Inej’s climb up the incinerator shaft illustrates how people can find purpose through pain and suffering, while the incinerator shaft itself represents adversity. Kaz’s plan to break into the Fjerdan Ice Court has his crew entering through the prison and accessing the rest of the Ice Court by climbing up the prison’s six-story incinerator shaft. This would be an impossible feat for most, and it is still an extremely difficult challenge for Inej, who’s known as the Wraith for her almost unbelievable climbing abilities. Due to her skill, Inej is the first one up the shaft—and she free climbs it, carrying 70 pounds of rope, while the incinerator is still hot.
However, it isn’t always clear that Inej will be successful in her climb. Indeed, she seems doomed to fail, first because she’s still recovering from major injuries when she makes the climb, and second because the heat from the incinerator burns her fingers and melts her special rubber shoes. Additionally, Inej finds the climb emotionally difficult as she mulls over the choices she’s made and the trauma she’s suffered that brought her to this moment—to the point where it briefly seems worthless to push forward. Inej finds the will to keep climbing, however, as she realizes her life needs a purpose beyond just getting up the shaft so Kaz can carry out the rest of the heist. Inej decides to purchase a ship, hire a crew, and hunt slavers like the ones who sold her into slavery in Kerch, which she can only do if she completes the climb. Bolstered with this newfound purpose, Inej is able to climb the shaft, despite it still being immensely painful (her rubber shoes melt to her feet). Her climb thus suggests the power and importance of finding a motivating purpose to push through adversity.
The Incinerator Shaft Quotes in Six of Crows
“I’ll go back in a minute. I just needed some air. And don’t feign concern for Inej when you’re planning to send her climbing up six stories of chimney with only a rope and a prayer.”
“The Wraith can manage it.”
“The Wraith is a sixteen-year-old girl currently lying unconscious on a table. She may not even survive the night.”
“When Kaz got Per Haskell to pay off my indenture with the Menagerie, the first thing I did was have the peacock feather tattoo removed.”
“Whoever took care of it did a pretty rough job.”
“He wasn’t a Corporalnik or even a medik.” Just one of the half-knowledgeable butchers who plied their trade among the desperate of the Barrel. He’d offered her a slug of whiskey, then simply hacked away at the skin, leaving a puckered spill of wounds down her forearm. She hadn’t cared. The pain was liberation. They had loved to talk about her skin at the House of Exotics. It was like coffee with sweet milk. It was like burnished caramel. It was like satin. She welcomed every cut of the knife and the scars it left behind.
She would hunt the slavers and their buyers. They would learn to fear her, and they would know her by her name. The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true. She clung to the wall, but it was purpose she grasped at long last, and that carried her upward.
She was not a lynx or a spider or even the Wraith. She was Inej Ghafa, and her future was waiting above.
Inej looked down at the fingers digging into her flesh. For a brief second, every horror came back to her, and she truly was a wraith, a ghost taking flight from a body that had given her only pain. No. A body that had given her strength. A body that had carried her over the rooftops of Ketterdam, that had served her in battle, that had brought her up six stories in the dark of a soot-stained chimney.
“Let’s buy the Menagerie.”
Inej grinned, thinking of the future and her little ship. “Let’s buy it and burn it down.”
They watched the waves for a while. “Ready?” Nina said.
Inej was glad she hadn’t had to ask. She pushed up her sleeve, baring the peacock feather and mottled skin beneath it.
It took the barest second, the softest brush of Nina’s fingertips. The itch was acute but passed quickly. When the prickling faded, the skin of Inej’s forearm was perfect—almost too smooth and flawless, like it was the one new part of her.
“How will you have me?” she repeated. “Fully clothed, gloves on, your head turned away so our lips can never touch?”
He released her hand, his shoulders bunching, his gaze angry and ashamed as he turned his face to the sea.
Maybe it was because his back was to her that she could finally speak the words. “I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.”
The Incinerator Shaft Symbol Timeline in Six of Crows
