The train lurched underneath them as it crossed a particularly bumpy bit of the rails, and Jesper's pen jolted, drawing a long scratch of ink down the paper. He swore under his breath. Inej sat back and watched him with amusement.
"I can feel you smiling," her friend told her petulantly, without looking up from whatever he was doodling on the scrap piece of paper he'd begged off Wylan Van Eck. The boy in question - with a face like a cherub's, and golden curls like someone had woven ribbons of sunlight, and was the most adorable person to ever exist (to quote Jesper Fahey) - was sitting a few rows down scribbling something in a notepad. From Inej's angle in the booth they'd claimed for themselves, she couldn't tell whether it was maths equations or music notes. "I am psychic. I know you and Kaz like I know myself, and I can tell what you're doing, even if I'm not looking at you."
She stuck her tongue out at Jesper. When he didn't react, oblivious, she smirked. "I'm sure you can," she said. Face still tilted downwards, he cast her a glower up through his eyelashes.
She sat back. "What are you actually doing?"
He gnawed at his lip for a moment, which instantly peaked her interest. His eyes darted to Kaz, who sat in the corner brooding as usual, for a moment - like he needed approval - and she sighed.
She reached for the papers even as she spoke. "For Saint's sake if Kaz is making you write out just how much money you lost to him in some ill-fated bet again I will-" She glanced at the paper she'd snatched off him, and raised an eyebrow. Somehow, Jesper looked simultaneously murderous and embarrassed. "You're designing. . . guns?"
Her lips tightened. Jesper had an unhealthy, bordering on violent obsession with things. The friend in Inej wanted to passionately support this unorthodox hobby, and encourage him wherever she could. The pacifist in her screamed that she either abandon him as a friend or try to talk him out of it.
She'd been ignoring her pacifist a lot recently. It wasn't that she condoned violence (no, it certainly wasn't that; Kaz knew all too well her thoughts on his and Jesper's methodically started fights. She didn't care whether or not they were advantageous to him in one way or another, they were inherently wrong, Kaz, for Saint's sake can't you see that) but she'd since learned that some things were worth the cost.
"The models Kerch uses are way too outdated to be of any use." Jesper began his rant; Inej listened with exasperated but fond ears. "We're an island nation rich from trading; we'll need proper weapons if we want to survive any wars in the future."
War. She shuddered. The Ravkan Civil War had been a little too recent for that word to be tossed around as much as it was. Nina, who'd fled their homeland in the midst of it, would agree with her.
Unfortunately, Nina and her new boyfriend Matthias had neglected to come on this particular school trip, saying that they'd "much rather be doing something useful", leaving her stuck with a brooding Kaz and a Jesper torn between doodling destructive items and making moony eyes at Wylan Van Eck.
Inej sighed loudly, "Let's play a game," she said. Jesper ignored her and Kaz didn't appear to have heard. So, in one quick and efficient movement, she snatched the paper out of Jesper's hand again, and by the time his barked "Hey!" had finished resonating she'd fished a pencil out of her bag, drawn six dashes over the blank side of the page, and placed on the table for them all to see.
"Guess the word."
"Hangman, Inej?" Jesper tried to joke. "I'd have thought that was a bit morbid for you." She gave him a pointed look, and he glanced at the page. "The word's 'peace'," he guessed, sitting back smugly.
She took immense satisfaction in shaking her head, and drawing a long straight line to the right of the dashes. Dismay crossed his face.
"'Peace' has five letters, Jesper, not six," Kaz said irritably from the window. He studied the page intently, and Inej glanced back down at it. When she looked up again he was watching her. "Inej is kind, not stupid. She wouldn't go for such an obvious word that's associated with her. We both know how smart she can be."
The words themselves were complimentary, but he said them in such a calculating way it unnerved her.
He narrowed his eyes. "S." He said. She got the sense he wasn't just guessing.
She nodded, and marked the letter on the first dash - but left the others blank. Kaz's eyebrows shot into his hairline.
"A." He guessed again.
She smiled to herself, having finally caught onto hi train of thought, and filled in the letter twice - once on the second dash, and once on the sixth. She heard his breath catch.
"I?" Only she and Jesper knew him well enough to catch the faint question in his voice - a sign of uncertainty. Without speaking, she drew a second long line perpendicular to the first. Jesper swore under his breath, and she idly wondered when a simple game of hangman had gotten so intense.
She looked up to find Kaz watching her. "N." A challenge.
She let herself smile, and marked the letter on the third dash. Kaz's eyebrows furrowed, and a faint tapping from below the table told her he'd started drumming his fingers against the metal head of his cane.
She'd been counting on this - counting on the fact that he wouldn't be able to resist a challenge like this one, or an opportunity to decipher the clues he had: the letters, and what he knew about her.
Then he looked at her again, and although he didn't smile, there was triumph in his face as he said firmly and decisively, "T." She knew he'd guessed it.
Jesper still looked confused. "Santa. . ." He whispered under his breath. She saw the exact moment realisation smacked him across the face. "You-" A breath hissed out from between his teeth. "You can't do words in Ravkan, Inej. That's cheat-" He cut off when he realised what he was saying, and exactly whose company he was saying it in.
He swore again, and pointed a finger at her. "You have been spending entirely too much time with Kaz and me."
It was with an odd smugness that she marked in the final letter, so that the word Sankta was scrawled across the page. "Well, I'm not disagreeing." She looked at Kaz again, who still looked contemplative. "You thought the words was 'Saints' at first."
His dark eyes cut to hers. "I got it right, didn't I?"
"Indeed." She smiled as she pushed the paper and the pencil towards him. "Your turn."
He raised an eyebrow again, but didn't object, and drew three short dashes. She could feel Jesper's surprise mirror hers; they'd have thought Kaz would have gone for a complicated word, just to ensure his own victory.
But nevertheless, Inej sucked her teeth between her lips and guessed, "E." It was the most common letter in the alphabet after all.
Kaz silently drew a long line that indicated she'd gotten it wrong.
"I," she guessed again. He nodded, and filled the letter in on the first dash.
"'Its'." Jesper said immediately. Kaz pressed his lips tighter together, like he was trying to suppress a smile or a frown, and drew another long line of the scaffolding. Jesper sat back in disappointment. "O," he said sullenly, but perked up a bit when Kaz marked the letter in on the second dash.
"Io," Inej murmured. "Ion?" A shake of his head; another line. "I'm sure that's the only three letter word beginning with those letters."
"Well you're clearly wrong then, because Kaz has just thought of one." Jesper said, most unhelpfully. He narrowed his eyes at the paper. "A." Another line. "B." Another. "C. D. F. G. H. J."
He kept listing the letters until the man on the paper was fully drawn, save for one leg. Inej frowned. "T?" She guessed as a last resort. Kaz shook his head and she slumped back in defeat as the little man was hung. "Alright, what is it then?"
Kaz silently reached over and marked a U on the third dash.
Jesper guffawed and Inej wrinkled her nose. "That's not a word, Kaz."
"And Sankta is?"
She picked up the pencil and twirled it between her fingers. "Sankta is technically a word in Ravkan, even if it's not in Kerch. Yours is an abbreviation. Would you put down 'cba' on another round?"
"If I thought it would win it for me, yes, I would."
Jesper giggled again. "You were asking for that one, Inej."
She ground her teeth together as she looked between them, from Jesper's laughing face, to the rarely seen amused glimmer in Kaz's eye.
"Saints take you both," she swore, throwing the pencil down, getting up, and storming off in the direction of the tuck shop.
She could hear the faint whisper of a chuckle emanate from Kaz behind her, and the sound chased her all the way down the length of the carriage.