They made the switch. The Bittern tilted, then righted itself as Harshaw let out a grunt.
“Got it,” he grated through clenched teeth. It wasn’t reassuring.
Tolya leapt down to Adrik’s side and began working. Nadia was sobbing, but she held the draft steady.
“Can you save the arm?” I asked quietly.
Tolya shook his head once. He was a Heartrender, a warrior, and a killer—not a Healer. “I can’t just seal the skin,” he said, “or he’ll bleed internally. I need to close the arteries. Can you warm him?”
I cast light over Adrik, and his trembling calmed slightly.
We drove onward, sails taut with the force of Grisha wind. Tamar bent to the wheel, coat billowing behind her. I knew when we’d cleared the mountains because the Bittern ceased its shaking. The air cut cold against my cheeks as we picked up speed, but I kept Adrik cocooned in sunlight.
Time seemed to slow. Neither of them wanted to say it, but I could see Nadia and Zoya beginning to tire. Mal and Harshaw couldn’t be faring well either.
“We need to set down,” I said.
“Where are we?” Harshaw asked. His crest of red hair lay flat on his head, soaked through with snow. I’d thought of him as unpredictable, maybe a little dangerous, but here he was—bloody, tired, and working the lines for hours without complaint.
Tamar consulted her charts. “Just past the permafrost. If we keep heading south, we’ll be above more populated areas soon.”
“We could try to find woods for cover,” panted Nadia.
“We’re too near Chernast,” Mal replied.
Harshaw adjusted his grip. “Does it matter? If we fly through the day, we’re going to be spotted.”
“We could go higher,” suggested Genya.
Nadia shook her head. “We can try, but the air’s thinner up there and we’ll use a lot of power on a vertical move.”
“Where are we headed, anyway?” asked Zoya.
Without thinking twice, I said, “To the copper mine at Murin. To the firebird.”
There was a brief silence. Then Harshaw said what I knew a lot of them had to be thinking. “We could run. Every time we face those monsters, more of us die. We could take this ship anywhere. Kerch. Novyi Zem.”
“Like hell,” muttered Mal.
“This is my home,” said Zoya. “I won’t be chased out of it.”
“What about Adrik?” Nadia asked, her voice hoarse.
“He lost a lot of blood,” said Tolya. “All I can do is keep his heart steady, try to give him time to recover.”
“He needs a real Healer.”
“If the Darkling finds us, a Healer won’t do him any good,” said Zoya.
I ran a hand over my eyes, trying to think. Adrik might be stable. Or he might slip more deeply into a coma and never come out of it. And if we set down somewhere and were spotted, we’d all be in for death or worse. The Darkling must know we wouldn’t land in Fjerda, deep in enemy territory. He might think we’d flee to West Ravka. He’d send scouts everywhere he could. Would he stop to grieve for his mother? Dashed on the rocks, would there be enough of her left to bury? I looked over my shoulder, sure that at any minute I’d see nichevo’ya swooping down on us. I couldn’t think about Nikolai. I wouldn’t.
“We go to Murin,” I said. “We’ll figure out the rest from there. I won’t force anyone to stay. Zoya, Nadia, can you get us there?” They’d been flagging before, but I needed to believe they had some reserve of strength to call on.
“I know I can,” Zoya replied.
Nadia’s earnest chin lifted. “Try to keep up.”
“We can still be seen,” I said. “We need a Tidemaker.”
David glanced up from bandaging the powder burns on his hand. “What if you tried bending the light?”
I frowned. “Bend it how?”
“The only reason anyone can see the ship is because light is bouncing off it. Just eliminate the reflection.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“You don’t say,” said Genya.
“Like a rock in a stream,” David explained. “Just bend the light so it never actually hits the ship. There’s nothing to see.”
“So we’d be invisible?” Genya asked.
“Theoretically.”
She yanked off her boot and plunked it down on the deck. “Try it.”
I eyed the boot skeptically. I wasn’t sure how to begin. This was a completely different way of using my power.
“Just … bend the light?”
“Well,” said David, “it might help to remember that you don’t have to concern yourself with the refractive index. You just need to redirect and synchronize both components of light simultaneously. I mean, you can’t just start with the magnetic, that would be ridic—”
I held up a hand. “Let’s stick with the rock in the stream.”
I concentrated, but I didn’t summon or hone the light the way I did with the Cut. Instead, I just tried to give it a nudge.
The toe of the boot grew blurry as the air near it seemed to waver.
I tried to think of the light as water, as wind rushing around the leather, parting then slipping back together as if the boot had never been there. I cupped my fingers. The boot flickered and vanished.
Genya whooped. I shrieked and threw my hands in the air. The boot reappeared. I curled my fingers, and it was gone.
“David, have I ever told you you’re a genius?”
“Yes.”
“I’m telling you again.”
Because the ship was larger and in motion, keeping the curve of light around it was more of a challenge. But I only had to worry about the light reflecting off the bottom of the hull, and after a few tries, I felt comfortable keeping the bend steady.
If anyone happened to be standing in a field, peering straight up, they might see something off, a blur or a flash of light, but they wouldn’t see a winged ship moving through the afternoon sky. At least that was the hope. It reminded me of something I’d once seen the Darkling do when he’d pulled me through a candlelit ballroom, using his power to render us nearly invisible. Yet another trick he’d mastered long before I had.
Genya dug through the provisions and found a stash of jurda, the Zemeni stimulant that soldiers sometimes used on long watches. It made me feel jittery and a little nauseated, but there was no other way to keep us on our feet and focused.
It had to be chewed, and soon we were all spitting the rust-colored juice over the side.
“If this stains my teeth orange—” said Zoya.
“It will,” interrupted Genya, “but I promise to put your teeth back whiter than they were before. I may even fix those weird incisors of yours.”
“There is nothing wrong with my teeth.”
“Not at all,” said Genya soothingly. “You’re the prettiest walrus I know. I’m just amazed you haven’t sawed through your lower lip.”
“Keep your hands off me, Tailor,” Zoya grumbled, “or I’ll poke your other eye out.”
By the time dusk came, Zoya didn’t have the energy to bicker. She and Nadia were entirely focused on keeping us aloft.
David was able to take over the wheel for brief periods of time so Tamar could see to the wound on Mal’s leg. Harshaw, Tolya, and Mal alternated on the lines to give each other a chance to stretch.
Only Nadia and Zoya had no relief as they toiled beneath a crescent moon, though we tried to find ways to help. Genya stood with her back to Nadia’s, bracing her so she could rest her knees and feet a bit. Now that the sun had set, we had no need for cover, so for the better part of an hour, I buttressed Zoya’s arms while she summoned.
“This is ridiculous,” she growled, her muscles shaking beneath my palms.
“Do you want me to let go?”
“If you do, I’ll cover you in jurda juice.”
I was eager to have something to do. The ship was too quiet, and I could feel the day’s nightmares waiting to crowd in on me.
Misha hadn’t budged from his spot curled into the hull. He was clutching the wooden practice sword that Mal had found for him. My throat tightened as I realized he’d brought it with him on the terrace when Baghra made him escort her to the nichevo’ya. I fished a piece of hardtack out of the provisions and took it to him.
“Hungry?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Will you try to eat something anyway?”
Another head shake.
I sat beside him, unsure of what to say. I remembered sitting like this with Sergei in the tank room, searching for words of comfort and failing. Had he been scheming then, manipulating me? His fear had certainly seemed real.
But Misha didn’t just remind me of Sergei. He was every child whose parents went to war. He was every boy and girl at Keramzin. He was Baghra begging for her father’s attention. He was the Darkling learning loneliness at his mother’s knee. This was what Ravka did. It made orphans. It made misery. No land, no life, just a uniform and a gun. Nikolai had believed in something better.
I took a shaky breath. I had to find a way to shut down my mind. If I thought of Nikolai, I would fall apart. Or Baghra. Or the broken pieces of Sergei’s body. Or Stigg, left behind. Or even the Darkling, the look on his face as his mother had disappeared beneath the clouds. How could he be so cruel and still so human?
The night wore on as a sleeping Ravka passed beneath us. I counted stars. I watched over Adrik. I dozed. I moved among the crew, offering sips of water and tufts of dried jurda blossoms. When anyone asked about Nikolai or Baghra, I gave them the facts of the battle in the briefest possible terms.
I willed my mind to silence, tried to make it a blank field, white with snow, unmarred by tracks. Sometime around sunrise, I took my place at the railing and began shifting the light to camouflage the ship.
That was when Adrik muttered in his sleep.
Nadia’s head whipped around. The Bittern bobbled.
“Focus!” snapped Zoya.
But she was smiling. We all were, ready to cling to the barest scrap of hope.