Jesper had no idea how to fill the silence that followed. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from this meeting with his father, but a friendly exchange of pleasantries wasn’t it.
Wylan cleared his throat. “Are you hungry, Mister Fahey?”
“Starving,” Jesper’s father replied gratefully.
Wylan gave Jesper a poke with his elbow. “Maybe we could take your father to lunch?”
“Lunch,” Jesper said, repeating the word as if he’d just learned it. “Yes, lunch. Who doesn’t like lunch?” Lunch felt like a miracle. They’d eat. They’d talk. Maybe they’d drink. Please let them drink.
“But Jesper, what has been happening? I received a notice from the Gemensbank. The loan is coming due, and you’d given me to believe it was temporary. And your studies—”
“Da,” Jesper began. “I … the thing is—”
A shot rang out against the walls of the courtyard. Jesper shoved his father behind him as a bullet pinged off the stones at their feet, sending up a cloud of dust. Suddenly, gunfire was echoing across the courtyard. The reverberation made it hard to tell where the shots were coming from.
“What in the name of all that is holy—”
Jesper yanked on his father’s sleeve, pulling him toward the hooded stone shelter of a doorway. He looked to his left, prepared to grab hold of Wylan, but the merchling was already in motion, keeping pace beside Jesper in what passed for a reasonable crouch. Nothing like being shot at a few times to make you a fast learner , Jesper thought as they reached the protective curve of the overhang. He craned his neck to try to see up to the roofline, then flinched back as more shots rang out. Another smattering of gunfire rattled from somewhere above and to the left of them, and Jesper could only hope that meant Matthias and Kaz were returning fire.
“Saints!” his father gasped. “This city is worse than the guidebooks said!”
“Da, it isn’t the city,” Jesper said, pulling the pistol from his coat. “They’re after me. Or after us. Hard to say.”
“Who’s after you?”
Jesper exchanged a glance with Wylan. Jan Van Eck? A rival gang looking to settle a score? Pekka Rollins or someone else Jesper had borrowed money from? “There’s a long list of potential suitors. We need to get out of here before they introduce themselves more personally.”
“Brigands?”
Jesper knew there was a good chance he was about to be riddled with holes, so he tried to restrain his grin. “Something like that.”
He peered around the edge of the door, peeled off two shots, then ducked back when another spate of gunfire exploded.
“Wylan, tell me you’re packing more than pens, ink, and weevil makings.”
“I’ve got two flash bombs and something new I rigged up with a little more, um, wallop.”
“Bombs?” Jesper’s father asked, blinking as if to wake himself from a bad dream.
Jesper shrugged helplessly. “Think of them as science experiments?”
“What kind of numbers are we up against?” asked Wylan.
“Look at you, asking all the right questions. Hard to tell. They’re somewhere on the roof, and the only way out is back through the archway. That’s a lot of courtyard to cross with them firing from high ground. Even if we make it, I’m guessing they’re going to have plenty more thunder waiting for us outside the Boeksplein unless Kaz and Matthias can somehow clear a path.”
“I know another way out,” said Wylan. “But the entrance is on the other side of the courtyard.” He pointed to a door beneath an arch carved with some kind of horned monster gnawing on a pencil.
“The reading room?” Jesper gauged the distance. “All right. On three, you make a break. I’ll cover you. Get my father inside.”
“Jesper—”
“Da, I swear I’ll explain everything, but right now all you need to know is that we’re in a bad situation, and bad situations happen to be my area of expertise.” And it was true. Jesper could feel himself coming alive, the worry that had been dogging his steps since he’d gotten news of his father’s arrival in Ketterdam falling away. He felt free, dangerous, like lightning rolling over the prairie. “Trust me, Da.”
“All right, boy. All right.”
Jesper was pretty sure he could hear an unspoken for now . He saw Wylan brace himself. The merchling was still so new to all this. Hopefully Jesper wouldn’t get everyone killed.
“One, two …” He started firing on three . Leaping into the courtyard, he rolled for cover behind the fountain. He’d gone in blind, but he picked out the shapes on the roof quickly, aiming by instinct, sensing movement and firing before he could think his way clear of a good shot. He didn’t need to kill anyone, he just needed to scare the hell out of them and buy Wylan and his father time.
A bullet struck the fountain’s central statue, the book in the scholar’s hand exploding into fragments of stone. Whatever ammunition they were using, they weren’t messing around.
Jesper reloaded and popped up from behind the fountain, shooting.
“All Saints ,” he shouted as pain tore through his shoulder. He really hated being shot. He shrank back behind the stone lip. He flexed his hand, testing the damage to his arm. Just a scratch, but it hurt like hell, and he was bleeding all over his new tweed jacket. “This is why it doesn’t pay to try to look respectable,” he muttered. Above him, he could see the silhouettes on the roof moving. Any minute, they were going to circle around the other side of the fountain and he’d be done for.
“Jesper!” Wylan’s voice. Damn it. He was supposed to get clear. “Jesper, at your two o’clock.”
Jesper looked up and something was arcing through the sky. Without thinking, he aimed and fired. The air exploded.
“Get in the water!” Wylan shouted.
Jesper dove into the fountain, and a second later the air sizzled with light. When Jesper poked his soaked head out of the water, he saw that every exposed surface of the courtyard and its gardens was pocked with holes, tendrils of smoke rising from the tiny craters. Whoever was up on the roof was screaming. Just what kind of bomb had Wylan let loose?
He hoped Matthias and Kaz had found cover, but there was no time to stew on it. He bolted for the doorway beneath the pencil-chewing demon. Wylan and his father were waiting inside. They slammed the door shut.
“Help me,” said Jesper. “We need to barricade the entrance.”
The man behind the desk wore gray scholar’s robes. His nostrils were flared so wide in effrontery that Jesper feared being sucked up one of them. “Young man—”
Jesper pointed his gun at the scholar’s chest. “Move.”
“Jesper!” his father said.
“Don’t worry, Da. People point guns at each other all the time in Ketterdam. It’s basically a handshake.”
“Is that true?” his father asked as the scholar grudgingly moved aside and they shoved the heavy desk in front of the door.
“Absolutely,” said Wylan.
“Certainly not ,” said the scholar.
Jesper waved them on. “Depends on the neighborhood. Let’s go.”
They pelted down the main aisle of the reading room between long tables lit by lamps with curving necks. Students huddled against the wall and under their chairs, probably thinking they were all about to die.
“Nothing to worry about, everyone!” Jesper called. “Just a little target practice in the courtyard.”
“This way,” said Wylan, ushering them through a door covered in elaborate scrollwork.
“Oh, you mustn’t,” said the scholar rushing after them, robes flapping. “Not the rare books room!”
“Do you want to shake hands again?” Jesper asked, then added, “I promise we won’t shoot anything we don’t have to.” He gave his father a gentle shove. “Up the stairs.”
“Jesper?” said a voice from beneath the nearest table.
A pretty blonde girl looked up from where she was crouched on the floor.
“Madeleine?” Jesper said. “Madeleine Michaud?”
“You said we’d have breakfast!”
“I had to go to Fjerda.”
“Fjerda?”
Jesper headed up the stairs after Wylan, then poked his head back into the reading room. “If I live, I’ll buy you waffles.”
“You don’t have enough money to buy her waffles,” Wylan grumbled.