Page 62 of Crooked Kingdom (Dregs 2)
“Let’s see,” said Nina. “Inej fell twenty stories.”
“We put a serious hole in my father’s dining room ceiling,” Wylan offered.
“Nina can raise the dead,” said Inej.
Matthias’ cup clattered against his saucer. It looked ridiculous in his huge hand.
“I can’t raise them. I mean, they get up, but it’s not like they come back to life. I don’t think. I’m not totally sure.”
“Are you serious?” said Jesper.
Inej nodded. “I can’t explain it, but I saw it.”
Matthias’ brow was furrowed. “When we were in the Ravkan quarter, you were able to summon those pieces of bone.”
Jesper took a gulp of coffee. “But what about the lake house? Were you controlling that dust?”
“What dust?” asked Inej.
“She didn’t just take out a guard. She choked him with a cloud of dust.”
“There’s a family graveyard next to the Hendriks lake house,” said Wylan, remembering the gated plot that abutted the western wall. “What if the dust was … well, bones? People’s remains?”
Nina set down her plate. “That’s almost enough to make me lose my appetite.” She picked it up again. “Almost.”
“This is why you asked about parem changing a Grisha’s power,” said Kuwei to Matthias.
Nina looked at him. “Can it?”
“I don’t know. You took the drug only once. You survived the withdrawal. You are a rarity.”
“Lucky me.”
“Is it so bad?” Matthias asked.
Nina plucked a few crumbs from her lap, returning them to her plate. “To quote a certain big blond lump of muscle, it’s not natural.” Her voice had lost its cheery warmth. She just looked sad.
“Maybe it is,” said Matthias. “Aren’t the Corporalki known as the Order of the Living and the Dead?”
“This isn’t how Grisha power is supposed to work.”
“Nina,” Inej said gently. “Parem took you to the brink of death. Maybe you brought something back with you.”
“Well, it’s a pretty rotten souvenir.”
“Or perhaps Djel extinguished one light and lit another,” said Matthias.
Nina cast him a sidelong glance. “Did you get hit on the head?”
He reached out and took Nina’s hand. Wylan suddenly felt he was intruding on something private. “I am grateful you’re alive,” he said. “I am grateful you’re beside me. I am grateful that you’re eating.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re better than waffles, Matthias Helvar.”
A small smile curled the Fjerdan’s lips. “Let’s not say things we don’t mean, my love.”
There was a light tapping at the door. Immediately, they all reached for their weapons. Colm sat frozen in his chair.
Kaz gestured for him to stay where he was and moved silently toward the door. He peered through the peephole.
“It’s Specht,” he said. They all relaxed, and Kaz opened the door.
They watched in silence as Kaz and Specht exchanged harried whispers; then Specht nodded and disappeared back toward the lift.
“Is there access to the clock tower on this floor?” Kaz asked Colm.
“At the end of the hall,” said Colm. “I haven’t gone up. The stairs are steep.”
Without a word, Kaz was gone. They all stared at one another for a moment and then followed, filing past Colm, who watched them go with weary eyes.
As they walked down the hall, Wylan realized that the entire floor was dedicated to the luxury of the Ketterdam Suite. If he was going to die, he supposed it wouldn’t be the worst place to spend his last night.
One by one, they climbed a twisting iron staircase to the clock tower and pushed through a trapdoor. The room at the top was large and cold, taken up mostly by the gears of a huge clock. Its four faces looked out over Ketterdam and the gray dawn sky.
To the south, a plume of smoke rose from Black Veil Island. Looking northeast, Wylan could see the Geldcanal, boats from the fire brigade and the stadwatch surrounding the area near his father’s house. He remembered the shocked look on his father’s face when they’d landed in the middle of his dining room table. If Wylan hadn’t been so terrified, he might well have burst out laughing. It’s shame that eats men whole. If only they’d set the rest of the house on fire.
Far in the distance, the harbors were teeming with stadwatch boats and wagons. The city was pocked with stadwatch purple, as if it had caught a disease.
“Specht says they’ve closed the harbors and shut down the browboats,” said Kaz. “They’re sealing the city. No one will be able to get in or out.”
“Ketterdam won’t stand for that,” said Inej. “People will riot.”
“They won’t blame Van Eck.”
Wylan felt a little ill. “They’ll blame us.”
Jesper shook his head. “Even if they put every stadwatch grunt on the street, they don’t have the manpower to lock up the city and search for us.”
“Don’t they?” said Kaz. “Look again.”
Jesper walked to the west-facing window where Kaz was standing. “All the Saints and your Aunt Eva,” he said on a gust of breath.
“What is it?” asked Wylan as they peered through the glass.
A crowd was moving east from the Barrel across the Zelver district.
“Is it a mob?” asked Inej.
“More like a parade,” said Kaz.
“Why aren’t the stadwatch stopping them?” Wylan asked as the flood of people passed unhindered from bridge to bridge, through each barricade. “Why are they letting them through?”
“Probably because your father told them to,” Kaz said.
As the throng drew closer, Wylan heard singing, chanting, drums. It really did sound like a parade. They poured over Zelverbridge, streaming past the hotel as they made their way to the square that fronted the Exchange. Wylan recognized Pekka Rollins’ gang leading the march. Whoever was up front wore a lion skin with a fake golden crown sewn onto its head.
“Razorgulls,” Inej said, pointing behind the Dime Lions. “And there are the Liddies.”
“Harley’s Pointers,” Jesper said. “The Black Tips.”
“It’s all of them,” said Kaz.
“What does it mean?” asked Kuwei. “The purple bands?”
Each member of the mob below wore a strip of purple around his upper left arm.
“They’ve been deputized,” said Kaz. “Specht says word is out all over the Barrel. The good news is they want us alive now—even Matthias. The bad news is they’ve added bounties for the Shu twins we’re traveling with, so Kuwei’s face—and Wylan’s—are gracing the city walls too.”
“And your Merchant Council is just sanctioning this?” said Matthias. “What if they start looting or there’s a riot?”
“They won’t. Rollins knows what he’s doing. If the stadwatch had tried to lock down the Barrel, the gangs would have turned on them. Now they’re on the right side of the law, and Van Eck has two armies. He’s pinning us in.”
Inej drew a sharp breath.
“What?” asked Wylan, but when he looked down at the square, he understood. The last group in the parade had come into view. An old man wearing a plumed hat was leading them, and they were cawing at the top of their lungs—like crows. The Dregs, Kaz’s gang. They had turned on him.
Jesper slammed his fist against the wall. “Those ungrateful skivs.”
Kaz said nothing, just watched the crowd flow past the front of the hotel below, the gangs bunched in colorful swarms, calling insults to one another, cheering like it was some kind of holiday. Even after they’d gone by, their chants hung in the air. Maybe they would march all the way to the Stadhall.
“What will happen now?” asked Kuwei.
“We’ll be hunted by every stadwatch grunt and Barrel thug in the city, until we’re found,” said Kaz. “There’s no way out of Ketterdam now. Certainly not with you in tow.”
&n
bsp; “Can we just wait?” asked Kuwei. “Here? With Mister Fahey?”
“Wait for what?” Kaz said. “Someone to come to our rescue?”
Jesper rested his head against the glass. “My father. They’ll take him in too. He’ll be accused of harboring fugitives.”
“No,” said Kuwei abruptly. “No. Give me to Van Eck.”
“Absolutely not,” said Nina.
The boy cut his hand through the air sharply. “You saved me from the Fjerdans. If we do not act, then I will be captured anyway.”
“Then all of this was for nothing?” Wylan asked, surprised at his own anger. “The risks we took? What we accomplished at the Ice Court? Everything Inej and Nina suffered to get us out?”
“But if I give myself up to Van Eck, then the rest of you can go free,” insisted Kuwei.
“It doesn’t work that way, kid,” said Jesper. “Pekka’s got his chance to take Kaz out with the rest of the Barrel backing him, and Van Eck sure as hell doesn’t want us walking around free, not knowing what we do. This isn’t just about you anymore.”
Kuwei moaned and slumped down against the wall. He cast a baleful glance at Nina. “You should have killed me at the Ice Court.”
Nina shrugged. “But then Kaz would have killed me and Matthias would have killed Kaz and it would have gotten incredibly messy.”
“I can’t believe we broke out of the Ice Court but we’re trapped in our own town,” Wylan said. It didn’t seem right.
“Yup,” said Jesper. “We are well and truly cooked.”
Kaz drew a circle on the window with one leather gloved finger. “Not quite,” he said. “I can get the stadwatch to stand down.”
“No,” said Inej.
