Six of Crows Read online

  At the last second, Matthias dropped into a crouch, knocking the first wolf into the dirt, then rolling right to pick up the bloodied knife the previous combatant had left in the sand. He sprang to his feet, blade held out before him, but Nina could sense his reluctance. His head was cocked to one side, and the look in his blue eyes was pleading, as if he was trying to engage the two wolves circling him in some silent negotiation. Whatever the plea might have been, it went unheard. The wolf on the right lunged. Matthias crouched low and spun, lodging his knife in the wolf’s belly. It gave a miserable yelp, and Matthias seemed to shudder at the sound. It cost him precious seconds. The third wolf was on him, knocking him to the sand. Its teeth sank into his shoulder. He rolled, taking the wolf with him. The wolf’s jaws snapped, and Matthias caught them. He wrenched them apart, the muscles of his arms flexing, his face grim. Nina squeezed her eyes shut. There was a sickening crack. The crowd roared.

  Matthias knelt over the wolf. Its jaw was broken, and it lay on the ground twitching in pain. He reached for a rock and slammed it hard into the poor animal’s skull. It went still and Matthias’ shoulders slumped. The people howled, stomping their feet. Only Nina knew what this was costing him, that he’d been a drüskelle. Wolves were sacred to his kind, bred for battle like their enormous horses. They were friends and companions, fighting side by side with their drüskelle masters.

  The first wolf had recovered and was circling. Move, Matthias, she thought desperately. He got to his feet, but his movements were slow, weary. His heart wasn’t in this fight. His opponents were gray wolves, rangy and wild, but cousins to the white wolves of the Fjerdan north. Matthias had no knife, only the bloody rock in his hand, and the remaining wolf prowled the arena between him and the pile of weapons. The wolf lowered its head and bared its teeth.

  Matthias dove left. The wolf lunged, sinking its teeth into his side. He grunted, and hit the ground hard. For a moment, Nina thought he might simply give in and let the wolf take his life. Then he reached out, hand scrabbling through the sand, searching for something. His fingers closed over the shackles that had bound his wrists.

  He seized them, looped the chain across the wolf’s throat, and pulled, the veins in his neck cording from the strain. His bloody face was pressed against the wolf’s ruff, his eyes tightly shut, his lips moving. What was he saying? A drüskelle prayer? A farewell?

  The wolf’s hind legs scrabbled at the sand. Its eyes rolled, frightened whites showing bright against its matted fur. A high whine rose from its chest. And then it was over. The creature’s body stilled. Both fighters lay unmoving in the sand. Matthias kept his eyes closed, his face still buried in the creature’s fur.

  The crowd thundered its approval. The ladder was lowered, and the announcer sprang down, hauling Matthias to his feet and grabbing his wrist to raise his hand in victory. The announcer gave him a little nudge, and Matthias lifted his head. Nina caught her breath.

  Tears streaked the dirt on Matthias’ face. The rage was gone, and it was like some flame had gone out with it. His north sea eyes were colder than she’d ever seen them, empty of feeling, stripped of anything human at all. This was what Hellgate had done to him. And it was her fault.

  The guards took hold of Matthias again, pulling the shackles from the wolf’s throat and clapping them back on his wrists. As he was led away, the crowd chanted its disapproval, clamoring “More! More!”

  “Where are they taking him?” Nina asked, voice trembling.

  “To a cell to sleep off the fight,” Kaz said.

  “Who will see to his injuries?”

  “They have mediks. We’ll wait to make sure he’s alone.”

  I could heal him, she thought. But a darker voice rose in her, rich with mocking. Not even you can be that foolish, Nina. No Healer can cure that boy. You made sure of it.

  She thought she would leap from her skin as the minutes burned away. The others watched the next fight—Muzzen avidly, flexing his fingers and speculating on the outcome, Inej silent and still as a statue, Kaz inscrutable as always, scheming away behind that hideous mask. Nina slowed her own breathing, forced her pulse lower, trying to calm herself, but she could do nothing to mute the riot in her head.

  Finally, Kaz gave her a nudge. “Ready, Nina? The guard first.”

  She cast a glance at the prison guard standing by the archway.

  “How down?” It was a Barrel turn of phrase. How badly do you want him hurt?

  “Shut eye.” Knock him out, but don’t actually hurt him.

  They followed Kaz to the arch through which they’d entered. The rest of the crowd took little notice, eyes focused on the fighting below.

  “Need your escort?” the guard asked as they approached.

  “I had a question,” said Kaz. Beneath her cape, Nina lifted her hands, sensing the flow of blood in the guard’s veins, the tissue of his lungs. “About your mother and whether the rumors are true.”

  Nina felt the guard’s pulse leap and sighed. “Never can make it easy, can you, Kaz?”

  The guard stepped forward, lifting his gun. “What did you say? I—” His eyelids drooped. “You don’t—” Nina dropped his pulse, and he toppled forward.

  Muzzen grabbed him before he could fall as Inej swept him into the cloak Kaz had been wearing just moments before. Nina was only mildly surprised to see that Kaz was wearing a prison guard’s uniform beneath it.

  “Couldn’t you have just asked him the time or something?” Nina said. “And where did you get that uniform?”

  Inej slid the Madman’s mask down over the guard’s face, and Muzzen threw his arm around him, holding him up as if the guard had been drinking too much. They deposited him on one of the benches pressed against the back wall.

  Kaz tugged on the sleeves of his uniform. “Nina, people love to give up authority to men in nice clothes. I have uniforms for the stadwatch, the harbor police, and the livery of every merch mansion on the Geldstraat. Let’s go.”

  They slipped down the passageway.

  Instead of turning back the way they’d come, they moved counterclockwise around the old tower, the wall of the arena vibrating with voices and stomping feet to their left. The guards posted at each archway paid them little more than a glance, though a few nodded at Kaz, who kept a brisk pace, his face buried in his collar.

  Nina was so deep in thought that she nearly missed it when Kaz held up a hand for them to slow. They’d rounded a bend between two archways and were in the cover of deep shadow. Ahead of them, a medik was emerging from a cell accompanied by guards, one carrying a lantern. “He’ll sleep through the night,” the medik said. “Make sure he drinks something in the morning and check his pupils. I had to give him a powerful sleeping draft.”

  As the men moved off in the opposite direction, Kaz gestured his group forward. The door in the rock was solid iron, broken only by a narrow slot through which to pass the prisoner’s meals. Kaz bent to the lock.

  Nina eyed the crude iron door. “This place is barbaric.”

  “Most of the better fighters sleep in the old tower,” Kaz replied. “Keeps them away from the rest of the population.”

  Nina glanced left and right to where bright light spilled from the arena entryways. There were guards standing in those doorways, distracted maybe, but all one needed to do was turn his head. If they were caught here, would the guards bother giving them over to the stadwatch for trial or would they simply force them into the ring to be eaten by a tiger? Maybe something less dignified, she thought bleakly. A swarm of angry voles.

  It took Kaz a few quick heartbeats to pick the lock. The door creaked open and they slipped inside.

  The cell was pitch-black. A brief moment passed, and the cold green glow of a bonelight flickered to life beside her. Inej held the little glass sphere aloft. The substance inside was made from the dried and crushed bodies of luminous deep-sea fishes. They were common among crooks in the Barrel who didn’t want to get caught in a dark alley, but couldn’t be bothered to lug a
round lanterns.

  At least it’s clean, Nina thought, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Barren and icy cold, but not filthy. She saw a pallet of horse blankets and two buckets placed against the wall, one with a bloody cloth peeking over the rim.

  This was what the men of Hellgate competed for: a private cell, a blanket, clean water, a bucket for waste.

  Matthias slept with his back to the wall. Even in the dim illumination of the bonelight, she could see his face was starting to swell. Some kind of ointment had been smeared over his wounds—calendula. She recognized the smell.

  Nina moved toward him, but Kaz stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Let Inej assess the damage.”

  “I can—” Nina began.

  “I need you to work on Muzzen.”

  Inej tossed Kaz the crow-headed cane she must have been hiding beneath her Gray Imp costume, and knelt over Matthias’ body with the bonelight. Muzzen stepped forward. He removed his cloak and shirt and the Madman’s mask. His head was shaved, and he wore prison-issue trousers.

  Nina looked at Matthias then back to Muzzen, grasping what Kaz had in mind. The two boys were about the same height and the same build, but that was where the similarities ended.

  “You can’t possibly mean for Muzzen to take Matthias’ place.”

  “He isn’t here for his sparkling conversation,” Kaz replied. “You’ll need to reproduce Helvar’s injuries. Inej, what’s the inventory?”

  “Bruised knuckles, chipped tooth, two broken ribs,” Inej said. “Third and fourth on the left.”

  “His left or your left?” Kaz asked.

  “His left.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” Nina said in frustration. “I can match the damage to Helvar’s body, but I’m not a good enough Tailor to make Muzzen look like him.”

  “Just trust me, Nina.”

  “I wouldn’t trust you to tie my shoes without stealing the laces, Kaz.” She peered at Muzzen’s face. “Even if I swell him up, he’ll never pass.”

  “Tonight, Matthias Helvar—or rather, our dear Muzzen—is going to appear to contract firepox, the lupine strain, carried by wolves and dogs alike. Tomorrow morning, when his guards discover him so covered in pustules that he is unrecognizable, he will be quarantined for a month to see if he survives the fever and to outwait the contagion. Meanwhile Matthias will be with us. Get it?”

  “You want me to make Muzzen look like he has firepox?”

  “Yes, and do it quickly, Nina, because in about ten minutes, things are going to get very hectic around here.”

  Nina stared at him. What was Kaz planning? “No matter what I do to him, it won’t last a month. I can’t give him a permanent fever.”

  “My contact in the infirmary will make sure he stays sick enough. We just need to get him through diagnosis. Now get to work.”

  Nina looked Muzzen up and down. “This is going to hurt just as much as if you’d been in the fight yourself,” she warned.

  He scrunched up his face, bracing for the pain. “I can take it.”

  She rolled her eyes, then lifted her hands, concentrating. With a sharp slice of her right hand over her left, she snapped Muzzen’s ribs.

  He let out a grunt and doubled over.

  “That’s a good boy,” said Kaz. “Taking it like a champion. Knuckles next, then face.”

  Nina spread bruises and cuts over Muzzen’s knuckles and arms, matching the wounds to Inej’s descriptions.

  “I’ve never seen firepox up close,” Nina said. She was only familiar with illustrations from books they’d used in their anatomy training at the Little Palace.

  “Count yourself lucky,” Kaz said grimly. “Hurry it up.”

  She worked from memory, swelling and cracking the skin on Muzzen’s face and chest, raising blisters until the swelling and pustules were so bad that he was truly unrecognizable. The big man moaned.

  “Why would you agree to do this?” Nina murmured.

  The swollen flesh of Muzzen’s face quivered, and Nina thought he might be trying to smile. “Money was good,” he said thickly.

  She sighed. Why else did anyone do anything in the Barrel? “Good enough to get locked up in Hellgate?”

  Kaz tapped his cane on the cell floor. “Stop making trouble, Nina. If Helvar cooperates, he and Muzzen will both have their freedom just as soon as the job is done.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then Helvar gets locked back in his cell, and Muzzen still gets paid. And I’ll take him to breakfast at the Kooperom.”

  “Can I have waffles?” Muzzen mumbled.

  “We’ll all have waffles. And whiskey. If this job doesn’t come off, no one’s going to want to be around me sober. Finished, Nina?”

  Nina nodded, and Inej took her place to bandage Muzzen to look like Matthias.

  “All right,” said Kaz. “Get Helvar on his feet.”

  Nina crouched beside Matthias as Kaz stood over her with the bonelight. Even in sleep, Matthias’ features were troubled, his pale brows furrowed. She let her hands travel over the bruised line of his jaw, resisting the urge to linger there.

  “Not the face, Nina. I need him mobile, not pretty. Heal him fast and only enough to get him walking for now. I don’t want him spry enough to vex us.”

  Nina lowered the blanket and went to work. Just another body, she told herself. She was always getting late-night calls from Kaz to heal wounded members of the Dregs who he didn’t want to bring around to any legitimate medik—girls with stabbing punctures, boys with broken legs or bullets lodged inside them, victims of a scuffle with the stadwatch or another gang. Pretend it’s Muzzen, she told herself. Or Big Bolliger or some other fool. You don’t know this boy. And it was true. The boy she knew might have been the scaffold, but something new had been built upon it.

  She touched his shoulder gently. “Helvar,” she said. He didn’t stir. “Matthias.”

  A lump rose in her throat, and she felt the ache of tears threatening. She pressed a kiss to his temple. She knew that Kaz and the others were watching and that she was making an idiot of herself, but after so long he was finally here, in front of her, and so very broken. “Matthias,” she repeated.

  “Nina?” His voice was raw but as lovely as she remembered.

  “Oh, Saints, Matthias,” she whispered. “Please wake up.”

  His eyes opened, groggily, palest blue. “Nina,” he said softly. His knuckles brushed her cheek; his rough hand cupped her face tentatively, disbelievingly. “Nina?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Shhhh, Matthias. We’re here to get you out.”

  Before she could blink he had hold of her shoulders and had pinned her to the ground.

  “Nina,” he growled.

  Then his hands closed over her throat.

  PART TWO

  SERVANT & LEVER

  7

  MATTHIAS

  Matthias was dreaming again. Dreaming of her.

  In all his dreams he hunted her, sometimes through the new green meadows of spring, but usually through the ice fields, dodging boulders and crevasses with unerring steps. Always he chased, and always he caught her. In the good dreams, he slammed her to the ground and throttled her, watching the life drain from her eyes, heart full of vengeance—finally, finally. In the bad dreams, he kissed her.

  In these dreams, she didn’t fight him. She laughed as if the chase was nothing but a game, as if she’d known he would catch her, as if she’d wanted him to and there was no place she’d rather be than beneath him. She was welcoming and perfect in his arms. He kissed her, buried his face in the sweet hollow of her neck. Her curls brushed his cheeks, and he felt that if he could just hold her a little longer, every wound, every hurt, every bad thing would melt away.

  “Matthias,” she would whisper, his name so soft on her lips. These were the worst dreams, and when he woke, he hated himself almost as much as he hated her. To know that he could betray himself, betray his country again even in sleep, to know that—after everything
she’d done—some sick part of him still hungered after her … it was too much.

  Tonight was a bad dream, very bad. She was wearing blue silk, clothes far more luxurious than anything he’d ever seen her in; some kind of gauzy veil was caught up in her hair, the lamplight glinting off of it like caught rain. Djel, she smelled good. The mossy damp was still there, but perfume, too. Nina loved luxury and this was expensive—roses and something else, something his pauper’s nose didn’t recognize. She pressed her soft lips to his temple, and he could swear she was crying.

  “Matthias.”

  “Nina,” he managed.

  “Oh, Saints, Matthias,” she whispered. “Please wake up.”

  And then he was awake, and he knew he’d gone mad because she was here, in his cell, kneeling beside him, her hand resting gently on his chest. “Matthias, please.”

  The sound of her voice, pleading with him. He’d dreamed of this. Sometimes she pleaded for mercy. Sometimes there were other things she begged for.

  He reached up and touched her face. She had the softest skin. He’d laughed at her for it once. No real soldier had skin like that, he’d told her—pampered, coddled. He’d mocked the lushness of her body, ashamed of his own response to her. He cupped the warm curve of her cheek, felt the soft brush of her hair. So lovely. So real. It wasn’t fair.

  Then he registered the bloody wrappings on his hands. Pain rushed at him as he came fully awake—cracked ribs, aching knuckles. He’d chipped a tooth. He wasn’t sure when, but he’d cut his tongue against it at some point. His mouth still held the coppery taste of blood. The wolves. They’d made him murder wolves.

  He was awake.

  “Nina?”

  There were tears in her beautiful green eyes. Rage coursed through him. She had no right to tears, no right to pity.