Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
“We’ll have to get in and out without him noticing,” said Inej. “And we’ll have to move quickly after that. As soon as Van Eck realizes the seal is missing, he’ll be able to guess what we’re up to.”
“We broke into the Ice Court,” said Kaz. “I think we can manage a mercher’s office.”
“Well, we did almost die breaking into the Ice Court,” said Inej.
“Several times, if memory serves,” noted Jesper.
“Inej and I lifted a DeKappel from Van Eck. We already know the layout of the house. We’ll be fine.”
Wylan’s finger was once more tracing the Geldstraat. “You didn’t have to get into my father’s safe.”
“Van Eck keeps the seal in a safe?” said Jesper with a laugh. “It’s almost like he wants us to take it. Kaz is better at making friends with combination locks than with people.”
“You’ve never seen a safe like this,” Wylan said. “He had it installed after the DeKappel was stolen. It has a seven-digit combination that he resets every day, and the locks are built with false tumblers to confuse safecrackers.”
Kaz shrugged. “Then we go around it. I’ll take expediency over finesse.”
Wylan shook his head. “The safe walls are made of a unique alloy reinforced with Grisha steel.”
“An explosion?” suggested Jesper.
Kaz raised a brow. “I suspect Van Eck will notice that.”
“A very small explosion?”
Nina snorted. “You just want to blow something up.”
“Actually…” said Wylan. He cocked his head to one side, as if he were listening to a distant song. “Come morning, there would be no hiding we’d been there, but if we can get the refugees out of the harbor before my father discovers the theft … I’m not exactly sure where I can get the materials, but it just might work.…”
“Inej,” Jesper whispered.
She leaned forward, peering at Wylan. “Is that scheming face?”
“Possibly.”
Wylan seemed to snap back to reality. “It is not. But … but I do think I have an idea.”
“We’re waiting, merchling,” Kaz said.
“The weevil is basically just a much more stable version of auric acid.”
“Yes,” said Jesper. “Of course. And that is?”
“A corrosive. It gives off a minor amount of heat once it starts to react, but it’s incredibly powerful and incredibly volatile. It can cut through Grisha steel and just about anything else other than balsa glass.”
“Glass?”
“The glass and the sap from the balsa neutralize the corrosion.”
“And where does one come by such a thing?”
“We can find one of the ingredients I need in an ironworks. They use the corrosive to strip oxidation off metals. The other might be tougher to come by. We’d need a quarry with a vein of auris or a similar halide compound.”
“The closest quarry is at Olendaal,” said Kaz.
“That could work. Once we have both compounds, we’ll have to be very careful with the transport,” Wylan continued. “Actually, we’ll have to be more than careful. After the reaction is completed, auric acid is basically harmless, but while it’s active … Well, it’s a good way to lose your hands.”
“So,” said Jesper, “if we get these ingredients, and manage to transport them separately, and activate this auric acid, and don’t lose a limb in the process?”
Wylan tugged at a lock of his hair. “We could burn through the safe door in a matter of minutes.”
“Without damaging the contents inside?” asked Nina.
“Hopefully.”
“Hopefully,” repeated Kaz. “I’ve worked with worse. We’ll need to find out which ships are departing for Ravka tomorrow night and get Specht started on the manifest and papers of transit. Nina, once we’ve got a vessel chosen, can your little band of refugees make it to the docks on their own or will they need their hands held for that too?”
“I’m not sure how well they know the city,” admitted Nina.
Kaz drummed his fingers over the head of his cane. “Wylan and I can tackle the safe. We can send Jesper to escort the Grisha and we can map a route so Matthias can get Kuwei to the docks. But that leaves only Nina to distract the guards and work the net for Inej at the silos. The net needs at least three people on it for it to be worth anything.”
Inej stretched, gently rolled her shoulders. It was good to be among these people again. She’d been gone for only a few days, and they were sitting in a damp mausoleum, but it still felt like a homecoming.
“I told you,” she said. “I don’t work with a net.”
12
KAZ
They stayed up planning well past midnight. Kaz was wary of the changes to the plan as well as the prospect of managing Nina’s pack of Grisha. But though he gave no indication to the others, there were elements of this new course that appealed to him. It was possible that Van Eck would piece together what the Shu were doing and go after the city’s remaining Grisha himself. They were a weapon Kaz didn’t want to see in the mercher’s arsenal.
But they couldn’t let this little rescue slow them down. With so many opponents and the stadwatch involved, they couldn’t afford it. Given enough time, the Shu would stop worrying about those dry-docked warships and the Council of Tides, and find their way to Black Veil. Kaz wanted Kuwei out of the city and removed from play as soon as possible.
At last, they put their lists and sketches aside. The wreckage of their makeshift meal was cleared from the table to avoid attracting the rats of Black Veil, and the lanterns were doused.
The others would sleep. Kaz could not. He’d meant what he’d said. Van Eck had more money, more allies, and the might of the city behind him. They couldn’t just be smarter than Van Eck, they had to be relentless. And Kaz could see what the others couldn’t. They’d won the battle today; they’d set out to get Inej back from Van Eck and they had. But the merch was still winning the war.
That Van Eck was willing to risk involving the stadwatch, and by extension the Merchant Council, meant he really believed he was invulnerable. Kaz still had the note Van Eck had sent arranging the meeting on Vellgeluk, but it was shoddy proof of the man’s schemes. He remembered what Pekka Rollins had said back at the Emerald Palace, when Kaz had claimed that the Merchant Council would never stand for Van Eck’s illegal activities. And who’s going to tell them? A canal rat from the worst slum in the Barrel? Don’t kid yourself, Brekker.
At the time, Kaz had barely been able to think beyond the red haze of anger that descended when he was in Rollins’ presence. It stripped away the reason that guided him, the patience he relied on. Around Pekka, he lost the shape of who he was—no, he lost the shape of who he’d fought to become. He wasn’t Dirtyhands or Kaz Brekker or even the toughest lieutenant in the Dregs. He was just a boy fueled by a white flame of rage, one that threatened to burn the pretense of the hard-won civility he maintained to ash.
But now, leaning on his cane among the graves of Black Veil, he could acknowledge the truth of Pekka’s words. You couldn’t go to war with an upstanding merch like Van Eck, not if you were a thug with a reputation dirtier than a stable hand’s boot sole. To win, Kaz would have to level the field. He would show the world what he already knew: Despite his soft hands and fine suits, Van Eck was a criminal, just as bad as any Barrel thug—worse, because his word was worth nothing.
Kaz didn’t hear Inej approach, he just knew when she was there, standing beside the broken columns of a white marble mausoleum. She’d found soap to wash with somewhere, and the scent of the dank rooms of Eil Komedie—that faint hint of hay and greasepaint—was gone. Her black hair shone in the moonlight, already tucked tidily away in a coil at her neck, and her stillness was so complete she might have been mistaken for one of the cemetery’s stone guardians.
“Why the net, Kaz?”
Yes, why the net? Why something that would complicate the assault he’d planned on the silos and lea
“You protect your investments.” Her voice sounded almost resigned.
“That’s right.”
“And you’re going off island.”
He should be more concerned that she could guess his next move. “Rotty says the old man’s getting restless. I need to go smooth his feathers.”
Per Haskell was still the leader of the Dregs, and Kaz knew he liked the perks of that position, but not the work that went with it. With Kaz gone for so long, things would be starting to unravel. Besides, when Haskell got antsy, he liked to do something stupid just to remind people he was in charge.
“We should get eyes on Van Eck’s house too,” said Inej.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“He’ll have strengthened his security.” The rest went unspoken. There was no one better equipped to slip past Van Eck’s defenses than the Wraith.
He should tell her to rest, tell her he would handle the surveillance on his own. Instead, he nodded and set out for one of the gondels hidden in the willows, ignoring the relief he felt when she followed.
After the raucous din of the afternoon, the canals seemed more silent than usual, the water unnaturally still.
“Do you think West Stave will be back to itself tonight?” Inej asked, voice low. She’d learned a canal rat’s caution when it came to traveling the waterways of Ketterdam.
“I doubt it. The stadwatch will be investigating, and tourists don’t come to Ketterdam for the thrill of being blown to bits.” A lot of businesses were going to lose money. Come tomorrow morning, Kaz suspected the front steps of the Stadhall would be crowded with the owners of pleasure houses and hotels demanding answers. Could be quite a scene. Good. Let the members of the Merchant Council concern themselves with problems other than Jan Van Eck and his missing son. “Van Eck will have changed things up since we lifted the DeKappel.”
“And now that he knows Wylan is with us,” agreed Inej. “Where are we going to meet the old man?”
“The Knuckle.”
They couldn’t intercept Haskell at the Slat. Van Eck would have been keeping the Dregs’ headquarters under surveillance, and now there were probably stadwatch swarming over it too. The thought of stadwatch grunts searching his rooms, digging through his few belongings, sent fury prickling over Kaz’s skin. The Slat wasn’t much, but Kaz had converted it from a leaky squat to a place you could sleep off a bender or lie low from the law without freezing your ass off in the winter or being bled by fleas in the summer. The Slat was his, no matter what Per Haskell thought.
Kaz steered the gondel into Zovercanal at the eastern edge of the Barrel. Per Haskell liked to hold court at the Fair Weather Inn on the same night every week, meeting up with his cronies to play cards and gossip. There was no way he’d miss it tonight, not when his favored lieutenant—his missing favored lieutenant—had fallen out with a member of the Merchant Council and brought so much trouble to the Dregs, not when he’d be the center of attention.
No windows faced onto the Knuckle, a crooked passage that bent between a tenement and a factory that manufactured cut-rate souvenirs. It was quiet, dimly lit, and so narrow it could barely call itself an alley—the perfect place for a jump. Though it wasn’t the safest route from the Slat to the Fair Weather, it was the most direct, and Per Haskell never could resist a shortcut.
Kaz moored the boat near a small footbridge and he and Inej took up their places in the shadows to wait, the need for silence understood. Less than twenty minutes later, a man’s silhouette appeared in the lamplight at the mouth of the alley, an absurd feather jutting from the crown of his hat.
Kaz waited until the figure was almost level with him before he stepped forward. “Haskell.”
Per Haskell whirled, pulling a pistol from his coat. He moved quickly despite his age, but Kaz had known he would be packing iron and was ready. He gave Haskell’s shoulder a quick jab with the tip of his cane, just enough to send a jolt of numbness to his hand.
Haskell grunted and the gun slipped from his grasp. Inej caught it before it could hit the ground and tossed it to Kaz.
“Brekker,” Haskell said angrily, trying to wiggle his numb arm. “Where the hell have you been? And what kind of skiv rolls his own boss in an alley?”
“I’m not robbing you. I just didn’t want you to shoot anyone before we had a chance to talk.” Kaz handed the gun back to Haskell by its grip. The old man snatched it from his palm, grizzled chin jutting out stubbornly.
“Always overstepping,” he grumbled, tucking the weapon into a pocket of his nubbly plaid jacket, unable to reach his holster with his incapacitated arm. “You know what trouble you brought down on me today, boy?”
“I do. That’s why I’m here.”
“There were stadwatch crawling all over the Slat and the Crow Club. We had to shut the whole place down, and who knows when we’ll be able to start up again. What were you thinking, kidnapping a mercher’s son? This was the big job you left town for? The one supposed to make me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams?”
“I didn’t kidnap anyone.” Not strictly true, but Kaz figured the subtleties would be lost on Per Haskell.
“Then what in Ghezen’s name is going on?” Haskell whispered furiously, spittle flying. “You’ve got my best spider,” he said, gesturing to Inej. “My best shooter, my Heartrender, my biggest bruiser—”
“Muzzen is dead.”
“Son of a bitch,” Haskell swore. “First Big Bolliger, now Muzzen. You trying to gut my whole gang?”
“No, sir.”
“Sir. What are you about, boy?”
“Van Eck is playing a fast game, but I’m still a step ahead of him.”
“Don’t look like it from here.”
“Good,” said Kaz. “Better no one sees us coming. Muzzen was a loss I didn’t anticipate, but give me a few more days and not only will the law be off your back, your coffers will be so heavy you’ll be able to fill your bathtub with gold and take a swim in it.”
Haskell’s eyes narrowed. “How much money are we talking?”
That’s the way, Kaz thought, watching greed light Haskell’s gaze, the lever at work.
“Four million kruge.”
Haskell’s eyes widened. A life of drink and hard living in the Barrel had turned the whites yellowy. “You trying to cozy me?”
“I told you this was a big haul.”
“Don’t matter how high the pile of scrub is if I’m in prison. I don’t like the law in my business.”
“I don’t either, sir.” Haskell might mock Kaz’s manners, but he knew the old man lapped up every gesture of respect, and Kaz’s pride could take it. Once he had his own share of Van Eck’s money, he wouldn’t have to obey another order or soothe Per Haskell’s vanity ever again. “I wouldn’t have gotten us into this if I didn’t know we’d come out of it clean as choirboys and rich as Saints. All I need is a little more time.”
Kaz couldn’t help but be reminded of Jesper bargaining with his father, and the thought didn’t sit well with him. Per Haskell had never cared for anyone other than himself and the next glass of lager, but he liked to think of himself as the patriarch of a big, criminally inclined family. Kaz could admit he had a fondness for the old man. He’d given Kaz a place to begin and a roof over his head—even if Kaz had been the one to make sure it didn’t leak.
The old man hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat, making a great show of considering Kaz’s offer, but Haskell’s greed was more reliable than a faithfully wound clock. Kaz knew he’d already started thinking of ways to spend the kruge.
“All right, boy,” said Haskell. “I can portion you a little more rope to hang yourself. But I find out you’re running game on me and you’ll regret it.”
Kaz schooled his features to seriousness. Haskell’s threats were almost as emp
“Of course, sir.”
Haskell snorted. “The deal is the deal,” he said. “And the Wraith stays with me.”
Kaz felt Inej stiffen by his side. “I need her for the job.”
“Use Roeder. He’s spry enough.”
“Not for this.”
Now Haskell bristled, puffing his chest out, the false sapphire of his tie pin glinting in the dim light. “You see what Pekka Rollins is up to? He just opened a new gambling hall right across from the Crow Club.” Kaz had seen it. The Kaelish Prince. Another jewel in Rollins’ empire, a massive betting palace decked out in garish green and gold as some ridiculous homage to Pekka Rollins’ homeland. “He’s muscling in on our holdings,” said Haskell. “I need a spider, and she’s the best.”
“It can wait.”
“I say it can’t. Head on down to the Gemensbank. You’ll see my name at the top of her contract, and that means I say where she goes.”
“Understood, sir,” said Kaz. “And as soon as I find her, I’ll let her know.”
“She’s right—” Haskell broke off, his jaw dropping in disbelief. “She was right here!”
Kaz forced himself not to smile. While Per Haskell had been blustering, Inej had simply melted into the shadows and silently scaled the wall. Haskell searched the length of the alley and peered up at the rooftops, but Inej was long gone.
“You bring her back here,” Haskell said furiously, “right now.”
Kaz shrugged. “You think I can climb these walls?”
“This is my gang, Brekker. She doesn’t belong to you.”
“She doesn’t belong to anyone,” Kaz said, feeling the singe of that angry white flame. “But we’ll all be back at the Slat soon enough.” Actually, Jesper would be headed out of the city with his father, Nina would be off to Ravka, Inej would be on a ship under her own command, and Kaz would be getting ready to split from Haskell forever. But the old man would have his kruge to comfort him.
“Cocky little bastard,” growled Haskell.
“Cocky little bastard who’s about to make you one of the richest bosses in the Barrel.”