Crooked Kingdom (38 page)

Matthias was running through the streets of a foreign city, into dangers he did not know, but for the first time since he'd looked into Nina's eyes and seen his own humanity reflected back at him, the war inside him quieted.

We'll find a way to change their minds
, she'd said.
All of them.
He would locate Nina. They would survive this night. They would free themselves of this damp, misbegotten city, and then … Well, then they'd change the world.

 

20

I
NEJ

Inej twisted, breaking the clawlike grip on the back of her neck. She scrambled to stop her fall. Her legs found purchase on the silo roof and she yanked herself free, pushing away from the hatch. She rocked back on her heels, knives already released from their sheaths, deadly weight in her hands.

Her mind could not quite make sense out of what she was seeing. A girl stood before her on the silo roof, gleaming like a figure carved of ivory and amber. Her tunic and trousers were the color of cream, banded in ivory leather and embroidered in gold. Her auburn hair hung in a thick braid laced with the glint of jewels. She was tall and slender, maybe a year or two older than Inej.

Inej's first thought was of the Kherguud soldiers that Nina and the others had seen in West Stave, but this girl didn't look Shu.

“Hello, Wraith,” the girl said.

“Do I know you?”

“I am Dunyasha, the White Blade, trained by the Sages of Ahmrat Jen, the greatest assassin of this age.”

“Doesn't ring a bell.”

“I'm new to this city,” the girl acknowledged, “but I'm told you are a legend on these filthy streets. I confess, I thought you'd be … taller.”

“What business?” Inej asked, the traditional Kerch greeting at the beginning of any meeting, though it felt absurd to say it twenty stories in the air.

Dunyasha smiled. It seemed practiced, like the smiles Inej had seen girls give customers in the gilded Menagerie parlor. “A crude greeting for a crude city.” She flicked her fingers carelessly toward the skyline, acknowledging and dismissing Ketterdam with a single gesture. “Fate brought me here.”

“And does fate pay your wages?” Inej asked, sizing her up. She did not think this ivory-and-amber girl had scaled a silo just to make her acquaintance. In a fight, Dunyasha's height would give her a longer reach, but it might impact her balance. Had Van Eck sent her? And if so, had he sent someone after Nina too? She spared the briefest glance below but could see nothing in the deep shadows of the silos. “Who do you work for?”

Knives appeared in Dunyasha's hands, their edges gleaming brightly. “Our work is death,” she said, “and it is holy.”

An exultant light filled her eyes, the first true spark of life Inej had seen in her, and then she attacked.

Inej was startled by the girl's speed. Dunyasha moved like painted light, as if she were a blade herself, cutting through the darkness, her knives slicing in tandem, left, right. Inej let her body respond, dodging more on instinct than anything else, backing away from her opponent, but avoiding the silo's edge. She feinted left and slipped past Dunyasha, managing the first thrust of her own.

Dunyasha whirled and evaded the attack easily, weightless as sun gilding the surface of a lake. Inej had never seen someone fight this way, as if she were moving to music only she could hear.

“Are you afraid, Wraith?” Inej felt Dunyasha's knife shred through her sleeve. The sting of the blade was like a burning lash.
Not too deep
, she told herself. Unless of course the blade was poisoned. “I think you are. You cannot fear death and be its true emissary.”

Was the girl mad? Or just chatty? Inej bobbed backward, moving in a circle around the silo's roof.

“I was born without fear,” Dunyasha continued with a happy chuckle. “My parents thought I would drown because I crawled into the sea as a baby, laughing.”

“Perhaps they worried you would talk yourself to death.”

Her opponent drove forward with new intensity, and Inej wondered if the girl had only been toying with her in that first aggressive flurry, feeling for her strengths and weaknesses before she seized the advantage. They exchanged thrusts, but Dunyasha was fresh. Inej could feel every ache and injury and trial of the last month in her body—the knife wound that had almost killed her, the trip up the incinerator, the days she'd spent bound in captivity.

“I confess to disappointment,” Dunyasha said as her feet skipped nimbly over the silo's roof. “I had hoped you might prove a challenge. But what do I find? A smudge of a Suli acrobat who fights like a common street thug.”

It was true. Inej had learned her technique from boys like Kaz and Jesper in the alleys and crooked streets of Ketterdam. Dunyasha didn't have just one mode of attack. She bent like a reed when required, stalked forward like a prowling cat, retreated like smoke. She had no single style that Inej could grasp or predict.

She's better than me.
The knowledge had the taste of rot, as if Inej had bitten into a tempting fruit and found it foul. It wasn't just the difference in their training. Inej had learned to fight because she had to if she wanted to survive. She'd wept the night she'd made her first kill. This girl was enjoying herself.

But Ketterdam had taught Inej well. If you couldn't beat the odds, you changed the game. Inej waited for her opponent to lunge, then leapt past her onto the wire stretched between the silos, moving recklessly across it. The wind reached out for her, eager now, sensing opportunity. She considered using the balance pole, but she wanted her hands free.

She felt the wire wobble.
Impossible.
But when she looked back over her shoulder, Dunyasha had followed her out onto the high wire. She was grinning, her white skin glowing as if she'd swallowed the moon.

Dunyasha's hand shot out and Inej gasped as something sharp lodged in her calf. She bent backward, taking the wire in her hands, and flipped her stance so that she was facing her opponent. The girl's wrist snapped out again. Inej felt another bright stab of pain, and when she looked down, she saw a spiked metal star protruding from her thigh.

From somewhere below, she heard shouting, the sounds of a fight.
Nina.
Who or what had Jan Van Eck sent after her? But she could not afford distraction, not on the wire, not faced with this creature.

“I hear you whored for the Peacock,” Dunyasha said as she flung another spiked star at Inej, and another. Inej avoided both, but took the next in the meat of her right shoulder. She was bleeding badly. “I would have killed myself and everyone beneath that roof before letting myself be used in such a way.”

“You're being used now,” Inej replied. “Van Eck isn't worthy of your skill.”

“If you must know, Pekka Rollins pays my wages,” said the girl, and Inej's footsteps faltered.
Rollins.
“He pays for my travel, my lodgings. But I ask no money for the lives I take. They are the jewels I wear. They are my glory in this world and will bring me honor in the next.”

Pekka Rollins.
Had he somehow found Kaz? The others? What if Nina was lying dead below? Inej had to get free of this girl. She had to help them. Another silver star came whirring at her and she bent left to avoid it, almost lost her balance. She danced backward on the wire, glimpsed another glint of silver. Pain lanced through her arm and she hissed in a breath.

Our work is death and it is holy.
What dark god did this mercenary serve? Inej imagined some vast deity looming above the city, faceless and featureless, skin taut over its swollen limbs, fattened on the blood of its acolytes' victims. She could feel its presence, the chill of its shadow.

A star lodged in Inej's shin, another in her forearm. She glanced over her shoulder. Only ten more feet and she would be at the first silo. Dunyasha might know more about fighting than Inej ever would, but she didn't know Ketterdam. Inej would race to the bottom of the silo, find Nina. They'd lose this monster in the streets and canals Inej knew so well.

Again, she gauged the distance behind her. Just a few more feet. But when she looked back, Dunyasha was no longer on the wire. Inej saw her bend, saw her hand reach for the magnet.
No.

“Protect me,” she whispered to her Saints.

The line went slack. Inej fell, twisting in the air the way she had as a child, searching for her wings.

 

21

K
AZ

Kaz heard a roaring in his ears. As always, he experienced a strange kind of doubling when he looked at Rollins, as if he'd been up too late and had far too much to drink. The man before him was Pekka Rollins, king of the Barrel, gang lord and impresario. But he was also Jakob Hertzoon, the supposedly upstanding merch who had fed Kaz and Jordie on comfort and confidence, then taken their money and left them helpless in a city that put no value on mercy.

Any sign of the respectable Jakob Hertzoon was gone tonight. Rollins wore a green-striped waistcoat snugly buttoned over the beginnings of a gut and trousers with an emerald sheen. Apparently, he'd replaced the watch Kaz had stolen from him, because he took out a new one and glanced at it now.

“This thing never keeps time quite right,” Rollins said, giving the watch a shake, his sideburns quivering slightly as he breathed an exasperated sigh, “but I can't resist a fine bit of shine. Don't suppose you kept the one you took off me?” Kaz said nothing. “Well,” Rollins continued with a shrug, snapping the watch shut and returning it to his waistcoat pocket. “Right about now, my lieutenants should be rounding up your crew and a certain priceless hostage at Black Veil Island.”

Wylan released a distressed sound.

“I've also prepared something special for the Wraith,” said Rollins. “An extraordinary asset, that girl. I didn't like the thought of that particular arrow in your quiver, so I found someone even more extraordinary to take care of her.”

A sick sensation settled in Kaz's stomach. He thought of Inej rolling her shoulders, the tidy frame of her body brimming with confidence.
I don't work with a net.

“Did you really think you'd be that hard to find, Brekker? I've been at this game a long time. All I had to do was think what I'd have done when I was younger and more foolish.”

The roaring in Kaz's ears grew louder. “You're working for Van Eck.” He'd known it was a possibility, but he'd ignored it. He'd thought that if he moved fast enough, they wouldn't have time to form an alliance.

“I'm working
with
Van Eck. After you came to me looking for cash, I had a feeling he might have need of my services. He was hesitant at first, hasn't had the best luck making deals with Barrel boys. But that little stunt you pulled with his wife drove him right into my loving arms. I told Van Eck you'd always be a step ahead of him because he can't help thinking like a businessman.”

Kaz nearly flinched. Hadn't he had the very same thought?

“He's a savvy one, no doubt,” continued Rollins, “but a man of limited imagination. Whereas you, Brekker, think like a villainous little thug. You're me with a lot more hair and a lot less style. Van Eck thought he had you all tied up on West Stave, felt pretty good about calling in the
stadwatch
too. But I knew you'd be more slippery than that.”

“And you knew I'd come here?”

Rollins chuckled. “I knew you couldn't
resist
it. Oh, I didn't know what plan you'd concoct, but I knew whatever scheme you devised would bring you here. You couldn't pass up the chance to humiliate Van Eck, to take back what you think he owes you.”

“The deal is the deal.”

Rollins shook his head, clucking like a big mother hen. “You take things too personally, Brekker. You should be focused on the job, but you're too busy holding a grudge.”

“That's where you're wrong,” said Kaz. “I don't hold a grudge. I cradle it. I coddle it. I feed it fine cuts of meat and send it to the best schools. I nurture my grudges, Rollins.”

“I'm glad you've kept your sense of humor, lad. Once you've served your term in stir—assuming Van Eck lets you live—I might just let you come work for me. Shame to see a talent like yours go to waste.”

“I'd rather be cooked slow on a spit with Van Eck turning the handle.”

Rollins' smile was magnanimous. “I imagine that can be arranged too. I'm nothing if not accommodating.”
Just keep talking
, Kaz urged silently, his hand slipping inside Wylan's satchel.

“What makes you think Van Eck will honor his agreement with you any more than he did with us?”

“Because I have the sense to get cash up front. And my demands are decidedly more moderate. A few million
kruge
to rid the Barrel of a nuisance I'd like to see gone anyway? Most reasonable.” Rollins hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat. “Fact is, Van Eck and I understand each other. I'm expanding, growing my territory, thinking bigger. The Kaelish Prince is the finest establishment East Stave has ever seen, and it's only the beginning. Van Eck and I are builders. We want to create something that outlasts us. You'll grow into it, boy. Now hand over that seal and come quietly, why don't you?”

Kaz pulled the seal from his pocket, held it up, letting it catch the lamplight, drawing Pekka's gaze. He hesitated.

“Come now, Brekker. You're tough, I confess, but I've got you cornered and outnumbered. You can't make the drop from that window, and Van Eck has
stadwatch
lining the street below. You're done for, toasted, swinging in the wind, so don't do anything foolish.”

But if you couldn't open a door, you just had to make a new one. Rollins was easy to get talking; in fact, Kaz doubted he could stop him if he wanted to. Then it was just a question of keeping Rollins' eyes on the shiny golden seal in Kaz's right hand while he opened the jar of auric acid with the left.