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