Six of Crows (39 page)

“What are those things?” he whispered.

“
Torvegen
,” Matthias said under his breath. “They don’t need horses to pull them. They were still perfecting the design when I left.”

“No horses?”

“Tanks,” murmured Jesper. “I saw prototypes when I was working with a gunsmith in Novyi Zem.

Multiple guns in the turret, and that big barrel out in front? Serious firepower.”

There were also gravity-fed heavy artillery guns in the enclosure, racks full of rifles, ammunition, and the little black bombs that Ravkans called
grenatye
. On the walls behind the glass, older weapons had been arranged in an elaborate display – axes, spears, longbows. Above it all hung a banner in silver and white: STRYMAKT FJERDAN.

When Kaz glanced at Matthias, the big man muttered, “Fjerdan might.”

Kaz peered through the thick glass. He knew defences, and Nina had been right, this glass was another piece of Fabrikator work – bulletproof and impenetrable. Coming or going from the prison, captives would see weapons, armaments, machines of war – all a brutal reminder of the power of the Fjerdan state.

Go on and flex
, Kaz thought.
Doesn’t matter how big the gun is if you don’t know where to point it.

On the other side of the enclosure, he saw a second walkway, where the female prisoners were being marched.

Inej will be fine.
He had to stay sharp. They were in enemy territory now, a place of steep risk, the kind of fix you didn’t walk out of if you didn’t keep your wits about you. Had Pekka’s team made it this far before they’d been found out? And where was Pekka Rollins himself? Had he stayed safe and secure in Kerch, or was he a prisoner of the Fjerdans as well?

None of it mattered. For now, Kaz had to focus on the plan and finding Yul-Bayur. He glanced at the others. Wylan looked as if he was ready to wet himself. Helvar appeared grim as always. Jesper just grinned and whispered, “Well, we’ve managed to get ourselves locked into the most secure prison in the world. We’re either geniuses or the dumbest sons of bitches to ever breathe air.”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

They were led into another white room, this one equipped with tin tubs and hoses.

The guard gabbled something in Fjerdan, and Kaz saw Matthias and some of the others start to strip down. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. He refused to vomit.

He could do this, he had to do this. He thought of Jordie. What would Jordie say if his little brother lost their chance at justice because he couldn’t conquer some stupid sickness inside him? But it only brought back the memory of Jordie’s cold flesh, the way it had grown loose in the salt water, the bodies crowding around him in the flatboat. His vision started to blur.

Get it together, Brekker
, he scolded himself harshly. It didn’t help. He was going to faint again, and this would all be over. Inej had once offered to teach him how to fall. “The trick is not getting knocked down,” he’d told her with a laugh. “No, Kaz,” she’d said, “the trick is in getting back up.”

More Suli platitudes, but somehow even the memory of her voice helped. He was better than this. He had to be. Not just for Jordie, but for his crew. He’d brought these people here. He’d brought Inej here. It was his job to bring them out again.

The trick is in getting back up.
He kept her voice in his head, repeating those words, again and again, as he stripped off his boots, his clothes, and finally his gloves.

He saw that Jesper was staring at his hands. “What were you expecting?” Kaz growled.

“Claws, at least,” Jesper said, shifting his gaze to his own bony bare feet. “Possibly a spiny thumb.”

The guard returned from dumping their clothes in a bin that would no doubt be taken to the incinerator. He tilted Kaz’s head back roughly and forced his mouth open, feeling around with fat fingers. Black spots bloomed in Kaz’s sight as he fought to remain conscious. The guard’s fingers passed over the spot between Kaz’s teeth where he’d wedged the
baleen
, then pinched and prodded the interior of his cheeks.

“
Ondetjärn!
” the guard exclaimed. “
Fellenjuret!
” he shouted again as he pulled two slender pieces of metal from Kaz’s mouth. The lockpicks hit the stone floor with a
plink-plink
. The guard shouted something at him in Fjerdan and cuffed him hard across the face. Kaz fell to his knees, but forced himself back up. He registered Wylan’s panicked expression, but it was all he could do to stay on his feet as the guard shoved him into line for an ice-cold shower.

When he emerged, soaked and shaking, another guard handed him colourless, prison-issue trousers and a tunic from the stack beside him. Kaz pulled them on, then limped to the holding area with the rest of the prisoners. In that moment, he would have given up half his share of the thirty million
kruge
for the familiar heft of his cane.

The holding cells looked much more like the prison he had anticipated – no white stone or glass displays, just dank grey rock and iron bars.

They were herded into an already crowded cell. Helvar sat down with his back to the wall, surveying the pacing men, eyes slitted. Kaz rested against the iron bars, watching the guards depart.

He could sense the movements of the bodies behind him. There was space enough, but they still felt too close.
Just a little longer
, Kaz told himself. His hands felt impossibly bare.

Kaz waited. He knew what was coming. He’d sussed out the others as soon as they entered the cell, and he knew it would be the burly Kaelish with the birthmark who came for him. He was twitchy, nervous, and he’d taken obvious notice of Kaz’s limp.

“Hey, cripple,” the Kaelish said in Fjerdan. He tried again in Kerch, his lilt heavy. “Hey, crip.” He needn’t have bothered. Kaz knew the word for cripple in plenty of languages.

The next second, Kaz felt the air move as the Kaelish reached for him. He stepped left, and the Kaelish lurched forward, carried by his own momentum. Kaz helped him along, seizing the man’s arm and driving it through the space between bars, all the way up to the shoulder. The Kaelish let out a loud grunt as his face smashed up against the iron bars.

Kaz braced the man’s forearm against the metal. He threw his weight against his opponent’s body, and felt a satisfying pop as the Kaelish’s arm dislocated from his shoulder. As the man opened his lips to scream, Kaz covered his mouth with one hand and pinched his nose shut with the other. The feel of bare flesh on his fingers made him want to gag.

“Shhhhhh,” he said, using his grip on the man’s nose to steer him backwards to the bench against the wall. The other prisoners scattered to clear a path.

The man sat down hard, eyes watering, breathless. Kaz kept his hold on his nose and mouth. The Kaelish trembled beneath his grasp.

“You want me to put it back?” Kaz asked.

The Kaelish whimpered.

“Do you?”

He whimpered louder as the prisoners looked on.

“You scream, and I’ll make sure it never works right again, understand?”

He released the man’s mouth and shoved his arm back into its socket. The Kaelish rolled over on his side, curled up on the bench, and began to weep.

Kaz wiped his hands on his trousers and returned to his spot by the bars. He could feel the others watching, but now he knew he would be left in peace.

Helvar came up beside him. “Was that really necessary?”

“No.” But it had been – to make sure they were left alone to do what needed to be done, and to remember that he wasn’t helpless.

Jesper wanted to pace, but he’d staked out this spot on the bench, and he intended to keep it. It felt like little quakes of anxiety and excitement were vibrating under his skin, and Wylan seated next to him drumming frenetically on his kneecaps wasn’t helping him settle. He didn’t think he could handle much more waiting. First the boat, then all that hiking, and now he was stuck in a cell until the guards came by to make their evening head count.

Only his father had understood his restless energy. He’d tried to get Jesper to use it up on the farm, but the work had been too monotonous. University was supposed to be the thing that gave him direction, but instead he’d wandered down a different path. He cringed at what his father would say if he learned his son had died in a Fjerdan prison. Then again, how would he ever know? That was too depressing to dwell on.

How much time had passed? What if they couldn’t even hear the Elderclock in here? The guards

were supposed to make the head count at six bells. Then Jesper and the others would have until midnight to get the job done. They hoped. Matthias had only spent three months at the prison.

Protocols could have changed. He might have got something wrong.
Or maybe the Fjerdan just wants
us behind bars before he rats us out.

But Matthias was sitting silently on the far side of the cell near Kaz. Jesper hadn’t been able to miss Kaz’s little skirmish with the Kaelish. Kaz was usually unshakeable during a job, but now he was on edge, and Jesper didn’t know why. Part of him wanted to ask, though he knew that was the stupid part, the hopeful farmboy who picked the worst possible person to care about, who searched for signs in things that he knew deep down meant nothing – when Kaz chose him for a job, when Kaz played along with one of his jokes. He could have kicked himself. He’d finally seen the infamous Kaz Brekker without a stitch of clothing, and he’d been too worried about ending up on a pike to pay proper attention.

But if Jesper was anxious, Wylan looked as if he might actually throw up.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Wylan whispered. “What good is a lockpick without his picks?”

“Be quiet.”

“And what good are you? A sharpshooter without his guns. You’re completely extraneous to this

mission.”

“It’s not a mission; it’s a job.”

“Matthias calls it a mission.”

“He’s military, you’re not. And I’m already in jail, so don’t tempt me to commit homicide.”

“You aren’t going to kill me, and I’m not going to pretend everything is okay. We’re stuck in here.”

“You’re definitely better suited to a gilded cage than to a real one.”

“I left my father ’s house.”

“Yeah, you gave up a life of luxury so you could slum it with us sobs in the Barrel. That doesn’t make you interesting, Wylan, just stupid.”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“So tell me,” Jesper said, turning to him. “We have time. What makes a good little merch boy leave home to keep company with criminals?”

“You act like you were born in the Barrel like Kaz, but you’re not even Kerch. You chose this life, too.”

“I like cities.”

“They don’t have cities in Novyi Zem?”

“Not like Ketterdam. Have you ever even been anywhere but home, the Barrel, and fancy embassy

dinners?”

Wylan looked away. “Yes.”

“Where? The suburbs for peach season?”

“The races at Caryeva. The Shu oil fields. The
jurda
farms near Shriftport. Weddle. Elling.”

“Really?”

“My father used to take me everywhere with him.”

“Until?”

“Until what?”

“
Until.
My father took me everywhere
until
I contracted terrible seasickness,
until
I vomited at a royal wedding,
until
I tried to hump the ambassador ’s leg.”

“The leg was asking for it.”

Jesper released a bark of laughter. “Finally, a little spine.”

“I have plenty of spine,” Wylan grumbled. “And look where it got—”

He was interrupted by a guard’s voice shouting in Fjerdan just as the Elderclock began to chime six bells. At least the Fjerdans were punctual.

The guard spoke again in Shu and then in Kerch. “On your feet.”

“
Shimkopper
,” the guard demanded. They all looked at him blankly. “The piss bucket,” he tried in Kerch. “Where is … to empty?” He pantomimed.

There were shrugs and confused glances.

The guard’s gloomy sulk made it clear he couldn’t care less. He shoved a bucket of fresh water into the cell and slammed the bars shut.

Jesper pushed to the front and took a big gulp from the cup tied to its handle. Most of it splashed on his shirt. When he handed the cup to Wylan, he made sure it soaked him as well.

“What are you doing?” Wylan protested.

“Patience, Wylan. And do try to follow along.”

Jesper hiked up his pants and felt around the thin skin over his ankle.

“Tell me what’s happen—”

“Be quiet. I need to concentrate.” It was true. He really didn’t want the pellet buried beneath his skin to open up while it was still inside him.