Six of Crows

Wylan and Jesper hurry to escape the courtyard when six guards enter, but the guards aren’t focused on the Dregs. Tidemaker Grisha literally “walk through the wall” and drain the guards’ blood until they’re dead (387). The Tidemakers turn on Wylan and Jesper, and Wylan tells Jesper to use his Fabrikator powers. Jesper focuses on the shards of metal left on his clothes after shaving the gate link and makes them lift and shoot toward the Grisha. The bits of metal burrow all the way to the Grisha’s organs, and Jesper wonders if he’s “killed two of his kind” as he and Wylan climb to the roof (388).  

When Matthias returns to Nina’s cell and opens the door, Nina realizes he’s on her side; “done with fear” (388), they share a passionate embrace. They run to find Yul-Bayur in his prison, which turns out to be an elaborate laboratory containing only a small Shu boy. The boy reveals that his father, Yul-Bayur, died when the Kerch attempted a rescue. They’re keeping the boy alive in hopes he can re-create the formula, but the boy is stalling.

Nina asks if he can truly replicate the formula, and the boy thinks he can. Remembering the Grisha tortured by jurda parem and her bargain with Matthias, Nina prepares to kill the boy, even though the act would be murder and a betrayal of the Dregs. Matthias protests that the boy is “one of us” (392), and Nina asks for the boy’s name, which is Kuwei Yul-Bo. Kuwei makes a flame fly from a beaker, showing he’s an Inferni Grisha. His father, also a Grisha, invented jurda parem by mistake while trying to hide his son’s powers.

Kuwei sets up an explosion with the lab equipment, and the three rush out of the building. The lab explodes, but drüskelle capture the three and tie their arms to their sides, leaving the Grisha unable to use their power. One guard, Lars, knows Matthias from their time training together. He taunts the group with a whip attached to their chains and forces them forward. Then blood gushes from Lars’s mouth and he drops the whip; a hooded drüskelle near him grabs it. The giant ash tree, sacred to the drüskelle, begins to fall, and the hooded guard unveils himself: it’s Kaz. Kaz nabs Kuwei and, warning the others not to take the baleen until they hit bottom, he jumps into the gaping hole beneath the uprooted ash tree—a hole the drüskelle believe to be “the throat of Djel” (397), their god. Nina and Matthias, still connected to Kaz by the whip and chains, are pulled into the hole as well.

Kaz remembers, earlier that evening, regurgitating the packets of Wylan’s root bomb powder he swallowed before entering the prison. He waited for Nina and Matthias and then, when “everything went to hell” (399), he improvised their escape. Kaz pushes baleen into Kuwei’s mouth and unbinds the others before they fall into the icy water deep beneath the tree. Kaz now knows his suspicions were right: The Ice Court must have been built not around the ash tree, but around the spring beneath, the water source that would explain the Court’s moat and deep gorge. Kaz hopes this underground river will deposit them in that gorge before the baleen stops working, twelve minutes at most.

As he falls, Kaz remembers, at the age of 14, robbing the bank that helped trick Jordie out of his money. Kaz broke a leg jumping from the bank roof, and “he’d limped ever after” (401). His cane was not a declaration that “no part of him was not broken,” but that “no part of him […] was not stronger for having been broken” (401). Kaz remembers Inej, the way she made him feel “there was magic in this world” (402). Running out of air, he tries to hold onto his desire for revenge, but instead he thinks of Inej—he must live to see her safe.

The guards drag Inej back into the palace, near the giant glass enclosure on the second floor. She attacks just as two more guards head toward them, but the two new arrivals turn out to be Jesper and Wylan in disguise. Inej shows them Heleen’s diamond choker, which she’s stolen because Kaz said they needed a diamond. Wylan attempts to construct a drill from the gate screw and winch, then attaches the diamond to its end. Diamond is the only substance harder than the enclosure’s Fabrikator-made glass, and they use the drill to carve a circular opening.

Inej makes a “mad leap” through the hole and grabs the lantern in the enclosure’s ceiling. She lands on a large tank and works to control the giant guns attached to it. She successfully shoots one of the guns, making the glass wall “shatter […] into thousands of glittering pieces” (412). When the smoke clears, Jesper and Wylan descend ropes from the walkway above to meet her. Jesper gets in the driver’s seat of the tank, while Inej and Wylan man the guns.

Jesper launches the tank forward, and all three feel the exhilaration of “going out like an army” (413). The tank crashes into the “legendary, impenetrable wall” of the Ice Court (413). They break through and beyond the court, driving down the road.

Nina emerges from the water and hears the Ice Court bells in the distance. Matthias pulls Kaz’s unconscious body from the river, and Nina uses her Grisha powers to bring back his breath and heartbeat. Nina, Kaz, Matthias and Kuwei run for the harbor and spy the tank that Jesper is driving. Nina spots another column of tanks coming from the Ice Court, and Jesper shoots the bridge over the Ice Court until it collapses, leaving the enemy tanks on the other side.

The entire group climbs onto Jesper’s tank, and they drive through towns, past astonished onlookers to the harbor. They arrive at the quay to find over 200 soldiers, “every barrel of every gun […] pointed directly” at the Dregs (420). A voice demands the release of Kuwei Yul-Bo.

Nina speaks to Kuwei, and he hands her a packet of jurda parem, which she ingests. As the drug takes effect, Nina becomes powerful enough to sense the soldiers’ bodies as “a map of cells, a thousand equations […] and she knew only answers” (423).

Matthias looks on as Nina, “her skin […] lit from within” (424), commands the soldiers to sleep. The Dregs walk through the prone soldiers toward the harbor, when another group calls from the quay: Jarl Brum and his drüskelle followers. Nina tries to control them, but they wear clothing “reinforced with Grisha steel” (425), so her powers don’t affect them. Jarl shoots Matthias in the chest, but the bullet passes through him without leaving a wound; Nina has healed him, and as the drüskelle shoot her, she heals herself as well.

Nina forces the soldiers to stand and strip the drüskelle, and then she attacks, making them feel terrible pain. Matthias urges Nina to show mercy, and she allows all their attackers to fall back into sleep. They will all survive.

Aboard the ship, Nina waits for the drug to wear off, as the entire crew hopes her body can purge the drug without succumbing to addiction. Inej attempts to comfort Nina, and Nina heals the scar left behind from Inej’s Menagerie tattoo. Kaz arrives, and Nina leaves him and Inej alone. Inej shares her dream to procure a ship and crew and hunt slavers, but first, she’ll return to Ravka to find her family.

Inej wonders what Kaz will do next, what he’ll need, and after a long hesitation he asks her to stay in Ketterdam with him. Inej says she’ll “have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all” (434). When Kaz doesn’t answer, she walks away.

Withdrawal symptoms consume Nina: “Her skin [feels] like an enemy” (435). She clings to Matthias, even though touching him hurts, and asks him not to give her more jurda parem, no matter how bad her condition gets. He begs for Nina, his “little red bird” (436), not to let go.

Wylan uses his knowledge of chemistry to care for Nina, and Jesper “misse[s] having the merchling around to annoy” (437). Jesper also struggles with his own guilt—he wonders if he should have taken jurda parem as well, so he could attempt to pull the drug out of Nina’s body—but he knows he doesn’t have “the makings of a hero” (438). The boat lands in Ketterdam, and Jesper accompanies Kaz in a longboat to Fifth Harbor, where they’ll meet the Merchant Council. Jesper still wonders what he’ll do now—does “he want to cultivate his [Grisha] power or keep hiding it?” (439).

Kaz delivers a note to the Council, explaining the truth of the mission. The next morning at dawn, Jesper, Kaz, Matthias, Inej, and Kuwei head out to meet the Council representative on Vellgeluk, an isolated island. Wylan has stayed behind to care for Nina, and Jesper hopes the boy isn’t avoiding him.

The elder Van Eck, a Shu representative, and guards, some carrying a heavy trunk, come to meet the Dregs. Kaz opens the trunk, and Jesper sees “row after row” (443) of Kerch bills inside. Kaz ensures all the money is there and the crew prepares to leave—but Van Eck responds, “[T]here’s no way any of you are getting off this island” (443). Suddenly a “howling, unnatural gale” rises (444): The sailors of Van Eck’s ship are Squallers, dosed with jurda parem.

Kaz points out that if the Merchant Council reneges on their deal, no one from the Barrel will work with them, but Van Eck reveals the Council was never involved. Kaz has been duped— “Hertzoon and his coffeehouse all over again” (445)—as Van Eck wanted the power of jurda parem for himself. He’s already buying jurda fields, and when the chaos of jurda parem overtakes the world, he plans to be its master.

Van Eck orders the Grisha to smash the small longboat with a wave, and then the Grisha send a much larger wave toward the Ferolind. Kaz reveals that Wylan is on the ship, but Van Eck doesn’t care; although Wylan is a genius with equations, he can’t read or write. Van Eck cast Wylan out as a disgrace, and the letters he sent Wylan were only to mock him.

Jesper defends Wylan, saying he’s “smarter than most of us put together, and he deserves a better father” (448), before two giant waves crush the Ferolind. The boy whom Van Eck believes to be Kuwei speaks in “perfect, unaccented Kerch” (449); it’s Wylan, tailored by Nina to look like Kuwei. Wylan himself came up with the plan as a way to test his father’s true feelings.

Kaz demands that Van Eck let them free with their payment—only then will he reveal the true Kuwei’s location. Van Eck orders his guards to kill everyone except Kaz, and Kaz instinctively looks to Inej, the girl he cares for, which prompts Van Eck to demand his guards capture Inej. A fight ensues, and one of the Grisha scoops up Inej and flies into the sky. Van Eck gives Kaz a week to deliver Kuwei “or they’ll hear that girl’s screams all the way back in Fjerda” (452). Although Jesper has a clear shot at Van Eck, Kaz tells him to let the mercher go.

Once Van Eck and his crew are gone, Kaz thinks of Nina and Kuwei safe in the cages at Hellsgate, which have been empty since Matthias’s prison break. Jesper berates Wylan for taking such a risk, and then Kaz accuses Jesper of having “sold us out to Pekka Rollins” (453). Jesper had told a Dime Lion he would be getting “big money” soon, trying to buy more time to repay his debts. Jesper tries to defend himself, but Kaz wants to fight; only Matthias’s intervention keeps them apart.

Wylan speaks up for Jesper, saying he made a mistake but didn’t intend to betray anyone. They wait for the Ferolind’s captain to pick them up, and Kaz determines that while he’s made mistakes of his own, he won’t “let himself be bested by some thieving merch” (455). The rest of the crew recognizes Kaz’s “scheming face,” and Kaz asks for the others’ help to get Inej back. They all agree, and Kaz is “Dirtyhands” once more, “come to see the rough work done” (456).

In his office above the Emerald Palace, Pekka studies the crew before him: Kaz, Nina with “jutting bones” and “trembling hands” (457), and the rest of Kaz’s crew. Pekka recalls that Kaz had let Pekka go back in the Ice Court, telling Pekka “you weren’t meant to die here” (459). Now, Kaz has “come to collect” (459): He needs 2,000 kruge from Pekka to help him wage war against Van Eck. In return, Kaz will sell his shares in the Crow Club and Fifth Harbor. Pekka agrees to the deal, recognizing a darkness in Kaz that sends “a chill slithering up his spine” (461).

Kaz and his crew leave, and Pekka realizes Kaz has stolen his watch, his wallet and even his gold shoe buckles. Pekka hopes Van Eck will kill Kaz—because if he doesn’t, Pekka will have to kill Kaz himself.