Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2)

by Leigh Bardugo

And there was no escaping the smell, the throat-choking stew of bilge, clams, and wet stone that seemed to have soaked into his pores as if he’d been steeping in the city’s essence like the world’s worst cup of tea.

Kaz never yelled the way Wylan’s father did, but Wylan had learned to listen for that low note, that bit of black harmony that crept into Kaz’s tone when things were about to get dangerous.

“A proper thief is like a proper poison, merchling. He leaves no trace.”

The really bad monsters never look like monsters.”

He’d always prided himself on a good sense of direction, but this city had defeated it, and he frequently found himself cursing whatever mad hand had thought it wise to raise a city from a swamp and then arrange it without order or logic.

“I’m pragmatic. If I were cruel, I’d give him a eulogy instead of a conversation.

He died in my stead, Matthias thought. And I didn’t even recognize his name. “Did Muzzen have family?” Matthias asked at last. “Just the Dregs,” said Kaz. “No mourners,” Nina murmured. “No funerals,” Matthias replied quietly. “How does it feel to be dead?” asked Jesper. The merry light had gone from his eyes.

Long ago, after a bad fall, her father had explained that only fools were fearless. We meet fear, he’d said. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.

And yet amid the clamor of suspicion, she could hear the soft chiming of another bell, the sound of What if? What if she let herself be comforted, gave up the pretense of being beyond the things she’d lost?

Better terrible truths than kind lies.

“Tell your master to honor his old deals before he starts making new ones,”

“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.”

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.

Never underestimate the public’s desire to get something for nothing.

Ahead, Inej could see a high column topped by Ghezen’s Hand, casting its long shadow over the heart of Kerch’s wealth. She imagined her Saints wrapping ropes around it and sending it toppling to the ground.

“This is my gang, Brekker. She doesn’t belong to you.” “She doesn’t belong to anyone,”

“It’s men who seek grandeur,” Inej said, springing nimbly along as if her feet knew some secret topography. “The Saints hear prayers wherever they’re spoken.”

“What you want and what the world needs are not always in accord, Kaz. Praying and wishing are not the same thing.”

Kaz saw Inej tug on the sleeve of her left forearm, where the Menagerie tattoo had once been. He had the barest inkling of what she’d endured there, but he knew what it was to feel helpless, and Van Eck had managed to make her feel that way again. Kaz was going to have to find a new language of suffering to teach that smug merch son of a bitch.

“I would come for you,” he said, and when he saw the wary look she shot him, he said it again. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.”

“Zoya used to say that fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”

“My mother is Ketterdam. She birthed me in the harbor. And my father is profit. I honor him daily.

He was always in motion, like a lanky piece of clockwork that ran on invisible energy. Except clocks were simple. Wylan could only guess at Jesper’s workings.

maybe being brave didn’t mean being unafraid.

When his father had stopped reading to him, music had given him new stories, ones that unfolded from his fingers, that he could write himself into with every played note.

His father was going to erase him from the ledger, a mistaken calculation, a cost that could be expunged. The tally would be made right.

“Nina, I am with you because you let me be with you. There is no greater honor than to stand by your side.”

Her temper he could bear, but her disappointment was unacceptable.

“You aren’t a flower, you’re every blossom in the wood blooming at once. You are a tidal wave. You’re a stampede. You are overwhelming.”

There is no one I want more; there is nothing I want more than to be overwhelmed by you.”

The idea of his wolf left alone, howling for Matthias to come and take him home, carved a hollow ache in his chest. It felt like something had broken there and left an echo, the lonely snap of a branch too heavy with snow.

“What kind of mother would I be to my son if I hid away my talents? If I let fear be my guide in this life? You knew what I was when you asked that I choose you, Colm. Do not now suggest that I be anything less.”

No mourners, no funerals. Another way of saying good luck. But it was something more. A dark wink to the fact that there would be no expensive burials for people like them, no marble markers to remember their names, no wreaths of myrtle and rose.

“No matter the height of the mountain, the climbing is the same.”

Ketterdam gleamed with golden light, lanterns moving slowly across the canals, candles left burning in windows, shops and taverns still shining bright for the evening’s business. She could make out the glittering spangle of the Lid, the colorful lanterns and showy cascade bulbs of the Staves. In just a few short days, Van Eck’s fortunes would be ruined and she would be free of her contract with Per Haskell. Free. To live as she wished. To seek forgiveness for her sins. To pursue her purpose. Would she miss this place? This crowded mess of a city she’d come to know so well, that had somehow become her home? She felt certain she would. So tonight, she would perform for her city, for the citizens of Ketterdam, even if they did not know to applaud.

Sure, a lock was like a woman. It was also like a man and anyone or anything else—if you wanted to understand it, you had to take it apart and see how it worked. If you wanted to master it, you had to learn it so well you could put it back together.

if you couldn’t open a door, you just had to make a new one.

“You’re not weak because you can’t read. You’re weak because you’re afraid of people seeing your weakness. You’re letting shame decide who you are.

“It’s shame that lines my pockets, shame that keeps the Barrel teeming with fools ready to put on a mask just so they can have what they want with no one the wiser for it. We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.”

Matthias was running through the streets of a foreign city, into dangers he did not know, but for the first time since he’d looked into Nina’s eyes and seen his own humanity reflected back at him, the war inside him quieted.

If you couldn’t beat the odds, you changed the game.

Our work is death and it is holy. What dark god did this mercenary serve? Inej imagined some vast deity looming above the city, faceless and featureless, skin taut over its swollen limbs, fattened on the blood of its acolytes’ victims. She could feel its presence, the chill of its shadow.

Nina glanced from Inej to Kaz and saw they both wore the same expression. Nina knew that look. It came after the shipwreck, when the tide moved against you and the sky had gone dark. It was the first sight of land, the hope of shelter and even salvation that might await you on a distant shore.

The letters from his father continued to arrive, once, sometimes twice a week. Wylan didn’t know what to make of them. Were they threats? Taunts? He stashed them in a stack beneath his mattress, and sometimes at night he thought he could feel the ink bleeding through the pages, up through the mattress and into his heart like dark poison.

“Nina,” Inej said gently. “Parem took you to the brink of death. Maybe you brought something back with you.” “Well, it’s a pretty rotten souvenir.” “Or perhaps Djel extinguished one light and lit another,” said Matthias. Nina cast him a sidelong glance. “Did you get hit on the head?” He reached out and took Nina’s hand. Wylan suddenly felt he was intruding on something private. “I am grateful you’re alive,” he said. “I am grateful you’re beside me. I am grateful that you’re eating.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re better than waffles, Matthias Helvar.” A small smile curled the Fjerdan’s lips. “Let’s not say things we don’t mean, my love.”

It’s shame that eats men whole. If only they’d set the rest of the house on fire.

This action will have no echo. It means we won’t repeat the same mistakes, that we won’t continue to do harm.”

“This is the city I bled for. And if Ketterdam has taught me anything, it’s that you can always bleed a little more.”

His mind had concocted a hundred schemes to bind her to him, to keep her in this city. But she’d spent enough of her life caged by debts and obligations,

“It’s done.” He’d liquidated every asset he had, used the last of the savings he’d accrued, every ill-gotten cent. She pressed the envelope to her chest, above her heart. “I have no words to thank you for this.” “Surely the Suli have a thousand proverbs for such an occasion?” “Words have not been invented for such an occasion.”