Crooked Kingdom: A Sequel to Six of Crows

The crew assembles to listen to Kaz’s latest plan. Kuwei will auction off his indenture at the Church of Barter, and Kaz will ensure that the Ravkans are the highest bidder. According to Kerch’s laws, the officers of the stadwatch, the Merchant Council, and even the Council of the Tides must protect the auction’s proceedings. Kuwei also has the right to select his own security guards, which will allow Kaz and Matthias to attend the auction with impunity until the proceedings are finished.

Nina points out that Ravka lacks the funds to win the auction, and Kaz reveals his contingency plan: Colm Fahey, with his knowledge of jurda and his “honest face” (351), will pose as a farmer named Johannus Rietveld and offer the members of the Merchant Council a chance to invest in jurda before parem becomes publicly available. He expects the merchants to leap at the opportunity to “make a fine dime off the world going to hell” (351). Jesper loathes the idea of his father risking his life in one of the crew’s schemes, but Colm agrees to the plan because his life will be empty if he loses his son and their farm.

Kaz’s crew needs reinforcements to pull off the plan, so he prepares to go to the Barrel and win back the Dregs, even though doing so jeopardizes his life. Before he goes, he frees Inej from her indentured servitude to the Dregs (Kaz had previously bought Inej’s indenture to free her from the Menagerie, so technically she was still a servant). Although part of Kaz longs to keep her in Ketterdam with him, he knows that “she’d spent enough of her life caged by debts and obligations” and thinks that they’re better off going their separate ways (358). Inej explains that the Suli believe that a person’s wrongdoings strengthen their shadow until it overpowers them. She says that Dunyasha is her shadow and that Kaz is Rollins’s.

Kaz and Inej try to face the traumas that left them with an aversion to touch as he helps her change her bandages with his bare hands. Inej opens up to Kaz about her time in the Menagerie, but he can’t bring himself to tell her why skin-to-skin contact makes him panic—namely, that when he was nine, he contracted firepox, and the bodymen left him for dead on the Reaper’s Barge. He had to use his brother’s corpse as a flotation device to make it back to land. Instead, he tells Inej how he destroyed the accomplices who helped Rollins dupe Jordie. Inej says that forgiveness must be earned and that she intends to merit it by hunting slavers and “being something more than just the next Pekka Rollins” (366). Inej asks Kaz not to go to the Barrel, but he sees no alternative. He tells her to achieve her dreams and claim her vengeance no matter what happens to him.

Inej follows Kaz to the Dregs’ headquarters even though he told her not to. There Kaz reminds everyone that Dirtyhands did the dirty work that transformed the Dregs from a second-rate gang to one of the most feared and successful in the Barrel. He declares that he is done following Haskell’s orders and takes on nine brawlers by himself. During the fight, Kaz falls to the floor, and Inej vows to “pile the bodies to the rafters” rather than watch him die (374). Kaz signals for her to stand down and wins the fight on his own.

Inej realizes that “the fight was just the opening act” and that “the real performance” is Kaz’s coup against Haskell (377). Kaz says that respect must be earned and asks the Dregs if they want a “crow” who will fight for them or “a washed-up rooster” who licks Pekka Rollins’ boots (378). Haskell orders his lackeys to fetch the Dime Lions, but the crowd shifts against him. A bloodied but triumphant Kaz tells Haskell to leave.

Zoya the Squaller and Genya the Tailor meet the Dregs at the hotel. The two powerful Grisha arrive with a third Ravkan. The man claims to be the legendary privateer Sturmhond but is actually the king of Ravka, as Kaz later learns. While Kaz and Sturmhond discuss the plan’s details in private, Wylan asks Genya to restore his original features. When Genya finishes tailoring Wylan, he looks just as he did when Jesper first saw him, a “lost prince who had woken in the wrong story” (391).

Wylan asks Genya if the Ravkans could teach an older Fabrikator how to use his gifts, and she explains that Grisha of any age can master their powers. Despite Wylan’s nudging, Jesper keeps quiet about his Grisha abilities. After Genya leaves, Wylan tells Jesper that he doesn’t have to hide his Grisha identity or pretend that everything is all right. He quiets Jesper’s restless mind with a kiss that feels like “a prairie fire” and “a stampede in [Jesper’s] chest” (395).

With the help of his newly acquired reinforcements, Kaz plants a lead about Johannus Rietveld in the mail of Karl Dryden, the Merchant Council’s youngest member. The planted information says that Rietveld is “taking meetings at the Geldrunner Hotel with select investors only” (399). Dryden and Van Eck come to the hotel, and Nina coaches Colm through the meeting in the guise of his assistant. Van Eck knows that the Dregs occasionally hire Nina for her Heartrender abilities, but he remains unaware of her current place in Kaz’s crew.

Colm says that his consortium represents growers who banded together after an unknown investor started snatching up jurda farms. Dryden realizes that this mysterious buyer likely knew about parem, and Van Eck’s skin takes on “a clammy sheen” as he fears the discovery of his plot (404). The Dregs lure several of Ketterdam’s wealthiest investors to the hotel by inviting them to a presentation on the Zemeni oil market, and Colm pretends that the investors are there to see him. The bluff spurs Van Eck to propose that the Merchant Council become the consortium’s exclusive investors, and Colm gives the merchants 24 hours to make an offer.

Kaz, Nina, and Inej sneak into the city’s morgue, and Nina collects tissue from a decaying body. The smell of death plunges Kaz into flashbacks. After he joined the Dregs, he began wearing gloves to avoid painful memories. When Kaz was 14, he developed feelings for a fellow Dreg named Imogen and tried to overcome his aversion to touch. His attempts to wean himself off his gloves ended in disaster when he panicked on a job and received a beating from one of the Dregs’ brawlers. After that, Kaz “stopped worrying about seeming normal, let people see a glimmer of the madness within him” (417). Anyone who touched him risked broken bones, and he became the dreaded Dirtyhands.

The morning of the auction, Kaz and his crew gather atop the hotel. As he often does, Kaz hears Jordie’s voice in his head. This time, he quiets the imagined accusations by remembering that his brother was meant to take care of him as well and that they were only children looking for a home when Rollins ruined them. Kaz sends his team out into the city to claim revenge and redemption.

Wylan stares at his restored reflection and asks himself who he truly is. He tells himself that he will free his mother and defy the father who tried to make him disappear. Wylan and Colm hide in an empty bakery while they wait for the auction to begin. Colm gives Wylan his blessing, saying that Jesper will likely give the boy “ten kinds of headache” but that Wylan would be “good for him” (424).

Wylan investigates a noise at the back of the bakery, and two people with Dime Lions tattoos drag him to a chapel in the Church of Barter. Van Eck promises to let Wylan live if he divulges the details of Kaz’s plan. Wylan spits in Van Eck’s face and scorns his supposed mercy by revealing that he knows what Van Eck did to his mother. His father instructs Wylan’s kidnappers to beat the information out of him. Wylan calls upon the courage and qualities he admires most in his friends, including “the wild, reckless hope he’d learned from Jesper, the belief that no matter the odds, somehow they would win” (427). However, he ultimately tells them everything they want to know.

Inej climbs to the top of the Church of Barter, where she stows Jesper’s rifle. Down in the cathedral, Ketterdam’s merchants gather, followed by delegations of Zemeni, Kaelish, Fjerdans, Ravkans, and Shu. Lastly, Kuwei enters with his chosen security guards, Kaz and Matthias, and the crowd erupts in outrage at the sight of the “most wanted criminals in the city […] striding down the center aisle” (435).

At the start of the auction, the Fjerdans and the Shu rapidly fire off large sums while the Zemeni make more cautious offers. Later, the auction shifts into a sparring match between the Ravkans and the Shu. The disguised Ravkan king knows better than anyone that his country’s coffers are empty, but he believes the plan—and his people’s safety—depend on him winning the auction. With “a jagged-edged laugh” (438), he raises his offer to 120 million. The cathedral’s doors crash open, and 15 figures enter, their identities concealed by robes and swirls of mist. They declare themselves the Council of Tides and condemn the auction as a sham. Dunyasha appears on the roof, and Inej readies herself for a rematch with her shadow.