Page 46 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
Grisha Squallers could control current. She’d even seen them play at tossing each other into the air at the Little Palace, but the level of finesse and power it took to maintain controlled flight was unthinkable—at least it had been, until now. Jurda parem. She hadn’t quite believed Kaz. Maybe she’d even suspected him of outright lying to her about what he’d seen just to get her to do the job. But unless she’d taken a blow to the head she didn’t remember, this was real.
The Squaller turned in the air, stirring the storm into a frenzy, sending ice flying until it stung her cheeks. She could barely see. She fell backward as another slab of rock and ice shot from the ground. They were being corralled, pushed closer together to make a single target.
“I need a distraction!” shouted Jesper from somewhere in the storm.
She heard a tinny plink.
“Get down,” cried Wylan. Nina flattened her body to the snow. A boom sounded overhead, and an explosion lit the sky just to the right of the Squaller. The winds around them dropped as the Squaller was thrown off course and forced to focus on righting himself. It took the briefest second, but it was enough time for Jesper to aim his rifle and fire.
A shot rang out, and the Squaller was hurtling toward the earth. Another slab of ice slid into place. They were being trapped like animals in a pen, ready for the slaughter. Jesper aimed between the slabs at a distant stand of trees, and Nina realized there was another Grisha there, a boy with dark hair. Before Jesper could get off a shot, the Grisha rammed a fist upward, and Jesper was thrown off his feet by a shaft of earth. He rolled as he fell and fired from the ground.
The boy in the distance cried out and dropped to one knee, but his arms were still raised, and the ground still rumbled and rocked beneath them. Jesper fired again and missed. Nina lifted her hands and tried to focus on the Grisha’s heart, but he was well out of her range.
She saw Inej signal to Kaz. Without a word, he positioned himself against the nearest slab and cupped his hands at his knee. The ground buckled and swayed, but he held steady as she launched herself from the cradle of his fingers in a graceful arc. She vanished over the slab without a sound. A moment later, the ground went still.
“Trust the Wraith,” said Jesper.
They stood, dazed, the air strangely hushed after the chaos that had come before.
“Wylan,” Jesper panted, pushing to his feet. “Get us out of here.”
Wylan nodded, pulled a putty-colored lump from his pack, and gently placed it against the nearest rock. “Everybody down,” he instructed.
They crouched together in a cluster as far away as the enclosure would permit. Wylan slapped his hand against the explosive and dove away, careening into Matthias and Jesper as they all covered their ears.
Nothing happened.
“Are you kidding me?” said Jesper.
Boom. The slab exploded. Ice and bits of rock rained down over their heads.
Wylan was covered in dust and wearing a slightly dazed, deliriously happy expression. Nina started to laugh. “Try to look like you knew it would work.”
They stumbled out of the corral of slabs.
Kaz gestured to Jesper. “Perimeter. Let’s make sure there aren’t more surprises.” They set off in opposite directions.
Nina and the others found Inej standing over the body of the trembling Grisha. He wore clothes of olive drab, and his eyes were glassy. Blood spilled from the bullet wound in his upper thigh, and a knife jutted from the right side of his chest. Inej must have thrown it when she’d escaped from the enclosure.
Nina knelt beside him.
“I need a little more,” the Grisha mumbled. “Just a little more.” He grabbed at Nina’s hand, and only then did she recognize him.
“Nestor?”
He twitched at the sound of his name, but he didn’t seem to know her.
“Nestor, it’s me, Nina.” She had been at school with him back at the Little Palace. They’d been sent to Keramzin together during the war. At King Nikolai’s coronation, they’d stolen a bottle of champagne and gotten sick by the lake. He was a Fabrikator, one of the Durasts who worked with metal, glass, and fibers. It didn’t make sense. Fabrikators made textiles, weapons. He shouldn’t have been capable of what she’d just witnessed.
“Please,” he begged, his face crumpling. “I need more.”
“Parem?”
“Yes,” he sobbed. “Yes. Please.”
“I can heal your wound, Nestor, if you stay still.” He was in bad shape, but if she could stop the bleeding …
“I don’t want your help,” he said angrily, trying to push away from her.
She tried calming him, lowering his pulse, but she was afraid of stopping his heart. “Please, Nestor. Please be still.”
He was screaming now, fighting her.
“Hold him down,” she said.
Matthias moved to help, and Nestor threw up his arms.
The ground rose in a rippling sheet, thrusting Nina and the others back.
“Nestor, please! Let us help you.”
He stood up, staggering on his wounded leg, pulling at the knife buried in his chest. “Where are they?” he screamed. “Where did they go?”
“Who?”
“The Shu!” he wailed. “Where did they go? Come back!” He took a wobbling step, then another. “Come back!” He fell face forward into the snow. He didn’t move again.
Nina rushed to his side and turned him over. There was snow in his eyes and his mouth. She placed her hands on his chest, trying to restore his heartbeat, but it was no good. If he hadn’t been ravaged by the drug, he might have survived his wounds. But his body was weak, the skin tight to his bones and so pale it seemed transparent.
This isn’t right, Nina thought miserably. Practicing the Small Science made a Grisha healthier, stronger. It was one of the things she loved most about her power. But the body had limits. It was as if the drug had caused Nestor’s power to outpace his body. It had simply used him up.
Kaz and Jesper returned, panting.
“Anything?” asked Matthias.
Jesper nodded. “A party of people heading south.”
“He was calling out for the Shu,” Nina said.
“We knew the Shu would send a team to retrieve Bo Yul-Bayur,” said Kaz.
Jesper looked down at Nestor’s motionless body. “But we didn’t know they’d send Grisha. How can we be sure they aren’t mercenaries?”
Kaz held up a coin emblazoned with a horse on one side and two crossed keys on the other. “This was in the Squaller’s pocket,” he said, tossing it to Jesper. “It’s a Shu wen ye. The Coin of Passage. This is a government mission.”
“How did they find us?” Inej asked.
“Maybe Jesper’s gunshots drew them,” said Kaz.
Jesper bristled and pointed at Nina and Matthias. “Or maybe they heard these two shouting at each other. They could have been following us for miles.”
Nina tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Shu didn’t use Grisha as soldiers, and they weren’t like the Fjerdans; they didn’t see Grisha power as unnatural or repulsive. They were fascinated by it. But they still viewed the Grisha as less than human. The Shu government had been capturing and experimenting on Grisha for years in an attempt to locate the source of their power. They would never use Grisha as mercenaries. Or at least that had been the case before. Maybe parem had changed the game.
“I don’t understand,” said Nina. “If they have jurda parem, why go after Bo Yul-Bayur?”
“It’s possible they have a stash of it, but can’t reproduce his process,” Kaz said. “That’s what the Merchant Council seemed to think. Or maybe they just want to make sure Yul-Bayur doesn’t give the formula to anyone else.”
“Do you think they’ll use drugged Grisha to try to break into the Ice Court?” Inej asked.
“If they have more of them,” said Kaz. “That’s what I would do.”
Matthias shook his head. “If they’d had a Heartrender, we’d
all be dead.”
“It was still a close thing,” replied Inej.
Jesper shouldered his rifle. “Wylan earned his keep.”
Wylan gave a little jump at the sound of his name. “I did?”
“Well, you made a down payment.”
“Let’s move,” said Kaz.
“We need to bury them,” Nina said.
“The ground’s too hard, and we don’t have the time. The Shu team is still moving toward Djerholm. We don’t know how many other Grisha they may have, and Pekka’s team could already be inside.”
“We can’t just leave them for the wolves,” she said, her throat tight.
“Do you want to build them a pyre?”
“Go to hell, Brekker.”
“Do your job, Zenik,” he shot back. “I didn’t bring you to Fjerda to perform funeral rites.”
She lifted her hands. “How about I crack your skull open like a robin’s egg?”
“You don’t want a look at what’s inside my head, Nina dear.”
She took a step forward, but Matthias moved in front of her.
“Stop,” he said. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you dig the grave.” Nina stared at him. He took a pick from his gear and handed it to her, then took another from Jesper’s pack. “Head due south from here,” he said to the others. “I know the terrain, and I’ll make sure we catch up to you by nightfall. We’ll move faster on our own.”
