Crooked Kingdom (53 page)

“Who's Jordie?”

Kaz paused. He'd known the question would come, and yet it was still hard to hear his brother's name spoken. “Someone I trusted.” He looked over his shoulder and met Jesper's gray eyes. “Someone I didn't want to lose.”

Kaz found Nina and Matthias asleep on the couch in the purple sitting room. Why the two biggest people in their crew had chosen the smallest space to sleep on, he had no idea. He gave Nina a nudge with his cane. Without opening her eyes, she tried to bat it away.

“Rise and shine.”

“Go 'way,” she said, burying her head in Matthias' chest.

“Let's go, Zenik. The dead will wait, but I won't.”

At last she roused herself and pulled on her boots. She had discarded her red
kefta
in favor of the coat and trousers she'd worn during the disastrous botch that had been the Sweet Reef job. Matthias watched her every move, but he did not ask to accompany them. He knew his presence would only increase their risk of exposure.

Inej appeared in the doorway, and they headed for the lift in silence. Curfew was in effect on the streets of Ketterdam, but there was no avoiding this. They would have to rely on luck and Inej's ability to scout the path ahead of them for patrolling
stadwatch
.

They left the back of the hotel and headed toward the manufacturing district. Their progress was slow, a circuitous route around the blockades, full of stops and starts as Inej vanished and reappeared, signaling them to wait or rerouting them with a flick of her hand before she was gone once more.

At last they reached the morgue, an unmarked, gray stone structure on the border of the warehouse district, fronted by a garden no one had tended to in some time. Only the bodies of the wealthy were brought here to be prepared for transportation and burial outside the city. It wasn't the miserable human heap of the Reaper's Barge, but Kaz still felt like he was descending into a nightmare. He thought of Inej's voice echoing off the white tiles.
Go on.

The morgue was deserted, its heavy iron door sealed tight. He picked the lock and looked once over his shoulder at the shifting shadows of the weedy garden. He couldn't see Inej, but he knew she was there. She would keep watch over the entrance as they got this grim business done.

It was chilly inside, lit only by a lantern with the blue-tinted warning flame of corpselight. There was a processing room and beyond it a large, icy stone chamber lined with drawers big enough to hold bodies. The whole place smelled of death.

He thought of the pulse beating beneath Inej's jaw, the warmth of her skin on his lips. He tried to shake the thought free. He did not want that memory tangling with this room full of rot.

Kaz had never been able to dodge the horror of that night in the Ketterdam harbor, the memory of his brother's corpse clutched tight in his arms as he told himself to kick a little harder, to take one more breath, stay afloat, stay alive. He'd found his way to shore, devoted himself to the vengeance he and his brother were owed. But the nightmare refused to fade. Kaz had been sure it would get easier. He would stop having to think twice before he shook a hand or was forced into close quarters. Instead, things got so bad he could barely brush up against someone on the street without finding himself once more in the harbor. He was on the Reaper's Barge and death was all around him. He was kicking through the water, clinging to the slippery bloat of Jordie's flesh, too frightened of drowning to let go.

The situation had gotten dangerous. When Gorka once got too drunk to stand at the Blue Paradise, Kaz and Teapot had to carry him home. Six blocks they hauled him, Gorka's weight shifting back and forth, slumping against Kaz in a sickening press of skin and stink, then flopping onto Teapot, freeing Kaz briefly—though he could still feel the rub of the man's hairy arm against the back of his neck.

Later, Teapot had found Kaz huddled in a lavatory, shaking and covered in sweat. He'd pleaded food poisoning, teeth chattering as he jammed his foot against the door to keep Teapot out. He could not be touched again or he would lose his mind completely.

The next day he'd bought his first pair of gloves—cheap black things that bled dye whenever they got wet. Weakness was lethal in the Barrel. People could smell it on you like blood, and if Kaz was going to bring Pekka Rollins to his knees, he couldn't afford any more nights trembling on a bathroom floor.

Kaz never answered questions about the gloves, never responded to taunts. He just wore them, day in and day out, peeling them off only when he was alone. He told himself it was a temporary measure. But that didn't stop him from remastering every bit of sleight of hand wearing them, learning to shuffle and work a deck even more deftly than he could barehanded. The gloves held back the waters, kept him from drowning when memories of that night threatened to drag him under. When he pulled them on, it felt like he was arming himself, and they were better than a knife or a gun. Until he met Imogen.

He'd been fourteen, not yet Per Haskell's lieutenant but making a name for himself with every fight and swindle. Imogen was new to the Barrel, a year older than he was. She'd run with a crew in Zierfoort, small-time rackets that she claimed had left her bored. Since she'd arrived in Ketterdam, she'd been hanging around the Staves, picking up small jobs, trying to find her way into one of the Barrel gangs. When Kaz had first seen her, she'd been breaking a bottle over the head of a Razorgull who'd gotten too handsy. Then she'd cropped up again when Per Haskell had him running book on the spring prize fights. She had freckles and a gap between her front teeth, and she could hold her own in a brawl.

One night, when they were standing by the empty ring counting up the day's haul, she'd touched her hand to the sleeve of his coat, and when he looked up, she'd smiled slowly, close-lipped, so he couldn't see the gap in her teeth.

Later, lying on his lumpy mattress in the room he shared at the Slat, Kaz had stared up at the leaky ceiling and thought of the way Imogen had smiled at him, the way her trousers sat low on her hips. She had a sidle when she walked, as if she approached everything from a little bit of an angle. He liked it. He liked her.

There was no mystery to bodies in the Barrel. Space was tight and people took their pleasures where they found them. The other boys in the Dregs talked constantly about their conquests. Kaz said nothing. Fortunately, he said nothing about almost everything, so he had consistency working in his favor. But he knew what he was expected to say, the things he was supposed to want. He did want those things, in moments, in flashes—a girl crossing the street in a cobalt dress that slid from her shoulder, a dancer moving like flames in a show on East Stave, Imogen laughing like he'd told the funniest joke in the world when he hadn't said much at all.

He'd flexed his hands in his gloves, listening to his roommates snore.
I can best this
, he told himself. He was stronger than this sickness, stronger than the pull of the water. When he'd needed to learn the workings of a gambling hall, he'd done it. When he'd decided to educate himself on finance, he'd mastered that too. Kaz thought of Imogen's slow, closed-mouth smile and made a decision. He would conquer this weakness the way he'd conquered everything in his path.

He'd started small, with gestures no one would notice. A game of Three Man Bramble dealt with gloves off. A night spent with them tucked under his pillow. Then, when Per Haskell sent him and Teapot to lay a little hurt on a two-bit brawler named Beni who owed him cash, Kaz had waited until they'd had him in the alley, and when Teapot told Kaz to hold Beni's arms, he'd slipped off his gloves, just as a test, something easy.

As soon as he made contact with Beni's wrists, a rush of revulsion overtook him. But he was prepared and endured it, ignoring the icy sweat that broke over him as he hooked Beni's elbows behind his back. Kaz forced himself to brace Beni's body against his while Teapot reeled off the terms of his loan with Per Haskell, punctuating each sentence with a punch to Beni's face or gut.

I'm all right
, Kaz told himself.
I'm handling this.
Then the waters rose.

This time the wave was as tall as the spires on the Church of Barter; it seized him and dragged him down, a weight that he could not escape. He had Jordie in his arms, his brother's rotting fish-belly body clutched against him. Kaz shoved him away, gasping for breath.

The next thing he knew, he was leaning against a brick wall. Teapot was yelling at him as Beni fled. The sky was gray above him, and the stink of the alley filled his nostrils, the ash and vegetable smell of garbage, the ripe tang of old urine.

“What the hell was that, Brekker?” screamed Teapot, face mottled with fury, nose whistling in a way that should have been funny. “You just let him go! What if he'd had a knife on him?”

Kaz registered it only dimly. Beni had hardly touched him, but somehow, without the gloves, it was all so much worse. The press of skin, the pliability of another human body so close to his.

“Are you even listening to me, you sorry, skinny little skiv?” Teapot grabbed him by his shirt, his knuckles brushing Kaz's neck, sending another wave of sickness crashing through him. He shook Kaz until his teeth rattled.

Teapot gave Kaz the beat-down he'd had planned for Beni and left him bleeding in the alley. You didn't get to go soft or give in to distraction, not on a job, not when one of your crew was counting on you. Kaz curled his hands into his sleeves, but never threw a punch.

It had taken him nearly an hour to drag himself from that alley, and weeks to rebuild the damage to his reputation. Any slip in the Barrel could lead to a bad fall. He found Beni and made him wish Teapot had been the one to deliver the beating. He put his gloves back on and didn't take them off. He became twice as ruthless, fought twice as hard. He stopped worrying about seeming normal, let people see a glimmer of the madness within him and let them guess at the rest. Someone got too close, he threw a punch. Someone dared to put hands on him, he broke a wrist, two wrists, a jaw.
Dirtyhands
, they called him. Haskell's rabid dog. The rage inside him burned on and he learned to despise people who complained, who begged, who claimed they'd suffered.
Let me teach you what pain looks like
, he would say, and then he'd paint a picture with his fists.

At the ring, the next time Imogen laid her fingers on his sleeve, Kaz held her gaze until that closed-mouth smile slipped. She dropped her hand. She looked away. Kaz went back to counting the money.

Now Kaz rapped his cane against the morgue floor.

“Let's get this over with,” he said to Nina, hearing his voice echo too loudly off the cold stone. He wanted out of this place as fast as possible.

They started on opposite sides, scanning the dates on the drawers, searching for a cadaver that would be in the appropriate state of decomposition. Even the thought ratcheted the tension in his chest tighter. It felt like a scream building. But his mind had conceived of this plan, knowing it would bring him to this place.

“Here,” Nina said.

Kaz crossed the room to her. They stood before the drawer, neither of them moving to open it. Kaz knew they'd both seen plenty of dead bodies. You couldn't make a life on the streets of the Barrel or as a soldier in the Second Army without encountering death. But this was different. This was decay.

At last, Kaz hooked the crow's head of his cane under the handle and pulled. The drawer was heavier than he'd anticipated, but it slid open smoothly. He stood back.

“We're sure this is a good idea?” said Nina.

“I'm open to better ones,” said Kaz.

She blew out a long breath and then pulled the sheet away from the corpse. Kaz thought of a snake molting.

The man was middle-aged, his lips already blackening with decay.

As a little boy, Kaz had held his breath whenever he'd passed a graveyard, certain that if he opened his mouth, something terrible would crawl in. The room tilted. Kaz tried to breathe shallowly, forcing himself back to the present. He spread his fingers inside his gloves, felt the leather tug, grasped the weight of his cane in his palm.

“I wonder how he died,” Nina murmured as she peered at the gray folds of the dead man's face.

“Alone,” Kaz said, looking at the man's fingertips. Something had been gnawing at them. The rats had gotten to him before his body was found. Or one of his pets. Kaz pulled the sealed glass container he'd lifted from Genya's kit out of his pocket. “Take what you need.”

*   *   *

Standing in the clock tower above Colm's suite, Kaz surveyed his crew. The city was still cloaked in darkness, but dawn would come soon and they would go their separate ways: Wylan and Colm to an empty bakery to wait out the start of the auction. Nina to the Barrel with her assignments in hand. Inej to the Church of Barter to take up her position on the roof.

Kaz would descend to the square in front of the Exchange with Matthias and Kuwei and meet the armed
stadwatch
troop that would escort them into the church. Kaz wondered how Van Eck felt about his own officers protecting the bastard of the Barrel.

He felt more himself than he had in days. The ambush at Van Eck's house had shaken him. He hadn't been ready for Pekka Rollins to reenter the field on those terms. He hadn't been prepared for the shame of it, for the memories of Jordie that had returned with such force.

You failed me.
His brother's voice, louder than ever in his head.
You let him dupe you all over again.

Kaz had called Jesper by his brother's name. A bad slip. But maybe he'd wanted to punish them both. Kaz was older now than Jordie had been when he'd succumbed to the Queen's Lady Plague. Now he could look back and see his brother's pride, his hunger for fast success.
You failed
me
, Jordie. You were older. You were supposed to be the smart one.