I would be very grateful if you did. And how can I repay you, for all this? Surely there must be something.
[ Nikolai doesn't know yet which of his skills might be useful in this place, but he is mindful of how much Onni is helping him. He ought to be able to make that debt right. Everyone has some favor that they need. Firewood to be cut, errands to be run...
When Onni asks his occupation in the military, Nikolai has to stifle the impulse to laugh. It's going to take some getting used to, being in a place where no one knows him. He debates telling Onni that he is King of Ravka, and as such the leader of both the First and Second Armies... but perhaps there is a way to avoid getting into all that, without outright lying. He's enjoying the break from being a monarch, for just a little while. It reminds him of his days living as Sturmhond - but even then he'd been captain of his ship. The man giving the orders and making the decisions. ]
I started in the infantry. I rose in the ranks to Major, before my service was over.
[ All of it is the truth. He just... leaves out some of the later details.
Nikolai listens with genuine fascination, wishing that David were here. He commits what Onni is saying to memory - he'll just have to tell David all the details when he gets home. Whenever that might be. ]
Trolls? What is a troll?
[ There must be some magic in this place allowing them to communicate - since Nikolai doubts very much that Onni can speak Ravkan - but it doesn't seem to work on terms he has never heard before. ]
Yes and no. There are some people with powers - they're called Grisha, though, not mages. And it isn't really magic, what they do. Some see it as miracles, but most of the Grisha I know think of it as a science. They can manipulate matter in a way that others can't. Some of them control the elements - fire, water, wind. Some of them control the human body - heal a broken arm, drop your heart-rate until you faint. Some of them control material things - metals, chemicals, all that.
[ He spreads his hands and adds with a shrug: ]
But I haven't got a drop of Grisha power in me.
[ There is a very different answer to Onni's question, of course. Grisha power is not magic because it exists within certain scientific bounds. It can't create matter, can't create life where there was none, can't transgress against certain fundamental laws. But of course, there was the Darkling and his merzost. It is the word for both 'magic' and 'abomination'. The power he had drawn on during the civil war had been an aberration against the natural order of the world.
And he had made Nikolai an abomination, with it. ]
no subject
[ Nikolai doesn't know yet which of his skills might be useful in this place, but he is mindful of how much Onni is helping him. He ought to be able to make that debt right. Everyone has some favor that they need. Firewood to be cut, errands to be run...
When Onni asks his occupation in the military, Nikolai has to stifle the impulse to laugh. It's going to take some getting used to, being in a place where no one knows him. He debates telling Onni that he is King of Ravka, and as such the leader of both the First and Second Armies... but perhaps there is a way to avoid getting into all that, without outright lying. He's enjoying the break from being a monarch, for just a little while. It reminds him of his days living as Sturmhond - but even then he'd been captain of his ship. The man giving the orders and making the decisions. ]
I started in the infantry. I rose in the ranks to Major, before my service was over.
[ All of it is the truth. He just... leaves out some of the later details.
Nikolai listens with genuine fascination, wishing that David were here. He commits what Onni is saying to memory - he'll just have to tell David all the details when he gets home. Whenever that might be. ]
Trolls? What is a troll?
[ There must be some magic in this place allowing them to communicate - since Nikolai doubts very much that Onni can speak Ravkan - but it doesn't seem to work on terms he has never heard before. ]
Yes and no. There are some people with powers - they're called Grisha, though, not mages. And it isn't really magic, what they do. Some see it as miracles, but most of the Grisha I know think of it as a science. They can manipulate matter in a way that others can't. Some of them control the elements - fire, water, wind. Some of them control the human body - heal a broken arm, drop your heart-rate until you faint. Some of them control material things - metals, chemicals, all that.
[ He spreads his hands and adds with a shrug: ]
But I haven't got a drop of Grisha power in me.
[ There is a very different answer to Onni's question, of course. Grisha power is not magic because it exists within certain scientific bounds. It can't create matter, can't create life where there was none, can't transgress against certain fundamental laws. But of course, there was the Darkling and his merzost. It is the word for both 'magic' and 'abomination'. The power he had drawn on during the civil war had been an aberration against the natural order of the world.
And he had made Nikolai an abomination, with it. ]