“So,” she said in a low, guttural voice, “you’re the Sun Summoner. Come to save us all. Where’s the rest of you?”
I shifted uneasily.
“Well, girl, are you mute?”
“No,” I managed.
“That’s something, I suppose. Why weren’t you tested as a child?”
“I was.”
“Hmph,” she said. Then her expression changed. She looked on me with eyes so unfathomably bleak that a chill rippled through me, despite the heat of the room. “I hope you’re stronger than you look, girl,” she said grimly.
A bony hand snaked out from the sleeve of her robes and fastened hard around my wrist. “Now,” she said, “let’s see what you can do.”
CHAPTER 9
IT WAS A COMPLETE DISASTER. When Baghra fastened her bony hand around my wrist, I realized instantly that she was an amplifier like the Darkling. I felt the same jolting surety flood through me, and sunlight erupted through the room, shimmering over the stone walls of Baghra’s hut. But when she released me and told me to call the power on my own, I was hopeless. She chided me, cajoled me, even hit me once with her stick.
“What am I supposed to do with a girl who can’t call her own power?” she growled at me. “Even children can do this.”
She slid her hand around my wrist again, and I felt that thing inside me rising up, struggling to break the surface. I reached for it, grasping, sure I could feel it. Then she let go, and the power slipped away from me, sinking like a stone. Finally, she shooed me away with a disgusted wave of her hand.
The day did not improve. I spent the rest of the morning at the library, where I was given a towering stack of books on Grisha theory and Grisha history and informed that this was just a fraction of my reading list. At lunch, I looked for Genya, but she was nowhere to be found. I sat down at the Summoners’ table and was quickly swarmed by Etherealki.
I picked at my plate as Marie and Nadia prodded me with questions about my first lesson, where my room was, if I wanted to go with them to the banya that night. When they realized they weren’t going to get much out of me, they turned to the other Summoners to chat about their classes. While I suffered with Baghra, the other Grisha were studying advanced theory, languages, military strategy. Apparently, this was all to prepare for when they left the Little Palace next summer. Most of them would travel to the Fold or to the northern or southern front to assume command positions in the Second Army. But the greatest honor was to be asked to travel with the Darkling as Ivan did.
I did my best to pay attention, but my mind kept wandering back to my disastrous lesson with Baghra. At some point I realized that Marie must have asked me a question, because she and Nadia were both staring at me.
“Sorry, what?” I said.
They exchanged a glance.
“Do you want to walk with us to the stables?” Marie asked. “For combat training?”
Combat training? I looked down at the little schedule Genya had left with me. Listed after lunch were the words “Combat Training, Botkin, West Stables.” So this day was actually going to get worse.
“Sure,” I said numbly, and stood up with them. The servants sprang forward to pull our chairs out and clear the dishes. I doubted I’d ever get used to being waited on this way.
“Ne brinite,” Marie said with a giggle.
“What?” I asked, baffled.
“To e biti zabavno.”
Nadia giggled. “She said, ‘Don’t worry. It will be fun.’ It’s Suli dialect. Marie and I are studying it in case we get sent west.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Shi si yuyan Suli,” said Sergei as he strode past us out of the domed hall. “That’s Shu for ‘Suli is a dead language.’”
Marie scowled and Nadia bit her lip.
“Sergei is studying Shu,” whispered Nadia.
“I got that,” I replied.
Marie spent the entire walk to the stables complaining about Sergei and the other Corporalki and debating the merits of Suli over Shu. Suli was best for missions in the northwest. Shu meant you’d be stuck translating diplomatic papers. Sergei was an idiot who was better off learning to trade in Kerch. She took a brief break to point out the banya, an elaborate system of steam baths and cold pools nestled in a birch grove beside the Little Palace, then launched immediately into a rant about selfish Corporalki overrunning the baths every night.
Maybe combat training wouldn’t be so bad. Marie and Nadia were definitely making me want to punch something.
As we were crossing the western lawn, I suddenly got the feeling that someone was watching me. I looked up and saw a figure standing off the path, nearly hidden by the shadows from a low stand of trees. There was no mistaking the long brown robes or the dirty black beard, and even from a distance, I could feel the eerie intensity of the Apparat’s stare. I hurried to catch up to Marie and Nadia, but I sensed his gaze following me, and when I looked back over my shoulder, he was still there.
The training rooms were next to the stables—large, empty, high-beamed rooms with packed dirt floors and weapons of every variety lining the walls. Our instructor, Botkin Yul-Erdene, wasn’t Grisha; he was a former Shu Han mercenary who had fought in wars on every continent for any army that could afford his particular gift for violence. He had straggly gray hair and a gruesome scar across his neck where someone had tried to cut his throat. I spent the next two hours cursing that person for not doing a more thorough job.
Botkin started with endurance drills, racing us across the palace grounds. I did my best to keep up, but I was as weak and clumsy as ever, and I quickly fell behind.
“Is this what they teach in First Army?” he sneered in his heavy Shu accent as I stumbled up a hill.
I was too out of breath to answer.
When we returned to the training rooms, the other Summoners paired off for sparring drills, and Botkin insisted on partnering me. The next hour was a blur of painful jabs and punches.
“Block!” he shouted, knocking me backward. “Faster! Maybe little girl likes to be hit?”
The sole consolation was that we weren’t allowed to use our Grisha abilities in the training rooms. So at least I was spared the embarrassment of revealing that I couldn’t call my power.