INEJ
"Cheers fer da captain, fer widout da Wraith, we drink water 'stead o' wine! Hip Hip?"
"Hooray!"
It was a raucous night in the small fishing village of Geren, as far west in Ravka you could go without drowning in the True Sea. The rambunctious crew of the infamous schooner, the Wraith, ate twice their weight in meats and drank just as much, celebrating another successful night of slaver hunting. Their charges celebrated too, trading their chains for pints of lager and bowls of peanuts. Some of them danced, some of them sang, but most of them just stared into the corner where Inej Ghafa, her long inky hair taken down from its knot to dry, nursed a steaming cup in silence.
She held up her tin in greeting, eliciting gasps from the girls and boys who could have not been more than thirteen years old. Inej stared into the red liquid, wrapping her cold hands around the cup in an attempt to chase away the chill that weeks on open water always caused. She was taken once, stolen from her parents' covered wagon when she was only a bit older than they were. Sold into slavery in a country where she couldn't understand, much less communicate with the people around her. She remembered the torture, the humiliation. She also remembered that killing was sometimes the only way to keep yourself and the ones you love safe.
It seemed like lifetimes ago, when she had last seen her friends. Wylan, just growing into his newly reclaimed skin, his golden curls like sunshine on a rainy day; Jesper, whose constant optimism and companionship she had come to miss; Nina and her awful singing voice filling a rocking boat cabin towards a mission they didn't know they'd survive through; Matthias, the kind and pious Fjerdan who didn't.
And Kaz.
Seven years had passed since she'd last seen the man known as Dirtyhands, but Inej could still remember what it felt like when he reached out to her for the first time, his skin, white and as soft as satin. Could still taste his lips when he kissed her during the occasions they found themselves alone. She remembered the first scathing argument that had caused a rift between them, irreparable. Could still feel the excitement that had settled in her bones, the fear that had coursed through her veins as she set sail with Kerch behind her, no intention of returning.
Inej upturned the drink, reveling in how the sharp cider chased away her memories.
"Well well well. I didn't know the Wraith drank like the rest of us heathens."
Luca Pavlov plopped down into the stool beside her, letting out a long sigh and making a show of stretching the kinks from his broad, muscled shoulders. Inej rolled her eyes as the navigator gestured to the bartender for another tumbler of brandy.
"I don't drink," she said simply.
Luca looked incredulous as the bartender handed him a glass.
Inej had met Luca a year she had left Ketterdam, on her crew's first major raid. It was a nice night, the frosty chill withstanding. There was not a cloud in the sky as her crew worked by moonlight, Inej herself vaulting over the black water from her deck to theirs, attaching the rope ladder so her men could cross.
They had managed to free or kill all the people on board within the hour, save for the sinewy man with hair the color of acorns that surrendered from the crow's nest.
"I'm but a mercenary for hire," he had said, his green eyes like spring grass.
Inej had scoffed, pointing at him with her dagger. "You sell yourself to slavers?" Venom laced her words.
His expression hardened, a lake frozen over in the winter. His eyes were emeralds.
"I do what I must to survive," His voice was thick. Unnerving.
Inej had pondered the words since then. She wondered now, turning the empty tin cup in her palms, its warmth long gone, where she would be if she had killed her first mate like her gut had told her to.
There was certainly a time when she had to do anything she could to survive. Most times, it was hard, unbearable. But if she didn't chose to survive, she wouldn't have traveled the world, wouldn't have met the people who surrounded her, her crew, whom she would trust with her life. She wouldn't have reunited with her parents, rejoined her Suli troupe, her family, even if it was only for a short while. She would have never become friends with Wylan or Jesper or Nina or Matthias. She wouldn't have fallen in love with Kaz Brekker.
Am I any better for it? Inej thought to herself, almost amused by the irony.
Jeering at memories long past, she signaled the barkeep for another cider, ready to succumb to it's lenitive warmth.
That was, until she felt a hand brush her side.
Immediately, she was the Wraith once more. Inej drew her blade, Sankt Petyr, in the blink of an eye. As if it was that night at the Exchange, all those years ago. As if she had never left Ketterdam at all.
Some aspects of seafaring were challenging, she thought to herself as she allowed her knife to pierce skin. It was difficult to balance on the prow of her shipas it bobbed up and down on the water, and her toes could scale gables better than any manila, but Inej would never forget how to use her claws. She didn't want to, and she suspected she never would. It was second nature to her, an extension of herself. She would have to pray to her gods later for the rumble of satisfaction that rolled through her as she jabbed the blade deeper into the perpetrator's neck.
The frivolity of the night ceased; it was like everyone in the pub had suddenly forgotten how to speak. Newly freed slaves dove under the tables, stifling their cries as each crew member aimed their pistols towards their captain like some sort of choreographed dance. No one made a sound. Luca seized the stranger from behind, his arms like iron bars.
The stranger's hood fell away.
"You're-" Luca growled, furious.
"Let him go," Inej ordered, her knife still at the ready.
The navigator threw her a dubious glare but did as he was told, his muscles tense.
Inej mustered a warm smile and gestured towards the frightened children underneath the tables. "Don't worry, everyone," she said, a pinch in her heart at the fear that spelled itself across their faces. "Business as usual. My friend and I are just going to have a little chat."
One by one, her crew loosened their grips on their pistols, sheathed their knives, and resumed their rhetoric. In no time, the bar was echoing with the brash atmosphere Inej had come to expect.
She made sure to smile again as she led the stranger, her knife in his side, towards the darkest corner of the pub. Luca had once told her, after she refused to accompany him to yet another tavern celebration, that she was doing her crew a disservice by declining to celebrate and drink with them at night.
"They look up to you," he had said, his expression aloof, but his eyes hard. "They trust your word, they trust you. But you have to show them that you are listening."
Now, however, was not a time for listening
"And what-" Inej asked, lowering her voice so that it was masked by the noise around her. "-pray tell, an Os Altan runner doing in a fishing town like Geren?"
Despite the precarious situation he was in, the runner smiled, revealing two rows of crooked teeth. He reached into his robe and Inej pressed harder with her blade. He slowed, holding up his hands, clutching a letter with an wax seal the color of the sky.
I
I
JESPER
Weather on the plains of Shu Han was deceiving. During the day it was hot and dry. The animals gathered under the spotted trees, vying for shade, and the grasses were orange from lack of anything to drink. During the night, however, it was cold, frozen wasteland. The air was so bitter that most people avoided leaving their homes for fear the cold would eat them alive.
Jesper, however, didn't mind.
If he hadn't personally driven the stakes into the frozen ground, nothing more than a hot knife through butter in his Grisha hands, he would have been afraid of the tent blowing away with the next howl of wind. But it stayed in place, keeping whatever heat it could, the elements raging beyond. As he lay on his double wide cot, his bare body exposed to the frosty breeze coming in through the poorly constructed hide shelter, he wasn't cold. After the Ice Court job, he didn't know if his body recognized what being cold was anymore.
Like it always did, Jesper's mind wandered to Ketterdam. He hadn't realized it until he had been gone from the place for four years; it wasn't normal to yearn for somewhere that had caused him so much pain.
His father had once called him a glutton for punishment, and Jesper didn't rebuke him because he knew it was partly true. Ketterdam was the beginning of a lot of things for him. Some of those things were good: his friendships with the Dregs. His rep as the best sniper in the Stave. His whirlwind romance with the strawberry blond merchling who had stumbled into his heart.
Jesper remembered the last time he had seen Wylan van Eck. The argument that had ended it all with the merchling was on the day of Colm Fahey's funeral. It was no different from any other day in Ketterdam: overcast, drizzling, and bone numbingly cold. Jesper remembered feeling, among other things, confused. Surely when he felt so miserable, so tired, like his soul was being crushed into a million pieces, the world would show some kind of reaction. But it was a normal day like any other. Jesper didn't know if that was when he had begun to hate the city or if it had started before that.
The world didn't move for people like him. It never did.
Jesper had rolled every asset he had, called in every favor, duped as many pigeons as he could, but he still couldn't gather enough money to send himself and his father home. It was where he would have wanted to be buried, Jesper knew, next to his mother on the golden plains of Noyvi Zem.
When the young merchling tried to get involved, Jesper had lost it.
The curses they had exchanged echoed through his mind like a church bell. Curt, terrible words that one human being should have never said aloud to another. Jesper loosed a long breath and scrubbed his eyes with his rough hands, willing the memory away. There was no use thinking about it now.
Now, he roamed Shu Han with the performance troupe Henrie Howlers as Genja the Sharp, the masked marksman from the uncharted West. After years of living as the guy always in the red, it was nice to be anonymous for a while. The audience didn't know that he was a screw up. They didn't know that when he was on stage he let his mind go blank. That the only thing he worried about at that moment was the way his pearl handled revolvers felt in his palm. The way the gun powder stung his nostrils. The way the crowd's cheers made him forget how much he had lost.
"What's your problem, Gen?"
Jesper glanced at the naked form beside him.
Belinda Bering was Henrie's voluptuous ticket taker and she screwed like a rabbit on jurda. She lit a stick of it and inhaled, filling the tent with its sweet scent and orange smoke. Jesper's eyes traced the swell of her breasts, the flush in her white skin, the gleam of her red hair that brought another red mop to mind...
He laughed aloud, though he didn't mean to. It was a loud, barking laugh, not real, but he did it anyway because acknowledging the hole in his gut would have been worse. Four years, and Wylan Van Eck was still the only thing on his mind.
"If I had a crow bar, I would hit you with it," Belinda said, tugging the shared blanket away from him.
One wouldn't know it from her bedside manner, but Belinda was quite pleasant at the ticket booth. In fact, it was common knowledge that Bel was the only reason the haughty Shu Han even looked the way of Henrie Howler's, poored their coffers into it every weekend. The troupe said it was because she was born and raised in the Southern Colonies, where women weren't as feisty or opinionated as the rest of the world but Jesper knew it was because no one, not even a rigid Shu merch, could ignore her generous cleavage.
"You should sleep in your own tent then," Jes retorted, stealing the jurda from her lips and taking a drag. He yanked the blanket off her as she squealed in protest. "Then you wouldn't have to deal with it."
Belinda sat up and shivered. Jesper scoffed again, enjoying the honey scent that she left behind as he wrapped himself in the blanket. After slipping on her discarded dress she turned around, her hands on her hips, appraising him.
"I can't," she stated, her eyes steady. "I sold everything. I'm following the nomads tomorrow to the coast. My summer job starts in three days."
Though he could vaguely recall her telling him about this, he couldn't find it in himself to care.
"Oh. I'm sorry to see you go," he said, staring up at the tent and taking another drag.
"Bullshit," she retorted, smiling. "But I appreciate the sentiment."
Henrie Howler's was a traveling carnival. No one ever stayed for too long, so it shouldn't have surprised him that Belinda, a girl from the Southern Colonies, wanted more than the barren fields of Shu Han.
But... if Jesper could admit anything to himself, he could admit that he had found comfort in her presence. With her it was just sex. Good sex. And that was what he needed.
"What's the job?" Jesper asked, noncommittally. What business?
Her eyes glittered as she plopped down next to him again, her feet waving through the air.
"There's a new liner, Jes, Le Plaisir," she squeed. "As tall as the Northern mountains and thrice as big. Made of gold and diamonds and all the things that rich people like. The captain spotted me at our show yesterday night, liked me so much that he hired me on the spot," she grabbed his hands and lined her palm with his. He noticed, for the first time, that her nails were bitten down to the quick, bloody and ragged. Jesper frowned when she spoke again.
"I'm gonna travel the world, Jes. Like the ladies of yore."
"You mean you're going to travel the world serving the ladies of yore."
"Same thing."
Jesper couldn't help but be happy for her. If anyone he knew deserved happiness, it was Belinda. Kind, sarcastic, but ever warm Belinda. He closed his hand around hers and squeezed.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, digging into the folds of her dress. She pulled out a crumpled envelope, its pale blue seal stark against the parchment. "He left this for you. I think he was an admirer."
Jesper steeled. No one left him notes, not since his father had passed.
He broke open the seal and scanned the letter, a familiar tickling of fear and suffocating excitement rushing through his gut, humming through his veins
"Hey B," It took effort to keep his voice even. "Could you get me onto that liner?"
I
I
WYLAN
"Sir, you've a letter. Shall I put it on your desk in the forgery?"
Wylan van Eck jolted at the sound of his butler's voice.
He had probably been standing against the gilded bedroom threshold for more than a few hours. As Wylan glanced at his mercher's watch, each little hand tuned for the major port cities off the west coast of Ravka, he saw that the sun had indeed set. It was just a few minutes after two in the morning.
Despite the time, Wylan couldn't sleep. After years of thinking his mother was dead, watching, Marya Hendriks rest was a privilege that he would never take for granted. It was one of his favorite things to do. When she slept, the lines around her eyes disappeared and she was the same woman he remembered from his childhood.
"Yes, that would be fine, Joshua. I'll get to it later..." Wylan replied distractedly, unwilling to blink, for fear his mother would disappear from his sight like a dream.
She shifted in her sleep and muttered a name beneath her breath, a smile on her face.
"Jan..."
Wylan's heart froze like it did every time he heard that name. No matter where they went, no matter how many canvases or paints or brushes he bought her, they would probably never be free of his father's shadow. He screwed his eyes shut, closing over the door, hoping the darkness would chase away the ghosts of their past.
"Joshua," Wylan called, resting his forehead on the veneered wood. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, hoping for some sort of relief. "While you're down there, snuff the fire-"
"What fire?"
Wylan's cheeks heated as he slowly turned around.
Hieronymus Nile was small in stature, with a swash of hair the color of corn silk and eyes as blue as the True Sea. His laborer's hands, tanned by exposure to the southern sun, snaked over Wylan's hips and around his torso. Wylan's mind when blank when Ronnie pressed a kiss on his nose, sighing in content as he stared into his eyes. Though Ronnie was the same height as himself, Wylan could feel the toned muscles in his lover's arms as they flexed against him.
For a moment they stood there in silence, simply enjoying the feel of each other, they way their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces, how their hearts beat, uncannily, in time. It should have been enough, but Wylan's mind had always traveled at one hundred miles per minute; he lurched forward, planting a long, lingering kiss on Ronnie's lips.
"I love you."
The words came out before he could process them.
Wylan hadn't many things to love in his life. He loved his mother. He loved mechanics and the ingenuity of modern science. He had once loved Jesper, and that ended exactly the way romances with barrel rats do: in a maelstrom of emotions and a hail of bullets. After leaving Ketterdam, Wylan wasn't sure if he could do it again. If he even wanted to.
Despite that, Wylan knew his words to be most honest he had ever spoken.
He tugged at the waistband of Ronnie's cotton sleeping pants, trying to bring him closer, even tough their bodies were twisted together like the plaits of a rope. Wylan's lanky limbs wrapped around Ronnie, his skin was hot and pulsing beneath Wylan's fingers.
Ronnie was a local island boy who was hired by Van Eck Holdings to maintain their southern properties. When Wylan and his mother first began vacationing there during the winter three years ago, Ronnie never failed to wave to them, to converse with them, even as Wylan and he and his mother attempted to navigate their new lives as majority share holders of the world's largest investment firm.
At some point along the way, Hieronymus Nile became a necessity to him.
Wylan heart filled with warmth at the memory. Before he could pull away, Ronnie gently held Wylan's neck and stood on his tiptoes, steering him into another, different kiss. A kiss so cosmic and searing, he could feel it in his limbs, bubbling under his skin like a million fire crackers gone off simultaneously.
Ronnie didn't pull away, but rested his forehead on his lover's, his face red.
"I've been waiting to hear those words," Ronnie whispered.
Wylan allowed his happiness to wash over him, the sensation of something familiar coursing through his veins. What was it? Perhaps a little happiness. Maybe a bit of guilt. Whatever it was, he knew that it had nothing to do with Ketterdam and that maybe, finally, he could leave all that happened there in the past.
I
"I pay you to run business, not your mouth, Joshua."
Wylan supposed he should be kinder to his butler, but upon hiring the retired mine worker, he had made his stipulations clear: his mother deserved one hundred percent of his attention and, under no circumstances, was he ever to speak about the forgery above ground.
Joshua silently nodded his head.
Wylan plopped down on his chair, levying his feet onto his desk and rubbing his eyes. He had never been a night person, but circumstances required it and it left him perpetually half conscious. He wasn't sure if he would ever get used to it. Glancing around the room, the unsettling feeling of guilt nipped at him again.
He had always had a penchant for mechanics. He'd had it since he was the illiterate heir to one of the most notorious merchers in the Lid. Jan van Eck was one of the most brutal, cut throat criminals Wylan had ever known. And though he was Wylan's flesh and blood, receiving news of his death didn't bother Wylan at all.
What did bother him, though, was when he also received word of his ascension in the van Eck corporate empire. After years of evading his father, working and living with the Dregs, he was sure that his father had struck him out of the line of succession. After all, Alys, his pretty young wife who was not much older than Wylan was, and borne his son Baron van Eck, not four years earlier.
"What the hell is this, Kaz?" Wylan had demanded on that foggy afternoon so many years ago.
Like always, Dirtyhands was unreadable. He simply continued with his paper work at his desk, as if silence would absolve him of any part in the matter.
But Wylan new Kaz Brekker had a hand in it. Kaz Brekker had a hand in everything that went on in the god forsaken city.
"You might be useful, yet, van Eck," was all he said.
Now, at twenty six years old, one of the richest people in the world, and in love with a boy who was as beautiful as the saints themselves, Wylan wasn't sure if he regretted the turn of events. He was positive, though, that he did regret how he came into it.
Turning his mind to other things, Wylan observed his surroundings. His forgery was enormous. Four walls of carved Grisha steel. They glowed devil's red in the fire's light, as did the smelting pot, a four meter kiln, a wall of new silicon molds imported from Ravka, countless barrels of metal shavings, both ordinary and rare, and every and shape and size of drift you could find.
Wylan closed his eyes again, pushing away the voice in his head telling him that he was doing something terribly wrong.
If keeping a metalwerks forgery two floors below sea level, accessible only through a hidden chamber in his closet, which he only entered when Ronnie was fast asleep was terribly wrong, then the fact that he had been doing it for years meant he was surely going to hell.
"What's this about a letter?" Wylan picked up the nondescript piece of parchment, noting the blue seal stamped with the double eagle of the Lantsov family. He shot upright in his chair, the haze of weariness that had hovered over him for years, gone.
"What the hell is this?" he exclaimed, ripping the parchment open, his eyes scanning the text.
Joshua, while snuffing the smithing fire, replied in an ominous voice.
"I'm not sure, Sir. The post master said a young man in a violet cloak left it in your mailbox."
A chill ran down Wylan's neck, despite the roaring fire. Wylan was done with Ketterdam. He was done with the Dregs and being seen as little more than a pawn in someone else's game. But it seemed no matter how far or hard he ran, Ketterdam refused to let him go.
I
I
KAZ
"I don't think you're hearing me correctly, Yuffino Sol. That wasn't a question. It was an order."
Ketterdam's night was cold and bitter against Kaz's ungloved hands. He hadn't worn the things for a decade, but he could admit to himself that the leather would have improved his grip on his knife as blood spurted out of Yuf's stumped phalanges.
Undoubtedly, there would be more blood.
In the ten years since the fall of the Dime Lions, the new Dregs had climbed up out of the sewers and reigned over the Barrel with an ironclad hold. Kaz had majority shares in all harbors coming out of the Lid, and the Dreg's numbers had increased three fold. Human trafficking and slavery were close to non existent in the Stave, and no one dared question it, for fear of the wrath of Dirtyhands.
The rewards weren't without reaping, however. Every week, new hopefuls walked into the Slat boasting fire eating skills or the ability to forge the signatures of the Ravkan royal court.
Every week, Kaz told most of them to fuck off.
He had the team he wanted once. Now, he worked alone.
Kaz wiped off his knife, gesturing to Rotty and Keeg. They held down Yuf with their corded arms.
Weeks before, Kaz had received intelligence that the former Dime Lion had been visiting a club off West Stave. It didn't seem like a big deal to him, waving it off with indifference. Everyone went to the pleasure district for something: food, money, sex. Even skivs like Yuf could find something to get him off.
But when Kaz heard that Yuf, a newly minted Black Tip, caught a gondel to Third Harbor during these trips, he planned an ambush in the night.
Before the fall of the Dime Lions, Third Harbor was the epicenter of human trafficking in all of Ketterdam. It didn't mean much to him before; running whores was a lucrative business, and anything that was lucrative was fair game, as far as he was concerned.
Now, with Tante Heleen out of the way and all of the pleasure houses in the West Stave under his thumb, Third Harbor was Dreg property, in its entirety. No one set foot on it unless they were doing Barrel business, or had a death wish.
And Yuffino de Sol continued to test Kaz's patience, he definitely had a death wish.
Yuf's dirty face streamed with tears as Kaz pressed his knife onto his other pinky finger. The boy cried out, his voice bouncing off the dips and valleys of Ketterdam's terrain.
"You've been meeting with someone in Third Harbor," Kaz repeated. "Tell me who that is."
"I-I," Yuf stuttered, clearly weighing his options. "Fuck! He's gonna fucking kill me!"
"And I will do worse. Much worse. If you don't talk."
Keeg twisted Yuf's arm to an unnatural angle. Yuf screamed like a strangled cat.
"H-his name is Marshall," Yuf started, fear lacing his every word. "Marshall Maginello of the Crown Suits."
Kaz turned this information over in his head. After Pekka Rollins disappeared from the Barrel, derelicts from all over Ketterdam wanted a piece of the fortune he left behind, the space in Ketterdam's shadow economy which he occupied. New gangs, most of them small fry and not even worth Kaz's attention, popped up like cases of the plague. One such gang was the Crown Suits.
From the information Kaz had dug up, Marshall Maginello was an honorably discharged corporal from the Frist Army. In fact, most members of the Crown Suits were immigrants from the Great War, veterans and orphans, people desperate with hope that their contributions to the crown had made a difference. They marked themselves with a tattoo of the spade, one half black, one half gray.
The Crown Suits began their business where every new gang began their business: in the Exchange. Not with mercher's work, but siphoning money here and there, the yuppies none the wiser until their coffers were empty. Kaz knew about it. Kaz knew that being a survivor of war made people desperate. But Kaz also knew that Ketterdam was an insular society. You had more chance of finding a decent omelet than burgeoning a gang if you didn't have an in. And if Maginello was doing business in the pleasure district, despite only having been in town for a year, he most definitely had an in.
"He's not the only one you're meeting," Kaz bit. "Talk."
"I ah-" Yuf squeezed his eyes shut, a stream of Zemeni curses escaping his lips. "Onkle Felix, from the White Rose. The one that hires the girls. They're going to open a new shop where the Menagerie used to be. Said a new shipment was coming today. On a big boat."
Kaz's eyebrows knit, a knot of something bitter in the back of his throat. " Le Plaisir?"
Yuf nodded his head rapidly, pleading to be let go.
Le Plaisir was a publicity stunt, Kaz knew. It had been put together by King Nikolai's court to show the world that Ravka was still a force to be reckoned with in international politics. Merchers from every high society and nationality had booked tickets to make sure they would be on board of the vessel when it made history as the largest pleasure cruiser ever to sail the world. Somehow, only two years after it was announced to the world, the ship had left production and embarked on it's worldwide tour a few days ago, with stops in the major port cities across the world.
If King Nikolai, who, when Kaz had met him, was not as insane as the rest of the world thought him to be, was paying for this spectacle by running slaves...
A lightning fast stream of rage coursed through Kaz like he had been struck with a bolt of lightning. He drove his knife down, severing the Black Tip's remaining small finger, just above his second knuckle. It splashed into the canal like a minnow, disappearing into the black water.
Yuf screamed once more, his eyes bloodshot and his snot running.
"You said you would let me go!" he cried. "I told you! I told you everything!"
Kaz motioned to Keeg and Rotty, who let Yuf slump to the ground. Kaz pushed him over with his foot, forcing eye contact. At his gesture, Keeg and Rotty backed off, making their way back to the Stave. Kaz grabbed Yuf by the collar as soon as the henchmen crossed the Zentsbridge. Kaz's voice was like honing stone, rough and low.
"Normally, I would abide, Yuf," he stated. He wiped off his knife again and realized that his hands weren't cold anymore. They couldn't feel anything.
"But," he continued. "Given newly attained knowledge and the fact that you are the worst fucking skiv in the Barrel, I've come to the conclusion that, including your service to the Black Tips, you run for the Crown Suits, am I correct?"
Yuf blanched.
"And if there is something I hate just as much as a slaver, it's a runner employed by slavers and is also a two timing prick who can't keep his mouth shut. If you did, I would have at least left this interaction with understanding for you. But instead, I'll leave you with this.
"Tell anyone about this, and the whole of the Barrel will know of your tryst," he threatened. "And both you and I have been around long enough to know what that means. If Wheatie finds out you've been running for the another gang, especially a gang as green as the Crown Suits, your fingers won't be the only thing to be rotting on the bottom of the canal."
He didn't stay to see if Yuf understood him. Kaz Brekker simply cracked him across the temple with his cane, pocketed his blade, and disappeared into the night.
I
It was just past three in the morning when Kaz had finally made his way back to the Slat. He had worked later than this before, had stayed awake for days in a row, even. But something about this night made him feel the weariness in his bones, as if, like his leg, exhaustion was a chronic condition he would never be rid of.
For most of the Dregs, however, life didn't start until the sun went down. They flooded the bottom-most level of the slat, where card tables, ale, and a roaring fire entertained the masses after a day of work.
"Kaz!" Rotty called from his perch on the bar, a boy he didn't recognized at his side. "What business?"
"It's done, that's all you need to know," he replied, making his way up the stairs. Kaz never made conversation with the Dregs. He wasn't in his line of work to make friends; as long as they did whatever he told them to do, he didn't care that they minded their own business while he disappeared above them.
Kaz's ascent was slow, his bad leg throbbing particularly hard as he took the steps in time. It wasn't just his legs, either. There had been an ache deep in his bones since he woke up that morning, and Kaz couldn't be sure if it was usual pains, or if it was a sign of something to come. After he usurped Per Haskell, even in the closest place he considered a home, Kaz was on edge, sure that someone was waiting in the darkness to try and take away everything he had built for himself.
Was this how you felt, old man? Kaz thought to himself. He still remembered the enraged expression on Per Haskell's face when Kaz stood before him, defiant, a mere boy of seventeen, and challenged him for the rights to his empire. How stupid he must have felt when the lieutenant, whom he had picked up like a stray dog, bit him with the mouth he had fed.
And Kaz wasn't an idiot. Sooner or later, someone would try and do the same to him. It was the way of the Barrel. The Barrel changed for no one.
Kaz pushed upward, contemplating the night's events.
He knew everything that went on in Ketterdam: when gangs took on new blood, when they kicked old blood out. Hell, he knew when every Barrel boss took a fucking shit. Marshall Maginello running slaves, however, was never in the cards. If the Crown Suits were dealing out of Dreg territory, and in collusion with the other gangs of the Barrel, at that, then the problem was a deep rooted one. He wasn't sure how far it spread, but he would find out.
I should send Anika and Pim out scouting... he thought, scrubbing his face with his bared hands. His skin felt like it was punctured with a hundred needles. No, I'll go myself. Tomorrow.
Tonight, Kaz would sleep.
As he walked through the last corridor before the stairs to the attic, his quarters, he passed a door. It was barely a sliver in the wall; if he wasn't looking for it, hadn't been looking for it for the past nine years, he might have missed it. Most of the Dregs had forgotten that the room even existed. The wood had aged to blend into the walls surrounding it; only it's oxidized knob breaking the illusion. Once, the room belonged to the Wraith. Since she left, he hadn't touched it.
Perhaps some foolish part of him thought she would return to him. To claim what meager living he could offer her, somewhere warm from the wet and cold of Ketterdam. Perhaps he was afraid that opening the door would release the demons that were trapped there, the ones constantly whispering into Kaz's ear.
He shook his head, dispelling the voices like cobwebs.
A swift plan came together in his head, pieces of a puzzle becoming a whole image before his eyes. Maginello was an unprecedented problem, and Kaz knew from almost twenty years of being a Barrel rat, that if he wasn't taken down, he and his would spread through Ketterdam like a cancer.
I'm not ready to give up on this city, Kaz, Inej had once told him. I think its worth saving.
Kaz steeled himself for the final flight of stairs and limped onward.
Only when the heavy oak door shut behind him did he loose his breath. The noise from the lobby was muffled now, barely a whisper, but Kaz could still feel his agitation rise.
Sitting on his desk, ominously illuminated by his lamp, was a folded letter sealed with blue wax.
Kaz steeled. No one had access to his rooms. Not even Marjorie, the Slat's fat cleaning lady.
In his peripheral, Kaz saw a flash of light. He drew his pistol, whipping around, all thoughts of a hot bath flew from his mind.
If ever there was a reason for his irritation, he would have never guessed they would be standing, nonchalantly, against his bed frame.
Wylan van eck grinning from ear to ear, dressed in a suit and a bulbous sling bag over his shoulder.
Jesper Fahey, his pearl handled revolvers on his waist as he waved Kaz into lowering his weapon.
And Inej. Graceful, beautiful, deadly Inej Ghafa next to them, silent as always, like a storm not yet settled.
I
I
Kaz Brekker,
You are called to service by his majesty, King Nikolai Lantsov, son of Alexander the third, first in his name.
As of mid summer, Private Nina Zenik has been declared Missing in Action by Ravkan intelligence. Last seen traveling to Ravka after spending nine and a half years in Fjerda, through what was known to generations past as the Unsea.
As Private Zenik has knowledge of Ravkan, Fjerdan, and Kerch intelligence, she is considered a threat to national security. Discover her whereabouts, be it sovereign lands or otherwise, and return her to the Ravkan state, or Ravka will be forced to take measures into its own hands.
A rendezvous has been scheduled in the port town of Os Kervo, on the fourth week of the third month, with emissary to the throne, Sturmhond of the third army ship fleet, Ornitha. There, an archivist will relay news of your progress to Os Alta.
Then, once Private Zenik is under the possession of Ravkan officials, compensation will be negotiated with his Majesty the King.
Regards,
Troian Kir-Bataar
Adviser to the Ravkan throne
I
I
The four Dregs stared, unblinking, at the parchment on Kaz Brekker's makeshift desk. They had all received identical letters, but the way Kaz glared at the note, like it covered in firepox, brought the true weight of it's message down on them.
Nina Zenik, their friend, while crossing what was once the most dangerous place in the world, had vanished.
"'Possession'," Inej hissed, breaking the silence, enraged. "As if she is an object. A trophy."
"She's as good as, if she's captured by Ravka's enemies," Wylan said, his long fingers fidgeting with his bag. "If anyone finds out that she survived jurda parem, whoever's got her will cut her open."
"And Ravka won't? She's not safe anywhere," Jesper bit. Kaz noticed that, despite talking to him, he didn't meet Wylan's eyes.
Inej nodded her head solemnly. "We have to bring her home."
"We?" Kaz spoke for the first time, his voice like gravel.
Wylan, Jesper, and Inej stared at him in silence. When they had received their letters, they booked passage to Ketterdam as fast as they could. It was the start of autumn, and they couldn't be sure when, once the True Sea had frozen over, travel by water would be a viable option anymore. They didn't give it a second thought. Nina would have done the same for them.
No one calculated, however, that Kaz, bastard of the Barrel, would think differently.
"But, Kaz-" Inej stepped forward, her hand outstretched.
Kaz backed away from her and she dropped her arm, a flicker of something awful running across her face. Good, he thought to himself. He would rather they hate him than endure another second of this.
"She's a Dreg," Jesper spat, furious. "That ought to mean something, even to you."
"Was a Dreg. That goes for all of you. You turned the tides when you left Ketterdam," Kaz returned, schooling his features into stoicism. "You're all a liability. Wild cards. I never give anything for nothing, and that much has not changed in the last nine years."
"So you want us to, what? Prove our worth to you? That this mission is just as worth it as the last job? Is the promise of the Ravkan throne not enough?" Wylan was flabbergasted.
"I wouldn't say the Ice Court was worth it," said Jesper. "I think I have perpetual frostbite on my ass."
"I don't give a damn if the saints themselvesare funding this trip. What do I have to gain for the rescue of Nina Zenik?"
On this Kaz Brekker would not falter. He had lived his life by this mantra, making sure the dues were higher than the costs of each venture he pursued. It's how he survived the Queen's Lady Plague, how he dragged himself off of Reaper's Barge and built himself an empire. It was the only thing he knew.
The tension in the attic room was insufferable, like a thick rope that threatened to tighten around Kaz's neck. Suddenly, he was very tired. All he wanted was for them to leave, go off to their far corners of the earth and leave him alone. They had done it once. They could do it again, and he'd be just fine.
Jesper's fists clenched. Wylan gaped, stupefied. But it was the Wraith who finally broke the silence.
"Fine," she said, her voice unwavering, her face unreadable. "What business, Kaz?"
After a moment's hesitation, he regaled them about the recent thorn in his side, Marshall Maginello, made clear what the objective was, tossed Wylan a wad of kruge, and, while he could still stop his tongue from telling Inej all the things he had wanted to say to her, told them to get the hell out of the Slat.