“That’s right. Two more fools for you to cozy. Now tell me his name.”
“Kaz and…” Rollins clasped his hands on top of his head. Back and forth he crossed the chapel, back and forth, breathing heavily, as if he’d run the length of the city. “Kaz and…” He turned back to Kaz. “I can make you rich, Brekker.”
“I can make myself rich.”
“I can give you the Barrel, influence you’ve never dreamed of. Whatever you want.”
“Bring my brother back from the dead.”
“He was a fool and you know it! He was like any other mark, thinking he was smarter than the system, looking to make quick coin. You can’t fleece an honest man, Brekker. You know that!”
Greed is my lever. Pekka Rollins had taught him that lesson, and he was right. They’d been fools. Maybe one day Kaz could forgive Jordie for not being the perfect brother he held in his heart. Maybe he could even absolve himself for being the kind of gullible, trusting boy who believed someone might simply want to be kind. But for Rollins there would be no reprieve.
“You tell me where he is, Brekker,” Rollins roared in his face. “You tell me where my son is!”
“Say my brother’s name. Speak it like they do in the magic shows on East Stave—like an incantation. You want your boy? What right does your son have to his precious, coddled life? How is he different from me or my brother?”
“I don’t know your brother’s name. I don’t know! I don’t remember! I was making my name. I was making a little scrub. I thought you two would have a rough week and head home to the country.”
“No, you didn’t. You never gave us another thought.”
“Please, Kaz,” whispered Inej. “Don’t do this. Don’t be this.”
Rollins groaned. “I am begging you—”
“Are you?”
“You son of a bitch.”
Kaz consulted his watch. “All this time talking while your boy is lost in the dark.”
Pekka glanced at his men. He rubbed his hands over his face. Then slowly, his movements heavy, as if he had to fight every muscle of his body to do it, Rollins went to his knees.
Kaz saw the Dime Lions shake their heads. Weakness never earned respect in the Barrel, no matter how good the cause.
“I am begging you, Brekker. He’s all I have. Let me go to him. Let me save him.”
Kaz looked at Pekka Rollins, Jakob Hertzoon, kneeling before him at last, eyes wet with tears, pain carved into the lines of his flushed face. Brick by brick.
It was a start.
“Your son is in the southernmost corner of Tarmakker’s Field, two miles west of Appelbroek. I’ve marked the plot with a black flag. If you leave now, you should get to him in plenty of time.”
Pekka lurched to his feet and began calling orders. “Send ahead to the boys to have horses waiting. And get me a medik.”
“The plague—”
“The one who’s on call for the Emerald Palace. You haul him out of the sick ward yourself if you have to.” He jabbed a finger into Kaz’s chest. “You’ll pay for this, Brekker. You’ll pay and keep paying. There will be no end to your suffering.”
Kaz met Pekka’s gaze. “Suffering is like anything else. Live with it long enough, you learn to like the taste.”
“Let’s go,” said Rollins. He fumbled with the locked door. “Where’s the damn key?” One of his men came forward with it, but Kaz noticed the distance he kept from his boss. They’d be telling the story of Pekka Rollins on his knees all over the Barrel tonight, and Rollins must know it too. He loved his son enough to wager the whole of his pride and reputation. Kaz supposed that should count for something. Maybe to someone else it would have.
The door to the street burst open, and a moment later they were gone.
Inej sank down into a squat, pressing her palms to her eyes. “Will he get there in time?”
“For what?”
“To…” She stared up at him. He was going to miss that look of surprise. “You didn’t do it. You didn’t bury him.”
“I’ve never even seen the kid.”
“But the lion—”
“It was a guess. Pekka’s pride in the Dime Lions is plenty predictable. Kid probably has a thousand lions to play with and a giant wooden lion to ride around on.”
“How did you even know he had a child?”
“I figured it out that night at Van Eck’s house. Rollins wouldn’t stop flapping his gums about the legacy he was building. I knew he had a country house, liked to leave the city. I’d just figured he had a mistress stashed somewhere. But what he said that night made me think again.”
“And that he had a son, not a daughter? That was a guess too?”
“An educated one. He named his new gambling hall the Kaelish Prince. Had to be a little red-headed boy. And what kid isn’t fond of sweets?”
She shook her head. “What will he find in the field?”
“Nothing at all. No doubt his people will report that his son is safe and sound and doing whatever pampered children do when their fathers are away. But hopefully Pekka will spend a few agonized hours digging in the dirt and wandering in circles before that. The important thing is that he won’t be around to back up any of Van Eck’s claims and that people will hear he fled the city in a rush—with a medik in tow.”
Inej gazed up at him and Kaz could see her completing the puzzle. “The outbreak sites.”
“The Kaelish Prince. The Emerald Palace. The Sweet Shop. All businesses owned by Pekka Rollins. They’ll be shut down and quarantined for weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the city closes some of his other holdings as a precaution if they think his staff is spreading disease. It should take him at least a year to recover financially, maybe more if the panic lasts long enough. Of course, if the Council thinks he helped set up the false consortium, they may never grant him a license to operate again.”
“Fate has plans for us all,” Inej said quietly.
“And sometimes fate needs a little assistance.”
Inej frowned. “I thought you and Nina chose four outbreak sites on the Staves.”
Kaz straightened his cuffs. “I also had her stop at the Menagerie.”
She smiled then, her eyes red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again.
Kaz checked the time. “We should go. This isn’t over.”
He offered her a gloved hand. Inej heaved a long, shuddering breath, then took it, rising like smoke from a flame. But she did not let go. “You showed mercy, Kaz. You were the better man.”
There she went again, seeking decency when there was none to be had. “Inej, I could only kill Pekka’s son once.” He pushed the door open with his cane. “He can imagine his death a thousand times.”
38
MATTHIAS
Matthias jogged along beside Kuwei’s lifeless body. Two of the stadwatch had hefted the boy onto a stretcher, and they were running toward the Beurscanal with him as the plague sirens wailed. The medik struggled to keep up, his university robes flapping.
When they reached the dock, the medik took Kuwei’s wrist in his hand. “This is pointless. He has no pulse. The bullet must have pierced his heart.”
Just don’t pull that shirt back, Matthias willed silently. Jesper had used a wax-and-rubber bullet that had shattered when it struck the bladder lodged behind Kuwei’s shirt button, bursting the bladder’s casing and spraying blood and bone matter everywhere. The gore had been collected from a butcher shop, but there was no way the medik could know that. To everyone in the church, it appeared that Kuwei Yul-Bo had been shot in the heart and died immediately.
“Damn it,” said the medik. “Where is the emergency boat? And where is the dock steward?”
Matthias suspected he could answer those questions easily enough. The steward had abandoned his post as soon as he’d heard that plague siren, and even from this narrow vantage point they could see the canal was clogged with watercraft, people shouting and jabbing
at the sides of one another’s boats with their oars as they tried to evacuate the city before the canals were closed and they were trapped in a plague warren.
“Here, sir!” called a man in a fishing boat. “We can take you to the hospital.”
The medik looked wary. “Has anyone aboard shown signs of infection?”
The fisherman gestured to the very pregnant woman lying at the back of the boat, sheltered by an awning. “No, sir. It’s just the two of us and we’re both healthy, but my wife’s about to have a baby. We could use someone like you on board in case we don’t make it to the hospital in time.”
The medik looked a bit green. “I am not … I do not treat female problems. Besides, why aren’t you having your baby at home?” he asked suspiciously.
He could care less if Kuwei survives, thought Matthias grimly. He’s looking after his own hide.
“Don’t have a home,” said the man. “Just the boat.”
The medik looked over his shoulder at the panicked people spilling from the doors of the main cathedral. “All right, let’s go. Stay here,” he said to Matthias.
“I am his chosen protector,” said Matthias. “I go where he goes.”
“There isn’t room for all of you,” said the fisherman.
The stadwatch officers exchanged furious whispers, then one of them said, “We’ll put him on the boat, but then we have to report to our command station. It’s protocol.”
Kaz had said the officers wouldn’t want to be anywhere near a hospital during a plague outbreak, and he was right. Matthias could hardly blame them.
“But we may need protection,” protested the medik.
“For a dead guy?” said the stadwatch officer.
“For me! I am a medik traveling during plague time!”
The officer shrugged. “It’s protocol.”
They hefted the stretcher onto the boat and were gone.
“No sense of duty,” huffed the medik.
“He don’t look too good,” the fisherman said, glancing at Kuwei.
“He’s done for,” said the medik. “But we must still make the gesture. As our uniformed friends would say, ‘It’s protocol.’”
The pregnant woman let out a terrible moan and Matthias was pleased to see the medik skitter back against the boat’s railing, nearly upending a bucket of squid. Hopefully the squeamish coward would keep well away from Nina and her fake belly. It was a struggle for Matthias to keep his eyes from her when all he wanted was to reassure himself that she was safe. But one glance told him she was better than safe. Her face was aglow, her eyes luminous as emeralds. This was what came of her using her power—no matter what form it took. Unnatural, said the old, determined voice. Beautiful, said the voice that had spoken the night he’d helped Jesper and Kuwei escape Black Veil. It was newer, less certain, but louder than ever before.
Matthias nodded to the fisherman and Rotty winked back at him, giving a brief tug on the beard of his disguise. He poled the boat rapidly down the canal.
As they approached Zentsbridge, Matthias caught sight of the huge bottleboat parked beneath it. It was wide enough that the hulls scraped as Rotty tried to pass. The bottle man and Rotty broke into a heated argument, and Nina let loose another wail, long and loud enough that Matthias wondered if she was trying to compete with the plague siren.
“Perhaps some deep breathing?” the medik suggested from the railing.
Matthias gave Nina the barest warning glance. They could fake a pregnancy. They couldn’t fake an actual birth. At least he didn’t think they could. He wouldn’t put anything past Kaz at this point.
The medik yelled at Matthias to bring him his bag. Matthias pretended to fuss with it for a moment, extracted the stethoscope, and shoved it beneath a pile of netting—just in case the medik wanted to listen to Nina’s belly.
Matthias handed over the bag. “What are you looking for?” he asked, using his bulk to block the medik’s view of the bottleboat as Kuwei’s body was swapped for the corpse they’d stolen from the morgue the night before. As soon as Sturmhond had gotten Genya out of the church, she’d stopped beneath the bridge to tailor the corpse’s face and raise its body temperature. It was imperative that it not look like it had been dead for too long.
“A sedative,” said the medik.
“Is that safe for a pregnant woman?”
“For me.”
The bottle man shouted a few more coarse words at Rotty—Specht was clearly enjoying himself—and then the fishing boat was past Zentsbridge and sailing along, moving faster now that they’d left the most crowded part of the canal. Matthias could not resist a look back and saw shadows moving behind the stacked wine crates on the bottleboat. There was still more work to be done.
“Where are we going?” said the medik abruptly. “I thought we were headed to the university clinic.”
“Waterway was closed,” Rotty lied.
“Then take us to Ghezendaal hospital and be quick about it.”
That was the idea. The university clinic was closer, but Ghezendaal was smaller, less well staffed, and bound to be overwhelmed by the plague panic, a perfect place to bring a body you didn’t want looked at too closely.
They glided to a halt at the hospital’s dock and the staff assisted Rotty and Nina out of the boat, then helped lift the stretcher out as well. But as soon as they arrived at the hospital’s doors, the nurse on duty there looked at the body on the stretcher and said, “Why would you bring a corpse here?”
“It’s protocol!” said the medik. “I am trying to do my duty.”
“We’re locking down for a plague. We don’t have beds to give to dead men. Take him around the back to the wagon bay. The bodymen can come for him tonight.”
The staff members disappeared around the corner with the stretcher. By tomorrow a stranger’s body would be ashes and the real Kuwei would be free to live his life without constantly looking over his shoulder.
“Well, at least help this woman, she’s about to—” The medik looked around but Nina and Rotty had vanished.
“They already went inside,” said Matthias.
“But—”
The nurse snapped, “Are you going to stand here all day blocking my doorway or come inside and be of help?”
“I … am needed elsewhere,” the medik said, ignoring the nurse’s disbelieving look. “The rudeness of some people,” he sputtered, dusting off his robes as they left the hospital. “I am a scholar of the university.”
Matthias bowed deeply. “I thank you for your attempts to save my charge.”
“Ah, well, yes. Indeed. I was only doing as my oath demands.” The medik looked nervously at the houses and businesses that had already started locking their doors and sealing their shutters. “I really must get to … the clinic.”
“I’m sure all will be most grateful for your care,” Matthias said, certain the medik intended to rush home to his rooms and barricade himself against anyone who so much as sniffled.
“Yes, yes,” said the medik. “Good day and good health.” He hurried off down the narrow street.
Matthias found himself smiling as he jogged in the opposite direction. He would meet the others back at Zentsbridge, where hopefully Kuwei would soon be revived. He would be with Nina again and maybe, maybe they could begin thinking about a future.
“Matthias Helvar!” said a high, querulous voice.
Matthias turned. A boy stood in the middle of the deserted street. The young drüskelle with the ice-white hair who had glared at him so fiercely during the auction. He wore a gray uniform, not the black of a full drüskelle officer. Had he followed Matthias from the church? What had he seen?
The boy couldn’t have been more than fourteen. The hand he held his pistol in was shaking.
“I charge you with treason,” he said, voice breaking, “high treason against Fjerda and your drüskelle brothers.”
Matthias held up his hands. “I am unarmed.”
“You are a traitor to your land and your god
.”
“We haven’t met before.”
“You killed my friends. In the raid on the Ice Court.”
“I killed no drüskelle.”
“Your companions did. You’re a murderer. You humiliated Commander Brum.”
“What’s your name?” Matthias asked gently. This boy did not want to hurt anyone.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you new to the order?”
“Six months,” he said, lifting his chin.
“I joined when I was even younger than you. I know what it’s like there, the thoughts they put in your head. But you don’t have to do this.”
The boy shook even harder. “I charge you with treason,” he repeated.
“I am guilty,” said Matthias. “I’ve done terrible things. And if you wish it, I will walk back to the church with you right now. I will face your friends and commanding officers and we can see what justice may come.”
“You’re lying. You even let them kill that Shu boy you were supposed to protect. You’re a traitor and a coward.” Good, he believed Kuwei was dead.
“I will go with you. You have my word. And you have the gun. There’s nothing to fear from me.”
Matthias took a step forward.
“Stay where you are!”
“Do not be afraid. Fear is how they control you.” We’ll find a way to change their minds. The boy had only been with the order for six months. He could be reached. “There’s so much in the world you don’t have to be afraid of, if you would only open your eyes.”
“I told you to stay where you are.”
“You don’t want to hurt me. I know. I was like you once.”
“I’m nothing like you,” said the boy, his blue eyes blazing. Matthias saw the anger there, the rage. He knew it so well. But he was still surprised when he heard the shot.
39
NINA
Nina pulled off her gown and the heavy rubber belly she had strapped over her tunic while Rotty rid himself of his beard and coat. They tied everything in a bundle and Nina tossed it overboard as they climbed into the bottleboat moored beneath Zentsbridge.
Crooked Kingdom Page 46
