Crooked Kingdom (The Six of Crows Duology #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,56

useless brilliance.

“You probably just scared the hell out of some hapless working girl,” Jesper said. “Give me that.” He snatched the other flash bomb and lobbed it directly into the path of their pursuers, turning to protect his eyes from the explosion. “And that’s how it’s done.”

“Next time, I’m not saving your life,” Wylan panted.

“You’d miss me. Everyone does.”

Nina cried out. Jesper turned. Nina’s thrashing body was covered in silver netting, and she was being dragged backward by the Shu woman, who stood with legs planted in the center of the alley. Matthias opened fire, but she didn’t budge.

“Bullets don’t work!” Wylan said. “I think there’s metal beneath their skin.”

Now that he said it, Jesper could see metal glinting from under the bloody bullet wounds. But what did that mean? Were they mechanicals of some sort? How was it possible?

“The net!” Matthias roared.

They all grabbed hold of the metal net, trying to pull Nina to safety. But the Shu woman kept yanking her backward, hand over hand, with impossible strength.

“We need something to cut the cord!” Jesper shouted.

“To hell with the cord,” Nina snarled between gritted teeth. She snatched a revolver from Jesper’s holster. “Let go!” she commanded.

“Nina—” protested Matthias.

“Do it.”

They let go, and Nina zipped down the alley in a sudden burst of momentum. The Shu woman took an awkward step back, then seized the edge of the net, yanking Nina up.

Nina waited until the last possible second, then said, “Let’s see if you’re metal all the way through.”

She shoved the revolver directly into the Shu woman’s eye socket and squeezed the trigger.

The blast didn’t just take her eye but most of the top of her skull. For a moment, she still stood, clutching Nina, a gaping mess of bone, soft pink brain matter, and shards of metal where the rest of her face should have been. Then she crumpled.

Nina gagged and scrabbled at the net. “Get me out of this thing before her friend comes looking for us.”

Matthias tore the net away from Nina and they all ran, hearts hammering, boots pounding over the cobblestones.

Jesper could hear his father’s fearful words, hastening him through the streets, a wind of warning at his back. I’m afraid for you. The world can be cruel to your kind. What had the Shu sent after Nina? After the city’s Grisha? After him ?

Jesper’s existence had been a string of close calls and near disasters, but he’d never been so sure he was running for his life.

A s Inej and Kaz moved farther from West Stave, the silence between them spread like a stain. They’d abandoned their capes and masks in a rubbish heap behind a run-down little brothel called the Velvet Room, where Kaz had apparently stashed another change of clothes for them. It was as if the whole city had become their wardrobe, and Inej couldn’t help but think of the conjurers who drew miles of scarves from their sleeves and vanished girls from boxes that always reminded her uncomfortably of coffins.

Dressed in the bulky coats and roughspun trousers of dockworkers, they made their way into the warehouse district, hair covered by hats, collars pulled up despite the warm weather. The eastern edge of the district was like a city within a city, populated mostly by immigrants who lived in cheap hotels and rooming houses or in shantytowns of plywood and corrugated tin, segregating themselves into ramshackle neighborhoods by language and nationality. At this time of day, most of the area’s denizens were at work in the city’s factories and docks, but on certain corners, Inej saw men and women gathered, hoping some foreman or boss would come along to offer a lucky few of them a day’s work.

After she’d been freed from the Menagerie, Inej had wandered the streets of Ketterdam, trying to make sense of the city. She’d been overwhelmed by the noise and the crowds, certain that Tante Heleen or one of her henchmen would catch her unawares and drag her back to the House of Exotics. But she’d known that if she was going to be useful to the Dregs and earn her way out of her new contract, she couldn’t let the strangeness of the clamor and cobblestones best her. We greet the unexpected visitor. She would have to learn the city.

She always preferred to travel along the rooftops, out of sight, free from the shuffle of bodies. There, she felt most herself again—the girl she’d once been, someone who hadn’t had the sense to be