Crooked Kingdom: A Sequel to Six of Crows

Kaz and Wylan sneak into Van Eck’s mansion. Wylan’s explosives distract the guard, allowing the boys to sneak into the merchant’s office. Wylan uses acid to burn a hole through the door of his father’s safe, and Kaz pockets the merchant’s official seal, “a fat gold ring with an engraving of a red laurel and Van Eck’s initials” (282), plus a few stacks of cash as an added bonus.

Wylan expresses disinterest in claiming his father’s business empire for himself, saying that his inability to read would make him a laughingstock. Kaz points out that he (Kaz) inspires fear even though people often react with pity toward individuals with limps and mobility aids. Kaz explains that Wylan’s weakness is not his inability to read but his fear of people seeing his weakness, and he cautions Wylan against “letting shame decide” who he is (283). Pekka Rollins and several of his thugs appear through a hidden entrance in the office wall.

The mob surrounding the hideout belongs to the Dime Lions, Pekka Rollins’s gang. The thugs pin down Jesper, Matthias, and Kuwei in a catacomb. Matthias draws on his military training to devise a strategy. He blows an exit in the catacomb with one of Wylan’s bombs. Under his instruction, Jesper combines his Fabrikator powers with Kuwei’s Inferni (fire-controlling) abilities to create spectral trails of fire over their enemies’ heads. The Dime Lions destroyed the Dregs’ boats, so they must secure another escape route. Matthias sets the ruined boats ablaze with Wylan’s explosives, and Kuwei intensifies the flames into “a wall of billowing white” (291). This burns a path, allowing the boys to race across the canal and through the streets beyond.

Jesper points out the irony of a former drüskelle leading Grisha into battle. Matthias experiences an epiphany that allows him to reconcile his Fjerdan faith in the god Djel with his oath to protect Nina: If Djel gave Grisha their powers, then the drüskelle, like Matthias, “could be made to see miracles where once they’d seen abomination” (291). Matthias resolves to survive this perilous night and change the world with Nina.

Inej breaks free of her attacker’s hold and sees that she is “a girl […] gleaming like a figure carved of ivory and amber” (293). The assassin identifies herself as Dunyasha, the White Blade, and moves “like painted light, as if she were a blade herself” (294). Dunyasha exults in killing as something sacred, whereas Inej fights to survive and prefers to let her opponents live. The injuries and exhaustion Inej accumulated during the Ice Court Job and her captivity weigh on her, and she realizes that she can’t defeat Dunyasha in combat.

Inej leaps onto the high wire, but Dunyasha pursues her onto the tightrope, striking her with throwing stars and verbal barbs about Inej’s time in the Menagerie. Dunyasha reveals that Pekka Rollins hired her, and Inej fears that he might have found her friends. Inej plans to locate Nina and use her knowledge of Ketterdam to lose the mercenary. Before Inej can reach the next silo, Dunyasha undoes the clasp holding the high wire in place, and Inej falls.

Pekka Rollins tells Kaz that he sent his Dime Lions to Black Veil Island to capture the Dregs and Kuwei, that he “found someone even more extraordinary” than Inej to take down the Wraith (299), and that he and Van Eck formed an alliance after the Dregs abducted the merchant’s wife. While Rollins boasts about how he’s bested Kaz, Kaz slips the acid out of Wylan’s satchel. Kaz tosses Van Eck’s seal to distract Rollins and pours the highly corrosive acid on the floor. Wylan and Kaz crash through their makeshift escape route and race to their getaway boat.

Van Eck’s guards open fire on the rowboat, but Wylan’s explosives send them scurrying for cover. Without the seal, the Dregs have no chance of sneaking the Grisha out of Ketterdam on Van Eck’s ship. Kaz tries to concoct a new plot, but he’s distracted by the feeling that he’s failed everyone because of his “blind spot where Pekka Rollins was concerned” and his fear that Inej might be hurt (303). Wylan wants to return to Black Veil and help Jesper and the others, but Kaz decides to go to Van Eck’s sugar silos instead.

From her hiding spot among the silos, Nina sees an armed band of Dime Lions swagger up to the guardhouse and gain entrance with a paper bearing Van Eck’s seal. Nina realizes that if Rollins and the merchant are working together, “the Dregs’ chances of getting out of the city alive had just turned to crumbs on a cake plate” (306). She decides to buy herself and Inej some time by showing herself. As she bluffs about her Heartrender powers to the Dime Lions, she sees a ghostlike figure pursue Inej across the tightrope.

The thugs seize Nina, and she uses her parem-altered powers to summon a small army of corpses from the boat bearing them to the Reaper’s Barge. The Dime Lions flee in terror, and Nina commands the corpses to catch Inej in a net. Nina’s army prompts Dunyasha to retreat as well. Nina worries what Rollins might have in store for Matthias and her Grisha friends hiding at the Ravkan embassy. Kaz and Wylan hurry to Inej and Nina. Inej and Kaz gaze at one another like shipwreck survivors catching “the first sight of land, the hope of shelter and even salvation” (314).

Wylan remembers the poverty and fear of his first days in the Barrel, and he recalls how the handsome Jesper looked “like a creature from another world” when he offered Wylan a job with the Dregs (317). Working for Kaz, Wylan found his courage and made allies who “valued the things he could do instead of punishing him for the things he couldn’t” (322).

Now the battered Dregs, including Jesper and Matthias, regroup in Colm Fahey’s hotel room. From the top of the hotel, they see the officers of the stadwatch seal off the city and watch all the gangs in the Barrel—even Per Haskell’s Dregs—unite in the search for Kaz and his crew. Kaz says that he’ll give himself up so the others have a chance to escape, but Jesper vehemently rejects the idea, and the two break into a fistfight. Colm reprimands the boys for fighting and reminds them that they are friends. Suddenly, Kaz concocts a new plan that will allow them to sneak Kuwei and the Grisha to safety, make their fortunes, and avenge themselves against Van Eck and Pekka Rollins. He announces that they’re going to auction off Kuwei.