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Chapter Text

Inej was thirteen years old when her daemon settled.

It was an ordinary day, really. They had just arrived near Os Kervo and the camp was bustling with activity, a familiar routine of what she liked to think of as controlled chaos. Her mother and aunts were gathered around the cookpots, chattering and chopping vegetables for supper. The tent they would perform in for the following weeks was being set up in a field on the outskirts of the city, and she could hear her father’s voice yelling instructions, the noise of equipment being shuffled around by her uncles and cousins. She felt her lips tug into a smile when an argument erupted, as it always inevitably had when a dozen men and heavy things in need of lifting were involved, and shuffled to the side as the youngest kids ran past, shouting at the top of their lungs, playing whatever game they had just invented. Their daemons were shifting and changing shapes all around them, running next to their owners as dogs, rabbits and cats, only to soar into the sky as birds a few seconds later. The air was warm and balmy, but the heatwave that had swept through Ravka over the previous weeks had finally broken. Inej turned her face west, letting the gentle breeze that brought with it the smell of the ocean brush over her cheeks. Seagulls were calling to each other high in the sky turned pink and gold by the setting sun.

Ajit was chirping happily on her shoulder in the form of a sparrow. He was always some bird or another those days, which worked for them both - when she was on the high wire, he could be right there with her without weighing her down, and she didn’t have to leave him on the ground, saving them both the discomfort of stretching their bond too far. Inej ran her fingers along the soft feathers on his back and walked towards the tent, maneuvering through the gaggle of children. Ajit joined the commotion for a few seconds, mixing in with the other daemons to playfully nibble on their ears and feet, eliciting another fit of laughter from her cousins. She shook her head at his antics.

“I thought we were too old for that stuff now,” she said as he landed back on her shoulder, this time as a nightingale. “Your words, not mine.”

He shrugged - or at least tried, which in his current form involved briefly raising his wings and lowering them in a sharp movement. “We’ve been stuck in a caravan all day. I need to stretch.”

Inej understood the feeling. It had been a few days since she’d last had a chance to practice on the wire, and she was itching for it, for the familiar feeling of balancing on a barely visible line in front of an awestruck audience, the freedom that came with being suspended halfway between the ground and sky, the thrill of knowing that one wrong move would send her plummeting into the net - and the certainty she carried in her heart that the fall wouldn’t come, that she was in control. Up there, the world was her kingdom, and she was its queen. Fearless. Invincible.

She stopped in her tracks and took in the sight in front of her: the tent nearly ready, the scaffolding of the high wire already in place. She saw her father and his falcon daemon near the tiered rows of benches that the audience would sit on. The sun was almost gone now, the night approaching fast, and she knew he was eager to finish working before it got completely dark.

“Papa!” she called out, quickly crossing the distance between them. “How can I help?”

He smiled at her, making the lines in the corners of his eyes deeper. “There’s not much left to do. You can help your uncle with the props.” He gestured to where his brother was loudly cursing everybody and their mother over a box filled to the brim with one-wheel bicycles, juggling balls, blindfolds and all the other knicknacks they used to make their performances more exciting, more daring, more unpredictable. If they wanted to lure in their audiences, they had to keep raising the stakes and inventing new tricks. Inej was old enough to understand that the entertainment they provided was often the only thing standing between them and the city officials denying them the right to camp within city limits. The public wanted a spectacle, and as long as they delivered, the sneering and outward contempt were kept to a minimum.

They were never completely gone, though.

Inej hurried to save her uncle before he could wish a plague upon every single continent. Together, they managed to haul all the props into the tent, box by box, and when they were all stacked neatly in one corner, hidden from view behind a curtain, Inej wiped her hands on her trousers and turned around to find Ajit nestled between the ears of her uncle’s large sheepdog daemon. He’d changed his shape again, this time to a bird the size of a pigeon, its feathers, legs and beak jet black, with yellow eyes. The light of one of the lamps caught on his plumage, and the feathers glimmered different colors: deep blue, purple, red, as if they were covered in a layer of iridescent paint. He shifted from one foot to the other, as if adjusting to the shape, and Inej felt an unfamiliar tug in her chest, a kind of slight and bittersweet flutter. One second and it was gone, but it left her with a strange certainty that something had irrevocably changed.

“Is this it?” she asked Ajit as they left the tent and made their way to where the rest of the camp was gathering for dinner, the aroma of spices and fresh bread hanging in the air like a beacon. He hopped off her shoulder and soared into the air, as if trying out his new wings.

“I think so,” he replied, hovering in the air to her left, then circled over her head a few times before landing in her outstretched palm. “I think I like it.”

She ruffled his feathers and smiled when he let out an indignant sound. “I think I like it too,” she agreed. It was strange to think that he’d never change his shape again, but if that was the form he was meant to settle in, Inej didn’t mind at all.

There was a celebration that night, like there always was when one of the members of the camp came of age. Her parents enveloped her in a rib-crushing hug, and she laughed, even though she could barely breathe with her mother pressed against her so tightly, like she never wanted to let go. Her uncles broke into a song, their voices carrying high over the fields. Her father’s face was beaming with pride.

“That’s a fine shape,” he told her, looking at Ajit chasing his own daemon high in the night air, the two shapes barely visible against the dark sky. “A fine shape, my love.”

When she went to sleep that night, much later than usual, Ajit nestled against her heart, her face almost hurt from smiling.

***

The first time Inej saw Kaz Brekker, his daemon was nowhere in sight.

He was just a boy, not much older than she was, dressed impeccably in a suit that reminded her of the rich merchants that snuck away from their respectable wives and jobs to seek forbidden pleasures of the Menagerie. And yet there was something about him that made it obvious he wasn’t a merchant at all, something austere and rough and dark that unsettled her, especially against the obnoxiously colorful backdrop of Tante Heleen’s parlor. She watched from the shadows as he took a wad of cash out of his pocket and held it out to Heleen in one gloved hand, the other clutching a cane with a crow’s head on top. From what Inej had overheard, he was after information, the kind of sensitive little secrets that men let spill all too easily when drunk on wine and pleasure. Heleen accepted the payment and swiftly counted the money, and just like that, the transaction was finished. Kaz Brekker definitely wasn’t the type for small talk, and he didn’t seem to notice or care for Heleen’s saccharine sweet charm that she used to wrap clients and investors around her pinky.

Heleen left the room, her peacock deamon by her side, and then Kaz Brekker passed by the nook where Inej and Ajit had hidden to listen in on the conversation.

“I can help you,” she said, barely a murmur, a whisper of a whisper.

He didn’t react, just kept walking towards the door. She could hear his uneven gait and the steady rhythm of his cane against the hardwood floors.

The second time she saw him, this time face to face, he offered her freedom - or the closest someone like her could get in a place like Ketterdam. His voice was rough, his words even rougher, but she preferred it that way. Better terrible truths than kind lies, and if he was giving her a chance to exchange one misery for another, at least he was being upfront about it. She wouldn’t find safety or happiness with him, he said. But she would be on her feet, a soldier, a weapon, instead of a pretty little thing with bells tied to her ankles, trapped in a glass cage, an object to be used.

She looked him in the eye, a stern and severe boy, his daemon still hidden from view, his face a collection of sharp edges that she knew she would cut herself on, and took the deal.

***

Kaz Brekker had no daemon, people in the Barrel whispered.

He'd sold his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal life.

He kept his daemon locked in a safe so nobody could use her against him.

He was a demon, a ghost, a malevolent spirit, something out of a children’s story. Something other and soulless, to be avoided and feared from a distance.

Inej didn’t believe those stories.

It wasn’t that Kaz Brekker didn’t live up to the reputation that preceded him in the dark alleys and less than reputable establishments of Ketterdam. He was just as ruthless and violent as people painted him. During her first month with the Dregs, Inej had seen him threaten and blackmail criminals and honest citizens alike. She’d seen him in a fight, thrashing like a feral animal, leaving a trail of blood and broken bones in his wake. She’d seen him slit throats and cut fingers, set fires and steal anything from jurda shipments to rare paintings. When he talked to her - to anyone, really, including his own gang members - he was brusque at best, barking orders or explaining his next scheme as briefly as humanly possible, clearly annoyed by questions or any sign of doubt. He could be cruel (especially, she quickly noticed, when his bad leg was acting up), and most of the time it seemed like he couldn’t care less about anything but bringing in more profit by whatever means necessary.

And yet, there were glimpses - rare as they may have been - of something else, something that Inej didn’t think a boogeyman he was made out to be would be capable of.

He caught her outside his window a few weeks after she’d joined the Dregs. She was still getting familiar with the rooftops of Ketterdam and she spent her days memorizing the confusing maze of streets, something she knew she needed to do if she wanted to be an effective spider for the gang. She enjoyed being up there, too - it wasn’t the same as walking on the wire, but after a year in the Menagerie, where she couldn’t take a step without being watched by one of Heleen’s enforcers, she relished the ability to move unseen, unnoticed by anyone other than the crows that gathered on the roof of the Slat. She stopped outside the attic window to feed them, pulling crumbs out of her pocket, Ajit swooping and soaring among the birds. She could almost see the harbor from where she was standing. Inej didn’t believe any part of the Barrel could smell good, but the stench of the streets didn’t reach all the way up the building, so she allowed herself to inhale deeply. Sometimes, in quiet moments like that, she almost felt like herself again - her old self, before the ship, before Heleen, before the nights at the Menagerie that chipped away pieces of her that she knew she’d never get back.

“Spying on me, Wraith?”

She jerked, startled by Kaz’s rough voice coming from the window. He used a name he’d invented for her, the beginnings of a myth that he wanted to build around his new spider. She didn’t like it, but she knew that hardly mattered to him. Kaz was looking at her, his face twisted into his usual scowl (she’d come to realize that was just his resting face). His voice was stone against stone, but he didn’t really seem as annoyed as his words suggested.

Before she could respond - and she wasn’t sure what she was going to say since the question was clearly rhetorical - Kaz turned around and limped back to his desk. “Might as well come inside if you’re going to lurk outside and feed the pests,” he threw over his shoulder. The invitation surprised her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Ajit freeze mid-air, falling a few feet before righting himself, clearly just as puzzled as she was. Kaz had never given her any inclination that he wanted company before. He didn’t seem to need anyone but himself and his schemes to keep him warm at night. And his daemon, Inej added in her head, because she was still certain that the elusive creature must exist, despite Kaz’s apparent satisfaction with the way the absence of his daemon added fuel to the fire of his reputation.

She slipped into the room before he could change his mind, and perched on the windowsill, taking in the sparsely furnished room. Kaz was already buried in his work, hunched over a ledger of some kind, paying her no mind. For a second, she thought she must have imagined him speaking to her at all. She turned around to look out the window. From this angle, only the crows and the rooftop of the building opposite the Slat were visible, but if she craned her neck, she could watch the sky change colors as the sun began to set.

They’d been sitting in silence for some time, Inej wasn’t sure how long, Ajit still playing among the crows, when she felt Kaz’s eyes on her. She didn’t turn around, but the skin on her arms tingled and she felt herself tense at the sensation. At the Menagerie, she was stared at all the time - by Heleen, by her enforcers, by the hungry eyes of her clients. Kaz’s gaze was difficult to bear, even across the room. Sometimes Inej felt she’d be happy to just disappear, melt into the wall or the night air, so that no one would ever look at her again.

A few minutes passed, and she felt herself slowly relax, even if she still couldn’t manage much more than shallow breaths. She was used to the staring being followed by touch, appraising her, undressing her, forcing her down on the bed. None of that came, she heard no movement behind her, and when she risked a glance at Kaz, he darted his eyes away from her, back to the ledger.

“No one is going to try anything with you here,” he said, and she froze. He had no way of knowing what was going on inside her head, the panic that had risen in her throat, choking her. Maybe he was a demon after all. “And if they do, you can protect yourself now”, he continued, referring to the knife he had given her earlier in the week, the one she carried hidden in her boot. His voice wasn’t soothing - she wasn’t sure Kaz’s voice was even capable of that - but as he looked at her again, she swallowed and nodded, the panic receding, allowing her lungs to expand once more.

He didn’t say anything else, and she slipped back onto the roof some time later, leaving him to his work. But, she decided, climbing down the side of the building to her own window, if Kaz Brekker really was an evil spirit, then she supposed there were far worse evils in the world.

The following night, and every night after that, his window was propped open, and she had a feeling it wasn’t because he enjoyed the fresh air.

***

Kaz had started teaching her to pick locks - a necessity, he insisted, if she was going to steal the kind of secrets that he required in order to establish himself as a major player in the Barrel.

The lessons took place in his office, Inej perched on the edge of his desk as he explained different lock mechanisms to her, his deft fingers taking them apart so she could see every detail. He was a good teacher when he wanted to be - he was never exactly nice, but he seemed endlessly patient as she fumbled with the lockpicks, a small kindness, one of those that she’d started cataloguing in her mind.

“Gently,” he’d tell her whenever she jammed in the lockpicks too hard. “A lock can’t be rushed.”

It really couldn’t, as Inej learned over the next several weeks. The lessons didn’t happen on a regular schedule since Kaz was busy, always in a rush to get to some meeting or watch over the proceedings at the Crow Club, searching the gambling parlors for cheaters and card counters. But every few days, she’d find him in his office with a new set of locks spread out on his desk, courtesy of a locksmith he knew, and they’d spend a couple hours hunched over the intricate mechanisms. Inej made good progress with the simpler locks, but the more complicated ones stumped her, a fact that seemed to make Kaz more annoyed at himself than her. She tried her best, never one to back down from the challenge, and sometimes, when she finally cracked a particularly challenging lock after dozens of tries, she could see what could almost be mistaken for a smile on his lips.

She wasn’t going to admit it, but that brought her much more satisfaction than the open lock in front of her.

Ajit hopped around on Kaz’s desk during their lessons, his yellow eyes taking in every detail. He made sure to give Kaz a wide berth, even though the boy’s hands were always covered and there was no exposed skin for her deamon to accidentally graze other than Kaz’s face and neck. Kaz always followed the bird with his eyes, watched as Ajit played with the locks and tried to open them with his claws and beak, or settled on Inej’s shoulder to clean his feathers.

“Can you tell your winged rat not to damage the equipment?” he snapped once when Ajit, bored and restless from sitting inside for too long, tried to lift one of the locks in the air and promptly failed, the object clattering to the ground with a deafening thud.

Inej shot Ajit a sharp look, and he had the decency to look sheepish - as much as a bird could, anyway - before settling on her shoulder.

“I’m not a rat,” he huffed to Kaz, clearly insulted.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Kaz replied, standing up and circling the desk to pick up the lock from where it’d landed on the floor.

“I’m sorry for him,” Inej said, gently rattling the lockpicks in a Schuyler 520, the newest lock on the market. “He’s just antsy. We both are. It’s the weather.”

Kerch winters were unforgivably cold, and the rooftops were covered in half-frozen snow, making climbing dangerous even for the Wraith. She still went out on missions whenever Kaz sent her, but over the previous weeks he’d had few assignments for her. Deep down, she suspected it had less to do with business being quiet - trade never slept in Ketterdam, no matter how biting the cold - and more with her usual routes being slippery enough to make her normally sure feet cautious. Sometimes, she thought she was being ridiculous. Kaz didn’t give a damn about her, and if he didn’t want her to plummet to her death, it was only because he’d have to find himself a new spider and all of her training would go to waste. But there were moments, usually in the quiet warmth of his room while the wind was howling outside, when she let herself believe for a moment that he actually cared.

Whatever the true reason for her sudden downtime was, Ajit didn’t take well to being cooped up inside the Slat, and boredom brought out the worst in him. He flew off Inej’s shoulder now, this time to rummage through a stack of papers on Kaz’s desk. She half expected another biting remark as Kaz settled in his chair and glanced at her deamon making an absolute mess of the pile - she could’ve sworn Ajit was doing it on purpose to rile up Kaz, despite her exasperation - but the boy just turned to her and looked at the lock in her hands.

“Not like that,” he said, and his gloved hands touched hers to adjust her grip. “Relax your fingers.”

Kaz only ever touched her during their lessons, and it was always as brief as possible, just to position her fingers correctly on the lockpicks. He never took off his gloves, something that made even more rumors about him circle the streets of the Barrel, and Inej had never dared to ask why. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t get an answer anyway. And given her own apprehension when it came to touch, she supposed she was the last person to judge. She’d gotten used to his gloved fingers brushing hers, the contact always short and light, never squeezing too hard. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was for Kaz’s benefit or hers.

She changed the placement of her fingers as instructed, and a minute later the lock clicked open.

She was sure she didn’t imagine the way Kaz’s lips curved into a flicker of a smile.

***

When the snow finally thawed and spring crawled into the narrow alleys and dirty streets of the Barrel, Inej was free to roam the roofs again. She was happy to stretch her muscles after weeks of little activity, and she raced Ajit from roof to roof as they made their way to the Financial District. He flew beside her, matching her pace, clearly overjoyed to finally be out in the open air. It was still chilly outside, but they both welcomed the cold breeze like an old friend.

Inej felt the burn in her arms as she scaled an ivy-covered wall to get to the rooftop of the next house. From here, six floors up, she could see East Stave, already full of tourists despite the less than ideal weather. It wasn’t as busy yet as it would get in the summer, but the gambling halls would be full by nightfall.

She had to climb down to the ground to cross the river, and as she briskly walked across the bridge to the other side, she let her eyes roam over the crowd. She could immediately pick out the richest men and women in the crowd, their clothes simple but tailored perfectly and made of quality fabrics, the men’s watches and women’s jewellery understated but clearly expensive. Truly rich people didn’t flaunt their wealth, Kaz had told her. It was the poor who tried to seem like more than they were that brandished flashy jewellery and donned frilly dresses and pretentious suits.

She didn’t even realize when it’d happened, but she’d started looking at the world the way Kaz did: finding targets in the crowd, people she could steal from or steer towards the Crow Club to let the cards do the stealing for her. She shook her head and quickened her pace. She wondered, for a brief second, what her father would say if he could see her, with her knives and a brand new set of lockpicks Kaz had gifted her, scheming in the shadows like a criminal.

She decided she didn’t want to know the answer.

***

She slipped through the open attic window of the Slat and saw Kaz at his desk, as always buried in his work. Ajit flew in after her and landed on Kaz’s desk to examine the notebooks and papers spread all over the surface. He and Kaz seemed to be playing some kind of game that consisted of Ajit trying to annoy the boy and succeeding. Inej didn’t understand why her daemon was so insistent on riling Kaz up. Sometimes it was hard to believe that they were one entity, two halves of one whole, if they could have such different views on something - namely, on how much of a nuisance they wanted to be for the Bastard of the Barrel.

“Try not to stain the books with your dirty feet, rat,” Kaz said as soon as Ajit landed softly on the edge of the desk, not looking up from whatever he was reading.

“Whatever you say, Dirtyhands,” her daemon shot back without hesitation, and in that moment Inej was sure Kaz was just going to snap the bird’s neck like a twig. She was going to die right there because her soul was clearly an idiot.

Did that make her an idiot by extension? She wasn’t sure.

Kaz didn’t reply, but she saw something cross his face, there and then gone. He’d looked almost fond. Maybe she’d had too much fresh air for one day. She was definitely seeing things.

As soon as she was sure Kaz wasn’t going to murder her daemon, Inej turned to look out the window, her hand reaching into her pocket for the seeds and crumbs she kept there for the crows. They were all waiting, skinny and ruffled after the long winter, and they ate straight from her hand. She felt herself smile as their beaks brushed against her palm, surprisingly gentle.

She looked back to Kaz, and she was startled by two realizations.

One, how much alike he and her daemon looked hunched over the day’s numbers like that, a little black bird and a skinny boy in a dark suit, their feud momentarily forgotten as Ajit pointed at something in one of the columns, and Kaz murmured something back, too quiet for her to hear.

Two, that there was now a dark shape sitting on Kaz’s shoulder, having apparently just crawled out from under his collar or maybe his shirt pocket.

It took her a second to register that the shape in question was in fact a spider - similar to the orb weavers that wove their webs in the nooks and crannies of her parents caravan, but slightly bigger and jet black, a stark contrast with Kaz’s crisp white shirt.

Inej never believed the stories about the Bastard of the Barrel not having a deamon, but she’d gotten used to the peculiar sight of a boy walking around without one, and she nearly toppled from the windowsill to the floor, her acrobat’s instincts saving her at the last moment.

Kaz looked up from the books. His bitter coffee eyes met her own, and she knew that he could see her seeing him - all of him - for the first time.

The spider crawled down his arm, settling next to Ajit on the desk. If her daemon was as shocked as she was, he didn’t let it show, hopping enthusiastically from one foot to the other as he and Kaz got into another competition of razor sharp wit. Inej kept her eyes fixed on the spider daemon, and she was pretty sure the daemon was looking right back at her. Neither one of them moved.

A few minutes passed, and suddenly the spider was off the desk and crawling towards the windowsill.

Inej felt rather than saw Kaz tense like a tightly coiled spring as his daemon climbed the wall until she was next to Inej’s face, a black spot against the grayish-white paint. It was almost as if he expected Inej to scream, or cry, or smack his deamon away. His face was impassive, but his hands were curled into fists so tightly that she was surprised the leather of his gloves didn’t split open over his knuckles.

Inej was afraid of many things, but spiders weren’t one of them.

She leaned slightly forward, towards Kaz’s deamon frozen on the wall. “Hello,” she said gently, “nice to finally meet you”.

She didn’t think she imagined the way Kaz’s breath hitched ever so slightly in his throat as he visibly relaxed.

She learned the daemon’s name was Eris, and that her voice was quiet and as soft as Kaz’s was gravelly rough.

When she climbed through Kaz’s window two days later, Eris was sitting on his shoulder and his gloves were off, his pale hands on full display, no blood stains or claws as far as she could tell. He didn’t say anything to greet her, but Eris climbed towards the window to murmur a hello to Inej, and Ajit circled the room a few times before he and Inej both noticed something new - a small perch on Kaz’s desk for her daemon to sit on.
“So the rat can finally stop jumping all over my desk like a wind-up toy,” Kaz grumbled, apparently sensing their stunned silence.

“Don’t mind him,” Eris said, her voice as silky soft as the web she was weaving in the corner by the window. “He’s grumpy because the Razorgulls got the jump on that sugar shipment.”

Inej couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her throat at the look of betrayal on Kaz’s face.

No one commented on it, but somehow it became a routine: Inej at Kaz’s window, feeding the crows he pretended to hate, a small black spider next to her, Kaz at his desk, a bird with iridescent feathers carefully preening himself on the perch.

Chapter Text

Kaz didn’t hide his daemon because he was ashamed of her.

He wasn’t ashamed of any part of himself, save maybe for the gloves and the weakness they represented, and even that was something he could use to his advantage, just another piece to add to the legend of Dirtyhands.

But Eris was too small, too fragile. It would be so easy for a bird daemon or someone who didn’t much care for the taboo of touching another person’s daemon to pluck her off his shoulder and squash her, killing them both. Sometimes, especially when he'd been younger, fighting his way through the streets of the Barrel with nothing to his name but his burning anger, he wished she’d settled as something bigger, more imposing. A lion, an eagle, a bear. Something with sharp enough teeth that she could walk by his side and no one would dare touch her. Something that could protect him as much as he protected her.

But Kaz was nothing if not honest with himself, and he knew perfectly well that he was hardly any of those powerful and noble things that he’d imagined his daemon would settle as when he'd been a child, far away from the streets of Ketterdam. He wove his schemes the way Eris wove her webs, his plans as intricate as the patterns she created. They both bided their time, waiting for another mark to get caught in the silky strands, trapping them slowly until they were so entangled they could no longer escape. Fly after fly, pigeon after pigeon. Patient. Meticulous.

Small daemons weren’t uncommon, and people found different ways to keep their souls safe in the crowd. Tiny glass spheres or cubes were popular in Ketterdam; women wore them around their necks like pendants, and men hung them from their wrists or belts. But the Barrel was full of thugs and thieves, and with Kaz’s list of enemies growing longer by the day, he could hardly afford to walk around with the most vulnerable part of him on full display in some shiny trinket. So he hid Eris, under his collar, up his sleeve, in the breast pocket of his waistcoat. He’d had tiny metal orbs sewn into his suits by a Fabrikator, a safe space for Eris to crawl into whenever things got too heated and he knew the night would end in a fight. No matter how bad a beating he took, she was safe - no stray punch or kick could harm her inside her Grisha-made bubble.

He knew what the word on the streets was about him. Very few people had seen his daemon, and he was perfectly content to let the rest believe whatever they wanted. Most people’s daemons were too big to be hidden from sight for too long, so as years went by and his was still nowhere to be seen, the rumor mill worked full throttle to paint him as some kind of supernatural creature, a monster without a soul. It served him well, probably inspiring more fear than his gloves, cane and actions combined.

He’d let her out when they were alone, let her crawl around on the walls and ceiling of his room, or settle in his hair. She’d weave her webs in the corners of the room, the light catching on the silky strands and turning them silver, and they’d talk through yet another scheme. She had a gift for spotting weaknesses that he hadn’t considered, filling in the gaps and working out the kinks that he couldn’t crack on his own.

“We need a spider,” she’d tell him from time to time, settled against his cheek, a black spot on his pillow.

“What for? I already have you,” he always replied. It was their private joke, something only the two of them and the four walls of the attic ever got to hear.

But they did need a spider, and one day in the Menagerie Kaz accidentally stumbled upon just the right one.

***

Eris was buzzing that night when they returned from Heleen’s pleasure house, raving on and on about the girl in the shadows that Kaz - that she - didn’t notice. Kaz had to admit that it was impressive. Eris noticed everything, as if the world was one giant web and she could feel everyone pulling on the strands, the way they moved, where they were going, what they were planning.

“I felt nothing, Kaz,” she said, furiously spinning in the web she’d woven by his bed. “Nothing. That’s extraordinary. We can’t let a talent like that go to waste.”

“She won’t be cheap,” he replied. “We both know what Heleen does with her indentures.”

“We’re not going to find anyone better,” Eris fixed an unnoticeable flaw in her web. “You need to go talk to the old man.”

He’d rarely seen Eris so insistent about anything, but she could be even more stubborn than him when she wanted to be. And, he supposed, if it was a spider they were looking for, she was the most qualified to offer her opinion.

So he went to Per Haskell, convinced him to take a very expensive chance on little more than Kaz’s hunch, and the next day he arrived at the Menagerie with a contract in his hand. He looked Inej Ghafa in the eyes, feeling Eris twitch excitedly on his wrist, and offered her a way out of Heleen’s gilded cage. Inej was a little younger than him, she spoke Kerch with a slight Ravkan accent, and carried herself like an acrobat or a dancer, whatever she'd been in her previous life. Her daemon perched on her shoulder, a bird with feathers that glimmered jewel tones in the bright lights of Heleen’s parlor. In their eyes, hers a deep brown and her daemon’s yellow, he saw the same yearning for freedom.

She took the deal, as he expected she would, and Eris crawled up his arm, unseen under his sleeve, to whisper “We need to get her some knives” in his ear.

***

Inej was a quick learner, and in just a few short months she established herself as one of Kaz’s best investments. She roamed the roofs of Ketterdam, stealing secrets from merchants’ bedchambers and criminals’ hideouts, gambling halls and trading offices, bringing him something even more precious than the kruge that flowed into the Dregs’ coffers from the Crow Club and the Fifth Harbor: leverage. He used it wisely, never one to move rashly when profit was involved. Kaz took whatever she brought him, he wove his web, and he waited, ready to strike as soon as all the pieces fell into place.

He wasn’t quite sure what to make of Inej other than the fact that she was even better than Eris had predicted, silent and efficient, so silent that sometimes he still almost missed her in the shadows - almost. It gradually became easier to spot her, as if his senses were tuning into some unique frequency that she operated on. She was excellent at getting information, and she took to the knives surprisingly well, too. He taught her the basic throws and thrusts, gave her the first dagger in what seemed to be a constantly expanding collection, and set her loose on the streets when he felt confident that she could defend herself if necessary. She didn’t talk much, and out of all the people Kaz knew, she probably had the fewest grating qualities. The only thing that really annoyed him about her was her religiousness, the prayers she sent to her Ravkan saints as if they’d ever done anything to help her, as if they deserved any of her devotion. Kaz didn’t put much stock in that pious nonsense. If there were any Saints or Gods, they hadn’t given a damn when he’d found himself in a pile of rotting bodies on Reaper’s Barge. Besides, the only religion that mattered in the Barrel was money, and the sooner Inej learned that lesson, the better.

He didn’t know why he invited her into his room that night when she was lurking in the shadows on the roof. She’d been with the Dregs for six weeks, and just a few days prior she’d taken her first life at his order. He remembered the weeping that had seeped into his room from her tiny quarters below after she’d returned clutching a bloody knife, loud sobs muffled ineffectively by a pillow. He’d stood in the doorway to his room, hands on his cane, and he could feel Eris twitching anxiously at his wrist.

“She knew what she was signing up for,” he’d snapped then, not really knowing what the anger that had risen in his chest was directed at. Kaz had no time or patience for weakness; he had a gang to run, a stack of papers on his desk that required his attention, and nearly 48 straight hours of no sleep under his belt. He shouldn’t be wasting time standing around listening to a girl’s pointless tears. It wouldn’t be the last person she’d have to kill, and she definitely wouldn’t have the time to cry over each one.

Eris crawled onto his cuff. “Maybe so,” she said, her voice low and sad. He’d never heard her sound like that before, not after anything, not even after Jordie. He didn’t understand why his daemon seemed so attached to the Suli girl. She’d never shown similar sentiments towards anyone before, treating most people with the same indifference that he did, focused on their goals, on the next score, on making them rich and taking down Pekka Rollins.

He preferred not to dwell on what her interest in the Wraith meant for him.

But when he saw a glint of iridescent feathers among the crows outside his windows a few days later, he told Inej to come inside, and he was surprised when he realized that her quiet presence didn’t bother him.

***

Winter came and went, and one spring day Eris crawled out from under his collar while Inej and her daemon were in the room.

He almost didn’t notice at first, too focused on what Ajit was pointing at, an inconsistency in the ledger. Inej’s deamon was so like her and completely different at once, as graceful flying in the air as she was in her every move, but not nearly as quiet, challenging Kaz more and more boldly as time went on, as if testing him. Kaz didn’t know what the test was, and it wasn’t like the rat’s opinion of him mattered more than anyone else’s, but there was a part of him that enjoyed the verbal sparring and the way Inej’s exasperation with her unruly deamon radiated off of her across the room.

If he was being honest with himself, he could relate. He and Eris had been seeing eye to eye less than usual, as became obvious when she decided to reveal herself to Inej without consulting him first.

“Would you have said yes?” she asked him afterwards, when the Wraith had left his windowsill and slipped into the night.

Kaz didn’t reply. Trust was a rare luxury in the Barrel, and he had to admit he’d placed much of his in his Wraith, coming to rely on her for many things. But trusting her to bring him other people’s secrets and trusting her with his own were two very different animals.

He felt Inej’s shock when her eyes landed on Eris for the first time, the way she lost her balance for a fraction of a second. He met her eyes, wide with surprise, and was momentarily distracted by the way she looked in the spring sun, a few loose strands from her braid framing her face.

He shook it off and went back to his calculations, trying to act as if everything was normal, but making a mental note to have a talk with Eris later.

Apparently though, Eris wasn’t yet done pushing the boundaries they’d established.

She crossed the room and stopped next to the windowsill, and Kaz felt the ice cold fingers of fear close around his throat. He wanted to get up, snatch his deamon from where she was sitting on the wall, perhaps reconsider locking her in a glass sphere after all so that she could never pull something like this again, but he found that he couldn’t move, frozen to the spot, his fists clenched so tightly he thought he might crush his own bones.

And then Inej - kind Inej, sweet Inej, so unlike him, so unlike anyone else in the Barrel - simply leaned towards Eris and greeted her like an old friend.

The weight in his chest fell to the floor and shattered into a million pieces.

The next time he saw Ajit outside his window, announcing Inej’s presence, he took off his gloves, finger by finger, and slid them in his pocket. He watched Inej and Eris talk quietly on the windowsill, as easily as if they’d known each other for years, then turned his eyes to the blackbird perched next to him. He flexed his bare fingers in the beam of sun that crossed his desk, and bent over another stack of never ending paperwork that came with running legitimate business in Ketterdam.

He rarely kept his gloves on around Inej after that, and sometimes he could feel her eyes on his exposed skin. He never offered an explanation, and she never asked.

Sometimes, he wondered what he’d do if she ever did.

***

Kaz made his way across the Crow Club to where Jesper was sitting at one of the tables, no doubt losing all of his earnings from the last job he and Kaz had pulled that may or may not have involved a shipment of coffee and a flock of angry geese.

Jesper’s hare deamon, Mabel, was in his lap, full of the same anxious energy that seemed to keep her owner constantly moving, fidgeting with his hands or his guns, or whatever object was within his reach. Her ears were twitching, taking in all the sounds of the busy gambling hall. Her big brown eyes spotted Kaz in the crowd long before Jesper did, and she hopped on the floor, making her way to him in a few swift jumps.

“What’s the job, boss?” she asked, standing on hind legs, ears twitching, nose scrunching, eyes darting around, as if she would drop dead if she ever stopped moving. Kaz knew how fast she could be in a fight, a blur of brown fur coming out of nowhere, tackling other daemons like a cannonball. She had no sharp teeth or claws to defend herself with, and yet there was rarely a scratch on her.

“How is he doing?” Kaz asked in lieu of a reply. It wasn’t that he was particularly interested in Jesper’s luck - or lack thereof - but he kept tabs on much debt the Zemeni gunslinger got himself into. A loan shark or a disgruntled gambling hall owner could very easily come after him, and Kaz would rather not find out what kind of sensitive information Jesper might let spill if pressed too hard.

“Poorly,” Mabel replied immediately, changing position five times in the span of two seconds, a blur of movement on the periphery of Kaz’s vision. “But when is he ever not?”

Kaz moved towards the table, Mabel overtaking him in a single hop, and without preamble dropped a piece of paper next to Jesper’s cards. The gunslinger’s head shot up, and he blinked up at Kaz, as if coming out of a trance.

“What’s this?” he asked, unfolding the page to read the words printed on one side. He grinned, his eyes twinkling mischievously. “No way.”

“It seems that the Dime Lions have forgotten their place,” Kaz said quietly, not wanting anyone to listen in on their conversation. “We need to show them what happens when they try to encroach on our territory.”

“Right away, boss,” Jesper replied, already buzzing the way he always did when he knew a fight was coming. He touched the revolvers at his sides, then bent down to rub one of Mabel’s feet, which he always did for good luck, be it before a shootout or a wager.

“Still not a rabbit, Jesper,” Mabel huffed, already darting past his owner towards the door.

“One of these days it will work,” he shouted after her, following suit. Kaz limped behind him, and through the open door he could already see Inej waiting for them in the street, Ajit immediately flying down from her shoulder to greet Mabel.

Kaz made sure Eris was safe in her metal bubble, then walked out of the Crow Club. Dirtyhands had work to do.

Chapter Text

Inej scaled the side of a tall Barrel building, Ajit flying next to her, a flicker of black against the night sky.

The building in question was a Dime Lions hideout - one of a few safehouses they had scattered around the city. Inej knew the location of them all, despite Pekka Rollins’ effort to keep them a secret. But there weren’t many secrets that the Wraith couldn’t steal, and she’d long ago marked all half dozen addresses on the map that hung on Kaz’s office wall.

When she’d slipped through the attic window earlier in the evening, Kaz had told her he had a new job for her - something urgent that needed to be dealt with the same night.

“What is it?” she’d asked, sitting on the edge of his desk as he’d changed his shirt. He’d started doing that around her, and she had yet to figure out why - to her knowledge, he didn’t make a habit out of undressing himself in front of the other Dregs. Hell, he didn’t even take off his gloves around anyone except for her. She wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a sign of trust or some sort of power play. But it was a new element in their routine - half-dressed Kaz who didn’t seem to care if she stared, and her averting her eyes from his bare chest and back as if she’d turn to stone if she looked at him for more than a second.

“The Heartrender you told me about,” he’d replied, his deft magician’s fingers quickly buttoning up the fresh shirt he’d put on. “The one the Dime Lions got to before us.”

She’d nodded. She’d brought him the information the previous night, after overhearing two Dime Lions grunts talking about it. “Nina Zenik.”

“I want you to make her a counter offer,” Kaz said. “One she can’t resist.”

And so Inej found herself perched on a fourth-story windowsill, looking into a dimly-lit room.

She counted all of her knives in her head. The collection had grown to fourteen, including the newest small blade that she hid in her hair. She sent a quick prayer to her Saints. It made her feel stronger, more centered, no matter how much Kaz sneered at her faith. Facing a deadly Grisha on what was essentially enemy territory was no small feat even for the Wraith.

She made quick work of cracking the lock on the window - Kaz’s lessons were paying off - and let Ajit fly into the room first, before she soundlessly slid off the windowsill and her feet landed on the floor.

Nina Zenik stood facing the window, her hands raised, ready to attack and crush Inej’s heart with little more than a flick of her wrist.

Inej raised her hands slowly. “I’m not here to hurt you,” she said, proud of herself when her voice sounded calm.

Nina quirked an eyebrow. “Sure, you’re just sneaking through my window in the dead of night to take me out for waffles. Ever heard of using the door? Or knocking, for that matter?”

Inej couldn’t help the smile that tugged on her lips. This close, the Grisha didn’t seem as terrifying as Inej had imagined her to be. “Doors aren’t really my thing.”

They stared at each other, for a few more seconds, Nina sizing her up and down.

Finally, the Heartrender lowered her hands and plopped down on the bed. “Fine, let’s say you’re not here to kill me after all - not that you could if you tried. And let’s say you’re not here to take me out for waffles - not that I would be opposed, despite your general murder-y vibe. What do you want, then?”

Inej moved to sit opposite Nina on a single chair by the table. “I have a proposition for you,” she began. “My name is Inej, and I’m with… I work for the Dregs. We know the Dime Lions want to contract your services. I think I can give you a better offer.”

Nina leaned back, and her daemon, who Inej only just noticed was sitting on top of the armoire the whole time, climbed down to perch on his owner’s shoulder. He was a small monkey with golden-brown fur and dark face. His eyes had the same impish twinkle as Nina’s. They both suddenly seemed completely relaxed, despite being ready to kill Inej in a blink of an eye less than a minute before. “I’m listening,” Nina said.

Inej relayed the terms that she and Kaz had discussed a few hours before. Inej knew she was free to sweeten the deal if necessary, but she also knew the terms of the contract the Dime Lions had drawn up for Nina and was pretty sure the Heartrender would find the Dregs’ proposition far more alluring.

As she talked, Nina’s daemon left her shoulder and snatched two pieces of candy from the bowl on the table. They sat next to each other, a powerful Grisha and her monkey daemon, chewing their toffees with the exact same expression of pure bliss on their faces. Inej almost laughed.

“So let me get this straight,” Nina said when Inej finished talking. “You’re promising me a far superior deal to the one I’ve been offered. What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” Inej replied. At the disbelieving look on Nina’s face, she conceded, “Kaz really hates Pekka Rollins”. It was true, even if Inej had no idea why. “I think he really wants to get one up on him.”

“A personal vendetta, huh?” Nina asked. “I can respect that.”

They sat in silence for a moment while Nina demolished another toffee.

“Ah, what the hell,” she said finally. “I’m in.”

She stuck out her hand to Inej and they shook.

“Nina,” the Heartrender introduced herself, then pointed at her daemon. “This is Kirin. Nice to make your acquaintance. Now,” she looked to the window and back to Inej, “how are you planning on getting me out of here? Because I am not climbing down four stories. These hands have many talents, but scaling walls isn’t one of them.”

Inej pulled up her shirt to reveal the rope wrapped around her waist. “I’m afraid this is the best I can offer, unless you prefer to kill your way to the front door.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Nina replied with a glint in her eye. “Fine, but if I fall, you owe me so many waffles.”

***

Nina and Inej became fast friends, and the Wraith frequently visited the Heartrender in her room in the White Rose. Inej loved having someone to talk to in Ravkan. She taught Nina some Suli, too, since it was pretty much the only language she wasn’t fluent in, as there was little chance she would ever need to infiltrate a Suli community as part of her work for the Ravkan crown.

Nina’s daemon was cheeky and eager to get into trouble, so he and Ajit often played together, Kirin climbing the side of the building, chasing the blackbird. Inej liked to watch them from her spot on the windowsill. She and Nina would talk about anything and everything: Inej’s work as the city’s best thief of secrets, Nina’s clients and their troubles, their lives before Ketterdam.

“Do you remember butter cakes?” Nina asked one day, fondly staring into space as she often did when reminiscing about food. She was sprawled out in a plush armchair, her feet propped up on a cushioned footstool. “I feel like I’ve been to every bakery in Ketterdam and have yet to find a decent replacement.”

Inej smiled from her spot on the windowsill. The air outside was warm, but she could smell autumn in the air. Leaves would start changing colors soon. “My parents would let me buy them sometimes when we went to the market. The best ones I’ve had were in Os Kervo.”

Nina sniffed. “I hate this city,” she confessed. “Mostly because of the smell and the overabundance of Grisha slavers, but the absence of butter cakes is definitely up there.”

Inej laughed. “I used to hate Ketterdam too,” she admitted.

“What changed?”

Inej looked out the window, letting the sun warm her face, carefully thinking about her answer.

What changed?

She thought of Kaz and Eris, the quiet afternoons and late nights spent discussing schemes, cracking locks, sitting in silence while Kaz worked and she sharpened her knives.

She thought of Eris’s gentleness, the way she wove her webs and made Inej laugh, the way Inej caught glimpses of the boy Kaz had been before he’d become Dirtyhands in his daemon.

She thought of the nights she’d spent exploring Ketterdam from above, Ajit soaring into the sky high enough that she felt pain deep in her chest as their bond strained.

She thought of the reassuring weight of her knives, the way they fit in her hands like she’d always been meant to wield them.

In the end, she settled for a shrug. “I suppose it could always be worse,” she said. “We could be in Fjerda.”

Nina grinned. “Now, that would be a tragedy.”

***

Inej watched the first snow of the year fall outside the attic window. Kaz’s room was warm thanks to a small furnace in the corner, and the money he’d spent insulating the Slat’s walls and roof was definitely turning out to be a good investment now that the cold winter wind was howling outside.

Kaz was sitting at his desk, his bad leg resting on a makeshift footstool. His scheming face was on, and Eris was weaving her web next to Inej more fervently than usual. They were planning some big job, and Inej knew better than to interrupt their thoughts. Even Ajit was behaving for once, perched next to Kaz and dozing off, his head tucked under one of his wings.

Inej was nodding off too, the warmth from the furnace and the sound of the wind outside lulling her to sleep. She stretched, raising her arms over her head. She felt her shirt ride up, a sliver of bare skin just over her hips coming in contact with the warm air.

When she dropped her arms and turned her face from the window to look at Kaz, he was staring at her, scheming face gone, replaced by something else. His eyes moved from her face to where her skin had been exposed just moments ago.

Her mouth suddenly went very dry.

She wanted to- what? Squirm under his gaze? Jump out the window, freezing cold be damned?

She forced herself to still, trying to center herself. A similar scene flashed before her eyes, over a year before, when he’d first invited her to this room, when he’d looked at her and she’d wanted to disappear, the memories of the Menagerie way too fresh, like open wounds.

Now, the feeling was different. His gaze burned her skin, but she didn’t want it to stop.

She wondered what it would feel like to be touched by him. To feel his fingers - his bare fingers, his gloves on the desk next to him - follow the trail of goosebumps that rose on her shoulders underneath her shirt. To feel his mouth doing the same.

The room felt too hot.

Kaz kept looking. Inej held his gaze.

There was no oxygen left in the room.

The knock on the door was deafening.

A beat passed - a second, a century, Inej wasn’t sure - and Kaz tore his gaze away from her. He stood up and cracked the door open just a little. Inej heard Rotty’s voice as he gave Kaz a report of the job several members of the Dregs had been sent out on earlier in the day. Apparently, it had been a smashing success.

Inej forced her lungs to work again. She looked at Ajit, who wasn’t asleep anymore. He seemed just as rattled as she felt.

“I thought he was gonna go for it this time,” he told her later. After Rotty had gone, she’d lamely excused herself and left before Kaz could say anything. She’d curled up on the narrow bed in her room and counted her knives, over and over, until she felt some semblance of calm return to her body.

“This time?” she asked incredulously. She was tossing and turning in her bed, trying to get some sleep, to no avail. She couldn’t get the image of his dark eyes out of her head. The way his slender fingers had flexed on the desk when he’d looked away from her.

“Yeah, he stares at you like, all the time,” Ajit replied from where he was nestled against her chest. “You really haven’t noticed?”

She shook her head, her head spinning a little at her daemon’s words.

“He pretends not to, but I see him doing it,” Ajit continued. “He usually waits until you’re turned away from him. I told him once that he could, you know. Do something other than staring.”

“You did not!” Inej wasn’t sure what was worse - the fact that Ajit had never mentioned anything before, or that he’d tried to play matchmaker with her and the Bastard of the Barrel.

“He told me to fuck off,” Ajit sounded so smug that she wanted to hit her head against a wall. “He tried to be more subtle, after that. Didn’t work very well. Besides, it’s not like you would be opposed,” he added in an accusatory tone. “I’m you, remember? Let’s not pretend those dreams we’ve been having are coming from me.”

Inej felt her cheeks getting hot. “We are never - and I repeat, never - talking about this again.”

“Suit yourself,” he replied. Then, after a beat, “Wait till you hear about the bet Mabel and I have got going on whether or not Kaz is gonna get his shit together.”

“Ajit!” she was going to have a stroke. Right there, and she would have nobody but her traitor of a soul to blame.

He seemed unphased. “It was her idea,” he replied. “You know her and Jesper. Never could resist a gamble. For the record,” he added, dozing off now, “if you could hold off for a few more months, that’d be great. I kind of want to win.”

Inej huffed a breath, not sure whether she was angry, amused, or somewhere in between.

Ajit fell asleep long before her. The Slat had gotten almost completely quiet by the time she finally managed to get the image of Kaz’s fingers, those damn, clever fingers, out of her mind.

Chapter Text

Wylan Van Eck stood out like a sore thumb in the Barrel.

It wasn’t just his curly red hair, or his bloody innocent blue eyes, or his soft merchling hands and even softer merchling manners.

The thing that made Wylan Van Eck a walking target was his daemon.

She was a dove - an honest-to-Ghezen dove, plump and pure-white, like one of those ridiculous purebred birds men with too much money on their hands kept in aviaries.

Wylan Van Eck was literally a pigeon, ripe for plucking, a fact that provided endless amusement to Kaz and Jesper.

There was a beauty to Silja, to be sure; she was a graceful little thing, soft to the eyes and ears, the way she cooed and snuggled against Wylan’s neck ever so gently, her feathers always pristine, her bones delicate, picture-perfect like a porcelain figurine and just as fragile. The kind of daemon that was meant for mansions and carefully maintained gardens, not shady gambling halls and tanneries.

In the Barrel, her beauty mattered little, and had it not been for Kaz’s protection, he suspected it wouldn’t have been long before those elegant wings of hers were stained with grime, or blood, or both.

“How complicated can it be to blow up a wall?” he asked Wylan, unable and unwilling to keep annoyance out of his voice.

He, Jesper and Wylan were sitting around a table in one of the private gambling parlors of the Crow Club, a floorplan of one of Ketterdam’s museums spread out on the table between them. There was a certain set of marble Shu Han statuettes the museum had on loan that Kaz was very keen on obtaining. He already had a buyer lined up, a merch that fancied himself an art collector and had a strange obsession with the Shu Han culture. According to the intel he’d gathered, the statuettes were in a box inside a vault, kept under lock and key until the Shu Han exhibition opened in a few weeks. Normally, Kaz would’ve had no trouble opening the vault, but it seemed the museum had a Fabrikator on the payroll - the vault had no door, instead there was apparently a reinforced wall, several feet thick, that could only be opened by a Materialnik. There was no lock to pick or code to crack. The only way to get inside would be to blow up the wall itself.

“It’s not just any wall,” Wylan replied, brushing his hair from his forehead. “We have no idea what it’s actually made of. All we have are rumors.” It was true. Not even Inej had managed to find out any specifics about the vault, which was supposed to be the most secure place in all of Ketterdam.

“Then give me your best guess, merchling,” Kaz spat out. “We need to take out a reinforced section of the wall without collapsing the building. You’re the demo expert. Figure it out.”

“I’ll need a week,” Wylan replied, “and two thousand kruge”.

“You have three days,” Kaz took out a wad of cash out of his pocket and dropped it on the table. “Make it work. We move in at 3 bells past midnight. That’s when the guards are the least alert. There’s supposed to be two of them guarding the vault at all times. I’ll take care of them while Wylan blows up the wall. Provided the ceiling doesn’t fall down on us, we take what we need and we’re out of there. Jesper, you’re there to watch our backs. If things go sideways, I want you to keep the guards busy.”

Jesper twirled his revolvers. “They’re not gonna know what hit them,” he said, winking at Wylan, who blushed deep red, his daemon nearly toppling off his shoulder.

Kaz rolled his eyes and got up from the table, shuffling past Mabel who was frantically cleaning her fur. “Three days from now. Across the street from the main gate. And Wylan,” he added, looking at the flustered merchling, “you better bring me receipts. I don’t want to have a single kruge unaccounted for.”

***

Kaz walked out of the Crow Club and moved towards the Slat. East Stave was bustling with activity despite the late hour, but as usual, the sea of tourists and thrill-seekers parted for Kaz.

He walked quickly, despite the ache in his bad leg, determined to get a few hours of sleep before sunrise. He had to be in Fifth Harbor at six bells to monitor the arrival of a jurda shipment and make sure none of the dockworkers were skimming while unloading the crates.

Eris was curled up under his collar, her legs twitching sleepily against his collarbone. She was just as tired as he felt. Too many long nights followed by early mornings.

The Slat was full of people, the Dregs celebrating their recent victory over the Razorgulls - a victory orchestrated by Kaz, of course, which was why several members of the gang turned to him while he was climbing the stairs, trying to start a conversation. Kaz brushed them off, as always, and he felt the way some of them stared daggers into his back as he made his way to the attic.

Let them stare, he thought. If he cared about being liked, the Dregs would still be a laughing stock of the Barrel.

He closed his door behind him and took off his coat and gloves. He didn’t bother turning on the lights - he knew every inch of the cramped room. He unbuttoned his shirt and walked to the washbasin, determined to wash off at least some of the sweat and dust that clung unpleasantly to his skin.

Kaz felt her presence without turning around. The air always changed just slightly when his Wraith showed up at his window, as if the city held its breath for a second, muffling the sounds from the street.

“Came for a show?” he asked, and he could imagine the blush creeping up her cheeks, the way she averted her eyes from his bare skin. He’d seen her do it often enough that the images flashed before his eyes instantly, clear and sharp. Sometimes, he had to push down the urge to brush his fingers over that blush, see if her skin was as soft and warm as he’d imagined. See how long he could withstand the touch before the water rose and threatened to pull him under.

For a long minute, the room was silent. He washed his arms and chest before glancing back at Inej, her face obscured by the shadows.

“What business, Inej?” he asked finally, putting on a fresh shirt.

“I have information,” she replied finally, and he could hear the smile on her mouth, the satisfied toothy grin of a cat that had swallowed the canary, “on Adam van de Berg”.

Kaz’s fingers stopped midway through buttoning his shirt. Van de Berg had been a pain in his ass for months, one of those holier-than-thou types determined to clean up the Barrel. His newest idea had been to raise taxes on the profits from gambling halls, and Kaz knew that the only way to make him back off would be to find leverage. Something big. Something ugly.

Judging by how pleased Inej seemed with herself, she’d found just the thing.

“Are you going to keep me in suspense, then?” he asked.

When she didn’t reply, apparently enjoying the power she had over him in that moment, he rolled his eyes. “Darling Inej, treasure of my heart, won’t you please tell me what kind of nasty little secret you dug up on Adam van de Berg?”

His voice was mocking, but there was a part of him, very deep down, a part that sounded suspiciously like Eris, that liked the way “Darling Inej” felt in his mouth.

Inej huffed out a breath, annoyed now, and replied, “Adam van de Berg has a wife.”

If that was the big reveal, Kaz was thoroughly unimpressed.

“I know he has a wife,” he replied, running his fingers through his hair and letting Eris climb up his neck and settle behind his ear. “All of Ketterdam knows he has a wife. The wedding was the talk of the town, if I’m not mistaken.”

“He has a wife,” Inej repeated, Ajit twitching excitedly on her shoulder, like he could barely contain himself, “in Zierfoort.”

Kaz stilled as realization dawned on him.

“Two children, too,” Inej added. “Except down south he’s known as Adam van der Beek.”

Well well well. A bigamist. Kaz was rarely surprised, but he had to admit that was a first.

“And just how did you find that out?” he asked. There wasn’t a lot Inej couldn’t do, but teleporting to Zierfoort and back in a span of one afternoon seemed beyond even her capabilities.

“He writes to her,” she replied. “He keeps an apartment in the Van der Beek name near West Stave. Sends his letters from a post office nearby. Apparently his wife thinks he came here to establish a new branch of his business. Adam van der Beek deals in furniture, and is just a humble middle-class citizen. Poor woman has no idea her husband has made a fortune in tobacco shares and built himself a mansion with a new wife,” Inej shook her head. “I’ve seen men go to a lot of trouble to hide their money and their mistresses, but this… This is something else.”

“Why doesn’t he just divorce the first wife, then?” Kaz asked, his mind working a thousand miles a minute.

“Apparently his father-in-law loaned him a considerable amount of money to start his business in Zierfoort,” Inej replied. “He doesn’t have to pay him back as long as he plays the role of a dutiful son-in-law. If they were to divorce, he’d have to pay it all back.”

“With considerable interest, I imagine. Not to mention the alimony and child support. And if she was to discover how much money he’s made here in Ketterdam, she could sue him. The legal fees alone would eat him alive.”

Inej nodded.

“Do you have proof?” he didn’t really need to ask. Inej never came empty-handed.

She came out of the shadows, then, to show him a file she must’ve stolen from Van de Berg’s secret apartment. It was full of letters from his wife - his actual wife - and buried at the very bottom was a copy of loan agreement between Adam van der Beek and a certain mister Visser, no doubt the father-in-law.

“This is good work,” he said, and he knew the admiration in his voice surprised her. He rarely let on how much he appreciated her talents, but he had to admit that this time she’d outdone herself.

“Thank you,” Inej replied, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “How's the heist preparation going?”

“Everything’s in place. Provided Wylan doesn’t blow us all to hell, come Thursday the museum director is going to have quite a few angry Shu Han officials at his door,” Kaz put the Van der Beek file on his desk. “Tomorrow, I’ll pay Van de Berg a visit. This should be enough to convince him to mind his own business from now on and stay away from mine.”

Inej nodded, but he knew her well enough to see that she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of letting the merchant get away with his lies. Ever the idealist. Kaz was surprised the Barrel hadn’t beaten that out of her yet, but Inej had a way of surprising him.

Perhaps it was the late hour, or his lack of sleep, or the satisfaction he felt at the prospect of facing Van de Berg, but he looked down at his desk, pretending to brush off some invisible speck of dust, and continued, “And then, who knows, maybe dear missus Van der Beek finds a copy of the Ketterdam Gazette in the mail, along with a picture from the wedding.”

When he glanced at Inej, she looked positively shocked.

“Am I having a stroke or did he just offer to do something nice?” Ajit whispered theatrically in his owner’s ear, and Inej choked out a laugh. Even Kaz couldn’t help the twitch of his lips at the rat’s audacity, not when Inej was laughing like that.

“Don’t go throwing me a parade yet,” Kaz said. “If our favorite furniture dealer is too busy fending off lawsuits from both his brides, he won’t have time to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong again. It’s the logical thing to do.”

“Eris, on a scale of one to the Slat’s latrine, how full of shit is that answer?” Ajit asked, yellow eyes twinkling.

“Ajit!” Inej put her head in her hands.

“Don’t answer that,” Kaz said.

“About a seven,” Eris deadpanned from her spot behind his ear, without hesitation.

“Who let you two even talk?” Kaz barked out, annoyed.

“Try and stop us,” Ajit challenged. “Not my fault Eris is much more fun than you.”

“Okay, we’re going now,” Inej said sternly, throwing her hands in the air. “See you guys tomorrow.”

She was gone within seconds, and Kaz stared after her for a long moment, wondering how the hell their conversations could get so completely derailed by their daemons, who apparently were in cahoots with each other to drive them both crazy.

He rubbed his eyes and limped to his desk. He needed a drink.

***

It was coming up on three bells when Kaz met Jesper and Wylan in an alley directly opposite the main gate of the museum. Jesper looked excited and ready for action, Mabel by his side, buzzing with so much energy Kaz was surprised she wasn’t levitating. Wylan, on the other hand, looked ill, despite his efforts to put on a brave face. Silja was trembling on his shoulder.

“Did you crack it?” Kaz asked, eyeing the street, making sure they were alone.

Wylan pulled out two small devices out of his pocket. “This should work,” he replied, and he looked paler than usual. “If my math is correct.”

Kaz fixed him with a glare. “I need better than ifs, Wylan.”

The boy swallowed and straightened. “It will work,” he said, managing to hold Kaz’s gaze for two seconds before looking away.

“Good. This way,” Kaz led them to a grate in the ground at the end of the alley.

“Oh, come on,” Jesper whined. “You don’t actually want us to-”

“This leads to a storm sewer. And that storm sewer leads to a courtyard right in the middle of the museum. I know you’d rather go in through the front gate, guns blazing, but I’d prefer to actually steal something before we get ourselves captured,” Kaz used his cane as a lever to prop the grate open, listening for the church bells. “We haven’t had rain in a few days, and the storm sewer is separate from the main sewer system. Besides, if you’re worried about ruining your outfit, it’s not like it can get much worse,” he raised an eyebrow at Jesper, who was decked out in his standard lime and green Barrel flash. “Ever heard the word ‘subtle’, Jesper?”

The gunslinger huffed a breath and ran his hands down his patterned waistcoat. “Doesn’t exist in the Jesper dictionary. And I’ll have you know this is the height of fashion.”

The bells finally rang, and Kaz gestured at Jesper and Wylan to follow before slipping down the grate into the storm drain. The landing was hard on his bad leg, and he winced, feeling pain shot up his thigh.

Jesper landed effortlessly right behind him, Mabel in his arms. Wylan dropped clumsily, stumbled, but kept his footing. Silja flew down gracefully and settled on his shoulder.

They moved quickly through the storm sewer. Just as Kaz had predicted, it was dry, and there were patches of light seeping in through the grates from the street above, illuminating their path.

The sewer ended just below the museum courtyard. Thick metal bars blocked the path. Behind them, Kaz could see the courtyard drain.

“I’m assuming you planned for this?” Jesper asked from behind him.

“No, I spent a month planning a heist only to be stopped by the first anti-thieving measure,” Kaz replied, slipping a small bundle out of his pocket. He unwrapped the cloth and took out a diamond file, tossing a second one to Jesper. “Let’s move.”

He and Jesper got to work cutting through the bars. By the time the first one snapped, they were both panting and covered in sweat.

Jesper eyed the gap. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I think we can all fit.”

Kaz moved first, squeezing between the bars.

“Give me a boost, Jesper,” he demanded, and the gunslinger sighed before joining his hands and holding them up so Kaz could use them as a step.

“Why is it always me that gets stepped on?” he complained. “Just be careful with the face.”

Kaz climbed on Jesper’s shoulder, ignoring the loud “Ouch!” as the soles of his shoes dug into Jesper’s skin. Slowly, he raised the grate and looked around the courtyard.

“It’s clear.” He said, and propped his elbows on the edges of the drain to haul himself up. “The courtyard is enclosed from all four sides, so the guards don’t patrol here.”

Jesper climbed out behind him and turned around to help Wylan. Silja flew around the courtyard, looking in the windows, before settling back on her owner’s shoulder.

“I don’t see anyone”, she said, her voice as soft as everything else about her.

Hunched over just in case, they made their way to the northern entrance to the courtyard, and Kaz quickly picked the lock. The corridors and rooms of the museum were dark and quiet, save for an occasional dimmed light here and there on the wall, so the guards wouldn't trip over priceless works of art on their patrol routes. Kaz led them down the corridor to the stairs, through several locked doors, then down to the basement, which was a maze of corridors cluttered with broken exhibits. Paintings awaiting maintenance were hung on the walls.

After several turns, Kaz gestured at the others to stop them, then took a quick look around the corner. At the end of the hallway, they saw a plain section of the wall with two guards stationed in front of it, their dog daemons sitting beside their owners.

Kaz let Eris slip out of his sleeve and he followed the tiny dark shape with his eyes as she crawled up the wall. Then, he raised his cane and brought it down to the floor with a deafening crunch of metal against stone.

“Who’s there?” came a voice from around the corner. He heard the guards pull out their guns from their holsters.

They waited in silence as the guards murmured to each other. After a few moments, Kaz heard footsteps as one of the guards approached the corner to check where the noise had come from. He braced himself, pulling a rag out of his pocket.

The guard turned the corner and laid eyes on the three of them hunched by the wall.

Before he could raise his gun or call his partner for help, Kaz hooked the end of his cane around the guard’s neck and pulled him closer, then pushed the rag against his mouth.

He saw the shock and fear in the guard’s eyes as he inhaled in surprise. A moment later, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed against Kaz.

Kaz felt a wave of revulsion wash over him as the guard’s body pressed against his, but he forced himself to stay calm as he lowered the body to the ground. The guard’s daemon hadn’t rounded the corner before they’d been knocked out, and Kaz heard the other guard’s distressed voice as he carefully approached the corner.

“Come out with your hands out!” the guard yelled. “This is your final warning!”

“Adorable,” muttered Jesper from his spot behind Kaz.

Kaz saw the guard’s shadow on the floor right next to him. In one swift move, he turned the corner and disposed of the second guard the same way he had the first.

“You know I could’ve dealt with them before they’d even got those guns out of the holsters,” Jesper said as they maneuvered between the bodies, careful not to touch the unconscious deamons.

“And if I wanted to draw attention to us by making a lot of unnecessary noise, I would’ve asked you to,” Kaz replied, putting the rag back in his pocket. “This will keep them knocked out for an hour and they won’t remember anything when they wake up.”

Wylan stepped forward and examined the wall.

“The weakest points will be towards the middle,” he said. “We’ll need to attach the explosives here and here.” He pointed to two spots on the wall.

“Hold that thought for a second,” Kaz looked around at the half dozen paintings that hung on the walls of the corridor. Most of them were faded, torn or otherwise damaged. There were a couple of giant portraits of a merchant and his wife hanging opposite each other, so large that they almost reached from the floor to the ceiling.

“Kaz, do I need to remind you that we’re here to steal art, not appreciate it?” Jesper asked, touching his revolvers.

“Do you know what’s almost as effective as having an impenetrable Grisha vault?” Kaz asked in lieu of a reply. His eyes caught Eris crawling out from one of the portraits. She crawled along the wall until she was next to him.

“It’s that one,” she confirmed quietly, and he nodded.

“Having an almost-impenetrable Grisha vault?” Jesper risked.

“Making everyone believe you have an impenetrable Grisha vault,” Kaz replied as he walked over to the portrait of the mercher’s wife and ran his fingers along the frame. It was heavily decorated, made of gilded metal and carved into intricate floral patterns.

“Is that scheming face?” Mabel asked behind him.

“Definitely,” Jesper replied.

Kaz traced the patterns on the frame until he found what he was looking for - one of the hundreds of tiny metal flowers that blossomed among climbing vines had tiny hinges, incorporated into the pattern so that they were almost impossible to find. He pried the flower open with his fingers, revealing a keyhole underneath.

His lockpicks slid easily into his hand from where they’d been hidden in his sleeve, and he got to work cracking the lock.

“Are you going to tell us what this is all about?” Jesper asked.

“Why tell when I can show you?” Kaz asked, gently turning the lockpicks.

The lock clicked and opened, and the portrait swung from the wall like a door, revealing hidden hinges on one side.

Behind it, there was a metal door to a vault - a sophisticated one, but definitely not impenetrable.

He heard Jesper and Wylan gasp in unison.

“So, the wall…” Wylan trailed off.

“Reinforced, I’m sure, but if I were a betting man, I’d wager there’s nothing behind it,” Kaz replied, scanning the vault door with his eyes.

“Why did I bring the explosives, then?”

“All in good time, Wylan.” There was a combination dial in the middle of the door. Six numbers, most likely. Kaz crouched by the dial and watched as Eris got in position above him. Kaz had a decent ear for safecracking, but time was of the essence, and no one could get the job done faster than his daemon.

He started turning the dial, and Eris stilled, feeling for the vibrations of the wheels inside the vault door, the barely audible clicks of the safe mechanisms falling into place.

“There,” she said after a few seconds, sensing the first click through her legs, those same legs that never missed anything.

Kaz kept spinning the dial gently, and Eris alerted him every time another notch fell into place. Even Jesper and Mabel stopped fidgeting, the basement almost completely silent except for their breathing.

Finally, after fifteen minutes of careful work, the last notch clicked into place and the vault opened.

Kaz reached for Eris and she crawled up his sleeve and settled against his neck. He picked up his cane from the floor and swung the vault door open. Inside, shelves lined the metal walls, stacked with the most valuable exhibits the museum had to offer.

Kaz walked inside and looked around, scanning the shelves until his eyes landed on a locked metal box just big enough to store two hideous marble Shu statuettes. And sure enough, as soon as he dealt with the lock and lifted the lid, there they were - two horses, one black and standing on hind legs, one white and in gallop, and both with heads that resembled birds more than horses.

Kaz grabbed the box, then turned around to Jesper and Wylan. “Once you set the devices, how long before the explosion?”

“Once the chemicals are mixed, the reaction will take around twenty seconds to complete,” Wylan replied. “But I still don’t get why…”

“Just do it, Wylan. And you better get ready to run,” Kaz replied, locking the vault behind him and setting the painting back in place. “We want them to think we blew up the wall, discovered the Grisha vault is a hoax, and escaped empty-handed. Everything goes right, they might not discover the theft for a few more days.”

Wylan and Jesper set the explosives, and the three of them ran towards the stairs and up to the ground floor. Kaz’s bad leg was on fire, but he forced himself to keep up with the other two as they made their way out of the basement.

They barely had time to shut the door to the basement behind them and slip into a janitor’s closet next to it when the explosion rumbled through the building, making the walls shake. Dust fell on them from the ceiling, but the building didn’t collapse.

“Seems Wylan got the math right,” Jesper whispered. Kaz was squeezed between him and several brooms, and he felt the water at his feet, threatening to rise and drown him. He closed his eyes and focused on the sharp pain in his leg, hoping it would be enough to keep the corpses at bay.

They heard shouting from behind the closet door as what must’ve been a dozen people ran towards the basement.

Kaz waited until they couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore, then cracked the door open and they quickly made their way back to the courtyard and down the storm drain.

They emerged in the alley where they’d started, and as Wylan crawled out of the drain, hauled by Jesper, a shadowy figure landed soundlessly next to them.

“Inej?” Jesper asked, surprise evident in his voice.

She was wearing a dark cloak, the hood obscuring her face. Ajit was barely visible against the dark sky.

“Did you get it?” Kaz asked, and he already knew the answer by the way her daemon fluttered excitedly over their heads.

“The explosion drew away nearly all the guards. They left just two in the main exhibition room,” she replied, and he caught a sliver of a smile in the moonlight.

“Anyone wanna tell me what the hell is going on?” Jesper was looking quickly between the two of them.

“Oh, there is quite a lovely exhibition in the main room right now. Something about rare coins. I sent Inej to have a little gander while the guards were occupied by Wylan’s little demo show,” Kaz replied.

Inej opened her cloak to reveal a bag full of coins strapped to her waist.

Jesper gasped, offended. “You ran a job inside a job? You never run a job inside a job. That’s, like, How To Be A Criminal 101.”

“I skipped that course,” Kaz replied. “Always thought it was too narrow-minded for my taste. Besides, it was more like a job with an adjacent job.”

Just as they had planned, Inej had slipped into the storm grate a few streets over from where he’d met Jesper and Wylan, climbed out in the courtyard, then made her way to the museum roof. There was a skylight over the main exhibition room, and when most of the guards had gone to the basement, drawn by the explosion, Inej had slipped down on a rope and quickly dealt with the two remaining guards, giving her free rein of the room and all of its exhibits.

Like taking candy from a baby, Kaz thought, except so much more profitable.

“I could slap you both,” Jesper said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Or kiss you. Not sure which one yet.”

“Try either and I’ll castrate you,” Kaz replied.

“I’ll pass. Guess I’ll settle for kissing Wylan instead.”

Wylan’s blush was evident even in the barely-there glow of the crescent moon.

Chapter Text

Inej liked Wylan Van Eck.

She liked his kind eyes and his quiet determination to prove himself despite the fact that he was about as ill-suited for gang life as it got. He was almost her age, but he looked younger, and sometimes, he reminded her of her little cousins. Maybe that was why she felt protective towards him. He didn’t belong in a place like the Barrel.

She wanted to believe that neither did she, but she was less and less sure with every knife added to her collection and every secret stolen so Kaz could blackmail and threaten people that didn’t always deserve to be threatened.

Wylan had a bird daemon, like her, like most of her family, and she liked to watch Ajit and Silja fly together as she and Wylan sat on a windowsill in the Slat or on the stone railing of one of Ketterdam’s bridges, two people tossed by fate into the worst part of a morally corrupt city. Her home was hundreds of miles away, across the ocean; his was twenty minutes away on foot, and yet she had a feeling that he couldn’t return there any more than she could to her parents’ caravan. She didn’t know his story, and she never asked. Kaz didn’t want Wylan to know that she’d found out his true identity.

“Keep your enemies close, and rich merchants’ children closer,” he’d said to her, and she’d kept her mouth shut as ordered, even though his words had left a sour taste in her mouth, like when she’d been five years old and bitten into a lemon on a dare.

Wylan didn’t talk much, but that suited her fine. They’d spent many hours just sitting in comfortable silence, both lost in their own thoughts, watching their daemons swoop and soar in the sky, chasing each other. Ajit was quick as the devil, his wings sharp, his black feathers glittering blue and purple in the sun. Silja was slower, softer, elegant in every move, blindingly white. They made an odd pair. But, Inej supposed, so did she and Wylan, a Suli girl with knives hidden underneath her coat, and a red-haired boy with a head full of music and numbers.

Spring had finally arrived in Ketterdam, fickle as always. Warm, sunny days were followed by frost-covered nights, violent storms and hail gave way to unbearable heat. Nothing about Ketterdam was ever gentle, not even its weather.

“Tell me about Ravka,” Wylan would say sometimes, the way her cousins had asked her for stories.

So she’d tell him about the camp, her aunts and uncles, the way her mother’s squirrel daemon helped her with cooking, her father teaching her to walk the wire, the routes they traveled, the sights she’d seen as their caravans moved through the Sikurzoi to avoid the Shadow Fold, the Shu bandits that would set traps in narrow ravines. She’d tell him stories from her childhood, the time she’d stumbled upon a beehive while picking berries and got stung six times, the time she’d walked the wire in front of an audience for the first time. She told him about the celebration the night Ajit had settled, just a few short months before the slavers had taken her.

Inej had never told anyone most of those stories before. She’d shared a few with Nina, but reminiscing about her old life for too long always left her feeling too raw and fragile, out of balance, and that was something the Wraith couldn’t afford to be. But somehow, with Wylan, it was easier. He didn’t ask too many questions, just listened, and she didn’t know if he asked her to talk because he needed a distraction from his own thoughts or because he believed it would help her, as if letting the words out after keeping them buried down for so long would help the wounds heal. Maybe it was both.

One day, she took Wylan on the Slat’s roof with her. He was pale and shaking as he settled beside her on the metal shingles over Kaz’s window, but he didn’t falter. Not for the first time, Inej thought that everybody underestimated Wylan. He was so much braver than people gave him credit for.

Ajit and Silja were racing each other high above the roof, and the weather was pleasant for once, the soft breeze from the Fifth Harbor bringing with it the smell of salt. Inej closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

“My father is not a good man,” Wylan said suddenly, the words hurried, as if he wanted to get them out before he lost the courage.

Inej sat still and quiet. She was afraid one move would be enough to Wylan and he’d either clam up again or fall off the roof.

Wylan swallowed thickly next to her.

“He’s not a good man,” he repeated. “That’s why I’m here. I can’t go back.”

She could feel his eyes on her, like he expected her to ask where exactly he couldn’t go back to.

Inej already knew the answer, so instead she said, “There aren’t many good men around here either.”

Wylan let out a breath next to her.

“No, there aren’t,” he replied. “But it’s easier when they’re not related to you.”

Inej looked at him then, his red locks ruffled by the breeze, his blue eyes wide and honest, and so sad it made her heart ache.

Maybe she’d have to visit Jan Van Eck and carve him up. Just a little.

She reached out and gently took Wylan’s hand in hers. He blinked, startled, but he didn’t let go, and when she squeezed his hand, he squeezed back.

Kaz’s words echoed in her head, and she knew she couldn’t be completely honest with Wylan, but there was at least one truth that she could offer him.

“You know, whoever your father is, he doesn’t deserve to have you as his son.”

She could tell that he didn’t believe it, not fully. Maybe someday.

They sat on the roof until the wind got stronger and she could feel herself starting to tremble, Wylan’s teeth chattering as the cold air slipped underneath the collar of his thin coat.

Silja landed on Wylan’s shoulder and snuggled against his neck, trying to warm him up. Ajit settled on the floor beside Inej, his yellow eyes twinkling.

“Silja wants waffles,” he announced.

“No, I don’t,” the dove daemon replied, gently nipping on Wylan’s ear.

“Fine, I want waffles. Are you guys going to get off this roof before we all freeze to death?”

“That depends,” Wylan replied. “I didn’t realize coming down would be so much more terrifying than going up.”

Inej stood up, stretched her arms, then turned around to look at him.

“Come on, Wylan,” she said, starting towards the attic window. She knew Kaz wouldn’t appreciate the four of them barging unannounced into his office, but at that moment, she didn’t care much. “I promise I won’t let you fall.”

Chapter Text

Kaz was very, very drunk.

He hadn’t meant for that to happen. He had enough enemies to go around and allowing himself to indulge in too much liquor dulled his senses, making him vulnerable. But he was sitting in the Crow Club, the club he’d built from the ground up, and no Barrel boss or grunt with at least a single brain cell would try to attack him there.

So Kaz drank, and then he drank some more.

The whiskey was good, and after a few glasses he couldn’t feel the burn anymore. The half-empty bottle sat in front of him, and he twirled his glass before pouring himself another two fingers.

It hadn’t been a kind week to the Dregs: there’d been a scuffle with the Black Tips that they hadn’t been prepared for. The defeat was embarrassing, pathetic even, and some of his best officers were cooped up at the Slat, licking their wounds. Two days after the confrontation, a big shipment of jurda sailing for Fifth Harbor had sunk in a storm somewhere en route from Novyi Zem. Kaz’s bad leg had been acting up, and earlier in the day he’d snapped at Inej over something stupid. He couldn’t even remember what it was now. He’d said cruel things to her, words that he knew she didn’t deserve. She’d left his office with tears in her eyes.

Kaz Brekker never chased after anyone, but in that moment, he almost had.

But he was still the Bastard of the Barrel, so instead, he’d taken his cane, walked to the Crow Club, and hadn’t left for hours.

Jesper had joined him a quarter of the bottle in, and Kaz could tell with one look that he’d lost badly. Without a word, he’d slid a second glass towards the gunslinger.

“I miss my dad,” Jesper slurred. He was resting his head on the bar, playing with his glass. Mabel was stretched out on the floor beside his chair, belly up, uncharacteristically still. The alcohol had clearly hit her harder than her owner, although he wasn’t far behind.

Kaz downed his whiskey in one sip and slammed the glass on the bar. “This is the third time you’ve said it, Jesper. If you’re so homesick, you can always sail back to Novyi Zem and be a good country boy.” He reached for the bottle. “But if you skip out on your debts, I will hunt you down and bludgeon all your goats with my cane.”

Jesper sniffed. “We don’t have goats.”

“Whatever livestock I find walking around, then. And then your kneecaps.”

“I like my kneecaps, thank you very much. And I’m not going back to the farm. You haven’t known boredom till you’ve spent a summer staring at jurda fields.” Jesper fell silent, then poured himself another glass. “It was my dad’s birthday last week. And I forgot about it.” He sounded like a little boy all of a sudden, small and sad.

Kaz tried to remember when his father’s birthday was. He couldn’t.

He shrugged. “Then buy him something now and blame the post when it arrives. I don’t see why this particular issue requires you to steal my whiskey when it could be solved very easily.”

“I don’t see why you’re sitting here with me when you could just go apologize to Inej,” Jesper replied, nudging Mabel with the toe of his shoe. The daemon made a displeased sound, but didn’t move.

Kaz shot Jesper a look. He hoped it was a threatening one, but the world was spinning, and he gripped the edge of the bar to steady himself.

“We all heard your argument today,” Jesper mumbled. “I bet Annika twenty kruge that Inej would finally stab you. But apparently she has the patience of a bloody Saint.”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Kaz replied, looking at the rows of bottles that lined the shelves on the wall behind the bar. The bright lights of the Crow Club seemed blinding all of a sudden,and he squinted as he looked around the room. It was coming up on two bells past midnight, but all the tables were still full, the tourists, merchants and Barrel lowlifes all mixing together, hoping to score a fortune. Cigarette smoke hung in the air. Kaz looked at all the tables, searching for cheaters and card counters, making sure the dealers weren’t skimming. But it was hard to focus when everything was spinning so damn fast.

“I like Inej. Unlike you, she doesn’t make a habit of threatening my goats.”

“I thought you didn’t have goats.”

“I’m still offended on behalf of my hypothetical goats.” Jesper downed his drink and reached for the bottle, then frowned when he noticed it was empty. “My point is, it’s a small wonder Inej hadn’t murdered you and skipped town yet.”

“Lucky for me, she doesn’t condone killing unless absolutely necessary,” Kaz replied. Suddenly, he felt very tired. The hard wood of the bar looked almost inviting. Or maybe he could lock himself up in one of the private gambling parlors and get a few hours of sleep on one of the plush couches.

“Maybe you should make amends before she rethinks that rule.”

“Maybe you should stop talking before I stick my cane up your ass.”

“At least buy me dinner first,” Jesper slurred, but he was grinning now. He tried to jump off the bar stool and nearly face-planted on the floor, catching himself at the last second. “On that note, I’m hungry,” he announced, picking Mabel off the floor and slinging her over his shoulder. She mumbled something in Zemeni, then fell silent again. “Wanna go for a burger? There’s a place at the end of the street. The food is vile, and the decor is even worse.”

Kaz hadn’t eaten for most of the day, and at the mention of food his stomach grumbled.

“Fine,” he stood up slowly and winced as his bad leg refused to cooperate, nearly buckling under him and sending a sharp wave of pain up his spine. He reached for his cane and steadied himself. “But when you wake up with a hangover and food poisoning tomorrow, I don’t want you throwing up around the Slat.”

“Who says I’m the one who’s gonna get food poisoning?” Jesper was buzzing with his usual energy now, falling into only slightly stumbling steps beside Kaz. For someone so skinny, he had an annoyingly good alcohol tolerance. “Maybe we both will. Especially if we order the triple-beef special. I swear, whatever they put in there is not even remotely related to a cow.”

“Haven’t you heard, Jesper? I crawled out from a gutter in the Barrel. I don’t get food poisoning.”

Jesper grinned, then. “Oh, I’m going to have so much fun when this comes back to bite you in the ass.” He opened the door to the Crow Club and walked out into the night.

Eris emerged from under Kaz’s collar, sloshed to seventh hell and back. “Kaz,” she whispered, panicked, resting against his collarbone. “We have a problem.” She tried to crawl further up his shoulder, but her legs kept getting tangled. “I think I have too many legs,” she announced, horrified.

Kaz couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. He tried to cover it up with a cough, but he saw Jesper glance back at him with a positively shocked expression on his face.

“That makes one of us, Eris,” he replied, limping down the street behind the gunslinger and his nearly passed-out daemon. “That makes one of us.”

Chapter Text

“If it gets any hotter, I am going to strip naked and jump in the West Stave,” Nina said from where she was sprawled out on her couch, fanning herself with a newspaper.

Summer had arrived in Ketterdam, and with it a scorching heat wave that brought out the worst in the Barrel. The stench of the narrow streets and alleyways - a mixture of urine, rotting garbage and unwashed bodies - always got more prominent as the temperature rose, and it hung in the unmoving air like a curtain. The usual crowds of West and East Stave were nowhere to be found. Tourists were hiding in their hotels, sipping on cold drinks, and Barrel thugs were holed up in their hideouts with nothing to do but play cards and pick fights. The rooftops got so hot that Inej couldn’t stand to be on them, even in shoes, the heat seeping through her rubber soles, threatening to melt them.

Nina’s room at the White Rose wasn’t much better than the Slat, but at least every once in a while the slightest breeze would blow their way from the river, making the sticky heat marginally less unbearable. Jesper was lying on the carpet with Mabel at his feet. He’d stripped off his shirt and left it on one of the chairs, and his bare chest was glistening with sweat. Wylan was curled up by the table, his cheek pressed against the cool wooden surface. Inej took her usual spot by the window. The blinds were half-drawn to prevent the merciless sun from creeping into the room, but the air was still thick like soup, the scent of perfumed white roses suffocating. Ajit and Silja were dozing off at the top of Nina’s armoire, leaning against each other.

Inej had ditched her usual coat and long-sleeved shirt in favor of a cotton vest, but even the thin garment was drenched in sweat, and her arms and neck felt unpleasantly sticky. For a moment, she considered chopping off her hair. Even keeping it in a tight coil didn’t help, and her scalp was so itchy it made her want to scream. She’d poured herself a glass of ice water, but a few short minutes had been enough to turn the drink lukewarm. She stuck her finger in it and swirled the half-melted ice cubes around.

“I’m pretty sure jumping naked in that water would give you ten different kinds of preventable diseases,” Jesper mumbled, covering his eyes with one arm. “But I think I might join you.”

“Good, then at least when I get arrested for indecent exposure, I won’t be alone.”

Jesper flashed Nina a tired grin. “I’m not sure Ketterdam could handle that, though.”

Nina snorted. “Breaking news, temperatures reached record highs today as two incredibly hot people were fished out of the river butt-naked. The number of passers-by that passed out at the sight had nothing to do with the blazing sun overhead.”

“You do realize you can catch flesh-eating parasites in the river, don’t you?” Wylan mumbled from his spot at the table. “They burrow under your skin and lay their eggs there.”

Nina made a disgusted face. “Thanks for ruining the fantasy, Wylan.”

The boy shrugged. “It’s not my fault Ketterdam is a cesspool of all things horrible.”

Nina nudged Kirin with her foot. Her monkey daemon was curled up on the opposite end of the couch.

“You alive back there?” she asked.

“In theory,” came a muffled reply from where Kirin’s face was pressed against the cushions.

“I miss the Little Palace,” Nina sighed. “The Squallers would always get a nice draft going in the summer to keep the rooms cool. And Kirin and I would sneak into the kitchen to steal ice cream.”

Kirin perked up slightly at the mention of ice cream.

“I miss the strawberry sorbet,” he sighed, moving from his spot on the couch to fish two pieces of candy from the bowl Nina always kept on the table. He threw one of the sweets to his owner, who caught it with practiced ease.

Nina unwrapped the chocolate and made a face. “It’s all melted. This stupid heat is stealing everything from me.”

Inej looked out the window at the nearly empty street below. The heat made the air appear wavy, but the sun was slowly getting lower.

“It will be getting dark soon,” she said to the rest of the group. “Hopefully it cools down a little at night.”

West Stave was deserted now, but she knew it wouldn’t stay that way. Once the sun had set and heat stroke was no longer a threat, the usual crowds would flow out of hotels and apartments, seeking the forbidden pleasures of the Barrel.

She remembered a similar summer she’d spent at the Menagerie, the way the cheap silks had clung to her skin, the way Heleen’s gilded cage of a parlor heated up like a greenhouse. Those hot nights had been the hardest. Her clients had smelled worse than usual, expected more of her, the boredom of being cooped up in their houses or hotel rooms all day making them more aggressive, more demanding. Her bedsheets had always been slick with sweat, afterwards.

She still couldn’t stand the feel of damp sheets against her skin.

Inej forced the memories out of her head. She wasn’t at the Menagerie anymore. She was in Nina’s room, with her friends. She had her Saints by her side, strapped to her clothes, hidden in her shoes. No one was going to touch her without her permission again.

She looked at Ajit, his watchful yellow eyes staring right back at her. He knew where her mind had gone.

“I’m okay,” she mouthed at him.

He examined her face for a moment, searching for something, then nodded and curled back up against Silja.

The room fell silent for a while, save for Nina’s light snoring as she and Kirin napped, smudges of chocolate in the corners of their mouths. Wylan was staring blankly at the wall, his mind occupied, or maybe just hazy from the heat. Jesper moved from his spot on the floor to perch on the windowsill next to Inej. She moved her legs to make room for him.

“Everything all right?” he asked. “You’re even more eerily quiet than usual.”

She smiled at him, and she hoped it was convincing.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just tired.”

“Has Kaz been sending you out in this heat?” Jesper asked. “Do you want me to shoot him?”

She laughed, then, a wave of fondness for the gunslinger rising up in her throat.

“Actually, no. We haven’t really talked since… You know,” she trailed off.

It had been almost a week since she’d left the Slat’s attic in tears, and she hadn’t heard a word from Kaz. With things being quiet in the Barrel, he probably hadn’t needed the Wraith’s services. Or maybe he was avoiding her.

Saints knew she was avoiding him.

It wasn’t that she expected an apology, really. She knew better. An apology would mean admitting that he’d made a mistake, and that wasn’t something Dirtyhands was known for.

So no, she didn’t expect anything.

But she hoped.

She hoped that maybe he would swallow his pride for once and surprise her. That maybe she meant enough for him to be willing to do that.

Clearly, she was a fool.

Beside her, Jesper scoffed. “Figures. You know, for an evil genius, he can be dumb as a pile of bricks.”

Inej felt her lips quirk at that. “Please don’t tell him he’s an evil genius. His ego is inflated enough already.”

“Of course I won’t,” Jesper grinned back at her. “If it gets any bigger, he might just float away like a balloon.”

They fell silent for a moment. Outside, the sky turned pink and gold as the sun finally began to set.

“He’ll come to his senses,” Jesper said, his voice serious. “He just needs to marinate in his misery for a bit. Give him a few days and he’ll come grovelling to your door.”

Inej laughed. “The day Kaz Brekker grovels in front of anyone is the day I convert to the Church of Ghezen.”

“Fine, maybe not grovel. But I reckon you could get at least a bit of light pleading out of him.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need him to beg. I just wish…” She turned her face to the window. Wishing was a dangerous thing in Ketterdam. The city had a way of taking people’s wishes and bulldozing them until there was nothing left but dust.

But then again, she’d wished for someone to save her from the Menagerie, and Ketterdam had sent Kaz her way.

Not quite the white knight she’d imagined, but he’d rescued her all the same.

Jesper patted her hand gently. “I know, love. We’ve all been there.”

“Been where?” Nina asked sleepily from the couch.

Jesper turned to the Heartrender and grinned. “Been on the verge of a mental breakdown because of your snoring. Could make the dead rise up straight from their graves.”

“You know I can kill you with my bare hands, right?” Nina asked.

“You’d miss my pretty face too much,” Jesper replied with a wink.

Nina stood up and moved to stand by the window. She threw her arm casually around Inej’s shoulders. Inej had nearly had a panic attack the first time Nina had hugged her, but over time, she’d gotten used to the Grisha’s touch. Nina was a tactile person by nature, and Inej found that once she’d adjusted to it, she’d started to enjoy the simple gestures of affection. She reached up with her hand and squeezed Nina’s elbow, and Nina rested her chin on top of her head.

“Do you guys want to go somewhere?” Nina asked. “If I have to spend one more minute inhaling the smell of those infernal roses, I’m going to be sick.”

“As if you even have to ask,” Jesper was already in motion. Mabel stretched her back and hopped to her owner’s side. With the sun almost gone behind the horizon, the room felt slightly cooler, and Inej felt a wave of renewed energy in the air.

“I want a drink,” Nina announced. “Something fruity and sweet.”

“I’m not sure Wylan will be allowed inside a bar,” Jesper replied, looking at the other boy with a glint in his eyes.

“You’re barely older than me,” Wylan replied, indignant. “And we’ve been to bars before.”

“Oh, but you haven’t been drinking with Nina yet,” Jesper replied. “Now that’s something you’re not prepared for. She gets violent when she’s drunk. It’s awesome.”

“Excuse you,” Nina huffed a breath, “it was one time. And that bartender absolutely had it coming.”

Jesper threw an arm around Wylan, who blushed a deep red, and the other one around Nina.

“It was still awesome. And speaking of drunk, wait till I tell you about Kaz getting absolutely shitfaced last week and falling asleep with his face in a burger.” Jesper glanced behind his back at Inej. “You coming?”

Inej stood up from the windowsill and felt the familiar weight of Ajit settle on her shoulder.She looked at the three faces in front of her, flushed from the heat, smiling, waiting for them to join her.

She touched her hand to the knife at her waist, an instinct, a prayer.

Thank you, she thought to her Saints, for this.

Her life in the Barrel was nothing like what she’d imagined for herself. Most days, she thought that younger Inej would never recognize herself in the girl she’d become.

But somehow, right in the middle of what might have been the worst city in the world, she’d found these people, and she’d carved tiny little pockets of happiness for herself.

Maybe miracles weren’t always big light shows and giant walls of shadow getting torn down.

Maybe they were right there in front of her: a brave red-haired boy, a quick-witted gunslinger with a heart the size of an elephant’s, a down-on-her-luck Heartrender who made Inej laugh like nobody else.

“Right behind you, guys.”

Chapter Text

Ten days had passed before Kaz saw Inej again.

Ten days of excruciating heat that made his room in the attic feel like the inside of an oven. Ten days of trying to plan the next job and failing spectacularly. Ten days of boredom, other Barrel gangs nowhere to be seen. Ten days of trying to contain his annoyance as the Dregs cooped up inside the Slat to wait out the heatwave made enough noise with their petty fights and their drunken card games to render any kind of meaningful work or sleep impossible.

It wasn’t that he missed Inej. Dirtyhands didn’t miss anyone. The Barrel had beaten that out of him long before the Wraith had appeared in his life.

But maybe, just maybe, a part of him had gotten used to her presence.

And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t like the way Ajit’s perch sat empty on his desk.

“You need to make things right with her,” Eris had told him after Inej had stormed out of his room, and she’d repeated it every day after that.

And he would.

Eventually.

Just not yet.

“You know you’re being ridiculous,” Eris said.

She’d abandoned her usual spot on his shoulder in favor of hanging from the ceiling, out of his reach, which she only did when she was particularly annoyed with him.

“I don’t see how you nagging me about it is productive in any way,” Kaz replied, running an ungloved hand through his hair.

The night was hot and sticky, and he’d taken off his gloves and shirt, leaving only a sleeveless undershirt on. He was determined to get some work done, but he quickly realized that he couldn’t focus.

“I’m only saying what you’re thinking anyway,” Eris replied, a tiny black dot against the dirty white ceiling.

“What do you want me to do, then? Buy her a bouquet? Rent a string quartet to play outside her window?”

“Maybe you could start by using your words,” she suggested. “A bouquet wouldn’t be a bad idea, although I’m not sure where we could get our hands on wild geraniums.”

“You do realize I was being sarcastic.”

“And I decided to ignore that and instead focus on how to fix this mess before you completely ruin everything.”

“Why do you care so much about this?” he asked, feeling a mix of exasperation and something he couldn’t quite name in his chest.

“You know damn well why, Kaz.”

She was right, of course. Eris was so very rarely wrong.

But Kaz hadn’t apologized for anything since he was seven years old, back when he’d broken a plate whilst washing the dishes on the farm. To say that he was out of practice would be an understatement.

He got up from the desk, the ledgers momentarily forgotten, and looked out the window. Kaz had kept it open every day and night since the argument. Mostly because of the heat. Not at all because he’d look outside every once in a while to see if maybe he’d catch a glimpse of iridescent feathers among the crows.

He leaned against the windowsill, letting most of his body weight rest on his good leg. The street below was quiet, hidden in the shadows. This part of the Barrel didn’t have many street lanterns, so it was easy to move around unnoticed after dark. Kaz had taken advantage of that many times in the past.

He looked at the street and the rooftops of the rickety buildings opposite the Slat. The crows had gone for the night. The sky was clear, but the thick cloud of smog coming from the factories gave it a strange greyish-orange color, obscuring the stars.

Kaz had never been one for stargazing anyway, so he looked back down to the window directly opposite his own. He knew that a couple lived there, a dockworker and his wife. Sometimes he could hear them arguing all the way from across the street. Apparently the man liked to drink, and his wife didn’t approve.

Kaz gripped the window frame and pulled himself onto the windowsill, then climbed out onto the roof.

The metal shingles burned his hands, but he didn’t really care. If he’d let a bit of pain stop him, he never would’ve gotten anything done.

He didn’t stop until he reached the narrow ridge. The roof was steep here, overlapping rows of shingles nailed haphazardly. Inej could probably tell him which ones to avoid lest he slip and fall to his death.

She probably knew every inch of this roof and every other roof in Ketterdam like the back of her hand.

Kaz sat down on the ridge and stretched his bad leg in front of him. He was far enough from Eris that there was a dull ache in his chest, but he didn’t move. She could be stubborn like nobody’s business, which was too bad, because so could he. Two could play this game.

He looked around. From this vantage point he could see an endless sea of buildings in the Barrel, stretching all the way to the Fifth Harbor, the lights of East and West Stave framing the neighborhood like the bindings of a book. He could hear music, buskers and street performers playing instruments and showing off their talents in exchange for a couple coins, actors shouting lines from the Komedie Brute, the chatter of endless masses of people as they moved from gambling halls to bars and pleasure houses. They were familiar sounds. He’d heard them nearly every night, running errands around the Crow Club or the harbor. The sounds of a greedy, corrupt city that never slept, not as long as there were pigeons to pluck and money to be made.

It was the soundtrack of his life, the rhythm that his heart beat to.

Kaz didn’t hear her, exactly. No one could hear the Wraith approaching unless she wanted them to. But he felt her presence like a ghost of a touch on the back of his neck, making his skin tingle.

He glanced in her direction. She was standing to his right, wearing a thin vest that left her arms bare. Inej had a small frame, but she was all lean muscle, slender and strong. Her hair was braided, but even in a plait it reached all the way down to her hips. She stood on the narrow ridge with the same ease that most people felt on solid ground. No stumbling feet, no waver. Kaz wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d suddenly sprouted wings. She was a creature of air, her soul a flutter of black feathers high over their heads.

If she was surprised to see him, she didn’t let it show. Her face was unreadable, her eyes darker than usual. When she looked at him, her gaze was sharper than the knives she had hiding under her clothes.

“Decided to do your own spider work from now on?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

Apologize, the part of him that sounded like Eris said.

Apologize, you idiot, you stubborn fool.

“I wouldn’t have to if my spider was actually around to do her job,” he replied, instead.

Inej squared her shoulders, a challenge in her eyes. “I assumed you didn’t have that much need for my help, given that you damn near kicked me out of your office last time we saw each other.”

“If I remember correctly, you left of your own volition,” he bit back.

“After you accused me of sabotaging your work, even though the info was rock solid.”

“If the info had been rock solid, the job wouldn’t have been a bust, Wraith.”

“Maybe you’re just not as clever as you think you are.”

“Or maybe you’re not half as useful as you think you are.”

Too far. He knew it the moment the words left his mouth.

Inej looked like he’d slapped her. He might as well have.

“Then I guess I won’t be coming back here again,” she said finally, her voice colder than the waters of the Reaper’s Barge, and turned to leave.

She’d come to him. She’d come to him, after everything he’d said, after how cruel he’d been.

She’d come to him, and he couldn’t even do her the courtesy of not being an asshole for two minutes.

He could taste metal on his tongue. His heart was racing all of a sudden, even though he hadn’t moved at all.

If she leaves, Eris’ voice echoed in his head, you’ll never find her again.

He was nine years old again, drowning, the water rising all around him as panic threatened to overtake him.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” he choked out. His throat was dry, the words barely a whisper.

But she heard him. The Wraith never missed a whisper.

It wasn’t an apology, not really, but it was enough to stop her in her tracks. Waiting. He knew she expected more.

Kaz Brekker didn’t know how to apologize.

But Kaz Rietveld had, once upon a time.

“What I said to you…” he swallowed. He suddenly wished he had his gloves, his cane, his armor with him. Maybe it would be easier.

“It was unfair. And it was untrue. And you…” he glanced at her. She was standing with her back to him, but she was still there. “You didn’t deserve it.”

Inej was still as a statue, and her silence suffocated him, sucking the air out of his lungs.

“The info was solid,” he admitted. He couldn’t even begin to make sense of the mess of emotions inside of him, but talking shop was easy. It was familiar ground for both of them. “The Razorgulls knew we were coming. I don’t know how they found out. Maybe someone ran their mouth too loudly in the street. Maybe they got themselves a spider. Whatever happened, it had nothing to do with you.”

“Then why did you snap at me?” she asked, finally. Her back was still to him, but she was looking at him over her shoulder.

He looked her in the eyes. Truth was little more than a currency in the Barrel. Something to be stolen from careless mouths and traded. Something to be fashioned into a weapon if need be.

Kaz Brekker didn’t have a lot of truth to give, but Inej deserved whatever his sorry excuse of a heart could muster.

“Because you were the only one brave enough to hang around Dirtyhands when he was in one of his moods.”

The clock of the Geldrenner Hotel struck midnight. Somewhere on the East Stave a group of men were drunkenly singing a bawdy ballad.

Finally, Inej turned to him. “You mean foolish enough,” she said, but there was no venom in her voice.

“I have been known to put those in the same category, yes,” Kaz replied.

His stomach had been somewhere in his throat, and now it slammed back into place.

Inej sat down next to him on the ridge, close enough that he could see her face in the dim light coming from his window, but far enough that they wouldn’t accidentally touch. He suddenly realized how much bare skin there was on display between the two of them, both of them in sleeveless shirts, his gloves forgotten back on his desk.

It would be so easy to scoot closer to her, brush his shoulder against hers, press their arms together.

The gap between them was a sliver of space, a tiny pocket of night air.

To Kaz, it might as well have been a canyon.

“So what are you doing on the roof, then?” Inej asked, resting her chin in her palm, her face turned to look at him.

Truthfully, Kaz didn’t know. It had been a spur of a moment decision, something to break the stupor that he’d found himself in, the quickest way out of the stuffy room and the only one that didn’t require him to socialize with the Dregs. There were a lot of people to stumble upon on the stairs of the Slat, and he hadn’t felt like talking to any of them.

He shrugged. “Even Dirtyhands needs some fresh air every once in a while.”

Inej smiled. “I don’t think there’s such a thing in the Barrel.”

He felt the corners of his mouth tug into a smile too. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and some will blow through from the Financial District.”

Ajit landed on the rooftop between the two of them.

“So, are we talking to him again?” he asked, hopping on the shingles next to Inej.

Inej glanced at Kaz. “Yeah, I guess we are,” she replied.

Ajit hummed. “Good. I missed Eris. Where is she, by the way? Or did you finally sell her to the Devil like everyone says you did?”

Kaz couldn’t help the snort that escaped him. “I tried, but somehow she keeps crawling back.”

“I heard that,” Eris said from where she was making her way towards them, invisible in the dark.

Ajit hopped down the roof to greet her, and Kaz looked at the girl beside him, the light from the attic casting a warm glow on her face. Her eyes twinkled when she looked at him, her braid falling over her shoulder, close enough that he could reach out and tug at it.

He was nine years old again, and magic was real, hidden in the dark brown eyes of a Suli acrobat and the glimmering feathers of her daemon.

Chapter Text

Inej never knew when the nightmares would sneak up on her again.

When she’d first left the Menagerie, she’d had them every night. She’d even tried not to sleep, for a while, avoiding her tiny room at the Slat, focusing on her training instead. She’d roamed around the city on the roofs, learned the fastest routes, memorized street names. She’d practiced with the knife Kaz had given her until the haft slid effortlessly into her hand and she’d gotten used to its weight at her hip, the way it felt pressed against someone’s throat. She’d listened to conversations, business deals, arguments, whispers in the dark. She’d gathered information, sifted through it until only valuable pieces remained. Remembered the rest just in case.

Mostly, she’d tried to keep moving so the horrors that breathed down her neck wouldn’t catch up with her.

But she couldn’t stay awake forever.

Whenever exhaustion had threatened to overtake her, making her clumsy and weak, she’d curled up on one of the windowsills or kitchen chairs at the Slat, somewhere loud enough that she couldn’t fall asleep too deeply. She’d survived on short naps, a couple of hours here and there. She’d told herself she’d be fine.

And she had been, until she’d fallen asleep while staking out a target with Kaz. It had only been for a few minutes, but Kaz had noticed. He never missed anything.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re no good to me if you can’t stay awake on a job,” he’d told her that night. “So whatever your problem is, sort it out.”

So Inej had gone to bed, and woken up screaming an hour later.

It’d gotten better, eventually. Her work for the Dregs kept her busy, the knives at her sides kept her safe. After a few months, she’d stopped feeling like someone was spying on her through a hole in the wall. There was a lock on her door at the Slat, and knowing that no one could come in without her permission made sleep easier. The nightmares had grown less frequent, and she’d gotten better at dealing with them.

Sometimes, she even allowed herself to believe that they might leave her alone one day.

It had been a few months since the last one. Maybe too many nights of restful sleep had lulled her into a false sense of safety. She’d lowered her guard down, gone to bed without expecting any trouble.

Always expect trouble, Kaz would tell her. Otherwise it will sneak up on you in the dark and shank you.

This nightmare started the way all her nightmares did.

Inej was sitting on a bed, but not the one at the Slat. This one was bigger, made of expensive wood, high thread count sheets pooled around her waist. The room was small and dark. Fabric was draped on the walls, candles burned on the table. The smell of incense hung in the air.

It was quiet.

Inej raised a hand to touch her hair. It was loose, covered in fragrant oils that left a greasy residue on her fingers.

She was wearing a cheap silk gown, the metal clasp cold against her neck. There were bells tied around her ankles that jingled softly with every move.

There was a knock on the door.

Inej sat very still, feeling every muscle in her body tense.

Maybe if they don’t hear anything, they’ll go away, she thought, although she couldn’t quite remember who was standing outside the door and why she didn’t want to see them.

A beat passed, silence filling the air.

Slowly, the door swung open.

A shadowy figure stood outside the room. Inej couldn’t make out more than a silhouette in the dark.

“What’s your name?”

The question echoed around the room, bouncing off the walls, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Inej squeezed her eyes shut.

This is not happening, she thought, it’s just a dream…

“What’s your name?”

Just a bad dream, wake up, wake up…

“What’s your name?”

Dhanvi.

Etisha.

Feba.

Inej opened her eyes. The figure stood at the foot of the bed, its face still obscured by the shadows.

“That’s a lovely name.”

A lovely name, echoed the walls. A lovely name, whispered the darkness in the corners of the room.

Inej couldn’t move. The sheets around her waist tightened, constricting her, keeping her in place.

It’s just a dream, not real, not real…

The figure moved. Inej heard the sound of a belt being unbuckled.

The smell of incense burned her nostrils, crawling into her throat, threatening to choke her.

The figure was leaning over her, ten feet tall, its limbs inhumanly long. Its face kept shifting, changing like a pile of dough being shaped and reshaped by invisible hands, faster than Inej could keep up with. Brown eyes. Blue eyes. Dark hair. Blonde hair. Shu. Fjerdan. Kerch.

A hundred faces. A hundred men.

Long fingers reached for her, pale like bone.

Inej grabbed the sheets that were keeping her in place and peeled them off her, the fabric impossibly heavy, clinging to her so tight it burned.

She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.

Just run. It doesn’t matter where. Just run.

Two hands burst through the floorboards and seized her ankles, just above the bells. Too-long fingers, too-pale skin.

They were dragging her down.

She forced herself to take a step. Then another.

It was like moving through a sea of tar. Every move she made felt too slow, labored.

Hundreds of hands were rising up from the floor all around her, ready to grab her.

The door was so close, but she couldn’t reach it.

Something grabbed her arm. Inej looked up into empty eye sockets of a shapeless doughy face.

“That’s a lovely name.”

They were everywhere now, crawling out of the shadows, tall and long-limbed and faceless, surrounding her, reaching for her, touching her skin.

That’s a lovely name. That’s a lovely name. That’s a lovely name.

She was being pulled under, suffocated beneath their greedy, unrelenting hands.

Inej sat up in her bed in the Slat, a scream burning in her throat, so loud that it made her ears ring.

She scrambled out of bed, pushing the covers away. She needed to get away, to run, run as fast as she could, as far away as she could.

She took one step and fell to the ground.

Inej curled into a ball on the hard floorboards, the wood shockingly cold against her skin. Her heart was hammering rapidly against her ribs, so hard that it hurt. Her throat was painfully raw. Her lungs refused to take in air, and she gasped for breath, trying to force her body to cooperate.

It was just a bad dream.

Sobs racked her body, so violent that her head slammed against the floor, her muscles spasming in painful cramps.

Everything hurt, her body one giant open wound, unhealed and torn fresh by the memories that were flooding her brain.

She was dimly aware of Ajit by her side, pressed against her chest, his soft feathers brushing her neck, trying to offer some comfort, and she grabbed for him, pulling him closer, trying to find something, anything to anchor herself to.

She was drowning, and there was nothing to hold onto, a sea of pale hands pulling her under.

There was a loud thump as someone banged on her door, and Inej screamed, curling into herself, slamming her hands against her ears. They were coming for her again, they were never going to leave her alone…

Suddenly, the banging stopped. Instead, there was a voice behind the door. Inej couldn’t make out the words, her ears filled with buzzing and her racing heartbeat.

The voice spoke again, and there was something in the tone that sounded familiar. She knew that voice. Whatever it was saying, there was an urgency to it. Inej tried to focus on the words.

“Open the damn door, Inej.”

Her brain was foggy, but somehow, it managed to process the words.

Kaz. The voice was Kaz’s.

She was at the Slat, in her tiny room with locked doors.

Moonlight was streaming in through the window, illuminating everything in cold silver light.

“Open the door or I’m going to kick it down.”

Inej tried to take a breath. Slowly, painfully, her lungs expanded.

“I can’t,” she tried to say, her voice croaky and broken, her throat torn to shreds. She attempted to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

“I can’t move,” she tried again, a little louder.

Ajit was shaking against her chest. She buried her nose in the feathers on his back.

She heard shuffling on the other side of the door. Kaz was leaving. Of course he was, now that she’d stopped screaming bloody murder, probably interrupting his work or his sleep.

But she didn’t hear footsteps or his cane. Instead, the floorboards by the door creaked, as if someone had sat down on the floor in the hallway.

Minutes passed. Silence filled the air.

After a while, Inej stopped shaking. Her head throbbed with pain, her muscles ached like she’d just run all the way across the city, but her heart was slowing down, her breath was evening out.

“Are you alive in there?” Kaz asked after what might have been five minutes or five hours. Inej wasn’t sure.

She tried to sit up. She felt so tired, so weak, but her body stayed upright. Small blessings, she supposed.

“I’m alive,” she replied, feeling Ajit climb onto her shoulder and press against her neck, his weight familiar, comforting.

“That’s a start.” Another minute of silence, then, “What can I do?”

The question surprised her. Kaz never offered to do anything for anyone. Not unless he was getting something in return.

She leaned against the bed, stared at the wall in front of her. The room was barely wide enough for her to sit on the floor with her legs outstretched. She counted her knives, the ones she’d left on the windowsill before going to sleep, the ones she still had strapped to her body. The one hidden under her pillow.

“I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do,” she replied at last.

Kaz didn’t say anything to that, but she had a feeling he understood.

Silence stretched between them, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. They’d spent countless hours in his office, not talking to each other, both buried in their own thoughts and work. It was familiar, except for the part where Kaz was sitting outside her door.

Inej didn’t understand why. She’d woken up screaming before, although not for a few months now. He’d never bothered to check on her.

Whatever his reasons, she was grateful. She didn’t know how long it would have taken her to pull herself together if he hadn’t come, hadn’t thrown her a lifeline, something to hold onto to stop herself from falling.

“They always asked my name,” she said before she could think better of it. She’d never talked to Kaz about what she’d gone through at the Menagerie. Partly because it was difficult, dredging up the memories. Partly because she didn’t think he cared.

Kaz was still silent, but she continued. “They always asked my name, before they… you know.” Started undressing her. Pushed her down onto the bed. “I always gave them a fake one.” Dhanvi. Etisha. Feba. Whatever came to mind first. “I couldn’t stand… I couldn’t stand the idea of them calling me by my real name. My name… it was all I had left of me. Of my family. I couldn’t let them taint it too.”

It wasn’t like those men had cared, anyway. Whatever name she’d given them, the reply had always been the same.

That’s a lovely name.

A hundred faces. A hundred men. But the words had never changed.

“When you came to the Menagerie that night with the contract, that was the first time anyone had used my real name in over a year. It felt…” The moment flashed before her eyes, Kaz’s black suit against the tacky decor of Heleen’s parlor, his eyes on hers, her name on his mouth. “It felt like someone was finally seeing me, the real me, not the exotic girl they were buying for the night.”

She could see Kaz’s shadow under the door in the silver moonlight.

“I do see you,” Kaz replied, and her head jerked in surprise. She didn’t really expect a response. “I missed you in the shadows that night you first spoke to me. So after that, I made it a priority to make sure I kept seeing you.”

“Is that why I can never sneak up on you?” she asked, and she actually felt a corner of her mouth quirk upwards.

“Not for lack of trying, I imagine,” he replied.

She was pretty sure she could hear a smile in his voice too.

Inej stood up and walked over to the door. She turned the key in the lock.

She cracked the door open and saw Kaz Brekker, the Bastard of the Barrel, the boy rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil, sitting on the floor, looking up at her, his hair messy and his hands ungloved.

Inej leaned against the doorframe. She could see Eris peeking out from underneath Kaz’s collar.

“You should get some sleep,” she told Kaz. “It’s late.”

“Or early,” Kaz replied. “Depending on your priorities.”

“Kaz.”

“Inej.”

“I know you’ve been burning the candle at both ends planning the Roetger heist. But tired feet don’t cover much ground.”

“Is that Suli wisdom?” he asked, his voice mocking, but his eyes soft.

“Call that Inej wisdom,” she replied. “I promise I will do my best to refrain from waking up the whole Slat again tonight.”

Kaz slowly stood up, propping himself up against the wall. He looked her in the eyes. Inej looked back, hoping her gaze was steady.

Finally, he nodded sharply, then shuffled past her, towards the stairs to the attic.

“And Kaz?” she called after him.

He stopped in his tracks, turned his head to look at her.

“Thank you.”

For coming to check on me.

For seeing me when nobody else had.

For getting me out of those silks and letting me fight.

Kaz turned away from her and kept walking.

He was almost at the top of the stairs to the attic when he spoke, his voice quiet, but perfectly clear to her.

“You’re welcome, Inej.”

Chapter Text

Kaz hated the Festival of Ghezen.

Correction: Kaz loved the crowds the Festival of Ghezen drew to Ketterdam, thousands of tourists that flocked to the city from all over, ready to drink, dance, gamble and spend money irresponsibly. He loved seeing the Fifth Harbor full of passenger ships and the Crow Club full of pigeons practically begging to be plucked. The week of the Festival alone always kept the Dregs’ flush with kruge for months after.

But the festivities themselves? Kaz avoided them like the plague.

An unfortunate turn of phrase, he always thought, but oh so appropriate in his case.

The summer was coming to an end, the heatwave of the previous months replaced by a gentle warmth that already smelled of autumn. The preparations for the Festival were in full swing. Strings of colorful paper lanterns had been strung along the streets and canals. Bars and gambling halls were stocking up on alcohol, hotels and inns expected to be fully booked in just a few days’ time. Shopkeepers decorated their windows as flashily as possible and promised sales and special deals. Stalls were popping up all around the Barrel with street vendors advertising masks, ribbons, hats and all kinds of gaudy souvenirs.

Ketterdam never slept, a hungry monster of a city, and the anticipation before the Festival made it even more restless, its black heart beating faster than usual.

Kaz stood in the middle of the Crow Club. It was early morning, just after five bells. This was the best moment to close the gambling hall, the night crowds already gone and the morning clientele still sleeping soundly in their beds. Kaz didn’t trust anyone but himself to supervise the preparations for the Festival. More tables needed to be added to the room to accommodate the expected crowds, more dealers and security hired for the week. He had to make sure the alcohol supply wouldn’t run dry and that the prices of the already overpriced food they sold at the bar were raised. When people were in the middle of a card game with a few drinks in their system, they didn’t care how much the food cost. They cared even less with the rush and excitement of the Festival thrumming through their veins.

Eris was moving around the supply room in the back, going through the crates of booze and shelves filled with groceries, making sure none of the bottles were missing, none of the food had spoiled. Kaz turned his cane in his hands, deep in thought. He still needed to get the cleaners to scrub down every inch of the place. He knew that cleanliness hardly mattered to the people that would crowd the club in a few days’ time, but the Crow Club was a reputable establishment and Kaz was not going to take any chances. When you were in the business of tricking people into giving you their money and passing it off as a good time, appearances were key.

“I thought you were here to help,” he said to Jesper, who was slouched by one of the tables, playing with his guns. Mabel was hopping around the bar, counting bottles and chairs.

“I am helping,” Jesper replied, his eyes darting to the corner of the room where a few men were moving furniture.

“Funny, because it looks more like you’re ogling the paid muscle,” Kaz said. “I don’t pay you to sit around and flirt.”

“You’re not paying me for this at all,” Jesper said.

“Good, that means I haven’t lost all my business savvy yet. Now make yourself useful and go check the private parlors. Even your rabbit is doing something.”

“Not a rabbit,” Mabel huffed, zooming past Kaz.

The front door swung open. Kaz turned around to see Inej walk into the club, Ajit flying in front of her.

“Is it done?” he asked.

“Good morning to you too,” Ajit said, settling on the bar. “And yes, it seems that a supply wagon full of whiskey went missing en route to the Emerald Palace. So unfortunate.”

“Indeed,” Kaz replied as Inej hopped on the bar to sit beside her daemon.

“On an unrelated note, two dozen crates of whiskey are being unloaded into the supply room as we speak.”

Kaz nodded, feeling a surge of satisfaction. Not even six in the morning and he’d already managed to get one up on Pekka Rollins. He knew it would be little more than an inconvenience for the Dime Lions boss, but it was still one step and a few hundred kruge closer to destroying him.

“Everything looks good,” Eris announced, crawling up Kaz’s leg and torso until she settled on his shoulder. “I think we should order more beef, though. Drunk people love their burgers.”

“That they do,” Kaz agreed, the memory of his and Jesper’s visit to a certain dingy burger joint flashing before his eyes. It had taken a lot of threats and an extra line of credit at the Crow Club to convince Jesper to never speak of that night to another soul.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked Inej. “I’ve got some business in the Fifth Harbor. I could use a second pair of eyes.”

Inej nodded. “What’s it about?”

“Let’s just say there’s a certain dockworker who’s been sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.” Kaz reached for his hat. “Or his hands, more accurately. It’s time someone explained to him that stealing is a poor idea if you value having all four extremities intact.”

“You literally just stole a wagon full of booze,” Ajit said.

“Ah, but there’s a difference, my dear rat,” Kaz replied. “First of all, unlike our friend the dockworker, I don’t get caught. And second,” he made a gesture with his cane, “my extremities can hardly be classed as intact.”

***

A few days later, the Festival was in full swing, and the normally crowded streets of the Barrel had become near impassable. The city had to hire people specifically to fish out Festival goers out of the rivers and canals. With thousands of drunk tourists squished together and trying to move in different directions, not an hour passed without someone being pushed or stumbling into the water. Bars and gambling halls were open around the clock, music played in the streets non-stop. Jugglers, fire-swallowers, magicians and knife-throwers performed wherever they could find an inch of space to set up their equipment. Entire sections of the streets were dedicated to makeshift dancefloors, others to food stalls and sitting areas with long wooden tables and benches. Between drunken fights, bar brawls, acts of vandalism and people attempting to ride horses naked through the streets, the stadwatch were stretched thin.

It was Ketterdam at its best and worst at once.

Kaz had absolutely no idea why he let himself be dragged out of his office. The Dregs had all scattered, determined to have as much fun and cause as much trouble as possible, and he’d been the only one left at the Slat. He’d wanted to get some work done, maybe go down to the Crow Club later on to watch over the proceedings.

And then Jesper and Inej had walked into his office and invited him to join them.

“Come on,” Jesper said, thrumming with excitement, “it will be fun.”

Kaz raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever seen me do anything fun?”

“First time for everything,” Jesper replied lightly.

Kaz looked at them, Jesper clad in his flashiest purple waistcoat, Inej in a simple tunic and trousers. Their eyes were bright and expectant.

He waved them off. “Go. Try not to get yourselves arrested.”

Jesper looked disappointed. Inej looked like she’d expected the reply all along.

“Fine,” Jesper said, linking arms with Inej. “If you change your mind, we’ll be somewhere by East Stave.”

They left, closing the door behind them, and his office was plunged into relative quiet once again, save for the music that even the closed window couldn’t keep out.

Kaz spent some time sorting through the papers on his desk, but quickly realized he couldn’t focus on the words in front of him. He looked at Eris, who was hanging from her web above his desk.

“If you think any louder, we’ll both go deaf,” he told her. Eris had a way of being pointedly quiet, something he’d noticed Inej could do as well.

“I want to go!” his daemon told him, her legs twitching excitedly. “Come on, Kaz. Just one night. It won’t kill you.”

“If I have to watch Jesper dance, it just might,” Kaz replied.

Eris spun around. “You know you want to go. You’ve been reading the same paragraph for ten minutes.”

The truth was, there was a part of Kaz that wanted to go. The part that was still a nine-year-old boy who loved magic and hot chocolate. The part that he knew his daemon still clung to, no matter how hard he worked to leave it behind.

He looked at Eris, then back at the document in his hand.

The music was seeping through the thin walls, loud and cheerful. Somewhere over West Stave, someone set off fireworks. Kaz could hear the explosions.

He reached for his gloves. “Fine,” he told his daemon, “let’s go. But I’m only doing it because we need to check up on the Crow Club anyway.”

Eris hummed, pleased, and slid down to his desk and then up his sleeve.

Kaz grabbed his cane and walked down six flights of stairs and through the front door of the Slat.

He didn’t even know if he’d find Jesper and Inej. The crowds of East Stave were dense, and there were plenty of places they could’ve gone between the Lid and the bottom of the Barrel. He probably wouldn’t even see them on his way to the Crow Club.

Kaz pushed through the masses of people and daemons. Even in their drunken frenzy, they still got out of his way, maybe because of his cane or maybe because of the scowl on his face. Whatever it was, he was grateful for it. With this many bodies pressing against him, he could feel the water of the Reaper’s Barge lapping at his feet. Too much pressure, too many accidental touches, and he’d go under, clinging to Jordie’s slick rotting skin. That was one of the reasons why he’d always avoided the Festival of Ghezen. Having a panic attack in the middle of a crowd of tourists was not something the Bastard of the Barrel wanted anyone to witness.

And yet here he was, risking his sanity and his reputation, and he didn’t even know what he was risking them for. Dirtyhands didn’t have friends, he had allies. That was what Jesper and Inej were: people he worked with, people who had skills valuable to him. So what the hell was he doing, fighting nausea in a swarm of sweaty bodies on the off chance that he would spot them?

Eris was pressed against his neck, hidden by his collar.

“This was a bad idea,” he told her. “Why did you push so hard?”

“One of us has to,” Eris replied simply. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life holed up in that office. Do you?”

Yes.

No.

Kaz didn’t know.

“It’s just as hard for me as it is for you,” Eris continued. “Maybe worse. Everything is too big, too bright, too loud. One wrong move and I’m dead. It wouldn’t even take a knife or a gun, just a careless hand, a step. When I first settled, I wanted to hide all the time. But that’s no way to live. I don’t want that for me. And I don’t want that for you. I think we deserve better.”

Kaz laughed, but he didn’t feel any joy. “You and I have very different ideas on what we deserve, then.”

“Maybe so,” Eris said. “Or maybe you’re just afraid to admit that you want something more.”

“It’s not a question of what I want,” Kaz replied. “It’s a question of what I can get. Wanting things that can never be is a waste of time.”

“So it’s better to settle for less? We’ll get our revenge, get our gang, get rich, and then what? Wait until some bigger boss comes along and kills us? Grow old and fat and useless like Per Haskell?”

“We’ll burn Pekka Rollins to the ground. I don’t care what happens after.”

“Which is exactly why I have to.” Eris brushed her legs against the skin of his neck, and he knew she was sensing something that he couldn’t even begin to understand. “There they are.”

And sure enough, Jesper and Inej were sitting at one of the long wooden tables in front of a bar, right next to a small dance floor. A band was playing some slow ballad, a few couples swaying to the music.

Inej spotted him first, and he saw surprise in her eyes. She nudged Jesper, who grinned and stood up, waving at Kaz.

“I knew you’d miss us,” he said as Kaz approached the table. “Nina!” he called out, and only then did Kaz notice the Heartrender standing inside the bar, apparently waiting for drinks. “Get one more for Kaz!”

Kaz sat down opposite Jesper and Inej. He realized that now he was here, he had no idea what to say. He never socialized if he could help it.

They didn’t seem to expect him to say anything, though. Jesper pushed a plate of fries towards him, then said, “Big Bolliger and Rotty got themselves thrown in jail for the night. They were playing a card game with some tourists and things got a bit too heated. Skulls were cracked.”

“Serves them right,” Kaz replied, snatching a fry from the plate. “I told them not to do anything stupid, but apparently that’s like asking a mosquito not to be a nuisance.”

“Annika and Pym were here earlier,” Inej said, playing with the end of her braid. “Apparently some rich tourist on West Stave offered a thousand kruge to whoever can outdrink him. Half of all the Barrel gang members are there now.”

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” Kaz said to Jesper. The gunslinger could never resist a wager, and he could hold his liquor better than almost anyone Kaz knew.

Jesper shrugged. “Nina and Inej told me that if I ditched them, they’d never let me hang out with them again.”

Kaz raised an eyebrow, looking between Jesper and Inej. “The ‘friendship ended’ card? How very elementary school of you.”

“What can I say?” said Nina, approaching the table with four shots in her hands. “We're an excellent company.” She thrust a glass into Kaz’s hands. “Drink up, Kazzy boy. You got some catching up to do.”

Jesper snorted, and Inej actually giggled. Kaz glared at Nina.

“Call me Kazzy boy again and I won’t need Heartrender powers to end you.”

Jesper downed his shot in one gulp, then grabbed Inej’s hand. “Come on, Wraith. Let’s dance.”

He dragged her off to the dance floor before she could protest. Mabel and Ajit were watching them from the bench, the bird perched on the hare’s back, nibbling at her ears playfully.

Nina sat down on the bench opposite Kaz, her monkey daemon perched on her shoulder, nibbling on a fry. She clinked her glass against Kaz’s and they drank their shots in silence. The alcohol burned in Kaz’s throat.

He watched Jesper and Inej sway on the dance floor, pressed against each other, Jesper’s arm loosely wrapped around Inej’s waist, his other hand clasped in hers. They looked so casual, so comfortable with each other. He remembered Inej’s screams a few weeks ago, the night she’d woken from a nightmare and he’d rushed to her door before he could think better of it. She had scars, some probably even deeper than his own. And yet she was there, letting Jesper twirl her around the dance floor. The gunslinger said something and Inej laughed, the sound bright and clear even with music filling the air. Kaz could listen to that laugh for hours and he didn’t think he’d ever get bored. Inej’s black hair was shining in the lights of the paper lanterns that lined the street. Even in the awkward shuffle of a dance that she and Jesper were doing, she was endlessly graceful, moving like she was floating an inch above the ground, light as a feather.

Kaz forced himself to tear his eyes away from Inej and looked at Nina, who was grinning at him, a mischievous twinkle in her green eyes. He didn’t think it should be possible for anyone to look that pleased with themselves.

“What, Zenik?” he snapped at her.

She shook her head lightly. “Nothing at all, Brekker. I just think you’ll get an eye sprain if you stare any harder.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

‘Mhm. Don’t try to outlie a liar, Kaz. It won’t work.”

“Will pushing you in the river do the trick?”

“So violent. Ever considered a therapist?”

Kaz laughed, then, imagining himself lying on a plush sofa as some university-educated schmuck with a notepad attempted to heal his troubled soul.

Nina grinned. “Now that’s a sound I don’t hear often. You’re right, though. I don’t think any therapist would last more than an hour in a room with you before giving up on the profession and moving to the Wandering Isle.”

“You wound me, Zenik. I think I could break them in fifteen minutes.” Kaz replied.

The music changed as the band switched from slow ballads to an upbeat Kaelish song. Jesper brought Inej back to the table and held out a hand to Nina instead.

“May I have this dance, milady?” he asked with a wink.

Nina accepted his hand. “I thought you were never gonna ask. I almost tried to convince Kaz to dance with me.”

Jesper laughed. “Now that’s something I would’ve paid to see.”

They walked over to the dance floor and broke into a traditional Kaelish jig - or at least that was what Kaz thought they were going for. There wasn’t much technique to it, but it certainly wasn’t lacking in enthusiasm.

Inej looked at him, her dark eyes glimmering in the warm lights of the Festival. Her braid had nearly fallen apart and her hair was falling down her shoulders in long, silky strands.

“I’m glad you came,” she told him.

Eris crawled out from underneath Kaz’s collar and settled on the table between the two of them, taking in the colors and sounds of the Festival.

Kaz shrugged. “I have to check on the Crow Club anyway.”

Inej hummed, smoothing the feathers on Ajit’s chest. The daemon was perched on her shoulder, his plumage glimmering in the light: cobalt blue, royal purple, deep burgundy.

Those were the colors of Inej’s soul, and Kaz thought he could stare at them all night.

He reached out his gloved hand, and he saw Inej’s eyes widen. He brushed her ear with his fingers, barely a ghost of a touch.

He pulled his hand back and held it out in front of her, a coin between his fingers. A simple trick, one he’d mastered when he’d been eleven. He hadn’t used it for years. It wasn’t particularly useful or impressive, just a little sleight of hand that made girls giggle, if one cared about that sort of thing.

Inej beamed at him, her grin wide and toothy, taking the coin from his hand and flicking it between her fingers.

Maybe he did care about that sort of thing after all.

Just a little.

Chapter Text

Inej straightened her back as she balanced a tray of drinks in one hand, a crisp white piece of cloth draped over her forearm.

Klaus Meijer’s house, located right in the middle of the Geldstraat, was in many ways a typical Merchant’s mansion, spacious and luxurious, but in a restrained way that was pure Ketterdam. Inej had visited Os Alta once, with her family, and seen the Grand Palace of the Lantsov royal family. It had reminded her of a giant wedding cake, all marble and gold, with balconies, terraces, columns and stone reliefs crowding the walls. No self-respecting Kerch businessman would be caught dead in a building so extravagant. The walls of Meijer’s parlor were covered in a neutral beige wallpaper, his furniture elegant, but practical. The symbols of his wealth were subtle: a small, but expensive painting on the wall, the shining mahogany of the side tables scattered along the walls of the room, the champagne glasses on the tray in Inej’s hand that were unmistakably made of pure crystal instead of regular glass. She could tell by the weight. She knew she’d start feeling a sprain in her wrist soon.

She made her way across the room, maneuvering between small groups of guests. Here and there, a hand reached out and snatched a glass from the tray. Inej kept her head down and her expression neutral, but she listened intently to every conversation within her earshot. There was a chance that she’d catch some valuable information in-between the never-ending talk of food prices, politics and winter fashion.

“I heard the little Lantsov king will not be throwing a Winter Fete this year,” said a stout gentleman to her right, his daemon a bored-looking bloodhound.

“Of course not!” a lady next to him exclaimed. With her slightly hooked nose and green dress, she bore an uncanny resemblance to her parrot daemon. “Ravka’s coffers are empty as it is. I’ve heard he’s been taking out massive loans from our banks.”

“Wonder how he plans to pay them back,” said a tall man in a dark brown suit, a weasel on his shoulder. Judging by his flushed cheeks, he was already a few drinks in. “Even with those silly farming reforms he’s been implementing, Ravka’s years, maybe decades away from starting to break even, much less turning profit.”

“Maybe he should seek a job on the West Stave,” replied the lady in the green dress with a grin that looked half amused and half predatory. “With his pretty face, he’d probably get Ravka back on its feet after a few months in one of the pleasure houses.”

The men roared with laughter. The bloodhound daemon continued to look miserable. Or maybe it was just her resting face. With those bloodshot eyes, it was hard to tell.

“He could bring along that General of his,” the daemon’s owner said. He was wearing a velvet suit, the jacket threatening to pop open at any second, stretched to the limit over his massive stomach. “She is a beauty.”

“And about as frigid as Fjerda in the winter, from what I’ve heard,” the woman said.

The man with the weasel daemon took a sip of champagne. “I bet I could find a way to warm her up,” he said with a wink, and the group burst into laughter again.

Inej walked away, feeling her stomach turn. She’d never met Nikolai Lantsov or Zoya Nazyalensky, and she didn’t have any particular interest in either of them, but hearing these rich buffoons joke so easily about forcing people to sell their bodies made her blood boil.

“Maybe they should work at the Menagerie for a few months and see how they like it,” she muttered to Ajit, who was perched on her shoulder.

Ajit cast a quick glance at the tall man. “A Kerch weasel? Doesn’t have a great ring to it.”

Inej smiled as she passed another group of guests. “I’m sure Heleen could make it work.”

She took a deep breath to center herself and felt her anger dissolve. She was on a job. Allowing herself to be distracted by a drunken conversation was an amateur move.

Inej looked around the room and caught sight of Nina and Jesper standing arm in arm next to the Meijers. Nina was wearing a blue dress that bordered on scandalous with its plunging neckline and a slit on one thigh. She was wearing a blonde wig, and she’d tailored herself. Her eyes, usually a vibrant green, were now brown, the shape of her eyebrows, nose and chin slightly altered. Inej knew Nina wasn’t great at tailoring, and it had taken her a lot of time to make these small changes, but they were enough to disguise her actual features. Jesper was dressed in a sharp gray suit with a black shirt. Nina had worked her magic on him as well, changing the shape of his eyes and mouth, and he was sporting a fake beard. Kirin was sitting at his owner’s feet, his fur dyed white to disguise its normal sandy color. Mabel, in turn, had been dyed black. If Inej didn’t know it was them, she didn’t think she’d recognize her friends.

She looked at Klaus Meijers, a merch who’d inherited his father’s - Klaus Senior’s - money and quadrupled it by investing in jurda and Zemeni weapons. He wasn’t an attractive man by any stretch of the imagination. He reminded Inej of a well-dressed toad. His daemon was a small lizard, brownish-gray and apathetic. Klaus was talking to Jesper, no doubt discussing a possible business venture of some kind - the man had no interests outside of his work - while Nina chattered with the lady of the house. Ilse Meijers was sitting on a cream-colored plush sofa, her ferret daemon in her lap. She was dressed in a simple black dress, the soft fabric clinging delicately to her small frame. Her hair was in a sleek updo, held in a bun by either magic or very discreetly placed pins. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry except for a necklace, an impressive string of egg-sized diamonds and sapphires framed in white gold. The jewels rested against her collarbones and glimmered in the light coming from the chandeliers.

The necklace had been a wedding gift from her toad-looking husband, a stunning piece created by Ketterdam’s best jeweller. Word on the street was that he’d paid nearly a million kruge for it.

Ilse Meijers never took it off.

“And we’re going to steal it,” Kaz had told them two months before as they sat in his office at the Slat, all five of them hunched around his desk.

Jesper had raised a brow. “The necklace that she wears around the clock, even when she’s in the bath or sleeping?”

“The very one.”

“And how, pray tell, are we going to do that? Not even you can steal something that heavy from around a woman’s neck without her noticing.”

Kaz had shot Jesper a look. “That’s debatable. But it would be too risky. Not to mention that a grab-and-run like that is a rookie move. No, we’re going to do something different, and if everything goes according to plan, no one will even realize it’s missing. At least not for a while.”

Nina leaned in, Kirin in her lap. “Come on, Brekker, enough with the theatrics. How are we going to pull this off?”

Kaz slapped something on his desk, a folded piece of paper. They all leaned in to read the elegant black calligraphy inside.

Klaus Meijers

requests the pleasure of your company

at a dinner party

in honour of his

50th Birthday

at 364 Geldstraat

on Saturday, the twenty-third of October

at seven o'clock in the evening

“Apparently Klaus Meijers’ birthday bash is the hottest event of the season,” said Kaz. “And we’re going to get ourselves an invitation.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but somehow I don’t think he’s going to invite a bunch of Barrel crooks just because we asked nicely,” replied Jesper, twirling one of his revolvers. Mabel was in his lap, and he was scratching her behind the ears with his other hand.

“Which is why we’re not going to be Barrel crooks.” Kaz leaned back in his chair. “Jesper, Nina, starting today, you’re married.”

Nina looked at Jesper, eyebrows raised. “He’s a bit skinny for my taste,” she said, eyeing him up and down. “But I guess he’ll do.”

“Oh darling,” Jesper replied, grinning. “I will rock your world.”

“Excellent,” Kaz deadpanned. “Then by the power invested in me by absolutely nobody I now pronounce you fake married. Nina, I assume your Zemeni is as good as your Kerch?”

Nina said something in Zemeni, her face dead serious, and Jesper doubled over laughing, Mabel nearly toppling from his lap.

“She said ‘no matter the language, your haircut is still terrible’,” Jesper translated.

Kaz reached a hand to his hair, and Inej felt her lips curl into a smile. Apparently even the Bastard of the Barrel could be self-conscious.

“My haircut is not the topic of this conversation,” Kaz said dryly. “Klaus Meijers loves his Zemeni guns. I need you to pose as an arms dealer. Take him shooting, dazzle him with your revolvers, whatever you have to do. Nina, befriend his wife. Con them into inviting you to the party. You have eight weeks starting from today to get into their inner circle.”

“Not going to be a problem,” Nina replied. “What about the rest of you?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Kaz replied.

Wylan raised a hand.

“You don’t need to…” Kaz looked like he’d just about reached his limit. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, Wylan?”

“If we’re doing a con and trying to snatch the necklace without anyone noticing, why am I here?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Kaz asked. “You’re the demo expert. I think the title is pretty self-explanatory.”

“So you want me to blow something up on a job that relies on no one noticing anything?”

“That’s right, Wylan. Because if they’re looking at the explosion, they’ll miss everything else.”

And so two months later Inej found herself posing as a waitress at Klaus Meijers’ 50th birthday party.

She took her empty tray and left the parlor. A long hallway ran from the front door all the way to the kitchen in the back of the house, a series of doors on both sides, most of them locked so that party guests couldn’t snoop around the Meijers’ private rooms. Inej opened the last door on the right, the one leading to the kitchen, and was hit by a wave of hot steam. People in white uniforms were scrambling as the head chef yelled out commands, pans and pots sizzling on the stoves. Wylan was chopping vegetables with a couple of other boys, his forehead dripping with sweat as he murdered a carrot with a knife. Silja looked morose, the hot steam wetting her pristine feathers. Kaz had wanted to keep Wylan away from the guests so that no one could recognize him. The kitchen provided him with anonymity, and he was also close to the open flames of the stove, a perfect place to blow something up when the time came.

Inej placed some more champagne glasses on her tray and made her way back to the parlor. The clock was almost at ten bells. She felt Ajit flutter excitedly on her shoulder.

Inej walked into the parlor, brushing past a guard stationed by the door, one of the Meijers’ private security. She looked up and locked eyes with Kaz, his eyes dark brown, shadowed by the cap of the guard’s uniform.

“Are you sure that’s the best role for you?” she’d asked him a few weeks before from her spot on his windowsill.

Kaz hadn’t looked up from the papers on his desk. “It will be mostly stationary. The guards are supposed to stand around the room, make sure no one steals the silverware. Even a useless cripple like me can manage that.”

Inej had rolled her eyes, watching Eris weave her web in her favorite corner by the window. “We both know you’re hardly useless.”

“But I am a cripple,” Kaz had replied. “Your concern is touching, Wraith, but unnecessary. I’d worry about your own part of the plan instead.”

Inej straightened her back and kept walking across the parlor, this time stopping close to where Nina and Jesper stood, still deep in conversation with the Meijers. They’d spent two months getting close to the Merch couple, posing as Zemeni newlyweds with a humble start-up business focused on exporting revolvers and repeating rifles from Novyi Zem. Jesper had caught Klaus Meijers’ attention at one of the Gold District parks one day, showing off his revolvers to some curious kid and bragging about how there wasn’t a single gun to rival them in all of Ketterdam. The merch had approached, and Jesper and Nina proceeded to charm him out of his pants.

Hook, line and sinker. Just like Kaz had predicted, Meijers had taken the bait, and when Nina had befriended Ilse - which had taken her all of twenty seconds and two thoughtful compliments - the two couples started dining together regularly. Thankfully Jesper loved guns as much as Meijers did, so discussing the weapons market and new prototypes of repeating rifles and handheld pistols came to him easily. And Nina, well, Nina could talk about anything and make it seem like she cared about nothing else as much as she cared about the topic at hand.

The con was on, and the invitation had arrived to the room that Kaz kept under the Zemeni couple’s name at the Geldrenner hotel exactly three weeks before the party.

Inej didn’t know how Kaz managed to get her on the waiting staff, Wylan in the kitchen, and himself on the guard rotation. She suspected it involved a healthy dose of bribery, blackmail, or violence. Perhaps a combination of all three.

“Ah, Ilse, and how is little Mimi doing?” Nina asked, the slightest hint of a Zemeni accent bleeding into her Kerch. Her voice was higher than normal, her tailored brown eyes wide and full of wonder, befitting the country girl she was playing. She was referring to the youngest of the Meijers’ three children, none of which had thankfully inherited their father’s toad features.

“Much better, thank you, Katrina,” replied Ilse. “Her fever has finally broken and today she wanted to play with her sister again. We had to practically chain her to the bed to get her to rest.”

Nina laughed, a delicate sound completely unlike her actual laughter. “That’s wonderful! Children are so resilient, aren’t they?”

“Indeed,” Ilse nodded, then looked between Nina and Jesper. “Are you two thinking about expanding your family? It’s easier when you’re younger, you know.”

Nina would’ve made a lewd joke. But Katrina just batted her eyelashes innocently.

“Of course, we would love a big family.” She looked at Jesper, who was lost in conversation with Klaus. “It’s just that we’ve been so busy trying to get the business off the ground…”

The clock struck ten bells.

The plan was in motion.

Inej turned to another group of guests and offered them champagne, but stayed close to Nina. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Heartrender clench her fist ever so slightly. No one else would notice the movement unless they knew what to look for.

Ilse suddenly paled and swayed. “I feel strange,” she said weakly, raising a hand to touch her head. “I think I’m going to…” Her eyelids fluttered shut and she slid down on the couch, passed out, her heartbeat slowed by Nina.

Nina was at the woman’s side in an instant, her eyes wide with fear. “Something’s wrong!” she exclaimed, her voice trembling as she cradled Ilse’s hand in hers. “Is there a medik here?”

“What’s going on?” Klaus Meijers looked away from Jesper and took in the sight of his unconscious wife. “Ilse! What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Nina’s lower lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. “We were just talking, and then suddenly she just…”

“We need a medik!” Meijers shouted, his lethargic daemon suddenly watchful, looking around the room. “We need to get her somewhere more private. You.” He pointed at Kaz. “Help me carry her to my office.”

“How can you be sure he’ll pick you?” Inej had asked Kaz two weeks before the party.

“He’ll need to get Ilse out of the room, so his eyes will wander to the door,” Kaz had replied. “When he does, he’ll notice the guard stationed by that very door. It’s not a foolproof plan, but I’d roll the dice that he’ll choose that guard to help him carry her out.”

Inej watched as Kaz obediently walked towards passed-out Ilse. He wasn’t limping, his posture perfectly straight, but Inej could see the barely-there clench of his jaw. He was in pain.

Kaz and Meijers picked up Ilse, but Nina wouldn’t let go of her hand. “I must go with her!” she exclaimed, a mix of urgency and desperation in her voice, her accent getting thicker. “I must help!”

“That’s not necessary,” Meijers replied, already shuffling towards the door. “We’ll have a medik here shortly.”

Nina grabbed his arm. “Oh, but please, sir, you cannot deny me! What kind of a friend would I be if I left Ilse in her time of need?” She was sobbing now, Kirin wailing at her feet. “She’s been so kind to me, so generous…”

Meijers shook off her hand awkwardly. “Very well, come if you wish, just please, don’t make a scene,” he hissed. He looked at the sea of party guests gathered in the parlor. “Everything is under control, everyone, please enjoy yourselves.” He looked at the band, who had stopped playing when Ilse collapsed, and at the look on his face they picked up their instruments again. An upbeat melody filled the air.

Nina was trailing on Meijers’ heels as they walked out of the room. Kirin carried Ilse's daemon in his little palms.

Inej circled the room once, then once more, and then finally slipped out into the hallway, leaving the tray on one of the side tables. She melted into the shadows by the stairs. After a few minutes, a door opened on the left side of the corridor, and a young boy came out, moving towards the front door. No doubt a runner on his way to get a medik.

“Maybe a cold compress will help!” Nina exclaimed enthusiastically before the door to Meijers’ office could close again. She peeked into the hallway, pretending to only just notice Inej passing by. “You!” she called. “Bring us some cold water and a towel.”

Inej cleared her throat. “Right away, ma’am.”

Inej walked quickly to the kitchen and slipped inside, making her way to the sinks. She filled a bowl with cold water. A waiter passed her with a tray of canapés and caviar.

Inej caught Wylan’s eyes and nodded. He nodded back.

“Ten minutes,” she whispered as she passed him.

Inej made her way back to Meijers’ office and knocked gently on the door. Nina opened and flashed her a quick grin before turning back to Meijers, her expression immediately turning into a concerned frown.

Kaz stood by the door, still as a statue. Ilse was lying on a small leather settee, the necklace glittering in the dim light of the lamp on Meijers’ desk. Meijers was pacing nervously, his lizard daemon crawling restlessly on his shoulder. Nina kneeled by the settee and wet the cloth Inej had given her in the cold water from the bowl. She wrung the cloth out and placed the compress on Ilse’s forehead.

“There we go,” she said softly, then mumbled something in Zemeni for good measure. Inej suspected it was a string of curse words, but it wasn’t like Meijers would be able to tell the difference.

Inej retreated to stand against the wall next to Kaz. She slowly reached her hand to the hem of her shirt. Beneath the waiter’s uniform, bound to her body with tightly wrapped cloth, a replica of Ilse’s necklace rested against her stomach, the metal cold against her skin.

“I don’t understand why you even need me there,” she’d told Kaz before the party. “Nina could carry in the necklace herself.”

Nina had grinned from where she was sprawled on the bed of the hotel room. “Oh, trust me, there will be nowhere to hide it underneath the dress I plan to wear.”

But the waiter’s uniform was slightly too big on Inej’s small frame, and the fabric of the shirt was loose around her waist - just loose enough, in fact, to disguise a necklace strapped to her stomach.

Meijers was still pacing.

“He won’t leave the room,” Kaz had said the week before. “He may love his wife, but he definitely loves the jewels he put around her neck. He’ll be watching.”

Inej carefully slid the counterfeit necklace from underneath the bindings. It was a slow process, moving it inch by inch until she could feel its weight in her hand, still hidden underneath the fabric of her shirt.

They were counting on Meijers not being the type to notice or care about the servants. So far, it looked like they’d been right. He looked at his wife and at Nina, but he never spared Kaz and Inej a glance.

Slowly, carefully, Inej slipped the fake necklace into the bowl of water she was holding.

Nina looked around her shoulder at her and Inej nodded, the slightest movement of her head.

Nina beckoned her with a finger. “Come, come, I think the compress is getting warm.”

Inej walked quickly across the room and put the bowl on the floor next to Nina, leaning over it to hide it from Meijers’ view. Nina wet the cloth in the bowl. As she was wringing it out, Kirin sat next to the bowl, covered by Inej. Gently, he lifted the necklace and slid it underneath one of the leather cushions that Ilse was resting on.

Inej straightened her back, stepping to the side to uncover Nina’s innocently looking monkey daemon and the equally innocently looking bowl.

Meijers sighed, annoyed. “How much longer is this going to ta-”

Boom. An explosion rattled through the house, coming from the kitchen.

No one but Inej heard the tiny click as Nina slid her hand from Ilse’s forehead to the back of her neck and undid the clasp of the necklace.

Meijers jumped at the sound of the explosion.

“What was that?” Nina asked innocently, her eyes wide.

“I have no idea,” Meijers replied, his eyes darting between his wife and the door. They could hear commotion outside of his office as party guests poured into the hallway, seeking the source of the noise.

Nina’s one hand was resting on the sofa next to Ilse’s head, the other tucked underneath the cushion.

“You,” Meijers pointed at Kaz. “Go see what’s happening. Quickly!”

Kaz bowed slightly. “Of course, sir,” he said. Inej almost snorted at how obedient he sounded.

Kaz opened the door and walked out of the room. Before the door could close, Jesper entered.

“There you are!” he exclaimed, his Kerch also slightly accented to match Nina’s. “Bloody hell, what was that? I thought the whole house was going to fall down on us!”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Meijers replied, but his voice didn’t quite match his words. “Maybe one of the cooks poured a little too much oil into one of the pans....”

“Either way, I think we should get everyone out just in case. What if something else explodes? Or maybe there’s a fire?” Jesper slapped a hand to his mouth, his eyes widening in horror. “What about the children?”

Meijers froze, as if he’d only just remembered that his three children were in fact sound asleep on the third floor of his mansion - if the explosion hadn’t woken them. “You’re right, the children…” He turned to Ilse, then back to Jesper, undecided.

“I will get them for you!” Jesper offered valiantly. “You shouldn’t leave your wife when she’s in such a state, of course…”

“No, no, I will go with you…”

Inej stood in the middle of the room, a buffer between Klaus Meijers and Nina. She realized that she couldn’t breathe. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Nina carefully sliding the necklace from Ilse’s neck, her other hand immediately putting the fake in its place.

Everything hinged on this moment. If Meijers turned around now, the whole two-month con would be blown wide open in an instant.

A beat passed.

Jesper grabbed Meijers’ arm, turning the man’s attention back to himself.

Nina closed the fake necklace around Ilse’s neck with a soft click. Kirin grabbed the real one from her hand and slid it into the water bowl in one swift motion. Nina took the compress from Ilse’s head and threw it into the bowl, the rumpled fabric covering the jewels. She leaned over Ilse, one of her hands clutching into a fist.

Ilse’s breath quickened, her eyes opened. “What’s going on?” she asked, looking around the room.

Meijers whirled around and Inej stepped aside, picking up the bowl and retreating into the shadows by the wall. The fake necklace looked convincing enough and weighed about the same as the real thing. It wouldn’t hold up to closer scrutiny, but at least for the moment, Meijers was convinced that nothing was amiss.

“Ilse,” the merchant said with relief, walking to his wife’s side. “How are you feeling? Can you stand up?”

“I feel quite well, actually,” she replied, letting her husband pull her up from the settee. “Did I pass out?”

“Yes, you did.” Nina jumped into the conversation. “It was so scary! And then there was an explosion!”

“Explosion?!” Ilse exclaimed. “Oh my, but the children…”

“The children are fine,” Meijers assured her. “There was an incident in the kitchen, but I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

Kaz walked back into the room, as if on cue. “There’s a small fire, but they’re putting it out now,” he announced. “One of the kitchen boys accidentally threw a bag of flour on the stove.”

“Flour?” Ilse asked, flummoxed.

“Yes,” Kaz replied, his face completely straight. “Apparently it can be quite combustible.”

Inej slipped out of the office. The hallway was filled with guests, a confused chatter filling the air.

The kitchen was a mess of people running around, flour dust in the air, dishes and cutlery scattered across the floor. The fire had indeed been put out, but the wall above the stove was charred.

Inej slipped out through the kitchen door. She put the bowl on the ground, picked up the very expensive necklace and made her way towards the fence in the back of the garden, a million kruge’s worth of jewels in her hand.

When Kaz entered his office a few hours later, Inej was on the windowsill. She’d laid out the necklace on Kaz’s desk.

He looked at her, then his eyes slowly moved to the jewels.

Nina and Jesper barrelled in after him, Wylan in tow. Nina moved to sit on the windowsill beside Inej, practically bouncing with excitement.

“I can’t believe we pulled this off!” She threw her arm around Inej. “Jesper, I want a divorce.”

“Worst decision of your life, love,” Jesper replied, casually slinging his arm around Wylan, who blushed profusely. “I’m keeping the children.”

Wylan stared at the necklace. “So, do you have a buyer?”

“Not quite,” Kaz replied, moving to sit in his chair. “The necklace can’t be sold in its current form. It’s too recognizable, no jeweller or pawn shop will take it, and considering how much it’s insured for, even fencing it on the black market will be tricky. The insurance company no doubt has some undercover officers that would gladly lock us up in Hellgate. But if we were to turn it into, say, five pieces of jewelry to be sold separately…”

Nina took off her blonde wig and shook out her hair. “So how much money can I expect for my trouble? Blonde is so not my color.”

Kaz looked at Inej and a smile crossed his face - a satisfied grin, brief as a summer storm. “Don’t you worry, Zenik. You’ll be swimming in toffees once the money comes through.”

Nina sighed, content, resting her head on Inej’s shoulder. “Totally worth it, then.”

Chapter Text

Kaz walked into the Slat, cane in hand.

His coat and suit were soaked through, the cold, wet fabric clinging to his skin in a way that threatened to bring up unwanted memories. Autumn in Ketterdam was always a miserable affair, heavy rain overflowing the city’s gutters and storm drains, flooding cellars and seeping through the poorly patched roofs of the Barrel. The biggest crowds of tourists were gone by now. Most of them had left after the Festival of Ghezen, which marked the end of the summer. The Crow Club was still doing reasonably well, but with fewer pigeons wandering through the thick fog of East Stave this time of year, Kaz knew he needed to pursue other sources of income if he wanted to keep the lights on throughout the winter. The Slat was a bitch to heat, even with all the renovations he’d already completed.

It was coming up on eleven bells, and the Slat was virtually empty. Most of the Dregs were still out, getting into all kinds of trouble or running whatever errands Kaz had assigned them. The floor creaked under his feet as he made his way down the dark hallway towards the stairs. His bad leg hurt, both from the weather and lack of rest. He should probably at least try to get a decent night's sleep. But there was always so much to be done, deals to close, rich men to blackmail. The Barrel was a place of few luxuries, and restful nights most definitely fit into that category.

Eris was sitting on his shoulder, hidden from view under his shirt. They'd spent most of the day in the harbor. The howling wind had turned the sea into a raging monster, black water hitting the quay and spilling onto the cobblestones in a mess of dirty white foam, rocking the ships dangerously in their berths. The weather hadn't been kind to sailors. Dozens of ships had been sunk by storms in the last few weeks. Kaz couldn't remember the last time things had got this bad. Even the Merchant Council was worried, according to the intelligence Inej had gathered. The Council of Tides had managed to keep the waters around Ketterdam calm enough to avoid any serious incidents, but even their powers were no match for what was happening farther out into the True Sea.

Kaz's mood was as foul as the weather outside as he contemplated what exactly these losses of revenue would mean to him. With fewer ships in the harbor and fewer people in the gambling halls, all his plans for expanding his little money-making kingdom had gone out the window.

He gripped the bannister and started walking up the stairs, but stopped in the middle of the first flight. He briefly touched his hand to his bad leg. The pain was radiating up his thigh, to his hip bone. It felt like a white hot knife sliding into his flesh over and over again.

That wasn't why he'd stopped. The pain was as familiar to him as the voice of his daemon.

Kaz lifted his head and took a deep breath. The air smelled of all things Slat, cheap booze and sweat and dust, but there was something else in the mix tonight. Spices and garlic and butter.

Someone was cooking.

The realization came to him, a strange thought, too abstract to wrap his mind around. No one ever cooked at the Slat. They had a kitchen, but it was mostly used as a storage room. Kaz wasn't sure most of the Dregs could even boil water without burning down the building. They ate at the Crow Club or one of the dingy diners in the Barrel, and if there was ever anything in the pantry besides mold, it was bread and cheese and dried meat, things that could be taken on the go between jobs, stuffed in the pockets for a quick snack.

The aromas that hung in the air now promised something different, an actual hot meal that someone prepared from scratch, a concept so alien to Kaz that his brain took a second to fully comprehend it. Once his head caught up, his stomach followed suit, grumbling loudly in the darkness, reminding him that he hadn't in fact eaten for most of the day, the day he'd spent getting soaking wet and buffeted by the wind.

Kaz had never given much thought to food. When he'd been a child, back on the farm, food had been something obvious, something that appeared on the table at set times. Fried potatoes, a cup of milk from their cow. Maybe some meat. Later, when they'd first arrived in Ketterdam, it had been Jordie's problem, and he'd dutifully provided. At least until Pekka Rollins. Those weeks they'd spent on the street, before the Queen's Lady Plague, had been the first time Kaz had ever felt true hunger - the kind that had turned his stomach into a tight, cold knot, made his limbs feel heavy, his mind sluggish.

After the Reaper's Barge, food had become a nuisance, something he had to steal or pay for and eat as fast as possible so he could get on with his day. He didn't particularly care about the taste. That was something rich people concerned themselves with, sitting at their big tables in their big houses, complaining about the soup being too salty or the steak too dry. Kaz wouldn't be caught dead fussing over something so inconsequential. Food kept him going, kept his mind running and his hands moving, and that was it.

But here he was, in his wet clothes, a mix of hunger and curiosity pushing him towards the door to the kitchen. He cracked it open and peeked through.

Inej was standing at the stove - Kaz couldn't remember the last time someone had used the thing, much less cleaned it. She was stirring something in a big frying pan that she must've bought or discovered in some dark corner in one of the cabinets because Kaz had never seen it before. Ajit was on the counter, hopping around a bunch of cooking utensils. Kaz spotted a chopping board, a few knives, small jars of spices and bundles of herbs. The kitchen was warm from the blazing fire burning under the stovetop, and the smells were stronger here. Garlic, smoked paprika, ginger. Other things Kaz couldn't name.

"You can come in, you know," Inej said, and Kaz jerked.

Of course she'd heard him, even over the crackling of the fire and the sizzling of whatever she was cooking.

Kaz opened the door wider and walked inside. The kitchen table was empty, the chairs nearly pushed in. Inej must've put them that way. They were usually in disarray.

He took off his wet coat and sat in one of the chairs. Inej turned her head to look at him, quirking one eyebrow. "Decided to go for a swim?"

"I couldn't resist. The sea is great this time of year," he replied.

"You'll get pneumonia."

"Don't you worry, Wraith. I've heard only the good die young," he told her. "But on the off chance that I do kick the bucket, do me the courtesy of making sure that everyone thinks I died doing something dastardly. I've got a reputation to uphold."

"Can you die from too much scheming?" Inej wondered.

"If you could, he'd have dropped dead long ago," Ajit replied.

Eris crawled out onto the table. She shuddered. "I hate the rain."

"So do I," Ajit told her. "Messes up my feathers."

Inej added something to the pan and stirred the food vigorously. Kaz realized that she was humming, a quiet melody, barely audible over the sounds of the cooking. He suddenly got the feeling that he was interrupting some kind of private ritual.

He wondered how often she did this, used this room for its actual purpose while everyone else forgot about its existence. He'd known her nearly two years, and he prided himself on being able to spot her anywhere regardless of situation, and yet he'd completely missed this.

It was none of his business.

And yet some part of him hated the fact that he hadn't known, hadn't noticed.

Inej took the hot pan off the stove and moved to one of the cupboards. Her hair was loosely braided tonight, shining in the warm lamplight. He could see the knives at her waist and hips. Sankta Alina, Sankta Lizaveta, Sankt Vladimir.

Kaz knew the names of all of her Saints. She'd mutter them sometimes, under her breath, while sharpening them. She probably didn't even realize she was doing it, the string of names on her lips nothing more than an instinct. He didn't think she knew that he always heard her. That he listened. That he remembered.

He looked at the tip of her braid, the way it swung from side to side as she moved, like the pendulum of a clock, brushing her hips.

Someone cleared their throat loudly. Kaz looked at the table, where Ajit was sitting next to Eris, both daemons staring at him with what he could only describe as barely restrained glee.

Traitor, he thought, narrowing his eyes at Eris. The rat was one thing, but his own soul was apparently in cahoots with Inej's daemon.

"Eat glass, both of you," he told them quietly.

A bowl appeared in his peripheral vision as Inej put it on the table in front of him, followed by a piece of bread and a spoon. The smell that hit his nostrils as the hot steam rose up from the dish made his brain short circuit for a moment. He stared at the food. It was some kind of a stew, meat and vegetables swimming in thick golden brown sauce.

Inej sat down in the chair opposite his own, clutching her own bowl. His eyes met hers and she smiled, brief and blinding.

Kaz's mouth suddenly felt very, very dry.

"Dig in, Kaz," she told him, scooping up some of the stew with her spoon. "It'll warm you up."

He felt his lips quirk. "A cold bastard like me? I don't think that's possible."

But he dipped his own spoon in the stew and took a bite.

As soon as his mouth closed around the spoon, the flavors exploded in his mouth. The sauce was thick and creamy, salty and sweet and smooth like nothing he'd tasted before. Garlic hit his tongue first, sharp and almost overwhelming, then honey and roasted carrots, syrupy sweet. Then ginger and smoked paprika, parsley and black pepper, and a dozen other things, one after the other, hitting his palate in waves.

It took all of his restraint not to moan. If he had, he would've never been able to look Inej in the eye again. And Ajit, the smug little rat, would've never let him live it down. So instead he kept his mouth shut and swallowed.

Inej was looking at him, and he could tell that she was searching for something. He tried to keep his features neutral, but he was pretty sure he was doing a terrible job of it.

"Good, then?" she asked, and there was no mistaking the mischievous glint in her eye. She already knew the answer.

He could've made a sarcastic remark. In fact, he probably should've. But Inej had just fed him quite possibly the best thing he'd ever eaten, and he couldn't think of a single witty reply. He took another mouthful of food instead.

"I didn't know the Wraith's services included cooking," he said at last.

"The Wraith has many talents," she replied, ripping her slice of bread into smaller pieces and popping one in her mouth. "And knives have many different uses."

"Deadliest woman in the Barrel by day, culinary expert by night?"

Inej smiled. "I think you mean deadliest person in the Barrel."

"I don't think I do," he said, even though they both knew Inej could kill him a dozen different ways if she wanted to before he managed to lift his fists.

But he was still Dirtyhands, and he wasn't about to admit that he thought she could kick his ass.

Inej laughed, then. It was the same laugh that haunted his dreams, like some kind of giddy phantom he couldn't get rid of. "Whatever helps you sleep at night".

They sat in silence for a while, the crackling of the fire and the clinging of the spoons against bowls the only sounds in the kitchen.

"My mother used to make this," she told him suddenly. Ajit was hopping around the table, picking up bread crumbs. "It wasn't often we could get our hands on meat. Not everyone would sell to us, and we didn't have our own livestock. It's always been my favorite dish in the world. Maybe because it was so rare."

Kaz didn't have any memories of his mother. She probably cooked for her family too. Jordie might have remembered.

He wasn't sure if it was better to have these memories and know whatever you had had been lost forever, or to not remember anything at all.

"We have a saying," Inej continued. She said something in Suli, the words as melodic and gentle as Kerch was rough and abrupt. "She'd say it to me when she put food on the table." Her eyes were distant now, like she was watching something that only she could see.

"What does it mean?" Eris asked, crawling closer to Inej, stopping mere inches from her hand.

Inej's eyes snapped back to reality, but it was Ajit who replied. "I love you," he said simply. "I want us both to eat well."

The words hung between them, and Inej's cheeks flushed a deep shade of red as the context of their current situation set in.

Kaz cleared his throat. He swallowed another mouthful of food, the same food that little Inej would eat with her family on special occasions. He could see the child she'd been in the girl sitting across the table from him, a tiny little thing with big, dark eyes. Years and continents separated him from that little girl, and yet here he was, eating the same thing she had, in another time, a happier time.

Inej was avoiding his eyes. "It's how we take care of each other," she said. "We fight, if we have to - and we have to more often than we would like - but more importantly, we nourish each other. That's what community is, to us. Making sure nobody goes hungry."

Kaz wasn't sure what to say to that. He'd never known anything like she was describing. The Barrel was a nasty place, he knew it better than most. It had thrown him into the gutter like he was nothing, left him to rot until he'd pulled himself back up by his fingernails. He had no one, just Eris and his schemes and his revenge. But Inej had her people, people who were still alive. People who had fed her and loved her and were probably still mourning her. To her, the Barrel must have seemed like the worst place in the world.

His spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. "If the food is always this good, then maybe I should join a Suli caravan."

Inej's lips quirked at that. "I don't think you'd like the clothes."

Kaz let out a deep sigh. "You're right. Black is definitely my color."

Ajit huffed a breath as he cleaned his feathers. "Personally I think a nice clown red would be perfect for you."

Inej grinned, then. "Throw some yellow in there. Maybe a scarf."

"Definitely a beret," Ajit added.

Kaz quirked an eyebrow at the bird. "Maybe I'll go for a nice feather boa," he said, looking pointedly at Ajit's shining black plumage.

"You wish you could pull that off," the daemon scoffed.

"Now now," Inej scolded gently, taking both empty bowls and throwing them in the sink. "Play nice, boys. Kaz, you're on dishwashing duty."

Kaz tried not to scowl. He really did.

He failed.

Inej burst out laughing, her eyes twinkling. "You didn't think I'd do everything, did you?"

Kaz got up from his seat. His clothes were drying fast in the heat of the kitchen, his stomach was full, and the pain in his leg had lessened. Maybe that was what it meant to feel content. "You could've told me that before you served the food," he replied indignantly as he passed her and limped towards the sink.

And so the Bastard of the Barrel washed the dishes as the Wraith sat on the kitchen counter, telling him to "use the damn dish soap, Kaz, so help me Saints."

Chapter Text

Inej was nervous.

She wasn't sure why. As she strapped her knives to her body, one by one, anxiety twisted her insides into a tight knot, making her feel sick. She knew Ajit felt it too. He was restless, moving around the room in spurs of sudden activity, as if every surface he perched on for more than a few seconds burned his feet.

"I don't like this," he said to her, settling briefly on her shoulder before taking flight again.

Inej buttoned up her vest slowly, trying to center herself. She took a deep breath. In and out, nice and slow, just like her father had taught her. Breathing was as important as footwork when it came to walking on the wire. Every inhale and exhale had to be coordinated with what the rest of her body was doing.

"Neither do I," she told her daemon as she pulled on her cloak. She threw open the door to her tiny door and walked out. Ajit followed her down the dark corridor towards the rickety staircase.

The task ahead of them seemed simple enough. There was a new gang in the Barrel, by all accounts nothing more than a bunch of street wise kids looking for a fight and hoping to score some cash. From what Inej had seen of them, they were disorganised and lacked solid leadership, but they had been causing enough trouble in the Barrel for Kaz to take notice. They had called themselves Black Sharks, which amused Kaz to no end.

“They think a name like that will make up for the fact that their gang is a gaggle of children,” he’d said. “How old can what’s-his-face be, nine?”

“Damien is fourteen,” Inej had replied. She’d spent a few days following the Black Sharks’ self-proclaimed leader, a gangly teen with a scar on his cheek and a fox daemon. “Weren’t you already a crime lord at that age?”

“Yes,” Kaz had admitted, “but at least I had some style. Daniel looks like he fell into one of the canals and couldn’t be bothered to shower since.”

“His name is Damien,” Inej told him.

“Dorian,” Kaz said pointedly and she rolled her eyes, “looks like he still has his baby teeth. Maybe I’ll do him a favour and knock some of them out when I get my hands on him.”

The kid might have been new to the crime world, but he was certainly proving himself to be a nuisance. The Black Sharks had managed to get into a few nasty fights with the Dregs and steal a small shipment of jurda, intercepting it on its way to Fifth Harbor. It wasn’t worth a lot, but to Kaz, every kruge lost was a personal offence.

“We need to nip this in the bud,” he’d said to Inej nearly a fortnight ago. “I’m not about to let a bunch of snotty-nosed brats mess with my business.”

Inej saw Kaz and Jesper as she walked out of the Slat, the two of them hunched together on the other side of the narrow street. They looked odd next to each other, Jesper in his bright Barrel best, slightly - but very intentionally - disheveled, and Kaz clad in black, his gloved hands wrapped around the crow’s head on his cane. Slight drizzle was seeping down from the sky, and tiny droplets of rain fell on Inej’s hair and behind her collar. She shuddered at the sensation.

Jesper and Mabel greeted her and Ajit with their usual enthusiasm. She could tell they were anxious to get going, stillness a foreign concept to both of them. Kaz acknowledged her with a nod, but didn’t say anything. In the light of the street lanterns, his face was a collection of sharp, unforgiving lines.

A few minutes passed, and more Dregs joined them, huddling together like a flock of chickens against the harsh autumn wind and persistent rain. The clock at the Geldrenner Hotel struck ten bells. As they moved north towards the harbor, Ajit flew ahead of the group, barely visible against the darkness, looking around every corner before reporting back to Inej. She looked around. Her fellow gang members looked excited, talking and laughing between themselves without a care in the world. Jesper sauntered beside her, almost leisurely, twirling his revolvers. It seemed that no one except for her expected trouble.

Well, maybe except for Kaz, but the stern purse of his lips was hard to read. She’d seen that look on his face on a thousand different occasions, ranging from successful heists to lost battles. If he did feel the same anxiety as she did, he wasn’t going to show it. His limp was worse than usual, either because of the rain or lack of rest, but he kept up with the group. Inej suspected it probably cost him quite a bit of energy to match their pace without wincing in pain, but he’d rather switch wardrobes with Jesper for a month than let any weakness show.

The Barrel didn’t care about the weather, and the streets were full of people filing in and out of gambling halls and pleasure houses. It was the same joyous, hungry crowd Inej had gotten used to seeing on the Staves, people searching for a bit of luck or some quick pleasure, filling their evening with drinks, cards and company. She’d seen that same crowd when she’d been at the Menagerie, when she was trapped in her glass cage and they were on the other side, spectators to her misery. She supposed on some level she’d been a spectator to theirs, too: all those people searching for oblivion, hoping for a distraction or something to temporarily fill their life with meaning, whether it be the next spin of the Makker’s Wheel or the prospect of tumbling an exotic girl with sad eyes and bells around her ankles. But everything in the Barrel was a lie, a smoke show, filled with pretty lights and loud music. They came out the other side with a bad hangover, significantly less kruge in their pockets, and no more substance to fill their empty lives with than before.

She might’ve been the Wraith, but they were the ghosts, their lives paper thin and weightless, with nothing to tether them.

They passed the Crow Club, full to the brim, then the neighboring gambling halls, bars and pubs with patrons spilling out into the street to chat loudly over a pint of lousy Barrel beer. The crowds got thinner closer to the harbor, and the bars got smaller and dirtier. These were the places that sailors favored, many of them named things like the Seagull or the Anchor. This close to the sea, Inej could taste the salt on her lips.

The Fifth Harbor was quiet this time of night, a giant graveyard of shipping containers stacked on top of each other next to tall loading cranes, their black silhouettes melting into the sky. The ships swayed gently in their berths, small yachts next to great trading vessels, dozens of them docked along the quay as far as the eye could see. The lights were sparse here, but the Dregs came prepared, and all around Inej small lanterns were lit, bathing the group in warm yellow light. She knew Kaz wanted them to be visible, to show that they weren’t afraid of drawing attention to themselves.

They were supposed to meet the Black Sharks by the harbor master’s office, but as the small building came into view, the quay was empty. The cobblestones were slick with rain and saltwater, glistening faintly in the swaying light of the lanterns. The chatter around her died down as every Dreg was suddenly on alert, looking for any sign of a trap. Whispers and hushed conversations were drowned out by the crashing of the waves against the quay. The wind howled in the narrow passages between the stacks of containers.

Kaz glanced at Inej. She didn’t need to ask what his look meant. She slipped quickly between the other Dregs and made her way towards the nearest pyramid of containers. They needed a better view of the area. The Black Sharks could be hiding somewhere, trying to surprise them or throw them off. The meeting was supposed to be peaceful, but Inej knew very well that these things rarely ended that way. Especially when young and blood-hungry players were involved.

The metal was cold against her hands as she climbed, her fingers going numb almost instantly. Strands of wet hair had escaped the tight bun on her neck and were now sticking to her face. She pulled herself on top of the container and brushed them off. Ajit was already higher up, urging her on.

Minutes passed. Rain kept falling.

Inej stood on top of the pyramid, four stories high. The Dregs looked like a bunch of wet rats from up here. Anika’s cat daemon was on her shoulder, trying to pierce the darkness with his keen eyes. Inej counted her knives and looked around. There was no sign of anyone as far as she could see, no movement in the shadows.

“There,” Ajit said suddenly, landing on her shoulder. He was staring at the harbor master’s office, where two small dark figures had just rounded the corner of the building and come into view. Inej knew Kaz had already spotted them too, so she kept quiet. They could always use the element of surprise.

She recognized Damien as he approached the Dregs. The light of the lanterns caught on the bright red fur of his daemon. The boy next to him must’ve been a new addition to the Black Sharks. He looked like he was around Inej’s age, with dark hair that fell to his shoulders. His daemon was a small raptor, maybe a sparrowhawk of some kind.

Inej didn’t like the fact that there were only two of them. They were either incredibly stupid or incredibly confident. And from what she’d seen of Damien, he was not stupid.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” Damien said, stopping a few feet in front of Kaz. “Running a gang keeps you busy. I’m sure you know a thing or two about that. Oh wait,” he snapped his fingers, as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “It’s old Per Haskell who’s still in charge, isn’t it? You’re just his lapdog.”

Kaz was unmoved by the taunt. Inej couldn’t see the expression on his face from this distance, but his voice was as calm and gravelly as always.

“I’m a lapdog with a very large harbor and a very profitable gambling hall,” he replied. “Your gang has less kruge put together than what the Crow Club makes me in one night.”

“Which is why we’re trying to do some honest business in the Barrel,” Damien said. His fox daemon was at his feet. She was a nasty thing, as wiry and smug as her owner, with cruel green eyes and one ear torn in half. “I thought you’d understand that.”

“You call stealing from me honest business?”

“Please,” Damien bristled. “We all know you’ve stolen more than half the Barrel gangs put together.”

“Only half? I’m insulted.”

“There’s enough room in the Barrel for both of us.”

“Maybe, as long as you’re at the bottom of the canal.”

Silence fell as Kaz and Damien stared each other down. The boy next to Damien was still as a statue.

“I’m not afraid of you, Dirtyhands,” Damien said, his voice low. “You like to act like you’re the biggest, baddest thing in Ketterdam, but I see what you really are.”

“You seem to be under the impression that I care about anything that comes out of your mouth,” Kaz replied. “Stay away from my harbor, my ships and my money. Steal from the Razorgulls or the Dime Lions all you want. They might be dumb enough to allow it. But you move one inch into the Dregs territory and I will bury you.”

Inej felt eyes on her, like a chill down her spine. The sparrowhawk daemon was staring straight at her through the dark from her spot on her owner’s shoulder. Ajit dug his claws into her skin. Panic shot through her, an instinctual reaction of a prey being sized up by a predator.

Damien took a step forward. He and Kaz were almost nose to nose.

Kaz didn’t back down.

“We’ll see about that,” Damien said.

Inej stood up, her hand reaching for the knife at her waist.

And then pain pierced her skull.

It was like a flaming hot arrow had found its way between her eyebrows, blinding waves of pain crashing down on themselves behind her eyes. The knife clattered out of her hand. She screamed, the sound burning in her throat, and as she collapsed to her knees, she felt Ajit fall from her shoulder and land with a thud on the cold metal roof of the container.

The pain receded for a brief moment and she saw the dark-haired boy next to Damien looking at her, his gaze as piercing as his daemon’s. His face was unmoving, but his fists were clenched.

Her eyes found Kaz’s, and understanding passed between them in a flash.

The Black Sharks had a Heartrender.

The boy raised his hands and everything descended into chaos.

Inej heard screaming as her friends collapsed, their daemons writhing next to them on the ground. The Heartrender dropped them one by one, as if it was nothing but a party trick to him. Jesper raised his revolvers, but the boy flicked his wrist and sent him to the ground. The sparrowhawk daemon shot from his shoulder, his talons digging into the tender flesh on Mabel’s stomach.

The last thing Inej heard before her pulse dropped and everything went black was Kaz screaming something that sounded vaguely like her name.

Chapter Text

“Kaz.”

The voice seemed to be coming from very far away. Kaz’s head felt heavy and strange, as if someone had taken out his brain and stuffed the space between his ears full of cotton. He really wanted to sleep, maybe just a minute more…

The voice called to him again. It seemed closer this time. There was a sharp pain in his leg. Maybe if he could just fall asleep, it would go away.

“Kaz!”

The air smelled of mold and dust, thick and musty in his lungs.

“Kaz!”

Kaz opened his eyes.

His head was pounding, but the world around him was dark and quiet. There was no light streaming in from anywhere, no sound that his ears could pick up. He was tied to a chair, his hands bound behind his back.

Eris was on his shoulder, crawling underneath the collar of his shirt. She’d been the one calling his name. As far as he could tell in the pitch black room, there was no one else in there with them.

“We’re alone,” Eris confirmed what he was already thinking, her legs somehow sensing every vibration in the air. No one could hide from her.

The room felt damp and poorly ventilated. A cellar of some kind. It was impossible to tell how big it might be.

Someone had searched him. The lockpicks in his sleeve and the knife in his shoe were gone. They’d stripped him off his jacket, hat and gloves. Kaz flexed his bare hands against the rope. The fog in his mind was slowly clearing.

“The Heartrender,” he groaned.

They’d been knocked out. If Kaz had had his cane with him, he would’ve whacked himself on the head for the sheer stupidity he’d exhibited. He should’ve taken Nina with them. She would’ve knocked the Black Sharks kid on his ass in two seconds flat. But he could never have predicted that this gang - and he was using that term very loosely - would have a Heartrender of all things in their ranks. Grisha were rare enough in Ketterdam, most of them either hiding or indentured. Just where the hell had Damien found this kid?

Kaz knew better than most what it was like to be underestimated. He knew how dangerous it was to brush off your opponent’s skill. Whatever hole Damien had crawled out of, he was clearly smarter than Kaz had given him credit for. He’d fallen victim to his own anger and ego.

Which was how he found himself in his current predicament.

Maybe he should’ve listened more to those Suli proverbs about hubris that Inej liked to recite.

He felt as if a stone had dropped into his stomach, knocking the air out of him.

“Inej,” he said. His voice sounded croaky and pathetic in his ears. He remembered the way she’d screamed when the Heartrender attacked her, high-pitched and horrible. If he never heard a sound like that come out of her mouth again, it would be too soon.

Maybe the Black Sharks had her tied up somewhere, in a room just like this. Maybe they’d taken Jesper too, or Anika, or all the other Dregs. Maybe his fellow gang members were being tortured right now.

Maybe Damien was saving him for last.

He thought about Inej bound and gagged in the darkness, all of her knives taken away from her. Jesper without his revolvers, buttons missing from his awful waistcoat. Ajit in a cage, with broken wings.

Bile rose in his throat and it took every ounce of strength he had not to lean forward and vomit.

“Stop thinking about them,” Eris whispered. “We can’t help them until we get ourselves free.”

Kaz tested the ropes around his wrists. They had been tied well, so tight that he had a very limited range of movement. He could get out of them, given enough time. He’d mastered every escape trick in the book long ago. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it could be done.

And then what?

He would fight his way out. He’d find the other Dregs. He’d carve out Damien’s liver with a dull knife and feed it to him.

Whatever he needed to do to get the sound of Inej’s screaming out of his head.

Before he could think, formulate some kind of plan, he heard voices and footsteps. Someone was coming.

There was a sound of a door being unlocked. Light flooded the room. Kaz blinked in the sudden brightness.

The room was definitely a cellar, with a stone floor and bare brick walls. There were no windows. Several boxes and crates lay scattered in the cramped space. A single gas lamp hung on the low ceiling directly over Kaz’s head.

Damien stood in the door, ever the prick. With his pimples and the ghost of a mustache on his face, he looked almost pathetic, just a kid playing a gangster.

And yet Kaz was the one currently tied to a chair.

Damien’s daemon sauntered into the room, her thick fur the color of ripe carrots. Kaz had never liked foxes. They used to steal his father’s chickens back on the farm. They would set traps for them, cruel contraptions that Jordie swore up and down would only catch the foxes and not harm them. It had been bullshit, of course, but five-year-old Kaz wanted to believe him.

He would very much like to see Damien’s daemon in one of those traps right now.

“Look who’s awake,” Damien said. If smugness had a smell, he would reek of it. “The mighty Bastard of the Barrel. Oh, how quickly they fall.”

The only thing that will fall is your teeth when I get my hands free, Kaz thought. He said nothing.

“Honestly, I’m disappointed,” Damien continued, as if he had nothing better to do than stand in doorways and monologue people to death. “Given your reputation in the Barrel, I thought you’d be more of a challenge.”

“Why don’t you untie me and we’ll see who’ll be disappointed then,” Kaz replied. His hands were tentatively tugging at the rope, trying to figure out where to start untangling himself.

Damien stepped into the room. His daemon had moved somewhere behind Kaz. Somehow, not seeing the fox was unnerving. There was something off about her, something that made Kaz’s hair stand on end.

“Is your head still hurting? I asked my friend to choke you after he knocked you out. Just a little bit.”

“My head is none of your concern,” Kaz bit back. “What do you want?”

“Well, to talk, of course.”

“Is that why you brought your Grisha lackey to the harbor? He didn’t seem very talkative.”

“He was a precaution. And he didn’t act until your little Wraith raised her knife.”

“Maybe she raised her knife because she could sense how full of shit you were.”

“Either way, she turned out to be about as impressive as you,” Damien said. He was leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets. “I hope she’s better at gathering intel than she is at watching your back. But she did miss my Heartrender friend completely, so perhaps she’s not that good at that either.”

Kaz was going to skin him alive.

“I suppose you needn’t be too hard on her for that, though,” Damien continued. “Rafael is a recent acquisition.”

Kaz heard the fox growl behind him, low and guttural. His hands stilled.

“Is there a point in there somewhere?” he asked.

“The point is that I bested you.”

“Congratulations. Do you want a gold star?”

“I gave you a chance to talk as equals. You told me to go fuck myself. So now we’re going to do things my way.”

Kaz raised an eyebrow. “And what is it exactly you want from me?”

“I told you. I wanted a seat at the table. A chance to make some money. But you’ve made it very clear that there will be no negotiation in good faith. So now I’m going to make some money off of you.”

It took a second for Kaz to understand what he meant. “If you seriously think the Dregs are going to pay ransom for me, you’re even dumber than I thought,” he said finally. He could almost burst out laughing at the idea, had he not been fundamentally opposed to big displays of emotion. Per Haskell valued him, sure, and he’d turned the Dregs into a force to be reckoned with, but the old man would never admit to needing him so desperately as to pay a ransom for him. He’d sooner let Kaz rot in this cellar forever. After all, he liked to think that he was single-handedly responsible for his gang’s success, and Kaz had been more than happy to let him believe it. As long as Per Haskell was content and patting himself on the back for other people’s work, he was too busy napping in his office or losing at cards to pay attention to half of what Kaz was doing. That arrangement had always suited Kaz fine. But it also meant that Per Haskell would never shell out a single kruge to get him back because he was convinced he could run the show himself.

But of course, Damien didn’t know any of that. He’d seen Kaz leading the Dregs; he’d assumed he was important enough to secure a fat payout.

And maybe to some of the Dregs, he was important enough, just not to the only other person with a key to the coffers. Not to the person whose name was on the bank accounts.

No one would come for him, and once Damien realized that, Kaz would no longer be of any value to him. At least not alive. But dead? He’d be the boy who killed Dirtyhands. The Black Sharks would gain credibility overnight. Damien would prove himself to be someone to be reckoned with.

“You might as well kill me now and be done with it,” Kaz said. It wasn’t that he was in a rush to meet his demise. But he’d rather be dead than have to listen to Damien talk all night.

Damien smiled. He had a chipped front tooth. “And skip all the fun stuff?”

Eris was completely still, pressed against Kaz’s collarbone. Despite himself, he felt his muscles tense. He could handle pain with at least some dignity. But if Damien touched him skin on skin, he would break. His secret, his weakness, everything that no one but him and Eris knew would be out, laid bare for this pimply asshole to see. Even now, the water was lapping at his feet. The dead were calling to him, their half-rotten hands reaching, brushing against him.

He kept his lips pressed, his back straight.

He hoped he looked pissed off and not terrified.

But Damien didn’t touch him. He circled him slowly, as if sizing him up, his eyebrows furrowed in thought.

“You know, one thing always intrigued me,” he said somewhere behind Kaz’s back. “The limp, the cane, the gloves, the way you dress, it’s all meant to intimidate people. To scare them. It’s all a bit much, to be honest, but it’s also very transparent. Anyone with half a brain can see right through your Dirtyhands act.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure there is a whole brain rattling around in that head of yours,” Kaz replied. “However small it may be.”

Damien’s lips quirked as he came back around into Kaz’s line of sight. “Anyone could buy a nice suit, a pair of gloves and a custom-made cane. There’s nothing special about you that couldn’t be easily imitated.”

He leaned in, his breath ghosting over Kaz’s face. He smelled of onions and stale coffee.

“But the daemon thing? Now, the daemon thing is interesting.”

Kaz felt Eris shudder against his shoulder. His jacket was gone, and with it the Fabrikator-made orb she usually hid in when things got dangerous. She was tiny, and she was vulnerable, and Kaz’s hands were still tied behind his back, watched closely by Damien’s daemon.

“It’s a nice trick,” Damien said. “You see, I couldn’t do that with Vesper. She’s a bit too flashy.” He grinned, and his daemon sat at his feet. She could be elegant if there wasn’t something crooked about her snout, something that made her look cruel or unhinged. It was the first time Kaz noticed how alike they looked, the boy and his daemon, both with that glint in their narrow eyes, just a hint of insanity.

They were clever, they’d proved that much, but they were also unstable, and that was a dangerous combination.

“When I first came to the Barrel, I heard the whispers,” Damien continued. “About a boy with no daemon. Everyone was afraid of him. They said he’d sold his soul to the devil. That he was some kind of a ghost.”

He reached out his hand and grabbed Kaz by the chin.

Panic hit him like a four-horse carriage when Damien’s fingers pressed against his face. His brain shattered like a broken mirror, his thoughts scattering, disconnecting from each other into an incoherent jumble.

Damien’s skin was rough.

It burned. It was freezing cold.

Water rose around his legs.

Jordie’s swollen face was pressed against his shoulder as he swam. His flesh was slick and rotten.

Seagulls circled above Kaz’s head, waiting for him to die, demanding their meal.

Damien leaned in. He was grinning.

There was a high-pitched tone in Kaz’s ears.

“But you look pretty ordinary to me,” Damien said.

He let go.

Kaz jerked back, almost knocking over the chair he was tied to. His shirt was clinging to his back, already drenched in cold sweat. Black was creeping into his vision. The spot where Damien’s fingers had been was burning, as if he’d pressed his face against a hot stove.

Vesper was inching closer to him now, sniffing the air carefully. Kaz stared at her, willing himself not to pass out. His throat felt raw.

He wanted to kick her right in that crooked snout of hers. Repeatedly.

His useless legs were still tied to the chair. His fingers started working on the restraints again, but he felt dizzy. His hands were clumsy and weak.

Vesper’s tail twitched as she stared up at her owner. Damien took a step toward Kaz. Kaz’s muscles were so tense that he couldn’t force more than short, shallow gasps of breath into his lungs.

Damien popped open one of his shirt buttons. “Don’t get any ideas, Dirtyhands,” he said. “You’re not really my type.”

His hand slid underneath the fabric and felt along Kaz’s chest.

The seagulls screamed in his ears. Jordie’s body floated on the waves of the Reaper’s Barge, up and down, up and down, a bobbing rhythm that made him feel sick.

Damien’s hand kept searching. A spasm tore through Kaz’s body at every touch.

His mouth tasted like vomit.

And then Damien beamed like he’d just found a million kruge in the street and his hand closed around Eris.

Kaz hadn’t thought anything could be worse than feeling someone’s bare skin on his own.

He’d been wrong.

As Damien pulled his hand back, his fist clenched around Kaz’s soul, every cell in Kaz’s body screamed in revulsion. It was as if his chest had been cut open and someone had grabbed his exposed heart and squeezed. If he hadn’t been tied to the chair, he would’ve keeled over, his entire body paralyzed with fear and disgust.

No one ever touched another person’s daemon.

It just wasn’t done, a taboo as old as time, bar a few exceptions.

Mothers touched their children’s daemons when they were too small to move by themselves.

Lovers might touch each other’s daemons as proof of their bond, although it wasn’t very common.

But no one dared touch another person’s daemon without explicit permission.

Even Damien looked mildly sick as he held Eris, not immune to the horrifying sensation of handling someone’s soul in the palm of his hand.

Kaz was ready to break when Damien had touched him. The visceral repulsion had been too much to bear.

But this? This was worse than any torture. He’d let every member of the Black Sharks touch him if it meant he didn’t have to endure one more second of this.

“Kaz.” Eris’ voice was weak. Pleading.

He’d let this gutter rat touch her. His Eris, his beautiful Eris, his dearest companion, his other half, with her clever mind and quick legs and all the kindness that he’d tried to kill in himself but she’d refused to let it go.

He’d failed to protect her.

Damien stared at Eris with contempt. “So this is what the legendary Kaz Brekker really is,” he said. His voice was strained, but he kept his fingers firmly wrapped around Eris. “A pathetic little bug.”

Kaz closed his eyes as his head dropped to his chest. He could feel Eris losing strength, Damien’s grip too tight, too cruel. Vesper sat in the middle of the room and laughed, a hard, barking laugh that didn’t sound human at all.

Kaz was going to die in a moldy cellar with his soul crushed in the hands of a juvenile psychopath.

He suddenly remembered Jordie’s daemon. Cilla had settled as a robin shortly before Da passed. She was a cheerful little thing, as keen as Jordie was to pursue new opportunities, risk be damned. She always flew high, so high that she was just a bright red spot in the sky.

A few years after Jordie died, Kaz realized that Pekka Rollins probably took one look at her and knew exactly how easy it would be to fool Jordie.

She disappeared when Jordie died, turning to gold dust like all daemons did.

Kaz wondered if she was still out there somewhere. Maybe Eris would join her.

He kept his eyes closed. Damien was not going to be the last thing he saw.

He thought of Jordie, his warmth and his recklessness, the two of them drinking hot chocolate, their feet dangling over the canal.

He thought of Jesper, always so eager to get into trouble, trying and failing to do the right thing, but somehow never letting the failure break his stride.

He thought of Inej. Her laugh. Her hair. The jewel tones of Ajit’s feathers as they caught the light.

Screaming erupted in the corridor.

Kaz’s eyes flew open, the all-encompassing nausea blurring his vision. Damien whipped around towards the door. His grip around Eris loosened for a fraction of a second.

It was enough. Eris bit his hand, hard. Damien yelped and released her.

Kaz knew that Eris’ bite wasn’t really dangerous. It was just painful, like a bee sting, with no long-lasting effects. But pain was all they needed.

His vision focused. Eris was somewhere on the floor, running for her life. Now that Damien wasn’t holding her anymore, the sick feeling in Kaz’s stomach receded.

He could hear sounds of fighting in the hallway, connecting blows and yelling, bodies thudding to the floor.

Vesper’s ears were flat on her head, her upper lip curled to reveal her teeth. Damien reached for the gun at his waist.

The door flew open, banging against the wall, and Inej walked into the room.

Kaz Brekker was not afraid of many things, but even he felt the urge to run away as fast as possible.

Inej’s eyes were ablaze with barely-contained fury. Her braid was falling apart and loose strands of hair framed her face. She held a knife in each hand, blades as long as her forearms.

She looked like she’d risen from hell to seek vengeance.

Damien stumbled backwards at the sight, his eyes almost comically wide.

Here’s my ‘little Wraith’, you pathetic waste of space, Kaz thought. He felt Eris crawling up his leg. He almost could’ve wept with relief as she returned to her spot on his shoulder.

Ajit flew into the room, a flutter of black feathers, and swooped down on the fox deamon, his beak and claws aiming mercilessly at her cruel eyes.

Inej grabbed Damien by the throat and pushed him against the wall, as if he didn’t have a few inches and forty pounds on her. Her hair was almost sizzling with adrenaline.

“Wait,” Damien choked out. Inej had him pinned like a rag doll. “We can…”

“No,” Inej snarled. “We can’t.”

She pushed one of her knives into Damien’s stomach.

He choked out a low, pained moan and collapsed to his knees. Blood flowed from the wound, the stone floor turning red all around him.

Kaz watched as the fox daemon dissolved into nothing, gold dust melting into the air.

Good riddance.

Inej stared at Damien’s dead body on the floor. She crouched down and took her knife back, the blade and hilt covered in blood. The sizzling and the furious glow in her eyes had ceased. When she looked up at Kaz, she once again looked like the Inej he knew.

Ajit landed on her shoulder. His feathers were ruffled, but he looked unharmed.

They heard footsteps in the hallway and Jesper along with a few other Dregs barged into the room.

“You okay, boss?” Jesper asked as he moved behind Kaz to untie him. Kaz forced himself not to flinch as Jesper’s hands brushed against his.

“Never better,” Kaz replied. He knew he looked like shit. He sounded like it too.

He looked at Inej. She was kneeling next to Damien, praying quietly.

Jesper cut the rope at his wrists and ankles. Kaz stood up from the chair. His legs had fallen asleep. He took a shaky step towards the door.

“My cane?” he asked no one in particular.

“It’s in the other room,” Jesper replied.

Kaz walked out into the hallway, where a dozen Black Sharks were lying either dead or unconscious, slumped against the walls. He scanned the faces, but the Heartrender wasn’t among them. Several other Dregs were ruffling through their pockets.

All the rooms in the cellar were similar to the one he’d been held in, cramped and moldy. He found his things on the table in one of them.

He put on his jacket first, then his gloves. As the soft leather slid over his hands, he felt more like himself. He made sure Eris was safe in his shirt pocket. She was still shaking. So was he, slight tremors tearing through his body. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He grabbed his cane, its weight comforting in his hands.

Kaz turned around and locked eyes with Inej.

She was standing in the doorway, her knives tucked away, Ajit on her shoulder. Her hair was still messy, but she didn’t look angry anymore. She simply looked tired.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’ll live,” he replied. “How did you find me?”

“I’d tracked down every Black Sharks hideout and squat weeks ago,” replied Inej. “You weren’t in any of them. So after that, we started searching every abandoned building in the Barrel. It took a while.”

“How long?”

“It’s been twelve hours since the harbor. Give or take.”

Kaz nodded. Five more minutes and he’d be dead. He didn’t tell Inej that, but he suspected she knew.

“So I was the only one he took?”

Inej nodded. She ran her hand through her hair. “When I woke up, you were gone. Everyone else is sore and tired, but otherwise fine.”

Silence hung between them, heavy like a curtain.

Kaz didn’t know what he wanted to say. He should thank her. Or apologize, even if he wasn’t exactly sure what for.

Instead, the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. “He touched Eris.”

Inej went very still, her eyes wide in horror. Ajit scanned Kaz with his bright yellow eyes. “Is she…?”

“I’ll be fine,” Eris replied gently, crawling out from underneath Kaz’s collar so Inej could see her.

Inej looked at Eris, then raised her eyes to meet Kaz’s. “I’m glad I killed him, then,” she said, her voice firm. “I’m glad. He deserved to die.”

He knew a part of her meant it, just like he knew another part of her would still be haunted by the life she’d taken.

“Have you found the Heartrender?” he asked. He couldn’t offer her comfort. He didn’t know how. It was better to focus on the issue at hand.

Inej shook her head. “He wasn’t here or anywhere else we searched. Maybe Damien has a different hideout just for him. That would explain why I’d never seen him before. If he’s still in the city, I’ll track him down.”

“Good,” Kaz nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”

He brushed past Inej as he limped out of the room.

“You’re not angry with me?”

The question stopped him in his tracks. He looked at Inej over his shoulder.

“And why should I be angry with you?”

“I messed up,” she replied. “Didn’t get all the intel. Nearly got you killed.”

Damien had said something similar to him.

And he could rot in hell.

“I messed up too,” Kaz replied, and Inej huffed a breath in surprise. “I should’ve taken Damien seriously. You tried to make me see that.”

He held her gaze.

“I guess we can call it even,” he said.

Inej swallowed. She nodded. “The deal’s the deal.”

“The deal’s the deal.”

Kaz turned around and limped towards the exit. He didn’t hear Inej walk behind him, but he knew she was there.

Chapter Text

“I don’t think this will work,” announced Jesper.

Wylan huffed a breath, not looking up from the bottles of powder and pieces of paper sprawled on the table in Nina’s room. “It will work,” he replied indignantly, brushing his hair from his eyes. “It would go faster if you helped.”

Jesper was sprawled upside down on one of Nina’s plush settees. He was staring at the ceiling, where a spider was slowly crawling from one corner of the room to another. “I’d rather not get my face blown off, thank you. I’m too good-looking for that.”

“Sure you are,” Mabel and Silja replied in unison. The dove was nestled on the hare’s back, both of them observing Wylan’s work with their keen black eyes.

Jesper scowled. “I’m being bullied.”

“Is it bullying if it’s the truth?” asked Nina. She was sitting on the windowsill next to Inej, watching Kirin climb one of the drapes and perch on the curtain rod.

“I’m glad I divorced you, you know.”

“You do realize our marriage was a sham officiated by Kaz Brekker of all people, right? You didn’t even get me a ring.”

“I was going to. I got distracted.”

“You mean you lost all of the money playing cards and I had to get us world’s ugliest wedding bands at the last minute?”

“They were not that ugly.”

“They were more offensive to my eyes than the vest you’re wearing.”

Jesper sniffed, pulling at the buttons of his bright purple waistcoat. “Everyone is insulting me today. I’m leaving.”

“The hell you are,” replied Mabel. “I want to see how this turns out.”

Wylan was mumbling to himself as he hunched over his work, carefully measuring the blasting powder and pouring it into long paper tubes.

Inej sat pressed against the window, her legs tangled with Nina’s. Even through the glass she could feel the Ketterdam street below almost trembling with excitement. Street vendors had set up their stalls along the canal, huge piles of fireworks in every color imaginable tempting the passers-by. It was already getting dark, the shadows of West Stave getting longer by the minute as the sun lowered on the horizon, far behind the warehouse district. The buildings were jet black against the pink and yellow sky.

Nina’s room was cozy as ever, warm and filled with plush settees, soft pillows and fuzzy blankets. It was one of Inej’s favorite places in Ketterdam. Inej’s tiny room at the Slat remained bare, but Nina had made this space her own, infused it with her personality and her affinity for all things sweet and comfortable. It didn’t quite feel like home, but it was a place you wanted to spend time in, and that was not something to be taken for granted in the Barrel.

In fact, Inej could only think of two places in the city she really felt at ease in: the room she was currently in, and a certain attic with crows gathering outside the window. How odd, she thought, that those two places were also each other’s complete opposites, one luxurious and decorated with utmost care, the other sparse as if its owner would drop dead if he felt comfortable for one minute.

Knowing Kaz, he actually might.

After a while, Wylan sealed yet another tube and threw it on a stack of a dozen similar ones. “I’m done.”

“Great!” Nina clapped her hands together and jumped off the windowsill. “Can we get something to eat on the way?”

“You had a cheeseburger two hours ago,” Jesper replied.

“Your point being?”

“How are you not puking your guts out right now? I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any beef or cheese in that thing. Even the bun looked suspicious.”

“I’m Ravkan,” Nina replied simply. “We do not throw up. If you saw some of the things I ate growing up, that cheeseburger would seem like a gourmet meal.”

“There’s a bakery on the way,” Wylan said. “It’s actually pretty decent.”

“Perfect. I demand a pastry.”

Wylan gathered all of the fireworks into a bag and stuck a box of matches in his pocket. Silja settled gently on his shoulder.

“We need to be there before eleven bells” said Wylan. “Or there won’t be any room left.”

They filed out of the room in a mess of coats and hats being pulled on, Ajit flying ahead of them, racing Silja down the stairs and out the door of the White Rose. The air was crisp with the promise of a freezing cold night, their breaths coming out in white clouds. Everywhere around them crowds of people were gathering with fireworks in their arms. They could already hear blasts here and there, the impatience to start the festivities making the air buzz. The smell of blasting powder and mulled wine served in every bar and pub along the street filled Inej’s nostrils.

Nina bounced towards the bakery, a small place on the corner of one of the narrow side streets. Kirin ran beside her, climbing onto the awnings that shaded the front windows and doorways of the West Stave, then jumping back down onto the street or on Nina’s shoulder. They disappeared inside the bakery, the smell of freshly baked bread and pastries spilling out into the street for a brief moment. Inej wrapped her coat tighter around herself as she waited by the door with Wylan and Jesper. The cold was already making her ears burn.

Moments later, Nina walked out triumphantly with a paper bag. She pushed a pastry into Inej’s hands, still warm, smelling of cherries and chocolate and dusted in sugar. She distributed pastries to Wylan and Jesper before holding up another two, one in each hand, and biting into both of them at once.

Inej tried hers. It was sweet and just a little tangy, the tart cherry jam balancing the overwhelming sweetness of the chocolate. The filling was still hot on her tongue, but it was a welcome sensation in the cold evening.

Jesper sighed as he bit into his pastry. “Saints, this is amazing. How come we’ve never been here before?”

“It only opened recently,” Wylan replied. “I kind of stumbled upon it by accident.”

Nina had a look of pure bliss on her face. “Wylan, you are my new favorite person. If the Barrel was on fire, you are the only one I would save. Apart from Inej, I mean. But she’d probably be fine anyway.”

“I can’t even feel offended when I’ve got this in my mouth,” Jesper said. “It tastes like love.”

“I almost like this more than waffles,” Nina said. “And I do not say that lightly.”

Wylan fiddled with the strap of his bag. “We should get moving,” he said. “There’s already huge crowds.”

They pushed through the sea of people as they made their way across the Barrel to the East Stave. It was completely dark now, but every single window they passed was brightly lit. No one in Ketterdam was sleeping tonight. As they walked, they could see groups of children playing in the street, awake and excited despite the late hour and the cold weather.

The clocks across the city struck eleven bells just as they finally emerged onto the East Stave. All the gambling halls were full to the brim, the doors thrown open to let some air into the overcrowded rooms.

Wylan and Jesper were in front of Inej now, searching the street for a spot where they could set up.

“I don’t even want to think about how many fingers are going to get blown off tonight,” Nina said. “The hospitals are going to be full of drunken idiots who managed to impale themselves on their fireworks.”

Inej shrugged and bumped shoulders with Nina. “That’s Ketterdam for you. No risk, no play.”

Nina grinned. “Someone will definitely get involuntarily castrated tonight.”

Jesper turned around to look at them and winced. “Don’t put that image into my head, please.”

“What? Are you afraid future Jesper Juniors might be in jeopardy?”

“I was actually thinking that I quite like to be able to pee standing up,” Jesper replied. Mabel was in his arms - equally for warmth and for safety in the crowd, Inej imagined.

“True, that’s the one thing I’m really jealous of,” Nina admitted. “So convenient! Not sure if I’d wanna deal with all that fragile ego, though.”

“I’ll have you know my ego is rock hard.” Jesper blinked. “Maybe not the finest choice of words.”

“Oh no,” Nina deadpanned, her face blank. “Please tell me more about your rock-hard ego.”

“You’re unbearable.”

“I am fantastic.”

Jesper grinned, then, and linked his arm with Nina’s. “That you are, darling.”

Nina grinned back. Inej shook her head, but couldn’t help the smile that tugged on her lips at her friends’ antics. She left them to their bickering, which resumed almost instantly, and caught up with Wylan.

He glanced at her. His hair was getting too long, falling into his eyes. Maybe she should offer to cut it for him.

“Are you all right?” she asked. Wylan wasn’t much of a talker, but he seemed even quieter than usual, lost in thought.

He shrugged. “Just thinking about stuff. New year, you know? Wonder what that’s gonna bring.”

Inej rubbed her hands together, trying to get some circulation back into her numb fingers. “Tons of money,” she replied, her voice devoid of emotion. “Death to our enemies. More money.”

A short laugh escaped Wylan. “Great Kaz impression.”

Inej laughed too. “I try.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, before Wylan finally stopped. There was a sliver of space right at the edge of the canal. He started pulling the fireworks out of the bag and setting them up.

Inej gave him space. She watched Ajit and Silja fly together, trying to keep moving to stay warm. Nina and Jesper caught up to them after a minute, both of them doubled over laughing, which was their natural state when in each other’s company.

Nina huddled closer to Inej and wrapped her long scarf around both of their necks. She took Inej’s hands in her own and began massaging them. Inej felt her heart speed up just a little and blessed warmth return to her fingers as Nina worked her Grisha magic.

Inej rested her head on Nina’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Nina replied. “Wouldn’t want you to turn into a little icicle on me.”

They watched Wylan set up the fireworks in an intricate pattern. Jesper disappeared in the crowd and returned with four glasses of mulled wine. He clinked his glass against Inej’s and Nina’s.

“Cheers, loves,” he said before taking a long swig. “May this new year bring us good fortune. And also a literal fortune.”

“And good food,” Nina said, raising her glass. “And good company.”

“Good health,” Inej added, taking a sip. The wine warmed her bones, the spices earthy on her tongue.

Wylan joined them and accepted his glass from Jesper. He stared at the liquid for a long moment. “Kindness,” he said finally, his eyes fixed on the drink. “May it be kind to us.”

He drank half of his wine in one go.

Inej reached for his arm and pulled him closer. Jesper huddled on the other side of Nina.

They stood there for a long moment, in their not-quite line and not-quite circle, like four penguins clinging to each other in a blizzard. Wylan put his arm awkwardly around Inej’s shoulder.

The clock struck quarter to midnight. Someone in the crowd started to sing a ballad. A few other voices picked it up.

Inej felt a tingling down her spine. She knew that feeling. She glanced over her shoulder and immediately spotted Kaz in the crowd. The Crow Club was just a few buildings down from where they were standing. Maybe he was just walking there.

Or maybe he’d come looking for them.

He was in his usual coat and hat, stern and impeccably dressed as ever. Always the businessman, even on a night like this.

Inej nodded at him, a barely there movement of her head. A greeting, an acknowledgement. An invitation to join them, even though she doubted he would accept it.

He didn’t move from his spot, but he didn’t leave, either. He just stood there, calm in the sea of frenzy, like a stone pillar.

Inej took another sip of her wine.

People around them were getting more frantic as midnight drew nearer. Fireworks were going off left and right. Ketterdam was thrumming with anticipation.

Finally, the countdown began.

Wylan and Jesper started lighting the fireworks as everyone around chanted “Ten, nine, eight…”

Nina joined in, her voice loud in Inej’s ear. “Seven, six…”

The fireworks sizzled.

“Five, four…”

Something strange rose in Inej’s chest, a tight sensation that made her want to cry and scream and laugh at once.

“Three, two, one…”

The world around them exploded. The sky, pitch black just moments before, was now illuminated in blue and pink, red and purple, green and yellow, hundreds of fireworks flying in high arcs over the canal.

Wylan’s fireworks flew into the sky in perfect synchronization. As they exploded, each a split second after the other, they formed a giant shape, deep golden and orange.

A crow.

There was a giant crow hanging in the burning sky, its sharp wings spread wide. It shone and sizzled and glowed even as all the other fireworks were fading around it, as if Wylan had managed to brand the sky with it permanently.

“Wylan,” Nina said, her eyes wide, ‘that is spectacular.”

Inej turned around and looked at Kaz through the crowd.

He was still there, his expression inscrutable. He held her gaze.

Some couple next to him was making out vigorously. Thousands of people all over Ketterdam were ushering in the new year with an embrace or a kiss.

Inej swallowed. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks despite the freezing cold, the blush spreading all over her face and down her neck.

Kaz’s eyes moved to her lips, then down to where the blush creeped under the collar of her coat.

She wanted to go towards him.

She wanted to run away, as far and fast as possible.

Her fingers twitched. If she’d walked over to him right now, raised her hand to touch his face, would he let her? Or would he catch her wrist, push her away?

Would she stay in the moment with him or would she disappear, like she still sometimes wanted to, even when her friends touched her?

She took a step forward, feeling like her knees might buckle underneath her.

“Inej!”

Jesper was in front of her, disheveled and smiling, Mabel tucked under his armpit like a sack of potatoes. She was making disgruntled noises.

Jesper leaned forward and planted a kiss on Inej’s forehead with a loud “mwah!”

“Happy New Year, Wraith,” he said, straightening and rocking back and forth on his heels. “I love you, you know? I don’t think I’ve ever told you that before.”

Inej smiled at him, her composure returning to normal. “I love you too, Jes.”

He beamed at her. “Good. I’m going to kiss Wylan now.”

He pounced on Wylan like an overenthusiastic lion on an antelope and kissed him loudly on the forehead.

“Wylan, you’re a genius,” he announced. “That firework display was incredible.”

Even now, the faint outline of the crow was still visible in the sky.

Wylan’s ears were red, but he held Jesper’s gaze. “I told you it would work.”

Jesper held up his right hand. “I will never doubt you again. On my honor.”

“On your what now?” Wylan, Nina and Mabel said in unison.

Jesper dropped his hand. “Fair point. On my handsomeness, razor sharp wit and charisma?”

Wylan brushed his hair from his eyes. “I’ll take it.”

Inej looked over her shoulder. Kaz was gone.

“Happy New Year, Kaz,” she whispered. “May you get all the money and power you wish for.”

She pushed down the ache in her chest, the unwelcome tugging at her heart.

Still, a part of her hoped that maybe he wished for something else, too.

Chapter Text

The Slat was quiet as Kaz made his way downstairs. It was just after five bells, and most of the Dregs were sleeping off the events of the night, lulling the building into a rare moment of serenity. The only sound was the steady thumping of Kaz’s cane against the rickety staircase. Gang activities may have just finished, but harbor business was starting, and Kaz had half a dozen shipments to keep an eye on.

His eyes felt dry. Too many hours spent at his desk, bent over some ledger or another instead of sleeping. He considered stopping for a cup of coffee on his way to the Harbor. He might’ve tried his luck in the Slat’s kitchen, but unless it was Inej’s cooking day, the only thing he’d find in there would be mold and rats.

Kaz opened the front door to the Slat and nearly tripped over something on the doorstep.

He would’ve ended face down on the cobblestones if not for his cane. He leaned on it forcefully and managed to regain his balance, but the sheer surprise of his near-fall left him bent over the doorstep for a few long seconds, his breath coming out in heavy gasps that turned into white clouds in the cold air.

“What the f-“ he murmured to himself, the hand that wasn’t clutching his cane flying to his collarbone where Eris was hidden. She crawled out from underneath his collar, her legs scratching gently against his skin. Together, they looked down at the offending object at Kaz’s feet that had nearly cost him - at the very least - his dignity. It was a wicker basket with a handle in the middle. Merchants’ maids would carry baskets like this around the fish market or the green grocer’s, filling them with filets and vegetables and whatever else rich men liked to eat for dinner. The basket was fairly large, more oval than round, cushioned with what looked like a rough wool blanket.

And right in the middle, wrapped tightly in what might have been a shawl, barely visible among all the materials, was a baby, sound asleep, despite Kaz giving it a good rattle not a minute before.

The sight was so unexpected - a baby, left at a gang’s door for some unfathomable reason - that for a while Kaz just stood there, trying to make sense of the situation. Babies had never been something he’d given much thought too. They were harmless, if unpleasant, so on the list of his interests they placed somewhere between warts and mosquitoes. He’d certainly never been in such close proximity to one before, and now he had no idea how to proceed.

The baby, to its credit, was not rushing him. It slept deeply, breaths coming out of its little nose in regular intervals, confirming that it was alive. Kaz wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or not. Finding a baby on one’s doorstep was one thing, but finding a dead baby would’ve been something else entirely. Its daemon, a tiny mouse, was sleeping next to its head. Kaz had no idea how old it might be. It looked exactly the same as every other baby he’d ever seen, and he hadn’t paid much attention to any of them.

“Should we… leave it here?” he risked. He had business to attend to, and whoever the baby might belong to, it was certainly not his problem.

Eris disagreed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed, moving down his sleeve to get a better look at the baby. “It’s cold, and this is not a safe place for a baby. We need to take it inside.”

“Do you think the inside is a safe place for a baby?” asked Kaz, eyebrow raised.

Eris sighed. “Marginally. Do you have a better idea?”

Kaz stared at the basket. His day had been clearly planned, and now the plan had been thrown out the window by some unforeseen force dropping an infant in his lap.

He tested the weight of the basket. It was heavier than he’d expected, but he could manage to haul it up the stairs. He might not have been enough of a bastard to leave a baby at the mercy of the elements, but he damn sure was not going to take care of it.

“Fine,” he said, slamming the door closed and starting back down the corridor. “Let’s go find a babysitter.”

He climbed up the stairs, hoping that the only person in the whole building that might know a thing about childcare was in her room.

***

Kaz knocked on Inej’s door, dropping the basket semi-gently to the floor beside him. The baby was still sleeping. Apparently it would take a bomb to wake it up, not that Kaz was complaining. He didn’t feel qualified to handle it in its current dormant state. If it decided to start making noise, he might just leave it and go to the harbor after all.

He heard shuffling in the room, and after a minute, Inej opened the door. She was already awake and fully dressed despite the early hour. The Wraith never really participated in the Dregs’ favorite nightly activities, and Kaz hadn’t had any new mission for her the previous night, so she was probably the most well-rested person currently in the Slat. Not that it was saying much. Being in a gang and getting a healthy amount of sleep did not mix together.

“I found this at our doorstep,” he said in lieu of a greeting, pointing at the baby with his cane. “Do you know what to do with it?”

“Good morning to you too,” Inej replied, her hands quickly braiding her hair. Kaz was momentarily distracted by her fingers weaving through the dark strands. “What do you mean you found it at our doorstep?”

“I mean someone left it there,” Kaz replied. “I don’t know if it’s because it… belongs to someone in the Dregs or if someone just picked a door at random, but I was told leaving it outside was not a good idea.”

“I assume it was Eris who bestowed this wisdom upon you,” said Ajit, hovering in the air next to Inej. He landed on the basket, using the handle as a perch, and looked at the baby. “Well, it’s not a newborn, unless someone had an eleven-pounder. That’s even weirder. Why would someone keep a baby for a while and then abandon it on the street?”

“I don’t know.” Inej crouched next to the basket and moved the blankets and rags to get a better look at the baby’s face. “What do you want to do with it, Kaz?”

Kaz shrugged. “I suppose we can wait to see if someone claims ownership.”

“You mean fatherhood,” said Ajit.

“Or motherhood,” Kaz replied.

“You think one of the girls managed to get pregnant and give birth without anyone noticing?”

“Probably not,” Kaz admitted impatiently, rapping his cane against the floor. “But I’m not ruling anything out just yet. Either way, if no one fesses up, you can drop it off at the nearest orphanage.”

“The nearest orphanage is a shithole,” Ajit replied. “I wouldn’t leave a dog there.”

“Whichever orphanage you deem appropriate, then,” Kaz said. “I need to be at the harbor. Will you deal with this? Because Jesper is next on my list, and even I can tell that’s not a good idea.”

“I’ll be fine,” Inej replied. “I took care of my cousins all the time. Do you think there’s any milk in this whole place?”

“Unless you bought it, the answer is no.”

“Well, then I guess we’re going shopping.” She picked up the basket with both hands. “I assume you’ll call a meeting later?”

Kaz nodded. He looked between Inej and the baby, not sure what else to say. At least Eris wouldn’t be nagging him about leaving the baby unsupervised.

“I’ll see you later,” he said finally, and turned to leave.

The clocks across the city started to strike six bells.

It was going to be a long day.

***

The wind in the harbor was brutal, nearly blowing Kaz’s hat off his head, pulling violently at his coat. The cold seeped through his clothes, crawling under his collar and down his back like a snake. He stood in the middle of the harbor, where there was little in terms of cover. Rain was getting stronger with every minute, lashing his face.

“Nothing else is going to come into harbor today,” the harbor master told him, his voice raised and yet barely audible over the howling of the wind. The waves were hitting the quay, white foam spraying everywhere. “Not in this weather. When the rain is this thick, it’s too easy to hit one of the islands off the coast and get stuck.”

Kaz nodded, one gloved hand keeping his hat in place. “Keep an eye on the Golden Tiger,” he said. “My source tells me they’re underestimating the weight of their cargo and underpaying the customs fees.”

“Will do, mister Brekker,” the harbor master replied. “What do you want me to do when I have proof?”

“Just bring it to me,” Kaz replied, practically yelling against the wind. “I’ll have a talk with the captain myself.”

They shook hands. The man turned to seek shelter in his office, his seagull daemon barely staying in the air, the wind tossing her to and fro like a ragdoll. Kaz walked inland, away from the harbor and into the maze of container ships that spread all along the docks. It was already after noon, but the sky was so dark that it might as well have been midnight. Eris had told him that a bad storm was coming, somehow always sensing the weather the same way she sensed everything else.

“I don’t know what it is,” she always told him when he asked. “I just feel it in my legs.”

Maybe it was something to do with air currents or humidity or atmospheric pressure. Kaz didn’t know, but she was never wrong.

“I’m glad we didn’t leave that baby on the doorstep after all,” she told him now, curling around his ear so that he could hear her clearly. His hat was providing her with just enough shelter to stay dry, even though it did little to stop the rain from hitting him in the face.

Kaz had almost forgotten about the baby, too caught up in the shipping manifests for the last few hours. Now, he suddenly felt impossibly tired. His clothes were soaked through, he was running on almost no sleep, and now he had a gang meeting to organize. All of it was suddenly crashing in on him, weighing him down like a brick.

“If no one confesses, bad weather is going to be the least of that kid’s problems,” he replied. “I’m not sure what’s better, growing up in an orphanage or taking his chances on the street.”

“Even if someone does confess, what then?” Eris asked. “It’s not like they can raise him in the Slat.”

“I don’t know, Eris,” Kaz replied. “That’ll be their problem to solve. Either way, the kid is screwed.”

Eris sighed, and he could tell that it was bothering her. He didn’t really understand why. Most of the kids in the Barrel were screwed. Many of them would end up dead before they saw their twentieth birthday. And if Wylan Van Eck was any indication, then maybe a happy childhood wasn’t achievable even in the better parts of Ketterdam. Otherwise the boy wouldn’t have ended up doing demolition gigs for the Dregs. The baby wasn’t special in its misery. At least it wasn’t aware of it yet.

Water was already flowing in the streets. Crappy storm drains of the Barrel combined with the naturally muddy terrain that the city was built on made floods the biggest problem in Ketterdam. Cellars and basements flooded constantly, and buildings collapsed in on themselves or started leaning more towards one side the way the Slat did. Kaz had reinforced the foundation and added steel support beams in the basement to keep the whole thing from crumbling. It was still crooked, but it was mostly safe.

The water levels in the canals were rising, and as he crossed one of the bridges on his way to the Slat, the water was already sloshing at his feet. He picked up the pace. Seeing Jordie was the last thing he needed.

The Slat was lit up from the ground floor to the attic, his gang already awake and loud as ever. He shook off his coat by the door and hung his hat on one of the hooks on the wall. He could hear the chatter of people in the common areas on the ground floor. The Dregs were sprawled out on the floor and battered sofas, playing cards or dice at the tables. In the corner, a small group was arguing about who should be sent out in the rain to get food. No one was willing to volunteer. Kaz passed everyone without a word, but he stopped when he caught sight of Anika.

“Gang meeting in half an hour,” he told her quietly. “Try to get as many people as you can down here.”

Anika nodded, not questioning his reasons. Her daemon, a large tabby cat, pierced Kaz with his yellow-green eyes, but said nothing.

Kaz walked up the stairs, and by the time he reached the second landing, he could already hear his message spreading in the room below. Anika worked fast. He knew people would be curious enough to come, especially on a day like this when they were all cooped up inside. A mysterious meeting would seem just enticing enough. He reached the attic, and as he entered his room, he was only half-surprised to see Inej there.

She was sitting on the windowsill, as usual, Ajit perched on Kaz’s desk. It was a familiar sight, one he’d seen a hundred times before. Except now the room smelled like milk and Inej had a baby in her arms.

The baby had been unwrapped from the many layers of fabric that now lay in disarray in the basket on the floor. It was dressed in what looked like a short gown of some sort - Kaz had no idea what baby clothes were called - and wool socks that were too big for its little feet. It was quiet in Inej’s arms, but its large blue eyes were alert and staring up at the girl’s face. One pink, wrinkled fist was wrapped firmly around Inej’s finger. The baby’s daemon, now a small, furry thing that Kaz couldn’t quite recognize, was in the basket, safely tucked in the greyish-blue shawl.

“I take it the spawn has been fed?” Kaz asked. The smell of warm milk in the air was almost pleasant. He walked over to his desk and saw a plate with two slices of bread and a piece of hard cheese. He looked at Inej, but she was leaning over the baby, not meeting his eyes. Of course she’d thought to leave food for him. Sometimes it seemed like she had the same sixth sense as Eris when it came to certain things.

“She’s been very good, actually,” Inej said, and he could hear the smile in her voice as he stripped off his wet shirt and pulled a dry one from his wardrobe. He stopped in his tracks when her words sank in.

“So it’s a girl, then?” he asked. He wasn’t sure why that mattered. He’d just assumed the baby was a boy.

“Yeah,” Inej confirmed. “I’m not completely sure how old she is, but she lifts her head and shoulders a bit when she’s on her tummy. She might be a couple months old. How was the harbor?”

“Wet,” Kaz replied, buttoning his fresh shirt quickly. “The meeting’s in half an hour. I think we’ll see most of the gang there. They’re bored.”

“That’s good,” Inej said, standing up and gently bouncing the baby in her arms. She seemed completely at ease with a tiny human pressed to her chest like that. The baby was cooing softly. There was a small patch of blonde hair on top of her head. Kaz limped over back to his desk and took a bite of the bread. As he looked at Inej, he thought he saw a small pleased smile on her face, but she turned away from him before he could be sure. Eris crawled out onto the desk and climbed on the small perch next to Ajit.

“Whose baby do you think it is?” she asked in her soft voice.

Ajit spread out his wings, which glimmered blue and purple in the lamp light. “Honestly, too many options,” he said. “I think we can exclude all the girls. And Kaz. Other than that, I have no idea.”

“Why are you so sure about me?” asked Kaz. The rat was right, of course, but it still felt strangely insulting.

“Because it looks too human to be your baby,” Ajit replied. “I’d imagine Kaz Brekker’s child would have cloven hooves at the very least.”

“It might have. Have you checked under those socks?”

“Yes, actually,” Inej said. “Normal baby feet. No hooves, I’m afraid.”

“Well, I bet it’s not Per Haskell’s,” Kaz said, cutting the cheese into smaller pieces with a pocket knife. “The old man likes to think he’s a ladies’ man, but I doubt he’s got enough steam these days to father a child. And I hope it’s not Jesper’s.”

Inej snorted. “I hope so too. But there’s not many good options, is there?”

Kaz tossed a morsel of cheese to Ajit, who caught it gracefully mid-air before settling back on the perch. “No, there’s not,” he replied.

“If no one confesses, I’ll try to get her adopted,” Inej said. “The orphanages are all horrible. There are a few rich families in the city that have had no luck trying for their own child. Maybe they’ll take her in.”

Kaz made a non-committal sound around a mouthful of bread. The baby fussed. Inej grimaced.

“I think she needs her diaper changed,” she said. She held out the baby towards Kaz. “Hold her.”

Kaz’s brain took a second to process the request. He looked between Inej and the baby. “No way.”

Inej rolled her eyes. The baby was now making noises that promised a full-blown cry coming up any second. “I promise she won’t bite you,” Inej said impatiently. “I just need to grab a clean cloth and some supplies. Unless you’d prefer to do it.”

Kaz pondered his options. He could hold the baby for a minute while Inej grabbed whatever she needed. Or he could go searching for the supplies while having absolutely no idea what was required to change a baby’s diaper, waste time, and inevitably force Inej to do it herself while the baby was screaming her lungs out.

The second option sounded a lot better, but Inej had brought him food, so he probably owed her.

Kaz reached for the baby, and Inej gently placed her in his arms. “There we go,” she said softly. “Put her head in the crook of your elbow. Hand goes under her bum. Just like that.”

She stepped away, and Kaz felt a surge of panic rise up in him. It wasn’t the panic he felt when someone touched him, or when someone’s body pressed too closely to his. The baby was too small, there were layers of clothing between them. This felt different. The baby seemed light and fragile in his arms, like something that might break at any second if he squeezed it too hard or held it a little bit wrong. She had calmed momentarily and was now looking up at him, her eyes too big and blue in her round pink face. The smell that indicated she was in need of a diaper change was obvious now, but there was something else beneath that, something he’d never smelled before. Like half-digested milk and baby powder, the smell of a tiny human. Somehow, it felt almost comforting.

Her tiny fist snaked around his gloved finger and pulled, the grip surprisingly strong for such a small creature. He tried to free his finger, but she held on. He let her.

He didn’t even realize Inej had left the room until he heard the door closing. She put a clean cloth, a bowl of water, a sponge and some other things on the desk, moving his papers carefully out of the way.

“All right,” Inej said, reaching for the baby. “Give her here.”

He passed the baby to her. His arms felt strangely empty.

He watched as Inej took off the baby’s soiled diaper - the stench got much worse, and even by Barrel standards, it was horrible - washed her and wrapped her in the clean cloth. Her movements were steady, practiced, like she’d done it a hundred times before. Maybe she had.

“I had a whole gaggle of baby cousins,” she said, noticing his stare as she secured the cloth with a pin. “Watched some of them be born, actually. I changed more diapers and wiped more noses than I can count.”

That sounded like Kaz’s worst nightmare, but Inej smiled fondly. The baby cooed.

Kaz cleared his throat and stood up. “It’s almost time. Let’s go and get this done.”

Inej nodded, cradling the baby in her arms. The baby’s daemon, now a tiny mongrel puppy, was in the basket. Inej hesitated for a second before picking it up gently. Mothers often did it with their children’s daemons before they could walk on their own. Kaz remembered the revulsion he’d felt when Damien had touched Eris. But this wasn’t like that. Both the baby and her daemon seemed perfectly content, curled against each other in Inej’s arms. Maybe they were too small to feel what Kaz had felt, or maybe it was different when whoever touched the daemon didn’t mean it harm.

The common area on the ground floor was full of people. They could hear the loud buzz of conversation on their way downstairs. Kaz stopped on the first landing and waited for the Dregs to notice him, his hands resting on his cane. Gradually, the conversations died down.

“This,” Kaz said without preamble, pointing at the baby in Inej’s arms, “was left at our doorstep this morning. Anyone know anything about it?”

The room was dead silent. The expressions on the Dregs’ faces varied from mild curiosity to disgust. Some seemed bored. Kaz focused on the ones who looked uncomfortable.

“It’s a girl,” he continued. “Inej says she might be about two months old. Does that ring a bell for anyone?”

Silence. Kaz thought he could drop a pin in the middle of the room and the sound would be deafening. Even all the daemons were still.

“Fine,” he said. “If no one comes forward, we’ll be leaving it in the street for someone else to find.”

Inej shot him a sharp look. He ignored her. A few people in the room looked uncomfortable at the idea, but no one said a word.

“We’ll be waiting till eight bells. If anyone changes their mind, I’ll be in my office.”

He didn’t need to dismiss them. As soon as he turned around, everyone started talking at once.

Inej was right behind him. “Do you think anyone will come?” she asked.

“There are a few possibilities. Pim looked uncomfortable. Specht wasn’t making eye contact. Whoever it is, we’ll see if he feels bad enough to come.”

“So basically this baby’s future depends on whether or not her father will feel guilty enough to take care of her.”

“Isn’t that how most fathers operate?” asked Kaz, walking into his office.

Inej scoffed. “I guess it’s too far-fetched for you to believe that he might actually love her and want to be there for her.”

Kaz sat in his chair and propped up his cane against the desk. “I doubt a loving father would have to have his baby quite literally dropped off on his doorstep.”

Inej curled up on the windowsill, the baby dozing off. “For her sake, I hope you’re wrong.”

Kaz shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think. We’ll find out soon enough.”

Minutes ticked by. Kaz busied himself with a stack of papers on his desk. Ajit was cleaning his feathers. Eris started weaving a new web in the corner by the window. The relentless rain eased up outside, and the sound of drops falling on the roof got quieter.

There was a knock on the door, and slowly, Rotty came into the room. His daemon trotted behind him. She was a small terrier, her shaggy fur a mix of grey and brown, her ears upright and alert.

Kaz leaned back in his chair, resting his intertwined hands on the desk. “The prodigal father, I assume?”

Rotty swallowed. His face was ashen. His eyes kept darting to the baby. “I think so, boss,” he said. “I’m not completely sure.”

Inej rose from the windowsill. The baby was napping, quiet as a mouse. “What happened, Rotty?” she asked. Her voice was gentle.

Rotty sat in the chair on the other side of Kaz’s desk. His daemon sat on the floor next to him. He stared down at his hands.

“I met this girl last year,” he said finally. “Her name was Anna. She was a barmaid in one of the pubs that we like to go to. We hit it off.”

Inej sat on the edge of Kaz’s desk. Ajit left his perch and landed on her shoulder.

“She told me she was pregnant,” Rotty continued. “Must be ten months ago. She told me she wasn’t going to keep it.”

“Did you see her after that?” Inej asked.

Rotty shook his head. “I went by her place a couple times, but she wasn’t there. They told me at the pub that she stopped showing up one day. I thought maybe she didn’t wanna see me, so I left it alone. Figured if she needed something, she’d let me know.”

“And it didn’t concern you that she just disappeared?” Kaz asked, eyebrows raised.

Rotty shrugged. “People disappear in the Barrel all the time, boss. Figured she moved back home or found a better job. It’s not like we were married or something.”

“Does she have any family in the city?”

Rotty and his daemon looked at each other. “A sister,” the terrier said finally. “She mentioned a sister once. Never said where she lived though.”

Inej turned to Kaz. They locked eyes. He nodded at the unspoken question being asked.

“I might need a few hours,” said Inej. “Can you two be trusted with this little one?”

“Absolutely not,” Kaz replied immediately.

“Well, too bad. It’s not like I can climb roofs and hold her at the same time,” Inej was already moving. She put the sleeping baby in the basket on the floor. “If she gets hungry, heat up some milk. I left a bottle in the kitchen. Fresh diapers are in that bag over there.” She pointed to a little satchel next to the basket. “I’ll try to be as quick as I can.”

Before Kaz could protest, she was already out the window, Ajit in tow.

Kaz looked at Rotty. He was pretty sure they both looked equally panicked.

***

Two hours, one bottle, and one traumatizing diaper change later, Inej slipped back into the room and dropped a piece of paper on Kaz’s desk, an address scribbled on it in her neat, round handwriting. She looked around at the desk, which was a mess of spilled milk and pieces of cloth, then at the baby, which was once again sleeping soundly in Kaz’s arms. She smirked.

Kaz scowled at her. “She wouldn’t stop fussing,” he said. “This was the only thing that calmed her down.”

Ajit cackled as he landed on the perch. “Just admit it, Dirtyhands,” he said. “You’re enjoying this.”

“The only thing I’m going to enjoy is plucking every last one of your tail feathers,” Kaz replied.

The truth was that he didn’t mind holding the spawn as much as he thought. Now that she was clean, fed and calm, he could admit it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever done.

But he’d rather cut off his good leg than tell Ajit that.

“Where’s Rotty?” Inej asked.

“He went out a while ago, after he fed the spawn. Said he needed time to think.”

“It can’t be easy,” Inej sympathised. “Finding out that you have a child out of the blue.”

“He’d better come around quickly,” Kaz replied. “How did you find the sister?”

“The guy at the pub gave me Anna’s last name. He remembered something about Anna’s sister working at a tannery, so I started asking around until I found someone who recognized the name. Turns out she lives only 20 minutes from here. She wasn’t home when I went there, though.”

Kaz looked at the baby. “It’s only after seven bells. She must get home sometime.”

Inej hopped onto the desk and reached out to gently stroke the baby’s cheek. “We can go there later. Hopefully Rotty gets back by then.”

She looked at Kaz, her dark eyes examining him. “You should get some rest,” she told him.

“I’ll rest when I’m dead,” he replied, and he almost smiled at the way Inej and Ajit rolled their eyes in unison. “And I could say the same about you, Wraith.”

Her lips quirked into a smile. “I’ll manage. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until I know what will happen to this little one.”

“I won’t be able to sleep until she’s out of my office,” Kaz said.

“Oh yes, you look absolutely miserable right now,” Inej teased gently.

Her eyes were twinkling. Kaz forgot what he wanted to say. When she was sitting this close, he could smell the faint aroma of her shampoo.

Eris crawled out from one of the blankets in the basket. She was keeping watch over the baby’s daemon, now a baby rabbit. Ajit flew down to meet her.

“I’ve never been this close to a newborn daemon,” Eris said. “I had no idea they were so… fickle. He even changes when he’s sleeping.”

“That’s normal,” Ajit said. “But he can only do a few shapes now. The older they get, the more forms he’s going to try. Unless she turns out to be a spectacularly unimaginative child.”

“What was the weirdest form you ever took?” Eris asked.

Ajit cocked his head slightly, the way Inej sometimes did when she was deep in thought. “I tried a dragon once. But all I could do was one the size of a dog. And I couldn’t breathe fire.”

“I was a bat once,” Eris said. “Didn’t like it much. I couldn’t see very well, and kept bumping into things.”

Ajit nudged the baby rabbit with his beak. It let out a yawn and changed into a kitten.

Kaz stood up and handed the baby to Inej. She looked at him questioningly as she took the bundle from him and cradled it to her chest.

“I think I know where Rotty might be,” Kaz said, memorizing the address she’d brought him. He pulled on his coat and reached for his cane.

“Do you want me to go with you,” asked Inej.

Kaz shook his head. “I don’t think dragging the spawn along would be a good idea. Unless you think anyone in this whole place could take care of her while we’re gone.”

Inej smoothed out the wrinkles on the baby’s blanket. “Anika might. But I’ll stay. For my own peace of mind.”

Kaz nodded and picked up Eris from the basket, letting her crawl onto his shoulder and underneath the collar of his shirt. “I’ll see if I can find Rotty and we’ll pay Anna’s sister a visit. With any luck, she’ll be home this time.”

***

He found Rotty in a dingy bar a few streets over from the Slat, one of the preferred drinking establishments of the Dregs, and by far the most depressing. Rotty was sitting on a stool at the end of the bar, nursing a glass of cheap booze of indeterminate color. Several empty glasses stood before him. He barely spared Kaz a glance.

“We found Anna’s sister,” Kaz said. “I’m going to go over there now. Do you want to join me?”

Rotty stared at his glass without a word, before knocking back its contents in one gulp. “I swear I didn’t know, boss,” he said, his voice slurring. “If I’d known, I would’ve done something sooner.”

“I don’t care about your guilt, Rotty,” Kaz replied. “That’s your business. I need you to pull yourself together and stop making your child my business. She’s been stinking up my office all day.”

“What am I gonna do with her, boss? I’m no father material,” Rotty sniffed. The dim light of the bar made him look even more miserable.

“There are institutions. Convents. Orphanages. Now, get up and let’s go. I don’t appreciate you forcing my Wraith to play babysitter while she could be out doing her actual job.”

Rotty got up, swayed a little, but kept upright. “I ain’t leaving my kid in an orphanage,” he said, a new determination in his eyes. “That ain’t right, boss. That’s no place for a kid.” His daemon trotted behind him.

Kaz walked out of the bar, welcoming the fresh air. The bar smelled like stale beer and unwashed bodies. “You do know what an orphanage is, don’t you, Rotty?”

Rotty spat on the cobblestones. “I ain’t doing it. Over my dead body.”

“If you don’t start moving, that can be easily arranged.”

Rotty kept quiet as they moved through the streets of the Barrel, barring an occasional sniffle or hiccup. The crowds in this part of town were different from the ones on the Staves. It was mostly workers from tanneries and factories, women with tired eyes and men with booze on their breath, dirty-faced, barefoot children running around, dogs looking for food in garbage-filled alleyways. Some politician or another was always yammering about cleaning up this part of the city. The dilapidated buildings on both sides of the street were leaning forward, as if they were about to collapse and bury Kaz in the rubble. The house numbers had been torn off long ago, but their shapes were still visible, light against dirty grey walls that might have been white once upon a time. Kaz located number 32, right on the corner. A dark, narrow staircase led them to the second floor. Kaz knocked.

There was a shuffle behind the door, and then it opened a crack. A woman eyed Kaz suspiciously.

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice suggesting that whatever it was, she already didn’t like it.

Kaz rested both hands on his cane. “We’re here about a baby,” he replied. “Left on the Dregs’ doorstep this morning. Ring a bell?”

The woman squinted her eyes at him. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t,” she replied. “What of it?”

“We’re looking for Anna,” Kaz told her. “I assume you’re not her. Any idea where she might be?”

“Sure, I’ll tell you where Anna is,” the woman said. “On the Reaper’s Barge.”

Kaz felt Rotty stiffen behind him. “She’s dead?” Rotty choked out. “Since when?”

“Died yesterday. They took her last night.” The woman eyed Rotty. “You the father?”

Rotty nodded. Kaz noticed his hands were shaking.

The woman stood silent for a minute, then opened her door wide enough to let them through. “Come in.”

The room was cramped and dark. A bed stood in the middle of the wall, opposite an unlit fireplace. The woman’s daemon, a goat, lay on the floor. A single door led to a tiny kitchen. There was no bathroom.

The woman closed the door behind her. She might’ve been in her thirties, but she looked ten years older, stringy hair falling around her sullen face. “If you think I’m going to offer you something, think again,” she said, moving to stand in front of the fireplace. She was trying to ignite some old newspapers and twigs.

Rotty stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. Kaz stayed by the wall.

“Anna told me she was gonna get rid of it,” Rotty said finally.

“She tried. It didn’t take. Whoever sold her those herbs just made her sick as a dog instead. And then she got attached,” the woman said grimly. “Decided to keep it.”

“How did she die?” Rotty’s voice broke a little on the last word. He swallowed.

“The medik told her she had a heart condition,” the woman replied. “It got worse when she was pregnant. Could barely walk up a flight of stairs. Couldn’t work and make her rent, so I took her in. She was weak, by the end. Never recovered after birth. I took care of the baby cause she couldn’t even lift her arms. Two weeks ago, she got pneumonia. Her heart couldn’t take it.”

“Why didn’t she say anything?” Rotty asked. “If she’d told me she needed anything…”

“What would you have done?” the woman asked sharply. A weak flame was now dancing in the fireplace. She sat on the edge of the bed. “Cause she was sure you wouldn’t want anything to do with it. Made me promise I’d raise the kid. As if I can afford to have another mouth to feed. I had to borrow money from everyone I knew when she was living with me, or else we would’ve starved to death. Loan sharks are on me all the time now, I can barely keep up with the payments. She didn’t tell me who the father was, only that he was in that wretched gang of yours. So after she died, I dropped it off at your door. Figured I’d done enough, now it was your turn.”

The room was silent, except for the crackling of the kindling in the fireplace.

“Did she name the baby?” Rotty asked at last. “Before she died?”

The woman examined a hole in her long skirt. “She named her Miriam, after our mother,” she said. “The daemon is Arden. She made me promise I’d remember. She was a sentimental goose, all right.”

In the dim light of the fireplace Rotty looked like he was crying. Kaz cleared his throat. He suddenly felt he couldn’t stand to spend one more minute in this room, with this woman and the crying Rotty.

“You can go now,” the woman said. “I’ve nothing else to say. I took care of my sister, did the right thing. But I’m not going to raise someone else’s child. My conscience is clear.”

Rotty stood in the middle of the room, his shoulders limp. He didn’t seem to hear her.

Kaz started towards the door and opened it. “We won’t bother you anymore,” he said. “Come on, Rotty.”

He walked out of the miserable room onto the narrow staircase. He was halfway downstairs when he heard Rotty follow and the door slam shut behind him.

***

Kaz thought he needed a drink.

Rotty was sitting in the chair across the desk from him, his eyes glassy as he stared at the floor. He looked like a shell of the man Kaz knew. The baby was softly cooing in her basket. Inej looked worried, her eyes darting between Kaz and Rotty from where she was sitting on the windowsill.

“Rotty, I need you to listen to me,” Kaz said, leaning over the desk. It was close to midnight, and he felt so tired that his head seemed to weigh a ton. “I need you to make a decision. She can’t stay here.”

Rotty didn’t reply. Kaz thought about slapping him to bring him out of his stupor.

As if sensing his intentions, Inej rose from the windowsill and kneeled down in front of Rotty. She took his hand in hers.

“Rotty, she’s your daughter,” she said, her voice gentle. “I know it’s scary, and what happened to Anna is terrible. You should mourn her. But right now, Miriam needs you. Look at her,” she pleaded. “Look at her, Rotty.”

Slowly, Rotty turned his head to look at the baby. Miriam cooed.

Rotty dropped his head on Inej’s shoulder and wept.

Kaz saw Inej stiffen for a second or two. She took a deep breath and relaxed.

“She needs you, Rotty,” she said softly. “She needs you to give her the best chance you can.”

It took a while for Rotty to calm down. Inej stayed on the floor next to him the whole time, patting his shoulder gently and letting him cry. Kaz watched from behind the desk.

He didn’t believe in Saints, but he doubted any of them could’ve been kinder than Inej.

Finally, Rotty stood up from his chair and wiped his face with his sleeve. Inej rose gracefully from the floor. She squeezed Rotty’s hand in encouragement.

“I have a sister in the country,” Rotty said finally. “I haven’t spoken to her in a few years. She’s not happy with me and what I do. But I think,” he looked helplessly at Inej, who nodded. “I think she’ll take her in, if I ask.”

“That’s good, Rotty,” Inej said. “That’s good. I’m sure Miriam will be well looked after.”

Rotty looked at Kaz. “I’m going to need a few days, boss. Need to get down there and put everything in order.”

Kaz nodded. “I’ll talk to the old man,” he said. “You should probably leave right now. You can still make the midnight boat, be down there by sunrise.”

“I’ll get you some stuff for Miriam,” Inej offered. “A couple bottles of milk should be enough.”

Rotty sniffed and nodded.

Twenty minutes later, equipped with several bottles of milk, a bunch of clean diapers, and strict instructions from Inej on how to take care of Miriam, red-nosed but much calmer Rotty put on his coat and reached for the basket that his daughter was currently dozing off in.

“Just a minute,” Inej interrupted him. “May I?”

She leaned over the basket and said something, first in Suli, then in Ravkan. Then she straightened her back and briefly hugged Rotty.

“It will be fine,” she assured him. “She’s a good baby.”

Rotty swallowed thickly and nodded. “Thanks, Inej,” he said earnestly. “I owe you big time.”

Inej smiled. “Forget about it, Rotty. It was my pleasure.”

When the door closed behind him, Inej sighed and curled on the windowsill. “I hope they’ll be okay.”

“The kid’s going to have a family. That’s as good as it gets,” Kaz replied.

Ajit landed on Inej’s shoulder and nipped gently on her ear. “You’re gonna miss her, aren’t you?”

“I will,” Inej replied, smoothing his feathers. “She reminded me of what life was like. Before.”

She didn’t need to finish. Kaz knew exactly what she meant.

Before Ketterdam. Before the Menagerie.

Before she’d ever had the misfortune of running into the Bastard of the Barrel.

Kaz rose from his seat. The room still smelled of milk.

“I need to get some rest,” he said, dropping his gloves on his desk. “Now that the spawn has finally vacated my office.”

Inej smiled. “You liked her a little bit.”

“I resent that remark.”

He washed his arms and torso quickly. He could feel Inej’s eyes on his bare back.

“What did you say to her?” he asked, not turning around. “Just before they left?”

Inej’s voice was sleepy. “A prayer,” she replied. “I asked the Saints to watch over her.”

If they look after her the way they looked after you, the kid is screwed, Kaz thought.

He kept his mouth shut and put on the shirt he used for sleeping.

When he turned around, Inej was asleep on the windowsill, curled into a ball, her head resting against the window. Ajit was in her lap, his head under one of his wings.

“Don’t wake her,” Eris whispered in his ear, climbing into his hair. “It’s been a long day.”

Kaz looked at Inej, the way the lamp light cast soft shadows on her face. Her chest rose rhythmically with her breathing.

He rubbed his eyes, then pulled one of the blankets off his bed and half-threw, half-draped it over Inej. She murmured something in Suli, but didn’t wake up.

Kaz turned off the light and slipped into bed. He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, the soft scent of milk and baby powder filling his nostrils.

Chapter Text

Inej stood between Nina and Kaz, a roaring crowd sitting below.

The old tower of Hellgate, usually nearly deserted, turned into the hottest attraction in town once a week. Inmates stepped into the pit at the bottom of the makeshift amphitheater to fight exotic beasts brought from far and wide by poachers while Ketterdam’s richest - beasts of an entirely different kind - yelled and jeered and placed bets. Just another vile endeavor that kept the city’s coffers overflowing. At least the inmates got something out of it - provided they survived.

Two men on Inej’s left were arguing, their voices loud but still barely audible in the noise. Their daemons, a vulture and a caracara clashed in the air in a flurry of feathers and talons. The sounds of daemons - the barking of dogs, the screeching of monkeys, the calls of birds - added to the already unbearable cacophony. The air smelled like sweat, cheap booze, wet fur and blood. Staring into the crowd was like staring into the gaping mouth of Ketterdam, its teeth bared and ready for whatever violent spectacle came next. Ajit was perched on Inej’s shoulder and his yellow eyes darted around the room, quick and watchful. Inej knew he was figuring out the quickest escape route if things went awry, which in a place like this seemed inevitable.

Next to Inej, Nina was unusually solemn, wringing her hands and biting her lip, her eyes never leaving the pit. Kirin sat on her back, his arms wrapped around her neck, looking over her shoulder. His creamy fur was standing on end. Inej had never seen either of them so tense. She didn’t know the details of what had happened between Nina and this Matthias they were supposed to bust out, but it was obvious something bad had gone down - bad enough to turn Nina, the most carefree and flirtatious person Inej had ever come across, into a ball of anxiety.

She reached out and gently squeezed Nina’s arm. The Heartrender flinched, her eyes darting away from the pit to meet Inej’s.

Inej opened her mouth to say something, but the crowd roared louder. She looked below just in time to see Matthias Helvar walking into the arena.

She’d never seen him before, but his tall frame and blonde hair were unmistakably Fjerdan. His hair was shaved close to his scalp, his features sharp, eyes intensely blue, even from this distance. Inej didn’t miss Nina’s sharp intake of breath at the sight of him or the way Kirin’s small black hands clutched his owner’s neck even tighter, so tight he must’ve been strangling her. She didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were fixed on Matthias and the expression on her face was a mix of such deep joy and despair all at once that Inej felt like she was intruding on some kind of an intimate moment. She looked away and her eyes landed on Kaz, who in turn was observing Matthias with cool calculation, his gloved hands folded neatly on top of his cane. Nina looked like she was drowning - or rather, like she’d been drowning all this time and someone finally pulled her up for air. Kaz looked mildly bored. The crowd loudly placed bets.

Matthias Helvar spun the wheel.

The colors and shapes blurred together. The spokes clicked rapidly. As the wheel slowed down, Inej could make out drawings of animals painted on the wood. A snake, a desert lizard, a bear, a tiger.

The wheel shuddered and stopped.

A wolf.

“Oh no,” Nina breathed next to Inej, her voice choked with panic. “Oh no, no, no.”

Matthias’ shoulders slumped. He suddenly seemed smaller. Inej looked between him and Nina, trying to discern why the wolf was upsetting them both so much.

“Kaz, you have to stop this,” Nina pleaded. “We can’t let this go on.”

Kaz didn’t spare her a glance. “There’s no way to stop it now. The only way Matthias Helvar is getting out of this pit is either victorious or dead.”

“You cruel bastard,” Nina sneered, her despair turning momentarily into anger. “How many times did I ask you, beg you, to help him, and now I’m supposed to just stand here and watch him die-”

“Let’s not forget, Nina dear, that you’re the one who put him in here,” Kaz cut her off. Nina flinched like he’d slapped her. “Besides, have a little faith in your witch hunter. He’s been here a year and hasn’t died yet.”

Matthias stood in the middle of the pit, his face blank. A shadow moved behind him, at the entrance of the tunnel, and in a second Inej understood why Nina was shaking next to her, why Matthias looked defeated before the fight even started.

Matthias Helvar’s daemon was a wolf.

As she came into view, the crowd screamed, applause and booing filling the air in equal measure. Daemons sitting in the rows closest to the pit growled and hissed, snapping their beaks and jaws at the wolf. She paid them no mind as she circled the arena before stopping next to her owner. Slowly, he raised his hand and gripped the fur at the base of her neck, his fingers digging into her skin. It looked painful, but it seemed to center them both. Matthias stood a little straighter. Inej glanced at Nina, who was pale as a ghost.

Loud, hungry growls sounded in the tunnel and two wolves came barreling into the arena. Matthias and his daemon moved as one, with deadly precision. It must have been the Drüskelle training kicking in, for Inej had never seen a person and their daemon moving together as seamlessly, as if they could predict each other’s every step. A person and their daemon were one, but Inej never knew exactly what Ajit was going to do next. He always surprised her, despite the bond that bound them to each other. Matthias and his daemon moved like they knew each other’s thoughts as well as their own. He struck a wolf on his right, his daemon jumped at the other one, their teeth clashing furiously as they landed on the ground, circled each other, jumped again, sharp fangs seeking blood.

Compared to the two wild wolves, Matthias’ daemon looked completely different. She was much bigger than a regular wolf could be, her shoulders nearly reaching Matthias’ elbow when they were standing side by side, her paws powerful enough to crush a human skull. The wolves’ fur was a dark grey peppered with black. Hers was silver and white, shimmering like a glacier in the moonlight. She was a creature of freezing Fjerdan winters, born to run free across boundless snow-covered plains, not rot in a grimy Kerch prison.

The wolves circled Matthias and his daemon, their ears flat, upper lips curled over knife-like teeth. Matthias crouched low. His daemon snarled. When she jumped, powerful muscles uncoiled and rippled underneath her thick fur. She met one of the wolves in the air with a sickening thud, and they landed hard on the ground, their bodies intertwined.

Nina watched the battle with unblinking eyes, as if she hoped to keep Matthias alive through sheer force of will. She flinched when one of the wolves’ teeth dug deep into Matthias’ skin, drawing blood. His face showed nothing, but beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. The wolf’s nostrils flared wide, filling with the scent of blood. It pounced again.

Matthias’ daemon moved faster than Inej’s eyes could track. In a second, she was in front of her owner. In a quick, snake-like movement, she bit into the wolf's throat. The animal yelped and fought back, but the daemon’s jaws were clasped tight. She dragged the wolf across the pit like a ragdoll, blood pumping from between her fangs, fur and the ground turning redder by the second. The wolf whined one last time and slumped. Matthias’ daemon released it from her crimson-stained jaws and watched its body fall gracelessly to the ground. The crowd roared. Blood dripped from the daemon’s snout.

Behind her, the other wolf leapt at Matthias, knocking him down to the ground. With a crazed snarl, the wolf snapped his jaws at Matthias’ face and neck, ready to kill. He raised his arms, trying to push the animal off. The wolf’s teeth ripped into his hands, tearing his flesh open. Nina looked like she was going to be sick.

Matthias’ deamon tackled the wolf, throwing it off. The force of the impact pushed the animal back to the entrance of the tunnel. Matthias’ daemon positioned herself between her owner and the wolf. Standing on straight legs, her fur standing on end, she was a giant, more bear than wolf. She pounced.

The wolf jumped back, narrowly avoiding her attack. His jaws snapped closed around the daemon’s thigh, fangs digging into her silver fur. She snarled, annoyance and pain mixing in the sound as she shook the animal off and chased after it across the pit, long leaps taking her to the other side in seconds. The wolf, now cornered, growled and flashed its blood-stained canines. Matthias got up from the floor. Blood trickled down his forearms, mixing with the dust from the arena. His face was stone, but Inej could see the strain in his jaw. He had been taught to hide pain and he was good at it, but the wounds were bad. Even a Fjerdan Witchhunter couldn’t completely shut it out.

He stood next to his daemon, two titans of ice stained crimson and brown.

“Just end it already!” someone in the audience yelled. Some other voices joined him, whooping in agreement.

Matthias Helvar bowed his head and whispered something. Inej suddenly realized that she and Nina were holding hands, Nina’s fingers crushing hers in a vice grip.

Matthias’ daemon lunged forward.

And the fight was over.

***

Over the next few hours, Inej learned a little more about Matthias Helvar.

She learned that he and his daemon spoke Kerch well, with a slight Fjerdan accent hardening the consonants.

She learned that he had more honor in his little finger than most of the Dregs - probably most of Ketterdam - had in their whole bodies.

She respected him for it. She really did. A man that spent a year in Hellgate and still believed in things like honor was to be admired.

But he was also a desperate man, and desperation didn’t mix well with any kind of principles. She knew a little something about that. Just like it had driven her to murder and theft and blackmail, things she didn’t think she’d ever wash off, no matter how hard she tried, it drove Matthias Helvar to betraying his country.

Although, she pondered, glancing between him and Nina, maybe something else had put him on that path before he ever saw the inside of a prison cell. She still wasn’t clear on the details of what had gone down between those two, but whenever Matthias looked at Nina - and he looked at her a lot - he looked like he could barely keep himself from touching her. To murder her or to do something else entirely, Inej didn’t know. She doubted even he knew.

He cursed out Kaz in Fjerdan for several long minutes, Kaz looking thoroughly unimpressed the whole time. His daemon sat by his side, taking up half the room. Inej had never seen a daemon this large before. The wolf must’ve weighed more than she and Nina put together.

Matthias stopped his tirade to draw in a breath. Kaz held up a hand.

“You seem to be under the impression that this is a negotiation, Witchhunter,” he said. “You are going to tell us how to get into the Ice Court, and if you don’t, Nina here will coax it out of you.”

Nina flinched. Matthias’ eyes darted to her. He spat out something in Fjerdan, the words as hard as his voice. She replied, her vowels clear and elegant, somehow making the rough language sound almost pleasant.

Kirin and Matthias’ daemon eyed each other, yellow wolf eyes staring into the monkey’s dark pupils. Their owners’ conversation went on. Kaz looked more annoyed by the second. Jesper twitched in his seat, Mabel shifting uneasily in his lap, her hare instincts reacting to the predator in the room.

Slowly, the wolf moved, and everyone fell silent.

She was terrifyingly large in the small space, her fur still stained brown from the fight. Despite her size, she didn’t make a sound when she moved, her giant paws gliding across the wooden floor as silently as they would on snow-covered ground. She stood in front of Kirin, the monkey smaller than her head, which she lowered so their eyes were on the same level.

Kirin stretched out his little hand, covered in leathery black skin, and cupped the wolf’s jaw, the gesture so tender that something in Inej’s chest tightened.

The wolf lowered her head even further, her forehead pressing against Kirin’s for a brief moment. Nina and Matthias stared at the two daemons, their argument all but forgotten. Even Kaz looked like he didn’t know what to say.

“Saga,” Nina breathed out the name with a shuddering breath.

The wolf looked at her, yellow eyes boring into green. Something passed between them, almost like an understanding.

Saga let out a low growl, and then she was back at Matthias’ side in an instant, his palm landing between her shoulder blades, a gesture that seemed completely instinctive to him.

The Fjerdan looked at his daemon for a long moment, before turning his gaze to Nina, and finally to Kaz.

His voice was grim, like he hated the words coming out of his mouth.

“I’ll tell you what I know”.

Chapter Text

If Kaz wasn’t already planning on destroying Pekka Rollins, he definitely would’ve made it his life mission now.

The night air was heavy with the scent of gunfire, the decoy ship burning behind him, sending clouds of black smoke into the sky. He crouched low behind a stack of wooden boxes. He could hear gunshots and yelling on all sides, people running by, someone moaning in pain. Wylan was next to him, Silja tucked under his jacket, hiding her starkly white feathers from view.

Kaz moved slowly to the next stack of boxes, peeking over them as he went. The blaze from the exploded ship lit up his surroundings in an orange glow, casting strange shadows on the row of shipping containers to his left. He saw Jesper’s tall frame, Mabel moving in a jittery zig-zag by his side as the two of them ran from one hiding place to another. Jesper held up his revolvers and fired two quick shots. A loud yelp sounded in the shadows as the bullets found their targets.

Kaz turned to Wylan, who looked pale but calm, shadows dancing across his face. The boy stayed close behind him as they crept through the maze of cargo. The real ship was still a distance away, across an empty stretch of concrete. If they went out there, they would be sitting ducks, even for those barely-competent shooters that Pekka had on his payroll.

Kaz peeked over the boxes once again and cursed as a bullet shot right past his face. He ducked for cover and pressed his back to the box. Across the narrow alleyway between two haphazardly stacked piles of boxes, he caught a glimpse of Nina, her arms outstretched and ready to crush the heart of any Dime Lion who crossed her path. Matthias and his giant wolf daemon were closely behind her, both of them way too large to hide. Saga’s fur had the color of burned copper as it reflected the flames. Her teeth were bared, long as knives.

Knives.

Where the hell was Inej?

Kaz motioned to Wylan to follow him and, bent over as low as possible, crept towards the metal shipping containers whose shadows gave them more cover. The containers were stacked in tall pyramids, creating a labyrinth of passages in between. Jesper was crouched in the shadows of the neighboring pyramid, his guns ready. Mabel’s ears twitched back and forth faster than Kaz’s eyes could keep up. He briefly locked eyes with Jesper.

He made a mental note to kill him later, too, but now he had bigger problems on his mind.

He turned to Wylan. “Listen to me, Wylan,” he whispered. “I need you to move over there, to where Jesper is. You two need to get to the ship first. If the rest of us are gonna make it, we need Jesper to lay cover fire.”

Wylan nodded, but a second later his brow furrowed. “I thought the ship just blew up.”

Kaz clutched the head of his cane. He caught another glimpse of Matthias’ daemon as she pounced on some Dime Lion’s dog daemon. Poor bastard had no chance.

“They blew up what I wanted them to blow up,” he replied. “Our ship is over there. Go to Jesper, and pass the information to Nina. She and Jesper are our best chance.”

“You should’ve given Matthias a gun,” Wylan said.

Kaz looked around the corner of the pyramid and swung his cane, hitting a Dime Lion headed their way squarely in the forehead with the crow’s head. The boy fell to the ground, his small raptor daemon plummeting from the sky with a dull thud.

“Maybe,” Kaz replied, turning around and looking briefly at Wylan, “but I didn’t trust him enough not to shoot us.”

“You should’ve given me a gun, then.”

“I didn’t trust you enough not to shoot yourself.” Kaz looked around the corner one more time. “It’s clear. Move.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hopefully crack a few more skulls. Now stop asking questions and go before we all get shot.”

Wylan crept out of the shadows and quickly made his way across the path between the two pyramids, joining Jesper on the other side. Kaz heard whispers as Wylan relayed the plan. Jesper’s head whipped around to look at Kaz at the mention of the second ship. Kaz raised an eyebrow. “Move!” he mouthed as forcefully as he could, his cane pointing at the ship bopping on the waves in the distance. As Jesper and Wylan turned away from him and began walking along the side of the pyramid, he ducked into the container maze, past the unconscious Dime Lion.

The light was more scarce here, the blaze from the burning ship obscured by the outer wall of the maze. Small lanterns were hung along the sides of the pyramids, but Kaz could still barely make out what was ahead of him. He moved slowly, his cane at the ready, Eris on his shoulder, feeling for vibrations in the air.

“Are you sure she’s in here?” Eris asked him in a hushed voice. “I lost sight of her as soon as the shooting started.”

“She’d go high,” Kaz replied, passing a lantern on the corner of a pyramid and turning right into another passageway. “Try to find a vantage point and sneak up on them from above. This is the only place that makes sense.”

He kept his eyes focused on the next lantern, a ring of pale light on the ground around it. The maze drowned out the sounds from outside, and he moved forward in near silence, save for his own uneven footsteps. He passed through the ring of light, then another.

Eris twitched on his shoulder and he froze.

“Incoming, Kaz,” she whispered, her legs picking up on something in the air that he was oblivious to.

Moments later he knew she was right. There was someone walking towards them, trying to be stealthy, but now that Kaz was expecting trouble, he could hear quiet footsteps and uneven breathing. He kept still, obscured by the shadows between two lanterns, and gripped his cane tighter. A few seconds later, a man stepped under a lantern. He was broad-shouldered and covered in tattoos, holding a knife in his hand in a way that suggested he knew how to use it. His daemon was a large and nasty-looking rat. Her beady eyes glowed red in the light. They hadn’t noticed Kaz yet. Two more lanterns separated them from him.

Kaz kept his breathing steady as the man got closer. From this distance, he could hear the pitter-patter of the rat’s feet on the pavement. Her nose was furiously moving, and he knew she’d be able to smell him within seconds.

A cane against a knife. Normally, he wouldn’t feel bad about his odds, but the man was three times his weight, and at least a few of his tattoos indicated a stint in Hellgate. The passage was narrow, the walls of the containers tall and smooth. Not many good options. The element of surprise was his only advantage.

The man was now one lantern away.

Kaz leapt out of the shadows, ignoring the violent protests of his bad leg, and swung his cane at the man's knees. The metal connected with the bone with a loud cracking sound, and the man screamed as his knees buckled underneath him. The rat hissed and bared her razor sharp teeth at Kaz, who retreated out of the man's reach and swung again, this time at the Dime Lion's head.

The man ducked and narrowly avoided the hit. One of his giant hands grabbed the other end of the cane.

"Shit," Kaz and Eris muttered in unison as the Dime Lion stood up and swung Kaz like a ragdoll into the wall of the nearest container.

His back hit the metal with a thud, knocking the air out of his lungs. As he slid down to the ground, he saw his cane, intact, but just out of reach. He blinked rapidly a few times, trying to think, when the front of his shirt was seized and he was lifted off the ground for the second time in twenty seconds. The Dime Lion's giant hand held him in a vice grip, the man's face so close he could feel his breath on his face.

Too close.

The man smiled, revealing a set of impressively crooked teeth. Kaz could hear the whooshing of water in his ears. One of the man's hands was holding him by the collar, the other held the knife pressed against Kaz’s side, the tip of it aimed straight at his liver. There were still layers of fabric between them, but as the man lifted Kaz even higher and pressed him back against the container, trapping him on both sides, Kaz could feel panic rapidly setting in, making him feel like his stomach was full of ice.

"Dirtyhands," the man said, drawing out the syllables of the moniker. "Pekka is going to pay quite handsomely for your head."

Kaz forced air into his lungs. The man's stench was unbearable, but his head cleared a little. His left hand fiddled with his belt.

"Whatever price he put on my head, I can double it," he said through gritted teeth.

The man chortled. "You really think there's any amount of kruge in this world that would make me let you go?"

"Every man has a price," replied Kaz. His heart was thumping rapidly in his ears. "But you're right. I don't think it would be a good idea to do business with you."

With one quick movement, Kaz lifted his left arm and thrust the tiny blade he kept underneath his belt into the man's ear.

The Dime Lion swayed and took a step back, releasing Kaz from his grip. Kaz dropped gracelessly to the ground, his bad leg again expressing dissatisfaction with the turn the night had taken. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet.

Blood was trickling out of the man’s ear and down his neck as he slumped against the opposite wall of the maze. The blade was stuck deep, only a sliver of it still visible. The rat daemon twitched uncontrollably on the ground.

Kaz brushed off his coat and picked up his cane. His breath was still ragged, but the water at his feet was receding.

“Do you think he’s gonna die?” Eris asked, crawling out from underneath his coat.

“Hard to say,” Kaz replied, limping away from the Dime Lion. “I turned his brain into scrambled eggs. If that doesn’t do the job, Pekka’s lackeys will finish him off.”

The passage was long, with perpendicular alleyways crossing it at regular intervals. At every corner, Kaz stopped and looked both ways, but there was no one around. The closer he got to the western edge of the maze, the clearer he could hear gunshots. With any luck, Jesper had made it onto the ship and was now picking off Pekka’s gang.

There was no sign of Inej.

Where the hell was she?

The lantern on the nearest corner wasn’t lit. Kaz peeked around carefully. The passage was empty.

“Kaz,” Eris whispered suddenly. She crawled into his hair, right behind his ear. “Up there. Eleven o’clock.”

Kaz looked up at the pyramid on his left, his eyes traveling upwards until he finally caught sight of Inej. She was on the second level of the pyramid and climbing, Ajit circling above her.

But something was wrong. She was moving slowly, her movements clumsy and sluggish. Ajit’s flight was erratic, and every few seconds he would drop down several feet before righting himself. She was hurt.

A man was chasing after her. He wasn’t a very good climber, but he was catching up with her. His daemon, some ugly furry creature Kaz didn’t care to try to identify, was on his shoulder.

Kaz could never remember clearly what happened next, except that before he knew it, he was on top of the nearest container, his muscles burning with effort. His heart was hammering with adrenaline, blood rushing loudly in his ears. He grabbed the man’s leg and pulled. The Dime Lion let out a surprised sound before falling at Kaz’s feet. As he landed on the roof of the container, something flashed under his belt. It was a knife. A bloody one.

Kaz punched the man in the face. Once, twice, and then he just kept punching, his vision blurring until all he saw was crimson. His gloves were soaked in something hot and wet.

It took him a few seconds to register that Eris was calling his name. His fist froze mid-air, and he felt a sharp pain around his knuckles. His vision cleared, and he saw the man’s face - or what was left of it, anyway. Blood was everywhere, pooling around the Dime Lion’s head and sprayed on the wall of the next level of the pyramid, trickling down in scarlet rivulets. His gloves were completely drenched. The air smelled like metal.

The man’s daemon slowly dissipated into a cloud of gold dust.

“Kaz,” Eris prompted, pulling him out of his stupor. “Inej.”

He looked up. Inej was one level above him, lying on her back on top of the container. He put down his cane and jumped, his fingertips grabbing the edge of the container. Slowly, he pulled himself up. His arms shook uncontrollably as he half shuffled, half crawled to Inej’s side. Her eyes were screwed shut, Ajit pressed to her chest. She held a knife in her hand, the tip of it aimed straight at her heart.

Kaz grabbed her hand, forcing her to open it. She made a sound like a wounded animal, pained and terrified. She dropped the knife.

“Not just yet, Inej,” said Kaz. Even to his ears, his voice sounded more gravelly than normal. His throat was completely dry.

Inej opened her eyes. They were hazy and unfocused. “Kaz.”

Her shirt was dark with blood around her stomach. Ajit’s feathers were stained with it. He looked weak, a fragile little bird, his luminous feathers devoid of their usual glow.

Kaz mulled his options. There wasn’t enough time to get help. There wasn’t anything that he could use to slow down the bleeding. The only thing he could do was carry Inej to the ship and hope that Nina could heal her.

There were several problems with that plan. He knew that climbing down the pyramid with Inej would be a nightmare. So would crossing the harbor in a hail of bullets.

The problem with not trying would be Inej’s certain death, and that was not something he had any intention of entertaining.

He grabbed Inej’s hand and put it on her wound. She let out a quiet whine. “Can you keep pressure on that?”

Her breathing was shallow. “I’ll try,” she whispered.

“Good,” Kaz replied, slowly getting up and pulling her up from the ground into his arms. “Because this is gonna suck.”

He looked at the distance to the container below. It wasn’t high, and with two good legs he probably could stick the landing, even with the added weight of Inej.

With one good leg, there was a chance he’d break it and watch Inej bleed out next to him. The odds were not in his favor on this one.

He closed his eyes briefly. As if he’d ever given a damn about the odds before.

He jumped, and landed with a thud, letting his good leg take most of the impact. The bad one buckled underneath him, and he hissed in pain, but managed to stay upright. Inej winced in his arms. Kaz picked up his cane from where he’d left it.

Inej mumbled something. He leaned in to hear her.

“I think this is it, Kaz,” she whispered.

Kaz adjusted his grip on her and made sure Ajit was safely tucked in between both their chests.

“Not possible,” he replied, bracing himself for the second jump. “You still owe me money.”

Something that sounded almost like a laugh came out of her mouth, followed by a pained grunt. “I’m glad I’m bleeding all over your shirt.”

“I’ll put it on your tab.”

He jumped to the ground. As he landed, he lost his balance, stumbled a few steps backwards, almost falling on his ass. He hit the wall of the container instead, his shoulder painfully colliding with the metal.

“Keep talking, Wraith,” he said through gritted teeth, starting towards the exit from the maze as fast as he could. With Inej occupying both his hands, he couldn’t use his cane, which was slowing him down. “Don’t slip away from me.”

She sounded drowsy now. “But it’s what I do best,” she mumbled. He could feel her growing heavier in his arms, her muscles going limp.

“Inej,” he said, and he hated the hint of panic that crept into his voice. “Inej!”

No answer. He walked faster. His bad leg felt like a burning hot knife was being plunged into his bone. He refused to slow down. He’d pay for it for weeks to come, but in that moment, he found that he couldn’t care less.

Minutes dragged like months, and it felt like an eternity had passed before he got out of the maze and laid eyes on the ship. It was maybe 200 yards away, just an empty stretch of concrete away.

A bullet shot right past his ear. He took a step back into the shadow of the nearest container. A series of gunshots rang out from the direction of the ship. So Jesper had made it.

He looked down at Inej. She was still breathing, but barely. He had to lean close to her mouth just to feel the ghost of her breath on his cheek.

“She’s not gonna make it, Kaz,” Eris said from her spot behind his ear.

A few more shots rang out. “Like hell she’s not,” he muttered in response.

“We have no cover out there. They’ll shoot you before we get halfway to the ship.”

“I’m aware, Eris,” he snapped. “Do you want to point out some more obvious things, or do you have something actually helpful to say?”

Eris twitched in his hair, like she wasn’t sure she should say whatever was on her mind. “I could try to help her,” she said finally. “If you let me.”

“No,” he replied immediately. “There’s no way it’ll work.”

“It might,” she pushed back. “Just long enough to get her to the ship.”

“I said no, Eris.”

He could still remember Damien’s fingers around Eris, sucking the life out of them both. There was no way he was letting her touch anyone else, ever again.

“Kaz,” Eris pleaded.

His throat felt so raw he wasn’t sure how he was still getting the words out. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it and still get us to the ship.” He hated every sound that came out of his mouth, the admission of weakness.

“If she dies now,” Eris began, “if she dies on that ship, we won’t be able to give her a proper burial. Do you know what we’ll have to do, Kaz?” She was angry now, spitting out the words like knives that cut him to the bone one after one.

His eyes flew shut. “Enough, Eris.”

“No,” she replied, quiet fury in her voice. “We’ll have to throw her overboard, Kaz. We’ll have to watch the sea take her.”

His lungs couldn’t take in air all of a sudden. He tried to breathe, but something in his throat was blocking him. “Stop talking.”

“She’ll rot away in the water. Like Jordie.”

The images flashed across his closed eyes.

Inej’s body, pale and cold, being carried away by the waves, moving up and down, up and down, in a sickening rhythm, like Jordie’s bloated corpse on the oily black waters of the Reaper’s Barge all those years ago.

Ajit disappearing in a flurry of gold dust, vanishing in seconds.

Inej’s still face haunting him in his dreams, silent and accusing like the face of his brother.

Bile rose in his throat. The shots seemed distant, muffled by the sound of rushing water in his ears.

“Do it,” he croaked, trying not to pass out. “Do whatever you have to.”

She was halfway down his arm already, her little black body traveling on the dark fabric of his coat. When she reached Inej’s shoulder, she hesitated for a second, before slipping under the girl’s collar.

As her legs made contact with Inej’s skin, Kaz braced himself for the same sickening feeling he’d experienced once before in that damp room in the cellar.

It didn’t come.

There was a strange tingling sensation as his daemon crawled all the way to the wound on Inej’s stomach, spinning her web furiously. It felt foreign, rolling in gentle waves across his entire body, like bubbles running underneath his skin. His stomach settled. Air rushed into his chest.

A Dime Lion rounded the corner, running towards him. Before Kaz could move, the man’s face twisted into a strange pained expression and he fell forward, his daemon dropping out of the sky like a stone before dissolving into dust. Kaz saw Nina at the edge of the pier where their ship was docked, her hand in a fist.

“Come on!” she yelled out.

Kaz held Inej tighter and left the safe shadows behind, coming into plain view of whatever Dime Lions were still left. It was on Nina and Jesper now.

Eris was moving around Inej’s wound, sending little sparks of electricity through him as she glided across the girl’s skin. He could hear people running behind him, footsteps inevitably followed by pained screams and the thudding of bodies as Nina’s magic or Jesper’s bullets reached them. Kaz kept his eyes on the ship.

100 yards, then less.

He could see Jesper now, high on the ship’s mast. Matthias and his daemon were coming on board.

As he passed Nina, her eyes landed on the red stain on Inej’s shirt. Even in the dark, Kaz could see she’d gone pale.

“What happened?” she asked.

“One of them got her with a knife,” he replied. “I need you to help her. Now.”

Nina swallowed and nodded. “I’ll do what I can. Take her below deck. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Kaz walked onto the pier. The ship looked ready to set sail as soon as they boarded. He spotted Wylan among the crew. He and Matthias were helping with the ropes.

Below deck, the ship smelled of tar and sea salt, and the gentle swaying of the floor almost knocked Kaz off balance at first. There were doors on both sides of the narrow corridor. One of them was ajar, revealing a small room with a table in the middle. Kaz walked in and slowly placed Inej on the table. As soon as he let her go, he realized his arms were burning with effort. His legs felt like they were about to give in underneath him. Adrenaline had run out and all of a sudden he felt unspeakably tired.

Inej’s blue shirt was soaked through with blood. His own had dark red stains all over it, some fading already into brown, others still fresh. He couldn’t tell where the Dime Lions’ blood ended and Inej’s began.

She looked so small like this, with Ajit curled up on her chest. Eris was still moving underneath her shirt, and Kaz gently lifted the fabric to see the result of her work.

The wound was a nasty looking gash, right underneath Inej’s ribs. Eris was furiously weaving a web over it. She’d looped two strings around Inej’s waist as a makeshift scaffolding, the silky strands falling over the wound and slowing down the bleeding as they stuck to her skin. The bleeding had slowed to a barely-there trickle, seeping through the web. Eris was moving faster than Kaz had ever seen her, her legs almost a blur. Normally, she took pleasure in weaving her webs, always taking her time with each new creation. This was different. It was quick, messy, desperate work, and Kaz could feel her determination, the way it burned in her all too familiar.

Nina walked into the room, and as she took in the scene in front of her, she stopped in her tracks, her eyes darting between Eris on Inej’s abdomen and Kaz. He couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen Eris before. He couldn’t care less.

“Whenever you’re done staring, Zenik,” he said, his eyes not leaving Inej and the barely visible rise and fall of her chest.

Nina cleared her throat and pulled up her sleeves. “I’m going to need bandages and hot water. Kirin, get Ajit off of her.”

Her daemon jumped onto the table and gently lifted the bird in his little human-like hands.

“Kaz,” Nina said, her voice urgent. He tore his eyes away from Inej and looked at her.

“Hot water. Bandages. Now.”

He nodded. Nina circled the table and leaned close to the wound, examining Eris’ webs. Eris was still spinning, as if in a trance, like she was hoping that she could keep Inej alive as long as she didn’t stop.

“Eris,” Kaz said finally, “that’s enough.”

She stopped at last, the last strands of her web sticking to Inej’s skin.

“Keep her alive for me,” she told Nina, who nodded solemnly, her hands already reaching for the wound.

“I’ll do what I can. For what it’s worth,” she added, her hands tracing the web, which stuck firmly to the wound like a bandage, “I think you may have saved her life with this.”

Kaz reached out for Eris, who crawled onto his outstretched palm and disappeared under his sleeve. The gentle buzzing sensation which had been present under his skin since the moment she’d touched Inej for the first time abruptly stopped.

Hot water. Bandages. He could do that.

As he emerged back on the deck, he saw that they’d already set sail and were coming out of the harbor. Jesper and Wylan were waiting for him, their faces pale with worry.

“How’s Inej?” Jesper asked. Kaz could smell the guilt on him from a mile away.

Hot water. Bandages. Kill Jesper. In that order.

“Nina is with her now.” Kaz cast a glance at Wylan. “Where are the medical supplies?”

Wylan looked around at the captain of the ship, who was shouting orders from his post at the steering wheel. “I’ll find out,” he said, already moving in that direction.

“Kaz,” Jesper said before Kaz could walk away from him. “There’s something else. We brought one of them on board. Alive. Apparently, he’s the one who led the charge on this attack for Pekka. He… he told one of his goons to look for Inej. I heard him.”

Kaz stood still for a second, his mind processing the information. He gripped his cane harder. His gloves were still sticky with blood.

“I’ll have a talk with him later,” he said finally.

Wylan called out to him. The medical supplies were in a box in the cargo hold.

Hot water. Bandages. Kill Jesper. Look the bastard who gave the kill order on Inej in the eyes and then gouge them out.

Not necessarily in that order.

Chapter Text

Climb, Inej, her father had told her so many times when she was a child.

“Climb, Inej!” Ajit’s voice sounded from above.

The sky was a tiny gray square high over her head, framed by the brick walls of the incinerator shaft. Impossibly far away.

The fire had been turned off, but the air was still unbearably hot. Inej was stuck in the middle of the shaft, halfway between still glowing embers and the roof. The rubber soles of her beloved shoes were melting in the scorching temperature. Her eyes stung with tears at the sight, and she willed herself not to cry.

She was tired, and she was aching from her still not completely healed wound. The way she was contorted between the walls of the shaft only aggravated it, causing dull pain right below her ribs. Inej closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to center herself.

It wasn’t working. She was on the verge of panic, suspended halfway between certain death and the promise of freedom. She couldn’t pull herself up even one more inch. Whenever she tried, her feet just kept sliding back down, her muscles weak and shaky.

Ajit had flown ahead, waiting for her on the roof, but sensing her distress, he’d doubled back and was now hanging in the air just a few feet over her head.

“Come on, Inej,” he prompted, his black wings fluttering up and down to keep him steady in the air. “We can’t fail them. This whole plan hinges on us.”

Inej gritted her teeth. “Damn the plan,” she replied, and she almost winced at how hoarse and bitter her voice sounded. “Damn Kaz, damn the whole thing.”

She was going to die in this incinerator shaft, after almost dying from a Dime Lion’s blade, all because Kaz couldn’t pass up the opportunity to fill his pockets and stick it to Pekka Rollins at the same time.

Inej screwed her eyes shut. She wasn’t being fair. She had agreed to go on the mission just like everyone else. She’d insisted on doing this, assured Kaz she would be able to climb the shaft when the time came.

But given her current predicament, she figured she was allowed to complain.

She braced her hands against the brick wall and pulled herself up another few inches. This time, she managed not to slide down. It made her feel a little better.

“That’s it,” said Ajit. “See? It’s not so bad.”

Inej dug her fingers into the spaces between the bricks. The mortar was dry and crumbly beneath her gloved hands. “Easy for you to say,” she muttered, hauling herself up a foot, then a second one. “I don’t have wings.”

Kaz’s gloves were too big for her hands, which made the whole thing even harder. With her bare fingers, she could easily find the tiniest cracks to hold onto, but she couldn’t risk burning her hands on the overheated bricks. Inej wished she had practiced with the gloves beforehand, tried to get used to them. It was too late now.

“You’ve almost reached me,” Ajit said. Inej could hear that fake cheerful note in his voice, the one that was always there when he was trying to seem more confident than he actually was. From his vantage point, she probably looked like a mess, sweaty and shaky and struggling, her body betraying her exactly when she needed it the most.

Inej hissed when another movement resulted in a sharp pain shooting from her wound and up her chest. Nina had done the best she could, but she wasn’t a Healer.

A memory made its way to the front of Inej’s mind, clear as day - the memory of a tiny little room below deck, the gentle swaying of the ship on the waves, the smell of clean fabric and antiseptic.

Nina had been by her bedside for days, diligent and concerned, attending to her every need, and - disconcertingly - shooting her strange, cryptic glances when she’d thought Inej wasn’t looking.

Inej had just waited. Whatever Nina wanted to say, it wouldn’t be long before she couldn’t keep it to herself anymore.

And, surely enough, on the fourth day of Inej’s recovery, the Heartrender had plopped down on the chair by the bed, opened her mouth and said what had clearly been on her mind the entire time.

“Kaz brought you in, you know.”

Inej had nodded from where she was propped up on several pillows - she had no idea where Nina had got so many pillows from and she’d decided she didn’t want to ask. “I remember. He found me in the Harbor.”

The fact that she hadn’t seen Kaz since then stung more than she would admit, even to herself.

Nina had taken a deep breath and exchanged a look with Kirin. “That’s not all, though.”

Inej had run her fingers gently through the feathers on Ajit’s back. He was lying in her lap. “Are you going to keep me in suspense all day, Nina?” she’d asked, eyebrow raised.

Nina had bitten her lip. She’d actually looked scared, and that in turn had made Inej’s stomach turn. “Nina?”

“WhenKazbroughtyouinhisdaemonwasweavingawebonyourwound,” Nina had blurted out, the words tumbling out of her mouth even faster than usual.

Inej had blinked. “Excuse me?”

Nina had taken a breath and closed her eyes briefly before opening them again to meet Inej’s eyes. “When Kaz brought you in, his daemon was weaving a web on your wound,” she had repeated, slowly this time.

Inej had suddenly felt out of breath, despite the fact that she hadn’t moved from the bed in four days. “You mean…” she’d started, unsure of what she was going to ask.

“She was on your stomach, Inej. Touching you.” Nina had whispered the last two words, as if she was afraid someone might overhear them. “I take it that… hasn’t happened before?”

Inej had drawn a shuddering breath. Ajit’s yellow eyes were flicking between her and Nina. “No,” she’d managed to say. “That has not happened before.”

Her mind was racing with a hundred different thoughts, and she couldn’t focus on any one of them.

Kaz had let Eris touch her.

The Bastard of the Barrel, arguably the most dangerous person in Ketterdam, had let his soul touch her body.

She could almost laugh at that. It sounded ridiculous. Kaz had never even touched her with his hand. There was no way he would willingly let the most vulnerable part of himself make contact with another person.

Would he?

Inej had understood Nina’s uncharacteristic anxiety at that moment. Touching another person’s daemon was a taboo, the biggest one of all. If someone did it consensually, it was always a sign of great intimacy and trust.

Of love.

Inej had shaken her head. No, her mind was not going to wander there. If Kaz really had done it, it was because he couldn’t find another way to save her, and without her, the plan wouldn’t work. He’d been protecting his investment, as always.

He didn’t even care enough to visit her, now that it was clear she was going to live.

Inej snapped back to reality, to the steaming hot trap she willingly climbed into. She wasn’t doing it for Kaz. She was doing it for the money that would allow her to pay off her debts and finally be free.

Free to do what - now that was the question.

Ajit was hovering right over her head now. She was close enough that she could touch him, if she could peel one of her hands away from the wall. Inej looked up at him. It was so easy for him, his wings always carrying him wherever he needed to go.

She wanted to feel like that too. Nothing in her way but clear skies stretching all the way to the horizon. No chains, no walls, no contracts keeping her in place.

A dream began to take root in her heart, so fragile that she almost didn’t want to focus on it, as if it could turn to dust simply by being acknowledged. A ship - small, but well-armed - her own crew, Ajit sailing on the salty breeze. She could make sure no other girl, Suli or otherwise, ever ended up at a pleasure house against her will.

Her home had always been the sky, or as close as she could get to it, but she could exchange it for the sea.

Yes, Inej thought, feeling a spark of joy, of hope, at last.

This was what she was meant to do.

And to achieve it, she needed to get back to Ketterdam alive.

Inej climbed with renewed energy. A foot, a second, a third. The roof didn’t seem so far away anymore. She pushed through the pain, and through the exhaustion, letting the tiny sapling of a dream carry her forward.

“You know salt really messes with my feathers, right?” Ajit asked her as she climbed out of the shaft minutes later, cold Fjerdan air hitting her like an icy wall after the relentless heat.

Inej laughed. The relief in her chest made her feel like she could float over the frost-covered roof. “I know. You’ll have to get used to it.”

Ajit sighed dramatically, watching her secure the rope so the rest of the team could join them. “I guess I can push through it. For a good cause. Blowing up some slaver ships might be worth it.”

“Yes,” Inej confirmed, tugging on the rope to make sure it would hold. “I think it will be.”

A slaver ship had brought her to Ketterdam, once upon a time. Eventually, it had led her to Kaz, and to becoming the Wraith, someone who inspired fear. She’d hated it, at first, the secrets and the shadows and the knives. But now - now it felt like it had all been leading up to this moment.

The Wraith inspired fear.

And that was exactly what the men who sold little girls to be used like objects deserved to feel.

Chapter Text

Inej wasn’t there, but Kaz could still hear her scream.

It echoed through his head over and over again, unshakable, getting louder instead of fading away. Always there, no matter what he was doing. The only time he was offered a reprieve was while he slept.

Except he’d never slept much, and now he slept even less.

The ease with which Van Eck had taken her, Ajit limp and helpless in the cruel grip of the Squaller’s eagle daemon, sharp talons digging into delicate black feathers, grated on his mind with relentless intensity. Kaz had never been one for guilt; it was a pointless emotion, an excuse to wallow in self-pity instead of doing what needed to be done. Guilt kept you standing still instead of moving forward. It kept you docile and ripe for the picking of the vultures circling overhead.

And yet he felt it now, some pathetic protective instinct he didn’t want or had any right to whispering in the back of his head, audible even beneath the broken cry that had pierced his ears right before Inej had been knocked out. Telling him in hushed, ugly syllables that he should’ve done better. That all his planning and his scheming had failed to keep his crew together, leaving broken, incomplete shambles.

Inej wasn’t there, Nina was still suffering from withdrawal, and they had no allies to turn to. Van Eck had the manpower and the resources to hunt them for as long as it took, through every dark and forgotten corner of the city. Even Black Veil Island couldn’t hide them forever, and the mausoleum was barely large enough to house them all as they licked their wounds. Matthias’ daemon alone took up too much space, both in their miserable base of operations and in Kaz’s plans. Walking around the city with a giant ice wolf was about as subtle as carrying around a banner announcing their whereabouts to Van Eck. Matthias had started leaving the island without Saga, the strain of their bond stretching far more than most humans could endure making him unfocused, jaw clenching in pain, sweat beading his forehead. It wouldn’t do to send him out when he looked like he was about to keel over with every passing second.

So that was the state of his team. His Wraith held hostage, his Heartrender bedridden, his Drüskelle benched. Then, of course, there was Jesper, whose guilt was far more visible than his own, anxious and twitching like Mabel at his feet, and their new addition Kuwei, the cause of their current predicament, stuck in this marble cage that was their only safe haven in the city.

And Wylan.

Kaz was not easily scared. He’d seen more than his fair share of horrors, Jordie’s body only the first item on a long list. He never thought of all the things in the world, the Merchling would make the cut.

It wasn’t Wylan’s face that made it almost impossible for Kaz to look at him. No, they all somehow adjusted to it, more or less begrudgingly, even Jesper. To seeing Kuwei’s mirror reflection answering questions directed at Wylan, reacting to his name. To seeing black hair in place of red, golden eyes instead of blue.

No, the thing that scared Kaz more than he would care to admit, in a visceral, instinctive manner he couldn’t squash, was Silja.

There had been no other way. The ruse could only have worked, fooled Van Eck for more than two seconds, if they transformed Wylan’s daemon along with his face, until they were both completely unrecognizable. Nina’s powers, under the influence of jurda parem, had made it look like child’s play. An easy trick, something she’d barely had to think about before it was already happening.

Maybe that had been the scariest part, in hindsight. How effortless it had been to take so many of the things that made Wylan Wylan, even his daemon, his soul, and change it with a flick of a Grisha’s wrist.

There wasn’t anything wrong with Kuwei’s daemon, per se. Leina was a weasel, slender and quick, with black gleaming eyes and a clever, cunning mind behind them. She told Kaz all he needed to know about their new… teammate, for lack of a better word. He knew there was far more to Kuwei than he wanted to let on, and that he understood Kerch a lot better than he claimed, if the twitching ears of his daemon during every conversation was anything to go by.

No, there wasn’t anything wrong with Leina, except her white-bellied, short-legged shape did not belong on Silja any more than Kuwei’s features belonged on Wylan. The reddish-brown fur instead of pristine white feathers added to the ever-present cacophony in Kaz’s head; a staccato rhythm of wrong, wrong, wrong, coming from deep in his consciousness. Daemons weren’t supposed to change once they settled. A dove should not become a weasel, and even Nina had looked uneasy once the transformation was complete.

“That’s not the kind of power that Grisha should possess,” she’d said, cheeks flushed with the drug running through her veins, and for all his clashes with Nina, Kaz could not have agreed more.

Wylan’s winged soul had been made wingless, trapped on the ground, and as chock full the Barrel was of sad sights, that may have been the saddest Kaz had been faced with thus far.

Sadness wouldn’t help him any more than guilt, so he pushed it down and avoided looking at Silja as much as possible.

Inej wasn’t there, imprisoned by Van Eck somewhere they couldn’t reach her. Somewhere he couldn’t reach her.

Nina was feverish and hazy, still gripped by the drug, drifting in and out of consciousness, a solemn Matthias watching over her, his giant of a daemon stalking around the tomb and snarling at nothing in particular.

Jesper was a shadow of his usual self, and Wylan was something stranger still, trapped in a body that was his and not his at once.

They were drowning.

Kaz was all too familiar with the sensation.

He’d pulled himself out of the water once before, by the skin of his teeth. Dragged himself out, clawed his way back from what should have been his grave. He could do it again.

Except this time, he had six other people to haul with him.

The canal around the Black Veil Island was quiet, eerily so. As if they were somewhere outside the city instead of right in the middle of it. Kaz flexed his hand around the head of his cane as he took in the foggy cemetery. The ever-present ache in his leg was sharper now, from the exhaustion and the cold and the dampness that permeated his clothes. The burning and throbbing sharpened his senses, each wave of pain offering a strange sense of clarity.

They needed a plan.

So Kaz, like the spider he was in his soul, bowed his head and began weaving one.

***

It crystallized slowly, the way all good schemes did.

Eris worked quietly in one of the corners of the crypt, and Kaz sat near. The stench of death mixed with a distinct odor of wet dog - courtesy of Saga, of course - didn’t register in his mind anymore. It seemed they’d all gotten quite accustomed to it by now. It was only one of the many inconveniences of their current circumstances, and far more harmless than some of the others.

The plan, like Eris’s web, started with a single thread. She spun between the cold stones, round and round and round, much like the pieces in Kaz’s head; still loose, chaotic, demanding to be organized into something useful. She pulled on this bit and that, tireless, meticulous in her craft, until the silky strands began to take the shape she wanted, an intricate pattern that caught the dim lights of the lanterns, glimmering silver. The steady rhythm of her work matched the pace at which the steps of the scheme worked themselves out in his head. Every time he hit a snag, he would pull back, readjust, dive back in again, aided by Eris’s soft-voiced commentary.

“You’re forgetting something,” she’d observe matter-of-factly from time to time, and he’d scoff in annoyance. Eris always saw the big picture in a crystal clear way that wasn’t accessible to him - even after all this time, even though they were technically one. Just like she felt every thread of her web, every movement, every change in the weather, she slid between the elements of every plan with breath-taking ease, not missing a single detail. She never told him exactly what was amiss until he worked it out on his own. It’s the only way to grow, she’d always say, no matter how much his frustration grew.

But he knew she was right, loath as he was to admit it.

This scheme was bigger and more complicated than anything they’d attempted before. It was beyond risky - beyond dangerous. Impossible to pull off, some might say. Nothing less would cut it.

“Walk me through it,” Eris would say, hanging in her nearly finished web, legs twitching lazily.

And Kaz would, in a low voice, watching the sorry state of his crew from his seat by the door.

Then he would do it again.

And again, working out the kinks one by one, letting the plan spin in his head to see it from every angle, like a three-dimensional figure. Staying up late into the night, watching the black waters and the white gravestones, until daybreak painted them gray and eventually gold. He’d push through the screaming inside his head and pull the threads together, one by one.

They needed Inej back. That was step one.

And then they needed to bring Van Eck to his knees. Strike him in a way he would never recover from. Destroy his reputation until there wasn’t anything left to burn.

Finally, between a bitter sleepless night and a cup of bitter coffee to make up for it, the web was woven.

When he walked into the crypt that morning, Nina was finally lucid, sitting up on her own in the makeshift bed they’d - mostly Matthias - constructed for her. Kaz did not put much stock in Saints or signs or anything of the sort, but this was the most positive development they’d had in days, even if her hands were still shaky, Kirin curled up in her lap into a drowsy ball of fur.

“You have a plan,” she croaked out, her voice raw, brows furrowed, as soon as he appeared in her line of sight from behind Matthias’ broad back. The Fjerdan was perched on the edge of the bed, like a solemn muscly statue, Saga’s giant head in his lap.

“Good to know the fever hasn’t dulled your perception,” Kaz replied. His voice was only slightly less rough than hers.

If he was a different person, he might have told her he was glad to have her back.

She offered a sliver of a grin, barely a shadow compared to her usual cheer. “Good to know you’re still such riveting company.”

There was a different air in the room all of a sudden, as if Nina recovering from jurda parem had lifted everyone’s spirits, if ever so slightly. Matthias still looked like he was in pain, but he looked like that most of the time, so Kaz didn’t use it as a reliable gauge of the state of his crew. Mabel’s ears, perked up where she was sitting at Jesper’s feet, made for a much better indicator.

“Wylan?” Kaz asked. The gears in his mind were turning, going through the plan once more. Eris twitched on his collarbone in reassurance. It was risky, but it was solid. They’d been over it dozens of times.

The black-haired, golden-eyed head snapped up at the name - wrong, wrong, wrong, the voice in Kaz’s head crooned, like a grim lullaby - and the Merchling looked at Kaz expectantly. Silja was perched on his shoulder, a weasel trying to sit like a bird.

For whatever reason, Kaz thought about Ajit losing his wings like this, and he gripped his cane more tightly.

“We have a job to do,” he continued now, trying to push past the sudden nauseating feeling, and he watched Mabel’s ears perk up even more, hopeful and restless. Jesper wore his heart on his sleeve as it was - a dangerous thing anywhere, but especially in the Barrel - and his daemon gave him away every time. Just like Leina gave away Kuwei’s understanding of Kerch, or Saga gave away Matthias’ feelings for Nina, about as large and inconvenient as she herself was.

That was one of the reasons Kaz preferred to keep Eris hidden. There was no telling what she’d give away about him.

He looked around the stifling space. Five Crows, each licking a different kind of wound. A broken band of broken people, going up against insurmountable odds.

They had nothing to lose, which meant there was very little they wouldn’t do. Van Eck had tried to play by their rules, outcon a con man, but at the end of the day, he was as rich as a king and twice as arrogant. He knew nothing of desperation. He knew nothing of the thirst for revenge that drove Kaz’s every waking moment.

He knew nothing of how far a cornered animal would go to survive.

And that was why he would lose.

Kaz leaned against the wall, taking some weight off his bad leg. The unforgiving cold of the stone seeped through all his layers of clothing, but the scheme in his head burned bright, the kindling of an idea stoked carefully into a blazing fire.

“I need you,” he began, thinking of all the ways Van Eck would get burned in the resulting inferno, “to tell me the name of your father’s lawyer.”

Chapter Text

Even many, many years later, Inej would remember the events post her imprisonment at the hands of Jan Van Eck as centered around just a few core moments, crystal clear in her mind even amidst the blur of everything else.

Moment one happened in the darkened crypt Kaz had apparently chosen as a hideout, not long after she’d been freed.

She’d had just enough time to eat something and get cleaned up, two simple luxuries, and even though the food had been bland and the water cold, it still felt good to wash off the time she’d spent in that pitch-black room, not knowing what was going on.

Not knowing whether her friends were still alive.

But they were - tired and scared in varying degrees, but alive. Given the circumstances, it felt like the best situation she could’ve possibly returned to.

She’d sat outside for a while, partly for Ajit’s benefit so he could stretch his wings after so many flightless days, partly for her own. She’d watched him swoop and soar above the island, air currents carrying him so high it caused an ache to bloom in her chest like a bloodstain. It was cold, and night was approaching fast, but she preferred it to the stuffiness of the crypt.

The truth was, she needed to collect herself before she could face Kaz again.

Since the moment she’d been taken from her parents, Inej’d had two clear categories for touch: wanted and unwanted. It was a simple distinction.

Unwanted: everything that had happened to her at the Menagerie. Every fight she’d gotten into since joining the Dregs. The cold metal of a Dime Lion’s knife tearing her flesh apart.

Wanted: Nina’s warm hugs. Jesper twirling her around as they danced in the street during the Festival of Ghezen. Wylan’s hand in hers as she helped him climb down from the roof of the Slat.

Simple.

Now, a third category had emerged, and Inej had no idea how to deal with that fact.

Wanted-unwanted. Something in the middle, and also completely apart.

While she was imprisoned, she’d had far too much time to ruminate on it, and it was still gnawing on the corners of her mind. When she locked eyes with Kaz on the bridge, it had flooded her mind again, almost knocking the air out of her lungs.

Eris had touched her, and it had changed everything and nothing at the same time.

Inej could swear she remembered it, if only in brief feverish flashes as she’d drifted in and out of consciousness. A light touch, so very soft, and a gentle sensation it’d brought with it, easing the pain spreading from her wound.

She’d locked it away during the heist. The plan had been risky as it was, and she couldn’t lose her focus. She’d forced herself not to dwell on it; made a promise to herself that it wouldn’t affect her.

But then, of course, the Squaller had taken her, and keeping those thoughts at bay had proved impossible when she had nothing else to do but sit in complete darkness and wait.

Wanted-unwanted.

That touch had saved her life.

But it had also forced Kaz to let the most vulnerable part of him make physical contact with another person, after he’d already been violated by Damien, and the thought that she had caused him that same anguish made her sick to her stomach.

“You need to let it go, Inej,” Ajit said, startling her. He’d landed in the grass right next to her, barely visible in the muted light. She hadn’t noticed how dark it had gotten already. “He made his choice. Nobody forced him to.”

Inej let out a shuddering breath. Goosebumps were rising on her arms, but she wasn’t sure there was any warmth to be found within the stone walls of the crypt. “If I had been more careful, he wouldn’t have had to do that.”

Ajit hopped closer, wings tucked neatly against his sides. “Don’t we carry enough guilt as it is?”

“Maybe.” She’d gotten so used to the burden it hardly registered anymore. One more thing wouldn’t make a difference.

When she glanced at Ajit, he was looking at her quizzically, tilting his head to the side.

“Do you feel guilty about the fact that Eris touched you?” he asked, and she already knew what he was going to say next. “Or…”

“Ajit…” she said warningly, but he paid her no mind. He never did, and it frustrated her to no end. Weren’t they supposed to be one? Why was her own soul tormenting her?

“...do you feel guilty because you want her to do it again?”

She jumped to her feet. “I am not having this conversation.”

It was an empty declaration. He knew the answer just as well as she did, without any words necessary on her part. She took a few long steps - she had no idea where she was going, just away, as if she needed to put physical distance between herself and that truth hanging in the air - but that was futile too, of course. Inej couldn’t escape herself no matter how much she may have wanted to.

Before she realized where she was heading, she was at the threshold of the ship-shaped crypt. Just a few candles were lit inside to illuminate the chilly space without drawing attention of anyone at the shore.

It was a good hideout, she had to admit. With the trees and the fog and the infamous reputation of the island, it was probably the safest place in the city for them right now. Damp and uncomfortable, but secure enough. No one would think to look for them here, at least not until they’d combed through every other corner of Ketterdam.

There was only one person inside, hunched over some papers spread over the table. Inej knew that austere black silhouette like she knew her own face in the mirror. She’d seen Kaz in this exact position, working on something, hundreds of times by now.

Everyone else was still gone, dealing with whatever tasks Kaz had assigned them to put his scheme into motion, and Inej resisted the urge to turn around and head back outside. He’d noticed her already anyway. He always did.

The silence hung heavy as she centered herself and took a seat in one of the other rickety chairs. Too many unspoken things in the air, Inej thought, echoing and whispering, demanding to be said out loud. Suffocating her slowly with every labored breath.

I’m sorry.

I’m leaving.

I don’t need a net and I hate you for wanting me to use one. I hate you for making me feel weak.

I’m sorry.

“For what?”

His gravelly voice broke the silence so abruptly Inej nearly jumped out of her skin. She hated this too, how easily she startled after all those days of barely hearing any sounds at all besides her own breathing.

She must have apologized out loud without even realizing.

Kaz’s dark eyes were focused on her now. His hair was messy, like it hadn’t been brushed properly in days. His complexion was paler, or maybe it just seemed like it in the candlelight. He looked like he hadn’t slept or eaten, and that wasn’t unusual for him, but it seemed more pronounced now, against the unfamiliar backdrop of cold gray stone.

She should tell him to forget it. It wasn’t a subject she wanted to touch, especially not here and now, in this tomb. Things were hard enough as it was, and she needed to focus on the road ahead, not dwell on what had already happened and couldn’t be changed.

But it sat in her chest like a sickness she couldn’t shake.

If she was going to leave, she might as well be honest with him. Even if that was something he didn’t often offer her in return.

So Inej squared her shoulders, and she held his gaze. “I’m sorry Eris had to touch me.”

Her voice quivered ever so slightly as she uttered the words. Even now, even though she knew for a fact it’d happened, it still seemed surreal to hear it out loud, coming from her own mouth.

But there it was, out in the open, and there was no taking it back.

Inej waited for a reply, but none came. Kaz simply stared at her, unblinking, as if he too was too shocked to formulate a response. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen him speechless.

“I know it must have been…” Unbearable. Sickening. “…hard. And I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

There was a sense of relief in finally getting it off her chest. She felt a little bit lighter.

But Kaz still wasn’t responding, and she really didn’t have anything left to say - not anything she’d be willing to give voice to, anyway. 

So after another silent beat, Inej rose from her seat and turned to exit.

“It wasn’t.”

She was nearly at the door before he spoke, and those two words froze her in her tracks.

When she turned her head to look at Kaz, he didn’t meet her gaze. He kept his eyes focused on the wall in front of him, but his hands were balled up into fists. The tension in his jaw looked like he was about to break his own bones.

Her brain tried to comprehend the meaning of what he’d said. It failed. “What?”

Finally, slowly, Kaz turned to face her. His expression was unreadable, and she wondered how much effort it cost him to keep his features so perfectly still, not a twitch to give away what he was thinking.

But his voice was strained.

“It wasn’t hard. It didn’t hurt.”

It didn’t hurt.

Inej blinked. The implication was too overwhelming to analyze.

If it didn’t hurt Kaz to let his very soul touch her… what did that mean for them?

But she couldn’t afford to think like that. She was leaving, and for all the astonishment that this revelation brought with it, Kaz still had far too many walls around him that he wasn’t willing to let down. Not to mention that they were at war. No further distractions would do.

“Good,” she whispered at last, so quietly that she wasn’t sure he could hear it.

And she walked back out into the night.

***

“Would you let him?” she asked Ajit some time later. It might have been the same evening, or maybe a different one. It didn’t really matter.

He blinked at her, eyes yellow and bright in the candlelight. He was perched on her shoulder, the familiar weight of his body comforting.

Inej didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. Ajit always knew.

“Would I let him touch me?” he asked, shifting from one foot to the other. The idea of it made a shiver run through Inej.

A shiver of what - that she wasn’t quite sure how to answer. She nodded silently.

The waters around the island were never silent. There was always whooshing, and splashing, and tinkling. Filling the background of her thoughts, an ever-present white noise. It crept into the silence between them that seemed to stretch on forever.

“Yes,” Ajit said finally. “I would.”

Inej nodded again. She always knew too.

That had been moment number two.

***

Moment number three: the sky overhead, the rope under her feet, and then falling, endless falling.

Dunyasha had been the last thing Inej expected. She hadn’t seen her coming. She hadn’t been prepared.

She couldn’t have been, but it made her angry at herself all the same. If not for Nina, she would’ve died that day. 

Which really was becoming a trend.

People scoffed at the Suli notion of shadows. But as Inej locked eyes with Dunyasha at the sugar silo, and then again on the roof of the church, she couldn’t shake the feeling of visceral dread that filled her stomach like ice water.

Dunyasha’s daemon was a bird, too. A falcon or a hawk or some other kind of raptor, small but deadly, with sharp talons and a vicious beak. Completely white, and not in the way Wylan’s Silja was. She was white like porcelain, pristine and beautiful. White like fluffy clouds on a sunny day, or freshly fallen snow before it’d been dirtied by the grime of Ketterdam.

But this daemon was white like a complete absence of color, a tiny void in the middle of the world. It unsettled Inej in a way she couldn’t put into words. And the contrast between him and Ajit was too obvious to seem like a coincidence. Ajit was darkness, true, but he was color too - blue and purple and red, rich and deep, glimmering like gemstones. Dunyasha’s soul was… empty.

Inej could feel the way his cruel feet tore into Ajit as she and Dunyasha fought. Her daemon was valiant, but he was smaller, unequipped for battle. Ajit had been made for entertaining crowds, swift and clever and graceful. The hawk, on the other hand, was a killing machine, with one goal in mind only.

But one thing about hawks was that they valued their sight over anything else, and when Dunyasha threw powder in Inej’s face, hoping for the sudden blindness to tip the scales in her favor, she was thinking like a hawk.

Inej didn’t think like a hawk.

She’d been on this roof too many times to remember, and her feet knew every inch of it even with her eyes closed. Ignoring the pain of Ajit being attacked in the air above her, she focused on the tiles underneath, searching for what she needed. She breathed in slowly.

There it was.

This time, it was Dunyasha who fell, and there was no waffle-obsessed Heartrender with an army of revenants to break her fall.

Ajit landed on Inej’s shoulder, and she ran her hand over his feathers, examining them carefully. Entire handfuls had been torn out, and she felt the warmth of his blood on her fingers. The wounds on his sides bit into her own flesh in the same spots, though her skin was untouched. He snuggled into her neck, and Inej fought back a sob at how small and delicate he looked, all battered like that, yet still resilient. Trying to stay strong for her benefit, even though she acutely felt the depth of his pain.

“We’re okay,” he whispered, shaking like a leaf. “We’re alive.”

Inej sniffled. She’d allow herself this one moment of vulnerability, up here where no one but her soul could see her. “When did you get so brave?”

He huffed a broken laugh. “Always have been. When did you get so clever?”

Together, they looked over the edge of the roof. Far, far below, the white speck of Dunyasha’s body lay unmoving. Too solid to be a shadow.

Her daemon was gone, scattered into dust and carried away by the wind, and Inej wasn’t sure she’d ever felt more profound relief in her life.

***

It wasn’t the only daemon that disappeared, in the end.

Where the hawk’s absence had been a welcome one, Saga’s cut like a white-hot knife of sorrow. It seemed wrong, to see Matthias without her; utterly, unspeakably wrong. She’d been such a large presence, in every sense of the word. The biggest daemon Inej had ever seen, silvery like moonlight, gorgeous and deadly at once. Her teeth so sharp, yet her fur so soft to the eye.

As Nina sobbed in her arms, Inej could only think of how gentle Saga had always been with Kirin. Her head had been bigger than the monkey’s entire body, yet she’d nuzzled him so tenderly, carried him on her back, let him curl up at her side while they slept. Even when Matthias had been at his most standoffish and glaring, Saga had stayed close to Nina.

Inej knew she hadn’t imagined the way Nina’s hand would wander to the scruff of Saga’s neck sometimes, as if of its own volition. The way it would linger there for just a second, brushing the ends of the wolf’s fur with the tips of her fingers.

Her eyes moved to Kaz over Nina’s trembling shoulders. She tried to imagine what the world would look like without Eris’s presence in it, so gentle and sweet in spite of all of Kaz’s harshness, as if he’d packed away every soft thing about him and given it to his daemon to carry.

The spider was so small, completely hidden away under Kaz’s clothes, but the gaping wound she would leave in the fabric of Inej’s reality if something happened to her seemed completely irreparable.

When Kaz’s eyes flickered to Ajit, wings spread wide and wrapped around Kirin, she wondered if he felt the same about her own soul.

She knew the answer.

As she tightenend her arms around Nina, she wished it could make things easier.

Moment number four: pain and tears and wishing, the same useless wishing that couldn’t bring Matthias back any more than it could heal all the broken bits scattered like shards of glass between her and Kaz.