begun to ring, the chimes of the Elderclock booming over the island, shaking the air. Lights from the guard towers came on in a bright flood. The drüskelle around the ash left off their rituals and began shouting orders, and a wave of guards descended from the towers to spread out over the island. He’d waited, counting the minutes, but there was still no sign of Nina or Matthias. They’re in trouble, Kaz had thought. Or you were dead wrong about Matthias, and you’re about to pay for all of those talking tree jokes.
He had to get inside the treasury, but he’d need some kind of cover while he picked that inscrutable lock, and there were drüskelle everywhere. Then he saw Nina and Matthias and a person he assumed must be Bo Yul-Bayur running from the treasury. He’d been about to call out to them when the explosion hit, and everything went to hell.
They blew up the lab, he’d thought as debris rained down around him. I definitely did not tell them to blow up the lab.
The rest was pure improvisation, and it left little time for explanation. All Kaz had told Matthias was to meet him by the ash when Black Protocol began to ring. He’d thought he’d have time to tell them to deploy the baleen before they were all falling through the dark. Now he just had to hope that they wouldn’t panic and that his luck was waiting somewhere below.
The fall seemed impossibly long. Kaz hoped the Shu boy he was holding on to was a surprisingly young Bo Yul-Bayur and not some hapless prisoner Nina and Matthias had decided to liberate. He’d shoved the disk into the boy’s mouth as they went over, snapping it with his own fingers. He gave the whip a flick, releasing all of the cables, and heard the others scream as the strands retracted. At least they wouldn’t go into the water bound. Kaz waited as long as he dared to bite into his own baleen.
When he struck the icy water, he feared his heart might stop.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but the force of the river was terrifying, flowing fast and hard as an avalanche. The noise was deafening even beneath the water, but with fear also came a kind of giddy vindication. He’d been right.
The voice of god. There was always truth in legend. Kaz had spent enough time building his own myth to know. He’d wondered where the water that fed the Ice Court’s moat and fountains came from, why the river gorge was so very deep and wide. As soon as Nina had described the drüskelle initiation ritual, he’d known: The Fjerdan stronghold hadn’t been built around a great tree but around a spring.
Djel, the wellspring, who fed the seas and rains, and the roots of the sacred ash.
Water had a voice. It was something every canal rat knew, anyone who had slept beneath a bridge or weathered a winter storm in an overturned boat – water could speak with the voice of a lover, a long-lost brother, even a god. That was the key, and once Kaz recognised it, it was as if someone had laid a perfect blueprint over the Ice Court and its workings. If Kaz was right, Djel would spit them out into the gorge. Assuming they didn’t drown first.
And that was a very real possibility. The baleen only provided enough air for ten minutes, maybe twelve if they could keep calm, which he doubted they would. His own heart was hammering, and his lungs already felt tight. His body was numb and aching from the temperature of the water, and the darkness was impenetrable. There was nothing but the dull thunder of the water and a sickening sense of tumbling.
He hadn’t been sure of the speed of the water, but he knew damn well the numbers were close.
Numbers had always been his allies – odds, margins, the art of the wager. But now he had to rely on something more. What god do you serve? Inej had asked him. Whichever will grant me good fortune.
Fortunate people didn’t end up racing ass over teakettle beneath an ice moat in hostile territory.
What would be waiting when they fished up in the gorge? Who would be waiting? Jesper and Wylan had managed to engage Black Protocol. But had they managed to do the rest? Would he see Inej on the other side?
Survive. Survive. Survive. It was the way he’d lived his life, moment to moment, breath to breath, since that terrible morning when he’d woken to find that Jordie was still dead and he was still very much alive.
Kaz tumbled through the dark. He was colder than he’d ever been. He thought of Inej’s hand on his cheek. His mind had gone jagged at the sensation, a riot of confusion. It had been terror and disgust and – in all of that clamour – desire, a wish that lingered still, the hope that she would touch him again.