Kaz expected to wake in the next world, warm and safe, his belly full, Jordie beside him. Instead, he woke surrounded by corpses. He was lying in the shallows of the Reaper ’s Barge, his clothes soaked through, skin wrinkled from the damp. Jordie’s body was beside him, barely recognisable, white and swollen with rot, floating on the surface like some kind of gruesome deep sea fish.
Kaz’s vision had cleared, and the rash had receded. His fever had broken. He’d forgotten his hunger, but he was thirsty enough that he thought he would go mad.
All that day and night, he waited in the pile of bodies, looking out at the harbour, hoping the flatboat would return. They had to come to set the fires that would burn the corpses, but when? Did the bodymen collect every day? Every other day? He was weak and dehydrated. He knew he wouldn’t last much longer. The coast seemed so far away, and he knew he was too weak to swim the distance. He had survived the fever, but he might well die out here on the Reaper ’s Barge. Did he care? There was nothing waiting for him in the city except more hunger and dark alleys and the damp of the canals.
Even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true. Vengeance was waiting, vengeance for Jordie and maybe for himself, too. But he would have to go to meet it.
When night came, and the tide changed direction, Kaz forced himself to lay hands on Jordie’s body. He was too frail to swim on his own, but with Jordie’s help, he could float. He held tight to his brother and kicked towards the lights of Ketterdam. Together, they drifted, Jordie’s distended body acting as a raft. Kaz kept kicking, trying not to think of his brother, of the taut, bloated feel of Jordie’s flesh beneath his hands; he tried not to think of anything but the rhythm of his legs moving through the sea. He’d heard there were sharks in these waters, but he knew they wouldn’t touch him. He was a monster now, too.
He kept kicking, and when dawn came, he looked up to find himself at the east end of the Lid. The harbour was nearly deserted; the plague had caused shipping in and out of Kerch to grind to a halt.
The last hundred yards were hard. The tide had turned once more, and it was working against him.
But Kaz had hope now, hope and fury, twin flames burning inside him. They guided him to the dock
and up the ladder. When he reached the top, he flopped down on his back on the wooden slats, then forced himself to roll over. Jordie’s body was caught in the current, bumping against the pylon below.
His eyes were still open, and for a moment, Kaz thought his brother was staring back at him. But Jordie didn’t speak, he didn’t blink, his gaze didn’t shift as the tide dragged him free of the pylon and began to carry him out to sea.
I should close his eyes, thought Kaz. But he knew if he climbed down the ladder and waded back into the sea, he would never find his way out again. He’d simply let himself drown, and that wasn’t possible any more. He had to live. Someone had to pay.
In the prison wagon, Kaz woke to a sharp jab against his thigh. He was ice cold and in darkness. There were bodies all around him, pressing against his back, his sides. He was drowning in corpses.
“Kaz.” A whisper.
He shuddered.
Another jab to his thigh.
“Kaz.” Inej’s voice. He managed a deep breath through his nose. He felt her pull away from him.
Somehow, in the cramped confines of the wagon, she managed to give him space. His heart was pounding.
“Keep talking,” he rasped.
“What?”
“Just keep talking.”
“We’re passing through the prison gate. We made it past the first two checkpoints.”
That brought him fully to his senses. They’d gone through two checkpoints. That meant they’d been counted. Someone had opened that door – not once but twice – maybe even laid hands on him, and he hadn’t woken. He could have been robbed, killed. He’d imagined his death a thousand ways, but never sleeping through it.
He forced himself to breathe deeply, despite the smell of bodies. He’d kept his gloves on, something the guards might have easily taken note of, and a frustrating concession to his weakness, but if he hadn’t, he felt fairly sure he’d have gone completely mad.
Behind him, he could hear the other prisoners murmuring to one another in different languages.
Despite the fears the darkness woke in him, he gave thanks for it. He could only hope that the rest of his crew, hooded and burdened by their own anxiety, hadn’t noticed anything strange about his behaviour. He’d been sluggish, slow to react when they’d ambushed the wagon, but that was all, and he could make up some excuse to account for it.
He hated that Inej had seen him this way, that anyone had, but on the heels of that thought came another: Better it should be her. In his bones, he knew that she would never speak of it to anyone, that she would never use this knowledge against him. She relied on his reputation. She wouldn’t want him to look weak. But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there? Inej would never betray him. He knew it. Kaz felt ill. Though he’d trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with this shame.