Crooked Kingdom (The Six of Crows Duology #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,163

face mottled with fury, nose whistling in a way that should have been funny. “You just let him go! What if he’d had a knife on him?”

Kaz registered it only dimly. Beni had hardly touched him, but somehow, without the gloves, it was all so much worse. The press of skin, the pliability of another human body so close to his.

“Are you even listening to me, you sorry, skinny little skiv?” Teapot grabbed him by his shirt, his knuckles brushing Kaz’s neck, sending another wave of sickness crashing through him. He shook Kaz until his teeth rattled.

Teapot gave Kaz the beat-down he’d had planned for Beni and left him bleeding in the alley. You didn’t get to go soft or give in to distraction, not on a job, not when one of your crew was counting on you. Kaz curled his hands into his sleeves, but never threw a punch.

It had taken him nearly an hour to drag himself from that alley, and weeks to rebuild the damage to his reputation. Any slip in the Barrel could lead to a bad fall. He found Beni and made him wish Teapot had been the one to deliver the beating. He put his gloves back on and didn’t take them off. He became twice as ruthless, fought twice as hard. He stopped worrying about seeming normal, let people see a glimmer of the madness within him and let them guess at the rest. Someone got too close, he threw a punch. Someone dared to put hands on him, he broke a wrist, two wrists, a jaw. Dirtyhands , they called him. Haskell’s rabid dog. The rage inside him burned on and he learned to despise people who complained, who begged, who claimed they’d suffered. Let me teach you what pain looks like , he would say, and then he’d paint a picture with his fists.

At the ring, the next time Imogen laid her fingers on his sleeve, Kaz held her gaze until that closed-mouth smile slipped. She dropped her hand. She looked away. Kaz went back to counting the money.

Now Kaz rapped his cane against the morgue floor.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said to Nina, hearing his voice echo too loudly off the cold stone. He wanted out of this place as fast as possible.

They started on opposite sides, scanning the dates on the drawers, searching for a cadaver that would be in the appropriate state of decomposition. Even the thought ratcheted the tension in his chest tighter. It felt like a scream building. But his mind had conceived of this plan, knowing it would bring him to this place.

“Here,” Nina said.

Kaz crossed the room to her. They stood before the drawer, neither of them moving to open it. Kaz knew they’d both seen plenty of dead bodies. You couldn’t make a life on the streets of the Barrel or as a soldier in the Second Army without encountering death. But this was different. This was decay.

At last, Kaz hooked the crow’s head of his cane under the handle and pulled. The drawer was heavier than he’d anticipated, but it slid open smoothly. He stood back.

“We’re sure this is a good idea?” said Nina.

“I’m open to better ones,” said Kaz.

She blew out a long breath and then pulled the sheet away from the corpse. Kaz thought of a snake molting.

The man was middle-aged, his lips already blackening with decay.

As a little boy, Kaz had held his breath whenever he’d passed a graveyard, certain that if he opened his mouth, something terrible would crawl in. The room tilted. Kaz tried to breathe shallowly, forcing himself back to the present. He spread his fingers inside his gloves, felt the leather tug, grasped the weight of his cane in his palm.

“I wonder how he died,” Nina murmured as she peered at the gray folds of the dead man’s face.

“Alone,” Kaz said, looking at the man’s fingertips. Something had been gnawing at them. The rats had gotten to him before his body was found. Or one of his pets. Kaz pulled the sealed glass container he’d lifted from Genya’s kit out of his pocket. “Take what you need.”

Standing in the clock tower above Colm’s suite, Kaz surveyed his crew. The city was still cloaked in darkness, but dawn would come soon and they would go their separate ways: Wylan and Colm to an empty bakery to wait out the start of the auction. Nina to the Barrel with her assignments in hand. Inej to the