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When Wylan had made his purchases, the three of them returned to the small inn where Tolya had gotten them rooms. Kaz and Nina were already there, and Inej and Zoya. Something had gone awry, Jesper could see it in their faces, but Kaz looked forbidding so he didn't ask for details, assuming Nina would tell him later.

"Ohval's not just a fence," Kaz told them. "She's the Disciple."

"What … what tipped you off?" Wylan asked, not yet used to Kaz's deductive skills.

"Her tea cup. When she set it down, she did so without a sound."

Nina added, "And her heartbeat never fluctuated once. It held at one beat a second like a clock."

"So, she can control her heart rate, and her emotions," Tolya said. He was walking around with a bag of shelled walnuts, sharing them out.

"Useful skills for a thief," Wylan said softly.

"Now is the part where you tell us where the blade is." Jesper wanted out of this tiny cramped parlor, out of this city, and back to Ketterdam as soon as possible.

"Ohval has it. Her signal to the waitress to spill tea on me told me as much."

"It's as if I know you," Jesper said in an exaggerated whisper.

Kaz gave him a withering look. He was never openly supportive of Jesper's levity, but today he seemed especially serious. He continued as if Jesper had never spoken. "And if she's not going to sell it to us, we'll just have to take it. After Nina and I ordered the chrysanthemum tea, I had Inej follow the tea shop employee who was sent to notify Ohval."

"She lives just outside the city," Inej said, playing restlessly with one of her knives. "When she stopped at the tea shop, she placed an order at the apothecary that she'll be picking up tonight. I watched her home for a while, and no one came or went except her."

"So. While she's out of the house, Nina will tail her to make sure she stays out of the house. The rest of us will go in and grab the blade."

Zoya laughed, and Kaz frowned at her. "You don't seriously expect me to break into this woman's house," she said.

"Uh … why do you think we're here?" Jesper asked.

She turned and fixed him with a disdainful look. "I'm a soldier, not a thief. Why else would I need you criminals?"

When she turned back, Jesper mocked her. He had little patience with the concept of hiring someone to do something and then acting as if you're above the job you're asking them to do.

"Oh, there's much less of a difference there than you think," Tolya remarked. He was hovering just over Wylan's shoulder. Tall, good-looking, charming, morally casual … all things Wylan had already been proven to be attracted to. And not prone to saying stupid things. If he wasn't so damned likeable, Jesper would really hate him.

Zoya gave Tolya a disdainful look of his own. "You just keep eating your walnuts." Turning back to Kaz, she announced, "I'll go with Nina."

Nina choked on a walnut. Leaning forward, she begged Kaz, "Are you sure you don't need me? I mean, Zoya can tail Ohval."

Kaz was steaming, Jesper could tell, although not a muscle in his face had moved, and his voice was perfectly controlled and calm. He never liked having his plans altered. "Nina and Zoya will wait for Ohval at the apothecary. Follow her. If she starts heading home, buy us some time. Distract her. Everyone else—I recommend a rest before we head out. It may be a long night."

Wylan retired, but it was hard to relax, remembering the last time he had been in a bed, lying in Jesper's arms, so warm and comfortable. Two doors down, Jesper was having much the same difficulty. He should go to him, he thought. Go to him, and … apologize? Explain himself? Beg for mercy? Claim not to have understood?

He fell asleep still turning the problem over in his mind.

It was dark when they left the city and made their way to the house on the outskirts that Ohval owned. It was all by itself on a lightly traveled road. Lanterns invitingly lined the eaves.

"This house is traditional," Tolya explained. "It has a specific layout." As they drew near the door and into the lantern light, he knelt and drew it out for them in the dirt. "We enter through the front courtyard, antechamber, middle courtyard, main chamber."

"We sweep the entirety," Kaz ordered. As he worked the lock, Wylan stepped up next to him. "How long will it take you to set up?"

"I can have the door open in about five minutes. And if Ohval trips it, we have two minutes before the firecrackers go off to get out."

Inej spoke up. "Even if she returns prematurely, we cannot leave without the blade."

"Yes. The future of Ravka and my payment depend on it. I'm aware."

A very Kaz-ian response. Jesper smiled. It felt better already. A little heist always improved a bad day.

"It's more than the future of Ravka at stake," Tolya said urgently. "If we fail, Shu Han, Fjerda, Ketterdam, and beyond, they'll all feel the weight of the Darkling bear down on them."

"Way to up the stakes," Jesper told him. Not that he didn't believe it was true, but in his experience, doom and gloom were not particularly motivating.

Kaz got the lock to give and pushed the doors open.

They stepped into a courtyard full of plants and lanterns. Wylan would have loved to stop and look at the plants, but he had a job to do. He set his bag down near the door and started putting together the trap, pausing only to close the doors behind Jesper, who was the last one in.

As Kaz started working the lock to the antechamber, Jesper took off his hat, hesitating. He hated this. He hated the way Wylan looked at him and then away, the pointed way he spoke to Tolya instead of Jesper … he hated how much his stupid remark must have hurt Wylan. He had tried everything else, but he hadn't tried just apologizing. And he didn't want to go off into the heist with this still hanging so uncomfortably between them.

Crouching down next to Wylan as he began to put the trap together, Jesper said softly, "Listen, I'm sorry about what I said at the Dregs Club. I honestly didn't know that you couldn't read. I … I didn't know. How could I know when you're so clever and so smart and—"

Wylan couldn't take it anymore. Did Jesper really think all this false flattery was somehow going to make him feel better? "Can you just stop? Please."

"With what?"

"Patronizing me. I hate it."

Jesper understood suddenly why nothing had worked. What he had intended—and felt—as genuine admiration, Wylan had taken as condescending. He sank down onto the step, staring at Wylan, wishing there was a way to convince him that Jesper had meant what he'd said, that Jesper was in awe of his beautiful mind.

But Wylan wasn't finished. "'Oh, Wylan, it's amazing how you hold onto all those equations in your head. It's so … so clever … so smart …'"

"I'm just saying you have nothing to be ashamed of."

As if somehow that would make it all better. As though Wylan was the only one keeping things to himself. "You're trying to tell me how to feel about my shame when you're hiding the very thing that makes you special."

Jesper smiled. "My face? I would never—"

"I'm talking about the fact that you're Grisha."

It was Jesper's turn to be shocked, and hurt, and a little betrayed. It was one thing for Kaz to have guessed, after years, but for Wylan … It was none of his business, is what it was. And a little aptitude for getting metal to do what he wanted was hardly what made him special. His wit, his fashion sense, all the things he had created about himself, those were important, not some power that he had never wanted, at least, not at the expense of what it had taken from him.

When Jesper didn't speak, Wylan continued, "I—I've seen you shoot all those impossible shots. That piano wire didn't just fix itself. The thing that I don't understand is why you keep it a secret. You're Zemeni. Zemeni believe that Grisha powers are a blessing. So why do you hide it?"

"Because it's not a blessing, it's a curse." Jesper was near tears, suddenly, shaking. He didn't want to think about this, about her. Not now. He lifted a finger and pointed it at Wylan. "And you have no idea what it's cost me."

Wylan wished he had never spoken, not if it was going to make Jesper look like that. He reached for him, wanting to hold him, or take it back. "I didn't mean to—"

"Jesper," Kaz said sharply from across the courtyard. "We're going in. Close the doors behind you."

He walked off after Kaz without a backward glance, leaving Wylan alone to try to get himself under control, to get back to work somehow.

Kaz pushed open the doors to the antechamber. It was empty. He entered slowly, cautiously. "Spread out."

Tolya, Inej, and Jesper followed. "I sense a heartbeat," Tolya said.

"I thought the compound was empty."

"It's faint. Further in the house." He took a step forward, the floor gave under his foot, and the doors rolled closed on both sides of the antechamber. Immediately they all started trying to get out, but whatever the doors were made of was impervious to Inej's blades and all of their brute force.

"The frames are made of metal," Kaz said.

Jesper had already worked that one out. He had also determined that his powers weren't going to help them. "They're Durast-made."

An hourglass on the wall above their heads turned over, and something hissed and clanked.

"That does not sound good."

"There's something in the air," Tolya said, looking up at an orange cloud that suddenly was streaming out of a vent above them. All of them started coughing, the air feeling close, the smoke filling their lungs.

"This is how we die." It was not at all the flashy death he had always hoped for. An ignominious poisoning in a locked room was not the ending Jesper Fahey deserved. But it appeared this was all he was destined for.

Blackness was closing in around him, his limbs going weak. And then it was over.