“I figured it out that night at Van Eck’s house. Rollins wouldn’t stop flapping his gums about the legacy he was building. I knew he had a country house, liked to leave the city. I’d just figured he had a mistress stashed somewhere. But what he said that night made me think again.”
“And that he had a son, not a daughter? That was a guess too?”
“An educated one. He named his new gambling hall the Kaelish Prince. Had to be a little red-headed boy. And what kid isn’t fond of sweets?”
She shook her head. “What will he find in the field?”
“Nothing at all. No doubt his people will report that his son is safe and sound and doing whatever pampered children do when their fathers are away. But hopefully Pekka will spend a few agonized hours digging in the dirt and wandering in circles before that. The important thing is that he won’t be around to back up any of Van Eck’s claims and that people will hear he fled the city in a rush—with a medik in tow.”
Inej gazed up at him and Kaz could see her completing the puzzle. “The outbreak sites.”
“The Kaelish Prince. The Emerald Palace. The Sweet Shop. All businesses owned by Pekka Rollins. They’ll be shut down and quarantined for weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the city closes some of his other holdings as a precaution if they think his staff is spreading disease. It should take him at least a year to recover financially, maybe more if the panic lasts long enough. Of course, if the Council thinks he helped set up the false consortium, they may never grant him a license to operate again.”
“Fate has plans for us all,” Inej said quietly.
“And sometimes fate needs a little assistance.”
Inej frowned. “I thought you and Nina chose four outbreak sites on the Staves.”
Kaz straightened his cuffs. “I also had her stop at the Menagerie.”
She smiled then, her eyes red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again.
Kaz checked the time. “We should go. This isn’t over.”
He offered her a gloved hand. Inej heaved a long, shuddering breath, then took it, rising like smoke from a flame. But she did not let go. “You showed mercy, Kaz. You were the better man.”
There she went again, seeking decency when there was none to be had. “Inej, I could only kill Pekka’s son once.” He pushed the door open with his cane. “He can imagine his death a thousand times.”
M atthias jogged along beside Kuwei’s lifeless body. Two of the stadwatch had hefted the boy onto a stretcher, and they were running toward the Beurscanal with him as the plague sirens wailed. The medik struggled to keep up, his university robes flapping.
When they reached the dock, the medik took Kuwei’s wrist in his hand. “This is pointless. He has no pulse. The bullet must have pierced his heart.”
Just don’t pull that shirt back , Matthias willed silently. Jesper had used a wax-and-rubber bullet that had shattered when it struck the bladder lodged behind Kuwei’s shirt button, bursting the bladder’s casing and spraying blood and bone matter everywhere. The gore had been collected from a butcher shop, but there was no way the medik could know that. To everyone in the church, it appeared that Kuwei Yul-Bo had been shot in the heart and died immediately.
“Damn it,” said the medik. “Where is the emergency boat? And where is the dock steward?”
Matthias suspected he could answer those questions easily enough. The steward had abandoned his post as soon as he’d heard that plague siren, and even from this narrow vantage point they could see the canal was clogged with watercraft, people shouting and jabbing at the sides of one another’s boats with their oars as they tried to evacuate the city before the canals were closed and they were trapped in a plague warren.
“Here, sir!” called a man in a fishing boat. “We can take you to the hospital.”
The medik looked wary. “Has anyone aboard shown signs of infection?”
The fisherman gestured to the very pregnant woman lying at the back of the boat, sheltered by an awning. “No, sir. It’s just the two of us and we’re both healthy, but my wife’s about to have a baby. We could use someone like you on board in case we don’t make it to the hospital in time.”
The medik looked a bit green. “I am not … I do not treat female problems. Besides, why aren’t you having your baby at home?” he asked suspiciously.
He could care less if Kuwei survives , thought Matthias grimly. He’s looking after his own hide.
“Don’t have a home,” said the man. “Just the boat.”
The medik looked over his shoulder at the panicked people spilling from the doors of the main cathedral. “All right, let’s go. Stay here,” he said to Matthias.
“I am his chosen protector,” said Matthias. “I go where he goes.”
“There isn’t room for all of you,” said the fisherman.
The stadwatch officers exchanged furious whispers, then one of them said, “We’ll put him on the boat, but then we have to report to our command station. It’s protocol.”
Kaz had said the officers wouldn’t want to be anywhere near a hospital during a plague outbreak, and he was right. Matthias could hardly blame them.
“But we may need protection,” protested the medik.
“For a dead guy?” said the stadwatch officer.
“For me! I am a medik traveling during plague time!”
The officer shrugged. “It’s protocol.”
They hefted the stretcher onto the boat and were gone.
“No sense of duty,” huffed the medik.
“He don’t look too good,” the fisherman said, glancing at Kuwei.
“He’s done for,” said the medik. “But we must still make the gesture. As our uniformed friends would say, ‘It’s protocol.’ ”
The pregnant woman let out a terrible moan and Matthias was pleased to see the medik skitter back against the boat’s railing, nearly upending a bucket of squid. Hopefully the squeamish coward would keep well away from Nina and her fake belly. It was a struggle for Matthias to keep his eyes from her when all he wanted was to reassure himself that she was safe. But one glance told him she was better than safe. Her face was aglow, her eyes luminous as emeralds. This was what came of her using her power—no matter what form it took. Unnatural , said the old, determined voice. Beautiful , said the voice that had spoken the night he’d helped Jesper and Kuwei escape Black Veil. It was newer, less certain, but louder than ever before.
Matthias nodded to the fisherman and Rotty winked back at him, giving a brief tug on the beard of his disguise. He poled the boat rapidly down the canal.
As they approached Zentsbridge, Matthias caught sight of the huge bottleboat parked beneath it. It was wide enough that the hulls scraped as Rotty tried to pass. The bottle man and Rotty broke into a heated argument, and Nina let loose another wail, long and loud enough that Matthias wondered if she was trying to compete with the plague siren.
“Perhaps some deep breathing?” the medik suggested from the railing.
Matthias gave Nina the barest warning glance. They could fake a pregnancy. They couldn’t fake an actual birth. At least he didn’t think they could. He wouldn’t put anything past Kaz at this point.
The medik yelled at Matthias to bring him his bag. Matthias pretended to fuss with it for a moment, extracted the stethoscope, and shoved it beneath a pile of netting—just in case the medik wanted to listen to Nina’s belly.
Matthias handed over the bag. “What are you looking for?” he asked, using his bulk to block the medik’s view of the bottleboat as Kuwei’s body was swapped for the corpse they’d stolen from the morgue the night before. As soon as Sturmhond had gotten Genya out of the church, she’d stopped beneath the bridge to tailor the corpse’s face and raise its body temperature. It was imperative that it not look like it had been dead for too long.
“A sedative,” said the medik.
“Is that safe for a pregnant woman?”
“For me.”