Six of Crows (35 page)

“Don’t get ideas,” he’d said with a laugh. His laughter had come more easily as they’d travelled, as if he were becoming fluent in a new language. “If this is Elling, I should be able to find us lodging.”

She’d stopped then, the truth of their situation returning to her with terrible clarity. She was deep in enemy territory with no allies but a
drüskelle
who’d thrown her in a cage only a few weeks earlier.

But before she could speak, Matthias had said, “I owe you my life, Nina Zenik. We will get you safely home.”

She’d been surprised at how easy it was to trust him. And he’d trusted her, too.

Now she swung her pick, felt the impact reverberate up her arms and into her shoulders, and said,

“There were Grisha in Elling.”

He halted midswing. “What?”

“They were spies doing reconnaissance work in the port. They saw me enter the main square with you and recognised me from the Little Palace. One of them recognised you, too, Matthias. He knew you from a skirmish near the border.”

Matthias remained still.

“They waylaid me when you went to speak to the manager of the boarding house,” Nina continued.

“I convinced them I was under cover there, too. They wanted to take you prisoner, but I told them that you weren’t alone, that it would be too risky to try to capture you right away. I promised I would bring you to them the next day.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

Nina tossed down her pick. “Tell you there were Grisha spies in Elling? You might have made your peace with me, but you can’t expect me to believe you wouldn’t have revealed them.”

He looked away, a muscle twitching in his jaw, and she knew she’d spoken truth.

“That morning,” he said, “on the docks—”

“I had to get us both away from Elling as fast as I could. I thought if I could just find us a vessel to stow away on … but the Grisha must have been watching the boarding house and seen us leave. When they showed up on the docks, I knew they were coming for you, Matthias. If they’d captured you, you would have been taken to Ravka, interrogated, maybe executed. I spotted the Kerch trader. You know their laws on slaving.”

“Of course I do,” he said bitterly.

“I made the charge. I begged them to save me. I knew they’d have to take you into custody, and bring us safely to Kerch. I didn’t know – Matthias, I didn’t know they’d throw you in Hellgate.”

His eyes were hard when he faced her, his knuckles white on the handle of his pick. “Why didn’t you speak up? Why didn’t you tell the truth when we arrived in Ketterdam?”

“I tried. I swear it. I tried to recant. They wouldn’t let me see a judge. They wouldn’t let me see you.

I couldn’t explain the seal from the slaver or why I’d made the charges, not without revealing Ravka’s intelligence operations. I would have compromised Grisha still in the field. I would have been sentencing them to death.”

“So you left me to rot in Hellgate.”

“I could have gone home to Ravka. Saints, I wanted to. But I stayed in Ketterdam. I gave up my wages for bribes, petitioned the Court—”

“You did everything but tell the truth.”

She’d meant to be gentle, apologetic, to tell him that she’d thought of him every night and every day. But the image of the pyre was still fresh in her mind. “I was trying to protect my people, people you’ve spent your life trying to exterminate.”

He gave a rueful laugh, turning the pick over in his hands.
“Wanden olstrum end kendesorum.”

It was the first part of a Fjerdan saying,
The water hears and understands.
It sounded kind enough, but Matthias knew that Nina would be familiar with the rest of it.

“
Isen ne bejstrum
,” she finished. The water hears and understands. The ice does not forgive.

“And what will you do now, Nina? Will you betray the people you call friends again, for the sake of the Grisha?”

“What?”

“You can’t tell me you intend to let Bo Yul-Bayur live.”

He knew her well. With every new thing she’d learned of
jurda parem
, she’d been more certain that the only way to protect Grisha was to end the scientist’s life. She thought of Nestor begging with his last breath for his Shu masters to return. “I can’t bear the thought of my people being slaves,” she admitted. “But we have a debt to settle, Matthias. The pardon is my penance, and I won’t be the person who keeps you from your freedom again.”

“I don’t want the pardon.”

She stared at him. “But—”

“Maybe your people would become slaves. Or maybe they would become an unstoppable force. If

Yul-Bayur lives and the secret of
jurda parem
becomes known, anything is possible.”

For a long moment, they held each other ’s gaze. The sun was beginning to set, light falling in golden shafts across the snow. She could see the blond of Matthias’ lashes peeking through the black antimony she had used to stain them. She’d have to tailor him again soon.

In those days after the shipwreck, she and Matthias had formed an uneasy truce. What had grown up between them had been something fiercer than affection – an understanding that they were both soldiers, that in another life, they might have been allies instead of enemies. She felt that now.

“It would mean betraying the others,” she said. “They won’t get their pay from the Merchant Council.”

“True.”

“And Kaz will kill us both.”

“If he learns the truth.”

“Have you tried lying to Kaz Brekker?”

Matthias shrugged. “Then we die as we lived.”

Nina looked at Nestor ’s emaciated form. “For a cause.”

“We are of one mind in this,” said Matthias. “Bo Yul-Bayur will not leave the Ice Court alive.”

“The deal is the deal,” she said in Kerch, the language of trade, a tongue that belonged to neither of them.

“The deal is the deal,” he replied.

Matthias swung his pick and brought it down in a hard arc, a kind of declaration. She hefted her pick and did the same. Without another word, they returned to the work of the grave, falling into a determined rhythm.

Kaz was right about one thing at least. She and Matthias had finally found something to agree on.

PART 4

THE TRICK TO FALLING

Inej felt as though she and Kaz had become twin soldiers, marching on, pretending they were fine, hiding their wounds and bruises from the rest of the crew.

It took two more days of travel to reach the cliffs that overlooked Djerholm, but the going was easier as they moved south and towards the coast. The weather warmed, the ground thawed, and she began to see signs of spring. Inej had thought Djerholm would look like Ketterdam – a canvas of black, grey, and brown, tangled streets dense with mist and coalsmoke, ships of every kind in the harbour, pulsing with the rush and bustle of trade. Djerholm’s harbour was crowded with ships, but its tidy streets marched to the water in orderly fashion, and the houses were painted such colours – red, blue, yellow, pink – as if in defiance of the wild white land and the long winters this far north. Even the warehouses by the quay were wrought in cheerful colours. It looked the way she’d imagined cities as a child, everything candy-hued and in its proper place.

Was the
Ferolind
already waiting at the docks, snug in its berth, flying its Kerch flag and the distinctive orange and green parti-colour of the Haanraadt Bay Company? If the plan went the way Kaz hoped, tomorrow night they would stroll down the Djerholm quay with Bo Yul-Bayur in tow, hop on their ship, and be far out to sea before anyone in Fjerda was the wiser. She preferred not to think of what tomorrow night might look like if the plan went wrong.

Inej glanced up to where the Ice Court stood like a great white sentinel on a massive cliff overlooking the harbour. Matthias had called the cliffs unscalable, and Inej had to admit that they would present a challenge even for the Wraith. They seemed impossibly high, and from a distance, their white lime surface looked clean and bright as ice.

“Cannon,” said Jesper.

Kaz squinted up at the big guns pointed out at the bay. “I’ve broken into banks, warehouses, mansions, museums, vaults, a rare book library, and once the bedchamber of a visiting Kaelish diplomat whose wife had a passion for emeralds. But I’ve never had a cannon shot at me.”

“There’s something to be said for novelty,” offered Jesper.

Inej pressed her lips together. “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

“Those guns are there to stop invading armadas,” Jesper said confidently. “Good luck hitting a skinny little schooner cutting through the waves bound for fortune and glory.”

“I’ll quote you on that when a cannonball lands in my lap,” said Nina.

They slipped easily into the traffic of travellers and traders where the cliff road met the northern road that led to Upper Djerholm. The upper town was a rambling extension of the city below, a sprawling collection of shops, markets, and inns that served the guards and staff who worked at the Ice Court as well as visitors. Luckily, the crowds were heavy and motley enough that one more group of foreigners could go unnoticed, and Inej found herself breathing a bit easier. She’d worried that she and Jesper might be dangerously conspicuous in the Fjerdan capital’s sea of blonds. Maybe the crew from the Shu Han was relying on the jumbled crowd for cover, too.

Signs of Hringkälla celebrations were everywhere. The shops had created elaborate displays of pepper cookies baked in the shape of wolves, some hanging like ornaments from large, twisting trees, and the bridge spanning the river gorge had been festooned with ribbons in Fjerdan silver. One way into the Ice Court and one way out. Would they cross this bridge as visitors tomorrow?

“What are they?” Wylan asked, pausing in front of a peddler ’s cart laden with wreaths made of the same twisting branches and silver ribbons.

“Ash trees,” replied Matthias. “Sacred to Djel.”

“There’s supposed to be one in the middle of the White Island,” said Nina, ignoring the warning look the Fjerdan cast her. “It’s where the
drüskelle
gather for the listening ceremony.”

Kaz tapped his walking stick on the ground. “Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”

“The ash is sustained by the spirit of Djel,” said Matthias. “It’s where we may best hear his voice.”

Kaz’s eyes flickered. “Not what I asked. Why isn’t it on our plans?”

“Because it’s the holiest place in all of Fjerda and not essential to our mission.”

“I say what’s essential. Anything else you decided to leave out in your great wisdom?”

“The Ice Court is a vast structure,” Matthias said, turning away. “I can’t label every crack and corner.”

“Then let’s hope nothing is lurking in those corners,” Kaz replied.

Upper Djerholm had no real centre, but the bulk of its taverns, inns, and market stalls were clustered around the base of the hill leading to the Ice Court. Kaz steered them seemingly aimlessly through the streets until he found a run-down tavern called the Gestinge.

“Here?” Jesper complained, peering into the dank main room. The whole place stank of garlic and fish.

Kaz just gave a significant glance upwards and said, “Terrace.”

“What’s a
gestinge
?” Inej wondered aloud.

“It means ‘paradise’,” said Matthias. Even he looked skeptical.

Nina helped secure them a table on the tavern’s rooftop terrace. It was mostly empty, the weather still too cold to attract many patrons. Or maybe they’d been scared away by the food – herring in rancid oil, stale black bread, and some kind of butter that looked distinctly mossy.

Jesper looked down at his plate and moaned. “Kaz, if you want me dead, I prefer a bullet to poison.”

Nina scrunched her nose. “When I don’t want to eat, you know there’s a problem.”

“We’re here for the view, not the food.”

From their table, they had a clear, if distant, view of the Ice Court’s outer gate and the first guardhouse. It was built into a white arch formed by two monumental stone wolves on their hind legs, and spanned the road leading up the hill to the Court. Inej and the others watched the traffic come and go through the gates as they picked at their lunches, waiting for a sign of the prison wagons. Inej’s appetite had finally returned, and she’d been eating as much as possible to build her strength, but the skin atop the soup she’d ordered wasn’t helping.

There was no coffee to be had so they ordered tea and little glasses of clear
brännvin
that burned going down but helped to keep them warm as a wind picked up, stirring the silvery ribbons tied to the ash boughs lining the street below.

“We’re going to start looking conspicuous soon,” said Nina. “This isn’t the kind of place people like to linger.”