Chapter Text
Ketterdam was unforgiving. It didn’t breed the kind of person who mourned, who grieved, who wept for the loss of someone. Far from it. When a person passed on there were two options. You were either:
-Rich
or
-Damned to the City Crematorium, where your remains would be scattered at sea and a single lily would go to your next of kin.
But for some, some lucky few who were in the know and had just enough coin to skirt by, there existed a third option. One the City Merchant Council would hate for the average citizen to know, but they could do nothing against. It existed just outside the lines of the city, but it served the populace of the city en masse.
Rietveld's Final Roost Funeral Home, Crematorium, and Mausoleum.
The Mausoleum (and graveyard) sat miles and miles away just outside of Liij, but the Funeral home was the first thing outside the City limits of the Warehouse district. There were rumors that the Head Funeral Director, one Kaz Brekker, owned the farmland right next door, and used the remains of those he’d “dealt with” to fertilize his partner, Inej Ghafa’s spices and herb garden.
The rumors could never be confirmed, of course, so they sprouted and ran wild, growing through the cracks of Ketterdam stone like a weed. The rumor twisted here, saying Brekker wore his signature gloves because his hands were permanently stained in blood from the corpses he’d handled in all manor of legality; the rumor spiraled there, giving him the nickname “Dirtyhands” because there was no death too gruesome for him and his crew of directors to handle, if it meant decent coin.
His crew of fellow directors came from everywhere and nowhere. All walks of life were welcome within the funeral home, and his employees did not want for a diversity hire. From Suli to Zemeni, to Fjerdian and Kaelish, many different worlds collided under one roof, which provided a wide array of clientele to be plucked from.
Mr. Brekker was not the most amiable director. He wasted no time with giving condolences or what Mr. Fahey, one of his fellow directors, would call “genuine human emotion”. He was cold, he was cutting. But he was honest. He never tried to upsell (again, much to Mr. Fahey’s dismay) and he never offered comfort.
“We all have our ghosts,” he was known to say, “Hopefully your new ones will rest in peace.”
Kaz Brekker was made of matchsticks and angles, with a flop of dark brown hair on top for decoration. His pale complexion often looked even more ghastly in comparison to the black three piece suits he regularly wore, especially on business. His crow’s head cane found its home in his gloved left hand, providing relief for his right leg as he walked.
Another rumor that spread like jam on toast was that Kaz’s right leg was hurt when the arms of the damned and decrepit reached up to grab him, to drag him down for desecrating their rest. Again, he never confirmed any rumors, but the lack of denial let them torch the path before him. He was the sort of man Ketterdam bred. The sort where one could point him out of a crowd and say “ You were raised in Ketterdam, weren’t you?” with complete certainty.
Kaz was often right flanked by a black Portuguese water dog with a smudge of white on its chest. Made up of curls and excitement, this dog, which he had lovingly named Murder after the term for a group of crows, followed him everywhere to a fault. Another less popular rumor was that Kaz was a devil, or at least a demon, and Murder was his faithful hellhound. This one circulated within the confines of his own funeral homes and didn’t find much traction beyond its doors.
His Crows were Inej Ghafa, expert in Suli tradition, Ravkan religion, and plenty more. Jesper Fahey, expert on Zemeni traditions, head of marketing, wardrobe as well as the Crematorium, and occasional pallbearer. Wylan Van Eck-Hendricks, expert mortician and assistant manager at the crematorium. Nina Zenik, well known mortician and magician, Kaelish expert, interpreter extraordinaire, in charge of florals, and Matthias Helvar, expert in Fjerdan and Druskelle traditions, assistant mortician, and usually the first face one sees after a Death Call is made, he retrieves the former loved one.
The Crows handled other people’s ghosts, and they did it with an ounce of pride and the bounce of coins in their pocket. But they were utter shit at handling their own.