iii.
The ruthless Bastard of the Barrel is shrouded under the cover of night, lying prone with his long glass in hand. The best vantage point of the mercher's mansion is at the southeastern angle, one window recklessly exposed with a view straight into his master bedroom.
The Wraith is beside him, staking out the area. While it has been a few months since they've done something so normal together, nothing has changed. It is with shocking ease that they fall back into their roles—him telling her of the mercher's desperate, dark deeds and her telling him the simplest route she can take to infiltrate his rooms.
There is nothing like this. He knew how much different it would be without her there by his side, but now that she's landed for a week or two, he realizes with a raw intensity how much he craves her presence when she's away.
"Shall I go in before or after his lady leaves him?" she asks, nodding toward the two figures walking along the side street below them, turning onto the sidewalk that will lead to the mansion. They proclaim their affection with kisses, and a braying laugh from the woman floats up to their perch.
"Depending on how involved they are with each other," Kaz says, bringing the long glass down from his eyes. "During."
He feels Inej's dissatisfied stare. "I don't need them to be distracted with one another. That's unnecessary and…an invasion of privacy."
"You asked," he says. At the look on her face, he shrugs. "Either way, it would be child's play for you."
She readjusts her position on the eaves of the roof. "I'll wait."
"You'll be waiting a long time. They can't seem to find his house."
"If you eat the fruit of your ways, you will become the fruit of your schemes, Kaz. You're not one to indulge in the impractical, and it would be if I snuck into their rooms while they..." she trails.
"Oh, Inej, I'm surprised I'm not the fruit of them, already. Why would I want you to infiltrate the place when you're at your most uncomfortable?"
She peers at him. Her warm, brown eyes are sharp with skepticism. "I wouldn't be uncomfortable."
"Are you so certain, Wraith?"
She narrows her glare at him, her eyebrows knitting together. Kaz likes to annoy her this way. Snaking under her saintly skin.
When the light turns on in the bedroom, Inej nods and Kaz places the long glass to his eyes once more. After a moment, he hands it to Inej. She gives him a dubious look.
"It's what we thought," he says.
As she peeks though the long glass, it takes her a moment to find the right view. When she does, her lips screw up and she sighs.
"Oh," she mutters. The lights begin to turn down enough to darken the window, and she lowers the long glass. She bites the inside of her lip. "Maybe it won't last as long as you think."
Kaz eyes her, analyzing the bluntness of her statement. She can't hide her frown before she looks up at him.
"What's your estimate?" he asks.
"Ten minutes, give or take."
"And if she actually cares for the bastard?"
She turns away from his stare, glancing out toward the statue of Ghezen. They are a mere three blocks away from the church, and the specter of it is bold and preening. "They will keep the lights low, and she will lie with him all night."
Her voice is soothing like a gentle stream, soft and steady. It doesn't waver, yet Kaz still imagines the Menagerie. He thinks of all the things he doesn't quite know. Stealing glimpses of Inej here, on the rooftop, he thinks of how she's lain beside with him all of these nights since the first, whenever she comes to visit. He thinks of the warmth she leaves in the sheets, even after she disappears to the sea. He sleeps on her side when she's gone. There is no logical reason for it other than touching the shadow of her ghost. He thinks of her when he lies awake at night, spending the dreamless hours pulling apart the ways she works, exploring the cobwebbed corners of her dark, neglected rooms. She is like the first magic tricks he witnessed. She beckons for her mysteries to be unraveled.
He doesn't know them. He can't know them until she opens the doors on her own.
He thinks about doing to her what the mercher is doing to his lady in the bed of a mansion. He thinks about doing more.
It is no different beside her now, wading in the witching hours of night. Ketterdam continues to teem with life and lights and laughter. She is still and soft and brief—the juxtaposition of the city. She is a challenge, a puzzle box. Kaz wants to twist her pieces until she buckles for him.
He can't know her until he allows her to explore his shadows, too. Unabashedly. Wholly.
He glances down at his watch. Ten minutes. He has ten minutes.
"My brother's name was Jordan." He glances toward the ports, then down to the stragglers on the streets. Some are dressed in Komedie Brute regalia. "I only ever knew him as Jordie. He died during the plague."
It's hard to say these things—much harder than it should be. Only three sentences in, and he feels like he's swallowed glue, congealing along his vocal cords.
"I came down with the plague, too. I don't remember most of it, just that I clung to Jordie, waiting for it to be over. I didn't know he was dead until—"
The glue thickens. The tides rise. His jaw tightens. He glares at the mansion and the darkened window of the mansion bedroom.
There is a slow shuffle beside him, and he feels the brush of Inej's shoulder on his arm. At the contact, his body stiffens.
"Go on," she murmurs. At her words, his voice thaws.
"They shoved me onto the Reaper's Barge, and I was stuck with dead bodies. I was surrounded. I waited to die, but death never came, and I called out for anyone to hear me. The bodies—" He shuts his eyes, but he sees the bloat and the flesh and the rising waves. His stomach lurches with disgust and nausea, but Inej does not move her shoulder away from him, and he focuses on the contact. It is suddenly his only tether. His mind wildly grasps it, digs its fingers into her.
"I used Jordie to get back to Ketterdam. He was my raft." An ugly smile curls his lips, because the gurgle of laughter is caught in the glue of his throat. "Then I let him go and pushed him back out to sea."
The silence between them is vast. It eats at his heart. He breathes out and realizes he is shaking, just a minor earthquake under his skin. It's another minute before he notices that Inej's entire side is against him, and how can that be? How can he not notice when this happened, when he can feel her touch miles away?
"That was your second birth," she whispers. Her voice is a reprieve. He drinks it in, and the tremors begin to calm. "That's how you started."
"And Pekka couldn't even remember his name," Kaz says, his tone gruff and rigid. He continues glaring at the mansion window. Hasn't it been ten minutes, yet?
"Kaz," Inej beckons.
It takes him a moment before he looks at her. She is close—so close. Their lips can't be two inches from each other, and if only—if only he could dip forward. Brush them together. A graze, the barest friction. Are they as soft as her eyes?
She saves him from the shame of receiving her pity. She is merely staring at him. It's a deep, soul-searching look, she might say. She would say.
His mind is fraying with a blister of fever. He tries to look away, but he can't.
"There was one man," she begins. "One man who had seen me perform with my family. He saw me on the wire. He smelled like vanilla. He smiled at me like we shared a secret. He was my worst client, because I couldn't escape my body. He had trapped me with his words, with memories of the past, and I couldn't vanish. I couldn't sink into the sheets and become nothing." Inej finally looks away from him this time. "When a man spends that much coin, he thinks he's earned the right to do whatever he wants. That's what I'd learned. Nobody told me they had a right to cage me, to bar my spirit while they picked my body apart."
Kaz stares at her profile. The lines of her face curve like practiced strokes on a painting. Kaz flexes his hands.
"What was his name?"
She shakes her head. "No, Kaz."
It sounds like a reprimand. He growls. "What was it?"
She nods her head, gesturing. "Look."
Kaz reluctantly follows her gaze. The bedroom's light is dim, a soft glow used as to not wake up sleeping company. A feminine silhouette passes the window. Inej turns to him. "I told you. Ten minutes." She flashes a bright smile at him, and Kaz wonders how she can do that. How she can make light of something that has burrowed an untouchable scar of pain inside of her.
She gets up from her perch, and he follows her down a fire escape. They make their way quickly to their parting intersection.
"I'll meet you in your room at the Slat," she says, her eyes bright with anticipation.
"Wait," Kaz calls before she vanishes. He runs his hand through his hair, messily crowding it along his forehead, and loosens his collar. He looks up at her with widened eyes. "How do I look?"
She appraises him. "Like a filthy pickpocket."
"What, I can't look like an innocent Samaritan?"
Inej laughs, then turns away into the night.
It's only after Kaz bumps into the mercher's lady, stealing the pouch of diamonds she left in her thousand kruge purse, bought with artificial love, that he notices the entirety of his right side is ablaze, remembering the pressure of Inej curled up against him. For once, it does not precipitate the cold rush of dead tides.
It begins to peel open a warm well of longing.