Read Online Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo - Free Book Online

Nina standing in his cell, the prison break. Nina had covered a member of the Dregs in false sores and given him a fever to make sure he was quarantined and kept from the larger prison population. Muzzen. Matthias should not have forgotten such a thing.
    â€œI thought you said you had a contact in the infirmary,” said Nina.
    â€œTo keep him sick, not to keep him safe.” Kaz’s face was grim. “It was a hit.”
    â€œThe Fjerdans,” said Nina.
    Matthias folded his arms. “That’s not possible.”
    â€œWhy not?” Nina said. “We know there are drüskelle here. If they came to town looking for you and made noise at the Stadhall, they would have been told you were in Hellgate.”
    â€œNo,” said Matthias. “They wouldn’t resort to such an underhanded tactic. Hiring a killer? Murdering someone in his sickbed?” But even as he said the words, Matthias wasn’t sure he believed them. Jarl Brum and his officers had done worse without a twinge of conscience.
    â€œBig, blond, and blind,” Jesper said. “The Fjerdan way.”
    He died in my stead , Matthias thought. And I didn’t even recognize his name.
    â€œDid Muzzen have family?” Matthias asked at last.
    â€œJust the Dregs,” said Kaz.
    â€œNo mourners,” Nina murmured.
    â€œNo funerals,” Matthias replied quietly.
    â€œHow does it feel to be dead?” asked Jesper. The merry light had gone from his eyes.
    Matthias had no answer. The knife that had killed Muzzen had been meant for Matthias, and the Fjerdans might well be responsible. The drüskelle. His brothers. They’d wanted him to die without honor, murdered in an infirmary bed. It was a death fit for a traitor. It was the death he had earned. Now Matthias owed Muzzen a blood debt, but how would he ever pay it? “What will they do with his body?” he asked.
    â€œIt’s probably already ashes on the Reaper’s Barge,” said Kaz.
    â€œThere’s something else,” said Rotty. “Someone’s kicking up dust looking for Jesper.”
    â€œHis creditors will have to wait,” said Kaz, and Jesper winced.
    â€œNo,” Rotty said with a shake of his head. “A man showed up at the university. Jesper, he claims he’s your father.”

 
    4
    I NEJ
    Inej lay on her belly, arms extended in front of her, wriggling like a worm through the dark. Despite the fact that she’d been as good as starving herself, the vent was still a tight fit. She couldn’t see where she was going; she just kept moving forward, pulling herself along by her fingertips.
    She’d woken sometime after the fight on Vellgeluk, with no sense of how long she’d been unconscious and no idea where she was. She remembered plummeting from a great height as one of Van Eck’s Squallers dropped her, only to be snatched up by another—arms like steel bands around her, the air buffeting her face, gray sky all around, and then pain exploding over her skull. The next thing she knew she was awake, head pounding, in the dark. Her hands and ankles were bound, and she could feel a blindfold tight across her face. For a moment, she was fourteen, being tossed into the hold of a slaver ship, frightened and alone. She forced herself to breathe. Wherever she was, she felt no ship’s sway, heard no creak of sails. The ground was solid beneath her.
    Where would Van Eck have brought her? She could be in a warehouse, someone’s home. She might not even be in Kerch anymore. It didn’t matter. She was Inej Ghafa, and she would not quiver like a rabbit in a snare. Wherever I am, I just have to get out.
    She’d managed to nudge her blindfold down by scraping her face against the wall. The room was pitch-black, and all she could hear in the silence was her own rapid breathing as panic seized her again. She’d leashed it by controlling her breath, in through the nose, out through the