will wait, but I won’t.”
At last she roused herself and pulled on her boots. She had discarded her red kefta in favor of the coat and trousers she’d worn during the disastrous botch that had been the Sweet Reef job. Matthias watched her every move, but he did not ask to accompany them. He knew his presence would only increase their risk of exposure.
Inej appeared in the doorway, and they headed for the lift in silence. Curfew was in effect on the streets of Ketterdam, but there was no avoiding this. They would have to rely on luck and Inej’s ability to scout the path ahead of them for patrolling stadwatch .
They left the back of the hotel and headed toward the manufacturing district. Their progress was slow, a circuitous route around the blockades, full of stops and starts as Inej vanished and reappeared, signaling them to wait or rerouting them with a flick of her hand before she was gone once more.
At last they reached the morgue, an unmarked, gray stone structure on the border of the warehouse district, fronted by a garden no one had tended to in some time. Only the bodies of the wealthy were brought here to be prepared for transportation and burial outside the city. It wasn’t the miserable human heap of the Reaper’s Barge, but Kaz still felt like he was descending into a nightmare. He thought of Inej’s voice echoing off the white tiles. Go on.
The morgue was deserted, its heavy iron door sealed tight. He picked the lock and looked once over his shoulder at the shifting shadows of the weedy garden. He couldn’t see Inej, but he knew she was there. She would keep watch over the entrance as they got this grim business done.
It was chilly inside, lit only by a lantern with the blue-tinted warning flame of corpselight. There was a processing room and beyond it a large, icy stone chamber lined with drawers big enough to hold bodies. The whole place smelled of death.
He thought of the pulse beating beneath Inej’s jaw, the warmth of her skin on his lips. He tried to shake the thought free. He did not want that memory tangling with this room full of rot.
Kaz had never been able to dodge the horror of that night in the Ketterdam harbor, the memory of his brother’s corpse clutched tight in his arms as he told himself to kick a little harder, to take one more breath, stay afloat, stay alive. He’d found his way to shore, devoted himself to the vengeance he and his brother were owed. But the nightmare refused to fade. Kaz had been sure it would get easier. He would stop having to think twice before he shook a hand or was forced into close quarters. Instead, things got so bad he could barely brush up against someone on the street without finding himself once more in the harbor. He was on the Reaper’s Barge and death was all around him. He was kicking through the water, clinging to the slippery bloat of Jordie’s flesh, too frightened of drowning to let go.
The situation had gotten dangerous. When Gorka once got too drunk to stand at the Blue Paradise, Kaz and Teapot had to carry him home. Six blocks they hauled him, Gorka’s weight shifting back and forth, slumping against Kaz in a sickening press of skin and stink, then flopping onto Teapot, freeing Kaz briefly—though he could still feel the rub of the man’s hairy arm against the back of his neck.
Later, Teapot had found Kaz huddled in a lavatory, shaking and covered in sweat. He’d pleaded food poisoning, teeth chattering as he jammed his foot against the door to keep Teapot out. He could not be touched again or he would lose his mind completely.
The next day he’d bought his first pair of gloves—cheap black things that bled dye whenever they got wet. Weakness was lethal in the Barrel. People could smell it on you like blood, and if Kaz was going to bring Pekka Rollins to his knees, he couldn’t afford any more nights trembling on a bathroom floor.
Kaz never answered questions about the gloves, never responded to taunts. He just wore them, day in and day out, peeling them off only when he was alone. He told himself it was a temporary measure. But that didn’t stop him from remastering every bit of sleight of hand wearing them, learning to shuffle and work a deck even more