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Summary: Chapter 27
Despite Kaz’s directives that she let him go to the Slat alone, Inej follows him. He breaks into the Slat through his old office window as she reflects that this might be the very last time that she sees the Slat. She remembers listening to Kaz scheme about their time together.
She also breaks into the Slat and perches like a spider on the roof beams. The Dregs below are boisterous from the morning’s activities. Inej worries that Kaz cannot enter undetected, as the staircase from his office is visible to everyone. Per Haskell comes in with a cane that resembles Kaz’s crow-headed walking stick. The Dregs cheer this mockery. Haskell tell them that they’ll catch Kaz and get the reward on his head.
Making no attempt to hide, Kaz brazenly enters the room and verbally spars with Haskell. The older man orders the Dregs to attack, and Kaz disables many opponents before finally being pinned to the ground. Inej is about to intercede when he stares directly at her. She realizes he’s known she was watching him the entire time. While still on the floor, he breaks the leg of a Dregs member and once again continues to fight. In a brief pause in the action, Kaz addresses the gathered Dregs, informing them that Haskell is working for Pekka Rollins and the Dime Lions, an alliance that betrays his primary obligation to the Dregs. Convinced by both Kaz’s speech and his fearless fighting, the Dregs decide to follow Kaz instead of Haskell. Kaz retrieves his cane, lost in the fight, and informs Haskell he has two minutes to get out of the Slat for good.
Summary: Chapter 28
Jesper tells Wylan that kissing Kuwei was an accident and that he thought he was kissing Wylan. The two then join Nina and Kaz to meet with the Ravkan diplomats, Zoya and Genya. A third person is present as well, Sturmhond, an infamous privateer who says he sometimes negotiates on behalf of the Ravkan king. Kaz and Sturmhond meet privately. Wylan asks Genya to Tailor him so he can have his own face back again.
The tailoring process is slow, and while Jesper watches, Wylan asks Genya about Grisha schooling. He confesses to Genya that he can’t read, a moment of difficult honesty for him. Jesper is happily shocked when Genya’s work is done and Wylan looks at him with his own face. Wylan tries to convince Jesper to develop his Grisha powers, but Jesper gets defensive and avoids the conversation. The two shake off this moment of tension and finally kiss.
Summary: Chapter 29
The gang places announcements of the auction in the daily broadcasts, and the Merchant Council declares its approval of the auction.
Nina, dressed in a kefta, escorts Colm, posing as Johannus, to the hotel’s dining room, where he appears to take meetings with many important merchants. The ruse is intended to convince the hotel staff to share the information that his consortium is in demand. Nina poses as a Grisha Heartrender who is also Johannus’s multilingual assistant. By targeting the most junior member of the Merchant Council, Karl Dryden, with fake documents about the jurda consortium, they lure the Merchant Council to the table with Johannus. Van Eck arrives at the meeting with Dryden. Colm expertly plays the role of the reluctant negotiator who is skeptical of the Merchant Council’s offer of thirteen investors in the jurda consortium. At the meeting’s close, Johannus gives them twenty-four hours to finalize their offer.
Analysis
In the dog-eat-dog world of the Barrel’s gangs, loyalty is a currency that can be more powerful than money. When Kaz goes to the Slat to claim his leadership of the Dregs, in the process ousting his former boss Per Haskell, he doesn’t have money to buy the allegiance of the Dregs. Nor does he have superior numbers to force them to ally themselves to him. But what he does have is a past record of loyalty to the Dregs, and an unwavering commitment to put the Dregs first. When Kaz exposes Per Haskell’s doubled allegiance, showing that he’s become a hand of Rollins and the Dime Lions, Per Haskell loses the influence he had over the larger gang. Power and respect are not always given to the person with the most money (in this case, Per Haskell), but instead are bestowed on the person who is most loyal. Similarly, in following Kaz to the Slat despite his warnings, Inej shows her unwavering loyalty to Kaz. She muses that she has had many opportunities to abandon him, and the same could be said of him as well, but they have stuck by each other. In a world in which families, like the Van Ecks, are divided by money and the cold pursuit of profit, and where bad actors like Rollins end the lives of people callously, loyalty—and the creation of chosen families—emerges as a force that can sometimes prove more powerful than profit.
Throughout the novel, love often brings out the best in characters. In this section, Genya draws on two inspirations for tailoring Wylan and giving him back the face he was born with: the portrait that his mother painted of him as a child, and input from Jesper, who remembers Wylan’s face in great detail. As a result, when Wylan is done being tailored, Jesper reflects that he looks even more beautiful than ever. Genya is thus able to tailor a face of love, as informed by two people who see the very best in Wylan’s character, even when he himself cannot. Similarly, when Kaz sees Inej in the rafters during the battle in the Slat, he is at the lowest point in his encounter with the Dregs. He is on the ground, his cane taken from him, and he’s been badly beaten. But one look from Inej infuses him with new power, and he’s able to rise up from a position of defeat and reestablish dominance over the gang. With Inej’s eyes on him, Kaz can be the best version of himself: in control of his narrative, able to rouse followers into action and loyalty, and establishing wise authority over others.
Kaz’s deft sleight of hand allows the gang to manipulate Van Eck and the other merchers. When it comes to the false jurda consortium, subtlety is the name of the game. Rather than slipping an entire letter into the documents ferried by Karl Dryden, Wylan creates the impression of a letter that rubbed off on an adjacent envelope, an effect not unlike whispering in Dryden’s ear about a possible investment opportunity. What’s more, they slip the envelope into Dryden’s documents by posing as members of the stadwatch, which illustrates that at every turn Kaz manipulates the bureaucracy they are taking down to his advantage. When Kaz dresses Colm, he adds subtle upgrades to his appearance that code him as wealthy, such as a nicer coat and a silver pin, clues that telegraph wealth to other affluent men. Kaz also strategically uses the fact that the wealthy men take their investment cues from each other by making it appear as though Colm is taking many meetings. All of this subtle manipulation, often using the language and structures of wealth against Van Eck and the other merchants, lures the merchers into thinking they are still in safe, familiar territory.
