Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
He had to get inside the treasury, but he’d need some kind of cover while he picked that inscrutable lock, and there were drüskelle everywhere. Then he saw Nina and Matthias and a person he assumed must be Bo Yul-Bayur running from the treasury. He’d been about to call out to them when the explosion hit, and everything went to hell.
They blew up the lab, he’d thought as debris rained down around him. I definitely did not tell them to blow up the lab.
The rest was pure improvisation, and it left little time for explanation. All Kaz had told Matthias was to meet him by the ash when Black Protocol began to ring. He’d thought he’d have time to explain more before they were all falling through the dark. Now he just had to hope that they wouldn’t panic and that his luck was waiting somewhere below.
The fall seemed impossibly long. Kaz hoped the Shu boy he was holding on to was a surprisingly young Bo Yul-Bayur and not some hapless prisoner Nina and Matthias had decided to liberate. He’d shoved the disk into the boy’s mouth as they went over, snapping it with his own fingers. He gave the whip a flick, releasing all of the cables, and heard the others scream as the strands retracted. At least they wouldn’t go into the water bound. Kaz waited as long as he dared to bite into his own baleen. When he struck the icy water, he feared his heart might stop.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but the force of the river was terrifying, flowing fast and hard as an avalanche. The noise was deafening even beneath the water, but with fear also came a kind of giddy vindication. He’d been right.
The Voice of God. There was always truth in legend. Kaz had spent enough time building his own myth to know. He’d wondered where the water that fed the Ice Court’s moat and fountains came from, why the river gorge was so very deep and wide. As soon as Nina had described the drüskelle initiation ritual, he’d known: The Fjerdan stronghold hadn’t been built around a great tree but around a spring. Djel, the wellspring, who fed the seas and rains, and the roots of the sacred ash.
Water had a voice. It was something every canal rat knew, anyone who had slept beneath a bridge or weathered a winter storm in an overturned boat—water could speak with the voice of a lover, a long-lost brother, even a god. That was the key, and once Kaz recognized it, it was as if someone had laid a perfect blueprint over the Ice Court and its workings. If Kaz was right, Djel would spit them out into the gorge. Assuming they didn’t drown first.
And that was a very real possibility. The baleen only provided enough air for ten minutes, maybe twelve if they could keep calm, which he doubted they would. His own heart was hammering, and his lungs already felt tight. His body was numb and aching from the temperature of the water, and the darkness was impenetrable. There was nothing but the dull thunder of the water and a sickening sense of tumbling.
He hadn’t been sure of the speed of the water, but he knew damn well the numbers were close. Numbers had always been his allies—odds, margins, the art of the wager. But now he had to rely on something more. What god do you serve? Inej had asked him. Whichever will grant me good fortune. Fortunate people didn’t end up racing ass over teakettle beneath an ice moat in hostile territory.
What would be waiting when they fished up in the gorge? Who would be waiting? Jesper and Wylan had managed to engage Black Protocol. But had they managed to do the rest? Would he see Inej on the other side?
Survive. Survive. Survive. It was the way he’d lived his life, moment to moment, breath to breath, since that terrible morning when he’d woken to find that Jordie was still dead and he was still very much alive.
Kaz tumbled through the dark. He was colder than he’d ever been. He thought of Inej’s hand on his cheek. His mind had gone jagged at the sensation, a riot of confusion. It had been terror and disgust and—in all of that clamor—desire, a wish that lingered still, the hope that she would touch him again.
When he was fourteen, Kaz had put together a crew to rob the bank that had helped Hertzoon prey on him and Jordie. His crew got away with fifty thousand kruge, but he’d broken his leg dropping down from the rooftop. The bone didn’t set right, and he’d limped ever after. So he’d found himself a Fabrikator and had his cane made. It became a declaration. There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken. The cane became a part of the myth he built. No one knew who he was. No one knew where he came from. He’d become Kaz Brekker, cripple and confidence man, bastard of the Barrel.
The gloves were his one concession to weakness. Since that night among the bodies and the swim from the Reaper’s Barge, he had not been able to bear the feeling of skin against skin. It was excruciating to him, revolting. It was the only piece of his past that he could not forge into something dangerous.
The baleen began to bead around his lips. Water was seeping in. How far had the river taken them? How far did they have left to go? He still had one hand gripped around Bo Yul-Bayur’s collar. The Shu boy was smaller than Kaz; hopefully he had enough air.
Bright flashes of memory sparked through Kaz’s mind. A cup of hot chocolate in his mittened hands, Jordie warning him to let it cool before he took a sip. Ink drying on the page as he’d signed the deed to the Crow Club. The first time he’d seen Inej at the Menagerie, in purple silk, her eyes lined with kohl. The bone-handled knife he’d given her. The sobs that had come from behind the door of her room at the Slat the night she’d made her first kill. The sobs he’d ignored. Kaz remembered her perched on the sill of his attic window, sometime during that first year after he’d brought her into the Dregs. She’d been feeding the crows that congregated on the roof.
“You shouldn’t make friends with crows,” he’d told her.
“Why not?” she asked.
He’d looked up from his desk to answer, but whatever he’d been about to say had vanished on his tongue.
The sun was out for once, and Inej had turned her face to it. Her eyes were shut, her oil-black lashes fanned over her cheeks. The harbor wind had lifted her dark hair, and for a moment Kaz was a boy again, sure that there was magic in this world.
“Why not?” she’d repeated, eyes still closed.
He said the first thing that popped into his head. “They don’t have any manners.”
“Neither do you, Kaz.” She’d laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.
Kaz took a last breath as the baleen dissolved and water flooded in. He squinted against the rush of the water, hoping to see some hint of daylight. The river knocked him against the wall of the tunnel. The pressure in his chest grew. I’m stronger than this, he told himself. My will is greater. But he could hear Jordie laughing. No, little brother. No one is stronger. You’ve cheated death too many times. Greed may do your bidding, but death serves no man.
Kaz had almost drowned that night in the harbor, kicking hard in the dark, borne aloft by Jordie’s corpse. There was no one and nothing to carry him now. He tried to think of his brother, of revenge, of Pekka Rollins tied to a chair in the house on Zelverstraat, trade orders stuffed down his throat as Kaz forced him to remember Jordie’s name. But all he could think of was Inej. She had to live. She had to have made it out of the Ice Court. And if she hadn’t, then he had to live to rescue her.
The ache in his lungs was unbearable. He needed to tell her … what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn’t pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her. That without meaning to, he’d begun to lean on her, to look for her, to need her near. He needed to thank her for his new hat.
The water pressed at his chest, demanding that he part his lips. I won’t, he swore. But in the end, Kaz opened his mouth, and the water rushed in.
PART SIX
PROPER THIEVES
39
INEJ
Inej’s heart careened against her ribs. On the aerial swings,
The guards hauled her back through the prison gate. There were many more guards and many more guns pointed at her than the first time she’d come through this courtyard, when she’d stepped off the prison wagon with the rest of the crew. They passed through the mouth of the wolf and up the stairs, and dragged her down the walkway through the corridor with its giant glass enclosure. Nina had translated the banner for her: Fjerdan might. She’d smirked at that the first time she’d passed, gazing down at the tanks and weapons, one eye on Kaz and the others on the opposite walkway. She’d wondered what kind of men needed to display their strength to helpless captives in chains.
The guards were moving too fast. For the second time that night, Inej made herself stumble.
“Move,” the soldier snapped in Kerch, dragging her forward.
“You’re going too quickly.”
He gave her arm a hard shake. “Stop stalling.”
“Don’t you want to meet our inquisitors?” the other asked her. “They’ll get you talking.”
“But you won’t look so pretty after they’re through.”
They laughed, and Inej’s stomach turned. She knew they’d spoken in Kerch to make sure she understood.
She thought she might be able to take them, despite their guns and even without her knives. Her hands weren’t bound, and they still thought they had a disgraced prostitute on their hands. Heleen had called her a criminal, but to them, she was only a little thief in scraps of purple silk.
Just as she was considering making her move, she heard other footsteps headed their way. She saw the silhouettes of two more men in uniform striding toward them. Could she manage four guards on her own? She wasn’t sure, but she knew that if they left this corridor behind, it was all over.
She glanced again at the banner in the glass enclosure. It was now or never.
She hooked her leg around the ankle of the guard to her left. He pitched forward, and she slammed her hand upward, breaking his nose.
The other raised his gun. “You’re going to pay for that.”
“You won’t shoot me. You need information.”
“I can shoot you in the leg,” he sneered, lowering his rifle.
Then he crumpled to the ground, a pair of beaten-up shears protruding from his back. The soldier standing behind him gave a cheery wave.
“Jesper,” she gasped in relief. “Finally.”
“I’m here, too, you know,” said Wylan.
The guard with the broken nose moaned from the floor and tried to lift his gun. Inej gave him a good hard kick to the head. He didn’t move again.
“Did you manage to get hold of a big enough diamond?” Jesper asked.
Inej nodded and slipped the massive jeweled choker from her sleeve. “Hurry,” she said. “If Heleen hasn’t noticed it’s missing, she will soon.” Though with Black Protocol in effect there wasn’t much she could do about it.
Jesper snatched the choker from Inej’s hand, mouth agape. “Kaz said we needed a diamond. He didn’t tell you to steal Heleen Van Houden’s diamonds!”
“Just get to work.”
Kaz had given Inej two objectives: nab a big enough diamond for Jesper to work with and get herself into this corridor after eleven bells. There were plenty of other diamonds she could have stolen for their purposes and other trouble she could have made to attract the guards’ attention. But it was Heleen she’d wanted to dupe. For all the secrets she’d gathered and documents she’d stolen and violence she’d done, it was Heleen Van Houden she’d needed to best.
And Heleen had made it easy. During the scuffle in the rotunda, Inej had made sure that she was too focused on being choked to worry about being robbed. After that, all of Heleen’s attention had been devoted to gloating. Inej only regretted that she wouldn’t be there to see Tante Heleen discover her prized necklace was missing.
Jesper lit a lantern and went to work beside Wylan. Only then did she see they were both covered in soot from their trip back down the prison incinerator shaft. They’d dragged two grubby coils of rope with them, too. While they worked, Inej barred the doors set into the arches on either side of the corridor. They had just a few minutes before another patrol came through and discovered a door that shouldn’t be locked.
Wylan had produced a long metal screw and what looked like the handle of a massive winch, and was attempting to rig them together to form what Inej hoped would be an ugly but functional drill.
A thump came from one of the doors.
“Hurry,” Inej said.
“Saying that doesn’t actually make me work faster,” Jesper complained as he concentrated on the stones. “If I just break them down, they’ll lose their molecular structure. They have to be cut, carefully, the edges assembled into a single perfect drill bit. I don’t have the training—”
“Whose fault is that?” put in Wylan, not looking up from his own work.
“Again, not helpful.”
Now the guards were pounding on the door. Across the enclosure, Inej saw men storming onto the other walkway, pointing and shouting. But they couldn’t very well shoot through two walls of bulletproof glass.
The glass was Grisha made. Nina had recognized it as soon as they’d passed through the display—Fjerdan might protected by Grisha skill—and the one thing harder than Fabrikator glass was diamond.
The doors on both sides of the walkway were rattling now. “They’re coming!” Inej said.
Wylan secured the diamond bit to the makeshift drill. It made a scraping sound as they placed it up against the glass, and Jesper began turning the handle. The progress was painfully slow.
“Is it even working?” Inej cried.
“The glass is thick!”
Something smashed into the door on their right. “They have a battering ram,” Wylan moaned.
“Keep going,” urged Inej. She toed off her shoes.
Jesper turned the crank faster as the drill bit whirred. He began to move it in a curving line, sketching the beginnings of a circle, then a half moon. Faster.
The wood of the door at the end of the walkway started to splinter.
“Take the handle, Wylan!” Jesper shouted.
Wylan took his place, turning the drill as fast as he could.
Jesper grabbed the fallen guards’ guns and pointed them at the door.
“They’re coming!” he yelled.
On the glass, the two lines met. The moon was full. The circle popped free, tipping inward. It hadn’t even struck the floor before Inej was backing up.
“Out of the way!” she demanded.
Then she was running, her feet light, her silks like feathers. In this moment she didn’t mind them. She’d duped Heleen Van Houden. She’d taken a little piece of her away, a silly symbol, but one she prized. It wasn’t enough—it would never be enough—but it was a beginning. There would be other bawds to trick, slavers to fool. Her silks were feathers, and she was free.
Inej focused on that circle of glass—a moon, an absence of moon, a door to the future—and she leapt. The hole was barely big enough for her body, she heard the soft swish as the sharp glass rim sliced through the silks she trailed. She arced her body and reached. She would have only one opportunity to grab for the iron lantern that hung from the ceiling of the enclosure. It was an impossible leap, a mad leap, but she was once again her father’s daughter, unbound by the rules of gravity. She hung in the air for a terrifying moment, and then her hands grasped the lantern’s base.
Behind her, she heard the door in the walkway burst open, gunfire. Hold them off, Jesper. Buy me time.
She swung back and forth, building momentum. A bullet zinged past her. Accident? Or had someone made it past Wylan and Jesper to shoot at her through the hole?
When she had enough momentum, she let go. She hit the wall hard. There was no graceful way around it, but her
She turned one knob then the next, trying to find the right controls. Finally one of the guns rolled upward. She pulled on the trigger, and her whole body shook as bullets rattled against the enclosure glass like hail, pinging off in all directions. It was the best warning she could offer Jesper and Wylan.
Inej could only hope she could get the big gun working. She wriggled down in the cockpit of the tank. She rotated the only visible handle, and the nose of the long gun tilted into place. The lever was there, just as Jesper had said it would be. She gave it a hard pull. There was a surprisingly small click. Then, for a long horrible moment, nothing happened. What if it isn’t loaded? she thought. If Jesper’s right about this gun, then the Fjerdans would be fools to keep this much firepower just lying around.
A thunk sounded from somewhere in the tank. She heard something rolling toward her and had the terrifying thought that she’d done it wrong. The mortar was going to roll right down that long barrel and explode in her lap. Instead there was a hissing sound and a shriek like metal grinding against metal. The big gun vibrated. A skull-rattling boom split the air with a puff of dark gray smoke.
The mortar struck the glass, shattering it into thousands of glittering pieces. Prettier than diamonds, Inej marveled, hoping that Wylan and Jesper had found time and space to take cover.
She waited for the dust to clear, her ears ringing badly. The glass wall was gone. All was still. Then two ropes attached to the walkway rail swung down, and Wylan and Jesper followed: Jesper like a limber insect, Wylan in stops and starts, wiggling like a caterpillar trying to make its way out of a cocoon.