CHAPTER 10

Times Have Changed

     If Brynn was going to die, she hoped it would happen soon. Not because she wanted to leave her friends, or even to get rid of the pain. It was the tomb. The smell was overwhelmingly putrid, the scent of death one that Brynn never wanted to smell again. And if she could have gotten up to leave, she would have.

She had no idea when Jesper and Wylan came back, just that when Nina and Matthias arrived back at the tomb, she noticed the wall of wanted posters with the faces of her friends on it. Hers was noticeably missing, along with Nina's and Sasha's.

"Van Eck probably thinks you're not going to live for much longer," said Jesper. "But he doesn't know you like we do. You're a fighter."

"Spare me," groaned Brynn, wishing she could hit him. But even talking hurt like a pile of rocks in her throat, so maybe that wasn't the best idea.

For the past few hours, all she heard from the crew was about how she was a survivor, and therefore she would survive. If that was true, it didn't feel like it. Brynn felt like she was dying, slowly but surely, her insides twisting and turning inside out.

The plan was set. Inej and Nina were going together to Sweet Reef where Inej would walk the highwire between the sugar silos and place the weevil in to destroy the sugar. Sasha would go with Kaz and Wylan to Van Eck's mansion to break into his vault and steal his seal for the letter to get the Grisha out of Ketterdam. Apparently, she'd helped create the weevil that Inej would put into the silos at Sweet Reef.

Brynn was going to stay with Jesper, Matthias, and Kuwei in the tomb until everyone came back. Then, from there, it should have been easy sailing. Assuming Brynn would survive parem, of course.

The craving for parem was there, always in the front of Brynn's mind. She hadn't bothered to ask who had it, even if they still had it. Before anything had gotten too bad, she'd made Kaz promise not to give her any, no matter what. Kaz probably wouldn't have budged, anyway.

The knowledge of that helped Brynn realize that asking for the drug was pointless, even if she wanted to throttle someone into giving her parem.

"So, what do you think will happen after you survive this?" asked Jesper, kneeling down to sit next to Brynn on the ground. "Nina's different, that's for sure."

"How different?" Brynn wondered.

"I'm not sure, but I think she choked a guy to death with a cloud of dust at the lake house."

Matthias shook his head. "I don't understand it," he said. "A cloud of dust? She controlled shards of bone today—she could never have done that before parem. She seems to think the change is temporary, a residual effect of the drug, but..." He turned to Kuwei. "Could the parem alter a Grisha's power? Change it? Destroy it?"

Kuwei fiddled with the latch on his travel pack. "I suppose it's possible. She survived the withdrawal. That is rare, and we know so little about parem, about Grisha power."

"Well, if I start turning blue, you'll know more about what happens afterwards," said Brynn. She shifted on top of the sleeping pack, but it still felt like she was laying on top of crushed glass and her head was still pounding.

So much had happened in the span of one day, so much dumped onto her with no way to do anything about it. Kaz's elaborate plan, Sasha's hatred of the pale boy, her desire to sail on a ship with Inej, hunting and catching slavers. Sasha's plan should have surprised Brynn more, but no one could ignore the way she'd paid a lot of attention to the way the Ferolind worked on their way back to Kerch.

Brynn blocked the others' conversation out while she focused on trying not to feel all the pain. It was harder than it sounded, that was for sure. The parem might as well have been tearing her body apart and then trying to sew it back together with knives.

"Don't focus on the pain, but what you're going to do after the pain is over," Ma would always say.

It was hard to imagine what Brynn would do when she didn't even know what was going to happen.

Somehow, she felt the vibrations of the gunfire before she heard it and it shattered the stained glass. The sound rang through Brynn's ears, her entire body protesting when Matthias grabbed her and pressed her against the wall. Jesper peered outside through the smashed window.

"Unless the ghosts just got a lot more lively," he said, "it looks like we have company."

As a second rattle of gunfire shook the air, Matthias shouted, "Stay down!" Kuwei flattened himself to the floor next to the Fjerdan, another stained-glass window shattering.

"Either they're interested in wasting a lot of bullets or those are warning shots," said Jesper.

Matthias edged to the other side of the tomb and peered through a thin crack in the stone. "We're surrounded," he said.

Wincing, Brynn dragged herself to the corner of the tomb to grab one of the pistols that someone had stashed there. She pushed aside the stabbing feeling in her... everything, just to be able to defend herself.

"I can't make out their tattoos," said Jesper. "But I'm pretty sure that's Doughty up front."

Doughty. Kaz had made her remember the many names of the members of the Dregs' rival gangs and the name sounded familiar. Brynn spoke despite the stabbing pain in her abdomen.

"Dime Lions," she gasped.

"A lot of them."

"What do they want?" asked Kuwei tremulously.

That was the question. Brynn checked her gun, back pressed up against the wall behind her. She'd kill for a nice ice bath and about twenty hours of peaceful sleep.

A cheer arose from the crowd outside the tomb. Something hurled through one of the broken windows and hit the floor with a clang. Green grass burst from its sides. Matthias yanked a horse blanket from the floor and threw it over the canister, shoving it back through the porthole as more gunfire rang through the air.

Jesper took a shot and Brynn heard a thump from what she assumed was a body hitting the ground. He continued to fire, his aim never missing, more and more Dime Lions toppling to the ground. Brynn would have helped, if she wasn't worried she'd accidentally find a way to shoot one of their own in the process.

"Keep lining up, boys," Jesper said grimly.

"Come on out!" bellowed Doughty's voice. "You can't shoot us all."

"I can't hear you," shouted Jesper. "Come closer."

"We smashed your boats. You got no way off this island except us. So come quiet or we'll bring just your heads back to the Barrel." Brynn squeezed her eyes closed from the graphic image placed in her head.

"Watch out!" said Matthias. Two more canisters crashed through a window. He scooped up Brynn, then roared, "The catacomb!" and they raced for the opposite end of the tomb, cramming themselves into the passage and sealing the stone door behind them. Jesper tore off his shirt and shoved it into the gap between the door and the floor. Matthias held Brynn bridal style, his grip firm and unyielding.

The darkness consumed the small space. For a moment, there was only the sound of the four of them coughing and gasping, trying to dislodge the gas from their lungs. Then Jesper shook out a bonelight and their faces were lit by an eerie green glow. Brynn had never been a fan of bonelight, the green light ghostly and like something straight out of one of the stories Da would tell them to get them to go to bed.

"How did they find us?" asked Jesper.

"It doesn't matter," said Matthias. "What are our assets?"

"Wylan left us with a bunch of those violet bombs in case we ran into trouble with the Shu soldiers, and I've got a couple of flash bombs too. Kuwei?"

"I have nothing," he said.

"You have that travel pack. There's nothing useful in there?"

Kuwei clutched the bag to his chest. "My notebooks," he said with a sniff and Brynn was almost reminded of her sister.

"What about the leavings from Wylan's work?" asked Matthias. He was still holding Brynn, and she wondered how long until he would start to tire out. Though with his muscles and huge frame, it wouldn't be a shock if he could hold her for hours.

"It's just some of the stuff he used to make the fireworks for Goedmedbridge," said Jesper. His gaze met Brynn's.

"Don't look at me," she said. "I'm about as useless as Kaz chaperoning a child's birthday party."

Jesper grinned, then the grin vanished when a flurry of shouts came from outside. "They're going to blow the door to the tomb," said Matthias.

"Did you see how many of them there are?" croaked Brynn.

"At least thirty out there looking to skin our hides," Jesper said. "There's no way out of the tomb, and we're on an island. We're done for."

Matthias' face, lit by the green bonelight, looked similar to Kaz's scheming face, though Kaz's was considerably more recognizable. "Maybe not," he said.

"Are you crazy? The Dime Lions have to know how badly outnumbered we are."

"True," said Matthias. "But they don't know that two of us are Grisha."

Jesper blinked. "Yeah, two Grisha with barely any training and one that looks like she's dying."

"That's because Matthias is crushing me with his abnormally large hands," said Brynn. The Fjerdan loosened his grip.

A loud boom sounded, shaking the tomb walls and sending the two of them careening into the others. Brynn wasn't sure if she'd be able to get back up after this.

"They're coming!" cried Kuwei.

The ringing in Brynn's ears blocked out anything else they said to each other until Matthias grabbed her again, throwing her over his shoulder and holding her there by her legs, his other hand around his rifle. Brynn wanted to kick him in the face to get him to put her down, but that would cause more trouble and pain than it was worth.

Brynn had lost count of how many times she almost died. It all started in the Wandering Isle, and the number of people trying to kill her had only increased from then. She'd imagined her death more times than she could count, but she didn't think she'd die slung over a Fjerdan's shoulder while exchanging fire with a gang in a Ketterdam cemetery.

Times had definitely changed.

a/n— I am loving these comments, thank you to everyone who has enlightened me with your commentary and made me crack a smile on an otherwise-crappy day. Let me know what you think!