Crooked Kingdom: Book 2 (Six of Crows) Read online

  One of the silo guards stepped forward—rather bravely, Nina thought, given the Dime Lions’ show of force. She couldn’t make out their exchange. A paper with a vibrant red seal changed hands. The guard gave it to his companion to read. After a moment he shrugged. And then, to Nina’s horror, the guard stepped forward and unlocked the gate. The lantern on the roof of the guardhouse flashed again. They were calling off reinforcements.

  The red seal. Van Eck’s color. These were his silos, and there was no way the guards would risk opening that gate for anyone their employer hadn’t sanctioned. The implications made her head spin. Could Jan Van Eck and Pekka Rollins be working together? If so, the Dregs’ chances of getting out of the city alive had just turned to crumbs on a cake plate.

  “Come on out, sweet Nina. Pekka’s got work for you.”

  Nina saw that the chain the boy was swinging had a heavy manacle at the end. When she’d first come to Ketterdam, Pekka Rollins had offered her employment and his dubious protection. She’d chosen to sign with the Dregs instead. It seemed Pekka was done abiding by contracts or the laws of the gangs. He was going to clap her in chains, maybe sell her to the Shu or offer her up to Van Eck so that he could dose her with parem .

  Nina was sheltered in the shadows of the second silo, but there was absolutely no way for her to move more than a few paces without exposing herself. She thought of the poison pill in her pocket.

  “Don’t make us come get you, girl.” The boy was gesturing for the other Dime Lions to fan out.

  Nina figured she had two advantages: First, the shackle at the end of that chain meant Pekka probably wanted her alive. He wouldn’t want to sacrifice a valuable Grisha Heartrender, so they wouldn’t shoot. Second, this assembly of geniuses didn’t know the parem had disrupted her powers. She might be able to buy herself and Inej some time.

  Nina shook out her hair, summoned every bit of her courage, and strolled into the open. Instantly, she heard the sound of triggers cocking.

  “Easy now,” she said, planting a hand on one hip. “I’m not going to be much good to Pekka if you plug me full of holes like the top of a saltshaker.”

  “Well, hello, Grisha girl. You gonna make this fun for us?”

  Depends on your definition. “What’s your name, handsome?”

  The boy smiled, revealing a gold tooth and a surprisingly charming dimple. “Eamon.”

  “That’s a nice Kaelish name. Ken ye hom? ”

  “Ma was Kaelish. I don’t speak that gibber.”

  “Well, how about you get your friends here to relax and lower those weapons so I can teach you some new words.”

  “I don’t think so. I know the way them Heartrender powers work. Not letting you get hold of my insides.”

  “Shame,” Nina said. “Listen, Eamon, there’s no need for trouble to night. I just want to know Pekka’s terms. If I’m going to cross Kaz, I need to know the pain is worth the price—”

  “Kaz Brekker’s good as dead, darlin’. And Pekka ain’t offering no terms. You’re coming with us, in chains or out.”

  Nina raised her arms and saw the men around her stiffen, ready to fire, regardless of Pekka’s orders. She turned the movement into a lazy stretch. “Eamon, you do know that before you clap me in those chains I could turn half these gents’ internal organs to goo.”

  “You’re not fast enough.”

  “I’m fast enough to make sure you never”—her eyes gave a meaningful slide below his belt buckle—“raise a flag on West Stave again.”

  Now Eamon paled. “You can’t do that.”

  Nina cracked her knuckles. “Can’t I?”

  A soft clang sounded from somewhere above them, and they all pointed their guns skyward. Damn it, Inej, keep quiet. But when Nina looked up, her thoughts stuttered to a terrified halt. Inej was back on the wire. And she wasn’t alone.

  For a moment, Nina thought she might be hallucinating as she watched the figure in white follow Inej onto the wire. She looked like a phantom floating in the air above them. Then she hurled something through the air. Nina caught a glint of metal. She didn’t see it hit, but she saw Inej’s steps falter. Inej righted herself, her posture ruthless, arms extended for balance.

  There had to be a way to help her. Nina reached out to the girl in white with her power, searching for her pulse, the fiber of her muscles, something she could control, but again there was that terrible blindness, that nothingness.

  “Not gonna help your friend?” Eamon said.

  “She can manage for herself,” said Nina.

  Eamon smirked. “You’re not nearly as tough as we heard. Big talk, no action.” He turned to his crew. “I buy drinks all night for the first one to grab her.”

  They didn’t rush her. They weren’t foolish enough for that. They advanced slowly, guns raised. Nina threw her hands up. They stopped, wary. But when nothing happened, she saw them exchange glances, a few smiles, and now they were coming faster, losing their fear, ready to take their reward.

  Nina risked a glance upward. Inej was still somehow keeping her balance. She seemed to be attempting to make her way back to the first silo, but she’d clearly been injured and her walk was unsteady.

  The net. But it was no good to Nina alone. If she had a bit of parem , just a taste of it, she could force these big idiots to help her. They’d obey her without thinking.

  Her mind reached out, grasping for something, anything. She would not just stand here helpless to be taken captive and watch Inej die. But all she felt was a great black void. There were no convenient bone shards, no dust to seize. The world that had once teemed with life, with heartbeats, breath, the rush of blood, had been stripped bare. It was all black desert, starless sky, barren earth.

  One of the Dime Lions rushed forward and then they were all lunging at her, grabbing onto her arms, dragging her toward Eamon, whose face split with a grin, his dimple curving in a half moon.

  Nina released a howl of pure rage, thrashing like a wild animal. She was not helpless. She refused to be. I know no fiercer warrior, powers or not.

  Then she felt it—there, in that black desert, a pocket of cold so deep it burned. There, past the silos, in the wedge of the canal, on the way to the harbor—the sickboat, piled high with bodies. A throb of recognition pulsed through her. She didn’t sense heartbeats or blood flow, but she could feel something else, something other. She thought of the bone shards, remembered the comfort she’d felt on Black Veil, surrounded by graves.

  Eamon tried to clap one of the shackles onto her wrist.

  “Let’s put the collar on her too!” another Dime Lion shouted.

  She felt a hand in her hair, her head wrenched back to expose her neck. Nina knew what she was thinking was madness, but she was out of sane choices. With all her remaining strength, she kicked hard at Eamon, breaking his grip. She threw her arms out in a wide arc, focusing this strange new awareness, and she felt the bodies on the barge rise. She clenched her fists. Come to me.

  The Dime Lions seized her wrists. Eamon struck her across the mouth, but she kept her fists clenched, her mind focused. This wasn’t the exhilaration she’d felt on parem . That had been heat, fire, light. This was a cold flame, one that burned low and blue. She felt the corpses rise, one after another, answering her call. Nina was conscious of hands on her, chains being lashed around her wrists, but the cold was deeper now, a fast-flowing winter river, black rapids jagged with broken ice.

  Nina heard screaming, the rattle of gunfire, and then the twist of metal. The hands on her loosened, and the chains hit the cobblestones with an almost musical jangle. Nina drew her arms toward her, plunging further into the cold of the river.

  “What the hell,” said Eamon, turning toward the guardhouse. “What the hell.”

  The Dime Lions were backing up now, mission forgotten, terror on their faces, and Nina could see exactly why. A line of people were pushing on the fence, rocking it on its posts. Some were old, some young, but all of them were beautiful—cheeks flushed, l
ips rosy, hair bright with shine and moving in waves around their faces with the gentle sway of something that grew underwater. They were lovely and they were horrible, because while some of them bore no signs of injury, one had brown blood and vomit splashed all over her dress, another bore a puncture wound gone black with decay. Two were naked and one had a deep, wide gash across her stomach, the plump pink skin falling forward in a flap. All of their eyes shone black, the glassy slate of winter water.

  Nina felt a wave of nausea overtake her. She felt strange and a little shameful, as if she was looking into a window she had no right to peek through. But she was out of options. And the truth was, she did not want to stop. She flexed her fingers.

  The fence crashed forward in a harsh screech of tearing metal. The Dime Lions opened fire, but the corpses kept coming, without interest or fear.

  “It’s her!” Eamon screamed, stumbling backward, falling, dragging himself onto his knees as his men fled into the night. “They’re coming for the Grisha bitch!”

  “Bet you’re wishing we’d had that talk now,” Nina growled. But she didn’t care about the Dime Lions.

  She looked up. Inej was still on the wire, but the girl in white was on the roof of the second silo and was reaching for the clamp.

  The net , she demanded. Now. The corpses moved in a blurry burst of speed, rushing forward, then suddenly halting, as if awaiting instruction. She gathered her concentration and willed them to obey, shoving all her strength and life into their bodies. In seconds they had the net in their hands, and they were running, so fast Nina could not track them.

  The high wire went slack. Inej fell. Nina screamed.

  Inej’s body struck the net, bounced high, struck the net again.

  Nina ran to her. “Inej!”

  Her body lay in the center of the net, pocked by wicked silver stars, blood oozing from the wounds.

  Set her down , Nina commanded, and the corpses obeyed, lowering the net to the paving stones. Nina stumbled to Inej’s side and went to her knees. “Inej?”

  Inej threw her arms around Nina.

  “Never, ever do that again,” Nina sobbed.

  “A net?” said a merry voice. “That seems unfair.”

  Inej stiffened. The girl in white had reached the bottom of the second silo and was striding toward them.

  Nina’s arms shot out and the corpses stepped in front of her and Inej. “You sure you want this fight, snowflake?”

  The girl narrowed her beautiful eyes. “I bested you,” she said to Inej. “You know I did.”

  “You had a good night,” Inej replied, but her voice sounded weak as worn thread.

  The girl looked at the army of decaying bodies arrayed before her, appeared to assess her odds. She bowed. “We’ll meet again, Wraith.” She turned in the direction Eamon and the rest of the Dime Lions had fled, vaulted over the remnants of the fence, and was gone.

  “Someone likes drama,” Nina said. “I mean really, who wears white to a knife fight?”

  “Dunyasha, the White Blade of something or other. She really wants to kill me. Possibly everyone.”

  “Can you walk?”

  Inej nodded, though her face looked ashen. “Nina, are these people … are they dead?”

  “When you put it that way, it sounds creepy.”

  “But you didn’t use—”

  “No. No parem . I don’t know what this is.”

  “Can Grisha even—”

  “I don’t know.” Now that the fear of the ambush and Inej’s fall were abating, she felt a kind of disgust. What had she just done? What had she tampered with?

  Nina remembered asking one of her teachers at the Little Palace where Grisha power came from. She’d been little more than a child then, awed by the older Grisha who came and went from the palace grounds on important missions.

  Our power connects us to life in ways ordinary people can never understand , her teacher had said. That’s why using our gift makes us stronger instead of depleting us. We are tied to the power of creation itself, the making at the heart of the world. For Corporalki, that bond is woven even more tightly, because we deal in life and the taking of it.

  The teacher had raised his hands, and Nina felt her pulse slow just slightly. The other students had released gasps and looked around at one another, all of them experiencing the same thing. Do you feel that? the teacher asked. All your hearts, beating in shared time, bound to the rhythm of the world?

  It had been the strangest sensation, the feeling of her body dissolving, as if they were not many students wriggling in their classroom chairs, but one creature, with a single heart, a single purpose. It had lasted only moments, but she’d never forgotten that sense of connection, the sudden understanding that her power would mean she was never alone.

  But the power she’d used tonight? It was nothing like that. It was a product of parem , not the making at the heart of the world. It was a mistake.

  There would be time to worry later. “We need to get out of here,” Nina said. She helped Inej to her feet, then looked at the bodies surrounding them. “Saints, they smell awful.”

  “Nina, what if they can hear you?”

  “Can you hear me?” she asked. But the corpses did not respond, and when she reached out to them with her power, they didn’t feel alive. There was something here, though, something that spoke to her in a way the living no longer could. She thought again of the icy river. She could still feel it around her, around everything, but now it moved in slow eddies.

  “What are you going to do with them?” asked Inej.

  Nina gave a helpless shrug. “Put them back where they were, I suppose?” She raised her hands. Go , she told them as clearly as she could, be at rest.

  They moved again, a sudden flurry that brought a prayer to Inej’s lips. Nina watched them fade, dim shapes in the dark.

  Inej gave a slight shudder, then plucked a spiked silver star from her shoulder and let it drop to the ground with a loud plink . The bleeding seemed to have slowed, but she definitely needed bandages. “Let’s go before the stadwatch show up,” she said.

  “Where?” Nina asked as they set out for the canal. “If Pekka Rollins found us—”

  Inej’s steps slowed as reality set in. “If Black Veil is compromised, Kaz … Kaz told me where to go if things went sour. But …”

  The words hung in the air between them. Pekka Rollins entering the field meant much more than a foiled plan.

  What if Black Veil was blown? What if something had happened to Matthias? Would Pekka Rollins spare his life or simply shoot first and claim his bounty?

  The Grisha. What if Pekka had followed Jesper and Matthias to the embassy? What if they’d set out for the docks with the refugees and been captured? Again she thought of the yellow pill in her pocket. She thought of Tamar’s ferocious golden eyes, Zoya’s imperious gaze, Genya’s teasing laugh. They had trusted her. If something had happened to them, she would never forgive herself.

  As Nina and Inej traced their steps back to the quay where their boat was moored, she spared one glance at the barge where the last of the corpses was lying down, shifting into place. They looked different now, their color returning to the ashy gray and mottled white that she associated with death. But maybe death wasn’t just one thing.

  “Where do we go?” Nina asked.

  At that moment, they saw two figures racing toward them. Inej reached for her knives and Nina raised her arms, prepared to call her strange soldiers once more. She knew it would be easier this time.

  Kaz and Wylan appeared in the light from a streetlamp, their clothes rumpled, their hair covered in bits of plaster—and what might have been gravy. Kaz was leaning heavily on his cane, his pace unrelenting, the sharp features of his face set in determined lines.

  “We’ll fight our way out together,” Inej whispered.

  Nina glanced from Inej to Kaz and saw they both wore the same expression. Nina knew that look. It came after the shipwreck, when the tide moved against you and t
he sky had gone dark. It was the first sight of land, the hope of shelter and even salvation that might await you on a distant shore.

  I ’m going to die and there will be no one to help her. No one to even remember Marya Hendriks.

  Wylan wanted to be brave, but he was cold and bruised, and worse—he was surrounded by the bravest people he knew and all of them seemed badly shaken.

  They made slow progress through the canals, pausing under bridges and in dark wells of shadow to wait as squads of stadwatch boots thundered overhead or along the waterways. They were out in force tonight, their boats cruising along slowly, bright lanterns at their prows. Something had changed in the short time since the showdown on Goedmedbridge. The city had come alive, and it was angry.

  “The Grisha—” Nina had attempted.

  But Kaz had cut her off quickly. “They’re either safe at the embassy or beyond our help. They can fend for themselves. We’re going to ground.”

  And then Wylan knew just how much trouble they were in, because Nina hadn’t argued. She’d simply put her head in her hands and gone silent.

  “They’ll be all right,” said Inej, placing an arm around her shoulders. “ He’ll be all right.” But her movements were tentative, and Wylan could see blood on her clothes.

  After that, no one spoke a word. Kaz and Rotty rowed only sporadically, steering them into the quieter, narrower canals, letting them drift silently whenever possible, until they rounded a bend near Schoonstraat and Kaz said, “Stop.” He and Rotty dug in their oars, bringing them flush with the side of the canal, tucked behind the bulk of a vendor’s boat. Whatever the floating shop sold, its stalls had been locked tight to protect its stock.

  Up ahead, they could see stadwatch swarming over a bridge, two of their boats obscuring the passage beneath.

  “They’re setting up blockades,” said Kaz.

  They ditched the boat there and continued on foot.

  Wylan knew they were headed to another safe house, but Kaz had said it himself: There is no safe. Where could they possibly hide? Pekka Rollins was working with Wylan’s father. Between them they had to own half the city. Wylan would be captured. And then what? No one would believe he was Jan Van Eck’s son. Wylan Van Eck might be despised by his father, but he had rights no Shu criminal could hope for. Would he end up in Hellgate? Would his father find a way to see him executed?