Six of Crows (23 page)

biggest haul any crew had ever attempted. Would Rollins send someone in his place or lead the crew to nab Bo Yul-Bayur himself?

In the dim confines of his cabin, Kaz whispered the words “Brick by brick.” Killing Pekka Rollins had always been tempting, but that wasn’t enough. Kaz wanted Rollins brought low. He wanted him to suffer the way Kaz had, the way Jordie had. And snatching thirty million
kruge
right out of Pekka Rollins’ grubby hands was a very good way to start. Maybe Inej was right. Maybe fate did bother with people like him.

In the cramped little surgeon’s cabin, Nina tried to put Inej’s body back together, but she hadn’t been trained for this type of work.

For the first two years of their education in Ravka’s capital, all Grisha Corporalki studied together, took the same classes, performed the same autopsies. But then their training diverged. Healers learned the intricate work of healing wounds, while Heartrenders became soldiers – experts at doing damage, not undoing it. It was a different way of thinking about what was essentially the same power. But the living asked more of you than the dead. A killing stroke took decision, clarity of intent. Healing was slow, deliberate, a rhythm that required thoughtful study of each small choice. The jobs she’d done for Kaz over the last year helped, and in a way so had her work carefully altering moods and tailoring faces at the White Rose.

But looking down at Inej, Nina wished her own school training hadn’t been so abbreviated. The Ravkan civil war had erupted when she was still a student at the Little Palace, and she and her classmates had been forced to go into hiding. When the fighting had ended and the dust had settled, King Nikolai had been anxious to get the few remaining Grisha soldiers trained and in the field, so Nina had spent only six months in advanced classes before she’d been sent out on her first mission. At the time, she’d been thrilled. Now she would have been grateful for even another week of school.

Inej was lithe, all muscle and fine bones, built like an acrobat. The knife had entered beneath her left arm. It had been a very close thing. A little deeper and the blade would have pierced the apex of the heart.

Nina knew that if she simply sealed Inej’s skin the way she’d done with Wylan, the girl would just continue to bleed internally, so she’d tried to stop the bleeding from the inside out. She thought she’d managed it well enough, but Inej had lost a lot of blood, and Nina had no idea what to do about that.

She’d heard some Healers could match one person’s blood to another ’s, but if it was done incorrectly, it was as good as poisoning the patient. The process was far beyond her.

She finished closing the wound, then covered Inej with a light wool blanket. For now, all Nina could do was monitor her pulse and breathing. As she settled Inej’s arms beneath the blanket, Nina saw the scarred flesh on the inside of her forearm. She brushed her thumb gently over the bumps and ridges. It must have been the peacock feather, the tattoo borne by members of the Menagerie, the House of Exotics. Whoever had removed it had done an ugly job of it.

Curious, Nina pushed up Inej’s other sleeve. The skin there was smooth and unmarked. Inej hadn’t taken on the crow and cup, the tattoo carried by any full member of the Dregs. Alliances shifted this way and that in the Barrel, but your gang was your family, the only protection that mattered. Nina herself bore two tattoos. The one on her left forearm was for the House of the White Rose. The one that counted was on her right: a crow trying to drink from a near empty goblet. It told the world she belonged to the Dregs, that to trifle with her was to risk their vengeance.

Inej had been with the Dregs longer than Nina and yet no tattoo. Strange. She was one of the most valued members of the gang, and it was clear Kaz trusted her – as much as someone like Kaz could.

Nina thought of the look on his face when he’d set Inej down on the table. He was the same Kaz –

cold, rude, impossible – but beneath all that anger, she thought she’d seen something else, too. Or maybe she was just a romantic.

She had to laugh at herself. She wouldn’t wish love on anyone. It was the guest you welcomed and then couldn’t be rid of.

Nina brushed Inej’s straight black hair back from her face. “Please be okay,” she whispered. She hated the frail waver of her voice in the cabin. She didn’t sound like a Grisha soldier or a hardened member of the Dregs. She sounded like a little girl who didn’t know what she was doing. And that was exactly how she felt. Her training
had
been too short. She’d been sent out on her first mission too soon. Zoya had said as much at the time, but Nina had begged to go, and they’d needed her, so the older Grisha had relented.

Zoya Nazyalensky – a powerful Squaller, gorgeous to the point of absurdity, and capable of reducing Nina’s confidence to ash with a single raised brow. Nina had worshipped her.
Reckless,
foolish, easily distracted.
Zoya had called her all those things and worse.

“You were right, Zoya. Happy now?”

“Giddy,” said Jesper from the doorway.

Nina started and looked up to see him rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Who’s Zoya?” he asked.

Nina slumped back in her chair. “No one. A member of the Grisha Triumvirate.”

“Fancy. The ones who run the Second Army?”

“What’s left of it.” Ravka’s Grisha soldiers had been decimated during the war. Some had fled.

Most had been killed. Nina rubbed her tired eyes. “Do you know the best way to find Grisha who don’t want to be found?”

Jesper scrubbed the back of his neck, touched his hands to his guns, returned to his neck. He always seemed to be in motion. “Never gave it much thought,” he said.

“Look for miracles and listen to bedtime stories.” Follow the tales of witches and goblins, and unexplained happenings. Sometimes they were just superstition. But often there was truth at the heart of local legends – people who had been born with gifts that their countries didn’t understand. Nina had become very good at sniffing out those stories.

“Seems to me if they don’t want to be found, you should just let them be.”

Nina cast him a dark glance. “The
drüskelle
won’t let them be. They hunt Grisha everywhere.”

“Are they all charmers like Matthias?”

“And worse.”

“I need to find his leg shackles. Kaz gives me all the fun jobs.”

“Want to trade?” Nina asked wearily.

The frenetic energy of Jesper ’s lanky frame seemed to drop away. He went as still as Nina had ever seen him, and his gaze focused on Inej for the first time since he’d entered the little cabin.
He was
avoiding it
, Nina realised.
He didn’t want to look at her.
The blankets shifted slightly with her shallow breaths. When Jesper spoke, his voice was taut, the strings of an instrument tuned to a too-sharp key.

“She can’t die,” he said. “Not this way.”

Nina peered at Jesper, puzzled. “Not what way?”

“She can’t die,” he repeated.

Nina felt a surge of frustration. She was torn between wanting to hug Jesper tight and scream at him that she was trying. “Saints, Jesper,” she said. “I’m doing my best.”

He shifted, and his body seemed to come back alive. “Sorry,” he said a bit sheepishly. He clapped her awkwardly on the shoulder. “You’re doing great.”

Nina sighed. “Not convincing. Why don’t you go chain up a giant blond?”

Jesper saluted and ducked out of the cabin.

Annoying as he was, Nina was almost tempted to call him back. With Jesper gone, there was nothing but Zoya’s voice in her head and the reminder that her best wasn’t good enough.

Inej’s skin felt too cool to the touch. Nina laid a hand on each of the girl’s shoulders and tried to improve her blood flow, raising her body temperature very slightly.

She hadn’t been completely honest with Jesper. The Grisha Triumvirate hadn’t just wanted to save Grisha from Fjerdan witchhunters. They’d sent missions to the Wandering Isle and Novyi Zem because Ravka needed soldiers. They’d sought out Grisha who might be living in secret and tried to convince them to take up residence in Ravka and enter service to the crown.

Nina had been too young to fight in the Ravkan civil war, and she’d been desperate to be part of the rebuilding of the Second Army. It was her gift for languages – Shu, Kaelish, Suli, Fjerdan, even some Zemeni – that finally overcame Zoya’s reservations. She agreed to let Nina accompany her and a team of Grisha Examiners to the Wandering Isle, and despite all of Zoya’s misgivings, Nina had been a success. Disguised as a traveller, she would slip into taverns and coach houses to eavesdrop on conversations and chat with the locals, then bring the peasant talk back to camp.

If you’re going to Maroch Glen, make sure to travel by day. Troubled spirits walk those lands –

storms erupt out of nowhere.

The Witch of Fells is real, all right. My second cousin went to her with an outbreak of
tsifil
and
swears he’s never been healthier. What do you mean he’s not right in the head? More right than you’ll
ever be.

They’d found two Grisha families hiding out in the supposed fairy caves of Istamere, and they’d saved a mother, father, and two boys – Inferni, who could control fire – from a mob in Fenford. They even raided a slaving ship near the port in Leflin. Once the refugees had been sorted, those without powers had been offered safe passage back home. Those whose powers had been confirmed by a Grisha Examiner were offered asylum in Ravka. Only the old Heartrender known as the Witch of Fells chose to remain. “If they want my blood, let them come for it,” she’d laughed. “I’ll take some of theirs in return.”

Nina spoke Kaelish like a native and loved the challenge of taking on a new identity in every town.

But for all their triumphs, Zoya hadn’t been pleased. “Being good with languages isn’t enough,” she’d scolded. “You need to learn to be less … big. You’re too loud, too effusive, too memorable. You take too many risks.”

“Zoya,” said the Examiner they were travelling with. “Go easy.” He was a living amplifier. Dead, his bones would have served to heighten Grisha power, no different from the shark teeth or bear claws that other Grisha wore. But alive, he was invaluable to their mission, trained to use his amplifier gifts to sense Grisha power through touch.

Most of the time, Zoya was protective of him, but now her deep blue eyes flattened to slits. “My teachers didn’t go easy on me. If she ends up chased through the woods by a mob of peasants, will you tell them to go easy?”

Nina had stomped off, pride smarting, embarrassed by the tears filling her eyes. Zoya had shouted at her not to go past the ridge, but she’d ignored her, eager to be as far away from the Squaller as she could get – and walked right into a
drüskelle
camp. Six blond boys all speaking Fjerdan, clustered on a cliff above the shore. They’d made no campfire and were dressed as Kaelish peasants, but she’d known what they were right away.

They’d stared at her for a long moment, lit only by silvery moonlight.

“Oh thank goodness,” she’d said in lilting Kaelish. “I’m travelling with my family, and I got turned around in the woods. Can one of you help me find the road?”

“I think she’s lost,” one of them translated in Fjerdan for the others.

Another rose, a lantern in his hand. He was taller than the others, and all her instincts screamed at her to run as he drew closer.
They don’t know what you are
, she reminded herself.
You’re just a nice
Kaelish girl, lost in the woods. Don’t do anything stupid. Lead him away from the others, then take him
down.

He raised his lantern, the light shining over both of their faces. His hair was long and burnished gold, and his pale blue eyes glinted like ice beneath a winter sun.
He looks like a painting
, she thought, a Saint wrought in gold leaf on the walls of a church, born to wield a sword of fire.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked in Fjerdan.

She feigned confusion. “I’m sorry,” she said in Kaelish. “I don’t understand. I’m lost.”

He lunged towards her. She didn’t stop to think, but simply reacted, raising her hands to attack. He was too quick. Without hesitation, he dropped the lantern and seized her wrists, slamming her hands together, making it impossible for her to use her power.

“
Drüsje
,” he said with satisfaction.
Witch
. He had a wolf’s smile.

The attack had been a test. A girl lost in the woods cowered; she reached for a knife or a gun. She didn’t try to use her hands to stop a man’s heart.
Reckless. Impulsive.