Chapter Fourteen
Invisible Machinery, These Moving Parts Inside Of Me
Weeks went by and although Inej did come to his room for reports and jobs, she did not lounge in his window as she once had, something had broken that Kaz did not know how to fix. He watched from afar as she continued to do her job perfectly, and he thought about how to get back into her good graces, and if he even wanted to.
In what may have been the pettiest thing Kaz had seen her do, Inej stopped wearing the shoes he had bought for her, she had a new pair, Fabrikator made by the looks of it. He didn't comment on it, part of him thought he may have been looking into this too deeply. The old shoes probably weren't adequate to keep up with the amount of climbing she needed to do, he hadn't thought to seek out a Fabrikator, an oversight on his part. He wouldn't even have noticed, shouldn't have noticed, if he hadn't gone out of his way to put himself where he knew she would be, and where she would be was near Jesper. It wasn't obsessive, but if he could just find a solution to her anger, then she would return to the empty place by his window, and his room would stop feeling so cold.
Jesper, who could never appear to hold a grudge when it came to Kaz, for reasons Kaz did not know and didn't care enough to look deeper into, was back to his usual self. He shadowed Kaz, took on jobs with his usual joking complaints and was ever the loyal dreg. Annoyingly, Jesper also chose not to mention Inej in front of him, he didn't comment on Kaz's dark cloud that followed his moods. It was not as if Kaz was going to confide in the sharpshooter, explain the reason behind his mood, but he knew to some extent that Jesper already knew what was wrong, and that was more frustrating than actually having to talk about it with him.
On this evening Kaz had waited until Inej was near Jesper, discussing something lightly, when he entered to give Jesper details on a job.
"Perfect timing boss!" Jesper greeted him.
"Oh?" Kaz questioned, had they been talking about him? Inej was steadfastly looking away from him, her eyes meeting the wooden boards behind the bar of the Crow Club.
"Anika and the others were asking Inej earlier, when is she going to be a full dreg?"
Kaz was rarely left speechless, yet Jesper's words truly made no sense to him. "What are you talking about Jesper?" His eyes flicked to Inej for answers, but she was still studying the boards.
"When is she getting the tattoo? We figured you would be doing it instead of Haskell, he's been busy recently, not dealing with the newbies as much." Jesper rolled the sleeve on his left forearm up and showed his own tattoo, for example, the black crow drinking from the goblet. All the Dregs had this tattoo, Kaz included. Recently Haskell had decided himself too busy to concern himself with the branding of his own gang, as his second in command the task had fallen to Kaz.
Inej had chosen now to look at him, her eyes staring cold and straight through him, he might as well be holding the needle now as she had braced herself. He stopped himself from glancing at her left forearm, always kept covered. He knew the peacock's feather tattoo lay under that sleeve. He could pretend to everyone but himself that he had not been putting off marking Inej as a dreg. So much of her life was done without choices, what was one more mark without her choice? But Kaz felt deeply that whatever feelings she had about more ink in her skin, would only be amplified by him being the one to put it there. But she had signed the contract, and here she was now, daring him with a stare.
"Come to my office tomorrow." He spoke directly to her, "At ten bells past."
"You'll be one of us!" Jesper spoke cheerily, either ignorant or unaware of the tension rising between his two companions, Kaz didn't know which.
Inej had schooled her face into a blank slate, she nodded at Kaz, betrayal alight in her eyes, and left the group, far too quickly for Kaz to have said more even if he wanted to.
He gave Jesper, who was frowning at Inej's departure, the details of his job quickly. He did not even take the time to remind the man to come straight to him after the job, not to the club to gamble the money away. His mind was already working fast, flitting through what he needed to do.
"There's that face again, I'm going to name it one day boss."
"There is no face Jesper." Kaz brushed him off.
He had one day.
The bell rang as Kaz entered the building, he reached up with his hand and quieted it. Not quick enough for the woman at the counter to miss his entering.
"Have you finally decided to let me fix that mess of a thing you call a leg?"
"If you try to touch my leg, I'll crush your hands and fashion you a lovely necklace with the bones. Tailors appreciate fashion, don't they?"
The woman's face paled and subconsciously she moved her hands behind her back, away from Kaz's pointed view. Ravkan refugees weren't used to the way those of the Barrel spoke, and Kaz was the worst of them all.
"If you're not here for yourself Brekker then what are you here for? You Dregs never pay for Tailors."
"I need you to remove a tattoo."
"Are you abandoning?" Her eyes glinted and Kaz scowled.
"Dregs don't abandon, it's not for me and it's not the Dreg mark. Can you remove tattoos or not?"
"What tattoo are we talking about Brekker?"
Kaz swallowed, "A peacock feather in a cage."
"No."
"Don't be hasty."
"Absolutely not, you might have my hands, but she'll have my body if I touch her girls."
"You're not touching her girls; we've bought her contract."
At this, the Tailor laughed, "Once a menagerie girl, always a menagerie girl. Heleen will get her back."
"Once a dreg always a Dreg, I can promise you she won't." Ice flooded his words, Heleen would not be getting her claws on any of his Dregs. Inej would never feel the silks of the Suli outfit again.
"Being in Kaz Brekker's good books isn't worth being in Heleen's bad ones."
"Heleen doesn't have any good books, 300 kruge."
The Tailor narrowed her eyes at him, "Two thousand."
"Six hundred Kruge and I don't tell the Razor Gulls that you've been healing the Dime Lions behind their back."
"How would you possibly know that?" Her face was twisted in shock and poorly masked fear, confirming what had only been a guess.
"I didn't, and now I do. Do we have a deal?"
"Payment in advance. You bring her here."
"Half now, half after, and you'll be coming to the attic floor at ten bells." He retrieved a bundle of kruge from his coat, counting them quickly and tossing them onto the table where she quickly grabbed them. "Do try to be subtle, no point in paying for the services of a dead person."
He turned and made his way out of the shop, hand silencing the bell before it could ring.
"Well, where is she?"
"You're early."
"Shouldn't she be early? I'm assuming you're giving her the Dreg tattoo after my job is done, that's some sort of honour for your lot surely?"
"I'm not paying you for your insight." Kaz snapped. His eyes were on the window, unlocked and half-open.
"Saints!" The Tailor had clutched her chest as if struck, she had turned to follow Kaz's gaze just as Inej slipped through the window, "That is an attic window!"
Inej rose an eyebrow at her and then turned to Kaz, eyes questioning who this was.
"I thought you did the tattoos yourself?" She asked him. Kaz usually did, gloves on, teeth gritted, his fear of touching the Dregs skin kept his hands steadier than most.
"I'm not a tattoo artist, I'm a Tailor."
At this Inej's face went entirely slack, whatever she had been expecting him to do, having a Tailor here certainly hadn't been on the list.
"Roll up your sleeve on your left arm." That was all he said, the Tailor moved forward, interested to see the tattoo in person. Inej kept eye contact with him, raised her arm forward, her forearm facing towards them, and then firmly pushed her sleeve up to her elbow.
Kaz was speechless.
"Saintka Alina herself, what hack job did that." The Tailor seemed more offended by the botched job someone had completed on Inej's arm, Kaz was shocked but more than anything he was impressed that he had been shocked, impressed he hadn't known.
Inej's tattoo was gone, skin hacked away in what could only have been a painful procedure, scars littered her forearm where the blade had slipped and caught on exposed flesh, it had healed to deep raised, pigmented scars, the circular shaped one the largest and showing where Heleens' mark had been.
"Good luck tattooing over that." The Tailor snorted. The snort was cut off abruptly as Kaz turned to look at her.
"You can leave, your services are no longer needed."
"I'm not giving the down payment back."
"Consider it payment for the danger of walking into here, and the unlikely chance you'll make it out without being seen."
The Tailor left, speaking darkly in Ravkan under her breath, Kaz wondered how many times he had been cursed in a language he could not speak.
He turned his attention back to Inej, still staring at him with those wide, challenging eyes.
"The right arm is still mostly unscarred if you want to do it there, I know it's not traditional." Her voice spoke like they were discussing business, it was only the slight, uncontrollable tremor of her fingers, the clench in her jaw that told Kaz her true feelings.
"How and when did you do that?"
"The day I ran away from Roeder, a butcher did it for me."
She had quite literally butchered her arm to be gone from the mark. Kaz couldn't believe how he hadn't noticed, and then he narrowed his eyes on her.
"It wasn't just the right rib cage then?" He referred to their first time sparring.
"You only asked me if I had wounds from the menagerie, my wrist was wrapped enough to handle any pain."
"You're an idiot, wraith."
"I was not having her mark on me for a day longer, we don't all have the money to bribe Grisha into helping us, and none of them would touch one of Heleens' girls."
They would if I had said to, Kaz thought but did not speak it. He stared at her forearm for a moment longer, before turning back to his desk.
"Then you can go."
"I can go?" Nothing he had said so far seemed to confuse Inej more than that, he avoided looking at her, moving to his sink instead and studying his own reflection in the small mirror.
"The marks you've given yourself are more a sign of being a true Dreg than any tattoo I could give you."
"You… you were going to get her to remove the mark for me." It wasn't a question.
To distract himself from looking at her, from acknowledging that yes, he had been only hoping to remove that peacock feather from her skin, to help heal that past in a way he could not heal his own, Kaz pulled off his gloves and ran his hands under the hot tap, using the water to wipe the grime from his face. Inej had gone strangely silent as he dried his face and hands with a towel, tossing it back onto its place on the chair before placing his gloves back on and turning to her, he thought she must have still been expecting him to tattoo her, her sleeve was still pushed up. Her face was in a blank state of shock that she seemed to snap out of when he faced her.
"I will not be the one to mark you again Inej, if you ever want the tattoo, you can have it, but I won't allow you to be marked without your consent."
It was as if the air had seeped out of Inej, the challenging look gone, the tremors fading. She reached up and pushed her own sleeve down, nodding slowly.
"Thank you."
"Don't." Kaz scolded the gratefulness almost as a second thought. He moved towards his desk and began sitting, sure that now she would leave just as she had arrived, silent.
She muttered something under her breath in Suli, "Vidiš me."
Kaz didn't ask what it meant, perhaps it was a curse or another weird proverb she was so fond of throwing at him. Instead of leaving she moved to the windowsill, and after wiping away the layer of dust that had befallen it, she returned to her spot at the window, beginning to talk lightly of the newer Dreg, Pim, and his potential for seeing the flaws in strategic plans and helping to spot cheats in the crow's club. Kaz only half listened, he had known Pim's strengths when he had sought him out to join. Instead, he was watching in small glances, fighting away the sense of triumph and normality that had returned upon seeing Inej sat there, giving him information in the way the pigeons may talk about their day.
It was only far later into the night when the early morning had begun to peak through the smog, and Inej had disappeared on a job, that Kaz looked down at his own leather gloves and realized it was the first time he had taken them off in front of another, at the least since the early stages of having obtained them. It had not felt like a display of weakness to do so in front of Inej, it had not felt like he had done so in front of another person at all. Kaz had felt as if there was simply another extension of himself in the room, like his cane. He didn't wonder if Inej would gossip, confirm that he had no claws under the leather, no blood adorning his fingertips, he knew she wouldn't. She had not seemed to even notice, as focused as he was, about her tattoo.
Kaz contemplated for a minute longer, on his gloves, on the rumours he stoked and the myths he helped create, on the scars across Inej's forearm that she had never asked to be removed. Just as Kaz would not have his leg healed, he knew Inej would not heal the scars left from removing her tattoo. It was a part of her story, having made her all the stronger from having it removed,
In that way, they were the same.
Authors Notes
Vidiš Me means 'You see me.' in Croation. I've been trying to decide what language to use for Suli and Croation seems to be the prominent one that Leigh uses so I'm going to use that. I kinda love the idea that Kaz is like, ah yes Inej is cursing me, and Inej is like wow this man truly sees me.
I am so proud of this chapter, it is my longest one yet and I was so excited to put my thoughts onto paper. I would love to know what your favourite part from it was? There will be some spying on Big Bol next chapter!
Hope everyone enjoys the chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Responding to Reviews
Thank you LucyMJ for reviewing!
Cat K- You're so right honestly how much of the actual books could have been resolved with Kaz just communicating with the rest of the crows. I hope you enjoyed the tattoo scene I had to reread the six of crows book to make sure I could include my idea whilst still making it canonically correct. I wasn't actually going to include Kaz removing his gloves for the first time although I knew it would be happening soon since he was at the stage of taking his shirt off in front of her at the beginning of Six of Crows, but then it just flowed and felt right to include it!
~ThisMayFlower