Note: This begins just after Crooked Kingdom. Spoilers ahead if you've only read Six of Crows!
The first night in the house on Geldstraat, Wylan had asked that rooms be made up for his guests. When the others had turned in, he took a spare blanket and curled up in the music room. It didn't feel right to sleep here as a guest, but he didn't feel that he was a resident, either.
His bedroom remade into a nursery made that much very clear.
This being his house now, he might have slept in the master bedroom, but he wasn't going to throw Alys out of it. She had chosen to leave her own room for his last night; apparently it made her feel closer to Jan. (Who would want to, Wylan thought bitterly, but said nothing.) She would be gone to the countryside by tomorrow afternoon, but still Wylan had no intention of sleeping there. It was his mother's. It would be ready for her when she returned.
Besides, the settee was soft.
The next morning, he folded up the blanket and went for a walk through the house. Before, he knew it in terms of the best places to hide, thought of it, perhaps, as a criminal, before he truly knew how criminals thought. Now he counted the rooms, considered the sheer size of the place.
He found himself, at the last, standing outside his father's office. He had been in here before. Recently. But it was different without Kaz.
Wylan took a breath and stepped into the office.
It was just an office. Ornate, lavish, but just an office.
An office with a huge hole in the floor and the rug and the safe… with the same chairs and desk Wylan had seen all his life.
Jan Van Eck was a man of extreme vices, but he was not without his virtues. He was diligent. Growing up, Wylan often saw his father here.
He made his way back behind the desk. The windows behind it would cast sunlight over the desk for most of the day. He rested his hands on the back of the chair.
When Wylan was small, when Jan was different, he loved this office. He loved the office because he loved his papa. It smelled the same, the same wax, same inks. Wylan remembered when he was three or four, when he could climb onto his papa's lap when he worked. He didn't understand the papers were supposed to mean anything—he was too small for that. They were just Papa's work, so they were important, like Papa was.
Wylan looked away from the desk, blinking rapidly. It was so bright in here, light stinging his eyes.
He looked across the desk to where he would have stood when he was older. When he was ten, twelve. Jan liked to have him read—try to read—at the same time, once a week. Like clockwork. Wylan knew what to expect, there was no reason for his lack of preparation. (As he was told several times.) He couldn't and knew he would never be able to, but he was there, every time, nonetheless.
He remembered the first time he saw an unexpected figure in the room. He remembered thinking the man's boots were dirty and Father didn't like that, anyone tracking muck into his office. Perhaps you simply need a better incentive. This is for you, Wylan, you know this world holds nothing for you if you cannot learn your letters. It was something Wylan found reassuring about Kaz. If Dirtyhands wanted him thrashed, he would do it himself. He lied and he tricked but he was honest with his fists. Kaz Brekker had never threatened to have someone else cut out Wylan's tongue and feed it to a stray cat.
He remembered looking at the page, trying to make sense of it. Looking back to his father and shaking his head. He remembered the look of resignation, like Jan had been forced into this, as he motioned the man forward. Never did the rough work himself.
Wylan flinched. He took his hands off the chair. The memories landed like blows now. He remembered the sounds, the pain. He remembered the steel in his father's eyes reminding him he had no one to blame but himself.
"Wylan."
He jerked his head up, forcing his focus into the here and now.
"Good morning, Inej. How are you feeling?"
"I'm healing," she said.
Wylan nodded. He understood: she was hurting, but it was a better hurt.
"I helped," he blurted. When she gave him a curious look, he explained, "At the Ice Court, I helped. And the Wyvil—it would have worked. The fireworks."
"I know that," Inej said. Her words moved like she did, soft and sinuous.
He looked away from her, to a spot of the floor that still had floor. It was stupid, looking for a pat on the head. Her role in all of this had been a huge one. Wylan was incidental. He made toys. Besides—no mourners, no funerals, and certainly no fanfare.
He thought about what he had said when it seemed Kaz might think about leaving Inej. She's one of us. It hadn't seemed to carry the weight he imagined it would, that fact, and maybe he had still been thinking too much that life was like stories and daydreams.
"It's just—I admire you. You're welcome to stay here for as long as you need."
Inej tilted her head to the side and smiled a secret smile.
"Thank you."
"Not only now, but always. Whenever your adventures bring you to Ketterdam."
"Here you are!" Jesper stood in the doorway. "I was starting to think I'd have to eat breakfast with Alys."
"She's not so bad," Wylan objected. "She's just silly."
Inej looked away in a manner that, rather than being proper silence, spoke volumes.
"Let's take the long route," Wylan said, glancing at the hole in the floor. He knew Inej would dance through it, and Jesper could get through with style to spare, but the fall had hurt quite enough the first time. Today, Wylan at least would use the stairs.
He didn't try to convince anyone, just walked out of the room and hoped they would come with him. They did.
"Good, you're both coming. I would have felt guilty eating your breakfasts. You both look like your weight doubles when you fall in the canal. I would have eaten them, I just would have felt bad."
"When did they marry, Wylan?" Inej asked.
"About a year ago. Alys has always been kind to me. She's tried to be my friend. In her own way."
"Tried?" Now Jesper was interested.
"It's not that I don't know she's silly," Wylan said. "But we have things in common. We both like music, and animals. Even if she does have miserable taste in animals. We talked about music and her birds… Alys always assumes people are good. The silliness helps."
It was difficult to be truly friends with someone who lived in another world.
"What exactly did she think was going on here?" Inej asked.
There was more than one way to steal a man's secrets. She had seen Wylan in the office. She had experienced his father's hospitality. Wylan knew he didn't have to say it for Inej to know.
"She… thought I was naughty. My father told her that, so she believed it. She thought I would learn," he added, not sure what this demonstrated. At least someone had believed he was capable of learning. "She would bring me a cup of tea and a biscuit sometimes, after he…. She said she knew I would learn not to make him so cross."
"Wow," Jesper said. "What kind of delusion must a person be under to believe something like that? I mean—Wylan, being naughty."
"Hey!" Wylan objected.
Inej was grinning. "I can't imagine it. Can you, Jesper?"
"I made bombs," Wylan said, "and auric acid."
"I can't," Jesper told Inej, "even my credulity is strained."
"I'm good at demo!"
Jesper grabbed him in a half-hug and kissed his cheek.
Apparently that was how things would be now.
Wylan hoped that was how things would be now.
"You're better at hostage," he said.
Wylan was torn. Their glee was infectious, but that didn't stop him resenting it—he was not incapable of naughtiness! He was a criminal and everything! He had been a useful member of the crew!—with the added challenge of the sheer joy Jesper seemed to physically radiate. Being close to him was its own magic.
And maybe, just maybe, Jesper needed to be close to someone right now. Maybe he was missing his da and needed someone to be beside him.
Wylan settled for laughing. "I'm great at hostage."
As it turned out, having a hole in one's dining room ceiling was less of a problem when one had dozens of other rooms. They did sit down to breakfast with Alys, who wished everyone a polite good morning. If she was keener to see her stepson than anyone else, no one held that against her—Wylan was familiar.
"What do you study?" Alys asked Inej and Jesper.
Maybe she would have preferred to talk to Wylan, but he was gulping down bites of bread and cheese so quickly his cheeks were puffed like a squirrel's. He didn't realize he was doing it until Inej gave his cup of coffee a subtle nudge.
"Study?" Jesper repeated.
"In Belendt. You're Wylan's schoolmates, aren't you?" she asked.
Wylan nearly coughed up his coffee. He hadn't thought to come up with a convincing story. Of course Alys made the completely logical assumption…
"I study dance," Inej said, a perfectly reasonable claim for someone with her fluid movement and impeccable posture.
"That must be nice," Alys said. "Do they feed you very well there? I could… speak to Jan, when all of this business is over."
It took Wylan a second to realize she meant him. She meant the way he was wolfing down every crumb of food he could like someone was going to take it away. He was touched she noticed and forced himself to swallow his food and take another sip of coffee like he had any manners to speak of.
He did.
Jesper came to his rescue: "They feed us plenty. Wylan here is just forgetting his manners. You know he can be terribly naughty."
This time he did hack up his coffee.
"I'm sorry," he said, dabbing at his hands with a napkin and wishing his voice didn't squeak. Wishing Jesper had the decency to love this slightly less.
"There's a trunk of your old clothes in the attic," Alys said. Apparently she had noticed the coffee drops landing on his trousers—or possibly the fact he was still wearing yesterday's blood-splattered shirt.
"Father kept my things?"
"It was my idea." Alys was very pleased with herself. "I knew you would be home for the holidays, and there was no need for you to travel with so much. It can be inconvenient to travel. When he sent most of it to Belendt, we kept a trunk here."
"Alys… thank you."
She might have been foolish to think Jan wanted and would permit Wylan to ever return then, she might have been foolish to think Jan would ever return now, she might have been naive to overlook what was happening right under her nose, but in her own way, she cared.
After breakfast was eaten, Wylan caught the look on the cook's face as she realized how it would be different feeding two teenage boys and one Inej; he caught, to his surprise, Jesper leaping to gather the dishes. It seemed quite a lot had changed.
He made his way up to the attic and located the trunk with his old clothes. First things were first, he needed something to change into. Since there was no point in doing that with his body filthier than Jesper's mind, he took a change of clothes, shut himself in the bathroom, and ran a bath. It wasn't something he would have casually done in the Barrel—because baths cost money he didn't have, and because he had never really felt comfortable in the washtub at the boarding house with its non-locking door. He remembered being repulsed by the reek of himself, until he stopped noticing it.
This wasn't something he would have casually done here before, either. Even though it was ridiculously easy, literally a matter of turning the taps, before, a servant would have run the bath water. It was stupid now. Embarrassing. But before it was just how things were.
He sank gratefully into the hot water. It was too hot (was there a wrong way to run a bath? He sensed perhaps there was…) and stung against his bruises, but the pain faded and left him feeling at ease.
Jesper was right—Wylan wasn't a criminal by any means. He had known it his first night: he didn't have what it took to survive in the Barrel. Without Kaz, he would have died. But Wylan had still done some good demo. He knew that. He wasn't useless. He wasn't helpless.
He was, however, surrounded by things he had done nothing to earn but be born into the right family.
It started with his mother. When she was home—that was the first thing Wylan needed to do. But once she was here, once he became not only Wylan but the heir to the Van Eck empire, he promised himself he would find a way to make good. He would find a way to deserve everything he had.
Even if it did start with the thing he spent years fighting: washing behind his ears. Why that was such a point of contention, Wylan didn't know, but he preferred not to admit how old he had been before the nanny stopped checking. He still refused to believe washing behind the ears was that important, but he did it anyway.
His clothes were far too big. He had never been a particularly large boy, but now his shirt was ridiculous. The shoulders hung too low, the cuffs brushed the second knuckle. His trousers wouldn't stay up. He had the same old belt he had cut extra notches into, but even with careful folds, there were places the wool simply gave up and sagged, letting the leather of his belt rub uncomfortably against his skin. He tucked his shirt in, but that made the ill-fittingness all too obvious.
New clothes were definitely on the to-do list. He couldn't be taken seriously at the Exchange looking like this.
In the meanwhile, he headed back to the attic to scrounge up a sweater or coat to hide the worst of it. He had things to do that were more important than a well-cut suit.