Six of Crows

When the firefight breaks out on the docks, Inej climbs high onto the cargo crates, then slides down to take out one enemy after another with her daggers. She notices their attackers come from both the Black Tips and Razorgulls and wonders how many gangs they’re fighting against.

Oomen, the Black Tips’ enforcer, appears out of nowhere and stabs Inej under her arm. She jams one of her kneepads in his crotch, and he lets go of her; she’s hidden tiny steel blades in both pads. Weak from blood loss, she hears her father saying, “Climb, Inej,” just as he did when she was a child, and he taught her to perform as an acrobat. She can’t make it high enough, and as she prepares to stab herself in the heart rather than be captured by the Black Tips, Kaz appears, plucks her up, and carries her toward the schooner.

Inej remembers first seeing Kaz at the Menagerie, where he paid Tante Heleen for intel about her clients. Inej told Kaz she could help him, and he returned the next day to take her away from the Menagerie. Now, he’s come back for her again, but when she says so aloud, he claims he’s only “protect[ing] my investments” (153). Inej demands an apology but blacks out before she can hear his answer.

Kaz struggles on board with Inej in his arms, the pain in his leg “the worst it [has] been since he’d first broken it falling off [a] roof” (154). He orders his chosen captain, Specht, to set sail, then rushes below deck to Nina and commands her to heal Inej. He wonders what transgression Inej wanted an apology for— “there were so many possibilities” (156)—as he leaves Nina alone to work.

Jesper and Matthias grab Oomen, who was forced on board by one of Kaz’s men. Kaz asks Oomen why the Black Tips are “out in force” (157) and yanks out Oomen’s eyeball with his bare hand, threatening to take the other if he doesn’t talk. Oomen admits that Pekka Rollins hired the Black Tips to ambush the Dregs. Kaz wonders if Pekka is leading his own crew to the Ice Court, but Oomen knows nothing more, so Kaz throws him overboard. Kaz reflects that “it always came back to Pekka Rollins, the man who had taken everything from him” (206), and he feels determined to make Pekka suffer.

Nina, a Heartrender Grisha and not a Healer, finds it difficult to save Inej. Nina wishes she’d had a more complete education, but Ravka’s civil war cut her schooling short. She closes Inej’s wound—all she can do for the moment—and observes that Inej has a partially removed tattoo of the Menagerie and no new Dregs tattoo. Nina has both a White Rose and a Dregs tattoo: “a crow trying to drink from a near empty goblet” (162). The tattoo signaled to others that “to trifle with [Nina] was to risk [the Dregs’] vengeance” (162).

Nina joined the Grisha’s Second Army following the Ravkan civil war. After a particularly harsh scolding from a superior, she wandered off and ended up in a drüskelle camp, where she was captured by a drüskelle with hair of “burnished gold”—Matthias—and thrown on a ship with other Grisha prisoners.

One day the drüskelle leader Jarl Brum, whom the Grisha whisper about as a “monster waiting in the dark” (168), addressed the prisoners, telling them they would be tried and executed. One drüskelle reached for Nina and wondered if he could have some fun with her, but Matthias—whose name Nina didn’t know at the time—smacked the other man and asked, “Would you fornicate with a dog?” (170). The other drüskelle left and Nina, drawing on her talent for languages, asked Matthias in Fjerdan of what crimes the drüskelle accused her. Matthias refused to elaborate, and she asked him for water. He brought back a tin cup and bucket of water; later, Nina recalls “that tin cup had saved her life” (171).

Nina falls asleep and wakes to find Inej alive and stable. Matthias watches her from the doorway. They trade barbs, and Matthias wonders why Kaz asked Nina about the White Rose. Nina shows Matthias her White Rose tattoo, and he asks why she worked there and stayed in Kerch. Nina says she was trying “to set things right” (174) and free Matthias from prison, but he doesn’t believe her. Nina studies Matthias, remembering the good things she once saw inside him after the shipwreck, and wonders if the goodness survived his stint in prison.

Back on deck, Matthias thinks of Nina, telling him she’d made a mistake by branding him a slaver and having him jailed, but he’s still sure a Grisha has no honor. Kaz gives his crew an invention called baleen, a disc that can be used for breathing underwater if bitten down on while a person is drowning. Matthias fills in place names on the map Wylan drew of the Ice Court, an act that makes Matthias feel “even more treasonous” (178). He wonders if, after being assumed dead in the shipwreck that killed his fellow drüskelle and Commander Brum, he could turn in the Dregs and return to the Fjerdans’ good graces.

Kaz asks Matthias about the prison layout and develops a plan for Inej to climb out through the incinerator. Jesper brings up the bigger problem of Pekka Rollins: Competing with Pekka over this mission will incite a gang war. Kaz insists that if the Dregs pull off this job first, they’ll become bigger legends than Pekka. Jesper about what his ghost will do “if Pekka Rollins kills us all” (181).

After three days at sea, Inej wakes after midnight feeling “sore, but not terrible” (186). Nina catches Inej up on the outcome of the fight, and Inej asks Nina to stay while she rests. Nina asks Inej why she doesn’t have a Dregs tattoo, and Inej points out the scars left behind from her Menagerie tattoo. Desperate to remove the brothel’s mark, she paid for a hack job that left “a puckered spill of wounds” (187). Inej didn’t want to be marked again, even by the Dregs. Yet in a way, Inej thinks, she has been marked by Kaz. She cares for him despite her attempts to keep from becoming emotionally vulnerable.

Inej still can’t sleep, and she and Nina connect over the fact that both associate boats with bad memories. As Nina sings to Inej, Inej remembers herself at 14. She and her family lived in a Suli caravan and performed in a carnival by the sea. One morning, she’d remained in her family’s wagon alone for a few extra minutes of sleep when slavers arrived and kidnapped her. She was imprisoned in a ship’s hold, along with other children. When she arrived in Kerch, she was handed over to Tante Heleen, who recognized the value in Inej’s flawless, golden-brown Suli skin.

With six days until the ship arrives in northern Fjerda, Jesper feels antsy enough to “hurl himself overboard” (192). He checks on Inej every day and eventually finds her well enough to rise, although Jesper has to help her walk to the deck. The crew members thank Inej for defeating the Black Tips and wish her well. As Jesper observes, “it’s a novelty to feel appreciated” (197).

Inej asks if Kaz came to check on her, and Jesper admits he didn’t, but speculates it would have been difficult for Kaz to see her in that condition. Jesper asks Inej about Wylan’s past, and Inej shares what little she knows from her investigations. Wylan appeared in the Barrel three months ago, using a fake name; according to rumor, Wylan was “caught in a sweaty romp” with a tutor (198). Councilman Van Eck sent Wylan letters every week, asking him to return home, but Wylan didn’t open them. Jesper concludes Van Eck must have done something terrible to make Wylan “slum it with us” (199).

Inej wonders why Jesper has taken on this dangerous mission, and he admits he’s in debt to his own father, whose farm in Novyi Zem has just started to make a profit. Jesper’s father loaned Jesper money he believes is for university, but it’s actually to pay off gambling debts. Jesper needs to pay his father back, and this job is the only way.

Two days after Inej is back on her feet, Kaz finally “make[s] himself approach” her (202). He shows her the map of the Ice Court, and she agrees she can climb the incinerator shaft. Kaz recalls snapping at Inej before they began the mission, and he now knows she was echoing his own worries. Now, he needs Inej to believe in him so he can have the confidence to continue.

Inej mentions Pekka Rollins, and Kaz reveals that Pekka killed his brother. Inej promises to pray Kaz’s brother will have “peace in the next world” (204). Kaz is surprised his skin isn’t crawling at his nearness to Inej; he actually wants to move closer. Inej asks Kaz what he wants from the mission, and he claims he simply wants money. He asks Inej about her goals, and she says she wants to leave Ketterdam and never hear the name Wraith again. Kaz leaves frustrated with Inej, and he starts to think of his childhood.

When Kaz was nine, his father was crushed by a plow, and Jordie sold the family farm and took his brother to Ketterdam. The boys rented a room in a boardinghouse, and every morning, Jordie ordered Kaz to stay inside, left to look for work, and returned home disappointed. One night, Kaz convinced Jordie to take him to East Stave, where they’d seen a performing magician. The boys passed Pekka’s Emerald Palace and at the next gambling hall, the Golden Strike, Kaz stopped to play with the little wind-up dogs for sale out front. The boy selling the dogs, Filip, told Jordie about a job as a runner, and he invited Jordie to come back the next day so they could ask about the job together.

The next day, Filip and Jordie both found jobs running messages for Jacob Hertzoon, a coffeehouse owner who arranged investment deals for trade ships. Kaz spent his days at the coffeehouse, and the boys even shared dinner with the Hertzoons. Overhearing information about the trade deals, Kaz realized Hertzoon’s associates were using inside knowledge to cheat in their investments. Jordie decided to invest his father’s money in one of those deals—the moment, Kaz now realizes, when “greed [took] hold of his brother” (210).

A week later, Jordie and Kaz discovered the coffeehouse closed and the Hertzoon residence abandoned. A neighbor told them the Hertzoons had only rented the house for a few weeks. Jordie held out hope the Hertzoons would return, but Kaz remembered the magician’s coin that had fascinated him so—like Jordie’s money, it was “there and then gone” (212).

The Ferolind arrives on the northern coast of Fjerda, and Kaz sends Nina to unlock Matthias’s shackles before they disembark. Kaz also wants Nina to “tailor” Matthias—to use her Grisha abilities to make him look different, so he won’t be recognizable. She darkens his hair, and Matthias struggles for composure as her lips draw so close to his that “if he sat up straighter, they’d be kissing” (216). Before she leaves, Nina tells Matthias she doesn’t “believe for a second” (217) he’ll allow the Dregs to deliver Yul-Bayur to the Kerch merchants.

The crew departs the ship, and the captain Specht says he’ll pick them up in Djerholm harbor once the mission is complete. The ship is their escape route, as it carries papers that claim they’re transporting goods from Fjerda back to Kerch. They spend a day hiking toward civilization, and Matthias is a little pleased to see the others struggling in the cold to which he’s accustomed— “the white north had a way of forcing strangers to reevaluate their terms” (218).

The next day, Kaz begins to go over the plan. The crew will be taken to holding cells before being charged. After completing a few tasks in the prison, they’ll climb rope placed by Inej in the incinerator shaft and cross to the embassy roof, thus avoiding the embassy checkpoints. Jesper will watch out for Wylan and help him make bombs from prison supplies, which will only be used if necessary. Matthias, hearing the plan, secretly considers killing Yul-Bayur at some point.

As the group continues traveling, Matthias remembers the shipwreck that transformed his life—a shipwreck that occurred only miles from where the team landed. When the storm tossed the drüskelles’ ship “like a toy” and “dragged [it] under” (224), Nina somehow escaped her shackles and rescued Matthias, using magic to keep him alive and pulling him along with her. Eventually, Matthias began swimming, and Nina’s powers “kept both of them breathing” (225) until they found land. Matthias considered abandoning Nina, but she’d saved his life— “a blood debt” (227)—so he guided her back toward civilization. Along the way, they got to know each other: psychologically, as Matthias bristled against Nina’s brash, immodest words and actions; and physically, as they lay close to each other at night to stay warm. Matthias must admit that he’s attracted to Nina, that he truly “did like the way she talked” (230)—and still does.

The crew comes across a pyre with tree stakes and the charred bodies of Grisha. “This is what Fjerdans do to Grisha” (231), Nina says, although Matthias insists the pyres are now illegal. They realize one of the girls is still alive, and Jesper shoots her to put her out of her misery. As Matthias and Nina argue over the Fjerdans treatment of Grisha, Matthias reveals that Grisha soldiers burned his entire village, killing his parents and sister.

Despite Matthias’s hatred of Grisha, Nine can’t change the fact that “one smile from Matthias Helvar [felt] like 50 from someone else” (234). She thinks back to the three weeks they spent wandering after the shipwreck. No matter how separate they kept themselves as they fell asleep, in the morning they’d wake “pressed together, breathing in tandem […] a single crescent moon” (235). Nina revealed how she used the jagged lip of the tin cup Matthias brought her to cut the Grisha’s bonds; they planned to attack the drüskelle, but the storm changed their plans. In spite of their mutual distrust, Nina and Matthias developed an ever-strengthening bond, their insults becoming increasingly playful and flirtatious until Matthias admitted he liked Nina. The two became “Nina and Matthias instead of Grisha and witchhunter” (241)—but now, Nina considers the intimacy of those weeks a lie.

In the present, Nina and Matthias continue tussling, both verbally and physically, until the others order them to stop fighting or they’ll “get us all killed” (242). Matthias forces Nina to admit what she did: When the two reached a town after the shipwreck, Matthias kept Nina’s identity hidden and began to arrange transport to Kerch, but Nina told the Kerch that Matthias was a slaver who’d captured her. The Kerch “tossed [Matthias] in the brig” (244) until they reached Ketterdam, and he ended up in Hellsgate. Now, Matthias asks Nina if she would undo her actions, and she insists she’d “do it all over again” (244).

Suddenly the earth erupts beneath the crew’s feet, and Nina realizes they’re being attacked by Grisha Squallers flying above them—something only possible with the aid of jurda parem. The Grisha are shooting slabs of rock and ice in a circle around the group, trying to trap them. Wylan sets off a bomb as a distraction, and Jesper shoots one of the Grisha down while Inej attacks the other. Wylan sets a larger bomb to destroy the slabs that have entrapped them. Nina recognizes the Grisha boy wounded by both Inej’s knife and Jesper’s bullet; he’s Nestor, one of her schoolmates. Nestor begs desperately for more jurda parem and for the Shu to come back, and then he collapses, dead, his body “ravaged by the drug” (247).

Kaz finds a Shu wen ye, or “Coin of Passage” (248), in the other Grisha’s pocket and surmises the Grisha were sent by the Shu government to collect Yul-Bayur. Nina wonders why they need the scientist if they already have jurda parem, and Kaz guesses that either only Yul-Bayur knows how to make more of the drug, or they want to ensure he doesn’t share the formula. He expects more drugged, dangerous Grisha are heading for the Ice Court.

Nina wants to bury the Grisha, and Matthias agrees to help her while the rest of the team continues moving—Nina and Matthias will catch up later. As they dig the graves, Nina wonders if what she saw in the influence of jurda parem is what Fjerdans see in all Grisha: an abomination, “the natural world undone” (251). Matthias asks Nina why she turned him in as a slaver, and Nina reveals that Grisha saw her with Matthias and asked her to turn him in. She saw the Grisha coming to collect Matthias at the docks, and she accused him of being a slaver so the Kerch would take him away because she believed he’d be safer in Kerch than with the Grisha. Once in Ketterdam, she tried to recant her testimony, but no one would listen.

Matthias is sure Nina will attempt to kill Yul-Bayur in order to save the Grisha, and Nina and Matthias realize they both want the scientist dead, even if doing so “mean[s] betraying the others” (254). Just as they did after the shipwreck, the two establish an uneasy truce, a determination that “Bo Yul-Bayur will not leave the Ice Court alive” (254).