Six of Crows (12 page)

“Saints, I hate this thing,” she said, kicking the
kefta
away and pulling a threadbare dressing gown from a drawer.

“What’s wrong with it?” Kaz asked.

“It isn’t made right. And it itches.” The
kefta
was of Kerch manufacture, not Ravkan – a costume, not a uniform. Kaz knew Nina never wore it on the streets; it was simply too risky for Grisha. Her membership in the Dregs meant anyone acting against her would risk retribution from the gang, but payback wouldn’t matter much to Nina if she was on a slaver ship bound for who knew where.

Nina threw herself into a chair at the table and wriggled her feet out of her jewelled slippers, digging her toes into the plush white carpet. “Ahhh,” she said contentedly. “So much better.” She shoved one of the cakes from the coffee service into her mouth and mumbled, “What do you want, Kaz?”

“You have crumbs on your cleavage.”

“Don’t care,” she said, taking another bite of cake. “So hungry.”

Kaz shook his head, amused and impressed at how quickly Nina dropped the wise Grisha priestess act. She’d missed her true calling on the stage. “Was that Van Aakster, the merch?” Kaz asked.

“Yes.”

“His wife died a month ago, and his business has been a wreck since. Now that he’s visiting you, can we expect a turnaround?”

Nina didn’t need a bed because she specialised in emotions. She dealt in joy, calm, confidence.

Most Grisha Corporalki focused on the body – to kill or to cure – but Nina had needed a job that would keep her in Ketterdam and out of trouble. So instead of risking her life and making major money as a mercenary, she slowed heartbeats, eased breathing, relaxed muscles. She had a lucrative side business as a Tailor, seeing to the wrinkles and jowls of the wealthy Kerch, but her chief source of income came from altering moods. People came to her lonely, grieving, sad for no reason, and left buoyed, their anxieties eased. The effect didn’t last long, but sometimes just the illusion of happiness was enough to make her clients feel like they could face another day. Nina claimed it had something to do with glands, but Kaz didn’t care about the specifics as long as she showed up when he needed her and she paid Per Haskell his percentage on time.

“I expect you’ll see a change,” Nina said. She finished off the last cake, licking her fingers with relish, then set the tray outside the door and rang for a maid. “Van Aakster started coming at the end of last week and has been here every day since.”

“Excellent.” Kaz made a mental note to buy up some of the low stock in Van Aakster ’s company.

Even if the man’s mood shift was the result of Nina’s handiwork, business would pick up. He hesitated then said, “You make him feel better, ease his woe and all that … but could you compel him to do something? Maybe make him forget his wife?”

“Alter the pathways in his mind? Don’t be absurd.”

“The brain is just another organ,” Kaz said, quoting Van Eck.

“Yes, but it’s an incredibly complex one. Controlling or altering another person’s thoughts …

well, it’s not like lowering a pulse rate or releasing a chemical to improve someone’s mood. There are too many variables. No Grisha is capable of it.”

Yet
, Kaz amended. “So you treat the symptom, not the cause.”

She shrugged. “He’s avoiding the grief, not treating it. If I’m his solution, he’ll never really get over her death.”

“Will you send him on his way then? Advise him to find a new wife and stop darkening your door?”

She ran a brush through her light brown hair and glanced at him in the mirror. “Does Per Haskell have plans to forgive my debt?”

“None at all.”

“Well then Van Aakster must be allowed to grieve in his own way. I have another client scheduled in a half hour, Kaz. What business?”

“Your client will wait. What do you know about
jurda parem
?”

Nina shrugged. “There are rumours, but they sound like nonsense to me.” With the exception of the Council of Tides, the few Grisha working in Ketterdam all knew each other and exchanged information readily. Most were on the run from something, eager to avoid drawing the attention of slavers or interest from the Ravkan government.

“They aren’t just rumours.”

“Squallers flying? Tidemakers turning to mist?”

“Fabrikators making gold from lead.” He reached into his pocket and tossed the lump of yellow to her. “It’s real.”

“Fabrikators make textiles. They fuss around with metals and fabrics. They can’t turn one thing into another.” She held the lump up to the light. “You could have got this anywhere,” she said, just as he had argued to Van Eck a few hours earlier.

Without being invited, Kaz sat down on the plush settee and stretched out his bad leg. “
Jurda parem
is real, Nina, and if you’re still the good little Grisha soldier I think you are, you’ll want to hear what it does to people like you.”

She turned the lump of gold over her in her hands, then wrapped her dressing gown more tightly around her and curled up at the end of the settee. Again, Kaz marvelled at the transformation. In these rooms, she played the part her clients wanted to see – the powerful Grisha, serene in her knowledge.

But sitting there with her brow furrowed and her feet tucked under her, she looked like what she truly was: a girl of seventeen, raised in the sheltered luxury of the Little Palace, far from home and barely getting by every day.

“Tell me,” she said.

Kaz talked. He held back on the specifics of Van Eck’s proposal, but he told her about Bo Yul-Bayur,
jurda parem
, and the addictive properties of the drug, placing particular emphasis on the recent theft of Ravkan military documents.

“If this is all true, then Bo Yul-Bayur needs to be eliminated.”

“That is not the job, Nina.”

“This isn’t about money, Kaz.”

It was always about money. But Kaz knew a different kind of pressure was required. Nina loved her country and loved her people. She still believed in the future of Ravka and in the Second Army, the Grisha military elite that had nearly disintegrated during the civil war. Nina’s friends back in Ravka believed she was dead, a victim of Fjerdan witchhunters, and for now, she wanted it to stay that way.

But Kaz knew she hoped to return one day.

“Nina, we’re going to retrieve Bo Yul-Bayur, and I need a Corporalnik to do it. I want you on my crew.”

“Wherever he’s hiding out, once you find him, letting him live would be the most outrageous kind of irresponsibility. My answer is no.”

“He isn’t hiding out. The Fjerdans have him at the Ice Court.”

Nina paused. “Then he’s as good as dead.”

“The Merchant Council doesn’t think so. They wouldn’t be going to this trouble or offering up this kind of reward if they thought he’d been neutralised. Van Eck was worried. I could see it.”

“The mercher you spoke to?”

“Yes. He claims their intelligence is good. If it’s not, well, I’ll take the hit. But if Bo Yul-Bayur is alive,
someone
is going to try to break him out of the Ice Court. Why shouldn’t it be us?”

“The Ice Court,” Nina repeated, and Kaz knew she’d begun to put the pieces together. “You don’t just need a Corporalnik, do you?”

“No. I need someone who knows the Court inside and out.”

She leaped to her feet and began pacing, hands on hips, dressing gown flapping. “You’re a little skiv, you know that? How many times have I come to you, begging you to help Matthias? And now

that you want something …”

“Per Haskell isn’t running a charity.”

“Don’t put this on the old man,” she snapped. “If you’d wanted to help me, you know you could have.”

“And why would I do that?”

She whirled on him. “Because … because …”

“When have I ever done something for nothing, Nina?”

She opened her mouth, closed it again.

“Do you know how many favours I would have had to call in? How many bribes I’d have had to

pay out to get Matthias Helvar out of prison? The price was too high.”

“And now?” she managed, her eyes still blazing anger.

“Now, Helvar ’s freedom is worth something.”

“It—”

He held up a hand to cut her off. “Worth something
to me
.”

Nina pressed her fingers to her temples. “Even if you could get to him, Matthias would never agree to help you.”

“It’s just a question of leverage, Nina.”

“You don’t know him.”

“Don’t I? He’s a person like any other, driven by greed and pride and pain. You should understand that better than anyone.”

“Helvar is driven by honour and only honour. You can’t bribe or bully that.”

“That may have been true once, Nina, but it’s been a very long year. Helvar is much changed.”

“You’ve seen him?” Her green eyes were wide, eager.
There
, thought Kaz,
the Barrel hasn’t beaten
the hope out of you yet.

“I have.”

Nina took a deep, shuddering breath. “He wants his revenge, Kaz.”

“That’s what he wants, not what he needs,” said Kaz. “Leverage is all about knowing the difference.”

The sick feeling in Nina’s stomach had nothing to do with the rocking of the rowboat. She tried to breathe deeply, to focus on the lights of the Ketterdam harbour disappearing behind them and the steady splash of the oars in the water. Beside her, Kaz adjusted his mask and cloak, while Muzzen rowed with relentless and aggressive speed, driving them closer to Terrenjel, one of Kerch’s tiny outlying islands, closer to Hellgate and Matthias.

Fog lay low over the water, damp and curling. It carried the smell of tar and machinery from the shipyards on Imperjum, and something else – the sweet stink of burning bodies from the Reaper ’s Barge, where Ketterdam disposed of the dead who couldn’t afford to be buried in the cemeteries outside the city.
Disgusting
, Nina thought, drawing her cloak tighter around her. Why anyone would want to live in a city like this was beyond her.

Muzzen hummed happily as he rowed. Nina knew him only in passing – a bouncer and an enforcer,

like the ill-fated Big Bolliger. She avoided the Slat and the Crow Club as much as possible. Kaz had branded her a snob for it, but she didn’t much care what Kaz Brekker had to say about her tastes. She glanced back at Muzzen’s huge shoulders. She wondered if Kaz had just brought him along to row or because he expected trouble tonight.

Of course there will be trouble.
They were breaking into a prison. It wasn’t going to be a party.
So
why are we dressed for one?

She’d met Kaz and Muzzen at Fifth Harbour at midnight, and when she’d boarded the little rowboat, Kaz had handed her a blue silk cape and a matching veil – the trappings of the Lost Bride, one of the costumes pleasure seekers liked to don when they sampled the excesses of the Barrel. He’d had on a big orange cape with a Madman’s mask perched atop his head; Muzzen had worn the same.

All they needed was a stage, and they could perform one of those dark, savage little scenes from the Komedie Brute that the Kerch seemed to find so hilarious.

Now Kaz gave her a nudge. “Lower your veil.” He pulled down his own mask; the long nose and

bulging eyes looked doubly monstrous in the fog.

She was about to give in and ask why the costumes were necessary when she realised that they weren’t alone. Through the shifting mists, she caught sight of other boats moving through the water, carrying the shapes of other Madmen, other Brides, a Mister Crimson, a Scarab Queen. What business did these people have at Hellgate?

Kaz had refused to tell her the specifics of his plan, and when she’d insisted, he’d simply said, “Get in the boat.” That was Kaz all over. He knew he didn’t have to tell her anything because the lure of Matthias’ freedom had already overridden every bit of her good sense. She’d been trying to talk Kaz into breaking Matthias out of jail for the better part of a year. Now he could offer Matthias more than freedom, but the price would be far higher than she had expected.

Only a few lights were visible as they approached the rocky shoal of Terrenjel. The rest was darkness and crashing waves.

“Couldn’t you just bribe the warden?” she muttered to Kaz.

“I don’t need him knowing he has something I want.”

When the boat’s hull scraped sand, two men rushed forward to haul them further onto land. The other boats she’d seen were making ground in the same cove, being pulled ashore by more grunting and cursing men. Their features were vague through the gauze of her veil, but Nina glimpsed the tattoos on their forearms: a feral cat curled into a crown – the symbol of the Dime Lions.

“Money,” one of them said as they clambered out of the boat.

Kaz handed over a stack of
kruge
and once it was counted, the Dime Lion waved them on.