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Jesper
After years of living in the Slat, and before that the small, well-loved house on the Frontier, being in the mansion feels strange. The rooms are too big, too empty. A sort of silence Jesper isn’t used to settles in them like the dust that accumulates all-too-quickly on the ornate, hand-carved furniture. He finds himself wandering aimlessly down the halls in the middle of the day, trying his best to stay out of Wylan’s way, giving his boyfriend space to grapple with the realities of taking over the Van Eck empire and being the youngest member of the Merchant Council.
Things with Wylan are great. They’re good. They’re… fine. Jesper just doesn’t know what to do with himself, and he can tell his anxious energy is beginning to unnerve Wylan—especially since Inej is spending less and less time at the mansion now that she spends her days learning how to captain her ship.
The problem doesn’t really have to do with Wylan at all. The problem, which is becoming evident to everyone who lives or works in the Van Eck mansion, is that Jesper is bored. He no longer has a reason to embark on daring heists for Kaz, risking his hide just to pay down a mere fraction of one of the many debts he owes across the Barrel. Kaz has also done him the favor—at least, Inej and Wylan insist that it’s a favor—of having him blacklisted from every gambling club in the city. For the first time in his life, Jesper has money to his name. In fact, he’s downright filthy rich. And for the first time in his life, he can’t spend it with reckless abandon.
The stock markets don’t offer nearly the same thrill as the tables, and Wylan—who is the greatest thrill of all—is too wrapped up in his father’s trial and the succession of his businesses to find Jesper something better to do. So it is only natural that with hands he can’t keep still and a mind that whirrs at all hours, Jesper begins fabrikating here and there. Every time he does it, there’s still a part of him that aches with guilt imagining his Da’s disapproving face. But sometimes it feels like this is the only part of himself he has left. Maybe it’s the only part of his mother he has left too. And out of all the reckless, foolish things Jesper has done since arriving in Ketterdam, this might actually be the safest thrill still left unexplored.
He begins spending hours experimenting: turning coins into keys, grafting tulips in the garden to make the petals impossible colors, creating increasingly ornate mugs they can barely drink out of. In one instance, he got it into his head that he could repair the hole Kaz and Wylan had put in the dining room ceiling—an endeavor far beyond his current skill set. It had ended with him crashing through the boards of wood all over again, breaking their replacement dining table. When Jesper offered to fix that as well, Wylan had pinched the bridge of his nose and left the room.
He shouldn’t miss his old life, not when he now has everything he could wish for. But he does. Tell Jesper he’s missed. Around the Slat, Inej had relayed to him the night after she got her ship. The words, though stilted and sparse, were more heartfelt than any message Jesper had ever received from Kaz before. It had made him giddy, an effervescent bubbling in his chest. Kaz is difficult—a difficult boss, a difficult friend, and, at times, difficult to love. But Jesper does anyway.
It’s when thinking back to that night, and those words, that he fabrikates the small leather case.
He’s sitting in the living room, a box at his feet that is overflowing with various odds and ends—small scraps of metal, an old coat cut into leather strips, buttons of all shapes and sizes. He selects a handful of the leather strips, the same supple, shiny black as Kaz’s gloves. The strips lay slack and formless in his hands; lifeless, almost, like the way Kaz’s gloves look when he takes them off—something he’s been doing more and more often lately.
Jesper begins folding the pieces together, twisting and tucking the leather until it resembles a small case, just big enough for some coin or a pair of reading glasses. Or perhaps a set of lock picks. It’s a fleeting thought, but it sticks, and Jesper fishes a small metal button from the box. He takes his time in a way he doesn’t usually, letting his long, twitching fingers settle on the leather, smoothing the frayed edges and joining the button to the front. He even gently etches a small KB at the base. There. It’s sentimental and stupid and perhaps the nicest thing he’s made. It makes him embarrassed and proud in equal measure.
He flips it over in his hands, inspecting his work, before noticing an imprint around the same size—no, the exact same size—as his thumb on the back. Barely noticeable, but there nonetheless. “All the stupid fucking Saints,” he grumbles to himself. He tosses the flawed leather onto the table beside him in frustration, discarding this attempt like all the rest, and forgets all about it.
-
The day Inej leaves on her maiden voyage, Jesper finds Kaz alone in the mansion, drinking their alcohol in their living room. Jesper can’t exactly claim to be surprised by this turn of events. When Jesper was just a boy, before Ma had died, his Da had taken pity on the runt from the latest litter of the neighbor’s hound; a tiny, wrinkled, pink thing he’d had to nurse by hand for weeks until it gained its strength. When Da left for the fields each morning, leaving the dog behind, it would inevitably run straight into the bedroom, burrowing into the sleep shirt Da had left on the floor from the night before.
Jesper can’t imagine Kaz as the runt of any litter—more like the biggest, meanest pup who would hoard milk from all the others. But there’s something about the image of Kaz here on the couch, drowning his sorrows in the very place Inej has just left, that reminds Jesper of that little puppy cuddling up to a bundle of his Da’s pajamas. He knows better than to say any of this to Kaz.
Kaz looks up with a grimace when Jesper walks in, then turns immediately back to the drink clutched in his right hand. He’s holding something in his left, but Jesper can’t quite make out what is wrapped so tightly in his fist.
“Well, hello to you, too, sunshine,” Jesper quips, dropping into the plush chair across from Kaz. “Please, by all means, make yourself at home.”
Kaz just grunts and takes another sip of his drink. It’s going to be a long few months while Inej is gone. Saintspeed and safe travels, dear, Jesper thinks, as if he could somehow urge her home quicker, and leans over to swipe the bottle from where it sits by Kaz’s feet to pour himself a glass in solidarity. They sit in silence for the length of time it takes to polish off the bottle.
Kaz is the one to break it. “What’s this supposed to be?” he asks, revealing what he’s been holding with a flick of his wrist. In his tipsy haze Jesper had forgotten about it, and upon taking a closer look, he realizes it’s the damn leather case.
Jesper sighs, sinking further into the chair, as if it could swallow the awkward length of his limbs. “It was—is—a case for lock picks.” It seems the drinks have made his tongue loose. “Your lock picks. I guess. But it’s—” he cuts himself off. He can see Kaz inspecting it again and watches as he runs a gloved finger over the imperfection in the leather. “It was stupid. And I messed it up anyhow.”
Kaz mumbles something that Jesper can’t quite catch, still studying the case as diligently as if it were a Schuyler lock, not just a muddled-up bunch of leather that a six-year-old in the Little Palace could probably fabrikate better than Jesper had.
Then, before Jesper’s very eyes, it seems to vanish into thin air.
“If it’s so shit, then you won’t mind if I take it. It has my initials on it,” Kaz peers at him appraisingly. Jesper figures Kaz is trying to hurt him, to embarrass him, and it’s working. The fact that he fabrikated a case for lock picks says enough—but of course Kaz has to rub salt in the wound, has to force Jesper to admit just how stupidly, pathetically in need of validation he is, producing some sentimental trinket he knows Kaz will never use.
He’s surprised when Kaz keeps speaking. “But you should know, they’re wrong.”
“What?” Jesper asks, curiosity managing to override his smarting feelings.
“They’re wrong. My initials are ‘K.R.’ Kaz Rietveld.”
Jesper must be gaping at him dumbly—you’ll catch flies that way, Da used to chastise him—because Kaz rolls his eyes and says, “I had a family name, once. A real one, not one I nicked from a piece of machinery in the harbor. Even had a family.”
Kaz’s gaze is far-off and glassy, and Jesper suspects that the alcohol is only partially responsible. “Ever since that night at the Geldrenner, I know that you’ve wanted to know who… who Jordie was…” Kaz takes a deep breath, swallowing heavily, as if there is something painful and dark fighting its way up his throat. When he lifts his glass to his lips only to realize that it’s empty, he scowls, setting it back down again with a frustrated clink.
“He was my brother,” Kaz finally finishes, the words rough and broken. Was. Past tense. The same tense he’d used during their fight at the Geldrenner. Jesper hadn’t missed that crucial detail then, and he certainly doesn’t miss it now.
“Your brother,” Jesper says slowly, a verbal nudge to prompt Kaz to say whatever he wants—no more, no less.
“He died right here in Ketterdam.” The words fall heavy as lead, though Kaz pronounces them with a careful dispassion. “And I died with him, but I came back all wrong.”
Kaz smiles, but it’s a gnarled, twisted thing. “Did you know I grew up on a farm? Just like you. Though we grew tulips, not jurda.” And after a pause that he uses to assess Jesper: “You can laugh if you want.”
Jesper doesn’t. How could he? His best friend has just pried open a piece of himself that Jesper never thought Kaz would—that Jesper didn’t even know existed. Kaz lives his life locked up tighter than a Gemensbank vault, and only one girl seems to have been granted the lock’s combination. But maybe Kaz is now giving it to Jesper, too.
“You remind me of him. Of Jordie. And I think I hate you for it.” Jesper can’t suppress his flinch, but Kaz doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes drifting to somewhere just over Jesper’s shoulder. “He was a fool. A young, naive fool with a little brother depending on him. But I—” Kaz cuts himself off and finally seems to see the room around them once more, almost startling as his gaze snaps back to Jesper. “He meant a lot to me. And so do you.”
What a cruel way to tell someone you love them, Jesper wants to say. But he can’t quite get the words out, still too pinned by Kaz’s confession.
“I have nothing left of Jordie but these,” Kaz says, holding up a gloved hand. It must be a trick of the light because it looks as though Kaz’s hand is shaking.
Kaz hasn’t told him why he wears the gloves, but Jesper learned early on that Kaz doesn’t like touch. Just a few weeks into his tenure with the Dregs, he good-naturedly slapped Kaz on the back after a successful heist. The next thing he remembers is being flat on his back and looking up at the cloudy, Ketterdam night sky, the only stars visible being the ones swirling in front of his eyes from Kaz’s punch.
Jesper knows intimately the different ways in which people carry grief. And Kaz, it seems, quite literally carries it daily.
Jesper watches raptly as Kaz lifts his other hand to start tugging on the worn leather, slowly pulling the glove off until first a pale wrist, then palm, then long, elegant fingers emerge. Kaz looks at his bare hand, inspecting it like some kind of foreign object he’s never seen before. He places the glove beside him on the couch and pulls out another leather object: the case.
Jesper prepares himself for another rebuke, another carefully crafted disapproval to tear at the seams that stitch the two of them together. But it never comes.
Instead, Kaz squeezes the case, his thumb fitting perfectly in the indent Jesper left. The case has a certain solidness to it that it lacked before, and Jesper realizes that somehow while they were talking Kaz has managed to slip his lock picks into it.
“But I know now,” Kaz begins, the words more tentative than any Jesper has ever heard from this usually blunt, unyielding crime boss, “that I have another piece of him in you.” Kaz skims his fingers over the leather of the case as punctuation before tucking it away again.
Jesper isn’t one to be at a loss for what to say. In fact, he typically has too much to say, a trait that has gotten him into quite a few scrapes. But he has no words now. Instead, Jesper reaches behind his back to grab a hideous pillow (which he won’t be telling Kaz was another one of his projects) and throws it at Kaz.
“Go to sleep,” Jesper finally says, a small, crooked smile forming on his face. “And you can tell me more about how I remind you of your dead and, apparently, incompetent brother in the morning.”
Kaz’s brow furrows, nostrils flaring, and his scowl comes back. “That’s not what I meant.” He looks just like the surly boy he must have been before this city took his childhood from him.
“I know, you utter podge,” Jesper says, perhaps more for his own benefit than Kaz’s. “But I’m going to make you try again anyway. Or I’ll tell Inej you grew tulips.”
“I’ve already told her,” Kaz grumbles. Of course, Jesper knows this. But he couldn't help a little ribbing.
“Sleep,” Jesper repeats. There’s a promise implied in his words: I’ll still be here when you wake up.
-
Marya
Marya likes the dour boy with the strange haircut who sneaks into her home at all hours of the day. Wylan always tries to warn her that no good comes from Kaz’s visits here, Mama, but Marya’s own observations seem to suggest otherwise.
First, there’s the way Wylan’s own shoulders tend to lift whenever Kaz is nearby, as if he has something to prove. The last time Marya lived in this house, his shoulders never looked like that: they were flinching, shrinking things, wilting and withering like hydrangea petals beneath his father’s scornful gaze. Now, his back is straight and strong as a tulip, healthy and well grown. Complain about Kaz as he may, Marya is glad to see her son rise to the challenge each time he shows up at their door—or, more likely, each time Kaz shows up in their sitting room, unannounced and uninvited. Even if the only good that comes from Kaz’s visits is Wylan’s increasing ability to turn him down at the door (or at least to turn down his proposed schemes and heists—Marya raised her son better than to fail to offer a guest tea and biscuits on arrival. Their cook says that Kaz favors the little chocolate wafers with his black coffee, so Marya makes sure to place a hefty order for both.), Marya is glad to see her son so empowered.
Jesper, too, seems to stand a little taller (if such a thing is possible for a boy who can touch the ceiling in most rooms without even having to jump) when Kaz comes around. Marya never had any siblings, and she was never able to give Wylan any either, but when she sees Jesper and Kaz interact, she wonders whether this is what brothers act like: all the ribbing and vexing, but always with an undercurrent of long-suffering affection just beneath the surface.
Then, of course, there’s Inej. When Inej stays here, that’s when Kaz appears most frequently of all. The two of them are quite private, as young lovers go, but it takes very little observation at all to realize how they dote on one another. Whenever Inej is in the room, Kaz’s eyes track her movements incessantly; whenever she leaves the room, it’s as if he remains only half-attuned to the conversation; the other half of him is obviously trying to figure out where Inej has gone, and when she might be coming back.
Marya watches them in the garden one morning from the window of her sitting room. She sees Kaz pull a black leather glove from his hand, finger by finger. She notices the way his breath catches and his fingers shake as he lifts that hand to Inej’s cheek, and the way Inej beams like every flower in bloom when he manages to caress her face for more than a few seconds before pulling away.
Marya watches, and she notices. And she thinks that she could help.
So the next time Kaz sneaks into the boys’ study when Inej is out to sea, Marya waits for him just beyond the doors, a table for two and a chessboard set up in front of her.
Kaz startles when he first notices her, though it takes him only a second to school his surprised expression back into polite disinterest. “My apologies, Ms. Hendriks. I didn’t know this room was occupied.”
“Hello, Kaz,” Marya waves him in with an indulgent smile. She notices that his haircut is a bit more even, a bit less unseemly than the last time she saw it. Perhaps Inej has something to do with that. “Won’t you join me for a game?” Her gaze dips down to the ornate black-and-white board, already set up with finely made ebony and ivory chess pieces on either side. “Wylan and Jesper have been forced to indulge me far too many times.”
Kaz frowns, consulting the silver timepiece inside his coat. “I suppose I could make time for one round,” he concedes, sinking into the chair opposite Marya’s. “I didn’t know you played,” he remarks offhandedly.
Marya hums. “Yes, since I was a little girl. This board was a wedding gift from my father, who taught me how to play. But then Jan never seemed to…” Her sentence trails off, drifting away with her thoughts. She still finds it difficult to remember it all, let alone to articulate it—even before she’d been forcibly confined to Saint Hilde’s, her marriage had been tumultuous, to say the least. But she doesn’t need to bring all that up now—not to a boy who’s only her son’s age. She knows that Kaz, like Wylan, is a capable young man; he’s had to brave hardships in this city that she, as a girl born to the luxury of the Geldstraat, could never imagine. But he’s still a young man. Whatever hardships he’s experienced, there’s no need to add her own horrors to his memory.
So she schools her expression into a placid smile, the way she’d learned to do when she was first married and being paraded from mansion to mansion on Jan’s arm. “Well, regardless. I do enjoy playing.” She gestures to the white pieces laid out on Kaz’s side of the board. “Your move, of course.”
When Kaz raises a gloved hand to move one of the pawns two squares forward, Marya clears her throat, catching his attention. “If you’d feel comfortable removing your gloves…” She sees the boy’s shoulders stiffen, but she continues on. “There’s no obligation to do so, of course. But it’s only us here, and I’ve found the feel of the pieces to be comforting. You’re quite safe, I promise.”
Marya hopes that he can see it in her eyes that she means it. After the experience she’s had—being lied to, manipulated, locked up for years—she wouldn’t promise safety to anyone and then go back on her word.
Kaz raises a skeptical brow. “Is anyone truly safe in Ketterdam?” he muses, and Marya smiles a bit sadly at him.
Marya has, admittedly, not gone so far west as the Ketterdam that Kaz knows—the Barrel and debauched Staves were, she was told, no place for a proper young lady. Regardless, she’s well aware of what goes on in that part of the city. She knows Kaz is in a gang—she knows he runs the gang—though he may try to hide it for decorum’s sake. And she suspects a promise of safety may sound more like a concealed knife waiting to strike.
“Perhaps not,” she admits. “But if one cannot be safe, at least it helps to be around someone you trust.”
“And how do I know that someone is you?” he demands sharply. Marya takes it in stride.
“You don’t. Not until I prove it to you. But you may find the effort worth the risk.”
Marya sees his gaze drift off for a moment, landing on the cracked window on the other side of the room that Inej is oft to slip through. She watches as he steels his jaw, then nods, once, firmly.
“Okay,” he says, telling himself as much as he’s telling her. He slips the gloves from his pale hands, which Marya politely ignores, already focused on moving her black pawn at the middle of the board.
“Your move,” she tells him. If his fingers shake just a bit as he picks up the next piece, she doesn’t say a word about it.
They play in silence for the next few minutes, the only sounds being the chirping of birds in the garden and the plop of each chess piece being picked up and moved across the board.
“Where did you learn to play?” Marya asks him, thinking back to foggy but fond memories of her childhood, her father explaining the name of each piece to her, critiquing her strategy as she learned to play. Did Kaz have a father to teach him such things? A mother? Someone to guide his hand as he brushed over the heads of the pawns, deciding which one to move first? Someone to sit beside him at the table and encourage him as he learned?
His expression reveals very little to her, but he tells her, “Picked it up at a club off West Stave after they banned me from playing cards. It’s not supposed to be a betting game, but sometimes I could earn a little coin under the table from the old men who swore that some kid off the streets couldn’t possibly beat them.”
Marya nods placidly, but the offhanded way Kaz described himself as some kid off the streets certainly troubles her. Wylan had suffered at Jan’s hands, Marya knows that—but at least for the vast majority of his life, he’d had a roof over his bed, covers to keep him warm, dinner at the table each night. How long had he been on those streets? Just how many years had he been alone?
Marya knows a little of what it does to a person to be so abandoned.
As the game progresses, Marya studies the way he moves across the board. He doesn’t employ the game strategies that Marya has studied in books, the formulas and patterns that masters of the game have deemed the most effective. It’s clear that with every turn, he’s employing his own strategy, reasoning through the next few moves and trying to predict how the pieces will move next. It’s guerilla gameplay, compared to Marya’s practiced hand, but she can admire the raw brilliance of his choices, the way he can think on his feet. It’s only when he leaves his king vulnerable to attack on one side by her queen that she’s finally able to take the lead.
“Check,” she murmurs politely, and Kaz raises an appraising eyebrow.
“So it seems,” he agrees, eyes still scanning the board intently, looking for a way out. “It’s curious, isn’t it, how they designed the king—the most crucial piece in the game—to be one of the weakest.”
Marya tilts her head, considering. “I wouldn’t call the king weak. Like you said, it’s a crucial piece—if the king falls, the game can’t go on. It’s just that the king is more reliant on the other pieces than you might expect, if you were only to watch from the outside.”
Kaz pushes his bishop a few spaces forward, taking his king out of the direct path of Marya’s queen. “And you wouldn’t call that forced reliance a weakness?”
With a smile, Marya exchanges her rook and king, perfectly placing her king in position to capture Kaz’s. “If you know how to use it to your advantage, I’d say it can actually be a strength. Checkmate.”
Kaz huffs what could almost be called a laugh through his nose. “I’ll have to learn how to do that,” he admits. Marya doesn’t ask whether he’s referring to the chess move or not. Either way, her answer is the same.
She smiles again. “You have plenty of time to practice.”
-
Mrs. Ghafa
Since the time Inej was a little girl, her mother has greeted her with kisses at the crown of her head. When Inej headed out the door of their wagon in the mornings, headed off to lessons with the other children of the caravan: a kiss before she left. When Inej came back from a late afternoon practice, where she’d been walking the tightrope for hours, long after the other acrobats had all left: a kiss to welcome her home.
And when Shanta Ghafa reunited with her daughter at the docks of Fifth Harbor, embracing her child for the first time in three long, dark years, the first thing she did: she planted a kiss atop her head.
Nowadays, of course, the kisses are far fewer and much farther between than when Inej was a little girl, but the fact that Shanta still gets to kiss her daughter at all is nothing short of a miracle from the Saints. Inej makes the effort to meet up with her parents’ caravan every year or so, and Shanta and her husband make the effort to travel with The Wraith to Ketterdam just as often. Every time Inej disembarks; every time she steps through the doorway of the Van Eck mansion, where they stay; every time she bids her parents goodnight at their door, she dips her head compliantly, and her mother kisses it.
But there is a new dimension to this ritual that Shanta could not, and did not, expect: more often than not, Shanta finds there is a second head to kiss.
Whatever room Inej Ghafa is in, Kaz Brekker is not far to follow. Shanta accepts this as among the fundamental truths of her daughter’s new life: Inej survived hell in the three years she was apart from them, and when she can’t stand to talk about it, Shanta doesn’t ask. Inej is a pirate, and a hunter of slavers, and is as fierce and brave as anything Shanta has ever seen. And Inej has an exceedingly polite (at least to Shanta and her husband) gangster boyfriend who tends to appear wherever she goes.
The problem, which Inej made very clear to her mother very quickly, is that Kaz does not like to be touched.
It was one of the first things Inej had said to her parents on their reunion. When they’d finally broken their three-person embrace, tears and snot streaking down all their faces, Inej gestured wetly toward the boy waiting a few steps behind her, who was politely averting his gaze.
“Mama, Papa, this is my—this is—well, I want you to meet Kaz,” she’d managed in Kerch, still sniffling and wiping at the corners of her eyes. The boy had extended a gloved hand politely, and Shanta gave him a once-over. He was Kerch, to be certain; he looked to be about Inej’s age; he walked with a limp and a cane; he was neatly dressed, though he kept fidgeting with his black silk tie as it threatened to flutter in the ocean wind; most notably of all, however, was the way Inej looked at him, like he was the sole reason the sun rose in the morning and set at night. But when Shanta moved forward with her arms extended to embrace him, Inej had immediately pulled at her arm to stop her.
“No, Mama,” Inej switched to Suli. “Let him be.” Without missing a beat, Shanta had taken him by the proffered hand instead, and she didn’t miss the way he glanced gratefully at Inej for a split second.
Oh, Shanta doesn’t begrudge the boy his space—Inej hasn’t said why, exactly, he flinches away from the mere brush of anyone’s skin, but it doesn’t take much difficulty for Shanta to imagine the kinds of terrible things a boy would suffer if left to fend for himself on the streets of Ketterdam.
It’s just that she doesn’t know what to do with this information.
When it comes to her own daughter, Shanta knows when to push and when to pull back; when to encourage Inej to talk, even when the words are difficult to say, and when to simply fold her daughter into her arms and allow the silent comfort to speak for itself. But Shanta isn’t Kaz’s parent, and she doesn’t want to overstep.
She just wants to show that she cares, somehow.
The thought occurs to her when Inej takes her to a cafe in the haughty Financial District, where men in well-pressed black suits shake hands and snicker beneath the curled ends of their mustaches, and women in layers of petticoats kiss each other on either side of their cheeks before taking afternoon tea together.
Because the women don’t really kiss each other, do they? They just kiss the air.
So the next morning, when Shanta discovers Inej and Kaz huddled together at the Van Ecks’ breakfast table, ever the co-conspirators, she plants a kiss atop the crown of Inej’s head as usual. Then she bends, her face hovering just a few inches above the slicked-back hair that covers Kaz’s scalp, and watches his shoulders stiffen as soon as she nears, bracing for the discomfort of her touch—
And she stops. Allows her lips to brush a kiss against the air, just her lips gently pursing, a small puff of air ruffling his hair before she steps away, making for the kettle still hot on the stove.
“Tea, anyone?” Shanta calls without looking backward, giving Kaz his space for the moment.
Still, when she’s pouring the boiling water over the tea leaves, she can’t help but glance up from beneath her lashes, peeking through the kitchen doorway to the table where Kaz and Inej are still sitting. Inej is focused on the papers in her hands, her gaze trained politely in front of her. But Kaz—
Shanta could swear, beneath the ever-present glower painted on his face, Kaz Brekker might just be smiling. Maybe Kaz Brekker could use some mothering after all.
-
Wylan
Like clockwork for their weekly dinners, when Wylan walks into the mansion’s dining room he finds Kaz already seated at the table, gloves off and sleeves rolled up, intently focused on an array of papers before him. Kaz’s fingers are covered in ink stains, and a rivulet of black ink is dripping down the bottle and onto the dining table. For being so meticulous, Kaz is also one of the messiest people Wylan has ever met—and Wylan lives with Jesper, who insists that the only way he remembers what clothes he owns is if they are scattered across the floor. (How else am I supposed to see them all at once, Wylan? I need some way to craft my spectacular outfits. Wylan had pointed out a wardrobe would suffice and was met with a scoff and Jesper waving his hand as though the suggestion was merely a bothersome gnat.)
“Time to clean up, Kaz,” Wylan says in greeting, then cringes at how much he sounds like a parent scolding a child. Kaz shoots Wylan a glare over his shoulder, though he should know well enough by now that it no longer carries any effect. Wylan watches as Kaz begins to tidy up the space, somehow managing to drag his sleeve through the spilled ink, even with his cuffs pushed up to his elbows.
Satisfied, Wylan walks into the kitchen and checks on the stamppot he’s making for dinner. He’s also prepared, to Jesper’s horror, soused herring. But what Wylan will not be telling Jesper is that at the end of each of these dinners, as Kaz is leaving, Wylan asks Kaz what he would like him to make next week. Kaz always chooses traditional Kerch meals (unless Inej is in town, her tastebuds demanding spice that Kerch food doesn’t provide), admitting one night that it reminds him of home. Wylan is not naive enough to think he means Ketterdam, but he isn’t sure what exactly home used to look like for Kaz Brekker. Though based on his dinner requests, Wylan can make a guess.
Wylan himself learned to cook these recipes in the mansion he stands in now, though he’s not sure he could call it a home as a child. At least not after his mother was committed and his father deemed him irreparably broken. But that didn’t stop Jan from drilling him with other forms of hospitality a good Merch boy should know, turning him into more servant than son. That is a far cry from now.
Through the doorway, Wylan sees his mother take the seat across from Kaz—she sometimes joins the three of them for dinner, sometimes not. Marya is quick to point out his ruined shirt, a playful quirk to her lips, and Wylan suddenly has an image in his mind of a small, young Kaz being lovingly chastened for his mess. It looks strangely right seeing them together. They talk quietly and animatedly, Kaz gesturing with his still gloveless hands. Wylan is so enraptured by the image they create, he doesn’t hear Jesper until the lanky boy has his arms wrapped around Wylan’s middle, planting a kiss just below his ear.
“Who knew the feral bastard could be tamed?” Jesper laughs—quiet enough that his voice doesn’t travel to the living room, but loud enough to earn him an elbow in the ribs from Wylan and a chiding shhh.
Wylan gives Jesper’s cheek a quick kiss before slipping out of his arms. “C’mon, let’s eat.” Jesper grumbles about the abomination that is Kerch tastebuds but helps Wylan bring the food out anyway.
It’s a peaceful scene, having them all at the table. And one Wylan realizes he’s missed. These dinners are the first time since he was a young boy, toddling after his mother as she set the table and baked a pie from the apples in the garden, that he feels like he has a family to share a meal with again. The only person missing is Inej, but with Kaz’s constant relaying of the letters she writes to him, it’s almost as though she’s there with them anyway.
They are not long, drawn-out affairs—Marya begs off for bed shortly after dessert, and Kaz insists on heading back to the Slat despite Wylan and Jesper’s constant offers of one of their many guest rooms. (Jesper makes a joke one night that Kaz comes and goes so often he may as well build a tunnel between us and the Slat that has ramifications none of them could expect). He never says anything normal, like, thanks for the lovely dinner as always, Wylan, you really are a fabulous chef and I appreciate being asked to dine with you. It’s just as well, because out of Kaz’s mouth that would be decidedly not normal. Instead, he pushes back from the table and stands, a quick nod toward the door signaling his intent to leave.
“I’ll walk you out,” Wylan always says in return.
They stand in the foyer together and both ignore the loud crash of dinnerware and cursing that follows. It’s par for the course at these dinners, really. They both should know better than to let Jesper clear the table—he always insists on doing it in one go.
“Next week?” Wylan asks.
“Inej will be back,” he says in return, and Wylan swears the haggard lines on Kaz’s face seem to smooth at just the mention of her name, his ever-present rasp almost softening around the syllables.
Wylan can’t hide his smile, not at the thought of all of them together again in just a few days' time.
“And she’ll be— she and I— we—” Kaz sputters, turning a hilarious, if not slightly confusing, shade of pink. A frown begins to tug down at the corners of Kaz’s mouth while Wylan’s own grin only grows.
“She asked to stay. With me. In the Slat,” Kaz finally gets out. “So there is no need to make up her room. Is all I mean.” Kaz is absolutely beet red—a vivid shade Wylan has only ever seen on him after an all-out brawl. But now, it’s just because he’s embarrassed. When Wylan thinks about it, Kaz actually handles a punch to the face better than this.
Stifling his grin is difficult, but Wylan manages long enough to tell him, “I’ll make sure to ask what she’d like for dinner then.”
Once he’s regained a modicum of composure, Kaz gives Wylan a short nod. He’ll never admit it to Kaz’s face—he does want to keep living with all his appendages still attached—but Wylan is proud of Kaz and Inej. They’ve come a long way and fought hard for each other and for themselves, and it’s been an honor to witness.
In lieu, Wylan grabs Kaz’s coat from the coat hanger and holds it open, letting Kaz step into it. It’s another tradition saved specially for these nights: Kaz is more than capable of putting his coat on himself, and Wylan knows this. He never offers, and Kaz never asks, but they perform this ritual all the same.
Kaz shrugs the proffered coat on one arm at a time, transferring his cane from hand to hand, and Wylan releases the thick fabric to settle snugly on his shoulders. Wylan is always quick to withdraw his hands, careful not to let them linger or brush against Kaz. But he hopes Kaz can feel the gesture for what it’s supposed to be anyway—a hug at the door; a friendly pat on the arm; the clasping of hands in parting. A thank you for bringing his home to life once more.
“Wylan,” Kaz says. It’s still not a thank you, or a goodnight, or well-wishes of any kind. But Kaz holds Wylan’s gaze in a way no one has for most of his life.
“Kaz.”
All buttoned up in his fine black attire, as dark as the night outside, Kaz opens the door and steps out, heading back to his own home he’s molded for himself in this city. As Wylan watches him walk away, he doesn’t mention the papers and pen and ink Kaz has left behind—he’ll be back soon enough.
-
Dog
The first thing she thinks is that the bowl sitting between the boy and the girl on the bench smells like sausage.
The second thing she thinks is that the girl, who has just set aside the bowl, leaving it half-uneaten, has a kind laugh.
The dog can usually sniff out—literally—the Good Humans from the bad ones, and this girl is most certainly one of the good ones. As for the boy… she isn’t too sure. He smells friendly enough, but his voice is rough and mean, like the enforcers who chase her off the street when she gets too close to one of their businesses.
But the girl’s laugh is so pleasant—the dog thinks she’ll take her chances.
She edges up to the bench, ears tucked timidly at the sides of her head, tail hanging limply behind her flea-bitten haunches, and lets out a single, mournful whine. The girl stops speaking to the boy immediately, evaluating the dog now sitting just before her feet.
“Oh, hello,” the girl coos softly, and the dog can’t help the instinctual twitch of her tail that perks up in response to the girl’s dulcet tone.
“Inej,” the boy beside her warns, but she doesn’t so much as turn to look at him. Instead, her gaze is planted firmly on the dog, her hand already reaching out to stroke her face.
“Come off it, Kaz,” the girl half-laughs, half-chides, as the dog begins wagging her tail outright. “I know you have a soft spot for dogs.”
“Do you?” the boy asks doubtfully, and the girl rolls her eyes.
“I remember the job at the house off Burstraat. You had that fighting dog practically rolling over in your lap, didn’t you?”
Still, the boy continues to frown. “There’s no good in tempting the strays,” he warns. “You know better. If you’d paused in the middle of your work as the Wraith to appease every miserable dog, cat, and rat on the streets of Ketterdam, you’d never have finished any job at all.”
“Lucky thing I’m not your Wraith anymore then, isn’t it?” she smirks, but the dog can sense that it doesn’t make the boy feel better—if anything, it dampens his mood. He almost smells…well, sad.
That certainly won’t do. Sausage on the line or not, a dog cannot allow a boy to go on sitting on a bench feeling sad. She sidesteps the boy’s cane, which is leaned against the bench beside one of his legs, and places her head atop the boy’s knee, whining once more for good measure, just so he understands what he’s meant to do.
“Look at her, trying to garner sympathy just for a few bites of sausage. Clearly, this dog’s been trained in the art of a con,” the boy scoffs.
The girl looks at him sideways. “So you have something in common, then.”
When the boy’s fingers finally (reluctantly) begin stroking the dog’s neck and spine, she’s surprised to feel his bare skin, rather than the leather of the gloves he’d been wearing when she’d approached.
“She’s not a true stray anyway,” the girl murmurs after a few moments. “The ones that were born on the streets know how to take their food and run without attracting too much attention. This one wants the attention. She must’ve had an owner, once.”
It’s true. There was a day, not that long ago, when the dog proudly wore a leather collar around the neck that the boy is scratching right now. A day when she had someone to feed her scraps of sausage off his breakfast plate, someone who would always throw the ball for her. Who allowed her to sleep inside by the fireplace on frigid winter nights. Now, the children on the streets throw rocks and sticks at her rather than for her, and there’s no fire to sleep by at night. The world has been colder and crueler since the day her owner fell asleep and never woke up.
“What are you saying?” the boy demands, cutting into the dog’s wistful reveries.
The girl opens her eyes wide, tilting her head just so, till a tendril of hair from her braid slips gracefully down her exposed neck. The dog can feel the boy’s hand still on her neck, and she hears his heartbeat pick up, as though he’s utterly captivated by this view.
“Surely, we’d have a space for her at the Slat…”
Immediately, the boy withdraws his hand with a scoff, gently pushing the dog’s head away and picking up his discarded glove. The dog suppresses the urge to whine in disappointment at being so abruptly rejected. “‘We have a space?’” he repeats disbelievingly. His voice is utterly cold, like the damp alleyways where the dog is forced to sleep at night. “I wasn’t aware you were still a member of the household, and now you claim to know we have extra room for some mangy stray. Be serious, Inej.”
For the first time, the dog witnesses what the girl’s face looks like when she’s frustrated: her dark brows furrow together at the middle of her forehead, her eyes narrow ever so slightly, and her lips, which seem much more accustomed to laughing than frowning, nonetheless manage to turn down at the corners. “Don’t be cruel, Kaz,” she bites. “Just because I have The Wraith now doesn’t mean you can cut me out of your life or act like I don’t have a vested interest in what happens to the Dregs.”
“You’re not a Dreg, and you don’t live at the Slat, so I don’t see how you could have a vested interest—”
“Have I really hurt you so deeply by leaving that you’re forcing me to prove how much I still care about you? Or do you simply value yourself so little?” the girl whispers furiously. The boy recoils from his spot on the bench, as if he’s just been slapped.
“I—” the boy struggles over his words, stumbles and starts again. “You’re right. I’ve been—unfairly angry. Not at you,” he quickly amends, before the girl has the chance to open her mouth and speak again. “Just at the—situation.” He shrugs noncommittally, and the dog notices some of his gloved fingers twitching nervously at his knee.
“The situation?”
The boy grimaces, as if he’d been hoping the girl wouldn’t force him to clarify. “Us being apart, I suppose,” he manages awkwardly.
To the dog’s relief—and the boy’s relief too; she can smell it almost right away—the girl only smiles at him, her expression smoothing out once more. “Now, was that really so hard to admit?” she teases, then her tone grows serious again. “I don’t enjoy being apart from you either,” she confesses, leaning her face in closer to the boy’s again, till they’re sharing the space of just one breath. “But it’s just for part of the year. And it’s just for now. It won’t always be this way.”
“Just for now,” the boy mutters under his breath, almost inadvertently, like he has to say the words himself to believe them.
Finally, the girl returns her attention to the dog, who wags her tail hopefully. The scent of the sausage wafting from that bowl remains utterly tempting, and the dog hasn’t eaten anything since she pilfered a few scraps of mushy carrots from a crate behind a restaurant yesterday evening.
“Maybe it would help to have someone else to look after you while I’m gone,” the girl muses suggestively, and the boy rolls his eyes.
“I’ve had enough dinner invitations from Jesper and Wylan, thank you very much. And now Marya has pulled me into these weekly chess tournaments…”
“As if you don’t enjoy being able to play against a true competitor,” the girl dismisses. “And I know Wylan’s been making stamppot for you—though how you can all bear to eat that flavorless mush, I’ll never understand, but—” She glances out the sides of her lashes at him, something mischievous sparking in her eyes. “I’m saying, I think you should bring this dog back to the Slat. Maybe it would give you something nice to focus on while I’m gone.”
“I’ve plenty to focus on—”
“Nice things?” she raises an appraising brow.
“The tunnels are looking nice,” the boy protests. The dog might even call his tone whiny. Then he grins slyly at the girl from the side of his mouth. “So are my pocketbooks.”
“Shevrati,” she shakes her head in disapproval. Finally, after what has felt like an interminable wait, she reaches her fingers into the abandoned bowl and holds out a bit of sausage for the dog to take. She chews it greedily, nearly inhaling the piece whole, then sits and waits for the next piece to come. “We’re taking the dog home,” the girl says, standing up from the bench as soon as the last scraps of sausage, biscuit, and green beans have made their way from her hand to the dog’s muzzle. “Whether you like it or not.”
“Home,” the boy grins at her, almost shyly. “I like the sound of that.”
When he takes the girl’s hand in his own as they walk down the side streets, glancing behind them every so often to ensure the dog is still following, that’s when the dog makes up her mind: this boy must be one of the Good Humans. And she’ll be sure to give him extra attention while his human girl is gone.
-
Kaz
It starts just like the last time: on a ship.
They’re all here again. Well, almost. Kaz could make a joke about how one tall, blonde Fjerdan is really no different from the next. But he won’t. Not for the sake of propriety—hell, since when has Kaz done anything for propriety—and not because he doesn’t want to think about all the dead, decaying sailors in the sea below them Nina could send his way. He doesn’t because he knows it isn’t true—just like all of them, he can feel Matthias’s absence keenly. The Wraith is not a small ship, but it feels crowded with ghosts.
There are of course other differences too. Kaz lies awake beside Inej, the bed in her captain’s cabin not quite as big as the one he recently purchased for his bedroom in the Slat. Combined with the sound of the water sloshing against the ship and lingering thoughts of the dead, his skin is crawling in a way it usually doesn’t around Inej, at least not anymore. He’s not sure how long he’s been tossing and turning, sweat accumulating on his brow, but it’s clear he’s woken Inej by the small displeased sound she makes.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, trying in vain to still his agitated mind and body.
“It’s okay,” she says in return, sleep slurring the words. “What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
Before she can ask any more questions, he heaves himself out of bed with a soft grunt. He turns back briefly to find Inej staring up at him with her dark eyes, those very same questions she already knows the answers to visible in them anyway.
“It’s nothing,” he repeats. “I just need some air.” Kaz bends to give her a kiss on the cheek but stutters at the last moment, lips barely brushing her soft skin and a shudder racking his body. “I’ll be back.” Tired and angry with himself, he can’t quite hide the guilt that creeps into the words. Inej gives a small nod, not prodding or begrudging him the time he needs, and closes her eyes once more. He waits until she’s fallen back asleep before quietly slipping out the door of her cabin and onto the ship’s deck.
Away from the smog of Ketterdam, the sky is bright with stars. Kaz hasn’t seen them look like this since he was nine years old on the farm. He and Jordie used to lay in the fields at night, tracing the constellations with their outstretched fingers, imagining they could feel how they twinkled beneath their touch.
He doesn’t do that now, just grips the banister tightly and looks down into the dark water. He hasn’t brought his gloves out here with him, and he lets the feeling of chilled wood beneath his hands ground him. It’s an inanimate object. Not alive, not dead. And it’s carried Inej back to him time and time again.
There is an echo of footsteps nearby and Kaz stays perfectly still, hoping the dark clothes he wears will let him blend into the night. But no such luck.
“I hate being on ships,” he hears beside him and looks over to see a sheet of white-blond hair. It takes him a moment to connect it with Nina—Mila now, he supposes. She doesn’t turn to look at him, her hair a glowing veil between them.
“Bad memories?” Kaz tries to jeer, but the words are flat and hollow.
“You could say that,” she says. “I guess it depends on your feelings toward abduction and drug withdrawal.”
“Two of my favorite pastimes.”
Nina laughs at that. It’s really no more than a quiet puff of air, but a laugh nonetheless.
“He was with me both times, and both times I hated him for it. I wish we hadn’t spent so much time hating each other.” There’s no need to ask who he is. “But you already know all that,” Nina sighs, and it sounds like she’s waiting for a biting comment from Kaz.
When he was running to the Ferolind, carrying her limp, bleeding body in his arms, Inej had asked him to apologize. He couldn’t get the words out, too scared that they would be his last words to her—a litany of his barbs and cruelties.
“I’m sorry,” Kaz says now on another ship.
“You’re sorry?” Nina says in disbelief. “Sure.”
There’s a rustle of clothing as Nina turns to rest her back against the gunnel, dipping her head and sighing. She tucks her hair behind her ear, revealing her profile—lips tight and jaw clenched. She glances sidelong at Kaz, a challenge he knows well in her eyes.
“He wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t…” If he hadn’t… what? Wielded Matthias’s faith and sense of duty against him? Dragged him into an international crisis? Turned the city against their crew?
“You didn’t pull the trigger, Kaz. And he would have most likely died in Hellgate anyway. If it’s anyone’s fault—” the words turn strangled and raw, “it’s mine. I sentenced him to death the moment I accused him of being a slaver.”
“And you would rather he have been killed by Grisha? Your precious Second Army?”
“That’s not—” she makes a noise of frustration, crossing her arms and looking away.
“You stayed in Ketterdam,” Kaz reasons. “You challenged the courts. You never abandoned him. You did eventually help get him out. No matter how guilty you feel, those are the facts, Zenik.”
She silently assesses him, surely picking the words apart to find where his trick is hidden. He supposes he deserves it. “This ship, the people on it,” she gestures with her head, “is the only place where someone would still call me by that name, you know.”
Kaz can’t tell Nina that he understands, to a somewhat concerning degree, what it means to hide behind a name, to change an identity and leave it with only the dead or distant. “Is that really such a bad thing?”
“What do you think?” Her question is not accusatory, and Nina looks to Kaz with genuine curiosity painted across her face.
While burning a hole in his father’s safe, and with a confession of fear for the secret fresh on his tongue, Wylan had asked Kaz, Would you? Trust someone with that knowledge, with a secret that could destroy you? There was no hesitation for Kaz. Yes, he had thought, for once allowing the barriers of his mind to fall. There’s one person I would trust. One person I know would never use my weaknesses against me. Inej would steal his secrets. She would keep them, too.
“I think it requires a level of trust that has to be earned. And I hope that means everyone on this ship has earned it.”
“You think quite highly of yourself then, do you?” Nina’s tone is lighter now, and they share a small smile.
“Always have, Nina dear.”
Letting silence fall around them, the only sounds are of the wind in the sails and the water that continues to incessantly lap at the hull. Nina is the one to break it, as abruptly as a cannon in the night.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that Matthias would still be alive if he had never even met me.” Her voice is hard as stone, all traces of tenderness and laughter gone. “If I hadn’t been so Saints-damn stupid. If I hadn’t ignored Zoya and wandered off that day.”
“If I recall—and please do correct me if I’m wrong—he was the one who left you to starve in the hold of a ship. He was the one who took the offer of a pardon and joined us on the job. He chose you, and that is not something you can force another person to do.” The words come quickly, intensely, and Kaz feels breathless with it. “You didn’t kill him. In fact, you might have saved him.”
There’s a pause before Nina opens her mouth, but Kaz is quicker, cutting her off before she can object. “You gave him a chance to change, to move past the prejudice and beliefs of the drüskelle, and choose a different path once and for all. He was made better for having met you, not the other way around.”
Just across the way, not twenty paces from where they stand, Inej still sleeps. And hadn’t she done the same for Kaz? Transforming his own beliefs of himself and his purpose into something more, reminding him that his life was a greater sum than just revenge? That day on the docks, her hand in his—a touch full of intention and promise—had been the first piece of armor he had painstakingly removed for her. Before he knew it, the rest had fallen off as well.
“I just wish we had more time,” Nina says, the lament thick with unshed tears that glisten brightly. “When I first went back to Fjerda, I could hear his voice in my head for a while. I wasn’t expecting that.”
Do you hear that, Jordie? Kaz thinks, and for once, he doesn’t hate the idea of Jordie listening in. I’m not the only one speaking with the dead.
“Says the Corpsewitch,” Kaz smirks.
“Ugh.” He watches as Nina’s face twists up and she scrunches her nose. “I’ve always hated that name.” Her voice rises, ending on a yawn. “Enough philosophizing, yes? I need my beauty sleep, and you,” she says, a barely noticeable smirk of her own forming on her lips, “certainly need it even more than I do.”
Kaz is, surprisingly, in agreement. But he has one more thing to say. While they were talking, he had slipped a hand into his pocket, its bareness suddenly feeling too raw and exposed for the conversation. In it, he had felt a piece of paper, worn and wrinkled. There was no question as to what it was. He had last worn this coat—meant for traveling, and leagues different from his usual immaculate suit jackets—sailing back to Ketterdam on the Ferolind and for the fraught days after.
Slowly, he pulls out the years-old pardon. He holds it out to Nina without a word and watches as she opens it. A tear finally falls before she folds it up and tucks it into her own pocket. “Thank you,” she whispers, though it could very well have only been the breeze that swirls around them.
Wiping her eyes and clearing her throat, Nina pushes off from where she leans against the boat, making to walk away. But instead, she stops, giving Kaz an appraising look. “You know,” she begins, just a little too slyly for Kaz’s liking. “If I’m not allowed to blame myself for Matthias’s death, you’re not allowed to blame yourself either.”
Kaz’s brow furrows. “I don’t blame myself. There may have been a time when I did but… not anymore.”
“I’m not talking about Matthias.” Nina stares at him meaningfully, and Kaz feels chills break out across his body as a particularly strong gust of wind sweeps across the deck of the ship. “Tell your ghosts I say hello. And let yourself forgive them.” She walks to the stairs that lead to the crew’s quarters, not sparing him a single glance back.
Gazing up at the stars while Nina’s footsteps fade, Kaz imagines being in that field in the South of Kerch once more. He can almost hear his Da calling them back inside to get ready for bed. So he does just that.
He tries to open the cabin door as quietly as possible, but Inej, ever alert, stirs anyway. His heart surges when she props herself up on an elbow, hair falling out of her braid, wild from the sea-salt air, and looks at him with sleep-heavy eyes.
“Are you feeling better?” She asks, raising her free arm to reach for him.
Kaz shucks off his coat and shoes and climbs into bed. “I am,” he whispers back, pulling her toward him, and kisses her once more, lips firmly planted against her cheek. She sighs contentedly and tucks her face into the crook of his neck. Kaz doesn’t shudder; he doesn’t pull away. For now, their ghosts are at rest. It’s only Inej, warm and alive, beside him.