Chapter Text
Alina wakes up on her twenty-second birthday, walks outside, and cries.
She can see the ocean.
Brackish blue water lapping at the coast even as it stretches out on the horizon farther than her sight can reach.
It’s the first time she’s ever seen it, and likely ever will. If she has her way, she'll be crossing to West Ravka with Mal tomorrow, but she knows her unit will be kept well away from the coast. The First Army doesn’t want soldiers getting ideas of leaving. Of stowing away on a boat in hope for a better life.
It’s not the wonder of the open water that makes her cry, nor the ships waiting to sail away, but the sentinel standing over the harbor: The Great Mariner of Os Kervo. A towering statue of stone that had been built before Ravkans worshiped the saints, when they whispered prayers to personifications of the land, and sun, and sea before taking their daily bread. The Great Mariner had straddled the entrance of Os Kervo’s harbor for centuries: a testament to Ravkan strength before the kingdom of Ravka was even a twinkle in King Aleksander’s eye.
And by the time Alina was born, it’d been gone over five hundred years.
She stares at the statue, tracing the lines of carved stone. She’d have to draw it when she got back. It might fetch her a penny or two, from an interested historian. Alina should do more. She should study the old boats bobbing on the water, memorize the thatched roofs of the homes around her, listen to the different intonations of the Old Ravkan being spoken in the busy street. The Head Cartographer would tell her to do something useful; commit the shoreline to memory, to help the army cartographers track its erosion. Mal would tell her to find some food, to hunt down some long forgotten recipe and bring it home with her. Alexei would tell her to find paper to leave a message.
Instead, Alina goes back inside and fills a bowl with water. The house itself is small and bare. There is no handicraft to be found, no loving tokens to tell of a life well-lived. The hearth is as empty as everything else, but Alina ignores the chill in the air and the hunger in her belly; she is well used to both. What she is not used to is the reflection she finds in the shallow dish.
Her soulmate is young, twenty-two just as she is, and handsome. His dark hair is thick and his jaw strong. Perhaps his nose is slightly too big for his face, and his eyes nearly black, but Alina finds fault in neither. Her soulmate is perfect.
Except he is dead. Not now, but at home. Her soulmate lived long before her; his bones will be dust by the time she wakes tomorrow.
Alina barely blinks. Her eyes run over the planes of his face again and again. She’ll never see it with her own eyes, never meet him or know him or love him, so this is all she will have.
She wipes away the tears on her soulmate’s cheeks and tries to smile. It doesn’t work.
Aleksander stumbles out of the tent in awe. He’s in some sort of military encampment, and the others are speaking Ravkan, though it sounds odd to his ears. The weaponry is as strange as the language: long pipes of metal with straps and handles and the ability to make a large amount of noise. From what he can tell, they release some kind of projectile. Aleksander wishes he could study one closely, but his observation had already won him dirty looks from those practicing with them. His soulmate did not appear to be well-liked.
He wanders. There are no bows to be found, and few swords. The tents are made from a thick fabric unfamiliar to Aleksander, and the dome-like construction is new to him as well. Everything is new. He must be in the future. Many years into the future, maybe even centuries. It’s not shocking or heartbreaking; his madraya had told him he would live a long life. But then, his madraya had also told him that soulmates were stories told to children and not a thing of reality.
Aleksander had held on to his hope though. He’d carefully distanced himself from his mother in the previous weeks, ensuring that they’d be in separate towns on his twenty-second birthday, as he did not want to subject his soulmate to Baghra unprepared. She’d known what he was doing, and scoffed at him for it, but she hadn’t stopped him. He’d gone to sleep nervous with anticipation, knowing that at some point in the night the odinakovost and etovost, the thisness and thatness, between he and his soulmate, if he had one, would reach the perfect balance and he’d wake up in their body. And his hope had paid off, because he had.
“Excuse me,” he starts to say to the closest idle soldier. The man startles, a look of hatred crossing his face. He spits an insult at Aleksander, centered around him eating rice of all things, and turns away. Aleksander retreats. He brushes his hand over his face. No dried rice stuck to his chin after a carelessly eaten meal. In fact, Aleksander doesn’t think his soulmate has eaten anytime recently. He’s starving.
Another soldier shoots him a look. Aleksander looks down at the uniform his soulmate was wearing. It bears the same embroidered double-headed eagle as everyone else’s. While Aleksander is not thrilled that his soulmate is fighting for the Lantsovs, he doubts the fools have improved with time, or that she sleeps in said uniform, it doesn’t offer an explanation for the soldiers’ enmity.
“Hey! Sticks!”
His uniform isn’t sloppy either. He’d tucked everything neatly before he’d left the tent this morning, and he’d checked it against everyone else’s. He’s not missing a thing. His soulmate had even conveniently braided her hair the night before, ensuring it was neat without any effort on his part. Still, the others look at him as if they know there’s something different about him. Could these otkazat'sya sense what Aleksander can: that his soulmate was a Grisha deep into the wasting sickness? Or was it something else?
“Sticks! Wait up!”
The call comes from much closer this time, and Aleksander turns. It had not been a call for wood to add to a fire. No, the man jogging towards him seemed to be referring to Aleksander’s soulmate as Sticks. Which, Aleksander can tell from the looseness of the uniform around her thin wrists, is not exactly inaccurate. But the insult still rankles.
“Where are you going this time of day? Shouldn’t you be with the other cartographers?”
Aleksander blinks.
“My soulmate reached twenty-two years today,” he says carefully, wanting to be understood despite the differences a few centuries had on a language.
The man’s eyes widen.
“It’s her birthday? I can’t believe Mal didn’t say anything! I guess it’s your birthday too though, isn’t it? Happy birthday!”
“Thank you. Can you tell me what year it is?”
The other man nods eagerly. “This is crazy. I’m Dubrov by the way. I’m only twenty, but Mikael had his Obmyen a few months ago. Still can’t believe his soulmate is a decade older. Guess it means she’s already rather set up at least. Which is nice, we trackers don’t get a huge payout like some units do—”
“The date?” Aleksander interrupts.
“Oh! Sorry! It’s the fifth of Yer'in, 412 A.F.”
“Ay Eff?”
“Yeah, you know. A.F. After the Fold.”
“What is the fold?”
The pleasant smile on Dubrov’s face freezes and then fades. He looks like he might cry.
“I’m so sorry,” he starts, which is not an explanation for whatever this fold business was, “Alina, I—no, you're not Alina, saints. I’m so sorry.” He reaches a hand out, as if to lay it in comfort on Aleksander’s shoulder, but then retracts it before touching him. “I’ll go find Mal. He’ll be able to tell you all about Alina. Just, wait here.” He takes a few steps back. “Wait, actually, come in here,” he says gesturing to a tent a few steps away.
Aleksander follows, a bit dazed. Alina. His soulmate’s name is Alina. Aleksander tucks the name away, close to his heart, next to where his true name has always lain, no matter what his mother dictated he be called that day.
Once inside, Dubrov pushes a number of small animal skins and sketches off the cluttered desk. He lays a blank sheet of paper, a pen, and an ink well at the center.
“I’ll go find Mal. But you should write her a letter. Alina, I mean. Just to give her something here when she wakes up. She deserves that at least.” With a last muttered sorry, Dubrov ducks out of the tent.
Aleksander doesn’t remain in the tent long. Not when there is so much to find out, and so much to see. Who is Ravka at war with? Are there any Grisha left? Is Aleksander still in Ravka? Is his mother alive? And on top of all this, a driving desire to know his soulmate. To know her now, and not be forced to wait centuries. Aleksander tries to remember the way back to the tent he’d woken up in. What could he learn about his soulmate? How could he find her in the future?
He emerges from the line of tents and stops short. He hadn’t noticed it before, hadn’t been looking up, but it seems impossible he hadn’t seen it.
It’s merzost. That he can tell from first glance. He has never encountered it before, his madraya would never allow that, but he knows this is it. He can feel how unnatural it is. It’s a tear in space, in reality, extending miles in both directions.
The second thing he knows is that this thing—the Fold he realizes, this is the Fold Dubrov had spoken of—is his. It resonates with Aleksander; harmonizes with his soul even as it remains out of sync with the rest of the world.
In his time, the first year of the calendar is said to be the year life began, when the Making at the Heart of the World bloomed and beget the earth and all her creatures. Aleksander’s bones shake at the knowledge that something he made replaced the Making in the minds of men.
He takes a step forward, heedless of the soldiers around him, staring up at his creation. A wall of shadow. Why had his future self made this? Was it protection? Against what? Against who?
Aleksander remembers the year Dubrov had given. It’s been four hundred and twelve years since he’d crafted this from merzost, but it remained. Either the wall is impossible to remove, or the threat is still present.
Aleksander needs to find out the state of Grisha in the future.
He tears his eyes away from the Fold.
Dubrov had said that Alina was a cartographer. She is educated and skilled. He’d heard the jealous note in Dubrov’s voice, when he mentioned the final payout from the army, and he suspects that the cartographers received a significantly larger purse than the trackers. Internally, Aleksander puffs up with pride for his little soulmate before he shakes his head and refocuses on his chosen task. He’ll find someone who will point him towards the cartographers. Alina must have a friend there, one who he could subtly question about the war and the current laws regarding Grisha.
Aleksander finds the Grisha before he finds a kind face. The wonder of knowing his soulmate exists is equaled by this knowledge: in the future Grisha thrive.
They are practicing, openly, in an encampment of an otkazat'sya army. Aleksander grins at the sight. He counts two dozen of them, all gathered round a series of dummies as they hone their abilities and trade tips. He has never seen anything like this freedom before. They look well-fed, clean, and comfortable. None of them share the hunted look sported by so many of the Grisha in his own time. None of them look prepared to flee at any moment.
There are still dark looks from the otkazat'sya, he doesn’t miss those, but Aleksander wants to laugh at the way one of the women—a Squaller, if Aleksander was right about the meaning behind their coats—bristles at this slight censure. To know they can live like this!
“Alina? Well, um, not-Alina? Dubrov didn’t actually catch your name before…”
A hand reaches out, brushing Aleksander’s own, and interrupts his joyful observation of the Grisha. It belongs to a soldier, one around Aleksander’s age, who is clearly an otkazat'sya, despite the hint of an amplifier Aleksander felt at his touch.
“Aleksander,” he says in answer, less because he wants this man to know his true name, and more because he doesn’t want a false one to cross Alina’s lips.
“Good to meet you. I’m Mal. Malyen Oretsev that is. Alina’s best friend.”
“Yes. Dubrov said that you would be the one who could tell me the most about my soulmate.”
Mal nods easily. “Yeah, we grew up together. We’ve known each other practically our whole lives.” Mal pauses, shooting an agitating glance towards the flares of Inferni fire. “Do you want to go somewhere else to talk?” he asks.
Ah, so that’s how it is, Aleksander thinks.
“No,” he says shortly. He’ll watch until the session is over. He wants to soak in this near paradise for as long as possible.
A pause and then, “I guess you wouldn’t want to turn your backs on them, considering where you’re from. But they can’t bully or attack you. Their general arrived today.”
“Their general?” Aleksander asks. A general just to keep the Grisha regiments in line? Aleksander pictures a bullish otkazat'sya, with a whip in hand. What other kind of general would the Lantsov king trust to control the Grisha?
“Kirigan, the Black General. Even they’re too scared of his shadows to make trouble with us.”
“A Shadow Summoner?” he asks, stunned. The Black General. That was Aleksander; it had to be. To think that the king trusts a Grisha to lead the Grisha. Mal wasn’t even surprised; it was a matter of course to him. Perhaps Aleksander had been too hasty in his judgement of the Lantsovs. Perhaps there were diamonds among them, despite the king of his own time and his mother’s experiences of the ones before. Or maybe all the diamonds are yet to come. He’d have to keep an eye on it. A Grisha leading Grisha. He couldn’t miss that opportunity.
“Yeah, just like the one who made the Fold.”—a statement truer than the otkazat'sya knew—"Don’t know why he’s here now though. They said its to see the new skiff leave, but it looks like all the others to me, no matter what the Grisha say.”
Aleksander doesn’t doubt that the Grisha are more knowledgeable about their new skiff than Mal was. But he doesn’t think the soldier is wrong either. Undoubtably, his future self knows the date. Aleksander has burned it into his memory already: the fifth of Yer'in, 412 A.F. Nothing could keep him from being here on this day.
Aleksander wonders if his future self plans to slip him a note, a map for their future to take. All the stories said that there was no way to change the future, but no story covered an Obmyen spanning centuries that would still allow the soulmates to meet. He glances around, but no waiting messenger emerges. Just Mal and the Grisha finishing their practice.
A Tidemaker douses the last of the dummies. Aleksander watches the smoke dissipate, the organized way the Grisha begin to break down their training grounds, the otkazat'sya who pass by without a wayward blink in the direction of the Grisha who wear their status proudly on their coats.
When he finally turns away, Mal is still waiting. He’s looking at Aleksander as if he’s never seen him before. Which he hasn’t, but it makes Aleksander wonder what expression he’s showing on Alina’s face—Satisfaction? Joy? Belonging?—and why Alina never wore it herself.
“Have you eaten at all? I’ve stashed some food at our watch tower. Alina and I’s tower I mean. Well, it’s the First Army’s, but it's never manned unless there is an active Fold crossing underway.
“I haven’t.” Aleksander says, finally noticing his cramping stomach. “Thank you, I would not want to leave Alina hungry.” The thought makes him bite the inside of his cheek. He can’t remember what food he had in the house, or if there was any at all. He never kept much food on hand, he’s not much of a cook, but he hopes there is something in the kitchen for Alina to eat.
They walk for a few minutes, back towards the Fold Aleksander notes, before Mal breaks the silence hesitantly.
“Dubrov said you didn’t know the Fold. That you’re from…before the Black Heretic.”
Aleksander suppresses a snort at the title and nods. They lapse into silence again, Mal’s face troubled and relaxed in minute turns.
The watch tower stands three dozen yards back from the Fold, nestled between a few command and supply tents. It faces Aleksander’s creation, a sentinel. He isn’t sure what it’s watching for; the height gives no advantage of sight into the Fold, and no protection if the darkness suddenly expanded.
Mal sets a hard tack biscuit and a bowl of fruit between them. A crystal bowl of fruit. At Aleksander’s look of askance, the other man shrugs. “Grisha girl gave it to me. I think she’s hoping I go back later to have a tumble in return.”
If he’s hoping for manly camaraderie on this, he won’t receive it. Aleksander is…disturbed. Do his Grisha buy off hungry otkazat'sya for sex? For a single bowl of grapes?
Mal interrupts his concerned thoughts.
“I hope Alina will wake early tomorrow and can see me off. I know she’s worried about it. Kind of inconvenient, her birthday surprising us like this.”
“You didn’t know her birthday?”
“No. She didn’t know hers and I didn’t know mine. We’re orphans. That’s why we grew up together. Fold ate her parents like it did mine.”
Aleksander’s eyes cut to the wall of shadow. It thunders, flashing with an internal lightning with no discernible source. It ate their parents? Was that metaphorical?
Was there some way he could stop it?
“How old was she?”
“Eight.”
He imagines himself at eight, scared of his own shadows, not yet a master of the Cut, and prone to cowering behind his mother. He stares up at the Fold.
Aleksander knows he will struggle with creating this, that he will stand with merzost in hand and pause, because he knows it will hurt his soulmate. But Aleksander knows he will do it anyway. The Fold will bring her immeasurable pain, ripping her family from her, but it will also ensure her birth and safety.
“I know you probably have a lot you want to know about Alina, but there’s something I want you to know first.” Mal takes a deep breath, as if preparing to share something profound. “She’ll be safe, and she won’t be alone. I’ll take care of her. We’ll take care of each other, really. My birthday was two months ago and my soulmate— she’s in this time, but…it’s another impossible match.”
Aleksander wants to take this at face value, knows many find comfort in such pairings, but, more than that, he wants to throttle this boy for his presumption. Aleksander can see on his face the poor life this would leave his Alina, how she’d always be competing with a woman that haunts Mal’s eyes: a woman he never knew but lived a day as at twenty-two. And Alina didn’t need him; she’d have Aleksander.
“I’m crossing the Fold soon too, and that always comes with a bonus. Our mandatory service is almost over, and between our payouts, we should be able to afford a farm. A small one, but still. Better than anything we’ve had.”
Did Alina want a farm? Aleksander wonders if the general of an army, even a Grisha one, is entitled to land. He must be. He could give Alina a farm. He would. If she wanted one.
“And I think we could be happy. Will be. If we let ourselves be. Because we’re not soulmates, but we’ve always understood each other, and this is just another thing we have in common. Maradi’s tears and all that.”
Aleksander didn’t know who Maradi was, but it didn’t matter.
“Thank you,” Aleksander says. The words taste bittersweet in his mouth. He knows the future that Mal describes will never come to pass, but the image Mal has painted for him still pierces Aleksander’s heart. Because what if she doesn’t want him? What if he finds her tomorrow and she thinks him too old, or his powers too unnatural, or his amplifier more useful than he is himself? What if she chooses Mal and his farm? Not because fate has dealt her a soulmate lost to time, but because it has dealt her Aleksander.
“Thank you,” he says again. If nothing else, Aleksander knows it is likely he owes Alina’s life to their friendship. Grisha didn’t live long with wasting sickness, but Alina had. She’d had a living amplifier close, subtly pulling her power to the forefront just enough to keep her organs functioning. Without Mal, she may never have made it to twenty-two to meet and reject Aleksander.
“It’s good to know she had you.”
Mal nods agreeably, and gamely does not mention Aleksander’s use of the past tense, and nudges the bowl of fruit closer.
Aleksander pops one of the grapes into his mouth, but winces as he bites down. It tastes like ash, liquid ash. It’s a struggle to swallow. He considers forcing Alina’s powers to the surface. He can feel them, slinking away from his focus, hiding as if her survival depended on it, but Aleksander could do it. He didn’t know what her abilities were, if his force would create a gust of wind, turn the closest torch into a fireball, or stop Mal’s heart in his chest.
It’d probably end the friendship with Mal, considering how the soldier looked at the Grisha earlier.
Aleksander lets her powers slip through his mental fingers. It’d be cruel to her, to take that first touch of the Small Science from her. She should feel the first curls of powers herself. Her life would change enough tomorrow. He’d let her have the morning to wake up in her familiar cot.
“Is there anything specific you want to know? My Obmyen…my soulmate and I don’t share a language. I couldn’t find out much of anything beyond the date.”
Aleksander looks out at the Fold. He should ask about it, interrogate Mal for everything he knows. He should use this opportunity to learn more about the advanced weaponry, and the structure of the military now. He should ask about the Lantsovs, and the border wars, and how his creation affected Ravka. He should learn more about the Heretic, about Grisha, about everything that will change in his country and the world.
“Or do you want me to find a looking glass? I think I know an officer that has one in their shaving kit. Or we could try to sneak into the Grisha camp. Bet they have bigger ones.”
Aleksander shakes his head immediately. He has her name, her rank, her age, and the date. His first view of Alina’s face will be from his own eyes.
As for everything else…he’ll have centuries to live through it. To shape and change it. To predict and loathe and wonder at it. What he will not have for centuries is this—
“Tell me about her. Everything. What was she like growing up? What does she like to eat? What’s her favorite flower? Did she want a soulmate? Has she ever...”
Alina wakes up crying. She doesn’t need to step outside to know she is back in her own body. The air no longer carries the salt of the sea, the pulled canvas of her cot is nothing like the pile of furs in her soulmate’s house, and her own muscles lack the strength of his.
The tears spill over, running down her temples. Alina can’t force herself to sit up, to stand, to wash her face in the the shared tin basin at the front of their tent.
She’d spent half of yesterday staring at her soulmate’s face and she can still see it. She could trace it on the ceiling of the tent in charcoal right now. But she fears that if she moves, if she even blinks for too long, the picture will fade from her memory.
She wants to keep it a moment longer.
Alina had thought of sketching a picture into the packed dirt floor of his home, had even laid out the outline of it. It’d been them, together, side by side as they never could be in reality. It wouldn’t be permanent, and Alina thought it was better that way. More poetic. The picture would be as ephemeral as they were. When he moved on from the little house, which he surely would soon, he’d leave her and the dream of them together behind.
But she’d wiped away the outline as soon as her mind had processed what she’d done. She’d pushed the table back into place, reset the pair of chairs on either side.
The portrait might be ephemeral, but what if it wasn’t? What if it anchored him to those temporary lodgings and to their doomed match? Alina didn’t want that for him. She wanted her nameless long dead soulmate to be happy.
Perhaps he’d married and had children with another woman, and perhaps those descendants were living in Ravka even now. The thought of looking across the mess hall and spotting a soldier with her soulmate’s subtly pointed chin, or catching another set of too-dark eyes, warmed Alina’s heart. She hopes he had; that some part of him still lived in her time—in her Ravka.
Alina hears movement outside, voices, and has just enough wherewithal to wonder where her tentmates are. The sun is streaming in through the gaps in the tent’s canvas, and neither Ruby nor Anya has ever been inclined to let her sleep in before.
Alina leverages herself forwards, legs already swinging to the floor, and realizes a piece of paper is clutched in her hand.
She unfolds it and stares. Inked across it in bold strokes are only two sentences:
My name is Aleksander Morozova.
I look forward to meeting you, Alina.
Her heart stutters once before returning to its normal rhythm. Centuries, she remembers, could change all sorts of things about a language, including the tenses. Still, now she had a name. She reads it again.
Aleksander Morozova.
She promises herself that she’ll look, at some point, for a record of him. In the army archives at least. But for now—
“Alina? Are you awake?”
Alexei’s head is peaking through the tent flaps.
“Oh good, you are.”
He steps inside the tent and quickly crosses towards her, speaking hurriedly.
“We were told not to wake you, but I still wanted to be here. Luckily, I’ve already done the days assignments, so the Head Cartographer had no reason to keep me.”
“Mine?” Alina asks blearily. She hasn’t slept in this late in months; even without the Obmyen, her body would need time to reorient itself to this well-rested state.
“You’ve been excused. Mal came round and reported it was your birthday yesterday. Head Cartographer said they’ll update the records. If you come—”
Excused? Obmyens might let a soldier off the hook the day of, but not the day after. Why had no one woken her?
But Alexei’s words remind Alina of something else, something past her the daily drudgery of her own assignments, and the life-changing event of losing her soulmate.
The last day she had spent in her body had been the fourth, which made this the sixth: the day the skiff was scheduled to leave.
“What time is it?” She asks, rubbing the last of the sleep from her eyes. “How long until the skiff leaves?”
Alexei shifts his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other.
“It already left, Alina. Earlier this morning.”
Alina deflates. No soulmate and now no Mal.
“I didn’t get to see him off,” she says sadly. She wonders if Mal will ever come back, after he reaches West Ravka. He has to, to get the promised bonus. But Mal was lucky, and talented, and charismatic. He could make a new life for himself in West Ravka, even with only five kruge to his name. And Alina would still be here. Alone.
“He’ll be fine. The Ultralight is the fastest skiff we’ve ever had. But you need to stop worrying about Mal and focus on yourself, Alina.” Alexei’s voice is uncharacteristically firm. “There’s Grisha outside. They’ve been waiting for hours.”
Alina is confused by the non-sequitur.
“Waiting? For what?”
Alexei looks appalled.
“For what? Alina—for you!”