Six of Crows (Six of Crows #1)(95)

Horses were a luxury, an indulgence to show that you had the space to keep them and the wealth to care for them. He hadn’t realised how much he missed simply being around animals.

But there was no time for nostalgia or to stop and stroke a velvety nose. He strode past the stalls and into the tack room. Matthias hoisted a massive coil of rope over each shoulder. He looked surprised when Jesper managed two as well.

“Grew up on a farm,” Jesper explained.

“You don’t look it.”

“Sure, I’m skinny,” he said as they hurried back through the stables, “but I stay drier in the rain.”

“How?”

“Less falls on me.”

“Are all of Kaz’s associates as strange as this crew?” Matthias asked.

“Oh, you should meet the rest of the Dregs. They make us look like Fjerdans.”

They passed through the showers and, instead of continuing to the holding area, turned down a tight flight of stairs and the long dark hall that led to the basement. They were under the main prison now, five storeys of cellblock, prisoners, and guards stacked on top of them.

Jesper had expected the rest of the crew to be collecting demo supplies in the big laundry room already. But all he saw were giant tin tubs, long tables for folding, and clothes left to dry overnight on racks taller than he was.

They found Wylan and Inej in the refuse room. It was smaller than the laundry and stank of garbage. Two big rolling bins full of discarded clothes were pushed against one wall, waiting to be burned. Jesper felt the heat emanating from the incinerator as soon as they entered.

“We have a problem,” Wylan said.

“How bad?” Jesper asked, dumping his coils of rope on the floor.

Inej gestured to a pair of big metal doors set into what looked like a giant chimney that jutted out from the wall and stretched all the way up to the ceiling. “I think they ran the incinerator this afternoon.”

“You said they ran it in the mornings,” he said to Matthias.

“They used to.”

When Jesper grabbed the doors’ leather-covered handles and pulled them open, he was hit by a blast of searing air. It carried the black and acrid smell of coal – and something else, a chemical smell, maybe something they added to make the fires burn hotter. It wasn’t unpleasant. This was where all the refuse from the prisons was disposed of – kitchen leavings, buckets of human filth, the clothing stripped from prisoners, but whatever the Fjerdans had added to the fuel burned hot enough to sear any foulness away. He leaned in, already beginning to sweat. Far below, he saw the incinerator coals, banked but still pulsing with an angry red glow.

“Wylan, give me a shirt from one of the bins,” Jesper said.

He tore off one of the sleeves and tossed it into the shaft. It fell soundlessly, caught flame mid-air, and had begun to burn away to nothing before it ever had the chance to reach the coals.

He shut the doors and tossed the remnants of the shirt back in the bin. “Well, demo is out,” he said.

“We can’t take explosives in there. Can you still make the climb?” he asked Inej.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“What does Kaz say? Where is Kaz? And where’s Nina?”

“Kaz doesn’t know about the incinerator yet,” said Inej. “He and Nina went to search the upper cells.”

Matthias’ glower went dark as a rain-heavy sky ready to split. “Jesper and I were supposed to go with Nina.”

“Kaz didn’t want to wait.”

“We were on time,” said Matthias angrily. “What is he up to?”

Jesper wondered the same thing. “He’s going to limp up and down all those flights of stairs, dodging patrols?”

“I may have tried to point that out to him,” Inej said. “Always surprising, remember?”

“Like a hive of bees. I really hope we’re not all about to get stung.”

“Inej,” Wylan called from one of the rolling bins. “These are our clothes.”

He reached in and, one after the other, pulled out Inej’s little leather slippers.

Her face broke into a dazzling smile. Finally, a bit of luck. Kaz didn’t have his cane. Jesper didn’t have his guns. And Inej didn’t have her knives. But at least she had those magic slippers.

“What do you say, Wraith? Can you make the climb?”

“I can.”

Jesper took the shoes from Wylan. “If I didn’t think these might be crawling with disease, I would kiss them and then you.”



Nina trailed Kaz up the stairs. Flight upon steep flight of stone and flickering gaslight. She watched him closely. He was setting a good pace, but his gait was stiff. Why had he insisted on being the one to make this climb? It couldn’t be a question of time, so maybe it was what Kaz always intended. Maybe he’d meant to keep some bit of information from Matthias. Or he was just determined to keep them all guessing.

They paused at every landing, listening for patrols. The prison was full of sounds, and it was hard not to jump at every one of them – voices floating down the stairwell, the metallic clang of doors opening and closing. Nina thought of the violent chaos of Hellgate, bribes changing hands, blood staining the sand, a world away from this sterile place. The Fjerdans could certainly be counted on to keep things orderly.