فصل 24

24

JESPER

At the base of the iron staircase, Jesper tried to straighten his shirt and dabbed the blood from his lip, though at this point he figured it wouldn’t matter if he showed up in nothing but his skivvies. His father was no fool, and that ridiculous story Wylan had concocted to cover for Jesper’s mistakes had worn faster than a cheap suit. His father had seen their wounds, he’d heard about their botched plans. He knew they weren’t students or victims of a swindle. So what now?

Close your eyes and hope the firing squad has good aim, he thought bleakly.

“Jesper.”

He whirled. Inej was right behind him. He hadn’t heard her approach, but that was no surprise. Have you told Inej you’re the reason she almost died at the end of Oomen’s knife? Well, Jesper figured he’d be doing a lot of apologizing this morning. Best get to it.

“Inej, I’m sorry—”

“I didn’t come looking for an apology, Jesper. You have a weak spot. We all have weak spots.”

“What’s yours?”

“The company I keep,” she said with a slight smile.

“You don’t even know what I did.”

“Then tell me.”

Jesper looked down at his shoes. They were miserably scuffed. “I was in deep with Pekka Rollins for a lot of kruge. His goons were putting the pressure on, so I … I told them I was leaving town, but that I was about to come into a big score. I didn’t say anything about the Ice Court, I swear.”

“But it was enough for Rollins to put the puzzle together and prepare an ambush.” She sighed. “And Kaz has been punishing you for it ever since.”

Jesper shrugged. “Maybe I deserve it.”

“Do you know the Suli have no words to say ‘I’m sorry’?”

“What do you say when you step on someone’s foot?”

“I don’t step on people’s feet.”

“You know what I mean.”

“We say nothing. We know the slight was not deliberate. We live in tight quarters, traveling together. There’s no time to constantly be apologizing for existing. But when someone does wrong, when we make mistakes, we don’t say we’re sorry. We promise to make amends.”

“I will.”

“Mati en sheva yelu. This action will have no echo. It means we won’t repeat the same mistakes, that we won’t continue to do harm.”

“I’m not going to get you stabbed again.”

“I got stabbed because I let my guard down. You betrayed your crew.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“It would be better if you had meant to betray us. Jesper, I don’t want an apology, not until you can promise that you won’t keep making the same mistake.”

Jesper rocked lightly on his heels. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“There’s a wound in you, and the tables, the dice, the cards—they feel like medicine. They soothe you, put you right for a time. But they’re poison, Jesper. Every time you play, you take another sip. You have to find some other way to heal that part of yourself.” She laid her hand on his chest. “Stop treating your pain like it’s something you imagined. If you see the wound is real, then you can heal it.”

A wound? He opened his mouth to deny it, but something stopped him. For all his trouble at the tables and away from them, Jesper had always thought of himself as lucky. Happy, easygoing. The kind of guy people wanted around. But what if he’d been bluffing this whole time? Angry and frightened—that’s what the Fjerdan had called him. What had Matthias and Inej seen in Jesper that he didn’t understand?

“I … I’ll try.” It was the most he could offer right now. He took her hand in his, pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “It may take me a while before I can say those words.” His lips tilted in a grin. “And not just because I can’t speak Suli.”

“I know,” she said. “But think on it.” She glanced toward the sitting room. “Just tell him the truth, Jesper. You’ll both be glad to know where you stand.”

“Every time I think about doing that, I feel like hurling myself out a window.” He hesitated. “Would you tell your parents the truth? Would you tell them everything you’ve done … everything that happened?”

“I don’t know,” Inej admitted. “But I’d give anything to have the choice.”

Jesper found his father in the purple sitting room, a cup of coffee in his big hands. He’d piled the dishes back onto the silver tray.

“You don’t have to clean up after us, Da.”

“Someone does.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Sit down, Jes.”

Jesper didn’t want to sit. That desperate itch was crackling through his body. All he wanted was to run straight to the Barrel as fast as his legs could carry him and throw himself down in the first gambling parlor he could find. If he hadn’t thought he’d be arrested or shot before he got halfway there, he just might have. He sat. Inej had left the unused vials of the chemical weevil on the table. He picked one up, fiddling with the stopper.

His father leaned back, watching him with those stern gray eyes. Jesper could see every line and freckle on his face in the clear morning light.

“There was no swindle, was there? That Shu boy lied for you. They all did.”

Jesper clasped his hands to keep them from fidgeting. You’ll both be glad to know where you stand. Jesper wasn’t sure that was true, but he had no more options. “There have been a lot of swindles, but I was usually on the swindling side. A lot of fights—I was usually on the winning side. A lot of card games.” He looked down at the white crescents of his fingernails. “I was usually on the losing side.”

“The loan I gave you for your studies?”

“I got in deep with the wrong people. I lost at the tables and I kept losing, so I kept borrowing. I thought I could find a way to dig myself out.”

“Why didn’t you just stop?”

Jesper wanted to laugh. He had pleaded with himself, screamed at himself to stop. “It isn’t like that.” There’s a wound in you. “Not for me. I don’t know why.”

Colm pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked so weary, this man who could work from sunrise to sunset without ever complaining. “I never should have let you leave home.”

“Da—”

“I knew the farm wasn’t for you. I wanted you to have something better.”

“Then why not send me to Ravka?” Jesper said before he could think better of it.

Coffee sloshed from Colm’s cup. “Out of the question.”

“Why?”

“Why should I send my son to some foreign country to fight and die in their wars?”

A memory came to Jesper, sharp as a mule kick. The dusty man was standing at the door again. He had the girl with him, the girl who had lived because his mother had died. He wanted Jesper to come with them.

“Leoni is zowa. She has the gift too,” he’d said. “There are teachers in the west, past the frontier. They could train them.”

“Jesper doesn’t have it,” Colm said.

“But his mother—”

“He doesn’t have it. You have no right to come here.”

“Are you sure? Has he been tested?”

“You come back on this land and I’ll consider it an invitation to put a bullet between your eyes. You go and you take that girl with you. No one here has the gift and no one here wants it.”

He’d slammed the door in the dusty man’s face.

Jesper remembered his father standing there, taking great heaving breaths.

“What did they want, Da?”

“Nothing.”

“Am I zowa?” Jesper had asked. “Am I Grisha?”

“Don’t say those words in this house. Not ever.”

“But—”

“That’s what killed your mother, do you understand? That’s what took her from us.” His father’s voice was fierce, his gray eyes hard as quartz. “I won’t let it take you too.” Then his shoulders slumped. As if the words were being torn from him, he’d said, “Do you want to go with them? You can go. If that’s what you want. I won’t be mad.”

Jesper had been ten. He’d thought of his father alone on the farm, coming home to an empty house every day, sitting by himself at the table every night, no one to make him burnt biscuits.

“No,” he’d said. “I don’t want to go with them. I want to stay with you.”

Now he rose from his chair, unable to sit still any longer, and paced the length of the room. Jesper felt like he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t be here anymore. His heart hurt. His head hurt. Guilt and love and resentment were all tangled up inside him, and every time he tried to unravel the knot in his gut, it just got worse. He was ashamed of the mess he’d made, of the trouble he’d brought to his father’s door. But he was mad too. And how could he be angry at his father? The person who loved him most in the world, who had worked to give him everything he had, the person he’d take a bullet for any day of the week?

This action will have no echo. “I’m going to … I’ll find a way to make amends, Da. I want to be a better person, a better son.”

“I didn’t raise you to be a gambler, Jesper. I certainly didn’t raise you to be a criminal.”

Jesper released a bitter huff of laughter. “I love you, Da. I love you with all my lying, thieving, worthless heart, but yes, you did.”

“What?” sputtered Colm.

“You taught me to lie.”

“To keep you safe.”

Jesper shook his head. “I had a gift. You should have let me use it.”

Colm banged his fist against the table. “It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. It would have killed you the same way it killed your mother.”

So much for the truth. Jesper strode to the door. If he didn’t get shut of this place, he was going to jump right out of his skin. “I’m dying anyway, Da. I’m just doing it slow.”

Jesper strode down the hall. He didn’t know where to go or what to do with himself. Go to the Barrel. Stay off the Stave. There’s a game to be had somewhere, just be inconspicuous. Sure, a Zemeni as tall as a modestly ambitious tree and carrying a price on his head wouldn’t be noticed at all. He remembered what Kuwei had said about Grisha who didn’t use their power being tired and sickly. He wasn’t physically sick, that was true enough. But what if Matthias was right and Jesper had a different kind of sickness? What if all that power inside him just liked to bounce around looking for someplace to go?

He passed an open doorway, then doubled back. Wylan was sitting at a white lacquer piano in the corner, listlessly plunking out one solitary note.

“I like that,” he said. “Has a great beat—you can dance to it.”

Wylan looked up, and Jesper sauntered into the room, hands swinging restlessly at his sides. He circled its perimeter, taking in all the furnishings—purple silk wallpaper flocked in silver fishes, silver chandeliers, a cabinet full of blown-glass ships. “Saints, this place is hideous.”

Wylan shrugged and played another note. Jesper leaned on the piano. “Wanna get out of here?”

Wylan looked up at him, his gaze speculative. He nodded.

Jesper stood up a little straighter. “Really?”

Wylan held his gaze. The air in the room seemed to change, as if it had become suddenly combustible.

Wylan rose from the piano bench. He took a step toward Jesper. His eyes were a clear, luminous gold, like sun through honey. Jesper missed the blue, the long lashes, the tangle of curls. But if the merchling had to be wrapped up in a different package, Jesper could admit he liked this one plenty. And did any of that really matter when Wylan was looking at him like that—head tilted to the side, a slight smile playing over his lips? He looked almost … bold. What had changed? Had he been afraid Jesper wouldn’t make it out of the scrape on Black Veil? Was he just feeling lucky to be alive? Jesper wasn’t sure he cared. He’d wanted distraction, and here it was.

Wylan’s grin broadened. His brow lifted. If that wasn’t an invitation …

“Well, hell,” Jesper muttered. He closed the distance between them and took Wylan’s face in his hands. He moved slowly, deliberately, kept the kiss quiet, the barest brush of his lips, giving Wylan the chance to pull away if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He drew closer.

Jesper could feel the heat from Wylan’s body against his. He slid his hand to the back of Wylan’s neck, tilting his head back, asking for more.

He felt greedy for something. He’d wanted to kiss Wylan since he’d first seen him stirring chemicals in that gruesome tannery—ruddy curls damp with the heat, skin so delicate it looked like it would bruise if you breathed on it too hard. He looked like he’d fallen into the wrong story, a prince turned pauper. From then on, Jesper had been stuck somewhere between the desire to taunt the pampered little merchling into another blush and the urge to flirt him into a quiet corner just to see what might happen. But sometime during their hours at the Ice Court, that curiosity had changed. He’d felt the tug of something more, something that came to life in Wylan’s unexpected courage, in his wide-eyed, generous way of looking at the world. It made Jesper feel like a kite on a tether, lifted up and then plummeting down, and he liked it.

So where was that feeling now? Disappointment flooded through him.

Is it me? Jesper thought. Am I out of practice? He pushed closer, letting the kiss deepen, seeking that rising, falling, reckless sensation, moving Wylan back against the piano. He heard the keys clank against one another—soft, discordant music. Appropriate, he thought. And then, If I can think about metaphors at a time like this, something is definitely wrong.

He pulled back, dropped his hands, feeling unspeakably awkward. What did you say after a terrible kiss? He’d never had cause to wonder.

That was when he saw Kuwei standing in the doorway, mouth open, eyes wide and shocked.

“What?” Jesper asked. “Do the Shu not kiss before noon?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Kuwei said sourly.

Not Kuwei.

“Oh, Saints,” Jesper groaned. That wasn’t Kuwei in the doorway. It was Wylan Van Eck, budding demolitions expert and wayward rich kid. And that meant he’d just kissed …

The real Kuwei plunked that same listless note on the piano, grinning shamelessly up at him through thick black lashes.

Jesper turned back to the door. “Wylan—” he began.

“Kaz wants us in the sitting room.”

“I—”

But Wylan was already gone. Jesper stared at the empty doorway. How could he have made a mistake like that? Wylan was taller than Kuwei; his face was narrower too. If Jesper hadn’t been so riled up and jittery after the fight with Kaz and the argument with his father, he would never have confused them. And now he’d ruined everything.

Jesper jabbed an accusing finger at Kuwei. “You should have said something!”

Kuwei shrugged. “You were very brave on Black Veil. Since we’re all probably going to die—”

“Damn it,” Jesper cursed, stalking toward the door.

“You’re a very good kisser,” called Kuwei after him.

Jesper turned. “How good is your Kerch really?”

“Fairly good.”

“Okay, then I hope you understand exactly what I mean when I say you are definitely more trouble than you’re worth.”

Kuwei beamed, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Kaz seems to think I’m worth a great deal now.”

Jesper rolled his eyes skyward. “You fit right in here.”