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Summary: Chapter 1
Emil Retvenko, a Grisha Squaller indentured to the Kerch Merchant council, drinks whiskey in a bar, thinking about how much he hates the smell of Ketterdam. He ponders rumors of Grisha vanishing, conjecturing that they were captured by slavers and sold, and he vows to avoid the same fate. Slightly tipsy, Retvenko heads toward the docks to report to work. If he completes two more voyages, he will be able to pay off his debt and return home. He thinks about his past work as a soldier, where he murdered innocents during the Grisha war.
As Retvenko heads to the harbormaster’s office to get some tea to help him sober up, he hears an unsettling sound. A Shu woman bursts into the office and Retvenko fights her, hurling objects at her with wind he creates using his powers. But a Shu man with great wings enters the building and grabs him. Terrified, Retvenko is carried off.
Summary: Chapter 2
Wylan is pretending to be a waiter at Club Cumulus as part of a ruse by the Dregs gang to distract Cornelius Smeet, a lawyer, during a card game. Wylan has been fabricated to look like Kuwei, a Shu Grisha, which makes him feel like an impostor even when he isn’t posing as someone else. Wylan watches Jesper gambling at the table with Smeet and remembers Kaz’s instructions to eavesdrop on Smeet’s conversations as much as possible. Kaz is undercover as the card dealer. Jesper can’t seem to stop losing and ends up wagering his beloved guns because Smeet covets them. Nina’s job at the ruse is to flirt with Smeet as he plays cards, but she struggles to maintain a seductive demeanor as she’s still in withdrawal from jurda parem, the highly addictive drug that enhances Grisha powers. Their ruse is part of their plan to save Inej, who was captured by Wylan’s father, Councilman Van Eck. Smeet is Van Eck’s attorney.
Matthias meets Wylan and Kaz on their way to Smeet’s house. They soothe Smeet’s guard dogs with a whistle they stole from him. Wylan is haunted by the memory of Kaz torturing and killing one of Smeet’s clerks to learn the dog’s whistle commands. He remembers how Kaz almost spared the clerk’s life until he made the mistake of revealing that he was blackmailing a girl at the pleasure house where Inej was enslaved. Kaz says the girl would die if she were discovered stealing from Tante Heleen, the pleasure house’s owner, and drops the clerk off the top of the lighthouse.
Kaz and Wylan search Smeet’s files, and Wylan is frustrated that he slows the process because he can’t read. Eventually, Kaz thinks he knows where Inej is being held. As they are leaving, they encounter Smeet’s young daughter, and Wylan is afraid Kaz may hurt her. Instead, Kaz pretends to be a monster and tells the girl if she ever talks, he will make her watch as he kills her parents and her dogs. Wylan is horrified. As soon as they leave the house, they run directly into Smeet.
Analysis
Crooked Kingdom is the second book in the Six of Crows Duology, and both its plot and the main characters’ motivations derive importantly from the previous novel, Six of Crows. This continuity is established quickly in the book’s opening chapter, which is narrated by a minor character from Six of Crows, Emil Retvenko. He conveys the brief passage of time by calculating how much money he must save to return to Grisha, before being captured by modified Shu warriors and carried off, never to return. More important, though, is the fact that Kaz and the gang are betrayed by Jan Van Eck at the end of Six of Crows, setting up the motivation for everything they do in Crooked Kingdom: rescuing Inej from Van Eck and destroying him economically and socially for reneging on the money he promised them for breaking into the Fjerdan Ice Court and kidnapping the person responsible for the development of parem. Thus, the problems these characters navigate in Crooked Kingdom are importantly established in the closing pages of Six of Crows.
These opening chapters explore the complex system of morality that guides Kaz’s actions. Wylan struggles with Kaz’s decision to kill the clerk and is haunted by watching the man die, suggesting that his understanding of morality is fairly black-and-white: in his view, murder is wrong in every case, and he finds it extremely disturbing that Kaz metes out his own version of justice seemingly at a whim. According to the rules Kaz lives by, however, the clerk’s murder is justifiable because he considers women at the pleasure house disposable. In Kaz’s eyes, the clerk’s disregard for people like Inej is enough to condemn him to death. Kaz is guided by a personal definition of right and wrong, one that is largely determined by how others’ actions impact the few people he loves, such as Inej and his late brother Jordie. Wylan, unsure of what Kaz will do, fears for Smeet’s daughter’s life. Kaz shows a complex kind of restraint in dealing with the child, sparing her life but frightening her so badly she may suffer long-term trauma. These decisions both indicate that while Kaz has moral principles determining who he will and won’t hurt, these principles do not preclude doing serious harm, and their rationales may be clear only to him.
The motif of disguises, which emphasizes the slippery nature of identity throughout the novel, is also crucial in these opening chapters. Wylan’s doubled layer of disguises, posing as a waiter while being tailored to look like Kuwei, causes him great self-doubt. These multiple layers of disguise protect Wylan from his father and other attackers, but also obscure his true self, reflecting his ongoing uncertainty after years of being emotionally and physically abused by his father. Wylan draws on his experiences as the son of a wealthy merchant to pretend to be a waiter, hinting at the way disguises and identity can have intriguing and useful interplays. Similarly, Kaz and Jesper are playing roles that reflect aspects of their identities: Kaz, though uncharacteristically barehanded, plays the role of a deft card dealer, while Jesper pretends to be a gambler, a role that is actually quite familiar for him. His losing streak, manufactured on Kaz’s secret instructions to keep Smeet interested in the game, parallels the real-life losing streak which had led him to the gang in the first place. Thus, the poker game is a ruse that both obscures and reveals key aspects of each characters’ identity.
The refrain “I’m a good man,” which is repeated throughout these chapters, points to the fact that there are very few innocents in Ketterdam. Individual actors often think of their decisions as justified, no matter the consequences. In an attempt to dissuade Kaz from dropping him off the lighthouse, the clerk proclaims that he is a good man, yet he was willing to let a woman in the Menagerie die so that he could live. Smeet never cheats at cards or on his wife, but he likes to spend one evening every week acting like an outlaw, lavishing time and money on other women. He compares gambling to murdering people, says racist things to Wylan, and enjoys the power his money gives him over Nina. Smeet’s obliviousness to the consequences of his actions makes him an easy target but also suggests he blithely sacrifices others to his own pleasures. In fact, his associations put his daughter in danger, and in Kaz’s world, not even a child is treated as innocent. When Wylan confronts Kaz about terrifying the girl, Kaz dismisses it, saying that they were all children once, a statement that represents the bleak view of humanity that often guides Kaz’s actions.
