CHAPTER 18
Stay With Me
The river tossed them back and forth, in seemingly endless circles instead of downstream. Brynn bit down on her baleen as soon as she couldn't breathe any longer, grasping blindly in the dark waters for something familiar to hang onto. She couldn't see in the water, it blinded her in a way she hated so much.
Brynn remembered the time she'd fallen into the river near her village. She and Sasha had been playing by the riverside in the mud, for which they surely would have been scolded by their mother for ruining their skirts.
The water rushed into her mouth and filled her lungs. Her throat burned, her airway constricted. She had reached out frantically for anything to hold, the rushing waters flinging her frail and small body every which way. Sasha's cries could be heard even beneath the surface of the ruthless brook.
Finally, a hand broke through the frothing waters. Brynn grabbed onto it despite her near-blinded state. The hand pulled her out quickly, then started to work to get the water out of her lungs. Brynn couldn't breathe for a long time, then she was given a chance at life again.
Ma had heard her sister's screams and came running with Da. Da was quick to jump into action, resuscitating Brynn with forceful compressions. Brynn never went down to the river again, and neither did Sasha. Even if their mother hadn't forbid it, they still would have stayed away. The experience traumatized them both beyond what they would have either admitted.
Here she was again, blinded and tumbling through the dark waters with no direction. Her dress tore from the strength of the current, her hair whipping around her mercilessly. Her body banged against the stones and rough sides of the river. She could feel the baleen beginning to bleed through on the sides of her mouth, the water slowly seeping in.
Just before, her head broke through the surface of the waters. Brynn could only take one breath before she was forced under again.
Then she was being dragged out and onto the gorge of the river, onto the rocky shore. Brynn coughed up water, swatting away the person who was dragging her. The rocks beneath her scraped at her skin and bare feet as she lugged herself up onto her feet.
Brynn's dress was ripped, many of the hanging chains of jewels ripped off of her dress and leaving her with many scrapes and bruises all over her near-naked body. Brynn was soaking wet and cold, her hair tangled, red spots bleeding through the blonde.
Nina stepped away from her, her own dress frayed and torn. Like always, she looked better than Brynn. Normally, she would have healed them both, then figured out why Bo Yul-Bayur was a mere boy, but then they saw Matthias drag a limp, unconscious Kaz out of the water and onto the dry land.
"Saints, is he breathing?" asked Nina.
Matthias grabbed Kaz and flipped him over harshly, starting to press his hands down on Kaz's chest with much more force than was necessary.
"I. Should. Let. You. Die," he muttered with each compression.
Nina stumbled over to him, her bare feet scraping against the rough rocks, and knelt beside the two boys. "Let me help before you crack his sternum. Does he have a pulse?" Brynn crawled over to them, pressing her fingers to his throat, ignoring the burning feeling in her own throat.
"It's there, but it's fading."
Nina nodded. "Get his shirt open."
Matthias tore the drüskelle uniform away. Nina placed one hand over Kaz's pale chest, the other pinching his nose shut. Brynn didn't know what to do, so she continued to check his pulse. She looked away as Nina pressed her lips to Kaz's to breathe air into his lungs. It felt like she shouldn't have seen such a thing, even if he had no idea it was happening.
"Will he live?" asked the Shu boy that, now Brynn had a little room to think, realized there was no way he could have been Bo Yul-Bayur.
"I don't know," said Brynn as Nina pressed her lips to Kaz's again. Come on, Kaz. You can't die on me. Not now. Not ever.
Then Kaz coughed, his chest spasming, as water spewed from his mouth. He shoved them away from him, scrambling backwards. His breathing was uneven and he wiped his gloved hand over his mouth.
"Get away from me," gasped Kaz. Brynn saw the unfocused look in his eyes, the panic. "Don't touch me."
"You're in shock, demjin," Matthias told him. "You almost drowned. You should have drowned." Brynn glared at him.
"Almost," she pointed out.
"Drowned," repeated Kaz, whole body shuttering, coughs reverberating through his lungs.
Nina nodded. "Ice Court, remember? Impossible heist? Near death? Three million kruge waiting for you in Ketterdam?"
"Four million," corrected Kaz with a blink to clear his eyes.
"I thought that might bring you around."
Brynn dragged a hand down her face, standing up slowly. "Oh my Saints. Djel truly performs miracles."
"You don't deserve miracles," Matthias scowled. "You desecrated the sacred ash."
"If you want to blame anyone for that, I'll happily take the blame," said Kaz. He pushed himself to his feet, staggering slightly, as he drew in another shaky breath."It's a symbol, Helvar. If your god is so delicate, maybe you should get a new one. Let's get out of here."
Nina threw up her hands. "You're welcome, you ungrateful wretch."
"I'll thank you when we're aboard the Ferolind," he replied. "Move. You can explain why our illustrious Shu scientist looks like one of Wylan's school pals along the way." Kaz was up, already dragging himself up the boulders that lined the far side of the gorge.
Nina shook her head and Brynn offered her a shrug. To quote Kaz himself, there's no rest for the wicked. But Kaz did have a point. And where was Bo, then?
While Kaz put his ragged uniform over his bare chest, Brynn looked away again. It felt intruding in on something that should have been private, though he seemed to be doing fine with it.
"He's a friend?" asked the young boy in Shu.
Nina glanced at Kaz up ahead. "On occasion."
They all followed after Kaz, the rocks jabbing into Brynn's feet. Kaz glanced at her a few times through their exhausting journey over the rocks and up the walls of the gorge. If Brynn remembered correctly, the gorge would lead them to the bridge that would then lead them closer to Djerholm and their escape from this wretched land.
Brynn still hadn't forgotten about what he had told her, back behind the ice sculpture. Stay, he'd said. Stay with the Dregs, in Ketterdam. Stay with me.
She wasn't even sure how she'd respond if he'd said the very same thing right then, as they scaled the gorge. Did she want to stay in Ketterdam? Would she try her luck in Novyi Zem with Sasha? Just being a Grisha put them in danger she didn't want to put Sasha in.
As they pulled themselves over the lip of the gorge, a rumbling came from somewhere in the direction of the Ice Court. Nina breathed a sigh, but Brynn didn't know if it was of exhaustion or relief.
"Oh, Saints, please let that be Jesper," she pleaded, flopping onto the ground next to the edge of the cliff.
"Whatever is coming, it's big," said Matthias grimly.
Nina looked at Kaz. "What do we do, Kaz?"
"Wait," he said. The sound grew louder.
"How about 'take cover'?" Nina asked nervously, dragging herself to her feet. "'Have heart'? 'I stashed twenty rifles in this convenient shrubbery'? Give us something."
"How about a few million kruge?" asked Kaz.
A tank thundered down the hill, dust and gravel spewing out behind it. Brynn grinned as she saw two familiar figures waving to them from the gun turret. Inej and Wylan were yelling and waving wildly from behind the dome.
Brynn looked over at Kaz as Nina and Matthias celebrated—Matthias more staring in disbelief at the tank. She couldn't quite believe her eyes.
"Kaz, are you smiling?"
"Don't be ridiculous," he snapped at her. But Brynn knew what she saw. Kaz Brekker was grinning like an idiot. Maybe he hadn't really known if his plan would work out.
"I'm assuming we know them?" asked the boy in Shu again. He obviously didn't know much—if any—Kerch.
Brynn's grin faded when a pack of tanks crashed over the horizon, aiming straight for the stolen tank. She should have expected something like this would happen. Fjerda wouldn't very well let a group of nobodies steal their lead scientist, leaving destruction and death in their wake, and not go after them.
When Inej and Wylan rolled over the trestles of the bridge, Brynn could make out what they were actually yelling: "Get out of the way!" They lept out of the path just in time for the tank to come to a stop just in front of them.
"We have a tank," marvelled Nina as Brynn just stared. "Kaz, you creepy little genius, the plan worked. You got us a tank."
"They got us a tank," corrected Brynn.
"We have one," said Matthias, shedding light to the problem at hand. "They have a lot more."
"Yeah, but you know what they don't have?" Jesper rotated the tank's giant gun as Kaz's knowing smirk creeped onto his face. "A bridge."
A shriek that made Brynn's ears ring went up from the tank. Then, a loud boom sounded, worsening her possibly-imaginary injuries. Brynn watched as the tank shot something through the air and at the bridge. With a second large boom, the entire bridge collapsed completely. There was no way of crossing the gorge without the ability to fly.
"We have a tank and a moat," said Nina in disbelief.
"Come on!" called Wylan.
Kaz helped Brynn onto the tank. She held onto anything she could grab ahold of and, when they were all safely secured, the tank began rumbling back down the road and toward the harbor at a speed that Brynn never wished to go again.
This was not how Brynn was expecting the job to go, but she wouldn't have exactly argued that their way didn't work. At least they were alive. They were seven hooting kids—plus one—clinging onto a Fjerdan tank and barreling down the streets of Djerholm, a STRYMAKT FJERDAN banner dragging along in the dirt behind them. A girl in purple silks and a boy with ruddy blond curls behind the guns; five soaked people holding onto the sides, turning their knuckles white—a Shu boy in prison clothes, two bedraggled boys in drüskelle uniforms, and two half-naked girls, Brynn in her shimmering jeweled gown and Nina in shreds of teal chiffon shouting, "We have a moat!"
When they entered Djerholm, Matthias called, "Wylan, tell Jesper to keep to the western streets." Wylan ducked inside the tank, and the tank veered west.
"It's the warehouse district," explained the former drüskelle. "Deserted at night."
The air was cold beneath the silver moonlight, but Brynn couldn't have cared less. Sasha was somewhere in that tank with Jesper, and that was home. If Ketterdam was where they ended up, that was home.
Then she glimpsed Kaz, hanging onto the tank on the opposite side of her. Did she feel the same way towards him that he felt towards her? Would a life with Kaz mean a happy life? Or would it mean a life full of crime and always running? Would she ever truly feel at home with him?
"Stop!" shouted Nina suddenly as they rounded a corner. "Stop!"
The tank lurched to a halt, nearly flinging them from their perches. Brynn's stomach dropped at the sight of at least two hundred soldiers, row after row of them in their gray uniforms, with every single barrel of every single gun pointed right at them. The bells of the Elderclock were still ringing.
"What is this?" uttered Brynn. She whirled on Matthias. "You never said—"
"They must have changed deployment procedure." He looked just as confused and hopeless as the rest of them.
"Everything else was the same," said Wylan.
"I've never seen Black Protocol engaged," growled Matthias. "Maybe they always had troops stationed in the harbor. I don't know."
"Be quiet," said Inej. "Just stop."
A voice echoed over the crowd, booming loud enough for someone over at the Ice Court to hear them. It spoke in Fjerdan, then Ravkan, then Kerch, and then finally Shu. "Release the prisoner Kuwei Yul-Bo. Put down your weapons and step away from the tank." So the Shu boy wasn't Bo Yul-Bayur, but his son.
"They can't just open fire," said Matthias in disbelief. "They won't risk hurting Kuwei."
"They don't have to," said Nina. "Look."
A prisoner was being led through the rows and rows of soldiers. Brynn could just barely see him, but from what she could see, he looked awful and was wearing a ragged red kefta, the ones that Corporalki in the Second Army wore. So this is what a Grisha hooked on jurda parem looked like.
"A Heartrender," said Matthias grimly.
"But he's so far away," Wylan argued.
Nina shook her head and Brynn could see the fear and dread in her eyes. "It won't matter." She was right. They'd seen a Squaller and a Fabrikator on the drug, there was no telling what a Heartrender might be able to do.
"I can see the Ferolind," murmured Inej. Brynn followed to where her finger pointed and picked out the Kerch flag flying high on the small schooner in the harbor. It was so close, but it felt like they were so far away.
Brynn thought through every possible way out. None of them seemed to have very promising results. They all resulted in most or all of them dead or captured.
"Kaz?" Jesper called from inside the tank. "This would be a really good time to say you saw this coming."
His next words put out any possible hope in Brynn's heart. "I didn't see this coming." Kaz shook his head, looking out over the sea of soldiers. "You told me one day I'd run out of tricks, Helvar. Looks like you were right." When Brynn looked up at him, his eyes were on her, not Matthias.
"I've had my fill of coming close to death," she said. "I'd rather die by any of your hands than theirs."
"They're not taking me alive," agreed Inej.
"Me neither," said Wylan.
Brynn heard Sasha snort from inside the tank and was filled with relief, even if it didn't do much to quench the dread. "You really need better friends, Brynn," she called in Kaelish. The corner of Brynn's mouth turned up for a second.
"Better to go out with fists swinging than let some Fjerdan put me on a pike," said Kaz. He was still staring at Brynn.
Matthias nodded. "Then we agree. We end this here."
Then Nina's voice came in a whisper. "No." Everyone turned to her as the same voice from before echoes from the Fjerdan ranks again.
"You have a count of ten to comply. I repeat: Release the prisoner Kuwei Yul-Bo and surrender yourselves. Ten..."
Nina began speaking to Kuwei in Shu, too rapidly for anyone else to understand, but Brynn knew. She shook her head as Kuwei and Nina spoke back and forth.
"You don't understand," the boy said. "A single dose—"
"I understand," Nina said.
Tears pricked in the corners of Brynn's eyes. "Please, Nina. Don't do this. Let me. I deserve everything this drug will do to me. Please, let me do it instead."
Nina had tears in her eyes, as well, but took the leather pouch stained with rust-colored powder from Kuwei without hesitation, grabbing it before Matthias could. It was happening all over again. Brynn was going to lose Nina, and there was nothing she could do about it but watch.
The Fjerdan voice counted down to seven.
"Nina, don't be stupid," said Inej. "You've seen—"
"Some people don't get addicted after the first dose."
"It isn't worth the risk."
Brynn's mouth quivered. "Nina, please. Let me do it instead," she pleaded, tears staining her cheeks. Nina had started off as a competitor as a Healer for the Dregs, and now Brynn was volunteering to die instead of her. Life loves irony. "I should be the one to do it."
"A Heartrender should take on a Heartrender. Kaz is out of tricks." Nina opened the pouch. "But I'm not."
"Nina, please," begged Matthias. Brynn had never seen him in such anguish, in such pain.
Nina touched Matthias' cheek. "If it gets bad, find a way to end it, Helvar. I'm trusting you to do the right thing." She smiled. "Again."
Then Nina tilted her head back and swallowed the parem.
a/n— Just a few more chapters, guys! I've already started writing the second book and plotting it out, so I can't wait to get it all on here! Let me know what you think!