The Fierce Reads Anthology (11 page)

By the time we were finished, dusk was falling. We handed in our work and walked to the mess tent, where we stood in line for muddy stew ladled out by a sweaty cook and found seats with some of the other surveyors.

I passed the meal in silence, listening to Alexei and the others exchange camp gossip and jittery talk about tomorrow’s crossing. Alexei insisted that I retell the story of the Grisha coaches, and it was met by the usual mix of fascination and fear that greeted any mention of the Darkling.

“He’s not natural,” said Eva, another assistant; she had pretty green eyes that did little to distract from her piglike nose. “None of them are.”

Alexei sniffed. “Please spare us your superstition, Eva.”

“It was a Darkling who made the Shadow Fold to begin with.”

“That was hundreds of years ago!” protested Alexei. “And that Darkling was completely mad.”

“This one is just as bad.”

“Peasant,” Alexei said, and dismissed her with a wave. Eva gave him an affronted look and deliberately turned away from him to talk to her friends.

I stayed quiet. I was more a peasant than Eva, despite her superstitions. It was only by the Duke’s charity that I could read and write, but by unspoken agreement, Mal and I avoided mentioning Keramzin.

As if on cue, a raucous burst of laughter pulled me from my thoughts. I looked over my shoulder. Mal was holding court at a rowdy table of trackers.

Alexei followed my glance. “How did you two become friends anyway?”

“We grew up together.”

“You don’t seem to have much in common.”

I shrugged. “I guess it’s easy to have a lot in common when you’re kids.” Like loneliness, and memories of parents we were meant to forget, and the pleasure of escaping chores to play tag in our meadow.

Alexei looked so skeptical that I had to laugh. “He wasn’t always the Amazing Mal, expert tracker and seducer of Grisha girls.”

Alexei’s jaw dropped. “He seduced a Grisha girl?”

“No, but I’m sure he will,” I muttered.

“So what
was
he like?”

“He was short and pudgy and afraid of baths,” I said with some satisfaction.

Alexei glanced at Mal. “I guess things change.”

I rubbed my thumb over the scar in my palm. “I guess they do.”

We cleared our plates and drifted out of the mess tent into the cool night. On the way back to the barracks, we took a detour so that we could walk by the Grisha camp. The Grisha pavilion really was the size of a cathedral, covered in black silk, its blue, red, and purple pennants flying high above. Hidden somewhere behind it were the Darkling’s tents, guarded by Corporalki Heartrenders and the Darkling’s personal guard.

When Alexei had looked his fill, we wended our way back to our quarters. Alexei got quiet and started cracking his knuckles, and I knew we were both thinking about tomorrow’s crossing. Judging by the gloomy mood in the barracks, we weren’t alone. Some people were already on their cots, sleeping—or trying to—while others huddled by lamplight, talking in low tones. A few sat clutching their icons, praying to their Saints.

I unfurled my bedroll on a narrow cot, removed my boots, and hung up my coat. Then I wriggled down into the fur-lined blankets and stared up at the roof, waiting for sleep. I stayed that way for a long time, until the lamplights had all been extinguished and the sounds of conversation gave way to soft snores and the rustle of bodies.

Tomorrow, if everything went as planned, we would pass safely through to West Ravka, and I would get my first glimpse of the True Sea. There, Mal and the other trackers would hunt for red wolves and sea foxes and other coveted creatures that could only be found in the west. I would stay with the cartographers in Os Kervo to finish my training and help draft whatever information we managed to glean in the Fold. And then, of course, I’d have to cross the Fold again in order to return home. But it was hard to think that far ahead.

I was still wide awake when I heard it.
Tap tap.
Pause.
Tap.
Then again:
Tap tap
. Pause.
Tap.

“What’s going on?” mumbled Alexei drowsily from the cot nearest mine.

“Nothing,” I whispered, already slipping out of my bedroll and shoving my feet into my boots.

I grabbed my coat and crept out of the barracks as quietly as I could. As I opened the door I heard a giggle, and a female voice called from somewhere in the dark room, “If it’s that tracker, tell him to come inside and keep me warm.”

“If he wants to catch
tsifil
, I’m sure you’ll be his first stop,” I said sweetly, and slipped out into the night.

The cold air stung my cheeks and I buried my chin in my collar, wishing I’d taken the time to grab my scarf and gloves. Mal was sitting on the rickety steps, his back to me. Beyond him, I could see Mikhael and Dubrov passing a bottle back and forth beneath the glowing lights of the footpath.

I scowled. “Please tell me you didn’t just wake me up to inform me that you’re going to the Grisha tent. What do you want, advice?”

“You weren’t sleeping. You were lying awake worrying.”

“Wrong. I was planning how to sneak into the Grisha pavilion and snag myself a cute Corporalnik.”

Mal laughed. I hesitated by the door. This was the hardest part of being around him—other than the way he made my heart do clumsy acrobatics. I hated hiding how much the stupid things he did hurt me, but I hated the idea of him finding out even more. I thought about just turning around and going back inside. Instead, I swallowed my jealousy and sat down beside him.

“I hope you brought me something nice,” I said. “Alina’s Secrets of Seduction do not come cheap.”

He grinned. “Can you put it on my tab?”

“I suppose. But only because I know you’re good for it.”

I peered into the dark and watched Dubrov take a swig from the bottle and then lurch forward. Mikhael put his arm out to steady him, and the sounds of their laughter floated back to us on the night air.

Mal shook his head and sighed. “He always tries to keep up with Mikhael. He’ll probably end up puking on my boots.”

“Serves you right,” I said. “So what
are
you doing here?” When we’d first started our military service a year ago, Mal had visited me almost every night. But he hadn’t come by in months.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. You looked so miserable at dinner.”

I was surprised he’d noticed. “Just thinking about the crossing,” I said carefully. It wasn’t exactly a lie. I
was
terrified of entering the Fold, and Mal definitely didn’t need to know that Alexei and I had been talking about him. “But I’m touched by your concern.”

“Hey,” he said with a grin, “I worry.”

“If you’re lucky, a volcra will have me for breakfast tomorrow and then you won’t have to fret anymore.”

“You know I’d be lost without you.”

“You’ve never been lost in your life,” I scoffed. I was the mapmaker, but Mal could find true north blindfolded and standing on his head.

He bumped his shoulder against mine. “You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” I said. But I didn’t. Not really.

We sat in silence, watching our breath make plumes in the cold air.

Mal studied the toes of his boots and said, “I guess I’m nervous, too.”

I nudged him with my elbow and said with confidence I didn’t feel, “If we can take on Ana Kuya, we can handle a few volcra.”

“If I remember right, the last time we crossed Ana Kuya, you got your ears boxed and we both ended up mucking out the stables.”

I winced. “I’m trying to be reassuring. You could at least pretend I’m succeeding.”

“You know the funny thing?” he asked. “I actually miss her sometimes.”

I did my best to hide my astonishment. We’d spent more than ten years of our lives in Keramzin, but usually I got the impression that Mal wanted to forget everything about the place, maybe even me. There he’d been another lost refugee, another orphan made to feel grateful for every mouthful of food, every used pair of boots. In the army, he’d carved out a real place for himself where no one needed to know that he’d once been an unwanted little boy.

“Me too,” I admitted. “We could write to her.”

“Maybe,” Mal said.

Suddenly, he reached out and took hold of my hand. I tried to ignore the little jolt that went through me. “This time tomorrow, we’ll be sitting in the harbor at Os Kervo, looking out at the ocean and drinking
kvas.
”

I glanced at Dubrov weaving back and forth and smiled. “Is Dubrov buying?”

“Just you and me,” Mal said.

“Really?”

“It’s always just you and me, Alina.”

For a moment, it seemed like it was true. The world was this step, this circle of lamplight, the two of us suspended in the dark.

“Come on!” bellowed Mikhael from the path.

Mal started like a man waking from a dream. He gave my hand a last squeeze before he dropped it. “Gotta go,” he said, his brash grin sliding back into place. “Try to get some sleep.”

He hopped lightly from the stairs and jogged off to join his friends. “Wish me luck!” he called over his shoulder.

“Good luck,” I said automatically and then wanted to kick myself.
Good luck? Have a lovely time, Mal. Hope you find a pretty Grisha, fall deeply in love, and make lots of gorgeous, disgustingly talented babies together.

I sat frozen on the steps, watching them disappear down the path, still feeling the warm pressure of Mal’s hand in mine.
Oh well
, I thought as I got to my feet.
Maybe he’ll fall into a ditch on his way there.

I edged back into the barracks, closed the door tightly behind me, and gratefully snuggled into my bedroll.

Would that black-haired Grisha girl sneak out of the pavilion to meet Mal? I pushed the thought away. It was none of my business, and really, I didn’t want to know. Mal had never looked at me the way he’d looked at that girl or even the way he looked at Ruby, and he never would. But the fact that we were still friends was more important than any of that.

For how long?
said a nagging voice in my head. Alexei was right: things change. Mal had changed for the better. He’d gotten handsomer, braver, cockier. And I’d gotten…taller. I sighed and rolled onto my side. I wanted to believe that Mal and I would always be friends, but I had to face the fact that we were on different paths. Lying in the dark, waiting for sleep, I wondered if those paths would just keep taking us further and further apart, and if a day might come when we would be strangers to each other once again.

The day Rance Ridley kissed a girl for the first time, his father revealed the exact date of the end of the world.

The girl’s name was Olivia.

Later, Rance wondered if his father would have seen “the end” if he hadn’t caught his son lying in the field with Olivia, her lips kissed to the color of crushed strawberries.

The two of them were thirteen. They’d known each other since they were babies, born only two days apart in the compound of the Church of Light. But Olivia’s mother abandoned her before she was weaned, disappearing from the compound as suddenly as she had appeared back when she was pregnant and destitute. Rance’s mother took Olivia in and acted as wet nurse to the baby girl, raised her as Rance’s sister. Perhaps that was why his father’s face turned red with fury when he found them and saw the way Olivia’s demure white blouse was unbuttoned, pulled loose from her long skirt. Or perhaps it was simply because Prophet Ram Ridley claimed that a kiss shared before marriage was an affront to the Almighty and should be punished accordingly.

The prophet caught Olivia by her hair and Rance by the back of his neck, and held them apart. Olivia’s wheat-colored eyes were huge with fear, and Rance knew his father was hurting her as he wrapped her endless hair in his fist, reeling her in. Olivia’s shirt hung open, revealing most of one small, white breast.

“My own son,” the prophet sputtered, his face now the color of a bruise. “You defile the purity of this child.”

“Father, we were only––” Rance began to say, but the prophet yanked Olivia’s hair so violently a sob flew from her throat. Rance hadn’t seen Olivia cry since she was a little girl. She had always been strong. It was one of the things Rance loved about her. One of the many things.

“I taught you better than this,” the prophet said to his son. “What will your punishment be, eh? The belt? Or shall it be the cellar this time?”

Rance felt his palms go clammy. He had never done anything bad enough to warrant confinement in the cellar beneath the church, but he’d heard stories from those who had spent days locked in the dark with the dead. That’s where the compound cemetery was located, in the large cellar beneath a church so white it hurt Rance’s eyes to look upon it, where those who died could forever hear the songs and prayers of the Followers of the Light. The earthen floor of the cellar was damp and loose, and those who spent too much time below the church felt themselves sinking into the ground, like the dead were drawing them slowly into the soil.

Worst of all, and to his shame, Rance was terrified of the dark, and had been for as long as he could remember. He always slept with an oil lamp burning, and he longed every night for electricity.

Rance would never be sorry for what he and Olivia had done that day in the waving summer grass of the field, and he knew lying was an unforgivable sin, but the mere thought of being locked in the cellar made him quake. So he hung his head and lied. “I’m sorry, father. It will never happen again. I deserve the belt.”

“You’ve had the belt before,” his father said. “It seems not to have made an impression on you. A day or two in the cellar should remedy that.”

“No!” Olivia cried. She knew better than anyone how terrified Rance was of the dark. She understood, and did not judge him. “Prophet, I must confess. I brought Rance to the field. I tempted him. Punish me instead. Rance is good, and I…I am a wicked girl. I should be taught a lesson.”

The prophet considered, frowning. And then he released Rance’s neck and shoved him away. But he kept hold of Olivia’s hair, and a smile bent his lips.

To Rance, it seemed as though he were the only one who could hear Olivia through the floorboards as the white-clad Followers sang their evening hymns. On the Church of Light’s compound, worship services were held three times a day. First at sunrise. Then again at noon. And again at the close of day.

Olivia had been locked in the cellar for five hours, and she was still screaming to be let out. Rance wanted more than anything to go to her, to rescue her from the darkness his father had sentenced her to for three days and three nights without food or water. But if he openly defied the prophet he would end up in the dark himself.

We could run away
, Rance thought.
I could rescue Olivia and together we could leave this place.

But where would they go? How would two thirteen-year-olds survive in a world neither of them had ever been part of? And how long would it be before Ram Ridley sent a team of Followers to drag the two of them back to the compound?

No, Rance could not save the girl he loved. All he could do was sit with his people and sing loudly enough that he couldn’t hear her cries.

But when the song ended and there was a moment of silence before the prophet began his evening sermon, Rance heard what Olivia said.

“Rance, pleeeease! Make them let me out! I’m scared!”

A few eyes flitted toward him, and Rance felt his cheeks go red with shame. He was the prophet’s son. He was supposed to set an example for the conduct of others, but instead he had let himself be tempted by a girl. No, a woman now. Olivia was thirteen. She had breasts, and she had told him herself that she’d begun to bleed. She was now capable of bearing children. If things had gone too far in the field, Rance might have been the one to get her with child. A kiss before marriage was an affront to God, but a child born out of wedlock…no matter how much he repented, Rance would never be washed clean of that sin. It was too great.

Rance had thought that Olivia was lying to protect him when she told the prophet she had purposely tempted Rance. But perhaps she was telling the truth. Suppose she’d intended to exploit the weakness all men felt in the presence of women.

“My dearest Followers,” the prophet boomed out in the chapel. He stood behind the podium and grasped the edges with his hands as though to keep himself from falling over. His face was pale, but his eyes were bright and reflective, like pond water when the moon shines off it. “I have had a revelation,” the prophet told them. “The end is nigh. I have seen it, a storm the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Noah and the flood. But from this storm there will be no ark to carry us away. This shall be a storm of judgment.” The prophet’s eyes, burning now, found his son. “Only those who are without sin shall be saved.”

The storm, his father said, would arrive in three days.

On the third evening, the Followers gathered in the Church of Light, and, as Prophet Ram Ridley had predicted, the rains came.

But Rance was not impressed with God’s cleansing storm. It started as a light sprinkle of drops, more like a mist than actual rain. But the mist soon became a downpour. Still, it was only rain. Just a summer storm, the kind that usually ended before it began.

But it didn’t end.

As water drummed on the roof, the Followers sang their songs. They prayed. Prophet Ridley sermonized and whipped his people into a frenzy, and then they sang some more. Rance could not keep his eyes from the windows. He kept waiting for the rain to stop, but it went on and on.

While lightning split the sky in a hundred places and thunder pounded their eardrums, the Followers around him stomped and threw their hands in the air and praised God. They basked in His glory, but Rance could not think about God. All he could think about was Olivia in the cellar, cold and alone in the terrible darkness. Shivering and wet and—

Wet.

Rance thought back to the last time there’d been a hard rain. The cellar had flooded. And that storm had been nothing compared to what they were experiencing now.

Olivia.

Rance ran from the chapel and burst out into the pouring rain. Droplets smacked his cheeks like pellets and burst apart. He was instantly soaked from head to foot. He heard his father shouting for him to get back inside, but for once he ignored the prophet. He slammed the church doors shut and rammed the only thing he could find, a piece of broken two-by-four, through the handles.

It wouldn’t keep his father and the Followers inside long, but it gave him time.

Rance sprinted around to the side of the church where the cellar door was located. But he should have paused to think before rushing out into the rain. The cellar was padlocked.

Rance pounded on the wooden doors. “Olivia! Can you hear me! Please answer!”

No sound. And no time to wait for it.

Rance had to break through the door before his father and the Followers stopped him. Before Olivia drowned in the cellar. Before the buried dead were washed loose from their graves, and Olivia floated with them. In the dark. In the dark, where he must go to save her.

“Rance!” He heard his father’s distant voice. “You stop this! I command it! God must judge us all! He must judge us all!”

Another bolt of lightning drew a jagged line across the clouds, illuminating, for a moment, a shovel lying against the wall of the nearby toolshed. Rance slipped and skidded through the mud and snatched it up.

He raised it high above his head and brought it down on the padlock. It did not break. He tried again. Nothing.

He pictured Olivia’s golden-green eyes and sun-bright hair in his mind, and raised the shovel once more before bringing it down with every ounce of strength he had.

He felt the charge before he
really
felt it. It tugged at his hair and woke his nerve endings and made his heart stutter.

The lightning filled him, washed everything to perfect, pristine white. Washed away Olivia’s face.

Rance had never been in a hospital, not even when he was born. So when he opened his eyes and found himself in an all-white room with white sheets pulled to his chest, he wondered if he had died. His vision was blurry, which made everything around him appear soft, heavenly. He blinked a hundred times, but the blurriness remained, as though he were looking through a sheet of ice.

Monitors beeped at a slow, steady pace. Rance began to remember what had happened before everything turned white: the storm and his attempt to free Olivia from the cellar, how he’d raised the shovel above his head, turning himself into a perfect lightning rod.

And the lightning had come for him. Come to judge him.

The beeping became faster and faster. Rance’s right hand began to feel hot to the point of pain, tingling with a fidgety, electric feeling.

He held his right hand before his eyes and saw, through the filmy veil that obscured his vision, veins of red on the palm of his hand, like it had been drizzled in blood.

There was a pounding in his head, a buzzing in his ears, and then a voice spoke so clearly inside his mind that Rance thought at first there must be someone else in the room.

Now you bear the mark. There is great work ahead for you. Gather your Apostles, for you are the new prophet of the Church of Light. The power is in your hands, and with your hands you must do the work of God.

Footsteps. Three indistinct figures entered, and the voice ceased speaking.

“He’s awake,” a woman said, and began touching him, checking the needle he hadn’t even realized was in his arm until she jostled it.

“There’s something wrong with his eyes.” His father’s voice filled the room, always deep and booming, the way it was when he gave a sermon.

“I’m afraid he’s developing cataracts,” another man said. His coat was white, but not his pants. They were black. He was no Follower. “It’s not a common aftereffect of being struck by lightning, but it has been known to happen.”

“His hair…when will its color return?”

His hair? What was wrong with his hair? Rance wished for a mirror.

“We don’t know,” the white-coated man answered.

“I thought you people were supposed to have all the answers,” the prophet said, a sneer in his voice. “What about that mark on his hand? What of that?”

“Lichtenberg figures,” said the man in the white coat. “Also caused by the lightning. But they should fade in a few days. The cataracts are…another matter.”

Rance spoke then, and his voice reminded him of his father’s. It carried a certainty he’d never had before. “I see more now than I ever could before,” he told the room. Then he directed his milky eyes toward his father. His father’s face was nothing but a smear of features.

“Tell me Prophet,” Rance said. “What became of Olivia?”

She’s dead
, that voice whispered in his mind again. Strangely, he was already growing used to it. And already he trusted it.
She’s dead, and it was this self-proclaimed prophet who took her from you. He is a false prophet, who declared an end that did not come. God does not speak to him. Your father’s time is past. You must remove him.

Rance couldn’t agree more.

Rance Ridley took the podium for the first time the day after his father’s body was found in the cellar. Apparently the former prophet had tripped and fallen down the steep steps and knocked himself out. He suffocated in the dark with his face shoved into the mud that remained from the rains and the flooding.

“My Followers,” Rance said to his congregation. “God sent his light into me the night of the storm, to chase away all darkness. He judged me and found me not wanting, but the same cannot be said of my father, the false prophet Ram Ridley. Let us not mourn the passing of the man who called himself prophet, when God never did. I have heard the voice of God. I have felt his light.”

He gazed out at his people, a blur of perfect white. For a moment, he tried to picture Olivia’s face, but he found it was already fading.

He blinked back tears and said what the voice had told him to say.

“God has chosen me, Rance Ridley, to be your one true prophet.”