The wagon came to a halt. The bolt slid back, and the doors flew open.
He heard Fjerdan being spoken, then scraping noises and a thunk. His collar was unlocked, and he was led from the wagon down some kind of ramp with the other prisoners. He heard what sounded
like a gate creaking open, and they were herded forward, shuffling along in their shackles.
He squinted as his hood was suddenly yanked free. They were standing in a large courtyard. The massive gate set into the ringwall was already being lowered closed, and it struck the stones with an ominous series of clanks and groans. When Kaz looked up, he saw guards stationed all along the roof of the courtyard, rifles aimed down at the prisoners. The guards below were moving along the rows of shackled captives, trying to match them to the driver ’s paperwork by name or description.
Matthias had described the layout of the Ice Court in detail, but he’d said little about the way it actually looked. Kaz had expected something old and damp – grim grey stone, battle-hard. Instead, he was surrounded by marble so white it almost glowed blue. He felt as if he’d wandered into some dream-like version of the harsh lands they’d travelled in the north. It was impossible to tell what might be glass or ice or stone.
“If this isn’t Fabrikator craft, then I’m the queen of the woodsprites,” muttered Nina in Kerch.
“Tig! ” one of the guards commanded. He slammed his rifle into her gut, and she doubled over in pain. Matthias kept his head turned, but Kaz didn’t miss the tension in his frame.
The Fjerdan guards were gesturing over their papers, trying to make the numbers and identities of the prisoners match up to the group before them. This was the first real moment of exposure, one Kaz would have no control over. It would have been too time-consuming and dangerous to pick and choose the prisoners they’d replaced. It was a calculated risk, but now Kaz could only wait and hope that laziness and bureaucracy would do the rest.
As the guards moved down the line, Inej helped Nina to her feet.
“You okay?” Inej asked, and Kaz felt himself drawn towards her voice like water rolling downhill.
Slowly, Nina unbent herself and stood upright. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “But I don’t think we have to worry about Pekka Rollins’ team any more.”
Kaz tracked Nina’s gaze to the top of the ringwall, high above the courtyard, where five men had been impaled on spikes like meat skewered for roasting, backs bent, limbs dangling. Kaz had to squint, but he recognised Eroll Aerts, Rollins’ best lockpick and safecracker. The bruises and welts from the beating they’d given him before his death were deep purple in the morning light, and Kaz could just make out a black mark on his arm – Aerts’ Dime Lion tattoo.
He scanned the other faces – some were too swollen and distorted in death to identify. Could one of them be Rollins? Kaz knew he should be glad another team had been taken out, but Rollins was no fool, and the thought that his crew hadn’t made it past the Ice Court gates was more than a little nerve-racking. Besides, if Rollins had met his death at the end of a Fjerdan pike … No, Kaz refused that possibility. Pekka Rollins belonged to him.
The guards were arguing with the wagon driver now, and one of them was pointing at Inej.
“What’s happening?” he whispered to Nina.
“They’re claiming the papers are out of order, that they have a Suli girl instead of a Shu boy.”
“And the driver?” asked Inej.
“He just keeps telling them it’s not his problem.”
“That’s the way,” Kaz murmured encouragingly.
Kaz watched them go back and forth. That was the beauty of all these fail-safes and layers of security. The guards always thought they could rely on someone else to catch a mistake or fix a problem. Laziness wasn’t as reliable as greed, but it still made a fine lever. And they were talking about prisoners – chained, surrounded on all sides, and about to be dumped into cells. Harmless.
Finally, one of the prison guards sighed and signalled to his cohorts. “Diveskemen.”
“Go on,” Nina translated, and then continued as the guard spoke. “Take them to the east block and let the next shift sort them out.”
Kaz allowed himself the briefest sigh of relief.
As anticipated, guards split the group into men and women, then led both rows, chains jangling, through a nearly round archway fashioned in the shape of a wolf’s open mouth.
They entered a chamber where an old woman sat with her hands chained, flanked by guards. Her