Jesper shook his head. “I’m impressed. With you and your tutors.”
They liberated two of the guards’ uniforms, leaving their own prison clothes in a tidy bundle, then bound the hands and feet of the guards who still had pulses and gagged them with torn pieces of their prison clothes. Wylan’s uniform was far too big, and Jesper ’s sleeves and pants looked ridiculously short, but at least the boots were a reasonable fit.
Wylan gestured to the guards. “Is it safe to leave them, you know—”
“Alive? I’m not big on killing unconscious men.”
“We could wake them up.”
“Pretty ruthless, merchling. Have you ever killed anyone?”
“I’d never even seen a dead body before I came to the Barrel,” Wylan admitted.
“It’s not something to be embarrassed about,” Jesper said, surprising himself a little. But he meant it. Wylan needed to learn to take care of himself, but it would be nice if he could do it without getting on friendly terms with death. “Make sure the gags are tight.”
They took the extra precaution of securing the bound guards to the base of a stone slab. The poor nubs would probably be discovered before they managed to get loose.
“Let’s go,” Jesper said, and they crossed the courtyard to the gatehouse. There were doors to the right and left of the arch.
They took the right side, climbing the stairs cautiously. Though Jesper didn’t think anyone would be lying in wait, some guard might be charged with protecting the gate mechanism at all cost. But the room above the arch was empty, lit only by a lantern set on a low table where a book lay open next to a little pile of whole walnuts and cracked shells. The walls were lined with racks of rifles – very expensive rifles – and Jesper assumed the boxes on the shelves were filled with ammunition. No dust anywhere. Tidy Fjerdans.
Most of the room was taken up by a long winch, handles at each end, thick loops of chain spooled around it. Near each handle, the chains extended in taut spokes through slots in the stone.
Wylan cocked his head to the side. “Huh.”
“I don’t like that sound. What’s wrong?”
“I was expecting rope or cables, not steel chains. If we’re going to make sure the Fjerdans can’t get the gate open, we’re going to have to cut through the metal.”
“But then how do we trigger Black Protocol?”
“That’s the problem.”
The Elderclock began to sound ten bells.
“I’ll weaken the links,” said Jesper. “Look for a file or anything with an edge.”
Wylan held up the shears from the laundry.
“Good enough,” said Jesper. It would have to be.
We have time, he told himself as he focused on the chain. We can still get this done. Jesper hoped the others hadn’t met with any surprises.
Maybe Matthias was wrong about the White Island. Maybe the shears would snap in Wylan’s hands.
Maybe Inej would fail. Or Nina. Or Kaz.
Or me. Maybe I’ll fail.
Six people, but a thousand ways this insane plan could go wrong.
NINE BELLS AND HALF CHIME
Nina dared one more glance over her shoulder, watching the guards drag Inej away. She’s smart, deadly. Inej can take care of herself.
The thought brought Nina little comfort, but she had to keep moving. She and Inej had clearly been together, and she wanted to be gone before the guard who had stopped Inej extended his suspicions to her. Besides, there was nothing she could do for Inej now, not without giving herself away and ruining everything. She ducked through the hordes of partygoers and shucked off the conspicuous horsehair cloak, letting it trail behind her, then allowing it to drop and be trampled by the crowd. Her costume would still turn heads, but at least now she didn’t have to worry about a big red topknot giving away her location.
The glass bridge rose before her in a gleaming arc, shimmering in the blue flames of the lanterns on its spires. All around her people laughed and clung to one another as they climbed higher above the ice moat, its surface shining below, a near-perfect mirror. The effect was disconcerting, dizzying; her too-tight beaded slippers seemed to float in mid-air. The people beside her looked as if they were walking on nothing at all.
Again she had the unpleasant understanding that this place must have been built by Fabrikator craft in some distant past. Fjerdans claimed the construction of the Ice Court was the work of a god or of S?nj Egmond, one of the Saints they claimed had Fjerdan blood. But in Ravka, people had begun to rethink the miracles of the Saints. Had they been true miracles or simply the work of talented Grisha?
Was this bridge a gift from Djel? An ancient product of slave labour? Or had the Ice Court been built in a time before Grisha had come to be viewed as monsters by the Fjerdans?