Page 48 of Crooked Kingdom (Dregs 2)
He hesitated, then said, “You could stay with me and Da. If you want. At the hotel. If you need a place to wait everything out.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” Jesper said with a shrug that didn’t feel right on his shoulders. “Inej and Kaz too. We can’t all scatter before the comeuppance is delivered.”
“And after that? When your father’s loan is paid, will you go back to Novyi Zem?”
“I should.”
Wylan waited. Jesper didn’t have an answer for him. If he went back to the farm, he’d be away from the temptations of Ketterdam and the Barrel. But he might just find some new kind of trouble to get into. And there would be so much money. Even after the loan was paid, there would still be more than three million kruge. He shrugged again. “Kaz is the planner.”
“Sure,” said Wylan, but Jesper could see the disappointment in his face.
“I suppose you’ve got your future all figured out?”
“No. I just know I’m going to get my mother out of that place and try to build some kind of life for us.” Wylan nodded to the posters on the wall. “Is this really what you want? To be a criminal? To keep bouncing from the next score to the next fight to the next near miss?”
“Honestly?” Jesper knew Wylan probably wasn’t going to like what he said next.
“It’s time,” Kaz said from the doorway.
“Yes, this is what I want,” said Jesper. Wylan looped his satchel over his shoulder, and without thinking, Jesper reached out and untwisted the strap. He didn’t let go. “But it’s not all that I want.”
“Now,” said Kaz.
I’m going to beat him over the head with that cane. Jesper released the strap. “No mourners.”
“No funerals,” Wylan said quietly. He and Kaz vanished through the door.
Nina and Inej were next. Nina had disappeared into one of the passages to change out of the ridiculous Fjerdan costume and don practical trousers, coat, and tunic—all of Ravkan make and cut. She’d taken Matthias with her and had emerged rumpled and rosy several long minutes later.
“Staying on task?” Jesper couldn’t resist asking.
“I’m teaching Matthias all about fun. He’s an excellent student. Diligent in his lessons.”
“Nina—” Matthias warned.
“Has problems with attitude. Shows room for improvement.”
Inej nudged the bottle of coffee extract toward Jesper. “Try to be cautious tonight, Jes.”
“I’m about as good at cautious as Matthias is at fun.”
“I’m perfectly good at fun,” Matthias growled.
“Perfectly,” Jesper agreed.
There was more he wanted to say to all of them, mostly Inej, but not in front of the others. Maybe not ever, he conceded. He owed Inej an apology. His carelessness had gotten them ambushed at Fifth Harbor before they left for the Ice Court job, and the mistake had nearly cost the Wraith her life. But how the hell did you apologize for that? Sorry I almost got you stabbed to death. Who wants waffles?
Before he could ponder it further, Inej had planted a kiss on his cheek, Nina had aimed a single-fingered gesture at the wall of wanted posters, and Jesper was stuck waiting for half past nine bells, alone in the tomb with a glum-looking Kuwei and a pacing Matthias.
Kuwei began reorganizing the notebooks in his pack.
Jesper sat down at the table. “Do you need all of those?”
“I do,” said Kuwei. “Have you been to Ravka?”
Poor kid is scared, thought Jesper. “No, but you’ll have Nina and Matthias with you.”
Kuwei glanced at Matthias and whispered, “He is very stern.”
Jesper had to laugh. “He’s not what I’d call a party, but he has a few good qualities.”
“I can hear you, Fahey,” Matthias grumbled.
“Good. I’d hate to have to shout.”
“Aren’t you even concerned about the others?” Matthias said.
“Of course. But all of us are out of nursery clothes. The time for worrying is over. Now we get to the fun part,” he said, tapping his guns. “The doing.”
“Or the dying,” Matthias muttered. “You know as well as I do that Nina isn’t at her best.”
“She doesn’t have to be tonight. The whole idea is not to get into a fight, alas.”
Matthias left off his prowling and took a seat at the table across from Jesper. “What happened at the lake house?”
Jesper smoothed out the corner of one of the maps. “I’m not sure, but I think she choked a guy to death with a cloud of dust.”
“I don’t understand it,” said Matthias. “A cloud of dust? She controlled shards of bone today—she could never have done that before parem. She seems to think the change is temporary, a residual effect of the drug, but…” He turned to Kuwei. “Could the parem alter a Grisha’s power? Change it? Destroy it?”
Kuwei fiddled with the latch on his travel pack. “I suppose it’s possible. She survived the withdrawal. That is rare, and we know so little about parem, about Grisha power.”
“Didn’t carve enough open to solve that riddle?” The words were out of Jesper’s mouth before he thought better of them. He knew they weren’t fair. Kuwei and his father were Grisha themselves, and neither had been in any position to keep the Shu from experimenting on others.
“You are angry with me?” said Kuwei.
Jesper smiled. “I’m not an angry type of guy.”
“Yes, you are,” said Matthias. “Angry and frightened.”
Jesper sized up the big Fjerdan. “Beg your pardon?”
“Jesper is very brave,” protested Kuwei.
“Thank you for noticing.” Jesper stretched out his legs and crossed one ankle over the other. “You have something to say, Matthias?”
“Why aren’t you going to Ravka?”
“My father—”
“Your father could go with us tonight. And if you’re so concerned about him, why weren’t you at his hotel today?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“I know what it is to be ashamed of what you are, of what you’ve done.”
“You really want to start this, witchhunter? I’m not ashamed. I’m careful. Thanks to people like you and your drüskelle buddies, the world is a dangerous place for people like me. It always has been, and it doesn’t look to be getting any better.”
Kuwei reached out and touched Jesper’s hand, his face imploring. “Understand. Please. What we did, what my father did … We were trying to make things better, to make a way for Grisha to…” He made a gesture as if he was pressing something down.
“To suppress their powers?” suggested Matthias.
