Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
“Maybe we could find a quiet corner?” Nina suggested.
Brum preened, his chest puffing out. “This way, dirre,” he said using the Kaelish word for sweetheart.
He led her down a deserted hall, unlocking the door with his circular key.
“This should do,” he said with a bow. “A bit of privacy and a bit of charm.”
Nina winked and sashayed past him. She’d expected some kind of office or retiring room for the guards. But there was no desk, no cot. The room was completely bare—except for the drain at the center of the floor.
She whirled in time to see the cell door slam shut.
“No!” she shouted, hands scrabbling over the surface of the door. It had no handle.
Brum’s face appeared in the window. His expression was smug, his eyes cold. “I may have exaggerated the charm, but there is plenty of privacy, Nina.”
She recoiled.
“That is your name, isn’t it?” he said. “Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize you? I remember your stubborn little face from the slaving ship, and we have files on every one of Ravka’s active Grisha. I make it my business to know them all—even the ones I hope have been swallowed by the sea.”
Nina lifted her hands.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Burst my eyes in their sockets. Crush my heart in my chest. That door won’t unlock, and in the time it takes you to tamper with my pulse, I’ll press this button.” She couldn’t see the brass button, but she could imagine his finger hovering over it. “Do you know what it does? You’ve seen the effects of jurda parem. Would you like to feel them, too? It is effective as a powder, but even more so as a gas.”
Nina froze.
“Smart girl.” His grin lifted the hair on her arms. I will not beg, she told herself. But she knew she would. Once the drug was in her system, she wouldn’t be able to stop it. She took a breath of clean air. A futile gesture, even childish, but she was determined to hold it as long as she could.
Then Brum paused. “No. This vengeance is not mine to take. There is someone else who owes you so much more.” He vanished from the window and a moment later, Matthias’ face filled the glass. He looked back at her, his eyes hard.
“How?” Nina whispered, not even sure if they could hear her through the door.
“Did you really believe I’d turn against my nation?” Matthias’ voice was thick with disgust. “That I’d give up the cause I devoted my life to? I came to warn Brum as soon as I could.”
“But you said—”
“Country before self, Zenik. It’s something you’ve never understood.”
Nina pressed a hand to her mouth.
“I may never be drüskelle again,” he said. “I may live always with the charge of ‘slaver’ around my neck, but I’ll find another way to serve Fjerda. And I’ll get to see you dosed with jurda parem. I’ll get to see you mow down your own kind and beg for the next fix. I’ll get to see you betray the people you love as you asked me to betray my own.”
“Matthias—”
He slammed his fist against the window. “Do not speak my name.” Then he smiled, a smile as cold and unforgiving as the northern sea. “Welcome to the Ice Court, Nina Zenik. Now our debt is paid.”
From somewhere outside, the bells of Black Protocol began to ring.
35
MATTHIAS
ELEVEN BELLS
“She’s beautiful,” Brum said, “in an exaggerated way. You were strong not to be lured by her.”
I was lured, though, thought Matthias. And it wasn’t just her beauty.
“The alarm—” Matthias said.
“Her compatriots, no doubt.”
“But—”
“Matthias, my men will take care of it. The Ice Court is secure.” He glanced back at Nina’s cell. “We could press the button right now.”
“Won’t she be a threat?”
“We’ve combined the jurda parem with a sedative that makes them more biddable. We’re still working out the correct ratios, but we’ll get there. Besides, by the second dose, the addiction does the work of controlling them.”
“Not the first dose?”
“Depends on the Grisha.”
“How many times have you done this?”
Brum laughed. “I haven’t counted. But trust me, she’ll be so desperate for more jurda parem, she won’t dare act against us. It’s a remarkable transformation. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
Matthias’ stomach clenched. “You’ve kept the scientist alive then?”
“He’s done his best to replicate the process of creating the drug, but it’s a complicated thing. Some batches work; others are no better than dust. As long as he can be of service, he lives.” Brum placed his hand on Matthias’ shoulder, his harsh gaze softening. “I can scarcely believe you’re really here, alive, standing before me. I thought you were dead.”
“I believed the same of you.”
“When I saw you in that ballroom, I barely recognized you, even in that uniform. You are so changed—”
“I had to let the witch tailor me.”
Brum’s revulsion was obvious. “You allowed her to—”
Somehow, seeing that response in someone else made Matthias ashamed of the way he’d reacted to Nina.
“It had to be done,” he said. “I needed her to believe I was committed to her cause.”
“That’s all over now, Matthias. You are finally safe and among your own kind.” Brum frowned. “Something is troubling you.”
Matthias looked into the cell next to Nina’s, then another, and another, moving down the hall as Brum followed. Some of the captive Grisha were agitated, pacing. Others had their faces pressed up against the glass. Others simply lay on the floor. “You can’t have known about parem for more than a month. How long has this facility been here?”
“I had it built almost fifteen years ago with the blessing of the king and his council.”
Matthias drew up short. “Fifteen years? Why?”
“We needed someplace to put the Grisha after the trials.”
“After? When Grisha are found guilty, they’re sentenced to death.”
Brum shrugged. “It is still a death sentence, just one a little longer in the making. We discovered long ago that the Grisha could prove a useful resource.”
A resource. “You told me they were to be eradicated. That they were a blight on the natural world.”
“And they are—when they attempt to masquerade as men. They aren’t capable of right thinking, of human morality. They are meant to be controlled.”
“That’s why you wanted parem?” Matthias asked incredulously.
“We have tried our own methods for years with limited success.”
“But you’ve seen what jurda parem can do, what Grisha can do when in its grip—”
“A gun is not evil. Nor is a blade. Jurda parem ensures obedience. It makes Grisha what they were always meant to be.”
“A Second Army?” Matthias asked, his voice thick with scorn.
“An army is made of soldiers. These creatures were born to be weapons. They were born to serve the soldiers of Djel.” Brum squeezed his shoulder. “Ah, Matthias, how I’ve missed you. Your faith was always so pure. I’m glad you’re reluctant to embrace this measure, but this is our chance to strike a deathblow. Do you know why Grisha are so hard to kill? Because they’re not of this world. But they are very good at killing each other. They call it ‘like calls to like.’ Wait until you see all we’ve achieved, the weapons their Fabrikators have helped us develop.”
Matthias looked back down the hall. “Nina Zenik spent a year in Kerch trying to bargain for my freedom. I’m not sure those are the actions of a monster.”
“Can a viper lie still before it strikes? Can a wild dog lick your hand before it snaps at your neck? A Grisha may be capable of kindness, but that does not change her fundamental nature.”
Matthias considered this. He thought of Nina standing terrified in that cell as the door slammed sh
“What is the Shu scientist like?” he asked Brum.
“Stubborn. Still grieving his father.”
Matthias knew nothing of Yul-Bayur’s father, but there was a more important question to ask. “Is he secure?”
“The treasury is the safest place on the island.”
“You keep him here with the Grisha?”
Brum nodded. “The main vault was converted to a laboratory for him.”
“And you’re sure it’s safe?”
“I have the master key,” said Brum, patting the disk hanging from his neck, “and he’s guarded night and day. Only a select few even know he’s here. It’s late, and I need to make sure Black Protocol has been addressed, but if you like, I’ll take you to see him tomorrow.” Brum placed his arm around Matthias. “And tomorrow we’ll deal with your return and reinstatement.”
“I still stand accused of slave trading.”
“We’ll get the girl to sign a statement recanting the slaving charges easily enough. Believe me, once she’s had her first taste of jurda parem, she’ll do anything you ask and more. There will be a hearing, but I swear you will wear drüskelle colors again, Matthias.”
Drüskelle colors. Matthias had worn them with such pride. And the things he’d felt for Nina had caused him so much shame. It was still with him, maybe it always would be. He’d spent too many years full of hate for it to vanish overnight. But now the shame was an echo, and all he felt was regret—for the time he’d wasted, for the pain he’d caused, and yes, even now, for what he was about to do.
He turned to Brum, this man who had become father and mentor to him. When he’d lost his family, it had been Brum who had recruited him for the drüskelle. Matthias had been young, angry, completely unskilled. But he’d given what was left of his broken heart to the cause. A false cause. A lie. When had he seen it? When he’d helped Nina bury her friend? When he’d fought beside her? Or had it been long before—when she’d slept in his arms that first night on the ice? When she’d saved him from the shipwreck?
Nina had wronged him, but she’d done it to protect her people. She’d hurt him, but she’d attempted everything in her power to make things right. She’d shown him in a thousand ways that she was honorable and strong and generous and very human, maybe more vividly human than anyone he’d ever known. And if she was, then Grisha weren’t inherently evil. They were like anyone else—full of the potential to do great good, and also great harm. To ignore that would make Matthias the monster.
“You taught me so much,” Matthias said. “You taught me to value honor and strength. You gave me the tools for vengeance when I needed them most.”
“And with those tools we will build a great future, Matthias. Fjerda’s time has finally come.”
Matthias returned his mentor’s embrace.
“I don’t know if you’re wrong about the Grisha,” he said gently. “I just know you’re wrong about her.”
He held Brum tight, in a hold Matthias had learned in the echoing training rooms of the drüskelle stronghold, rooms he would never see again. He held Brum as he struggled briefly and as his body went slack.
When Matthias pulled away, Brum had slipped into unconsciousness, but Matthias did not think he imagined the rage that lingered on his mentor’s features. He made himself memorize it. It was right that he should remember that look. He was a true traitor at last, and he should carry the burden of it.
When they’d entered the great ballroom, Matthias and Kaz had staked out a shadowy nook near the stairs. They’d watched Nina enter in that outrageous gown of shimmering scales—and then Matthias had spotted Brum. The shock of seeing his mentor alive had been followed by the terrible realization that Brum was following Nina.
“Brum knows,” he’d said to Kaz. “We have to help her.”
“Be smart, Helvar. You can save her and get us Yul-Bayur, too.”
Matthias had nodded and plunged into the crowd. “Decency,” he’d heard Kaz mutter behind him. “Like cheap cologne.”
He’d waylaid Brum by the stairs. “Sir—”
“Not now.”
Matthias had been forced to step right in front of him. “Sir.”
Brum had halted then. His face had shown anger at being stopped, then confusion, and then wondering disbelief. “Matthias?” he’d whispered.
“Please, sir,” Matthias had said hurriedly. “Just give me a moment to explain. There is a Grisha here tonight intent on assassinating one of your prisoners. If you’ll bear with me, I can explain the plot and how it can be stopped.”
Brum had signaled to another drüskelle to watch Nina, and shepherded Matthias into an alcove beneath the stairs. “Speak,” he’d said, and Matthias had told him the truth—a bare sliver of it: his escape from the shipwreck, his near drowning, Nina’s false charge of slavery, his captivity in Hellgate, and then the promise of the pardon. He’d blamed it all on Nina, and said nothing of Kaz or the others. When Brum had asked if Nina was alone in her mission, he’d simply said he didn’t know.
“She believes I’m waiting to escort her over the secret bridge. I broke away as soon as I could and came to find you.”
A part of him was disgusted by how easily the lies came to his lips, but he would not leave Nina at Brum’s mercy.
He looked at Brum now, mouth slightly open in sleep. One of the things he’d respected most in his mentor was his mercilessness, his willingness to do hard things for the sake of the cause. But Brum had taken pleasure in what he’d done to these Grisha, what he would have gladly done to Nina and Jesper. Maybe the hard things had never been difficult for Brum the way they’d been for Matthias. They had not been a sacred duty, performed reluctantly for the sake of Fjerda. They had been a joy.
Matthias slipped the master key from around Brum’s neck and dragged him into an empty cell, propping him up against the wall in a seated position. Matthias hated to leave him there, chin flopped on his chest, legs sprawled in front of him, without dignity. He hated the thought of the shame that would come to him, a warrior betrayed by someone to whom he’d given his trust and affection. He knew that pain well.
Matthias pressed his forehead once, briefly, against Brum’s. He knew his mentor could not hear him, but he spoke the words anyway. “The life you live, the hate you feel—it’s poison. I can drink it no longer.”
Matthias locked the cell door and hurried down the passage toward Nina, toward something more.
36
JESPER
ELEVEN BELLS
Jesper waited by the slit in the wall, a sniper’s bolt, the perfect place for a boy like him. What did we just do? he wondered. But his blood was alive, his rifle was at his shoulder, the world made sense again.
So where were the guards? Jesper had expected them to rush into the courtyard as soon as he and Wylan triggered Black Protocol.
“I’ve got it!” Wylan called from behind him.
Jesper hated to give up the high ground before they knew what they were up against, but they were short on time, and they needed to get to the roof. “All right, let’s go.”
They raced down the stairs. As they were about to burst from the gatehouse archway, six guards came running into the courtyard. Jesper stopped short and held out his arm.
“Turn back,” he said to Wylan.
But Wylan was pointing across the courtyard. “Look.”
The guards weren’t moving toward the gatehouse; all their attention was focused on a man in olive drab clothing standing by one of the stone slabs. That uniform …
A woman walked through the wall, a figure of shimmering mist that solidified beside the stranger. She wore the same olive drab.
“Tidemakers,” Wylan said.
“The Shu.”
The guards opened fire, and the Tidemakers vanished, then reappeared behind the soldiers an
The guards screamed and dropped their weapons. A red haze formed around them. The haze grew denser as the guards shrieked, their flesh seeming to shrink against their bones.
“It’s their blood,” Jesper said, bile rising in his throat. “All Saints, the Tidemakers are draining their blood.” They were being squeezed dry.
The blood formed floating pools in the vague shapes of men, slick shadows that hovered in the air, the wet red of garnets, then splashed to the ground at the same time as the guards collapsed, flaccid skin hanging from their desiccated bodies in grotesque folds.
“Back up the stairs,” whispered Jesper. “We need to get out of here.”
But it was too late. The female Tidemaker disappeared. In the next breath, she was on the stairs. She balanced her weight on the banisters with her hands and planted her boots against Wylan’s chest, kicking him backward into Jesper. They tumbled onto the black stone of the courtyard.
The rifle was jerked from Jesper’s arms and tossed aside with a clatter. He tried to stand, and the Tidemaker cuffed him on the back of his head. Then he was lying next to Wylan as the Tidemakers towered above them. They lifted their hands, and Jesper saw the faintest red haze appear over him. He was going to be drained. He felt his strength start to ebb. He looked to the left but the rifle was too far away.
“Jesper,” Wylan gasped. “Metal. Fabrikate.” And then he started to scream.
In a flash, Jesper understood. This was a fight he couldn’t win with a gun. There was no time to think, no time to doubt.
He ignored the pain tearing over his skin and focused all his attention on the bits of metal clinging to his clothes, the shavings and tiny particles from the severed link in the gate chain. He wasn’t a good Fabrikator, but they didn’t expect him to be a Fabrikator at all. He thrust his hands forward, and the bits of metal flew from his uniform, a gleaming cloud that hung in the air for the briefest second then shot toward the Tidemakers.
The female Tidemaker screamed as the metal burrowed into her flesh, and she tried to turn to mist. The other Tidemaker did the same, features liquefying, but then solidifying once more, his face gray, speckled with bits of metal. Jesper didn’t relent. He drove the metal home, into their organs, questing deeper. He could feel them attempting to manipulate the particles of metal. If the problem had been a bullet or a blade, they might have succeeded, but the flecks and shavings of steel were too many and too small. The woman clutched her stomach and fell to her knees. The man screamed, coughing up clotted black specks of metal and blood.