Six of Crows

by Leigh Bardugo

  He made a neat slash across Oomen’s eye—from brow to cheekbone—and before Oomen could draw breath to cry out, he made a second cut in the opposite direction, a nearly perfect X. Now Oomen was screaming.

  Kaz wiped the knife clean, returned it to his sleeve, and drove his gloved fingers into Oomen’s eye socket. He shrieked and twitched as Kaz yanked out his eyeball, its base trailing a bloody root. Blood gushed over his face.

  Kaz heard Wylan retching. He tossed the eyeball overboard and jammed his spit-soaked handkerchief into the socket where Oomen’s eye had been. Then he grabbed Oomen’s jaw, his gloves leaving red smears on the enforcer’s chin. His actions were smooth, precise, as if he were dealing cards at the Crow Club or picking an easy lock, but his rage felt hot and mad and unfamiliar. Something within him had torn loose.

  “Listen to me,” he hissed, his face inches from Oomen’s. “You have two choices. You tell me what I want to know, and we drop you at our next port with your pockets full of enough coin to get you sewn up and buy you passage back to Kerch. Or I take the other eye, and I repeat this conversation with a blind man.”

  “It was just a job,” babbled Oomen. “Geels got five thousand kruge to bring the Black Tips out in force. We pulled in some Razorgulls, too.”

  “Then why not more men? Why not double your odds?”

  “You were supposed to be on the boat when it blew! We were just supposed to take care of the stragglers.”

  “Who hired you?”

  Oomen wavered, sucking on his lip, snot running from his nose.

  “Don’t make me ask again, Oomen,” Kaz said quietly. “Whoever it was can’t protect you now.”

  “He’ll kill me.”

  “And I’ll make you wish for death, so you have to weigh those options.”

  “Pekka Rollins,” Oomen sobbed. “It was Pekka Rollins!”

  Even through his own shock, Kaz registered the effect of the name on Jesper and Wylan. Helvar didn’t know enough to be intimidated.

  “Saints,” groaned Jesper. “We are so screwed.”

  “Is Rollins leading the crew himself?” Kaz asked Oomen.

  “What crew?”

  “To Fjerda.”

  “I don’t know about no crew. We were just supposed to stop you from getting out of the harbor.”

  “I see.”

  “I need a medik. Can you take me to a medik now?”

  “Of course,” said Kaz. “Right this way.” He took Oomen by the lapels and hoisted him off his feet, bracing his body against the railing.

  “I told you what you wanted!” Oomen screamed, struggling. “I did what you asked!”

  Despite Oomen’s knobby build, he was deceptively strong—farm strong like Jesper. He’d probably grown up in the fields.

  Kaz leaned in so that no one else could hear it when he said, “My Wraith would counsel mercy. But thanks to you, she’s not here to plead your case.”

  Without another word, he tipped Oomen into the sea.

  “No!” Wylan shouted, leaning over the railing, his face pale, stunned eyes tracking Oomen in the waves. The enforcer’s pleas were still audible as his maimed face faded from view.

  “You … you said if he helped you—”

  “Do you want to go over, too?” asked Kaz.

  Wylan took a deep breath as if sucking in courage and sputtered, “You won’t throw me overboard. You need me.”

  Why do people keep saying that? “Maybe,” said Kaz. “But I’m not in a very rational mood.”

  Jesper set his hand on Wylan’s shoulder. “Let it go.”

  “It’s not right—”

  “Wylan,” Jesper said, giving him a little shake. “Maybe your tutors didn’t cover this lesson, but you do not argue with a man covered in blood and a knife up his sleeve.”

  Wylan pressed his lips into a thin line. Kaz couldn’t tell if the kid was frightened or furious, and he didn’t much care. Helvar stood silent sentinel, observing it all, looking seasick green beneath his blond beard.

  Kaz turned to Jesper. “Fit Helvar with some shackles to keep him honest,” he said as he headed below. “And get me clean clothes and fresh water.”

  “Since when am I your valet?”

  “Man with a knife, remember?” he said over his shoulder.

  “Man with a gun!” Jesper called after him.

  Kaz replied with a time-saving gesture that relied heavily on his middle finger and disappeared belowdecks. He wanted a hot bath and a bottle of brandy, but he’d settle for being alone and free of the stink of blood for a while.

  Pekka Rollins. The name rattled through his head like gunfire. It always came back to Pekka Rollins, the man who had taken everything from him. The man who now stood between Kaz and the biggest haul any crew had ever attempted. Would Rollins send someone in his place or lead the crew to nab Bo Yul-Bayur himself?

  In the dim confines of his cabin, Kaz whispered, “Brick by brick.” Killing Pekka Rollins had always been tempting, but that wasn’t enough. Kaz wanted Rollins brought low. He wanted him to suffer the way Kaz had, the way Jordie had. And snatching thirty million kruge right out of Pekka Rollins’ grubby hands was a very good way to start. Maybe Inej was right. Maybe fate did bother with people like him.

  14

  NINA

  In the cramped little surgeon’s cabin, Nina tried to put Inej’s body back together, but she hadn’t been trained for this type of work.

  For the first two years of their education in Ravka’s capital, all Grisha Corporalki studied together, took the same classes, performed the same autopsies. But then their training diverged. Healers learned the intricate work of healing wounds, while Heartrenders became soldiers—experts at doing damage, not undoing it. It was a different way of thinking about what was essentially the same power. But the living asked more of you than the dead. A killing stroke took decision, clarity of intent. Healing was slow, deliberate, a rhythm that required thoughtful study of each small choice. The jobs she’d done for Kaz over the last year helped, and in a way so had her work carefully altering moods and tailoring faces at the White Rose.

  But looking down at Inej, Nina wished her own school training hadn’t been so abbreviated. The Ravkan civil war had erupted when she was still a student at the Little Palace, and she and her classmates had been forced to go into hiding. When the fighting had ended and the dust had settled, King Nikolai had been anxious to get the few remaining Grisha soldiers trained and in the field, so Nina had spent only six months in advanced classes before she’d been sent out on her first mission. At the time, she’d been thrilled. Now she would have been grateful for even another week of school.

  Inej was lithe, all muscle and fine bones, built like an acrobat. The knife had entered beneath her left arm. It had been a very close thing. A little deeper and the blade would have pierced the apex of the heart.

  Nina knew that if she simply sealed Inej’s skin the way she’d done with Wylan, the girl would just continue to bleed internally, so she’d tried to stop the bleeding from the inside out. She thought she’d managed it well enough, but Inej had lost a lot of blood, and Nina had no idea what to do about that. She’d heard some Healers could match one person’s blood to another’s, but if it was done incorrectly, it was as good as poisoning the patient. The process was far beyond her.

  She finished closing the wound, then covered Inej with a light wool blanket. For now, all Nina could do was monitor her pulse and breathing. As she settled Inej’s arms beneath the blanket, Nina saw the scarred flesh on the inside of her forearm. She brushed her thumb gently over the bumps and ridges. It must have been the peacock feather, the tattoo borne by members of the Menagerie, the House of Exotics. Whoever had removed it had done an ugly job of it.

  Curious, Nina pushed up Inej’s other sleeve. The skin there was smooth and unmarked. Inej hadn’t taken on the crow and cup, the tattoo carried by any full member of the Dregs. Alliances shifted this way and that in the Barrel, but your gang was your family, the only protec
tion that mattered. Nina herself bore two tattoos. The one on her left forearm was for the House of the White Rose. The one that counted was on her right: a crow trying to drink from a near empty goblet. It told the world she belonged to the Dregs, that to trifle with her was to risk their vengeance.

  Inej had been with the Dregs longer than Nina and yet no tattoo. Strange. She was one of the most valued members of the gang, and it was clear Kaz trusted her—as much as someone like Kaz could. Nina thought of the look on his face when he’d set Inej down on the table. He was the same Kaz—cold, rude, impossible—but beneath all that anger, she thought she’d seen something else, too. Or maybe she was just a romantic.

  She had to laugh at herself. She wouldn’t wish love on anyone. It was the guest you welcomed and then couldn’t be rid of.

  Nina brushed Inej’s straight black hair back from her face. “Please be okay,” she whispered. She hated the frail waver of her voice in the cabin. She didn’t sound like a Grisha soldier or a hardened member of the Dregs. She sounded like a little girl who didn’t know what she was doing. And that was exactly how she felt. Her training had been too short. She’d been sent out on her first mission too soon. Zoya had said as much at the time, but Nina had begged to go, and they’d needed her, so the older Grisha had relented.

  Zoya Nazyalensky—a powerful Squaller, gorgeous to the point of absurdity, and capable of reducing Nina’s confidence to ash with a single raised brow. Nina had worshipped her. Reckless, foolish, easily distracted. Zoya had called her all those things and worse.

  “You were right, Zoya. Happy now?”

  “Giddy,” said Jesper from the doorway.

  Nina startled and looked up to see him rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Who’s Zoya?” he asked.

  Nina slumped back in her chair. “No one. A member of the Grisha Triumvirate.”

  “Fancy. The ones who run the Second Army?”

  “What’s left of it.” Ravka’s Grisha soldiers had been decimated during the war. Some had fled. Most had been killed. Nina rubbed her tired eyes. “Do you know the best way to find Grisha who don’t want to be found?”

  Jesper scrubbed the back of his neck, touched his hands to his guns, returned to his neck. He always seemed to be in motion. “Never gave it much thought,” he said.

  “Look for miracles and listen to bedtime stories.” Follow the tales of witches and goblins, and unexplained happenings. Sometimes they were just superstition. But often there was truth at the heart of local legends—people who had been born with gifts that their countries didn’t understand. Nina had gotten very good at sniffing out those stories.

  “Seems to me if they don’t want to be found, you should just let them be.”

  Nina cast him a dark glance. “The drüskelle won’t let them be. They hunt Grisha everywhere.”

  “Are they all charmers like Matthias?”

  “And worse.”

  “I need to find his leg shackles. Kaz gives me all the fun jobs.”

  “Want to trade?” Nina asked wearily.

  The frenetic energy of Jesper’s lanky frame seemed to drop away. He went as still as Nina had ever seen him, and his gaze focused on Inej for the first time since he’d entered the little cabin. He was avoiding it, Nina realized. He didn’t want to look at her. The blankets shifted slightly with her shallow breaths. When Jesper spoke, his voice was taut, the strings of an instrument tuned to a too-sharp key.

  “She can’t die,” he said. “Not this way.”

  Nina peered at Jesper, puzzled. “Not what way?”

  “She can’t die,” he repeated.

  Nina felt a surge of frustration. She was torn between wanting to hug Jesper tight and scream at him that she was trying. “Saints, Jesper,” she said. “I’m doing my best.”

  He shifted, and his body seemed to come back alive. “Sorry,” he said a bit sheepishly. He clapped her awkwardly on the shoulder. “You’re doing great.”

  Nina sighed. “Not convincing. Why don’t you go chain up a giant blond?”

  Jesper saluted and ducked out of the cabin.

  Annoying as he was, Nina was almost tempted to call him back. With Jesper gone, there was nothing but Zoya’s voice in her head and the reminder that her best wasn’t good enough.

  Inej’s skin felt too cool to the touch. Nina laid a hand on each of the girl’s shoulders and tried to improve her blood flow, raising her body temperature very slightly.

  She hadn’t been completely honest with Jesper. The Grisha Triumvirate hadn’t just wanted to save Grisha from Fjerdan witchhunters. They’d sent missions to the Wandering Isle and Novyi Zem because Ravka needed soldiers. They’d sought out Grisha who might be living in secret and tried to convince them to take up residence in Ravka and enter service to the crown.

  Nina had been too young to fight in the Ravkan civil war, and she’d been desperate to be part of the rebuilding of the Second Army. It was her gift for languages—Shu, Kaelish, Suli, Fjerdan, even some Zemeni—that finally overcame Zoya’s reservations. She agreed to let Nina accompany her and a team of Grisha Examiners to the Wandering Isle, and despite all of Zoya’s misgivings, Nina had been a success. Disguised as a traveler, she would slip into taverns and coach houses to eavesdrop on conversations and chat with the locals, then bring the peasant talk back to camp.

  If you’re going to Maroch Glen, make sure to travel by day. Troubled spirits walk those lands—storms erupt out of nowhere.

  The Witch of Fells is real, all right. My second cousin went to her with an outbreak of tsifil and swears he’s never been healthier. What do you mean he’s not right in the head? More right than you’ll ever be.

  They’d found two Grisha families hiding out in the supposed fairy caves of Istamere, and they’d saved a mother, father, and two boys—Inferni, who could control fire—from a mob in Fenford. They even raided a slaving ship near the port in Leflin. Once the refugees had been sorted, those without powers had been offered safe passage back home. Those whose powers had been confirmed by a Grisha Examiner were offered asylum in Ravka. Only the old Heartrender known as the Witch of Fells chose to remain. “If they want my blood, let them come for it,” she’d laughed. “I’ll take some of theirs in return.”

  Nina spoke Kaelish like a native and loved the challenge of taking on a new identity in every town. But for all their triumphs, Zoya hadn’t been pleased. “Being good with languages isn’t enough,” she’d scolded. “You need to learn to be less … big. You’re too loud, too effusive, too memorable. You take too many risks.”

  “Zoya,” said the Examiner they were traveling with. “Go easy.” He was a living amplifier. Dead, his bones would have served to heighten Grisha power, no different from the shark teeth or bear claws that other Grisha wore. But alive, he was invaluable to their mission, trained to use his amplifier gifts to sense Grisha power through touch.

  Most of the time, Zoya was protective of him, but now her deep blue eyes flattened to slits. “My teachers didn’t go easy on me. If she ends up chased through the woods by a mob of peasants, will you tell them to go easy?”

  Nina had stomped off, pride smarting, embarrassed by the tears filling her eyes. Zoya had shouted at her not to go past the ridge, but she’d ignored her, eager to be as far away from the Squaller as she could get—and walked right into a drüskelle camp. Six blond boys all speaking Fjerdan, clustered on a cliff above the shore. They’d made no campfire and were dressed as Kaelish peasants, but she’d known what they were right away.

  They’d stared at her for a long moment, lit only by silvery moonlight.

  “Oh thank goodness,” she’d said in lilting Kaelish. “I’m traveling with my family, and I got turned around in the woods. Can one of you help me find the road?”

  “I think she’s lost,” one of them translated in Fjerdan for the others.

  Another rose, a lantern in his hand. He was taller than the others, and all her instincts screamed at her to run as he drew closer. They don’t know wha
t you are, she reminded herself. You’re just a nice Kaelish girl, lost in the woods. Don’t do anything stupid. Lead him away from the others, then take him down.

  He raised his lantern, the light shining over both of their faces. His hair was long and burnished gold, and his pale blue eyes glinted like ice beneath a winter sun. He looks like a painting, she thought, a Saint wrought in gold leaf on the walls of a church, born to wield a sword of fire.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked in Fjerdan.

  She feigned confusion. “I’m sorry,” she said in Kaelish. “I don’t understand. I’m lost.”

  He lunged toward her. She didn’t stop to think, but simply reacted, raising her hands to attack. He was too quick. Without hesitation, he dropped the lantern and seized her wrists, slamming her hands together, making it impossible for her to use her power.

  “Drüsje,” he said with satisfaction. Witch. He had a wolf’s smile.

  The attack had been a test. A girl lost in the woods cowered; she reached for a knife or a gun. She didn’t try to use her hands to stop a man’s heart. Reckless. Impulsive.

  This was why Zoya hadn’t wanted to bring her. Properly trained Grisha didn’t make these mistakes. Nina had been a fool, but she didn’t have to be a traitor. She pleaded with them in Kaelish, not Ravkan, and she didn’t cry out for help—not when they bound her hands, not when they threatened her, not when they tossed her in a rowboat like a bag of millet. She wanted to scream her terror, bring Zoya running, beg for someone to save her, but she wouldn’t risk the others’ lives. The drüskelle rowed her to a ship anchored off the coast and threw her into a cage belowdecks full of other captive Grisha. That was when the real horror had begun.

  Night blended into day in the dank belly of the ship. The Grisha prisoners’ hands were kept tightly bound to keep them from using their power. They were fed tough bread crawling with weevils—only enough to keep them alive—and had to ration fresh water carefully since they never knew when they might have it next. They’d been given no place to relieve themselves, and the stink of bodies and worse was nearly unbearable.