Six of Crows (21 page)

Not smart
, Jesper thought.
Do not turn your back on an angry Fjerdan.
Helvar looked like he was seriously considering shooting her. Jesper lifted his revolver, prepared to bring the giant down. Then Helvar was standing next to Nina, aiming into the maze of crates beyond. Just like that they were fighting side by side. Had Kaz left Matthias bound with Nina deliberately? Jesper could never tell how much of what Kaz got away with was smarts and planning and how much was dumb luck.

He gave a sharp whistle. Nina glanced over her shoulder, and her gaze found Jesper ’s. He flashed two fingers, twice, and she gave a quick nod. Had she known berth twenty-two was their real destination? Had Inej? Kaz was at it again, playing with information, keeping one or all of them blind and guessing. Jesper hated it, but he couldn’t argue with the fact that they still had a way to get to Fjerda. If they lived to board the second schooner.

He signalled to Wylan, and they continued to make their way past the boats and ships moored along the dock, keeping as low as possible.

“There!” he heard a voice shout from somewhere behind him. They’d been spotted.

“Damn it,” Jesper said. “Run!”

They pounded down the dock. There, at berth twenty-two, was a trim-looking schooner with
Ferolind
written on its side. It was almost eerie how much it looked like the other boat. No lanterns had been lit aboard it, but as he and Wylan bolted up the ramp, two sailors emerged.

“You’re the first ones here,” said Rotty.

“Let’s hope we’re not the last. Are you armed?”

He nodded. “Brekker told us to stay hidden until—”

“This is until,” Jesper said pointing to the men storming towards them on the dock and snatching his rifle back from Wylan. “I need to get to high ground. Keep them back and distracted as long as you can.”

“Jesper—” began Wylan.

“No one gets past you. If they take down this schooner, we’re done for.” The men gunning for them didn’t just care about keeping the Dregs from leaving the harbour. They wanted them dead.

Jesper fired at the two men leading the charge down the dock. One fell and the other rolled left and took cover behind the bowsprit of a fishing boat. Jesper squeezed off three more shots, then sprinted up the mast.

Below he could hear more gunfire erupt. Ten feet up, twenty, boots catching in the rigging. He should have stopped to take them off. He was two feet from the crow’s nest when he felt a hot blade of pain sear through the flesh of his thigh. His foot slipped and for a moment he dangled above the distant deck with nothing but his slippery palms clinging to the ropes. He forced his legs to work and sought purchase with the toes of his boots. His right leg was nearly worthless from the gunshot, and he had to pull himself up the last few feet with his arms trembling and his heart pounding in his ears.

Every one of his senses felt as if it was on fire. Definitely better than a winning streak at the tables.

He didn’t stop to rest. He hooked his bad leg in the rigging, ignoring the pain, checked the sight on his rifle, and began picking off anyone in range.

Four million
kruge
, he told himself as he reloaded and found another enemy in his sights. The mist made visibility poor, but this was the skill that had kept him in the Dregs even after his debts had mounted and it had become clear that Jesper loved the cards more than luck loved him. Four million
kruge
would erase his debt and land him in clover for a good long while.

He spotted Nina and Matthias trying to make their way onto the pier, but at least ten men were in their way. Kaz seemed to be running in the opposite direction, and Inej was nowhere to be found, though that didn’t mean much when it came to the Wraith. She could be hanging from the sails two feet away from him, and he probably wouldn’t know it.

“Jesper!”

The shout came from far below, and it took a moment for Jesper to realise it was Wylan calling to him. He tried to ignore him, taking aim again.

“Jesper!”

I’m going to kill that little idiot.
“What do you want?” he shouted down.

“Close your eyes!”

“You can’t kiss me from down there, Wylan.”

“Just do it!”

“This better be good!” He shut his eyes.

“Are they closed?”

“Damn it, Wylan, yes, they’re—”

There was a shrill, shrieking howl, and then bright light bloomed behind Jesper ’s lids. When it faded, he opened his eyes.

Below, he saw men blundering around, rendered blind by the flash bomb Wylan had set off. But Jesper could see perfectly.
Not bad for a mercher’s kid
, he thought to himself, and opened fire.

Before Inej had ever set foot on the high wire or even a practice rope, her father had taught her to fall – to protect her head and minimise the impact by not fighting her own momentum. Even as the blast from the harbour lifted her off her feet, she was tucking into a roll. She hit hard, but she was up in seconds, pressed against the side of a crate, her ears ringing, her nose singed by the sharp scent of gunpowder.

Inej spared Kaz and the others a single glance, then did what she did best – she vanished. She launched herself up the cargo crates, scaling them like a nimble insect, her rubber-soled feet finding grips and footholds.

The view from above was disturbing. The Dregs were outnumbered, and there were men working

their way around their left and right flanks. Kaz had been right to keep their real point of departure a secret from the others. Someone had talked. Inej had tried to keep tabs on the team, but someone else in the gang could have been snooping. Kaz had said it himself: Everything in Ketterdam leaked, including the Slat and the Crow Club.

Someone was firing down from the masts of the new
Ferolind
. Hopefully, that meant Jesper had made it to the schooner, and she just had to buy the others enough time to make it there as well.

Inej ran lightly over the tops of the crates, making her way down the row, seeking her targets below. It was easy enough. None of them expected the threat to come from above. She slid to the ground behind two men firing at Nina, and said a silent prayer as she slit one throat, then the next.

When the second man dropped, she crouched beside him and rolled up his right sleeve – a tattoo of a hand, its first and second fingers cut off at the knuckle. Black Tips. Was this retribution for Kaz’s showdown with Geels, or something more? They shouldn’t have been able to raise these kinds of numbers.

She moved on to the next aisle of crates, following a mental map of the other attackers’ positions.

First, she took down a girl holding a massive, unwieldy rifle, then skewered the man who was supposed to be watching her flank. His tattoo showed five birds in a wedge formation: Razorgulls.

Just how many gangs were they up against?

The next corner was blind. Should she scale the cargo containers to check her position or risk what might be waiting for her on the other side? She took a deep breath, sank low, and slipped around the corner in a lunge. Tonight her Saints were kind – two men were firing on the docks with their backs to her. She dispatched them with two quick thrusts of her blades. Six bodies, six lives taken. She was going to have to do a lot of penance, but she’d helped even the odds a bit in the Dregs’ favour. Now, she needed to get to the schooner.

She wiped her knives on her leather breeches and returned them to their sheaths, then backed up and took a running start at the nearest cargo container. As her fingers gripped the rim, she felt a piercing pain beneath her arm. She turned in time to see Oomen’s ugly face split in a determined grimace. All the intelligence she had gathered on the Black Tips came back to her in a sickening rush

– Oomen, Geels’ shambling enforcer, the one who could crush skulls with his bare hands.

He yanked her down and grabbed the front of her vest, giving the knife in her side a sharp twist.

Inej fought not to black out.

As her hood fell back, he exclaimed, “
Ghezen
! I’ve got Brekker ’s Wraith.”

“You should have aimed … higher,” Inej gasped. “Missed my heart.”

“Don’t want you dead, Wraith,” he said. “You’re quite the prize. Can’t wait to hear all the gossip you’ve gathered for Dirtyhands, and all
his
secrets, too. I love a good story.”

“I can tell you how this one ends,” she said on an unsteady breath. “But you’re not going to like it.”

“That so?” He slammed her up against the crate, and pain crashed through her. Her toes only brushed the ground as blood spurted from the wound at her side. Oomen’s forearm was braced against her shoulders, keeping her arms pinned.

“Do you know the secret to fighting a scorpion?”

He laughed. “Talking nonsense, Wraith? Don’t die too quick. Need to get you patched up.”

She crossed one ankle behind the other and heard a reassuring click. She wore the pads at her knees for crawling and climbing, but there was another reason, too – namely, the tiny steel blades hidden in each of them.

“The secret,” she panted, “is to never take your eyes off the scorpion’s tail.” She brought her knee up, jamming the blade between Oomen’s legs.

He shrieked and released her, hands going to his bleeding groin.

She staggered back down the row of crates. She could hear men shouting to each other, the pop of gunfire coming in smatters and bursts now. Who was winning? Had the others made it to the schooner? A wave of dizziness rolled over her.

When she touched her fingers to the wound at her side, they came away wet. Too much blood.

Footsteps. Someone was coming. She couldn’t climb, not with this wound, not with the amount of blood she’d lost. She remembered her father putting her on the rope ladder the first time.
Climb, Inej.

The cargo containers were stacked like a pyramid here. If she could make it up just one, she could hide herself on the first level.
Just one.
She could climb or she could stand there and die.

She willed her mind to clarity and hopped up, fingertips latching onto the top of the crate.
Climb,
Inej.
She dragged herself over the edge onto the tin roof of the container.

It felt so good to lie there, but she knew she’d left a trail of blood behind her.
One more
, she told herself.
One more and you’ll be safe.
She forced herself up to her knees and reached for the next crate.

The surface beneath her began to rock. She heard laughter from below.

“Come out, come out, Wraith! We have secrets to tell!”

Desperately, she reached for the lip of the next crate again and gripped it, fighting through an onslaught of pain as the container under her dropped away. Then she was just hanging, legs dangling helplessly down. They didn’t open fire; they wanted her alive.

“Come on down, Wraith!”

She didn’t know where the strength came from but she managed to pull herself over the top. She lay on the crate’s roof, panting.

Just one more.
But she couldn’t. Couldn’t push to her knees, couldn’t reach, couldn’t even roll. It hurt too much.
Climb, Inej.

“I can’t, Papa,” she whispered. Even now she hated to disappoint him.

Move
, she told herself.
This is a stupid place to die.
And yet a voice in her head said there were worse places. She would die here, in freedom, beneath the beginnings of dawn. She’d die after a worthy fight, not because some man had tired of her or required more from her than she could give.

Better to die here by her own blade than with her face painted and her body swathed in false silks.

A hand seized her ankle. They’d climbed the crates. Why hadn’t she heard them? Was she that far gone? They had her. Someone was turning her onto her back.

She slid the dagger from the sheath at her wrist. In the Barrel, a blade this sharp was known as kind steel. It meant a quick death. Better that than torture at the mercy of the Black Tips or the Razorgulls.

May the Saints receive me.
She pressed the tip beneath her breast, between her ribs, an arrow to her heart. Then a hand gripped her wrist painfully, forcing her to drop the blade.

“Not just yet, Inej.”

The rasp of stone on stone. Her eyes flew open.
Kaz.

He bundled her into his arms and leaped down from the crates, landing roughly, his bad leg buckling.

She moaned as they hit the ground.

“Did we win?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

He must be running. Her body jounced painfully against his chest with every lurching step. He needed his cane.