“We’ll fight our way out together,” Inej whispered.
Nina glanced from Inej to Kaz and saw they both wore the same expression. Nina knew that look. It came after the shipwreck, when the tide moved against you and the sky had gone dark. It was the first sight of land, the hope of shelter and even salvation that might await you on a distant shore.
I ’m going to die and there will be no one to help her. No one to even remember Marya Hendriks.
Wylan wanted to be brave, but he was cold and bruised, and worse—he was surrounded by the bravest people he knew and all of them seemed badly shaken.
They made slow progress through the canals, pausing under bridges and in dark wells of shadow to wait as squads of stadwatch boots thundered overhead or along the waterways. They were out in force tonight, their boats cruising along slowly, bright lanterns at their prows. Something had changed in the short time since the showdown on Goedmedbridge. The city had come alive, and it was angry.
“The Grisha—” Nina had attempted.
But Kaz had cut her off quickly. “They’re either safe at the embassy or beyond our help. They can fend for themselves. We’re going to ground.”
And then Wylan knew just how much trouble they were in, because Nina hadn’t argued. She’d simply put her head in her hands and gone silent.
“They’ll be all right,” said Inej, placing an arm around her shoulders. “ He’ll be all right.” But her movements were tentative, and Wylan could see blood on her clothes.
After that, no one spoke a word. Kaz and Rotty rowed only sporadically, steering them into the quieter, narrower canals, letting them drift silently whenever possible, until they rounded a bend near Schoonstraat and Kaz said, “Stop.” He and Rotty dug in their oars, bringing them flush with the side of the canal, tucked behind the bulk of a vendor’s boat. Whatever the floating shop sold, its stalls had been locked tight to protect its stock.
Up ahead, they could see stadwatch swarming over a bridge, two of their boats obscuring the passage beneath.
“They’re setting up blockades,” said Kaz.
They ditched the boat there and continued on foot.
Wylan knew they were headed to another safe house, but Kaz had said it himself: There is no safe. Where could they possibly hide? Pekka Rollins was working with Wylan’s father. Between them they had to own half the city. Wylan would be captured. And then what? No one would believe he was Jan Van Eck’s son. Wylan Van Eck might be despised by his father, but he had rights no Shu criminal could hope for. Would he end up in Hellgate? Would his father find a way to see him executed?
As they got farther from the manufacturing district and the Barrel, the patrols dwindled, and Wylan realized the stadwatch must be concentrating their efforts on the less respectable parts of town. Still, they moved in fits and starts, passing along alleys Wylan had never known existed, occasionally entering empty storefronts or the lower levels of unoccupied apartments so they could cut through to the next street. It was as if Kaz had a secret map to Ketterdam that showed the city’s forgotten spaces.
Would Jesper be waiting when they finally got wherever they were going? Or was he lying wounded and bleeding on the floor of the tomb with no one to come to his aid? Wylan refused to believe it. The worse the odds, the better Jesper was in a fight. He thought of Jesper pleading with Colm. I know I let you down. Just give me one more chance. How often had Wylan spoken almost the same words to his father, hoping every time that he could make good on them? Jesper had to survive. They all did.
Wylan remembered the first time he’d seen the sharpshooter. He’d seemed like a creature from another world, dressed in lime green and lemon yellow, his stride long and loping, as if every step was poured from a bottle with a narrow neck.
On Wylan’s first night in the Barrel, he’d wandered from street to street, certain he was about to be robbed, teeth chattering from the cold. Finally, when his skin was turning blue and he couldn’t feel his fingers, he’d summoned the courage to ask a man smoking his pipe on the front steps of a house, “Do you know where there might be rooms for rent?”
“Sign right there says vacancy,” he said, gesturing across the street with his pipe. “What are you, blind?”
“Must have missed it,” Wylan said.
The boarding house was filthy but blessedly cheap. He’d rented a room for ten kruge and had also paid for a hot bath. He knew he needed to save his money, but if he contracted lung fever the first night, he’d have problems beyond being short of cash. He took the little towel into the bathroom at the end of the hall and washed up quickly. Though the water was hot enough, he felt vulnerable crouching naked in a tub with no lock on the door. He dried his clothes as best he could, but they were still damp when he put them back on.
Wylan spent that night lying on a paper-thin mattress, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of the rooming house around him. On the Geldcanal, the nights were so silent you could hear the water lapping against the sides of the boathouse. But here it might as well have been noon. Music flooded in through the dirty window. People were talking, laughing, slamming doors. The couple in the room above him were fighting. The couple in the room below him were definitely doing something else.
Wylan touched his fingers to the bruises at his throat and thought, I wish I could ring for tea . That was the moment he really began to panic. How much more pathetic could he be? His father had tried to have him killed. He had almost no money and was lying on a cot that reeked of the chemicals they’d used to try to rid the mattress of lice. He should be making a plan, maybe even plotting revenge, trying to gather his wits and his resources. And what was he doing? Wishing he could ring for tea. He might not have been happy at his father’s house, but he’d never had to work for anything. He’d had servants, hot meals, clean clothes. Whatever it took to survive the Barrel, Wylan knew he didn’t have it.
As he lay there, he sought some explanation for what had happened. Surely, Miggson and Prior were to blame; his father hadn’t known. Or maybe Miggson and Prior had misunderstood his father’s orders. It had just been a terrible mistake. Wylan rose and reached into the damp pocket of his coat. His enrollment papers to the music school in Belendt were still there.
As soon as he drew out the thick envelope, he knew his father was guilty. It was soaked through and smelled of canal, but its color was pristine. No ink had bled through from the supposed documents inside. Wylan opened the envelope anyway. The sheaf of folded papers clung together in a wet lump, but he pried each of them apart. They were all blank. His father hadn’t even bothered with a convincing ruse. He’d known Wylan wouldn’t try to read the papers. And that his gullible son would never think to suspect his father of lying. Pathetic.
Wylan had stayed inside for two days, terrified. But on the third morning, he’d been so hungry that the smell of frying potatoes wafting up from the street had driven him from the safety of his room. He bought a paper cone full of them and scarfed them down so greedily he burned his tongue. Then he made himself walk.
He had only enough money to keep his room for another week, less if he planned on eating. He needed to find work, but he had no idea where to begin. He wasn’t big enough or strong enough for a job in the warehouses or shipyards. The softer jobs would require him to read. Was it possible one of the gambling dens or even one of the pleasure houses needed a musician to play in their parlors? He still had his flute. He walked up and down East Stave and along the more well-lit side streets. When it started to get dark, he returned to the boarding house, thoroughly defeated. The man with the pipe was still on his steps, smoking. As far as Wylan knew, he never left that perch.