Note: This was written following the release of the first two chapters of Six of Crows by BookCon and as such, this could prove supremely AU once the full book is released.
I wrote it anyway. Because.
That one is Retvenko.
He had studied Fjerdan at the Little Palace and Kerch only years later, his accent around the latter words a thick coat even to this day. But he could understand them perfectly well. Could hear the tone that rendered him less a man and more a commandeered watercraft, however much one of quality.
When it was Hoede who spoke, the smirk did not shape his mouth, yet it was there nevertheless, underling every word, laced together with smug pride.
Fought on the wrong side of the Ravkan civil war.
Retvenko had thought it himself, in the beginning.
He had crossed the Shadow Fold many a time as a younger man, taking his turn in propelling sand skiffs across the dead, grey land. One became inured only to a certain point - the essential horror never truly left. Surviving a crossing never meant you would live through the next. The volcra were always hungry.
So there was a certain irony then, in the bolt of fear that struck him when he saw darkness breaking apart around him like dissipating smoke and light pouring forth from otkazat'sya all around. But he knew what it must mean and there was plenty of cause for fear in that, for all that this particular expanse of land was safe to stand upon for the first time in hundreds of years.
Safe from volcra at least.
Many had surrendered or fallen to rifle fire. Retvenko and several others had turned for Os Kervo and fled, the great gilded lighthouse their beacon even from land as they drew closer. Outside of the sprawl of the port city, the oprichniki with them had shed what pieces of their uniforms as they could without drawing eyes for indecency instead and piled them in a heap with cast off kefta, the lot of it set alight by an Inferni. Retvenko kept the smoke from pluming high as they all stood and stared. Something in his chest cramped hard as he watched silver thread crimp and crisp, blue fabric turn to ashes. Doubt came then in that quiet moment as it had not during the numb span of time that preceded it. Yet it was no more coherent than those frantic, sandblasted hours had been.
What should he doubt? The first time he laid eyes upon the Little Palace as a child and did not care about ever returning home? The moment when wind rippled over the lake beside the pavilions, entirely at his call? The day he went forth from Os Alta as a full soldier of the Second Army with pride singing in him through and through?
Never.
He was in the encampment at Kribirsk when the Darkling and Alina Starkov disappeared into the Fold with foreign ambassadors and the King's emissary in tow. He was there when so few who had set out returned, stumbling forth on foot and wreathed in blood and wounds. Even the Darkling. Oprichniki had moved quickly to obscure that particular sight. But Retvenko saw for a moment, long enough to drive a chill through him.
They had had to flee Kribirsk, but that did not keep word from Os Alta from reaching them. Of what had befallen the King, of the slaughter in the lower town. The nigglings of doubt that had reared at the edge of the Fold had nearly wormed deeper. But it was burned away again as he heard of the plight of other Grisha across Ravka. Called traitors and deserters if they ran, attacked and even killed if they did not. Guilt flickered, but anger trumped it. What would they have done had it been otkazat'sya who revolted? Killed people, of that he was certain - the nobility of Ravka did not care who suffered to keep their fine lives as they were. But would they have tried to kill the entire First Army? That, he very much doubted.
Their ranks swelled as more Grisha sought out the Darkling. Word came of the Sun Summoner placing herself beneath the King's thumb, while across the countryside peasants built altars to her. Santka Alina: Retvenko had sneered to hear it.
When the Darkling had lead them back to the capital, it was to triumph. To a Grisha upon the throne. To a type of hope Retvenko had never before experienced.
Now soot trembled in the air around them and it might as well have been hope that burned in that shallow pit in the ground. The dissonance of not regretting the choices he had made, but what they had come to ached, in his temples. It shouldn't have been like this.
The weight of knowing it was no longer his choice as to whether he returned home was what finally bowed his head.
They slunk into Os Kervo and trickled apart like water through parched earth, having agreed with few words exchanged that it was best they not stay a knot of people all seeking escape together. Already the city buzzed with word of Nikolai Lantsov, now King of Ravka. After everything, another Lantsov on the throne. Retvenko could have spit right there on the street, were he not so aware of how precarious his position was. His face was not unknown along Ravka's coast and the best opportunity lay in departing swiftly, aboard a vessel not crewed by Ravkans.
He picked exposure over drowning, yet another fork in his path where neither choice was enticing. There was brief hope to be had in the sailors' disbelieving relief at salvation, for the squall that had blown up was the worst Retvenko had ever laid eyes upon. Alone as he was, it was little short of a miracle that he had been able to keep them afloat. The crew had gaped in astonishment as the world finally grew calm around them, before falling into the over exuberance that comes of survival unexpected. They babbled at him, clapping him on the back, and offering their flasks of jenever.
The Etherealki had not allowed himself optimism, but it was still a disappointment when the captain took an accounting of the damage to his ship and decided Grisha fetched too fine a price in Kerch to let this opportunity go by the wayside. He had stayed alert as long as he could, smiling as though he trusted them and believed their gratitude, but ever ready to react. But he was weary from too many things and in the end, they had sprung against him when sight of land finally came. It had not helped his situation to kill two of them; one impaled on another's blade, the second sent to crack his head against the rail before being blown overboard where he drowned before anyone could fetch him up. But Retvenko felt no remorse. They would all have died in the storm if not for him, yet now they thieved his paltry freedom from him.
Outright slavery was a cold reality in these parts, but the captain it seemed had connections and a different sort of plan in mind. There was a mercher who could pay quite a tidy bit of coin for the indenture of a skilled Squaller. Retvenko could enter such service as a refugee fleeing Ravka's troubles. . .or he could go to far more brutal circumstances, with a parting gift of two smashed kneecaps.
Little enough choice to be had there either.
They told him it was for his own safety - he understood that they truly meant it was for the preservation of the Councilman's property - that he not be allowed out, for slavers were ever ready to snatch a Grisha from the streets of Ketterdam. And so he was kept within the workshop with Yuri and Anya, whenever Hoede did not have him out to sea. The other two were younger than Retvenko, but they were akin enough in other ways, and the three would mutter to each other in their own language when no one was about to threaten them for it. Afraid of plotting, Retvenko though derisively, as if he could come up with much of a plot with a Fabrikator and a Healer as fellow conspirators. But nevertheless, he felt a sense of responsibility for them. They were all each other had of home.
He had yet to see another indenture that was not Ravkan. And that too burned within him: to find a Grisha with talent trained, there was no where else from which they could come. Slaves and sacrifices and the murdered: that was what Grisha were in all places but Ravka. He would think of it while standing on the decks of Hoede's ships, or in the lamp-lit confines of the workshop, and his hands would clench within the sleeves of blue robes that were no kefta.
It was for their safety that they were kept close he was told, but in that too he heard other things. What did it mean for an indenture to end, if full slavery waited a step beyond the threshold?
"Would you have done differently, if you knew it would come to this?" Yuri asked him once. The Materialki was leaning over the latest absurdity Hoede's wife had him at - sheets finer than silk or somesuch nonsense, to keep from chafing her plump thighs - and he did not even bother looking up at Retvenko as he spoke.
Retvenko was silent for long moments. "Yes." The word was lingered over, tasted. He was not sure how it would feel until he said it, but hearing it aloud, it felt right. "I would have remembered I a— was a soldier of the Second Army."
He would have run, not toward Os Kervo, but toward the serf-soldiers with a traitor's mark branded on their faces. And he would have fought until they cut him down.
Because being on the losing side did not mean it was the wrong one.