Six of Crows (Six of Crows #1) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,38

archway.

“How down?” It was a Barrel turn of phrase. How badly do you want him hurt?

“Shut eye.” Knock him out, but don’t actually hurt him.

They followed Kaz to the arch through which they’d entered. The rest of the crowd took little notice, eyes focused on the fighting below.

“Need your escort?” the guard asked as they approached.

“I had a question,” said Kaz. Beneath her cape, Nina lifted her hands, sensing the flow of blood in the guard’s veins, the tissue of his lungs. “About your mother and whether the rumors are true.”

Nina felt the guard’s pulse leap and sighed. “Never can make it easy, can you, Kaz?”

The guard stepped forward, lifting his gun. “What did you say? I—” His eyelids drooped. “You don’t—” Nina dropped his pulse, and he toppled forward.

Muzzen grabbed him before he could fall as Inej swept him into the cloak Kaz had been wearing just moments before. Nina was only mildly surprised to see that Kaz was wearing a prison guard’s uniform beneath it.

“Couldn’t you have just asked him the time or something?” Nina said. “And where did you get that uniform?”

Inej slid the Madman’s mask down over the guard’s face, and Muzzen threw his arm around him, holding him up as if the guard had been drinking too much. They deposited him on one of the benches pressed against the back wall.

Kaz tugged on the sleeves of his uniform. “Nina, people love to give up authority to men in nice clothes. I have uniforms for the stadwatch, the harbor police, and the livery of every merch mansion on the Geldstraat. Let’s go.”

They slipped down the passageway.

Instead of turning back the way they’d come, they moved counterclockwise around the old tower, the wall of the arena vibrating with voices and stomping feet to their left. The guards posted at each archway paid them little more than a glance, though a few nodded at Kaz, who kept a brisk pace, his face buried in his collar.

Nina was so deep in thought that she nearly missed it when Kaz held up a hand for them to slow. They’d rounded a bend between two archways and were in the cover of deep shadow. Ahead of them, a medik was emerging from a cell accompanied by guards, one carrying a lantern. “He’ll sleep through the night,” the medik said. “Make sure he drinks something in the morning and check his pupils. I had to give him a powerful sleeping draft.”

As the men moved off in the opposite direction, Kaz gestured his group forward. The door in the rock was solid iron, broken only by a narrow slot through which to pass the prisoner’s meals. Kaz bent to the lock.

Nina eyed the crude iron door. “This place is barbaric.”

“Most of the better fighters sleep in the old tower,” Kaz replied. “Keeps them away from the rest of the population.”

Nina glanced left and right to where bright light spilled from the arena entryways. There were guards standing in those doorways, distracted maybe, but all one needed to do was turn his head. If they were caught here, would the guards bother giving them over to the stadwatch for trial or would they simply force them into the ring to be eaten by a tiger? Maybe something less dignified, she thought bleakly. A swarm of angry voles.

It took Kaz a few quick heartbeats to pick the lock. The door creaked open and they slipped inside.

The cell was pitch-black. A brief moment passed, and the cold green glow of a bonelight flickered to life beside her. Inej held the little glass sphere aloft. The substance inside was made from the dried and crushed bodies of luminous deep-sea fishes. They were common among crooks in the Barrel who didn’t want to get caught in a dark alley, but couldn’t be bothered to lug around lanterns.

At least it’s clean, Nina thought, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Barren and icy cold, but not filthy. She saw a pallet of horse blankets and two buckets placed against the wall, one with a bloody cloth peeking over the rim.

This was what the men of Hellgate competed for: a private cell, a blanket, clean water, a bucket for waste.

Matthias slept with his back to the wall. Even in the dim illumination of the bonelight, she could see his face was starting to swell. Some kind of ointment had been smeared over his wounds—calendula. She recognized the smell.

Nina moved toward him, but Kaz stopped her with a hand on her