Crooked Kingdom (The Six of Crows Duology #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,109

hands with a satisfying click. He slid open the sash and climbed inside. The tiny rooms on the top floor of Van Eck’s house were devoted to the servants’ quarters, but all of the staff were currently occupied below with Van Eck’s guests. Some of the richest members of the Kerch Merchant Council were filling their bellies in the first-floor dining room, probably listening to Van Eck’s tale of woe about his son’s kidnapping and commiserating about the gangs controlling the Barrel. From the smell in the air, Kaz suspected ham was on the menu.

He opened the door and quietly made his way to the staircase, then proceeded cautiously down to the second floor. He knew Van Eck’s house from when he and Inej had heisted the DeKappel oil, and he always liked returning to a home or a business he’d had cause to visit before. It wasn’t just the familiarity. It was as if by returning, he laid claim to a place. We know each other’s secrets , the house seemed to say. Welcome back.

A guard stood at attention at the end of the carpeted hallway in front of what Kaz knew was Alys’ door. Kaz checked his watch. There was a brief pop and a flash of light from the window at the end of the hall. At least Wylan was punctual. The guard went to investigate, and Kaz slipped down the hall in the other direction.

He ducked into Wylan’s old room—which was now clearly intended to be the nursery. By the light from the street below, he could see its walls had been decorated with an elaborate seascape mural. The bassinet was shaped like a tiny sailing ship, complete with flags and a captain’s wheel. Van Eck was really embracing this new heir thing.

Kaz worked the lock on the nursery window and pushed it open, then secured the rope ladder and waited. He heard a loud thud and winced. Apparently Wylan had made it over the garden wall. Hopefully he hadn’t broken the containers of auric acid and burned a hole through himself and the rosebushes. A moment later, Kaz heard panting and Wylan rounded the corner, bustling along like a harried goose. When he was below the window, he tucked his satchel carefully against his body and climbed up the rope ladder, sending it swaying wildly left and right. Kaz helped him through the window, then pulled the ladder in and closed the sash. They’d exit the same way.

Wylan looked around the nursery with wide eyes, then just shook his head. Kaz checked the hall. The guard was back at his post in front of Alys’ door.

“Well?” Kaz whispered to Wylan.

“It’s a slow-burning fuse,” said Wylan. “The timing is imprecise.”

The seconds ticked by. Finally, another pop sounded. The guard returned to the window, and Kaz gestured for Wylan to follow him along the hallway. Kaz made quick work of the lock on Van Eck’s office door, and they were inside in moments.

When Kaz had broken into the house to steal the DeKappel, he’d been surprised by the office’s plush trappings. He’d expected severe mercher restraint, but the woodwork was heavily ornamented with swags of laurel leaves; a chair the size of a throne, upholstered in crimson velvet, loomed over the wide, glossy desk.

“Behind the painting,” Wylan whispered, gesturing to a portrait of one of the Van Eck ancestors.

“Which member of your hallowed line is that supposed to be?”

“Martin Van Eck, my great-great-grandfather. He was a ship’s captain, the first to land at Eames Chin and navigate the river inland. He brought back a shipload of spices and used the profits to buy a second ship—that’s what my father told me, anyway. That was the start of the Van Eck fortune.”

“And we’ll be the end of it.” Kaz shook out a bonelight, and the green glow filled the room. “Quite a resemblance,” he said, glancing at the gaunt face, the high brow, and stern blue eyes.

Wylan shrugged. “Except for the red hair, I always took after my father. And his father and all the Van Ecks. Well, until now.”

They each took a side of the painting and lifted it from the wall.

“Look at you,” Kaz crooned as Van Eck’s safe came into view. Safe didn’t even seem like the right word. It was more like a vault, a steel door set into a wall that had itself been reinforced with more steel. The lock on it was Kerch-made but like nothing Kaz had ever seen before, a