“Glad you dressed for the occasion,” Jesper gasped, still trying to regain his breath.
The Shu soldier inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, and smiled.
Jesper scrambled backward. The soldier followed. Jesper cursed himself for not taking the stadwatch grunt’s gun. The little pistol was no good for distance shooting, but it would have been better than nothing with a giant staring him down.
He leapt to his feet and sprinted back down the nave. If he could make it to the cathedral … he might have some explaining to do. But the Shu soldier wouldn’t attack him in the middle of the auction. Would he?
Jesper wasn’t going to find out. The soldier slammed into him from behind, dragging him to the ground. The cathedral seemed impossibly far away, the clamor from the auction and the Council of Tides a distant echo bouncing off the high stone walls. Action and echo , he thought nonsensically as the soldier flipped him over.
Jesper wriggled like a fish, evading the big man’s grip, grateful he was built like a heron on a strict diet. He was on his feet again, but the soldier was fast despite his size. He flung Jesper against the wall and Jesper released a yelp of pain, wondering if he’d broken a rib. It’s good for you. Jogs the liver.
He couldn’t think straight with this oaf manhandling him.
Jesper saw the giant’s fist draw back, the gleam of metal on his fingers. They gave him real brass knuckles , he realized in horror. They built them into his hand.
He ducked left just in time. The soldier’s fist struck the wall beside his head with a thunderous crack.
“Slippery,” said the soldier in heavily accented Kerch. Again he inhaled deeply.
He caught my scent , Jesper thought. That day on the Stave. He doesn’t care that he might be found by the stadwatch, he’s been hunting and now he’s found his quarry.
The soldier drew his fist back again. He was going to knock Jesper senseless and then … what? Bash down the chapel door and carry him along the street like a sack of grain? Hand him off to one of his winged companions?
At least I’ll never be able to disappoint anyone again. They would dose him full of parem . Maybe he’d live long enough to make the Shu a new batch of Kherguud.
He dodged right. The soldier’s fist pounded another crater into the church wall.
The giant’s face contorted in rage. He pinned Jesper by the throat and hauled back to strike a final time.
A thousand thoughts jammed into Jesper’s head in a single second: His father’s crumpled hat. The gleam of his pearl-handled revolvers. Inej standing straight as an arrow. I don’t want an apology. Wylan seated at the table in the tomb, gnawing on the edge of his thumb. Any kind of sugar, he said, and then … keep it away from sweat, blood, saliva.
The chemical weevil. Inej had dumped the unused vials on the table in the Ketterdam suite. He’d fidgeted with one when he and his father were arguing. Now Jesper’s fingers fumbled in his pants pocket, hand closing over the glass vial.
“Parem! ” Jesper blurted. It was one of the only Shu words he knew.
The soldier paused, fist in midair. He cocked his head to the side.
Always hit where the mark isn’t looking.
Jesper made a show of parting his lips and pretended to shove something between them.
The soldier’s eyes widened and his grip loosened as he tried to tear Jesper’s hand away. The Kherguud made a sound, maybe a grunt, maybe the beginnings of a protest. It didn’t much matter. With his other hand, Jesper smashed the glass vial into the soldier’s open mouth.
The giant flinched back as glass shards lodged in his lips and spilled over his chin, blood oozing around them. Jesper rubbed his hand furiously against his shirt, hoping he hadn’t nicked his own fingers and let in the weevil. But nothing happened. The soldier didn’t seem anything but angry. He growled and seized Jesper’s shoulders, lifting him off his feet. Oh, Saints , thought Jesper, maybe he’s not going to bother taking me to his pals. He grabbed at the giant’s thick arms, trying to break his hold.
The Kherguud gave Jesper a shake. He coughed, big chest shuddering, and shook Jesper again—a weak, stuttering jiggle.
Then Jesper realized—the soldier wasn’t shaking him, the soldier was just shaking.
A low hiss emerged from the giant’s mouth, the sound of eggs dropped onto a hot skillet. Pink foam bubbled up from his lips, a froth of blood and saliva that dribbled over his chin. Jesper recoiled.
The soldier moaned. His massive hands released Jesper’s shoulders and Jesper edged backward, unable to tear his eyes away from the Kherguud as his body began to convulse, chest heaving. The soldier bent double as a stream of pink bile spewed from his lips, spattering the wall.
“Missed me again,” said Jesper, trying not to gag.
The giant tipped sideways and toppled to the floor, still as a fallen oak.
For a moment, Jesper just stared at his enormous body. Then sense returned to him. How much time had he lost? He bolted back toward the chapels at the end of the thumb nave.
Before he reached the door, Inej emerged, hurrying toward him. He’d missed the meet. She wouldn’t have come after him unless she thought he was in trouble.
“Jesper, where—”
“Gun,” he demanded.
Without another word, she unslung it from her shoulder. He snatched it from her, running back toward the cathedral. If he could just make it up to the arcade.
The siren sounded. Too late. He’d never make it in time. He was going to fail them all. What good is a shooter without his guns? What good was Jesper if he couldn’t make the shot? They’d be trapped in this city. They’d be jailed, probably executed. Kuwei would be sold to the highest bidder. Parem would burn a swath through the world and Grisha would be hunted with even more fervor. In Fjerda, the Wandering Isle, Novyi Zem. The zowa would vanish, pressed into military service, devoured by this curse of a drug.
The siren rose and fell. There were shouts inside the cathedral. People were running for the main doors; soon they’d spill over into the thumb, seeking another way out.
Anyone can shoot, but not everybody can aim. His mother’s voice. We’re zowa. You and me.
Impossible. He couldn’t even get eyes on Kuwei from here—and no one could shoot around a corner.
But Jesper knew the layout of the cathedral well enough. He knew it was a straight shot up the aisle to where the auction block stood. He could see the second button of Kuwei’s shirt in his mind’s eye.
Impossible.
A bullet had only one trajectory.
But what if that bullet could be guided?
Not everybody can aim.
“Jesper?” said Inej from behind him. He raised his rifle. It was an ordinary firearm, but he’d converted it himself. There was only a single round inside it—nonlethal, a mixture of wax and rubber. If he missed, someone could be hurt badly. But if he didn’t shoot, a lot of people would be hurt. Hell , Jesper thought, maybe if I miss Kuwei, I’ll take out one of Van Eck’s eyes .
He’d worked with gunsmiths, made his own ammunition. He knew his guns better than he knew the rules of Makker’s Wheel. Jesper focused on the bullet, sensed the smallest parts of it. Maybe he was the same. A bullet in a chamber, spending his whole life waiting for the moment when he would have direction.
Anyone can shoot.
“Inej,” he said, “if you have a spare prayer, this would be the time for it.”
He fired.
It was as if time slowed—he felt the kick of the rifle, the unstoppable momentum of the bullet. With all his will, he focused on its wax casing and pulled to the left, the shot still ringing in his ears. He felt the bullet turn, focused on that button, the second button, a little piece of wood, the threads holding it in place.
It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. But when it came down to it, Jesper’s life had been full of blessings. His father. His mother. Inej. Nina. Matthias leading them across the muddy canal. Kaz—even Kaz, with all his cruelties and failings, had given hi
m a home and a family in the Dregs when Ketterdam might have swallowed him whole. And Wylan. Wylan who had understood before Jesper ever had that the power inside him might be a blessing too.
“What did you just do?” asked Inej.
Maybe nothing. Maybe the impossible. Jesper never could resist long odds.
He shrugged. “The same thing I always do. I took a shot.”
K az had been standing next to Kuwei when the bullet struck and had been the first to his side. He heard a smattering of gunfire in the cathedral, most likely panicked stadwatch officers with hasty trigger fingers. Kaz knelt over Kuwei’s body, hiding his left hand from view, and jabbed a syringe into the Shu boy’s arm. There was blood everywhere. Jellen Radmakker had fallen to the stage and was bellowing, “I’ve been shot!” He had not been shot.
Kaz shouted for the medik. The little bald man stood paralyzed beside the stage where he’d been tending to Wylan, his face horror-stricken. Matthias seized the medik’s elbow and dragged him over.
People were still pushing to get out of the church. A brawl had erupted between the Ravkan soldiers and the Fjerdans as Sturmhond, Zoya, and Genya bolted for an exit. The members of the Merchant Council had surrounded Van Eck with a clutch of men from the stadwatch . He wasn’t going anywhere.
A moment later, Kaz saw Inej and Jesper pushing against the tide of people trying to escape down the center aisle. Kaz let his eyes scan Inej once. She was bloody, and her eyes were red and swollen, but she seemed all right.
“Kuwei—” said Inej.
“We can’t help him now,” said Kaz.
“Wylan!” Jesper said, taking in the cuts and rapidly forming bruises. “Saints, is all that real?”
“Anika and Keeg did a number on him.”
“I wanted it to be believable,” said Wylan.
“I admire your commitment to the craft,” said Kaz. “Jesper, stay with Wylan. They’re going to want to question him.”
“I’m fine,” said Wylan, though his lip was so swollen it sounded more like, “I’b fibe.”
Kaz spared a single nod for Matthias as two stadwatch guards lifted Kuwei’s body onto a stretcher. Instead of fighting the crowds in the cathedral, they headed for the arch that led to Ghezen’s little finger and the exit beyond. Matthias trailed them, pulling the medik along. There could be no questions surrounding Kuwei’s survival.
Kaz and Inej followed them into the nave, but Inej paused at the archway. Kaz saw her look once over her shoulder, and when he tracked her gaze he saw that Van Eck, surrounded by furious councilmen, was staring right back at her. He remembered the words she’d spoken to Van Eck on Goedmedbridge, You will see me once more, but only once. From the nervous bob of Van Eck’s throat, he was remembering too. Inej gave the smallest bow.
They raced up the pinky nave and into the chapel. But the door to the street and the canal beyond was locked. Behind them, the door to the chapel banged shut. Pekka Rollins leaned back against it, surrounded by four of his Dime Lion crew.
“Right on time,” said Kaz.
“I suppose you predicted this too, you tricksy bastard?”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me walk away this time.”
“No,” Rollins conceded. “When you came to me looking for money, I should have gutted you and your friends and saved myself a lot of hassle. That was foolish of me.” Rollins began to shrug off his jacket. “I can admit I didn’t show you the proper respect, lad, but now you’ve got it. Congratulations. You’re worth the time it’s going to take me to beat you to death with that stick of yours.” Inej drew her knives. “No, no, little girl,” Rollins said warningly. “This is between me and this skivstain upstart.”
Kaz nodded to Inej. “He’s right. We’re long overdue for a chat.”
Rollins laughed, unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. “The time for talk is over, lad. You’re young, but I’ve been brawling since long before you were born.”
Kaz didn’t move; he kept his hands resting on his cane. “I don’t need to fight you, Rollins. I’m going to offer you a trade.”
“Ah, a fair exchange in the Church of Barter. You cost me a lot of money and earned me a lot of trouble with your scheming. I don’t see what you could possibly have to offer that would satisfy me as much as killing you with my bare hands.”
“It’s about the Kaelish Prince.”
“Three stories of paradise, the finest gambling den on East Stave. You plant a bomb there or something?”
“No, I mean the little Kaelish prince.” Rollins stilled. “Fond of sweets, red hair like his father. Doesn’t take very good care of his toys.”
Kaz reached into his coat and drew out a small crocheted lion. It was a faded yellow, its yarn mane tangled—and stained by dark soil. Kaz let it drop to the floor.
Rollins stared at it. “What is that?” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. Then, as if coming back to himself, he shouted, “What is that? ”
“You know what it is, Rollins. And weren’t you the one who told me how much alike you and Van Eck are? Men of industry, building something to leave behind. Both of you so concerned with your legacy. What good is all that if there’s no one to leave it to? So I found myself asking, just who is he building for?”
Rollins clenched his fists, the meaty muscles of his forearms flexing, his jowls quivering. “I will kill you, Brekker. I will kill everything you love.”
Now Kaz laughed. “The trick is not to love anything, Rollins. You can threaten me all you like. You can gut me where I stand. But there’s no way you’ll find your son in time to save him. Shall I have him sent to your door with his throat cut and dressed in his best suit?”
“You trifling piece of Barrel trash,” Rollins snarled. “What the hell do you want from me?”
Kaz felt his humor slide away, felt that dark door open inside of him.
“I want you to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Seven years ago you ran a con on two boys from the south. Farm boys too stupid to know any better. You took us in, made us trust you, fed us hutspot with your fake wife and your fake daughter. You took our trust and then you took our money and then you took everything.” He could see Rollins’ mind working. “Can’t quite recall? There were so many, weren’t there? How many swindles that year? How many unlucky pigeons have you conned in the time since?”
“You have no right—” Pekka said angrily, his chest rising and falling in ragged bursts, his eyes drawn again and again to the toy lion.
“Don’t worry. Your boy isn’t dead. Yet.” Kaz watched Pekka’s face closely. “Here, I’ll help. You used the name Jakob Hertzoon. You made my brother a runner for you. You operated out of a coffeehouse.”
“Across from the park,” Pekka said quickly. “The one with the cherry trees.”
“That’s it.”
“It was a long time ago, boy.”
“You duped us out of everything. We ended up on the streets and then we died. Both of us in our own way. But only one of us was reborn.”
“Is that what this has been about all this time? Why you look at me with murder in those shark’s eyes of yours?” Pekka shook his head. “You were two pigeons, and I happened to be the one who plucked you. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else.”
That dark door opened wider. Kaz wanted to walk through it. He would never be whole. Jordie could never be brought back. But Pekka Rollins could learn the helplessness they’d known.
“Well, it’s your bad luck that it was you,” he bit out. “Yours and your son’s.”
“I think you’re bluffing.”
Kaz smiled. “I buried your son,” he crooned, savoring the words. “I buried him alive, six feet beneath the earth in a field of rocky soil. I could hear him crying the whole time, begging for his father. Papa, Papa. I’ve never heard a sweeter sound.”
“Kaz—” said Inej, her face pale. This she would not forgive him.
Rollins bulled toward him, grabbed
him by his lapels, and slammed him against the chapel wall. Kaz let him. Rollins was sweating like a moist plum, his face livid with desperation and terror. Kaz drank it in. He wanted to remember every moment of this.
“Tell me where he is, Brekker.” He smashed Kaz’s head against the wall again. “Tell me.”
“It’s a simple trade, Rollins. Just speak my brother’s name and your son lives.”
“Brekker—”
“Tell me my brother’s name,” Kaz repeated. “How about another hint? You invited us to a house on Zelverstraat. Your wife played the piano. Her name was Margit. There was a silver dog and you called your daughter Saskia. She wore a red ribbon in her braid. You see? I remember. I remember all of it. It’s easy.”
Rollins released him, paced the chapel, ran his hands through his thinning hair.
“Two boys,” he said frantically, searching for the memory. He whirled on Kaz, pointing. “I remember. Two boys from Lij. You had a piddling little fortune. Your brother fancied himself a trader, wanted to be a merch and get rich like every other nub who steps off a browboat in the Barrel.”
“That’s right. Two more fools for you to cozy. Now tell me his name.”
“Kaz and …” Rollins clasped his hands on top of his head. Back and forth he crossed the chapel, back and forth, breathing heavily, as if he’d run the length of the city. “Kaz and …” He turned back to Kaz. “I can make you rich, Brekker.”
“I can make myself rich.”
“I can give you the Barrel, influence you’ve never dreamed of. Whatever you want.”
“Bring my brother back from the dead.”
“He was a fool and you know it! He was like any other mark, thinking he was smarter than the system, looking to make quick coin. You can’t fleece an honest man, Brekker. You know that!”
Greed is my lever. Pekka Rollins had taught him that lesson, and he was right. They’d been fools. Maybe one day Kaz could forgive Jordie for not being the perfect brother he held in his heart. Maybe he could even absolve himself for being the kind of gullible, trusting boy who believed someone might simply want to be kind. But for Rollins there would be no reprieve.
Crooked Kingdom: Book 2 (Six of Crows) Page 45