Six of Crows

by Leigh Bardugo

  In the prison wagon, Kaz woke to a sharp jab against his thigh. He was ice cold and in darkness. There were bodies all around him, pressing against his back, his sides. He was drowning in corpses.

  “Kaz.” A whisper.

  He shuddered.

  Another jab to his thigh.

  “Kaz.” Inej’s voice. He managed a deep breath though his nose. He felt her pull away from him. Somehow, in the cramped confines of the wagon, she managed to give him space. His heart was pounding.

  “Keep talking,” he rasped.

  “What?”

  “Just keep talking.”

  “We’re passing through the prison gate. We made it past the first two checkpoints.”

  That brought him fully to his senses. They’d gone through two checkpoints. That meant they’d been counted. Someone had opened that door—not once but twice—maybe even laid hands on him, and he hadn’t woken. He could have been robbed, killed. He’d imagined his death a thousand ways, but never sleeping through it.

  He forced himself to breathe deeply, despite the smell of bodies. He’d kept his gloves on, something the guards might have easily taken note of, and a frustrating concession to his weakness, but if he hadn’t, he felt fairly sure he’d have gone completely mad.

  Behind him, he could hear the other prisoners murmuring to one another in different languages. Despite the fears the darkness woke in him, he gave thanks for it. He could only hope that the rest of his crew, hooded and burdened by their own anxiety, hadn’t noticed anything strange about his behavior. He’d been sluggish, slow to react when they’d ambushed the wagon, but that was all, and he could make up some excuse to account for it.

  He hated that Inej had seen him this way, that anyone had, but on the heels of that thought came another: Better it should be her. In his bones, he knew that she would never speak of it to anyone, that she would never use this knowledge against him. She relied on his reputation. She wouldn’t want him to look weak. But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there? Inej would never betray him. He knew it. Kaz felt ill. Though he’d trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with this shame.

  The wagon came to a halt. The bolt slid back, and the doors flew open.

  He heard Fjerdan being spoken, then scraping noises and a thunk. His collar was unlocked, and he was led from the wagon down some kind of ramp with the other prisoners. He heard what sounded like a gate creaking open, and they were herded forward, shuffling along in their shackles.

  He squinted as his hood was suddenly yanked free. They were standing in a large courtyard. The massive gate set into the ringwall was already being lowered closed, and it struck the stones with an ominous series of clanks and groans. When Kaz looked up, he saw guards stationed all along the roof of the courtyard, rifles aimed down at the prisoners. The guards below were moving along the rows of shackled captives, trying to match them to the driver’s paperwork by name or description.

  Matthias had described the layout of the Ice Court in detail, but he’d said little about the way it actually looked. Kaz had expected something old and damp—grim gray stone, battle-hard. Instead, he was surrounded by marble so white it almost glowed blue. He felt as if he’d wandered into some dreamlike version of the harsh lands they’d traveled in the north. It was impossible to tell what might be glass or ice or stone.

  “If this isn’t Fabrikator craft, then I’m the queen of the wood sprites,” muttered Nina in Kerch.

  “Tig!” one of the guards commanded. He slammed his rifle into her gut, and she doubled over in pain. Matthias kept his head turned, but Kaz didn’t miss the tension in his frame.

  The Fjerdan guards were gesturing over their papers, trying to make the numbers and identities of the prisoners match up to the group before them. This was the first real moment of exposure, one Kaz would have no control over. It would have been too time-consuming and dangerous to pick and choose the prisoners they’d replaced. It was a calculated risk, but now Kaz could only wait and hope that laziness and bureaucracy would do the rest.

  As the guards moved down the line, Inej helped Nina to her feet.

  “You okay?” Inej asked, and Kaz felt himself drawn toward her voice like water rolling downhill.

  Slowly, Nina unbent herself and stood upright. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “But I don’t think we have to worry about Pekka Rollins’ team anymore.”

  Kaz tracked Nina’s gaze to the top of the ringwall, high above the courtyard, where five men had been impaled on spikes like meat skewered for roasting, backs bent, limbs dangling. Kaz had to squint, but he recognized Eroll Aerts, Rollins’ best lockpick and safecracker. The bruises and welts from the beating they’d given him before his death were deep purple in the morning light, and Kaz could just make out a black mark on his arm—Aerts’ Dime Lion tattoo.

  He scanned the other faces—some were too swollen and distorted in death to identify. Could one of them be Rollins? Kaz knew he should be glad another team had been taken out, but Rollins was no fool, and the thought that his crew hadn’t made it past the Ice Court gates was more than a little nerve-racking. Besides, if Rollins had met his death at the end of a Fjerdan pike … No, Kaz refused that possibility. Pekka Rollins belonged to him.

  The guards were arguing with the wagon driver now, and one of them was pointing at Inej.

  “What’s happening?” he whispered to Nina.

  “They’re claiming the papers are out of order, that they have a Suli girl instead of a Shu boy.”

  “And the driver?” asked Inej.

  “He just keeps telling them it’s not his problem.”

  “That’s the way,” Kaz murmured encouragingly.

  Kaz watched them go back and forth. That was the beauty of all these fail-safes and layers of security. The guards always thought they could rely on someone else to catch a mistake or fix a problem. Laziness wasn’t as reliable as greed, but it still made a fine lever. And they were talking about prisoners—chained, surrounded on all sides, and about to be dumped into cells. Harmless.

  Finally, one of the prison guards sighed and signaled to his cohorts. “Diveskemen.”

  “Go on,” Nina translated, and then continued as the guard spoke. “Take them to the east block and let the next shift sort them out.”

  Kaz allowed himself the briefest sigh of relief.

  As anticipated, guards split the group into men and women, then led both rows, chains jangling, through a nearly round archway fashioned in the shape of a wolf’s open mouth.

  They entered a chamber where an old woman sat with her hands chained, flanked by guards. Her eyes were vacant. As each prisoner approached, the woman gripped his or her wrist.

  A human amplifier. Kaz knew Nina had worked with them when she’d been scouring the Wandering Isle for Grisha to join the Second Army. They could sense Grisha power by touch, and he’d seen them hired on at high-stakes card games to make sure none of the players were Grisha. Someone who could tamper with another player’s pulse or even raise the temperature in a room had an unfair advantage. But the Fjerdans used them for a different purpose—to make sure no Grisha breached their walls without being identified.

  Kaz watched Nina approach. He could see her trembling as she held out her arm. The woman clamped her fingers around Nina’s wrist. Her eyelids stuttered briefly. Then she dropped Nina’s hand and waved her along.

  Had she known and not cared? Or had the paraffin they’d used to encase Nina’s forearms worked?

  As they were led through an arch on the left, Kaz glimpsed Inej disappearing into the opposite arch with the other female prisoners. He felt a twinge in his chest, and with a disturbing jolt, he realized it was panic. She’d been the one to wake him from his stupor in the cart. Her voice had brought him back from the dark; it had been the tether he gripped and used to drag himself back to some semblance of sanity.

  The male prisoners were led clanking up a dark flight of stairs to a metal walkway. On their l
eft was the smooth white bulk of the ringwall. To their right the walkway overlooked a vast glass enclosure, nearly a quarter mile long and tall enough to comfortably fit a trading ship. It was lit by a huge iron lantern that hung from the ceiling like a glowing cocoon. Looking down, Kaz saw rows of heavily armored wagons capped by domed gun turrets. Their wheels were large and linked by a thick tread. On each wagon, a massive gun barrel—somewhere between the shape of a rifle and a cannon—jutted out into the space where a team of horses would ordinarily be hitched.

  “What are those things?” he whispered.

  “Torvegen,” Matthias said under his breath. “They don’t need horses to pull them. They were still perfecting the design when I left.”

  “No horses?”

  “Tanks,” murmured Jesper. “I saw prototypes when I was working with a gunsmith in Novyi Zem. Multiple guns in the turret, and that big barrel out in front? Serious firepower.”

  There were also gravity-fed heavy artillery guns in the enclosure, racks full of rifles, ammunition, and the little black bombs that Ravkans called grenatye. On the walls behind the glass, older weapons had been arranged in an elaborate display—axes, spears, longbows. Above it all hung a banner in silver and white: STRYMAKT FJERDAN.

  When Kaz glanced at Matthias, the big man muttered, “Fjerdan might.”

  Kaz peered through the thick glass. He knew defenses, and Nina had been right, this glass was another piece of Fabrikator work—bulletproof and impenetrable. Coming or going from the prison, captives would see weapons, armaments, machines of war—all a brutal reminder of the power of the Fjerdan state.

  Go on and flex, Kaz thought. Doesn’t matter how big the gun is if you don’t know where to point it.

  On the other side of the enclosure, he saw a second walkway, where the female prisoners were being marched.

  Inej will be fine. He had to stay sharp. They were in enemy territory now, a place of steep risk, the kind of fix you didn’t walk out of if you didn’t keep your wits about you. Had Pekka’s team made it this far before they’d been found out? And where was Pekka Rollins himself? Had he stayed safe and secure in Kerch, or was he a prisoner of the Fjerdans as well?

  None of it mattered. For now, Kaz had to focus on the plan and finding Yul-Bayur. He glanced at the others. Wylan looked like he was ready to wet himself. Helvar appeared grim as always. Jesper just grinned and whispered, “Well, we’ve managed to get ourselves locked into the most secure prison in the world. We’re either geniuses or the dumbest sons of bitches to ever breathe air.”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  They were led into another white room, this one equipped with tin tubs and hoses.

  The guard gabbled something in Fjerdan, and Kaz saw Matthias and some of the others start to strip down. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. He refused to vomit.

  He could do this—he had to do this. He thought of Jordie. What would Jordie say if his little brother lost their chance at justice because he couldn’t conquer some stupid sickness inside him? But it only brought back the memory of Jordie’s cold flesh, the way it had grown loose in the salt water, the bodies crowding around him in the flatboat. His vision started to blur.

  Get it together, Brekker, he scolded himself harshly. It didn’t help. He was going to faint again, and this would all be over. Inej had once offered to teach him how to fall. “The trick is not getting knocked down,” he’d told her with a laugh. “No, Kaz,” she’d said, “the trick is in getting back up.” More Suli platitudes, but somehow even the memory of her voice helped. He was better than this. He had to be. Not just for Jordie, but for his crew. He’d brought these people here. He’d brought Inej here. It was his job to bring them out again.

  The trick is in getting back up. He kept her voice in his head, repeating those words, again and again, as he stripped off his boots, his clothes, and finally his gloves.

  He saw that Jesper was staring at his hands. “What were you expecting?” Kaz growled.

  “Claws, at least,” Jesper said, shifting his gaze to his own bony bare feet. “Possibly a spiny thumb.”

  The guard returned from dumping their clothes in a bin that would no doubt be taken to the incinerator. He tilted Kaz’s head back roughly and forced his mouth open, feeling around with fat fingers. Black spots bloomed in Kaz’s sight as he fought to remain conscious. The guard’s fingers passed over the spot between Kaz’s teeth where he’d wedged the baleen, then pinched and prodded the interior of his cheeks.

  “Ondetjärn!” the guard exclaimed. “Fellenjuret!” he shouted again as he pulled two slender pieces of metal from Kaz’s mouth. The lockpicks hit the stone floor with a plink-plink. The guard shouted something at him in Fjerdan and cuffed him hard across the face. Kaz fell to his knees, but forced himself back up. He registered Wylan’s panicked expression, but it was all he could do to stay on his feet as the guard shoved him into line for an ice-cold shower.

  When he emerged, soaked and shaking, another guard handed him colorless, prison-issue trousers and a tunic from the stack beside him. Kaz pulled them on, then limped to the holding area with the rest of the prisoners. In that moment, he would have given up half his share of the thirty million kruge for the familiar heft of his cane.

  The holding cells looked much more like the prison he had anticipated—no white stone or glass displays, just dank gray rock and iron bars.

  They were herded into an already crowded cell. Helvar sat down with his back to the wall, surveying the pacing men, eyes slitted. Kaz rested against the iron bars, watching the guards depart. He could sense the movements of the bodies behind him. There was space enough, but they still felt too close. Just a little longer, Kaz told himself. His hands felt impossibly bare.

  Kaz waited. He knew what was coming. He’d sussed out the others as soon as they entered the cell, and he knew it would be the burly Kaelish with the birthmark who came for him. He was twitchy, nervous, and he’d taken obvious notice of Kaz’s limp.

  “Hey, cripple,” the Kaelish said in Fjerdan. He tried again in Kerch, his lilt heavy. “Hey, crip.” He needn’t have bothered. Kaz knew the word for cripple in plenty of languages.

  The next second, Kaz felt the air move as the Kaelish reached for him. He stepped left, and the Kaelish lurched forward, carried by his own momentum. Kaz helped him along, seizing the man’s arm and driving it through the space between bars, all the way up to the shoulder. The Kaelish let out a loud grunt as his face smashed up against the iron bars.

  Kaz braced the man’s forearm against the metal. He threw his weight against his opponent’s body, and felt a satisfying pop as the Kaelish’s arm dislocated from his shoulder. As the man opened his lips to scream, Kaz covered his mouth with one hand and pinched his nose shut with the other. The feel of bare flesh on his fingers made him want to gag.

  “Shhhhhh,” he said, using his grip on the man’s nose to steer him backward to the bench against the wall. The other prisoners scattered to clear a path.

  The man sat down hard, eyes watering, breathless. Kaz kept his hold on his nose and mouth. The Kaelish trembled beneath his grasp.

  “You want me to put it back?” Kaz asked.

  The Kaelish whimpered.

  “Do you?”

  He whimpered louder as the prisoners looked on.

  “You scream, and I’ll make sure it never works right again, understand?”

  He released the man’s mouth and shoved his arm back into its socket. The Kaelish rolled over on his side, curled up on the bench, and began to weep.

  Kaz wiped his hands on his trousers and returned to his spot by the bars. He could feel the others watching, but now he knew he would be left in peace.

  Helvar came up beside him. “Was that really necessary?”

  “No.” But it had been—to make sure they were left alone to do what needed to be done, and to remember that he wasn’t helpless.

  23

  JESPER

  Jesper wanted to pace, but he’d s
taked out this spot on the bench, and he intended to keep it. It felt like little quakes of anxiety and excitement were vibrating under his skin, and Wylan seated next to him drumming frenetically on his kneecaps wasn’t helping him settle. He didn’t think he could handle much more waiting. First the boat, then all that hiking, and now he was stuck in a cell until the guards came by to make their evening head count.

  Only his father had understood his restless energy. He’d tried to get Jesper to use it up on the farm, but the work had been too monotonous. University was supposed to be the thing that gave him direction, but instead he’d wandered down a different path. He cringed at what his father would say if he learned his son had died in a Fjerdan prison. But how would he ever know? That was too depressing to dwell on.

  How much time had passed? What if they couldn’t even hear the Elderclock in here? The guards were supposed to make the head count at six bells. Then Jesper and the others would have until midnight to get the job done. They hoped. Matthias had only spent three months at the prison. Protocols could have changed. He might have gotten something wrong. Or maybe the Fjerdan just wants us behind bars before he rats us out.

  But Matthias was sitting silent on the far side of the cell near Kaz. Jesper hadn’t been able to miss Kaz’s little skirmish with the Kaelish. Kaz was usually unshakable during a job, but now he was on edge, and Jesper didn’t know why. Part of him wanted to ask, but he knew that was the stupid part, the hopeful farm boy who picked the worst possible person to care about, who searched for signs in things that he knew deep down meant nothing—when Kaz chose him for a job, when Kaz played along with one of his jokes. He could have kicked himself. He’d finally seen the infamous Kaz Brekker without a stitch of clothing, and he’d been too worried about ending up on a pike to pay proper attention.

  But if Jesper was anxious, Wylan looked like he might actually throw up.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Wylan whispered. “What good is a lockpick without his picks?”

  “Be quiet.”

  “And what good are you? A sharpshooter without his guns. You’re completely extraneous to this mission.”