Baghra laughed that rattling, vicious chuckle. “You’re taking to power well, I see. As it grows, it will hunger for more. Like calls to like, girl.”
Her words sent a spike of fear through me.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said weakly.
“You cannot violate the rules of this world without a price. Those amplifiers were never meant to be. No Grisha should have such power. Already you are changing. Seek the third, use it, and you will lose yourself completely, piece by piece. You want my help? You want to know what to do? Forget the firebird. Forget Morozova and his madness.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I won’t.”
She turned back to the fire. “Then do what you like, girl. I’m done with this life, and I’m done with you.”
What had I expected? That she would greet me as a daughter? Welcome me as a friend? She’d lost her son’s love and sacrificed her sight, and in the end, I’d failed her. I wanted to dig in my heels and demand her help. I wanted to threaten her, cajole her, fall to my knees and beg forgiveness for everything she’d lost and every mistake I’d made. Instead, I did what she’d wanted me to do all along. I turned and ran.
I nearly lost my footing on the stairs as I stumbled from the hut, but the servant boy was waiting at the bottom of the steps. He reached out to steady me before I could fall.
I took grateful gulps of fresh air, feeling the sweat cool on my skin.
“Is it true?” he asked. “Are you really the Sun Summoner?”
I glanced at his hopeful face and felt the ache of tears in my throat. I nodded and tried to smile.
“My mother says you’re a Saint.”
What other fairy tales does she believe? I thought bitterly.
Before I could embarrass myself by breaking down in tears on his scrawny shoulder, I pushed past him and hurried down the narrow path.
When I reached the lakeshore, I made my way to one of the white stone Summoners’ pavilions. They weren’t really buildings, just domed shells where young Summoners could practice using their gifts without fear of blowing the roof off the school or setting fire to the Little Palace. I sat down in the shade of the pavilion’s steps and buried my head in my hands, willing my tears away, trying to catch my breath. I’d been so sure that Baghra would know something about the firebird and so positive that she’d be willing to help. I hadn’t realized just how much hope I’d invested in her until it was gone.
I smoothed the glittering folds of my kefta over my lap and had to choke back a sob. I’d thought Baghra would laugh at me, mock the little Saint all dressed up in her finery. Why had I ever believed the Darkling might show his mother mercy?
And why had I acted that way? How could I have threatened to take away her few comforts? The ugliness of it made me feel ill. I could blame my desperation, but it didn’t ease my shame. Or change the reality that some part of me wanted to march back to her hut and make good on those threats, haul her out into the sunlight and wrest answers from her sour, sunken mouth. What was wrong with me?
I took my copy of the Istorii Sankt’ya out of my pocket and ran my hands over the worn red leather cover. I’d looked at it so many times that it fell right open to the illustration of Sankt Ilya, though now the pages were waterlogged from the crash of the Hummingbird.
A Grisha Saint? Or another greedy fool who couldn’t resist the temptation of power? A greedy fool like me. Forget Morozova and his madness. I ran my finger along the curve of the arch. It might be meaningless. It might be some reference to Ilya’s past that had nothing to do with amplifiers, or just an artist’s flourish. Even if we were right and it was some kind of signpost, it could be anywhere. Nikolai had traveled most of Ravka, and he’d never seen it. For all we knew, it had fallen into rubble hundreds of years ago.
A bell rang at the school across the lake, and a gaggle of Grisha children rushed from its doors, shouting, laughing, eager to be out in the summer sunshine. The school had continued to run, despite the disasters of the last months. But if the Darkling was coming, I’d have to evacuate it. I didn’t want children in the path of the nichevo’ya.
The ox feels the yoke, but does the bird feel the weight of its wings?
Had Baghra ever really spoken those words to me? Or had I only heard them in a dream?
I stood up and brushed the dust from my kefta. I wasn’t sure what had shaken me more, Baghra’s refusal to help or how broken she seemed. She wasn’t just an old woman. She was a woman without hope, and I’d helped to take it from her.
Chapter
15
DESPITE ITS NAME, I loved the war room. The cartographer in me couldn’t resist the old maps wrought in animal hide and embellished in whimsical detail: the gilded lighthouse at Os Kervo, the mountain temples of the Shu, the mermaids that swam at the edges of the seas.