Page 29 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
She tried. Her vision was blurring, but she could make out a pale, shiny scar on Kaz’s neck, right beneath his jaw. She remembered the first time she’d seen him at the Menagerie. He paid Tante Heleen for information—stock tips, political pillow talk, anything the Menagerie’s clients blabbed about when drunk or giddy on bliss. He never visited Heleen’s girls, though plenty would have been happy to take him up to their rooms. They claimed he gave them the shivers, that his hands were permanently stained with blood beneath those black gloves, but she’d recognized the eagerness in their voices and the way they tracked him with their eyes.
One night, as he’d passed her in the parlor, she’d done a foolish thing, a reckless thing. “I can help you,” she’d whispered. He’d glanced at her, then proceeded on his way as if she’d said nothing at all. The next morning, she’d been called to Tante Heleen’s parlor. She’d been sure another beating was coming or worse, but instead Kaz Brekker had been standing there, leaning on his crow-head cane, waiting to change her life.
“I can help you,” she said now.
“Help me with what?”
She couldn’t remember. There was something she was supposed to tell him. It didn’t matter anymore.
“Talk to me, Wraith.”
“You came back for me.”
“I protect my investments.”
Investments. “I’m glad I’m bleeding all over your shirt.”
“I’ll put it on your tab.”
Now she remembered. He owed her an apology. “Say you’re sorry.”
“For what?”
“Just say it.”
She didn’t hear his reply. The world had grown very dark indeed.
13
KAZ
“Get us out of here,” Kaz shouted as soon as he limped aboard the schooner with Inej in his arms. The sails were already trimmed, and they were on their way out of the harbor in moments, though not nearly as fast as he would have liked. He knew he should have tried to secure some Squallers for the journey, but they were hell to come by.
There was chaos on deck, people shouting and trying to get the schooner into open sea as quickly as possible.
“Specht!” he yelled at the man he’d chosen to captain the vessel, a sailor with a talent for knife work who had fallen on hard times and ended up stuck in the lower ranks of the Dregs. “Get your crew in shape before I start cracking skulls.”
Specht saluted—then seemed to catch himself. He wasn’t in the navy any longer, and Kaz wasn’t a commanding officer.
The pain in Kaz’s leg was terrible, the worst it had been since he’d first broken it falling off the roof of a bank near the Geldstraat. It was possible he’d fractured the bone again. Inej’s weight wasn’t helping, but when Jesper stepped into his path to offer help, Kaz shoved past him.
“Where’s Nina?” Kaz snarled.
“Seeing to the wounded below. She already took care of me.” Dimly Kaz registered the dried blood on Jesper’s thigh. “Wylan got dinged during the fight. Let me help you—”
“Get out of my way,” Kaz said, and plunged past him down the ramp that led belowdecks.
He found Nina tending to Wylan in a narrow cabin, her hands drifting over his arm, knitting the flesh of the bullet wound together. It was barely a graze.
“Move,” Kaz demanded, and Wylan practically leapt from the table.
“I’m not finished—” began Nina. Then she caught sight of Inej. “Saints,” she swore. “What happened?”
“Knife wound.”
The cramped cabin was lit by several bright lanterns and a stash of clean bandages had been laid out on a shelf beside a bottle of camphor. Gently, Kaz placed Inej on the table that had been bolted to the deck.
“That’s a lot of blood,” Nina said on a low breath.
“Help her.”
“Kaz, I’m a Heartrender, not a real Healer.”
“She’ll be dead by the time we find one. Get to work.”
“You’re in my light.”
Kaz stepped back into the passageway. Inej lay perfectly still on the table, her luminous brown skin dull in the swaying lamplight.
He was alive because of Inej. They all were. They’d managed to fight their way out of a corner, but only because she’d prevented them from being surrounded. Kaz knew death. He could feel its presence on the ship now, looming over them, ready to take his Wraith. He was covered in her blood.
“Unless you can be useful, go away,” Nina said without looking up at him. “You’re making me nervous.” He hesitated, then stomped back the way he’d come, stopping to purloin a clean shirt from another cabin. He shouldn’t be this shaken up by a dock brawl, even a shoot-out, but he was. Something inside him felt frayed and raw. It was the same feeling he’d had as a boy, in those first desperate days after Jordie’s death.
Say you’re sorry. That was the last thing Inej had said to him. What had she wanted him to apologize for? There were so many possibilities. A thousand crimes. A thousand stupid jibes.
On deck, he took a deep breath of sea air, watching the harbor and Ketterdam fade from view on the horizon.
“What the hell just happened?” Jesper asked. He was leaning against the railing, his rifle beside him. His hair was mussed, his pupils dilated. He seemed almost drunk, or like he’d just rolled out of someone’s bed. He always had that look after a fight. Helvar was bent over the railing, vomiting. Not a sailor, apparently. At some point they’d need to shackle his legs again.
“We were ambushed,” Wylan said from his perch on the forecastle deck. He had his sleeve pushed up and was running his fingers over the red spot where Nina had seen to his wound.
Jesper shot Wylan a withering glare. “Private tutors from the university, and that’s what this kid comes up with? ‘We were ambushed’?”
Wylan reddened. “Stop calling me kid. We’re practically the same age.”
“You’re not going to like the other names I come up with for you. I know we were ambushed. That doesn’t explain how they knew we would be there. Maybe Big Bolliger wasn’t the only Black Tip spy in the Dregs.”
“Geels doesn’t have the brains or the resources to bite back this fast or this hard alon
e,” Kaz said.
“You sure? Because it felt like a pretty big bite.”
“Let’s ask.” Kaz limped over to where Rotty had stashed Oomen.
I stuck your Wraith, Oomen had giggled when Kaz had spotted him curled up on the ground. I stuck her good. Kaz had glanced at the blood on Oomen’s thigh and said, Looks like she got you, too. But her aim had been off or Oomen wouldn’t have been talking to anyone. He’d knocked the enforcer out and had Rotty retrieve him while he went to find Inej.
Now Helvar and Jesper dragged Oomen over to the rail, his hands bound.
“Stand him up.”
With one huge hand, Helvar hauled Oomen to his feet.
Oomen grinned, his thatch of coarse white hair flat against his wide forehead.
“Why don’t you tell me what brought so many Black Tips out in force tonight?” Kaz said.
“We owed you.”
“A public brawl with guns out and thirty men packing? I don’t think so.”
Oomen snickered. “Geels doesn’t like being bested.”
“I could fit Geels’ brains in the toe of my boot, and Big Bolliger was his only source inside the Dregs.”
“Maybe he—”
Kaz interrupted him. “I want you to think real careful now, Oomen. Geels probably thinks you’re dead, so there are no rules of barter here. I can do what I want with you.”
Oomen spat in his face.
Kaz took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and carefully wiped his face clean. He thought of Inej lying still on the table, her slight weight in his arms.
“Hold him,” he told Jesper and the Fjerdan. Kaz flicked his coat sleeve, and an oyster shucking knife appeared in his hand. At any given time he had at least two knives stashed somewhere in his clothes. He didn’t even count this one, really—a tidy, wicked little blade.
