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Summary: Chapter 13
Inej confides to Nina that Van Eck tortured her, and Nina replies with an offer to disembowel him. Inej says that she prefers to make him pay herself, revealing that fear was the worst part of her captivity. Nina agrees, noting that fear is like a phoenix because it always returns.
Nina and Matthias dress as Fjerdan siblings and head to Little Ravka, a section of Ketterdam. Visiting Little Ravka is painful for Nina because it reminds her of home. They walk through the market and see the bones of Saints on display. To distract Matthias from his glowering, Nina tells him a titillating Ravkan story about a princess and a Barbarian.
Nina and Matthias give a code to a peddler, and in response, he directs them to specific seats in a tavern. As soon as they sit down, the other customers spread out and point guns at them. When a Heartrender tries to use her powers on Nina, it becomes clear the tavern is full of Grisha. Matthias ignites a duskbomb, which obscures the Heartrenders’ sight and disables their powers. Nina still doesn’t have access to her original powers but, when she makes the Saints’ bones fly through the window like shrapnel, she realizes she has access to different powers. Suddenly Nina and Matthias are thrown upward, and Nina sees Zoya Nazyalenksy, her old mentor and one of the most powerful witches in Ravka, who has pinned them to the ceiling.
Summary: Chapter 14
Wylan and Jesper travel by boat to Olendaal. They are ostensibly going to purchase a mineral necessary to make the weevil, but, in truth, the mineral is readily available in Ketterdam. The real reason for the trip is that Wylan wants to visit his mother’s grave at Saint Hilde, located near Olendaal. Before they set off, Kaz warns Wylan that he may only visit his mother’s grave if they have extra time.
On the boat, Wylan tells Jesper about his mother, who loved art and music. He considers telling Jesper the story of how he ended up in the Barrel, but, instead, he just walks through the painful events silently. One day Van Eck had informed Wylan that he was being sent to music school in Belendt and would never be welcomed home again. The idea, Van Eck had explained, was to remove his son from the city so people would forget his very existence, a constant source of embarrassment. As Wylan gathered his things to leave forever, he saw that Alys was pregnant. Clever Wylan then understood that his father would soon have a new heir to replace him. But Van Eck’s plan turned out to be even more horrifying because, during the journey, the servants accompanying Wylan tried to kill him. He escaped the attack and made his way to the Barrel, where first Kaz and then his father discovered him. These memories are very painful for Wylan.
When they arrive in Olendaal, Wylan tells Jesper that he lied about the commonly available mineral in order to visit his mother’s grave. When they arrive at Saint Hilde, posing as Van Eck’s clerks, they discover that it’s not a cemetery but an asylum. Jesper reads a Transfer of Authority that Van Eck filed to claim Wylan’s mother’s assets for his own. Wylan is shocked to discover that his mother is alive, housed at the institution under a different name. Jesper flirts with the nurses to distract them while Wylan visits with his mother, entertaining her by playing his flute. She whispers that her last name is Van Eck. When he looks at her paintings, Wylan sees that many of them depict him as a little boy.
When they leave, Wylan breaks down and sobs, devastated at what his father did to his mother. Jesper comforts him, offering a pointed reminder that their scheme will destroy Van Eck’s life.
Analysis
Nina’s experience with parem severs her connection to life, replacing it with an intimate tie to death. One of the main symptoms of Nina’s withdrawal from parem is the near-total erasure of her famously robust appetite. To eat is to commit to life, to nourish one’s body and hunger for vitality, and Nina’s formerly powerful hunger once mirrored her voraciousness for life itself. Her disinterest in, even distaste for, food disturbs the others because it is so uncharacteristic, emphasizing how the addiction has changed her. When Nina tries to access her old powers, she now feels nothing from the bodies around her, no life. She was formerly connected in an intimate, magical way to the very lifeblood of everyone around her. After her experience with parem, she can only reach into a “pocket of cold in a deep lake.” Instead of being able to reach inside a person and feel their emotions, now she turns bones into shrapnel. This suggests that the changes to Nina’s powers put her in touch with death itself.
This section also emphasizes the multiple ways that Van Eck has literally and metaphorically stolen Wylan’s life. First, by denigrating and insulting Wylan for much of his childhood, Van Eck eroded his son’s sense of self and undermined his role in the family. Second, Van Eck sends away the person who loves Wylan most in the world, his mother, and makes him believe that she is dead. Not only was this cruel to Wylan’s mother, it also dismantled Wylan’s support system, depriving him of a source of nurture and love. Third, Van Eck tells Wylan that he wants the world to forget that he ever had a son, erasing Wylan so thoroughly that it will be as if he had never existed. Finally, he orders his son’s murder, turning the analogy into literal fact, disposing of a son he believes is unworthy of the Van Eck name. Once Wylan accepts the full extent of his father’s cruelty, he is finally able to recognize that his father is his mortal enemy.
Throughout the novel, art offers a means of survival in the darkest times. When Wylan finds his mother alive, he discovers that she has spent much of her imprisonment in the asylum painting. The sheer volume of her paintings, so many that Saint Hilde discards them every six months because they lack the space to store them, suggests that Marya is desperate for the solace that painting brings her. That she returns repeatedly to images of Wylan reveals her longing for her son and the pain of his loss. Though Marya has had every other form of agency taken from her, she expresses the beauty that still exists within her through art. Similarly, though Wylan doesn’t have words to communicate the depth of his sorrow and rage to his mother, nor can he reveal himself as her son as he’s wearing Kuwei’s face, he uses music to express his emotions. The connection he establishes with her through his flute comforts them both. Although Wylan has been denigrated throughout his life for his illiteracy, drawing and playing music have been constant sources of self-expression, escape, and comfort for him.
