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

I frowned. If the Cartographer had seen Alexei attacked, then why hadn’t he
tried to help?
The old man cleared his throat. “They were everywhere. I saw one go after her
—”
“Who?” asked Raevsky.
“Alina … Alina Starkov, one of my assistants.”
The beautiful girl in blue smirked and leaned over to whisper to her friend. I
clenched my jaw. How nice to know that the Grisha could still maintain their
snobbery in the midst of hearing about a volcra attack.
“Go on,” Raevsky pressed.
“I saw one go after her and the tracker,” the Cartographer said, gesturing to
Mal.
“And where were you?” I asked angrily. The question was out of my mouth
before I could think better of it. Every face turned to look at me, but I didn’t
care. “You saw the volcra attack us. You saw that thing take Alexei. Why didn’t
you help?”
“There was nothing I could do,” he pleaded, his hands spread wide. “They
were everywhere. It was chaos!” “Alexei might still be alive if you’d tried to
help us!” There was a gasp and a burble of laughter from the crowd. The
Cartographer flushed angrily and I felt instantly sorry. If I got out of this mess, I
was going to be in very big trouble.
“Enough!” boomed Raevsky. “Tell us what you saw, Cartographer.”
The crowd hushed and the Cartographer licked his lips again. “The tracker
went down. She was beside him. That thing, the volcra, was coming at them. I
saw it on top of her and then … she lit up.”
The Grisha erupted into exclamations of disbelief and derision. A few of them
laughed. If I hadn’t been so scared and baffled, I might have been tempted to
join them. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on him, I thought, looking at the
rumpled Cartographer. The poor man clearly took a bump to the head during the
attack.
“I saw it!” he shouted over the din. “Light came out of her!”
Some of the Grisha were jeering openly now, but others were yelling, “Let
him speak!” The Cartographer looked desperately to his fellow survivors for
support, and to my amazement, I saw some of them nod. Had everyone gone
mad? Did they actually think I had chased off the volcra?
“This is absurd!” said a voice from the crowd. It was the beautiful girl in blue.
“What are you suggesting, old man? That you’ve found us a Sun Summoner?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” he protested. “I’m only telling you what I
saw!”