Six of Crows

“Most gang members in the Barrel loved flash: gaudy waistcoats, watch fobs studded with false gems, trousers in every print and pattern imaginable. Kaz was the exception—the picture of restraint, his dark vests and trousers simply cut and tailored along severe lines. At first, she’d thought it was a matter of taste, but she’d come to understand that it was a joke he played on the upstanding merchers. He enjoyed looking like one of them.

‘I’m a businessman,’ he’d told her. ‘No more, no less.’

‘You’re a thief, Kaz.’

‘Isn’t that what I just said?’” 

This quotation continues to establish Kaz’s careful creation of his own identity, as he controls his physical appearance to impress his colleagues and enemies. Unlike his competitors’, Kaz’s clothing says he doesn’t need “flash” to proclaim his might. Moreover, Kaz’s sartorial choices emphasize the novel’s ambiguous morality: In the world Bardugo has created, respectable merchants and criminals are equally motivated by greed and self-interest. Kaz’s comparison of merchers and thieves even foreshadows the novel’s final twist, in which a prominent businessman is willing to betray his word and take lives for his own personal gain.

“Geels looked at Kaz as if he was finally seeing him for the first time. The boy he’d been talking to had been cocky, reckless, easily amused, but not frightening—not really. Now the monster was here, dead-eyed and unafraid. Kaz Brenner was gone, and Dirtyhands had come to see the rough work done.” 

The author introduces the novel’s theme of “monsters,” contrasting the human character of Kaz with the “monster” Dirtyhands, a constructed, inhuman persona who lacks empathy and fear. Kaz has just told his opponent Geels that he’s prepared to murder Geels’s sweetheart if Geels doesn’t give in to his demands. As the quote illustrates, surviving in a cruel world like the Barrel requires Kaz to become cruel himself, to the point where he would murder an innocent to accomplish his goals. 

“Kaz laughed. ‘What’s the difference between wagering at the Crow Club and speculating on the floor of the Exchange?’

‘One is theft and the other is commerce.’

‘When a man loses his money, he may have trouble telling them apart.’” 

This quote illustrates the immoral nature of the society Bardugo has created, where merchants and criminals alike try to trick others out of their livelihood. Bardugo tells the story through the point of view of criminals—antiheroes who don’t automatically elicit the reader’s sympathy—but at the same time she emphasizes that the supposedly “respectable” members of society act in equally reprehensible ways. The quote also foreshadows the betrayals yet to be revealed in the novel: When the protagonists trust those who appear to be upstanding citizens and people of authority, they find themselves taken advantage of as a result. 

“Matthias knew monsters, and one glance at Kaz Brekker had told him this was a creature who had spent too long in the dark—he’d brought something back with him when he’d crawled into the light.” 

Bardugo develops the theme of monsters, and how tragic circumstances can lead a person to become monstrous. Matthias recognizes the way Kaz has abandoned compassion and created a cruel, even heartless persona for himself. At the same time, a character’s monstrous nature is defined by the person who views them: Matthias thinks he “knows” monsters such as the Grisha, but as the novel continues, he’ll question whether the Grisha really are monsters just because they possess magic. In the same way, Matthias will reassess his view of Kaz, as both he and readers come to see why Kaz has become Dirtyhands.

“He would run Nina Zevik to ground and make her pay in every way imaginable. Death would be too good. He’d have her thrown into the most miserable cell in the Ice Court, where she’d never be warm again. He’d toy with her as she’d toyed with him.” 

This quote emphasizes the theme of vengeance and the way it can damage those who desire it. Matthias’s need to take revenge on Nina consumes him, warping his vision so he can’t see the reality of the situation: the fact that Nina actually tried to save him rather than “toying” with him. Matthias characterizes Nina as less than human, as a witch who plays with him and who doesn’t deserve compassion. As he spends more time with Nina, his viewpoint begins to change, and he realizes that vengeance may not offer true satisfaction.

“Move, she told herself. This is a stupid place to die. And yet a voice in her head said there were worse places. She would die here, in freedom, beneath the beginnings of dawn. She’d die after a worthy fight, not because some man had tired of her or required more from her than she could give. Better to die here by her own blade than with her face painted and her body swathed in false silks.”

Inej is seriously injured while protecting the other Dregs during an ambush, and she prepares to kill herself rather than be captured. The scene both underscores how dangerous the Dregs’ mission will be—they haven’t even begun their task, and already one of their strongest members has nearly died—and reveals important aspects of Inej’s past and her perspective. Inej is haunted by her time in the Menagerie pleasure house, where she was forced to become an object for men to use, with a “painted” face and “false silks.” Now, Inej values free will so much that she places it above her own safety, and even her survival.

“In school, Nina had been obsessed with the drüskelle. They’d been the creatures of her nightmares with their white wolves and their cruel knives and the horses they bred for battle with Grisha. It was why she’d studied to perfect her Fjerdan and her knowledge of their culture. It had been a way of preparing herself for them, for the battle to come. And Jarl Brum was the worst of them.

He was a legend, the monster waiting in the dark.” 

While the Fjerdan drüskelle, or Grisha hunters, perceive the Grisha as monsters, Grisha like Nina take the opposite view. Even as the Fjerdans see themselves as wiping out demonic Grisha, for Grisha the drüskelle are the monstrous “creatures of […] nightmares.” Humans define one another as monsters based on a lack of empathy and understanding, and not because some groups or individuals are actually less human than others. The characterization of drüskelle leader Jarl Brum as the “worst” of the monsters is particularly significant, as readers come to learn that Brum is a mentor to Matthias, Nina’s enemy turned lover.

“Matthias had always fought his own decency. To become a drüskelle, he’d had to kill the good things inside him. But the boy he should have been was always there, and she’d begun to see the truth of him in the days they’d spent together after the shipwreck. She wanted to believe that boy was still there, locked away, despite her betrayal and whatever he’d endured at Hellgate.” 

In this quote, Bardugo wrestles with the question of how humans become monstrous, and she suggests that experiences of violence and suffering can cause humans to “kill the good things inside” them. Without “good things” such as compassion and a basic respect for others, humans can act like monsters. However, monstrosity is a mask rather than a true self, and here Nina hopes that the “decency” of Matthias’s true character has managed to survive beneath the mask.

“‘A monster, a maiden, a sylph of the ice. You kissed me, whispered stories in my ear. You sang to me and held me as I slept. Your laugh chased me into waking.’

‘You always hated my laugh.’

‘I loved your laugh, Nina. And your fierce warrior’s heart. I might have loved you, too.’

Might have. Once. Before she had betrayed him. Those words carved an ache into her chest.” 

For Matthias, Nina is both a monster, a Grisha with unnatural powers, and a temptress, a “sylph of the ice.” Matthias must choose between the doctrines he’s received from the drüskelle, who treated him like family yet told him the Grisha were evil, and his love for Nina. Nina feels deeply for Matthias—she aches to realize she’s betrayed him, even if unintentionally, as her testimony landed him in prison, and she was unable to free him. When the characters listen to their emotions rather than exterior messages, they see each other’s humanity instead of a monstrous mask.

“Feeling anything for Kaz Brekker was the worst kind of foolishness. She knew that. But he’d been the one to rescue her, to see her potential. He’d bet on her, and that meant something—even if he’d done it for his own selfish reasons. He’d even dubbed her the Wraith. […]

He’d helped her build a legend to wear as armor, something bigger and more frightening than the girl she’d been.” 

Characters must construct new identities to survive in a cruel world, and these identities often prevent deeper connection. After being kidnapped and sold to a brothel, Inej needs to wear “armor,” to become frightening so she won’t remain vulnerable. Kaz has donned his own armor: the appearance that he acts purely for selfish reasons, that he will act cruelly to protect himself. In a world where teenagers must completely hide their vulnerabilities, caring for someone the way Inej does for Kaz becomes foolishness, a pointless endeavor that can only lead to disappointment.

“‘What do you want, then?’

The old answers came easily to mind. Money. Vengeance. Jordie’s voice in my head silenced forever. But a different reply roared to life inside him, loud, insistent, and unwelcome. You, Inej. You.” 

Kaz’s life goal has become avenging his brother’s death; however, Kaz finds that no matter how he tries to deny his unwelcome, vulnerable human side, his love for Inej only makes it more powerful. Bardugo suggests that love for others will ultimately win out over the violent desire for vengeance. 

“What had he said to Geels at the Exchange? I’m the kind of bastard they only manufacture in the Barrel. One more lie, one more piece of the myth he’d built for himself.” 

Kaz’s constructed identity—he’s presented himself as a cruel, even monstrous creature born from a violent environment—adds to the novel’s theme of home and family. While many other characters in the novel long to return to their homes, Kaz actively resists his home to the point of erasing its very existence. At the same time, the family Kaz has tragically lost actually shapes his new identity: Kaz remakes himself as a “bastard” of the criminal underworld to achieve revenge for his brother’s death.

“The first day trekking was like a cleansing—little talk, the white hush of the north welcoming Matthias back without judgment. He’d expected more complaints, but even Wylan had simply put his head down and walked. They’re all survivors, Matthias understood. They adapt.” 

In the novel’s world, teenagers must adapt to losing their homelands and families in various ways. Matthias feels welcomed back to his own home of Fjerda, which he was forced out of following a shipwreck after already losing his family to a Grisha attack. Just as Matthias had to adapt to life in Hellgate prison, the other members of the Dregs must now adapt to a bitterly cold, foreign landscape. These teens are all survivors who rely on their own strength; this fact draws them together, allowing them to find a new sense of family.

“‘Because our crime is existing. Our crime is what we are.’

Matthias went quiet, and when he spoke he was caught between shame for what he was about to say and the need to speak the words, the words he’d been raised on, the words that still rang true for him. ‘Nina, has it ever occurred to you that maybe … you weren’t meant to exist?’” 

Indoctrinated prejudice can lead humans to view each other as monsters, as beings without the right to exist. Matthias’s shame reveals his inner knowledge that his belief may not be accurate—after all, he loves Nina, one of the Grisha he’s been told aren’t meant to exist, but his inherited beliefs are clearly strong and dangerous ones. Only by looking past labels like “witch” and “monster,” and seeing others as individuals, can characters like Matthias move beyond prejudice to form deeper connections.

“‘Zoya Nazyalensky?’

Nina had stopped short. ‘You know her?

‘We all know of her. She’s a powerful witch.’

It had hit her then: For the drüskelle, Zoya was a little like Jarl Brum—cruel, inhuman, the thing that waited in the dark with death in her hands. Zoya was this boy’s monster. The thought left her uneasy.” 

Nina realizes that the woman she looked up to as mentor and family is a “monster” to the drüskelle, just as Brum, Matthias’s mentor, is Nina’s “monster”; monsters are created by the perspective of those who perceive and label them. This realization makes Nina uneasy because, if Zoya is not a monster, then Brum one can’t be either. Her enemies, like her mentors, are simply humans who choose to act in ways that help or harm others.

“‘This must be hard for you,’ [Inej] said quietly. ‘To be here but not really be home.’

[Matthias] looked down at his cup. ‘You have no idea.’

‘I think I do. I haven’t seen my home in a long time.’

Kaz turned away and began chatting with Jesper. He seemed to do that whenever she mentioned going back to Ravka. Of course, Inej couldn’t be certain she’d find her parents there. Suli were travelers. For them, ‘home’ really just meant family.” 

All the novel’s main characters have experienced the loss of home, either a place, the people they cared for, or both. This loss actually provides them with a new connection, as here, Matthias and Inej find common ground over the fact they’ve been separated from home for so long. Even now that Matthias has returned to his homeland, he’s not really home, not with the people he once cared about, and the author suggests that characters can’t truly return to the communities they’ve lost. They’ve been transformed by violence and suffering, and they must find a new community with those who share and understand their experiences.  

“He had survived the fever, but he might well die out here on the Reaper’s Barge. Did he care? There was nothing waiting for him in the city but more hunger and dark alleys and the damp of the canals. Even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true. Vengeance was waiting, vengeance for Jordie and maybe for himself, too.” 

This quotation marks the moment Kaz first conceives of the desire for vengeance that drives him to become Dirtyhands and propels his decisions for much of the novel. Kaz wants to make the criminals of the Barrel suffer—most of all, gang leader Pekka—for taking everything from Kaz and leaving him at the point where he has nothing but “hunger and dark alleys” and pain ahead of him. Righteous anger gives Kaz something to live for and forces him to transform, but he must become one with the “dark alleys and the damp of the canals,” the worst aspects of the city that has destroyed him. 

“She wanted a storm—thunder, wind, a deluge. She wanted it to crash through Ketterdam’s pleasure houses, lifting roofs and tearing doors off their hinges. She wanted it to raise the seas, take hold of every slaving ship, shatter their masts, and smash their hulls against unforgiving shores. I want to call that storm, she thought. […] She would hunt the slavers and their buyers. They would learn to fear her, and they would know her by her name.”

In contrast to Kaz’s dark, violent quest for revenge, Inej conceives of a vengeance that will save both others and her. Like Kaz, Inej rejects her status as a victim and looks for a way to become as powerful as the ones who victimized her, but she does so without taking on the victimizers’ cruelty as Kaz has done. Inej conceives of a more powerful version of herself, one who commands “a deluge,” and she will use her power to save others from being victimized.

“The swim back from the Reaper’s Barge had been Kaz’s rebirth. The child he’d been had died of firepox. The fever had burned away every gentle thing inside him.

Survival wasn’t nearly as hard as he’d thought once he left decency behind. The first rule was to find someone smaller and weaker and take what he had.” 

A cruel world, and in particular one that doesn’t protect children, causes its people to lose their humanity. After undergoing suffering, loss, and betrayal, and being tossed in a pile of corpses with no one caring enough to notice he was still alive, Kaz had every gentle aspect of himself destroyed. To survive, he became like the people who victimized him, as he set aside his decency to take advantage of the small and weak. Kaz has made himself into a monster, and while he’s managed to survive, he’s lost his human compassion as a result.

“What bound them together? Greed? Desperation? Was it just the knowledge that if one or all of them disappeared tonight, no one would come looking? Inej’s mother and father might still shed tears for the daughter they’d lost, but if Inej died tonight, there would be no one to grieve for the girl she was now. She had no family, no parents or siblings, only people to fight beside. Maybe that was something to be grateful for, too.”

Through misfortune or the cruelty of others, every main character has been separated from their family and home, but they’ve found each other. No one outside of these six characters’ world can understand the tougher versions of themselves they’ve been forced to become; they truly have only each other, and for Inej, that’s “something to be grateful for.”

“More than any place in the Ice Court, more than any place in the world, this felt like home to him. But it was home turned on its head, his life viewed at the wrong angle.” 

As Matthias discovers, none of these characters can truly go home again. Every character has dealt with suffering, transformed, and learned to see the world in a new way; as a result, home doesn’t look the same or hold the same meaning. Matthias’s relationship with Nina has shown him the error of his former family’s viewpoint. Matthias, and the other characters, will have to choose whether to continue to approach their old homes from the wrong angle or to find new homes with the people who understand their struggles.

“[Matthias] thought of Nina standing terrified in that cell as the door slammed shut. He had longed to see her made captive, punished as he had been punished. And yet, after everything they’d been through, he was not surprised by the pain he felt at seeing it come to pass.” 

The desire for revenge crumbles beneath the strength of compassion and love. Now that Matthias sees Nina as a human rather than a witch—and more than that, a human he admires and loves—he can’t take pleasure in her suffering. Matthias’s love for Nina, and his choice to rescue her rather than seeking vengeance, will bring him much greater satisfaction.

“[Kaz] tried to think of his brother, of revenge, of Pekka Rollins tied to a chair in the house on Zelverstraat, trade orders stuffed down his throat as Kaz forced him to remember Jordie’s name. But all he could think of was Inej […] He needed to tell her … what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn’t pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her.” 

Like Matthias, Kaz finds love more powerful than revenge. While revenge is a negative impulse that brings out violence and cruelty, love for Inej makes Kaz want to become a better version of himself, a man rather than a broken monster.