Page 15 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
Nina shrugged. “There are rumors, but they sound like nonsense to me.” With the exception of the Council of Tides, the few Grisha working in Ketterdam all knew each other and exchanged information readily. Most were on the run from something, eager to avoid drawing the attention of slavers or interest from the Ravkan government.
“They aren’t just rumors.”
“Squallers flying? Tidemakers turning to mist?”
“Fabrikators making gold from lead.” He reached into his pocket and tossed the lump of yellow to her. “It’s real.”
“Fabrikators make textiles. They fuss around with metals and fabrics. They can’t turn one thing into another.” She held the lump up to the light. “You could have gotten this anywhere,” she said, just as he had argued to Van Eck a few hours earlier.
Without being invited, Kaz sat down on the plush settee and stretched out his bad leg. “Jurda parem is real, Nina, and if you’re still the good little Grisha soldier I think you are, you’ll want to hear what it does to people like you.”
She turned the lump of gold over her in her hands, then wrapped her dressing gown more tightly around her and curled up at the end of the settee. Again, Kaz marveled at the transformation. In these rooms, she played the part her clients wanted to see—the powerful Grisha, serene in her knowledge. But sitting there with her brow furrowed and her feet tucked under her, she looked like what she truly was: a girl of seventeen, raised in the sheltered luxury of the Little Palace, far from home and barely getting by every day.
“Tell me,” she said.
Kaz talked. He held back on the specifics of Van Eck’s proposal, but he told her about Bo Yul-Bayur, jurda parem, and the addictive properties of the drug, placing particular emphasis on the recent theft of Ravkan military documents.
“If this is all true, then Bo Yul-Bayur needs to be eliminated.”
“That is not the job, Nina.”
“This isn’t about money, Kaz.”
It was always about money. But Kaz knew a different kind of pressure was required. Nina loved her country and loved her people. She still believed in the future of Ravka and in the Second Army, the Grisha military elite that had nearly disintegrated during the civil war. Nina’s friends back in Ravka believed she was dead, a victim of Fjerdan witchhunters, and for now, she wanted it to stay that way. But Kaz knew she hoped to return one day.
“Nina, we’re going to retrieve Bo Yul-Bayur, and I need a Corporalnik to do it. I want you on my crew.”
“Wherever he’s hiding out, once you find him, letting him live would be the most outrageous kind of irresponsibility. My answer is no.”
“He isn’t hiding out. The Fjerdans have him at the Ice Court.”
Nina paused. “Then he’s as good as dead.”
“The Merchant Council doesn’t think so. They wouldn’t be going to this trouble or offering up this kind of reward if they thought he’d been neutralized. Van Eck was worried. I could see it.”
“The mercher you spoke to?”
“Yes. He claims their intelligence is good. If it’s not, well, I’ll take the hit. But if Bo Yul-Bayur is alive, someone is going to try to break him out of the Ice Court. Why shouldn’t it be us?”
“The Ice Court,” Nina repeated, and Kaz knew she’d begun to put the pieces together. “You don’t just need a Corporalnik, do you?”
“No. I need someone who knows the Court inside and out.”
She leapt to her feet and began pacing, hands on hips, dressing gown flapping. “You’re a little skiv, you know that? How many times have I come to you, begging you to help Matthias? And now that you want something…”
“Per Haskell isn’t running a charity.”
“Don’t put this on the old man,” she snapped. “If you’d wanted to help me, you know you could have.”
“And why would I do that?”
She whirled on him. “Because … because…”
“When have I ever done something for nothing, Nina?”
She opened her mouth, closed it again.
“Do you know how many favors I would have had to call in? How many bribes I’d have had to pay out to get Matthias Helvar out of prison? The price was too high.”
“And now?” she managed, her eyes still blazing anger.
“Now, Helvar’s freedom is worth something.”
“It—”
He held up a hand to cut her off. “Worth something to me.”
Nina pressed her fingers to her temples. “Even if you could get to him, Matthias would never agree to help you.”
“It’s just a question of leverage, Nina.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Don’t I? He’s a person like any other, driven by greed and pride and pain. You should understand that better than anyone.”
“Helvar is driven by honor and only honor. You can’t bribe or bully that.”
“That may have been true once, Nina, but it’s been a very long year. Helvar is much changed.”
“You’ve seen him?” Her green eyes wer
e wide, eager. There, thought Kaz, the Barrel hasn’t beaten the hope out of you yet.
“I have.”
Nina took a deep, shuddering breath. “He wants his revenge, Kaz.”
“That’s what he wants, not what he needs,” said Kaz. “Leverage is all about knowing the difference.”
6
NINA
The sick feeling in Nina’s stomach had nothing to do with the rocking of the rowboat. She tried to breathe deeply, to focus on the lights of the Ketterdam harbor disappearing behind them and the steady splash of the oars in the water. Beside her, Kaz adjusted his mask and cloak, while Muzzen rowed with relentless and aggressive speed, driving them closer to Terrenjel, one of Kerch’s tiny outlying islands, closer to Hellgate and Matthias.
Fog lay low over the water, damp and curling. It carried the smell of tar and machinery from the shipyards on Imperjum, and something else—the sweet stink of burning bodies from the Reaper’s Barge, where Ketterdam disposed of the dead who couldn’t afford to be buried in the cemeteries outside the city. Disgusting, Nina thought, drawing her cloak tighter around her. Why anyone would want to live in a city like this was beyond her.
Muzzen hummed happily as he rowed. Nina knew him only in passing—a bouncer and an enforcer, like the ill-fated Big Bolliger. She avoided the Slat and the Crow Club as much as possible. Kaz had branded her a snob for it, but she didn’t much care what Kaz Brekker had to say about her tastes. She glanced back at Muzzen’s huge shoulders. She wondered if Kaz had just brought him along to row or because he expected trouble tonight.
Of course there will be trouble. They were breaking into a prison. It wasn’t going to be a party. So why are we dressed for one?
She’d met Kaz and Muzzen at Fifth Harbor at midnight, and when she’d boarded the little rowboat, Kaz had handed her a blue silk cape and a matching veil—the trappings of the Lost Bride, one of the costumes pleasure seekers liked to don when they sampled the excesses of the Barrel. He’d had on a big orange cape with a Madman’s mask perched atop his head; Muzzen had worn the same. All they needed was a stage, and they could perform one of those dark, savage little scenes from the Komedie Brute that the Kerch seemed to find so hilarious.
