Six of Crows (15 page)

“You want me to make Muzzen look like he has firepox?”

“Yes, and do it quickly, Nina, because in about ten minutes, things are going to get very hectic around here.”

Nina stared at him. What was Kaz planning? “No matter what I do to him, it won’t last a month. I can’t give him a permanent fever.”

“My contact in the infirmary will make sure he stays sick enough. We just need to get him through diagnosis. Now get to work.”

Nina looked Muzzen up and down. “This is going to hurt just as much as if you’d been in the fight yourself,” she warned.

He scrunched up his face, bracing for the pain. “I can take it.”

She rolled her eyes, then lifted her hands, concentrating. With a sharp slice of her right hand over her left, she snapped Muzzen’s ribs.

He let out a grunt and doubled over.

“That’s a good boy,” said Kaz. “Taking it like a champion. Knuckles next, then face.”

Nina spread bruises and cuts over Muzzen’s knuckles and arms, matching the wounds to Inej’s descriptions.

“I’ve never seen firepox up close,” Nina said. She was only familiar with illustrations from books they’d used in their anatomy training at the Little Palace.

“Count yourself lucky,” Kaz said grimly. “Hurry it up.”

She worked from memory, swelling and cracking the skin on Muzzen’s face and chest, raising blisters until the swelling and pustules were so bad that he was truly unrecognisable. The big man moaned.

“Why would you agree to do this?” Nina murmured.

The swollen flesh of Muzzen’s face quivered, and Nina thought he might be trying to smile.

“Money was good,” he said thickly.

She sighed. Why else did anyone do anything in the Barrel? “Good enough to get locked up in Hellgate?”

Kaz tapped his cane on the cell floor. “Stop making trouble, Nina. If Helvar cooperates, he and Muzzen will both have their freedom just as soon as the job is done.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then Helvar gets locked back in his cell, and Muzzen still gets paid. And I’ll take him to breakfast at the Kooperom.”

“Can I have waffles?” Muzzen mumbled.

“We’ll all have waffles. And whisky. If this job doesn’t come off, no one’s going to want to be around me sober. Finished, Nina?”

Nina nodded, and Inej took her place to bandage Muzzen to look like Matthias.

“All right,” said Kaz. “Get Helvar on his feet.”

Nina crouched beside Matthias as Kaz stood over her with the bonelight. Even in sleep, Matthias’

features were troubled, his pale brows furrowed. She let her hands travel over the bruised line of his jaw, resisting the urge to linger there.

“Not the face, Nina. I need him mobile, not pretty. Heal him fast and only enough to get him walking for now. I don’t want him spry enough to vex us.”

Nina lowered the blanket and went to work.
Just another body
, she told herself. She was always getting late-night calls from Kaz to heal wounded members of the Dregs who he didn’t want to bring around to any legitimate medik – girls with stabbing punctures, boys with broken legs or bullets lodged inside them, victims of a scuffle with the
stadwatch
or another gang.
Pretend it’s Muzzen
, she told herself.
Or Big Bolliger or some other fool. You don’t know this boy.
And it was true. The boy she knew might have been the scaffold, but something new had been built upon it.

She touched his shoulder gently. “Helvar,” she said. He didn’t stir. “Matthias.”

A lump rose in her throat, and she felt the ache of tears threatening. She pressed a kiss to his temple. She knew that Kaz and the others were watching and that she was making an idiot of herself, but after so long he was finally here, in front of her, and so very broken. “Matthias,” she repeated.

“Nina?” His voice was raw but as lovely as she remembered.

“Oh, Saints, Matthias,” she whispered. “Please wake up.”

His eyes opened, groggily, palest blue. “Nina,” he said softly. His knuckles brushed her cheek; his rough hand cupped her face tentatively, disbelievingly. “Nina?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Shhhh, Matthias. We’re here to get you out.”

Before she could blink he had hold of her shoulders and had pinned her to the ground.

“Nina,” he growled.

Then his hands closed over her throat.

PART 2

SERVANT AND LEVER

Matthias was dreaming again. Dreaming of her.

In all his dreams he hunted her, sometimes through the new green meadows of spring, but usually through the ice fields, dodging boulders and crevasses with unerring steps. Always he chased, and always he caught her.

In the good dreams, he slammed her to the ground and throttled her, watching the life drain from her eyes, heart full of vengeance –
finally, finally
. In the bad dreams, he kissed her. In these dreams, she didn’t fight him. She laughed as if the chase was nothing but a game, as if she’d known he would catch her, as if she’d wanted him to and there was no place she’d rather be than beneath him. She was welcoming and perfect in his arms. He kissed her, buried his face in the sweet hollow of her neck. Her curls brushed his cheeks, and he felt that if he could just hold her a little longer, every wound, every hurt, every bad thing would melt away.

“Matthias,” she would whisper, his name so soft on her lips. These were the worst dreams, and when he woke, he hated himself almost as much as he hated her. To know that he could betray himself, betray his country again even in sleep, to know that – after everything she’d done – some sick part of him still hungered after her … it was too much.

Tonight was a bad dream, very bad. She was wearing blue silk, clothes far more luxurious than anything he’d ever seen her in; some kind of gauzy veil was caught up in her hair, the lamplight glinting off of it like caught rain.
Djel
, she smelled good. The mossy damp was still there, but perfume, too. Nina loved luxury and this was expensive – roses and something else, something his pauper ’s nose didn’t recognise. She pressed her soft lips to his temple, and he could swear she was crying.

“Matthias.”

“Nina,” he managed.

“Oh, Saints, Matthias,” she whispered. “Please wake up.”

And then he was awake, and he knew he’d gone mad because she was here, in his cell, kneeling beside him, her hand resting gently on his chest. “Matthias, please.”

The sound of her voice, pleading with him. He’d dreamed of this. Sometimes she pleaded for mercy. Sometimes there were other things she begged for.

He reached up and touched her face. She had the softest skin. He’d laughed at her for it once. No real soldier had skin like that, he’d told her – pampered, coddled. He’d mocked the lushness of her body, ashamed of his own response to her. He cupped the warm curve of her cheek, felt the soft brush of her hair. So lovely. So real. It wasn’t fair.

Then he registered the bloody wrappings on his hands. Pain rushed at him as he came fully awake

– cracked ribs, aching knuckles. He’d chipped a tooth. He wasn’t sure when, but he’d cut his tongue against it at some point. His mouth still held the coppery taste of blood.
The wolves.
They’d made him murder wolves.

He was awake.

“Nina?”

There were tears in her beautiful green eyes. Rage coursed through him. She had no right to tears, no right to pity.

“Shhhh, Matthias. We’re here to get you out.”

What game was this? What new cruelty? He’d just learned to survive in this monstrous place, and now she’d come to heap some fresh torture on him.

He launched himself forward, flipping her to the ground, hands fastened tight around her throat, straddling her so that his knees pinned her arms to the ground. He knew damn well that Nina with her hands free was a deadly thing.

“Nina,” he gritted out. She clawed at his hands. “Witch,” he hissed, leaning over her. He saw her eyes widen, her face getting redder. “Beg me,” he said. “Beg me for your life.”

He heard a click, and a gravelly voice said, “Hands off her, Helvar.”

Someone behind him had pressed a gun to his neck. Matthias didn’t spare him a glance. “Go ahead and shoot me,” he said. He dug his fingertips deeper into Nina’s neck – nothing would deprive him of this. Nothing.

Traitor, witch, abomination.
All those words came to him, but others crowded in, too:
beautiful,
charmed one. Röed fetla
, he’d called her, little red bird, for the colour of her Grisha Order. The colour she loved. He squeezed harder, silencing that weak-willed strain inside him.

“If you’ve actually lost your mind, this is going to be a lot tougher than I thought,” said that raspy voice.

He heard a whoosh like something moving through the air, then a wrenching pain shot through his left shoulder. It felt like he’d been punched by a tiny fist, but his entire arm went numb. He grunted as he fell forward, one hand still clamped around Nina’s throat. He would have fallen directly onto her, but he was yanked backwards by the collar of his shirt.

A boy wearing a guard’s uniform stood before him, dark eyes glittering, a pistol in one hand, a walking stick in the other. Its handle was carved to look like a crow’s head, with a cruelly pointed beak.

“Get hold of yourself, Helvar. We’re here to break you out. I can do to your leg what I did to your arm, and we can drag you out of here, or you can leave like a man, on two feet.”

“No one gets out of Hellgate,” Matthias said.

“Tonight they do.”

Matthias sat forward, trying to get his bearings, clutching his dead arm. “You can’t just walk me out of here. The guards will recognise me,” he snarled. “I’m not losing fighting privileges to be carted off Djel knows where with you.”

“You’ll be masked.”

“If the guards check—”

“They’re going to be too busy to check,” said the strange, pale boy. And then the screaming started.

Matthias’ head jerked up. He heard the thunder of footsteps from the arena, cresting like a wave as people burst into the passageway outside his cell. He heard the shouts of guards, and then the roaring of a great cat, the trumpet of an elephant.

“You opened the cages.” Nina’s voice was shaky with disbelief, though who knew what might be

real or performance with her. He refused to look in her direction. If he did, he’d lose all sense of reality. He was barely hanging on as it was.

“Jesper was supposed to wait until three bells,” said the pale boy.

“It is three bells, Kaz,” replied a small girl in the corner with dark hair and deep bronze Suli skin.

A figure covered in welts and bandages was leaning against her.

“Since when is Jesper punctual?” the boy complained with a glance at his watch. “On your feet, Helvar.”

He offered him a gloved hand. Matthias stared at it.
This is a dream. The strangest dream I’ve ever
had, but definitely a dream.
Or maybe killing the wolves had finally driven him truly mad. He’d murdered family tonight. No whispered prayers for their wild souls would make it right.

He looked up at the pale demon with his black-gloved hands. Kaz, she’d called him. Would he lead Matthias out of this nightmare or just drag him into another kind of hell?
Choose, Helvar.

Matthias clasped the boy’s hand. If this was real and not illusion, he’d escape whatever trap these creatures had set for him. He heard Nina release a long breath – was she relieved? Exasperated? He shook his head. He would deal with her later. The little bronze girl swept a cloak around Matthias’

shoulders and propped an ugly, beak-nosed mask on his head.

The passageway outside the cell was chaos. Costumed men and women surged past, screaming and

pushing each other, trying to get away from the arena. Guards had their guns out, and he could hear shots being fired. He felt dizzy, and his side ached badly. His left arm was still useless.

Kaz signalled towards the far right archway, indicating that they should move against the flow of the crowd and into the arena. Matthias didn’t care. He could plunge through the mob instead, force his way up that staircase and onto a boat.
And then what?
It didn’t matter. There was no time for planning.

He stepped into the throng and was instantly hauled back.

“Boys like you weren’t meant to get ideas, Helvar,” said Kaz. “That staircase leads to a bottleneck.

You think the guards won’t check under that mask before they let you through?”

Matthias scowled and followed the others through the crowd, Kaz’s hand at his back.

If the passage had been chaos, then the arena was a special kind of madness. Matthias glimpsed hyenas leaping and bounding over the ledges. One was feeding over a body in a crimson cape. An elephant charged the wall of the stadium, sending up a cloud of dust and bellowing its frustration. He saw a white bear and one of the great jungle cats from the Southern Colonies crouching in the eaves, its teeth bared. He knew there were snakes in the cages as well. He could only hope that this Jesper character hadn’t been foolish enough to set them free, too.