Chapter Text
“<We sentenced most of them this morning,>” Santa Zoya says. “<The Stolypin, Naumov, and Durnovo families are stripped of their titles, holdings, and possessions. Their estates revert to the crown, and the crown pledges the first year of revenues to the payment of Ravka’s debt to the Van Eck Compagnie, as well as the profits from the sale of their moveables.>”
“<I’m sure Wylan and Jesper will be grateful, Sankta.>” Inej sips her tea. The royal tea service doesn’t include butter; tea isn’t bad without it, but she’s been spoiled by a week of Kaz bringing her tea just as she likes it, and it seems thin and watery on her tongue.
(He’d brought out a dress this morning, lavender velvet, with pearl buttons on its long sleeves and high collar, laurel and oak leaves embroidered over the bodice in black and bronze metallic thread. But she refused. She wears the Saint’s gift, the green silk, the hem of little mirrors, the golden veil.
“You know she only sent someone to the market to buy it,” he said irritably, and maybe that was true. But it’s beautiful. She let him tie the strings on the back of the choli.)
“<The Grand Duchess Durnova and Dmitri Verontsov will be sentenced this afternoon. His parents are loyal; he acted completely without their knowledge.>” The Saint looks at her. “<Do the Suli have a king?>”
“<No, Sankta,>” Inej says.
“<Do they — do we have laws?>”
“<We have ozhakut.>”
“<What is that, a code of laws?>”
“<It’s a — it’s a road.>” So strange, to be saying this in Ravkan. But how many times has she translated herself into Kerch, trying to explain to Kaz? But still so strange, and stranger still to be explaining to a Saint. It makes the familiar words uncertain “<Say a woman goes to water. Her feet bend the grass. That’s a road; it shows the way to water, and if you follow it you won’t die of thirst. Ozhakut is a road; if you follow it, you won’t do wrong to your people.>”
“<And if you leave it? What then?>”
“<That depends,>” Inej says, fidgeting with the tea cup. “<How a person left it. Whether they come back.>”
“<If they don’t come back. What then?>”
“<A person can be — cut off. In different ways. Like quarantine, like they do in Kerch. You have to keep your distance.>” She has kept her distance for a very long time now, hasn’t she. She thinks, with a mixture of hatred and guilt, of Adem Bajan. “<Or worse. You can be forsaken.>”
“<And who makes these judgements?>”
“<We do,>” Inej says.
“<But you — we don’t have a king, magistrates —>”
“<We have judges,>” Inej says defensively. “<When the clan meets. But you don’t need a judge for everything. One of my cousins hit his wife once; we all heard him do it. So he was cut off. For a year. He traveled behind us and slept apart and ate last, even after the children. We didn’t need to wait for a judge.>”
Suddenly she wonders, Why a year? Is it always a year, or did someone decide? Did he do it again, after I was gone, or did he learn his lesson? She waits with trepidation for Sankta Zoya to ask her, ask one of these questions she can’t answer, but that isn’t what she asks.
“<My father had children with a woman who wasn’t Suli.>” Sankta Zoya sits very straight in her chair. “<Was that a crime, to the Suli?>”
Inej traces the blue pattern on the saucer with her thumb. Long-necked cranes and elegant fish. This must be the Kerch porcelain Kaz talked about. It is pretty. “<It’s not — it’s not a crime, to marry someone who’s not Suli.>”
“<He stayed with her, in her village. He didn’t travel anymore.>”
“<It’s a punishment, to settle; not a Suli punishment, a Ravkan punishment. That’s what they do to us, try to make us settle. Go where they want.>”
“<His brother came. Begged him to come back to his family. He wouldn’t. If he was cut off, the way you say, would he have done that?>”
“<I don’t understand that,>” Inej says. What could make a man do that? “<He punished himself. He punished you.>”
“<I wouldn’t be who I am,>” the queen says, “<if I hadn’t been there for the Second Army to find.>”
“<Of course, Sankta Zoya,>” Inej says hastily. Explaining things like this, she’d almost forgotten who she was talking to, and everything that meant. “<I didn’t mean to suggest — I just don’t understand.>”
“<Neither do I,>” Sankta Zoya says. “<His name was Suhm Nabri. Does that — mean anything to you?>”
Inej tries to think. Its not a family name in her clan, but she thinks she might have heard it once or twice. “[What was his trade?]” she asks absently, and then hurriedly corrects herself into Ravkan.
“<He and my mother grew barley,>” Sankta Zoya says. “<Badly. Kept some goats and sold them too cheap. But I think — his brother was a fiddler. Maybe he was one once, too. If he had a fiddle, I never saw it. Maybe he sold it, too.>”
Inej sips her tea, trying to hide her horror at the thought. To sell the only tool of your trade — better to beg. Better to do almost anything. A fiddler without his fiddle is an acrobat without his legs.
But a Suli smith who is forced to settle can make money in a smithy. A wagon-maker can put build houses without wheels, make cabinets, be paid for it. A weaver can spin wool instead of silk. And the money can still come in, month after month. A musician who stays in one place — who will give him any money, for songs they’ve heard a dozen times? It only took a week, in the smaller towns, for the Ghafa circus to stop making money.
And he had a child.
“<If the Nabris are musicians,>” she says, “>then your family is in my lege. My trade group, prestar lege. My family will be happy to hear that. That they have that in common with a Saint. Sankta Marya was dhatar lege, and they don’t let you forget.>”
“<Captain Ghafa,>” Sankta Zoya says, and her face, in the afternoon light, looks suddenly lost and anxious and very human. “<Inej. Would you — stay with me? Teach me about the Suli?>”
Two minutes ago, Inej would not have dared to question a Saint’s requests. But Sankta Zoya looks at her teacup, a great and holy thing and still a person, and Inej thinks, It was a question, just a question.
“<I think you should find someone older than me, Sankta,>” she says hesitantly. “<I was — taken from my family when I was fourteen. I don’t know everything I should. And elders are the best at explaining. And maybe — wouldn’t you like to speak to a seer?>”
Sankta Zoya puts down her cup. She looks out the window. “<But you understand.>”
“<A seer will understand,>” Inej says. “<Better than I ever could. If you like — when I see my family, I’ll tell them that you want a seer. And they’ll tell everyone, and a seer will come to you.>”
“<So I’ll just have Suli seers knocking on my door, saying they’re here to advise me?>” The queen makes an expression of dissatisfied disgust, and Inej bristles, reflexively. That expression is Kaz’s expression, the Grand Duchess Durnova’s expression, the expression that thinks seers are charlatan beggars.
“<They won’t send you a false seer,>” she says, stiffly. “<You would have been a seer yourself, if you had lived with your father’s caravan. Unless the child-catchers found you there, too.>”
“<The Second Army saved me,>” Sankta Zoya says, coldly.
Inej hangs her head, feeling like a child who’s been shouted at — sorry, resentful, hurt. She shouldn’t have said no to Sankta Zoya. But she couldn’t have said yes, could she? It would be like a dancer trying to teach acrobatics. Like an acrobat trying to teach smithing. It would be wrong. “<I’m not questioning the Saints,>” she says.
Almost angrily, Sankta Zoya says, “<I didn’t want — I didn’t ask to be a Saint; it wasn’t my idea —>”
And Inej knows how that might feel, because there are so many things she is and has been that she didn’t ask to be. The Saints are like us. The Saints understand. “<You can’t help being what you’ve been made. The past has already happened. Hasn’t it?”>”
“<Yes,>” Sankta Zoya says. “<No going back. We can only go forward.>”
“O vasaro lasho vi o drom age age,” Inej says. “<The good driver looks far down the road.>”
“<Not the worst proverb,>” the queen says. “<Thank you for joining me for tea, Captain Ghafa.>”
In the throne room, Inej stands beside Wylan, with Kaz and Jesper behind them. The room is packed, and tense with clashing emotions — fear, anger, resentment, glee, satisfaction. Some eyes catch on her, where she stands in her green and gold with her veil over her head, not beside the dias but not too far from it either. Wylan, seeing them look, offers her his arm. She takes it, and keeps her head high.
The doors at the other end of the room open, and armed guards enter, followed by a pair of heartrenders. The sight of their red keftas make Inej suddenly miss Nina very badly — Nina and all the things she would have had to say about everything that’s happened, and all the faces she would have pulled while Kaz wasn’t looking.
The heartrenders escort in the Grand Duchess Durnova, who can’t seem to decide if she would rather look proud and unbeaten, or pathetically ill-treated. For a few steps, she carries herself rigidly upright, then changes her mind and lets her whole body slump, her head rolling down. Then she changes her mind again, and pulls herself upright.
The guards bring them to the queen, and she looks down at them from her place on the throne. There’s a heavy crown on her lovely black hair, and it only makes her hold her head higher. When she speaks, her voice is hard and resonant.
“<Varvara, formerly the Grand Duchess Durnova. You have plotted against the crown of Ravka, and for this, we have stripped you of your title. We have stripped you of your lands, your properties, and your revenues; your moneys and your moveables are forfeit. You are not the builder of this plot; you are, if anything, its dupe. These men never meant to make you queen. But nonetheless you have conspired, and you have pretended to the throne. And for this, we sentence you. You are banished. If ever you set foot on Ravkan soil or enter Ravkan waters, or if you interfere in affairs touching the Ravkan state, your life is forfeit on the instant. You are no longer a citizen of Ravka; our embassies will not protect you, and you may accept no gifts from any Ravkan, except what the crown affords you, which is this: an allowance sufficient to maintain a modest establishment in Ketterdam. We give this allowance into the control of Kaz Brekker, a petty merchant of that city, and you must apply to him for any money you require.>”
Inej can almost hear Kaz’s thoughts behind her — the insult of petty merchant, the gleeful contemplation of all the possible opportunities to be had in controlling a noblewoman’s finances. And the idea that the woman will have to come to Kaz every month and beg for her allowance while he sits behind his desk and smiles — it’s hard not to smile herself.
“<My Ravka!>” exclaims the Grand Duchess who is no longer a Grand Duchess, in fainting tones. “<My beloved Ravka, how I grieve —>”
“<Oh be quiet,>” Sankta Zoya snaps. “<Do you think you’re deceiving anyone? You grieve for your position and for your ambitions. You know nothing of Ravka but the insides of palaces and the views from carriages. You are cut off. Be grateful that we spare your life. Take her away.>”
The doors close behind Durnova, but only for an instant, and then they open to admit Dmitri Verontsov, escorted by the same guard of guns and grisha. He walks steadily, with a soldier’s bearing. He stops when the guards stop him, and looks straight ahead, as if the room were empty.
“<Dmitri Verontsov,>” Sankta Zoya says. “<You have planned all this. And you have failed — not by chance, but because you and your conspirators, who you thought should be the ones to wield the power of the Ravkan throne, are stupid, incompetent, and treacherous. Your accomplices betrayed one another and you, and you betrayed the woman you claim to love. You are a disgrace to our nation as well as a traitor, and you must pay with your life.>”
Dmitri doesn’t move. He doesn’t react at all. But out of the assembled ranks of nobles comes a man with grey hair and medals on his sash, and the same inflexible soldier’s bearing as his son. Inej recognizes him; she met him once, at the opera.
“<Your Majesty.>” Count Verontsov goes down on one knee before the throne. Inej sees that it was a graceful gesture, once, ceremonial and familiar to him, but that his knees hurt him now, and his hips are stiff. But still he kneels, and bends his head. “<Your Majesty, I come before you as a man who has always served his country, faithfully and without complaint. I can make no excuses for my son. He is guilty of a terrible crime.>” His face is rigid, Inej sees, fiercely stiff with the effort of stoicism. “<I cannot beg you for his life for the sake of my own service, which has been only humble. But I do beg you, Your Majesty. I beg you for the sake.>” His voice breaks. “<For the sake of his brother, who died fighting beside you. To spare Dmitri’s life. Under any condition, at any cost that pleases you. Please spare him.>”
There is a silence. Inej’s heart beats. She wants him to face justice, this young noble. He poisoned Jesper and stuffed him in a trunk. He would have seen the done the same to her, and worse. And it was all a game to him and his friends, all posturing to soothe their vicious pride, which was so wounded to see a Suli woman on the throne. She wants to see him punished for his vile actions and his contemptible dreams; she wants to see the fear in his eyes, not just the dread but the gallows fear that makes men struggle like animals or fall down limp and sobbing.
Does she want it enough to watch his father’s heart break for it?
She doubts the old count is any friend to the Suli, that he’d have been any less likely to accord her a sneer than a nod if he’d seen her with her caravan. She doesn’t doubt he’d turn up his nose at thieves and spies.
But he is a father, like her father, with only one child.
Slowly, Sankta Zoya stands. She descends one step from the throne, and then another.
The count bends, lowering his head until it touches the queen’s shoe. This is what Inej has always heard stories about, as child, the terrible things that the gadyei make each other do, to demonstrate their power, to show that they are not free. Free men do not kneel and kiss the foot that kicks them, her father said.
But she knows, and is sick to her stomach with the knowing, that her father would have done this, and more, to save her. If he could have.
Beside her, Wylan is stiff. His father would have let him go to his death and never spared him a glance, let alone humbled himself for the sake of his son.
“<Count Verontsov,>” Sankta Zoya says, and her voice carries. “<We remember Pavel, and we remember his sacrifice for his country. Nor do we discount your own service to Ravka, which has been long and loyal. And it is for your sake that we will spare Dmitri the death that he has earned. He will live, in our custody, and we will keep him in some comfort. You may visit him. But all the peerages of Ravka proceed from the crown, and we refuse him those. His claim to your land and titles is void; you must choose another heir. Does this satisfy you?>”
Inej breathes, and feels how hard she has been pressing her fingers into her heart.
Gavriil Verontsov raises his head. Saltwater wavers in his hollow eyes. “<Thank you, Your Majesty. You are most generous. His mother and I will never forget it; we owe you everything.>”
He looks at his son. Dmitri does not look back; he stares into space. He is everything to this man; does he truly not care? What is so poisonous inside him, that he can’t even spare his father a glance? Inej waits to see if he’ll soften. But he doesn’t. He maintains his blind focus on nothing as the guards escort him out.
Sankta Zoya dismisses the court, and sweeps out with the prince consort on her arm, his golden head inclining towards hers. The crowds press together as they head for the exits, a swirling mass of fine clothes and whispers.
But Count Verontsov and his wife walk alone, no one crowding at their elbows. Everyone around them pushed aside by the invisible force of their relief, their shame, their grief.
“He wouldn’t even look at him,” Inej says. “His father begged for his life and he wouldn’t even meet his eyes.”
“Maybe he thinks he’d rather have died,” Wylan says. “Rather than have his father call him an unforgivable criminal in front of the world.”
“He wouldn’t have preferred death.”
“No,” Wylan says. “He wouldn’t have. But I don’t think it was close enough for him to realize that.”
“But he did it because he loved him.”
“It can be a hard thing,” Jesper says quietly. “Hard to be loved more than you know you deserve.”
Inej finds she does not have anything to say to that.
At the hotel, Kaz somehow manages to insert himself into packing Wylan’s trunk before Wylan can do it, and then shuts the communicating door and briskly sets about packing hers.
“You realize,” he says after a moment, “that your Saint has ordered me to stay in Ketterdam. To keep watch over Durnovo.”
She snorts, and seats herself comfortably on the bed, cross-legged under the skirt. She knew he’d try to play this card. “Perhaps for a while. But you wouldn’t let that stop you if you really planned to leave, would you?”
“Oh, there are a number of unfortunate accidents she might have,” he says.
“Or you could just hand her over to Wylan.”
“You don’t mind if Wylan stays in Ketterdam, then.”
““Wylan doesn’t have a stadwatch file as thick as my wrist. No one wants revenge on Wylan; Wylan hasn’t made his name in blood. There are many rich men much stupider than he is who live long and peaceable lives.”
He turns to face her. “Do you think Wylan doesn’t have enemies? Do you think I don’t do anything about them? Do you think you don’t have enemies? You’re so glib about your ship, your safety — do you think that what safety you have happens by itself, just because you think your mission is blessed by your Saints?”
“Who are you to say it isn’t?” she demands, stung, because it is; Sankta Zoya blessed it herself, and how could it not be —
“Then aren’t I part of your Saints-ordained protection? Right where I am in Ketterdam?”
“The Saints don’t want you dead.”
“Do the Saints always want what you want? That’s very convenient.”
“Why do you want to court your own death?” she flares, sliding off the bed to stand on her feet. “Pekka Rollins isn’t coming back. What do you want to do so badly, in that filthy city? Be king of a kingdom you despise? Or are you just afraid to go anywhere else?”
“Afraid?” he snorts, eyes hard. “That’s rich, coming from you. What are you doing on your boat but hiding from what you can’t face? Cowering from a life you think you can’t go back to and hoping you can wipe away your sins? Do you think you can do it, Inej? How many ships do you have to seize before you’ll feel clean enough to face your family?”
“They kidnap people,” she says. “They chain them hand and foot and I set them free —”
“You were the best spider the Barrel ever saw,” Kaz says. “You could be studying the indenture market, attacking it at the roots. But you’d rather hack at the branches, because you know there’ll never be an end to them that way; there will always be another ship to hunt and so you’ll never have to go home. And you can draw your knives and draw some blood and it’s not a crime, because this time, this time it’s all in the service of the Saints.”
“It is,” she cries, “it is in their service; she made me a whore and you made me a killer but I will put it all in the service of the Saints —”
He’s just looking at her, steady and silent. She wants to climb out the window. She can’t; she’s dressed in green and gold silk, and there’s nowhere for her to go. She goes to the window anyway, and looks out. The streets are grey with mud and smoke and the cold haze of early spring. The people in them move like people always do, intent on their own business.
Behind her, she hears Kaz close the trunk and turn the lock. She keeps her eyes on the people below. How many of you are happy? she wonders. How many of you are loved? How many of you have blood on your hands, and how many of you care?
“If you want to risk your life,” he says quietly behind her, “that’s your choice to make, and I can’t stop you. But don’t leave me with nothing to do about it but pray for you, Inej, because I can’t pray.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“Yes,” he says. “But my brother’s still dead. And I’m still alive.”
She forgets. It is cruel of her, to forget. As unreachably far as her parents, her cousins, her caravan can seem, the vast gulf between them of everything she can’t tell them and knows they know, they are alive. She could — she can, she will — go back to her family. He never can.
“I talked to Genya Safin,” he says. “While you were at tea with Nazyalensky. They can knock me out. Cut out the bit of the bone that can’t be fixed. Seal the rest together straight.” She spins to face him. He’s looking at his hands on his cane. “That leg will be shorter than the other. I’ll need some stupid sort of shoe.”
“But you won’t be in pain any more?”
“I won’t be poised to enter any dancing competitions, or win any footraces either. It just reduces the risk of infection in the bone.”
“But you won’t be in pain.” Did he think of this, looking at the bone in the museum? He is too stubborn, too proud of his own endurance, to have asked for it for himself. When she told him she didn’t want to lose him, did he think of this small way to save himself a little for her?
Is it enough?
Not by itself. But it’s a step. Like holding her hand, like helping her Saint. He moves slowly; he extracts concessions. But he moves towards her. He tries.
“I change my conditions,” she says, and his head snaps up. She stands up straight, the Saint’s silk veil around her head. “You don’t have to leave Ketterdam, before I’ll marry you. But you must promise me. That you will find a way to leave it. To keep yourself alive. And I will wait. And I will live with the risk, as you will live with me on the sea. Do you accept?”
He limps one step towards her, one away. “That’s hardly so different.”
“I think it is.”
He steps towards her again. “Who am I, without Ketterdam? Where would I go? What would I be?”
“I don’t know where you’ll go,” she says. “But I know you will always be exactly who you are, and no one else.”
“I could spend the rest of my life telling you I was thinking on it.”
“You could,” she says. “But I have faith in you.”
“Faith,” he says. “You and your faith.”
“I have been in dark times,” she says stubbornly. “And in terrible places. And my faith has always served me well.”
He’s breathing hard, unsteadily, his eyes far away. Cautiously, she steps closer to him.
“If I drive a hard bargain,” she says, “who taught me to do that?” And just as she’d hoped, the edge of his mouth twitches, dragging itself into a dry, wry smile. Carefully, she eases a hand up between them, to brush that smile with her fingertips as she smiles back at him. “I bargain hard for what I want. And I want you all my life.”
He catches the hand in one of his, holding it tight. “All right,” he says hoarsely, staring down at her. “I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But make it ten days. Ten days of twenty-eight. And I will find a way.”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“Is there anything else? Any other condition?”
“No,” she says. “That’s all. I want your love, and I want your life.”
“Then. The deal is the deal,” he says, and drops his head to kiss her, like any bride should be kissed, before Wylan raps on the door to say their carriage to the airship is waiting.
One year later.
“Will that be all?,” he asks, running his hand through the rough rich silk of her hair and down over the velvet curve of her waist. Red velvet, wine red that brings out the glowing color in her skin, even in the smoky Ketterdam light, and a neckline so low and wide that most of her smooth shoulders are bared.
“Servants aren’t supposed to touch their ladies like that.”
“No,” he agrees. “They’re not. You’re very right to frown at me like that. Keep doing it.” He runs his hands further down, velvet and petticoats blurring the shape of her thighs.
Her chin comes up, showing him the lovely curve of her throat in the mirror. The mirror’s half the reason he bought this chiffonier, had it hauled all the way up the stairs in the Slat. “You’re taking liberties. I should slap you.”
“If you like, little miss,” he murmurs, and turns her around. Her palm cracks against his cheek and he licks his lips, looking down at her. “You know I’ll just go on taking them from the front, though.”
“Because you’re a bad servant,” she says sternly. “You ought to apologize.”
“Should I?” He has his hands under her skirts now, .
She slaps him again, harder this time, a sweet burn running up his face. “Apologize.”
“I’m sorry, little miss.” He doesn’t stop. He lifts her onto the top of the chiffonier, and his pants are open now. He pushes close and rubs himself against her, the soft rasp of the hair between her legs and the wet, slippery warmth he’s looking for. That she spreads her thighs to let him slowly ease himself into. She gasps, and he could live on that gasp for weeks.
(He will have to. But for now — )
“Little miss, little miss,” he croons into her hair, “do you like having me in your cunt like this?”
“Impertinent,” she says, or starts to say; he turns it into a squeak when he moves.
“Yes. I’m a bad man, aren’t I?”
“Very bad,” she manages. “Very bad.”
“You shouldn’t just let me — fuck you like this.” He doesn’t deserve it, this sweetness, this knowledge of her body, this power to make her make these sounds. He has it anyway. “You shouldn’t let me get away with it.”
She reaches up and sinks cruel fingers into his hair, and he gasps. Everything coming into focus. “Ah that’s right. That’s right. Put me in my place.”
“Bad man. Bad, wicked man.”
“But you like it, don’t you,” he says in her ear. “Maybe you’re a little bad yourself, Inej.” The way that makes her squirm, the way it makes her squeeze him — she’s going to make him fucking come —
But she lets go of his hair and things blur a little. He breathes.
He knows her body, and she knows his, reads him, takes away the bright thread of pain that ties him so tight to pleasure so that he can remember to hold her at just the right angle, put his thumb just there, keep the pace so that she moans and clings to his shoulders and rides him, uses him, just like that, until he feels her hot breath on his neck and then her teeth — sharp white lightning in his head, signal and command for him to come. He hears himself, the hoarse groan he gives, as he holds her tight.
She strokes his hair, just once, and lets her grip on him go. So he can move away, if he needs to.
But he doesn’t need to, today. He stays, leaning his head against hers, velvet under one hand and sweat-damp skin under the other. Giving mental thanks to Genya Safin for whatever she suggested Inej do with the healer that lets them do this without worrying.
“Now undress me,” she says, when their breathing has slowed. “So I can clean up.”
“I’ll clean you up,” he says, reaching for the basin and the washcloth. “No need to take it off.” The dress looks stunning on her, as he knew it would.
(That’s the other reason he got the chiffonier. It’s quite hard to resist having more dresses made, though this is only the second time he’s indulged himself since they’ve been married.)
They are married. The deal is done, and she won’t go back on her word. Still, he casts a glance at the satchel in the corner, just making sure it’s still there. Not that anyone could steal it, or would want to.
“I’m not going to meet them dressed like this,” she says, though she cooperatively holds the skirts away as he runs the cloth over her thighs. She’s a pretty mess, but he can take pride in getting her clean, too.
“At least let me take you down to the Silver Six,” he says. “You should see it, and the crowd should see you. You can change at the Van Ecks’.”
“This doesn’t look very much like leaving Ketterdam,” she says.
“Well,” he counters, “last month you left after eight days.”
“That was an emergency.” She lifts her legs to let him bathe them better.
“I’d say that dress is too. Come on, Inej. Let me let them see you. It’s all part of my plan.”
“Oh, is it?”
He puts the bowl back, and smooths the velvet down over her knees. It’s a simple dress, with a severe black sash and matching black bands on her arms where her knives shine, half their blades naked. He watches her braid her hair back up, smooth and even. She looks so deadly. A person could be cut open just looking at her. “Yes, actually.”
She hmmphs, then adds, “The things aren’t going to walk off by themselves. You don’t need to check on them every minute.”
That’s a gross exaggeration of how often he’s glanced at the satchel. He goes to the wardrobe and begins to change his shirt. She does still watch him do it. “I’m not worried about the things. I’m more worried I’ll forget the words. It’s just nonsense to me.”
“Tjai, mul, sunsika,” she says patiently. “Tea, wine, a coin. Aypa. To you. Lelo. I bring. Zamutro hona. To be your son-in-law.”
He gestures impatiently, threading in a cufflink. “They won’t expect me to conduct the rest of the conversation in Suli, I trust.”
“No.”
“And you’re sure it wouldn’t be better to bring Mrs. Van Eck? Surely she’s more respectable than Jesper. And I’m sure she speaks Ravkan.”
“The idea is, when you bring your parents, to show my parents who will take care of me, and who is close to you. Jesper and Wylan are close to you. And my father will like Jesper.”
“Probably more than me,” he mutters. He chooses the soberest tie he’s got.
“Kaz,” she says, “they know we’re married. They’re going to keep the wine, no matter what.”
And he can just imagine their faces as they do it. Maybe Jesper can charm them into some good grace, despite the language barrier.
“They are my parents,” she says. “So they are your parents, too. No matter what.”
He shoulders on his coat. “They’re not going to be happy about it,” he says, not for the first time.
Inej doesn’t say that this wasn’t their idea, that she’d only said she’d bring them after he mentioned it for the — he’s actually not sure how many times he mentioned it. Too many, evidently. But then he couldn’t back out of it, could he? So now he has to live with her patience, and his bad Suli, and whatever her parents make of the situation.
She says, “Maybe not. But it’s not always a happy business, being a parent, I think.”
She steps towards him, and the small gold stud in her nose glitters in the light. He should have got her one with a garnet, to go with the dress. She came in through the window, and he can’t wait to see the Dregs see her, appearing out of nowhere at the top of the stairs, red and black and dangerous.
“But you don’t think I’ll be a bridge too far for them?”
He reaches for his cane. He still walks with it. Ketterdam doesn’t need to know that his weaknesses might not be quite what they think they are. And despite the lifted shoe, it helps with balance sometimes. He is still learning how to put weight on the leg. It’s still weak.
And the absence of pain is still shocking, sometimes.
“I’m theirs,” she says. “And you’re mine. And that’s the end of it.”
"There's never an end to it," he says, but he feels himself smiling, and sees her smile back. Because it’s true, that he’s hers. And he is so shocked, and so shockingly happy, that he doesn't argue anymore, just takes up the satchel and goes to the door. "After you, little miss."
"If you say so, sweetheart," she says, and goes out with him onto the stairs.