Shadow and Bone

TWO DAYS LATER, just after dawn, we passed through a
massive gate and the famous double walls of Os Alta.
Mal and I had taken our training not far from here, in the
military stronghold at Poliznaya, but we had never been inside
the city itself. Os Alta was reserved for the very wealthy, for
the homes of military and government officials, their families,
their mistresses, and all the businesses that catered to them.
I felt a twinge of disappointment as we passed shuttered
shops, a wide marketplace where a few vendors were already
setting up their stalls, and crowded rows of narrow houses. Os
Alta was called the dream city. It was the capital of Ravka,
home to the Grisha and the King’s Grand Palace. But if
anything, it just looked like a bigger, dirtier version of the
market town at Keramzin.
All that changed when we reached the bridge. It spanned a
wide canal where little boats bobbed in the water beneath it.
And on the other side, rising from the mist, white and
gleaming, lay the other Os Alta. As we crossed the bridge, I
saw that it could be raised to turn the canal into a giant moat
that would separate the dream city before us from the common
mess of the market town that lay behind.
When we reached the other side of the canal, it was as if we
had passed into another world. Everywhere I looked, I saw
fountains and plazas, verdant parks, and broad boulevards
lined with perfect rows of trees. Here and there, I saw lights on
in the lower stories of the grand houses, where kitchen fires
were being lit and the day’s work was starting.
The streets began to slope upward, and as we climbed
higher, the houses became larger and more imposing, until
finally we arrived at another wall and another set of gates,
these wrought in gleaming gold and emblazoned with the
King’s double eagle. Along the wall, I could see heavily armed
men at their posts, a grim reminder that for all its beauty, Os
Alta was still the capital of a country that had long been at
war.
The gate swung open.