Title: If You're Gone, Maybe it's Time To Come Home
Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjen_enla (Wattpad)/emjenenla (Tumblr)
Teaser: (There's an awful lot of breathing room, but I can hardly move) Or Kaz goes into a downward spiral after Crooked Kingdom.
Rating: PG-13/T
Canon/Timeline: Mainstream, post-Crooked Kingdom
Dominant Characters: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, appearances of various other characters, a couple relatively minor OCs
Pairings: Kanej (Kaz/Inej), perhaps one OC/OC if you squint (and/or can read my mind)
Warnings: depression, panic attacks, anxiety, some drinking, Kaz being Kaz, Ketterdam being Ketterdam
Notes:
-I think the time has come for us all to admit that I'm not going to be posting as much as I once did. I've been really busy in the last year with school and work and my own original work. I'm not saying that I'm completely done with fanfiction, but updates might be pretty slow from now on.
-I did not intend for this to be a multi-part fic, but I was working on it tonight and realized that the part I have written (which I think it roughly half) was already over eight thousand words. I figured that I may as well release it in parts to make it a bit more manageable. I'm hoping this will be a two-part fic, but it might get up to three. Hopefully I'll be done before I go back to college at the end of August, but I'm honestly not sure what will happen.
-I read the Six of Crows Duology over Christmas break and it (mostly Kaz, let's be honest) has stuck with me ever since. This story is mostly inspired by the fact that I'm honestly really worried about Kaz now that his only real reason for living (revenge on Pekka Rollins) is gone.
Disclaimer: I don't own Six of Crows or the song "If You're Gone" by Matchbox 20.
Part One
(1)
After they beat Van Eck and Pekka Rollins, everything and nothing changes.
Kaz is now king of the Barrel. Of course, the rest of the gangs haven't figured that out yet. Everyone is expecting Rollins to eventually dig his way out of the hole he'd fallen into. The rumor of him on his knees at Kaz's feet is spreading through the Barrel like wildfire, but Rollins has been in power for so long that no can fathom the idea that his time as ruler might be over. However, Kaz knows that it's only a matter of time before that minor annoyance is rectified.
He also has four million kruge slowly siphoning into his accounts. Between that and the shares of the Crow Club and Fifth Harbor that he bought off Haskell, he figures he's easily the richest person in the Barrel and probably comfortably in the top fifty richest people in Ketterdam. Not bad for a person who was flat broke two weeks before.
Still he makes the rest of the people involved in the Ice Court job keep the payoff quiet. It won't do any of them any good for people to realize just how much kruge they're each rolling in. Kaz has built his life around stealing from the ridiculously wealthy and he'd rather not become one of those pigeons for some other angry upstart.
He should be ecstatic, even with the Council of Tides still breathing down his neck, but he's not. Firstly, Inej is leaving. He's not surprised, though, and he's not going to try to stop her. He understands why she needs to go, he just…wishes she wouldn't.
Inej and her parents stay for a few days so Inej can show them around Ketterdam. She's always with them so Kaz tries to say out of their way. Being around Mr. and Mrs. Ghafa makes him nervous. He's not positive, but he's pretty sure that Inej's parents know exactly how he feels about her. (He shouldn't be surprised, nothing says "I'm completely and totally, illogically in love with your daughter" like "I bought her a ship so she can go fulfil her purpose in life.") That transparency makes him feel uncomfortable in his own skin. He's not ashamed of what he is, but he knows that he's not the kind of boy that the Ghafas want their daughter to end up with.
(Will he and Inej end up together? He's not even sure.)
He tries to tell himself that Inej is the only thing bothering him, but if he's truly honest with himself Matthias is weighing heavily on his mind as well.
Though it's a truth he'll take it to his grave, he was not completely surprised by Matthias' death. He'd planned hundreds of possible scenarios for the auction scheme and he'd known that the chances that at least one of them wouldn't make it out were much higher than he would have liked. He'd also known that after Kuwei, he and Matthias had the worse odds of them all. If something went wrong, the rest of the gang had a chance of being able to vanish underground and wait things out. He and Matthias would be forever chased by the powerful people who wanted them dead.
Still, he hadn't mentioned any of that to Matthias. He'd told himself that he didn't want to risk Matthias backing out, but he'd known that Matthias would never back out while Nina was still in danger. There had been no excuse. Perhaps telling Matthias about the dangers would have saved his life, perhaps it wouldn't have (they still aren't sure what had happened, though Kaz has his theories). Either way, the idea of Matthias going to his death knowing it was a possibility seems like it would make things a little better.
Kaz has lost crewmembers before, but somehow Matthias weighs on him heavier than all those others. The night of the auction, after he left Van Eck's—Wylan's—house, he returned to the Slat. He made a mug of the herbal tea Inej keeps around and makes after big jobs when he feels like crud because of shear exhaustion. He couldn't get it to taste right so he corrupted it with a double dose of a painkilling tonic and couple shots of whiskey because why not. Then he downed the whole vile-tasting thing in a couple gulps. His stomach was empty so the concoction hit him hard and knocked him out in a matter of minutes. He slept until late the next morning and expected to wake up feeling more like his normal self, but he didn't.
He hadn't felt quite right since then either, but it would be okay. He'd had low times before and he always snapped out of them.
It would be okay.
(2)
Inej leaves long, long before he's ready. The night before the Wraith is due to leave, she shows up at the Slat and they spend a night wandering the city, just like they did before the Ice Court. Kaz leaves his gloves off and tries not to flinch when people come to close. Inej pretends not to notice when he fails.
"So how exactly are you planning to catch these slavers?" he asks while they're walking down an empty street even though they've already talked about this a number of times.
"Well, first I'm taking my parents back to Ravka," Inej says. "I want to see the rest of my family again, plus they'll need a ride back. While I'm there I might try to add to the crew. Papa says that I have a couple cousins who might be interested in signing on and there are a lot of purposeless Grisha in Ravka now. After that, I start looking for slavers."
"And how are you going to find them?" he asks.
"Well, I know there's a slaver hideout somewhere between here and Ravka," she says. "I don't have the crew or experience to take it now, but knowing where it is will help me to intercept individual ships."
He nods and they're quiet for a couple more minutes while he considers if he really wants to do this.
"I've thought about what you said about me helping you catch slavers," he says after what feels like an age.
"Really?" she looks at him. Her expression is passably neutral, but he knows her well enough to see the tension.
"I'll help you," he says before he loses his nerve.
A huge grin spreads across Inej's face. She moves like she's going to hug him and he leaps out of the way, wrenching his bad leg. The smile fades as she realizes what just happened. Her arms drop back to her side and her lips press together. "Thank you very much," she says formally.
The mood never quite recovers from that.
(3)
More people show up to see the Wraith off than Kaz anticipated. He hadn't realized Inej had integrated herself so well into the Dregs. Even people like Beatle and Swann who had tried to literally beat Kaz's brains out a few weeks before are there. A small group of people crowd the dock as Inej and her crew off.
Kaz leaves his gloves on. The crowd isn't big by Ketterdam standards, but the dock is narrow enough that people bump and brush up against each other. He knows that if he tried to go barehanded he'd probably end up having one of his episodes like the one in the prison cart. (He knows what the proper name for those is, but he feels less pathetic and weak when he doesn't think of them by that name.)
He waits until everyone else has finished saying goodbye to Inej before he approaches her. They stand there, staring at each other, neither knowing what to say, how they should part.
"Remember to write," Inej says. Perhaps that sounds sweet to someone who doesn't know that they ended last night by coming up with a plan on how he can get letters to her and an overly complicated code so he can send her information without blowing his involvement. There's nothing romantic about her telling him to write; it's just business.
He wishes it wasn't. He wishes he could tell her he loves her. He wishes he could throw his arms around and hold her until she agrees to stay here with him. He wishes he could kiss her just so he could know what it's like.
Instead he nods stoically, showing no hint of any of his desires. "I will," he says and the promise is too audible in his voice so he goes on with something cutting, "And try not to get killed. It would be a waste of perfectly good kruge I spend on that ship."
Her expression is somewhere between fond and disappointed. When she speaks again, her voice has dropped to a near whisper. "Kaz, about last night-"
He does not want to talk about this ever, let alone in front of all these people. "Wraith-"
"Kaz," she cuts in her voice rising slightly, but when she next speaks her voice is quiet again. "Don't give up hope, okay? Just keep trying. It'll get better." Then she reaches out, takes his gloved hand and squeezes.
He doesn't know how to respond to that, but he finds himself nodding stiffly and squeezing her hand back. They stand like that for a couple seconds. He can feel the gazes of the other people burning into him. He's uncomfortably aware that for most of these people this is probably the first time they've seen him touch someone in a way that isn't violent.
He pulls away first and steps back to put a little more space between them. "No mourners," he says because he doesn't know how to put words to what he actually wants to say.
"No funerals," she says. "Take care of yourself, Kaz."
When he doesn't respond right away she turns away and heads up the ramp onto the Wraith, leaving him in Ketterdam all alone.
"You too," he says too quietly for anyone else to hear.
(4)
The next few weeks are busy ones. Kaz consolidates his control of the Dregs and begins to use his inside knowledge of the falsity of the plague to encroach on the territories of other gangs (namely Rollins'). He begins searching for more spiders after it becomes obvious that Roeder won't be able to fill Inej's shoes on his own. He quietly starts tracking down slavers and their compatriots.
He's very busy. Given that, if he's eating and sleeping less than he should, that's okay. If he's drinking more coffee and whiskey than he probably should, that's okay too. He's a general now, not a lieutenant, he has more responsibilities than he did before (never mind that he was practically running the Dregs before the Ice Court job).
He's not trying to ignore his stubbornly lingering guilt about Matthias. He's definitely not trying to distract himself from the gaping hole in his heart and by his side where Inej is supposed to be. He's fine. Just fine, thank you very much. There's absolutely nothing wrong.
Nothing.
(5)
A month after the auction, Kaz pulls his first job as leader of the Dregs. There shouldn't be much difference between this and any other job he's ever done. After all, after the Ice Court and everything that happened afterwards, Kaz is pretty sure every job he'll ever do should seem easy.
Still, no one knows about the Ice Court, and it doesn't look like anyone ever will. This is his first job as leader of the Dregs and all the gang members in Ketterdam will be watching and waiting to see if he chokes.
That shouldn't bother him—if anything it should make him more confident—but it does.
The job is a raid on a particularly rich mercher's private jewel collection. It's a job that requires a fairly small number of members (himself, Anika, Pim, Roeder and Mina, the thirteen-year-old Grisha Heartrender he's letting try for a position as a spider). The job also doubles as a chance to look through the mercher's records to see if the vague rumors Kaz has been hearing about the man being involved in the slave trade are accurate.
The break-in goes off without a hitch. The mercher and his family are still waiting out the "plague" in a summer home and it looks like the servants have taken this as an opportunity to take a paid vacation. Once inside, he leaves the others in the showroom to bag the jewels while he goes upstairs under the pretense of doing some reconnaissance. In reality, he picks the lock on the mercher's office door and goes through the man's papers.
It takes him four and a half minutes to find the information he's looking for. Yes, the man's involved in the slave trade. Yes, he knows when the next shipment's coming in. There aren't any routes in the information, but there are locations of launches and when they're supposed to come in. That information will be a start for Inej. It takes him three minutes to memorize the information, then he puts the office back the way he found it, locks the door again and gets back to the showroom before the others have time to start wondering what was taking him so long.
The rest of the job goes off without a hitch. They're back in the Slat within a few hours a couple thousand kruge richer. As soon as he's sure everything's settled and the jewels are locked up in the big safe that only he knows the combination to, Kaz retreats to his upstairs rooms (he's taken over Per Haskell's office, but his private rooms are something else entirely). He lights a candle, gets out a sheet of paper and starts his first coded letter to Inej.
He takes all his self-control to focus on the business and not say anything pointless about how much he misses her.
(6)
He doesn't get a return letter from Inej for almost a month and when one does come it's a list of the ships they'd raided (mostly ones from that first list he'd sent her) and people rescued. Perhaps Kaz feels a little pride at knowing his information was put to good use, but mostly he wishes she'd have said something, anything about herself and how she was.
He forces those thoughts out of his head with a couple shots of whiskey, then sits down and writes her another completely impersonal letter about the new information he has for her.
(7)
Almost three months after Inej left, Kaz dreams that he's in the harbor again, swimming for his life. Not that unusual an occurrence, especially now. He would have thought that his nightmares would have gotten better after he got his revenge on Pekka Rollins, but if anything, they've gotten worse.
Still none of that matters in this moment. He struggles to keep hold of the corpse under his arms and struggles to keep kicking towards the lights of Ketterdam which never seem to get any closer. His breaths burn in his throat, his teeth chatter from the cold, his chest is tight with fear.
A wave washes over his head. He almost loses his grip on the corpse but manages to pull himself back onto it at the last moment. He blinks saltwater out of his eyes, harsh breaths that are just a little like sobs ripping out of his body.
Then he looks down and realizes the corpse he's clinging to isn't Jordie's but Inej's.
He jolts back to reality in his bed in the Slat, blankets twisted around his legs, sweat soaking through his shirt and sticking it to his chest and back. He takes two heaving breaths before he turns and vomits over the side of the bed onto the floor.
When he's done he collapses onto his side and twists his bare hands into the sheets. He's been trying not to wear the gloves as much so he can surprise Inej if she comes back (when she comes back, Kaz tells himself, when), but now he wishes he was wearing them. He's sure that if he was just wearing the gloves he could deal with this, but they're lying on his desk in the other room and he's shaking too hard to make it in there to get them.
He curls up in a ball, biting the insides of his cheeks so hard he tastes blood. He stares at the opposite wall until his vision starts to tunnel. Images both from his memory and from the dream play over and over in his head. He can't stop shaking.
He lies there, almost too afraid to blink as the night drags by and sunlight starts to slowly creep into the room.
The sun is quite high by the time he's able to get up and go retrieve his gloves.
(8)
Inej comes back to Ketterdam two weeks later. Kaz meets her on the dock under the pretense of having just been passing by. He can tell she doesn't believe him, but he finds that he doesn't really care. He's just happy to be near her again. Her quiet, steady presence relaxes and completes him. He feels more like himself than he has in months. Which is relieving, but also a little scary, mostly because he hadn't realized he wasn't feeling right until it stopped.
"So, you managed not to die or destroy my investment," he says jerking his head at the Wraith.
Her smile is superficially fond, but he can see disappointment underneath it. Her eyes shift to his hands, encased in his gloves. She doesn't say anything but he knows what she wants.
"Sorry," he says beginning to peal the gloves off. "Forgot." His stomach clenches into a series of knots. He's been wearing his gloves constantly since the nightmare, because the thought of that happening again gives him cold sweats. He feels ashamed; he really wanted to be less reliant on the gloves the next time they saw each other.
He doesn't mention any of this as he tucks his gloves into his coat, careful not to let his hands shake. Inej is studying him, with her head cocked to the side. He expects her to have noticed his nerves, but what she says is, "You look tired."
He doesn't know how to tell her that he's been trying to avoid sleeping as much as possible because he's terrified of having a nightmare about clinging to her corpse again, so he just gives her a thin smile. "Been busy."
Now her smile is definitely fond, he feels like he's floating. "You do know that even demons need to sleep, don't you, Kaz?"
(9)
She leaves again long before he's ready. Again, he wants to beg her to stay, again his bites his tongue and covers his true feelings with biting comments. Still he stands on the dock and watches until long after the Wraith has vanished over the horizon. Though he'll never admit it, he's hoping she'll realize that there's more for her here with him than out at sea.
That's ridiculous though, Inej is nothing if not a noble person. There are a lot of people in the world who need her way more than one demon-boy in the city of Ketterdam.
By the time he heads back to Slat, a cold rain has started to fall.
(10)
Several months later, the Razorgulls start a gang war with the Dregs. People have been slowly realizing that Pekka Rollins is not coming back. That makes things more difficult for Kaz. He's been slowly moving the Dregs into Rollins' holdings since the plague scare. Up until this point, people have just been letting him, assuming that he'll regret it once Rollins comes back. Now that it doesn't look like that's going to happen, people realize that Kaz has been allowed to snag a huge amount of territory with little to no resistance.
The conflict with the Razorgulls comes down to a massive fight through the streets of the Barrel while the stadwatch stands by helpless to control the violence. Torches light up the night until it's nearly like day as Kaz chases the Razorgulls general through the alleys near the fighting.
He comes out into a dark dead end and the general is nowhere in sight. He has half a second to wonder where he went before the man leaps on him from behind wrapping bare forearms around Kaz's neck in a headlock.
The waters rise up before Kaz has time to breathe and he drops like a stone. Within instants the other general is on top of him, one bare hand around Kaz's throat and the other punching him in the face. He was probably yelling, but Kaz couldn't hear him over the ringing in his ears.
Kaz can't breathe, he can't think. He struggles against the weight of the body on top of him, looking for a way out. Eventually he gets his fingers around one of his hidden knives and stabs it into the other general's stomach. The man's grip loosens and Kaz is able to shove him off. He finishes the job, then collapses against the wall gasping.
He waits until he's no longer shaking like a Grisha on parem before he drags the general's body up onto a high balcony above the main body of the battle. He declares the war over and gives the Razorgulls an ultimatum: join the Dregs or die.
Unsurprisingly most of them opt to join the Dregs.
That surrender takes place a few hours before dawn but it's still well into the afternoon by the time Kaz gets back to his rooms. He's profoundly exhausted in a way he hasn't been since the Ice Court and he can't quite shake the tremors from the memory of someone else's hands around his neck. He collapses onto his bed and loses his grip on the world.
He wakes up late the next morning by Anika pounding on his door with a list of questions, as exhausted as he was when he fell asleep.
(11)
The surrender of the Razorgulls nearly doubles the size of the Dregs. Granted, it'll be a while before he can actually trust any of these new recruits, but the Barrel runs on strength. Kaz is confident he can win them all over given time.
One of the more interesting new members is a scrawny eleven-year-old boy. He's newly orphaned and worked cleaning chamber pots in one of the Razorgulls' hideouts. His name is Espen and his eyes gleam with the same cold, calculating anger Kaz sees in himself every time he looks in a mirror.
Perhaps Kaz should take Espen under his wing and attempt to put the boy back together in a way better than the way he put himself together. Perhaps he would if he was a better person. Perhaps he would if the mere thought of putting up with another person's issues on top of his own wasn't utterly exhausting.
So, he doesn't try to help. Instead his foists the kid on Mina and tells her to teach him to be a spider instead.
Maybe that will be enough.
(12)
His letters to Inej are starting to get out of hand.
Not the ones he actually sends to her; those are just as impersonal as always. It's the drafts of those letters that are starting to become problematic.
They've gotten long.
Kaz has always been a master of brevity when it comes to letters. He can normally fit anything he could possibly need to say to anyone into under a page. His average letter is only a couple sentences.
The drafts of his letters to Inej go on for pages and pages.
His words scrawl across the paper, rambling in ways that don't sound like him, and to make matters worse, he's not really talking about anything. He does talk about the Dregs and Ketterdam news sometimes, but mostly he just talks about how much he misses her and begs her to come back and stay with him.
He realizes that this is getting beyond ridiculous the night he writes almost thirty pages of a logical, step-by-step argument for why she should abandon her quest to bring justice to the slavers and return to being his spider.
He stares at the letter for a long time, a strange feeling of disgust and fear swirling inside him. He can't possibly send something like this to Inej. Hunting slavers is her purpose, and she will keep doing it no matter what. All this letter would do is guarantee that she really will never come back.
He crumbles the letter into a ball and throws it into the fire. Then he starts another draft. He intends for this one to be a short, to-the-point passing of information, but somehow it devolves into an even longer argument. This one is about how he is a horrible, corrupt person with no hope for anything better and how Inej would really be better off if she left him behind and never looked back.
The sun has risen by the time he finishes this letter. He sits at his desk and stares blankly at the letter. He images that a normal person would probably be crying right now, but there are no tears for him. There haven't been since that night in the harbor all those years ago. It's like something about that night locked all his tears up somewhere inside him and threw away the key. He hasn't been able to cry since, even as an act.
So, his eyes are dry as he looks at the letter, but his chest is tight. He has never hated himself, never felt a sliver of shame about what he is, but he feels it now. If only he wasn't like this, maybe Inej wouldn't have left him. Sure, she's come back a couple times, but how long will it be before she realizes how much better off she is without him in her life and stops coming back? How long before she leaves him completely alone?
The sunlight creeps into his room. The Slat is coming awake around him. He has a million things to do. He's the leader of the Dregs, he has everything as long as he does the things he needs to do. He knows that he needs to get moving, but he doesn't want to. He's empty and sad and so incredibly tired.
So, for the first time that he can remember, Kaz Brekker ignores his responsibilities, he shoves the letter aside, pillows his head on his arms and hopes things will be better when he wakes up.
They aren't.
(13)
Kaz is tired.
He's used to being tired—he has a tendency to ignore things like sleep when on big jobs and doesn't sleep a normal amount even when he's not on jobs—but normally he can just slam a couple cups of coffee and be fine. This is something different. Even with his veins seemingly swimming with coffee, he still finds himself fighting against a deep-seated exhaustion. Even sleep doesn't seem to shake it, even though he's sleeping more than he normally does.
He tells himself that it's no big deal. He knows that his sleeping habits are unhealthy, and if they're finally catching up to him, Inej would probably say it's for the best. It's not like he's sleeping an insane amount, anyway. If anything, he's probably just sleeping a normal amount now and it just seems like a lot because he's not used to it. It will only take him some time to adjust.
Still, he is tired and it's hard to care about any of the things that used to take up his full attention. He hasn't destroyed the letter. He keeps it tucked carefully away in one of the drawers of his dresser, nestled among his ties and spare pairs of gloves. He takes it out and reads it sometimes, as a reminder of why he's so lucky for the chances he's had with Inej and why he should never expect too much.
(14)
He, Roeder, Mina and Espen are on a job. They get in easy enough, but while they're bagging the man's inappropriately stuffed safe, the owner of the house comes home. They all freeze in shock when they hear the front door open. Kaz had calculated that they had another hour and a half before the mercher came home from his mistress' house. For a few blank seconds, all Kaz can think is "How was I so wrong?" then survival instincts kick in.
"Clear out," he orders and they make for the windows.
They aren't fast enough. Within minutes the stadwatch are on their tails. They're crossing over the river when one of the stadwatch gets lucky and hits Roeder. The oldest spider takes a dive over the edge of the bridge and into the water. Mina skids to a stop on the bridge and stares over. "Dirtyhands!" she yells (he has never heard her call him anything else, even Brekker) "You need to do something! Espen and I are too small!"
A voice whispers that he should just let Roeder die, but he needs Roeder. Roeder is the only one of the spiders who's obviously useful in a fight and he's not about to lose that advantage.
"Take care of the stadwatch," he tells Mina giving her a look he hopes she interprets it correctly. Then he thrusts his cane into Espen's hands. "Be careful with that; it's worth more than your life," he says then vaults over the side of the bridge and into the water.
Kaz knows how to swim; he is honest enough about his own life to know that is a useful skill, but he doesn't like it. The water in the river tonight is cold and the memory of the barge returns. Still he does his best to push it down and he lunges to Roeder.
He grabs the back of the spider's shirt and pulls him into his chest. He wraps his other arm around Roeder's chest and almost immediately has one of the biggest flashbacks he's ever had. He is nine years old in the harbor clinging to Jordie's body, he has little to no recognition of ever being anything else. His head goes under and the only thing that keep him from shoving Roeder's body away is the belief that he is Jordie and the only thing keeping him drowning.
His free hand strikes something hard. He grabs on and manages to drag his head above water. His mind is whirl of panic and revulsion. He knows that he needs to get out of the water, but the panic is so much that he can't move.
When another hand clasps around his arm, he loses himself completely and trashes, letting go of whatever he was holding onto completely in an attempt to get away. The hand doesn't let go, actually another joins it and jerks him to a stop just as his head goes under again.
The next moment his heartrate starts to slow and the edges of his panic fade. He realizes that his head is underwater and kicks until he's above the water again and can get a gasp of air. His vision clears and he realizes the person attached to the hands holding his arm is Mina. She's kneeling on the pier he grabbed onto, water sticking her mouse-brown hair to her face and her gray eyes wide. She's using her abilities to lower his heartrate.
Mina helps him pull Roeder and himself out of the river and they drag the spider onto the shore together. Immediately, Mina pulls Roeder's shirt open and positions her hands over his chest. Kaz knows that she'll now use her powers to draw the water out of his lungs. She'll do it carefully so no one knows exactly what she did. It's still dangerous to be a Grisha in Ketterdam, so Mina keeps her powers carefully under wraps. Kaz isn't even sure if Roeder and Espen know she's a Heartrender. She would have been careful to find a very subtle way to incapacitate the stadwatch when he ordered her to.
Kaz just wants to collapse and not move until he can breathe again, but the instant Mina starts tending to Roeder, Espen is in his face.
"What was that?" the little boy snarls with an expression that even Kaz will admit is slightly demonic. "What is wrong with you?"
"What are you talking about?" Kaz asks more to buy time than anything else. He almost winces at how wrong his voice sounds.
"You were supposed to save Roeder, not freeze and make Mina pull you out!" Espen has his face in very close to Kaz's, so close that flecks of the boy's spit hit Kaz's cheeks. "What kind of general are you?"
Kaz wants to pull away and put miles of distance between himself and every other human in Ketterdam, but he forces himself to react to Espen's taunts and closeness in the way that helped to earn him his reputation, the way that will save face.
He punches the kid in the jaw.
Espen, for all his bravado, does not know how to take a punch. The kid goes sprawling across the ground, gasping. Mina looks on in surprise. Kaz takes a fortifying breath and stands up even though his legs feel no more solid than the water he almost drowned in both tonight and all those years ago.
"You really should learn that you're not in charge here," he tells Espen, keeping his voice steady through sheer force of will. "You only have a place in this gang because you the good you outweighs the annoyance of putting up with you. Understand?"
Espen is staring. For once, he's actually wearing an expression other than anger. He looks shocked and a little scared. His mouth opens and closes mutely.
"I'll take that as a yes," Kaz snarls. "Now, what did you do with my cane?"