Shadow and Bone Read Online Free PDF

strong wind, a single soldier by his side. The deck was slick with blood in places. My stomach turned as I remembered the horror of the battle. A Corporalki Healer was tending to the wounded. Where was Mal?
    There were soldiers and Grisha standing by the railings, bloodied, singed, and considerably fewer in number than when we had set out. They were all watching me warily. With growing fear, I realized that the soldiers and the Corporalnik were actually guarding me. Like a prisoner.
    I said, “Mal Oretsev. He’s a tracker. He was injured during the attack. Where is he?” No one said anything. “Please,” I begged. “Where is he?”
    There was a jolt as the skiff came aground. The captain gestured at me with his rifle. “Up.”
    I thought about simply refusing to get up until they told me what had happened to Mal, but a glance at the Heartrender made me reconsider. I got to my feet, wincing at the pain in my shoulder, then I stumbled as the skiff started to move again, pulled forward by the drydock workers on land. Instinctively, I reached out to steady myself, but the soldier I touched shrank back from me as if burned. I managed to find my footing, but my thoughts were reeling.
    The skiff halted again.
    “Move,” the captain commanded.
    The soldiers led me at riflepoint from the skiff. I passed the other survivors, acutely aware of their curious and frightened stares, and caught sight of the Senior Cartographer babbling excitedly to a soldier. I wanted to stop to tell him what had happened to Alexei, but I didn’t dare.
    As I stepped onto the drydock, I was surprised to see that we were back in Kribirsk. We hadn’t even made it across the Fold. I shuddered. Better to be marching through camp with a rifle at my back than to be on the Unsea.
    But not much better , I thought anxiously.
    As the soldiers marched me up the main road, people turned from their work to gawk. My mind was whirring, searching for answers and finding nothing. Had I done something wrong in the Fold? Broken some kind of military protocol? And how had we gotten out of the Fold, anyway? The wounds near my shoulder throbbed. The last thing I remembered was the terrible pain of the volcra’s claws piercing my back, that searing burst of light. How had we survived?
    These thoughts were driven from my mind as we approached the Officers’ Tent. The captain called the guards to a halt and stepped toward the entrance.
    The Corporalnik reached out a hand to stop him. “This is a waste of time. We should proceed immediately to—”
    “Take your hand off me, bloodletter,” the captain snapped and shook his arm free.
    For a moment, the Corporalnik stared at him, her eyes dangerous, then she smiled coldly and bowed. “ Da, kapitan .”
    I felt the hair on my arms rise.
    The captain disappeared inside the tent. We waited. I glanced nervously at the Corporalnik, who had apparently forgotten her feud with the captain and was scrutinizing me once again. She was young, maybe even younger than I was, but that hadn’t stopped her from confronting a superior officer. Why would it? She could kill the captain where he stood without ever raising a weapon. I rubbed my arms, trying to shake the chill that had settled over me.
    The tent flap opened, and I was horrified to see the captain emerge followed by a stern Colonel Raevsky. What could I possibly have done that would require the involvement of a senior officer?
    The colonel peered at me, his weathered face grim. “What are you?”
    “Assistant Cartographer Alina Starkov. Royal Corps of Surveyors—”
    He cut me off. “ What are you?”
    I blinked. “I … I’m a mapmaker, sir.”
    Raevsky scowled. He pulled one of the soldiers aside and muttered something to him that sent the soldier sprinting back toward the drydocks. “Let’s go,” he said tersely.
    I felt the jab of a rifle barrel in my back and marched forward. I had a very bad feeling about where I was being taken. It can’t be , I thought