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Inej
There is an ill wind in the air tonight, Inej can feel it in her bones. They’re barely a half day’s sail from the south coast of Kerch, and on the trail of Egidius De Vries. He’s calling himself Admiral Cepra, these days – building his identity on an old Ravkan legend, but it’s easier to slay a monster when you know its real name.
They say his ship was built by a team of enslaved Grisha, that the chains in the hold can’t be broken. They say he had a Heartrender nailed up inside the ship somewhere, so he can order anyone on the ship dead, at any moment. There are rumours he pickles people, and has them sent to their enemies as a gift. Or their friends, as a threat. She’s heard he’s seven foot tall, and a Tidemaker, and the bastard prince of Ravka.
It’s mostly hokum, especially the Heartrender thing (really, how would that even work?) but the boiled down facts aren’t pretty. De Vries used to have a fleet of eight ships. He takes anyone; Suli, Kerch, the sort of people who won’t be missed. They go to the Southern Colonies and they don’t come back. There is absolutely no way he’s operating alone. Kaz gave her the tip off, ten months ago, when they’d put in at a Shu port. A girl, Kerch, thirteen if she was a day, handed Inej a note as she finished negotiating for provisions she wanted loaded onto The Wraith. She’d recognised the scrawl at once.
Captain,
Look for a ship called The Black-Eyed Bastard. Captain name of Smit. No proof, might be something big. Last report she was headed for Os Kervo. Offloaded a lot of raw sugar in Ketterdam. Didn’t take anything on board that would fill up the hold. Crew of thirty. Sixteen guns.
The girl will make a good deckhand, if you want her. She’s got a strong right hook, better put to use pulling on ropes.
-K
The information had been good (and he’d been right about the girl. Disrespectful, angry, formed by whatever she’d been through in the Barrel, but ready to become something else.) They’d sunk The Black-Eyed Bastard, in the end. Took fifty men and women on board The Wraith and then back home again. It had been a long hard fight when she’d been looking for a clean surrender. People had died, she’d done penance for it. Inej regretted the deaths, but she wasn’t sorry. The slave trade on the True Sea wasn’t going to break because someone asked nicely.
She’d had a foolish hope that there would be some incriminating document in the captain’s quarters that would reveal the extent of the operation. No such luck. Their captain had been a stooge. All he’d had to give her were threats about his fearsome Admiral Cepra, and a bullet that barely grazed her side, but it didn’t matter. The name had been enough to start her on the trail.
She worked with Kaz, him in Ketterdam, looking for the Admiral’s backers, her on the open sea, hunting down his captains, taking his ships, freeing the people he stole. Kaz was even less forthcoming in letters than he was in person; it was like they communicated their feelings in the spaces between the words that made up the substance of their correspondence.
I hear The Last Leviathan will be sailing south out of Ketterdam, on the first high tide. Twenty guns, but the ones on the port side fire short. Don’t let that imbecile of a first mate talk you into repeating your last tactics.” That might have meant: “Be careful, I care about you very much, the captain of this ship is familiar with your previous movements and if you try it again, you will sink and drown and I will be very sad.” Of course, it could also have meant: “Don’t fuck this one up, moron.”
How could she complain, though? Her reply had gone: ”Fourteen from Ketterdam in the Leviathan’s hold. All talk about three weeks in a cellar with blue stained tiles, a stone ceiling that drips acid, and a man with no front teeth and a grip like iron.” What she’d meant was: “they are all terrified of this man, don’t underestimate him or he will beat you to a pulp and drown you in the harbour, and I will be very sad.” He probably read it as: “Don’t fuck this one up, moron.” All this wasn’t even counting the crossings out. If they could have read each other’s crossings out, it might have amounted to something like a frank conversation.
As they’d linked Egidius De Vries to the Admiral Cepra identity, their correspondence had become more muted. Discovery would bring the whole scheme crashing down before it had even really begun. A sentence whispered in her ear by a Kaelish sailor in a Shu harbour, a note brought by a bird, scarcely a line.
And now, something bad was in the air. They were getting close.
She’s climbing down from the rigging, glass in hand, when her thoughts are interrupted.
“Captain!”
Inej looks down to see Ciara, deckhand and troublemaker, backed up by Gerrit, the ship’s cook, both running towards her looking harried. Vladlena, a Grisha Healer with the kind of past Inej doesn’t like to ask about, is trailing behind them and waving her remaining arm. Inej decends easily down the rigging and lands lightly on the deck. Sometimes she thinks she might have been constructed to sail.
“There’s a body-“ Ciara burst out, then gasps for breath. “There’s a body in the rum. It’s the-“
“There was a noise and we went to see what was the matter, Captain.” Gerrit interrupts, clearly wanting the story to be told in a more organised fashion, and leaving Ciara red faced and firey eyed, like she wants to demonstrate that famous right hook again. Gerrit takes too long arranging his next sentence.
“And we went and there’s a body in the rum!” Ciara finishes for him, triumphantly.
“I’m sorry there’s a what in the where?” She’s had weevils in the hardtack before, but this is a new one. If Old Keller has started selling her bad stock she’s going to be furious.
“It’s not a body if it’s-“ Vladlena is breathing hard – she must have chased the agile deckhand up through all the ship.
“-It’s the man from Ketterdam!” Ciara says, glowering at her elders. “The one with the shark eyes. The one who gave me the-“
Inej drops the glass. She’s gone before Ciara can finish her sentence. If it’s true, if she really does have a body in the hold, if it really is him. It can only mean one thing: they’ve been outplayed. De Vries has figured out their game and sent her Kaz’s head in a barrel. Congratulations, Ketterdam’s greatest spider has just uncovered the secret of which of the Cepra rumours are true.
It barely takes her any time to get down to the hold. The Wraith is like a part of her now, she knows every step, every creak, every crooked nail and twine of rope.
She’s not sure what she’s expecting to see, in their well-ordered cargo hold, but it’s not what’s there. Kaz is sitting on a stack of roped barrels, bare-chested, hair dripping, holding a piece of paper in his hands. If he’s dead, he’s hiding it well. Sort of well. He’s only corpse adjacent. Her first instinct is to throw her arms around him, make sure he’s real, but that’s not going to happen. She hasn’t seen him in nearly six months, and hurling yourself at Kaz Brekker is a good way to get shanked on the best of days. Of all the greetings they could have gone for, they seem to have settled for ‘staring awkwardly’.
This is ridiculous. Someone has to say something. She feels like it should be him. He’s the one who has turned up uninvited, pretending to be dead. He coughs, wetly, looks up at her, says “Oh good, it is you,” and passes out. So that’s that.
Kaz
Kaz would not be the first to admit that going up against the Council of Tides had been a mistake. He would have to beat Nina and Wylan to it, and that metaphorical ship had already sailed.
But there, in the hold of what he desperately hopes is The Wraith, alone with his thoughts, and fifty gallons of terrible Kerch grog, he could at least approach the idea that it might not have been the smartest plan.
He hadn’t been intentionally kicking the wasps’ nest. Sure, unmasking every member of the Council of Tides and using that information to make a very large profit was the sort of idea that kicked around in the back of his mind, but it didn’t quite have a form yet. No, this whole business had been a side effect of the little job he was running with Inej, trying to figure out who on the Merchant Council had been turning a blind eye to a slaving operation as large as Admiral Cepra’s. He’d been planning on backing up Inej, but personally his aims were minor blackmail at most. Then he’d found the connection to the Council of Tides, and by that point it was too late.
He has no particular memories of being sealed into the barrel and transported, which is good. He just remembers getting drowned by Adelheyd Kelder, née De Vries, member of the Council of Tides, wife of a member of the Merchant Council, but most importantly, the lynchpin of a network of slavers that were just begging for the Wraith’s attention. Connecting the three identities had been hard, rough work, had nearly cost him his best new spider, and had culminated in her slowly drowning him on her extremely fine Fjerdan rug. Which was exactly according to plan. Well, plan B. Maybe plan C.
”Maybe we could try a plan where no one has to be fake dead? I mean, I haven’t heard from Kuwei, but it’s not like he’s writing to say how much he enjoyed it.” Wylan had said, doubtfully.
”It’s not your stupidest clever plan, but it’s in the top ten.” Nina had sighed.
”It’s the best we can do on short notice. And it’s Inej’s life on the line, so go ahead and risk it.” Jesper hadn’t said, because he wasn’t there. He sill had a point.
He didn’t have to do this. Working on Inej’s righteous cause. He could have kept to the Crow Club, or gone legitimate businessman (businessman on the right side of the law, whatever the game). Build something up, burn it all down again. It just wasn’t the same without someone to drag down with you. And it wasn’t the same without Inej. He had three spiders now; a competitive bunch who almost managed to fill her place in his organisation if not…otherwise. He could tell the Dregs that this endeavour was all for profit, but walking to his almost certain death, for the first time in months, he actually felt alive.
Adelheyd Kelder kept a beautiful house, and she kept it under extreme security. This was ostensibly in deference to her husband’s priceless collection of Zemini sculpture and Ravkan paintings, but Kaz’s recent discoveries made him suspect it was more to do with her own position on the Council of Tides. It seemed they were not always a cordial bunch.
He was led through a long corridor by two liveried servants, indentured Grisha both. They hadn’t been able to lay their hands on a floor plan (Inej would have managed), but he counted the turns and doors they passed anyway, out of habit.
Ostensibly, he is here for tea. At least, that’s what her very genteel invitation stated. What his guides made of their mistress’ guest, they didn’t make known. Perhaps it was usual for her to entertain nineteen year old criminals with dubious haircuts at her home of an evening (interesting information, if true).
Kelder kept him waiting. By the time she got around to drowning him, he’d been in her house above an hour, and he had everything Inej would need. It would be down to Nina's...abilities, whether she got the information on his live body, or his dead one.
Inej
“As I was saying. You don’t call it a body if it’s not dead.” Vladlena came up behind her, grumbling. “Although it looks like he’s a bit closer to it now.”
“You do so call it a body if it’s alive-“
“Ciara, the aft-deck wants swabbing.” Inej says it quietly, but with an undertone that brooks no argument. Ciara goes.
Vladlena hauls Kaz bodily with her good arm, like he barely weighs anything, and Inej follows her to the closet that passes for their sickbay. She is muttering something about ‘Heartrender tricks’. Even though she’s a Healer, Vladlena hates all other Grisha. She avoids their Squaller, and grumbled when Inej recruited an Alkemi gunner. It’s one of the many mysteries that surround her, probably best left unprobed, at least to her face. She’s good at her job, she has proven her loyalty. Also she’s more than six and a half foot tall, and sometimes she scares people into getting well again.
It’s some time before Vladlena will allow anyone into the sickbay, but when she emerges, she fixes Inej with her cold blue eyes. “He’s all yours. Unless you want me to throw him in the ocean for the fishes?” At her headshake, Vladlena shrugs and hooks her way back up the deck, saying “Your choice, Captain.” From Vladlena, that’s almost a ringing endorsement.
“Did you read it?” He rasps, not looking at her, when she walks in. She has, in fact, read it, assuming it is the note he was clutching, but it’s not what she wants to discuss. Vladlena has clearly borrowed him clothing from one of the crew; in thick wool, and roughspun trousers, he looks young. His hair is longer.
“There was no better way to get this to me? Bird? Large cannon? Complicated morse code and a big mirror?”
“This arrangement isn’t to your satisfaction? Did you want me to bring flowers with the news of your impending doom?”
“My Healer tells me I was about an hour away from getting a corpse with the news of my impending doom.”
“That was plan D. I didn’t know you had a Healer on board.”
She rolls her eyes at the subject change. “She came from the Rat Boy. I’m still working on where she came from before that. Why were you in a barrel, Kaz?” He stares at the planks of wood above his head like he’s thinking about how much to tell her. It’s pointless. This is her job, not his.
“Long story.”
“Have you considered just telling me the truth? If you don’t, I’m going to assume you fell in by accident and this is all an unfortunate coincidence.”
“De Vries has a sister. Adelheyd Kelder.” He still won’t meet her eyes.
“Jan Kelder’s wife? I remember she was having about five affairs, you know, before, but nothing else.”
“She’s also a Tidemaker. I think the affairs were a cover for all the time she spent at the tower. You don’t need to bribe half of Ketterdam to look the other way when your sister controls whether your boat gets over the landbridge. So long as the money keeps coming in, I don’t think Jan Kelder questions too much. If you just took his official businesses into account, he’d be penniless.”
She waits, knows there’s more to it.
“She must have intercepted our last correspondence. I got a very cordial invitation. It was the best chance at finding out what they were planning for you. Where, when, who. She thinks she drowned me. And now you have my corpse, you’ll be an even easier target. Do something stupid.”
Inej understands. “Like sail right into a fight I can’t win.”
He nods. “Goodbye Wraith. And goodbye Wraith.”
She has settled herself next to him on the worktop, half a breath away from touching, but if he notices, he doesn’t show it.
“You didn’t have to do this. You could have walked away.” That was what the genteel invitation had meant, after all. It was an offer. He could have torn it up, let her sail into the trap and to her doom.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your mother knows where I live.”
She almost laughs. Sometimes, it is good to act without thinking. She hugs him, quickly, tightly. She feels his breathing quicken, but he doesn’t pull away. “It was a stupid thing to do. Thank you.”
“We may need to rethink the plan. Given the circumstances. You should head to a Shu port, lay low for a while.”
Inej pulls back, looks at him with an amused expression. “I thought we agreed that on the water, I’m the boss? I have a much better idea than that.”
Captain Kuznetsov
Alexsey Kuznetsov stands at the helm of the Empress Delilah and stares out across the flat expanse of sea. Os Kervo is four days behind him, and the night is still. Orders are simple. Ship name of The Wraith. End her.
On the books, The Wraith trades sundries, from Ketterdam to Bhez Ju, to Os Kervo and back again. No one has ever made money doing that, so most people will assume she’s a smuggler. The truth? The Wraith is a common pirate. She’s taken two boats in Admiral Cepra’s fleet. The Bastard, he could forgive. Smit was an imbecile, everyone assumed he’d probably scuttled the ship himself while drunk. After what had happened on The Last Leviathan though…He takes a swig from his gold flask. Maybe Smit hadn’t been so stupid. The Wraith owed the Admiral two holds’ worth of cargo. Kuznetsov was here to collect.
Some people didn’t hold with slaving, said it was an abomination. His wife would probably be one of them, but since he’d been dismissed from the Ravkan Navy after that bit of bother with The Lady Emily, she didn’t question where the money came from all that closely. Personally, given the sort of people they were taking off the streets, he considered himself a public servant. Sugar planting was useful work, and they were hurting for volunteers in the colonies. Damned if he was going to let a miserable pirate eat into their profits. Theft of a man’s honest earned goods – that was a real crime.
They sight The Wraith at two bells, the moon high in the sky, a low fog on the water. She’s a pretty little schooner, he’ll give her that. Copper plated hull and a tight little set of cannon. If they can avoid sinking her, she’ll make a nice addition to the fleet. She’ll be faster than him, but the tide is against her. His guns have more range. He’s been looking forward to this. He might not sail under lawful colours anymore, but he’s still on the side of right.
“Rouse the men.” He passes off the spyglass to his second, picks up his pistols and holsters them. The Wraith will have marked them by now. Will she turn tail? Or will she come at them, teeth bared? No one knows a blessed thing about the captain of The Wraith, except maybe the admiral. He decides when they find him, he’s going to pickle the bastard’s head and send it to Cepra as a gift.
“Resistance, Captain?” Yul Ba, his first mate. She’d been a slave herself, once.
“Heavy, I imagine. She’s not running.”
She isn’t doing much of anything. When they close on her, she’s presenting herself for his cannon like a wanton little minx. He’s not that stupid. And he’s no green cabin boy, pissing himself over rumours. One of the sailors who’d lived from The Black-Eyed Bastard had a gash the length of his torso, and swore up and down no living creature had ever touched him. Ghosts. Idiot.
“Sort of eerie, don’t you think?” Yul Ba mutters, as the boarding party starts to gather around them. She’s looking through the spyglass at The Wraith’s darkened decks.
He snorts derisively. “Shitting yourself over ghosts? Don’t you worry. If the dead walk on that ship, I’ll show them how to die twice.”
Kaz
In the dark of the captain’s cabin, they wait in silence. Her crew are good at obeying orders. They might as well be on a ghost ship, all he can hear is the slap of the waves against the bow, the creak of wood, and the sound of their breathing. Their only light is the crescent moon, filtering in through the tiny window. She has a new scar, a thin line running from her lip to her chin, and he wonders who managed to hit her, and what she did to them in return. When she takes hold of his bare hand, he involuntarily inhales, but doesn’t obey his first instinct, which is still to back up like a wounded animal and say something cutting to cover up the fear. There is barely any distance between them, and he understands, she has taken them this far, if he wants to go further, it’s up to him to close the gap.
It would be easier not to. Every time he has left his gloves in his pocket to do some trivial transaction in Ketterdam, it would have been easier not to. He had failed, most of the time, in the beginning. He fails often, now. But. There is a very real chance this plan will go south, and they’ll end up at the bottom of the ocean (he has drowned too many times in his life now. He’s not doing it again.). That means there’s also a very real chance that Inej’s last thoughts will run along the lines of ‘Well, Kaz Brekker is a really terrible kisser. I’m so glad I didn’t waste more of my time on him’. Were they actually going to do this? Or was he going to flinch? Like the last time, at the Geldrenner, when she’d greeted his fumbling attempt towards warmth with open honesty, and he’d repaid her by biting like a rabid dog.
He had told her the truth, the night she left Ketterdam on The Wraith for the first time. She hadn’t looked surprised, or pitiful, or revolted. She’d just thanked him for telling her. Squeezed his gloved hand. Sailed off into the mist. Nearly ten years, he’d held onto that night lived amongst the dead. His silence had been feeding its grip on him. Naming it diminished its power.
Every job is like stepping off a precipice. That first leap changes the course of your future. You might break your leg into four pieces, and hurt for the rest of your life. You might get away with seventy million kruge. You might get both. There is only one way to find out. Kaz jumps.
Inej
“Do you remember the waffle shop?” Inej blurts out. Kaz is holding her hand the way she holds a trapeze bar she thought she would miss (the way she holds the rigging when she climbs the mast in a storm).
He looks at her, expression confused; when she adds “On Raadhuisstraat,” his dark eyes widen in comprehension.
“I remember.”
It had been a miserable night, a few weeks before the Ice Court. There had been a disagreement between Kaz and Per Haskell, and now Kaz was being punished for his insubordination with a blackmail job that, just incidentally, required a twelve story stair climb.
Inej had understood his leg was probably bad, but it didn’t excuse the extent of his bad mood, snipping and griping at her, with long stretches of sullen silence between.
She’d gotten entirely sick of it two hours into their stakeout. He wasn’t the only one out in the icy rain, and he wasn’t the one about the risk his neck crossing a slackline over to the building on the other side of the street. She’d left him to watch for the target, busied herself checking the rope, humming an old Suli song to the waterlogged pigeons that were their only company.
“If the job required an opera girl I would have brought one.” He’d snapped.
“That would have been nice,” she’d replied, because she suspected being cheerful would annoy him. “She’d be better company than you. And I haven’t seen ‘The Ice Maiden and the King’ yet.”
“Don’t bother. The director’s in deep with Van Ereen. The whole thing was written in about four days and Ereen’s mistress is caterwauling in the lead.”
“Seems like a stupid move by Van Ereen, if he wants his money back. Remember ‘Fenella the Mute’? They burned the opera house down.”
Inej had thought she’d seen the ghost of a smile, then became reasonably sure of it, because Kaz looked annoyed with himself. Either way, the look had vanished as he caught sight of the target, and his face assumed a much more familiar arrangement.
The result of the scheming face was a request to retrieve more than just information from the target’s room. She’d inwardly sighed. It would take twice as long, and would be twice as dangerous. If he hadn’t been in such a foul temper all day, she probably would never have spoken, but as she pulled herself out to the rope, she’d let her frustration get the better of her.
“And what do I get for all this extra work? A please? A thank you? An umbrella for the walk home?”
She’d waited for the sharp comeback, probably a reminder that she was going to get paid her damn share, but instead he’d looked at her with an evaluating expression.
“What do you want?”
“Waffles.” She’d said, partly because her mind had gone a little blank, but the look on his face had made her glad she’d said it. “Not from Ma Drisken’s place. Nice ones. Fluffy and crispy. Little decorative bits of fruit. Cream. Chocolate sauce.”
“I suppose you want ice cream and a sparkler stuck in the top, too.”
She’d lifted herself into the slackline and nodded, her balance perfect. “The sparkler is mandatory.”
Then, to her astonishment, he’d shrugged, and nodded. “Alright, Wraith. Get me what I need from his case without him any the wiser…”
“And you’ll buy me a plate of waffles.”
“The deal is the deal?”
“The deal is the deal.”
Of course, it turned out he was using the occasion to get near some mercher’s daughter who frequented the place, but he had bought her a plate of waffles, decorative pyrotechnics and all. To outside eyes, they were just a young couple. A Kerch boy and a Suli girl, wasting their wages on cream and sugar and young love. She had wondered if there was any world where that could have been the truth.
There had been a moment, though, as they’d left, as they’d waited, pressed against a wall, for the boat that would take them back to the Barrel. As they’d heard his target explode with rage, somewhere behind them, there had been a moment when she’d thought-
He’d looked down at her and she’d looked up and him, and if they had truly been that couple eating waffles in the winter sun, he would have leaned down and kissed her.
Then the watch had started towards them, they’d stolen onto the boat, and headed back to the reality of their lives in the Barrel.
“I don’t know why I thought-“ Inej starts, and finishes, unsure where she’s going.
“By the bridge. It was cold. You had chocolate on your face.”
She feels her face heating up. She hadn’t known that. “I thought. For a second, I thought you were going to-“
“I think I wanted to.” She can feel his shallow breath on her skin, he’s that close. “I want to.”
Words seem to catch in her throat, but it is not a time for silence. When the trapeze reaches the right point, you have to let go. “I wanted you to. I want-“
He kisses her. Fast, hot, breaks away almost immediately. Grips her hand tighter.
“I don’t- I’ve never-“
She kisses him back, slower, so she can remember the feel of it. He tastes like rum and saltwater. They part, and he leans his head against her shoulder. The change in his breathing feels something like relief.
Then they hear the bird call. Twice. It is time to move.
Captain Kuznetsov
He sends the crew to divide and conquer, but there’s no one on the fucking ship. It’s like they all just downed tools and decided to drown themselves. Flattering thought, but he’s smarter than that. They’re hiding on board somewhere. Is this The Wraith’s game? Wait for him to celebrate his victory then slaughter everyone in their stupor? That’s the kind of thing Smit would have fallen for, but not him. His blood is up, and he’s ready for some action.
“Captain!”
Yul Ba hisses in his ear. She’s a superstitious idiot, whispering for fear of ghosts. He follows her gaze, though. There’s a man at the helm, casually leaning, one hand on the wheel. He’d sent Van Eyre and Pinkeye to see to the forecastle and the helm, and where are they now?
“You want me to shoot?”
He waves her off. “No, lets see what stupid game we’re playing, here. If anyone’s shooting, it’s me.”
Kuznetsov cocks his six shooter, walks up to the man with a confidence he’s faking. “Take your hands off my boat, Captain. And consider yourself relieved of command.”
The man turns. He’s young, but he looks like a corpse, with shark black eyes and waxy pale skin that’s gone damp in the mist. Kuznetsov supresses a shiver and for a second, he wonders if maybe Yul Ba is right. He glances sidelong, but she’s not at his six anymore.
“Oh I’m not the captain.” The man glances down at his ankle. It’s shackled to the deck with a thick iron manacle. One gloved hand is chained to the wheel “The captain’s not here. She got word you were coming, sent me to meet you.”
Kuznetsov doesn’t lower his gun, but he grins. “Fine job.”
“I didn’t volunteer.” He says, flatly.
“Women. Never up for a fair fight.” The ship mustn’t be sound, if this bitch is willing to give it up. “What is it, then? Slow leaking hull? Crack in the mast?” He’s seen this kind of sabotage before, even done it once or twice. You let a privateer take your ship and man it with his crew, then watch half your enemies sink. Not something that’s going to fool him, of course, but it’s sweet that she tried.
“You hear about The Grim Alex?”
Everyone had heard about The Grim Alex. Missing in the true sea for a year and more, with a hundred million kruge worth of silver bullion. The captain had turned up alone in a skiff, raving about fire and demons and little else. A lot of people had tried to talk sense into him, if only for a clue to where the treasure was, but nothing had worked.
“What about her?” The second he feels water coming into the boat, he’s going to force a description of The Wraith’s crew out of this lackwit, and head to shore to butcher the lot of them. “Is your captain at the bottom of the ocean with her?”
“My captain?” He spits. “Let me tell you a story about my captain and The Grim Alex.”
What he’s saying can’t be true. But he has details that add up. Kuznetsov’s brain is telling him to put a bullet in the kid, but his gut is saying silver.
By the time he’s done, Kuznetsov is incredulous. His crew is staring at the man chained to the helm. A hundred million kruge. At the bottom of the ocean. All for revenge. All female captains are crazy bitches, he respects that, but this takes the cake.
“And she made us watch. I still have the scar where she pressed the knife at my throat. The old first mate covered his eyes, so she cut off his hand. Then his eyelids.”
Kuznetsov scoffs. “So what’s the plan here. She got a tonne of explosives in those rum barrels?” Now that he’s said it, he’s suddenly uneasy, as is the crew; they’re muttering to each other urgently, looking down at their feet as if the deck might disintegrate at the thought of it.
“The plan is, you all surrender, we all get to live another day.”
“You expect me to believe she’s gonna sink her own ship? Who are we supposed to surrender to? You?”
He almost smiles, shakes his head, and nods towards the port side, behind Kuznetsov. “Surrender to the Empress Delilah. I hear her captain is the forgiving sort.”
Kuznetsov frowns. “There’s forty men on the Empress Delilah.”
“Then you just lost forty men.” He says, unblinking. Empress Delilah is signalling with the lamp. One word. Surrender.
“Yul Ba! Gutrot! Get to the gun decks. No one touches Delilah but me.
“You want us to fire on our own ship?”
“I’ll see her fucking sink before I see her stolen by a pirate. Get to it. And someone get an axe. I want this idiot off the helm.”
“That’s probably a bad idea.” The idiot says, because the weak points in the chains holding the wheel immobile are his hands and legs. Some people just aren’t givers.
Kuznetsov gets up close, points his gun into the kid’s temple. “You want me to shoot you before I cut you out? You think I should waste a bullet on you?”
“You aren’t wrong.”
“That it’d be a waste of a bullet?” He likes a man who knows his own value.
“About the tonne of explosives. You don’t go into the skiffs like meek little lambikins, and she’s going to start firing.”
“Captain! You might want to come and look at this.” Yul Ba is looking into a barrel on the deck with a very grim expression on her face.
“Tick tick.” The idiot at the helm says, under his gun. Kuznetsov is about to shoot him because it’s the only thing he can think of to make him feel better, when a shot booms out across the quiet of the still ocean. The song of Delilah’s long nine. She shoots high, smashing through the taffrail, taking Gutrot and Kuska over the side with her. If the crew hold their nerve, he can make something of this. They don’t. They’re hurling themselves at the skiffs as the lantern signals again. Surrender.
He means to win this, he can still win this. But he takes his eye off the idiot, and the next thing he knows, he has a bloody nose and a chain around his neck. He shoots, but hits wide, and the graze doesn’t slow the bastard down. He is missing his second pistol. Where is his second pistol? Kuznetsov goes down with a sharply broken shin, and he understands. The last thing he sees is Delilah’s lanterns. Surrender.
Inej
Inej leaves Cai and Specht in charge on the Delilah. They’ve got 60 of Kuznetsov’s crew chained in the hold, broken, bloody, begging for mercy, but alive. They built that boat believing it could hold three hundred people for weeks. They have no business complaining. She might have set them adrift, they’re only a day from shore and the odds aren’t terrible, but they’re necessary for the next phase of the plan. The craziest phase. The part that was her idea.
She doubts Kaz will share her opinion, but the fresh air is doing him good. The wind is tousling his hair and putting colour in his cheeks for once. It suits him. She watches him stare grimly out across the horizon from her position in the rigging for a few minutes, then climbs down lightly to join him, her legs dangling over the side of the boat.
“I think that could have gone worse. Taking one of the dread Admiral Cepra’s finest with two shots?”
“You fired a cannon at me.”
“I missed, didn’t I?” She replies, lightly. He takes her hand, entangles their fingers, keeps looking out at the sea.
“I felt a breeze.” He pauses for a moment. “You’ve always had good aim.”
“The heart is an arrow.” She agrees. Aim is not her problem. Targets, sometimes. But not aim. “My father said when I’m through with the world, there’ll be new sayings about me.” She says, because this is a brave new future, and idle chit chat with Kaz Brekker is something she wants to try out.
“He’s proud of you.” She’s not sure if it’s a question or a statement.
“Some of him. The rest of him wishes I was safe at home, concerning myself with a husband and grandchildren.”
Kaz looks down at their hands and coughs awkwardly. “Yes, he might have mentioned that. Once or twice.” At her astonished expression, he gives a wry grin. “He writes. He thinks I need a positive influence in my life.”
“You do.” She replies flatly.
“And here I thought this was why you crossed my path.”
“I’m a terrifying scourge of the seas, I’m no good to you. I think that’s why we all have Wylan.”
They’re quiet for a while, watching the sharks circle something large beneath the boat, as the sunrise turns the water red.
“I missed you.” Kaz say quietly, like it’s in a language he’s not quite sure he knows.
“Careful. Your reputation will be in tatters. Kaz Brekker, notorious bastard of the barrel. Likes holding hands and sunrises.”
“Don’t slander me. I’m entirely indifferent to sunrises.”
There is a very good chance this whole endeavour will end in disaster. Adelheyd Kelder is a bigger target than Pekka Rollins, or even Jan Van Eck. There are so many points it could fail at. Maybe Kaz will die in Hellgate, or The Wraith will be lost at sea, and so this will all have been for nothing. Right now, though it feels like a good time to bet on the impossible.