Page 32 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
Occasionally the ship would drop anchor, and the drüskelle would return with another captive. The Fjerdans would stand outside their cages, eating and drinking, mocking their filthy clothes and the way they smelled. As bad as it was, the fear of what might await them was much more frightening—the inquisitors at the Ice Court, torture, and inevitably death. Nina dreamed of being burned alive on a pyre and woke up screaming. Nightmare and fear and the delirium of hunger tangled together so that she stopped being certain of what was real and what wasn’t.
Then one day, the drüskelle had crowded into the hold dressed in freshly pressed uniforms of black and silver, the white wolf’s head on their sleeves. They’d fallen into orderly ranks and stood at attention as their commander entered. Like all of them, he was tall, but he wore a tidy beard, and his long blond hair showed gray at the temples. He walked the length of the hold, then came to a halt in front of the prisoners.
“How many?” he asked.
“Fifteen,” replied the burnished gold boy who had captured her. It was the first time she had seen him in the hold.
The commanding officer cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind his back. “I am Jarl Brum.”
A tremor of fear passed through Nina, and she felt it reverberate through the Grisha in the cell, a warning call none of them were free to heed.
In school, Nina had been obsessed with the drüskelle. They’d been the creatures of her nightmares with their white wolves and their cruel knives and the horses they bred for battle with Grisha. It was why she’d studied to perfect her Fjerdan and her knowledge of their culture. It had been a way of preparing herself for them, for the battle to come. And Jarl Brum was the worst of them.
He was a legend, the monster waiting in the dark. The drüskelle had existed for hundreds of years, but under Brum’s leadership, their force had doubled in size and become infinitely more deadly. He had changed their training, developed new techniques for rooting out Grisha in Fjerda, infiltrated Ravka’s borders, and begun pursuing rogue Grisha in other lands, even hunting down slaving ships, “liberating” Grisha captives with the sole purpose of clapping them back in chains and sending them to Fjerda for trial and execution. She’d imagined facing Brum one day as an avenging warrior or a clever spy. She hadn’t pictured herself confronting him caged and starving, hands bound, dressed in rags.
Brum must have known the effect his name would have. He waited a long moment before he said in excellent Kaelish, “What stands before you is the next generation of drüskelle, the holy order charged with protecting the sovereign nation of Fjerda by eradicating your kind. They will bring you to Fjerda to face trial and so earn the rank of officer. They are the strongest and best of our kind.”
Bullies, Nina thought.
“When we reach Fjerda, you will be interrogated and tried for your crimes.”
“Please,” said one of the prisoners. “I’ve done nothing. I’m a farmer. I’ve done you no harm.”
“You are an insult to Djel,” Brum replied. “A blight on this earth. You speak peace, but what of your children to whom you may pass on this demonic power? What about their children? I save my mercy for the helpless men and women mowed down by Grisha abominations.”
He faced the drüskelle. “Good work, lads,” he said in Fjerdan. “We sail for Djerholm immediately.”
The drüskelle seemed ready to burst with pride. As soon as Brum exited the hold, they were knocking each other affectionately on the shoulders, laughing in relief and satisfaction.
“Good work is right,” one said in Fjerdan. “Fifteen Grisha to deliver to the Ice Court!”
“If this doesn’t earn us our teeth—”
“You know it will.”
“Good, I’m sick of shaving every morning.”
“I’m going to grow a beard down to my navel.”
Then one of them reached through the bars and snatched Nina up by her hair. “I like this one, still nice and round. Maybe we should open that cage door and hose her down.”
The boy with the burnished hair smacked his comrade’s hand away. “What’s wrong with you?” he said, the first time he’d spoken since Brum had vanished. The brief rush of gratitude she’d felt withered when he said, “Would you fornicate with a dog?”
“What does the dog look like?”
The others roared with laughter as they headed above. The golden one who’d likened her to an animal was the last to go, and just as he was about to step into the passage, she said in crisp, perfect Fjerdan, “What crimes?”
He stilled, and when he’d looked back at her, his blue eyes had been bright with hate. She refused to flinch.
“How do you come to speak my language? Did you serve on Ravka’s northern border?”
“I’m Kaelish,” she lied, “and I can speak any language.”
“More witchcraft.”
“If by witchcraft, you mean the arcane practice of reading. Your commander said we’d be tried for our crimes. I want you to tell me just what crime I’ve committed.”
“You’ll be tried for espionage and crimes against the people.”
“We are not criminals,” said a Fabrikator in halting Fjerdan from his place on the floor. He’d been there the longest and was too weak to rise. “We are ordinary people—farmers, teachers.”
Not me, Nina thought grimly. I’m a soldier.
“You’ll have a trial,” said the drüskelle. “You’ll be treated more fairly than your kind deserve.”
“How many Grisha are ever found innocent?” Nina asked.
The Fabrikator groaned. “Don’t provoke him. You will not sway his mind.”
But she gripped the bars with her bound hands and said, “How many? How many have you sent to the pyre?”
He turned his back on her.
“Wait!”
He ignored her.
“Wait! Please! Just … just some fresh water. Would you treat your dogs like this?”
He paused, his hand on the door. “I shouldn’t have said that. Dogs know loyalty, at least. Fidelity to the pack. It is an insult to the dog to call you one.”
I’m going to feed you to a pack of hungry hounds, Nina thought. But all she said was, “Water. Please.”
He vanished into the passage. She heard him climb the ladder, and the hatch closed with a loud bang.
“Don’t waste your breath on him,” the Fabrikator counseled. “He will show you no kindness.”
But a short while later the drüskelle returned with a tin cup and a bucket of clean water. He’d set it down inside the cell and slammed the bars shut without a word. Nina helped the Fabrikator drink, then gulped down a cup herself. Her hands were shaking so badly, half of it sloshed down her blouse. The Fjerdan turned away, and with pleasure, Nina saw she’d embarrassed him.
“I’d kill for a bath,” she taunted. “You could wash me.”
“Don’t talk to me,” he growled, already stalking toward the door.
He hadn’t returned, and they’d gone without fresh water for the next three days. But when the storm hit, that tin cup had saved her life.
* * *
Nina’s chin dipped, and she jerked awake. Had she nodded off?
Matthias was standing in the passage outside the cabin. He filled the doorway, far too tall to be comfortable belowdecks. How long had he been watching her? Quickly, Nina checked Inej’s pulse and breathing, relieved to find that she seemed to be stable for now.
“Was I sleeping?” she asked.
“Dozing.”
She stretched, trying to blink away her exhaustion. “But not snoring?” He said nothing, just watched her with those ice-chip eyes. “They let you have a razor?”
His shackled hands went to his freshly shaved jaw. “Jesper did it.” Jesper must have seen to Matthias’ hair, too. The tufts of blond that had grown raggedly from his scalp had been trimmed down. It was still too short, bare golden fuzz over skin that showed cuts and bruises from his last fight in Hellgate.
He must be happy t
o be free of the beard, though, Nina thought. Until a drüskelle had accomplished a mission on his own and been granted officer status, he was required to remain clean-shaven. If Matthias had brought Nina to face trial at the Ice Court, he would have been granted that permission. He would have worn the silver wolf’s head that marked an officer of the drüskelle. It made her sick to think of it. Congratulations on your recent advancement to murderer of rank. The thought helped remind her just who she was dealing with. She sat up straighter, chin lifting.
“Hje marden, Matthias?” she asked.
“Don’t,” he said.
“You’d prefer I spoke Kerch?”
“I don’t want to hear my language from your mouth.” His eyes flicked to her lips, and she felt an unwelcome flush.
With vindictive pleasure, she said in Fjerdan, “But you always liked the way I spoke your tongue. You said it sounded pure.” It was true. He’d loved her accent—the vowels of a princess, courtesy of her teachers at the Little Palace.
“Don’t press me, Nina,” he said. Matthias’ Kerch was ugly, brutal, the guttural accent of thieves and murderers that he’d met in prison. “That pardon is a dream that’s hard to hold on to. The memory of your pulse fading beneath my fingers is far easier to bring to mind.”
“Try me,” she said, her anger flaring. She was sick of his threats. “My hands aren’t pinned now, Helvar.” She curled her fingertips, and Matthias gasped as his heart began to race.
“Witch,” he spat, clutching his chest.
“Surely you can do better than that. You must have a hundred names for me by now.”
“A thousand,” he grunted as sweat broke out on his brow.
