فصل 24

24

Nina trailed Kaz up the stairs. Flight upon steep flight of stone and flickering gaslight. She watched him closely. He was setting a good pace, but his gait was stiff. Why had he insisted on being the one to make this climb? It couldn’t be a question of time, so maybe it was what Kaz always intended. Maybe he’d meant to keep some bit of information from Matthias. Or he was just determined to keep them all guessing.

They paused at every landing, listening for patrols. The prison was full of sounds, and it was hard not to jump at every one of them – voices floating down the stairwell, the metallic clang of doors opening and closing. Nina thought of the violent chaos of Hellgate, bribes changing hands, blood staining the sand, a world away from this sterile place. The Fjerdans could certainly be counted on to keep things orderly.

On their way up the fourth flight, voices and bootsteps suddenly burst into the stairwell. Hurriedly, Nina and Kaz backtracked to the third floor landing and slipped through the door leading to the cells.

The prisoner in the cell nearest to them started to shout. Nina quickly raised a hand and squeezed his airway shut. He stared at her, eyes bulging, clawing at his neck. She dropped his pulse, sending him into unconsciousness as she released the pressure on his larynx, allowing him to breathe. They needed him quiet, not dead.

The noises grew as the guards clambered down the stairs, loud Fjerdan reverberating off the walls.

Nina held her breath, watching the door, hands ready. Kaz had no weapon, but he’d dropped into a fighting stance, waiting to see if the door would crash open. Instead, the guards continued on past the landing, down to the next floor.

When the sounds had faded, Kaz signalled to her, and they slipped back out the door, closing it as silently as possible behind them, and continued their ascent.

Seven bells struck as they reached the top floor. One hour had passed since they’d knocked out the prisoners in the holding area. They had forty-five minutes to search the high-security cells, meet back at the landing, and get to the basement. Kaz gestured for her to take the corridor on the left while he took the right.

The door creaked loudly as Nina stepped inside. The lanterns were spaced far apart here, and the shadows between them looked deep enough to fall into. She told herself to be grateful for the cover, but she couldn’t deny it was eerie. The cells were different, too, with doors of solid steel instead of iron bars. A viewing grate was lodged into each of them at eye level. Well, eye level for a Fjerdan.

Nina was tall, but she still had to stand on tiptoe to peek into them.

Most of the prisoners were asleep or resting, curled into corners or flat on their backs with an arm thrown over their eyes to block out the dim lamplight that filtered through the grate. Others sat propped against the walls, staring listlessly at nothing. Occasionally she found someone pacing back and forth and had to step away quickly. None of them were Shu.

“Ajor? ” one called after her in Fjerdan. She ignored him and moved on, heart thudding.

What if Bo Yul-Bayur really was in these cells? She knew it was unlikely, and yet … she could kill him in his cell, put him in a deep, painless sleep, and simply stop his heart. She’d tell Kaz she hadn’t found him. And what if Kaz located Bo Yul-Bayur? She might have to wait until they were out of the Ice Court to find a solution, but she could at least count on Matthias to help her. What a strange, grim bargain they’d struck.

But as she worked her way back and forth along the corridors, the tiny hope that the scientist might be there withered away to nothing. One more row of cells, she thought, then back down to the basement with nothing to show for it. Except when she entered the final corridor, she saw it was shorter than the others. Where there should have been more cells there was a steel door, bright light shining beneath it.

A flutter of unease passed through her as she approached, but she made herself push the door open.

She had to squint against the brightness. The light was harsh – as clear as daylight but with none of its warmth – and she couldn’t locate its source. She heard the door whooshing closed behind her. At the last moment she whirled and grabbed it by the edge. Something told her this door would need a key to unlock it from the inside. She looked for anything she might use to prop it open, and had to settle for tearing off a piece from the bottom of her prison trousers and stuffing it in the lock.

This place felt wrong. The walls, floor, and ceiling were a white so clean it hurt to look at. Half of one wall was made up of panels of smooth, perfect glass. Fabrikatormade. Just like the glass enclosure surrounding that vile display of weaponry. No Fjerdan craftsman could make surfaces so pristine. Grisha power had been used to create this glass, she felt sure of it. There were rogue Grisha who served no country and who might consider hiring themselves out to the Fjerdan government. But would they survive such a commission? Slave labour seemed more likely.

Nina took one step, then another. She glanced back over her shoulder. If a guard entered the corridor behind her, she’d have nowhere to hide. So move, Nina.

She peered inside the first window. The cell was as white as the hallway and illuminated by that same sustained, bright light. The room was empty and devoid of any kind of furniture – no bench, no basin, no bucket. The only break in all that whiteness was a drain at the very centre of the floor, surrounded by reddish stains.

She continued to the next cell. It was identical and equally empty, as was the next, and the next. But here something caught her eye, a coin lying next to the drain – no, not a coin, a button. A tiny silver button emblazoned with a wing, the symbol of a Grisha Squaller. She felt a chill creep over her arms.

Had these cells been crafted by Grisha slaves for Grisha prisoners? Had the glass, the walls, the floor been made to withstand Fabrikator manipulation? The rooms were devoid of metal. There was no plumbing, no pipes to carry water that a Tidemaker might abuse. And Nina suspected that the glass she was peering through was mirrored on the other side, so that a Heartrender in the cell wouldn’t be able to locate a target. These were cells designed to hold Grisha. Designed to hold her.

She whirled on her heel. Bo Yul-Bayur wasn’t here, and she wanted out of this place right now. She snatched the fabric from the lock and blew through the door, not stopping to make sure it closed behind her. The corridor of iron cells was even darker after the brightness that had come before, and she stumbled as she raced back the way she’d come. Nina knew she was being incautious, but she couldn’t get the image of those white rooms out of her head. The drain. The stains around it. Had Grisha been tortured there? Made to confess their crimes against the people?

She’d studied the Fjerdans – their leaders, their language. She’d even dreamed of entering the Ice Court as a spy just like this, of striking at the heart of this nation that hated her so much. But now that she was here, she just wanted to be gone. She’d grown used to Ketterdam, to the adventures that came with her involvement with the Dregs, to her easy life at the White Rose. But even there, had she ever felt safe? In a city where she couldn’t walk down the streets without fear? I want to go home. The longing for it hit her hard, a physical ache. I want to go back to Ravka.

The Elderclock began to chime a soft three-quarter-hour. She was late. Still, she forced her steps to slow before she opened the door into the stairway. There was no one there, not even Kaz. She ducked her head into the opposite passage to see if he was coming. Nothing – iron doors, deep shadow, no sign of Kaz.

Nina waited, unsure of what to do. They’d been meant to meet on the landing with fifteen minutes to spare before the hour. What if he was in some kind of trouble? She hesitated, then plunged down the corridor Kaz had been responsible for searching. She raced past the cells, the hallways snaking back and forth, but Kaz was nowhere to be found.

Enough, thought Nina when she reached the end of the second corridor. Either Kaz had abandoned her and was already downstairs with the others, or he’d been caught and dragged off somewhere.

Either way, she had to get to the incinerator. Once she found the others they could figure out what to do.

She sped back through the halls and threw open the door to the landing. Two guards stood chatting at the head of the stairs. For a moment, they stared at her, open-mouthed.

“Sten! ” one shouted in Fjerdan, ordering her to halt as they fumbled for their guns. Nina threw out both hands, fingers forming fists, and watched the guards topple backwards. One fell flat on the landing, but the other tumbled down the stairs, his rifle firing, sending bullets pinging against the stone walls, the sound echoing down the stairwell. Kaz was going to kill her. She was going to kill Kaz.

Nina hurtled past the guards’ bodies, down one flight, two flights. On the third floor landing a door flew open as a guard burst into the stairwell. Nina twisted her hands in the air, and the guard’s neck broke with an audible snap. She was plunging down the next flight before his body struck the ground.

That was when the Elderclock began to chime. Not the steady tolling of the hour, but a shrill clamour, high and percussive – a sound of alarm.