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Summary: Chapter 33
A young drüskelle stares furiously at Matthias while he prays for Nina’s safety. The Tidemakers say someone has interfered with the auction’s outcome. Van Eck adds that a false fund was created that funneled money to the Ravkans. But the Tidemakers disagree, asserting that the money was actually funneled to the Shu. Van Eck continues to argue, insisting Kaz brokered a deal with the Shu, but a Tidemaker rejoins that it was Johannus Rietveld and Van Eck who created the fund. Denying this charge, Van Eck points to the fact that Kaz kidnapped Alys as proof of his guilt, but Alys says she never saw her kidnappers. Wylan emerges, badly beaten, and asserts that Pekka Rollins had him the whole time. It turns out that Kaz had used his own men to fake Wylan’s kidnapping. When Van Eck gestures to the merchants that saw Kaz fall onto his dining room table, Kaz calmly counters that Van Eck invited him there to broker the deal for Kuwei’s indenture. While he and Kuwei were there, Rollins ambushed them. Outraged merchants accuse Van Eck of violating the auction and stealing their funds. Adding to the general chaos, the plague siren begins to wail and shots ring out in the Church of Barter.
Summary: Chapter 34
In the Barrel, Nina uses her new Grisha powers to make decaying flesh appear on both gamblers and dealers at the gambling houses, causing mass chaos and fear because the marks resemble those caused by the Queen’s Lady Plague. Kaz had earlier noted that the capital is only vulnerable to two things: fire and disease. Ketterdam is more frightened of the plague than either the foreign delegates or the gangs, he explains. The plague siren will require everyone to return immediately to their homes. Nina reflects that her new Grisha power makes her feel like she’s the Queen of Mourning, and she’ll never drown.
Summary: Chapter 35
Inej fights Dunyasha again. Since their last encounter Inej has developed new skills of her own. Most importantly, she looks for Dunyasha’s tell and notices that the assassin takes a deep breath before she attacks. As a result, Inej is able to predict her moves and wound her badly. Just when Inej believes Dunyasha has given up, however, the latter blows red dust into Inej’s eyes, blinding her temporarily. Inej prays, thinking she may die. But she suddenly remembers a loose piece of scrollwork on the roof, and as Dunyasha tries to deliver a deadly blow, she steps aside, causing the assassin to fall to her death. Worried that she is late, Inej sets off to find Jesper, because, she says, Kuwei has to die. This assertion—that the gang will kill Kuwei—is introduced in the chapter’s closing sentence without any elaboration, suggesting that the plan has evolved in horrifying ways.
Summary: Chapter 36
Dressed as a guard himself, Jesper feigns stomach problems to convince the stadwatch to let him enter an area of the church where he’s slated to meet Inej. There, a gigantic, modified Shu warrior attacks him. Jesper sees his life flash before his eyes, but then remembers the chemical weevil in his pocket. He pretends it is parem that he is about to take, but forces the warrior to swallow it instead. The man dies gruesomely. Jesper finds Inej, who hands him his gun. But they are too late, and Jesper can’t get a clean shot. In a last-ditch effort, he tries to maneuver the bullet, a blank, with his Grisha powers. It needs to hit a button on Kuwei’s clothes. He feels the bullet turning but doesn’t know if he hit his target.
Analysis
The gang faces powers that dwarf them yet manage to succeed through self-possession, ingenuity, and cunning. Kaz lies easily, using the manipulations and creative sleights-of-hand that he’s seeded throughout his scheme to dismantle Van Eck’s credibility, one of the currencies that gives him power in Ketterdam. Even when Kaz’s previous plans had gone awry, he still was one step ahead: making sure Alys never saw him, lying easily with plausible explanations for his public actions, and encouraging Wylan to lie to his father’s face. All this trickery is possible because Van Eck believes deeply in the impenetrability of his own power. Similarly, Inej faces Dunyasha, who seems to have every advantage: better training and an unwavering belief in her own glorious destiny. Inej uses this arrogance as a weapon when, in the last moment, she lets Dunyasha believe she has won. She also uses her knowledge of the city, earned by fighting tooth and nail to survive, to best Dunyasha, who moves through the world as if every place is her home.
Members of the gang regularly look death in the face and take from the encounter the strength to survive. When Inej is on the roof of the church, battling Dunyasha, she believes she is outmaneuvered, and as she faces her death, she realizes that she doesn’t regret choosing to live as a killer rather than a slave. In a sense, Inej realizes in this moment that she is already free, that she has, despite the trauma of her past, been able to choose a life worth living on her own terms. Similarly, Jesper’s life flashes before his eyes when he is fighting the modified Shu soldier. Though he does have regrets about the way he’s disappointed others, he thinks of the people he loves: his father, Inej, and Wylan. By focusing on his purpose and the people who are most important to him, Jesper is inspired to use Wylan’s chemical weevil as a weapon against the soldier, a trick that saves his life. Given a chance to fight another day, Jesper decides to embrace his power and claim his birthright as a Grisha. Through facing death, both Inej and Jesper come to better understand the power and structure of their own lives.
Nina’s communion with death is the result of vanquishing pain and struggle. Nina’s old power put her in touch with life on a deep level, and her powers were part of her identity as a member of a Grisha community. Her experience with parem changed her relationship to her own life, her own power, and her community. Although most Grisha do not survive parem addiction, Nina managed to fight her way through the pain and agony of withdrawal, living for a time on the brink of death. This experience changed her on a deep level. As she spreads the appearance of Queen Lady’s Plague and shuts down the city, she feels as if she has the power to wield death itself. Rather than being ashamed or feeling cut off from life, though, she feels empowered and returned to herself. By coming to accept who she is on the other side of the trauma of her ordeal, Nina embraces herself and her new power. She’s restored to the regal persona she’s always had. In calling herself the Queen of Mourning, she expresses the strength and authority that she has claimed.
