Page 52 of Six of Crows (Dregs 1)
In the prison wagon, Kaz woke to a sharp jab against his thigh. He was ice cold and in darkness. There were bodies all around him, pressing against his back, his sides. He was drowning in corpses.
“Kaz.” A whisper.
He shuddered.
Another jab to his thigh.
“Kaz.” Inej’s voice. He managed a deep breath though his nose. He felt her pull away from him. Somehow, in the cramped confines of the wagon, she managed to give him space. His heart was pounding.
“Keep talking,” he rasped.
“What?”
“Just keep talking.”
“We’re passing through the prison gate. We made it past the first two checkpoints.”
That brought him fully to his senses. They’d gone through two checkpoints. That meant they’d been counted. Someone had opened that door—not once but twice—maybe even laid hands on him, and he hadn’t woken. He could have been robbed, killed. He’d imagined his death a thousand ways, but never sleeping through it.
He forced himself to breathe deeply, despite the smell of bodies. He’d kept his gloves on, something the guards might have easily taken note of, and a frustrating concession to his weakness, but if he hadn’t, he felt fairly sure he’d have gone completely mad.
Behind him, he could hear the other prisoners murmuring to one another in different languages. Despite the fears the darkness woke in him, he gave thanks for it. He could only hope that the rest of his crew, hooded and burdened by their own anxiety, hadn’t noticed anything strange about his behavior. He’d been sluggish, slow to react when they’d ambushed the wagon, but that was all, and he could make up some excuse to account for it.
He hated that Inej had seen him this way, that anyone had, but on the heels of that thought came another: Better it should be her. In his bones, he knew that she would never speak of it to anyone, that she would never use this knowledge against him. She relied on his reputation. She wouldn’t want him to look weak. But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there? Inej would never betray him. He knew it. Kaz felt ill. Though he’d trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with this shame.
The wagon came to a halt. The bolt slid back, and the doors flew open.
He heard Fjerdan being spoken, then scraping noises and a thunk. His collar was unlocked, and he was led from the wagon down some kind of ramp with the other prisoners. He heard what sounded like a gate creaking open, and they were herded forward, shuffling along in their shackles.
He squinted as his hood was suddenly yanked free. They were standing in a large courtyard. The massive gate set into the ringwall was already being lowered closed, and it struck the stones with an ominous series of clanks and groans. When Kaz looked up, he saw guards stationed all along the roof of the courtyard, rifles aimed down at the prisoners. The guards below were moving along the rows of shackled captives, trying to match them to the driver’s paperwork by name or description.
Matthias had described the layout of the Ice Court in detail, but he’d said little about the way it actually looked. Kaz had expected something old and damp—grim gray stone, battle-hard. Instead, he was surrounded by marble so white it almost glowed blue. He felt as if he’d wandered into some dreamlike version of the harsh lands they’d traveled in the north. It was impossible to tell what might be glass or ice or stone.
“If this isn’t Fabrikator craft, then I’m the queen of the wood sprites,” muttered Nina in Kerch.
“Tig!” one of the guards commanded. He slammed his rifle into her gut, and she doubled over in pain. Matthias kept his head turned, but Kaz didn’t miss the tension in his frame.
The Fjerdan guards were gesturing over their papers, trying to make the numbers and identities of the prisoners match up to the group before them. This was the first real moment of exposure, one Kaz would have no control over. It would have been too time-consuming and dangerous to pick and choose the prisoners they’d replaced. It was a calculated risk, but now Kaz could only wait and hope that laziness and bureaucracy would do the rest.
As the guards moved down the line, Inej helped Nina to her feet.
“You okay?” Inej asked, and Kaz felt himself drawn toward her voice like water rolling downhill.
Slowly, Nina unbent herself and stood upright. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “But I don’t think we have to worry about Pekka Rollins’ team anymore.”
Kaz tracked Nina’s gaze to the top of the ringwall, high above the courtyard, where five men had been impaled on spikes like meat skewered for roasting, backs bent, limbs dangling. Kaz had to squint, but he recognized Eroll Aerts, Rollins’ best lockpick and safecracker. The bruises and welts from the beating they’d given him before his death were deep purple in the morning light, and Kaz could just make out a black mark on his arm—Aerts’ Dime Lion tattoo.
He scanned the other faces—some were too swollen and distorted in death to identify. Could one of them be Rollins? Kaz knew he should be glad another team had been taken out, but Rollins was no fool, and the thought that his crew hadn’t made it past the Ice Court gates was more than a little nerve-racking. Besides, if Rollins had met his death at the end of a Fjerdan pike … No, Kaz refused that possibility. Pekka Rollins belonged to him.
The guards were arguing with the wagon driver now, and one of them was pointing at Inej.
“What’s happening?” he whispered to Nina.
“They’re claiming the papers are out of order, that they have a Suli girl instead of a Shu boy.”
“And the driver?” asked Inej.
“He just keeps telling them it’s not his problem.”
“That’s the way,” Kaz murmured encouragingly.
Kaz watched them go back and forth. That was the beauty of all these fail-safes and layers of security. The guards always thought they could rely on someone else to catch a mistake or fix a problem. Laziness wasn’t as reliable as greed, but it still made a fine lever. And they were talking about prisoners—chained, surrounded on all sides, and about to be dumped into cells. Harmless.
Finally, one of the prison guards sighed and signaled to his cohorts. “Diveskemen.”
“Go on,” Nina translated, and then continued as the guard spoke. “Take them to the east block and let the next shift sort them out.”
Kaz allowed himself the briefest sigh of relief.
As anticipated, guards split the group into men and women, then led both rows, chains jangling, through a nearly round archway fashioned in the shape of a wolf’s open mouth.
They entered a chamber where an old woman sat with her hands chained, flanked by guards. Her eyes were vacant. As each prisoner approached, the woman gripped his or her wrist.
A human amplifier. Kaz knew Nina had worked with them when she’d been scouring the Wandering Isle for Grisha to join the Second Army. They could sense Grisha power by touch, and he’d seen them hired on at high-stakes card games to make sure none of the players were Grisha. Someone who could tamper with another player’s pulse or even raise the temperature in a room had an unfair advantage. But the Fjerdans used them for a different purpose—to make sure no Grisha breached their walls without being identified.
Kaz watched Nina approach. He could see her trembling as she held out her arm. The woman clamped her fingers around Nina’s wrist. Her eyelids stuttered briefly. Then she dropped Nina’s hand and waved her along.
Had she known and not cared? Or had the paraffin they’d used to encase Nina’s forearms worked?
As they were led through an arch on the left, Kaz glimpsed Inej disappearing into the opposite arch with the other female prisoners. He felt a twinge in his chest, and with a disturbing jolt, he realized it was panic. She’d been the one to wake him from his stupor in the cart. Her voice had brought him back from the dark; it had been the tether he gripped and used to drag himself back to some semblance of sanity.
The male prisoners were led clanking up a dark flight of stairs to a metal walkway. On their l
eft was the smooth white bulk of the ringwall. To their right the walkway overlooked a vast glass enclosure, nearly a quarter mile long and tall enough to comfortably fit a trading ship. It was lit by a huge iron lantern that hung from the ceiling like a glowing cocoon. Looking down, Kaz saw rows of heavily armored wagons capped by domed gun turrets. Their wheels were large and linked by a thick tread. On each wagon, a massive gun barrel—somewhere between the shape of a rifle and a cannon—jutted out into the space where a team of horses would ordinarily be hitched.
“What are those things?” he whispered.
“Torvegen,” Matthias said under his breath. “They don’t need horses to pull them. They were still perfecting the design when I left.”
“No horses?”
“Tanks,” murmured Jesper. “I saw prototypes when I was working with a gunsmith in Novyi Zem. Multiple guns in the turret, and that big barrel out in front? Serious firepower.”
