Six of Crows (Six of Crows #1)(45)
Shall I tell you the secret of true love? her father once asked her. A friend of mine liked to tell me that women love flowers. He had many flirtations, but he never found a wife. Do you know why?
Because women may love flowers, but only one woman loves the scent of gardenias in late summer that remind her of her grandmother’s porch. Only one woman loves apple blossoms in a blue cup. Only one woman loves wild geraniums.
That’s Mama! Inej had cried.
Yes, Mama loves wild geraniums because no other flower has quite the same colour, and she claims that when she snaps the stem and puts a sprig behind her ear, the whole world smells like summer.
Many boys will bring you flowers. But some day you’ll meet a boy who will learn your favourite flower, your favourite song, your favourite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won’t matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.
That felt like a hundred years ago. Her father had been wrong. There had been no boys to bring her flowers, only men with stacks of kruge and purses full of coin. Would she ever see her father again? Hear her mother singing, listen to her uncle’s silly stories? I’m not sure I have a heart to give any more, Papa.
The problem was that Inej was no longer certain what she was aiming for. When she’d been little, it had been easy – a smile from her father, the tightrope raised another foot, orange cakes wrapped in white paper. Then it had been getting free of Tante Heleen and the Menagerie, and after that, surviving each day, getting a little stronger with every morning. Now she didn’t know what she wanted.
Just this minute, I’ll settle for an apology, she decided. And I won’t board the boat without one.
Even if Kaz isn’t sorry, he can pretend. He at least owes me his best imitation of a human being.
If she hadn’t been running late, she would have looped around West Stave or simply travelled over the rooftops – that was the Ketterdam she loved, empty and quiet, high above the crowds, a moonlit mountain range of gabled peaks and off-kilter chimneys. But tonight she was short on time. Kaz had sent her scouring the shops for two lumps of paraffin at the last minute. He wouldn’t even tell her what they were for or why they were so necessary. And snow goggles? She’d had to visit three different outfitters to acquire them. She was so tired she didn’t entirely trust herself to make the climb over the gables, not after two nights without sleep and a day spent wrangling supplies for their trek to the Ice Court.
She supposed she was daring herself, too.
She never walked West Stave alone. With the Dregs at her side, she could stroll by the Menagerie without a glance towards the golden bars on the windows. But tonight, her heart was pounding, and she could hear the roar of blood in her ears as the gilded fa?ade came into view. The Menagerie had been built to look like a tiered cage, its first two storeys left open but for the widely spaced golden bars. It was also known as the House of Exotics. If you had a taste for a Shu girl or a Fjerdan giant, a redhead from the Wandering Isle, a dark-skinned Zemeni, the Menagerie was your destination. Each girl was known by her animal name – leopard, mare, fox, raven, ermine, fawn, snake. Suli seers wore the jackal mask when they plied their trade and looked into a person’s fate. But what man would want to bed a jackal? So the Suli girl – and the Menagerie always stocked a Suli girl – was known as the lynx. Clients didn’t come looking for the girls themselves, just brown Suli skin, the fire of Kaelish hair, the tilt of golden Shu eyes. The animals remained the same, though the girls came and went.
Inej glimpsed peacock feathers in the parlour, and her heart stuttered. It was just a bit of decoration, part of a lavish flower arrangement, but the panic inside her didn’t care. It rose up, clutching at her breath. People crowded in on all sides, men in masks, women in veils – or maybe they were men in veils and women in masks. It was impossible to tell. The horns of the Imp. The goggling eyes of the Madman, the sad face of the Scarab Queen wrought in black and gold. Artists loved to paint scenes of West Stave, the boys and girls who worked the brothels, the pleasure seekers dressed as characters of the Komedie Brute. But there was no beauty here, no real merriment or joy, just transactions, people seeking escape or some colourful oblivion, some dream of decadence that they could wake from whenever they wished.
Inej forced herself to look at the Menagerie as she passed.
It’s just a place, she told herself. Just another house. How would Kaz see it? Where are the entrances and exits? How do the locks work? Which windows are unbarred? How many guards are
posted, and which ones look alert? Just a house full of locks to pick, safes to crack, pigeons to dupe.
And she was the predator now, not Heleen in her peacock feathers, not any man who walked these streets.
As soon as she was out of sight of the Menagerie, the tight feeling in her chest and throat began to ease. She’d done it. She’d walked alone on West Stave, right in front of the House of Exotics.
Whatever was waiting for her in Fjerda, she could face it.
A hand hooked around her forearm and yanked her off her feet.
Inej regained her balance quickly. She spun on her heel and tried to pull away, but the grip was too strong.
“Hello, little lynx.”
Inej hissed in a breath and tore her arm free. Tante Heleen. That was what her girls knew to call Heleen Van Houden or risk the back of her hand. To the rest of the Barrel she was the Peacock, though Inej had always thought she looked less like a bird than a preening cat. Her hair was a thick and luscious gold, her eyes hazel and slightly feline. Her tall, sinuous frame was draped in vibrant blue silk, the plunging neckline accented with iridescent feathers that tickled the signature diamond choker glittering at her neck.