Page 30 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
He made a neat slash across Oomen’s eye—from brow to cheekbone—and before Oomen could draw breath to cry out, he made a second cut in the opposite direction, a nearly perfect X. Now Oomen was screaming.
Kaz wiped the knife clean, returned it to his sleeve, and drove his gloved fingers into Oomen’s eye socket. He shrieked and twitched as Kaz yanked out his eyeball, its base trailing a bloody root. Blood gushed over his face.
Kaz heard Wylan retching. He tossed the eyeball overboard and jammed his spit-soaked handkerchief into the socket where Oomen’s eye had been. Then he grabbed Oomen’s jaw, his gloves leaving red smears on the enforcer’s chin. His actions were smooth, precise, as if he were dealing cards at the Crow Club or picking an easy lock, but his rage felt hot and mad and unfamiliar. Something within him had torn loose.
“Listen to me,” he hissed, his face inches from Oomen’s. “You have two choices. You tell me what I want to know, and we drop you at our next port with your pockets full of enough coin to get you sewn up and buy you passage back to Kerch. Or I take the other eye, and I repeat this conversation with a blind man.”
“It was just a job,” babbled Oomen. “Geels got five thousand kruge to bring the Black Tips out in force. We pulled in some Razorgulls, too.”
“Then why not more men? Why not double your odds?”
“You were supposed to be on the boat when it blew! We were just supposed to take care of the stragglers.”
“Who hired you?”
Oomen wavered, sucking on his lip, snot running from his nose.
“Don’t make me ask again, Oomen,” Kaz said quietly. “Whoever it was can’t protect you now.”
“He’ll kill me.”
“And I’ll make you wish for death, so you have to weigh those options.”
“Pekka Rollins,” Oomen sobbed. “It was Pekka Rollins!”
Even through his own shock, Kaz registered the effect of the name on Jesper and Wylan. Helvar didn’t know enough to be intimidated.
“Saints,” groaned Jesper. “We are so screwed.”
“Is Rollins leading the crew himself?” Kaz asked Oomen.
“What crew?”
“To Fjerda.”
“I don’t know about no crew. We were just supposed to stop you from getting out of the harbor.”
“I see.”
“I need a medik. Can you take me to a medik now?”
“Of course,” said Kaz. “Right this way.” He took Oomen by the lapels and hoisted him off his feet, bracing his body against the railing.
“I told you what you wanted!” Oomen screamed, struggling. “I did what you asked!”
Despite Oomen’s knobby build, he was deceptively strong—farm strong like Jesper. He’d probably grown up in the fields.
Kaz leaned in so that no one else could hear it when he said, “My Wraith would counsel mercy. But thanks to you, she’s not here to plead your case.”
Without another word, he tipped Oomen into the sea.
“No!” Wylan shouted, leaning over the railing, his face pale, stunned eyes tracking Oomen in the waves. The enforcer’s pleas were still audible as his maimed face faded from view.
“You … you said if he helped you—”
“Do you want to go over, too?” asked Kaz.
Wylan took a deep breath as if sucking in courage and sputtered, “You won’t throw me overboard. You need me.”
Why do people keep saying that? “Maybe,” said Kaz. “But I’m not in a very rational mood.”
Jesper set his hand on Wylan’s shoulder. “Let it go.”
“It’s not right—”
“Wylan,” Jesper said, giving him a little shake. “Maybe your tutors didn’t cover this lesson, but you do not argue with a man covered in blood and a knife up his sleeve.”
Wylan pressed his lips into a thin line. Kaz couldn’t tell if the kid was frightened or furious, and he didn’t much care. Helvar stood silent sentinel, observing it all, looking seasick green beneath his blond beard.
Kaz turned to Jesper. “Fit Helvar with some shackles to keep him honest,” he said as he headed below. “And get me clean clothes and fresh water.”
“Since when am I your valet?”
“Man with a knife, remember?” he said over his shoulder.
“Man with a gun!” Jesper called after him.
Kaz replied with a time-saving gesture that relied heavily on his middle finger and disappeared belowdecks. He wanted a hot bath and a bottle of brandy, but he’d settle for being alone and free of the stink of blood for a while.
Pekka Rollins. The name rattled through his head like gunfire. It always came back to Pekka Rollins, the man who had taken everything from him. The man who now stood between Kaz and the biggest haul any crew had ever attempted. Would Rollins send someone in his place or lead the crew to nab Bo Yul-Bayur himself?
In the dim confines of his cabin, Kaz whispered, “Brick by brick.” Killing Pekka Rollins had always been tempting, but that wasn’t enough. Kaz wanted Rollins brought low. He wanted him to suffer the way Kaz had, the way Jordie had. And snatching thirty million kruge right out of Pekka Rollins’ grubby hands was a very good way to start. Maybe Inej was right. Maybe fate did bother with people like him.
14
NINA
In the cramped little surgeon’s cabin, Nina tried to put Inej’s body back together, but she hadn’t been trained for this type of work.
For the first two years of their education in Ravka’s capital, all Grisha Corporalki studied together, took the same classes, performed the same autopsies. But then their training diverged. Healers learned the intricate work of healing wounds, while Heartrenders became soldiers—experts at doing damage, not undoing it. It was a different way of thinking about what was essentially the same power. But the living asked more of you than the dead. A killing stroke took decision, clarity of intent. Healing was slow, deliberate, a rhythm that required thoughtful study of each small choice. The jobs she’d done for Kaz over the last year helped, and in a way so had her work carefully altering moods and tailoring faces at the White Rose.
But looking down at Inej, Nina wished her own school training hadn’t been so abbreviated. The Ravkan civil war had erupted when she was still a student at the Little Palace, and she and her classmates had been forced to go into hiding. When the fighting had ended and the dust had settled, King Nikolai had been anxious to get the few remaining Grisha soldiers trained and in the field, so Nina had spent only six months in advanced classes before she’d been sent out on her first mission. At the time, she’d been thrilled. Now she would have been grateful for even another week of school.
Inej was lithe, all muscle and fine bones, built like an acrobat. The knife had entered beneath her left arm. It had been a very close thing. A little deeper and the blade would have pierced the apex of the heart.
Nina knew that if she simply sealed Inej’s skin the way she’d done with Wylan, the girl would just continue to bleed internally, so she’d tried to stop the bleeding from the inside out. She thought she’d managed it well enough, but Inej had lost a lot of blood, and Nina had no idea what to do about that. She’d heard some Healers could match one person’s blood to another’s, but if it was done incorrectly, it was as good as poisoning the patient. The process was far beyond her.
She finished closing the wound, then covered Inej with a light wool blanket. For now, all Nina could do was monitor her pulse and breathing. As she settled Inej’s arms beneath the blanket, Nina saw the scarred flesh on the inside of her forearm. She brushed her thumb gently over the bumps and ridges. It must have been the peacock feather, the tattoo borne by members of the Menagerie, the House of Exotics. Whoever had removed it had done an ugly job of it.
Curious, Nina pushed up Inej’s other sleeve. The skin there was smooth and unmarked. Inej hadn’t taken on the crow and cup, the tattoo carried by any full member of the Dregs. Alliances shifted this way and that in the Barrel, but your gang was your family, the only protec
tion that mattered. Nina herself bore two tattoos. The one on her left forearm was for the House of the White Rose. The one that counted was on her right: a crow trying to drink from a near empty goblet. It told the world she belonged to the Dregs, that to trifle with her was to risk their vengeance.
