Six of Crows: Part Three

But Kaz had returned for her, to rescue his investment.

“Do we know who came after us at the harbor?”

He’d gifted her with her first blade, the one she called Sankt Petyr—not as pretty as wild geraniums, but more practical, she supposed.

Fjerda's western coast was all perilous rock and steep cliffs.

“Meaning everyone knows you can’t keep away from a fight or a wager, no matter the odds.”

“Where does all the water come from? The Court is on a hill, so where’s the aquifer or aqueduct to bring the water up?”

The idea that the ambush on the docks might simply be the end of her had shaken him.

It was a stone gray day, the sea a bleak slate broken up by whitecaps, the sky pleated with thick ripples of cloud.

This is a six-person job, and apparently he needs me to scale an incinerator shaft. If I die, the plan falls apart.

“He probably hired those boys to attack you so you’d feel indebted to him.”

They didn’t venture too far south, where they’d been warned the streets grew dangerous.

Mister Hertzoon had Jordie and Filip place the orders with three separate offices to make sure such a large purchase didn’t garner unwanted attention.

He said Mister Hertzoon was just like the merchants at the Exchange, hoarding all the riches for himself, and called Mister Hertzoon names that had made Kaz cringe.

He’d had over a week aboard the Ferolind to prepare, but his head had been full of the path he’d chosen, of Nina, of the cruel magic that had taken him from his prison cell and placed him on a boat speeding north beneath a limitless sky, still bound not just by shackles but by the burden of what he was about to do.

Despite their cover as trappers, the Dregs were still a conspicuous group.

Once we’re out of the cells, we should have at least six hours to cross to the embassy, locate Yul-Bayur on the White Island, and get him down to the harbor before they realize anyone is gone.

Once they were in those holding cells, Kaz and the others would be at their most vulnerable.

“The rest of the prison isn’t like the holding area. Patrols in the cellblock rotate every two hours, and we don’t want to risk anyone sounding an alarm, so be smart. We coordinate everything to the chiming of the Elderclock. We’re out of the cells right after six bells, we’re up the incinerator and on the roof by eight bells. No exceptions.”

Matthias put his head in his hands, imagining the havoc these low creatures were about to wreak on his country's capital.

He kicked his legs steadily, trying not to expend too much energy, but they both knew it was probably futile.

There, in the distance, he could just make out a jutting promontory of ice and the blessed black slash of a dark gravel shore.

The witch tilted her head back, resting it against his shoulder as he drove forward, inch by miserable inch, each wave pulling them back, as if the sea was unwilling to relinquish its hold.

When she looked up at him, the expression on her face was a bleak map of loathing and fatigue.

Three stakes had been driven into the icy ground, and three charred bodies were bound to them, their blackened, cracked skin still smoldering.

“Tell me the last time someone was prosecuted for putting a Grisha to the flames. Do you even call it murder when you put down dogs?”

They’d spent long days slogging through the snow, freezing nights in whatever rudimentary shelter they could assemble or in the deserted huts of whaling camps when they were lucky enough to come across them.

“Because you’re horrible. You’re loud and lewd and . . . treacherous. Brum warned us that Grisha could be charming.”

“Oh, I see. I’m the wicked Grisha seductress. I have beguiled you with my Grisha wiles!”

“Then what? Drawing and quartering? Firing squads? Does the Royal Palace have a view of the gallows?”

She’d had to tell him the charges she’d made and tried to recant when she was begging for his assistance.

But publicly, they reviled it and were obligated to prosecute all slavers.

If he hadn’t been ravaged by the drug, he might have survived his wounds.

It was as if the drug had caused Nestor’s power to outpace his body.

Shu didn’t use Grisha as soldiers, and they weren’t like the Fjerdans; they didn’t see Grisha power as unnatural or repulsive.

“Are we going to talk about Matthias’ little revelation about Nina’s loyalties?” asked Jesper.

“Pretty sure most of us don’t have ‘stalwart’ or ‘true’ checked off on our resumes.”

Nestor in the grip of parem had seemed like a perversion of everything she loved about her power.

“At last, you succumb to my influence. But how are we going to eat without any money?” she asked as they headed down the hill.

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

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.