Chapter Text
“Kaz nodded as if steeling himself, flexed his fingers once more.
”Wait,” he said. The burn of his voice was rougher than usual. “Is my tie straight?”
Inej laughed, her hood falling from her hair.”
- Crooked Kingdom, chapter 44.
His tie is pin-straight, of course.
It always is. Kaz is a meticulous dresser, which would be an amusing trait in any other man, but he is Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, Bastard of the Barrel, and the many layers of shirts and undershirts and ties and wool coats just serve to make him all the more untouchable. It’s something about the way he shoulders the coats, she thinks- sharp, ironed lines, like the barrel of a gun. Inej is certain that the formality of it is just to make merchers squirm.
But she doesn’t tell him any of this. He could do with a little self-consciousness, for once. And anyways, her mouth is busy breaking into a beaming grin, and then she whirls away from him and starts running. Not catlike, or covert, or creeping- running. Like a child. Her heart is a river and she is one too; down she flies, over uneven cobblestone, never once losing her footing, and straight to berth twenty-two. Her berth.
And there in front of her-
Her parents.
Her Mama. Her Papa. They’re so much more real, suddenly, right here than they had been through the looking-glass. They look older, of course they do- she’d forgotten so much. The crows-feet around her father’s eyes, as he reaches her and his face softens like sweet dough. His lips part. She’d forgotten the leathery creases in his palms, as he pulls her close. How tight his hand was around hers, as he murmurs familiar prayers. The scent of incense and canvas and horse and the open road, even dulled by the sea-air, as he presses her into his strong chest. She feels so, so infinitely small; like a baby, cradled by her Papa’s forgotten hands. It is not an unpleasant feeling.
And then her mother cries, “Inej?”
And she has such bright, almost yellowed eyes. And her silks are soft, and the way the bobbled patterns press into Inej’s cheek are a comfort beyond words. Her hair is tied back in a long, oiled braid, down to her elbows- the exact same style Inej has picked for the day.
“Meja.” Her mother says. “Oh, my Inej. It’s so good to see you. And you’re well. Oh, you’re so well!”
It’s strange, the way Inej’s head clicks into her mother tongue without pause. She’d expected it to be difficult- in those dreams where she walked up to the caravans as they settled for the night, beckoned by star-shaped lanterns and the grazing horses, the coordinated calls of families arranging tents and draping fabrics, she would broach the doorway and find herself unable to utter a single word of her home-tongue, and wake up gasping to recite Suli prayers to her ceiling- but it seems there is little that Ketterdam could steal which she cannot take back, these days. “Mama.” She says, finding herself tearful. “Papa. You’re here.”
“Your clothes!” Her Mama continues, letting go only to fret from a small distance. “And you are not much taller, but you are a young woman, now.”
She looks down at her spider’s outfit- she’d donned it when Kaz had left her that note, because he is trouble incarnate- and compares it to the pinned silhouettes of her mother’s tangerine silk dress, or her fathers wide blue trousers and draped tunic. They are worlds apart.
“And a beautiful one.” Her father adds, smiling. “We have looked for you, meja, but we didn’t think- we didn’t dare to believe that you had survived, and we barely knew where to start.”
“How did you find me?” Inej asks, wiping her eyes. They’ve moved back a little, into one of the empty toll shelters, and the passing tourists pay them no mind.
Her mother shrugs, a little hopelessly. She seems unable to tear her eyes from Inej, even to blink. “Soldiers came knocking. We thought they were asking us to move off and nearly had Bojan chase them away. Good thing we didn’t- they brought us straight to you, meja.”
“Bojan?” Inej says, bubbling with warm surprise. She’s completely forgotten about the wriggling, pink-nosed pups of their old hound. “You kept him?”
“And he’s very big.” Her father twinkles. “Good for scaring off any embassy. I will draw you a picture.”
Inej laughs. She feels full, and lighter than she does even on the rope. “I would love that.” Suddenly, her voice constricts. “We have so much to catch up on.”
Her mother presses warm, anxious hands against Inej’s cheek. “Where do you stay? Could we- is it safe? Are you comfortable?”
Inej swallows. The distance between them now is more vast that than the physical ocean ever was. There is so much they do not know about her- what she has done, who she has become.
A light, familiar tap of metal on cobbles behind her reminds her of the boy she had brought with her. The sound grounds her in the present once again. She is no scared mouse, no slinking lynx- the wraith does not fear the truth. “Mama, Papa,” she says, determinedly, taking a step backwards to be by his side. “This is Kaz.”
Kaz is looking at her with a curious expression- both present and not. His shark-eyes scan her parents once, before he nods politely, and looks back to Inej. He’s wearing one glove, she notes, with minor hilarity- on the hand furthest from hers.
Her father is the first to speak. “You have looked after our daughter?”
Inej blushes and is about to translate, when Kaz answers, in imperfect Suli, “I’m afraid Inej Ghafa looks after herself.”
Her mouth falls open. “Since when-?”
“I do listen when you speak sometimes, Wraith.” Kaz says, in his rasping Kerch again. “Besides, it pays to know all of the tongues of my enemies. I know the word bastard in six languages.”
“Please don’t say any of them to my parents.” Inej says, grinning. “Could we take them back to the Crow Club?”
She knows better than to suggest the Slat- back under Kaz’s firm hand, it’s returned to its brawling, bustling glory, and is perhaps not the quietest environment for a three-year catchup with her pigeon-esque parents. But the Crow Club is quiet at noon, and has more back rooms of which they could acquire.
“Actually,” Kaz says, “You’ve got a reservation in a quarter-bell.”
“I do?” She quirks a brow.
“Yes. The Ambeeld. They’ve got a table set for three, upstairs.”
Her face suddenly feels warm. She reaches out and touches his sleeve. “Kaz.” She says. “Thank you. But, really, it should be four.”
His eyes widen and his hands flex atop his cane. “You want…?”
“Come on.” Inej says, and rolls her eyes. She takes her Mama’s hand and explains the conversation to her parents, who are giving Kaz all sorts of looks. They set off as an odd little trio- Inej between her parents, and Dirtyhands up ahead.
“Has the arrow landed, my little Inej?” Her father murmurs, as they follow Kaz up the docks.
“Papa!” Inej says, in a voice so high that it’s almost not her own. “That’s just Kaz. He has been good to me. He sent those soldiers to fetch you.”
“He did?” He says. “Is he a rich man? Has he… he wasn’t… one of those who has made an object of you?”
“No.” Inej says, firmly. “I was his employee, for a while. Now we’re… friends.”
The relief is palpable in his eyes. “What work did you do? He looks like a businessman, your friend. Are you still practicing the high wire? You had such a talent for it.”
“I’ll tell you about it later.” Inej says, and slips through a set of wooden doors. She’s never been in the Ambeeld before, but it appears to be one of the nicer of the eateries on the shoreline, where her parents won’t need to worry about keeping one hand on their wallets. Kaz has, as ever, thought it all through; they’re seated on the second floor, in a private corner with a rather attractive view of the water. Inej realises, with a pleasant jolt, that she can see her ship from here. Perhaps he planned that too.
Kaz sits beside her, with one eye on the door. Her parents ooh and ahh over the view, which is rather grey compared to the people departing the foreign ships below. He orders black coffee. Inej reads the menu to her parents and helps them negotiate with a terrified waitress, who sets Kaz’s coffee down so shakily that it drips on the white tablecloth.
He’s mostly quiet whilst her parents spin stories of their boat journey, the acts they’ve perfected recently, and the two children her cousin, Hanzi, now has (One of them is three, and talking; her middle name is Inej). Apparently Inej’s grandfather had died too, some time ago. She squeezes her mother’s hand. She’s unsure how much of the conversation Kaz is actually following, or if his grasp of Suli only extends to token phrases
“And will you come home?” Her father says, as if he already knows the answer. His eyes are careful never to rest on the knives in her sleeves. “What’s in the future for you now, meja?”
She smiles. “I have a ship. I am going to hire a crew, and we’re going to stop what happened to me from happening to any other little girls. I may come back one day- but I am split now, you see. I am not done with Ketterdam. It is not done with me.” Here, she looks boldly as Kaz. He looks back at her just as steadily.
”And what did happen to you?” Her father says, softly. “What would bring you back to this city that you should so hate? You walk like a shadow, my Inej, and you talk like a local.”
She sees Kaz’s questioning head tilt out of the corner of her eye. It’s an offer- an out, if she wants it. But she shakes her head. She has nothing to be ashamed of, and this story will be her armour as much as her soft shell.
She begins simply. She takes a breath, and places her toes on the wire.
“When I was taken from my bed that summer, I was brought to Ketterdam and indentured to a woman named Tante Heleen. Heleen Van Houden. I was her lynx. I was exotic, and made a good price.”
“Inej.” Says Kaz. Just that. He’s looking at her with something close to admiration.
“I was there for nearly a year,” she continues, ignoring him, “until the Dregs took a chance on me. I became one of Kaz’s crew, and was paid well. Now, I am wanting to make my own way.”
Her father has a sad, knowing look in his eyes. Her mother whispers a brief prayer, and then takes Inej’s hands across the table again, between plates of hutspot. “You are so brave. You are my most brave, precious, incredible girl. Oh, meja. What I wouldn’t give to have just held you that bit tighter…”
Her father, after a long moment, looks at Kaz. Kaz seems uncomfortable, almost upset, and for a wild second Inej thinks he might get up and leave. Instead, he allows her Papa to assess him, as close to nervous as she has ever seen him.
“Thank you.” Her Papa says, in Suli. “Thank you. Inej, how do I say thank you in Kerch?”
Inej tells him. The surprise in Kaz’s eyes when her father repeats it, three times, is brazen. But when her Papa tries to shake his hand, Inej shakes her head. “He doesn’t like to be touched, Papa.”
“Oh.” Her father says, and sits back. She understands his confusion- Suli culture is close and casual. She grew up with her cousins swinging her between them, her father holding her tight, her mother’s hands in her hair. The idea of someone not wanting contact is almost implausible. “Is he… like you?”
“No.” Inej says, although she’s had the same thought herself. Kaz is on the lither side, and could almost pass for pretty were he not so moody. It wouldn’t be unheard of in the Barrel. But, still, she believes he would have told her if they shared that particular horror- no, she thinks, more firmly, whatever happened to Kaz was something different. She has a sinking feeling it involved water, although she has accepted the fact that she may never know. “Just don’t touch him, Papa.”
It’s taken her a little while to notice it, but when she says the word just then, it’s suddenly apparent. Every time she says Mama or Papa, Kaz flinches. It’s a minuscule thing- just a bare twitch of his facial muscles and an adjustment of his fingers around the coffee cup or his cane. She certainly wouldn’t have noticed if she weren’t sat so close. Still, now she’s seen it is hard to let go- he reacts as if he has never heard the word before.
She’s seen him gut a man and put his heart in a butchers bag. She’s seen him scoop out eyeballs with nothing but his fingers. She’s seen him shove his elbow in the mouth of a screaming lackey. She’s seen him red, hurt, gorey, angry-
She hasn’t seen him look so out of place as he does when she says Mama.
“Inej,” he says quietly, when her parents are distracted by a Mister Crimson in the street below, “I have business. Will you-?”
“I’ll stop by the Slat later.” She promises. “Eight bells?”
“Ten. The Silver Six needs dealers.”
“Nine.” She counters, warm at the mention of their namesake club. “You can step away for an hour.”
He doesn’t say anything more and she turns to explain Comedie Brute to her parents. When she looks back, Kaz is long gone.
“Strange boy, your jackal,” Her mother says, taking in the empty seat. “Did you see the berth everyone on the street gave him?”
“My what?” Inej splutters. Jackals, in her home, are a sacred symbol. The Jackal mask brings protection from evil.
“Mene yaram.” Papa says. Don’t worry. “We are old, but not yet blind. Is he a merchant?”
“No.” Inej says. “But he’s… an important figure in the city. People like to make myths in Ketterdam.”
“An important figure? He must be only your age, surely.”
“Don’t underestimate him. Kaz is determined. And far more dangerous than he looks.” She resists the urge to add as am I.
“Inej.” Her mother says. “Are you safe, meja?”
She smiles despite herself. There are knives sewn into these clothes and buckled onto her belt. There is money in a coffer with her name atop it. There is a ship in the harbour big enough to take on a whole ocean, and enough steel in her stomach to take on the world. “Safer than I’ve ever been.” She takes pity on her parents, with their fearful, pigeon-like expressions a moment later, and sighs. “Mama, Kaz is no good man. But he’s good to me. He is what this accursed city made him- violent, and clever, and now very rich. He’s not going to bring you flowers but he will keep me safe. That’s what I need. It’s what I want.”
“And,” her Papa probes, cautiously, “you don’t want to try and leave that behind, now that you have the chance?”
“No.” Inej says. “I am a good spider, and I have done bad things- I have, Papa, don’t argue. I have killed men. There. I am not ashamed, not of what I had to do. Ketterdam- it chews you up and spits you out all wrong. I am not the girl you knew and I will take vengeance for that. He says he will help me. He will get that, in a way nobody else will.”
With that, she stands up and reaches for her wallet. Her Papa bats her away. “My treat, little Inej.” He reaches his hand into his pocket, only to draw it out again, puzzled, with a stack of kruge in his fingertips. “How very odd. I haven’t been down to the currency exchange yet.”
”And look!” Her mother gasps. “It’s the exact amount on the bill.”
Inej turns away to stifle a laugh. Some things, it seems, never do change. Her dark, sharp saint of small miracles is still always one step ahead.
“You’re early.”
“We agreed nine bells, did we not?” Inej says innocently, as she tips herself through the window. Kaz is only just letting himself in- locking his office with that over-complicated chain system behind himself.
“You said nine bells. I said ten.” He walks over the window and then seems to freeze, several metres from her. “How are your… parents?”
“You’re not my boss anymore, Kaz. But they’re well.” She tilts her head. “It’s nice to see them again, beyond words. Is the Six busy?”
“Very.” He aborts his mission over to her and slides into his desk chair- which he has finally upgraded, even if it’s only to a simple wooden seat. “It’s dredging up more than the Crow Club lately.”
Inej turns back to face the window, where the actual crows are looking at her with beady eyes. Perhaps they really do remember faces. She tips a little grain from her pocket and lets them flutter over, like knives through the cool night. “You will feed them when I’m gone, won’t you?”
He says nothing for a long moment. His face is inscrutable, as it often is when he has something on his mind. “And when will you go, Wraith?”
“Soon.” She refuses to play this game with him. If he has a question to ask her, he can damn well ask it. “I’ve got to gather a crew, of course. Specht is eager but I’ve no experience, and we’ll need a few decent sailors at least. I must talk to Jesper and Wylan, too. Maybe a week. Maybe two.”
“A week.” Kaz repeats. “And you’ll take your parents with you?”
“Yes. They’ve got a carnival to attend back in Ravka. I might take my father out on the rooftops first, though. Maybe scale one of the churches.” She thinks he will enjoy the open air, as she does- she didn’t even have to ask if he still works the wire. His cuffed trousers and pointed toes told her it all, and he’d spent nearly ten minutes marvelling over her sleek spiders slippers.
“Don’t get caught.” Kaz says, with an amused smirk.
She knows the idea of her Suli father scaling Ghezen’s sacred home satisfies him, and she would admonish him for his lack of piety if they didn’t have such intricate, climbable spires. “Am I ever?”
“No.” Kaz says. Something changes in his tone- it slips softer, grittier. She continues to watch him from her perch on the windowsill as he repeats, “No, Inej. You put me in a difficult position to try and replace you.”
“Kaz.” She says. “I will come back. I promise.”
“But not to the Dregs.”
“No. Not to the Dregs.” To you, you stupid bastard. Inej never took on a single job for that gang of barrel lowlifes, as sweet as some of them could be- she worked for Dirtyhands and Dirtyhands alone, and they all knew it. His pet, Roeder once said, and she broke his pinkie.
“Good.” Says Kaz. His chair creaks as he leans back. “I’ll spend less on replacing daggers now. And on ballet slippers.”
“Climbing shoes.” She corrects. “And you won’t need to use your manners when giving orders anymore.”
(She had told the ‘hat story’ to Nina, who had found it hilarious, and they’d amused themselves for many hours doing rock-salt rasp impressions that mostly consisted of You, boy. Hat, now.)
“There’s that. Do you parents require anything else, for their stay?”
“No.” She gives him a wry smile. “Thank you, Kaz. That will be all. You’ve performed a shocking amount of miracles today for someone who’s so often called a demjin.”
“Perhaps I’m repenting.” Kaz says, and then snorts. She throws her head back and laughs, and he tracks the movement. Some time during the conversation, he’s slipped his gloves off and placed them neatly on the desk, like an offering of something dead.
The crow with the crooked toe pecks her back. Inej scolds it, but gives it more grain anyways, before turning back to Kaz. “Could I…” she shifts, and catches his dark, dark eyes. “Could I repay you?”
“In what way?” He frowns. “My coffers are fat and my clubs are stuffed with pigeons.”
“Not with money. Is there anybody I could… find, for you? Or talk to?”
She sees the way he shutters when he realises what she means. She’s been thinking all afternoon about Kaz’s parents, whoever they were. Did he know them? Does he miss them? He’s never mentioned either of them even in passing during her two years of his company. He never gets personal letters, nor takes time off. She knows where his shares of every job go, and there is no portion siphoned off to a country house, like many of the Dregs.
But he must have come from somewhere. He must have been raised, and to have a brother in blood, their parents must have been together. Even Kaz must have been a small child once, who liked to hold hands and be picked up and carried. Kaz Brekker is, despite every attempt to make himself seem bigger, just a boy. Just as she is a girl.
Finally, Kaz exhales. Very, very quietly, as if he could hide this truth even from himself, he says, “No.”
“I suspected.” Inej admits, calmly, although her heart sinks at the confirmation. He has no family. No Mama, no Papa, no Pa or Da or Baba or Ma, no cousins or grannies or aunties or uncles or brothers or sisters. “Has it always been so?”
Kaz grits his teeth. It’s as if he has to force every minuscule confession out of himself, like a parasite. “You know I had a brother.”
There is progress, in this dark world, she thinks. There is truth in the dim, glittering lights of Ketterdam after all. “But you must have had a mother. A father.”
“My mother I never knew.” He says. “My father died when I was young.”
“How young?” She probes, hoping she is not pushing her luck. The Slat is the place for it, though- for making rough, suicide plans that you can wriggle out of by the skin of your teeth, for putting all of your money on the table and slipping hands until you’ve got triple it back.
“Seven.” He says, although he seems uncertain. She smiles, and lets it go. Tonight, this truth will satisfy her. He has taken the hand she offered, and filled her palm with gifts. If he cannot yet extend one in return, she will only have to keep on offering.