellions.”

“I suggest you look up ‘Shadow Fold’ and ‘Anastas’ in any Ravkan history book,” he sighs, while looking up only to reference a document and scribbling several things on a paper in front of him.

“I think I know something about that one,” she says.

“Do you now?” he asks pointedly.

“I’d know about it better if you’d tell me.”

He gives one mirthless scoff.

“In time, perhaps.”  He continues to scrawl several notes down.  For some time there is only the scratch of his pen and the shuffling of his correspondence.  “I am waiting for other things in the interim.”

“Me?” she says archly.

“I still do expect payment for my part in this,” he says in a tone honeyed by amusement.  “I have several reasons, though, to expect that you will not be so forthcoming with… renumeration.  But I am patient.”

She gives a sniff of indignity that he still thinks she will just give in to him, given enough time.

“I am also practical,” he adds, shuffling through the stack of papers immediately in front of him, “Which is why I am biding my time here.”

She knows he will not give up on his little game until she asks directly, “And just what are you waiting for?”

The movement of his pen pauses mid-word and, although he doesn’t turn, she has no trouble imagining the enigmatic half-smile that appears on his face when he says, “The fuse is laid, solnyshka.  I’m simply waiting for the spark.”

Audibly, she scoffs.  “It doesn’t seem like you not to be holding the torch.”

He cocks his head to the side a bit, even as he continues writing.  She imagines the raised eyebrow.

“It seems exactly like me,”  he observes, “True power is, after all, having others dirty their hands on your behalf.”

There’s a slight edge to this little lesson of his.  One she refuses to recognize.  Though she has ample reason to, given several of his irritating implications, she still does not leave.

“Still checking up on me, Alina?”

He still does not turn to her.

“Ravkan history books aside, I have some personal experience with how your rebellions tend to go.”

He absolutely means to bait her when he says, “You are not a complicating factor in this one.”

In truth, though, she does not want him to explain what it means at all.

“Clearly you should have worked with me all along,” she says, neatly sidestepping whatever he intends her to be snared by.

He finally looks up at her, his eyes piercing.

“Or, perhaps,” he says with an utterly measured tone, “You should have worked with me from the beginning.”  She does not look away.  Not even when he adds, “I told you that you might make me a better man.”

Impulsively, she puts her hand on his shoulder and leans in, her lips perilously close to his ear: “You may yet prove to be a monster again, Aleksander.”

She’s, in fact, not certain he’s ever stopped.

She lets the connection dissipate between them.  From there, she waits for reports to come back to her, carried verbally by a vast array of people no one would think are anything but normal.)

Today, Maksim has donned what Alina has come to recognize more and more as a persona meant to cast away any suspicion that he might be anything other than a slightly ill-mannered buffoon.  He makes his practiced gestures: gestures she has seen over and over.  He wipes the crumbs from his hands and then absently pats the pocket of his kefta before, wiping his fingers once more for good measure, he withdraws an envelope.

The writing she recognizes immediately: it is a beautiful, someone antique scripting, appropriate to the beautiful and more than antique nature of its owner.

“He wanted you to have this.”

She leans across and takes it, trying not to let her suspicion show in the gesture.  But the writing is Aleksander’s and the name on the slightly creased envelope is Miss Mariya Baranova.

She opens it and inside is a glossy thing.

It is a portrait of Aleksander in what she knows, because she has seen him in the intervening time, is his officer’s uniform.  He stands, tall, graceful, and beautiful—his expression serious almost to the point of severity.  She has to wonder, momentarily, at his vanity, because there is not a speck of Mikhail in his demeanor.  She turns it over and there is the date that it was taken, in his hand, and in his elegant script a note that reads “I’ll have to be careful from now on.”

She has no doubt Zaitsev has read it and drawn his own—entirely wrong—conclusions.  How a soldier at the front has to keep himself safe to come home to his clearly unrequited love.

The Zaitsev she knows would find a soft, soppy sort of romance in it.

She, however, imagines Aleksander’s wry voice that goes along with the flawless posture of the individual in the photograph:  There’s evidence of me, at long last.

However, she is unsure of what exactly he means by sending it to her.

Zaitsev examines the rugelach in his hand.

“I’m told woman often put pictures of their—” he suddenly realizes that he has no idea what she and “Mikhail” are.  And, really, she would rather die than admit he’s definitely in good company—but she is certain it is not whatever Zaitsev envisions.  To cover over his own confusion, however, he takes an excessively large bite of his pastry, and then, when he is nearly through chewing it, he changes tack:  “You might put it in a locket, Mariya.”

“Keep him next to my heart?” she says lightly.

Maksim’s mouth turns into a smile.

“Perhaps that’s where he belongs.”

Alina slides the photograph back into the envelope and politely thanks him for delivering it to her.  Later, she will shove it in a drawer next to a pair of Alexandrite earrings.  Even so, she does not ever want to explain to Maksim Zaitsev—or anyone else, for that matter—how far away that man, no matter which name he wears, should be kept from her heart.

***

By the third town near Ulensk they come into, the otkazat’sya welcome them in rather than chase them out with farming implements that are as thin as their frames are.  He knows the power of story and rumor.  He has seeded it for several of his lifetimes.

And, as he hears the whispers, he knows he will now reap his own long-awaited harvest.

“Sankt.”

“The Starless One!”

A woman who is more wraith than human grabs at the hem of his uniform as Losev, their Inferni, melts the soil for the Materialki to do their work, and gasps out, “Sankt Mikhail!”

(He regrets only the name they address him as.  Maybe, in time, Mikhail will die.  Maybe he will one day wear the name carved upon his heart.)

He is in Ulensk itself, putting up a series of greenhouses that can withstand the Ravkan winter with his Durasts and preparing the soil and transplanting several saplings from the Little Palace, when the Tsar’s messenger finds him at last.

The messenger is typical of the members of the nobility that do military service.  In a time of cars and guns, he has a sword on his hip that Aleksander has no doubt he has no idea how to use and has insisted on leading a contingency of untested “officers” harvested from the family trees of various counts and dukes who like the show of patriotism without the cost.  These, in their spotless uniforms, walk in formation behind his horse.  Evidently as a show of strength.  The show fails, entirely, since the man’s horse is half-dead, and foam is dribbling out of the poor beast’s mouth.

He shouts, “Captain Stepanov!” 

Mikhail, whose posture he has allowed to straighten and become more like his own to save him the pain in his shoulders, presents himself with only a show of fractional hesitation.

“You are to present yourself to Duke Kirigan in Os Alta, Captain Stepanov.”

He’s pleased to see the rail thin ghosts of the Ravkans of Ulensk stir at this command, gathering around as this farce unfurls.  The Duke’s soldiers all brazenly wear the blue and gold of the Lantsov double eagle and look well fed and hearty—something no one else in the immediate vicinity, with the exception of his Grisha, can claim.  This fact alone is enough to stir old stories and old grudges up from a ground that has been steeped with several generations of Ravkan blood for the sake of a long line of Tsars who have given them very few rewards in return for their servitude.  The fool is, of course, as unaware of his peril as he is of the conditions he has put his horse in—and Aleksander already knows his horse is the superior creature of the lot of them.

He pulls himself up and says, more as himself than Mikhail, “I have orders to suppress the rebellions in the north,” he says.  “I have been doing as ordered.”

This group of otkazat’sya playacting as soldiers fails to know one thing he has learned from centuries of walking amongst the famine stricken fields of Ravka claimed by the harshness of winter which deprives Ravkans of even grass to eat.  They do not understand hunger is its own commander.  And, to their credit, hunger had been a distant memory under Zoya—a Grisha.  And here, again, were the Grisha to combat it.  The nobility in their dachas with their full bellies and imported Kerch chocolates do not understand this.  They, with their food in their larders, and fat children are something to be feared.

While Alina might understand helping the otkazat’sya, Aleksander understands the fear he is sewing in the peasantry and the loyalty he is harnessing.  The faces that are saving them are Grisha faces.  The hands that feed their children are Grisha hands.  The men who are preventing this from happening belong to the boy Tsar and his regent. 

He was displacing the deeply rooted fear of the “unnatural” Grisha and replacing it with the fear of a nobility who can lock them out and shoot them for the crime of wanting to eat.

These puffed up boys who think the insignia of their rank and their privilege will save them are utterly unaware of their peril.

“Precisely.”  The man narrows his eyes and sniffs, “Suppress,” he hisses.  “Not join.”

For the first time, as the whispers rise to an angry tempest around him, the man suddenly has an inkling—far too late—of the danger he has found himself in.  But, alas, they have but one horse and the car they no doubt took is likely far out of sight. 

Such is the tragedy of prioritizing self-importance over sound strategy.

Aleksander affects Mikhail’s tremulous voice:  “What does Duke Kirigan want with me?”

The man draws himself up.  The fool should have done what he is about to do without an audience.  But he believes his loyalty to the Tsar and his uniform will protect him.  He makes a gesture Aleksander does not miss.  He has made similar under better circumstances.

His “soldiers” gather around him at the gesture.

He knows the words before he’s told them (he’s heard them before, under different names):  “Captain Mikhail Stepanov, you’re being charged with treason against the Crown.”

This is when the first stone hits the man in the side of the head, and when it falls blood runs from his temple and more stones fall.  His Grisha, of course, follow him.  The townspeople defend their Sankt.

The spark is lit.

Now to make it brighter than the sun.

***

She comes back from a lesson with a Tidemaker at the lake to find Maksim Zaitsev sitting in his usual spot.  She comes in, shrugs out of her winter cloak, and still he does not say anything.

He does not have any pastries, and his face is such a mask that she wonders if this is where she will meet who he really is at long last.

“Mariya,” he says, a glint of steel in her name.  “You will need to pack.”

She sits down across from him and makes no move to do any such thing.

“Am I going somewhere, Maksim?”

Zaitsev’s lips thin and he says, without preamble, “Yes.  You’re coming with me.”  He crosses his arms over the barrel of his chest.  “It is an order from the Triumvirate.”

Alina wonders, briefly, if this is where this life ends.  If they will expect her to appear on the front lines and show precisely what she is.

(If the next time she talks to Aleksander it will be from some dingy room somewhere, where she has far fewer resources to see what he is doing.  To stop him, if necessary.  When it is necessary.)

She keeps her whole face calm and expressionless:  “Am I allowed to know where I am going with you, Maksim?”

He drags out the silence between them—his eyes turn to him and he does not even hide the fact that he is evaluating him.

“Ulensk,” he says simply.

“I am an instructor,” she says, “I am not a soldier.”

His lips tip up and for a strange moment, his expression appears to be more in line with something she might expect would appear on Aleksander’s than on Zaitsev’s.

“You will be going in the capacity of… an instructor.”  He pauses.  “Your secret is safe, Mariya.”

“Do I have any stray students in Ulensk?” she says, lightly, but deliberately obtuse.  She feels more like Maksim Zaitsev than he is at the moment.

“You know about Mikhail,” he says. 

Not a question.  A statement.  A statement that cannot be interrogated without giving something away.

“I know many things about Mikhail,” she responds.  Something behind his watery green eyes hardens at this.  “What is relevant here?”

“Love, hopefully.”

He says this unironically.  Like he believes it.

And he may.  Because Aleksander has allowed him to believe it for reasons she has not yet figured out.

And he knows only Mikhail… not Aleksander.

This is still Maksim, however, as, when she doesn’t respond, he says, “We think you are the best chance of… persuading him to stop.”

(He does not know how true this is.  Ironically, for once, she is not sure this is the time to stop him.) 

“And if he doesn’t stop?”

Maksim meets her eyes and holds them.

“How do you execute a Sankt, Mariya?”

For a moment, although the man to whom the scent belongs is long dead, she swears she can smell the scent of newly turned grave dirt and rot.  Mostly because since she has been a Sankta herself, she knows the answer.

“You martyr them,” she whispers.

His face becomes a strangely expressionless mask which doesn’t sit well on the features of the man who generally leaves crumbs on her rug every time he visits.

“I see you understand perfectly, then,” he says.

Zaitsev gives her instructions as to where the car will meet her and gives her an hour to gather her things.

Alina gathers up the few meager possessions she cares about in her life.  On impulse, she empties the drawer with Aleksander’s earrings and portrait into her bag, not examining too closely what the gesture means.  She takes a small, yellowing packet of letters with her, a blue kefta, and a book of Fjerdan verbs she’d bought in a used bookstore in Ketterdam.

Then she looks back over a place she still thinks of as Baghra’s, takes in the dead embers in the hearth and the cold that is creeping in, and then she pulls her arms through her winter cloak, and goes out into the evening.

***

Chapter Text

vi.  Martyrdom

The car slows as it drives towards the crowds that ringed Ulensk, where black, gold, yellow, covering every shade draped over the wasted figures of human beings.  They begin pressing themselves against either side of the vehicle, dirty bodies and ripped and worn clothing, holding banners stitched with every manner of rough approximation of the sun ascendent and the moon in eclipse.

An occasional rock pelts the windows at either side (Zaitsev, sitting straight-backed next to her, is making a good show of being unconcerned.  Another rock finds its mark and he gestures towards the windows and says, “Fabrikator-made.  Don’t worry, my dear.  They’ve made all sorts of things stronger these days.”) and there is a disquieting rattle and sway as the press of bodies tightens as their progress slows to a crawl.

In these rail thin otkazat’sya who are more wraiths than human beings, maybe the ravenous void under Aleksander’s ribs had finally found something it has been yearning for, maybe for all his long, long life.  These people, defending him with stones and what little strength they have in their dirty, emaciated bodies, represent the bleeding heart of Ravka.

It is a heart who, for now, for at least a moment, loves him back.

Her thoughts shatter, as a stone hits the window beside her head, causing her to jump away from the glass, bumping Zaitsev’s shoulder in the process.

He chuckles as she sinks back in her seat, holding herself away from the window as much as possible.

“I see you’re becoming acquainted with Mikhail’s new army.”

She takes a breath and relaxes into the seat as much as she can.

“Closely.”

“Haven’t been to a battlefield?” he says, with something like amusement.

Not in a long time.

She frowns.

“This isn’t a battle,” she says instead.

“Not yet,” he responds.  “To keep it from becoming that way is why we are here.”

Pulling her lips into a tight line she looks out at the press of white and gold suns and moons.

“Though you might have trouble convincing them of this when we need to get out from behind the Fabrikator-reinforced glass.”

Zaitsev chuckles.

“Do you have a hidden Lantsov double eagle I don’t know about, Mariya?”

“Do you have a banner for the Cult of the Twin Saints?” she rejoins.

Zaitsev doesn’t so much as flinch when a rock pelts his window, separated from his temple by a piece of Fabrikator-reinforced glass.  Instead, he smiles, but it is a bowing of his mouth that Alina has trouble remembering from the man who brought pastries into her living room.

“I can do better than that, Mariya.”  The corner of his mouth dips up even more.  “I think I can produce the Saints of legend.”  He laughs, “Well, one.”

Which means he is depending on Aleksander.

Which is not a calculation she would usually bet her life on, in all honesty.  And, on that dark note, the car stops and there is a press of bodies so tight around the vehicle that is rocks from side to side for what feels to her like a small eternity.  Then, abruptly, the bodies peel away from the windows and part, like the sun cutting through a cloud.  And there, with less regal posture than usual, but without the stoop shouldered, slightly hang-dog expression she has become accustomed to when he is Mikhail, Aleksander comes out, far less clean than he usually is.  There are still dark circles under his eyes and his hair is mussed and part of the color of his uniform—the part embroidered in black and grey to show his position as a Grisha Shadow Summoner—is rumpled and popped unevenly. 

As the bodies of his adoring faithful fall away from his presence, through the smudges in the windows made by both travel grime and body oils, his eyes find her and narrow in a look that would never cross Mikhail’s face.  The expression evaporates as fast as it appears and is replaced by one of simpering worry as he rushes over and moves to open the car door.

“See Mariya, no need to worry, our escort has arrived.”

The door opens and, flawlessly, “Mikhail” (because she is certain that this irritates Aleksander to no end) salutes Zaitsev as he gets out of the car.  Then, he extends his arm to help her out.  As soon as she is out among the press of pilgrims, his arm loops around her waist and remains there, crushing her to him with almost bruising possession.

(And this one gesture speaks volumes about how much he actually trusts his new army.)

He does not let go until they go in the tent she has only seen through the connection of the tether.  He faces his desk and the regal nature of his posture indicates several things that Zaitsev does not know how to read because he has been reading an entire different volume.

Aleksander’s voice is soft and absolutely dangerous.

“Why did you bring her?”

The corner of Zaitsev’s mouth turns up.  As if he is pleased by this question.

As someone who has seen exactly what the man in front of them will do when someone meddles with what he thinks is his and his alone, Maksim has no reason to be pleased.

(Baghra’s voice echoes out of the ages, like it had only sounded minutes ago:  “Run.”

It is very sound advice for most people when he is like this.)

“To persuade you, my boy,” he says breezily.  Like he has the upper hand.  Like he is not standing somewhere at all dangerous.

(Alina decides that Maksim Zaitsev is either very stupid or entirely too clever for his own good.  She suspects it is more a matter of the former.)

Zaitsev continues:  “I’m hoping Mariya can be persuasive where I have failed.”

Aleksander turns around, the look on his face carefully calculated to be something other than who he is, once more.  Still, Alina knows he is taking Zaitsev’s measure and calculating whether he is able to take what he has said with any measure of trust in the content of his words.

“I am doing what I was ordered,” he responds at length.  Then, he adds, “Does anything prove I am not like the Darklings of history more than the fact that I am helping the people of Ravka?”

Zaitsev seats himself in the only other chair the tent offers that is not pulled into the makeshift desk she knows well.

“It antagonizes the Tsar—”

“You mean the Duke,” Aleksander cuts him off neatly.

Maksim sighs and makes an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders.  “Are they not the same?”  he pauses and his face dips into a more severe frown.  “You may not understand the politics, Mikhail, but it is not so simple as helping the people of Ravka—”

“They are starving, Maksim!” he breaks in, absolutely appearing to hold the severe naivety of youth.  “And the Duke—”

Zaitsev stands and there is suddenly steel in his voice of the kind Alina has never heard him use before.  “We are not in a position to defy him.”

“We?”

(She cannot tell if it is Mikhail or Aleksander that practically spits the word.  Both would have contempt for the sentiment for entirely different reasons—Mikhail out of a naïve optimism and Aleksander because he knows the answer and the weakness it represents.)

Both are lost on his audience, who unrepentantly answers: “The Grisha Triumvirate.  They’ve sent me to order you to stand down.”

“The Tsar and the Duke—”

Zaitsev puts a hand up to stop him.  “—Will be sorted out one way or another by the people.”

And rage, different from what she knows coils in Aleksander, but rage nonetheless, coils within her.  In that moment, she can see exactly what they want and her role in it:  The people will starve and the people with riot.  The Duke and his boy Tsar will fall one way or another: the only choice that needs to be made is to do nothing.

The full force of Aleksander’s gaze bleeds through his well-worn mask.  For the first time, Maksim seems to flinch under it.  She hopes it is because the Tidemaker has something of a conscience. 

She’s no longer confident about that, though.

“What would you have me do, General Zaitsev?” he says, his tone deceptively neutral and formal, the polished veneer of a good soldier.

“I would have you follow orders.”

“Is the rebellion not put down?” he asks.

“Not in the way they wanted,” Zaitsev answers.

“They wanted me to be a Darkling.  They wanted me to kill them.  They wanted proof Grisha are—”

Zaitsev puts up a hand and then straightens his kefta.  The gesture and his silence become his answer.  Aleksander—because perhaps that is who he is at this moment, or maybe, deeply ironically, the Darkling—turns around, clasping his hands in back of him.

Suddenly, Maksim turns to him and makes a frustrated sawing of his hand through the air.

“Talk sense into him, Mariya.”

She goes to the edge of his cot and sits.

“He seems to be talking sense to me, Maksim.”  Her lips draw into a hardline.  “You’ve often accused me of having no political sense, but I think the Triumvirate has forgotten the lessons of Sankta Alina.”

Aleksander shifts position just enough so that, from her position she can see his shadowed expression and Maksim can’t.  He looks vaguely interested.

Raising his eyebrows he says, “Because dead saints are incredibly relevant to the issue at hand, dearest Mariya.”

Only she sees Aleksander’s lips form into an enigmatic half smile at this comment.

“Her reputation after her death is relevant,” she says, with a sigh.  “Despite the fact that the Darkling who martyred her leveled a city and significantly reduced the ranks of the Grisha of the Second Army during his ‘liberation,’ as some scholars have called it, Santa Alina’s role in history is fairly universally reviled.”  She takes on the tone of a teacher lecturing her student instead of someone talking to her superior officer.  “Why is that, Maksim?”

The steel from earlier returns to his gaze and although his tone has its usual levity, it emanates from a man who exudes none of it:  “I suppose I will be your student instead of Mikhail, today.  Is that your intention?”

Something of the hollow thing in her own chest, which still lives just under her heart, stirs.

“My intention is to not see Ravka bleed where it is not necessary,” she pauses.  “And to learn from the mistakes of history.”

An apt pupil, indeed.

He sidesteps all of the implications of her comments easily, as if this is really a matter of academic reinterpretation and not a matter where the lives of real people are at stake:  “Since you’ve already entertained us with your historical revisionism concerning the Great Liberator, by all means—tell me what the martyred Sun Summoner has to offer Ravka.”

Alina rests her ankle on her knee, straightening herself as she does so.

“Sankta Alina might have fought the Darkling for the good of Ravka,” she says—history does not dispute her motives, after all—only her intelligence and competence—“But she allied herself with who history would remember as villains.  And now history remembers her more for that than any of her intentions.”

Zaitsev does not immediately respond.  Again, as he did the day he asked her to escort Mikhail to his audience with the Tsar his expression sets—a look like he’s seen something real and unpleasant which he wishes he had not seen.

Because now he will have to deal with some matter of actual unpleasantness.

He stands, his military training suddenly apparent in all the taut crisp lines with which he holds himself.  As if he has never sat on her couch and eaten pastries or hugged people after consuming too much vodka.

“Thank you, Mariya,” there’s not an ounce in the sincerity of this statement, “You are dismissed.  I will speak privately to Captain Stepanov.”

And, she knows and he knows that there is nothing to do with this but comply.  Unexpectedly, Aleksander comes with her, coming to the tent mouth and saying loudly, “Sokolov!”

A petite woman with her blonde hair swept up into a severe bun bustles over and, since she is wearing a Heartrender’s black and red on her color and cuffs, Alina knows what will come next.

“Watch her,” he says with a tone of command.  Before softening it by adding a very Mikhail-esque, “Please.”

Sokolov, who smirks slightly in doing her duty and says, when they are a good deal away from the tent, “Ah, you must be Mariya.”

Inwardly she sighs.

“Yes,” is the only confirmation.

Sokolov throws a look at her over her shoulder as she is lead to another tent.

“Don’t worry,” she says when they arrive, “No one is going to tell General Zaitsev you’re the architect of this thing one way or another.”  She winks. And Alina realizes why when she corrects herself, “At the very least you’re his inspiration.”

She doesn’t have to ask her to clarify who she has, apparently, inspired.

After a day when the Triumvirate’s—or at the very least, Zaitsev’s—goals have become very clear to her—even though their motives are less than transparent, to hear this… acknowledgement makes something in her stomach plunge.

Mostly because by that comment alone, she can see why Aleksander benefited from keeping her away.

She only hopes he doesn’t actually mean to use her as a scapegoat now that she’s arrived.

***

She goes to him that night, everything in his tent blurring but him where he lays on his back, dressed in loose black clothes, his hands behind his head, pillowing it.  He does not so much as open his eyes when she sits on the bed, an arm’s length from him.  She keeps her back turned to him.

“Did you come to stop me?”

Something almost wistful colors the otherwise weary voice in which he speaks.

“I was ordered to come here.”  He hums.  “But I’m not concerned about stopping you until after you finish whatever—” she makes a gesture he does not see, because he still has not opened his eyes, “—this is.”

He gives one burst of dark mirth.

“I’m not accustomed to your approval, solnyshka.”

She folds her hands in her lap to cover over the annoyance she feels at this comment.

“Don’t get into the habit of expecting it.”  Her knuckles shine momentarily white as she clutches her hands together.  “I won’t always be the architect of your schemes, either.”

His voice turns silky:  “Are you wearing my portrait?  I suggested to Zaitsev that he get you a locket when I sent it.  To remember me.”

Internally, she rolls her eyes.

She comes to her point, instead:  “Zaitsev is dangerous.”  She pauses.  “To you.”

“To me?” he drawls, unconcerned.  Then, with maddening certainty, he states, “Zaitsev is predictable.”

“I think he means to kill you.”

She glances back in time to notice that he has moved one of his hands to rub an unshaven cheek as if such statements are commonplace.

(She supposes to him they are.)

“I would in his shoes.  You and I have made ourselves very inconvenient for Zaitsev and the interests he represents.”

She sighs.

“Aleksander—” She sighs again.  The mattress shifts behind her, but she refuses to turn around.  She realizes only when his arms have wrapped around her, that he has sat up at last, uncoiling himself like a serpent.

His breath is hot in the shell of her ear.

“Is that… concern, Alina?  For me?”

There is an underpinning of suspicion in his tone mixed with… something else.  Moreover, she doesn’t know that what motivates her is not concern.  And there is something about that fact that makes something oily writhe in her.  But even as he holds her there, arms greedy and possessive, as usual, she does not move to alter her position to accommodate him.  Nor does she respond.

“I slept in your bed for months,” His words continue to come in hot bursts.  “You’ve tried to kill me twice.  You could have slit my throat at any point or tried to drive another knife into my heart.  You only failed last time by fractions of inches.”

She makes no move other than to relax her hands, setting them on her knees.

“You clearly don’t know what’s good for you,” she says, frowning.

“And do you, Alina… know what is good for you?” he asks, the same enigmatic tone in his voice from earlier.

She frowns, but doesn’t give him the satisfaction of anything else.

“They only want me because of you.  Arguably, as usual, you’re what’s not good for me.”

There is a warm puff of humor from him.

“I’ve let them think you are my weakness,” his lips move close enough to her to brush her ear, “But, I have always seen people for precisely who they are and have almost always known what is good for me.” 

His lips ghost over the skin of her neck—a kiss held in abeyance.  She leans her head away from him and scoffs.

“Even you make mistakes.”

He chuckles darkly, and his arms withdraw from around her.

“You would know best, solnyshka.”

She lets the connection between them fade and she is back in her own small tent in her own small cot, the fading warmth around her the only evidence of the warning she has given him.

(It is only later she realizes he was doing the same.  In his own way.)

***

No one calls for her for two days.  Sokolov, in one of several unguarded moments, mentions that General Zaitsev has met with Captain Stepanov multiple times and that the General’s heartbeat indicates a high level of frustration and stress with the situation.

(She had asked about the Captain.  Sokolov, as if telling a state secret, whispers, “I have never heard the Captain’s heart beat as fast as it did when you arrived.”  She smiles brightly.  “He is usually very… calm.”

Alina does not know how much Aleksander can make his own heart lie.

She’d rather not think about it.)

Then on the third day, she is drawn out by the sounds of a scuffle and she is just in time to see a man in oprichniki grey hit Sokolov over the head with the butt end of his rifle, while two others in the same uniform hold her apart.   She is knocked to the ground, unconscious.

“What is the meaning of this?” she demands, bringing her hands up on reflex. 

There are the sounds of guns being cocked and suddenly she realizes that she is surrounded.

“You’re to come with us,” says the man who is wiping what Alina realizes is blood from Sokolov’s head off, creating a dark streak on his uniform.  Then, her arms are seized and tied behind her, apart, as if this might stop her.

(She already knows very well, if she summons, there are going to be very different repercussions on whatever this is.  This stops her more than anything they are doing.)

Nevertheless, one of the grey-clad men tells his colleague, “We’re to consider her dangerous.”

He nods curtly an she is roughly dragged off her feet and has the vague impression of coming to an opulent tent somewhere along the route.  It stirs old memories—of the Fold and the first time she had seen him.  Even as the Darkling, though, his tent had been in keeping with the rest of the Grisha—understated elegance that was enough to mark him out as having a higher status, but not something excessive.  The tent she is led to is a paradise in a sea of squalor.  And when she is thrown down on the ground, Zaitsev is sitting in a carved wooden chair, which had to have been moved in the other car with the oprichniki.  His kefta is already dusted with crumbs from kartoshka that would take the combined wages of most of the members of this dusty village on the outskirts of Ulensk to purchase the flour and sugar for, let alone the absolute luxury of the Kerch imported cocoa powder that coats it.

(Inappropriately, in light of her conversation with Aleksander, she wonders who does the army budgets these days).

“Thank you for joining us, Mariya,” Zaitsev says, his voice no different than if she were sitting in her armchair and him on her settee, not him sitting like some imitation Grisha Tsar as she is hunched and bound before him. 

“What have you done with Mikhail?” she asks.

Zaitsev laughs.  The same barrel chested laugh he has always used.  Then he clears the tent, jovially ordering everyone else out so that they can be alone.  Her shoulders ache from the awkward way she has been tied up and irritation pervades her every move.

For a moment she wonders if she should burn through the restraints, blind him, and run.

She does not know if the costs of that would be worth it.  Mostly because she does not know what Zaitsev is playing at and who is playing the game with him.

“Mikhail has left you, my dear.  Well, he left you a lone Heartrender as a token of his… regard.  As if that would protect you.”  He pauses, his eyes becoming suddenly piercing, “Didn’t he warn you?”

Zaitsev already knows he did not.  She wonders if this is another of Aleksander’s betrayals.  Or if he is planning something else.  But she does not have the time to figure out Aleksander when there is a nearer danger is in front of her.

“Why am I here, Maksim?”

He does her the service of putting his kartoshka down.  His smile is amused.

“I did tell you, Mariya, exactly why I brought you.”  He spreads his hands before him, in an all-encompassing gesture.  “Love.”

She arches an eyebrow at him, acid rising to her tongue.

“Clearly your romantic aspirations have failed you,” she says.  She cocks her head to the side.  “As you’ve said, he left me without warning.”

Zaitsev chuckles and the sound is muffled when he takes another bite of his pastry.  He merely remains eating, the sound of his lips smacking the only sound in the tent.  He puts the kartoshka down again and trains the full force of his attention on her.

“Ah Mariya, that’s where you are mistaken.  It was never Mikhail’s love I was after.”  The edge of his smile stabs upward.  “We both know you are worth more than that.”  His expression grows grave and he takes a deep breath.  “You must decide what it is you love, my dear.”

That he uses “what” rather than “who” is jarring.

She pulls herself as far upright as her bonds will allow her.  She shifts tactics, doing something she has done several times to powerful men and only been caught at by the one she deals with most.

She becomes what they think she is and tells them they are what they think they are.

 (Aleksander’s declaration from last night echoes in her ears, Let them think you are my weakness.

She will tear him out of the equation.  She will just let them think she is weak.

They will learn.)

She casts her eyes down, relaxes the pride in her posture.  She wears the desperation and obedience that she’s rooted out of herself systematically over the spread of her years like a discarded coat.

“Why is what I love even relevant to someone like you, Maksim?”

Maksim rises, taking a cloth from the table beside his carved wooden chair and dusting off his hands.

“Tell me, Mariya.  Do you love the Grisha?  Do you love Ravka?”

Her chin lifts despite herself in a gesture of defiance she cannot shake.  And for a moment she feels acutely what Aleksander must feel when he stares down the barrel of history.  When those who have not lived and bled as they have ask them to prove something they have spent years proving.

What has she not given up for the Grisha?  For Ravka?

(And, unlike Aleksander, she has never asked for anything back.  Not when everything but him—and who knows what he means in the balance of things?—has been and will be taken away.)

Her answer is easy:  “More than you know.”  She keeps her expression neutral.  “Have I not taught the new generations at the Little Palace for the benefit of Ravka?”

He looks down at her, his watery blue eyes evaluating her.  Then, his expression hardens and, her eyes tracking his every movement, he moves, picks something up and sits back in the chair, a wrapped packet in his hands.

“If that is the case, perhaps you are ready to demonstrate your love in a very different manner.”

Deliberately, he undoes the twine and carefully peels off the brown paper which surrounds what is unmistakably a garment inside.  Then, she holds her breath as he unfurls it, the fabric of it catching what little light there is in the tent.

It is a kefta.

A kefta that is a rich gold like the sun.

Zaitsev looks at her, a small smile playing at his lips.

"Shadow and Sun. Mikhail and Mariya."  Aleksander and Alina.  “Such a lovely story.” 

She stares.

“I’m not—” she begins.  “I’m not a Sun Summoner.”

His smile grows condescending.

And for a moment she feels blindsided.  Then she realized she had been warned that it could not last.  Aleksander had been telling her.  And as usual, she had been too focused on Aleksander to see what was good for her.

She feels a twist of rage.

“Gusev?” Zaitsev calls softly.  A man steps out from behind the curtained area that Alina had dismissed as some sort of partition for a sleeping area.  She recognizes him by both name and appearance as Heartrender from the royal audience—meaning the Triumvirate had not left them completely alone and unmonitored.  Seeing him, too, she thinks of Genya and realizes that centuries may pass, but the games played by the powerful do not change much.

“She’s lying, of course, General.”

He smiles—all teeth and triumph.

“Shall we talk about love again?”  He lays the golden kefta on the ground in front of him like an offering at his feet.  “We just need a Sankta the people will follow.”

She knows how this sentence goes.  She knows.  It had been in the same warning Genya had given her:  Beware powerful men.  And with it, she suddenly feels the press of all of her years.  Her opponent picks up the kartoshka, takes a bite, and lets the sweetness move about on his tongue, his expression momentarily blissful. 

“…And one that will follow the Triumvirate.”

She translates easily, because as Aleksander had warned her years ago… how eventually everything gets old.  She is not so old as he—but this—this—she is weary of.  Because she knows he means that he is looking for someone who will follow him.

Alina almost wants to laugh.  Because Aleksander had been right: Zaitsev is predictable.

Her voice is soft: “And you’ll use me to lure him back.”  Her voice drips with venom.  “With love.”

Zaitsev’s expression doesn’t change immediately.  The Heartrender’s face is impassive.

“It would have been a beautiful story, wouldn’t it?  Sun and Shadow, Mikhail and Mariya.  The Twin Saints….” He pauses.  “A pity.”

“A pity?” she repeats.

Instead of answering her directly, Zaitsev takes another bite and, with a mouth full of the chocolate truffle, he comments, “Mikhail’s Shu is excellent, would you say?”

She stares, and because there is a Heartrender, she can only speak truth.  “Yes.”

He continues, flicking his eyes over to her, “Far beyond what one would expect from a boy who has studied it at the Little Palace for just over a year.”

Tentatively, because they are now out of predictable territory, and there is much that can be revealed, she simply responds, “Yes.”

Then he turns fully to face her.

“Your earrings… do you realize they cost… likely about ten years of my entire salary?”

She remembers the day he had picked them up and examined them, holding the delicate metalwork aloft in his thick fingers.  She shakes her head and the Heartrender remains impassive.  Zaitsev, however, leans forward in his chair, and his voice taking on a steely edge that she has only heard the day he ordered her here, asks, “How does an orphan from Oretsev afford such a thing?  Such… love is expensive.”

Since he is not an orphan from Oretsev, she cannot say.  She imagines he has several bank accounts from several lives that have accumulated a good sum of money.  The only questionable part of this is that he has chosen to spend it on her.  And that somehow, Zaitsev has been allowed to know about it.

But he does not pause for her answer.  He only asks, in the same tone, “How long has he been a spy for Shu Han?”

This time she does laugh.  In response, Zaitsev frowns.

“He’s definitely not a spy for Shu Han,” she says, amused, moving he hands around to get a more comfortable position.  She flexes her palms, experimentally, feeling for the cloth of her bindings.

Flicking his eyes over to the Heartrender, he gives a nod, confirming she is telling the truth.  Zaitsev turns back to her and narrows his eyes.

“We’re certain he is not who he says he is.”  Alina thinks this is an understatement of epic proportions—if only he knew!  Even she’s still unwinding who he might be.  She will likely spend several centuries more doing so.  “Who is he?”

She knows what will happen as soon as she answers.

“Mikhail Stepanov.”

She turns to Gusev and waits, watching as a furrow forms between his brows and he says, in the most tentative way possible, “…She’s lying.”

(Of course she is.  She imagines the slightly blurred lines of Alexei Stepanov, the cartographer, and the impression of a burly man with red hair standing alongside Mal.  He’d plucked the names out of some biography of her as a taunt.)

Immediately, Zaitsev’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, he turns back to her and then, as if understanding might actually be dawning on him, he asks again, “Who is he?”

“Confirm for him that everything I say is the truth,” she says, turning to Gusev, as if she is imparting an order.  The Heartrender looks to Zaitsev, whose entire expression is trapped between interest and deep suspicion.  He gives a minute nod of permission.

Her voice even and calm, she begins: “He’s someone you should have run from the first time you met him.”

She pauses, nodding at Gusev.

“Truth,” says the Heartrender, the furrow between his brows becoming more pronounced.

“Someone who pretty much is the exact opposite of everything he has presented himself as.”

“Truth,” affirms the Heartrender again.

“But, to answer your question, he has many names,” she continues.  “But he usually goes by a single title.  One you know quite well.”

The word “Truth,” comes out as barely a whisper.

Zaitsev’s entire focus is now on her.  She repositions her hands again and clasps the cloth of her bonds.

The title slips out of Maksim’s mouth with an incredulous reverence:  “He’s the Darkling.”

Alina smiles as the confusion dawns on his face.  She can tell he is running the calculations.

“That would mean—”

Aleksander is again right about his predictability.

She finishes instead, “He would tell you that would mean there are no others like us.  I would tell you, Maksim Zaitsev, that really means that you are entirely outmatched.  Because you’ve made us both angry.”

She can feel the heat of the sun collect in her palms and run down her arms.  The smell of the cloth binding her is already beginning to faintly waft in the tent, so she knows she does not have much longer to endure this farce.

He sits entirely up in preparation for the next question, his kartoshka forgotten on the wooden tray beside him.

She really has his full attention now.

“And who are you?” he asks.

Finally.

Predictably.

Entirely too late.

She imagines her smile is filled with daggers.

“A woman who is too powerful to turn into your willing little Sankta,” she says, before saying for the first time in more than a century, “But you’d know me as Alina Starkova.”

She doesn’t wait for Gusev to confirm the truth of the statement.  The sun she calls flares bright and her bonds burn and, clasping her hands together, she bends the light and vanishes in front of them.

Chaos erupts a beat after they realize she has gone.  But she is not out of danger yet, as the Heartrender can still hear the beat of her heart.  For a moment, Gusev finds her and she can feel the tell-tale squeeze of his Small Science being used as a painful tightening of her chest.  She swerves from his line of sight and grabs the wooden tray off of Maksim’s table and brings the edge of it sharply down on Gusev’s head, knocking him out, scattering the small pile of kartoshka onto the ground.  Because she can, and she has wanted to do it for a long time, she takes one of the pastries and smashes it in Maksim’s face, causing him to cry out as the cocoa powder that coated them scattering into his eyes before bringing the tray down on his skull, too, splintering it with the force of the blow.

Then, pausing only to add insult to injury by taking the golden kefta and then incapacitating the bored oprichniki outside, she collects Sokolov and her bag containing her worldly possessions from her tent and decides she is going to give Aleksander a piece of her mind for the both of them when she finds out where the hell he’s gone.

*** 

She rides hard into his camp, his sentries stopping her, as they’ve been trained.  When she arrives she is imperiously demanding a Healer and him.  Immediately.

Alina is, as always, beautiful in her anger, and, adopting Mikhail’s stoop shouldered posture, he goes towards her at a slower and more tentative pace than he’d like.  Then, assessing the situation, he calls for a Healer, since Alina has managed to bring back Sokolov.  That dispensed with, she gives him a look of cold fury and marches fully past him, demanding, “Where is your tent?”

He extends a hand graciously towards it.

She enters it like a queen—his queen—and, flinging a bag of her meager possessions down, orders him, “I need a large basin of water, vinegar, and to wring your damn neck, Aleksander.”

He arches an eyebrow and, wanting to see her flush with rage, tells her he will be able to get her two out of her three requests, although his neck will be available in different circumstances later if she still desires.  He is quite certain she only barely holds back from slapping him.  But, as amusing as that could be, he calls for what she’s asked and, as they wait, as if she belongs there, she pulls off her coat and hat and drops it on his cot. He notices the bruises and burns on her wrists immediately.

He keeps his voice a soft, dangerous promise: “What did he do?”

She doesn’t answer him and, even so, her silence is interrupted by the arrival of a basin of warm water and vinegar.  He sets it down and immediately, she sheds another layer and scarf, and lifts her mousy brown hair out and, pinning him with a look, orders, “Wash my hair.”

Even though he knows he will eventually comply with her request, he does not immediately wish to let her know this.

“Why?” he says, more out of curiosity than anything.

Her lips purse with anger and she says in soft, clipped tones, “Because I’m giving you what you want and it is the least you can do considering what you just put me through, you ass.”

He finds himself moving to shuck off his uniform coat, which joins her coat on the bed, and then, as he rolls up his sleeves, he asks, “And what is it you think I want?”

She adds the vinegar to the water and then fixes him with the cool rage of her glare again.

“You want a Sun Saint, do you not?”

He stops and weighs his words.  It is true that this is one of his aims.  But he had not expected it to be so… precipitous.  Which means someone has forced her hand who wants the exact same thing.

He kneels down as she leans over the water, letting her dull brown locks fall into the basin.  Gently, he cups his hands, working the water over the crown of her head.

“Zaitsev knows, then,” he says.

“How long have you known that?” she says, tone soft and coiled with anger.

“He’s shown interest.  In private.”  The vinegar begins to do its work and the cheap, mousy dye begins to run free of her hair and cloud the water.  “I’ve suspected.”

He combs his fingers through her scalp, the white of the strands revealing itself little by little as the brown comes off and stains his pale fingers.

“Well, now he knows about you,” she states.

He cups his hands again, the now cloudy water running in rivulets through his fingers.

“What exactly does he know about me?”

“That you really are the Darkling.  That Mikhail Stepanov doesn’t exist.”

He frowns, but ultimately Zaitsev would be perceived as a fool if he were to try to convince people of this.  That a Darkling and a Sun Summoner are both alive—it sounds like something out of a fairy tale.  Even Zaitsev is not fool enough not to realize this.  Nevertheless, the fact that it is only her who could have told him this… leaves several things to be desired.

He keeps his tone utterly neutral: “How exactly did he get you to reveal this?”

She gives him a sharp look.

“You don’t get to be angry about that, Aleksander.  You left me there knowing exactly what would happen to me.  Because he thought I was your weakness.  You said as much yourself.”

His fingers do not pause in their ministrations.  She’s not wrong.

“You are not my weakness,” he says evenly.  Because this is mostly true.  She has the potential to be equal in strength to him, after all.  Even guessing she was a Sun Summoner wouldn’t have prepared the fool Zaitsev for a fully trained Sun Summoner who wielded a powerful amplifier.  “I knew I was leaving them with a poison if they were foolish enough to come for you.”  He wrings the dye out of her hair, making it plume like a cloud in the already dirtied water of the basin.  “Did you show them how wrong they were to underestimate you, solnyshka?”

He sits back as she lifts her head up, her bone white locks dripping with dirty water, which she squeezes out into the basin.

“I may have left Maksim and his Heartrender with a concussion and the impression that both of us would be coming for him.”

He arches an eyebrow, dealing with each piece of information she is imparting in order of importance.

“His Heartrender?”

She brushes her long hair to the side, probably deliberately flicking him with water as she does.

“Coincidentally he seems to be sharing said Heartrender with Duke Kirigan.  Which now means we have a problem of an entirely different kind.”

He wipes his face on his sleeve.

That is a simple enough problem to be solved.  One he can literally solve with a gesture, if need be.  So, he leaves it.  Instead he gets up and drapes a towel over her shoulders.  She wraps up her hair in it.  He remains standing over her.

“And are we, Alina, both intending to come for him?”

She looks up at him and her chin tilts up in defiance.

“He thinks you’re a Shu spy,” she says curtly, not answering his question.  “Because you gave me earrings that were the cost of a small city.”

He narrows his eyes and, crossing his arms turns towards his desk.

There’s an edge in his voice he doesn’t quite intend when he says, “Their cost still pales in comparison to my original offer.” 

She snorts and rises, shrugging into her coat and perching on the corner of his cot.  She looks away from him, a muscle in her jaw working.  Then she sighs, and he realizes she is tired.  It is a tiredness he recognizes—one that sleep alone could not possibly fix.

“This is apparently the day I need to remind people that I don’t belong to them just because they have the audacity to ask me to.”

His voice is cold:  “You will never belong to someone like Zaitsev.”

Although she would object if he relayed his actual thoughts:  That she would belong to no one but him.  But he knows saying it now will do him no favors in convincing her of this.  Especially since the weariness has invaded her eyes as she turns and looks at him.

“Supposedly, I would have belonged to the Triumvirate,” she sighs again.  “Because it is apparently hard for all of you to believe I belong to myself.”  She gestures by inclining her head towards the bag.  “He did thoughtfully get me a kefta.”

He turns the rickety thing that hardly passes for a chair around and splays his long legs comfortably out in front of him, since the two of them are quite beyond posturing of a certain kind.  Steepling his hands in his lap, he asks lazily, “Do you want revenge, my dear Alina?  Shall we sweep over Ravka in the guise of avengers of the people to achieve it?”

She frowns.

“Is that what you’ve planned, Aleksander?”

“No,” he says honestly.  The alterations to his plans would actually not be difficult with the inclusion of the people’s Sol Koroleva, after all.  All it did was advance things he had assumed would come to fruition later.  “But I am willing to be persuaded.” 

“I’m sure.”  She scoffs again.  She leans forward, her anger clearly still not burnt out. “Mostly I want to know what you intend.”  She purses her lips together.  “You could even try to be honest.”

“Would you believe I have been thus far?”

She arches a bone white eyebrow at him and rejoins, “Would you believe I spent most of yesterday tied up on a rug?”

He leans back and says casually, “I’ve offered to make him suffer for it.  Say the word.”

She scowls, her eyes flashing.  “I warned you.  You might have done the same.”

If she had been paying attention, he had, in fact, warned her several times.  He decides perhaps a different reminder of one of their enduring arguments is in order.

“Perhaps if you focused on your actual enemies instead of me, you might have noticed I did.”  In response, her eyes narrow and it actually appears she might be pondering his words.  However, he must admit the fact that she has come to him, even if only to spout empty threats, represents something of an improvement.  He continues by asking, “So, I suppose I should ask, Alina—do you think I was wrong to treat you as my equal and assume you were competent enough to evaluate a situation independently of me and act?”

He cradles his chin in a hand, wondering if she has indeed finally discarded some of her earlier presumptions.  She reaches up and, frowning, begins wringing her hair out with the towel.

“You wanted a Sun Summoner.”

Something ravenous in him stirs.  Something that starved for hundreds of years and has yet to be entirely sated.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever made a secret of wanting every part of you, Alina.”

(She need not know that one day he had asked Zaitsev if Mariya was an Inferni, because as he had come in he had seen the light in her hands.  She need not know and now, even should Zaitsev tell her, she would not believe him.

Nor does she need to know he had sent some casual communications to his Shu Han operatives to see how closely he was being monitored.  Nor that he had purchased the earrings after receiving a response that Zaitsev did not read, and delivered them to her on a day he knew Alina would leave them on the table for him to see.

He would accede that the Triumvirate might pass for competent.)

Rather, she holds his gaze at him for a moment, before throwing her head forward and continuing to dry off the white locks of her hair with the towel.  Still drying, she says, “This is where you tell me what you want to do with me.”

His lips curl up into an easy grin.

“I certainly have ideas.”

The brown of her eyes peeks out between her hair at him, and what he sees of her expression shows only annoyance.  She flips her hair behind her head, no trace of the guise of the mouse, and draws her lips into a sharp, serious line.

“You’ll continue with the greenhouses and soil reclamation?” she asks pointedly.

He represses a sigh.

“That surprises you?”

Her fingers tease apart the white strands of her hair into three parts.

“It is a means to your end.”  He watches as she begins pulling her damp hair into a loose braid—how her nimble fingers weave the separate strands together.  “And after?”

“We wait,” he says simply.

“…For them to attack you,” she states

He arches an eyebrow and corrects her:  “Attack us, I had thought.”

“Who will attack?” she presses, ignoring him.

“No matter who it is, it will look like the Tsar.  He already unwisely threatened such in an open session of court.”  Everything is so predictable, he stifles a bored yawn.  “Based on what you’ve said today, it will almost assuredly be the Heartrender, under Zaitsev’s direction.  The Grisha get a martyr, Zaitsev loses someone who can outstrip his power and influence, the otkazat’sya find an enemy.”

She regards the floor of his tent for a long moment, taking this in.  Then, coming to some conclusion, she nods.

“I suppose then you allow the people to depose the Duke and the Tsar—” (“Same thing” he comments, making a flippant gesture.) “—expose the Triumvirate’s role in all of this to take control of the military, and become the Sainted Tsar of the Holy Ravkan Empire with me as your Sainted Tsarista.  Am I missing something…?”

He smiles fondly at her.

“A lovely story,” he drawls dismissively.

As she isn’t bothering with hiding any of her emotions from him, her thoughts ripple openly over her face.

“You don’t actually need me anymore,” she thinks out loud, pursing her lips.  “Because you have—"

And then, as she begins laughing, because she has evidently discovered exactly why her story, while persuasive, is unpalatable to him, at best.

“Sankt Mikhail!”  She bursts out between bouts of mirth.  “That’s the problem!  Without me—you’d need to be him.”  She doubles over with laughter.  “And you despise him!  And—”  She pauses, placing a hand over her mouth, still shaking with mirth.  “You can’t even be your own descendant, Aleksander.  Because of the Count Kirigan-Duke Kirigan problem and the fact that… instead of Mikhail you’d be… you and need me again.  And—you already know I won’t.” 

He's killed people for saying far less to him.  And, to remind her, the shadows climb menacingly up the walls.  She stops laughing and he watches her eyes follow the progress of his shadows before he turns back to him.

Her eyes flash and she calls his bluff immediately.

“If you intended to kill me, you wouldn’t have put yourself through the trouble of washing my hair.”  She ties off her braid and he allows the shadows to slowly dissipate.  “You, too, could have cut my throat at any time, you know.  But you won’t.”

He will not.  She knows this.  Like he knows what she will say next.

“Because I am your weakness, Aleksander.”

He has not made a secret of this to her.  He has and likely will do things that he would do for no other for her.  But if she has not realized it, he will not confirm it.  Instead, he continues on.

“You act, Alina,” he says with deliberate, clipped intention, “Like this is the only time when my plans have failed to work out.”

She smirks.

“Oh, I know it isn’t the only time.  I’ve been there, remember?”

He tenses his fingers and a muscle in his jaw tightens.  His voice, though, when it comes out is still smooth:  “I doubt you’d let me forget.”

Her smile broadens and she shows her teeth.  And, in spite of himself, he admires how she has learned to sharpen the blade of her own cruelty against him.

“But, my Alina,” he speaks over her predictable muttered protest, “you also seem to have forgotten I have a very particular set of strengths.”

“Oh,” she says, doing a mocking approximation of his tone, “I doubt you’d let me forget.  Shall I guess?”

He makes an equally mocking gesture of permission.

“Time, patience, condescension for the whole of humanity except for occasionally—and I emphasize occasionally—me?”

He turns his face away from her and sighs, “There will be other opportunities.”  He pauses, waiting for whatever snide comment she has a mind to make.  “And in the meantime, there is Shu Han.”

Out of the corner of his eye she sees his entire face shift with flashes of anger and then suspicion before she says, with biting incredulity, “What in Shu Han can possibly distract you from a crown in Ravka?”

It is a good question.  One he has weighed in the past months.

“Something that I believe will require my… personal attention.”  He sits up, looking her straight in the eye, and asks, “What have you heard about jurda parem?”

The name evidently doesn’t register, because the lack of alarm on her face does not reflect what should be present given the fact that those two words are again in his mouth.

“Is it worth a crown to you?” she scoffs.

“To many people in Ravka, it is worth a martyrdom,” he says seriously.  Before he adds, “But for now, it is worth a civil conversation with you even when you are in a less than… amenable mood.”

Her lips purse, but through a consecrated miracle ushered in by the Sun Saint, she allows him to explain.

The ensuing conversation lasts them until the dawn.

***

Maksim Zaitsev owns two warring things as he walks, escorted by a full detachment of the Little Palace’s grey cloaked oprichniki and several high ranking Grisha through a surprisingly well-run military encampment: curiosity and utter cynicism.

He has used something of history and something of folklore to buoy Mikhail Stepanov’s rise to power, under the theory that he could be controlled and made a figurehead.

That was what the Duke had ordered, after all.

And then, in a tent outside of Ulensk, from out of the mouth of a woman who he had thought a colleague, he had been asked to believe—truly believe—in the stories he himself has spun out of fiction and folklore and into molded being to serve his own ends.  Stories meant to accomplish the work.  He is asked to believe it from the voice of a character in those stories.

Absurd.  Absurd.  Patently absurd!

In fact, once he had had a Healer pull out the long splinters of wood that his scalp had been liberally peppered with, he had been driven back to Os Alta and, after giving the Tsar the unfortunate news that Mikhail Stepanov was unsalvageable, he returned to the Little Palace and had gone into the Library, unlocked the glass windowed cabinet with the lock on it that only the Triumvirate and the Little Palace Librarian possessed a key for, and took out the contents.

In two days he had read every available account of the Darklings and Alina Starkova and surrounded himself in something that has risen to the level of mythos.  But there are things, too, which inspire both belief and doubt.  Frail with age, there are even gossamer thin documents with their writing on it, that he had never bothered to look at before, as he had not wanted history, only the verisimilitude of history.

But there it is—the same familiar spidery and elegant script that has left him notes on his own correspondence—the first seemingly authentic piece of evidence in a tale of what should be ludicrous madness.  Handwriting that matches over the course of centuries.

(Still, he wonders, which is the forgery—the Darkling or Mikhail?  Could one or the other have made Mariya believe in an absurd truth so much her very heartbeat supported its veracity?)

Then, brushing off Agafya’s concerns about “Mariya” and “Mikhail” with a shake of his head, he had gone to Donskoy, the Corporalki member of the Triumvirate.  He’d asked the severe looking old Heartrender—and one of the two people he can divulge this information to—one question:  “How does one lie to a Heartrender?”

Donskoy had sneered—“As any first year student here can tell you, Maksim, you don’t.”

Then, Maksim had smiled and revealed, “Mariya Baranova sat on the floor of my tent in Ulensk and told Gusev that she is actually Alina Starkova, the Sun Summoner.”  He paused as Donskoy’s mouth dropped open.  “Gusev confirmed she wasn’t lying.”

“That is—” he sputters.  Mariya has always been held as an object of active curiosity by the older members of the Little Palace.  However, she had done her job efficiently and well, so after some time such curiosity faded to a muted whisper.  “Did you see her summon?”

He is not sure what he saw.  There is also the strange residual effects of a concussion which she had given him.

“She… disappeared.”  He will not divulge the information about Mikhail yet.  Mikhail had been under his purview and he will not disclose anything until there is something to disclose.  “Is it possible, Donskoy, that madness and truth can be confused?”

He frowns.  Then, uncharacteristically visibly hesitating, he mutters under his breath, “…That can’t possibly be true.”

“Gusev says it is.”  He pauses, watching as Donskoy’s lined face mulls over the information,

“But you can see why I had to ask a question every child at the Little Palace knows in their first year.”

“The effects of madness on reading one’s veracity have not been studied.  It is possible that madness allows true belief so that…”  He pauses.  “Though I don’t imagine this would be a common application.”  He makes a dismissive wave.  Then, in a slightly more concerned tone, as he knows the possible ramifications of this, he asks  “Is Duke Kirigan aware?”

“About Baranova and her defection, yes.”  He pauses, the words still having the taint of unreality about them, even as they leave his mouth, “About Starkova?  Only you, my friend.  I don’t want to be forced to resign because my mental capacity becomes an open question.  There is too much work yet.”

Because it is still patently absurd.  A Darkling and the Sun Summoner exist—and this fact alone is enough for the rabble out there to burn everything in their way, leaving the Winter Reaper to take Ravka for his own.

Folk superstition.

And now, in a tiny windswept village south of Ulensk, he is greeted by simpering Mikhail from Oretsev and proud Mariya from parts rumored—the same as they ever are.  As if no other claim has been made about them.  As if he is only here to bring them to heel on behalf of the crown and the Triumvirate.

“You can bring your Heartrender, General Zaitsev,” says Mikhail with the same worn tone of apology in his voice which he has always had.

He knows they mean Gusev.  Which is perfect.  And makes the trip back to the Little Palace worth it.

(His Fabrikators, after all, always do excellent work.  In this case, he is betting on their work quality with his life.)

“And who will you have?” he asks politely.

It is the woman who he has always known as Mariya Baranova, who might be insane, or a myth—he’s not overly sure which—who answers:  “If we can trust you, Maksim, do we have need of anyone else?”

(If she is not insane, she certainly has no need of anyone else.  Zaitsev is more than a competent Tidemaker.  He has an amplifier.  But he has no delusion of being an equal match for a Darkling or a Sun Summoner.)

Zaitsev is mostly hoping that the woman who has chosen to live apart in a forgotten hut maintained by order of the Storm Queen, on the outskirts of the society of the Little Palace, is just insane.  And, in the car ride out, in just Gusev’s charmingly taciturn presence, he had convinced himself that all the signs were there from the beginning.  But here, in her wool hat, walking beside Mikhail with her lips in the slight twist of disapproval she always has had when dealing with the boy, she seems no different.

But as soon as the tent flap rustles to a close, and Mariya ushers them towards the four chairs set out, all his attention becomes fixed on the tall boy he had taken by the hand in Oretsev who transforms utterly before his eyes: Mikhail’s back straightens, his stride lengthens, and he seats himself with not a single wasted movement, pulling himself up to his full height while folding one long leg over the other and pillowing his chin in a his palm.  The eyes that look down at him are as cold as the winter which beats outside the tent and, for a moment Zaitsev feels as if he himself has transformed inexplicably into a bug.  As an utterly inhuman smile slashes the boy’s face (making Zaitsev sure he is not, in any definition, a boy), he drawls, “Hello Maksim, I’ve been told you’ve been made aware of who you are meeting with today.”

This person is a stranger wearing the boy named Mikhail’s skin.  He overshadows even the fact that when Mariya Baranova has removed her fur hat and her scarf and moves to take her seat, the bone white hair of Sankta Alina tumbles over her shoulders as she moves to perch at Mikhail’s—no the Darkling’s—side. 

(Light and dark juxtaposed, he thinks.  A mere fairy tale for before a winter’s fire.)

He opens his mouth and suddenly, thrust into a fairy tale himself, he does not know how to address either being.  If this isn’t all some incredible act conjured up for the purposes of strategy—two people who are wrested the narrative out of someone else’s grasp to use for their own purposes.  And then the Darkling’s smile sharpens and he pulls himself upright, making an inviting gesture with his free hand.

“You have a Heartrender and you no doubt have questions.”

“You… have never been Mikhail Stepanov,” he asks.

“No,” he says, amusement dancing over his face.  “But you knew that before.”  He waves dismissively.  “Come, Maksim, I’m giving you an opportunity I’ve rarely given anyone in the past.”

“You’re the Darkling,” he states, wanting to hear it from his own mouth.

“Yes,” he says, unambiguously.  Gusev gives one curt nod in response.

“…Which one?”

Something about his face twists, though his expression doesn’t overtly change.  The change is in his eyes.  Maksim doesn’t think that he has ever looked on anyone so ancient.

“All of them,” answers Mariya flatly, her demeanor the same as when she had brown hair and had made sense two weeks and another lifetime ago.  Next to him, Gusev gives an equally incredulous nod.

“That’s—”

He does not know how the sentence ends.  The first Darkling created the Fold.  That was more than 550 years ago.  Zoya Nazyalenskaya, the Storm Queen, had an exceptional lifespan at 138.

The woman—the one who acts like Mariya but who isn’t—smiles.  “Improbable…?” she supplies.  “I suppose we both are.”

(The Darkling turns to her and gives her an absolutely withering look that Maksim does not ask about and does not understand.  Mostly he thanks all the saints save the ones in front of him that it is not directed at him.  Mariya, though, seems entirely used to it as she gives him back the same look of tired disdain he has seen her cast at him during his lessons.)

They know one another and have for… perhaps, as Gusev confirms, centuries.  And these… beings come from a place of power beyond Triumvirates and Tsars and Regents and have enough power to level mountains with a flick of their hands.  Some even said that Shadow soldiers ripped from the Darkling’s flesh marched on the Little Palace slaughtering half of what used to be known as the Second Army.

Suddenly months of his carefully laid plans seem desperate and silly fantasies.

He tries, though, to salvage something.  Not even knowing how to phrase the question he says, “The Greenhouses…?”

And Sankt Mikhail the Starless, succor of the Ravkan people in dark times, smirks and says, “If a few hundred otkazat’sya die, it is not my concern.”  He flicks his eyes over to the woman sitting next to him and gives a small, mocking bow of his head towards her, “My hand is just doing my Sankta’s bidding.”

Sankta Alina seems distinctly unimpressed by this statement because she rolls her eyes and mutters darkly, “It is not as if you haven’t gotten exactly what you wanted out of it.”

Zaitsev does not quite know what to make of the two of them.  Everything agrees they killed one another almost two hundred years ago—and, though they sit opposing him, there is nothing of trust or easy camaraderie in what he is seeing in front of him.  …If he can even trust what he is seeing in front of him.  If he is not in front of a pair of absolute master manipulators who can somehow fool even a Heartrender. 

If he were to engage in a protracted war against them, no one he knew could be an adequate tool to defeat the pair of them—he’d have to turn them on themselves.

(And, in doing so, Ravka would burn in an entirely different way.  And he has made a deal with the devil to make sure it will not any more than is strictly necessary.)

Beings of myth and legend or no, he prefers to handle it the way he has planned.  He will at least try.  He owes that to Ravka.  And maybe the Duke.  He is pulled from his musings by the fact that the Darkling is giving him a long, cool evaluative look.

“I did not agree to meet you for greenhouses,” he states, “So… have you gotten your fill, Maksim?”  He cocks his head to the side, an enigmatic smile playing on his face, his gaze still boring down on him.  “Shall I ask the questions now?”

His tone is ominous, indeed.  Zaitsev has the sudden feeling of being a bug again—this time one pinned to a card with its wings spread, like the butterflies from Donskoy’s delightful hobby.

He finds himself nodding.  He sits up and folds his hands in his lap. 

“You see, Maksim, my boy,” he drawls, and the endearment becomes something of a terrible promise, “As I am the hand of the Sun Sankta in pandering to the otkazat’sya, the Triumvirate has become the fingers on the hand of the Duke.”  Zaitsev feels the imaginary pin wedge in his stomach at this calmly delivered observation. Then, his face deceptively calm when compared to the rage which suffuses the face of his white-haired companion, asks, “Why have you sold Ravka’s Grisha out?”

Zaitsev opens his mouth and then closes it.

“I have not,” he says, mustering indignation.  “We have not.  We have only done what is necessary to maintain peace.  For Ravka!”

The Darkling leans forward and says, his voice silky and light, “I don’t need a Heartrender to read the lie you’ve just told me.  And most would not dare to try such a tactic.  Especially not when I’ve shown them remarkable mercy.”  Disdain drips from the last word.  And horror grows when the corner of his mouth turns up and, inclining his head towards the woman next to him, he says as if it is nothing, “You should thank her.  You, your niece, and several of your mistresses owe her their lives, Maksim.”

The steely threat shines through his tones.

Gusev blurts:  “Mercy?”

Alina Starkova fixes him with a look and says, “For him it is,” she flicks her eyes over to where he remains sitting, utterly calm and poised.  “Note, he will likely change his mind.  He’s showing some incredibly restraint.  For him.”

(The Darkling smiles at this, as if she has praised him.  He does not understand this.  He does not understand this at all.

Mostly because part of him still believes he is in a fairytale.)

But, at the same time, Zaitsev knows that the Duke had been right.  Even if he had no knowledge of the full truth.

Ravka could not tolerate a Darkling.

“You want something,” Zaitsev says despite the fact that his heart is yammering in his chest.  He does not say out loud: That’s the only reason you haven’t killed me immediately.

The Darkling looks at him and spreads his hands out in a gesture Mikhail would make.

“I want many things.”

Next time him, the woman who wears Mariya’s face frowns and, then, jaw tightening, says, “I want some very specific things.”  He has never seen the rage that comes to her expression as she says:  “You owe me an explanation, Maksim Zaitsev, for the Fabrikator made bullets sold to Fjerda, for the Shu Hanese refugees who disappear and somehow end up with profitable Kerch indentures with links back to accounts tied to Duke Kirigan, for some rather interesting troop movements, too—where Grisha forces are either deployed and slaughtered or held back at key strategic points allowing several highly questionable shipments into Ravka.”

Mikhail Stepanov has gone through his personal communications for months.  Been left unguarded in his room.  Trusted.  Mikhail Stepanov who is not Mikhail Stepanov but an unnaturally old Darkling who knows the ciphers and the languages and has likely seen the litany of what he has been forced to do.  He makes a very strategic effort to keep the look of utter panic in him from rising to his face.  But he can feel Gusev twist next to him at this information.  Gusev who is the liaison between the Triumvirate and the Duke.

(If others knew they had allied with the Crown—allied with them so that the coffers of Ravka could be refilled, so that, even if the Duke showed open disdain for the Grisha, Ravka could remain at peace.)

“And, perhaps the only reason why I haven’t already hunted you all down and disposed of your miserable carcasses, is you have one piece of information I need,” this threat is made with all notes of cold, precise brutality.  And Zaitsev is fairly certain he knows what will be asked.

“Where is the parem coming from?”

If he knows about the parem, which was never in any correspondence he was allowed near—mostly because there is no correspondence—Zaitsev knows he likely knows far more.

Instead, he pulls himself up and says, “The Grisha cannot afford to be alone in these times—with the backing of the Crown we can—Ravka can—”

The Darkling rises and looks down on him, then he brings a single hand up and shadow circles around his throat and he is choking on darkness, his throat stuffed with it.

“You should know, my dear Maksim, what happened to the last person who thought they could distribute jurda parem to my Grisha.”  Maksim involuntarily shrunk back as the shadows of the tent climbed the wall.  “I destroyed the man who invented it slowly,”  he stands over him, the grey of his eyes cold as marble, “and the last Taban Queen died just like this, choking on my shadows for giving him the order to do so.”

“Gusev,” he gasps, bringing up his hands and calling into his hands his own power.

Even Gusev hesitates because something dark shimmers in his other hand.

And Zaitsev remembers, probably too late, that each Darkling was noted to be extremely proficient with the Cut.

(He remembers as a half-crazed voice that he is apparently the only Darkling.  Which means he also made a Shadow Fold.  And though he only has the barest comprehension of what that was, he knows that it dominated Ravka for four centuries).

But as lights lick at the edge of his own vision, there’s a muted flash of light and for a moment he braces for his own death while choking on darkness.  But then the shadows drop to defend against the sudden burst of light.

“Stop,” she demands, the light licking off of her and her white hair whipping about her like an avenging goddess.

(Sankta, his mind supplies.  And he believes it.)

The Darkling’s eyes narrow and there is a flash of something like rage directed towards her and the shadows ripple in response.  And, though his throat constricts, in that stray look on the Darkling’s face and the molten sun that pools in her hand, Zaitsev sees a promise.  These Twin Saints are not aligned.  Like the sign of the Darkling of old, the darkness wishes to eclipse the sun’s rays.

And for a moment, he sees how the stories can serve him again—when brought to their original forms.  Sankta Alina will turn on the Darkling.  Sankta Alina can be made to embrace the Crown.

In Sankta Alina he can see a faint glimmer of hope.

He will do what he has to do today and, despite what she had said yesterday, Zaitsev has hope that she can be turned and she can be used.

(After all, it has been done before.  This is the story of Sankta Alina with the fairy tale rooted out of it and the history put back in.)

But that can be for later.

For now he needs to get out of the room.

For now he needs to seemingly tip his hand.

For now he just needs to get him out of the tent and in front of an audience.  So the real show here can go on.  Then he can bicker over with parem and bullets and Fjerda with Sankta Alina.

His hand comes up and massages the bruised skin of his throat and, his voice coming out breathy and gravelly, he gives a command performance, “I can give you the names of the informants.”

“That’ll do,” says Sankta Alina, sitting up regally in her chair.

“For now,” says the Darkling, his tone pregnant with threatening intent.

Then he lies, because he needs to get out.  The stories that can be spun from doing what he wants to do in this room, alone and unwitnessed, would all whip back at him—and likely several other people.

“Donskoy has them—he deals with Shu Han,” he lies.  Donskoy had told him never to deal with parem.  That the long-term consequences could be catastrophic for Grisha the world over.  “I handled Fjerda and the arms deals.”

Shadows flare in the room, and the Darkling says, “I was aware of the second.”  He arches an eyebrow.  “I’ll need assurances on the first.”

Here, he decides he should tip his hand, “I haven’t yet deployed the multiple army regiments that surround your camp right now.  Is that an assurance?”

The Darkling’s lips quirk up (he’s a man who has destroyed mountains.  He used to come to the front simply to lower the enemy’s morale, and if he is to be believed, he destroyed the Taban line in Shu Han and was the architect of the Shu Hanese Civil War.) and he says, “It has been a long time since I’ve been pitted against a poorly trained and under provisioned force.”  He seats himself down in his chair again.  “You did well to not force the conflict.  But, I’ll entertain your terms.”

It is not a bluff Zaitsev will call.

(Although he notes the Darkling takes sole responsibility.  What Sankta Alina thinks is as difficult to tell as when she had been simply Mariya.)

“I will bring you Donskoy,” he says.  “He will only believe me.”

“And if you don’t?”

Zaitsev steels himself.  He knows precisely what is at stake if he and Gusev fail today.

“I believe you already have assurances.”

The smile that spreads across the Darkling’s face chills him to his very core.

“Your niece,” he begins, “I believe she is assigned to an army regiment near Poliznaya… your dearest Ulyana.”  Zaitsev knows he’s about to gamble.  He has known the stakes.  “I’ll give you a week.”

Zaitsev nods.  Because he knows the stakes.  He has been prepared for such eventualities the moment he had first sat on the Triumvirate.

He rises, and repeats, “A week.”

The Darkling rises as well and, suddenly, as if a veil has lifted over him, he slouches and her face changes entirely and all evidence that anyone else exists in Mikhail Stepanov’s skin is eradicated.  Sankta Alina, too, piles her bone white hair in a hat and becomes unremarkable Mariya once more.

Then Mikhail’s face ripples and a smile he would never wear slashes his mask, as he dips into a bow that feels like a mockery, though it is flawless in every way he can see.

“After you, General,” he says in Mikhail’s shy voice.

And they depart the tent together, as he had planned.  Gusev gives him a nod and Mariya, whose status here is the most questionable, trails after him.

They walk side by side, until they get to the middle of the camp, and he thinks then of the speculations of the martyrdom of Sankta Alina—how she had killed the Great Liberator with a simple dagger where Grisha might and otkazat’sya military arms had failed countless times.  Knives are close and personal.

Three gun shots ring out in quick succession.

(Knives are personal.  Bullets are not.

And his Fabrikators have made good bullets.  Bullets that can tear apart even core cloth.)

Zaitsev turns, as if in surprise, as these well-crafted bullets explode into the back of Mikhail Stepanov and Gusev, as he planned, is shouting his allegiance to the Tsar and to Ravka as the grey cloaked oprichniki fold his arms around him, casting the gun away and restraining him.

Zaitsev looks back, as if in shock and surprise, as if he hasn’t organized this entire thing and then, the warmth of satisfaction at what he has just done is suddenly strangled when he meets the calm, knowing eyes of the woman who claims to be Alina Starkova.  But for a moment, she is no different than Mariya Baranova, sipping tea in her chair, listening to gossip about the Little Palace.  Although the world has dissolved into chaos around him—with the shouting of both Mikhail Stepanov’s loyal soldiers and pilgrims and his own trusted forces, to Gusev writhing in their hold, the gun tossed from his hand, she, unnoticed and unremarkable, reaches up to her head and removes her hat, her hair falling down to her shoulders, like a story unraveling, and she begins to glow.

And, as if that glow in her calls something in the—hopefully—dying frame of Mikhail Stepanov, shadows writhe up from his fallen figure to meet the light.  In the distraction, Gusev manages to break away—exactly according to script—and then, in the first aberration, he makes it three paces and a bright sickle of light tears through him, slicing him in half at an odd angle.

The world erupts into madness and people are milling every which way, shouting, and rushing headlong away from the light.  She walks, eyes fixed on the dark body on the ground, and when she passes she does not so much as pause or look at him, and her voice, when she speaks, is almost drowned by the din.

“As agreed, you have a week.”

He manages to bleat out, “He’ll be dead in minutes.”

A beatific smile lights her face—the smile of a saint granting a benediction to their faithful.

(Later, he will be asked again and again what words passed from the Sankta’s lips to his unworthy ears.  He does not know what to say.

Because, despite her smile, it is poison which leeches out of her mouth.)

“Did you actually think we would make it so easy, Maksim?  Did you think we did not know what you are?”

Then, like a figure in a fairy tale the glow about her burns with a searing brightness and around her becomes a blinding inferno of light.  It coalesces over the bleeding body of what looks like a young, handsome boy, and then both of them are gone, seemingly, in the blink of an eye.

And, just like that, he knows the narrative has been yanked out of his hands. 

He knows he has lost.  And in this lost gamble, he knows that all he has sacrificed for Ravka would not be enough.

***

Vladimir Vasiliev (1), a private in the New Ravkan Army, watches as Grisha Captain Mikhail Stepanov is hit by three rounds to his back by a man spouting Imperialist propaganda.

(The man is cut in half by a blade of light before anyone knows what happens.  It is a scene that gets played over and over again in Vladimir Vasiliev’s nightmares: the light and the way the man simply… separates.  One of several horrors from this period.)

He watches as the world around the man, whom many call the Starless Saint, is enveloped in another burst of searing light that draws itself into a woman with starkly white hair.

The Sun Saint, go the whispers.

Beloved of Sankta Alina.

The Twin Saints be praised!

Both Saints disappear and, in their absence, Vladimir Vasiliev watches, too, as the Sainted alliances built by Sankt Mikhail the Starless evaporate into a firestorm of anger.  In Balakriev, the dachas of the nobility burn (2).  In Os Kervo, the governor appointed by the Tsar and his regent are dragged from the Hall of Justice and shot in the street while the people in the city raid the city’s storage for flour for bread.

Even Sankt Mikhail’s greenhouses burn in Ulensk.

Ravka’s dry and desiccated fields are watered instead with Ravkan blood.

Finally, the rage and fire reaches the Tsar in Os Alta.  The blood that waters the streets of the Ravkan capital city is noble and blue and several generations and a title saves no one.

Not even the Regent.

Not even the Tsar, a boy of 9.

(He does not read what happens to them in any detail.  He expects it is bloody and cruel and unsparing.  They are both shot.  Their bodies are displayed.

Do the details matter?

Dead is dead.)

But, remembering the flash of light, the snuffing of the shadows, and, in its aftermath, watching Ravka burn, Vladimir Vasiliev arrives at one fundamental truth:  Even the Saints cannot save Ravka now.

Perhaps they never could.

***

Chapter Text

vii.  Domestication

When he wakes and tries to sit up, the world rocks around him until, momentarily disoriented, he falls back into the scratchy sheets wrapped around him.  He attributes his apparent weakness to the curling, pain radiating throughout him that he hasn’t felt since an entire cathedral was almost toppled on his head.  Gathering his will to him, he attempts to steady himself.  But, this does nothing to stop the swaying.  He wipes his brow with a hand, and finds the now fading ridges of his scars under are coated with a slick layer of sweat.

He realizes the lantern, perched on an iron hook some distance from his bed—only a cot, he realizes on further evaluation—sways along with him.

His consciousness slowly coming back to him, he realizes the rhythmic sway is an indication he is on a ship.  He composes himself again, expending all of his focus in a way that immediately makes him tired:  Bandaged, in a cot, dressed in rough, homespun clothing in drab whites and browns.

Injured.  More than he should be.

Not dead, though.  That much has gone to plan.

He turns his focus more sharply inward, conscious of how quickly his own, old heart beats and how the very sinews of his joints and marrow of his bones seem to ache:  Bad, but not the worst shape he has been in.  A Healer has evidently seen to him.  So, something else went to plan, too.

Blearily, he lies back, his breath coming loudly to his own ears.  Gingerly, the spare movement lighting his body on fire, he manages to turn his head spare inches which feel like miles.

He sees her, then, sitting backwards on a chair, her head pillowed on her crossed arms on its back, her face calling up something in him he is too tired from the simple act of staying conscious to fight.  His mind supplies random detail, instead.  How her hair is now a dark reddish hue (which fires some odd, blurred visual memory of what he retains of Genya Safin).  How it hangs about her in an unkempt nest.  How her clothing, too, is drab, homespun peasant fare. 

How she is asleep.

Attempting to stay up, he groans involuntarily and plummets back.

Across from him, Alina stirs into life and, rising, hisses, “Don’t you dare try to get up” before disappearing.

She brings back at old woman who she gestures expansively and ridiculously towards.  The woman nods and then, in lilting Kaelish, “Your wife is very worried about you, sir.  I’m to change your dressings.”

He hears the word “wife” and momentarily loses the thread of translation.  Mostly because he has not used Kaelish extensively since he was younger than her and now is not the ideal time for him to regain proficiency.

Alina—wife, he disjointedly realizes, which sends a shiver of something that is not quite rage through him—gives up her chair.

Pain radiating throughout his entire torso, the woman, with Alina’s help, manages to pull him up.  Alina, as if she really is his little devoted wife, lifts up his shirt over his head to anticipate it.

“Ravka is dangerous these days,” the old woman lilts while she works. 

Uncharacteristically, he is almost grateful for her chatter, as concentrating on the thread of her words—the long unused grammar and foreign accent—gives him a mental defense against the pain which seems to lick every part of him.  “They say someone killed a Saint in cold blood and now the whole place is erupting into total pandemonium.  Don’t blame you and your sweet wife for going back to the Motherland.”  She cuts into the bandages.  “Even killed half of the witch folk they have ruling up there.”  She tuts, cleaning his wounds with some sort of strong smelling antiseptic solution, and repeats, with a sigh, “Total pandemonium.”

Through the haze of pain he marks this for later.

“How has my wife been managing?” he asks back in thick, sludgy Kaelish.

His voice sounds sepulchral even to his own ears. The unaccustomed shape of the round, bright vowels—so unlike Ravkan—covered by the rasp of disuse.

She ties off the bandages and then pats his hand in an indulgent, motherly way.

“Been beside herself, sitting next to you day and night.  You’ve had a fever—you know.  Tried to watch you the whole time, she did.  Doesn’t speak a word of Kaelish, as I found out, but I made the lass sleep.  She understood well enough, though—bright thing, she is.  But old Aoifa—she watched you for that lovely wife of yours.  Return the favor to her when all is well.  Keeps the marriage sweet, you know?”

She pats his hand again.

“Tell her to send for me when the dressings need changing again.”

He lays down and can feel a bead of sweat roll down his forehead from the effort of being upright.  He closes his eyes and bites back on the pain.  Finally, when he has mastered it, he says, the Ravkan word harsh and gravelly, “Wife.”

He opens his eyes to see her floating above him, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.  The old woman hadn’t been wrong about his “wife’s” concern, strangely.

“Eryk,” she says—his mind is still sluggish and it takes a moment for him to realize that this is, most unfortunately, a name she’s chosen for him now that Mikhail has died.  “You’re awake.”

He does not know what she is called now that Mariya Baranova is also dead.  He cannot ask, either. He does not know who listens here and who they think he or she is.

“Wife,” he persists, the word sour in his mouth, and it sends him coughing.  She ducks out of his line of sight and comes back with a thermos of sorts.

“Drink,” she says, her expression now guarded. 

The water inside is cool and tastes of medicinal herbs.

“Where?” he says, the question still like dust in his throat.

Her mouth tightens into a line.  Vaguely, he realizes that there are dark bags under her eyes.

“We’re going to the Wandering Isle,” she says.  “Two more questions and then you go back to sleep.”

“How long?”

Typically, she answers rather than clarifying.

“You’ve been mostly comatose for a week and a half.  I’ve been told you’ve woken a few times, though I don’t think you’d remember any of them.”  Her frown becomes more pronounced.  “You’ve had a fever from an infection that’s finally cleared up.  Aoifa has been helping me.  She’s why I chose this ship.”

He lays back, and he can feel the sweat trickle over his forehead again.  Knows how easy it would be for her to end this all.  Knows how blunted his restraint has grown that the thing in his chest he keeps muzzled growls and, he closes his eyes, and it speaks with his mouth: “You came.”

It is not a question.  No, damningly, it is an uncertainty.  It’s something he has the rare wish to claw back into himself.  Particularly as he can hear the sharp intake of a surprised breath that the words pull from her.

There’s a hand on his, and he need not pry his eyes open to see who it is because what is in him calls to what is in her and he can feel the sun at his fingertips, like stars blazing in the darkness.  The thing in him cranes its neck towards her, towards the light in the touch of his hand on her and for once, he lets it.

“You asked,” he hears the barest whisper.

(He wonders if he imagines it.)

Either way, the darkness closes over him again.

***

He is now Eryk Kotov, traveling with his wife, Lia Kotov.  They are refugees from Ulensk.  He was shot in the chaos of the food riots while fleeing to the port of Arkesk and his wife, who grew frightened, had gotten him as healed as she could so that he was safe to escape from Ravka. 

He molds the feigned names to his tongue, practicing them when he can do scarce more than lay there, until they roll sinuously off his tongue.  Once again it’s like when he was a child and his mother chided him so that he wouldn’t get them both killed because of his inability to tell a skillful lie.  In turn, at night, when they lay swaying in their respective cots, he molds the Kaelish tongue to Alina’s voice, sometimes with the help of the old woman, who occasionally titters at the antique quality of his own Kaelish.

(Her grin splits into a gap-toothed smile and she asks him, “Did’ya learn from a particularly old book now, lad?”

He does not tell her he is just a particularly old man and being forced to lay here for an extended period of time makes him feel more of his years than usual.).

Late into the night, when he is certain they are alone, he finally asks her why they are on a ship going to the Wandering Isle.

There is a silence that lengthens for such a time that he wonders if she has gone to sleep.

“We didn’t anticipate the bullets.  I left you with Mochalina as long as I could.  But…” He knows she has become intentionally vague.  She wonders what kind of chase she must have led them on.  “They would be looking for us over the border regions in Shu Han.  Or on a flyer.  They will not be looking for us here.”  There is a long pause.  “Not that you are in any shape to go anywhere.”  She pauses again.  “I thought you actually might die.”

“Would you have mourned me, solnyshka?”

He keeps his tone light, almost mocking.  But, in truth, he is genuinely curious about her noted… concern for him.

Her response is unenlightening, her tone simply annoyed: “You’d finally have left me alone.”

“Unfortunate,” he says after a period of consideration.

“That I’m still stuck with you?” she rejoins, although she yawns and the vitriol she might have exhibited several decades ago is more than blunted.

“That you’ve chosen the Wandering Isle.”

The vitriol returns with a vengeance when she sneers, “Should I not have acted as your equal and acted as if I was… ‘competent enough to evaluate a situation independently of you?’  Not to mention, Aleksander, you were in no state to offer any meaningful advice, even should I have wanted it.”

“We’ll need to work.  I have no accounts to draw from there.  Mostly because I haven’t lived there in any capacity since I was younger than you are now.”

Her response is immediate:  “I’m no stranger to work.”

“Nor am I,” he says easily.  And he means it.  He has done many things she could not possibly think of in his life.  “Although I shall refrain from taking some of the work my mother and I did the last time we were here.”

She is instantly suspicious.

“Why?”

“I’m apparently a married man now,” he says obliquely.

“Where did you—?” she starts after a long time, her youthful naiveté making the framing of the question difficult.  Normally he would press her to ask.  He has a feeling she won’t this once.

“A brothel,” he answers.  “For a while.”

When she remains uncharacteristically silent, he sits up and looks at her.  Her expression is something to behold.  She opens her mouth once.  Then closes it.

(Sometimes she so sharply reminds him how much younger she is.  How much the world has changed and how little she really knows of it.  She may think otherwise, but he’s done much to shield her from the worst of it.  One way or another.)

He shrugs.

“Moral pretensions don’t mean much when you’re both starving and hunted, dearest wife.”

“I’m not your wife,” she fires back, falling into the disappointing familiarity of her general contempt for him.

“Need I remind you that you chose that?  You needn’t have if it bothers you,” he says, amusement at the fact that she dislikes the outcome of her own choices pouring into his tone.

“What else could I have done?”

His advice is both practical and designed to irritate her further:  “Black hair dye and you might have been my younger sister.”  He pauses.  “I believe I once had a Kaelish half-sister.  Long dead now, of course.”

Her expression shutters closed again and she asks, the mocking tone of her voice more affected that she’d no doubt like it to be, “From the brothels, too?”

“Undoubtedly,” he says, unbothered by the implication.  “Two Ravkans without a command of the language who were outsiders… not much they would have been allowed to do, then.”  His tone turns thoughtful, “Even now they believe Grisha blood to be a magical cure-all.  So, do be careful, mo anamchara (1).  I’d rather you remain un-exsanguinated.”

She once again retreats back to the safety of contempt:  “You could have just called me a potato for all I know of Kaelish so far.”

He smiles faintly.  “Perhaps I did.”

“Say it again, so I can ask Aoifa.”

He gives a brief huff of humor.  “I don’t think I will.”

She pauses and then says, very tentatively, almost as if she suspects the answer, “…Did you have any children?”

He wonders that she keeps asking him that.

But, he supposes, it is just another indication of how little she really knows about the world.

His lips twist into a mirthless smile and he informs her, “That would have been quite impossible given my… clientele.  The only women who come to such institutions generally work there.”

She stares.  He meets her gaze evenly.

“Saints,” she utters, at long last.  “Aleksander…” she starts, before trailing off, the use of his name a better indication of her thoughts than anything else she could do.  He remembers back in Ketterdam when she had asked such things as if they were nothing.  As if being an orphan in Keramzin would have prepared her for the world before she got there.

Perhaps she intends to apologize for the world.

(It’s a ridiculous, useless notion.)

Apologies are worthless.  Remorse more so.  What matters is changing things moving forward. 

“I am not ashamed, solnyshka,” he says, laying back down.

“That’s not—” she starts.  There is silence for a long time before she finally says, “Why don’t you say something?”

He’s amused that this is where she has landed.

“I thought that should be evident after you’ve known me for so long,” he says easily.  “I prefer doing things.”

“Those things?” she asks dryly.

“Depends with whom,” he answers honestly.  Then, deflecting in his own way, he asks, “Is that an offer, wife?”

There is a very long pause.

“Go to sleep, Aleksander.”

He smirks and says, “As my lady wife commands.”

They have gotten to the point where he thinks he can hear her rolling her eyes at a significant distance.

***

They are at an inn on the outskirts of Leflin, the room’s rate representing much of the rest of the Ravkan vlachki she possessed before converting it into Kaelish currency.  It is a port city and she has learned that in places which are designed for people enter and leave from, a certain degree of anonymity is allowed, and so she and Aleksander take full advantage of this as Mr. and Mrs. Kotov, merely two of the steady stream of Ravkan refugees who come off the ships in various emaciated forms.

Aleksander—who now has three puckered scars on his back to match the ones on his face and the purpled slash just over his heart—walks with the slightest strain on his usual elegance that is probably unnoticeable to anyone but her.  Despite the anonymity of their room and the closeness (though not as close as Ketterdam) of a bed that is not so much as shared but explicitly cut in half for each of their individual uses, he has not asked her about Ravka or Zaitsev.

Mostly, strangely, he dips into the crowds of Leflin and allows himself to be swallowed and drowned in them.  And, because it is her lot in life to make sure he does not do terrible things (again), she drowns as much as she is able beside him.

Leflin (2), she knows, is the largest city in the Wandering Isle even though it is entirely dwarfed by Os Alta or Ketterdam.  It is cleaved in two by a river that rushes in from the cold of the True Sea and  is dotted with a number of mismatched bridges—a large stone one which is capped on each end with the a quartet of proud red foxes which are the symbols of the ruling Field Marshal, another is a delicate confection of scrolled iron in green-tinted swoops and arches—so delicate that a toll that only the well-heeled pay is needed to pass over its length, there’s also a flat wide, unadorned bridge that spills into the wide plaza where men and women wearing elaborately cabled knitted shawls and vests hawk their wares.  People shout political opinions on street corners, newspapers unfurled in their hands, a woman with her hair coiffed into elaborate braids plays a small lap harp.

(She pauses to listen to how her hands drift over the strings, producing a melody like a waterfall.  Even more surprisingly, Aleksander, in a dark suit he bought on the first day off the ship, along with the long red skirt she wears under a light sweater and black shawl embroidered with red spring flowers, simply indulges her.  For a long time, he stands next to her as she closes her eyes and indulges in the music.  Strangely, when he is done, his long, elegant fingers flick a coin into the old leather case at the woman’s feet.

When they have disappeared once more into the crowd underneath the shouts advertising fresh fish and oysters, she frowns at him and, he gives her that enigmatic half-smile she dislikes, and comments “They should be rewarded for entertaining my wife.”

When—if—she is ever forced to do this with him again, he will definitely be her brother.  Or better yet, her cousin.  She will never give him such satisfaction again because it makes him even more insufferable.)

The capital city of the Wandering Isle (and the whole of the country, by extension), feels, too, like it is several decades behind Os Alta.  While cars bearing the nobles and members of the New Ravkan military had increasingly begun to choke the wide brick roads of Os Alta, they are a much rarer sight here.  Occasionally, a military vehicle of thick, Fjerdan-make, flying the green and gold pennant of the Field Marshal’s fox in front of three towers will lumber carefully over the narrow streets and bump over the rough cobblestones.  But Alina thinks the cars look out of place in a city where every evening men still mount ladders to light gas lamps adorned with elaborate scrolling metal that reflect on the dirty river at dusk.

They have been there a week and, just as surprising as when Aleksander had flicked a coin into the musician’s case, he doesn’t appear to be doing anything but allowing her to go where she pleases and, occasionally, picking up supplies and needful objects not brought over with them.  She knows, too, the sure, lilting tones of his Kaelish and his charming smile likely do more for their meager reserves of cash than she wants to ask.

(In Ketterdam he had, she has come to realize, made a show of doing nothing.  As if he had been making a point she didn’t care to understand—which seems quite likely.  This idleness, she knows, is not quite the same.)

It is only when he goes into the second pub in three days, ordering them both an ale and leading her by her arm to the shadows of a back corner booth, that she suspects he is not quite as idle as he seems.

He grasps the tall glass of ale between the pale fingers of his hands (she decides, nursing her own for probably a different reason, she does not much like ale.  It is better than the tart and sweet Kerch lambics they infused with various fruits, but only just.) and quietly sips it over the course of an hour and a plate of breads and cheeses and pickles.

Occasionally, always addressing her as “Wife” in softly lilting Kaelish, likely just to irritate her, he asks her questions in Ravkan which are so banal that she does not pay attention to her own answers.

When they finally make their way back to their tiny inn, where the landlady is changing a vase of flowers on the little table in their room, making a comment in Kaelish to Aleksander she doesn’t understand as she bustles out of the room as they enter again.  In response, he gives the long, traditional phrase that passes for “good night” that Alina can identify but cannot yet replicate and closes the door behind her.

Alina drops to her side of the bed as Aleksander locks the door with a thick iron key before pocketing it.  He, as languidly as he has done anything else here, goes to the window, clasping his hands behind him, looking out at the dimming world beyond until he has become merely a silhouetted shadow himself.

“What are you doing?” she asks sourly when several minutes have passed between them without comment.

The shadow cocks his head to the side, but doesn’t turn his head back to look at her.  She’s filled with irritation at the fact that she can likely quite accurately picture the expression on his face.  And her suspicions are confirmed when he says, voice sinuous and smooth, “What makes you think I am doing anything?”

She ignores this and, taking a breath, draws herself up and says, “I’m asking.”

His dark form swivels towards her and the candles dance over the sharp planes of his face and flicker in the calculating gray of his eyes.

“I’ve been listening,” he answers, the same purring dangerous thing from before lurking just under his tone.

“For what?”

The expression comes up—the upturning of his lips, the slight narrowing of his eyes.

“You tell me, solnyshka.”

She folds her hands on her lap.  Stiffens.

“You could just ask me about Ravka.”

He leans on the wall, seemingly as relaxed as he has been since they arrived, though she notes he favors one shoulder and avoids pressing his back against it.

“You could just tell me about Ravka,” he answers back.  “But I don’t think it will be necessary.”

She does not back down from whatever lesson he is imagining he is teaching her or, more accurately, whatever game he thinks he is playing with her.  Irritatingly, he turns and takes up his previous position at the window.

“By all means, Aleksander,” she says, injecting her own bait into the false sweetness of the request, “Tell me about how Ravka has done in your absence.”

“It burns,” he says, an odd satisfaction in his voice.  The same kind of satisfaction that purrs through his Kaelish when he looks at her and says, “wife.”  “It burns over me.”

“It burns over Mikhail Stepanov.”

He chuckles.

“Are we not the same thing?”

She smiles wolfishly, though he does not see it as more than a pale reflection in the window pane.

“Did Ravka grieve you in the same way when the last Darkling died?”

She bets the lines of his mouth grow hard and she can see a dangerous tautness surge into his shoulders.

(She wonders that he always forgets that she, too, can play his games.  That he taught her how to play them at his level whether she wanted to learn or not.)

“Donskoy is dead,” he continues in his infuriatingly even voice, without acknowledging her previous question.

“Thanks to Duke Kirigan,” she says without elaboration.  “And Maksim.”

“The Duke and the boy Tsar will follow,” he adds certainly.  “Maksim won’t be a problem anymore, either.”

“Yes,” says Alina.  “He won’t.  I killed him.”  Aleksander turns around, brow arched in an expression  of dark interest.  She might say he looks a little impressed.  “You did not hear that, I gather?”

A smirk blooms on his lips.

“I confess I did not,” he says.  “How did you do it?”

(She recalls the power bursting to her fingertips, the Cut.  The look of terror on his face when she had told him “Your week is up.”)

“He has an impressive network in Shu Han that I have plenty of information on now,” she says, as if he never asked anything.  Because she suspects he could not have heard this either.  And, in confirmation, his eyebrow rises fractionally higher.  “One that has no doubt been alerted to our… interests.”

And he comes to the crux, his tone a cold, cold thing she is used to avoiding:  “And yet we are here.”

“Waiting will make them sloppy,” she says.  “And it would be very suspicious if a Shadow Summoner and a Sun Summoner were to start destroying Shu Hanese laboratories when one is supposed to be dead and the other largely mythical.”

The cold thaws as soon as it comes and the smirk comes mercurially back.

“And is that what you expect you and I will do when that time comes—sweep in and destroy Shu Hanese laboratories?”

She says honestly, “That is what I would like to do.”

He considers this, his face not reflecting his thoughts on the matter.

“When the time comes,” he says.  He makes a flippant gesture with a hand.  “Who am I to deny you?”

Something about the ease of his yielding sours her stomach.  But he has also told her what is at stake here: how jurda parem enslaves a Grisha, burning them out and perverting their Small Science like mass-produced merzost.  Aleksander had reported this is a paler shadow of what he has already destroyed, throwing an entire country into chaos in order to pull out the threat by the roots, but Alina knows that, for once, a Darkling’s methods are probably more effective than those of the Sun Sankta.

And, when they are on the same side, in whatever this uneasy truce they have called without clearly laying out the terms, she knows the world will change.

“In the meantime, several people will do so on my behalf.”

He makes it to the bed in three strides, sitting on his half, and kicking off his boots.

“You were busy,” he says, in what appears to be an almost earnest compliment.

“You were comatose,” she shrugs.  “Mikhail’s Healer friend, Mochalina, was not so certain you’d survive.”

He spreads his arms wide.

“Yet, here I am.”

“How many times have you almost been assassinated now?” she asks, not really expecting an answer.

He lays heavily in the bed next to her.

“I stopped counting at least four hundred years ago.”  Then, practically, he says, almost to himself, “We will need better Core Cloth.  We did not anticipate the bullets.”

He does not need to tell her that.  She had been the one to have to leave him half-alive and bleeding to go to Os Alta and deal with Zaitsev alone.  Sighing, she kicks off her own slippers, and pulls the cabled sweater over her head, before tipping her own head back onto the pillows, the braids of her hair which mark her as a married woman in the Wandering Isle pulling at her scalp uncomfortably.

(She wonders if the tradition prevents relaxing like this on purpose.)

“What else did you hear?”

There’s a burr of satisfaction in his tone when, mystifyingly, he reports, “There are rumors of the fae in Istamere.”

She scoffs.  “I didn’t know we’d come to hunt faeries.”

His tone is filled by dark honey.  “Perhaps, solnyshka, I thought you wished to dabble in lighter pursuits before covering Shu Han in ashes.”

She rolls her eyes and just swallows her own pride in order to deny him the satisfaction of chasing her into doing so himself, she asks, “Why do you care about Istamere?”

He is surprisingly straightforward, for him:  “Because that is where we will go.  Tomorrow, perhaps.”

She rolls over, keeping her back to him.

“I didn’t realize faeries were one of your areas of interest.”

The same dark amusement remains. 

“I am when the fae are likely a more acceptable explanation than who likely actually exists in Istamere.”

Alina lets the strange, foreign word for what they are twist out of her mouth:  “Draíodóir.” (3)

“It’s likely.”

Then, because she knows precisely how much their remaining coin will not buy them, she asks, “And is there work in Istamere?”

“That is why we are leaving tomorrow,” he says.  “I have one more acquisition to make.”

She rolls the other direction and sees the arrogance shine on the planes of his face.

“I suppose you’re not going to tell me anything more,” she says.

“And ruin the surprise?” he says dryly.  Then, his tone turning to warm honey again, he says, “You could always ask me very nicely, wife.”

With a huff she rolls away from him and, standing only to pull off her clothes and throw them over a chair, snuffs the light out and utterly ignores him until dawn crests through the windows and wakes her the next day.

***

They take a train with the remaining amount of their money. And since all of the coins have been allotted to this purpose, when Aleksander disappears into the misty streets of Leflin and comes back with an odd shaped suitcase, she asks, “Do I want to know where you got that?”

He smirks.

“You probably don’t, no.”

She sizes it up.

“What is it?”

His smirk broadens.

“Necessary equipment for gainful employment.  And earning a fare to Shu Han.”

She drops it and brings her small bag with the few things she brings from life to life with her, although she chances provoking Aleksander’s amusement as she keeps glancing at the scuffed case that sits at his feet during the entire ride through the mist and rolling hills which, after some hours, drift into thinning fields surrounded by stone walls to stone walls which surrounded fields with even more rocks and stone.

The outskirts of Istamere immediately make her miss the streets of thin houses with bright doors and cobblestones of Leflin.  The train lets them out into a grey and green landscape that reminds her momentarily and ridiculously of the permafrost of Tsibeya.  Except instead of ice it is hills made of slanted and veined rocks that slope down to long fields of stone interrupted by streaks of green moss and the occasional small flower clinging to the cracks (4). 

Aleksander rises more majestically than Istamere probably merits, and grabs his mysterious (and likely stolen) case, and straight-backed and regal as always, gets off the train, waiting for her on the platform with an arm extended up.

She doesn’t grasp it, and Aleksander furrows his brow just noticeably, though his expression stays otherwise fixed as her feet meet the ground outside.

He pauses to consult an older man in a sweeping the platform in an unhurried manner.  They exchange a conversation in rapid-fire Kaelish of which she understands the traditional greeting between them and then she gathers, after a discussion of what might be the possibility of rain, Aleksander is asking about an inn or a pub.  The man’s replies, however, are lost on her, as the Kaelish accent here is tinnier sounding and more rapid than the almost melodic speech of the inhabitants of Leflin.

Finally, Aleksander nods his thanks to the man and then, glancing at her says, now in Ravkan, “Come.”

The station is, evidently, some distance from the town and the two of them walk side by side in silence down a skinny strip of road bounded by sharp rock walls and furrowed by cartwheels. The mists that clung to the streets of Leflin in the morning are still here, swirling in the grey and green of stone and low shrubbery just past the wall so that the sky and earth blend together without a single hinge.

“Are you going to explain what is going on?” she says, falling into place beside him lest he vanish into the fog and disappear. 

That she should be so lucky.

“No,” he says, amusement evident in his entire irritating expression.

She leaves off having to deal with him and resumes her contemplation of the scenery.

Eventually, the shapes of the actual town of Istamere loom out of the fog and into existence. A single street emerges, which likely passes for the high street of the town. It has none of the uniformity of the tall, narrow houses, which varied only in the iron work of the railings and the bright colors of the doors. Rather, Istamere is a place where ancient and moderately new collide in a patchy quilt of clashing architecture. 

On a single hill is a looming tower of a church, tall graves stretched out in front of its walk. There are also houses of brick and high wooden fronts with signs with golden letters offering her services she won’t accept because she can’t read what they are.  And, though it is almost noon, there are only a few people walking between the hodge-podge of buildings.

Towards the end of the street, Aleksander comes to a stop before one of the newer buildings and, because they have visited several such establishments, Alina can identify the words “Public House” which are under a much larger set of slightly tarnished gilded letters.  The window has a pleasant spray of red flowers in a box.  Her companion contemplates the place with a slight cock of his head and, for a moment she wonders if he is just playing up the moment to continue to amuse himself at her expense.

Finally, he goes in, casting a glance over his shoulder to make sure she is following.

A bell over the door tinkles as they come in to find a much squatter room.  The walls are the same thick, white plaster as the outside, and are lined with high backed booths in dark, rough varnish that absorbs most of the light from the one guttering lantern that is currently lit overhead.

In the corner is a very narrow, slightly rickety looking staircase, that a woman wearing the traditional Kaelish braided sweater and a layer of bright skirts that glint in various colors as she moves, is coming down.  In the low light of the empty room, Alina realizes that the woman is not much older than she appears to be—maybe 22 or 23.  When she sees she knows neither of the people who have come through door, she says, pulling herself stiffly to a height that is several inches shy of Alina, let alone Aleksander, and says something firmly in Kaelish.  Alina recognizes only the traditional greeting, and the word “closed.”

In the disconcerting way he has, Aleksander becomes someone who is not at all actually like Aleksander.  An easy smile slides across his face and he, returning the traditional greeting, launches into a string of rapid fire Kaelish she understands maybe three words of in total.  One of those is “work.”  The woman, whose stony expression does not lighten despite Aleksander’s charm being exerted on her full force, takes what he has and then, saying something, takes a few steps towards the stairs and calls up, “Diarmaid!”

Diarmaid is likely the name of the wiry man who trundles down the stairs next, who growls something full of irritation (The only word of it Alina understands is “woman”) as he bumps his way down the stairs slowly. He grows more alert when he sees Aleksander and, then, the piercing green of his gaze drifts back to her.

He barks something at her and Aleksander, reaching around her shoulders to pull her to his side, says a sentence she understands at last: “This is my wife.”

Diarmaid makes a show of sizing the both of them up and then, he turns to the woman—who Alina will later discover is named Róisín, his widowed sister.  Walking over into the darkness, he barks an order at the woman, who sets to lighting the oil lamps above them and then, only pausing to whip a wooden chair that faced the darkened bar around, he slumps humorlessly into it, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Well, then, show me.”

The sentence he says is basic enough that Alina understands it, though she is not certain what he means.  But then, that enigmatic half-smile playing on his face, Aleksander picks up his case and puts it on the table. He undoes the series of tarnished silver clasps keeping it closed and then, from out of the depths of it, draws out a beautiful, gleamingly dark violin.

Alina hides her surprise—because he is supposed to be her husband and she is, no doubt, supposed to know her husband plays violin, particularly when he is evidently auditioning for a job as a musician.

(Still his little test rankles her.  Again, he might have warned her.)

Although she and Mal had picked out some odd notes on the ivory keys of the dusty piano in Keramzin growing up, running when the distinct clang of Ana Kuya’s heavy key ring approached them, they were never supposed to touch any of the instruments in the music room at the orphanage.  Thus, she has not the faintest idea what he is doing, though he is plucking the strings and turning the pegs at the instrument’s end with his usual practiced grace.

Then, he tucks the end under his chin and takes up the bow and plays.

And, Alina does not know what to say, other than the melody that he pulls from the strings of the violin is beautiful.  It is soft and lilting and longing and the long notes vibrate with practiced intensity that speaks to that thing in her chest that watches the passing of many years and just loses and loses and yet keeps fragments and pieces of things hoarded to it like shards of broken glass—lovely, glinting and sharp when reached for.  The song, too, reminds her of night and loneliness and things unspoken and unspeakable.

(Ridiculously, she wonders if he is playing on behalf of the same thing in him.  Maybe it is the one voice he can speak with.  Maybe, though, this is as much a lie as anything else about him.)

The song ends in one last, trilling—longing—note.

Róisín waits until Aleksander puts down the bow and then her stony face lightens and she claps.  (Later, when she can understand what is being told to her, Róisín will tell her that the first time she heard her “husband” play it she thought that he was a man “whom the Dagda himself must have kissed on the cheek.(5)”  Then playfully, she had continued, “Be careful of such a man, dear Lia.”)  Her brother runs his fingers through his dark red hair and then asks Aleksander a question.  The corners of his mouth quirk up with his usual arrogance and his response in Kaelish is only the word “yes.”

Briefly, he adjusts the something on the instrument before he perches with the violin under his chin once more and brings up the bow, leaving it deliberately hovering just above the violin’s strings, his body perfectly taut.  Then, he brings it down over the strings and a wholly different kind of melody comes from the strings.  It is jaunty and rollicking and light and as un-Aleksander-like as it is possible to be.  He plays it with an ease and skill and smile that he wears exactly as he had worn shy Mikhail’s skin.

(She wonders, sometimes, if she has ever actually met him.  Or if in everything she’s done with him, she’s just met some layer of him he won’t or maybe can’t pull off to show her anything else.)

Róisín thanks Aleksander and then turns to the man sitting next to her.  Listening to her, Diarmaid leans forward on the arms of his chair, causing the lean muscles to bunch in his forearms as he grunts acknowledgement.

Finally, he leans up and barks, something.  The word “wife” is clear.

It becomes immediately clear that they are now discussing her, as Aleksander says, as he’s told seemingly innumerable people since they’ve arrived in the Wandering Isle, that she doesn’t speak much Kaelish.

Diarmaid’s entire green-eyed focus falls on her, nonetheless.

“Name,” he says, enunciating the word clearly.

“Lia,” she says.  “Lia Kotov.”

He barks another question at her and Aleksander, raising an eyebrow, translates, “He wants to know if you’re above being a barmaid and serving girl, to help his sister.”

“Is that strange?”

The corner of his mouth dips up just slightly.

“For a married woman here, yes.”  He pauses thoughtfully, “Since we are Ravkan refugees you will likely be more an object of curiosity than anything.”

She gives a huff of laughter.

“Won’t be the first time.”

He frowns, visibly.

(Later, in the room they will rent, he says, “It is far beneath you, solnyshka.”

She shoots back, “What about you?”

He smiles lazily.

“I think I know my worth far more than you know yours.”)

“Tell them,” she says after a moment, “That I am not above working hard.”

She does not know if he translates this accurately, but nods and then Diarmaid stands and, coming to Aleksander, extends his hand.  Aleksander, in turn, claps it, and they shake on a deal Alina does not know the particulars of.  Then, he says something to Róisín and waits only for Aleksander to put his violin back into the case before leading them out into the foggy streets of Istamere again.

Aleksander takes the opportunity to hold out his arm and, as she can hardly refuse and keep up the charade, she takes it in hers, but, again, doesn’t explain what exactly is going on.

They duck into a side street and walk down a side lane, quickly leaving what appears to be the sole center of civilization in Istamere in favor of more jagged rock fences with cows in them that stare as they pass.  They pass one or two stone cottages before Diarmaid flicks open the gate and strolls up the front gravel path to an old house covered in white plaster with a red door and a thatched roof.

Without preamble, he beats on the door and shouts, “Maeve!”  Followed by a rapid fire string of Kaelish and another, “Maeve!!”

A bent old woman with a red shawl thrown hastily over her shoulders hollers right back at him and opens the door, before they engage in what appears to be a rapid fire argument between them before the woman turns to Aleksander and barks something else.

He visibly stiffens and, for once, she asks, “What did she say?”

For a moment he puts the question aside and says, instead, “It appears we have a landlady, dearest wife.”  Something in his impassive expression hardens and he then translates, “She’s telling us to get inside because we are letting all of her heat out.”

They come in and, she looks the two of them up and down and then gives them a sharp command to “Come.”

She shows them to a room in the back of the house with a window overlooking a small garden and more fog.  It has a wide bed, two comfortable armchairs and a small table by the window, a bureau, and a small table by the side of the bed with a door leading off to a washroom.

“Here,” she says, just as sharply.  “You’ll be here.”

Then she turns and looks between them and says bluntly, something that makes Aleksander widen his eyes and shoot one of his eyebrows up.

She shouts something out the door to Diarmaid, who was left in what she will later know as “the front parlor” and gets an immediate shouted answer she understands to a question she does not:  “Tonight!”

And then she looks between the two of them again and loftily tells them both something Aleksander nods at, before she closes the door behind them and he stays, the intensity of his gaze ratcheting up in her absence, still staring at the place Maeve the Landlady had occupied just a moment before.

Then, he is putting his violin case and his one other bag down inside of the worn wooden bureau and hanging his coat on the door.  She simply watches him before saying, rather dumbly, “What just happened?”

He folds himself into one of the armchairs by the window, crossing one leg over the other and leaning his head on an elbow to look out into the fog.

“We have an otkazat’sya job and an otkazat’sya landlady.”  His tone sours and becomes smoothly cruel.  “It is precisely the kind of existence you’ll enjoy, solnyshka.”

She strips her own coat off, hanging it and her heavy shawl on the hook next to his.  She then puts her small bag of possessions in the worn bureau right next to his.  Then, she folds herself into the chair across from him and, sitting straight and rigid in her own chair, says, “I have not forgotten why we are here, Aleksander.”  Then, borrowing one of his usual laments, although hating that she does, especially to soothe him in some odd way she doesn’t want to think about, she simply adds, “It is temporary.”

His frown deepens in response, but he doesn’t otherwise say anything.  His attention remains fixed on the swirling eddies of fog just outside.

“What did she say that surprised you?” she asks.

His expression is unreadable, and even the eyebrow that arches is nothing more than a vestige of a well-practiced mask.

“She said we will make beautiful babies.”  Alina recognizes his expression as disdain.  “But, she also requested we refrain from having them here.”

“Oh,” she says, in response. 

He grins.

“She also expressed she likes quiet.  At night.  To keep that… in mind.”

She suddenly took a liking to the old woman—Maeve—more for all of her unintentional barbs that have lodged under Aleksander’s skin in a way most people’s do not than anything else.

She feels the edges of her own lips tug up into a smirk at his expense.

“Did you tell her she need not worry, dearest husband?” she asks.

There’s a dark glint in his eye and she knows she is playing with fire.  But she goes on and plays—because he would not squander the same kind of advantage if he found himself in her position.

So, she stabs at him with the one ghost she guesses he is trying to exorcise.

She sweetens her own tone, as if she doesn’t know what she is asking:  “Did Baghra teach you to play the violin?”

His eyes become marble and his tone becomes frost:  “No.”

Then, after a long time during which they both look out the window, he asks, his tone deceptively solicitous, “How is your Kaelish coming, dear wife?”

She will not let him remind her she needs him.

(Even if she does.)

But she has not given him a single piece of information on Zaitsev’s contacts in Shu Han.  So he needs her, too.

So, unwilling to give him the power over her he seeks, she smiles and says, “Someone once told me I am an apt pupil.”  His expression changes to a downright glower.  “So I suspect it will only improve.”

***

Days and nights run together like a strange melody.

She measures the time out by how much she puts away for fare off the Wandering Isle after their room and board is paid.

She walks to Róisín’s pub—which she finds out has been run by her deceased husband’s family for four generations—leaving Aleksander to whatever plotting he does when she is gone.  (“Reading, as it is commonly called,” he corrects her coolly for his usual chair, when she says such a thing out loud one day.)

Increasingly familiar people trickle in at vaguely dependable times during the day.  Several of them make a game of teaching her Kaelish.

(One of the men—who is called Seánn Cormac—who comes in an hour before Aleksander and his violin come, makes a point of teaching her the filthiest phrases anyone can imagine.  Until one day Aleksander hears one of his “lessons,” and between his evening’s sets and under the cover of a singer backed by a man playing a traditional bodhrán drum, he sits and shares an ale with him.

The next day Seânn Cormac comes in and asks her if she knows how her husband is.  Alina smiles easily and tells him she knows exactly how he is.  When they return to the familiarly drawn battle lines of their bed that evening, she reminds him that in such a small town what he might see as a “convenient” disappearance would definitely be noted.

Because she definitely knows him.

Seânn Cormac, grinning at Aleksander each time before he does so, does not know what he’s tempting when he teaches her several more increasingly filthy phrases.  The lessons continue until Aleksander says, with dripping disdain, that she could rival a Kaelish whore.

She smiles at the compliment.

Because, apparently, he would know.)

In a town apparently known for its music, Aleksander and his violin have become something of a well-known figure.  And, aside from his musical reputation, he quickly gains a reputation for two other things:  Firstly, being a very jealous man where his “pretty wife” is concerned (mostly because Seánn Cormac declaims it to about everyone who will listen as a joke that he doesn’t realize isn’t one) and secondly, for being quite conversant in what Diarmaid calls the “National Sport of the Wandering Isle” which is discussing politics (even Aleksander is impressed by some of the nuances of Ravkan politics that he is able to turn over with some of the locals).

She, on the other hand, becomes known for two things as well:  Firstly, what she is usually known for, namely, balancing out “Eryk’s” excesses, and secondly, for being a rare “modern woman” whose husband allows her to work.

(She will never ask, but she rather thinks Aleksander is smugly satisfied at the first of those.  Probably for several reasons.)

Róisín, who puts a pint of ale in front of her during the predictable lulls that coincide with Aleksander’s performances, just says, “Well, a man like that has to have a catch, Lia, my lass.  One simply can’t have fine looks, fine talent, and fine temperament in one man.”  She laughs.  “Unless he is a fae lord, and you’ve no wish to tangle with those.”

Alina suspects these are truer words than Róisín means them to be.

She asks about Róisín’s late husband and she smiles fondly, “The gentlest being to kiss the earth,” she says, the look in her eyes growing far away.  “But as ugly as sin, he was… compared to what you have got yourself there.”

Alina follows her eyes to where Aleksander is playing the third song in his set.  At her expression, Róisín laughs again, though, swallowing the darkness that briefly crept over her.

As she wipes down tables and the bar stools, while Aleksander watches her, his violin bow resting on a knee, she thinks about him far more than she’d like to.  In truth, as she had found in Ketterdam, and as she keeps finding, she realizes that Aleksander has been so many things and can easily be them again when the situation calls for him to be them. So, as always, she is not entirely sure what exactly she has got.

Or even if she has anything real of him.

(But, with a creeping slowness, she is fairly certain that whatever it is she has really, is, in some strange dimension of his thinking, hers alone.)

***

The Wandering Isle has not moved as fast as the surrounding countries.  In Ravka, much to his chagrin, with the rise of the street lights and electricity, the stars are increasingly blotted out at night.  Here, after the day’s rains have faded, it has given rise to a clear, crisp night, dotted with light.  So, finding in himself no inclination to sleep despite his weariness, he watches the stars from the window, long after Alina had tumbled into her bed after her shift in the pub.  He’s looked towards them since he was a child, and afraid of the dark.  In a life where few things are dependable, stars have been.

(He’d remembered to rightness when he put the constellations on the ceiling of his rooms in the Little Palace. 

Those are gone now. 

But the actual stars, older and more fixed than he, are still there.  As always.)

“Do you ever sleep?”

She is sitting up in bed, her hair disheveled and bleary eyed.

A corner of his mouth turns up.  “I won’t answer a question you already know the answer to.”

Wrapping the heavy flannel of her blanket around her shoulders she rises.  Maybe it is the image this calls up of Ketterdam, or the fact that he has been foolishly reminiscing on a version of himself that is centuries dead and past, but something long idle stirs in his chest.  He clamps down on it immediately, thinking only about want in his mother’s voice.

Without either gracefulness or artifice, she practically flings herself into the worn armchair across from him, pulling the blanket tighter onto her shoulders, before she, in turn, looks out the window.

With a yawn she asks, “What are you doing?”

And, in the same way she usually does, she tears from him a concession she has no idea is a concession.

“I’m watching the stars.”

Her gaze remains fixed on the sky outside of the window.  Quietly, she ventures, “You like them.”

He gives a non-committal hum and his focus shifts to the familiar silhouette of her profile.

“They must mean something to you,” she continues, her voice still slightly rough with sleep, “You put them on the ceiling of your room in the Little Palace.”

“They do,” he says without elaboration.

She shifts to look at him, and he watches as the blanket opens, revealing a slice of pale skin of her throat and the thin gown she wears to sleep.  She frowns.

“For all the time I’ve been with you, I still hardly know anything about you.”

The thing in him breaks free again.  The wanting.

“You know enough,” he says, almost dismissively.

She doesn’t respond immediately—uncharacteristically, he reads hesitation in her every move.  Then, she leans forward, the blanket falling about her in uneven clumps, and takes one of his hands in hers.

(He expects his surprise at this is visible to her.  But the terrible yawning thing inside of him that starts with the stars and has always ended with her howls and he can feel rightness and certainty ripple between them as he barely manages not to clench his own cold, cold hand around her warm one and what is in him rises towards the sun.)

“You let me dress your wounds, tell me about working in brothels, and you won’t tell me why you like stars?”  She arches an eyebrow at him.  “You’re a confusing man, Aleksander.”

He won’t.  Intimacies of the body are cheap and have never cost him much of anything he couldn’t part with (though the hand clasping him is doing its best to disprove this).  He has always suspected Ketterdam—for her—had been her learning the same lesson.  Again, a sharpening of her cruelty against him.

It is too bad, though, that he has already mastered everything she wishes to learn.

“What will you give me, Alina?” he asks evenly enough, the question ambiguous enough to invite many an enlightening answer.

The warmth of her hand leaves his and suddenly there is a weariness in her that has nothing to do with sleep.

She sighs, “What exactly do you want, Aleksander?”

She returns the bait, with its myriad possibilities, to him.  In response, the thing in his chest, molten and unsatiated, moves his lips.

“You,” he says.  “Tonight.”

As always, the greedy thing purrs.  Every night.  Every day.  Eternity.

“Some of me, then.  Tonight,” she says, her gaze heavy and even on him.  “In exchange for some of you.”

In the way of the two of them, it is less than either of them wants.

But he is tired, too, despite it all, so he seals the bargain with her, as usual.  Because his greed often outweighs his restraint where she is concerned.  And he is fairly certain she might one day learn this.

Actually, he is fairly certain she already knows.

“Hope,” he says, knowing she will likely discount his words almost immediately.  “They used to remind me that something else was out there—fixed and beautiful.”

She bites her lip.

(He also knows what she is offering him is easy.  So very easy.  What she is asking for in return is not.  Intimacies of the body are not intimacies of the mind or soul.)

“Used to?” she asks, the hesitation from earlier clinging to the words.  Rattling them.

“When I was young,” he says.  When he had just built the Little Palace.  When it had represented some sort of a fulfillment of a promise made to himself.  Made to others.  When it had seemed like even that wouldn’t be enough.  When he had been waiting, waiting, waiting.

Always patient.

“And now?”  He does not respond immediately.  Her voice takes on a cast of anger:  “Have you given up now, Aleksander?”

What he feels now is quite out of the scope of their bargain.  So, he brings her back to the strict terms:  “I looked for fixed light in the darkness—the suns of other worlds.”  He folds his hands together in his lap.  Folding himself off from her, too.  “An apt metaphor, I suppose.”

He does not say what the metaphor is for.  But she is clever enough and he has been fairly transparent.  Alina, though, turns back to the window, though she is chewing on her lip thoughtfully in a juvenile gesture he rarely sees her make.

“You stupid man,” the insult falls from her mouth like a term of endearment.  He is certain that this time, though, his confusion at it doesn’t show.  “I won’t make you a better man,” she continues, rising from her chair and gathering the blanket around her.  “Be your own light.”

He flicks his gaze back to the stars outside the window.

“You’ll recall what I did when I held all of your light.”  She steps into his line of vision.  “It wasn’t for me.”

She tosses her head and says, “At least you can still learn something, Aleksander.”  He turns in time to see the blanket slide from her shoulders onto the floor, revealing the planes of her pale shoulders, the shivering expanse of fabric beneath them.  His patience frays and he, too rises.  “One day you’ll learn that I’m not for you, either.”

He walks with purpose towards her, ignoring her usual nonsensical denials.  His arms drift around her.

“You’re mine now,” he hisses into her ear.

“Part of me,” she says.  “Just for tonight.” 

His hold on her becomes bruising in response.

As he places her on the bed, she challenges, “Perhaps you can have me when I can have you.”   

He kisses her neck, her jaw, her cheeks, her lips—any skin he can reach. 

“Don’t you have me?” he breathes into her.

He feels her shiver with laughter underneath him.

“You stupid man,” she repeats and, being busy with other things, he permits her the insult.  Mostly because he hears in it an echo he won’t contemplate, hollowed of her touch of fondness:  Foolish boy.

And then another, more muted echo, one he never lets sound:  Know that it wasn’t enough.

The greedy thing roars in him, longing, as it ever does, for enough.  And that night, he satiates what he can of it.

***

(Their one night truce of sorts spirals out into a game.

She extracts details about him and gifts herself to him when his answers satisfy.

He tells her how an older Kaelish catamite who called him Ciarán (6) had taught him how to play the violin.

Why his mother and he had come there in the Wandering Isle in first place when they had been forced into working in a brothel.

That it is not the only time they’d take up such work is not in the scope of that night’s contract.

Rather, he had responded, “Why did we go anywhere when I was young?” while looking up at the stars as he had become accustomed to doing.  “We wanted to survive.”

Sometimes still, she asks for larger terms than he is willing to admit under the terms of their arrangement.  And, as usual, she is unwilling to offer him better terms.  So, when she asks about Anastas, about his actual age, about if he has had any children—her usual refrains—the usual lines are drawn in the bed they share.

He knows what the terms for such details will be.  And they both know she is unwilling to give into them as of yet.)

***

As is now her habit, she drinks a bitter tea the morning after they dance around one another without comment, as he leaves the blurred line of the bed putting back on his undergarments and then begins to put on the components of one of his dark suits.

And, although there is a curtain of rain outside of the window, little by little, spring has slowly begun to raise her head in the form of flowers and the primroses and cow slips that shoot slowly forth from what Alina thinks, compared to Ravka at this time of year, is a perpetual state of green.  Her Kaelish, too, is improving, and Diarmaid, grinning while he wipes down the gleaming wood of the bar, tells her she “sounds less like she swallowed a dictionary.”

It is during these times that they also speak of what is happening in Ravka.

One day it is the slaughter of the nobility, as he pours himself a cup of tea that Maeve leaves on a tray outside of their room every morning.

Another week, Aleksander comments on the death of both the Tsar and Duke Kirigan with a shrug of disinterest as if boy Tsars and their regents are shot by their subjects every day.

(When she presses him about it, he merely says, “Didn’t I tell you everything gets old?”  He had shrugged on his tweed jacket and, smoothing back his hair in the black spotted mirror on the table, sticks the grey cap that Kaelish men frequently wear on his head.  “It was not even an interesting death, as far as these things go.”

If that night she asks him what he defines as “an interesting death”—well, it gives her a break from pulling away any personal details of his life from him as if they are a dragon’s hoarded riches.  It is also a very strange conversation about aspects of Ravkan history than no scholar would ever discuss.  Mostly because she expects Aleksander has done his utmost so that no scholar can actually explain any of it.)

“I’m told the mob has found a leader,” he says, while she watches his hands button up his shirt.

She drinks a final sip of the tea and it lingers, spreading earthy and unpleasant across her tongue.  She redirects her focus to her empty cup.  Then, it jumps from her field of vision as he has plucked it up, turning it over and returning it to the silver tray that appears every day.

“Will you tell me something trite, now?  About how only fools lead such mobs?  Or maybe you’ll give me some treatise on how fleeting otkazat’sya regimes are to exalted beings like us?”

By now, he has plucked up his own cup of tea and she has pretended not to have seen him dump three times the amount of sugar into it that she generally does as he lounges in his accustomed chair across from her.

He smirks.

“All of those things are, of course, true about Vladimir Vasiliev.”

He sips his cup of tea, his eyes turned towards the window and his focus drawn inward.

Finally, because she can read him better than the current politics of killing just about anyone that pervade Ravka, she states, “Vladimir Vasiliev wouldn’t normally interest you.”

He turns to her, his expression unreadable, and takes one of the sugared confections that Maeve must have figured out he likes and dunks it into his tea before taking a bite.

“Vladimir Vasiliev is not following the pattern I would expect.”

Since Aleksander has seen, by his own account, much of what people might do to one another in different situations, this is not an idle statement.

“You’re not normally surprised,” she observes, coolly.

The person who annihilated Novokribirsk to make a point about his own abilities, has the nerve to continue on:  “Most people don’t have the audacity to attack what Vladimir Vasiliev has chosen to attack in order to rise to power.”

Even though they are in a temporary truce, she cannot forget what he has been and what he yet has the potential to be.  She directs her focus away from him and out towards the window.

“What kind of monstrosity interests a monster?” she asks, grabbing her own pastry.

She looks back and his expression has sharpened along with his posture and she knows something of her barb has struck home.  That his voice becomes smooth and sinuous is a dead giveaway that he is angry at her.

“And here I thought we would see eye to eye in this particular instance.  Perhaps even be on the same side.”

His voice, as always, paints the picture he wants her to see—the one that benefits him the most.  The one that provides the frame he’d like her to view whatever he knows in.  He folds his hands in his lap, perfectly at ease with this.

“Are we not on the same side now?” she asks, a touch of faux sweetness in her voice that she knows will immediately irritate him.

He stands and comes to occupy the narrow space in front of her, towering over her.

She bites off another piece of the pastry, unbothered.  Finally, she looks up at him.  There’s absolute fury that undergirds the mask of his expression, flashing in his eyes, lending the faintest blush of color to his skin.

“Would you prefer it the other way, Alina?”

His voice is soft and dangerous and possessive and despite the bright morning, the shadows stir around the room.  Using her name tips his hand, in a way.  Except when they are in bed, her name is a quantity he rations the same way she rations his own.

(And probably for the same reason.)

She stands, and there is so little space between them that not even a hand could pass there unhindered.  She looks him straight in the eyes.

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, Aleksander.”

***

Two regulars are nursing pints of ale in their normal booth when she hears her name in a voice that does not belong to Aleksander.

“…I heard they burned the Church of Sankta Alina of the Fold.”

Her ears sharpen as she wipes the lacquered surface of the table with far more thoroughness than is necessary.

“Vasiliev, I think the new lad’s name is.” says the other one, shaking his head in thin lipped disapproval.  “Downright heretical.”

His companion gives a sharp nod.

“Can’t say I’ve thrown in my lot with the Ravkan saints, but seems a far cry to say that they’re what is keeping their country down… what did he say?”

The other one takes a long drink from his glass before setting it down with a thunk on the table.

“Something like ‘From now on the faith of the Ravkan will only be in themselves.’  Then he sent the whole church up in flames.  Said the Sankta had propped up the monarchy who had robbed the people for generations, anyways.  Something about ‘If we only looked at history rather than superstition.’  That sort of thing.”

Without realizing it, she had stopped even the pretense of cleaning the table at some point, The cloth wads up in her hand.  And then, her focus is diverted from the tension in her hands and the sudden heat that floods her being by a hand on her shoulder.

She looks up to see the hard lines of Diarmaid’s face looking at her with worry.

He moves his hand from her shoulder to her forehead.

“You’re burning up,” he says bluntly.

She is.  But not in a way she is allowed to in this place.

“Go home,” he says sternly.  “Tell that husband of yours to stay with you tonight, too.  We’ll have Colm come in in his stead.”

But the sun is throbbing in her veins and she is doing her best to suppress it.  Mechanically, she goes behind the wide, oak bar and draws both her coat and her shawl from the peg where they are hung while she works, pulling them on while holding the light back.

“Róisín,” she hears distantly, “Be a lamb and help dear Lia home.”

“Don’t,” she says.  It comes out sharper than intended.  “I’ll be fine, Róisín.  I’ll be back tomorrow.”

The younger woman comes to her shoulder and says, “No lass,”  She frowns.  “I don’t think you will be fine.  I’ll see you home.” 

She knows from her tone, how her pale green eyes flash, that there will be no dissuading her. 

Róisín is already putting her coat on, and saying in a lighter tone, “We all know what that demon husband of yours will do if we work you too hard, after all.”

(She is pretty sure she doesn’t.)

Alina barely remembers the walk back to Maeve’s house, she feels the heat course through her seemingly forestalled only by Róisín’s hand on her back.  And, when her brain stops wrestling with her, she is at the door to her room and Róisín is knocking urgently.

Then Aleksander is at the door and there is a stab of something in his eyes when he meets them.  “Mr. Kotov,” she begins and Róisín gives some explanation she can’t hear for the pulsing in her ears.

Aleksander takes her by the shoulder, the picture of the concerned husband.  However, only she notices that he places his ungloved hands very carefully so he will not touch her bare skin.  He shuts the door and immediately drops his hold, moving quickly and efficiently to draw Maeve’s heavy red curtains over the window, then, silently, he claps his hands together and the darkness rolls over the both of them.

Then, from within the darkness, he commands, “Shine, solnyshka.”

And she lets it go within the cocoon of darkness, shining just brightly enough not to drive the darkness away.  The rage and the heat rolls over her, coming off in waves until it is burned out.  Breathing hard, the embrace of the shadows around her dissolves.

Aleskander looks down on her, slowly lowers his hands, and cocking his head to the side, says, “You’ll need to explain.”

She does not get up.  He comes close to her, but does not reach down to touch her.  Rather, for the second time, he attempts to intimidate her in a way that no longer works.

“Vasiliev.”

"Ah," he says, this time utterly condescending, "That's the root of your little tiff."

"Tiff?" She spits poisonously.

His smile is a thing of honed cruelty: "I thought you'd prefer that to my actual thoughts on the matter."

She gets up, glaring, and stalks to her usual chair.

"And what are those?" She challenges.

With a deceptive calm, he takes his customary seat opposite of her. Sitting rigidly, the same anger as this morning simmers in him.

"That you almost totally lost control and endangered the both of us."

Defensively, she huffed, "Hardly."

He crossed his legs and allowed both of his arms to rest upon the arms of the chair—just like he is a king sitting in a throne, barking his orders.

"You forget yourself, Alina." His tone brooks no argument. "You forget that if you gave off a single wisp of what you really are to these people—these brief little things you think are friends—they would be baying for your blood to cure every cough and sniffle in their brief, meaningless lives."  His eyes harden into marble. "You must never for a moment forget who we are and what they do to us."

“They wouldn’t—”

He doesn’t bother to hide his weariness.  Then, the handsome features of his face twist into a sneer of disdain and, as if he can’t bear to look at her, he closes his eyes and allows his head to fall back.

“They will, Alina.  I’ve no desire to prove it to you, but they will prove it for me in time.  Probably several times.”

(And there is no deception or malice or anything.  She’s seen the litany of scars over his skin.  In addition to the one over his heart she’d given him, the three puckered bullet holes in his back, and the one’s over his face, his body is littered with them.  One night she had asked, as he lay beside her with his arm draped over her possessively, she had reached out, rather boldly, tracing a nasty slash that covered most of his side.

He had opened his eyes to watch her.

“That one was Anastas,” he says simply.  “Or rather, his otkazat’sya General.  Anastas didn’t have it in him to waste his own time on me by then.”

She stopped asking then.)

“Vasiliev,” she tries again, the anger leaching back into her.  “He—”

For a moment, he fixes her with a flat look, which robs her of whatever coherent thoughts she had worked her way up to.  Then, he allows weariness to leech into his whole posture in a way he does not generally allow himself the luxury of doing.  He leans his chin on his elbow and closes his eyes again.

“You can’t possibly be upset he burned the Church of Sankta Alina, Reluctant Sankta of the Fold.”

“No,” she says sharply.  “I… I just know Ravka.”

He opens his eyes once more, his expression still unreadable.

“And what do you know about Ravka?” he asks quietly.

“That the people will not give up their Saints,” she says.  “Even if Vasiliev says they should to be strong.”

“Yes, they will all hold on dearly to all those dead Grisha whom they’ve come to cherish.”

He sighs.

She ignores him and says with righteous indignation, “Do you realize what will happen, Aleksander?”

The whole of his intent focus narrows on her and he says, with the same weariness, “Better than you, likely.”

He is likely right.  After all, she’s heard him dispassionately line up a series of incidents and figures like dominos only to watch them tip one after another, as if he’d conjured their conclusions into being.  If nothing else can be said about him, she knows Aleksander can read the flow and patterns of power like no one else in the world can.

“Ravka will tear itself apart,” she concludes.

“Yes,” he agrees without argument.  “Vladimir Vasiliev will almost certainly tear Ravka apart if he continues to be successful.” 

She raises her voice, and the sun ripples off of her skin again, “Is that all you have to say?”

He leans forward, transformed suddenly again, and says, ice in his every word, “I have watched the Vasilievs of the world tear apart Ravka countless times.  You and I will no doubt see countless more of his ilk.  Had you stood at my side I might have staunched the bleeding somewhat.  But, it remains a fact:  Ravka has always been torn apart and bleeding and it is not so simple of a thing to cauterize the wound painlessly and without cost.”  His last question slices like Grisha steel, “What is it you would have me do, Alina?”

She draws herself up, and asks, mostly seriously, “What is there to do?”

He does not speak for a moment, but Alina has the uncomfortable sensation that he is looking at everything in her and finding her wanting.

“I’ll give you the choices, dear Alina,” he says at a length.  “We can get back to Ravka—either spending our meager savings or by commandeering a ship, if need be, and the both of us can become avenging Saints, rallying the people away from Vasiliev and his forces.  This will be difficult as neither of us has any actual influence built up aside from wisps of legend and superstition.”  He smirks.  “I’ve, of course, built things from less.  I can teach you to do the same.  So… it is difficult, but not impossible.”

"The cost?" She asks sharply.

He arches an eyebrow and, for a fleeting moment, looks almost pleased.  But the emotion, if it is that, ripples over his face and is gone.

"To Ravka?" He pauses. "Deaths in the thousands or more. The usual cost of war."

He says it so casually—like it is a common occurrence.  And, for him, swept up in an endless war, maybe it is.

"But that's not it," she says softly.

His eyes widen fractionally, and the corner of his lip turns up.  Alina realizes he is surprised.  Then, carefully, almost earnestly, he admits, "I suspect the cost of such a plan to you will be steeper than you have a mind to pay.”

She steels herself.

“And what would it cost me, Aleksander?”

He stiffens barely perceptibly.  It’s a small thing—this change in him.  But by now she knows him and his tells.  She knows she is drawing him into a conversation with her he’d rather not have.  He turns towards the window, though the heavy red drapes are still drawn and these is nothing to see, confirming this.

“You’d have to rule.  With me.”  He pauses, as if weighing his words very carefully.  “Together we might staunch the bleeding.”

“So,” she begins, adopting the same contemplative tone he had, “The cost is essentially, you.”

He turns back, something flickering in his expression.

“No, Alina.” He says.  “The cost to you would be every pretension you have of not becoming, as you charmingly put it, ‘like me.’”  He turns back to the window.  “In some ways, the cost would likely be much of you that you, at least, would rather not part with.”

Her brow furrows and she stares at him, but he does not move from his relaxed seeming posture as he gazes towards an obscured window.  Eventually, he turns back, just to look at her, taking in, no doubt, the way she had folded in on herself, and the way she is looking at him, trying to discern if what looks like sincerity from him is some kind of a trap.

“What is the other choice?” she asks, without commenting on what he’s said previously.

He frowns.

“We let Vasiliev win and the Saints burn and we go to Shu Han to fight a different front of the war.”

“So, what we’ve already planned,” she clarifies.

“Vasiliev’s tactics have been… unexpected.”  His expression darkens.  “I won’t pretend not find him deeply irritating when it comes to several of my longer term goals.”  She frowns and he ignores her obvious disdain for his “goals” and continues, “But I think parem will destroy more than he can, if left unchecked.”

“So we go to Shu Han,” she says decisively.  “As planned.”

His response is sure and even:  “You’re condemning Ravka in choosing this, Alina.”  He folds his elegant hands in his lap.  “You need to understand this is the trade-off.  You need to be aware that there are no decisions at this level that do not come with what you would deem very ugly trade-offs.”

She feels the weight of his words and, trying to match his steady certainty, states, “Grisha being weaponized through parem have implications far beyond just Ravka.  Jurda parem has the potential to destroy all of us as well as the otkazat’sya we’d be pitted against.”

Aleksander’s expression turns grave.

“I agree,” he says.

Then, more to herself—more as a rhetorical question than anything else—she sighs, “Could this not have been stopped earlier?”

Aleksander picks up his discarded book from the table in front of him, and rises, then, casting her a glance again, says, with an undertone of anger, “Yes.  I could have stopped much of this had you not seen it fit to bend me to your will and return the bastard Nikolai Lantsov to the throne.”

She is on her feet before she thinks about it.

“I hardly think I have ever been successful at bending you to my will, Aleksander.”

His look in return practically smolders.  And in it is rage, contempt, and something else that is so cuttingly terrifying to her that doesn’t want to acknowledge it exists.

“Then perhaps you haven’t been paying attention, solnyshka.”

She is the one smoldering now, heat licking beneath her palms for the third time today.  He leaves her like that, laying himself out on the bed with a casual arrogance and making a display of reading his book.

Sometimes she thinks her only actual miracle as Sankta Alina is that she hasn’t strangled him yet.

***

He leaves for Leflin, with the vast amount of the money they’d earned in hand to book passage to Shu Han.  He says he will return, smirking as he walks away with no other conventional farewell.

(She wonders as she wipes the gleaming oak of the bar, that day at work, if that will be the last she will see of him in this life.  She doubts though, that he would make it so easy for her.  As much as she dislikes the idea, she has come to accept she will need him in Shu Han.

And she has yet to give him the information she’d extracted from Zaitsev regarding what the now former-Grisha Triumvirate had known about parem manufacturing.  So she has assured he will need her, too.)

When she returns that night, the room in Maeve’s house feels empty with only her in it and his absence doesn’t feel like the reprieve she thought it might.  Indeed, his presence in her life is no longer the constant worry of making sure there was someone to stop him that she had once burdened herself with.  That he mostly hasn’t done anything remotely worth stopping since… the Fold, she finds even more disquieting in the times she’s allowed herself to contemplate it.  She is fairly certain he has not been humbled—not in any permanent way, by what had transpired between them there.

(Maybe, whispers the dark voice in her head… Maybe it had been the opposite.)

That what she sees now explains what he did there better than any of the what she had known of him before is probably the biggest reason she keeps him at a distance.  Although many of their interactions lead to agreed-upon concessions on both sides, the bigger picture of what exactly the two of them are doing together remains… unsettled.  If nothing else, they have come to an unspoken and uneasy truce. 

But it seems, as usual, neither of them gets quite what they want out of the other.

(She comes back to the Little Palace and the fact that he’d offered her his name there.

Which, because she knew him well enough, she knew was no small gesture.  She hadn’t yet dared to ask if he’d extended the same offer to anyone else in his long life.  While, she’d tripped over any number of other surprising details about his life, this one he will not reveal to her lightly.

She suspects that is by design.  She expects the answer might be more costly than her allowing them to both satiate themselves for the night using the other.)

But, as usual, when he’d made his proposal, he’d offered none of what would have made her at all tempted to accept his offer.  His name was no small token, yes—but there wasn’t much of the rest of him in any of it.  She’d given herself to him in the most perfunctory way, which was as much of a surrender as she would make. 

He wanted more than her body.

And she…

It was too simple to say that she didn’t want him—in a way that went beyond the physical.

(The part of herself that knew that he had done the unforgivable and had the absolute capacity to do it again, no matter how he explained it away, had a bitter explanation for this:  You’re just alone and lonely.)

Sometime between Ketterdam and the Wandering Isle, she had seen enough of what likely lay beyond his mask to understand.  While, understanding did not mean forgiveness, just like sex did not mean love, it made hating him with the same vitriol as she did before difficult.

She does not hate him now.

She can admit that.

Because he is the only fixed thing in the world.  And, in many ways, he had been correct about many things: about how it hurt to bury people you liked, about how everything got old, about how time would win long before he did.

And for all his rage at all of this, and his heart he wouldn’t show anyone, including her, maybe because he couldn’t admit it, too, hadn’t been entirely worn away, his acceptance that he could not be a good man… he is still the only one who knows she is Alina Starkova, orphan from Keramzin, former mapmaker, and Sun Summoner of the Second Army.

To want that—to want to be who you were—that could only be human.

(“Alone” he had asked in Ketterdam, and she thought him ridiculous, “Alone, use my name.”

It made it easier:  He, too, was human in this way.  And she needed his humanity sometimes as much as he did not want to admit it existed.)

She can say she wants to know him as a human.

(He resists with every fiber of whatever else he’s become.)

But she also can’t say she also does not want more than him, too.

Eternity is a long time, though perhaps not long enough for them to be completely satisfied in the other.  But she also knows he is not the only model of how to live with eternity.  And sometimes she thinks Baghra haunts her as much as she does her son—though her shade manifests for the two of them for very different reasons. 

Baghra was never her mother.  So she is free to see her at a longer distance than he does.  She is able to see that Baghra had walked through eternity and wanted more, too.

Aleksander Morozov was the proof of that desire.  She’d wanted him—him, her son, not the Darkling, but the boy she’d given a name to that he couldn’t ever tell anyone but her—more than her own life in the end.

(Maybe, too, she had comforted herself with the same notion she’d impressed on her son like a mantra:  Wanting makes you weak.

Then she could convince herself he alone was the chink in her armor.)

That is not a lesson of Baghra’s that she will learn.  She has learned, though, that to be successful is to see ahead.  And, as a woman with Aleksander’s same dark hair and same darkness, just manifested differently, calls her a fool in her own head—she learns from his plans like he has taught her.

She plans for the lives she will live beyond Shu Han.

And, if necessary, she plans for beyond him.

Baghra’s dark ghost follows her for the two days Aleksander is gone and the thoughts about what is enough for her, for him, play out until she comes back and sees him, as if he never left, in his usual chair in Maeve’s room, reading the same book that she has left on the table in front of it, waiting to see if he will come back to claim it.

She sits across from him, as usual.

“Next week,” he says without looking up, as if he is continuing a conversation that they have already been having.  “Say what goodbyes you will.”

A sheaf of travel documents have taken the place of the book on the table and, in lieu of questioning a stubborn man who isn’t in the mood for a “hello,” let alone questions of substance, she picks up a set of the papers and flicks through them.  As he had promised, he has booked them a single cabin—“An economic necessity” he had said before he had left for Leflin—for them on a small merchant vessel bound to trade with Shu Han.  She spots her own name on the documentation, and then she stops.

“They’ve made a mistake.”

He does not look up from where he is reading.  “There’s been no mistake.”

She double-checks and says dryly, “Funny, you’d think I know the name of the man I’m married to.”

He lowers the book and looks at her, his face impassive.

“Then, dear wife, you’d know exactly why the man you married changed his name.”

Rather than “Eryk,” all of the travel documents have him listed as “Emil Kotov.”

The question is more of a surprised reaction than a genuine attempt to get him to actually explain something about himself:  “Why?”

He slips back into his stupid game easily.

“That’s a costly question,” he says, before settling himself back into reading with flourish.  However, he notices that his eyes are not sliding over the page to read anything, so she knows he’s waiting to see what she will do.  She has found he hides several things from the world with such statements.  And she bets most in the world doesn’t have the wherewithal to move past them.

“Tonight,” she says, without much thought.

“No,” he says.

(Some of her questions he simply tells her, “You will not pay what I ask.” 

He has not done that, yet.)

“A week,” she says, more interested in seeing what he’ll do with the offer than anything—as she’s never given him the hope of more than three days with her at a time and they crash back to the sharp division of the bed they sleep in after things are said and done.

“Tempting,” he says, although his tone indicates otherwise.  He turns a page she is pretty certain he hasn’t even read.  But, she wants to know him.  So, she feigns a form of defeat and curls further into her chair.

“All I know of what you’re offering me is that you apparently dislike the name ‘Eryk.’”

He turns another page, making a show of his indolence as he does so.

Without changing his tone he says, “I’ve only been ‘Eryk’ once before this.  ‘Dislike’ doesn’t begin to cover the experience.”

She glares at him.  He ignores her and turns another page.

She sighs and asks directly.  “What will it cost me to understand your dislike?”

He looks up and there is a storm in his eyes that was not there before she pressed the issue.

“I want you for all of Shu Han, Alina,” he states.  He sets the book down, the cover splayed over his leg, his expression a challenge.  “With no more games.”

Part of her is instantly annoyed.  Both because this is not her game that they continue to play, but also because, as they have never remotely discussed exactly how long they will be in Shu Han, he might as well have asked for a conventional lifetime.

“How can a name be worth that?” she says, frowning.

“It is not about a name,” he says.

“Enlighten me then, Aleksander.  Because I don’t intend to give myself to you cheaply.  What exactly am I actually asking you?”

He meets her eyes.

“You’re asking me how I learned the Cut.”  She widens her eyes at this claim.  “It is not something I’d particularly relish rehearsing again.  You’ll have to make it worth my while, particularly when you gave me the name that goes with that life again to begin with.”

Then he lifts the book and closes it with a soft thud, placing it back down in the place it had been sitting for the two days he had been gone.

Her mind whirs.  Because the only reason he would walk off like this before she has responded is if he believes he has offered her a price that he thinks she will absolutely not pay.

(But, she thinks, with some dissatisfaction, they never do get what they want out of each other.  The other is never quite right.  Quite enough.  And now would be a poor time to start pretending otherwise.

At least he hadn’t offered her his last name again.)

“Fine,” she says.  “All of Shu Han.  I’m yours.”

He stops and turns around slowly.  Even so, he hasn’t yet quite wiped the look of surprise off of his face.  Then his expression hardens into a brief flash of hatred.  That, too, he does not allow to linger.

“Fine,” he says.  “That gives me a week.”

She nods.

(And, in the dark of the night on their last night in Istamere, for the first time she almost regrets asking him one of her questions about his life.

Because it is costly.  Probably more to him than her.

He speaks in bare facts and impersonal details:  He had been thirteen.  They’d wanted an amplifier and frozen his hands under ice and tried to drown him.  His first time using the Cut he had killed two children.  The second time he had used it had been on himself.  (She’s seen the scar on his leg.).  The Grisha leaders he’d stayed with had burned an otkazat’sya village in retaliation for a crime that never took place.

(He adds, “It probably damned them, too, in the long run.  Though I can’t say for sure.”)

When all is said and done all she can ask, her voice trembling just noticeably on the syllable is, “Why?”

His answer is firm and tired:  “I wanted to swim.” 

He does not say “with them.”  He does not say, “Like a child would.”  He does not say, “For fun.”  But, nonetheless, she hears so much he won’t ever allow himself to say.

(She and Mal, despite being orphans, had had a meadow.  They’d had each other.  What had he had?)

He’d had survival.

Wanting makes you weak, his voice echoes out of the Winter Fete.  An echo of an echo.  She wonders if he thinks of his hands encased in ice or drowning when he wants something simple now—like swimming with children his own age or the kiss of someone he’s attracted to.

She doesn’t know why she thinks to ask the question.  She is less certain why he actually chooses to answer:  “What did your mother say?”

“If it hadn’t been them, it would have been us.”  Then, almost a whisper in the darkness, “That I need’t apologize because she’d burn a thousand villages and kill a thousand people to keep me safe.”  The room falls silent and she does not know how to fill it up with anything meaningful.  He only says one damning sentence further, which explains much of what he won’t:  “I believed her then.”

And Alina pictures him, a boy who could not say his own name, who could not touch one of his own people, who could not mix with people outside of his own, small, hunted group—she pictures that boy standing in a half-frozen pond, ice fracturing around him like daggers, with blood of his hands.  And thinking it over, thinking if it had been her and Mal, if she would have done anything differently than he had in those circumstances.

She doesn’t think she would have.

It’s the first time the thought fills her with sympathy rather than revulsion.)

***

Chapter Text

viii.  Infiltration

This is the truth Aleksander has learned about power vacuums: people fill them.  Willingly or unwillingly.

He has made use of more than a few such vacuums in his long, long life.

In Ravka there is no Tsar.  No Lantsov pretenders have seen fit to step into the space that the boy King and his handler had tried and failed to command.  The Grisha Triumvirate had narrowed down to a long Durast named Popov who had as much personality as the pickled herring the Little Palace used to serve.  And, from his sources, Popov has drawn in the Grisha forces and refused to join the madness descending out of Ulensk and sweeping the rest of the country.

The Army, meanwhile, has become a hot bed of several conflicting Generals, with very amusingly self-important titles.  There is, when the foolishness is cleared away, the General of the Church, the General of the Nobility, and the General of the People.

But the General of the Nobility watches Balakirev burn along with much of his influence, and the Church is divided as always into factions and sects and strictures of worship that will not even give way in the face of an existential threat.

Vladimir Vasiliev, a former private in the Ravkan Army, steps into the vacuum and does war with the Ravkan Saints on behalf of the People.

He topples statues, desecrates reliquaries, burns churches, and tells the people they have been held in the thrall of the bones of the dead for far too long.  And he declaims that a new Ravka, a stronger Ravka, united under the peasants, did need not prop up a Tsar and a nobility who only trample upon them anymore.

Aleksander admits, he quite likes Vasiliev’s audacity.

That his methods are bloody and thorough, he expects bothers him much less than other people.  Mostly because Aleksander knows that, in the way of power, as in the ways of merzost, when one produces something from nothing, there is a cost.

But Vasiliev has made clear he will pay it.  He will march his way into Os Alta and claim it on the pretense of claiming it for the People of Ravka.

And one day, Aleksander will come meet him and take his measure personally.

(And then, perhaps, he’ll kill him, too).

But until then, he has more pressing matters that need his personal attention.

***

They settle into a dingy house several hours drive from the Koba at the end of a village that barely merits the label and whose name will slip his memory as soon as he is allowed to leave.  By the time they arrive, the entirely forgettable place has slipped under the cover of late night anyways. 

(Unconsciously, he’s been keeping a tally of the places he and Alina have come to, mentally weighing them.  Koba is better than Ketterdam, worse than Istamere.  All fall short of the Little Palace. 

He then makes, perhaps, a future calculation:  None of them are Adena.)

Here they have far more resources than the Wandering Isle—fragments of his network from when he had overthrown the Taban Queens, carefully cultivated over the intervening years, linger in pockets.  There are several accounts that lie dormant that allow him ready cash.  His Shu is flawless and Alina’s is that of a student from a textbook, but it is passable for someone whose identity is that of a Ravkan refugee and much better than her Kaelish had begun.

She, barely giving him a glance, throws the one dingy bag she brings with her from place to place onto her accustomed side of their low bed, and then throws herself onto it alongside the bag.  He removes his boots, putting them next to the small door in the sunken tiled entrance, as is expected in a Shu Hanese household, and, lighting a lamp, seats himself at the room’s small desk and pulls out the paper and pen he keeps on him at all time, beginning to write instructions for various individuals still loyal to him.

“Aleksander?”

He hums, continuing writing, pausing only to see she has drawn herself up on an elbow.  Slowly, she’s become increasingly unguarded in her interactions with him.

(He’s cautiously hoping his patience has somewhat paid off at last.)

“What do we plan to do?”

He puts the final period at the end of a sentence, and turns, arching an eyebrow.

“About?”

She pulls herself into a sitting position and, assuming the most familiar part of her armor again, raises her chin.

“Everything,” she says, letting the word hang between them heavily.

He gives her the full force of his attention.  Then, smirking, he spreads his hands in a plaintive gesture.

“You’ll no doubt be amused to know I don’t actually have a plan for… everything.  But,” his voice becomes honeyed, “I’m honored by your trust.”  Her eyes flash.  "And, as much as I'm honored that you think I have control over everything," he smirks and her face alights with irritation. "You'll have to be more precise as to what you’re intending to trust me with."

"The parem labs," she says, pointedly, the small signs of her initial discomfort with this discussion not entirely fading.

"Ah," he says. "You’ve led me to believe you have the vast amount of the current information where those are concerned."  He pauses.  "I'd assumed once we were here you would demand what we would do in that charming way of yours, solnyshka."

By now she has wrapped her arms around her knees making herself look smaller and younger than she is.  But, while he is causing her a typical amount of irritation for their more politically fraught discussions, she seems to be chewing on something of a response for an inordinately long length of time for something like this.

Then, as if it is an insult, she finally spits, "You know better."

He frowns, wondering what exactly she is playing at with this. He keeps his tone frostily neutral, because he is genuinely unsure of what she will say next, "What do you suppose I know better?"

Her jaw tightens and then releases. She bites her lip and then, moving her focus slightly so she is glaring daggers at the edge of the room rather than him, she states flatly: "Tactics and strategy."

He purposefully does not speak, because he wants to see if she will do what she, slightly improbably, seems to be on the point of doing.

"I—" The tightening in her jaw resumes as if what she is about to admit physically pains her. And knowing her, it might. "I want your... advice. For how to proceed."

"Ah," he repeats. "And you’re expecting a catch?"

The chin lifts again.  Likely because she has already given him everything she would normally have to bargain with and knows that, if he intended this to be one of their usual transactions, she is pitifully bereft of any bargaining chips he’s actually interested in.

His suspicions are confirmed when she says, "I'm waiting for you to tell me how much your help is going to cost me."

He rises and then, moving to the bed, sits down on the edge of it, within an arm’s length of her. Even though she stiffens, she does not move away in the slightest.

"Only advice?" He asks, looming closer to her. Close enough to see her hands knot into fists and her knuckles whiten.

And then, she lifts her chin and she says, her voice unsure, "Teach me."

From her it is a startling request.

"Everything?" He says wryly.

She looks him in the eye at last.

“Everything you are willing to,” she answers.  Then she turns to glare at the corner again.  “Though I doubt that’s much.”

The corners of his mouth draw up.

“Fine,” he agrees.

She jerks up to look at him, suspicion reflected in her pursed lips and narrowed eyes, fixing him with a glare as if it might discern his intent.

“Fine?” she repeats, her tone incredulous.

He reaches out to her, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, the barest touch of his hand calling up sparks of the sun where his finger trails her cheek.

“What do you know about parem’s capabilities?” he asks, withdrawing the touch.

There’s a faint blush on her cheeks.

“It—unbinds the Small Science and pushes it beyond a Grisha’s normal capabilities.”

There is no hair and no excuse, but because he can and she is letting him, he reaches over and trails the line of her jaw with the back of his finger, what is in him calling to what is in her.

“Then you know for either of us to touch it would be… ill-advised,” he continues matter-of-factly.

She snorts.

“Unless Shu Han wants its own Fold.”  The shape of his mouth draws into a grim line.  “Of shadow or light.”

“So,” he continues on, “As a matter of basic tactics and strategy, we need… balance.”  What he means is, he supposes, trust, though he doubts either will use that word, though they both understand it as such.  He traces the line of her neck.  “Both of us should never be in the same facility at the same time.”

“In case…” her expression grows dark.  “One of us needs to be stopped.”

Again, she does not choose, “saved,” only “stopped.”

And what stopping the other looks like she leaves vague.  And, perhaps, it should be.  As he, too, is unwilling to quantify that, he draws his hand back, and drawing himself onto the bed, he lays on his back, his head falling onto the entirely too thin pillow.

Instead, he offers the first of her lessons, “Neither one of us can afford mistakes at this level.”

At one point she would have fought against even this simple notion, now, though, she nods.

“We’ll plan tomorrow,” she says, before flopping back on her own side of the bed.  “I’m tired and the world will still be broken tomorrow.”

She falls quiet, staring at the wooden beams of the ceiling although, between them, reflecting in the tautness of the connection between them, something still hangs, unsaid and unacknowledged.  Almost juvenile, this becomes reflected in the fact that she has begun twitching her right foot in a rhythmic cadence.

And, because she won’t do it, and her twitching is annoying, he decides he will.

“Have we covered everything you wished, Alina?”

“No,” comes her immediate answer.  But, irritatingly, her foot continues to twitch and no explanation is immediately forthcoming.  Then, she simply says, “All of Shu Han.”

Ah, he thinks.  She has realized, finally.

“You—” she begins and then shuts her mouth.  “What do you want?”

He closes his eyes.  Because he does want. 

“Did you expect me to force you?” he asks evenly.

Her response is quiet.

“…No.”  She stops and begins, “You’re not—”

She does not commit to the end of that sentence.  But that there is a beginning is something.

Something.

He presses the advantage.

“Would it surprise you to know I want what you’ll give me freely?”

Next to him, he can feel her weight shift, and he suspects she’s rolled onto her side and is now looking at him, waiting for him to do the same.  But she does not respond.

So, he, too, rolls upon his side, propping his head up on an elbow, almost lazily, and does something he rarely has cause to do with any other person in the world:  He asks a question he does not know the answer to yet.

“Do you not want more, Alina?”

(“What is infinite, boy?”)

He does not understand the expression that drifts across her face, nor the strange swell of emotion in the bond that connects them to one another.

With exceeding slowness, she rolls back onto her back.

“With you?  You can’t tell me you don’t leave a lot to be desired,” she states.  Then, with surprising seriousness, she says, “Enlighten me, Aleksander, what does that look like for you?  Are we just going to spend eternity making petty bargains with one another and provoking the other?”

It would look like trust—trust in the form of more than her not putting a knife into his heart while he sleeps beside her.  Something more than an uneasy truce in pursuit of a mutual goal.  It would look like…

(“The universe and the greed of men.”)

He meets her questions with one of his own, forcing a patina of amusement onto his tone:  “Do you not enjoy the challenge?”

“A challenge is eventually rewarded with something,” she says.  “You reward me with more challenge.”  The word drips.  “If that can be called a reward.”

There is silence between them then.  And Alina is the one who breaks it.

“Of course I want more, Aleksander.”

(He thinks about this moment much later.  When she answers the question in a way all his carefully planned calculations do not account for.

That her more is only nominally his to offer her.)

But for that moment, the same question she asked him lingers on the tip of his tongue, but will not leave his lips.  He’s already asked one question he does not know the answer to that day.  Instead, he rolls back over, closing his eyes.  He is no longer used to being a man who does not have the superior leverage in a negotiation.  Because, if anything, stripped away of their “petty bargains” and provocations, he finds himself in the strange position of having equal footing with her.

He wants to keep her and she does not necessarily want to be kept on his terms alone.  And, she has proved more than anyone he has ever known that his terms will not accomplish what he wants in the end.

And there the problem is again: Wanting.  Specifically wanting her—a thing that tightens in his chest and drives him to lengths he has taught himself not to go.  The maddening desire to both claw her out of him eternally, just to continue on in the equally maddening way he had lived without her.

… And his own inability to do just that.

Aleksander did not want to want.  And that was the whole of the problem.

***

She comes up with how they will tackle the first parem lab—unfolding her strategy bit by bit based on the combined intelligence of both Zaitsev’s organization and his own handpicked Grisha operatives.  He spends their nights simply asking her questions and forcing her to turn around every contingency possible.  Always the apt pupil, she lays beside him and turns the plans over in her mind, chewing over the possibilities and, haltingly, asking questions he only answers, to her irritation, with more questions.

But, when they are done, it is arguably her own plan from beginning to end.  The only real input he has is before the planning had ever begun in earnest:  Without disclosing this to her, he purposefully chooses a lower value target and, thus, one with less security.

(If she learns well enough, he thoroughly expects she will be angry for this initial manipulation.  Though during his long life he has trained enough military commanders to understand how one builds them up, battle by battle and, it is, as many things he does, ultimately for her own good.

He suspects, ultimately, that will still make no difference to her.)

She insists, too, that she will be the first to “bring it down,” which he supposes is a charming way and quite characteristic way for her to refer to what he is fairly certain will be destruction and a fair degree of what she will term outright murder.  And the only time she has done this to her knowledge is Zaitsev and Gusev and fighting him.

Yet, she asks.

So, he lets her.

He tries to warn her about the cost he expects the exercise to extract from her twice.  Which is twice more than he would extend to any other person living.  Her chin juts forth defiantly the second time and she says, sharply, “I’ve heard you, Aleksander.”

(He does not remind her of this moment later.  This act of restraint is, too, one of the many concessions he makes that one day she might notice.)

For a first encounter it goes well in a purely military sense.  As discussed, he secures the perimeter easily with a small group of Heartrenders whose names he does not bother to learn but she already knows.  She enters with another small group of Corporalki—both Healers and Heartrenders—and her handpicked Etherealki whose names he also does not learn, but whose background he has checked thoroughly independently of her.

He knows her plans.  But he also knows that she is not entirely prepared for what a parem lab entails.

And when she finds it, he knows.  He knows because between them their connection flares, incandescent with her righteous rage and a palpable slither of horror.  From his position, monitoring the entrance and egress of the building, he confirms that the main threats are neutralized and then, assigning the watch to two Heartrenders, he strides into the building.

She is precisely where he expects her to be in the exact state he anticipated she’d be in and, for once, he derives no satisfaction from either of these deductions.  She is staring, as fixed as marble, into one of the cells in a long corridor of identical holding cells.  While she speaks in soft Shu tones, he can feel the writhing mass of her rage arc from her, almost tangibly.  The woman she is talking to is more husk than human—emaciated and burned out and murmuring, “More, more, more,” over and over in Shu.

He comes to her shoulder, and asks, softly, though he already knows what her answer will be: “Have you called the Healers in?”

She gives a spare, shallow nod of her head.  Aleksander has seen famine and war and sickness and violence more than any ephemeral peace over his life.  He knows when death is a mercy.  He knows when death and a cold kindness intertwine in one form.

“I’ll do it,” he tells her, and he raises his hands.

“No,” she says, so soft he can barely hear her.  “No,” she repeats.  “I will.”

She summons the sun to her hands, honing it to a bright blade.  She does this six times. And falls to her knees on the last one, tears tracing trails of grime down her cheeks.  He extends a hand, and limply, she takes it, allowing him to pull her roughly to her feet. She stands there, mute and empty, until, grabbing her upper arm, he steers her to the middle of the building.  Like a sleepwalker, she stumbles there with him steadying her.

He commands the building be emptied and, upon receiving the word, he takes his hand and drapes it over the bare skin of her neck, feeling the boiling heat of her roiling dangerously just beneath his fingers and feeling that rage draw on his own.

“This is yours,” he says to her.  Something centers in her expression.  Her eyes burn and, understanding exactly what he wants her to do, she flings her hands wide and burns bright and beautiful and brutally destructive until there is nothing left but ashes and the two of them, shielded from the light and heat only by his shadows.

She is silent the entire ride back to their house outside of Koba.  Silent as she comes in the house, standing insensate in front of the door.  Silent as she stands there.

And though she is yet young, compared to him, he remembers.  The tragedy that he had weathered had worn some other face, but he had remembered days and nights exactly like this.

He calmly orders her to remove her shoes.  Then her clothes.  Those he simply burns.

Then, taking her by her forearm again, he leads her into the bathroom and, without a word, sits her in the sunken tub, and pours tubs of water over her, dirt and ash and blood rolling off her skin with each tub he pours over her.  She sits, mutely and meekly, and lets him do this, too, before he goes to gather new clothes for her.  He holds the towel out for her and, some of her returning, she grabs it with a growing fury he is intimately familiar with.

She breaks her silence at last:  “This was not the first time for you.”

He does not remind her that he warned her.  He simply says, “No.”

“And…” she cannot quite put a tongue to her horrors yet.  Mostly because she is not as inured to them as he is.  “Is this time…?”

“Better,” he finishes.  And he means it.  The Grisha they had found this time had retained some modicum of humanity.  The twisted things that he had found, slave to their own addiction and burned out by their own Small Science, had been little more than wraiths.

Then, he stands off to the side until she asks him a familiar question.

It is limned by pain and rage and blame aimed at him and not at him.  Mostly because he has always been a convenient villain for her.

“How do you stand it, Aleksander?”

He wants to tell her the simplest of truths about himself:  That he does not stand it.  That even after centuries he is not entirely inured.

He settles for that truth in another form.

“By turning my rage on them.”

Her eyes burn as she looks at him.

“Fine,” she says simply.

***

(That night is the first night she comes to him in Shu Han and in it there is nothing of gentleness.

She is a wild thing: nails and bruising and teeth and the oblivion of unfeeling he knows far too well.

He meets her:  Violence for violence.

And it seems to suit her quite well.)

***

He does not tell her that it gets easier.

But it does.

She channels her rage and singes parts of Shu Han, turning parem and those who make it into ashes.  She burns so brightly that he suspects history will forget him when it speaks of this.  Generation and generation will speak of an avenging goddess who rains down her heavenly fire on the irredeemable.  Her rage and wrath will eclipse him.

And she is a bright and terrifying and lovely, lovely thing.

And this, too, he lets her do. 

This, too, he allows.

***

He has only once married for such a small thing as emotion (and he was young.  So hopelessly young), though he’s married several other times for several other reasons.

Early on, when he was young, he had one girl for whom he had convinced himself he held a measure of tepid feeling along with some amount of adolescent lust.  She had bloomed and faded and now he could not so much as recall the shape or her face or the name he had held then.

He’s had frigid political wives who have taken his feigned names for peace or power and lived separate lives in separate rooms and houses that have never intersected with his.

Sometimes he has seduced women for their power and influence, kept them in his bed to guarantee their submission and that of their powerful backers.  Sometimes the charade lasted an entire marriage and, oftentimes, it was discovered for the farce it was far too late for the bond to be undone.

Some of his marriage partners sought him out to use him as much as he used them—and he finds the most appreciation in them.  These bright, unyielding things he still remembers fragments of.  He remembers Ekaterina who put a knife in his back, and Ulyana with her poison, which was a lovely and ruthless thing until she’d tried to serve it to him.  They had all been too brief to hone more and had fallen—either to their own foolish betrayals or the inevitability of time.

Bright as they burned, they could not hope to be his equal.

(He—he as Aleksander Morozov—has never been married.)

Perhaps this is what it would be like.  For him.  As himself.

With her.

In truth, though, he imagined something more than Shu Han.  Something worthier than some anonymous house outside of Koba.

(Adena, maybe.  Someday.  But not now.)

He has discovered several things: that the current formulation of parem is certainly not as strong as the original (but as he created the Shadow Fold and Alina is his equal, he knows full well if he makes mistakes what the mistakes might be). He finds that Alina is a terrible cook (she comments, with a raised eyebrow, “I’ve put my considerable energies towards other things.”).  Lastly, he prefers her best covered in the ashes of a parem lab, flush with the halo of her powers boiling under her skin (oh, how he doesn’t care its far beneath her—them—when the door flings open and he cages her against the wall, and how he lifts her and how she lets him, lets him).

(Koba is warmer than Ketterdam.  So much so he nearly asks if she will have it again—his name.

But he is patient.

Patient.)

***

Their network, cobbled together as it is, finds exactly what they need.  He and Alina meet with an undercover Inferni in a nondescript café in Koba.  They talk of nothing memorable, and when the bill comes due, the man waves him off and, in the exchange, transfers over an envelope.

Then he and Alina go back and study the information they have gained: there are coordinates, schematics, blue prints, notices of troop movements, grainy black and white photographs of the intended target, and a single photograph of the man who they have been looking for.

Batu Yul-Jochi. (1)

The Fabrikator who had worked out the new jurda parem from salvaged notes from the original inventor’s son.

“We will need to quickly get in, lest he escapes,” she says thoughtfully, her hair unbound and streaming down her shoulders next to him on their bed.

He hums his approval, looking over the diagrams of troop movements.

“He needs to be interrogated,” she continues.  “You’d be better at that.”

The assumption that underlines this is almost amusing to him.  However, he simply responds, “You might learn.”

She, however, does let out a faint burst of mirth, and mirrors his own expression irritatingly back at him, “Are you going to let me learn on him?”

“No,” he says simply and as they both continue on with their individual tasks, the silence stretches.

“You should use them,” she says, and she is staring hard at a list of available personnel in their network.  He takes one finger and bends down the page to see her face. 

“Those Inferni?” he asks archly.

She yanks the paper away and does not look up.

“Your nichevo’ya.”  She pauses.  “You haven’t used them… since the Fold.”  Her pause becomes a hesitation.  “To my knowledge.”

He frowns.  Because he realizes that she truly does not know.

Perhaps she has actually thought he has been practicing his restraint all this time?

Though she will not look at him, he pins her beneath his gaze.

“You should not ask me for the impossible, Alina.”

She looks up, meeting his gaze bright with defiance.

“How—” she starts, ever reactive.  Ever eager to believe the worst of him even now.  But then, when her first instinct burns out, she has a stark look of understanding and says, carefully, as if testing the idea against him, “On the Fold…”

She, as ever, stops just short of what she might have realized.

He lays the sheets of paper down between them and sinks back into the bed, closing his eyes, as if to block out some half-remembered light.

“I held the entire sun that day,” he answers honestly.  His tone is even and factual:  “Is it any wonder that even my darkest shadows could not withstand your light, Alina?”  When he opens his eyes at last to look back, the shock still hasn’t faded from her face.  He moves beyond it, though.  “So we will have to plan for some other eventuality.”

She masks her expression at last and, slowly, nods.

(Later, he will wonder that it took her so long to notice.  He pays very close attention now that she apparently has.  Mostly to see if it changes something in her.

He cautiously concludes it might have.

But he is not so foolish as to entirely trust it.

Not yet.)

***

Batu Yul-Jochi’s paper fortress falls to shadow and sun.  For the first time, because they have chosen to prioritize stealth and speed, he agrees they can go in together.  As the group of Inferni outside causes a distraction, she bends the light around them and, slipping in at a poorly monitored side door, they make their way together towards the building’s heart.

He silently kills each guard they encounter with an easy flash of shadow, as easy as breathing.

They find Batu Yul-Jochi making his final preparations for his departure.  Unaware he is little more than a corpse held in abeyance, he imperiously orders his assistants to “save the samples before that infernal witch queen shows up.”

He lashes the exit closed with a band of shadow and Alina drops her hands and strolls out, saying in perfect Shu, “The witch queen is already here.”  An easy smile lights her face.  “But today, Batu Yul-Jochi, you should not be so afraid of me.”

The man takes an involuntary step back, crashing into a table and sending several of his precious samples to the ground, their glass slides shattering.

“Who—?”

“Oh,” says Alina, striding forth so that her boots crush the glass under her feet.  “I’m afraid we will be asking the questions today.  Or rather,” she gestures to him, “He will be.”

Aleksander steps forward, the shadows pooling around him. 

“Hēisè Tiānzāi (2),” Batu Yul-Jochi breathes.  “The bane of Bo Yul-Bayur.”

Aleksander smiles.  “He begged for death.”

(He had.  He had laid his sins at Aleksander’s feet.  Professed he just wanted to hide what he and his son were.  That he had made a mistake.  That he had told no one. 

That what he had created was an abomination perpetuated as a weapon by the Taban against his will.

He had asked for mercy and Aleksander had given it to him, in a certain fashion.)

Despite the fact he is pale and visibly shaking, Bo Yul-Bayur’s intellectual heir draws himself up and manages, with a quavering voice, to say, “I do not negotiate with abominations.”

Aleksander doesn’t mince words.  Instead, he moves one hand in a lazy fashion and lets the Cut fly.  Suddenly, Batu Yul-Jochi is holding up his wrist, blood spurting from it, looking at where his hand and half of his lab table used to be.

“You presume you have the means of negotiating with me at all,” he says.

And Aleksander proceeds to get what he wants, one precise Cut at a time, revealing the work he still has to do to secure a future for his Grisha.  Then, when he has wrenched out secret after painful secret from the man in front of him, he fulfills his end of the bargain.

For a moment, hope climbs back onto the man’s face as he drops him to the floor.

“Now, Sol Koraleva,” he says, switching to Ravkan, and earning him a glower.  He switches back to Shu and says, “You may do what you will, as promised.”

He leaves her to finish him, knowing there is little Batu Yul-Jochi will be able to do with her that will not involve using his teeth, as Aleksander has divested him of most of his useful limbs as a method to liberate secrets from his tongue.  Although he had not discussed this with her, he goes to see to the Grisha prisoners and extend to them what mercy he is able.

(And this, he thinks, is something of a mercy to her, though he will not say it).

They meet outside and he simply asks, “It is done?”

She nods, no trace of remorse on her face.  Indeed, he feels a curl of pride in her when she looks slightly triumphant, she strides forward and, looking back at him, says, “Shall we do this together?”

He gives her a little mock bow.

“I live to serve, solnyshka.”

Scoffs and spreads her hands wide, the sun glittering, deadly and beautiful, between them.

“You live to serve you,” she says.

He frowns, and the words, “Not always,” make it to the tip of his tongue, but, thinking it better to simply show her the error of her ways, he simply mirrors her form, forming a black, writhing blade of shadow between his hands.  He waits patiently for her cue and, when they do so, shadow and light intertwine, leveling the entire building.

Immediately, Batu Yul-Jochi’s death changes something in her, though he can’t entirely follow the logic which brings the change about where he is concerned.

That night, they take a long, largely silent ride back to their little house outside of Koba, during which they change vehicles three separate times, walking side by side across multiple dark blocks in nondescript villages and through dark hedges on small back roads.

(Only once during this does she speak.  And this is only to ask him, “How many?”  He knows what she is asking him without further elaboration.  He knows she wants to know how many Grisha the main facility had contained.  “Thirty-seven,” he answers.

He does not tell her that none of them could be saved.  Nor she does not ask.  He suspects she already knows.)

However, when they make their way to their house, walking the last few miles in the darkness, as soon as the entrance door slides shut, she is on him, kissing him fiercely.

(She has given him her body many times.  She had kissed him back when he has put his lips on her.  This is the first time since that distant Winter Fete, several of their lifetimes ago, that she has kissed him.

For a disconcerting moment, something flutters in his stomach, and he, who has seduced women for centuries, until even that is old and stale, in that moment where the woman who has resisted him most bends to him, he feels young.

The feeling passes quickly, but leaves something of an impression nonetheless.)

Until the morning light chases the thought away, he thinks about asking her again, to have the name he has not given to anyone else.

When he takes time to think on the impulse, on the change in her, on his own reaction to her, something about the encounter leaves him feeling unexpectedly ragged.  Because he has never liked her influence on his self-control—somehow only she leaves him reeling, her fingers getting beneath his skin, poking at things best left alone, dizzy with want.

(He is suddenly back in front of the Vezda Suite at the Winter Fete, facing an empty room and a double betrayal.)

Though he might argue his patience has been rewarded, that he does not understand this change in her gives him pause.

He does not, as ever, know if it is enough.

***

In Shu Han, as well as Ketterdam, something holds constant between them: he wakes earlier than she does.  Today, she is clothed only by a sheet, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her arm lazily flung over his bare chest.  Her breath curls through her, deep and regular, ruffling a stray tendril of her black dyed hair with every exhalation.  In Ketterman and Istamere, he had merely rolled out from beneath her grip, bent on productivity.

Especially when there have been mornings when he is up for hours before her.

But these days, in their miserable house outside of Koba, he finds it to be such a strange thing to wake in the arms of another person, what he is singing between their bare skin—a moment of his life which passes without suspicion or caution or fear—that he waits for her first, spare stirrings of consciousness to move.  Then, looking over the now familiar planes and curves of her form, he resists the urge to run his fingers over her skin again, to feel how the sun rises to meet his light touch as it does in their nights.  Rather, as if he has just woken, he pulls himself up and washes their mingled sweat from his skin.  By the time she has some semblance of coherence, he is often pulling his clothing on for the day, observing how she pulls on the brightly patterned Shu robe he had bought her without comment, and lingering slightly as she drags herself towards the kitchen.

This morning, following a pattern that has held throughout their time in Shu Han: she makes tea.  The routine between them has become familiar as the rhythms of her breathing and the moans she makes in the night, things he wishes to gather up and claim and make his alone.  Blearily, her eyes still half-closed, her hair lank and hanging in her eyes, she pours them both a cup of tea and, in his, spoons three heaps of sugar in his cup, crinkling her nose in distaste every time, while in hers she adds nothing.  Foisting her cup up, she cradles it in her hands, breathing gently to scatter the steam, her dressing gown slipping down one shoulder, and waits for him to come for his.

He grabs the cup, stirring the sugar in, and sitting down at the little table they have.  She remains perched, rubbing a spot on her breast and neck he’d given particular attention to the previous evening.

“Batu Yul-Jochi is dead,” she states.

“He is,” he takes a sip of his tea, the sweetness of the sugar tugging at his lips.  “Although there is still much to do to clean up after him.”

“Then?” she asks, and now there is a strangely focused look in her eyes.

“We’ll go to Ravka,” he says.  “There is still Vladimir Vasiliev.”

She sips her tea, quietly.  “He’s united the army and the okazat’sya at all levels follow him.”  She pauses.  “He’s advocating change and modernization—better education and opportunity.”

He cocks his head, studying her.

“You’ve changed you opinion, Alina,” he says carefully.

She meets his eyes.  “Have you changed yours?”

“Promises are easy.”  He drains his cup and then, frowns.  “The fact remains that I am Grisha,” he says, the conversation he has had most in his life spooling forth again.  “And many of his measures make Grisha obsolete.”

Alina flops into a chair across from him, with a sigh.

“I hope there is far more about being Grisha than being raised to be a weapon of war.”

Almost self-consciously, in the morning light, she draws the robe around her more tightly, then thinks better of it and lets it go.

He makes a lazy gesture.  “In Ravka there has always been war.  And without war the age of Grisha will end.  Fjerda will not stop for a petty revolution.  Shu Han will eventually resurface.”

She rubs the spot on her neck again and her expression becomes annoyed.

“I suppose this is why the Ravkan Grisha need you …?” she asks dryly.

He side-steps her veiled insult neatly:  “Vasiliev has solidified power by breaking the back of the church and the nobility.  There is one very likely place where he need turn next to solidify his rule.”

“Perhaps the Grisha need to change then, if Vasiliev is going to break them so easily.”

He rests his chin on a fist.  “Perhaps Vasiliev needs to be persuaded to change himself.”

She watches him far closer than one of their arguments merits, then sighing again, asks, “Are you too old, then, to change, Aleksander?”

He straightens fractionally, evaluating her, but mostly evaluating her question.

He knows it is a dangerous question when he asks it:  “Can you think of a cause for me to change?”

It is such moments as these that he feels a vague sense of irritation thrill through him that she’s managed to mask her emotions at last.  But then, the mask gives way to a sense of resignation he recognizes.

(He’s seen it on his own features for centuries.)

“Perhaps one day you will find there is more to love than Ravka.”

(Who loves the dust? He wants to ask her. 

But she is not dust.  She is someone whose light renders others into dust.  He has watched her time and time again in Shu Han.  She is light.  And he’s held the sun in his hands and knows the fire may not burn her, but light and shadow can’t directly coexist.)

He stills his own features and decides to hazard holding the sun in his hands once more.

Bluntly, he asks, “Are you looking for a declaration, Alina?”

He watches her reaction in pieces:  How her forehead knots, her lips turn down, how her hand fidgets with her robe—tightening it and then loosening it.  Then she rises, moving towards the wardrobe.  Before speaking, she takes out her usual gown and her undergarments.  Then, each movement growing more furious, she pulls them on while still shielding herself with her robe.  Then she pulls the gown over her head and divests herself of the fine Shu Brocade in one move.

Then, as if she has burnt herself out, it is only the cold ashes of resignation which greet him as she pulls on her coat and, at last, says, “I won’t ask you for something I know you cannot give.”

She goes back and only returns late in the day.

(He does not deign to ask her what it is she has been doing.)

Nor does he ask her precisely what any of it means when the next morning, he wakes, her skin singing the sun to his, draped in his arms.  Then, tying her dressing gown tightly over her waist, she makes tea—black for her, three scoops of sugar for him.  He, already dressed, drinks his in silence.

***

It is her who leaves him behind in Shu Han.

He is sleeping, his hair tousled, his breath hot and even, his features relaxed and almost boyish.

She imagines the look on his face—the small frown, the hardening in his eyes, the control he is exerting over something he still does not want entirely—as he wakes bare chested in the morning and finds she is not there.

And, when she fails to return, he will figure she has gone for reasons of her own.

(He will not know—not until later—that he has given her a reason to leave.

It is just far different than the ones he normally gives her.)

***

Standing in their empty room for a third day, Aleksander accepts she is gone, though, as she does, Alina gives him no explanation or even warning of her departure.

He rages for a day, seethingly dissecting their last few encounters.  Attempting to determine why she has seen fit to do this to him again.

Especially since their work is not yet done.  The Grisha are not yet safe.  And yet she has left him alone to fight the remaining battles of this conflict.

A week later, in the quiet of an empty room, where his shadows whip around him as he works reading over communications for a number of his contacts with an uncharacteristic air of distraction, he thinks she might have, once again, played him for a fool.  Only half focused on the documents in front of him, his formidable intellect turns the problem over, trying to discern what it is he has missed.

And, tearing the issue apart inside and out he decides the problem doesn’t so much lie in the fact that Alina Starkova is not exactly his.  Much of the problem lies in the fact that he is not hers.  Which is a problem he is much less willing to solve.

***

Chapter Text

ix.  Possession

It had taken Alina the greater part of two and a half centuries to understand that the impulse that led Aleksander Morozov to whisper “Mine” into the bare skin of her shoulder in the depths of the night and that led him to move troops in fields like they were the wooden figures on his map table were one and the same.

She’d decided it was a kind of hunger that their strange existence produced.

When he was at his most human, when his hair was disheveled and his head lay upon her shoulder in the pale hours of the morning, when he wasn’t all grand machinations and unsatiated ambition to be… then, she wondered how he had not gone mad.  He was much older, and for much longer portions of his life, much more alone.

And if she amplifies what she felt in the darkness of a cold room some nights that stretched into decades, she had started to understand that facet of him (even though there’s much he still tries to keep hidden, maybe for the same reasons). 

Sometimes, though, she found herself horrified at how acute his absolute wanting must be.  Because she had felt it, too, two centuries in, that hunger for permanence.  For something to stay.

In her first century, without him and glad to be without him, she had been tired of losing and had travelled to Balakirev, to Novyi Zem, to war torn border regions where only the level of violence had changed in generations, to anywhere she could think of to dull the ache.  Nikolai had died.  And David.  And Genya.  And finally, finally Zoya.  And she had been raw from loss and being left.  Then, everything in her protesting, she had reached out to the one note of permanence she had, in him.

(It was a weakness, to be sure.  But not the same one his mother had warned him about).

She is certain what has developed between then in Ketterdam, and the Wandering Isle, and in Shu Han, is not so simple a thing as any love.  (His taunt asking her if she wanted a declaration had said it all.). After all, no one would sing of their desperate fumbling when, after years fell away from them in a gesture, a blink, they whirled together, clutching at one another to ensure something somewhere remained.  When one of the things that he had made in his mind into something tangibly there—Ravka, the Grisha—failed him, he knew he had her.

(Which was, likely, the problem.  Love of the concept of her—of the permanence she represented—from his stunted and shriveled heart was not the same as loving her.  Of that, she knows, there likely would never be any declaration.)

For her, the hunger had taken a different form: she did not long for the power over lands that changed form but held to predictable patterns, or power over people who could be shaped to create a lasting ideal.  He, too, she held very lightly (she can admit to herself now, after a century and a half that she did hold him, though.  And he, in turn, held her more fiercely still).

As his hunger—for her, for Ravka, for the Grisha, for permanence—had damaged her early on, when he, stronger and older and much more practiced in eternity had held onto her with his iron grip, she knew that what she had decided to do in Shu Han might do the same to him in terms of the damage it might cause.

Because she had decided that what she wanted was not exactly him.  That he had been wrong in all these years of their eternity that what she might want might change as she did (and did not).  In some ways, although the faces and details had long blurred in her memory with some variation (she remembers the glint of keys on Ana Kuya’s belt as she hung from that tree and the sweet smell of summer meadow grass under her hand as she clasped a warm palm), she is still an orphan from Keramzin.

(And maybe, she wonders, he is a boy in ice whose mother would burn the world down for him.)

Aleksander is still not entirely what that orphan longed for and, in many ways, because of his own life, he cannot be.

For a man who had been suckled on the idea that wanting was weak, but could not help but want… For a man like Aleksander, who knew more losing and grief and impermanence and betrayal than anyone else, she knows that he will likely see what she has done to satiate her own hunger as an act of war—taking something from him he had not granted.

Even if it might give him something, too.

(Something Alina knows he does not want).

***

She is sure when she goes to the Little Palace again.  Just as she had been self-conscious in their little house in Koba that, under the thin brocade of her dressing gown, he might see and know.  Now, though, she can place a hand to her abdomen and, already, there is a barely perceptible swell.

She is also sure when she gives the General her name for this life. 

(She is very sure what he will think about the one she has chosen.  She is, in fact, betting on it.)

The newest General—this time a Corporalki—sits behind a desk in what used to be the Darkling’s War Room and then, later, became one of the places where the members of the Triumvirate lived.

Now, there is only the General, who presides over all of the United Armies of the People of Ravka, under President Vladimir Vasiliev, who rules in the name of the will of the people and who has killed people for even implying he is anything less than utterly philosophically different than a Tsar.

“Ah, Madame Morozova,” General Yahontov states, the name rolling off her tongue with an odd disbelief. 

The General gives Alina a long, hard look.

“You have a quite famous name for a Grisha,” she says. 

(A Saint’s name, in fact.  Two, really.  But the Saints are dead and to imply otherwise is another kind of treason.)

Alina smiles slightly, and she looks down at the carefully folded hands in her lap.  She slips back into the picture of polite deference to an authority figure.  After so long in Aleksander’s company, she had thought such deference might be hard to assume again.

“He has a very famous name,” Alina responds carefully, knowing every word is being closely monitored given what the dossier Alina has offered her says.  “The man who thinks of himself as… my husband.”

She kneads her hands in blatant distress, casting her eyes about the room, showing her supreme discomfort with the word “husband” so that she will no longer ask about him.  Then she need not pretend that their arrangement together has ever been as formal as the one between husband and wife.

The woman narrows her eyes and she knows she is evaluating her heartbeat for any lie she might tell.  She finds nothing, because she continues, perfunctorily, “He is… also Grisha?”

Alina gives the barest nod.

“Etherealki,” she says quietly.  She lets a fear she hasn’t felt about him in a long time come to her.  Though the fear is not for herself.  “Very… strong.”

Her earlier ploy works and she does not have to explain what kind of Etherealki her definite-not-husband whose name she has taken anyways because she knows he will be incensed and leave her alone for a period. 

General Yahantov is particularly discouraged from pursuing this line of information because the dossier in front of her contains much more interesting information than about her new recruit’s wayward husband.

Indeed, predictably, the General makes a show of reading the file again, before pretending to hesitate over some piece of information she has found there.  But Alina never needed to talk to her in the first place to know what information she wants.

The woman drums her fingers on the desk—an obvious nervous gesture.  The humanity of the little action strikes her, as many things do after she has spent a span of time with Aleksander, who very much finds being nervous and displaying it both quaint and trite.

But he is old.  Over his years he has trained most of the humanity out of himself, excepting what he uses for theatrical purposes.

(Which he certainly does often.

But she also knows that being old and set in his ways hasn’t entirely made him… inhuman.)

Gambling with a humanity he wears as an imperfect skin, as she decided to do back in Shu Han, is, at best, an uncertain proposition.  But, as she stands to gain (or lose) as much as he does from her gamble, (though she hopes he remains unaware for a decade or two), it seems worthwhile from her perspective.

(If it works out.)

The woman looks up from her file.

“You are…” The General steeples her fingers together on top of her desk, her expression grave.  “Is this true?”

By this, Alina realizes that the woman across from her has decided she wants to begin her bit of theater, too—as Alina very much knows that the General of the United Ravkan Army normally wouldn’t give an appointment to a pregnant Grisha of unknown origins.  So, in a far more convincing performance, she slowly brings her head up to look at her.  Then, casting her eyes down again, almost as if in shame, she nods again.

The woman presses farther.

“You are really a Sun Summoner, then?”

“Yes,” she answers quietly.

The General puts the sheath of paper into her hands and taps the bottom of the pile on her desk three more times than she needs to.  Another nervous gesture.

“This should be strictly confidential.  Last time there was a Shadow Summoner—I’m sure you know what happened to him…”

Her heart definitely does not lie when she says she know exactly what happened to him.

Briskly, the General moves on:  “You are trained.”

Alina nods.  Because this is true.

“By whom?”

Her next answer is true enough.  Mostly because the question can mean as many things as her answer can, and so delicacy makes the truth lie.  And he has trained her in many things.  Such as making the truth lie.  Even to Heartrenders.

“Him,” she says pointedly.

She drums her fingers on her desk again and, this time, expresses what she objects to.

“This arrangement is…” she hesitates, drumming her fingers again, the unsaid hanging in the air.  Then, coming around to the point, “Why do you require us to shield you, Sun Summoner?  What has he done?”

Alina is glad she has dissuaded the General from calling him her husband.  She does not know what they are, but, though he has offered for reasons not entirely apparent to her,

they are not married by any formal ceremony she knows.  She might have avoided mentioning him entirely had she known that the General was a Heartrender and that she’d interview Alina personally. 

Luckily, speaking about what Aleksander has done to anger her requires no lies.

“He… tried to controlled my powers.  Control me.”

It is an old sin of his.  But it is a true sin.

(She has a sudden flash of that day:  “I will not be your villain in this.”)

The General narrows her eyes and then gives a short, distinct rap of her knuckles on the desk again.

“He has never joined the army?” she asks.

Alina looks down at her hands knotted in her lap, contemplating how to answer this question.  Under Vasiliev’s rule, likely to disincentivize Grisha from overpowering him militarily, Grisha enlistment is no longer compulsory and now, largely due to some of her earlier efforts, there are other, non-military occupations available to them.  So, though it might not be odd that her theoretical husband is not in the military, she cannot answer the question directly mostly because he has joined the army.  Several times. 

Arguably, he founded parts of it.  Really, without exerting any effort, strategically, intellectually, or militarily, Aleksander would eat this woman alive.

She instead answers with something true:  “He is not a trusting man.”

The General nods, evidently extracting precisely what Alina wanted her to from this statement.

“He…” and this is truth as she knows, “I want you to know he will not hurt me physically.”  She says this because she knows that, for the first time since the terms of their first truce dissolved, she is handing him something to hurt her with.  Thinking about this, she puts her hands over her abdomen, where the slight swell is already apparent.  And she tells a truth she is afraid of: “I’m not certain about the child.”

Drumming her fingers again, her brow puckering.  Almost to herself she says, “A Sun Summoner and her child…”

Then, she folds her hands over the folder on her desk, the one that gives her name, the one that does not tell her as much as she needs to know about a husband, and out loud, she says, “You should be well aware Ravka cannot afford to do this for free.”

Alina nods.  She, too, has been in the army multiple times.  And she knows Ravka better than she does her own child.

(Aleksander is, as always, the one unknown.  Alina has come to realize he has room in his brittle heart to want three things.  She’s also realized that, paradoxically, none of them does he even momentarily believe are entirely in his grasp.)

“Well,” says the General, facing forward and nothing like any of the generals she has seen, except for in the question she is about to ask, “You had better show me.”

And for the second time in her life, she holds the sun in her hands and puts herself in the hands of a General of a Ravkan army.

***

(From the empty house outside of Koba, he learns she has gone back to the Little Palace again.

He learns her name this time.

Aleksandra Morozova.

It’s singularly galling.  And absolutely something she would do to him.  And likely because she believes he did something to her in turn, though he cannot immediately recall it.

(Perhaps she had wanted a declaration she had also thought he was incapable of giving.  It is his only explanation).

Or she wants him to come ask her why, but is, as usual too stubborn to ask.

He decides he will not take her bait.)

 ***

The pregnancy is difficult.

When she had thrown up for the fifth time in a day, despite eating nothing but candied ginger at any point during it, she morosely wonders if it is the father’s personality coming out in the irritability of the growing child.  It is a satisfying, if petty thought, that is usually dashed—and dashed quickly—by the next wave of nausea that roils through her.  That she hasn’t been sick for the better part of two centuries makes the experience both novel and frustrating.

The Healer who she sees weekly on the General’s orders, though, assures her it is within the bounds of normal.  Particularly for a stronger Grisha.

Since parting with him, although he likely would find that a generous way of referring to her leaving in the middle of the night without an explanation, she is unsure what Aleksander is doing.

Over the centuries, she’s learned how, in the broadest strokes, to both live with him and fight with him.  Though, since that day, they have yet to fight outright on quite so grand a stage (fighting with words and occasionally, during particularly contentious times, with shadows and sunlight, seems to be unavoidable in their relationship).  But as his child grows within her, bending and reshaping her in ways that rob her of sleep at night and even rob her of the ability to sit or stand comfortably during the day, she wonders if this action of hers will be the spark to set him off again.

He has certainly been angry with her—and disdainful, often, disappointed, even more frequently.  He reminds her often he is not a good man.  He is not someone tender and gentle and given to mercy, even if somewhere in his brittle heart he has the capacity, decayed as it might be.  And, as her life lengthens, she understands more and more of the utter possessiveness that lies in him, too, gnawing at his ribs, just under his skin—some black creature of loss and grief and otherness that only finds security in her.

If her gamble fails, if the child in her, the child of the most powerful Grisha to perhaps ever exist, is not what she hopes it will be, she knows all of this will serve to remind him again that she cannot be possessed in the way he wants.

That she will not be possessed.

(And if it fails, he will likely think she has betrayed him in wanting something of her own.)

In the familiar rooms of the Little Palace, as his child grows within her, she feels it come to move under her palm, restless as Aleksander is when confined (she’d learned in Istamere that even when he makes a show of a life of reading and sleeping, he is more like a serpent coiled and pent up, ready to strike).  She knows that this is something that will force him to reevaluate her again.  After all, even having discussed it once, long ago, theoretically, she knows his feelings on the matter.  She knows, now, that sometimes she can see what he hides beneath centuries of a shield to hide anything close to vulnerability, that he will see this as something he can only lose and something that will only be lost. 

And it might be.

He had, in the honest brutality that is all the kindness he can summon in the face of the world he has survived and survived again, asked her how much of loss she could endure.

(Now, she just wonders if Baghra had been that same way for centuries—love for a foolish boy she had helped make that way.)

Now that, along with the exhaustion and painful displacement of her skin, she can feel her child move within her, she understands Baghra, too.  But knows Aleksander is very wrong—she cannot be like her.  Even if her child is the most ordinary of otkazat’sya.

Now that it is all a matter of reality, Alina is fairly certain she can only do this once.

(And, in the darkness of the night, she tries not to contemplate what it might be like to lose.  Especially since, except for Aleksander, she has tried to be as unattached as possible.  But she is tethered to the child within her, just as certainly as she is to their father.)

She just needs a decade—which is hardly anything.  She will give birth, and she will know whether Aleksander will need to be convinced that to want something else is not weakness.  If he even need know anything—because for him, even a normal Grisha’s life is dust. 

But, as she puts her hands over and feels again, the stretch of the child within her, she knows as she knows herself what will break him again.

Alina is betting on the fact that this will not be enough.

***

Despite the fact that she has abandoned him, he sees the rest of the work they started through by necessity.  The parem labs are almost entirely decimated.  Shu Hanese scientists will likely grow scarce for a few generations.  Hopefully neither will ever threaten any Grisha again.

However, because the Fjerdans have thought to take advantage of the revolution headed by Vladimir Vasiliev and have broken the fragile and illusory peace that his dictatorship has cast over the newly minted Ravkan People’s Republic, tensions along the northern border have mounted.

Rumors of Fjerdan aggression are equally meant with rumors that a Sun Summoner has taken the field at the head of the United Ravkan Army—not a Sankta reborn, but a symbol of the people’s might, of the Firebird that has become the symbol of the Ravkan People’s Republic.

His informants carry him a number of reports that, to his practiced eyes, straddle the line between fact and propaganda:

That she glows white at the day.

That she can take down mountains with a sickle of light, like an avenging goddess.

That her foes sizzle in her rays and turn to ash.

(That, in the depths of the night, the poor cling to her image and the image of the rest of the banned saints, finding comfort in the paper icon of Sankta Aleksandra who will light their way.

It secretly amuses him that the Saints remain a hidden burr in Vladimir Vasiliev’s heel.)

He will admit only to himself that her needling angers him.

He will not come to her. 

Not when she has once again allied herself with the wrong side.

(Not when she’s taken his name and not him.)

***

The General has had vague reports for some time, of the Counter-Revolutionaries and their weapon.

They speak of shadow to oppose the New Ravkan Army’s Firebird.

These are the people who still raise the banner of the dead Saints, who cling to the old ways that did not serve the people.

So, General Yahontov simply orders a propaganda packet to be printed.  She’ll believe in their Shadow Summoner when they can produce them.  Until then, she has an assured Sun Summoner that is in her debt.

***

The Healer Midwife—Katya, she learns on the second day—is worried, although, when Alina has the presence of mind to string a coherent thought together, she knows Katya is trying to appear not to be.

(Aleksander would think she has no mask, comes a stray thought.

The next thought is that she wants to be thinking about anything but Aleksander.

That she can’t even blame him for this.

Damn him anyways.)

But, since it has been a full two days since the pains began, she need not wonder as to the cause for the Healer’s worries.

(“You have quite the stubborn child,” Katya says lightly, when she checks her again, and the waves of pain still aren’t to where they need to be.  Because, evidently, this needs to be more painful.

Alina, loopy with pain and exhaustion that does not seem to abate at all, had laughed through a grimacing contraction and somehow bleated out, “You should meet the child’s father.”)

It all intensifies until the world narrows to the bands of pain which wrap her body and the churning urge to eject what is causing them.  She loses herself in the pain, becoming a feral, animalistic thing, remembering images of Adrik getting his arm cut off and the grounds of the Little Palace scattered with bloodied corpses after the onslaught of the nichevo’ya, wraiths produced by parem, vials of Grisha blood for sale on a market day in Istamere.  And, on the third day of pain and the small world it creates, there is a sudden pull on the dormant slack of the tether she shares with Aleksander.

He is trying to come to her.

Something he has not done since the day Mal died and she might as well have and their bond was forged anew.

And, even amidst the haze of pain she clamps down with all her might on the connection, knowing that he cannot come here.  He cannot see this.  Cannot know what she has gambled on his behalf.  Absurdly, she appeals to Mal, whose blood now binds her and Aleksander, to not let him come.  Each ragged breath coming out like a prayer.  Even though it is absurd, because of what she is doing now and how she got that way and whose child she is trying to push into the world in a haze of pain and blood and the strange fascination that her immortality is no safe harbor from death in childbed.  And the fact that Mal would be absolutely aghast that the child within her is the Darkling’s and that she is having his child willingly.  But he does not know Aleksander.  No one but her does.  And she knows, more than anything, that he cannot come here.  Mal and the Saints and all the things out there that might prevent it cannot let him see her now.  And, amidst the pain that grips her and the grimness of the healer’s expression, and the fear that she might die and the child might die and All Saints, what would he do, she begs the Firebird and Mal and anything she can think of not to let Aleksander come.

When the child finally does come, except for the cessation of pain, it is almost anticlimactic.  There is a weak squall and, as Katya takes the little body and looks it over, her face relaxes.

When Aleksander’s son is put on her chest, she’s barely conscious of the child as he, in his coat of blood, squirms against her.  In a fog of exhaustion what pulls her to crest the surface of reality is not his wriggling, foreign presence, but the faint draw between her and her infant.  And the knowledge that the boy is, at very least, Grisha.  But even this is a dully sounding piece of information in the unreality she wanders through.  She is relieved, yes, that the pain has stopped, but she is perhaps more relieved that her son’s father has stopped battering at the connection between them, his impotent rage and horror receding, instead of materializing in front of her in the form of his shade.

She blinks and the squirming thing on her chest is gone with only a smear of blood to mark its presence.  The Healer, meanwhile, is murmuring soft lovely things as she busies herself about something—only dimly does she realize the cloth that is fluttering in her hands comes away red and only then does it register that the boy—her son—is being cleaned.  Another blur works at her feet—and she vaguely conscious of another pain that feels like a drop in the ocean, and then the woman says, “We’ll put him to your breast, Sun Summoner, and then you may sleep.”

It takes Alina a moment to process that this is directed towards her.  Then the child, now wrapped in something soft, is back in the next blink and the Healer murmurs, “That will explain the difficulty in your pregnancy—he’s an amplifier.  Quite a powerful one.”

Alina already knows this, but hearing someone else say it still leads her down a dizzying path of thoughts that are connected and that aren’t—that he is his father’s son, that someone could wear his bones, the both of their bones, that he is hungry and eats well, that he is small, that her belly is still rounded like he is in there, but he is here at last, at last, and his father should stay far, far away for a time that will seem brief to him and long to his son until he can make do with the truth.

She falls asleep as he suckles hungrily, this pale skinned boy with his shock of dark hair who is somehow hers.  He looks like Aleksander, she thinks distractedly.  But with a certain, fierceness—though coiled and lazy with exhaustion—she does not care.  Because she does not know if the little thing on her chest can be his yet.  If at all.

But she knows he is hers.

As her eyes close, at last, she feels once again the pull on their tether.

I’m alright, she says, she means it with an emotion she rarely directs at him.  Do not worry.  Do not worry.  I am fine.

And although the feeling that seeps back through to her has many different and even contradictory layers, she can practically feel a rage not her own thrum through her like a dully struck chord on an instrument fading into an echoing hall before it is gone like a door slamming closed.

***

A Corporalnik, Boris Turgenev, her mind supplies, throws open the door and shouts, “General, two guards at the gates of Os Alta have been killed.”

She looks up from the stack of field reports she is responding to, alarmed.

“Killed by what?”

Boris collects himself, drawing himself up.

“Whom,” he corrects. The General narrows her eyes.  “They were both cut in half.” 

The Corporalnik fidgets with a cuff, unprecedently sluggish in his report.  The General, growing impatient with his reticence, drawls, “By a sword?”

Boris looks at her, his eyes haunted.

“Shadows,” he whispered.  “The one survivor he left said he used a blade of shadows and just walked off like it was nothing.”

The General chews her bottom lip and taps her fingers on her desk.

“What did he want, Boris?”

He doesn’t hesitate this time:  “He wants to Sun Summoner.”

The General is out of her office and hurtling towards the Healer’s Pavilion before he finishes the sentence, leaving Boris behind her.  Aleksandra Morozova is asleep when she arrives, her infant swaddled in a bassinet beside the bed, also sleeping.  With no time to honor the delicacy of her condition, she shakes her roughly awake.

“Your husband,” she says, and just the words draw Aleksandra into alertness despite the fact that her eyes are hazy and unfocused, “is what kind of Etherealki, exactly?”

She doesn’t answer, though her face slips to a seriousness she has never seen.

“Take my baby.  If he asks, say he was born dead.”

The General, ignoring her insipid demand, with a tone of command, repeats, “What kind of Etherealki?”

The woman sits up straight, and through a grimace, says in the same tone of command, “Take Pavel away.”

She calls loudly and a Healer on duty comes, she gathers up the infant and the mother says, “As far away as possible.”

“Now speak, Sun Summoner.”

“It’s best you don’t find out,” she says, looking at her evenly.  Her next sentence is all cool calm:  “Direct him to me, if you do.  Just do what he asks.”

She raises her voice, “I need to be able to know what I should be taking counter measures against to protect my people!”

The woman, in the same tone of calm says, “You will not be able to take countermeasures against the Darkling.”  The archaic title sends a thrill of recognition and cold fear to slithering within her.  “Unless you are me, you run or give him what he wants.”  She turns away to look out the window.  “And what he wants is me—which is fine.”  She makes a slight dismissive gesture.  “Please let me handle him.  Like I said, he will not hurt me.”  She pauses and then the Sun Summoner looks her directly in the eye.  “Know that I am the only one that applies to.”

***

The Little Palace is not immediately attacked by a myth made flesh who is married to another myth made flesh, and, after three days from the initial report at one of the gates into Os Alta, General Yahontov allows herself to relax fractionally.  Some exceedingly rational part of her brain thinks, too, that the threat might only be the product of hysteria and a new mother’s exhaustion.

Pavel Morozov, however, is taken out of the Little Palace and placed temporarily with the daughter of a wealthy merchant’s family in Os Alta who had escaped the recent purges with several plainclothes Heartrenders seeded among the servants.  That there exists any possibility that his father is, of all things, a Darkling, and his mother is a Sun Summoner makes the child both an undoubted future asset to the Ravkan military, but, by the same token, also an absolute threat.

The General makes certain that not even his mother knows of his whereabouts.

Having checked the perimeter defenses of the Little Palace, she strolls back into her office and, wearily closes the door behind her when she hears, “Ah, you must be General Yahontov.”

She has never heard the voice that has greeted her and the heartbeat, even and calm, is also unfamiliar to her.  She turns to see a man in a black, old fashioned kefta—the style a student at the Little Palace might have still worn a century ago—gracefully lounging behind her desk in her own chair, his hands folded in his lap with an air of expectancy.

“How did you get in here?”

The man makes a lazy gesture with a slim, elegant hand.  Nothing about him does not appear at ease.  That very fact yields one of two possibilities: He is either very stupid, or he is very dangerous.

“There is precious little about the Little Palace I do not know, General.”

“You have no right to—” she begins.

“I have every right,” he says, and although he doesn’t raise his voice in the slightest, the force of his words is like cold iron clamping around her.

General Yahontov raises her chin.

“Who are you?”

He looks at her for what feels like a long time, his cold, grey eyes boring into her.  Then, he crosses his legs and says very slowly, “You will tell me where to find the woman calling herself my wife.”  She does not know that she has ever heard such contempt poured into any two words before as when he clarifies, “Aleksandra Morozova.”

“What business do you have with her?”

The Sun Summoner’s warning thrums through her:  “You run or give him what he wants.” 

The room goes funny, and for a moment she cannot pinpoint precisely what is going on and then, to her horror, she realizes that the shadows are bleeding down the walls like water—flowing right near her, where they settle about her in a tight ring, bubbling around her as if they mean to drown her.  And he hasn’t even raised his hands.

“She would be upset with me for killing you,” he says with a silken drawl.  “Let her know what mercy I showed you if you are to speak to her later.”  The shadows thicken and draw so there is hardly any space between them and her.  “Aleksandra knows well what a finite thing my mercy is.”

“She is in the Healer’s Pavilion.”

His eyes narrow and his tone sharpens, “Why?”

General Yahontov gives one spare glance towards the inky blackness spooling at her feet and answers, “I mean no disrespect, but that is something you should find out from the woman who calls herself your wife.”  She looks away from the narrow-eyed suspicion in his gaze, only to feel a peel of thrill bubble up in her when she realizes there are fractions of inches between her and whatever his conjured shadows will do.  Nevertheless, she continues calmly, “It is rather a private matter.”

Then, in a blink, the shadows retract into him and, as if he is an apparition from the annals of Ravkan history and myths meant to scare children into compliance, he rises and vanishes.   

***

When she awakens, Alina is not entirely surprised to see Aleksander sitting in a chair next to her bed.  He is sitting facing the foot of the bed with his back turned to her.  The proximity he adopts is typical of him—close to her, but not so close that it might betray any affection he may or may not hold.  (And really, anything in him that might be labeled “affection” is covered with such a thick layer of utter possessiveness that it barely merits that label by the time all is said and done.)

By now, she thinks she could tell it is him anywhere simply from his profile and posture.  To a casual observer—well, pretty much anyone else alive—he is lounging carelessly, one long leg crossed over the other, his elbow resting on the arm of the chair and his chin resting on his open palm.  Aleksander always appears to others to be at casual, graceful ease.

By now, though, she knows all of his mannerisms and affectations, so Alina sees several things she suspects no one else does—the slight tension around his shoulders, the tautness of his hand, the slightly harder than usual set of his jaw.

Alina can tell at a glance he is angry.

(And he likely has a right to be, finding out this way.)

She hauls herself up to a sitting position, her abdominal muscles still screaming in complaint, even though five or six days have elapsed since Pavel’s birth.  Her abdomen, too, still bulges like she is pregnant (“It will go down,” Katya assures her).  But, as Aleksander has seen no alteration in her for uncountable years and is more than capable of basic math, he has no doubt already drawn his conclusions.

“Why are you here?” she asks softly, even though she knows very well that he has already realized she is now awake.

He does not move a single muscle and, when he speaks, his voice has a slight rasp in it, as if he has not spoken to anyone in a long time.

“Not for the reasons I thought I would be, I confess,” he responds and says no more.

“You know,” she finally says softly.  Unnecessarily.

For a moment his only reaction is to lean heavier onto his hand.  Since he is still looking away, she imagines what his expression must be.  She bets it is unreadable to most people—his marble and frost that is undergirded with a nearly invisible layer of a cold, cold fury.

“I assumed someone had seen fit to try to assassinate you, now that you’ve become a dog of the United Ravkan Army or whatever fanciful title they call themselves these days.”  He goes on as if this discussion is of little consequence… all iron clad restraint.  “Although it did not entirely explain why you’d seek to rebuff me from knowing that when every paper carries the same propaganda.”

Leaving the reason hanging in the air between them, he falls silent.  He definitely knows now. 

He raises the specter of it all, at a length: “Did you find your three days of agony to be to your benefit, Alina?”

He is going to make her say it.  To make admit to him what he has already been told has happened.  This, too, is like him, though.  This is his own subtle form of cruelty.  Of punishment.  To make her say the words.

(She’d hate him for it if any of them were true.  She might never forgive him if any of it were actually true.).

When she does not speak, he continues and, still not moving, but finally, a note of anger clinging to his posture reveals itself at last in his voice, “Where is the child you have seen fit to give me, Alina?”

“Stillborn,” she whispers, imagining the horror in the word.  Imagining the void where Pavel had been before the General had come to her bedside and warned her.  Widening it and bringing it to Mal, to Genya, to Zoya, to Nikolai, to everyone she can remember ever knowing and liking and losing.  Willing him to believe it.

(As a kindness, she tells herself. She owes him this much.  This much for that day.

For her understanding of what he is, what he was, what he became.

This much kindness.)

His voice, too, becomes softer.  His tone, as well, is one she has not heard him use often.  If at all.

“You might have asked me, Alina.  I would have stopped you.”

Human, she realizes.  He sounds soft, and brittle, and human.

The guilt and grief in her voice hardly has to be feigned, although it is no longer for the ghost of a possibility of what might have happened to Pavel, who is very much alive.  It has everything to do with how she already knows he is going to answer her next question.

“How could you have possibly known, Aleksander? …What would have happened?”

At last, he shifts, raising his head, uncrossing his legs, moving the chair so that it faces the bed as it used to.  Then he fixes her with a look.

“No woman has ever been brought to bed and delivered of a living child of mine." He closes his eyes momentarily and, almost imperceptibly, his jaw tightens.  The wording of the statement is old, a strange phrase that belies his actual age.  And probably indicates the last time he had needed words to speak about something like this.  "I might have spared you the hope, Alina.  Had you asked."

He speaks of nothing for himself.  That she might have spared him the pain, as well.

He says it like any other fact and yet, in it, Alina wonders: how many children has he buried?  And their mothers?  His wives?  Lovers?  People who saw his mussed hair and the tiredness he occasionally allows to steal into his frame.  People whose fingers might have, for what would have been seconds to him, pried off his carefully cultivated mask?

(That even now, she might own that his resignation might be cause for a different kindness.  But if this Aleksander is what a finished thing, something over and done with and decided, produced... She fears one with hope.)

How many things had he tried to feed the hungry thing that lives in his brittle heart, the hungry ghost of very human want, to have that desire crumble in his hands, hopeless and impermanent?

Then, quieter, a question: "Did you see him burned, Alina?  In the way of Grisha?"

(“How many children’s bodies have you burned, Aleksander?” some braver, perhaps crueler, version of herself wants to ask.  “How many of your own?”)

She looks away from him and he presses, "Alina, was the body burned?"

"I didn't see it," at least she might say she told him the truth in this.  Later.  "But it should have been done.  But, I... couldn't."

He leans his cheek on a fist once more.

"Make sure.  I'll not see someone wear the bones of my son as a crown," he says with a fierceness that surprises her.

Someone had told him that he had had a son.  And that that son was an amplifier. 

And, as he has lived as one, on top of being Grisha, in a time before the Little Palace had been carved out with his own hands, she suddenly has a cold dread in the pit of her stomach as to what that had meant for him.  (She had heard, in Istamere, too).  A colder dread, too, surfaces—that she has sent Pavel off with strangers to keep him from this man here who understands better than she the world of risks she had sent her infant son into.

"Aleksander—" she begins, uncertain of how to proceed.  Knowing with half-formed dread that she might be very wrong about him.

"Don't," he says, cuttingly.

Stupidly, she repeats, "Don't what?"

A smile twists his features and for a moment he looks every bit the Darkling, the Black Heretic, the man who wears a cloak of fear in place of an identity.  The same twisted smile on his face, he crosses his legs again, suddenly regal in what definitely has an undercurrent of rage.

"If you wanted my name, I made you an offer of it.  Did you not believe me?"

Suddenly having to account for herself, she feels brought up short.  She had meant it as a shield—his name.  She had meant not to have this discussion at all.

"No..." He answers for her, his smile puckering into a frown.  "It appears you still do not."

His voice is smooth as silk, when he asks, "And my child?" Her mouth feels dry.  "I assume you left Shu Han when you were certain you had gotten what you wanted from me." He pauses, raising a single eyebrow, as if he is inviting her feedback, although she knows he is not.  "Like dear old madraya, you found a powerful Grisha to gamble against eternity with."

Alina fists the cloth of her bed linen.

"And after all of that, you're still left with the thing you don't want, aren't you, solnyshka?"

Her voice comes out barely above a whisper: "And what is it you think I don't want?"

He says it as simple truth: "You want my name, you want my child, you want all these things of importance to me." She can feel his eyes bore into her, but does not rise to meet them.  "But you do not want me."

She doesn't even look up at him.

"Nothing?" He goads, his anger for a moment palpable in the single word.

She opens her mouth, closes it.  Nothing—neither denial nor agreement comes out.  For a moment, all she is aware of is her aching abdominal muscles and the absolute morass of emotion she can feel from what binds them, though none of it reflects on his face.

The anger is gone when he speaks again and replaced by something altogether different.  Alina finds herself feeling a ripple of horror at his next question.  But, for once it is not a horror that has to do with him.

No, it has everything to do with her.

"Tell me, Alina, can you love a monster?"

The question has the cold of Ketterdam in it.  Worn blankets and his bread.  Both the way she had first allowed him to take her to show him she would not be conquered that way and the way he breathed possession into her skin anyways every time after.

(A monster and his Fold of Shadows.  Made and unmade at his hand.  His monsters without form which died in the sun light that had coursed through him.  But a monster, also, who made his child and has lied that she has unmade him, too.  That has taken the few things he will not pry from his grasp and toyed with them to her own ends.

She suddenly cannot comprehend monsters anymore.  Or maybe she doesn't want to.)

She looks up at him, at last.  And, for all the arrogant affectation of his posture, in his voice... He has never seemed more human.  The grey of his eyes is not marble and immutable.  In them is only hurt she's done him.

"You may choose to ask yourself one day, Alina, why I am here, sitting in the room of a woman who has made me endure the loss of a child she knew I thought was a foolish prospect, and who has taken the only name I've had that is wholly mine in what I can only speculate is a childish defense against the consequences of her other actions.  You're welcome to enlighten me as to your purer motives any time, though, Alina."

Her voice is barely above a whisper.  "What do you want with me, Aleksander?"

Everything in him goes hard and the bond between them suddenly bricks closed, as if all of his defenses are mounted.  The grey of his eyes is impenetrable and his posture becomes a shield of arrogance.

"I've been very clear."

Her chin rises.  "Obviously not."

"Perhaps you've been confused by the wording I've been using for more than a few centuries—that I wanted an equal, by my side, for eternity."  She does not move from her defiant stance.  He, however, gets up, and leans down over her.  He towers over her and he says, "So I will say it in a way that you will not mistake."

He pauses, pinning her beneath his gaze—he who has known everything she has planned and every lie she's told him.

(Except one.  Probably the most important one.  And the one she's sure is least forgivable for a man who could readily imagine a world where his dead child's bones might crown someone’s brow.)

And he says, unmistakably, as promised: "I want to be yours."

The moment passes and he's again remote and a being well acquainted with the waiting of eternity.

Then abruptly, he moves to the door, stopping just long enough to say, "When that's amenable, find me.  I'll make no further concessions." Then, in a moment of what must be hesitation, he looks back and says, "I've seen what you are.  Just remember, Alina, even now, even when you won't look at yourself, I haven't looked away."

Then he is gone.

***

(The next day, her Healer, Katya, comes in and, after pronouncing that she is much improved, she withdraws and brings back a covered tray.

Underneath it is the smell of herbs and spices and slow cooked stew meat.  It's a scent she knows and likes.  She looks up from her Kerch stew, flavored like winter in Ketterdam, to Katya, who is evaluating her.

"You do like it, then?" she asks carefully.

She takes a bite, letting the bitterness of some of the herbs mixed with the distinctive tang of the sauce wash over her tongue.  She nods and the woman looks relieved.

Alina, regards her and realizes only one person knows what she likes to eat.

"I am sorry for him," she says softly.  "What did he..." The word that comes to mind is "threaten," but what she chooses is... diplomatic, given their meeting yesterday, "say?"

"That the Sun Summoner was fond of this kind of stew."

Alina frowns and says incredulously, unable to fathom Aleksander just offering up information on her favored foods, "When did he offer this...?"

"When I told him I would leave him alone with you on the condition you weren't taxed and he did not wake you, no matter what my orders were." She smiled grimly.  "He looked at me and said, I believe quite seriously, that I am the only person he's had any inclination to leave alive in the entire Little Palace...  Then he was talking about Kerch stew."

Alina sighed.

"How serious was he?" Katya asks.

"I do find Kerch stew delicious," she says with false brightness.

Katya’s smile only broadens.

"Good to know he was serious about killing me, Aleksandra."  She nearly flinches at her own purloined name.  "…In case he comes by again "

Alina's smile is less grim.

"It's not likely he will," she says.  Because... she is not sure how to give him what he wants.  "But, you should know that's rather a compliment for him.  To not want to kill you.  Almost like he likes you.  As much as he likes anyone."

She realizes she is blathering on.  Because without Pavel and in light of her conversation with Aleksander yesterday she feels strangely unmoored.  Much of her does not want to examine what he'd said and not said.

"I gather..." Katya gives a brief bust off laughter, which endears her to her.  For a moment she feels a deep pang resonate in her with the name Genya.  She becomes contemplative, "You will... have to explain him one day.  Your... husband."

Alina reads a question she is not impolite enough to ask hanging in the air:  "Why a man like that?  Why you and a man like that?"  And she cannot explain that, though they have a son and he is, in many ways, the only one suited to her, that the problem is it is not her and a man like that.  Because the world might tremble if they actually belonged to one another.  If the world actually did care about anything.

"He's a complicated man."

That is as true as she can be.  She does not have enough years to explain Aleksander, whom even she still only sees bits and pieces of beneath his practiced shell.

"But not a good one," Katya observes.

What a "good" man is has changed for Alina over the centuries.  She's decided he is not usually a villain (also he certainly has had his moments), though he allows himself to be perceived as such if it furthers his ends.  Sometimes he will unrepentantly be one.  Mostly because he sees things in spans of time that most men will not ever fathom.  It is harder for him to see a Healer taking care of the mother of his child who will be much like a blink to him.  It is not worth the effort to value what, for him, is already dust.

(And she has learned, too, the harder lesson that he had tried to teach her earlier, but she was too young to learn: that it hurts less, too, when they’re simply dust from the beginning.)

And, even before he showed up, she's been thinking lately of him and Baghra and his thousand little secrets and untold stories about what he endured in his childhood.  How to raise his son who she hopes never lives in anything like the world which gave birth to his father.  How Baghra had started with a bright, clever, and oh so powerful boy who had only had her and a power that put a target on his back.  How Baghra disdained him and exalted him and loved him because in him she saw her own elusive father and the unnaturalness which damned them all.

How she might make Pavel into a bright and clever boy that reflected what good is in his father.)

Finally Alina tells her: "He was raised to be a great one."

(And she would not make Baghra’s mistake and do the same.)

With a tilt of her head Katya seems to contemplate this but doesn't comment on it.  Alina feels a bit relieved at her silence.

(She does not want to talk about Aleksander.)

Katya takes a deep breath.

"He did ask about Pavel," she discloses simply.

Maybe she means to console her that her husband cares despite appearances.

"And how did you answer?"

With marked efficiency, Katya speaks so that Alina will know each question Aleksander asked her.

"That he had a son.  That he was an amplifier.  That no one would bury the infant as if he was otkazat'sya in the Little Palace, especially the son of the Sun Summoner and..."  She purses her lips tightly together and trails off without filling in what she expects is mostly speculation.  Then, in a softer voice continues on, "Then, that you will be well and whole in a little while.  That..." She pauses.  "Nothing would prevent you from having another child if you so wished.  I told him the truth, Sun Summoner."

The place where Genya was a long time ago throbs.

(And she does not want to think about Aleksander.  Much less the truth.)

She changes the subject again.

"Pavel?" She asks.

"The General would like to wait a week before he comes back to the Little Palace."

(Alina thinks of the image Aleksander has cursed her with: someone wearing her son's bones.)

And she is his lone protector.  Her actions have ensured it.  It is her job to make sure he becomes a good man, not a great one, and that maybe, one day, his father might want to be his, too.  

(She takes the feeling of these into her and each promise of what she must do burns like the sun under her skin.

Then, when she has been released from the Healer's care, she marches into Aleksander's old War Room and demands that General Yahontov bring Pavel back as soon as possible.

The woman looks her in the eyes, "Are you not at all concerned that your husband will come back?"

"He will not," she declares.

"Sun Summoner, your son is likely a valuable asset to the United Ravkan Mili—"

Alina sits down and leans forward.

"Only I have agreed to be an 'asset.' Pavel will stay with me at the Little Palace until such a time as that changes."

"Madame Morozova," she says, rising and setting both her palms on the desk, prior to leaning forward.  "Understand that the military has expended many resources to protect your son and will likely expend more in the service of his continued protection."

Alina meets her eyes, no longer playing the mouse, even if the opponent before her is much easier than the other she met in this very room.

"And that is the cost of having Ravka's only Sun Summoner.  As we discussed."

General Yahontov pulls herself upright.

"Terms can change.  Your husband cost two guards their lives.  You did not tell me you were married to a Darkling."

A Darkling who would be far more skilled at the negotiation the General wishes to have and is thus no threat to Alina.

Alina smiles and, raising her chin, responds calmly, "You did not ask."

The General sits herself down again.

"Then, based on this new information, the terms have changed."

Alina rests the ankle of one leg on the knee of the other and leans her chin upon her hand.

"They have not.  You will bring Pavel back tomorrow and I and I alone will be your military asset.  These are my final terms."

The General's eyes narrow.

"Or what?"

She speaks only truth, even if in some cases it is only half the story.

"First, you will know there are few things that the Darkling won't do for me.  Secondly, you will know that there are few things I will not do for my son.  Lastly, you will know that the two of us together will change your world in the way we see fit, if at all necessary."

Yahontov’s lip curls.

"And you would threaten me by saying you'd unleash that monster on me after what I've done for you?"

Alina gets to her feet.  Under her breath, in her heart, the hungry thing that is unbound by eternity awakens, ready to sate itself.

"If you seek to do anything to my son without my permission, I assure you, General Yahontov, I will be all the monster you can handle."

Katya brings Pavel into her the next day and she feels him draw the sun to the surface of her skin when he's placed back into her arms.  He is whole and seemingly happy.  She strokes the bare tendrils of his inky black hair and thinks about his father.

And, for a moment, she has the impulse in her to tell him she has an answer now to his question—that she can tell him now if she can love a monster.

She does not, because answering his question now necessitates asking a different one:

“Which monster did you mean, Aleksander?”

***

Chapter Text

x.  Narratives

As a young child, Pavel Morozov is afraid of the dark.

Things move in the shadows, he tells his mother.  Don’t you see them?  He cries into her shoulder.  And as he cries, he sees the shadows move closer to him.  Madraya strokes his head and, always, she drives away the things in the shadows with her light.

His mother holds him, glowing and warming him, until he can drift back to sleep again.  If he cannot, he begs for a story.  Her stories are varied and strange—not at all like the books of folk tales and fairy stories he will find in the library of the Little Palace as he gets older.  Not at all like the stories that other children are told in the dark of night by their parents.  No, Pavel’s mother’s stories are stories of a wise, one-eyed woman who can turn everyone but herself beautiful, of birds and stags and sea monsters, of a queen with the temper of a dragon, and a king who pretends to be a pirate.

(Privateer, she corrects.  Pavel asks what the difference is and his madraya merely shrugs).

They are strange stories, with strange digressions and stranger silences that Pavel only becomes aware of as he gets older.  As he knows more about who and what his mother is.

(And who and what he himself is.)

Pavel does not like the stags, sea whips, and fire birds.  Nor does he like the fox-faced princes and dragon queens.  Nor tales of cold, cold Kerch and its krugr nor Shu Han and its Queens and subsequent revolutions nor the Wandering Isle and its faeries and mystical music.  Most of the stories he likes talk about a man who can call the shadows with his hands.  He asks repeatedly for the stories about the Shadow Summoner, which is the only name his mother ever calls him.

At six, Pavel calls for his madraya because he cannot see—the daylight world had become encased in darkness and it is only then that he realizes that the darkness is something from his own hands which has eclipsed the sun.

Then, his madraya tells him, like she tells him to wear his gloves against the cold, even when it is not particularly cold, even when it is summer, that he should show his shadows only to her.  Ever.

(Later these both become The Rules.  Rule One—gloves always. And Rule Two—no shadows outside of her.

The Rules mark him out from the other children in the Little Palace, who are instructed in their Small Science and go around bare handed and free.  To them, Pavel is just an otkazat’sya being done a political favor because his mother is the Ravkan Firebird.  But then, he is taught Grisha and otkazat’sya are equal in Ravka even though he can see plainly in the Little Palace this is not true.

Every now and again, though, another Grishenko asks him about the Rules and Pavel lies.  Because lying seems easier than any explanation he’s never gotten from his madraya.  The instructors, though, in their jeweled kefta, have always looked at him with hard eyes as he has trailed after his mother, who looks back at them like they are mere stones.).

But before they become Rules, Pavel is a good boy who loves his madraya and her stories, so he wheedles and negotiates and exchanges her words for gloves on warm days and dances between light and shadow in the dark where no one can see.

Instead of folk tales, he asks for stories about the man like him.  Stories Madraya only grants when he either is particularly good or is particularly good at pestering her until he gets his way.

(He likes to weave traps with his words like a game.  Can he corner his madraya into one more story before bed?  Can his words do that?

He likes it when he can.

Madraya does not.)

The stories grow as he does.  At first the Shadow Summoner is a man of simple action and simple motive, like a fairytale being.  He defies kings, he builds a magic palace with a great gold dome to shield his people, his shadows fight the wars of the Grisha, he vows he will carve out a place for them with his own two hands.  He likes sugar in his tea (who doesn't?) and can make taverns in the Wandering Isle fall silent with the sound of his fiddle.

When he is eight and nine and ten, the stories change and so does the Shadow Summoner.  He does wrong now, makes mistakes, his cleverness backfires.  He betrays the kings now, chooses between deaths and deaths as his shadows start wars.

And he makes something called the Fold.

His mother tells him stories and, after her voice falls silent, she often asks now, What do you think, Pasha?

He is never certain what Madraya wants him to say to that.  That people do bad things sometimes?  That it must be hard to have so much power that you can halve a country?  That he does not know what he is supposed to take from these stories and she won’t tell him?

He thinks, sometimes, it might be a history lesson.  Or a lesson in theory.

Because Pavel listens in classes, too.  He knows what's normal for a Grisha's power and what isn't.

The Shadow Fold is not a normal application of anyone’s Small Science.

"Merzost shouldn't be used," he says, answering her usual question after the repeated story of the Shadow Summoner and the Fold.  His madraya's face is unreadable.  Perhaps he is wrong in his assumption—too black and white in his thoughts.  So he adjusts his thinking for, perhaps, her approval: "At least under most circumstances."

A deep frown graces his mother's face and she gets up, telling him she's had enough for the day.  She calls for dinner and sits in front of her fire in her favorite chair.  She never says he's wrong, though.

Pavel takes that to mean he is right.

(Although, the story of the Fold changes something in their stories.  Mostly because his mother declares the day after that she will find him a teacher to help him summon.  And, since she will not clearly answer questions he does not dare ask her anyways, he finds a book of old maps in the Library and finds, spread across Ravka, a wall of ink labeled “The Unsea.”

The book is the first place he sees a word that gives him pause.

That word is “Darkling.”  

It, too, is a more common name for a real Shadow Summoner.  It is, in fact, the name for the entire line of them (although his mother has never talked about more than one), all descended from the same family line.

(He does not know the question to ask here, either.  She has never said anything about his father.  But so few children at the Little Palace have parents that he hadn’t bothered to think about the question until the age of ten.)

But he wonders if Darklings and Shadow Summoners inhabit separate worlds.  One in history, one in story.

Because when he calls the Shadow Summoner “Darkling” in front of his mother only once, she visibly flinches, and gives him a rare sharp word.  In the term, unseen until now, he suddenly sees a wall of taboos and odd silence spring up where before there had only been stories.)

So, Pavel tries to wrest the Shadow Summoner back to the earlier stories both he and his mother like better.  Where he is simple motive and simple action and builds palaces and protects people.  Where he heaps sugar in his tea and plays fiddle and has Pavel’s same warped sense of humor.

He asks, jokingly, one day, "Madraya, what food do you use to lure a Shadow Summoner out?"

Madraya gives him an odd look and he decides then that even light jokes cannot bring them back to where they were before.  Indeed, Pavel thinks she might simply shush him.

Then she answers quietly, "Medovic might help (1).  If you meet him."

Her voice has some of the lightness of the old stories.  But it's also tinged with something of the new.

"Medovic?" He repeats, not having expected honey cake to lure out what he had been hoping is a fairytale.

Then his mother says, "If you ever meet someone like you Pasha, promise me something…" Something in Pavel's stomach knots at these words and he can feel his childhood fracture around him.  Because he recognizes that there might, in fact, be someone else like him.

(Darkling—the word throbs, unsaid, in the space between them.)

She makes Pavel repeat something three times he doesn't entirely understand the significance of.  Something that belongs to the world of stories and doesn't.

Then, confused, because he is increasingly certain that his entire childhood his mother has been telling him a very different story than he has thought, he asks, "Should I give him Medovic then?"

His madraya stretches a smile over her face that doesn’t fit there.

"Only if he behaves."

(He wants to ask her how you tell if a fairytale is behaving.  Because all his life he's been taught that the beings from stories follow their own rules.

But he lets the silence rule.

Mostly because one of the answers his madraya might be forced to give him is that you can tell when a being from a fairytale is behaving when they are not, indeed, a fairytale at all.

Pavel does not want to see how that story ends.  At least yet.)

***

There is one story about the Shadow Summoner his Pavel is never told.

It is about where it ended and where it began.  What might be an act of good faith or an act of control.  Maybe an act of love.  Maybe an act of desperation.

It’s the story of the end of the her first of many lives.

But it is not something for a child’s ears.  Barely something for her own.

(Too heavy of a burden yet.  She will let him be a child.  She has tried so hard to let him have a childhood.  To defy the rest of the stories—his and hers.)

It goes like this:

***

The warmth of his callused hands, hands that could make rabbits from stones, drops from hers and they come away sticky with his heart’s blood—red, red, so red—and as the blood of the Firebird (Mal, Mal, Mal) coats her hands, mingles with the dirt and grey sand of the Fold under her nails, sinks into her, pours to where she can never ever scrub it out, power had surged within her.

Too warm.

Too bright.

(“What is infinite?”)

Too, too, too, too much.

The power, like the blood spilled over her and around her, starts blurring her own lines of thought and body, making and unmaking her a burning galaxy, a constellation, a thousand suns tangentially tied together in arbitrary lines someone else has drawn.

(“The universe—“)

And as she is made and unmade in a thousand ways, the tang of the unreal, of merzost, rips out of her as if what had been all her was briefly burned to ashes and, for what is either the blink of an eye or an eternity, she is just the resonance of pain and nothing else.  There is a great and pronounced Tearing and the only thing that is held constant between her and what bound her to anything tangible—the light, the light, no longer hers, but in everything, making everything small and finite and binding and dividing in the same breath—and then it arcs upwards, borne on wings and the first thing she is aware of is the sand of the Fold against her knees from where she has collapsed down, bodied once again.  Then, she reaches into where the light has been, even in those years when she had pressed it down and made it dormant, and all she can find is a cavernous hollow, a boundless, echoing reserve of unabated emptiness at her very core.  Instead of light uninterrupted, the gentle rays of the sun, is a Darkness so bone deep no sun could shine again.

(“—and the greed of men.”)

There are cries all around her.  Cries from the people fighting, cries of the volcra, and the thick veil of shadow over everything.

And, in the depths of her grasping for something that had left her utterly, she hears him, the Darkling, cry out in a pain so human he could hardly have been anything but.  For a moment, his darkness encompasses her, blocking out everything but the gnawing void within her, and then wave upon wave of shadow wither into useless tendrils of half-remembered darkness and the starving maws of the nichevo’ya dissolve into insubstantial motes of light.

In that hollow place, some primal creature stirs within her, shrinking from the initial display of the light that suddenly blazes forth from him, a slinking, receding thing that brushes over her wrist and slinks around her neck and, as the Sea Whip’s scales dissolved into dust and the antlers which had bound her like a collar broke into ashy nothingness, the faint slithering creature stops and pays attention as the Darkling looks at her with a look she could not have named if she had even tried, even as her understanding of the world breaks around her.  The slithering creature, she realizes, is the last thin, tendril of whatever act of merzost had bound them together all this time.

And it leaves her, too, in the black hole where what was part of her used to be.

And then, lit up in the center of a glowing dome containing just them, is the Darkling, still in his black kefta, his elegant hands outstretched like a maw that might consume the entirety of the world.  He remains utterly frozen with that look of something closest to awed horror on his beautiful features.  Then, from one of his hands emerges not the soft, barely dawn glow of the power that had sealed their bargain in the Chapel of St. Ilya in Chains what felt like a hundred lifetimes ago—

(“My power is yours and yours is mine.”)

—but the bright full, glow of the sun.  Her sun.  Her light.

The look in his ancient eyes freezes and he whispers in awed reverence, “Merzost.” 

Then, leveling his gaze on her, he brings the orb of the sun to the front of him—hers, she wants to cry out, to protest!—thinking desperately of how little he deserves to have it emanating from those blood soaked fingers when she knows what it had cost her, knowing that all of it, all of it—Mal, Mal had bought this.

It brightens into a dome and the volcra, his creatures, can do him no further harm.

Everything had bought him exactly what he wanted.  She had paid for something that could not exist out of balance.  And her light—hers!—had found its likeness, its balance in a different form.  A vestige of itself in another body, like a haven.  Like had found like and gone there when the Firebird’s power had sent her power spiraling out of her.  And now it is intertwining in him, in his hands, giving him the absolute key to everything and anything he could want.

(“Not everything,” came a voice that slid over her wet hands, and under her fingernails, and avoided the embedded grains of the sands.  Mal.  Mal’s voice.)

The Darkling drew nearer, looming towards her, a creature unnaturally balanced and unfathomably dangerous.  Somehow, she raises her blood covered hands, warding him away—trying to, trying desperately to plumb the hollows inside of her for something, anything, and his hand hovers above her skin where bits of white ash—the stag, her mind contorts and supplies—still cling to her and he lurches to stillness again and she feels, even at this distance, the warmth of a sun dappled summer day under his palm.

This man, who has everything.  Had taken everything—her light, Mal.  And she looks up into his face as penance for all she has done to help him and sees no look of triumph, when he should be smiling that terribly easy smile, exultant in his total victory over her.

Instead an echo of the blankness she feels inside seems reflected in the stillness of his features, a suspicion that mars the planes of his unnaturally young face.

Instead, he takes his hand away and extinguishes any trace of the sun.  Then, in a deliberate motion, his focus never wavering from her, he moves without his usual elegance until his fingertips come to rest on the patch of skin of her collarbone where the stag’s collar previously occupied.  Despite the tautness and rigid assurance of the rest of him, as his hand touches her, she feels him tremble.

This uncharacteristic movement is the only answer she feels from him.  The tremble moves up his arm and in one, swift and violent gesture, he grabs her wrist, his grip bruising and his face contorting into something still new.

“What have you done?”

She had killed Mal.  She had been emptied.  She had let him win.

That’s what she’d done.  He’d been there.  He should know.  What was in her was now in him, after all.

So, Alina, bathed in the light that was no longer hers, emanating from someone who had gotten everything, finds only one response within her.  Laughter bubbles out of her: at the mockery of the universe, at him, at her.

Where had all their wanting gotten them?

She looks into the panic in his eyes and laughs more, saying between choked fits of deranged hysterics, like a curse, “What is infinite—?”

Because she feels nothing from him but skin on skin and the bruising clasp of his grip over her wrist which momentarily distracts her from the nothingness that gapes back at him.  There is nothing between them to find.  Nothing in her to find.  And, distantly, as quaking with some emotion now, he kneels in front of her and takes her face into his hands, a series of unheard, whispered denials streaming from him, she wonders—hadn’t he won?  But, his grey eyes have an unmasked look in them she has only seen once before, the last time she had played with merzost and nearly killed them both that night in the chapel.

He is afraid.

“Alina,” he says, and she finds her ears can follow him at last with the reminder of who she might still be.  “Alina, you’re—nothing.  Nothing now.  Nothing.”

The word is wrenched from him.

(If that were true, how easy would it be now?)

“You were—we were—”

In the face of his fear, of her hollowness, she laughs again. She imagines the sound echoing in the cavernous place where she used to exist.

“There’s no shelter but you, is there now!” she laughs.  “You’ve gotten exactly what you wanted!”

He looks like he has been struck.

“And you don’t want me now, do you?  Not when I am the nothing you’ve made me!”

He flares with the fury of a storm.  Darkness and light, interlaced, arc about him.

“I—what I made you?  Do you blame me for killing your Tracker?  For the nature of merzost?  For…”

He cannot find the words, but instead the summoning around him calms and he makes a sharp, almost defeated gesture towards her.  Then he looks away from her, at last, and says something in a voice not much above a whisper, but that carries nonetheless.

“I will not be your villain in this.”

And, as fury at him rolls through her, rises up with her laughter, momentarily filling the cracks and hollows left behind as the substance of her had been ripped out, she feels, still in her hand, the dagger.  The earned Grisha steel, still slick with Mal’s amplified blood.

And, with him in front of her like that, afraid and so human, she takes every advantage that he has ever taught her.  Ever the apt pupil.  Finding something that answers her—and laughing when she realizes it is his shadow, still anchored to her like a curse, she wraps it around the blade, still slick with red, and it allows her to stab into him.

In her rage, she misses his heart, but the knife sticks in his flesh and suddenly, familiar and new, something becomes taut between them and radiates the heat and light of the meadow, of stories that don’t end, of simplicity and childhood and always finding a true direction.  Despite the knife in his chest, sunlight and shadow, suddenly amplified, pour from him uncontrollably, already amplified by what he is and he is screaming.  He becomes and inferno that blots out everything but him and her, tearing darkness as it expands out.  Amidst his pained, almost animal howling, words form:  “No!  I refuse!”

Then, something slams into her and the emptiness cowers and is gone and he collapses forward into her, shadow retreating into him with the only light from… the sky above them and the true sun.

He leans on her, in the sparkling white sands of where the Fold used to be, basking in the sun for the first time in four centuries, gasping shallowly.

His lips move.  Form words.  Repeat:  “I refuse.”

And she feels it—feels him again, feels the bone weariness that pervades him, feels residual fear, feels the surety that emanates from where his skin touches her.  And, impossibly, she feels the sun within her again and knows what he has done.

Merzost.

Her mind reels and his mouth moves again and it takes her a moment for the sounds and their meanings to merge again:  “I refuse to be alone again.  Alina, Alina.”  He feels feverish. Blood is pouring from one of his nostrils.  “I refuse, I refuse.”

Mal’s blood sings between them.  Mal’s death weaves them together.  And yet this man leans on her like a lover wrapped in death’s embrace.  And, for a moment, the horror rises within her at what binds them.  What will bind them for all of eternity.

(“If it takes a lifetime to break you—").

Is she not already broken?  Did he think it would take an entire lifetime?

(In that moment, the years yawn before her—an unforgiving maw—and even the concept of a tomorrow grows fuzzy in her head.)

She wants to laugh again, there with Aleksander’s broken head on her shoulder, mumbling broken acts of will that have already damned her.

Her hand moves and he does not even follow the movement.  Not until the blade glints in his vision, bright in the noonday sun that hasn’t shone here in forever.  His head jerks up instantly as he sees her.

“Stop.  Stop it,” his voice comes out in a hoarse whisper.  And he has one hand over his heart where his own blood is coming between his fingers, and one hand pinned by her over his wrist.  Her power, amplified by him, glows anew in her fingertips.  Enough to singe and burn if she wants.

The knife is at her own throat, ready to slit it.

Her voice shakes.

“Let’s come to terms.”

“Alina—no.  No.  Don’t you—don’t you, underst—”

She ignores how human the fear and desperation in his grey eyes makes him.  Ignores his own brokenness.

“I will make it clear, Aleksander, that you will not break me.  Not today, and not in whatever centuries you have left in you.”  She jabs the knife in, and feels her own blood, mixed with his, mixed with Mal’s, drip down her throat.  “I am the only one who will break me.”

He looks at her, and for a moment, with the knife pressed to her own throat, the threat of undoing what he has just done looming over him, he concedes.

“Fine.”

She has no leverage left but this and he knows it.

“You’ll stay out of Ravka.  No pursuing thrones.  You’ll leave Nikolai alone.  It does not need to be you.”

His lips curl into a snarl, and, probing as he always does for any weakness in her, he snaps, “Not forever.”

“Until everyone here is dead, then.”

This time he spits the word:  “Fine.”

“And you’ll leave me alone.”

Naked betrayal washes over his features, starting in his eyes and revealing itself in the tightening of his jaw.  It is followed hard-on by undisguised rage.

“You would blame me for—”

“I don’t care!” she screamed, tears making their way out at last.  “Just let me go!  Mal is dead and I don’t—”

With a vicious quiet, he has the gall to say, “And you would pretend this isn’t just an acceleration of—”

“I don’t care!”  She shouts again.  “Not about you.”  The hand that holds his wrist flares and he grunts in momentary pain, though it is just a ripple over his expression.  She moves the blade over, and a fresh wash of blood beads up from a wound she barely even feels.  “And certainly not about me.”

“Fine,” he repeats.  “Do what you like.”  His eyes, for a moment, reflect the same emptiness from before.  “They can all do what they like.”

“And you’ll leave me alone,” she says.

Nothing alters in his expression.

“As I said.”  He stops and then says, “As long as you never try this with me again, Alina.”

She holds the knife in place for a small eternity longer and then, it falls from her fingers. 

“Not unless you make me.”

His actions are his only answer.  He has it faster than she can believe and the blade crumples in a ball of inky shadows before she’s even released his wrist.  He wrenches his hand away next, and his wrist comes away with blisters and burns ringing it.

He heaves out a sigh and crumples forward, suddenly boneless.

His reply, when it comes, is barely a whisper.  Something that is maybe not even meant for her:  “Then do not make me.”

She does nothing but sit and watch him as he attempts to heave himself up, blood still trickling from beneath his hand.

She watches, too, as without another word, he starts off through the ashen grey sands of the former Unsea and limps away.

Someone calls her name—Zoya, she thinks.  But she doesn’t look away from his slowly retreating form.  She comes to her side and puts up her hands up to summon.

“Don’t,” she says with a sharpness that even surprises herself.  “Let him be.”

Zoya does not drop her hands.  There is blood on one of her cheeks, and she still stands proud and regal.  She looks down at her disdainfully, “You finally destroyed the Fold, his greatest creation.  If he’s dead nothing like that will ever happen to anyone again.  No one ever need fear him again.”

“It was him—him, not me.”  And, Alina starts sobbing brokenly into her hands.  “It wasn’t me,” she repeated, then again several times, not knowing who she was trying to convince at all.

***

It is a story that, when Alina allows herself to be honest with herself, she still does not entirely understand.

Or maybe, when she is very honest with herself, it is a story she does not want to understand.

Sometimes, when she is weary and the years of her life weigh down on her, when Pavel asks her questions for which there are no good answers, when she thinks about another little boy who couldn’t be touched and never could have a name, she wonders how Aleksander would tell it.

She knows the answer to that, though.

He wouldn’t tell it at all.

***

Pavel's promised teacher comes to his rooms without so much of a word from his mother, who is gone out for several days with the army anyways—where she goes with startling frequency these days.

The man, who he assumes must be his new instructor, is already lounging in his mother's favorite chair before the fire when Pavel comes in after his morning classes, his hands closed over books stolen from the Little Palace’s Library his madraya probably wouldn't want him reading, if she knew.  

(But since she's gone, she won't know.  And he bets his passing fascination with the man known to history as the Darkling is nothing of note to his new instructor.)

The man's face, though, is mostly expressionless, and he's young compared to most of the instructors he has, but the guards have let him in here and he bets his mother merely forgot to tell him in her whirlwind of preparations for the current Fjerdan campaign.

Pavel notes he is dressed in a smartly tailored black coat and black pants, forgoing the ceremonial kefta of the other instructors.  The dark color compliments the pale cast of his skin.  Although it is not winter, he, too, wears gloves.  He also doesn't so much as say anything until Pavel sits rigidly in the chair across from him, setting his books on the table next to him and folding his own gloved hands in his lap.

The older man’s head rests on a fist and he observes him rather impassively.  Pavel, knowing that Mr. Lebedev (2), the Inferni in charge of teaching most of his academic subjects, takes exception when he speaks out of turn, just sits and attentively waits.

The man's grey gaze has something of familiarity in it.  And beneath it, Pavel has the slight urge to squirm.  But, as this is likely a test, he refuses to do anything but sit at polite attention.  He will not give him an excuse to find fault where there should be none.  He will not embarrass his mother or himself.

He is not, as Mr. Lebedev sometimes implies, an "undisciplined whelp."

(It is only Pavel, who alone receives the benefit of a Little Palace education without submitting to the practical Small Science instructors, who receives Mr. Lebedev’s wrath when the older man is feeling particularly vicious.  Then he implies Pavel is only here due to "hereditary celebrity," not any merits of his own.

More than once he's been tempted to correct that, but there are The Rules.

Because here, no matter what he is actually capable of, he is otkazat’sya.

And when one's madraya can take out mountains and armies with a flick of her hands, one does not break The Rules out of spite.  One day, Pavel is tempted to tell her because he knows she will be tempted to take out Mr. Lebedev instead of some Fjerdan mountain.  He sometimes feels very considerate that he has not leveraged this avenue against the man.)

"I'm told you're called Pavel," the man says, when what feels like a small eternity has passed.

"Pavel Morozov, sir," he answers crisply, holding himself tall.

One eyebrow of the man's face drifts upward, but his overall expression doesn't give much away.  Nor does he give a verbal response.

"I'm told," Pavel starts cautiously, looking for any hint the man will take exception with his speaking out of turn.  When he doesn't seem likely to, he continues, "That you've come to instruct me in... summoning?"

The man lifts his head, a smile that isn't one twisting his lips, and in response, he says, "Oh, have I?"

Pavel keeps the confusion out of his expression.

"Madraya—Aleksandra Morozova—" he looks for the telltale recognition of the Sun Summoner's name, which has been constant his entire life and finds only a cross between boredom and, strangely, anger, "she was supposed to have arranged it…?"

The man gives a short laugh.  There’s nothing even vaguely to do with humor in it.

"She has arranged many things regarding me," he says.

The question—who are you?—forms over Pavel's lips, though he does not utter it.  But he has the disconcerting feeling that this man feels like he has slipped through the cracks of the taboos and silences of his mother's maybe stories.

Then, he crosses his long legs in front of him, and says, "Well, boy, you should show me what she has made of you, then."

Carefully, Pavel prepares to break The Rules which have governed his life at the Little Palace until now.  He removes one glove and then the other, placing them on the arm of the chair. Then, he claps his hands together, feeling the power of his own natural amplification course through him, and concentrates on drawing the shadows of the room towards him.

The man gives a brief hum of half-hearted interest in his display.  Then, coldly, he gives an evaluation that makes a slice of anger erupt in Pavel: "Your dearest madraya has made you weak, boy."

Pavel decides he will not allow this man to intimidate him.  Nor speak ill of his mother.  So, he mimics the man's posture, again earning him a raised eyebrow.

Evenly, without allowing any of his anger to color his tone, he asks him, "What do you intend to make of me, then, sir?"

The man smiles, as if he finds Pavel amusing.

(Which makes Pavel's jaw set all the more.)

"That depends entirely on you, boy."

Pavel decides right then he does not overly like this man his mother has chosen.

"Neither my mother nor I are weak."

He cocks his head in response.  Then, he gets up and, all of a sudden, without even moving his hands, shadows coalesce towards him, flowing and spooling around him in a storm of darkness.  He makes one lazy move to pull the glove from his hand, and the shadows pour from it and shoot towards Pavel, snaking around his limbs and torso and moving towards his neck, wrenching the breath from his lungs suddenly and stopping his mouth.  Stupidly, he feels like a child in the dark again, wanting to cry, but this time the darkness is alive and infinitely more terrifying because he has no control over it when he has worked hard with his mother to be able to do so.

Forgetting dignity entirely, Pavel tries to force air into his lungs, and, largely failing, twitches his hands as much as he can to call to the shadows, too, wrenching them to him as much as he can with his own control.  They waver infinitesimally and seeing it, Pavel concentrates his whole being just on the ones around his head and throat and, curling his hand, pushes.

It works momentarily.  Greedily, he gulps air down before his control flags and the shadows are wrenched from his command again.  But, as swiftly as they came, the shadows are withdrawn entirely and Pavel is left hunched over on the floor in front of his chair, gulping in mouthfuls of beautiful air, too stunned to be embarrassed or surprised.

The man's eyes bear down on him.

Then, as if he didn't almost attempt to kill him, he sits back in his mother’s comfortable armchair, posture regal and arrogant and rage-inducing.

"What has your dearest madraya told you, boy?" he asks, "About me."

He thinks about palaces and armies and good behavior and shadows and merzost and silences and taboos and Darklings.

Nothing that confirms you're human.

But you’ve basically confirmed what I thought.  About you.

Indeed, now that he's walked out of his mother's stories, he only can remember the thrum of his mother's voice, making him repeat the same litany of nonsense every time he’s asked about him.  (Always, he’s asked about the Shadow Summoner.  Never what he must be.  To him.).  Pavel, still huddled on the floor, his fingers touching his throat, anger and memory filling him, refuses to answer his question.  Instead he rasps, "There's only one thing she wants you to know."

"Ah,” The man says, utterly cold and aloof.

Pavel doesn't know what it means exactly.  She won’t ever tell him.  It is something that belongs to taboo and silence. 

And this man alone.

"She’d like you to know if you touch me, if you harm me in any way, we'll both join the Firebird, as she promised." He stares at him, the cold, grey of his eyes hardening into marble.  For the first time a scowl mars his face.  Pavel then adds the last words, as his mother has made him practice, and all he knows is that it cannot be anything but a threat: "Then you'll belong to nothing."

The man rises again, stepping close to Pavel to use the full advantage of both his height and his gaze to make him feel as young and weak as Pavel might really be.

And he, too, answers in the same incomprehensible way as his mother might.

"Remind my dear Alina that she changed the terms.  She lied.  She cannot blame me for this." 

He exits through the front door and there's an immediate shout from the guards that is suddenly strangled.  There’s a commotion in the corridor and, after a long time of shouting, a uniformed man, with the cuff of a Corporalki Healer comes in and sees him still hunched on the floor.

“Master Morozov,” he says, kneeling next to him.  “Are you injured?”

His pride is, he supposes.  But that is not what he is being asked about.  So he shakes his head.

“Do you have any idea who that was?” he asks gently.

Not his instructor.  Not a being from fairytale.

“No,” he says, softly.

Ridiculous possibilities flit through his head even so: an assassin, an impossibility, a Darkling.

(And one that is sickeningly likely.  Which Pavel knows is the likeliest.  But the one he also least wants now that the possibility has presented itself.)

“Your mother will be informed,” the Healer says, as he is gently taken by the elbow and sat back into his mother’s chair and examined.

“There’s no need,” says Pavel, as the Healer begins to look him over.  He realizes, absently, he is missing his gloves, and tucks his hands away from him.  The man gives him a quizzical look, whether at his refusal or at his gesture, he doesn’t know.  “I’m fine,” he adds hastily.

(Later he realizes that his sentiment might have been misplaced.  Both the guards are in the Healer’s Pavilion, one who had had his arms nearly wrenched from both sockets, the other one whose entire side had become a bloody gash.

Terrifyingly, although the identity of the assailant varies from Shu Hanese assassin to ridiculous beings of legend, the rumor mill of the Little Palace all agrees on two things: he had been Grisha and he had caused such damage while simply walking by, without saying so much as a word.

The fact that Pavel alone is fine seems beside the point in hindsight.  He would have called his mother, too.  She’s probably the only one who could counter that for the sake of everyone else.)

Pavel only knows that he is strong.  And, if being strong means being that, maybe being weak isn’t so bad.  Maybe he’d rather be weak, in fact.

But that is all he knows.

Cynically, he bets he can ask Alina who that was and what he wanted.

…Too bad long dead and now forbidden Sanktas don’t make themselves available for ready questioning and he has no idea who the man had actually been speaking about.

***

Chapter Text

xi.  Bastards

It is an utter coincidence that his mother’s friend, Ludmila, had brought him medovic when she had heard what had happened.  It’s also utterly coincidental that he happens to be reading a very, very old tome about the Black Heretic neither the library nor his mother knows is in his possession.

So, Pavel is awake before the dying embers of the fire to see the man step out of the shadows and into his mother’s sitting room once again.

Although he is, honestly, more than a bit afraid, ridiculously, having the honey cake on a plate on the table in front of him gives Pavel a strange brand of courage.  His mother had called him on the telephone in the General’s office—just for Pavel to emphasize he is fine and her to protest she would explain, without doing so—and so he knew there would be no help from that quarter for two days or more.

Which means he is on his own.

But he has medovic.  Which almost counts as not being alone.  Since he is at least alone with cake.

“You’re not supposed to be able to get in here,” he says lightly.

He is merely standing there watching him right now.  But, when it comes, his response is more enlightening than Pavel expects:  “There is not much about the Little Palace I do not know.  They are foolish to think they could bar me from it.”

Getting up, Pavel goes to the little kitchen and gets two of his mother’s dainty little china plates—the ones she uses for their very, very occasional guests—and a knife and two forks.

“You built it after all,” he tries, picking up the plates and returning to his chair and his books.  Then he looks up and sees if the conjecture finds its mark.  But the man just walks forward and settles into his mother’s chair again.  Pavel leans forward and gets up just enough to serve him a slice of the honey cake between them.  The man narrows his eyes at the gesture and, with a shrug, when he doesn’t reach out to accept it, Pavel just places it in front of him.

(He’s not really sure what he’s doing.  But this is evidently not what he expects either.  Which, Pavel supposes, is something.  To be unexpected.)

“I’m told you’re supposed to like it.”  The man doesn’t give any indication of like or dislike or pretty much just about anything.  Oh well.  Pavel is not going to waste perfectly good cake if he may well die in the next few minutes anyways.  So he puts a bite in his mouth and, still chewing, affirms, “It is not poisoned.”

His visitor crosses one leg over the other.  “Did she teach you no manners?”

Pavel wipes a spare bit of cake away from his mouth with his sleeve to stubbornly underscore his point.

“Manners like knocking before you enter where someone else lives and not sending the people who are supposed to be here doing their jobs to the Healer’s as you walk by?”

As this comes out of his mouth he decides that perhaps sitting up late reading has adverse effects on his basic sense of self-preservation.  He’s already seen what the man across from him can do with a lazy flick of his hand.  And now he is being glared at for calling him out on his own hypocrisy.

Probably not among his wiser moments.

He puts another bite of cake in his mouth and the man across from him glowers very, very effectively.  Even though he in no way looks like he is glowering.  Pavel takes note of that super power.

“Why are you here again?” Pavel asks pointedly.

The man cocks his head to the side.

“Curiosity,” he drawls.  He does not at all elaborate.

Pavel eats another bite of cake.  He wonders, briefly, what his madraya would do if she were here, serving medovic to a slightly homicidal man of legend who he has been prepared to meet with for his whole life without being told that’s what’s been happening.

He comes up empty and asks, instead, politely, “Tea?”

“Tea?” his guest repeats, as if the word is a new and offensive one in his vocabulary.  Pavel is pretty sure it isn’t.  He gets up to make it anyways, since he himself is thirsty and it gives him a reason to be out of the other man’s direct proximity.

“Would you like some?” Pavel asks slowly and carefully, as if he may not understand his intent, after a moment of silence where the man is just watching him.  “It goes nicely with the cake,” he pauses before adding, “Madraya did, in fact, teach me manners.”

“What precisely are you doing, boy?” he asks, when he sets a cup down next to his cake plate.

“I believe it is called talking,” Pavel drawls at him, again wondering vaguely if he has a death wish.  “Is that not something you do?”

“I tend towards more consequential conversations,” he says with a vague sense of irritation.

Pavel decides he really does have a death wish.

“By all means, say something consequential,” he says.

Pavel honestly can’t tell if his reply is actually meant to be consequential or is simply hyperbolic:  “It has been several centuries since I’ve allowed anyone but your mother to speak to me like that.”

Instantly, Pavel decides he decides he doesn’t want to know for sure what normally happens to people who speak to him like he is.  Although he has some very, very good guesses.  Mostly guesses which involve violence and death.  And centuries is… just dramatic.  Possibly?  …Probably?

“Have I satisfied your curiosity?” Pavel asks, taking another bite of cake.

“I see she’s told you more than just threats,” he observes easily, his tone at odds with his body language.

Pavel decides he may not get another shot at saying his suspicion.

“It’s natural she wants me to know about my father,” his eyes widen for a fraction of a second, emboldening Pavel perhaps too much, “Since that’s who you probably are.”

He pauses for confirmation.

He, unsurprisingly, doesn’t get anything of the sort.  Nothing about the cold panes of his expression change in light of what is, for Pavel, slightly life altering news.

“Not that she’s ever told me that.”  He pops his last forkful of cake into his mouth, missing its company almost as soon as it is swallowed.  “Maybe she doesn’t think it’s… consequential?  I only know because, at least allegedly, Shadow Summoners only come from one line.”  Pavel looks up at him and thinks, from the tightening of his jaw, that he might have hit some nerve.  It’s nice to know he has nerves to hit.  And, his stupid mouth, oblivious to the fact that his father could take him out with truly minimal effort, just says, “I mean I’m the… eighth?”

“Third,” his father says, turning away.

Pavel starts.  He glances down at the book next to him—a comprehensive history of the Darklings, as if it has all the answers to the mysteries of the universe.  It definitively lists six.  The last had been Mikhail Stepanov, who is theorized to be a descendant of the bastard child of the Darkling also known as the Great Liberator.  The book proceeded him, though.

“There’s Leonid, then the Black—”

The man cuts him off sharply.

“There is my mother, me, and, unfortunately, you.”

Math is not Pavel’s strong suit.  Mr. Lebedev would very freely tell his father that if he were sitting here.  Actually, he’d probably piss himself because his father is… well… frankly terrifying.  Even if only half the things that his mother has even implied about him are true.  But he doesn’t need to do the math to realize how many years the existence of only one other male Shadow Summoner—his father, he reminds himself—throughout the entire history of Ravka amounts to.  He blurts, “Then you’re…” His father raises his eyebrows.  “Old” he finishes lamely.  Perhaps even diplomatically.

“I was ‘old’ at two centuries, boy,” he says without any sense of irony.

With his cake gone, Pavel takes a steadying sip of his tea.  He suddenly has no idea what it means that he is the son of an ancient being of myth and legend.  Moreover, he has no idea what his mother was thinking marrying him.

“So I guess abandoning your wife and child for more than a decade is not—”

“Not my wife,” he corrects smoothly.  There’s a tightness around his jaw, though.  “Although you’re correct to assume your very existence is… negligible.”

Pavel is certain his father means to make him feel all warm and fuzzy with such a fine sentiment.  His other statement gives him pause though.  Gesturing vaguely at his stack of books, he tries to communicate something in slightly awkward terms, “Some scholar—Misha something?(1)—seems to think the… Darklings are descendants of Ilya Morozov.”

His father does not take exception to the term in the same way his mother does.  Rather, he confirms simply, “My grandfather,” an enigmatic half smile Pavel does not like playing on his lips.

(Maybe he doesn’t like much about his father.)

Well, he’s related to a Sankt and the Bonesmith.  Add that into being son of the only living Sun Summoner and an ancient… something.  Which probably means he is mostly a genetic freak.  But seems like his genetic freak father may have something to do with it.

“I’m Morozov,” Pavel ventures, not quite courageous enough to ask.  He’s fairly certain there are some types of questions his father will answer.  And this is one of them.

His father looks truly amused by this observation.

Smoothly, his intent and implication rather naked, he asks, “And just how much do you actually know about your dearest madraya?”

Pavel tries to school his features and clear them of the alarm he feels at this question.

“She’s—” Aleksandra Morozova, is the easiest, most basic way to finish his sentence.  But the pieces are laid out in front of him.  His name is Morozov, not hers.  He’s already said she is not his wife.  Thus, she does not have his name.

Which means, in theory, neither should Pavel.

“Tell me, boy,” he says grinning faintly, his hands steepled in his lap, “What is her name?”

His father is an ancient being, but Pavel has always been clever for his age.  And his father has already let something slip.

The name—something dead and impossible that lives on in liturgical texts paired with the Starless Saint and history books which look at what is variously named the Grisha Civil War/Great Liberation/End of the Lantsov Line—comes to his lips, unsaid and unfamiliar before this:  “Alina Starkova.”

If there is only one Darkling, than it is theoretically possible that there is only one Sun Summoner.

But it changes things.  That name.

The name and its silence and taboos and the man who has come to shatter all of them.  It destabilizes all of the foundations that underpin Pavel’s twelve years.  It invites questions into the silence and one of them now has the smooth glass tones of his father’s voice:  “Just how much do you actually know about your dearest madraya?”

The grey eyes of his father, framed by a face that shows none of the unnaturally long life he claims, narrow.  And he learns he is not only dangerous because of the shadows which heed his call.

He gives a humorless bark of laughter.  “How long have you actually known that?”

Pavel raises his tea cup to his lips and doesn’t answer.  His father smirks, reading everything about him in this gesture and in his silence.

“I thought so.”  He leans his head on his hand.  “A word of caution about my dearest Alina,” he says easily, “She likes to take things that she has no right to.”

“Like your name,” Pavel says without considering it.

The smile broadens.

“Among other things,” he says, the cold marble of his gaze boring into him.  This man probably had no idea he existed until an indeterminate span very close to… today.  Maybe yesterday.

Me, he nearly says.  Wondering what that means as the thought occurs to him.

“When did you know about me?” he asks, feeling like he’s betrayed a mother whose name he has never known until today just in its asking (which somehow feels… equal.  Isn’t that a betrayal?  Has she betrayed his father just as much?  And maybe him?).

The older man gazes at him for what feels like a very long time and Pavel feels as if all he is being stripped away and his father is finding nothing but fault in everything he finds and evaluates.  Then, as if he is reading his mind, his father says, “Your mother betrays many more of her secrets than she is aware of to me.”

It’s an answer and not an answer.

Turns out both his parents are cut from the same cloth when actual explanations of just about anything are required.

(Maybe being, apparently, centuries old does that?)

But even so, Pavel does not know if what he says is true—he cannot see a way this man, whom he has only known about for the span of two days, would be able to talk to his mother, whom Pavel has been with since he was born, with the exception of her visits to the fronts.

(And he knows she goes to those—the newspapers and radio channels report about the Sun Summoner’s battles.  There are pictures.  She’s not meeting some paramour—well, his father—on the sly.

Probably.

At this point how much of his mother does he know?  For that matter, how can he be sure of anything this man says?

After all… he’s negligible.)

“Why did you even come?”

His looks disinterestedly at the dying embers of the fire.

“I came to see if her tendency to pick up things unworthy of her has continued.”

Pavel realizes it is him that is the unworthy thing.

“I am your son, too,” he says, frowning.  “Probably,” he adds in an undertone.

“Something I had little control over,” he says rather dismissively.

Not wanting to think about it overly much, especially since his father is like, hundreds of years old and, seemingly, almost entirely a jerk, but he says rather dryly, “I’m fairly certain your participation was somewhat necessary in the endeavor.”

The man arches an eyebrow at him in something that is clearly disapproval.  Or distaste.  His mother is also apparently a several hundred year old liar, and Pavel doesn’t want to think about the fact that his existence might have rested on some strange… thing between them.

“Let me make this clear to you, boy:  She is mine.”

Pavel has no idea what to do with this declaration.  The “she” is obviously his mother.  Although, except sarcastically, he has also not recognized her as Pavel’s mother the entire time.  Nor has he recognized Pavel as anything but “boy.”  It may make sense why his madraya never mentioned his father for his entire life.  Pavel hopes she knew what she was getting into with him before she chose to have a child with him.  But he doesn’t want to question his very existence tonight.  He really has no idea what to do with the father he's found.  And in light of the father he’s found, he’s not entirely certain about the mother he's always had either.  After this conversation he’s actually not sure he knows what to do with much of his life anymore.

“And…” he might be an idiot for hazarding this question, but he feels compelled to ask it anyways, “what am I to you?”

He cocks his head to the side.

“To me?” he asks, amusement clear in his tone.  “To me you are nothing but an impediment.  Had I known about you, I might have smothered you in your cradle.”  He pauses and Pavel realizes he is probably serious about this.  “What are you to your mother, though…?”  He goes silkily on, “That answer is more interesting, I suspect.”

Pavel words his response very precisely, “And what do you suspect her answer would be?”

There are daggers in his teeth when he smiles.  He gets up and turns his back towards him, observing the fire which has almost died and left the two of them in increasing darkness.

“She’d never say outright you were her pawn.”  He clasps his hands behind his back in a gesture of contemplation.  “But perhaps you should ask her what she intended for you.”

With that, his father disappears into the shadows in the same way he came, leaving an uneaten slice of cake and an untouched cup of tea.

***

Pavel wakes with a start to the unmistakable feeling of the dark yearning towards the sun that is embodied by his madraya’s fingers on the bare skin of his cheeks. He allows so few people to touch his bare skin that he thinks he can catalogue them all by the feel of the calluses on their fingertips.  The book he had fallen asleep reading—one he immediately hopes his madraya doesn’t notice—falls to a floor with a clunk as she launches herself forward and puts her arms around him now that he’s awake.

He is glad to have her back, really, given the upheavals to his life in the last three days, but, instead, his nose wrinkles in distaste and he grits out, “Saints, madraya, when is the last time you bathed?”

Luckily, she laughs at him and squeezes him tightly, before the scent of her sweat and the dirt of the Fjerdan front recedes a bit with a bemused exclamation of “Pasha!”

She doesn’t let go entirely.  Instead, her hands drift to his shoulders and, bending over him (though he’s nearly her height already—his mother being a comparatively tiny thing.  The strange thought occurs to him that now he can definitely attribute his height to his father), her eyes are concerned and worried as she looks him over, still in her dirt splattered (and maybe other things he doesn’t wish to think about splattered) uniform with its distinctive blue and gold cuffs and collar.  Her white hair, similarly smudged with filth, is mostly bound up in a scarf like she’s someone’s old grandmother, even though she doesn’t look a day over 25.

“I’m fine, Madraya,” he grinds out, slightly embarrassed to be the object of this much attention from her at his age.  He tries to be slightly more forthcoming because her expression becomes more shuttered rather than more reassured, “He never even touched me.”

My father’s shadows did, not his hands, he thinks, wondering if this is an excuse she will buy.  He hopes maybe he won’t have to explain at all.

She draws back and, for a moment, the warm brown of her eyes—a color he inherited from her instead of the cold, cold grey of his father’s—holds him in place.  She breaks eye contact with a sudden sigh which makes her seem ancient, before she steps over and drops with little grace into her usual chair.  Then, for a long time, she is uncharacteristically silent as she fixates on some point near the fireplace.

“Pasha,” she says at a length, before pausing again as if the next sentence pains her somewhat.  She finally finishes, “Perhaps we should talk.”

He straightens in his chair, nudging the book with the slightly faded title The Legacy of the Starless Saint—which he procured from a shelf in the library of books that aren’t even intended for public circulation—under the chair with his foot.  He probably knows what she wants to say, and such things confirm it.  Nonetheless, his father’s words about pawns and her name and her taking things that don’t belong to her linger in his mind.  Not that he necessarily thinks his father is a fountain of truth and wisdom.  Mostly because he has never so much as been told, your father is a myth that I’ve been telling you about and one of the most powerful Grisha ever who is well-nigh immortal and thus was at the center of centuries of Ravka’s bloody wars.

Pasha is nothing if not realistic, though—that all sounds like more of a fairytale than his mother’s maybe actual fairytales. 

Her focus suddenly comes to the cake and tea he never bothered to clean up last night in front of her.

“Pasha,” she asks quietly, though there is an edge in her voice at seeing the slice of layered medovic.  “Who was here?”

Leaning on his palm, he decides he might as well be as kind as he can to his madraya with her silences and her taboos.

“My dear papochka paid me another visit.”  Idly, he notes his own tone sounds a good deal like his father’s.  He glances back at his mother, who except for an initial stiffening when he says this, merely looks resigned in the face of this information.  “For the record, he doesn’t seem like he much likes medovic.”  He pauses and decides he is going to just keep being honest.  “Or me.”

His mother massages her temples with one grimy hand.

She denies nothing.  Nor does she seem surprised that after twelve years his father has waltzed into a heavily guarded room twice for a chat with his son during her absence.  Nothing about that even remotely fazes her.

Her question is one he does not predict, instead.

“Did you tell him what I asked?” she says without moving her hand.

“I did.”

“And he said…?”

Pavel looks at her directly.

“He told me that it was you who changed the terms and… lied.”  She doesn’t so much as move at this.  However, she flinches visibly when he adds, mostly to see how she will react, “Alina.”

She sighs again before pulling herself upright and says, quietly, “You have questions.”

Oh, does he have questions.

Pavel decides he should start with broad strokes.

“Who exactly is my father?”

“Aleksander Morozov,” she says, giving a strange weight to every syllable.  “Which is a name you won’t find in any of your books, Pavel.  You’re probably the only other person besides me to know it.”  She frowns.  “And I would not use it with him.  He’s… possessive, I suppose would be the word.”

Pavel had noticed.  Even so, he meets her gaze evenly as she continues on.

“History calls him the Darkling, primarily.”  Strangely, there’s much less of a look of distaste on her face when she uses the term than when he did.  “…It calls him a lot of things, really.”

She probably thinks he will ask something about this.

But he can learn about his father later.  He’s more than adequately covered in hundreds, if not thousands, of tomes.

He wants to know, immediately, about his mother.

“That makes you Alina Starkova, I suppose.”  Her eyes widen and then she gives a bare nod.  “How many people know that?”

“You and your father,” she says without hesitation.

“Which makes you… how old?”

Her frown deepens and for a moment he thinks she will not answer.

“I’m almost three hundred years old.”

“And him?”

She sighs and redirects her attention back to the same spot on the floor as before.

“He hasn’t ever told me.  I’d guess he’s at least 700.  He could be somewhere around a 1,000 though.”

Pavel crosses his arms over his chest.

“And you expect me to believe that my parents are both—what exactly?”

“Until you, Pasha, there were no others like us.  Your father—” she presses her lips together.  “Not that it excuses… many things.  But, he was alone for a long time.  It—”

“He had a mother.”

She turns sharply to him.

“How much did he tell you?”

Pavel bites his lip.

“Not as much as it seems.  Just that there have been three Shadow Summoners.  So he had a mother, too.  Somewhere.  Do I have an immortal grandmother somewhere I need to worry about?”

There is a silence.

“No,” she says.  The second half is more revealing: “Not anymore.”

The questions dry up.

“I’m… like you?” he asks, not at all knowing what being like them entails.  How is one immortal?  How is his mother a woman with a different name who is three hundred and looks twenty five?

His mother observes him a long time.

“Yes,” she answers, at a length.  “It’s more than likely you’re like us.”  She pauses again.  “I wanted to explain.  When you were… far older.  I thought,” she takes a breath.  “I thought your father would speak to me first.”

“He’s—” Pavel straightens up and tries to put something of his impression of the man into words.

His mother pre-empts him:  “An ass.  Generally.”

“Oh,” Pavel says, not disagreeing with her assessment.  “I didn’t know if that was… special.  Just for me.”

To his surprise, his mother laughs and then says, “It likely was.  He is much more of an ass with most other people.”

He thinks about the guards outside of the doors with their wrenched arms and the blood he had seen the workers in their charcoal gray scrubbing from the walls.  Somehow he knows they got off lightly.  For a moment he feels the choking sensation of shadow about his head and neck and he knows he did, too.  Even though Pavel is his son, though he is “negligible.”  Saints help the rest of the world when his father looks down on it from his lofty perch.

“Madraya,” he states, “He never knew about me.”

It is not a question and she knows that.

(He knows it is probably a reason why she wanted his father to talk to her first.

He thinks it’s also probably the reason he didn’t, too.)

She looks away and her whole expression draws into a mask.  While this usually would hide most people’s thoughts, the fact that she does this now is more indicative of what she thinks than anything else.  Her answer, once again, in a conversation about answering his questions, leaves him with the silence and taboo he’s accustomed to: “He does now, Pavel, which is what we need to deal with.”

“He doesn’t care about me,” he says, using the same tactic she does—talking about things slantwise and forcing them to a point.  She wonders if she learned it from his father or he learned it from her.  He’s not sure how they… relate to each other.  Other than the obvious fact that he exists and they did at one point… relate.

She fixes her eyes on him.

“Did he say that?”

Pavel frowns, trying to think of how his father had worded his obvious general distaste for him.  He tries to capture something of his father’s utter disdain:  “I believe the words he used were ‘impediment,’ ‘negligible,’ and that, had he known about me sooner, he may have well ‘smothered me in my cradle.’”

His mother doesn’t look quite as upset as she likely should have been about the not so implied death threat.  Which probably says something about the both of them he’d rather not contemplate.  Rather she rolls her eyes to the sky and swears, not quite under her breath, “Saints!  That man!”

“You chose him,” he mutters.  “I don’t know why.”

She rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms.  “Sometimes I don’t know why either.  But I do not have time to explain him to you.”  She sighs noisily.  “But it may be better, strangely, that he feels that way.”  She adds hastily, perhaps realizing what it sounds like that it’s better his father doesn’t see him as anything but worthless and weak, “At least for now.”

But she doesn’t have time for that.

And since he’s become aware that his mother, father, and apparently Pavel himself are all immortal, this is quite the statement about Aleksander Morozov.

Pavel regrets his next questions as soon as they tumble foolishly from his mouth.

“Do you love him, then?  Does he love you?”  His mother looks vaguely alarmed momentarily at the fact that he’s asked this.  It doesn’t help that he adds, “He told me you were his.”

She rubs her eyes again and it occurs to Pavel that she has just fought in a campaign and she’s a day earlier than he had been told to expect her—which meant she hurried back for… whatever this is and so she must be quite exhausted.

“He will not harm you, Pavel,” she says tiredly.  “Because he knows exactly what is good for him.”

“Because—” he pauses, then repeats the words he has been taught, “We’ll join the Firebird.  If he does… anything.”  Her eyes in her tired face become sharp and glinting and Pavel can see exactly why a man like his father wouldn’t cross her.  He believes several of the ridiculous things that he’s been told about her and his life.  “What does that even mean?”

“You don’t need to know, Pasha,” she says immediately in the tone he’s heard her issue orders in.  One which means she will not debate anything, directly, slantwise, or at all.  He’ll be left with silence.  “Let me deal with your father now that he’s decided he wants be dealt with.”

Something about this answer doesn’t leave him feeling… very reassured.

“So, if he just… pops into tea unannounced again… I should just… tell him to go talk to you?”

She nods and then, groaning more than slightly, gets up and while stretching, says, “Give him more sugar and then go do something else while he heaps it in his cup behind your back.  He’s got a terrible sweet tooth he hides from everyone.  He always thinks he’s very subtle.”

Pavel nods.  Not knowing what to do with this information at all.

Actually he’s not feeling very enlightened on just about anything at the moment.

(Except that now he has a father.

And that his whole family is immortal.)

But his mother is muttering that she needs a bath and since his father and his sweet tooth and offhand threats of murdering his own family members (probably) won’t eminently appear again, and his mother, quite frankly, reeks, he lets her go.

He hides his stack of books in the meantime.  Particularly the one about Sankta Alina of the Fold.  When it comes to it, he might ask later.  When things seem to maybe make sense again.

(But when he hears his mother, in her empty bedroom during the dead of night say sharply, “Aleksander” and hold what amounts to half of a hushed, nonsensical conversation he decides that, perhaps, the world might never make sense again.

He doesn’t even try to ask about that.  Not that she’ll tell him.

Instead, he decides, half-heartedly, maybe he doesn’t want to know at all.)

***

He’s looking out a window when she comes to him.  He’s clad all in black and his back is to her, straight and regal, as always.  And although he knows she has come—he always does—she knows he is refusing to acknowledge her.

If he thinks he is getting an apology, though, Alina has no idea who he’s spent the last three centuries with.  He’s done far worse with no remorse.

So, she sits on the edge of his bed, willing to be his equal in stubbornness, at the very least.  Although he has always been more patient than she is and after several minutes, with a huff, her annoyance at him wins over.

“Really, Aleksander, I would have thought the silent treatment was beneath you.”

He does not turn around.

“There’s my Alina,” he says, the honeyed texture of his voice more cloying than usual, “I was simply waiting for you to deliver whatever sanctimonious lecture your hypocrisy has devised for me this time.”  He remains stubbornly looking out the window.  “Is that not why you’ve come?”

Sometimes, during the intervening decades, she forgets just how irritating he is when he has a mind to be petty.  Which he generally does have a mind to be.  Even though he knows very well why she’s come.

“And this,” he continues, smoothly, “after you’ve given me—twelve years, I believe?—of the silent treatment yourself.”

She sighs and says, “I was busy.”

“I gathered,” he says dryly, still not acknowledging why he knows she’s come and what she’s been busy doing.  He alludes to it, though, “Dealing with the consequences of your lies takes a good deal of time and energy, I’m told.  As you well know, this is one of the few domains I have no experience with.”

She knew he would deliberately misunderstand.

“What do you think you are doing?”

He turns at last and says, “I’m launching a popular rebellion against the weak military dictatorship you’ve backed.”

Saints.  That was not what she wanted to know.  And it is likely true.  And a distraction. 

She’d deal with him on that level… later.

“With Pavel,” she clarifies, tired of playing his stupid game when she now has other things to manage.  Like putting down popular rebellions led by ancient, bored men who only know one script to enact.

“Whatever would I need to do with my dead son?” he says, the honeyed sarcasm flowing thick and angry from him.

“Aleksander,” she says sharply.

He turns around and marches forward, capturing her chin in his hand and roughly forcing her head up to look at the marble planes of his face and his wildly flashing eyes.

“I am not your boy to be lectured to, Alina,” he says sharply, all fury and taut lines.  “You seem to be under the impression that I have no claim to my own son.”

She puts her hand on his wrist and forces it away from her.

“As of now you don’t.  Just as you have no claim on me, Aleksander.”  In light of his fury, she crosses her arms over her chest.  “Really, what do you think entitles you to habe anything to do with either of us?”

The burst of fury on his face is incandescent for a moment, as if once more he is filled with all of her light and burning.  Then, his usual mask crashes down.

“Because you’re mine,” he says fiercely.

She arches an eyebrow, mimicking his own irritating mannerisms back at him in a way she knows he will find galling. 

“Are you ours?” she asks pointedly.  He draws back, not quite liking her own possessiveness as much as his own, as usual.  Sanctimonious hypocrisy, indeed.  Saints, did the man not know who looked back at him in the mirror for the last several centuries?  “Any desire to know what your son thinks of you?”

Something in the mask of his face stirs momentarily—not enough for Alina to tell what he is thinking, because often that is an exercise in futility, even considering how long she has known him.  His mouth settles into a hard line, showing his fury is not quite spent.

“Should I care about what a weak boy thinks of me?”

Alina sighs noisily and bites out, “I don’t know, Aleksander, should you?  It seems only you get to decide what it is you will care about, and since you’ve already told him you should have smothered him in his crib, I think you can see why I’ve kept you out of it.”

“Why you lied to me,” he corrects, acidly.

She throws up her hands and says just as acidly back, “Saints!  Don’t pretend you’re some paragon of truth and virtue.  I see you just as clearly as you see me and here I am!”

He draws closer and, in what is likely the closest to vulnerability she can push him to, he draws close to her again, so close his breath kisses him as he hisses, “You lied to me.”

And she sees what he’s not admitting to be angry about.

So, quietly, she says, “Trust is earned, Aleksander.”

Something in his eyes blares a warning.  Mostly because he seems less in control than usual.  He does not move from his close proximity and enunciates each word clearly, “Have I not earned it from you, Alina?”

She reaches out a hand and reaches up to touch his cheek.

“Do you know what Pavel asked me?”  He regards her silently, fury not at all abated.  “He asked if you loved me.”

He draws back fractionally, “Need you give me more evidence of the boy’s weakness?”

Alina sighs and says, “I am not Baghra, Aleksander.  Accept that I will raise your son to be unashamed of his humanity and unashamed of having a conscience—he’ll get that from me even if he stubbornly persists in being like you in every other regard.”

“So you have your monster to love after all,” he says savagely, a mirthless smile splitting his handsome face.

“His father gives me a good deal of practice,” she says lightly.  His anger dissolves for a moment in the crinkling of his brow in a sudden expression of surprise.  “I suspect he will give me more in the coming centuries.”

He doesn’t respond and, taking in the sudden flurry of calculation she can see going on in his mind, she says, “You’re going to make it easy to gang up on you if you keep as you are.  Which is fine by me, I need all the help I can get in keeping you human.”

“That’s not why you did it,” he accuses, brushing most of what she says aside as irrelevant.

“That’s not the only reason I did it,” she admits.  “I did it because it was something I wanted.  You just have exceeding difficulty when I want things you don’t want.”

“Like my child,” he responds drily.

“Like Pavel,” she says, without missing a beat.  “Who is just like us, so you should likely learn to accept him.” 

She stifles the urge to remind him that he can, indeed, be wrong.  He draws himself up defensively as if she made the observation anyways.

“So you insist on being opposed to me, as usual.”

She feels less charitable towards him as he begins his usual argument.

“Aleksander, for such a smart man you can be absolutely blind to things that are obvious to anyone with eyes to look.”

His tone is unamused:  “Is that not what service you perform for me?  Pointing out what is supposedly obvious?”

“Your son has your name.  He was born in the sanctuary you created.  He will not have the life you had, largely because of what you’ve done.  And I will ensure it, too.” 

“They will still hunt him,” he says definitively.  “They will still use him.  Prepare for that eventuality.  Ravka is still at war, as it always has been.”

“They don’t even know what he is,” she says.  “I’ve been careful.”

He sighs.

“I guarantee you are not nearly careful enough, Alina,” he says.  “Once something is known, you can’t make it unknown again.  And even if they never know what he is—which I guarantee you someone already does—they know what you are.  A weak, untrained boy is an easier path to victory than a fully-fledged Sun Summoner.”  He looks into her eyes.  “Have you gotten more competent guards since I came?  I could have taken him as easily as breathing just then.  And I could have killed him more easily than that—he barely has any control.”

“He’s twelve.”

He is unphased.  “I knew the Cut at thirteen.  And I used it.  On children who would have murdered me without a second thought.  Despite all I’ve shown you, you are as naïve as usual about the world.  Gloves won’t protect him.  You will not be able to always protect him.  You will need to accept what he will need to do for his own survival.”

“He is not you, Aleksander.”

He smirks.  “You’d worry less if he was.  You cannot keep him soft and keep him, Alina.”  He pauses in the face of her rising anger and the knot of fear in her stomach.  “I can see it never occurred to you that eternity was not my only reason for my choices.”  His eyes darken.  “And now that you’ve created a gaping weakness in your flank do not think you can run to me to fix your errors.  Giving the boy my name does not mean I will see him as mine.  As you know, such sentimentality is not something I have sought to cultivate.”  His tone, ever sinuous, becomes colder.  “Particularly when you had no claim on that name to give it to him in the first place.”

“Bastard,” she grinds out.

“That would be the technical term for him, yes.”

She gives him a hard look, “Know Aleksander, however you think of him, if you harm him I will carry through with every word of my threat.”

Aleksander returns back to looking out his window, without responding immediately.

“Do you really think I will have to raise a finger, Alina?  Even if I was so inclined to tempt you to anger in such a way, the world is far likelier to harm him than I am.  But since we’re in the business of engaging in threatening one another, I’ll pay you back in kind,” he clasps his hands behind his back and resumes his initial stance.  “If you care for the boy, I would take him and flee the Little Palace.”

“Did you not hear what I said?”

He appears unbothered.

“Every word, Alina.  And, if you were listening to me, you’d realize you’ve now been warned.”

She suddenly feels every year of her age.

“What exactly are you threatening?”

“Regime change is a bloody business, but you’ll, of course, come to no harm if you heed me, for once.  But I am letting you know I am coming for those you serve.  And you know very well I have a better reputation for carrying out what I threaten than you.  So, choose the right side now that you have so much more at stake, solnyshka.”

He whirls and lets go the Cut and she is back in the Little Palace with a head crammed full of too many contradictory thoughts.

***

Chapter Text

xii.  Discovery

His father changes everything, despite not appearing again, and despite his mother pretending like his appearance hasn’t actually changed everything.

Pavel’s education goes on.  He knows Shu and Fjerdan—his mother has been tutoring him in both since he was old enough to speak Ravkan.  He has a basic proficiency in Kaelish, though his mother laughs at his accent (which, honestly, makes him less likely to pursue more proficiency).  By himself he’s tried to pick up Zemeni, but the grammar proves more tricky than he bargained for and, since his mother doesn’t speak more than a few phrases, he’d have to ask one of the Little Palace tutors. 

(His official language designation is Shu, though, so this might cause some ruffled feathers.  Especially since he is already seen as an entitled, upstart otkazat’sya by several of the instructors.).

She drops the idea of giving him a tutor and, instead, tells General Yahantov that she will need a block of time each day where she will be uninterrupted, unless she is at the front.  Pavel doesn’t know what she gives up in exchange for this, as the General has absolutely no love for his mother, but he knows she would not answer even should he ask.

However, she begins marching him out to a secluded area of the Little Palace’s grounds past the Summoner’s pavilions, past the Alkemi greenhouses, past the Fabrikator workshops, past the lake, to a lonely clearing in the forest.

Then, although he knows she is holding back, she is holding back much less than she probably should, and using her light and a surprisingly strict teaching regime, she pushes him to control his shadows, to wind them out, to pull them back in, to shield, and form a sword.  Then, to do several of those things at the same time.  Then, to do several of those things at the same time amplified.

He comes home bloodied and bruised from these encounters, but his control is better.  He can manifest his shadows and do multiple things with them at once.  When he claps his hands together and amplifies his powers, he can still do these things without the Darkness overwhelming them both, only to be cut up by the Sun.

One day, when he’s nearly exhausted and his mother is relentless, panting, he falls to his knees and whines, “Madraya…” and then plaintively, “Why?”

It is a question that could address most of his life at that particular moment.

Her eyes grow ancient as she gazes down at her, her summoning arcing around her and producing a glow like a halo around her body.

“He will not be kind to you, Pasha,” she says and he knows without her saying it that this is the first time since the day after he refused to eat medovic that she is addressing the issue of his father again.  “You will need to resist him or he will crush you under his heel as easily as breathing.”

(He remembers the shadows around his throat and thinks that it is a more appropriate metaphor than she can possibly know.)

He does not know what possesses him—actually he does.  It is the frustration of not knowing when it is in her power for him to know—and he spits back the strange words of his childhood back to her.

“Won’t we just become the Firebird, Madraya?”

Her eyes become more ancient and she says, so quietly, that even the rustle of the forest threatens to carry away her reply: “Do not say that lightly, Pavel.”

(He does not need to be told twice.  Nonetheless, he wants to know what will stop his father cold as his mother seems to have a magic charm to do this.

He wants to know what it is and if he can use it, too.

Mostly because—for all his bluster—his father terrifies him. For several reasons he does not want to examine closely.  And one he can articulate: Now that he’s met him, his mother will occasionally tell Pavel how alike they are.  On some days, too, she reminds him that he need not be alike, too.)

Now, too, he’s aware of a dialogue going on about him that takes two separate forms.

His mother meets with several Grisha in her rooms, serving them sweets and tea on the same delicate china he had served his father on.  He’s not allowed to be present for what they talk about.  Rather, they greet him as “Master Morozov” and his mother asks him to study in his room.  He does not know what they talk about, but in using the washroom once he caught wind of discussions regarding both “Fjerda” and “Counter-Revolutionaries under the Banner of the Duality.”

It seems a bit above his political paygrade.  Which is generally zero.

Pavel is also increasingly convinced his mother and his father talk, though not on the newly installed telephone that rings to take his mother away at odd intervals.  No, it is far later into the night, when he stays up reading, but wraps the shadows around his lamp and him so as not to be caught doing so.  Then, they talk… well, argue.

It strikes him, during the third time he’d overheard snatches of their conversation, that when his mother talks to “Aleksander” she is a lot more like him, too.

(That thought he lets go rather than facing it.)

They play a lot of chess, too, which, strangely, is the time when his mother is the most open to answering some of his questions.  He’s found the most success in asking questions about her.  Of a certain kind.  He asks her if it is true she was a General, (she nods and then, as if to prove it, steamrolls him in her next four moves).  He asks her if she knew the Storm Queen (she tells him that once, in her own time at the Little Palace the Storm Queen sent her to the Healers with a broken rib).  He asks her when she met his father (though he knows this, he just wants to check the story against the historical records).

Not even chess, though, will induce her to speak of the Firebird, which is, in the history books about her, always talked about in reference to a triad of amplifiers.  All of the accounts of Sankta Alina of the Fold agree—she is associated with Morozov’s Stag, the Sea Whip, and the Ravkan Firebird.  Three, like a fairytale.  Three like a miracle.

She now has none that he’s aware of.

And in asking her about them is one of the few times she’s snapped at him and recognized that the silence will stay a silence.

But, he’s touched her neck when she’s asleep and there are no antlers.  He’s held her wrist multiple times, and there is no bracelet of scales. The Firebird is more a myth lingering as a narrative layer in the hagiography of Sankta Alina than anything else, so he wouldn’t know where it would be if she’s tried to hide it.

It is curious, though: every single thing he’s read seems to agree that a Grisha cannot just get rid of an amplifier, let along two.  But you’re not supposed to be able to have two, either.  Or be immortal.

So maybe that changes things.

As he goes continuously down the rabbit hole of Grisha theory, a name is continually cited, so lightly, it is like a ghost, a theorist whom Pavel has never heard a single instructor talk about (although he’s heard about him in other contexts—the Durast was pretty famous in his day and there are three entirely separate practices in use that are all, confusingly, called, “The Kostyk Method.”) provides a dissenting view to all of the theories he’s read about.

However, all he can tell about the theory is that “Kostyk alone demurs on the subject” and that it “holds true with the exception of Kostyk’s findings.”

Pavel, unfortunately discovers that Kostyk’s findings do not want to be found.

He is very familiar with the restricted shelves of the Little Palace’s Library by now—which are in a second locked annex.  That’s mostly where anything pertaining to his father that bears some resemblance to the actual truth of what he thinks his father might actually have been (and maybe still is) is stored.  So, on a day when his mother’s absence and the librarian’s absence coincides, he wraps his shadows around him and checks the censored logs, where his parents (especially his father) have a greater than average chance of landing.  He finds it in a decades old log—when text suppression took both the signature of the now-defunct Head of Education and one of the instructors.

This one is signed by Yulia Agafya and Mariya Baranova—the description is for a personal journal of one David Kostyk.  Agafya is not a new name to him—Pavel thought it likely she had been a pawn of some sort of the last corrupt Grisha Triumvirate (ironic, since Kostyk was a member of the first), but Mariya Baranova is a new name.  And, since he’s found that Kostyk’s Journal has been relegated to an archive outside the Little Palace that will take a lot more planning and thought to get a volume from, he instead tries to figure out why Mariya Baranova wanted the text suppressed in the first place.

When Pavel finds an old, yellow photo of her, he sighs, and knows that a long walk through the streets of Os Alta to the non-descript building that hides some of the more dangerous Grisha texts is going to be very much in order.

Because Mariya Baranova and her dark hair is a version of his mother… One of the many lives she will not tell him about.

***

Pavel tells himself that this is the only way—that if she will not tell him, he has a right to find out himself what his mother hides from him.

That, maybe, his mother has hidden too much.

(As with his father, though, she has mostly proven that that might have been a good idea.)

He waits for her to be called away to the front on some errand.  Then, in the darkness, he slips into one of the many networks of tunnels he’s begun mapping out through the bowels of the Little Palace.  It spits him out a long way from where he wants to be in Os Alta, but he doesn’t mind walking and no one is going to miss him for several hours, as the guards won’t come in if he’s not sleeping and his mother has never liked Heartrenders around them.

(He’d asked once and she has simply muttered, “Ivan” and she hadn’t even pretended she might clarify.)

He’s picked locks before—there are a lot in the tunnels and more complicated Fabrikator made ones that guard the restricted sections of the library.  It is simply a matter of maneuvering his shadows with pinpoint control.  It’s probably not the kind of exercise his mother might approve of, but if she can have her secrets, so, too, can Pavel.

And, because people don’t guard certain kinds of knowledge because they are stupid, once Pavel enters under the cover of night to the back room with its protected and locked bookcases, he is free to walk off with whatever he wants.

Which is only one thing.

He slots in a worn copy of the Istorii Sankti from the Little Palace Library that no one will miss, mostly because it is banned throughout the rest of Ravka, and slips the journal out gingerly.  He locks everything up tight again and is out in a blur of night and shadows that people can’t detect even if they are trying.

(He’s secured pastries from the Little Palace’s kitchens using the same trick for ages).

Then, he gets home and settles the journal securely under a loose floorboard in his room so that, should his mother come home unexpectedly, she will not find him pouring over a text that she banned from the Little Palace in another life for some reason he is more than convinced has to do directly with her.  And maybe his father.

And amplifiers.

When it is safe to read, he finally takes it out again.  David Kostyk’s handwriting is small and cramped and gives Pavel a vague headache.  Much of the beginnings of his journal are a Fabrikator’s wet dream.  There are schematics and ideas and vague aspirations in the opening pages for devices that anticipated things being invented now by about two centuries.  Most of them are too technical for Pavel to follow aside from the broad strokes of the idea, so, he flips the yellowed pages until he sees his own name twice in the same page:

Morozov’s Stag

Morozov’s Journal

And David Kostyk writes a theory that is not his own and is tantamount to blasphemy: An amplifier killed by another Grisha can, in theory, be taken by another Grisha, giving the person who killed the amplifier access to the Small Science of the one who wears the amplifier. 

In essence, theoretical subjugation.

The fact that this is possible is enough for this journal to be suppressed.

He reads on and his stomach ties itself into a knot as he reads about a trip past Tsibeya with the Darkling, written in David Kostyk’s slanting, impersonal hand.  About a Cut of Shadow killing a giant stag and how its antlers are taken and how David Kostyk had personally fashioned a collar around… his mother’s throat.

And because it is not theoretical at all, he snaps the book shut, feeling sudden righteous fury well up in him.  Wanting to ask his mother the moment she had walked in the door What were you thinking?  He—my father—did that to you.

But, his fury settles, like a banked coal in the pit of his stomach, because of course he can’t ask.  He can’t ask even though he knows the rest of the story from a slanted perspective, divorced from the horror his father had perpetuated against his mother.

He knows what happens at Novokibirsk.  How the Darkling had threatened the Sun Sankta, the defender of the royalty and the Old World.  Had tried to make her join with him to create a new world—like a President Vasiliev before the time had been ripe.

Pavel wants to shout at every book he’s read and lesson he’s attended:  That’s not it at all.

And he can’t.

Because Madraya will want to know how he knows.  And the prospect of losing his mother’s love is something that terrifies him infinitely more than his father and what he is capable of doing.

(“Why, Madraya,” he still wants to ask her.  Even though the question is a blight on his own existence.  “Wasn’t there any other person in the entire world but him?”)

***

If Morozov’s Stag is terrible, the Firebird is worse.

David Kostyk outlines exactly what—who—the Firebird had been.

(He has never heard her mention Malyen Oretsev.  It is not a name that has survived.  It’s an omission right alongside Aleksander Morozov and everything else.  Even David Kostyk gives him a curt description—"Alina Starkova’s childhood friend from Keramzin.” 

He writes, his cramped, slanting handwriting obscuring the horror of the sentence, “It was reported that Starkova took the third amplifier, with assistance from Oretsev himself,  with unexpected consequences.”

Pavel reads the sentence three times.  Three, increasingly horrifying, numbing times.  By the third is becomes a bloody knife in a hand.

It is followed hard upon by another terror:  “It was universally believed that sacrificing Oretsev was necessary in order to defeat the Darkling.”

He draws one conclusion about his father and mother:  Firstly, that his mother knows his father’s weakness.  Secondly, that his father knows his mother’s weakness.  And his mother has already told Pavel exactly how his father should be handled: resist or be crushed.

Only his mother—his clever, clever, terribly horrifying—mother has come up with a third alternative.

Pavel had been so very mistaken in thinking he could replicate his mother’s trick against his father.  Mostly because his mother has decided, if his father wants to break her, she will break him right back with the one thing that gives his father pause:  herself.

It boils through him exactly what he’s threatened his father with.  What will stop him.

And right then, Pavel decides it needs to stop.

By himself, in the glade where his mother takes him to practice, he decides to stop sneaking out to libraries and liberating forbidden tomes.  Instead, over and over and over again, until his muscles seize with protest and his mind is sluggish with both a lack of sleep and the taxing sharpening of focus that what he is attempting takes, he practices.  In the glade in the night he learns the one technique his mother refuses to teach her in the light of day.

And, finally, after eight months of relentless practice, just after his fourteenth birthday, between his hands, he manages a small sickle of darkness and lets it fly.  The Cut goes wide and, instead of the tree trunk, it severs a high tree branch and causes the tree to disgorge several birds into the air as the branch crashes through the lower branches to the ground.

It isn’t much.

It will not hold up against his father.

It will not protect his mother.

But it is a start.

And that is all Pavel needs.

***

At the age of fourteen, Pavel also is allowed to journey outside of the Little Palace more.  And, even when he is not allowed to, he does anyways when his mother is absent and there is no one with any real authority to stop him.

The newspapers he picks up in Os Alta paint a very different picture of a very different Ravka than what he gets over chess with his mother—when he gets anything from his mother.

(She is strangely reticent about politics and, at first Pavel thinks this must have to do with his father.  However, as time goes on, he is more and more certain this has to do with his mother.

… And the fact she is not entirely comfortable with the position she occupies in Ravka.)

Many times the bigger newspapers contain headlines vaguely vaunting Ravkan technological advancements in a March to Modernity to “counter Fjerdan aggression.”  The papers have splashes of photographs of President Vasiliev posing with his troops with a wide shot of the People’s Palace draped in the symbol of the Ravkan Firebird in the background.  Sometimes there are pictures of his mother, calm and poised, at some Fjerdan outpost.  Sometimes there are pictures of his mother, unsmiling and blank faced in her ceremonial uniform, posing with President Vasiliev.  In smaller articles that give him pause, there are notices of changes in key political or military offices, which use verbs like “released” or “let go” to describe what had happened to the office’s former incumbents.

Pavel switches his reading from Darklings and Sun Sanktas and amplifiers to tomes of history.

He learns this is how it is in Ravka—things have not changed much:  The President still acts, in many ways, like a Tsar, but he’s called something different.  He still even lives in the luxury of the Grand Palace, but the name has been changed to make it seem different.  The peasants still starve, but they starve now as workers in factories which manufacture munitions rather than in their fields.  Grisha, too, still largely live in the Little Palace—which was given another name that doesn’t stick and no one bothers to remember—and their lives are now equal to other Ravkans.  Just as cheap—unless you’re someone whose name is emblazoned in the large articles in the newspaper instead of the smaller ones.  Ravka, Pavel knows, is very good at changing names and the broad strokes of the ideas while staying much the same in the details.

The small articles without the posed pictures are what Pavel finally settles on asking his mother about.

His mother makes an assured move across the chess board and tells him, “You need to know, Pavel, that Ravka is not a safe place right now and you may not talk to anyone else about what you’ve just mentioned.”

She says this with the same pronouncement as one of The Rules.

Pavel, knots his brow in concentration, less at the chessboard and more at the game of chess he is playing with what he knows his mother will not—and maybe cannot—tell him.  So, in a childish voice that serves him better than any logic, he asks, “But you’re safe—aren’t you, Madraya?”

He puts his piece down with a click onto the board’s polished surface and looks up to see his mother watching him, sad and ancient and possibly, (weirdly), a little bit angry.

“Know Pavel,” she begins, “That there are no safe decisions at my level.  Only a choice of terrible ones.”

Giving up even the pretense of playing chess, Pavel sighs and then asks, “Why play at that level then?”

His mother sighs, giving up the pretense with him.

“Someone has to be able to stop people from gaining certain types of power.  Even when it doesn’t look like that’s what they’re doing.”

Pavel stares, his brow furrowing.  He thinks, for a moment, of Sankta Alina of the Fold.  The first Firebird who was her friend who helped her stab him to take him as an amplifier.

(His father, the first one she had to stop.)

Pavel knows he will never get another shot at this conversation, too.  At the answers in it.  That it will go to the realm of silent taboos as soon as the topic is left behind.

“Why does it have to be you?”

(There’s a little anger in his voice, too.  Later he’s ashamed of this.)

She looks at him in a way that makes Pavel feel strangely transparent—like she can look through him and see where he goes at night, and the books he’s stolen and replaced and read without permission, and all the times he’s evaded the people who are supposed to guard him using his shadows he’s supposed to show no one but her.

Her eyes, which are also his, grow ancient and soft.  Her voice, too, is brittle, when she says very quietly, “Because I have the power and experience.”  She pauses.  “And, Pavel, I said I would.”

He looks back, trying to be just as steady and she is, despite his youth and inexperience.

“Why would you agree to that, Madraya?”

He doesn’t entirely succeed.  And his mother’s steady, steely reply makes his stomach fall.

“I have things to protect, Pavel,” she suddenly picks up the thread of the chess game again, picking up one of her white pieces delicately.  “And it was an easy choice.”

Pavel suddenly feels an intense guilt spread in his stomach, making him vaguely queasy.  Because he knows exactly what he thinks his mother has exchanged to stand in the place she is standing.

Pavel knows she’s made a terrible choice for him.

***

A few days after Pavel turns fifteen the Little Palace buzzes and throbs with rumors.

General Yahontov, it is generally, agreed, has been “released.”

The manner of this happening is subject to rampant speculation.  According to some students, they’ve heard unspecified workers say that the black uniformed members of Vasiliev’s special unit came for her and escorted her from her office.  Other whispers indicate that the General had been called to the People’s Palace and simply failed to reappear in her office for several days until a “substitute” was sent in her place.  One ridiculous rumor suggests they took her out and shot her by firing squad.

Pavel does not see the point in baseless speculation.

(Well, he does… it certainly keeps people in line.  He just knows better than to join in fearmongering that controls other people).

Over his studies one night he asks his mother, “Is the General gone?”

She, reading over a series of letters, responds simply, “Yes.”

“For good?” he clarifies.

His mother does not even look up.

“Yes.”

Pavel turns the page, his pen pausing in its progress.

“Do you know who will replace her?”

His mother is silent for a long time.

(Pavel has a sudden horror that they will pick her.  That she will be the next person who will be “released” and that he won’t know where they’ve released her to.  After all, she’s the embodiment of the regime’s Firebird.  It makes sense to have that person be the acting General of the United Ravkan Army.

Symbols get free loyalty, after all.)

“We shall see,” she says, calmly.

Pavel can’t bite his tongue fast enough, so the question tumbles out:  “Will it be you?”

Finally, she looks up at him and says with steel in her voice and eyes:  “No.”

(And Pavel does not know if that it is their final decision, but it is certainly his mother’s.)

***

Before he goes off to his classes—which are all with Mr. Lebedev today, so no picnic—his mother informs him that they will have people over for dinner tonight.  She pauses while putting on her black and gold dress kefta, to add, “Important people.”

“Who?” he asks absentmindedly, stuffing a pastry from his mother’s breakfast tray into his mouth as he pulls his arms through the sleeves of the charcoal grey coats worn by all the students at the Little Palace these days.

“The President,” his mother says easily.  As if the President of the Ravkan People’s Republic comes to dinner every night.  Pavel’s stare only increases in intensity as she puts her other arm through the black sleeve of her kefta and adds, “And the new General.”

Through a mouth full of pastry, as if this is normal breakfast conversation, Pavel asks, “And who is she?”

“He,” she corrects.

“He,” he says, swallowing and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, to his mother’s visible disapproval.

“I don’t know,” she admits after a day.  Then more carefully, she says, “He is from the Special Forces.”

That makes sense, Pavel concedes.  From what he’s been able to discern, the Special Forces represents the President’s inner circle: a group of handpicked men and women who slip like Shadows through the world of Ravkan politics.  That his mother acknowledges that they even exist tells Pavel a good deal about what level of power she sits at in Vasiliev’s government.

His mother apparently catches up to this detail, because, as Pavel draws on his gloves, she adds with a startling severity, “Not that you should ever say that to anyone.”

“Right,” he says, buttoning the top buttons of his jacket and flexing his shoulders so it settles right.  “And I’m invited or should I make myself scarce while the important people talk?”

He knows instantly from the tone of her voice and the set of her own shoulders that his mother is attempting to keep this casual.

“Your presence has been requested.”  Pavel knows instantly the sentence she has just uttered as if it does not matter at all terrifies her.  “Security should already be in place when you come back from your classes today.”

Pavel thinks for a moment of the sway of trees in the night, how his shadows feel at his fingertips as he forms them into a long, deadly blade.  Then, he gives his mother a nod to show he has understood and bids her goodbye with a kiss on her cheek.

(He goes through the motions in his mind again—how to make the Cut—as she comes to the door and watches him, brown eyes distant and solemn, as he goes out to attend his classes and he pretends not to know that she has done this.)

***

He goes through three levels deep of security—that he can see—as he arrives home at the Vezda Suite.  Workers from the Little Palace’s kitchens are bustling about with covered trays of food and silver samovars (1) and all of the golden trappings of wealth his mother refuses to use on a day-to-day basis.  Pavel tries not to take notice of the emaciated woman who, ignored by the others, takes a little of each dish that will be served in her own little silver dish as they come in and eats it (2).  The others watch her out of the corners of their eyes, their mouths drawn into hard lines.

His mother is already in her black kefta with the elaborate gold embroidery.

(He is not officially a Grisha, so he is only allowed to wear his dress uniform, which is worn by the students of the Little Palace for the two holidays they participate in at the People’s Palace.  Officers only wear kefta these days at ceremonial functions, anyways.  That he is extended this courtesy is solely because he is Aleksandra Morozova’s son.)

“The General?” he asks in shorthand.

His mother’s entire expression closes off in the span of a look.

“Malyen Petrov,” she says in a tight voice.

Pavel wonders if it pains her, though her tone is the only sign of it.

“Do we salute him, like the President?” he asks, as a matter of protocol.

“Yes,” she says, the shadow over her mood lifting.  “The oprichniki tell me they are arriving together.  Then, dinner, which you will remain for, and coffee, which you will not remain for.”

As this entire… dinner party, is highly irregular, Pavel wonders what will be discussed during coffee or if his mother even knows.   Or, he wonders if they did ask her to be General and, having denied the position, she is now being shown that people in power can come into her home and eat dinner with her son whenever they desire to do so.  As a reminder of where she stands.

He cannot ask her about anything because of all the workers flitting through their parlor, each with the potential to hear and say things that could be absolutely damaging to the both of them.  And, by now, although he’s not certain he merits it at all, Pavel is fairly certain his mother has put herself in this position for two reasons: because she loves the people of Ravka and because she loves Pavel.

It is enough to make Pavel think about the merits of becoming a hermit somewhere.  As long as he got to bring his mother with him.  Along with some books.

But it is also enough for him to know he absolutely needs to watch his step.

A grey cloaked guard, Lev, one of their usual oprichniki, puts his head in the door and informs his mother that their guests are enroute from the People’s Palace and should arrive in eight minutes.  She gives a curt nod and the emaciated woman eats one last morsel of food and, along with most of the grey clad workers, bustles out of sight.   The only people who remain are the ones who will stay to wait on the President, the General, the Firebird of Ravka and her son.

They wait by the door, backs pulled straight, awaiting their visitors.

Then, the door opens and Vladimir Vasiliev, President of the Ravkan People’s Republic comes in.  Pavel has seen his picture multiple times in newspapers and, occasionally, from afar at events where his presence would be expected.  But this is the first time Pavel has seen him this close up.  Vasiliev is otkazat’sya, and so he has not weathered the storms of overthrowing the former-Tsar like the Grisha he is used to interacting with (Mr. Lebedev is in his 60s and doesn’t look a day past his early 30’s.  And he knows both of his parents are genetic freaks).  His stoop shouldered frame and the way his grey threaded hair is combed over his half-balding head, makes him look much older than his fifty-two years, but maybe that is the burden of Ravka.  He is dwarfed by the new General, who stands with a regal bearing next to him in the black uniform of what is likely the Special Forces—because Pavel has never seen it before.  The General’s brown hair is carefully slicked back and his beard and mustache neatly trimmed.  Pavel knows, too, from the lack of embroidery at the cuff and collar that the new General, too, must be otkazat’sya.  But Pavel doesn’t feel particularly suicidal at the moment, and thus doesn’t mention either of these things and sticks to the script he’s been given.

He, in fact, doesn’t know anything is amiss until he and his mother have saluted and his mother has welcomed the visitors to the house and he has been formally presented and introductions are, very unnecessarily, given in return by Vasiliev himself.  They go ahead of them to sit at their lavishly set table, with the golden plates of the Little Palace set out on it with their golden domes, keeping a series of hors d’oeuvres which the Little Palace staff can confirm are both free from poison and hot.  As the utter last one present in terms of precedent and rank in the hierarchy of Ravkan society he has currently found himself in, he is the last one to come, following his mother.  Observing her, Pavel finds his mother walks a fraction too stiffly and that her smile seems slightly frozen as he seats himself next to her.

Indeed, he cannot fathom what has gotten into her—because she has never acted like this at the events she has seen her in when she is in proximity to President Vasiliev and people of the General’s stature.

But then the General speaks, complimenting her on how very comfortable she has made the Vezda Suite feel, and how much consideration she has obviously shown for her growing child.  And Pavel does not dare freeze as he lifts the fork of blini to his mouth.  He cannot stare.  He cannot give the game away—cannot admit he knows the silk of that voice like he knows his own skin.  His mother responds, politely, using his title and, when the General, a smile in his voice, tells his mother that she may simply call him “Mal” as they will be working closely together from now on and such formalities need not be observed between equals, Pavel primly puts the last bite of blini into his mouth, the caviar salty on his tongue.

And, when the man asks after his studies, Pavel does not flinch when he looks up to find the amused grey eyes of his father in a face that looks like neither of them anymore.  Especially not when he adds, in a tone that most people would describe as earnest, “That it cannot be easy being the son of the Firebird of Ravka.”

Pavel recognizes where the taunt is aimed easily enough.

But it doesn’t keep him from flooding with rage at this Malyen Petrov on behalf of his mother.  It also doesn’t keep him from imagining his shadows forming into the Cut and neatly bisecting the man who sired him and ending all his snide amusement.  At The General’s opening volley of questioning, his mother touches his knee under the table and he takes it for the warning it is.  He remains perfectly polite and, next to him, his mother is also perfectly polite and even warm—which is both an odd and difficult thing to be in the presence of a dictator and a Darkling.  He spends most of the second half of the meal trying to calculate a way for him not to leave her during the coffee part of the night, but by the time his mother dismisses him to “Go complete his coursework for tomorrow,” he’s thought of several vaguely ridiculous reasons for a fifteen-year-old to be included in the serious portion of the meal, none of which will allow him to actually be included.

Especially when his father gets one last barb in as he is already turned to leave.

“Your son is not Grisha, then, Madame Morozova?”

He does not stiffen or give anything way.

“I expect that is his father’s influence.”  He hears his mother answer in a pleasant, double-edged way, “You can find his test results right next to your own, General.”

He does not hear his father’s reply, as he firmly shuts the door behind him just as a black uniformed man takes up a position outside of his door.  Lucky him, thinks Pavel, starting to pummel his pillow while picturing his father’s face.

It helps when he has to salute to the asshole when he and President Vasiliev leave.

When their front parlor is returned to normal by the grey-clad Little Palace workers and the fancy remnants of the dinner party furniture are cleared away, he stubbornly parks himself in his chair in front of hearth, while his mother, with a calm he envies, directs the remaining people.

Her calm lasts just until the last of the workers leave and his mother faces the door and begins glowing, the air of their parlor transforming into the feeling of the air just before lightning hits in a storm.

“Pasha,” she says, her voice low and dangerous.

“I know it was him,” he says, sparing her the need to explain her anger.  Especially since he’s named himself Malyen—another level in his game that Pavel is not even supposed to be aware of.  “Is he trying to be an otkazat’sya?”

“Yes,” her response is clipped and precise.  “He’s spent the last few years rising in the ranks and spying in Fjerda.”

Pavel is pretty certain he is absolutely not supposed to know anything about this.

Finally, because he knows that his father has created a scenario where to reveal him is to reveal the two of them, he asks, already knowing the answer he will be given, “What would you like us to do about my father, Madraya?”

As always, she tells him, “You let me handle him, Pavel.”

She does not need to tell him the second part:  Have as little to do with him as you can.

It’s advice he plans to take, for once, as he can hardly do anything else right now.  What he does instead is come to her and say, quietly, “I can take your kefta for you, Madraya.”

He’s not much.  And he’s not overly useful.  But he’s there.

(And it is perhaps revealing that his mother does not even lower her voice late in the night when she has a disembodied conversation that begins, “How dare you, Aleksander.”

Pavel’s also thankful that, however they communicate, they have no real physical proximity to one another, because he’s pretty certain from his mother’s tone alone the two of them would absolute devastate whole swathes of the Little Palace and beyond tonight.)

***

Chapter Text

xiii. MIA

His father moves into General Yahontov’s old suite, erasing her from existence like so many others in the Ravkan government have been erased.

He learns, too, from snippets of conversation and reading several unguarded pieces of communication he shouldn’t be reading that trouble is brewing in Fjerda on multiple fronts.  His mother’s correspondence has veiled references to “the weapon” and also increased activity among the Drüskelle under a new leader (although the government of Fjerda has long since sought to pretend the Drüskelle don’t exist anymore).

None of the Os Alta papers speak of anything like this.  Only of the great victories of the Ravkan People’s Republic under General Malyen Petrov and it’s Firebird are mentioned.  One such newspaper emblazoned with such a headline his mother takes, and then with a flash of blinding light in her palm, she reduces it to cinders.

It’s what she would probably like to do to his father, too, whose orbit she has been increasingly pulled into by the Fjerdan operations.  Yahontov’s former office has instead become dominated by a round table and innumerable charts illustrating troop movements and military and civilian assets.

One benefit of Fjerdan saber rattling, though, is that the General is drawn to the front quite often.  The drawbacks are that the General calls his mother to the Front, as well, probably more times than he needs to.

Pavel makes a point of ignoring him past perfunctory pleasantries paid to his rank, which his father receives with a smirk.

“Is all of this normal for him?” he asks one night, as his mother, noticeably drawn and exhausted because she has spent the day in his father’s company, nurses a glass of tea.  Pavel eats his slice of medovic.

(It’s probably what makes him think to ask the question).

“He’s being suspiciously well-behaved,” she sighs.  “For him.”

“Pray tell, Madraya, what does his poor behavior look like?”

She heaves a sigh again.

“Civil war?” she says, with a comic lightness that doesn’t quite fit her words.  “Creating a Shadow Fold?”

Pavel regards his cake critically and, not having a good response to any of this, takes another bite.  His mother looks into the steam of her tea and then, exhibiting some objectively poor timing, just as he finishes his cake, chooses to tell him, “I will be gone for a month or so.”

Pavel sits up straighter, moving his plate to the table.

“Fjerda?”

She bites her lip—which is not a usual gesture for her.  Then she nods.

“With him?” he asks, trying to understand her expression.

“No,” she says definitively.  “But stay out of his way.”

Her subtext is obvious:  I’m not going to be here to protect you from him.

Pavel wants to tell her that is not necessary—that he can take care of himself, even where he is concerned.  But he also knows that this is a lot of bravado.  His father had seamlessly changed his face, pretended to be an otkazat’sya, and risen to the highest level of the Ravkan military without a single whisper to herald his arrival.

He sees his mother off in a non-descript black military vehicle the next day, saluting her crisply as she goes.  On the way back to their suite, he passes his father, drawing to the side and giving him a slightly droopier version of a salute.  His father’s lips, on a face that should look like Pavel’s but doesn’t, dip up into an enigmatic half-smile and Pavel feels a violent surge of hatred for him that propels Pavel through his own door. 

He starts counting down the a month’s worth of days that night.

***

He gets to 35 days without seeing either of his parents.  Also, strange for one of his mother’s visits to the front, the papers carry no pictures or information about the glorious Ravkan Firebird for the entire span of her mission.  And, although his mother’s timeline had been somewhat vague, he asks Lev, the oprichniki most likely to know, if he has heard anything Pavel has not.

Lev comes back the next day with the slightly strained reply, “She has been unavoidably detained, Master Pavel.  Expect her within a week.”

Pavel counts down the days in the week and still his mother does not return.  When he asks, he gets the same explanation from Lev, almost worded exactly the same way.

He counts seven more days and his mother still does not arrive.  He counts seven more after that and finally asks, “Is there anyone else who might know where she is?”

Lev frowns and says, “I can only tell you what I’m told, Master Pavel.”

His breakthrough comes from an unlikely place.  During Mr. Lebedev’s class, a handful of days later, he gets whacked an astounding three times in the back of the head by a rolled up paper for not paying attention.  The third time it happens, Pavel doesn’t even pretend he will change, and as Mr. Lebedev, red-faced, hits the rolled up paper against his hand with a clear threat of reprisal, all Pavel can conjure in response is a look of surly blankness.

He barks, “Morozov!  After class!”

Still blank faced and more tired than surly, he simply remains in his desk staring straight ahead when Mr. Lebedev crowds his view again, leaning down so his face is inches from him.

“Explain,” he says, spit landing in his face.

Pavel does not know why he does—maybe it is the fact that he only has his mother to depend on and, because he occupies the deeply strange space of being the son of the most famous living Grisha in all of Ravka and also presents himself in the Little Palace as at otkazat’sya, he does not have anyone to say it to.

“My mother has been missing for 56 days,” he says, the words feeling torn from him.  “I don’t know when or if she is coming back.”

Mr. Lebedev’s head withdraws from his view and is replaced by his torso.  Still, Pavel makes no effort to shift his frame of reference.  Or move really.  He expects the older man is looking down at him with his usual disdainful curl of lip, but he doesn’t waste the effort of looking.

Finally, the man simply says, “Dismissed.”

He drags himself back to his empty suite, where he sits in front of the dead embers of the fire in the darkness until there is a knock at the door.  Flicking on the lights, he is surprised to see Mr. Lebedev on the other side of the door, bereft of his blue kefta for the first time ever.  He is leading a middle-aged looking man in the same black military uniform that his father had on for their first, terrible family dinner party.

“Morozov,” he says brusquely, “May we come in?”

Pavel opens the door, leading them to the two chairs in front of the cold hearth.  Mr. Lebedev looks at him and frowns, but says nothing further.  Pavel stands at attention between them, not knowing what this is all about.  The man Mr. Lebedev has brought doesn’t give his name and Pavel is not stupid enough to ask it—he knows when a favor is being done, although he can’t fathom why Mr. Lebedev is calling in a favor on his behalf.

“I’m told your mother has not come home,” says the man in a raspy voice.

“That’s correct, sir,” he says, because he can think of nothing else to say.

The man looks up at him, evaluating him.  Then, giving a spare nod, mostly to himself, as if he has found something about Pavel worthy, and says, “The Sun Summoner is not on any documented mission.”

His emphasis lingers just noticeably on the word “documented” and he widens his eyes and lifts his chin in a gesture to silently gauge Pavel’s comprehension.

“Understood,” he says, his voice steady despite the ember of hot worry that is threatening to burn through the numb shell he’s wrapped around himself for the past weeks.

“Young Master Morozov,” he continues, as if he hadn’t spoken, “She is officially in residence at the Little Palace, recovering from an injury received during training.”  He pauses and Pavel knows he is being given a gentle warning, though there is no judgment in his tone.  He finishes, never breaking eye contact, “She is expected to make a full recovery, although the timeline is known only to the President and, possibly, the General.”

Pavel puzzles through all of the things he is not being told:  That whatever his mother is doing, it is over even this man’s head.  But, he can say definitively, she has not been “released” or any such other euphemism.  Yet, no one can say definitively what she is doing and where she is except for the President, which is a tree too tall for Pavel to consider barking up, even as the Sun Summoner’s son.

Then there’s his father.

His voice shakes a little bit as he breathes out, “Thank you, sir.”  Then, because his mother raised him to have manners, and he will not disappoint her, he asks, “Would you like some tea since you have taken the time out of your busy schedule to come here?”

The man nods again, as if to himself, as if he has found something in Pavel to approve of again, before he clears his throat and, sending a significant look to Mr. Lebedev, who has remained stone-faced and silent for the duration of the encounter.

“No, no, I don’t think we will.  You no doubt want us old men out of your hair, young Master Morozov.”  Then, getting up his eyes glitter, and he says, “Please tend to your mother’s recovery well.”

Then, the numbness flooding back in again, he manages a salute.

***

Pavel thinks about it all night—where he goes from here.  He knows he’s been warned to simply wait, but he does not know what he is waiting for.  And a man whose authority, if he has read the subtext of the conversation correctly, falls just under his father’s, has confirmed not even he knows more than the cover story being provided.

It seems like a deal with the devil to go to his father.  His mother has told him multiple times to simply avoid dealing with him at all costs and he does not know what, precisely, the cost of ignoring her advice might be.

But, in the small hours of the morning he comes to the logical conclusion that, with or without his father, he has the potential to lose his mother.  Adding his father to the equation, however, might lessen the probability of it just slightly.

Maybe.

He presents himself in the General’s office the next day, asking for a meeting.

The man, who is some sort of Secretary and wears the banding of a Heartrender on his grey uniform, looks him over with a vague sneer and then simply responds, “Impossible.”

Pavel’s sharp reply is likely a measure of his desperation and lack of sleep.

“Why?”

He sounds like a petulant, powerless child, and he hates it.  Absolutely hates it.

The man’s lip curls into a solidified sneer and he says, “First of all, kid, he’s in Ryevost,” Pavel takes in this information.  “Secondly, he’s much too busy for someone like you.”

Pavel suspects that is the case, but he’s decided he’s going to be precisely the impediment that he has been accused of being.

So, he skips the rest of his classes, packs and, then, after an uneasy night’s sleep, clinging to the familiar shadows of the Little Palace, he finds a supply van bound for Ryevost and wraps himself in the shadows of the darkest part of its cargo hold.

***

Pavel spends most of his journey to Ryevost lingering in the dark, in one of three states:  firstly, since he had consumed the pastries he had stolen from the Little Palace kitchens some hours in, he becomes aware that his stomach is growling for something more substantive than sugar and dough.  Then, as the hunger within him grows, his mood veers toward a good deal of recrimination.  Because, really, is he really foolish enough to think his father would extend any actual effort to help him?  …Especially since it was his father who told him that he might as well have killed him as an infant and was more than probably serious?  So, in the event that this is all a wild goose chase and his mother is just safe and delayed, she might very well come back to news that her erstwhile… (he stops, never knowing quite how to quantify what his parents are to one another), but whatever his father is to her had killed her son?  When he had taken the time to think about it he doesn’t even know how he will know they have arrived at Ryevost.  So, every time the truck rumbles to a stop and the back opens, Pavel feels terror flood his system.  He has never been outside of Os Alta without his mother.  And, even then, his visits to other places were brief and rare. 

Really, for anything significant in his life, he’s never been without his mother.  He wonders how much of an idiot he is for thinking he could do this.  Because, he misses her.  He misses her so much, the feeling becomes leaden and clings to him with his shadows in the dark.  Something about being hungry and confused and terrified in the back of a truck with military rations has a way of humbling you, Pavel supposes.

But, somewhere in the dark, a different answer comes to him, too.

That she has told him all his life he is capable.  He knows, too, despite her never telling him, that she has done much more difficult things for him.  That this is the smallest token that she might ask of him.

When he reaches Ryevost, it is more obvious, mostly because several soldiers begin unpacking the crates and barrels of supplies and complain that they need to be back in Os Alta by first light tomorrow.  He’s also incredibly lucky that it is the night that greets him outside.

Pavel knows his timing needs to be exactly right, otherwise his efforts up until now will be wasted.  He waits for a lull and the sounds to fade and then, wrapping the darkness around him like a cloak, takes the night as his ally and gets out.

What greets him is an entire complex of squat, grey, military buildings—the kind that Pavel has noted have become more common under President Vasiliev.  In the courtyard of the complex, the Ravkan Firebird flaps in flag form over everything.

There is, of course, no indication as to where his father’s quarters might be, as it is poor strategy at best to announce a General’s presence loudly unless one is actively courting an assassination.

And, though his father is many things, stupid is not among them.

But soldiers talk.  Just as oprichiniki and workers do, and he manages to pinpoint that the General might be in one of two buildings.  Then, really, it is a matter of evaluating security.  For a while, both buildings look as if they are guarded equally, but, from his studies of his father, Pavel is expecting to find one characteristic of the people he has chosen to guard him personally: Over and over it is noted by the many military historians who have evaluated his legacy that the Darkling prefers Heartrenders. 

Which means he just needs to run in and find the one group of Grisha who are going to be able to detect him through his shadows.

Sneaking about the Little Palace and stealing texts about his parents allows him to move with ease through the building, easily evading the otkazat’sya guards.  The first building turns out to be a barracks and the majority of the soldiers in it are both otkazat’sya and asleep.  By the time he rules it out, the sky is already dipping towards morning and the sun is sending lazy fingers of light through the sky, which means much of his cover is going to be limited.

Without pausing to think about it, he goes into the second building.

The first layers of security are as easily breeched as the others.  Much of this building is composed of wide receiving halls, hung with banners of state meant for important visitors or officers who distinguished themselves sharply from the lowly conscripted members of the Ravkan military.

Past these rooms, the building becomes a narrow warren of corridors and passages, branching off to where the officer’s quarters must be.  In a spartan vestibule at the center of this snarl of passages, he finds the Heartrenders at last.  However, as they are likely not really expecting someone to surpass the guards with such ease and without a sound, they are perhaps less vigilant than they should be.

He is caught off guard when one of them, in their red and black color, sighs and, tossing his head back towards the door, says, “I don’t think he sleeps.”

The other, grunts.

“He’s a demon, I swear.”

The first breaks into a lopsided grin and quips, “At least he’s Ravka’s demon.”

Pavel thinks, from this description, he’s found where his father’s rooms are.  Unfortunately, at the same time, the man who had spoken first, a man with close-cropped dark hair and a goatee, jerks his chin up and looks directly at where Pavel is standing.

Not thinking so much as reacting, Pavel clings to the shadows, fleeing back to the large shadowy hall he’d passed through, his mind moving at an almost inhuman clip.  He does not think he can necessarily win against two seasoned Heartrenders, but he might be able to against one—and he doubts training and orders permit them to leave their General unguarded.

He also doesn’t want to provoke his father unless absolutely necessary.  In his father’s guise as an otkazat’sya Pavel is utterly unaware of his capabilities.  Every text he has ever read concentrates on the dominance of his Small Science.  He doesn’t know what sort of physical prowess he has or what kind of shot he is, but as he’s had literally centuries to become proficient at such things, Pavel doesn’t really want to find out for certain.

So, he needs to divide and conquer.  He keeps moving until he finds just the correct spot.  Then, he thinks about something that terrifies him—which he has his pick of at the moment, so it is easy—and the first Heartrender comes towards his steadily increasing heartbeat like a homing missile and Pavel feels the beginnings of the tell-tale squeeze.

As soon as he comes through the door into the small anteroom, though, he forms his shadows into a small version of a sickle of living dark, and Cuts through the top of a heavy portrait of President Vasiliev hanging about the door.  The angle is true and, heavy frame and all, it hits the man’s head, sending him out cold.  For extra measure, Pavel pulls the heavy man into a closet and, in a reverse of his normal skill set, hones the darkness into a key which locks him in.  As hiding a comatose man who weighs double what he does has given him time to think, Pavel decides he is going to execute the purely stupid part of his plan.  So, in the room with its banners, he waits, curled into the shadows, until the second Heartrender, now infinitely more cautious than the first, comes out.

He dissolves the shadows around him and strides forward.

“You’re a—”

Pavel knows exactly what he is: A child who has emerged from nowhere in what is supposed to be a highly guarded building.  It makes him hesitate in putting his hands up to make Pavel’s heart explode.

“I’d like to see the General,” he says.

“The General does not have time for children,” the man replies tersely.

Pavel keeps his voice—and hopefully his heartbeat, although he’s less certain about that—calm and even.

“He should make time for me.”

The man puts his hands up, but there is not yet a tell-tale pinch in his chest and his heart remains at a slightly rapid canter that is equivalent with breaking into highly secured military buildings and dragging prone bodies about.

“Why?”

Pavel had removed his gloves prior to entering into this room again, and now he feels poised on a knife’s edge of his mother’s world and somewhere else—somewhere he’s about to break all of The Rules that have governed his life up until now for his own protection.

(His mother’s voice dances in his head—"Once you’re known, Pasha, you can’t be unknown.”)

Without a moment’s more hesitation, he claps his hands together and with a thunderous boom the dark roils around him, filling the room, and wrapping around the man’s eyes, dangerous and terrible.  Within it Pavel shifts, as Heartrenders need a line of sight that Pavel need not give him.

He draws back the shadows when he is behind the man.

These words are calculated to be passed onto the man’s superior.  Because, if one thing comes out of the stories that history and his mother has told him, it is that his father is a possessive man.

Particularly of things he views as his.

While Pavel is not something he has ever viewed that way, he doubts the he views the title he has taken time and again throughout history with the same ambivalence.  So, the shadows swirl and he takes the knife that his mother gave him—Grisha steel—and holds it to the man’s throat.

“March in there and tell the General the Darkling has come to see him.”

For extra measure, he lets the shadows whip around them, as they march toward his father’s rooms, and lets the legends his father created do more work to terrify a fully-seasoned soldier than Pavel is actually capable of doing.

But it gets the Heartrender to knock at the door and, his father’s voice, dripping with irritation answers, “What is it?”

When Pavel jabs in the knife—just enough for a little blood to well up—into the man, he really does gasp out, “The Darkling.”

Pavel doesn’t drop the knife in his hand until his father, with his borrowed face and his cold grey eyes, steps out, sees him, and then orders him, “Release him.”

Relieved, because Pavel doesn’t think he could have done more than posture to kill anyone, he takes the knife away and the Heartrender looks between Pavel and the General in abject confusion, until his father’s lips curl into a smirk and he tells the man, “You’re dismissed.”

“Boris…” he manages.

His father arches an eyebrow and then fixes Pavel with a look.

“What did you do with my other Heartrender, boy?”

Pavel directs him to the closet in the anteroom just before the assembly room and his father gives him a lingering evaluative look before turning back to the other Heartrender and enunciating, “I believe I said you were dismissed.”

The Heartrender gives Pavel a wary look and, then, the man says, “You do know what he—”

His father cuts the man off with words sharpened to a cold, controlled fury.

“I know what he is better than you could ever know.  Do you think it is your place to lecture me?”

The sharp rebuke seems to jar something loose in him and he pulls himself up and salutes, before obeying.

Then, Pavel finds that, of his own devices, he is now alone with his father, standing in the half-darkness of a military building in Ryevost, holding a knife with a smear of a Heartrender’s blood on it.  The thought brings bile rising to this throat, but he knows—he knows so well—that in front of his father is not a place he is permitted to show weakness.

Rather, now that he is alone, he wants to know one singular thing so much that is comes tumbling out of his mouth with the sting of acid:  “What did you do to my mother?”

His father’s grey eyes narrow.

Then, he says with the same acidity, “Come, boy” and, when Pavel doesn’t move, he grabs him by the scruff of the neck and shoves him through the door into the connecting room.

Once inside, his father drops his hold and then orders, “Sit.”

Pavel does not.  He remains standing stock still in the middle of a chamber just lit by firelight from an iron stove.

“Where is she?” he repeats.

His father sits gracefully in a chair in front of the fire.  His expression grows hard.

“At the Little Palace, as far as I know.”

The word and all the day’s terrors and frustrations rips from him:  “Liar.”  He is balling his fists, and the shadows writhe about him.  The accusation follows after, easily said:  “You’ve done something to her.”

His father gets up, languidly, almost in a bored manner and comes close to him.  The blow across his face is so fast, Pavel doesn’t even see it coming.  Just that suddenly, there is a fleeting rise in power as his father’s ungloved hands connect with his cheek and a stinging aftermath.  The face that is looming over him is a mask of fury.

“Are you finished?”

Pavel doesn’t so much as move a muscle in answer.  His father, however, moves and, Pavel tightens his muscles for another blow, but his father instead resumes his former seat.

“I approved a single week’s trip for the Sun Summoner to the Fjerdan front to increase troop morale.”  Pavel’s cheek throbs so much he can barely concentrate on the words.  “I then received a request from the Little Palace for the Sun Summoner to spend time in reserve so that she might spend time with her son.”

The word drips with something that Pavel is too tired to identify.  It’s not quite contempt.  His father is more subtle than that.  At least sometimes.

“That’s funny,” Pavel rasps, knowing that every word out of his mouth is likely a lie.  “The higher ups at the Little Palace have been informed she had sustained an injury during a routine training mission and is now convalescing.”  He thinks he tastes the coppery tang of blood in his mouth and resists the urge to spit it on his father’s floors.  “Both can’t be true.”

His expression becomes a mask and his father simply responds, “Indeed.”

Silence falls between them.  Thick and impenetrable.

“How long?” he asks, finally.

“Fifty-seven days now,” then, because it is already the morning after the day he left Os Alta, he corrects himself:  “Fifty-eight.  Actually.”

His father remains looking at him, even and calm, despite what he’s just relayed and what he’s already done.

Then, because he doesn’t care anymore—not about what will happen to him, not about keeping concealed what he knows, and certainly not about the man who happened to have sired him—he just says, “You can contact her.  Somehow.”

His father doesn’t deny this or ask where he has come by this knowledge of his strange relationship with his mother.

No, what his father actually says is far more chilling.

“Do you think I have not been trying to do that the entire time you’ve been here?”  His father’s foreign lips curl into a grim line.  Then, with a calm that is quickly eluding Pavel,  he orders, “Tell me what you know.”

It is the only request he’s ever made of Pavel that he’s willingly complied with.

***

The boy had come to him.

And, soft and untutored as he had been kept, had still managed to subdue two of his best Heartrenders.  And now, foolishly unguarded, his unruly black hair falling into his eyes, he sleeps on the settee in his office.

(For a moment he thinks of innumerable camps and fires and his madraya, who would always greet him with a “Boy,” no matter how much time had elapsed since the last time they had been in proximity to one another and how much of a boy he no longer was.  How she would sigh and then push food into his hands, bidding him eat.)

He watches for a while.

Watches what she had foolishly given so much up for by putting herself into Solovyov’s hands.  Watches the boy who she chose and will keep choosing.

He, unexpectedly, had not been useless, though.  Solovyov had not accounted for him, certainly.  Which introduced another variable.

He hopes it is enough.  Mostly because, typically, Alina had also not accounted for what Solovyov actually was.

But the boy has perhaps proven he can be of use.

It is up to him to continue to be of use.

He turns away from the boy who has a face that is unquestionably like his and once again tries to push through the light of the connection that tethers them together, his efforts dissipating into the sparks of the Firebird like so many scattered shadows.

Then, he tries again.  His will against it, once again.

And again.

And again.

And still he finds nothing.

***

At some point, as his father had made several phone calls and delivered blistering orders to whoever was on the other end, the world changes between one blink and the next, as Pavel simply passes out on the stiff, uncomfortable settee that is obviously there more to look impressive than to sit on.  He wakes under a warm duvet, with a tray of cold meats and cheeses on the highly polished table next to him.

(Pavel wonders at this as he cannot imagine his father plucking up a duvet to put on his sleeping son or ordering food for him from the kitchens at Ryevost at all.  Whatever his mother’s early stories about him might have hinted, he does not seem like that kind of man.)

Pavel pulls himself up and sees that his father is working at his desk in corner, silently pouring over something and taking notes, as the only sound in the room is the scratching of his pen. 

Without even turning around he says, “Eat.”

Pavel, who has not eaten more than a few purloined pastries for the entirety of a day, doesn’t argue.  He simply eats what has been offered to him mechanically, trying to ignore the other occupant of the room as much as he possibly can.

At some point, he stops and his father, still not looking up from his work, asks, “Where do they think you are?”

Pavel frowns.

“I left a note.  One of my teachers… well, he was the one who got me in touch with a member of the Special Forces who told me about Madraya’s… injuries.”  He pauses and his father doesn’t so much as react.  “So I left a note saying I’d gone to my father’s kin to make her recovery easier.”

His tone when he responds is almost defensively neutral.

“And who, pray tell, are your father’s kin?”

He takes a breath and says, “On paper I’m the son of a dead otkazat’sya from Dva Stolba.  So,” he draws another breath, “I’d presume they might go there to look for me.”

For some reason, this is the bit of information that makes his father turn around and look at him at last, though Pavel cannot fathom why.  It wasn’t as if his mother could have listed “Aleksander Morozov, Ancient Asshole Extraordinaire” on the birth registry along with his not-wife “Aleksandra Morozova.”

“We have a lead of a few hours, then” he says. 

Pavel doesn’t even bother to hide his confusion at this statement, though his bruised cheek throbs when his lips twist into a frown.

“Until what?”

“They attempt to assassinate you for what you know.”

Pavel blinks.  Then he responds to what he can, definitively, respond to:  “I—I don’t know anything.”  He pauses.  “Do you think I’d be here if I knew something?”

His father’s mouth twists into a leering smirk.

“Do you think they care?”

It is then that Pavel realizes he is missing a critical piece of information that is father is not.

“Who is ‘they’?”

His father’s expression shifts, like a small stone tossed in a pond, and just for a the barest moment he reveals himself.  And just then Pavel realizes he’s made a mistake—his father is not at all calm.  He is, perhaps, the farthest thing from calm.  He is furious and, likely through long practice, his fury is concealed with an implacable mask.

(His mother has always told Pavel he is a possessive man.  Whoever “they” are is about to find that out in probably the least desirable way possible.  His father has caused a civil war over his mother before, after all, and that’s a matter of documented historical record.)

His father, of course, doesn’t answer.  Instead, he indicates a lump of grey fabric that has been unceremoniously left on the back of the settee and says, “Dress.  We leave in an hour.  You are to follow all of my orders or I will leave you to find out precisely who ‘they’ are and what ‘they’ will do.”

Pavel doesn’t need to be told twice.  He knows what the stakes are.  And, Saints forbid word get to his mother that something has happened to her son when his father is vaguely in charge of him.  Then, threat delivered and used to being obeyed, his father is turning back to his desk to finish whatever task he has set for himself, as Pavel changes into a Ravkan Army uniform with the banding of a Heartrender. 

Then quietly, as this will likely be his last bit of resistance for a while, Pavel asks, “Do you at least know where she is?”

His father stops, his pen poised above the paper, though he does not look back at him.

“Fjerda,” he says, his voice thrumming with anger he’s not bothering to conceal.  “Near Overüt.”

“Is she… alive?”

He asks so quietly, he does not know, for a moment, if his father has heard him.

But he had, because he responds, the silk of his voice dark and ominous, “She had better be.”

Then there is just the scratching of his pen between them.

***

Chapter Text

xiv.  Kin

Pavel loses track of how many times they change cars and change directions on the nameless, cratered streets of Ravka or on remote, dusty country roads.  His father had ordered him to simply take hold of his briefcase—a brown, gleaming thing with his false name embossed with gold on one side between the buckles—salute where he should, and not say a single word to anyone.

For most of the dizzying array of their innumerable legs of the journey, his father works on paperwork, on a lap desk that seems to come with each car that materializes off of dusty roads in the middle of nowhere.

Sometimes they are in the company of other soldiers, most with the banded collar and sleeves that mark them as Grisha, and Pavel sits, eyes half-glazed over, not daring to succumb to sleep, and instead remaining in stiff military bearing in their presence.

Only once does his father even address him, on one of the few legs of their journey when they are alone except for an otkazat’sya driver who is separated from them by a thick window of Fabrikator-made glass.  Pavel doesn’t even know how many hours he has sat in cars that have crisscrossed Ravka’s back country, seemingly at random. 

He speaks without looking up from his work.

“How did you manage to best two Heartrenders?”

Pavel masks his annoyance at the question, wondering what answer will allow him to exit from this conversation the fastest.  He chisels his reply down to two words:  “Dumb luck.”

His father actually deigns to look up at him, his grey eyes fixing on him in a way that makes Pavel want to squirm.  He does not, though, because he will not cede his father any unnecessary points in the already deeply unfair game they are playing.  The mouth in his strange face crooks up into a half-smile that doesn’t seem as at home on his features as it should.

“At least you know that,” he says at last.

Pavel, who had not seen either man when he left Ryevost, asks, “What happened to them?”

The smile that broadens on his father’s foreign face, with its too dark skin, and too thick mouth, and too brown hair, reminds Pavel of a serpent coiling to strike.

“You are very like your mother,” he observes before moving back to his work.

“How so?” he asks, even though he knows this is what he wants and what his father wants seems, by and large, to be not very good for anyone but his father.

He does not even bother to look up again.

“You both ask questions you do not really want the answers to,” he replies.

Pavel loses track of the hours before they speak to one another again.  He watches the early autumn landscape of Ravka roll by—all lakes and yellowing fields and red flaming trees that blur into one another, only to be interrupted by small villages dutifully flying the flag of the Firebird in a show of overt patriotism.  Finally, at some point, he nods off.

***

He is roused roughly, and he realizes his father has shaken him awake.

(Strangely, Pavel thinks this is the first time in his life that his father has ever actually touched him.  Aside from slapping him.  Which Pavel supposes may count.).

Pavel, conscious that he’s masquerading as a body guard of sorts, pulls himself up to attention and doesn’t miss the look of censure in his father’s eyes.

“Come,” he says softly.

Pavel takes the briefcase with him, and this time, they are in the dusk of a fully-fledged city.  It is full of the squat grey buildings which all look the same and that supposedly proclaim that Ravka has advanced into a new and more modern era.

He does not ask where they’ve finally come—mostly because he’s not allowed to under his father’s current operating rules, and he doesn’t want to appear that he’s been cooped up in the Little Palace for most of his life, even if he has indeed been cooped up in the Little Palace for most of his life.  So, he follows, pretending his grey, slightly too large uniform is not rumpled as he follows a respectful five steps after his father.  They come into one of the nicer of the grey buildings, under the cover of an awning and into a lamplit lobby.

The woman behind the polished oak counter doesn’t even bother to stop them.  Rather, with a salute and a small acknowledgement of “General,” that is received with the barest nod of his father’s head, he goes into a stairwell and climbs a full three floors.  They walk down a narrow hallway and his father slips a key from his pocket and puts it into a door.

The door opens to a barely furnished apartment and he enters.  Since his father hasn’t managed to maim or kill Pavel yet, and he, at the very least, seems as upset as he may be likely to get about his mother, Pavel decides he will follow him in.  His father waits for him in the foyer, holding up a gloved hand for silence.  Pavel waits as he roots around in several of the rooms and comes back with several small, mechanical devices which Pavel has never seen.

Smoothly, his father removes one of his gloves and the things become pulverized in a ball of shadow.

“What…?” Pavel doesn’t even know how to ask about what he’s seen.

“Wiretaps,” he says.  “The Minister of Spies is playing a dangerous game with an opponent he only thinks he knows.”

“Can we…?”  Talk.  Think.  Be…?

His father gives him a sharp look.  As if he is an idiot.

“Yes,” he says,  “Now.”

He swishes on a heel and goes deeper into the apartment.

“Where are we?” Pavel asks, not entirely certain if he should follow after.  Because, really, the only version of the man he has any form of knowledge about is the Darkling, who has allegedly been dead for close to 300 years, and the strange being that emerges from his mother’s old stories who likes too much sugar in his tea and loves horses and occasionally divides up Ravka with a giant hulking wall of shadow wherein monsters live.

As far as Pavel can tell, the man in front of him is none of these things.  He’s a person who has, strangely, gone into a very spartan, impersonal bedroom and has begun shoveling a fair bit of black clothing into a bag and ignoring Pavel’s existence.

(Well, at least the last behavior is pretty consistent over the last 15 years.  Some things in this surreal situation still hold constant).

The stranger before him simply responds, “My official residence in Arkesk.”

That’s normal, Pavel tells himself.  That his father has a whole life he doesn’t know about.  That apparently has spies in it.  That his life without his mother in it has become nightmarish and strange is something he doesn’t really want to contemplate.  Did his mother sweep for wiretaps in the Vezda Suite?  Did she have some impersonal apartment like this close to the front with a life that she has never shared with Pavel?

(He thinks about the brief conversation with his father earlier and decides that, for now, there are perhaps some questions he does not want answers to right now.  His life seems to have become nightmarish enough due to the subtraction of his mother and the addition of his father.)

His father closes the case.

“What did you bring?” he asks.

Pavel fixes his expression on his borrowed shoes, thinking about the bag of useless idiocy he had left back in Ryevost.

“Myself mostly,” he responds, not overly expecting his father will do much to rectify this.

Indeed, utterly neutrally, he hums.  Then, as if Pavel has winked out of existence again when it is convenient for him, he goes to the phone and calls someone to have a brief and confusing conversation that sounds like gibberish.  Pavel, feeling like he is someone else and that these last few days have been something of a horrifying dream, sits down in an armchair that looks like no one has ever sat in it.

His father briefly disappears and comes back dressed in non-descript clothing—mostly black.  At least he’s consistent about some things.

“Bathe,” he says.  “I’ve left clothing for you for the time being.”

Refusing to ask directions, Pavel tries not to look like he is bumbling around until he finds a room with a tub where clothing, also mostly black and definitely his father’s, has been laid out on the small sink cabinet for him.

The small pile of folded clothes seems to come from another world that doesn’t have his father in it, but, rather than complicate everything that doesn’t make sense in his current life—which, frankly, is most of it—Pavel contemplates drowning himself in the clawfoot tub.

The clothes are too long in both the arm and the legs—Pavel is tall for his age and still growing, but his father is still taller.  The strangeness of wearing his clothing—and that they have the strange scent of the coming of winter on them, the smell of a stranger he does not know, is not lost on him.  It apparently isn’t lost on his father either, as when he comes out, his black hair slicked carelessly back, the black hems of his trousers rolled up, and his fingertips sticking out of the white, button-up shirt, the stranger who is nonetheless related to him frowns.

Then, he says, “We leave tonight.”

Pavel doesn’t so much as nod.

“And we go to Fjerda?”

“Yes,” he responds without giving any useful details.  Not that he’s come to expect anything like transparency or, well, information from the man.  Rather, with no further discussion, his father goes into his kitchen and goes through the completely normal and yet utterly bizarre display of making what is, apparently, their dinner.  It is a simple soup joined by some dark rye bread.  Pavel is mostly certain it is not poisoned, because his father, like he is actually human, is eating it, too.

They eat it at the table, across from one another, a strange parody of a father and son.  Pavel watches him over his spoon.

“What happened to her?” he asks morosely, dunking some of the bread into the (surprisingly tasty) broth.

His father, though, remains his father despite his bizarre display of human skills, and simply responds, “I’ll know more tonight.”

Then, looking hard at the bowl of soup in front of him and the remaining crust of bread, he asks the one question he does not necessarily want an answer to, but he feels he should know to expect.

He forces himself to look up at a face that isn’t his father’s, but belongs to him for the time being.

“Why haven’t you just left me behind?”

His father holds his gaze for a long time, something that Pavel can’t identify flickering in his expression.

“Because the battle lines between your mother and I have been drawn for a long, long time, boy.”

Pavel bites his lip, then releases it, realizing he’s still being examined.

“And I am your blood.”

He won’t hazard the word “son.”  He knows this is a forced alliance with mutual interests.  He is, though, curious if his father carries with him any sense of familial ties.

His answer is a kind of riddle.

“Perhaps I think of you rather as my mother might have thought of me.”

Knowing well that his question is an escalation of something that is probably better left alone—if his father helps him find his mother, that will be enough for Pavel.  They can go back to an existence without him easily.  Because that is how it has always been.  That’s how Pavel wishes it still were.

But he cannot help but ask.

“And what did your mother think of you?”

There is no trace of falsehood in his answer:  “That I was more of a curse than a son.”

(It will be decades before Pavel unravels that statement.  And by then he has learned that his father doesn’t lie like a normal person.

Because half-stories don’t count as lies in his code of ethics.  And the story of his grandmother, as he hears it first from his father’s lips, doesn’t even count as the barest fraction of that particular story.)

***

After a long walk through the sleepy streets of Arkesk before the sun even rises, they end up in a black car… a black car his father is driving.  They are driving for what seems like an eternity, the only noise the roll of the tires and the scrape of the dirt roads they travel on once they have left the rough cobblestone streets of Arkesk.

“I did not know you could drive,” Pavel observes.

One of his eyebrows quirks, though he does not take his eyes off of the pale scope of what the headlights can see in front of them.

“Has your mother not learned?”

Pavel has certainly never seen her drive herself anywhere.  It might be possible.

He settles for an answer that is not a betrayal:  “I don’t know.”

His father gives a little mirthless exhalation that might pass for a laugh.

This is the total of their conversation until his father pulls down a narrow road—certainly one not meant to be driven down by a car, and drives down it until he finds a nondescript house.

“Do not speak or confirm anything to them,” he orders—as per the usual.

The house has not yet been attached to the fledgling Ravkan electrical grid and so, when his father knocks loudly, a squat old woman carrying an old fashioned oil lamp opens the door and shines it in his face, before bowing and saying, “Moi soverenyi.”

Then, hardly pausing to look at him, she shows him in.  He sits in a small, cramped parlor and Pavel sits next to him, uncomfortably stiff.

It is a humble dwelling—a place that President Vasiliev’s March to Modernity for the Ravkan People has marched right on by.  Mostly because, the more Pavel looks around, the more he realizes that the people who live here are hardly interested in keeping up with Fjerdan or Kerch technology.  They are served tea from a silver samovar and served cakes on a chipped china plates.  And, halfway through politely drinking a cup of tea, Pavel realizes that, in a small alcove, mostly hidden from view, are forbidden pieces of iconography: A woman, one hand held wide over the waves, a broken heart nestled in her other hand, held close to her chest.  A picture of a woman amidst her miraculous field of blood red roses.  The eclipsed sun and the sun ascendant, joined in the sign of the Duality of Equals. 

When his father has finished the tea, the woman says, “You’d like to be put back.”

His father nods gravely.

Then, the woman pulls up a stool and sets upon the table a mess of assorted objects and, raising her hands, begins to pull off his father’s false face—adjustment by adjustment revealing the black hair, his pale skin, the sharp planes of his face and cut of his jaw.  Until a face startlingly familiar to Pavel’s own emerges again.

The woman’s eyes, more than once, flick to Pavel’s own face as she works, though she says nothing and neither does he.

Then, his father thanks her and they get back into the black car in the dark.

The silence is driving him a little crazy, he thinks.  It is his only excuse for even contemplating saying what he does next.  That and the homey nature of the living room after living in his father’s strange, impersonal world for what feels far longer than it has been had reminded him a bit of his mother.

“She was a Counter-Revolutionary,” Pavel states.  He’s not even certain what this observation will produce.

His father doesn’t even bother to deny this.  He hums, his long, gloved fingers gripping the clutch of the car a bit tighter.  And now that Pavel has filled the silence once, he might as well do it again.

“…You’re the General of the United Ravkan Army.”

A smile slides across his lips and he asks, with deceptive ease, “Do you have a question or an accusation?”

Pavel knows a trap when he hears it, no matter what the tone is of the question.

“An observation,” he demurs, hopefully sidestepping whatever he feels like he’s going to have to walk into anyways.

“You would do well to keep your… observations to yourself for the duration of tonight.”

Swallowing, Pavel simply looks forward at what little the headlights of the car illuminate in front of them.  As it turns out, Ravka outside of the Little Palace is mostly empty roads and little villages that are occasionally supplanted by bigger villages.  His father drives on towards the unknown.

In lieu of falling asleep, he takes the time to make a perusal of his father out of the corner of his eyes.  Mostly because now that he’s wearing his own face, the one like Pavel’s, he can examine him for, perhaps, the first time.  He is reassured and elegant where Pavel is all sharp angles and gangly limbs.  And, were they off on some normal father and son trip somewhere, Pavel might ask him how he keeps his hair flat like that—because try as he might, he’s not sure it has it in it to actually lay flat.  He might ask if he looks more like his father or his mother—or what his own father was like.  Because he’s never seen reference to the Darkling having any father but, ironically, himself.

And Pavel only knows that because he knows entirely too much about his family lineage.

Well, about some parts of his family lineage.  Pavel has some startling gaps: like if his father and mother even like each other.  Sure, his father seems to be going to some lengths to find his mother and bring her back to where she belongs, but his motives are not clear.  Yet, his mother clearly wanted her son to know about him… she’d told him story after story about the Shadow Summoner growing up.  Even though she never did acknowledge that said Shadow Summoner was his father and maybe should have been there the entire time.

(He does not think either of them would answer if he asked why he wasn’t…)

Sometimes Pavel honestly wondered if the stories his mother had told him were meant to be an antidote to the actual man when he showed up.

Pavel suppresses a sigh—though he doesn’t think his father would care about it even if he indulged in it—and merely drowsily looks out the window as they turn onto a tight succession of roads.  He doesn’t even know how long they’ve been driving when his father pulls into a small road which is blocked by a rough-hewn gate.

The man—a soldier from the crisp salute he gives him when he recognizes him on sight—calls him “moi soverenyi” like the other woman had and opens the gate.  Before them squats a series of small, squat non-descript buildings.

Pavel has been around facets of the military for most of his life, so he recognizes it almost immediately as some sort of encampment that is trying its best not to be one.  However, there is no flag of the Firebird, no obvious supply trucks, nothing to really clearly denote what kind of place it is.

His father opens his mouth to speak to him again, as they make a very slow approach to the buildings, and Pavel cuts him off, “Be quiet and generally pretend I don’t exist.”

One black eyebrow arches and he says, with something like amusement, “At least you’re not entirely stupid, boy.”

He gets out and, almost immediately, he passes the keys over to a man—also clearly a military officer of some kind who wears no uniform—and Pavel scurries to get out as the officer slides into the seat his father had just left.

“Get the bags,” his father orders.

Pavel begrudgingly does, following after him through a facility that he is more and more certain with each step he takes shouldn’t exist.  He barrels through the first door, where several people are already waiting.

It’s then he sees the banner: the Sun Ascendant and the Moon in Eclipse, joined.  The flag of the Counter-Revolutionary forces who supported the old ways and looked to the Suns and Shadows to save them from Vladimir Vasiliev’s destruction of the entire Ravkan way of life.

(His mother had made passing comments about them, mostly implying if the old ways had been entirely working, than no one would want to change them.  He’s asked, though, in the privacy of their Suite, if his mother finds Vasiliev’s much better and he is met with stony silence and hushed.)

His father strides towards them like he is not the General of the opposing side and the people welcome him as if he is not the General of the opposing side.

(Pavel immediately wonders which side he is actually playing.  And if his mother knows his father is playing both sides.

But mostly he is wondering why on earth his father would trust him—the son he won’t name as a son—with such information.  Perhaps it is all one glorious test.

Or one glorious trap.)

The people are grouped around a rough-hewn table—no more than a plank supported by a series of crates, really, and pouring over a map.  They didn’t even seem to be overly surprised by his father’s appearance, which they acknowledge with a nod of their heads and a whispered “moi soverenyi.”  He simply joins their throng and asks, “Where is the Sun Sankta?”

Pavel hangs back, suddenly not aware of what he should do.

A thin man, tall and spare, launches immediately into an explanation:  “We think she is being held in a facility several hours outside of Overüt.  Her son has disappeared, I’m told, though it is being circulated that he is visiting his father’s kin during his mother’s recovery.”

Pavel freezes.  Mostly because this suggests that his father has been keeping tabs on him and his mother from afar.

“Pay him no mind,” his father says.  For the first time the tall spare man spies Pavel over his father’s shoulder and for a fraction of a second his face bears the suggestion of surprise.  “We’ve ascertained it was Solovyov?”

The tall man nods.

“We do not know if the Sun Sankta was aware she was serving Solovyov or not.  The nature of the mission was… something likely to arouse her sympathies.”

Pavel can only see his back, but the threat that laces his tone is unmistakable: “I will deal with Solovyov personally.”

A woman, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, gives a bare bow before saying, “I still think that, perhaps, moi soverenyi, you should rethink going into Fjerda personally… your loss would be—”

His father draws himself up to his full height and says in a tone that is dripping with dangerous intent, “Do you think there is a chance I will cede what is ours to Fjerda?”

The woman seems to know her peril, because she edges back and hurries to say, “Of course not, moi soverenyi.”

“What arrangements have been made?”

Another rolls of paper—a map and something smaller, is put on the table before him.

“There’s a trader flyer bound for Overüt.  We have no contacts at the actual facility and no way of getting you there from Overüt.  Honestly, we are not even sure how Solovyov managed to dispatch the Sun Sankta there.”

His father does not speak for a moment, appearing to consider this.

“We will manage.”

The woman from earlier pretends to notice Pavel for the first time with a rise in her eyebrows.  She doesn’t dare sweep her eyes from him to his father—though Pavel knows there is more of a resemblance than he, perhaps, would like to admit. 

“That’s…” the woman says, and there is a pause, “Pavel Morozov.  The Sankta’s son.”

Pavel wonders if there will be some speculation about the other half of his parentage when they leave the room.

His father is smirking when he turns back to look at him.

“The boy has been a font of surprising information.”  Pavel keeps his expression what he hopes is carefully neutral, knowing that one wrong move here will put him at odds with not only his father, but a number of people whom he knows nothing about, but that they’ve managed to evade the government for a very long time.  His father turns back to them and away from him, drawing their attention back to the map, maybe so they will draw no conclusions about what surprising information he is a font of.  He then adds, “He will also assure the Sun Sankta’s cooperation.”

The sentence, said so matter-of-factly, sends a chill down Pavel’s spine.

Mostly because he is fairly certain it is true and, despite the fact that he’s managed to bring him here with no harm thus far, he knows very well his father is not a kind man doing this because Pavel just happens to be his son.

***

He is shown to an impersonal room with a cot which is guarded by a motley crew of men and women who do not have any identifiable uniform or device.  Pavel is not certain if the added protection is so that he doesn’t get out or other people don’t get in.

His father is not going to be forthcoming about who he trusts and doesn’t.  But it doesn’t bother him in this instance because he doesn’t see anything but the fabric of his pillow.

When he gets up there are new clothes, awaiting him—warm and thick and not black except for the nondescript black jacket and a thick hat.

He dresses, because he can take a hint, and he decides he, the son of the preeminent symbol of the government that these people are fighting against, probably shouldn’t wander around what is, apparently, a counter-revolutionary base.

(That he is also the son of the General for both the counter-revolutionary forces and the government forces, he suspects his father likely deems irrelevant information.  Even though, to Pavel’s mind, it is most decidedly relevant.)

There’s a blur of corridors and cars and more transfers between vehicles, during which he mostly sits next to his father and they both pretend the other doesn’t really exist.  And then, he is walking after the increasingly familiar tall, unbending back of his father into an airfield.

His father speaks rapid-fire Fjerdan to the obviously Fjerdan flyer captain, who regards them both with narrow-eyed suspicion.

He wonders if his father knows he speaks Fjerdan, mostly because, after a traditional Fjerdan greeting and some pleasantries he didn’t know his father had in him, his father takes out just enough Fjerdan krydda to make the conversation worth his while and says, “I’m told you have room for my son and I.”

It is strange to have him own it, even though he knows it is something of a truth woven into a lie.  The krydda, perhaps, clouding the man’s judgement, because he clearly has no idea who he is taking on his flyer, lets them on and Pavel’s next few hours pass in vaguely queasy unease.

But eventually they land it is in the lightly snow-flecked expanse of the northern Fjerdan countryside, with Overũt’s smoke billowing chimneys and squat, industrial grey houses in the background.  Between the ache in his stomach and the ache in his heart, and the fact he cannot truly say how many days it has been since he set out from Os Alta to find his father as a means to find his mother, he is not even overly impressed that he has left Ravka for the first time.  He does not even bother to wonder what his mother would say about the whole thing.

Mostly he feels cold and numb, which he mostly can’t actually even attribute to the weather.  Pavel barely registers climbing in the passenger seat of a car, his father once again at the wheel.  They are either hours or minutes into their journey to wherever they are going when he realizes he has no idea where exactly his father managed to find a car.

But an entire sense of unreality pervades the fact that he is driving through Saints-forsaken Fjerda with, of all the people in the world, his father.

And the sense that none of it is real allows him to voice what he really fears, after all, to a man who probably hasn’t ever thought he might have feelings.  Mostly because Pavel is not entirely sure his father understands what feelings are, because he is approximately a billion years old and a boogey man who makes a mean soup.

“Fjerdans don’t take Grisha captive,” he speaks into being.  He sees his father’s black gloved hands tighten over the steering wheel.  “Shu Han does that.  Fjerda—” he hesitates “—Drüskelle still burn them for heresy.  Unofficially, at least.”

His father’s lips tighten in a grim line.

“They shoot them these days.  The days of the pyres of Djel are over.  The ruling line does not like to admit their practices are still medieval.”

As his father was likely alive in medieval times, Pavel had to give him this observation.  However, he realizes his father knows exactly what Pavel fears and does not intend to give him an answer to his implied question.

Pavel feels foolish for thinking he could be anything so normal as nice.

Bluntly, like his mother might be after a long day, he just asks, “How do you even know she is still alive and this isn’t a suicide mission?”

His father’s eyes flick over to him and, in the shine of the car’s slanted windshield, he can tell that this question doesn’t please him.

“I’d know if she was dead,” he says shortly.  Then despite the fact that his son, whom his mother jokes got nothing from her in terms of his appearance, is sitting right beside him, as absolute evidence of his own self-delusion, he says, “There are no others like us.”   

Pavel pictures his mother rolling her eyes.

(He bets, even from the half-conversations he’s only vaguely heard fragments and pieces of that it is this kind of nonsense which makes her mother say, in a tone of disappointment that Pavel is more familiar with than he’d like to be, “Aleksander.”

He wonders how fast he would die if Pavel tried the same strategy with his father.)

Instead, not letting it pass, he forms his words into a barb, though he does not know if his father really has any soft parts in which it might lodge.

“That’s funny,” he says, although its largely rhetorical because there’s not so much that’s funny about your own father denying your existence, “It scares Madraya that I’m so like you.”

His father laughs—a startling and rich sound that he has never heard before.  Because apparently it is funny to him.

“My dearest Alina has never liked the consequences of her own actions, boy.”

Pavel tries to recover his equilibrium, feeling anger well up in him, he tilts his chin up and says, “Maybe she got that from you.”

His father smirks.

“I assume you got that undesirable trait from her.  You’ve, of course, amply proven you have no regard for your own mother’s desire to protect you at a foolish cost to herself.”

The observation rings in the air.  And suddenly, sharp and stomach gnarling, doubt grips Pavel in a vise.  Because he’s missed something terribly significant.

“I—” he begins.

Next to him, the wavering reflection of his father in the windshield, arches an eyebrow.

“You’ve already cost two Heartrenders their lives.”

The statement hits Pavel like a punch in the stomach.

“I—didn’t kill them,” he manages.

“I did what you wouldn’t, boy,” his voice is calm and measured and betrays absolutely no sense of remorse, which leaves Pavel feeling all the more sickened.  “Isn’t that why you ran along and found me once you couldn’t hide behind your mother’s skirts?”

“They didn’t need to die!”  Pavel only realizes he’s shouting after the words leave his mouth and he sits in fist-balled rage.

His father is cold as ice, utterly calm and unbothered by the outburst.

“They knew what you were.  Something your mother foolishly gave up her freedom to make sure didn’t happen.”  He pauses for a moment and the vise in Pavel’s chest only tightens.  “I’ve killed for less.”

Rage—biting, clouding, terrible, making the dark writhe around him—robs Pavel of any ability to comment upon his father’s habitual homicides.

“And did you never think to examine that a high level member of the Special Forces would just give you information regarding another high profile member of the Special Forces?”  Pavel remembers Mr. Lebedev and the man in his black uniform.  His father goes on, “Do you think that you are so unknown that a uniform would hide the fact that the Sun Summoner’s son went straight to General Petrov in Ryevost and that it wasn’t immediately reported when we entered the first car?”

The pieces slot into place with a ferocity that makes Pavel want to vomit.

“This is all a trap.”  The second conclusion follows hard upon.  “She’s—”  He doesn’t want to say it, but the silence vibrates between them and somehow Pavel knows he won’t get any other information until he says it definitively.  So he swallows and says, “She’s alive because she is bait.”

“That explains Solovyov,” he says offhandedly, the name coming back to him from last night.  “Not Fjerda.”

Pavel turns off part of his brain as words spool out of him, horrible and terrible:  “If Fjerda had caught the Sun Summoner… news of her execution would be everywhere.”

“Indeed,” his father drawls, as if they are talking over an academic exercise and not Pavel’s mother and… whatever it is she is to him.  “How hard do you think your mother is to subdue, boy?”

Pavel blinks, stuck on the word “subdue.”  He thinks about history and the Fold and the Battle of the Little Palace and the decimation of Novokribirsk.

“You haven’t been able to do it.”

His father’s voice becomes quieter, but it is a thing honed and polished, like a knife in the dark:  “Not while she’s a Grisha.”

“You can’t—” he begins.  You don’t just stop being Grisha.  His father doesn’t make him finish the thought, though.  Maybe because some monsters are too terrible for even him to contemplate.  Which is a more chilling thought that Pavel needs at the moment.

“Not until now, I suspect.”  He leaves that dangling in the air.

He thinks about how his father had told him he could not reach her.  Seen the anger in his frame.  Knows he’s killed for her before and is going to again now.

“Who is Solovyov?” he finally asks, because that information seems to be at the heart of his mother’s disappearance.

“You do have a modicum of intelligence,” he says, anger drifting into his answer.  “Solovyov is the hidden face of Ravka—the Head of the Special Forces.  A man who does not strictly exist.”

“Why would he want my mother?”

His father scoffs.  “My comment upon your intelligence was perhaps… precipitous.”

Mostly because they’ve already established that his mother is the bait in a trap.  A trap that began with her own son.  But they have no use for him.  But—a suspicion forms and solidifies and he looks at the almost familiar profile of his father’s face and sees red.

“They want you,” he says, the anger in his voice rising like a tide.  “They’re using Madraya to get to you.”

His father offers the next piece of information like it has nothing to do with him, like it has not doomed his mother, and put his bastard son in this car next to him:  “The leader of the Counter-Revolutionaries is rumored to be a Shadow Summoner.”

Pavel thinks of the man in black with Mr. Lebedev, how he was eager to give him information on his mother.  About The Rules.  About how once he became known he could never be unknown.  About the devices in his father’s apartment in Arkesk.

About two dead Heartrenders.

His father’s sentence comes as an indictment:  “And someone has confirmed that the Sun Summoner’s son is one, as well.”

Pavel’s voice comes out in a stunted whisper:  “Shadow Summoner’s only come from one bloodline.”

His father is smiling.  But it is a smile borne of a frosty, artic rage.

“Solovyov’s suspected that the leader of the Counter-Revolutionary Forces is the Sun Summoner’s former lover for some time.”

His smile broadens and Pavel swears there are daggers glinting in his teeth.  Suddenly, his mother’s voice comes back to him:  “Trust your father with nothing but me.”

His father continues on with a voice that is calm only on the surface.

“They’re about to find they’ve caught exactly what they set out to catch.”

Pavel admits to himself he’s afraid of him and, as of right now, he’s not even entirely his enemy.

Whoever Solovyov is… he does not understand what he’s done.

***

Pavel is roused into the darkness of a Fjerdan night once more with an abrupt stop and a curt command to “Get out.”  As he is rapidly learning how to wake up and will his body into movements that it does not want to do upon waking, he manages to roll out of the car and follows his father to the car’s trunk.

He opens the case of his belongings, and removes his jacket.  Then, taking one of his black garments out, Pavel recognizes it for what it is.

A black Kefta.  Which, minus the gold embroidery, is just like the one his mother wears to official events.  He slides his arms through and does up the buttons with practiced ease, before easing a heavy coat—black, for a change—over it.

Then, before Pavel has a moment to wonder that he had a lot of audacity to claim he could be a Darkling when his father can look like that, something is roughly shoved at him.

“Put that on.”

Pavel looks down, numbly, at the bundle of fabric.

It, he realizes, is also a black, wool-lined kefta, though the buckles are gold to his father’s silver.  As he’s always been coded as an otkazat’sya at the Little Palace—which was apparently ultimately a useless charade—he’s never worn one, so his fingers, numbed with cold because he’s had to remove his gloves to manage the catches, trip as he does it up.  It fits, unlike the clothes given to him at the apartment in Arkesk.

Not bothering to ask what it even means that his father is making this gesture, he pulls his black coat over it.

Then, quietly, his father puts his hands on his shoulders, for a moment a picture of father and son, until his grip becomes bruisingly strong and the image descends into one of parody again.  The moment is so entirely bizarre, that Pavel actually stares into the cold, grey of his father’s eyes before he says, in a tone of command, “You’ll tell your dearest Madraya what I am about do for you.”

The question barely has time to form on the tip of his tongue before one of his father’s hands is off his shoulder—a movement so fast, Pavel doesn’t do more than flinch to counter it.  His father’s hand comes down sharply on his head, with a crack.

Then Pavel’s world goes utterly black.

***

(Pavel does not see how Aleksander Morozov releases the full extent of his power and experience.  How he claps his hands together and brings to bear a storm of shadows, finding his way into the facility with a Cut.

He does not see him stride down the halls of the facility, killing whoever he happens by, until the floors are slick with blood and there are no survivors.

He does not see how Fjerdan technology does nothing to stand in his way and there are no Grisha to even slow his advance.

He does not see him interrogate the few people he finds—taking them to task piece by piece as they yield to the precision of his shadows.  Does not see the cages of half-dead Grisha he finds and then kills out of mercy.

He does not see him find his mother in a similar cage, eyes blazing from within, or see him pick her up, cradling her emaciated form, does not see the rage in his eyes as he realizes what has been done to her.  Does not see how he vents his blind rage with a torrent of shadows.

Does not see that he leaves nothing but her alive.  How he drives her and her son to a stable, and leaves them only long enough to take the car back.  He drives it straight into the gash left by his earlier entrance and then, lighting the car on fire, he stays just long enough to make sure that it had caught.

He walks back to the stable.

He does not see how he holds her desperately.  How he whispers her name.  How he begs her to open her eyes—just open her eyes.  How he holds her, shaking into the night, the shadows curling about her until finally, finally, he passes out from sheer exhaustion.

Pavel sees nothing of this.

And Aleksander much prefers it this way.

He does not need his son to know.)

***

Chapter Text

XV.  Maturity

The scent of hay, disconcertingly, hits his nose just before the ache in his head sharply  announces itself.

He’s lucky his Small Science allows him to see well in the dark, because it is quite dark when he finally opens his eyes.  The strange memory of his father hitting him over the head swims in and out, like the bright spots on the fringes of his vision which blot out the otherwise uniform darkness.

Holding his head, he eases himself up, a dirty blanket falling off of him, realizing that somehow, he’s now found himself in a pile of hay—he massages his temples and finally can keep his eyes open long enough to wait for them to adjust to the darkness so he can take stock of where the pile of hay actually is.

It appears, he thinks on a cursory inspection and the unmistakable whickering of horses that is the only other sound to mar the silence, that he has somehow been transported to a stable.  So, either the afterlife is a strange place—and either his father or the Fjerdans has bothered to kill him—or someone, at some point, really had pulled him into a stable and left what is definitely a saddle cloth draped over his unconscious form.

He's in a stall, he realizes, and he is fairly certain that his father has put him there.  Mostly because he is sitting behind him, his back propped up on the rough boards of the stable’s back wall, ostensibly watching the only opening.  But for the first time since Ryevost, maybe, his father is sleeping and not even Pavel’s movements wake him.  One of the sleeves of his black kefta is torn and his skin, usually as pale as Pavel’s, is tinged with an unnatural pallor and there are heavy circles under his eyes.  Around one forearm is a roughly tied scrap of dirty white fabric, stained dark with what must be blood.

There’s a lump pillowed on his legs.  Pavel, his head still feeling thick and sluggish, watches it for a long time and realizes that the lump is breathing under a spill of the black fabric of his father’s coat.  Feeling his heart rise into his mouth, he traces the lines and, realizes that under the thick mess of brown hair in his lap is a face as familiar to Pavel as his own reflection.

Because his mother is cradled in his father’s lap, his now ungloved hand splayed over her back—a gesture of either protection or possession.  Or both.

The image, though, allows him to believe there might be something more than late night mysterious conversations between his parents after all.  His father had come, after all, and apparently freed his mother by himself.

His head still pounding, Pavel manages to crawl to her and, removing one of his gloves, he feels underneath his father’s warm coat to find her hand.  He grabs hold of it, hoping really, that the gesture will wake her up.

It doesn’t.

And, rather than the starburst of sunlit warmth that usually rises to meet him when his bare skin connects with hers, what Pavel gets instead is the frigid sunlight of a cloudy day—an anemic light that has to fight its way to the surface.

The sensation of her light—usually a guarantee of comfort and security—instead sends a bolt of terror through him.  But he still holds on—willing her to draw on him.  Willing her light to find him and rise like the dawn sun.  Uncaring if his father wakes and sees him like this and thinks him weak.

Because Pavel has his mother back and there is no force in existence that will make him give her up: not to whoever Solovyov is, not to the Fjerdans, not to Vasiliev, and not even to his own father.

He falls back asleep with a pounding head and the feel of the weak sun in his hand.

***

When Pavel manages to peel his eyes awake again, it is because he is being shaken violently.  When he arises, he realizes the warmth of his mother’s hand has withdrawn, and he blurts out, “Madraya!”

There is a terrible kind of silence and what washes into his view is not his mother, but the hems of his father’s ragged and dirty pants.

His father is standing over him.  There are still dark circles under his eyes, as if his rest hadn’t been particularly restful, and he notices that his grey eyes are more than slightly bloodshot.  Today he’s traded his torn kefta for the black shirt he had worn yesterday.

“Get up, boy,” he commands.

Pavel, fed up with him, raises his chin in silent rebellion and looks around until he sees his mother—in the same place his father occupied last night—pulled into a seated position with her back against the boards of the stable.  Although there is still a shallow rise and fall of her chest to indicate she is alive, her head lolls to the side, like she is a broken doll.  She is wearing his father’s kefta now—her arms swallowed in the much longer sleeve.  His coat is still pooled over her legs, giving the overall impression that his father has dipped her in his shadows.

“What—” he starts.  His father’s face is set in a grim line, his fury barely masked.

“Do you know how to ride a horse, boy?”

Pavel does not peel his eyes away from his mother.

“Yes.  But…”  He wills her silently to open her eyes and wake up.  But she remains as she is.  He finds himself getting to his feet, simply so he can reach for her again.  He is stopped by a crushing grip on his wrist.

“Leave her,” his father says, and since he has grabbed him, Pavel can literally feel him roil with power beneath the iron vise of his grip.

Pavel yanks his hand away with all of his might and, somehow manages to break his grip and rise until he is bare inches away from his father.

“Tell me what has happened to her.”

His father’s grey eyes flash, and there is a hint of something barely restrained in them.  Indeed, as he speaks the darkness in the room throbs violently as if he is just on the verge of keeping it reigned in.

“You noted so astutely that Fjerda does not take Grisha captives.  Instead, they’ve developed a drug to take away Djel’s curse,” he says, every word liquid hatred.  Pavel feels the blood run from his face because he has felt himself how far away the sun feels from his mother.  His father tips his head to look down at Pavel, his eyes searing into him and every ridge of the old scars that line his face suddenly visible at such a close proximity.  “They took what was mine, boy.  And now you can be assured that they are all dead.  Even if they are breathing yet, it will be an utter matter of time.”

Pavel believes every single word of his father’s speech.  He knows that he will hunt every single person who might have harmed a single hair on his mother’s head if he has to do so.  Personally.  And likely savagely.

(And some answering, primal thing utterly wants to do it with him.  Because his mother is theirs if anything.)

“She needs a Healer,” Pavel manages, though he knows it is obvious.

His father looks suddenly tired and ancient for a moment before his mask falls onto his expression again and that one unguarded look unsettles him more than anything he might have told Pavel.

That he chooses to follow that up with, “What she needs is a miracle” makes Pavel’s insides begin to writhe.  Mostly because his father doesn’t seem like one to believe in those.

***

They manage to get his mother on a horse, nestled in his father’s arms.

Pavel, who has been riding horses with his mother since he was barely walking, gets up on the second horse.

He’d asked, snippily, if it would be safer for her to take a car.

His father had merely given him a look as if he is an idiot and declared, “There are no roads to drive on where we are going.”

Pavel, who felt as if his life was becoming increasingly unreal, rides out into the wastes of Hedjut territory in northern Fjerda having to depend on his father, of all people, looking for what even he classifies as “a miracle.”

(That his mother is alive throbs like hope in his breast.  That his father will do anything to keep her that way seems a different thing altogether.)

***

Pavel decides his father has mastered the art of yelling quietly from a few lifetimes of people jumping up to do whatever unreasonable thing he wants done. And even though he understands the impulse to yell—his mother is dying, they're in Saints damned Fjerda, and they're being forced to coexist—Pavel wants to snap he has equal or more reason to yell.  First and foremost being that if something happens to his mother he’s left with his father who keeps ordering him about like one of his soldiers and looking down his nose at him.

So far, only today, his father had doubted his ability to ride a horse, speak Fjerdan, use his own Small Science, and do elementary wound care. He’s done everything he asked.  In fact, in Pavel's opinion, the only thing he had fallen short on was his ability to tolerate him.

(Which, quite frankly, is becoming increasingly low on his priority list).

But his mother sits slumped in front of him, increasingly pale and still not conscious, and his father won’t let her out of his hold.  This is perhaps the only thing that is keeping him from doing more than contemplating strangling the man who had sired him.  That and the fact that he holds his mother in his lap and carefully, almost gently, tips broth into her mouth and allows himself to look halfway concerned when he thinks Pavel isn’t looking. That gives Pavel some hope: things aren’t so far gone that his father can’t keep up damned appearances.

Pavel stays out of his way as his goal is to survive—both his father and Fjerda.

His mother had once told him not to trust his father with anything but her.

He understands now.

He also understands that his father would probably kill him dead for making the observation. Cruelty and violence he had no qualms about his only child observing, (at the one inn his father has allowed them to stop at, in a town that barely merits the name and teeters on the edge of dubious civilization, the patrons at the tavern below were all talking in concerned voices about what Fjerdan media has termed “The Carnage of Overüt.”  He’d even managed to see one grainy newspaper photo: His father had reduced the building to jagged edges and a smoldering nothing with no survivors.  The destruction is so thorough that some had speculated it had been caused by a new kind of weapon.

In hindsight, Pavel thinks that his father knocking him out had been a legitimate act of mercy.).  

Violence is habitual to him, Pavel supposes.  But tenderness might impart the idea that his father is somehow human. The bare idea of which, apparently, made him feel generally angry.

(Pavel wonders if immortality will make him so strange when his life stretches far past his fifteen years.  Wonders if his father was always so serious.  Wonders if he can smile without it either looking like he’s about to destroy everything you love or that you are some small cute thing he finds very, very passing amusement with.

He wonders what has happened to his father that is not written down in any of the books about him he’s read.

Pavel thinks that he likely will never ask him any of this.  Mostly because it seems more likely his father will never answer even should he ask.)

And it is not the time for such questions because, no matter how old she is, his mother is also human and dying, which produces a more sensical kind of anger in his father.

Pavel shares that anger, too.

(But he’s not mad at being human.  At least not yet.)

Halfway through the second day of silence except for the crunch of snow and the pounding of hooves, he finally can’t hold his thought in, "There's nothing north. We should be going south."

“She needs a Healer,” his father says, as if Pavel hasn’t been thinking of this every second he’s awake and she’s not.

(Pavel finds the least bit of comfort in the fact that they’ve downgraded from “miracle” to “Healer.”  One is infinitely more possible.

“A Healer who is not going to be in Hedjut territory.  Mostly because there’s just about no one in Hedjut territory.  Especially Grisha.”“How it must feel to know everything at your age,” he responds dismissively, rather than giving him any sense of rationality or explanation.

“I imagine it must feel like being you every day,” he grinds out without bothering to mutter the sentiment under his breath.

Surprisingly, he gives a bark of laughter rather than indulging his quick anger.  The sound is surprising and he wonders if it is calculated to make Pavel feel small again—that he can’t even goad him correctly when that is what he is so obviously trying to do.  That he can manage maybe worrying over his mother and being an ass all at once.

How talented his father is.

“Perhaps ask a question, boy,” he finally says after they’ve traveled a long distance.

Like, Dearest Papochka, can you please tell me the answer to the thing you already know I want to know but won’t say because you want to show me that you can make me ask?

He settles for “Where are we going?” instead.

“Kenst Kjerte,” is the only information he gets for his trouble.

“Because whaling is going to save her?”

Because that’s the only thing that comes out of islands that even the dour Fjerdans call the Broken Heart.  So, Pavel is expecting misery of the finest order.

“She needs a Sankta.”

As this excursion goes on, Pavel’s mouth just does what it normally does at home:  “I’m fairly certain you don’t even believe in Sanktas.”

“I only pray to myself, boy,” he says.

“And which Sankt are you?”

(He canonizes his father right there:  Sankt Aleksander of the Asses.  You pray to him to commit acts of Absolute Assholery.)

“I’ve been several—The Starless one, part of the Duality, a half of the Twin Saints—they’re all some version of your mother and I,” he supplies.  Pavel thinks he means to brag.  Or impress.  His speech achieves neither of these ends, though.

“Why would a Ravkan Saint be in Kenst Kjerte?” he asks, genuinely curious enough to play his father’s game.

“Because my mother had some strange predilections,” he says cagily. 

“Do you simply enjoy talking in riddles?” Pavel bursts out, exasperated and exhausted.  “You know the purpose of conversation is to have both sides… communicate, right?”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re insufferable, boy?” he says easily, not in the least bit bothered by his outburst.  Or him in general.

“Madraya,” he says definitively, and then he adds, “She attributes that quality to you, for the record.”

He chuckles again and Pavel can at least say he’s an object of his father’s amusement during this moment of his personal hell.  At least one of them is getting something out of it, he supposes.  But most books imply that his father sees most people in such a way—objects of amusement or use—so he’s not so sure that is much of an achievement.  It certainly doesn’t feel like one.

He swallows his pride once more and asks, “Who is it we’re going to see?”

“Sankta Ursula of the Waves,” he answers.  His tone becomes almost aggressively neutral:  “Though you can try to call her Aunt Ulla.”

Pavel blinks.

He puzzles through the logic of this statement:  “And she’s… a Grisha Healer?  Who has survived in… Fjerda?  For, probably, some centuries?  And she’s related… to you?”

His father doesn’t answer for a moment.  Maybe he is upset that there is information being exchanged in a normal manner.

“She’s half-sildroher.” (1)

And now he has a mythical aunt with a fishtail—maybe?—to add to his already fraught family tree.

Instead, because he can’t wrap his head around it, he blurts, “That means, your mother—”

“Stop,” he says in the way he yells without yelling.  And Pavel decides he will.  Because he doesn’t want to know.  He really, really doesn’t want to know.

That night Pavel has a jumble of disparate thoughts simultaneously before he succumbs to exhaustion: he hopes his father hasn't changed his mind and won't kill him in his sleep, that he wonders what his father has seen to be blithely accepting that his sister is half-fish, and that somehow the fact that his aunt is half-fish and what it says about his grandmother's proclivities makes him feel better about the strange bond that unites his own parents.

***

He is jostled roughly awake, and there’s a welling up of something odd in him when he wakes to see the pale, drawn face of his mother next to him and his father, who has his gloves off and has deliberately smacked his cheek with his bare hand.

He has about a fraction of a second to realize, as he drowsily struggles towards awakeness, that his father has deliberately tried to amplify him to jolt him into consciousness.

(Though it doesn’t entirely work.)

“Get up boy,” he hisses.

Still half-leaden from exhaustion, he lifts his head and mumbles, and then is roughly dragged to his feet.  At the edge of the clearing, stark against the snow, is a new dark stain.  Slowly, his mind processes it and his eyes widen.

It is not a stain, but a man—well, two pieces of him.  Pavel is too surprised to gag, although the impulse follows hard upon his realization.  His father is unphased by the grisly spectacle.

(He’s knows why from his reading.  He made the Shadow Fold.  He slaughtered Novokribirsk.  He’s been a General and a soldier in the Ravkan Army countless times.  The words have told him over and over—his father is a seasoned killer.

Dead words on a page and seeing it are jarringly different, though.)

“A scout,” he explains.  Luckily he is straightforward in situations where they might all imminently be slaughtered.

“Do you know how to perform the Cut?” he says in a very low voice.

Pavel spares a glance at his mother—who he has hidden this particular skill from—and then gives a single, spare nod, which his father spares a single glance for before directing his focus back towards the tree line.

“Drüskelle?” Pavel whispers, his voice barely carrying in the cold snap weather.

His father simply gives him a glance and holds a hand out as if to caution him back from what’s coming.  Pavel, his stomach tying in a knot, and, with slightly shaking hands, removes his gloves.  He’s only ever sparred and, because his mother didn’t want precisely this happening, the number of people he’s been allowed to spar with him he can count on one hand.

And, as for why he has drilled himself in the Cut… well.  It hadn’t precisely been for battling—killing—drüskelle.  Especially since they had mostly gone underground in modern times.

(“We’ll become the Firebird,” his mother’s voice makes him repeat.

A threat against the man he hopes care enough not to allow a forest full of drüskelle to kill him in his stead.)

“You protect her,” his father says, the smooth glass of his voice oddly comforting for a moment.  At least until he says, “If you fail in that, boy, know that death will be the best you will be able to hope for.”

There’s the howl of a wolf and then, Pavel is aware there are bodies moving in the darkness all around him.

Too bad for them that the darkness is exactly the most dangerous place they can possibly be.

Pavel raises his hands and calls the shadows to him, gathering them around his mother like a shield.

There’s a command in Fjerdan that is drowned out by a sound like a thunderclap.  And there, in a whirling eddy of darkness, in a disorienting state of utterly calm assurance, is his father, the Black Demon of Ravka, the Darkling, the Black Heretic, and someone, from this very small display, who Pavel never, ever wants to have to fight seriously against.  His hands are raised and the shadows under his command ripple out in writhing tendrils, swallowing bullets, stuffing themselves down throats, and yanking necks aside with a snap, all grisly efficiency.  Pavel would be tempted to stare had he not been afraid of dying.

And, as he stands over the prone body of the mother who raised him, his shadows pooling about him, as his father’s Small Science—lithe, elegant, deadly—pulverizes and dismantles and ends all the beings of flesh and blood it comes into contact with, Pavel has a sharp moment of clarity: His madraya has kept Pavel away from his father’s world.  Kept him in a place where he could never have such an innate command because he does not have the experience that comes with, frankly, being given a choice between death at the hands of someone else or causing death by your own hands.

(And, strangely, amidst his fear is a feeling of stupidity: Madraya had made these choices, too.  How many times had he read accounts of the Sun Summoner in her battles?  How many times had he looked at photographs of singed devastation in the aftermath of her military campaigns on the front pages of newspapers?  How often had he refused to connect it with the woman whose medovic he would eat without thinking of the tasters in the kitchen or the woman who he’d let touch his bare skin and call him Pasha?  How many times?)

But the shadows that wheel and hunt and devour their prey are not his.  His ring his mother and are unwilling to do more.  His refusal, for a moment, to break the world she has painstakingly created where he can choose not to be any incarnation of the man in front of him who looks so much like him, whom she has always told Pavel he need not be in anyway, stands.

And then a man gets through his father’s assault.

(Later, Pavel knows that this is not the case.  His father has battled his mother.  One drüskelle is nothing more than a corpse that happens to be confused and still breathing in his mind.

The man had been allowed through.

Allowed.)

He is taller even than his father, and definitely more burly.  He has a rifle and he is shouting in desperately brave Fjerdan—but, his father is giving Pavel a look and he cannot focus and only hears “drüsje.”  The rifle aimed at his mother makes his communication clear enough, though. 

(And the way the shadows part around the attacker and his rifle, the way the shadows are manipulated into pursuing other targets… that communicates, too.)

He spares a wild glance at his father as the man shoulders the rifle and his father merely looks back at him, the cold sheen of his eyes all the response he gets.  And, in an action that feels like it is being performed as if he is underwater, where the world has slowed to wintery sludge about him, Pavel raises his hands, gathers the darkness into a single focused, gleaming weapon, and holds it as the world slows further, and its as if he can see every movement of everything in the entire world: how the hand strays towards a trigger, the sudden tension of intent, how he aims the barrel of the rifle at his mother.

Pavel lets the Cut fly and the man, still in the same slow, languid way the world has coalesced into, suddenly becomes a caricature of a human, a man-shaped object suddenly splitting apart like a matryoshka doll, except inside is not another doll, but the dull splat of entrails and red on the snow.

Then he is very, very dead in the whirl of Pavel’s shadows and he keeps his hands raised because this is not a copse of grass or a tree branch at the Little Palace, but something living that is now not and he can suddenly feel the quickening pace of his own heart pounding against his own chest and the draw of his breath, which is faster than it should be.  He watches as his father cuts down the rest of them in the same brutal fashion and he remains unbothered and yet all Pavel can think or say in his defense is that they leveled a rifle at his mother.  At his madraya who kisses his cheeks and can touch his skin with her own and is the sun.  And that is his only defense.

But there’s another one, and the rifle cracks around him and he brings the shadows up to his hands and thinks only of the movement of his hands and the feel of the darkness within them and not about his beating heart or his quickening breath or his father in the darkness and his mother in the light and lets go the Cut again and doesn’t even look where it lands.

(But he hears—the guttural cry, the thud deadened by snow, the splatter of—)

Then silence.

Silence and the darkness curling back into his father like spools rewinding, like a caress he’s never wanted. 

And Pavel finds himself sinking to his knees in the snow next to his mother’s prone figure who seems smaller under the thick fabric of his father’s kefta, which he never reclaimed during the attack.

And suddenly Pavel wants her fiercely to be here.  To be her child again. To be held by her and have soft things whispered into his dark hair.  To not know what he will be.  To believe the stories she told him.  To hear the soft voice of her reassurances or even the hot thrum of her anger.

(To have her tell him once again that being his son does not mean being him.)

But in front of him is only the black leather of his father’s boots and his reluctance to see what is on his face—whether it is disappointment or satisfaction or just plain nothing.  All of it would anger him.

Because he’d asked what Pavel could do.  His shadows had parted.  His father had not spared him this time.  And Pavel’s hands had formed the Cut and had done what his father wanted him to.  Had been what he wanted him to be.  And despite the fact that somewhere he knows it is inevitable being what he is—Grisha, the Sun Summoner’s son, the Darkling’s progeny, a Shadow Summoner in his own right—he resists the inevitability of it all with everything in him.

(He resists the urge to bring his arms around his torso and hug himself.)

Because it being inevitable is not the same as it being forced upon him.

His father’s boots do not move and, when it comes, his voice has nothing but command.

“Get up.”

Pavel refuses to look up at him.

“Am I not allowed half a moment?”

“No,” and again, he takes his decision away by kneeling in front of him, and, in the most tender gesture he’s ever seen him exhibit towards him, his father puts his still bare hand on Pavel’s head.  And, despite himself, their shadows sing to one another’s skins and there is a surety to his touch that Pavel can’t describe, mostly because it has never happened before.  Then, quietly, he says, “It was necessary, Myshka. (2)  There is no time for the luxury of remorse.”

(Later he realizes that this may have been the first time he had decided he was Pavel’s father, after all.  That his first act of fatherhood is making his son kill people is not something Pavel wants to parse in the cold of Fjerda with only his father there.

Because all he wants is his mother.

And while she’s here, too, in a way, there’s no guarantee he gets to keep her.  There’s no guarantee she’ll be her again.)

Pavel does not move, does not speak. He is only aware of the sudden twist in his guts and he launches himself up and runs, avoiding his father’s view as much as the broken shapes in the snow as he runs towards the trees, before he empties the contents of his stomach all over the roots of an Ash tree.

(It may be that this his father’s second fatherly act: he does not so much as mention it when Pavel comes back.)

He already has his gloves on and he is dragging the remains of several Drüskelle into a pile.

“Find new horses,” he orders, before he walks over to the half of a man that Pavel’s Cut had ripped through, and Pavel, not wanting to see how inured to it all he is, wanders off into the woods to find replacements for their half-dead mounts.  He finds the best examples and then rounds them up, taking them, and whatever supplies he can find, back to the grim clearing where he finds his father, his shadow stretching tall into the trees behind him, standing in front of an impromptu fire the horses shy away from.  Pavel ties them to a tree and, trying to prove to himself—and maybe to his father—that he will not be broken by this, he comes to his side and sees him gazing over the bodies alight in front of him with a look of utter satisfaction made manifest in the upturning at the corner of his mouth.

He enjoys Djel’s perverse pyre for a fraction of a second and then turns back to where his mother lies and takes her carefully in his arms.

“We ride tonight—they’ll send more, eventually.  As much as I enjoy treating them like they have always treated us, word that the Black Demon is loose in Fjerda could have political implications.”

Pavel nods and numbly rides through the cold snap of the Fjerdan night, clinging to the memory of how sunlight feels under his mother’s hands.  The cool glass of his father’s voice unexpectedly cracks the silence of the night and the remembered warmth of his thoughts.

"You have questions," he says, as if he is a father actually interested in teaching a son.

Even though Pavel wants to protest that he doesn't, he blurts out, "Why?" and suddenly hates that he says it with all his fifteen years and wants to hate his father with the balance of however many he will have beyond them for making him say it in the first place.

His answer, although it is less perplexing than most of what he says, is not less infuriating:  "I must teach you the world."

"I've learned the world," Pavel snaps.

His father's tone turns amused, "From where have you learned the world, Myshka?"

(Pavel registers dimly that he's now something other than "boy."  Though he does not know that being a “little mouse” is evidence that he's risen or fallen in his father's esteem.  That is something he definitely won’t be asking.)

Instead he turns to answering his question.

Books, he thinks.  Largely about you.  How best to illustrate how to deal with the unfairness of the world wrongly?

But this, too, is not something he will say.

Instead he says "Madraya," because she lies between them, inviolate.  And he is less likely to question her.

He’s seen enough of his father during this hell that he can picture his expression even though it is dark and he is riding ahead of him: the arched eyebrow and the slightly condescending upturn of one side of his mouth.

(How he hates that expression.)

Acting as if Pavel had just told a particularly good joke, he asks, “And what does your madraya tell you about the world?”

He’s honest.  Because his mother has raised him to be so.  And he suspects most people don’t have the balls to be honest with his father.

“That I don’t have to live in yours—because it is not the only one there is.”

It’s one of the only times he actually wants to see his father’s reaction in one of the endless games of verbal chess they play.  But he remains facing forward.  Though his tone changes.

“Do you think she’d be alive if she didn’t live in ‘my world’ as well, boy?”

Pavel is not an idiot.  Nor does he treat his father like he is one (because he, also, most definitely, is not an idiot).  He knows his viewpoint, knows how inexorably and subtly he works to shape and refine people to accept it, knows that whether he is 700 or 1,000 he’s seen the worst that humanity have had to offer to Grisha and knows that maybe that had twisted his soul and warped his perspective beyond all measure.  And all that had repeatedly and endlessly worn down whatever he had started as for centuries in a manner Pavel can’t fathom.

(Sometimes, ridiculously, thinking of his father—and to a lesser extent his mother—as miraculous characters from some strange Ravkan folktale sometimes allowed them to make more sense to him.

But to think of his father as the monster under the bed of Ravkan children and his mother as the one who dispelled his darkness was patently ridiculous.  Mostly.)

Theoretically—academically—he can imagine losing everything flesh and blood in a blink.  How it coalesces into a person in a practical application… he has two widely varying examples of in front of them.

He supposes that his mother must love his father somehow.  Mostly because she has a very faint hope he has something more than cruelty and cunning left in him after the world and immortality and his own ambition has hollowed him out.

So, he makes his move on his father’s unbalanced chess board as best as he can.

“She’d be happier.”

He doesn’t know if he wins the exchange, really, but his father shuts up and finally lets him have half a moment to contemplate the two murders he’s performed today on top of the fact he’s still in Fjerda under the very loose protection of lethally powerful being who is the only hope for his half-dead mother.

That’s enough of a victory for him.

That he doesn’t talk to him for most of the next day either makes the effort of talking to him then feel almost worthwhile.

***

He doesn’t know how far they actually are from Kenst Kjerte.  But the forest and the ash and the pine never trade their perfume for that of the salt of the sea, so it can’t be near.  Their stolen drüskelle horses are exhausted and it seems to Pavel they’re just as likely to drop dead as they are to make it to whoever and wherever they are going.

And Madraya… she’s fading, too.  So much so that there are moments when his father doesn’t even feign not worrying in front of Pavel anymore.

They stop for water and, while it has become clear that he does not know nearly as much as his father does about horses, he can tell when one wants to keel over and die well enough.  The water from the stream they’re stopping at is not going to be a cure for exhaustion.  And no one is going to find a new horse—or even better yet, a flyer—in the wastes of Hedjut territory in northern Fjerda.

His father has set his mother so her back is to an ash tree.

Strangely, his father walks to the other side of the small clearing they’ve stopped in, his arms crossed over his chest, as if he is thinking.

Pavel kneels next to his mother, assuring himself that the rise and fall of her chest continues and tucking a strand of bone white hair behind her ear, his finger feeling the sun—one that is muted through clouds on the rainiest day—beneath his touch.  How the sun isn’t drawn beautiful and warm towards his touch scares him more than anything.

Scares him into getting up, stalking over, and actively engaging his father.

“She’ll die before we get there,” he states, an edge of panic in his voice he’d normally mind if his father heard quite apparent in a quaver in his voice.

His father hums in what might be an agreement.

Pavel, feeling a lick of fury flare at this, marches around to face him and shuts his mouth at the look on his face.  His father’s mouth is drawn up into a tight line, grimly resolved towards… what Pavel hopes isn’t his mother’s inevitable death.

“What do you know of merzost, Pavel?”

He’s so taken aback by the fact that his father has deigned address him by name that for a moment the import of the question doesn’t set in and Pavel’s mouth only dumbly repeats, “Merzost?”  Then his father’s eyes turn towards him, sharp and cold with the intensity of his gaze and he manages, “It’s an abomination—to make something from nothing.  With the Small Science.”

Pavel doesn’t know what he is saying.

“The price is unpredictable,” his father continues.  “Which makes… lesser beings fear it.”

In no way, in his own head, is his father any kind of “lesser being,” and he has no idea if this speech is meant to be informational and fatherly in nature, in the same manner that opportunities to commit one’s first murder had been, or if it is… something of a plan.

Both possibilities make Pavel’s guts clench.

Quietly, with something like fondness that seems strangely laced with the underlying hint of his anger, he says, "Your mother has a habit of costing me dearly."

And from this sentence, which is supposed to show Pavel what is owed him and how he, in his narrative of himself and his mother, shows his magnanimity. But it also, probably unintentionally, reveals something about him, too.

"But you'll pay," Pavel observes out loud.

You'll pay every time if it means keeping her. And not only because the alternative is losing her.

The understanding makes him feel fractionally sorry for his father. That his mother knows this, too, and knows that she is the only real chink in his armor. And that she knows that his way of thinking means that he regards her as a mere weakness in the first place is… sad.

“Take off your gloves,” he says.

Ridiculously, his mother’s voice comes to him, reciting the litany of his childhood:  “Keep your gloves on and let no one touch your skin but me.  Don’t let them see your shadows.”  And the litany of his teenage years: “Don’t trust your father, except with me.  He won’t hurt me.  Not directly.”

“Why?” he says.

His father’s expression is a cold mask.

“It is more likely to be successful with the addition of another amplifier.”

“What will be?”

The corner of his mouth turns up grimly.

“Merzost,” replies the man who made the Shadow Fold.  He makes a dismissive gesture like he’s talking about going for a walk or eating a cherry pastry.  “Something I’ve done before.”  Then the cool grey of his eyes becomes molten and stares into him, “Something I’ll do again.”  He gazes off into the distance as Pavel carefully removes his gloves, shoving them roughly into his pocket, about to break just about every rule in the book.

He almost misses the last thing his father says, because it is not uttered for Pavel’s ears.  Rather, it has the tone of the softest prayer:  “I refuse, Alina.”

***

(What happens next defies all the logic of the world that Pavel knows.  It is like one of those dark stories with deathless gods and heroes that kidnap their wives.  But there are no heroes here.  It becomes imminently clear he is with the God of Death and not the Hero. (3)

It is a story Pavel doesn’t want to know and never wants to tell.

Even as it had been happening, he found himself concentrating on sensations and images:  the bruising strength of his father’s grip on his wrist, the dark, brutal call, of his father’s power drawing upon him until the darkness burns like a cold heat, the wheeling blast of his shadows.  The burning draw of his power on Pavel, almost like what he is attempting to suck both of them dry—even though he is double amplified and perhaps the most powerful Grisha to have ever lived.

It makes his screaming worse—all of his power and invincibility. 

Pained, animalistic screams that make it impossible to pretend, ancient and warped as he is, that there is not something in him that is most definitely still human.  And being tortured. 

That he is not torturing himself.

But then, as if they are ripped into a reality somewhere between Fjerda’s frosty morning and his father’s chest, strange, tall, mouthless, faceless things that conform to the structure of a human in only the most basic ways, formed of shadow and merzost emerge into the weak morning sun.

Then, his grip is there and gone and his father pitches forward onto his knees in the snow. He coughs and a spatter of red mars the white, and still he remains bent and small and ancient for a moment as he gasps for breath as the shadowy beings stand before him.

Pavel watches him and, for a moment, the display feels somewhat obscene.  In the next, thought, he wonders if he should help. He takes half a tentative step and his father thrusts an arm out in a clear defensive gesture.

The thing of shadow stirs malevolently before them.

Then, between ragged breaths, he says hoarsely, “She’ll be there by tonight.”

Pavel, feeling exhausted by everything looks up to the tall shadow beings in front of them.  Beings that emerged from the pages of legend and disputed scholar’s theories that such things couldn’t possibly exist.

His father, still on his knees, kneads his temples with one hand and rasps with a throat raw from screaming, “They’ll take us.”)

(This is all he knows of love, Pavel remembers distinctly thinking.  And it is such a terrible, terrible thought that he suppresses it.  Because it must be love.  It is the only logical explanation for someone doing that to themselves.  And yet it also makes his guts clench and his gorge rise. 

Because what kind of love is… that?

And what did it cost him?)

***

Chapter Text

xvi.  Bargains

Save one brief visit, Aleksander has not seen Ulla in centuries.  Indeed, as his nichevo’ya carry him aloft, Alina, in his arms, and another carries the boy, he wonders what she will require of him.

(The boy’s arrogant assessment of him—so like her—pricks the back of his mind.

That he will pay the cost.

But he knows Ulla will also be costly.  And once again, for her, he will pay the cost. 

Hopefully her boy has understood something of the costs the world will yet require of him for simply being what he is from this as well.

But even then it will only be a matter of time.

Two miserable drüskelle will hardly factor in the balance over the entire course of the boy’s likely miserable life.  And when Alina will inevitably lob her hypocritical objections at him, he will be able to say that he granted the boy the mercy of missing what he had done in the Fjerdan facility.  And the mercy of missing what had been done to her.)

The house, small, stone, and untouched just as he has come to expect it will be, is waiting.

Ulla, her long black hair blowing in the breeze, waits for him, too, smiling and predatory. 

She, too, is just as he expects, as well.

***

She knows he is coming long before he appears at the crooked stone house that overlooks the bay.  The wind howls with his wrongness and the songs of the land she has come to know like the black of their hair shriek amidst the faint song of their kinship.

Ulla has not seen him for centuries, not since his shadows faded from his own land and he had come trailing rage and a heart more frayed than Ulla had thought possible.  It had made her smile a jagged smile much like his.

(Ulla knew all about what he had become in his land.  Had seen how far he might fall.  And only surmises when he comes to her door that fall he had—in oh so many ways).

But he had made her no bargains, asked for nothing then.  He had only come, he had claimed, to tell her, in the way of the sildroher, that their mother’s song had ended.  The mother who had abandoned her to the sea and then to the frigid coasts that took her in.

Those were almost better than the arms of a mother, in the end.  At least her mother.

And since that song has ended between them, she wonders what he believes binds them now.

She watches, without watching, as he comes, on towering beings of blackness, borne aloft.  And Ulla realizes that, for the first time, her brother has brought her visitors, trailing unfamiliar refrains.

Ulla listens for the sound of the song between them—the one her brother has never desired to listen for and know.  She watches as he takes a woman in his arms who is starbright where he is the dark of the storm on a moonless night.  The fire sings between them—making Ulla frown and itch with displeasure.  But the song between them is not sweet—no, the fire is not sung by either of them, even though it is full of bright discordant sounds and weakly sounded notes.  It is a song to snare a heart which has long forgotten what its purpose in beating was in the first place.

A smile composes itself on her face and she goes to meet her only kin.

He draws the sunshine he holds closer as Ulla approaches, as if the dark could swallow light like that—the fool.

“Brother,” she greets, “Who have your brought me?”

He has acquired a curse it seems, in woman-form, because the smile does not slide onto his face so easily, and the cool glass of his voice is not so smooth and flawless—and it does not flow from his lips to call her wife and Ulla realizes he does not have words to sing what she may be to her.

(He does not want to know that song, either.  Such a realization is delightful.)

Even better is the boy who follows behind him—a sullen and scared thing with a song full of sharp peaks of resentment that binds them together.  He gives her brother a look and says, “My mother.”

But song of kin sings between them—her brother, the boy, and Ulla and Ulla realizes that she had been wrong.

Her brother is no longer her only kin.

She turns to her brother, and seeing the same dark hair shared between him and the boy, the same slant of bone and arrangement reflected from her brother to the boy, she knows.  So, she allows both of her eyebrows to rise, her lips to bend, and asks, “And who else have you brought me, dear brother?”

Ulla wonders if it is the first time someone has rung the words out of him.  Wonders how the boy came to exist—and if the woman her brother cradles like a precious thing in his arms—his not-wife—has cursed him with this boy, someone whose song sings in discordant keys with his own and may forever onward.

But his lips open and the words “My son” are drawn from them, relentless, like the moon’s pull on the tides.

(Ulla decides right then that she likes the curse-woman in her brother’s arms, though she does not yet know her.  The song that flows from her is not like her brother’s.  There are parts that will not sing in harmony with what he chooses to be.  There are parts that will never sing in harmony with him, while others slip around his like knots around them both.

It’s like her brother has allowed her to weave a collar around his own neck.  What a curse-woman she must be to curse such a man as he, who has tried for centuries to wear away that he is “man” and not “monster” or “god.”)

His not-wife’s curse, who stands before them both in boy form, jilts all the music of his song at her brother’s declaration, so surprised must he be to be owned and known.  But he and her brother’s discordant keys pluck the same series of notes, and he hides what he feels like the sun behind a storm cloud.

Then, the boy, looking at her brother only out of the corners of his eyes, his frown sharp, says politely in a way her brother never would, and says, “I’m Pavel Morozov.”

She smiles, showing her teeth like sharpened pearls, knowing that her brother has come to her like everyone else comes to her:  He has come to strike a bargain.

“You are kin,” she says, in the way of the sildroher.  “Come in.”

(The bargain she will make with him is like all bargains—every single bargain begins with the same sand that forms into the same pearl:  Make me someone new. 

Even her brother has thought he might achieve this with the right tools, the right curses, the right person.)

***

The boy is the one to broach the topic of the bargain he knows needs to be struck, though he does not understand Ulla and, as with most things in his life, does not treat her with the caution he should.

“My mother is dying,” he says bluntly.  He turns suddenly formal, “My father thinks you can help.”

Aleksander’s frown tightens at both the recognition and the sentiment.

Ulla shows them to a modest sitting room in front of a fire to drive away as much cold as possible from the shores of Kenst Hjerte.  A few chairs, a sofa, soft blankets over the back, laced with the smell of snow and salt water wafting in from the northern sea, and bids them sit.

Ulla sits with the grace of a queen and turning to the boy, replies, “Then your father will have to ask.”

Aleksander already knows she will take nothing from the boy.

Not when he is here.

His brow knotting, the boy looks suddenly down at his shoes, clearly out of his depth.  Then, the fool looks at his treacherous sister, variable as the seas she came from, and says, “What will it require to heal her?”

Ulla smiles her pearl dagger smile.

“Nothing from you,” she says easily.

The foolish boy persists, “I will do anything.”

Ulla’s smile broadens because the boy does not understand that she has been sharpening her teeth on desperate fools such as him for centuries.  A boy like him has only one thing to offer Ulla that she wants: her own brother’s submission.  So, she repeats again, meeting his own eyes, “Nothing from you, my dear nephew.”

Why take the egg when the kraken was within her grasp?

Ulla’s eyes turn to him, dark like the sea in a storm and perhaps more dangerous.

“You’ve remembered me again, brother.”

He arches an eyebrow, “You seem to imply that I have ever forgotten about you, Ulla.”

The darkness in her eyes alights with mirth.

“And yet you come back at last only to make a request of me.”  He meets her gaze and doesn’t deny it.  “Very well, brother, what is it you will have of me?”

“She’s beyond conventional Healing.”  Next to him the boy stiffens noticeably.  “But not beyond your powers.”

She arches a graceful eyebrow in a gesture like a mirror’s reflection, and toying with him, says, “And your request?”

He wills himself to feel the fading warmth of the sun under his fingertips and refuses once more.  He will ask.  He will direct the sinews of his flesh and pride to bend.  He will kneel.

Because he refuses any outcome but the one he has come here to get.

“Heal her, Ulla.”

She does not immediately reply.  Instead, she presses her hands together, touching their tips to her chin.  Her smile shows all of her teeth.

"I understand you now, and understand the hungry eyes you looked at me with all those years ago at Söndermane, brother. Has your hunger been sated? Your thirst slaked?"  She pauses, folding her hands in her lap and angling her head forward towards Alina and the boy.  He tenses only the muscles in his toes, out of her sight.  “And is this what has slaked it?  Such simple things?”

He stands first, ignoring her slight, holding Alina to his chest.  Her sun barely answers the call of his amplification anymore.

"Ulla," he repeats, "Heal her. If I ever was kin to you, do it."

It is the closest he might ever get to begging.

Her mouth forms the same smile as his, like she is looking at the king’s mirror from all those years ago and he is her reflection.

"Even for you there is a price of a bargain struck, dear brother. Even for you."

He knows this.  He had come knowing it. 

He came anyway.

Ulla regards him, dangerous as him in her un-belonging and her eternity. Warned against wanting and yet bound to it like a curse.

"Name it," he says. Then the words fall from his mouth like an ill omen:  "I will pay."

His sister's mouth curves up, a pretty thing of sharpened teeth and cruelty. Then she observes, "What lovely things you bring me, brother. A not-wife who you are bound to by the heart’s blood of the Firebird, who cannot be someone else's but yours… and yet does not seem to be yours at all." Aleksander wills the curl of his lip to even and his face to remain stone despite the flare of rage that kindles in him. "And your other little thing... a boy who makes you long to be our mother, a being… ‘without sentiment.’ Because your not-wife reads all the things you want, but will not claim, if only because you want them, into existence without having asked."  Then she laughs, high and melodious and beautiful. "How you've twisted love to consuming fire like you did for me. So you might feel the pain and burn and have nothing else to tempt you to it."

She throws her dark head back and laughs again.

He stiffens.

“You, dear brother, will pay twice for what you want—”  Her mouth curves, “—I first require a name to remember you.”  Rage rises thick in him at the daring of her request, but the pearls of her teeth only glint at this and she juts her chin at Alina and adds, “And last, you will willingly let her do that which so terrifies you and offends your pride. My price is for you, dear brother, to want and to endure the thing you want on her behalf.  Your not-wife can name her own curse on your behalf."

His mouth feels suddenly dry.

And the boy’s accusation thunders through his skull like a battering ram:  That he will pay.

“Fine,” he breathes, and then says, “I, Aleksander Morozov, accept.”

Ulla’s mask crinkles into a delighted smile and she rises. 

Air floods her lungs and, powerful as his shadows, her voice pours forth, dark and liquid and sinuous.  He feels the skill of the Songcaster—the smooth, graceful arches and soothing bars of the sildroher Song of Healing—wrap around Alina.

She warms in his hands, the sun being drawn forth by his skin.

But it is not enough.

Ulla lets the song fade and she comes forward, and he allows her to touch Alina’s forehead.

She frowns and murmurs, “Reflection upon reflection…”  Then, she looks up at him and says, “I will need a third promise.”

Aleksander’s entire being bends against the rage filling him lest in break free.

“That will keep her for now, but to heal her fully…”  Her smile glints, “I’ll need a mirror.”

***

Pavel learns several extraordinary things:  His mother will live.  His aunt can heal people with a song.  His father, with sufficient provocation, will produce mirrors from the snows of Northern Fjerda before collapsing from exhaustion so that his aunt’s song can be amplified and projected.

(Apparently, even he has his limits.)

Pavel learns, too, that his father is heavy and it takes both him and his aunt to drag him to one of her bedrooms and bundle him beneath the sheets.  Pavel, more out of a pity his father would hate than any sense of filial piety, removes his boots.  He convinces himself it is more like a gesture of spite even if it doesn’t look like one.

His aunt, whom he calls nothing, simply says, “You are soft-hearted” to him at the gesture.  Pavel thinks she means it as an insult.  But there’s a bitterness to it, and maybe a longing.  He puts out the old-fashioned oil lamp in that room without comment, leaving his father to sleep in the darkness.

His mother they lift with more delicacy, mostly because she is skin and bones and Pavel can hold most of her weight by himself.  They pull the coverlet over her prone form, though he can feel the sun of a bright clear day under her skin.

Mostly, Pavel learns that he doesn’t understand the world.

But, exhausted himself, he pulls a chair to the side of his mother’s bed and takes her hand and decides he might puzzle through it on another day.

Or maybe never.

As his eyes slide closed, they both seem like equally good options at the time.

***

She awakes and the sun is at her fingertips like it is a dream.  For a moment, she is expecting that it is a dream, that the grey walls of the room she had been kept in at the facility would greet her along with a needle in her arm which drove away what she was, leaving her feeling like she was fading out of existence and ebbing away.  She closes her hand over a warm hand and, it is real and there, and though her vision spots with the effort and even the small movement leaves her winded, she sits up to see Pavel, collapsed and asleep over the side of an unfamiliar bed, his fingers curled in the palm of her hand.

“Pasha,” she breathes out, taking his hand in hers.

His hand is bare, so the connection between them flairs to life, and the sun, weak though it is, attempts to part the clouds of weariness that surround her.  Pavel stirs, his black hair long and unkempt, falling in his eyes as he blinks awake.

“Madraya,” he says, roughly coming awake.  “Madraya,” he repeats and for a moment she thinks he might just cry.  And he does, swiping the tears from his eyes with dirty sleeves and a fury at his own weakness that reminds him of someone else entirely.

“Surely it couldn’t have been so bad?” she jokes weakly.

(But she had seen where she had been—had not been even to feel what tethered her to Aleksander.  Had lost him and what remained of Mal and Pasha all at once in a dull grey room where the sun could not rise to save her.)

Pavel levels a look that just speaks volumes and then says, as if it encompasses the whole of it, “I’ve spent the last—I lost track of how long it was, but it was long—dragging my unconscious mother across Fjerda with my father.”

At the mention, she reaches for the bright bond that connects them, and, something in her relaxing, finds it.  Finds what is at the other end is dark and murky and somnolent.

And close.

At least Pasha and Aleksander had had… quality time together at last.  She sighs.

“He’s here?” she asks softly.

Something disapproving flicks in Pavel’s expression, but it seems almost habitual as it flattens out to something much more complicated.

“Yes,” he answers.  “Apparently he, too, sleeps? …Sometimes?”  She nearly laughs at this statement, and it is a rusty, hoarse sound, “And apparently when he doesn’t and does—” the Pavel looks down and schools his expression until he looks so much like his father that there is a clench in her heart, “other things—he passes out for, well, a day or two thus far.”

“Other things?” she asks.

“No,” Pavel answers almost immediately, and there’s an edge there that was not there when she had last seen her son.  And the edge likely has his father’s name.  “He can explain.”

Alina doesn’t know that she is joking when she asks, “Is Fjerda still intact?”

Pavel’s answering expression doesn’t take it as a joke either.

“Most parts.  Not for his lack of trying.”

There is a silence between them for a moment.

“Your opinion doesn’t seem to have improved,” she says, shifting herself, despite the exhaustion she feels dragging herself down, as well.

(Despite the fact that she knows very well to get to wherever they have come, Aleksander likely kept him alive.  Which had seemed like more gamble than guarantee at times in the not so distant past.)

Pavel sits back on his chair, extending his long, gangly legs and frowning.  For a moment he is an unpolished mirror of his father.

“I’ll grant that he’s… human.”  He pauses.  “Sometimes, at least.”

It’s hardly overly complimentary.  But she does not have the time and energy to separate them out besides broad strokes.

“It’s his very well kept secret.”  She pauses.  “The trick is getting him to see us the same way.”

Pavel looks at her and she knows there is much he will not tell her unless she pries it from him.  Which means Aleksander will be much worse about whatever it was that happened between them.  They have that same obnoxious stubbornness about the two of them.  Then he looks away and everything in him tightens.

So, Alina almost thinks she must have misheard, he asks, “Why haven’t you married him, Madraya?”

Alina feels taken aback by the question for a moment.

“Why would you ask?” she repeats a little dumbly.

Pavel scoffs but still doesn’t look back at her. 

“Believe me, he’s done nothing to improve my own opinion, even if he’s maybe decided being my father is acceptable for some definitions of ‘acceptable.’”  He chuckles darkly.  She realizes it’s out of a kind of nervousness and he wonders what counts as being an “acceptable father” for Aleksander Morozov.  “Don’t think we’re going on… fishing trips?  Is that even what normal fathers and sons do?  I don’t even know and probably won’t ever know.”  Finally he meets her eyes.  “… But for some reason you chose him.  And while we’re not doing…” He makes a tired gesture, “any of that any time soon.  Probably ever because I can’t even imagine him fishing… that’s nothing to do with the two of you.”

She does not want to unpack this.  She does not want to understand what Aleksander’s efforts at being fatherly have looked like, especially considering his own parenting and the fact that he’s spent most of his son’s life pretending he doesn’t exist.

Pavel looks away from her, fixing on a spot on the floor.

“But…”  Suddenly, the bluster slips off of him like a shroud and he becomes the boy she had hoped he’d remain as long as he could.  A boy who is all uncharacteristic soft, hesitation who only knows how to speak an unswerving, unbending truth.  Then he begins again:  “I think he’d destroy himself for you,” he says softly.  The words hang in the silence between them for a fraction of an eternity.  “And, maybe—just maybe—it might be a mercy.  For him.  If you let him.”

And for a moment she sees that same hardness in Aleksander in her son and the image of a boy—her boy—evaporates like wisps of darkness in the noon sun.  And that hardness intertwines with his words and presages a double loss she never wants to contemplate.

(Because there are some things she would also destroy herself for.

They have never been the same as Aleksander’s and that has always been a problem.

But not one that she wants her son to understand.  At least yet.)

“Stop,” she hisses without thinking and Pavel straightens, just as if she’d struck him.  Then he bites his lip, in a manner he hasn’t for a long time, and looks simply young.  Saints, looking at her son, she can’t remember when she was ever so young.  (Probably, comes a stray thought, when she met Aleksander she was that young.  No wonder the two of them had almost torn apart Ravka then.). She forgets somehow—mostly because he looks so much like his father who doesn’t let her forget he is not what he appears to be at all.  But, slowly, working her sluggish mind through the exchange, she realizes this is as unlikely of a defense of Aleksander as Pavel might ever make.

“What did he do?”

Pavel looks up at her and his expression hardens.  He closes his eyes for a spell and opens them.

“Madraya… please don’t.  Just… don’t.”

Saints.  What did Aleksander do?

And, as to pry and wheedle what has changed seismically between them, seems like adding the heavy weight of exhaustion on top of her existing exhaustion, she sighs and, giving up, asks, “And where are we?”

Pavel’s expression does something absolutely strange and, he sighs, as well, before saying, “Would you believe I have an aunt?”

Alina blinks in surprise, as this disclosure means several things—none of which Aleksander has felt fitting to share with her.  Though the things Aleksander still sees fit not to share with her are legion, so this shouldn’t be at all surprising.

“And… how is your… aunt?”

“She’s—” Pavel’s eyebrows shoot up under his long hair, and remain there and he attempts to put something into words.  “Well, she’s half-sildroher…. But, not as, well… fishy? As I was led to expect.  She looks… like him?  And she… sings?”  He shoots a look at the door.  “I get the feeling she doesn’t like him much, either, because she’s made herself scarce.  I’m not even sure where she went… not that there are a lot of choices because she lives in, quite literally, a barren wasteland.  In Fjerda.”  His mouth twists into an even more bizarre expression.  “Or maybe she’s doing… Sankta… things?  Because apparently my aunt is Sankta Ursula of the Waves?”  He pauses momentarily, and adds, as if it makes sense, “She sang and you got better.  That’s why—why he brought us here.”

Alina honestly doesn’t know where to start, so she just curses, “Saints.”

“I really wonder about my grandmother,” he mutters under his breath, before glowering at the floor.  And Alina has had centuries to wonder about Pavel’s grandmother and it has never proven particularly elucidating.  “I’ve learned my whole family is… nuts.”  He yanks his head up and says quickly, “Except you, Madraya.”

She laughs.  And it feels good to laugh. 

Pavel almost seems startled by the sound, but he looks up at her, eyes suddenly shining and then, rising, launches himself towards her.  He wraps both his arms around her, the warmth and surety of his embrace rising to the surface between them wherever his skin touches hers.  He moves his hands over her skin and feels him draw upon her almost greedily.  Then he buries his face in her knotted hair and whispers, “Madraya, I missed you.  I thought you’d die.  Don’t do that again.  Don’t leave me again.”  There is something like a sob she pretends she doesn’t notice, and even more quietly he says, “You’re all I have.”

And Alina holds him and holds him, shushing him like she did when he was younger and fell and skinned a knee.  She leans in, feeling exhausted.

“How did you get me…here?” she asks.

Pavel frowns and, again, bites his lip.

“I… had nothing to do with it.  I… I asked him to help you and, maybe miraculously, he did.  He went to get you.  I’m supposed to actually explain to you that he knocked me unconscious and, I think, put me into the trunk of a car.  Although, really, I’m not certain about where he put me, because I was unconscious.”  Alina stares.  “But he seemed to think it was pretty nice of him for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom.”  He takes a big breath and states emphatically, “My father is terrifying for all the wrong reasons.”  He eyes her.  “He’s the most nuts, in case you were wondering.  And I say that having witnessed his sister’s singing magic and knowing my grandmother procreated with a fish.”

(She thinks for a moment, of the time before they had gone to Istamere.  Aleksander, barely conscious, still healing from being shot, and his exhaled two words:  “You came.”

This time he had come and she hadn’t even asked.

And it was perhaps a time he’d had least cause to do so.)

Then, when he has calmed she asks quietly, “Pasha, can you take me to your father?”

Something stirs in his eyes—there’s a flash of dislike, uncertainty, and something very akin to fear.  And she realizes that, despite his question, he is not certain of this—them.  Until this moment it has always been Madraya and his father.  Two separate beings from two world who did not intersect.

He stands up, his thin, gangly frame seeming taller than the last time she saw him and then, says, “If that’s what you want, Madraya.”

And he makes her say it.  That this is what she wants.

Then, slowly, almost resentfully, Pavel nods before he goes about the business of carefully easing her up from her bed and snaking her arm around his shoulder, bearing most of her weight for her.  Even so, it is a slow and deliberate effort, and she is panting outside of the door as he stops, allows her to get her breath and then continues the short and also impossibly long distance to a door a short distance away.

“He’s in there,” he says.  He chuckles with an air of nervousness again.  “…had to drag him, too.”

There’s a prone figure on the bed when they get there, half under a blue coverlet that looks like it’s been carelessly dropped on it and, because it has been so long without it, she lets the path of fire between them flare, clear and incandescent and there, though what it connects to is murky and leaden, if familiar.

Pavel seats her on the edge of the bed in a small gap where Aleksander isn’t, and as her weight sinks in next to him, he does not so much as seem to register it.  Aleksander is, in fact, so still, she has to watch him to make sure that his chest still rises and falls.  He is still fully dressed, though someone has at least removed his shoes.  (It is not surprising that Pavel did not go to much effort for him—he reflects his father’s own antipathy towards him back at Aleksander with a mulish stubbornness.  In this Alina and her son are alike in their youth.) Aleksander is lying on his stomach, with a quilt haphazardly thrown over half of him.  And, for the first time since he emerged from the fold with scars across his face, she notices in him a difference that makes her stomach bubble with something like fear.

On one side of his head, stark against the thick black of his hair, is a pronounced lock of white and around him is a halo of… wrongness, that clings to him like a half-remembered residue.

“Pavel,” her voice is firm and even, despite the storm rising within her, because she is not accustomed to seeing Aleksander change. “What did he do?”

Her son sets his expression and for a moment looks painfully like his father.

“He kept you alive.”

Her response is sharp:  “How?”

Then he swallows and is Pavel again.

“Merzost,” he returns, as if he is scared of the word.  And Alina knows this is as far as he’ll be pushed without damage.  Because he is fifteen.  He is fifteen and has spent a good deal, likely, doubting if his mother was alive.  And that thought had driven him to a father he had never known.  And Aleksander has no doubt showed him the way of his world at last.

And for Pavel, that world had to be less terrifying than a world without her.

She leans over, running the lock of white hair through her fingers, though she knows full well Pavel is watching.  Then, because he has come and kept Pavel with him, she says with something like affection, “You stupid man.”

Because she is not Baghra.  No matter what he thinks, she did not use him to gamble against eternity blindly.  Pavel is Pavel.

“Pavel,” she says softly, “You may go.  I need to talk to him.”

He does not.  She realizes her son has some hesitation about leaving her with his father because he is fifteen and has only read history books about them he thinks he has been too clever for her to know about (how like his father).

She looks up at him, meets the eyes of a boy who knows two separate worlds, but not this one, and says, “With this you know you can trust him.  You’ve seen it.”  Slowly, he nods.  “I’ll call you, Pasha, if I should need you.  But I need to speak with him.”

He frowns, deeply uncertain, and then nodding, he goes to leave.

Then, hesitating slightly, because they have been at odds and it is, perhaps, easier for them to be enemies than anything else they might be, she cups his cheek, running the tips of her fingers over the ridges of one of his faded scars, and says, “You can stop pretending now, Aleksander.  I can’t embarrass you in front of your son anymore.”

His grey eyes slide open.

“Alina,” he breathes, like her name is a prayer.  And then, his tone becoming ancient and exhausted and brittle, he says, “You came.”

And then, because she can make this one concession to him, she acknowledges, “So did you.”

Then, in an effort that leaves her whole arm trembling, she bats his cheek.

“What did you give up?” she asks, her voice trembling just as her arm is.

He pulls himself up in to a seated position and she can feel that he, too, trembles with the effort.  He puts his forehead on her shoulder, a position of vulnerability she has rarely seen him adopt.  She fights the simple desire to wind her arms around him.  To make sure she is not still in a grey cell and this is imagined.

He chuckles, and it’s a harsh sound.

“To my sister?”

Alina does not know what to do with this, but she will not be distracted.

“To the merzost.”

She supports one hand with the other and reaches for the tendril of white hair.

“Are you worried about me, my Alina?”

Each breath of his words falls on her neck in a burst of hot air.

(She should protest against the “my.”  But she’s long past giving him the satisfaction.)

“Yes,” she answers simply.  “Does it surprise you that I find much to worry about regarding you?”

“’Regarding’?” he quotes archly.  “That is not necessarily worrying about me, solnyshka.”

“I doesn’t mean I never worry about you,” she says lightly.  “Mostly I trust you can manage yourself and worry what you’ll do to other people.”

His chuckle, slightly bitter, comes out as a puff of warmth.

“You need not worry about the people who took you from me,” he says, darkness rippling in his tone like glass.

“Because they’re dead?” she asks.

He pulls himself up with a vague shudder.

“Of course they are.”  He is utterly without remorse.  He heaves a sigh.  “Solovyov I plan to hunt down myself.  Perhaps Vasiliev.  I tire of them and you were a fool for giving yourself to them in the first place.”

He is not wrong.

“I might help,” she says.  His head tips up, she realizes there are still deep circles under his eyes.  “With Solovyov.”

His grey eyes look vaguely amused at her sudden backpedaling.  Then, almost tentatively, he pillows his head on her shoulder once more.

Then, he pronounces, “You should never have trusted Solovyov over me with the boy.  Or yourself.”  She does not have it in her to tell him that he is right.  Mostly because he knows it.  And, because he is Aleksander, he presses his advantage and, as usual assumes he is right about everything.  An irritating tendency he illustrates when he chooses that moment to remind her, “There are no crowns anymore, Alina.  And this could very well be an opening.”

She feels suddenly tired.  Well, more tired.  Mostly of having Ravkan politics as a bedfellow.  Especially when, for once, she’d just like him in a simpler form than he usually comes in and, for spare moments, it had seemed she might get him that way.

This is perhaps a losing battle, though.

“Lay down, Aleksander,” she says, pushing at him with one of her hands.

He does not move.  Rather, his arms come around her and hold her, possessively.  For once, she lets him.

His breath is in her ear.

“Only if you lay with me, Alina.”  He draws in a breath.  “I’ve gone to considerable trouble for you.”

She hums noncommittally, knowing he means to imply a debt, and allows him to pull her down with her.

“Pasha will be scandalized,” she whispers when she has settled at his side.

Irritation flashes momentarily over his expression.  Then he closes his eyes and gives a sigh of resignation, which is all that should could probably hope for for now.

“The boy will learn.”

She knows they will likely very strenuously disagree on what Pavel should learn, if he has actually decided he has a son.

“He told me you taught him several things already,” she says.

“No he didn’t,” he rejoins.  “You wouldn’t approve.  Or be here… if that boy actually talked.”  That confirms much of what she expects.  He pauses.  “Though you should know he came to me, in the end.  Of his own free will.”

He is very lucky Alina is too tired to move.  Or to pretend Aleksander was ever going to be anyone but Aleksander.

Especially where Pasha is concerned.

So she ignores him.

“And… your sister…?”  Her voice is thick with import.

Import he does not care about, as his eyes are closed and his breathing is evening out, though his arms are still around her.

“Tomorrow,” he says, his voice already growing thick with sleep.

“Why?” she asks, mostly because she has not needled him in a long time.

His hold on her becomes more firm—just short of bruising.

“You’re here now,” he answers her, though he seems to be genuinely asleep almost as soon as this pronouncement is given.

***

(They wake in the cold light of sun-starved Northern Fjerdan morning and Alina finds that he has pulled her to his chest for the night.  He smells of sweat and dirt and horse and she wonders how long it has been since he has bathed.

But, since she would bet he is awake, as he has never slept much, she says, “You never told me the cost.”

“I paid it,” he says dismissively, her face still buried in his chest.

“What was it?” she presses him.

“The same as the last time—I was, in fact, betting it would be predictable.”

She knows what he’s done now.

“The Nichevo’ya.”  It is a statement.  One he does not dispute.  Thinking of the shock of white hair that now mars the black, altering an appearance that his not altered in the span of centuries, she repeats:  “What did it take?”

 “Something I’ve always been willing to part with,” he pauses, though she hears the lie in his voice, as he has never willingly given anything up he considers his. 

“What, Aleksander?”

Strangely, his grip tightens around her.

“Time, Alina.”

She feels the admission like lead in her stomach.  For once, maybe because of the shock of it (maybe of all of it), she is honest with him and whispers into the faint light of the sunrise, “I’m not willing to part with it.”

He releases her, and she can feel a tension coil into him—a wariness at what she’s said.

“You’ll have Pavel.”  Then, with a latent bitterness, he adds, “Was that not the point of him?”

She reaches out to him, for a moment a reflection of his own possessiveness, and says, firmly, “No, Aleksander.”  She pauses.  “I am not Baghra and Pavel is not you.”

He lets out a breath of frustration and finally, simply says, “I do not know what you want from me.  I believe you are aware I’d be inclined to give it to you, if I knew.  I have accepted I am ruled by utter folly where you are concerned.”

She smacks him lightly.

“Saints, you are dramatic.”  She sighs.  Then she says, “We’ll start easily:  Tolerate your son, Aleksander.  Ideally, love him, though that might take you centuries.”

The bitterness leaches from his voice, and his hold drops from around her, “You assume such things are…” he stops and for a moment the bitterness and rage flashes in his expression, “enough.”

She puts her hands on both his cheeks and looks directly into his eyes, because his skull is thicker than just about anyone else’s.  But they have danced around this for far too long.

“Make them enough, Aleksander.  It may be about the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”  He looks visibly surprised by this declaration.  She rolls over on her back.  There is movement next to her and she imagines he might have done the same.  Then, because it has been echoing in her mind since the words came to her, she says, “Even Pavel thinks you might love me to your own destruction.”

He scoffs, next to her.  “Still looking for a declaration after all this time, solnyshka?”

Yes, she wants to snap.  Like she is some mooning teenager, waiting for a bouquet of wildflowers and a honeyed word.  Like he hadn’t poured his life away for her mere days ago like it was nothing.

What a deeply irritating man.

She rolls back towards him, only to see him gazing stubbornly at the ceiling.  Then, as she had done that night, long ago, in the cold of Ketterdam, she pins him with her body.  She hovers above him, though her frame shakes with the effort of it, his body caged in her arms, a morass of contradictory feelings writhing freely through the bond that unites them.

“You stupid man,” she repeats, “Did you ever think it was about something so simple as love between us?”

He glares up at her, willing to be her equal in stubbornness.  Then, before she even has a chance to ponder it, he sits up and manages to flip their positions.

“No, Alina,” he says fiercely, “Hasn’t it always been about what we’re going to do with whatever love is between us?”

He says the word as if he is spitting poison—though it is the closest he has ever gotten to acknowledging any sort of actual feeling within him.

It is her time to be surprised.  Because he is right.

So, deliberately, she asks the same question that always precipitates a seismic shift between them:  “What is it you want, Aleksander Morozov?”

And, again, he admits it to her.

“My equal,” he says.  “You.”

Alina laughs at him.  “Do you even know, after all this time, what that means?”

His eyes sharpen with intensity.

“I’ve become very good at negotiating it with you over the centuries, Alina.  I’m expecting to do so for centuries more.”  (Time, his admission whispers.)  “I would that we be frank with one another for once.”

Then he kisses her, and she lets him.  Again and again, until a knock at the door makes her stop allowing him to do so, and she pushes Aleksander aside in an effort to look less compromised than she is.  Pavel, ill-concealed embarrassment shining off of his face, tells her that “Aunt Ulla” would like to check on her.

The door shuts and, Aleksander growls, probably less pleased to see his son than usual at this particular moment.

She sits up, knowing that she should probably go to Pasha now, her stocking feet dangling over the side of the bed.

“You’ve always just assumed you’ve already won, Aleksander,” she says, as he draws himself next to her.  “Try to win me, at least.”

His eyebrow arches, “Like you are a peninsula in need of a flag?”

“Like I am a woman worthy of you in every way,” she says, “Like I am enough for you.”

Then she gets up.

She means to walk away from him, leaving him to think about it, but she makes it two steps before she nearly topples over ungraciously and he, trembling with his own efforts, catches her and will not let her go.

What a pair they make.

“How…” he says, tentatively, stooping and hauling her arm around him to steady her, “Would you like me to do that?”

“You’re a smart man, Aleksander.  I think you’ll figure it out.”

***

His mother does not call him to bring her back.  She, in fact, seems quite content to be near his father.

Which makes one of them.

Pavel thinks of coming to get her anyways—making it clear things are going to go back to how they were.  Somehow he and his mother would go back to their apartment at the Little Palace, alone, and they would keep living like they had been.  Somehow, too, his father would skulk off to one of his armies and do whatever it was his father usually did.

(It pains Pavel to contemplate it.)

After some spare hours, he makes it as far as standing in front of the other door, listening for any hint of protest on his mother’s part or any even vaguely snarky comment on his father’s part that might give him license to go in and do exactly what it was he wished.

Instead, he just hears a steady stream of silence.

At least he can gratify himself with the fact she likely isn’t dead—his father went through an awful lot of effort to keep her alive just to kill her now.  Which, logically dictates they are sleeping. 

Together.

(A notion that leaves his crinkling his nose in disgust.)

He turns away and, instead of going back to his solitary room, decides to go sit in front room with its slowly glowing embers.  He plunks himself on a chair in front of the warmth of the fireplace, brooding.

“Boy,” comes a voice from the darkness at the room’s threshold.

Maybe that form of address simply runs in the family.  Like a hereditary curse.

“Pavel,” he corrects his aunt, quietly.

She sweeps into the room and comes to stand at the back of his chair..

Even in the dark, he can see his aunt’s smile and he decides that, perhaps, it might not be so bad that he is just “boy” to her.  He turns away and, sighing at the thought, looks into the waning light.

“He does not know you,” she says. 

He turns back towards her.

“He does not want to,” he replies, honestly.

She smiles.  Her voice is a musical taunt.  “But he knows you well enough, in some ways.”

Pavel does not respond.

“But your mother—” she leaves the sentence dangling.  She extends a long boned white hand in front of her mouth, obscuring the pearl of her teeth.  “The blood of the Firebird sings between him and her.  Did you know that?”

Pavel’s lips form around a stranger’s name that he’s never met—and won’t because he died and became his mother’s last, and now, only amplifier. 

“What does that mean?”

Aunt Ulla smiles again.

“She is his and he is hers.”  She pauses, the musical hum of her voice seeming to beckon him.  “That’s what he’d want you to think.  Because he wants to be oh so very clever about such things, my dearest brother.”

Pavel remains wary, as his aunt makes her way around where he is seated and perches next to him on the sofa.  He thinks about getting up.  Going back to the bedroom.  But, despite himself, he wants to know.  If only because his Aunt seems to be the only other person here who has no love for his father and the seemingly sudden shift of his mother’s affections has left him rawer than it should have at his age.

“He put blood on your hands,” she observes, her eyes bright in the anemic glow from the flames.  Then, very quietly, she adds, “That is his way, perhaps.”

(Later, Pavel will recognize that this was the beginning of an old story.  One that is patterned in his father’s shape.  At that moment, though, he was preoccupied with his own thoughts.)

Uncomfortably, Pavel perches on the edge of his seat.  He does not want to think about what had once been man-shaped in the darkness and then, after him, had become strange and foreign.  He does not want to think of his father screaming until his voice broke and drawing abominations from stories only shared in the dark of night forth.

“Tell me about the Firebird,” he says, setting his jaw.

(Because that is a story that he knows will always be subject to taboo and silence—his mother’s and his father’s.  And, though he knows little about what binds them in any sense, he knows that he, alone, will never be able to overcome their combined efforts.)

Aunt Ulla’s teeth shine like daggers and Pavel knows where they are pointed.

And having dealt very extensively with her intended victim in the past few weeks, he does not blame her one bit.

“Do you know what the Firebird was?”

Who, he wants to say. To defend someone who only lives on through a memory of bloodshed.

Pavel’s lips once again shape a name that has likely been unuttered for centuries. 

(A name he does not know belongs to a man who could make rocks into rabbits, who wanted to become a blade, and who did, in the end.  A blade that had lodged in the ribs of a man who wanted to utterly possess the woman he loved.)

Her smile grows to a gash.

“He will always be bonded to your mother and your mother to him.  But, the Firebird does not bow to him like the stag.  It will cry at him in a song of defiance for all his eternities and only be subdued by the one beloved of the Firebird.”

Pavel tries to conjure the ghost of Malyen Oretsev, the man whose blood binds his parents together.  But mostly, with something of a petty satisfaction, he smiles at the fact that his father will have to contend with an otkazat’sya who time cannot overcome because of his mother for the rest of his life.

He bets his mother has no idea.

“Do you know him?” he says at length, as if the conversation about the Firebird had never occurred.

Aunt Ulla in all her dark beauty seems to curl into herself and, for a moment, he has no problem imagining a storm surging about her.

“He does not want to know me either,” she says.  “Even when our blood sings in a complimentary key.”  She pauses and, there is a bitterness that infuses her whole tone.  “He, too, is not… sentimental.”

But then the storm and the darkness disappears and for a moment, his aunt sits, erect and proud and unsmiling, for once, the sweep of her black hair and the youthfulness of her face is doing nothing to distract from the absolute weight of the years in her eyes.

“Beware mirrors, young Pavel,” she says, her voice a powerful singsong of warning and promise.  “You and Aleksander both fear what is reflected back.”

Then the effect of this collapses and she falls silent turns to look out her dark windows.  Pavel takes this as the dismissal it is and returns back to his quiet, empty room, listening, all the while, for sounds of life and familiarity through the wall.

***

Ulla’s hair is as dark as Aleksander’s, as Pavel’s, as Baghra’s must have once been.  And, although Ulla’s skin is a sun-kissed bronze, even in the anemic light that reaches Kenst Hjert, in contrast to her brother’s pale moon, their features suggest kinship.

Aleksander manages to get Alina to the room’s sofa, and sit next to her, pretending his breathing is far less erratic than it actually is at the moment.

Pavel perches in an armchair opposite to his aunt, as if he plans to leave his chair at the slightest provocation, his face set in a stone-faced half-grimace he wears when he is simply enduring something.

Ulla sits in a chair, a delicate blue tea cup perched just before her lips and observes sinuously, “Good morning, Aleksander.”

There is a flash of absolutely dangerous irritation in his expression, before, his breath still heaving from what should generally be a minor physical irritation for both of them and yet isn’t right now, he greets her, “Sister.”

“Aleksander.”

Ulla sips her tea delicately and then, aside from an offer for a breakfast of pickled herring, which Aleksander silently helps himself to and Alina refuses on principal, she smiles into the silence at her brother.

Alina finally turns to her and, dipping her head to express her thanks, says, “I understand I owe my life to you.”

Ulla smiles again, clasping her hands in her lap.

“Anything for dearest Aleksander,”  She feigns hurt, “Negligent an older brother as he is…  He’s brought me…” her eyebrows go up and the beautiful, full mouth draws into a bow—the picture of innocence—but her eyes are just as ancient as his when she turns to him and says, “And who is she to you, dear Aleksander?”

Aleksander gazes levelly back.  Ulla smiles back, before changing the intensity of her gaze and smiling beatifically at her.  She raises a beautifully formed eyebrow.

“Perhaps you can enlighten me?”

“She’s mine,” Aleksander cuts in, with steel in his voice.

Ulla raises a long-fingered hand to her mouth and gives a light, musical laugh at him.

“Are you his?” she asks Alina, her tone overtly incredulous, her eyes boring into her.

It is all the loyalty she owes him—she tells herself—to say nothing in response to this.  All the thanks he deserves for him dragging her, half-dead, over the wastes of northern Fjerda to her.  All the loyalty she owes to relative whom she has never heard of and who clearly has little love for him.

Her smile curls into the same smirk his does, sometimes—a thing of glinting cruelty in the wake of her silence.

She sips her tea again and she looks under her long lashes at her brother and laughing low and beautifully, flicks her attention from Pavel back to him, and says, her grin widening, “Just because you’ve been allowed to use something, doesn’t make it yours.”  She puts down the tea cup delicately.  “And I did not do it free.  Did you not tell her, dear Aleksander?”

Next to her, he shifts in a gesture that looks certain to anyone who is not her.  The straightening of his posture and the tightening of his shoulders announcing control when it is evident to her he does not feel it.

He flicks his eyes over to her, and for a moment, the cold granite of his gaze is chilling.

Finally, sighing, he says wearily, “Ask something of me, Alina.”

Ulla looks at her intently and Alina does not dare ask what the price was and what Aleksander is asking her now.  Even more, she does not want to be involved in the game they are playing with one another.  The influence of Baghra’s blood apparently runs strongly in both her remaining children.  And it is irritating.

Exhausted by the both of them, she leans back, closes her eyes, and simply says, “I want to go home.”

A pregnant silence lingers.

Aleksander breaks it at last, a strange expression rippling briefly over his features.

“Will that do, Ulla?”

She opens her eyes and glancing over sees Ulla’s teeth glint in a smile of triumph.  The kind of smile she is used to seeing, rarely, in another face.

She answers:  “That will do, dear Aleksander.”

Alina closes her eyes again.  She is tired and wants no part in any of whatever it is that is occurring.

She can barely handle two people with Baghra’s blood flowing in their veins.

Three simply seems like a bridge too far for any person to endure.

***

They do not stay long.  Long enough to regain some semblance of strength.  Long enough for several pointed barbs to be exchanged.

Long enough to limp, slightly frozen despite layers of clothing, to an even more frozen harbor.

Ulla smiles, her teeth like pearls in the darkness, as they leave.

***

Aleksander is glad that some things do not change.

The only way out of Northern Fjerda remains whaling ships.  The only way onto a whaling ship when you have no coin to pay your way is work.

(But it is work he has done before and no matter how the world changes around him, the basic work of whaling has only changed in a cursory fashion over the centuries.)

He speaks to the Captain, who regards him with suspicion.

"We'll work for our passage," he declares.

The man, made old and grizzled by the sea and the salt and the cold, gives him a skeptical look.

"Have you worked a whaler before, boy?"

His lips turn up at the insult—usually a man like this would be dead for it.  If he couldn’t prove himself of use to him.

"I'm older than I look," he says.  If only because he wants to leave Northern Fjerda.

"And your son?"

The boy meets no one’s eyes, though his jaw tightens as if he suspects that Aleksander will deny the relationship, though it is plan as their faces are.

"He'll learn," he says instead.

He will have to learn to be useful to him.

The captain, marred in the same superstitiousness that has girded Fjerda for all the centuries of Aleksander’s life, looks at Alina and says, his disregard clear, “Your wife?”

“She’ll rest.  I want to take her back to the mainland to finish recovering.”

The mistrust flickers in his eyes.

“The North is no place for a sick woman.”

On this they can agree.

***

His mother is sleeping. She's done that more often than not on the whaler.  And since all he has done has left him with a mass of aching muscles where his body used to be, Pavel can do little more than sprawl on his poor excuse for a cot.  His father is sitting next to her form, and Pavel derives some satisfaction from the fact that although he is sitting jauntily in his chair as usual, the affectation wears on him and dark smudges now mar his face under his eyes.

It makes Pavel feel better since he's also bone tired.  It is satisfying to see his father fallible.

He curls up next to his mother, well aware it will irritate him instantly. Maybe he's too tired for irritation tonight, though, because he just stretches his long legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankle, and has his hands loosely folded in his lap in response. His head is leaned back and his eyes are closed.

Maybe he even intends to sleep. Pavel almost wants to stay up to witness the spectacle of it all.

He might if he wasn’t also utterly exhausted.

"Too accustomed to the life of the Little Palace, boy," he says dismissively.

"I have a name," he snaps, too tired to keep his promise and play nice with the irritation in vaguely human form that is the man who sired him.

He doesn't move.

"My mother called me ‘boy’ for centuries," he says, a weariness creeping into his voice.

"I'm sure you loved it," he says waspishly.

“Pavel,” he says, unexpectedly.  Mostly because it is only the second time he thinks his father has ever actually said his name.  Then, with measured contempt, he continues, “Small, humble—what did your mother intend giving you such a name?”

Pavel himself thinks it is rather obvious: Madraya wanted him to not be him.  Small and humble is perfectly fine when compared to “grandiose megalomaniac with pretensions of ruling everything and everyone.”

He doesn’t say this, of course.  Mostly because his father has very few chinks in his armor and he has given him the opening to exploit one.  It is an opportunity that Pavel is loath to pass up for something as silly as sarcasm.

“Aleksander,” he intones, mirroring his father’s tone with precision.  He’s gratified to see that his father’s whole expression curls dangerously—both that he knows his name and that he’s wielding it the same way he had just done against his own son.  “Defender of men—I suppose Madraya will get her wish to keep me small and humble while your madraya isn’t likely to get what she wanted out of you.”

His father has angled his head up and is giving him a rather dangerous look.

His retort is like silk:  “My madraya would have eaten you alive, boy.”

As Pavel has now met two of her offspring, he is inclined to believe him; However, officially having no sense of self-preservation where his father is concerned, he snorts and comments, “Sounds like she got more than a few bites out of you, too.”

And, as an apparent award for his insolence, he hits on something that actually rankles his father.  But he also knows he should not press the advantage too much—especially since all he knows about his grandmother is that she wielded the same Small Science as him and had a lot of interesting children.  His father does not press the issue, but lays his head back down once again.

"Do you intend to talk all night?"

He has not even bothered to hide his irritation.

"Only if you don't like it.”  Pavel compounds his defiance because he can: “How am I doing?"

He's actually silent for a moment.  He must be tired.

"You have your mother's mouth.”

Strangely, his father almost sounds... fond.  

"Your brain, your looks, her mouth—she always says I got the worst possible combination."

He looks at him for a moment, out of the corner of his eye.

"And... you're proving it.  By continuing to prattle."

He makes a show of settling back into his previous position.

"Only humans need to sleep, Papochka," (1) he says lightly, making a show of sidling up to his mother.

He cracks open and eye and regards him, almost warily.

“When you become as human as I am, myshka, perhaps you’ll think better of me.”

(Beware mirrors, his aunt had told him.  He is looking at a mirror now.)

And, perhaps he is thinking of his aunt when he blurts it, but it comes out regardless:  “The Firebird binds you.”

He does not lift up his head, but he notices how just his hands go rigid, almost as if he is stopping himself from summoning.  A name—the forgotten name of the Firebird—dances over Pavel’s tongue.  But even he is not so much of a fool as to utter it.  He’s seen very clearly what his father will do when he’s not even vaguely angry.  He’s also had a taste of what he can do when he is.

(He’s also certain the fact that he is his mother’s son shields him far more than the fact that he is his father’s son.)

“Yes.”

Pavel is almost certain he has never heard more contempt packed into a single syllable.  It is one of his father’s many talents.

It almost succeeds in making Pavel shut up.

“Two people cannot share an amplifier.”

His father’s tone drips with danger:  “You’ll find neither one of us are very successful at sharing.”

His message is clear:  If Pavel has a mind to be personal, his father would follow suit.

(And Pavel realizes his restraint thus far in the conversation speaks volumes).

He changes the subject:  “What will we do when we return?”

He scoffs.

“I will personally remove several cankers from Ravka.”

Murder, Pavel succinctly summarizes to himself.  But, at least it is seemingly patriotic murder.

(It should surprise him more.  But it does not.)

“Then?”

“Home,” he says.  Just as he had to Aunt Ulla.

Pavel falls asleep before he can summon the will to want to contemplate what that means for his father.

***

Chapter Text

xvii.  Unification

Upon their return to Ravka, Aleksander is immediately buried in work.

Alina, still feeling more weak than she should, sits on his bed in a house summoning sunbeams in her hands at his behest.  And, with each ball of light that pulses from her hands, she feels a little bit more like herself again.  After being released from work on the whaler, Pavel had promptly passed out on a couch in the main room of the apartment they’d arrived at.  She had poked him a few times, only to be groaned at before Pavel rolled over into a tight ball, still insensate.

She decided to leave him alone for a while, as she still had not gotten the full measure of what Aleksander had put him through in Fjerda and, likely, before.  When they had been alone, she had asked Aleksander, already knowing the likely outcome.  Aleksander had simply quipped, “I showed him the world” and, despite several attempts, Pavel had remained quiet about what the world he had been shown contained.

(Aleksander had then asked her what had happened to her in Fjerda.

She does not need to tell him about it.  Nor does she want to think about it.

She already knows she and Aleksander are on the same page about what will happen because of it.  The only thing she thinks they will disagree on, perhaps, is how far they will go.  And, honestly, in this particular case, she is not sure she will actually disagree with him all that much on that.)

Then, letters and people had begun arriving, and Aleksander had begun a flurry of reading and writing until the small hours of the morning, sending several packets of information off with a woman in a non-descript black dress who, dutifully, arrived every morning.

Pavel, awake and slightly less surly, begins to watch him work, a frown on his face.

“Which army are you working for?” he asks idly one day.

Aleksander, without even bothering to look up, simply grunts, “Both.”  He pushes his hair out of his eyes, before sighing, “I have been gone for far too long.”

Pavel, sitting next to her, idly sending his shadows spiraling through her sun, gives her a sidelong look and asks, “Did you know he’s a double General?”

Sighing, she nods.

“I suppose he didn’t want me to know about his second appointment—which is why he went through the Special Forces.  Half of the members of the Special Forces don’t know the other half exist, by design.”

“My design,” Aleksander says idly, his pen still scratching the details of something or other.  “Did you not know, solnyshka?”

She had not.  Though, in hindsight, it is not exactly surprising. 

(She wishes she had known about Solovyov.  Wished he had warned her.  But until this point, Aleksander would not have told her.

Mostly, he would say, she had made her choice.

And she had.

Though she might never tell her, in hindsight, it, too, had been the wrong one.).

They are interrupted by the arrival of food.  Aleksander makes the person who brought it taste each dish in front of them before they are ordered out, and then, taking his portion back to his desk in the other room, leaves Pavel and her to their own devices.

Pavel shoves a forkful of meat into his mouth and comments, “He makes me feel exhausted and I’ve not even done anything here…”

Alina hums.  Aleksander’s work ethic could never be faulted.  For a long time they eat in silence, the only sound being the sound of cutlery scraping the plate.

Then Pavel asks a question he does not want to know the answer to.

“Madraya,” he asks, not looking up, “Are we going back to the Little Palace?”

He means to ask much more than this, she knows.  He wants to know if they will return to the life he has always known.  He wants to know, she expects, if they will be saddled with Aleksander from here on out.

He will not like her answer, she knows.  Because it is not the one he is expecting.  Mostly because Aleksander sees no point in allowing Pavel to see anything about him that would endear Pavel to him.  And, Pavel being much like his father, feels rather the same about him. 

(Pavel does not understand what is means that he had, indeed, come.

He does not understand what it means that Pavel had asked and Aleksander had complied.  Nor does Aleksander understand what it had taken Pavel to ask.)

“We’ll need to talk to him.”

Her son frowns.

She draws in a breath and, knowing Pavel has known only the stability of the life she’s traded a good deal to give him for his first fifteen years up until now, brings him into a new world of her own:  “But that life is likely over for us, Pasha.”

Aleksander, who, unbeknownst to her, has been standing in the doorway, his empty plate in his hand, has heard this and seen the beginning of Pavel’s reaction—which her son stops as soon as he realizes he is being observed.

As if Pavel is not sitting across from her, Aleksander says to her, “He will get used to the life we must live.  He will learn that very little is permanent.”

He places his dishes down and is gone back to his previous work.  Pavel waits until Aleksander has been gone for some minutes, before asking, a sour puckering to his face he usually reserves for Mr. Lebedev, “So, Madraya, does ‘we’ include me?  Because his words say ‘yes,’ but his eyes say ‘no.’”

She’s always been inclined to trust Aleksander’s eyes more than his words, but Pavel does not need to know this.

She smiles, though.  It is not a Sankta’s smile.  It is more akin to his.

(Because he might have come, but this still does not mean she will simply cede her life to him.)

“You assume I will give him a choice, Pasha.”

***

The woman who comes and deals with his father’s correspondence each morning comes the next morning, handing his father a discreet package at the door.

He opens them and hands Pavel another Heartrender’s uniform, though this one seems more tailored to him than the other.  His mother also has one—though she is dressed with the blue and red banding of an Inferni.

His mother and father have a brief exchange and later, his mother’s distinctive white hair becomes a glossy black hue (he notices that, later that day, the white shock of hair that his father took from his efforts with merzost is similarly gone.)

In a rare moment where he gives over his work, he takes a strand of her hair in his fingers and trails it through, whispering something in her ear.  His father narrowly escapes being elbowed in the gut for whatever it is.

(Pavel does not ask and really, really does not want to know.)

Each of them are resplendent in the uniforms of the United Ravkan Army when the following day finds them in the same switchback of cars and drivers that Pavel had endured before, before ending up at the same house.  The same woman, her fading red hair wrapped up in a kerchief, greets him at the door, with a bow and guides them in.  They are served tea which his father does not even bother to test.

The woman looks from his father to his mother and she finally says, “You do me a great honor, moi soverenyi.”

His father becomes effortlessly charming in a way he has never been in his presence.  A smile graces his handsome features and the old woman becomes beguiled by his act.

“Loyalty should aways be rewarded,” he says, his words as smooth as honey. 

Her eyes bright, she looks at her mother, who, sits stiffly next to his father with her strange dark hair, and she breathes, “Sankta.”

His mother, clearly wary, gives a stiff nod.

Then, the woman remakes his father into someone else and his mother watches, eyes sad.

“You’re a Tailor,” she says as the black leeches from his father’s hair and the familiar planes of his face reshape themselves.

The woman smiles.

“It has run in my family for generations,” she says, leaching the black from his father’s hair and putting in a rich brown.  “Though we have stopped presenting ourselves at the Little Palace under the new edicts.”

“What is your name?” she asks softly.

And the woman, who has no business trusting his mother, especially since she is the face of everything she likely doesn’t believe in, answers, “Irina Kostyk.”

There’s a strange edge to her voice, when his mother states, “Kostyk is a very famous name for Durasts.”

The woman smiles with pride.

“The Kostyk Method—all of them—is named for a many times great-grandfather of mine.”

When they leave, though, his mother is furious and will not so much as look his father in the eye and will not speak to him except for clipped sentences for two days.  She will not even explain why to Pavel.

***

They end up in the apartment in Arkesk.  His mother, with her strange black hair pinned up into a severe bun and face altered with thick make-up, and with his father with his borrowed face.

Only Pavel is the same.

At Arkesk they wait while his father finds several more wire taps, as his mother looks impassively on, not indicating if this is something his father alone contends with or something she is also familiar with.

When they are gone to the sole bedroom, together, as if it is a normal thing to do, leaving him to a slightly lumpy couch, Pavel decides he will attempt sleep so as not to think about anything else.  However, the urge leaves him when he is dropping off and he hears his mother ask his father, “Where do they think you are?”

Pavel strains his ears to hear.

His father responds just as softly, “Investigating the disappearance of two Heartrenders from the Command Building at Ryevost—though Vasiliev will soon find a strange connection between their disappearance and the disappearance of the Ravkan Firebird.”

“And where did they actually go?”

Pavel freezes.

“I killed them.”  The silence rings for a moment.  “Pavel revealed himself to them.”

He knows this—knows that his father is a seasoned killer.  That he feels no remorse.  None of that should be surprising.  He’d seen him—in Fjerda—killing drüskelle like they were nothing.  None of this information is new.

It’s his mother’s simple reply that keeps him up that night:  “Good.”

***

In the last day before he must present himself back to the command center at Ryevost, Aleksander faces the window of his official residence, his hands clasped behind his back.

Alina sits on his bed.

Since Pavel is dead asleep, she feels it is finally time to broach the subject at hand.

“How would you like to handle it?”

He looks over his shoulder and, without so much as a hint of a smirk, says, “I would like my Nichevo’ya to take him and rip him limb from limb, slowly, in a mirror, before peeling his flesh back in ribbons, so he can watch his own slow demise.  Perhaps I will then do the same to his wife as he watches.”  He turns back to the window.  “I doubt you will be allowing me to do that.”

Alina frowns, but, in many ways he is doing what she has asked—in the past he would definitely have done exactly this with absolutely no qualms.  He still has no qualms telling her.

Mostly because he thinks he is doing it on her behalf.

“No,” she says, looking at the silhouette of his back.  “Someone has to keep you human.”

Aleksander sighs.

“I’ve seen many men who have exhibited far more barbaric tendencies in much shorter timespans and never had their humanity questioned.”

She purses her lips.

“Which is why you, in all your eternal wisdom, should know better.”

He arches an eyebrow at her tone.

“I know such men will not stop unless they are made to, Alina.”

She indulges in a sigh and asks, purely rhetorically, of course, “Do you not see anything of yourself in that description?”

He turns fully to her.

“You asked me what I would do because Solovyov had the nerve to take from me what is mine.”

(Under her skin, Alina seethes at this, the feel of the sun boiling under her skin: pure, and brilliant, and blessedly there.  Because they had taken what was hers alone, as well.  In so many ways.  They had used her and hollowed her out for the second time.

Only for Aleksander, once again, to give all that she was back.

… Once again.)

But, surprisingly, this is not what he dwells upon.  She and what he is owed for her is not what he dwells upon.  Instead, he continues, “They did it to exploit me.  To exploit you.  Do you wish to set a precedent?  Do you think it will serve you well if it is ever publicly acknowledged that that boy is mine?”  The grey agate of his expression grows cuttingly hard.  “They’ve already used him as a pawn, Alina.  They will no doubt try again.  Do you not think they should fear doing that?”

(Mine, she thinks.  A word that he used to apply to her and Ravka alone).

By now she appreciates that much of what has tempered the man that Aleksander has become is seeing again and again the worst impulses and deeds of humanity: from brothels in the Wandering Isle, to Grisha who wore the bones of amplifier children, to Fjerdan pyres and Shu Hanese labs.

It has set a rather low bar.

Her solution, at least the utterable one, is simple:  “He will need to learn to protect himself.”

He strides over and for a moment, she wonders if he will tower over her.  Like she can fear him anymore.  Instead, he merely sits next to her, expression inscrutable.

“And yet you will not allow me to teach him.”

She reaches out and, very deliberately, places his hand over his.  He does not outwardly react.

“He needs balance,” she says.

His expression turns downright poisonous: “Because you do not want him to be me.”

In response, she merely wraps her hand around his, as it remains stubbornly limp in his lap.

“I do not want him to be me, either, Aleksander.”

Turning towards her slowly, he narrows his eyes.  She takes it as a good sign, though, that he has not yet moved his hand from hers.  It is not an outward show of vulnerability, and it is certainly no invitation… but it is not a rejection of what she is tenuously offering entirely.

“Explain,” he says emphatically.

She gives a brief scoff of mirth.

“Do you think I have made no mistakes in my life?  That I am a true Sankta who is holy and above humanity?”  His eyes narrow, probably looking for the trap in her words.  Then she confesses, “When you found me, on the Fold—I never wanted to be anything more than I was.  Just a mapmaker.  Just an orphan.  Just plain ol’ me.”

She feels his hand tense.

“Yet he is ‘humble’ and ‘small.’”

She gives a small laugh.

“A reminder,” she says.

His brow knots and for once, by measures, his expression becomes genuinely curious.

“Of?”

“What he started as, when he isn’t that person anymore,” She squeezes his hand.  “Did you think something that is a product of the two of us can remain small and humble, Aleksander?  Saints, if the two of us were ever properly on the same page we really would change the world.”

She looks over to him to find him observing her carefully, as if he is memorizing every angle of her face. 

“Haven’t we?” he asks, softly.  Then, with that sinuous danger in his voice, his hands grips hers and he asks the second part, “Couldn’t we?”

His other hand moves up, his long elegant fingers caressing her cheek.

“We’ll handle Solovyov together,” she says abruptly.  “To start with.  Perhaps without your Nichevo’ya.”  She frowns.  And she feels since she is being honest, she whispers,  “You shouldn’t have.”

“I was left with no choice.”

(She wonders if he is honest, right now, too.)

She’s well aware he feels like that, even though sometimes it feels as if the absence of her is far more of a deterrent than her presence in his life.

He withdraws both his hands, just leaving the ghosts of warmth where his fingertips had been, the sinuous glass of his voice asks, “And Vasiliev?”

She sighs.  “You mean Ravka?”

“Always,” he says unrepentantly.  “I have control over both armies—simply tell me which one you’d prefer to win.”

She faces him fully.

“And then what?  Another civil war?  You on whatever today’s equivalent to a throne is?”

She is not expecting him to have changed.  And, in many ways, he hasn’t:  “And you, of course.”

“What I want,” she closes her eyes, sighs. “Is some peace, Aleksander.”

But, in some ways, too, he has.

“In some ways, Alina, we want the same thing.”

She gives him a look.

“I can tell you, Aleksander, just based on the last five minutes of conversation, that we do not at all have the same ideas as to what ‘peace’ looks like.”

He turns back to the window, looking out to the grey world of squat, supposedly modern buildings that largely represent what Ravka has become.

“Solovyov, first.”  He says.  “Then we can see if our ideas of ‘peace’ align, my dearest Alina.”

She sighs and feels suddenly irritated with him, knowing exactly what he intends.

“If I wanted to lead Ravka, I could have staged my own coup as the Firebird for years.  That was obviously what they were afraid of and, yet, I have obviously not done that.”

He looks at her over his shoulder, amusement in his eyes.

“Do you think I did not already know this?  Did you not think, all the years I spent under the Lantsovs was the same?” 

She mumbles in exasperation under his breath, which only causes him to give her his usual enigmatic half-smile.

Then, facing the window, he asks, “Have you ever been to Adena?”

She does not know that there is anything in the blot on a map that is Adena.  Nor why Aleksander would care about it.  It remains a rural location near the edge of the region that used to be covered with the Fold.  Long ago—before her, but probably not before him—it had been on the main road into the Tula Valley.

Now, she expects, even Ravkan modernity had likely largely passed it by.

“There is nothing in Adena,” she responds.

He gives the barest exhalation of mirth before saying, “You may very well be right.”

Sighing, she does not even make the effort to try to figure out what it is he is not actually trying to tell her.  Mostly because she is in no mood for one of his games on top of the normal ones they both play.

“Well,” she quips, irony infusing her entire expression.  “We agree on something.”

***

She sits next to him, and he does not even bother to hide his web of typed orders, communiques, handwritten missives, and ciphers spread around him.  She knows this, from him, is something of a marker of trust.

Perhaps he’s decided he will, for once, play all his cards on the table.

“You don’t have an aide?” she asks, picking up something written in the going Fjerdan military cipher used by the United Ravkan Army.

“The particulars of my situation preclude the help of others.”  His mouth folds into one of his half-smiles.  “As does my reputation.”

She makes a derisive scoff and watches him make several notes.

“Where do they think I am?”

“Dead, likely.  I did quite thorough work in Fjerda.  They would not have been able to shift through the ashes of where you were kept to discover if your corpse was among the dead or not.”  His raises an eyebrow.  “I suspect Solovyov and Vasiliev will rather be at odds over it.  It will be to our advantage.”

She lets that sink in.

“Were you afraid?”

She expects he will say something biting and dismissive—give a denial of some sort.  Instead, he stops and she watches as his hand curls around his pen—the pale knuckles of his hand turning whiter.

“Yes,” he admits.  His eyes turn to her, intense and sharp and filled with something she can name, but doesn’t believe he has the words to utter.  And, more remarkably, he follows this up with no rhetorical quip or retort.  And he sits frozen at his desk with the enormity of it all.

“I knew they’d developed the drug,” she says, softly.  “I knew the risks.  I should have been able to get into the facility and release the test subjects—just as we’d done so many times in Shu Han.  Bend the light, free the prisoners, destroy the facility.  I knew what to plan for.”

His grip grows tighter, and she is afraid the pen will break in it.  She feels all he is roil beneath their shared connection, unmasked.  And, when she reaches forward and touches his skin, she can feel, even at the mere reminder of it all, his darkness barely restrained, swirling in dark eddies beneath his skin.  She pries his fingers loose, and takes them into her own, allows the sun to sing to his darkness.

“So did Solovyov,” he says, the darkness rising towards her and climbing the walls.

Anger masking something he wants to believe foreign to himself.

“He did,” she acknowledges.

And then, though he pretends it does not, he makes what amounts to an admission on his part.

“You should have told me,” he says.  “In Shu Han we never allowed the other to go in unguarded.”

And, for the first time, she makes a concession to him:  Still holding his hand, she allows her head to rest on his shoulder, and closes her eyes.

“I should have trusted you with it,” she says, her voice a whisper against the black fabric of his uniform.  Then, even more quietly: “But you came anyways.”

He hums an acknowledgement and then gives another statement that isn’t quite as neutral as it sounds, because it is meant to be an excuse, but, because she knows Aleksander, it certainly isn’t anything of the sort.

“Because the boy came to me.”

(The dark eddies hum under his skin at this, too—a storm he doesn’t know entirely how to resolve.)

“It is not nothing that he did that, Aleksander,” she says, squeezing his hand gently.

He draws in a breath—just short of a sigh and, letting go of her hand, replies, “Do you think I do not know that?”

She nods, picking her head up.  Eyeing the mountain of paperwork he still has to work through, she says, “Perhaps I can be your aide while I, unfortunately, am an unconfirmed corpse.”

He nods, shoving a stack of missives towards her.

“Rations and supply lines,” he says, as a sort of shorthand, and it strikes her that, after Shu Han, he expects her to know what he would want done with these things.  Even more surprisingly, he takes one of her typed missives, peruses it, and without comment, allows it to stand.

They work in a silence only interrupted by the occasional necessity for clarification—as a high ranking member of the Special Forces, she knows most of the outlines of his work, and most of how the battlelines are drawn outside of the propaganda.  And, much of his work with the Counter-Revolutionaries is organized according to the principals he had laid down as General of the Second Army, so it falls into familiar lines and grooves, as well.

He finishes up one task, starts another, and says, “I know how to lure Solovyov out.”

Alina keeps right on working on her own tasks, but gives a brief acknowledgement of the familiar rhythms of how they have always planned strategies together.  That he stops and turns to her, pinning her down with his look is the only new element.

She understands why when he says, “I will, however, need Pavel.”

She manages, as if this were any other sort of strategy, to ask casually, “For what?”

Aleksander frowns.

“For his parentage and connection to me.”

“Bait,” she says, moving away from him, the word a stinging thing.  “You’re using him as bait.  Our son, Aleksander.”

She expects him to do what he has always done—tell her he is hers and hers alone.  To be a bastard himself and tell her that he is not responsible for her bastard boy.

Aleksander turns to her, eyes blazing.

“I’m hunting down those who would do the same to him.  Those who have already come after you.”  He takes her wrist and there is nothing gentle in his hold.  But she can feel how he vibrates with power and anger.

“You may not like my methods, Alina.  But I am protecting you both.”

Alina holds his gaze and draws the battle lines that have always existed between then starkly:  “If you get him killed I don’t care how many centuries we live—I will never forgive you.”

He gives her a long look and drops his hold.  His expression hardens.

“You need not say something I already know.”

***

His mother explains to him what will happen, his father sitting next to her, stone-faced and silent.  It is something like a family meeting, Pavel supposes.  Only, he supposes most people’s family’s do not get together to discuss murdering the second-in-command of dictatorships and, perhaps, taking control of countries.  Or murdering anyone, really.

His family is special like that, after all.

He knows he will return to Os Alta, in the care of the General of the United Ravkan Armies.  He knows he will have an audience with President Vasiliev.  He knows he will lie and Heartrenders will excuse him for his lies.

He knows it will get a man killed who may very well deserve it—but it still seems a heavy sentence for Pavel to pass.

And, because his mother and father ask it of him, he agrees.

(His mother comes to him alone, that night, budging up alongside him in his bed as if he is still a child, burying her nose in the back of his hair.

“It will be different from now on,” she says, after she has stayed like this for some time.

“Because of dear Papochka?”

He tries to keep the stinging bitterness from his voice and mostly doesn’t.  His mother’s sigh ruffles his hair, hot and a bit sad.

“No, Pavel.”  She sighs again—though it is quieter and more resigned.  “Because of the world we live in and because of who we are.”

Pavel does not know why the notion scares him, but because it is his madraya, he knows he can ask it:  “Who will I be after this?”

Her arms snake around him and hold him tightly.

“You will always be Pavel Morozov, no matter what you call yourself.  Remember that, Pasha.  Remember you will always be mine and, for better or worse, you will always be your father’s.”

She kisses him on the cheek, and leaves him with only the fading warmth of her arms and a feeling of doubt.

Because he had seen her close to death.  He had seen his father drive himself to nearly the same place—and maybe something objectively worse—without her.  And Pavel, at the age of fifteen has no concept of what the yawning void of eternity might demand of him—but he’s seen it in his parents.

(It has even crossed his mind that maybe, sometime unfathomably long ago, his father might have once been a good man.  He’s just seemingly outlived his own goodness. 

The very idea haunts him.)

He does not know if he would shoulder eternity without them.  He does not know who he might end up being alone.)

Later, when he is alone with his father and his mother goes to a safehouse before she will return to the Little Palace wearing a new face, as General Petrov’s mistress, his father explains the tunnels—how to get in and out of the Vezda Suite by means no one else other than him knows.

In his small quarters in Ryevost, where they stop to make preparation, his father watches him like a hawk as he makes Pavel form the Cut over and over until his arms ache and his mind feels slow and rubbery from the immense concentration he is spending on his Small Science.

He finishes with a disappointed sigh from his father, who opines, “It will have to do.”

And when Pavel returns to the Little Palace at last, he does not miss how whispers dog his steps to his suite, how several people whom he has known all his life stare at him as he walks side-by-side with General Petrov.  He does not miss that the oprichniki outside of his door have no familiar faces or how his father becomes a distant, careful shadow.

Although he is in the place he has always called home, there is no longer anything homely about it.

***

Chapter Text

xviii. Bait

His plan proceeds in increments.

His aide, a Heartrender, notes that Pavel Morozov, the Sun Summoner’s son, has come to see him personally three times and has been turned away, as he will not give a compelling reason as to why he needs to speak to the very busy General.

The boy is, for once, doing exactly as asked.

The fourth time, which he has pre-arranged with the boy, he sweeps in while the boy is being thoroughly dressed down and remains stock-still in the middle of the war room, shoulders in stiff, practiced military bearing as his Heartrender shouts inches from his face.   

The boy steps back and his son salutes him crisply as he comes into the room and, arching an eyebrow he turns to Ivan (a far less competent model than his last Ivan) and asks, with cold irritation, “What is this?”

“He says he will only see you, sir.”

The boy remains silent and does not relax his posture at all.  Aleksander flicks a look over at him and then back to Ivan, who looks more ruffled by a fifteen-year-old boy than he should.  The sight might stir some pride in a lesser man.

“And why has he asked to see me?”

The boy does not answer, as this is directed to Ivan.  Ivan growls in irritation and says, “He will not tell me.”

Aleksander directs his attention back on the boy and orders, “Speak.”

He keeps his eyes straightforward, to all eyes a true child of the Little Palace’s educational efforts during this current regime, and says crisply, “That is a matter best left for a different venue, General Petrov.”  He flicks his eyes towards Ivan, who somehow seems more sullen than the boy, and continues, “A private venue.”

Several people witness Pavel Morozov go into his office.  They them witness him come out.  Several more witness General Malyen Petrov escort the boy promptly to the People’s Palace after the short meeting ends.

In this meeting, he reports that the boy, who will not raise his eyes, says that he has received information that his mother has died.  Vasiliev, leaning forward and tenting his hands on his desk, asks, as if the question does not matter, where the boy had received his “patently untrue” information from concerning the Firebird.

The boy, who looks down at the polished desk the President is seated behind and does a commendable job appearing distinctly uncomfortable with the inquiry, before offering, “My father,” and then, with a squirm that seems in keeping with a child of his age, though not this particular boy, he adds ruefully, “My real father.  Not the one in my files.”

Vasiliev’s eyes go hard and he asks, both his General and the boy whom he had brought, “And why is your… real father,” he drawls this with a heavy dose of cynicism, “…of interest?”

(He wonders, idly, how much Solovyov has actually disclosed.  Or how much the President himself has become a pawn in his schemes.)

Then, tentatively, Pavel Morozov claps his hands together and summons a ball of darkness—one President Vladimir Vasiliev last saw years ago in the hands of a martyred Saint that he saw shot down—a martyrdom which precipitated his rise to a place where he decided what Ravkans sanctified or didn’t.

His eyes flick to the General and, replaying the scene from a lifetime ago when there was still a Tsar whom the people of Ravka were compelled to serve, no matter their own interests, and asks, urgently, “Who knows this?”

“I am the only one besides the boy’s father and mother,” he says, lying smoothly, knowing the Heartrender who serves Vasiliev will confirm his lie as truth, because his sympathies lie with the Counter-Revolutionaries and the two Starless Saints who sit before him.

And then, like a gift, the boy proceeds to verify several intelligence reports about the Sun Summoner.

Because Vasiliev and his General know what the boy does not:  A Shadow Summoner is the head of the Counter-Revolutionary Army.  And Shadow Summoners only come from one line.

However, with a kindly smile on his face, Vasiliev looks at young Pavel Morozov and asks a question neither quite knows the implications of:  “Tell me, Master Morozov, do you love Ravka?”

And the boy, playing his part smoothly, responds, “That is why I am here, Sir.”

“Would you be willing to contact your father?” he asks.  “For Ravka?”

And the boy hesitates and becomes a boy again, biting his lip, “What of my mother?”

Vasiliev raises his eyebrows and says, as if the Sun Summoner is his pawn to be bargained with, “I think we might be able to come to an agreement.”

He makes sure one man’s informants see the Ravkan Firebird’s son go into a private meeting with the President of the Ravkan People’s Republic and his General and return to the Little Palace.  He bets it is additionally noted that the guard on the boy is more than tripled.

His own informant tells him that a man—squat, balding, stocky of build, and as nondescript as they come—goes into the President’s office sometime after this private meeting.

One of his informants tells him that this man, Andrei Solovyov, has a smile on his face when he leaves.

Aleksander’s own mouth twists up at this detail.

***

Long ago, his Madraya had made him repeat the useless repetition about the infinite, and man’s greed, and the universe thinking it might alter him somehow.  Like it applied to him.  And, it was as if she might have been imagining Andrei Solovyov’s face as he has kept Pavel Morozov tightly in his auspices.

As usual, no one announces him and he comes in, his black uniform immaculate and crisp and without denotation of any rank whatsoever.  Without so much as an invitation he leans on his silver tipped cane and seats himself in front of Aleksander’s desk.

“Malyen,” he says familiarly.

Far, far too familiarly.

(And how he hates the name.)

“Comrade Solovyov,” he says lightly, as the man in front of him holds no official rank or title but walks among those that should have the highest of both.  Aleksander knows that for most, he is a dangerous man who has lodged himself in Vladimir Vasiliev’s ideals and heart like the thorns of a rose.

“You know why I’ve come,” he says, bringing his cane in front of him and planting both hands on top of it.

Aleksander pours him some fine Kaelish whiskey he keeps for this purpose, as is his custom for these rare meetings.

“I can hazard a guess,” he says affably, as if they are colleagues and not mortal enemies, though both of them are masters of the farce they are going through the motions of and Aleksander already knows he will give Solovyov exactly what it is he thinks he needs.

“Who would have known the cold, cold Madame Morozova slept with the enemy?” he says lightly flexing his fingers above his cane.  As if he has not already long ago independently confirmed this and hoarded the secret.  “I must say that what appears to be the truth about the boy is far, far better than the squalid rumors about his parentage.  And looking in General Yahontov’s personal files, it seems that it all ended in rather a tiff between them over the boy.”  He chuckles.  Aleksander does not because he recognizes it for the attempt at a threat that it is.  “My my my…”

Aleksander decides he will play with him in the same way he believes he is playing with General Malyen Petrov.

“The only danger in pursuing this is the boy’s mother…”

The smile that crosses Andrei Solovyov’s face is a study in maliciousness.

“I’m told Vladmir—” Solovyov purrs the name “—assured the boy quite thoroughly that he would be seeing his mother again if he just did Ravka this service.  That she was coming back from her mission to a joyous family reunion.”  The smile widens, revealing a mouth of crooked teeth, a maw wide enough to try to swallow the world.  “And, since his mother no doubt passed on her… most unwholesome political views to her whelp, perhaps he shall hope to see her in some sainted afterlife.”

Pretending to be surprised with the slightest suggestion of raised eyebrows, he says, “Then she is dead.”

“Tragic,” he opines, in a tone that indicates the fate of the Ravkan Firebird is anything but. “But the time of Grisha is over with the time of the Saints.”

Black rage surges throughout Aleksander’s being, though he gives a swirl to his glass of whiskey and with a raise of his glass towards his “comrade,” he drinks it down and smiles serenely back.  Unsurprisingly, the man across from him, smiling in the same way he always has, does not do the same.

Because Solovyov comes down to the delicate business.

“There is only the matter of Pavel’s cooperation…” he advances.

He decides he does not like the sound of the boy’s name on that man’s lips and muses that he might cut his tongue out prior to killing the man, slowly and painfully, for the offense.  He pours himself more whiskey.

Solovyov comes to a delicate point—poised on the edge of a dagger of objective statement and accusation.

“I’m told he came to you in Ryevost…”

Aleksander makes a show of frowning thoughtfully.  He answers with large swathes of the truth.

“Looking for his mother,” he says offhand.  “Impressive given she’s cloistered him behind her skirts his entire life—probably more for her own protection than his, as it turns out.” 

Solovyov flexes his fingers over his cane again before clearing his throat.

“You no doubt developed a sense of… rapport with the child?  No doubt he has been… looking for some sort of father figure in his mother’s absence.”

One Solovyov’s own machinations sent him off to find.  Letting lose a chuckle, Aleksander leans back in his chair, the picture of unruffled ease.

“No doubt.  Although, he chose poorly coming to me.”  A rueful smile graces his face.  “I am not a man who is suited to children.”

Solovyov grins in return.

“That is no doubt why you have a mistress rather than a wife.”

Aleksander’s smile sharpens.  Solovyov is letting him know he is keeping tabs on him thoroughly.  And this is good, because the man is paying precise attention to the details he would rather he pay attention to.

As planned.

“No doubt.”

Solovyov gives a perfunctory tap of his cane and sits up.

“Then you can deliver what it is I want, Malyen?”

This is as good as admitting that he has no access to Pavel.  And Aleksander does not intend to give him access to Pavel.  Because he has no intention to provide Alina with a villain at this particular juncture when a more opportune one is sitting in front of him.

Aleksander pours himself another glass of whiskey and then, coming down to business at last, makes a soft demand of his own in this game of chess:  “You’ll need to enlighten me as to just how you intend to proceed, Comrade…”

Solovyov smiles.

“Let us see, old friend, if we can see our way into some cooperation.”

***

He retires to his bedroom, sweeping for wiretaps before he approaches the woman who is reading, draped in the silk sheets of his bed.

Sitting on the edge, he removes his boots and the heavy jacket of his uniform.

“How did it go?” she asks idly, turning a page.

“I am to engineer a meeting between the boy and his father…”

The woman, her hair black, her features dark and sharp with eyes having the distinct shape of a woman of Shu Hanese ancestry, arches an eyebrow.  The woman laughs, her voice pitched lower than he is accustomed to it being.  He likes none of it.

“Solovyov is the best suited to receive him—as his face is unknown.”  The woman nods, absently turning another page.  “I’ve confirmed you are dead.”

She laughs.

“Very,” she says wryly.

Aleksander decides he will give her a warning:  “He saw fit to comment upon my mistress.”

She sits up, and looks at him.

“Are you worried, Aleksander?”

He gets up, padding over to his bureau to retrieve his sleeping clothing, though he will likely still work into the small hours of the night.

“You can take care of yourself, Alina, can you not?  I have no wish to go to Fjerda for you again.  Though, I’m sure you would love for Solovyov to attack you outright so that you can reduce his miserable corpse to ashes.”

He shucks off the remaining layers of his uniform, heaping them on a chair.

She gives a rueful laugh.  “Too fast.”  She pauses.  “Too merciful.”

He pulls on a loose shirt and pair of pants.

“We find ourselves in rare agreement on the subject of mercy, solnyshka.”

She pulls her arms around her knees, watching him.

“But I am more than capable of taking care of myself, as you pointed out.  Perhaps I hardly need you.”

He looks back at her, his mouth twists into a smile.

“Not for this, Alina,” he concedes, before turning back to his work.  “The boy is another story.”

“You did not concede,” she says flatly, an air of accusation in her voice, which still makes her sound like herself despite the deepening of her voice.

He gets out a stack of correspondence.

“I told you I would not,” he says.  “But you know Solovyov.”

She knows exactly what Solovyov will do when he is denied his path.  He has not risen to where he is by submitting meekly to what others have told him is possible.  It is one of the traits that he might admire about him, had he not chosen to exercise it in the fashion he had chosen.

“Warn your son, Aleksander.”

It pains her, he knows, that the General’s mistress cannot be seen with the Sun Summoner’s son, even in her disguise.  He does not like that the boy is one of the few things that can conjure fear in her when he has worked for centuries to relieve her of such scruples.

But he knows concerning this, he can only concede:  “I will speak with the boy.”

***

Pavel has taken to sleeping, bolt upright, in his usual armchair in front of the fire with his gloves off, so he might be prepared.  Everything he values and his mother values has already been given over to his father and conveyed to who knows where.  The small pile of items that he hadn’t trusted him with sits in a non-descript bag on the table next to him, on top of a book from before his mother left for Fjerda.

Sometimes it feels to him as if he is looking on the detritus of another lifetime entirely.

(He wonders, too, if this is how his mother and father feel at the end of each of their strange lives, strung together about them, like a slowly choking necklace of mismatched pearls.)

“Myshka,” the shadows say, softly.  His father emerges from them, sweeping in with his borrowed face and dropping into the chair opposite of him with a grace Pavel knows it will probably take him several strange lifetimes strung together to come close to matching.

Pavel hasn’t been sleeping well, so he does not even feign a genial mood.  He does not even open his eyes.

“He’ll likely approach you tomorrow, so make yourself available,” he says.  “Do you understand what is at stake?”

Pavel is tired from several sleepless nights, and basically never in the mood to deal with his father.

“I think staying alive should be incentive enough,” he says.

His father actually chuckles at this and does not dispute the fact at all.

“Don’t trust the Heartrenders,” he says.

Pavel closes his eyes and sighs.

“So—your advice is to be like you?”

His father laughs for a second time that night—it must be some sort of record.  Or maybe he is as sleep deprived as he is, given he is scheming enough for two armies.

His father’s voice, though, still has a slightly ragged amusement:  “I would not worry if you could remotely achieve that.”

Pavel languidly opens his eyes and fixes him with a stare.

“Don’t pretend your own worries sent you instead of Madraya’s.”

He crosses his eyes and is silent for more time than he should be, before he says softly, “I am your father.”

Pavel says nothing to this.  Mostly because there is nothing to say.  And he is tired.

And, strangely human, for once, his father asks, “Would you like me to say anything to her?”

(He must be tired, too, he thinks.  Too tired to be a monster.)

He might have a lot he wants to tell his mother.  But it would be wrong to say any of the words through his father’s mouth.

But he gives him a pittance anyways, because he’s come, after all.  He’s come and asked.

“She knows, Papochka.”

For what it is worth, it’s the closest he’s ever gotten to meaning the title.

***

Pavel has kept his routine fairly predictable since he has returned to the Little Palace.

He goes to the library, although his reading tastes have become particularly tame since his return, as he expects someone is probably watching him far more than they had before.  He takes one meal under the golden dome—alone, generally—since as the Sun Summoner’s son and the Little Palace’s resident otkazat’sya, he had never been able to accumulate many friends and, whatever Grisha he had struck up an acquaintance with had already been shipped off to Ryevost and other parts for either the army or the Officer’s Academy.

He pretends he doesn’t hear the whispers—some sympathetic, some derisive—about the boy who doesn’t belong there who disappeared and came back without his mother.  Stoically, he eats what is offered to him.  These meals are eaten alone, along the benches—among the Grisha in their banded coats.  He supposes he has his oprichniki.  But they do not eat with him and make themselves scarce during the parts of his day when he goes through the motions of a schedule and puts on the mask of a worried son who has lost his mother.

He's not surprised when a man whom his father has shown him a grainy picture of, taken at a considerable distance, approaches him.  The constituent parts are all there:  the cane, the gray hair, the pleasant open face, the much less pleasant ever-present smile.

He is a dangerous man.

But he is also in a war he doesn’t know about with a far more dangerous man who is, at least for the moment, Pavel’s ally.

(And perhaps father.)

The oprichniki who surround Pavel like a cloud these days part for this man in a seamless, wordless display of the power he wields.

But, Pavel has a lot riding on the fact that he is, to all appearances, a moody, untutored boy who has been spoiled by his far more powerful mother and raised to heights because of her he might never have been destined to climb by himself.  So, because the man who has fallen into a slightly slower lopping gait beside him wears neither rank nor insignia, Pavel pays no mind to either and walks on, without addressing him and without slowing down.

The man clears his throat eventually.

Then, doing the best impression of his father he can, he arches an eyebrow, distills disdain into his glare, and says coldly, “Can I help you?”

The man who Pavel knows is Andrei Solovyov but is not supposed to know, chuckles to himself and says, with unnecessary condescension, “Master Pavel Morozov, I suppose?”

He flicks his eyes over to the man sullenly, “You suppose correctly.”

(He even sounds like his father.  But he will allow the comparison to disturb him when he is not in a situation where he is likely being monitored by several highly skilled Heartrenders.)

The man’s smile broadens.

“Then you can indeed help me, Master Pavel.”  He gives what can only be a lazy signal and the oprichniki stop, forcing Pavel to stop.  Pavel knows, because he has watched his father do far more subtle things with his authority, that this is not for Solovyov’s benefit—it is rather meant to be a somewhat overt demonstration of his power.

“Do you know who I am, Pavel?” he asks breezily.

(The fact that he uses his first name—which no one does except his mother at the Little Palace—is also an outright manifestation of what his unspoken rank is.)

He frowns, knowing he cannot outwardly deny this because he is guessing there is a plainclothes Heartrender in his midst.  This is what his father would do, after all.

So, he speaks in the half-truths that he has learned to shape his mouth around around from both his parents:  “I do not believe I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance.”  Which is an utterly true statement.  “Although you seem to know who I am.”

The man grins easily, appearing for a moment more like a slightly madcap grandfather rather than a man who engineered the kidnapping and imprisonment of his mother for the sole purpose of luring out his father.

And here Pavel is, directly in his clutches.

“I would like some moments of your time, Pavel.”

Pavel frowns, deliberately giving off a rather sour impression.  He knows that, in some circles, he is known to be entitled.  He might as well lean into this.

“I believe they’re being granted right now.”

The man’s smile morphs again, into a deeply condescending thing.

“In private, if you will.”

Pavel makes a feigned wild look at his own oprichniki, who are deliberately not meeting his eyes.

“I’m sorry, but that is decidedly against the protocol I’ve established with the General...”  For extra effect, he gives a hard look at his lead oprichniki, who looks above his head as if he is not there.  And, as General Petrov is overtly acknowledged as being the highest ranking person other than the President who is currently stationed at either the Little Palace or the People’s Palace, this will essentially make his guest pull rank.

Solovyov looks at him, all of the humor draining from his smile and leaving in its place something that momentarily reminds him of the way a skull grins, simply because it can do nothing else.

“The General can be made to understand,” he says with the same easy tones of clipped politeness.

Pavel, projecting the picture of an arrogant, restless youth, then drawls, “By all means then, sir, why do we not go ask him?”

Solovyov once again picks up one of his arms and makes a languid gesture.

“It would be a shame to interrupt such a busy man,” he says cordially.

Pavel frowns and then, with an air of boasting, rejoins, “I believe he will make time for me.”

Solovyov, moving at a much slower pace than before, gives the most minute nod of his head (Pavel thinks his father would have just started walking), and says, “You have… quite the close relationship with the General, then?”

Pavel allows his very mixed feelings about his father copious free reign.

“I would not characterize it as that,” he says.  Then, arching an eyebrow and giving Solovyov a look, he says, “I have had the pleasure of his acquaintance though.”  He pauses and adds, “Perhaps we are too well-acquainted.”

This again is truth.

“Oh?” says Solovyov, still leading him to an unknown destination.

And, in something he has seen his mother do over and over again while telling him half of a story, he gives an entirely different story than the one that is asked for.

“We share a wall,” he says flippantly.  “And he has a mistress.”  He pauses, letting his real feelings show on the matter.  “That is probably all that is best said since I’m not sure about the company I am currently in or what intentions they have towards me.”

Solovyov laughs.

“You will not be harmed, Pavel,” he says briskly.

“Funny,” he replies, throwing a completely unsubtle look towards his usual oprichniki, “That is precisely what someone who wanted to convince me to go somewhere where I’d be harmed might say.”

Solovyov laughs and then says, in the same easy-going tone of voice, “Arton, go interrupt General Petrov for this young man.” One of Pavel’s own oprichniki salutes and then leaves.  And Pavel knows this is supposed to be some sort of intimidation tactic, too.  And, if Pavel were related to anyone else, he might have been intimidated.  “Until then, I don’t think you can object to taking a very public walk in the garden.”

Pavel does much what he would do with his father in the same situation and allows his mouth to say exactly what it will:  “I am beginning to believe you are not going to be entertaining any objection I might have.”

The other man’s sole response is to laugh again.

Solovyov, walking at a leisurely pace, asks him several general questions about himself that Pavel answers just as generally, giving no more detail about his life than need be.  Finally, the oprichniki stop again—not at Solovyov’s signal—but at the appearance of a tall man with slicked back brown hair and neatly trimmed mustache and beard.  The soldiers salute sharply—a courtesy that had never been extended to Solovyov.  A beat behind them, Pavel does the same.

Solovyov, still smiling, does not move a single muscle at his father’s arrival.  Meanwhile, his father’s grey gaze rakes over the assembled oprichniki before settling on Solovyov and Pavel.

“At ease,” he declares, before saying, “I’m not accustomed to being summoned Comrade Solovyov.”

Pavel makes no discernable movement at the man’s name.

“Apologies, Malyen,” he says, as if this is all perfectly normal and Generals just come at one’s beck and call.  “This young man right here needs your assurances that I only wish to have a brief private conversation with him and this is perfectly within his security protocol.”

Feigning embarrassment, Pavel gives his father a briefly startled look before pausing to examine his shoes, for a moment before looking up at him again with a vaguely hang-dog expression.

“It is not in his protocol,” he says, because his father is aware that in not stating this outright, he is ceding his own authority to Solovyov… which is something he has never seen his father do to anyone but his mother.  “Though a momentary deviation can be authorized.  But, Comrade, in the future both Master Morozov and myself would appreciate some advanced notice.”

Solovyov’s lips curl up into his skull smile once more and, taking one hand off from where he is leaning on his cane, he brushes every word his own General has said aside with a “Ah, yes, but you know how these things go, Malyen…”

His father cedes nothing.

“This once,” he emphasizes, his own lips tightening up into a look rather like a predator about to strike.

And then, as if he is nothing, Solovyov turns away from his own General and says to Pavel, as if he is not still standing there, “You’ve heard it from his own lips, dear Pavel.”  He begins walking as if nothing had ever stopped them and hums, “Now, where were we?”

They slowly leave the grounds of the Little Palace and his father behind as they walk on towards the People’s Palace.

As he goes, Pavel can feel his father’s eyes burn into his back.

But he has to hand it to him.

Every single thing that has happened thus far has happened exactly as he had predicted it would.

***

Pavel does not gawk.  He keeps his eyes straightforward and focused upon the man in front of him, who slips into his leather-backed chair, a smile still playing at his lips.  But, even were he inclined to gawk (because even his father has never been inside of Andrei Solovyov’s office), there is almost nothing at which he might gawk.

It is more impersonal even than his father’s apartment in Arkesk.

There are no signs of any attachments—no framed photos of a wife or children.  There are no books.  There is a gleaming desk, on which sits a perfunctory desk lamp.  There are two wooden boxes containing papers.  There are pens.  Behind him, on the wall, the only decoration whatsoever is, ironically, the banner of the Firebird.

There’s nothing in the whole of the place to indicate any sort of humanity.  Really, Pavel thinks, there’s nothing here to arouse any sort of liking or disliking in anyone.  It is, as if, Andrei Solovyov simply exists.

(He wonders, really, if the price of the highest levels of power—to be hollowed out and made inhuman.  Because attachment means exploitation and weakness.

He wonders if the same thing in his father who was the Darkling might find something in Solovyov utterly understandable.  Because maybe to be this powerful is to simply be a ghost.  The Darkling was just an angrier, hungrier kind.)

“Tea, Pavel?” the man says affably.

“I’ve just eaten,” he mumbles, not having to feign his discomfort with the entire situation.  “…Sir.”

He smiles back at him—the look of a grinning skull.  The look of a man who has never gained anything to lose and so can do what he likes.

“I shall get some for myself, then.”

He picks up a black telephone and speaks an order into it.

“Now, Master Morozov,” he says when he has placed the gleaming black phone back in the metal cradle it usually rests in.  “Tell me about your father.”

Pavel frowns and looks anywhere but him.

“He is… from Dva Stolba.  Dead, I’m told.”

It is silent and, when Pavel raises just his eyes up to look at him, his smile has tightened.

“Now, now, Pavel,” he says, leaning forward, “That is not what you told President Vasiliev or the General.”  He brings up a hand and beats a carefully controlled staccato beat on the table.  “And the President has tasked me with… arranging something of a reunion.”

Pavel slowly draws himself up, and knows that men like Solovyov shift meanings to suit—who Pavel could be reuniting with could be anyone from his father or mother to some person he met once when he was three.  The meaning always suited the person in power who made no explicit offers and thus could tell no lies.

“I want my mother back,” he says, angry and biting.  “I’m not offering anything until I am guaranteed that I will get my mother back.”

His terms, too, are left vague, by design.  In Solovyov’s mind he might just as well get to see some ashes from his mother’s corpse and his promise would be fulfilled.

(“Semantics are the privilege of the powerful,” his mother had told him, as his father looked on, a look of rare satisfaction on his features.)

“I alone can guarantee that,” he says mildly.  “Aleksandra Morozova has been under my sole jurisdiction for a long time.”

Pavel knows it is unwise, but he says it anyways, because he is fairly certain the man across from him intends to kill him as soon as he gets from him what he wants, so he will find the question of no consequence.  He allows his eyes to burn and some of the rage he felt in Fjerda, feeling the weak sun beneath his slowly freezing palms, to leech into his expression.

“And who are you that the strongest Grisha in the United Ravkan Army is under your sole jurisdiction?”

The man hums and says, “You surely don’t have the clearance to know that, Pavel.”

Pavel holds his eye for a moment.

“Do I have the clearance to know what it is you’ve done with my mother, then?”

“She is fighting for Ravka, as a member of the military.  That is all you need to know.”

Pavel’s lips flatten into a hard line.

“You mean that is all I get to know.”

This is not a man who is used to being contradicted.  Pavel has become intimately familiar with the signs of those.

“Your real father,” Solovyov says, leaning back in his chair and folding both of his hands into his lap.  “In exchange for your mother.”

Pavel knows what his objective is, given the line of conversation.  So, biting his lip, he looks down, takes a deep breath, and then looks at Solovyov again.

“The General knows and is handling it.”

Solovyov’s smile spreads as if he is one of the long-banned Ravkan Saints.  As if he is suffering Pavel’s very presence to greater glory.

(He probably actually thinks like that.  But Pavel can’t think on it too long without being disgusted by several things all at once.)

“Let us just say it has been taken from his jurisdiction.”

Pavel’s mouth does the work before his brain:  “And given to you?”

“Yes,” he replies, without even a veneer of modesty.  “Do you realize who your father is?”

(It depends upon the day, Pavel thinks.  Centuries of identities are a lot to wade through.)

“My mother has long cut ties with him,” he grinds out defensively.  Because he knows how it all looks.  Politically.  That his mother bedded and had a child with who could be called, at best, a political traitor.

His father had designed the whole thing to look like that, he supposes.

“Your mother will be forgiven, of course,” he says, twiddling his thumbs in his lap.  “She is far too valuable to Ravka as the Spirit of the Firebird.”  He pauses and, Pavel does not know if it is his imagination or not, but something acrid and bitter leeches into his smile for the barest fraction of a moment.  “The people trust and turn to her, after all.”

Pavel takes a chance on what he has just seen and attempts to rub salt in that wound by wholeheartedly agreeing, like the naïve boy he’s pretending to be, “Ravka loves her.”

The earlier expression, however, is gone.  Because Solovyov has a masterful mask.

“Your father is an enemy who wants to erode everything that the Ravkan People have built since the Revolution, Pavel.”  His eyes take on a bright tinge to them.  “He is a danger to everything your mother, the Firebird, has fought for and you, Pavel Morozov, have the means to fight for those ideals.”

My mother has fought for me, he thinks, the guilt gnawing at his insides.  Not for your ideals.

“I want the General there,” he seems to blurt, though the interjection is as calculated as they come.  “I want him with me.”  Then, with a juvenile desperation that rankles him, he says petulantly, “He needs to be there.”

This is the only demand that matters.  Because, ironically, if the General does not show up, neither will Pavel’s father.

For the first time, Andrei Solovyov’s smile flickers.  And Pavel, who is used to looking at the minute differences on the faces of his father and mother that can indicate—well, anything—can read an entire novel of intent and motivation into his momentary lapse in control.

This man, who likely has spent his entire life cutting down anything he might fear, who took down his mother and used her sympathies to attempt to hollow her out so that she might not turn the people against him, has found in General Malyen Petrov someone who he has not easily outwitted.

“The General knows everything.  In fact, he’s told me he has already managed to contact him…” Pavel continues, injecting his tone with every ounce of anxious earnestness he is capable of.  “You will work with him, won’t you Comrade Solovyov?”

The smile drops off and without it, Andrei Solovyov is even more skull-like.

And his father had been absolutely right on this score, too:  This man is someone that knows when to cut his losses.  And, because he believes his mother is dead, he knows he has absolutely no more leverage than he has already been promised.

His voice is light:  “I always look forward to working with General Petrov.  You can be assured of that.”

Pavel is then dismissed.

(He is nearly to the Vezda Suite and through the doors of the place that he will soon no longer call home when he realizes the intangible part of his father’s plan.

His father has made himself Solovyov’s villain—a man who has corrupted the goose that laid the golden eggs far sooner than he knew.  And so, Solovyov’s ire will be focused and directed almost solely at him.

As Pavel settles into his armchair, his satchel over his shoulders so that he can bolt out at a moment’s notice, he is not quite sure what to think of this development.)

***

Aleksander comes in much later than usual, a strange look on his face.  She rises from where she is reviewing a number of the communiques, the sheets of the bed draped over her.

Wearily, he shrugs off his coat and hangs it, neatly, on its hook, and his fingers go to work unbuttoning his uniform.  She takes it from him, pillowing the black fabric of it over her arms before she hangs it on its designated hanger.

She has a good guess exactly as to why he is late—and who had been the cause of his delay, but, perhaps to spite her, he remains silent.  Rather, he sits down on the side of the bed and begins to knead his temples with one hand.

“Pavel?” she asks in a strange voice that she has not quite gotten used to hearing.

He looks up, ancient and weary.

“He’s clever,” he says, the two words more praise than he’s ever heaped on his own son before.  “Solovyov is none too pleased with him.”

She sits next to him, their shoulders touching, though she does not yet lean into him.

“…Will he…?” she asks, uncertain and unwilling to think about what that odious man might do to her son who has few protections he could not take away.

Aleksander’s expression clouds like a storm.

“He’s even less pleased with me,” he states.  “Exactly as planned. And I am more expendable in his eyes.”

“When?” she asks after several minutes have passed in silence.

Aleksander considers this.

“Next week,” he says.  Before amending, “Probably…”

Alina nods.

Then she hazards the conversation they keep not having:  “And then?”

His voice is heavy with something generally foreign to it.

“Adena,” he says, again.  “Unless you’d like to try immediately for Vasiliev…?”

Fixing him with a look that doesn’t seem to penetrate any of his usual armor, she asks pointedly, “Wouldn’t you like to try for Vasiliev?”

He looks genuinely contemplative for a moment.

“I would—but he is old and without Solovyov there is no clear replacement.  And,” he leaves the word hanging in the air, “If news gets out that he killed the Firebird…”

He trails off.

“You would be the replacement,” she says, because it seems obvious.  This is what he would have planned in any other lifetime.

He turns to look at her before saying pointedly, “And you?”

“No,” she says.  “I… None of this is the Ravka I want.”

He says it with the softness of a promise:  “It will fall apart without Vasiliev or Solovyov or myself.”

She arches an eyebrow.  She waits for him to propose the alternative: that he will sweep in with his Counter-Revolutionary Army and wipe the slate clean with blood.

He does not.  At least yet.

“And you’ll let it?”

He nods.  Then adds, “For now.”

“Why Adena?” she asks again, not yet daring to agree or hoping he would agree.

The corner of his mouth dips into his familiar enigmatic smile.

“You shall see, Alina.”  Then he gets up.  “I’ll tell the boy.”

Then he is gone with a billow of shadow.

***

The Little Palace hums with rumor for the next few days: that General Petrov has very publicly cast out his own mistress.

(Some, even, have hazarded talking to the General’s nearest neighbor, the dour-faced son of the Firebird.  His only comment is a sigh and a wistful, “Perhaps it will be quieter now.”)

The incident does much to explain why the General is short and, perhaps, even distracted.

(Though it has, perhaps, not reversed his tendency to throw himself into long, inhumane hours of work.  If anything, he does so more.)

Andrei Solovyov takes note of all of this, seeing through several pairs of eyes that are not his.  And he sees opportunity where, before, there was none.

Quietly, sipping tea in the confines of his office, he contemplates his triumph—how he will remove the General and the last scourge of the Saints of Ravka, all at once.  He breathes in the steam, luxuriates in the delicate fragrance of the expensive, imported concoction, and, as always, patiently bides his time.

***

The car—black, official, and utterly anonymous—picks him up, while his father and his strange face stands at his shoulder.  Andrei Solovyov is already sitting inside, on the opposite seat, his face set into a grimace and his fingers braided together and resting in his lap.

Sitting beside him is a man dressed entirely in black.  He sits, staring ahead, his face expressionless.  Unsurprisingly, Pavel has never seen him before.

“Malyen,” Solovyov greets as his father slides into the car next to him.  Then, his eyes, which to Pavel’s imagination glitter when they alight on him, land on Pavel’s face.

“Are you prepared, Master Morozov?”

Pavel directs a withering look at him he does not have to work at faking whatsoever.

“When will I see my mother?” he asks.

Solovyov’s grin broadens.

“When her political purity can be assured.”  Pavel assumes that this means never.  He settles himself back into the seat feigning contentment with this answer.  Next to him his father—whom Solovyov has every reason to distrust—turns to him.

His voice, as he speaks to Pavel, is bereft of affection he doesn’t feel for him anyways.

“Do your part at the meeting site and your meeting with your mother is assured.”

After all, thinks Pavel, it is not every day you allow the Ravkan State to use you as bait in order to kill one of your parents.

His eyes rake over to the man sitting next to him, his posture from where he has crossed his long legs at the ankles and sits, apparently unconcerned, the only thing still familiar about him.  Then he, conscious of the fact that the only person that knows the joke is on the Ravkan State, assumes the posture of a moody adolescent and rests his chin on a fist and looks out the window as the scenery grows more and more unfamiliar as it goes by.

***

Another black, anonymous car is already parked in a field where the blossoms of spring have already flowered and have grown brown and blotchy with the promise of summer warmth.  They park opposite to it.  As planned.

The boy maintains most of his mask, but he glances at him for fractions of a second too long before he abruptly moves his focus back to Solovyov.  He has acquitted himself passably during this unpleasantness.  Aleksander would admit he did have a modicum of cleverness that was still restrained by his mother’s teachings.  He bet that Alina’s unfortunate lessons would fade with time, as the boy excelled more at the machinations he would find could move and reshape the world into the forms he himself chose. 

Getting out of the car, they arrange themselves in a triad near the front of the car, the fourth figure never so much as stirring from the car’s interior.  A sniper, likely.  Not likely a Heartrender since Solovyov is not smarter than his unfortunate beliefs.  He hadn’t deigned to ask Solovyov about the unauthorized addition to their party because it mattered little enough.

A black hooded figure emerges near the other car, flanked by two masked, grey-uniformed soldiers, waits.

Aleksander has the sudden urge to laugh, but the impulse is crushed before so much as a fraction of it can ripple the surface of his expression.

“Nice of you to join us,” Solovyov calls over the withering flowers.

(It is a mistake driven by ego and ignorance that he has joined them in the first place.  It is a mistake he had only encouraged over fine Kaelish whiskey.  There is little more destructive than to believe one is indestructible or indispensable.  Solovyov has believed the myth he has surrounded himself with.

And, ah, how pride only goeth before the fall.  But he, too, has been humbled before the figure in front of them.  The difference between Solovyov and him would amount to the fact that he had survived his encounters.)

Solovyov continues, “I’m told you will provide an assurance of your identity?”

Only the wind ruffles the long, black cloak on the figure.  Aleksander imagines the expression on the hidden face.  How it curls up into a smile.  How the rare sight of utter disdain and viciousness is unfurling just out of his sight.  He allows himself a moment of indulgent fondness over the thought.

Silently, the figure sticks out a hand, draped in black fabric, obscuring all but a flash of black gloved hands.  Then, weakly, a spray of darkness emanates from the figure.

Next to him, the boy starts, clearly surprised by this development.  How quickly he conceals how his eyes dart over to him.  Aleksander’s expression remains dispassionate.

“Does that suffice?” he asks Solovyov.  “It appears we have grouped all the Shadow Summoners together.”

A smirk of triumph—such an arrogant display—blooms over the other man’s lips.  Aleksander has always thought he looks very much like a corpse who has kept living in spite of himself.

“Indeed,” he said.

One of the grey-clad individuals flanking the central figure speaks:  “You are to leave the boy.”

Solovyov laughs and asks, as if this is a good natured exchange between friends, “Oh, is that what we are supposed to do?”

“That was the deal,” the man practically growls.

Such dramatics, thinks Aleksander, suddenly tired of the whole farce.

Solovyov makes a gesture—subtle, and behind his back.  Aleksander has a good idea as to what is coming.  He tilts his head in a way that could be mistaken for a normal physical tic.

“The Darkling,” drawls Solovyov, all vitriol possible pressed into the word.  “A part of Ravka’s past that should remain there.”

“I agree,” comes a voice.

Solovyov immediately straightens at it, his entire figure going rigid and wary far too late.  The black cloaked figure before him takes down the hood, revealing a wash of white hair.  It flatters him that she has worn a black kefta for the occasion—something she has sworn she won’t ever do again.

“I don’t intend to ever let a Darkling rule Ravka again,” continues Alina, who has gathered the heat of the sun on her palms and has begun to glow like a goddess of vengeance.  “It might be the sole thing we have ever agreed upon, Andrei.”

Then he sees it.  The delicious way her mouth curls, savoring the look of apoplectic rage that has darkened Solovyov’s pale, corpse-like cheeks.  His Alina is magnificent.

Even so, they both have their roles to play.  Aleksander strides forward, leaving the boy behind him, knowing that, if need be, he will send his Nichevo’ya to stand guard over him because he will give Alina no excuses when he is this close to conquering her as well as Solovyov.

When he is perched up on the peak of obtaining everything.

“As I have ever professed, solnyshka, you will rule by my side.”  He lets the darkness drip from him, trail his footsteps as he walks, run from his hands like the blackest blood.  An emotion that Aleksander is rather sure Andrei Solovyov has thought himself quite estranged from blooms over his face: he is afraid.

And he is right to be.  He has angered the two most powerful beings alive—beings whose power and knowledge his pitifully small life could not even begin to comprehend. 

Because he is but a mayfly with the ephemeral illusion of power.

Then Andrei Solovyov becomes boringly predictable.

“You,” he says, as if he knows anything.  Anything.  “There’s a sniper trained on the boy.  Is he worth risking?”

Aleksander laughs and then, because he wants to make the power dynamic here absolutely clear, with the familiar pain bubbling in his chest, he rips living darkness from himself—merzost personified—and the Nichevo’ya crushes the car thoughtlessly, and the sniper in it, as if it were a mere tin can.

(His only regret is that he will not wear his own face when he crushes Solovyov.)

“No,” responds Aleksander easily.  “He’s not worth risking.  The Sun Summoner is rather fond of him.  Thank you, Andrei, for making me aware of the threat to my son.”

Fear has well and truly gripped Solovyov now: his mouth works open and then closes.  There is a sheen of sweat across his forehead.

But by now Alina has swept over to him, resplendent in the midnight of her kefta.

“You’ve told me he’s mine.”

He bows in mock permission at her before saying, “I will take care of the platoon of soldiers he unwisely sent after us first, then.” 

She smiles.  “You say that as if I need your help at all.”

“Of course, solynshka,” he says deferentially.  Solovyov cowers.  But it is not nearly enough.  Aleksander turns to him and says, “Have you heard how proficient the Ravkan Firebird is with the Cut?  Have you read how she can level mountains with a flick of her fingers?”

He looms over him.

“Do not worry,” his words flow like honey from his lips, “Her control is impeccable.  You will be witness her mastery.”  He smiles.  “It is a thing of beauty.” the 

Then he leaves Alina to it.

He admires her work from afar, as he removes the last of Solovyov’s loyal pests who come to join them with a sense of boredom and a few fluid motions of his hands.  When Alina finishes, the pieces of what used to be Andrei Solovyov have the faint smell of cooked meat about them.

Leading him away to his car so they can await his mother, he asks the boy if he is hungry.

(Predictably, the boy sidesteps the question and only asks how his mother can wield shadows in response.

Aleksander tells him the truth as he sees it:  “We have always belonged to one another.”

It is also the reason he gives himself for what he does next.)

***

Chapter Text

xix.  Adena

He wears his own face again.

He takes nothing from either of his double lives.  For now.  He needs nothing where he is going.  He has never needed anything where he is going.

Then, for at least a while, he leaves Ravka to devour herself.  He knows he can come back and right her, when necessary.

Then he keeps his promise to Ulla.

He goes home.

And for the first time in his life, he brings someone with him there.

***

The house is unassuming and ancient:  The walls are stacked logs that he reseals himself every few years (1).  About a century ago, he had replaced the thatched roof with tin and finally, some handful of years ago—for him—with tile.  The windows he’d changed innumerable times.  The back, where he expects the fence has collapsed once again, slants down to a river, although there is a well on the far corner of the property.

(Civilization has not quite found this corner of the world yet, even in this age.  One day he might have electricity and plumbing, but he does not now.  He expects only the boy, who has only known the current century, will find this an inconvenience).

He notices, too, that now he will need to paint it again as the green of the last coat is peeling in places.  But he may have time.  The woodwork, too, could use replacement here and there, as the carvings have rotted away in places since last he had come here.

He bids Alina and the boy stay in front, near a sagging fence that needs to be repaired, lest the goats which have been farmed on these lands for centuries find their way into a garden that he intends to plant.  And he goes round, kneels down near the foundation in back, digs his way down into the soil, and feels for the iron door which is never locked, but not at all visible unless one knew it was there in the first place, and removes a key of Fabrikator made steel for a lock he’d had replaced by a Fabrikator who had no idea who he was.

Wiping the dirt from his hands, he goes around to the front, where he’s left her and the boy.  She, as usual when he is doing something for her that she cannot fathom the magnitude of, greets him with something of suspicion.

“What is this place?” she asks, as a variation on her refrain the entire way out.

And, in the same answer he’s always given her throughout their journey, he answers, “Adena.”

(And his son, deciding to be rarely useful, simply sighs, “Madraya, he’s not going to tell us out here.”  And once, insolently, he had muttered, “He may not tell us ever.”)

He fits the key to the lock, and turns, going in and beckoning them to do likewise.  The air inside is musty, as he has not been here in almost fifteen years, and, as usual when he first comes, the cloths that cover the furniture are thick with dust and, occasionally, there is evidence of a small leak or a minor rodent infestation.  Although, his initial cursory inspection finds nothing out of the ordinary.  The tapestries to keep the chill out and the rugs are all organized in precisely the place that he put them last, bound up and shielded from harm, and his books still sit, closed neatly in their glass cases in the shadowy backroom.

Upstairs, the fourposter bed in his bedroom is, as usual when he comes, bereft of any sort of bed linens—he buys those anew in the village that is some half day’s walk from the house each time he comes.  The other two bedrooms sit crammed with carefully boxed up miscellaneous articles from his travels—mostly books—which have survived the years, and have no beds, as of yet.

He expects Alina will make him acquire one for the boy before too long.  And probably a desk and shelf, as well.  Such things will need a car for the journey, as he is loathe to have anyone deliver anything here, but that will need to be worked out later.

He makes his way into the rustic kitchen, and, lighting one of the oil lamps, he takes it in his hand to guide them.  Alina follows silently and suspiciously after him, and her boy following her like a lost puppy.  Efficiently, he removes the heavy cloth that covers the wooden table and chairs.

Aleksander had carved them long ago, in a rare summer between a death and a resurrection when he had been free of being anything at all.  But they do not need to know this yet.  Or maybe at all.

“Sit,” he says.  Then, explaining about the plumbing slantwise, he rifles through a cabinet, finds a dusty, but manageable bucket, and says, “I’ll go to the well and heat some water for tea.”

He is back, bucket in hand, and he sends the boy out to the wood pile.

As soon as he leaves, he goes about rinsing out a tea set he finds in the cabinet, although the four tea cups have never touched the lips of anyone but him.

He rinses them with the well water and finds an ancient teapot and does the same.  Alina observes him, a frown on her face.

“Where have you brought me, Aleksander?”

He finds a vaguely acceptable cloth and begins to dry what he’s found, setting it on the table in front of her.

“A home,” he says, off hand.

She is as relentless as he expects:  “Whose, Aleksander?”

He sets a cup in front of her.

“Mine,” he says, observing her face.  “I purchased it while posing as an otkazat’sya merchant sometime after the Fold.”

Something in her softens.  A corner of his lips dips up almost unconsciously before he evens his expression out again.

“You didn’t think that, after all of those years, all I had were my rooms in the Little Palace, did you?”

He puts the rest of the tea set onto the table and slides into the chair next to her.

“You never said,” she says.  “Though I’m not surprised you didn’t.”

“Not even Baghra knew.”  He pauses.  “And if she had she would have likely disapproved as usual.”  He looks at her, willing her to understand—about Adena.  About him.  “I’ve never brought anyone here before.”

She remains looking at him fixedly.

“Why us?”

He frowns.

“I should hope that would be obvious, Alina.”

She raises her own eyebrow at him.

“Enlighten me, nonetheless.”

He pillows his chin on a hand and meets her eyes, “If you had been honest with me, Pavel might have been born in his father’s house.”  She has the decency to look a bit guilty about it.  He gestures around the darkened room.  “What is mine is yours, Alina.”

She looks down, and, taking the tea cup in her hands, twirls it around, her fingertips tracing the fine loops of silver in the metalwork.

“All of it?”

He draws his lips into a line, not overly daring to hope that she means anything more than the house in Adena he comes to when he has no better place to go.  The closest thing he has, aside from the idea of the Little Palace to a home.

In truth, there is little in the world which comes under his hand which is truly his.

He begins with the boy, who is, at first glance, uncomplicated.  At least in this matter.

“He is my son.”

She meets his eyes, then, as if it is in question, she asks, “And me?”

He frowns, wondering if this is some trap of hers—some new method to hone some vestige of an old grudge.

“You are Alina Starkova,” he says.  “The Sun Summoner.”  He makes his hand into a fist, squeezes it, and then, willing his face into a mask of indifference, owns  “You are technically not mine.”

She actually laughs, and, her lips forming in a smirk, repeats dryly, “Technically?  You might as well say I don’t belong to you.”

He sets his jaw.

“Yet, Alina.”

He does not ask her anything, because the boy comes in with wood and his usual insolent expression, and such a discussion is not for his ears.  Aleksander then finds that this century has not equipped him to light so much as a stove.  With a sigh, he instructs him through the relatively simple steps, his mother’s eyes watching Aleksander throughout the process.

But he does not ask that night.

Nor the next.

Nor the next.

***

Alina does not approve of the plumbing.  Or the electricity.

He makes a note and decides perhaps he will bring the house comfortably into what passes for modernity.

Mostly, though, he works on acquiring furniture as much of it that remains is only suited to his brief, solitary forays here between each of his feigned lives or the rare times when he simply needed a few moments of peace.  It is not suited to… guests.

Alina finds a pair of green armchairs in the next town over.  He finds money in several accounts to pay for them and a sofa, as apparently the boy needs to be able to sit down with them.  Then they acquire a modest car to bring it all back without bringing anyone traipsing through his house.

(Alina is surprised he can drive.  He is surprised she cannot.  He tells her that he will teach her, as it is a skill that will be necessary in the centuries going forward.)

The bed remains his favorite purchase.

And, although it has been years since Koba, Alina approaches him on their first night on a decent mattress and they come together as if the boy had never come between them in any manner.  She lingers in the dappled sunlight that filters through the moth bitten curtains he will soon replace.  He rises to light the fire in the stove and to make breakfast and tea.

He lets her into his house.  He lets her dictate the terms of their living in it.  He lets her move and reorganize and sift through the detritus of his long life—the books, the papers, small trinkets that at one time he thought important.

The boy settles into the room next to him.  Aleksander lets him among all of his bookshelves, but one, and the boy greedily devours volume after volume and goes through far more oil in his room’s lamp than he should.  But that is a hunger that Aleksander understands all too well.  And, even towards the boy he feels indulgent here.

Alina, of course, does not understand the magnitude of what he is allowing her to do.  Even so, she slips into Adena seamlessly.

And he lets her.

He lets them.

(It is the closest he has ever come to showing her what and who he is.)

***

Pavel does not know what to make of Adena.  Or his parents.  He especially does not know what to make of his parents in Adena.

As far as he knows, as he has lived in the Little Palace for most of his existence, this is the closest he has ever gotten to anything even vaguely resembling normality.  His mother still makes him wake up in the morning and practice his lessons—Fjerdan and Shu and Kaelish.  And, often, while he studies, his parents play chess.  Occasionally, his father produces a newspaper from somewhere and chess doubles as a verbal sparring match.

He's watched his father plant a garden and chop wood.  With an ax.  He ventured out one day with his mother and a day later a car with mattresses and various furniture came.

Pavel goes outside, down towards the river, and practices his summoning.  Sometimes he returns to find his father watching him from the porch.  But he remains impassive: Pavel does not ask and his father does not say anything.

Pavel also does not ask to borrow his father’s books.  But, when he walks in on him in the parlor reading them, he simply narrows his eyes at him for a moment and also doesn’t say anything.  So, Pavel takes this as tacit permission to go right on borrowing volumes to read.  And it may be, because one day his father takes the armchair next to him and does the same.

Without comment.

It is more interesting seeing his father and his mother interact, as most of the time Pavel has seen them together it had been when his mother had been largely unconscious.

Since he shares an adjacent bedroom with them he knows, to his own mortification that, in some ways, they get along… quite enthusiastically.  And, if Pavel rolls over and pulls his pillow over his ears to block that out, he doesn’t think anyone can particularly blame him.

It is the smaller things, too.  How his mother heaps a disgusting amount of sugar into his father’s tea without comment.  How his father makes Kerch stew several times a month, even though summer is not really the time for such things.

(When a surprisingly well-made medovic cake shows up, Pavel does not know what to make of it.  He eats it.  It is good.

His father eats it, almost begrudgingly, despite the fact that Pavel knows that his mother is an absolute disaster in the kitchen and it was not her that made it in the first place.

And his mother smiles.)

Such is Adena.

***

They play a lot of chess.  Mostly as Pavel tears through Aleksander’s shelves of books with a fervor that leaves his father looking at his son contemplatively, almost as if he might actually recognize something of himself reflected in him.

And because Aleksander swears he has simply never had the time to master the game, she wins more than she loses.

And, as if it is Ketterdam, or Istamere, or even miserable Koba, she begins again to ask him questions.  As always, with him, she approaches the monument of his life like he is a startled animal, knowing which general behaviors are going to frighten him.

(Don’t mention Anastas, she knows.  Don’t ask what he was in the Tula Valley doing before the Fold swallowed it up.  Baghra often has a similar result if she asks about her early enough.  Once she hazarded his own father and finds that he is not taboo, but, sadly, their knowledge about him from Baghra is about identical.)

Instead she pokes at other of his taboos, finding the man he is in Adena to be ever less resistant to answering, so long as Pavel is nowhere near.

One night, she asks, “When did you know about Pasha?”

He looks up at her, his eyes suspicious.  Then, he responds, “For his third birthday, you ordered the kitchens to bake a Korolevskiy Cake (2).  You and a woman named Katya—your Healer, I believe—attended.  The frosting, probably, somehow was allowed to enter his nose,” Alina, who had actually been there, can picture the precise moment he is talking about.  Pasha, his face and hands filthy with the cake and the frosting, Katya, fussing as she did, in the small part of their suite that functioned as a kitchen, getting a cloth to wipe him up… Aleksander’s impassive narrative continues, “He sneezed and was upset over the mess.  I’m guessing he cried.”

He had sneezed.  Katya had run over and seen, right then, the wet cloth to clean him off, and Pasha had cried.

And the Shadows had answered.

Alina stills, the game between them quite forgotten.

His voice is soft.  “I told you that you were not careful enough.”

“…Katya?” she asks, still a bit numb to what she is being told.

“A friend of hers.  A fellow Healer.”  Aleksander, leaned forward, “I paid her handsomely for her compromised loyalties and paid her even more handsomely to give Solovyov very different information than she gave me.  She was killed on the Fjerdan front nine years later.”

Alina balls her fists in her lap.

“You knew and—”

Aleksander’s voice goes hard and his eyes go stormy.

“I knew you lied.  Which was as good of a reason for me to stay away as all of your idiocy in taking my name—you were very clear in all the ways you could be that you wanted me to have nothing to do with the boy.  I let you have your way.”  His whole expression tightens.  “But I had just as much a claim to know the boy as you.”

“You threatened to kill him the first time you met him,” she protests, incensed.

He rounds his shoulders, straightening his posture.  Coldly, deliberately, he reveals, “Do you know your son taught himself how to perform the Cut?”

Alina’s mouth goes dry.

“He—”

She has deliberately not armed him with that knowledge.  He had gone through the Little Palace’s defense program—his physical level rivaled that of the oprichniki.  And she had personally taught him how to apply his Small Science.

“He killed two Drüskelle in Fjerda with it.  But, he assured me prior to that moment he knew exactly how it was performed.”

(This information should impact her more.  But the years have numbed her.  She, too, can vaguely remember the girl who had a Drüskelle split in half in front of her and her horror over it has grown ever more abstract over the intervening years.)

It occurs to her that here, too, is something Aleksander is not fully admitting.  Something he is waiting for her to understand that he already does.  And, confirming her suspicions, he says, “He, much like my younger self, has an unfortunate predilection for finding out things he’s explicitly not supposed to.  It is probably an unintended downside of your choice to have me father your child.”  He leaves the comment hanging in the air with something of an air of accusation.  And, indeed, he finishes, “I’m not the only one who threatened Pavel with death the first time we formally met.”  He gets up.  “At least I didn’t make him do it in his own voice.”

He ends up pouring himself a glass of water before he resettles himself across from her.

“He doesn’t know what the Firebird is,” she says decisively.

“I assure you he does,” he says.  He remains sipping his glass, as if he is merely having a very casual conversation.

“Did you tell him?” she asks.

He arches an eyebrow and slouches forward in his chair, lazily.

“You threaten to kill your own son and I am the villain if I tell him what you’ve done, solnyshka?  Have we not moved beyond such pettiness?”

Her eyes bore into him.  “I should hope so.”

“David Kostyk told him,” he says, offhand.  Her eyes widen.  Because there is only one way that her son has been able to learn anything from Genya’s long dead husband and it should have been definitively out of his reach.  Horrifyingly, Aleksander continues on, “He went to some considerable effort to obtain his journal from an auxiliary archive of banned materials.  Had I not quashed it, you may very well have ended up with an official from the Censorate in your living room, dear Alina. Isn’t it a good thing that his father was placed so highly in the Special Forces?”

Alina processes this all.  Mostly that Pavel gets up to things he should very much not because Aleksander is quite right—he’s not completely been made aware of the world he is living in.  Mostly because she has shielded him from it.

More surprising, perhaps, is that Aleksander—in his own, slightly terrifying way—has been shielding him, as well.  Though he would definitely deny this characterization if she asked him.

It does not stop her from asking, though, merely to see what lie he will tell her.

“Why?”

He realizes this question is more widely aimed.

And he, as ever, answers it in the same spirit:  “Curiosity.”

She feels her brow knot at what is evidently a half-truth.  One, if she knows Aleksander, he does not want questioned.

“Curiosity about what?”

His lips draw into a line and he puts down the cup he is sipping from, shifting to a posture that indicates more seriousness than the question perhaps demands.

“I wanted to know how much like me he would become,” he answers at length.  Then, he leans his chin onto his fist and, in something that must be brutal honesty, looks to where the gauzy curtains are flapping lightly in the spare summer breeze.  “I wondered, as he did become more like me, if you’d regret it.”

Probably because using Pavel is the only way he can fathom asking this question, although he is not, indeed, asking, Alina knows to her guts and marrow and all the way to the Making, that at its core, this sentiment is not strictly about Pavel as always.

She answers honestly, as well.

“I don’t regret it.”

He looks back, and his grey eyes linger over her for longer than is necessary.

Then, he makes a surprising request:  “Let me teach him.”

Alina looks down to the grain of the table.

“I’m not sure he’d like that,” she quips.

Aleksander scoffs.

“I’m sure he will not.  But he still needs to be taught.”

Alina doesn’t necessarily feel as if he is trying to trap her into something, but still, this sudden willingness on his part is… new.  She does not know if it is Adena—because Aleksander is a different being, once more, in Adena—but this is not the man who wanted nothing to do with Pavel in what he would regard as a period shorter than the blink of an eye ago.

“Why you?”

He makes a gesture as if to ask, nonverbally, who else she expects him to find here. 

“Aleksander,” she says sighing.

He gives her a slightly irritated look and then, frowning faintly, explains, “Hasn’t Pavel already shown you that, if left to his own devices, he will seek to answer his own questions?”

“…Yes,” she answers begrudgingly, knowing there is perhaps more Pavel has done than Aleksander has been willing to divulge.

“I found my own answers, as well,” he says, once more staring off into the darkening world outside of the windows and taking a sip from his cup.  “Eventually, I made the Shadow Fold with what I’d found.”  Then, after a beat, he admits, “And my own parentage is not nearly as powerful as his is.”

Alina suddenly realizes that, maybe, Aleksander, too, fears his son becoming like him.

And, the fact he feels like that gives her something akin to hope that she is right about him, after all.

***

His father is watching him, his ever present look of arrogant disapproval plastered to his features.  Pavel can literally feel his eyes on his back as he calls the shadows to him.  Out of pure irritation, he forms the Cut, then dissolves it, just to show him he’s not incapable.

There’s silence for a moment.  And really, Pavel has no real expectation that this would have made him react at all.

But then he speaks.

“Are we not all things?”

Mostly out of spite, Pavel does not halt what he is doing to look at him.

“Another riddle?”

His father’s voice, as smooth as glass answers, “More of a theory.  Perhaps something of a philosophy.”

He keeps his tone purposefully bored:  “Whose?”

“Ilya Morozov’s,” he says, his tone amused.  “My grandfather.”

It goes unsaid, as it always does with his father, that since they are related, Ilya Morozov is also Pavel’s great-grandfather.

But, despite his best efforts, that small detail piques his interest.  Because his great-grandfather was  the Bonesmith—a man who lived before Grisha were even properly categorized into orders, though most would call him a Fabrikator.  He knows, too, from Kostyk’s journal, he created his mother’s amplifiers. 

(His mother will pointedly not answer questions about those—the very, very rare times he finds the courage to bring them up.

… Though he puts the Firebird outside of the bounds of questioning.  He knows what he knows from his Aunt Ulla most.  But the only thing he knows for certain is that it is simply what connects them.

Neither of his parents is likely to offer up any actual information about the matter.

And Pavel does not know how to bring it up from the land of taboo and silence that he’s only now begun to pierce.)

Calculating what showing interest in this small admission might cost him—because it seems like his father’s thinking is transactional in its very nature, he lets the shadows recede into his hands and says, with calculated petulance, “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

His father does not even rise.  From his seated position, he claps together his hands and, doing nothing more than the very basics of summoning—repeating the exact forms Pavel had just been going through—he makes a display more powerful than Pavel could hope.

“Do it again,” he says, the soft lilt of command in his voice.

Pavel, frowning, finds that the cost of his knowledge is an actual lesson with his father.  But, after some consideration, he complies, begrudgingly going through the motions, comparing his efforts to a man who literally has centuries more experience and still finding it irksome to come up short.

“Properly, Pavel.”  His father’s voice contains no trace of anything but utter seriousness.  And the fact that he has used his name is, perhaps, an indication of this.  “Concentrate.”

Taking a deep breath, Pavel obliges.  Although it does not nearly rise to the level of his father’s mastery, the darkness he wields intensifies, coalesces, and then he hits his limit and can do no more.

The tendrils of darkness dissipate from his father’s hands with something that Pavel can only categorize as a disappointed sigh and, without raising his voice, he commands, “Stop.”

Pavel does.

“Do you know the basic principles of the Small Science?” he asks.

Pavel refrains from rolling his eyes, as he has practically mauled all of the copies of the theory books in the Little Palace’s Library.

“Odinakovost and Etovost,” he says shortly.  His father raises an eyebrow.  “Etovost gives us our affinity, but it works in tangent with the principal of odinakovost.”

His father’s expression is utterly impassive.  Pavel does not know if his answer is acceptable or that he even cares that his erstwhile son has a command of the most elementary facets of the Small Science.

Then, he asks what should be a simple question, “And how does a Grisha call what they have an affinity with?”

The sarcastic reply slips from his mouth before he can even stop it:  “Their hands.”

His father drops his hands and, still, the darkness around him swirls and rises.

“Explain,” he says.

You’re a freak, sits on the tip of his tongue.  He does not say this only because his father, as if he is able to read his mind and find the retort, says, “Your mother can also do this.”

Pavel remains stubbornly silent.  Mostly because in traditional Grisha theory, the hands are the conduit of etovost.  He shouldn’t be able to do that.  Nor should his mother.  Not because they are freaks, but because it goes against traditional theory.

Are we not all things?

He turns it over in his mind.  On the surface, as philosophy, it is a somewhat dehumanizing at best.  But, as theory…

“Why not simply ask what binds the world?”

His father regards him, something working behind his mask.

“Overly broad and pedantic,” he appraises.  “But continue.”

 Are we not all things?

“Perhaps a more… specific application, would be to ask… why are the Grisha who wield sun and shadow more powerful?” Pavel posits theoretically.  His father offers neither expression nor comment on this line of questioning.  “If you break everything down—what lies between all things?  Not fire, nor wind, nor water.”

“Light and dark,” his father supplies.

“And centuries,” he mutters, causing his father’s lips to form into a dangerous, thin line.  Even though it’s not an insignificant measure in Pavel’s humble opinion.

Otherwise, though, he ignores his comment and says, “Why then, Pavel, do you think your hands command your shadows?”

Pavel jerks his head up and blinks at him, before, probably far too late, managing to stuff his reaction behind a half-hearted mask.  He’s not fooling anyone, probably.  Least of all his father.

“How?” Pavel says, not willing to expand the question.

His father is, as usual distinctly unimpressed.

“How what?” he asks, each word an emphatic whip.

Pavel bites back on a retort and, with some effort, manages,  “If not with your hands, how?”

His father’s face draws into that enigmatic half-smile Pavel mostly hates.  Because it makes him feel like a mouse before a cat.  Maybe a tiger.  And he’s decided he’s not going to give this man the benefit of fear.

He rises.

He comes and stands so close Pavel swears he can feel the warmth of his skin drift off of him.

“Keep your hands at your sides.”

He balls his hands into fists and then does as he is told.

“Call the shadows,” his voice is right in his ear.

Are we not all things?

Feeling more than a little ridiculous, he thinks about the world before him, narrowing in further and further.  Thinking of what lies between all of the half-rotten fence posts, between the logs that make up the house, the cool shadows of leaves.  Then he goes smaller—the cool darkness underneath the grass, the dark that hides between the caps of the acorns fallen from the oaks, how underneath his own skin and his father’s there is darkness that the light cannot reach.  How darkness and light bind everything together at a fundamental level.

Like calls to like—a theory he’s read in every single book.  A fundamental tenant of the Small Science.  But nothing about this feels even remotely like theory.

Because, he breathes and even he is no different from the total flow of the world and in it he can feel what is in him call to everything else.  He breathes and around him the shadows move in tandem with what he is.

“Good,” the one word interrupts his focus and he has the sudden recognition that his father is standing close enough that he can feel his breath on the small strip of exposed skin above his shirt collar.  “That will do,” he says.

Pavel does not know what to do with such praise.  Mostly because he cannot think of a single thing his father has ever thought was good about him.

“What was that?” he asks, hating how uncertain his tone sounds like.

His father is already walking back to his former perch on the rickety porch railing.  Pavel is not even expecting an answer, really.  Mostly because he never gets more than riddles.

Though, this time there is an answer.  One that is even understandable to mere humans:  “The beginnings of mastery.”

If it were Madraya he would sit next to her.  But it is not Madraya.  And he does not know what his father is playing at, honestly.  Or, even more terrifying, if he is actually playing at anything.

He blurts something he’s known since he read about his mother’s amplifiers, years ago.

“You have Ilya Morozov’s journals.”

They’re sitting in the one cabinet with a lock, after all.

His father’s eyes immediately narrow and it is clear he is not expecting this particular turn.

“I’m his heir.”

Pavel’s mouth does its usual thing and blathers on without his brain’s permission:  “Then so am I.”

His father’s eyes go the kind of stormy that usually presages someone being eviscerated.  Probably sometimes literally.  And lucky for Pavel it is only him and his mouth here for the occasion.  Then, his father changes again, strangely mercurial as he always is.

“I have no objections to you reading them.”

Pavel can hear the second half of the sentence writhing between them like a tangible thing.

“Madraya,” Pavel says.

His father regards him for a moment and then, continuing on in the same way he has been since they’ve come to Adena, like he’s peeled some of himself off him like a snakeskin and Madraya and him are left with this strange being who has a house not even she knew about after three hundred some odd years of association.

“The house only has two livable bedrooms and the main room is cold at night, boy.  You’d rather not sleep there.”

Pavel stares outright.  (Which is not usually a safe behavior with the person in front of him.). But he stares some more as he puzzles through the implications of what he’s just been told.

“You’re—”

His brain warns him strenuously he should probably not finish that sentence if he has any sense of self-preservation.  So he swallows the end as his father’s expression turns into a surprisingly dangerous thing for a man who is sitting in his shirt sleeves on the edge of his porch, like he’s somehow normal.

And then Pavel’s lips quirk up.

“You weren’t supposed to tell me any of that.”

His father remains looking coolly back at him, though his lack of a retort speaks more volumes than anything.  He’s noticed from watching him talk to his mother that he is a man who prefers half-truths over outright lies. 

Pavel’s smirk widens, and he decides maybe having a sense of self-preservation is overrated.

“I won’t tell Madraya you’ve been imparting forbidden truths to me in an effort to corrupt me,” his father stills at the wry characterization of what has occurred and he knows he does not have his mother’s clout and therefore it is probably suicidal to do something so normal as tease his own father who has just amply demonstrated that he could wipe Pavel out without so much as raising a single finger.  “On one condition,” he finishes.

His father is most definitely evaluating him.

“Fine,” he says, in one clipped word.  “Name it.”

Pavel is almost embarrassed that this is his only term.  He draws himself up, though he still falls short of his father’s full height.

“You keep teaching me.”

Surprise washes over his father’s face.  Which is gratifying, really.  Even though it is smothered almost as soon as it appears.  The important thing is that it had, indeed, been there and Pavel had seen it.

“I’m not a gentle teacher,” he says after a moment.

Pavel sets his features, because he knows he is likely underestimating exactly what he is asking for.  Actually, he suspects that it will be pretty hellish.  Especially since he’s given his father leave to remind him, every lesson that they have, that it was Pavel himself who asked for this.

“Neither is the world,” Pavel says, in answer, hardening his jaw.

His answer is its own kind of negotiation, as he knows that this is not Madraya’s view.  (At least the Madraya  who doesn’t rip apart men Cut by Cut.). It is, in fact, something dangerously close to his father’s.  But, Pavel wonders if he is just destined to thread a needle between the two of them.

“We shall speak to your mother, Myshka.”

Pavel nods.  Then, because he is not really sure what has happened at all, he goes back in the house and goes immediately upstairs to his room.

***

“I always thought, for such a smart man, you were far worse at chess than you should be.”

He looks up at her and makes his move, deliberately toppling her queen.  The curtains in the open windows ripple, sending a cool breeze wafting through the main room.

She smiles and moves her bishop.

“Check.”

“Haven’t I explained why?”

He examines the board with a languid eye, almost as if he does not care about the results.  Then, his long, elegant fingers grasp a piece and make his move, removing the threat.

“Yes, yes, Aleksander,” she says dismissively.  “You’ve funneled your no doubt prodigious talents elsewhere.”  She moves her piece and announces once more, “Check.”

He hums dismissively and examines the board once more, raising an eyebrow, though she realizes that his options are closing off and he knows it.

“Would you like to ask, Alina?”

He moves his piece.

She frowns just slightly.  Captures one of his pieces.

She scoffs, though he is unruffled.  A small, vain part of her wonders if he has become accustomed to losing to her, even if by narrow margins.

“What would you like me to ask?”

“What I intend to do with my,” he clears his throat—dramatic as usual—“‘prodigious talents’ next?”  He makes his move.  “We cannot stay in Adena forever.”

She looks up.  He is still looking at the board.  She moves decisively.

“Check.”

He looks ruefully (at least she imagines this is what his expression might mean), down at the state of the board and makes what they both know is his last move.

She makes her move, in turn, knocking over his king.

“Checkmate.”  She pauses.  And then says, because she knows that they are still playing a game of sorts, although he is far more practiced at the one they are currently in the midst of.  “I happen to like Adena.”

His gaze, when it comes to rest of her, is not quite cool.  Something sparks in the agate of his eyes.  In some ways, like being terrible at chess, he is fairly predictable to her by now.  So she knows what he will ask before he asks it.

“And what of Ravka?”

She imitates his usual expression, arching one of her eyebrows and looking disdainful.

“Has it burned down and ceased to exist without you, Aleksander?  Do you think it won’t spin on without you?”

Also predictable, he looks irritated at this response. 

“The Grisha—”

“Can own something like this and never spend a day in the army if they don’t want.  Under Vasiliev they have no or less status than the next otkazat’sya.  And Fjerda will always be Fjerda, and Shu Han will eventually come up with something else vile.”  She leans her chin on a fist.  “And even then, that is not all your responsibility, Aleksander.”

“Alina,” he says, her name a dangerous, sinuous warning, in the way only he can make it.  Possibly because, like their literal game of chess, this is not exactly going the way he expected it to.  Because she can mostly count on his arrogance, as well.

“Aleksander,” she echoes back to him.  Then she makes her blunt proposal, “You should use your prodigious talents here.”  He opens his mouth, no doubt to say something dramatic and cutting that she doesn’t care about, because she continues, “Fix the fence, for instance, or find a way that drawing a bath doesn’t leave you needing a bath.  Or perhaps you could play violin or see if I really am utterly hopeless at making a loaf of bread—which I probably am, to be honest.  But there’s no harm in finding out for sure.”  His expression becomes, by turns, suspicious and then, simply baffled.  “Let’s stay here.”

“And do what?”

His tone is not doubt meant to be intimidating.  Alina, however, does him the favor of not rolling her eyes.

Instead she meets his eyes:  “Live, Aleksander.  Not rule.  Not run.  Not just survive.  Live a kind of life that you never have before.”

There’s distrust in his eyes.  But it is not at her—it is as ancient as he is, probably.

He’s disdained this viewpoint before, she knows.  With Mal.  Because nothing about it is quite as simple as it appears.  He truly does complicate just about every simple thing that exists in the world, she swears.

And he is so predictable, because the stupid man smirks and, asks, “And what do I get out of this?”

Alina smiles at him and makes her preliminary offer.  “Me.  Pavel.”

He feigns disinterest—the bastard—and then he has the nerve to ask, “Are you not already mine?”

She lifts her chin.  Her voice goes soft.  “Ask me again, Aleksander.”

He looks on unerringly, having realized the conversation is much higher stakes than he had, at first supposed.  His voice is barely above a whisper.  And the question, when it comes, is not the one she expected.

“Do you love a monster, Alina?”

“You stupid man,” she says, affectionately, though he frowns.  “Why are you asking a question you should very well know the answer to?”

Something in his expression shutters closed.  Almost as if he cannot bring himself to believe.  And as a man who has, for most of his life, only had himself to believe in, it is a hard worn habit of his to not believe in someone else.  Especially someone who can refuse him.

He does not, as a rule, give someone room to overrule him.

Then he says, “My name is the smallest part of it.”

And she knows what it would mean for him to ask her twice and notes he is pointedly not doing so. 

She reaches across to him.

“Don’t blame me for the fact you never say what you mean.”

He scowls.  Then, with a tone much at odds with what he is actually saying, he clarifies:  “Shall I blame you for the fact that you do not want what is attached to the name?”

“I would have conditions,” she says and if looks could kill his would have.  “Which would not necessarily be a no, in case you are wondering.”

He leans wearily forward.

“It would also not necessarily be a yes, solnyshka.”

Yet, stands on the tip of her tongue.  But she is doing a negotiation of a kind.  He hasn’t overtly rejected her first offer, either, as of yet.

“If you want me to entertain your offer, if you decide to chance making it again, you’ll need to ask Pavel—” he brows knot and, before he can even say anything, she says, “Ask, not inform.”

“Fine,” he says tightly.  He is almost angry and it shows when he asks, “And?”

“We stay here.”

He takes a noisy breath, laden with irritation.  “How long?”

“Long enough to raise your children.  Maybe half a century—hardly anything for you.”

He scrutinizes her.  Opening his mouth and then closing it.  He’s not a stupid man and he’s caught onto exactly what her second term is going to be.

“Children,” he says aggressively neutrally.  “I do not have children.”

“Not yet,” she responds, evenly, enjoying his reaction more than she thought she might.

He in fact, looks rather ruffled over the implication.  And Aleksander needs a good ruffling every few decades.  When he realizes she is not going to explain or confirm, she watches as he works something in his jaw.

“Are you…?” he asks, the unsaid word hanging between them in a way that he would never allow her to get away with.  And she has learned so much from him that she, too, will not allow him to get away so easily.

Mirroring his habitually annoying mannerisms back at him, she raises one of her eyebrows and, doing her best and most irritating impression of him, asks, “Am I what?”

His lips purse, and he finishes, in his strangely archaic way, “…with child?”

“Yes,” she confirms.

And, she is not sure what she had expected his response to be—especially as she had purposefully skipped over this particular step with Pavel because of what she had thought was necessity.  And, honestly, she had not expected it to ever be a necessity again.

But it is not for him to hum and shutter his expression.

(He is only so predictable, after all this time, really.)

She nearly asks him if he is happy—but the question is a bit ridiculous.  Aleksander and happiness go together about as much as oil and water.  Baghra had not raised a man who was at all destined for such petty things as happiness.

“…Aleksander?” she asks, leadingly.  After all, she hadn’t gotten herself pregnant.  And this time he couldn’t very well deny that he didn’t know it was a possibility.  “Are you… surprised?” she finishes, rather lamely.

He hums again.

“My,” she says, dramatically, “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you at a loss for words, Aleksander.”

He folds his hands on the table.

“The words are there, Alina.  I’m not sure you’ll be overly… partial towards them…”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, she smirks.  “Such restraint.”

He glares, then sighs.  He becomes serious like he is only serious about the state of Grisha and her.  His mood, despite her other concession, verges on grim.

“You should be aware nothing about this is at all certain, Alina.”

She makes the beginning of a protest.  “Pavel—”

He cuts her off neatly and decisively.

“Is a proven liability and perhaps…” He actually seemed to uncharacteristically chew over his words, before ending, “A stroke of absolute dumb luck.”

She leaves “liability” off for a moment—mostly because she already knows his distinctive thoughts on this.  And she also knows they are not, perhaps, what he expects.

“How many?” she asks.

He frowns, knowing exactly what she is asking.  He sighs and settles into being about as ancient as he ever allows himself to be.

“And what exactly do you mean to do with such information, Alina?  How could it possibly be of benefit here to know how many children I’ve lost?  I’ve lived a very, very long life.”  He pauses.  His grey eyes flick over to her.  “Would it surprise you to know I’m not thinking about me in all... this?”

She freezes.

He sighs again.  He looks up at her wearily.

“Do you not think, Alina, that after all this time I do not know what has the potential to break you?”  She feels briefly as if someone has stolen the breath from her lungs.  He stands up, comes very close to her, and weaves his fingers under her chin, pulling her up with something akin to gentleness.  “I’ve wanted you for a very long time.  Every piece of you.”  His fingers dance up and pull threw a strand of bone white hair that now matches the shock on the back of his otherwise inky hair which he keeps dyed, he drags it up and over his lips.  “And I don’t think I need to tell you I am a selfish and possessive man.  So I will keep you.”  He leaves her with just the shadow of the warmth of his fingertips.  “If nothing else, Alina, I’ve developed the utmost respect for things that will thwart that objective.”

The strand falls, and his hand leaves simply the ghost of warmth where it had been.  Then, without so much as another word, he leaves through the front door of his own house.

She does not ask where he goes.

Checkmate, she thinks into the resulting silence.  Even though, for the first time in a long time, it is not overly clear to her who has won the encounter.

***

Madraya is still sitting at the kitchen table when he comes down, the chess board sits in front of her and she is sitting drinking tea contemplatively.  The sugar bowl and a cup across from her indicate his father had been there recently.

Generally, although neither of them has confirmed this with the other, this is the time of day when he gets what passes for lessons from his father.  Mostly, Pavel goes out and his father happens to be out there, and something just… starts.

But, as usual for the two of them, neither of them really wants to look at it too closely.  What unites them, after all, is Madraya.  Not any sort of… familial allegiance?  Paternal concern?  Filial responsibility?

But even Pavel has to admit that Adena makes him look at his father differently.  Or maybe, really, Adena makes his father different.

He slouches into the seat across from his mother—his father can wait, after all, because even if he’s vaguely expected, this is not really acknowledged.  And if his father actually wants it to be, he can very well actually ask.

His mother is looking contemplatively into her tea cup and, honestly, he had heard the vague hints of his father’s patented yelling without yelling which—to be fair—his father does at fairly regular intervals.

And his mother must be in a mood, because she looks up from the steam of her teacup and asks, “How long have you known about the Firebird?”

Pavel goes absolutely still.

Like both of his parents have taught him when these things come up, he answers slantwise:  “It is a symbol of Ravka itself.  It was in the children’s books you read me, Madraya.  Isn’t that why President Vasiliev adopted it for his regime?”

His mother looks at him in a hard way that is not usual for her.

(And for a moment, it reminds him of his father.  Which just makes something in him rankle—that there are points of comparison between them.)

“Pavel,” she says sharply.  “You know about the amplifier.”  She pauses.  “My amplifier.”

Malyen Oretsev, he thinks.  He had a name.  He had been your friend.  He was even blood related to him through his father’s side.  But he does not say any of this.  That name and this history do not belong to him in the least.

“For a few years,” he says vaguely.  He’s not about to confess stealing a journal of a long dead man that she used to know unless she absolutely forces it out of him.

“Do you know how you take an amplifier, Pavel?”

Slowly, wondering what has prompted this terrible conversation, he nods.  After all, he is an amplifier.  He knows exactly why someone would want to wear his bones or make a necklace from his teeth.

“My first love,” she starts, her voice trembling, “He let me stab him.  To take his blood.”

(She doesn’t use the name.  Both of his parents barely use their own names.  His father even rations Pavel’s out.)

He knows this and, in the face of it, he can do nothing but feel small and nod his understanding. 

“You got it to—” Pavel finds his courage failing.  Because to finish the sentence is to ruffle something in the present.  Her first love trying to kill what might be her second, if what is between them can remotely be labeled “love.”

“The Darkling,” she finishes.

He nods.

The Darkling.  The Black Heretic.  Aleksander Morozov. 

His father.

And he supposes here is where his confusion begins and ends.  That his mother sacrificed something she’d loved to kill the man who is probably waiting on the porch for him, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows in the summer heat, ready to teach her son. 

And his.

Pavel asks—not because he thinks he will get an answer—but because he should.

“What changed?”  And then quieter.  “Between you?”

And, before he knows it, though he is far too old for them and has seen the truth of the world with his own eyes, and dealt death with his own hands, his mother tells him a story.

It starts with a stag, which binds her to him, like a prisoner.  In between there is a sea whip.  And finally, the a Firebird which, at first, unwinds all of that and for a moment, takes his mother’s sun and, in the oldest governing principle of the Small Science, like found like in his father and, for a moment, he held everything she was in his hands.

And then, at some price, he had chosen to give everything she had been back to her.

(He remembers so clearly, in that grove in Fjerda—his father’s vice-like grip upon his wrist and his rasping voice:  “I refuse, Alina.”  The image still sent a deep shiver down his spine.

What terrible, terrible love.)

She picks up her tea and drinks it.

“He’s very afraid to lose what he has.”  Pavel, looking at her, wondering why she is explaining this to him, simply nods understanding in lieu of any other reaction.  “When your life is long like ours, you develop a completely different perspective.”  Then the conversation shifts.  “You taught yourself the Cut.”

He knows there is only one place she could have gotten this information from.

“Did he tell you?”

His mother’s face becomes sorrowful.

“I tried to protect you from that world.”

“I…” Pavel remembers the blood on the snow and feels his stomach curdle slightly.  “I think you did for as long as you could.”  He looks down at the table.  “I think he is right, though.  I can’t stay in the Little Palace forever.  I can’t hide behind you… or him.”  His line of his mouth hardens.  “Though, I don’t like his methods.”

She nods.

“I never have either,” she says quietly.  “But I want to ask about yours, Pavel.”

Pavel forces himself to look her in the eye.

“Why the Cut?”

Pavel takes a breath.  Because he knows his mother already suspects his answer.

“I did not want—do not want—you to become the Firebird, Madraya.  If he came at you—” he looks down at the table both because he knows now that he is never going to overpower his father.  He’s centuries behind in skill and control, for one.  For two, he wonders if he will ever be willing to make the same horrid decisions he has to obtain more power for himself.  Use the same methods.  But, he suspects that if and when he has to make those decisions, it will not be against his father.  Hopefully.  At least over the issue of his mother.  So he finishes, “But I don’t think he will now.”

"He will not fight me, Pasha." She pauses. "That's always given me hope.  He doesn’t fight people he loves."

She drinks her tea, contemplatively.

"I have great hope he will not fight you either, if given the chance."

(Pavel Morozov does not know that his mother is echoing a far older woman and giving him a far older lesson.  His mother has always picked and chosen the lessons she left her with.  And some she has picked apart.  Some she has applied.)

“I think I have less latitude than you,” he says.  He frowns.  “Probably because…” he takes a deep breath, as he has spent many of the years since knowing who his father is denying it, “we’re very alike.”

His mother smiles, indulgently.

“I suspect that is why you will always be at odds with one another.”

To his own credit, Pavel considered what he meant to say to her for a moment before he did:  “You both always seem to be at odds with one another, too.”

His mother laughs.

“It keeps things interesting after several centuries.”

Pavel stares, then, slowly, rises from his chair, thinking about it.  Mostly because it wasn’t a perspective he had been expecting.

“Pavel,” she says, as he makes to leave the kitchen, “He may try to talk to you.”

Nodding and slightly wondering how this differs from normal, because it seems his father is always, at least, talking at him, he shrugs, “He can try.”

His mother’s resulting expression is slightly exasperated.   But, as he goes outside and, for once, does not find his stern taskmaster of a father waiting for him, he does not get to find out what conversation his mother meant for his father to have with him.

***

Aleksander does not come to bed that night and so, when she can reasonably guess Pavel is either asleep or he is reading and doing a good job pretending, she goes to find him.

He, as it turns out, has not gone far. He is sitting, still with his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows for the summer heat, sitting in one of her dark green armchairs, one bare, pale foot propped up on a knee which stands out sharply against the black fabric of his trousers. As she approaches, she's realized he is cradling a glass of Kaelish whiskey in his hand.

She bypasses the empty, adjacent chair next to him and instead perches directly next to him, on the arm of his.

He takes a sip and puts the glass down on the roughhewn side table between the chairs. Then, with slow, almost hesitating, speed his hand comes to lie on her stomach, though there's nothing there yet to indicate anything he may be looking for.

"How... long?"

She closes her hand over his.

"About as long as it was when I left Shu Han with Pavel. Long enough to be sure."

He contemplates this, dropping his hand.

"Shortly after we arrived here, then," he states neutrally.

She nods, already having come to that same conclusion herself. 

"I didn't do it alone," she says, a fraction more defensively than she means to.

He lets a breath out.  "I'm well aware of my own complicity in the matter," he says dryly.  “Though I regard it as far from ‘sure.’”

His withdraws his hand and picks up his glass again, taking a slow draw of what is in there, his face revealing nothing of what he is thinking.  She looks deeper in herself, following the familiar path that leads to him, and finding, strangely, mostly resignation resting on the embers of an old anger.

And, ever so slightly, hurt.  Doubt.  Things he has tried to push down and stamp out.  Things that he generally considers to belong to people who are not him.

“Talk,” she says, a demand in her tone.

He looks coolly up at her, swallows the last sip from his glass, than puts it down on the table as it is the punctuation at the end of a sentence he will not say.  In retaliation, she pushes herself off the arm and slides into his lap.

She pillows her cheek on his shoulder and says, in a much softer tone, right into his ear, “Talk, Aleksander.”

He has not softened at all.  His arms may come around her in a gesture that appears tender, but their hold on her is bruising.

“My mother—” he begins, before falling silent.  Alina confesses this is not where she had thought their conversation would begin.  He sighs, still flustered by Baghra centuries after her death. Then, he draws himself up and, as if the words have plagued him for since he heard them, he unspools a hard memory, “‘Girl, do not fail me again.’”

His hold on her strengthens.  Like he is pinning her arms to keep her from going to a knife rather than holding his lover.

“I always thought she meant for you to kill me.”

“No,” she says softly, despite his hold on her.  “She did not.”  She chuckles.  “She also didn’t think I had even the faintest chance of doing that.”

He looks down at her, his expression unreadable.

“Explain,” he says simply.  It is a… soft demand for him when he is in a mood like this.

Alina has thought about Baghra and him far too much—because Baghra would always haunt Aleksander and Pavel, Aleksander and this new child, Aleksander and Alina.

“She wanted what you once were back,” she begins.

“As a boy,” he says, with contempt.  “Boys grow.”

Alina, stretches and finds that he is not in such a mood that he will not yield.

“As her boy,” she says, enunciating the difference.  “She wanted you human,” she finally explains.

“And… you?”  His lips dip into a sneer.  “I suppose she thought I could only corrupt you.”

She snorts.

“To be fair, you did try.”  He narrows his eyes.  “That’s why she told me to run.  I’m now very aware I didn’t have a shot—at running or fighting.”

He hums contemplatively.  Then, appraisingly, he adds, “Not then.”

He stops and she has the feeling that he is avoiding stepping towards a part of the conversation that cannot be stepped back from.

“And now?” she asks, because she knows he will not.

“If you ran, do you not think I would tear the world apart to get back to you?”

“I’d rather keep the world together, thanks,” she says, with a slight smirk.

He raises an eyebrow.  For the first time during this exchange, he sounds almost amused:  “Best you stay with me, then.”

She winds an arm around him.

“Stay here,” she says.  “For a while.”

“I’m glad you like it—Adena,” he says idly, in lieu of an actual answer.  She knows he is dancing away from what she wants him to talk about.  “You can tell Ulla I fulfilled my part of her bargain.”

“You don’t expect me to know what to make of that—do you?”

He chuckles.