Six of Crows

by Leigh Bardugo

  The old man in front of him wore the robes of a university medik. He had a bottle of wuftsalts in his hand that he was waving beneath Kaz’s nose. The stink was nearly unbearable.

  “Get away from me,” Kaz rasped.

  The medik eyed him dispassionately, returning the wuftsalts to their leather pouch. Kaz flexed his fingers, but that was all he could do. He’d been shackled to a chair with his arms behind his back. Whatever they’d injected him with had left him groggy.

  The medik moved aside, and Kaz blinked twice, trying to clear his vision and make sense of the absurd luxury of his surroundings. He’d expected to wake in the den of the Black Tips or some other rival gang. But this wasn’t cheap Barrel flash. A squat decked out like this took real money—mahogany panels dense with carvings of frothing waves and flying fish, shelves lined with books, leaded windows, and he was fairly sure that was a real DeKappel. One of those demure oil portraits of a lady with a book open in her lap and a lamb lying at her feet. The man observing him from behind a broad desk had the prosperous look of a mercher. But if this was his house, why were there armed members of the stadwatch guarding the door?

  Damn it, Kaz thought, am I under arrest? If so, this merch was in for a surprise. Thanks to Inej, he had information on every judge, bailiff, and high councilman in Kerch. He’d be out of his cell before sunrise. Except he wasn’t in a cell, he was chained to a chair, so what the hell was going on?

  The man was in his forties with a gaunt but handsome face and a hairline making a determined retreat from his forehead. When Kaz met his gaze, the man cleared his throat and pressed his fingers together.

  “Mister Brekker, I hope you’re not feeling too poorly.”

  “Get this old canker away from me. I feel fine.”

  The merch gave a nod to the medik. “You may go. Please send me your bill. And I would, of course, appreciate your discretion in this matter.”

  The medik secured his bag and exited the room. As he did, the mercher rose and picked up a sheaf of papers from his desk. He wore the perfectly cut frock coat and vest of all Kerch merchants—dark, refined, deliberately staid. But the pocket watch and tie pin told Kaz all he needed to know: Heavy links of laurel leaves made up the watch’s gold fob, and the pin was a massive, perfect ruby.

  I’m going to pry that fat jewel from its setting and jab the pin right through your mercher neck for chaining me to a chair, Kaz thought. But all he said was, “Van Eck.”

  The man nodded. No bow, of course. Merchants didn’t bow to scum from the Barrel. “You know me, then?”

  Kaz knew the symbols and jewels of all the Kerch merchant houses. Van Eck’s crest was the red laurel. It didn’t take a professor to make the connection.

  “I know you,” he said. “You’re one of those merch crusaders always trying to clean up the Barrel.”

  Van Eck gave another small nod. “I try to find men honest work.”

  Kaz laughed. “What’s the difference between wagering at the Crow Club and speculating on the floor of the Exchange?”

  “One is theft and the other is commerce.”

  “When a man loses his money, he may have trouble telling them apart.”

  “The Barrel is a den of filth, vice, violence—”

  “How many of the ships you send sailing out of the Ketterdam harbors never return?”

  “That doesn’t—”

  “One out of five, Van Eck. One out of every five vessels you send seeking coffee and jurda and bolts of silk sinks to the bottom of the sea, crashes on the rocks, falls prey to pirates. One out of five crews dead, their bodies lost to foreign waters, food for deep sea fishes. Let’s not speak of violence.”

  “I won’t argue ethics with a stripling from the Barrel.”

  Kaz didn’t really expect him to. He was just stalling for time as he tested the tightness of the cuffs around his wrists. He let his fingers feel along the length of chain as far as they were able, still puzzling over where Van Eck had brought him. Though Kaz had never met the man himself, he’d had cause to learn the layout of Van Eck’s house inside and out. Wherever they were, it wasn’t the mercher’s mansion.

  “Since you didn’t bring me here to philosophize, what business?” It was the question spoken at the opening of any meeting. A greeting from a peer, not a plea from a prisoner.

  “I have a proposition for you. Rather, the Council does.”

  Kaz hid his surprise. “Does the Merchant Council begin all negotiations with a beating?”

  “Consider it a warning. And a demonstration.”

  Kaz remembered the shape from the alley, the way it had appeared and disappeared like a ghost. Jordie.

  He gave himself an internal shake. Not Jordie, you podge. Focus. They’d nabbed him because he’d been flush off a victory and distracted. This was his punishment, and it wasn’t a mistake he’d make again. That doesn’t explain the phantom. For now, he pushed the thought aside.

  “What possible use would the Merchant Council have for me?”

  Van Eck thumbed through the papers in his hand. “You were first arrested at ten,” he said, scanning the page.

  “Everyone remembers his first time.”

  “Twice again that year, twice at eleven. You were picked up when the stadwatch rousted a gambling hall when you were fourteen, but you haven’t served any time since.”

  It was true. No one had managed a pinch on Kaz in three years. “I cleaned up,” Kaz said. “Found honest work, live a life of industry and prayer.”

  “Don’t blaspheme,” Van Eck said mildly, but his eyes flashed briefly with anger.

  A man of faith, Kaz noted, as his mind sorted through everything he knew about Van Eck—prosperous, pious, a widower recently remarried to a bride not much older than Kaz himself. And, of course, there was the mystery of Van Eck’s son.

  Van Eck continued paging through the file. “You run book on prize fights, horses, and your own games of chance. You’ve been floor boss at the Crow Club for more than two years. You’re the youngest to ever run a betting shop, and you’ve doubled its profits in that time. You’re a blackmailer—”

  “I broker information.”

  “A con artist—”

  “I create opportunity.”

  “A bawd and a murderer—”

  “I don’t run whores, and I kill for a cause.”

  “And what cause is that?”

  “Same as yours, merch. Profit.”

  “How do you get your information, Mister Brekker?”

  “You might say I’m a lockpick.”

  “You must be a very gifted one.”

  “I am indeed.” Kaz leaned back slightly. “You see, every man is a safe, a vault of secrets and longings. Now, there are those who take the brute’s way, but I prefer a gentler approach—the right pressure applied at the right moment, in the right place. It’s a delicate thing.”

  “Do you always speak in metaphors, Mister Brekker?”

  Kaz smiled. “It’s not a metaphor.”

  He was out of his chair before his chains hit the ground. He leapt the desk, snatching a letter opener from its surface in one hand, and catching hold of the front of Van Eck’s shirt with the other. The fine fabric bunched as he pressed the blade to Van Eck’s throat. Kaz was dizzy, and his limbs felt creaky from being trapped in the chair, but everything seemed sunnier with a weapon in his hand.

  Van Eck’s guards were facing him, all with guns and swords drawn. He could feel the merch’s heart pounding beneath the wool of his suit.

  “I don’t think I need to waste breath on threats,” Kaz said. “Tell me how to get to the door or I’m taking you through the window with me.”

  “I think I can change your mind.”

  Kaz gave him a little jostle. “I don’t care who you are or how big that ruby is. You don’t take me from my own streets. And you don’t try to make a deal with me while I’m in chains.”

  “Mikka,” Van Eck called.

  And then it happened again. A boy walked t
hrough the library wall. He was pale as a corpse and wore an embroidered blue Grisha Tidemaker’s coat with a red-and-gold ribbon at the lapel indicating his association with Van Eck’s house. But not even Grisha could just stroll through a wall.

  Drugged, Kaz thought, trying not to panic. I’ve been drugged. Or it was some kind of illusion, the kind they performed in the theaters off East Stave—a girl cut in half, doves from a teapot.

  “What the hell is this?” he growled.

  “Let me go and I’ll explain.”

  “You can explain right where you are.”

  Van Eck huffed a short, shaky breath. “What you’re seeing are the effects of jurda parem.”

  “Jurda is a just a stimulant.” The little dried blossoms were grown in Novyi Zem and sold in shops all over Ketterdam. In his early days in the Dregs, Kaz had chewed them to stay alert during stakeouts. It had stained his teeth orange for days after. “It’s harmless,” he said.

  “Jurda parem is something completely different, and it is most definitely not harmless.”

  “So you did drug me.”

  “Not you, Mister Brekker. Mikka.”

  Kaz took in the sickly pallor of the Grisha’s face. He had dark hollows beneath his eyes, and the fragile, trembling build of someone who had missed several meals and didn’t seem to care.

  “Jurda parem is a cousin to ordinary jurda,” Van Eck continued. “It comes from the same plant. We’re not sure of the process by which the drug is made, but a sample of it was sent to the Kerch Merchant Council by a scientist named Bo Yul-Bayur.”

  “Shu?”

  “Yes. He wished to defect, so he sent us a sample to convince us of his claims regarding the drug’s extraordinary effects. Please, Mister Brekker, this is a most uncomfortable position. If you’d like, I will give you a pistol, and we can sit and discuss this in more civilized fashion.”

  “A pistol and my cane.”

  Van Eck gestured to one of his guards, who exited the room and returned a moment later with Kaz’s walking stick—Kaz was just glad he used the damn door.

  “Pistol first,” Kaz said. “Slowly.” The guard unholstered his weapon and handed it to Kaz by the grip. Kaz grabbed and cocked it in one quick movement, then released Van Eck, tossed the letter opener onto the desk, and snatched his cane from the guard’s hand. The pistol was more useful, but the cane brought Kaz a relief he didn’t care to quantify.

  Van Eck took a few steps backward, putting distance between himself and Kaz’s loaded gun. He didn’t seem eager to sit. Neither was Kaz, so he kept close to the window, ready to bolt if need be.

  Van Eck took a deep breath and tried to set his suit to rights. “That cane is quite a piece of hardware, Mister Brekker. Is it Fabrikator made?”

  It was, in fact, the work of a Grisha Fabrikator, lead-lined and perfectly weighted for breaking bones. “None of your business. Get talking, Van Eck.”

  The mercher cleared his throat. “When Bo Yul-Bayur sent us the sample of jurda parem, we fed it to three Grisha, one from each Order.”

  “Happy volunteers?”

  “Indentures,” Van Eck conceded. “The first two were a Fabrikator and a Healer indentured to Councilman Hoede. Mikka is a Tidemaker. He’s mine. You’ve seen what he can do using the drug.”

  Hoede. Why did that name ring a bell?

  “I don’t know what I’ve seen,” Kaz said as he glanced at Mikka. The boy’s gaze was focused intently on Van Eck as if awaiting his next command. Or maybe another fix.

  “An ordinary Tidemaker can control currents, summon water or moisture from the air or a nearby source. They manage the tides in our harbor. But under the influence of jurda parem, a Tidemaker can alter his own state from solid to liquid to gas and back again, and do the same with other objects. Even a wall.”

  Kaz was tempted to deny it, but he couldn’t explain what he’d just seen any other way. “How?”

  “It’s hard to say. You’re aware of the amplifiers some Grisha wear?”

  “I’ve seen them,” Kaz said. Animal bones, teeth, scales. “I hear they’re hard to come by.”

  “Very. But they only increase a Grisha’s power. Jurda parem alters a Grisha’s perception.”

  “So?”

  “Grisha manipulate matter at its most fundamental levels. They call it the Small Science. Under the influence of parem, those manipulations become faster and far more precise. In theory, jurda parem is just a stimulant like its ordinary cousin. But it seems to sharpen and hone a Grisha’s senses. They can make connections with extraordinary speed. Things become possible that simply shouldn’t be.”

  “What does it do to sorry sobs like you and me?”

  Van Eck seemed to bristle slightly at being lumped in with Kaz, but he said, “It’s lethal. An ordinary mind cannot tolerate parem in even the lowest doses.”

  “You said you gave it to three Grisha. What can the others do?”

  “Here,” Van Eck said, reaching for a drawer in his desk.

  Kaz lifted his pistol. “Easy.”

  With exaggerated slowness, Van Eck slid his hand into the desk drawer and pulled out a lump of gold. “This started as lead.”

  “Like hell it did.”

  Van Eck shrugged. “I can only tell you what I saw. The Fabrikator took a piece of lead in his hands, and moments later we had this.”

  “How do you even know it’s real?” asked Kaz.

  “It has the same melting point as gold, the same weight and malleability. If it’s not identical to gold in every way, the difference has eluded us. Have it tested if you like.”

  Kaz tucked his cane under his arm and took the heavy lump from Van Eck’s hand. He slipped it into his pocket. Whether it was real or just a convincing imitation, a chunk of yellow that big could buy plenty on the streets of the Barrel.

  “You could have gotten that anywhere,” Kaz pointed out.

  “I would bring Hoede’s Fabrikator here to show you himself, but he isn’t well.”

  Kaz’s gaze flicked to Mikka’s sickly face and damp brow. The drug clearly came with a price.

  “Let’s say this is all true and not cheap, coin-trick magic. What does it have to do with me?”

  “Perhaps you heard of the Shu paying off the entirety of their debt to Kerch with a sudden influx of gold? The assassination of the trade ambassador from Novyi Zem? The theft of documents from a military base in Ravka?”

  So that was the secret behind the murder of the ambassador in the washroom. And the gold in those three Shu ships must have been Fabrikator made. Kaz hadn’t heard anything about Ravkan documents, but he nodded anyway.

  “We believe all these occurrences are the work of Grisha under the control of the Shu government and under the influence of jurda parem.” Van Eck scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Mister Brekker, I want you to think for a moment about what I’m telling you. Men who can walk through walls—no vault or fortress will ever be safe again. People who can make gold from lead, or anything else for that matter, who can alter the very material of the world—financial markets would be thrown into chaos. The world economy would collapse.”

  “Very exciting. What is it you want from me, Van Eck? You want me to steal a shipment? The formula?”

  “No, I want you to steal the man.”

  “Kidnap Bo Yul-Bayur?”

  “Save him. A month ago we received a message from Yul-Bayur begging for asylum. He was concerned about his government’s plans for jurda parem, and we agreed to help him defect. We set up a rendezvous, but there was a skirmish at the drop point.”

  “With the Shu?”

  “No, with Fjerdans.”

  Kaz frowned. The Fjerdans must have spies deep in Shu Han or Kerch if they had learned about the drug and Bo Yul-Bayur’s plans so quickly. “So send some of your agents after him.”

  “The diplomatic situation is somewhat delicate. It is essential that our government not be tied to Yul-Bayur in any way.”

  “You have to know he’s probably dead. The Fje
rdans hate Grisha. There’s no way they’d let knowledge of this drug get out.”

  “Our sources say he is very much alive and that he is awaiting trial.” Van Eck cleared his throat. “At the Ice Court.”

  Kaz stared at Van Eck for a long minute, then burst out laughing. “Well, it’s been a pleasure being knocked unconscious and taken captive by you, Van Eck. You can be sure your hospitality will be repaid when the time is right. Now have one of your lackeys show me to the door.”

  “We’re prepared to offer you five million kruge.”

  Kaz pocketed the pistol. He wasn’t afraid for his life now, just irritated that this fink had wasted his time. “This may come as a surprise to you, Van Eck, but we canal rats value our lives just as much as you do yours.”

  “Ten million.”

  “There’s no point to a fortune I won’t be alive to spend. Where’s my hat—did your Tidemaker leave it behind in the alley?”

  “Twenty.”

  Kaz paused. He had the eerie sense that the carved fish on the walls had halted midleap to listen. “Twenty million kruge?”

  Van Eck nodded. He didn’t look happy.

  “I’d need to convince a team to walk into a suicide mission. That won’t come cheap.” That wasn’t entirely true. Despite what he’d said to Van Eck, there were plenty of people in the Barrel who didn’t have much to live for.

  “Twenty million kruge is hardly cheap,” Van Eck snapped.

  “The Ice Court has never been breached.”

  “That’s why we need you, Mister Brekker. It’s possible Bo Yul-Bayur is already dead or that he’s given up all his secrets to the Fjerdans, but we think we have at least a little time to act before the secret of jurda parem is put into play.”

  “If the Shu have the formula—”

  “Yul-Bayur claimed he’d managed to mislead his superiors and keep the specifics of the formula secret. We think they’re operating from whatever limited supply Yul-Bayur left behind.”

  Greed bows to me. Maybe Kaz had been a bit too cocky on that front. Now greed was doing Van Eck’s bidding. The lever was at work, overcoming Kaz’s resistance, moving him into place.