Crooked Kingdom (43 page)

“Damn it, Kaz. What are you always telling me? Walk away from a losing hand.”

“I'm giving you a way out. Take it.”

“Why are you treating us like a bunch of yellow-bellied skivs?”

Kaz turned on him. “You're the one getting ready to bolt, Jesper. You just want me to run with you so you don't have to feel so bad about it. For all your love of a fight, you're always the first to talk about running for cover.”

“Because I want to stay
alive
.”

“For what?” Kaz said, his eyes glittering. “So you can play another hand at the tables? So you can find another way to disappoint your father and let down your friends? Have you told your father you're the reason he's going to lose his farm? Have you told Inej you're the reason she almost died at the end of Oomen's knife? That we all almost died?”

Jesper's shoulders bunched, but he didn't back down. “I made a mistake. I let my bad get the best of my good, but for Saints' sake, Kaz, how long are you going to make me pay for a little forgiveness?”

“What do you think my forgiveness looks like, Jordie?”

“Who the hell is Jordie?”

For the briefest moment, Kaz's face went slack, a confused, almost frightened look in his dark eyes—there and gone, so fast Wylan wondered if he'd imagined it.

“What do you want from me?” Kaz snarled, his expression just as closed, just as cruel as ever. “My trust? You had it and you shot it to pieces because you couldn't keep your mouth shut.”

“
One time.
How many times have I had your back in a fight? How many times have I gotten it right? Doesn't that count for anything?” Jesper threw up his hands. “I can't win with you. No one can.”

“That's right. You can't win. You think you're a gambler, but you're just a born loser. Fights. Cards. Boys. Girls. You'll keep playing until you lose, so for once in your life, just walk away.”

Jesper swung first. Kaz dodged right and then they were grappling. They slammed into the wall, knocked heads, drew apart in a flurry of punches and grabs.

Wylan turned to Inej, expecting her to object, for Matthias to separate them, for someone to
do something
, but the others just backed up, making room. Only Kuwei showed any kind of distress.

Jesper and Kaz swung around, crashed into the mechanism of the clock, righted themselves. It wasn't a fight, it was a brawl—graceless, a tangle of elbows and fists.

“Ghezen and his works, someone stop them!” Wylan said desperately.

“Jesper hasn't shot him,” Nina said.

“Kaz isn't using his cane,” said Inej.

“You think they can't kill each other with their bare hands?”

They were both bleeding—Jesper from a cut on his lip and Kaz from somewhere near his brow. Jesper's shirt was halfway over his head and Kaz's sleeve was tearing at the seam.

The trapdoor sprang open and Colm Fahey's head emerged. His ruddy cheeks went even redder.

“Jesper Llewellyn Fahey, that is
enough
!” he roared.

Jesper and Kaz both startled, and then, to Wylan's shock, they stepped away from each other, looking guilty.

“Just what is going on here?” Colm said. “I thought you were friends.”

Jesper ran a hand over the back of his neck, looking like he wanted to vanish through the floorboards. “We … uh … we were having a disagreement.”

“I can see that. I have been very patient with all of this, Jesper, but I am at my limit. I want you down here before I count ten or I will tan your hide so you don't sit for two weeks.”

Colm's head vanished back down the stairs. The silence stretched.

Then Nina giggled. “You are in
so
much trouble.”

Jesper scowled. “Matthias, Nina let Cornelis Smeet grope her bottom.”

Nina stopped laughing. “I am going to turn your teeth inside out.”

“That is physically impossible.”

“I just raised the dead. Do you really want to argue with me?”

Inej cocked her head to one side. “Jesper
Llewellyn
Fahey?”

“Shut up,” said Jesper. “It's a family name.”

Inej made a solemn bow. “Whatever you say, Llewellyn.”

“Kaz?” Jesper said tentatively.

But Kaz was staring into the middle distance. Wylan thought he knew that look.

“Is that—?” asked Wylan.

“Scheming face?” said Jesper.

Matthias nodded. “Definitely.”

“I know how to do it,” Kaz said slowly. “How to get Kuwei out, get the Grisha out, get our money, beat Van Eck, and give that son of a bitch Pekka Rollins everything he has coming to him.”

Nina raised a brow. “Is that all?”

“How?” asked Inej.

“This whole time, we've been playing Van Eck's game. We've been hiding. We're done with that. We're going to stage a little auction. Right out in the open.” He turned to face them, and his eyes gleamed flat and black as a shark's. “And since Kuwei is so eager to sacrifice himself, he's going to be the prize.”

 

PART FIVE

K
INGS
& Q
UEENS

 

24

J
ESPER

At the base of the iron staircase, Jesper tried to straighten his shirt and dabbed the blood from his lip, though at this point he figured it wouldn't matter if he showed up in nothing but his skivvies. His father was no fool, and that ridiculous story Wylan had concocted to cover for Jesper's mistakes had worn faster than a cheap suit. His father had seen their wounds, he'd heard about their botched plans. He knew they weren't students or victims of a swindle. So what now?

Close your eyes and hope the firing squad has good aim
, he thought bleakly.

“Jesper.”

He whirled. Inej was right behind him. He hadn't heard her approach, but that was no surprise.
Have you told Inej you're the reason she almost died at the end of Oomen's knife?
Well, Jesper figured he'd be doing a lot of apologizing this morning. Best get to it.

“Inej, I'm sorry—”

“I didn't come looking for an apology, Jesper. You have a weak spot. We all have weak spots.”

“What's yours?”

“The company I keep,” she said with a slight smile.

“You don't even know what I did.”

“Then tell me.”

Jesper looked down at his shoes. They were miserably scuffed. “I was in deep with Pekka Rollins for a lot of
kruge
. His goons were putting the pressure on, so I … I told them I was leaving town, but that I was about to come into a big score. I didn't say anything about the Ice Court, I swear.”

“But it was enough for Rollins to put the puzzle together and prepare an ambush.” She sighed. “And Kaz has been punishing you for it ever since.”

Jesper shrugged. “Maybe I deserve it.”

“Do you know the Suli have no words to say ‘I'm sorry'?”

“What do you say when you step on someone's foot?”

“I don't step on people's feet.”

“You know what I mean.”

“We say nothing. We know the slight was not deliberate. We live in tight quarters, traveling together. There's no time to constantly be apologizing for existing. But when someone does wrong, when we make mistakes, we don't say we're sorry. We promise to make amends.”

“I will.”

“
Mati en sheva yelu.
This action will have no echo. It means we won't repeat the same mistakes, that we won't continue to do harm.”

“I'm not going to get you stabbed again.”

“I got stabbed because I let my guard down. You betrayed your crew.”

“I didn't mean—”

“It would be better if you
had
meant to betray us. Jesper, I don't want an apology, not until you can promise that you won't keep making the same mistake.”

Jesper rocked lightly on his heels. “I don't know how to do that.”

“There's a wound in you, and the tables, the dice, the cards—they feel like medicine. They soothe you, put you right for a time. But they're poison, Jesper. Every time you play, you take another sip. You have to find some other way to heal that part of yourself.” She laid her hand on his chest. “Stop treating your pain like it's something you imagined. If you see the wound is real, then you can heal it.”

A wound? He opened his mouth to deny it, but something stopped him. For all his trouble at the tables and away from them, Jesper had always thought of himself as lucky. Happy, easygoing. The kind of guy people wanted around. But what if he'd been bluffing this whole time?
Angry and frightened
—that's what the Fjerdan had called him. What had Matthias and Inej seen in Jesper that he didn't understand?

“I … I'll try.” It was the most he could offer right now. He took her hand in his, pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “It may take me a while before I can say those words.” His lips tilted in a grin. “And not just because I can't speak Suli.”

“I know,” she said. “But think on it.” She glanced toward the sitting room. “Just tell him the truth, Jesper. You'll both be glad to know where you stand.”

“Every time I think about doing that, I feel like hurling myself out a window.” He hesitated. “Would you tell your parents the truth? Would you tell them everything you've done … everything that happened?”

“I don't know,” Inej admitted. “But I'd give anything to have the choice.”

*   *   *

Jesper found his father in the purple sitting room, a cup of coffee in his big hands. He'd piled the dishes back onto the silver tray.

“You don't have to clean up after us, Da.”

“Someone does.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Sit down, Jes.”

Jesper didn't want to sit. That desperate itch was crackling through his body. All he wanted was to run straight to the Barrel as fast as his legs could carry him and throw himself down in the first gambling parlor he could find. If he hadn't thought he'd be arrested or shot before he got halfway there, he just might have. He sat. Inej had left the unused vials of the chemical weevil on the table. He picked one up, fiddling with the stopper.

His father leaned back, watching him with those stern gray eyes. Jesper could see every line and freckle on his face in the clear morning light.

“There was no swindle, was there? That Shu boy lied for you. They all did.”

Jesper clasped his hands to keep them from fidgeting.
You'll both be glad to know where you stand.
Jesper wasn't sure that was true, but he had no more options. “There have been a lot of swindles, but I was usually on the swindling side. A lot of fights—I was usually on the winning side. A lot of card games.” He looked down at the white crescents of his fingernails. “I was usually on the losing side.”

“The loan I gave you for your studies?”

“I got in deep with the wrong people. I lost at the tables and I kept losing, so I kept borrowing. I thought I could find a way to dig myself out.”

“Why didn't you just stop?”

Jesper wanted to laugh. He had pleaded with himself, screamed at himself to stop. “It isn't like that.”
There's a wound in you.
“Not for me. I don't know why.”

Colm pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked so weary, this man who could work from sunrise to sunset without ever complaining. “I never should have let you leave home.”

“Da—”

“I knew the farm wasn't for you. I wanted you to have something better.”

“Then why not send me to Ravka?” Jesper said before he could think better of it.

Coffee sloshed from Colm's cup. “Out of the question.”

“Why?”

“Why should I send my son to some foreign country to fight and die in their wars?”

A memory came to Jesper, sharp as a mule kick. The dusty man was standing at the door again. He had the girl with him, the girl who had lived because his mother had died. He wanted Jesper to come with them.

“Leoni is zowa. She has the gift too,” he'd said. “There are teachers in the west, past the frontier. They could train them.”

“Jesper doesn't have it,” Colm said.

“But his mother—”

“He doesn't have it. You have no right to come here.”

“Are you sure? Has he been tested?”

“You come back on this land and I'll consider it an invitation to put a bullet between your eyes. You go and you take that girl with you. No one here has the gift and no one here wants it.”

He'd slammed the door in the dusty man's face.

Jesper remembered his father standing there, taking great heaving breaths.

“What did they want, Da?”

“Nothing.”

“Am I zowa?” Jesper had asked. “Am I Grisha?”

“Don't say those words in this house. Not ever.”

“But—”

“That's what killed your mother, do you understand? That's what took her from us.” His father's voice was fierce, his gray eyes hard as quartz. “I won't let it take you too.” Then his shoulders slumped. As if the words were being torn from him, he'd said, “Do you want to go with them? You can go. If that's what you want. I won't be mad.”

Jesper had been ten. He'd thought of his father alone on the farm, coming home to an empty house every day, sitting by himself at the table every night, no one to make him burnt biscuits.

“No,” he'd said. “I don't want to go with them. I want to stay with you.”

Now he rose from his chair, unable to sit still any longer, and paced the length of the room. Jesper felt like he couldn't breathe. He couldn't be here anymore. His heart hurt. His head hurt. Guilt and love and resentment were all tangled up inside him, and every time he tried to unravel the knot in his gut, it just got worse. He was ashamed of the mess he'd made, of the trouble he'd brought to his father's door. But he was mad too. And how could he be angry at his father? The person who loved him most in the world, who had worked to give him everything he had, the person he'd take a bullet for any day of the week?