Six of Crows (11 page)

“
Please
.”

Kaz heaved a sigh as he braced himself for three painful flights of stairs. He looked over his shoulder and said, “Please, my darling Inej, treasure of my heart, won’t you do me the honour of acquiring me a new hat?”

Inej cast a meaningful glance at his cane. “Have a long trip down,” she said, then leaped onto the banister, sliding from one flight to the next, slick as butter in a pan.

Kaz followed East Stave towards the harbour, through the beginnings of the Barrel’s gambling district. The Barrel was bracketed by two major canals, East Stave and West Stave, each catering to a particular clientele, and separated by a tangle of narrow streets and minor waterways. The buildings of the Barrel were different from anywhere else in Ketterdam, bigger, wider, painted in every garish colour, clamouring for attention from passersby – the Treasure Chest, the Golden Bend, Weddell’s Riverboat. The best of the betting halls were located further north, in the prime real estate of the Lid, the section of the canal closest to the harbours, favourably situated to attract tourists and sailors coming into port.

But not the Crow Club
, Kaz mused as he looked up at the black-and-crimson façade. It had taken a lot to lure tourists and risk-hungry merchers this far south for entertainment. Now the hour was coming up on four bells, and the crowds were still thick outside the club. Kaz watched the tide of people flowing past the portico’s black columns, beneath the watchful eye of the oxidised silver crow that spread its wings above the entrance.
Bless the pigeons
, he thought.
Bless all you kind and generous
folk ready to empty your wallets into the Dregs’ coffers and call it a good time.

He could see barkers out front shouting to potential customers, offering free drinks, hot pots of coffee, and the fairest deal in all of Ketterdam. He acknowledged them with a nod and pressed further north.

Only one other gambling den on the Stave mattered to him: the Emerald Palace, Pekka Rollins’

pride and joy. The building was an ugly green, decked out in artificial trees laden with fake gold and silver coins. The whole place had been done up as some kind of tribute to Rollins’ Kaelish heritage and his gang, the Dime Lions. Even the girls working the chip counters and tables wore glittering green sheaths of silk and had their hair tinted a dark, unnatural red to mimic the look of girls from the Wandering Isle. As Kaz passed the Emerald, he looked up at the false gold coins, letting the anger come at him. He needed it tonight as a reminder of what he’d lost, of what he stood to gain. He needed it to prepare him for this reckless endeavour.

“Brick by brick,” he muttered to himself. They were the only words that kept his rage in check, that prevented him from striding through the Emerald’s garish gold-and-green doors, demanding a private audience with Rollins, and slitting his throat.
Brick by brick.
It was the promise that let him sleep at night, that drove him every day, that kept Jordie’s ghost at bay. Because a quick death was too good for Pekka Rollins.

Kaz watched the flow of customers in and out of the Emerald’s doors and caught a glimpse of his own steerers, men and women he hired to seduce Pekka’s customers south with the prospect of better deals, bigger wins, prettier girls.

“Where are you coming from, looking so flush?” one said to the other, talking far more loudly than necessary.

“Just got back from the Crow Club. Took one hundred
kruge
off the house in just two hours.”

“You don’t say!”

“I do! Just came up the Stave to get a beer and meet a friend. Why don’t you join us, and we’ll all go together?”

“The Crow Club! Who would have thought it?”

“Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. I’ll buy everyone a drink!”

And they walked off together laughing, leaving all the patrons around them to wonder if maybe they ought to head just a few bridges down the canal and see if the odds weren’t kinder there – Kaz’s servant, greed, luring them south like a piper with flute in hand.

He made sure to cycle steerers in and out, changing the faces so Pekka’s barkers and bouncers never got wise, and customer by customer, he leeched away the Emerald’s business. It was one of the infinite tiny ways he’d found to make himself strong at Pekka’s expense – intercepting his shipments of
jurda
, charging him fees for access to Fifth Harbour, undercutting his rents to keep his properties free of tenants, and slowly, slowly tugging at the threads that made up his life.

Despite the lies he’d spread and the claims he’d made to Geels tonight, Kaz wasn’t a bastard. He wasn’t even from Ketterdam. He’d been nine and Jordie thirteen when they’d first arrived in the city, a cheque from the sale of their father ’s farm sewn safely into the inner pocket of Jordie’s old coat. Kaz could see himself as he was then, walking the Stave with dazzled eyes, hand tucked into Jordie’s so he wouldn’t be swept away by the crowd. He hated the boys they’d been, two stupid pigeons waiting to be plucked. But those boys were long gone, and only Pekka Rollins was left to punish.

One day Rollins would come to Kaz on his knees, begging for help. If Kaz managed this job for

Van Eck, that day would come much sooner than he ever could have hoped.
Brick by brick, I will
destroy you.

But if Kaz had any hope of getting into the Ice Court, he needed the right crew, and the next hour ’s business would bring him a step closer to securing two very vital pieces of the puzzle.

He turned onto a walkway bordering one of the smaller canals. The tourists and merchers liked to keep to well-lit thoroughfares, so the foot traffic here was sparser, and he made better time. Soon, the lights and music of West Stave came into view, the canal choked with men and women of every class and country seeking diversion.

Music floated out of parlours where the doors had been flung open, and men and women lounged

on couches in little more than scraps of silk and gaudy baubles. Acrobats dangled from cords over the canal, lithe bodies garbed in nothing but glitter, while street performers played their fiddles, hoping to garner a coin or two from passersby. Hawkers shouted at the sleek private
gondels
of rich merchers in the canal and the larger browboats that brought tourists and sailors inland from the Lid.

A lot of tourists never entered the brothels of West Stave. They just came to watch the crowd, which was a sight in itself. Many people chose to visit this part of the Barrel in disguise – in veils or masks or capes with nothing but the glint of their eyes visible. They bought their costumes in one of the speciality shops off the main canals, and sometimes disappeared from their companions for a day or a week, or however long their funds held out. They dressed as Mister Crimson or the Lost Bride, or wore the grotesque, goggle-eyed mask of the Madman – all characters from the Komedie Brute.

And then there were the Jackals, a group of rowdy men and boys who cavorted through the Barrel in the red lacquered masks of Suli ‘fortune-tellers’.

Kaz remembered when Inej had first seen the jackal masks in a shop window. She hadn’t been able to contain her contempt. “Real Suli fortune-tellers are rare. They’re holy men and women. These masks that are handed around like party favours are sacred symbols.”

“I’ve seen Suli tellers ply their trade in caravans and pleasure ships, Inej. They didn’t seem so very holy.”

“They are pretenders. Making themselves clowns for you and your ilk.”

“My ilk?” Kaz had laughed.

She’d waved her hand in disgust. “
Shevrati
,” she’d said. “Know-nothings. They’re laughing at you behind those masks.”

“Not at me, Inej. I’d never lay down good coin to be told my future by anyone – fraud or holy man.”

“Fate has plans for us all, Kaz.”

“Was it fate that took you from your family and stuck you in a pleasure house in Ketterdam? Or was it just very bad luck?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she’d said coldly.

In moments like that, he thought she might hate him.

Kaz wove his way through the crowd, a shadow in a riot of colour. Each of the major pleasure houses had a speciality, some more obvious than others. He passed the Blue Iris, the Bandycat, bearded men glowering from the windows of the Forge, the Obscura, the Willow Switch, the dewy-eyed blondes at the House of Snow, and of course the Menagerie, also known as the House of Exotics, where Inej had been forced to don fake Suli silks. He spotted Tante Heleen in her peacock feathers and famous diamond choker holding court in the gilded parlour. She ran the Menagerie, procured the girls, made sure they behaved. When she saw Kaz, her lips thinned to a sour line, and she lifted her glass, the gesture more threat than toast. He ignored her and pressed on.

The House of the White Rose was one of the more luxurious establishments on West Stave. It had its own dock, and its gleaming white stone façade looked less like a pleasure house than a mercher mansion. Its window boxes were always bursting with climbing white roses, and their scent clung dense and sweet over this portion of the canal.

The parlour was even stickier with perfume. Huge alabaster vases overflowed with more white roses, and men and women – some masked or veiled, some with faces bare – waited on ivory couches, sipping near-colourless wine and nibbling little vanilla cakes soaked in almond liqueur.

The boy at the desk was dressed in a creamy velvet suit, a white rose in his buttonhole. He had white hair and eyes the colour of boiled eggs. Barring the eyes, he looked like an albino, but Kaz happened to know that he’d been tailored to match the decor of the House by a certain Grisha on the payroll.

“Mister Brekker,” the boy said, “Nina is with a client.”

Kaz nodded and slipped down a hallway behind a potted rose tree, resisting the urge to bury his nose in his collar. Onkle Felix, the bawd who ran the White Rose, liked to say that his house girls were as sweet as his blossoms. But the joke was on the clients. That particular breed of white rose, the only one hardy enough to survive the wet weather of Ketterdam, had no natural scent. All the flowers were perfumed by hand.

Kaz trailed his fingers along the panels behind the potted tree and pressed his thumb into a notch in the wall. It slid open, and he climbed a corkscrew staircase that was only used by staff.

Nina’s room was on the third floor. The door to the bedroom beside it was open and the room unoccupied, so Kaz slipped in, moved aside a still life, and pressed his face to the wall. The peepholes were a feature of all the brothels. They were a way to keep employees safe and honest, and they offered a thrill to anyone who enjoyed watching others take their pleasure. Kaz had seen enough slum dwellers seeking satisfaction in dark corners and alleys that the allure was lost on him. Besides, he knew that anyone looking through this particular peephole and hoping for excitement would be sorely disappointed.

A little bald man was seated fully clothed at a round table draped in ivory baize, his hands neatly folded beside an untouched silver coffee tray. Nina Zenik stood behind him, swathed in the red silk
kefta
that advertised her status as a Grisha Heartrender, one palm pressed to his forehead, the other to the back of his neck. She was tall and built like the figurehead of a ship carved by a generous hand.

They were silent, as if they’d been frozen there at the table. There wasn’t even a bed in the room, just a narrow settee where Nina curled up every night.

When Kaz had asked Nina why, she’d simply said, “I don’t want anyone getting ideas.”

“A man doesn’t need a bed to get ideas, Nina.”

Nina fluttered her lashes. “What would you know about it, Kaz? Take those gloves off, and we’ll see what ideas come to mind.”

Kaz had kept his cool eyes on her until she’d dropped her gaze. He wasn’t interested in flirting with Nina Zenik, and he happened to know she wasn’t remotely interested in him. Nina just liked to flirt with everything. He’d once seen her make eyes at a pair of shoes she fancied in a shop window.

Nina and the bald man sat, unspeaking, as the minutes ticked by, and when the hour on the clock chimed, he rose and kissed her hand.

“Go,” she said in solemn tones. “Be at peace.”

The bald man kissed her hand again, tears in his eyes. “Thank you.”

As soon as the client was down the hall, Kaz stepped out of the bedroom and knocked on Nina’s

door.

She opened it cautiously, keeping the chain latched. “Oh,” she said when she saw Kaz. “You.”

She didn’t look particularly happy to see him. No surprise. Kaz Brekker at your door was rarely a good thing. She unhooked the chain and let him show himself in as she shucked off the red
kefta
, revealing a slip of satin so thin it barely counted as cloth.