The Demon in the Wood (4 page)

“What are you talking about?” said Lev, putting a tentative foot on the icy surface of the pond.

“Be quiet,” Annika whispered furiously.

“I’m an amplifier. And once Annika wears my bones, you won’t be able to push her or her sister around anymore.”

“Shut up,” she screamed.

Eryk saw understanding dawn on Lev’s face, and in the next minute, he was sprinting across the ice. It cracked beneath Lev’s bulk.
Closer,
Eryk urged silently, but Annika was already upon him.

“I’m sorry,” she moaned. “I’m so sorry.” She was crying as she brought the rock down on his head.

Pain exploded over his right temple, and his vision blurred.
Don’t faint.
He gave his head a shake despite the tide of pain that came with it. He saw Annika lifting the rock again. It was wet with his blood.

A gust of air struck her, sending her sliding back over the ice.

“No!” she cried. “He’s mine!”

Lev was pounding over the ice toward Eryk. He already had a knife in his hand. Eryk knew his power would belong to whomever made the kill. That was the way amplifiers worked.
Never let them touch you.
Because one touch was enough to reveal it, this gift lurking inside him. It was enough to make him less a boy than a prize.

Annika was lifting the rock again. This would be the strike that broke his skull open. He knew it. Eryk concentrated on Lev’s boots, the cracks spreading out from them. He stretched his legs, then brought his knees up to slam against the ice. Nothing. Despite the nausea gripping him, he did it again. His knees hit the ice from below with a painful crunch. The ice around him ruptured. Then Annika was toppling, collapsing into the water, the stone slipping from her hands.

Eryk wrenched his arms free and plunged beneath the surface. Under the water, he could see nothing but darkness. He kicked hard. He had no idea which direction he was going, but he had to make it to shore before Annika could freeze the pond again. His feet touched bottom, and he half swam, half dragged himself toward the shallows. A hand closed around his ankle.

Annika was on top of him, using her weight to hold him down. He screamed, thrashing in her arms. Then Lev was there, shoving her aside, grabbing a handful of Eryk’s shirt, lifting the knife. Everyone was shouting. Eryk wasn’t sure who had hold of him. A knee pressed into his chest. Someone shoved his head beneath the surface again. Water flooded up his nose and into his lungs.
I’m going to die here. They’ll wear my bones.

In the eerie, muffled silence of the water, he heard his mother’s voice, vicious like a whip crack. She was always asking more of him, demanding it, and now she told him to fight. She spoke his true name, the one she only used when they trained, the name tattooed on his heart. A heart that had not stopped beating. A heart that still had life.

With the last bit of his strength, he tore his arm free and lashed out blindly, furiously, with all his terror and rage, with all the hope that had been born and died this day.
Let me make a mark on this world before I leave it.

The weight slid off his chest. He struggled to sit up, choking and gasping, water spilling from his mouth. He coughed and heaved, then managed to draw a thready, painful breath. He looked around.

Lev floated facedown beside him, dark blood pluming from a deep diagonal slash that ran from his hip almost straight through his chest. His shirt was torn, and it flapped backward in the water, revealing pale skin that glowed fish-belly white in the moonlight.

Annika was on his other side, sprawled in the shallows, her eyes wide and panicked. A deep gash ran from her shoulder up through the side of her throat. She had a hand pressed to her neck to try to stop the flow of blood. Her fingers and sleeve were dripping with it.

He’d finally managed to use the Cut. It had torn through them both.

“Help me,” she croaked. “Please, Eryk.”

“That’s not my name.”

He didn’t move. He sat and watched as her eyes went glassy, as her hand dropped away, as at last she slumped backward, her empty gaze fastened on the moon. He watched the remaining chunks of ice bobbing on the surface slowly melt away. His head throbbed, and he was dizzy with the pain. But his mother had taught him to think clearly, even when he was hurting, even when he wasn’t so sure he wanted to go on.

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.

S
IX DANGEROUS OUTCASTS.
O
NE IMPOSSIBLE HEIST.

Read on for an excerpt from Leigh Bardugo’s

S
IX OF
C
ROWS

Available September 29, 2015

Copyright © 2015 by Leigh Bardugo

PART 1

S
HADOW
B
USINESS

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.

Maybe he could compliment Anya’s laugh? Except he’d never heard her laugh. He wasn’t very good with jokes.

Joost glanced at his reflection in one of the glass panels set into the double doors that led from the house to the side garden. His mother was right. Even in his new uniform, he still looked like a baby. Gently, he brushed his finger along his upper lip. If only his mustache would come in. It definitely felt thicker than yesterday.

He’d been a guard in the
stadwatch
less than six weeks, and it wasn’t nearly as exciting as he’d hoped. He thought he’d be running down thieves in the Barrel or patrolling the harbors, getting first look at cargo coming in on the docks. But ever since the assassination of that ambassador at the town hall, the Merchant Council had been grumbling about security, so where was he? Stuck walking in circles at some lucky mercher’s house. Not just any mercher, though. Councilman Hoede was about as high placed in Ketterdam government as a man could be. The kind of man who could make a career.

Joost adjusted the set of his coat and rifle, then patted the weighted baton at his hip. Maybe Hoede would take a liking to him.
Sharp-eyed and quick with the cudgel,
Hoede would say.
That fellow deserves a promotion.

“Sergeant Joost van Poel,” he whispered, savoring the sound of the words. “
Captain
Joost van Poel.”

“Stop gawking at yourself.”

Joost whirled, cheeks going hot as Henk and Rutger strode into the side garden. They were both older, bigger, and broader of shoulder than Joost, and they were house guards, private servants of Councilman Hoede. That meant they wore his pale green livery, carried fancy rifles from Novyi Zem, and never let Joost forget he was a lowly grunt from the city watch.

“Petting that bit of fuzz isn’t going to make it grow any faster,” Rutger said with a loud laugh.

Joost tried to summon some dignity. “I need to finish my rounds.”

Rutger elbowed Henk. “That means he’s going to go stick his head in the Grisha workshop to get a look at his girl.”