A SEER'S SOLACE , KAZ BREKKER

xlviii. a sinner and a saint

xlviii. a sinner and a saint
– Kaz

          KAZ HEARD A roaring in his ears, one that grew louder even as the streets of Ketterdam grew silent and still.

How had he not seen Pekka Rollins coming? How he never have thought of the possibility Van Eck would enlist Rollins to hunt them down? In and out without never knowing, at least he'd been half right. But what played over and over in his mind as a thousand bombs and rockets lit up the evening sky was that their only safe place in Ketterdam had been compromised.

And he'd left the only person that mattered to him on the Black Veil in a spit of anger.

Kaz tipped his oars, steering the boat and barely missing a rowboat full of tourists.

"We have to go back to Black Veil." Wylan began. "The others—"

"Shut up, Wylan, I need to think."

Jesper, Matthias and Randvi were good in a fight. If anyone had a chance of getting Kuwei off Black Veil, they did. But how had Pekka found them? Someone must have been followed to the island. They'd all taken risks that day, ventured away from Black Veil. Any one of them might have been spotted and pursued. Nina and Matthias? Wylan and Jesper? Kaz himself? No, he thought with a sudden surge of bitter rage. It was Randvi.

Kaz flexed his shoulders, and Rotty matched his pace, the strokes of their oars driving the boat forward faster through the current. He needed to get them into traffic and as far away from Van Eck's house as possible. He needed to get to Sweet Reef. Rollins' men would have followed Inej, Nina and Jakov there from Black Veil. Why had he sent them to the silos alone? Nina and her precious refugees. There would be no grand rescue for the Grisha tonight. All their chances were shot to hell.

I've prepared something special with your darling Randvi. Had Randvi helped orchestrate the attack? Or had Rollins been looking for a way to get at him? To hell with revenge, to hell with his schemes. If Rollins had done something to Randvi, Kaz would paint East Stave with his entrails.

Think. When one plan was blown, you made a new one. When they backed you into a corner, you cut a hole in the roof. But he couldn't fix something he couldn't catch hold of. The plan had gone slippery. He'd failed them. He'd failed her. All because he seemed to have some kind of blind spot where Pekka Rollins was concerned. Inej could be bleeding on the streets of Sweet Reef. Randvi could be dead already.

No. A voice howled inside him. Randvi could never die, she was too good for such a fate. She'd made it off the Black Veil, there was no way Matthias and Jesper would have left her behind – dead or alive.

He turned his oars. "We're going to the warehouse district."

"What about the others?"

"Jesper and Matthias are fighters, and Randvi is impossible to kill. There's no way Pekka's going to risk harming Kuwei. We're going to Sweet Reef."