Their next day traveling together was better, quieter. Alina had the last watch, giving her the opportunity to observe how the first piercing rays of dawn fought with the ring of shadows around their camp. The edges started to writhe first, reminding Alina of worms left out on the paving stones of Keramzin after a rainstorm. If they could make it to the safety of the soil once more, they would survive. Here under the canopy of trees there were the natural shadows from the treetops, but they were not enough to shelter all of Kirigan's summoned ones.
Before they got burned completely away by the sunrise, Kirigan dismissed them with a wave of his hand. "Good morning," Alina greeted him. It pleased her to find that she didn't have to fight to put on pleasant airs. She had not shared her revelation last night, but it still was a comfort.
Her good mood remained with her even after the sunrise and when they got back on the road. There was no snapping, no jabbing, no barbs of any kind. Kirigan stepped back from leading the way, another gesture that Alina appreciated.
"Do we have a specific destination in mind? We should be heading West if you intend to go to Balakirev, though I suspect that you know that," Kirigan asked at one point in the afternoon. They were walking the horses once again. Zarya had been getting testy, the one blemish on an otherwise decent day's ride.
Alina gave him a look. "If I didn't know how to get to Balakirev from Os Alta, I would have made a poor cartographer," she replied.
"Making maps and using them are two very different skillsets."
"Debatable," Alina laughed.
Kirigan scoffed lightheartedly, mimicking Alina's tone. "I knew a major who made the most beautiful sea charts. Couldn't navigate his way down a river to save his life."
She raised an eyebrow. "Do you mean Major Dunlap? And we weren't talking about sailing. That's it's own monster," she protested.
He shook his head. "You wouldn't have known him."
"The cartographers were fairly insular. And there aren't many in the upper ranks," Alina pressed. "C'mon. Try me."
"Really. You wouldn't have."
"When was he in the corps? Before or after the last Fjerden incursion?" For once, Alina found herself fully able to direct the conversation. She was constantly on the back foot when it came to the Grisha or the Second Army, but when she had been separated from Mal in the First Army ranks, Alina had done her best to pay attention to her new environment. She knew the way that they marked time in ceasefires and battles and changes to the borders.
Kirigan tipped his head up as he thought. "Definitely before then," he finally answered.
Alina frowned. "Alright… but he couldn't have been from the Sikursk campaign. That was, what, sixty years ago now? Seventy?" She remembered the oldest - and most insufferable - of commanders posturing on and on about how their training came from the best of the best soldiers who survived that campaign.
"Sixty-eight. Close enough to seventy," Kirigan replied easily. "But he definitely served before then."
She stopped in her tracks, drawing Zarya to a halt. "Before Sikursk. You're joking," Alina said. Kirigan took a moment to realize that she had paused. He stopped Harbinger as well, a familiar expression alighting on his face. He was amused by all of this.
"You can't know someone who served in the First Army seventy years ago."
"I believe that Major Dmitri served just shy of one hundred years ago, actually," Kirigan replied with an easygoing smile.
Alina sputtered. He continued, ignoring or perhaps relishing her flabbergasted reaction. "Grisha power brings long life, if one isn't shot or stabbed somewhere along the way," Kirigan said.
"You're… a hundred years old?" Alina asked. She tried to keep her voice from rising in pitch. She failed spectacularly. Of course in her books and lessons they had spoken about Grisha's living longer lives than otkazat'sya. That seemed easy to do, though, when the average Ravkan was trying to just feed themselves or not get shot up in the endless border wars. Plus, books and lessons had a way of keeping to the theoretical. Kirigan was a living, breathing person. Who very much did not look like he was far beyond thirty years old, never mind triple that.
He laughed openly at her question, choosing like before to only give a vague response. "Like I said, you are young, Alina. Why do you think I value patience so much?"
He tugged Harbinger into motion once more. Alina stood there for a long minute further, shaking her head.
"Saints," she muttered under her breath. She hoped she would look that good at a hundred years old. If she didn't manage to get herself killed before then, and assuming that her Grisha powers were anywhere near strong enough to make a difference.
Then she realized that yet again he had tossed his stupid little anecdote about "patience" back at her, and Alina was very glad that she was riding behind him to hide the roll of her eyes.
The next day, just after they had left camp and Alina brought them to the first proper road they had traveled on in days, was when she decided to tell him. "I'm taking us to Tsibeya," Alina announced. She passed the reins between her palms, choosing to look at them rather than at Kirigan. She could still see how he canted his head when he heard in the corner of her eye.
"Tsibeya?" he repeated. Alina nodded in confirmation. She waited for a reaction, anything at all. The horses kept their own counsel, whispering to one another while their riders paused at the side of the road.
Kirigan hummed as he thought. Then - "You're going to need warmer clothes. The only thing one does in Tsibeya is prepare for the permafrost. Yes?" She nodded again and chanced looking up from her hands. If Kirigan objected, there was no indication on the general's face or in his body language. He inclined his head for Alina to proceed, and she nudged Zarya back into the lead position.
It was actually worse that Kirigan wasn't asking for her rationale for going to Tsibeya, Alina decided. Or perhaps it was worse for reasons completely unrelated to the Black General because while she had finally accepted that Tsibeya and Mal's strange quest for a stag had been her subconscious goal all along, she still had not yet dared to breach the contents of the rest of Mal's letters.
She meant to. Each night that they had made camp or when they stopped to water the horses and eat some of their provisions, Alina had the opportunity to finally read through the letters that she had been denied. She simply couldn't bring herself to do it. Not yet.
Today the sky was grey with thick cloud cover. It had snowed on them twice already. So much for the last stretch of autumn weather. "Have you ever been to Tsibeya before? You must have, in your hundreds of years of life experience," Alina asked him. She was coping with the realization that Kirigan was older - and more powerful - than she realized by making a big joke out of it.
The reward of successfully getting him to laugh was well worth it. "Yes, Miss Starkov, I have been through Tsibeya many times," he answered. "It isn't so much a place that one goes to as one that you pass through. Like we will be."
"So there's no must-see sights there, then."
"If you're lucky, you might get to see a tiger or two."
Alina brightened at that. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I read about them. Well, I mean everyone knows there are tigers there. But I mean they were in my assigned reading. The books on amplifiers. The white tigers end up as stronger amplifiers than the other kinds when a Grisha claims them, right?"
She earned herself that look from Kirigan which Alina had deduced was fondness. "I don't know why I'm surprised, but yes, yet again you are a quick student," he said.
"It was a book talking about tigers. Of course I was going to pay attention," Alina said, only half-joking. At the time she had debated even adding it into a letter to Mal. She had held off partially because she had forgotten by the time she had gotten to actually sit down and write. Now, she worried that had she included it - and had Mal ever gotten it - he would have just been disgusted. Grisha took an amplifier by taking the animal's life and claiming a piece of the animal's bones only. The rest was usually burned.
"I've gone on several trips to the permafrost when there is a white tiger spotted. I'm afraid you missed the last by… seven years? Yes, that sounds right," Kirigan mused. "Before that I think it was nearly another decade prior. One went to Zoya - that was a surprise; she was barely a teenager then - and the other was claimed by a very clever Alkemi who unfortunately did not survive the front."
Alina made a face when the Squaller was mentioned but she relented when Kirigan mentioned the other Grisha's fate. Even with amplification, Grisha were still as mortal as anyone else.
"I don't suppose we're due for another white tiger to show up," Alina said. The more powerful the animal, the more powerful the amplifier. Alina was hard pressed to think of a creature stronger than the Tsibeyan tigers. Maybe the hulking black bears in the south?
"There were two cubs with the parent last time," Kirigan offered. "But I wouldn't worry about that. They tend to avoid the horses unless they're hungry. And it's still early enough where there are plenty of deer to eat."
Alina opened her mouth to ask if he meant Morozova's herd then thought better of it. The stag was just a story. Certainly there were plenty of deer and caribou in Tsibeya and beyond that would proliferate the tale of a massive, white stag. It did pose an interesting thought though - a fantastic creature of Morozova's legacy might be even more powerful than even a tiger or a bear if it was an amplifier. Assuming that it could exist at all.
Alina asked instead about the tigers again. "What are the chances those two cubs would be amplifiers as well?"
Kirigan shook his head before she had even finished speaking. "I know where this question is leading."
It had been weighing on Alina in the back of her head, buried initially by her frustration at Kirigan and her worry for Mal's safety. Now with some of those concerns assuaged and being well on their way to verifying Mal was in fact still alive and well Alina was free to focus on the idea that Nadia had oh-so-helpfully deposited into Alina's mind.
"Wouldn't it make sense to get me an amplifier?" Alina pressed.
"No," Kirigan answered flatly. She was not so easily dissuaded.
"I'm supposed to bring down the Fold. No one knows if that's even possible for one summoner on her own."
"No," Kirigan repeated.
Alina huffed. "It couldn't hurt," she spat. This was what she didn't enjoy about being with Kirigan. Yes, he was the Black General, and he was quite literally her superior officer; but she still didn't relish being told outright what she was or wasn't going to do. Especially when she had some genuine good points, she thought.
"You were not meant for an amplifier like that," Kirigan said.
As if to spite her further, Kirigan was nudging Harbinger faster. Just like their last argument, he was moving to cut it off by taking the lead. Alina narrowed her eyes and kicked her heels to get Zarya to match his pace once more.
"What's that supposed to mean? Any amplifier's better than no amplifier," she said.
"A Grisha only gets one amplifier. You are the first - perhaps only - Sun Summoner in all the world. You were not meant for the same amplifier as Zoya Nazyalensky."
Alina narrowed her eyes. Before she got the chance to formulate a better response, Kirigan added in a much softer tone, "Besides. I keep telling you, you are not doing this on your own." He had stopped pushing Harbinger into a trot. He reached out across the short distance between the two of them to tug one of her hands from the reins. Alina blinked as her irritation smoothed to nothing.
His touch, as usual, brought out her powers effortlessly which in turn brought a wave of joy. His fingers threaded through hers, tying them together. When Alina took her next breath, her exhale brought with it a low haze of light all around them. It was effortless, instinctive, simple. "Whatever you do, you will not be alone," Kirigan said firmly. "Neither one of us can handle the Fold on our own."
Alina swallowed harshly, trying to tamp down the rush of endorphins that came right along with her abilities. "And if I'm still not strong enough?" she dared to ask. "I don't want to end up being the next heretic. They're already expecting me to be a saint."
The hand in hers squeezed tightly, just for a moment, before relaxing once more. Alina felt Kirigan's thumb run reassuringly over the back of her hand. "I will not allow that to happen," he swore.
"But-" Alina protested.
"Alina," Kirigan replied with equal insistence. When she closed her mouth, his thumb once again caressed her skin. "I know that I have no grounds to ask, but I will regardless. Trust me on this, if you will not trust me on anything else. I will not allow Ravka to turn its back on you."
She shouldn't trust him. Not yet. Not on his word alone. And yet.
Alina squeezed her fingers around his. "Don't let me down," she murmured. If he could hold to that promise, then just maybe she would be able to move on past what had happened before.
His hand moved from holding hers to cupping the side of her face. His grip was sure, intentional and strong without being forceful. "I would not dare to," he replied.
The terrain was getting more rocky and the elevation was starting to rise as they neared the foothills of the Petrazoi mountains. Alina had been carefully watching the sun and the stars positions to ensure that they were angling far enough northeast to avoid the actual eastern mountains, but the ache that crept up the back of her legs through the day along with the more frequent breaks that the horses needed told her that they were unquestionably in the outer edges of the range.
Alina paused in the middle of saddling Zarya for the morning to look over at Kirigan. They were still at that impasse from before, neither having budged nor was either choosing to bring the topic up again. So long as they were traveling north, Alina couldn't bring herself to disturb the tentative peace between them.
She would have to read the letters soon, though. They weren't making record time across Ravka, but each day brought them closer and closer to Tsibeya and the permafrost beyond. Alina needed to know what Mal had tried to say to her before she saw him again. She owed him that much at least. Whatever that meant for her relationship with Kirigan once she had read whatever apparently meaningful message was there, it wasn't something that she could ignore any longer.
Shaking her head, Alina returned to the task at hand. Tonight, she decided. Tonight she would pluck up the courage and deal with the situation at hand properly.
"Ready to go?" Alina called out to Kirigan. She gripped the horn of the saddle and pulled herself up in the same smooth motion that she had grown accustomed to. Her momentum carried her too far, though, and Alina felt the world tilt on its axis. Before she had time to blink, she saw the ground flying up to meet her face.
Her shoulder and chin took the brunt of the hit as her hands didn't have enough time to move to slow her fall. The pained grunt that escaped her mouth was muffled by dirt and an unfortunate amount of moss that then had to be spat back out. Alina rolled onto her back and just stared in bewilderment at Zarya.
The mare was decidedly bothered, giving a hearty shake of her head and tamping her front hoof in the way that Alina had learned meant she was upset. Normally it took a solid day of hard riding for Zarya to get this upset. They had only just finished breakfast.
When a shadow spilled over Alina and Kirigan's face appeared upside down in her sight, Alina sighed heavily. "That was the breathing thing, wasn't it?" she grumbled. In their first lesson on how to tack up the horses Kirigan had warned her that they might try to hold their breath to keep the saddle straps from being tight. If the rider didn't notice it and they decided to toss themselves onto their horse like a sack of potatoes, the saddle could slip and dump them just as easily.
"That was the breathing thing," Kirigan confirmed with a bright, amused twinkle to his eyes. He stuck out a hand to help Alina to her feet.
"Lie to me just this once," Alina said. "Tell me that Harbinger has done that to you before." She brushed dirt from her clothes all the while praying that she didn't still have moss in her teeth. There were some things that were just unacceptable even after a solid week of camping.
Kirigan wasn't paying attention to Alina's complaints however. He was working to calm Zarya down. Alina would have dismissed it as his usual eerie connection with the animals, but he was frowning and taking a long look at her front leg.
Alina wrapped her arms around her middle, rubbing the remaining pain away from her shoulder, and approached as well. "What's wrong?" she asked. Her inexperience hurting herself was fine, if annoying. But if she had done something to hurt Zarya, that was a whole other issue.
Picking up her foot, Kirigan's frown deepened. "Have you been picking her hooves at night?"
"That's what you said we had to do, so yes," Alina answered. She crouched to join him. He was prodding at Zarya's shoe and Alina didn't have to be an expert to see that it was moving with hardly any provocation. "That looks bad. I don't remember it doing that last night," she said.
To be fair, they had also ridden long and hard the previous night. By the time that they had settled in and Kirigan had wreathed the camp in shadow, Alina had barely been able to keep her eyes open. Now her lip curled in a frown just as deep as Kirigan. This was her fault.
He seemed to notice her distress. He nudged her shoulder with his, coaxing her to stop staring in dismay at Zarya's foot. "She'll be fine. We just need a farrier," he insisted. "And to take that off before it gets caught on something."
Alina did her best not to gape openly at him. Her best was a deepening of her frown and sinking onto the ground to sit. "How are we supposed to find a farrier in the middle of nowhere?"
Kirigan let go of Zarya's leg. She immediately returned to unhappily tamping her foot on the ground. Alina winced. This new information shed an uncomfortable light on her horse's habits these past days. Maybe the shoe had been slowly loosening the whole time. Kirigan stood to rifle through the packed bags on Harbinger's back. He returned with a pair of carefully folded parchments.
"You're the cartographer," he said cheerfully. "I know at least two villages in the eastern mountains that should have farriers. Can you figure out which is closer while I help out our miserable friend here?"
That was a plan that Alina could get behind. She held onto the reins and prodded Kirigan for information about the villages in the area. Selecting a new - temporary - destination kept her attention away from agonizing over exactly what Kirigan was doing with the makeshift tools they had available to get the shoe fully removed from Zarya. They were going to have to backtrack unfortunately but the village they were heading towards was close to a military camp as well.
"We could pick up more supplies from there," Alina suggested. She was petting Zarya's nose and giving her one of the rare sugar cubes from Kirigan's stash to calm her down once more.
"That's a First Army camp," Kirigan said. It wasn't an outright no, but Alina could hear the dismissive tone creeping into his voice.
"You don't have any Grisha up here?"
Kirigan wiped his hands off with a rag before tossing it and the extracted shoe into a saddlebag. "There's an actual Second Army encampment that's usually set up by now, though it's closer to the permafrost. I'd prefer to go there instead."
"But the other one's closer now," Alina said, dusting off her own fingers as though Zarya hadn't thoroughly sniffed out all the remnants of sugar. She re-cinched the saddle and was about to pull herself back up. Kirigan stopped her with a touch.
"You can't do that," he said.
"Go to a First Army camp after we get Zarya fixed up? Sure we can. You're the Black General. I'm pretty sure we can do whatever we want."
Kirigan huffed. "That's- we're going to have a long conversation about exactly where my influence begins and ends. I think it would be an enlightening lesson for you. No, I mean that you can't ride on her," he insisted.
Alina blinked. "You took off the loose shoe."
"And now she doesn't have a shoe. Ideally she would be left in a pasture until a farrier could come to her. The fact that we have to travel to them means there's more opportunity for damage. Keeping weight off of her is the best that we can do," he clarified.
An all-too-familiar sinking feeling rose in Alina's gut. She let go of the saddle and turned to face Kirigan properly. "We're not walking all the way to civilization," she said.
"Of course not," he replied with a smug twist to his grin. He gave a low whistle to call Harbinger over. As usual, the gelding was all too happy to amble over.
Alina begrudgingly patted him on the nose when he nudged at her shoulder. It wasn't his fault that his master was this way. "Of course not," Alina repeated, sighing. Kirigan holding the opposite side of the saddle seemed like a dig at her most recent tumble and had the added challenge of Alina then not "accidentally" kicking him with her booted foot. That would be unquestionably rude, regardless of her mess of feelings.
And when he slid onto the saddle behind her, Alina was more or less stuck listening to whatever he had to say. It would make for a long trip if she had conked him in the head.
"Ready to go?" he asked. Alina could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She worried - however briefly - if she had gotten all of the dirt out of her hair when she had fallen. Then Kirigan reached around her to gather the reins and her focus shifted to staying perfectly still and out of the way. When he still didn't nudge Harbinger to go forward, Alina realized that she had still not replied.
"Let's get this over with," she grumbled, glad at least that Kirigan probably couldn't see the hot flush moving over her cheeks.
A/N: So I remembered somewhere along the line that I've actually cut out the canon/OG horseback riding moment between Alina and Kirigan as well as the nighttime visit where she comforts him etc etc. Naturally that mean that I needed to put in at least one moment where he does that face touch thing because I am a simple woman with simple needs T_T
I know I already have the heads up in the tags that there is much dubious horsemanship in this fic, but this chapter probably has the worst offenders of "I googled for like… fifteen minutes and it may or may not be correct." Sorry to all who are actually competent in this!