Crooked Kingdom (37 page)

“We're surrounded,” he said. The people standing between Black Veil's graves were a far cry from the
stadwatch
officers he'd expected to see. In the flickering light of lanterns and torches, Matthias glimpsed plaid and paisley, striped vests, and checkered coats. The uniform of the Barrel. They carried equally motley weapons—guns, knives as long as a man's forearm, wooden bats.

“I can't make out their tattoos,” said Jesper. “But I'm pretty sure that's Doughty up front.”

Doughty.
Matthias searched his memory, then remembered the man who had escorted them to Pekka Rollins when Kaz had sought a loan. “Dime Lions.”

“A lot of them.”

“What do they want?” said Kuwei tremulously.

Matthias could hear people laughing, shouting, and beneath it all, the low, fevered buzz that came when soldiers knew they had the advantage, when they scented the promise of bloodshed in the air.

A cheer arose from the crowd as a Dime Lion sprinted forward and hurled something toward the tomb. It soared through one of the broken windows and hit the floor with a clang. Green gas burst from its sides.

Matthias yanked a horse blanket from the floor and threw it over the canister. He shoved it back through the porthole as another stutter of gunfire split the air. His eyes burned, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Now the buzz was cresting. The Dime Lions surged forward.

Jesper squeezed off a shot and one of the advancing crew fell, his torch extinguished on the damp ground. Again and again Jesper fired, his aim unerring as Dime Lions toppled. Their ranks broke as they scattered for cover.

“Keep lining up, boys,” Jesper said grimly.

“Come on out!” bellowed Doughty from behind a grave. “You can't shoot us all.”

“I can't hear you,” shouted Jesper. “Come closer.”

“We smashed your boats. You got no way off this island except us. So come quiet or we'll bring just your heads back to the Barrel.”

“Watch out!” said Matthias. Doughty had been distracting them. Another canister crashed through a window, then another. “The catacomb!” Matthias roared, and they raced for the opposite end of the tomb, cramming themselves into the passage and sealing the stone door behind them. Jesper tore off his shirt and shoved it into the gap between the door and the floor.

The dark was almost complete. For a moment, there was only the sound of the three of them coughing and gasping, trying to dislodge the gas from their lungs. Then Jesper shook out a bonelight and their faces were lit by an eerie green glow.

“How the hell did they find us?” he asked.

“It doesn't matter,” said Matthias. There was no time to think about how Black Veil had been compromised. All he knew was that if Pekka Rollins had sent his gang after them, Nina might be in danger too. “What are our assets?”

“Wylan left us with a bunch of those violet bombs in case we ran into trouble with the Shu soldiers, and I've got a couple of flash bombs too. Kuwei?”

“I have nothing,” he said.

“You have that damn travel pack,” said Jesper. “There's nothing useful in there?”

Kuwei clutched the bag to his chest. “My notebooks,” he said with a sniff.

“What about the leavings from Wylan's work?” asked Matthias. No one had bothered to clear anything away.

“It's just some of the stuff he used to make the fireworks for Goedmedbridge,” said Jesper.

A flurry of shouts came from outside.

“They're going to blow the door to the tomb,” said Matthias. It was what he would have done if he'd wanted prisoners instead of casualties, though he felt certain Kuwei was the only one of them the Dime Lions cared about extracting alive.

“There have to be at least thirty toughs out there looking to skin our hides,” said Jesper. “There's only one way out of the tomb, and we're on a damn island. We're done for.”

“Maybe not,” said Matthias, considering the ghostly green glow of the bonelight. Though he did not have Kaz's gift for scheming, he'd been raised in the military. There might be a way out of this.

“Are you crazy? The Dime Lions have to know how badly outnumbered we are.”

“True,” said Matthias. “But they don't know that two of us are Grisha.” They thought they were hunting a scientist, not an Inferni, and Jesper had long kept his Fabrikator powers a secret.

“Yeah, two Grisha with barely any training,” said Jesper.

A loud
boom
sounded, shaking the tomb walls and sending Matthias careening into the others.

“They're coming!” cried Kuwei.

But no footsteps sounded, and there was another series of shouts from outside. “They didn't use a big enough charge,” said Matthias. “They want you alive, so they're being cautious. We have one more chance. Kuwei, how much heat can you produce from a flame?”

“I can make a fire burn more intensely, but it's hard to maintain.”

Matthias remembered the violet flames licking over the body of the flying Shu soldier, inextinguishable. Wylan had said they burned hotter than ordinary fire.

“Give me one of the bombs,” he told Jesper. “I'm going to blow the back of the catacomb.”

“Why?”

“To make them think we're blasting our way out the other side,” Matthias said, setting the bomb at the farthest end of the stone passage.

“Are you sure you aren't going to blow us up with it?”

“No,” admitted Matthias. “But unless you have some brilliant idea—”

“I—”

“Shooting as many people as possible before we die is not an option.”

Jesper shrugged. “In that case, go on.”

“Kuwei, as soon as the bomb goes off, get to the front door as fast as you can. The gas should have diffused, but I want you to run. I'll be right behind you, lending cover. Do you know the tomb with the big broken mast?”

“To the right?”

“Yes. Head straight for that. Jesper, grab up all those powders that Wylan left and do the same.”

“Why?”

Matthias lit the fuse. “You can follow my orders or you can ask your questions of the Dime Lions. Now, get down.”

He shoved them both against the wall, shielding their bodies as a thunderous
boom
sounded from the end of the tunnel.

“Run!”

They burst through the catacomb door.

Matthias kept a hand on Kuwei's shoulder, urging him along as they raced through the remnants of the green gas. “Remember, head straight to the broken mast.” He kicked open the tomb door and lobbed a flash bomb into the air. It exploded in shards of diamond-white light, and Matthias ran for cover in the trees, blasting at the Dime Lions with his rifle as he dodged through the graves.

The Dime Lions returned fire and Matthias dove beneath a slump of moss-covered stones. He saw Jesper charge through the tomb door, revolvers blazing, cutting toward the broken stone mast. Matthias lobbed the last flash bomb into the air as Jesper rolled to the right, and the roar of gunfire erupted like a storm breaking as the Dime Lions forgot all promise of discipline or offer of reward and let fly with everything they had. They might have been ordered to keep Kuwei alive, but they were Barrel rats, not trained soldiers.

On his belly, Matthias crawled through the dirt of the graveyard. “Everyone unhurt?” he asked as he reached the broken mast of the mausoleum.

“Out of breath but still breathing,” said Jesper. Kuwei nodded, though he was shaking badly. “Fantastic plan, by the way. How is being pinned down here better than being pinned down in the tomb?”

“Did you get Wylan's powders?”

“What was left of them,” said Jesper. He emptied his pockets, revealing three packets.

Matthias chose one at random. “Can you manipulate those powders?”

Jesper shifted uneasily. “Yes. I guess. I did something similar at the Ice Court. Why?”

Why. Why.
In the
drüskelle
he would have been brigged for insubordination.

“Black Veil is supposedly haunted, yes? We're going to make some ghosts.” Matthias glanced around the edge of the mausoleum. “They're moving in. I need you to follow my orders and stop asking questions. Both of you.”

“No wonder you and Kaz don't get along,” Jesper muttered.

In as few words as he could, Matthias explained what he intended now and when they reached the island's shore—assuming his plan worked.

“I've never done this before,” said Kuwei.

Jesper winked at him. “That's what makes it exciting.”

“Ready?” said Matthias.

He opened the packet. Jesper raised his hands, and with a light
whump
the powder rose in a cloud. It hung suspended in the air as if time had slowed. Jesper focused, sweat beading on his forehead, then shoved his hands forward. The cloud thinned and rolled over the heads of the Dime Lions, then caught in one of their torches in a burst of green.

The men surrounding the torch holder gasped.

“
Kuwei
,” directed Matthias.

The Shu boy lifted his hands and the flame from the green torch crept along the handle, snaking up the arm of its bearer in a sinuous coil of fire. The man screamed, tossing the torch away, falling to the ground and rolling in an attempt to extinguish the flames.

“Keep going,” said Matthias, and Kuwei flexed his fingers, but the green flames went out.

“I'm sorry!” said Kuwei.

“Make another,” demanded Matthias. There was no time for cosseting.

Kuwei thrust his hands out again and one of the Dime Lions' lanterns exploded, this time in a whorl of yellow flame. Kuwei shrank back as if he hadn't intended to use so much force.

“Don't lose your focus,” Matthias urged.

Kuwei curled his wrists and the flames of the lantern rose in a serpentine arc.

“Hey,” said Jesper. “Not bad.” He opened another packet of powder and tossed its contents into the air, then arced his arms forward, sending it to meet Kuwei's flame. The twisting thread of fire turned a deep, shimmering crimson. “Strontium chloride,” the sharpshooter murmured. “My favorite.”

Kuwei flexed one of his fists and another stream of fire joined the flames of the lantern, then another, forming a thick-bodied snake that undulated over Black Veil, ready to strike.

“Ghosts!” one of the Dime Lions shouted.

“Don't be daft,” replied another.

Matthias watched that red serpent coil and uncoil in trails of flame, feeling the old fear rise in him. He'd grown comfortable with Kuwei, and yet it had been Inferni fire that consumed his family's village in a border skirmish. Somehow, he'd forgotten the power this boy held within him.
It was a war
, he reminded himself.
And this is one too.

The Dime Lions were distracted, but it wouldn't last long.

“Spread the fire to the trees,” Matthias said, and with a little grunt, Kuwei threw his arms wide. The green leaves fought the onslaught of devouring flame, then caught.

“They got a Grisha,” shouted Doughty. “Flank them!”

“To the shore!” said Matthias. “Now!” They sprinted past gravestones and broken stone Saints. “Kuwei, get ready. We need everything you have.”

They skittered down the bank, tumbling into the shallows. Matthias grabbed the violet bombs and smashed them open on the hulls of the wrecked boats. Slithering violet flame engulfed them. It had an eerie, almost creamy quality. Matthias had navigated to and from Black Veil enough times to know this was the shallowest part of the canal, the long stretch of sandbar where boats were most likely to run aground, but the opposite shore seemed impossibly far away.

“Kuwei,” he commanded, praying that the Shu boy was strong enough, hoping that he could manage the plan Matthias had outlined bare moments earlier, “make a path.”

Kuwei shoved his hands forward and the flames poured into the water, sending up a massive plume of steam. At first, all Matthias could see was a wall of billowing white. Then the steam parted slightly and he saw fish flopping in the mud, crabs skittering over the exposed bottom of the canal as violet flames licked at the water to either side.

“All the Saints and the donkeys they rode in on,” Jesper said on an awed breath. “Kuwei, you did it.”

Matthias turned back to the island and opened fire into the trees.

“Hurry!” he shouted, and they ran over a road that had not been there moments before, bolting for the other side of the canal, for the streets and alleys that might lend them cover.
Unnatural
, a voice clamored in his head.
No
, thought Matthias,
miraculous
.

“You do realize you just led your own little Grisha army?” said Jesper as they hauled themselves out of the mud and hurried through the shadowed streets toward Sweet Reef.

He had. An uncomfortable thought. Through Jesper and Kuwei, he had wielded Grisha power. And yet, Matthias did not feel tainted or somehow marked by it. He remembered what Nina had said about the construction of the Ice Court, that it must be the work of Grisha and not the work of Djel. What if both things were true? What if Djel worked through these people?
Unnatural.
The word had come so easily to him, a way to dismiss what he did not understand, to make Nina and her kind less than human. But what if behind the righteousness that drove the
drüskelle
, there was something less clean or justified? What if it wasn't even fear or anger but simply envy? What did it mean to aspire to serve Djel, only to see his power in the gifts of another, to know you could never possess those gifts yourself?

The
drüskelle
gave their oath to Fjerda, but to their god as well. If they could be made to see miracles where once they'd seen abomination, what else might change?
I have been made to protect you.
His duty to his god, his duty to Nina. Maybe they were the same thing. What if Djel's hand had raised the waters the night of the wrathful storm that wrecked the
drüskelle
ship and bound Matthias and Nina together?