Page 85 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
Rollins held up his watch chain. A turnip was hanging from the fob where his diamond-studded timepiece should have been. “That little bastard—” Then a thought came to him. He reached for his wallet. It was gone. So was his tie pin, the Kaelish coin pendant he wore for luck, and the gold buckles on his shoes. Rollins wondered if he should check the fillings in his teeth.
“He picked your pocket?” Doughty asked incredulously.
No one got one over on Pekka Rollins. No one dared. But Brekker had, and Rollins wondered if that was just the beginning.
“Doughty,” he said, “I think we’d best say a prayer for Jan Van Eck.”
“You think Brekker can best him?”
“It’s a long shot, but if he’s not careful, I think that merch might walk himself right onto the gallows and let Brekker tighten the noose.” Rollins sighed. “We better hope Van Eck kills that boy.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise I’ll have to.”
Rollins straightened the knot of his pinless tie and headed down to the casino floor. The problem of Kaz Brekker could wait to be solved another day. Right now there was money to be made.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have a degenerative condition called osteonecrosis. This basically translates to “bone death,” which sounds kind of gothy and romantic, but actually means that every step I take is painful and that I sometimes need to walk with a cane. It’s no coincidence I chose to create a protagonist struggling with similar symptoms, and I often felt that Kaz and I were limping along this road together. We wouldn’t have made it to “The End” without a lot of wonderful people.
All the love to my crew of outcasts and troublemakers: Michi, Rachael, Sarah, Robyn, Josh, and especially Morgan, who gave this book its name and helped me finish it. Many thanks also to Jimmy, who dragged me off to Santa Barbara and smashed my writer’s block just by being wonderful.
Bless Noa Wheeler for helping me solve this particular puzzle and for staying patient when I get prickly and bring out the whiteboard. I am deeply grateful to Jean Feiwel, Laura Godwin, Jon Yaged, Molly Brouillette, Elizabeth Fithian, Rich Deas, April Ward, Caitlin Sweeny, and the countless people at Henry Holt and Macmillan Children’s who have helped bring the Grisha world to life and who let me continue to explore it with readers. Joanna Volpe at New Leaf: “Stalwart and true” should definitely be on your résumé. I can face just about any challenge knowing you have my back. Thanks also to Pouya “he was a young” Shahbazian, Kathleen Ortiz, Danielle Barthel, Jaida Temperly, and Jess Dallow. And a big thank-you to Team Grisha in the UK: Fiona Kennedy, Jenny Glencross, and the wonderful crew at Orion—most especially Nina Douglas, who is an extraordinary publicist, an excellent traveling companion, and a born Ravenclaw. Thank you to the readers, librarians, booksellers, BookTubers, and bloggers who celebrate stories all over the world.
Any good heist requires talented specialists, and I’ve been aided by the best:
Steven Klein offered invaluable expertise on how beginners learn magic and pointed me to the work of Eric Mead and Apollo Robbins, gentleman thief. Angela DePace did her best to help me find a real way to knock out a room full of prisoners, but the chloropellet ended up being a work of pure fabrikation. (Don’t try it at home.) Richard Wheeler advised me on how government buildings and high-security facilities actually keep out ne’er-do-wells. Emily Stein walked me through knife wounds and introduced me to the beautiful phrase “apex of the heart.” Conlang king David Peterson tried to nudge me in the right direction and let me be very stubborn about straats. And Hedwig Aerts, my dear friend and Soberumi, thank you for helping me mangle Dutch more thoughtfully.
Marie Lu, Amie Kaufman, Robin LaFevers, Jessica Brody, and Gretchen McNeil keep me laughing and put up with so much whining. Thanks also to Robin Wasserman, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, Kelly Link, and Cassandra Clare for plot advice, margaritas, and foisting Teen Wolf upon me. I will never be the same. Anna Carey can be blamed for the Fjerdan guard’s nosebleed. Send her your complaints.
Christine, Sam, Emily, and Ryan, I am so lucky to call you family. And dearest Lulu, you have failed your city. Thank you for weathering my moods and caring about my little band of thugs.
Many books helped Ketterdam, the Barrel, and my team of crows take shape, but the most essential titles were Sarah Wise’s The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum; The Coffee Trader by David Liss; Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto; Criminal Slang: The Vernacular of the Underworld Lingo by Vincent J. Monteleone; David Maurer’s The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man; and Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists by Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg.
One more thing: This book wanted to be revised to the sounds of the Black Keys, the Clash, and the Pixies, but it was born in a drafty old schoolhouse with In a Time Lapse playing on a continuous loop, and a bat flapping around the eaves. Many thanks to composer Ludovico Einaudi. And the bat.
For my grandfather:
Tell me some lies.
An Imprint of Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
macteenbooks.com
SHADOW AND BONE. Text copyright © 2012 by Leigh Bardugo.
Map copyright © 2012 by Keith Thompson.
All rights reserved.
Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and are used by Henry Holt and Company under license from Macmillan.
Square Fish books may be purchased for business or promotional use.
For information on bulk purchases, please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 × 5442 or by e-mail at [email protected]
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bardugo, Leigh.
Shadow and bone / Leigh Bardugo.
p. cm
Summary: Orphaned by the Border Wars, Alina Starkov is taken from obscurity and her only friend, Mal, to become the protégée of the mysterious Darkling, who trains her to join the magical elite in the belief that she is the Sun Summoner, who can destroy the monsters of the Fold.
ISBN 978-1-250-02743-6
[1. Fantasy. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Ability—Fiction. 4. Monsters—Fiction. 5. Orphans—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B25024Sh 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011034012
Originally published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company
First Square Fish Edition: May 2013
Book designed by April Ward
Square Fish logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
BEFORE
THE SERVANTS CALLED them malenchki, little ghosts, because they were the smallest and the youngest, and because they haunted the Duke’s house like giggling phantoms, darting in and out of rooms, hiding in cupboards to eavesdrop, sneaking into the kitchen to steal the last of the summer peaches.
The boy and the girl had arrived within weeks of each other, two more orphans of the border wars, dirty-faced refugees plucked from the rubble of distant towns and brought to the Duke’s estate to learn to read and write, and to learn a trade. The boy was short and stocky, shy but always smiling. The girl was different, and she knew it.
Huddled in the kitchen cupboard, listening to the grown-ups gossip, she heard the Duke’s housekeeper, Ana Kuya, say, “She’s an ugly little thing. No child should look like that. Pale and sour, like a glass of milk that’s turned.”
“And so skinny!” the cook replied. “Never finishes her supper.”
Crouched beside the girl, the boy turned to her and whispered, “Why don’t you eat?”
“Because everything she cooks tastes li
ke mud.”
“Tastes fine to me.”
“You’ll eat anything.”
They bent their ears back to the crack in the cupboard doors.
A moment later the boy whispered, “I don’t think you’re ugly.”
“Shhhh!” the girl hissed. But hidden by the deep shadows of the cupboard, she smiled.
* * *
IN THE SUMMER, they endured long hours of chores followed by even longer hours of lessons in stifling classrooms. When the heat was at its worst, they escaped into the woods to hunt for birds’ nests or swim in the muddy little creek, or they would lie for hours in their meadow, watching the sun pass slowly overhead, speculating on where they would build their dairy farm and whether they would have two white cows or three. In the winter, the Duke left for his city house in Os Alta, and as the days grew shorter and colder, the teachers grew lax in their duties, preferring to sit by the fire and play cards or drink kvas. Bored and trapped indoors, the older children doled out more frequent beatings. So the boy and the girl hid in the disused rooms of the estate, putting on plays for the mice and trying to keep warm.
On the day the Grisha Examiners came, the boy and the girl were perched in the window seat of a dusty upstairs bedroom, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mail coach. Instead, they saw a sleigh, a troika pulled by three black horses, pass through the white stone gates onto the estate. They watched its silent progress through the snow to the Duke’s front door.
Three figures emerged in elegant fur hats and heavy wool kefta: one in crimson, one in darkest blue, and one in vibrant purple.
“Grisha!” the girl whispered.
“Quick!” said the boy.
In an instant, they had shaken off their shoes and were running silently down the hall, slipping through the empty music room and darting behind a column in the gallery that overlooked the sitting room where Ana Kuya liked to receive guests.
