Free Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo Page A

another bell, the sound of What if? What if she let herself be comforted, gave up the pretense of being beyond the things she’d lost? What if she simply let Van Eck put her on a ship, send her home? She could taste the skillet bread, warm from the pan, see her mother’s dark braid twined with ribbons, strands of silk the color of ripe persimmons.
    But Inej knew better than that. She’d learned from the best. Better terrible truths than kind lies. Kaz had never offered her happiness, and she didn’t trust the men promising to serve it up to her now. Her suffering had not been for nothing. Her Saints had brought her to Ketterdam for a reason—a ship to hunt slavers, a mission to give meaning to all she’d been through. She would not betray that purpose or her friends for some dream of the past.
    Inej hissed at Bajan, an animal sound that made him flinch backward. “Tell your master to honor his old deals before he starts making new ones,” she said. “Now leave me alone.”
    Bajan had scurried away like the well-dressed rat he was, but Inej knew it was time to go. Bajan’s new insistence could mean nothing good for her. I have to get out of this trap , she’d thought, before this creature lures me with memories and sympathy. Maybe Kaz and the others were coming for her, but she didn’t intend to wait around and see.
    Once Bajan and the guards had left, she’d slipped the shard of broken bowl from where she’d hidden it beneath the ropes around her ankles and set to work. Weak and wobbly as she’d felt when Bajan had arrived with that heavenly smelling bowl of mush, she’d only pretended to swoon so that she could deliberately knock her tray off the table. If Van Eck had really done his research, he would have warned Bajan that the Wraith did not fall. Certainly not in a clumsy heap on the floor where she could easily tuck a sharp piece of crockery between her bonds.
    After what seemed like a lifetime of sawing and scraping and bloodying her fingertips on the shard’s edge, she’d finally severed her ropes and freed her hands, then untied her ankles and felt her way to the vent. Bajan and the guards wouldn’t be back until morning. That gave her the whole night to escape this place and get as far away as she possibly could.
    The passage was a miserably tight fit, the air inside musty with smells she couldn’t quite identify, the dark so complete she might as well have kept her blindfold on. She had no idea where the vent might lead. It could run for a few more feet or for half a mile. She needed to be gone by morning or they’d find the grating that covered the vent loosened on its hinges and know exactly where she was.
    Good luck getting me out , she thought grimly. She doubted any of Van Eck’s guards could squeeze inside the air shaft. They’d have to find some kitchen boy and grease him down with lard.
    She inched forward. How far had she gone? Every time she took a deep breath, it felt like the air shaft was tightening around her ribs. For all she knew, she could be atop a building. She might pop her head out the other side only to find a busy Ketterdam street far below. Inej could contend with that. But if the shaft just ended? If it was walled up on the other side? She’d have to squirm backward the entire distance and hope to refasten her ropes so that her captors wouldn’t know what she’d done. Impossible. There could be no dead ends tonight.
    Faster , she told herself, sweat beading on her brow. It was hard not to imagine the building compressing around her, its walls squeezing the breath from her lungs. She couldn’t make a real plan until she reached the end of this tunnel, until she knew just how far she’d have to go to evade Van Eck’s men.
    Then she felt it, the barest gust of air brushing against her damp forehead. She whispered a quick prayer of thanks. There must be some kind of opening up