Chapter Text
can you love me for what I've become;
love me for what I
said that I would not become?
-even though our love is doomed,
garbage
“What business?”
Now I know I’m back in Ketterdam, Inej thought.
A medik asking ‘what business?’ after asking her to pay a fee upfront, taking as much as possible while she bled through her shirt and a gash extending from her left ear to her clavicle threatened to open up for the third time in five days.
“I need fresh bandages and salve,” Inej said.
She would see to her injuries herself except she didn’t know where to find supplies when she crept off the ship she smuggled herself on landed at the port.
Ketterdam had changed in the nine years she’d been gone; Inej knew that everyone she knew must think she was missing or dead.
The Barrel medik gave her the salve and bandages at a higher price than she’d like but everyone needed kruge.
If he were in her situation, Kaz would steal the supplies, of course.
The Slat was next on her list, after discarding her bloodied and sea-soaked clothes and yes, stealing fresh clothes from a line hanging between the high and thin alleys.
The streets and buildings had changed, as if she was visiting Ketterdam in a dream.
There were three years when she docked The Wraith in Ketterdam and deposited slavers to the courts, captives who chose their next stop, and had taken a few grisha to join the Ravkan army.
Three years to meet Kaz with less armour than she’d ever seen him, in stolen nights in the Slat and her room at Wylan’s home.
Her first night touching his cold bare chest, warming his heart, was almost twelve years ago.
What were their terms going to be now?
The Wraith was at the bottom of the sea. Inej was barely holding on.
The Slat was busy. Business busy.
It had changed for the better in her absence yet Inej could easily slip into Kaz’s office on the ground floor.
He wasn’t there but there was evidence of her - No, Inej thought, he’s not mine.
As if on cue a small voice spoke from a closed cupboard.
“Father?”
Inej froze.
She didn’t realise she’d made a sound, going through Kaz’s immaculate and impressive reports.
Before she could respond the cupboard opened and a small girl stood before her.
“Are you Father’s spider?”
Saints.
Cas Brekker was never wrong, Kaz had learned.
She was only four years old but his daughter had never been wrong.
A dreg corroborated Cas’ report that a Suli woman with a neck wound was in the Barrel. Mediks were quick to give up their patient’s information, via kruge or a knife.
Kaz sat at his desk and wondered how long it would take Inej to make herself known, dreading she would be spooked by Cas no doubt calling him Father.
It would be unlike Inej… but how much had she changed?
Kaz changed; the Barrel changed.
She might not like it.
He imagined her judgement, he could feel -
“Inej.”
He couldn’t remember when her name was last on his lips.
Jesper would say it on a visit to the club to get five minutes away from the kids, three drinks in and wanting a heart to heart - Kaz's heart to Jesper's ears, more like. Nina would visit and say her name, only to reveal she hadn't heard any news. Kaz hadn't seen her parents in five years; they were the last ones he'd said her name to, he reckoned.
“Inej,” Kaz said again, staring at the Suli girl like an idiot.
“I met Cassandra,” Inej settled cross legged on a chair on the other side of his desk. “She’s adorable.”
Kaz let down his guard and let his gaze fall on a charcoal drawing of his daughter on the wall.
What have I become?
“She needs to wise up or I’ll have to send her to the countryside.”
Inej’s lips - he remembered them well - tilted up at the corners.
“You speak like Jan Van Eck now.”
Some days I feel like that useless merch.
Kaz folded his arms and squared his shoulders, lifted his chin.
“Shall I leave a four year old defenceless on a street in the Barrel?”
The words flowed from his mouth like a mountain’s creek in spring. Venelina would be tsk-ing in return, “Shall I leave my husband for days on end? How lonely you will be!”
Inej twisted her braid in her right hand. Her hair was longer than when he’d last seen her, but she must have cut it again before then and now.
“Kaz… what happened?”
“You didn't return. I wasted five years searching for you.”
“I owed you nothing.”
Because Kaz Brekker would only be going after her like a struggling debt collector going to desperate lengths to secure a small kruge fee in the courts.
“And as was the case when I followed every wisp of a lead, there are no ties between us.”
Kaz pretended to read yet another letter begging the support of the Crow Club for some tax-evading charity scheme.
He knew he wasn’t fooling her but he needed the protection after so long with his armour completely on again.
His heartbeat stubbornly thudded against his chest.
Inej was here; Inej was whole.
“Five years after you left, your parents did.”
“And you married and had a kid,” Inej inclined her head first to a framed marriage certificate and the charcoal portrait. She smiled. “Or was it the other way around?”
Something about everything felt wrong, like sleeping in a bed you suspected was infested with bugs but you had to lie waiting for the inevitable bites to come to know it was true.
“Haven’t you inspected the year? The marriage was first. I’m not that kind of monster.”
“I know. But we’re not teenagers anymore.”
Logically, Inej knew she wasn’t the circus girl who was stolen from her family anymore, nor the teenager with a reputation to kill for in the Barrel, nor at the helm of The Wraith with the mission of a young woman like a knife heading towards the bullseye of a target.
No, they weren’t teenagers anymore.
It had become that much clearer when she met Cas; if Inej thought she’d been through enough in her life to feel like a ninety year old woman on some mornings, to feel the weight of the world and Saints balancing on her shoulders, she was wrong.
For she couldn’t prevent what happened to her, what she did. She wouldn’t stop herself if she had the chance to not become a Crow, to not sail the seas on the watch for slavers.
She could have had a child - Kaz had.
She could have settled down with a partner, go to the Five Fingers chapel, go to any chapel she wished. It would be one she knew well, from nooks and crannies to high ceilings, it would be with Suli silk and sweets, a bunch of flowers in one hand and a leather glove in the other…
Kaz was back to pretending to read. If he didn’t know she knew his face, well…
“How long will you be in Ketterdam?”
Not: ‘Where are you staying?’, ‘What happened to The Wraith and what will you do next?', ‘How long will you be with me?’
“I don’t know,” Inej said truthfully. “I saw that Wylan and Jes still have my room available. I’m going to surprise them with waffles this evening. The Wraith has sunk. I don’t know what I’m going to do until I can afford another ship after paying off damages.”
She wanted to continue the same mission but it would be different now that most of her crew hadn’t survived, now she knew what (and who) she was dealing with.
Was this how Kaz felt after he was first betrayed by Per Haskell?
Kaz’s eyes met hers dead-on.
An old and warm chill went down her spine.
She needed a mantra for this new danger.
Cassandra. Cassandra Brekker and Venelina Brekker. He has a wife and a daughter.
Would it be enough?
Kaz picked up a pen and began replying to letters, ignoring Inej until she knew he was comfortable enough to speak.
“Work for me. I could always use a decent spider.”