payment page
Summary
Chapters 17 & 18
Chapter 17
Summer comes to Os Alta and its leaders are still unsure of the Darkling’s whereabouts. Nikolai and Alina formulate a strategy for when the Darkling attacks Os Alta in which Nikolai plans to flank him with soldiers while Alina leads the Grisha in an attack from the Little Palace. The plan feels hopeful. Nikolai works with the David and the other Fabrikators to build the city’s defenses and rebuild the Hummingbird. Alina is needed at the Grand Palace as a bartering chip in diplomatic sessions with Ravka’s neighbors. When Vasily decides to help, Nikolai gives him paperwork. The First and Second Armies are starting to train together and forge relationships. Having once been their comrade, Alina is uncertain how to relate to the Grisha as their new leader. Nadia, a Squaller and one of the first Grisha to treat Alina kindly when she first arrived at the Little Palace, asks Alina if her brother Adrik can remain at the Little Palace after the Grisha school is evacuated. He is young but determined, so Alina agrees. Alina finds Mal training with Pavel, with Zoya watching. Alina questions Zoya’s motives and learns that she lost family members at Novokribirsk. She wants revenge on the Darkling. Mal asks Alina to go with him to a fortune-tellers party, and she agrees.
Chapter 18
Disguised as fortune-tellers, Mal, Alina, and Tamar sneak away from the Little Palace to spend a night on the town. The party is held at the Gritski estate, which turns out to be located in a seedy part of town. They enter and are immediately ordered about like the servants they appear to be. Mal and Alina find a cozy corner and banter like they did when they were young and living at Keramzin. Eventually, customers begin to approach, and Mal and Alina giggle to themselves while inventing over-the-top fortunes for the drunk and tipsy, the young and old. They are interrupted by shouts and crashes as the room erupts into a general brawl. On their way out, Mal returns to save a woman who had fallen in the chaos, leaving Alina with Tamar. But outside in the dark, Alina finds herself alone with the Apparat.
Alina sends out a flash of light to deter him and smells mildew and incense. He has replaced the golden double eagle on his robes with the emblem of the Sun Summoner. He greets her with respect, asking her to join him as leader of a pilgrim army. She distrusts their fanaticism and his motives, but instead of a direct challenge, she asks him about the firebird. His reply is evasive, but she suspects he might have Morozova’s journals. Suddenly, first Mal and then Tamar burst in upon them, but the Apparat disappears. Back at the Little Palace, Mal and Alina bicker in her chambers. He feels like an outcast, and he resents the rumors that he and Alina are having an affair. He accuses her of using her power cruelly, and he fears that they are growing apart. Just as they embrace, the Darkling appears over his shoulder and Alina stiffens, which Mal interprets as her stiffening at his affection. Infuriated at the perceived rejection, Mal storms out.
Analysis
Alina finds hope when her dream of a unified army finally starts coming to fruition under her leadership. Her hope persists because, even though the King’s council continues to meet separately from the Grisha, the First and Second Armies are now training together. Perhaps more importantly, they are learning to combine the small science, modern weaponry, and merzost. The results are uneven and sometimes catastrophic, but that fact emphasizes how powerful the success of their combined forces might prove to be. The Darkling sees modern warfare as a threat to Grisha power and seeks a deeper magic to forestall its encroachment. In contrast, Alina empowers the Second Army to collaborate and innovate solutions, with manifold results. Distinctions among the ranks blur to create a more egalitarian social order. At least one of the weapons proves successful as the mirrors they create magnify and redirect Alina’s power, giving the army greater leverage against the nichevo’ya. The system requires several handlers, meaning the Grisha act in concert with Alina to form a united front against the enemy. Thus, Alina attains a tactical advantage over her enemy, takes a step toward a more unified Ravka, and experiences some much-needed hope.
Alina’s meeting with the Apparat clues her into the fact that she may have a spy in her midst, and reminds her of her responsibilities as a leader. The Apparat’s whereabouts have been a mystery since the Darkling’s revolt and Alina is under constant surveillance, so she recognizes that their rendezvous at the Gritski estate must have required extensive planning and the help of a spy within her ranks. Alina already knows her followers’ loyalties are divided, and this intrusion simply makes her more suspicious of them all. Individual suspects abound, from Sergei, who opposed her leadership, to Zoya, a rival for Mal’s affections, to Vasily, who wants her and Nikolai out of the picture. But pinpointing the responsible individual is less important to Alina than the reminder that no one can be trusted. She had allowed herself to be distracted from her mission because she missed her former life, in which she was just an ordinary girl with a crush on a boy. That was a mistake she could have paid for with her life, leaving the Grisha without their commander and Ravka without its Sun Summoner. Leaders cannot afford to make such mistakes, but Alina is still learning what it means to be a leader.
The ominous circumstances of the Apparat’s appearance suggests that his motives in seeking Alina are nefarious, and it leaves her destabilized and questioning where she ought to stand. Alina has never been able to determine the Apparat’s motives and his loyalties still seem shifty to her. He elevates her to the status of a saint, and she is uncomfortable with these appellations because she knows the source of her power is dark and worldly. She wants her leadership to be merit-based, not rooted in faith and miracles over which she has no control. Worse, saints generally end up as martyrs, and a dead Alina might be more useful to the Apparat than a living one. In an ironic twist, the Apparat tries to persuade her by appealing to her dark side, her quest for more power. If the Apparat truly possesses Morozova’s journals, the temptation might prove sufficient for Alina to defect to his side. Alina generally makes decisions based on logic and concern for her people, so it is unlike her to include a desire for power into her calculations. This shift in motivations suggests that the Apparat might be able to win Alina over to his side, leaving Ravka to fend for itself.
