Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2)

by Leigh Bardugo

There had been more rumors of disappearances in Ketterdam recently—Grisha vanishing from the streets or their homes, probably snapped up by slavers and sold to the highest bidder.

By all that was holy, nothing could motivate the Kerch like cash.

His prayers turned to screams, but both went unanswered.

“To be fair, Matthias, you don’t like much.”

And if there was another reason, a tall, lanky reason with a too-strong taste for games of chance, he wasn’t going to think about that right now.

“Nina is fine. Jesper is fine. Everyone is fine except for me because I’m stuck with a gang of hand-wringing nursemaids.

Another private laugh for his father to enjoy—an abandoned island with nothing on it but a broken-down amusement park, a worthless place for his worthless, illiterate son.

Why do you guys say that, anyway? No mourners, no funerals? Why not just say good luck or be safe?” “We like to keep our expectations low.”

There are no good men in Ketterdam, Kaz said. The climate doesn’t agree with them.

“You’ve got to give it a name,” said Jesper. “How else will you call it to dinner?”

Genya Safin knows poisons like no one else, and David Kostyk developed all kinds of new weapons for King Nikolai.”

Oh, and there was some kind of attack at one of the harbors a few days ago. Bunch of sailors killed, harbormaster’s office turned into a pile of splinters, but no one knows details.”

“No mourners,” Nina murmured. “No funerals,” Matthias replied quietly.

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.

Her suffering had not been for nothing. Her Saints had brought her to Ketterdam for a reason—a ship to hunt slavers, a mission to give meaning to all she’d been through. She would not betray that purpose or her friends for some dream of the past.

“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.

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.

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.

No. I can’t do this alone.

He felt free, dangerous, like lightning rolling over the prairie.

“I hate you a little, drüskelle.” “I’m used to it. Come here.”

You lay a finger on me and Kaz Brekker will cut the baby from your pretty wife’s stomach and hang its body from a balcony at the Exchange.”

“Do you know what Van Eck’s problem is?” “No honor?” said Matthias. “Rotten parenting skills?” said Nina. “Receding hairline?” offered Jesper.

“Before you finish that sentence, I want you to think about what a promise from me costs and what you’re willing to pay for it.”

“Tell me my business again.” Wylan swallowed, parted his lips. “Do it,” said Kaz. “And I’ll cut the tongue from your head and feed it to the first stray cat I find.”

He needed to dunk his head in a bucket. He was behaving like a besotted ninny.

“No mourners.” “No funerals,” they replied.

Now he was sure of nothing but his faith in Djel and the vow he’d made to Nina. I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept from this oath.

“I wouldn’t throw myself off a bridge for the king of Ravka.”

“No mourners,” he murmured. “No funerals,” she replied,

“He can’t suffer if he’s dead,” Kaz had said, and that had been the end of it. The demjin brooked no argument.

He was a wounded animal who needed to be put down.

Things are always more interesting in the dark, Jesper had replied.

Nina waited until the last possible second, then said, “Let’s see if you’re metal all the way through.” She shoved the revolver directly into the Shu woman’s eye socket and squeezed the trigger.

“We are not our fathers.”

No. Kaz had built those places from nothing. They were testaments to what he’d done for the Dregs.

“That’s terrible,” said Wylan. “It’s brilliant.” Jesper winked. “Just like you.” Wylan blushed daylily pink.

“I told you,” she said. “I don’t work with a net.”

He wasn’t Dirtyhands or Kaz Brekker or even the toughest lieutenant in the Dregs. He was just a boy fueled by a white flame of rage, one that threatened to burn the pretense of the hard-won civility he maintained to ash.

I couldn’t bear to watch you fall.

Kaz couldn’t help but be reminded of Jesper bargaining with his father, and the thought didn’t sit well with him.

The Kaelish Prince.

Kaz forced himself not to smile.

“She doesn’t belong to anyone,” Kaz said, feeling the singe of that angry white flame.

“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.”

“Curse you and all your Saints,” he said to no one at all, then realized he was smiling.

Thoughts of moonlight and silken hair evaporated in a black bolt of fury.

The silence between them was dark water. He could not cross it. He couldn’t walk the line between the decency she deserved and the violence this path demanded. If he tried, it might get them both killed. He could only be who he truly was—a boy who had no comfort to offer. So he would give her what he could.

“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.”