In the cramped little surgeon’s cabin, Nina tried to put Inej’s body back together, but she hadn’t been trained for this type of work.
For the first two years of their education in Ravka’s capital, all Grisha Corporalki studied together, took the same classes, performed the same autopsies. But then their training diverged. Healers learned the intricate work of healing wounds, while Heartrenders became soldiers – experts at doing damage, not undoing it. It was a different way of thinking about what was essentially the same power. But the living asked more of you than the dead. A killing stroke took decision, clarity of intent. Healing was slow, deliberate, a rhythm that required thoughtful study of each small choice. The jobs she’d done for Kaz over the last year helped, and in a way so had her work carefully altering moods and tailoring faces at the White Rose.
But looking down at Inej, Nina wished her own school training hadn’t been so abbreviated. The Ravkan civil war had erupted when she was still a student at the Little Palace, and she and her classmates had been forced to go into hiding. When the fighting had ended and the dust had settled, King Nikolai had been anxious to get the few remaining Grisha soldiers trained and in the field, so Nina had spent only six months in advanced classes before she’d been sent out on her first mission. At the time, she’d been thrilled. Now she would have been grateful for even another week of school.
Inej was lithe, all muscle and fine bones, built like an acrobat. The knife had entered beneath her left arm. It had been a very close thing. A little deeper and the blade would have pierced the apex of the heart.
Nina knew that if she simply sealed Inej’s skin the way she’d done with Wylan, the girl would just continue to bleed internally, so she’d tried to stop the bleeding from the inside out. She thought she’d managed it well enough, but Inej had lost a lot of blood, and Nina had no idea what to do about that.
She’d heard some Healers could match one person’s blood to another ’s, but if it was done incorrectly, it was as good as poisoning the patient. The process was far beyond her.
She finished closing the wound, then covered Inej with a light wool blanket. For now, all Nina could do was monitor her pulse and breathing. As she settled Inej’s arms beneath the blanket, Nina saw the scarred flesh on the inside of her forearm. She brushed her thumb gently over the bumps and ridges. It must have been the peacock feather, the tattoo borne by members of the Menagerie, the House of Exotics. Whoever had removed it had done an ugly job of it.
Curious, Nina pushed up Inej’s other sleeve. The skin there was smooth and unmarked. Inej hadn’t taken on the crow and cup, the tattoo carried by any full member of the Dregs. Alliances shifted this way and that in the Barrel, but your gang was your family, the only protection that mattered. Nina herself bore two tattoos. The one on her left forearm was for the House of the White Rose. The one that counted was on her right: a crow trying to drink from a near empty goblet. It told the world she belonged to the Dregs, that to trifle with her was to risk their vengeance.
Inej had been with the Dregs longer than Nina and yet no tattoo. Strange. She was one of the most valued members of the gang, and it was clear Kaz trusted her – as much as someone like Kaz could.
Nina thought of the look on his face when he’d set Inej down on the table. He was the same Kaz –
cold, rude, impossible – but beneath all that anger, she thought she’d seen something else, too. Or maybe she was just a romantic.
She had to laugh at herself. She wouldn’t wish love on anyone. It was the guest you welcomed and then couldn’t be rid of.
Nina brushed Inej’s straight black hair back from her face. “Please be okay,” she whispered. She hated the frail waver of her voice in the cabin. She didn’t sound like a Grisha soldier or a hardened member of the Dregs. She sounded like a little girl who didn’t know what she was doing. And that was exactly how she felt. Her training had been too short. She’d been sent out on her first mission too soon. Zoya had said as much at the time, but Nina had begged to go, and they’d needed her, so the older Grisha had relented.
Zoya Nazyalensky – a powerful Squaller, gorgeous to the point of absurdity, and capable of reducing Nina’s confidence to ash with a single raised brow. Nina had worshipped her. Reckless, foolish, easily distracted. Zoya had called her all those things and worse.
“You were right, Zoya. Happy now?”
“Giddy,” said Jesper from the doorway.
Nina started and looked up to see him rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Who’s Zoya?” he asked.
Nina slumped back in her chair. “No one. A member of the Grisha Triumvirate.”
“Fancy. The ones who run the Second Army?”