As soon as Inej’s bandages came off, she was back on the wire. She never worked with a net again. She knew it had made her careless. But looking down now, she could admit she wouldn’t have minded a little insurance. Far below, the moonlight caught the curves of the cobblestones, making them look like the black seeds of some exotic fruit. But the net stashed behind the guardhouse was useless with only Nina there to hold it, and regardless of what Kaz had originally intended, the new plan hadn’t been built around someone in plain sight holding a net. So Inej would walk as she had always done, with nothing to catch her, borne aloft by her invisible wings.
Inej slid the balance pole from its loop on her vest and, with a flick, extended it to its full length. She tested its weight in her hands, flexed her toes in her slippers. They were leather, stolen from the Cirkus Zirkoa at her request. Their smooth soles lacked the firm, tactile grip of her beloved rubber shoes, but the slippers allowed her to release more easily.
At last the signal came from Nina, a brief flash of green light.
Inej stepped out onto the wire. Instantly, the wind snatched at her and she released a long breath, feeling its per sis tent tug, using the flexible pole to pull her center of gravity lower.
She let her knees bounce once. Thankfully, the wire had almost no give. She walked, feeling the hard press of it beneath the arches of her feet. With each step, it bowed slightly, eager to twist away from her gripping toes.
The air felt warm against her skin. It smelled of sugar and molasses. Her hood was down and she could feel the hairs from her braid escaping to tickle her face. She focused on the wire, feeling the familiar kinship she’d experienced as a child, as if the wire were clinging to her as closely as she clung to it, welcoming her into that mirror world, a secret place occupied by her alone. In moments, she’d reached the rooftop of the second silo.
She stepped onto it, retracting the balance pole and returning it to its sling. She took a sip of water from the flask in her pocket, allowed herself the briefest moment to stretch. Then she opened the hatch and dropped in the weevil. Again she heard that crackling hiss, and her nose filled with the smell of burning sugar. It was stronger this time, a sweet, dense cloud of perfume.
Suddenly, she was back at the Menagerie, a thick hand grasping her wrist, demanding. Inej had gotten good at anticipating when a memory might seize her, bracing for it, but this time she wasn’t prepared. It came at her, more insistent than the wind on the wire, sending her mind sprawling. Though he smelled of vanilla, beneath it, she could smell garlic. She felt the slither of silk all around her as if the bed itself were a living thing.
Inej didn’t remember all of them. As the nights at the Menagerie had strung together, she had become better at numbing herself, vanishing so completely that she almost didn’t care what was done to the body she left behind. She learned that the men who came to the house never looked too closely, never asked too many questions. They wanted an illusion, and they were willing to ignore anything to preserve that illusion. Tears, of course, were forbidden. She had cried the first night. Tante Heleen had used the switch on her, then the cane, then choked her until she’d passed out. The next time, Inej’s fear was greater than her sorrow.
She learned to smile, to whisper, to arch her back and make the sounds Tante Heleen’s customers required. She still wept, but the tears were never shed. They filled the empty place inside her, a well of sadness where, each night, she sank like a stone. The Menagerie was one of the most expensive pleasure houses in the Barrel, but its customers were no kinder than those who frequented the dollar houses and alley girls. In some ways, Inej came to understand, they were worse. When a man spends that much coin , said the Kaelish girl, Caera, he thinks he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants.
There were young men, old men, handsome men, ugly men. There was the man who cried and struck her when he could not perform. The man who wanted her to pretend it was their wedding night and tell him that she loved him. The man with sharp teeth like a kitten who had bitten at her breasts until she’d bled. Tante Heleen added the price of the blood-speckled sheets and the days of work Inej missed to her indenture. But he hadn’t been the worst. The worst had been a Ravkan man who had chosen her in the parlor, the man who smelled of vanilla. Only when they were back in her room amid the purple silks and incense did he say, “I’ve seen you before, you know.”
Inej had laughed, thinking this was part of the game he wished to play, and poured him wine from a golden carafe. “Surely not.”
“It was years ago, at one of the carnivals outside Caryeva.”
Wine sloshed over the lip of the glass. “You must have me confused with someone else.”
“No,” he said, eager as a boy. “I’m sure of it. I saw your family perform there. I was on military leave. You couldn’t have been more than ten, the barest slip of a girl, walking the high wire without fear. You wore a headdress covered in roses. At one point, you bobbled. You lost your footing and the petals of your crown came loose in a cloud that drifted down, down.” He fluttered his fingers through the air as if miming a snowfall. “The crowd gasped—and so did I. I came back the second night, and it happened again, and even though then I knew it was all part of the act, I still felt my heart clench as you pretended to regain your balance.”
Inej tried to steady her shaking hands. The rose headdress had been her mother’s idea. “You make it look too easy, meja , scampering around like a squirrel on a branch. They must believe you are in danger even if you are not.”
That had been Inej’s worst night at the Menagerie, because when the man who smelled of vanilla had begun to kiss her neck and peel away her silks, she hadn’t been able to leave her body behind. Somehow his memory of her had tied her past and present together, pinned her there beneath him. She’d cried, but he hadn’t seemed to mind.
Inej could hear the hissing of the sugar as the weevil did its work. She forced herself to focus on the sound, to breathe past the constriction in her throat.
I will have you without armor. Those were the words she’d said to Kaz aboard the Ferolind , desperate for some sign that he might open himself to her, that they could be more than two wary creatures united by their distrust of the world. But what might have happened if he’d spoken that night? If he had willingly offered her some part of his heart? What if he had come to her, laid his gloves aside, drawn her to him, kissed her mouth? Would she have pulled him closer? Kissed him back? Could she have been herself in such a moment, or would she have broken apart and vanished, a doll in his arms, a girl who could never quite be whole?
It didn’t matter. Kaz hadn’t spoken, and perhaps that had been best for them both. They could continue on with their armor intact. She would have her ship and he would have his city.
Inej reached out to close the hatch and took a deep breath of coal-tinged air, coughing the sweetness of the ruined sugar from her lungs. Then she stumbled as she felt a hand grab the back of her neck, shove her forward.
She felt her center of gravity shift as she was sucked into the yawning mouth of the silo.
G etting into the house wasn’t nearly as difficult as it should have been, and it put Kaz on edge. Was he giving Van Eck too much credit? The man thinks like a merch , Kaz reminded himself as he tucked his cane beneath his arm and eased down a drainpipe. He still believes his money keeps him safe.
The easiest points of entry were the windows on the house’s top floor, accessible only from the roof. Wylan wasn’t up to the climb or the descent, so Kaz would go first and get him inside via the lower floors.