Six of Crows (34 page)

Nina made herself face them. She had her reasons, but did they matter? And who were they to judge her? She straightened her spine, lifted her chin. She was a member of the Dregs, an employee of the White Rose, and occasionally a foolish girl, but before anything else she was a Grisha and a soldier. “No,” she said clearly, her voice echoing off the endless ice. “I’d do it all over again.”

A sudden rumble shook the ground. Nina nearly lost her footing, and she saw Kaz brace himself

with his walking stick. They exchanged puzzled glances.

“Are there fault lines this far north?” Wylan asked.

Matthias frowned. “Not that I know of, but—”

A slab of earth shot up from beneath Matthias’ feet, knocking him to the ground. Another erupted to Nina’s right, sending her sprawling. All around them, crooked monoliths of earth and ice burst upwards, as if the ground was coming to life. A harsh wind whipped at their faces, snow spinning in flurries.

“What the hell is this?” cried Jesper.

“Some of kind of earthquake!” shouted Inej.

“No,” said Nina, pointing to a dark spot that seemed to be floating in the sky, unaffected by the howling wind. “We’re under attack.”

Nina crawled on hands and knees, seeking some kind of shelter. She thought she might well have lost her mind. There was someone in the air, hovering in the sky high above her. She was watching someone fly.

Grisha Squallers could control current. She’d even seen them play at tossing each other into the air at the Little Palace, but the level of finesse and power it took to maintain controlled flight was unthinkable – at least it had been, until now.
Jurda parem.
She hadn’t quite believed Kaz. Maybe she’d even suspected him of outright lying to her about what he’d seen just to get her to do the job. But unless she’d taken a blow to the head she didn’t remember, this was real.

The Squaller turned in the air, stirring the storm into a frenzy, sending ice flying until it stung her cheeks. She could barely see. She fell backwards as another slab of rock and ice shot from the ground. They were being corralled, pushed closer together to make a single target.

“I need a distraction!” shouted Jesper from somewhere in the storm.

She heard a tinny
plink
.

“Get down,” cried Wylan. Nina flattened her body to the snow. A
boom
sounded overhead, and an explosion lit the sky just to the right of the Squaller. The winds around them dropped as the Squaller was thrown off course and forced to focus on righting himself. It took the briefest second, but it was enough time for Jesper to aim his rifle and fire.

A shot rang out, and the Squaller was hurtling towards the earth. Another slab of ice slid into place.

They were being trapped like animals in a pen, ready for the slaughter. Jesper aimed between the slabs at a distant stand of trees, and Nina realised there was another Grisha there, a boy with dark hair.

Before Jesper could get off a shot, the Grisha rammed a fist upwards, and Jesper was thrown off his feet by a shaft of earth. He rolled as he fell and fired from the ground.

The boy in the distance cried out and dropped to one knee, but his arms were still raised, and the ground still rumbled and rocked beneath them. Jesper fired again and missed. Nina lifted her hands and tried to focus on the Grisha’s heart, but he was well out of her range.

She saw Inej signal to Kaz. Without a word, he positioned himself against the nearest slab and cupped his hands at his knee. The ground buckled and swayed, but he held steady as she launched herself from the cradle of his fingers in a graceful arc. She vanished over the slab without a sound. A moment later, the ground went still.

“Trust the Wraith,” said Jesper.

They stood, dazed, the air strangely hushed after the chaos that had come before.

“Wylan,” Jesper panted, pushing to his feet. “Get us out of here.”

Wylan nodded, pulled a putty-coloured lump from his pack, and gently placed it against the nearest rock. “Everybody down,” he instructed.

They crouched together in a cluster as far away as the enclosure would permit. Wylan slapped his hand against the explosive and dove away, careening into Matthias and Jesper as they all covered their ears.

Nothing happened.

“Are you kidding me?” said Jesper.

Boom.
The slab exploded. Ice and bits of rock rained down over their heads.

Wylan was covered in dust and wearing a slightly dazed, deliriously happy expression. Nina started to laugh. “
Try
to look like you knew it would work.”

They stumbled out of the corral of slabs.

Kaz gestured to Jesper. “Perimeter. Let’s make sure there aren’t more surprises.” They set off in opposite directions.

Nina and the others found Inej standing over the body of the trembling Grisha. He wore clothes of olive drab, and his eyes were glassy. Blood spilled from the bullet wound in his upper thigh, and a knife jutted from the right side of his chest. Inej must have thrown it when she’d escaped from the enclosure.

Nina kneeled beside him.

“I need a little more,” the Grisha mumbled. “Just a little more.” He grabbed at Nina’s hand, and only then did she recognise him.

“Nestor?”

He twitched at the sound of his name, but he didn’t seem to know her.

“Nestor, it’s me, Nina.” She had been at school with him back at the Little Palace. They’d been sent to Keramzin together during the war. At King Nikolai’s coronation, they’d stolen a bottle of champagne and got sick by the lake. He was a Fabrikator, one of the Durasts who worked with metal, glass, and fibers. It didn’t make sense. Fabrikators made textiles, weapons. He shouldn’t have been capable of what she’d just witnessed.

“Please,” he begged, his face crumpling. “I need more.”

“Parem?”

“Yes,” he sobbed. “Yes. Please.”

“I can heal your wound, Nestor, if you stay still.” He was in bad shape, but if she could stop the bleeding …

“I don’t want your help,” he said angrily, trying to push away from her.

She tried calming him, lowering his pulse, but she was afraid of stopping his heart. “Please, Nestor. Please be still.”

He was screaming now, fighting her.

“Hold him down,” she said.

Matthias moved to help, and Nestor threw up his arms.

The ground rose in a rippling sheet, thrusting Nina and the others back.

“Nestor, please! Let us help you.”

He stood up, staggering on his wounded leg, pulling at the knife buried in his chest. “Where are they?” he screamed. “Where did they go?”

“Who?”

“The Shu!” he wailed. “Where did they go? Come back!” He took a wobbling step, then another.

“Come back!” He fell face forwards into the snow. He didn’t move again.

Nina rushed to his side and turned him over. There was snow in his eyes and his mouth. She placed her hands on his chest, trying to restore his heartbeat, but it was no good. If he hadn’t been ravaged by the drug, he might have survived his wounds. But his body was weak, the skin tight to his bones and so pale it seemed transparent.

This isn’t right
, Nina thought miserably. Practising the Small Science made a Grisha healthier, stronger. It was one of the things she loved most about her power. But the body had limits. It was as if the drug had caused Nestor ’s power to outpace his body. It had simply used him up.

Kaz and Jesper returned, panting.

“Anything?” asked Matthias.

Jesper nodded. “A party of people heading south.”

“He was calling out for the Shu,” Nina said.

“We knew the Shu would send a team to retrieve Bo Yul-Bayur,” said Kaz.

Jesper looked down at Nestor ’s motionless body. “But we didn’t know they’d send Grisha. How can we be sure they aren’t mercenaries?”

Kaz held up a coin emblazoned with a horse on one side and two crossed keys on the other. “This was in the Squaller ’s pocket,” he said, tossing it to Jesper. “It’s a Shu
wen ye
. The Coin of Passage.

This is a government mission.”

“How did they find us?” Inej asked.

“Maybe Jesper ’s gunshots drew them,” said Kaz.

Jesper bristled and pointed at Nina and Matthias. “Or maybe they heard these two shouting at each other. They could have been following us for miles.”

Nina tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Shu didn’t use Grisha as soldiers, and they weren’t like the Fjerdans; they didn’t see Grisha power as unnatural or repulsive. They were fascinated by it. But they still viewed the Grisha as less than human. The Shu government had been capturing and experimenting on Grisha for years in an attempt to locate the source of their power.

They would never use Grisha as mercenaries. Or at least that had been the case before. Maybe
parem
had changed the game.

“I don’t understand,” said Nina. “If they have
jurda parem
, why go after Bo Yul-Bayur?”

“It’s possible they have a stash of it, but can’t reproduce his process,” Kaz said. “That’s what the Merchant Council seemed to think. Or maybe they just want to make sure Yul-Bayur doesn’t give the formula to anyone else.”

“Do you think they’ll use drugged Grisha to try to break into the Ice Court?” Inej asked.

“If they have more of them,” said Kaz. “That’s what I would do.”

Matthias shook his head. “If they’d had a Heartrender, we’d all be dead.”

“It was still a close thing,” replied Inej.

Jesper shouldered his rifle. “Wylan earned his keep.”

Wylan gave a little jump at the sound of his name. “I did?”

“Well, you made a down payment.”

“Let’s move,” said Kaz.

“We need to bury them,” Nina said.

“The ground’s too hard, and we don’t have the time. The Shu team is still moving towards Djerholm. We don’t know how many other Grisha they may have, and Pekka’s team could already be inside.”

“We can’t just leave them for the wolves,” she said, her throat tight.

“Do you want to build them a pyre?”

“Go to hell, Brekker.”

“Do your job, Zenik,” he shot back. “I didn’t bring you to Fjerda to perform funeral rites.”

She lifted her hands. “How about I crack your skull open like a robin’s egg?”

“You don’t want a look at what’s inside my head, Nina dear.”

She took a step forward, but Matthias moved in front of her.

“Stop,” he said. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you dig the grave.” Nina stared at him. He took a pick from his gear and handed it to her, then took another from Jesper ’s pack. “Head due south from here,” he said to the others. “I know the terrain, and I’ll make sure we catch up to you by nightfall. We’ll move faster on our own.”

Kaz looked at him steadily. “Just remember that pardon, Helvar.”

“Are we sure it’s a good idea to leave them alone?” Wylan asked as they moved down the slope.

“No,” replied Inej.

“But we’re still doing it?”

“We trust them now or we trust them later,” Kaz said.

“Are we going to talk about Matthias’ little revelation about Nina’s loyalties?” asked Jesper.

Nina could just make out Kaz’s reply: “Pretty sure most of us don’t have ‘stalwart’ or ‘true’

checked off on our résumés.” For all that she wanted to pummel Kaz, she couldn’t help being a bit grateful, too.

Matthias walked a few steps away from Nestor ’s body. He heaved the pick into the icy earth, wrenched it free, plunged it in again.

“Here?” Nina asked.

“Do you want him elsewhere?”

“I … I don’t know.” She gazed out at the fields of white, marked by sparse groves of birch. “It all looks the same to me.”

“You know our gods?”

“Some,” she said.

“But you know Djel.”

“The wellspring.”

Matthias nodded. “The Fjerdans believe all the world is connected through its waters – the seas, the ice, the rivers and streams, the rain and storms. All feed Djel and are fed by him. When we die, we call it
felöt-objer
, taking root. We become as roots of the ash tree, drinking from Djel wherever we are laid.”

“Is that why you burn Grisha instead of burying them?”

He paused, then gave a brief nod.

“But you’ll help me lay Nestor and the Squaller to rest here?”

He nodded again.

She took hold of the other pick and attempted to match his swing. The ground was hard and unyielding. Every time the pick struck the earth it sent a rattling jolt up her arms.

“Nestor shouldn’t have been able to do that,” she said, her thoughts still churning. “No Grisha can use power that way. It’s all wrong.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Do you understand a little better now? What it’s like to face a power so alien? To face an enemy with such unnatural strength?”

Nina tightened her hold on the pick. Nestor in the grip of
parem
had seemed like a perversion of everything she loved about her power. Was that what Matthias and the other Fjerdans saw in Grisha?

Power beyond explanation, the natural world undone?

“Maybe.” It was the most she could offer.

“You said you had no choice at the harbour in Elling,” he said without looking at her. His pick rose and fell, the rhythm unbroken. “Was it because I was
drüskelle
? Were you planning it all along?”

Nina remembered their last real day together, the elation they’d felt when they’d crested a steep hill and seen the port town spread out below. She’d been shocked to hear Matthias say, “I am almost sorry, Nina.”

“Almost?”

“I’m too hungry to really be sorry.”

“At last, you succumb to my influence. But how are we going to eat without any money?” she asked as they headed down the hill. “I may have to sell your pretty hair to a wig shop for cash.”