04 – The Hallowed Practice of Separating Pigeons from their Money

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Disclaimer: I do not own any content recognisable as belonging to the Six of Crows series or the Grishaverse. All rights go to the respective owners.

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A week later, Inej had still not found a name for her knife, but she had managed to found the beginnings of what she hoped could become a comfortable routine.

Unused to getting a full night's sleep, Inej found herself waking early in the morning, as the sun was rising. She and Pauk would wander the winding alleyways of the Barrel, only venturing onto the very South end of the West Stave – she wasn't ready to walk past the Menagerie yet.

She learnt the characters of the Komedie Brute, and the best cart to get an early morning coffee for less than five kruge. It was disgusting, but Inej loved it because it was real. She revelled in the Barrel's perpetual hangover, its stale smokiness and drink-stained streets. Most of all, she loved the rooftops that had views of the harbour. Places nobody else could get to, where she and Pauk could sit and watch the ships swaying in the early morning breeze as the thick fog that crowded through the alleyways at night receded across the water and out to the sea. It would be back again come evening, snaking its way through the streets and weighing the air with secrets untold, whispering stories of the foreign lands it had visited in a language unknown by even the most educated of scholars.

"One day," she said to Pauk as they sat beside one another looking out at the harbour. "One day we will have our own ship and crew, and sail far from this place."

"We could find our family," he suggested. "We could find our parents."

"See the Wandering Isle and Southern Colonies."

"Visit Novyi Zem."

"Perform with a troupe again and fly on the silks."

"Come back here," he concluded. "Home?"

"Not yet." She paused, trying to put thoughts into words. Pauk adjusted his position beside her but was otherwise silent as he waited.

"This place isn't home," she said finally. "Home is in the caravan, with the smell of Mama's cooking tinting the air. Home is on the high wire, and doing tricks with Harij by the campfire. Home is a new town every night, Pauk. Home is where family is, and here we are all alone."

A long silence followed and Inej, feeling herself close to tears, hold them back as she counted seconds marked by the distant lapping of waves on wooden hulls and masts creaking in the wind.

In the last still moment of the sleepy morning, Inej felt Pauk's tiny paw reach over and press gently on her thigh. She turned her head to meet his gaze, black eyes sparkling in the glimpses of early morning sunlight peeking through the clouded sky.

"Maybe it isn't home yet," he conceded. "Maybe we're not ready for it to be. But don't let the fear of it becoming one cloud your way. Ketterdam may surprise us yet."

It was Kaz Brekker who taught Inej how to steal. Every day they would meet mid-morning outside the Crow Club and walk East Stave together in silence. She learnt by watching him, and she learnt a lot about him.

He stole mostly from the rich, the gamblers. The ones with something to lose. The ones who would be so drunk that evening they wouldn't know that the money they lost wasn't gambled away at the tables. He showed her that they were the easy marks.

He stole from the tourists flocking to the shops and stalls lining the staves at midday. Watches and jewellery, because they were so careful about minding their money, they forgot about everything else.

She learnt about him from watching too. How he never touched the people around him, gloved fingers ghosting in and out of pockets but never close to skin. How he never took too much. He took more from the men than the women, he would toss coins to children tucked up in doorways and alleyways. Despite his rumoured lack of daemon, there was a kindness deep inside him.

Inej wasn't particularly skilled at thievery, but she knew how to disappear. To predict the direction her target would turn once they felt her and sidestep the other way. She could pull her scarf up and blend in amongst the crowd, and Pauk's pelt was dark enough and her borrowed coat big enough that he could burrow in amongst the folds of fabric and avoid being seen. When she wasn't quick enough to steal unnoticed, she made herself invisible.

At first, she never took anything. Slipping her hands in places they didn't belong felt treasonous, and every hat she saw in a crowd was a stadwatch officer on the lookout for her. Over time it became a practice to instead pick out a man's wallet and replace it without emptying its contents. It made stealing a skill that she could use if she wanted to, not something she did to survive.

Three weeks after they met for the first time, Inej learnt why Kaz had taught her the way he did.

The dining space at the Slat was a communal area, with slumpy moth eaten couches and armchairs clumped in one corner around a low central table, dining-height tables arranged around the rest of the room, and an annexed kitchen that had a back door opening out into an alleyway. People trickled in and out all day, but the room was always full come dinnertime at five bells, when mismatched chairs were dragged from table to table as required and left scuff marks on the unpolished wooden floor. There was supposedly some sort of roster for dinners, but most of them, Inej included, were simply glad for a guaranteed hot meal.

That night, she had sequestered herself into a corner in an attempt to separate herself from the chaos that came with more than twenty rowdy people and their usually large daemons dining in one space together. Stories of shoot-outs and gambles were batted from one end of the room to another, often accompanied with sound effects and graphic re-enactments. It made for a shock, transitioning from the silence of meals at the menagerie to this intense, loud landscape, but Inej didn't mind it too much. She'd been listening to one such story that had something to do with a group of university students and a game of Makker's Wheel when Kaz cornered her, sitting down across from her as she nursed a bowl of stew.

"Tomorrow night at the Crow Club," he said. "No later than eight bells." That was when they opened for the night.

Inej raised her eyebrow at him. "Is that a command or a request?"

"Watching the tables." He continued stiffly, having clearly heard her but evidently not willing to answer. "Seegan's on a job and Per Haskell needs someone to fill in. You'll be paid his usual."

So it was a test. To see how well he had taught her, and to see how well she had learnt. A regular job for the Dregs was watching the tables at the Crow Club for cheaters and thieves, and while Inej had a limited knowledge of the card games popular in the clubs, she had been watching Kaz steal for weeks. This was his way of offering her a chance to prove herself, as useful or otherwise.

Before Inej could respond, Kaz had stood and left the room. He didn't eat with the rest of them.

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