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Chapter Text

It was always going to end like this. Deep down, Kaz wanted it to end like this, and yet, as Inej stands surrounded by the Dregs in the silence of the Slat common room, the thought is not comforting.
She's come home to find him dead. It's a whim of fate that she's even here to send him off, and for the first time maybe ever she truly understands what it cost him to let her go.

Kaz doesn't look like he's at rest. He does not look asleep or peaceful. He looks dead, because he is. She's seen enough dead bodies to know the difference. His face is a greenish sort of pale and a few strands of black hair have fallen over his open eyes. She would have cut it for him during her visit. The blood on his clothes isn't too visible, a shiny patch of brownish dark on black, but the impact of the bullet is clear as day, tattered edges just an inch above his heart.

The Dregs are standing vigil to Dirtyhands' corpse, waiting for someone, waiting for him, really, to tell them what to do. No one has touched him. Even in death he commands the room, and they haven't dared. Inej does it for them. She closes Kaz's eyes first, cannot stand the vacant stare of them, the lifeless sheen of the light reflected there. She lays him out properly on the table, brings his cane to rest on the crook of his elbow, smoothes his lapels and his shirt, barely flinches when her fingers stain red on the wet cotton. When she's set his tie straight Inej bends down to kiss Kaz, a barely there brush of her lips against his. It's cold and dry, and not at all like any kiss they've ever shared, yet she still feels the shift in the atmosphere, is suddenly very aware of the Dregs shuffling awkwardly behind her. She's never kissed him in public. She'll never have kissed him in public now, not that he'd have wanted her to. Kaz was hers privately, kissing him now takes him away from the Dregs, though Dirtyhands belonged to them.

“Where's Lyra?” The girl must not know yet, or she'd be here.
“Out on a job,” someone says, some newish recruit Inej doesn't know well.
“Someone find her.” She's met with silence. “Now.” Inej turns around with her blades in hand. Whatever argument the Dregs might have raised at taking orders from her dies at the sight of her Saints.
“I'll go get her,” Fry says, which is probably the safest choice. Lyra'll take the news hard, and there aren't many who'll understand just how hard, but Fry will, at least better than most.
“Good.” Inej turns back to Kaz. “Leave us.”
“Inej...” someone starts, maybe Pim. Sankta Alina sinks into the doorframe before she's really decided to throw it.
“Leave.”
They leave.

Inej stands her own vigil after that, watches over Kaz until the sun peters out and the door finally creaks open. Lyra meant to be heard, or she'd have kept it silent. Inej nods when the girl comes to stand on the other side of Kaz, and when she reaches a hand to touch his shoulder she lets her. He's hers as much as Inej's.
“Mister Kaz,” Lyra says, her voice barely over a whisper, “got that intel you wanted, I'll take care of it now, don't worry.” She cries then, silent tears that roll down her cheeks and disappear into her blouse, but Inej can't. If she gives in to her grief now she'll never get back up, and this is not who they are. They keep on fighting, so Inej settles for the empty feeling in her heart, a slow-spreading cold that might never thaw out.

Later, Jes joins them. He falters at the sight of Kaz, grows uncharacteristically still in the doorframe, shakes his head like he cannot quite believe it. Wylan comes too, though Inej assumes he's had to use the tunnel, he can't very well be seen using the front door. He makes them all drink water and drags chairs around for them to sit on, but he knows better than to talk.

When the sun comes back up again, Lyra breaks the silence. “Anika brought him back. Says he...” Her voice breaks and she draws in a breath, pushes through a new wave of tears. “Says it happened on the docks, bullet got him from a rooftop and she dragged him home.”
Inej nods. She doesn't want to know. If they give her a name now she'll go on rampage, put everything she's trying not to feel into the immediate gratification of an under-planned revenge, and Kaz deserves better.

“What now?” Jesper asks. He's gripping the table, fingernails digging into the wood half an inch from Kaz's gloved hand but Inej knows he won't cover the distance, will not take in death what was not offered in life.
“Not the barge,” she says. She will not send him back. Kaz will not burn on that island, one more bloated body amongst his nightmares.
“No.” Lyra dries her eyes on her sleeve, “I'll take care of it.” Inej's not sure exactly how much she knows, but as she watches her draw her shoulders back and morph her face into a blank mask of efficiency, there is no doubt in her mind that she was Kaz's, and that he's taught her enough.

Jes nods, and Wylan too, but Lyra turns to her, raises half an eyebrow in question.
“Kaz first,” Inej says, “then revenge.”
“I'll go with you.”
“Of course.” Inej will tolerate no one else, but Lyra's owed this as much as she is, she's just lost her second father, and retribution is the language he raised her to speak.

It's hard to know who's keeping a brave front for whose benefit once she's gone, but Jesper is the first to cave. He dissolves into wracking sobs, pushes Wylan away when he tries to comfort him. Wylan looks briefly hurt before composing himself, and Inej wonders what he knows, or what he must have guessed of the boys' relationship. She's known, of course, all these years, that Jesper never fully healed from Kaz, never got over being in love with a man who could only ever see him as a brother. Hearts will do what they will, and Jes's is big enough for two, big enough to content himself with whatever Kaz managed to give him, knowing full well it would never be quite right. Wylan must have known too, she decides, because he smiles sadly, whispers something to Jes before leaving the room.

“He loved you as best he could.” Inej tells Jesper when he can breathe again. Her eyes are drawn to Kaz's face, as they always are, but every time her gaze lands on his blood-drained lips her heart seizes and the world goes a little colder.
“I know,” Jepser says. He offers her a sad smile. “He loved you better than that.”
“Yes.” There's no point in denying it. Kaz loved her furiously, quietly and absolutely, and now he's gone.

“What are you going to do when it's done?”
“Leave.”
“Inej...” Jesper's tone turns pleading.
“No, Jes. Ketterdam was always him. I've got nothing to come back to anymore.”
He looks at her with real hurt in his eyes but that's the truth of it, she'd have stopped coming years ago if not for Kaz, and the city will only hurt her now. “Write to me, come visit me in Ravka if you can, this city's not mine. It was only ever ours.”

“What about the Dregs?” Jesper asks, but there's little conviction in his voice.
“I'm sure Lyra can handle that.” Inej doesn't care about the Dregs, really, not beyond the personal connections she has with the old members. This is not a part of Kaz that belongs to her.
“Is that what he wanted, do you think? For the kid to get it all?”
“If she can take it, then yes.” Inej has no doubt the succession will be a hard-fought battle, but more than ever she knows it is not her fight, though Kaz would have loved to see it unfurl. “You know Kaz, Jes, never anything for free.”
“Knew.” Jes whispers, and Inej looks away from him and at Kaz's ghostly face.
“Knew.”

Chapter Text

“Who are you?”
Lyra's got to hand it to the judge, he takes fairly well to the presence of an intruder in his office. She sets her glass down on the desk next to her feet. He's got excellent whiskey, she should look into his supplier.
“Doesn't matter who I am”, she tells him.
The judge's face does something complicated, starts with anger, runs through fear briefly before settling on a posh neutral smile.

“Ah. One of Brekker's aren't you?”
“You could say that.” She keeps her voice level as she shrugs, now is not the time for sentiment.
“And what does he want now?” The judge sounds resigned to his fate, whatever the boss had on him, it's bad.
“He's dead.” Lyra says, and she might kill him for the sheer relief that shines in his eyes, the obvious way in which his shoulders relax at the news.

“My condolences,” he nods, more ingrained politeness than sincerity, “you can leave now.” There's something new in his tone, like he's seen an out and is running for it. Lyra's too angry to find it funny.
“Thank you.” She makes no move to leave or explain herself, just swishes the whiskey in her glass idly, playing with the reflection of the lights. The judge looks at her expectantly for a while before he sighs, sounding for all the world like a put out father. Well. Not hers, clearly, the boss would have approved of this.

“What do you want?” the judge asks, “and why should I do anything for you?” He steps up towards Lyra and pours himself a drink, throws a disgusted glance at her boots on his shiny mahogany desk but clearly thinks better of fighting her on it.
“The boss's dead, doesn't mean we can't still ruin you.” There's no 'we' yet, and she isn't exactly here in any official Dregs capacity, but he doesn't need to know that. She watches him go very still, registers the slight tremor in his hand as he sets the bottle down. Good, Lyra thinks, fear has come back to him.
“You're bluffing.”
“Am I?”
“He said...” the judge shakes his head, “he said the secret would die with him, he swore he wouldn't tell anyone else if I held up my end,” he speaks like he really wants to believe it, but the fight's already half gone out of him. Lyra rolls her eyes, pushes the knife in anyway.
“And you believed that?” She lets disdain drip on her every word, infuses each syllable with sarcasm. “Thought Dirtyhands was good on his word or something?” He was. Infuriatingly so. Lyra is bluffing, she has no idea what the boss had on him, but she can yield fear and shame as well as her knives, and if she doesn't miss he'll never stop to think she hasn't actually offered proof of what she's supposed to know.

The judge eyes the knife in her hand when she lets it slide from her sleeve, seems to weigh his options. He's not an insubstantial man, but brute force alone doesn't do much in a knife fight, and he's at least twenty years older than she is, she could take him down in a heartbeat. She's not scary, at first glance, barely clears five feet, but there are the tattoos on her body, the one she bled for and the ones she chose for herself, plus the dead-eyed stare she's stolen from the boss. It's enough for the judge to give up on fighting her.
“Fine.” The defeat in his voice is music to her ears. “What do you want?” the judge sits down on the visitor's side of his own desk.

“A permit,” Lyra smiles sweetly.
“For?”
“The burial of Kaz Brekker on Black Veil Island.”
The judge lets out a shocked little laugh. “That's impossible.”
Lyra lets her feet fall to the ground with a loud thud and stands, leans over the desk to look down on him. “Make it possible.”
“I can't. No one's been buried on Ketterdam soil since the first plague, everybody knows that.” They do. Paupers are sent on the barge to be burnt, and the rich and mighty get mausoleums built inland. But Kaz Brekker was neither and both, and this city was his.
“The council'll make an exception,” Lyra tells the judge, “and when they come to you for the permit, you'll sign off on it.”
“They won't.”
“You were my first stop, Schorel, but it's early still, you'll have the papers on your desk by tonight.” This Lyra can say with certainty, the boss may not have told her everything, but she knows how to sway the Council, which members to blackmail and which to bribe, and they will not fight her on this.

“How?” he asks, and Lyra bares her teeth into a grin.
“Well... If it comes to it, I know things, but the Barrel just lost its bastard king, pretty fertile ground for a riot, don't you think?” If there's one thing the Council won't risk at the height of tourist season, it's days of fighting and looting, fires starting and spreading fast. There's too much Kruge at stake and they know she can deliver. Schorel seems to know it too because he swallows thickly before nodding.
“I'll sign the permit.”
“Good.” Lyra makes her way to the door, turns her head back to him on her way out. “See you around, Judge.”

Chapter Text

The attic is empty, of course, no one has set foot in it since Kaz left to meet his death, and very few people since he took possession of it a quarter of a century ago.
Inej runs a hand along the makeshift desk Kaz never saw fit to upgrade, takes in the perfectly-made bed she had planned on inhabiting for the next few weeks. Not so now. She's spent a few hours chasing after sleep in her old room, looking blankly at the ceiling. Sleep didn't come. Tears didn't come either, nothing but a hollow feeling and the certitude that she couldn't face their bed alone.

She's facing it now, but only because she needs to get Kaz's things in order, to hide away what he wouldn't want others to see. Inej will protect him even in death, and for Kaz it means upholding his reputation, keeping the armour on to the end, at least for the rest of the world to see.

She walks to the wardrobe, avoids looking at her reflection in the mirror that covers most of the opposite wall. She's supposed to pick a suit, something to bury Kaz in now that they're sure they can go through with it. Lyra's presented them with a derogation signed off by both Council and court, shrugging lightly when Anika asked how she'd managed it. Inej should probably mind more that the girl's using this to make her moves towards power, but she knows Kaz would be proud, would probably make light of her reservations. Funerals are just another show Inej, the dead don't care.

Inej picks a black shirt from the neatly folded pile in front of her, a simple linen one that she loved to sleep in, then moves on to find a vest and jacket. There isn't much to consider, most of what Kaz wore was black or white, expensive but unadorned, and all of it matching. The only piece of colour he owns is a Suli shirt her mother's made for him in purple silk. Kaz wore it exactly once, the day after it had been gifted to him on the one trip he took with her to Ravka. She hadn't thought he would, but Kaz had been surprisingly keen on winning her parents over, and he'd worn the shirt to the festival as a show of respect for her mother's work and her entire culture besides. His plans to get into her parents' good graces had worked, like most of his schemes, though she'd been hard-pressed to find his angle. It matters to you, doesn't it? I can wear a shirt Inej, so long as no one asks me to dance. Inej blinks away the memory of Kaz, nearly tanned after a month at sea, drinking with her cousins and stumbling his way through conversations in broken Ravkan and irredeemable Suli as she danced with the other girls, his eyes flashing towards her often enough that they'd made fun of him for it. He'd blushed. Inej completes her selection with a clean pair of gloves, sets it on the desk along with her mother's shirt.

There's a loose plank hidden up over the top of the supporting beam in the rafters, if you know to look for it, and beneath it a big enough space to hide a flat box. Inej climbs up and pries it from under the shingles, lets herself down silently. The box is padlocked, of course, but Kaz's lessons in lock-picking haven't been in vain, she pries it open in a few minutes, thinks that it would have taken him about ten seconds to do the same. Kaz was nothing if not paranoid - cautious, Inej – so the box itself is a riddle, can only be opened through sliding and pushing on the right metal and wooden pieces in the right order. Inej makes short work of that, there's an exact replica of that box in her cabin on the Wraith. Inside Kaz's she finds herself. Twenty years of letters and trinkets, inconsequential notes and heartfelt gifts. There's a lock of her hair tied with a piece of leather thong, a tiny paper bird she'd made for him after a girl they rescued from a Shu slaver taught her how. She'd tried to make it look like a crow, but paper birds aren't that easy to subdue.

Inej closes the box and goes to the window, the one that Kaz never locked. The crows flock to her when she throws grain for them, and one of the oldest ones perches on her shoulder. Inej runs a finger down its inky feathers. “Hi Kaz.” She'd named it as a joke, and Kaz had pretended to be annoyed by it. True to form, it has lived long past its natural life, possibly from sheer force of will. Inej tries to find this beautiful, but the bird is alive and Kaz is not, she's not sure she'll ever manage to find anything beautiful anymore.

There's a few more things for her to gather, gifts from Lyra and Jes that they might want to keep, a couple of books and a tattered piece of red ribbon Inej cannot throw away. She can't put it in the box either, Kaz would not have liked that. In the end she slides Saskia's poisoned gift in her pocket, will return it to the sea when she next sails, to drown and rot with the rest of his demons.

Lyra goes in through the window. The lock yields to her with a satisfying little click and she steps in, takes in the boss's office. If I ever catch you in here again, you're out. Well, joke's on him now, this is the last time she'll need to break in. If things go right it will be hers soon, along with everything else.

It's hard to think of him dead, so she doesn't. She ignores the couch by the window, pointedly looks away from the faded stain still distinguishable on the seat. It's her own blood on the fabric. The Wraith is clearing the attic right about now, gathering the mysterious pieces of the boss's private life, but for Lyra it's the office that holds him. It's here they've had most of their important conversations, here he's taught her to read and count and scam, here she's last seen him too. The trick, kid, is to pretend you don't love anything, sentimentality will only get you dead. Lyra shakes her head firmly and moves away from the desk and its piles of papers, the knife she'd given him open on top of the ledger, like maybe he'd been halfway through slicing an apple when he went out.

She's careful to keep quiet, walks up to the painting that covers the wall safe. It's terribly cliché, he'd told her once, but sometimes old tricks work just fine, and anyway, who would dare break into Dirtyhands' office? Lyra, evidently. She'd had no intention of stealing anything the last time she did this, and she's not stealing now, unless you count information, which she doesn't. She tucks her hair away and presses an ear to the cold metal of the safe, takes her time working it open. It's absurdly complicated, a multi-lock affair Lyra suspects he's designed himself, but nothing is unbreachable, and she's come a long way since her first lessons. Good. Now go and practise. She had.

Lyra listens to each bolt and tumbler as it falls into place, switches and holds her picks whenever necessary, does it all patiently until the door finally gives in. There's no money in the safe, they keep the clubs' earnings on the premises and wash the rest of their revenue through them too, before it's redistributed. Money is not what she's after. Lyra's here for the paperwork, as boring as it sounds. The boss has to have left a will of some sort, he'd never have let his shares go for auction, not when the cash from those flows straight into the Council's coffers. If not a will, Lyra's at least hoping to find a run down of the clubs' shares, usable intel on who in the Dregs is more likely to fight her, who has more to lose if business is disrupted.

The old guard, as it turns out, Pim and Anika and Roeder, Keeg and some others too, but their shares aren't much. As a rule the Dregs don't get shares, everybody is on payroll for the clubs anyway, plus all the extras from the traffic and heists, but most high-ranking members eventually buy in, it's a status thing as much as some form of stability. Mostly though, the clubs are divided between local business owners, each owning a small share, not enough to weigh in on decisions but enough for the cash returns to keep the legitimate denizens of the Barrel happy with Dirtyhands. The boss owned the majority of everything, of course. Lyra has a major stake in the Ace of Spades, plus minor shares in most everything else, which does not give her any specific power over the business, and even less so over the disreputable side of it. This she'll have to fight for.

There's a will at the bottom of the safe, properly notarised and signed, stamped on and everything. It's authentic, as far as she can tell, and if it isn't it looks good enough to hold up in court. The date at the top goes back a few weeks, and Lyra wonders how often he updated it. Often enough, probably, he seemed constantly surprised to have made it this old. Lyra chuckles drily at the thought. Thirty-seven isn't old, not even by Barrel standards, though dying young isn't a novelty either, whether you're in a gang or not.

The will settles nothing, not that she'd expected it to. There's a farm inland that he's bequeathed to Jesper for some reason, and a truly indecent amount of money that's going to the Wraith, but every other asset, the will says, is to be divided in proportional shares amongst existing Dregs stake holders, the management of each establishment to be reviewed at their discretion. In other words, Lyra thinks, he's left them to sort it out amongst themselves. No one deserves anything, kid, and nothing is ever fair, so just grab what you want and call it good business practice. He's left her the Slat though, and that's all the endorsement she needs.

It's their name on the deed, and though she doesn't use it much seeing it tears something loose in her.
“Got the paperwork done for your share kid, we just need to fill it in.”
“Alright.”
“You're going to need a name.”
“What's wrong with mine?”
“A surname, Lyra.”
“Yea, and again, what's wrong with mine?”
“I don't know it.”
“You don't know it?”
“No.”
“I feel like you should, Boss.”
“Never came up, did it?”
“Guess not. Da was Bastjin Aakster.”
“Lyra Aakster, then?”
“Well, what else?”
“I was thinking Brekker.”
“Oh.”
“Only if you want, Lyra. I just figured if you liked your own, you might have been using it.”
“Yeah. It's... I don't know Boss, Da would have hated it here. Might have despised me too, if I'm honest.”
“His loss, kid.”
“Lyra Brekker, though. I could get used to it.”
“Lyra Brekker then.”
Lyra lets herself cry for a minute or two before she gathers herself and puts the papers back. She's got work to do now, Anika's meeting her at the club soon, she can't afford to fall apart before she's done, and probably never again once she is, at least not where people can see.

Chapter Text

“So,” Lyra starts.
“So.” They're having a drink in the backroom of the Ace of Spades, and it hasn't escaped Anika's notice that the kid's doing this on her turf, picking the club she runs when the Crow is much closer to the Slat, and Anika's own Six not as far. “Pim and Roeder have gone to the Gulls and I've seen Heilmer for the Liddies. We've got a forty eight hour truce.”
“Good,” Lyra nods, “that's enough time for the funeral, but there'll be damage after that. Nishka's sent Elke and Sami out to find what they can, but so far nothing.”
Anika frowns. “Not the Wraith?”
“No one sends the Wraith anywhere,” Lyra shrugs, “she'll get on it after the funeral if nothing comes up before then. We'll deal with it.”
“Right.” It makes sense, objectively, that Inej would be the one to do it, and Lyra has a strong claim to revenge herself, but this goes way beyond personal grudge. “Dregs gotta have their say here, especially if it's a gang.”
“I know.”

They drink quietly for a bit. It's a complicated situation they find themselves in. There's realistically no one besides them who'd be able to run the Dregs, not to say there won't be more willing to get a taste of power. Anika's got seniority, but in the Barrel being old isn't necessarily a good thing, no boss can look weak and she'll be forty soon. Lyra's younger, fierce and ruthless, and no one can deny she's got what it takes, except she's Brekker's kid, and the Barrel hates heirs. Fortunes are made here, not handed down.
The question, Anika muses, is does she actually want Brekker's job? She's been his lieutenant for over two decades and she never really knew the man. Being boss seems lonely, though that might just have been Kaz.

“I'm sorry,” Anika tells Lyra, “about Brekker.”
Lyra just nods, takes another sip form her glass. “Was it quick?” she asks after the silence's settled back.
“Yeah.” The bullet had come from the roof, long after they'd stopped expecting heat. Brekker and her had led a few bruisers to settle a territory claim on the edge of fourth harbour, a routine show of force against the Black Tips that Anika can't see being linked to it. “Asshole fell to his knees and tried to get himself up, pushed on his cane and everything, reached for his piece even, before he keeled backwards. Must have taken thirty seconds, tops.” The rest of them had started shooting back by then, but the men she'd sent to get the shooter had come up with nothing. Anika wonders when she turned asshole into a term of endearment, but Brekker had that gift, of making you like him even being what he was.
“He say anything?”
“No,” she'd like to tell her something else, her or Inej, tell them that he'd thought of them at the end, but it really had been quick, and Brekker had been nothing but practical, trying to fight back, to keep himself upwards long enough to shoot. “Sort of smirked though.” Before the light had gone out of his eyes. Anika'd dragged his body to a boat, brought him back to the Slat.
“He would.” Lyra snorts into her glass.
“Yeah.”

It's still unreal to think of him dead, he's been ruling over her days for so long, it's like losing a clock or a compass – though one she'd had a mild crush on at some point. There's more silence, another round of observation before Lyra gets to it.
“Right,” she finally says, “you know I'll go for it.”
Anika appreciates that, the kid being straight with her. It bodes rather well for the rest.
“Assumed so.”
“Yeah. Are you gonna try and stop me?”
“Depends.” Anika looks at Lyra then, tries and fails to read her. Whatever Brekker was like behind the mask, he probably was a good teacher, the kid's face is perfectly blank.
“On?”
“What you plan to do next.”

“Should we take his gloves off?” Wylan asks softly. He's been very quiet since Kaz died, and Jesper knows it's his fault, he's being cold and standoffish like he's the only one in pain here and Wy didn't love Kaz like a brother too. That's the crux of it, of course, that Jesper loved Kaz the way he loves Wy, so not exactly like a brother. He's about to tell Wylan no, not when people will see, when Inej beats him to it.
“No. He'll need them down in hell.”
“Inej!” Wy sounds genuinely shocked, which really is a testament to how fucking sweet he still is.
“What? I know who I love, Wy, and he was not a good man. Kaz'll be running the place by the time I join him there, and he'll need the armour. The gloves stay, and the cane. No one could use it anyway, this thing is absurdly heavy.”
“Lethal” Jesper says.
“Exactly.” Inej nods towards Wylan, who just shrugs.

“You're not going to hell, though, 'Nej”, Jesper says, “you and Wy are the best of us.”
“I've got enough blood on my hands to give even Barrel thugs pause, Jes.”
“Slaver blood,” he argues. It's not like her to be that bleak, although of course there's always been the proverbs.
“Not only,” Inej says as she arranges Kaz's hair. She's swapped his ruined suit for an immaculate replica of it before Jesper helped her move his body into the coffin. He'll seal it closed before they bury it, but they'll row it open all the way down to the island, Lyra's going for a show, and Jesper agrees. The Barrel doesn't get much, at least this once they can honour their dead. Besides, Kaz would have loved the grandstanding of it all, and he suspects that's why Inej's going along with it too.
“You had to, 'Nej.”
“So did he.”

That's arguable, Jesper thinks, but she's not entirely wrong. Kaz spent half his life doing what he had to to survive, and so do most Barrel rats for that matter, it's just that the definition of what's necessary tends to vary widely from one person to the next, and if you're Jesper, from one hour to the next. Maybe she just needs to believe she'll see him again, and it's easier to think of her going down than Kaz going up, so Jesper drops the point.
“They'll be here soon.”
“Two minutes,” Wy says with a glance at his watch, and Jesper goes to him, takes his hand in his. Wy tenses but lets him.
“I'm sorry,” he murmurs, as Inej pretends to be busy with Kaz's cufflinks, gives him this fleeting moment of privacy before they both go and bury the man they love.
“It's fine.” Wylan shrugs, but his eyes won't meet Jesper's.
“It's not. You've been nothing but understanding and I'm sorry, okay? I've got no right to be an asshole to you just because I'm heartbroken.”
“I...” Wy starts, and this time their eyes connect. “You're right. Make it up to me by going through today, alright?” He squeezes his hand and Jesper squeezes back, breaking eye contact at the knock on the door. It's time.
Inej squares her shoulders like she's about to walk on stage, casts a last glance at Kaz before leading the way out. Lyra and Anika fall into step on either side of her, and Pim comes in with Roeder and Specht. Together they'll carry Kaz to the boat, then row him down to Black Veil.
“No promises,” Jesper tells Wylan as he shoulders his share of the weight.

Chapter Text

They're all here. All the Dregs of course, minus those manning the clubs, but most of the Barrel has come out too, the shop owners and the street pedlars, come to bear witness to Dirtyhands' last great con. Even the bosses from the rival gangs have shown up to pay their dubious respects, protected by the fragile truce Anika's brokered. Lyra watches them closely, but none of them show any sign of guilt or triumph. It's unlikely they're behind his death anyway, they're all too pathetic to have dared. There are street kids too and a few daring tourists, no doubt driven here by sheer curiosity, it's the first Ketterdam funeral in a century after all, even without the low-life crowd in their Barrel flash it would still be something to see. The girls from the Fleur de Lys have come too, a few of them informants but mostly just grateful for their freedom and protection, not mentioning the substantial number of those who've got Dregs sweethearts and have turned up in support. Lyra doesn't doubt the Stadwatch has sent people as well, but let them watch. Nothing happening here today is illegal, except from the pickpocketing, which is just par for the course. If their reports mention a new boss for the Dregs, well... It's just a matter of time before word gets out anyway, and it's not like they don't already know who she is.

Jesper's here, of course, decked in flash and gold, maybe so no one will notice his ashen skin and sunken eyes. Wylan's nearby, dressed in some sort of compromise between his official mercher black and normal clothes, possibly trying to blend in. He doesn't, but that's fine, no one is looking at him and he's had years of experience beating the allegations around his entanglements with the Barrel, Lyra's not worried about him.
The Wraith is another story. She's dressed up at the pirate queen she is, not as a Barrel spider, gold in her hair and black kohl around her eyes, half a dozen blades shining in the sun. She's asked to be the first to speak, and no one thought to deny her. She's the boss's widow, whether they were married or not doesn't change the fact. Once the crowd has settled into relative silence, the Dregs arranged in a semi-circle around the freshly dug grave and the boss's open coffin, Inej steps up on the upturned crate Keegs's thought to bring along. Even standing there she barely reaches Jesper's height, which doesn't stop her from commanding the audience.

“I have nothing to say that Kaz would have wanted you to hear.”
“Boss didn't seem to mind us hearing you all that much,” Luka interrupts. Inej chuckles along with the Dregs, you don't spend twenty years on a pirate ship learning about good taste. “It's not hearing me come that should have you sweating Luka.”
Luka pales as the crowd snickers. “Didn't mean nothing by it Wraith, sorry.”
Inej nods slightly and moves on, she doesn't mind the interruption but the comment just brought home the fact that Kaz will never touch her again, never make her moan or come or laugh, and she can't think about this now, cannot break down yet, not until the Wraith is well underway. If anything, banter is easier than thinking about what she's doing, about what she still needs to do before she can set sail again. Someone has to pay for the hole in her heart.

“I haven't been Dregs for a very long time now, and you owe me no loyalty. I know you will want retribution,” she says, and they nod their assents, a few 'ayes' rising from the ranks. “You're owed your revenge for the death of your leader, and you will have it. But I'm owed more. Kaz was your boss but he was mine, and I intend to settle that score. If you know what's good for you, you'll not try and rob me of my revenge. Lyra will come with me, and that should be enough for you.”

In the silence that follows Inej steps down from the crate. Lyra can take it from here, she's got work to do. She stands for a minute looking down at this man she loves, the only person she could ever really bring herself to trust. She's supposed to find him small, now that she's standing and he's down, but it's not a position they were entirely unacquainted with, and he'd never seemed small to her. He doesn't now. He's dead but he's still Kaz, and for an insane second she considers laying herself down with him, letting her life be taken too, so she doesn't have to go on loving a ghost, waiting for letters that will no longer come. He would never forgive her if she did. Despair is not something Kaz ever bowed to, and Inej isn't about to start either. She'd tried to take her life once, a long time ago in the Menagerie. Heleen had made sure she didn't touch another blade until Kaz put Sankt Petyr in her hands.

She unsheathes it now and reaches over her shoulder for her braid. It's heavier than usual, done up with golden beads for the occasion. Inej slices it off at the nape, ignores the few shocked gasps from the crowd at her back and lays it down next to Kaz. It's as much of her as she can give him, and it doesn't feel nearly enough.
She doesn't look back when she leaves, just lets herself slip through the crowd and into a boat, rows back to Ketterdam proper and turns into Kaz's Wraith for the last time as she blends with the city.

Lyra gives them a minute to process Inej's exit, and then it's her turn to speak. She steps up on the crate and looks through the crowd, careful not to let her gaze catch on anyone in particular, especially not Fry or Jes, making note of who looks genuinely grave and who doesn't, and what their postures are telling her.
“No mourners,” she starts.
“No funerals,” the Dregs chant back as one.
“Yeah. So. So much for that then, but the boss was never big on sticking to the rules.” There's a few smirks and some mild chuckles, and Lyra goes on. Keeping her voice level while his corpse is lying right next to her is the hardest thing she's ever done for Dirtyhands, even considering she's also doing it for herself.

“He was a contrary asshole,” she says, “cold and moody, distant and tyrannic, right?”
They don't answer. They're watching her intently too, waiting for her to slip up or step up, waiting to see how this all plays out. Today they're holding a funeral, a loud, inevitable middle finger drawn in the face of Ketterdam's good society, but tomorrow there'll be hell to pay and scores to settle. After that, Lyra knows, it might be war. Everybody's going to want a piece of the kingdom, and if she's not careful there'll be nothing left. “Still, he put a roof over your head and Kruge in your pockets, and for all that he wasn't necessarily fun to be around, he was fair and he was just. He was all of that to me too, gave me a home when he could have just as easily thrown me back into the canals. Each of us owes the boss something. Our lives, our fortunes, the reputation that has kept us on top.” Lyra pauses briefly to glance through the crowd. There are so many eyes on her, she imagines his, the amused glint in them when she got cocky.

“You may not have loved him, and he wouldn't have wanted you to, but I did, and I know you all respected him. So here's what we do. We keep going. The clubs don't close, the shipments keep coming, and the Dregs keep winning.
Dirtyhands was my Da, but you're each of you family. You know what I want. The boss didn't own you, and you're no one's inheritance. I don't own you either, but I'll fight for you. I'll fight to keep us all together, and to keep the business going. The Slat is mine, as per his own will, but the clubs aren't, we all still share them.” Lyra stops to acknowledge the rest of the Dregs lieutenants, Anika, Roeder, Keegs, Rotty, Nishka and Jes, though she's not sure how long he'll stick around now that the boss's gone.

“The boss named no heir, but I intend to claim it all anyway.”
“I taught you how to pick pockets, Lyra.”
“I know Leo, and I dragged you home from a puddle of your own sick just last week, what exactly is your point?” That earns her a few open laughs, which Leo doesn't appreciate.
“Why should we follow you, kid?”
“Because I haven't been a kid for a while now, because I know the business inside and out, know how to read the books and balance them, the names of all our suppliers and the detail of each chain of command for all the clubs and businesses. Because for all that the boss didn't name me heir, I don't see anyone else stepping up to the job, or no one that could do it better than me. Who do you think got the Council to agree to this, Leo?” Lyra gestures at the crowd, encompassing the cemetery and the boss's grave.

“I've been calling shots for a while now, this is just a step up. You're right though, you've known me most my life. So you know what I can do. You know I've bled for the Dregs and you know I'll fight you for it. The real question is, is it worth it, when you know you can't win?” Lyra hates doing this, but he's put himself in the line of fire, and there were bound to be casualties. She needs an example, his ego will recover. “You're old Leo. You're a good bruiser, but you're getting slow. You've been loyal though, and we'll remember it when you can no longer fight. Crows take care of their own.”

There's silence then, as Leo looks away. Lyra hopes they won't pity him, she doesn't need them to like her much, but she'd rather they didn't think her cruel.
“By tomorrow night,” she says, “the truce will end, every small time gang in Ketterdam is going to want a share of our turf.” Lyra nods towards the back where the bosses are gathered, and the Dregs follow her gaze. She watches their faces set into frowns and scowls, whatever they're thinking of her now, it's good to remind them of their real enemy. “The only way we keep it for ourselves is united. You were loyal to Dirtyhands because you trusted him to serve your interests, I seek no other deal from you, and you know I can deliver. So fight me if you want, but do it quick. I've got better things to do than draw on family, doesn't mean I won't. I don't mean to change much, you all keep your jobs, your spots in the Slat, and all the extras you work for...”
“But you're the boss now?” Fin cuts in.
“Good to hear you're following.”
“Gonna get a haircut and start wearing gloves too?”
“Probably not. I'll keep the tits as well, if that was a concern.”
“Was a bit, if I'm honest.”
“Keep dreaming Fin, I would never rob the girls of your company.”
Fin laughs easily at that, and Lyra knows she's won that round.
“Alright Boss, works for me.”
“And me.” Anika steps up on the crate next to her, and that about seals the deal. Enough Dregs nod or mumble things along the lines of 'aye' and 'me too' that there'll be no one to stand against her now. It won't end here, Lyra's well aware, she'll need to prove herself soon, starting with getting even and dealing with dissidents.

“Right,” she says, “now we've got that covered, time to put Dirtyhands to rest. May Ghezen welcome him into his coffers.”
“Bastard'll break his way in, you mean.” Luka says, to general merriment.
Lyra smiles down at the Dregs from her spot on the crate, they're an unruly bunch of thieves and crooks, and yet she's glad that it's with them she's putting a father to the ground this time, not alone with a stuck up priest and a growling stomach. “Should have put that on the stone. Jesper?”

Jesper steps forward and nods, whispers something too low for her to hear as he places the lid on the coffin. Lyra catches one last glimpse of the boss's pale face, but she's said her goodbyes already, back in the Slat where no one could see her tears, and she'd rather look away now, he wouldn't have held it against her. Others move in to help lower the casket down in the grave and then everybody lines up, shovels a little dirt on top until the wood disappears and all that's left is a patch of dark earth. Some Dregs say a few a words as they pay their respects, a few of them throw a coin in the dirt in the old Kerch fashion, but mostly they nod their goodbyes and move on. The Barrel allows no weakness after all, not even for funerals.

Most people leave once they've filed past, back to the Crow for the wake, where they'll spend the night drinking, regaling each other with stories of the boss, of triumphs and near misses and implacable violence. Dirtyhands' myth will live on, grow ever more terrible now that the man isn't here to prove them wrong, not that he ever bothered to. Eventually Lyra's left with Anika, Pim, Wylan and Jes and together they finish the job, seal the grave shut with a heavy slab of stone. Jesper traces words into black granite and the stone yields to him. Lyra watches him work with the same wonder she used to watch the boss's magic tricks, except this is one she'll never be able to master. When he's done engraving Jesper pushes gold from a few coins into the letters, until the text glitters in the fading light of the sun.

There'll be a headstone too, when it's done, with a stone crow and cup and the dates of his life.

Chapter Text

It takes her longer than she'd like. Inej's made a point of running the rooftops every time she's come to shore, but still, a lot has changed in twenty years, and Ketterdam no longer yields to her as it once did. Kaz had other spiders, Roeder and Nishka, and all the younger ones that have come since, but he still asked her on jobs, out of trust, he said, though Inej suspects nostalgia played its part.

She starts with the obvious, once she's changed out of her funeral clothes and into something more practical. There's very little chance of her being recognised if she's even seen, especially not now that her hair's gone, but that is no reason to advertise herself by flashing in the sun. Inej spends some time hanging around other gangs' clubs and haunts, listening to grapevine talks and spying on business deals. She makes notes of a few planned moves against Dregs territory Lyra needs to be made aware of, but there's no word on Kaz's killer. It's what everyone's talking about, but no one seems to have a clue.

There's always a possibility that the shooter was hired by the Council but it doesn't really make sense, Kaz's death alone will not stop the Barrel. It will not close the clubs or the brothels, nor put an end to the gambling and general debauchery of the place. And even if it did, there's too much Kruge to lose for that to be a real Council plan, however much reforming noise they make to keep their wives happy. In all actuality, Inej thinks, Kaz has probably done more to clean up the Barrel than any reforming crusade ever managed. He worked with her to hand the brothels down to their workers and he made the Dregs so big there isn't much competition anymore, and less gang fights as a result. I didn't do it for them, Inej. It's just an unfortunate side effect of us getting richer that the Gelstraat ladies get what they want.

The last option, of course, is revenge. Kaz had no shortage of enemies, and someone's anger was bound to win one day. After a night of unsuccessful spying Inej changes plans, visits the Barrel's many boarding houses listening for tales of strangers and unusual tourists, until finally she strikes gold.

They go in together, Lyra and her, as planned. Inej steps through the window as Lyra kicks the door open, a tactic she's used countless times with Kaz, covering all possible exits simultaneously.
The man in the bed loses no time running for the door, stumbling barefoot through the darkness of the room, and soon finds himself on the business end of Lyra's razor blade. The girl pulls him down until he's kneeling, his head drawn back against her torso.

Inej turns on the lamp that sits on the desk, and in the light of its wavering flame it dawns on her that this is not a man. The boy is sixteen, seventeen at most, and by the looks of him he's not experienced much of Ketterdam before. He's got longish hair that falls over his eyes in mousy-brown strands and the ruddy face of someone who's seen more sun than a Barrel rat can hope to in a lifetime. This boy was farm raised, she would swear to it.

“You sure it's him?” Lyra asks, her grip firm on the blade at his throat. She hasn't so much as nicked the skin, though Inej can clearly see the give of flesh against metal.
“Let's ask,” she says. “What's your name boy?”
“Jaap,” he doesn't sound afraid so much as resigned.
“Do you know who I am?”
“I can guess.” The boy shrugs, and Lyra gathers his hair to pull his head back.
“Don't move.” The blade follows the movement, presses a little harder against the kid's throat as he swallows.
“Guess, then.” Inej says.

“You're here about Brekker.”
“So you're not completely stupid,” Lyra spits, “why are you still here? Why not run?”
“Got nowhere to run to anymore.”
“Good to know,” Lyra smirks, her eyes cold.
Inej watches the scene with growing detachment. They both look like Kaz. Lyra, fierce and unyielding, efficient and angry, and the boy, barely older than Kaz when they met, clearly lost and desperate, but with enough fight left in him to strike.

“Why'd you do it? You're not gang, clearly.”
“Brekker killed my Da. He lost everything we had to the gambling halls and couldn't pay up. I came here to find him after the lawyers came to repossess the land, they told me he'd already been dragged on the barge and burnt. Took me half a day to find out Brekker killed him, he didn't even deny it when I asked, just offered me a job.”
“You should have taken it.”

You can't con an honest man, Inej, I'm not responsible for their greed, or what they put up as stakes. Gambling is a simple game, if you can't pay up you're out. It's all very upfront, really.
Inej finds that she understands the kid, perhaps more so for having understood Kaz's own loss. Does she owe this to Kaz? Another dead country boy to avenge his death? Would Kaz ask it of her? You owe me nothing, Inej. You can have me for as long as you want, but you'll always be free to go. I want nothing from you that you don't want to give.

She's been burning with anger ever since she laid eyes on Kaz's lifeless body, but now Inej feels numb, her revenge increasingly futile. If she kills this boy Kaz will still be dead.
He would have burned her killer to ashes without a trace of hesitation but her own rage is gone, replaced by a bottomless well of grief, and it's all she can do to hold herself up and rein in her tears. Her Saints will be no comfort in this, however much she's prayed for Kaz throughout the years, prayed for one more safe passage back to him, for his demons to let him live and for her own to let her love him, Inej knows that if she's right and Kaz has gone to be judged, he will pronounce himself guilty and refuse to repent. He would accept no salvation, and Inej herself might be past it, for she's always known what Kaz was, and she loves him still, even faced with this freshly orphaned boy whose father shared a vice with Kaz's own best friend and died for it. She looks up to see Lyra frowning at her, realises that she has no idea what has been happening in the past few minutes.

“He could be you,” she tells her. He could be Kaz too, or Colm, if the roles were reversed.
“Yeah,” Lyra agrees, “but he's not.”
“Revenge has got to end somewhere.” Inej isn't sure she believes that. If they let this boy live, will he grow up into the next Dirtyhands? Will he go back to his village, farm what should have been his own land for half a loaf of stale bread and a spot to sleep in a barn at the end of the day? It doesn't matter, she realises, the boy is already dead. We got reborn, Inej, all of us. Ketterdam's magic like that, it kills you and brings someone else back to life.

“Got kin, boy?” Lyra asks, “Mother, siblings? A very young kid?”
“No,” the boy holds his head high. There's nothing but defiance in his eyes, and Inej knows he's not lying. Kaz had been better at hiding, back before he laid his armour at her feet, his mask hardly distinguishable from his actual face, but the boy really does look like him, all anger and spite, fierce desperation barely contained behind his arrogance.
“Ends with him then.” Lyra's blade slides into the kid's throat with a whisper. Blood sprays out in a sickening arc and paints the room crimson, there's a reason why Inej prefers stabbing.

Lyra lets him fall as his body convulses feebly, and by the time she's done wiping her hands he's grown still, a lifeless pile of limbs on the dirty floor.
“Thank you,” Inej says.
“I didn't do it for you.” Lyra's focussed on cleaning her blade but the bite in her tone is unmistakable.
“I know. Thank you anyway.”

“He'd have burned the city down for you, you know that?” Lyra turns to her, reproach evident on her face.
“He almost did, as I recall.” For a mosquito bite. I'm not sure that's the way I want to want you. I don't know that I can do it differently.
“Yeah. So, why?”
Because the boy looked like Kaz. Because after he set her free he wouldn't have made her kill for him. Some things you've got to do for yourself Inej. If you want her dead, kill her. Or let me do it for you, but don't do it for me. “I don't think he would have wanted me to.”
“Wouldn't have stopped you either.”
“No,” Kaz wouldn't have stopped her doing anything, “nor you.”
Lyra nods at that. “Big on freedom, the boss, all things considered.”
“Yes.” Freedom's just another illusion, Inej, but it's the only way to go. They're free to waste their money on chance, and I'm free to play the Council, so long as we all agree to face the consequences when we lose.
You've been running form consequences all your life, Kaz.
Yes. One day they'll catch up to me, and I'll do my level best to make things worse on my way down.

“I don't understand.”
“I don't need you to. I'm glad Kaz got his revenge, and I'm also glad I didn't do it. Dregs got their due, I don't owe you more than that.”
“Not me,” Lyra says, “him.” There's a tense line to her shoulders as she looks at Inej, some real anger that she doesn't seem to know what to do with. Of course she'd be like Kaz. For all the time Inej spent with the Dregs she's not a Barrel native, but Lyra is, as much as Kaz ever was, and revenge is a show of love, sometimes the only acceptable one.

“He'd be glad it was you, you know?” Sometimes I think I've made her worse, but then she smiles like this is the only life worth living, so maybe we were just made of the same stuff anyway.
“Would he?” Lyra sounds unsure still, and Inej could despair of them both, of the twenty years they've spent unable to voice their love.
“Did you want to?”
“Yes.” Lyra doesn't hesitate, she'd have killed the boy with or without Inej, but in her mind and in Inej's own, really, his death had been Inej's due.
“Then yes. Kaz loved you, Lyra, even if he could never tell you.” I gave her my name, Inej. I didn't think it mattered that much until she said yes. I wonder when I grew so soft.
“He showed me well enough.” Lyra says, and Inej wonders whether she's thinking of the same thing or if she found proof somewhere else, in a lock-picking lesson or a late-night glass of brandy shared around a questionable deck of cards. “I never said it either, I think we might have died.”
“He knew.” Neither of you has any sense Inej, she looks at me like I can do no wrong, and you look at me like you can forgive it all.
“Alright.” Lyra's eyes shine too bright in the lamp light and Inej looks away, if the girl starts crying she'll probably follow suit, and they still need to deal with the boy.

“You don't have to stick around for this,” Lyra tells Inej once she's blinked away the tears.
“It's fine.” Inej shrugs like it really is, and Lyra can't tell what she's thinking. It's not the Wraith's first time handling bodies, obviously, but she also couldn't kill the boy, which is still puzzling.

Lyra doesn't doubt that Inej loved the boss, but she was also not really one of them, only working jobs that had to do with her own crusade, so maybe they had an agreement. Inej's different Lyra, she thinks the world can be redeemed. Anyway, if she says the boss wouldn't have asked it of her, that's good enough for Lyra, it's not as if she's shied away from revenge entirely, and the boy's still dead, which is what matters now. Lyra's not stupid, she understands where Inej's coming from, it is not the kid's fault his Da gambled his life away, and she's in no position to begrudge him his desire for revenge, but the rules are simple. When it comes down to it he's killed the boss, and he could not be allowed to live.

Lyra's first kill is distant memory, and she's long ago crossed the line from self-defence to aggression. It tugs on her conscience sometimes, but mostly it doesn't, no one she's killed was innocent, and when someone eventually comes for her she'll probably have deserved it too. The boy's death will not haunt her, she knows. His blood has satisfied something in her, the primal instinct of hurting those who have hurt you, of making sure they will not do it again. The boss's still dead, of course, and that pain isn't going anywhere, but at least now she can look his memory in the eye, knowing she's done what had to be done.

Inej helps her drag the body downstairs. He's quite heavy, stocky in the way farm boys are, grown large from physical labour and a decent diet. Barrel boys run ganglier, which Lyra's not opposed to. The lodger steps out to see what the noise is about, but quickly retreats at the sight of them. Lyra nods to her as they negotiate the narrow turn of the stairs, this place is under Dregs protection and it was once her job to collect. She'll come back later to pay for the door and the cleaning, throw in a little extra for the woman's troubles.

“Where to?” Inej pants as they lift him over the threshold.
“Nearest canal,” Lyra grunts, “then we'll row him up to Fifth harbour.”
They drag Jaap's body down to a flat boat, and Inej takes some time to close his eyes and arrange his limbs into some semblance of resting stance, though there isn't much to do for the mess of blood down his front. “Saints welcome him.” Inej murmurs, closing her own eyes in what Lyra assumes is a silent prayer. She wouldn't know, she hasn't prayed once since Da died, and if she serves Ghezen through enterprise it's only because their goals happen to align.

“I used to have faith.” Inej tells her as they row.
“And you don't anymore?”
“No,” the Wraith shakes her head lightly, “I do. I just wish the world was different.” Her face isn't too visible in the low glow of the gas lights that line the canals, though it's better now that they've left the Barrel, where street lights when they exist are quick to be broken down. No one down there needs the scrutiny. Still, Lyra can see that she looks sad, sadder than she's seen her since they stood vigil by the boss's side. It's an improvement on the dead stare she's been sporting for the last few days, but it's also heartbreaking, and Lyra finds herself grasping for something, anything to make her feel better.
“So keep making it different,” she tries, “I know you had a deal, with the boss I mean, for the slavers and all. I don't see why we can't keep it up.”

“I don't think I can ever come back, Lyra. Not...” Inej's voice breaks down and she draws in a deep breath. “Not without him here.”
“What about Jes?” They're friends, at least, but family too, bound together by some improbable feat Lyra's put together through years of piecemeal retelling, something involving a tank and overpowered Grisha, and the boss conjuring up a fake council of Tides to win a rigged auction.
“Take care of him for me, will you?” The Wraith looks briefly guilty but steels herself, “it's going to be hard on him.”
“It's going to be hard on all of us.”
“Yes.”

When they reach Fifth harbour it's nearly deserted, just a few drunkards waiting for the morning boat, wasted tourists stupid enough to risk sleeping out on the docks. If they're still here it means the watch have come and gone already, they will not be disturbed. Lyra whistles a few notes and a couple of kids come out to meet them.
“Go find Keeg,” she tells them.
“Yes Boss,” the first kid says. She's a tiny girl by the name of Rose, one of the brothel kids that hang around the Slat doing odd jobs for a few Kruge but don't actually live there. Maybe she'll make it out of the Barrel one day, most likely she'll end up in the trade too, or on Dregs payroll.
“Is that him?” the other kid's eyes grow wide at the sight of the body lying between them.
“Yes, Vincent, that's him, now go get Keeg.”
“Sorry Boss, going now,” the kid turns tail and runs.

Keeg steps out of the shadows a few minutes later, takes a long look at the kid and snarls. “Explains the rooftop shot. Kaz would have destroyed that boy in a fight.”
“Yeah,” Lyra nods.
“Smart coward, I guess,” Keeg shrugs as he shoulders the kid's body like he weighs nothing, “though not that smart if he thought we'd let him live. Where do you want him, Boss?”
“Prop him up over there, make sure he's hard to miss.” Lyra points to a pyramid of empty crates waiting to be removed and refilled. Anyone coming in from the sea will see the boy, and they only need the first batch of tourists to bear witness and start the rumour mill, the watch will clean it up fairly quick after that, let the story spread and grow.

She climbs up with Keeg and together they arrange the body, tuck enough black feathers in and around him to make any misinterpretation impossible. The Dregs don't usually sign their kills, it's a surefire way to get the Stadwatch poking where they have no business, but this is different. The Barrel needs to know retribution has been served, that no one coming after them is safe.
“Anything else?” Keeg asks when they're done.
“You're alright Keeg, go home, I'll see you at the Six tomorrow.”
“Alright. Night, Boss. Wraith,” he nods curtly at them and turns away, making his way to whatever girl holds his heart for the week.

“Still not used to being called Boss,” Lyra tells Inej as they row back to the Slat.
“I think you bear it well,” Inej smiles lightly at her, and Lyra realises she'd been waiting for a sign of her approval, and that this is it. The Wraith knew the boss better than anyone living, and if she's fine with Lyra taking over it means something.
“Thanks. You could write, you know. If you don't want to come back. Information trade. We take care of things on our end, you send information our way, shipping routes and such, maybe sink the occasional concurrent?” Truth be told, Lyra would keep on taking care of slavers even without the Wraith, but there's no harm in gaining from it, and it's easier to offer this way.

Inej seems to consider this, closing her eyes for a while. When she speaks again they've reached home. “The deal is the deal.”
“The deal is the deal,” Lyra smiles as they shake on it. They walk up to the Slat's door together but when she turns around to hold it open for her the Wraith is gone. Lyra knows she will never see her again.

Chapter Text

She comes to him in the early hours of the morning, right around the time the clubs close, just before the Dregs come home to roost. The knock on the door doesn't quite take him by surprise, yet Fry finds himself relaxing at the sound, his shoulders sagging with relief. He leaves his drawing on the desk by the window and gets to the door in one slightly elongated stride.
“Hey Boss.”
“Fry.” She looks exhausted, cocky grin notwithstanding. “Mind if I come in?”
“Place's yours now, isn't it?” He moves aside to let her through.
“Not like that.” There's something earnest in Lyra's voice, underneath the grief and the weariness, something eager to prove itself.
“'Course not.”

Lyra closes the door and locks it shut, signalling a need for privacy more than guaranteeing it, no one under this roof would actually be stopped by a locked door. She flops on his bed and spreads out, manages to cover enough space to prevent him from doing the same, so Fry sits back at his desk.
“What are you working on?”
“Some sort of boat thing for the kids.” Fry passes it over to her so she can look at it. They share an interest in drawing, although Lyra's mostly lies in tattoos.
“Nice lines,” she says as she hands it back, “you're too soft on them.”
“Thanks. Someone has to, might as well be me. Remember Keeg's random whittled cows? Probably saved my childhood.”
“Cows?” she frowns, “always thought they were dogs.”
“With horns?”
“Hell dogs?” Lyra waves a hand around dismissively and Fry laughs.
“And to think you were country raised.”
“Was not. Not long enough for it to stick anyway.”

That's true enough, Fry supposes. He's pretty much been raised in the Slat, but there had been something before that, some sort of normal family life. He's left them behind, but like most Barrel orphans he's still got blood. Cousins, a good dozen of them by his last count, and a maternal aunt, wife to the uncle that considered six was old enough for him to start earning his keep. Fry lasted a few months in a match factory before he started running for the Dregs and never looked back. None of his cousins were made to work before the age of twelve, and none of them slept on the floor either, but Fry doesn't hold their normal lives against them, still pops in for a visit on occasion, brings in a little cash and a few trinkets for the kids, though he's lost track of which are his cousins and which are their children.

The Barrel has a way of shifting things, stolen goods and moral standards, anything not set in stone can be made to yield, down to the very meaning of words. Fry does have blood, but they mean less to him than the Dregs, and if asked he'll tell you that that's where his family lives, in a surprisingly well maintained house down at the bottom of the Barrel, a bunch of murdering thieves and crooked conmen crammed together through four stories of cupboard-like rooms between the wet pavement of the street outside and the murder of crows nesting on the roof. He should draw it.

Lyra's closed her eyes but she's not asleep, her fingers drumming a nervous little beat on the wooden frame of his bed.
“Is it done then?” Fry asks. He knows it is, of course. The kids love him so every time they get wind of something exciting they come running, make sure he's apprised of the news. Add to that the Dregs' gleeful tendency towards gossip and flair for the dramatics, word of Lyra's feathered display was bound to travel fast and it's been a good three hours.
“It's done.”
“Good.”
“Yea.”
“You alright?” That's the real question of course, but Lyra's not just inherited the Slat from the boss, she's also not usually keen on being coddled and her definition of that expands far beyond most people's.

“Yea.” She turns on her side to face Fry, drawing her knees up to her chest. Curled up on herself like that she looks as small as she did when they first met, though he'd had about an inch on her then, not a foot and a half. “Feels right, you know? Like a debt paid.”
“Just that?”
Something lights up in her eyes as she grins. “No, not just that.”
The thing about Lyra, Fry knows, is that for all that she's his best friend and his sister, and something more besides, for all that she jokes around and drinks and sings bawdy songs with the rest of the Dregs, she's got a thing for power. Lyra chases the rush of it. She likes people yielding to her, and if the yielding is brought about through violence then that's fine too. She's not bloodthirsty, exactly, and she's doesn't kill if there's no call for it, but she's quick to fight and much too good at it, always has been. Getting Dirtyhands' killer was never going to be just about duty. The boy's death was necessary, sure, for the Dregs' reputation and status, but the show in Fifth harbour isn't really, it's Lyra's power move and message to the world, as well as a tribute to the Boss himself, who was known for the occasional grand display.
“Good,” Fry says, and Lyra's smile turns softer.

“I've got a job for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. How would you feel about running the Ace?”
“Ace's yours Lyra.” Has been from the day the building was bought, some sort of gift from the boss, a bypass of more senior Dregs that had fed gossips for weeks.
“Everything's mine, Fry,” she's turned flat on her belly now, head propped on her hands facing him, “I won't have time to be on the floor as much, gotta deal with the rest of it.”
“True.” He's not quite processed that yet.
“Yea. So... The Ace?”
“I mean...” Fry's worked the floors of every club the Dregs own since he was old enough to look credible in a suit, running one is a promotion no one would pass on, and he's helped with the Ace besides, back when Lyra picked the décor and the theme. “Do you even have to ask?”
Lyra raises an eyebrow at him. “Would you rather I boss you around?”
“Nothing new about that.”
“Guess not.” She grins up at him and Fry rolls his eyes, they haven't much changed in near on twenty years, and he doesn't see them starting now. Lyra will set her mind to something and Fry will follow, give her shit whenever necessary.

“Wraith's gone.” Lyra says after a while.
“That was fast.” Fry has gone back to his drawing, is currently in the process of rendering rope coils on his pirate ship.
“Yeah. Gone for good I mean.”
“Wasn't ever really here, though.”
“Suppose not. Feels weird, you know, everything changing so fast.”
Fry turns back around at the wistfulness in her voice, shrugs noncommittally before answering. “You could always give over to Anika, if change worries you that much.”
“As if.” Lyra's glare doesn't quite work on him anymore, but it's miles better than the grief that has settled in her eyes ever since he's told her about the boss.

“You'll be fine, Lyra. No one with two braincells is actually surprised, and no one is even really that mad about you taking over.”
“Would they tell you, though?” Seeing how close they are, she means.
“Not me, the kids. They're everywhere, you know, and no one bothers to keep quiet around rats, not about that kind of things.”
“True. Anything I should know?”
“Well. Leo's still pissed, but Keeg's told him to learn to take a joke, so I guess he will, and Ava's been weirdly quiet. You might want to keep an eye on that, she's fairly popular even with the whole Lion dad thing, and she's smart enough to be trouble if she sets her mind to it.”
“Alright.” Lyra nods seriously before grinning at him.”You do have your uses, you know.”
“I'm flattered, really.”

“Can I sleep here?”
“Sure.” It's sweet that she still asks, considering the hour and the fact that he's never refused her before, but Lyra always asks and he always says yes.
“Yea? Isn't Mel gonna take issue with that?”
“Melissa doesn't want anything to do with 'whatever shady business' I get up to, actually, so I think you're safe from retribution.” Fry's grip on his pencil absolutely does not tense as he tells her so. It's been four days, he's over it.
Lyra's teasing voice clearly indicates she knows better. “Told you not to go for a good girl.”
“Thought you liked Mel.”
“Sure I do, got a bit old lying to her all the time though. You should try the straight bad boy approach, it'd be less stressful.”

And more honest, Fry supposes, but that's a harder sentiment to defend here, even though he tries not to make a scam of his love life, at least not too often.
“No one believes me when I do.”
“It's your face Fry, you're too pretty for Barrel scum.”
“I know.” Fry sighs dramatically, “makes for very easy money visiting bored Gelstraat ladies, though, so I guess I'll keep it.” He turns around to share a knowing smirk with Lyra, and she bites her lip gleefully.
“Long as you don't try for a moustache again.”
“Do I need to bring up that undercut from back when you were in love with Anika?”
“Low blow, Fry.”

As Lyra sits up behind him and starts undressing, toeing her boots off and unbuckling her belt, letting it all fall to the floor in a messy pile, Fry adds some shading to the main sail. From the corner of his eye he gets a glimpse of Lyra pulling out her weapons, lining blades up on his bedside table and sticking one under her pillow, a prison habit neither of them ever really tried to shake.

“Ah fuck.”
“Hmm?” Fry throws in a couple of exotic birds flying around the crows' nest, little Vincent is going through a phase.
“Got blood on my shirt, Marya's gonna kill me.”
“For how much blood she scrubs out every week you'd think she'd be used to it by now.”
“Yea. I think she just likes terrorising us. Only grandma in the Barrel who can get Keeg to say thank you. That's real power there, Fry, I should take notes.”
Her corset goes next, it's the kind that has fastenings at the front so that once the lacing at the back's been done it can easily be removed without help, which Fry knows because he's the one who did it up when she first got it. It joins her shirt and boots on the pile.

Fry hums vaguely as he surveys his work, makes a few corrections here and there as more fabric rustles behind him.
“You could have watched, you know.” Lyra tells him from under the covers. Judging by the pile on the floor she's down to her shift and drawers.
“Maybe I like being invited,” Fry shrugs. Or maybe you've just buried your Da and you'd just rather not sleep alone.
“Can't fault you for that, I guess,” she smirks. “Consider yourself invited into your own bed then. I need to be up by two bells, gotta see Keeg and the rest at the Six, draw up a battle plan.”
“Gulls?” Fry adds his own blades next to Lyra's, plus the brass knuckles he carries around for bruising.
“Yeah. According to the Wraith they've got plans to move on warehouse twelve, and my own rec turned up a few interesting things about their new line of jurda imports, so we might just move on that while we're there.”
“Alright,” Fry says as he pulls off his shirt, “need me there?”
“No. I need you running the Ace and keeping your ears open. Spoil the kids if you must, I'll need to know everything going on inside until I've at least made an example or two. Gotta make sure no one gets any idea about taking over.” Lyra tells him all of this very matter-of-factly, like a little treason is a given, and infighting inevitable.

“Dregs love you Lyra, you don't need to be like him.”
She turns on her side to glare at him as he slides in next to her. “Nothing wrong with being like him.”
Fry pushes a lock of hair away from her eyes and she frowns, but still turns around so he can fold himself around her, reaches for his arm and tucks it firmly around her waist.
“Look,” Fry says into her hair, “I know he was different with you, and I know he was your Da, but you know full well there was plenty wrong with the boss. You can take his place, and I'm honestly glad you are, but you can't become him. You're not that cold Lyra, it'll never work for you and it will get you killed.”
Lyra's grip on his hand tightens slightly but she doesn't break away, which Fry decides to count as a win.
“I'll think about it.”
“Fair enough.”

When she turns around to lay her head on his chest Fry slides his hand up to play with her hair, rolls a few curls through his fingers. The slight rays of sunlight coming through his shuttered window catch on the copper of it, make it seem like her head is burning red.
“Fry?” Lyra whispers in the washed-out dark, the way she did when they were kids, carrying conversations that could never have withstood the full light of day.
“Yeah?”
“D'you think he'd be proud?”
“Of you?” he asks and Lyra nods slightly, her breath a ghost on the bare skin of his chest. “You're being violently ambitious and slightly arrogant as well as absurdly brave, the boss would have loved it. Boss would have been proud of you if you'd decided to leave with the Wraith or join the circus Lyra, you know that.”
“Not really, I don't.”
“Yeah, you do.” Fry tells her as he holds her close. “Why d'you think he gave you his name?”

As Lyra cries silent tears against his heart for a father no one else could have loved, Fry tries to understand. His own Da's identity being a bit of a mystery and the Boss having been who he was it's not an easy feat, but he knows what Dirtyhands meant to her, and he knows he loved her too, though he could have gone about it differently.

So... Lyra loves you.
I.. uh. It's...
I don't mean like that, boy. Or I don't care. Kid loves you anyway, I don't need to know more.
Okay.
What I need to know is, do you love her too?
I... Yes.
How?
Anyway I know how.
I suppose that's the best anyone can do. You should tell her.
I don't think you can make me do that, Boss.
It's not an order, boy, just free advice.
Alright.
You can go.
Boss?
What?
I think you should tell her too, just free advice.
… I can see why she likes you. Fuck off now, Fry.

“I've got another job for you” Lyra mumbles through her tears.
“Yeah?”
“Yea. I need you to see me, Fry. Need you to stay right here and call me out on my bullshit, tell me when I'm going too far or too low. I probably won't listen to you half the time, but someone's gotta be able to give me shit and you're uniquely qualified.”
“I do have experience.” Lyra snorts in his arms. “Anything else?” he asks when the silence turns heavy.
“Yes. I need you to let me cry myself to sleep when the whole gang believes I've buried my soul with my Da and I'm as mad as they think he was. It's the only way I don't turn into Dirtyhands.”
“You want me to be your Wraith.”
Lyra shrugs as she slides her hand down his side, raising goosebumps in her wake. “Fucking's optional.”
“Fuck off, Boss, you know what I mean.”
“Yes. Will you do it?”
“Kinda insulted you have to ask.”

Lyra snuggles closer to him and brushes a kiss over his clavicle, which could end here or turn into something more, depending on what he decides to do next.
They've gone through this dance before, though it's not one they've ever been open enough to name real steps to. Lyra had been Fry's first kiss and he'd been hers, though that had been more practise than anything else, about as sexually charged as jumping naked into the canals during Ketterdam's summers, their bodies bared to each other long before it occurred to them to notice or care.

Fry doesn't know what they are. What he knows is that no one in the Barrel cares, that for all that they behave like siblings they're technically not, and that none of their respective partners have lasted long past questioning their relationship.
Lin had been good for that, before he'd turned squeamish about the whole gang thing, but that had been before they'd started sleeping together, so maybe that had helped.

They don't talk about it. Either they don't need to or this is one of those areas where Lyra's cowardice aligns with his. She knows, Fry thinks as he pushes his fingers through her hair and guides her head back to look into her eyes. She has to know what he can't quite put to words himself, that if she asks he'll never look at anyone else again, but that if she doesn't he'll stay by her side anyway, live his own adventures, find others and love them too, so long as she still whispers to him in the dark it's fine. Fry's not in love with Lyra. He's been in love before, obsessed with the delicate turn of a wrist or the ringing chime of a laugh, and this is not that. It doesn't matter whether he gets butterflies when he sees her, so long as he gets to see her, so long as she can claim half of his bed and drink from his glass like they belong together. Lyra's little smile before she kisses him is the last thing he registers before they get lost in each other, and when Fry wakes up he finds her sharpening her blades, fully dressed with her boots already on. There's tea on the bedside table, and Lyra's empty coffee cup on his desk.
“Ace's gotta be open by four.”
“Sure thing, Boss.”

Chapter Text

Somewhere along the southern bank of the Obol river there's a nameless village. The Ravkans can't quite pronounce the name used by its inhabitants so they've taken to simply calling it that village with the usual trace of disdain they reserve for her people. It's the only fixed Suli settlement in existence, as far as Inej knows, and it's the one reliable point of passage for all the caravans, and thus a perfect mail drop.

Her parents' caravan has gone through Çilligöl twice already since she's joined them in her grief, and she's ignored the pull of the pigeonholes behind the barmaid's kegs both times, but it's been six months now and it is time she went back to her life. Inej collects a short stack of letters and settles herself in the corner of the inn to read them. She could get out and find a more private venue but this is still Suli territory, where no one is ever really alone. It's fine though, she' safe here. Safe to let her grief take any form it will, knowing there isn't anyone here to use it against her.

It's been a strange thing missing Kaz living amongst her clan. Not much in Ravka reminds her of him, he only visited once, not enough for her kin to really know him, and not enough for her to have many memories of him here. What little she does have – Kaz so strangely casual in everyday travel wear, his hair unruled and his skin sun-kissed, the little freckles that had come out after a few weeks away from Ketterdam's near constant cloud cover, his appalling attempts at Suli and the way he'd played magic tricks for her little cousins – those memories haunt and delight her in equal parts. It had been a surreal experience, having him share her former life, at the same time a dream come true and the confirmation she would never again really fit with the caravan. He'd have visited more if she'd asked, but Inej hadn't.

Everyone's well-meaning curiosity had been nearly unbearable for both of them, and Kaz away from Ketterdam always seemed unbalanced, unsure of who to be without people to boss around. She should have encouraged it. Encouraged him to find out, to try his hand at normalcy, but how could she when she'd been unable to settle back into it herself? The caravan wasn't hers, not like her ship was, not like Ketterdam's rooftops and attics had been, and certainly not like Kaz, so how could she have asked of him what she couldn't ask of herself, to know who he was without what he'd been through? They'd been broken both of them, mended enough for each other and for the lives they'd chosen, but unfit to live amongst ordinary people even if they'd wanted to.

It's been lonely missing him here. Being back sleeping in her parents' caravan, in the built-in cot that has been hers since birth – the one she was taken from and returned to.It has not been an entirely pleasant experience. She's found solace in her kin's embrace, but no real understanding. Her grief is natural, they think, the lament of a lover's loss. They do not understand. Six months is not the longest she's gone without Kaz, but she could always take comfort in the solidity of him, in the unshakeable force of Kaz's determination. He'd been there, somewhere, being insufferably full of himself and missing her. Not somewhere, even. Home, in Ketterdam, lording over the slums in expensively immaculate suits and sleeping on a bed made of crates it had never occurred to him to replace.

Kaz had taken comfort in stability, in people behaving just as predictably as he judged them for, in patterns repeating themselves. Inej had been born moving. Literally, to hear her father tell it, for the caravan had been late decamping that autumn and they'd been riding their carts hard, trying to make it south of Os Kervo before the snow set in and trapped them there and Inej's mother had had to deliver her baby on the road. So there they had been, put together by fate, a travelling girl born in motion and a boy with roots so deep he'd become inextricably entangled with his city. Inej had found comfort in it. Kaz would be there when she returned, always, and she'd always return, for he'd somehow turned his empire into a home, one even she could fit in.

She no longer fits with her parents' caravan. They love her, and she loves them back, understands the customs that used to be hers, that should have been hers by right and usage, but those customs do not suit her anymore. She could not get married the way she'd dreamed of as a little girl, not because Kaz would have refused her, but because she had chosen a life of violent justice and incessant risk which, all thoughts of purity and service put aside, simply did not align with vows of family and harmony. Thus for the last six months Inej has been grieving but she has not donned Suli mourning silks, choosing instead to bear her shorn hair proudly, a symbol that no one here has really made sense of.

It hurts in a way it never did before, being with them and not fitting in. When she'd found herself stumbling over a Suli word she should have known, or when her cousins had tried to engage her in talks of motherhood that left her feeling alien and trapped, Inej had thought of Kaz. Of how even though she didn't quite belong with her own anymore, she would always belong with him, in that weirdly permissive world in the Barrel, where despair somehow manages to let freedom grow. No one in Ketterdam's slums cares about purity or tradition, and no one can afford to be too regarding of anyone's past. Inej had grown to find comfort in that too, knowing vaguely that once she grew too old for the seas, this was were she would go back to. To Kaz.

She can never go home now, but she can still go back to sea. Inej did not grow up on the shore, she learned to swim in a pond and when they threw her in the belly of a slaver ship she had only ever seen the ocean twice. She's had to learn it. Learn the waves and the currents, the patterns of the wind and the will of her own ship. It came a lot easier than learning command, but Specht hasn't let her down yet, and it's been a good decade since he's stopped giving her advice under the cover of night and started complaining about his nieces and their poor tastes in men.

The first letter is from him, an update on the ships' maintenance and supply, a reassurance that he's got the fleet under control and the crew at hand. Inej has spent a fortune keeping her crew around on indefinite leave, and quite a steep price in dock fees too, but she's obscenely rich now, and she'll find ways to spend Kaz's money, to give others the stability he spent his life chasing after. She doesn't need it for herself, not as long as she can sail.

The second letter is from Nina, condolences and a plea to come visit, a strange missive painfully devoid of the usual gossip and personal updates, the sobriety of it much worse than the hurt Nina tried to avoid causing by staying away from frivolous topics. Inej misses her enough that she considers sailing for Fjerda, maybe as soon as next year.

The third letter is from Jes, a long running, rambling train of thought covering everything from grief to the proper maintenance of garden tools, each line full of pain and life and love. Wylan has attached a few sketches, one of them of Kaz drinking with Jesper, caught forever in a rare unguarded moment. Inej's fingers trace the little lines Wylan's captured at the corner of his eyes. The portrait is good, but too flattering. Too nice, really, and Kaz wasn't ever really nice. He tried. He wanted to be, even, but it never did come easy. Love did after a while, with her. Devotion, loyalty, softness at times, and so much care. But Kaz wasn't nice. Kaz's love came in shows of violence or surrender, in secret offerings and veiled excuses to be here, around her or Lyra, around the boys too, though always begrudgingly. Wy should have drawn him frowning.

Kaz was not nice. They did not go strolling along the canals or on picnics in the countryside, they went on reconnoissance missions and ate street food huddled on rooftops, lived a life together carved out from Ketterdam's darkest corners, away from prying eyes and wholly theirs. Kaz did not surprise her with flowers, he gave her blades and ships, names and intel, and never ever clothes or jewellery.

You know, most people give their lovers pretty things, like dresses and bracelets.
You're not a doll Inej, I assume you can dress yourself. And besides...
Besides?
I wouldn't want to get it wrong.
I'll survive an ugly shirt Kaz, and you've got very good taste, all the fences say so.
Not that kind of wrong. What if... What if it reminds you of... What if it looks like... Look. Do you not like the dagger?
I love the dagger, Kaz. Thank you.

The last letter is sealed in black and Inej's heart stops, just long enough for her to realise that it's not from Kaz, of course it's not from Kaz, it's from Lyra, and the girl could not have known what the sight of that crow frozen in black wax would do to her. The letter's short, a brief update on the Dregs at large and a few more lines about Jesper specifically, plus a list of names and ships with dates and itineraries, some Inej will sink for herself, and some she'll hunt down as repayment for the first ones. She'll even spare the crew, if they're smart enough to behave.

Attached to Lyra's letter is a clipping from Ketterdam's longest running newspaper, one that Kaz loved to read, if only so he could grumble about the terrible lack of integrity from the reporters and brag about which ones he'd gotten to himself.

I'm a strong believer in freedom of the press Inej. Van Blundt can run as many fear-mongering pieces about the Barrel as he wants, no one's ever been better for business. Every time he talks about me he has a go at the Council for letting me live, and at the watch for being a bunch of asses, makes you wonder whose side he's on. The man rants about vice so passionately you'd think he has first hand experience...
Doesn't he?
Of course he does. Comes very cheaply as a result, and he still hasn't figured out we're using his paper to advertise the fighting rings, I really am a huge fan.

BREKKER'S LEGACY: BRAZEN BOLDNESS IN THE BARREL

Apparently dissatisfied with simply allowing a notorious criminal to be buried on Ketterdam's soil, the Council is further fuelling claims of its corruption by condoning the glorification of Kaz Brekker, late Barrel boss and renown thief.
As reported in theses pages last month, a derogatory permit was granted for the inhumation of Brekker, whose arrest record and earliest proof of legal existence suggests he was around 40 when he died. It remained at first unclear how, and who exactly obtained this permit on behalf of the deceased, but Dirtyhands, it has since turned out, has left behind an heir, a girl known as Lyra Brekker whose filiation has also proven to be a bit of a mystery. Whether she is an actual child of his or not she seems to have inherited her mentor's (father's?) name, claims, and sense of flair.
The Barrel has indeed unveiled a new statue on 5th harbour, itself an emblematic symbol of Ketterdam's inglorious pleasure district. The statue, an impressive six foot tall black stone crow, will be the first thing many tourists see upon their arrival in Ketterdam, a monument to Brekker himself, known for his infamous crow-headed cane, and to the gang he left behind, whose allegiance tattoo features the same black bird, a motif used on a number of clubs and establishment throughout the Barrel.
Our investigations in the matter have unveiled deeper ramifications than honest citizens might be comfortable with. Indeed, Brekker seems to have secured legal rights of operation for 5th harbour, including the right to outfit it as she wishes. In other words, there are no legal grounds to oppose the erection of such a scandalous glorification of violence and vice.
What, we must ask, is the Council going to do about this?
Isn't it high time for our supposedly influent leaders to take real measures and tackle this blight on our most prosperous city?
For years we have watched criminals and thugs get comfortable in our midst, defying Ghezen and the basic laws of decency, and the Council has done nothing, nor has the Watch, whose history of corruption has been well-documented here, as our faithful readers surely recall. Mr. Brekker's death should have been an opportunity for order to be re-instated, but it seems our seediest denizens will still be able to wallow in gambling dens and unconscionable sin as the Council lets the Barrel revel on, unchecked.
For more on Brekker's successor, see page 12.
For the Council's latest trade decisions, page 6.

Inej smiles as she reads, and when she's done she gives into the one desire that has not deserted her since Kaz died. She reaches into her bag for paper and a pen, and she writes to him.

Kaz.
Is this how it felt? Missing Jordie? Did you see him everywhere? Find traces of him in the wind, in a stranger's gait or silhouette? Did you wake up having forgotten he was gone just to get your heart broken all over again?
I do.
I can hear you, Kaz. I find myself wondering whether missing you so much is healthy, and here's your voice telling me. 'Who cares Inej? Who will ever be good enough to sit in judgment for your heart?'
I'll eat something sweet and save a bite for you, like I don't know Ketterdam is an ocean away, and you'll never taste anything again.
Raja told me a joke and I laughed. How could I laugh, Kaz? You're still dead.
I pray for forgiveness, and you have nothing to say to that, though I know what you'd think. You'd tell me to live. Tell me to let go and forget about you, to find someone else if I want, though no one could ever deserve me.

I'll live Kaz, I'll go back to my ship, I'll answer my mail and sharpen my blades, but I won't leave you behind. I might be able to, but I won't try.

How long until I forget?
How long until I only remember you as this perfect idea in my head? Will I turn you into an idol, Kaz? The memory of your love made cloying by time? Will I only keep the sweet parts, your lips on mine and your hands in my hair, that look in your eyes when you said my name and the way you never held me back? I want to remember the rest too, Kaz. The anger in your soul and the violence it brought, how cold you could be and how easily you'd melt down for me, the way you laughed and the way you fought. I want to remember how deeply you loved and how horrible you could be because of it. I loved it all Kaz, I still do.

So I won't try. I will hang on to you for as long as I can, and when death comes for me I will beg the Saints to let me go, I'll come find you and pay for my sins, make yours a little more bearable. Wait for me Kaz, wherever they sent you, down in hell or somewhere else altogether, wait for me one last time, I'll meet you when I'm done here, tell you what I haven't been able to in this life.

You made yourself mine and you never asked for more, but I was yours too.
I was yours as soon as you let me go. The moment you renounced your claim on me. I was yours through the months I spent at sea, chasing myself and learning my way back. I was yours when you spilled blood or tears, when you made me mad and when you made me laugh.
I was yours when you said you loved me and I said it back, and when my past forced me away from you.
When you surrendered to me, let your body be mine, let me tie you up and use you, I was yours then, too, maybe more than ever.
I should have told you. You should have known before you died that I was yours as much as you were mine. That I will be yours always.

Inej.

Somewhere on the True Sea, the Wraith sails. In the Captain's cabin there are two identical boxes. The first one holds Kaz, as no one else ever saw him, his every thought and secret, the truth of his heart and the pain in his soul, the man beyond the monster and the boy behind both. Inej opens it when she feels the voice in her head slip away, when she is not sure that Kaz would say that, or would say it that way. She opens it to keep him with her, to keep his memory alive and true, so that when the time comes she will recognise him, find her Kaz in whatever new myth he will have made himself into.
The second box holds herself, and Inej opens it in the hope that whatever she writes and puts in it it will get to Kaz, that her words find him through the veils between worlds, and that he doesn't forget her either, doesn't let go of her in this world or the next, though it's by doing so that he secured her love.