Six of Crows (45 page)

EIGHT BELLS AND HALF CHIME

Kaz was watching her intently, his bitter coffee eyes glittering in the light from the dome.

“You know those costumes,” she said. “Heavy cloaks, hoods. That’s all the Fjerdans will see. A Zemeni fawn. A Kaelish mare.” She swallowed and forced the next words past her lips. “A Suli lynx.”

Not people, not even really girls, just lovely objects to be collected.
I’ve always wanted to tumble a
Zemeni girl
, a customer would whisper.
A Kaelish girl with red hair. A Suli girl with burnt caramel
skin.

“It’s a risk,” said Kaz.

“What job isn’t?”

“Kaz, how are you and Matthias going to get through?” asked Nina. “We might need you for locks, and if things go bad on the island, I don’t want to be stranded. I doubt you can pass yourselves off as members of the Menagerie.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” said Kaz. “Helvar ’s been holding out on us.”

“Have you?” asked Inej.

“It’s not—” Matthias dragged a hand over his cropped hair. “How do you know these things,
demjin
?” he growled at Kaz.

“Logic. The whole Ice Court is a masterpiece of fail-safes and doubled systems. That glass bridge is impressive, but in an emergency, there would have to be another way to get reinforcements to the White Island and get the royal family out.”

“Yes,” said Matthias in exasperation. “There’s another way to the White Island. But it’s messy.” He glanced at Nina. “And it certainly can’t be done in a gown.”

“Hold on,” Jesper interrupted. “Who cares if you can all get onto the White Island? Let’s say Nina sparkles Yul-Bayur ’s location out of some Fjerdan higher-up, and you get him back here. We’ll be trapped. By then, the prison guards will have completed their search and are going to know six inmates got out of the sector somehow. Any chance we have of making it through the embassy gates and the checkpoints will be gone.”

Kaz peered past the dome to the embassy’s open courtyard and the ringwall gatehouse beyond.

“Wylan, how hard would it be to disable one of these gates?”

“To get it open?”

“No, to keep it closed.”

“You mean break it?” Wylan shrugged. “I don’t think it would be too difficult. I couldn’t see the mechanism when we entered the prison gate, but from the layout, I’m guessing it’s pretty standard.”

“Pulleys, cogs, some really big screws?”

“Well, yes, and a sizeable winch. The cables wrap around it like a big spool, and the guards just turn it with some kind of handle or wheel.”

“I know how a winch works. Can you take one apart?”

“I think so, but it’s the alarm system the cables are attached to that’s complicated. I doubt I could do it without triggering Black Protocol.”

“Good,” said Kaz. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

Jesper held up a hand. “I’m sorry, isn’t Black Protocol the thing we want to avoid at all costs?”

“I do seem to remember something about certain doom,” said Nina.

“Not if we use it against them. Tonight, most of the Court’s security is concentrated on the White Island and right here at the embassy. When Black Protocol sounds, the glass bridge will shut down, trapping all those guards on the island along with the guests.”

“But what about Matthias’ route off the island?” asked Nina.

“They can’t move a major force that way,” Matthias conceded. “At least not quickly.”

Kaz gazed out at the White Island, head tilted, eyes slightly unfocused.

“Scheming face,” Inej murmured.

Jesper nodded. “Definitely.”

She was going to miss that look.

“Three gates in the ringwall,” Kaz said. “The prison gate is already locked up tight because of Yellow Protocol. The embassy gate is a bottleneck crammed with guests – the Fjerdans aren’t going to get troops through there. Jesper, that just leaves the gate in the
drüskelle
sector for you and Wylan to handle. You use it to engage Black Protocol, then wreck it. Break it badly enough that any guards who manage to mobilise can’t get out to follow us.”

“I’m all for locking the Fjerdans in their own ‘fortress’,” said Jesper. “Truly. But how do
we
get out? Once we trigger Black Protocol, you guys will be trapped on that island, and we’ll be trapped in the outer circle. We have no weapons and no demo materials.”

Kaz’s grin was sharp as a razor. “Thank goodness we’re proper thieves. We’re going to do a little shopping – and it’s all going on Fjerda’s tab. Inej,” he said, “let’s start with something shiny.”

Beside the big glass dome, Kaz laid out the details of what he had in mind. If the old plan had been daring, it had at least been built on stealth. The new plan was audacious, maybe even mad. They wouldn’t just be announcing their presence to the Fjerdans, they’d be trumpeting it. Again, the crew would be separated, and again, they would time their movements to the chiming of the Elderclock, but now there would be even less room for error.

Inej searched her heart, expecting to find caution there, fear. But all she felt was ready. This wasn’t a job she was performing to pay off her debt to Per Haskell. It wasn’t a task to be accomplished for Kaz or the Dregs.
She
wanted this – the money, the dream it would help to secure.

While Kaz explained, and Jesper used the laundry shears to portion out pieces of rope, Wylan helped Inej and Nina prepare. To pass as members of the Menagerie, they would need tattoos. They started with Nina. Using one of Kaz’s lockpicks and copper pyrite Jesper had extracted from the roof, Wylan traced his best imitation of the Menagerie feather on Nina’s arm, following Inej’s description and making corrections as needed. Then Nina sank the ink into her own flesh. A Corporalnik didn’t need a tattoo needle. Nina did her best to smoothe the scars on Inej’s forearm. The work wasn’t perfect, but they were short on time and Nina’s calling wasn’t as a tailor. Wylan sketched a second peacock feather over Inej’s skin.

Nina paused, “You’re sure?”

Inej took a deep breath. “It’s warpaint,” she said, both to Nina and herself. “It’s my mark to take.”

“It’s also temporary,” Nina promised. “I’ll remove it as soon as we’re in the harbour.”

The harbour. Inej thought of the
Ferolind
with its cheerful flags, and tried to hold that image in her head as she watched the peacock feather sink into her skin.

The finished tattoos wouldn’t bear up under any kind of close scrutiny, but hopefully they would do.

Finally, they stood. Inej had predicted that the Menagerie would arrive late – Tante Heleen loved to make an entrance – but they still needed to be in position and ready to move when the time came.

And yet, they hesitated. The knowledge that they might never see each other again, that some of them – maybe all of them – might not survive this night hung heavy in the air. A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.

Inej looked at her strange crew, barefoot and shivering in their soot-stained prison uniforms, their features limned by the golden light of the dome, softened by the mist that hung in the air.

What bound them together? Greed? Desperation? Was it just the knowledge that if one or all of them disappeared tonight, no one would come looking? Inej’s mother and father might still shed tears for the daughter they’d lost, but if Inej died tonight, there would be no one to grieve for the girl she was now. She had no family, no parents or siblings, only people to fight beside. Maybe that was something to be grateful for, too.

It was Jesper who spoke first. “No mourners,” he said with a grin.

“No funerals,” they replied in unison. Even Matthias muttered the words softly.

“If any of you survive, make sure I have an open casket,” Jesper said as he hefted two slender coils of rope over his shoulder and signalled for Wylan to follow him across the roof. “The world deserves a few more moments with this face.”

Inej was only slightly surprised to see the intensity of the look that passed between Matthias and Nina. Something had changed between them after the battle with the Shu, but Inej couldn’t be sure what.

Matthias cleared his throat and gave Nina an awkward little bow. “A word?” he asked.

Nina returned the bow with considerably more panache, and let him lead her away. Inej was glad; she wanted a moment with Kaz.

“I have something for you,” she said as she pulled his leather gloves from the sleeve of her prison tunic.

He stared at them. “How—”

“I got them from the discarded clothes. Before I made the climb.”

“Six storeys in the dark.”

She nodded. She wasn’t going to wait for thanks. Not for the climb, or the gloves, or for anything ever again.

He pulled the gloves on slowly, and she watched his pale, vulnerable hands disappear beneath the leather. They were trickster hands – long, graceful fingers made for prying open locks, hiding coins,

making things vanish.

“When we get back to Ketterdam, I’m taking my share, and I’m leaving the Dregs.”

He looked away. “You should. You were always too good for the Barrel.”

It was time to go. “Saints’ speed, Kaz.”

Kaz snagged her wrist. “Inej.” His gloved thumb moved over her pulse, traced the top of the feather tattoo. “If we don’t make it out, I want you to know …”

She waited. She felt hope rustling its wings inside her, ready to take flight at the right words from Kaz. She willed that hope into stillness. Those words would never come.
The heart is an arrow.

She reached up and touched his cheek. She thought he might flinch again, even knock her hand away. In nearly two years of battling side by side with Kaz, of late-night scheming, impossible heists, clandestine errands, and harried meals of fried potatoes and
hutspot
gobbled down as they rushed from one place to another, this was the first time she had touched him skin to skin, without the barrier of gloves or coat or shirtsleeve. She let her hand cup his cheek. His skin was cool and damp from the rain. He stayed still, but she saw a tremor pass through him, as if he were waging a war with himself.

“If we don’t survive this night, I will die unafraid, Kaz. Can you say the same?”

His eyes were nearly black, the pupils dilated. She could see it took every last bit of his terrible will for him to remain still beneath her touch. And yet, he did not pull away. She knew it was the best he could offer. It was not enough.

She dropped her hand. He took a deep breath.

Kaz had said he didn’t want her prayers and she wouldn’t speak them, but she wished him safe nonetheless. She had her aim now, her heart had direction, and though it hurt to know that path led away from him, she could endure it.

Inej joined Nina at the edge of the dome to await the arrival of the Menagerie. The dome was wide and shallow, all silver filigree and glass. Inej saw there was a mosaic on the floor of the vast rotunda below. It appeared in brief flashes between partygoers – two wolves chasing each other, destined to move in circles for as long as the Ice Court stood.

The guests entering through the grand archway were being shepherded into rooms off the rotunda in small groups to be searched for weapons. Inej saw guards emerge with little piles of brooches, porcupine quills, even sashes that Inej assumed must contain metal or wire.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” said Nina. “You don’t have to put those silks on again.”

“I’ve done worse.”

“I know. You scaled six storeys of hell for us.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Nina paused. “I know that, too.” She hesitated, then said, “Is the haul so important to you?” Inej was surprised to hear what sounded like guilt in Nina’s voice.

The Elderclock began to chime nine bells. Inej looked down at the wolves chasing each other around the rotunda floor. “I’m not sure why I began this,” she admitted. “But I know why I have to finish. I know why fate brought me here, why it placed me in the path of this prize.”