Chapter Text
Dear god, shout it from the rooftops. I’ll hate you all the more for silence—tell the world!
Despite Jesper fixing his cane, and the healer more-or-less fixing his leg, it doesn’t change the purpling bruises along Kaz’s back. It hurts. Hurts to breathe and hurts to walk; every step jostling the sprained muscles. Hitting the ground leaves damage.
Kaz doesn’t mention this to Jesper, especially since Jesper paid out the nose for the healer. Kaz will remind Jesper of this later. Don’t get scammed, no matter how rich you are now. Kaz’s mind is scattered, trying to move forward despite the shocks still running through him.
For a moment, Kaz thought he had broken his back. That would have been the end of Dirtyhands. Not the end of Kaz Brekker—plague, Pekka rollins, tractor accidents and falls all failing to bring him down—but the end of the only life Kaz wants to live. What is left, without Dirtyhands? Just the farm boy who pulled himself out of the gutter.
Kaz is slow. Jesper keeps slowing to let Kaz catch up, trying not to make it obvious. Kaz ignores him. Calling attention to it would only be more embarrassing when Kaz proves that he can’t keep up with Jesper.
“We need to go to the zelverstraadt,” Kaz says shortly.
Jesper turns his head. “The zelverstraadt? What do we need there?”
“Not what,” Kaz says.
Jesper groans. “For once, can you just explain, Kaz? You just fell from a roof. That’s not exactly a great sign.”
“It wasn’t a bank.”
Jesper pauses. “I know. I didn’t say it was. Why, did you think it would be a bank?”
“I knew it wasn’t.”
“That implies you checked.”
“If it was a bank,” Kaz forges onwards, “or some other place of commerce, I would have stopped to rob it.”
Jesper scents blood. He skips up to Kaz. “You asked because you’re religious,” Jesper announces with delight. “You as good as admitted to it in the church. Everyone knows that accidents near places of commerce are bad signs.”
“No such thing.” Irritation sparks through Kaz. He levels a glare at Jesper. “Accidents are accidents.”
“But you checked,” Jesper says again. He valiantly suppresses a smile, but Kaz can see it twitching at the corners of his mouth. It temporarily washes the lingering fear off Jesper’s face. “You so went to church as a kid. Me? We didn’t have churches. We had nature and animal spirits. I wasn’t dragged to church so much as dragged outside to sit in the sun. Very different.”
“I didn’t go to church.”
“You already admitted it, Kaz, just give in.”
“I didn’t,” Kaz insists, now truly annoyed with Jesper.
It’s true, for once. Kaz never went to church. Apparently, his mother was the pious one, and after she died, the whole family stopped. Kaz was firstly too young to attend, then too young to remember the family stopping. Jordie was pleased for it. Kaz remembers that much. No more stuffy collars and sermons on giving back to your community. It’s pious to earn money. It’s even more pious to spend it, letting the economy circulate.
The man they traded wheat for apples with used to pinch Kaz’s cheeks and tell him that farmers are the key to everything, including the Church of Ghezien.
“We keep the whole island running,” he said in his smoker’s voice. “Without us, no one would be alive, much less earning money. We’re the centre of it all. Never forget that Kaz. Its why farmers are so honoured. We spend money for our crops and livestock, which gets sold, then gets cooked and consumed by people who go and purchase it all again. No better way to honour Ghezien, Kaz. It’s the ultimate offering.”
His Da used to threaten the two of them with church if they didn’t do their chores. The closest they came to worship was at the family altar.
Most people in their town worshipped at altars like that. Churches were for bigger towns. Places where you didn’t have to travel an hour just to encounter the next property. But their mother used to make the trip, before Kaz was born. She came from a bigger place. A city, someone said. Kaz doesn’t think of her often.
But he thinks of her oleander coin, now.
“Fine!” Jesper throws his hands up. “You never went to church, okay. But you did something.”
“Zelverstraadt,” Kaz reminds him. “Our priority for the day.”
“Shooting people wasn’t enough? Fine. Let’s go shoot more of Vanderwald’s men.”
“Enough shooting,” Kaz says firmly. “We have other things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like making it to the zelverstraadt in one piece.”
Jesper rolls his eyes. They reach the canal, Jesper reaching out to untie a narrowboat and pull it closer to them. He motions for Kaz to get in first, Jesper holding it steady.
Kaz doesn’t argue. He hates boats, and he hates getting into them even more. He gingerly lowers himself into the boat, each rock of the boat tugging at his back. Kaz bites back a groan.
Jesper climbs in quickly after Kaz.
“Fastest way to the zelverstraadt from here,” he reminds Kaz pointlessly. “It won’t take long, Kaz. It’s also best to avoid you walking right now.”
“Just start rowing,” Kaz says. He wraps his hands around his cane like a lifeline and closes his eyes.
Jesper is right – it doesn’t take them long to arrive at the zelverstraadt, centre of most commerce practices and trades in Ketterdam. The country, even.
“Where to now, boss?” Jesper says with only a hint of mocking.
Kaz ignores him. He places his cane on the side of the boat and gradually levers himself up. Kaz inelegantly climbs out of the boat and quickly moves away from the water that still coats his tongue with bile.
“Okay, then,” Jesper comments calmly. “Another Kaz special. I’ll find out right at the end, yeah?”
But he follows Kaz deep into the zelverstraat without argument.
Kaz stops outside Lukas Vanderwald’s house. It’s buried deep in the zelverstraadt and isn’t obvious to anyone passing by. From the outside, it looks like it could be another commercial centre, and not a private residence buried between a bank and a consultant company. The tall building is modern, converted. Formerly owned by an investment banker, if Kaz’s information is correct.
“This,” Kaz says calmly, knowing Jesper is directly behind him, “is where we are robbing.”
Jesper lets out a whistle. “I can see why we needed a con, now.”
With the house being surrounded by the most profitable businesses in Ketterdam, the entire district is littered with guard dogs, security guards, alarm systems, and spying neighbours. The stadwatch patrols the zelverstraat the most out of any Ketterdam district, barring the Upper Stave. It is hardly an easy place to break into. It would be nearly impossible for anyone else.
“The theatre troupe will get us inside for a private viewing, if all goes well,” Kaz says, knowing full well that he will make it go well, “giving us access to the house and the ability to take what we need. Take the goods, rejoin the troupe, and slip out the way we came.”
“Simple.” Jesper raises an eyebrow. “Too simple for you, Kaz. What do we need with the church and the emeralds you talked about? Why did I get a key copied?”
Kaz ignores him. “Just focus on this house. The locks are all made from a specific combination of metals designed to make it hard for any durasts to break down or alter. Do you think you can manage?”
“What, all the locks in the house?” Jesper cocks his head. “It’s impossible to tell without getting closer, but the actual shape of the locks? I can manage them fine.”
“I’ll give you the formula. Share it with Wylan and work out a way to get through the locks.”
“For the safes, right?”
“And anything else we need access to, besides the main doors.”
“Right.” Jesper visibly bites back the rest of his questions, amusement stealing across his face. “I’m just waiting to find out where the emeralds and the key come into play.”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
Jesper rolls his eyes. “You’ll keep saying that right up until I do need to worry about it. Please don’t fall off any more buildings, Kaz. I already spent way too much money on that healer.”
“I fell from that roof, actually.” Kaz doesn’t know why he does it, but he points towards a bank across the street. “Broke my leg the first time.”
Jesper tracks Kaz’s gesture. His eyebrows shoot up.
“Shit, Kaz. That’s at least two storeys. You survived that? There is absolutely nothing around that building that could have broken your fall.”
“The human body can endure up to a four-storey fall without death, unless you hit your head.”
“Still.” Jesper shakes his head, then stops. He visibly does the math. “Hang on, Kaz. We met when we were fifteen, and you already had your cane. How young were you when you fell?”
“Young enough,” Kaz says smoothly. His hands itch. Everything itches with the need to keep moving. To run from Jesper.
Why did he say that? Kaz hasn’t told anybody how he hurt his leg. Anyone. Even Inej.
The bloody church, stirring up memories like silt in water. Then the fall. Everything is mixed up. Slipping through Kaz’s fingers. Walking into a dream.
“The stories you tell…” Jesper starts. He shakes his head again. “Maybe you really are a demjin.”
“No such thing. Demjins are a story the Fjerdans tell themselves to feel better about all the things they don’t understand.”
“Like Grisha,” Jesper says, then shakes his head. He looks at the house thoughtfully, his fingers drumming against his thighs. “I know, but sometimes I wonder, Kaz.”
Kaz checks his pocket watch. “I’ll give you three hours to study the formula. I need you ready for tonight.”
“But we aren’t staging Granida for another week,” Jesper cries, alarmed. “What do we need from the house tonight?”
“Nothing.” Kaz leans heavily on his cane.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Jesper rolls his eyes. “Test run, then. You want to make sure that if my abilities can’t get us in, then we have a backup from Wylan. You could have just asked Wy to make you a corrosive compound.”
“Would he have done it?”
Jesper wiggles his hand. “Fifty-fifty shot, depending on the day. He likes you well enough, and he hates Vanderwald. But enough to risk his career for the Dregs? I don’t know.”
Kaz shrugs. “This is simpler.”
“Simpler?”
“Yes.” Kaz checks his watch again. “I need Wylan to have more than just plausible deniability. I need complete deniability.”
“He needs an alibi,” Jesper realises. “And a believable reaction. Wylan’s a good actor, and you know that, Kaz. He was brilliant with the market scheme.”
Kaz shrugs. He begins walking away from the house, Jesper quickly catching up to him.
“He was good then, yes,” Kaz allows, “but Wylan is an honest person. I’d rather keep him in the dark until necessary.”
“And what would make it necessary?” Jesper increases his pace, nearly overtaking Kaz with his stupidly long legs.
“When it becomes necessary.”
“Wow.” Jesper shakes his head. “Illustrative, Kaz.”
“I try.”
Jesper sighs. “When do you need this test run?”
“Seven bells.”
“That’s early.” Jesper’s eyebrows shoot up, and he unconsciously checks his pistols. “Why not wait until it’s darker?”
“Too dark, and we look like thieves. Too early, and they will realise we’re there. At seven bells,” Kaz explains smoothly, diverting them down a side alley, “we look like security contractors. Making a routine sweep through the zelverstraadt.”
It isn’t uncommon for the Merchers to pay for the stadwatch and the security contractors to do special checks on their properties. Perpetually worried about losing even a drop of their ill-gained wealth.
“That’s our ruse, then.” Jesper grins. “Oh this is going to be fun.”
“Isn’t that why you agreed?” Kaz turns his shark-eyes on Jesper, nearly smiling himself. “By the time we are done, Vanderwald will be ruined. I guarantee it.”
They both know that Kaz’s guarantees are carved from rock.
“I look forward to it,” Jesper says honestly.
They round another corner and Jesper stops, realising they are on the same block as his house with Wylan. Kaz watches him in amusement.
“I know my way around,” Kaz says. “Do you?”
“I thought I did.” Jesper keeps looking around. “But I have no idea how we got here from the zelverstraadt.”
Kaz shrugs. He leans onto his cane. “Time to brush up on your geography, Jesper. Remember, seven bells. Don’t be late.”
Jesper gives a mocking salute and trots down the street to his house, no doubt planning excuses for Wylan. Jesper is smart. Although Wylan knows that Jesper is involved in a job for Kaz, the less Wylan knows about the details, the better it looks if he is called into an investigation later.
Kaz turns his head and realises he is standing directly outside a church. Not the Church of Sacred Provision. A smaller, but no-less wealthy church, designed for the leisurely Sunday visits of the Upper Stave residents.
Kaz knows the fall really did rattle his brains, because for some unfathomable reason, he walks inside.
In the grand scheme of things, Kerch is a small place. It comes with being an island. Half of Kerch’s population live in Ketterdam, while the other half live in the countryside. Kaz’s life is a fifty-fifty split of the two most common experiences in the whole island. Farm boy turned city rat.
Kerch has been monotheistic for nearly its entire existence, raised from rock and supported by the cloaked Council of Tides that Kaz so wisely pissed off in dealing with Jan Van Eck. There is nothing secret, nothing unknown about Kaz’s childhood rituals of kneeling by their family altar, praying to Ghezien—Ghezen, forget it, Kaz—and placing coins in the smooth white dish. It isn’t private. Everyone in Kerch has a similar memory. It is the childhood of nearly every person in Kerch who grew up even minimally religious.
Nor, too, is there anything particularly special about Kaz’s childhood of farm chores and climbing apple trees. Falling out of the tree at eight and breaking his left arm, nursed by his father’s simple tomato soup.
The nature of childhood is that everything feels secret, sacred, anyway. Childhood is not shared. Kaz’s family altar wasn’t anyone else’s family altar. His mother’s picture rested there, along with her final offering to Ghezien—a bronze coin ringed with oleander leaves—immortalised on the offering dish, until they sold the house.
Kaz’s father was never particularly pious. He said religion could bring no comfort for anyone except the dead and dying. But he never moved the coin.
When their father died, Jordie—thirteen years old—ripped the whole altar down. He didn’t do it in front of Kaz. Kaz wandered inside for a final look at the house they would soon leave behind forever, and found the dish shattered on the ground. He hated Jordie intensely in that moment. Hated him enough to be sick.
He still can’t explain what drove him to pocket their mother’s coin. It doesn’t matter, anyway, only that he did. Keeping it safe from Jordie’s rage. Jordie’s foolishness. Bustling around with a fevered energy that scared Kaz.
In the end, it wasn’t safe from Kaz’s foolishness, either. It fell into the harbour with Kaz and Jordie, and only Kaz crawled back out.
Kaz takes a seat inside the church and looks at the open palm of Ghezen resting in the centre of the church. Smooth, white marble. There was a church in Lij that had a stone palm half the size of this one. Their mother, according to their nosy neighbour, used to make the trip to Lij to visit that church. When their father took Kaz and Jordie to Lij, they walked quickly past the church without stopping.
Kaz’s lip curls with distaste. It feels wrong, sitting in the church. Stifling. At any moment, a preacher will come along and tell Kaz to leave, sensing the wrongness of it dripping from Kaz’s skin.
Praying to gods and saints has never helped anyone, no matter what Inej believes. He cannot share her faith. He cannot tell her that he did, once. That he would kneel by the altar and hold his mother’s coin in hand, thinking of what to share with Ghezien. You cannot miss a mother you never met. But he could feel it, sometimes. The outline of what was missing.
Kaz would pray for a good crop that year so that their father could look less worried, and they could buy chicken to eat for once. Kaz prayed that the village school—run by an unmarried woman named Marta, greying and unworried—would bring in a real math teacher from the city, so that Kaz could learn multiplication. He prayed that Jordie would stop skipping school. Jordie wouldn’t work on the farm, and he wouldn’t go to school. He spent his days dreaming and walking, walking and dreaming.
If there was a Ghezien, his father wouldn’t have died. Jordie wouldn’t have gotten sick.
But Kaz looks at the palm of Ghezen and remembers what it was like to have that kind of faith. The endless hope that things would be alright, because no matter how things got, no matter how cold the nights were sleeping in the gutter, there was a god up there. There was Ghezien, and everything would be alright. He just had to hold on.
Well, Kaz held on. He held on through Jordie’s first night racked with coughs, and the first night of his own fever, and he slipped into sleep thinking it would be for the best, that either they would both wake into the after-life—whatever that was—together, or they would both wake up dead.
Now, he knows that he was being laughed at.
Kaz’s hand tightens around his cane, and he suddenly wants to hit something. He refrains; in case someone really is watching.
Choosing to run a job that involves churches so heavily was, Kaz can admit, perhaps a bad idea. He thought it wouldn’t hurt him. The market job involved a church, too, and a faked plague, and the auction. It shouldn’t hurt him, and yet his heart rattles around his chest. That blackened, old thing.
Kaz doesn’t have a conscience, and he doesn’t have religion, but he sticks to any deal he offers and, in some circles, that is praise to Ghezen enough.
He wonders what they would think about him falling from a bank. They’d probably laugh themselves sick.
Kaz could have used it to further his legend, in some strange way. Another sign of him being forsaken by Ghezen. Not a demjin, because Kerch legend doesn’t believe in those, but something else. Something wrong.
But Kaz feels wrong enough, these days.
Please. Please. Please.
Kaz will never know why Jordie—older, stronger, healthier—succumbed first. Whether something inside him gave out before it did in Kaz. They said, later, that it was mostly children and the elderly that were hit hardest. Jordie got it first, and he got it worse. Kaz wasted days trying to find food and medicine for Jordie. Wiping Jordie’s mouth. Trying to clean away the oozing pus of the sores all over his body. Kaz ran and ran and ran around the streets of the Barrel, trying to find something to save his brother. They had no money for medicine and the entire city had locked up their stores tight. Everyone in the Barrel was looking for medicine, and if anyone had anything left to sell, it was out of Kaz’s price range even if he still had all Jordie’s money from the sugar scam.
Taking care of Jordie was likely how Kaz himself got sick. Kaz didn’t care. He was scared and sick but refused to leave his brother.
“Ghezien protect us,” Jordie said, eyes glassy and blank during one of his more lucid moments. Praying to a god he never believed in, alternating between scoffing and spitting when he walked past the town altar. “Please.”
There would be no mercy for Jordie and Kaz. Not from Ghezien, and certainly not from Ketterdam.
The test.
Jesper meets Kaz the street down from the zelverstraadt, wearing a grey outfit and gaudy accessories that passes, superficially enough, as something a security contractor would wear. Famously wealth because of all the bribes they receive to either deviate from their route and check on another Mercher’s house instead, or to look the other way at strategic business sabotage.
“Wylan’s onto us,” Jesper warns once he is close enough for Kaz to hear. “He doesn’t want to know any of it, but he’s smart. He’s starting to work it out even without me telling him.”
Kaz shrugs. “We’ll be quick. Do you have what you need?"
Jesper withdraws a small bottle from inside his jacket. He grimaces.
"Wy says we can't use anything stronger without making it obvious that the locks have been degraded," Jesper says. "This should make it possible for me to undo the locks, but it'll still take time. Can you just pick the locks instead, Kaz?"
"I'm needed elsewhere," Kaz says. He doesn't bother explaining. "And there is no lock to pick."
"What do you mean?" Jesper shifts.
Kaz contemplates whether to explain. He sighs, and does.
"There aren't locking mechanisms, per se. The locks are Fabrikator-made. They only open with a durast. I'm assuming Vanderwald keeps one, either hired or indentured. I have the formula for the chemical they use to prevent other durasts from opening the locks themselves, but the solution to break it down is kept even more hidden. Only the durast themselves would have the solution, and my sources tell me there's a man who never leaves the Vanderwald house."
"So you can only get to the house through the durast, who never leaves the house themselves. Shit, I hope this works." Jesper doesn't seem confident. "This could go really badly, Kaz."
"Hence the test run," Kaz reminds him. "This is our only through the locks. We can get in with the Kommedie Brute, but we need a way to his office, and to let ourselves out if they see through the ruse."
Jesper's fingers twitch like he wants to reach for his pistols. He places the solution back inside his pocket.
"Let's give it a go," he says.
They enter the zelverstraadt with fake credentials flashed by Kaz and make their way along the street in a convincing sweep pattern. Jesper saunters ahead while Kaz lingers behind, maintaining the ruse.
It doesn’t take long to arrive at Vanderwald’s house. Jesper steps confidently up to the driveway with his light firmly in hand. Kaz takes to the bushes, waiting in the dark. Jesper walks all the way up to the front door with an unhurried ease, looking all the world like he is testing the locks instead of undoing them. Kaz brings out his pocket watch and counts down the time.
Jesper drops a small amount of the formula into the lock, tilting the bottle awkwardly. He turns over his head to mouth, remind me to get a dropper, then turns back. Jesper places his hand over the lock and focuses.
It takes nearly two minutes for Jesper to step back from the locks. He nods at Kaz, who puts his watch away. They meet back on the street and quickly finish their pretend sweep, escaping down an alley and away from the zelverstraadt before anyone can see through them.
Out of sight, Jesper slowly exhales.
“That took too long, Kaz.”
“It did,” Kaz agrees, frowning. “If the plans—”
“What plans?”
“—are correct, then we have five locks to get through. Ten minutes for a durast means at least twelve for me, even if there wasn't the compound on all the locks. If there was even one more mechanism, I could get through the locks, but I can't."
Jesper doesn’t argue at Kaz placing himself only slightly below a durast. He cocks his head.
"We must really be screwed for you to be admitting you can't do something," Jesper says. He folds his arms and tips his head. "It's too long, Kaz. There are too many things that could go wrong in that time.”
“We’ll have to hope that the play takes up their attention,” Kaz says.
“You mean we need to make it take up their attention.”
Kaz shrugs. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“It’s going to be a problem,” Jesper says again. “We’re both supposed to be on for nearly all of the scenes, and intermission only runs for so long. Have a plan for that, Kaz?”
“One or two,” Kaz says easily, and nothing further.
“How long left?” Jesper drags a hand over his face. “Until we stage, I mean.”
“One day,” Kaz says. “For the canals. For the invite to Vanderwald’s for a private viewing? Well. Come morning, the invite will be sitting with the troupe leader.”
"I thought we had a week?"
"We did." Kaz smoothly tucks his watch into his waistcoat. "And now we have one day."
“You’re excited to stage this.” Jesper shakes his head, but he is half-smiling. “Aren’t you? Positively shaking in your books.”
“It’s the job,” Kaz says.
“You can admit that you like acting, Kaz. I think all of Ketterdam knows that by now.”
“This is hardly acting. This is a street play.”
“Yeah, and it’s theatre. You love theatre.”
“The Kommedie Brute was a means to an end.”
“You sooo enjoyed the Master Crimson scheme. Admit it, Kaz.”
Kaz admits no such thing. He doesn’t enjoy anything except making money, these days, and occasionally top-shelf whiskey.
“Go to bed,” Kaz says, turning his back. “We have a play to stage in the morning. Everything will be in place by tomorrow night. Be ready.”
“Right,” Jesper says, sounding confused. “I’ll leave you with that, then. Night, Kaz.”
Kaz doesn’t reply.