Author's Note: This is non canon compliant, but really, can't we have a lot more fun that way?
Chapter 1
When the man came bursting through her window, Inej was thinking about mustaches.
Wet, oily mustaches to be precise, with one droplet of sweat dangling from the tip of the left side. She choked her gorge down and leaned in to kiss her customer again, and so when a man jumped straight through her window, dark coat swirling in his wake, she wasn't shocked so much as deeply relieved.
Also, impressed. She knew the roof of the bank building was within jumping distance of her window. Because when her window was open, she could leap across the alley, catch the edge of the roof with her calloused hands, and pull herself up and over the edge. She often did, when she needed a bit of air late at night and to feel her body in her own service, rather in service to others. But to jump off the roof with exactly enough fall to get back down to her window, and enough force to crash through and not just bounce off to the cobblestones below…well, it was a hell of a brave leap, and that was coming from a trained acrobat.
The shards of glass hadn't all hit the floor yet by the time two Stadwatch and a man in a bank security uniform came jumping in after him, landing clumsily as they took advantage of the window he'd broken open for them. The dark man slung a sack in under her dressing table, smashed one of her perfume bottles in the face of the bank security officer, and elbowed a Stadwatch in the throat.
"Well, see here!" her customer stammered from where he'd leaped behind her for safety. "I have paid and expect—"
"Expectations," the dark man growled, as if it were the punchline to a joke. He ducked a blow from the second Stadwatch, who was toweringly blond.
Inej wondered if she let this go on long enough, if perhaps she could wreck her room enough to get out of her duties for the night. She hauled her customer to the left, using their combined bodies to herd the fight closer to her bed, where it would be more likely to provide some good property damage.
The security officer was back up and raising a billy club. She inhaled, wincing at how much the blow would hurt. The dark man parried it with some kind of cane while placing a shiv into the face of the shorter, previously throat-punched Stadwatch. The Fjerdan Stadwatch leapt across the room and Inej glared at him, letting him know all the hiding room behind her had already been taken. By an oily mustached merchant who damn well better tip magnificently for this. A flash of movement caught her eye but she didn't even have time to groan before the Fjerdan threw a bola. She jumped for the curtain rail of the canopy bed, grabbing on and curling her whole body up and out of the way. The dark man tried to dodge, but his jump was uneven and the bola caught him around one arm. He snarled with irritation, but instead of stopping to untangle it, when the Stadwatch came in for the kill, he simply shouldered the bigger man out the window.
"You staying?" he said to her customer, conversationally. Mustache squeaked in terror and Inej dropped from the curtain rail of the bed and palmed the purse out of his back pocket as he fled. The dark man nodded to her and her blood froze, wondering if the bank robber had just seen her lift the purse. But no, she decided it must have been just a nod of acknowledgment at her not fleeing, because otherwise he would have no doubt raised the alarm on her stealing to draw attention away from his own.
She looked for the security officer, but the dark man had apparently knocked him out, and the shorter Stadwatch was currently bleeding his last into her rug. Hopefully enough to justify shutting down business for the night. Corpse disposal could take a while, after all. Especially on the upper floors.
She sent up a quick, half-guilty prayer for his soul. The saints valued every one, even if the world didn't.
The silence caught her attention and when she looked up, the dark man had faded two steps closer. His head cocked, canny and quick like a crow as he studied her, and something in her cringed. Nothing good ever came of catching a man's interest.
Fortunately, her door burst open just then. She shucked the merchant's purse into the gap between the footboard and the base of the mattress, in case he'd complained to Tante Heleen and she was about to be searched. A tall Zemeni man burst in with two pistols and a grin of great anticipation on his face that faded almost immediately to despair. Considering the fate of the last three who had gone up against her window-breaker, she considered his reaction appropriate.
"Kaz!" the tall man complained. "You never save anything good for me." He whirled his pistols around his fingers before holstering them.
Inej held the surprise from her face. This was Kaz Brekker, the Bastard of the Barrel? Well, she supposed that explained the bank robbing.
Kaz just scowled harder, beginning to hitch his way across the room. She'd thought the cane was a fighting tool, but he seemed to need it. Rather badly, at the moment.
How on earth did one decide to go leaping through windows when one needed a cane just to cross a level floor?
But then, how many nights had she stared out her window at the brick wall of that bank? That sort of motivation could get men to leap from rooftops. She hadn't been able to stop herself from imagining the wealth inside of it that would buy out her indenture a hundred times over. Suddenly, she remembered the sack he'd forgotten under her night table, and stopped herself before she glanced over and reminded him, too.
"Who sold us out?" the sharpshooter complained. "The Stadwatch were already waiting where the getaway horses were supposed to be."
"Probably Spat," Kaz grunted. His hair fell blackly over eyes of the same color. "He started flashing a nearly-real looking silver watch around the Slat yesterday afternoon."
"No, it was Von Tramp," Inej said. The information should distract him further, in case he thought of the bag now that the adrenaline of the fight was wearing off. She remembered her half-undone bodice and considered leaning forward to further distract him. But she didn't, for reasons she didn't care to closely examine.
The Bastard of the Barrel turned the slash of his eyes her way. "Explain."
She was vaguely surprised he'd acknowledged her contribution at all, but just shrugged one shoulder, folding her arms. "He was in here yesterday, spending twice his usual and bragging about a big bonus coming his way after today."
"That could have been about anything."
"Anything except he mentioned the delivery alley inside the bakery courtyard. That was your getaway route, wasn't it? It's out of the sight line of the bank guard towers, but just across the alley from the trash door of the bank." She flicked her braid back. "And if you were surprised by Stadwatch there, you could have climbed the fire escape on the back wall of the gambling hall, hopped across to the bank roof, and then realized there wasn't another roof near enough to jump to, so you'd have to go in a window. Not a bad jump, by the way, though your roll could use some work."
His scowl didn't lift, but for a second his eyes gleamed with something she thought she'd long since forgotten, it had been so long since she'd last seen it.
Respect.
"Hmph," was all he said before he turned to limp out of the room.
"Wait!" she blurted, her brain still finishing the calculation her instincts had already made.
She knew Kaz Brekker's reputation but not his face because he never came into the Menagerie, or any of the other pleasure houses if rumors were to be believed. The girls gossiped that maybe there was something wrong with his privates; perhaps an illness that had also disfigured his hands so he always needed the gloves. Inej thought it was more likely he preferred men, which suited her just fine. Also, it was said he could all but work miracles when it came to making kruge out of nothing. He'd reopened Fifth Harbor when he was only fifteen, giving the Dregs its own private harbor.
He hadn't paused at her words, so she said, "I can help you."
That hitched his steps, and his tall friend looked abruptly interested. "Kaz, I think she's flirting. You do know what flirting is, don't you? It's what young, attractive people do when they like each other and they're not busy talking about kruge."
They both ignored him, but she managed to turn Kaz's measuring eyes back her way. "Why would I need help from a girl who can't even pick pockets?"
"If I can't pick pockets, why have I got his purse and he doesn't?" She folded her arms.
The pistol man chortled with glee. "Ooh, she got you there, Kaz. I like this one!"
Kaz threw him a sour look.
"Buy my indenture," Inej rushed out, no longer even caring if he stayed long enough to remember his sack of bank robbing treasure. "You wouldn't have known about Von Tromp if it weren't for me, and that was when I wasn't even trying." She lifted her chin. "Also, I'm more punctual than your friend."
"Hey!" the pistol man protested.
"If I bought your indenture, how would you bring me information from all the customers?" Kaz challenged.
Her thoughts raced and she opened her mouth to answer, but he was already out the door, leaving the bodies of his opponents behind.
The pistol man tipped his jaunty hat to her and swept out with a flourish of his tailored coat. Inej shut the door behind them and only then risked a look across the room to the spot under her dressing table.
The bank bag was gone.
Author's Note: There will be two chapters to this, so stick around! I have one more Kaz & Inej fic going right now, a much more intimate one called One Thousand and One Nights.