Kaz gestured to Jesper. “Perimeter. Let’s make sure there aren’t more surprises.” They set off in opposite directions.
Nina and the others found Inej standing over the body of the trembling Grisha. He wore clothes of olive drab, and his eyes were glassy. Blood spilled from the bullet wound in his upper thigh, and a knife jutted from the right side of his chest. Inej must have thrown it when she’d escaped from the enclosure.
Nina kneeled beside him.
“I need a little more,” the Grisha mumbled. “Just a little more.” He grabbed at Nina’s hand, and only then did she recognise him.
“Nestor?”
He twitched at the sound of his name, but he didn’t seem to know her.
“Nestor, it’s me, Nina.” She had been at school with him back at the Little Palace. They’d been sent to Keramzin together during the war. At King Nikolai’s coronation, they’d stolen a bottle of champagne and got sick by the lake. He was a Fabrikator, one of the Durasts who worked with metal, glass, and fibers. It didn’t make sense. Fabrikators made textiles, weapons. He shouldn’t have been capable of what she’d just witnessed.
“Please,” he begged, his face crumpling. “I need more.”
“Parem?”
“Yes,” he sobbed. “Yes. Please.”
“I can heal your wound, Nestor, if you stay still.” He was in bad shape, but if she could stop the bleeding …
“I don’t want your help,” he said angrily, trying to push away from her.
She tried calming him, lowering his pulse, but she was afraid of stopping his heart. “Please, Nestor. Please be still.”
He was screaming now, fighting her.
“Hold him down,” she said.
Matthias moved to help, and Nestor threw up his arms.
The ground rose in a rippling sheet, thrusting Nina and the others back.
“Nestor, please! Let us help you.”
He stood up, staggering on his wounded leg, pulling at the knife buried in his chest. “Where are they?” he screamed. “Where did they go?”
“Who?”
“The Shu!” he wailed. “Where did they go? Come back!” He took a wobbling step, then another.
“Come back!” He fell face forwards into the snow. He didn’t move again.
Nina rushed to his side and turned him over. There was snow in his eyes and his mouth. She placed her hands on his chest, trying to restore his heartbeat, but it was no good. If he hadn’t been ravaged by the drug, he might have survived his wounds. But his body was weak, the skin tight to his bones and so pale it seemed transparent.
This isn’t right, Nina thought miserably. Practising the Small Science made a Grisha healthier, stronger. It was one of the things she loved most about her power. But the body had limits. It was as if the drug had caused Nestor ’s power to outpace his body. It had simply used him up.
Kaz and Jesper returned, panting.
“Anything?” asked Matthias.
Jesper nodded. “A party of people heading south.”
“He was calling out for the Shu,” Nina said.
“We knew the Shu would send a team to retrieve Bo Yul-Bayur,” said Kaz.
Jesper looked down at Nestor ’s motionless body. “But we didn’t know they’d send Grisha. How can we be sure they aren’t mercenaries?”
Kaz held up a coin emblazoned with a horse on one side and two crossed keys on the other. “This was in the Squaller ’s pocket,” he said, tossing it to Jesper. “It’s a Shu wen ye. The Coin of Passage.
This is a government mission.”
“How did they find us?” Inej asked.
“Maybe Jesper ’s gunshots drew them,” said Kaz.
Jesper bristled and pointed at Nina and Matthias. “Or maybe they heard these two shouting at each other. They could have been following us for miles.”
Nina tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Shu didn’t use Grisha as soldiers, and they weren’t like the Fjerdans; they didn’t see Grisha power as unnatural or repulsive. They were fascinated by it. But they still viewed the Grisha as less than human. The Shu government had been capturing and experimenting on Grisha for years in an attempt to locate the source of their power.
They would never use Grisha as mercenaries. Or at least that had been the case before. Maybe parem had changed the game.
“I don’t understand,” said Nina. “If they have jurda parem, why go after Bo Yul-Bayur?”
“It’s possible they have a stash of it, but can’t reproduce his process,” Kaz said. “That’s what the Merchant Council seemed to think. Or maybe they just want to make sure Yul-Bayur doesn’t give the formula to anyone else.”
“Do you think they’ll use drugged Grisha to try to break into the Ice Court?” Inej asked.
“If they have more of them,” said Kaz. “That’s what I would do.”
Matthias shook his head. “If they’d had a Heartrender, we’d all be dead.”
“It was still a close thing,” replied Inej.
Jesper shouldered his rifle. “Wylan earned his keep.”
Wylan gave a little jump at the sound of his name. “I did?”
“Well, you made a down payment.”
“Let’s move,” said Kaz.