Page 50 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
They camped in a dry gully bordered by a tangle of shrubs, and took shifts dozing on the hard rock ground and keeping watch. Despite her fatigue, Inej hadn’t thought she would be able to sleep, but the next thing she knew, the sun was high above them, a bright pocket of glare in an overcast sky. It had to be past noon. Nina was beside her with a piece of one of the pepper wolf cookies she’d bought in Upper Djerholm. Inej saw that someone had made a low fire, and the sticky remnants of a block of melted paraffin were visible in its ashes.
“Where are the others?” she asked, looking around the empty gully.
“In the road. Kaz said we should let you sleep.”
Inej rubbed her eyes. She supposed it was a concession to her injuries. Maybe she hadn’t hidden her exhaustion well at all. A sudden, crackling snap snap snap from the road had her on her feet with knives drawn in seconds.
“Easy,” Nina said. “It’s just Wylan.”
Jesper must have already raised the the signal. Inej took the cookie from Nina and hurried up to where Kaz and Matthias were watching Wylan fuss with something at the base of a thick red fir. Another series of pops sounded, and tiny puffs of white smoke burst from the tree’s trunk where it met the ground. For a moment it looked like nothing would happen, then the roots loosed themselves from the soil, curling and withering.
“What was that?” asked Inej.
“Salt concentrate,” said Nina.
Inej cocked her head to the side. “Is Matthias … praying?”
“Saying a blessing. Fjerdans do it whenever they cut down a tree.”
“Every time?”
“The blessings depend on how you intend to use the wood. One for houses, one for bridges.” She paused. “One for kindling.”
It took less than a minute for them to pull the tree down so that its trunk lay blocking the road. With the roots intact, it looked as if it had simply been felled by disease.
“Once the wagon stops, the tree will buy us about fifteen minutes and not much more,” Kaz said. “Move quickly. The prisoners should be hooded, but they’ll be able to hear, so not a word. We can’t afford to arouse suspicion. For all they know, this is a routine stop, and we want to keep it that way.”
As Inej waited in the gully with the others, she considered all the things that might go wrong. The prisoners might not be wearing hoods. The guards might have one of their own in the back of the wagon. And if their crew succeeded? Well, then they’d be captives on their way into the Ice Court. That didn’t seem like a particularly promising outcome, either.
Just when she started to wonder if Jesper had been wrong and sent up the flare too early, a prison wagon rumbled into view. It rolled past them, then came to a halt in front of the tree. She could hear the driver cursing to his companion.
They both slid down from the box seat and made their way over to the tree. For a long minute, they stood there staring at it. The larger guard took off his hat and scratched his belly.
“How lazy can they be?” Kaz muttered.
Finally, they seemed to accept that the tree wasn’t going to move on its own. They strolled back to the wagon to retrieve a heavy coil of rope and unhitched one of the horses to help drag the tree out of the road.
“Be ready,” Kaz said. He skittered over the top of the gully to the back end of the cart. He’d left his walking stick behind in the ditch, and whatever pain he might have been feeling, he disguised it well. He slipped his lockpicks from the lining of his coat and cradled the padlock gently, almost lovingly. In seconds, it sprang open, and he shoved the bolt to the side. He glanced around to where the men were tying ropes around the tree and then opened the door.
Inej tensed, waiting for the signal. It didn’t come. Kaz was just standing there, staring into the wagon.
“What’s happening?” whispered Wylan.
“Maybe they aren’t hooded?” she replied. From the side, she couldn’t see. “I’ll go.” They couldn’t all bunch up around the back of the cart at once.
Inej climbed out of the gully and came up behind Kaz. He was still standing there, perfectly still. She touched his shoulder briefly, and he flinched. Kaz Brekker flinched. What was going on? She couldn’t ask him and risk giving anything away to the listening prisoners. She peered into the wagon.
The prisoners were all cuffed and had black sacks over their heads. But there were considerably more of them than in the wagon they’d seen at the checkpoint. Instead of being seated and chained to the benches at the sides, they were standing, pressed up against one another. Their feet and hands had been shackled, and they all wore iron collars that had been clipped to hooks in the wagon’s roof. Whenever one started to slump or lean too heavily, his or her breath would be cut off. It wasn’t pretty, but they were so tightly packed together it didn’t look like anyone could actually fall and choke.
Inej gave Kaz another little nudge. His face was pale, almost waxen, but at least this time he didn’t just stand there. He pushed himself up into the wagon, his movements jerky and awkward, and began unlocking the prisoners’ collars.
Inej signaled to Matthias, who leapt out of the gully to join them.
“What’s happening?” one of the prisoners asked in Ravkan, his voice frightened.
“Tig!” Matthias growled harshly in Fjerdan. A rustle went through the prisoners in the truck, as if they were all coming to attention. Without meaning to, Inej had straightened her spine, too. With that word, Matthias’ whole demeanor had changed, as if with a single sharp command he’d stepped back into the uniform of a drüskelle. Inej eyed him nervously. She’d started to feel comfortable with Matthias. An easy habit to fall into, but unwise.
Kaz unlocked six sets of hand and foot shackles. One by one, Inej and Matthias unloaded the six prisoners closest to the door. There wasn’t time to consider height or build or even if they’d freed men or women. They led them to the edge of the gully, all while keeping an eye on the progress of the guards on the road. “What’s happening?” one of the captives dared to ask. But another quick “Tig!” from Matthias silenced him.
Once they were out of view, Nina dropped their pulses, sending them into unconsciousness. Only then did Wylan remove the prisoners’ hoods: four men, one of them quite old, a middle-aged woman, and a Shu boy. It definitely wasn’t ideal, but hopefully the guards wouldn’t fret too much over accuracy. After all, how much trouble could a group of chained and shackled convicts be?
Nina injected the prisoners with a sleeping solution to prolong their rest, and Wylan helped roll them into the gully behind the trees.
“Are we just going to leave them there?” Wylan whispered to Inej as they hurried back to the wagon with the prisoners’ hoods in hand.
Inej’s eyes were trained on the guards moving the tree, and she didn’t look at him when she said, “They’ll wake soon enough and make a run for it. They might even get to the coast and freedom. We’re doing them a favor.”
“It doesn’t look like a favor. It looks like leaving them in a ditch.”
“Quiet,” she ordered. This wasn’t the time or the place for moral quibbling. If Wylan didn’t know the difference between being in chains and out of them, he was about to find out.
Inej cupped her hand to her mouth and gave a low, soft birdcall. They had four, maybe five minutes left before the guards cleared the road. Thankfully, the guards were raising quite a noise shouting encouragement at the horse and yelling to one another.
Matthias locked Wylan into place first, then Nina. Inej saw him stiffen as Nina lifted her hair to accept the collar, revealing the white curve of her neck. As he fastened it around her throat, Nina met his eyes over her shoulder, and the look they exchanged could have melted miles of northern ice. Matthias moved away hurriedly. Inej almost laughed. So that was all it took to send the drüskelle scurrying and bring the boy back.
Jesper was next, panting from his run back to the crossroads. He winked at her as she placed the sack over his head. They could hear the guards calling back and for
th.
Inej locked Matthias’ collar and stood on tiptoe to place the hood on his head. But when she moved to pull Nina’s hood down, the Grisha fluttered her eyes rapidly, bobbing her head toward the wagon door. She still wanted to know how Kaz was going to lock them in.
