Crooked Kingdom (46 page)

“How?” she said. “The money—”

“It's done.” He'd liquidated every asset he had, used the last of the savings he'd accrued, every ill-gotten cent.

She pressed the envelope to her chest, above her heart. “I have no words to thank you for this.”

“Surely the Suli have a thousand proverbs for such an occasion?”

“Words have not been invented for such an occasion.”

“If I end up on the gallows, you can say something nice over the corpse,” he said. “Wait until six bells. If I'm not back, try to get everyone out of the city.”

“Kaz—”

“There's a discolored brick in the wall behind the Crow Club. Behind it you'll find twenty thousand
kruge
. It's not much, but it should be enough to bribe a few
stadwatch
grunts.” He knew their chances would be slim and that it was his fault. “You'd have a better shot on your own—even better if you left now.”

Inej narrowed her eyes. “I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. These are my friends. I'm not going anywhere.”

“Tell me about Dunyasha,” he said.

“She was carrying quality blades.” Inej took the shears from the table of the vanity and began cutting fresh strips of cloth from one of the towels. “I think she may be my shadow.”

“Pretty solid shadow if she can throw knives.”

“The Suli believe that when we do wrong, we give life to our shadows. Every sin makes the shadow stronger, until eventually the shadow is stronger than you.”

“If that were true, my shadow would have put Ketterdam in permanent night.”

“Maybe,” Inej said, turning her dark gaze to his. “Or maybe you're someone else's shadow.”

“You mean Pekka.”

“What happens if you make it back from the Slat? If the auction goes as planned and we manage this feat?”

“Then you get your ship and your future.”

“And you?”

“I wreak all the havoc I can until my luck runs out. I use our haul to build an empire.”

“And after that?”

“Who knows? Maybe I'll burn it to the ground.”

“Is that what makes you different from Rollins? That you'll leave nothing behind?”

“I am not Pekka Rollins or his shadow. I don't sell girls into brothels. I don't con helpless kids out of their money.”

“Look at the floor of the Crow Club, Kaz.” Her voice was gentle, patient—why was it making him want to set fire to something? “Think of every racket and card game and theft you've run. Did all those men and women deserve what they got or what they had taken from them?”

“Life isn't ever what we deserve, Inej. If it were—”

“Did your brother get what he deserved?”

“No.”
But the denial felt hollow.

Why had he called Jesper by Jordie's name? When he looked into the past, he saw his brother through the eyes of the boy he'd been: brave, brilliant, infallible, a knight bested by a dragon dressed like a merch. But how would he see Jordie now? As a mark? Another dumb pigeon looking for a shortcut? He leaned his hands on the edge of the sink. He wasn't angry anymore. He just felt weary. “We were fools.”

“You were children. Was there no one to protect you?”

“Was there anyone to protect
you
?”

“My father. My mother. They would have done anything to keep me from being stolen.”

“And they would have been mowed down by slavers.”

“Then I guess I was lucky I didn't have to see that.”

How could she still look at the world that way? “Sold into a brothel at age fourteen and you count yourself lucky.”

“They loved me. They love me. I believe that.” He saw her draw closer in the mirror. Her black hair was an ink splash against the white tile walls. She paused behind him. “You protected me, Kaz.”

“The fact that you're bleeding through your bandages tells me otherwise.”

She glanced down. A red blossom of blood had spread on the bandage tied around her shoulder. She tugged awkwardly at the strip of towel. “I need Nina to fix this one.”

He didn't mean to say it. He meant to let her go. “I can help you.”

Her gaze snapped to his in the mirror, wary as if gauging an opponent.
I can help you.
They were the first words she'd spoken to him, standing in the parlor of the Menagerie, draped in purple silk, eyes lined in kohl. She had helped him. And she'd nearly destroyed him. Maybe he should let her finish the job.

Kaz could hear the drip of the faucet, water striking the basin in an uneven rhythm. He wasn't sure what he wanted her to say.
Tell her to get out
, a voice inside him demanded.
Beg her to stay.

But Inej said nothing. Instead, she gathered the bandages and shears from the vanity and placed them beside the basin. Then she flattened her palms on the counter and effortlessly levered herself up so that she was seated on it.

They were eye to eye now. He took a step closer and then just stood there, unable to move. He could not do this. The distance between them felt like nothing. It felt like miles.

She reached for the shears, graceful as always, a girl underwater, and offered them to him handle first. They were cool in his hand; the metal unpliable and reassuring. He stepped into the space framed by her knees.

“Where do we start?” she asked. The steam from the basin had curled the wisps of hair that framed her face.

Was he going to do this?

He nodded to her right forearm, not trusting himself to speak. His gloves lay on the other side of the basin, black against the gold-veined marble. They looked like dead animals.

He focused on the shears, cold metal in his hands, nothing like skin. He could not do this if his hands were shaking.

I can best this
, he told himself. It was no different than drawing a weapon on someone. Violence was easy.

He slid the blade carefully beneath the bandage on her arm. The towel was thicker than gauze would have been, but the shears were sharp. One snip and the bandage fell away, revealing a deep puncture wound. He cast the fabric aside.

He picked up a strip of fresh towel and stood there, steeling himself.

She lifted her arm. Cautiously, he looped the clean piece of cloth around her forearm. His knuckles brushed against her skin and lightning cracked through him, left him paralyzed, rooted to the earth.

His heart should not be making that sound. Maybe he would never get to the Slat. Maybe this would kill him. He willed his hands to move, knotted the bandage once, twice. It was done.

Kaz took a breath. He knew he should replace the bandage at her shoulder next, but he wasn't ready for that, so he nodded to her left arm. The bandage was perfectly clean and secure, but she didn't question him, just offered her forearm.

This time it was a little easier. He moved slowly, methodically, the shears, the bandage, a meditation. But then the task was complete.

They said nothing, caught in an eddy of silence, not touching, her knees on either side of him. Inej's eyes were wide and dark, lost planets, black moons.

The bandage on her shoulder had been looped under her arm twice and tied near the joint. He leaned in slightly, but the angle was awkward. He couldn't simply wedge the scissors beneath the towel. He would have to lift the edge of the fabric.

No.
The room was too bright. His chest felt like a clenched fist.
Stop this.

He pressed two fingers together. He slid them beneath the bandage.

Everything in him recoiled. The water was cold against his legs. His body had gone numb and yet he could still feel the wet give of his brother's rotting flesh beneath his hands.
It's shame that eats men whole.
He was drowning in it. Drowning in the Ketterdam harbor. His eyes blurred.

“It isn't easy for me either.” Her voice, low and steady, the voice that had once led him back from hell. “Even now, a boy will smile at me on the street, or Jesper will put his arm around my waist, and I feel like I'm going to vanish.” The room tilted. He clung to the tether of her voice. “I live in fear that I'll see one of her—one of
my
—clients on the street. For a long time, I thought I recognized them everywhere. But sometimes I think what they did to me wasn't the worst of it.”

Kaz's vision came back into focus. The water receded. He was standing in a hotel bathroom. His fingers were pressed against Inej's shoulder. He could feel the fine muscles beneath her skin. A pulse beat furiously at her throat, in the soft hollow just beneath her jaw. He realized she had closed her eyes. Her lashes were black against her cheeks. As if in response to his shaking, she had gone even more still. He should say something, but his mouth could not make words.

“Tante Heleen wasn't always cruel,” Inej continued. “She'd hug you, hold you close, then pinch you so hard, she broke skin. You never knew if a kiss was coming or a slap. One day you were her best girl, and the next day she'd bring you to her office and tell you she was selling you to a group of men she'd met on the street. She'd make you beg her to keep you.” Inej released a soft sound that was almost a laugh. “The first time Nina hugged me, I
flinched
.” Her eyes opened. She met his gaze. He could hear the drip of the faucet, see the curl of her braid over her shoulder where it had slipped free of its coil. “Go on,” she said quietly, as if she was asking him to continue a story.

He wasn't sure he could. But if she could speak those words into the echo of this room, he could damn well try.

Carefully, he raised the shears. He lifted the bandage, creating a gap, feeling regret and release as he broke contact with her skin. He sliced through the bandage. He could feel the warmth of her on his fingers like fever.

The ruined bandage fell away.

He took up another long strip of towel in his right hand. He had to lean in to loop it behind her. He was so close now. His mind took in the shell of her ear, the hair tucked behind it, that rapid pulse fluttering in her throat. Alive, alive, alive.

It isn't easy for me either.

He looped the bandage around again. The barest touches. Unavoidable. Shoulder, clavicle, once her knee. The water rose around him.

He secured the knot.
Step back.
He did not step back. He stood there, hearing his own breath, hers, the rhythm of them alone in this room.

The sickness was there, the need to run, the need for something else too. Kaz thought he knew the language of pain intimately, but this ache was new. It hurt to stand here like this, so close to the circle of her arms.
It isn't easy for me either.
After all she'd endured, he was the weak one. But she would never know what it was like for him to see Nina pull her close, watch Jesper loop his arm through hers, what it was to stand in doorways and against walls and know he could never draw nearer.
But I'm here now
, he thought wildly. He had carried her, fought beside her, spent whole nights next to her, both of them on their bellies, peering through a long glass, watching some warehouse or merch's mansion. This was nothing like that. He was sick and frightened, his body slick with sweat, but he was here. He watched that pulse, the evidence of her heart, matching his own beat for anxious beat. He saw the damp curve of her neck, the gleam of her brown skin. He wanted to … He wanted.

Before he even knew what he intended, he lowered his head. She drew in a sharp breath. His lips hovered just above the warm juncture between her shoulder and the column of her neck. He waited.
Tell me to stop. Push me away.

She exhaled. “Go on,” she repeated. Finish the story.

The barest movement and his lips brushed her skin—warm, smooth, beaded with moisture. Desire coursed through him, a thousand images he'd hoarded, barely let himself imagine—the fall of her dark hair freed from its braid, his hand fitted to the lithe curve of her waist, her lips parted, whispering his name.

All of it there and then gone. He was drowning in the harbor. Her limbs were a corpse's limbs. Her eyes were dead and staring. Disgust and longing roiled in his gut.

He lurched backward, and pain shot through his bad leg. His mouth was on fire. The room swayed. He braced himself against the wall, trying to breathe. Inej was on her feet, moving toward him, her face concerned. He held up a hand to stop her.

“Don't.”

She stood in the center of the tile floor, framed by white and gold, like a gilded icon. “What happened to you, Kaz? What happened to your brother?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Tell me. Please.”

Tell her
, said a voice inside him.
Tell her everything.
But he didn't know how or where to begin. And why should he? So she could find a way to absolve him of his crimes? He didn't want her pity. He didn't need to explain himself, he just needed to find a way to let her go.

“You want to know what Pekka did to me?” His voice was a snarl, reverberating off the tiles. “How about I tell you what I did when I found the woman who pretended to be his wife, the girl who pretended to be his daughter? Or how about I tell you what happened to the boy who lured us in that first night with his mechanical toy dogs? That's a good one. His name was Filip. I found him running a monte game on Kelstraat. I tortured him for two days and left him bleeding in an alley, the key to a wind-up dog shoved down his throat.” Kaz saw Inej flinch. He ignored the sting in his heart.

“That's right,” he went on. “The clerks at the bank who turned over our information. The fake attorney. The man who gave me free hot chocolate at Hertzoon's fake office. I destroyed them all, one by one, brick by brick. And Rollins will be the last. These things don't wash away with prayer, Wraith. There is no peace waiting for me, no forgiveness, not in this life, not in the next.”