Crooked Kingdom

by Leigh Bardugo

  “I will.”

  “Mati en sheva yelu. This action will have no echo. It means we won’t repeat the same mistakes, that we won’t continue to do harm.”

  “I’m not going to get you stabbed again.”

  “I got stabbed because I let my guard down. You betrayed your crew.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “It would be better if you had meant to betray us. Jesper, I don’t want an apology, not until you can promise that you won’t keep making the same mistake.”

  Jesper rocked lightly on his heels. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “There’s a wound in you, and the tables, the dice, the cards—they feel like medicine. They soothe you, put you right for a time. But they’re poison, Jesper. Every time you play, you take another sip. You have to find some other way to heal that part of yourself.” She laid her hand on his chest. “Stop treating your pain like it’s something you imagined. If you see the wound is real, then you can heal it.”

  A wound? He opened his mouth to deny it, but something stopped him. For all his trouble at the tables and away from them, Jesper had always thought of himself as lucky. Happy, easygoing. The kind of guy people wanted around. But what if he’d been bluffing this whole time? Angry and frightened—that’s what the Fjerdan had called him. What had Matthias and Inej seen in Jesper that he didn’t understand?

  “I … I’ll try.” It was the most he could offer right now. He took her hand in his, pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “It may take me a while before I can say those words.” His lips tilted in a grin. “And not just because I can’t speak Suli.”

  “I know,” she said. “But think on it.” She glanced toward the sitting room. “Just tell him the truth, Jesper. You’ll both be glad to know where you stand.”

  “Every time I think about doing that, I feel like hurling myself out a window.” He hesitated. “Would you tell your parents the truth? Would you tell them everything you’ve done … everything that happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Inej admitted. “But I’d give anything to have the choice.”

  * * *

  Jesper found his father in the purple sitting room, a cup of coffee in his big hands. He’d piled the dishes back onto the silver tray.

  “You don’t have to clean up after us, Da.”

  “Someone does.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Sit down, Jes.”

  Jesper didn’t want to sit. That desperate itch was crackling through his body. All he wanted was to run straight to the Barrel as fast as his legs could carry him and throw himself down in the first gambling parlor he could find. If he hadn’t thought he’d be arrested or shot before he got halfway there, he just might have. He sat. Inej had left the unused vials of the chemical weevil on the table. He picked one up, fiddling with the stopper.

  His father leaned back, watching him with those stern gray eyes. Jesper could see every line and freckle on his face in the clear morning light.

  “There was no swindle, was there? That Shu boy lied for you. They all did.”

  Jesper clasped his hands to keep them from fidgeting. You’ll both be glad to know where you stand. Jesper wasn’t sure that was true, but he had no more options. “There have been a lot of swindles, but I was usually on the swindling side. A lot of fights—I was usually on the winning side. A lot of card games.” He looked down at the white crescents of his fingernails. “I was usually on the losing side.”

  “The loan I gave you for your studies?”

  “I got in deep with the wrong people. I lost at the tables and I kept losing, so I kept borrowing. I thought I could find a way to dig myself out.”

  “Why didn’t you just stop?”

  Jesper wanted to laugh. He had pleaded with himself, screamed at himself to stop. “It isn’t like that.” There’s a wound in you. “Not for me. I don’t know why.”

  Colm pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked so weary, this man who could work from sunrise to sunset without ever complaining. “I never should have let you leave home.”

  “Da—”

  “I knew the farm wasn’t for you. I wanted you to have something better.”

  “Then why not send me to Ravka?” Jesper said before he could think better of it.

  Coffee sloshed from Colm’s cup. “Out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “Why should I send my son to some foreign country to fight and die in their wars?”

  A memory came to Jesper, sharp as a mule kick. The dusty man was standing at the door again. He had the girl with him, the girl who had lived because his mother had died. He wanted Jesper to come with them.

  “Leoni is zowa. She has the gift too,” he’d said. “There are teachers in the west, past the frontier. They could train them.”

  “Jesper doesn’t have it,” Colm said.

  “But his mother—”

  “He doesn’t have it. You have no right to come here.”

  “Are you sure? Has he been tested?”

  “You come back on this land and I’ll consider it an invitation to put a bullet between your eyes. You go and you take that girl with you. No one here has the gift and no one here wants it.”

  He’d slammed the door in the dusty man’s face.

  Jesper remembered his father standing there, taking great heaving breaths.

  “What did they want, Da?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Am I zowa?” Jesper had asked. “Am I Grisha?”

  “Don’t say those words in this house. Not ever.”

  “But—”

  “That’s what killed your mother, do you understand? That’s what took her from us.” His father’s voice was fierce, his gray eyes hard as quartz. “I won’t let it take you too.” Then his shoulders slumped. As if the words were being torn from him, he’d said, “Do you want to go with them? You can go. If that’s what you want. I won’t be mad.”

  Jesper had been ten. He’d thought of his father alone on the farm, coming home to an empty house every day, sitting by himself at the table every night, no one to make him burnt biscuits.

  “No,” he’d said. “I don’t want to go with them. I want to stay with you.”

  Now he rose from his chair, unable to sit still any longer, and paced the length of the room. Jesper felt like he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t be here anymore. His heart hurt. His head hurt. Guilt and love and resentment were all tangled up inside him, and every time he tried to unravel the knot in his gut, it just got worse. He was ashamed of the mess he’d made, of the trouble he’d brought to his father’s door. But he was mad too. And how could he be angry at his father? The person who loved him most in the world, who had worked to give him everything he had, the person he’d take a bullet for any day of the week?

  This action will have no echo. “I’m going to … I’ll find a way to make amends, Da. I want to be a better person, a better son.”

  “I didn’t raise you to be a gambler, Jesper. I certainly didn’t raise you to be a criminal.”

  Jesper released a bitter huff of laughter. “I love you, Da. I love you with all my lying, thieving, worthless heart, but yes, you did.”

  “What?” sputtered Colm.

  “You taught me to lie.”

  “To keep you safe.”

  Jesper shook his head. “I had a gift. You should have let me use it.”

  Colm banged his fist against the table. “It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. It would have killed you the same way it killed your mother.”

  So much for the truth. Jesper strode to the door. If he didn’t get shut of this place, he was going to jump right out of his skin. “I’m dying anyway, Da. I’m just doing it slow.”

  * * *

  Jesper strode down the hall. He didn’t know where to go or what to do with himself. Go to the Barrel. Stay off the Stave. There’s a game to be had somewhere, just be inconspicuous. Sure, a Zemeni as tall as a modestly ambitious tree and carrying a price on his head wouldn’t be noticed at all. He remembered wh
at Kuwei had said about Grisha who didn’t use their power being tired and sickly. He wasn’t physically sick, that was true enough. But what if Matthias was right and Jesper had a different kind of sickness? What if all that power inside him just liked to bounce around looking for someplace to go?

  He passed an open doorway, then doubled back. Wylan was sitting at a white lacquer piano in the corner, listlessly plunking out one solitary note.

  “I like that,” he said. “Has a great beat—you can dance to it.”

  Wylan looked up, and Jesper sauntered into the room, hands swinging restlessly at his sides. He circled its perimeter, taking in all the furnishings—purple silk wallpaper flocked in silver fishes, silver chandeliers, a cabinet full of blown-glass ships. “Saints, this place is hideous.”

  Wylan shrugged and played another note. Jesper leaned on the piano. “Wanna get out of here?”

  Wylan looked up at him, his gaze speculative. He nodded.

  Jesper stood up a little straighter. “Really?”

  Wylan held his gaze. The air in the room seemed to change, as if it had become suddenly combustible.

  Wylan rose from the piano bench. He took a step toward Jesper. His eyes were a clear, luminous gold, like sun through honey. Jesper missed the blue, the long lashes, the tangle of curls. But if the merchling had to be wrapped up in a different package, Jesper could admit he liked this one plenty. And did any of that really matter when Wylan was looking at him like that—head tilted to the side, a slight smile playing over his lips? He looked almost … bold. What had changed? Had he been afraid Jesper wouldn’t make it out of the scrape on Black Veil? Was he just feeling lucky to be alive? Jesper wasn’t sure he cared. He’d wanted distraction, and here it was.

  Wylan’s grin broadened. His brow lifted. If that wasn’t an invitation …

  “Well, hell,” Jesper muttered. He closed the distance between them and took Wylan’s face in his hands. He moved slowly, deliberately, kept the kiss quiet, the barest brush of his lips, giving Wylan the chance to pull away if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He drew closer.

  Jesper could feel the heat from Wylan’s body against his. He slid his hand to the back of Wylan’s neck, tilting his head back, asking for more.

  He felt greedy for something. He’d wanted to kiss Wylan since he’d first seen him stirring chemicals in that gruesome tannery—ruddy curls damp with the heat, skin so delicate it looked like it would bruise if you breathed on it too hard. He looked like he’d fallen into the wrong story, a prince turned pauper. From then on, Jesper had been stuck somewhere between the desire to taunt the pampered little merchling into another blush and the urge to flirt him into a quiet corner just to see what might happen. But sometime during their hours at the Ice Court, that curiosity had changed. He’d felt the tug of something more, something that came to life in Wylan’s unexpected courage, in his wide-eyed, generous way of looking at the world. It made Jesper feel like a kite on a tether, lifted up and then plummeting down, and he liked it.

  So where was that feeling now? Disappointment flooded through him.

  Is it me? Jesper thought. Am I out of practice? He pushed closer, letting the kiss deepen, seeking that rising, falling, reckless sensation, moving Wylan back against the piano. He heard the keys clank against one another—soft, discordant music. Appropriate, he thought. And then, If I can think about metaphors at a time like this, something is definitely wrong.

  He pulled back, dropped his hands, feeling unspeakably awkward. What did you say after a terrible kiss? He’d never had cause to wonder.

  That was when he saw Kuwei standing in the doorway, mouth open, eyes wide and shocked.

  “What?” Jesper asked. “Do the Shu not kiss before noon?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Kuwei said sourly.

  Not Kuwei.

  “Oh, Saints,” Jesper groaned. That wasn’t Kuwei in the doorway. It was Wylan Van Eck, budding demolitions expert and wayward rich kid. And that meant he’d just kissed …

  The real Kuwei plunked that same listless note on the piano, grinning shamelessly up at him through thick black lashes.

  Jesper turned back to the door. “Wylan—” he began.

  “Kaz wants us in the sitting room.”

  “I—”

  But Wylan was already gone. Jesper stared at the empty doorway. How could he have made a mistake like that? Wylan was taller than Kuwei; his face was narrower too. If Jesper hadn’t been so riled up and jittery after the fight with Kaz and the argument with his father, he would never have confused them. And now he’d ruined everything.

  Jesper jabbed an accusing finger at Kuwei. “You should have said something!”

  Kuwei shrugged. “You were very brave on Black Veil. Since we’re all probably going to die—”

  “Damn it,” Jesper cursed, stalking toward the door.

  “You’re a very good kisser,” called Kuwei after him.

  Jesper turned. “How good is your Kerch really?”

  “Fairly good.”

  “Okay, then I hope you understand exactly what I mean when I say you are definitely more trouble than you’re worth.”

  Kuwei beamed, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Kaz seems to think I’m worth a great deal now.”

  Jesper rolled his eyes skyward. “You fit right in here.”

  25

  MATTHIAS

  They assembled once again in the suite’s sitting room. At Nina’s request, Colm had ordered another stack of waffles and a bowl of strawberries and cream. A mirror covered most of the suite’s far wall, and Matthias could not stop his gaze from straying to it. It was like looking into another reality.

  Jesper had slipped off his boots and was seated on the carpet, knees tucked up to his chest, casting furtive glances at Wylan, who had settled on the couch and seemed to be deliberately ignoring him. Inej perched on the windowsill, her balance so perfect it made her appear weightless, a bird poised to take flight. Kuwei had wedged himself into the crook of the settee, one of his notebooks open beside him, and Kaz sat in a high-backed purple chair, his bad leg propped on the low table, cane leaning against his thigh. He’d somehow seen to the torn sleeve of his shirt.

  Nina was curled up next to Matthias on the couch, her head resting on his shoulder, her feet tucked beneath her, fingers stained with strawberry juice. He felt strange sitting this way. In Fjerda, even a husband and his wife showed little affection in public. They held hands and might dance at a public ball. But he liked it, and though he could not quite relax, he couldn’t bear the thought of her moving away from him.

  It was Colm’s solid presence that transformed the image in the mirror. He made the people in the reflection seem less dangerous, as if they weren’t the team that had broken into the Ice Court and bested the Fjerdan military with little more than their wits and nerve, only a bunch of children worn out after a particularly brutal birthday party.

  “All right,” said Nina, licking strawberry juice from her fingers in a way that thoroughly defeated Matthias’ ability to form a rational thought. “When you say an auction, you don’t actually mean—”

  “Kuwei is going to sell himself.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “I’d probably be happier if I was,” said Kaz. He rested one gloved hand on his cane. “Any Kerch citizen and any free citizen who travels to Kerch has the right to sell his own indenture. It isn’t just the law, it’s trade, and there’s nothing more holy in Kerch. Kuwei Yul-Bo has the sacred right—as sanctioned by Ghezen, god of industry and commerce—to submit his life to the will of the market. He can offer his service at auction.”

  “You want him to sell himself to the highest bidder?” Inej said incredulously.

  “To our highest bidder. We’re going to fix the outcome so Kuwei gets his fondest wish—a life sipping tea from a samovar in Ravka.”

  “My father will never allow it,” said Wylan.

  “Van Eck will be powerless to stop it. The auction of an indenture is protected by th
e highest laws in the city—secular and religious. Once Kuwei declares his contract open, no one can stop the auction until bidding has closed.”

  Nina was shaking her head. “If we announce an auction, the Shu will know exactly when and where to find him.”

  “This is not Ravka,” said Kaz. “This is Kerch. Trade is sacred, protected by law. The Merchant Council are duty bound to make sure an auction proceeds without interference. The stadwatch will be out in force, and the auction statutes demand that the Council of Tides provide their assistance too. The Merchant Council, the stadwatch, the Tides—all required to protect Kuwei.”

  Kuwei set his notebook down. “The Shu may still have parem and Fabrikators.”

  “That’s right,” said Jesper. “If that’s true, they can make all the gold they want. There would be no way to outbid them.”

  “That’s assuming they have Fabrikators in the city already. Van Eck has done us the courtesy of blockading the harbor.”

  “Even so—”

  “Let me worry about the Shu,” said Kaz. “I can control the bidding. But we’ll need to make contact with the Ravkans again. They’ll have to know what we’re planning. At least part of it.”

  “I can get through to the embassy,” said Inej, “if Nina will write the message.”

  “The streets are closed down by barricades,” protested Wylan.

  “But not the rooftops,” Inej replied.

  “Inej,” said Nina. “Don’t you think you should tell them a bit more about your new friend?”

  “Yeah,” said Jesper. “Who’s this new acquaintance who poked a bunch of holes in you?”

  Inej glanced through the window. “There’s a new player on the field, a mercenary hired by Pekka Rollins.”

  “You were defeated in single combat?” Matthias asked in surprise. He had seen the Wraith fight. It would be no small thing to best her.

  “Mercenary is a little bit of an understatement,” said Nina. “She followed Inej onto the high wire and then threw knives at her.”