Crooked Kingdom (The Six of Crows Duology #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,82

time he swallowed, and he was terrified that every splash he heard was Prior coming to finish the job.

He needed to make some kind of plan, but it was hard to form whole thoughts. He checked his trouser pockets. He still had the kruge his father had given him tucked safely away. Though the cash was wet through, it was perfectly good for spending. But where was Wylan supposed to go? He didn’t have enough money to get out of the city, and if his father sent men looking for him, he’d be easily tracked. He needed to get somewhere safe, someplace his father wouldn’t think to look. His limbs felt weighted with lead, the cold giving way to fatigue. He was afraid that if he let himself close his eyes, he wouldn’t have the will to open them again.

In the end, he’d simply started walking. He wandered north through the city, away from the slaughter houses, past a quiet residential area where lesser tradesmen lived, then onward, the streets becoming more crooked and more narrow, until the houses seemed to crowd in on him. Despite the late hour, there were lights in every window and shop front. Music spilled out of run-down cafés, and he glimpsed bodies pressed up against each other in the alleys.

“Someone dunk you, lad?” called an old man with a shortage of teeth from a stoop.

“I’ll give him a good dunking!” crowed a woman leaning on the stairs.

He was in the Barrel. Wylan had lived his whole life in Ketterdam, but he’d never come here. He’d never been allowed to. He’d never wanted to. His father called it a “filthy den of vice and blasphemy” and “the shame of the city.” Wylan knew it was a warren of dark streets and hidden passages. A place where locals donned costumes and performed unseemly acts, where foreigners crowded the thoroughfares seeking vile entertainments, where people came and went like tides. The perfect place to disappear.

And it had been—until the day the first of his father’s letters had arrived.

With a start, Wylan realized Jesper was pulling at his sleeve. “This is our stop, merchling. Look lively.”

Wylan hurried after him. They disembarked at the empty dock at Olendaal and walked up the embankment to a sleepy village road.

Jesper looked around. “This place reminds me of home. Fields as far as the eye can see, quiet broken by nothing but the hum of bees, fresh air.” He shuddered. “Disgusting.”

As they walked, Jesper helped him gather wildflowers from the side of the road. By the time they’d made it to the main street, he had a respectable little bunch.

“I guess we need to find a way to the quarry?” Jesper said.

Wylan coughed. “No we don’t, just a general store.”

“But you told Kaz the mineral—”

“It’s present in all kinds of paints and enamels. I wanted to make sure I had a reason to go to Olendaal.”

“Wylan Van Eck, you lied to Kaz Brekker .” Jesper clutched a hand to his chest. “And you got away with it! Do you give lessons?”

Wylan felt ridiculously pleased—until he thought about Kaz finding out. Then he felt a little like the first time he’d tried brandy and ended up spewing his dinner all over his own shoes.

They located a general store halfway up the main street, and it took them only a few moments to purchase what they needed. On the way out, a man loading up a wagon exchanged a wave with them. “You boys looking for work?” he asked skeptically. “Neither of you looks up to a full day in the field.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Jesper. “We signed on to do some work out near Saint Hilde.”

Wylan waited, nervous, but the man just nodded. “You doing repairs at the hospital?”

“Yup,” Jesper said easily.

“Your friend there don’t talk much.”

“Shu,” said Jesper with a shrug.

The older man gave some kind of grunt in agreement and said, “Hop on in. I’m going out to the quarry. I can take you to the gates. What are the flowers for?”

“He has a sweetheart out near Saint Hilde.”

“Some sweetheart.”

“I’ll say. He has terrible taste in women.”

Wylan considered shoving Jesper off the wagon.

The dirt road was bordered on each side by what looked like barley and wheat fields, the flat expanses of land dotted occasionally by barns and windmills. The wagon kept up a fast clip. A little too fast , Wylan thought as they jounced over a deep rut. He hissed in a breath.

“Rains,” said the farmer. “No one’s got