Beautiful and Broken

13.

It was almost midnight when Genya knocked on my door, and busted in without awaiting an answer.

"You need to come with us", she panted.

"Where are you actually going?"

"You need to come because he listens to you. The Darkling."

"Genya, you're wrong."

"You even call him Aleksander, for heaven's sake! Nobody else ever does that!"

I didn't even know if I was even allowed to go, but it turned out that Genya was one step ahead of me, having already asked Aleksander, already knowing that I was free to stay or to go as I wished. I had no intention of joining them, even though I would have liked to see the Sun Summoner's magic. This was wrong on so many levels: him with a whole army behind his back, hunting for Alina, with the intention of forcing her to do as he pleases. Last time he made her participate in the murder of a whole city. What could he be planning now? I wasn't going to be any part of it.

"Genya, why do you want me to come with you? What are you hoping that I can achieve?"

"Try to stop him. Or just make him do anything differently. I don't know, Altair, to make any change for the better. This is not right. None of this is right. He should leave Alina alone."

I couldn't agree more. The only problem was that Genya greatly overestimated my influence on Aleksander. I doubted that I could ever convince him of anything. I doubted that anyone could. Still, against all my better judgement, at dawn I was standing in the hangar with the rest of them, my meagre belongings in a backpack. Dozens of Grisha were running from one place to another on a thousand last minute errands, all in an eerie silence. It might have been discipline. It also might have been hopelessness.

"You've decided to join us." Aleksander startled me. I was supposed to be the last thing on his mind this morning. "You'll need a gun. And a kefta. It protects against bullets."

"I can shield myself, thank you. I'm also not intending to take part in any fight."

"You may intend as you please, but you may not get what you've intended. Genya," he called out, "Do you have a kefta to spare? And get her a gun."

In the end only not everyone at the base ended up leaving, though it certainly looked like that at first. I was riding along two dozen or so Grisha, blending in with them thanks to the red kefta that Genya has landed me. It elicited a cheer from Fedyor, him immediately stating that I've joined their ranks as a Corporalki – even though wearing the coat made me feel more of a fraud.

"You're technically a Grisha. Can you wield magic or not?" he tried to comfort me.

"But can she stop a heart?" Ivan was again playing the devil's advocate.

"I succeeded with the hearts of rabbits and groundhogs, does that count?"

"Actually", mused Fedyor, "you should wear the whole rainbow." It was eerie how these two could make me smile at the most improbable moments.

As we left the forest behind, the pine trees gave way to steep hills covered by rich grass, cut here and there by a well maintained wooden fence. Obviously the people living here used them as pastures, in lack of any level piece of land. They must have spent the better time of their lives making arduous trips from their scattered white-painted houses to take care of their cows, and back home, as many times a day as the animals required. It was a beautiful sight, but also one that told a story of a fierce people carving out their living.

"How are they just letting us pass? Shouldn't they be burning us right now?" I wondered aloud.

"We're officially considered enemies of Ravka, that automatically makes us friends of Fjerda", Ivan answered. There was no lightheartedness about the way he said it, but there was no accusation in his voice, either. "And you still follow him," I uttered half as a question, half as a statement. He frowned, run his fingers trough his shortly cut brown hair. "He's all we've ever known. All we have. Nobody else would ever lift a finger for us in Ravka." 

There was no denying that their General had their best interests at heart. Was it by circumstance or by his own will, that Grisha were kept from mingling too close with the regular humans? Whisked away from their parents at young ages, educated in the capital at a facility dedicated to them, enrolled into an army of their own. Why would regular people feel compassion or loyalty for the ones they barely knew, but who never had to endure hunger, cold, poverty? Morozova had a deep sympathy for regular people, woven into every page in his journals. Where has this legacy of his disappeared?