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Inej Ghafa was no stranger to secrets.
In fact, secrets were her trade. She hid in corners and shadows, watching and listening, gathering and reporting. She'd stuffed herself full of other people's secrets: mortifying habits, fears, the things people did when they thought no one was watching. Some called her a shadow. Some called her a spider. Mostly, people called her the Wraith.
Inej knew a secret when she saw one. And on Monday morning, striding into the cafeteria with two coffees in hand, she saw one.
Inej plopped herself down at the usual table, sliding one of the coffees towards Kaz Brekker --leader of the Dregs, master thief and lockpick, monster of the Barrel-- before taking a sip of her own. Kaz didn't start when she sat down; despite her silent tread, he somehow always seemed to know when she was coming.
He didn't look up from the notebook he was poring over, but he did pull the coffee towards him --black, the way he liked it-- and nod in acknowledgement. The Dregs, one of many gangs that haunted Barrington High, specialized in bets and gambling. Kaz had a lockpick's mind and a magician's memory, but he still recorded everything: it gave him something to point to when someone cheated.
Inej turned away for a moment, studying the crawl of students in the cafeteria. School didn't start for another thirty five minutes, but Kaz was always three-quarters of an hour early --and wherever Kaz was, Inej was usually not far behind.
There weren't many students in the cafeteria at this hour. A few teenagers were bent over textbooks at various tables. Most of them were alone.
In a table in the corner huddled the Gulls, one of Barrington High's lesser gangs. The Gulls had no real purpose beyond huddling together and pretending to be intimidating; they were a gang solely because they believed gangs were cool. Occasionally, when better gangs rallied against another, they joined in to beat people up and pretend they mattered.
Satisfied with her examination of the cafeteria, Inej turned back to Kaz. She drummed her fingers on the table, eyeing the hard lines of his face and his ever-present black gloves. His gaze was steadily fixed on the notebooks, but his eyebrows twitched. It was a small motion; only those who spent as much time watching Kaz as Inej did would have noticed it. He was definitely hiding something.
Kaz was known for being inscrutable, but he did not keep secrets from her. She was as much a constant in his life as he was in hers. Inej was a proprietor of secrets because he had asked her to be. There was no one, Inej was sure, that Kaz trusted more than her.
"What is it?" She said at last, each finger strumming the hard plastic of the table one last time before ceasing.
Kaz did not react right away. His dark eyes studied the notebook until he had emptied each number from his brain onto the paper. He dropped his pen and scrubbed his hands over his eyes before taking a long sip of coffee. Then, at last, he looked at her. His eyes were the same bitter black as his coffee. Inej preferred hers with milk and sugar.
"A new job," he said at last. "A big one."
"High risk?"
"High reward." He confirmed. The stakes were always like this with him: the bigger the prize, the harder the task.
"And?"
"I want you on it, if you want."
If you want.
Inej was indebted to the Dregs for buying her indenture at Heleen's Pleasure House. She'd never been offered a choice in a job before: she had debts to pay, and scaling walls and gathering secrets and risking her life was how she paid them.
"It's not an assignment, Inej." He said. His eyes were steely, hyper focused on hers, but there was a softness to them that he usually lacked. "It's your choice. You don't have to if you don't want to."
"What's the job?" She asked at last.
Kaz raised his eyebrows at her. She knew better than to ask details at school. Everything in the Barrel leaked, and Barrington High worst of all. It was where Inej gathered her more harmless secrets.
"What's the reward?" She asked instead.
"Forty thousand." Kaz's gaze stayed steady.
"Each?" Doubt and wonder had crept into her voice. That would more than pay off her indenture in the Dregs.
"Each." Kaz confirmed. "Three hundred thousand divided among the six of us, minus Haskell's cut."
Per Haskell was the man who owned the building in which the Dregs resided. He'd created the original Dregs, though now their ranks were filled with the people Kaz recruited. A younger generation. But Haskell still got a cut of everything.
"The six of us?" Inej asked. She could feel her brow furrowing, mouth tilting into a frown. He hadn't told her, and he'd already decided who he wanted for the job.
"If they agree to it." Kaz shrugged.
"They will." Kaz was a hard man to say no to. If he didn't have your loyalty, he had something on you or something you wanted. Usually the former. Usually information Inej had gathered.
Something was bothering her beyond the mystery shrouding the job.
"Only six?" She pressed. It seemed too small a number for something this big. High risk, high reward.
"Six is all we need." Kaz said. The corners of his mouth tilted upwards into something that ghosted on a smile. "Speaking of."
Jesper Fahey, all dark skin and mile-long limbs slumped into the seat on Kaz's right, across from Inej. After folding himself into the cafeteria chair, he dropped his head onto the table with a moan, arms spilling across the table.
"How bad?" Inej asked, all exasperation, taking a sip of her coffee.
"Bad." Jesper moaned, face still pressed to the table's surface. Jesper had never been able to walk away from a bet (or a fight), no matter how bad the odds were.
"Hey Jesper," Kaz said, eyes glinting. Jesper raised his head at the sound of Kaz's voice, head cocked to the side. "How do you feel about forty thousand dollars?"
Jesper's entire body bolted upright immediately. His face split into the largest grin Inej had ever seen. "Pretty damn good. Odds?"
"There's a fair chance we're all going to die."
Jesper's grin didn't falter; if anything, it stretched. Jesper, for whatever reason, was never more alive than when his life was in danger. "I'm in."
Kaz's expression softened, and Inej recognized it immediately- it was the face he wore when all the pieces falling into place.