Page 5 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
That was when Inej saw Kaz still hadn’t moved. “You don’t look well, Geels.”
“I’m just fine,” he said. But he wasn’t. He looked pale and shaky. His eyes were darting right and left as if searching the shadowed walkway of the roof.
“Are you?” Kaz asked conversationally. “Things aren’t going quite as planned, are they?”
“Kaz,” Jesper said. “Bolliger’s bleeding bad—”
“Good,” said Kaz.
“Kaz, he needs a medik!”
Kaz spared the wounded man the barest glance. “What he needs to do is stop his bellyaching and be glad I didn’t have Holst take him down with a head shot.”
Even from above, Inej saw Geels flinch.
“That’s the guard’s name, isn’t it?” Kaz asked. “Willem Holst and Bert Van Daal—the two city guards on duty tonight. The ones you emptied the Black Tips’ coffers to bribe?”
Geels said nothing.
“Willem Holst,” Kaz said loudly, his voice floating up to the roof, “likes to gamble almost as much as Jesper does, so your money held a lot of appeal. But Holst has much bigger problems—let’s call them urges. I won’t go into detail. A secret’s not like coin. It doesn’t keep its value in the spending. You’ll just have to trust me when I say this one would turn even your stomach. Isn’t that right, Holst?”
The response was another gunshot. It struck the cobblestones near Geels’ feet. Geels released a shocked bleat and sprang back.
This time Inej had a better chance to track the origin of the gunfire. The shot had come from somewhere near the west side of the building. If Holst was there, that meant the other guard—Bert Van Daal—would be on the east side. Had Kaz managed to neutralize him, too? Or was he counting on her? She sped over the gables.
“Just shoot him, Holst!” Geels bellowed, desperation sawing at his voice. “Shoot him in the head!”
Kaz snorted in disgust. “Do you really think that secret would die with me? Go on, Holst,” he called. “Put a bullet in my skull. There will be messengers sprinting to your wife and your watch captain’s door before I hit the ground.”
No shot came.
“How?” Geels said bitterly. “How did you even know who would be on duty tonight? I had to pay through the gills to get that roster. You couldn’t have outbid me.”
“Let’s say my currency carries more sway.”
“Money is money.”
“I trade in information, Geels, the things men do when they think no one is looking. Shame holds more value than coin ever can.”
He was grandstanding, Inej saw that, buying her time as she leapt over the slate shingles.
“Are you worrying about the second guard? Good old Bert Van Daal?” Kaz asked. “Maybe he’s up there right now, wondering what he should do. Shoot me? Shoot Holst? Or maybe I got to him, too, and he’s getting ready to blow a hole in your chest, Geels.” He leaned in as if he and Geels were sharing a great secret. “Why not give Van Daal the order and find out?”
Geels opened and closed his mouth like a carp, then bellowed, “Van Daal!”
Just as Van Daal parted his lips to answer, Inej slipped up behind him and placed a blade to his throat. She’d barely had time to pick out his shadow and slide down the roof tiles. Saints, Kaz liked to cut it close.
“Shhhh,” she whispered in Van Daal’s ear. She gave him a tiny jab in the side so that he could feel the point of her second dagger pressed against his kidney.
“Please,” he moaned. “I—”
“I like it when men beg,” she said. “But this isn’t the time for it.”
Below, she could see Geels’ chest rising and falling with panicked breaths. “Van Daal!” he shouted again. There was rage on his face when he turned back to Kaz. “Always one step ahead, aren’t you?”
“Geels, when it comes to you, I’d say I have a running start.”
But Geels just smiled—a tiny smile, tight and satisfied. A victor’s smile, Inej realized with fresh fear.
“The race isn’t over yet.” Geels reached into his jacket and pulled out a heavy black pistol.
“Finally,” Kaz said. “The big reveal. Now Jesper can stop keening over Bolliger like a wet-eyed woman.”
Jesper stared at the gun with stunned, furious eyes. “Bolliger searched him. He … Oh, Big Bol, you idiot,” he groaned.
Inej couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The guard in her arms released a tiny squeak. In her anger and surprise, she’d accidentally tightened her grip. “Relax,” she said, easing her hold. But, all Saints, she wanted to put a knife through something. Big Bolliger had been the one to pat down Geels. There was no way he could have missed the pistol. He’d betrayed them.
Was that why Kaz had insisted on bringing Big Bolliger here tonight—so he’d have public confirmation that Bolliger had gone over to the Black Tips? It was certainly why he’d let Holst put a bullet in Bolliger’s gut. But so what? Now everyone knew Big Bol was a traitor. Kaz still had a gun pointed at his chest.
Geels smirked. “Kaz Brekker, the great escape artist. How are you going to wriggle your way out of this one?”
“Going out the same way I came in.” Kaz ignored the pistol, turning his attention to the big man lying on the ground. “Do you know what your problem is, Bolliger?” He jabbed at the wound in Big Bol’s stomach with the tip of his cane. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question. Do you know what your biggest probl
em is?”
Bolliger mewled. “Noooo…”
“Give me a guess,” Kaz hissed.
Big Bol said nothing, just released another trembling whimper.
“All right, I’ll tell you. You’re lazy. I know it. Everyone knows it. So I had to ask myself why my laziest bouncer was getting up early twice a week to walk two extra miles to Cilla’s Fry for breakfast, especially when the eggs are so much better at the Kooperom. Big Bol becomes an early riser, the Black Tips start throwing their weight around Fifth Harbor and then intercept our biggest shipment of jurda. It wasn’t a tough connection to make.” He sighed and said to Geels, “This is what happens when stupid people start making big plans, ja?”
“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” replied Geels. “This gets ugly, I’m shooting from close range. Maybe your guards get me or my guys, but no way you’re going to dodge this bullet.”
Kaz stepped into the barrel of the gun so that it was pressed directly against his chest. “No way at all, Geels.”
“You think I won’t do it?”
“Oh, I think you’d do it gladly, with a song in your black heart. But you won’t. Not tonight.”
Geels’ finger twitched on the trigger.
“Kaz,” Jesper said. “This whole ‘shoot me’ thing is starting to concern me.”
Oomen didn’t bother to object to Jesper mouthing off this time. One man was down. Neutral territory had been violated. The sharp tang of gunpowder already hung in the air—and along with it a question, unspoken in the quiet, as if the Reaper himself awaited the answer: How much blood will be shed tonight?
In the distance a siren wailed.
“Nineteen Burstraat,” Kaz said.
Geels had been shifting slightly from foot to foot; now he went very still.
“That’s your girl’s address, isn’t it, Geels?”
Geels swallowed. “Don’t have a girl.”
