“And then what?” I felt panic press in on me again. “Even if we beat the Darkling and I destroy the Fold, Ravka will be vulnerable.” No Lantsov prince to lead. No Darkling. Just a scrawny orphan from Keramzin with whatever force I might piece together from the Grisha who survived and the remnants of the First Army.
“There’s the Apparat,” said Tolya. “The priest may not be trustworthy, but your followers are.”
“And David thought he might be able to heal Nikolai,” Zoya put in.
I turned on her, my anger rising. “Do you think Fjerda will wait for us to find a cure? How about the Shu?”
“Then you’ll make a new alliance,” said Mal.
“Sell my power to the highest bidder?”
“You negotiate. Set your own terms.”
“Hash out a marriage contract, pick a Fjerdan noble or a Shu general? Hope my new husband doesn’t murder me in my sleep?”
“Alina—”
“And where will you go?”
“I’ll stay by your side as long as you let me.”
“Noble Mal. Will you stand guard outside our bedchamber at night?” I knew I was being unfair, but in that moment I didn’t care.
His jaw set. “I’ll do what I have to do to keep you safe.”
“Keep your head down. Do your duty.”
“Yes.”
“One foot in front of the other. Onward to the firebird. Keep marching like a good soldier.”
“That’s right, Alina. I’m a soldier.” I thought he might finally crack and give me the fight I wanted, that I was itching for. Instead, he stood and shook the water from his coat. “And I’ll keep marching because the firebird is all I can give you. No money. No army. No mountaintop stronghold.” He shouldered his pack. “This is all I have to offer. The same old trick.” He stepped out into the rain. I didn’t know if I wanted to run after him to apologize or knock him into the mud.
Zoya lifted one elegant shoulder. “I’d rather have the emerald.”
I stared at her, then shook my head and released something between a laugh and a sigh. My anger went out of me, leaving me feeling petty and embarrassed. Mal hadn’t deserved that. None of them had.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Maybe you’re hungry,” said Zoya. “I always get mean when I’m hungry.”
“Are you hungry all the time?” asked Harshaw.
“You haven’t seen me mean. When you do, you’ll require a very big hanky.”
He snorted. “To dry my tears?”
“To stanch the bleeding.”
This time my laugh was real. Somehow a little of Zoya’s poison was exactly what I needed. Then, despite all my better judgment, I asked the question I’d wanted to ask for nearly a year. “You and Mal, back in Kribirsk—”
“It happened.”
I knew that and I knew there had been plenty of others before her, but it still stung. Zoya glanced at me, her long black lashes sparkling with rain. “But never since,” she said grudgingly, “and it hasn’t been for lack of trying. If a man can say no to me, that’s something.”
I rolled my eyes. Zoya poked me in the arm with one long finger. “He hasn’t been with anyone, you idiot. Do you know what the girls back at the White Cathedral called him? Beznako.”
A lost cause.
“It’s funny,” Zoya said contemplatively. “I understand why the Darkling and Nikolai want your power. But Mal looks at you like you’re … well, like you’re me.”
“No he doesn’t,” said Tolya. “He watches her the way Harshaw watches fire. Like he’ll never have enough of her. Like he’s trying to capture what he can before she’s gone.”
Zoya and I gaped at him. Then she scowled. “You know, if you turned a bit of that poetry on me, I might consider giving you a chance.”
“Who says I want one?”
“I want one!” called Harshaw.
Zoya blew a damp curl from her forehead. “Oncat has a better chance than you.”
Harshaw held the little tabby above him. “Why, Oncat,” he said. “You rogue.”
* * *
AS WE CLOSED IN on the area where the Cera Huo was rumored to be, our pace quickened. Mal grew even quieter, his blue eyes moving constantly over the hills. I owed him an apology, but I never seemed to find the right moment to speak to him.
Almost exactly a week into the journey, we came across what we thought was a dry creek bed that ran between two steep rock walls. We’d been following it nearly ten minutes when Mal knelt and ran his hand through the grass.
“Harshaw,” he said, “can you burn some of this scrub away?”
Harshaw struck his flint and sent a low blanket of blue flame rolling over the creek bed, revealing a pattern of stones too regular to be anything but manmade. “It’s a road,” he said in surprise.
“Here?” I asked. We’d passed nothing but empty mountains for miles.
We stayed alert, searching for signs of what might have come before, hoping to see etched symbols, maybe the little altars we’d seen carved into the rock closer to Dva Stolba, eager for some kind of proof that we were on the right path. But the only lesson in the stones seemed to be that cities rose and fell and were forgotten. You live in a single moment. I live in a thousand. I might live long enough to see Os Alta turn to dust. Or maybe I’d turn my power back on myself and end it all before then. What would life be like when the people I loved were gone? When there were no mysteries left?
We followed the road to where it just seemed to end, buried in a slump of fallen rock covered in grass and yellow wildflowers. We scrambled over it, and when we reached the top, a sliver of ice crept into my bones.
It was as if the color had been leached out of the landscape. The field before us was gray grass. A black ridge stretched along the horizon, covered in trees, their bark smooth and glossy as polished slate, their angular branches free of leaves. But the eerie thing was the way they grew, in perfect, regular lines, equidistant, as if they had each been planted with infinite care.
“That looks wrong,” said Harshaw.
“They’re soldier trees,” said Mal. “It’s just the way they grow, like they’re keeping ranks.”
“That’s not the only reason,” said Tolya. “This is the ashwood. The gateway to the Cera Huo.”
Mal took out his map. “I don’t see it.”
“It’s a story. There was a massacre here.”
“A battle?” I asked.
“No. A Shu battalion was brought here by their enemies. They were prisoners of war.”
“Which enemies?” asked Harshaw.
Tolya shrugged. “Ravkan, Fjerdan, maybe other Shu. This was old days.”
“What happened to them?”
“They starved, and when the hunger became too great, they turned on each other. It’s said the last man standing planted a tree for each of his fallen brethren. And now they wait for travelers to pass too close to their branches, so they can claim a final meal.”
“Lovely,” grumbled Zoya. “Remind me to never ask you for a bedtime story.”
“It’s just a legend,” Mal said. “I’ve seen those trees near Balakirev.”
“Growing like that?” Harshaw asked.
“Not … exactly.”
I eyed the shadows in the grove. The trees did look like a regiment marching toward us. I’d heard similar stories about the woods near Duva, that in the long winters, the trees would snatch up girls to eat. Superstition, I told myself, but I didn’t want to take another step toward that hillside.
“Look!” said Harshaw.
I followed his gaze. There, amid the deep shadows of the trees, something white was moving, a fluttering shape that rose and fell, slipping between the branches.
“There’s another,” I gasped, pointing to where a whorl of white shimmered, then disappeared into nothing.
“It can’t be,” said Mal.
Another shape appeared between the trees, then another.
“I do not like this,” said Harshaw. “I do not like this at all.”
“Oh, for Saints’ sake,” sneered Zoya. “You really are peasants.”
She lifted her hands, and a massive gust of wind tore up the mountain. The white shapes seemed to retreat. Then Zoya hooked her arms, and they rushed at us in a moaning white cloud.
“Zoya—”
“Relax,” she said.
I threw up my arms to ward off whatever horrible thing Zoya had brought down on us. The cloud exploded. It burst into harmless flakes that drifted to the ground around us.
“Ash?” I reached out to catch some of it on my fingers. It was fine and white, the color of chalk.