“Be quiet. We’re in a library.”
Jesper had never had cause to enter the rare books room while he was at school. The silence was so deep it was like being underwater. Illuminated manuscripts were displayed in glass cases lit by golden falls of lamplight, and rare maps covered the walls.
A Squaller in a blue kefta stood in the corner, arms raised, but shrank back as they entered.
“Shu!” the Squaller cried when he saw Wylan. “I won’t go with you. I’ll kill myself first!”
Jesper’s father held up his hands as if gentling a horse. “Easy, lad.”
“We’re just passing through,” said Jesper, giving his father another push.
“Follow me,” said Wylan.
“What is a Squaller doing in the rare books room?” Jesper asked as they raced through the labyrinth of shelves and cases, past the occasional scholar or student crouched against the books in fear.
“Humidity. He keeps the air dry to preserve the manuscripts.”
“Nice work if you can get it.”
When they reached the westernmost wall, Wylan stopped in front of a map of Ravka. He looked around to make sure they weren’t being observed, then pressed the symbol marking the capital—Os Alta. The country seemed to tear apart along the seam of the Unsea, revealing a dark gap barely wide enough to squeeze through.
“It leads to the second floor of a printmaker’s shop,” said Wylan as they edged inside. “It was built as a way for professors to get from the library to their homes without having to deal with angry students.”
“Angry?” Jesper’s father said. “Do all the students have guns?”
“No, but there’s a long-standing tradition of rioting over grades.”
The map slid closed, leaving them in the dark as they shuffled along sideways.
“Not to be a podge,” Jesper murmured to Wylan, “but I wouldn’t have thought you’d know your way around the rare books room.”
“I used to meet with one of my tutors here, back when my father still thought … The tutor had a lot of interesting stories. And I always liked the maps. Tracing the letters sometimes made it easier to … It’s how I found the passage.”
“You know, Wylan, one of these days I’m going to stop underestimating you.”
There was a brief pause and then, from somewhere up ahead, he heard Wylan say, “Then you’re going to be a lot harder to surprise.”
Jesper grinned, but it didn’t quite feel right. From behind them, he could hear shouting from the rare books room. It had been a close call, he was bleeding from his shoulder, they’d made a grand escape—these were the moments he lived for. He should be buzzing from the excitement of the fight. The thrill was still there, fizzing through his blood, but beside it was a cold, unfamiliar sensation that felt like it was draining the joy from him. All he could think was, Da could have been hurt. He could have died. Jesper was used to people shooting at him. He would have been a little insulted if they’d stopped shooting at him. This was different. His father hadn’t chosen this fight. His only crime had been putting his faith in his son.
That’s the problem with Ketterdam , Jesper thought as they stumbled uncertainly through the dark. Trusting the wrong person can get you killed .
N ina couldn’t stop staring at Colm Fahey. He was a bit shorter than his son, broader in the shoulders, his coloring classically Kaelish—vibrant, dark red hair and that salt-white skin, densely clouded with freckles by the Zemeni sun. And though his eyes were the same clear gray as Jesper’s, they had a seriousness to them, a kind of sure warmth that differed from Jesper’s crackling energy.
It wasn’t only the pleasure of trying to find Jesper in his father’s features that kept Nina’s attention focused on the farmer. There was just something so strange about seeing a person that wholesome standing in the stone hull of an empty mausoleum surrounded by Ketterdam’s worst—herself among them.
Nina shivered and drew the old horse blanket she’d been using as a wrap more tightly around her. She’d started tallying her life in good days and bad days, and thanks to the Cornelis Smeet job, this was turning out to be a very bad day. She couldn’t afford to let it get the best of her, not when they were this close to rescuing Inej. Be all right , Nina willed silently, hoping her thoughts could somehow cut through the air, speed over the waters of the Ketterdam harbors, and reach her friend. Stay safe and whole and wait for us.
Nina hadn’t been on Vellgeluk when Van Eck had taken Inej hostage. She’d still been trying to purge the parem from her body, caught in the haze of suffering that had begun on the voyage from Djerholm. She told herself to be grateful for the memory of that misery, every shaking, aching, vomiting minute of it. The shame of Matthias witnessing it all, holding back her hair, dabbing her brow, restraining her as gently as he could as she argued, cajoled, screamed at him for more parem . She made herself remember every terrible thing she’d said, every wild pleasure offered, each insult or accusation she’d hurled at him. You enjoy watching me suffer. You want me to beg, don’t you? How long have you been waiting to see me like this? Stop punishing me, Matthias. Help me. Be good to me and I’ll be good to you. He’d absorbed it all in stoic silence. She clutched tight to those memories. She needed them as vivid and bright and cringe-inducing as possible to fight her hunger for the drug. She never wanted to be like that again.
Now she looked at Matthias, his hair coming in thick and gold, long enough that it was just starting to curl over his ears. She loved the sight of him, and she hated it too. Because he wouldn’t give her what she wanted. Because he knew how badly she needed it.
After Kaz had settled them on Black Veil, Nina had managed to last two days before she’d broken down and gone to Kuwei to ask him for another dose of parem . A small one. Just a taste of it, something to ease this relentless need. The sweats were gone, the bouts of fever. She could walk and talk, and listen to Kaz and the others hatching their plans. But even as she went about her business, drank the cups of broth and tea heaped with sugar that Matthias set before her, the need was there, a ceaseless, serrated sawing at her nerves, back and forth, minute to minute. She hadn’t made a conscious decision to ask Kuwei when she’d sat down beside him. She’d spoken to him softly in Shu, listened to him complain about the dampness of the tomb. And then the words were out of her mouth: “Do you have any more?”
He didn’t bother to ask what she meant. “I gave it all to Matthias.”
“I see,” she’d said. “That’s probably for the best.”
She’d smiled. He’d smiled. She’d wanted to claw his face to shreds.
Because she couldn’t possibly go to Matthias. Ever. And for all she knew, he’d thrown whatever supply of the drug Kuwei had into the sea. The thought filled her with so much panic that she’d had to race outside and vomit the spare contents of her stomach in front of one of the ruined mausoleums. She’d covered the mess with dirt, then found a quiet place to sit beneath a trellis of ivy and wept in jags of unsteady tears.
“You’re all a bunch of useless skivs,” she’d said to the silent graves. They didn’t seem to care. And yet somehow the stillness of Black Veil comforted her, quieted her. She couldn’t explain why. The places of the dead had never held solace for her before. She rested for a while, dried her tears, and when she knew she wouldn’t give herself away with blotchy skin and watery eyes, she’d made her way back to the others.