Crooked Kingdom (The Six of Crows Duology #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,25

will be able to put you back together again, Miss Ghafa. Maybe you can earn your way out of your contract by begging for pennies on East Stave and then crawl home to the Slat every night, assuming Brekker still gives you a room there.”

“Don’t.” She didn’t know if she was pleading with Van Eck or herself. She didn’t know who she hated more in this moment.

The guard took up a steel mallet.

Inej writhed on the table, her body coated in sweat. She could smell her own fear. “Don’t,” she repeated. “Don’t.”

The blade-nosed guard tested the mallet’s weight in his hands. Van Eck nodded. The guard lifted it in a smooth arc.

Inej watched the mallet rise and reach its apex, light glinting off its wide head, the flat face of a dead moon. She heard the crackle of the campfire, thought of her mother’s hair twined with persimmon silk.

“He’ll never trade if you break me!” she screamed, the words tearing loose from some deep place inside her, her voice raw and undefended. “I’ll be no use to him anymore!”

Van Eck held up a hand. The mallet fell.

Inej felt it brush against her trousers as the impact shattered the surface of the table a hair’s breadth from her calf, the entire corner collapsing beneath the force.

My leg , she thought, shuddering violently. That would have been my leg. There was a metallic taste in her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue. Saints protect me. Saints protect me.

“You make an interesting argument,” Van Eck said meditatively. He tapped a finger against his lips, thinking. “Ponder your loyalties, Miss Ghafa. Tomorrow night I may not be so merciful.”

Inej could not control her shaking. I’m going to cut you open , she vowed silently. I’m going to excavate that pathetic excuse of a heart from your chest. It was an evil thought, a vile thought. But she couldn’t help it. Would her Saints sanction such a thing? Could forgiveness come if she killed not to survive but because she burned with living, luminous hatred? I don’t care , she thought as her body spasmed and the guards lifted her trembling form from the table. I’ll do penance for the rest of my days if it means I get to kill him.

They dragged her back to her room through the lobby of the dilapidated theater and down a hall to what she now knew must be an old equipment room. They bound her hands and feet again.

Bajan moved to place the blindfold over her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know he intended … I—”

“Kadema mehim.”

Bajan flinched. “Don’t say that.”

The Suli were a close people, loyal. They had to be, in a world where they had no land and where they were so very few. Inej’s teeth were chattering, but she forced out the words. “You are forsaken. As you have turned your back on me, so will they turn their backs on you.” It was the worst of Suli denunciations, one that forbade you the welcome of your ancestors in the next world, and doomed your spirit to wander without a home.

Bajan paled. “I don’t believe any of that.”

“You will.”

He secured the blindfold around her head. She heard the door close.

Inej lay on her side, her hip and her shoulder digging into the hard floor, and waited for the tremors to pass.

In her early days at the Menagerie, she’d believed someone would come for her. Her family would find her. An officer of the law. A hero from one of the stories her mother used to tell. Men had come, but not to set her free, and eventually her hope had withered like leaves beneath a too-bright sun, replaced by a bitter bud of resignation.

Kaz had rescued her from that hopelessness, and their lives had been a series of rescues ever since, a string of debts that they never tallied as they saved each other again and again. Lying in the dark, she realized that for all her doubts, she’d believed he would rescue her once more, that he would put aside his greed and his demons and come for her. Now she wasn’t so sure. Because it was not just the sense in the words she’d spoken that had stilled Van Eck’s hand but the truth he’d heard in her voice. He’ll never trade if you break me. She could not pretend those words had been conjured by strategy or even animal cunning. The magic they’d worked had been born of belief. An