Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (z-lib.org).mobi

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 dry dock 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 dry dock, 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 got out of the Fold, anyway? The wounds near my shoulder
throbbed. The last thing I remembered was the agony 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 towards 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
scrutinising me once again. She was young, maybe even younger than I was, but