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southslates · 2 years

Text

Midas Touch

read on archive of our own!

it was so fun writing this piece for this year’s @grishaversebigbang!

materialki: @doorhandle16 [piece] and @oranges-and-stuff [piece]!

summary:

Perhaps the rumors that abound in the Staves are more fact than fiction. Brekker's touch burned like brimstone—a single brush of his bare skin caused your flesh to wither and die.

Whatever Kaz Brekker touches with his gloves, he makes sure to turn to gold. But there are only nightmares against his bare skin . . . until he finds the mysterious Suli girl in the Menagerie who can feel him without falling apart.

fic:

To those who live in the Fourth and Fifth Harbors, far from the fanciful Merchers’ Districts, Kaz Brekker is a legend who walks the streets. He’s a boy, but they prefer to call him a demon. Really, there are no boys in Ketterdam, especially not in the suspicious and broken alleys of the staves. But Brekker’s reputation is more than that of a corrupt man—there is no lack of those in Ketterdam either. It is supernatural and terrifying. No matter how morally bankrupt these men and women are, most have something to lose.

It is clear to see Brekker does not. He’s handsome in a disarming way, but also terrifying. And he is distinctive. All of those in the Staves with self-preservation know what to do when they glimpse a demon walking the streets with a cane and leather gloves. You run. There is no way to escape Brekker if you don’t run, but if he really wants you that will not help either.

Still, he is the only justice in this corner of Kerch.

He plays the game of the evils of the world better than anyone else. He is always underneath your window, always behind your door. He knows everything.

This is the reputation Kaz likes to hold up but he’s found himself in the awkward position, as of late, of losing track of informers and information—not something he can afford with the current state of the Crow Club and how well it’s doing. It would be terrible to lose his advantage over the other terrifying rats of the Staves now, and that’s why he finds himself at Tante Heleen’s Menagerie.

He’s not fond of the place for many reasons. A lot of them have to do with his fear of touch and of being touched. This pleasure house is meant for giving and taking, for soft moans and whispered comforts and most of all intimacy, and Kaz cannot stand that. The thought of skin against his makes him think of falling underneath the water, of the way Imogen had looked at him before she’d tried to kiss him and fallen to the ground and never gotten up again. He thinks of Jordie and waves against his skin, curling into his hands, of the way they gave him power and took away his vulnerability.

And also, Kaz hates the Menagerie because he detests the selling of skin. He is Kerch’s justice, and he knows the women here have not received justice. Most of them were stolen or forced into this lifestyle. Really, he can do nothing about it for now without jeopardizing his position in this place. But that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

He walks through its gilded, artificial gate and makes a beeline for the desk of Tante Heleen. He balances his stride as calmly as he can, as to not bely his level of uncomfort here. That is a weakness that would certainly be used against him.

Most of the people of the Staves and the Harbors could not fathom his real weakness—for most in his profession, the fall is caused by hubris or by letting too many words slide between bedsheets. Kaz knows to take advantage of those faults. Men like him, boys like him, are supposed to enjoy losing themselves in the pleasures of the bed and of women who can’t help themselves. They are supposed to enjoy the power of touching and getting touched. But Kaz’s hands have more power than any of those men, and he will not use it. He will make his way to the top and he will hide this disgusting quality of his forever—the fact that he himself is a weapon. The idea of touching a woman or man revolts him.

The visuals of the Menagerie are not supposed to be jarring, but seductive. To Kaz, they’re just uncomfortable. He throws a bag of coins with the requisite amount of coins at Heleen’s desk, and she peers up at him with over decorated eyes before slyly sliding it into her hands. She bites her lip and delicately removes coin by coin from the bag to her desk, deliberately, painfully slow.

Kaz grits his teeth but says nothing, keeping his face cold. Heleen sighs as she draws the silver through her smooth fingers and taps them with bold red fingernails. “You do look stressed, Mr. Brekker. I’m sure I could procure you one of my girls to the backroom. It can be quick, of course. I know a busy boy like you is on a schedule.”

He clenches his teeth faster but makes no outward movement other than a glare. “I need information, Heleen. You told me you had Jasker coming by,” he leans into her, not scared of a little intimidation—the crow’s head on his cane stares down at her like a curse.

To her credit, she barely balks under his unforgiving gaze. With a sigh, she deposits the coins back into the bag and then gets up. “My Suli speaks to him, and she is currently occupied. You will have to wait a few moments, Mr. Brekker. Unless you’d like to spend that time . . .”

She is a businesswoman and a cold-hearted, despicable one at that. “I do not have time or the care to listen to your ramblings, Heleen. Show me your girl.” Kaz does his best to hide the shiver that drives through his soul as Heleen moves and allows him to look at some of the girls standing in the shadows. Their skin arises a mixed bag of feelings he can’t contain, the intrusive thoughts to touch and ruin and also more that he know he cannot feel, what destroyed Imogen. He is cursed and he cannot reach out to them in any way.

Heleen rolls her eyes and calls for a doe-eyed Kaelish girl in the corner to call a girl she describes as a lynx. Kaz slowly steps back to the entrance of the Menagerie, trying to portray annoyance rather than claustrophobia.

The girl returns in moments with a slight Suli girl, covered in fake silks and looking downwards. There is a staunch downwards curve to her mouth. Kaz refuses to think she’s beautiful like this, like any of these girls are. He is not as much of a monster as he wants the Staves to believe, as his hands would say.

Tante Heleen grabs the girl’s wrists and tugs her in front of Kaz, who looks on unflinchingly. “Tell him what Jasker told you.”

In calm, accented Kerch, she quietly whispers everything Kaz had wanted confirmed about his planned raid on Jasker’s mansion and also more. He makes sure to not betray his satisfaction with the information, but a slight smirk makes its way through. He is, after all, human with all of his faults. When she finishes her belaying of information, he nods at Heleen and then turns out of the Menagerie to disappear to Fifth Harbor.

He needs to check several shipments of alcohol he has coming in from the South and then on the jurda he needs to ensure has arrived on time. His latest spider broke his leg coming from in from the Exchange a week ago, so Kaz has been on more excursions than he has in months. He hasn’t done so much ground-work in half a year, but it’s really quite entertaining, and a bit of a variation from his current day-to-day monotony. It’s also far more dangerous, and he finds that appealing too.

Kaz walks proud with his fingers clenched around the head of his cane, and he almost doesn't notice the small voice in his ear in the thrum of the evening in the darkest corners of Kerch. But then he does. “I can help you,” it whispers. Calm, accented Kerch.

He pauses. “Reveal yourself.”

“Don’t take me back,” the voice pleads again. Kaz has no idea where it’s speaking from, and that terrifies him. But it also intrigues him.

“Show yourself,” he says. “Then I’ll see.”

He digs his cane into the earth, waiting just a second for the girl from the Menagerie to suddenly materialize in front of him. She walks like water, and takes a step towards him he can’t hear in the slightest. Kaz looks discreetly to the alley behind her, and then to her feet.

They are clothed in purple slippers made of silk, and there are bells on her ankles. Bells, like chains. Bells meant to make sound, for men to play with and also for Heleen to hear her girls escaping, but they’re silent.

He hides his shock. “What do you want?” He knows, but he wants her to say it, wants to see what she’ll say to him.

“I am Inej. Please, Heleen . . .” she looks pitiful and also strong, such a complex picture. A puzzle, and he knows he is already fascinated. Kaz likes puzzles, and games, things he can work to solve. “I can help in other ways. I am from a caravan and I am good on my feet. I can spy, do whatever you want.”

“Why me?” Kaz asks, his cane still standing up in the ground. He closes one gloved hand around it, turning the crow’s head towards her. “Why me, and not any of the others?”

“You are different,” she says.

It’s her eyes, the way they peer into his soul at that moment—that is why, he will forever claim, he agrees to her request. He cannot really afford enraging Heleen right now, but some part of his mind is telling him to take this girl who can see right through him back to the Slat. And Kaz has survived this far in the Staves by trusting his instinct more than he would admit.

He doesn’t respond to her, really. He turns on his heel and she follows and he thinks that should be all. It is all, until she reaches for his gloved hand like she wants to hold it and make a promise.

Kaz never turns his back to potential threats, and perhaps he just made a grave mistake. But when Inej closes her hand around his glove and he turns around to insist she let it go, he is caught in a moment of sheer horror when he notices that his shirt sleeve has loosened. The tips of her fingers are touching his skin.

He looks at her wide-eyed, in some kind of expectation. He remembers what happened to Imogen vividly—how she’d fallen to the floor, fallen into herself. It had really just been a few months prior.

He hadn’t loved Imogen, but he had certainly felt something for her. He had made that feeling harden into something and guard his heart after she had died in his arms, after any of his desire has poisoned her.

Kaz had never considered himself religious, but in that moment he had thought Ghezen had put him on this Earth and then tortured him to make him a demon. To kill with nothing but touch was the consequence for his instinct and his mind. He could be the enforcer of Ketterdam, could read the minds of the worst men of these streets, but he could be nothing else. Have no connection, no love, no weakness.

Inej meets his gaze for a moment before she lets go of his hand, finishing the awkward grab she’s begun he hadn’t been receptive to. Kaz walks back to the Slat in complete silence, forgoing a trip to the harbor.

Before he enters the front door, he turns to Inej and speaks gruffly. “Go see Anika—the blonde one with the half-shaved head—and she will help you settle in. Don’t bother me.”

He stalks up the Slat’s stairs without looking back.

Two days later, he’s sitting doing numbers on his rickety desk when he sees a shape at his window. Kaz doesn’t move when the window opens and the slight Suli girl crawls in.

She looks at him with a tilt of her mouth he thinks he could make cruel. But in the moment, he says nothing. Inej sits in the windowframe and stares out into the dreary Kerch sky for half an hour until he finally puts down his pen. “What do you want?” he asks.

Inej blinks at him. Her eyes are so wide, so otherworldly. She is looking at him the same way she did, that first day. Like she knows why he is what he is.

Kaz is the monster that haunts this city, but she scares him. He would never admit it.

“Something to do,” she whispers, before gliding over to him. Again, she makes no sound at all. “I am grateful you took me with you. What do you want me to do?”

Heleen has not complained about a missing girl to him, not sent any letters. His other spiders have heard of nothing amiss in the Menagerie, either. Kaz files that information away to think of later.

Sentimentalities aside, he analyzes the girl with the eye of a crook. He has her, and he might as well put her to work. He reaches for the corner of his desk and takes out a map. “I’ll give you a house to stake out.”

Suddenly, she is in front of him, her hand in front of his face. “I don’t need a map,” she says. “What do you want to know?”

He is kind of affronted by the hand in front of his face, but he says nothing, just takes a minute to calm the beating of his heart. Inej looks down like she can sense the way it’s about to bounce out of his throat.

“The entrance time of the man, and his wife and his children. Any time that would be good to enter, and what you can tell about their security system. The guards and if they are lazy.”

Inej nods, and before he can think again she has jumped out the window.

When she returns a day later and lists off what she has found in a low, measured tone, he can tell something is off.

He doesn’t recall telling Inej the address of Meijer’s Geldin District house. Perhaps she saw his finger on the map. He tells himself it must be that.

She has taken to sitting in his window, all the time.

He should tell her to go, but he doesn’t, he can’t. He thinks of that first day and the way she had touched him, and he wonders if it was real. He shouldn’t want to find out.

Perhaps the gods that made him this way were right, to not allow him to touch. A second of contact with this girl has wasted him. All he needs to do is scare her off and tell her to leave, but now he can’t. He has a weakness.

Inej doesn’t say much. Sometimes, she brings up pieces of bread and throws them to the birds at his window. At first a medley of birds came, but now there are just crows. They have outlasted and outpicked the rest. Other times, she simply stares out into the sun. She is content with existing, simply, when he is not telling her what to find and where to go.

And she is very, very good at finding people’s secrets. With her invisibility, the way she disappears, Kaz has more than made up for Roeder’s short stint with an injury. He doesn’t comment on her methods, simply knows they are extraordinary. His annoyance is that she can make everyone else think she is but a wisp of air, but he cannot let her go.

She sits at his window, but she lives in his mind. And she has opened up a box in him he had screwed tight. Visions flood through his head, that of a boy underwater, gasping for air. A girl falling to pieces. The insides of a man on pavement, bloody bones lining a street. Kaz has seen a lot of things he needs to stay in his mind. Inej has brought them out.

She is the one that approaches first.

Kaz is sitting at his desk, and then she is in front of him. Up front, she almost takes his breath away. He doesn’t like thinking of her as a beauty, but she is. Her eyelashes flutter in front of him and there is so much power and knowing in her eyes.

“I need a weapon,” she says.

He looks at her with heavily veiled shock. “You haven’t had one, so far?”

“No,” she seems confused.

Kaz frowns. “Anika did not give you one?”

“No.”

“How have you not been attacked so far?”

She shrugs. “I am quiet.”

She is quiet. She is so silent that when she isn’t talking to him, he could look down and not even think she’s here. He can’t sense the pace of her breathing, her steps on the concrete. She is so—

That is the first day Kaz looks at Inej, the first time he lets his eyes see through her and land on the other side, the day he learns she is a wraith made of glass and that is why she is invisible. It is the day she reminds him of a corpse and of a body he’d used as a raft, something to save him, something upon which to build the body of Brekker the monster.

He ignores her face then, because to compare Inej to Jordie would make him fear loss, and he cannot be that boy again, cannot be weak. Instead, he slides out a sharp blade from the side of his boot. He drops it on the table and Inej swoops in like a bird and picks it up.

Kaz thinks she will go, but she stands in front of him.

“What?” he says impatiently.

“Do you believe in saints, Kaz?” she says it with all the thought in this world, his name. It sounds so soft coming out of her mouth, and he is reminded of Imogen. There had been so much hope with Imogen, a potential beginning, a different fork in the road for him to have taken—a life that wasn’t clouded with revenge, but with something else . . . not necessarily even with her, but with someone. A path he could never pursue.

He shouldn’t even give Inej an answer, but in a second he looks down at the map in front of him and whispers harshly. “No.”

“How sad,” she says conversationally. I am quiet, she had said, and now she wants to talk. “Have you heard the story of Sankt Petyr?”

“If I believe in God it is only Ghezen,” Kaz sums up his beliefs succinctly. His religion is barter and trade and the pulpits of Ketterdam, where money is prayer. Sometimes he thinks of a boy who believed in gods and saints, but he cannot afford to be him.

If that religion is real than they have deigned Kaz’s hands as a reward for a demon and a punishment for a man. He cannot think of that, cannot think there is a reason he has been made this way, without his thoughts spiralling to far depths of self-loathing. He doesn’t have time to hate himself.

“Sankt Petyr,” Inej says dreamily. She walks closer, perches on his desk, so close Kaz is forced to look at her. She is beautiful and her voice is hazy, and her braid is coiled in his direction as she stares out the window. She does not smell like anything, but he imagines flowers, the geraniums that were his mother’s favorite flower. “He was a priest, you know, in Brevno, in Ravka. I had gone there, before. It was one of my earliest memories.”

Kaz stays silent. He wants to bite something cynical but he cannot muster up the courage to.

“Brevno was attacked by a demon, one that did not use a cane or wear leather gloves, but lured villagers to their deaths regardless. The demon would seduce the villagers with tales of their dead loved ones.”

Kaz cannot speak. Any words he might have had are frozen in his throat and she is not looking at him.

“Petyr was haunted by his brother who had died in an accident when he was younger and he always blamed himself for it. And the demon tried to seduce him with the words of the brother, but Petyr recited prayers until the words could no longer harm him, the Sikurian Psalms. And then he convinced the villagers to light flaming arrows to kill the demon. When the demon came to collect Petyr, like his dearly loved brother, Petyr held him out of the water for the villagers to shoot him with the arrows. They shot him, too, and now he is a saint.”

Inej holds out the knife just so it reflects the sun. “I think that I will call this knife Sankt Petyr. Thank you, Kaz.”

Then she leaves and there is no trace of her, nothing anywhere, and Kaz does not know what to think, or do, or be.

After that, he starts seeing her around everywhere, but only when he’s alone. It’s then he starts to realize, when he starts to feel something like Imogen rise in his chest for this invisible girl. Something like Imogen but worse, because Inej knows he is the demon and also the saint. She knows he is both, she knows he is a demon, she knows, she knows . . .

It keeps him up at night, these thoughts he can’t think. The next week he commands that she go on a stakeout with him and she comes. They sit on a rooftop in the Financial District, and while Kaz watches the streets he notices Inej watches the stars. She looks otherworldly in the light of Ketterdam’s pollution, like she is one with the air or just floating through it.

He could watch the way she shimmers forever, in a way no demon should. He tells her that she should go with Rotty on his next foray into Black Tips category. He hears later that his man barely avoided death, praising his close encounter on religion. But Kaz knows, he knows now.

He has known, he has known ever since Tante Heleen had failed to question him about a missing girl, had not even inquired into a indenture. He has known ever since that day when they brushed skin and he felt Inej, felt her like she was alive, and she didn’t fall to the ground. He has known when she said she was quiet, when he could not hear her breathing, could not feel a heartbeat.

When Per Haskell asks for a roster of the Dregs he doesn’t even have to scan the list Anika puts together to know she will not be there. He could stalk back to the Menagerie, but he doesn’t do that.

The next day she sits at his window, he grabs his cane and walks towards her. She doesn’t move at all until he is right next to her, eerily still. If she did not turn towards him with wide eyes, eyelids dropping like she is remembering to blink, Kaz could have convinced himself to ignore the truth.

He glares at her, at her pretty face, and she smiles back beautifically. Then she reaches out a hand in front of her.

Kaz needs to take a moment because he is overwhelmed with thoughts of drowning and the ocean. Of his brother’s rubbery, loose skin that he had used as a raft, of the feeling that had sunk into his bones after he’d let Jordie go. Of how the man that had approached him not two days after his rebirth had crumpled when he’d reached for Kaz’s hand, had not gotten up again. Of Imogen and her lips and the way she had died with one touch. Of the way the people of the Staves thought of him, of the many reasons they thought he wore his gloves.

None of them knew Kaz Brekker was afraid of touch, that his touch did burn like brimstone, that it made you wither and die.

Unless you were already dead.

Kaz slides off his glove and his fingers shake, and he reaches for Inej’s hand—closer and closer until her fingers, almost warm and alive, are enclosed in his.

He wants to fall to his knees and pray to saints and cry like a child. It has been so long since he has felt touch. Maybe this is not real and she is not real, but it feels so real. He cannot look at her, but he can whisper.

Maybe he should say something that reveals the depth of his emotion, but he’s sharp. “Who are you?”

A hand falls to his head, brushes his uneven haircut with so much care. “Someone who did not have the chance you do.”

And then she is gone. Kaz is left sprawled across the floor of his room, pale hands splayed across hardwood and desolation unfolding in his chest.

"I'm sure you've heard the stories."

"Each more grotesque than the last."

Kaz had heard them, too.

#kanej #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #six of crows #grishaverse #shadow and bone #kanej fic #gvbb #grishaverse big bang #grishaverse mini bang 2022 #doorhandle16 #oranges-and-stuff

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aceinejghafa · 1 year

Text

on the magic inherent in snowflakes and in laughter

Kanej | Rated general | tw for canon-typical discussion of the slave trade

Summary: Ketterdam is grey, when the Wraith docks in berth twenty-two of Fifth Harbour.

Or, Kaz and Inej take a walk in the snow, ft. reflections on magic and absolutely zero plot.

Materialki: @cassecorrea (art here)

Etherealki: @swift-creates (fic here)

A/N: My fic for the Grishaverse Reverse Mini Bang @grishaversebigbang!

Read it on AO3 or below the cut.

Ketterdam is grey, when the Wraith docks in berth twenty-two of Fifth Harbour. Captain Inej Ghafa stands on deck, her hands on her hips, and looks out at the city that has broken her, rebuilt her, shaped her.

On second thought, maybe it’s not quite grey. It’s more black and white, city and snow mixed together and piled on top of each other until the first impression is that it’s all one grey mass. A closer look shows dark rooftops peeking out from underneath the snow, dark streets paled by drifts piling up to either side. The still-falling snow creates a mist that makes the city seem gentler, softer.

Inej’s feelings for Ketterdam are complicated. Despicable things are done here, just as they are done everywhere else she has been — Ravka’s oppression of the Suli and general imperialist bent; Fjerda’s demonization and genocide of Grisha; Ketterdam’s refusal to value anything more than money.

And yet, as everywhere, it’s a mix. Ravka has a half-Suli queen. Whatever Nina’s doing in Fjerda, it’s slowly chipping away at the Fjerdan hatred of Grisha. And Ketterdam — well, Inej is doing her fair share to clear Ketterdam of the least savoury aspects of its business, and between Wylan’s influence with the Merchant Council and Kaz’s willingness to help her take down any other barrel boss engaging in the slave trade, the city’s got a chance at not being quite so atrocious as it has been.

But atrocious or not, grey or black-and-white — Inej has missed this place, missed the rooftops she’s ran across countless times, missed this dirty, complicated, greedy city where she has learned who she is, who she wants to be.

She has missed the people, too: Jesper, his grin and his guns and his ridiculous waistcoats; Wylan, clever and red-haired and far less innocent than he looks.

And she has missed a boy with dark hair and sharp edges, with a painful past that’s left him with gloved hands and armour, with a clever mind and a rare smile.

Inej could spend the next few hours arranging for a food and water resupply for the Wraith. If not, she could head out into Ketterdam and catch up on anything she’s missed — there’ve been some rumours of a buyer in the warehouse district that she could investigate. She could even stay on her ship and spend time with her crew.

But she doesn’t need to do any of that, and Specht is a perfectly competent first mate who can safely be left in charge of a ship — arguably more competent than her, although she’s learnt a fair bit about handling a ship since first stepping foot on the Wraith.

She climbs easily down the Wraith’s side — her skills as a spider might not apply to sailing a ship, but they at least work in her favour to allow her to get off and on — and disappears into the maze of the city.

The first time that Kaz saw a snowfall in Ketterdam, it seemed like a magic trick — like the street performers who hid coins in their palms and up their sleeves, reality concealed behind obfuscation. Some of the city’s dirt vanished beneath the white, nature flicking a wrist to hide what she did not want people to see. Drawing attention to the glittering piles of white so that nobody saw the beggar in the corner, the starving child, the scars on the girls in the pleasure houses. A veil thrown over the world to soften its edges. Sleight of hand to replace poverty with beauty.

But Kaz knew that all the dirt was still there underfoot. The magician’s trick was not quite good enough, or perhaps Kaz was too good for it, too good at seeing through the magic to the mechanism behind it. That first year, the snow brought cold, and cold meant death. The veneer of white concealed a fate to which Kaz refused to succumb.

He begged and lied and cheated and stole, that first year. He survived that first year. He survived every year, clinging to life, to revenge, to reality, refusing to drift down into the cold white comfort promised by the cold white snow.

Today’s snow is deeper than expected, and Kaz wonders how many children are wandering the streets as he once did. How many are dying. Dirtyhands wouldn’t care; Inej would. Kaz does not know what he thinks.

A girl, perhaps twelve at most, decides that the doorway of the Slat would be a good place to beg from. Kaz tells himself that she is good at faking an injured leg to get more sympathy. He tells himself that she seems clever and resourceful. He tells himself that she could be a useful member of the Dregs, one day. When she subtly inserts herself into the Slat itself and settles herself in a corner, he pretends not to notice, and his Dregs follow his lead. He doesn’t know if Inej is rubbing off on him, or if instinct tells him she’ll be useful, or if there is another reason altogether for his actions — but he lets her stay.

She’s still there in the corner when he heads upstairs to his office. The snow has, of course, another effect — his leg aches more than usual, and it’s a relief when he reaches the top of the flight of stairs. Once seated at his desk, he stretches it out under the table, allowing him a moment to massage away the ache; he knows from experience that a long walk without too many stairs would probably be good for it, but he needs to deal with the paperwork that’s accumulated for him to sign. The Dregs have prospered since the Dime Lions’ fall, but the downside is that he has several more properties to worry about.

He glances out at the cityscape once or twice — his office shows him a panorama of snow-capped rooftops, the familiar view transformed but still fundamentally the same.

But he’s focusing intently on the accounts for the new gambling den he’s recently opened up when he becomes aware of her presence.

Kaz looks up, and there she is, perched on the window ledge only feet away from him. Her old spot, and for a moment he wonders if he’s dreamed her up, but there is a sparkle in her eyes that Kaz does not think his subconscious brain could invent.

Her hair is windblown, a few white flakes scattered amidst the black. She wears a grey tunic with a dark red scarf and gloves; she wears confidence about her shoulders like a cloak. Her cheeks are glowing, and she grins at him when he meets her eyes.

Kaz smiles. “Welcome to Ketterdam, Captain Ghafa.”

Captain Ghafa. Inej has gone by many names, some she hated and some she liked, all of them placing expectations on her shoulders — the lynx, the spider, the Wraith. Captain Ghafa is one she has chosen for herself of her own free will, and she likes it best of all.

Kaz smiles like he’s a boy again, like he’s only seventeen years old, like he’s not a barrel boss with a reputation to strike fear into the heart of anyone foolish enough to cross him. Inej hasn’t seen that smile often, but she’s as helpless as she’s ever been to prevent her own lips from ticking up in response.

“Kaz,” she returns. She’s missed him with an unexpected ferocity, in all her months at sea — missed his cleverness, his talent for getting out of any tough situation; missed his scheming face and the quips he trades with her; missed his company most of all, with a deeper ache than she’s cared to admit to herself.

There’s a moment of silence between them, comfortable silence that doesn’t need to be filled with words. Kaz breaks it first, setting down his pen and leaning back in his chair to look at her, still perched on the windowsill. “What have you been up to?”

Inej takes the invitation for what it is and shuts the window, blocking the cold air out. “Figuring out how to sail a ship. Figuring out how to fight a ship. Figuring out how to track down other ships.” She shrugs. “Killing slavers, which requires a bit less figuring out.”

“Living the dream, then,” Kaz observes drily. He shifts his leg slightly, and she catches the movement, remembering two winters of watching him limp slightly more than in the summer. He hides it well, of course, but Inej has learnt to be observant from Kaz himself.

A walk would help him stretch it out, and walking allows for conversation as much as sitting. “Acquired a fair bit of info on the buyers,” she tells him. “Your competitors. I’ll tell you about them, but I’d like to walk around Ketterdam a bit while we’re at it.”

Kaz raises an eyebrow, and she knows he’s seen her glance down at his leg — he is perfectly aware of what she’s doing. But he doesn’t object. “Gladly,” he says instead, and pushes his chair back to stand up. He doesn’t hide the faint wince on his face, and Inej knows that is an honour she will cherish: to see past the walls he puts up around every weakness, the masks that hide his pain. Kaz lets her through, and it is a gift.

They walk down the stairs together. Inej does not offer Kaz a hand; she has pushed him enough for today. Instead, she follows Kaz into the Slat proper.

“Inej!” Anika calls, as soon as Inej comes in sight, and then she’s surrounded by a crowd of Dregs — laughing, asking her how she’s been, congratulating her on the growing reputation she’s gaining. She was worried that they might resent her for leaving, or might see her as a competitor, but they greet her with all the comradeship she built with them over those years in Ketterdam. She hadn’t quite realised how much she missed them until now.

Kaz stands by, leaning on his cane and watching from the shadows. It’s achingly familiar: Kaz never joined in with the conversations or games or jokes tossed around the Slat, but he always watched, and Inej knew he was secretly pleased when they all got along — and only partially because a more tight-knit gang is a more efficient one.

Eventually, Inej manages to extricate herself, and walks out the door with Kaz. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Rotty open his mouth to wolf-whistle only to be elbowed in the side by Anika; he doubles over in soundless pain.

Inej smiles, and steps out onto the street.

The streets of Ketterdam are quiet, footsteps muffled by the fallen snow. The cold keeps most of the city in their houses. There are still a few hurrying about on errands, but nobody pays close attention to the two figures walking side-by-side down the street. Kaz is grateful; he isn’t in the mood to get into a fight if a rival gang recognises him.

His knee still aches, but walking is helping, as he (and Inej) knew it would. His coat is warm enough to keep out the cold, especially with Inej walking at his side. He’s missed her in her absence, more so than his dignity would allow him to admit to anyone but her. Seeing her again is like a breath of fresh air after too long underwater.

Inej tells him about which slavers she’s gotten rid of and which Barrel bosses she thinks have been buying from them, about the rumours of a buyer with a hideout in the warehouse district, about — in a quieter voice — catching the man who kidnapped her, two and a half years ago.

Her feet come to a stop; she is not looking at anything around them. “The ship,” she says, quietly. “It was. The same one. That I was—”

Kaz isn’t good at offering comfort, but Inej’s eyes look far away like she’s been pulled out of her skin, like she’s far away in a ship that brought her torment. “Inej,” he says, but she doesn’t seem to hear him; a shiver races across her skin.

Touch, Kaz thinks, would help. To ground her. To draw her back to the snowy streets of Ketterdam, and away from where she is now. He doesn’t think he could touch bare skin right now — the cold has brought back memories of cold water and cold skin — but he’s wearing gloves, and so is she.

“Inej,” Kaz says again, and brushes the back of his hand against hers.

She shudders faintly, exhaling mist into the cold air, and grabs his hand properly. Her eyes flick over to him, present again in a way they weren’t before. “Kaz.”

Kaz feels something in him relax at the sound of her voice. A small smile appears on her face; he feels his own lips tick faintly up in response.

Talking about it, right now, in the open street, is not what she needs. So he returns to their earlier topic of conversation, offering his side of the puzzle that will show her where Captain Ghafa is needed most.

Thanks to Inej, most of Ketterdam’s pleasure houses have closed down, and Kaz has been ensuring that no new ones open (quietly, because it feels like a crack in the armour that is Dirtyhands, but efficiently all the same). He’s also made a custom of keeping an ear to the ground, listening for rumours of anyone trading in people — whether that be regular indentured slaves, Grisha, or women — and finding out their veracity.

Now, he tells her what he knows about the trader in the warehouse district, and they fall into planning out their next steps as they have a hundred times before. Except now, Inej isn’t the Wraith, indentured to Per Haskell, Kaz’s subordinate in the Dregs; she is free, and still choosing to walk beside Kaz with their hands still entwined.

While plotting murder, naturally. But for them, that’s par for the course.

Inej discovers that she’s missed plotting with Kaz.

He has a tendency to make at least four layers of plans beyond what he actually tells her about, which can be a bit annoying, but she’s missed it nonetheless. Before the Ice Court, she’d bring him secrets and whispers from all over Ketterdam and he’d listen, and ask questions, and take her input on whatever plans he concocted.

Now it’s — it’s not Kaz concocting plans and Inej bringing him the information he needs; it’s both of them sharing information, then building plans together. Plans that are actually the entire plan, not just the basics that Kaz sees fit to tell her; they are partners in this, equals, in a way that they weren’t before.

Kaz trusts a very small number of people. Trust itself has been dimmed out of him by cruelty and plague and loss, and the Barrel is not exactly the best place to learn to trust again. Even with the Dregs, she knows that Kaz must always be on the lookout, always aware of the motivations of everyone around him in case those motivations should lead them to betray him.

He trusts Jesper. Wylan, now, too, Inej thinks. Nina, perhaps; her allegiance to the Ravkan throne is an obstacle, but not an unsurmountable one. Rotty.

And Inej. Even before the Ice Court, he trusted the information she brought, even relied on it — and today, he shares information with her in equal measure. He tells her what he’s planning, lets her see not only what but how he thinks. Kaz turns life into a series of magic tricks, performances, where he pulls the strings from behind the curtains. Now he’s letting her come backstage with him, and that is a gift.

(It is also a gift that they’re still holding hands. Kaz hasn’t let go since he drew her from memories of a slave ship she’d rather forget, despite his aversion to touch. Their hands are gloved, yes, but he holds her hand like it’s nothing, like the demons of his past don’t haunt his skin like ghosts. She doesn’t know if they’re absent for once or simply being ignored, but either way, Kaz is choosing to keep holding hands of his own free will.)

In this part of town — the wealthier, bourgeois district they’ve wandered into — they’re not going to be recognised as Dirtyhands and Captain Ghafa. They could be mistaken for any two sweethearts, wandering the streets despite the cold, speaking sweet nothings in low tones — and although they are not that couple and never could be, on this street, in the snow, they are — similar.

They are two people broken by the cruelty of the world, two people who have pieced themselves back together into someone different, stronger, than they once were. Two people who have too many jagged edges to fit with anyone unbroken, unscarred; two people who, nevertheless, are walking down Ketterdam’s streets in the snow.

Snowflakes are still falling, dusting Kaz’s hair with white, the outline of the city paled to something gentler than usual. Their breath ghosts in the air, and Inej is comfortable regardless of the cold, warmed from the inside out by her hand in Kaz’s and his smile when he looks at her.

Gradually, the conversation shifts from planning to reminiscing, to storytelling. Inej talks about her crew — among them not a few former Dregs — and Kaz reciprocates with updates on how all the current Dregs are doing.

Their words drift, like snowflakes, and Inej smiles and laughs and is at peace.

Inej is telling a story, and Kaz watches her, drinking up the joy that emanates from her with such ease. She’s dusted with snow, and little curls of hair flutter around her face in the wind. She’s beautiful.

She is, unquestionably, far too good for anyone so broken and crooked as Kaz. She deserves better than him, but she also deserves whatever she wants. And she has also been quite clear that she wants to spend this time with Kaz, so who is he to deny her?

If she deserves better than what he is now, then he’ll simply have to make himself into someone more worthy of her.

So Kaz walks by her side and holds her hand and absorbs into himself all the goodness that she gives him freely. She’s brighter now than she ever was as part of the Dregs; this — fighting for what she believes in, fighting for everyone as powerless as she once was — is good for her. (Good for the world, too, most likely, but Kaz is more preoccupied with Inej.) Kaz doesn’t really believe that people have preordained destinies, paths they’re set to follow — but if he did, he’d say Inej is achieving her purpose.

He doesn’t know what his own destiny might be, but he knows he wants his path to lie close to hers.

Kaz is a cynical bastard, has been since he swam to shore using his brother’s corpse as a raft. He isn’t good at having faith, at hoping for the best outcome, at believing in a magic trick.

But Inej laughs, and this is no sleight of hand — it’s more magic than trick, inexplicable and real all at once. There is no curtain to look behind, only truth. Only magic.

It is fitting that Inej be crowned by snowflakes.

#gvbbrmb22 #gvbbrmbfic22 #gang 4 #six of crows #soc #inej ghafa #kaz brekker #kanej #kaz x inej #fic #my fic #tw slavery

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