Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
He didn’t stop to rest. He hooked his bad leg in the rigging, ignoring the pain, checked the sight on his rifle, and began picking off anyone in range.
Four million kruge, he told himself as he reloaded and found another enemy in his sights. The mist made visibility poor, but this was the skill that had kept him in the Dregs even after his debts had mounted and it had become clear that Jesper loved the cards more than luck loved him. Four million kruge would erase his debt and land him in clover for a good long while.
He spotted Nina and Matthias trying to make their way onto the pier, but at least ten men were in their way. Kaz seemed to be running in the opposite direction, and Inej was nowhere to be found, though that didn’t mean much when it came to the Wraith. She could be hanging from the sails two feet away from him, and he probably wouldn’t know it.
“Jesper!”
The shout came from far below, and it took a moment for Jesper to realize it was Wylan calling to him. He tried to ignore him, taking aim again.
“Jesper!”
I’m going to kill that little idiot. “What do you want?” he shouted down.
“Close your eyes!”
“You can’t kiss me from down there, Wylan.”
“Just do it!”
“This better be good!” He shut his eyes.
“Are they closed?”
“Damn it, Wylan, yes, they’re—”
There was a shrill, shrieking howl, and then bright light bloomed behind Jesper’s lids. When it faded, he opened his eyes.
Below, he saw men blundering around, rendered blind by the flash bomb Wylan had set off. But Jesper could see perfectly. Not bad for a mercher’s kid, he thought to himself, and opened fire.
12
INEJ
Before Inej had ever set foot on the high wire or even a practice rope, her father had taught her to fall—to protect her head and minimize the impact by not fighting her own momentum. Even as the blast from the harbor lifted her off her feet, she was tucking into a roll. She hit hard, but she was up in seconds, pressed against the side of a crate, her ears ringing, her nose singed by the sharp scent of gunpowder.
Inej spared Kaz and the others a single glance, then did what she did best—she vanished. She launched herself up the cargo crates, scaling them like a nimble insect, her rubber-soled feet finding grips and footholds.
The view from above was disturbing. The Dregs were outnumbered, and there were men working their way around their left and right flanks. Kaz had been right to keep their real point of departure a secret from the others. Someone had talked. Inej had tried to keep tabs on the team, but someone else in the gang could have been snooping. Kaz had said it himself: Everything in Ketterdam leaked, including the Slat and the Crow Club.
Someone was firing down from the masts of the new Ferolind. Hopefully, that meant Jesper had made it to the schooner, and she just had to buy the others enough time to make it there as well.
Inej ran lightly over the tops of the crates, making her way down the row, seeking her targets below. It was easy enough. None of them expected the threat to come from above. She slid to the ground behind two men firing at Nina, and said a silent prayer as she slit one throat, then the next. When the second man dropped, she crouched beside him and rolled up his right sleeve—a tattoo of a hand, its first and second fingers cut off at the knuckle. Black Tips. Was this retribution for Kaz’s showdown with Geels, or something more? They shouldn’t have been able to raise these kinds of numbers.
She moved on to the next aisle of crates, following a mental map of the other attackers’ positions. First, she took down a girl holding a massive, unwieldy rifle, then skewered the man who was supposed to be watching her flank. His tattoo showed five birds in a wedge formation: Razorgulls. Just how many gangs were they up against?
The next corner was blind. Should she scale the cargo containers to check her position or risk what might be waiting for her on the other side? She took a deep breath, sank low, and slipped around the corner in a lunge. Tonight her Saints were kind—two men were firing on the docks with their backs to her. She dispatched them with two quick thrusts of her blades. Six bodies, six lives taken. She was going to have to do a lot of penance, but she’d helped even the odds a bit in the Dregs’ favor. Now, she needed to get to the schooner.
She wiped her knives on her leather breeches and returned them to their sheaths, then backed up and took a running start at the nearest cargo container. As her fingers gripped the rim, she felt a piercing pain beneath her arm. She turned in time to see Oomen’s ugly face split in a determined grimace. All the intelligence she had gathered on the Black Tips came back to her in a sickening rush—Oomen, Geels’ shambling enforcer, the one who could crush skulls with his bare hands.
He yanked her down and grabbed the front of her vest, giving the knife in her side a sharp twist. Inej fought not to black out.
As her hood fell back, he exclaimed, “Ghezen! I’ve got Brekker’s Wraith.”
“You should have aimed … higher,” Inej gasped. “Missed my heart.”
“Don’t want you dead, Wraith,” he said. “You’re quite the prize. Can’t wait to hear all the gossip you’ve gathered for Dirtyhands, and all his secrets, too. I love a good story.”
“I can tell you how this one ends,” she said on an unsteady breath. “But you’re not going to like it.”
“That so?” He slammed her up against the crate, and pain crashed through her. Her toes only brushed the ground as blood spurted from the wound at her side. Oomen’s forearm was braced against her shoulders, keeping her arms pinned.
“Do you know the secret to fighting a scorpion?”
He laughed. “Talking nonsense, Wraith? Don’t die too quick. Need to get you patched up.”
She crossed one ankle behind the other and heard a reassuring click. She wore the pads at her knees for crawling and climbing, but there was another reason, too—namely, the tiny steel blades hidden in each of them.
“The secret,” she panted, “is to never take your eyes off the scorpion’s tail.” She brought her knee up, jamming the blade between Oomen’s legs.
He shrieked and released her, hands going to his bleeding groin.
She staggered back down the row of crates. She could hear men shouting to each other, the pop of gunfire coming in smatters and bursts now. Who was winning? Had the others made it to the schooner? A wave of dizziness rolled over her.
When she touched her fingers to the wound at her side, they came away wet. Too much blood. Footsteps. Someone was coming. She couldn’t climb, not with this wound, not with the amount of blood she’d lost. She remembered her father putting her on the rope ladder the first time. Climb, Inej.
The cargo containers were stacked like a pyramid here. If she could make it up just one, she could hide herself on the first level. Just one. She could climb or she could stand there and die.
She willed her mind to clarity and hopped up, fingertips latching on to the top of the crate. Climb, Inej. She dragged herself over the edge onto the tin roof of the container.
It felt so good to lie there, but she knew she’d left a trail of blood behind her. One more, she told herself. One more and you’ll be safe. She forced herself up to her knees and reached for the next crate.
The surface beneath her began to rock. She heard laughter from below.
“Come out, come out, Wraith! We have secrets to tell!”
Desperately, she reached for the lip of the next crate again and gripped it, fighting through an onslaught of pain as the container under her dropped away. Then she was just hanging, legs dangling helplessly down. They didn’t open fire; they wanted her alive.
“Come on down, Wraith!”
She didn’t know where the strength came from but she managed to pull herself over the top. She lay on the crate’s roof, panting.
Just one more. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t push to her knees, couldn’t reach, couldn’t even roll. It hurt too much. Climb, Inej.
Move, she told herself. This is a stupid place to die. And yet a voice in her head said there were worse places. She would die here, in freedom, beneath the beginnings of dawn. She’d die after a worthy fight, not because some man had tired of her or required more from her than she could give. Better to die here by her own blade than with her face painted and her body swathed in false silks.
A hand seized her ankle. They’d climbed the crates. Why hadn’t she heard them? Was she that far gone? They had her. Someone was turning her onto her back.
She slid the dagger from the sheath at her wrist. In the Barrel, a blade this sharp was known as kind steel. It meant a quick death. Better that than torture at the mercy of the Black Tips or the Razorgulls.
May the Saints receive me. She pressed the tip beneath her breast, between her ribs, an arrow to her heart. Then a hand gripped her wrist painfully, forcing her to drop the blade.
“Not just yet, Inej.”
The rasp of stone on stone. Her eyes flew open. Kaz.
He bundled her into his arms and leapt down from the crates, landing roughly, his bad leg buckling.
She moaned as they hit the ground.
“Did we win?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
He must be running. Her body jounced painfully against his chest with every lurching step. He couldn’t carry her and use his cane.
“I don’t want to die.”
“I’ll do my best to make other arrangements for you.”
She closed her eyes.
“Keep talking, Wraith. Don’t slip away from me.”
“But it’s what I do best.”
He clutched her tighter. “Just make it to the schooner. Open your damn eyes, Inej.”
She tried. Her vision was blurring, but she could make out a pale, shiny scar on Kaz’s neck, right beneath his jaw. She remembered the first time she’d seen him at the Menagerie. He paid Tante Heleen for information—stock tips, political pillow talk, anything the Menagerie’s clients blabbed about when drunk or giddy on bliss. He never visited Heleen’s girls, though plenty would have been happy to take him up to their rooms. They claimed he gave them the shivers, that his hands were permanently stained with blood beneath those black gloves, but she’d recognized the eagerness in their voices and the way they tracked him with their eyes.
One night, as he’d passed her in the parlor, she’d done a foolish thing, a reckless thing. “I can help you,” she’d whispered. He’d glanced at her, then proceeded on his way as if she’d said nothing at all. The next morning, she’d been called to Tante Heleen’s parlor. She’d been sure another beating was coming or worse, but instead Kaz Brekker had been standing there, leaning on his crow-head cane, waiting to change her life.
“I can help you,” she said now.
“Help me with what?”
She couldn’t remember. There was something she was supposed to tell him. It didn’t matter anymore.
“Talk to me, Wraith.”
“You came back for me.”
“I protect my investments.”
Investments. “I’m glad I’m bleeding all over your shirt.”
“I’ll put it on your tab.”
Now she remembered. He owed her an apology. “Say you’re sorry.”
“For what?”
“Just say it.”
She didn’t hear his reply. The world had grown very dark indeed.
13
KAZ
“Get us out of here,” Kaz shouted as soon as he limped aboard the schooner with Inej in his arms. The sails were already trimmed, and they were on their way out of the harbor in moments, though not nearly as fast as he would have liked. He knew he should have tried to secure some Squallers for the journey, but they were hell to come by.
There was chaos on deck, people shouting and trying to get the schooner into open sea as quickly as possible.
“Specht!” he yelled at the man he’d chosen to captain the vessel, a sailor with a talent for knife work who had fallen on hard times and ended up stuck in the lower ranks of the Dregs. “Get your crew in shape before I start cracking skulls.”
Specht saluted—then seemed to catch himself. He wasn’t in the navy any longer, and Kaz wasn’t a commanding officer.
The pain in Kaz’s leg was terrible, the worst it had been since he’d first broken it falling off the roof of a bank near the Geldstraat. It was possible he’d fractured the bone again. Inej’s weight wasn’t helping, but when Jesper stepped into his path to offer help, Kaz shoved past him.
“Where’s Nina?” Kaz snarled.
“Seeing to the wounded below. She already took care of me.” Dimly Kaz registered the dried blood on Jesper’s thigh. “Wylan got dinged during the fight. Let me help you—”
“Get out of my way,” Kaz said, and plunged past him down the ramp that led belowdecks.
He found Nina tending to Wylan in a narrow cabin, her hands drifting over his arm, knitting the flesh of the bullet wound together. It was barely a graze.
“Move,” Kaz demanded, and Wylan practically leapt from the table.
“I’m not finished—” began Nina. Then she caught sight of Inej. “Saints,” she swore. “What happened?”
“Knife wound.”
The cramped cabin was lit by several bright lanterns and a stash of clean bandages had been laid out on a shelf beside a bottle of camphor. Gently, Kaz placed Inej on the table that had been bolted to the deck.
“That’s a lot of blood,” Nina said on a low breath.
“Help her.”
“Kaz, I’m a Heartrender, not a real Healer.”
“She’ll be dead by the time we find one. Get to work.”
“You’re in my light.”
Kaz stepped back into the passageway. Inej lay perfectly still on the table, her luminous brown skin dull in the swaying lamplight.
He was alive because of Inej. They all were. They’d managed to fight their way out of a corner, but only because she’d prevented them from being surrounded. Kaz knew death. He could feel its presence on the ship now, looming over them, ready to take his Wraith. He was covered in her blood.
“Unless you can be useful, go away,” Nina said without looking up at him. “You’re making me nervous.” He hesitated, then stomped back the way he’d come, stopping to purloin a clean shirt from another cabin. He shouldn’t be this shaken up by a dock brawl, even a shoot-out, but he was. Something inside him felt frayed and raw. It was the same feeling he’d had as a boy, in those first desperate days after Jordie’s death.
Say you’re sorry. That was the last thing Inej had said to him. What had she wanted him to apologize for? There were so many possibilities. A thousand crimes. A thousand stupid jibes.
On deck, he took a deep breath of sea air, watching the harbor and Ketterdam fade from view on the horizon.
“What the hell just happened?” Jesper asked. He was leaning against the railing, his rifle beside him. His hair was mussed, his pupils dilated. He seemed almost drunk, or like he’d just rolled out of someone’s bed. He always had that look after a fight. Helvar was bent over the railing, vomiting. Not a sailor, apparently. At some point they’d need to shackle his legs again.
“We were ambushed,” Wylan said from his perch on the forecastle deck. He had his sleeve pushed up and was running his fingers over the red spot where Nina had seen to his wound.
Jesper shot Wylan a withering glare. “Private tutors from the university, and that’s what this kid comes up with? ‘We were ambushed’?”
Wylan reddened. “Stop calling me kid. We’re practically the same age.”
“You’re not going to like the other names I come up with for you. I know we were ambushed. That doesn’t explain how they knew we would be there. Maybe Big Bolliger wasn’t the only Black Tip spy in the Dregs.”
“Geels doesn’t have the brains or the resources to bite back this fast or this hard alon
“You sure? Because it felt like a pretty big bite.”
“Let’s ask.” Kaz limped over to where Rotty had stashed Oomen.
I stuck your Wraith, Oomen had giggled when Kaz had spotted him curled up on the ground. I stuck her good. Kaz had glanced at the blood on Oomen’s thigh and said, Looks like she got you, too. But her aim had been off or Oomen wouldn’t have been talking to anyone. He’d knocked the enforcer out and had Rotty retrieve him while he went to find Inej.
Now Helvar and Jesper dragged Oomen over to the rail, his hands bound.
“Stand him up.”
With one huge hand, Helvar hauled Oomen to his feet.
Oomen grinned, his thatch of coarse white hair flat against his wide forehead.
“Why don’t you tell me what brought so many Black Tips out in force tonight?” Kaz said.
“We owed you.”
“A public brawl with guns out and thirty men packing? I don’t think so.”
Oomen snickered. “Geels doesn’t like being bested.”
“I could fit Geels’ brains in the toe of my boot, and Big Bolliger was his only source inside the Dregs.”
“Maybe he—”
Kaz interrupted him. “I want you to think real careful now, Oomen. Geels probably thinks you’re dead, so there are no rules of barter here. I can do what I want with you.”
Oomen spat in his face.
Kaz took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and carefully wiped his face clean. He thought of Inej lying still on the table, her slight weight in his arms.
“Hold him,” he told Jesper and the Fjerdan. Kaz flicked his coat sleeve, and an oyster shucking knife appeared in his hand. At any given time he had at least two knives stashed somewhere in his clothes. He didn’t even count this one, really—a tidy, wicked little blade.