Six of Crows (41 page)

Nina was tall, but she still had to stand on tiptoe to peek into them.

Most of the prisoners were asleep or resting, curled into corners or flat on their backs with an arm thrown over their eyes to block out the dim lamplight that filtered through the grate. Others sat propped against the walls, staring listlessly at nothing. Occasionally she found someone pacing back and forth and had to step away quickly. None of them were Shu.

“
Ajor?
” one called after her in Fjerdan. She ignored him and moved on, heart thudding.

What if Bo Yul-Bayur really was in these cells? She knew it was unlikely, and yet … she could kill him in his cell, put him in a deep, painless sleep, and simply stop his heart. She’d tell Kaz she hadn’t found him. And what if Kaz located Bo Yul-Bayur? She might have to wait until they were out of the Ice Court to find a solution, but she could at least count on Matthias to help her. What a strange, grim bargain they’d struck.

But as she worked her way back and forth along the corridors, the tiny hope that the scientist might be there withered away to nothing.
One more row of cells
, she thought,
then back down to the basement
with nothing to show for it.
Except when she entered the final corridor, she saw it was shorter than the others. Where there should have been more cells there was a steel door, bright light shining beneath it.

A flutter of unease passed through her as she approached, but she made herself push the door open.

She had to squint against the brightness. The light was harsh – as clear as daylight but with none of its warmth – and she couldn’t locate its source. She heard the door whooshing closed behind her. At the last moment she whirled and grabbed it by the edge. Something told her this door would need a key to unlock it from the inside. She looked for anything she might use to prop it open, and had to settle for tearing off a piece from the bottom of her prison trousers and stuffing it in the lock.

This place felt wrong. The walls, floor, and ceiling were a white so clean it hurt to look at. Half of one wall was made up of panels of smooth, perfect glass.
Fabrikatormade.
Just like the glass enclosure surrounding that vile display of weaponry. No Fjerdan craftsman could make surfaces so pristine. Grisha power had been used to create this glass, she felt sure of it. There were rogue Grisha who served no country and who might consider hiring themselves out to the Fjerdan government. But would they survive such a commission? Slave labour seemed more likely.

Nina took one step, then another. She glanced back over her shoulder. If a guard entered the corridor behind her, she’d have nowhere to hide.
So move, Nina.

She peered inside the first window. The cell was as white as the hallway and illuminated by that same sustained, bright light. The room was empty and devoid of any kind of furniture – no bench, no basin, no bucket. The only break in all that whiteness was a drain at the very centre of the floor, surrounded by reddish stains.

She continued to the next cell. It was identical and equally empty, as was the next, and the next. But here something caught her eye, a coin lying next to the drain – no, not a coin, a button. A tiny silver button emblazoned with a wing, the symbol of a Grisha Squaller. She felt a chill creep over her arms.

Had these cells been crafted by Grisha slaves for Grisha prisoners? Had the glass, the walls, the floor been made to withstand Fabrikator manipulation? The rooms were devoid of metal. There was no plumbing, no pipes to carry water that a Tidemaker might abuse. And Nina suspected that the glass she was peering through was mirrored on the other side, so that a Heartrender in the cell wouldn’t be able to locate a target. These were cells designed to hold Grisha. Designed to hold her.

She whirled on her heel. Bo Yul-Bayur wasn’t here, and she wanted out of this place right now. She snatched the fabric from the lock and blew through the door, not stopping to make sure it closed behind her. The corridor of iron cells was even darker after the brightness that had come before, and she stumbled as she raced back the way she’d come. Nina knew she was being incautious, but she couldn’t get the image of those white rooms out of her head.
The drain. The stains around it. Had
Grisha been tortured there? Made to confess their crimes against the people?

She’d studied the Fjerdans – their leaders, their language. She’d even dreamed of entering the Ice Court as a spy just like this, of striking at the heart of this nation that hated her so much. But now that she was here, she just wanted to be gone. She’d grown used to Ketterdam, to the adventures that came with her involvement with the Dregs, to her easy life at the White Rose. But even there, had she ever felt safe? In a city where she couldn’t walk down the streets without fear?
I want to go home
. The longing for it hit her hard, a physical ache.
I want to go back to Ravka.

The Elderclock began to chime a soft three-quarter-hour. She was late. Still, she forced her steps to slow before she opened the door into the stairway. There was no one there, not even Kaz. She ducked her head into the opposite passage to see if he was coming. Nothing – iron doors, deep shadow, no sign of Kaz.

Nina waited, unsure of what to do. They’d been meant to meet on the landing with fifteen minutes to spare before the hour. What if he was in some kind of trouble? She hesitated, then plunged down the corridor Kaz had been responsible for searching. She raced past the cells, the hallways snaking back and forth, but Kaz was nowhere to be found.

Enough
, thought Nina when she reached the end of the second corridor. Either Kaz had abandoned her and was already downstairs with the others, or he’d been caught and dragged off somewhere.

Either way, she had to get to the incinerator. Once she found the others they could figure out what to do.

She sped back through the halls and threw open the door to the landing. Two guards stood chatting at the head of the stairs. For a moment, they stared at her, open-mouthed.

“
Sten!
” one shouted in Fjerdan, ordering her to halt as they fumbled for their guns. Nina threw out both hands, fingers forming fists, and watched the guards topple backwards. One fell flat on the landing, but the other tumbled down the stairs, his rifle firing, sending bullets pinging against the stone walls, the sound echoing down the stairwell. Kaz was going to kill her. She was going to kill Kaz.

Nina hurtled past the guards’ bodies, down one flight, two flights. On the third floor landing a door flew open as a guard burst into the stairwell. Nina twisted her hands in the air, and the guard’s neck broke with an audible
snap
. She was plunging down the next flight before his body struck the ground.

That was when the Elderclock began to chime. Not the steady tolling of the hour, but a shrill clamour, high and percussive – a sound of alarm.

Inej looked up, into the dark. High above her floated a small, grey patch of evening sky. Six levels to climb in the dark with her hands slippery from sweat and the fires of hell burning below, with the rope weighing her down and no net to catch her.
Climb, Inej.

Bare hands were best for climbing, but the incinerator walls were far too hot to permit that. So Wylan and Jesper had helped her fish Kaz’s gloves from the laundry bins. She hesitated briefly. Kaz would tell her to just put the gloves on, to do whatever it took to get the job done. And yet, she felt curiously guilty as she slid the supple black leather over her hands, as if she had crept into his rooms without his permission, read his letters, lain down in his bed. The gloves were unlined, with the slenderest slashes hidden in the fingertips.
For sleight of hand
, she realised,
so that he can keep
contact with coins or cards or finesse the workings of a lock. Touch without touch.

There was no time to acclimatise herself to the oversized feel of the gloves. Besides, she’d climbed with covered hands plenty of times when the Ketterdam winters had turned her fingers numb. She flexed her toes in her little leather slippers, revelling in the familiar feel of them on her feet, bouncing on her nubbly rubber soles, fearless and eager. The heat was nothing, mere discomfort. The weight of seventy feet of rope coiled around her body? She was the Wraith. She’d suffered worse. She launched herself up into the chimney with pure confidence.

When her fingers made contact with the stone, she hissed in a breath. Even through the leather, she could feel the dense heat of the bricks. Without the gloves, her skin would have started to blister right away. But there was nothing to do except hold on. She climbed – hand then foot, then hand again, seeking the next small crack, the next divot in the soot-slick walls.

Sweat coursed down her back. They’d doused the rope and her clothes in water, but it didn’t seem to be doing much good. Her whole body felt flushed, suffused with blood as if she were being slowly cooked in her own skin.

Her feet pulsed with heat. They felt heavy, clumsy, as if they belonged to someone else. She tried to centre herself. She trusted her body. She knew her own strength and exactly what she could do.

Another hand up, forcing her limbs to cooperate, seeking a rhythm, but finding only an awkward syncopation that left her muscles trembling with every upwards gain. She reached for the next hold, digging in.
Climb, Inej.

Her foot slipped. Her toes lost contact with the wall, and her stomach lurched as she felt the pull of her weight and the rope. She gripped the stone, digging into the cracks, Kaz’s gloves bunching around her damp fingers. Again, her toes sought purchase, but only slid over the bricks. Then her

other foot began to slip, too. She sucked in a gust of searing air. Something was wrong. She risked a glance down. Far below, she saw the red glow of the coals, but it was what she saw on her feet that shocked her heart into a panicked gallop. They were a gummy mess. The soles of her shoes – her perfect, beloved shoes – were melting.

It’s all right
, she told herself.
Just change your grip. Put your weight in your shoulders. The rubber
will cool as you go higher. It will help you grip.
But her feet felt like they were on fire. Seeing what was happening had somehow made it worse, as if the rubber was fusing with her flesh.

Inej blinked the sweat from her eyes and hauled herself up a few more inches. From somewhere

above, she heard the chime of the Elderclock. The half hour? Or quarter till? She had to move faster.

She should be on the roof by now, attaching the rope.

She pushed higher and her foot skidded down the brick. She dropped, her whole body stuttering against the wall as she scrambled for purchase. There was no one to save her. No Kaz to come to her rescue, no net waiting to break her fall, only the fire ready to claim her.

Inej canted her head back, seeking that patch of sky. It still seemed impossibly distant. How far was it? Twenty feet? Thirty? It might as well have been miles. She was going to die here, slowly, horribly on the coals. They were all going to die – Kaz, Nina, Jesper, Matthias, Wylan – and it was her fault.

No.
No, it wasn’t.

She hefted herself up another foot –
Kaz brought us here
– and then another. She forced herself to find the next hold. Kaz and his greed. She didn’t feel guilty. She wasn’t sorry. She was just mad. Mad at Kaz for attempting this insane job, furious with herself for agreeing to it.

And why had she? To pay off her debt? Or because despite all good sense and better intentions, she’d let herself feel something for the bastard of the Barrel?

When Inej entered Tante Heleen’s salon on that long ago night, Kaz Brekker had been waiting, dressed in darkest grey, leaning on his crow’s head cane. The salon was furnished in gold and teal, one wall patterned entirely in peacock feathers. Inej hated every inch of the Menagerie – the parlour where she and the other girls were forced to coo and bat their lashes at prospective clients, her bedroom that had been made up to look like some farcical version of a Suli caravan, festooned in purple silk and redolent with incense – but Tante Heleen’s salon was the worst. It was the room for beatings, for Heleen’s worst rages.