Six of Crows: Chapter 14: Nina Summary & Analysis

Nina struggles to heal Inej’s body. She’s not trained for this: she’s a killer, a Heartrender, and killing is easier than healing. Having done all she can, Nina monitors Inej’s breathing and heartrate, and she inspects the lack of tattoos on Inej’s arms. The Menagerie tattoo has been removed badly, leaving scars; and Inej isn’t tattooed with the Dregs’ crow and cup. That’s strange, especially given how close Kaz and Inej seem to be. Losing herself in memories, Nina thinks of Zoya, a Grisha leader who’d grudgingly agreed to send Nina out on her first mission. Now, Jesper interrupts Nina’s thoughts: he’s looking for Matthias’s leg shackles. He suddenly becomes serious, says Inej can’t die, and leaves. 

As she sits with Inej, Nina thinks of how Zoya and the other Grisha wanted to save Grisha from the drüskelle and rebuild the Second Army in Ravka. They sent Grisha out to find others living in secret, which is how Nina ended up traveling with Zoya to the Wandering Isle. They’d recruited several Grisha—and then, when Zoya hurt Nina’s feelings, Nina had stormed off, right into a drüskelle camp. They took her hostage, and to protect her colleagues, Nina didn’t reveal she was Ravkan or scream for help. The drüskelle chained her up in a ship with other Grisha and fed their prisoners only enough to keep them alive. The young Fjerdans often came belowdecks to taunt the prisoners.

Then, one day, an older drüskelle commanding officer came belowdecks: Jarl Brum, the “monster waiting in the dark” who transformed the drüskelle into a huge, deadly force and began leading raids on Grisha in other countries and even on slave ships. He told the Grisha they’d stand trial for their crimes, praised the young drüskelle, and left. The young drüskelle, pleased with their work, discussed raping Nina, but the handsome one who captured Nina (Matthias) spat that it’d be like having sex with a dog. Matthias was the last drüskelle belowdecks, and Nina had asked him what her crime was and if any Grisha are ever found innocent. He refused to answer and called her a witch, but he brought her fresh water when she begged. Later, the tin cup in the water bucket saved her life.

Now, back in the present, Nina jerks awake. Inej is still asleep and stable, and Matthias is standing in the doorway. Reminding herself that Matthias is a murderer, Nina taunts him by speaking in Fjerdan, and even makes his heart race when he threatens her. She feels immediately bad, though, and turns her attention to Inej. Matthias wants to know if Inej will live. He cares because Inej is a fellow human—and Nina knows that the subtext is that she, a Grisha, is not. When Matthias asks how Nina knows about the White Rose, she shows him her tattoo denoting that she works there, but she doesn’t tell him she didn’t engage in sex work. She explains that she stayed in Kerch to try to get Matthias out of Hellgate, since her mistake landed him there.

As Matthias and Nina argue, Matthias notes that the bruises he left on Nina’s neck are gone. She understands that he’s a decent person inside after spending weeks alone with him after the shipwreck, but he had to “[fight] his own decency” to become a drüskelle. Now, they discuss what they’ve dreamed of over the last year. Matthias admits that he always dreamed of Nina, and he admits that he once loved her.