Crooked Kingdom (47 page)

Inej shook her head. How could she still look at him with kindness in her eyes? “You don't ask for forgiveness, Kaz. You earn it.”

“Is that what you intend to do? By hunting slavers?”

“By hunting slavers. By rooting out the merchers and Barrel bosses who profit off of them. By being something more than just the next Pekka Rollins.”

It was impossible. There was nothing more. He could see the truth even if she couldn't. Inej was stronger than he would ever be. She'd kept her faith, her goodness, even when the world tried to take it from her with greedy hands.

His eyes scanned her face as they always had, closely, hungrily, snatching at the details of her like the thief he was—the even set of her dark brows, the rich brown of her eyes, the upward tilt of her lips. He didn't deserve peace and he didn't deserve forgiveness, but if he was going to die today, maybe the one thing he'd earned was the memory of her—brighter than anything he would ever have a right to—to take with him to the other side.

Kaz strode past Inej, took his discarded gloves from the sink, pulled them on. He shrugged into his coat, straightened his tie in the mirror, tucked his cane under his arm. He might as well go to meet his death in style.

When he turned back to her, he was ready. “Whatever happens to me, survive this city. Get your ship, have your vengeance, carve your name into their bones. But survive this mess I've gotten us into.”

“Don't do this,” Inej said.

“If I don't, it's all over. There's no way out. There's no reward. There's nothing left.”

“Nothing,” she repeated.

“Look for Dunyasha's tells.”

“What?”

“A fighter always has a tell, a sign of an old injury, a dropped shoulder when they're about to throw a punch.”

“Do I have a tell?”

“You square your shoulders before you start a move as if you're about to perform, like you're waiting for the audience's attention.”

She looked slightly affronted at that. “And what's yours?”

Kaz thought of the moment on Vellgeluk that had nearly cost him everything.

“I'm a cripple. That's my tell. No one's ever smart enough to look for the others.”

“Don't go to the Slat, Kaz. Let us find another way.”

“Step aside, Wraith.”

“Kaz—”

“If you ever cared about me at all, don't follow.”

He pushed past her and strode from the room. He couldn't think of what might be, of what there was to lose. And Inej was wrong about one thing. He knew exactly what he intended to leave behind when he was gone.

Damage.

 

27

I
NEJ

She followed him anyway.

If you ever cared about me at all.

Inej actually snorted as she vaulted over a chimney. It was offensive. She'd had numerous chances to be free of Kaz, and she'd never taken them.

So he wasn't fit for a normal life. Was she meant to find a kindhearted husband, have his children, then sharpen her knives after they'd gone to sleep? How would she explain the nightmares she still had from the Menagerie? Or the blood on her hands?

She could feel the press of Kaz's fingers against her skin, feel the bird's-wing brush of his mouth against her neck, see his dilated eyes. Two of the deadliest people the Barrel had to offer and they could barely touch each other without both of them keeling over. But they'd tried. He'd tried. Maybe they could try again. A foolish wish, the sentimental hope of a girl who hadn't had the firsts of her life stolen, who hadn't ever felt Tante Heleen's lash, who wasn't covered in wounds and wanted by the law. Kaz would have laughed at her optimism.

She thought of Dunyasha, her shadow. What dreams did she have? A throne, as Matthias had suggested? Another kill offered up to her god? Inej had no doubt she would meet the ivory-and-amber girl again. She wanted to believe she would emerge victorious when that time came, but she could not argue with Dunyasha's gifts. Maybe she really was a princess, a girl of noble birth trained in the killing arts, destined for greatness like a heroine in a story. Then what did that make Inej? An obstacle in her path? Tribute on the altar of death?
A smudge of a Suli acrobat who fights like a common street thug.
Or perhaps her Saints had brought Dunyasha to these streets.
Who will remember a girl like you, Miss Ghafa?
Maybe this was the way Inej would be called to account for the lives she had taken.

Maybe. But not yet. She still had debts to pay.

Inej hissed as she slid down a drainpipe, feeling the bandage around her thigh pull free. She was going to leave a trail of blood over the skyline.

They were drawing closer to the Slat, but she kept to the shadows and made sure there was a good distance between her and Kaz. He had a way of sensing her presence when no one else could. He paused frequently, unaware he was being observed. His leg was troubling him worse than he'd let on. But she would not interfere at the Slat. She could abide by his wishes in that, at least, because he was right: In the Barrel, strength was the only currency that mattered. If Kaz didn't face this challenge alone, he could lose everything—not just the chance to garner support from the Dregs, but any chance he would ever have to walk the Barrel freely again. She'd often wished to chip away a bit of his arrogance, but she couldn't bear the idea of seeing Kaz stripped of his pride.

He dodged over the rooftops of Groenstraat, following the route they'd laid out together, and soon enough, the back of the Slat came into view—narrow, leaning lopsided against its neighbors, its shingled gables black with soot.

How many times had she approached the Slat from just this angle? To her, it was the way home. She spotted Kaz's window on the top floor. She'd spent countless hours perched on that sill, feeding the crows that gathered there, listening to him scheme. Below it, slightly to the left, she spotted the sliver of window that belonged to her own tiny bedroom. It struck her that, whether the auction succeeded or failed, this might be the last time she ever returned to the Slat. She might never see Kaz seated at his desk again or hear the thump of his cane coming up the Slat's rickety steps, letting her know from its rhythm whether it had been a bad night or a good one.

She watched him crawl awkwardly down from the lip of the roof and pick the lock on his own window. Once he was out of sight, she continued over the steep pitch of the gable to the other side of the Slat. She couldn't follow the way he'd gone without giving herself away.

On the front of the house, just below the roofline, she found the old metal hook used for hauling up heavy cargo. She grabbed it, ignoring the disgruntled warbling of startled pigeons, and nudged open the window with her foot, wrinkling her nose at the stink of the bird droppings. She slipped inside, moving across the roof beams, and found a place among the shadows. Then she waited, unsure of what to do next. If anyone looked up, they might see her there, perched in the corner like the spider she was, but why would anyone think to?

Below, the entryway buzzed with activity. Apparently the festive mood of that morning's parade had suffused the day. People came in and out the front door, shouting to one another, laughing and singing. A few Dregs sat on the squeaky wooden staircase, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth. Seeger—one of Per Haskell's favorite bruisers—kept blowing the same three notes on a tin whistle for all he was worth. A group of rowdies burst through the door and tumbled into the entry, cawing and screeching like fools, stomping the floor, banging into one another like a school of hungry sharks. They carried axe handles studded with rusty nails, cudgels, knives, and guns, and some of them had painted crows' wings in black across their wild eyes. Behind them, Inej glimpsed a few Dregs who didn't seem to share the excitement—Anika with her crop of yellow hair, wiry Roeder who Per Haskell had suggested Kaz use as his spider, the bigger bruisers Keeg and Pim. They hung back against the wall, exchanging unhappy looks as the others whooped and postured.
They're Kaz's best hope for support
, she thought. The youngest members of the Dregs, the kids Kaz had brought in and organized, the ones who worked the hardest and took the worst jobs because they were the newest.

But what exactly did Kaz have in mind? Had he entered his office for a reason or simply because it was the easiest point of access from the roof? Did he mean to speak to Per Haskell alone? The entirety of the staircase was exposed to the entryway. Kaz couldn't even start down it without attracting everyone's notice, unless he planned to do it in disguise. And how he would negotiate the stairs on his bad leg without anyone recognizing his gait was beyond her.

A cheer went up from the people gathered below. Per Haskell had emerged from his office, gray head moving through the crowd. He was dressed in high flash for the festivities today—crimson-and-silver-checked vest, houndstooth trousers—out and about as the lord of the Dregs, the gang Kaz had built up from practically nothing. With one hand, he was waving around the plumed hat he favored so much, and in the other, he carried a walking stick. Someone had secured a cartoonish papier-mâché crow atop it. It made her sick. Kaz had been better than a son to Haskell. A devious, ruthless, murdering son, but even so.

“Think we'll land him tonight, old man?” asked Bastian, tapping a nasty-looking cudgel against his leg.

Haskell lifted the walking stick like a scepter. “If anyone's gonna get that reward, it's one of my lads! Isn't that right?”

They cheered.

“Old man.”

Inej's head snapped up as Kaz's rock-salt rasp cut through the noise of the crowd, silencing the rowdy chatter. Every eye turned upward.

He stood at the top of the stairs, looking down four flights of rickety wood. She realized he'd stopped to change his coat and it clung to him in perfectly tailored lines. He stood leaning on his cane, hair neatly pushed back from his pale brow, a black glass boy of deadly edges.

The look of surprise on Haskell's face was nearly comical. Then he started to laugh. “Well, I'll be a son of a bitch, Brekker. You have to be the craziest bastard I ever met.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

“Shouldn't have come here—unless it's to turn yourself in like the smart lad I know you to be.”

“I'm through making you money.”

Per Haskell's face crumpled in rage. “You ignorant little skiv!” he roared. “Waltzing in here like some merch at his manor.”

“You was always acting like you're better than us, Brekker,” shouted Seeger, still holding the tin whistle, and a few of the other Dregs nodded. Per Haskell clapped his hands in encouragement.

And it was true. Kaz had always kept himself at a remove from everyone. They'd wanted camaraderie, friendship, but he had never agreed to play their game, only his own. Maybe this reckoning was inevitable. Inej knew Kaz hadn't intended to remain Per Haskell's lieutenant forever. Their triumph at the Ice Court should have made him king of the Barrel, but Van Eck had robbed him of that. The Dregs didn't know the extraordinary things he'd achieved in the last few weeks, the prize he'd wrested from the Fjerdans, or the haul that might still be within his grasp. He faced them alone, a boy with few allies, a stranger to most of them, despite his brutal reputation.

“You got no friends here!” shouted Bastian.

Along the wall, Anika and the others bristled. Pim shook his shaggy head and crossed his arms.

Kaz lifted one shoulder in the barest shrug. “I didn't come looking for friends. And I'm not here for the washed-up cadgers and cowards, or the losers who think the Barrel owes them something for managing to stay alive. I came for the killers. The hard ones. The hungry ones. The people like me. This is my gang,” Kaz said, starting down the stairs, cane thumping against the boards, “and I'm done taking orders.”

“Go get your reward, lads!” Haskell shouted. There was a brief pause, and for a moment, Inej hoped that no one would listen, that they'd simply mutiny against Haskell. Then the floodgates opened. Bastian and Seeger were the first to rush the stairs, eager to get their shot at Dirtyhands.

But Seeger was slow from the whiskey, and by the time they'd reached Kaz on the third flight of stairs, they were out of breath. Kaz's cane whipped out in two slashing arcs, shattering the bones in Seeger's arms. Instead of engaging Bastian, he slipped past him, uncannily fast despite his bad leg. Before Bastian could turn, Kaz jabbed his cane into the soft space between Bastian's thigh and his knee. He crumpled with a strangled cry.

Another of Haskell's lackeys was already rushing to meet him—a bruiser called Teapot for the way he whistled through his nose when he breathed. A blow from Teapot's bat glanced off Kaz's shoulder as he bobbed left. He swung his cane and struck the bruiser directly in the jaw with the full weight of the crow's head. Inej saw what had to be teeth fly from Teapot's mouth.

Kaz still had the high ground, but he was outnumbered, and now they came in waves. Varian and Swann rushed the third-floor landing, Red Felix on their heels, Milo and Gorka hovering close behind.

Inej clamped her lips together as Kaz took a hit to his bad leg, faltered, barely righted himself in time to dodge a blow from Varian's chain. It smashed into the banister inches from Kaz's head, sending splinters of wood flying. Kaz grabbed the chain and used Varian's momentum to send him hurtling over the broken banister. The crowd surged backward as he struck the entry floor.

Swann and Red Felix came at Kaz from both sides. Red Felix grabbed Kaz's coat, yanking him backward. Kaz slipped free like a magician escaping a straitjacket in a show on East Stave.

Swann swung his spiked axe handle wildly, and Kaz slammed the head of his cane into the side of Swann's face. Even from a distance, Inej saw his cheekbone collapse in a bloody crater.