Page 42 of Crooked Kingdom (Dregs 2)
The nurse twinkled at Jesper. “Well then, I think we might have a quick look around.”
Wylan studied his mother, his thoughts a jangle of misplayed chords. They’d cut her hair short. He tried to picture her younger, in the fine black wool gown of a mercher’s wife, white lace gathered at her collar, her curls thick and vibrant, arranged by a lady’s maid into a nautilus of braids.
“Hello,” he managed.
“Did you come for my money? I don’t have any money.”
“I don’t either,” Wylan said faintly.
She was not familiar, exactly, but there was something in the way she tilted her head, the way she sat, her spine still straight. As if she was at the piano.
“Do you like music?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, but there isn’t much here.”
He pulled the flute from his shirt. He’d traveled the whole day with it tucked up against his chest like some kind of secret, and it was still warm from his body. He’d planned to play it beside her grave like some kind of idiot. How Kaz would have laughed at him.
The first few notes were wobbly, but then he got control of his breath. He found the melody, a simple song, one of the first he’d learned. For a moment, she looked as if she was trying to remember where she might have heard it. Then she simply closed her eyes and listened.
When he was finished, she said, “Play something cheerful.”
So he played a Kaelish reel and then a Kerch sea shanty that was better suited to the tin whistle. He played every song that came into his head, but nothing mournful, nothing sad. She didn’t speak, though occasionally, he saw her tap her toe to the music, and her lips would move as if she knew the words.
At last he put the flute down in his lap. “How long have you been here?”
She stayed silent.
He leaned forward, seeking some answer in those vague hazel eyes. “What did they do to you?”
She laid a gentle hand on his cheek. Her palm felt cool and dry. “What did they do to you?” He couldn’t tell if it was a challenge or if she was just repeating his words.
Wylan felt the painful press of tears in his throat and fought to swallow them.
The door banged open. “Well now, did we have a good visit?” said the nurse as she entered.
Hastily, Wylan tucked the flute back into his shirt. “Indeed,” he said. “Everything seems to be in order.”
“You two seem awfully young for this type of work,” she said, dimpling at Jesper.
“I might say the same for you,” he replied. “But you know how it is, the new clerks get stuck with the most menial tasks.”
“Will you be back again soon?”
Jesper winked. “You never do know.” He nodded at Wylan. “We have a boat to catch.”
“Say goodbye, Miss Hendriks!” urged the nurse.
Marya’s lips moved, but this time Wylan was close enough to hear what she muttered. Van Eck.
* * *
On the way out of the hospital, the nurse kept up a steady stream of chatter with Jesper. Wylan walked behind them. His heart hurt. What had his father done to her? Was she truly mad? Or had he simply bribed the right people to say so? Had he drugged her? Jesper glanced back at Wylan once as the nurse gibbered on, his gray eyes concerned.
They were almost to the pale blue door when the nurse said, “Would you like to see her paintings?”
Wylan jerked to a halt. He nodded.
“I think that would be most interesting,” said Jesper.
The woman led them back the way they’d come and then opened the door to what appeared to be a closet.
Wylan felt his knees buckle and had to grab the wall for balance. The nurse didn’t notice—she was talking on and on. “The paints are expensive, of course, but they seem to bring her so much pleasure. This is just the latest batch. Every six months or so we have to put them on the rubbish heap. There just isn’t space for them.”
Wylan wanted to scream. The closet was crammed with paintings—landscapes, different views of the hospital grounds, a lake in sun and shadow, and there, repeated again and again, was the face of a little boy with ruddy curls and bright blue eyes.
He must have made some kind of noise, because the nurse turned to him. “Oh dear,” she said to Jesper, “your friend’s gone quite pale again. Perhaps a stimulant?”
“No, no,” said Jesper, putting his arm around Wylan. “But we really should be going. It’s been a most enlightening visit.”
Wylan didn’t register the walk down the drive bordered by yew hedges or retrieving their coats and caps from behind the tree stump near the main road.
They were halfway back to the dock before he could bring himself to speak. “She knows what he did to her. She knows he had no right to take her money, her life.” Van Eck, she’d said. She was not Marya Hendriks, she was Marya Van Eck, a wife and mother stripped of her name and her fortune. “Remember when I said he wasn’t evil?”
Wylan’s legs gave out and he sat down hard, right there in the middle of the road, and he couldn’t bring himself to care because the tears were coming and there was no way he could stop them. They gusted through his chest in ragged, ugly sobs. He hated that Jesper was seeing him cry, but there was nothing he could do, not about the tears, not about any of it. He buried his face in his arms, covering his head as if, were he to only will it strongly enough, he could vanish.
He felt Jesper squeeze his arm.
“It’s okay,” Jesper said.
“No, it’s not.”
“You’re right, it’s not. It’s rotten, and I’d like to string your father up in a barren field and let the vultures have at him.”
Wylan shook his head. “You don’t understand. It was me. I caused this. He wanted a new wife. He wanted an heir. A real heir, not a moron who can barely spell his own name.” He’d been eight when his mother had been sent away. He didn’t have to wonder anymore; that was when his father had given up on him.
“Hey,” Jesper said, giving him a shake. “Hey. Your father could have made a lot of choices when he found out you couldn’t read. Hell, he could have said you were blind or that you had trouble with your vision. Or better yet, he could have just been happy about the fact that he had a genius for a son.”
“I’m not a genius.”
“You’re stupid about a lot of things, Wylan, but you are not stupid. And if I ever hear you call yourself a moron again, I’m going to tell Matthias you tried to kiss Nina. With tongue.”
Wylan wiped his nose on his sleeve. “He’ll never believe it.”
“Then I’ll tell Nina you tried to kiss Matthias. With tongue.” He sighed. “Look, Wylan. Normal people don’t wall their wives up in insane asylums. They don’t disinherit their sons because they didn’t get the child they wanted. You think my dad wanted a mess like me for a kid? You didn’t cause this. This happened because your father is a lunatic dressed up in a quality suit.”
Wylan pressed the heels of his hands to his swollen eyes. “That’s all true, and none of it makes me feel any better.”
Jesper gave his shoulder another little shake. “Well, how about this? Kaz is going to tear your father’s damn life apart.”
Wylan was about to say that didn’t help either, but he hesitated. Kaz Brekker was the most brutal, vengeful creature Wylan had ever encountered—and he’d sworn he was going to destroy Jan Van Eck. The thought felt like cool water cascading over the hot, shameful feeling of helplessness he’d been carrying with him for so long. Nothing could make this right, ever. But Kaz could make his father’s life very wrong. And Wylan would be rich. He could take his mother from this place. They could go somewhere warm. He could put her in front of a piano, get her to play, take her somewhere full of bright colors and beautiful sounds. They could go to Novyi Zem. They could go anywhere. Wylan lifted his head and wiped away his tears. “Actually, that helps a lot.”
Jesper grinned. “Thought it might. But if we don’t get on that boat back to Ketterdam, no righteous
comeuppance.”
Wylan rose, suddenly eager to return to the city, to help bring Kaz’s plan to life. He’d gone to the Ice Court reluctantly. He’d aided Kaz grudgingly. Because through all of it, he’d believed that he deserved his father’s contempt, and now he could admit that somewhere, in some buried place, he’d hoped there might still be a way back to his father’s good favor. Well, his father could keep that good favor and see what it bought him when Kaz Brekker was finished.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go steal all my dad’s money.”
“Isn’t it your money?”
“Okay, let’s go steal it back.”
They headed off at a run. “I love a little righteous comeuppance,” said Jesper. “Jogs the liver!”
15
MATTHIAS
A crowd had gathered outside the tavern, drawn by the sounds of breaking glass and trouble. Zoya lowered Nina and Matthias none-too-gently to the floor, and they were herded quickly out the back of the tavern, surrounded by a small segment of the armed men. The rest remained in the tavern to offer whatever explanations could be given for the fact that a bunch of bones had just flown through the marketplace and shattered the building’s windows. Matthias wasn’t even sure he understood what had happened. Had Nina controlled those false Saints’ relics? Had it been something else altogether? And why had they been attacked?
Matthias thought they would emerge into an alley, but instead they descended a series of ancient-looking steps into a dank tunnel. The old canal, Matthias realized as they climbed aboard a boat that passed soundlessly through the dark. It had been paved over but not entirely filled in. They were traveling beneath the broad thoroughfare that fronted the embassy.
