Six of Crows (57 page)

She looked out over the lines of Fjerdan soldiers. She could hear their hearts beating. She could see their neurons firing, feel their impulses forming. Everything made sense. Their bodies were a map of cells, a thousand equations, solved by the second, by the millisecond, and she knew only answers.

“Nina?” Matthias whispered.

“Move,” Nina said, and she saw her voice in the air.

She sensed the Heartrender in the crowd, the movement of his throat as he swallowed his dose. He would be the first.

“Two … one …”

Matthias saw Nina’s pupils dilate. Her lips parted, and she pushed past him, stepping down from the tank. The air around her seemed to crackle, her skin glowing as if lit from within by something miraculous. As if she’d tapped a vein of Djel directly, and now the god’s power flowed through her.

She went for the Heartrender immediately. Nina flicked her wrist, and his eyes exploded in his head. He crumpled without a sound. “Be free,” she said.

Nina glided towards the soldiers. Matthias moved to protect her as he saw rifles raised. She lifted her hands. “Stop,” she said.

They froze.

“Lay down your arms.” As one they obeyed her.

“Sleep,” she commanded. Nina swept her hands in an arc, and the soldiers toppled without protest, row after row, stalks of wheat felled by an invisible scythe.

The air was eerily still. Slowly, Wylan and Inej climbed down from the tank. Jesper and the rest followed, and they stood in stunned silence, all language dissolved by what they’d witnessed, gazing out at the field of fallen bodies. It had happened so quickly.

There was no way to reach the harbour unless they walked over the soldiers. Without a word, they began to pick their way through, the hush broken only by the faraway bells of the Elderclock.

Matthias laid his hand on Nina’s arm, and she released a little sigh, letting him lead her.

Beyond the quay, the docks were deserted. As the others headed towards the
Ferolind
, Matthias and Nina trailed behind. Matthias could see Rotty clinging to the mast, jaw slack with fear. Specht was waiting to unmoor the ship, and the look on his face was equally terrified.

“Matthias!”

He turned. A group of
drüskelle
stood on the quay, their uniforms soaked, their black hoods raised.

They wore masks of dully gleaming grey chainmail over their faces, their features obscured by the mesh. But Matthias recognised Jarl Brum’s voice when he spoke.

“Traitor,” Brum said from behind his mask. “Betrayer of your country and your god. You will not leave this harbour alive. None of you will.” His men must have got him out of the treasury after the explosion. Had they followed Matthias and Nina to the river beneath the ash? Had there been horses or more tanks stationed in the upper town?

Nina raised her hands. “For Matthias, I will give you one chance to leave us be.”

“You cannot control us, witch,” said Brum. “Our hoods, our masks, every stitch of clothing we wear is reinforced with Grisha steel. Corecloth created to our specifications by Grisha Fabrikators under our control and designed for just this purpose. You cannot force us to your will. You cannot harm us. This game is at an end.”

Nina lifted a hand. Nothing happened, and Matthias knew what Brum was saying was true.

“Go!” Matthias shouted at them. “Please! You—”

Brum lifted his gun and fired. The bullet struck Matthias directly in the chest. The pain was sudden and terrible – and then gone. Before his eyes, he saw the bullet emerge from his chest. It hit the ground with a
plink
. He pulled his shirt open. There was no wound.

Nina was walking past him. “No!” he cried.

The
drüskelle
opened fire on her. He saw her flinch as the bullets struck her body, saw red blooms of blood appear on her chest, her breasts, her bare thighs. But she did not fall. As fast as the bullets tore through her body, she healed herself, and the shells fell harmlessly to the dock.

The
drüskelle
gaped at Nina. She laughed. “You’ve grown too used to captive Grisha. We’re quite tame in our cages.”

“There are other means,” said Brum, pulling a long whip like the one Lars had used from his belt.

“Your power cannot touch us, witch, and our cause is true.”

“I can’t touch you,” said Nina, raising her hands. “But I can reach them just fine.”

Behind the
drüskelle
, the Fjerdan soldiers Nina had put to sleep rose, their faces blank. One tore the whip from Brum’s hand, the others snatched the hoods and masks from the startled
drüskelle
’s faces, rendering them vulnerable.

Nina flexed her fingers, and the
drüskelle
dropped their rifles, hands going to their heads, screaming in pain.

“For my country,” she said. “For my people. For every child you put to the pyre. Reap what you’ve sown, Jarl Brum.”

Matthias watched the
drüskelle
twitch and convulse, blood trickling from their ears and eyes as the other Fjerdan soldiers looked on impassively. Their screams were a chorus. Claas, who had drunk too much with him in Avfalle. Giert, who’d trained his wolf to eat from his hand. They were monsters, he knew it, but boys as well, boys like him – taught to hate, to fear.

“Nina,” he said, hand still pressed over the smooth skin on his chest where a bullet wound should be. “Nina, please.”

“You know they would not offer you mercy, Matthias.”

“I know. I know. But let them live in shame instead.”

She hesitated.

“Nina, you taught me to be something better. They could be taught, too.”

Nina shifted her gaze to his. Her eyes were ferocious, the deep green of forests; the pupils, dark wells. The air around her seemed to shimmer with power, as if she was alight with some secret flame.

“They fear you as I once feared you,” he said. “As you once feared me. We are all someone’s monster, Nina.”

For a long moment, she studied his face. At last, she dropped her arms, and the ranks of
drüskelle
crumpled to the ground, whimpering. Her hand shot out once more, and Brum shrieked. He clapped his hands to his head, blood trickling between his fingers.

“He’ll live?” Matthias asked.

“Yes,” she said as she stepped onto the schooner. “He’ll just be very bald.”

Specht shouted commands, and the
Ferolind
drifted into the harbour, picking up speed as the sails swelled with wind. No one ran to the docks to stop them. No ships or cannon fired. There was no one to give warning, no one to signal to the gunnery above. The Elderclock chimed on unheeded as the schooner vanished into the vast black shelter of the sea, leaving only suffering in her wake.

They’d been blessed with a strong wind. Inej felt it ripple through her hair and couldn’t help but think of the storm to come.

As soon as they were on deck, Matthias had turned to Kuwei.

“How long does she have?”

Kuwei had some Kerch, but Nina had to translate in places. She did it distractedly, her glittering eyes roving over everyone and everything.

“The high will last one hour, maybe two. It depends how long it takes her body to process a dose of that size.”

“Why can’t you just purge it from your body like the bullets?” Matthias asked Nina desperately.

“It doesn’t work,” said Kuwei. “Even if she could overcome the craving for long enough to start purging it from her body, she’ll lose the ability to pull the
parem
from her system before it’s all gone.

You’d need another Corporalnik using
parem
to accomplish it.”

“What will it do to her?” asked Wylan.

“You’ve seen for yourself,” Matthias replied bitterly. “We know what’s going to happen.”

Kaz crossed his arms, “How will it start?”

“Body aches, chills, no worse than a mild illness,” Kuwei explained. “Then a kind of hypersensitivity, followed by tremors, and the craving.”

“Do you have more of the
parem
?” Matthias asked.

“Yes.”

“Enough to get her back to Ketterdam?”

“I won’t take more,” Nina protested.

“I have enough to keep you comfortable,” Kuwei said. “But if you take a second dose, there is no hope at all.” He looked to Matthias. “This is her one chance. It’s possible her body will purge enough of it naturally that addiction won’t set in.”

“And if it does?”

Kuwei held out his hands, part shrug, part apology. “Without a ready supply of the drug, she’ll go mad. With it, her body will simply wear itself out. Do you know the word
parem
? It’s the name my father gave to the drug. It means ‘without pity’.”

When Nina finished translating, there was a long pause.

“I don’t want to hear any more,” she said. “None of it will change what’s coming.”

She drifted away towards the prow. Matthias watched her go.

“The water hears and understands,” he murmured beneath his breath.

Inej sought out Rotty and got him to dig up the wool coats she and Nina had left behind in favour of their cold weather gear when they’d landed on the northern shore. She found Nina near the prow, gazing out at the sea.

“One hour, maybe two,” Nina said without turning.

Inej halted in shock. “You heard me approach?” No one heard the Wraith, especially over the sound of the wind and sea.

“Don’t worry. It wasn’t those silent feet that gave you away. I can hear your pulse, your breathing.”

“And you knew it was me?”

“Every heart sounds different. I never realised that before.”

Inej joined her at the rail and handed over Nina’s coat. The Grisha put it on, though the cold didn’t seem to be bothering her. Above them, the stars shone bright between silver-seeded drifts of cloud.

Inej was ready for dawn, ready for this long night to be over, and the journey, too. She was surprised to find she was eager to see Ketterdam again. She wanted an omelette, a mug of too-sweet coffee. She wanted to hear the rain on the rooftops and sit snug and warm in her tiny room at the Slat. There were adventures to come, but they could wait until she’d had a hot bath – maybe a few of them.

Nina buried her face in her coat’s woollen collar and said, “I wish you could see what I do. I can hear every body on this ship, the blood rushing through their veins. I can hear the change in Kaz’s breathing when he looks at you.”

“You … you can?”

“It catches every time, like he’s never seen you before.”

“And what about Matthias?” Inej asked, eager to change the subject.

Nina raised a brow, unfooled. “Matthias is afraid for me, but his heart thumps a steady rhythm no matter what he’s feeling. So Fjerdan, so orderly.”

“I didn’t think you’d let those men live, back at the harbour.”

“I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. I’ll become one more Grisha horror story for them to tell their children.”

“Behave or Nina Zenik will get you?”

Nina considered. “Well, I
do
like the sound of that.”

Inej leaned back on the railing and peered at Nina. “You look radiant.”

“It won’t last.”

“It never does.” Then Inej’s smile faltered. “Are you afraid?”

“Terrified.”

“We’ll all be here with you.”

Nina took a wobbly breath and nodded.

Inej had made countless alliances in Ketterdam, but few friends. She rested her head against Nina’s shoulder. “If I were a Suli seer,” she said, “I could look into the future and tell you it will be all right.”

“Or that I’m going to die in agony.” Nina pressed her cheek against the top of Inej’s head. “Tell me something good anyway.”

“It will be all right,” Inej said. “You’ll survive this. And then you’re going to be very, very rich.

You’ll sing sea shanties and drinking songs nightly in an East Stave cabaret, and you’ll bribe everyone to give you standing ovations after every song.”

Nina laughed softly. “Let’s buy the Menagerie.”