The Demon in the Wood (The Grisha 0.1)(9)
They would blame him for this. No matter what Annika and Lev had intended, they would blame him. They’d put him and his mother to death and give their bones to the Ulle or some other Grisha of rank. Unless he could give them someone else to hate. That meant he needed a better wound. A killing wound.
He’d lost a lot of blood. He might not survive it, but he knew what he had to do. He knew what he could do now. The evidence was all around him.
He waited until the sky had begun to lighten. Only then did he summon the shadows and from them draw a dark blade.
*
When the Ulle’s men woke him on the shore, he gave them the answers they needed, the truth they were only too eager to see in the corpses of their children, in deep, slicing wounds they were sure had been made by otkazat’sya swords.
He lost consciousness as they carried him to camp, and it was many long hours later that he came back to himself, this time in the snug little hut. His mother was once again beside him, but now her face was smudged with blood and ash. She smelled of bonfires. The Ulle sat in the corner, his head in his hands.
“He’s awake,” said his mother.
The Ulle looked up sharply and rose to his feet.
Eryk’s mother pressed a cup of water to his lips. “Drink.”
The Ulle towered over Eryk’s bed. His features were haggard and coated in soot. “You are all right?” he asked.
“He will be,” his mother said with conviction. “If his wounds are kept clean.”
The Ulle rubbed his weary eyes. “I’m glad, Eryk. I could not have borne another … another death this day.”
He reached out, but Eryk’s mother grabbed his sleeve to stop him. “Let him be,” she said.
The Ulle nodded. “We’ll need to leave here,” he said. “Word will travel after what we’ve done this night. There will be consequences.”
Eryk’s mother pressed a damp towel to his forehead. “As soon as he’s strong enough to travel, we’ll go.”
“You have a place with us, Lena. It’s safer to travel together—”
“You promised us safety once before, Ulle.”
“I thought—I believed it was mine to offer. But maybe there is no safe place for our kind. I must go see to my wife—” His voice broke. “And Lev. Forgive me,” he said, and lurched through the doorway.
There was silence in the hut. Eryk’s mother wetted the cloth again, wrung it out. “That was very smart,” she said at last. “To use the Cut on yourself.”
“She froze the lake,” he rasped.
“Clever girl. Can you take another sip of water?”
He managed it, his head spinning.
When he could find the strength, he asked, “The village?”
“They would not give up the riders who attacked you, so we killed them all.”
“All?”
“Every man, woman, and child. Then we burned their houses to the ground.”
He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
She gave him the barest shake, forcing him to look at her. “I’m not. Do you understand me? I would burn a thousand villages, sacrifice a thousand lives to keep you safe. It would be us on that pyre if you hadn’t thought quickly.” Then her shoulders slumped. “But I cannot hate that boy and girl for what they tried to do. The way we live, the way we’re forced to live—it makes us desperate.”
The lamp burned low and finally sputtered out. His mother dozed.
Outside, he heard sad voices lifted in songs of mourning as the funeral pyre burned and the Grisha offered prayers for Annika, for Lev, for the otkazat’sya in the smoking ruins of the valley below.
His mother must have heard them too. “The Ulle is right,” she said. “There is no safe place. There is no haven. Not for us.”
He understood then. The Grisha lived as shadows did, passing over the surface of the world, touching nothing, forced to change their shapes and hide in corners, driven by fear as shadows were driven by the sun. No safe place. No haven.
There will be, he promised in the darkness, new words written upon his heart. I will make one.
SIX DANGEROUS OUTCASTS.
ONE IMPOSSIBLE HEIST.
Read on for an excerpt from Leigh Bardugo’s
SIX OF CROWS
Available September 29, 2015
Copyright ? 2015 by Leigh Bardugo
PART 1
SHADOW BUSINESS
1
Joost
Joost had two problems: the moon and his mustache.
He was supposed to be making his rounds at the Hoede house, but for the last fifteen minutes, he’d been hovering around the southeast wall of the gardens, trying to think of something clever and romantic to say to Anya.
If only Anya’s eyes were blue like the sea or green like an emerald. Instead, her eyes were brown—lovely, dreamy … melted chocolate brown? Rabbit fur brown?
“Just tell her she’s got skin like moonlight,” his friend Pieter had said. “Girls love that.”
A perfect solution, but the Ketterdam weather was not cooperating. There’d been no breeze off the harbor that day, and a gray milk fog had wreathed the city’s canals and crooked alleys in damp. Even here among the mansions of the Geldstraat, the air hung thick with the smell of fish and bilge water, and smoke from the refineries on the city’s outer islands had smeared the night sky in a briny haze. The full moon looked less like a jewel than a yellowy blister in need of lancing.