Crooked Kingdom

by Leigh Bardugo

  “The rules of the auction are clear,” said the Tidemaker. “Neither the indenture nor his representatives are permitted to interfere with the auction’s outcome. The market must decide.”

  The members of the Merchant Council were on their feet now, demanding answers, gathering around Radmakker at the front of the stage. Van Eck made a great show of shouting along with the others, but he paused beside Kaz, and Matthias heard him murmur, “Here I thought I would have to be the one to reveal your scheme with the Ravkans, but it seems the Tides will have the honor.” His mouth curved in a satisfied smile. “Wylan took quite a beating before he gave you and your friends up,” he said, moving toward the podium. “I never knew the boy had so much spine.”

  “A false fund was created to swindle honest merchants out of their money,” continued the Tidemaker. “That money was funneled to one of the bidders.”

  “Of course!” said Van Eck in mock surprise. “The Ravkans! We all knew they didn’t have the funds to bid competitively in such an auction!” Matthias could hear how greatly he was enjoying himself. “We’re aware of how much money the Ravkan crown has borrowed from us over the last two years. They can barely make their interest payments. They don’t have one hundred and twenty million kruge ready to bid in an open auction. Brekker must be working with them.”

  All the bidders were out of their seats now. The Fjerdans were shouting for justice. The Shu had begun stamping their feet and banging on the backs of the pews. The Ravkans stood in the middle of the maelstrom, surrounded by enemies on every side. Sturmhond, Genya, and Zoya were at the center of it all, chins held high.

  “Do something,” Matthias growled at Kaz. “This is about to turn ugly.”

  Kaz’s face was as impassive as always. “Do you think so?”

  “Damn it, Brekker. You—”

  The Tides raised their arms and the church shook with another resonant boom. Water sloshed in through the windows of the upper balcony. The crowd quieted, but the silence was hardly complete. It seethed with angry murmurs.

  Radmakker banged his gavel, attempting to reassert some authority. “If you have evidence against the Ravkans—”

  The Tidemaker spoke from behind her mask of mist. “The Ravkans have nothing to do with this. The money was transferred to the Shu.”

  Van Eck blinked, then changed tack. “Well then, Brekker struck some kind of deal with the Shu.”

  Instantly, the Shu were shouting their denials, but the Tidemaker’s voice was louder.

  “The false fund was created by Johannus Rietveld and Jan Van Eck.”

  Van Eck’s face went white. “No, that’s not right.”

  “Rietveld is a farmer,” stammered Karl Dryden. “I met him myself.”

  The Tidemaker turned on Dryden. “Both you and Jan Van Eck were seen meeting with Rietveld in the lobby of the Geldrenner Hotel.”

  “Yes, but it was for a fund, a jurda consortium, an honest business venture.”

  “Radmakker,” said Van Eck. “You were there. You met with Rietveld.”

  Radmakker’s nostrils flared. “I know nothing of this Mister Rietveld.”

  “But I saw you. We both saw you at the Geldrenner—”

  “I was there for a presentation on Zemeni oil futures. It was most peculiar, but what of it?”

  “No,” said Van Eck, shaking his head. “If Rietveld is involved, Brekker is behind it. He must have hired Rietveld to swindle the Council.”

  “Every one of us put money into that fund at your encouragement,” said one of the other councilmen. “Are you saying it’s all gone?”

  “We knew nothing of this!” countered the Shu ambassador.

  “This is Brekker’s doing,” insisted Van Eck. His smug demeanor was gone, but his composure remained intact. “The boy will stop at nothing to humiliate me and the honest men of this city. He kidnapped my wife, my son.” He gestured to Kaz. “Did I imagine you standing on Goedmedbridge in West Stave with Alys?”

  “Of course not. I retrieved her from the market square just as you asked,” Kaz lied with a smoothness even Matthias found convincing. “She said she was blindfolded and never saw the people who took her.”

  “Nonsense!” said Van Eck dismissively. “Alys!” he shouted up to the western balcony where Alys was seated, hands folded over her high, pregnant belly. “Tell them!”

  Alys shook her head, her eyes wide and baffled. She whispered something to her maid, who called down, “Her captors wore masks and she was blindfolded until she reached the square.”

  Van Eck released a huff of frustration. “Well, my guards certainly saw him with Alys.”

  “Men in your employ?” said Radmakker skeptically.

  “Brekker was the one who set up the meeting at the bridge!” said Van Eck. “He left a note, at the lake house.”

  “Ah,” said Radmakker in relief. “Can you produce it?”

  “Yes! But … it wasn’t signed.”

  “Then how do you know it was Kaz Brekker who sent the note?”

  “He left a tie pin—”

  “His tie pin?”

  “No, my tie pin, but—”

  “So you have no proof at all that Kaz Brekker kidnapped your wife.” Radmakker’s patience was at an end. “Is the business with your missing son as flimsy? The whole city has been searching for him, rewards have been offered. I pray your evidence is stronger on that account.”

  “My son—”

  “I’m right here, Father.”

  Every eye in the room turned to the archway by the stage. Wylan leaned against the wall. His face was bloodied and he looked barely able to stand.

  “Ghezen’s hand,” complained Van Eck beneath his breath. “Can no one do their jobs?”

  “Were you relying on Pekka Rollins’ men?” Kaz mused in a low rasp.

  “I—”

  “And are you sure they were Pekka’s men? If you’re not from the Barrel, you might find it hard to tell lions from crows. One animal is the same as the next.”

  Matthias couldn’t help the surge of satisfaction he felt as he saw realization strike Van Eck. Kaz had known there was no way to get Wylan into the church without Van Eck or the Dime Lions finding out. So he’d staged a kidnapping. Two of the Dregs, Anika and Keeg, with their armbands and fake tattoos, had simply strolled up to the stadwatch with their captive and told the men to fetch Van Eck. When Van Eck arrived in the chapel, what did he see? His son held captive by two gang members bearing the insignia of Pekka’s Dime Lions. Matthias hadn’t thought they’d rough Wylan up quite so badly, though. Maybe he should have pretended to break sooner.

  “Help him!” Radmakker shouted to a stadwatch officer. “Can’t you see the boy is hurt?”

  The officer went to Wylan’s side and helped him limp to a chair as the medik hurried forward to attend him.

  “Wylan Van Eck?” said Radmakker. Wylan nodded. “The boy we’ve been tearing apart the city searching for?”

  “I got free as soon as I could.”

  “From Brekker?”

  “From Rollins.”

  “Pekka Rollins took you captive?”

  “Yes,” said Wylan. “Weeks ago.”

  “Stop your lies,” hissed Van Eck. “Tell them what you told me. Tell them about the Ravkans.”

  Wylan lifted his head wearily. “I’ll say whatever you want, Father. Just don’t let them hurt me anymore.”

  A gasp went up from the crowd. The members of the Merchant Council were looking at Van Eck with open disgust.

  Matthias had to stifle a snort. “Has Nina been giving him lessons?” he whispered.

  “Maybe he’s a natural,” said Kaz.

  “Brekker is the criminal,” said Van Eck. “Brekker is behind this! You all saw him at my house the other night. He broke into my office.”

  “That’s true!” said Karl Dryden eagerly.

  “Of course we were there,” said Kaz. “Van Eck invited us there to broker a deal for Kuwei Yul-Bo’s indenture. He told us we’d be meeting wit
h the Merchant Council. Pekka Rollins was waiting to ambush us instead.”

  “You’re saying he violated a good faith negotiation?” said one of the councilmen. “That seems unlikely.”

  “But we all saw Kuwei Yul-Bo there too,” said another, “though we did not know who he was at the time.”

  “I’ve seen the poster offering a reward for a Shu boy matching Kuwei’s appearance,” Kaz said. “Who provided his description?”

  “Well…” The merchant hesitated, and Matthias could see suspicion warring with his reluctance to believe the charges. He turned to Van Eck, and his voice was almost hopeful when he said, “Surely, you didn’t know the Shu boy you described was Kuwei Yul-Bo?”

  Now Karl Dryden was shaking his head, less in denial than disbelief. “It was also Van Eck who pushed us to join Rietveld’s fund.”

  “You were just as eager,” Van Eck protested.

  “I wanted to investigate the secret buyer purchasing jurda farms in Novyi Zem. You said—” Dryden broke off, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. “It was you! You were the secret buyer!”

  “Finally,” muttered Kaz.

  “You cannot possibly believe I would seek to swindle my own friends and neighbors,” Van Eck pleaded. “I invested my own money in that fund! I had as much to lose as the rest of you.”

  “Not if you made a deal with the Shu,” said Dryden.

  Radmakker banged his gavel once more. “Jan Van Eck, at the very least, you have squandered the resources of this city in pursuing unfounded accusations. At the worst, you have abused your position as a councilman, attempted to defraud your friends, and violated the integrity of this auction.” He shook his head. “The auction has been compromised. It cannot go on until we have determined whether any member of the Council knowingly channeled funds to one of the bidders.”

  The Shu ambassador began yelling. Radmakker banged his gavel.

  Then everything seemed to happen at once. Three Fjerdan drüskelle surged toward the stage and the stadwatch rushed to block them. The Shu soldiers pushed forward. The Tidemakers raised their hands, and then, over all of it, like the keening cry of a woman in mourning, the plague siren began to wail.

  The church went silent. People paused, their heads up, ears attuned to that sound, a sound they had not heard in more than seven years. Even in Hellgate, prisoners told stories of the Queen’s Lady Plague, the last great wave of sickness to strike Ketterdam, the quarantines, the sickboats, the dead piling up in the streets faster than the bodymen could collect and burn them.

  “What is that?” asked Kuwei.

  The corner of Kaz’s mouth curled. “That, Kuwei, is the sound that death makes when she comes calling.”

  A moment later, the siren could not be heard at all over the screaming as people shoved toward the church’s double doors. No one even noticed when the first shot was fired.

  34

  NINA

  The wheel spun, gold and green panels whirring so fast they became a single color. It slowed and stopped and whatever number came up must have been a good one, because the people cheered. The floor of the gambling palace was uncomfortably warm, and Nina’s scalp itched beneath her wig. It was an unflattering bell shape, and she’d paired it with a dowdy gown. For once, she didn’t want to draw attention.

  She had passed unnoticed through her first stop on West Stave, and through her second, then she’d crossed over to East Stave, doing her best to move unseen through the crowds. They were thinner due to the blockades, but people would not be kept from their pleasures. She’d made a visit to a gambling palace just a few blocks south of this one, and now her work was almost done. Kaz had chosen the establishments with care. This would be her fourth and final destination.

  As she smiled and whooped with the other players, she opened the glass case in her pocket and focused on the black cells within it. She could feel that deep cold radiating from it, that sense of something more, something other that spoke to the power inside her. She hesitated only briefly, recalling too clearly the chill of the morgue, the stink of death. She remembered standing over the dead man’s body and focusing on the discolored skin around his mouth.

  As she’d once used her power to heal or rend skin, or even place a flush in someone’s cheeks, she had concentrated on those decaying cells and funneled a slender sheath of necrotic flesh into the compressed glass case. She’d tucked the case into a black velvet pouch and now, standing in this raucous crowd, watching the happy colors of the wheel spin, she felt its weight—dangling from her wrist by a silver cord.

  She leaned in to place a bet. With one hand, she set her chips on the table. With the other, she opened the glass case.

  “Wish me luck!” she said to the wheel broker, allowing the open bag to brush against his hand, sending those dying cells up his fingers, letting them multiply over his healthy skin.

  When he reached for the wheel, his fingers were black.

  “Your hand!” exclaimed a woman. “There’s something on it.”

  He scrubbed his fingers over his embroidered green coat as if it were simply ink or coal dust. Nina flexed her fingers, and the cells crawled up the broker’s sleeve to the collar of his shirt, bursting in a black stain over one side of his neck, curling under his jaw to his bottom lip.

  Someone screamed, and the players backed away from him as the broker looked around in confusion. Players at the other tables turned from their cards and dice in irritation. The pit boss and his minions were moving toward them, ready to shut down whatever fight or problem was disrupting game play.

  Hidden by the crowd, Nina swept her arm through the air and a cluster of the cells jumped to a woman beside the wheel broker wearing expensive-looking pearls. A black starburst appeared on her cheek, an ugly little spider that rippled down her chin and over the column of her throat.

  “Olena!” her heavyset companion shouted. “Your face!”

  Now the screams were spreading as Olena clawed at her neck, stumbling forward, searching out a mirror as the other customers scattered before her.

  “She touched the broker! It got her too!”

  “What got her?”

  “Get out of my way!”

  “What’s happening here?” the pit boss demanded, clapping a hand on the baffled broker’s shoulder.

  “Help me!” the broker begged, holding up his hands. “There’s something wrong.”

  The pit boss took in the black stains on the broker’s face and hands, backing away quickly, but it was too late. The hand that had touched the broker’s shoulder turned an ugly purplish black, and now the pit boss was screaming too.

  Nina watched the terror take on its own momentum, careening through the floor of the gambling hall like an angry drunk. Players knocked over their chairs, stumbling toward the doors, grabbing for chips even as they ran for their lives. Tables overturned, spilling cards, and dice clattered to the floor. People raced for the doors, shoving one another out of the way. Nina went with them, letting herself be carried by the crowd as they fled the gambling hall and lurched into the street. It had been the same at every one of her stops, the slow bleed of fear that crested so suddenly to full-blown panic. And now, at last, she heard it: the siren. Its undulating wail descended over the Stave, rising and falling, echoing over the rooftops and cobblestones of Ketterdam.

  Tourists turned to one another with questions in their eyes, but the locals—the performers and dealers and shopkeepers and gamblers of the city—were instantly transformed. Kaz had told her they would know the sound, that they would heed it like children called home by a stern parent.

  Kerch was an island, isolated from its enemies, protected by the seas and its immense navy. But the two things its capital was most vulnerable to were fire and disease. And just as fire leapt easily between the tightly packed rooftops of the city, so plague passed effortlessly from body to body, through the thick crowds and cramped living spaces. Like gossip, no one knew exactly where it began or how it moved so quickly, only that it did, throu
gh breath or touch, carried on the air or through the canals. The rich suffered less, able to stay sequestered in their grand houses or gardens, or flee the city entirely. The infected poor were quarantined in makeshift hospitals on barges outside the harbor. The plague could not be stopped with guns or money. It could not be reasoned with or prayed away.

  Only the very young in Ketterdam didn’t have a clear memory of the Queen’s Lady Plague, of the sickboats moving through the canals piloted by bodymen with their long oars. Those who had survived it had lost a child or a parent or a brother or a sister, a friend or a neighbor. They remembered the quarantines, the terror that came with even the most basic human contact.

  The laws addressing plague were simple and ironclad: When the siren sounded, all private citizens were to return to their homes. The officers of the stadwatch were to assemble at separate stations around the city—in case of infection, this was a means of attempting to keep it from spreading to the entirety of the force. They were dispatched only to stop looters, and those men were given triple pay for the risk of policing the streets. Commerce halted and only the sickboats, bodymen, and mediks had free rein of the city.

  I know the one thing this city is more frightened of than the Shu, the Fjerdans, and all the gangs of the Barrel put together. Kaz had gotten it right. The barricades, the blockades, the checks on people’s papers, all of it would be abandoned in the face of the plague. Of course, none of these people were properly sick, thought Nina as she sped back through the harbor. The necrotic flesh would not spread beyond what Nina had grafted onto their bodies. They would have to have it removed, but no one would grow ill or die. At worst, they’d endure a few weeks of quarantine.

  Nina kept her head lowered, her hood up. Though she had been the cause of it all, and though she knew the plague was pure fiction, she still found her heart racing, carried into a gallop by the hysteria bubbling up around her. People were crying, shoving and shouting, arguing over space on the browboats. It was chaos. Chaos of her making.

  I did this, she thought wonderingly. I commanded those corpses, those bits of bone, those dying cells. What did that make her? If any Grisha had ever had such a power, she’d never heard of it. What would the other Grisha think of her? Her fellow Corporalki, the Heartrenders and Healers? We are tied to the power of creation itself, the making at the heart of the world. Maybe she should feel ashamed, maybe even frightened. But she hadn’t been made for shame.