"Miss Starkov, are you alright?" Kirigan had asked. The other riders kept to the sides of the clearing or remained among the trees, leaving just the two of them in the open space. Alina still had not answered. At this point, Kirigan had nearly reached her.
Alina chose to lift the knife once more, holding the point out in front of her as a warning. The General's steps paused. She could see movement by the other soldiers, Grisha and Oprichniki alike, until Kirigan signaled for them to stop. "Alina?" His head tipped in further question but he remained where he was, waiting for her to answer.
"I was doing just fine before you showed up," Alina hissed. She was entirely aware of the audience that she had, but she couldn't stop the frustration and the fear from today bubbling over into anger now. One knife would not stop any of them from taking her down, especially not the Heartrenders in their brilliant red and black coats that she could see waiting on the outskirts of the clearing, but she refused to drop it.
Kirigan kept his hand up. "Really," he replied, his voice calm. Somehow that only irritated Alina further.
"I wasn't being held in a web of lies, so, yes. I was doing far better out here than I was before," Alina said.
That earned her a reaction such as it was, a furrowing of the general's brow. On the sidelines, one of the Heartrenders slid from their mount and took a step into the clearing. Alina skittered further back, pressing once more against Zarya. The mare had calmed slightly when the Grisha had appeared, but she was still tamping her hooves. She wasn't reacting well to Alina crowding her when neither of them could run.
"General," the Heartrender spoke. Alina recognized Ivan's voice even as his face was out of the torchlight.
"We're fine," Kirigan insisted.
"If she tries to run-" Ivan tried again. Kirigan cut him off.
"No one will be running anywhere. We need to set up a perimeter and proper camp for the night. This space is not large enough. Coordinate that, please, Ivan, while I make sure that Miss Starkov is whole. We will join you later." Kirigan redirected the Heartrender's attention without ever taking his eyes off of Alina. She still had the knife pointed at his chest, but that hardly seemed important to Kirigan.
If Ivan resented being sent away, Alina would not have known from his actions. He obeyed the general's command after a stiff bow. She suspected that she may have seen anger glinting in his eyes, though. Maybe she was just projecting her own feelings onto the man. Warily, Alina watched the small group of riders depart until it was just herself, Kirigan, and their own mounts left in the clearing. He had not tried to approach her further, though he was crouching now next to the smoldering remnants of her fire. Alina's arm was starting to shake from keeping the knife held out for so long. She swapped hands and warily regarded the man in front of her.
"Why did you do that?" Alina asked, breaking the silence between them first. It would have been easy enough for Ivan to slow her heart and knock her out. They all knew that.
Kirigan nudged at the coals with some of the kindling that Alina had not needed. "I hoped that it would put less pressure on you to not be under so many eyes and that you might feel comfortable enough to drop that little blade. But perhaps more simply I thought we could both use some privacy for this discussion," he answered.
Alina frowned. She thought about putting the knife down - he was just one man just as she was one young woman - but she knew that even while apparently unarmed, General Kirigan was still plenty dangerous.
"I don't have any reason to believe anything that you have to say," Alina said.
"Really." Again, he had that calm affect to his voice that raised her hackles. He continued to prod at the coals, adding slim twigs and dried leaf litter to the remnants of her fire.
"Really," Alina insisted. She waited a beat then she added, "Genya must have told you that I figured out you've been lying to me."
"Which lies are those?" The first pieces of leaf litter were smoldering along with the coals. Kirigan plucked a large sheath of bark that Alina had carved off of a log and used it to gently fan flames to life. They were tiny but eager, racing to consume the kindling that had been set. Alina was less than impressed with the quick revival. He was just using her previous hard work that had come from long minutes of friction and tired arms.
"You've been intercepting my letters. And Mal's. And Saints know who else's," Alina spat. There weren't many who might have wanted to keep in contact with her, but it wasn't impossible. Her thoughts went to Alexie and those who had not come back from the Fold, those in her unit who had been her only real other companions, and her mood plummeted further. Perhaps there wasn't anyone else who cared about Alina other than Mal.
Kirigan leaned over to grab one of the logs from Alina's small pile. Further irritation rose in her throat as the fire quickly grew to a healthy size. Kirigan put a second log on, letting the fire's light spread wider in the clearing than Alina had dared. He trusted his people to keep them safe. Or perhaps just his own abilities.
Alina didn't want to relent and bring the knife down, but her shoulder was burning and realistically… it wasn't going to do much. Apparently the general was more focused on taking a seat now by the revived fire than, what? Dragging her kicking and screaming back to the Little Palace? He would have used Ivan or one of the Oprichniki for that.
He finally turned his head back to her after brushing the dirt from his hands. He looked less like a general and more like one of his soldiers with his crossed legs on the mossy ground. Alina finally huffed and slid her knife back into her belt. It was still ready to draw, ready to be used, but not wagging in the general's face. He nodded in acknowledgement, though Alina respected most the fact that he didn't immediately suggest that she sit down by the fire - by him.
She sank onto her haunches and chose to remain by Zarya. "Well?" she pressed. He had not denied her accusation, but she wanted some kind of answer.
"Do you want my practical response? Or the truthful one?" Kirigan replied with his own questions before choosing one for himself. "They're similar but not the same. It's well within my prerogative to choose what information is handed out about a valuable, vulnerable Grisha who has already been subject to at least one known assassination attempt.
"A letter to a loved one is an innocent enough want. But one that comes with her friend's identities? Her day to day activities? Her exact location within the grounds of the Little Palace? Those are details which would be invaluable to another assassin," he explained in a cool, flat tone that brought Alina right back to Keramzin when she had failed some lesson. Her anger fanned just as quickly under Kirigan's attention as the flames in her cook fire.
"Then why give me the option at all? Why bother with the pretense if you're so justified in your explanation? I would have understood the practicality of it all. I'm not a child. I was a soldier," Alina shot back.
"You still are a soldier. And you are Grisha. But you have resisted accepting both of those facts, Miss Starkov. You would have held onto your otkazat'sya past for longer if you were waiting out hope that you would reconnect with it."
Alina could only stare at him. "So you admit it was intentional. You had them keep the letters to make me feel isolated and forgotten by the only person who's ever given a damn about me before now."
Her words had some effect, even if it was just to push him to look down at his hands. He wiped away a streak of dirt that had been missed before. "Better to be forgotten than to be used or to be feared for what you are," Kirigan murmured. His eyes flicked back to hers. "One day, you'll understand. Being Grisha-"
"Being Grisha doesn't mean that I've forgotten how to be a human being. Or what it was like to have people who cared about me. And I'm not exactly feeling un-used by the Grisha, either," Alina snapped.
Kirigan chuckled. Alina folded her arms over her chest defensively. "People who cared about you. You mean your tracker, Oretsev, who hopes that your abilities are a mistake."
"You don't get to talk about him," she retorted. When she blinked, she realized that she had once again taken out the knife and was now toe to toe with the fire that separated them. Kirigan merely tipped his head slightly. He paused only briefly before speaking again as though Alina hadn't even moved.
"He is otkazat'sya. At very least, he fears Grisha power because he does not understand it. How long until that fear turns to your powers? To you? Where he does not see you as his fellow orphaned compatriot and instead just as another Grisha who is other and unknown ? I promise you, that day will come. Sooner rather than later."
"Stop," Alina hissed. She couldn't say anything more because her voice was going to crack in her throat from the emotions now freely boiling to the surface.
Kirigan raised his palms again. Alina watched as he rose from the ground and carefully backed along the distance back to Harbinger. A stone sank in her stomach as Kirigan reached into one of the bags tied to the gelding to retrieve a sheath of papers. "You can see for yourself," he offered.
When he moved back to the fire, he tossed the sheath across the short distance in a tall arc. Alina had to make the choice of either letting them fall into the flames or keeping her weapon - such that it was - trained on Kirigan.
She snatched the letters out of harm's way with both hands and let the knife drop into the dirt.
If she dug into them now, she would only be validating every point that Kirigan had been making. That didn't mean that it wasn't what Alina desperately wanted to do, however. Tucking the leather under her arm, she took the time to bend and pick up her knife.
"Regardless of what Mal thinks - whether he's afraid or just worried or doesn't care at all - you still manipulated me. Both of you, Genya included," Alina said.
Kirigan shook his head. He was settling once more on the ground, back to the picture of civility. "You're still so young," he remarked. It wasn't a denial. Yet just like Genya, it wasn't an apology, either.
Alina cleared her throat, going for another avenue to attack. "How am I supposed to trust you Grisha when this is how you're treating me? Like I'm not mature enough to make decisions for myself. Like I can't handle hard truths or difficult problems," she protested.
"Is running away into the woods the mature way to handle difficult problems?" he asked. Alina sank to the ground, crossing her legs and arms haughtily in front of her.
"I was going to come back."
Even in the dim firelight Alina could see his eyebrow raise. "Really." It had fast become Alina's least favorite word, all in the span of one conversation.
She snorted. "You've made it pretty clear how important the Sun Summoner is for Ravka. Of course I was going to come back," Alina replied. It surprised her how easily she admitted it, even when she had spent all of today's ride avoiding considering the logistics.
"When I was ready," she added hastily. That had been her hang up. She would have been fine with another day or two to clear her thoughts properly instead of being harangued and interrogated at her own campsite.
Of all the things that Alina had said, this was the one that Kirigan seemed to need a few moments to consider. They sat in silence for a long stretch of time with just the fire crackling between them.
"I did not mean for you to feel alone, Alina," he murmured finally. "I just wanted you to understand how much more fitting… how much safer it would be for you at the Little Palace."
Alina shifted to better cover her shoulders and arms with her cloak. She felt the little parcel of papers still under her arm, a nagging reminder. "You wanted it to feel like my home. That's what you said - 'Welcome home,'" she recalled.
"Yes."
"I don't know a lot about homes and families," Alina said. She wanted to keep the bitterness and hurt from her voice when she said that, but it was an old wound that she had never truly let heal even before now. She pushed ahead with her point. "But I know that they aren't supposed to lie to one another. And if they do, they apologize." She held his gaze this time, refusing to be the one to break first.
"If I just apologize, you still won't trust me though," Kirigan remarked. It was surprisingly astute - Alina herself only then realized that what he'd said was an entirely correct reading of her feelings. It seemed unfair that he had picked up on that in under an hour and she had spent two long days wrestling with it all.
Still, it was the truth. Alina nodded tightly. He nodded in return, and Alina felt oddly like they'd agreed to something silently between them.
Alina knew that they weren't going to just sit and stare at the campfire for eternity, but she still stiffened when Kirigan breached the long silence between them and asked, "If I ask you to come with me to join the others, would you?"
He hadn't left his spot by the fire. Alina had gotten up several times to fuss with Zarya's lead, to put the sheath of letters safely into her bag, to do something to get Kirigan out of her direct line of sight. When she did, feeling him behind her was almost worse. Now she had to figure out how she was going to answer him.
"You want me to come back to the Little Palace," she said, skirting the question.
He nodded once. "Of course. Where it's safe," he emphasized. She could not help but think of his "pragmatic" reasons for keeping her in the dark - it was dangerous out beyond the walls of Os Alta for the Sun Summoner.
Alina's face once again fell into a frown. She started to respond, but Kirigan was speaking again and she couldn't hardly believe what he was saying. "But you're not ready to come back yet, so I thought the first step would be to rejoin the camp. In the morning we can discuss next steps."
"Next steps?" Alina asked. Even as she did, he was moving to stand up across from her. It wouldn't take long to break down her camp. There was pretty much just the fire and the pile of Zarya's tack to address. She found herself standing to mirror him again. Arguably it was to keep from being caught off guard.
"If you aren't prepared to return to the Palace yet, then surely you must have some other destination. So, we can discuss in the morning," he said, matter-of-fact. He patted Harbinger's nose and turned to look over his shoulder at Alina. "If that would be agreeable."
It was too good to be true, yet Alina had no better response than to accept his terms.
At least he didn't insult her further by offering to help pack up her things. Alina tossed her bag over Zarya's back when she had the horse saddled once more and waited pointedly for Kirigan to lead the way. It was too dark where Alina was not going to chance having Zarya trip over Saints knew what. They traveled on foot in the direction where Kirigan's troops had slipped into the woods.
Even when they found the camp that the Grisha had set up, he still didn't push. Alina was waiting for the other foot to drop. When she was directed to a tidily pitched tent, when she was handed a bedroll, when she was more or less dismissed; she continued to expect Kirigan to revoke what he had said in that tiny clearing and declare that in the morning they would make for the Little Palace once more.
Despite her paranoia, Alina was given her space once more. They didn't even try to take her knife. The only concession she had to make was to allow a Corporalki Healer check her over for injuries. And then, nothing.
Alina woke after a night of actual sleep to the smell of fresh game cooking over a spit. Her stomach growled and she warily allowed herself to be drawn from the tiny tent. In the morning light, the camp looked strangely familiar. Just as her unit once did, the Grisha soldiers collected around the fire while they waited not-so-subtly for the morning's rations to be doled out. Alina's mouth watered when she spotted the brace of rabbit that was cooking. Stale bread and cheese could not compare. Saints, depending on the day in the Little Palace, Alina might have traded for rabbit over herring.
No one should have to live on herring alone.
Plates were passed out and Alina was not allowed to just hover on the edge of the group for long. The Inferni who had managed the torches last night were a pair of twins that Alina only knew in passing. Regardless, they were more than happy to plant themselves on her flanks. Alina realized they were the only other Etherialki in the small pack. Everyone else was either a Corporalki or Oprichniki.
The twins shot dark looks at the Healer who came by to make sure that Alina also had a full canteen to counteract the slight dehydration they had remarked upon last night. The politics of the Grisha were no more subtle than their colorful keftas that marked their lines drawn in the sand. Alina focused on her plate as much as she could. When that could no longer hold her attention, she used Zarya as an excuse. The mare was more than happy to accept the pets and obligatory ogling that came from the Inferni twins that continued to shadow Alina.
Was she intended to go to Kirigan now that she was awake and eaten? Or was she supposed to sit on her hands and wait to be addressed? No one around was talking about why they were out here directly - at least not in front of Alina - but there was plenty of chatter about getting back to the Little Palace before the weather turned worse. Ravkan winter hit hard and she hit fast.
When she was able to, Alina excused herself from the Inferni twins. She had spotted Ivan coming in from the perimeter making his way to one of the tents that was conspicuously attended by Oprichniki. Obviously this was where the Black General was.
When she reached the tent, Alina expected to have to argue her way in. Instead a red jacketed arm stuck out from the flap along with Ivan's typical less-than-impressed expression. "You're expected," he said flatly.
"Thank you."
The tent wasn't properly sized to hold three people at once. Ivan ducked out past Alina, his lip curled a little further. Compared to the massive pavilion in Kribirsk, this was beyond tight quarters. Still, Alina was glad for the illusion of privacy.
"Good morning, Miss Starkov," Kirigan greeted. Alina replied in kind, though her reservations about just what today was going to bring kept her from having quite the same level of cheer to her voice.
Kirigan's head touched the gently sloping canvas of the tent. He was just now shouldering his cloak, apparently not having gone out in the cold yet. Alina twisted her palms in front of herself. She would reach for the scar that had been tailored away, even after weeks of it being gone. She wanted something familiar, though she felt self conscious about the obvious tell. Intentionally Alina forced herself to bring her palms back to her sides where her fingers trailed instead over the corecloth and embroidery of her kefta .
"You didn't tell them that I don't want to go back to the Palace," Alina said. She suspected it and wanted to confirm.
He shook his head. "I haven't said one way or another what the plan is. Because you and I have not discussed that fact," Kirigan explained. Perhaps it wasn't solely Alina that had caused Ivan's poor mood, then. Surely his de facto second-in-command - or perhaps formal? It wasn't clear to Alina how much was assumed versus formalized - wouldn't appreciate being kept on the outside for once.
The rest of his supplies had been neatly packed away save for the bedroll. He knelt down to begin to roll it up, brushing off the twigs and dirt that clung to the padding. Alina hadn't even thought to pick up after her own things before going to find food. "Did you eat?" he asked, eerily following her thoughts.
Alina blinked. "Yes?"
"Good. I don't think that anyone thought to offer you something last night, did they?"
In fact they hadn't, but Alina had been more focused on settling Zarya in and then on catching up on her deficit of sleep. Plus she had eaten most of her original dinner, little as it was. "It's really not that important. A hot meal isn't going to just fix my feelings," Alina said. She felt defensive despite being the one standing around doing nothing as he finished with his bedding.
"No, but hunger has a way of clouding judgement. I can still hope that a hot meal might make you more inclined to return home instead of lingering here."
"Are you sure that you're not the one who's just hungry and a little fuzzy around the edges?" The lighthearted jab fell from Alina's lips unexpectedly. She tensed, waiting for Kirigan to snap in response. This was not the time for banter and jokes, not in the slightest. She was still mad at him, fundamentally.
His eyebrow lifted over one dark eye, and he let out a chuckle. "It isn't out of the question." Then he stood and turned away from her. Alina leaned to better see what he was doing, curiosity getting the better of her. He had two or three bags just as she had seen yesterday tied off to Harbinger, freshly packed with supplies. She recognized the little tins that both armies used to keep flint and tinder dry, more hard cheese for longer travel, and the tell-tale orange flash of dried jurda blossoms.
"Shall we discuss over food, then? To prevent poor thinking on all sides," Kirigan asked.
"I already ate," Alina said before wincing. It sounded petulant even to her own ears.
He cinched his bag closed and stood fully. "Some tea, then?"
Alina acquiesced without pushing back further. Part of her thought that maybe they would emerge from the tent and find that breakfast had been set out for the Black General. She blinked back her surprise rather ineffectively as instead Kirigan got the same standard issue tin plate and serving of rabbit straight from the spit. He passed her the first cup of tea, even, before they settled on the edge of the camp. Conspicuously the Grisha keeping watch moved further into the treeline. That was the only sign of favor she might have ascribed to Kirigan, and Alina suspected it was more out of respect than something he demanded.
While Kirigan started on his food, her hands wrapped around the tin cup to eagerly sap up the warmth from the freshly brewed tea. Her lips curled as soon as she took a sip. Alina had not missed camp tea. The leaves steeped all morning while the food cooked, making the drink miserably bitter after not too long.
"I should have gotten some earlier," Alina grumbled to herself. She watched with great amusement as Kirigan paused to take his own tentative sip. The grimace on his face was almost worth the discomfort from waiting on tenterhooks for them to actually address their impasse.
"Saints," Kirigan said. "That'll wake you up."
"It'll wake the dead," Alina agreed. Still, it was hot in her belly and better than the water from her canteen that quickly picked up a metallic aftertaste. She moved to take another sip regardless of the taste.
"Wait." Alina turned her head to see Kirigan rifling once more through pockets. She shook her head and laughed when his hand emerged once more with a rare delicacy - a pair of white sugar cubes.
"You bribe me with hot food and now sugar. I'm not as easily swayed as Harbinger," Alina said. Still, she didn't protest when one went into both of their cups. Alina swirled the cup in her palms to coax it to dissolve fully. Her mouth actually watered; before this past month she certainly liked sweets more than other foods from their novelty, but when summoning had made her appetite emerge it brought to the front a much stronger fondness for sugary treats.
"I'm not bribing you with anything. You've made that fairly clear that it won't work. But I am loath to watch someone suffer through Daria's horrible tea," Kirigan insisted.
Alina twitched her chin in the direction of the rest of the camp. "Do you have enough of those little cubes for everyone, then?" she teased.
"Everyone else has already eaten. That's beyond my control," Kirigan replied with equal lightness.
"So there are some things which are beyond even your control?"
It was intended to be another joke, but Alina watched as the amusement in Kirigan's eyes faded out. He jabbed at the remaining food on his plate, a brief pause lingering between them. Then - "Alina, I know that you resent my decisions on how to shape your first months with us. That you see me somewhere above the rest of my Grisha, as someone only a few steps from the King." His voice had dropped lower as he continued to prod at the plate rather than take another mouthful. His words slowed as well as he considered each of them.
"That isn't… There are many things that are beyond my control. So, yes, I may overstep or seem to overstep when it comes to those that I can control. Clearly that being a matter of perspective and differing opinion," Kirigan continued.
"Differing opinion" was perhaps a generous way to put it, but Alina wasn't going to interject just yet.
"There are a great number of things that I wish were in my control. Things that could change if we were to have a weapon against the Fold that could allow Ravka some means to rebuild," he said. At that, his eyes lifted and met Alina's once more. His point was obvious.
"Me," Alina sighed.
It wasn't far from the usual expectations that Alina had come to shoulder at the Little Palace, but it still hit her suddenly and powerfully. Her chest tightened and she dropped her gaze first to stare down at her cup. The sugar wasn't quite dissolved yet. There was a little pile sitting on the bottom.
"I'm not… I'm still a person. I'm not a tool or a weapon." Alina tried to voice the confusing thoughts that were still all tangled up in knots and getting even more tangled by sugar cubes and that packet of letters in her rucksack and Kirigan being so damn human right here and now. "But I am still a soldier. And I am Grisha, much as that's still beyond baffling to me. So."
She set her shoulders and forced herself to look back up at the man next to her. "I need to know that you see me as a person. I need to know that or feel that, however you look at it, again. Otherwise, I don't know that I can trust that I'm not being manipulated once more," Alina said.
Kirigan had his head tipped just so while he listened. "You're set on not returning to the Little Palace before then," he said to confirm. Alina nodded even as her resolve threatened to waver. She gripped her tea cup to ground herself.
"I'm not going to leave you on your own, though," Kirigan said.
"I suspected as much," Alina sighed. She looked over her shoulder at the camp behind them. The morning hustle and bustle had quieted down but it still was far more lively and noticeable than what Alina would hope for while travelling across the country.
His lip quirked in a brief smile. Alina felt as though she was passing some kind of test, and she wasn't certain just how she wanted to feel about it. "Then where shall we go to find some trust, you and I? Outside of the palace, just as two people not General and Sun Summoner?" Kirigan asked.
Alina craned her head to find the sun before pointing to the side of the clearing where their horses were waiting serendipitously. "North," she replied confidently.