Crooked Kingdom (2 page)

“We're not ready for the rest of the crew just yet,” the first mate said as Retvenko gave his name. “You can keep warm in the harbormaster's office. We're waiting on our signal from the Council of Tides.”

“Good for you,” Retvenko said, unimpressed. He glanced up at one of the black obelisk towers that loomed over the harbor. If there were any chance that the high and mighty Council of Tides could see him from their watchtower, he would have let them know exactly what he thought with a few choice gestures. They were supposedly Grisha, but had they ever lifted a finger to help the other Grisha in the city? To help those down on their luck who might have welcomed a bit of kindness? “No, they have not,” he answered himself.

The first mate winced. “
Ghezen
, Retvenko. Have you been drinking?”

“No.”

“You stink of whiskey.”

Retvenko sniffed. “Little bit whiskey.”

“Just dry out. Get yourself some coffee or strong
jurda
. This cotton has to be in Djerholm in two weeks' time, and we aren't paying you to nurse a hangover belowdecks. Understood?”

“Yes, yes,” Retvenko said with a dismissive wave, already heading toward the harbormaster's office. But when he was a few steps away, he flicked his wrist. A tiny whirlwind caught the papers the first mate was holding, sending them flying over the docks.

“Damn it!” he shouted as he went scrambling over the wooden planks, trying to capture the pages of his manifest before they blew into the sea.

Retvenko smiled with grim pleasure, then felt a wave of sadness overtake him. He was a giant among men, a gifted Squaller, a great soldier, but here he was just an
employee
, a sad old Ravkan who spoke broken Kerch and drank too much.
Home
, he told himself.
Soon I'll be home.
He would get his pardon and prove himself once more. He would fight for his country. He would sleep under a roof that didn't leak and wear a blue wool
kefta
lined with silver fox fur. He would be Emil Retvenko again, not this pathetic shadow.

“There's coffee,” said the clerk when Retvenko entered the harbormaster's office, gesturing toward a copper urn in the corner.

“Tea?”

“There's coffee.”

This country.
Retvenko filled a mug full of the dark sludge, more to warm his hands than anything. He couldn't bear the taste of it, certainly not without a healthy dose of sugar, which the harbormaster had neglected to supply.

“Wind blowing in,” said the clerk as a bell clanged outside, shaken by the rising breeze.

“I have ears,” Retvenko grumbled.

“Don't think it will amount to much here, but once you get out of the harbor—”

“Be silent,” Retvenko said sharply. He was on his feet, listening.

“What?” said the clerk. “There's—”

Retvenko put a finger to his lips. “Someone cries out.” The sound had come from where the ship was docked.

“It's just gulls. Sun's coming up soon and—”

Retvenko raised a hand, and a gust of air slammed the clerk back into the wall. “I said
be silent
.”

The clerk's mouth dropped open as he hung pinned to the slats. “You're the Grisha they got for the crew?”

For Saints' sake, was Retvenko going to have to pull the air from this boy's lungs and suffocate him into quiet?

Through the waxy windows, Retvenko could see the sky beginning to turn blue as dawn arrived. He heard the squawking of gulls searching the waves for breakfast. Maybe the liquor was muddling his mind.

Retvenko let the clerk drop to the ground. He'd spilled his coffee, but he didn't want to bother with another cup.

“Told you it was nothing,” said the clerk as he dragged himself to his feet. “Didn't have to get all heated up.” The clerk dusted himself off and got resettled behind the desk. “I never met one of you before. Grisha.” Retvenko snorted. The clerk probably had and simply didn't know it. “You get paid pretty good for the voyages?”

“Not good enough.”

“I—” But whatever the clerk was going to say next was lost as the door to the office exploded in a hail of splinters.

Retvenko's hands went up to shield his face. He ducked and rolled behind the clerk's desk for cover. A woman entered the office—black hair, golden eyes.
Shu.

The clerk reached for a shotgun Retvenko saw strapped beneath the desk. “They've come for the payroll!” he shouted. “Ain't no one taking the payroll.”

Retvenko watched in shock as the gangly clerk stood like some kind of avenging warrior and opened fire. By all that was holy, nothing could motivate the Kerch like cash.

Retvenko peeked around the desk in time to see the shotgun blast strike the woman directly in the chest. She was thrown backward and collided with the doorjamb, crumpling to the floor. He smelled the sharp burn of gunpowder, the metallic tang of blood. Retvenko's belly gave a shaming lurch. It had been a long time since he'd seen someone shot down in front of him—and that had been in a time of war.

“Ain't no one taking the payroll,” the clerk repeated with satisfaction.

But before Retvenko could reply, the Shu woman wrapped her bloody hand around the door frame, hauling herself to her feet.

Retvenko blinked. Just how much whiskey had he had?

The woman marched forward. Through the remains of her tattered blouse, Retvenko saw blood, flesh pocked with buckshot, and the glint of what looked like metal.

The clerk fumbled to reload, but the woman was too fast. She grabbed the gun from his hands and swatted him down with it, knocking him sideways with terrible force. She tossed the gun aside and turned her golden eyes on Retvenko.

“Take payroll!” Retvenko shouted, clambering backward. He dug in his pockets and tossed his nearly empty wallet at her. “Take what you want.”

The woman smiled slightly at that—with pity? Amusement? Retvenko did not know. But he understood that she had not come for the money at all. She had come for him. And it didn't matter if she was a slaver or a mercenary or something else entirely. She would face a soldier, not some cowering weakling.

He leapt to his feet, muscles responding reluctantly to his demands, and shifted into fighting stance. His arms arced forward. A howling wind swept through the room, tossing a chair, then the clerk's desk, then the steaming coffee urn at the woman. She batted each item away with little interest, as if she were brushing aside stray cobwebs.

Retvenko focused his power and shoved both his hands forward, feeling his ears pop as the pressure dropped and the wind swelled in a surging thunderhead. Maybe this woman couldn't be stopped by bullets. Let's see how she fared against the fury of a storm.

The woman growled as the gale seized her, hurtling her back through the open doorway. She seized the jamb, trying to keep hold.

Retvenko laughed. He'd forgotten how good it felt to fight. Then, from behind him, he heard a loud
crack
, the shriek of nails torn free and rending timber. He looked over his shoulder and caught the briefest glimpse of the dawn sky, the wharf. The wall was gone.

Strong arms seized him, clasping his hands to his sides, preventing him from using his power. He was rising, sailing upward, the harbor shrinking beneath him. He saw the roof of the harbormaster's office, the body of the first mate in a heap on the dock, the ship Retvenko had been meant to sail on—its deck a mess of broken boards, bodies piled near the shattered masts. His attackers had been there first.

The air was cold on his face. His heart pounded a ragged rhythm in his ears.

“Please,” he begged as they soared higher, unsure of what he was pleading for. Afraid to move too suddenly or too much, he craned his neck to look at his captor. Retvenko released a terrified moan, somewhere between a sob and the panicked whine of an animal caught in a trap.

The man holding him was Shu, his black hair pulled into a tight bun, his golden eyes narrowed against the rush of the wind—and from his back emerged two vast wings that beat against the sky, hinged, gracefully wrought in looping silver filigree and taut canvas. Was he an angel? A demon? Some strange mechanical come to life? Had Retvenko simply lost his mind?

In the arms of his captor, Emil Retvenko saw the shadow they made cast upon the glittering surface of the sea far below: two heads, two wings, four legs. He had become a great beast, and yet that beast would devour him. His prayers turned to screams, but both went unanswered.

 

2

W
YLAN

What am I doing here?

That thought had run through Wylan's head at least six times a day since he'd met Kaz Brekker. But on a night like this, a night when they were “working,” it rose and fell in his head like a nervous tenor practicing his scales:
WhatamIdoingherewhatamIdoingherewhatamIdoinghere.

Wylan tugged at the hem of his sky-blue jacket, the uniform worn by the waiters of Club Cumulus, and tried to look at ease.
Think of it as a dinner party
, he told himself. He'd endured countless uncomfortable meals at his father's house. This was no different. In fact, it was easier. No awkward conversations about his studies or when he planned to start classes at the university. All he had to do was stay quiet, follow Kaz's instructions, and figure out what to do with his hands. Clasp them in front? Too much like a singer at a recital. In back? Too military. He tried just dangling them at his sides, but that didn't feel right either. Why hadn't he paid better attention to the way waiters stood? Despite Kaz's assurances that the second-floor parlor was theirs for the night, Wylan felt certain that at any minute a real member of the staff would enter the room, point at him, and shout, “Impostor!” Then again, Wylan felt like an impostor most days.

It had been just under a week since they'd reached Ketterdam, almost a month since they'd left Djerholm. Wylan had been wearing Kuwei's features for most of that time, but whenever he caught a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror or a shop window, it took a long moment to realize he wasn't looking at a stranger. This was his face now—golden eyes, wide brow, black hair. His old self had been scrubbed away, and Wylan wasn't sure he knew the person who remained—the person who was standing in a private parlor in one of the Lid's most luxurious gambling dens, caught up in another of Kaz Brekker's schemes.

A player at the table lifted his champagne glass for a refill, and Wylan darted forward from his perch against the wall. His hands were shaking as he took the bottle from the silver ice bucket, but there were some benefits to the years he'd spent at his father's social functions. He at least knew how to pour a proper glass of champagne without it foaming over. Wylan could almost hear Jesper's mocking voice.
Marketable skills, merchling.

He dared a glance at Jesper now. The sharpshooter was seated at the table, hunched over his cards. He wore a battered navy waistcoat embroidered with small gold stars, and his rumpled shirt shone white against his dark brown skin. Jesper rubbed a tired hand over his face. They'd been playing cards for more than two hours. Wylan couldn't tell if Jesper's fatigue was real or part of the act.

Wylan filled another glass, focusing on Kaz's instructions.

“Just take the players' orders and keep one ear on Smeet's conversation,” he'd said. “It's a job, Wylan. Get it done.”

Why did they all call it a job? It didn't feel like working. It felt like missing a step and suddenly finding yourself falling. It felt like panic. So Wylan took stock of the room's details—a trick he'd often used to steady himself whenever he arrived someplace new or when his father was in a particularly foul mood. He inventoried the pattern of interlocking starbursts that formed the polished wood floor, the shell-shaped nodes of the blown-glass chandelier, the cobalt silk wallpaper flocked with silver clouds. No windows to allow in natural light. Kaz said none of the gambling dens had them, because the bosses wanted players to lose track of time.

Wylan watched Kaz deal another hand to Smeet, Jesper, and the other players at the round table. He wore the same sky-blue staff jacket as Wylan and his hands were bare. Wylan had to fight not to stare at them. It wasn't just the strangeness, the wrongness of seeing Kaz without his gloves, it was that his hands seemed animated by a secret machinery Wylan didn't understand. When he had started to learn figure drawing, Wylan had studied anatomy illustrations. He had a good grasp of musculature, the way bones and joints and ligaments fit together. But Kaz's hands moved as if they'd been made for no other purpose than to manipulate cards, long white fingers flexing in easy rhythm, the shuffle precise, each turn economical. Kaz had claimed he could control any deck. So why was Jesper losing so badly?

When Kaz had outlined this part of the plan at the hideout on Black Veil, Wylan had been incredulous, and for once, he hadn't been the only one with questions.

“Let me get this straight,” Nina had said. “Your grand scheme is to give Jesper a line of credit and make him play cards with Cornelis Smeet?”

“Smeet likes high-stakes Three Man Bramble and blondes,” said Kaz. “So we're going to give him both. I'll deal the first half of the night, then Specht will take over.”

Wylan didn't know Specht well. He was a former navy seaman, a member of the Dregs who had piloted their ship to and from the Ice Court. If Wylan was honest, between the grizzled jaw and the tattoos that ran halfway up Specht's neck, he found the sailor slightly frightening. But even Specht had looked concerned when he said, “I can deal cards, Kaz, but I can't control a deck.”

“You don't have to. From the time you sit down, it will be an honest game. The important thing is to keep Smeet at the tables until midnight. The shift change is when we risk losing him. As soon as I stand up, he's going to start thinking about moving on to another game or calling it a night, so you all need to do everything you can to keep his ass firmly planted at that table.”