He halted midswing. “What?”
“They were spies doing reconnaissance work in the port. They saw me enter the main square with you and recognised me from the Little Palace. One of them recognised you, too, Matthias. He knew you from a skirmish near the border.”
Matthias remained still.
“They waylaid me when you went to speak to the manager of the boarding house,” Nina continued.
“I convinced them I was under cover there, too. They wanted to take you prisoner, but I told them that you weren’t alone, that it would be too risky to try to capture you right away. I promised I would bring you to them the next day.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
Nina tossed down her pick. “Tell you there were Grisha spies in Elling? You might have made your peace with me, but you can’t expect me to believe you wouldn’t have revealed them.”
He looked away, a muscle twitching in his jaw, and she knew she’d spoken truth.
“That morning,” he said, “on the docks—”
“I had to get us both away from Elling as fast as I could. I thought if I could just find us a vessel to stow away on … but the Grisha must have been watching the boarding house and seen us leave. When they showed up on the docks, I knew they were coming for you, Matthias. If they’d captured you, you would have been taken to Ravka, interrogated, maybe executed. I spotted the Kerch trader. You know their laws on slaving.”
“Of course I do,” he said bitterly.
“I made the charge. I begged them to save me. I knew they’d have to take you into custody, and bring us safely to Kerch. I didn’t know – Matthias, I didn’t know they’d throw you in Hellgate.”
His eyes were hard when he faced her, his knuckles white on the handle of his pick. “Why didn’t you speak up? Why didn’t you tell the truth when we arrived in Ketterdam?”
“I tried. I swear it. I tried to recant. They wouldn’t let me see a judge. They wouldn’t let me see you.
I couldn’t explain the seal from the slaver or why I’d made the charges, not without revealing Ravka’s intelligence operations. I would have compromised Grisha still in the field. I would have been sentencing them to death.”
“So you left me to rot in Hellgate.”
“I could have gone home to Ravka. Saints, I wanted to. But I stayed in Ketterdam. I gave up my wages for bribes, petitioned the Court—”
“You did everything but tell the truth.”
She’d meant to be gentle, apologetic, to tell him that she’d thought of him every night and every day. But the image of the pyre was still fresh in her mind. “I was trying to protect my people, people you’ve spent your life trying to exterminate.”
He gave a rueful laugh, turning the pick over in his hands. “Wanden olstrum end kendesorum.”
It was the first part of a Fjerdan saying, The water hears and understands. It sounded kind enough, but Matthias knew that Nina would be familiar with the rest of it.
“Isen ne bejstrum,” she finished. The water hears and understands. The ice does not forgive.
“And what will you do now, Nina? Will you betray the people you call friends again, for the sake of the Grisha?”
“What?”
“You can’t tell me you intend to let Bo Yul-Bayur live.”
He knew her well. With every new thing she’d learned of jurda parem, she’d been more certain that the only way to protect Grisha was to end the scientist’s life. She thought of Nestor begging with his last breath for his Shu masters to return. “I can’t bear the thought of my people being slaves,” she admitted. “But we have a debt to settle, Matthias. The pardon is my penance, and I won’t be the person who keeps you from your freedom again.”
“I don’t want the pardon.”
She stared at him. “But—”
“Maybe your people would become slaves. Or maybe they would become an unstoppable force. If
Yul-Bayur lives and the secret of jurda parem becomes known, anything is possible.”
For a long moment, they held each other ’s gaze. The sun was beginning to set, light falling in golden shafts across the snow. She could see the blond of Matthias’ lashes peeking through the black antimony she had used to stain them. She’d have to tailor him again soon.
In those days after the shipwreck, she and Matthias had formed an uneasy truce. What had grown up between them had been something fiercer than affection – an understanding that they were both soldiers, that in another life, they might have been allies instead of enemies. She felt that now.
“It would mean betraying the others,” she said. “They won’t get their pay from the Merchant Council.”
“True.”
“And Kaz will kill us both.”
“If he learns the truth.”
“Have you tried lying to Kaz Brekker?”
Matthias shrugged. “Then we die as we lived.”
Nina looked at Nestor ’s emaciated form. “For a cause.”