Crooked Kingdom: Book 2 (Six of Crows)

by Bardugo, Leigh

  “Life isn’t ever what we deserve, Inej. If it were—”

  “Did your brother get what he deserved?”

  “No.” But the denial felt hollow.

  Why had he called Jesper by Jordie’s name? When he looked into the past, he saw his brother through the eyes of the boy he’d been: brave, brilliant, infallible, a knight bested by a dragon dressed like a merch. But how would he see Jordie now? As a mark? Another dumb pigeon looking for a shortcut? He leaned his hands on the edge of the sink. He wasn’t angry anymore. He just felt weary. “We were fools.”

  “You were children. Was there no one to protect you?”

  “Was there anyone to protect you ?”

  “My father. My mother. They would have done anything to keep me from being stolen.”

  “And they would have been mowed down by slavers.”

  “Then I guess I was lucky I didn’t have to see that.”

  How could she still look at the world that way? “Sold into a brothel at age fourteen and you count yourself lucky.”

  “They loved me. They love me. I believe that.” He saw her draw closer in the mirror. Her black hair was an ink splash against the white tile walls. She paused behind him. “You protected me, Kaz.”

  “The fact that you’re bleeding through your bandages tells me otherwise.”

  She glanced down. A red blossom of blood had spread on the bandage tied around her shoulder. She tugged awkwardly at the strip of towel. “I need Nina to fix this one.”

  He didn’t mean to say it. He meant to let her go. “I can help you.”

  Her gaze snapped to his in the mirror, wary as if gauging an opponent. I can help you. They were the first words she’d spoken to him, standing in the parlor of the Menagerie, draped in purple silk, eyes lined in kohl. She had helped him. And she’d nearly destroyed him. Maybe he should let her finish the job.

  Kaz could hear the drip of the faucet, water striking the basin in an uneven rhythm. He wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say. Tell her to get out , a voice inside him demanded. Beg her to stay.

  But Inej said nothing. Instead, she gathered the bandages and shears from the vanity and placed them beside the basin. Then she flattened her palms on the counter and effortlessly levered herself up so that she was seated on it.

  They were eye to eye now. He took a step closer and then just stood there, unable to move. He could not do this. The distance between them felt like nothing. It felt like miles.

  She reached for the shears, graceful as always, a girl underwater, and offered them to him handle first. They were cool in his hand; the metal unpliable and reassuring. He stepped into the space framed by her knees.

  “Where do we start?” she asked. The steam from the basin had curled the wisps of hair that framed her face.

  Was he going to do this?

  He nodded to her right forearm, not trusting himself to speak. His gloves lay on the other side of the basin, black against the gold-veined marble. They looked like dead animals.

  He focused on the shears, cold metal in his hands, nothing like skin. He could not do this if his hands were shaking.

  I can best this , he told himself. It was no different than drawing a weapon on someone. Violence was easy.

  He slid the blade carefully beneath the bandage on her arm. The towel was thicker than gauze would have been, but the shears were sharp. One snip and the bandage fell away, revealing a deep puncture wound. He cast the fabric aside.

  He picked up a strip of fresh towel and stood there, steeling himself.

  She lifted her arm. Cautiously, he looped the clean piece of cloth around her forearm. His knuckles brushed against her skin and lightning cracked through him, left him paralyzed, rooted to the earth.

  His heart should not be making that sound. Maybe he would never get to the Slat. Maybe this would kill him. He willed his hands to move, knotted the bandage once, twice. It was done.

  Kaz took a breath. He knew he should replace the bandage at her shoulder next, but he wasn’t ready for that, so he nodded to her left arm. The bandage was perfectly clean and secure, but she didn’t question him, just offered her forearm.

  This time it was a little easier. He moved slowly, methodically, the shears, the bandage, a meditation. But then the task was complete.

  They said nothing, caught in an eddy of silence, not touching, her knees on either side of him. Inej’s eyes were wide and dark, lost planets, black moons.

  The bandage on her shoulder had been looped under her arm twice and tied near the joint. He leaned in slightly, but the angle was awkward. He couldn’t simply wedge the scissors beneath the towel. He would have to lift the edge of the fabric.

  No. The room was too bright. His chest felt like a clenched fist. Stop this.

  He pressed two fingers together. He slid them beneath the bandage.

  Everything in him recoiled. The water was cold against his legs. His body had gone numb and yet he could still feel the wet give of his brother’s rotting flesh beneath his hands. It’s shame that eats men whole. He was drowning in it. Drowning in the Ketterdam harbor. His eyes blurred.

  “It isn’t easy for me either.” Her voice, low and steady, the voice that had once led him back from hell. “Even now, a boy will smile at me on the street, or Jesper will put his arm around my waist, and I feel like I’m going to vanish.” The room tilted. He clung to the tether of her voice. “I live in fear that I’ll see one of her—one of my —clients on the street. For a long time, I thought I recognized them everywhere. But sometimes I think what they did to me wasn’t the worst of it.”

  Kaz’s vision came back into focus. The water receded. He was standing in a hotel bathroom. His fingers were pressed against Inej’s shoulder. He could feel the fine muscles beneath her skin. A pulse beat furiously at her throat, in the soft hollow just beneath her jaw. He realized she had closed her eyes. Her lashes were black against her cheeks. As if in response to his shaking, she had gone even more still. He should say something, but his mouth could not make words.

  “Tante Heleen wasn’t always cruel,” Inej continued. “She’d hug you, hold you close, then pinch you so hard, she broke skin. You never knew if a kiss was coming or a slap. One day you were her best girl, and the next day she’d bring you to her office and tell you she was selling you to a group of men she’d met on the street. She’d make you beg her to keep you.” Inej released a soft sound that was almost a laugh. “The first time Nina hugged me, I flinched .” Her eyes opened. She met his gaze. He could hear the drip of the faucet, see the curl of her braid over her shoulder where it had slipped free of its coil. “Go on,” she said quietly, as if she was asking him to continue a story.

  He wasn’t sure he could. But if she could speak those words into the echo of this room, he could damn well try.

  Carefully, he raised the shears. He lifted the bandage, creating a gap, feeling regret and release as he broke contact with her skin. He sliced through the bandage. He could feel the warmth of her on his fingers like fever.

  The ruined bandage fell away.

  He took up another long strip of towel in his right hand. He had to lean in to loop it behind her. He was so close now. His mind took in the shell of her ear, the hair tucked behind it, that rapid pulse fluttering in her throat. Alive, alive, alive.

  It isn’t easy for me either.

  He looped the bandage around again. The barest touches. Unavoidable. Shoulder, clavicle, once her knee. The water rose around him.

  He secured the knot. Step back. He did not step back. He stood there, hearing his own breath, hers, the rhythm of them alone in this room.

  The sickness was there, the need to run, the need for something else too. Kaz thought he knew the language of pain intimately, but this ache was new. It hurt to stand here like this, so close to the circle of her arms. It isn’t easy for me either. After all she’d endured, he was the weak one. But she would never know what it was like for him to see Nina pull her close, watch Jesper loop his arm through her
s, what it was to stand in doorways and against walls and know he could never draw nearer. But I’m here now , he thought wildly. He had carried her, fought beside her, spent whole nights next to her, both of them on their bellies, peering through a long glass, watching some warehouse or merch’s mansion. This was nothing like that. He was sick and frightened, his body slick with sweat, but he was here. He watched that pulse, the evidence of her heart, matching his own beat for anxious beat. He saw the damp curve of her neck, the gleam of her brown skin. He wanted to … He wanted.

  Before he even knew what he intended, he lowered his head. She drew in a sharp breath. His lips hovered just above the warm juncture between her shoulder and the column of her neck. He waited. Tell me to stop. Push me away.

  She exhaled. “Go on,” she repeated. Finish the story.

  The barest movement and his lips brushed her skin—warm, smooth, beaded with moisture. Desire coursed through him, a thousand images he’d hoarded, barely let himself imagine—the fall of her dark hair freed from its braid, his hand fitted to the lithe curve of her waist, her lips parted, whispering his name.

  All of it there and then gone. He was drowning in the harbor. Her limbs were a corpse’s limbs. Her eyes were dead and staring. Disgust and longing roiled in his gut.

  He lurched backward, and pain shot through his bad leg. His mouth was on fire. The room swayed. He braced himself against the wall, trying to breathe. Inej was on her feet, moving toward him, her face concerned. He held up a hand to stop her.

  “Don’t.”

  She stood in the center of the tile floor, framed by white and gold, like a gilded icon. “What happened to you, Kaz? What happened to your brother?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Tell me. Please.”

  Tell her , said a voice inside him. Tell her everything. But he didn’t know how or where to begin. And why should he? So she could find a way to absolve him of his crimes? He didn’t want her pity. He didn’t need to explain himself, he just needed to find a way to let her go.

  “You want to know what Pekka did to me?” His voice was a snarl, reverberating off the tiles. “How about I tell you what I did when I found the woman who pretended to be his wife, the girl who pretended to be his daughter? Or how about I tell you what happened to the boy who lured us in that first night with his mechanical toy dogs? That’s a good one. His name was Filip. I found him running a monte game on Kelstraat. I tortured him for two days and left him bleeding in an alley, the key to a wind-up dog shoved down his throat.” Kaz saw Inej flinch. He ignored the sting in his heart.

  “That’s right,” he went on. “The clerks at the bank who turned over our information. The fake attorney. The man who gave me free hot chocolate at Hertzoon’s fake office. I destroyed them all, one by one, brick by brick. And Rollins will be the last. These things don’t wash away with prayer, Wraith. There is no peace waiting for me, no forgiveness, not in this life, not in the next.”

  Inej shook her head. How could she still look at him with kindness in her eyes? “You don’t ask for forgiveness, Kaz. You earn it.”

  “Is that what you intend to do? By hunting slavers?”

  “By hunting slavers. By rooting out the merchers and Barrel bosses who profit off of them. By being something more than just the next Pekka Rollins.”

  It was impossible. There was nothing more. He could see the truth even if she couldn’t. Inej was stronger than he would ever be. She’d kept her faith, her goodness, even when the world tried to take it from her with greedy hands.

  His eyes scanned her face as they always had, closely, hungrily, snatching at the details of her like the thief he was—the even set of her dark brows, the rich brown of her eyes, the upward tilt of her lips. He didn’t deserve peace and he didn’t deserve forgiveness, but if he was going to die today, maybe the one thing he’d earned was the memory of her—brighter than anything he would ever have a right to—to take with him to the other side.

  Kaz strode past Inej, took his discarded gloves from the sink, pulled them on. He shrugged into his coat, straightened his tie in the mirror, tucked his cane under his arm. He might as well go to meet his death in style.

  When he turned back to her, he was ready. “Whatever happens to me, survive this city. Get your ship, have your vengeance, carve your name into their bones. But survive this mess I’ve gotten us into.”

  “Don’t do this,” Inej said.

  “If I don’t, it’s all over. There’s no way out. There’s no reward. There’s nothing left.”

  “Nothing,” she repeated.

  “Look for Dunyasha’s tells.”

  “What?”

  “A fighter always has a tell, a sign of an old injury, a dropped shoulder when they’re about to throw a punch.”

  “Do I have a tell?”

  “You square your shoulders before you start a move as if you’re about to perform, like you’re waiting for the audience’s attention.”

  She looked slightly affronted at that. “And what’s yours?”

  Kaz thought of the moment on Vellgeluk that had nearly cost him everything.

  “I’m a cripple. That’s my tell. No one’s ever smart enough to look for the others.”

  “Don’t go to the Slat, Kaz. Let us find another way.”

  “Step aside, Wraith.”

  “Kaz—”

  “If you ever cared about me at all, don’t follow.”

  He pushed past her and strode from the room. He couldn’t think of what might be, of what there was to lose. And Inej was wrong about one thing. He knew exactly what he intended to leave behind when he was gone.

  Damage.

  S he followed him anyway.

  If you ever cared about me at all.

  Inej actually snorted as she vaulted over a chimney. It was offensive. She’d had numerous chances to be free of Kaz, and she’d never taken them.

  So he wasn’t fit for a normal life. Was she meant to find a kindhearted husband, have his children, then sharpen her knives after they’d gone to sleep? How would she explain the nightmares she still had from the Menagerie? Or the blood on her hands?

  She could feel the press of Kaz’s fingers against her skin, feel the bird’swing brush of his mouth against her neck, see his dilated eyes. Two of the deadliest people the Barrel had to offer and they could barely touch each other without both of them keeling over. But they’d tried. He’d tried. Maybe they could try again. A foolish wish, the sentimental hope of a girl who hadn’t had the firsts of her life stolen, who hadn’t ever felt Tante Heleen’s lash, who wasn’t covered in wounds and wanted by the law. Kaz would have laughed at her optimism.

  She thought of Dunyasha, her shadow. What dreams did she have? A throne, as Matthias had suggested? Another kill offered up to her god? Inej had no doubt she would meet the ivory-and-amber girl again. She wanted to believe she would emerge victorious when that time came, but she could not argue with Dunyasha’s gifts. Maybe she really was a princess, a girl of noble birth trained in the killing arts, destined for greatness like a heroine in a story. Then what did that make Inej? An obstacle in her path? Tribute on the altar of death? A smudge of a Suli acrobat who fights like a common street thug. Or perhaps her Saints had brought Dunyasha to these streets. Who will remember a girl like you, Miss Ghafa? Maybe this was the way Inej would be called to account for the lives she had taken.

  Maybe. But not yet. She still had debts to pay.

  Inej hissed as she slid down a drainpipe, feeling the bandage around her thigh pull free. She was going to leave a trail of blood over the skyline.

  They were drawing closer to the Slat, but she kept to the shadows and made sure there was a good distance between her and Kaz. He had a way of sensing her presence when no one else could. He paused frequently, unaware he was being observed. His leg was troubling him worse than he’d let on. But she would not interfere at the Slat. She could abide by his wishes in that, at least, because he was right: In the Barrel, strength was the only curren
cy that mattered. If Kaz didn’t face this challenge alone, he could lose everything—not just the chance to garner support from the Dregs, but any chance he would ever have to walk the Barrel freely again. She’d often wished to chip away a bit of his arrogance, but she couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Kaz stripped of his pride.

  He dodged over the rooftops of Groenstraat, following the route they’d laid out together, and soon enough, the back of the Slat came into view—narrow, leaning lopsided against its neighbors, its shingled gables black with soot.

  How many times had she approached the Slat from just this angle? To her, it was the way home. She spotted Kaz’s window on the top floor. She’d spent countless hours perched on that sill, feeding the crows that gathered there, listening to him scheme. Below it, slightly to the left, she spotted the sliver of window that belonged to her own tiny bedroom. It struck her that, whether the auction succeeded or failed, this might be the last time she ever returned to the Slat. She might never see Kaz seated at his desk again or hear the thump of his cane coming up the Slat’s rickety steps, letting her know from its rhythm whether it had been a bad night or a good one.

  She watched him crawl awkwardly down from the lip of the roof and pick the lock on his own window. Once he was out of sight, she continued over the steep pitch of the gable to the other side of the Slat. She couldn’t follow the way he’d gone without giving herself away.

  On the front of the house, just below the roofline, she found the old metal hook used for hauling up heavy cargo. She grabbed it, ignoring the disgruntled warbling of startled pigeons, and nudged open the window with her foot, wrinkling her nose at the stink of the bird droppings. She slipped inside, moving across the roof beams, and found a place among the shadows. Then she waited, unsure of what to do next. If anyone looked up, they might see her there, perched in the corner like the spider she was, but why would anyone think to?

  Below, the entry way buzzed with activity. Apparently the festive mood of that morning’s parade had suffused the day. People came in and out the front door, shouting to one another, laughing and singing. A few Dregs sat on the squeaky wooden staircase, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth. Seeger—one of Per Haskell’s favorite bruisers—kept blowing the same three notes on a tin whistle for all he was worth. A group of rowdies burst through the door and tumbled into the entry, cawing and screeching like fools, stomping the floor, banging into one another like a school of hungry sharks. They carried axe handles studded with rusty nails, cudgels, knives, and guns, and some of them had painted crows’ wings in black across their wild eyes. Behind them, Inej glimpsed a few Dregs who didn’t seem to share the excitement—Anika with her crop of yellow hair, wiry Roeder who Per Haskell had suggested Kaz use as his spider, the bigger bruisers Keeg and Pim. They hung back against the wall, exchanging unhappy looks as the others whooped and postured. They’re Kaz’s best hope for support , she thought. The youngest members of the Dregs, the kids Kaz had brought in and organized, the ones who worked the hardest and took the worst jobs because they were the newest.