Page 55 of Crooked Kingdom (Dregs 2)
The Dime Lions returned fire and Matthias dove beneath a slump of moss-covered stones. He saw Jesper charge through the tomb door, revolvers blazing, cutting toward the broken stone mast. Matthias lobbed the last flash bomb into the air as Jesper rolled to the right, and the roar of gunfire erupted like a storm breaking as the Dime Lions forgot all promise of discipline or offer of reward and let fly with everything they had. They might have been ordered to keep Kuwei alive, but they were Barrel rats, not trained soldiers.
On his belly, Matthias crawled through the dirt of the graveyard. “Everyone unhurt?” he asked as he reached the broken mast of the mausoleum.
“Out of breath but still breathing,” said Jesper. Kuwei nodded, though he was shaking badly. “Fantastic plan, by the way. How is being pinned down here better than being pinned down in the tomb?”
“Did you get Wylan’s powders?”
“What was left of them,” said Jesper. He emptied his pockets, revealing three packets.
Matthias chose one at random. “Can you manipulate those powders?”
Jesper shifted uneasily. “Yes. I guess. I did something similar at the Ice Court. Why?”
Why. Why. In the drüskelle he would have been brigged for insubordination.
“Black Veil is supposedly haunted, yes? We’re going to make some ghosts.” Matthias glanced around the edge of the mausoleum. “They’re moving in. I need you to follow my orders and stop asking questions. Both of you.”
“No wonder you and Kaz don’t get along,” Jesper muttered.
In as few words as he could, Matthias explained what he intended now and when they reached the island’s shore—assuming his plan worked.
“I’ve never done this before,” said Kuwei.
Jesper winked at him. “That’s what makes it exciting.”
“Ready?” said Matthias.
He opened the packet. Jesper raised his hands, and with a light whump the powder rose in a cloud. It hung suspended in the air as if time had slowed. Jesper focused, sweat beading on his forehead, then shoved his hands forward. The cloud thinned and rolled over the heads of the Dime Lions, then caught in one of their torches in a burst of green.
The men surrounding the torch holder gasped.
“Kuwei,” directed Matthias.
The Shu boy lifted his hands and the flame from the green torch crept along the handle, snaking up the arm of its bearer in a sinuous coil of fire. The man screamed, tossing the torch away, falling to the ground and rolling in an attempt to extinguish the flames.
“Keep going,” said Matthias, and Kuwei flexed his fingers, but the green flames went out.
“I’m sorry!” said Kuwei.
“Make another,” demanded Matthias. There was no time for cosseting.
Kuwei thrust his hands out again and one of the Dime Lions’ lanterns exploded, this time in a whorl of yellow flame. Kuwei shrank back as if he hadn’t intended to use so much force.
“Don’t lose your focus,” Matthias urged.
Kuwei curled his wrists and the flames of the lantern rose in a serpentine arc.
“Hey,” said Jesper. “Not bad.” He opened another packet of powder and tossed its contents into the air, then arced his arms forward, sending it to meet Kuwei’s flame. The twisting thread of fire turned a deep, shimmering crimson. “Strontium chloride,” the sharpshooter murmured. “My favorite.”
Kuwei flexed one of his fists and another stream of fire joined the flames of the lantern, then another, forming a thick-bodied snake that undulated over Black Veil, ready to strike.
“Ghosts!” one of the Dime Lions shouted.
“Don’t be daft,” replied another.
Matthias watched that red serpent coil and uncoil in trails of flame, feeling the old fear rise in him. He’d grown comfortable with Kuwei, and yet it had been Inferni fire that consumed his family’s village in a border skirmish. Somehow, he’d forgotten the power this boy held within him. It was a war, he reminded himself. And this is one too.
The Dime Lions were distracted, but it wouldn’t last long.
“Spread the fire to the trees,” Matthias said, and with a little grunt, Kuwei threw his arms wide. The green leaves fought the onslaught of devouring flame, then caught.
“They got a Grisha,” shouted Doughty. “Flank them!”
“To the shore!” said Matthias. “Now!” They sprinted past gravestones and broken stone Saints. “Kuwei, get ready. We need everything you have.”
They skittered down the bank, tumbling into the shallows. Matthias grabbed the violet bombs and smashed them open on the hulls of the wrecked boats. Slithering violet flame engulfed them. It had an eerie, almost creamy quality. Matthias had navigated to and from Black Veil enough times to know this was the shallowest part of the canal, the long stretch of sandbar where boats were most likely to run aground, but the opposite shore seemed impossibly far away.
“Kuwei,” he commanded, praying that the Shu boy was strong enough, hoping that he could manage the plan Matthias had outlined bare moments earlier, “make a path.”
Kuwei shoved his hands forward and the flames poured into the water, sending up a massive plume of steam. At first, all Matthias could see was a wall of billowing white. Then the steam parted slightly and he saw fish flopping in the mud, crabs skittering over the exposed bottom of the canal as violet flames licked at the water to either side.
“All the Saints and the donkeys they rode in on,” Jesper said on an awed breath. “Kuwei, you did it.”
Matthias turned back to the island and opened fire into the trees.
“Hurry!” he shouted, and they ran over a road that had not been there moments before, bolting for the other side of the canal, for the streets and alleys that might lend them cover. Unnatural, a voice clamored in his head. No, thought Matthias, miraculous.
“You do realize you just led your own little Grisha army?” said Jesper as they hauled themselves out of the mud and hurried through the shadowed streets toward Sweet Reef.
He had. An uncomfortable thought. Through Jesper and Kuwei, he had wielded Grisha power. And yet, Matthias did not feel tainted or somehow marked by it. He remembered what Nina had said about the construction of the Ice Court, that it must be the work of Grisha and not the work of Djel. What if both things were true? What if Djel worked through these people? Unnatural. The word had come so easily to him, a way to dismiss what he did not understand, to make Nina and her kind less than human. But what if behind the righteousness that drove the drüskelle, there was something less clean or justified? What if it wasn’t even fear or anger but simply envy? What did it mean to aspire to serve Djel, only to see his power in the gifts of another, to know you could never possess those gifts yourself?
The drüskelle gave their oath to Fjerda, but to their god as well. If they could be made to see miracles where once they’d seen abomination, what else might change? I have been made to protect you. His duty to his god, his duty to Nina. Maybe they were the same thing. What if Djel’s hand had raised the waters the night of the wrathful storm that wrecked the drüskelle ship and bound Matthias and Nina together?
Matthias was running through the streets of a foreign city, into dangers he did not know, but for the first time since he’d looked into Nina’s eyes and seen his own humanity reflected back at him, the war inside him quieted.
We’ll find a way to change their minds, she’d said. All of them. He would locate Nina. They would survive this night. They would free themselves of this damp, misbegotten city, and then … Well, then they’d change the world.
20
INEJ
Inej twisted, breaking the clawlike grip on the back of her neck. She scrambled to stop her fall. Her legs found purchase on the silo roof and she yanked herself free, pushing away from the hatch. She rocked back on her heels, knives already released from their sheaths, deadly weight in her hands.
Her mind could not quite make sense out of what she was se
eing. A girl stood before her on the silo roof, gleaming like a figure carved of ivory and amber. Her tunic and trousers were the color of cream, banded in ivory leather and embroidered in gold. Her auburn hair hung in a thick braid laced with the glint of jewels. She was tall and slender, maybe a year or two older than Inej.
Inej’s first thought was of the Kherguud soldiers that Nina and the others had seen in West Stave, but this girl didn’t look Shu.
“Hello, Wraith,” the girl said.
“Do I know you?”
“I am Dunyasha, the White Blade, trained by the Sages of Ahmrat Jen, the greatest assassin of this age.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“I’m new to this city,” the girl acknowledged, “but I’m told you are a legend on these filthy streets. I confess, I thought you’d be … taller.”
“What business?” Inej asked, the traditional Kerch greeting at the beginning of any meeting, though it felt absurd to say it twenty stories in the air.
Dunyasha smiled. It seemed practiced, like the smiles Inej had seen girls give customers in the gilded Menagerie parlor. “A crude greeting for a crude city.” She flicked her fingers carelessly toward the skyline, acknowledging and dismissing Ketterdam with a single gesture. “Fate brought me here.”
“And does fate pay your wages?” Inej asked, sizing her up. She did not think this ivory-and-amber girl had scaled a silo just to make her acquaintance. In a fight, Dunyasha’s height would give her a longer reach, but it might impact her balance. Had Van Eck sent her? And if so, had he sent someone after Nina too? She spared the briefest glance below but could see nothing in the deep shadows of the silos. “Who do you work for?”
Knives appeared in Dunyasha’s hands, their edges gleaming brightly. “Our work is death,” she said, “and it is holy.”
An exultant light filled her eyes, the first true spark of life Inej had seen in her, and then she attacked.
Inej was startled by the girl’s speed. Dunyasha moved like painted light, as if she were a blade herself, cutting through the darkness, her knives slicing in tandem, left, right. Inej let her body respond, dodging more on instinct than anything else, backing away from her opponent, but avoiding the silo’s edge. She feinted left and slipped past Dunyasha, managing the first thrust of her own.
