Six of Crows (19 page)

He saw a shadow pass over Inej’s face. She wouldn’t like being without her knives any more than he liked being without his cane.

“I’ll need you to get cold weather gear,” he told her. “There’s a shop on the Wijnstraat that supplies trappers – start there.”

“You think to approach from the north?” asked Helvar.

Kaz nodded. “The Djerholm harbour is crawling with customs agents, and I’m going to bet they’ll be tightening security during your big party.”

“It isn’t a party.”

“It sounds like a party,” said Jesper.

“It isn’t
supposed
to be a party,” Helvar amended sullenly.

“What are we going to do with him?” Nina asked, nodding at Matthias. Her voice was disinterested, but the performance was wasted on everyone except Helvar. They’d all seen her tears at Hellgate.

“For the moment, he stays here at the Crow Club. I want you dredging your memory for details,

Helvar. Wylan and Jesper will join you later. We’ll keep this parlour closed. If anyone playing in the main hall asks, tell them there’s a private game going on.”

“We have to sleep here?” asked Jesper. “I have things I need to see to at the Slat.”

“You’ll manage,” Kaz said, though he knew asking Jesper to spend the night in a gambling den without placing a bet was a particular kind of cruelty. He turned to the rest of them. “Not a word to anyone. No one is to know you’re leaving Kerch. You’re working with me on a job at a country house outside the city. That’s all.”

“Are you going to tell us anything else about your miraculous plan?” Nina asked.

“On the boat. The less you know, the less you can talk.”

“And you’re leaving Helvar unshackled?”

“Can you behave?” Kaz asked the Fjerdan.

His eyes looked murder, but he nodded.

“We’ll be locking this room up tight and posting a guard.”

Inej considered the giant Fjerdan. “Maybe two.”

“Post Dirix and Rotty, but don’t give them too many details. They’ll sail out with us, and I can fill them in later. And Wylan, you and I are going to have a chat. I want to know everything about your father ’s trading company.”

Wylan shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it. He doesn’t include me in those discussions.”

“You’re telling me you’ve never snooped around his office? Looked through his documents?”

“No,” Wylan said, his chin jutting out slightly. Kaz was surprised to find he actually believed him.

“What did I tell you?” Jesper said cheerfully as he headed through the door. “Useless.”

The others started to file out behind him, and Kaz shut the safe, giving the tumbler a spin.

“I’d like a word with you, Brekker,” Helvar said. “Alone.”

Inej cast Kaz a warning glance. Kaz ignored it. She didn’t think he could handle a lump of country muscle like Matthias Helvar? He slid the wall panel closed and gave his leg a shake. It was aching now

– too many late nights and too much time with his weight on it.

“Go on, Wraith,” he said. “Shut the door behind you.”

As soon as the door clicked shut, Matthias lunged for him. Kaz let it happen. He’d been expecting it.

Matthias clamped one filthy hand over Kaz’s mouth. The sensation of skin on skin set off a riot of revulsion in Kaz’s head, but because he’d been anticipating the attack, he managed to control the sickness that overcame him. Matthias’ other hand rooted around in Kaz’s coat pockets, first one then the other.

“
Fer esje?
” he grunted angrily in Fjerdan. Then, “Where is it?” in Kerch.

Kaz gave Helvar another moment of frenzied searching, then dropped his elbow and jabbed upwards, forcing Helvar to loosen his grip. Kaz slipped away easily. He smacked Helvar behind the right leg with his cane. The big Fjerdan collapsed. When he tried to shove up again, Kaz kicked him.

“Stay down, you pathetic skiv.”

Again, Helvar tried to rise. He was fast, and prison had made him strong. Kaz cracked him hard on the jaw, then gave the pressure points at Helvar ’s huge shoulders two lightning-quick jabs with the tip of his cane. The Fjerdan grunted as his arms went limp and useless at his sides.

Kaz flipped the cane in his hand and pressed the carved crow’s head against Helvar ’s throat. “Move again and I’ll smash your jaw so badly you’ll be drinking your meals for the rest of your life.”

The Fjerdan stilled, his blue eyes alight with hate.

“Where is the pardon?” Helvar growled. “I saw you put it in your pocket.”

Kaz crouched down beside him and produced the folded document from a pocket that had seemed

empty just a moment before. “This?”

The Fjerdan flopped his useless arms, then released a low animal growl as Kaz made the pardon

vanish in thin air. It reappeared between his fingers. He turned it once, flashing the text, then ran his hand over it, and showed Helvar the seemingly blank page.

“
Demjin
,” muttered Helvar. Kaz didn’t speak Fjerdan, but that word he knew. Demon.

Hardly. He’d learned sleight of hand from the cardsharps and monte runners on East Stave, and spent hours practising it in front of a muddy mirror he’d bought with his first week’s pay.

Kaz knocked his cane gently against Helvar ’s jaw. “For every trick you’ve seen, I know a thousand more. You think a year in Hellgate hardened you up? Taught you to fight? Hellgate would have been paradise to me as a child. You move like an ox – you’d last about two days on the streets where I grew up. This was your one free pass, Helvar. Don’t test me again. Nod so I know you understand.”

Helvar pressed his lips together and nodded once.

“Good. I think we’ll shackle those feet tonight.”

Kaz rose, snatched his new hat from the desk where he’d left it, and gave the Fjerdan one last kick to the kidneys for good measure. Sometimes the big ones didn’t know when to stay down.

Over the next day, Inej saw Kaz begin to move the pieces of his scheme into position. She’d been privy to his consultations with every member of the crew, but she knew she was seeing only fragments of his plan. That was the game Kaz always played.

If he had doubts about what they were attempting, they didn’t show, and Inej wished she shared his certainty. The Ice Court had been built to withstand an onslaught of armies, assassins, Grisha, and spies. When she’d said as much to Kaz, he’d simply replied, “But it hasn’t been built to keep
us
out.”

His confidence unnerved her. “What makes you think we can do this? There will be other teams out there, trained soldiers and spies, people with years of experience.”

“This isn’t a job for trained soldiers and spies. It’s a job for thugs and thieves. Van Eck knows it, and that’s why he brought us in.”

“You can’t spend his money if you’re dead.”

“I’ll acquire expensive habits in the afterlife.”

“There’s a difference between confidence and arrogance.”

He’d turned his back on her then, giving each of his gloves a sharp tug. “And when I want a sermon on that, I know who to come to. If you want out, just say so.”

Her spine had straightened, her own pride rising to her defence. “Matthias isn’t the only irreplaceable member of this crew, Kaz. You need me.”

“I need your skills, Inej. That’s not the same thing. You may be the best spider crawling around the Barrel, but you’re not the only one. You’d do well to remember it if you want to keep your share of the haul.”

She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t wanted to show just how angry he’d made her, but she’d left his office and hadn’t said a thing to him since.

Now, as she headed towards the harbour, she wondered what kept her on this path.

She could leave Kerch any time she wanted. She could stow away on a ship bound for Novyi Zem.

She could go back to Ravka and search for her family. Hopefully they’d been safe in the west when the civil war broke out, or maybe they’d taken refuge in Shu Han. The Suli caravans had been following the same well-worn roads for years, and she had the skills to steal what she needed to survive until she found them.

That would mean walking out on her debt to the Dregs. Per Haskell would blame Kaz; he’d be forced to carry the price of her indenture, and she’d be leaving him vulnerable without his Wraith to gather secrets. But hadn’t he told her that she was easily replaced? If they managed to pull off this heist and return to Kerch with Bo Yul-Bayur safely in tow, her percentage of the haul would be more than enough to buy her way out of her contract with the Dregs. She’d owe Kaz nothing, and there would be no reason for her to stay.

Sunrise was only an hour away, but the streets were crowded as she wended her way from East to West Stave. There was a Suli saying:
The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.
Her father had liked to recite this when she was training on the wire or the swings.
Be decisive
, he’d say.
You
have to know where you want to go before you get there.
Her mother had laughed at this.
That’s not
what that means
, she’d say.
You take the romance out of everything.
He hadn’t, though. Her father had adored her mother. Inej remembered him leaving little bouquets of wild geraniums for her mother to find everywhere, in the cupboards, the camp cookpots, the sleeves of her costumes.

Shall I tell you the secret of true love?
her father once asked her.
A friend of mine liked to tell me
that women love flowers. He had many flirtations, but he never found a wife. Do you know why?

Because women may love flowers, but only one woman loves the scent of gardenias in late summer that
remind her of her grandmother’s porch. Only one woman loves apple blossoms in a blue cup. Only one
woman loves wild geraniums.

That’s Mama!
Inej had cried.

Yes, Mama loves wild geraniums because no other flower has quite the same colour, and she claims
that when she snaps the stem and puts a sprig behind her ear, the whole world smells like summer.

Many boys will bring you flowers. But some day you’ll meet a boy who will learn your favourite
flower, your favourite song, your favourite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it
won’t matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns
your heart.

That felt like a hundred years ago. Her father had been wrong. There had been no boys to bring her flowers, only men with stacks of
kruge
and purses full of coin. Would she ever see her father again? Hear her mother singing, listen to her uncle’s silly stories?
I’m not sure I have a heart to give
any more, Papa.

The problem was that Inej was no longer certain what she was aiming for. When she’d been little, it had been easy – a smile from her father, the tightrope raised another foot, orange cakes wrapped in white paper. Then it had been getting free of Tante Heleen and the Menagerie, and after that, surviving each day, getting a little stronger with every morning. Now she didn’t know what she wanted.

Just this minute, I’ll settle for an apology
, she decided.
And I won’t board the boat without one.

Even if Kaz isn’t sorry, he can pretend. He at least owes me his best imitation of a human being.

If she hadn’t been running late, she would have looped around West Stave or simply travelled over the rooftops – that was the Ketterdam she loved, empty and quiet, high above the crowds, a moonlit mountain range of gabled peaks and off-kilter chimneys. But tonight she was short on time. Kaz had sent her scouring the shops for two lumps of paraffin at the last minute. He wouldn’t even tell her what they were for or why they were so necessary. And snow goggles? She’d had to visit three different outfitters to acquire them. She was so tired she didn’t entirely trust herself to make the climb over the gables, not after two nights without sleep and a day spent wrangling supplies for their trek to the Ice Court.

She supposed she was daring herself, too.

She never walked West Stave alone. With the Dregs at her side, she could stroll by the Menagerie without a glance towards the golden bars on the windows. But tonight, her heart was pounding, and she could hear the roar of blood in her ears as the gilded façade came into view. The Menagerie had been built to look like a tiered cage, its first two storeys left open but for the widely spaced golden bars. It was also known as the House of Exotics. If you had a taste for a Shu girl or a Fjerdan giant, a redhead from the Wandering Isle, a dark-skinned Zemeni, the Menagerie was your destination. Each girl was known by her animal name – leopard, mare, fox, raven, ermine, fawn, snake. Suli seers wore the jackal mask when they plied their trade and looked into a person’s fate. But what man would want to bed a jackal? So the Suli girl – and the Menagerie always stocked a Suli girl – was known as the lynx. Clients didn’t come looking for the girls themselves, just brown Suli skin, the fire of Kaelish hair, the tilt of golden Shu eyes. The animals remained the same, though the girls came and went.