Chapter Text
‘For these people I set no limits, of neither space nor time, but I give to them an empire without end.’ - Vergil, The Aeneid.
In a time before time, there was an empire which encompassed all the known lands of the world. While it reigned, all its people knew a Golden Age and an unending peace. But the seed of corruption that is humanity was planted in its heart, and the titan which reached for the heavens crashed hard onto the earth.
By the time I was born, many lifetimes ago, this empire was already dust. Marble temples and gilded palaces lay in ruins beneath the hovels of mayflies, who scrabbled for survival amid the wasteland in which they were born and died.
When I was child, I fell into an abandoned well. Nearly broke my neck. As I tried to sit up, my fingers dug into the crumbling dirt which had long since gone dry. Something cold and hard poked through the surface, and I closed my hand around it.
Once I re-emerged onto the surface, I inspected my well-deserved plunder. A gold coin, one side bearing the profile of an undeservedly prideful man; the other depicted an idealized woman with no distinguishable features, bearing an olive branch and accompanied only by the engraved letters PAX . ‘Peace,’ in the tongue of the empire which was now nothing but a rotting corpse.
I could have showed the coin to my mother, pawned it for a goodly amount of food and wool, perhaps even shelter which would not be bought by my mother disappearing into a dark corner with a man who was generous, but not generous enough. It’s probably what I should have done. But I have never enjoyed heeding the ‘shoulds’ and ‘ought tos’ of life. So I kept my treasure, occasionally taking it out of my pocket to run my fingers along the faded edges in the light of the moon.
The man on the coin, who had probably ordered its minting, was a nameless pile of ashes in some plundered mausoleum. The peace immortalized on its reverse followed him to the grave not long after. But the coin itself, rigid and lifeless, endured. Still, I vowed, my young fingers playing with the shining disc, it would not outlast me.
Centuries later, the coin is inset in a silver chain around my neck, secure beneath my kefta as I sweep through the Grisha pavilion in Kribirsk. My people bow their heads with respectful murmurs of ‘moi soverenyi’ as I pass.
“Ivan,” I call, “a word.”
My reliable Corporalki appears instantly. “Yes, moi soverenyi?”
I hold up the papers that comprise today’s morning report. “The passenger manifest for the skiff includes three civilians. Why?” The Fabrikators have promised that the latest sandskiff design minimizes all unnecessary noise, and optimally distributes the blue lamps on deck to balance visibility and stealth. But I don’t want an uncivilized farmer jumping at the slightest sound in the Fold and dooming everyone on board, including some of my best Grisha.
Ivan’s lip curls in distaste. “I believe it was approved by First Army leadership. Some rich West Ravkan offered a lot of money for the family to be on board.”
That’s money wasted if those civilians can’t contain their fear during the crossing. But it’s too late to tell Raevsky he’s going to have to refund his bribe. Even now, the skiff is setting sail.
I am simmering with impotent rage as I stalk to the viewing deck. Raevsky, a mere colonel, would not dare to pull something like this with any other general, to hide this information until the morning of the expedition. But for all that he cowers every time my hands come close together, he has the gall to think himself better than Grisha. I long for the day I can free that pride-swollen head from his shoulders.
All in due time. And I have plenty of time.
The day is unseasonably cold, but I owe it to my Grisha on board to watch the skiff as it is swallowed by the gaping maw of the Fold. They would thank me not to join them, though. Having me accompany them would be a death sentence. Like calls to like, and the volcra instinctively know that their darkness and mine are the same.
There is a small fluttering movement in the distance. At first I think it is a bird, suicidally close to the Fold. But as the wind picks up, I see that it’s a scarf. Blue and gold, the colors of Ravka. How patriotic. It would not have protected its owner against the unique coldness of the Fold.
When the sandskiff is gone from sight, I return to the pavilion, where Ivan has set up the maps and documents for our next meeting. When--if, I reluctantly admit to myself, because it’s always a matter of if --the skiff arrives in Novokribirsk, I do not want my Grisha lingering any longer than necessary to load supplies. The reports from my agents in West Ravka have grown increasingly worrisome of late. Generally my Grisha are well disciplined, but a moment of inattention in a tavern could mean their disappearance. Zlatan, of course, is feigning ignorance. He would not be so arrogant if he were on this side of the Fold.
A disturbance stirs at the edge of the pavilion, which quickly morphs into an outright furor by the time it reaches us. Ivan and I both turn as Fedyor runs to our table.
“Moi soverenyi,” he pants. “The skiff has returned.”
Strange, but I remain calm as I ask, “What happened?”
“We’re not sure yet. It looks like they were attacked in the Fold. There were some casualties, including our own. But--” Fedyor, normally so gregarious, hesitates.
I gesture impatiently. “But?”
“We saw...lights, moi soverenyi. A terrible ray of light, miles into the Fold. Some of the otkazat’sya who were on the skiff have been babbling about...a Sun Summoner .”
The weight of my endless years and responsibilities, so constant that I no longer notice it, briefly lifts in that moment. A Sun Summoner. The predestined counterbalance to my darkness. How many times, though, have I chased down a desperate rumor only to find a charlatan conning the unlearned, unwashed rabble out of their pennies?
So I have to inquire, “Are we certain the otkazat’sya didn’t just mistake an Inferni for one?”
Fedyor shrugs helplessly. “It all happened so fast, moi soverenyi. No one knows.”
“Very well.” I rise. “Bring the supposed Sun Summoner here. We will get to the truth of this.”
Despite myself, the seed of hope buried deep within my heart--whose existence many think as fanciful as that of a Sun Summoner--begins to sprout.
All the Grisha gather in the main area of the pavilion, excited and uncertain whispers flying across the space. I allow them to remain. If this is the real deal, the rumors will spread faster than a wildfire anyway. At least my people will be witnesses firsthand.
But I refuse to stare goggle-eyed at the tent flap like they do, overcome with childish wonderment as if Sankt Nikolai himself is about to waltz through the entrance with a giant sack of toys. So I turn my back to it, pretending to occupy myself with rereading the morning report. When my eyes land on the line about the three civilians on the skiff, this time I feel more curiosity than resentment. Perhaps I’ll let Raevsky get away with accepting bribes more often.
A blacksmith; his wife; his daughter , the paper reads. Somehow, I know it is the last who has caused the stir throughout Kribirsk.
Or perhaps, as my mother would insist, I just want it to be so. A girl, young and naive and biddable, to mold in my image. And perhaps, in my heart of hearts, I can admit to myself that I crave someone who is my equal, my partner, in all ways.
I know the exact moment she arrives in the pavilion, as a hush descends upon the waiting Grisha. “Bring her closer,” I order, because I know the First Army soldiers always hesitate at the threshold, afraid that our oddities will rub off on them.
I turn around.
Rarely, in my innumerable years of being alone but for a bitter mother resigned to her own loneliness, have I allowed myself to imagine what the Sun Summoner would be like. There was always that small fear that I would be disappointed one day.
She is more than I would ever have dared to dream.
Beautiful--no, that word is inadequate. She is like the sun which she allegedly holds in her hands. Radiant. Glorious. Eternal.
Mine.
Clearly she is part-Shu. Surprising, but certainly not disappointing. It just is. She is not garbed in old rags, as one might expect of the peasant daughter of a rural craftsman. Although blood and dirt stain her garments, they are undoubtedly well-made, even bearing some tasteful embroidery along the hems. Her cheeks are round and full of color, and behind the anxiousness, her eyes are bright.
Those same eyes meet mine. She lifts her chin, as if in challenge.
No withering flower clinging to life in a rocky crevice. She has been nurtured well, and blossomed for it.
My voice is deliberately even as I ask her, “Is it true? Can you summon light?”
Her answer comes without hesitation. “Yes.”
That damnably weak seed in my heart stirs. “Show me.”
I expect immediate obedience, as has been the Darkling’s due for the last four centuries. But she bristles. “Sir, I am not one of your soldiers to order as you please.”
Her hand twitches, and my gaze instantly follows the movement. A ring--jade, it looks like. An expensive bauble for a peasant girl. “So you say. My apologies.” I will indulge her in this. I will indulge her in much, if she is who she claims she is. “Who are you, if I may ask?”
When she gives me her name, it sings in my ears. “Alina Starkov. My father, Anton, is a blacksmith from Dva Stolba.”
Honestly I couldn’t give a damn about her otkazat’sya parents, but they clearly mean a lot to her. “And your mother?” I ask, not truly interested in the identity of yet another otkazat’sya.
But she doesn’t answer, and that gets my attention more than if she’d just made up a white lie. Instead, she clasps her hands together, and the resulting beam of sunlight almost makes me forget her omission.
Almost.
The light sets her whole body aglow, and I would believe her to be otherworldly if I were some illiterati hungering for miracles. But I have lived long enough to know there is no such thing as miracles.
But there is darkness, and there is light. There is her, and there is me. In a world where civilizations rise and fall between heartbeats, where kings terrorize and decay in the blink of an eye, we two will be the only constants.
I am drawn to her, a comet unable to resist her orbit. My mouth forms the perfect harmony of her name. “Alina.” The light is reflected in her dark brown eyes, like two miniature suns framed by her face. In that moment, I know my vow to be true. “You and I are going to change the world.”
Her hand is small and soft in mine, gently callused by a childhood of honest, but not backbreaking, work. I draw it up for a chaste kiss. Naturally, I seize the opportunity to inspect the ring on her hand; I would not be me if I didn’t. Jade, as I suspected, but the viridity and translucence indicate the prime grade usually hoarded and coveted by the Shu imperials. And most Shu nobles engrave their own families’ sigils on their signets; the falcon, as emblazoned on Alina’s, is usually found on the ruling family’s very own or on cheap knock-offs. Lastly, the minuscule Shu characters along the border are unfamiliar, but I rapidly memorize them to look up later.
All this in the span of seconds, before I release her hand after an appropriate duration.
Not just a blacksmith’s daughter. As I am not just a carpenter’s grandson.
As soon as I step away from Alina, I make plans for her immediate transport to the Little Palace. There is absolutely no question of her continuing her journey to West Ravka, and the camp in Kribirsk is much too exposed. No, I would have her safely behind the walls I have built, paid for by the blood and lives of countless Grisha who came before, as we all waited for her.
She insists on seeing her parents. I’m beset by more than a twinge of irritation, but I suppress it and allow her this. If she was willing to defy me in front of all the other Grisha, I would not be surprised if she literally fought anyone who tried to stop her. Any of my people could handle her, untrained as she is, but I do not want to exhaust her goodwill so quickly. Besides, rumor has it her mother is an Inferni--her Shu mother, who most likely gave Alina that ring. My Healers might overhear something interesting. Instead, I use the extra minutes to have my carriage prepared with a few creature comforts. A taste of what she can expect in her life to come, in case she is still resistant to separating from her family.
But before I can make my own departure, Raevsky informs me that an urgent missive from the tsar has just arrived. ‘Urgent’ could mean anything from he has single-handedly drained the royal treasury, to he wants my Fabrikators to hurry up with their upgrades for the palace gardens. Raevsky looks about ready to wet himself from the exciting prospect of getting to tattle on me ignoring the word of the tsar. I reluctantly order Ivan and Fedyor to lead the caravan ahead of me, while imagining Raevsky liberated of his useless cranium.
Unsurprisingly, the ‘urgent’ missive is closer to the palace-garden-upgrade side of the spectrum. Perhaps I’ll instruct the Fabrikators to fill the Grand Palace’s sprinkler system with pesticide, I muse as I mount my horse and set off after her .
Usually I enjoy an extended, solitary ride--my escorting oprichniki know better than to try to speak to me for anything less than an imminent threat. It’s an ideal time to just sit and think, and the feeling of the wind in my face is always the same, no matter the century or which king I serve. But all I can think of now is how I could have spent these hours speaking with Alina, learning what gives her joy and what gives her sorrow, memorizing the face and body that will stand beside mine for the eons to follow.
I sense the danger long before it comes into view. Perhaps the omnipresent darkness warns me, or perhaps it is lifetimes of honing a second sense for threats. I don’t question it. I spur my horse faster.
Smoke rising. The carriage is the source. Like calls to like, and I know somehow that Alina is still in there. I recognize the druskelle swarming my Grisha and oprichniki; one is fanning the flames which have set the carriage alight.
He dies first.
Cool shadows snuff out the angry fires, snuff out the lives of the remaining Fjerdans. Their last, desperate chokes are background noise as I dismount, and I beckon a finger toward the carriage door so it will open.
Alina stumbles out, and I unconsciously let out a sigh of relief when I see her whole, if a bit sooty and flushed. I start to ask her if she has any injuries when she interrupts first. “Sorry about your carriage.”
I wasn’t even thinking about the carriage. I glance at it--ruined, but replaceable--before looking back at her. Alina, who is most certainly not replaceable. “You’re going to be very expensive for me to maintain, aren’t you, Miss Starkov?”
She doesn’t seem to know what to make of that. Truth be told, I don’t either. I am the General of the Second Army. I don’t banter. Yet I did just that.
Frustration swells as I curse this uncharacteristic playfulness, and she’s to blame. This mustn’t happen again. “We still have a ways to go, Miss Starkov. You ride with me.”
I help her onto the saddle in front of me, and I immediately realize my mistake: she fits perfectly between my legs. Like she was made for me. Stirrings which I thought I had mastered long ago now demand attention, and my grip tightens on the reins until my knuckles are white.
The Darkling, I think with gritted teeth, is not an adolescent boy who has just discovered the soft loveliness of women. The Darkling is cold and iron-hearted, not beholden to these human, mortal failings. In the end, it is not these self recriminations but thoughts of Mother repeatedly hitting my shins with that damnable cane which allow me to keep my dignity.
It is both a relief and disappointment when Alina requests a break. Her voice, though admirably steady, still carries undeniable pain and exhaustion. I find a defensible location where she can take her rest. As I check on my horse, I keep an eye on her pacing. She knows to keep moving rather than succumb to the temptation of an unmoving seat, which would worsen her aches later.
Despite how sore she must be, she stands tall still, shoulders back and head high with an easy, natural pride, as is her prerogative. Her airs are more befitting a lady born and bred in court, not a common girl of the valley.
Even a Sun Summoner must learn these habits somewhere.
I move closer. She doesn’t see me, pacing away from my direction, until she makes her next turn and almost runs straight into my chest. My fingers twitch with the urge to take hold of her shoulders. “You never answered my earlier question,” I remind her before she can speak.
Her apologetic mien shifts to caution. “Remind me what that was?”
“Who is your mother?” Who is the Inferni Shu who gave you that signet ring, which would not look out of place on the hand of an empress?
“A blacksmith’s wife,” she retorts dryly.
The half-truths of court life, not the simple honesty of a peasant hamlet. “And before that?” The ring, I notice, no longer adorns her finger. Clever girl must have hidden it elsewhere on her person for safekeeping and discretion; I suspect the pouch peeking out beneath her collar. Unfortunately for her, I already gathered all the details I need from it.
“A refugee from Shu Han,” she allows, ceding the barest sliver of ground. “Why all these questions?”
No ordinary refugee. “I have it on good account that your mother demonstrated Inferni abilities on the sandskiff.”
She seems to relax, relieved that’s all I seem to know. Oh, my dear Alina, you have so much to learn. “The Shu are not known for their kindness to Grisha. My mother didn’t want to stay there.”
Truly a meritocratic society, the Shu, if even their highest members are not safe from the dissection table. However, this does not answer why a noble, if not royal, of Shu Han chose to stop in whatever Saints-forsaken village Alina grew up in, rather than continuing to the capital. “If she was seeking kindness, we would have granted her asylum had she presented herself to the Little Palace. I would’ve thought she’d feel more at ease in a courtly setting than a small border town prone to raids by her own people.”
Alina seems to bristle at the subtle insult to her hometown. Adorable. “Not everyone wants to be a soldier.”
No, indeed. Most are not cut out to be one. So many Grisha who would have thrived in peacetime, tinkering in their labs or traveling the world, have instead died on the battlefield. Such is the cost of our survival. “To be Grisha is to be a soldier. It’s compulsory in Ravka, which I’m sure your mother knew.” A foreign aristocrat would not be beholden to the draft, though, and likely not her offspring either. “Were you tested as a child?”
She hesitates. That is all the answer I need. The Grisha examination process is not perfect, but to have let the Sun Summoner slip through… “Will my parents get in trouble?”
I almost laugh. She would have every right to set up her parents in a luxurious villa, staffed by a hundred servants, for the rest of their days. “Punish the Sun Summoner’s parents? Perish the thought. The consequences of that would be unforeseeable.” I pointedly glance at the pouch beneath her collar, only to mentally castigate myself for it immediately after.
Why would I ever so much as hint to her that I know her little family secret? Banter again. Ugh.
She purses her lips. “So does this mean I have to be a soldier now?”
A soldier? No. A soldier mindlessly takes orders from their superiors. Alina shall be the one giving the orders. “Miss Starkov, you are the Sun Summoner. You don’t have to do anything.”
And when we arrive at the Little Palace, she will be a queen of her own realm, just as I serve as the patriarch of the Grisha. It must be the Vezda Suite for her, I decide. Nothing less than the best will do. She will want for nothing, not even her dear parents, and she will know that it is I who shall give her the world.
In return, she need only stay by my side for the rest of our endless days.
Alina Starkov, daughter of a blacksmith and a blacksmith’s wife , I think as I hold out my hand so she can remount the horse. You will be my Pax.