Shadow and Bone: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Ivan drags Alina to the Darkling’s black coach, which is surrounded by Etherealki guards. He tells her to get in, but Alina refuses: there’s been a mistake and she doesn’t want to go. Ivan hisses that soon, Fjerdans and Shu Han assassins will know who she is—and they’ll try to kill her. She must get to Os Alta, where she’ll be safe. Ivan shoves Alina into the coach. A Healer, a Corporalnik, and two oprichniki guards enter as well, and then the coach starts to move. The Healer cleans and mends Alina’s wounds, which itches but isn’t painful. When the woman is finished, Ivan tells her to give Alina her kefta and ushers her out of the coach.

Once the Healer is gone, Ivan explains that the kefta is made with Materialki corecloth and is bulletproof. An oprichniki explains that they all wear these kefta when they’re in the field. Alina thinks it doesn’t seem quite fair that Grisha soldiers have so much protection, while regular soldiers are on their own. Blinking back tears and studying the Darkling’s mark etched in the window—two overlapping circles to represent the sun in eclipse—Alina thinks this must be a hallucination. But Ivan and the Corporalnik are still staring at her, and they don’t stop. Alina snaps that she doesn’t do tricks and asks that they take a nap and leave her alone. The Corporalnik laughs and introduces himself as Fedyor.

Fedyor explains that it’s not safe to be traveling at night, but they must. The Shadow Fold, he explains, has been helping their enemies for years by weakening Ravka. But if Alina is a Sun Summoner, she can open the Fold or maybe destroy it—so Fjerda and the Shu Han will be itching to kill her. Alina just gapes at Fedyor. Ivan asks how Alina hid her power and if she was tested. Alina says she had no idea she had powers and she was tested—but she doesn’t add that nobody really cared about Duke Keramsov’s orphans and her dead parents couldn’t help her. Instead, she says she’s not Grisha. She doesn’t know what happened in the Fold or when the Darkling touched her. He did something when he touched her.

Ivan explains that the Darkling is a living amplifier. He shows Alina his amplifier, a necklace of Sherborn bear claws. Amplifiers increase a Grisha’s power, and only the Darkling’s most favored Grisha have them—Fedyor, for instance, doesn’t have one. Alina closes her eyes and remembers how she felt before the Darkling touched her: small and clumsy. But when he touched her, it was like a call echoed through her and when she answered, she felt absolutely certain and powerful. Alina tries to recreate the feeling, but she can’t.

The coach travels for days, day and night. Once, Alina wakes up to Fedyor watching her—and he asks who Mal is. Realizing she must’ve been talking in her sleep, Alina says Mal is the tracker who saved her on the Shadow Fold. Fedyor points out that Alina saved his life too, as well as many others’ lives. Alina is shocked, especially when Fedyor—a Heartrender, a killer—says that saving lives is an honor. He explains that he decided to become a Heartrender rather than a Healer because he thought he could save more lives that way.

Just then, Fedyor elbows Ivan—and a soldier opens the door to share that there’s a fallen tree ahead. Before the soldier can finish, someone shoots him in the back. Fedyor mutters that it’s the Fjerdans. He gives Alina a knife and leads everyone out of the coach to defend it. Terrified, Alina curls up on the floor of the coach—until two men with  yellow beards enter the coach, and one pulls Alina out. Alina races into the hills away from the man and the battle, but the man tackles her halfway up. Just as the man pins Alina, the Darkling and some of his soldiers ride up on horseback. The Darkling claps his hand, sending tendrils of darkness to blind the attackers; Grisha take the opportunity to kill the men.

Alina shouts and the Darkling turns toward her. Her Fjerdan attacker, though blinded, says he can still kill Alina. The Darkling attempts to bargain with the man, but just as the man brings his knife down toward Alina, Alina hears a huge cracking sound. She opens her eyes and can’t even scream: the man has been cut in half. Crawling backwards, Alina screams until the Darkling helps her up and walks her to his horse. He tells Ivan that he’s taking 20 riders, and Alina will ride with him.

As the coach rolls away—a decoy—Alina observes that the Darkling does make mistakes. Smiling, he admits he infrequently makes mistakes. As he helps Alina onto the horse in front of him, he observes that she’s shaking. Alina offers that she’s not used to assassination attempts, and she can’t tell if the Darkling is joking when he says he hardly notices anymore. She’s also extremely disturbed by what he did to the Fjerdan. But he takes off a glove and puts a hand on the back of her neck, filling her with that feeling of power and certainty. Alina falls asleep.