They were in a small chapel topped by a dome. The oil paintings on the wall featured battle scenes and piles of armaments. The chapel must have been donated by a family of weapons manufacturers.
Over the last few days, Wylan had studied the layout of the Church of Barter, mapping the rooftop niches and alcoves with Inej, sketching the cathedral and long finger naves of Ghezen’s hand. He knew exactly where he was—one of the chapels at the end of Ghezen’s pinky. The floor was carpeted, the only door led to the stairway, and the only windows opened onto the roof. Even if he wasn’t gagged, he doubted anyone but the paintings would be able to hear him cry for help. Two people stood behind Van Eck: a girl in striped trousers, the yellow hair shaved from half of her head, and a stout boy in plaid and suspenders. Both wore the purple armbands indicating they’d been deputized by the stadwatch . Both bore the Dime Lion tattoo.
The boy grinned. “You want me to go get Pekka?” he asked Van Eck.
“No need. I want him keeping his eyes on the preparations for the auction. And this is something I’d prefer to handle myself.” Van Eck leaned down. “Listen, boy. The Wraith was spotted with a member of the Grisha Triumvirate. I know Brekker is working with the Ravkans. For all your many shortcomings, you still carry my blood. Tell me what he has planned and I’ll see you’re taken care of. You’ll have an allowance. You can live somewhere in comfort. I’m going to remove your gag. If you scream, I’ll let Pekka’s friends do whatever they like to you, understood?”
Wylan nodded. His father tugged the rag from his mouth.
Wylan ran his tongue over his lips and spat in his father’s face.
Van Eck drew a snowy monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket. It was embroidered with the red laurel. “An apt retort from a boy who can barely form words.” He wiped the saliva from his face. “Let’s try this again. Tell me what Brekker is planning with the Ravkans and I may let you live.”
“The way you let my mother live?”
His father’s flinch was barely perceptible, a marionette yanked once by its strings, then allowed to return to rest.
Van Eck folded his soiled handkerchief twice, tucked it away. He nodded to the boy and the girl. “Do whatever you have to. The auction starts in less than an hour, and I want answers before then.”
“Hold him up,” the stout boy said to the girl. She hauled Wylan to his feet, and the boy slipped a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket. “He’s not going to be so pretty after this.”
“Who is there to care?” Van Eck said with a shrug. “Just make sure you keep him conscious. I want information.”
The boy eyed Wylan skeptically. “You sure you want to do it this way, little merch?”
Wylan summoned every bit of bravado he’d learned from Nina, the will he’d learned from Matthias, the focus he’d studied in Kaz, the courage he’d learned from Inej, and the wild, reckless hope he’d learned from Jesper, the belief that no matter the odds, somehow they would win. “I won’t talk,” he said.
The first punch shattered two of his ribs. The second had him coughing blood.
“Maybe we should snap your fingers so you can’t play that infernal flute,” Van Eck suggested.
I’m here for her , Wylan reminded himself. I’m here for her.
In the end, he was not Nina or Matthias or Kaz or Inej or Jesper. He was just Wylan Van Eck. He told them everything.
G etting into the Church of Barter was no easy task this morning. Due to its position near the Exchange and the Beurscanal, its roof didn’t conjoin any others, and its entrances were already surrounded by guards when Inej arrived. But she was the Wraith; she was made to find the hidden places, the corners and cracks where no one thought to look.
No weapons would be allowed inside the Church of Barter during the auction, so Jesper’s rifle was secured to her back. She waited out of sight until she spotted a group of stadwatch grunts rolling a cart full of lumber toward the church’s huge double doors. Inej assumed they were the makings of some kind of barricade for the stage or the finger naves. She waited until the cart had rolled to a stop, then tucked her hood into her tunic so it would not trail on the ground and slipped beneath the cart. She latched herself onto the axle, her body bare inches above the cobblestones, and let them wheel her directly down the center aisle. Before they reached the altar, she dropped and rolled between the pews, narrowly missing the cart’s wheels.
The floor was cold stone under her belly as she crawled the width of the church, then waited at the end of the aisle and darted behind one of the columns of the western arcade. She moved from column to column, then slipped into the nave that would lead her to the thumb chapels. Once more she dropped into a crawl so that she could use the pews in the nave as cover. She didn’t know where the guards might be patrolling, and she had no desire to be caught simply wandering the church.
She reached the first chapel, then climbed the stairs to the orange chapel above. Its altar was rendered in gold, but built to resemble crates of oranges and other exotic fruits. It framed a DeKappel oil that showed a family of merchants dressed in black, cradled in Ghezen’s hand, hovering over a citrus grove.
She scaled the altar and launched herself up to the chapel’s dome, clinging to it so she was hanging nearly upside down. Once she reached the center of the cupola, she wedged her back against the little dome that crowned the larger dome like a hat. Though she doubted she could be heard here, she waited until the sounds of sawing and hammering from the cathedral began, then positioned her foot in front of one of the slender glass windows that gave light to the chapel and kicked. On the second attempt, the glass fractured, spilling outward. Inej covered her hand with her sleeve to clear away the excess shards and edged out onto the top of the dome. She latched a climbing line to the window and rappelled down the dome’s side to the roof of the nave, where she left Jesper’s rifle. She didn’t want it throwing off her balance.
She was atop Ghezen’s thumb. The morning mist had started to burn away and she could feel the day would be a hot one. She followed the thumb back to the steeply gabled spires of the main cathedral and began to climb once more.
This was the highest part of the church, but the terrain was familiar, and that made for easier going. Of all the rooftops in Ketterdam, the cathedral was Inej’s favorite. She’d had no good reason to learn its contours. There were plenty of other places from which she could have observed the Exchange or the Beurscanal when a job called for it, but she’d always chosen the Church of Barter. Its spires were visible from almost anywhere in Ketterdam, the copper of its rooftop long since turned to green and crisscrossed by spines of metal scrollwork, full of perfect handholds and offering plenty of cover. It was like a strange gray-green fairyland that no one else in the city ever got to see.
The wire walker in her had imagined running a line between its tallest spires. Who would dare to defy death itself? I will. The Kerch would probably consider staging acrobatics atop their cathedral blasphemous. Unless of course she charged admission.
She planted the explosives Kaz had described as their “insurance” in the locations she and Wylan had agreed upon while mapping the cathedral. Only in Kaz’s mind could chaos count for security. The bombs were meant to be noisy but would do little damage. Still, if something went wrong and a distraction was needed, they would be there.