Page 99 of Crooked Kingdom (Dregs 2)
“How many times have you told me you’re a monster? So be a monster. Be the thing they all fear when they close their eyes at night. We don’t go after all the gangs. We don’t shut down the houses that treat fairly with their employees. We go after women like Tante Heleen, men like Pekka Rollins.” She paused. “And think about it this way … you’ll be thinning the competition.”
He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh.
One of his hands balanced on his cane. The other rested at his side next to her. She’d need only move the smallest amount and they would be touching. He was that close. He was that far from reach.
Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird’s feather. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away.
“I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving.
Once they’d stood on the deck of a ship and she’d waited just like this. He had not spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragged under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and she knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown too.
Back on Black Veil, he’d told her they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying.
She felt his knuckles slide against hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm was pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine.
For a long while, they stood there, hands clasped, looking out at the gray expanse of the sea.
A Ravkan ship flying the Lantsov double eagle had docked only a few berths over from the Wraith, probably unloading a cargo of tourists or immigrants seeking work. The world changed. The world went on.
“Kaz,” she asked suddenly. “Why crows?”
“The crow and cup? Probably because crows are scavengers. They take the leavings.”
“I don’t mean the Dregs tattoo. That’s as old as the gang. Why did you adopt it? Your cane. The Crow Club. You could have chosen a new symbol, built a new myth.”
Kaz’s bitter coffee eyes remained trained on the horizon, the rising sun painting him in pale gold light. “Crows remember human faces. They remember the people who feed them, who are kind to them. And the people who wrong them too.”
“Really?”
He nodded slowly. “They don’t forget. They tell each other who to look after and who to watch out for. Inej,” Kaz said, gesturing out to the harbor with the head of his cane, “look.”
She raised the long glass and peered back down at the harbor, at the passengers disembarking, but the image was blurry. Reluctantly, she released his hand. It felt like a promise, and she didn’t want to let go. She adjusted the lens, and her gaze caught on two figures moving down the gangplank. Their steps were graceful, their posture straight as knife blades. They moved like Suli acrobats.
She drew in a sharp breath. Everything in her focused like the lens of the long glass. Her mind refused the image before her. This could not be real. It was an illusion, a false reflection, a lie made in rainbow-hued glass. She would breathe again and it would shatter.
She reached for Kaz’s sleeve. She was going to fall. He had his arm around her, holding her up. Her mind split. Half of her was aware of his bare fingers on her sleeve, his dilated pupils, the brace of his body around hers. The other half was still trying to understand what she was seeing.
His dark brows knitted together. “I wasn’t sure. Should I not have—”
She could barely hear him over the clamor in her heart. “How?” she said, her voice raw and strange with unshed tears. “How did you find them?”
“A favor, from Sturmhond. He sent out scouts. As part of our deal. If it was a mistake—”
“No,” she said as the tears spilled over at last. “It was not a mistake.”
“Of course, if something had gone wrong during the job, they’d be coming to retrieve your corpse.”
Inej choked out a laugh. “Just let me have this.” She righted herself, her balance returning. Had she really thought the world didn’t change? She was a fool. The world was made of miracles, unexpected earthquakes, storms that came from nowhere and might reshape a continent. The boy beside her. The future before her. Anything was possible.
Now Inej was shaking, her hands pressed to her mouth, watching them move up the dock toward the quay. She started forward, then turned back to Kaz. “Come with me,” she said. “Come meet them.”
Kaz nodded as if steeling himself, flexed his fingers once more.
“Wait,” he said. The burn of his voice was rougher than usual. “Is my tie straight?”
Inej laughed, her hood falling back from her hair.
“That’s the laugh,” he murmured, but she was already setting off down the quay, her feet barely touching the ground.
“Mama!” she called out. “Papa!”
Inej saw them turn, saw her mother grip her father’s arm. They were running toward her.
Her heart was a river that carried her to the sea.
45
PEKKA
Pekka sat in the front room of his country house, peering out from behind one of the white lace curtains. Kaelish lace. Imported from Maroch Glen. Pekka had spared no expense when he’d polished up this place. He’d built the house from the ground up, specifying the dimensions of every room, the varnish for the floors, choosing each fixture and furnishing with care. The Emerald Palace was his great pride, the Kaelish Prince the crown jewel of his empire, a testament to luxury and style, decked out in the highest Barrel flash. But this place was his home, his castle. Its every detail spoke respectability, prosperity, permanence.
Pekka felt safe here, safe with his son and the bodyguards he paid so well. Still, he moved away from the window. Best not to take any chances. Plenty of spots for a marksman to hide out there. Maybe he should cut down the beech trees that bordered the lawn.
He struggled to understand where his life had gone. A month ago he’d been a rich man, a man to be reckoned with, a king. And now?
He clutched his son closer and stroked his red hair. The boy was restless in his lap.
“I want to go play!” Alby said, leaping from Pekka’s knee, thumb in his mouth, clutching the soft little lion—one of the many he owned. Pekka could barely stand to look at the thing. Kaz Brekker had bluffed him and he’d fallen for it.
But it was worse than that. Brekker had gotten into his head. Pekka couldn’t stop thinking of his boy, his perfect boy buried beneath clods of earth, screaming for him, pleading for his father, and Pekka unable to come to his rescue. Sometimes his son was crying from somewhere in the fields but he didn’t know where to dig. Sometimes Pekka was the one lying in the grave, paralyzed as the earth was piled on top of him—light at first, a patte
r of rain, then in heavy clods that filled his mouth and stole the breath from his chest. Above him he could hear people laughing—boys, girls, women, men. They were silhouettes against a blue dusk sky, their faces lost to shadow, but he knew who they were. All the people he’d swindled, duped, killed. All the sorry sobs he’d sacrificed as he made his climb up the ladder. He still couldn’t remember the name of Brekker’s brother. What had he been called?
Pekka had been Jakob Hertzoon; he’d worn a thousand different faces. But Kaz Brekker had found him. He’d come for his revenge. If one of those fools could find him, why not another, and another? How many would stand in line to throw the next shovelful of dirt?
Making choices, even simple choices, had become difficult. What tie to wear. What to order for dinner. He doubted himself. Pekka had never doubted himself. He’d started life as a no one. A stone breaker from the Wandering Isle, a sturdy boy valued only for his strong back and his youth, for his ability to swing a pick and carry a load of rocks. But he’d cheated his way onto a boat coming to Ketterdam and made his reputation with his fists. He’d been a boxer, a bruiser, the most feared enforcer in the gangs. He’d survived because he was the wiliest, the toughest, because no one could break his will. Now all he wanted to do was sit inside, drink his whiskey, watch the shadows move across the ceiling. Anything else filled him with a terrible fatigue.
And then one morning he woke to a bright, blue-enamel sky. The air was full of birdsong. He could smell the arrival of summer, real heat in the air, fruit ripening in the orchard.
He dressed. He breakfasted. He spent the morning in the fields, working in the early sun and playing with Alby. When the day grew too hot, they sat on the wide porch and drank cool glasses of lemonade. Then Pekka went inside and actually faced the papers and bills that had been piling up on his desk.
Things were in disastrous shape at the Emerald Palace and the Kaelish Prince. They’d been closed by the city as a health precaution, the doors and windows marked with dire black Xs to indicate an outbreak site. News from Ketterdam indicated that the plague had been a false alarm, some strange fungus or virus that had struck quickly but seemed to be proving harmless. City officials were cautiously optimistic.
