Crooked Kingdom Read online

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  Van Eck sighed. “Remember that I have tried to treat you with civility.” He turned to one of the guards, a heavyset man with a sharp blade of a nose. “I’d prefer this didn’t go on too long. Do what you think is best.”

  The guard let his hand hover over the table of instruments as if deciding which cruelty would be most efficient. Inej felt her courage wobble, her breath coming in panicked gasps. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.

  Bajan leaned over her, face pale, eyes full of concern. “Please tell him. Surely Brekker isn’t worth being scarred or maimed? Tell him what you know.”

  “All I know is that men like you don’t deserve the air they breathe.”

  Bajan looked stung. “I’ve been nothing but kind to you. I’m not some sort of monster.”

  “No, you’re the man who sits idly by, congratulating yourself on your decency, while the monster eats his fill. At least a monster has teeth and a spine.”

  “That isn’t fair!”

  Inej couldn’t believe the softness of this creature, that he would bid for her approval in this moment. “If you still believe in fairness, then you’ve led a very lucky life. Get out of the monster’s way, Bajan. Let’s get this over with.” The blade-nosed guard stepped forward; something gleamed in his hand. Inej reached for a place of stillness inside of herself, the place that had allowed her to endure a year at the Menagerie, a year of nights marked by pain and humiliation, of days counted in beatings and worse. “Go on,” she urged, and her voice was steel.

  “Wait,” said Van Eck. He was studying Inej as if he were reading a ledger, trying to make the figures line up. He cocked his head to one side and said, “Break her legs.”

  Inej felt her courage fracture. She began to thrash, trying to get free of the guards’ hold.

  “Ah,” said Van Eck. “That’s what I thought.”

  The blade-nosed guard selected a heavy length of pipe.

  “No,” said Van Eck. “I don’t want it to be a clean break. Use the mallet. Shatter the bone.” His face hovered above her, his eyes a bright, clear blue—Wylan’s eyes, but devoid of any of Wylan’s kindness. “No one will be able to put you back together again, Miss Ghafa. Maybe you can earn your way out of your contract by begging for pennies on East Stave and then crawl home to the Slat every night, assuming Brekker still gives you a room there.”

  “Don’t.” She didn’t know if she was pleading with Van Eck or herself. She didn’t know who she hated more in this moment.

  The guard took up a steel mallet.

  Inej writhed on the table, her body coated in sweat. She could smell her own fear. “Don’t,” she repeated. “Don’t.”

  The blade-nosed guard tested the mallet’s weight in his hands. Van Eck nodded. The guard lifted it in a smooth arc.

  Inej watched the mallet rise and reach its apex, light glinting off its wide head, the flat face of a dead moon. She heard the crackle of the campfire, thought of her mother’s hair twined with persimmon silk.

  “He’ll never trade if you break me!” she screamed, the words tearing loose from some deep place inside her, her voice raw and undefended. “I’ll be no use to him anymore!”

  Van Eck held up a hand. The mallet fell.

  Inej felt it brush against her trousers as the impact shattered the surface of the table a hair’s breadth from her calf, the entire corner collapsing beneath the force.

  My leg, she thought, shuddering violently. That would have been my leg. There was a metallic taste in her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue. Saints protect me. Saints protect me.

  “You make an interesting argument,” Van Eck said meditatively. He tapped a finger against his lips, thinking. “Ponder your loyalties, Miss Ghafa. Tomorrow night I may not be so merciful.”

  Inej could not control her shaking. I’m going to cut you open, she vowed silently. I’m going to excavate that pathetic excuse of a heart from your chest. It was an evil thought, a vile thought. But she couldn’t help it. Would her Saints sanction such a thing? Could forgiveness come if she killed not to survive but because she burned with living, luminous hatred? I don’t care, she thought as her body spasmed and the guards lifted her trembling form from the table. I’ll do penance for the rest of my days if it means I get to kill him.

  They dragged her back to her room through the lobby of the dilapidated theater and down a hall to what she now knew must be an old equipment room. They bound her hands and feet again.

  Bajan moved to place the blindfold over her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know he intended … I—”

  “Kadema mehim.”

  Bajan flinched. “Don’t say that.”

  The Suli were a close people, loyal. They had to be, in a world where they had no land and where they were so very few. Inej’s teeth were chattering, but she forced out the words. “You are forsaken. As you have turned your back on me, so will they turn their backs on you.” It was the worst of Suli denunciations, one that forbade you the welcome of your ancestors in the next world, and doomed your spirit to wander without a home.

  Bajan paled. “I don’t believe any of that.”

  “You will.”

  He secured the blindfold around her head. She heard the door close.

  Inej lay on her side, her hip and her shoulder digging into the hard floor, and waited for the tremors to pass.

  In her early days at the Menagerie, she’d believed someone would come for her. Her family would find her. An officer of the law. A hero from one of the stories her mother used to tell. Men had come, but not to set her free, and eventually her hope had withered like leaves beneath a too-bright sun, replaced by a bitter bud of resignation.

  Kaz had rescued her from that hopelessness, and their lives had been a series of rescues ever since, a string of debts that they never tallied as they saved each other again and again. Lying in the dark, she realized that for all her doubts, she’d believed he would rescue her once more, that he would put aside his greed and his demons and come for her. Now she wasn’t so sure. Because it was not just the sense in the words she’d spoken that had stilled Van Eck’s hand but the truth he’d heard in her voice. He’ll never trade if you break me. She could not pretend those words had been conjured by strategy or even animal cunning. The magic they’d worked had been born of belief. An ugly enchantment.

  Tomorrow night I may not be so merciful. Had tonight been an exercise meant to frighten her? Or would Van Eck return to carry out his threats? And if Kaz did come, how much of her would be left?

  PART TWO

  A KILLING WIND

  5

  JESPER

  Jesper felt like his clothes were crawling with fleas. Whenever the crew left Black Veil Island to skulk around the Barrel, they wore the costumes of the Komedie Brute—the capes, veils, masks, and occasionally horns that tourists and locals alike used to disguise their identities while enjoying the pleasures of the Barrel.

  But here on the respectable avenues and canals of the university district, Mister Crimson and the Gray Imp would have drawn a lot of stares, so he and Wylan had ditched their costumes as soon as they were clear of the Staves. And if Jesper was honest with himself, he didn’t want to meet his father for the first time in years dressed in a goggle-eyed mask or an orange silk cape or even his usual Barrel flash. He’d dressed as respectably as he could. Wylan had lent him a few kruge for a secondhand tweed jacket and a gloomy gray waistcoat. Jesper didn’t look precisely reputable, but students weren’t supposed to look too prosperous anyway.

  Once again he found himself reaching for his revolvers, longing for the cool, familiar feel of their pearl handles beneath his thumbs. That skiv of a lawyer had ordered the floor boss to store them in a safe at the Cumulus. Kaz said they’d get them back in good time, but he doubted Kaz would be so calm and collected if someone had swiped his cane. You’re the one who put them on the table like a nub, Jesper reminded himself. He’d done it for In
ej. And if he was honest, he’d done it for Kaz too, to show he was willing to do what it took to make things right. Not that it seemed to matter much.

  Well, he consoled himself, it’s not like I could have worn my revolvers on this errand anyway. Students and professors didn’t go from class to class packing powder. Might make for a more interesting school day if they did. Even so, Jesper had hidden a sad lump of a pistol beneath his coat. This was Ketterdam, after all, and it was possible he and Wylan were walking into a trap. That was why Kaz and Matthias were shadowing their steps. He’d seen no sign of either of them, and Jesper supposed that was a good thing, but he was still grateful Wylan had offered to come along. Kaz had only allowed it because Wylan said he needed supplies for his work on the weevil.

  They walked past student cafés and booksellers, shop windows crammed with textbooks, ink, and paper. They were less than two miles from the noise and clatter of the Barrel, but it felt like they’d crossed a bridge into another country. Instead of packs of sailors fresh off the boats looking for trouble, or tourists jostling into you from every angle, people stepped aside to let you pass, kept their conversations low. No barkers shouted from storefronts hoping to garner business. The crooked little alleys were full of bookbinders and apothecaries, and the corners were free of the girls and boys who lacked an association with one of the West Stave houses and who had been forced to ply their trade on the street.

  Jesper paused below an awning and took a deep breath through his nose.

  “What?” asked Wylan.

  “It smells so much better here.” Expensive tobacco, morning rain still damp on the cobblestones, blue clouds of hyacinths in the window boxes. No urine, no vomit, no cheap perfume or garbage rot. Even the tang of coal smoke seemed fainter.

  “Are you stalling?” Wylan asked.

  “No.” Jesper exhaled and sagged a bit. “Maybe a little.” Rotty had taken a message to the hotel where the man claiming to be Jesper’s father was staying, so they could set a time and place to meet. Jesper had wanted to go himself, but if his father really was in Ketterdam, it was possible he was being used as bait. Better to meet in broad daylight, on neutral ground. The university had seemed safest, far away from the dangers of the Barrel or any of Jesper’s usual stomping grounds.

  Jesper didn’t know if he wanted his father to be waiting for him at the university or not. It was so much more pleasant to think of facing a fight than the shame of how horribly he’d botched everything, but talking about that felt like trying to climb a scaffold made of rotting boards. So he said, “I always liked this part of town.”

  “My father likes it too. He places a high value on learning.”

  “Higher than money?”

  Wylan shrugged, eyeing a window full of hand-painted globes. “Knowledge isn’t a sign of divine favor. Prosperity is.”

  Jesper cast him a swift glance. He still wasn’t used to Wylan’s voice coming out of Kuwei’s mouth. It always left him feeling a little off-kilter, like he’d thought he was reaching for a cup of wine and gotten a mouthful of water instead. “Is your papa really that religious, or is that just an excuse for being a mean son of a bitch when it comes to business?”

  “When it comes to anything, really.”

  “Particularly thugs and canal rats from the Barrel?”

  Wylan shifted the strap of his satchel. “He thinks the Barrel distracts men from work and industry and leads to degeneracy.”

  “He may have a point,” said Jesper. He sometimes wondered what might have happened if he’d never gone out with his new friends that night, if he’d never walked into that gambling parlor and taken that first spin at Makker’s Wheel. It was meant to be harmless fun. And for everyone else, it had been. But Jesper’s life had split like a log into two distinct and uneven pieces: the time before he’d stepped up to that wheel and every day since. “The Barrel eats people.”

  “Maybe,” Wylan considered. “But business is business. The gambling parlors and brothels meet a demand. They offer employment. They pay taxes.”

  “What a good little Barrel boy you’ve become. That’s practically a page out of the bosses’ books.” Every few years some reformer got it into his head to clean up the Barrel and purge Ketterdam of its unsavory reputation. That was when the pamphlets came out, a war of propaganda between the owners of the gambling dens and pleasure houses on one side and the black-suited merch reformers on the other. In the end, it all came down to money. The businesses of East and West Stave turned a serious profit, and the denizens of the Barrel dumped very righteous coin into the city’s tax coffers.

  Wylan tugged on the satchel strap again. It had gotten twisted at the top. “I don’t think it’s much different from wagering your fortune on a shipment of silk or jurda. Your odds are just a lot better when you’re playing the market.”

  “You have my attention, merchling.” Better odds were always of interest. “What’s the most your father’s ever lost on a trade?”

  “I don’t really know. He stopped talking about those things with me a long time ago.”

  Jesper hesitated. Jan Van Eck was three kinds of fool for the way he’d treated his son, but Jesper could admit he was curious about Wylan’s supposed “affliction.” He wanted to know what Wylan saw when he tried to read, why he seemed fine with equations or prices on a menu, but not sentences or signs. Instead he said, “I wonder if proximity to the Barrel makes merchers more uptight. All that black clothing and restraint, meat only twice a week, lager instead of brandy. Maybe they’re making up for all the fun we’re having.”

  “Keeping the scales balanced?”

  “Sure. I mean, just think of the heights of debauchery we could reach if no one kept this city in check. Champagne for breakfast. Naked orgies on the floor of the Exchange.”

  Wylan made a flustered noise that sounded like a bird with a cough and looked anywhere but at Jesper. He was so wonderfully easy to rattle, though Jesper could admit he didn’t think the university district needed a dose of the dirty. He liked it just fine as it was—clean and quiet and smelling of books and flowers.

  “You don’t have to come, you know,” Jesper said, because he felt he should. “You have your supplies. You could wait this out safe and snug in a coffeehouse.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  No. I can’t do this alone. Jesper shrugged. He wasn’t sure how he felt about what Wylan might witness at the university. Jesper had rarely seen his father angry, but how could he fail to be angry now? What explanations could Jesper offer him? He’d lied, put the livelihood his father had worked so hard for into jeopardy. And for what? A steaming pile of nothing.

  But Jesper couldn’t bear the thought of facing his father on his own. Inej would have understood. Not that he deserved her sympathy, but there was something steady in her that he knew would recognize and ease his own fears. He’d hoped that Kaz would offer to accompany him. But when they’d split up to approach the university, Kaz had spared him only one dark glance. The message had been clear: You dug this grave. Go lie in it. Kaz was still punishing him for the ambush that had nearly ended the Ice Court job before it began, and it was going to take more than Jesper sacrificing his revolvers for him to earn his way back into Kaz’s good graces. Did Kaz even have good graces?

  Jesper’s heart beat a little harder as they walked beneath the vast stone archway into the courtyard of the Boeksplein. The university wasn’t one building but a series of them, all built around parallel sections of the Boekcanal and joined by Speaker’s Bridge, where people met to debate or drink a friendly pint of lager, depending on the day of the week. But the Boeksplein was the heart of the university—four libraries built around a central courtyard and the Scholar’s Fountain. It had been nearly two years since Jesper had set foot on university grounds. He’d never officially withdrawn from school. He hadn’t even really decided not to attend. He’d simply started spending more and more time on East Stave, until he looked up one day and realized the Barrel had become hi
s home.

  Even so, in his brief time as a student, he’d fallen in love with the Boeksplein. Jesper had never been a great reader. He loved stories, but he hated sitting still, and the books assigned to him for school seemed designed to make his mind wander. At the Boeksplein, wherever his eyes strayed, there was something to occupy them: leaded windows with stained-glass borders, iron gates worked into figures of books and ships, the central fountain with its bearded scholar, and best of all, the gargoyles—bat-winged grotesques in mortarboard caps, and stone dragons falling asleep over books. He liked to think that whoever had built this place had known not all students were suited to quiet contemplation.

  But as they entered the courtyard, Jesper didn’t look around to savor the stonework or listen to the splashing of the fountain. All his attention focused on the man standing near the eastern wall, gazing up at the stained-glass windows, a crumpled hat clasped in his hands. With a pang, Jesper realized his father had worn his best suit. He’d combed his Kaelish red hair tidily back from his brow. There was gray in it now that hadn’t been there when Jesper left home. Colm Fahey looked like a farmer on his way to church. Totally out of place. Kaz—hell, anyone in the Barrel—would take one look at him and just see a walking, talking target.

  Jesper’s throat felt dry-sand parched. “Da,” he croaked.

  His father’s head snapped up and Jesper steeled himself for what might come next—whatever insults or outrage his father hurled at him, he deserved. But he wasn’t prepared for the relieved grin that split his father’s craggy features. Someone might as well have put a bullet right in Jesper’s heart.

  “Jes!” his father cried. And then Jesper was crossing the courtyard and his father’s arms were tight around him, hugging him so hard Jesper thought he actually felt his ribs bend. “All Saints, I thought you were dead. They said you weren’t a student here anymore, that you’d just vanished and—I was sure you’d been stuck through by bandits or the like in this Saintsforsaken place.”