Page 59 of Crooked Kingdom (Dregs 2)
Her body lay in the center of the net, pocked by wicked silver stars, blood oozing from the wounds.
Set her down, Nina commanded, and the corpses obeyed, lowering the net to the paving stones. Nina stumbled to Inej’s side and went to her knees. “Inej?”
Inej threw her arms around Nina.
“Never, ever do that again,” Nina sobbed.
“A net?” said a merry voice. “That seems unfair.”
Inej stiffened. The girl in white had reached the bottom of the second silo and was striding toward them.
Nina’s arms shot out and the corpses stepped in front of her and Inej. “You sure you want this fight, snowflake?”
The girl narrowed her beautiful eyes. “I bested you,” she said to Inej. “You know I did.”
“You had a good night,” Inej replied, but her voice sounded weak as worn thread.
The girl looked at the army of decaying bodies arrayed before her, appeared to assess her odds. She bowed. “We’ll meet again, Wraith.” She turned in the direction Eamon and the rest of the Dime Lions had fled, vaulted over the remnants of the fence, and was gone.
“Someone likes drama,” Nina said. “I mean really, who wears white to a knife fight?”
“Dunyasha, the White Blade of something or other. She really wants to kill me. Possibly everyone.”
“Can you walk?”
Inej nodded, though her face looked ashen. “Nina, are these people … are they dead?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds creepy.”
“But you didn’t use—”
“No. No parem. I don’t know what this is.”
“Can Grisha even—”
“I don’t know.” Now that the fear of the ambush and Inej’s fall were abating, she felt a kind of disgust. What had she just done? What had she tampered with?
Nina remembered asking one of her teachers at the Little Palace where Grisha power came from. She’d been little more than a child then, awed by the older Grisha who came and went from the palace grounds on important missions.
Our power connects us to life in ways ordinary people can never understand, her teacher had said. That’s why using our gift makes us stronger instead of depleting us. We are tied to the power of creation itself, the making at the heart of the world. For Corporalki, that bond is woven even more tightly, because we deal in life and the taking of it.
The teacher had raised his hands, and Nina felt her pulse slow just slightly. The other students had released gasps and looked around at one another, all of them experiencing the same thing. Do you feel that? the teacher asked. All your hearts, beating in shared time, bound to the rhythm of the world?
It had been the strangest sensation, the feeling of her body dissolving, as if they were not many students wriggling in their classroom chairs, but one creature, with a single heart, a single purpose. It had lasted only moments, but she’d never forgotten that sense of connection, the sudden understanding that her power would mean she was never alone.
But the power she’d used tonight? It was nothing like that. It was a product of parem, not the making at the heart of the world. It was a mistake.
There would be time to worry later. “We need to get out of here,” Nina said. She helped Inej to her feet, then looked at the bodies surrounding them. “Saints, they smell awful.”
“Nina, what if they can hear you?”
“Can you hear me?” she asked. But the corpses did not respond, and when she reached out to them with her power, they didn’t feel alive. There was something here, though, something that spoke to her in a way the living no longer could. She thought again of the icy river. She could still feel it around her, around everything, but now it moved in slow eddies.
“What are you going to do with them?” asked Inej.
Nina gave a helpless shrug. “Put them back where they were, I suppose?” She raised her hands. Go, she told them as clearly as she could, be at rest.
They moved again, a sudden flurry that brought a prayer to Inej’s lips. Nina watched them fade, dim shapes in the dark.
Inej gave a slight shudder, then plucked a spiked silver star from her shoulder and let it drop to the ground with a loud plink. The bleeding seemed to have slowed, but she definitely needed bandages. “Let’s go before the stadwatch show up,” she said.
“Where?” Nina asked as they set out for the canal. “If Pekka Rollins found us—”
Inej’s steps slowed as reality set in. “If Black Veil is compromised, Kaz … Kaz told me where to go if things went sour. But…”
The words hung in the air between them. Pekka Rollins entering the field meant much more than a foiled plan.
What if Black Veil was blown? What if something had happened to Matthias? Would Pekka Rollins spare his life or simply shoot first and claim his bounty?
The Grisha. What if Pekka had followed Jesper and Matthias to the embassy? What if they’d set out for the docks with the refugees and been captured? Again she thought of the yellow pill in her pocket. She thought of Tamar’s ferocious golden eyes, Zoya’s imperious gaze, Genya’s teasing laugh. They had trusted her. If something had happened to them, she would never forgive herself.
As Nina and Inej traced their steps back to the quay where their boat was moored, she spared one glance at the barge where the last of the corpses was lying down, shifting into place. They looked different now, their color returning to the ashy gray and mottled white that she associated with death. But maybe death wasn’t just one thing.
“Where do we go?” Nina asked.
At that moment, they saw two figures racing toward them. Inej reached for her knives and Nina raised her arms, prepared to call her strange soldiers once more. She knew it would be easier this time.
Kaz an
d Wylan appeared in the light from a streetlamp, their clothes rumpled, their hair covered in bits of plaster—and what might have been gravy. Kaz was leaning heavily on his cane, his pace unrelenting, the sharp features of his face set in determined lines.
“We’ll fight our way out together,” Inej whispered.
Nina glanced from Inej to Kaz and saw they both wore the same expression. Nina knew that look. It came after the shipwreck, when the tide moved against you and the sky had gone dark. It was the first sight of land, the hope of shelter and even salvation that might await you on a distant shore.
23
WYLAN
I’m going to die and there will be no one to help her. No one to even remember Marya Hendriks.
Wylan wanted to be brave, but he was cold and bruised, and worse—he was surrounded by the bravest people he knew and all of them seemed badly shaken.
They made slow progress through the canals, pausing under bridges and in dark wells of shadow to wait as squads of stadwatch boots thundered overhead or along the waterways. They were out in force tonight, their boats cruising along slowly, bright lanterns at their prows. Something had changed in the short time since the showdown on Goedmedbridge. The city had come alive, and it was angry.
“The Grisha—” Nina had attempted.
But Kaz had cut her off quickly. “They’re either safe at the embassy or beyond our help. They can fend for themselves. We’re going to ground.”
And then Wylan knew just how much trouble they were in, because Nina hadn’t argued. She’d simply put her head in her hands and gone silent.
“They’ll be all right,” said Inej, placing an arm around her shoulders. “He’ll be all right.” But her movements were tentative, and Wylan could see blood on her clothes.
After that, no one spoke a word. Kaz and Rotty rowed only sporadically, steering them into the quieter, narrower canals, letting them drift silently whenever possible, until they rounded a bend near Schoonstraat and Kaz said, “Stop.” He and Rotty dug in their oars, bringing them flush with the side of the canal, tucked behind the bulk of a vendor’s boat. Whatever the floating shop sold, its stalls had been locked tight to protect its stock.
