Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Almost two years now, and the sea air is too clean in Inej’s mouth. There’s an absence of Ketterdam, of the smoke and starkly human scents, perfume and garbage and sweat; she doesn’t miss it, quite, but she feels it, like the gap of a missing tooth. You don’t long for the wiggling and the pain of the what’s gone, maybe you taste the blood, but your tongue finds the empty space just the same. The salt and sun and silence are like that for Inej, even after this long, and she can’t decide if she likes it.

Certainly, she loves this mission; every life she saves from her own fate feels, somehow, like recovering a piece of herself that vanished during those long nights. She’s often felt that in leaving her body behind, she lost things; that she healed wrong, and that makes her think of Kaz. She had thought that she would never see those parts of herself again, and yet here she finds them, scattered across the sea—even if they don’t quite fit right with the armor she’s grown in their place. It’s a dangerous, wondrous thing.

But even if she has found her aim, does she miss Ketterdam? She’s soon to find out, she knows; by this evening at the latest, the Wraith will be at berth twenty-two and the Wraith will be back on the city’s rooftops. Back at the Slat. Back on Kaz’s window, feeding the crows, unless they’ve stopped coming while she’s been gone. She wonders, as another tangy breeze strikes her face and lifts loose strands of her hair, if that smell of ink and coffee still lingers around him, and then wonders why she cares.

Maybe that’s what she feels missing in the briny taste of the wind.

Her first weeks at sea, Inej had spent more time in the rigging than not, desperate to climb something. She’d understood for once the constant restlessness that kept Jesper in motion and even wondered briefly if this was right, if her aim had been true. But then they took down their first slaver’s ship, and their second, and by the time captains began coming up with names for her, titles like Kaz had earned, she knew better. They can call her the Reaper of Ships, the Scourge of the Seas, call her what they like, as long as no one ever calls her lynx again.

Now she takes to the nets as a kind of comfort, feeling safest when the thing between her and falling is thin. It makes her feel stronger, sheer dependence on her muscles and balance and—quite possibly—stubbornness. When she stands in the sky, a knife in her hand rather than the usual privateer’s cutlass, and sees nothing but waves beneath, how could her aim not be true?

One of the girls—Inej’s crew is mostly female—calls to her from below. As she expected, they’ll be in Ketterdam by early evening. Inej grabs hold of a rope and swings down to the deck, lifted for a moment on the thrill of the wind. She sticks a seamless landing even with the ground moving beneath her; that, she doesn’t like to admit, took some learning.

“What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get back?” asks another girl, Kaelish, with a tall and emphatic build like Nina’s. Her face is buried in freckles from this trip and her accent lilts.

Inej gives a small smile. “Take a bath and a nap.”

In that order.

Her hair and clothes are looser than they were back in the city, a messier braid and a billowy blouse; she’s almost certain that both are crusted with salt by now. The fresh water they have, after all, is best used for drinking.

“It’s Ketterdam,” her lookout, a Zemeni girl almost as tall as Jesper, protests. “Surely there’s something you want to see, somewhere you want to go?”

“If I haven’t seen my fill of Ketterdam by now, perhaps I never will,” Inej replies. Turning and changing tack, she asks, “How is she?”

As if he’d heard her, Specht, one of the exceptions, emerges onto the deck, holding a baby girl in his arms with surprising tenderness. Well, not a baby, exactly; the girl is a toddler, somewhere around three, and at least half Suli. Inej takes her and settles the nameless child on her hip.

“Good, considering,” Specht replies. He looks amusingly bereft now that Inej has taken the little girl.

Considering, indeed. The girl, whom Inej knows she should name, was taken with her mother, who had sickened and died on the slavers’ ship, from what Inej and her knives could discern from the crew. She knows, with a feeling that tightens her stomach more than the waves ever could, that if not for her the child would have been killed—or worse, left to die.

Inej hands the little girl back to Specht and hoists herself back into the ropes. If she can help it, she wants to be the first person to see that skyline she knows so well. And perhaps even despite her words, some part of her knows that the first thing she’ll want to do when her feet hit the docks is climb, discover it all again.

Climb to the Slat.

See if her room is still there.

See Kaz.

Inej sighs, even though nobody can see her face up here or see inside her head. It’s not the first time she has thought of him, nor will it be the last. Does she want to see him? Does she want to fight for the beginning that she hasn’t forgotten? The little girl will complicate things. And maybe he’s hardened in her absence. Maybe, even if she doesn’t seem to know better, he will.

Kaz allowed her to leave. Kaz propelled her to leave. Kaz gave her a ship and she put a dream in its sails. There are so many places where the paths diverge, where another could-have-been grows—there are so many lives that they could have lead, and for all Inej knows, in some versions she never meets Kaz. But those are not what is. This is what happened.

Maybe she’ll get enough calluses from the ropes to forget the softness of his hands. Maybe she’ll sleep enough nights on a hard and unforgiving bed to forget the feeling of laying her head on his shoulder. Maybe she’ll visit her parents enough that they won’t ask after him anymore.

For her next voyage is to Ravka, to the farm they’re renting until they can reunite with their caravan. Hopefully, the little girl will be safe with them. A stop in Ketterdam to re-supply and say her hellos, and then she’s going home. If it can be so called. If she even sticks to the plan. She’s worked with Kaz long enough to know that in every plan, there are more things that can go wrong than steps.

Inej pushes away a loose strand of hair and leans out over the deck. She needs to stop thinking about Kaz or they could end up going the wrong direction.

“Prepare your things for when we reach land!” she calls. And that’s another thing, another part of being captain: the Wraith has learned to be loud.

The chorus of shouts in reply buoys Inej, and, clinging to the rope, she hangs out into the wind like a flag; whatever awaits her in Ravka, whatever awaits her in Ketterdam, she will not wish for it. She will meet it as it comes.

“No mourners, no funerals,” she whispers to herself.

<><><>

Kaz has a knee pinning the man’s chest and a knife in the man’s side. The sad part is, he’s not angry, at least not by his standards.

This sorry sod tried to attack him, and since he bears no gang tattoos and fights with a polished style, Kaz can best discern that someone hired him. It’s almost funny. Especially since it’s the attacker’s own knife that now sticks out from beneath his ribs.

Shadows play over the man’s face as he sobs, illuminating in their absence scars and grimy cheeks smudged with tears and snot. The man whimpers, making Kaz hate him a little. At least don’t die like a keening infant.

“Now, for a last-ditch effort, this is just sad,” says Kaz, his lip curled. “It’s clear that’s what you are—some skilled fighter or assassin who thought that was all it took to survive in the Barrel.” Knowing how to use your fists means nothing if you aren’t ruthless enough to hit where it will hurt the most.

The man stares at him with unbridled horror, satiating the manic something that has broken loose in Kaz these past years.

“I was born without manners,” Kaz continues, pushing the man’s head back sharply, “but even I have the good grace to be insulted.”

Strangely, the man looks less terrified now and more appalled. Well, it’s not going to keep Kaz up at night, not when he has more important things keeping him awake. In a strained, choked voice thick with tears and revulsion, the man gasps out, “You’re heartless.”

“True. You’ll have no luck finding my heart here.” Kaz pulls out the knife, rises, and straightens his tie. Sorry sod, indeed. He would wipe the knife on his trousers, but that would ruin the point of wearing them.

He turns away.

“You’d be better off searching the seas.”

Chapter Text

Kaz’s leg is killing him. He sinks into the chair behind his desk and stretches it out, though it does little to ease the throbbing from too many late nights and too many flights of stairs. At some past point, he’d left Per Haskell’s old office and decided that the climb was worth having the Slat’s attic to himself, but sometimes he wonders.

It’s neither safe nor worth it, though, to second-guess oneself. Can’t afford it in the Barrel.

Can’t afford it when you’re Kaz Brekker.

He stares down at the open ledger, willing the figures and sums to march into his head in orderly lines. They refuse, however, to make enough sense that it’s worth memorizing them. Kaz pulls off his gloves, neatly, one finger at a time, and rakes his hands through his hair. Focus.

Something, however, makes the short-shorn hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He doesn’t raise his head or turn, doesn’t move from studying the books, but his senses are instantly alive, enough to pick up the scent of saltwater over the ever-present Ketterdam rain.

He could put the pieces together, but he doesn’t dare.

Hope, as he once told Inej, is dangerous.

So the only movement he makes is to slip his gloves back on and bend his bad leg, ready for a fight if it comes. The movement aches, but a blow he’s not prepared for will hurt worse.

“Kaz.”

He’s prepared and it hurts. It’s a dull and desperate pang, like the hunger he knew when he was a starving, feral boy fresh out of the harbor. He turns around and oh, Saints, Djel, Ghezen, he sees her. The sight of her makes a boy with no gods feel like praying.

“You’re back,” he says. There’s a catch in his rasp, rough since the plague; anything he might think of to say has vanished from his tongue, and his voice is reeling with the rest of him. It sounds wrong. He feels wrong, but also like nothing has made sense in the last seven months. He doesn’t like how Inej sets his world spinning into a kaleidoscope of paradoxes. He needs it.

“It’s not like you to state the obvious,” she says, tilting her head to one side. Her hair is oil-slick from the rain, and the blouse that would normally billow from the corset around her waist hangs off of her in loose folds. He can see more through it than he wants to. Does he want to? He shifts his eyes before he has the chance to think about it, despite the fact that he’s had far from his fill of looking at her. Too many men have looked at her this way, like it’s their right, like it’s what she’s there for. He refused to mark her body, and he refuses to admire it now.

“I believe things more from my own mouth,” he replies at last, simply because it’s the first thing to pop into his mind. He’s staring at the wall over her shoulder, but he can still see the seashell curve of her ear and the loose black strands clinging around it. He’s starting to wish she had never returned, but all the same he never wants her to leave.

When his eyes turn back to her face, she’s pursing her lips disapprovingly at him. They look soft. He stretches his leg back out, forces his mind away from the impossible.

Finally, she says, “Yes, I’m back.” It almost sounds like a challenge, paired with the new ferocity in her black eyes. Maybe it is.

“For how long?” Kaz asks, as conversationally as he can. He’s twiddling his pen through his fingers, absentmindedly making it disappear and reappear. It requires just enough brainpower that he can’t think too much about Inej. If only something would distract him enough that he couldn’t think about her at all.

“Just a few days.” She takes a few steps forward, enough to lean on the desk; watching him carefully, she hoists herself onto it, sitting on a patch of space that’s clear of his papers. She is close enough now that her feet dangle just beside his outstretched leg. It takes a concerted effort for Kaz to not hold his breath.

He wonders if he should answer the question in her eyes, tell her she’s not too close, but he doesn’t trust his voice any longer, and he’s not going to tell her to go away. His eyes find her now, they can’t stop finding her; her braid is looser, her skin deeper bronze, she has an earring in one ear, but it’s the things that are the same that he looks for. Those are the things about Inej that matter to him; the things about her that don’t change. They are the reasons she is the only person he trusts.

“Where to next, then?” he asks. His head tilted back and his cane leaning on one leg, he is the picture of mild interest, an old colleague, perhaps even an old friend. He knows better, and Inej probably does too, so why bother?

He’s not sure he knows how to do anything else.

“Ravka,” Inej responds, bumping her leg against the edge of the desk. Her hands are folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on them. Kaz entertains, for a moment, the fancy that she’s avoiding looking at him for the same reasons he’s trying not to look at her, but dismisses it. Hope, as he has to keep telling himself, is dangerous. It’s the kind of thing that drives people like Jesper to the tables and their coin into Kaz’s purse. He refuses to be in anyone’s debt.

“What awaits the Wraith in Ravka?” he asks, putting his pen down and resting his fingertips on the desk.

Inej turns to him and raises one black brow, her earlier confidence returning to her demeanor. It seems, however, as if she’s hiding something. “The Wraith, or the Wraith?”

“Well, I would be concerned if one arrived without the other,” Kaz replies, although his concern (that’s one word, he thinks) would be considerably stronger in one circumstance than the other. He’ll entertain it for now, but he knows she’s stalling.

Inej tips her head back and closes her eyes, the line of her throat like a golden ladle. Kaz wonders briefly if his lantern has gone out and she’s lighting the room in its stead.

“My parents,” she says, her eyes still closed. “They’re renting a farm until they can re-join their caravan, and...I want to see them before they do.”

“You’re going home,” Kaz replies, almost questioning.

“I don’t know if it is my home,” Inej says, sitting up again and staring straight ahead. “But Ketterdam was no place for them, certainly with me gone. They’ve had lives these past years, Kaz.”

The sound of his name in her mouth makes him happy he’d kept that much of his old self. “I suppose you told them a Suli proverb about letting go of what you love.”

She’s silent for a moment, her eyes trained on the floor, one leg swinging a rhythmic beat against the edge of his desk. At last, so quietly that he almost misses it, she says, “You would know.”

Kaz’s hand flattens against the desk and he finds himself conscious of how close she is. He’s no fool; he hears her meaning. And maybe she’s right. But if hope is dangerous, love is lethal. It’s good for nothing but revenge.

Still...the wonderings he’s kept alive, these months, imagining her return...she’s leading him into something. Only with Inej is he willing to not be several steps ahead.

As she had once, he asks her, “What do you want, Inej?”

“Come with me.”

They both startle at the words, as if a ghost spoke them, but Kaz looks at her and finds her black eyes burning into his, the voids left behind by twin dying stars. She is sitting upright now, leaning towards him like a tree that was bent by a storm and kept growing that way.

She smells of the sea. Somehow that bothers him. She never used to have a scent.

“Come with you?” he repeats, letting her lead him.

“To Ravka. To see my parents.”

“I’ve already met your parents. And I have business to run here.”

“Kaz.”

She looks no less serious, and it’s like she knows what he means to say before he says it. It falls from his lips. He should know better by now.

“Yes.”

The rain whispers against the window. Inej stands, some farewell in her eyes that never reaches her tongue. She doesn’t need to say it; Kaz knows she’ll be back.

He watches her leave and still misses the precise moment that she disappears, like a magic trick he’ll try to crack until dawn.

Chapter Text

The trip to Jesper and Wylan’s is even wetter than the climb to the Slat was, and by the time Inej slips in through a second-story window, she is thoroughly soaked and missing her old gear, which was much better suited to Ketterdam’s weather. She holds the end of her braid out the window as she perches on the sill, beneath the awning, and tries to wring some of the rainwater out of it, but she might just have to settle for dripping on the floors. She has a feeling that Wylan will forgive her.

Indeed, when she makes her way downstairs on silent feet, he looks up at her from the chair he’s nestled in and his face breaks into a smile. “Inej! We heard you were coming back.”

“I was hoping you’d get the letter,” she replies. “And lucky I could trust you to take me even if you hadn’t. Even if I am dripping on your carpet.”

Wylan grins and rises from his chair to greet her. “You could have come in the front door.”

“But would I?” asks Inej. She catches movement in the corner of her eye and turns slightly to spot the approach of Jesper, who is garbed in such a vivid array of citrus shades that he couldn’t be missed against the austere decor if he wanted to.

“You didn’t honestly expect her to use the door, did you?” he asks, loping over and resting an elbow on Wylan’s shoulder.

The shorter boy shrugs him off; he replaces his elbow and Wylan gives a long-suffering sigh.

Inej doesn’t quite suppress a smile.

“How’s the world? I’m sure you’ve seen most of it by now,” asks Wylan.

Jesper grins at her. “And I’m sure it wasn’t near ready for you.”

“Just as good and just as bad as you would expect, I think,” Inej answers Wylan, finishing her descent of the staircase to stand on the landing. “Evil men are still kidnapping girls and mothers are still making skillet bread. I like to think that I’m tipping the scales.”

“You should see West Stave these days,” says Jesper with a shake of his head. “Three houses closed in the last six months.”

Inej finds it hard to swallow, let alone ask him which ones. The gratitude in the eyes of the boys and girls she saves is one thing; to know that here, in Ketterdam, they are feeling the wake of the Wraith, is another thing altogether.

“How is it, being back?” Wylan asks, shrugging Jesper’s elbow off with finality and answering, “You’re too bony,” to the other’s pout, though a fond smile plays around his lips. “Have you seen Kaz yet?”

“Is it that obvious?” Inej almost wonders if she should tell them about the little girl, as she almost told Kaz...but she didn’t. She still isn’t sure why. But why would Kaz Brekker, of all people, care about something like that? Aren’t the only lives that matter to him still the ones he can use?

Maybe not, Inej thinks, recalling the look in his eyes when he saw her. There and then gone, as wily as a shadow, but something. He would tell her that it’s dangerous to hope.

“We’ve been trying to talk him into coming for dinner,” says Jesper, breaking her from her thoughts. “Maybe he actually will now that you’re here.”

“It’s Kaz,” Inej replies. “Try not to have expectations; he’ll always break them.”

Wylan grins. “Well, on the odd chance that he shows up and you want to settle in before then, your room’s upstairs. The one on the end of the hall? Might have been the one you climbed into, actually.”

“You may never know,” Inej teases.

“I’m sure we won’t,” he replies with a brief shake of his head.

“Don’t take too long!” Jesper calls after her as she begins to ascend the staircase. “We want to hear about the places you’ve been. And the new swear words you’ve learned.”

“She can take as long as she needs,” she hears Wylan say.

And while Inej is eager to spend all the time with her friends that she can, she made a promise to her crew—a bath and a nap, in that order. And it’s one she intends to keep.

<><><>

Inej can’t quite stop a sigh from escaping her lips as she sinks into the hot water. Usually, she’s as quick as possible to clean herself, but this once she’ll let herself luxuriate in the warmth and the bubbles, at least for a few minutes. It’s a novel thing after years on a ship and in the Barrel, after all.

She tips her head back, soaking her hair; the water is soothing aches that she didn’t realize she had, and she can’t bring herself to mind it. She wonders briefly if Kaz would find it to help his leg, then promptly halts her imagination concerning Kaz and baths from going any further. She’s not sure she would be capable of anything she might fantasize about, anyway.

It’s not just a lack of time that normally leads her to get this over with; she doesn’t like to see herself uncovered like this. It’s too easy to forget that she was the one to peel away her layers, that she has made the choice to be laid bare. It’s too easy to see tracks left on her skin by wandering hands. It’s too easy to remember the things Heleen would say on her bad days—too small, too rough, too flat. Too easy to remember the praises of her skin like it’s a fine silk when it is all she sees.

So she closes her eyes. It’s not a perfect thing, but she wants to be able to rest her mind as well, for now. She lets time steal away from her as if it’s a Wraith itself, padding on soft feet to return and take her by surprise. Her body, she reminds herself, is what saved her. It’s what made her valuable to the Dregs. It’s what ties her to her family. It allows her to fulfill her dream of saving others from the fate it bore.

When she rises, then, and wraps herself in a robe that must be Marya’s, since it doesn’t drown her like Jesper’s or even Wylan’s would, she can remember the strength of what she sees. She seats herself in front of the fogged-up mirror and begins to weave her wet hair back into a braid, and though she eyes the tubs and jars of creams and cosmetics that Marya has laid out beside the sink, she wouldn’t know the first thing to do with them.

Once Inej has finished her braid, coiled it at the nape of her neck, and re-fastened her earring, she pads out into the adjoining room, where she’d hung her clothes to dry. They’re still damp, but luckily she had left a few things here in anticipation of future stays. Her fingers drift over the folded pieces: black, purple, deep blue. Cotton and leather, skintight. Nothing like the billowing linen she knows now. Well, it’ll be familiar all the same.

She leaves the hood and mask behind, but the asymmetrical jacket and sleek black pants still fit her. At least her body hasn’t changed much, if her mind has. She didn’t really expect anything different.

That nap might have to wait, she thinks, glancing at the clock, and instead makes her way to the staircase. Dry and in these clothes, it feels familiar to slide down the banister and slip from the post at its end, making her way from there into the dining room. Wylan is messing with the silverware, or maybe laying it out, and Jesper is trying to get away with putting his feet up on the table. Wylan appears to be the more successful of the two.

Inej drops her eyes to the plates and utensils. “I thought your father’s servants stuck around.”

“They did,” says Wylan, switching the order of two forks that look identical to Inej. “And I let them, because they need a living wage. Doesn’t mean I’m going to make them do things that I can do myself.”

The stern, aproned older woman in the corner would appear to disagree, but to her credit, she says nothing and disappears into the kitchen.

“Things that Jesper should be helping with,” Wylan adds, giving a pointed look to the tipped-back chair and its occupant.

Inej picks up a fork from the basket that rests on the table. “Where do these go?”

“Ah ah,” says Jesper, reaching over with one absurdly long arm and sliding the fork from her grip. “You’re our guest.”

“And what’s your excuse?” asks Wylan, “accidentally” jabbing the Zemeni with a plate. “Anyway, we’re only setting the table for four, and that’s being hopeful.”

“All right, then,” says Inej, picking up the basket that holds the remaining silverware and plates. “Where does this go?”

“Somewhere you’re too short to reach anyway,” says Jesper, finally standing to scoop up the basket and stow it away on a shelf on the opposite wall.

Inej purses her lips. “And reaching high places has stopped being my specialty? Why did no one inform me?”

“Guest,” Jesper repeats in a sing-song voice. As if to echo him, the door knocker falls; after a brief shared glance among the three of them, Inej makes for the door first.

Forget what Kaz said; she feels hope blossoming through her like the warmth brought by her mother’s tea, and she gives it free reign, her steps speeding almost to a run. She stops at the door and rests her hand on its knob for a bare fraction of a second.

It isn’t Kaz.

“Fionn?” Inej says blankly, looking at her Kaelish crewmate. Then her eyes fall to the child in the redhead’s arms. “Oh.”

Fionn shifts the little girl’s weight. “I’d thought she would be safer with you than where most of us are staying. Not that Specht didn’t try.”

Inej smiles softly, adjusting to this like it’s a wobble of the wire or a change in the wind. “You weren’t followed,” she says, raising an eyebrow as she takes the little girl. It’s not quite a question. She trusts her crew.

“Nobody stands out here,” says Fionn. “And you’re in the rich part of town. Nice, by the way. Lucky.”

Inej strokes the toddler’s downy hair. The Kaelish believe in luck; she’s not sure that she does. “Still, be careful going back. Even without her.”

“You know me,” says Fionn, tightening her ginger ponytail. “Almost as quiet as you.”

When you want to be. Inej presses her lips together as the girl leaves, thinking of the bawdy sea shanties Fionn likes to belt out. She and Nina would have gotten along.

She’s two steps into the parlor before she realizes how this looks—her with a little Suli girl who’s as old as Inej has been gone—but by then Jesper is already staring at her.

“Well, that’s not Kaz,” he says, strolling up to offer the little girl a hand to grab. She blinks dark eyes at him and clings closer to Inej.

Jesper scoffs. “Rude.” His attitude is playful, but there’s a seriousness in his eyes as he looks at Inej, and she sighs.

“She’s not mine.”

Jesper laughs nervously. “Well of course, I mean, I wouldn’t think—”

Inej shakes her head softly, smiling. “Of course you would. And why would I mind that you did? We rescued her a few weeks ago from a ship that had taken her mother.”

“The mother?” Jesper asks, but the deepening of his brow tells Inej that he already knows the answer, so she just thins her lips disappointedly.

“Poor nub.” He looks sadly at the girl as Wylan enters.

“Uh, what’s—who—?”

“Fear not,” says Inej, sinking into a chair to rest the girl on her lap. She’s strong, but a child of almost three is heavy standing like this. “She’s not mine.”

“Nor anyone’s now,” Jesper says, taking the chair opposite hers.

“Ours then,” says Wylan, kneeling in front of Inej’s chair. How she appreciates him for making nothing of it! The child is shy with him too, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “All of ours.”

That seems to make Jesper think. “Does Kaz—?”
He’s interrupted by the sound of the knocker once again.

“Saved any other lost babies?” he asks nervously.

Wylan opens the door, and Inej says, “No.”

Kaz’s collar is turned up and his hat is pulled down, but she still sees his eyes find the little girl.

Chapter Text

Inej is holding a little girl—a little Suli girl with eyes like lost moons. Kaz’s world seems to stutter to a halt.

He doesn’t say anything—what can he say? He generally prefers to be reticent where feelings are involved, anyway.

Besides, he tells himself strictly, It’s not as if you were under contract. She deserves better than you; so what if she found it? You tried, and it wasn’t enough.

Jordie’s voice interjects. Cut your losses, Kaz.

Kaz stands straighter, his posture stiffer. He looks at Inej, and regardless of the argument he’s been drafting against himself, pain worse than a gunshot knifes through him.

He’s close to leaving and never saying a word. He wants to leave. But there’s no way to do so without making it excruciatingly obvious why.

So.

“Hello, Wraith,” he says. Cordially, formally, former employer to erstwhile spider who was never in the curtain call of his daydreams. The one he sent away from Ketterdam to responsibly dispose of a distraction. Bad for business to lose her, but worse to keep her. For business and business alone.

The erstwhile spider, however, is set on being more direct. “I should have told you about the baby,” says Inej, and then her eyes go wider. She presses her face to the top of the little girl’s head, embarrassed. “That came out wrong.”

Why is Jesper laughing? Kaz will break his nose, show him what’s funny. Maybe pop out a few of those pearly teeth while he’s at it.

“I was just telling Jesper,” Inej says with an awkward bob of her head, “she’s not mine. We saved her from a slaver’s ship a few weeks ago.”

Oh.

Yet again, the world seems to re-shape itself, and Kaz is faced with the terrifying prospect of his dangerous hopes being possible again. He grips the head of his cane more tightly, his face smooth to assure no one’s noticed.

“You can come in, you know,” Wylan pipes up, rising from the floor and taking a seat by Jesper.

Kaz steps in with a tap of his cane against the floor and stands there. He still can’t think of anything to say, but they don’t have a right to expect him to talk. He came; that’s enough, he decides.

And they don’t need to fear for silence, for the little girl in Inej’s lap lets out a delighted gurgle and stretches out her hands. Kaz stares at her. It’s a bizarrely happy sound to his ears.

Jesper makes an offended noise and Inej beams. Kaz gets that feeling again, like the lights have gone out and she’s illuminating the room all by herself.

“She likes you,” Inej says.

Kaz coughs skeptically. “Wonderful.”

The toddler gives another insistent noise and almost topples out of Inej’s lap. Inej raises her eyebrows. “I think she wants to come say hello.”

“Can she actually say anything?” Kaz asks. “Does she know Kerch?”

“Some,” Inej replies with all the pride of a young mother. It hurts Kaz to hear it, and he’s not sure why. “She—”

“Man. Hat man,” says the child, in decent Kerch for a three-year-old.

Kaz gives Inej a long-suffering look. “No.”

“Oh, come on!” Jesper protests. “Of course the one person she likes is the one who wants nothing to do with her.”

“Maybe you’re secretly a kid person, Kaz,” says Wylan. “You know, when you’re not threatening to murder their families.”

Kaz cuts his eyes sideways at Wylan, not caring enough to bring out his full glare. “No.”

“Hat man,” the toddler says again. “Hat stick man.”

“Those names are going to get less complimentary the longer you refuse,” Inej advises. “She’s been living on a ship, remember?”

As if to prove Inej’s point, the little girl swears with a respectable amount of gusto at nobody in particular. Inej gives her a disapproving look.

Kaz, on the other hand, considers himself won over—or just worn down. He takes the empty chair next to Inej, which he suspects was left empty on purpose. His crew should really stop trying to play criminal mastermind when they know full well that it’s his business and they can’t pull it off anyway.

“Does she have a name?” he asks as Inej lets the girl down to walk, presumably over to him.

“Not yet. My crew couldn’t agree,” Inej replies. Kaz eyes the little girl, who is making a beeline for his cane, with some trepidation. She’ll have to learn to not be so obvious about what she wants.

“How about letting an outsider choose, then?” asks Jesper, sitting up a bit straighter.

Kaz scowls. Whatever they’re going to call her, the kid’s got a hold of his cane now. At least he still has the other end, and better the cane than his leg. Or his hand.

Inej narrows her eyes, a smirk playing around her lips. Kaz tries not to focus too much on the shadows cast by her lashes and the lamplight on her face. “I’m not sure I trust you with that,” she says.

“And me?” asks Wylan, leaning on the arm of his chair as if he thinks a cheeky smile will make Inej pick him.

Maybe I ought to try it sometime.

“I’m sure all the names you know are family names, or impossibly Kerch,” says Inej. “She ought to be able to learn her own name.”

“Mine’s not that bad!” Wylan protests.

“Well, I don’t think we’re naming her ‘Wylan’,” Inej replies teasingly.

“It is a good name, though,” Jesper reassures.

Kaz looks down at the little girl, who’s tired of grabbing his cane and is now repeating “Hat,” over and over.

“Stop that, Jordan,” he murmurs. The name feels funny on his tongue, like a shirt shoved into the back of a drawer that you haven’t worn in years, like it doesn’t fit right, but it could.

She pauses and blinks absurdly round eyes at him. “Stop?” she asks, stuttering a bit over the Kerch consonants.

Kaz sighs heavily and drops his hat onto her head, most of which it engulfs. “Happy now?” he asks roughly, and turns his eyes back to the others.

They’re still bickering; Jesper is evidently insisting that Llewellyn is gender-neutral.

“Jordan,” says Kaz.

They all look at him, including the little girl, who has preemptively become Jordan in his mind. He’s trying out the idea, drafting a plan to see if it fits.

She is still wearing his hat.

Inej is not just looking at him but rather giving him a look, probably because she knows. She knows more than Jesper and Wylan do. “Jordan?” she asks. Now the little girl looks at her, pushing up the brim of Kaz’s hat to do so. At least the kid learns fast.

“I guess she likes it,” says Wylan.

Inej is smiling at the child and her oversized hat, a soft smile, effervescent almost, like the glow around the edges of a flame. And like that glow, she seems to make Kaz’s world shift and shimmer like heat waves in the air.

“But ‘Jordan’ is Kerch, sort of!” Jesper protests. “You, Captain Ghafa, are playing favorites.”

“If she were,” Kaz puts in, lifting his hat from Jordan’s head, “it wouldn’t be me.”

Inej slits a look at him but carries on. “It’s a good name—Jordan. And she likes it better than yours.”

“Rude, again,” Jesper mutters, but he’s grinning.

“Jordan?” Jordan questions.

“Yep,” says Wylan, “that’s you.”

She appears to contemplate this for a moment. Everyone else pays rapt attention. Kaz sighs. Children.

“Jordan eat,” she pronounces. “Food.”

Kaz shrugs. “You did invite me for dinner, not an impromptu baby shower.”

<><><>

Jordan seems to have warmed to Jesper and Wylan, if for no other reason than that she likes her new name, so they escort her into the dining room, each holding one of her hands. It looks so familial. Kaz won’t say he’s jealous of them, but there is something there.

With Wylan, Jesper, and most importantly, Jordan effectively out of the way, Kaz flicks his cane in front of the door to stop Inej, who’s following him. She tips her head but looks unsurprised.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” he says quietly, his eyes fixed on the molding at the base of the wall.

“Kaz?” she asks.

“Was that the truth?” he queries roughly. “That she’s not yours?” He doesn’t say ‘Jordan’, because that’s worse, to name Inej’s child by someone else after his brother. It’s too many layers of loss. Too much trust broken.

Now he risks looking at her. Maybe he shouldn’t have. Her brow is furrowed, eyes dark with hurt. He’d put a bullet in anyone else who put that look on her face, but he has to know.

“No,” Inej says firmly. “Why would I lie to you about that, anyway?”

Illusions of a hope he doesn’t have. Are they illusions? Has he allowed himself too much already?

“Don’t try to protect me. Trying to save me was hopeless enough. Don’t make it worse.”

Inej looks away, and the shadows dance over her face, her braided coil of hair gleaming. “I was right. You’re the same as before.”

Before? When he heard magic in her laugh, when he saw the universe in her eyes, when her touch brought him the possibility of salvation after all. He hasn’t escaped any of that. It is yet another weakness he can’t fight, but maybe he can turn it into a strength like the others.

So he says nothing.

Inej goes on, angrily now in earnest. “And you know exactly what it would take to do that. Maybe you’ve forgotten when you’ve gotten selfish and cold these years, but it’s not just hard for you, Kaz. I couldn’t have a child if I wanted to.”

Kaz feels like he should do something. He flexes his fingers in his gloves, but childish though it may be, he needs the feeling of safety. Maybe he’s proving her right by it.

“So she’s not yours.”

“She’s as good as.” Inej’s tone is cooler now, steel. “I am all she has in the world. You used to care about that.”

“You assume that because you were alone. But you are one of a kind.” He realizes too late the implication that he cares about her, but doesn’t amend it. “Is that why you’re really going back to Ravka?”

“Don’t let yourself start feeling clever for that, Kaz, but yes,” Inej replies, straightening the corset with her knives strapped to it. “So then you’re not coming?”

“The deal is the deal,” says Kaz, rapping his cane against the floor once. Simple, efficient, uncomplicated. If only things were actually that way.

Inej purses her lips. “See you in there,” she says, and joins the others in the dining room.

Kaz, for his part, is left with the bitter aftertaste of a mistake.

Chapter Text

Jordan is swinging over the city in a sling of dark cloth. She peers over the edge and sees the winding streets, buildings, windows down below; she sees people, little like the bugs that Mama One used to tell her to stomp on and make them go squish. Jordan always liked that part, the squish part. She likes making things go squish, in general. 

And her view is always moving, always changing, because she’s slung against Mama Two’s chest, and Mama Two is climbing over the roofs and spires of the city, invisible to the bug-people beneath. Jordan is invisible too. She feels Mama Two’s heartbeat where they’re pressed together, and likes the secret of it all. 

She peeks up over Mama Two’s shoulder; the city smoke and Mama Two’s loose hairs tickle her and she sneezes. 

“Shh,” Mama Two murmurs. “We’re almost there.” She’s using Mama One words, like she always does when it’s just her and Jordan. 

Jordan is learning that there are two words for everything; there are Mama One words—the words she knows better—and Mama Two/Hat Man/Tall Stick Man/Red Boy words. Mama Two uses Mama One words when they’re alone, like now, but when they’re around the others, like last night, or even Freckle Girl and Stick Girl and Arm-Pictures-Man on the Good Small Boat (as opposed to Big Bad Boat), she uses these other words, words that clash and clatter and hop around like little frogs. 

“Where?” Jordan asks, in Mama One words, since she knows them better. 

“To see your friend from last night, Kaz.” Mama Two hops over the gap onto the next roof and Jordan does her very big-girl best to not squeal excitedly. 

She tries out the new word, Kaz, but it doesn’t suit her tongue; the ‘Z’ sound slips and slithers through her teeth, and she scowls, as much as a three-year-old round-faced child can. 

Mama Two laughs. She has such a pretty laugh that Jordan doesn’t even mind that she got it wrong. Now they’re slipping under the eaves of a funny crooked house, out of the mist and onto a windowsill. Mama Two plays with the latch and slips inside, and Jordan ducks so she doesn’t bonk her head on the top of the window. 

Inside, there’s a bed on one wall, a chest of drawers with a basin on top against the other, and a desk near the door, behind which sits—

“Hat man!” Jordan crows. He isn’t wearing his hat right now, but that just means it’ll be easier for her to get her hands on.

He looks up over his shoulder at them. He’s not wearing a big dark coat that Jordan wants to hide in like last night; just a white shirt, jacket, and vest, all boring. But if he isn’t wearing the coat, then it’s here somewhere, and maybe Jordan can steal it. She wriggles for Mama Two to put her down. 

“You’re...both here,” says Hat Man. He’s using those other frog words. Jordan doesn’t quite understand them, but she doesn’t need to understand to find his coat. 

“Jesper and Wylan are out for the afternoon, and I’m going to pick up supplies with my crew. It’s too dangerous for Jordan,” says Mama Two. She unties the sling and lets Jordan down, who, having heard her name, is interested again. 

Hat Man raises his eyebrows. Jordan likes his eyebrows. They say more than his mouth does. “Are you punishing me, Inej?”

Jordan looks at Mama Two. “Inej?” she repeats. This one sounds like a Mama One word, and sits nicely in Jordan’s mouth. 

“That’s my name,” says Mama Two, still using frog words. Jordan at least recognizes my, so she decides to ask as well as she can. 

“That’s my name Jordan?” she asks, thumbing at herself to emphasize her point. 

Hat Man just watches her, but his eyebrows say, Smart. Jordan is very pleased with herself. 

“How do you know I’m not going anywhere?” says Hat Man. 

Mama Two crosses her arms. “You forget how much I know. Information is my specialty, Kaz.”

In-firm-a—nope. Too long. 

“And there’s nobody else you could go to? I don’t like being cornered.” Jordan understands enough to tell that Hat Man is arguing, and there’s a bite in his voice, but his eyebrows have already given up. 

Clearly, Mama Two also understands this, because she smiles her pretty smile—almost as pretty as her laugh—and slips out the window. 

Jordan gives Hat Man an appraising look, and sets about looking for his coat. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, even though he isn’t looking at her. His voice is rough and scratchy, like a feed sack or a gravel road. He should try some of Mama One’s tea, Jordan thinks. 

She understands the ‘what’, and figures he doesn’t understand the strength of her coat fantasies, but he can probably figure it out himself. She’s too busy on her hunt to make conversation. She toddles over to the chest of drawers and opens the bottom one, but it’s just white shirts. The next one, which isn’t very far below the level of her face, has dark fabric in it, which looks more promising, so Jordan starts pawing through it.

“Jordan. Stop that.”

She remembers that word from last night. Stop. She knows what it means. She doesn’t know how to say ‘coat’, though. 

“Warm,” she says insistently. “Warm big shirt.”

“You’re cold?” he says impatiently.

Cold. Jordan knows that one. She nods, bobbing up and down on her heels as she does so. 

“It’s Ketterdam. It’s always cold. Inej should have given you a coat.”

Was that the word? Jordan heard Inej and cold , and Mama Two, who must be Inej, would know better than Hat Man and give her a coat, so maybe that’s the word. “Coat,” Jordan repeats back at him. 

He sighs. “I knew pirates had parrots, but you, really?”

“You coat,” Jordan insists. 

He turns back to his paper. “I’m warm.”

“Me you coat,” Jordan says, stomping her foot. Stupid frog words.

He turns around slowly. It’s scary, but Jordan stands her ground. Maybe she shouldn’t have stomped her foot, though. 

When is Mama Two getting back, say his eyebrows. Jordan agrees with them. But he just turns back around, rustling the—wait. Was that on his chair before?

Beaming victoriously, Jordan tiptoes up to the back of his chair, wraps her little fists in the fabric of the coat, and tugs as hard as she can. 

His hand slips up and grabs the hem. It’s so fast Jordan barely sees it, and she gives a frustrated whine. 

“Maybe one day you’ll learn to steal from me,” he says. “But you’ll have to be better than that.” 

Jordan doesn’t know all of those words, but the message is clear enough. She storms over and flomps onto the bed, arms firmly crossed. 

Hat Man just goes back to his work. 

Jordan doesn’t like him very much anymore. 

Since he’s ignoring her, she takes her socks off, which always used to get Mama One’s attention and would probably annoy Mama Two as well. But Hat Man isn’t paying attention. Jordan scowls and decides to devise a game—a game so fun that he will have to admit he’s being a stupid-head and play with her. 

Since she has her socks anyway, she slips them over her hands. Now she has a fine pair of puppets, but that’s a boring game. It has to be a competition game. That’s a hard game to play by yourself, but Jordan figures that it has to be fun, because no matter what, she’ll win. But no matter what, she’ll lose, too…

She scrunches up her nose and tries to figure out how to fix this problem. The obvious answer is to have Hat Man play with her, but the point of the game is to make him play with her, so no to that. Maybe if she pretends that each hand is its own person—Jordan is good at pretending. When the bad men took her and Mama One, she pretended that it was an adventure. When they were on the ship, she pretended that she was a pirate too. When Mama One got sick, Jordan pretended that she would get better. And when Mama One didn’t wake up, Jordan pretended that she would come back. 

But she knew better. That’s the point of pretending. 

Jordan goes back to her game and doesn’t think about bad men and Mama One anymore. Or at least, she pretends not to. 

<><><>

“Hat Man.” Jordan stands next to his chair. 

“Hm?” 

But he isn’t looking at her, so Jordan grabs his stick and pokes him with the bird head. It’s a very heavy stick, and she drops it more than putting it down; it hits his leg and clatters loudly to the floor. Now he’s glaring at her like one of those bad men. Is he a bad man? Jordan doesn’t think that Mama Two would leave her with a bad man, but maybe she would. People, Jordan knows, don’t always do what they say they’re going to do. When Mamas say they’ll be right here, baby, no matter what, they don’t mean no matter what—not really. 

Maybe he doesn’t want to see her game. Jordan starts to go back to flop on the bed. But he says, “What?”

When he bends to pick up his stick, Jordan sees that he’s looking at her and is satisfied. She holds up her hands with the socks on them and, with much growling, has the two hands fight to pull off each other’s sock until the victor is finally crowned. Holding the losing sock, Jordan pumps the winning fist high in the air and adds sound effects, just in case he doesn’t get it. 

Hat Man doesn’t say anything, but his eyebrows don’t like her game. 

Jordan drops her hand, sits on the floor, and feels a tremendous urge to cry. She wants Mama Two to come back. She wants Mama One to come back. 

“That would work better if you had two people fighting.”

Jordan sniffles and looks up. Hat Man scoots his chair back, leans on his stick, and awkwardly levers himself down to sit on the floor next to her. He still has his gloves on, like he did last night, even though he said he wasn’t cold. 

Gloves would be better than socks, Jordan thinks. She reaches out with the hand that still has a sock on and makes as if to snap at his glove, asking the best way she knows how, but he pulls his hand back into a fist against his chest. 

“No,” he says. Not angry, exactly, but firm and final. 

Okay, then. Thinking of all the frog words she can use to say this, Jordan tells him, “Good with...people, more people...eyes.” She points from her eyes to the socks in hopes that it makes more sense.

Hat Man leans back against the leg of the desk. Maybe she should start calling him Gloves Man instead. “With people watching?”

“Watch, watch, yes, watching,” says Jordan, bouncing. She’s learning so many new words today! 

Hat Man, or Gloves Man, or whatever his name is, raises an eyebrow, and for once, it says exactly the same thing that his voice does. “What for?”

Jordan knows this one. “Money,” she says. Three years of life is enough to teach her that people will pay for anything. Including sock-game tournaments. 

Hat/Gloves Man wrestles his face into a smooth expression, but his eyebrows and even his eyes are proud of her. “Tickets and bets, hmm? I might get a Dregs stake in that once you’re up and running.”

Jordan doesn’t quite know what he means, but she shrugs and gives him a sock. 

Chapter Text

Leave Jordan alone with Kaz for two hours, and she comes back with a tournament to rival the Hellshow, a business plan, and Dregs backing. Inej should have known better. 

Jordan’s grand plans, however, will have to wait; today they’re leaving for Ravka, where she’ll have far less success starting a sock-gladiator ring, though she could probably still do it if she tried. She’s been chattering incessantly all morning as Inej tries to pack, switching between Suli and Kerch, often midsentence. Inej still can’t figure out why she keeps calling Kerch “frog words”. 

Fionn, who finished packing first, has earned the grand honor of keeping Jordan busy while their captain now gets everything in order to depart. Inej eyes them from her position at the bow of the ship; while she can’t stop Fionn from teaching Jordan new swear words (in Kerch and Kaelish), she can at least ensure that Jordan makes it onto the Wraith in one piece. 

With a proper pirate’s hat that she’d acquired at their very first port stop perched on her head, dressed again in a billowy blouse, this time purple, and a deck beneath her feet, Inej somehow feels back at home. She is in command here. Hiding is the opposite of what her crew needs her to do as she directs them here and there.

Kaz isn’t here yet. Inej is not surprised. He’ll make his entrance when he’s ready.

(Or maybe he won’t come at all.)

“No, move that belowdecks!” Inej shouts. Shouting takes focus, which automatically precludes thinking about Kaz. About Kaz and how she feels unmoored with him again, blind to the parts of him she can’t reach and shut out of what he really means. She could never get a read on him, but this is different, worse. She doesn’t want to start over. 

Apparently shouting doesn’t require as much focus as she wants it to. 

Moreover, not shouting allows her to hear a click against the boards behind her. Ink and coffee reach her nose, mingling with the fish and sweat and salt. It’s a heady thing, and Inej remembers the pull of longing again. She remembers what it’s like to want what’s closed away from her. 

“You came,” she says, after a delay that she would hope he doesn’t notice, except that of course he notices everything. Too late, she realizes how revealing the statement is in itself. 

“You thought I wouldn’t?” Kaz muses, leaning against the rail, where Inej joins him. He is limned by the morning sunlight, waves rippling in his dark eyes, so sharp-edged as to be geometric in profile. Inej feels the bizarre desire well up to soften all of his lines, to fluff the shoulders of his coat, to ruffle his hair, to see him smile. The world might very well stop for that. 

“I didn’t know,” Inej hedges. This conversation feels achingly familiar, but she remembers what he said last time.

“I did,” says Kaz, and it’s as simple as an I will always come , all by itself. I will set the world on fire if it stops me , is written in invisible ink. Inej would think she’s looking too much into it, but she can so rarely read him that the words are like he said them out loud. 

They’re on the side of the ship that faces not the open harbor, but Ketterdam. Their city. At least they will both feel unmoored to leave it. Inej can’t go so far as to say that her memories are all or even mostly fond, but like a scavenger, she scrounged her armor from the alleys of Ketterdam and banged it together in the fire of her own creation. At least she has it to thank for that, if not for the necessity of armor in the first place. 

“I should have known better,” Inej murmurs. 

Kaz doesn’t say anything, but his silent agreement is clear. If he disagreed, he’d be saying something. Finally, however, and surprising her by it, he says, “As should I.”

Inej turns, leaning one hip against the railing, and asks him, “About what?” 

Two members of her crew carry a coil of rope past them. Voices rise and fall, carried away by the sea. The wind ripples through her hair and sings into the silence. She’s reminded, unprompted, of the softness of his touch, times she can count on one hand. 

Is it too much to press him? They both know. But in this unsteady space, Inej feels stronger, maybe even strong enough to ask for what she deserves. What he has to give her if he wants her. Never something for nothing. 

“Jordan.” He says the name carefully, like he’s afraid it’ll summon something, like a child trying out a new swear and fearing to be caught by his parents. “I...It was a bad call. To question you. Despite my best efforts, you’re not a liar.”

The shadow of a smile touches Inej’s lips. “Thank you. And thank you for taking care of her. Jordan likes you, you know.”

Kaz flexes his wrists against the railing, staring down into the harbor like he expects some sea monster to rise from it. “Again, despite my best efforts.”

Inej rocks towards him, still leaving him some space. “I’m not sure I believe that.”

“Because, despite your best efforts, I am a liar,” Kaz concurs, almost teasingly. He looks back at her, and his eyes seem like pieces of amber now, trapping the sunlight. 

“My parents will be far too excited to get to know you,” says Inej, changing the subject rather more clumsily than she would’ve liked. She feels set adrift in a different way now. 

Kaz’s eyebrows lift, but he doesn’t comment. “Have you told them I’m coming?”

“A letter wouldn’t reach them before we do,” Inej says, finding her footing in the safety of the mundane. 

“So you haven’t told them about Jordan either.” With a click of his cane, Kaz steps away from the railing back towards the bow, where Fionn and Jordan are on the dock below. Inej joins him, perching on the side of the ship. 

Jordan has socks on her hands again; well, only on one hand, as she’s somehow talked Fionn into donning the other one (and is dominating the Kaelish girl at the “sock game”). Inej shudders to think of the words Jordan is learning every time Fionn loses. 

“She looks happy,” says Inej. “She’s a happy girl. Despite everything.”

Kaz’s eyes darken to a glare and there’s a black bite in his voice when he says, “She’s too young to understand. She’ll be paying later.”

“That doesn’t mean she can’t fight her way back from it.” Inej closes her eyes briefly—how naive and cloying and childish. But she’s not going to run from it now. She sets her hand down on the railing beside her, slightly more towards him than would be natural, her pinky parted just a bit further from the other fingers. 

His eyes are as dark and cold as the harbor. It’s something akin to what Jesper calls “scheming face”, but instead of fixing somewhere in the distance, his gaze is focused on her. 

His hands seem to stay folded behind him, out of Inej’s view; she sighs and looks back down at Jordan and Fionn. She should have tried harder to take his advice, to battle back her hope. It only got her here. 

Bare skin brushes against her finger. 

Inej’s head jerks up, and she looks at Kaz; he’s stiff, staring straight ahead, but his hand lies on the railing beside hers, his glove clutched in his other fist. He brings their little fingers to touch again, and she sees a shudder ripple through him, but he doesn’t pull his hand away. 

Inej wants to take his hand like she did before, to squeeze it tight and feel the solid reality of him, her anchor. If this is all he can do now, though, she will accept it; it’s never been about what he can do, for her, as long as he is doing all that he can. Not all that he will; that’s the difference. It would never be enough as long as he didn’t try for her, as long as all he had meant all that he had a backup for. All that he could recover from. All that he could live to lose. She wasn’t about to be collateral damage.

 It’s like the Saints’ fable of the poor woman who only offered a few measly coins, but was smiled upon because it was all that she had. Inej will have to tell it to him sometime. 

“This is all that I want,” she says, brushing her finger up and down against the side of his. He’s still gripping the rail hard, but she knows he’ll pull away if he has to. 

“Is it?” Kaz asks, staring into the sky. 

“If it’s all you have,” Inej replies. “Of course I want more. I want…” I want you. The words are as stunted in her mind as they were from his mouth. “I want you without armor. If I’m going to open myself to you, I expect the same.”

Kaz twines his finger with hers, his eyes on their now joined hands. The harbor speaks with the voice of a lost home and a lost brother. The wind whispers of what has been found. 

Chapter Text

Everything is different from the Ferolind , except for what is the same. For instance, the two days Kaz has spent trying to think of a reason to talk to Inej. 

The most they’ve exchanged is a casual conversation in the two days since they left Ketterdam, and it’s so quiet here; if Kaz were still in the city, there would have at least been a brawl or two to clean up by now. He can’t stop himself from worrying about what’s going on in his absence, and if his people can handle it. But instead of memorizing sums and figures, watching the regulars of the Crow Club, or testing out new tactics to draw in business, he has been demoted from feared gang leader to babysitter. 

Like now. 

He sits with his back against the mast and his bad leg propped up on a coil of rope, his cane resting across his lap to keep it out of little hands. Jordan is not one to be stopped by things being too big for her. Kaz has a good idea of where she’s learned that kind of determination.  

She’s hunted down the coat that he discarded after mere minutes beneath the beating sun and, despite the fact that it must be too hot for her as well, she is currently draped stubbornly in it. As much as Kaz admires her penchant for stealing things, and her ambition for the toughest target, he does wish that she’d stop targeting him. It’s frustrating for the both of them, since no one, not even Inej, could make him let this kid win. Going soft on her won’t teach her anything. 

He stares at her. Doesn’t glare at her. It might look like glaring, but if it scares her, she might just have to suck it up. 

She continues parading around in his coat. 

Kaz sighs and—well, even though what he’s doing feels a lot like giving in, he isn’t , because he does not give in. Not this easily. Not to three-year-olds. “What are you doing?”

Jordan turns as if she’s just noticed him, as if she hasn’t been carefully trying to get his attention this whole time, and raises an imperious eyebrow. Well, one and a half. She hasn’t quite mastered the trick of raising only the one. 

Kaz returns the look, much more successfully. But he is not competing with a three-year-old. He’s better than the kind of person who feels satisfaction in triumph over a toddler. Better, as in he has bigger fish to fry. 

She pouts. Predictably.

Not his problem if she isn’t going to talk. He’ll just keep sitting here. Not worrying about what’s happening to the Dregs without his reputation around to protect them. Hopefully the threat of what he’ll do when he gets back is enough—no, not hopefully, because as established, he isn’t worrying. 

That does not explain why he slits his eyes against the sun, nor the headache that’s burrowing in between his eyes. Though that could also be because he’s not sleeping any more here than he did in Ketterdam. 

Jordan toddles over to stand in front of him, eyeing his cane. Kaz tightens his grip on it. She seems undeterred. 

Naturally.

“Kaz,” she says, although she stumbles and hisses through the ‘Z’ sound so that it sputters to a disappointing conclusion. 

“So now you know my name,” he replies. 

“My name,” she corrects. 

Kaz sighs heavily. This seems to annoy Jordan as it annoys most other people.

“Me Kaz,” she insists.

Ah. The coat makes sense now. And the strut, although he’s never walked like that, even before he broke his leg. But he’s not something to be playing at; not something anyone who’s sane and whole should want to become. Certainly not her. 

Certainly not someone named Jordan.

He reaches out and plucks his coat back, making her fuss, but she’ll get over it. Maybe one day she’ll even figure out why, if she remembers this. 

He’s not sure why he keeps thinking of what he’ll teach her or how he’ll influence her, as if he’s going to be around as she grows. He’s third in line at the very least—Inej has taken Jordan in, not him, and the plan is to leave the child with her new grandparents, where she’ll be safe. He may hardly know her after this. 

And he can’t be, wouldn’t be, shouldn’t be thinking of raising her with Inej. He’s in no position to presume as such. And when did he start making plans beyond what he can control and confirm? 

A shadow shifts on the deck before him; it’s Inej, descending from her perch to walk among them. Ah, the Sankta of the Sea deigns to associate with mere mortals. One of many reasons she is the only Saint he believes in. 

There is a new confidence about her now, here; her braid is loose over her shoulder instead of coiled at her neck, stray wisps fluttering free and brushing her sun-goldened cheeks. Her clothes are looser, too, as is her stride; she speaks louder—speaks more, at that. She is as at home here as on a roof, but in a completely different way, like the difference between the shadows she hid in for him and the sunlight that reveals her as beholden to no one. 

Jordan has been sitting and scowling up until now; maybe she’s watching Inej, too, though Kaz doubts it. Also, ‘too’ implies that he was watching her, which. He might admit it in some other life, but not this one. 

“You Kaz,” says Jordan, pulling his focus back to her. She’s contemplative, curious, her head tilted to one side in a way that’s untraceably familiar. 

Kaz nods. 

“No me, me no Kaz,” she says. She’s looking to him for approval. She should learn not to do that, either.

But he nods again.

“I be...Jordan,” she says, suddenly still, her eyes intent on his. They are not the eyes of a child, barely more than a baby.

Kaz swallows through the thickness in his throat. “Be...you.”

She doesn’t understand the difference, of course. 

<><><>

As Kaz watches Jordan, who’s calmer now, toddle around on the deck, one of Inej’s crew—Kerch, with a ragged ponytail and Shu-style dual swords strapped to her back—calls that she’s spotted a ship. 

Inej trots over to the girl’s side, and Kaz uses his cane to lever himself to his feet; previously just a speck like an grease spot on the horizon, now the shape of what’s clearly another ship is making for them. It’s a larger vessel than the Wraith , lighter in color, flying no nation’s flag. But there’s a change in the air, as if the wind has turned, that tells Kaz that this crew knows it. They’ve seen this ship before. 

Leaving Jordan by the mast, he limps up to join Inej and the Kerch girl. He wants to know what’s about to happen, even if no one is going to tell him. He may not be in charge here, but he’s not going to be completely adrift in the middle of a fight if he has anything to say about it. 

“This won’t be a cannon fight, will it?” asks the girl with the Shu swords. 

Inej tilts her head without quite shaking it. “They won’t bother. And we’re not as heavily armed.”

Reading between the lines, the girl with the swords grimaces. “They’re going to board.”

“We could outrun them,” Specht suggests from further down the deck. “We’re smaller, lighter.”

A suitable strategy for a ship named the Wraith, but not an effective one. Maybe for a new enemy, but not when they’re being hunted. Just as Kaz is about to voice this—

“No,” Inej responds, her tone strong and clear. “This is personal. They won’t give up on chasing us.”

Kaz keeps looking straight ahead, over the waves, at the spot on the horizon that’s now more of a splatter. So he’d suspected. “You know that ship,” he murmurs, rough and rocky. 

Inej turns her head only slightly towards him. Just as soft, but piercing, she says, “That’s the ship we took Jordan from.”

“How?” asks the Kaelish girl, Fionn, from her position up near the figurehead. “We took all the girls off of that ship and a fair number of their crew. How’s it still sailing?”

Inej rolls her shoulders back. The sun is behind her, her lashes lowering to half-lid her eyes, black in profile. Kaz is struck by the terrifying thought that, more than anything, she looks like him.

“Because we didn’t sink it last time,” she says.

Chapter Text

He was right. They’re boarding. The Wraith’s usual strategies, so much as he knows them, won’t do much when they’re on the defensive and in full daylight. Inej’s eyes are on him and on fire. “Get Jordan to my cabin,” she says. “They’re here for her.”

Kaz is too used to crisis situations to ask, why him. Or, is that the best place. He can wonder all he likes as he limps in long strides over to Jordan, wraps her in his discarded coat, and after a moment’s hesitation, scoops her into the arm that’s not holding his cane. 

There’s plenty of fabric between the two of them, and it’s a short walk down the hall to Inej’s cabin, but nonetheless he puts her down as soon as he can. She’s fussing again, her face twisting with confusion and the onset of tears, but he’s not here to play nursemaid, so he drops her on the bed and slips out, double-bolting the door. 

Inej pokes her head into the hallway’s opening, harriedly sweeping loose strands of hair away from her face. “Jordan? Is she—”

Kaz flicks his eyes towards the door. 

Inej takes in the bolts and his readied stance with the quickness that always served her so well on jobs, then gives him a curt nod. “Stay here. Defend this hallway.”

Kaz gives her a nod of his own, though he’s rather more smug about it. “Captain Ghafa.”

Inej rolls her eyes briefly. “Learn to take orders, Kaz. I know you’ll fight for her.”

He re-adjusts his grip on his cane. The shouts are getting louder now; she’ll have to go. “Why’s that? Why should I care?”

“Because Captain Ghafa said so.” Inej slips back out of the doorway and out of his vision.

If he had the time, he would’ve disagreed; he’ll care because Inej said so. 

The slavers who are storming the hallway probably don’t care to listen.

Kaz gets their first try out of the way easy with a swing of his cane; back of the knees, front of the head, out cold. He can’t tell how they’re doing out on the deck, if they could be fighting harder or if this is the result of sheer numbers. Doesn’t matter why when the outcome is still the same and he’s got to handle them. 

Another of the slavers, taller than Kaz with a red bandanna around his bald head, lunges at him, but he’s uncoordinated. Kaz side-steps and flings around to the back, slipping the bandana around the man’s neck and pulling it tight while the slaver sputters. He pretends that these are the men who captured Inej. His heart is pumping hot rage. 

Two down, more coming. They’re pitiful next to what the Barrel has to offer, at least for now. The “for now” comes true when a shorter one draws a sword, and Kaz curses under his breath. He doesn’t have time for luck now, and the hall is narrow, and there are three of them on him. 

One, he flicks his cane with enough spin to fracture a wrist and the opposite ankle. The pile of sweat and fish-stench stumbles and goes for his throat, but Kaz has an elbow to the face waiting to blur his vision and set his head spinning. The one with the sword is at the back and the blond one’s coming at him. Another punch because the first one, the smelly one, doesn’t know when to stop and the right hit under the nose will get him out of the way if not dead. 

All right, he’s tired of defense. Two on one. There’s still the problem of the sword, but Kaz is sizing the string bean of a kid up as an ineffectual coward, so he goes for the burly blond one. A well-aimed knee and the slaver’s squealing like a pig; then they’re on the floor, and Kaz may not be able to grab anything convenient in this hallway, but a fist is as good to bash into a stupid expression as anything. That, and the head of his cane to the windpipe, if he can find it in the man’s lump of a neck. 

He later blames one specific moment, as usual. 

In all of his choking and flailing, the blond slaver scrabbles frantically, clawing at Kaz’s sleeve; somewhere in the course of it all, he grab’s Kaz’s wrist, between white cuff and black glove. Bare skin. A bare chance. 

He doesn’t know how he wasn’t expecting it, but he wasn’t, and it makes the bile rising in his throat so much worse. The ship is rocking, and the harbor is swallowing him, and he’s failing to protect Jordan—Jordie—but wasn’t Jordie supposed to protect him, who’s the failure now—

Of all things, it’s a hot blade of pain down his back that brings him back to the ship and the man who’s dying beneath him. Kaz yanks his arm away, leaving tracks from the man’s fingernails, and whirls; the one with the sword has finally come into the fight. 

“Took you long enough,” Kaz pants, tugging down his rumpled sleeve and giving the strangled slaver a kick with his good leg. He can feel blood running down his back and it’ll start stinging in a minute, but pain is more normal for him than not. 

The kid hesitates long enough before the bodies of his compatriots to let Kaz make several calculations and one decision. Small hallway; no one else coming; better chance of winning when he’s brought a cane to a sword fight if they’re not in such close quarters. Dodge, feint, and a whack for good measure, and now they’re out in the chaos of the main deck. 

Kaz doesn’t look for Inej. Does not. He’s not giving into his tell if he can be aware of it. The girl with the dual swords swings by and steals his opponent, taking one slaver with each hand. Kaz is some mixture of impressed and annoyed. 

Gunshots. Kaz’s ears find them, and then his eyes do: one of the weaker-looking slavers, probably better armed for it. Nobody’s screamed or fallen, so he must have missed, but Kaz doesn’t feel like taking chances. 

He scans the deck, and there’s Inej: dancing along the railing like it’s a high wire, managing her crew and her fight, emitting what seem like glints of silver at this distance. She grabs hold of a loose rope and leaps into an arc, kicking his mind into gear; Kaz flicks a signal to her. Just as soon as she’s close enough to see it, but not so far that their enemies will guess, he bends and cups his hands at his knee, bracing himself for the weight when her heel sinks into his palms.

She springs off into a pivot and a fierce kick, almost too fast for Kaz’s eyes to follow except that he sees the damage. He sees her land, get the gun between her curved knives, and then between her swinging towards him and him fighting towards her, she hands it off. 

He’s not as good of a shot as Jesper, but for someone who’s not a Fabrikator, he isn’t half bad. Certainly good enough at this range. He’s got plenty of anger still and pain to fuel it, so if his shots kill that’s not his problem. 

One of them is too shocked at the bodies of his crewmates for the profession he’s chosen. He’s  angry, but anger is like wine; it gets better with age, and in that arena Kaz wins. He’s not afraid to be vicious—not afraid, like he told his would-be assassin, to hit where it hurts. 

“What kind of man fights for your captain? ” the man spits. “She tired of pleasing men and decided to murder them.”

New rage works as well on a foundation of the old. Kaz has heard of people seeing red when they’re furious, but his vision goes black; he grazes the stubborn slaver with a bullet, then flips him onto his back with cold satisfaction, sliding the gun over him until it comes to rest above his heart. 

The man, who looks young, but maybe it’s just because of his fragile expression, whimpers. Of course his bravado’s gone. Too bad Kaz can’t call Inej over here to kill him herself. 

Kaz puts the gun like a finger to the slaver’s lips. “Shh, now.”

The man jerks his head. “What... are you?” he says. He’s trying to sound disgusted, but Kaz hears his horror. In that other life he thinks of too much these days, he might have felt some guilt. 

“I’m what hides under the monster’s bed,” Kaz croons, gripping the man’s face with one gloved hand and pulling the trigger. Too bad he won’t get to hear the second half of the line. “Someone has to do it.”

Things have quieted down, he realizes; he pushes himself up on his cane and looks around, and two of Inej’s crew members are dragging men out of the hallway to the cabin. Whether they’re dead or unconscious, Kaz can’t tell and doesn’t care.

His eyes sweep across the deck and stop on Inej, who’s striding towards him, but there is anger in her eyes. The pain of the slash to his back is starting to settle in now. 

“I told you to stay back there,” Inej says, her voice low. 

He looks at her, perhaps more coldly than he means to. “Nobody else was coming into the hall. He was coming at me with a sword. My chances were better out of close quarters.”

“You’re used to being in charge,” Inej says. “You might have teased about it earlier, but I am in charge on this ship, Kaz.”

He straightens and lifts his chin. “I was making educated decisions in a fight.”

Inej pushes her hair out of her face with more force than strictly necessary. “I was trusting you to protect Jordan, Kaz. I watched you go ten on one with the Dregs. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have handled it.”

Maybe he’s planning to say something, maybe he isn’t. He doesn’t have time to decide. 

“You’re on my ship,” she says. “But that shouldn’t even matter when I tell you to protect Jordan.” 

The anger he has left from the fight is half-quenched, half-rekindled, and there’s a sick kind of confusion swirling in its place. 

But—as he limps belowdecks to attempt to bandage his back—there’s also the question: “When I tell you to protect Jordan”, she’d said. Like she, too, against her better conscience, was imagining that he would be in Jordan’s life. That they would protect her again. Maybe even together. 

Chapter Text

Jordan is safe, but Kaz is not. And not in a Inej-is-going-to-hurt-him way, though she had been considering it a moment ago. 

When Inej had burst into her cabin, Jordan was sitting on the bed—crying, but unhurt. Inej knelt next to her and wrapped the little girl in her arms, pressing a kiss to her fuzz of black hair and feeling her own shoulders relax as Jordan calmed.

“You’re safe,” she’d whispered, pulling back to cup Jordan’s face. “You’re safe?”

Jordan’s eyes were round with fear, but she’d nodded.

Now Jordan is with Specht, as his rough hands dry her tears better than Inej ever would have thought they could, which leaves Inej free to investigate belowdecks. 

When Kaz had turned to leave, after she chastised him for abandoning Jordan—and fear and irritation still mingle somewhere in her—she’d seen the red stripe across his back, muted through the slate gray of his vest, but not hidden as it would have been under his coat, back in Ketterdam. Maybe he’d forgotten, but Kaz was never the kind to forget. 

She’s not sure why he would have meant to show her, however. It’s even less like him to make a bid for pity; he hides pain of any kind, he always does. And Inej understands, because given the choice, so does she. They both have learned to never stop fighting. 

And no matter how broken we were…

She can’t hear the words any other way but in his voice, like they’re scraping the edges to escape his throat before he can regret them. She never regrets them. She hears them too often. 

I would come for you, he said .

I can help you, they had both said, and made good on it.

Now is her chance to return the gesture. 

If you ever cared for me at all, don’t follow.

She hasn’t learned her lesson in that regard, nor does she plan to. She might still be annoyed, angry even, but Kaz doesn’t deserve her pettiness. Neither does she. She owes it to herself to be better than that. 

Soft steps carry her down a ladder that must be uncomfortable for Kaz to navigate, even though he’s too proud to say so. What serves as his cabin is something more like a closet—she could say it’s his fault, since he bought the ship, but it seems ungrateful and besides, he can figure it out for himself. It’s funnier that way. 

She doesn’t hesitate, because that has never been a wise choice in her life once she’s decided on a course of action. Instead, she knocks. 

There is no answer. But the silence, where before there was shifting and breathing and the rustle of fabric, is an answer all its own. So she opens the door. 

Kaz is facing her, sitting on an upturned crate, his back to the crooked, clouded mirror tacked up behind him. Inej does not like that she notices the bloody gash in his reflection somewhere after his lack of shirt. 

He gives her a quizzical look—not embarrassed, certainly. Almost challenging. Almost a veneer for just how vulnerable he is right now: not even that he’s wounded, but the amount of skin that’s exposed, how she could incapacitate him with a touch. His gloves sit beside him and his cane lies on his other side. 

She’d wanted him without armor. Does she want it like this?

“I can help you,” she says. 

It sounds like fake silks and white tiles. They’re always doing the same thing, aren’t they?

Kaz seems to think this, too. He winds the roll of bandages back and forth around one hand—one bare hand, that Inej keeps looking at; besides the strangeness of it, he has nice hands, which is not what she needs to be thinking about right now—and says, “That sounds familiar.” He’s not joking quite right. She can see the tension in the muscles over his shoulders. She can see it really well.

She takes a step forward; such a tiny space, a step is all it takes to reach him. If only he really were that close. His knees are nearly brushing against her thighs. If she bent her head now, they could be kissing. She lifts the roll of bandages from his hands with such delicate fingers as to not even brush against his palms, and says in almost a whisper, “Turn around.”

He...does. He shifts and, with the barest grunt, turns his back to her. She can see his face in the mirror—his hair, no longer neatly pushed back, falling over his forehead; the wariness in his eyes, as if he’s ready to run. She sees her face, too, and is surprised to find the same caution there.

The cut isn’t deep, but it’s a long slice; they could try to trust that it’ll heal on its own, but Inej isn’t sure that she likes those odds. Jesper might not even like those odds, which is saying something. 

“It needs stitches,” Kaz guesses. He’s still staring into her reflection.

“You can’t do it yourself,” Inej replies. There’s no way he can reach, even with the mirror’s aid to see.

She can see the thoughts running through his quick mind; balancing what’s worth it and what isn’t. He’s treating this like a business decision, like a wager, like a deal. And maybe, to Kaz, that’s all it is. It must be easier to make every decision as if only logic is involved. 

“Do it,” he says quickly, quietly. They’re still speaking in near-whispers—for the same reason, Inej thinks, that people whisper in a church. There’s a reverence about this, about what they have. They are perhaps the least likely people to build something holy, but right now, Inej feels as if they’re standing on a precipice of sacred ground. It could all fall away, but it’s blessed right here.

“I need to get my kit, but I don’t have anything to give you for the pain,” she murmurs, setting the bandages beside him. 

Kaz doesn’t answer as she leaves. The pain isn’t what either one of them is worried about. 

<><><>

When she returns, Inej focuses more than she needs to on the minute tasks of preparation—needle, thread, cleaning her tools, cleaning the cut. She thinks she sees something in Kaz’s face twitch at the cold and the sting, but they’re both too used to this to react much. They’re both too used to this, period. Inej isn’t yet nineteen and she feels old. She feels the way the grandparents in the caravan must have when they made friendly wagers on who would be the first to die. Back then, she’d thought it was morbid. Now she knows better. 

She’s put it off as long as she can; everything is ready now. Everything but them. 

“I’m—” she says, still whispering, “I’m starting now.”

Kaz doesn’t speak, but she sees his shoulders rise and fall with an unsteady breath. She doesn’t know if that’s what makes her think of it, but she’s not sure what else would. 

“What if...I wear your gloves?”

His eyes move up to meet hers in the mirror; he lifts his head. He’s waiting. 

Go on. Finish the story. 

Slowly, but not hesitantly—even paced—Inej picks up Kaz’s gloves from where they sit beside him. They’re big for her hands, but, she realizes, he’s cut little slits into the fingertips for better contact with cards and coins. They’re still warm from his hands. 

Kaz is still watching her intently, warily, not having said a word. His armor is quite literally in her hands now. Inej has a flash of feeling what it’s like to be safe like this, and only like this. Somehow it’s...scarier. 

It’s harder to pick up and hold the tiny tools this way, but the gloves are thinner than they look; it takes her a try or two, but then she’s got it, fingers pressed right up against the slits. She puts one gloved hand to his back to steady her approach; his breath catches uneasily, but evens out. 

“How’s this?” she asks. Her voice is rough as if from disuse. Or maybe wearing the gloves somehow makes her sound like him. 

“Fine. Better.” Better than, he doesn’t say. But she hears it. 

Inej still doesn’t like the clumsy feeling of this new thickness covering her fingers and wonders how Kaz’s hands can still be so agile—picking locks, making coins vanish, working a deck of cards. Even if he’s had years of practice, if he can do that, then she can do this. She pinches the needle hard, lining it up with the slit to feel it, and makes the first prick into his skin beside the cut. She glances up and sees him give the barest grimace, but at least he’s not moving, which makes her job easier. 

Out, back in, and the first stitch is done. Almost without thinking of it, as she works, Inej keeps looking up into the mirror to check Kaz’s face; the pain doesn’t much show there, nor did she expect it to. Once he catches her, in fact, and almost smirks. 

There is, however, only so much one can do when piercing someone’s skin, not to mention the limits of the oversized gloves. Every once in a while, she’ll pull a stitch tight and hear him hiss through his teeth, or see the muscles in his shoulders knot, if only for a moment before they settle. At least there doesn’t seem to be much chance of infection; a miracle with slavers’ blades, usually as dirty as their hands.

Bizarrely, Inej feels the urge to giggle at this thought. If only the people calling Kaz by Dirtyhands knew that he probably had the cleanest, softest hands in the city, at least in the literal sense. 

“What’s funny?” Kaz grunts through the tug of another stitch. She sees his fist flex and relax against his knee, and he takes a steadying breath. 

“It would take some explaining,” Inej replies, half-murmuring since she’s trying to focus. 

She wonders if he’ll ask, but he lapses into silence again. Maybe it’s just as well. 

So it’s in silence that she finishes: the creaking of the ship, the sussurating waves, either one of them catching their breath every now and again, in concentration or in pain. 

But now he sees her scowl in her reflection, or he’s felt her hands stop. “What is it?”

“I can’t tie it like this,” Inej replies. “And I can’t afford to get it wrong.” The detriment to her delicate work has been something she can cope with up to now, but she’s trying to tie off the loose ends, and they slip through her fingers made clumsy by his gloves. 

Once again, she sees him thinking; weighing his options, taking the bet. He doesn’t meet her eyes in the mirror, but he says, “Take them off, then.”

Inej lifts her hands. “You’re sure.”

“What other choice do we have?” Perhaps realizing that it’s not her he’s frustrated with, Kaz flattens his hands against his knees, looking stubbornly at them. “It won’t be different than before.”

“You’ve done this,” Inej half encourages, half infers. “We’ve done this.”

(Their hands, touching on the railing. His lips, shy against her neck.)

He doesn’t reply, but she sees him steel himself—almost feels it. So she slips the gloves off, laying them carefully beside him. Maybe there’s no reason to be so gentle, but for reasons she’s unsure of, she feels honored in a way that he trusted her with them, with himself. 

When she picks up the ends of black thread, her fingertips brush his back; she sees his head come up, his eyes go wide, his hands curl at his knees, but he doesn’t tell her to stop. With this, she’s more willing to allow him his pride, if that’s what it is—because she wants this, too. 

She knots the ends, not too tight, not too loose. The barest touches here and there are unavoidable; he reacts to them more than he ever did to the pain of the stitches themselves, but it lessens each time. The seconds seem long, but it’s abrupt when they’re over. 

Inej steps back.

Kaz shifts and turns around; whether to look at her work in the mirror or to look at her, she’s unsure and somehow doesn’t want to find out. 

“Another scar for you,” she says, more hurriedly than she means to. 

“I think you’re just determined to mend me,” Kaz replies. He tries to twist to look at his reflection, but winces at the pull. 

“I’ve done it, haven’t I?” Inej asks, picking up and folding his shirt with more nonchalance than she feels. “I hope you have something else,” she adds, handing it to him. 

He looks at her in a way that Nina does better. Please, it’s me.

“Should I leave?” Inej asks, bracing one hand against the doorframe. 

“Not as if you have to,” Kaz replies. 

Thank you so much for reminding me you haven’t had a shirt on this whole time. 

Still, it’s as good as a “please stay” from Kaz, and Inej takes it as such. He stays on the overturned crate he’s been sitting on, and she slips past him to sit on the bed, which is diagonal across the small space in order to fit. 

“I have a few minutes,” she says.

Chapter Text

Water is different things to different people, and the ocean just happens to be a massive example of this. 

Of the two ships floating side by side—one floating significantly more than the other—it is to the larger an avenger, wrapping the ship in wings of death and luring its empty husk to a grave of silt and salt. The ship fights, but it’s already flooding within, dark and drowning from the inside out. 

To the smaller ship, the ocean is a mother, cradling it in her arms and gently rocking it to sleep. The little vessel is not yet safe and has much to face, but for now it can rest. 

This is also a lesson in analogy. 

Aboard the Wraith, Kaz watches the slavers’ ship sink through a porthole. He feels the tide pulling at him as the ship becomes a barge and he thinks of thoughts that lurk in this sort of silence; he’s been jumped unaware by his memories more than by any assailant. Night on a ship is a dangerous place to be when the waves come rushing in. 

Inej sits across from him on her bed; they’ve migrated to her cabin after she retrieved Jordan from Specht and oversaw the restraining of their few prisoners. 

(“It’s a small ship,” Kaz had observed, brushing his gloved knuckles over the stolen gun. “Not much room left.”

“Not much outside the hold,” Inej had agreed, inspecting one of her longer knives. “No room for escapees.”

The prisoners, a casual observer might note, had begun moving rather more quickly.)

Now Inej is curled in the upper corner of her bed, against the wall, while Jordan is asleep in her lap, tucked between her chest and her drawn-up knees. As the ship lists with the gentle waves, the lantern overhead swings from side to side, throwing ever-changing pictures of Inej’s features into dim, brassy light. 

Kaz is reminded of the hypnotists on East Stave, using pendants and pendulums to bend curious pigeons to their will. Even if he believed in their craft—and he does believe it can be done, just not that most of them can do it—he may never understand why anyone would submit themselves to it. He feels out of control of his own mind enough. 

And yet, here in his very own illusion—his very own hypnosis—perhaps he’s mesmerized all the same. Well, pity points in the superiority game, at least his is real. 

Inej runs her fingertips over Jordan’s head, such a simple touch—because, for most people, there is such a thing. She and Kaz have talked more today than they have since leaving Ketterdam, if not since she returned altogether, and now the silence is comfortable, unstrained. 

Nonetheless, she breaks it. “She looks so peaceful like this.” 

It’s true; looking at Jordan, Kaz wonders if either of them has ever looked that serene. Well, not him—for starters, that would require him to sleep on any predictable basis. 

“We thought she was asleep when we found her,” Inej goes on, her hand drifting down to rest on Jordan’s back as it rises and falls with her small breaths. “Just...curled up on this pile of dirty clothes, burlap sacks.”

Kaz shifts his gaze carefully from Jordan to Inej, trying to gauge why she’s telling him this. Her lips form the story around a soft smile, and the pang it gives him is easily worse than any aches that Ketterdam’s winter might set into his bones. Inevitably, the memories crash over him—of her smile, her laugh, her faint touches, and sick panic constricts his chest. He needs to let go. He needs to let the waves take her. The last time he held on, it ended him like this, and the harbor still won in the end. 

But Inej is still telling the story, Jordan’s story, that something tells him is at least partway hers, too. And he keeps looking at her, and he holds on. He can’t bear to see her drown any more than he could to see her fall. 

“When we got down there,” Inej is going on, “she was awake the whole time—she looked at me with these wide eyes, not crying, not even scared. I thought—I don’t know why it reminded me—” She gives a sighing sort of laugh, trying not to disturb Jordan. “I thought of you. That you would have looked at me like that. Or maybe I always just thought that you never would have cried, if you ever were a child.” The corner of her mouth pulls up; she’s teasing, but he still doesn’t know why. 

And as to what he was like as a child, she’ll have to ask that of a mother he’s chosen to forget. Another body he gave to the tide.

“I wasn’t,” he says. “I’m the spare parts of a boy sold cheap.”

Inej looks back at Jordan, which seems like a preparation then and an explanation later. “Spare parts don’t have brothers.”

He is a sinking ship, water running in through the holes and out again in words. “Neither do I.” If only because one or the other of those boys didn’t hold on tight enough. If only because this piecemeal man learned too soon to let go. 

Inej is silent again, but her hand has fallen still on Jordan’s back. She didn’t expect anything else, but he’s still managed to disappoint her. 

That, he can bear. Opening his mouth to say any more would open the dam and he’d lose himself. And maybe it’s better this way, better for her to learn again what she already knows. After this trip, she will leave Jordan in Ravka and they’ll part ways again, perhaps for longer this time. He thinks of that “longer”, and now knows where longing got its name. 

But Inej is growing in the sun, turning her face to it, sinking roots where they won’t be ripped loose. He is a bitter, twisted, dead thing, rotting from the inside out; he’ll never have the chance. And he doesn’t want to poison her with the self-destruction of everything that’s kept him awake and alive since he was not yet ten. He had believed before that he could make himself better for her, even that he wanted to, but if the choice is to drown or to burn and set the world on fire, maybe he will turn out to be just as selfish as they all say. 

“You know my secrets,” Inej counters, her head tilted. A challenge, maybe. But she only wants it to sound like one, and the plaintive question is one he can’t answer. 

“I trade in information,” Kaz responds. “I’d be the worst kind of fool to give mine up.”

It might break me. 

That story is the center of all the cracks, the one pin at the heart of every tear in him. Pull it out, and he would fall apart. 

“To someone who’d use it against you,” Inej replies. 

And she wouldn’t, would she? She captures secrets and keeps them that way. Dead men tell no tales, and neither does the Wraith. Maybe she even deserves to know. 

“Don’t go asking for what you deserve,” Kaz says roughly. You deserve more than this world can give you.

She turns from him, and he sees her eyes find the sinking ship. He wonders if it makes them think of the same things, or if to her, it’s the body of another conquered enemy. A step closer to what she deserves. She’s silent, but her arms tighten almost imperceptibly around Jordan’s sleeping form.

“You’re getting attached,” he says. He’s saying it to Inej about Jordan, about him. He’s saying it to himself. He’s saying it to the dangerous feeling of all being right in this room that has to be an illusion, because if anyone knows illusions, he does. He’s seen behind the curtain. This is not who they are. 

“Maybe I am,” says Inej. She cradles the base of Jordan’s head with one hand and presses a kiss to the little girl’s tuft of black hair. “But I’ll see her again. I’ll see you again.” She looks up and meets his eyes, black to black, the night and the swinging lantern, the pendulum of chance. 

Kaz Brekker is mesmerized. 

Maybe that’s why he allows the illusion. She’s always had a way of making him believe in magic before. 

“You’re seeing me now,” he says. He’s not sure what he means. Maybe here, he doesn’t have to be. 

“And it’s worth something,” Inej says. 

Jordan blinks open bleary eyes, eyes as dark as the sea. She doesn’t look afraid. She doesn’t cry. She just...looks, right at Kaz. 

“And you’re seeing us,” says Inej, shifting Jordan’s weight and trying to shush the little girl back to sleep. 

It’s true, Kaz thinks. But he always has been. Once he learned to see her, he never stopped. 

He never wanted to. 

Maybe this is the beginning of something, of what it means to say I see you . Maybe it’s an illusion, or a fire that will leave them all as ash. Maybe Kaz has been taken in by the pendulum, by Jordan’s wide, dark eyes and the light shifting over Inej’s face. 

The sea continues to coddle with one hand and kill with the other. The harbor is kept at bay. 

Chapter Text

Jordan likes being on the Small Good Boat. She likes to stand on the deck and turn her face up to the hot sun; she likes to climb in the nets (higher and higher when Mama Two isn’t looking); she likes to talk to Stick Man, Kaz, and steal his coat even though it’s too hot for a coat. She’s learning lots of new frog words from him. Also lots of fun frog words from Freckle Girl, words that Mama Two tells her not to say. 

However, the big big big blue-green ocean that was everywhere yesterday is a little bit less everywhere today; now, part of the everywhere, under a sky that is too big, is a gray-green-brown smudge. It looks like the place where she met Stick Man, but there aren’t any buildings, even from this far away. Jordan’s memories are few and far between, but she thinks of yellow grass and spindly bushes and thin, lonely trees. Maybe, if there aren’t buildings in this new place, there will be wagons. 

She’s sitting up on the quarterdeck with Mama Two, looking at the smudge. Mama Two has a spyglass up to her eye; Jordan likes the spyglass, because whenever the person using it turns to the front, their eye looks all big. 

“New place?” Jordan asks in Mama One words. Her legs are stuck through the gaps in the railing, swinging over the waves. She likes to kick her bare heels against the hull and feel the spray on her toes. 

“You could say that,” Mama Two answers. She’s wearing her scarf instead of her hat today, and it mostly covers her pretty, shiny hair. This makes Jordan sad. She wants to have hair just like Mama Two when she grows up. 

She wonders if Stick Man is sad, too. He looks at Mama Two’s hair a lot, so that probably means that he likes it. 

Jordan looks over the deck for Stick Man, but she doesn’t see him. He’s probably belowdecks; he’s a pale snowman person, not perfect sunny gold like Jordan and Mama One and Mama Two. The sun doesn’t like him, and he doesn’t like the sun. He’s always dressed all dark and inky, so the shadows probably like him better. 

“New place?” Jordan asks again, since Mama Two’s first answer made no sense. Grown-ups often say things that make no sense. 

“I suppose this particular place will be new to you,” says Mama Two, putting the spyglass down and sitting beside Jordan. Jordan leans up against her; Mama Two is small and wiry, not squishy and good for cuddling like Mama One, but her arms are strong and she’s warm—probably because the sun is her friend. “It’s home to me.”

“Home?” asks Jordan, not because she doesn’t know the word, but because she thought the Good Small Boat was home. She knows that some people live in buildings, but other people, she thought, just live on boats. Jordan would like to live on a boat. Living in something that never moves would be boring. 

“Yes,” says Mama Two, turning her face to the green smudge and the big, big, big sky. “It will be your home, soon, too.” The wind is getting stronger as the land-smudge gets closer; it lifts little loose pieces of Mama One’s hair like playful hands, and her voice seems to sigh into it as she speaks. Jordan wishes her own hair would grow faster. 

This is an interesting idea, that people can change homes. Jordan lost her home when the bad men took her away, but she hadn’t really thought about getting a new home. Maybe she thought that, just like it was Mama Two’s home, the Good Small Boat would be hers. 

But Jordan knows that even if grown-ups often make no sense, very small children are most likely to be wrong. And if the sky is far too big, then she is far too small. 

<><><>

The green smudge was not a smudge anymore, and then it was so big that it almost filled the whole line between ocean and sky. Now they are meeting it, slipping in beside another boat just like they did in the place with all of the smoke and buildings. Jordan stands on her toes and peeks over the railing, though she can barely get her eyes above its top; there are dusty roads and yellow grass and no trees. She wants to get off of the boat and run as fast and as far as her little legs can—which is neither very fast nor very far. 

All of the boat people are moving around now. They’re picking things up, pulling on ropes, calling to each other in frog words; Mama One is watching, one moment on the quarterdeck, the next in the ropes, the next on the railing. Jordan wishes her legs weren’t so little so that she could climb just that high. 

Even Stick Man is back on the deck, his hat pulled low over his head, shadowing his eyes. He is friends with the shadows, Jordan knows it. They are the only ones he’ll let touch him. 

Jordan hops down from the quarterdeck and toddles over to join him. He is too tall. He’s just standing, watching the yellow grass get closer and closer. Jordan squints up against the sun to look at his face, but he’s not smiling or frowning or anything. He has to be thinking something, but Jordan can’t figure out what. It annoys her so that she almost stomps her foot again, but he didn’t like it the last time she did that.

Instead, she tentatively questions in frog words, “New...home?”

“For you,” he says, not looking at her. His hands are folded over his stick, still covered in his gloves.

“Hands cold?” says Jordan, blinking into the sun. At least she’s trying to look at him.

He finally peers down at her, arching an eyebrow. The one thing she can understand. “No.”

Jordan waits, but he goes back to looking at the grass and the roads and the people carrying boxes. How could people carrying boxes possibly be more interesting than her? Eventually, she does stomp her foot in the best act of rebellion she knows, and continues to stomp away. Grown-ups are lots of words that Freckle Girl would say, but they are also ex-as-per-at- ing. Ugh.

<><><>

Mama Two apparently likes Stick Man enough to keep him around, so Jordan will put up with him—especially now that it’s just the three of them and their bags. Jordan is tucked into the sling against Mama Two’s chest, peeking over the edge, though there’s not much to see; just the grass and the dusty road. Between Mama Two’s shorter legs and Stick Man’s uneven stride, stick in one hand and bag in the other, they keep pace well. It reminds Jordan of how they are the rest of the time, of how they don’t talk that much, but they always seem prepared to match one another, to move for the same things. Grown-ups understand so many things without talking. Jordan wonders if she ever will. 

They are, however, talking now. “We’ll hop a cart soon,” says Mama Two. “It won’t exactly be comfortable, but it won’t be walking.” Jordan doesn’t know most of the frog words she’s using, but she’s just as happy to look around and not worry about whatever confusing thing they’re saying now. 

“I’d be comforted, if I were ever worried,” says Stick Man. “I hiked days to the Ice Court. Seems to me you might remember.”

“You hadn’t been cut up again back then, and it still wasn’t pleasant. Believe it or not, I want this trip to be easy, not just doable.”

He laughs, but not like something is funny. Jordan is just about to give up on grown-ups. “For both our sakes, want something attainable, will you?” he says.

“Right, I’ll do that, but I’ll have to start by sending you back to Ketterdam,” says Mama Two. There’s an odd sharpness to her voice, and an even odder silence follows. Jordan pokes her head further out of the sling to see if she’s missed anything, but Stick Man is staring straight ahead, his eyebrows obscured in the shadow of his hat so that she can’t even read them. 

Mama Two sighs heavily, enough that Jordan moves with the rise and fall of her rib cage. “You’ve beaten a city to its knees, Kaz, and yet I’m the one of us who can say it.”

“I have said it,” he replies roughly, speaking at last. “And nothing has changed about that.”

Jordan twists, trying to see Mama Two’s face and figure out what they’re talking about, but the sun is in her eyes. Why do they sound all…mad-sad, but happy-scared? Too many things.

“Everything’s changed, Kaz,” says Mama Two. “I thought you were telling me not to get attached. Do you want to make it harder?”

“You know what I want,” says Stick Man, more quickly than he’s responded to anything this whole time. 

Jordan keeps hearing that word— want . She knows what that word means. She wants a lot of things, like pretty hair and longer legs and a knife (or ten) and Mama One and a real home, on a boat or in a building, it doesn’t matter. But wanting something isn’t the same as having it. It doesn’t even mean that you can have it. That’s why Jordan can want things like Mama One. And a knife.

Right now, she just wants them to talk. But they don’t; they’re quiet all the way until the cart picks them up, and then they rumble down the road, and the bouncing and the rocks make Jordan want to cry. She wonders if grown-ups just stop wanting to cry, or if maybe they know better, even though they’re very silly sometimes. She looks around, but now she can’t even see yellow grass and lonely trees out the windows. Only dust. 

Chapter Text

Kaz isn’t going to say that he was grateful for the cart, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t. He’d rather not limp into the house and have Inej’s parents’ second-first impression of him be one of pity. Then again, gratitude isn’t a thing much spoken of in the Barrel; speaking one’s thanks is as good as admitting debt. Running a club will teach a man things about debt. For that matter, being fr—allies—coworkers—whatever, associating with Jesper will teach a man things about debt. Most places, the person you owe will come and take your things or your livestock as pay, if worse comes to worst. In the Barrel, they’ll go straight for your head. 

It’s an old habit, but the logical part of Kaz (the part that Inej’s presence tends to silence) reminds him that it doesn’t apply to her; he already owes her more than he can express, let alone repay. Still, in this moment, he retains his pride. 

They are unloading their things now, dismounting; Jordan looks around with the eyes of one who still searches for the good in a new place, instead of potential threats or possible routes of escape. It takes some getting used to, though maybe they should just train it out of her. That kind of thinking got her namesake killed. 

Kaz sets his cane down first and uses it to lever himself down from the cart. Inej passes one of the bags to him, which he takes in his free hand; he can’t quite read her eyes, except for the promise that they’ll talk later. He’s rather disconcerted to find that the prospect of greeting her parents is a relief in comparison. 

Jordan is wriggling and complaining, so Inej sets her down as they walk towards the house, her hand looking big when it grasps Jordan’s tiny one. Kaz scans the landscape for reasons unrelated to the tightness in his chest at the sight of them; it’s like his few memories of the town near Lij where he left his childhood, though drier, and with seemingly more crops than animals. 

They stop at the door. 

Kaz raises his eyebrows, inviting Inej to go ahead. It’s not lost on him that she has Jordan, and that whichever one of them enters with her will have to face the questions first. He assumes she’ll want to. 

Inej looks back at him, shifting the bag in her hand as if to remind him that her hands are full. Kaz’s are, too, but perhaps just to prove that she could’ve managed it, he jostles the handle of his own bag onto his gloved palm and opens the door. 

(She also could have just let go of Jordan’s hand, but he isn’t so petty as to point that out.)

(Even if he wanted to be, Inej smiles at him as she goes in, which erases any thoughts of, well, anything else.)

The house smells of herbs; it’s so different from the Slat that Kaz’s mind takes a moment to adjust. A perfume of sage and jasmine hangs in the air, in the dust that shimmers in bands of sunlight through the windows. A woman that Kaz recognizes to be Inej’s mother is sitting at a table, around the corner from the entrance but still visible; as soon as she sees them, however, her face alights with a smile that Kaz finds jarringly familiar. It’s Inej’s smile, but unafraid in its brightness, unfettered, uncomplicated. He wonders if, had their lives been better, Inej would smile like that. He wonders if he could handle it, if she did. 

Inej’s mother runs over on light feet that Kaz also recognizes to wrap her daughter in her arms and cling to her, murmuring words in Suli into Inej’s ear. She cups Inej’s face, runs her fingers through her hair, clasps her hands close; Kaz looks away. 

Jordan has stepped back uncertainly from Inej and now stands at his side, though from the looks of her she’s a moment away from just sitting on the floor and having done. Has she had a nap today? That’s the kind of thing that Inej usually remembers, and technically there’s no reason for Kaz to know, especially if things go according to plan. Still. 

He feels something brush against his good leg, the side that Jordan’s on, and perhaps it’s the unexpectedness that makes his whole frame go stiff. He looks down and Jordan has a fistful of the leg of his trousers, her other thumb firmly implanted in her mouth, and for a moment he’s annoyed—she’s going to stretch the fabric—but then he realizes what she’s doing. 

Jordan is pulling on the fabric for a reason. She’s holding it away from his leg in such a way that her hand doesn’t touch him, not even through it. 

There’s no way she’s doing that on purpose.

Even if Inej had told her—and if she did, they’ll have to discuss the explanation of his weaknesses to toddlers—what are the odds that she would have remembered?

Some people believe in reincarnation, including certain followers of Inej’s Saints. For a ludicrous moment, Kaz wonders. 

Still, he knows better. He knows better than to go believing in things, and he knows better than to search for the dead. He knows to let go, otherwise it’s both of them being dragged out with the tide.

Kaz hears a shout of delighted surprise that tells him Jordan has been spotted. Still ostensibly ignoring him, Inej’s mother kneels and cups the child’s face with hands that are just as rough as Inej’s, if for very different reasons. The woman calls over her shoulder, more words in Suli, before switching to Kerch for Jordan.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” she murmurs, that smile alighting her face again. Kaz wishes that he could do anything to make Inej smile so often. 

They’re joined through the open doorway by Inej’s father, who is shorter than Kaz by enough that it’s surprising. It makes sense, but given their relative positions, it feels wrong somehow. Unlike his wife, the older man notices Kaz straightaway. 

“So she has convinced you to come.” He clasps his hands proudly, but the fact that it’s in lieu of shaking Kaz’s hand is not lost on anyone, save perhaps for Jordan, who is still in her prospective grandmother’s clutches. Nonetheless, he smiles. “Our Inej still has a winning way about her, hm?”

Kaz lifts an eyebrow. He doesn’t smile, but he lets the hard lines of his face soften for her sake. “Indeed she does.”

Inej does smile at that, from her place at her father’s side, and Kaz—well, he’s not sure what his face is doing, but the warm effervescence of her seems to fill him, soothing even the lingering ache of the cut across his back. 

Inej’s mother says something in Suli again, looking up at her husband and holding Jordan’s hands; what she means is obvious enough from context, not to mention the look on Inej’s face. Kaz braces himself for the inevitable questions—not that he hasn’t been expecting them this whole trip. 

The older man looks up, joy seemingly sun-baked into the lines of his face. “You have finally brought us a grandchild?”

Kaz bristles at finally, but the look that Inej shoots him is enough to calm that reflex, at least for now. “In a way,” she says hesitantly. 

“I told you,” says Inej’s mother, finally rising, in rough Kerch. “I said this man, she loves this man, marry him—”

Inej shifts back into Suli to correct her mother while Kaz stares resolutely at the head of his cane. His conscience may well be on its last breaths, but it does raise a weak finger of objection at his letting Inej handle this alone. What else, he argues, can he do? It’s a matter for family, which he is not. 

He’s not sure what Inej is explaining now, but he can at least contribute concerning Jordan. “Inej rescued her,” he explains, mostly to Inej’s father, who seems to be playing the part of interpreter. “The adoption isn’t official yet, but she fits in well.” There’s a roughness in his throat that the years haven’t smoothed, and he feels it more now, in the quiet. “Her name is Jordan.”

Both parents test the name. It suits their tongues, and Jordan looks up, curious, at the sound of it. 

Inej steps back to stand at Kaz’s side, her hand dangling mere inches from his. A distance too far. 

“She is beautiful,” her father says. “She could be your child.” 

Kaz’s face remains impassive, but he feels a tightness in his chest; despite the implications of the man’s words, Kaz sees the aim of his eyes, and understands—more than he wants to—that the your is plural. 

They break the circle to enter the house proper; it’s one level, simple and neat, not unlike the house in the fragmented memories that are gathering dust in the back of Kaz’s mind. Jordan has released her grip on him, but still walks beside him, constantly poking at things from which he finds himself shooing her away. 

“That’s not yours,” he mutters, poking her heel with the tip of his shoe when she reaches out to grab a large vase. 

Inej just about snorts. “And that’s ever stopped you, Kaz?”

He sighs heavily and looks back at Jordan, who is clearly not benefitting from these mixed signals. “You might break it,” he amends. 

Inej mumbles something that sounds like “Dining room ceiling.” 

“You don’t want to be like me anyway,” Kaz huffs, sounding more like a harmless curmudgeon than he has ever wanted to. At least it convinces Jordan to move along and follow her new grandparents into the main room, where a collection of chairs and ottomans awaits them. 

He slits his eyes sideways at Inej, but she’s smiling, which puts a stop to any irritated train of thought that he might have. He really needs to get a grip if he’s going to maintain his reputation with her around. 

Inej would tell him that he doesn’t have to, he thinks as they settle into the late afternoon warmth. There are no witnesses to who he might become here, with Inej in his line of view and Jordan nestled into some kind of puff between them. But change, he thinks as he watches Inej talk to her parents, is a lasting thing. 

There’s something in their eyes that he both recognizes and feels opposite to—a wanting to love, a fighting to remember how. They begin so excited about the land, the sun, the crops; they tell stories of family and friends who hope to see Inej agin, and of their hopes to reunite with the caravan; but with each tale she returns of a daring midnight rescue, each retelling of a job or a fight, each slip of what her life has been these years, they grow quieter and quieter, seeming at a loss. 

Kaz knows that Inej spoke to them when they were first reunited, that her first voyage on the Wraith was to take them home, but how much she told them of what she faced alone, he isn’t sure. He can gauge from their warm receptions, however, that she has told them very little about him. What parents would welcome a man who gave their daughter base survival, offering her no remedy and scorning her faith? Never mind everything else he has done. He can’t afford to let shame overtake him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not aware of others’ perceptions.

The silence stretches. It makes even Kaz uncomfortable. 

Jordan has fallen asleep, but she looks up, as if the gap in conversation awakens her where no noise did. Inej, as if grateful for the disturbance turns sharply to her and bends to smooth back Jordan’s tuft of dark hair. “Shh,” she soothes, murmuring something in Suli, but there’s a high set to her shoulders that Kaz doesn’t miss. 

“Why don’t you get settled,” says Inej’s father, rising abruptly with the grunt that seems to come in every old man’s handbook. “You will have some time together this evening, hm?” He forces a jovial smile and hesitates a moment before leaving, his wife shuffling out behind him. 

As soon as they’re gone, Inej drops her face into her hands. “Saints.”

Kaz presses his hands hard against his knees. He’d thought that finding Inej’s parents would bring her the kind of joy that he alone could not—and still, selfishly, he savors the memory of the way she’d glowed in the sun, racing down the docks—but who is he to gauge how complicated family can be? How should he know?

“Should we not have come?” he murmurs, his eyes landing on Jordan for a reason that he can’t place. She’s half asleep again, perhaps proving the theory of blissful ignorance that Kaz has never subscribed to. 

Inej sits up straight. “No! I mean, yes, of course we should. It wasn’t going to be perfect, Kaz. Family never is.” She dangles her arm over the side of the chair, reaching down towards Jordan. “That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”

She’s doing it again, Kaz thinks. Talking about family as if it’s something he’s a part of, as if he finally lowered his infamous guard enough to become entangled in all of this with them unawares. He certainly doesn’t feel like it. But then, with Inej, it was never a rush, never something he knew while he was happening. He just looked up and found that he’d fallen. 

He’s not sure if she’s right about all of this, but one certainty pierces anything else. For her, he will stay. He’ll fight, because that’s what he promised. And people may say what they want about him, but he always keeps his word. 

Chapter Text

Inej is stowing away her few things in the guest room her parents had indicated when Kaz joins her. She doesn’t bother to turn, instead lifting her head at the sound of his cane on the floors. Each of them always knows when the other is there.

“This is the only one,” he says.

Inej fills in the gaps and turns around to face him, sitting on the bed beside Jordan, who is taking a much-needed nap. She waits for him to go on, but, Kaz being Kaz, he doesn’t elaborate. It won’t be the first nor the last time that she wonders if it’s worth waiting for him to offer more, or if she will always have to ask. Then again, in fairness, she doesn’t need either just now. She supposes she should have expected there to only be the one room, but with everything happening with Jordan, she’d barely considered it. But what that means for both of them...

“Well, I did only tell them that I was coming,” she reasons, watching him to guage his reaction. His face remains impassive, but she sees his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallows, sees his hands tighten on the head of his cane as he grounds himself. 

“We can set up a cot,” she says, rising and looking briefly around the sparse room. “If it comes to it, I’ll make a nest out of pillows. I’ve slept on worse.”

That was both the wrong and the right thing to say; while Kaz’s brows draw together angrily, it seems to have distracted him from the oncoming panic. 

“What about her?” he says gruffly, tipping his head towards Jordan. 

“She’ll share with us,” Inej decides. “For all I know, my parents still have some of my old things...and they’ll need supplies for her anyway.”

She doesn’t know why, but every time one of them brings up the plan to leave Jordan here, Inej feels as if she’s realizing it for the first time, not remembering how it’s supposed to be. For once, it might be worth learning Kaz’s method of letting go. 

And yet, when Jordan wakes in the silence, confused and fussing before she realizes where she is, Inej wants nothing more than to be here for every one of these moments. She wants to wrap the little girl, her little girl, in her arms and teach her that there is still kindness in the world, but that she has to be ready for the parts that lack it. For now, however, as she pulls Jordan into her lap, she knows she’ll have to savor the time she has left—to take it day by day. 

Brick by brick.

The faintest of smiles crosses Inej’s lips. When applied to better things, Kaz’s philosophy isn’t actually a bad one. 

“Have I missed a joke?” Kaz asks, arching an eyebrow. He’s seemed distracted, but now his eyes are back on her and Jordan. 

“Would you laugh?” Inej parries. 

“Think of my reputation, Inej.”

“I don’t think you can laugh, reputation or no.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Do you accept?”

Despite her teasing, or maybe because of it, Kaz doesn’t quite smile, but his mouth curls up at the corners into something treacherously close. 

Jordan starts squirming to be put down, which gives Inej an idea. “Are you up for a walk?”

Kaz tilts his head, stoic and serious once more. “What for?”

“The joy of it,” says Inej, raising her eyebrows in a challenge. “Might I introduce you to the concept?”

“Don’t pretend you’ve been so blessed,” says Kaz, his lips thinning, but nonetheless he makes his way back to the door and pushes it open. Jordan finally succeeds in wiggling out of Inej’s lap and toddles over to the door, beating him out over the threshold and grinning in victory. 

“You are both determined to compete with me today,” Kaz mutters, shaking his head. 

“And maybe with our combined forces we’ll win.” Inej closes the door once the three of them have all made it out and takes Jordan’s hand, ushering her away from the wrong doorway. 

Despite her jesting to Kaz, this is a bizarre feeling—to have no reason to do things, to do something more than survive, to have no plan, only ever-shifting desires. She’s struck by the sudden, possibly ridiculous fear that she won’t know what to do when it’s just them, talking—no job to plan, no information to share, no walls to throw herself against like a bird at a window until her strength is gone. What then?

They are two of the most dangerous people in the world, and yet the things that scare them are absurdly harmless. Maybe that’s always how it is. 

We’re about to find out. 

<><><>

Summer is barely awakening to set the sky to rights, and yet it’s already warm here, Inej reflects. It’s so different from Ketterdam, where she would wear her sleeves long to keep out the chill as much as to hide the remains of the Menagerie tattoo. Inej drinks in the heady, golden perfume of late spring grasses that they stir as they walk, Kaz slightly in front to carve a path with his cane; the look in his eyes is distant, seeing something invisible to her, and she wonders if he, like her, is thinking of his home—wherever that may be.

She remembers walking through these fields with her family. She remembers flattening the grass beneath the wagons' wheels. If she closes her eyes, she’s a girl again, with the sun heavy on her shoulders and her heart pulling her on to run forever. Will the fireflies dance with her now as they would around a campfire, or will she be a stranger to them?

She feels strange. The language has never left her tongue, and her Saints have never left her heart, but they can’t guide her here. And it is not Ravka, not the Suli, not her parents, who have changed; it is her. 

Jordan sneezes, pulling Inej back to the present; she smiles softly and scoops up the little girl, settling Jordan on her hip, or what she has of one. Nina could carry Jordan all day, if only she were here. Jordan’s been quiet since she woke up. Inej wonders what she remembers—if she remembers anything. 

Kaz has stopped. They’ve ascended a shallow slope to the top of a rise that drops down steeply on the other side, and before them is nothing but land. For miles upon endless miles, the golden fields roll on, sun-baked under an impossibly wide sky. The horizon is smudged with forest where it climbs into the north, but here there is only a forest of wildflowers and sweet-smelling earth. 

Inej looks over at Kaz, where he’s watching it all, still silent. His hair isn’t so sternly pushed back as usual, nor as rumpled and mussed as it is when he’s been running his fingers through it, trying to solve a problem. The soft hands of a breeze lift it as Inej has long wanted to do. He’s shed his coat and vest for the sake of a simpler white shirt that almost makes him fit the matching, warm simplicity of the world around them. 

“I never thought this would suit you,” Inej murmurs. 

He looks back at her. “Does it?”

“Would I have said so otherwise?” 

Jordan lays her head on Inej’s shoulder. “We sun friends now,” she says sleepily. “All, all.”

Inej gives her an amused smile. “If you say so.”

She sees Kaz’s shoulders rise and fall on a steadying breath before he finally says, “You believe that you should’ve come.”

“I do.” But that’s never stopped him from re-hashing things with her.

He makes some attempt to smooth his hair back. Inej is almost sad to see it. “Should I have?” he asks. There’s the same tone in his voice as there was right before he first met her parents—the nervousness that reminds her that he’s still not much more than a boy. Seventeen or nineteen, sometimes the same things that make you grow up too fast make you miss parts of growing altogether. 

“It’s not like you to second-guess yourself,” Inej says softly, stepping up to his side. The grass rustles around them like unintelligible voices, the only sound for miles. 

“Maybe I’m not. But I am consulting you, which is necessary now.”

“Only now?”

“Don’t beg me for compliments, Inej.” But he must not be trying to hide much from her, because he says it in a way to make her think that he’s afraid of what he would say if she did. 

“I’ll beg you for nothing,” she says, not angrily, but with a pride that she at last knows she deserves. She raises a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “I don’t know whether you should have come. Only the Saints might. But I do know that I want you here.”

Kaz stares straight ahead, his eyes the color of oversteeped tea. He looks like he’s scheming, Inej thinks, planning what to say to her, piece by careful piece. She almost wishes that he would just say something, for once, instead of burying his true meaning the way that he does. 

“We want you here,” Inej adds, shifting Jordan’s weight against her hip. “She likes you.”

“That I will never understand,” says Kaz, the ghost of a humor returning to him as he shifts his gaze back to her. 

“It’ll be the first thing that you’re content not to know, then,” says Inej. She sits, settling against the grass, and shifts Jordan onto her lap; Kaz joins her. His silence is comfortable now, not strained and aching like an overworked muscle. 

They watch Jordan as she totters around, picking the wildflowers and grabbing at bugs that burst up and buzz away. It shouldn’t pain Inej to see how much Jordan is at home here, but she feels it keenly nonetheless. Somehow, she fears that with Jordan, she’ll have lost a reminder that there are still good things, innocent things, unspoiled souls in this world. Inej spent her time in the Barrel trying to find the good in people who lacked it, and now here is someone at last with nothing to hide. 

Jordan patters up to Kaz with a fistful of wildflowers and holds the makeshift bouquet out to him. He raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure those aren’t for Inej?”

Jordan shakes her head stubbornly. “No. You.”

“Me?

“Too much...blehh. Need pretty, some pretty.”

Inej hides a smile behind her hand, only to cover a blush as well when Kaz says, “I’ve got your mother, isn’t that enough?”

Inej sits up a good bit straighter. “Kaz Brekker.” This from the boy who called her an investment? His voice is light, as if they’re still bantering back and forth, but she sees a shade of red creep up his neck from beneath his collar. 

“Mama pretty. Flowers pretty,” Jordan insists, clearly oblivious, or maybe just not understanding enough Kerch—though, for all that, she’s on the right track. She all but shoves the wildflowers into Kaz’s gloved hands, and he takes them, perhaps still surprised at himself. 

He looks over at Inej and holds up the flowers, presumably asking her if she wants one. She’s not sure why he can’t just ask, since apparently he knows how to use his words now. 

“They’re your gift,” she finally says. “Keep them. Besides, I’d rather not upset Jordan.”

Kaz shakes his head. “You couldn’t. She worships the ground you walk on.”

“Says you ,” Inej retorts. They’re both much more comfortable in the safer territory of going back and forth, clinging to the familiarity of one another, hiding from what they remember and what is revealed in the sunlight. And maybe she’s wrong; maybe the scent of spring grasses, the heat on their heads, the blue-and-gold world of fields and endless sky—they are only a change to him. Maybe the distance in his eyes speaks of nothing that has gone before. But on the rare occasion that she can read him, Inej isn’t usually wrong. 

Maybe they can at least pretend, here, that sunlight on the fields is the only gold they need. 

Chapter Text

Kaz wakes up from that nightmare. He hasn’t had it in months. Maybe because he’s been dreaming of Inej, instead.

He stares at the ceiling with dead eyes, the same dark and empty eyes that are branded onto his mind. If he closes his eyes, shuts out the world, he can almost feel the waves rocking him, coaxing him under. 

Here, though, awake, the gray dawn is brushing against his face, weak shafts through the window by his bed. He squints and drags himself into a sitting position, holding one arm up to shield his eyes from the light, dim though it is. He chances a look to the makeshift bed on the floor—it must be early, since Inej is still asleep. That was still the most he’s slept in too long. 

He takes advantage of the mercy of the early hour to let his eyes linger; the simple night shift that she wears is loose on her, giving only suggestions of her lithe frame in the shadows or thin places struck by the early light. Her eyelashes fan gently over her bronze cheeks, and for that moment, she is not the girl he made her. She is whoever she was here, a picture of a better world.

Jordan, meanwhile, is asleep on a large cushion between them. She’s got her thumb firmly implanted in her mouth and shows no sign of waking up soon, which he supposes is a thing to be grateful for.  

Kaz rolls his shoulder in the plain cotton shirt he’s wearing, easing out the stiffness that he must have gained in dreaming. His leg, though, isn’t bad; actually, it’s better here than it’s been in the cold, wet city in a long time. At least there’s one good thing about being here.

He picks up his cane but limps out of the room without it, his eyes catching on Inej before he goes. 

Well, two things.

<><><>

Kaz is sitting in the front room, killing time and growing increasingly irritated with the lack of coffee, when Inej comes in.

She’s wearing her quilted vest now, her feet bare and her hair loosely plaited over her shoulder, a sleep-warm softness around the edges of her eyes. Kaz is in the middle of vanishing a small, flat stone from a decorative bowl and botches the trick completely, almost dropping the stone altogether. 

“What was that supposed to do?” asks Inej, smiling a smile that might well beat the sun to lighting up the sky.

“Exactly what it did,” Kaz retorts, half pretending to be insulted. 

“I forgot, you don’t make mistakes,” Inej agrees seriously. “We can go sit, you know. Wait until you try my mother’s spiced tea.” An almost dreamy mist glazes over her eyes. “I’ve missed it.”

“I can tell,” Kaz says quietly, more rough burr than true voice or tone. He leans on his cane and pushes himself up from the chair, softening its clicks as well as he can while he follows Inej into the kitchen. 

When they enter, Inej’s mother is leaning against the counter, methodically stirring something in a pot. A smile breaks gently over her face, and Kaz thinks again of how easily she smiles.

“Perfect timing,” Inej muses, sliding an arm around her mother and receiving a kiss to the cheek in return. Kaz is almost baffled by how the previous day’s strain seems forgotten.

“Where is the little one?” Inej’s mother asks, her Kerch tentative and thickly accented. 

“Still asleep, Mama,” Inej replies, extricating herself and carrying the pot to the table. She shifts into Suli to say something longer; based on the way her mother beams with pride, Kaz gathers that it has something to do with the tea. He takes a seat and accepts the offered cup.

Inej holds her own cup only momentarily before she lets go, shaking her hands from the heat. Kaz, for his part, is perfectly content thanks to his gloves and shoots her a smug look. She rolls her eyes. 

In his mind, however, he’s trying to approximate the tallies for the Crow Club and the Silver Six. They were both doing well before he left, and there haven’t been issues with upstart gangs in the past weeks—Dirtyhands only has to show up to so many skirmishes before people realize that he isn’t running his empire from the backseat. Per Haskell did it, Pekka Rollins did it, and now Kaz is sitting on the throne. 

(You’ll see who wins in the end, says Jordie’s voice in his head. You’ve beaten a city to its knees, says Inej.)

He isn’t about to make the mistakes of the kings he toppled. Not while someone younger and hungrier can always come along.

It isn’t exactly that he doesn’t believe Anika and Pim and his experienced Dregs can handle things; he’s just made his success by taking the smart odds and having back-ups and being one step ahead. Being an ocean away from his city and his sources makes that well-nigh impossible. 

“Scheming face,” says Inej.

Kaz looks at her inquiringly. The look she returns over the rim of her steaming cup is one of amusement. “What do you have to plan here?”

“What I’ll do when I get back,” Kaz replies, taking a sip of his tea. Warmth bursts in his mouth, both of temperature and flavor, and floods his core. It’s surprisingly pleasant. 

“Always so many steps ahead,” Inej says, still sounding amused for some reason that he can’t fathom.

“That’s how I survive,” Kaz reminds her. 

Inej reaches across the table to him, and he’s surprised at how little he hesitates before covering her fingertips with his gloved ones. 

“Enjoy not having to,” she says softly.

As the morning grows in strength, the tea cools, and the sun streams in through the windows, eventually Inej’s father and Jordan join them so that the whole—so that all of them are around the table.

The whole family. That’s what he almost called them. He wants to pretend that he didn’t, but his thoughts have always been his only honesty.

Jordan is sitting next to Inej, getting her little hands sticky as she stuffs her face with fruit. Her grandmother clicks her tongue and wipes the juice off of Jordan’s chin, making Inej laugh. They all look so…happy. Normal. They’re willing to do the work for this relationship, Kaz sees. He’s seen that reflected in Inej enough to know.

“You are already starting to fit in, young man,” her father comments with a nod to Kaz. He supposes that he does look more like he belongs, dressed in simple linen and cotton, his hair loose instead of sternly pushed back. He could just leave it at that, and yet.

“Some things never quite wear off.”

It’s like when he told Inej that Pekka Rollins killed Jordie; he’s not sure why he says it, but then it’s out and in the ears of those who don’t know how much it means.

“You’ve lived on a farm before?” Inej’s father asks. At least he looks pleased. 

“Hidden depths,” Kaz murmurs in assent. He risks a glance at Inej, who is studying him with her dark eyes; he can’t see anything in them that he understands—no anger, no joy, hardly even surprise. 

All he sees is the promise that she’ll ask him later. 

<><><>

“I wondered,” she says. “When we were in the field yesterday.”

“Have I grown so easy to read?” Kaz asks. Jordan is charming her grandparents in the next room, so he and Inej have the sun-soaked kitchen to themselves, the perfume of herbs and spices heavy in the air. They’ve returned to their earlier position, their fingertips touching, though he hasn’t taken his gloves off yet. He isn’t sure why. 

“Only for me,” Inej replies, her index finger drifting back and forth across his in almost a caress. “You looked like you were remembering.”

“And is that similar to scheming?” Kaz asks, raising a brow.

She laughs lightly. “I can’t believe you never noticed Jesper saying that before. Then again, I guess you were busy scheming, weren’t you?”

“Always,” Kaz replies drily. 

Inej goes silent for a moment before she says, “Will you—tell me about it?”

Will he? Can he? Kaz isn’t sure. The story is pices—broken, interconnected pieces, all the same shape as the cracks in him. But, like he thought before, she deserves to know. He will give her what he can.

“I grew up just a few towns over from Lij,” he says. The words hang in the air, thick and heavy like smoke between them. “I’m not a bastard. My mother died bearing me.” He half expects to have pulled his hand back from hers by now, but instead he’s pressing down on her fingertips, desperate for an anchor. With every word, he feels as if he’s unraveling, faster and faster until it threatens to spin out of control. 

“And your father?” Inej prompts, curling her fingers to link the tips with his. Her eyes bore into him like lighthouses, searching.

“I was nine. Crushed beneath a plow. First body I remember seeing.” And the last one that didn’t flood him with memories. It strikes him dimly that it probably isn’t a good thing if the sight of his father’s mangled body doesn’t haunt him after everything else he’s seen and done.

“And…and your brother?” Inej’s voice is barely a whisper now. He can’t make himself meet her eyes anymore. 

“Brave. Foolish. Gullible. I…he…” The hand that isn’t touching hers curls into a fist against the table. He can’t do it. He can’t form the words, can’t force them out. His chest constricts with panic at the thought of it. He stares down at the lines of the table, studying them, his face twisted with shame. 

It’s shame that eats men whole. 

But Inej says, “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

They have made a habit of walking together—sometimes just him and Inej, usually the three of them. It’s a foolish thing to play at, and yet Kaz can’t bring himself to refuse. The level terrain agrees with him more than the drainpipes, uneven streets, and rooftop mazes of Ketterdam, and he’ll begrudgingly admit to himself that the company doesn’t hurt. Sometimes they talk, filling the silent world with both light and heavy words that the wind carries like a messenger from one to the other; sometimes they simply wade through the sweet grasses and stand on the rise, watching the world pass in a way that they’ve never been able to before.

On the third day, it’s late morning by the time they take to the fields. Jordan can’t seem to follow a straight line; she scrambles around them, hangs back to inspect something she’s found, and then totters on ahead in pursuit of a bug or flyaway leaf. Normally, she’ll get tired and Inej will have to carry her, but today she is all but buzzing with energy. Kaz wonders if he was ever that happy—and if Inej is thinking the same thing. 

The tap of his cane is muffled by the soft earth, so he and Inej are only surrounded by Jordan’s giggles and squeals as they walk on, unhurried. These are the times when Kaz almost understands Jesper’s draw to the tables. He knows the harm that will come from savoring this moment; he knows the trick that’s being played on him by some cruel fate; he knows the illusion that’s being wrought; and his common sense would tell him to stay away, to shut it out, to ignore the impossible dream. But he can’t. Over and over in his criminal career, he’s done the supposedly impossible, and yet he can’t deny himself this. 

“She loves it here,” says Inej, her eyes trailing Jordan. The little girl is laying down and making shapes in the grass now, having beaten them to the rise where they usually rest. 

“She’ll be happy,” says Kaz. He’s a liar, but he’s not lying about this. And what truly shocks him is that he cares at all—that he wants Jordan to be happy. She doesn’t deserve the lives they’ve made.

Inej trails the last few steps to the hill in silence. She stops, still standing, and looks over the striped landscape below. When she looks back at him, her eyes are deep with sadness, deep as the harbor, but she still smiles. “My father was right. You make a good farm boy.”

Kaz flicks his suspenders with one gloved thumb. “You look like you belong here.” Over her billowy white blouse, the vest she wears is of Suli silk, real silk, jade green. Her hair flows loose down her back in a rippling sheet. It’s almost as long as her mother’s. 

“I only look like it,” Inej translates. She gathers the curtain of her hair and pulls it over one shoulder. “Kaz, I’m trying.”

“Did I say a thing about that?” he says, taking another step up to stand beside her. 

“You didn’t have to.”

They do say a lot in silence. Her silence is a weapon. His is a shield. His armor.

Maybe that’s what she meant, in that encapsulated moment that was so long ago but seems to belong to a time of its own. Maybe that’s what she’s really wanted, all along. Not his touch, but his words. Honesty from a criminal. Well, he’ll never say that she doesn’t deserve it, but the question is whether or not it’s more than he can give. At least now he’ll concede that it’s worth trying. 

“To look at us, we’re the people we could have been,” Inej says softly. Her eyes are as clear as the sky, but dark. A black mirror. “A Suli girl and her farm boy.”

It’s nowhere close to the truth, so he shouldn’t clutch at the way she calls him hers. Shouldn’t. He does a lot of things that he shouldn’t, and he’s not stopping now. His eyes fall to Jordan, and he doesn’t have to look at Inej to know that she’s thinking the same: And their child. Our child. No use dwelling on the could-have-been, he knows. And yet. 

“I’ve mastered deception by appearance,” Kaz says with a slight tilt of his head towards her. 

“Not to me.” From the satchel slung over her shoulder, Inej withdraws an apple and tosses it to him. The hand that he catches it in is bare; it hits his palm with a satisfying smack. While the feeling is strange, the glimmer of hope stirring in Inej’s eyes is worth it. He still feels a bit foolish for having used his sleight of hand to slip the gloves off without her noticing, but her delighted surprise, well, that’s worth it, too.

Jordan almost immediately comes toddling up at the prospect of food. Nina would love her, Kaz thinks. He raises his eyebrows skeptically, but he gives Jordan the apple. She has to hold it with both hands.

“You spoil her,” says Inej, sitting down and settling back on her hands.

Kaz joins her. “You insult me.”

“I’m not sure I believe that,” she says.

Kaz starts to think of a retort, but pauses when he notices one strand of hair that’s loose down her back, not swept over her shoulder with the rest. His hand shakes for a moment, whether from restlessness or fear he’s not sure, but it’s steady when he raises it in question.

Inej looks at him curiously. 

“You have a…” His throat has gone dry. He can’t even think of the words. It’s such a laughably small thing. 

She follows his eyes and touches a hand to the nape of her neck before her fingers find the loose strand and she drops it in understanding. “I do.”

It sounds like a vow, not just the words but how she says them. Kaz shifts so that he’s mostly behind her and extends his hand just a bit further, slow, unsteady. She holds the rest of her hair out of the way as if he’s clasping a necklace around her throat. 

He forces himself to close the gap. His fingertip and thumb close around the strand, and it’s just as soft as he always suspected, though he brushes her neck in the process, and it’s all Kaz can do to keep from jerking his hand back. He doesn’t want to hurt her. He sweeps the loose lock into place, his hand bumping against her shoulder as he does so. 

There’s a familiar jolt of panic at the first contact, but, he realizes, no bodies, at least not yet. No dark harbor. No desperation, no Jordie. 

Jordan. It’s odd how it makes him think of her. He looks over to where she’s sitting, gnawing on the apple, but then she looks up at him and sets it in her lap. 

“Careful, you’ll get juice on—” Inej sighs in a way that’s mostly a laugh. “Lost cause.”

Kaz shifts back to his spot next to Inej. “Hands,” Jordan says curiously, wiggling over to sit beside Kaz. His heart hasn’t stopped hammering against his chest, and he stiffens when he feels how close she is. He hears his own tension reflected in Inej’s voice, like a string tuned too tight, when she warns, “Jordan—”

“Big and little,” says Jordan, carefully enunciating each syllable. She still sounds unsure of the words themselves, but certain of their meaning. She holds up one hand, which is very small indeed.

Kaz doesn’t think about the choice. This has always served him in extremes—either very well or very badly. If he’s going to be a fool today, he might as well go all in.

“So they are,” he says, and holds out his hand to her. She blinks at him before giggling delightedly and pressing her hand to his. It’s barely bigger than his palm. His free hand digs into the earth, clutching at the grass, fighting for an anchor. He can’t let the harbor take her from him. Not another Jordan. Not like this.

Inej makes a sound that’s half gasp, half laugh. Kaz looks over at her, and her smile is unbridled, glowing, beaming. It’s the kind of smile that he wants to catch and keep like a firefly in a jar. It’s her mother’s smile. It’s the kind of smile he aches to earn again. It almost makes him forget, too.

Jordan’s hand is sticky with apple juice. He’s not sure why it makes a difference, but it tethers him. He’s able to clamp down on the sickness that swirls in him and take this for what it is. 

“Very little,” says Jordan, flexing her hand against his. She lifts it to tug on one of his fingers. “Real?”

Inej laughs. First that smile and now this. Kaz is not going to forgive either of them. “Real enough,” he says. 

Is Kaz Brekker your real name? 

Real enough.

It doesn’t quite feel like it right now. If she asked him now, he’s afraid he would say no. He’s afraid he would say that he is Kaz Rietveld, a boy who would lose everything he as Dirtyhands has worked and fought for. Except her. It’s a gamble, and Kaz doesn’t gamble unless he can cheat. 

His eyes fall to his hands, and it occurs to him that this is another problem to solve—another puzzle. His own mind is the most intricate puzzle he’s yet faced, but from this vantage point it’s just an incredibly complex lock in need of picking. Suddenly, the idea seems less frightening and more intriguing. 

“What a time for your scheming face,” says Inej. “What is it?”

“I told Wylan that he thinks like a lockpick, but maybe my mind is a lock,” says Kaz, tilting his head to one side. “Not in need of mending, just coaxing open.” It’s a sideways method of getting at the truth, but it’s as open as he’s been with her in some time—years maybe, if ever—and the words are uneven in the way they spill out of him.

“It’ll be a long job,” says Inej, her eyes on him. The sun shimmers along the length of her hair, the breeze lifting it and rippling its reflections. Kaz finds himself mesmerized again, on the edge of something too dangerous to think about twice. 

Kaz slides his hand to hers against the ground, slotting his fingers into the spaces between hers. Four points of contact, each one small. The waves crest and ebb, but he’s still standing when they pass. “Luckily I’m renowned for my patience.”

Chapter Text

Inej slips into the kitchen, still feeling the ghost of Kaz’s touch. It’s sparks on her neck, warmth between her fingers. It’s dangerously safe. 

Jordan is asleep, and Kaz is in the front room with her father. What they could be talking about, she can’t imagine or doesn’t want to. She’d wanted to stay, but Kaz had urged her on with his eyes, silently imploring her to trust him. And for a reason beyond reason, she does.

It’s only late afternoon, but already the silence is punctuated with the warm, familiar scent of her mother’s cooking. She steps up next to Mama, who pushes Inej’s hair aside to plant an absentminded kiss on her cheek. 

“It smells good, Mama,” Inej says, her first language returning to her as surely as her footing after a wobble on the wire. Her body, her tongue, remembers. It’s like climbing; she trusts herself to know what to do.

“I should hope so,” her mother returns, raising an amused eyebrow. Her face is a rosy, misted mirror to Inej; her expressions are Inej’s expressions, her eyes Inej’s eyes, but open and unwary. Unmixed. Uncomplicated. What a marvelous thing that must be to feel. Inej should know; she’s felt it, surely; but that is a different girl. That girl died somewhere on the sea, the same sea that Inej feels has been her phoenix rebirth. 

“You deserve even the obvious truth,” says Inej, stepping to the side to look over the ingredients that are neatly ordered on the counter. 

“Mmm, and yet, my love, I am afraid you are going easy.”

A whole section of the counter is taken up with various spices in fiery shades. Inej’s lips twist upwards. “I may be going easy, but you’re not, Mama. I would say you’re testing Kaz if I didn’t know better.” It’s an avoidance of sorts, but the conversation her mother was leading her to isn’t one that she wants to have now, not with the peace of the fields fresh in her mind and Kaz stirring hope in her again. They’re both losing their caution. It doesn’t scare her as much now as it usually does. 

“Testing?” Mama stirs and has a taste. “This is not testing, Inej. This is easy.”

Inej doesn’t quite hide a smile. “The Kerch love their salt, but they don’t season much beyond that.” Before Mama gets worried, she adds, “It will be a chance to try new things for him. Besides, I’ll have fun.”

“And of that you need more, Inej.”

It hurts to agree.

<><><>

They start dinner with a prayer, as always. And as always, Inej doesn’t hear the rough stone of Kaz’s voice among the rest. She’s not so petty as to check if his eyes are closed, though she’s certain they’re not. She can almost hear him: Wouldn’t you say it’s blasphemy for me to play at thanking your Saints? The worst part is, she might just agree. Or he would say that he’ll thank the Saints when they give him something worth his gratitude. Or merely something about how gratitude is only the weight of debt in the Barrel. And he teases her about proverbs. 

Jordan has been propped up on several cushions, but she’s still at a funny angle to the table. Her restlessness reminds Inej of Jesper, the way that she pats the tabletop and kicks her legs or hums tunelessly. Of course, her new grandparents, seated on either side, adore her; they take great pleasure in cooing and murmuring to her, playing with her, and making her laugh. 

She’ll be happy here, Inej tells herself. Look at her. She is happy here.

She feels more than sees Kaz’s gaze on her, burning cold like frostbite. She turns to meet his eyes, and his meaning is indiscernible, but somehow she’s certain that he’s thinking the same thing that she is. Though, maybe that’s just her foolish hope talking. And in either case, it changes nothing. What’s best for Jordan is clear and unaffected by her feelings, whether Kaz shares them or not. 

He’s seated next to her father, which is a turn of events that Inej regards with something like suspicion. While the two men seem to get along well, they have next to nothing in common, except, apparently, for this life in the country that Inej still knows next to nothing about. 

I grew up a few towns over from Lij.

(And your father?)

I was nine. Crushed beneath a plow. First body I remember seeing.

(And your brother?)

Brave. Foolish. Gullible.

The pieces all add up to something, but she doesn’t have Kaz’s love of puzzles nor his gift for them. And if he’s right, that he’s a puzzle, a lock in need of picking, then the only one who can solve it is Kaz himself. 

But she believes that he can. 

A sharp scent interrupts her thoughts; Mama delivers several dishes to the table, steaming faintly. The smell is in full fire now, passion and warmth, herbs and spices, and it hits the back of Inej’s throat like a punch. The memories strike like an unexpected gust of wind, threatening to bowl her over with the ache of all that she’s missed. 

She could have spent years knowing that smell, eating with her family, running through the fields of inland Ravka. She could have grown up in the sun, not the shadows of a city. She might even have met a boy, maybe one who looked like Bajan, a normal, sweet boy who would bring flowers and songs like her parents promised. Not men who crushed her beneath their bodies. Not a broken boy put together at wrong angles, who never answered anything right side up. 

But that same boy, across from her now, sees her fists curl against the tabletop. His dark eyes search her, and for once they are clear. He mouths, Inej, and even the imagining of his voice brings her back. 

There’s only what is. That’s what he would say.

What is, is Mama dishing out the meal—one of Inej’s favorites. It’s Papa making faces at Jordan to make her giggle. It’s Jordan making grabby hands for a dish and spoon of her own. And it’s Kaz, taking everything in, observing carefully, but trying for her. She’s never seen him so polite. The fact that this matters to him warms her as well as her mother’s spiced tea. 

“Oh, I remember that you like this one,” says Papa. His Kerch seems to have improved. Maybe that’s what he and Kaz were talking about? Inej will ask one or the other of them later. 

For now, she smiles and helps herself, choosing her words so that Mama will understand them. “I’d almost forgotten. I don’t know how you remembered.”

“Inej,” says Mama in Suli, “We remembered everything. All the pieces of you that we still had.”

Inej looks down at her plate. That keen ache takes hold of her again, sharp and throbbing. It’s possible, she knows now, to miss what you never had. She misses it so much that the pain is almost physical. 

But once again, Kaz’s eyes are on her. He doesn’t know what her mother said, but maybe it doesn’t matter as long as he knows her. He can’t reach across the table and take her hand like someone else might, but there is so much in those eyes that it almost doesn’t matter. 

“Thank you,” says Inej, first in Suli, then in Kerch. “Thank you.”

“It is no favor to love you,” her father says, still in Kerch for Kaz’s benefit. “It is easy.”

Inej’s eyes sting, but it’s a welcome feeling. Especially since, in the corner of her vision, she sees Kaz almost smile. 

<><><>

As the evening wears on, Inej nearly forgets. 

Jordan seems determined to eat more than the rest of them combined, and of course her grandparents will refuse her nothing. She wields her spoon a bit like a weapon, but she manages to make a minimal mess for all that. The Ghafas are not, however, too busy laughing at her to laugh at Kaz. 

Inej has never seen his face so red. He reminds her, in these rare times, that legal adult or no, part of him is still a proud, stubborn boy. He has struggled through barely half of one serving, and by now, Inej half expects steam to be coming from his ears. She particularly enjoys the fact that he is staring her down, as if she challenged him to do this. Well, she’s certainly not going to stop him. 

Jordan, meanwhile, gobbles her way through her third helping, completely oblivious. If Inej were over there beside her, she’d wipe the little girl’s mouth clean, but Mama does it instead. 

“Some water, Kaz?” She almost calls him Dirtyhands, for the sake of juxtaposing his intimidating persona with this situation, but she can’t see that shadow of him in the boy in front of her. Brekker or Dirtyhands or whatever his name was before, he’s just Kaz now. Her Kaz, she’d say in a better world. 

“I’m fine.” He’s even breathing hard. Inej can’t quite suppress a laugh. What a gloriously normal problem to have—weak Kerch taste buds versus Suli cooking. It’s a world away from rainy slopes and crows on windowsills and kill-or-be-killed in the Barrel. 

“Just let me know when you’re done,” she says sweetly.

“Worry about assisting the actual child, perhaps?” says Kaz, a flush still high in his cheeks. Now she can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment or from the spices.

“Why do you think I’m asking you?” Inej props her chin on one fist, half-lidding her eyes smugly. She’s not sure that her mother is following the conversation, but Papa chuckles.

“I couldn’t fathom,” says Kaz, far more angrily than the situation merits, and stubbornly takes another bite.

Inej wonders how far they’ll get before his eyes start watering. In the meantime, she should probably tell Jordan that she can’t have a fourth plate.

Chapter Text

Inej is braiding her hair when she finally asks him, so it takes Kaz’s mind a moment to comprehend the question. 

“What were you talking to my father about?” she asks, her fingers moving through the silky strands of hair the same way that Kaz’s own hands work a deck of cards. Her movements are silk themselves, fluid, seamless, a seemingly endless pattern of sliding the gleaming locks over one another. Kaz knows he couldn’t do it as well, but has to wrestle down a powerful urge to try.

“You,” he says. “The one thing we have in common.”

He sees her cheeks redden—pomegranate, dusty rose. He shouldn’t have taken that risk the day before. Now he’s fighting a near-constant battle with himself against the want for her that’s almost an ache in its own right. 

“What did he say?” she says. She finishes off the braid and ties it with a length of scarlet ribbon. It won’t be the first time a red ribbon has doomed him, Kaz reflects darkly.

“Memories,” says Kaz. “Your parents find the sentiment to be worth keeping them around. He says it eased the loss.” For his own part, Kaz is doubtful of that, and he’s well aware that it shows. He’s found memories to be like keeping a wound open—it’s near certain to fester. No wonder his healed wrong. 

“You don’t believe him,” Inej muses, sliding the braid over her shoulder and curling into her makeshift bed. Between them, Jordan is already asleep, and the candle is burning low into the shadows.

“I’ve learned differently,” says Kaz, pulling his legs up onto the bed to sit back against the headboard. The cut across his back twinges slightly, but then settles. He doesn’t know why he’s telling her this—he never does. It’s a shock to him as much as anyone when what comes out of his mouth is a bleeding truth rather than an obfuscating metaphor. 

“Remembering them kept me alive at the Menagerie,” Inej says quietly. She’s curled up on one side, her arm tucked under her head. If Kaz can barely stand the sight of decay, he wonders how she ever sleeps. He never used to care enough to wonder.

He stares at the candle, imagines the name of the Menagerie burning in it like a doomed moth. “Perhaps the Suli are more sentimental.”

“We live on risk,” says Inej. The shadows are low on her face, and yet it still gleams. “High wires with no net. You always know the odds.”

“I wonder if you would still believe that when I tell you that he asked me to join his work tomorrow,” says Kaz, looking at the ceiling. He rolls his head sideways. “Under the guise of seeing what I remember. I expect he’ll want to talk about you again.” 

In truth, Kaz would rather face a gang brawl any day. He doubts they’ll just be sharing memories this time. 

Inej, to her credit, doesn’t look amused—only contemplative. “And you agreed?”

“So I did. By all rights, it puts you in my debt, but I swore you’d be beholden to no one, so perhaps you’ve finally forced me to do something beyond my own benefit.”

Inej’s eyes slide closed. “Just say it was out of the goodness of your heart, Kaz.”

“Impossible,” he says. “I’d need a good heart for that.” But he looks at her, shadows and candlelight and feathered lashes against her cheeks, and thinks that she is the only heart he has, and she is good against all odds.

<><><>

Kaz is not a late sleeper by any means, when he sleeps at all, but it still seems early when he cracks his eyes open before sunrise. He dresses in a rush, glancing over at Inej briefly and wondering what her mornings were like on the Wraith. Did she sit in her cabin and braid her hair? Did she rise before the sun and climb until she could beat it into the sky? She lights every room before it gets the chance. Like her other enemies, the sun won’t know she’s winning until she’s won.

His clothes have gotten gradually plainer since he first arrived; today Kaz wears only a linen shirt and a simple pair of trousers, besides his gloves. He’d like to roll the sleeves up against the heat, but that’s more risk than he wants to take. He takes his cane with him, though he’s expecting to have his hands full. 

He crosses through the main room and out onto the porch, from there down and around to the wide expanse of land behind the house. Inej’s father is already there, dressed alarmingly similarly to Kaz—or maybe, worse yet, Kaz is dressed alarmingly similar to him. He needs to get back to his city. Whoever he is right now couldn’t keep a handle on an empire.

“I was surprised that you said yes. But pleased,” the older man says. His accent is careful and precise, stronger than Inej’s, his speech measured. This isn’t, Kaz senses, just because of his unfamiliarity with Kerch, but also because this is a man who thinks through everything he says.

“What better ways do I have to occupy myself?” Kaz asks, one eyebrow arched. It’s the kind of comment for which Inej would scowl at him with that satisfying little furrow between her brows, but her father takes it as a joke and jokes back. 

“You insult my daughter’s company.” He tosses Kaz a slice of bread—spiced, but only with something like cinnamon, thank goodness. Kaz would prefer to push the previous night’s humiliation into his ever-growing pile of abandoned memories. 

“Or I elevate yours,” Kaz suggests, limping over the extra steps to trade his cane for some sort of spade. Maybe it’s the warmer weather or the more even terrain, but his leg has been surprisingly good these past few days.

“I am a simple old man, but I am no fool, Mr. Brekker. No young man like you would prefer me to Inej.”

Kaz digs the tip of the spade into the earth and notes its sharp point. It’s lucky that most farmers lack violent tendencies, considering the deadly implements at their disposal. He thins his lips and flings some loose earth aside. Inej’s father has no idea what young men like you means. They are men who look for a weapon in everything. They are men who would find his daughter and give him back a girl of blades and shadows that he doesn’t know. Kaz has never been ashamed of what he is, and he’s not ashamed now, but now he knows what it might feel like.

And then there’s the matter of his implications. If the old man isn’t a fool, well, neither is Kaz. He knows when he’s being baited. Inej must have gotten her subtlety from her mother. 

Or from mine, Kaz thinks, recalling the time he called Ketterdam his mother. 

At last, he settles on, “I’m sure Inej warned you that I’m a liar. I only didn’t expect to be caught in it so soon.”

His companion joins Kaz’s efforts regarding the soil with a large, slender-headed spade that makes thin, deep holes in the soil. The memory of Jordie using just such a tool, and Kaz standing on it but still being too small to push it into the earth, hits him like the overpowering perfume of spring grasses and wildflowers. His grip on the spade's handle tightens against his gloves, and he blinks hard to right his focus.

“She does not say much about you,” says Inej’s father, pausing to regard Kaz with a look of consideration. “That you saved her from that—that awful woman.” He spits out a word in Suli, a word that Kaz doesn’t need to know to understand its meaning. “That you brought us together again.”

And yet further apart, Kaz thinks, recollecting all too clearly their stiff, stilted conversation on the first day. He feels that clash of two worlds again now, in the expectations he was not made to meet. The Ghafas are good people. He envies them and pities them in equal measure. 

“It was the least she deserved, and not entirely without selfish motive,” Kaz says evenly, tossing another shovelful of earth aside. It tugs on his stitches and he grimaces. How he feels about Inej is a selfish thing; her pain hurts him, so he never wants her to hurt. Her smile thrills him, so he wants to make her smile every minute.“The Barrel changed her, but not as much as most people.”

“As you?” the old man asks with the same intuition, the same curious gaze and gentle probing that his daughter has mastered so well. “You hold that spade like a man who knows how.”

“I’m a quick study,” says Kaz. “Which answers both of your questions.”

They’ve made an even line of fresh-turned earth, holes for the seeds spaced every few inches. The sun is barely coming up and Kaz is warm already. Ridiculous. Inej’s father stops to look over their work. “Inej seems to fear for the things you are slower to learn, Mr. Brekker.”

“I’ve survived this long without them.” Kaz doesn’t like where this conversation is going. Never mind that he’s sensed it from the start; he makes it his business to be in control of a conversation, and he doesn’t plan to give it up now. “And you said that she didn’t tell you much about me.”

“But even after these years, and the ship and the knives, I know my daughter. I can see where her heart aims.”

Kaz draws a neat line of overturned soil, more out of contemplation than the pattern he’s fallen into. “A dangerous business.”

Inej’s father catches up to him with a line of even indents in the earth. “You gave her the ship and the knives. Is that not dangerous?”

Not nearly as dangerous as giving her myself.

“They made her dangerous,” says Kaz, squinting against the rising sun. “But she was dangerous when I met her. She could always have been. The girl you see now is that, realized.”

“I loved her as I knew her and I love her as she is,” says the old man, leaning on his spade in a mirror of Kaz’s position. There is a hard gleam in his dark eyes that makes Kaz wonder if he’s underestimated him. “Do you?”

There it is. 

“That,” says Kaz, “is where the danger lies.”

<><><>

It’s midday when he goes back in, after hours of more silence than not. He’s glad for his cane by now; terrain and weather regardless, his leg has started to complain. Inej greets the two men in the front room, where she’s playing with Jordan. 

“How did it go?” she asks. 

“Warm,” Kaz sighs, pushing his hair back off of his forehead. There are beads of sweat around his collar. 

“That’s not even half an answer,” says Inej, motioning him down to the chair beside her. She’s obviously in a good mood, due no doubt to the company of Jordan, who is teaching her the “sock game”. 

“Ask anyone,” says Kaz, taking the offered seat and propping his bad leg up on a low ottoman. “I’m cheap.”

“Not now, you aren’t,” says Inej, pausing only to groan dramatically as she’s defeated by Jordan. “I was in Ketterdam long enough to see the Crow Club taking up half the street.”

“The less of East Stave is covered in glitter and eye-damaging colors, the better,” says Kaz. “Call it public service.”

“Public service with profit.”

“Then I’m practically a member of the Council.”

Inej gives him an unimpressed look, which is somewhat ruined by her failure to cover a smile. She pauses before her eyes trail over him in a way that makes him feel unnervingly exposed. “I think you got a tan.”

On his face and nowhere else. Won’t that be a fashion statement. Well, he’s rich enough now that he doesn’t have to worry about people’s opinions on these things (and his haircut is fine , Zenik, it’s practical. ) “I fear for my reputation.”

“I can hear the terror in your voice,” Inej responds with equal sarcasm. “Okay, all right, Jordan, if you insist on defeating me again. I’m back.”

Jordan whoops gleefully and returns to her attack. 

“Sock isn’t much of a weapon,” Kaz says idly. “Maybe we should get her—”

“You finish that sentence and I’ll remind you what a real weapon can do, Kaz.”

Kaz is deeply disturbed by how enthralling that sounds.

Chapter Text

Rising to greet the sun is different here from Ketterdam, different even from the sea. The sky is clear and impossibly wide, soft as a blanket swaddling the earth. Inej sees it through the window across the room, the window over Kaz’s bed.

He’s still asleep, as is Jordan. The latter is a common occurrence, but usually Kaz is up first, if his nightmares haven’t woken him already. He’s learned, like she did, to have them quietly. Inej is willing to bet that these few days have been the most he’s slept in longer than she wants to consider. 

The lack of responsibility has to be jarring for him; it is for Inej, and she’s only been a captain for two years, compared to the time he’s spent all but running—and eventually leading—the Dregs.

You wouldn’t know it to look at him now.

The sharp lines of his face are softened and blurred at the edges. He’s not so pale as he was, and the ever-present furrow between his brows is smooth. His breathing is even, all of the tension in his strong frame relaxed. There’s even a dusting of freckles over his cheeks. He looks so young.

Is this what he would’ve been like, if he never came to Ketterdam? 

If she died at the Menagerie? If Jesper fell in with a gang less able to protect him? If Matthias wasted away in Hellgate? If Nina ended up working in one of Rollins’ pleasure houses? If Wylan was killed the second he hit the streets of the Barrel?

So much has been saved from so much evil. So many lives spared by the destruction of one, and the carnage left behind. It isn’t simple. It isn’t fair. 

Oh, little lynx, life isn’t fair, Tante Heleen would say. There are only those who are kind to you and those who are cruel. 

Heleen would call herself kind, too, so who’s to say what else she was wrong about?

Kaz is wrong about many things, too, but she believes him when he says there’s only what is. No use in could-have-beens, even if this trip has been a string of them. 

That, however, is to say nothing about what could be.

Inej knows the feeling of a precipice—of curling her toes over the very edge, willing the wind not to change, the swoop in her stomach that tells her something is coming. She wants to stay on the edge of the change forever. She doesn’t want to see it come, because she knows she will fall. This is that feeling.

But Kaz opens his eyes. The wind swirls and settles. Inej tucks her arm under her head, and breathes.

He meets her gaze but stays quiet. His eyes are soft and dark in the pale dawn. 

Inej rises and pads past Jordan, around the end of his bed to the window, and easily hoists herself onto the sill. She slides up until she’s sitting beside his head, her back against the window frame, the dim sun on her side. It’s the way she used to sit in his window, she remembers, when she would feed the crows. 

“Morning,” Kaz murmurs. His voice is deeper than usual, rough from sleep in a way that’s more gravel than tone, in a way that Inej feels. It burns in her chest like she’s the one talking. 

“So they do call it beauty sleep for a reason,” she muses, rolling her head to one side to look at him. She’s just in time to catch a red flush creeping up his chest and a temporary stilling of that sharp tongue of his.

Take that, Inej thinks smugly. That’ll be her revenge for his comment back in the field the other day. Words she hasn’t stopped thinking about since.

“Flattery won’t sway me, Wraith.”

“And calling me Wraith won’t stop your blushing.”

Kaz scowls at her, but there’s not much true feeling behind it. She would know. She’s seen his real glare. 

“You’ve got freckles,” she adds, fluttering her fingers towards him. “I suppose you and the sun can get along after all.”

“Not enough,” Kaz replies quietly, shifting into more of a sitting position against the headboard. “And maybe that’s for the better.” 

“How do you mean?”

He runs one thumb across the bridge of his nose as if he’s hoping to smudge away the offending marks. “I have to go back to the city looking like this. No one will take me seriously.”

Inej knows he’s making a joke, but there’s a part of it that he means. The feeling of a precipice returns, and this time, she leaps. “Do you? Do you have to go back?”

He’s silent, but not the kind of silence that tells her he’s holding back a yes. Not like it was in his office when she first returned. Somehow, she’d thought that if he’d chosen her once, he might do it again.

“You know I do,” he says. “You and your family can say what you like. I don’t belong here.”

There’s a reckless glory in having nothing to lose because you’ve already lost it all. Inej seizes it. “Could you?” 

Kaz goes quiet again, looking past her out the window. She slips one of her hands from its place on her lap and lets it hang down, fingertips dangling over his bare palm. He can close the distance if he chooses to. “Could you belong with me?” she asks.

Kaz curls his hand so that her fingertips slot into the places between his, a touch but not quite a grasp. Hope lifts its head warily in Inej, but he says, “Do you belong here?”

Part of her does. Part of her will always hold the girl who turned cartwheels in the fields until her parents dragged her home. Part of her contains, somewhere, the girl who put on her best silks, real silks, to dance with the fireflies. That girl lives here. But she is a ghost, dancing and tumbling through the grass forever with no one left to call her home. She will never realize that her body is being used and broken. She will chase the sun forever. 

Inej is not that girl. 

“I wasn’t going to stay,” she says. “The real wraith is the girl who lives here, the ghost girl I left behind. Sometimes I think I can vanish so well because I’m not a whole person, because I lost her.”

“Ah, but I don’t have your gift, and you are more whole than I will ever be.” Kaz flashes her a wry smile and gives the side of her hand a gentle caress with his thumb. 

“You say that,” says Inej, her eyes on their hands, “but, at risk of making you think too much about it, look at what we can do now.”

Kaz’s mouth twists, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to let go, but instead he swallows hard and regains himself, his fingers flexing against hers. “It’s not enough.”

“It wasn’t going to be,” Inej murmurs, returning his soft caress. “Not so soon. But maybe if neither of us is whole, we are shaped right for each other’s broken places.”

“You don’t want to fix—”

“No. I want to be there while you do.”

Kaz shifts their tangled hands onto his lap, the movements tentative and slow. “I have to go back. But you have to go back to your ship.”

Say it, Inej wills. Tell me what you mean. Tell me and I might stay. 

“I do,” she says, and hope rises in her, prepared to leap at his word. 

The chance comes and goes. The wind changes, and it’s gone. Inej feels it go still.

“What about Jordan?” he says. It’s not what she was waiting for, but it’s better than what she was expecting. 

“Don’t ask me that,” Inej says wistfully, turning her head to look out at the lightening sky over the fields. “I said she was going to stay, and my parents love her.”

“So do you,” says Kaz. “You deserve someone so uncomplicated to love.”

Inej purses her lips. “Not subtle.”

“Didn’t mean to be.”

“Of course.” Inej sweeps a strand of hair away from her face with her free hand and presses her palm against the window. “If I got what I deserved, Kaz, I would never have met you. And I’d be doing penance now instead of taking my blessed revenge. It’s not about what I deserve. It’s about what I want.”

They had this conversation before, when they first arrived here; it was a jumble of double meanings and half-truths. This is better. The soft touch of his hand against hers, long white fingers against her lithe brown ones, is better.

“Want,” Kaz muses. His hand loosens against hers, but tenses with his next words. “I need you, Inej.” It breaks from him like a muted groan, like a drowning man’s first gasp of air. A thrill ripples through Inej’s body, but in the same moment, she almost pulls away—she has heard those words in that tone from men before, though they never used her name. The fear almost tears her from the moment. 

“You don’t need me,” she whispers. “We don’t need each other. But we are better as a pair.”

“I could—I could work with you.” His gaze is fixed past her, out on the fields. “You hunt slavers on the seas and I fight them in the city. It would be…a reason to write.”

A smile breaks slowly over Inej’s face, sure and patient as the sunrise. She drops her shoulder to slide her hand all the way into his, knitting them with a tight and precious grasp. “They’ll never see us coming.”

“Brick by brick,” says Kaz.

And maybe that applies to their demons, too. They will destroy them together. They’ll attack unsuspected. Brick by brick. 

Chapter Text

They have a proper parley in the sun-drenched living room. It’s different from the shadowed alleys of Ketterdam in plenty of ways, but most notably in the hoped-for outcome; this time, the hours they spend strategizing, side by side but apart, their shadows mingling on the walls, is directed towards minimizing the carnage. This meeting calls for as little damage as possible to both sides.

Inej stands with the posture she’s known all her life, straight as a blade, the one her parents mirror. Jordan sits on her hip, clinging to her shirt. Kaz stands behind her, gloved hands folded nearly over his cane, his white shirt crisp and buttoned. She’s used to being his backup, but it’s not so bad having things the other way around.

Her parents sit across from them in a pair of sturdy chairs, their expressions open but their postures looking for all the world like they’re about to scold Inej for trying something reckless on the wire.  There are empty seats—enough for the three of them—but Inej remains standing, and Kaz follows suit. She needs to be grounded in her patience for this. She needs to remember her strength. 

“I needed this. So did Jordan,” she says. The little girl looks up at the sound of her name with an inquisitive coo, her brown eyes wide. Inej’s arm holds steady beneath her. Inej speaks in Suli, not the language of trade but the language of unspoken love that knits them all together. Kaz has helped her put this speech together enough that he doesn’t need to understand it by now. “She wasn’t part of the plan, but she is more than that now. She’s part of our family.”

Kaz shifts behind her with a slight creak, a murmuring rustle. She doesn’t look at him. Whether or not he is included in the unspoken collective is his own choice. Inej only knows her path. 

“You told me that my heart was an arrow, that it needs aim. I had my aim before I got you back. I love you as much as my heart can love, but I can’t stay here.”

Her father has her mother’s hand tight in his, his thumb stroking gently across the back of her hand. They are so close, even with the chair’s arms between them, moving not in tandem but as if in a dance where each knows their part. Inej aches for it.

“We know,” he says. “Inej, we never expected you to stay. You are free and you are happy, and wherever you are, you will be loved.” His gaze moves briefly over Inej’s shoulder, and she senses Kaz shifting behind her again. Still, he doesn’t say a word. 

Mama extends her hands, and Inej slowly walks forward, allowing her mother to clasp her free hand and look up into her face. She touches her fingertips to Inej’s cheek. “You are strong and brave, my love, stronger and braver than you should ever need to be. Just write to us. And when we reunite with our caravan, perhaps you’ll come home?”

Inej holds Jordan tighter with both hands, pressing a kiss to the child’s head for the sake of looking away. “I will.”

“She will be safe.” 

The words come from behind her. They are simple words, the accent rough and clipped, the language unsure, the rasp unmistakable. It’s her language in a voice she knows better than the skyline of Ketterdam or the fields of her home. 

Tears brim in Inej’s eyes and she cups Jordan’s head with one hand, holding her close in an echo of Kaz’s promise. It’s an unreasonable promise. It’s a foolish promise. It’s a contradiction of the no mourners that they’ve whispered into the dark too many times to count. It’s a target. 

But, then again, so are they—which Inej remembers clearly when the gunshots sound.

<><><>

Kaz’s cane is off the ground and braced as a weapon the second he hears the shots. Inej has dragged her parents down below the window and shoved a wailing Jordan into her mother’s arms. 

Her father demands something in Suli, talking too fast and low for Kaz’s new and extremely limited vocabulary to make out. Inej’s reply is short and sharp, her focus narrowed to a knife’s point. She springs up and all but appears beside Kaz, who’s already gotten low.

“Close,” she says in Kerch. “East.”

“Northeast,” he corrects. 

“Pedant.”

“Cautious.”

“You? Never.”

Nonetheless, she follows him out the door, sticking to the walls, her hand poised to flick a knife down into its waiting palm. The house doesn’t appear to have been struck; certainly, the windows are all intact; but the shots came from around the side, and Kaz’s apprehension whittles to a point as they creep up to the corner of the house.

“Slavers?” Kaz murmurs.

“Here?” Her brows draw together, her lips pursed.

“Jordan?”

“We sank their ship. What about you?”

“No one knows I’m here.”

“The city leaks, Kaz.”

He braces his cane against the earth. This half-crouched position is far from comfortable. “Doesn’t matter who they are as long as they’re shooting at us.”

“Well, unless you’ve learned to deflect bullets—”

“No more of those, are there?”

Their whispers fall still, and they listen. Kaz’s mind is whirring. Those were warning shots. Their attacker or attackers must still be decently far off. No way to guess at numbers, or how well armed they are. And this after Kaz made a fool of himself, making promises he can’t keep. Back to the ones he can, then.

“No mourners,” he says, meeting the golden swirl of Inej’s eyes, the tilt of her black brows, the sweep of her lashes. 

“No funerals,” she says, flicking the knife into her hand. 

Kaz looks up before rounding the corner, while Inej is up the side of the house; she’ll be on the roof in seconds. Meanwhile, he’s already looking as soon as he’s out from the cover of the wall. It’s open fields for miles. How would anyone—

Another shot rings out. Lucky for Kaz, their aim is terrible, but it does hit the side of the house. 

The Ghafas are in there. 

Jordan is in there.

His anticipation boils into rage, just the kind of rage that he needs to carry him into whatever’s coming. The land dips down perhaps fifty yards out, so whoever’s shooting at him must be hiding behind that rise. He trusts that Inej has seen it and starts to cross the open ground. 

He can just hear her chastising him later— Are you insane?—Of course.— but that’s an optimistic projection that assumes they both survive. Kaz can work with that. He needs to lure their attackers out and get them back towards the house so that Inej can jump down on them. 

He’s barely halfway to the dip before several figures, clothed in dark homespun, burst out. Only one has a rifle slung across his back. The others presumably have weapons hidden in their clothes, but all the better if Kaz can take them down before they get a chance to use them. 

He wishes he had a lapel to smooth. The best he can do now is to stand straight, knife-straight like Inej does and like her parents do and like Jordan will someday, and fold his hands over his cane. And he smiles. It’s a smile that shows blood on his teeth if you don’t look too closely, and at least it gives them pause. Good.

It’s not going to last, of course; the one with the rifle swings it into his hands and takes aim. Advantages of distance. Kaz kept the pistol he’d stolen from that slaver, but he doesn’t have it on him. 

The city’s more patient than you, Kaz , Jordie muses in his head. It’s been waiting to take you down, and see, now you’ve gone soft. Now’s its chance.

The voice in his head isn’t his brother’s voice. Not really. And if it is, it’s the voice of a boy who failed him. He has better things, brighter things to depend on. 

Watch me live.

So when Kaz sees, even this far out, the man’s finger flex against the trigger, it’s too late. He’s already disappeared. 

<><><>

Inej watches from the roof and only has a minor heart attack. Kaz and that Saints-forsaken smoke bomb of his. How he pulled it off in an open field is a mystery even to her. Also, now she has to find him.

She drops from a crouch to lay on her stomach, parallel to the ridge of the roof, and shimmies sideways to the very edge. From there, she gets a hold of the eave and rolls under, drawing on her core until she can brace her feet against the rafters and wedge herself into the space. She’s got her back to the people below her now, though, and can’t see a thing, so she crosses one hand under the other, braces her feet again, and flips over. There’s a moment where her grip shakes and her stomach drops, but she regains it as soon as it falters, and now she can see what’s going on below. 

The rafter she’s gripping digs into her hands, but she knows how to avoid getting splinters. Meanwhile, Kaz is somehow almost directly below her, a dark blot against the beige-wheat landscape. Three of the four men are coming at him while the fourth follows, reloading. She’ll bet that Kaz knew what kind of gun he has and counted off how many shots were left—Kaz would.

She needs a way to propel herself at the one with the rifle and get him out of the way. She’s too high up just to drop from here, but she has no way to signal to Kaz to give her a launch point. Just this once, she misses Ketterdam, the way it lends itself to her set of skills. Not so much the open plains. 

While she keeps an eye on Kaz, who’s handling the men ably so far, Inej drops her feet so that she’s hanging from the rafter and swings forward to wrap her legs around the drainpipe that runs from the roof. Now she can creep down, twisting to keep an eye on the fight, until she’s low enough to—

The one with the rifle is taking aim again. She’s not low enough. That’s not important anymore.

Inej drops one hand so that she’s hanging off of the drainpipe like a flag, puts her feet against the wall, and leaps. 

She can pretend there’s a trapeze to catch. She can pretend she’s reaching for her wings. It doesn’t matter. She is a knife, thrown, flying. She is an arrow. 

Her feet slam into the man’s chest; his gun goes off at the sky, while Inej digs her knee into his sternum and rests Sankt Petyr against his throat. 

“That bullet will fall,” he croaks. 

“Let’s hope it doesn’t hit you, then,” says Inej, as if they’re discussing the chance of rain. It’s not so bad when the man is beneath her . Impossible thoughts of Kaz come and go, as wily as Inej herself.  “Or me, since my hand might slip.”

“Yeah it will,” he grunts, and he throws his weight upward. Inej is prepared, but when she slams him back down, the gun goes skittering off to one side and goes off somewhere in the process, grazing her leg. It is only a graze, but she grunts and jerks forward, and her careful pressure on Sankt Petyr drives the blade into his neck. Inej pulls back—there’s warm blood running down her thigh now, and on her hands, and on his shirt—but she went too deep, too fast. Her position had been poised to make good on her threat, and blood is spurting from him now, gushing over her hands. She shakes it off as well as she can and leaps to her feet, staggering slightly when the pull makes her leg sting.

The man looks vaguely familiar. Has she fought him before? No gang tattoos or otherwise identifying marks, but on the sea one battle and another aren’t so different. 

She turns around and scoops up the gun; she doesn’t know how many shots it has left, and she wouldn’t know how to use it beyond the basics, but Kaz will be able to. Maybe he could use the help, she thinks, and starts running, ignoring the pain in her leg.

This is the man who fought an entire gang and won, but the men—whoever they are—have put up a decent fight. That said, one of them is already down, probably with his ankles broken by the looks of it. The second is on his way—as Inej watches, he tries to dig a knife under Kaz’s ribs, and before Inej can answer the rage that blooms in her, Kaz gets the blade from underneath and spins it, aiming the point under his attacker’s chin and slamming it upwards. 

The third one is going from behind to grab Kaz with an arm around his throat. Inej hefts the gun into position—she can at least pretend that she knows what to do with it—but Kaz whirls and breaks the man’s nose with his elbow. While the man staggers, Inej races over lopsidedly and pushes the rifle into Kaz’s arms. He passes his cane to her and takes the gun.

“You’re hurt,” he says, quiet and intense. He barely looked at her for a breath, but he saw.

Inej ducks a punch from the man who’s still standing and slips around to his back, bracing her free arm across his throat as he’d tried to do to Kaz before. Speaking of Kaz, there’s a red line bleeding into his shirt where the knife must have nicked him. “So are you.”

Kaz rests the barrel of the gun against the man’s chest, though Inej is strangling him quite successfully. “A shame.” He turns his attention on their enemy; Inej takes the signal and lets up the pressure enough for the man to speak. 

“What are you doing here?” Kaz asks, tipping his head to one side. His eyes are bleak and empty, his face peaceful. With Kaz, there is no calm before the storm; his calm is the storm. 

The man stares back, half-dead but defiant. He looks familiar, too, Inej reflects.

“No job or bounty could pay you enough to get killed here,” she says in his ear. “It’s no use if you’re not alive to spend your share.”

“How do you know it’s a job?”

“It isn’t. Plenty of people hate us, but none enough to come this far,” says Kaz, spinning his cane in his hand and planting its tip against the earth. “But, honestly—as we all know, I’m an honest man—it makes no difference to me. I come out of this alive either way, and you don’t.”

“Where’s the kid?”

Inej’s grip across his throat tightens. The pain in her leg is forgotten.  They’re here for Jordan? It no longer matters how they got here, or how they know—if Nina were here, Inej would make her raise the men so she can kill them over again. Anyone who thinks to touch her child deserves every death Inej has narrowly avoided and then some. She’ll spill their bodies over the sea with the name of the Wraith on their chests. 

Kaz shifts the gun and makes a show of aiming. “Have I made a mistake? Seems like you think you’re still in a position to make demands.”

The man bares his teeth like some gruesome animal. “Nothing’s set in stone.”

“Oh, you’re already dead,” Inej murmurs from behind him. She is quiet and soothing in her fury. “Why do you think they sent a ghost and a demon to escort you?”

The man blanches. He’s got a wide, flat face—not ugly, just unremarkable. Swollen and off-color, now. “Shoot me already.”

“Don’t have to,” says Kaz with a broken-glass smile. “You heard her.”

“You have that kid, you have the Scourge of the Seas. We were just supposed to take out some old people if they got in the way, but hey, Ghost Captain’s a bonus prize.”

They know that Jordan is here. They know that Jordan is supposed to be with her parents. Inej has to fight down the urge to strangle him right there, or flick out one of her knives and cut the features from his face until there’s just a skull left behind. She is almost surprised by this feral feeling, but not repulsed by it anymore.

 The man stays stubborn. That’s all right; if Kaz doesn’t break him, she will. “There’s good money in killing you.”

“There would be if it were possible.” Kaz’s face remains placid, but contrary to his words, his eyes are dead. Inej would know Dirtyhands anywhere, and this is the monster. The vindictive hunger in her is eager to see him burn this man’s life down, even if it has to be so quick as a bullet. “I was born in decay. I was brought to life by a corpse. If you tell the dead you’re alive enough times, you stop believing it too.”

The man doesn’t have time to scoff before Inej shifts her grip to his side and watches the blood spray. 

She lets the body drop. She doesn’t whisper a prayer. For some truly evil men, killing them is its own penance. 

They need to check on Jordan, to figure out how people still know where to find her, and yet she has to ask. “How much of it is true?” she asks, not looking at Kaz. “When you say those things?”

Kaz is already limping back towards the house. “Everything is true in one way or another.”

Chapter Text

Inej wastes no time in running into the house and bundling a wailing Jordan from her mother’s arms into her own, pressing kisses over and over to the little girl’s head. Kaz hangs back; this is not a scene he has a place in. It’s clear, anyway, that they have overstayed their welcome. 

The cut beneath his ribs still stings; it’s not so deep as the one still healing on his back, but still a nuisance. Not to mention the result of a slow response on his part. At least a proper fight assured him that he’s not gone so soft as he feared, but he’ll still have catching up to do once he makes it back to the city.

And he is going back. All thoughts of mornings and windowsills, clever fingers against his palm, the what-might-have-been that doesn’t matter because it’s not real —they’ve faded like the dream they are. He’ll let Inej make her choices, but he already knows what they will be. He’ll keep his promise, but whatever they’ve made here was not meant to last. 

He takes a slow step towards the family, where Inej is clasping her parents’ hands; everyone is wiping each other’s tears, murmuring quick and low in Suli while Kaz stands at a distance. They are busy comforting each other, as they should be. 

Jordan, however, squirms down from her mother’s—from Inej’s grasp, Kaz corrects himself sternly. Well, maybe it’s not wrong. He saw the look in his Wraith’s eyes as soon as a threat to Jordan was mentioned. He heard the low, black bite in her voice. He could never afford it, but it seems that allowing herself to feel and be connected has made Inej more dangerous. 

Jordan toddles over to him and looks up at him, her thumb firmly planted in her mouth and tears still smudging her face. Kaz sighs heavily. She’s just going to keep looking at him unless he does something—and so will Inej, once she notices. 

Carefully, he sinks onto the nearest low ottoman and leans his cane against his knee, his leg complaining as he does. Jordan scrambles up beside him, and he has to fight not to hold his breath.

“Are you scared?” he asks quietly. It’s a stupid question; obviously, she’s scared, and he supposes that with an optimistic view of things, she should be, but Kaz has been a realist for as long as he can remember. He also never learned how to talk to children when he doesn’t want something from them.

Jordan, however, just nods; she pulls her thumb from her mouth and scrubs at the tears on her cheeks. “Bad men?” she says. 

“Not anymore,” says Kaz, keenly aware of the way that he can feel her beside him. 

“Bad men take Mama One,” says Jordan. Her Kerch has improved over this trip. “Bad men take Mama Two?”

“She’s still here,” says Kaz, and if he believed in gods or Saints he’d thank them for it. “You’ve both had your share of bad men. Even me.”

“You bad man?” Jordan asks, looking like she’s going to cry again. Some people would say it’s too much for her to understand, but Kaz isn’t interested in lying to her. He won’t see her much after this, anyway.

“Yes,” he says. “But not to you.”

Jordan kicks her little bare feet against the side of the ottoman before seemingly deciding that this suits her. She squirms sideways and curls more closely against Kaz; he grips the head of his cane, hard, fighting down the way that his heart wants to hammer out of control. It’s a small weight, it’s on the one side, it’s not everywhere, not cold, not the bodies—

He’d turned away that voice, hadn’t he? Watch me live? Now, though, it’s all he can do to hold still and keep his mind here instead of back on the Reaper’s Barge. 

But it’s a Jordan beside him, Jordan’s weight against him, and it connects to nothing else except that he can’t stop thinking of that name, of the give of his brother’s rotting flesh under his hands. His breathing is rising now, getting shallow, because he’s drowning, because he can’t do this anymore, and now the distant dream is even less than that. 

I was born in decay. I was brought to life by a corpse.

Why did he say that? It’s too fresh in his mind now. It’s all he can see. The water is filling his lungs, killing the voice that wants to scream I’m alive.

Abruptly, he stands, bracing himself with his cane, and strides down the hall to the bedroom. 

Maybe he hears Jordan start to cry behind him. Or maybe that’s just the waves of the harbor.

<><><>

It’s a blessing and a curse to be able to feel her presence. 

Kaz is sitting on the end of the bed, his back to the door. His hands, safely gloved—but what difference does it make, really?—are in fists against his knees. He knows Inej is behind him, but he doesn’t move. He can’t. He can’t see her face, not when he knows what she’s thinking anyway, what they’re all thinking. 

“We need to leave,” he says brusquely. “Tomorrow if not by the end of the day.”

“I don’t disagree.” He can’t read anything from her voice. He finally turns around. She’s got a roll of bandages in her hand and a tin of some kind of salve. There’s a dark line on the leg of her trousers that he noticed before, that must be blood. “First,” she says, “Mama gave me these.”

Kaz feels cold. He’s not ready to do this again, to try and fail and be helpless again. He doesn’t say anything. He can’t. 

“You’re hurt too,” says Inej, taking a step into the room.

“And I’ll handle it.”

“I have bad days, too,” says Inej, more quickly than she usually responds to his cold avoidance. She sits on the bed, too, but up by its head, a good three or four feet away from him. “Don’t set your precedents on them.”

“By which you mean?” 

“You know as well as I do that there have been days when I barely left my room, Kaz. I never said that it would always be like that. I waited until it wasn’t.”

“Then wait now,” he says, flattening his hands out against his knees. They’re shaking. Usually a fight makes him feel powerful, stops him from feeling like this. It was simpler when he was both the threatened and the threat.

“As long as you actually want me to wait and not to stop trying,” says Inej, shooting him a glance before rolling up the leg of her trousers. There’s a graze on the side of her calf—not deep, but probably painful. It should be nothing after getting stabbed, Kaz reflects grimly. At least then he could carry her. 

He pulls the hem of his shirt loose and undoes the bottom buttons, up to where the cut is. When he looks over at Inej, she’s dabbing two fingers in the salve and spreading it over the graze, grimacing slightly as she does.

“What’s that?” Kaz asks quietly, breaking the silence. 

“It’ll clean the spot and help it heal,” says Inej. “I remember Mama making this when I was little. It stings, though.” She wrinkles her nose slightly, and Kaz almost has to look away, but she holds the tin out to him. 

“Will you do it?” His voice is so quiet and rough that he can barely hear himself, but steady. 

Inej pauses. “I thought you said—”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, not looking at her. “Just…try.” If they’re going to part ways again after this…he doesn’t know why, but he feels as if he owes her this much.

Inej shifts to kneel on the floor in front of him instead of sitting beside him, which Kaz appreciates for reasons he doesn’t quite understand. As she did for herself, she dabs two fingers in the salve and holds them up.

Kaz nods, not trusting himself to speak. Keep going. 

Slowly—achingly slowly—she brings her fingertips to the cut.

The first touch is the worst, and yet the sting almost makes him forget. Kaz bites out a curse, and Inej laughs shakily. “I told you,” she says, though she’s lifted her hand away now.

“Do the rest.”

Again she touches him, and again it stings, and again he fights back the urge to run or to strike. She’s not quite finished when he pulls back, or pushes her away—he’s not sure by now, with the past and the future mixing in his muddled thoughts. There are bodies, but this pain has to come from somewhere, and is he warm, cold, why is it all falling apart and what is it anyway—

“That will be enough.”

Inej is in front of him, holding up her hands, the tin sitting on her lap. “Barely enough, but I don’t need to do any more.”

If you wouldn’t lecture me for it, I’d thank your Saints. All of him is shaking now, so badly that when she holds out the roll of bandages he can’t take them. He shakes his head, breathing hard. He can barely be this close to her, and she’s at least a foot away. He can barely be in the same room. 

Inej doesn’t question further. She returns to her place by the pillows, draws her leg up in front of her, and wraps the bandages around it while Kaz trembles and looks away, sickness crawling up his throat. 

She passes the bandages to him when she’s done, and he goes to work on his own cut, and yet—the shame he usually feels is less, now. He remembers those days, the days she talked about when she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, go into the Crow Club without going blank and vacant, vanishing to some place in herself that nobody could find. He heard the crying from her room, sometimes, on the bad nights. And he’d been cold and impatient, always expecting somehow that she would hide it and push through the way he had. Never again. 

He turns towards her. He doesn’t know what to say, but he wants the memory of her after this, of all that he could have been good enough for, maybe. She mirrors his action, curious and careful. 

“Every captain knows that the sea has good days and bad days,” she says. “It has a temper. But it carries me. It holds my ship. It gives me what I need to take my vengeance.” Inej stands, and she is in profile to him now, facing the bed, the upturned set of her lips proud and certain, her eyes shadowed by the sun on her brow. “I love it in the shallows and the storms.”

“Just—come back,” says Kaz. Their shadows on the wall are bent close to one another, their silhouetted faces almost touching. In reality, he’s still sitting on the bed, while she stands by its headboard, facing the window, but their shadows care nothing for depth. It’s a wistful reflection. “However long it takes. Come back to Ketterdam.” Come back to me.

“I will, and so will Jordan. I’m taking her with me,” says Inej. Kaz was expecting it, and somehow he is proud, still. 

“She’ll be safe,” he says, again in Suli, even if the language doesn’t so much matter to Inej. This is something he can be certain of. Jordan will be safe with Inej. 

“Look,” says Inej, her eyes finding their silhouettes on the wall. “The sun is being good to us.”

Kaz tilts his head up and watches their shadows kiss, wondering if he will ever know how it feels. 

Chapter Text

Inej feels like a reflection, sitting in her mother’s chair and holding Jordan on her lap. She hums the notes she remembers of a song that still lives in her memories somewhere, a song about a child of the wind, a little girl who could fly. She’d always meant to ask Mama if she heard it somewhere or made it up. Maybe, that day the slavers first came, she would’ve finally gotten around to asking. Maybe it doesn’t matter. 

“Pretty,” Jordan says in her little voice. She’s been speaking more in Kerch recently, which is perhaps for the best, though Inej will make sure she doesn’t forget her Suli. She herself never had someone to make sure she didn’t lose her culture and herself, so she will be that person for Jordan. Her little girl will look beautiful in true, shimmering silks one day, and she will dance only for herself. Maybe she’ll fight, too. Maybe both.

“You lie to your mama, bad girl,” says Inej, stroking Jordan’s downy black hair. “You know I can’t sing.”

“Sing,” says Jordan sleepily, her eyes falling closed. 

“I don’t think you’re listening to me,” Inej says with a soft laugh. 

“I would get used to that,” says a warm voice in Suli. Inej looks up; Mama is standing by the window, watching her and Jordan with a wistful smile. “Daughters tend to have a mind of their own.”

“Oh, but not me,” Inej teases. “I was the perfect child.”

“You were the perfect child because of your spirit, my love.” Her mother comes over to stand by the chair and puts a hand on its headrest, looking down into Jordan’s round little face. “You loved living so much that you taught the rest of us how.”

“I wish I remembered.” Inej shifts Jordan’s weight in her arms. She knows that her mother is right, and yet she can’t imagine a time when she could simply love her existence as it was, without fearing for it or regretting parts of it. 

“We will remember for you.” Mama kisses the crown of Inej’s head, as she herself has done to Jordan before. “And you will remember for her.”

Inej tilts her head up. “You knew I was going to keep her.”

Mama puts her hands on Inej’s shoulders from her position behind the chair. “I know your heart, my love. You love her as I love you. No one else could do better for her than that.”

“Oh, and so humble, aren’t we?” Inej teases, tipping her head back to meet her mother’s dark eyes. 

“A mother’s love is not a thing to be proud of or to hide. It simply is, and it is indestructible. Perhaps no other kind of love is that way.” Mama sweeps Inej’s braid off of her shoulder and begins to unwind the strands with a well-practiced grasp.

Inej hums, letting her eyes slide closed. “I think that’s where people go wrong with love, is when they compare it and show it off. It isn’t like that.”

“No,” Mama agrees with an amused lilt in her voice. “I should say that you and Mr. Brekker even try to hide it.”

“Mama.” What else can she say? There’s no way to explain her and Kaz to her parents, the way that it grows and stretches and changes and strains. Their edges are too rough for things to happen the way that they should. There’s no agreement, no confessions and promises, no constant state; there’s only what they’re brave enough to handle, what they’re willing to try. They may never define what they are. They’re just…people. People who fight together, people who would kill or die for each other, people who hold hands sometimes. Is that love? Inej wouldn’t know. 

And yet, even though she doesn’t know, she still thinks that she might love him. And if she doesn’t, if she can’t, there will be no one else for her—not really. Then she will love her ship and her work and her Saints, and her daughter. Her daughter, who has his brother’s name. 

“I think,” her mother says slowly, spreading Inej’s now-loose hair over her shoulders, “that where people go wrong is with all their importance, their words and days and rules. Love should grow, like all of those flowers in the field, Inej. Sometimes it will falter. Sometimes, before the bud opens, you do not know how it will look. But it is beautiful in the end.”

Inej shakes her head, a smile still soft on her face. “The flowers die, Mama.” Maybe she has been spending too much time with Kaz. 

“And some of them come back,” her mother replies, leaning against the back of the chair. “Spring after spring. Sometimes they are surprising, like you. We might never have expected you to come back, and here you are.”

“Not for much longer,” Inej muses, shifting Jordan’s weight in her arms. The little girl is asleep now, peaceful in a way that Inej can’t help but marvel at. How lovely it must be to know that you are safe. 

“Ah, but you will come back,” says Mama. “The people that we love always draw us back to them sooner or later. Maybe that is the true test of it.”

“I will,” Inej promises, and it’s a promise she isn’t afraid of. “I don’t know how to be a mother. Maybe I’ll just come back for your help.”

“Nobody ever knows how to be a mother, Inej,” Mama replies. “You just love as hard as you can, and the rest will fall into place.”

“With a few bumps here and there,” Inej laughs softly. 

“Always, my love. That’s the best way of learning things.”

<><><>

Inej recognizes the Kaz who greets her by the door to their room in pieces, but not as a whole. He is wearing his long, dark coat again, all crisp seams and pressed edges, with his cane in his gloved hand; and, yet, his hair is still loose and soft, his face still freckled and goldened. Inej feels as if she’s just meeting him, but she likes this boy.

He’s standing back from the door a bit, his hands folded on the head of his cane; Inej leans against the doorframe, her arms crossed, her face tilted up to him. “Ready?” she asks softly. “We’ll meet the ship by this evening.”

“Well, I’m quite sure that I have everything,” says Kaz, looking back over his shoulder. 

“I’m not sure that’s what I meant,” Inej says with a gentle smile. “Jordan is with my parents. We have a minute.”

“For what?”

Inej drifts in the moment, and breathes. She is taking it for what it is, too much so to be frustrated with him. “Anything. I know we’ll be able to talk on the ship, but…”

Kaz’s gaze turns out into the house, towards the sounds of Jordan’s laughter down the hall. “Yes, I’m ready,” he says. “Ketterdam can only go so long without me.”

“It might lose its exciting reputation, at least,” Inej teases gently. “Or regain some color. Imagine that.” Personally, she wonders if what Kaz really means is that he can only go so long without Ketterdam. She is still discovering who she is without the city, and that was his world for much longer. Maybe he feels lost now, although it’s hard to imagine Kaz ever not having a plan or an understanding of where he is. 

“Perish the thought,” Kaz replies drily. He seems to hesitate—seems to, Inej thinks, because it’s a thing so unlike him—before saying, “I’d thought you might keep her.”

“Jordan?”

Kaz nods, though halfway, as if he wants to pretend they could be talking about anything else. “It was a good call—to keep her,” he says, and even though Inej has long been done waiting for his approval, she still feels a sight glow of pride. He’s not one to freely hand out praise. 

“Careful, now,” Inej says with a light smile, resting the side of her head against the door frame. “That almost sounded nice.”

He narrows his eyes, but without any real malice. “I’ll rescind it if you start setting expectations.”

“As someone said to me recently, perish the thought.” 

Kaz apparently elects to ignore her in favor of changing the subject, though not by much. “What changed your mind?”

Inej isn’t sure why he’s asking something that she’s almost certain he already knows. It’s not like Kaz to talk to anyone without a reason. Then again, maybe the boy in front of her is full of new surprises. “After those men came...I knew she would no longer be safe here,” Inej confesses. “They came for her to get at me. They came because they knew she was my child, so I might as well make it so. I don’t want to put my parents in danger with a life that is mine to choose.”

“How noble of you,” says Kaz with a crooked smile. 

“It’s not noble. It’s just right,” she replies. Maybe, once, she might have tried to convince him that she was not some haloed stained-glass figure, that she too was dark and dangerous. Now he knows what she is, and she knows the same. They’ve seen it all. It is his to take or leave. She can’t ask him to remove his armor if she keeps her own, after all. 

Kaz dips his head in assent. Inej briefly admires the way that his eyes catch the reflected, late sunlight more than she should. “How do you think they found us?” he asks, in a way that tells her that he at least has a theory, if he doesn’t already know. He wants to hear her thoughts, and she’s slightly embarrassed at the way that the idea warms her.

“They looked familiar,” she responds. “Could they have been from the crew that had Jordan? Maybe our prisoners escaped? They would at least know where the ship left us, and how many people of our descriptions would you find out here?”

“If they escaped, I expect it was messy,” says Kaz. “Might delay the ship meeting us. Or prevent it.”

“Between the two of us, I think we can figure something out,” Inej replies, arching an eyebrow, although the thought of some damage to her crew or her precious ship stirs something uneasy in her chest. “We’ve scraped through worse.”

“I expect you’d rather not have to,” Kaz guesses, stepping up to stand against the other side of the door frame. It puts them close, a foot or two apart. Inej finds that she doesn’t mind it. 

“I’d rather not have to do many things,” she replies. “But this life of ours would demand it.”

“Ours?” 

She’s prevented—or saved—from answering.

“Inej!” 

Inej looks down, still surprised at the little voice using her name. It’s been a few days now of Jordan calling Kaz and Inej by their first names since she’s learned them, and Inej doesn’t complain. It doesn’t change her love, she knows, thinking of her conversation with her own mother. 

She bends and scoops up the little girl. “What is it, my love?”

“Found you,” Jordan giggles, touching a clumsy hand to Inej’s cheek. 

“So you did,” Inej laughs, though she turns her face away slightly. She knows it will disappoint Jordan, but somehow the press against her face makes her uneasy. “Is that all?”

Jordan nods, her eyes dark and serious. Inej glances over at Kaz. “I think she has your eyes.”

He frowns. “She isn’t actually—”

“I know,” says Inej, stepping up to his side with Jordan in her arms. “But, look.”

Kaz still looks skeptical, which is mostly just the irritated side of neutral, also known as his constant expression. This just encourages her. “If you insist.”

“What do you think about that?” Inej asks Jordan teasingly, shifting the little girl’s weight. Jordan tips her head to one side very seriously and stares into the distance. Inej bursts out laughing. 

“What?” says Kaz, although there’s a shadow of a smile on his face at last, a softness around the edges of his eyes. 

Inej beams at her little girl—who might just force Kaz into this family of theirs after all. These things are so simple when one is not quite three. “Scheming face,” she says.

Chapter Text

Kaz never expected to enjoy being surrounded by the sea, and yet it’s somehow better when Inej is there. Sometimes he just...watches, while she climbs into the rigging or gives orders to her crew or stands at the railings, her face to the wind. The girl he taught her to be never took up space this way, although now he thinks that she always could have if she’d wanted to. 

They’re within sight of Ketterdam now. After everything it’s put him through, Kaz is still something close to grateful at the sight of his city. This voyage has been smoother than the last; their start was indeed delayed, since the prisoners had, as Inej predicted, staged a riot and four of them escaped. As for the others, as Fionn, the Kaelish girl, had explained, there would be no need to worry about them. (“I think they’ll find the sharks friendly after you two,” she’d said in her amused lilt.)

Kaz hasn’t needed to caution Inej against being blinded by relief; they both knew better. An enemy as great as the slave trade, which had become an institution in its own right, would rise to their challenge. Just because the last people who knew of Jordan’s new parentage were dead, didn’t mean that they weren’t able to pass that news on after their escape.

For now, all remnants of that crew are gone, and Jordan is back to being a secret—now with a greater priority to stay that way. She does not seem to realize this. 

“Might as well wean you off of it,” says Kaz, taking his coat back from her for the umpteenth time. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t understand and starts fussing at him. Or maybe she does understand, and she prefers to complain anyway. Well, she’ll grow out of it—he hopes. 

(What’s the point in hoping? They’re within sight of the shore, and then she and Inej will be off again with no definite date to return. She could be a true child, a little person, the next time he sees her, and why should he care? Better not to.)

Good luck with that , says a voice that sounds more like Jordie than usual. 

“Why?” Jordan asks in her small voice. She has grown enamored with that question recently. Kaz is told that it’s a common thing for children, though he wouldn’t know. 

“I’m leaving,” he says, as much to himself as to Jordan. He’s leaning against the railing with most of his weight on his good leg, and she stands beside him, sticking a round little hand through the bars to catch the sea spray. Apparently her distress over his coat has been erased. What must it be like to just— feel things, without feeling as if emotions are a quantity to be preserved and not wasted?

“No leave,” she says, and Kaz can’t decide if she’s telling him not to go or pointing out that there’s nowhere to go, except perhaps over the rail. He’s not sure which he would prefer, either.

“Soon,” he replies, looking out at the skyline that’s rising slowly from the horizon. The mist off of the harbor shifts in front of it as the wind changes, revealing a different city, it seems, with each glimpse that it offers. “But you’ll be fine. You’ll be safe.”

“I be sad,” says Jordan, and now he knows that she understands exactly what he’s saying. It hits him, before he can dismiss it, the almost ludicrous thought that he’s sending another Jordan out into the harbor, into the expanse of the True Sea, leaving him in the city. But he’s not a child anymore. He is not the one in need of protecting. And he’s not one for promises, but he’ll keep his word to Inej. 

You hunt them on the seas and I’ll fight them in the city.

West Stave has been struggling recently, but they could bring about its downfall so much faster with his plans and power. If he can’t protect Jordan, he can protect a legacy for her, for Inej. He will refuse to admit it until the bitter end, but Inej would say that she’s drawn some good from him at last. 

“You’ll be with Inej,” he reminds her, which means many things. And now he straightens and turns his face to the oncoming city; berth twenty-two is open, and Ketterdam doesn’t know what’s coming for it. 

<><><>

When they get close to the docks, Kaz slips belowdecks; he’ll sneak off of the ship so that no nearby spiders or scouts see him near it. He tells himself that he’s gathering his things, but he knows that he’s just buying time, and that he’s not alone. 

He closes the door on his makeshift cabin and sets his cane against the plank floor, moving back towards the stepladder that he hates, knowing he’ll be stopped. 

“Another minute.”

Inej’s voice. He’s not surprised. She’d known he wouldn’t be.

“For you? Maybe even two,” he says. 

“Kaz Brekker, the charmer.” She melts out of a shadow somewhere in his right periphery. Dressed in ivory and mauve, and she can still do that. Of course she can. 

“I try,” he says, his eyes still on the ladder and the hatch above. He turns his head by a fraction to look at her. 

“Hm,” she says. “That’s new.” She steps around on silent feet to face him, shadowed against the wall. The light from above gleams off of her single gold earring. “Like a lot of other things.”

“It had to be the right kind of change for this city,” says Kaz. “Some of it would get me killed.”

“You do plenty of things that should get you killed, Kaz,” she says, taking a careful step closer. “And does it make a difference if I like the change?”

“It should.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

He doesn’t reply. How can he? As much as he wants to be this person that Inej sees differently, he also wants to be alive and have something to show for it when she comes back. And yet, all the same, he doesn’t think that he could steel himself enough to bear that disappointment in her eyes just now. 

“Don’t go back to the way you were,” she says. “Don’t be the boy that I left on the docks for the first time.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Kaz looks at the wall. He can’t look at her. 

“I’ll miss your freckles.”

And now he can’t help it. He turns to her, and her eyes are dark—dark pools, dying stars, lost planets, fresh ink, everything that means something to someone and especially to him. He’s never been one for art or theatre beyond hiding his schemes, but the smile on her face is like the end of a tragedy—beautiful in a bitter way. 

“You’ll write,” he says carefully, testing the waters—though for what, he isn’t sure.

“Without a reason,” says Inej, her smile softening. 

He could do that. Maybe—maybe they could do that. Maybe he could just say things, to her. Maybe that would make them matter all by itself. 

“When will you come back?” he asks. 

“I don’t know. But I will. Eventually I won’t be able to help it, I think.”

“Ketterdam has that way about it,” says Kaz, thinking again of how he is about to return.

“I would say that you do,” says Inej. She steps closer, and he looks at her, half in sunlight and half in shadow, and knows that this is all he will be able to do. He can’t give her a kiss or an embrace or whisper rosy promises against her skin. But at least he can keep this memory with him, more vivid and valuable than a stolen painting, but taken with just as much secret and care—the picture of her. Dark and golden and filling the space like her presence fills him. 

“You don’t need something to remember me by,” he says, stepping back. “Don’t remember. Just come back, and meet me again.”

“Don’t be a stranger when I do,” says Inej, and with a last look at him, she climbs up the ladder and disappears into the sun above.

<><><>

Kaz doesn’t know what he’s done to convince his people that they should go and start getting ideas, but whatever it was, he wishes he never did it. “We are not adding colored lights to the Silver Six.”

Maikel, one of the newer Dregs—sixteen with a build plenty of fully-grown bruisers would be proud of and a fashion sense to rival Jesper’s—pouts. “But a bunch of the other places have them!”

“The places we’re better than, you mean?” Kaz asks impatiently, making his way out of the Slat. By making his way, what should probably be inferred is storming through the path that clears for him, because people know better. He used to hate having to push through crowds and would often go around them. As it turns out, practically running the Barrel his its benefits. “Have some self-respect.”

“That sounded a bit too much like encouragement, boss,” someone calls from one of the tables. 

“I can cut your ears off and fix that problem.” It’s good to keep them on their toes. The old theory was always that a gang that felt like a family inspired loyalty, but to Kaz’s way of thinking, you let people joke around with the boss and they start thinking they can get away with things. Better to leave them wondering what’s banter and what’s a true threat, and anyone who knows him will err on the side of caution. 

Then there’s Maikel, who is still following him. “Wouldn’t it attract attention?”

“If the fake jewels and the size of the place don’t do that, nothing will. Get big enough to start your own place and you can add all of the lights you want.”

Inej has taught him a handful of tricks for losing a tail, be they a true threat or just annoying, and he’s happy to make use of them now as he continues down toward the docks. Nobody else might be able to tell—except maybe Jesper, so it’s probably just as well that he’s not here—but there is an anticipation stirring in him that someone more easygoing might call excitement. Kaz is frustrated with Roeder on a regular basis, but when the spider brought news of the Wraith being sighted, Kaz was close to forgiving him everything. 

Six months has seemed longer than it should. It was two years the last time, he keeps reminding himself. And why should it seem longer when he has her letters this time around, kept in a box beneath his desk? Their progress has been slow, but he did pull off a very successful raid of one of the houses on West Stave that brought two new Grisha into the Dregs—both Fabrikators. He’s held off on telling Wylan, but he suspects that the youngest member of the Merchant Council would leap at the chance to finally get Jesper some training, if the sharpshooter will finally agree to it.

On the way, he stops at a small, hidden stash and switches out his hat for one that more deeply shadows his face and his coat for a dark blue one. He wraps a faded scarf over his shoulders, and he’s decided to forgo his cane for this particular meeting. Even if he’s already doing this in relative secrecy, Kaz knows better than to assume that one can be too careful.

Finally, he reaches the stacked crates, from which he has a view of the ship. Is it his imagination, or do the people on the ship and the docks look more frantic than usual? He slips his hands into the pockets of the strange coat and slides his gloves off inside them, though he takes hold of the knife strapped to the inside of each pocket. 

A dark shape is running up the docks, running like it’s—like she’s flying, in a way that Kaz knows. Directly at him. There’s something bundled in her arms. 

He breaks out from behind the crates and walks down towards her; if she suddenly no longer cares for hiding their place, then he’ll preserve the secret for another time. 

It is Inej, he sees as she gets closer—with Jordan in her arms. The little girl has grown some, and her hair is longer, but right now Inej is cradling her like a baby. Kaz quickens his pace, ignoring the way that his leg complains. “What—?”

Inej’s eyes are wide with fear. Kaz’s gaze finds Jordan’s face, sweat beaded on her little brow, her eyes squeezed painfully shut. His throat seems to close. He can’t do this again.

“Jordan’s sick,” Inej says. “We need help.”

Chapter Text

“Get her to Jesper and Wylan’s,” Kaz says, barely looking at Jordan and Inej. “Use the tunnel from the Crow Club.” 

“There’s a tunnel?” says Inej. 

“Secret door in one of the private parlors,” says Kaz, and then he’s striding back towards the Slat, stealth and secrecy forgotten. She’ll find it. 

He abandons his previous route, instead taking the quickest way, making use of some shortcuts that he’s found and some that Inej has shown him. On the way, he sheds the coat, hat, and scarf that he’d been using to blend in. He won’t have time to grab his own, or even his cane for that matter, but his gloves—those he puts back on. He feels so unhinged in this moment that one slip without them could bring it all crashing down. 

He almost runs part of the way, and his bad leg is aching by the time he reaches the Slat, but that’s far enough down his list of priorities to be negligible. His mind is whirring, if for no other reason than to keep everything else at bay—the surging waters, the cold beneath him, the way that he has to fight to breathe. He needs to break something. He needs a decent fight to clear his head. 

The best he can do now is slam open the door, making a handful of people who’ve been enjoying the afternoon calm too much jump. Good. They’re too soft, then.

“Where’s the medik?” he demands, his voice black and biting. He’s not afraid to be the monster now. Maybe that man could have saved his brother. And if not, maybe he can save another Jordan. He’s not about to lose his second chance. 

They’re staring at him. What kind of idiots has he brought into his gang? He’s not afraid to gut them all and start over if he has to. “Where the hell is the medik?”

“A meeting. We knew it’d go sour, so you sent him—couple of Razorgulls. Should be back soon.” Trust Anika to keep her head. Though, he wonders how he must look if even she’s hesitating. 

One of his younger scouts, one who apparently hasn’t learned, asks, “Why? Are you—?” Wrong question. Any question is the wrong question when what he wants is an answer. The kid walks up as if to, what, look him over? 

“Don’t touch me.” Kaz didn’t leave the knives behind with the blue coat, and now he’s got one in his palm, the blade glinting between his fingers. He feels raw, wild, like he’s been flayed open and they can see inside of him, so he might as well make a bloody mess while he’s at it. “Where?” He should already know this, but he doesn’t have the time to try to remember.

At least the kid has guts enough to answer. Or brains enough to not ignore the knife. “That—that abandoned factory, where the—”

Kaz isn’t listening. He’s already out the door. That fight doesn’t need a medik—at least, they won’t until he gets there. And a fight is exactly what he’s itching for. He needs to remember that he’s not helpless. He’s not a lost child anymore. He’s a nightmare, with teeth that want sharpening. 

<><><>

By the time he makes it to the factory, Kaz would be thanking Inej for her shortcuts if he could just think enough to do even that, but he can’t, he can’t think at all; he feels like he’s treading water, and soon he’ll get tired, soon he’ll fail and sink and drown, but he has to use the time while he has it. Jordan needs him. He needs to remind himself that he is something terrible now, something with a fighting chance. 

He stands with his back against a building, rough cold stone as an anchor behind him that grounds him where he is. He has a good, secluded view of the fight from here—Anika was right to predict that the meeting would go sour—and of their medik, Kerstan, sheltered behind a post with a pistol waiting in his hand in case he needs it. The Razorgulls are well-armed; looks like the Dregs weren’t the only ones to expect that this would take a bad turn. Kaz follows the shadows up to Kerstan’s side and leans as close to the man’s ear as he can stand, though even still, his stomach knots and he pulls back as soon he’s done speaking. 

“You’re done here. Get to the house in the Geldin district.” Kerstan is one of few who will know what that means. 

He turns his head halfway, enough to look at Kaz out of his periphery. “They need me—”

“They won’t if there’s no one left to fight,” says Kaz, spinning the knife he’s holding into his gloved palm. 

“What happened?” Does everyone need to ask unimportant questions today? Kaz is going to have a talk with them about learning to follow orders if he doesn’t lose his patience first. 

“Ever mended a broken collarbone, Kerstan?”

“Once or twice. Is someone–”

“Want to practice on yourself?” Ghezen’s sake, Kerstan finally takes the hint and scrambles past him, leaving Kaz to deal with the Razorgulls. Pim is leading the charge, plus Espen and Betje, two he’s recruited within the last year, but they don’t need to worry anymore. Dirtyhands has come out to play. 

Kaz steps out from the sheltered spot with a cruel and crooked smile. “So you’re the sorry skivs who’ve been testing our borders.”

It’s almost funny to watch them notice him, even though they don’t stop fighting; even his own people look surprised, almost relieved. Pim raises an eyebrow in the breath between blows, but his questions can wait. All of them can wait. He doesn’t need their help, and he plans to prove it. 

He’s is regretting not stopping for his cane, but that’s all right; it’ll be a challenge, less of a massacre. It’ll be another legend for the mythos of Dirtyhands. By tonight the story will have grown and spread around the Barrel like a contagion, like—

For a moment, the knife shakes in Kaz’s hand. Not like that. He’s not going to think about that. He is not that boy now. And apparently he’s not the only one who needs to remember. 

Credit to the Razorgulls, they don’t back down; there’s no surrender in the Barrel, only fighting past the limit. Unfortunately, they’d be wiser in this case to forget that rule and run. There are four of them, maybe they’re thinking. Decent odds. 

Maybe that’s why the first one comes at him, a stocky man who’s armed with brass knuckles and throws a punch at Kaz’s jaw. Kaz rides backwards with the movement and sticks his knife right under the man’s ribs. He twists it for good measure, and the man’s groan breaks into a scream before fading as he falls. 

Around him, Pim and Betje have shrunk back to the role of support; Espen is already, Kaz suspects, on his way back to the Slat. Kaz is just as happy to not have help. He doesn’t need them, and he wants to make sure that everyone knows it. He pulls his knife out and gets the dying man by the collar, giving his opponent’s arm—or victim’s, rather—a final twist out of its socket for good measure. 

The next one has a dagger nearly the length of his forearm, but the size of your weapon doesn’t matter as much as whether or not you know how to use it. Pim and Betje are holding off the remaining two, so Kaz can focus on this one. In the case of this man—skinny, but quick—he’s focused too much on the front, leaving an opening for Kaz to get the knife in under his arm like the hero in a bad play. He could use this man as a meat shield between himself and the gun, but that would be too easy. Kaz swaps out his smaller knife for the dagger that’s fallen to the ground. 

Now one of them has a gun. They say not to bring a knife to a gun fight, but a gun in their hands is a gun he can steal, and sometimes the city is good to him. Sometimes Ketterdam offers up just what he needs. 

Pim and Betje are trading blows with the one woman the Razorgulls have brought, who’s putting up a pretty remarkable fight, but Kaz doesn’t have time to be admiring his opponents when there’s a gun on him. He’s not about to trust that one of his people will notice. It’s too much of a risk. 

No smoke bombs to use now, and that would be too much of a shortcut anyways. He wants to see them suffer, to see the fear in their eyes that will bring him back to who he is and what he can do. He may not be able to dodge a bullet, but he can stop it from ever being fired. 

The one he just stabbed staggers up and has another try at him. Kaz sees the gunman’s finger twitch against the trigger, but a snap analysis says that he won’t risk shooting another member of his gang. Kaz gets the injured one by the back of his collar and slashes the dagger across his throat, slamming its hilt into the back of his head for good measure. Instead of kicking the dying man down, though, Kaz throws him forward, towards the one still aiming at him; that second is enough for Kaz to catch hold of one of the gunman’s wrists and twist sharply until he hears it snap.

If his opponent drops the gun, though, it’ll go off on both of them, so Kaz is ready to catch it when it falls; he fires off two shots with surgical precision, one just beneath each of the man’s cheekbones. 

The last of the Razorgulls—a woman, armed with a spiked club—lunges at him in grief-stricken rage, with Pim and Betje holding her back. Kaz knows rage, but it only helps once you’ve fermented it into something potent. He feels mad and raw now, in a dangerous way that could slip from his own control any second, but he could do so much worse given time to make a plan. 

“Let her,” he says, twirling the gun like Jesper might do. Credit to his people, they listen; the woman charges at him like a bull, her face twisted with tears. 

Kaz raises the pistol, looks her in the eye, and fires directly into her head. When she falls, Kaz turns away. 

That’s why you don’t play the hero. There are no heroes, at least not in Ketterdam.

He thinks of Jordie, the brother he loves in the stunted way of something cut off and scarred over. He thinks of Jordan, the child who isn’t his, the child he’s wasting his time caring about, the child he can’t save, and the way that knowledge tears something hot and wild loose inside of him. No one to rescue you here.

He’s about to leave, but then he stops, crouches to the former gunman, and carves a smile from one gaping hole to the other with the tip of the stolen dagger. Now the dead man looks like a gruesome doll. That’s the only kind of happiness I can offer anyone. I don’t make promises in this life, but at least when you’re dead I’ll carve you a smile. 

Pim and Betje are still behind him. He doesn’t hear either one of them gasp or gag—good, he’d expect better—but he can imagine the looks on their faces. That story will be circulating the Barrel by tonight, another legend for his armor. 

Kaz rises and swipes his hands together. His gloves are slick and stained, though it’s hard to tell against the black leather. 

Better blood than water, Kaz thinks. 

<><><>

By the time he makes it to Jesper and Wylan’s, the medik has beaten him there by a good bit. Good. He’s done what he can, so now he can get this over with and get out. He needs to be alone, and he needs it about ten minutes ago. 

Wylan meets him at the base of the grand main stairs. “They’re upstairs,” he says, trying and failing to hide some concern. “Why are you covered in blood?”

“Not my blood.”

“Not the question.”

“Maybe you need a refresher on how and when to argue with me, merchling,” says Kaz, already on his way up the stairs. His leg is screaming, but to hell with that. “By the way, you don’t.”

“Good to see you too,” Wylan mutters. Kaz ignores him. 

Inej meets him once he’s finally limped his way up the stairs. Her face is haloed by loose, wispy hairs, her brow set and determined. He can’t even take in the sight of her. It’s too much. It’s all too much. 

“She’s in there,” says Inej, tipping her head towards one of the doors, from which Kerstan quietly emerges and stands back a bit from them. She glances over him. “What happened?”

“Had to clean up a fight,” Kaz says brusquely. His eyes dart to the door and back to Inej. He doesn’t know if he wants to go in there, but he needs to go in. 

“She’s asleep,” Kerstan offers. “Her fever hasn’t broken yet, but keep giving her that medicine and her odds will be good.”

This should let Kaz relax. Somehow, it doesn’t. His hands are shaking, and he doesn’t have pockets to shove them into, so he curls them into fists. He looks back at Inej again, willing her to say something, to make the choice for him; he needs to get out of here, to be anywhere else, but he needs to be in that room just as badly. 

“Go on,” Inej says softly. He can’t get a read on her beyond her words. “Even asleep, I think it would be good for Jordan.” 

Somehow, the sound of the name makes his heart stutter. The part of him that’s trapped somewhere in the past raises its head at the sound, and he has to wrestle it down. He nods sharply, turns, and limps into the room. 

There’s a polished nightstand, a door to an adjoining bathroom, a four-poster bed. Maybe it’s the size of the bed, but Jordan looks so...small. Her little face is twisted into a grimace, and she keeps shifting in her sleep. Kaz slips his gloves off; she doesn’t need to be marked by the blood he’s shed on her behalf. 

He inches closer. This is ridiculous , he tells himself sharply; what are you afraid of? But he’s hanging on by so very little now. Anything could be too much. 

Why, then, does he reach out a hand towards her? To feel her fever, to show her he’s there? It doesn’t matter, anyway. He barely gets close enough to feel the heat. 

He makes for the adjoining bathroom as fast as he can manage, his hands shaking so badly that he nearly gives up on the handle and just breaks the door in. Why now? Why that? Why did he even try it? He has the half-lucid thought that normally he can finesse any lock, and here he is wrestling with an unlocked doorknob. But maybe Kaz doesn’t know that man who can solve anything. Maybe he’s just trembling on the tiles now. It’s a miracle that he remembers to lock the door behind him. 

He lurches over and vomits into the basin, heat and bile stinging his throat; his whole body is shaking now, so much that he can barely hold himself up as he grips the basin’s edges. He staggers back from it and slides down against the wall, finally relieving his leg at least, all but crashing to the cold tile, fighting for air. He can’t breathe. Maybe he’s finally dead. Maybe he’ll be the one to get Jordie out of the harbor this time around.

He hears Jordan cough somewhere beyond him, and which Jordan it is doesn’t really matter anymore, not when he’s lost in limbo and his heart is racing so fast—too fast—too fast to think or breathe or realize that he’s crying until the hot tears hit his lap or the ground. 

He’s crying. It’s been years since he’s cried. He gasps harder, but his chest feels too small, probably since his lungs are filled with water—or, wait, is he still sick? Where is he? When is he?

He jams a shaking hand against his mouth to muffle the sob that tears out of him and fights to breathe, because maybe if he could just breathe he could do something else after that and fix it all, but the air still won’t come. Sweat is rolling down his neck, or maybe that’s just water, or maybe it’s from the fever? In any world, he’s about to lose everything, and he can’t remember why, but all he can seem to think is not again, I can’t do this again—

He tries to wrestle his gloves back on, to salvage some thread of security, but his vision is blurred and his hands are shuddering so badly that he keeps dropping them. He can’t even bite a curse through his teeth. He can’t say anything. He can’t save himself this time, let alone Jordan, or anyone else who’s depending on him to pull yourself together, Brekker—

Should he count the furniture, or something? Has he tried that before? What is before? Basin, toilet, tiles, tiles, tiles. White and gold tiles, hotel bathroom, skin, corpses, harbor, Jordie, Jordan—

“Kaz?”

That’s. That’s his name. He knows that much. He still feels sick. He still can’t breathe.

That’s Inej’s voice. He knows that, too. He can’t answer her. He hates this sick weakness more than he’s hated anything. He shuts his mouth and tries to muffle the gasping sobs that he knows she would hear. 

“I know you’re in there.”

Kaz curls his hands in his lap and stares hard at them. He still can’t say anything, but at least it’s getting easier to fill his lungs now. The world is still spinning, and his gut clenches. Jordan is going to die, both of them, in every time, and he’ll be standing by just trying to keep his head above water. His heart is going too fast. He needs to snap out of it, but he can’t control anything, can’t even control himself anymore—

“What happened?”

If only Kaz knew. He tries to say something, to make his throat work, but he can’t get enough air in or out to speak. He splays his fingers out to feel the tension in the skin between them, the pull almost like pain, something to remind him that he’s alive, but he can’t hold on to the feeling. He needs to tell her that he hears her, somehow. He hesitates, then taps his fingertips clumsily against the cold floor—once, then again, louder.

“What can I do?” Bless Inej. He’d thank some god for making her if he’d thought she could be made.

What a fine pair we make—one too good to be created and one too broken to be destroyed. 

Kaz finally forces himself to say something. “Keep talking,” he rasps, and he would wince if he wasn’t so utterly drained. His voice sounds terrible. She’ll know. 

And so what if she does? whispers a voice that sounds like something Jordie might say. Idealistic fool that he was. Where did that ever get anyone?

“About what?”

He gets a decent breath, but he’s still trembling so badly that he can hear his elbows jittering against the wall. He swallows hard and forces himself to answer, to keep breathing. “Anything.”

“I could tell you about this one captain,” says Inej, says the voice that brought him back from the dark, the living hand that pulls him from the water. 

Kaz tips his head back against the wall, and. And breathes. “Good,” he whispers. “That’s—that’s good.”

She probably didn’t hear him, but she keeps going anyway. “Well, when I startled him…”

Chapter Text

Jordan wakes up in a very big bed in an even bigger room and does not like it at all. This is sort of a good sign, she thinks, because it means that she is really awake and not cold-forever-asleep like Mama One. Mama One used to tell her that when people don’t wake up anymore, like after getting sick or hurt or just plain old, they are in a happy place where they don’t hurt anymore. But Jordan still hurts very much, and she is not happy, so at least she knows she’s awake for real.

Maybe that’s sad, though. If she were forever-asleep, she could see Mama One and get one more soft hug that made everything feel okay because Mamas weren’t supposed to lie and when they said it would be okay, it would. But then, they never said anything about bad men or getting sick or going away even when they said they would always be right here. So maybe they did lie, after all. Maybe they knew how to pretend, just like Jordan. 

She isn’t on the Small Good Boat anymore—that much she can tell from the way that everything is staying still, although she doesn’t like how it feels. It should be moving. But she isn’t back in the big house with the yummy food and flowers, either. Wherever she is, she has never been here before, and she’s alone, and she feels yucky. She isn’t sure if she’s shaking because she’s cold, or scared, or both.

She is sleepy but too cold to sleep and too ow to get up and find another blanket and her throat hurts too much to call for help, so she does the best thing that she can and cries. When you are very small like Jordan, you have limited options. 

She can’t cry very loud because her throat hurts, but the door creaks open anyway, a sliver of yellow light coming through it to make a funny sort of triangle on the floor. Standing in the light is Mama Two, whose real name, Jordan knows now, is Inej; she comes up to the bed on quiet feet and sits next to Jordan, swiping some tears off of her face.

“You’re awake,” she says, and she sounds happy about that, which makes Jordan think that maybe things are a little bit okay, if Inej is happy. 

“I cold,” Jordan says through sniffles. “And ow. ”

“I’ll bet it hurts,” Inej says softly, carding her fingers through Jordan’s fluffy hair the way that she likes. It still isn’t long enough to braid, but Jordan can’t wait till it is. “You’re burning up.”

“No,” Jordan says stubbornly, since she is very obviously burrowed into the blankets, “I cold.”

“It would feel like that,” Inej soothes. She is quiet for a little bit, just running her fingers through Jordan’s hair, and Jordan doesn’t mind. It’s nice, until she thinks of a question. Sometimes people get better and then worse, she knows.

“I going to sleep...forever?” Jordan asks, because even if she’s awake now, she’s still sick, just like Mama One. And she knows what it’s called, she just doesn’t want to say it. She knows what being dead means. It’s when people go away forever and ever, when they say they’re going to stay and then they don’t. 

“No, love, no,” says Inej, putting her arms around Jordan to help her sit up halfway, but she sounds scared and sad and lots of wrong things that Jordan never wanted to make her feel. Now Jordan feels bad in even more ways. She wants to cry again, but that might make Inej sadder. “You’re going to be okay.”

“You not pretending?” Jordan asks, burying her face against the dark fabric of Inej’s clothes. Inej is smaller and not as soft as Mama One, but she is strong and warm and nice for hugging. Jordan would miss her, she thinks. 

“No,” says Inej, laying down and holding Jordan against her chest. “I promise you’ll be okay.”

“Good,” says Jordan. “I want long hair.” And she has to be alive to have long hair, so. 

“You will have beautiful, long hair,” says Inej in a gentle voice that makes Jordan sleepy. “Longer than mine. Maybe even longer than my mama’s.”

Jordan remembers that. That is very long. She would love her hair, if it was that long; she would braid it every day, or maybe make Inej braid it. Maybe she could even have some parts be long and some parts be short. Again, she says, “You not pretending?”

“I’m not,” says Inej, rubbing Jordan’s back in a way that makes it hurt a little less. It makes breathing easier, too. “I won’t, with you.”

“No pretending?” says Jordan. “Not even for games?”

“Well, maybe for games,” says Inej with her pretty laugh. The laugh washes over Jordan and fills her up inside like medicine. Maybe she will get better if she just keeps being funny enough. 

It does occur to Jordan that she still doesn’t know where she is. The status of this question on her list of problems has gone down since at least Inej is here, but she still wants to know. She only remembers being on the Small Good Boat. 

“Where?” she asks sleepily. She can’t look around the room, being far too comfortable in Inej’s arms, but she thinks that Inej will understand. 

“We’re back in the city,” Inej says softly. “Do you remember that? Where we met Kaz and Jesper and Wylan?”

The other names, Jordan doesn’t remember, but Kaz she does. “Stick man? Kaz?”

“Yes, love.”

“Where Kaz?” She’s gotten better at saying his name now. 

She isn’t sure why that makes Inej pause before she answers, but it does. “Just outside. Probably resting.”

“I see him?” Jordan asks. She tries to squirm enough to lift her head, but she can’t quite manage it and her muscles are still sore, and besides, the air outside of this hug is cold. 

“Maybe in the morning,” says Inej, kissing the top of Jordan’s head. “Like I said, he’s probably resting now, like you should be.”

Jordan scowls. She doesn’t understand why, if Kaz is here, he’s not here. He was always all grumpy about her before, but not in a way where he really didn’t like her. And besides, she would really like his big warm coat right now. 

“Coat?” she asks hopefully, having learned the word since she first tried to ask him. 

Jordan feels Inej smile against the top of her head. “Patience. Right now, you need to sleep so you can get better.”

“No sleep,” says Jordan. “Cold.”

“I’m sure you are.” Inej pulls Jordan closer with the arm that’s looped over her back. “I’ll stay with you, okay? Then will you go to sleep?”

“You stay?” Jordan says quietly. “Promise?” And maybe even when Mamas make promises, they’re a sort of pretending—saying that something won’t happen when they can’t really stop it. Maybe they can’t do everything, after all. Maybe she should think that Inej is pretending now, too. But she doesn’t. 

“I promise,” says Inej, and Jordan believes her. 

Chapter Text

When Inej wakes up to a warm body against hers, her heart stutters, and for a moment she forgets where she is. But the shape is too small and too warm; it’s only Jordan, she reminds herself sternly, and still fevered by the feel of it, though less so than the night before. 

Carefully, with all the weightless grace of the Wraith, Inej lifts her arm from its hold on Jordan and rises, padding away from the bed on silent feet and opening the door without so much as a squeak of its hinges. As many ways as Inej’s past doesn’t do much for motherhood, it comes in handy on occasion. One might never think to appreciate her skill set as it applies to sleeping toddlers, and yet.

She shuts the door behind her so that the early light, dim though it is, doesn’t get into the room; the latch clicks silently into place with a soft press of her palm, and she steps out into the pool of yellow lantern-light that trails down the center of the hallway. Across from the railing that leads to the grand staircase, enormous paneled windows let in the pale light of the morning.

A few steps down from Jordan’s door, Kaz sits on a chaise longue, looking much more out of place against the mauve upholstery than he usually might, with his loose hair and looser tie. His bad leg is stretched out in front of him, his head tipped back, but he’s awake, his eyes deep and dull in the gray slats of light across his face. Inej perches on the end of the settee by his feet. 

“How do you feel?” she asks softly. 

His scowl at the ceiling deepens. “Fine.”

“Like hell?” Inej translates, hooking her elbow over the back of the chaise.

Kaz gives a hollow laugh. “That’s an insult to hell.”

Inej rests her chin on her arm. “That bad?”

“Don’t make me say it twice.”

Inej has to smile a bit at that. Normally, Kaz would make every effort to avoid being honest about his well-being—and even now, if he’ll admit that it’s bad, she has to wonder just how bad that is. 

Kaz still seems wary of getting close to anyone; since he eventually emerged from the en-suite to Jordan’s room, he’s been keeping more distance than usual, so Inej has her legs folded under her and her body clear of his, fabric or no fabric. She knows only disconnected pieces of what’s made him so afraid, but this isn’t a time to ask. Not many things scare Kaz Brekker, after all.

“Didn’t sleep?” she asks. He never seems to develop the tell-tale dark circles beneath his eyes, as if nature has just given up on trying to remind him to rest. Still, she’s certain he hasn’t slept much, if at all; she would know that bad days are usually followed by bad nights. 

“Couldn’t, he says roughly. His hand goes to his knee, pressing and kneading there—and maybe it’s almost involuntary, but Kaz is usually so conscious of these things that Inej takes it as a deliberate act of trust. “Between this and the—couldn’t,” he cuts himself off. 

Nightmares, Inej suspects, being familiar with them herself. She sees his free hand go to grip the head of his cane, almost like a comfort. She’d gone to get it and a fresh shirt for him from the Slat, late the night before; Kerstan had ousted them from the room so that he would work, and she preferred to be doing something useful rather than endlessly pacing the hallway, wearing tracks in the carpet. 

She can’t shake the feeling that it’s her fault, somehow. If there someone else to blame, someone who dared to harm her child, she would be making them beg for death and then denying them its release. But there isn’t—there’s no one to blame, unless she wasn’t careful enough, unless she missed the signs, unless there was some way she should have been protecting Jordan that a girl of not yet twenty wouldn’t know. 

Kaz’s dark eyes trail down to the door behind which Jordan sleeps. “You were in there,” he says carefully. He shifts back to sit up a bit more, scowling more than wincing as it jostles his leg. 

Inej waits. “I was.”

Kaz rubs harder against his knee, staring down as if it’s personally attacked him. His shoulders tense and then fall. “How—how is she?”

Inej’s smile breaks into something full and true. It seems so little to ask, for him to care, but for him , it’s enormous. “Still fevered, but it’s getting lower,” Inej replies. “She was awake for a bit last night. She asked to see you.”

Kaz arches a skeptical eyebrow. 

Inej tips her head to the side in exasperation. “You really think I’d lie about that?”

Kaz shrugs dismissively, but he’s looking away; if Inej didn’t know better, she’d say he seems flustered. Well, maybe she doesn’t know better, after all. 

“If she isn’t awake now, she will be soon,” says Inej. “Do you want to go see her?”

“Well, she probably won’t stop bothering you until I do,” he says, trying very hard to sound annoyed. 

“Well, thank you for worrying for me,” says Inej, rising with a smirk. Maybe he didn’t realize that there wasn’t a way to make a selfish excuse just there. 

Kaz glares at her, but it’s a softened version of his usual scowl. It deepens into a wince as he slowly turns forward and stands, leaning heavily on his cane. 

“Go on,” he says, sounding irritated. “I’m not the one who needs a nursemaid.”

Normally, Inej would snip back at him, but just now she’ll allow him his pride. She doesn’t need to add insult to injury. So she goes on ahead, quiet as before, hearing his cane muffled against the carpet behind her.

When Inej cracks the door open and steps into the room, Jordan is still sleeping on the bed, a little lump of blankets, but she’s beginning to stir. Inej goes to sit beside her, curling half-upright against the pillows and holding Jordan close to her. 

Jordan blinks a few times and squints in the low light. “Mama?” she asks, clutching automatically at Inej. 

“I’m—I’m here,” says Inej, wrapping her arms around Jordan. You’ve never called me that before. 

“You stay,” says Jordan, relief evident in her small voice. She wriggles her torso half-onto Inej, dragging the blanket with her.

“I promised,” says Inej, rubbing the little girl’s back. “And you know who else is here?”

Jordan squirms to lift her head, just as Kaz opens the door with rather less grace or silence than Inej had. He looks warily at her and doesn’t close the door, standing in front of it instead, looking—and Inej would have never thought it possible—awkward.

Jordan, however, looks more alive than she has in days. Her eyes light up and she wriggles in Inej’s grasp. “Kaz! Stick man!”

“Stick man indeed,” says Kaz, tapping two fingers against the head of his cane, on which he’s putting a lot of weight. Inej is paying less attention to that, however, than to the fact that he’s almost smiling—the ghost of something tired and soft-edged and warm playing around his lips. 

“People aren’t usually so excited to see you,” Inej teases, sitting up and shifting Jordan so that she can sit against the cradle of Inej’s body. 

“Neither should they be,” says Kaz, but nonetheless he limps up to the side of the bed and stands perhaps a foot away. 

Jordan stretches her arms out to Kaz and makes grabby hands at him. He goes still and his eyes flicker to Inej, not quite betraying panic but dangerously close. 

“You don’t want to get Kaz sick, do you?” asks Inej, giving Jordan a squeeze. “Maybe hugs can come later, but you have to get better first, okay?”

Jordan chooses to sulk in favor of answering. This is hampered by the fact that she looks absurdly adorable, swaddled in blankets with her arms crossed and her little pouty face. 

“A compromise,” Kaz suggests, one brow raised theatrically in his showman’s manner. He lifts one hand off of his cane and shakes out his sleeve as if to make sure that the cuff is crisp and properly wrinkle-free. Jordan watches him, wide-eyed. 

Kaz shuffles a step closer, reaches out, and snaps his gloved hand three times by Jordan’s ear. She tries to turn to look at his hand, but he sweeps it around behind her ear and flicks it upward, revealing a coin grasped between his fingers. Jordan laughs and laughs, clapping her hands as she rocks back and forth in Inej’s arms.

And Inej? She beams. He’d promised that he wouldn’t go back to the boy she left on the docks. She still remembers telling him that having bad days means figuring out how to go on, not giving up on trying. And he has .

Somehow, she’d been afraid yesterday, when he was as cold and brusque as ever, brushing her off with barely enough information to go on. When she’d hunted him down to the en-suite, when she’d finally coaxed open the door and found him sitting on the ground, tear-streaked and wild-eyed, when he’d flinched away from even the suggestion of her touch, she didn’t know what to make of him. She’d thought that maybe anything they had fought for was lost, again.

But here he is—admitting his pain, if begrudgingly so; looking awkward, worried, tired, happy; making Jordan feel better in a way that he can’t rationalize aside, and they both know it.

As for Jordan, her pain and tiredness seem all but forgotten; she claps her hands and squeals, giggling with delight at the magic. It means more than Inej can say to hear that laugh from the little girl who talked last night so fearfully and with too much knowledge of death. It’s not too late for Jordan. It might be too late for them, but for her little girl—dares she say, for their little girl—there is still time to have the kind of joy in life that she deserves. 

Kaz drops the coin into Jordan’s hands and meets Inej’s eyes; she’s almost afraid to say it, but she might dare to think that she finds hope there.

Ridiculously, Inej wants to cry or kiss him or something equally foolish. Maybe that will be for another time. She’s pretty sure that there are tears in her eyes anyway when she meets his gaze and mouths, “ Thank you.”

Chapter Text

Kaz finds himself at the house on the Geldstraat for the third evening in a row and almost turns right back to the Slat. The Crow Club will be ramping up into its busiest hours soon; he could go back and observe the counters, the dealers, the players, keep an eye on business. It would be more productive than this. The Dregs aren’t much bothered by his leaving for the night, but if he keeps doing this, his Crows might start to think he likes them.

Perish the thought, says a voice in the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like Inej.

Welcome to the party. He’s got enough voices in his head by now that he might as well add a voice of reason to the mix. 

Kaz leans on his cane and glares balefully at the door for several seconds before limping up the stairs and letting the knocker fall. Look at him—going in through the front door and knocking, for Ghezen’s sake. This is ridiculous. He should at least pick the lock. But if he does that, Wylan will be giving him vaguely disappointed looks all evening, which is quite possibly more trouble than it’s worth. 

Frankly, it’s insulting. He knows better than to damage the lock. They’re not that difficult to crack by the look of them (and really, former members of his crew should know to put better security measures on their house). 

Kaz is still sulking somewhat about this when a maid he thinks he’s seen before opens the door with a cheery smile that grows slightly forced when she sees him. “They’ll be thrilled that you’ve come,” she says, her cheeks round and red as apples, and swings the door open with rather excessive flair. 

“I’m sure,” Kaz rasps drily, stepping past her into the foyer. His eyes trail up to the ceiling. Looks like real gold designs on the crown moulding, he mused. If I could get Inej up there, theoretically, I could—

“May I take your coat, sir?” The maid is still smiling obnoxiously at him. 

Kaz glances over her. “No.”

He continues down the carpeted foyer until he’s a few paces from the end, whereupon Jesper pokes his head in and beams brilliantly. Kaz is getting a little annoyed with how happy everyone is to see him. Not to mention that Jesper looks like one of those new paintings out of the Southern Colonies—colorful and blurry, with human figures who look like ribbons or rubber toys. 

“I knew he would come!” Jesper proclaims, bounding over to Kaz in about a step and a half. The former sharpshooter knows better than to sling an arm around his shoulders, and yet Kaz finds himself stiffening and shifting away when Jesper and all of his energy gets close. 

“If you’re going to be like this all night, I’ll leave,” Kaz mutters, but he follows Jesper into one of the many parlors anyway. 

At first glance, it appears as if none of the furniture in the room matches; however, when surveyed with the careful eye of one who appreciates (and appropriates) fine craftsmanship, it reveals itself to have similar whimsical lines and patterns in the thankfully subtle upholstery. “You’ve redecorated.”

“Apologies,” says Jesper. “We know you’re allergic to color. We can always step outside if it gets life-threatening.”

Kaz and Wylan collectively ignore him. “You were here yesterday,” says Wylan from his high-backed chair by the roaring fire. “You know how the furniture looks.”

“So much for my attempt to be charming.”

“That was an attempt?”

Jesper stands at the back of an elegant couch, his hands drumming on the polished wood frame. The piece is worth at least 12,000 kruge, easy. Inej would say it’s bad form to appraise his hosts’ furniture for hypothetical thieving situations, but Kaz will just add this to the list of ‘Things that happen in my head which Inej is better off not knowing’.

Speaking of Inej, where is she? Not that Kaz will be particularly stricken, of course, but he would be annoyed—well, maybe upset—fine, hurt if she left without telling him. He finally enters the room, but deigns to stand beside one of the chairs rather than actually taking a seat, his posture arranged in impatient nonchalance, one hand resting on the chair’s back.  

“Inej should be right down,” Wylan says, hopefully realizing the absence rather than understanding Kaz’s thoughts. He wants the merchling in his head even less than he wants Inej there. “She was going to get Jordan, I think, but they’re—”

“Here,” says a voice from the doorway. Kaz finds himself turning to face her, drawn to that voice, and at the first sight of her something in him raises its head—wakes up, resets, stands at attention and then in awe—as it always does. 

She’s got her hair in a neat braided knot at the base of her neck, the firelight gleaming off of her single earring. She’s wearing one of her quilted vests over a loose, faded white blouse and is balancing Jordan on her hip. There’s a smile in her eyes beneath the full sweep of her dark lashes. Kaz grips the back of the chair a little harder. 

“And look who else is here,” she says, turning her face to Jordan. The little girl lifts her head from its place on her mother’s shoulder and squeals. “Kaz!”

He fights to keep his face impassive. “Yes, hello, Jordan.”

Inej strolls over and takes the chair he’s standing next to. Without thinking much about it, Kaz takes the seat beside hers. 

“Jordan gets a proper greeting?” Jesper gasps, falling onto the couch. “Unfair.”

“She has more manners than the rest of you combined,” says Kaz, unable to keep himself entirely from giving Jordan an amused look, especially when her reaction to this comment is to look utterly offended. 

“Even me?” Inej teases, propping her chin up on her elbow and lowering her lashes in mischief. It’s impossibly mesmerizing. 

“I don’t think it’s acceptable in proper society to say hello with one’s knives, Wraith,” says Kaz with an amused tilt to his lips. This chair is far too comfortable. He might just say to hell with not stealing from associates and sneak it back to the Slat with him. 

“I hate to admit it, but he’s right,” Wylan chimes in. His hair looks vividly orange with the fire’s glow against it. “It’s not.”

“I didn’t say it was a compliment,” Kaz points out. “As Jordan has figured out before the rest of you.”

“She is clever,” Inej sighs heavily, shifting Jordan so that she’s facing Kaz’s chair. He shouldn’t be relieved to see that the color is back in the kid’s face, the light back in her eyes, but he is. “Too clever for her own good, honestly.”

Jesper and Wylan give each other a long and meaningful look. Kaz pins them with his glare like a dart. He knows that look was meant to be seen and is not about to give them the satisfaction. 

“Think she might have a future as a criminal mastermind?” says Jesper, looking everywhere but at Kaz and Inej. “Join the family busine—okay, okay, okay.” 

Kaz’s glare, having sharpened from a warning to a kill shot, is now firmly set in place and he intends to leave it that way. 

“Speaking of family,” Inej says placatingly, curling into the plush velvet of her chair, “tell Kaz what you told me about Colm.”

“Oh.” Jesper looks uncertain for a second—running a hand over his head, fidgeting with his buttons, suddenly taking up much less space—but he meets Wylan’s eyes and then regains himself. “My da is coming to visit. Just a week or two, this winter—less to tend to on the farm, you know.”

Kaz, frankly, isn’t sure what to say to that. “ Good”? Well, he supposes it is, but he’d perform a baton twirling routine in front of a rival gang before he would say that. He hadn’t minded Colm, honestly. He’s a concerningly honest man as Kaz remembers him, but he also reminded Kaz of his own da more than he might’ve liked. He’s saved from answering, though, since Jordan speaks up. 

“Da?” she questions, trying out the new word. She looks back to Inej for answers. 

“It’s like ‘papa’,” Inej replies. “Another word for the same thing.”

Jordan groans and buries her face in Inej’s shoulder. “So many words,” she whines. 

Inej laughs softly and pats Jordan’s back. Kaz almost smiles.

<><><>

After dinner, Jesper and Wylan are ahead of Inej, Jordan, and Kaz on their way back to the comfortable chairs and the fireplace, dancing to some imagined music as they go. Inej is hanging back, so Kaz takes his cue from her until at last she stops in the wide, high-ceilinged hallway and sets Jordan down. “Go on, love,” she says. “We’ll catch up.”

Jordan blinks a few times before nodding seriously and toddling off towards the door and the dance of shadows on the wall. Kaz expects she’ll be asleep by the time he and Inej catch up if the way she keeps rubbing her eyes is any indication. 

He stands up straight, hands on the head of his cane, and looks at Inej with careful inquisitiveness. “What business, Inej?”

“Not so much business,” she admits, looking down with a soft laugh, but when she raises her eyes back to his they’re serious. “Can I ask you something?”

“Can’t answer that until I know what it is.”

She sweeps an imaginary strand of hair away from her face. “All right. When Jordan was sick at first, what was it...why were you so afraid? I’ve known—I’ve felt that kind of fear, but…”

“But no one touched me,” Kaz says softly, almost not believing it when he hears the words in his own voice. He thinks she must be able to hear his heart, as loudly as it’s pounding. She’s asking for another piece, another shard closer to the center of his brokenness, another block from the tower that could be the one to make it fall. And he knows what she wants the answer to be. She wants to hear that he cares about Jordan, that he found it in himself to fear for another human being enough that it could have cost him everything, but that’s not what he can tell her. Can he tell her anything?

Inej takes an unsteady breath. The lights are dim, low flames in the lanterns, and they make gold of the shadows on her skin that renders the moulding cheap in comparison. “Can you—will you tell me?”

Kaz’s breath trembles on his lips. He can’t make himself speak, somehow, but he can act. What did he do the last time? Sitting at her parents’ table, his gloved fingertips over hers? When he told her more than he had told anyone?

It might be entirely the wrong thing to do, but he peels off his gloves and shoves them into the pockets of his coat, his movements hasty so that he can get through them before he loses his nerve. He extends a hand to her, probably the boldest offer he’s ever made. 

Inej can’t possibly understand what Kaz intends if he himself doesn’t, but to her credit, the Saint of a woman raises her hand to meet his, their palms sliding together, curves and ridges, his fingertips resting on her pulse. It’s the pulse that saves him. He holds on to the warmth of her, the throbbing under his touch, firm and not falling apart. 

There they stand, hands linked, connecting them like a bridge, an impossibly fragile thread of strength. Kaz closes his eyes and forces himself to speak. He owes her this much. “You were there when I told Rollins what we lost. That we ended up without anything, anyone.”

“I was.” A second ago, it was impossible to look at her, and now that he hears her it’s impossible not to. Kaz opens his eyes and drinks in her face, warm and radiant and alive. He presses harder against her pulse, forcing himself to focus on the steady rhythm, and she doesn’t flinch. 

He’s not sure what to say next, or even if he can say anything, but Inej speaks as if she understands. “That’s how he died? Starving, cold?” There’s an understanding in her eyes, but hard anger glimmering somewhere within. It’s a more righteous anger than Kaz will ever know. He’s lost his right to that. 

“No.” His voice sounds even rougher than usual, all rasp, practically a whisper. “That was the year plague came to Ketterdam. The Queen’s Lady.”

“Kaz.” He hates the sadness in her voice and he hates it worse in her eyes. Her words aren’t pitying, but her brows are drawn together, her grip on his hand tighter; it must all make sense now—the rough rasp of his voice, the pitted, faded scars on his cheeks that could so easily be mistaken for acne scars. Something deep inside of him wants to tear away, to tell her to forget that he said anything.

“Don’t,” he forces out. “We both got sick. I just—I came back. And Jordie…”

“Her name,” Inej breathes. She rolls her shoulders back as if to steady herself, though Kaz can’t for the life of him fathom why. “Kaz,” she says, like she’s trying to draw him back to her, to anchor him as she has before. 

But he’s staring at the floor now, his face twisted in anger and the horrible feeling of something worse, something hot and sticky and far too vulnerable for this. He grips the head of his cane with his free hand until it hurts, but the other is still gripping hers like a lifeline. He can’t let go. “It’s been long enough. By now it shouldn’t—I shouldn’t—”

Inej takes a step closer, pulling their joined hands down between them. “These things last,” she says insistently. “People will call them scars, but I think they’re more like...wounds with stitches.” Kaz remembers, clear as anything, the memory of her wearing his gloves, mending his wound when he didn’t deserve her help. “They’re not still bleeding,” Inej goes on, “but things can tear or break the stitches, and we can still do the wrong thing. We hope for them to scar so that they don’t hurt anymore.”

“And until then?” Kaz mutters, making himself look at her again. He sees everything that he has always treasured. 

“We heal,” says Inej, shifting her hand so that his touch is fully against her pulse. “But that’s a choice we have to make, too, to do what we have to and get better.”

“Then I will.” It’s one of the quickest decisions he’s ever made. He’d said he wouldn’t come offering her promises, but he’s giving his word now and plans to keep it.

Inej smiles. No, she beams. It’s utterly radiant, golden and ethereal and right. Earning this feels better than 30 million kruge.

You’re beautiful. The thought is so overpowering that he almost says it out loud. But that isn't part of what they are, of this tentative golden balance, crows' feathers on a tipping scale that never did its job at justice. He doesn't know if it could be. 

Inej releases his hand and starts forward, a lightness in her step. “Our friends are waiting.”

<><><>

When Kaz and Inej come back into the parlor, Jesper whoops with a careless upward fling of his hands. “Wine, whiskey, kvas for the daring, lady and gentleman?” he asks dramatically. 

“I don’t know who you’re talking to,” says Kaz. “I’m no gentleman.”

“You’re not Kaz Brekker, either,” says Wylan, looking up in surprise. “Not with that smile.”

“I’m not smiling,” says Kaz, who might at least be not scowling but wouldn’t admit it at gunpoint. 

“And I’m not the best dancer in Ketterdam,” Jesper scoffs from his position by the end table that’s apparently been converted into a makeshift drinks cart.

“Thank you for proving my point,” Kaz says smugly, resuming his previous seat. The fire is burning a bit lower, and the light in the room is warm and dim; shadows creep around its edges like old friends, making the room seem smaller. The firelight is low on his companions’ faces, on white-toothed smiles and glasses raised in toast, and something feels so unnervingly right about this that Kaz takes the moment to simply drink it in. 

Jordan, to his surprise, has stayed stubbornly awake this long—something else that she’s picked up from him, Kaz notes rather grimly. She’s been sitting at the foot of his chair and now looks up to him, standing and taking hold of the chair’s plush arm. “Up,” she says stubbornly. 

Kaz sighs. He glances over at the other three, and they’re clustered around the drinks—not paying attention. The chair is at least big enough that he wouldn’t be entirely holding her; it would be like back at Inej’s parents’. Where he failed before.

“Up,” Jordan whines. 

He hears his own voice again, hears Inej talking about healing. I will.  

“All right,” he says quietly. “Here.” He shifts over to make room for her. With a start, he realizes he still doesn’t have his gloves on. 

He holds his breath without quite meaning to as Jordan crawls up beside him; she curls into the chair but puts her head against his chest. Hesitantly, his whole frame alert and jittery, Kaz lifts his arm, holding the flap of his coat, and puts it around her as carefully as he can. The coat keeps her skin separated from him.

He feels cold. The water threatens him again, the way that it always does, closing over his ankles and seeping in deeper. He shifts his shaking hand further up Jordan’s back until it rests over her shoulder and touches his fingers to her pulse. 

She’s alive. She’s alive, and warm, and it’s all right, and he’s finally doing something right, and the craziest bit is? He’s alive, too. 

“Da,” Jordan says sleepily, but as clear as anything he’s ever heard. 

Kaz closes his eyes and tips his head back against the chair, her pulse still going under his fingertips. A real smile breaks over his face, unabashed and absurd. 

Look, Jordie, I’m living.

Chapter Text

The hours and the shadows alike have grown long, and the fire is low in the hearth. Some time ago, Jordan fell asleep against Kaz’s chest, and now her pulse beats steady and slow beneath his touch. The fire is burning low and red, dimly illuminating the shapes of Jesper and Wylan asleep on the opposite couch; Kaz isn’t sure how long they’ve been there, even though he’s been staring into the hearth this whole time. 

Inej sits in the chair beside him, curled up with her feet tucked beneath her and a long-empty glass in her hand. She, too, is staring into the faded orange glow of the fireplace, the shadows deep around her eyes and the light threading red through her hair. Kaz realizes he’s been looking at her; he’s not sure how long it’s been, now. 

He’s amazed in a faintly aware kind of way that he’s still here, that he’s doing this; it must have been hours since Jordan has fallen asleep, and yet he’s still here in the warm parlor—he’s not drowning. There have been moments when it’s gotten hard to breathe, when the world has blurred, when he would’ve gotten up and run but for fear of disturbing her. But he didn’t. He has to keep all of his focus on the rhythm of her pulse, steady as the flaring and waning of a small candle in the dark, and he fears that if he gets much more tired his control will start slipping. 

He keeps hearing her small voice in his head, calling him her da. A little comfort is a dangerous thing, he knows; he’s been lulled by firelight and warm parlors and a sense of family before, and he’s not lost so much of his sense as to forget that. Much like the choices that men make drunk and regret sober, he’s not about to make a decision now that will bite him when reality crashes back onto his shoulders come morning. 

“I should put her to bed,” Inej muses quietly, tipping her head to look at him. She’s even more beautiful in the half-sleep and half-light, fireglow hanging around her face like a fuzzy halo and a soft smile curving her lips like the crescent moon. The sound of her voice seems to awaken him even though he’s been awake all this time.

She rises softly as a shadow and bends over him to scoop Jordan up, every motion so delicate that her fingers barely brush the buttons of his waistcoat. Still, Kaz holds his breath at the closeness of her, at the scent of salt and jasmine that wreaths them and the warmth of her body bent so close to his. She shifts Jordan into her arms, and the little girl fits against the cradle of her mother’s body as easily as she had against Kaz. 

“Come with me,” says Inej, one hand on Jordan’s back. She asked him that once before, in his office, only across the city but seemingly on the other side of the world. He hadn’t even known about Jordan then. They have both changed. He’s testing out a new person, trying him on for size. But no version of him can refuse her. So he nods, picks up his cane, and follows her to the staircase. 

Kaz grimaces at the sight of all of those stairs; Inej, of course, ascends them like a sheet of silk, while he follows, gripping the banister tightly with the hand that isn’t holding his cane. Inej slows for him. She might say that it’s so she doesn’t wake Jordan, try to salvage his pride—they could both say that and go on in the illusion. It’s just that he knows better. 

Finally, painfully, they make it up to the landing, and Jordan’s room is only two doors down. Marya sleeps on the next floor—Kaz hasn’t seen her this evening, but he knows from Inej that some days she stays in her room—but nonetheless he tries to keep quiet. Inej slips into Jordan’s room and crosses to the four-poster, but Kaz remains by the door, watching as she tucks Jordan in and folds the coverlet around her. He’s never seen Inej like this before. It should make sense that she would take to motherhood naturally, that her spirit which could never un-learn to care for others would know how to do this, but he’d never thought of it. It’s not a joy that he can give her. 

Once Jordan is settled, however, instead of coming back to the door, Inej crosses to the window. Kaz steps into the room, shutting the door softly behind him, and she looks at him with that crescent-moon sliver of a smile back on her face. 

“Come with me,” she whispers again, and the light in her eyes draws him forward as surely as anything. 

Kaz crosses to the window, where Inej slides it open without a sound and hops up onto the sill. “Pass me your cane,” she whispers. 

Kaz sets his hands on the frame of the window. It’s cold from the night air. “I haven’t got your skill for scaling walls, Inej.”

“You don’t need it,” she says. “It’s a dormer, look.” He passes his cane over, and once she’s taken it, she steps out to the side of the window, onto the slope of the roof and out of sight. 

Kaz knows dormer windows. They’re windows built into the roof with little roofs of their own; deceptively easy-looking to get into, since you have to get onto the roof itself first and that’s its own host of problems. Easy to get out of from the inside, though, even with one good leg. He sits backwards on the sill, then pulls himself up to standing and climbs up onto the little roof of the dormer, admittedly with less grace than Inej. He trusts her not to laugh at him for it. She grasps the edge of the dormer’s roof, slides over, and closes the window with her foot, then starts up towards the slope. 

Kaz has to half-crawl for purchase against the steep tiles, scowling slightly at Inej, who’s walking up the slope of the roof like it’s just another hill. He’s going to be annoyed if she doesn’t have a good reason for dragging him onto her territory. 

Once they reach the crest of the roof with Kaz somewhat behind, he sees it’s one of those types that has a flat channel along the ridge; typically used for water runoff, but handy in this case to sit on. He sits tentatively on the edge, lowering himself down after Inej passes his cane back to him. She sits beside him, her head tipped back, the golden line of her throat bared to the sky. Kaz has to wrestle down the overwhelming urge to press his lips to it. 

Instead, he looks at his city. From up here, it looks strangely beautiful—the tangled mass of streets like a child’s abandoned tatting, the lights of East Stave that are still alive at this hour, the streetlamps reflected in the canals. Behind him and Inej, he knows, if he looks he’ll see the black slick of the harbor. But the harbor is behind him now, and so it ought to stay. One day he might even be brave enough to tell Inej what happened there. 

“Jordan called me her da,” he says. The words ring in the silence like a bell in an empty cathedral. He dares to look at Inej after a long while, and she’s opened her eyes, but she’s looking straight ahead. 

“Was she right?”

Wouldn’t he like to know. He knows what he would say if he answers now. He knows that’s the wrong thing to do. “I—I can’t say.”

Now Inej is looking at him. She draws one knee up to her chest with easy grace. “You don’t know, or you do and you won’t tell me?”

“I know what I want to say,” says Kaz, his eyes shifting back to the streets that raised him. The less he looks at her and everything that is impossible around her, the better off he’ll be. “And it isn’t what you think. But I can’t say things now. Not like this.”

“Not like what, Kaz?” There’s that note of frustration creeping into her tone, the one that would usually lead to her vanishing for hours in a sulk while he pretended that he wasn’t missing her. 

“Everything feeling right. I know it isn’t going to stay like this. It can’t.” He squeezes his eyes shut, blocks out the dream. “Tell me it can’t, Inej. Talk me back to reason. Please. ”

“Not...exactly like this,” Inej says slowly. “But you can care and still be dangerous. You can be more dangerous for caring. I am.”

Kaz almost laughs. At least he can open his eyes now, and look at the few stars that are able to fight through the fog. Inej would probably give him some Suli proverb about light conquering the darkness, but it’s lost on him. Anyway, the city lights are blotting out the stars, too. “You’re a lot of things that I will never be, Inej.”

“You could be more than you think if you tried.” He forgets, sometimes, how stubborn she is. He looks over, and there’s that face that he used to love to cause, the little furrow between her black brows and the proud turn of her lips. He remembers why he liked it so much. “You’re working with me already, bringing evil men to justice,” she says. “That counts for something.”

He shakes his head and leans back against the ridge of the roof, shingles rough and cold against his hands. They’re still bare, he realizes. His gloves are still in his pockets, but they might as well be back in the parlor. “You’re my proof that there’s no justice in this world.”

Inej knows him too well to be hurt by his words just yet. She stretches one leg out like he does sometimes, resting her heel against the slope. “And how’s that?”

“If there were justice, if people got what they deserved, you never would have been put in my path,” Kaz says, his eyes on her, not on the sky or the faded, crescent moon or the city below them. Why would he settle, when he can look at her? “I made myself deserve you. I didn’t wait for someone to decide that I did. I was never going to be a good man, but you’re worth being a better one.”

This isn’t a time for a kiss or an embrace—shallow, temporary passions, anyway. There’s something about the yellow moonlight in her eyes that’s both the gold and the fire that tests it. “I know. I see you.”

This feels more insane and impossible than anything he’s ever tried. He has the feeling that maybe, if he stepped over the roof’s edge, he might find that he has black wings to blot out the stars. “Just don’t stop.”

Chapter Text

Winter has swept down in full over Ketterdam. It isn’t like in Ravka, where the swift and gentle flurries would bury the land in drifts deep enough to swim in and the skies would turn silver over the coast. Winter in the city is gray-brown sluice on the streets, patches of ice that those less agile than the Wraith are prone to slip on, and ducking as you march into the wind. It’s a kind of cold that isn’t just cold, but rather a lingering ache that settles into the very marrow of your bones and takes up residence like an unwelcome visitor. It doesn’t help that most of Inej’s memories of winter involve Kaz being in a particularly dour mood, thanks to the lack of tourist traffic and his leg acting up. 

Speaking of Kaz, she’s hardly seen him since that night on the roof. Every once in a while she’ll find a note from him, and a few times she’s even gone out to gather information and return the notes in kind, when she can get someone to watch Jordan. It’s good to know that she hasn’t gotten rusty. 

Once it became obvious that she would at least be staying in Ketterdam long enough to say hello to Colm, she’d sent Specht and the rest of her crew on a scouting mission to prepare for their next big ambush. It will help to know more about exactly what they’re facing. She does fell somewhat guilty, reading letters from Specht and Fionn in front of the roaring fire of Wylan’s manor, but at least from their missives it sounds like things are going well despite the icy seas.

In the meantime, Inej can’t say that she minds being holed up with Jesper and Wylan. Despite its size, the mansion is undeniably cozy, and it’s good for Jordan to have the company. On her good days, Marya will often come out and join them. Some nights, she’s played the piano, and that’s when she seems the most like herself—as if the music is a safe part of her memory, a thing deeper and untouched. She’s also been painting again. Today, in fact, she’s set up an easel in one of the third-floor sitting rooms whose bay window overlooks the back garden. Much to Jordan’s delight, Marya has laid an extra canvas down on the floor for her, and the little girl is happily finger-painting a masterpiece. 

“Wylan loved to paint when he was her age,” says Marya, watching Jordan. Her smile is still somewhat dreamy, but there’s a perfectly lucid brightness in her eyes that reminds Inej of her son. 

“He still does,” says Inej, looking up from her latest bundle of letters and reports to look at Jordan’s work. Jordan is currently deep in the throes of artistic passion, judging by the way that she has paint splattered nearly up to her elbows and is frowning in deep concentration. Inej finds herself reminded of Kaz crafting one of his schemes, even if he’s a bit neater about it and his hands are marked with ink instead of paint. 

There are three rough blobs on the canvas; one of them is mostly shades of blue and brown, one is brilliantly colored, and the last is almost entirely black. There appears to be a sun as well, but it is only above the two colorful shapes. 

“What’s that?” Inej asks, setting the papers down and shifting over onto her hip to look at Jordan’s masterwork. 

Jordan jabs one stubby, blue-tipped finger at the canvas. “You. Me. Da.”

It’s going to take some getting used to, to hear her calling Kaz her da. Then again, he hasn’t been around to stop her, and Inej wonders if he would, even if he were here. “That’s us?” she asks.

Jordan nods fervently, adding more paint to the figure that Inej suspects to be herself. “Pretty colors for me,” she says happily. 

“You are very colorful right now,” Inej chuckles. “Kaz looks a bit sad, though.”

“Dark and sad,” Jordan agrees. Inej has to stifle a laugh as Jordan adds more black paint to the Kaz-shape. 

“What’s that?” Inej asks, pointing to a line that appears to slash through Kaz’s chest. 

“Stick,” says Jordan, poking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth. 

“Why is it going...through him?”

Jordan looks all the way up from her art to give Inej an impressive glare. “ Holding it.”

“I’m sorry,” says Inej, pressing a hand to her mouth to hide her amused smile. Not just because Jordan’s conviction is, frankly, adorable, but she’s reminded of Kaz again, of how snappish he could get if she criticized the plan he was forming. “I should have known.”

Jordan nods in agreement and returns to her work, every inch the serious artist. 

“It’s very lovely,” Marya says mistily, smiling as she adds shading to her roses. 

“Thank you,” Jordan says cheerfully. 

Oh, Inej thinks, so now you have manners.

Her amusement is cut short by a rather impressive thundering of footsteps on the staircase and then approaching down the hall. Inej shakes her head. She doesn’t expect everyone to be as silent as she is, but Jesper could at least try.

The lanky Zemeni pokes his head into the room, bursting with color and energy—and, Inej would dare say, nerves. His fingers are fluttering over his hair, his clothes, the furniture, aimless and never quite landing. 

“Look!” Jordan chirps, slapping a handprint onto the lower corner of her painting. 

“Wha—oh, oh, yeah, looks nice, Jordan.” Inej was right; he is more scattered than usual. 

A soft smile touches her lips. “I assume he’s here?”

Jesper smiles shakily, relaxing ever so slightly into something like relief. “Yeah.”

“That had better be excitement that I see in your eyes, then,” says Inej, standing and setting her stack of letters aside. She steps forward and takes hold of Jesper’s restless hands, looking up into his face. “Your father will be proud of you.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You think?”

Inej squeezes his hands with a determined nod. “I know. You’re doing so much better. You’re out of the Barrel. And you’re happy here.”

Jesper puffs out a breath. “Okay. Okay. Thanks.” He shakes his head, and then his usual smile is back, seeming mostly genuine in its brightness. “Do you want to come say hi?”

“Of course.” Inej drops his hands and looks back over her shoulder. “Someone might have to get cleaned up first, though.”

Jordan looks up from her painting. “Bath?” she says mournfully. 

“They say that art has its price,” Inej says teasingly as she scoops up the paint-splattered little girl. “And if it makes you feel better, I might have to get cleaned up too, thanks to you.”

“You can show my da your painting,” Jesper volunteers from the doorway. 

“Da?” Jordan asks, looking at Inej. “Da!”

“ His da,” says Inej, smoothing down Jordan’s hair. Somehow that child has gotten green paint on her nose. “A new friend.” She gives Jesper an amused glance. “Go. You don’t have to wait for us.”

<><><>

Apparently an excited Jordan is an efficient Jordan, because not twenty minutes later they’re both presentable and on their way downstairs to meet Colm. Jordan insists on not being carried but allows Inej to hold her hand as she scrambles down the grand staircase. 

“Slow down,” Inej laughs. “I don’t want you to fall.” 

“No fall,” says Jordan happily, skipping down on light feet. “I fly.”

“Okay, well, let’s not test that one, shall we?” says Inej, giving Jordan’s hand a squeeze. 

They’re halfway down the last flight when they see the group of three in the foyer—Jesper, Wylan, and Colm, recognizable even at this distance with his gray-streaked red hair and crumpled hat clutched in his hands. Inej suddenly falters, made uncertain by how unchanged he is compared to the rest of them. She finds her free hand fiddling with her single gold earring. The girl he last knew was a tough and wiry thing, wise but silent, eyes too old for her face. She’s grown into those eyes now. Her face is stung by salt spray, her braid and blouse loose, her manner bolder than it has ever been—and none of that begins to touch the child at her side. She knows what he’ll think. He’s like her parents that way—one plus one equals two, and a pair of teenagers dancing around each other then plus a little dark-eyed Suli girl now has an equally obvious answer. How does she explain that things are not so simple for them? Especially now, when Jordan will proudly proclaim Kaz as her da?

Part of Inej fears that they’ve scared him off. She saw him fighting, saw him trying, saw him pushing to the limits of what that coiled knot inside of him would allow, and she’ll admit that it excited her. That the part of her that was begging for the wire to be raised ever higher wanted to see how far they could go, in the fatalistic fear that it had to be now or it would all fall away. 

She hears Kaz’s voice again, speaking words she’s not sure he’s ever said but she knows that he would. There’s only what is. Consequences of her own actions or no, the circumstances won’t change as she wills, so she will face them as they are. And right now, that means heeding the call of the child who’s tugging her downstairs. 

Colm turns and his face breaks into a smile when he sees them. There are more lines around his eyes than Inej remembers, more gray shot through his red hair, but he looks so much the same that it’s almost shocking. His gray eyes are kind. “Inej, as I remember?” 

“You remember right,” says Inej. She feels for a fleeting, ridiculous moment as if she doesn’t know what to do, but there’s a welcoming ease about Colm that chases away her worry. 

“Oh,” he says, and his smile widens at the sight of Jordan. “Now, who’s this?” He kneels and puts out a rough hand to Jordan, who takes hold of one of his fingers, though she keeps a tight grip on Inej. 

“This is Jordan,” Inej says, unable to deny the fondness that rises in her voice. Even if Jordan isn’t her daughter by blood, the little girl has won Inej over with her bright and clever spirit, the way that she sees the world as being simple and good. Even if it’s not all true, it’s a good thing to be reminded of.

“She’s precious,” says Colm, making Jordan giggle by darting his hand just out of reach when she tries to grab it. “Ah, you’ve won,” he says to her, and looks back at Inej with a knowing grin. “The dimples! Too bad Jesper never had them,” he adds with a wink.

“ Da, ” Jesper complains, but he looks much more at ease than he did earlier. Inej gives him a brief smile. 

“I like him all right without them,” Wylan volunteers with a shrug. 

“And that’s all I ever need,” Jesper says, while Inej just chuckles at the pair of them. 

“Apologies, Jes, but this little lady might just have stolen my attention for the week,” Colm says in a mock-formal tone. He holds out his hands to Jordan, and she doesn’t bother to take them, instead clambering into his arms. He laughs and stands up, still holding Jordan, who sways happily. 

“I feel replaced,” Inej comments, grinning. 

Jesper shakes his head. “That makes two of us.”

“You might just find it useful, Inej,” says Colm, bouncing Jordan in his arms and making her squeal happily. “If there’s anything you want to get done, now you’ve someone to watch her.”

“Maybe that would be all right,” Inej replies, unable to keep a smile from her face. In the midst of all of their scheming, she’d never quite realized how good it was to have Colm around. He might have seemed simple to their street-hardened band, but, like right now, he had the intuition to not ask questions or offer judgements and instead to offer the kind of patience and compassion they’d all been denied. 

Inej has the fleeting thought that Kaz should come and talk to him. Maybe nothing would come of it, but maybe unconditionality, which not even she can give him, would be a good thing.

“Lunch is probably ready, Da, if you want to get settled,” Jesper offers. He’s already picked up his father’s worn carpetbag and is rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. 

Jordan cheers. “Food!”

Colm laughs and gestures them forward. “Lunch it is, it seems.”

Chapter Text

A bored Kaz Brekker is a dangerous thing.

Late afternoon is the slowest time of day in the Barrel, the kind of hour that makes it easy for Kaz to understand why men like Rollins were happy to coast on their success. When you’ve put all of the work into becoming king, you want to recline on the throne at last. But Kaz toppled Pekka Rollins and those like him, and he himself is of a breed too hungry and too clever to get complacent while he wears the crown. 

Part of the expansion of the Crow Club involved adding secret windows to the private booths that border the main room, such as the one in which Kaz now sits, a glass beside him. They allow him, or any member of the Dregs who’s privy to the information, to open a wall panel with a lock and hinges disguised as nails, revealing a window through which he might watch the proceedings at the tables. Right now, the club is barely a third of the way full, but come nightfall it will be bursting with pigeons, even at its new capacity. 

He’ll look over the club’s tallies tonight—and he does them all in his head anyway—so he has no paper with him, nothing to do except to watch the few players at the tables and mull over his running schemes. The property on the Lid that he’s converted into a (mostly) respectable eatery is doing well—as are the contraband hidden in its storerooms and the clandestine meetings held in its booths. So far, while the Liddies are suspicious, they don’t have proof enough to make trouble, either. Shipments coming in to Fifth Harbor have been consistent, as have the numbers of pigeons spilling onto the docks and into the Barrel, though consistently low thanks to the weather. Kaz will readily admit that this has left him cross. He’s never been known as unpredictable or temperamental by any means—anyone who’s paying attention can sense his moods brewing like black clouds over the harbor—but his Dregs have been keeping extra distance lately, which he wryly supposes is something about winter to be grateful for. 

He’s got his bad leg stretched out under the table, his cane resting against his hip, but there’s still a dull and unrelenting ache that has settled into his bones in a way that he’s gotten used to. He sets a hand against the point of the old break but only rubs it half-heartedly, knowing it won’t do much to help. 

Then he stills. If he were outdoors, he’d say there has just been a change in the wind. It feels like that—a tugging at his neatly pressed seams, a ripple in the black water. But he knows better. He doesn’t look at the rafters over his head. 

“If I’d known we had a spider problem, I would have spent more money on cleaning this place,” he says out loud, something that is too much like a smile curling his lips. 

Inej drops onto the table and lands with barely a ripple on the surface of his drink. She crouches there and pulls her hood back, the dim yellow lights gleaming on her hair. “It’s a bit early to be drinking.”

“It’s a bit late to still be trying to sneak up on me.”

“Maybe that was never my aim,” says Inej. She shows no inclination towards getting off the table, and Kaz doesn’t bother to push it. He’s too busy fighting off the urge to soak in the shape and the details of her, the way she’s a lithe little shadow, yet radiant before him, more real than the memories he’s been fighting off these past weeks. He doesn’t like the way that the sight of her strikes something guilty and tender in him. It’s not as if he’s done anything wrong, exactly. 

“I have something for you,” she says, and holds out what appears to be a rolled-up canvas. Kaz takes it, suppressing the not unpleasant shudder that runs through him when his gloved fingertips brush her palm. 

“A stolen painting?”

A wispy smile crosses her face, there and then gone, wily as Inej herself. “From right under the artist’s nose.”

Kaz hums, feeling it vibrate low in his throat, and begins to unroll the canvas. “Darling Inej, don’t tell me you went on a heist without me.”

The words hang loud and heavy in the space between them, words he once used to tease her without a thought. They mean too much now. But Inej doesn’t look at him with any embarrassment or even coldness—the set of her brows is high, her eyes expectant. She speaks next, but she’s still waiting on something from him. If only he knew what it was. “You didn’t seem available.”

There it is. There are many things that he could say—that he already told her, that night on the roof, that he didn’t know what he would become when reality came back to him; that she was leaving soon and he needed to let go; a thousand others, all true but not fair or kind. He isn’t fair, he isn’t kind, but he’d told her he would be better. So he says nothing, and unrolls the painting instead. 

Kaz’s eyebrows lift. It consists mainly of three blobs, two colorful and one mostly black, with a small, reddish handprint in the lower corner and what he thinks is a sun overhead. 

“I think Jordan wanted you to have it,” Inej supplies. There’s mischief glittering in her dark eyes, jewels worth more than all the fine jewelry he’s seen, stolen, and sold. 

“Right,” says Kaz, bemused. “And it is…”

Inej’s smile is sad in a way that he feels, illogically, to be his fault. “The three of us. Her family.”

As if Kaz needed another ache to strike him, this one sweet and singing through his chest. His hands flatten against the canvas, gloves smoothing over the figures that suddenly seem so fragile. This should only reinforce his conviction that she’s leaving soon, so better to let it grow some distance, but something irrational and too much like panic in him says to draw them closer.

“You didn’t just come here to give me this,” says Kaz, brushing his thumb over the little blob that he suspects is meant to be Jordan. 

Inej rolls her shoulders back. Kaz’s eyes follow the lines of her motion, the elegance in the way that they shift. “No. Colm arrived yesterday. You should come say hello.”

“I’m not in the habit of making social calls, Wraith.”

“Then make new habits. You can start with not calling me Wraith.”

Kaz lifts an eyebrow. “It’s the name of your ship. You’ve tired of it?”

Slight downturn of the chin, a press of her lips that makes the little black space between them vanish—a magic trick that would never grow old. He could watch her expressions all day. “It’s the name you called me for business alone,” she says. “Now you call me that when you’re trying to let me go.”

Kaz masks his frustration. He should probably figure out what exactly he wants before he goes acting on it. “And you won’t allow it?”

“I don’t need to answer that.” Inej stands and hops off the table, pausing by the door. 

“You’re not using the rafters again?” Kaz questions.

“I don’t need to.” She goes, and she doesn’t ask if she’ll see him later or chastise him to come. Somehow, that’s all the more infuriating than if she had. 

<><><>

As it turns out, the five stages of grief also apply to social outings. Kaz is currently in denial. This is despite the fact that he’s standing on Jesper and Wylan’s doorstep, stamping the icy sludge off of his boots and struggling to look dignified while doing so. 

The door flies open, and a blast of warm air hits Kaz in the face. He tries to maintain his scowl while squinting and resisting the urge to fix his hair, which has now been blown entirely astray. Jesper is standing behind the door, wearing a slightly manic grin. Kaz continues to regret his decision. 

“Does your maid dislike me that much?” he asks. 

“More like we like you that much,” says Jesper, “Ghezen knows why. But stay out here if you want. It matches your personality.”

“You are the last person I would trust to advise me on what matches,” says Kaz drily, stepping inside after the erstwhile sharpshooter. 

“That’s cold. Not even an apology?” Jesper complains as he leads Kaz into the foyer.

“Well, why would I ask for forgiveness if I’ve never given it? That would make me a hypocrite, Jesper.”

“Right. Saints forbid you add hypocrisy to your list of sins.”

“Can’t make a profit on it, can I? I’m only cruel in the ways that pay,” says Kaz, slightly behind Jesper as they traipse into the firelit parlor from last time. It’s only late afternoon, gray skies in the windows, but the fire in the hearth is roaring with a merry warmth that Kaz feels repelled by and drawn to all at once. 

Speaking of being drawn and conflicted and all of those uncomfortable feelings that he was avoiding so nicely until now, Inej is sitting on the carpet by the hearth with Jordan sitting in her lap, playing with her hair. When she sees him, however, Jordan squeals and scrambles to her feet, then runs over to him. “Da!”

Kaz goes stiff. He feels as if the room has gotten very quiet, even though Jesper is doggedly talking even louder as if to fill the space. 

Kaz catches Colm Fahey in his peripheral vision. He doesn’t look at the farmer, but convinces himself that it’s not for fear of the look on the man’s face. He can’t quite answer why it would be, then, however. At his feet, Jordan is bobbing back and forth. Shyly, she puts her arms out. “Hug okay?”

Kaz is feeling more emotions right now than he has at a single time in recent memory. He feels vaguely sick. He thinks hazily that he has so many I-told-you-so’s to say: feelings are, in fact, overrated, regardless of what anyone says. 

And yet. And yet, he smooths his gloved hand over her short dark hair, the pressure in his touch inviting her ever so slightly closer. She gives a happy but blessedly quiet squeak and goes to fling her arms around his leg, but switches to a much gentler approach off of a look from Inej. Kaz braces himself, but it’s...it’s not so bad. The warmth of her little body even soothes the ache a little. He has to stay focused; he can’t do anything else right now, can’t even speak for fear of his mind slipping, but at least he’s here. 

“Evening, Mr. Brekker.” The slight accent alerts Kaz to Colm’s presence, and he mentally kicks himself for allowing his focus to drift. He looks up and returns the greeting with a brief nod. 

“Jordan, let him sit,” says Inej, reaching out a hand. Jordan whines, but complies, scrambling back into Inej’s arms. The firelight is golden on the both of them, the shadows deep and warm, and Kaz has to force his gaze away. This is why he was keeping his distance, though maybe he was just a fool to think that he ever could. 

Kaz makes his way to a chair and lowers himself into it, more slowly than he would have liked to. Now he can make a proper analysis of Colm; the farmer looks bizarrely unchanged, given how different the world seems from when they saw him last. Kaz’s impression is the same as before—that the man has an utterly open, honest face. It’s a bit jarring, frankly. Even Jesper knows how to hide his thoughts when he has to. 

“I didn’t think we would see you,” Colm says amiably, a hand resting on his knee, his posture back and at ease. 

“I’m surprised you would want to,” Kaz replies. “Given the circumstances of our last meeting and what exactly Jesper was doing in my employ.” He isn’t here to make friends or pretenses, so better to dispense with both. 

Maddeningly enough, Colm just nods, the picture of wise acceptance. “I suppose my feelings weren’t entirely kind. But I’d suspect that you also have something to do with his circumstances now.”

Kaz resists the urge to roll his eyes in Inej’s direction. The last thing he needs is another person trying to make a saint out of him. It will just be disappointing for both of them. “I’m a thief by trade, Mr. Fahey, but I don’t steal credit if I can help it.” A bold-faced lie, but as Jesper pointed out earlier, at this point it’s just another speck of gravel in the quarry of his sins, pointless to count when there’s no torment or penance awaiting him. 

“I think he might be trying to say it was Jesper and Wylan’s doing,” says Inej from the floor. 

Wylan smirks. “Didn’t know that you needed a Kaz translator, did you?”

“I understand fine,” Colm says placatingly. “But all that is my long-winded way of saying that no, Mr. Brekker, I’m not angry with you.”

“Easier for the both of us.” Whether or not he should be isn’t Kaz’s business. 

Jordan has been babbling to Inej throughout this conversation, and Inej—suddenly, it seems—stands, holding the little girl against her hip. “Sorry to interrupt, but she wants to show you two her paintings,” she says, nodding to Jesper and Wylan. 

Kaz sneaks a glance at Colm, who looks more understanding than he would have preferred. Not subtle, Wraith.

“Oh, uh—sure,” says Jesper, nodding a bit too fast. “Love to.” 

They’re barely out of the room and it’s already too quiet. Kaz leans back in a forced posture of relaxation and turns his head to look out the window at the sleet falling over his city. “I assume you were involved in that orchestration.”

“Honest doesn’t mean simple, Mr. Brekker. In fact, I might be reading these things better than you can.”

Kaz’s lips thin, but this isn’t the time to get defensive. He needs to be careful and plot his moves. Playing this right is crucial to holding everything together. “And your conclusion is?”

Colm smiles gently, making crows’ feet crinkle at the corner of his eyes. “That you still think you have a choice.”

Wouldn’t that sound threatening from any other mouth. Kaz steeples his gloved fingertips in his lap, pulling himself into a dangerous calm. “By which you mean?”

Colm twists his hands around his crumpled hat. It’s probably the same one that he had years ago. “I don’t know anything about the other circumstances, mind, but that little girl has decided you’re her father. That isn’t something you can accept or decline. It just is.”

There’s only what is. If he hasn’t said that before, he’s certainly thought it. His eyes remain cold, though, and he doesn’t respond—he senses that, whether he wants it or agrees with it, Jesper’s father has more to say.

And he’s right; the man leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, his eyes far too kind. Kaz needs to leave. “What you do have a choice in is how you’re going to handle it. There are lots of wrong ways to do this and just as many right ways, but you do have to do it.”

Or what? Kaz thinks bitterly, but that’s a stupid question. A thousand responses rise to his mind, all biting, all the wrong thing to say. “I appreciate the input,” he forces out.

Colm laughs—full and hearty and all wrong. “No you don’t,” he says. “I’d be surprised if you did. No need to appreciate it. Just remember it.”

The only thing I remember is that I need to get back to the Crow Club before it gets busy , Kaz almost says. So why doesn’t he? Why can’t he barricade himself behind the kind of cruelty that he used to toss out without a second thought? This is how his guard slips. This is how he loses his kingdom to something so fickle as caring. 

Colm stands, still clutching his hat, and runs a hand through his graying hair. “I’ve said my piece,” he says, “and now I’d like to see those paintings. Maybe you’ll come?”

Kaz’s eyes find the sleet and swirling mist outside the window again. He knows the real meaning; honest men aren’t subtle, and the fact that Colm is testing him can barely be considered hidden. But he isn’t going to change for appearance’s sake. “I’ll catch up,” he says, and listens until the footsteps are gone.

Kaz rises, takes his cane, and makes his way back out through the foyer. The rolled-up canvas in his pocket bounces against his hip. 

It’s going to be a long walk home.

Chapter Text

They’re leaving today. Maybe that’s why Inej wakes up before dawn, the sky dark and silver with winter clouds over the roofs of her city—still her city, despite everything. She swings her legs over the side of the bed but doesn’t set her feet on the floor, instead just breathing in the burn of the cold air and closing her eyes into the feeling. Some part of her is going to miss this. The sea air will taste too clean again.

At last, she sets her feet on the floor and walks to the chest of drawers, even more light-footed than usual on the cold wooden floor. She picks up the captain’s hat that sits on the dresser, turns it over in her hands ever so briefly, then sets it on her head at a jaunty angle with barely a glance in the mirror. Jordan is still asleep next door; Jesper will bring her by the docks later so that she’s not underfoot while they prepare the Wraith to take to the seas again. 

Inej crosses to the window, runs a hand under her braid to smooth it over her shoulder, and slides the latch open without the slightest squeak. Then she’s out on the wall, springing off to catch the next sill, the next roof, and maybe after that she’ll get hold of a silver cloud to look down on her city. Or maybe she doesn’t have time for gazing; the harbor is calling her, and who is she not to answer?

It’s good to have the time to think, up here. Despite the fog and fumes rising with steam from the dewdrops, the sky clears her mind. Saints know it’s been full enough these days.

She wasn’t surprised, exactly, when they returned downstairs and no one knew where Kaz had gone—only that he had. Guilt and impatience run tandem in her, because maybe it was her fault for scaring him, but then maybe he just needs to make up his mind. 

He’s trying, she reminds herself. Before, he would never have greeted Jordan like that. He wouldn’t have stayed to talk to Colm. And it’s all true. Unfortunately, it just spurs her on to imagine what else they could be or do. 

But there is something she didn’t tell him, something she might not have even if she’d had the chance. She’s been comfortable with her friends for years now, but the day after that night on the roof, Jesper threw an arm around her shoulders, and she flinched. She’d managed to hide it, but she still remembers the feeling of her heart jackrabbiting in her chest, the sense of silks strangling her, the desperate flash of an urge to run, there and then gone.

 Maybe it was the abandonment of the things she had used to protect herself that changed things—the openness of trying to heal. She’d opened the curtain to the memories and feelings she’d been storing away, blown off the dust and begun to unpack the boxes, and what she found inside was far too raw and unchanged. It’s like her mother used to say when mending clothes: sometimes a messy seam has to be torn out and re-sewn. Maybe they have to make new memories. Maybe that’s okay.

She’s within sight of the docks now, so she catches hold of a drainpipe and slides down to the icy, cobbled street. She probably should have more layers on than what she’s wearing, she thinks as the chill seeps through her clothes, but it wouldn’t be worth the way that the extra bulk would restrict her freedom to move. Anyway, she marched through Fjerda with a barely-healed stab wound. She can handle another Ketterdam winter. 

A few men are moving around by the docks, coiling ropes and carrying crates, but for the most part it’s too early for her crew to be preparing the ship just yet. That’s all right; Inej doesn’t mind the quiet. And while her crew isn’t here, someone else is.

She’s been expecting it, she realizes. She just didn’t know she’d been expecting to see him until now, until the undercurrent of feeling rose into conscious thought. She can’t keep herself from walking a bit faster down the quay, down to where he stands, the bitter wind off the harbor ruffling his dark hair.

She steps up next to him, and they stand in silence. She can feel his warmth across the inches of difference. Maybe if they were different, she could lean into him, and they could share their heat. If they were anyone else, she could feel his lean, solid frame against her, instead of just being intensely conscious of it in a way that scares her. She knows she’s been protecting herself from these feelings, but now that she’s trying not to, there is a physicality to it all that’s foreign and forbidden to her. 

“I knew I’d find you here,” Inej says softly. “I just didn’t realize I knew until I saw you.”

“At least I wasn’t standing in the cold for nothing,” Kaz murmurs, and Inej closes her eyes against the way that the ragged burn of his voice washes over her and wakes something in her. She doesn’t need that now. 

“Not for nothing—there’s a nice view,” Inej offers. They always talk like this, like a circling bird—eventually they’ll get down to what they’re really seeking, but they have to go around and around it first, scouting for danger.

“So there is,” says Kaz, and there’s a swoop in her stomach because he isn’t looking out over the harbor anymore—he’s looking at her, his words and his dark eyes burning deep. There’s a doomed inevitability to it all, Inej thinks. Like calls to like, and they are two broken people who will keep clumsily trying to mend each other and themselves, circling forever. Will they ever find land? Will they take the chance and dive? Will it even be something they can know?

“I don’t want you to want me, Kaz,” says Inej, meeting his eyes and holding them there. “I want you to choose me, and keep choosing me.”

“I did,” says Kaz, a bitter blackness in his voice, “on Vellgeluk, and Van Eck took you.”

“And you burned his empire. You took everything that mattered to him. You destroyed his reputation. You wouldn’t have gone that far if all he had done was stand against you.”

Kaz is quiet, but it’s not a silence she can interpret. Before them, the fog dances like ghosts over the harbor. 

“You already work with me. You fight with me. You stand with me. Just be with me.” Inej turns her head to look at him, at the clean-cut edges of his profile and the things that haunt him lurking in the shadows on his face.

 Kaz’s lips—a tragically beautiful feature, Inej sees now—part, and his breath fogs in the air as he gives something almost like a dry laugh. “You’re leaving.”

“Distance has never made much of a difference for us, has it?” Inej reminds him gently. Kaz looks down, his Adam’s apple rising in his throat, and she shakes her head. “It’s gotten worse for me too, you know.”

His eyes slowly drift to her, away from the dark water, away from the place Inej could not follow him. He says nothing, but he doesn’t need to speak. 

“The wanting and the not being able to, both.” Voicing it seems to give power to the pull inside of her, and she smooths her hands forcefully over her trousers, swallowing hard. It’s been a long time since she has been so conscious of the strength of his frame, the heat of his presence, the intoxicating pull of his dark eyes. She isn’t the first woman to feel it, she’s willing to guess, but she is the first to be ready for all that it entails. The silence swirls between them and dissipates in the heavy fog. 

“I...kept your letters.” Kaz brushes a gloved thumb over the back of his opposite hand where it rests on his cane. Inej might not have recognized the words as his if she hadn’t seen him form them; his speech is usually an orator’s, even in conversation—smooth, polished, a tad grandiose, always smugly clever. These are an uncertain boy’s words, uneven and knocking into each other as they try to settle into an ill-fitting new space. They traipse tentatively after each other and sit heavy in the gray dawn. Inej is reminded of that same voice asking, Is my tie straight?

She turns to him like a startled bird. “You did?” If Kaz sounds like an uncertain boy, Inej sounds like a shy little girl. She feels as if she’s meeting this part of herself for the first time.

Kaz lifts one shoulder in a jerky, uneven shrug. “Maybe I should have burned them. But there was important intelligence that I wanted to reference later, and—” Now he’s talking too fast, trying to recover his uncaring front, and Inej cuts him off with a full, warm laugh that rolls from her lips and fills the quiet of the morning quay. Kaz Brekker—harder to break into than the Ice Court, but once you’re inside, everything is on display if you know where to look.

She listens for it this time, and she hears Kaz’s breath catch. Her heart swells. Nina was right. 

As they stand in a silence that’s warm despite the winter morning, ripples of her laugh still seeming to echo around them, dockworkers slowly begin to arrive, along with the members of her crew. The sailors and workers call to each other, bickering and teasing, directing one another here and there. A gull or two even swoop down from the clouds. Life goes on, and surely as the golden spill of the hourglass, it pulls them apart. That’s all right; they will circle, but never separate. 

They’ve been standing long enough that when Kaz shifts beside Inej, it awakens her attention. She doesn’t look at him, but she listens for his voice, her heart a channel for his words. 

“Tell Jordan...her da will be here when she gets back.”

Inej closes her eyes and turns her face to the bitter wind off the harbor. Just as she’d known he would be here, she feels it when he leaves, and her eyes stay closed. 

She doesn’t say goodbye. She just lets go. After all, he’ll be here when she gets back. 

Chapter Text

This has been the longest one yet, and Kaz would know. Almost a year, they’ve been gone—eleven months and fourteen days, specifically. Not that he’s counting. 

(Maybe that’s a lie—maybe he is counting, everything from the days between voyages to the days between letters—but lying is his business. So are numbers, for that matter. But it’s getting harder and harder to delegate what’s business and what isn’t where Inej is concerned.)

And if he’s really counting, it’s been more like two years since their last long stay, peppered with days-long visits here and there, long enough to resupply the Wraith and then the sea takes another Jordan from him, again. 

He’s been practicing, where he can. Taking his gloves off as soon as he’s in his room or his office alone, turning over his bare hands, forcing himself to be conscious of the sensations that are no longer dulled by leather—cold air, rough wood, the smoothness of his pen. He’ll stare at the expanse of his own skin until it starts to blur into decay, until sun-starved pale becomes fish-belly white. Then the gloves go back on, and he shuts his eyes and pretends he’s not angry with himself, though why he bothers to hide it when he’s alone he can’t answer. 

Lately, he’s taken to reading Inej’s letters with his gloves off. It’s safer than if she were really there, but it’s worth something. Sometimes he doesn’t even read them right away; he just closes his eyes and lets himself be wreathed by jasmine and sea salt until the ache of nameless wanting ebbs away. There’s a note of irony to it; Kaz has built a career on knowing what people do behind closed doors, and his own guilty habit is to clutch a letter like some lovesick idiot. At least he knows how to keep from getting caught. He’s not about to abandon the mythos of Dirtyhands that’s kept him alive—especially when Jordan is likely to end up under its umbrella as well. He can’t keep her a secret forever. 

As any decent lockpick knows—certainly a master like him—the trick to picking a lock is to be able to break it down and build it back again, to get inside of it and know its inner workings, damage and all. He’s been deeply familiar for years now with how his mind can serve him, but never liked to dwell on what made it his downfall. At least one good thing has come from having too much time to think these days; now he knows better than he ever has what’s stopping him, though not so much how to fix it. 

The letter in his bare hands contains a good deal of carefully concealed, useful information, but there’s one line that he keeps reading over and over. 

By the way, I’ll be visiting your mother about a week after this letter reaches you. I hope your father’s business spares you for long enough to join us.

A shadow of a smirk crosses Kaz’s face. Only Inej could get away with such a jibe. He’s too proud to admit that the remark her hidden message refers to—that is, his mother being Ketterdam and his father being profit—might have been a bit much, but he’ll concede enough to allow her to tease him for it. Besides, he’ll feel more forgiving about any remark that heralds Inej’s return. 

Today. Today, it’s been a week. She only said about a week, he knows, and it’s well-nigh impossible to be punctual about these things, but Inej has always kept time better than certain others of his associates (one Zemeni marksman comes to mind). Besides, somewhere along the way a sliver of hope has worked its way into him, and now he can’t figure out how to get rid of it—or if he even wants to. 

He needs to check the safe house in the Warehouse District that’s become their meeting place anyway, Kaz convinces himself. If Inej isn’t there, then he’ll still be able to ensure its security so that it’s ready when she does arrive. If she is there—well. Kaz isn’t one to walk into a situation without a plan, but imagining what could happen, in this case, might turn out to be far worse than improvising once he gets there.

The outcome that he’s expecting, however, might be told by the fact the he leaves his gloves in his pocket, folding Inej’s letter with his bare hands and slipping it in beside them. 

<><><>

It feels ridiculous, but Kaz can’t stop thinking about how cold the crow’s head of his cane is against his bare hands. It’s nice in a way; cool and rigid, unforgiving, nothing like flesh. But he’s gotten used to knowing the world through shapes and not textures, how easily it gives in his grip, and now a new corner of his mind is occupied—the cobwebs cleared out to make room for texture, temperature, new sensations that he never needed to get by. 

Narrow alleys darkened by awnings are excellent places to hide a secret entrance, especially in Ketterdam, because how many people are going to stumble into a place like that? Kaz finds the loose cobblestone in the street with the toe of his shoe, then feels six bricks up from there (and the bricks are cold, too), pushing the sixth one in with the head of his cane. The panel in the brick wall slides away with a light touch, admitting Kaz into the storehouse; as it turns out, one of the upsides of being rich is the ability to indulge his dramatic side with traps, secret entrances, and all manner of hidden security features anywhere that’s owned by the Dregs. It’s just another kind of illusion, after all, like a magician’s hat with a false bottom. 

Dusty shafts of sunlight filter into the storehouse from windows high on the wall, hitting ancient (and mostly empty) crates stacked in the corners. It’s a fair distance from Fifth Harbor, but closer than the Slat or the Crow Club—also more covert. The success of his and Inej’s joint operation requires the element of surprise. 

The place looks empty, but Kaz knows it’s not. The fine coating of dust on the floor has been disturbed, and when he checks the latch on one of the few crates that actually contains anything (maps, mostly), it has clearly been recently opened. Besides, shadows don’t usually giggle like that. 

“You’ve gotten better, Jordan,” Kaz comments, looking nowhere in particular. “But perhaps don’t move so much.”

The dark shape half-concealed behind a crate scrambles over the top of the rough wood and becomes a little girl in the dim light, pouting spectacularly at him. Kaz carefully conceals his surprise. She’s all legs now, her hair long enough to be pulled back from her face, wearing a little red vest over an all-black ensemble that’s reminiscent of Inej’s spywear. 

“Don’t feel bad,” says another shadow, melting away from the wall. “He can find me, after all.”

“Then one day I’m gonna be better than you,” Jordan declares, little fists set on her hips.

Kaz says nothing, his eyes trained on Inej. She’s not so much changed; but then, he looks for the things about her that stay constant, the things that have made her someone he can rely on. That single gold earring still gleams in her ear, and her braid swishes down to her hips, her hair held back from her face with a red bandanna tied over it. The smile that she gives him is full and radiant, her dark eyes gleaming, and Kaz feels the push of the lever—greed, but a whole different kind than he’s used to, one he doesn’t know how to relieve or satisfy. 

“Very punctual of you,” he says at last. Wraith almost slips out, but he remembers what she said before. That’s what you call me when you’re trying to let go. And just now, that’s the last thing he wants to do. He wants to be selfish. He wants to keep her with him. He wishes he could hold her, just the once.

“I’m not the only one who was here on time,” says Inej, and now there’s a spark of mischief in that smile, closed-lipped like a secret, and she’s going to be the death of him—Kaz Brekker, killed right here in this Saints-forsaken warehouse. Kaz flexes his hands hard against the head of his cane, hoping desperately to regain himself, but he barely remembers what she said well enough to craft a response.

“I’m known for keeping my word,” Kaz replies, casting a look at Jordan. Tell Jordan her da will be here when she gets back. He meant it, and he’s made a point to mean it every day since. 

“Why are we here?” Jordan complains. “It’s cold.”

Inej laughs, and Kaz is this close to praying to some god to come and save him. He swears she’s doing it on purpose. “It’s also safe, love,” she says, and Kaz tries and fails to let the memory of that last word pass him by instead of embedding itself deep. “I don’t know how well you remember them, but we’re going to stay with Jesper and Wylan after this.”

Jordan frowns slightly in concentration, and her brow furrows in the same way that Inej’s does. Kaz fights down the urge to look desperately at the heavens because now there are two of them.  

Jordan nods carefully. She keeps looking shyly at Kaz as if she’s not entirely sure what to do with him, and he can’t blame her. It’s been a long time since he saw the wide-eyed toddler who leapt at his presence. This little girl will have to get to know him all over again. But he’s been here and he will be here, just like he said he would be.

“Here,” Kaz says roughly, shrugging off his coat and holding it out to her. He’s sure that he doesn’t sound very comforting, but it’s the best he can do, even when no one is watching. He’s sure that it was the right choice, though, when Jordan’s eyes light up and she eagerly grabs the coat with both hands. 

“Careful, it’s heavy,” says Inej, sounding amused as Jordan wraps herself in the coat like a blanket rather than bothering to put it on. Inej looks up at Kaz over Jordan’s head, gratitude shining in her eyes, and she doesn’t have to say a word. That smile is all he needs. 

Jordan curls up on the crate she’s been sitting on, and Inej sits on the one beside her, moving over so that there’s room for a second person. It’s a clear invitation. Kaz smooths one hand reflexively over the head of his cane, finding comfort again in the cold metal, before stepping forward decisively and taking it. He can’t be tentative about this, or he’ll lose his nerve. 

There’s a breath between their shoulders now, but not much more. Inej leans back slightly and turns her head to face him. Kaz takes the chance to take in the details of her again, the slopes and ridges of her face, the arch of her brows, the slant of her shoulders. He breathes in the moment, afraid to lose it. 

“We’ve been celebrating the rough anniversary of my finding Jordan as her birthday,” Inej comments after a brief but comfortable silence. 

Jordan pipes up, “I’m…um…”

“How old are you now?” Inej coaches.

“Four! I think.”

“So you’re almost five.”

“Almost five,” Jordan tells Kaz proudly, enunciating the syllables, leaning around Inej to look at him. 

Kaz raises a brow. “So I’ve heard.” He isn’t sure yet where this is going, but he’ll let the conversation take its course. Inej can have all of the time that she needs. He can pretend that this is how it will always be, with no one watching and enough hope to try something new. 

“I wanted to celebrate with her while we’re here.” Inej’s hand slides to rest next to his on the crate, and he knows she doesn’t miss the slight shiver that ripples through him at the barest whisper of contact, but it’s…it’s all right. He’s still here, with them, and he’s keeping his promise to stay. 

Kaz tilts his head to the side, his eyes finding the slatted sunlight through the high windows. “What did you have in mind?”

He can just about feel Inej smirking, so he breaks off from his train of thought and looks at her. “Something you’d like to say?”

Inej shakes her head, but he was right about that smirk. “Scheming face,” she says. “Maybe not required. I thought we might be able to get my parents to join us, and maybe even Nina.”

Kaz knows roughly the length of a voyage to or from Ravka, as well as how long Inej plans to stay in the city, so it only takes a moment for him to compare those things and draw a conclusion. “This is an invitation, then.”

“As opposed to a request for permission or your opinion? Yes,” says Inej, her fingertips brushing over the back of his hand. “I’ve already got it planned, so you can put your scheming face away for now. But I would like you to come.”  

Despite Inej’s words, Kaz’s eyes drift to the light through the windows again. It’s falling on the three of them now, creating an almost absurdly picturesque scene—if this were a painting, he’d steal it and hang it in his office. 

But it’s not a painting, it’s a moment, and a fleeting one at that. When he leaves this place, when they part ways, the gloves will go back on and he’ll be Dirtyhands again, heartless and beholden to no one. They’re all depending on it. How much can he afford to compromise his legend before he gets caught and it can no longer protect him?

But he can feel Jordan’s eyes on him, wide and dark like her mother’s, peering out over the collar of his coat. She shifts nervously, then asks, “Will you please come…Da?” 

Saints, Ghezen, and every other god save him. Everyone who believes it will do any good needs to pray for Kaz Brekker, because he is officially powerless. He turns his hand over, palm up, and links his fingers with Inej’s, looking at his family.

 “All right,” he says. “I’ll come.” 

Of course Colm Fahey was right all along. He really doesn’t have a choice. 

Chapter Text

Most people don’t feel hopeful after a meeting with Kaz Brekker. Inej, however, can’t call the steady warmth coiled in her chest by any other name. It’s hope, blissfully unfettered as she has hardly ever known it. It’s something like the feeling of his fingers in the spaces between hers, like the feeling of their broken places fitting together, like the feeling of Jordan’s little hand clutching hers tight. 

“Are you excited about the party?” she asks Jordan, giving her daughter’s hand a little squeeze. They have to go back to Fifth Harbor and check in with her crew before making the long walk to the Geldin District, so she’s trying to keep Jordan happy enough that she won’t pay attention to how far they have to go. Inej will probably end up carrying her anyway, though.

Jordan nods enthusiastically, making her little ponytail bob. She was ecstatic when they discovered that her hair had grown long enough to be tied back, though it’s not quite braid length yet. 

“Excited to be five?” Inej pushes, upping the somewhat false enthusiasm in her voice and giving Jordan’s arm a little nudge. Sometimes she feels like she’s floundering in this whole business of being a mother—it was never something that she’d learned or even considered amidst learning to throw knives and kill a man before he could touch her. Besides, since the Menagerie, she hadn’t even thought it would be possible. She tries to remember how Mama and her aunts and cousins would speak to the little children in the caravan, but she still feels as if she’s doing it all wrong. 

“Mm-hmm!” says Jordan, bouncing. 

Inej laughs a little. Luckily, she has a shockingly happy, patient child to learn with. 

They have to pass through the Lid on their way to Fifth Harbor. Inej wonders if they’ll see the new place that Kaz mentioned having opened there—supposedly a legitimate business, but Inej would be ashamed of herself if she didn’t know what each of the Dregs’ holdings was up to, even from the middle of the sea. There are fewer people here than in the crush of the Barrel, although Inej does feel somewhat out of place—loose mauve trousers with buttons at the calves, a cream blouse with the neck laced over her collarbones, kerchief tied over her hair. It’s the kind of appearance that wouldn’t garner a second look on the Staves, but among the slightly classier establishments of the Lid, it’s a bit much. Hopefully she can blend in with the sailors taking the fastest path through to the heart of the Barrel.

There are still a few people on the streets—tourists, wealthy locals, and the like, as well as a handful of sailors as Inej had predicted. She scoops Jordan up and holds her close, keeping her eyes on the people around her. They look respectable enough, but she should know from Kaz that appearances are curated and only mean as much as the person wants them to. 

Then she hears his voice, and her feet stop working. 

She didn’t think she remembered them—their voices, their faces, how they smelled. Those things were the Lynx’s concern, lost to the harbor wind with all of the other misery that hangs around Ketterdam strongly enough to leave a scent. But she was wrong.

It’s nasal, tenor maybe, with a scratch to it but nothing like Kaz’s rasp. He’s talking to some companion, but all she hears is her memories—his breathless gasps, broken Suli that he thought might impress her, “Be a good girl for me and I’ll be kind.” 

It was a lie. They were never kind. If he were kind, he would never have paid for the rights to her body and used her as he liked. She’d heard him trying to talk down Heleen’s price.

Inej can’t move. She doesn’t even know where he is, except that she hears that voice. She clutches Jordan tightly enough that the little girl whines, clinging to her shoulders. “Mama?”

Inej tries to find her voice. Nothing, love, she needs to say. It’s nothing. But she can’t speak. She can’t move. She should be on her guard, checking her knives, striding by with the knowledge that she could have him bleeding out before he even saw her—all the skills of the Wraith that she knows so well. But Heleen’s little lynx runs deeper. She learned long ago that it was better to give up control over herself right away instead of fighting for it, and now she’s lost to that instinct. 

Sankt Petyr, she thinks. Sankta Alina. That was probably the wrong order. She can’t even remember which comes next. Her heart is beating far too fast. Is she remembering to breathe? Is she breathing? Is she alive, or just a ghost, a wraith, another victim of Ketterdam?

He’s coming up the same side of the street as her. Hair the color of dried blood; peeling, sunburnt skin. There’s a woman with him in lilac and lace. Did you know that your companion likes to pay for girls like fine spices? Inej thinks numbly. But even despite her pirate’s garb and the child on her hip, the man’s eyes slide right over her. 

He bumps into her shoulder and keeps walking without an apology—no acknowledgement that she was even there. Was he faking for the sake of the woman with him?

Probably not, Inej thinks in muted shock. Why should he remember the face of a girl he laid with at least five years ago now? Heleen’s girls were symbols, pieces of a set. The faces came and went and no one cared. They only wanted icy Fjerdan eyes, long Zemeni legs, red Kaelish hair. Inej was just another bronze-skinned, silk-swathed shell of a girl—no one and everyone, anyone they wanted her to be. 

That was probably all that they saw when they looked at her daughter, too. 

“Remember how you wanted a knife?” Inej murmurs into Jordan’s hair. She knows the little girl can probably feel her shaking. “If Kaz doesn’t get you one for your birthday, I will.”

Jordan nods into her shoulder, then pokes her head up and tries to look at the people who are now well past them. “Mama, who’s that?”

“No one,” Inej says quietly, setting Jordan down. She starts to walk again, slowly, but her legs are shaking like mad. She keeps Jordan’s hand tight in hers; if she has any say in the matter, she is never letting go. “I just thought I’d seen him before.”

“He was mean,” Jordan says, swinging their arms. “He didn’t say sorry.”

The scent of saltwater is growing stronger as they approach the harbor, and now Inej can see the distant spikes of the docks breaking into the gray water on the horizon. She rolls her shoulders back and holds her chin up to face the meager rays of sun. “You’re right, love,” she says. “He has a lot to be sorry for.”

For some reason, she’s thinking of Pekka Rollins on his knees, fat tears rolling down his face as he fought to remember the one thing that would save his son—the name, Inej has learned, that her daughter now bears. Kaz had been obsessing over Rollins since even before Inej knew him, and yet when the moment finally came, he had to walk Rollins all the way to realizing that they had ever met. 

Kaz would probably give her one of his versions of proverbs if she mentioned it to him, but maybe he would be right. People liked to set up those who had hurt them as deliberate, malicious, personal, all the better for defeating; in reality, they were just another person, chasing a few more kruge or a pleasure high. Not everyone might be addicted like Jesper, but they’re all slaves to a turn just as unpredictable as Makker’s Wheel, and the aftershocks are never fair in their distribution. 

That’s what I’m doing, Inej reminds herself. Making my own kind of justice.

The world owes her nothing. Kaz taught her to take all that she could regardless. It’s better when there’s no debt, he’d say. Then you can take as much as you want, instead of only what you deserve.

Well, the least that Inej and all the girls like her deserve is a better world. The least that Jordan deserves is to never have to fear meeting her memories on the streets of Ketterdam. This city is steeped in suffering, but if Inej has her way there will be less of it to go around. 

Berth twenty-two lies ahead, the Wraith’s flag fluttering demurely from its mast. When they reach the intersection of the cobbled street and the wooden path down to the docks, Inej gives Jordan’s shoulder a nudge. “I’ll race you to the ship.”

She can’t exactly win while they’re holding hands, but oh well. She’s not letting go of her daughter for anything.

Chapter Text

Kaz won’t say that he’s been making a point of spending more time in his office, no. But has he been doing it, nearly every day, checking the window all the while? Well, that would have to be a yes. 

Inej and Jordan have only been back for a few days, so he shouldn’t really be waiting to see them—especially since Inej is always busy when she’s back in the city. She doesn’t come back to Ketterdam just for social calls, and Kaz is glad for it, because that’s who she is. Inej has always sought after something greater. 

Still, her letters provide him no solace these days; he can read the same lines as many times as he wants, but knowing that she is here, in his city, barely more than a walk away, makes the letters feel like dead leaves in his hands. The life and the insatiable pull that he associates with Inej are gone from them, because now she is here, so close but as far away as she’s always been. And the man who fought an entire gang and won is, of course, not brave enough to seek her out, so he waits. 

It’s raining again today—a miserable drizzle, barely more than a mist, the usual for Ketterdam but somehow seeming more dismal than it normally does. The skies are slate gray even above the bent and crooked awnings over the slick streets below. Kaz should be getting back to check on things at the Crow Club soon; business will be ramping up there any time now as the locals get off work and the pigeons come rolling in from the docks. 

Still, he’ll stay a few minutes extra—as he has for the last few days—not really doing anything, even, except hoping like the self-acknowledged fool that he is. He spares a glance at his bare hands where they rest on his desktop. They’ve begun to feel less naked, less like an open wound for anyone to drive deeper, but it’s still an unnerving thing to catch out of the corner of his eye every once in a while. 

Above the desk hangs a canvas that he’s calling an invaluable abstract if anyone asks—a pioneer of a new style from Ravka by an apparently anonymous artist. Three blobs of color, a handprint, and a sun. If anyone asks him what it means, well, he just says that it’s his business to steal art, not analyze it. And this particular painting happens to be priceless. 

His eyes drift away from it with a shadow of fondness, and he’s just about to listlessly re-shuffle his papers when he stops and tilts his head to the side. There’s no sense that he can pinpoint—no sound, no shifting draft through the window, not even a scent—but his heartbeat has picked up, his hands gone still. Daring to look, Kaz turns partway around. 

Inej is standing in front of the window, her hood up over her head, a secretive smile on her lips that steals Kaz’s breath as surely as a hard fall. Jordan is clinging to her side, held by a sling-like scarf that she’s almost grown too big for. 

“I was wondering when you would make an appearance,” he muses. “You’re cutting it close, you know.”

“I always make it in time,” Inej replies, her smile widening ever so slightly. Kaz registers the slight crinkle around her eyes, the flash of white teeth, the fan of her half-lowered lashes; he can’t help it. He’s gone too long without seeing her, and now he doesn’t want to stop. This is all far too dangerous, but it’s slipping from his control.

“Why do you think I haven’t been able to replace you?” says Kaz, turning his chair all the way around. 

Inej sets her free hand on her hip. “Wylan had better hurry up and invent time travel, because I need to go back and inform seventeen-year-old Kaz that one day he’ll admit that I’m not replaceable.”

Kaz’s smile fades, just barely. I did say that, didn’t I? “No need to rub it in,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t contradict her. How can he?

Inej unties the sling and sets Jordan down, carding her fingers briefly through the little girl’s damp hair. “You are getting too big for that,” she teases. Jordan scrambles over to Kaz’s desk and starts poking around underneath it, although she isn’t going to find much besides crumpled pieces of paper and old pen nibs. He moves his chair over to make room for her. 

“I would have thought she’d be climbing on her own by now,” Kaz observes, arching an eyebrow. Inej crosses her arms, and he enjoys the old satisfaction of riling her as he used to so easily. 

“She’s five years old, barely, and it’s raining, Kaz. Clearly, you still expect us all to be miracle workers.”

“But have you ever fallen short?” asks Kaz, raising his eyebrows. 

Now Inej has set her hands on her hips. His successes just keep multiplying. Kaz is sure that it’s obvious how much he’s enjoying himself, but oh well. “Don’t you compliment me while arguing with me, Kaz.”

“And why ever not? I’m a man of many talents,” Kaz replies. 

“We saw a man,” Jordan interjects, poking her head out from under the desk. 

“Don’t hit your head,” Kaz says gruffly, sparing a glance down at her. His eyes find Inej again. “And who was this man?”

Inej’s posture straightens and she makes a point of holding his gaze. “No one.”

Kaz’s lips thin. He knows she’s lying—that's always been her way of facing a fight, to square her shoulders, to return to the acrobat's posture that she knows best—but he can’t discern whether or not it’s worth pushing the subject. 

“He was mean,” Jordan chips in, now sitting beside Kaz’s chair with her legs splayed out. “He didn’t say sorry.”

Kaz feels the low flame leap to life inside him, not hot enough to scorch but ready to surge at her word. “For what?” His voice is deadly calm, thin and sharp as a razor’s edge.

Inej’s eyes are still locked onto his, too stubborn to give a tell by looking away. “He ran into me,” she says stiffly. 

“You’re certain you didn’t know him?”

“If I did, I can protect myself,” Inej says sharply, her hands tensing at her sides. She inhales deeply and her shoulders relax. “He’s no threat to you, Kaz. He didn’t even recognize me.”

Kaz fits the pieces together, and then the gears of the lock turn at his will. He should have realized sooner. “They usually don’t,” he says. Speak my brother’s name and your son lives.

He’s distracted by Jordan’s hand poking up over the edge of his desk and looks down at her. She’s standing back up, presumably searching through his things for a toy or something she can make into one. Kaz should push her hand away, but he hasn’t put his gloves back on, and her hands are wet from the rain, and he doesn’t know if he wants to risk it. Inej has seen his damage whether he wanted her to or not, but he can’t take the chance of falling apart in front of Jordan. 

Maybe he can distract her. He’s done it before. He takes a single kruge note from his pocket, and to Jordan’s credit, that’s all that it takes to get her attention. He doesn’t have to say a word. 

Inej sighs in the background. “I don’t know how, but she learned that from you.”

“Good,” says Kaz. “An innate business sense will take her a long way.” It might have saved her namesake. He shakes off the thought. He doesn’t know why he keeps thinking about Jordie today, but he can wallow in all of that later. This isn’t the time. 

Continuing with his earlier plan, he holds the note between two fingers, twirls it, and drops the result into his palm. It’s now folded into the rough shape of a bird—a crow, to be exact. He hands it to Jordan. “Keep it,” he says, “but do something smart with it.” He can’t help chancing a look at Inej when he adds, “Never underestimate the value of a good investment.”

She just rolls her eyes. “Have you been feeding my crows?” she asks. 

“Since you asked,” says Kaz dismissively, which isn’t exactly a lie. She’d written and asked him to. What she doesn’t need to know is that Kaz had been doing it long beforehand. Now, every once in a while, they’ll bring by trinkets and shiny things that they find—nothing valuable, usually, except for a few brooches and tie pins and the like. 

“Good.” Inej moves over to lean on the end of his desk and runs her fingers through Jordan’s hair. “I’ll have to teach you how,” she says to the little girl. 

Jordan looks up curiously. “Crows?”

“That’s what that is,” says Kaz, nodding to the paper crow in her hands. He looks back at Inej. “I assume you have another reason for this visit?” Not that I’m complaining.

“Sharing information,” says Inej, still leaning on the end of his desk. “What I always do.” She pulls her hood back and her braid falls over her shoulder, almost brushing the tabletop. Kaz resists the urge to take his hands to it, to carefully unravel the strands, to twist the end around his fingers. He doesn’t like how much he’s thought about doing that. 

“And that is?” he questions, arching an eyebrow. He wonders briefly if it’s just an excuse, if she actually wanted to see him—it’s a bizarre thought, so he doesn’t give it too much consideration, but still the possibility remains. 

“Have you heard about this boy who’s been doing jobs for the different gangs?” she says, bending over the desk to pick up his pen and spin it between her fingers. The nimble motions of her hands are far too entrancing, and Kaz has to shift his eyes elsewhere so that he can pay attention to what she’s saying. “He’s young, and he hasn’t joined one yet, but he’s already getting a reputation for being fast, brutal, and willing to do seemingly anything,” she continues. 

Sounds like someone I know, Kaz thinks. People were calling him Dirtyhands even before he joined the Dregs, although the name didn’t come into common use until he started making a point of building his legend—the gloves, the suits, the ruthlessness. “Do you have a name, anything that will be useful to me?”

“His name is Felix Pieterse, or at least that’s what he’s going by.”

“The surname is from the Southern Colonies,” Kaz muses.

“He could be good for the Dregs,” says Inej, setting his pen back on the desk. “You wanted a new generation of fighters like you—hungry, desperate, not held to code or conscience. He seems to fit.”

“As we know, fighters like me are only satisfied with authority while it suits them,” says Kaz, folding his hands in thought. “But the chance might be worth taking. Good work.”

To his surprise, Inej laughs, her teeth flashing white despite the gray of the afternoon. He wasn’t prepared and finds himself caught up in it, the sight and the sound, his breath taking a moment to return to him. 

“I don’t work for you anymore, Kaz,” she teases. “And you never said that to me when I did.”

He leans back in his chair and gives her the faintest of smiles. “Call it making up for lost time.”

Inej leans down and takes Jordan’s hand. “So we will. I’ll see you at the party.”

He lets his eyes slide shut as they leave, his smile refusing to fade. And maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe, as long as there’s no one to see, he can take a chance, another step onto the bridge that’s never broken. Maybe for them, it’s worth it.

Chapter Text

Planning Jordan’s birthday party feels unnervingly like planning a heist. Inej feels like she should almost be sitting in Kaz’s window with her feet up on the sill, tossing wild ideas to him like she tosses seed to the crows. Instead, she’s in the third-floor sitting room at Wylan’s, which has now been dubbed the “War Room”, writing letters and measuring garlands until her hands and wrists ache.

Jesper teases her about it. “This doesn’t have to be a seamless operation, you know. This isn’t one of those plans where you die or get arrested if it goes sour.”

“I just want it to go right,” Inej protests, tipping her head back from where she’s kneeling on the floor to look pleadingly at him. “Besides, those are hardly the worst possible outcomes.”

Jesper’s brow wrinkles skeptically. “Oh?”

Inej deepens her voice in a poor imitation of roughness that scratches her throat. “Of course not. The worst thing is if we don’t get our money.”

Jesper practically cackles. “The resemblance is uncanny. You’re even doing the scowl right.”

“Am I?”

“Nope,” says Jesper, grinning impishly. “Not scary enough.”

“I’m terrifying.”

“I believe that,” he replies. “But you’re terrifying as you, not as Kaz.” He makes as if to leave, but he’s making enough of a presentation about it that Inej waits skeptically before turning back to work. As she expected, he reaches the door and casually adds, “By the way, Nina’s here.”

Inej leaps to her feet, her work forgotten. “Nina?”

“That’s what I said the first time,” Jesper says in amusement, standing aside to let her pass. “Walking up the steps as we speak.”

Inej pauses at the top of the stairs and peers back down the hallway at him. “Jordan is still with Wylan, right?”

“And determined to ruin any and all surprises, yes,” says Jesper. He flicks his hand at her. “Go on.” 

Inej can’t even pretend that she needs any more prompting. She forgoes the stairs entirely, instead leaping to the banister and sliding the whole way down. 

It only takes a few light steps to get from the main landing to the foyer where Nina is waiting, her hair artfully mussed by the wind but somehow looking as if she meant for it to be exactly that way. She looks more tired than Inej remembers—the old sparkle in her eyes is subtle, dormant—but the apples of her cheeks are flushed rosy and her smile is as brilliant as always. “Inej!” she cries, dropping her bag. 

Inej doesn’t answer, instead flinging herself into her best friend’s arms, where she is pillowed by Nina’s strong embrace. She stands on her toes to rest her head against Nina’s shoulder. “I missed you.”

“Oh, you have no idea.” Nina pulls back and cups Inej’s face in her hands. “Look at you. Captain Inej.” She pushes a few stray hairs back into Inej’s braid, and even though Tailoring has never been Nina’s power and certainly isn’t now, Inej believes that they’ll stay. 

“How are things in the icy north?” Inej asks, teasing gently. 

“Icy,” Nina replies. “Better, though. Better than before.” 

As glad as Inej is to see her friend’s old smile, there is something in Nina’s face that she feels sure must be reflected in her own—the time has touched them, roughed them up, made them tired. They thought that they were hardened by reality before, but in truth they were still wild and desperate in the way of all teenagers who like to play with risk and immortality. Knowing better has stripped even that away from them. They’re hovering around twenty-one and world-weary already. A nameless sadness surges in Inej, one that has no place here.

Nina links arms with her and together they walk towards the firelit sitting room that opens to the grand staircase. “Oh, and how’s Kaz? I can’t believe I’m asking after him, but—”

“Still an idiot,” says Inej with a soft smile. She can’t deny or hide the fondness that laces her voice. She still feels his touch against her hand. She still sees the cautious light creep back into his eyes. 

“So, better?” Nina asks, bumping an arm against her side. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“And you will,” says Inej, stopping beside one of the chairs. “He’s coming to the party.”

Nina barely has time to look surprised before Jordan comes scurrying down the stairs. “Mama—”

Nina raises her eyebrows and looks back at Inej. “ That much better?”

Inej sighs heavily, but she still feels herself blush. She sinks into the chair and holds out a hand to Jordan. “You were supposed to stay upstairs, love.” To Nina, she says, “It’s not like that. Besides, I told you what the party was for, so it’s not like you’re surprised.”

Nina comes to stand beside the chair, regarding Jordan carefully. “No, I just—she looks more like you than I thought.”

Neither speaks of the wicked cleverness in Jordan’s eyes that reminds them of someone else. 

“Coincidence, I suppose,” says Inej, smoothing Jordan’s hair. “My crew rescued her. She needed me.”

“I believe you. You know I do,” says Nina. “She’s in good hands.” Inej’s heart swells with gratitude. She should have known that her friend would understand. 

Jordan is looking shyly at Nina, clinging to Inej’s leg. Inej looks down at her. “This is Nina,” she says. “One of my best friends.”

She sneaks a look out of the corner of her eye at Nina, who’s beaming, and adds in a stage whisper to Jordan, “She gives the best hugs.”

“I like hugs,” Jordan says warily, taking a careful step forward. 

Nina comes around the side of the chair and kneels in front of her. There’s nervousness in her smile, and Inej can’t help but feel amused. 

Jordan takes another step, then another, then carefully grasps a strand of Nina’s hair. Nina shoots a look at Inej out of the corner of her eye; Inej just smiles. 

Apparently, having long, pretty hair is good enough for Jordan, because she rushes into Nina’s arms. Nina’s nervous smile grows full and startled, a sudden and vibrant thing like a firework, and Inej laughs. 

<><><>

The house is filling, and Inej is relieved to find that she hasn’t yet grown soft. It’s like a familiar dance—being in constant motion, doing five things at once and thinking about several more, darting from one place to the next when a new problem arises. It’s exhilarating. Jesper is doing as much as he can and keeping up gamely with her pace; she remembers fighting by his side, the way a shoot-out could make him seem like he’d been struck by lightning, his hair sticking up and all. Now she can toss out instructions to him and trust that he’ll get where she needs him more quickly than she can. 

She’s interrupted in the middle of counting servings in the kitchen by Wylan this time, who she’ll dare say seems to being enjoying the chaos as well. He ruffles his red-gold curls and fixes his collar. “Just to let you know, I think your parents are here.”

Inej looks up abruptly. A few more stray hairs fly into her face and she smoothes them back with some irritation. “Can you let them know that I’m almost done here? Or—” She looks over the plates and platters again. That’s probably enough. If she can take the kind of risk that involves climbing six stories up a recently-run incinerator, she can guess at the amount of food needed for a child’s birthday party. 

Inej pauses before rushing out the door, however. “Where’s Jordan?”

“Still upstairs,” says Wylan, “not that she’s happy about it. At least Mother doesn’t mind.”

Inej can’t quite hold back a smile. “Will Marya be joining us later?”

He shakes his head, trying to look unbothered. “Too many people.”

Inej sets a hand on Wylan’s shoulder and meets his eyes. “That’s all right. She’s doing better. I’ve seen it.”

He gives a brave half-smile. “I know. It’s just that she used to love parties—performing for everyone. She told me one day, once I got good enough, I could play for her and she’d sing.”

“Maybe you can try if things quiet down later,” says Inej, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “If not, you can play and Nina and I will sing. We’ll make you sound good.”

At that, he laughs a little. “I already sound good. Go on, go see your parents.”

Inej grins at him. “I think Jesper is rubbing off on you.” But it doesn’t take any more prompting for her to walk quickly out to the foyer. During her first few stays with Jesper and Wylan, the enormous house had seemed like somewhat of a maze, but by now she could probably navigate it in the dark. 

By the time she gets there, Nina is already conversing with her parents in Suli. Inej feels a sudden rush of gratitude again for her friend and quickens her stride to join them. 

“ Meja,” her mother greets her, pressing a kiss to Inej’s forehead. Her father wraps her in a brief but strong embrace. 

Like she’d seen in Colm, they look comfortingly unchanged. Inej is reluctant to leave her father’s embrace. 

“I’m glad you’ve met Nina,” she says, the language of her birth sliding easily from her tongue. “Now my family by blood shared has met my family by blood shed.”

“It sounds so serious when you say it like that,” Nina teases. 

“But it’s true,” Inej replies, her heart full with her family around her. Now Kaz just needs to get here and it will be like it used to be. 

Well, not really. 

Inej feels a sudden burst of fear that somehow it will be worse—that being together again will make them feel too keenly what’s missing. They are not the same reckless children who would take on the world for freedom and vengeance and gold. They are not the same children who loved each other desperately, fiercely, foolishly, and lost to the hand of the odds. They were so vibrant, so vivid and alive even when everything seemed to say that they shouldn’t be. They could only live in defiance for so long. 

Inej takes Nina’s hand and grips it tight. Even if it’s terrible, even if they’re not the silver six anymore, they can still love each other with all the defiance and desperation that they once had. They can still look a world in the eye that won’t notice their loss and demand to be noticed. They can still rob justice itself and win by their own rules. It’s not too late. 

Her parents are talking still. Inej drops her head onto Nina’s shoulder. “No mourners,” she whispers.

Nina squeezes her hand. “No funerals.”

Chapter Text

Inej knows when he arrives. She doesn’t know how exactly, since Kaz doesn’t make a habit of announcing himself, but she does. She’s sitting in the main parlor with her parents and Jordan, smiling while her mother fusses over the little girl. This motherly pride is a new and welcome feeling; every time someone tells her that Jordan is a beautiful, healthy child, or oh look how clever she is, Inej finds herself smiling and standing a bit straighter. She’s fretted about this to Nina. “I look like a proud hen, don’t I?”

Nina, loyal Nina, cups her face with one hand. “You look happy, Inej. It’s long overdue.”

Inej knows she’s once again smiling in spite of herself, though for a different reason, when she rises, murmuring to Mama that she’ll be back in a minute. When her light steps carry her over the short distance to the foyer, that smile only grows. He’s here.

Kaz turns automatically to her in the middle of fending off a maid who is insisting upon taking his hat. The maid takes advantage of his distraction to finally snap it up and hang it on a hook, despite Kaz’s impressive glare. 

His hands are tucked into his pockets, the set of his shoulders high and his expression endearingly wary. He has a parcel tucked under one arm, and when he draws the other hand free to take up his cane, it’s bare. Inej forces herself to walk instead of running to him as her heart is suddenly so desperate to do. 

“You came,” she says, more breathlessly than she wants to.

He gives her a look of mock disappointment. “You underestimate me.” Inej isn’t sure if anyone who knows him less would notice, but she senses the nervousness beneath his sleek, intimidating facade. She isn’t sure if she should be proud of him, but oh, she is.

She arches an eyebrow the way that he does, teasing. “Do I? Oh, and my parents have been asking after you.”

He hesitates. Inej wants to laugh. “Asking what?” he questions carefully. 

“Everything from how you’re doing to if we’re married yet,” Inej says as if it’s of no consequence to her. In truth, she’s probably blushing, and if Nina were here she’d laugh. 

“Ah,” says Kaz. “I see.” He gives her a sideways look as they begin to walk to the parlor. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing really,” Inej replies. The sudden longing to take his hand, to rest her head on his shoulder, swells in her without warning, and her breath almost stutters before she regains herself. “I’m just happy. That’s all.”

Kaz is silent for a moment, and then he says, “Good. That’s good.”

They’ve reached the others by now, and Nina is the first to look up when she sees them. She gets to her feet and strides over with the old confidence and presence that Inej remembers. She gives Kaz a critical look. “Brekker.”

He levels his gaze imperiously at her. “Zenik.”

Inej takes Nina’s arm. “Good to see that we’re all friends again.”

“His haircut is still terrible,” Nina stage-whispers to her.

“And perhaps one day I’ll make room in my schedule to care,” Kaz says drily as they join the circle around Jordan, where Inej finds herself tucked in between him and Nina. 

Wylan had given Jordan one of her presents early, essentially as a bribe to stay upstairs; it turns out to be a puzzle, which she is now working on in deep contemplation—at least until she sees Kaz. She waves a puzzle piece at him. “Da! Help me.”

Inej is amused to see Kaz, who normally makes himself the center of attention, seem slightly disconcerted at the eyes now landing on him. Nina elbows her side. “Da?” she whispers.

“That was Jordan’s idea,” Inej replies.

“But he isn’t stopping her, is he?” Nina replies. Inej follows her eyes to Kaz, who is levering himself down with his cane to sit beside Jordan. 

“No,” says Inej, a soft smile gracing her face. “That’s true.”

They stand and watch as Kaz takes the puzzle piece from Jordan, careful not to touch her hand as he does, and points out the space that it fits into. He says something quiet to her that makes her burst into giggles. 

Inej hears Nina gasp quietly next to her. “When did he stop wearing the gloves?”

“Just around me,” says Inej. “This is…this is new.”

Nina tilts her head. “I don’t know what I was expecting. Scars or something, maybe.”

There are scars, Inej thinks, you just can’t see them.

<><><>

The attention of the group is stolen when Jesper comes down the stairs, his arms full. “Since everyone’s here, I thought we’d do presents.”

“How thoughtless,” says Kaz, who is still sitting with Jordan. “I haven’t so much as looked at a tea sandwich.”

“Presents?” says Jordan.

“Ignore him,” Inej tells Jesper. 

Her mother nods wisely. “I used to say this to your father, all the time.” Her Kerch is much improved, but her accent is still slow and careful. Inej ignores the less-than-subtle hint. 

While Jesper comes over with the bundle of presents, Kaz picks up his cane again and takes the chair that Inej is standing next to. She looks briefly down at him, but the glance he returns is certain.

Jesper sets the pile down on an empty couch and takes a flat box off the top. “Mine first, since I’m doing all the work.”

“Saving the best for last, I see,” Kaz muses. He doesn’t smile, but there’s a touch of mischief in his voice. 

Jesper scowls. “Rude. At least Jordan will be nice to me when she opens this.”

“No I won’t,” Jordan says happily. 

“ Jordan. ” Inej refuses to laugh, despite her daughter’s mastery of the innocent look. 

“Everyone is bullying me today,” Jesper laments as he passes the box over to Jordan, crouching beside her. 

Jordan sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth in concentration and grabs the wrapping at the corner, from which she tears it off in one pull. 

Inej leans on the back of Kaz’s chair. “No manners,” she comments teasingly.

He lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. “She’s a little crow.”

Jordan pulls the lid off of the box and paws through the paper until she pulls out a pair of tiny black slippers with nubbly rubber soles. 

“Fabrikator made,” Jesper says with a twinkle in his eye. 

“I finally talked him into some training,” Wylan adds from his position in the background, rather proudly.

Inej goes to kneel beside Jordan and takes the little shoes in her hands. “You can use these to climb with me,” she explains. 

Jordan squeals happily. “I’m gonna be better than you!”

“Patience, meja ,” Inej says with a laugh. “Come here. Let’s see how they fit.”

Jordan plops down, her legs stuck out in front of her; she’s already barefoot, so Inej helps her slip the shoes on.

“Fits like a glove,” says Jesper with a wink in Kaz’s direction. Kaz rolls his eyes. Jordan is happily wiggling her feet.

“What do we say?” Inej coaches. 

“Thank you!” Jordan chirps. Jesper beams back at her. 

“Now if only Kaz could be that easily trained,” Nina says. 

“People aren’t in the habit of giving me things,” Kaz says smoothly. “That would be why I’m in the business of taking them.”

Inej stays quiet, looking around the circle. All of a sudden, her heart seems so full that her throat closes, and even if she wanted to say anything else, she couldn’t. This is her family—her parents pressed together on the loveseat, Nina with that old shine in her eyes, Jesper using his gift at last, Wylan looking on with pride, Jordan with her precious shoes, and of course Kaz, sitting back from the group, a quiet affection in his gaze that perhaps only Inej can sense. 

“Since none of us believe Kaz but nobody wants to argue with him, who wants to go next?” says Jesper from his seat on the floor. 

“Here,” says her father, passing a package down to Inej, who hands it to Jordan. It’s wrapped in a length of embroidered fabric—one of her mother’s scarves, she thinks, patterned with wild geraniums. 

“Careful,” she instructs to Jordan, gently unwrapping the scarf herself before allowing Jordan to open the box. 

“Keep it,” her mother says in Suli. “You are a mother now, Inej.”

Inej nods, the scarf clutched in her hands, not trusting herself to speak. 

Jordan gasps delightedly when she opens the box, and Inej’s heart stutters when she realizes what’s inside. It’s a dress—one of her old costumes—royal blue silk embroidered in shimmering gold. 

“It is not practical,” her father admits in careful Kerch, “but little girls should have pretty things.”

“Pretty,” Jordan agrees, turning the dress in her little hands so that the embroidery glitters in the light. “Thank you!”

Inej kisses the crown of her daughter’s head. “Good girl.” She knows it’s just a dress, but all the same, she wants desperately for Jordan to have the childhood that she lost. Maybe this is a small part of that. Jordan should never have to ration joy by what serves another purpose. She should have pretty things for the sake of having them. She should love because she can. 

“I already gave her mine,” Wylan says with his hands up. “Who’s next?”

“All right,” says Nina, “My turn.” She picks up a rather lumpy parcel off of the pile that Jesper brought down and bends to hand it to Jordan. 

“Soft,” Jordan says thoughtfully as she turns the parcel over, poking experimentally at the paper. 

“It’s not a puzzle, it’s a present,” Nina teases, one hand set on her hip as she stands to watch. “I know who you’ve been spending too much time with. Stop trying to look innocent, Kaz, it’s not in your nature.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” says Kaz, who admittedly has not belonged in the same sentence as the word innocent in anyone’s memory. 

Meanwhile, Jordan has torn into the package and pulled out a beautiful red coat, made of some kind of wool and lined with pale brown fur. She pets the inside and her eyes go wide. “ Really soft.”

“Oh, it is beautiful,” Mama puts in. 

“Glad you like it,” Nina says proudly. “Apparently good things come out of Fjerda after all.”

“Perhaps they just take some training,” Kaz muses quietly. Inej isn’t even sure that Nina hears him. 

She turns back to face him and rests an elbow on his chair, beside his knee. “Maybe now she’ll stop stealing yours.”

Kaz shakes his head, although he seems vaguely amused. “I don’t believe in chasing empty dreams, Inej.”

“It’s at least somewhat waterproof,” Nina says from her position beside Wylan. “Meant for snow, but I thought it could also work for sea spray—or Ketterdam rain,” she notes with a meaningful look at Inej. “Oh, and look in the box, there’s something else in there.”

“More presents?” says Jordan eagerly, making everyone laugh. She investigates the box and pulls out a silver hairpin in the shape of an ornate feather. “It’s shiny!”

Inej, still leaning on Kaz’s chair, turns back to him. “She really is a little crow, isn’t she?” she says softly. 

His nod is so faint as to be imperceptible, but it still makes Inej smile. 

“Jesper,” she says, “can you pass me that thin box on the top? The one wrapped in red.”

Jesper gets up and picks up the package she indicated, leaning over with one long arm to pass it to her before sitting down beside the last remaining parcel. 

Inej, from there, sets it in Jordan’s lap. “Do you remember what I promised?” she asks.

Jordan’s eyes go wide. “Knife?” she whispers.

Inej smiles conspiratorially. “Shh. Open it and see.”

Much more carefully than she’s handled any of the others, Jordan peels off the red paper and lifts the lid away from the box. From the velvet lining, she lifts a small, slender blade—a letter opener, in essence—the handle silver engraved with red. Ever so gently, she turns it back and forth, watching it catch and reflect the light. Her little mouth is open in an expression of wonder. “Thank you, Mama!” she says, smiling widely at Inej. 

Inej feels her parents’ eyes on her. She can’t bring herself to look at them—she knows what they’re thinking. 

“That is…unusual,” her father says in Suli, in the tone he would use with her when she was a child and he wanted to correct her without her getting upset.

“I want her to be able to protect herself,” Inej returns, trying to stay quiet despite the fact that nobody can understand what they’re saying. 

To her surprise, she hears Kaz speak up from behind her, although in Kerch. “It’s practical. We’ve been writing. She can open the letters without mutilating them like those presents.”

Inej turns to face him in silent gratitude. She knows what it must have cost him to admit their communication, even in front of people he should trust. She prays that they won’t make a fuss about it. 

“Oh, you have, have you?” Jesper says mischievously. “Inej, where’ve you been hiding all those perfumed love letters?”

Inej runs a hand over her face. “Saints’ sake, Jesper, it’s just an exchange of information. Ketterdam happens to be a popular place for bounty hunters.”

Jesper opens his mouth, probably to continue with his teasing, but Wylan’s hand lands on his shoulder and he stops. Instead, he picks up the last package. “All right, boss, you’re up.”

Nina laughs, full and warm the way Inej remembers. “We don’t work for him anymore, thank the Saints.”

“If anyone knows old habits die hard, it’s me,” Jesper says with a grin. Wylan shakes his head, but he’s smiling. 

Jesper gets up and sets the small box into Kaz’s hand. He does a double-take when he notices the lack of gloves, but Inej gives him a look, imploring not to say anything. She can feel the tension radiating off of Kaz and doesn’t want to damage his efforts. 

Once Jesper sits back down, Kaz leans forward, one elbow resting on his knee, and hands the box down to Jordan. It’s black, unassuming and plain. Even still, it’s a mark of her bewildering love for Kaz that she immediately sets the knife box down and takes it. 

Everyone seems awfully quiet as Jordan opens the box. The first thing she pulls out is a small, white paper bag with colorful sweets inside. She gasps. “Candy!”

“Oh,” Mama says with interest. “Where do you buy this?”

There is quite a bit of muffled snickering. “Oh yes, Kaz,” Nina says devilishly, “where did you buy that? With good, honest kruge, of course?”

“You know I never reveal my secrets,” says Kaz, perfectly serious.

Jordan, meanwhile, has lifted the second thing out of the box. It’s a pocket watch—weathered, probably ten years old at least, and when she opens it there are faded planets around the edges of the face. 

“You would give a five-year-old a watch, wouldn’t you?” says Nina. 

“It’ll last her,” says Kaz, cold and calm, but Inej is looking over Jordan’s shoulder at the watch. On the back, there’s an old engraving: the letters J.R. 

Inej is reminded of Kaz’s R tattoo and her old wonderings of what it might mean. Could that J stand for Jordie?

“Tell him thank you,” she says to Jordan, softly. “This present is very special.”

“Thank you,” Jordan recites. She looks up inquiringly at Kaz. “J,” she says. “J is for Jordan?”

His bare hands twist in his lap. Something in his eyes flickers like the shadows of a candle’s flame. “Yes,” he says, his rasp rough and dry. “That’s right.”

Chapter Text

The evening has burned low, the city outside the windows dark beyond the yellow light of the streetlamps. Inej’s parents have retired to their hotel, and after being allowed to stay up late, Jordan has sometime since gone to bed. Soft voices and the click of glasses sink into the walls of the parlor, and in the shadows that press against the ring of fireglow, the years seem to encroach on those who remain. The chatter and banter from earlier has ebbed away, and Kaz can’t discern whether this quiet is the quiet of a church, of a library, or of a graveside. Maybe it doesn’t matter. There is reverence in what the time has made of them. 

The glass is cold in his bare hand. Kaz isn’t sure why his mind fixates on that detail, but it lingers in the background of his thoughts—a simple sensation, really. But it’s like taking off gray glasses after more than a decade and seeing the colors of the world again. 

Well, Ketterdam wouldn’t look much different, he thinks wryly. 

Jesper tilts his head back and drains what’s left in his glass. Even in these quiet hours, he does everything all in—with energy and vibrance. Tucked in beside him, Wylan is swirling his glass but hasn’t raised it to his lips in a good fifteen minutes. 

On the couch opposite, the one beside Kaz’s chair, Inej is next to Nina, close to her side. They look so comfortable, casual. Kaz isn’t in the habit of avoiding ugly feelings—he tends to embrace them, ride them out, let them make him the monster and deal with the effects after—but this twisted, far from simple jealousy is something he doesn’t want to dwell on. It’s hardly Inej’s fault that everyone else can embrace her should she so choose. But the thoughts have gotten worse for him, images and fantasies, like some new kind of torture—he can nearly feel what it would be like, the heat of her skin, her taut muscles, the press of her lips. He needs her to leave, but he needs her to stay. He needs her. 

“It’s all so different,” she says quietly. Kaz watches her, time slow and thick as syrup, the firelight catching on strands of her hair and making them look like spun gold. “It feels different.”

“Better in some ways,” Wylan says thoughtfully, his eyes trailing to Jesper beside him. 

“And worse in others,” Nina adds quietly. Kaz doesn’t remember her ever being subdued that way. As unnecessary as he might have found her extravagance before, this is almost unnerving. 

“I wonder if things could have happened any other way,” says Jesper, his fingers drifting over the buttons of his obnoxious paisley waistcoat. “If we still would have…I don’t know.”

“Met? Changed anything? Taken on the world?” Nina suggests.

Inej’s eyes are half-lidded in thought. “Not unless you all came to Ravka. I would have stayed as an acrobat.”

“We could’ve all joined the circus,” Jesper suggests with half a grin. “Maybe I could talk my da into it instead of sending me to university. Wy could do pyrotechnics.”

“Running away to join the circus? My father would be thrilled. I’d also make a very good clown,” Wylan says seriously, pulling on a strand of his hair. 

“I’d be a clown with you,” says Nina. “Or a waffle vendor.”

Inej rests her head on Nina’s shoulder. Kaz feels an unpleasant swoop in his gut. “You could be a Grisha mystic,” she says with a slow smile like the unwrapping of a secret. 

None of them mentions Matthias. Kaz isn’t about to. 

Wylan looks over at him. “What about you, Kaz?”

Jordie would still be alive. Too smart for school, he said. He could do anything he wanted. I could do magic. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaz says flatly. “It only happened one way. It’s a waste of time to wonder how else things could have gone.” I’ve wasted too much time doing that already.

Nina frowns at him. “It’s not really about—”

“Card tricks,” says Inej. He’s not sure if that’s the firelight reflected in her dark eyes or a glitter of mischief, but he’s fully ensnared either way. “Or you could always be a clown with Nina and Wylan.” Her smile shows a brief flash of white teeth, the edge of a laugh, the beginning of something terrifying. 

“I think anyone would pay to see that,” Jesper snorts. “I would.”

“Not enough money in the world,” Kaz says firmly. 

“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” says Nina. “We did almost die for thirty million kruge. ”

Kaz gives her a sardonic smile. “So what? We almost die every day.”

<><><>

They’re drifting apart, saying their goodbyes, and still he lingers. Inej knows, of course. She returns from talking to Nina and regards him carefully—waiting, he knows, for him to speak. But he can’t figure out what he wants to say. He doesn’t even know if he wants to stay. Well, maybe he does—desperately. 

“I have to go back,” he says, but she knows as well as he does that he’s making no motion to leave. Keep me here. Draw the time out. Make some excuse. Please.

“But not yet,” Inej finishes cautiously, her eyes studying him. He feels utterly exposed and is surprised to find that he doesn’t mind it. 

He inhales, forces himself to say it. “No. Not just yet, Inej.” Didn’t he say those words on another night, impossibly long ago? Is there that much difference between asking her to stay and saying that he will?

“Good,” she says decisively, her eyes never leaving his face. “Come back to the roof with me.”

I would follow you anywhere. I would follow you to the end of the world.

When they make it out the window and onto the roof—Kaz doing so without much grace—a soft wind is blowing, cold but not biting, promising spring rains to come. If only they could wash the suffering from this city. 

Inej has wrapped her mother’s scarf over her hair, but it’s slipped back a bit from her golden brow, framing her face, the ends draped over her shoulders. “Did you want to say something?”

Anything. Anything that will keep me here with you, that will stave off the time when I have to let you go again.

“She’ll understand the watch later,” he says at last, looking out over the dim lights of his city, the dark lines of the canals. The harbor is calling to him, asking to be known.

Inej is silent for a moment. He can feel her beside him, the breath between their shoulders. “Will I?” she asks.

Kaz looks down at the tiles, at his hands, white and bare. The tightness in his chest is foreign, and it doesn’t feel like his own voice speaking when he says, “I’‘m going to tell you.”

Inej turns to face him. The ends of the scarf flutter in the breeze. Kaz thinks distantly of catching one. “Then tell me.” It’s an invitation, not a command. Go on. Finish the story.

“I don’t—where do I—” He’s already starting to panic, his breath running away from him as he grasps uselessly for a place to start. He flexes his hands and forces a steadying breath. “Normally, the Council and the stadwatch don’t care much for keeping the Barrel clean, never mind that it’s impossible. But during a plague you end up with bodies in the streets.” He stumbles over the word bodies, images of white limbs and gray eyes rising into his vision. He tastes bile. 

He can’t look at Inej, but he can feel her eyes on him. He doesn’t know who he is now, without his gloves, with his cane downstairs, with no anchor but the city half-lit before him and Inej steady at his side. He’s afraid that he is no longer someone strong enough to keep her safe, if he ever was. 

But he has to go on. No matter what she says or thinks of him, or if he falls apart right here with no one but the yellow moon and his keeper of secrets to know, he can’t stop. “We were holed up together. Just some boxes that we called the Nest. Maybe it was something to do with crows even then, I—I got a splinter and Jordie pulled it out when he was still strong enough.” His eyes are wide and unseeing. He knows perfectly well that he’s spouting nonsense, hiding himself in unimportant details as if he can escape having to confess what happened next. 

“I didn’t know he was dead. The—the fever. They didn’t know I was alive, so they took us both.” It’s not cold, but he’s shivering like mad, his sentences degenerating into as many words as he can spit out at a time. The sickness is worse now, heavy and horrible. The bodies rise in the dark water. The harbor will be patient with its vengeance. 

“Kaz.” Inej’s voice is an echo, a beam from the surface, something he no longer hears or understands. He can’t stop talking. 

“Took me out to the Reaper’s Barge. I was—no one heard so I—I was too small. Jordie was there. He was dead. I had to swim. Too small for that too.” He’s a child again, lost in the waves, no one to listen or care. Sinking, drowning, and the voice he hears is just another echo in the storm. 

“Kaz.”

“Jordie could still save me,” he says, almost stubborn now. His voice is a child’s voice, his throat rough from plague and saltwater, his lungs starving for air. “Corpses float.”

“ Kaz. ”

He closes his eyes. He’s shaking so badly that he doesn’t know how he’s staying upright. This was a mistake. He should never have said anything. He should have left while he had the chance. And now he has nothing to regain his pride, no sin with which to scare her off, no horror to prove that he’s a monster and not a scared little boy. Why did he ever show it all to her? Why did he ever put the full truth of who he was, the child and the terror, into her hands? Now he can’t do anything but drown. Now she can do with it what she will. 

“Sit,” she says. “It’s flat here.”

The rotting eyes are still fixed on him, the hands still clinging, the water cold. “I don’t need to sit down.”

“Fine,” she says. “But do it anyway.”

Kaz sinks down and folds his arms over his knees, dropping his head onto them. He isn’t sure he’s breathing right, or at all. 

He feels the air shift as Inej sits beside him. She doesn’t say anything about the story. He continues to sink in the waves. The undertow is stronger than a fading dream of golden eyes in the firelight. But at least she knows. 

Something touches his hand. His head raises, eyes wide. 

It’s Inej. She’s wrapped the patterned scarf around her hand and is covering his with it—an anchor, a layer of safety. 

Kaz stares at her, trembling. He no longer feels like himself. He can’t trust himself to speak, even if he could think of what to say. 

“Thank you,” says Inej. The harbor wind murmurs on, but now her voice is in its song. The same voice that has brought him back from the dark every time. “Thank you for telling me.”

Kaz turns his face to the harbor, barely more than a shine against the black sky now. He’s always marked that desperate day on the Reaper’s Barge as the moment of his rebirth, the remaking of a boy into a monster. But maybe there was another day that reformed him again, slow and painful as a chrysalis, all catalyzed by the words “I can help you.” Maybe by the molding of her hands, by saving himself from the harbor this time around, he’s become something new again. 

Chapter Text

Kaz has enough to do that he’s no longer full-time floor boss at the Crow Club, but he does like to keep an eye on things. After all, it’s that place and Fifth Harbor that brought the Dregs up from the laughingstock they’d been under Haskell, and he doesn’t mind taking pride in them. The Silver Six means something else to him; his Crows can tease him about the name, but it was just too fitting to rename Rollins’ so-called palace after the team that bested him. 

It’s the beginning of the busy hours, and the lamp-lit club is filling with people and noise, just the way Kaz likes it. They know to give him a wide berth, which amuses and relieves him in tandem; aside from the prickling of his skin at any proximity, he has better visibility of the tables and the dealers this way. 

It gives him a restless sort of comfort to be here, in full view of something built by the man he has become. For over a decade, his life has been split into distinct halves: the boy and the monster, the child and the terror, a name that had a home and a name he’d stolen like everything else. Before the harbor and after. With Jordie and without him. Kaz Brekker had never known any place besides this city, the twisting alleys and black canals, and at some point or other he’d bought into his own myth, he thinks. But since that night on the roof, since he told Inej everything, the halves of his life have begun to bleed like the ink from his first cheap gloves. The slow fusion of Brekker and Rietveld into a man who can be neither is now stark in his notice. 

“Boss,” says Maikel. If his thinking face is as obvious as Jesper says, Kaz would love to know why people interrupt him anyway. He stares coldly at Maikel’s face, waiting for him to speak. 

“You wanted any information on that Pieterse kid,” the new bruiser states, pressing on stubbornly. “The little spiders tracked him and he’s headed for Fifth Harbor, probably to sabotage shipments. If we send someone—”

Maikel is useful, but overeager. He’ll have to learn the skill of intricacy. “Guard the door,” says Kaz, already heading out past him. At least the bruiser has sense to not complain. 

<><><>

He makes no secret of himself. Felix Pieterse has been an annoyance to the Dregs since shortly after Inej first heard about him—skimming off of their shipments, roughing up lower-ranking members, and generally making himself a thorn in Kaz’s side. It feels personal, and Kaz intends to find out why. 

He doesn’t have to search for long; he’s only been walking along the docks of Fifth Harbor for a few minutes when he sees a boy sitting on a stack of crates, tucked between a pair of warehouses. The kid can’t be more than sixteen, his clothes and thick sheaf of dark hair roughed up and mussed. 

If Kaz hadn’t been sure of his theory before, he is now: the boy’s eyes are black with hate. It’s an expression of which Kaz knows every line.

He stops at the base of the crates and folds his gloved hands neatly over the head of his cane, his head tilted ever so slightly to the side. He’ll let Felix open the negotiations; he clearly has something to say. 

Felix is crouched on the front of his toes, knuckles balancing on the edge of the crate; it puts him just above Kaz’s eye level but well within his view. He’s snub-nosed, freckled, tanned—can’t have been in Ketterdam for long. “I didn’t think you’d actually come,” he says. “Figured you’d send someone.”

Kaz spreads his hands. “Congratulations. You’ve made yourself enough of a nuisance to gain my notice. Most people wouldn’t call that a good thing.”

Felix’s lips twist bitterly. “You really think you’re the toughest thing walking these streets, don’t you, Brekker? Like you’re invincible because you’re rich and not afraid to bash in a man’s skull? You wouldn’t have come if I were just a nuisance. I worry you.”

“I had the fear beat out of me before I was your age,” Kaz replies. He was this boy far too recently to be talking that way, but it’s the truth. “All that’s left is sense and spite.”

“Like you’d know spite.” Pieterse leaps down from the crates and lands right in front of Kaz. He’s close enough that Kaz feels the rush of wind from it, the brush of the kid’s breath. The water laps at his feet, hungry to consume him, patient with its vengeance; since that night on the roof, the memories have been prone to rise at the slightest provocation, consuming any time he lets his mind rest. He hasn’t been sleeping much. 

Despite the thundering of his pulse and the sickness that coils in him, he refuses to step back. 

“There’s no justice here,” Felix spits. “You can’t deserve a cent of what you have.”

“I worked for it all,” Kaz replies, his voice low and harsh. Whatever this is about, he’s ready to be done with the chatting and face it. He learned long ago that he is willing to hurt anyone and everyone to make sure that he is never hurt again. “I fought for it. I killed for it. If you’re in the way, you can join the list. But you didn’t come here to tell me what I’ve heard before.”

“You don’t know?” Pieterse tips his head, mockingly wide-eyed. “But I thought Dirtyhands knew everything. Maybe they were right in saying you’d gone soft.”

Kaz knows well enough to tell when he’s being baited. If the things people say are really a matter of concern, they’re certainly not an immediate one. “Every story changes with the teller,” Kaz says smoothly. “And you aren’t hiding the fact that you’re aching to tell, so allow me to indulge you.”

“Like hell you will,” Felix mutters. He leans back on the crate. “It’s a shame really. We’ve met, you know.”

Kaz regards him in silence. He’s got a pistol in his pocket and he’s not about to waste his time. He’s going to get rid of this problem one way or another. 

“I guess you don’t even remember that ,” says Felix, rolling his neck and smirking cruelly. The smirk vanishes as he stands up straighter and takes a step across the space between them. “That’s what I mean by justice. It’s not so hard. If you’d just think about it with that monstrous brain of yours—” 

He reaches out, perhaps to grab Kaz by the lapel. Kaz doesn’t care to find out; before the boy’s fingers brush his coat, he’s spun his cane in his hand and cracked Pieterse across the jaw. He grunts and falls back against the crates with Kaz standing over him. 

“Stop wasting my time,” Kaz snaps. His heart is still racing. “The theatrics aren’t helping you unless you’re trying to get shot.”

“Fine,” Felix spits, blood spraying behind the words. “I’ll feed it to you and we’ll see if you remember. No reason, no permission, and no shame, huh, Dirtyhands?”

“Shame is bad for business,” Kaz replies, smoothing his lapel. As his gloved hand passes over his heart, he feels its thrumming. “I don’t have time for it.”

“Make time,” says Felix. He’s on his knees, but managing to kneel with defiance. “We just came here, me and my da. Weren’t even supposed to stay. We wanted to buy a farm.”

“Touching,” says Kaz.

Felix slams his fist against the crate. “You wanted me to talk, let me talk. You don’t get to take that from me too.”

Kaz gestures grandly for the boy to continue. It’s like prodding a bull, but riling people up tends to make them reckless, and that’s where Kaz can exploit their mistakes. 

Felix’s chest rises and falls with the exertion of fury alone. “We were going to sell my father’s ring. Pure gold. Emeralds around the band. Remember that?”

Distantly. He sold it for some obscene amount more than it was worth. But he doesn’t say any of that to Pieterse; he just keeps glaring, lets his conscience slip away from him, lets the beast he is show its manic gleam in his eyes. This is bigger than an heirloom, and his mind refuses to trace it further. Why would his greatest weapon now betray him?

“When he lost it, when you stole it, Da went to the tables,” says Felix, his face twisting as he speaks. His voice is low and controlled, but saturated with rage. Some furious thing inside of this boy aches to be set loose. Kaz can relate, but he’s careful not to sympathize. “To your club. He was desperate, thought maybe he could make the money back. Instead,” he says, his voice rising as he pushes to his feet, “he got killed by his creditors.”

“Then your father was just another pigeon looking for quick coin,” Kaz says sharply. “Go to war with his ghost, not with my gang.”

Felix stares, almost shaking with fury. “Easy for you to say. Do you even remember his name?”

The words die on Kaz’s tongue. He keeps up a cold exterior, silent, but suddenly his thoughts are raging. 

Speak my brother’s name. 

Just another pigeon looking for quick coin.

Remember that? See, it’s easy.

Does he? Does it take memory to see what he’s turned into? 

He has always been a monster and always been a boy. The first thing he ever did was kill. He’d known to beat up someone weaker and take what they had without having to learn. He wants to take Inej and Jordan and show them the apple trees. He is a sick shell of that child who will hurt anyone before they can hurt him.

He is something much worse. He is a Barrel boss who stripped a child of his family for a price.

There’s the answer to your identity crisis, Jordie whispers cruelly, a voice he hasn’t heard in—not long enough. Do you like it?

“Why the gloves, anyway?” Felix says abruptly. “You and I both know you don’t have claws.”

“Don’t I?” says Kaz, deadly quiet, not quite facing him. 

“No.” Felix shakes his head, takes a slow step forward. “You’re just a man…”

He reaches for Kaz’s glove. 

There’s a panicked second between his hand brushing Kaz’s wrist and Kaz shoving him against the crate with a pistol to his temple where it almost unravels. Or maybe it has already. 

Kaz steps back, the gun still extended, his heart jackrabbiting against his ribs. “The Dregs could use you,” he says, a smile in his voice but none on his face—and it’s a smile that shows teeth. 

“They do say to keep your enemies close, don’t they?” says Felix. “But you’re only human. A crooked crown will fall the same as any other.”

Kaz Brekker, philosopher crook. He wills Rollins’ voice out of his head. “Find a gang that needs you. Make people know that you built it up. Take every job until you can afford not to.” 

“Thanks,” Felix says acidically, “but if I do things your way, you’ll see me coming. I’ll leave you time to forget me between now and when I destroy you, since your memory is so short.”

“I doubt I will. Stay off our territory.” Kaz turns his back—which is less of a surrender and more of a challenge. He’ll walk away.

“What did you do with the ring, anyway?” says Felix from behind him, a bit too casually. “Give it to that little girl of yours?”

Kaz doesn’t ask how he knows. Felix Pieterse is just as angry and just as dangerous as he was, but a measure more reckless. He can’t sense that he has pushed too far. Where Kaz might only bluff that he’d buried Rollins’ child, someone with less subtlety might go through with it. 

Kaz turns halfway around. He doesn’t quite look. He just fires.

Chapter Text

Inej has trusted Kaz with her life. She should be able to trust him with her child. Their child, if Jordan has anything to say about it. 

Jordan has been clinging to her back most of the way to Kaz’s window, but the last jump is short enough and the roofs dry enough that Inej lets her climb down and try it. 

“Keep your eyes where you want to land,” she says, pointing to the spot on the Slat’s roof that they’re aiming for. “And remember that it’s better to land too far than too close.”

I sound like my mother, she reflects. Practical advice that’s actually a metaphor.

Jordan is as oblivious as a younger Inej might have been, however; she crouches like a little frog and springs off to land on the shingles opposite. Inej is unreasonably proud of how quiet her landing is and finds herself smiling as she follows. 

Jordan pushes experimentally on the window. 

“He never locks it,” Inej says with a sigh. “Although once he starts teaching you to pick locks, he might.”

She pulls at the stubborn frame and slides the window open, slipping inside from the gray sky. Kaz must have gotten her note; he comes in just as they’re arriving, clearly after a labored climb up the stairs. 

“Why didn’t you keep the downstairs office?” Inej asks, swinging her legs over the sill while Jordan hops down into the room. 

“It doesn’t have a window,” Kaz replies. There’s a smile in his eyes that doesn’t quite make it to his face, but it’s subdued somehow. She hasn’t seen much of him since he told her the story that still weighs on the back of her mind, and when she has, he’s been…different. Distant, but no longer confident in his distance. Uncertain. Unmoored. It would make sense. She doubts he’s ever told anyone before.

“Da!” Jordan says, waving happily, but to Inej’s surprise, Kaz’s expression darkens at the sight of her. 

“I don’t know if you should leave,” he says, pulling out his desk chair and sinking into it, stretching his bad leg out. 

“It’s just a supply run,” says Inej with a slight frown. She tries to quiet the frustration rising in her, but for once, she wants to be able to trust him. She wants to believe that if he says he’ll stay, that he’ll do better for Jordan, then she can come back the next day and hold him to it. 

“It’s not that,” says Kaz, picking up a pen in his gloved hand and twirling it between his fingers. He stops, carefully sets the pen down on his desk, and meets Inej’s eyes for the first time. His gaze is black and burning, and her breath stutters. “Someone found out about her.”

Now Inej is forgetting to breathe for a very different reason. “Who?” If she’d known, she never would have sent a note—that was too easily tracked—she would have to change all of her plans…

“Felix Pieterse,” Kaz says, ever so quietly, his rasp a grating burr. His gaze has fallen to the floor now. There is something in his expression beyond Inej’s understanding, and there are so few looks she’s never seen on him before that she can’t name it. Is it remorse? Suddenly, without knowing why, she’s afraid. 

“How did he—”

“I don’t know.” His voice is still that dangerous quiet. “But he’s dead.”

Inej reflexively looks at Jordan, but she has pulled the watch from her coat pocket and is sitting on the floor, holding it up to her ear and bobbing her head in time with the ticking sounds. She slips down off of the window sill and walks up to him, standing where she can still see Jordan. She lowers her voice. “You killed him.”

Kaz’s gaze rises to hers, unapologetic and unforgiving. Somehow still defeated. 

She doesn’t look away, as much as she wants to. “He was a child, Kaz.”

“He was me. And he knew about Jordan.” 

Inej takes a step back. She isn’t sure that she agrees, but she understands. They have spent too long doing what has to be done, making their own kind of justice. Kaz knows his nature; she has to believe in that. And she knows what to do now. “If you will kill to protect her,” she says, “I trust that I can leave her with you.”

Kaz looks down at Jordan, tracking her with a new gentleness in his eyes. Once again, Inej feels a desperation to pull apart the clockworks of his mind, to understand what lies beneath his machinations. 

She steps away, back to the window, leaving a small bag of Jordan’s things by the desk. “Jesper and Wylan will be back from the conference tomorrow.”

He watches her go. He doesn’t say a word. 

<><><>

Sleep has always been an inconvenience to Kaz. In the Barrel, being asleep meant being vulnerable, and besides, the city itself never slept, so what might pass him by if he allowed himself to? He had a business to run, vengeance to craft, a kingdom to build, and far too many pigeons ripe for the plucking to miss. Even back on the farm with Jordie—in his other life that has begun to feel much more like part of this one—he’d never wanted to go to bed, afraid of what he might miss or the time he’d be wasting.

Lately, he avoids it in hope of missing something, of seeing Jordie every time he closes his eyes. But it could only go on for so long. 

Normally he doesn’t recognize them, the white faces in the black water. This time, it’s not just Jordie—it’s Jordan, it’s Inej, it’s Felix Pieterse, blood running down his side. Their hands reach for him, they give in his grip, they stare blankly. He can’t get away. He can’t breathe. His lungs are filling with salt and rot. 

The fever burns in the chill of the harbor. There are more of them every second, burying him, obscuring the sky. He twists and writhes in desperation until suddenly there’s a ceiling over him instead of storm clouds and gray-eyed faces. He’s shaking so badly that there is a distant rattling in his ears. He hasn’t realized that he’s sitting up until he’s staring at his lap, staring like the faces imprinted onto his memory. 

Before he knows what he’s doing or why, he’s grasped his gloves with shaking hands and pulled them on, fighting to breathe right again. He looks at Jordan, who built a little nest for herself under the desk. He doesn’t have much in the way of spare pillows and such, but she seemed happy to take one and burrow into his coat. 

He blinks hard and swallows down the sickness in his throat, the image of her swollen face and rotting eyes. She’s all right. She’s here and they’re both all right. 

Well, not entirely. 

As his eyes adjust to the dark, he realizes that she’s crying, soft whimpers reaching his ears over the shuddering of his own breath. He shoves a hand through his hair, rocking on the edge of the bed, trying to force himself to get up and go to her. What good is the half-spoken acceptance that he is her father if he can’t force his way through this?

Ignore the pain. Ignore the lies you know. Face it later. Do what has to be done.

The contradiction aches. To help her, he has to do the very thing that’s gotten him here, the very strategy he’s been fighting to unlearn. 

Jordan squirms and her little eyes snap open, bright in the dim shadows, and she immediately starts to cry in earnest. “Da?”

The name strikes him like a bullet to the chest. He shoves himself up off the bed and doesn’t bother to go for his cane, instead taking the few steps to the desk and levering himself down on his stronger side. 

She puts her arms out, reaching for him. “Da!” 

His breath catches. He shakes his head. What can he say? Can he say anything at all? He knows he can’t stand to touch her, not now. He can’t hold her, can’t even sit close to her. What does it make him if he can’t even force himself to speak?

Jordan looks on the edge of a fresh wave of tears. “There were bad men,” she whines. 

Kaz forces himself to inhale deeply. “I’ll protect you,” he says, though the way he sounds he isn't sure she should believe it. He doesn’t quite look at her. He’s afraid of what his broken mind will make him see. 

“I want a hug,” Jordan sniffles. 

Kaz’s gloved hands curl in his lap. He could try. But it would be so much worse for the both of them if it went wrong, and he’s barely holding himself together as it is. But she needs him. 

Inej trusted him with Jordan. He refuses to fail that. 

“I can’t,” he says, his voice coming out hoarse and horrible. He pushes his hair back off of his face again and looks at her. 

All he sees is her face in the dark, small and round and streaked with tears. She hiccups and rubs her eyes. 

mati en sheva yelu.  This action will have no echo. He wishes he had the strength to promise her that. But all he has to give is what he should have said to far too many people years ago. 

“I’m sorry.” He says it so quietly that he doesn’t even hear himself. Say you’re sorry. Inej would know what to do if she were here. But he’s spent enough time fighting alone that he can face this, too. And if he can manage it, beyond every fight, every heist, every challenge, it might be the bravest thing he’s ever done. 

“You know why Inej makes you ask,” he says slowly, “before you hug me. Sometimes it’s…” 

This is all wrong. This isn’t like him. But it feels absurdly safe, suspended, nowhere to fall. “Like that dream you had.”

“Scary,” Jordan says, nodding slowly. “Hugs are nice. Hugs aren’t scary.”

“Sometimes they are,” says Kaz, pressing one gloved hand hard to his knee. 

Jordan is quiet for a moment, apparently thinking about this revelation. “ You’re not scared of anything.”

“That’s what we tell people,” says Kaz, and he finds that he can breathe again. “This is our secret.” 

Jordan puts her small hand out. His heart starts racing again, but all she does is touch her thumb to the little finger of his upturned hand. “Not scary?” she asks. 

Kaz shifts his shoulders back and lets himself breathe. “Not at all.” His eyes trail her small, nimble hands. With some training, she could fit those into locks and pockets better than even he could. “We don’t have to go back to sleep just yet. How’d you like to learn to pick locks?”

Jordan gives him a smile too big for her face, and the water begins to recede. 

Chapter Text

“Tag, you’re it,” says Nina. It has been three hours since Inej left, and Kaz is fairly sure that Jordan hasn’t gone one minute without crying or sulking. He’d thought it couldn’t get worse than the crying, and then she started to pout. 

Jesper has sometime since fled the upstairs sitting room where they’ve sequestered themselves. Lucky him. Kaz is going to find Jesper and make him cry. 

“That is cruel and unusual by my standards, Nina dear,” says Kaz, who is being offered a wailing Jordan. He could be at the Crow Club right now. He probably would have been if he were smarter.

“Indeed, how dare I make you take care of your own child,” she says sarcastically. “I have already made my noble sacrifice. Inej should marry me when she gets back.”

It might be easier for her, Kaz thinks. However, he halts his internal argument re: the Dregs wondering where exactly he’s been, and shrugs off his coat. 

“I gave her a perfectly good one,” Nina protests. Now they’re both pouting. Maybe Kaz will leave, see how they like it. 

“That didn’t work, now, did it?” he says, and drapes the heavy wool coat over Jordan where she’s sitting on an olive velvet armchair. All goes blissfully silent, and she peers out at them from beneath the collar. 

“Saints’ sake,” Nina mutters irritably. “I hate you so much.” 

“You’re welcome,” Kaz says drily, taking the seat beside Jordan. 

Nina remains standing, regarding both of them with her hands on her hips. “Maybe if we get lucky she’ll fall asleep.”

“I don’t wanna sleep,” Jordan says stubbornly from somewhere within Kaz’s coat. Her voice starts to wobble. “I want Mama.”

Kaz’s glare exists on several levels. The one he pins Nina with now could make a grown man cry. 

Unfortunately, this is Nina Zenik, so she just glares back.

Chapter Text

Jordan is not sleepy. Her da keeps making fun of her for yawning, but he’s just mean, and he’s the one who let her stay up super late anyways. He gave her some locks and some little poky metal things that she’d waved around, watching them catch the light, until he told her to stop before she put someone’s eye out. Then he laughed. She still doesn’t know why that was funny. 

He says she’s doing a really good job, too—she just has to fiddle around with the poky things until the lock clicks open, and then he almost smiles. That’s nearly as good as a hug, since her da is very grumpy. 

But she knows new things about him now. She knows that there are things that scare him after all. She knows what his laugh sounds like. She knows that he likes candy because he took some of hers. She knows that even when you’re grown up and scary, you still get bad dreams sometimes. 

She went to sleep for a little bit after that and didn’t dream any more. Now they’re walking in a tunnel, and Jordan doesn’t even have to run to keep up because his stick makes him walk nice and slow. She’s wearing her new coat with what’s left of her candy in one pocket and her watch and knife in the other one. Her da has her climbing shoes so that they don’t get messed up walking on the stone. 

When they come out of the other end of the tunnel into a foggy day, it’s only a little bit more of a walk to get to Jesper and Wylan’s house. Mama says she used to call them silly names, Tall Man and Red Boy or something like that. Jordan is older now. She knows people’s names. She knows Kaz and Inej, but she likes Da and Mama better. 

They don’t go in the front door. Instead, her da takes them around the side to a smaller door with a round knob and a little roof over it. Jordan tries to twist the knob, but it doesn’t turn. 

Her da holds his hand out and slides one of the shiny needles from his black-gloved palm into her grasp. She puts it in the lock and moves it around like he told her to until she feels it slide into the right channel and then the gears click. Beaming, she looks up at her da. 

He motions to the door. “Try it again.”

Jordan tries the handle, and this time it opens! She gives an excited little squeal. 

“Now, that ,” says her da, “is going to get you caught. A bit more training and you’ll be able to crack something like that in about two seconds.”

“Sorry,” says Jordan in a small voice, but she can’t stop from giggling, just a little. 

Jesper is sitting on the couch when they go in, wearing a bright yellow shirt. Jordan loves his clothes. Her da does not. 

Jesper picks up his head and looks over his shoulder at them, not even bothering to get up. “Really?” he says. “I’m almost positive we gave you a key.”

“And I’m almost positive I told you to replace those locks with something a five-year-old couldn’t get through,” says her da, tapping his stick against the floor. 

Jordan waves with the hand that’s still holding the shiny needle. 

Jesper stares at them both. “You didn’t.” When there’s no answer, he keeps talking. “You did. ”

“Yes, and I need you to make me another set of lockpicks. And fix the one she bent.” He crosses the room to Jesper, his stick clacking against the floor as he goes, and Jordan trails behind.

“Good to see you too,” says Jesper, but he takes the thing that her da hands to him. He sees Jordan and kneels down so that he goes from being as tall as a tree to about her height. “So you get to hang out with me and Wylan for a bit, huh?”

Jordan nods enthusiastically. “I wanna see more magic.”

Jesper shakes his head, grinning. “Kaz does magic. I do science.”

Jordan shrugs. “Up,” she demands, putting her arms out to him. He’s really tall, and when he stands up she’ll be up super high. 

“But of course, your highness,” says Jesper, and puts her all the way up on his shoulders. “But you know that you have to stop growing or you’ll be too big for this.”

“Or get as tall as you,” says Jordan. She’s taller than her da now! She waves down at him happily, but he’s not looking at her—he’s staring hard at the top of his stick with a face that’s sort of sad-mad. Jordan doesn’t understand what it is or why, but she knows it’s not a happy face. She wants her da to be happy again. She makes a silly face, but he doesn’t look at her. 

Jesper pats her leg. “Well, it’s lucky for everyone that Wylan and I are here just in time to save you from getting too corrupted.”

“Depends on your definition of corrupted,” her da mutters, still looking at the floor. “Your fashion sense is a greater crime than anything I’ve done.”

“Now that ,” says Jesper in a voice that makes Jordan giggle, “is a low blow.”

“It’s also the truth,” her da replies, tapping his stick against the ground and starting to leave. Jordan is about to squirm to get down so that she can go after him and make him stay, but she can’t latch onto him or grab his leg or anything unless she wants him to be scared again. It’s all so confusing. She just wants him to be happy and not grumpy or scared, but sometimes hugs are okay and sometimes they’re scary, and sometimes it’s only okay for him to hug her, and Mama isn’t here to tell her what’s okay since she always just seems to know, and suddenly Jordan feels like crying. She’s a big girl now and she shouldn’t cry, but her throat and eyes hurt like she’s just a baby again. 

“Hey, hey—” Jesper takes her down off of his shoulders and sits on the couch with her. “What’s wrong? You don’t want him to leave?” His hands are going all over the place, on the buttons of his shirt and over his short, curly hair and to his belt like he’s going to grab onto something but he doesn’t. 

Jordan just shakes her head, her lip wobbling. She isn’t just sad because he’s leaving, but all the other reasons she’s sad are too big for the words that she knows. She knows he’s coming back. She knows Inej is coming back. They said they would. But for some reason, she’s really, really scared that they won’t. 

“Well,” says Jesper, giving her a squeeze with one arm, “he just didn’t want to stick around for what I have planned, because your da is no fun.”

“Locks are fun,” says Jordan, scrubbing at her eyes. She wants to know what he’s talking about, though.

“Oh, my,” says Jesper in the same silly voice as before, “things are more serious than I thought if you think that locks are fun. Well, desperate times call for Jesper-ate measures.”

He laughs more than Jordan does, but he’s very silly, so she at least manages to smile. 

“Oh, come on,” he says with a big grin, “that was funny. Anyway, we’re going to fix this. You know how?”

Jordan sniffles. “How?”

Jesper swings her up high into the air and plops her down on the floor. She almost feels like she could laugh instead of crying, which is better, because she’s a big girl and her mama and her da are coming back. “We,” he says, “are going shopping.”

<><><>

Jordan has never been to this place before. Most of the things she knows about the city are the roofs, and the places where she and Mama have met Kaz when they come back from the boat, and Jesper and Wylan’s big house. This is a new place with nice stores and pretty ladies walking around. Jordan wants one of those dresses. 

Jesper is holding one of her hands and Wylan is holding the other one, and they tell her to run and jump and then they swing her high in the air like she’s flying. Jordan squeals and makes them do it again. She is still wearing her new coat, the red one with the fur, and she thinks that it makes her fit in with all of the fancy people. 

“Where do you want to go first?” says Wylan. He’s a little easier to walk next to than Jesper, who goes too fast, but not as easy as her da. 

“Um…” Jordan looks around at all the stores. Some of them have pictures outside of what they have, but a lot of them just have signs. Jordan is learning her letters, but she’s not very good at putting them all together. 

One of the stores has a picture of a big lollipop on the outside. Jordan pulls them over to it and looks up at the poster. “S…T…R? Stra…” She frowns. That word is too long. Also, Wylan is holding her hand really tight all of a sudden. 

“Strawberry cream,” says Jesper, “but if you want to know a secret, reading isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Just get someone to read to you.”

“ Jesper. Don’t tell her that,” says Wylan, but he doesn’t sound mad, he sounds happy. Grown-ups are weird. Jordan doesn’t think she ever wants to be one, except that there are lots of things grown-ups can do that she wants to do. 

Anyway, she wants to try the strawberry creams, whatever those are. They sound yummy. So she pulls Jesper and Wylan into the store after her. They have to let go and get in a line to go through the door, but Jordan is already running ahead anyway. She’s gonna eat so much candy—maybe that’s a good part of not having Mama here. She would probably say no.

Jesper pulls out a couple of coins and clicks them together. “All right, pick something out,” he says. “And don’t tell Kaz that you actually paid for something. He’ll be very disappointed.”

“Jesper.”

“What?”

<><><>

Elsewhere in the city, a boy wakes up in a dim room, with calloused hands dripping water into his mouth. There is an aching throb burrowed into his side, and judging by the sweat and tingling heat of his skin he has or has had an infection, but he’s more alive than he expected to be. 

He remembers, vaguely, those same calloused hands finding him shot and bleeding in an alley; he remembers them touching him, being gentle with him, carrying him into the darkness and through the fire. Now he knows that he has been fevered, for he’s only ashes of what he was before. Maybe it was infection or maybe just his rage consuming him as he slept, but he has been burned down to the hard and blackened core of who he has to be to do what must be done. 

He sits up achingly slowly, a hand pressed to the wound in his side where a bullet has sometime since been removed. 

“You got lucky,” says the voice of his rescuer. It is an old and creaking voice. “They missed.”

He won’t be a nuisance that Dirtyhands is so easily rid of. Unarmed, he shook the man enough to make him miss. He is already imagining what he could do with an army. 

Kaz Brekker has too many enemies for his own good. Kaz Brekker has a weakness that one person alive knows. Kaz Brekker has a child. Like everyone else, even Dirtyhands fell victim to caring. 

Felix Pieterse isn’t going to waste his time like that. 

His rescuer’s hands are not only calloused, they are lined. The voice is thin with age. She goes down without a cry; Felix empties her pockets, searches the rest of the room for what little is there, and takes some bandages with him. He takes a few proper steps and a hot blade of pain stabs his side, but he presses on. He doesn’t have any more time for pain than he has for kindness. 

Dirtyhands taught him that. Felix isn’t doing things his way. 

Chapter Text

She’s been back for two days. If you don’t come to meet the Wraith, she will find you.

Her heart had taken her back out to sea—beyond the new leads, beyond the need for supplies and messages at port towns, Inej’s blood had begun to itch at the domestic life Ketterdam had for her. She wasn’t going to be Kaz’s assassin or his spy, and while she stayed for Jordan’s party, she is a wanderer in spirit. The Suli travel. It is born into her bones. 

Besides, Inej knows pretty cages far too well. She was far more inclined to leave at the first sense of being trapped. 

She and Jordan will leave again soon, probably for the longest time yet if her information is anything to go by. She knows that Kaz knows. Maybe it’s why she hasn’t seen him. 

She is a scout, and she is a spy, and she is a hunter. And Kaz is not hiding from her. 

She won’t find him at the Slat; he is expecting her. He wants to be found, but he wants to give her trouble by it. These are the things that Inej no longer wonders how she knows, because it’s Kaz, and that is just a part of who they are.

Below her, the briny wind off the harbor carries fog and damp through the tangle of streets and canals, scents of smoke and fish reaching from the mansions of the Geldstraat to the slums of the Barrel. The streetlamps wink in the dark as she passes by, a shadow crossing and then gone. Inej wonders if it will be changed when she returns. 

She is meeting Kaz as the captain behind the cloak of the Wraith: dressed in black against the smoky night, hooded and masked, but goldened and wind-roughened and wiry-limbed beneath it all. He can have his choice of which he prefers. 

Inej takes her time. If he can make a game for her, she can make him wait. It’s these small and savage pleasures that delight them both, like when they were seventeen and as reckless as they were dangerous and would bicker to forget the fact that they might not see another year alive. 

She walks along the gables of a roof like it’s a tightrope, turning a cartwheel before the yellow moon to remind herself that she knows the rhythm. Sankt Petyr. Sankta Lizabeta. Sankta Alina. The feeling blooms in her again of a precipice, a dare to leap, a change in the wind pushing her over the edge. She welcomes it into her silence and will listen to what it has to say. It is in time with the beating of her heart, steady, eager. 

Her heart and her body, things she knows are hers at last, guide her over the spires and the ridges of Ketterdam, from the flat-topped warehouses to the sloping docks, until she finds him. 

She pulls down her mask. Of course. She hadn’t even realized where she was going. 

The quay. No, the harbor. The canals vanish behind her as she slips down the facade of a building and pads down the docks, following the tide that pulls her inevitably to where he stands against the line between dark sea and darker sky. 

She steps up beside him. They don’t speak. Somewhere, a seagull cries; Inej finds herself wishing it were a crow. 

Kaz’s hand flicks up into her vision. Between two bare fingers he grasps a single earring, a teardrop pearl. 

“Don’t tell me you left some woman walking around with one earring,” Inej murmurs, looking out over the moon-goldened water. In spite of herself, she smiles slightly, though for all she knows Kaz can’t see it beneath the shadows of her hood. 

“No,” he muses, his rock salt rasp rolling over her. Inej fights the urge to close her eyes against the surge of feeling, the catch of her breath. “Your crows brought it to me.”

“Seems like they’re your crows as well,” she says. Her voice is so soft tonight, a silken whisper; the feeling of something coming, of being pulled onward to some glorious fall, is so powerful that she can barely find words in its roaring force. “Call them ours. We’re sharing a lot of things these days.”

“Not this,” says Kaz from somewhere in her periphery. His knuckles brush against hers, and then his brilliant trickster hand is tucked into her palm, pressing the cold earring against her fingers but not pulling away. “This is yours.”

Inej turns and looks at him for the first time. It is a blessing and a mistake. He is tragically beautiful, not in the way of something made beautiful by tragedy, but in the way of something that brings pain in its beauty. Something she should not find beautiful. Sharp lines to cut herself on, black eyes to lose herself in, soft lips and soft hands that would make her lose her mind. She wants to call it all forbidden, distant, but it is close. It’s worse somehow, that he is so Saints-forsaken close.  

“Walk with me,” she says, and her voice has returned.

Kaz takes up his cane, and…and they walk. Their hands swing between them, joined. They keep pace. It’s not hard after years of fighting side by side—and she could argue that they are fighting now, every second that they touch. The tap of his cane and his footsteps and the distant gulls are all too quiet. Inej, of course, walks silently. It is all that she knows. 

They make it all the way to the end of the dock, and Inej leans against the railing, the wind off the harbor rippling her hood and the few loose hairs that dance around her face. The water is smeared with moonlight. Kaz’s hand is still warm in hers. She can’t think of a single thing to say. 

She wonders why he chose to meet her here, yet all the same she knows. She knows now, now that he has finally done what he was too battered and jaded to do at a furious, broken seventeen. She knows all that this harbor has taken from him, and the defiance that he stands in to touch her, skin to skin, right above those waters. The nameless feeling rises in her throat, compels her aimlessly, terrifies her with its magnitude. She doesn’t want it to be what it is. 

“How long this time?” Kaz asks. His voice isn’t nearly as rough against the background of whispering waves. 

Inej closes her eyes. “Years, Kaz. I don’t know how many.”

He gives what might be a steadying breath or a sigh. His thumb caresses the side of her hand, terribly gently. 

“Feed the crows for me,” she says, her voice so quiet now that she almost doesn’t hear it. 

His fingers flex around hers. “I will.”

“And don’t stop—trying. Visit Jes and Wylan. Just don’t—” How can she say that she doesn’t want to lose him, to lose this? How can she ask for more than everything he’s already given her? Are there words for any of this?

But he says, “I won’t.” And that’s all.

They stand in the sounds of birds and murmuring water. Inej looks at him from beneath her hood. “I’ll get you a new hat.”

Kaz meets her eyes properly for what might be the first time since she’s arrived. “My darling Inej, the treasure of my heart, nothing would make me happier.”

Inej nudges their joined hands, suddenly shy for reasons beyond her understanding. “That’s a lie.”

“And that’s true,” he says, bracing his free hand against the railing. They mirror each other, and their wavering reflections in the harbor multiply the illusion. “You can have the earring, you know.”

Inej turns her face fully to him, her hood slipping back from her hairline, though it doesn’t fall all the way. “Will you…put it in?”

“I might stab you,” he says with a faint echo of a smile. Still, he releases her hand; it feels cold, suddenly. 

As he faces her, Inej almost laughs. “That’s my area of expertise.” She turns so that her back is against the railing and the side of her face is to Kaz. 

He is so close now—there is barely space between them for the wind off the harbor to pass through. He smells like ink and coffee, same as he always has. He bends close and his breath brushes her cheek; Inej’s chest constricts, her eyelids flutter—powerful wanting and revulsion surge in tandem. The scent of the salt breeze is stronger than incense, she insists to herself. She is not strangled in silk. She is standing on the quay with a boy who’s as terrified as she is.

And his hands are gentle. The irony is almost painful and yet she wants to laugh. Dirtyhands is more careful with her than any man has ever been, his touches faint and cautious. The earring’s hook clicks shut, but he doesn’t move back; his hand remains beneath her hood. 

Inej shifts her gaze to meet his eyes. They are wide and wary and soft, his pupils dilated, something in them speaking of terrible hope. “Can I…” His voice comes out dry and hoarse. “Can I try something?”

Inej feels frozen. She can’t nod. She can’t speak. 

“I won’t unless you say so,” says Kaz, beginning to withdraw his hand.

Irony upon irony. Kaz Brekker didn’t need a reason, never mind permission, yet with her he always asks. “No,” she says, finding her voice. “I mean—yes. Don’t stop.” It’s all she can manage, but she wills him to hear what she really means. I trust you. 

Kaz’s hand slips back beneath her hood. His thumb catches the fold of her mask and pulls it back up over her mouth and nose. His gaze never leaves hers.

Inej nods, barely. Go on. Finish the story. Her heart speaks where she cannot.

The distance between them is so bare. He barely has to lean in to put his lips to the fabric, over hers, safe and sane. Inej’s eyes flutter shut. She wants to break this moment into pieces and know each one at a time—the brush of his lashes on her cheeks, the wind going still, the distant gulls, the ink-and-coffee scent of him—but it’s all there and then gone. A halfway kiss, wholly perfect. 

Kaz steps back. Inej touches the earring, looking at him. It’s smooth and cold under her fingertips. “A pearl?” she asks, with a smile that perhaps he can’t see. “Don’t they stand for innocence and purity?”

He’s smiling, a tiny thing but full and glorious, his fingertips drumming on the head of his cane. He’s always so still and composed, and yet this reminds her of Jesper, of how he can’t hold still when he’s excited. “A pearl,” says Kaz, “is an annoyance that gets into an oyster’s shell and bothers him so much that he makes something valuable in spite of himself.”

“You and your way with words,” Inej says drily, grinning anyway. “I’m back to being valuable now, it seems.”

“More than you know,” Kaz replies. He straightens his coat over his shoulders and tightens his tie, suddenly looking aimless. 

That’s all right. They’ve said more than enough. And they’ll write. She was a fool to forget about these everyday miracles. She could stay, she supposes, or they could walk back together, but while she’s spoken all that she can, the harbor has more to say. 

“I’ll be back,” she says before turning to make her way back up the docks.

Kaz’s voice comes from somewhere behind her, soft against the waves. “I’ll be here.”

Chapter Text

Excerpts from the letters between Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghafa, sent by increasingly convoluted methods over a period of slightly less than four years.

To the captain of the Wraith , hidden in the false bottom of a glass of Kaelish whiskey she’s never liked, courtesy of a well-bribed bartender: 

The little spiders have been gathering names of bounty hunters. They’re almost as effective as you. Don’t be jealous, Wraith, after all there are four of them and one of you. There could only ever be one of you. The pub in which you’ll find this missive is a common haunt for many of the bounty hunters mid-journey, which I suspect is also what will bring you there. Make friends, and if you can’t do that, there are always the metals of persuasion—gold, silver, steel, and lead. You’re kinder than I, and better for it, so you’ll probably let them choose. If you see Renier Bennik, ask him about the feathers and handcuffs and he should cooperate. 

To the head of the Dregs, some months later, delivered by the normal methods because not everything has to be a twelve-part scheme, Kaz: 

Renier Bennik looks like a mulberry pie when he’s embarrassed. In other news, we’ve made an alliance with him and his crew, as well as two other bounty hunters whose ships are slower but larger and better-armed. 

Also, Specht has a threat to his position as first mate. What she lacks in stature she makes up for in tenacity, and we’ve learned to look in the crow’s nest when we can’t find her. I thought you’d appreciate that. Someone painted a bullseye on the main mast and, after a near-death experience or two, she’s landing knives inside the target now. Eventually, Fionn is going to teach her to shoot. I expect someone we know won’t be pleased about that, though I imagine he can help her with the finer points when we return. 

Whether or not she gets a promotion in the crew, I believe she would enjoy being included in your correspondence. Soon enough she’ll be able to read it for herself. 

To the captain of the Wraith , written on an apparently blank piece of paper, rolled up inside the lock of a sea chest purchased for her by a mysterious donor: 

Apparently being on the Merchant Council still leaves one with enough free time to make invisible ink. Not that I’m complaining. I’m sending the crew of the Bleeding Sunset your way. Their ship-naming skills might be lacking, but their combat makes up for it. 

Tell your new crewmate that if she wants to hear from me, she’ll have to be more creative about sending letters than you are, unless you want someone else to suffer the consequences of discovery. 

Or perhaps you can dissuade her altogether by telling her of me. She has seen enough of the world that my stories won’t scare her, but neither will they make me a hero in her eyes.  She has the hero that she needs. Just as well. She should know the truth. Save your sweet lies for me, Inej. I’m foolish enough to listen.

Wylan needs to fix this ink formula. It’s smudging all over the place. 

To Kaz Brekker, some months later, on the back of a shipping label arriving in Fifth Harbor: 

Thank you for the ink formula. We’ve been in Novyi Zem, around the southern coast, so I’m sending this while we’re at port for a few days. I remember you complaining about the Ravkan summer; you would never make it here. I haven’t gotten sunburned so far, but Fionn is miserable, and you’d be worse. I miss your complaining. I’d gladly listen if only you were here.

Also, it turns out that Specht can sew. It came in handy when our youngest crew member shot a hole through the sail recently. She’s making bullseyes with the knives now, however.

I have a sense that something is coming, something big, something dangerous. The shadows are about their own business, my father would say. The last few ships we’ve come upon have been more prepared for us than usual. A few days in port are giving my crew time to recover, but the sea is a much bigger battleground than the city, and I can’t so easily discover what people know or how. I can listen in taverns and port towns and interrogate the prisoners we take, but I ask now that you’d be my ears as I once was yours. 

Maybe I’m being paranoid and foolish. Maybe I just want to hear from you more often. But better to be paranoid than ill-prepared, especially with the cargo that the Wraith has to protect. I won’t pretend I’m not aware that my enemies know I’m coming. It’s better—better for them to name their nightmares. 

And in a larger, sprawling hand (corrections made by the previous author): 

Hi da. I can write my name now but Inej the captain says not to. I shot a gun yesterday.

To the captain and first-and-a-half mate of the Wraith, care of Colm Fahey: 

I could have told you Specht can sew. He stitched Jesper up after a scuffle or two that went sour. Once he offered to tailor my vests, but he was drunk, so I didn’t completely invert his skull. You will, of course, be moving on from Novyi Zem when you read this, although I hope you made some conversation when you retrieved this missive; I struck a very solemn deal with the aforementioned Mr. Fahey that he would hold this letter for you if it would bring you to visit. It’s too late for warnings, but nonetheless I should note that he was intent on spoiling your youngest crewmate horrendously (as am I).

Speaking of, advice to her from myself: she may need to adjust her stance. There have been other unsolicited suggestions from the younger and far more bothersome of the Faheys, but I advise as one lacking his natural talents, which unfortunately we must assume she is also. 

But to you, I say so much and so little, so much less than you deserve to trust your instincts. You hardly need my input or permission to do so, indeed you might be wiser without me, but do what you know best. The fastest way to steal a man’s wallet is the same for prisons and ships. Hit where the mark isn’t looking. Make sure they don’t look at you. 

To Kaz Brekker, rolled up around a fountain pen, received after a significant delay that he insists he wasn’t worried about: 

We’re stopping briefly by the Wandering Isle, which is where I’m sending this from; I daresay Fionn feels much more at home here. Our youngest crewmate seems to make friends everywhere she goes. The locals all adore her, and now she wants red hair. I don’t quite know how to break the news to her, but then perhaps I won’t. She deserves to keep some false hope; she deserves to be allowed. I wish we could have.

How are things on your battlefront? At first, one lead was uncovering another like a scavenger hunt or like knocking down those stacked tiles the clubs play with, and now it’s more like untangling a net. Every day my sense grows that they know more than I can get out of them. It reminds me of you, sometimes. Perhaps you’ll have better luck. 

To the captain and first-and-a-half mate of the Wraith, shortly before the latter’s seventh birthday, hidden under the label of a bag of sweets that also contains a knife:

This was the most convenient mode of delivery, but if there happen to be any celebrations occurring on board that it might be useful for, do with it what you will. 

There is a campaign on the Merchant Council’s table to tighten the restrictions on indentures and investigations into their sources, headed by he who is often incorrectly termed the younger Van Eck. Historically, they haven’t had any luck crusading in the Barrel, but perhaps they’ll make more headway with the aid of someone who’s actually been there. If there’s an investigation, it will make things worse for West Stave; they’ve been struggling for years now with a mysterious shortage of supply. Fewer diversions would also mean more pigeons tourists spending their time in taverns and gambling dens, which is probably not something that would be wise to mention to the Council but makes excellent motivation for those gangs who don’t hold much stake in the brothels. 

This missive has two recipients. A note to the latter: blades and bullets take training. Past that, just punch till you see blood, and then once more for good measure.

Note: this last was reportedly not communicated to its intended target; however, she was able to later discover the letter and read it for herself. 

That’s all the sage life advice I have to give—other than, don’t fall out of the crow’s nest. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. 

To Kaz Brekker, a year or so later, tucked into the brim of a truly awful teal bowler hat: 

I apologize for taking so long. I had to find the perfect hat. My first-and-a-half mate, as you’ve called her, approved of this one. She’ll be eager to see you wearing it when we return, and for that matter, so will I. 

I’m going to keep this short. My suspicions of the slavers forming an alliance are gaining ground. If we return sooner than expected, you’ll know why, and if we don’t…you’ll know why. 

If things get truly dangerous, you may find yourself with a new guest. I don’t expect her to be happy about it, but I’d rather she be upset and alive. 

On the back of the previous note, written in an uneven scrawl (misspellings omitted for clarity):

I picked out the best hat for you. You need more colors. The captain says I might get to see you soon. Specht says she is scared, but I know she isn’t scared of anything. Wait till you see how tall I am. 

To Inej, written in smudged ink and smelling of whiskey, lost somewhere in the True Sea before reaching its recipient: 

Went to Jes and Wylan’s tonight. It’s been a while. I was thinking of you, like I’m not always thinking of you, you, you, Inej, you. I close my eyes and it’s you or it’s Jordie or it’s you floating in that damned harbor. I don’t remember how much coffee and whiskey I’ve had or which one I had last, not counting now, and this bottle that’s making a decent paperweight and a better comfort. 

A while, too long, same thing really. I left the gloves here when I went like the fool that I am. You make a fool of me. I’ll gladly be a fool for you, but not like this. I haven’t crossed anything out yet, I’m too drunk to draw a straight line. Maybe kvas would be faster, but I’m not going to fall down the stairs looking for some. I’ve fallen too much today. Ever seen a stupid cripple try to walk drunk? Ever seen a wretched husk of a man land hard for you and never want to get up? You have. You’ve seen it every time you meet my eyes. Inej, my piety and my punishment. 

I forgot to write what happened. Podge. That’s to me, not you—but you, my wisdom, you knew that. It was all right at first. They sang a duet. It wasn’t bad really, but I didn’t know the song. Jesper gave me a wineglass, touched my hand. It was bad, but I was fine, even if I wasn’t, I was enough. That wasn’t the worst thing. It’s not like I wasn’t thinking about it, about touch, about you, your hair, your eyes, your mouth, your hands, your laugh, your smile. The things that stop me breathing and remind me to start again. Kill me for that smile or kill me with it. Just be here. That’s all. That’s the worst thing. 

I don’t even remember what Jesper did after that. Leaned on my shoulder, maybe. Something Jordie used to do. They have the same laugh, head thrown back and eyes shut. 

I crossed something out after all. It looks awful, but I can’t look at his name. I can’t shake it out of my head, though maybe that’s just the headache or the fact that I’m so dizzy, but I can’t look at it. You’ll know, my wraith, my keeper of secrets, the secret of my heart. 

All these names and I can’t write yours but once. It’s the only prayer I’ll ever make. Inej. Inej, Inej, InejInejInejInejInej. Come back and let me say it to you, say it until my lips are numb, gasp it as you remake me. Let me kiss the salt off your lips. Let me kiss the fear from your mind. Let me kiss you until it kills me. Kill me, and it would be all right. Let me have you. Let me tell you the hundred things I want to do to you. Do what you will with me, my saint, my salvation, my destruction, my rebirth. My darling, my love. I can’t love you, but I can’t do anything else.

If you send Jordan back to me, I’ll take her. I’ll take her home, show her the apple trees and the creek and buy her so many sweets at the bakery that you’ll scowl at me in that glorious way you do—because you’ll be there, too. We’ll be together, we’ll be safe. Just wait to send her back until I’ve pulled myself together. 

I can’t believe in gods because of you. You would be a creation worth worshiping if I thought you could be made. But the world isn’t fair as long as I can love you. If there was anyone watching over you, they’d give you a better life, a better man, someone whole. You are too good to be created. I am too broken to be destroyed.

I left. They probably asked questions. I don’t know. I was gone. I was sick from the bodies first and the drink later. But I am sick with love of you, too. The waters can’t kill this fire for you that wants to burn me alive. Come back and let it consume me. Come back and take me for your own. Come back and be mine and sweeten my mouth with the taste of it. Come back and keep me alive. 

Jordie wants to have his word with me. He’s been waiting this whole time. Come back and make him go away. 

Chapter Text

It’s been too long. 

Maybe it’s his own fault, Kaz reminds himself. How was Inej supposed to respond to the rambling, desperate disaster he’d sent her when stripped of his senses? If he had never gone to the Geldstraat at all that night, never taken the chance of trying—but it was what she’d asked him to do. And he has been trying, but he sees now how inevitable it was that it would all fall apart. 

He still hears from Jesper and Wylan sometimes, asking after him—or at least he did for a while, after that night. The messages stopped coming recently. Inej hasn’t written at all. 

If we return sooner than expected, you’ll know why, and if we don’t…you’ll know why. 

But she hasn’t sent Jordan back to him like she said she would—though, then again, who would trust a child with someone who’d write what he had written? He had sent letters after, imploring her not to read it, apologizing, trying to brush aside the things he’d said, but how could she? It was all honest. There’s a reason he trades in lies. They’re as elegant as the rest of his facade, while honesty cuts and aims to kill. 

He’s sitting in a window booth at the Crow and Cup, the cafe he opened on the Lid some years ago, which has ironically become one of the Dregs’ most successful holdings despite its shockingly legal reputation. In reality, of course, it has become a playground for a new kind of parley, his kind—where the negotiators wound only with words and pay only with secrets. Its back rooms also make excellent storage for whatever the Dregs might be smuggling into the city. Shipments can come straight here from Fifth Harbor, disguised among deliveries of pastries and coffee beans. He drops by on occasion to keep an eye on things, and today he’s taken a whole booth to himself, just to be contrary. Bad for business, but better for his mood. 

He took her letter out of his pocket this morning. He’d been carrying it around like a romantic fool. Anyway, the scent of salt and jasmine no longer lingers on it—though perhaps that better befits Inej, who never used to carry a scent. 

In the opposite corner, a couple is sitting in the booth, pressed against the back of it but unfortunately not entirely hidden from Kaz’s view. He can only see the back of the girl’s head, her hair obviously dyed rusty copper, as their faces are…otherwise engaged. Kaz’s scowl deepens. He’s a bit surprised that the coffee in the cup he’s clutching hasn’t begun to boil. 

He watches as a waiter approaches the couple—a waiter handpicked from the ranks of the Dregs, of course—and appears to stand patiently to the side before giving up and walking away. However, Kaz notices a flash of white sleeve and something shiny vanishing into the apron pockets before the waiter starts back to the kitchen. Upon spotting Kaz, though, he changes course and comes to stand by his table, his back carefully to the other patrons. 

Kaz holds out a gloved hand. The waiter, Anders, drops a jeweled chain, a string of pearls, and two hundred kruge into it. Kaz knows perfectly well that Anders still has a ring and a few more kruge notes tucked into his cuff, but he’s not interested in criticizing a thief for stealing. What he’s more than happy to do is to correct is his methods. 

“I saw that,” he says. Maybe from some it would be taken as encouragement, but Kaz likes to think that the dangerously slow scrape of his voice tells otherwise. “It was sloppy.”

“I got the stuff, didn’t I?” 

Anders gets defensive, because of course he does. Unfortunately for him, Kaz isn’t in the mood for it. “Yes, and a good share more than you gave me. No point in getting the scrub when the stadwatch will take it right back after they arrest you.”

“Well, I doubt anyone else would have noticed—just because you saw me—”

“I have no use for flattery, Anders, and you don’t have to be a decent thief to spot a bad one. You need to move faster, cover more. Now stop bothering me about it and put whatever you haven’t given me in the till.”

Anders is seething, but he’s barely eighteen and he’ll get over it. Kaz isn’t feeling charitable today, and he’s never had a use for anything but the best. Before he stalks off, the young man tears a sheet from his notepad and says stiffly, “I’m meant to give this to you.”

Kaz plants two fingers on the scrap of paper and draws it towards him. “Oh? And who else is giving you orders?”

Anders fixes him with a half-decent glare. “The Wraith.” Then he’s gone, a fine illusion but no longer the center of Kaz’s focus. 

It takes him a few tries to grasp the edge of the paper and turn it over. His hands are shaking. He hates it. 

When he manages it, the opposite side is also blank. He shouldn’t really be surprised. He takes a lighter from his pocket, flicks on the flame, and holds the piece of notepaper over it. He spies the line at the top where it must have been glued into the notepad. Clever, he thinks, with the closest thing to a smile he’s worn all day.

The words appear when touched by heat—sharp and scrawling and smelling of nothing at all. As he reads them, Kaz’s heartbeat grows loud in his ears. There’s a distant rushing of blood or waves. The old burning of vengeance simmers, but intermixed with it as there’s never been there is an awful, blinding fear. 

They have Jordan. They want me to destroy my ship to get her back. I’m sending this as quickly as I can, and likely it will get back to Ketterdam before I do. Meet me on the docks. Don’t bother with the warehouse.

He checks the note front and back, desperate to find more words that he might have missed. There’s nothing. The world is red and black. Maybe Inej doesn’t know yet who the slavers are, who’s taken Jordan—he’ll learn each of their names and paint them on the docks in blood. He’ll string them up from their masts like chandeliers. He’ll make the name of the brother who deserved better and the daughter who deserves the world, write it in bones and burn it on the streets of Ketterdam. 

But first he needs to find Inej. 

<><><>

The ship has barely docked before Inej gives up on waiting and leaps from the rail down to the docks, and then she’s running, running, flying in bounds down to the dark shape on the quay. She imagines slavers’ blood under her feet. She imagines the True Sea running scarlet. She imagines Jordan back and safe in her arms. 

Kaz is there when her stride falters, when she stops running and starts shaking and her knees threaten to give out. Some distant part of her realizes that he doesn’t even hesitate before holding her up, holding her, letting her lean into his chest and hear the wild runaway rhythm of his heart. She all but crashed into him, and now she stands there, ink and coffee and the sudden presence of him around her after four years’ absence making her almost dizzy. Despite having had the voyage back to think and plan and process, all of a sudden it all feels as fresh as a gaping wound, and Inej can’t breathe.

His hand on her back is stiff but strong. His thumb traces unsteady circles on her shoulder. She hates how much she wants to cry. 

“The message said to meet them here,” she says into his shirt, her voice steady but in the way of something wobbling on the wire, suspended on the trembling edge of falling. “Here, at Fifth Harbor. They know about Jordan and they know about you. I don’t—we were being so careful—”

“Inej.” Kaz’s voice in her ear is harsh, but enough so to remind her to breathe. He steps back from her, but he’s still holding her arms. He looks so much the same. Too old for twenty-six, the lines of his face harder and more severe, but then he’s always looked too old. He bends to her eye level, black eyes burning into hers until they’re all she sees. “They played their hand. They already told you everything they know and asked to meet you on your territory. They’re setting themselves up to lose.”

Illogically, she’s furious at him for not being more afraid. He wasn’t there, and it makes her want to scream, even though he couldn’t be there and she was the one who’d wanted to leave. You weren’t there either, hisses a voice in her mind that sounds like Heleen’s honeyed whisper. And she wasn’t, was she? One moment with her back turned, one raid gone wrong, and she can only imagine her daughter’s cries. Did Jordan scream? How could she have gone unheard? How could Inej have missed it? How could she have failed her child in exactly the same way she’d been—was this how her parents had felt? How could they stand it?

“ Inej. ” Kaz’s voice is sharp enough now to cut.

She glares at him. “What?”

“You need to breathe. You’re not going to get her back by panicking,” he says, his voice infuriatingly calm. Maybe he’s trying to be comforting, but Inej wants to grab him by the collar and throw him into the harbor. It might not be helpful, but if he seemed worried at all she’d at least know that he cared. 

“Doesn’t seem as if you’d be bothered either way,” she says stiffly, pulling away from him. 

Kaz’s expression shutters. “By which you mean, what? I’m not falling to pieces and I’m trying to do something useful? I suppose I forgot that you’re not above sentimentality, but save it for the reunion, will you?”

Inej backs away, shaking her head, unable to believe what she’s hearing. She was wrong—he has changed, and she doesn’t have the time to deal with it. “One day I’m leaving this city for good. I never seem to like what you’ve become when I get back.” 

Maybe, she thinks as she returns to her ship, that day will be today—but first, she has to make a plan. If Kaz deigns to inconvenience himself, he can help. With or without him, though, she’s getting her daughter back. 

Chapter Text

Up until today, Jordan has never liked being underestimated. Now she’s found it quite useful. It’s very typical of men (and adults in general) to find a nine-year-old girl, thin as a whip, and think it won’t take much to hold her, but she is a pirate, thank you very much. A pirate and a lockpick who keeps knives in her shoes. And one in her hair. At least they were smart enough to take her knives, which is frustrating because now she’ll need new ones. She’d at least like to get the one back that she stabbed that guy with. 

By what little she knows, she and Inej and the crew were on their way back to Kerch, to see her da who Inej is always telling her about. She knows how much Inej wants her to remember him. There’s something there—colors and feelings, mostly, the way a lot of her memories of being little are. She puts her hand in the pocket of the vest he sent her when she turned nine and holds tight to her watch, which she guesses was too old and boring for the slavers to take. She traces the letters J.R. with her fingertips. She asked Kaz in one of her letters what they meant, but even though he always answered her questions, he didn’t answer that one. 

If she could ask him a question now, what would he say? He’d tell her to think, Jordan knows that. She’s known that this whole time. Even in the black hold of a ship, unable to move or to see, alone, her mind had worked just as well in the dark as in the daylight. 

She doesn’t know where she is, except that she’s probably in Kerch, if the slavers really were taking her to Ketterdam. They tried to scare her, telling her about how her mama had to blow up her ship or they were going to sell Jordan. They talked about the things that would be done to her, things Jordan already knew a little bit about from living with sailors, but she knew better. Kaz and Inej have been telling her since she was little that her body is hers to do with what she wants and nobody else’s, and if they try to do things with it she should stab them or shoot them or kick them somewhere very specific. She hadn’t had time to get a gun and they took her knives, but she knows how to kick hard.  

They didn’t like that and threw her down in the hold, and even now her back still hurts, but Jordan is smart and she’d known they wouldn’t kill her. Kaz likes to write about the value of things, how you can pay in more than just money, and Jordan knows just how much she’s worth—and it’s more as long as she’s alive. She knows things, not that she’s going to tell anyone. 

One of those things happens to be how to pick locks. She’d prayed a quick thank-you to the Saints when she was put in cuffs instead of tied up with rope. She knew how to get out of cuffs and how to make it look like she hadn’t, and how to swing them at the right point on someone’s head and wriggle away and run where they couldn’t see her. Port towns provided plenty of places to climb, but now she’s been walking all day and made it into the country. 

Jordan is at the edge of the woods, sitting on a rock by a little creek. She holds on tight to the watch and feels it tick and tries not to cry. She is very strong and brave and fast, and she’s a pirate, but right now she’s used up just about all of those things. She’s lost, and doesn’t have her knives, and more than anything she feels like a scared little girl. 

Kaz and Inej would probably have smart things to tell her—or they wouldn’t be here to begin with. Her mama would have known where to go instead of running off into the middle of nowhere. Jordan’s feet hurt, and her eyes are stinging from trying not to cry, and she can hold the watch as tight as she can but it just pushes the J.R. into her hand and reminds her that she doesn’t know what it means and her da isn’t here to tell her. 

She pulls her hand out of her pocket and pushes herself off of the rock onto hurting feet. She’ll just go a little bit further, she decides. If she has to stop and sleep in the woods, she will. She just hopes that it doesn’t rain. 

As Jordan crosses out of the woods, the meadow in front of her rises up into a hill spotted with wildflowers. She bends down and picks a dandelion and blows on it, watching the fuzzy bits fly away into the wind. She makes a wish—that someone in this big, empty, lonely world will find her. Jordan is a very little pirate, after all. Sometimes even pirates need help. 

When she makes it to the top of the hill, there’s a little dot on the flat line of grass that runs into the sky. She starts walking a little faster, and realizes that it’s a house! She has to be careful, of course, since she knows plenty well that not everyone is nice, but she can at least get close enough to see.

Her wish came true, Jordan thinks, or maybe the Saints heard her prayer. She whispers a thank you to the sky, where both the Saints and the dandelion seeds are, and her tired feet start to run. 

<><><>

Alby is having a very boring day, right up until he meets her.  

He’s done all of his lessons already, and he guesses he could start the ones for tomorrow, except that they’re all boring and today’s lessons were an awful chore to get through. He can go outside, but his papa is so paranoid that he has to stay close to the house, in sight of the windows, even with all of the awesome woods and meadows everywhere. It’s stupid, but his papa has been scared like that for as long as Alby can remember. 

He’s too old for his toys at a very proud ten, so he sits by the veranda and draws pictures in the dirt, his legs splayed out in front of him. He’s working on drawing a map when he spots something moving and looks up. 

As the thing gets closer, he realizes it’s a girl, maybe his age. She’s wearing some kind of black pants and a black shirt and a red vest that are all grubby and messed-up, and her black hair is halfway out of a braid. She’s barefoot and slowing down out of a run, kicking dust everywhere. 

She is the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. 

Alby realizes his mouth is hanging open and quickly shuts it. He can just hear his tutor telling him that he’ll swallow a fly doing that. 

“Who are you?” he asks. He has a little bit of an accent, leftover from his Kaelish mum who he doesn’t really remember. He only ever notices it because he sounds different from his father, but suddenly he’s worried about what the girl will think of it. 

She stops short and frowns at him, crossing his arms. “Who are you?”

Alby’s mouth is open again. He snaps it shut and scrambles to his feet, messing up his map in the process. “I’m Alby. I live here. What are you doing here?”

She takes a step back and looks at him suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”

Alby blinks. “I just said that. I live here.”

“Oh yeah?” She puts her hand on her hip and points at the remains of his map. “What’s that?”

“A map,” says Alby, a little self-conscious about it all of a sudden. 

“Oh, good,” she says, bouncing over to look. “I’m lost.” 

She is standing next to him. Alby tries very hard not to hold his breath. She tips her head to one side, and the top of it almost hits his face. Her hair is shiny even though it’s all dusty. Alby is amazed. 

“What’s it a map of?” she says, stepping away from him and crinkling her nose. Alby is a little disappointed. 

“Kerch,” he says, waving his hand at the map. “Or what I remember from my geography lessons.” He frowns and messes up his hair. “I don’t pay that much attention in geography. Where are you lost from?”

“Ketterdam,” she says, settling both fists at her hips and looking at the map, her head tilted to one side. Alby is jealous of her thinking face. It’s scary. 

He frowns, though. “Why do you want to go to Ketterdam? It sounds awful. My father told me never to go there.”

“Well, that’s where my da is,” says the girl, looking up at him with very big, serious brown eyes. “And I’m Jordan.”

Alby is too happy about knowing her name to ask her why she’s decided to tell him now. Jordan. Jordan, Jordan, Jordan. He tucks it away in his heart like a secret. “Wait here, Miss Jordan,” he says, jumping up and running to the door. “I’ll go get you a real map.”

He gets the one off his desk that he’s supposed to use for geography and just hopes his tutor won’t mind. He can always get a new one. He’s about to run back outside when he stops, goes back for a pen, and writes his address on the back of the map. 

When he goes back outside, he jumps down the steps and runs to Jordan, who’s sitting in the dirt with her legs stretched out. It’s late afternoon, and the sun makes her look like she’s made of gold. Alby almost trips over his feet. 

“Here, Miss Jordan,” he says proudly, holding out the map to her and pointing at it. “See, here’s where we are—and here’s Ketterdam. Are you really gonna walk all the way there?”

“Well, I’m gonna run some of it,” Jordan says seriously, taking the map from him and looking at the route he pointed out. 

“If you want to get there faster…” Alby gasps and bounces on the balls of his feet. “You could stow away on a ship! There’s a port right close to here that takes stuff to the city all the time!” He’d kept the pen, and he circles the place he’s talking about on the map. He’s jealous of Jordan; she gets to go on a real adventure, and he can’t even leave his yard. 

Jordan does the thinking face again, her head tilted, looking off into the distance. After a few seconds, she nods and rolls up the map, getting to her feet. 

“Wait!” says Alby. Feeling shy for no reason that he can understand, he adds, “I put my address on the back. Write me a letter when you get there, please?”

“Okay.” Jordan smiles at him for the first time, showing her teeth. She’s missing her canines. 

Alby makes sure his mouth is shut. 

Chapter Text

Kaz stands on the dock, considering the things he hates. He has a plentiful list—a fact well-known enough that it’s practically part of his persona. However, he is deciding at this moment that the thing he hates most is feeling helpless. 

Despite his telling Inej all those years ago never to sneak up on him again, she’d crept into his heart, silent and light-footed, and cleared out the cobwebs, shorn up its walls, opened the windows and let the sun in, and by the time he’d bothered to inspect the state of things, it was too late. Even in his desperate avoidance of accepting it, something that has slowly fallen away (and fallen apart, he’d thought, with that letter), he’d failed to account for the full magnitude of what it meant.

He has no solace from the fact that she has hurt him. Perhaps he’d just grown to assume he would never need it. 

If it had been anyone else, it would have been easy—plan his vengeance, strike them where it hurts, find their seams and tender edges and shred them apart. He could buoy himself with promises of the suffering to come. 

But this is Inej. It brings him no joy to see her in pain. It’s like the stories his father used to tell him, of bonded souls who felt each other’s hurts. He’d often wondered what they would do if they were enemies. But it didn’t matter—the fascination of having someone who was meant for you faded when he realized that there was no such thing as destiny; if he wanted something, he had to take it for himself.

And maybe she’s right. Maybe the discomfort coiled in his chest, heavy and ill-shaped for the space, ought to be something more like guilt. He hasn’t been there, has he? He’s written to Jordan as often as he can, said as much as he can while still keeping her safe—and in the end he failed to do that, didn’t he?

Inej hasn’t said a word about the letter. Maybe there just wasn’t time, and he certainly understands her being preoccupied, but he has a sense of something worse. It’s useless to ignore his intuition for the sake of making himself feel better, he reprimands himself, and yet he just can’t allow the thought to form. Because if that’s true, then it’s his fault, all of it, and he is left with nothing but guilt tearing him limb from limb behind a stony expression. 

Conjecture won’t solve this. Vengeance won’t absolve it. The only hope he has—and he is desperate—is to act. The Wraith lies before him, a plot being crafted in his absence onboard. Kaz puts on his scheming face and starts towards it. 

<><><>

Inej hears the click of heels and cane and doesn’t turn around. The chest that doubles as a desk in her cabin is covered in maps and charts and blank pieces of paper, most of them ink-stained, and in the corner of it all, not quite out of her vision, is the note that she pretends she hasn’t read every five minutes. It doesn’t change, of course. It doesn’t say anything new. Destroy your ship or your daughter is gone. For all Inej knows she’s gone already. She scrubs the back of her hand over her eyes, half-expecting Kaz to make some remark about the uselessness of her tears. Instead, a piece of fabric is pressed into her bare hand. 

She looks up. It’s a handkerchief, silk and probably stolen, although where he would have nicked a black one Inej has no idea. She meets his eyes to gauge his expression, but it’s unreadable as always, which makes her angrier than it should. 

She doesn’t thank him, nor does she wipe her eyes. She clutches the kerchief in her fist and turns back to the desk, but if she’s honest she has no idea what to do with any of what’s spread before her. She can’t think right. What is wrong with her? 

“Do you know how they found out?” Kaz steps up to stand beside her, the question infuriatingly careful. It’s his old habit of saying everything as if it means nothing to him at all. 

Inej pushes a handful of flyaway strands off of her face, but that just results in more of them falling loose. She gives up. “Maybe one of those first letters? I know I mocked you for being so careful, but—and yet that was years ago, so why—”

“I doubt it.” Though Kaz’s rasp is rough as gravel, it cuts through her panicked rambling as cleanly as a blade. “No sense in waiting, what, three years? It wouldn’t have taken them that long to find her, either.” He steps around to the end of the makeshift desk, back into her view, bending with his gloved fingertips resting on one of her maps. 

His face has lost any boyishness it once retained; the lines of his jaw are stark and shaded, his cheeks more hollow, a new scar cutting just beneath his ear. The sides of his hair are shaved shorter and more sternly than they were once. Inej liked them longer. She liked him better before. She desperately hopes that she still knows him, some part of him.

What she does know is that he’s not at rest. The wheels of his wicked mind are turning, but they are not crafting a plan, they are debating what to say. She wants to scream that that’s a waste of time, that his reputation is the least of their worries right now, but she doesn’t have the time or the energy to fight with him again. And whether or not she wants to admit it, she needs his help. 

“Say it,” she says, pulling one of the maps towards her, her brow furrowed as she looks at it—away from Kaz. “You can’t remove the personal from this, Kaz, it’s my daughter and supposedly yours too. Whatever it is, say it.”

He hasn’t been moving, but nonetheless she could swear that he goes still. “It’s not important who is to blame,” he says slowly, each word clipped as if to declare that it is final and there’s nothing else to say. “When did they tell you to meet them?”

Inej frowns at the change of tack, but she can at least agree that they don’t have time for the trivial. “Here, today. The start of sunset.”

Kaz scoffs lightly. “How trite.”

“Don’t let me hear you, Kaz Brekker, mocking someone else for being dramatic,” Inej says. She’s still frowning, but this is all right, this is familiar—she is one of few people in the world who are privileged enough to tease him and get away with it, and as long as she’s thoroughly abusing that privilege, something is right with the world. 

“I didn’t say dramatic,” he says, in the absent sort of murmur that tells her his thoughts are elsewhere. In this case, that’s just where she wants them to be. He reaches across the table and picks up one of her charts. “I said trite. I mean, sunset, really?”

“I suppose you’d prefer twilight with the mist rolling in off the canals,” Inej says drily, her eyes scanning her map of Ketterdam’s harbor. “To make an entrance.” If it’s Fifth Harbor they’re coming to, then there are really only three points of entry, all visible from a good distance depending on one’s vantage point. But seeing them coming doesn't mean knowing how to stop them. 

“I’d prefer anytime and anywhere I have the upper hand,” says Kaz, shuffling the papers, “so it doesn’t really matter.” At least his confidence hasn’t changed. She can’t really call it arrogance, because even if she doesn’t like it—and she’s fairly sure nobody does—he tends to be right. 

“Can you and Wylan make it look like the ship has been destroyed?” she asks, looking up from the map, desperately casting for some solution. Kaz knows (probably better than she does) that they shouldn’t go into this expecting fair play, but if there’s any chance of pulling off the trade…

“That would be quite the vanishing act. Your specialty, isn’t it?” Kaz muses, his hands as lean and agile as ever as they make some order of the cluttered papers. He looks over at her, his movements as sharp and decisive as the lines of his face. “Easier just to get her back. Do you have any idea how many of them there are?”

“It doesn’t matter. There could be a hundred. All that a number tells us is how many severed limbs they’ll have to clean off the docks.” Inej usually isn’t one to talk of bloodthirst like this, but this is her daughter. This is her beating, bleeding heart, back in crude and calloused hands. 

For Jordan, she will be dangerous. She will be the monster that monsters fear. She’s not so kind as a Saint. She is righteous. She is justice. She is the smoke rising from the fire and the ashes that foretell the phoenix. She’ll leave the match to slip from their fingers and burn them alive. 

Once, she was afraid to be dangerous. She thought that it made her dirty, broken, less. Dangerous, now, is the only way that she feels clean. 

She looks back at Kaz, hesitant somehow to see his response. His face hasn’t much changed, except that the corner of his mouth is curled up, slight as a hairpin and twice as sharp. “I’m glad you’re on board,” he says. “I thought you might try for stealth, to stop them before they got here.”

Inej checks her knives and turns to face him. She squares her shoulders, the tell she’s never been able to lose—but let the world know that she’s preparing for a fight. Let them know and be afraid. Very afraid. 

“Let the bastards come,” she says. “We’ll run the harbor red with blood and fire.”

Now the other corner of his mouth is curved with its twin. “As you command, Captain Ghafa.”

Chapter Text

Jordan is hungry and thirsty and more scared than she has ever been in her life, but she still hasn’t been caught. 

Right now, she’s tucked into the folded sail of a mercher ship, using it like a hammock. The sun is hot on her dark hair, and there's barely enough shade for her to lay in, but at least she's pretty sure nobody can see her up here. They’re only transporting salt and grains and the like, so the crew is sparse; she knows because she started out in the hold, hiding herself in a stack of crates until she managed to slip out and steal something to eat. 

She is her mama’s daughter, so she knows how to sneak and she knows how to climb. She steals food and water and sneaks around the ship, a little shadow like Inej taught her, moving to a new hiding place every time she’s exhausted the last. So far she hasn’t had to fight any of the crew, which is good because even though she would probably win, then they would know they had a stowaway. 

Her latest hiding spot—and hopefully her last—is in one of the higher sails that folds to create a nice little pocket, Jordan-sized. It’s not easy work to shimmy up and down the mast when the gnawing emptiness inside her gets to be too much, but she’s much less likely to get discovered here as a whole. Plus, she can see, over the wide ocean and now to the land. 

She can see that they’re almost back to the city. 

Her memories of Ketterdam are as hazy as the smoke and fog that blur the tops of the buildings. Most of what she knows is from stories and the letters Kaz used to write. But she still knows it when she sees the gray blob of land, slowly getting clearer and clearer as the ship gets near. Suddenly, the empty feeling in her belly is replaced by a whir of excitement. She’s almost home.

Now she just has to find a man she hasn’t seen in four years. Dressed in black, crow-headed cane, says Inej's voice in her head. It's been comforting to pretend that her mama is there to tell her what to do, but she should probably get out of the habit of pretending. 

She also has to get off of this ship. 

She can’t just jump straight from the mast; it’s too far down, and anyway she’s heard that there are sharks in this harbor. But she won’t be able to make it back into the hold—she’ll be found when they start unloading all of those big crates. She has to get down from the sail and off of the ship, unnoticed but close to the city. 

She’ll need to figure out how to keep Alby’s map dry, because she’s going to have to swim. 

<><><>

The sun has barely slipped towards the horizon before they’re preparing to leave the harbor, out to meet the Hawk within sight of Ketterdam. Kaz knows that the Hawk ’s crew, the bastards who have Jordan, want to put on a show—and maybe he would have done the same. But a man can go a lifetime in the Barrel and never know that the same kind of show isn’t always right, that sometimes a dark, clean facade works better than fire and glamour ever will. Kaz was smart enough to learn it quick and not forget. 

Now he’s wishing he doesn’t have so much talent for keeping a polished exterior, that for once words would come to him, or at least something would arise on his face, but more and more as the crew of the Wraith prepare to sail out into Kerch waters does his skin feel like a mask. He doesn’t know how, anymore, to do anything but keep his head on straight and anything else in the periphery. 

He chances a look at Inej, like he hasn’t been doing that every half a minute since they came up on deck. She stands by the wheel of her ship, talking to that Kaelish girl who’s been in her crew almost since the start, wearing a vest that’s too large for her with a belt at her waist. She doesn’t look back at him. She used to.

Kaz flexes his hands, feels the leather of his gloves tighten. The bizarre desire wells up to strip them off and fling them into the harbor, to remember how it is to be in contact with the world and feel things without a wall in between. But that’s not the smart move. That’s leaving himself blatantly vulnerable when Jordan needs his strength. 

He’s losing something. Control—he’s losing control. Over himself, over everyone, over everything. His mind and pulse haven’t stopped racing since before Inej returned, and he wonders if he’ll survive to see them cross the finish line. 

Someone yells from up by the figurehead. Kaz can’t understand it, but he doesn’t need to. He can see the shape of the Hawk approaching them, not rushed but thoroughly determined in its pace. 

“That’s your cue.” Suddenly Inej is beside him. He hopes he only missed her approach because he wasn’t paying attention, and not because he’s lost his sense for her. He’d rather go blind. 

“So eager to be rid of me?” he queries drily, but he’s more worried about it being truthful than he’s had reason to be in a long time. 

“Just to get Jordan back. And this was your plan—argue with your reflection if you don’t like it,” she says. 

Kaz glances over the rail into the water, but it’s just black, not even a silhouette returning his skeptical gaze. He wonders what Inej would say that means. He doesn’t ask her. 

Instead, he makes his way back onto the docks, the tap of his cane seeming especially loud in the closing evening. People will be flooding the Barrel before long, but for now, Ketterdam waits—eager, suspended, not complacent, but at least temporarily at rest. Kaz wishes he could say the same for himself. He walks as if on slender pins. 

Barely has he disembarked before the Wraith is leaving its berth, out to draw parallel with the Hawk well within sight of the skyline of Ketterdam. Kaz doesn’t like the distance, but neither does he want to invite slavers onto his shores. Besides, they need it for Wylan’s little trick to work—distance always helps a good illusion. 

Another ship has been slow coming in, not to Fifth Harbor but to a berth further down. He keeps a cautious eye on it, but it passed the Wraith and the Hawk without a stutter, so hopefully it’ll drop its cargo and mind its business. 

Kaz doesn’t like hopefully. Hopefully doesn’t get him paid. Hopefully doesn’t get his daughter back. But he can’t go tromping down the docks to chase a cargo ship when Inej and Jordan need him here. 

As he watches, the Wraith and the Hawk draw nearer to each other—they look like toy ships, pieces in a game. To the slavers, Kaz realizes with a fresh bolt of rage, they are. But he’d be a hypocrite to rise to fury because someone didn’t care for the lives they were playing with, wouldn’t he? He does it every day. 

And for Jordan, he thinks, checking the gun in his coat’s pocket, he’ll do it again. 

He’s by the warehouses now, having made his way up the quay, but movement draws his eye to one of the docks, a few over from where the mercher’s ship just arrived. A dark shape in the water. 

Rising out of the water. 

Wet hands clawing the boards. A child’s hands. The shining slick of wet skin.

Jordie?

The question is nonsensical, but so are his thoughts. For nearly two decades has Kaz trained himself to fight, but they fall away from him like rotting flesh, leaving him bare, vulnerable, with only the raw desire to run. He hadn’t even realized how on edge he’s been this whole time. He can’t hear the waves over the roar of his heartbeat. 

Dark hair, wet and stringy. Desperation. Dark eyes meeting his, and a flash of recognition. 

There’s a whirlpool in his mind, of nine years old and Jordan and the salt-fish stink of the harbor. It’s him and it’s Jordie and it isn’t. It’s a shivering little girl, her hair falling out of the braid she always wanted, her skin warm bronze and not at all the fish-belly pale of a corpse. 

The harbor took one Jordan from him, but it has returned another.

Her arms are shaking as she crawls up onto the dock and stops there, on her hands and knees, head hanging low and dripping water onto the boards. Kaz takes a step towards her, then a few more. Normally he’d be searching for a plan, an angle, but right now his mind is just scrambling to rearrange its composure.

“Jordan?” he asks. His voice comes out sounding all wrong—he knew he couldn’t manage to sound comforting, but he’d hoped at least for something shy of threatening, something that sounded safe. Instead, he almost sounds as if he is the one afraid. 

She looks up, and he knows her face. It’s thinner, less of a baby’s roundness in her cheeks, but those deep-set eyes are the same. “Kaz?”

She pushes herself to her feet. Help her, his mind says, but he can’t make himself move. His eyes go to the Wraith and the Hawk , closer now, side by side, some sort of connection established between them. He has to tell Inej. 

The little girl who he does and doesn’t know takes a few steps towards him. She is long-limbed and wiry, dressed in red and black, scared and exhausted. A tear leaks down her cheek and she scrubs it away. Kaz wonders who taught her to do that. She speaks again. “Da?”

She is three in his arms and she is five at Jesper and Wylan’s and she is nine, right in front of him, far too old in far too short a time. He goes to her, strips off his coat, and puts it around her. He remembers how she used to hide in it. “Yes,” he says. He may not be able to do anything else the way that he should, but at least he can keep her warm. 

He looks her in her watering eyes, ready to tell her every lie that his wicked and well-practiced mouth can conjure—that she is safe, that she is home—but it is because he’s looking into her face that he doesn’t see the explosion. 

He only hears the rush and the roar, and when he looks up, the Wraith is already burning. 

That’s wrong. Something is wrong. It wasn’t supposed to happen yet. It looks too real. They don’t even have Jordan. 

The cacophony crescendos in unison. Inej is on that ship.

He’s already shed his heavy coat, so he lays down his cane and doesn’t bother with the buttons of his vest. He shouldn’t be leaving Jordan when he’s just found her, shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing because of a thousand perfectly good reasons, and if he were thinking he wouldn’t. But Inej is his tell, his weak spot. He isn't thinking. All his cold logic and patient vengeance is gone. 

It’s her own damn fault, he tells himself as he dives into the harbor and starts to swim. 

Chapter Text

Everything’s going to hell in a handbasket, and then there is fire.

Not-so-very-much earlier:

The ships meet in Ketterdam’s harbor, barely more than a swim from the docks—if one has a good bit of endurance and isn’t afraid of the fabled sharks, that is. Inej has enough claws and teeth of her own to fall into that category, and today she’s baring all of them.

She has knives strapped to her arms, to her legs, in her vest, one down her back, even one in her hair. The guns on the ship itself won’t be of much use, but the ones her crew carry will do just fine. The exchange is supposed to be peaceful, but Inej knows better—she hasn’t spent this much of her life at the side of a master con artist for nothing. She knows her senses. The harbor doesn’t smell of salt and fish so much as violence.

And for once, she is hungry for a taste of it.

She will not let the Hawk reach her city. The opportunities for trickery are countless when a ship meets the shore. Out in the harbor, there is only so much one can hide. Inej wonders if the slavers passed the Reaper’s Barge on the way into the city—for that is how she intends to have them leave it.

She picks out who’s in charge on the Hawk almost immediately. It’s not always the captain who leads the crew, whether they realize it or not, but that isn’t of much consequence to Inej. In this case, it’s a young man—younger than her by a good five years at least—with a thick sheaf of dark hair and eyes black even in the dying sun. It strikes Inej that she thinks of twenty as young, now. It had seemed unfathomably old when it was an age she wasn’t sure she’d live to see.

His stance is a collection of odd angles, as if he was put together by estimates, without exact measurements or much care for results. He’s dressed a notch more nicely than the ship’s crew—still a sailor, still a slaver, but one who’s doing better than just getting by. Inej wonders how many lives his clothes cost.

Jordan’s will not be one of them.

Inej leaps up and balances on the rail. She uses one of the bits of sleight-of-hand that Kaz taught her to conceal a knife in her hand, small enough to hide but wicked enough to hit and hurt its mark.

We’ll run the harbor red with blood and fire.

The ships are close. They could board the Hawk by swinging over if it came to it. But that’s an invitation that Inej is too wise to take.

The young man who seems to be in charge is close enough for Inej to see the freckles on his face. “Where’s Brekker? You’d think that he would leap to your defense, wouldn’t you?”

Inej’s balance holds steady. She half-expected to be bitterly reminded of Kaz’s stoic face, of his cursed patience, but instead what she remembers is the feeling of being in his arms, of him holding her steady while the world crumbled around them. It felt safe in a way that it shouldn’t have. A way she can’t think about now.

“I might, but why would you?” Inej returns, raising her voice over the distance and waves. “Where is my daughter?”

“Just the way he wrote about you,” the young man says, a smile creeping languidly across his face. “Such pretty names, he called you. You’d almost believe he had a heart.”

Inej’s own heart nearly stops, but not because of his words. For all she knows, he’s bluffing. There might have been some other way to realize that they were working together and to extrapolate from that. Besides, the letters she’d received from him were stilted, formal; Kaz wouldn’t write some poetic missive, even to her, if forced at gunpoint.

No, her world is slowed by the sight of a small figure, draped in black and hooded, being led onto the deck.

“So, are you going to destroy your ship with your crew on it? Follow it to the waves like a good captain should?” The dark-haired man grabs the child roughly and holds her beside him by the back of her neck. “Although then, of course, your little girl would be orphaned again. Very tragic. But it brings out the best in some of us.” Inej itches to bury her knife in his heart, but there are pieces of this that she needs to understand first.

She’d known that the slavers were starting to work together, but this man is no ordinary member of their league. He knows about Kaz, and somehow he found out about Jordan. Could he be telling the truth about that letter? Obviously he has a vested interest in the destruction of the Wraith, but there’s a wrath about him, barely kept in check, that feels personal.

Felix Pieterse is dead, she insists to herself. Kaz doesn’t miss. And she and Kaz both have their share of enemies. But if, somehow…

First things first. She gets down from the rail, takes hold of a rope, and swings across to the deck of the Hawk. She lands perhaps ten, fifteen feet from the man who can’t be Felix. Her limited crew—Specht, Fionn, Xian, and a few others she trusts—don’t yet follow; the breaking of the peace is inevitable, but having them follow her would either start a full-out battle or concede to destroying the Wraith, neither of which Inej wants if she can help it.

Besides, she has other concerns as soon as she takes a proper look at the hooded child.

“That’s not her.”

The young man narrows his eyes like a smug cat and puts a gun to the child’s head. She whimpers. The voice isn’t Jordan’s. “You know, I’m glad Brekker isn’t here. He wouldn’t bother to save someone else’s child.”

Cold rage crystallizes Inej’s body, from her thundering heart to the steel of her knives. She moves as if to put up a hand in surrender, but at the last second she reveals and throws the hidden knife, straight for the man, whose identity she no longer cares for.

He doesn’t move the gun. Nonetheless, the knife hasn’t quite left her hand when she gets shot.

Inej goes to her knees, pain exploding through the side of her stomach. She clamps a hand to the spot and dizzily wonders how shocked they’ll be when it comes away bloodless.

When it’s Fabrikator-made, bulletproof material absorbs impact better than the regular sort, so Inej will get off with a nasty bruise rather than anything seriously broken. She has the absurd thought that she’s going to have to thank Kaz for letting her wear his vest—and perhaps even to apologize.

Someone’s helping her up. Inej was already winded, and her breath stutters. Their clumsy hand goes to the freshly bruised spot, and Inej has to swallow down a gasp of pain. Specht, she distantly realizes, seeing tattoos in her periphery.

“I’m fine,” she says, pushing him away. She’d rather not dwell on the bright spark of panic that rose at the unexpected contact. Besides, she has more important things to be doing.

It’s chaos. Her crew has almost entirely boarded the Hawk in her defense, and at least for now they’re holding their own. The dark-haired man is still roughly where he was, although there’s no sight of the gun or the child. Inej can only hope that her crew has retrieved them both.

Her side still throbbing, she draws one of her longer knives—better for combat where swords are involved—and leaps up to balance on the railing, giving her an advantage of height and a way to see where she’s needed in the melee. The combat has carried over to the Wraith, although the crew of the Hawk is larger and they are as much ransacking her ship as fighting on it. As much as she would like to throw them all into the harbor and let them take their chances, Inej knows better that her crew needs her more than her ship does.

Besides, her ship is safer with the Hawk’s men on it.

She can’t get much of a running start, so it’s a tricky jump, but she propels herself off of the rail and up onto the mast of the Hawk. It’s a miracle that she manages to grip it, frankly, and she murmurs a prayer of thanks before getting hold of a rope and kicking off into an arc; she’d like to catch the Hawk’s captain with a kick to the face, but he’s too good for that, and he ducks. Inej releases the rope and drops onto the deck, advancing on him, feeling as if her steps might scorch the boards. She hopes they do. She’d like to burn him alive.

Where is Jordan? If that’s not Jordan—

Inej knows the language of pain, and if her daughter is dead, she will make these men fluent speakers.

Jesper sent her some throwing stars like Dunyasha’s, and this man doesn’t have her skill for dodging, so she manages to stick him with a few, but those small wounds won’t decide the match—especially with pain still pulsing from her side.

He has a sword, but Inej has a knife, and practice, and a mother’s fury. The scream of steel on steel exhilarates her so fully that she almost forgets to control her breathing. She is vicious. She is justice. She is close to the man now, close enough to see fear in the whites of his eyes, close enough that he can see her smiling a manic smile, showing all her teeth. She doesn’t know if she’s ever felt like this. She loves it more than she should.

“I see why Brekker likes you,” he says, trying and failing to drive her back with an outward strike that she ducks and parries.

Inej slashes his bicep. To his credit, he doesn’t falter—much. “We’re two of a kind, just a couple of monsters. But if you’re challenging the ghosts and demons, you must really fear your sins.”

His blade catches her forearm, just barely, but it’s a deep slice and it bleeds. Luckily it’s her left, so it won’t affect her grip. Dueling isn’t Inej’s style, and yet she’s managing to stick and slice him well enough. They’ve fought their way down the deck with her advancing, and if she can disarm him, she’s strong enough to flip him over himself and get him on the ground—

She is not one to fantasize about blood spilling over her hands, life draining from a man’s eyes while she watches. Maybe Kaz does that. But she does want to see this man hurt. She wants him to cry. She wants him to plead. And she wants him to remember.

She watches him move, start toward her weakened left, but she’s faster; she lunges opposite, slips around his back, and gets an arm across his throat, pinning him to the rail.

Her knife is at his heart. She fancies that she can hear it shuddering. She wonders if she will hear it stop. “Perhaps you’ve heard that the sea is fickle,” she whispers at his shoulder. Her breath stirs the little hairs that curl behind his ear. “That it does not forgive, that it is cruel. But the truth is that it’s merciful compared to me.”

He does not plead. Inej wonders just how much he must have lost, and finds that she wishes it were more.

You always have more to lose. She doesn’t know if the thought comes before or after the Wraith explodes, but she’ll remember it as coming after. It’s more poetic that way.

Chapter Text

Everything is cold chaos. Inej vaguely remembers the shock of the explosion, of the Hawk rocking and tilting and her being thrown over the rail. Her knife is no longer in her hand. She’s not sure where the Hawk’s captain went. 

She can’t make herself think of him by name, even though she knows what it is.

The saltwater stings the slice on her forearm terribly, and she can barely open her eyes enough to find the surface. Her lungs burning, she kicks upwards until her head breaks out of the water into blessed air that suddenly seems frigid. She clears the water from her eyes as well as she can, gasping, and looks around. It looks like most everyone else managed to stay on the Hawk, except for a dark shape thrashing weakly in the waves near her. 

A red trail follows him, smeared in the dark water. Inej is reminded of the sharks. 

Focus. She’s treading water all right for now, but her breath still hasn’t recovered from the gunshot, and if she goes under for too long it’ll give out. These aren’t exactly ideal circumstances for making the swim back to the docks, but it’s the best chance that she has. 

She imagines doing this, nine years old, pretending that the only thing you have to cling to isn’t who he is. Suddenly she can’t remember why she was so angry with Kaz. 

She turns her body forward and starts to swim, pretending that she’s not in quite so much danger but swimming as if she is. Pretending that her ship isn’t gone, who knows how many dead, Jordan still missing, or—

Stop thinking. Just swim.

Every time her left arm submerges, a fiery line of pain ignites, but it’s a small price to pay for keeping her head above water. If she can just get back to the city, Kaz will be there, and they can make a new plan, or…

What if they can’t make a new plan? What if Jordan is just gone? 

Then he will hold her like he did when she fell into his arms, four years disappearing between them. She tells herself this and finds that she believes it. 

Swim, Inej, swim.

Cold water and burning bricks aren’t so different when it comes down to it. She might not like the future that she sees, but nonetheless it’s waiting above. Her life’s work began in that incinerator, and if it has to end here, she trusts that there is something beyond. Every time her head rises above the waves, she murmurs the names of her Saints. 

Swim, Inej, swim. 

Her limbs are sore and heavy, but she can see the docks. She can make it as far as that. As long as she can see—

Another dark shape in the water. Shark , her mind screams in a panic. But the shape is wrong. And then a dark head breaks the surface. And she doesn’t understand, not at all, but she knows. 

She swims faster. 

He’s looking somewhere beyond her, face and eyes white, unseeing. Inej is half sure that he would swim right past her if she doesn’t stop him, but she isn’t sure how to do that without touching him, which she knows is only going to make things worse. Why didn’t he know that? Why didn’t his monstrous brain manage to conceive that he wasn’t going to be able to save her if he couldn’t even get close? Maybe that wasn’t his intention, but why else leap into the harbor, as he must have…

“Kaz,” she says insistently, bobbing and treading water in front of him, her voice hoarse and raw. He falters, stops, starts to sink, and then claws his way back to the surface, barely keeping himself upright. His breathing is all wrong. 

“You need to go back,” Inej says. “We need to go back.”

Slowly, his gaze turns to her and latches onto her face, but instead of comfort or clarity, open horror shatters his expression. He shakes his head, bobs back and forth in the churning waves. Inej can only imagine what he thinks he sees. But she can’t stay like this for much longer. Her body is screaming to rest, to give up, to let the current carry her where it will. 

But she can’t help him. She can’t save him. She can’t even get near him. 

Inej kicks closer to him and squirms out of the borrowed vest, making her bruised side ache, craning her head back to keep breathing. She presses one end of the vest into his hand; he still has his gloves on, but they’re soaked through. He flinches away from her, but his fist closes around the fabric, which is all that Inej wanted. 

Holding tight to her end, she turns onto her back and starts kicking towards the docks, keeping her eyes on Kaz. He seems at least stirred into motion enough to move and not just be dragged along, perhaps not even realizing that he’s grasping the other hem of the vest. Inej can’t tell if he’s looking at her or past her. 

“Why?” she says as she kicks with energy she doesn’t have, frustration leaking into her words. “Why wouldn’t you just stay where I told you? Why finally decide to care in the worst way, Kaz?”

He meets her eyes, and she could almost believe he’s perfectly lucid, but for his words. “I lost you.”

“You didn’t,” Inej insists. Everything in her wants to pull him to her. “I’m here.”

“I’m here,” he says, and even though he’s repeating her words, it means something different. 

Inej looks back over her shoulder and realizes that they’re almost there, but the thought is almost immediately eclipsed by the sight of the little figure standing on the dock. Inej’s heart leaps into her throat. She almost stops, right there, forgets everything but that little shape that she could outline in her dreams. The only reason she keeps moving is because everything in her needs to be there, now, yesterday, a week ago. 

Inej turns forward and crosses the last distance, still listening for the sounds of Kaz following. Jordan is dirty, scraped, disheveled…wet? But whole and alive, and for now that is all Inej cares.

Jordan is also holding Kaz’s cane. She drops to her knees and lowers the head of it down towards the water, her face open and alight. “Mama!”

Inej’s vision is blurred, and it takes her a moment to realize that it’s with tears and not saltwater. She has to let go of the soaked vest to get her hands up on the end of the dock. “I can get up, I don’t need it, meja ,” she says, half sobbing, suddenly full of the strength to pull herself up onto the boards. Jordan puts Kaz’s cane aside and barrels into her arms, bursting into tears. 

Inej buries her face in Jordan’s wet hair, stroking it over and over, murmuring in half-incoherent Suli and Kerch. She is safe. Jordan is safe and here and alive, and she is so brave, and Inej is so proud. Her heart is full to overflowing. 

“I was brave, mama,” says Jordan, hiccuping between tears in the way that small children do. “I was a good pirate.”

“You are so brave, meja, but you don’t need to be brave anymore,” Inej whispers, giving her daughter a squeeze to reassure herself as much as Jordan. “I’m here.”

Distantly, she recognizes the sound of Kaz joining them, pulling himself onto the boards. She lifts her head up and looks over Jordan at him, on his hands and knees, shivering with what might be cold or panic. Inej is still helpless, but she’s helpless with Jordan in her arms, and she can’t make herself afraid in the same way anymore. “Kaz?”

He looks up at her, and his gaze is clear, his face flushed with cold. He gathers up his coat and walking stick from the boards and stands unsteadily. Inej waits. 

“Is the bastard dead?” His voice is quiet, his face half-shadowed. 

Inej kisses the top of Jordan’s head. The breeze, so much colder now that she’s soaked through, nips at her skin. She thinks of the blur of the explosion, of being thrown forward, her knife sinking deep—of the dark head in the water, trailing a red stain. She looks out into the harbor at the burning wreckage, sure to incur the wrath of the Council if not the Tides themselves. Nothing alive approaches from it. 

Felix Pieterse should have been dead. Well, he is now. 

“He is.”

“Good.” Kaz starts to move past them. Inej will let him go. It’s not worth making him stay with them if he has more important places to be, not now that her daughter is back and safe. 

“Stay,” says Jordan, pushing Inej’s arm down to look up at Kaz. She scrubs some tears from her little face. “Please, da? Or can we go with you?”

Kaz looks down at Jordan, his coat still draped over his arm, his expression inscrutable. It’s as silent as a prayer. There is no ceremony in it when he turns back to them; when he puts his coat over Inej’s shoulders; when he sits. When he moves closer. 

Inej dares to relax into him, to let their arms press together, a barrier of wool between. Kaz shudders, but he doesn’t move away. She hears him take a steadying breath that then settles. 

“Can we still go with you?” Jordan says sleepily. 

The Hawk is turning back to shore. Inej whispers a prayer of thanks that her crew was on it. 

“Your mother is hurt,” says Kaz. “So yes. But I expect she’ll want to wait for her crew.”

Inej looks at him in surprise. How had he known? “Where would we go? I’d just assumed…” What had she assumed? Jesper and Wylan didn’t even know she was back. It certainly wasn’t ideal to spring herself on them, even though they’d likely welcome her in. 

“Wherever you want,” says Kaz. “Wherever you need.” The stubbornness in his face is old and familiar—the expression he wears when he tells you that yes, he’s calling on you to do the impossible again and yes, he believes you can, it’s not like he’s just asking to make you feel better. 

She is stuck in the city now, isn’t she? She’s looking right at the sinking wreckage of the rest of her life. And yet, from this vantage point, she can look the future in the face. She’d chosen to believe that Kaz would hold her steady in the after, and here he is, doing just that. It’s a strange feeling, the thought that she might not have to do everything alone. 

She thinks of his white face and dark eyes in the harbor. I’m here.

“I’m here.” As if he knows, he says it again. 

Chapter Text

Inej is the first to board the Hawk when it reaches them. Jordan is not leaving her side, which Inej is just as glad for, so they venture onboard together, hands clasped tight. Jordan is buried in the folds of Kaz’s coat, the sleeve bunched up around her elbow just to allow her to hold Inej’s hand. 

Some of the members of her crew she’d brought with her are milling around on deck—she can only pray that the rest are accounted for. After assuring them that she and Jordan are all right—more or less—the first place that Inej goes is to the captain’s cabin. She can’t stop thinking about Felix’s words.

Such pretty things he wrote about you.

It’s probably foolish of her, but she has to know if he was bluffing—and if he wasn’t, what exactly the letter said, and why, and how. 

Jordan almost trips on the hem of the overlarge coat, her solution to which is to bundle the extra folds into her free arm and hold them, crumpled, against her chest. Inej somehow doubts that Kaz will mind. 

The door is locked when they get to it. Inej frowns slightly. It’s a minor obstacle, and probably one she should have thought—“Jordan, what are you doing?”

Jordan has fished a shining needle out of the coat’s pocket and inserted it into the lock. She sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth as she fiddles with the lock, then beams when it gives and the door swings open. Inej just looks at her for a moment before sighing heavily and following her inside. 

While Jordan pokes around in drawers and under the cot, Inej goes straight to the desk. There isn’t much on it—just some maps—but there is a slender drawer sunk into its front. It’s locked as well, but while she’s no Kaz, Inej has enough pride not to ask a nine-year-old for help. It takes her a moment, but then the drawer slides open easily enough under her silent touch. 

It’s empty. Apparently. 

The bottom of the drawer, however, is made of some kind of flimsy, green material. Inej feels around the edges until her nail slips under in the corner. As she’d expected, the false bottom peels away, and there’s an envelope beneath it—an envelope closed with a now-broken black wax seal. 

As silently as the thief she is, Inej slips the letter out of the drawer and unfolds it, cursing her hands for how shaky and uncertain they’ve suddenly become. She lays it down on the desk, smoothing out the creases with a press of her hand. 

“Captain.” 

Inej turns around much more sharply than she would’ve liked, slipping the letter into her vest. No one surprises the Wraith. That’s her game. 

At least it’s just Specht, standing in the straightest salute she’s ever seen from him. Inej’s breath rushes from her lungs as something cold and heavy fills her chest like lead. “There’s no need for all that,” she says. “What is it?”

He relaxes—droops, more properly, as if the strings holding him up have been cut. “Fionn.” The name comes out as a strangled whisper, but to Inej, it’s as loud as a cannon blast. 

No. 

She’s silent, of course. She is the Wraith, after all, and she will do her grieving as invisibly as everything else. 

“Of the five of us,” he goes on, his voice taut and trembling like a tightrope in the wind, “she was the only one on the Wraith. ”

Inej has lost friends since all the way back to her time with the Dregs. She’s even lost crew members before. But Fionn was one of the first to believe in her enough to join her cause. She’d been so like Nina. And she had done so much to raise Jordan. 

Jordan.

Inej looks to her daughter, whose eyes are wide and watering. “Is that what blew up?” she says. “Did our ship—”

“Come here,” says Inej, crouching and putting her arms out to Jordan. Like many other times in this world, even when the waves are crashing over her head, she has to lift her daughter up to breathe. She clutches Jordan close to her, feels their hearts beat against each other through wet clothes. “It’s going to be okay. Kaz and I will figure out what to do next.” She’s almost surprised to find how much she believes that. 

With one arm still around Jordan, she looks up at Specht, who’s still there. “Anything else?” Her voice sounds startlingly ragged. 

“We captured one of the Hawk’s crew. Thought you’d want to talk to him.”

As a matter of fact, she would like that very much. 

<><><>

Kaz comes into the cabin, and there is a man tied to a chair. He surveys the room and sees Jordan watching quite intently. Good. One must set an example, after all. 

Parenting 101 with Kaz Brekker, acknowledged expert, he thinks drily. 

He understands, to a degree, the somber mood on board; the practical part of him that’s impatient with it is quickly silenced by the part of him that doesn’t particularly feel like getting yelled at by Inej again. 

Also, right now, he has an example in living color of what she’s like when she’s angry. 

“—was a one-time job,” the man is saying. He looks like one of those creatures that’s been preserved in a jar for study, except considerably more afraid. “To get rid of the little bug that was biting us. And we did, didn’t we?”

“Oh, yes, I’d say you vanquished the bug that killed your crew and tied you up on your own ship,” Inej says, her voice bitingly sweet. “And what do you think the bug is going to do next?”

He shifts a shoulder. “Have Dirtyhands beat me up? Ask me more questions? I’m not giving names or—”

Kaz notes the implication that he works for Inej, but doesn’t correct it. At this point, it’s not exactly wrong. 

“Silly boy,” says Inej, and there’s a note in her voice, rich and smooth, that makes something deep in Kaz’s stomach buzz with heat. He shutters the feeling, saves it for later. “You don’t have anything else that I want. If you want to survive, you can no longer bargain. You’ll have to beg.”

Kaz would go to his aching knees for a kind word from her, were she not so good as to give them out freely. 

The beast, however, spits at her. Kaz is about to snap his jaw off and make a collar out of it. 

Instead, it’s Inej who moves. She kicks the chair out from under him, in the same motion driving her knee into his groin, and slams him to the floor, a fist in his hair to bash his skull against the boards. She steps back and plants a foot on his head, pushing it to the ground. 

Her fighting style has always been elegant, fluid, even when it was quick. Kaz was always the one to be harsh and brutal and cruel. This is a new weapon in her hands, and he likes it. He likes it more than he should, like everything else about her. 

Inej rests a forearm on her knee and bends over the fallen form. “Actually, I do have a question for you. Did you touch my daughter?”

Silence. Kaz can hear the man fighting down a groan. 

“He did,” says Jordan from the corner. “He hit me.”

Inej tilts her head like a predator focusing its gaze. “Which hand?”

The man grunts. “Why would I remember—”

“Right,” says Jordan, taking a step closer. She looks down at him, careful, observing, and gestures to illustrate her words. “He tried again. But I pulled a nail out of the floor and he hit that instead. Tchk. ” She mimes what Kaz assumes is the nail going through his hand. “That’s why he was hiding on his ship. He could only fight with his bad hand after that.”

Kaz clenches his jaw tight, but it’s not enough to stop the slightest hint of a smile from breaking through. 

Inej, meanwhile, lifts her foot from the man’s head and crouches, then draws his right hand out from beneath his crumpled form. There’s still a small, round, fresh wound on the back of it. 

Inej looks over it for a moment. Kaz sees her grip loosen and wonders if she’ll walk away. He can’t force her to be a monster today; maybe it’s better if she never becomes like him, after all. 

But then the man is screaming, and there’s a knife in his hand, sunk clean through into the boards. 

Inej goes to talk to Jordan, and Kaz prepares himself to slip out. Before he goes, though, he looks back over his shoulder. “Those annoying little spiders do have a nasty bite, now, don’t they?”

<><><>

Inej knows where they’re going well before they get there. She hasn’t just been watching Kaz walk, heavily favoring his right, probably made worse by the cold and the swim. She’s been observing her surroundings; it may have been years, but she still knows the city around the Geldrenner hotel. 

She supposes that Kaz can afford it, the way that things are going with the Dregs and his enterprises. If only the desperate teenagers that they were, with no resources and a city against them, had known that one day they’d be able to afford an indefinite stay. Or, at least, that Kaz would. He was the one who’d cared for kruge, back then. 

At least one of us got what they wanted.

When they get inside, they get some odd looks from the few patrons mingling in the lobby; the Geldrenner is frequented by the city’s elite, and here they are looking like a family of drowned canal rats. She can’t bring herself to care. 

The hotel has recently installed a new feature, it seems, a metal box that’s raised by some kind of pulley, for the use of guests who’d rather not take the stairs. Inej pretends to be curious about it, for Kaz’s sake. She senses that he knows her game, but at least he doesn’t argue. 

The hallway is long and empty. Doors follow doors that follow more identical doors. They check in to room 306, and Kaz hands Inej the key. It’s strange to see him use one. 

Jordan runs inside and flops on one of the beds. Inej doesn’t care enough to tell her to put a towel down first. She’ll have to get some of their clothes from Jesper and Wylan’s, but none of Jordan’s will fit anymore…

She sees Kaz walk into her field of vision and realizes that she’s stopped just inside the door, staring dumbly into the clean, plush, practically empty room that’s just like a thousand others. Jordan says she’s hungry.

“I’ll go downstairs,” says Kaz. “The room arrangements still need settling.”

Of course he’d find a reason. Anything but that he cares. Inej slowly goes to the end of the bed that Jordan isn’t on and sits on it. It gives beneath her, soft and springy. 

Maybe the weight of what she’s lost will settle onto her eventually. If she had her say, she would simply vanish, join the thousand ghosts hanging over this city until the pain was gone; but now she has something tethering her to this world. Now she has Jordan, needing her there, whole and solid. If she could just make herself feel, she’d be afraid. 

She goes to adjust her vest and feels the envelope that she tucked into it. Numbly, she reaches inside and extracts it, watching her hand draw out the parchment as if it’s not attached to her body. 

And…she reads. 

The words are desperate. Hollow. And horribly, painfully honest. She doesn’t like that she can imagine Kaz, his eyes bloodshot, hunched over his desk, scribbling in a fervor and getting ink all over the place. What she can’t imagine is him saying the things that this letter says to her. 

My piety and my punishment. My wisdom. My wraith, my keeper of secrets, the secret of my heart. My saint, my salvation, my destruction, my rebirth. It’s all so dramatic. So very Kaz, in that way. But she looks down at these words in his handwriting and can’t reconcile the two; they are things that should not exist together, not so close, not like this. Maybe that applies to her and Kaz as well. 

My darling, my love. Normal things that normal people call their normal lovers. Sweet nothings, whispered between kisses. She can’t hear them in his voice. They don’t fit. 

Let me kiss the salt off your lips. Let me kiss the fear from your mind. Let me kiss you until it kills me. Kill me, and it would be all right. Let me have you. Let me tell you the hundred things I want to do to you. Do what you will with me.

The old wanting blossoms inside of her, an unsteady pulse, ready to careen and fall any second. It’s a swoop in her stomach, a tightening of her chest, the feeling of leaping from a trapeze and trusting that there will be another there to catch. It is all far too dangerous—this time, she knows she’ll fall. 

Jordan’s curious, sleepy voice rises beside her. “Mama? Are you okay?”

Inej begins to answer, but she’s interrupted by another voice from the door. “She’s not. I found some—”

His sentence jerks to a halt and then trickles away to nothing. Inej knows why. 

“They’re sending up room service,” Kaz says flatly. 

Inej faces Kaz where he stands in the doorway, backlit. The letter lies in her hands. It feels incriminating. 

“That’s how he knew.” Kaz speaks like he’s walking on nails, like if he doesn’t hold every word on the tightest string, it will all collapse. He might have to be honest, Inej thinks bitterly. But what lies in her hands is what happens when he’s honest. 

“Felix Pieterse,” she says, her voice coming out terribly quiet. The voice of the Wraith. “Did you suspect?”

Kaz takes a slow step towards her, the click of his cane muffled by the carpeted floor. He’s still wet. They both are, Inej supposes. He has a roll of bandages dangling limply from his free hand. 

“It made sense,” he says, still ever so careful. “He didn’t need to be a slaver to create a coalition that hates you, in order to get at me. Inej, your arm—You need—”

“What I need is answers.” Inej rises and walks, not sure of where she’s going, but she finds herself facing the bathroom door. She holds the letter so tightly it might tear. It feels like evidence, but she’s no longer sure which one of them it accuses. “Where was this? Where was any of this when…when—ever?”

“Properly locked away where it belonged. Some of it blessedly unthought of.” She looks back; Kaz’s collar isn’t quite high enough to hide the flush that creeps up his neck. He takes another stilted step towards her. Over his shoulder, Jordan is asleep. “Now, will you please—”

“Look who’s learned manners,” Inej muses. She fiddles with her earring and only then realizes which one it is. 

The pearl. The one he gave her. 

The memory of an almost-kiss, of the ghost of his touch, washes over her so powerfully that she can hardly breathe. Could she imagine that man pouring his heart out on paper? Maybe this one just isn’t so different. 

She takes the chance and looks into his eyes. They are as bitter-coffee brown as ever, impossibly deep. All she can think of is his words, words she only had to read once to memorize: Ever seen a wretched husk of a man land hard for you and never want to get up? You have. You’ve seen it every time you meet my eyes.

Inej’s breath leaves her entirely. She sees it now. 

Slowly, she opens the bathroom door and steps inside. It’s as if the years have disintegrated—the same high windows, the same white and gold tiles. This probably isn’t the same room, and the light is much deeper gold in the almost-twilight, but it hardly matters. 

She lifts herself onto the counter. Kaz hesitates before following her in, standing a foot away, that look in his eyes that has somehow always been there—but now Inej can’t look away. How did she never notice that before? How had she managed to will away what she knew was there?

“I can help you,” says Kaz. Nothing really changes, does it?

She was right. She’d leapt with nothing to catch her. But this will be a glorious fall. 

Inej rolls up her sleeve to look at the cut. It’s stopped bleeding, helped by the saltwater. She dries her arm with a towel that hangs by the sink, then rests her forearm on her thigh, palm up. 

Kaz steps closer to her. He’s standing between her thighs, golden light on his hair. It’s been almost ten years, and so very little has changed. He left his cane behind, and now he undoes the clasps on his gloves and lays them aside on the counter. Inej sets the letter down on top of them, covering his armor with what happens when it’s gone. She offers him the towel.

Kaz dries his hands. The silence is reverent as she lifts her arm to allow him to wind the bandage around it. “Did you think that letter was why I stopped writing?” Inej asks at length, watching the gentleness of his motions—just the slightest brushes against her, unavoidable. 

“It was what I expected,” he replies, quickly and curtly, looking down at his work. Inej senses the effort behind making it sound businesslike. She knows him well enough to know better. 

“I was angry,” she confesses. “I thought—I wrote that I might send Jordan back, and you never answered, so I…” She’d thought the worst of him. I’ll take her home , he’d written. Show her the apple trees and the creek and buy her so many sweets at the bakery that you’ll scowl at me in that glorious way you do.

“And you never answered me ,” Kaz says with a wry twist of a smile. 

“We’re supposed to be smarter than this, aren’t we?” Inej asks. She watches as Kaz finishes with the bandage, the process so careful that it barely hurts. 

“I’m a fool when it comes to you.” Kaz’s voice is so soft, all rasp and no tone, that she barely hears him. But he looks up and meets her eyes again, and then there is no doubt. 

You’ve seen it every time you meet my eyes.

“You leapt into the harbor to save me,” Inej says. Before he can interject, she continues, “You said that you would come for me. And you did.” She touches her earring as she did before. “You were wrong, you know.”

“Impossible,” says Kaz, arching an eyebrow. “I never am.”

“My Saints are watching over me,” says Inej, bending ever so slightly closer. “And that’s why they gave me you.” Their breaths are mingling as she speaks. Kaz’s hitches softly, sharply. He has a tiny, white scar at the corner of his lip. 

His dark, liquid gaze darts from Inej’s eyes to her lips and back again. Something deep inside of her ignites, and she grips the edge of the counter hard. Every nerve in her body seems to stand upright, to strain towards him. He gives a dry chuckle, and she watches his crooked, clever mouth as he speaks.  “When I said there was no one like you, I was referring to your skills, but you know as well as I that no one else would consider me a blessing.”

Inej lifts a hand, clutching the towel she used before, and wipes away a rivulet that’s rolling down his temple from his wet hair, lingering over the closest thing she can have to a touch. He shivers and leans into it. “You don’t have to understand,” she says. 

He doesn’t speak, and she can accept that. There aren’t always words for times like this. But the things that people do instead of speaking are forbidden to them. The only words Inej can find, funnily enough, are his. 

“I can’t love you,” she says, “but I can’t do anything else.”

Chapter Text

Jordan dreams about the bad men. 

Sometimes, when she dreams, she knows she’s dreaming. This isn’t like that. This is like what Inej has said it’s like to Forget—that’s what they call it when Inej gets all quiet sometimes and doesn’t remember where she is. Maybe getting taken on a ship by bad men always makes you Forget, and now Jordan will too. 

But she is not thinking any of this now. She is on the ship, in the dark hold, with their hot breath beating down on her like the sunlight that she hasn’t seen in days. Their voices are scratchy, but not like Kaz’s. 

“Dirtyhands’ kid, huh? Scrawny little thing.”

“You think he’s really working with the Wraith?”

“Working is one word. I’ve heard things about what she did before she came for our business. Bet Dirtyhands is rich enough to pay for her.”

“I’ll bet this one grows up nice.” One of them grabs her face and pulls it to look at him. It hurts. Jordan wants to close her eyes. “Flat as a pan, but she’s got a pretty face.”

The other one spits on the floor. “Too young for my taste. Give her a few years.”

The one holding Jordan laughs, loud and ugly. He throws her back down, and she tries not to cry out when she hits the floor. She is a pirate, and pirates don’t cry. 

“She won’t make it that long,” he says. Jordan understands that well enough. The dark is swallowing her, like maybe the ship is sinking, and there’s nothing but black water. And maybe she isn’t a pirate after all, because she feels a hot tear roll down her face. 

She’s still crying when she wakes up, and at first, it’s—she’s crying in the dark, just like she was before, and is the breathing nearby one of those men? But it doesn’t sound like them. It sounds like…

Jordan scrambles out of bed, crying harder for some reason, and crawls into the other bed, next to Inej. Inej is facing away from her, and she goes tense when Jordan puts an arm over her side to hug her. Quickly, Jordan pulls away, trying to hush her crying to little, gasping hiccups. 

Inej turns over, and her eyes are wide and scared for a second before she sees Jordan by the light through the filmy curtains. “I’m sorry, meja, ” she says, her voice scratchy with sleep. She puts an arm around Jordan and pulls her close. “What’s wrong?”

Jordan wonders if her mama Forgot, and if she did, why. “Bad dream,” she says, burrowing into the fluffy covers. These hotel beds are so comfy and soft; she doesn’t ever want to sleep in a hammock again. 

Inej smells nice, safe and clean. She strokes Jordan’s hair. “It’s gone now,” she whispers, her voice wrapping around Jordan as warmly as the blanket. “You’re safe with me.” Jordan tries to believe that, to forget the men’s voices, their rough hands throwing her around. She squeezes Inej back, tighter, making it a game to see who can give the strongest hug. Between the two of them, maybe they can keep her safe. 

She thinks she remembers having a bad dream before, when they were in the city last time. Her memory is as hazy as the silvery light from the window, but she thinks, like the light gets clearer where it pools on the floor, that she remembers Kaz being there. Maybe that’s when he started teaching her to pick locks. 

“Why isn’t Kaz here?” she asks, soft and sleepy. Inej goes all tense again, and now Jordan is afraid she said something bad. Sometimes Inej likes to talk about Kaz, and sometimes she doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense. 

“He doesn’t live here. He lives somewhere else.” Inej pushes some pieces of Jordan’s hair back off of her face, still wet from the bath she took before going to sleep. “We’ll see him again soon.” But Jordan has known how to pretend since she was very little, and pretending isn’t so different from lying, and people seem to think it isn’t really lying when they just don’t say the whole truth, but Jordan knows better. She knows when they’re doing it. “Soon” could be anything. It could be too late. She starts crying again and tries to hide her face in the blankets. 

Inej sits partway up and lifts up Jordan’s face with a hand on her cheek. “What’s wrong?” She sounds almost scared. Jordan doesn’t like that. Inej isn’t supposed to be scared of anything. Not when she could kill the same man that Jordan couldn’t even stop from hitting her. 

Jordan tries to hide her face again, but Inej brushes away a tear with a sweep of her thumb. “Nothing,” Jordan says, because they might as well both be lying. 

Inej is quiet. It’s a bad quiet. Jordan can’t see her face, but she feels her lie back down. She rests her head on Inej’s chest, thin and not very soft but still safe and solid. Perfect as far as Jordan is concerned. 

“Stay here,” Inej says quietly, combing her fingers through Jordan’s hair. “No one can hurt you while I’m here.”

She’s pretending again, Jordan thinks. But Jordan doesn’t argue, because she wants to pretend that, too.

<><><>

In the morning, breakfast is brought up on trays—cheese and fruits and bread shiny with butter, plus pastries dusted with sugar. Jordan pounces on the little chocolatey ones and gets powdered sugar on the sheets, but she doesn’t think it matters since they’re both white. Inej doesn’t seem to mind. 

“I couldn’t forget your sweet tooth,” she says, cross-legged on the bed and nibbling on an orange. She smiles, that pretty smile that Jordan loves. “You’re just like your—” The smile drops, but not into sadness as much as surprise, where Inej blinks at herself and gives Jordan a funny look. Not a bad one, though. “You’re just like your father. Save one for him.”

Jordan pouts, but she listens. She can’t really imagine Kaz liking sweets, though. Would he get powdered sugar all over his gloves? His black coat? The idea of it makes her giggle, of her serious da stuffing his face with pastries. Maybe Inej is thinking about it too, because she laughs, just a little. That makes Jordan giggle even more until she flops over backwards, still laughing, and Inej puts another pastry in her mouth. 

“That’ll make you be quiet,” she teases. 

Jordan tries to scowl, but as she’d figured out when trying to imagine Kaz, it’s very hard to look angry with a puff pastry in your mouth. 

After they eat, and Jordan reluctantly leaves a pastry for Kaz, Inej braids her hair. 

“Tell him he has to come today,” Jordan says seriously. “It’ll get stale.”

“Or you might just have to eat it,” says Inej, and even she’s behind her, Jordan can hear her smiling—that mischievous smile that’s even better than the pretty, happy one. That smile means they’re going to get into trouble together, which is the best.

Inej is just tying off Jordan’s braid with a red ribbon when there’s a knock on the door. Both Inej and Jordan startle, but then Inej puts Jordan’s finished braid over her shoulder and rises to walk to the door. Jordan marvels at how quiet her footsteps are. She wants to learn to move like that. 

Inej checks the door before opening it. Jordan watches her posture change and knows who’s there. 

Kaz steps into the room. He’s leaning more on his walking stick than Jordan remembers. But his expression also looks…Jordan isn’t sure. Not happier, exactly, but softer somehow. Or maybe just tired. 

Jordan picks up the remaining pastry from the tray and slides off of the bed, bounding up to Kaz. She holds it out to him. “Inej made me save you one.”

He gives her a long look before taking off his gloves, putting them in his coat pocket, and carefully picking the pastry up from her hand. Jordan gives him a look. 

He raises his eyebrows. “Something else, Jordan?”

“You need to say thank you,” she insists. He doesn’t have to be nice, but he should at least have manners. 

Kaz and Inej look at each other. Jordan looks at them. She isn’t sure what’s funny, but Inej is doing a bad job of not laughing. 

“Thank you,” he says slowly.

Jordan, contented, hops back onto the bed, where her vest is laid out—now dry. Right now, she’s dressed in all-black, like Inej’s spy clothes, but the vest that she puts on and buttons up is dark red. It has a pocket on the inside where her knife used to go, and another one that she keeps the pocket watch in, which, luckily, is still working. The map from Alby is secreted away in a dresser drawer, wrinkled and smeared but, Jordan thinks, still legible. It just needs to stay there without Inej finding it.

Kaz and Inej are talking quietly by the door. Inej nods and comes over to get Jordan, who perks up. Are she and Kaz going on an adventure?

“Behave yourself for him,” says Inej, taking one of Jordan’s hands and helping her off the bed, even though she doesn’t need help. She looks over at Kaz, who is using the nearest curtain to dust powdered sugar off of his hands. “And you, behave yourself for her.”

“I’m a model citizen,” says Kaz. “As far as the stadwatch is concerned.”

“Somehow, I doubt that,” says Inej, giving Jordan’s shoulders a little nudge towards the door. 

“They don’t have anything on me yet, so in terms of technicalities, I’m afraid you’re wrong, dear Inej.” He tips his hat to her dramatically. 

Jordan giggles and follows him out the door.

<><><>

Kaz doesn’t hold her hand as they walk around like Inej does, but it’s easy enough to trail him; people seem to move out of his way, leaving a Jordan-sized path behind him. Mostly, though, she doesn’t even use it, opting to scramble up a drainpipe or lamppost and scamper over the roofs, following the trail that he leaves in the morning crowd.

She almost loses him once when she stops to give some pastry crumbs to the crows, but a moment later, she spots his dark shape in the street and catches up. She doesn’t know the city well enough to know which districts they pass through, but it seems like a shorter way than it should be by the time Kaz seems to stop.

He’s stopped by a little cart under an awning, near a stone bridge that crosses the canal. Jordan slides down the awning and drops to the ground beside him, bending her knees to soften the impact. 

The man behind the cart, gray-haired and smiling, looks down at her in surprise. “A friend of yours?”

“None of that, De Vos; you know I don’t have friends.” Kaz pulls a kruge note out of seemingly nowhere and puts it on top of the cart. “That said, make it two.”

“Two what?” says Jordan. 

“Patience is the key to revenge, stakeouts, and everything else in life,” says Kaz, which is not even close to being an answer. Jordan pouts. 

Mr. De Vos smiles at her as he stirs something in a cup. “Is she yours?”

“As much as a stray dog that follows me home and nips at my heels when I try to make it leave is mine,” Kaz replies, taking the two cups. He hands one to Jordan, and she catches the scent immediately. 

“Hot chocolate?”

“Emphasis on hot, so don’t spill it,” says Mr. De Vos. “Whatever Mr. Brekker is to you, he actually paid for this, so let’s not waste that rare occurrence.”

“You slander me like that and I’ll stop paying,” says Kaz. He touches his cane to Jordan’s shoulders. “Now leave this old fool to his business.”

Jordan thinks she hears Mr. De Vos grumbling behind her, which makes her laugh. She follows Kaz to the bridge, where he leans against the rail, and she climbs up to sit on top of it, carefully balancing the hot chocolate.

Kaz takes a sip of his. “He’s been in this city as long as I have. You’d think he would have been scared off by now.”

Jordan kicks her legs, watching them swing above the water. “But there are lots of tourists. And they like hot chocolate.”

Kaz bumps his cup against hers. “Would you like to be the second person I’ve ever trusted with a secret of mine, Jordan?”

She kicks her legs faster and nods in excitement, blowing some steam off the top of the cup. 

Kaz takes a long sip of his hot chocolate and gives her a look, one like Inej’s trouble smile. “I like it too.”

Chapter Text

The note is in Kaz’s handwriting—a script she sees behind her eyes so often now, thinking of that letter—and it bears an address. A house on Zelverstraat. 

Typical of Kaz, to keep a chokehold on information and trust her to show up. But to what—a heist? A stakeout? A fight? She almost doesn’t go, fearing that it’s forged. But the likelihood of such a thing getting past both her and Kaz is…

(It almost did, now, didn’t it?)

But she arms herself to the teeth and tucks one of her smaller knives into Jordan’s vest. She isn’t bringing Jordan, but the Zelver and Geldin districts are relatively close, and she and Jordan have been getting reacquainted with Jesper and Wylan. She has to convince herself that she can trust them to watch her daughter for an hour or two. 

They have guns and bombs and Schuyler locks, she comforts herself, and nothing in recent memory connecting them to us.

Still, she clings tight to her daughter’s hand, right up until she passes it into Jesper’s. The years haven’t changed him much—a blessing of the Zemeni—but she notes that his motions are a little smoother, his expressions less frantic. It’s like he’s finally settled into his own skin. 

Inej wishes she could say the same. She feels like she’s been falling ever since she lost the Wraith, falling without even the cruel earth rising to catch her. 

Maybe that’s why she walks the streets to the address Kaz sent her instead of climbing. She can be someone without the name he gave her, someone besides who she was before. But there are so many “befores”, now—the Wraith and the Wraith and the girl of the Ravkan fields, daughter and mother and pirate and spy. She is tired of losing herself. 

She thinks of another identity, of another set of names she hasn’t yet lost. My piety and my punishment. My wisdom. My wraith, my keeper of secrets, the secret of my heart. My saint, my salvation, my destruction, my rebirth. My darling, my love. But she doesn’t want who she is to be wrapped up in what might well be drunken ramblings. Is that how he’s always felt? She’s almost certain he would never tell her. 

The house that he sent her to has a blue front door and white lace curtains in the windows. It looks absurdly normal, and most importantly, empty. 

There is a sign in the front that reads For Sale .

Inej goes very still. She’d been plotting her entrance—maybe up to the porch roof and in through a window? But now—

Is this what hitting the earth feels like? Or maybe it’s what hitting a net feels like—a shameful kind of safety, one that she shouldn’t need. She wonders if she’d rather she never landed. 

The front door opens. Inej doesn’t think before sinking a knife into the doorframe, right beside what turns out to be Kaz’s head. He turns, slowly, and his nose almost touches the side of the blade. “Lucky I wasn’t wearing my hat,” he notes, arching an eyebrow. 

Inej can almost hear Nina whispering in her ear— Cut it a little closer, Inej, you might have fixed his haircut. Not like you could make it worse. Aloud, she says, “You should know better than to surprise me.”

“I thought you couldn’t be surprised,” says Kaz, tapping his cane against the porch. “Come in and have a look.”

Inej gives him a look, but she follows, her silent footfalls up the stairs making up, somehow, for the click of his cane on the floorboards. She tracks his gait—she’ll guess that his leg is still unhappy after their swim in the harbor, but it’s not like he would tell her, nor do anything about it. She can easily imagine how it wouldn’t have healed right in the first place. 

The house doesn’t have a grand foyer like the Van Eck mansion; instead, a smaller entrance hall opens into a sitting room of sorts, with a piano by the window and a neat little fireplace. Inej walks carefully into the room—despite knowing that it’s unoccupied, she still hesitates to touch anything, or even venture too far inside. Old habits from her days as a thief, perhaps. Or just the fear that this can’t be real, because if it is, it means…It means everything that she’s lost. 

She looks back over her shoulder at Kaz. He remains in the entryway, surveying the house with an odd expression, inscrutable and almost painfully restrained. 

He’s been here before. Kaz wouldn’t just pick a house like this at random. 

“What is this place?” she asks, standing by the piano to face him. 

His hands flex on the head of his cane. “Thirteen Zelverstraat. Seems it was a foreclosure—always been rented, never sold, and no longer worth the bank’s time.”

Inej picks up an empty vase that sits on top of the piano, turning it over in her hands. They both know that’s not all. But she’ll walk him to the answer, and if he still won’t tell her, she’ll start asking real questions. “And why did you bring me here?”

The sun from the window flashes over his eyes, painting his face with patches of light. “You read the sign, Inej. Although I should say I’ve come to take it down.”

Inej sets the vase down sharply and turns all the way to him, squaring her shoulders. You square your shoulders before a fight. “You bought it already?”

“I have my own purposes if you don’t want it,” says Kaz. His voice seems almost bound up in chains, as rough and cold as ever. Once, Inej would have wondered what happened to the man who bandaged her arm, who leapt into the harbor to save her. Now she doesn’t bother. It’s never gotten her anywhere. 

“So Jordan and I would live here?” she asks slowly, wandering across the entrance hall to an end table that sits by the kitchen door. There’s a mirror hanging over it. She recognizes the face she sees in its reflection, but can’t tie her to anything. Who is she? What is she for? Does she matter to someone, or is she a problem to solve?

“There’s a private school in this district that she could attend before she’s old enough for the university,” Kaz continues, his footsteps announcing his presence as he walks up to stand behind her, though not close enough to be reflected in the mirror. 

Inej wants to run back to him, to fall into his arms like she did when she first came back with Jordan missing, but she doesn’t think she could trust this version of him with her broken self. This is the Kaz whose plans account for every variable except the participants’ feelings. This the Kaz who knew that she could and just assumed that she wanted to. Maybe that’s her own fears talking, the desperation to believe that she can still stand on her own without a mission, but what’s facing her is that her mission would be raising Jordan. Being a mother. 

It isn’t enough. Is that terrible? Is that the final marker of what’s twisted, crooked, wrong inside of her, of what’s broken and can’t be made whole? Does that make her terrible? 

It feels like it. She’s put a knife in a man’s heart, but the secret feeling that raising her daughter would never be enough is somehow worse. 

“We could also get married.”

Inej’s head jerks up sharply. Now she can see Kaz in the mirror, his face maddeningly impassive. 

He seems to take her silence as, at the very least, a lack of disagreement. “I don’t believe you were ever made a Kerch citizen, and it would make living here much easier for you, especially since I expect you plan to operate mostly legally. Obviously, there are also financial benefits, better terms on loans, tax benefits, if you plan on paying them—”

It’s too much. It’s far too much in a way that’s not enough, and isn’t that just Kaz all over?

Inej turns around, looks him in the eyes. She tries to remind herself of what she saw in those eyes before, but right now she’s too angry to search for it. “You want to marry me,” she says slowly, “for tax benefits? ”

He shifts impatiently. “That was only one of the things that I listed. It would give you a whole host of—”

“You’re just searching for another way to make me a valuable asset, Kaz,” she says. “You know I won’t work for you as a spy anymore, so you’re solving the problem of my being stuck here in a way that suits you.”

Kaz’s lips thin; his shoulders draw up higher. She’s losing him and can’t bring herself to care. “Inej.”

Inej can’t look at him anymore. She can’t listen to him saying her name the same way that he’s proclaimed her entire future without once asking her. She has spent enough time in one cage in this city, and she’s not about to trade her wings for another. 

And she is tired. Tired of chasing down and waiting for the side of him that might care for her. Tired of hoping and never knowing. Tired of not hearing the plan until it’s too late to back out. Tired of losing, and losing, and losing; she is not about to lose herself. “Why not just buy me another ship, if you were going to spend the money anyway?”

Kaz looks away to the windows, a muscle straining in his neck. “I want—Well, to start, it’s better for Jordan to have a stable life here—”

Inej was pacing the front room, but now she is stock-still. Her hand curls at her side—not into a fist, but the way it might around the hilt of a knife. “Don’t tell me what’s better for Jordan,” she says, her voice so low that he will have to hunt it down to hear it. She wants him to work for every word and be disappointed when he finds them. “I raised her, Kaz. You didn’t.”

“You didn’t let me. ” 

When Inej looks at him, he is almost shaking with the strain of holding his uptight position, staring straight ahead as if to burn through the wall. “You left,” he says, his tone as tight as a high wire, “for four years. But fault me for wanting you to stay.”

“It doesn’t matter what you want, it’s my choice, and you made it for me,” says Inej, going to the door. She didn’t want to have to make a life without him. Once she wouldn’t have imagined that she could. But now, with so little left to lose, she might as well cut it all off, start over—vanish. Let the wind take her. Let her Saints lead her. “It’s always business with you, never thinking that your plans involve humans and not assets. But remember this, Kaz: you’re far from the only man who’s tried to buy me.”

Then she’s out the blue front door, closing it behind her without a sound. The words will cut, she knows that; let him bleed a little. Maybe then he’ll remember he’s as human as everyone else. 

She convinces herself of that, right up until she’s on the steps of the Van Eck mansion and the tears start falling.

Chapter Text

He’s finally done it. He’s lost her. 

Thirteen Zelverstraat never ceases to take things from him. Thirteen is an unlucky number, after all. Kaz has never been much for fate or superstition, but maybe there’s something to be said for that one. 

He feels like he’s watching himself from a distance, waiting to see what he will do. What else he can ruin. Will he find a fight to clear his head, stir up trouble that the Dregs don’t need, maybe ruin an alliance? Will he punch a hole in the wall of this house that’s as cursed and unwanted as he is? Will he find a mug of strong coffee and march on, or forget who he is in the back of some seedy bar? Will he drown himself in the canal, let the city finish its slow eating away at him? He’d always had the thought that that might be it, that one day when the fire of rage in him burned out he’d die at his own hand in order to do so undefeated. 

In the end, he doesn’t do any of that. It’s a paradox: When the world has caved in, it’s as if nothing has happened at all, because nothing is left to matter. 

He walks to the piano, noting absently that his leg screams with every labored step. He almost laughs at himself. So much time pushing his body past its limits, and for what? For what, really? More kruge, more gold? Clearly Inej isn’t interested in that. She isn’t interested in being that. 

In retrospect, there was only one thing he wanted. One thing that just walked out that blue front door. 

He sinks onto the piano bench. It relieves the ache, a little. He peels off his gloves; what use are they? He’d gladly lose his mind now, gladly give himself over to the black tide, if it means leaving the present. Not so much difference between drifting and sinking, is there?

He thinks he should be angry. But angry at who? And for what? At Inej? What good can come of that? He can’t get any pleasure from vengeance against her. He can’t hurt her on purpose—despite how good he is at doing it when he’s not trying. 

He sets his hands on the keys. Wylan told him that they’d make fine pianist’s hands, once. Little does Wylan know that once, before they learned to steal and kill and cheat at cards, they were. It drove Jordie mad that his little brother could play better than him. 

Kaz doubts that he remembers the song, or at least not how to play it. 

I do, says his brother’s voice. 

Figures that Jordie would be here. Still clinging to the dream of this house, maybe. Kaz wants to tell him to cut his losses, but neither of them has turned out to be good at that. So it’s his brother’s voice, not quite deepened to a man’s, that sings to him as he picks out the chords. 

The sky be your cradle, the sun be your mother…

“The moon be your night-light so you’re not afraid…afraid…” The first chord sounds wrong, so Kaz tries another one. He plays a tentative, messy scale, humming the note until the pitch matches. It feels like picking a lock, like sliding the pick into the right channel and feeling it give.

His voice scrapes against his throat—he’s never been much of a singer—so he half-hums, mumbling the words as he works through the song the first time over. “The stars will shine for you, clouds be still for you…the willow won’t weep ’till it knows you’re safe.” The second time over, a little more at ease with the chords, he builds on them, working out a bass line that he doesn’t know if he’s remembering or inventing. 

He’ll have to play it for Jordan, if he ever sees her again. 

Halfway through the second verse, he realizes that he no longer hears himself—only the piano. His throat is closed, no sound emerging. The last chord rolls through the empty house, and he slowly stops, staring ahead out the window. 

He’s…crying. 

This is ridiculous , he tells himself, though he can’t pinpoint exactly why. For more than a decade now, he’s accounted for every variable to make himself practically invincible. He is what he always wanted to be—rich and triumphant and beholden to no one. 

So why do tears dot the keys as he watches them fall? Why does he touch a hand to his face and feel them? It’s pointless. It’s absurd. 

Without thinking much about it, he wipes the keys off with the cuff of his sleeve. They emit a weak cacophony in response to the pressure. He doesn’t really want to go back to the Slat, where Jesper or Wylan could track him down and berate him; besides, his body seems to be defying him, and he suspects that he won’t even be able to rise from the bench without ample aid from his cane. 

Maybe he’ll just stay here. Wait, though for what he isn’t sure. Scheme, although what there is to gain he has yet to decide. Run a little experiment—if number thirteen is cursed, then it will keep taking from him. He might as well find out what he has left to lose. 

He could go after her. 

Some version of him, after all, could say things that would make her stay. He could call her a Saint, call her a creature of magic, an icon in stained glass. 

But she isn’t, is she? She’s just a woman. One who is dangerous and beautiful and kind, but one who he was drawn to for being as broken as he is. Broken things have sharp edges; an easy thing to forget until one tries to put them together. 

The worst part is that he loves her for it. 

He loves her. 

He loves Inej. 

People over the years will mock and whisper that Dirtyhands is cold and cruel, that if you see him smile your death is inevitable, but they should see him now: laughing long and loud and like a maniac, his head tipped back the way that Jordie used to do. He laughs so hard that he’s probably crying again. He laughs until it’s hard to breathe. 

He’s in love with Inej, and irony is a damned thing. He puts his hands back to the piano and starts playing again, a dam broken in his memory—his da was a musical man, a lover of folk songs, and Kaz knows enough to last him for a good long while. He’ll play the out-of-tune piano in this cursed old house until the world forces his hand, so free that it feels like flying. 

Once, when he was seventeen and a touch too eager to warm his hands by the world on fire, he’d had the thought: There’s one person who would never use my weaknesses against me. And she didn’t use his weaknesses, did she? 

She became one. 

<><><>

Inej hates herself for dissolving into tears the moment Jesper opened the door. He’d immediately taken a step back, hesitantly reaching to help her, but it was Wylan who’d put an arm around her back, who’d told Jordan to stay in the kitchen for a minute, who’d guided her to the parlor that was tucked out of sight. 

She hadn’t wanted to stay there, for fear of facing Jordan, and now she’s shut herself away upstairs like a coward. Look at her; first she can’t stand the thought of staying put to raise her daughter, and now she hides from her while Jordan’s little fists pound on the door. 

“Mama, please, what’s wrong?”

Nothing. Nothing and everything. She was wrong, before; this is the fall. This is the landing. This is the knowledge that she miscalculated, that she leapt too far, the only the thing left in her head as she breaks against the ground. 

Another voice. Wylan’s gentle tenor. “I think she needs a minute to herself, all right? But it’ll be okay.”

Jordan continues to cry. Inej’s body has been her survival and her weapon, and now she can’t even get it to rise from the floor. 

“Hey.” Wylan’s voice softens. “Look at me. It’ll be okay, all right? I promise.”

Inej pretends he’s speaking to her. 

“Go see Marya,” he says. “She has some new paints to show you.”

A moment’s silence. “Okay,” says Jordan. “Just one thing.” Her voice gets clearer, as if she’s speaking right against the door. “Mama? Will you be okay if I leave?”

Your heart can always break a little more. Inej goes up on her knees and rests her forehead against the door’s surface. “Yes, meja. I won’t be in here forever.” Promising that to Jordan is the only way to ensure it, she thinks. It would be alarmingly easy just to stay here—with no mission awaiting her, no life outside. 

Little footsteps patter hesitantly away, muffled but not silent. Wylan’s voice rises again, as tentative as Inej remembers him at sixteen. “Can I come in?”

Rather than answering, Inej grabs the doorknob and uses it to pull herself to her feet, then, numbly, turns it. She moves away from the door to sit on the bed, but she hears Wylan come in behind her, shutting the door with a soft click.

“What happened?” he asks.

She looks somewhere past him at the wall, the corner of the door frame. “Kaz bought a house. For me and Jordan.”

“Okay.” Wylan sounds confused, and when she looks at him, it strikes her how young he looks, still—how open-faced, like he could still be not yet twenty.

She inhales and shuts her eyes. “He also asked me to marry him.” He didn’t propose, not really. It wasn’t a proposal by any means. Except perhaps in the business sense. 

“Oh.” When she opens her eyes again, Wylan is blinking sky-blue eyes at her. “I would’ve thought you’d be happy about that.” 

“For the financial benefits ,” says Inej, unable to keep some bite from her voice. Her hands knot into fists around the blankets. “Ten years and nothing has changed. Men are still putting a price on me.”

“Okay, no.” Wylan takes several quick steps towards her, but stands in front of her instead of sitting at her side. “This is Kaz we’re talking about. Who we used to joke about loving money more than anything in the world. And he’s given up more of it for you than anything.”

“Because I was worth something to him,” Inej says bitterly. “A good investment.” It’s shocking how easily every old ache from years past resurfaces—everything that she now sees she must have overlooked in favor of her hopes that he could choose to be a better man. 

Wylan frowns, and this time he does sit beside her. “You didn’t always believe that.”

“I didn’t want to.” And it’s true, isn’t it? Whatever evidence Kaz gave her to the contrary, she had always been the hopeful girl, clinging to whatever scraps of proof he gave her. 

But what about that letter? What about the kiss? What about that look in his eyes?

Who knows, then? Maybe Kaz cares for her after all. But as long as he finds it shameful, as long as he refuses to admit it, she will not clutch at whatever slips through his iron grasp on his demeanor. She won’t settle when he is failing to hide that he cares for her, rather than trying to show it. 

“You know, maybe there was some truth to it, when we used to call money his one true love. He’s Kerch. We worship commerce and hold trade sacred. Couldn’t that just be the language he chooses to tell you…” Wylan lifts a shoulder, and whether he doesn’t know what to say or how to say it doesn’t really make a difference to Inej. 

“Tell me what? How he feels ?” Inej shakes her head slightly, her lips thinning into a line. “Kaz doesn’t—it doesn’t work like that, with him. Everything is a trade deal. Never something for nothing.”

Wylan leans forward into her line of vision. Inej doesn’t bother to look away, despite her urge to run, to climb, to disappear. “Then why buy your ship? Why step up for Jordan like this?”

A spark of frustration leaps to life in Inej’s chest. She pushes herself off of the bed and paces. “I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason. How often did he actually tell us what he was planning? Besides, the ship—why would he give me the means to leave, if—”

“Maybe he wants you to stay now,” Wylan says softly, one of his hands wrapped around the other. 

Inej stops her pacing and almost scoffs, her gaze trailing aimlessly out the window. The sky is the usual Ketterdam gray, fog swirling low over the distant harbor. “You really believe that Kaz Brekker, the Bastard of the Barrel, wanted to marry me just—because?”

“I think he didn’t expect that you’d want to marry him just because,” says Wylan. “I know Kerch law at least as well as Kaz does. Those financial benefits go both ways. And there’d be more in it for you.”

A swirl of incredulous responses rises to Inej’s mind, but something makes her hold her tongue. She doesn’t—nobody could hurt Kaz Brekker. Physically, maybe, but while you might say something to make him angry, his feelings didn’t get injured. That just wasn’t the way that he operated. It isn’t. 

She can’t imagine him being worried that she wouldn’t accept his proposal. She can’t imagine him taking such a personal risk, and for what? It just doesn’t seem like the forever-confident man she knows, one who can even tip over into arrogance, one who accounts for every potential flaw in the plan. 

(Maybe he did account for those flaws, and you don’t like how he did it).

The pieces refuse to connect, but the thought won’t leave her, and it makes something settle cold and heavy in her gut. 

“I don’t understand why you’re defending him,” she says, though with far less conviction than she might have a moment before. 

“I’m not,” says Wylan, rising from the bed. “I’m just not agreeing with you.” He goes to the door, but before he leaves, he says, “Can I tell Jordan that you’re all right to see her?”

Inej nods, but her mind is elsewhere. She’d thought that she already knew the cracks in Kaz’s armor; she is his keeper of secrets, the one who helps to hide his vulnerabilities from the world. But if she has hurt him, then that means that she can, and that’s—it scares her. 

She just isn’t sure why.

Chapter Text

There are books in the house—shelves full of them; maybe they were for show, but at any rate they’re Kaz’s now. There are books on Kerch law, finance, even a few on gardening; the cookbooks aren’t much use to him, since Kaz’s approach to eating has generally been to swipe things from the carts and stalls around the Barrel when the hollow feeling inside of him gets sharp enough. 

At any rate, most of the time, he reads. He props his leg up on the coffee table and a book on his lap and learns things that the Barrel never taught him. He hangs his coat on the hook by the door, leaves his gloves on top of the piano, and loosens his tie. There are a few books of sheet music that he takes over to the piano and experiments with, but if he could ever read them, he can’t now. Besides, Kaz has never liked to follow directions when he could invent his own way of doing things. 

He sleeps, too. Almost on a regular schedule. The first time that he wakes up on the couch and it’s already bright out, he’s so disoriented that he nearly panics. He might just be losing it, but he could swear that the world takes on a new clarity when he’s facing it with something more than the burnt-out stub of yesterday’s energy. 

After a day or two, he ventures back into the city, squinting in the sun that has come out for once. His cane is conspicuous, but he takes it anyway; the gloves, he leaves on the piano. It’s less of a choice and more that he’s halfway out the door when he remembers them, pauses, and keeps going. 

One of those books was on the procedures of scientific experiments, so Kaz writes up his own experiment, hypothesis and all. Instead of walking past the stall that sells those candy-coated nuts and deftly nabbing a paper cone full, he actually pays (shame on him), and when the seller passes the cone to him, he allows their fingers to brush. His chest tightens, and he has to remind himself to breathe, but…that’s as close as he gets to drowning. 

So he tries again. Bumping against people on the street. Reaching for something or other at the same time as someone else. The smallest attempts, each carefully recorded and tucked away in his mind. Not every trial is a success; one time he tries walking through a crowd, and the old sickness rises so badly that he has to duck out to gasp and retch in an alley, his hands curled into the fabric of his shirt. 

Perhaps the crucial thing missing from this experiment, he thinks as he leans against the cold, rough brick that couldn’t be less like flesh, is the why. Why bother? Who is it for? He’s survived up to this point well enough.

Maybe I don’t want to survive anymore, he thinks, mad and desperate. Maybe I want to live.

Maybe, Inej. Maybe Inej what? Maybe Inej would have a man who could kiss her, who could hold her? Maybe Inej would be able to succeed at this where he fails? Maybe Inej is the only way he can succeed at this?

He links his fingers—his bare, sensitive, vulnerable fingers—into the channels between the bricks and pulls himself properly to his feet. His cane must have slipped from his hand, but it only takes a moment to pick it up and right himself. 

He won’t drag himself to her, although he promised to if it came to it; he will walk, however. He’s been staying out of the Barrel in order to not be spotted, so it won’t be far to the Geldin district, but he has the sense that it’s going to feel like a long walk.

Oh well. That’s just a feeling, after all. He ignores those well enough. 

(Except for in the case of what he’s about to do.)

<><><>

Jordan asks where Kaz is, again. Inej is running out of answers.

He’s busy. He has other places to be. It’s a long walk to the Barrel. 

Jordan says she can climb there.

“No, you can’t.” Why not? “Because I said no.” Saints above, she sounds like her mother. But Wylan keeps trying to talk to her, and even Jesper has made a valiant attempt or two, and how is she supposed to leave all of this behind when everyone else is dragging it into the present with them?

She has never understood Jesper’s desire to run and never stop as much as she does now. 

“Mama, please. You were sad and then he stopped coming back. I’m a big girl. You can tell me.” Jordan is sitting on the floor at the foot of Inej’s chair, having completely abandoned the puzzle she was working on. There’s a certain stubbornness in the set of her stare that Inej has seen before, but whether it was on Kaz or in the mirror she’s not certain. 

Jordan fidgets, squirming with as much restraint as a nine-year-old can be expected to. “He’s not gone…forever, is he?”

Inej rubs a hand across her face. “No, Jordan, of course not. It’s just…we had a disagreement.”

Jordan frowns, too seriously for her age. “You had a fight? About what?”

Inej gets up and walks to the dresser, glancing at her reflection as she wraps her braid into a coil and starts pinning it. “It wasn’t a fight, it was just…he had ideas for how we could live here, you and me. And he didn’t ask me about them.”

“Oh.” Inej can’t see Jordan’s face in the mirror, but she can imagine that divot burrowing between her little black brows. “Were they good plans?”

Were they? They outlined a more domestic life than Inej had ever thought she’d be capable of, a nice house to live in and a school to send her daughter off to. What would she do, then? Cook and clean and sharpen her knives when no one was looking? Wash dishes with her blood-stained hands? Get used to the earth being so still beneath her? “Not for us,” Inej says, and puts a pin between her lips to free both of her hands. 

There is a pause, in which she dares to hope that Jordan has gone back to her puzzle. Alas. “Did he want us to live with him?”

Inej is spared from having to answer immediately by having the hairpin in her mouth, but when she removes it, her excuse vanishes. “Yes.”

Jordan’s voice rises. “I wanna live with him!”

Inej steels herself, sweeps a few strands of hair back from her face. “It wouldn’t be safe.” For you. For my heart. 

A whole storm of traitorous thoughts sits heavy in her chest. Why are you so attached to a man you should barely remember, anyway? It is so much easier to be jealous of him. To be mistrustful of him. To believe him when he says he’s a monster. Is she allowed to be tired of searching for the good, in him, in the world? Is she allowed to stop taking chances, to cut her losses, to protect herself? 

But would she make herself the same promise that she made him? I will have you without armor, or I will not have you at all. If she refused to love him with his armor, then how can she love herself with hers? 

Her wings have not been shorn. The loss of her ship hasn’t killed the spark that she fed through her years at the Menagerie. Maybe life isn’t fair, and she will never have her reprieve from pain. But the heart is an arrow, and if hers has lost its aim, she’ll have to give it some. 

Or just go back to the place it’s always pointed. Not like the north of a compass, drawn no matter what, but like the aim of an arrow—chosen, calculated, and let to fly. 

She turns back from the mirror. Jordan is sulking. Inej bends to kiss the crown of her head. “I’m going on a walk.”

“Can I come?” Jordan asks, not looking up from her puzzle. 

Inej straightens to standing. “Not this time. But I won’t be long.” Then she’s out the door, down the hall, down the banister for old times’ sake. 

In the end, she doesn’t make it past the porch. He’s already there. 

Kaz is possibly as simply dressed as she’s ever seen him when not ill or injured; his coat and vest are gone, leaving him in his tailored trousers and a black shirt that might be the one she saw him in last. The top two buttons are open at his throat, and not only are his hands bare, his pockets lie flat—he must not have his gloves with him. 

Her heartbeat is already going too fast. Why did she think she had something to say to him? Why did she think she’d be able to do so much as open her mouth?

“You wouldn’t think it would be quiet without you,” he says, “but it has been.” His hair is softer, looser. It’s grown out a little on the sides, and there’s a shadow along his jaw to match. The corner of his mouth curls up just slightly. She wants—she isn’t sure what, anymore. 

“I was going to find you.”

“And so you have,” he says, brushing some imaginary dust from his shirt with the hand that isn’t resting on his cane. As if he hadn’t noticed his hands. Kaz and his flair for the dramatic. 

If for no other reason than to give herself time to think, Inej backs up to stand against the railing, leaving room for him opposite her. He steps into the space, and now anyone wanting to go inside would have to walk between them. Inej pities that poor, hypothetical soul. 

“I’m not going to say that I’m sorry,” she says, and realizes that she’s squared her shoulders—the old habit. “Nor that I didn’t mean what I said. Even if it was wrong, it was not impulsive.”

“If I wanted you to apologize, I would be a fantastic hypocrite,” says Kaz, arching a brow.

“Only cruel in the ways that pay,” Inej murmurs, a slight smile tugging at her lips before she’s realized it. 

“Besides,” Kaz adds, “I don’t believe the Suli apologize. If I’ve heard correctly.” It might just be the rare sunbeam striking them, but Inej swears that there’s a glitter in his dark eyes. 

“We don’t. We make amends.” Inej raises her chin in perfect performer’s posture, straight as a knife. “ Mati en sheva yelu, Kaz. This action will have no echo. And I mean that just as much as everything else I’ve said.”

“I know you do,” says Kaz, that little curl of his lips threatening to become a full smile. “You’re dreadfully honest.”

He looks happier, she thinks. And maybe it should needle her that he became happier without her, but…so much of the tension in his stance is gone. His expressions are more open. He reminds her more of the man she left on the docks those years ago, the one she’s been searching for in him. Maybe he became better for himself. And really, isn’t that what she wanted? 

“I was afraid—of everything. Of you,” she says, looking him square in the eye. You’ve seen it every time you meet my eyes. 

That look is still there. She has to wonder if it ever left. 

Kaz holds her gaze, gives her a calculating look. “You’d be in good company.”

Inej shakes her head and finds herself taking a tiny step closer. “I shouldn’t have been.” She is tired, but not in the way that she was before. She’s tired of running from him, from herself. Tired of hiding with every wall locked down. Tired of fighting alone for fear of betrayal. Tired of being alone, full stop. 

“I’m still not ready to marry you,” she says, inhaling slowly, “and I’m not sure about the house. But Jordan should go to school.”

“That way she’ll never have Jesper mock her for not knowing that the earth goes around the sun,” Kaz mutters. 

“What?”

He shakes his head, but even in his annoyance he looks slightly amused. “I assume you’d like to arrange that yourself.”

“A wanted criminal signing her up would probably raise some questions, Kaz.” Without thinking about it or quite meaning to, she takes another step closer to him. She still isn’t sure what she wants, but this is something like it. 

At this distance, or lack thereof, she sees the shift in his face, the decision in the steadiness of his gaze, before he holds his hand out to her. 

Inej takes a slow, steadying breath. She knows what that hand really means. The same man who collects enemies like trophies and accepts insults like the highest of praise is offering her his bleeding, beating heart—one that, as it turns out, is just as human as hers. 

She takes his hand, and he doesn’t so much as flinch.  

He gives a gentle pull, and Inej allows herself to be drawn forward, to fall, and this time she lands in his arms. She leans into his strong and solid frame, clinging tight to him, and now it’s not the scent of ink and coffee surrounding her, but that of old books. His hand goes to her hair; his arms are around her, holding her up. 

“I mean what I said, too.” His words are stilted, strained, unsteady as a child learning to walk the wire, but they are—as he would say—dreadfully honest. “And what I wrote.”

A Ghafa does not work with a net, but Inej thinks that, every once in a while, she could allow Kaz to catch her.

Chapter Text

Kaz likes to be sure of his plans, and he wasn’t at all sure that Inej would come—given what happened the last time she received a note from him. But she is as elegant in her forgiveness as he is not, and so some part of him is unsurprised when she is waiting in the safe house in the warehouse district.

It’s raining—when is it not raining?—but somehow she is completely dry, sitting on a stack of crates. He allows himself a moment to imagine her, lithe and agile, dancing around raindrops, dodging every single one. It keeps getting harder not to allow the thoughts, even when he feels himself slipping. Dangerous, and wholly irresistible. Something has finally chipped away at his monstrous will. 

“Jordan starts school today,” says Inej, a note of pride in her voice. He loves to see her like this, loves to see how purely happy Jordan makes her, without all of the complications that he himself brings. She deserves to feel it more often. 

“She’ll have at least six teacher’s notes by the end of the day,” says Kaz. “And I predict she’ll escape from detention at least once before the week is out.”

“If she does, it’s your fault,” says Inej, but there’s a bit of a smile behind her stern expression. 

“Did I teach her the art of spycraft, Wraith?”

If Inej were the sort to roll her eyes, he gets the feeling that she would. Instead, she says, “You called me here for a reason. What business, Kaz?”

Kaz beckons her down from the crates and glances out the window, leaning on his cane. He’d like to sit, but they have a short walk to take while he explains the plan. It’s easy to forget he’s a few years off from thirty yet; he feels so old, some of these days. “I could depend on moving into a nice, big house to keep you busy for a few days, if that. When most people refer to being bored as ‘climbing the walls’ it’s a metaphor, but in your case…”

Inej slips noiselessly off the crate and walks up to meet him. “The point?”

Right. He’s getting to that. He keeps talking as he walks out the door, his collar turned up, staying beneath the overhangs of buildings. “To the surprise of approximately no one, I never found you a proper replacement. The solution became to have a team. Small, agile, and quiet. They handle the collection of information, while Roeder and others like him handle combat.”

Inej has been matching his pace, and now she turns her face to him, dark eyes scrutinizing. She’s so silent that he could be walking alone. “Small and agile? Don’t tell me you’re inducting children.”

“Inducting, no. They are not part of the Dregs, and won’t be until they’re at least fourteen or so. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be useful as long as they share our resources.”

Once again, he feels as if Inej’s eyes cut deeper than her blades ever could, that she sees right through his layers to the core of him. “Weren’t you twelve when you joined?”

He was. But while he had never made death his servant, it had been his companion, and he’s not going to rely on any of these kids being so lucky. “They’re not ready, and they won’t be by then. Besides, they do better work when they’re fighting to prove themselves to me.”

It’s all perfectly logical—to have these little spiders bearing no mark of his gang, making them harder to trace, while at the same time being indebted to him for their survival and desperate to prove their worth. It makes sense. But what doesn’t is that any one of them, any one of these urchins who crawled in off the street, could be that little farm boy from Lij. Any one of them could be a Kaz Rietveld, a Felix Pieterse. A Jordie. He sees it in their faces, a look he remembers from hours practicing magic tricks in front of a smudged mirror. 

He wants for them what he wants for Jordan, that they can get out of this damn city and live like real people do. The city’s winning right now, but you’ll see who wins in the end. He beat Pekka Rollins, but he’s not stopping until he’s made Ketterdam itself kneel. Just like he picked off pigeons from the Dime Lions and stole from their shipments, he’s pulling victims from the canals and making them his instead. A crow’s wing casts a long shadow, but it can also make an excellent shield. 

He knows by the look on Inej’s face as they arrive at the designated building that she has more questions, but instead she says, “All right. What does this have to do with me?”

“I want you to train them,” Kaz tells her, and pushes open the door. “You don’t need finesse to be a bruiser or brawler, but scaling walls is a different trick.”

“I’m aware,” says Inej, looking around. Kaz scrutinizes the place through her eyes—ropes hanging from the ceiling, metal bits attached to the walls, and three eager, rather grubby faces turned up to them. Personally, Kaz is as surprised as he ever is that they not only showed up, but stayed put. 

Simon is the first one to leap to his feet. He is as Kerch as they come—strawberry blond, freckles on his reddened nose, scrawny as a twig. Apparently he wanted to be a dancer before he lost his father to drink. He was attempting to perform for coins on East Stave when Kaz found him, and part of what sold him was that he wasn’t half bad, even probably starving. “I want to start on the climbing ropes!” he blurts out. 

“Maybe you should start by teaching them to be quiet,” Kaz comments to Inej. 

She, however, looks vaguely amused. He hopes that she stays this patient. 

Thea is staring at Inej as if she’s made of rainbows. Thea is seven, Kaelish mixed with Ghezen knows what, and still missing her front teeth. Knowing her, Kaz would not be surprised if she lost them in a fight, rather than by the usual methods. 

Inej goes to sit, cross-legged, in front of the group, and Kaz allows himself to fade into the background, to sit on one of the boxes they’ve set up for jumping practice and stretch his leg out. He can picture Inej at home like this, teaching her cousins, perhaps, showing the children of the caravan how to turn a cartwheel or walk a wire. Whether or not he’s to blame for the loss of the Wraith , recent revelations would suggest that he wants Inej, wherever she lands, to be happy. This is the best that he can give her. This is the only way he knows how to tell her. Hopefully, it’s enough. 

She’s standing now, demonstrating something. Om has moved closer to her, Kaz notices. Om is Suli, and while he’s probably about ten or eleven, no one has gotten him to say more than a few words since he was caught stealing from the vendors outside of the Crow Club. Out of the three, he joined most recently, and Kaz still has yet to uncover his story. Maybe Inej will have more luck. 

The little spiders are more attentive to Inej than they’ve ever been to him, which Kaz supposes shouldn’t really be a surprise; he watches her patience with them, and with herself when she struggles to explain. After two hours has passed, Thea in particular is glued to her side, but they all seem to instinctively trail her around. Kaz has a brief mental image of a line of ducklings. 

Inej comes back to him, the little spiders in tow. “They should have shoes made,” she says. “Rubber ones like I had.”

He’s not going to tell her that he already mentioned it to Jesper, and just nods. To the little spiders, he says, “If you can beat me back to the Slat, I’ll consider this a success.” He’s planning to stay behind for a bit, but they don’t need to know that. 

“What’s dinner?” says Thea, lisping.

“The sooner you get there, the sooner you find out,” says Kaz, and watches them scamper off, already climbing up the walls and out the high windows. 

When he looks at Inej, she’s smiling. There’s a light sheen of sweat across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. “You sound like a father,” she teases.

Kaz thinks of Jordan, at school, living the life that he might have had. If Jakob Hertzoon were real, him and his wife and daughter and Thirteen Zelverstraat…he might have taken Kaz and Jordie in the way he and Inej have done for Jordan. The thought is jarring, as if his child-self hadn’t prayed for it to happen every night until the harbor. “They’d better not think so,” he says. “I’m giving them a place to survive, not coddling and games of catch.”

“They’re not the only ones you’re giving a job,” says Inej, taking a step closer to him. Even the premonition of having her near sends a thrill through him. He still remembers what it was like to hold her—glorious and overwhelming.

Part of him wants to draw closer still. Part of him wants to run. In the end, he stays right where he is, his cane leaning against his thigh. “Well, it’s not as if I was going to have Roeder teach them.”

“Of course,” says Inej, arching an eyebrow. “At least you admit that I’m the best.” Yet another step closer. If she took one or two more, their knees would be touching, her standing and him sitting. It’s nearly unbearable, the indecision, the almost of it all. A decade’s worth of almost is stretched tight between them, a taut string from one to the other, and the question now seems to be not if it will fall slack, but when.

“I never denied it,” says Kaz, his voice sounding hoarse to his ears. “I just never said anything else.” His hands are clenched around each other in his lap, so it doesn’t take much to fumble with his gloves and peel them away. He would have come without them, but he didn’t want the little spiders to see. He can’t risk looking vulnerable to them. 

Inej is watching, always watching and waiting. He sees how tired she is, sometimes, of the waiting, but doesn’t she know that he is too? It’s just that between the both of them, they’re both waiting for him to act, to make the choice. 

Her lips part, and there’s a beat of silence between the action and her speech in which Kaz’s mind floods with images, driven half-mad by the little black space in between. “Will you now, Kaz?” she says.

He will never tire of hearing her say his name. Perhaps that’s what makes him get to his feet, laying his cane aside, before he loses his nerve completely. “I have something else to give you.”

Another step. She tilts her face up to him. He can feel his heart beating against his ribs like a trapped bird, a caged crow. He has fought this city tooth and nail since he was a child, but in this moment, to begin, to take her hand, feels like the hardest thing he’s ever done. “Squeeze it,” he says, his voice sounding dry and thin and utterly foreign. “Tight enough to hurt.”

Inej doesn’t ask, she just obliges, gripping his hand with all of her strength, and he remembers why he loves her. It’s enough to keep going, to move to the next step. To not look further than that. 

He takes up her free hand in the one of his that’s unoccupied—two points of contact, treading water—and brings it shakily to his lips. He kisses each of her knuckles, the join of her index and thumb, taking refuge in the bone and taut muscle just beneath her skin. Alive, alive, alive.

He looks at Inej, for confirmation, to see that everything’s all right, and finds the same glance reflected back at him. Mirrors of one another, they nod. Go on . Take the next step. He listens to her breathing, feels her dig her nails into his hand. She is strong against his touch, not listless. Alive, alive, alive. Maybe it keeps her anchored too.

Kaz bends close, his face beside hers, near her cheek and neck and shoulder and skin, so much of it, why did he think that he could do this again? But her breath hits his cheek, as shaky as his, he thinks, and she’s clinging to his hand for dear life, and he’s not going to drown if it means taking Inej with him. He crosses the distance, puts his lips to her shoulder, to the base of her neck, like he did when he was seventeen and had no hope of living to try again. The pearl earring touches the side of his face. She still wears it, he realizes hazily. 

Inej gives his hand a brief, tighter squeeze. It’s an assent, an encouragement. She must be able to hear his heartbeat by now. 

As most people tend to be, Kaz is more in control of his body and his thoughts than he was as a teenager, but deprivation will do something to a man. They’re barely touching, yet a low flame burns somewhere below his gut, driving him on, begging for more, closer, a flood of imaginings too powerful for him to stop. But the things he wants, neither of them is ready for. 

Instead, almost trembling with what could be panic or anticipation or the feeling he dares not name, he brings his lips to her cheek—the softest he’s tried yet, the closest to the decay that lingers beneath the surface of his memories. For a moment, it’s—it’s. It’s brown eyes deadened to gray, so much gray, rotting gray flesh and cold gray water. Kaz pulls back, turns his face away, clamps his mouth shut as sickness threatens to claw its way up his throat. Her lips will be worse. He can’t do this. 

But there’s a spark of pain that’s out of place in this memory, a pressure on his hand, points of stabbing sharpness. Hazily, he drifts back, his eyes going to Inej’s grip on his hand before they register what they’re seeing. Funny that most people would call it a death grip. For him, it’s a reminder of life. 

He has to try. For Inej’s sake and for his own, for the practice and the progress he’s been chasing like anything else he’s ever wanted to learn, he has to try. He straightens up, then inclines his face towards her, fixes his eyes on hers, worlds trapped in amber. All it will take is the slightest motion, to let gravity bend him. 

He can’t do it. 

His expression, he knows, must betray his frustration, but before he has much time to think about it, Inej has risen up and brushed her lips across his. Gentle as a moth’s wing. That’s all it is—there and then gone. A magic trick. The most perfect magic trick he’s ever seen. 

Inej settles back onto her heels. She’s looking at him almost shyly, a flush of burgundy on her cheeks. He’s spent so long collecting the details of her, and yet—when he looks at the whole picture, he finds himself startled by how beautiful she is. 

“Try it again,” he whispers. Kaz Brekker has never had much respect for religion, but he dares not raise his voice in this holy place. 

This time, when she kisses him, Inej slides her free hand into his hair; Kaz is a little surprised at himself when a soft gasp breaks from the back of his throat at this, but if she notices, she doesn’t falter. This kiss is perhaps a second longer than the first, a harder press, and Kaz leans into it, makes himself think of nothing but her. 

They part, and his heart is thundering; not like he’s just had a fight, but like he’s just won one. Like he’s spat blood on the floor, bared his teeth, and held up his fist—yes, it was the hardest thing he’s ever done, he says to the spectators, but he did it. He remembers feeling like this after playing tag with Jordie, running through the fields all day before collapsing in the grass, smiling so hard his face hurt. And for the first time, the memory of his brother is gentle, as gentle as Inej’s touch. 

He meets her eyes, and there’s a shine in them, of tears maybe—Kaz almost worries, but then she’s laughing, loud and startling and radiant, and he thinks that maybe his old wish has come true. Maybe he is drunk on it, the way that he feels—euphoric, unsteady, and incredibly foolish. 

I love you. He wants to say it. He wants to learn ‘I love you’ in every language and say it to her in all of them. He wants to say it until the words lose all meaning. But anything that he says right now will come out sounding like it, anyway.

“Don’t,” says Inej, another laugh breaking over her voice. “You don’t need to. You don’t need to say anything.”

I want to, Kaz thinks, but she’s right—he can’t. The only word he can properly think of is her name. 

“I thought maybe,” she says, squaring her shoulders, “once Jordan and I are properly moved into the house, we could…celebrate it. Something small. But I’d like for you to come. I think she—”

“I will.” So simple. And as he expected, it sounds like a lot more than what it means. But she knows. 

She knows, and she beams like the sun. Kaz wonders if it’s still raining outside. If it is, it won’t matter. Nothing can touch him right now. 

They don’t say anything else; they’ve never needed to, have they? Kaz turns his back, lets her disappear; he has to get back to the Slat, and somehow compose himself on the way there. The little ones will have beaten him back, of course, so he’ll likely have to craft an excuse; for now, he has the whole length of the warehouse district to smile like an idiot and hope he doesn’t get seen.

Chapter Text

Letters between Ketterdam and somewhere in the Kerch countryside, sent over a period of about a year with progressively better spelling.

Deer Dear Alby

We’re learning about writing letters in school. I do school now. Your map was very hellpfull. Duh, since I’m alive and writing to you. My teacher says not to say duh. She says it makes me sound dumb. I think she just doesent like me because she got me in trouble 6 times this week. It was Lewieses Lewies’s fault for being rude to me so DUH I hit him. My da told me not to let people push me around so I don’t, not even dumb teachers who don’t want me to say duh. 

Sinceer Sencer S Goodbye,

Jordan 

Some weeks later, on a piece of paper stolen from his father’s desk:

Dear Jordan,

I’m glad you’re alive. That’s sort of important. Also I’m glad that map was H-E-L-P-F-U-L with one L each. Maybe your teacher really is dumb if she can’t teach you to spell helpful right. I’m sorry you have a dumb teacher. But tell your da no if he wants to get you a tutor like I have, then you’ll be shut up in the house all the time. 

What did Lewies do to you? If he was only annoying you, you probably shouldn’t have hit him. When you’re a grown up you can’t just go around hitting people.

Sincerely,

Alby

A stretch of time later which was certainly not spent in sulking: 

Not-dear Alby,

I D-O-N-T C-A-R-E. You knew what I meant didn’t you. You are almost as rude as Lewies and I kicked dirt on him two weeks ago. I didn’t kick it very high but it still got on his uniform. I didn’t hit him because you said that grown ups don’t hit people, but I know that’s wrong because my mama taught me how to hit people and she’s a grown up. And Lewies deserved it because he was saying things about her, that she wasn’t an anybody and it was sespishus suspeshus he suspekted me for just showing up and starting at the school. Duh she is a somebody. Every person is a somebody. Even you are a somebody, you are just an annoying somebody. 

My da wouldn’t get me a tutor because he never lets anybody come to our house. Which makes sense because as you know I got kidnapped one time. At least I think you know. If I didn’t tell you I got kidnapped one time, that’s what I was running away from. Don’t get kidnapped. I’m a pirate so I can get away but you couldn’t.

GOODBYE,

Jordan

A few weeks later, with a rough sketch of a landscape tucked into the envelope: 

Even-less-dear Jordan, 

I did know what you meant, but it took me a minute to figure it out. It would have been easier if you would of just written it right. Besides, nobody will take you seriously if you can’t write. Duh, like you would say. I am not as rude as Lewies because I would never insult your ma. Even though she taught you how to hit people, which is weird.

You did not tell me that you were kidnapped. Maybe Lewies was right to be S-U-S-P-I-C-I-O-U-S about you if you got kidnapped and your ma teaches you to hit people and your da doesn’t let anyone come to the house. 

But I guess my da doesn’t really let people come to my house either. You’re probably right that I couldn’t get away, so I’ll try my best not to get kidnapped. 

Sincerely,

Alby

Sometime later, during which Jordan was presumably working on her spelling:

Kind-of-dear Alby, 

Your drawing looked nice. Is that a place by your house? I don’t remember very much about your house because I was scared when I was there. I made a friend at school by the way. Her name is Raina and she is nice. Even though she told me not to hit Lewies, she told me not to apologize to him either. 

My mama is NOT WEIRD. She is AMAZING and you can NEVER be mean to her or I will never write you any more letters ever again. And you are exactly right that you are wrong because da’s are just like that and they don’t want us to get kidnapped.

We are learning about books in school. Have you heard of Ghezen’s Wood by…I dunno how to spell his name. Peter something. My mama and da have never read it but my da wants to read it when I’m done. He reads lots of books when he’s at our house. The book is confyu confuz confusing. There are lots of words that I don’t know in it. My teacher says it’s about man versus nature but it isn’t like he is fighting the trees or anything. That would make it a less boring book. I dunno why we have to read boring books. I am nine.

BUT! I am almost ten and we are going to have a party. You proberly probably can’t come to the party but I will write to you about it.

Sincerely, 

Jordan

Shortly after, containing a wrapped parcel—a bracelet made of wooden letter beads that reads, JORDAN: 

Dear Jordan, 

I made you a present for your birthday. It’s probably early, but I would rather it be early than late. I have lots of craft stuff because I have to stay in the house all the time so I made you a bracelet out of beads. Let me know if it’s too big or something. 

Your spelling is getting better. Maybe that book is helping you even if it is boring. I have heard of Ghezen’s Wood but I read it this year, the writer’s name is Peter Johannes. I am surprised you’re reading it already. You must be at some fancy kind of school. I can’t imagine you at a fancy school. I bet it’s funny to see you all dressed up. Do you wear a uniform?

The drawing is how it looks out of the window over my desk. There is a creek back there where I sometimes catch frogs even though I get in trouble for catching them. Your friend sounds nice. I bet she isn’t as pretty as you though. She is right that you shouldn’t hit Lewies anymore. If you are going to a fancy school you should stay there. 

You also spelled sincerely right,

Alby

Written on some fresh stationery that was, presumably, a birthday gift: 

Dear Alby,

I am ten now. Thank you for the bracelet!! It’s very nice and so are you, when you stop correcting me on my spelling. It fits just right even though I can’t tell my mama and da because they might tell me not to write to you anymore. I met you and I know you’re okay, but they should probably meet you first. I bet they will like you. Just don’t correct them on their spelling. Specially my mama. She didn’t learn to read and write Kerch until she was 14 but that is because she knew Suli before that. 

I finished reading Ghezen’s Wood even though I did not want to and I beat Lewies on the quiz, so THERE. Reading is okay but I like math better. My da is smart with numbers and can get them all nice and neat in his head so he can help me. I have to wear a uniform which is stupid because it’s a dark blue dress thing that is very hard to be a pirate in. Raina says I shouldn’t say stupid but my da says plenty worse words and I will say them all to Lewies.

I told you I was going to tell you about the party so I am going to tell you that now. My da came and had a long dinner with me and my mama and I got to stay up late. There was pudding. Pudding was my new favorite food for five minutes until there were waffles and now waffles are my favorite food. You need to eat them with berry syrup. It is THE BEST. I got a new knife because I lost my old one and we had hot chocolate. Hot chocolate and waffles with berry syrup is YUMMY and I want to have it every day forever. 

Old-ly, 

Jordan

Containing a sketch of what appears to be a crooked branch but, on closer inspection, turns out to be a snake: 

Dear Jordan, 

Ten is only sort of old because I am older than you. Ha-ha. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that because now you won’t think I’m nice anymore. I like your new paper also. Was that a birthday present too? I got a new sketchbook when I turned eleven and I went out and drew some pictures and even though that was a while ago, I drew one for you before I wrote this. It is a snake that I saw. I like snakes as long as they are far away from me. 

Your da sounds sort of like mine. My da is also good with numbers and also doesn’t let people come to the house. Maybe they would get along. That would be funny.

I know you don’t like your uniform but I bet you look awfully cute in it. You can go and say bad words to Lewies as long as you don’t hit him again and don’t get caught. My da says swears a lot because he’s part Kaelish and they’re all like that.

Maybe I will ask him if we can have waffles sometime. Although then I would have to tell where I got the idea from. I s’pose I could just say it was a book or something like that. If I came to see you we could have waffles. But that probably can’t happen either.

Older-ly, 

Alby

Sent in such a hurry that it’s a miracle it was mailed to the correct recipient: 

Dear Alby,

Ten IS SO old because oldness isn’t reliti reletiv relative. I also like my new paper. I just can’t write on it right now because I am about to go see my mama and my friends and so I just stole some paper off of my da’s desk. It has some pictures on the back but I think it’s just a poster or something. 

The snake picture is very good. It almost desgises its self in it like they do in real life. I would like to pet a snake.

I would rather look scary than cute in my uniform but thank you anyways. And I don’t need your pamis parmish permisshun to say swears at Lewies, although it is funny that your da says swears a lot. Mine taught me like five new ones when his stick that he walks with hit the corner of the table and he almost fell over it.

I need to tell you about my new friends. They are named Thea and Simon and Om and I am learning to climb and fight with them. My mama is teaching us. I want to try walking on a tightrope but she won’t let me even though I KNOW she was doing it when she was my age. Parents are NOT FAIR. 

Okay she is telling me to go now. But if you ever come here maybe I can see you. Just not at my house.

Goodbye, 

Jordan

Chapter Text

When Inej gets home, the lights are already on. 

She puts a hand on Jordan’s shoulder and steps in front of her, facing the stairs, scanning the house’s exterior; what kind of amateur burglar would leave the lights on? Or turn them on to begin with? She’s slipped a knife into her free hand just in case; she checks the doors and windows for disturbed locks, broken seals, and then—

The window boxes. All the tension runs out of Inej, and she gives the door a disapproving look, imagining that it cuts straight through the wood. 

The window boxes used to contain tulips, but now they are filled with wild geraniums. 

“What happened?” Jordan asks from behind her. 

Inej just gives an irritated sigh and climbs the stairs, then pushes the door open. Kaz is sitting inside, his bad leg propped up on the coffee table, flipping through one of Jordan’s books— Ghezen’s Wood, it looks like. 

“You have a key,” she says, while Jordan rushes past her. 

Kaz doesn’t look up from the book, merely raising his eyebrows. “Who’s to say that I didn’t use it?”

Inej slips off her headscarf and hangs it on one of the hooks by the door. “Jordan, take your shoes off.” Back to Kaz, she says, “Isn’t that one of Jordan’s books?”

Jordan, who has returned to deposit her shoes by the door, nods grimly. “It’s not a good book. It’s boring. Do we have mail?”

“Is this about your pen pal from that assignment?” Inej asks. “Not that I’ve seen. But isn’t the project over, anyway? You’re done with school for the summer.”

Jordan doesn’t answer; she merely looks dejected and drags herself over to the couch to sit beside Kaz, rocking back and forth impatiently. 

Kaz slowly looks up, pointedly ignoring the child next to him. “Yes, it’s one of Jordan’s books. But I personally find it interesting.” He arches an eyebrow as if daring Inej to disagree.

She does not.  Instead, she says, “You’re supposed to congratulate her.”

Kaz turns a page, slowly, clearly enjoying himself. “Who?”

Jordan bounces to her feet, apparently having had enough. “Me! I’m smart now!”

“You’ve only had one year,” says Inej. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Still, she is proud of her daughter, prouder than she might admit; she and Kaz learned only what they needed to know at the hand of the world, and she wishes for Jordan to have more options than the lives they’ve landed in. 

Then again, she thinks, looking around—at the house, the bookshelves, the piano, Kaz giving Jordan an amused look as she rattles off the things she’s learned—they’ve landed rather well. It was just a long, hard fall. 

She crosses to stand behind the sofa, at Kaz’s shoulder. “Any luck with tracking down the bounty hunters?”

He withdraws a slip of paper from the pocket of his vest and holds it up between two fingers—two bare fingers, Inej is pleased to notice. “Not luck,” he says. “I don’t believe in it, and if I did I wouldn’t have any.”

“You’re lucky you’re alive,” Inej returns, taking the folded note, touching her fingertips to his as she does. It’s a test, a question, and Kaz doesn’t so much as flinch. She pockets the slip of paper for later; she’ll compare it to what Wylan has gathered from Council meetings when she gets the chance, but this time is for her family. 

Speaking of which—she reaches over Kaz’s shoulder and takes the book from his hands, folding the page corner to mark his spot. The fact that she’s able to take it lets her know that he isn’t genuinely bothered; if he were, he wouldn’t have let go. 

Instead, he just gives her a look, a watered-down version of his usual glare. “You can finish it later,” Inej tells him in the voice that she uses when Jordan is getting whiny. 

The glare darkens a shade, but Jordan provides the perfect distraction by flopping back onto the couch. “Is it a good hug day?” she asks, overly serious about it. The idea of good days and bad days has been difficult to explain to her, but Inej takes pride in the effort Jordan has put into learning to ask. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Kaz, hooking an arm over the back of the couch in such a way as to create a Jordan-shaped space against his side. “I don’t give hugs.”

Jordan grins devilishly and scoots over to sit beneath his arm. Inej sees the old lines of tension rise in Kaz’s shoulders, but she sees when he forces them down as well. 

Jordan had wanted to invite Simon, Thea, and Om to celebrate with them, but Kaz had staunchly refused, telling her that she could play with them at training. To a certain degree, Inej understands; it is dangerous to mix those lives. Kaz has survived and protected their family by being cruel in public and kind in private, so who would he be if the lines were blurred? At the end of the day, the little spiders are still working for him, and they don’t need to see him like this. 

But she sees it, and loves it. He has taught her to collect secrets, to guard them close, and these secret pieces that she adds to her mental collage of him are among her most cherished. 

“I want dinner,” Jordan proclaims, squirming. Inej moves out from behind the couch and crosses toward the adjacent kitchen, touching a hand to her daughter’s knee in passing. “Hold still.”

Kaz, however, catches her eye and gives her a look—not quite a shake of his head, but it means: don’t. It’s all right. Inej wonders if Jordan moving around helps him to stay tethered. 

“Are you buying?” Kaz asks Jordan, somewhere in Inej’s periphery as she opens a cabinet and withdraws the hutspot she’d purchased earlier to heat up—breakfast for dinner, special for Jordan. She hadn’t thought that she would warm to this life, and she’ll never be the cook that her mama is, but when Jordan is at school, she’s been exploring the city, rediscovering old Suli recipes and artifacts in Little Ravka. One day, there was even some genuine silk on sale. 

“No,” says Jordan, sounding insulted. “I’m a pirate. I don’t need to buy things.”

Inej can only imagine how proud Kaz must look. With a slight shake of her head to herself, she fishes a few soapy plates out of the sink. 

She hears Kaz’s footsteps as he rises and crosses over the hallway between the rooms to join her. He must be standing behind her when he stops; she can sense the closeness. It makes her skin prickle in a pleasant way. 

When she glances over her shoulder, there’s a look of intent in his eyes; they’re still not in a place where his looking at her like that can come to much, but it makes a pleasant heat creep through her nonetheless. She holds up her wet hands, signaling him to wait a moment—trying anything before she’s dried them won’t go well—then dries them off thoroughly with a hand towel that hangs nearby. 

She’s not sure what she’s expecting, but it isn’t for Kaz to move fully into the kitchen, hunt down a pot, and set it over the stovetop. He takes the containers of hutspot from her hands, and she knows that the slight contact of their fingertips as he does so is intentional. 

She watches the precision of his movements as he sets it to heat, the same precision that’s there when he’s shuffling cards or picking a lock. She finds herself mesmerized by his focus, sixteen and flustered again, her imagination getting away from her with half-formed images of the other applications of that intent. Foolish as they ever were. But rather braver in their clarity, these days. 

Kaz rolls his sleeves to his elbows, exposing lithe-muscled forearms and his Dregs tattoo. It’s an experiment, but Inej wonders if he’s also showing off, even slightly. But maybe she’s just thinking that way because it’s working. 

Saints’ sake. Get a hold of yourself. 

Hopefully he’s about to say or do something particularly Kaz-like that will make this easier, make reality crash back over her. But the way he is tonight…

He seems oblivious to the effect he’s created as he moves the pot, long fingers wrapped around its handle, but Inej suspects that he isn’t. She slips up behind him, silent as ever even though she knows he’ll sense her presence, and slides her fingers up into the short-shorn hairs at the back of his neck, absentmindedly toying with the longer strands. He startles at first—movements pausing, pupils dilating—but leans into the touch in a way that makes her think he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. 

“Eww,” says Jordan, wandering into the kitchen. Inej drops her hand to rest more safely on Kaz’s shoulder, protected by the fabric of his shirt. The danger of having Jordan around is, of course, getting caught like a couple of blushing teenagers. 

Jordan has grown into her legs and no longer has to stand on tiptoes to look over the rim of the pot, a grin crossing her face as she catches the scent. 

Inej nudges Jordan with her leg. “Be patient, Jordan.”