Toss 'em in the bushes before they make too much noise.

She can drop them into a light unconsciousness first - and can snap in Fjerdan, her voice suddenly deep and commanding, at the remaining prisoners who try to make any noise, pitching her voice to not carry forward. 

And the Dregs can don the prisoner disguises and take their places on the express VIP bus to the Ice Court.

They need to have the hoods placed, and be shackled to each other - Inej gets the door shut and more or less secured after them, it isn't perfect but it'll hold up to a cursory inspection - and Kaz needs to lock everyone in, as they press and crowd into the wagon - 

And needs to lock herself in. 

There's a lot of people here. It's hard - impossible - to avoid touch. 

Yeah, well, that's what the coat and gloves are for. And she knew this was likely coming.

Inej, at least, tries to give her space, tries to lessen the impact. 

Yeah. Kaz mostly concentrates on the solid wood wall at her back.

It's a long, slow road to the Ice Court. 

They aren't discovered, though, not even when the guards give the doors a perfunctory shake - nor at any of the headcounts, which the outposts are lazy about, not even bothering to unhood the prisoners - 

Though the intake at the actual prison intake is much, much stricter, and does demand they be unhooded, and matches them to the descriptions of prisoners on their list. 

- Which causes some problems with Inej especially, and one of the prison guards says in annoyed Fjerdan, "We were expecting a Shu boy. This is clearly a Suli girl. What are you doing down there?"

"We didn't send up the lists," one of the wagon drivers says. "And the list isn't our problem. I need to get back downhill in thirty minutes."

The prison guard frowns. "We'll need to call down the hill..."

The wagon driver groans... And the second prison guard, a tired-looking man with greying hair who favors his knees, says, "It's end of shift, and you'll tie all of us up at least an hour... Come on, just let the next shift sort this out."

They set to bickering about the idea - and about whose fault the incorrect manifest is, and whose responsibility it is to investigate...

'This is somebody else's problem' seems to be winning the day as an argument, and the next shift apparently isn't here to plead their case about it not being their problem. 

Have the involved parties all carefully considered that a rather large wolf is now sitting quite close to the guard post, watching this argument with a demeanor that might be best characterized as "impatient"?

(...She'd know that wolf anywhere.)

It's natural to stare. 

It's hard to stare correctly. Not like she just glimpsed a missing portion of her soul. 

...Eh, you know who else's problem this can be? The druskelle theoretically in charge of final intake and policing. The wagon was late and everyone's been standing in the cold for forever, and they'd like to get off shift eventually for the parties... And their window for opening the gate is only so long. 

The prisoners are loaded back into the wagon, and they signal the gate to open. 

The next time they're let out, they're in an inner courtyard, the imposing inner prison doors before them. (The wolf is, by the by, being given free run of the place until and unless someone who outranks the random soldiers here contradicts that.)

Good, then the wolf doesn't have to rip anyone's throat out. Yet.

(...Hopefully it doesn't give the game away. Nina knows why that wolf's here, even if the rest of the Dregs don't.)

Druskelle work here and the wolves are considered a badge of office so are allowed to wander around more than they should; an isenvulf coming to supervise without their accompanying druskelle isn't that weird, fortunately - and none of the guards can actually tell the wolves apart.

Which means that, so far, none of the guards are treating the wolf as anything other than a commanding officer that's randomly swung by. Probably for an inspection. They're going to be very efficient now about having these passengers checked one by one by their enslaved amplifier, to make sure no one is grisha (they're not thorough enough for the paraffin wax to not work to hide the grisha), and about sorting people into the male or female groups to be searched and then imprisoned in one of the large cells for later more detailed sorting. 

Very fortunately, no actual (current) druskelle swing by to do a surprise inspection.

Unfortunately (but as expected), Jesper is going to be separated from everyone else, and the women in the group are going to be shepherded into a cell where they're actually a slim majority of prisoners - Fjerda doesn't bring a lot of women to the Ice Court's prisons.

The wolf sits down next to the door.

"What's up with the dog?"

...Even speaking in Kerch might be risky...

"They're companions to witch hunters," she says, carefully. 

Pretty calm for a witch hunting dog in the presence of two witches. Maybe it won't be what fucks them over today.

...This is going to affect their escape plan. So she should probably signal or say something. 

"...I know her." She takes a deep breath and looks Kaz in the face and proceeds to tell some utter bullshit. "She's my brother's." And then her voice cracks, genuinely, honestly: "I thought she was dead. Since - he is." 

"Will it be a problem."

"No." She's very confident that, despite being named 'troublemaker,' Trassel could never be a problem. 

"It's a good break."

"Then we proceed as planned."

'As planned' requires Jana hiding the waste bucket - the female guard who comes around at exactly six bells asks after it but doesn't bother searching when it isn't immediately apparent - and then popping a small pellet out of a slit near her ankle that Nina created, ignoring the pain from this - and then removing the protective wrap on the little pellet - 

And calling out in Kerch, "A storm's coming."

It's a signal for the crew to cover their mouths, close their eyes, and try to hold their breath until the gas from the pellet she's about to drop in the bucket dissipates. 

Of course, everyone who didn't get that warning is about to hit the floor. 

She doesn't know what chloroform does to wolves -

But she's got line of sight to Trassel, and the druskelle have a lot of ways of coordinating quietly. 

So she angles her body to hide what she's doing from the other prisoners - hopefully also her own crew - and flashes through the hand signals for 'gas danger.' 

(It's amazing what things routinely come up when you're trying to capture Fabrikators alive.)

The wolf gets up and trots around the corner.