Crooked Kingdom (The Six of Crows Duology #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,125

complete their work and collect their pay. They were given no gloves or masks, and Wylan was fairly sure he’d be dead of poisoning before he ever had to worry about where he should go with the tiny bit of money he was earning.

One afternoon, Wylan heard the dye chief complaining that they were losing gallons of dye to evaporation because the boilers ran too hot. He was cursing over the cost he’d paid to have two of them fixed and how little good it had done.

Wylan hesitated, then suggested adding seawater to the tanks.

“Why the hell would I want to do that?” said the dye chief.

“It will raise the boiling point,” said Wylan, wondering why he’d thought it was a good idea to speak at all. “The dyes will have to get hotter to boil so you’ll lose less to evaporation. You’ll have to tweak the formula because the saline will build up fast, and you’ll have to clean the tanks more regularly because the salt can be corrosive.”

The dye chief had merely spat a stream of jurda onto the floor and ignored him. But the next week, they tried using saltwater in one of the tanks. A few days later, they were using a mixture of seawater in all of them, and the dye chief started coming to Wylan with more questions. How could they keep the red dye from stiffening the hides? How could they shorten processing and drying times? Could Wylan make a resin to keep the dyes from bleeding?

A week after that, Wylan had been standing at the vats with his wooden paddle, woozy from the dyes, eyes watering, wondering if helping the dye chief meant he could request a raise, when a boy approached him. He was tall, lanky, his skin a deep Zemeni brown, and looked ridiculously out of place on the dying floor. Not just because of his lime plaid waistcoat and yellow trousers, but because he seemed to exude plea sure, as if there was no place he’d rather be than a miserable, foul-smelling tannery, as if he’d just walked into a party he couldn’t wait to attend. Though he was skinny, his body fit together with a kind of loose-limbed ease. The dye chief didn’t usually like strangers on the dying floor, but he didn’t say a word to this boy with the revolvers slung across his hips, just tipped his hat respectfully and went scurrying off.

Wylan’s first thought was that this boy had the most perfectly shaped lips he’d ever seen. His second was that his father had sent someone new to kill him. He gripped his paddle. Would the boy shoot him in broad daylight? Did people just do that?

But the boy said, “Hear you know your way around a chemistry set.”

“What? I … yes. A bit,” Wylan had managed.

“Just a bit?”

Wylan had the sense that his next answer was very important. “I have a background.” He’d taken to science and math and pursued them diligently, hoping they might somehow compensate for his other failings.

The boy handed Wylan a folded piece of paper. “Then come to this address when you get off work tonight. We might have a job for you.” He looked around, as if just noticing the vats and the pallid laborers bent over them. “A real job.”

Wylan had stared at the paper, the letters a tangle in front of his eyes. “I—I don’t know where this is.”

The boy gave an exasperated sigh. “You’re not from here, are you?” Wylan shook his head. “Fine. I’ll come fetch you, because clearly I don’t have anything to do with my time but squire new lilies around town. Wylan, right?” Wylan nodded. “Wylan what?”

“Wylan … Hendriks.”

“You know much about demo, Wylan Hendriks?”

“Demo?”

“The boom, the bang, the flint and fuss.”

Wylan didn’t know what he meant at all, but he felt admitting that would be a bad mistake. “Sure,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster.

The boy cut him a skeptical glance. “We’ll see. Be out front at six bells. And no guns unless you want trouble.”

“Of course not.”

The boy had rolled his gray eyes and muttered, “Kaz has got to be out of his mind.”

At six bells, Jesper arrived to escort Wylan to a bait shop in the Barrel. Wylan had been embarrassed by his rumpled clothes, but they were the only ones he owned, and the paralyzing fear that this was just some elaborate trap concocted by his father had provided ample distraction from his worry.