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Summary: Chapter 8
The gang kidnaps the very pregnant Alys Van Eck with surprising ease, as Van Eck’s guards are lax and Alys is docile. Although she never fights them, Alys does begin to cry for her home and dog. The gang tries to calm her, and her endless singing irritates Matthias. He remains very attentive to Nina, concerned about her recovery from the parem she took after the raid on the Ice Castle. At his request, she tries to practice using her powers on him, but she can’t compel him to kiss her. He dismisses the test as silly, saying he always wants to kiss her. Nina wonders why he hesitates if this is true. Nina longs for Matthias to stop treating her like she’s fragile.
Matthias and Nina pick up costumes in the form of Mister Crimson, a traditional Ketterdam character from the Komedie Brute, and hand them out to tourists and revelers to wear. Wearing a Mister Crimson costume is a Ketterdam custom—the bright red figure sings a stock song and distributes money—and is often used to disguise one’s identity when visiting the Barrel. Matthias and Nina offer free food and wine to anyone who wears the costume, telling people it’s a promotion for a new gambling hall called Crimson Cutlass. In reality, this plan is intended as a distraction away from the meeting on the bridge between Kaz and Van Eck. The gang is posted around West Stave during the exchange, signaling to each other with mirrors. When Matthias sees Inej, he’s flooded with relief that she’s alive. Just as Kaz and Van Eck are about to trade Inej for Alys, Matthias sees that the stadwatch has filled the streets. He worries about Nina, remembering a dream of marching across the ice in a killing wind, a dream he’s had since Nina used parem at the Ice Court.
Summary: Chapter 9
As soon as Kaz trades Alys for Inej, the stadwatch storms the bridge to prevent their departure. Kaz tosses Inej her knives as he unshackles her, and they jump off the bridge onto a waiting flower boat; there they don the Mister Crimson costumes he has stashed for them. Wylan ignites fireworks as a distraction. Kaz and Inej scramble up to the bridge, now swarmed with Mister Crimsons, but as they disappear into the crowd, a big explosion goes off and Kaz knows something is wrong.
Summary: Chapter 10
Wylan’s fireworks signal to the people who took the Mister Crimson costumes from Nina and Matthias to put them on and then to sing the Mister Crimson song. The gang, too, wears these costumes. Matthias lights more fireworks as Wylan detonates water mines. Nina and Jesper meet up with them but the larger blast knocks them all to the ground. They realize that someone else is setting off bombs. Looking up, they see flying Shu warriors, like the ones who carried Retvenko away in the opening chapter, blasting into a nearby building, hunting and capturing Grisha. Jesper shoots at the Shu flyers, but bullets don’t stop them. Nina tries to access her powers, which are still not working. The gang realizes with horror that the warriors have metal beneath their skin. A female Shu warrior traps Nina, but she manages to shoot and kill her attacker. As they run away, Jesper feels like he’s fleeing for his life.
Analysis
Matthias’s recurring dream, which began after Nina took the parem, sees his beloved homeland, Fjerda, transformed into a place of horror. He is lost in a snowy landscape, lashed by a ferocious wind as wolves howl in the distance. He calls for Nina but cannot find her. This dream conveys the anguish Matthias feels about his past treatment of Nina, linking this feelings to his nation while also establishing his fear that he will be unable to protect her in the future. The cold hatred the drüskelle instilled in Matthias for all Grisha, including Nina, is a legacy that continues to plague Matthias as he comes to terms with his role in the attempted genocide of the Grisha. The wolves are further evocative of Fjerda and the complex ways Matthias is still tied to his nation. He deeply loves his country’s wolves, but had to betray them in order to survive by fighting wolves to the death in Hellgate in Six of Crows. That there are wolves in the distance of his dreamscape while he’s calling for Nina suggests his fear that the hatred of his brothers could still pose a threat to the woman he loves.
Throughout the novel, the use of disguises emphasizes the instability of identity. To blend in with the revelers, the gang dress up as a crowd of Mister Crimsons, making them indistinguishable from other citizens of Ketterdam. But there is irony in the fact that they must wear a costume to fit in with respectable people, particularly one like Mister Crimson that average citizens will often wear to visit the world of the Barrel. To protect their reputations and guard the face they present to society, people who frequent gambling dens and pleasure houses mask themselves in the Barrel. Kaz’s plan manipulates the popularity of costumes and the reasons for wearing them. When the gang don their costumes, hiding themselves from the stadwatch and Van Eck, they also do so to hide their identity from others. These various layers of masking destabilize the notion that a person’s identity is fixed and consistent, raising questions about social performance. As Matthias and the others participate in the ritual of throwing coins into the audience—some made of candy, some real—the obfuscation becomes increasingly complicated. Citizens scrabble for coins, unsure of which are real, just as so many in the city wear masks and lose their sense of who they really are, all the while chasing easy money.
This section also explores the ravages of addiction. Most Grisha who take parem are killed by the drug, but Nina manages to survive. Across the novel, she not only struggles with the physical and emotional aftermath of her experience with parem, but must also confront its alterations to her powers. Though Nina survives her use of the drug, it changes something that had been basic to her identity as a Grisha. The diminishment of her powers feels like an assault on her identity. The parem experience also confuses her personal relationships, especially with Matthias. Nina’s struggles are highlighted as well by the attack of the modified Shu warriors, who powerfully convey the dangerous consequences of parem. Both examples, the aftermath of Nina’s addiction and the modified Shu warriors, underscore how dangerous parem can be in the wrong hands.
