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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 gotten off your bony ass 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 what I saw!”
    “It’s not impossible,” said a heavyset Grisha. He wore the purple kefta of a Materialnik, a member of the Order of Fabrikators. “There are stories—”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” the girl laughed, her voice thick with scorn. “The man’s had his wits rattled by the volcra!”
    The crowd erupted into loud argument.
    I suddenly felt very tired. My shoulder throbbed where the volcra had dug its talons into me. I didn’t know what the Cartographer or any of the others on the skiff thought they had seen. I just knew this was all some kind of terrible mistake, and at the end of this farce, I would be the one looking foolish. I cringed when I thought of the teasing I would take when this was over. And hopefully, it would be over soon.
    “Quiet.” The Darkling barely seemed to raise his voice, but the command sliced through the crowd and silence fell.
    I suppressed a shiver. He might not find this joke so funny. I just hoped he wouldn’t blame me for it. The Darkling wasn’t known for mercy. Maybe I should be worrying less about being teased and more about being exiled to Tsibeya. Or worse. Eva said that the Darkling had once ordered a Corporalki Healer to seal a traitor’s mouth shut permanently. The man’s lips had been grafted together and he had starved to death. At the time, Alexei and I had laughed and dismissed it as another of Eva’s crazy stories. Now I wasn’t so sure.
    “Tracker,” the Darkling said softly, “what did you see?”
    As one, the crowd turned toward Mal, who looked uneasily at me and then back at the Darkling. “Nothing. I didn’t see anything.”
    “The girl was right beside you.”
    Mal nodded.
    “You must have seen something.”
    Mal glanced at me again, his look weighted with worry and fatigue. I’d never seen him so pale, and I wondered how much blood he had lost. I felt a surge of helpless anger. He was badly hurt. He should be resting instead of standing here answering ridiculous questions.
    “Just tell us what you remember, tracker,” commanded Raevsky.
    Mal shrugged slightly and winced at the pain from his wounds. “I was on my back on the deck. Alina was