AN:
Hello! This fic is written by two long-distance best friends. We stayed up very late on New Years Eve writing the first draft. The goal was to write something based on this very angsty concept that would still fit within the canon of CK.
The plot and dialogue were written by both of us.
Inej POV chapters were written by N (prxnceling on AO3 and ) and come out on Sundays; Kaz POV chapters were written by D (dairymcoy on AO3) and come out on Wednesdays.
Enjoy!
The blade-nosed guard tested the mallet's weight in his hands. Van Eck nodded. The guard lifted it in a smooth arc.
Inej watched the mallet rise and reach its apex, light glinting off its wide head, the flat face of a dead moon. She heard the crackle of the campfire, thought of her mother's hair twined with persimmon silk.
"He'll never trade if you break me!" she screamed, the words tearing loose from some deep place inside her, her voice raw and undefended. "I'll be no use to him anymore!"
Van Eck smiled. The mallet fell.
Inej had experienced a hundred kinds of pain.
Somehow, it was not enough to prepare her.
She heard the crackle, like the splintering of a matchstick. She felt the rest of her body respond, wrenching itself up and back as she grasped at either side of the table and strained against the guard's grip on her leg. There was a ringing in her ears. And then, finally, she felt it.
Saints protect me, Saints protect me.
The pain lanced through her ankle and spat up the length of her calf in fiery tendrils, and she heard sobs from her own mouth, breathy and high and pathetic, but there was no time to gather any semblance of control before the mallet came down again.
"Don't," she heard herself plead, but it was no use. The second blow she felt immediately, and she could not stop the cry that ripped itself from her lips.
I'm going to cut you open, she thought, yelling it in her head. Even then, it was hard to hear her own voice when her mind was screaming at her about the pain. She looked at Van Eck. His form was blurry through her tears, but she could see the white gleam of his teeth. Her scream morphed into a growl. I'm going to excavate that pathetic excuse of a heart from your chest. I'll do penance for the rest of my days if it means I get to kill you.
The grip on her legs loosened. She struggled to catch her breath. Her teeth chattered from adrenaline and fear and rage. Van Eck turned his back, motioning to the guards.
"She's not going anywhere," he said dismissively.
They were going to leave her there. The mallet was placed back up on the wall, its cruel gaze enough to make her look away. She thought she might vomit.
As Van Eck and the guards stepped offstage, her eyes landed on Bajan. He was pale, eyes wide, and Inej could see that even where his hands were clasped tightly they were trembling. She spat on the ground near his feet.
Kadema mehim, she thought, but she couldn't catch her breath enough to say it aloud. As their eyes met, she channeled her hatred into a glare that struck Bajan hard enough that he flinched. You are forsaken. As you have turned your back on me, so will they turn their backs on you.
Bajan scurried out. Inej heard the door close.
Her raspy breathing was loud in the silent room. It was shaky and fast, and she felt like she wasn't getting enough air, but asking her lungs to fill up properly was an impossible task. She closed her eyes and tried to wish herself somewhere, anywhere else.
Take a deep breath. Her father's voice, a whisper from a time when she had fallen from the high wire many years ago. A sprained ankle was the only consequence. She knew how to fall. Sit up, little dove.
I can't, Papa. She had never felt pain like this.
Open your damn eyes, Inej. Another voice, and a closer memory. Kaz's face above her, the shine of the scar on his neck, the tightness of his jaw and his brows low over his eyes. The feel of his arms tightening around her, trying to hold her earthside. Don't slip away from me.
He wouldn't come for her now. Or, if he did, when he saw what they'd done to her and that she was useless to him, he would regret it. Maybe she could still live in the Slat, at least until she was healed enough to do whatever came next. She would never recover fully. And she would never be the Wraith again.
When darkness came for her, she surrendered.
When she woke with a shudder, she was still on the table. It was cold, and suddenly the pain crashed over her like the wave of a dark sea. She gasped, and then forced her breathing to deepen even as she shook. High above in the darkness, she could make out the dark outlines of the lights and the long, heavy drapery of the curtains.
She gathered all her courage and then finally looked down at herself. The sight made her immediately queasy: her right leg, where the mallet had hit her shin, was bent wrong. Her left was stuck straight. Even when she focused all her strength on the task, she could not move either limb. But at least the pain was not the roaring river that it had been when it had brought her under. The more that she breathed, the more she gained control, but the pain still lapped at the edges of her mind and threatened to pull her down if she gave in.
She shifted, and a clank drew her eyes to her arm—a shackle. Apparently, though Van Eck had said she wasn't going anywhere, he was not entirely sure of that. The sight of it almost made her smile. She would never be the Wraith again, but he was right to be wary. Even if she couldn't walk, and no matter how long it took, she would find some way to make him pay.
There was a rush of wind, and her gaze shot to its source—the curtain was slowly rising. The lights came on, blinding at first, but as she blinked and strained against the brightness the world beyond the curtain began to come into view. She had dropped from the vent into the rows of seats yesterday, but in the light she could see that they stretched back further than she had thought. There were hundreds of seats, and in the aisles, armed guards, and the glint of rifles.
The curtain reached its peak, and silence fell.
"Your hero is coming." Van Eck's voice boomed. Inej kept her eyes trained on the soldiers as her anger tightened into something sharp. His shadow came over her as he stood beside the table, and she kept her head turned away from him.
"I wasn't sure Brekker would bite," Van Eck continued. He spoke calmly and authoritatively, as if he was giving a speech at some mercantile function, but there was a cold edge to his voice. "I have sent Bajan back and forth from Eil Komedie every day to get his attention. And earlier this evening, the big Fjerdan and the Zemeni boy prepared a gondel. I did not have them intercepted." He paused. He had a flair for the dramatic. Inej wondered if he had rehearsed this.
"Much like you, they are mere pawns."
She felt her heartbeat in her throat. She swallowed down the rage and stored it somewhere where it could fester and be useful.
A shout echoed from the entrance to the theater, and silently the guards turned. Despite herself, her eyes were wide as she looked at the dark entryway, and dread settled in her stomach.
Am I about to watch them die?
"I thought it best not to leave the perimeter completely unguarded," said Van Eck. "We wouldn't want to make it too easy."
"He'll never tell you where Kuwei is," she said, her voice lined with fire that masked the mounting panic.
"He will. Eventually. I only wonder which will prove more effective—" Van Eck said. Finally she looked up at him, and his smile was sharp. His eyes gleamed. She wanted to wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze until all the forsaken light left them. "—Torturing Mister Brekker or having him watch as I torture you."
He leaned over her. His voice was conspiratorial, a mockery of the way Kaz spoke softly and deliberately when he discussed a plan with her. "I can tell you the first thing I'm going to do is peel off those gloves and break every one of his thieving fingers."
Inej's rage ripped forth from her like a wild cat, and there was nothing she could do to hold it back any longer. She yanked at his jacket and slammed her forehead upward, shattering his nose. Van Eck screamed, and the feeling of his blood spattering on her face gave her a grim satisfaction.
"You little wretch," Van Eck said, stumbling back and grasping at his face with both hands. "You little whore. I'll—"
There was a clatter in the hall. The door opened, and the soldiers pointed their guns. But it was not Jesper, or Matthias, or even Kaz himself that stood there. It was a boy, thin and with curly hair, wearing the Van Eck livery of red and gold. He held up his hands, stuttering his master's name.
"Stand down," Van Eck commanded the guards, his voice nasal and muffled by his hands. "What is it?"
"Sir, the lake house. They approached from the water."
Van Eck's hands fell in shock. The twist of his offset nose was almost comical. "Alys—"
"They took her an hour ago. They killed a guard and left the others tied up in the pantry. There was a note…" The boy came down the aisle and held out the piece of paper, and Van Eck's eyes were wild as he read it.
He crumpled the note in his fist, but Inej had already seen it. Noon tomorrow. Goedmedbridge. With her knives. And with it, the tie pin, a shining ruby with golden leaves that Kaz had stolen from Van Eck.
"Brekker," Van Eck snarled.
Inej smiled.
AN: As you can probably tell, a lot of the content from this chapter is just remixed content from chapters 4 and 7 of CK. The italicized section at the beginning is straight from the book.
Please leave a review if you enjoyed! :)
-N