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

us, and she still needed a flint to make the spark that would burn that fuel. Grisha
steel wasn’t endowed with magic, but by the skill of Fabrikators, who did not
need heat or crude tools to manipulate metal.
But if I understood what we did, I was less sure of how we did it. The
grounding principle of the small science was “like calls to like”, but then it got
complicated. Odinakovost was the “thisness” of a thing that made it the same as
everything else. Etovost was the “thatness” of a thing that made it different from
everything else. Odinakovost connected Grisha to the world, but it was etovost
that gave them an affinity for something like air, or blood, or in my case, light.
Around then, my head started swimming.
One thing did stand out to me: the word the philosophers used to describe
people born without Grisha gifts, otkazat’sya, “the abandoned”. It was another
word for orphan.
Late one afternoon, I was plodding through a passage describing Grisha
assistance with trade routes when I felt someone’s presence beside me. I looked
up and cringed back in my chair. The Apparat was looming above me, his flat
black pupils lit with peculiar intensity.
I glanced around the library. It was empty except for us, and despite the sun
pouring through the glass ceiling, I felt a chill creep over me.
He sat down in the chair beside me with a gust of musty robes, and the damp
smell of tombs enveloped me. I tried to breathe through my mouth.
“Are you enjoying your studies, Alina Starkov?”
“Very much,” I lied.
“I’m so glad,” he said. “But I hope you will remember to feed the soul as well
as the mind. I am the spiritual adviser to all those within the palace walls. Should
you find yourself worried or in distress, I hope you will not hesitate to come to
me.”
“I will,” I said. “Absolutely.”
“Good, good.” He smiled, revealing a mouth of crowded, yellowing teeth, his
gums black like a wolf’s. “I want us to be friends. It is so important that we are
friends.”
“Of course.”
“I would be pleased if you would accept a gift from me,” he said, reaching
into the folds of his brown robes and removing a small book bound in red
leather.
How could someone offering you a present sound so creepy?
Reluctantly, I leaned forward and took the book from his long, blue-veined
hand. The title was embossed in gold on the cover: Istorii Sankt’ya.