“Also the proper way to fold a napkin and dance a minuet. Oh, and you can play the flute.
Marketable skills, merchling. Marketable skills.”
“No one dances the minuet any more,” grumbled Wylan.
Kaz leaned back. “What’s the easiest way to steal a man’s wallet?”
“Knife to the throat?” asked Inej.
“Gun to the back?” said Jesper.
“Poison in his cup?” suggested Nina.
“You’re all horrible,” said Matthias.
Kaz rolled his eyes. “The easiest way to steal a man’s wallet is to tell him you’re going to steal his watch. You take his attention and direct it where you want it to go. Hringk?lla is going to do that job for us. The Ice Court will have to divert resources to monitoring guests and protecting the royal family. They can’t be looking everywhere at once. It’s the perfect opportunity to spring Bo Yul-Bayur.” Kaz pointed to the prison gate in the ringwall. “Remember what I told you at Hellgate, Nina?”
“It’s hard to keep track of all your wisdom.”
“At the prison, they won’t care about who’s coming in, just anyone trying to get out.” His gloved finger slid sideways to the next sector. “At the embassy they won’t care who’s going out, they’ll just be focused on who’s trying to get in. We enter through the prison, leave through the embassy. Helvar, is the Elderclock functional?”
Matthias nodded. “It chimes every quarter hour. It’s also how the alarm protocols are sounded.”
“It’s accurate?”
“Of course.”
“Quality Fjerdan engineering,” Nina said sourly.
Kaz ignored her. “Then we’ll use the Elderclock to coordinate our movements.”
“Will we enter disguised as guards?” Wylan asked.
Jesper couldn’t keep the disdain from his voice. “Only Nina and Matthias speak Fjerdan.”
“I speak Fjerdan,” Wylan protested.
“Schoolroom Fjerdan, right? I bet you speak Fjerdan about as well as I speak moose.”
“Moose is probably your native tongue,” mumbled Wylan.
“We enter as we are,” Kaz said. “As criminals. The prison is our front door.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Jesper. “You want us to let the Fjerdans lock us in jail. Isn’t that what we’re always trying to avoid?”
“Criminal identities are slippery. It’s one of the perks of being a member of the troublemaking class. They’ll be counting heads at the prison gate, looking at names and crimes, not checking passports or examining embassy seals.”
“Because no one wants to go to prison,” Jesper said.
Nina rubbed her hands over her arms. “I don’t want to be locked up in a Fjerdan cell.”
Kaz flicked his sleeve, and two slender rods of metal appeared between his fingers. They danced over his knuckles then vanished once more.
“Lockpicks?” Nina asked.
“You let me take care of the cells,” Kaz said.
“Hit where the mark isn’t looking,” mused Inej.
“That’s right,” said Kaz. “And the Ice Court is like any other mark, one big white pigeon ready for the plucking.”
“Will Yul-Bayur come willingly?” Inej asked.
“Van Eck said the Council gave Yul-Bayur a code word when they first tried to get him out of Shu Han so he’d know who to trust: Sesh-uyeh. It will tell him we’ve been sent by Kerch.”
“Sesh-uyeh,” Wylan repeated, trying the syllables clumsily on his tongue. “What does it mean?”
Nina examined a spot on the floor and said, “Heartsick.”
“This can be done,” said Kaz, “and we’re the ones to do it.” Jesper felt the mood shift in the room as possibility took hold. It was a subtle thing, but he’d learned to look for it at the tables – the moment a player came awake to the fact that he might have a winning hand. Anticipation tugged at Jesper, a fizzing mix of fear and excitement that made it hard for him to sit still.
Maybe Matthias sensed it, too, because he folded his huge arms and said, “You have no idea what you’re up against.”
“But you do, Helvar. I want you working on the plan of the Ice Court every minute until we sail. No detail is too small or inconsequential. I’ll be checking on you regularly.”
Inej traced her finger over the rough sketch Wylan had produced, a series of embedded circles. “It really does look like the rings of a tree,” she said.
“No,” said Kaz. “It looks like a target.”
“We’re done here,” Kaz told the others. “I’ll send word to each of you after I find us a ship, but be ready to sail by tomorrow night.”
“So soon?” Inej asked.
“We don’t know what kind of weather we’ll hit, and there’s a long journey ahead of us. Hringk?lla is our best shot at Bo Yul-Bayur. I’m not going to risk losing it.”
Kaz needed time to think through the plan that was forming in his mind. He could see the basics –