#leaving off here for now because Van Eck is about to ask Kaz how old he is

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Six of Crows fan-written Script

Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll to see if you guys wanted to keep this going!! 🖤

Hi, so in true me style I still haven't got around to organising these posts into scene breakdowns so this is the next part of episode 1 scene 5, I'm hoping that I can get the end of scene 5 out in the next post and then from that point forwards I'll be able to post it scene by scene. I hope that makes sense.

Same reminder as usual: I'm trying to be as true to the books as possible whilst also matching Show!canon but I've also taken the occasional bit of artistic licence as to how I would imagine producing the show myself, for example inserting my personal headcanon about Anya in the opening scene of episode one. Also, I have never written a script before so the formatting is my own made-up method; if it doesn't make sense please let me know and I'll adapt it :)

Side note: Would it be helpful for me to make a masterlist with links to the parts I've already posted?

Recap since it's been a while - Kaz is with Van Eck at the Hoede house and is holding a knife to the merch's throat when Mika walks through the wall, frightening Kaz because he thinks he's hallucinating from a drug Van Eck has given him

EPISODE ONE SCENE FIVE (PART 2)

KAZ: What the hell is this?

VAN ECK: Let me go and I’ll explain

KAZ: You can explain right where you are

VAN ECK: What you’re seeing are the effects of jurda parem

KAZ: Jurda’s just a stimulant. It’s harmless

VAN ECK: Ordinary jurda, yes. Jurda parem is completely different - and most definitely not harmless

KAZ: So you did drug me?

VAN ECK: Not you, mister Brekker. Mika

[KAZ turns and looks at MIKA. The camera moves slowly up the Tidemaker’s figure; his hands are trembling, the dark circles beneath his eyes are pronounced, and his kefta is slightly ill-fitting as though he has lost a lot of weight since it was last altered]

VAN ECK: Jurda parem is a cousin to ordinary jurda - from the same plant. We aren’t sure of the production process, but a sample was sent to the Merchant Council by a scientist named Bo Yul-Bayurr

KAZ: Shu?

VAN ECK: Yes. He wished to defect, so he sent the sample to prove his claims regarding the drug’s extraordinary effects - Please, mister Brekker, this is a most uncomfortable position. If you’d like, I can give you a pistol and we can sit and discuss this in a more civilised fashion

KAZ: A pistol and my cane

[VAN ECK gestures to one of the stadwatch guards by the door, who leaves briefly and returns with KAZ’s cane]

KAZ: Pistol first. Slowly

[The guard unholsters his own gun and hands it to KAZ by the grip. KAZ grabs the gun and cocks it in one swift movement, then releases VAN ECK and throws the letter opener onto the desk before snatching his cane from the guard’s hand. He is immediately more comfortable. VAN ECK paces backwards and KAZ moves slowly towards the window]

VAN ECK: That cane is quite a piece of hardware, Mr Brekker. Is it Fabrikator made?

KAZ: None of your business. Get talking, Van Eck

VAN ECK: When Bo Yul-Bayur sent us the sample of jurda parem, we tested it on three Grisha - one from each order. 

KAZ: Happy volunteers?

VAN ECK: Indentures. The first two were a Fabrikator and a Healer indentured to Councilman Hoede,

[KAZ frowns; he recalls hearing the name recently but cannot remember why]

and Mika is a Tidemaker. He’s mine. You’ve seen what he can do using the drug.

KAZ: I don’t know what I’ve seen.

[KAZ looks back at MIKA, and the camera follows his gaze. MIKA is focused intently on VAN ECK as though he is unaware of anything else in the room, his expression one of desperation]

VAN ECK: An ordinary Tidemaker can control currents, summon water or moisture from the air, or a nearby source. They manage the tides in our harbours. But under the influence of parem, a Tidemaker can alter their own state from solid, to liquid, to gas and back again and do the same with other objects - even a wall.

[KAZ frowns. He isn’t convinced, but he has no other explanation for what he’s seen]

KAZ: How?

VAN ECK: It’s hard to say. You’re aware of the amplifiers some Grisha wear?

KAZ: I’ve seen them - animal bones, and such. I hear they’re hard to come by.

VAN ECK: Very. But they only increase a Grisha’s power. Jurda parem alters a Grisha’s perception.

KAZ: So?

VAN ECK: Grisha manipulate matter at its most fundamental metals - they call it the Small Science. Under the influence of parem, those manipulations become faster and far more precise. In theory jurda parem is just a stimulant like its ordinary cousin, but it seems to sharpen and hone a Grisha’s senses. Things become possible that simply shouldn’t be. 

KAZ: What does it do to sorry sobs like you and me?

[VAN ECK is marginally offended to be aligned with KAZ]

VAN ECK: It’s lethal. An ordinary mind cannot tolerate parem in even the lowest doses.

KAZ: You said you gave it to three Grisha. What can the others do?

VAN ECK: Here

[He begins to open one of his desk drawers and KAZ raises his pistol slightly]

KAZ: Easy

[VAN ECK opens the drawer with exaggerated slowness and pulls out a lump of gold the size of his palm]

VAC ECK: This started as lead.

KAZ: Like hell it did.

[VAN ECK shrugs]

VAN ECK: I can only tell you what I saw. The Fabrikator took a piece of lead in his hands, and moments later we had this.

KAZ: How do you even know it's real?

VAN ECK: It was the same melting point as gold, the same weight, the same malleability. If it’s not identical to gold in every way the difference has eluded us.

[He holds it out for KAZ to take]

VAN ECK: Have it tested, if you like. 

[KAZ inspects the gold for a moment, then slips it into his pocket. He’s decided that even if it's an imitation, it's convincing enough for him to find it a purpose]

KAZ: You could’ve gotten that anywhere.

VAN ECK: I would bring you Hoede’s Fabrikator here to show you himself, but he isn’t well.

[KAZ glances at MIKA again, and the camera once more notes his sickly pallor and the dark circles beneath his eyes]

KAZ: Let’s say this is all real and not cheap coin trick magic. What does it have to do with me?

VAN ECK: Perhaps you heard of the Shu paying off the entirety of their debt to Kerch with a sudden influx of gold? The assassination of the trade ambassador from Novyi Zem? The theft of documents from a military base in Ravka?

[KAZ nods. He is glad to know the secret of the Zemeni Ambassador’s death and remembers JESPER talking about the three Shu ships filled with gold. Although he has heard nothing of the Ravkan documents, he doesn’t want VAN ECK to know that and so acts as if he is more than aware]

VAN ECK: We believe that all of these occurrences are the work of Grisha under the control of the Shu government and under the influence of jurda parem. Mr Brekker, I want you to think for a moment about what I’m telling you: Men who can walk through walls. No vault or fortress will ever be safe again. People who can make gold from lead - or anything else for that matter - who can alter the very material of the world. Financial markets will be thrown into chaos, the world economy would collapse.

KAZZ: Very exciting. What is it you want from me, Van Eck? To steal a shipment? The formula?

VAN ECK: No. I want you to steal the man.

KAZ: Kidnap Bo Yul-Bayur?

VAN ECK: Save him. A month ago we received a message from Yul-Bayur begging for asylum, he was concerned about his government’s plans for jurda parem, and we agreed to help him defect. We set up a rendez-vous, but there was a skirmish at the drop point.

KAZ: With the Shu?

VAN ECK: With Fjerdans.

[KAZ raises an eyebrow - the Fjerdans must have spies deep in Shu Han or Kerch, or both]

VAN ECK: The diplomatic situation is somewhat delicate, and it is essential that our government not be tied to Yul-Bayur in any way.

KAZ: You have to know he’s probably dead. Fjerdans hate Grisha; there’s no way they’d let knowledge of this drug get out.

VAN ECK: Our sources say he’s very much alive and that he’s awaiting trial.

[VAN ECK clears his throat]

VAN ECK: At the Ice Court.

[KAZ stares at him for a moment, then bursts out laughing]

KAZ: Well, it’s been a pleasure being knocked unconscious and taken caprice by you Van Eck - you can assure your hospitality will be repaid when the time is right. Have one of your lackeys show me to the door.

VAN ECK: We’re prepared to offer you five million kruge.

[KAZ pockets the stadwatch officer’s pistol. He is no longer afraid for his life, but he’s furious to have had his time wasted so tremendously]

KAZ: This may come as a surprise to you, Van Eck, but we canal rats value our lives just as much as you do yours.

VAN ECK: Ten million.

KAZ: There’s no point to a fortune I won’t be alive to spend. Where’s my hat? Did your Tidemaker leave it behind in the alley?

[KAZ begins to walk towards the door and the camera follows behind him]

VAN ECK: Twenty.

[KAZ pauses, and slowly lifts his head - an image mimicking that of season one of Shadow and Bone when he heard the offer of one million kruge. He turns slowly to face VAN ECK]

INEJ voiceover, a reminder of what she told him in Scene Three: Greed is your god, Kaz.

KAZ: Twenty million kruge?

KAz voicover from Scene Three: Greed bows to me. 

[VAN ECK nods, but he doesn’t look happy about having raised the offer so much higher]

KAZ: I’d need to convince a team to walk into a suicide mission - that doesn’t come cheap.

VAN ECK: Twenty million kruge is hardly cheap.

KAZ: The Ice Court has never been breached. 

VAN ECK: That’s why we need you, Mr Brekker. It’s possible Bo Yul-Bayur is already dead, or that he’s given up his secrets to Fjerdans, but we think we have at least a little time to act before jurda parem is put into play. 

KAZ: If the Shu have the formula-

VAN ECK: Yul-Bayur claimed he’d managed to keep the specifics secret - we believe they’re limiting from whatever limited supply he left behind. 

[KAZ has already started thinking about the job, and who he’ll need on his team - and what he’ll be able to do with the money. He pauses, and frowns]

KAZ: Why me? Why the Dregs? There are more experienced crews out there.

[MIKA has a sudden coughing fit, and VAN ECK helps him into a chai and offers him his handkerchief. He snaps his fingers at one of the guards]

VAN ECK: Some water

[The guard exits]

[wesperbrekkered]

"Do I have a crush?" "You have whatever is after a crush." For Wesper Please

Maybe Inej or Nina says this to Jesper or to Wylan? Even Kaz possibly.

This is a lil snippet from Counting Down The Years, a wesper oneshot that is estimated to be finish between 10k and 15k words. Thank you sm for the ask!

_________________________________________

Jesper didn’t speak much on the journey home, choosing to look out the window of Matthias’ battered old truck instead. Matthias didn’t push, he just put on his Fjerdan folk songs on a low, manageable volume and hummed along to them.

He liked Wylan.

The realisation floored him, and he wasn’t entirely sure why.

It felt natural, because Wylan was always drawing Jesper in, always capturing his attention in the way that nothing, nothing ever could. It felt like the only sane way somebody would feel about him, because how could you not take a look at the magical creature that was Wylan Van Eck and want to give him fucking everything.

Wylan had always just been his best friend, but he supposed he never thought of an excuse to kiss his other friends every year.

He both thanked and rejected Matthias’ offer to stay with him, telling him to go back and enjoy himself and that ‘I can look after myself just fine, thank you very much.’ He shot Jesper a look at those words, but he finally left after giving Jesper a cartoon of leftover food that he’d smuggled with him.

Jesper could have cried.

He didn’t cry. Instead he placed the carton onto his nightstand and sat down on his bed heavily. His shirt was still wet, but he made no move to take it off.

Instead—

“Jesper?”

The voice over the phone was crackly and tired, and Jesper realised he probably should have remembered that timezones exist.

“Hey Da,” he whispered, feeling every string that was holding him together start to fray and snap.

“Jes?” there was more rustling, his father’s voice sounding more worried then sleep riddled now, “you alright?”

“I’m uh—” he hesitated, sucking in a breath, “I’m fine. I think.”

“Jes—”

“—Please.” His eyes burned like someone was poking them with red hot needles, his hand trembling where it clutched his phone to his ear, “please. I just—I just want to talk to you. I miss you.”

He could tell his father didn’t believe him, but Jesper didn’t feel ready to admit just yet what he’d saw, what he’d realised. He’d have to tell Nina tomorrow, he’d accepted that, but for right fucking now he wanted to forget.

Because if he didn’t forget he’d only end up crying, and Jesper felt too old to be crying over a boy.

He didn’t tell his Da about Wylan. He didn’t tell him that he’d only just realised that he liked his best friend. He didn’t tell him that he was struggling, that his course made him feel like he was drowning already, only three months in. He didn’t tell him that he already regretted ever coming here.

Instead, he lay back, shirt still wet, Matthias’ food sat unopened on the nightstand, eyes closed as he listened to his father talk about his week and what it was like being back on the farm and his Ma’s cherry tree.

“Jesper?” his father said suddenly, disrupting him from his sad thoughts.

“Yeah?” Jesper managed, forcing his voice not to crack.

“I love you, you know that right?”

Jesper inhaled suddenly, squeezing his eyes shut as tears seeped down his cheeks. “Yeah,” he tried, he tried, “Yeah I know. I love you too Da.”

When Kaz came back in the early hours of the morning, he wacked Jesper in the shin with the bottom of his cane, telling him to get dressed and eat something or ‘I swear to fucking Ghezen Jesper—’

Neither of them addressed his tear streaked face, or the way his voice was raspy and eyes red rimmed. He just ate his hutspot and let Kaz steal a few mouthfuls.

Later that night—morning—just as the clock turned to 5am, Jesper’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out on instinct, stomach turning to lead when he saw who it was from.

Wyvil

You OK? Nina said you had to leave early.

Jesper sucked in a breath. He could ignore. It was fucking 5am, Wylan wasn’t going to blame him for being asleep.

Jessie

im fine

someone spilled their drink on me and i nearly got sick

Jesper could never ignore Wylan, not really.

Wyvil

Well shit.

Want me to come over tomorrow with some stroopwafels?

And if any one word was likely to make Jesper cry, stroopwafel was the word.

Jessie

nah dw

i think nina has already claimed the nurse keeping position

Wyvil

Well if you need anything else, let me know!

Jesper promptly shoved his face into his pillow and he and Kaz both pretended he wasn’t crying.

You Wylan, I just need you.

“Alright. Spill.”

Jesper sighed.

The next morning—well, lunchtime—saw Nina sat in Jesper and Kaz’s shared dorm room, two steaming bowls of ramen balancing on his bed and Kaz grumbling about how he didn’t get any ramen.

‘If you want ramen you can get your own, Brekker,’ Nina had said, before turning her sharp, expectant gaze on Jesper.

“I may have... seen something,” he muttered, grabbing his bowl and cursing when it burnt his hands.

“I guessed that,” Nina huffed, “what did you see? Did you see what I think you saw?”

Jesper narrowed his eyes, “what do you think I saw?” He wasn’t appreciating this interrogation, thank you very much Nina.

Before he had a chance to answer, Kaz cut in, sounding bored, “he saw Wylan making out with that drummer.”

“How the fuck do you know that?” Jesper cried, nearly dropping his bowl of ramen at the exact same time Nina exclaimed, “I fucking knew they were making eyes at each other!”

Kaz blinked at both of them, flicking through his business book because only Kaz fucking Brekker would be studying on New Years Day.

Jesper groaned, abandoning his bowl in favour of burying his face in his hands. “Do I have a crush?” he whined, almost pitifully except he was moping too much to really care. Maybe he was a moper.

“You have whatever is after a crush,” Kaz said flatly, not even looking up.

“Alright Brekker, shut up or I’m kicking you out,” Nina snapped, turning back to Jesper. “Do you think you have a crush?”

Peeking at her from between his fingers, Jesper shrugged, “I mean, maybe? I think so. I don’t know. Ninaa.”

Nina huffed lightly, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, “congrats Jes, you’re officially the last to know. Now eat your ramen.”

“Yes mom,” Jesper grumbled, but he felt eternally grateful for her anyway.

His phone buzzed from where it sat on the nightstand. Nina turned it off before he could even check who sent it.

Perhaps it was for the best.

[themerchliing]

Jan Van Eck hired the best tutors from every corner of the world to teach his son multiple subjects — Wylan has always been home-schooled — with particular attention given to the fact that Wylan never learned to read or write. Ever since he was a child, he struggled with it and the frustrations from his father didn’t help matters.

At eight, after his mother’s death (or so he thinks…) Jan became abusive. He constantly called Wylan a moron and couldn't stand to be around him. He resorted to beatings to scare him into working harder, but Wylan’s brain genuinely struggled with words and the abuse made it worse rather than motivating him to do better.

With tutors coming and going, most of them too frustrated with the boy to continue (as well as Jan establishing a rule that said no tutor would be employed for more than two years if they didn't succeed), a new one appeared when Wylan was eighteen. Upon working with Wylan, he realized that he was incredibly smart — something that his father never took the time to notice. He used Wylan’s fondness for math, problem-solving, and art to teach him in a way that would make sense to Wylan’s unique brain — by using diagrams and maps:

“I used to meet with one of my tutors here, back when my father still thought … The tutor had a lot of interesting stories. And I always liked the maps. Tracing the letters sometimes made it easier to … It’s how I found the passage.” - Wylan.

The tutor was patient and encouraged Wylan to try, knowing that he’d given up due to his father’s impatience and constant abuse. Progress was sometimes slow, sometimes non-existent, but the tutor would still praise him. Due to this, Wylan slowly developed a desire to hear more praise which often made him seek validation. He didn’t get anything like that from his father, so he turned to the tutor for it. Over the course of the next few months, Wylan also developed a crush. Up until that point, he’d been aware that he had no interest in girls, instead preferring to wonder about men.

One night, he decided to flirt with the tutor. It was on a whim and he didn’t think anything would come of it. However, when the tutor reacted in a positive way and responded with flirting of his own, Wylan was surprised. It opened his eyes up to the world of his own sexuality. They kissed and did other intimate things before the tutor took his leave, too guilty to take it all the way despite Wylan wanting to. However, that was all it took for Wylan to wonder if maybe there might be more to life than constant studying and being trapped in the Van Eck mansion.

After Wylan’s stepmother, Alys, became pregnant, Wylan’s father attempted to have Wylan killed in order to protect the repute of the Van Eck name and erase Wylan from public memory. His father told Wylan he was going to study music in Belendt, but instructed two of his guards to kill Wylan on the browboat as they left Ketterdam. After nearly being strangled, Wylan jumped into the canal and eventually swam to shore.

Now twenty-years-old, Wylan ended up in the Barrel, where he rented a room at a boarding house and hid for a few days before venturing out to find work at a tannery, barely able to make enough money to scrape by. He went by Wylan Hendriks, his mother’s surname. After he made some money, he purchased a workshop for cheap because nobody else wanted it and the seller wanted it off his hands. This is where he does his demo work, but also where he lives, which is seen in season two.

He was strapped for cash after purchasing the workshop, so when Kaz Brekker showed up to ask him to make a phosphorus bomb that he could use against the Darkling, Wylan agreed, thinking it would be a one-time thing and not a real step into Kaz's world.

However, a couple of weeks later, he met Jesper Fahey while exploring the Barrel on one of his rare days off. The two were instantly attracted to each other and spent the entire day together, which ended in them nearly becoming intimate that night. However, Wylan decided to flee, thinking that it was dangerous to become attached to someone and that, even after the lovely day they had, it was just too good to be true.

After that, he visited his old rented room at the boarding house to retrieve something he'd forgotten only to discover that his father had sent a letter; this showed that Jan was aware that Wylan was alive. Panicked by this — he was afraid his father would send more men to kill him — Wylan decided to quit his apprenticeship at the tannery so that he could focus on doing demo work for Kaz. His father continued to send letters in an attempt to taunt him, knowing that his son couldn't read them. However, Wylan now living in his workshop, fortunately never received them.

[lonslibrary]

3 moments between the crow couples during their time at hogwarts

1. an unknown part of wylan and jesper’s somewhat disastrous amortentia story comes moments after jesper pulled wylan in for a kiss by his tie, causing the rest of their classmates to erupt in cheers and applause so loud that professor snape’s “boys! in the hall, now!” went unheard. minutes later, when they had actually been led out of the classroom to wait for their punishment, wylan finally worked up the courage to meet jesper’s eyes, his face almost as red as his hair. jesper’s grin was radiant. “so. butterbeer and my cologne, huh?”

it took all of wylan’s nerve to not sink into the ground where he stood. “i didn’t know today’s lesson was on amortentia,” he muttered, feeling himself flush again.

it took all of jesper’s will not to kiss the younger again right there where he stood with the way the redhead was looking up at him from beneath his long lashes.

“well, what about you?” wylan demanded, rolling his eyes. “let me guess. cards, pumpkin juice, and galleons?”

“no, actually.” jesper replied, spinning his wand in his hand. “i smell grass. gunpowder. and...”

he took a step closer to wylan who stood still, holding his breath. “...and?” the third year asked quietly.

“exploding elixir.”

wylan’s mind shut down.

“the entire room was filled with the same smell from that day we singed snape’s hair,” jesper snorted. “of all things, we had to mess up the potion that smelled like burnt-”

it was wylan who pulled jesper down this time, reaching up on his tippy toes to meet jesper’s soft lips, the ones that had captivated him from the moment he had walked into the potions classroom and saw his new lab partner for the first time.

“fahey, van eck!” snape burst into the hallway. “does it seem possible to keep your hands off of each other?”

“sorry, prof.” jesper winked, eyes still trained on wylan’s mouth. “guess you can say we’ve got...chemistry.”

wylan couldn’t even bring himself to care about detention.

2. nina stifled a laugh, trying to keep a straight face as she watched matthias scan the inside of zonko’s joke shop. she had just gotten matthias to admit that he enjoyed a drink as sweet as butterbeer, hours earlier at the three broomsticks. “you look like you’re inside the shrieking shack, not a joke shop.” nina snickered at the way matthias perked up.

“whatever the shrieking shack is, i think that there’d be more dignity in such a place than...this.” matthias dropped a dungbomb he had picked up like it had personally offended his grandmother.  

“why?” nina giggled. she shook the box in her hand. “not a fan of ton-tongue toffees?”

matthias made a face that looked like he was more than just not a fan. “if it’s anything like those jelly beans you fed me on the train, then no.”

that only made nina laugh harder. “i swear you picked the worst ones! you should’ve seen your face when you tried the rotten egg flavor.”

matthias cracked a smile, relaxing a little amongst the colorful store and his girlfriend’s laughter. he picked up another product, a pink bottle corked at the top. “what does this one do?”

nina lowered her voice, gesturing for matthias to come closer, as if letting him in on a secret. “that one’s a love potion. one drop of it in someone’s drink and they’re yours,” she whispered. “they’ll think about you all day.”

matthias jerked away, putting the bottle back on the shelf. “you can’t be serious. love can’t be made like that!” he sputtered.

“i don’t know, durmstrang,” nina teased. “what if i bought one and slipped some in your pumpkin juice tomorrow at breakfast?”

matthias only crossed his arms, continuing to grimace. “well, that wouldn’t work at all.”

“why not? zonko’s is pretty reliable when it comes to their products.” she said pointedly, looking at the extendable ears on sale.

“because i’m already in love with you.” matthias stated simply.

nina froze, turning to her boyfriend. during her time dating matthias, the hufflepuff had proven to be narrow minded and straightforward as a broom doing any and every thing. it was moments like these she was reminded that this included during his expressions of affection, and nina couldn’t love him more for it.

“i’m in love with you, too.” she declared, slipping her hand into her boyfriend’s. she had always liked...brooms. “now, come on. i want to see if we can get kaz to fall for a trick wand.”

3. all inej had wanted was a quiet place to study that wasn’t the library. she liked to practice with her wand for transfiguration, and magic wasn’t allowed in the library. she had been wandering the school for an empty classroom or quiet corner when the room of requirement had appeared at the end of a hallway, exactly moments before she was about to give up and return to the gryffindor common room. she was only half surprised when she opened the door and saw kaz, but like always, kaz hadn’t seemed surprised at all when she entered. he sat on top of a desk with his cane leaned against it, wand out, in the middle of a silent spell. inej let her eyes trail over his robe perched on a chair, his gloves off and set aside in a rare moment, and his uniform sleeves pulled up to his elbows.

“first time here?” kaz asked, not looking up from the book in his lap. his rough voice echoed slightly in the large room as inej scanned her surroundings. the room was empty besides a couple of desks and chairs in one corner, a cluttered pile of objects in another, and a big wardrobe that looked ages old. a fireplace on the wall kept the room warm, and a small chandelier hung above inej’s head.

“guess i didn’t require much until now.” inej shrugged, pulling a desk and chair of her own towards the center of the room. “you?”

kaz closed his book, finally looking up at inej. “i come and go when i want.”

inej wanted to know more about what had revealed the room to kaz in the first place, but she redirected the question away from kaz himself, knowing it was unlikely he would answer. “get anything out of it?” with kaz, it was all about gain.

kaz drummed his fingers on his desk. inej tried not to stare. “some crying first years with who miss their mums. i think i’ve witnessed a bit of every couple in the school’s snogging.” he pulled out a handful of extendable ears from his robe pocket. “snape’s planning something. don’t know the details yet, but something big.”

inej nodded. part of her expected kaz to leave, speak with his silence as he tended to do, but he continued to sit and look at inej, book in lap. inej knew him well enough to recognize that while it wasn’t exactly an invitation, kaz wasn’t saying no to a conversation. she could’ve started with a less risky question about snape’s plans, or asked for the names of the couples in their year, just to know, but inej was curious about other things.

“and how did you find this place, kaz?”

“the de kappel painting.” he said casually. “i needed a place to hide it.”

inej froze, taken aback by kaz’s answer. or more accurately, his willingness to answer. “so it’s true?” she questioned, hoping her voice didn’t give away her surprise. “the gringotts vault rumor.” she had half believed them to begin with, knowing kaz’s abilities but never his motives. still, kaz had never confirmed it with anyone as far as she had known.

“true enough.” kaz reopened his book, attention back on the page. inej inwardly sighed. the satisfaction of knowing kaz trusted her enough to confirm the gringotts rumor didn’t last long. figures kaz wouldn’t want to talk much about himself.

“but that’s a story for next time.” kaz flipped a page, the slightest start of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

next time, inej turned over in her head. she tried not to smile as she opened her own book. she could work with next time.

author’s note (pls read!) this is my first time on tumblr so idk how to use it too well but i’m overwhelmed by all the nice responses so thank you all so, so much. i see everything!! idk if there’s like poll mechanisms and stuff on tumblr (argh help) but i wanted to gauge what everyone would like next—im deciding between six of crows x pjo or shadow and bone x harry potter, so comment below what you’d like to see first (: i’d also love to hear abt any personal requests so my dms (is that what they’re called here?) are open for suggestions. no promises, but lmk if there’s something you want to read. feel free to get as niche as you want, respectfully! ok ik this is super long god bless your soul if u actually read the entire thing but finally, i just wanted to introduce myself—i’m lynn, this is my library and i dabble in most fandoms! my goal is to get at least one piece of writing out every month, so if you’d like to read what i write, follow along! OK im finally done, i swear. thank you again for the tremendous support. unbelievable. happy reading!

[milo-my-beloved]

chapter nine of stupid things!

Read on AO3 // Playlist // Buy me a coffee?

Group Chat: Double Daters

Jesper: guess where we’re going on friday

Inej: where?

Jesper: no u have to guess

Wylan: I know!! :D

Jesper: if u spoil it, i’m breaking up with u

Wylan: aw :(

Kaz: does this have anything to do with the email I just received?

Jesper: depends what ur email is about

Kaz: a ticket for a festival this friday

Jesper: ...yeah that’ll be it

Inej: why are we going to a festival?

Wylan: it’s our last friday together! I move on sunday :(

Kaz: do we have a choice in the matter?

Jesper: no

Kaz: then see you on friday, I guess

Jesper: hey Kaz you’re driving, right?

Inej laughs, sliding her phone back into her apron. It looks like there’ll be one last outing after all. She doesn’t know what she’ll do when she doesn’t have all these idiots to laugh at on her weekends, but she has an extra week to figure that out.

Nikolai wiggles his eyebrows. “Going on a hot date?”

“Shut up,” Inej whines, shoving him playfully. “We’re all going to a festival, actually.”

“Well, good luck,” he replies with a smirk. “I’m sure you’ll need it.”

{o0o}

The festival, as it turns out, is little more than a gathering of drunk people in a field decked out with a collection of speakers. Inej can’t say she’s particularly impressed, but she’s here now, so there’s no point in complaining.

“This is shit,” Kaz declares, his nose wrinkled in distaste as he surveys the crowd.

Inej smiles. “This barely classifies as a festival.”

“It’s closer to a houseparty that spilled out into the garden,” Kaz jokes, and Inej laughs.

He’s not wrong, though. Actually, it reminds her of the party where they first met.

“We need to stop being the only sober people at parties,” Inej announces, turning towards the bar. “Will you let me buy you a drink this time? I actually brought my wallet this time.”

Kaz grins, but shakes his head. “I’m the designated driver, remember? Besides,” he continues, pointing out Jesper and Wylan in the crowd. “I think one of us needs to stay sober to look after those two.”

Inej groans. “We need to stop going to parties just because Jesper asked us to.”

Kaz shrugs. “I don’t know… If we hadn’t gone to the last one, we never would have met.”

“I also wouldn’t have had to run away from a load of bouncers in my pajamas,” Inej replies, but she knows Kaz is right. “Jesper might not have been lying about the live music, though. Shall we see if we can find it?”

Kaz gives Inej one of his mischievous grins, offering her his arm, which she latches onto. “Sounds like fun,” he answers, and they head towards the crowd.

{o0o}

Jesper doesn’t remember the first time he met Wylan. He asked Kaz about it, later, but the man had just glared at him and told him that he would never pick him up from a houseparty again.

At the rate they are going, he isn’t going to remember tonight, either.

“WYLAN!” he yells over the music, slinging an arm around his boyfriend’s neck. They’ve been there for an hour or so, and thanks to the open bar, they’re both already quite tipsy. “HAVE I TOLD YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU?”

Wylan rolls his eyes, but Jesper’s rewarded by a huge, dopey grin. “You should do it more often,” he suggests, laughing at Jesper’s fake offense.

“WELL, I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH.”

Wylan laughs. “I love you too, idiot!”

Jesper suddenly goes very still, like he has just remembered something. He frowns, pulling his arm back and patting his back pocket but coming up empty.

“Have you lost your phone again?” Wylan asks, concerned.

Jesper shakes his head. “NO, IT’S FINE. LET’S GO FIND KAZ AND INEJ.”

Wylan doesn’t look particularly convinced, but he nods anyway. “I saw them head towards the stage,” he says, taking Jesper’s hand in his and squeezing it.

The stage is near the bar, anyway. So far, he’s not quite drunk enough to forget that school’s over, and with it, everyone will be going their separate ways. In just a week’s time, he’ll be back in the Van Eck mansion with his father, and he might never see his friends again.

Jesper squeezes his hand back, giving Wylan his most charming smile.

If this is our last hurrah, Wylan thinks, then I had better make the most of it.

{o0o}

There is, in fact, a stage. It’s tucked away in a corner of the field behind a few tall poplars and an alarmingly large bonfire, so Inej thinks it’s totally reasonable that it took them half an hour to find it.

If anyone brings up that it’s right next to the bar… well. She doesn’t really have a good excuse for that one.

Even though it feels impossible, Inej is sure it is getting more and more crowded with every minute that passes. She lost sight of Jesper and Wylan a while ago, and the ice has melted in her glass of lemonade, leaving it lukewarm and slightly sticky.

Kaz looks like he might throw up and she doesn’t blame him, so she grabs his hand and tugs him around the bonfire, climbing up onto a boulder and pulling him up after her. Away from the crowds, everything seems much more manageable.

“Thank you,” Kaz mutters. Inej squeezes his arm in response, taking a sip of her drink.

“Let’s hope no drunk people try to climb up after us,” she jokes, and Kaz smirks.

“I don’t know,” he replies, wrapping an arm around her back to stop her from tipping backwards. “I think it would be funny to watch.”

“Kaz!” Inej chastises, slapping his arm playfully. “It would definitely not be funny. They could get hurt.”

“HEY GUYS!” Jesper yells from right behind them, startling Inej enough for her drink to slosh all over her legs.

She locks eyes with Kaz, both of them desperately trying to stifle their grin, but they burst out laughing anyway.

Jesper doesn’t seem to notice. “CAN I HAVE MY VERY SPECIAL PRESENT, PLEASE?” he yells at Kaz, wobbling precariously as he reaches out a hand so Kaz can pass it over.

Kaz looks him up and down, sizing up whether or not it’s a good idea. Eventually, he sighs, reaching into the inside of his jacket so he can pass it over to Jesper.

“THANKS!” Jesper shouts, smiling widely, before jumping back down and dashing into the crowd, presumably to find Wylan.

They both watch him go, Inej dabbing absentmindedly at the spilt lemonade on her lap. These pants are old, so she doesn’t particularly mind them getting wet.

“What’s his ‘very special present’?” she asks, fishing in her bag for a tissue. She comes up with an old Subway napkin and stares at it for a second, before mentally shrugging and trying to make it look like she hasn’t wet herself.

“Unless he manages to completely fuck it up, I think you’ll know soon,” Kaz answers cryptically, but he has a fond smile on his face, so Inej doesn’t worry about it. She trusts Kaz to tell her everything she needs to know in his own time, and she isn’t going to push when she has bigger problems.

“I’m going to see if the bar has any more napkins,” she declares, twisting around so she can slide off the boulder. “Want anything to drink?”

“A glass of water would be nice,” Kaz replies, smiling down at her.

“A glass of napkins and a wad of tissues,” she confirms, nodding as she drops down onto the crowd. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t get lost,” Kaz jokes, leaning back into the extra space.

Inej just laughs, the noise disappearing into the night as she is swept into the crowd.

{o0o}

Jesper has the best plan in the entire world, and he’s absolutely sure the sober version of him would approve of it. That’s what his dad used to tell him - if you think you’re about to make a bad decision while drunk, figure out what sober you would think.

If he’s being honest, Jesper doesn’t think the sober version of him would be this calm about the plan. Sober Jesper would probably have put more than ten minutes of thought and more than three steps into the plan.

Luckily for him, Sober Jesper isn’t here.

Besides, it’s not like he has a history of making terrible decisions while drunk. Okay, sure, there have certainly been some… unfortunate accidents, shall we say, but nothing irredeemable. And, if you’re considering the bad things, you have to look at the good ones too; Kaz and Inej may never have met without him drunk dialing both of them, and look how happy they are!

(Well, happy is a relative term with Kaz. Jesper has seen him smile more than once a month, which - for Kaz - is an absolute win.)

Jesper’s favourite drunk decision is somewhere in the crowd, probably getting them both another drink. He feels bad about leaving Wylan on his own, but the first two steps of the plan require total secrecy, and it’s only for a few minutes. He’s sure Wylan can manage for that long.

With step one (Retrieve The Goods) complete, it’s time for step two of Jesper’s master plan.

He heads towards the stage.

{o0o}

There are no napkins at the bar. Inej doesn’t really know what she was expecting, considering the biggest infrastructure at this entire ‘festival’ is a few people stood on a unstable platform with some speakers next to it, but she’s still a little disappointed.

A little bit of looking around confirms that there aren’t even any toilets for her to grab some loo roll from, so she’s stuck with her one soggy napkin, Kaz’s glass of water, and not a lot else.

“‘Nej?” someone asks from behind her, and she swirls around to find Wylan looking a little dazed.

“Wylan?” she asks, concerned. “Are you okay? Where’s Jesper?”

Wylan shrugs, his entire body wobbling with the effort of staying up straight. “He said he had to go do something and that he’d be back in a minute, but now I can’t find him.”

Inej mentally curses him. “Did he tell you where he was going?”

Wylan pouts, considering her question. “The stage, maybe?”

“Okay,” Inej says, looping her arm through his so they don’t get separated. “Let me deliver this to Kaz, then we’ll all go find him together, okay?”

Wylan nods, looking pretty put out. Inej isn’t sure what he’s been drinking, but if the blue stains on his shirt are anything to go by, it’s a weird mix of something probably designed to get you drunk fast.

The bar is fairly close to the boulder where they were sitting, so it only takes a few moments to get there. Inej lets go of Wylan’s hand, making him promise to wait where he is for a minute, before clambering up the rock one handed so she can pass the glass of water to Kaz.

Only, when she reaches the top of the boulder, Kaz isn’t there.

“For fuck’s sake,” Inej mutters, looking around to see if she can spot him, but finding nothing. She carefully balances his glass of water on top for if he returns before dropping back to the ground beside Wylan.

“Kaz isn’t coming?” Wylan asks, sounding unreasonably upset by the news.

“He’s not there,” Inej explains, grabbing Wylan’s sticky hand so he doesn’t wander off.

“Oh. Can we find Jes now?”

“Sure,” Inej says gently, pushing her way through the crowd so they can head towards the stage. “‘Don’t get lost’, you said,” she mutters as they go. “What a load of horseshit.”

{o0o}

When Kaz spots Jesper clambering onto the stage, he slides off the boulder and heads towards the stage in record time. Sure, he had agreed to help when Jesper had told him about his plans, but he never thought he’d go through with them drunk.

Only a special kind of idiot does that, and Kaz had been stupid to think Jesper didn’t qualify.

A few elbow jabs and well-placed ankle whacks later, Kaz makes it to the stage. Jesper is up there, whispering something to the guy on the drums, who starts to smile and nods enthusiastically.

Kaz climbs onto the platform, grabbing Jesper’s arm and yanking him back down. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Jesper blinks at him slowly, like he’s trying to comprehend Kaz’s question. “STEP TWO!” he exclaims, grinning.

Kaz briefly considers kicking Jesper in the privates, but refrains, satisfied with just the mental picture. “What?”

“Kaz!” a woman’s voice yells from the crowd, and he turns around to see Inej leading a very drunk Wylan behind her. “Where’d you go?”

Before he can get out a response, the song finishes and the lead singer steps up to the microphone, tapping it a few times to get everyone’s attention.

“Hey everyone! Thank y’all so much for coming out here to show your support, it means a lot to us! Now, before we go onto the next song, we have a very special announcement to make…”

The crowd lets out a collective ‘ooh’, everyone’s eyes on the stage.

“Is there a Wylan in the audience with us today? Come on up here, we want to meet you!”

Kaz watches as Wylan hesitates at Inej’s elbow, hovering for a moment before making his way up to the stage. He’s too drunk to climb up by himself, but the singer just seems to find his clumsiness endearing, and gives him a hand to help him up.

Inej comes around the side of the stage to stand with Kaz. “What’s going on?”

Kaz shrugs. “I would like to officially state that I didn’t know Jesper was going to do it this dramatically.”

“Okay everyone, here’s Wylan! Now, Wylan, your lovely boyfriend over here - Jesper, he’s called - he wants to ask you a question up on stage, if that’s alright.”

A heavy silence hangs over everyone in the crowd as Jesper steps up to the microphone, seeming more sober than he has all night. He swallows nervously, fidgeting with something behind his back.

“Wylan… I know we haven’t known each other very long,” he begins, his voice unsteady. “But I love you much very and I think you are really cute.”

Wylan blushes, apparently not noticing the fact that Jesper is barely speaking English.

“I just wanted to tell you that you’re the best, and…” Jesper pauses for dramatic effect, waiting a few seconds before dropping to one knee and holding a ring out in front of him. “D’ya want to be the best with me forever?”

Wylan is far beyond words - Kaz is pretty sure he’s crying - but he launches himself at Jesper and they both topple to the ground in a laughing, crying heap.

“Is that a yes?” the singer says, stepping up to the mic. “I think it is! Congratulations, guys!”

The crowd explodes into cheers, everyone now personally invested in Jesper and Wylan’s relationship. The two of them still haven’t managed to successfully pick themselves up off the floor, their arms wrapped around each other as they kiss.

“We’re taking them home,” Inej decides, grinning widely, and Kaz isn’t about to complain. They’re both absolutely pissed, and he isn’t about to spend hours scouring a field tomorrow when they inevitably lose the ring. “And then we’re gonna cuddle on their couch and watch a movie.”

“The deal is the deal,” Kaz says, both of them grinning as they remember the night they met. “Let’s get these two idiots home.”

{o0o}

Jesper wakes up many hours later to a bursting bladder and his head feeling like it is about to explode. He sits up, gently disentangling a drooling Wylan from his side, when he spots the ring on his boyfriend’s hand and he stills.

“What. The. Fuck,” he whispers to himself.

Instinct has him reaching to his forehead, and sure enough, Kaz has been kind enough to leave a note taped to him. On it is printed a single word: Congratulations.

Jesper smiles. Maybe proposing while drunk was a stupid thing to do, but his life is made up of a million stupid things, and he wouldn’t trade a single one of them for the world.

[rukiakwashere]

Chasing Last Summer

An amazing experience while working with talented artist for the @grishaversebigbang 

Corporalki: 

@gimmedafood

Materialki:  

@anubem (link to art), 

@bookish-ginger (link to art),

@wellwatersurprise  (link to art)

Summary: 

As Jesper is trying to settle down, away from cards on the Van Eck estate with Wylan alongside him as a work partner, wondering what to do with his father’s empire, they both start thinking of what they want. The Summer they left behind them went great so maybe it was time to get something serious going on. While busy reordering their priorities, Wylan receives a letter (more like hides it) and it all goes downhill after that...

Jesper boards a ship... The Wraith makes a visit and convinces some cane-dude to tag along... Some Grisha appear... And Wylan may or may not fulfil one of Kaz’s lifelong dreams

tl;dr Post-Crooked Kingdom Wesper making their best to figure out themselves and each other.

Ao3 Link : https://archiveofourown.org/works/33678499/chapters/83698627

[Chapter one under cut]:

Jesper looked at the clock on the wall for what seemed like the twentieth time in the meeting. He fidgeted on his seat looking left and right spotting both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Men and women, mostly old, everyone much older than he was.

Wylan was on his left, completely still and focused on the woman speaking loudly,  moving her hands animatedly to make her point. Jesper thought that her hands were too distracting, he really couldn’t make what the point was with so much waving around. Wylan on the other hand seemed to perfectly understand. He nodded a lot when anyone paused, he offered his opinion when asked and he conversed easily with all the businesspeople around him. It suited him, Jesper thought. Wylan Van Eck looked like a businessman in his own right. His young and calm presence made people trust him and his ironed black and white suit made them believe he was one of their own, refined elite. 

Jesper, on the other hand, didn’t know what to make of himself. His long legs never remained in the same place for more than mere seconds and his awkward posture as he tried to fit on the chair always brought on curious and sometimes annoyed stares. People weren’t used to seeing someone like him sitting on their expensive and elegant chairs. They simply weren’t made for him.

Still, Wylan never commented on anything. Sometimes he caught Jesper’s stare in a meeting and all he did was nod- like he was on autopilot. Jesper didn’t know what to make of it. Was he just another face in Wylan’s business-related crowd? Sometimes he wasn’t that sure if Wylan was only keeping him around because of the promise they had made months ago. Was he just pitying him? 

Jesper didn’t know if being Wylan’s secretary was the lowest or highest point of his life to date. 

Occasionally, he wondered what life would be like if he had never made that deal, not being Wylan’s eyes. Nina’s offer echoed in his ears. Ravka… Would he dare to leave home and become a Grisha? Probably not. 

He would have been back at the Barrel, sitting at a gambling table spending the money he had till it vanished. At least working with Wylan saved him from going broke again, he concluded. Still, was he happy with where his life was at now? Spending his days waiting for the next meeting, talking about things he had little interest in with people that didn’t interest him?

Wylan though… The ginger’s presence was steady and when they weren’t in a meeting, he was okay to be around. Jesper didn’t mind his presence, he rather enjoyed Wylan’s witty remarks and random facts. 

The past few days though, the ginger seemed less and less enthusiastic about anything. Dark circles seemed to have formed permanently below his eyes and he seemed to be sighing a lot – and it didn’t seem to be because of Jesper’s breathtaking presence.

“Wy?” Jesper mouthed, poking the ginger’s shoulder lightly. Wylan didn’t seem surprised, turning discretely towards him with a tired smile. 

“What happened?” Jesper read the ginger’s lips. 

“You cool?”, he mouthed back.

~~~

Wylan had the audacity to snort, suppressing his laughter at Jesper’s question. He opted for a small hands-up and a smile that nearly reached his eyes. Sincerely, he felt tired and spent.

He didn’t know business. Kaz had taught him the basics, which felt more like the principles of manipulation, bribery and theft – which Wylan had decided pretty quickly, were better than nothing.

His father had given up on him early on, realizing Wylan’s bad relationship with letters would make him a bad businessman and would let people exploit him freely. His father never imagined, though, his son would have found Jesper, the only person Wylan could put his trust on fully - and did so every day. 

Jesper was the one responsible for what came in and what went out, who might prove beneficial and who was to be avoided. He read stacks of papers daily, and even though his legs wouldn’t stop moving and tapping the floor, he read them all and reported every line he found even slightly useful back to Wylan. While all Wylan could do was sit and wait, pretending the numbers he could make out at the sheets in his hands were enough.

He didn’t understand why Jesper was still there. His awkward fidgeting at the meetings they attended together made it clear that he felt out of place. Wylan was sure Jesper was longing for action, his revolvers out, not hidden inside his jacket. Sure, they were sharing their profits but was Jesper missing the Slat? Did he want to go back to risking his life every day? To feel the thrill of chasing and being chased? Was Jesper still around him out of pity, trapped in a promise he had made while in action, when he wasn’t sure if he would make it out alive to see the next sunrise? 

Maybe, it was the same as his awkward confession, a stupid phrase that kept replaying in Wylan’s mind even though he had hit stop months ago. Maybe I like your stupid face. 

Wylan was annoyed with himself about how a six-word sentence that nearly insulted him made him feel so tingly and weird inside. He soon realized though, as the battle came to an end, as his dad backed off, as Kaz won whatever feud he had with Pekka Rollins, that some things that are best left unsaid can rise in the heat and uncertainty of a battle and what happened between him and Jesper had been one of them. 

We were fugitives, bounties on our heads. Of course, some emotions would be misunderstood, Wylan repeated in his head.

What happened with Jesper was one of them. Wylan was passable and the time they had spent together just- was like that. It meant nothing more. Jesper might have kissed him twice, or once – damn Kuwei – but as things calmed down and they went back to their lives, old and new, he didn’t approach him again in that way - apart from the occasional flirting - and Wylan… Wylan felt really stupid to have expected something more.

Wylan poked the side of his cheek, annoyed with himself. This wasn’t time for his thoughts to be drifting. The meeting… He had to speak with Lady Kadrir and make sure their agreement held,even though the head of the Van Eck family had changed and he needed to speak with that white haired man and give his condolences to that Lady and so many things he had never pictured himself doing ever before.

He never expected to be here. When his father still tolerated him, Wylan dreamed of a music school and maybe joining a theater orchestra with his flute. Even when his father decided otherwise, he still hoped for a demo-related work at the Crows or maybe someone reaching out and joining a traveling band… never business. His father had made it clear early on that he was not suited for that and it was the only thing Wylan and his father had agreed upon. He wasn’t sure he would like it… and he had yet to decide.

Business was… weird. Wylan’s perspectives of it had been two; one when he was growing up, seeing his father busy with paperwork he was always signing… and then, there was business the way the Dregs did it. Meetings under the fold of darkness, sometimes gunshots sounding along, a gambling parlor expecting tourists and sailors from far away…

Yet, what he felt he was doing on his own, was different. Sure, Jesper seemed to be writing and reading tons of stuff but Wylan thought of business as constant meetings, a lot of useless information in his head and a relentless bell ringing in his head reminding him to be polite yet entitled. That was the way. 

At first, he liked being good at it, memorizing estates, meeting people that didn’t look at him down their noses, because Wylan Van Eck possessed property the same way they did. He sat and talked and traded in the language they understood.

Still, that feeling had slowly drifted away, as the bell in his head rang louder and louder. He felt lost and disconnected, yet he wouldn’t stop. He was more determined than ever not to give up. Those meetings had come to be the only place where he felt like he proved his worth. The only thing he could be good at and be of use.

“Mister Van Eck.” 

It was his turn to speak.

“As my father retired and passed me on new property, I’ve made the decision to establish a reliable network around the Van Eck brand.” Words scripted and exercised in front of a mirror, delivered to an audience just like in a theater. 

It’s fine. I can work like this. At least that’s what he convinced himself as he went on with his speech.

~~~

[serene-victory-77]

The Rodent Whisperer Of Ketterdam

This is my piece for the Grishaverse Mini Bang of 2021, thank you to @grishaversebigbang for hosting this event! @offrostandflames 

My wonderful Materialki/Artists amazing and lovely pieces:

Frisslimbim’s Art and Instagram and Offrostandflames’ Art and Instagram

Summary: Kaz Brekker is known throughout the Barrel for his various schemes and skills. But there's one particular talent no one in his life is privy to, and it's going to help him get 30 million kruge. Crack Fic, Short And Sweet!

Fic:

Kaz walked away from the meeting with Jan Van Eck, his mind racing.

He’d accepted the deal, accepted 30 million kruge for breaking into the Ice Court and stealing a scientist with a drug that could change the world.

But Kaz wasn’t an idiot. It was too risky for humans, and only his best people could maybe do it. He didn’t like his chances.

There was no way he was gonna risk human error.

He hesitated. There was another option, but did he really want to instead use them?

Kaz thought about it for a long while as he made his way to the Slat. They were brave, they were many, and their relationship ran deep.

If he was being honest, they probably were his best, despite Jesper and Inej’s skill.

And humans…. Humans wouldn’t ever be able to succeed, he figured.

He knew what he had to do. He knew who he could trust.

Kaz closed the door behind him as Inej left the room. He looked around.

“Calling a meeting,” he said, tapping his cane thrice on the floor.

There was a rustle within the walls, the pitter patter of dozens upon dozens of feet. They came out of the walls, climbed through a cracked open window, found their place among the rafters and on top of his desk.

They were Kaz’s army, grown since he was nine and now an unknown force in his arsenal.

The Great Order Of Mice and The Virtuous Rat Society.

They named themselves.

He waited a little bit longer for them to all get settled.

“Thank you for your fast arrival,” he said, grabbing some cheese and crackers, as well as some bowls of water, setting them on a platter on the floor. “I have a big job for you all,”

The rodents chittered between themselves before looking up at him curiously.

He hesitated. “It involves leaving Ketterdam for a colder climate. It’s very dangerous. You might need the entire colony,”

The rodents stopped nibbling to stare at him. One of the bigger rats squeaked in confusion.

“Yes, I know, that’s a lot of you, and you guys aren’t used to being outside Ketterdam. But the reward is 30 million kruge ,”

The entire assembly went silent before wild squeaking ensued.

Kaz held up a hand. “Quiet, please, don’t alarm the Dregs,”

They calmed down again but all stood on their hind legs, nibbling their food while staring at him with wide eyes.

“I will tell you what it entails, and we can decide your reward if you agree. We’ll need to do some extra training to handle the colder weather, but that will wait a bit,”

They nodded, and Kaz settled down to explain what he could.

The briefing lasted two hours, and then the next night he had to go and break Helvar out of prison for more details to give to the army. They seemed to be in general good spirits about the entire thing, despite Kaz’s warning of danger and ice.

When he came back with all of the information he had gathered, including several small copied versions of the maps and diagrams Wylan had drawn, the real training began.

“No, the keys are going to be more complex than anything you see in the Barrel,” Kaz shook his head and laid out several old complicated door knobs and keyholes. “Show me how you’d open this,”

The rat squeaked determinedly and set to work.

“Even if you’re stealing from them, you can’t go around being sloppy,” Kaz frowned, straightening the bowties of a group of mice. The mice wore black ribbons, the rats gray, and The Council Of Rodents red. “I do not dress sloppy, and you shall not either. You are representing all Ketterdam rodents with this mission,”

They nodded seriously and let him adjust their ribbons.

“Make sure to take baths!” Kaz called after them once they were done. “You do not spread viral infections to other countries, alright!?”

Affirmative squeaks.

“It’s going to be cold, but your feet are grabby so we can’t cover them. You’re already used to Ketterdam cold, but this is different entirely,” Kaz warned them. “I tried finding some ice for you to practice on, and I’ve got...” he put several boxes atop his desk, “You guys some coats. There should be enough for all of you and are in different sizes, everyone in single file,”

The Council Of Rodents was following Kaz around town as they decided what treats he would be buying them with his share of the money.

He watched with hidden pride as the mice distracted the bakery shopkeeper and a group came from the left flank to pry open display cases and steal bread.

“They’ve come so far,” he whispered to one of the older rats that was standing on a ledge near Kaz’s head. It nodded in agreement.

A customer tried to bat away one of the rats with her purse, and a group of them jumped on her face in revenge.

“So far,” he nodded, pleased.

At the end of the week, in the hours before the sun had even risen over the sea’s horizon, Kaz stood at Fifth Harbor.

“Is everyone here?” he asked, looking over the crowd of rodents.

Two tardy mice ran from behind a shop and squeaked in apology.

“Alright, then. That ship over there is manned by someone who works for me. He has been instructed to leave you all alone and not bring a cat on board the ship. I’ve set aside barrels of cider, water, seeds, fruits, cheese, and crackers for you in the hold of the ship, so do not steal from the humans,”

One of the rats snickered and Kaz sighed. “Yes, I know I usually tell you to steal from the humans, but work with me here,”

They nodded.

“Does everyone have their maps?”

The rodents rummaged through their tiny leather pouches and waved their small maps at him.

“Weapons?”

Needles flew up into the air.

“No one is missing their coat?”

No negative squeak.

Kaz nodded. “Well, then, everyone. The ship departs in forty minutes. The journey will take a few weeks, and you’ll have to wait a while once you arrive. Do you remember what day you have to go to the Ice Court?”

Chitters confirmed they did.

Kaz took a deep breath. “Then, off to the boat with you. I trust I’ll be seeing you in two month’s time. No mourners,”

They squeaked back their best rendition of “No funerals,”, taking their individual time to pat his shoe in affirmance, and scrambled towards the boat.

Kaz stood and watched the boat until it departed.

As an extra safety measure, he ended up sending some guard crows to travel with the ship. Just being careful.

The great part about not sending humans to do your job is that people have a lot harder time figuring out which boat you’re going on, so Kaz had fun getting rid of the Black Tips that had failed to do any damage, as his army was already far out at sea.

Kaz had been training the rodents for a long time. He’d long since taken in stride that for some reason, not only could they understand him, but they could actually communicate back, and they were his secret weapon in everyday life. If things were too risky or complicated for Inej, he sent them to find out people’s secrets and bring back the information he used to control people like Geels.

He didn’t typically do big jobs with them though, they were too valuable to put in danger like that, but they were the only ones he could trust to really get the job done.

Still, despite his confidence in their abilities, he worried.

The next few weeks there were only about a couple dozen rodents from both the Order and Society, the ones that were either too young or too elderly to handle the trip, but they could still do work around Ketterdam, and news of what Jan Van Eck planned to do infuriated Kaz.

He wasn’t gonna not give his army their rewards, so while he waited for them to come back, he went about ruining lives.

Kaz found himself spending a lot of time with Wylan, Nina, Matthias, Jesper, and Inej the following weeks, one part because they were working on tearing down Wylan’s father, and one part because he had nothing else to do. The mouse and rats that were still there had taken to also watching Kaz’s companions.

He found a red fabric scrap and handed it to one of the mice, and later on, they came up to him, showing off the now rather dress-like piece.

“Who are you supposed to be, Nina?” he asked.

Affirmative squeak.

Kaz rolled his eyes and the mouse flicked their tail at him in contempt.

“Actually, you kind of have it down,” he noted, and the mouse sniffed haughtily before clambering away.

“Where’d you get that?” Kaz asked a rat playing with some gambling chips. “Better not be from the Crow Club,”

The rat showed him the Dime Lion insignia on the chips.

“Oh, you can always steal from them. But why the gambling chips?”

The rat twirled and did a little motion with its hands.

“Jesper? Really?”

He found a large, rather grumpy rat watching the Nina Mouse one day. He didn’t even have to wonder who that one was taking inspiration from, and instead handed Matthias Rat a piece of ice.

A small mouse had taken to stealing matches and trying to light small fires.

“You are not a demo expert,” Kaz told the mouse. “I don’t care how many hours you’ve spent watching the Merchling,”

The mouse squeaked sadly and Kaz frowned.

“Fine, you can mess with the matches, but have Jesper Rat watch over you,”

Wylan Mouse seemed to sigh but went with Jesper Rat anyway.

One of the smallest mice had taken to riding on Kaz’s shoulder whenever Kaz was walking the streets at night. At first, he’d wondered why, knowing he didn’t need to be watched over, but then he found that that mouse had been collecting needles, sharp metal bits, and even a small human-sized knife, and Inej Mouse was established.

A little longer than two months later, he stood on Fifth Harbor once more, the Five of Rodents waiting alongside him. A crow had arrived two days ago, with a note from the rodents that they were on their way, but complications had occurred.

He worried about numbers lost, or maybe that some of them had been imprisoned, but that wasn’t the result.

They came from the ship's hold like an ocean, carrying a small boy through pure willpower.

Kaz raised his eyebrows. “Welcome home, everyone. That doesn’t look like an old scientist to me,”

A group of them came forward, clambering over each other to explain what had happened.

“One at a time,” Kaz scolded, looking them over. It seemed that their numbers were almost intact. Clearly, some had been lost, but all in all, the casualties were minimal. He was relieved.

They explained what had happened, and Kaz sighed. Well, the old man was dead, but at least they had the son.

“Kuwei, was it?” he told the Shu boy. “Don’t speak to anyone about them,”

The boy just nodded nervously, looking more confused than anyone Kaz had ever seen.

A mouse piped up and Kaz turned incredulously. “You did what to Pekka Rollins?”

There was a gleeful chitter and Kaz smirked. “This is why I trust you guys,”

One of them asked about the reward.

“Yeah, I know,” Kaz told them. “Things got a little bit messy with Jan Van Eck, but now he’s in jail, and you guys have your own house fully stocked with food,”

A triumphant orchestra of squeaks filled the early Ketterdam morning, and Kaz grinned as the army ran onto the streets of the Barrel, pitter-pattering away.

--

[lilacs-with-lavender]

Slip Away Pt. 1

Read it on Ao3 here!

Kaz Brekker x Inej Ghafa

For my lovely six of crows ladies, you all know who you are. Thanks for making the tale end of 2020 a little less of a nightmare. Merry Christmas!

Summary:

After a long year of putting slaver ships at the bottom of the ocean, Captain Inej Ghafa docks in Ketterdam for the first time in a long while. She tells herself she’s come back to take on some new crew, maybe visit a few old friends. But if Inej is being honest with herself Jesper’s last few letters have had her worrying about a certain bastard of the barrel, one she hasn’t heard from in months. One who’s rasping voice and light touches have haunted her dreams since she left.

WC: 2,556

Warnings: Angst, feels, Crooked Kingdom spoilers!

The first thing she noticed was the familiar smell. The salt of the sea mixed with Ketterdam’s smoke and oil to form the scent that used to greet her every morning she slipped out the window of her room in the Slat. Off to collect some information about the Dime Lions’ plans or the Razor Gulls latest recruits, helping to encourage meaningless gang wars over territory. It was hard not to imagine herself as young and naive when looking back at her time spent with the Dregs, even if things had changed after the Ice Court job, even if now she’d found her true calling.

A small part of her still resented that girl who had obeyed Kaz Brekker without question, without thought. 

The Wraith came into port, making for that berth he had given her all those years ago, and Inej felt the wind whip at her hair as she took in the sight of her city. 

The young woman she was now spent little to no time thinking of Ketterdam’s infamous crime boss, if her thoughts strayed to her past visits to this place she lost her focus. Sailing, looking after her crew, and going after slavers, that’s what mattered. 

Now, with her crew eager to take a reprieve from life on the True Sea, Inej had time to think about him. Them. Both now laden with even more titles than they’d had when she had left last year. Even on the sea, she could never escape the odd mention of him, Ketterdam’s king of the Barrel. 

The shouts of her crew shook the pirate queen from her thoughts, the melody of her battleship’s sails and ropes forming sweet music as they worked to secure The Wraith to her dock. Once the gangplank had been lowered and she’d seen everyone off, Inej hesitated. No matter how many times she returned to Ketterdam her heart always beat this nervous staccato at the prospect of seeing who awaited her at the docks.

She had thought with the years that had gone by she had matured, lost the naive part of her that hoped, longed for a sight of him waiting to greet her. Cane in hand as if not a day had passed since she last saw him. 

Most of the time she was disappointed, this time was no different. 

But when her quick scan of the crowd found only Jesper and Wylan waiting for her she stole herself, a smile lighting up her face as she dropped her bags and embraced them, forcing the disappointment down until it was nothing but a memory.

~*~

Dinner at the Van Eck household was always a good time, and tonight was no exception. Drinks were passed around and Wylan dined with his whole household, a now natural occurrence since he had insisted from the beginning that such a ridiculously large dining table be put to good use. Inej enjoyed herself, dazzling the girls in his employment with tales of her adventures. One, in particular, a sweet-tempered Shu girl who cared for the house’s grounds with her father, took to Inej right away.

“After you rescued those Ravkans did they join your crew?” She asked, in awe of one of The Wraith’s latest conquests, a slave ship that had specialized in Grisha. 

Inej twirled more pasta around her fork, “Well, we give them a choice, they can rejoin their families in Ravka or join our crew. It’s a harrowing experience being taken, most choose to return home.”

The girl wrinkled her nose slightly, “I’d definitely join your crew.” Then seeming to realize what she had said she blushed, golden eyes darting away from Inej’s amused expression.

“I think that’s a terrific idea,” her face lit up like the sun at that but glimpsing the girl’s father eyeing them warily across the table, Inej added, “for when you’re old enough to sail of course.” 

She frowned but nodded after a moment, fixing Inej with a very serious look for a thirteen-year-old and saying solemnly,  “that’s probably for the best, I’m not that good of a swimmer.”

Inej laughed but schooled her face into a serious nod as the girl was led to bed by her father, the rest of the household heading home one by one and leaving the three of them alone. It was a comfortable silence, the food finished and their bellies full, Inej opened her mouth to ask how Jes’s father had been when she caught sight of something on his hand that threw the all-knowing Wraith for a loop. 

Wylan saw where her eyes were fixed and smiled as the realization dawned on her, “That isn’t a… You two aren’t-”

Apparently unable to contain himself any longer Wylan cut her off mid-stutter, “Engaged?”

Inej blinked at Jesper who for once in his life looked shy as he fingered the carved silver band that now graced his ring finger. “You didn’t tell me?!”

He had the audacity to shrug sheepishly, “I could’ve told you in my last letter but we wanted to tell you in person! Nina and Kaz still don’t know!”

Wylan said smugly under his breath then, “Kuwei does though, and he’s not as happy.”

A shocked breath of laughter escaped her then and she smiled as they glanced at each other, the devotion in their eyes so clear it tugged at her heart. “I assume this means my pirate spoils for you both will have to wait until the wedding then.”

Jesper looked at her, stricken, “Wait what- no pirate spoils until the wedding?” 

He turned to Wylan, face somber, “I’m afraid I have to rescind my I do merchling”. 

Wylan rolled his eyes and looked to Inej with an expression that said, can you believe this is the idiot I decided to marry? 

The conversation quickly turned to Jesper’s outrageous wedding plan involving a releasing of crows instead of doves but as the three of them laughed, she couldn’t help but feel lonely, with just the ship, the sea, and her crew for company it was easy to forget Inej didn’t have what they had. Never permanently. Even though she’d tried…

She blinked back the memories of rare sunny days during the summer when she had docked here, receiving notes inviting her to various high-end bakeries and cafes throughout the financial district that she’d never stepped foot in. Refused to remember stolen kisses in alleyways as they walked back, the barest brush of skin-to-skin contact that had her floating through the rest of the day. But inevitably it had ended how it always did, with tense arguments about who was worthy of who, rainy nights that left her in such a state that she left without saying goodbye… 

It was those vivid memories that caused her to mutter, her voice barely above a whisper as she asked, “How’s he been?”

Jesper and Wylan stopped their banter to answer her, bright expressions turning solemn and sad, they pity me, she realized. “We haven’t seen him in two months Inej.”

Her braid swung off her shoulder when she turned to Jesper, brows furrowed, “You promised you’d check on him in your last letter Jes.”

Her old friend sighed, as if weary of dealing with Kaz Brekker’s moods now that he’d found happiness for himself without said bastard of the barrel. “I did, he refused to see us.”

She spluttered slightly, the audacity of this man. “He refused- I’ll go then.”

Wylan and Jesper exchanged a pointed glance and Inej looked between them, “What now?”

Jesper winced as Wylan prodded him, “He sort of told us that he didn’t want to see anyone we brought by… he may have mentioned you specifically.”

Wylan cleared his throat when she opened her mouth to ask why exactly he would say such a thing, explaining quickly. “We, um... we think he was drunk.”

Inej stared at the both of them incredulously, Kaz had done many questionable things while she’d known him but he’d never gotten drunk. 

“How on earth could you tell, I thought you didn’t see him.” 

There it was again, that shared knowing look between the two of them, it was starting to get on her nerves. Eventually, it was Jes who said, “the orders didn’t really sound like a sober man’s words… we may also have heard some rumors a while back, something about Dirtyhands losing focus on the job.” Inej winced, if that had been because he’d been thinking of her… the Kaz Brekker she knew wouldn’t have forgiven himself very easily. Saints, she had been away for too long. 

Rising from the dinner table she lay her napkin down and grabbed her cloak, “I have to go check on him.”

Wylan just sighed and said, “We know.”

~*~

She stuck to the rooftops by habit, their different dips and gullies like old friends as she made for the Slat. Inej was once again struck with the odd feeling of being thrown back in time as she leapt over tiles. Suddenly she was sixteen and heading back to the Slat to report, her day spent eavesdropping and spying for Dirtyhands… for Kaz. 

Now she was almost twenty and as she approached the glowing windows of the Slat her old perch outside of Kaz’s office seemed small. The treasured refuge of a barely healing girl and her crows. 

Inej slipped through the window, breath sucked in now that she had developed the curves and muscle that came with being a woman her age. Standing in the dimly lit room brought back memories she had kept locked away while at sea. Quite nights spent talking, eating, laughing… sharing hesitant touches whenever she visited Ketterdam. But always that reservation in him, the thought he had voiced on several occasions that rankled her. 

Not good enough, not deserving, monster.

Inej still had faith in him, there was no one who held her heart hostage more than Kaz Brekker. Despite all his ridiculous self-loathing that secret part of her still remained. The bit that held onto hopes of a sun drenched future with the bastard of the barrel.

So she felt no small amount of disappointment when she found him face down in papers at his desk, undercut dramatically disheveled. He looked a bit as if he had been tearing at his hair. The mess on his desk made it quite impossible not to guess what he had been doing before passing out. 

Splayed across the worn wood were unfinished papers, all with his coarse yet refined handwriting, all addressed to her. Inej shuddered as she happened across one without her name, addressed only to 

My Treasure,

Someone had been very drunk indeed. 

She turned away before any other words jumped out at her, slipping off her cloak and hanging it on the stand next to his hat. It had only been a few months since she’d last been here but it felt like longer. A quick glance at the rest of her room and it was clear Kaz was still using Per Haskell’s old office for business. This floor was just his rumbled unmade bed and the old desk, on which the letters were splayed. 

Sighing, she reached for him, breath hitching when her bare hands shook his shoulders gently. When there was no response she shook harder.

“Kaz.”

His face was still hidden in his arms but a muffled groan had the corners of her mouth perking up. Her voice turned sing-song as she bid him again,“Wake up Kaz.”

He lifted his head and blinked at her blearily, eyes clearing as she fought not to laugh. His voice sounded tougher than usual when he spoke however, and her stomach did a somersault. “I-Inej?”

He looked so confused, so out of his depth, she really couldn’t help herself.

“Hello, my treasure.”

Kaz blinked twice and Inej would be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy the way his pale skin flushed as the realization hit him. Before she could purr anymore adoring nicknames he buried his face in his bare hands, an audible, “Fuck”, his only response. 

Inej laughed, spirits rising as she helped him out of the chair, not trusting him to balance on his own two feet. Kaz made no objections surprisingly, only held onto her shoulder as they made their way to his bed. She glanced at his profile, the scars she had memorized were still there, his fading blush and pained expression all synonymous with the boy she had missed on the True Sea. 

Before she could slide out from under his arm to set him on the bed, however, Inej was stopped by a hand at her waist. Her eyes holding his as he leaned towards her, slowly moving both hands up from her hips to her back until they were so close she could tuck her head under his chin if she wanted to. 

Instead she held his gaze, the intensity and longing there no doubt mirroring her own as he leaned closer. Inej held her breath now, gaze fixed on the rafters above them as he pressed a kiss to her neck and settled there pulling her closer by the waist until she was encircled by his arms. 

“I missed you.” The soft admission was spoken just next to her ear, and she shivered, hands curling against the front of his shirt. She doubted it was the alcohol talking now, it was the most honest thing she’d ever heard him say when she came to visit. It was always the game of “What business?” and “Good to see you back Wraith.” Certainly never this.

Inej couldn’t be happier, in fact, she could die right here in his arms and it would be a wonderful way to greet death. It was only when his kisses resumed that she realized he needed sleep. Kaz never moved this fast sober, the boy she knew could spend hours just playing with her hair and be fulfilled. 

Inebriated Kaz, however, didn’t seem to have the same idea and Inej had to push him away. His hands dropped to his sides and when she shoved him further down onto his bed, those bitter coffee eyes that she so loved begining to flutter shut. Before she could turn away from him however he reached a hand for her wrist, not even flinching as he blinked up at her slowly. “Stay… please.”

Now it was her turn to flush, her eyes darting from his bare feet to his loose shirt and rumpled hair. There was no way this would end well, but as always, when it came to Kaz Brekker, Inej’s common sense made itself scarce. 

So she toed off her boots and slipped her knife belt under the bed, walking to the window and door to lock both before laying down beside him. They had never dared share a bed over night before, certainly not after any amount of what they considered intimacy. Usually after such intense touching both of them were quite tired out and more than ready to take a break. Now, Inej could only think of how warm he felt next to her, how right. 

And as she drifted off with her head tucked into the crook of his neck, she couldn’t help but think that this was better than anything the True Sea had to offer. 

~*~

First kanej fic and I’m freaking outtt you guys I hope I did them justice! A ship that gave me the will to live over quarantine deserves only the finest *sobs*

Anyways Merry Christmas all!! Please come say hi on ao3 or reblog this post if you have time & tell me how you liked this!! ~ Love Liles

[anonniemousefics]

My Dearest Inej | Chapter Six

Chapter Masterlist

Originally posted on AO3

Rating: Teen And Up

Synopsis: A series of letters kept among the personal belongings of Captain Inej Ghafa.

Chapter Six: Dear Nina

Hello, lovely,  

Some news and a request. I am going away on an assignment for the next several months, and this one’s rather sensitive. It means I’ll be out of reach for a time. Don’t worry your wonderful Inej brain about it, though. You know very well I’ll be just fine.  

Here’s how I’m thinking we make due in the meantime. I’m writing down all my adventures and silly thoughts to send you as soon as it’s safe, and then we’ll be able to catch up in no time at all when all is right with the world again. You should do the same. Once I’m able, I’ll send a giant wad of letters along with where I can be reached to the Van Eck mansion for Wylan to hold on to for you until your next trip to Ketterdam. There. Not so bad, right?  

I miss you more than cake. And that’s not an exaggeration. Be safe, lovely. And give them all hell.

All my love,

Nina

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(enclosed in an overstuffed envelope marked “Nina”)

(translated from Kerch)

Dear Nina,  

Your last letter has made me grouchy. I don’t know if there would have ever been a good time for you to fall off the map, but I think there could have at least been a better time than this. I’ll take your suggestion, though, and settle for trying to imagine your face when I tell you these things. When you read this, let’s imagine that we’re at that cafe in West Stave. The one with the little white tables outside. You’ve ordered enough waffles to feed five men, and I’m all hopped up on hot chocolate, and we can’t stop snickering. It’ll happen again someday, right?  

I’m going to use this letter to take a break in entertaining you with stories of battle at sea and the many delightful ways in which bad men beg. I’m docked in Ketterdam today with my head dangerously full of some truly mortifying events. I don’t know what to do, Nina. Keep eating your imaginary waffles – I’m going to offload a great many details and bring you up to speed.

I’ve told you that Kaz and I write letters. That they’re sort of a romantic nature. I know you think I’m crazy. I’m well aware that I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know -- there’s just something about him I can’t give up yet. And I love these letters. They’ve become the first thing I pick up at every new port. They’re these little slices of Ketterdam – all of the good stuff, that is, and none of the bloodshed.

It’s dangerous, though, isn’t it? Only getting the good side of things. It messes with your perception of reality.  

It should surprise no one that Kaz Brekker is good with pen and paper, considering how we’ve seen him con. Sometimes I worry that’s what letter-writing really is to him. Another way to con. He says things in letters that you could not even imagine, Nina. He can be affectionate. He can be really funny, maybe even playful. He can also write the most sincere, heartfelt sentences. You read them, and you really forget he’s, well, Brekker. It’s almost like, when he writes me, he’s not. Like some other side comes out when he picks up a pen, and it’s the side I’ve always hoped was really there all along.  

I’m such a goner for this other side, Nina. It’s become a problem. Try not to spit out those imaginary waffles.  

It’s a problem because, in person, when I’m in Ketterdam, he’s still Kaz Brekker, the persona, the enigma. It started messing with my head, because there is such a stark contrast between Kaz Brekker the enigma and the Kaz who writes me these insanely charming letters. That’s not to say Kaz Brekker isn’t trying to be less enigmatic, but it’s little things. He can take off his gloves more now without having violent reactions to a brush of skin. He’s managed to hold my hand for a few, brief moments. I’ve tried to cozy up to him, but I don’t know. It’s impossible to know what he thinks of it, if he likes it, if he hates it, if he resents it – until a letter shows up. And then he’s writing, “I miss you” and “I’m dreaming of tasting your lips.” (I’m imagining you making that silly fanning yourself gesture, and I really hope that’s true. Saints, I miss you.)

I’m rambling so much. I wish you were just here instead.  

He wrote me this letter after Jesper’s birthday, Nina. Ughhh, why are you so far away? It was a really good letter. A really, really good letter. We had a moment during this hot air balloon ride (yet another reason you need to come back to visit Ketterdam – we do birthday experiences now). Jesper and Wylan were on one side of the balloon’s basket, wrapped up in each other and all the sights with their backs to us. And, out of nowhere, he pulled me close, tucked me right up against his side, close enough that I couldn’t help but hold him back. At first, I could actually feel his heart racing and thought maybe he’d pull away. But he settled after a minute, and we rode in the balloon for a good while like that, stars overhead, city lights below. That was all, and it was more than enough for me. I still think about it all the time. He told me later that he thought it was a nice night, and so I thought it best to leave it at that. We had a nice night. Nice, like when your dinner isn’t ruined or someone opens a door for you.

But this letter that awaited me in Os Kervo. You know Suli, right? So, if I use the phrase (nearest translation: “I shit a brick”), you’ll understand just how shocked I was. He wrote how he never wanted to forget that night and the way I looked and the way he felt. It was perfectly un-Brekker-like. It might have made you cry.

The contrast has never seemed so stark.  

And so it came down to this: I needed to know that Kaz Brekker in Ketterdam was capable of actually being this person who keeps showing up in envelopes and using his name.

Which brings me to my most recent trip to Ketterdam. This was the trip after the hot air balloon ride. Before I arrived, he asked if I wanted to stay in the Slat this trip – with him. Don’t choke on your waffles, please. Nothing was going to happen – he can barely hold my hand for more than a few minutes, and at least one of the times it’s happened, I had to bribe him with Ravkan toffees first.

I had one condition for this arrangement. I wanted to bring letters for him to read aloud. Perhaps most incredibly, he agreed.

Right. This is where it gets ugly.  

I’d spent the day at The Slat. Usually my first day on land, I find I’m unusually exhausted, and everything in The Slat is fresh and new since Seeger’s fire – I’d even venture to say comfortable. I slept most of the day, a luxury I know you’d appreciate. I was up around dinnertime, and he’d brought in dinner. (It was those meatballs and mash pots we used to love so much. I hope I’ll be able to eat them again after this without wanting to hurl.)

Dinner seemed like a good time to try out the letter reading. We’d spread out the food on his desk and passed a bottle of kvas back and forth to lighten the mood before he rolled up his sleeves and I gave him the first one. I had tried to pick a variety of his letters to bring along, the ridiculous ones right up to the one I can’t get over – the one after the hot air balloon ride.

Before you get too excited, we didn’t get to the hot air balloon ride letter.

It was going so well in the beginning. My cheeks were hurting from smiling so hard, listening to so many charming words come from that voice. He seemed to be enjoying it even – feet up on the desk, a sip of kvas here, read an old joke there, and he’d try not to smirk to himself when it made me laugh. He even let one of his own laughs slip once or twice. It was just what I wanted. I felt like I was finally putting together a whole picture out of two halves.

But then we came to this letter he’d given to me on the docks of Fifth Harbor, thanking me just before I left after Seeger’s fire. I was getting ready to hand it over to him, and my heart dropped right into my feet. Nina. I’d forgotten I’d written something really, really, REALLY embarrassing in the margins. Just. Sankta Alina. I don’t know if I can repeat it.  

I tried to skip over that one, but he was having none of it. Everything had been playful and a little flirtatious up until that moment, and he swiped it from my hands. Sankta Elizabeta, my face is burning up while I’m writing this. Tell me this is salvageable. Oh, wait, you’re in backwoods Fjerda or something. Ugh, why, Nina, why?  

Everything got really quiet – he’d seen it right away. I could tell he was surprised, but that was it. I have no idea what else was happening in that brain of his.

What it was was this. I’d made a note of how different he was on paper and labeled that Kaz by his original name. I’d written that I like Kaz Brekker, but after these letters, I was in love with Kaz Rietveld.  

NINA. (Untranslatable Suli vulgarities)

I snatched the letter back – he wasn’t even making eye contact with me. He hadn’t even budged. It was too horrible. The silence felt never-ending. So, I left. That was yesterday. Now I’m staying on the Wraith. Maybe forever.  

I have to say something, and I wish you were here to help me figure out what to say. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there are fragments of lessons and sayings my father would have about this, if I could only cobble them in to something coherent. I’m trying and trying to imagine how he must be feeling.

He couldn’t have been that surprised about my feelings, could he? Not after all this time, not everything we’ve written. It’s not as if I’ve been terribly coy. I’m forcing myself to believe he would not be horrified to know how I feel. No, there’s something else.

How awful it must feel to think someone you trusted finds only a part of you lovable.

I have some soul-searching to do, Nina.

Come back.  

Inej

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(hand-delivered, unaddressed envelope)

Dear Inej,  

I’ve spent the whole night thinking, and I have some things to say. I won’t read this one out loud, so if you have a hard time believing it’s me, I guess you’ll just need to get creative.  

I know you’re embarrassed. You might remember I have intimate knowledge of what it’s like to be in your position. At first, I wanted nothing more than to ease your mind and put everything back the way it was. There was a large part of me that was awestruck that you’d find even a small, half-dead remnant of myself worthy of loving. I was ready to crawl back to you and do anything to erase this moment from time.

But then I realized that’s not a fair deal to Kaz Brekker.

And before you start making faces, I’m not becoming one of those politicians that likes to bloviate in the third person. Just for the sake of clarity in this letter alone, I’ll use the labels that you used.  

Inej, Kaz Brekker saved my life. Yours, too. And a lot of other people’s. Kaz Brekker could find me food and dry clothes and shelter when there was no one else. Kaz Brekker has fixed and built and risked and fought and salvaged. And yes, there are a good many things he’s terrible at, like not being an unmitigated asshole. He is not friendly or particularly kind, and he’s rarely truthful. There are many things he should never have done. He’s done unthinkable things he’s not even sorry for. Trust me, Inej. When it comes to hating Kaz Brekker, I have a front row seat.  

But the only reason there’s a Kaz Rietveld here for you to love at all is because Kaz Brekker brought him this far.  

At first, my instinct was to write a letter detailing all the many ways I can become more like the man you love. And that’s not to say there isn’t some wisdom in trying to coax him out a bit more – you tend to have good taste in most things. There’s probably some value in striking a balance.

But Kaz Brekker is part of the deal. You can’t have one without the other. There is a lot about him – about me -- that I would not and will not change. So, I need to know that you see the same value in him. In all of me. Because, if you can’t, I’m not sure it will matter how much I’m in love with you, too.  

And to think we might have avoided this whole mess if I just would have let you bring a flute. To that I say, mati en sheva yelu. I am in love with you even if you play a damn flute.

Are you smiling at least a little bit? I hope so.

Sincerely,

K. Rietveld

[skiewrites]

There is No War in Ba Sing Se...

Written for the amazing event that is the @grishaversebigbang​. They are some amazing mods and have worked very hard to get this event out. Go check them out!!!

Corporalki: @monomads​, @shelbychild​

___: @grishasverse​, @thegeyerofintelect (IG) @thematicallycoherent​, @paperpenss​

Summary: There is no war in Ba Sing Se, or at least, that is what people are taught to believe. But, there are people, living deep into the slums of the outer circle of Ba Sing Se, that know better than that. Kaz has been given a mission from a Mister Jan Van Eck. ‘Retrieve the Avatar from Omashu. For your efforts you will be paid beyond your wildest dreams.’ But leaving the city is illegal, so he will need a team of the finest people he can find off of the streets of Ba Sing Se to help him achieve this goal.

Archive Link

Chapter One: Wylan - The Runaway

Wylan has planned this day to the last second.

His bags have been packed for the last week, every night he went through it just to make sure he had everything he thought he needed. He been talking longer and longer nightly strolls, coming home later and later so that his behaviour won’t trigger anything suspicious, or at least, for long enough that he will be far gone out of the middle circle of Ba Sing Se, and therefore out of his father’s reach, before he realised that his son was missing.

He had his route planned out for longer though. The way that he would jump a fence and double back on himself a couple of times before and after he got out of the middle circle so that anyone following him would not be able to follow him out of the city and try and take him back to the nightmare of his childhood home.

See, Wylan had planned to use the structure of Ba Sing Se to his advantage. It had been built centuries ago now, by powerful Earthbenders, who told the Earth to raise multiple walls to protect the city, now the biggest Earth Kingdom and potentially the whole world. The outer wall was the biggest and therefore the hardest to cross, getting both in and out, but there were other, much smaller walls inside the outer wall, protecting the richer and more important people in the city, the inner walls protecting the Earth King.

Of course, it was not the inner walls or the outer walls that Wylan cared for, but much rather the middle walls, the wall that kept the poor away from the rich, and it was this wall that was going to hide Wylan from the eyes of his father. Many of the criminals of the slums of the outerwall tried to get inside the middle wall each night, each story being wilder and wilder each time a child told another at school. Because of this, most of the focus of the soldiers on the wall was focus on no one getting in, meaning that Wylan getting out of the middle wall and joining the slums, where his father would not be able to see him, would be like taking candy from a baby.

That is, if his plan went the way that he planned.

When the bell rang ten, the shrills of the bell calling all across the merchants street of the middle circle, Wylan threw on his bag, something that was heavier than he thought but some of the items were things that he simply could not part with, and escaped out of the window, dropping down and landing in a crouch behind a bush before standing up, looking around before making his daring escape.

At the dead of night, there were not many people out of their houses, too filled with fear of the people like the Dai Li, the secret police that roamed the streets and looked for anyone causing any slight inconvenience and made them comply with their mind-bending skill, or at least, that was the rumours that the Earthbending kids would always tell him, before throwing rocks at him and causing him to run back to the so called 'safety’ of his father’s home. Wylan kept his head down as he walked past each person, not sure who was telling the truth and who was employed by the king to keep the peace.

It did not take long for him to get to the wall, the one that would be the key that locked the door between him and his father.

A peak around the corner showed two guards standing and looking away from him, showing him the street ahead of him, one that lead him away from his father.

He was almost there.

Picking up a stone, Wylan skidded it across the ground, making it go far out from the guards’ posts, watching with a smile on his face as the pair looked at each other with a frown, before running after the stone, leaving the archway free for Wylan simply wander through.

He did run through it though. Just in case.

And he didn’t stop. Why wouldn’t he? He was free! Free from his father’s expectations, his harsh words of criticism, his hatred glare knowing that he’ll never be able to be the son and heir that his father desired out of him.

He was free to be anyone he wanted here in the slums. That was such a freeing thought that it could not leave his head as he ran, and ran and ran and ran, further and further into the slums, and eventually, into someone.

“Watch where you’re going kid,” the man growled, turning to face Wylan, then pushing the smaller boy to the floor, letting out a huff as his soft palms grazed the harsh ground below him.

“What is a merchant kid like you doing this far away from the middle circle?” A second man asked, gaining the attention of the third man as he crouched down to face Wylan with a smile that screamed at him to run. “What a full bag,” His eyes moved from boy to bag to boy again, before flicking out a knife, harshly placing it underneath Wylan’s chin, seemingly not noticing how it split his skin and caused blood to start trailing down his front, staining his white shirt. “What did you say your name was little man?”

“Nonya.” Wylan replied after a second of thought, trying to ignore the pain that seemed so abnormal for him, having grown up away from pain and consequences.

“Nonya? What a funny name for a boy… Merchants are sure creative these days. What’s your full name?”

“Non ya business!” Wylan yelled as he kicked the man in the face, quickly getting up off of the floor and picking up his bag as he went, and beginning to weave in between the poorly built houses as the men started to gain up on him, the advantage of living in the slums becoming clearer and clearer with each wide stride they took.

However, Wylan had the advantage of being smaller than the men.

He ducked into a small dark corner, holding his breath as he watched the angry men run past him, the reflection of their knife hitting his eye as they went.

The slums are dangerous. He knew this before he committed himself to the plan, with the idea that anyway would be better than his father’s house. It still is, however, the knowledge that, if he hadn’t run away when he had, he would be dead, bleeding more than the painful cut on his chin.

“Man, kid, you’ve really rifled them up,” Wylan turned at the sudden voice, his eyes catching a figure in the dark. Stepping into the moonlight, he managed to get a better look at the speaker, a dark skinned teenager who couldn’t be too much older than himself, wearing the typical green clothes commonly seen by those who lived in Ba Sing Se. He was holding a slingshot in his hand, something that seemed weirdly out of place on the gangly teen.

“I’m not a kid!”

"That’s something that twelve year olds say.”

"I’m not twelve, I’m sixteen!”

"You’re pulling my leg, there’s no way you’re sixteen.”

"I am!”

"Prove it.”

The man, who remained nameless, took a step closer to Wylan, only to notice his chin still dripping with blood. The cut was not life-threatening by any means, but it was still deeper than most nicks that Wylan had experience in his life thus far.

“Lets get that looked at.” The man began to drag Wylan by his hand through the maze.

“Why are you helping me?

"Because there’s something about you kid.”

[emjenenla]

I was younger then, take me back to when I found my heart and broke it here [A Six of Crows Fanfic]

It wasn’t until she stepped off the boat onto the docks of Ketterdam that Nina Zenik realized she hadn’t really expected to ever come back. Or Nina returns to Ketterdam and goes on a life-changing field trip with Kaz.

Warnings: PTSD, some reanimated corpses because its Nina

I don't own Six of Crows. Title comes from "Castle on the Hill" by Ed Sheeran.

I actually started this last spring, but then put it on the back burner because I thought it was too much like everything else I was publishing at the time (though looking back, I'm not sure why I thought that). I'm hoping to write some more Six of Crows stuff, because the number of fics I've written for this duology is a poor reflection how much I love it, but I've never been good at finishing things (and I've got an eighteen page document full of one-to-two sentence descriptions of fanfics) so we'll see.

Also, the summary is a bit of an exaggeration, but did you get the reference?

It wasn’t until she stepped off the boat onto the docks of Ketterdam that Nina Zenik realized she hadn’t really expected to ever come back. She had been dodging Jesper, Wylan and Inej’s requests to come back because they missed her by saying she needed more time to figure everything out. It wasn’t until her boots hit the sea-softened boards of Fourth Harbor that she realized those had just been excuses to get them off her back. She had never meant to come back to the city that had taken Matthias from her and didn’t quite understand why she’d come back now.

She stood on the dock lost in this new understanding as the other passengers of the cargo boat she’d ridden from Ravka pushed by her. Why was she here? Why would she willingly have returned to the place that Matthias had died after all this time? It wasn’t like she expected it to be any less vile now than it had been when she was seventeen. She had half a mind to hop the next boat leaving and get out, but common sense stopped her. She was here now and she wasn’t a bad enough friend to just leave without at least saying hi.

She also found that she didn’t want to go straight to the Van Eck mansion. If she saw Jesper and Wylan now while she wasn’t sure why she had come here in the first place she might forget that she didn’t want to be here. Before she faced them she needed to be reminded exactly what kind of place Ketterdam was and why she’d left, and she knew the perfect place for that.

The Slat had not changed in the years she’d been gone. Nina wasn’t sure why she’d expected Kaz to actually fix the place up after getting his hands on four million  kruge, because now that she thought about she couldn’t think of a good reason why he would have. After a moment of simply looking up at the building, she shoved aside a hearty dose of déjà vu and let herself in.

The atmosphere of the Dregs’ hideout had not changed. There were still people lounging around, drinking and talking and flirting and playing cards. It was still a disreputable cesspit just like it had been when Nina had hung out here, but there was now not a single familiar face. The realization was so startling Nina stopped in her tracks. She hadn’t come to Slat for warm fuzzy feelings, but she had expected to see Pim and Keeg and Anika and all the other girls and boys she had laughed and plotted and flirted with as a teenager. The sea of unfamiliar faces that turned to look at her made her unexpectedly sad.

After a moment a blonde boy in his late teens detached himself from a cluster of people and stalked towards her. He puffed his chest out in a way that was vaguely ridiculous. “This is Dregs territory,” he said, “What do you want?”

“I’m here to see Kaz Brekker,” Nina said. “Tell him that Nina Zenik is here.” She almost added that Kaz would definitely want to see her, but stopped herself. She hadn’t actually spoken to Kaz, even in letters, since she’d left Ketterdam. The only reason she knew that someone hadn’t managed to kill him was because Inej, Jesper and Wylan talked about him in their letters.

The boy snorted in a way that he probably thought was intimidating. “Yeah, no dice. We don’t let just anyone see the boss.”

“I’m a member of the Dregs,” Nina said. “I’ve been away for a couple years, but now I need to see Kaz.”

“I don’t believe you,” the boy said.

Nina heaved a sigh and pushed up her sleeve to bare the Dregs crow and cup on her forearm. She’d thought about finding a Corporalnik who still had their regular powers to remove it for years, but it had never felt right, now she was glad she hadn’t. “Here,” she grumbled. “Believe me now?”

“No,” the boy said sounding pleased that he got to be so contrary. “You either had someone tattoo that on you in preparation for this or you’re a traitor. Either way you’re going to be dead.”

Nina tensed, preparing for a fight. She’d come here wanting a reminder of why she didn’t want to stay in Ketterdam, and it appeared she was going to get more of one than she’d anticipated. “Listen, you little-”

“Espen!” a familiar voice called out. “What’s going on?”

Nina and the boy both turned to see a blonde woman standing in the entrance to the office that had once been Per Haskell’s. It took Nina a moment to recognize Anika, who had somehow always remained a teenager in her mind. Anika had shaved both sides of her head and pulled the remaining hair on the top of her head back in a ponytail. She glared at them both. It was the look of someone who was used to being obeyed.

“This woman is trying to see the boss,” the boy said. “She has a Dregs tattoo so she’s either an impostor a traitor. I say we kill her.”

Anika’s gaze turned to Nina and her pale eyebrows rose. “Nina Zenik?” she asked.

Nina grinned. “The very same.”

“I was starting to think you were dead,” Anika said without any intonation to suggest how she felt about being proved wrong. “Where have you been?”

Nina didn’t see the point in lying about it. “Ravka and Fjerda,” she said. “I’ve been taking care of some stuff.”

“And now you’re here,” Anika said, still tonelessly.

“I am,” Nina said. “Can I see Kaz?”

Anika thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “He’s not working on anything major right now. Get over here.”

The boy spluttered. “What? She just admitted to abandoning the gang! She’s a traitor! She deserves to die!”

Anika fixed him with a glare. “Espen, which one of us is the top lieutenant of this gang?”

The boy looked like he was going to keep arguing for a while, then his shoulders slumped. “You are,” he grumbled.

“Good, and I say she can see Kaz,” Anika said. “Come on, Nina.”

Nina crossed the room, ignoring the weight of the Dregs’ eyes on her back. Anika rapped her knuckles on the door, then opened it and started inside. “Boss? You’ll never believe what the tides brought in.”

Nina stepped into the room after Anika. “Hey, Kaz.”

Nina had only been in Per Haskell’s office a handful of times, but she remembered that it hadn’t looked this much like an office when the old man had used it. The shelves were lined with books and papers. The windows were closed with heavy black shades and several oil lamps lit the room. The large desk was covered with papers and ledgers and a few scattered weapons and lockpicks.

Kaz Brekker sat in the large chair behind the desk. He too had aged in a way that Nina hadn’t expected. She had never found him attractive--even if you ignored his many scars he was decidedly average-looking--but now he looked even more macabre than he had at seventeen. He’d lost baby fat Nina hadn’t even realized he had, his face going even more hollow and sharp and pale. His eyes were still and sharp and shark-like as ever, though, and Nina’s sudden reappearance in his life only got a raised eyebrow.

“Nina,” He said looking her up and down in a firm, appraising way. “It appears reforming drüskelle suits you.”

“Kaz,” she mimicked. “It appears being a Barrel Boss doesn’t suit you. You look like a ghoul. Do you eat?”

Kaz grinned, it was a thin, knife-like flash of teeth. “Occasionally.”

“Espen was advocating for killing her as a traitor,” Anika said to Kaz. “I had to pull rank on him again. We need to do something about that kid.”

“I know,” Kaz said. “I’m working on it.”

“We should strip him of his rank,” Anika said. “A couple weeks cleaning the gambling houses might be just the attitude adjustment he needs.”

“I’d do that,” Kaz replied a little tightly, “if I didn’t know that all it would do was drive him to another gang. He’s a far better spider than either Roeder and Minna are; if he were to start running with the Razorgulls or something we’d have a real problem.”

“We can’t just do nothing,” Anika said. “He barely listens to me anymore, how long do we have before he stops listening to you too?”

“I said I was working on it,” Kaz growled. “Now I’d like to have a conversation with Nina. Go get Gustaaf’s report. He should have just gotten back from the docks.”

“Fine,” Anika nodded. “I’ll be back.”

Nina waited until the door closed behind the other woman before she spoke, “Who’s Gustaaf?”

“Member of the Dregs.” Kaz said. “Why do you care?”

“Aside from Anika and you, I haven’t seen anyone I know,” Nina said. “What happened to everyone?”

“Roeder’s probably sleeping; he was working last night,” Kaz said. “Pim oversees all our gambling dens now. He’ll be in to report in another hour or so.”

Nina waited for a minute to see if he was going to go on, but he didn’t. “Well?” she asked. “What about Keeg? Dirix? Rotty? Specht?”

“Specht works for Inej,” Kaz said. “The rest are dead.”

“What?” Nina gaped. “All of them?”

Kaz nodded sharply.

“Don’t you ever let anyone retire?” Nina asked, shock making her voice quieter than she would have liked.

“No one retires in the Barrel, Nina dear,” Kaz said. “We don’t live long enough.”

There was a long pause, then Nina forced herself to change the subject before she thought about that to much. “So I see you’ve taken over Per Haskell’s office,” she said lightly. “Does that mean you’re living in his rooms too?” She gestured at the closed door to what had once been Per Haskell’s private apartments.

“Those are storage,” Kaz said. “The mere thought of sleeping in that man’s bed is enough to give you some kind of raging disease or parasite.”

“He wasn’t that dirty,” Nina said, but she couldn’t keep from smiling.

Kaz shrugged. “So why are you here, Nina? Last I heard you were in Overüt.”

That had been the last place Nina had been and Kaz said it so casually that it took her a minute to remember that he wasn’t supposed to know that. She never told Inej, Jesper and Wylan where she was, so there was definitely no way that Kaz Brekker could--

“Wait, have you been keeping tabs on me?” she asked.

“Only a little,” Kaz said with another shrug. He didn’t even pretend to be ashamed. “Inej, Jesper and Wylan have been worried about you.”

“And have you?” she ventured after a moment.

Kaz gave her a flat look that clearly said,  “Would you expect me to admit it if I have?” After a moment he looked away and said breezily, “How long have you been here, anyway? It’s funny, I would have thought the first thing Jesper and Wylan would have done after you showed up at their door was send a messenger to me.”

“Actually, my ship just landed,” Nina admitted. “I haven’t seen them yet.”

“So you came to see me before anyone else?” Kaz raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me this isn’t the part where you confess your undying love to me.”

“Do you want me to?”

Kaz snorted. “Ghezen, no.”

Nina cracked a smile. “Good, because I’m just here so you can be a colossal bastard and remind me why I’m not staying.”

Kaz gave her a look, all humor gone. He didn’t look offended, just calculating. “Any particular reason that you’re here hoping I’ll convince you not to stay?”

“The others will want me to stay,” Nina said. “They’ve been begging me to come back for years and now that I’m here I don’t think they’ll let me leave again. But I can’t. There’s too many ghosts here.”

She wasn’t sure why she was being so honest with Kaz Brekker of all people, but he just nodded. “You’re not wrong about the ghosts,” he said slowly, pointedly not looking at her. “What do I need to do to convince you that you don’t want to stay?”

“To be honest your toadie out there was more convincing than I was expecting,” Nina admitted.

“Espen?” Kaz asked. “He has that effect on people. He makes me want to arrange an unfortunate accident for him in a dark alley on the best of days.”

“Then don’t you do that?” she asked. “It can’t be because of morals, because we both know you don’t have any.”

“Two reasons,” Kaz said. “One: he is my best spider. The three I’ve got now only barely do the job as well as Inej did. Espen’s the best of the three, and I rely on my reputation for knowing everything that goes on in this city. Two: If I kill him and people figure out it was me, it’ll look like I was scared of him and that would be bad. Of course,” he shrugged, “he’s well on his way to doing something that I’d be required to kill him for by the unofficial code of the Barrel, so perhaps I should start looking for more spiders.”

Nina looked at him for a minute until he asked, “What?”

“You’re thinking out loud,” she said. “You never used to do that.”

“Don’t worry, I still don’t share my plans.”

“Saints forbid your minions actually know what’s going on.”

Kaz smiled but didn’t comment. “Now that we’ve established that Espen is better at convincing people they don’t want to stay in Ketterdam than I am,” he said instead. “I’ll walk you to Jesper and Wylan’s.”

Nina raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t have to pretend to be a gentleman, Kaz. You’re not fooling anyone.”

“I haven’t been outside yet today,” Kaz said. “And I’d like to take a look at the Crow Club and couple other things. Pim is good at his job, but he only notices about half of what he should.”

He braced his palms on the desktop and levered himself to his feet. It was a stiff, creaky, painful-looking motion that would have been at home on an old man.

Nina looked away before he could see her worry and sympathy, and slid her hands into her pockets. They were both empty. She patted her clothes looking for her wallet, but it was gone.

“What’s wrong?” Kaz asked. He was fully upright now, leaning surreptitiously on his cane.

“I lost my wallet,” she said. “That’s weird. I had it when I left the ship.”

Kaz snorted. “You probably got pick-pocketed. How much did you lose and what way did you walk to get here?”

When she finished explaining, he crossed to the big safe in the wall and opened it. He counted out a number of kruge and held them out to her. “What’s this for?” She asked

“The borders of Dregs territory have expanded since last time you were here,” Kaz said. “You were in our territory practically the whole way here. That means that the person who pick-pocketed you probably works for me. Consider this getting your money returned.”

“Oh,” Nina took the stack of kruge. “Thanks.”

“And don’t expect this kind of generosity again,” Kaz said closing the safe. “Remember how to hold on to your wallet.”

Nina folded the money and stuck it into the wraps over her breasts. She’d like to see someone try to steal it from there. Then she looked up at Kaz. It was more of a look up than it had once been.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re taller. Have you grown?”

Kaz gave her a look. “Teenagers tend to.”

“You mean to tell me,” Nina said slowly, “that you led us on the biggest heist of the century then figured out how to take down two of the most corrupt men in Ketterdam and you were still growing?”

Kaz gave her a long-suffering look. “Come on, Nina. Let’s get going.”

~~~~

The rest of the Barrel had changed drastically, but also remained exactly the same as always. Drunk and stupid pigeons stumbled around even in broad daylight getting conned out of all their worldly possessions. The members of the gangs strutted around in their Barrel flash trying to look impressive. Everyone, no matter how drunk, got out of Kaz’s way when they saw him coming.

They didn’t talk, but it wasn’t necessarily an awkward silence. Kaz was obviously deep in thought and not actively trying to be rude, so Nina just surveyed her old haunting grounds, noticing how all Pekka Rollins’s gambling dens had been taken over by the Dregs and the way that even the building that had once housed the Menagerie didn’t exist anymore.

“You’ve really made some changes to the place,” she said when she couldn’t take the silence anymore.

Kaz jerked back into awareness of her without a hint that he had been thinking of anything else. “Yes,” he said. “All in all, things are going-” Then something caught his attention, and he trailed off, gaze focused on something off to his right.

Nina followed his gaze but only saw people going about their normal days. “Kaz?” she asked.

“You remember where the Van Eck mansion is don’t you, Nina?” Kaz asked in a hyper-focused tone of voice. “I’ll meet you there; I have something I need to look into first.”

“I can help,” Nina said. “What did you see?”

Kaz looked at her for a moment, his eyes dark and calculating. “It might be good to have a face he doesn’t know,” he said. “Come on.” He pulled his hat down over his and hiked up his cane so the the head was in his armpit and mostly hidden from view. Then he set off down a side street, his limp more pronounced without the aid of the cane.

Kaz moved fast, but cautiously, leaving Nina to half walk half jog after him. The street was still pretty busy, so Nina couldn’t tell exactly who they were following. They’d gone quite a ways when Kaz suddenly grabbed the back of her coat and hauled her into an alley. He shoved her aside then peaked around the corner again.

“You could have just told me where to go,” Nina grumbled, but he was ignoring her, watching something happening the street intently.

After a minute Kaz turned back to her. “Okay,” he said. “The person we’ve been following is called Barend Meijer. He’s doing some dirty business that I’m trying to gather information about. He’s about to go into the inn down the street. You should be able to just walk in and figure out who he’s meeting with.”

“Alright,” Nina said, peaking around the corner. “Which one is he?”

“The one in the green coat,” Kaz pointed out a man with greasy hair and rat-like mustache who was just ducking into the inn, carrying a package wrapped in oilcloth. The cut of his clothes was Kerch, but not quite what someone from Ketterdam would wear. He wasn’t from the city.

“I want that package if we can get it,” Kaz said.

“Alright,” Nina said. “Do you want me to just steal it?”

“No,” Kaz said. “We don’t want him to know I’m onto him. I just need a couple minutes to look through it.”

“Do we need a plan?” Nina asked.

“Go in after him,” Kaz said. “I’ll create a distraction, then it’s your job to, make sure he leaves that package.”

“Alright,” she said and headed into the street.

This part of Ketterdam was disreputable even by Barrel standards. The cobblestones looked like they hadn’t been replaced ever and vanished periodically into mud puddles. One of the buildings Nina passed was so unstable that the whole thing creaked and swayed ominously whenever someone climbed to the second floor. The sides of the street were inhabited by beggars and drunks. It took Nina a few minutes to realize that there were a not inconsiderable number of bodies lying against the buildings as well. She made a mental note to ask Kaz whose territory this was; she was willing to bet that it wasn’t the Dregs.

Nina was also aware that she was gathering a lot of attention. She wasn’t wearing a kefta--that would have been ridiculously stupid--but her clothes were distinctly Ravkan. People were sizing her up and seeing nothing more than a naive foreigner who had lost her way. Some of the men in practical had what they were thinking printed clearly across their faces. Nina reached to her waist and uncorked one of the bottles she kept for just this purpose. Any man who dared to touch her would get a face full of bone shards.

Perhaps she was telegraphing her intentions somehow, because she reached the door to the inn without incident. The inside of the inn was even more disgusting than the street. People were congregating around listing and mismatched tables eating and drinking from plates and mugs that looked like they’d never been washed. The whole place smelled like someone had dumped ale and urine all over the floor and let it fester.

She crossed the room and sat down at the bar so she could study the room without looking like a lost foreigner. She flipped a coin to the bartender and got an ale in a mug so dirty her fingers came away smudged with grime when she touched it. She bit back a look of disgust. Yeah, she wasn’t drinking that.

It only took her a couple seconds to find Meijer. He was sitting in a booth with a large, ill-kept man that Nina actually knew. It was Markus Visser. He was an intermediary who found slaves for pleasure houses, including the House of the White Rose where Nina had once worked as the resident Grisha. She was disappointed; she’d been hoping someone would have killed him by now. Fortunately, while she knew Visser, he didn’t know here so she didn’t need to worry about him recognizing her.

She watched the two men for a few minutes. They were talking quietly with the package on the table between them, it looked like they weren’t planning to go anywhere for awhile. Nina got up off her stool and ambled towards them, acting like she was lost in thought. She wasn’t sure how long it would take Kaz to create his distraction and she wanted to be near the target when it happened.

Suddenly there was a huge commotion coming from the kitchen. Someone dressed in dark clothes darted into the room and yelled, “Help! Come quick! There’s a fire in the kitchen!”

Visser scrambled to his feet and was out the door in an instant. Saving his own skin, probably. Meijer looked around wildly for a moment, fingers tightening on the package, and Nina saw her opening. She lunged over and grabbed his arm, not caring that she dropped the disgusting mug on the floor. “Sir,” she said in her most simpering tone. “Please go help up out the fire! I don’t want this place to burn down!”

The man shook her off violently, but headed for the kitchen.

Nina snatched the package but before she could move, a pair of black gloved hands took it from her. She looked up to see Kaz. “Where did you come from?” she asked.

He smiled but didn’t say anything as he opened the package and began paging through the loose sheets of paper inside. Each was printed with what looked like some kind of order form. Kaz looked at each one for only a second or two before moving onto the next.

“Are you even reading any of that?” Nina asked.

“Make sure no one comes back,” Kaz said paging without pause. “I don’t know how long it will take them to put that fire out.”

“You really set the kitchen on fire?” Nina asked.

“Yes,” Kaz said. He was halfway through the stack of papers by now. “Keep your eyes on the-”

Before he could say anything else, an arm shoved Nina out of the way and onto a table. Meijer was back. Before Nina could do anything, the man had turned on Kaz, knocking the papers out of his hands. “Who do you think you are?” he growled, confirming what Nina had suspected. Meijer was new to Ketterdam; that was the only explanation for someone involved in something illegal in this city not recognizing Kaz Brekker.

“I was just curious,” Kaz said in a confused, higher-pitched voice that didn’t sound anything like his own. “What is this stuff?”

Meijer struck Kaz across the face, then wrapped a bare hand around his throat and shoved him against a wall. Kaz twitched visibly and his hands opened and closed spasmodically.

Nina scrambled off the table and stepped towards Meijer, raising her hands to summon her bone chips. Then hands grabbed her from behind, and she was trapped in a violent hug. The reek of unwashed male and cheap ale enveloped her.

“Let the man do his business, little lady,” her captor slurred in her ear.

Nina struggled against him and tried to keep an eye on Kaz and Meijer. Meijer still had Kaz pinned against the wall and Kaz didn’t seem to be fighting back. Nina couldn’t figure out why, but she didn’t have time to contemplate it. Fortunately, the drunk who had captured her hadn’t realized she was raising her hands because she was Grisha so he hadn’t tried to pin her hands. She twitched her wrists, only now she wasn’t controlling the bone shards, her focus was on what she’d seen in the street outside.

Half a dozen animated corpses burst into the inn. They glommed around Nina and the drunk, ripping her free. The drunk screamed and fled. Nina sent a corpse after him just to further beat in the lesson about assaulting women, then directed the rest of the corpses towards Kaz and Meijer.

The corpses obeyed, ripping the two men apart with their cold, dead hands. Kaz stumbled and fell, curling into a ball with his arms wrapped around his head. Nina couldn’t tell if he was hurt or not, and there wasn’t time to find out. Smoke was now pouring steadily out of the door to the kitchen. Evidently, no one had managed to put the fire out.

She twisted her hands, and one of the corpses turned away from beating up Meijer with the others and heaved Kaz over its shoulder. Nina made another motion and the corpse followed her as she darted out of the inn by the back door into the alley leaving Meijer behind. He’d probably survive, because she would get to far from the corpses to control them long before the entire inn burned down, but at least this way he couldn’t follow them.

Nina ran for a couple blocks until the shouting about fire had died down and she was sure no one was following. Then she stopped and had the corpse set Kaz down. She carefully guided the corpse to the side of the alley and had it lie down as reverently as possible. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Rest in peace,” and she let the corpse go still.

Behind her she heard retching. She turned to see Kaz on his hands and knees, vomiting onto the dirty cobblestones. His gloved fingers were digging into the cracks between the stone and his entire body was shaking violently.

“Kaz?” Nina asked. “Are you alright?” She hurried over, reaching for his shoulder.

Before she could touch him, Kaz pulled out a knife and lunged at her. She stumbled backwards, fell and landed on her butt against one of the alley walls. Kaz pressed the tip of the knife against her throat, but didn’t touch her beyond that. His eyes were wild and Nina could feel him trembling through the knife.

“If you ever let one of those things touch me again,” Kaz said in a trembly, rasping snarl. “I will cut you into so many pieces no one will be able to identify you. Do you understand?”

“Kaz,” Nina said, trying to ignore the way the knife pressed into her throat as she spoke. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset. I just wanted to get us out of there. Are you sick?” She reached for the handle of the knife, but he jerked back out of her reach taking the knife with him.

“Don’t touch me!” he shrieked. His hands were shaking so badly that he almost dropped the knife.

“Alright,” Nina said holding up her hands. “I won’t touch you, but can you tell me if you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Kaz snarled, struggling to his feet. “We should to go.” He tried to walk, but stumbled and almost fell, catching himself against the opposite wall. She him breathing; the gasps were loud, fast and frantic.

“Kaz,” she said quietly. “Maybe you should sit down.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Kaz shouted. “I’m fine! Let’s move!”

“You’re hyperventilating,” Nina said. “You’re going to pass out. You need to calm down.” She hated her inability to help. Before the  parem  she would have been able to lower his heart rate and ease his breathing herself, now she could do nothing but watch him struggle for breath.

“Kaz,” she repeated. “Please sit down.”

Much to her surprise, he actually listened, sliding down the wall to sit on the damp cobblestones with his knees drawn up and his forehead pressed against them. Nine stayed against the other wall, watching him until his breathing quieted and his muscles began to relax.

“Are you okay now?” she asked, making her voice level and quiet so as not to set him off again.

“I’m fine,” Kaz said, uncurling but not looking at her. “That was nothing.”

They both knew he was lying.

Kaz had hidden his cane before going into the inn so they had to double back to retrieve it and avoid the commotion around the now burned-out husk of the inn. Once they were done with that, they continued on to the Van Eck mansion. They didn’t speak, and though Kaz was twitchier than usual, he had himself surprisingly well in hand.

The Van Eck mansion was yet another thing that hadn’t substantially changed since the last time Nina had seen it. She was a little surprised Jesper hadn’t convinced Wylan to paint the whole exterior lime green. Kaz marched right up to the front door and knocked. They were admitted by a servant girl who obviously knew who Kaz was and was extremely uncomfortable with it.

The servant lead them upstairs to an office where Jesper and Wylan were seated at the desk looking at paperwork. They both looked up when Kaz and Nina came in,

“Look who turned up at the Slat,” Kaz said, monotone, gesturing at her.

Their faces lit up. “Nina!” Jesper cried and within moments both men had crossed the room and thrown their arms around her. Nina was surprised to feel her eyes filling up with tears. She hadn’t realized she missed them so much.

“When did you get back?” Wylan asked when they pulled apart.

“This afternoon,” Nina said. “I wasn’t sure where to find the rest of you so I went to Slat.” That wasn’t really true, but she didn’t want to admit to wanting to be reminded why she wasn’t staying.

“Hear that, Kaz?” Jesper asked. “You’re predictable.”

Kaz had floated over to the desk and was paging through the papers sitting there. He flinched when Jesper addressed, a small but visible tightening of muscles. “I’ll do my utmost to remedy that,” he said stiffly.

Jesper’s lips pressed together in concern, he and Wylan exchanged a significant look. “Have you two had supper yet?” Wylan asked after a moment.

“No,” Nina’s stomach growled.

“Good, we haven’t eaten yet either,” Wylan said. “You can have supper with us.”

“Actually,” Kaz began. “I need to-”

“Nope,” Jesper interrupted. “You’re staying, no arguments.”

Kaz stared at them for a moment then looked away and heaved a sigh. “Fine, but I’ll need some paper and a pen; I need to write a letter.”

“Done,” Jesper said. “Good to have you here, Kaz.”

“I’ll go tell the cook there will be two more for dinner,” Wylan said and left the room.

Jesper, Nina and Kaz relocated to the downstairs parlor. Jesper procured paper and a pen and Kaz retired to a corner and began writing at lighting speed in what appeared to be an extremely complicated code.

Jesper leaned in close to Nina and jerked his head at Kaz. “Is he okay?” he breathed.

“I think he’s fine now,” Nina murmured. “He...wasn’t before.”

“What happened?”

“I used my powers on some corpses,” Nina said. “I had one carry him, and I think that’s what set him off.”

Jesper nodded. “That’ll do it.”

“Do you know why he reacted like that?” Nina asked.

Jesper rocked a hand back and forth. “Inej told us some things so we could keep an eye on him while she’s gone. Not all of it, a lot of its really private, but some.”

“Does he know you know?” Nina asked.

“He’s Kaz Brekker, of course he knows,” Jesper grinned crookedly, then sobered. “But we’ve never been able to get him to have a conversation about it with us.”

“But he’s okay, though?” Nina said. “Just to make sure.”

Jesper made a face.

“What?” she asked.

“Wy and I aren’t convinced his health is very good,” Jesper said. “I mean his health’s never been great because he doesn’t sleep or give himself breaks, but last winter he had a really bad chest infection, and we don’t think he ever completely recovered from it. We’re worried about him.”

“Are you two going to just sit over there whispering like schoolgirls?” Kaz asked without looking up. It was impossible to tell if he’d been able to hear anything they were saying, but writing the letter seemed to have calmed him down.

“What are we supposed to do?” Jesper asked. “You’re engrossed in writing a long, coded missive to our beloved Wraith.”

“You’re writing Inej?” Nina asked, getting up and crossing the room to look at the paper. The code really was incomprehensible. “I take it she’s out hunting slavers?” She hadn’t really thought that Inej was here since no one had mentioned telling her of Nina’s arrival, but she’d hoped.

“She might be back in a few weeks,” Kaz said. “Though it’s hard to say; things sometimes come up.”

“So what is this letter about?” Jesper asked, throwing an arm around Wylan’s shoulders as the other man came into the room and kissing him on the temple. “Though, since the things are all in code, you could tell us they were about anything when in reality you’re just raving about how beautiful her hair is.”

Kaz shot Jesper a withering glare. “This is a summary of some information Nina and I found before we came here,” he said.

“Wait, those papers?” Nina said. “But you barely looked at them. You can’t really remember what they said.”

“I remember what they said,” Kaz said flatly. "But I do need to get this down while it’s still fresh; my memory for words is not as flawless as my memory for numbers.”

“What is this information about?” Wylan asked from his place in Jesper’s arms.

“Barend Meijer is part of an organization that specializes in providing slaves that fit parameters requested by buyers,” Kaz explained. “For example, one of the documents Nina and I were looking at is a request for a young Ravkan woman who resembles Alina Starkov. Inej has been trying to track the leadership of this organization for almost a year with little success.”

“And you’re helping her?” Nina asked. “How are you making any money off that?”

“He’s not,” Jesper crowed. “Helping the Wraith in her endeavours to end slavery is his sappy romantic side project.”

“I am not above cutting out your tongue and feeding it to the nearest pack of dogs, Jes,” Kaz said.

Both Jesper and Wylan laughed. “Don’t worry, Kaz, your secret soft side is safe with us,” Jesper teased.

A maid appeared in the doorway. This one was older and looked much less uncomfortable at the idea of the Bastard of the Barrel being in the parlor. “Supper is ready,” she said. “Should I inform Mistress Van Eck, Master Wylan?”

“Yes, thank you, Annemie” Wylan said. He disentangled himself from Jesper and slid his arm through Nina’s. “You’ll get to meet my mother! I’m pretty sure you never have.”

“That will be wonderful,” Nina said, letting Wylan lead her towards the dining room.

“You coming, Kaz?” Jesper asked. “Will that information stick in that genius brain of yours for a little longer?”

“Oh, fine,” Kaz grumbled and Nina looked over her shoulder in time to see him folding the letter up carefully and sticking it into his coat. He levered himself painfully to his feet and reached for his cane before he said, “And Nina?”

“What?” she asked as she and Wylan paused.

“You really should stay until Inej gets back,” he said. “I know she really wants to see you again.”

“But-” Nina stammered. “You were supposed to be the one who-” She cut herself off before she said something she’d regret and gave him a look.

Kaz just grinned and brushed by her and Wylan on his way to the dining room.

--

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Don't Go Blindly Into the Dark

Summary:

To hide that he can't read, Jan Van Eck has been forcing his son to pretend he's blind since he was eight years old. Wylan is now attending Ketterdam University, and meeting Jesper Fahey may very well be about to change his life. But is he safe to tell Jesper the truth? And what will Jesper say if he does?

Jesper is struggling to weigh up his life in the Barrel and his life at the University of Ketterdam, and there's a good chance that his growing debt is about to make the decision for him. He hasn't attended class consecutively for months, but maybe that will change when his newest project includes partnering up with Wylan Van Eck. But can he really leave the Barrel behind him? And how long can he keep up the pretence of who he thinks Wylan wants him to be?

Tags: @justalunaticfangirl @lunarthecorvus

If anyone else would like to be tagged let me know :)

Content warnings for this chapter: death, trafficking references (Kerch indenture law), weapons, violence, murder, dehumanisation

AO3 link

Chapter 12 - Inej

“And exactly why do I care?” asked Kaz, coolly.

Kaz’s office at the Crow Club was by far the most difficult room to eavesdrop on in any of the Dregs’ main haunts, and Inej didn’t doubt that was why he had chosen it. Inej also didn’t find a lack of windows or accessibility at all off putting, and was currently laying flat on her front so she could just about squeeze into the space between Kaz’s ceiling and the floor above it. There was a gap between some of the slats, barely perceptible from below unless you were at the perfect angle, that Inej had found after only a few weeks of working with the Dregs when she was preparing herself for her first real job by trying to move about the Crow Club undetected. It proved a surprisingly simple task, but Inej had never been quite sure if Kaz knew that she was there. As she peered through the gap now she was gifted the slightly hazy image of Kaz, leaning back in his chair with his gloved fingers closed over the head of his cane, and the very edge of Jesper sitting opposite him at the desk. 

Perhaps Inej should feel guilty for spying on Kaz; here, outside his window at the Slat, through a vent above Per Haskell’s office. But it was him who had made her the Wraith, wasn’t it? You couldn’t train a falcon and expect it not to hunt. If he never bothered to tell her anything himself, she would have to find the information her own way. 

“You’re going to steal the secrets of the rich men of Ketterdam,” he’d told her, months ago, amongst a longer speech. It felt like years ago. It felt like days. “And I’m going to use that information to take that money,”

“What happens when you take their money, and you become a rich man?”

That had made him smile.

“Then you can steal my secrets too,”

Well, Inej had seen the books: Kaz was more than comfortably on his way to being rich. So what if she was jumping the gun a little? Of course she knew, or at least she supposed, that the dark shimmer of humour behind his words was because he would never be rich; no matter what money Kaz Brekker accrued, he lived in the worst slum in the Barrel, his cash wasn’t safe to just spend without thinking, he would always be DIrtyhands, the Bastard of the Barrel. When Kaz said rich he didn’t mean money, not always. He meant old money, real money, Geldin District money. Even Zelvar District; it was earned money, then, not old money, but five kruge from a lawyer would always be worth more than ten of Kaz’s ill-gotten gains. Plenty of people got rich in the Barrel - people like Pekka Rollins, and Tante Heleen - but no-one made real money. Inej had realised a long time ago that you couldn’t make real money, you could only inherit it and add more to the pile. 

“If you want to make anything off that kid-”

“If there’s truth to anything you’ve told me, Jesper, then I wouldn’t have been able to make a penny off him anyway. I’m cutting my losses,”

Inej had come late to the conversation, but she assumed they must be talking about Wylan. Once she’d got Jesper back to his dorm last night, she made him drink two glasses of water and then waited until he’d fallen asleep - it didn’t take long - before she went to find Nina and tell Kaz was calling them home.

“We’re not even hanging around tonight?”

Inej shook her head.

“Everything completely cancelled,”

“Damn,” Nina shook her head, “I owe him back for two weeks income now,”

They’d walked back to the Barrel together, bags in hand, following the waterway along the Southern border of the Financial District until they were at the very bottom of West Stave. Because of the canals and where the bridges were situated, they had to go up past the Crow Club before Inej could turn back towards the Slat. They stopped on the bridge and Nina put her arms around Inej’s shoulders.

“You sure you don’t want to come back to the Slat for a while?” asked Inej.

The sun was rising but Inej was going to try to get a few hours of sleep anyway, and she could tell that Nina was tired as well. But she shook her head, smiling. 

“No, I should get back. I probably have a thousand clients waiting,” she teased, “But I’ll be insisting on taking a nap first, I think,”

Inej stood and watched for a moment as Nina began to head North, and then slowly turned and began to wander back to the Slat. She was exhausted, and she thought she might have managed two hours of sleep since she got back and got everything sorted through, but as soon as she woke up she’d come to the Crow Club and found herself hiding inside Kaz’s ceiling. 

“You reckon she was already dead, or that The Peacock got her?” Rotty was saying to Anika and Pim as Inej walked through the door.

“Too clean,” said Anika, quieter than Rotty had, her words holding more melancholy where his did intrigue, “Nothing I’ve ever heard makes me think she does deaths that clean,”

Inej frowned, feeling a sudden alertness taking hold of her at the sound of that name. The Peacock. That was how the rest of the Barrel referred to Heleen Van Houden, but to her girls it was Tante Heleen or the back of her hand. 

“What happened?” she asked, turning to Rotty and the others.

None of them had realised she was there, and a surprised whisper of Wraith quickly flew between their mouths. She prompted again.

“The Leopard showed back up this morning,” said Rotty, “They found her a couple of hours ago. Dead,”

Inej shivered. At the Menagerie each girl was known by her animal counterpart; a Fjerdan wolf, a Shu serpent, a Zemeni fawn, a Kaelish mare. A Suli lynx. The Leopard was the costume worn by the girl from the Southern Colonies. Inej didn’t know her - no-one had been wearing that cloak when Inej was there, except for the last month of her indenture when a little scrap of a thing from the Colonies had shown up. They’d never spoken, in fact Inej had seen very little of her because the Leopard had spent most of that month in the room downstairs, but Inej had recognised her on the occasional time she crossed through West Stave. A pretty girl with blonde curls and deep brown eyes that looked more like they belonged to a doe, despite the spots painted on her neck and across her collar bones. She’d heard about her going missing because it happened right before she and Nina went to the university and she didn’t doubt rumours had flown across the staves - by all accounts, the Leopard was currently Heleen’s most popular item on display. Or she had been, anyway.

“How?”

“Strangled, it looks like. They left her on the steps outside the Menagerie, I heard the Peacock complaining it’s gonna reduce business,”

Inej’s hand drifted to her knives.

“Where’s Kaz?”

“In his office, with Fahey, last I saw,”

Inej nodded, then walked away and ignored the whispers that surely followed. She slipped upstairs; it was mostly private game rooms up here but none were populated this morning, and the staff room at the far end was probably empty or near it if the rooms weren’t currently in use. Inej slipped into the store cupboard above Kaz’s office and leant against the door, whispering a prayer for a girl with no name. 

“Demo,” said Jesper now, suddenly, as Kaz stood up.

Inej was pulled out of her thoughts. Kaz paused at the corner of his desk, leaning heavily against his cane as he turned back to see Jesper.

“Demo?”

“You said you want more hands on demolitions,” Jesper breathed, “Last week, I heard you telling Raske,”

Kaz conceded it with a nod. Inej was only mildly surprised; Raske was the best demolitions expert in the Barrel, but he was also one man and the only member of the Dregs who knew what he was doing with a bomb. 

“Wylan can do demo. He’s a chemist, Kaz, he can make anything,”

“You’ve seen his work?”

“Yes,”

Inej was pretty sure that was a lie, but apparently Kaz was either fooled or willing to be fooled, because he nodded slowly.

“What are you staking on it?”

Oh Saints, Kaz.

“What?”

“I’m not putting my neck on the line for no reason, Jes. I’ve already lost a lot of money this week, I don;t fancy adding to that. If this goes sideways or the kid isn’t any use to me I want compensation, and I know you don’t have any cash so I need some insurance. What are you staking?”

There was a long pause. An inexplicably long pause, actually. A noise behind Inej made her flinch and she had to restrain a gasp as one of the boards beneath her creaked. Kaz looked up, almost straight at the tiny gap Inej was peering through, but he mustn’t have been at the right angle because he only mused:

“Layla’s dropping my merchandise again,”

Layla waited tables at the Club, and had an unfortunate reputation for accidentally smashing rather expensive bottles and platters. Sometimes Inej wondered why Kaz kept her on, but then she saw her at the tables and knew exactly why; Layla could dazzle anything out of anyone, and she would sail back past Kaz and Inej armed to the teeth with political gossip for Inej to follow up on.

Silence fell back over the office for a time, but Inej could hear footsteps behind her now. Any minute Layla or another staff member could wander in and find her spying on Per Haskell’s best lieutenant, and probably - especially if word of the run-in with Velthuis and the Black Tips was spreading as quickly as she predicted it would - accuse of her of betraying the Dregs. Even though she trusted that Kaz knew she never would, that was a near-on impossible thing to come back from around here. Your gang was your family, and Inej already felt like she didn’t entirely belong. 

“Well?” asked Kaz, after another long moment had passed, “Am I doing this or not?”

Jesper stood up, unslung his gun belt, and dropped his prize revolvers onto Kaz’s desk. 

“Your insurance,”

Inej couldn’t see their faces properly, but she could imagine the exact arch of Kaz’s brow. 

“Alright then,” he said, walking towards the door, “I’m in,”

[crowsvalentine]

Little Crow 5a

Masterlist

A lot of different people show up to the Slat looking for a job or just for solitude. The slat offered a home to grown men in trouble with the law and teenagers who have too many debts to pay. When the dregs open the door one day and see a cradle, offering only a note for explanation will their leader take the baby in or throw her back to let Ketterdam have it’s way with her?

aka a baby shows up at the Slat and Kaz is Shook (probably making this into a series, maybe I’ll leave it as it is, idk)

When Kaz woke up that morning, he wasn’t expecting to see the smiling face of a four-year-old girl looking down at him. He jumped a bit, his surprise making the girl giggle and flop down onto the bed next to him. In the four years she’d been around, Crow hardly ever stepped foot in the slat, let alone in the top-most bedroom where Kaz stayed. It wasn’t that he didn’t allow her to be there, it was just she never had reason to be. Everything she needed was at the Van Eck Mansion and Kaz could be there in a moment if he was ever needed or if he ever wanted to see her. So, her being in the slat, alone, was not something he’d ever expect. Sitting up, he turned to look at her, raising his eyebrows at the way she casually laid back on his bed, as if it were her own and no one else’s.

“Crow, why are you here?” She’d stopped giggling, her face serious as she pretended to fly Breck above her head. “Crow, where are Jesper and Wylan?” She still didn’t answer, but the corners of her mouth were turned up into a smile. He watched her continue to play, giving him no mind as he sighed and stood from the bed, throwing the blanket over her as he did.

“Hey!”

He smiled at the way she threw it off her, giving him the same glare that he was told resembled his own. Sitting up, she crossed her arms, Breck sitting on her lap with, what Kaz could only feel, was giving him the same look she was. Ignoring the two, he walked into his old office and started getting dressed for the day. He was sure Crow’s visit wasn’t planned, that would have been something he remembered, he was far too busy to spend the day with her that day, things he didn’t plan around a visit from her. He walked back out of the room as he pulled on his gloves, flexing his fingers as each one was pulled over his hands.

“Why do you where those?”

He looked up at her as he buttoned the glove around his wrist, wondering where the question came from when she’d seen him wearing the gloves for years. She was sitting with her legs hanging off the side of the bed, swinging them back and forth as she watched him re-enter the room. Kneeling the best he could to face her, he crossed his arms over her lap and smiled at her.

“It’s a secret,” he whispered, “but because you’re special I’m going to tell you, okay?” She nodded happily, leaning in a bit as if to hear better. He waited a second, smirking when she started fidgeting and getting impatient.

“Da! Tell me!”

She placed her hands on his shoulders, leaning in so close that her nose was touching his, narrowing her eyes as she stared into his own. He took the opportunity to admire the colour of hers, they were smiliar to another pair of eyes he grew to love, but these ones were all Crow, filled with all the joy and mischief a child raised by the dregs could have.  

“Okay, okay,” she grinned, “you can’t tell anyone though, okay?” She nodded and turned her head, knowing that secrets were always whispered in ears. “They make me look scarier.”

She burst out laughing and fell back onto the bed making Kaz stare at her in confusion, he didn’t understand what was so funny about what he’d just said, the look of the gloves was actually part of the reason he still wore them.

“Why’s that so funny? Am I not scary?” She sat up and shook her head.

“No! You’re my da, you can’t be scary,” she said matter-of-factly. He rolled his eyes, not wanting to argue with a four year old about his image. Ignoring her, he grabbed his cane from the side of the bed and held out his free hand for her to take. “Da?”

“Yes?”

“Scary people don’t hold hands either.”

-

There had been a note on his office door when they’d gotten downstairs, it was from Wylan, Jesper and Nina, explaining that he needed to watch Crow for the day because they had given the staff the day off and they needed a day to themselves. He couldn’t be mad at it, Jesper and Wylan needed time alone with each other without needing to worry about the child that took up residence in their home, and Nina had become to sole female influence on Crow in the last year, making sure she wasn’t too corrupted by having three men taking care of her. It was hard work and Kaz couldn’t help but appreciate the need for a break. Kaz just shrugged and threw the note away before telling Crow to get her jacket and boots on. In any other situation, he would have left Crow at the slat, where he was going was not a place for children. However, it was the time of day when the Slat was mostly empty, everyone gone to do their assigned jobs leaving no one capable of babysitting their boss’s ward in the place.

They now walked through the streets of Ketterdam, Crow unsure of why everyone was looking at them the way they were. Kaz tried distracting her by pointing to different buildings and landmarks that she never would have seen before and telling her stories of the tiny jobs he used to do back before he was the leader. As Crow marveled, Kaz and his men glared at the passersby, letting them know that it was far from okay to stare at them as they walked.  

It hadn’t taken long for Ketterdam to learn that Kaz had a new girl in his life, the image of the gang leader with a child amusing everyone until they learned that bringing her up was a mistake that they shouldn’t make twice. It took until that year for Kaz to finally accept that people knew about Crow, finally allowing the girl to stray from the mansion and experience life as it was in the city. Though, it was still rare to see the big, bad Kaz “Dirty Hands” Brekker holding hands with a four year old girl who smiled and skipped along next to him. It was a bit jarring, to say the least.

Kaz looked down when he felt a tug at his arm, but Crow wasn’t looking back at him, instead her eyes trained on a small shop that they were about to pass by.

“Can we have ice cream?” She asked making Kaz sigh.

“I have one meeting and then we can have ice cream.” She only nodded, she may have been spoiled but she knew when not to push a matter.

When they arrived at their first destination, Kaz looked back and nodded to Pim and Feliks, who  were following close behind, silently telling them to go on ahead to check out the building before they entered. Crow stared up at the fancy building they stopped at, her eyes wide and her mouth making an O in awe of the thing. Kaz chuckled and tugged on her arm gently to get her to walk inside.

“Weapons in the bin.”

The voice had Kaz looking up, ignoring the confused look the two men gave Crow as he let go of her hand. Looking to the side, he saw his own men getting patted down for anything they might have missed.

“Do you really think I’d carry a weapon with a child present?”

The two men just stared at him, one of them even pushing the bin closer as if to say “yes, we’re not taking any chances with you”. They were smart, Kaz hummed and went into his coat to pull his gun out of it’s holster. He tried not to think about Crow as he disarmed, the girl wasn’t completely unaware of the life that Kaz lived, but seeing a gun verses hearing stories about guns were two different things.

“What about the girl?” One of the men asked, still confused about why she was there.

“What about her?” The other asked.

“She’s a little girl, she has package of sweets in one pocket, she won’t hesitate to bite your hand if you touch it, and her toy can sing, she’s carrying nothing that will cause harm to anyone,” Kaz assured them, wondering how someone could be dumb enough to think he’d let a baby carry a weapon.

They both nodded, not wanting to anger Kaz anymore with their assumptions. After patting Kaz down, and Kaz stopping them with a glare when they looked over at Crow, they finally started walking deeper into the building to where the meeting was to by held. He stopped at the door, letting the other men walk in ahead of his own. He turned to look at them, assessing them to see who would be better fit for the job he was about to give.

“You stay out here with Crow,” he said to Feliks, the man’s eyes widened as he looked between his boss and Crow. The dregs were willing to kill and maim for their gang, but taking care of their youngest member was something that not just anyone would be willing to take on, if anything happened to the little girl, then well, that was a sure way to end up at the bottom of a canal. Kaz sighed and put a hand into his pocket, the men stiffened, wondering what the hell he could be pulling out if he’d just disarmed not even a minute ago. However, they let out a sigh of relief when it was just a deck of cards. “Here, teach her a card trick, she likes them,” he instructed, “just keep her occupied and away from the door, okay?”

“Can I go with you?” It was the question Kaz was waiting for and he shut his eyes when Crow finally asked. When he didn’t answer, she tugged on his coat sleeve, trying to gain his attention, “Da, please?” It took everything in him not to look down and get sucked in by the look he knew she was giving him, it was the look that earned her all the toys she now owned and a bigger bedroom at the mansion. If Kaz looked down now, he was sure he’d let her do as she asked.

“No, Crow, go with Feliks, I won’t be gone long,” he said, lifting their joined hands to pass hers to Feliks. She begrudgingly let Feliks take it, her hand much smaller than the man’s, practically wrapping around a single finger in an effort to hold it. When they started to walk off he couldn’t help but frown at the way Crow was dragging her feet. There wasn’t much that could get her upset, and the fact that it was Kaz who could bring her usually happy mood down was something he was less than okay with. However, there wasn’t much he could do about it, he was due in a meeting.

-

He looked down at the bloodied and bruised bodies of the men around him, the meeting hadn’t gone as planned and he was forced to take measures in a different direction. It wasn’t something he did often anymore, the need for beating not as apparent as it once was when he was still an up and coming leader. He was once accused of becoming soft, and Kaz needed moments like this to prove that that wasn’t the case. Sighing, he grabbed his cane from where it laid on top of the large table, giving one of the men a small nudge with the end of it as he passed.

“Remember this next time you want to cross me, Mr. Parks,” he said before he exited the room. Turning to look at the man, he noticed the way he was smiling, causing an unease to settle over Kaz. The man mumbled something and spit blood out onto the ground, he was the only one of the three still sitting in his chair, giving him an unobstructed view of the two Dregs that stood at his door.

“What was that?” Kaz asked, knowing that it wasn’t something that he’d enjoy hearing.

“I said, you can beat us all you want, but you’ll need to kill us to keep your weakness safe, Mr. Brekker.” He started laughing, taking no mind to the way blood trickled out of his mouth. It took a second for Kaz to understand what he meant, and when he did, he rushed out the door, yelling at Pim to deal with Parks as he did.

He knew he shouldn’t have brought Crow out with him, Kaz may have been a boss but he still had enemies in Ketterdam willing to do anything to bring him down. There were no limits with these people, a four year old girl being anything but off limits to them. Despite his bad leg, he ran to look for Feliks and Crow, and as he did, he remembered a dream he had a few years ago about this very thing happening. The baby crow that was shot out of the sky under his watch might have been coming true, and Kaz lost all of his usual composure at the thought of it. He couldn’t help but remember when Inej was taken, how back then he was able to stay calm, keeping all of his worry bottled up inside him to show that nothing could bring him to a breaking point. All of that was lost when it came to Crow.

When he finally reached the front of the building, he skidded to a halt. Kaz had never found the sound of laughter so comforting before, Crow’s laughter was something that he always wanted to hear every second of the day to know his girl was perfectly safe. He slowly walked over to her, and he found himself smiling when she caught sight of him and grinned.

“Look!” She exclaimed, holding out a fan of cards, “pick one!” He kneeled down on his good leg, smiling as he did as instructed. “Now put it on top!” He watched as she shuffled her small deck, something he taught her awhile ago and that she’d gotten good at just hours after learning. She lifted a single card and held it right up to his face, making Kaz go cross eyed when he tried to focus on what was written on it. “Is this your card?”

“Yes, it is, you did a good job,” he praised.

There was something in him that he hadn’t felt in years, and it caused him to wrap his arms around Crow and pull her to his chest. One of his hand pressed to the back of her head as he held her close. He laughed, genuinely laughed, when he felt her wrap her own arms around him, the assurance that the hug gave him making him want to hold onto her forever.

“Da, I didn’t finish my trick!” Crow said, quickly pulling away from him. She held something in her right hand, her small fist clutched around it making Kaz raise his eyebrows at her. He spared a look over at Feliks, only getting more confused at the look of pride he was giving Crow. “Tricks are just a distraction.” Those were words she’d heard him say the first time he taught her a trick, it was a simple ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ trick that even he learned before he’d come to the city. He’d stolen the wrapped piece of candy out of her pocket that day, it amazed her more than anything else. It should have been worrying, that she was entertained by theft, but he couldn’t help but feel proud when she asked to learn more. Once she repeated the words she held out her hand, opening her fist to reveal the double-sided coin he had hidden in his sleeve.

“How did you know that was there?” He asked, amazed by what she’d just done. She leaned in, just as he had that morning, ready to whisper him a secret.

“Magic.” She squealed when he stood and lifted her, laughing when she wrapped her arms around his neck. Learning her new skill had thankfully helped her forget about Kaz practically abandoning her earlier, her sadness completely being replaced by the joy of besting him at his own game. “Can I have ice cream now?”

“Yes, I think you deserve some ice cream.”

He set her down, but she froze when he held out his hand for her to take, her eyes widening at the sight of something. He quickly drew back, completely forgetting about what now stained his gloves. She hadn’t noticed it before, thankfully, too excited about her trick to pay much attention to the blood that covered the back of his gloves. Pim and Feliks watched him, wondering what had just happened. Clearing his throat, Kaz looked at the two.

“What is-“

“It’s nothing, Crow, just a bit of ink.”

Thankfully the red almost disappeared on the black of his gloves, looking like a colourless inky substance that he could play of as just that. Crow seemed to believe it and nodded, though she made no move to retake his hand before she started walking towards the door. He motioned for Feliks to walk with her, not wanting to scare her anymore than he already has. As the two of them left the building, he and Pim found the bin with their weapons and rearmed themselves, Kaz wiping his gloves on a discarded piece of paper as he did so.

“You shouldn’t bring her to these things, boss, we promised we would keep her away from what we do,” Pim’s quiet voice said. Kaz frowned at his words, he’d been there the day Crow had arrived and he was one of the first to hold her when they’d decided to keep her. Pim was no stranger to what happened to the vulnerable young in Ketterdam, his own family being victim to it not long ago. Kaz only nodded at him, already knowing that what he said was true but not wanting to say it himself.

“She’s going to learn eventually, Pim, better to do it slowly.”

-

Kaz watched her from his place against the wall, the slow rise and fall of her chest, the way she clutched her crow, and the look of peace on her face that could only come from someone who felt completely safe where they laid. Crow was safe with him, he’d always try to convince himself. Nina praised his ability to adapt to having an unexpected child, she always did, but adaption meant changing and Kaz wasn’t sure he was doing enough to change for Crow. His life still posed a threat to her and at this point, he couldn’t bare it if something happened to her. Today was just the first day anyone had dared to use her as a pawn against him, threaten her in the hope of getting Kaz to bend to their will, and there was no saying if it would ever happen again.

Walking over to his bed, he gently sat down next to Crow, careful not to wake her up after the busy day they’d had. It used to be that Kaz was just afraid of change, that the world wouldn’t take him seriously if he’d become soft and easy on those who ran under him. He solved that problem, proving that he was still the same Dirtyhands that ruled the streets years ago, that having Crow meant nothing when it came to business. Then there was the problem of him not being good enough for Crow, that she deserved better guardians who didn’t have his passed trauma. However, he was assured time and time again that he was the best that Crow could have, that no one could keep her from the life of the Barrel better than the top Barrel Boss himself. He was sure Crow was safe with him, he took precautions, made sure that she was aware but not apart of his world. That changed and looking at her now, something so untouched and unchanged by the evils Kaz saw everyday, he couldn’t help but think he failed her some how.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting this.”

He moved faster than a bullet at the voice, so unexpected at the late hour and in his own bedroom. His first instinct was to grab Crow, keep her close to him in case the unexpected intruder was there to take her. His scare from earlier still too fresh in his mind to keep her more than a step away from him. Holding her to his chest now, still fast asleep on his shoulder, he couldn’t help but stumble at the speed in which he moved. The fall against the wall caused her to wake up, waking the four-year-old as she cried out at the unwanted jolt.

Crow was almost dropped when Kaz finally looked up at who came in, the image something out of a dream that he could recall all too vividly at that moment. He didn’t drop her then though, he held her closer if possible, his fear slowly being replaced by a tiniest of smiles.  

[sucker-for-six-of-crows]

Okay so I just realized that I’m more obsessed with Kaz x Nikolai than I’d previously thought???

Because like

- Kaz being so completely entranced by Sturmhond’s cunning nature when he’d helped them during the whole issue with Van Eck

- He was (barely) keeping his emotions in check the whole time

-Kaz taking Inej’s announcement that she’s going to start going out with Nina in stride because that morning he’d received a mysterious letter that showered him in compliments and was only signed ‘S’

-He and Sturmhond writing letters back and forth for months

-Kaz slowly becoming captivated by the charming, witty words on the paper and the loopy ‘S’ that he now knows stands for ‘Sturmhond’

-The Dregs noticing how Kaz is constantly distracted and is caught daydreaming with a small smile on his face

-The Dregs breaking into Kaz’s office when he’s out and rifling through the drawers of his desk until they find tons and tons of letters stashed away, all of them neat and kept safe and close to his heart

-Kaz almost having a heart attack when Sturmhond finally asks to meet in person, by the docks

-“Why do you look more dressed up than usual, Kaz???” Nina will demand playfully as she and Inej cuddle on the couch. “You got a hot date???”

-No reply

-Kaz’s heart relocating to his throat when he finds Sturmhond leaning against the wall with a bouquet of flowers in his hand

-Flowers that he gives to Kaz

-Finding out that Sturmhond is also uncomfortable taking off his gloves

-Kaz being shocked when he finds out that Sturmhond booked them a dinner at a super fancy restauraunt

-”How do you have this much money??? Aren’t you a pirate????”

-”I have my ways”

-Kaz growing increasingly flushed as Sturmhond compliments him shamelessly at the table for two, shocked at how completely at ease he is around a notorious criminal and conman

-Getting into a heated but friendly debate on which country would win if the whole world went to war

-Kaz is all for Shu Han and their advanced weaponry, but Nikolai is (surprise, surprise!) firmly supporting Ravka and their Second Army

-Kaz being a little sad when they finally part ways, growing even more flustered when Sturmhond takes his hand and kisses his gloved knuckles, bowing before disappearing off into the night

-Kaz standing there, star-struck and staring in the direction Sturmhond had gone for ten whole minutes before heading back to the Slat

-The Dregs COMPLETELY noticing the vase full of flowers on Kaz’s desk the next morning

- Kaz and Sturmhond hanging out constantly, growing closer and closer until Kaz isn’t sure he’d be able to go a day without that charming smile and those witty remarks

- Kaz missing him terribly for the long months in which he has to go away.

-”Pirate stuff” Sturmhond says. “A guy’s got to make a living somehow.”

-Kaz is suspicious, but his loneliness distracts him from the half-assed excuses

-Sturmhond telling Kaz all of these fantastic tales of his voyages at sea, all of them sounding realistic except for the one about the legendary Sun Summoner, which Kaz just scoffs and rolls his eyes at.

-In return, Kaz telling Sturmhond about his most daring heists, and Sturmhond is shocked when he finds that it was the Dregs who’d broken into the Ice Court.

-”That was you?!?!???!!!!??”

- After several months Kaz finally opening up about why he’s uncomfortable taking off his gloves when they hold hands and refuses to hug or kiss

- Sturmhond taking off his gloves in front of Kaz to show him the scars from the ninchevo’ya transformation.

-Several months after that Kaz “Dirtyhands” Brekker is caught by the rest of the Dregs sitting on the stoop of the Slat holding hands with Sturmhond and kissing him. None of them have gloves on.

-Kaz catching on that Sturmhond isn’t actually who he says he is when he catches him going to a Grisha for his face to be tailored

-Kaz being mad a first for being lied to but then realizing how desparate Sturmhond is to keep him

-”Why don’t you just tell him the truth, Nikolai?” the Grisha tailor will say as Kaz watches through the window and listens in through the cracks.

- “I can’t-” Nikolai’s voice breaks. “I can’t lose him. If Kaz realizes who I really am, he’ll hate me. I…I think I’m in love with him.”

-Kaz staggering home and refusing to leave his room when the Dregs knock on his door

-He doesn’t come out even when Nikolai comes knocking on the door the next day to pick him up for their daily noontime date

-Kaz refuses to see Nikolai for a week, but every day he keeps coming, and every day the Dregs still let him inside

-Because they know that Nikolai needs Kaz and Kaz needs Nikolai

-Kaz not responding as Nikolai stands on the other side of his door and begs to be let in

-”Did I do something wrong? Kaz, please talk to me!” Softer, he’d murmur. “I miss you.”

-Then one day Kaz opens the door

-They have a long private talk about it, and eventually Kaz is able to forgive him for lying.

-He’s also able to wrap his mind around the fact that someone loves him. Romantically.

-He even whispers “I love you, too” because by this point they’ve been dating for a year or so and there’s no point in lying to himself

-Nikolai stops going to the tailor and begins to indulge Kaz, spoiling him rotten

-He also seems to be adamant about paying for everything

-”Who’s the king here? Besides, all that money isn’t your own, anyway.”

-Kaz doesn’t argue

- For the next couple of years, the couple spends their time between Kerch and Ravka

-Nikolai being accepted as one of the Dregs and getting his tattoo because he might as well since he’s there literally all the time

-The whole big palace and little palace taking a loving to Kaz despite his rough exterior, getting into a hardcore competition to see who can make him smile

-That ability seems to only belong to Nikolai and the Dregs

-The two of them sharing a bed in Kaz’s tiny, homey room or in Nikolai’s extravagant chambers

-Kaz attending dinners and balls and galas with Nikolai, the two of them always arm in arm and holding hands under the table

-Ravka seems totally okay with having their king marry a man.

-Nikolai taking Kaz on long voyages at sea with his pirate crew

-One day they’re in the royal gardens, five or six years into their relationship, and Nikolai brings Kaz to one of their favorite hangout spots by a fountain

-AND THEN HE’S GETTING DOWN ON ONE KNEE AND KAZ CAN’T BREATHE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT THIS IS HAPPENING

-NIKOLAI GIVING KAZ THE FAMILY RING THAT HE’D ORIGINALLY INTENDED FOR ALINA

-Kaz says yes, of course

-They have two weddings, one small private one in Ketterdam with only their close friends in attendance and then a gigantic ball in Ravka

-Half the country attends because even they love Kaz because he helps the poor by stealing from the rich like a black-clad Robin Hood. (He only steals from the bad rich that exploit their workers- he used to think all rich people were bad, but Nikolai is the obvious exception)

-The church is packed as Kaz walks down the isle towards Nikolai, who’s all dolled up in his King’s outfit and is staring at Kaz open-mouthed

-Nikolai grabbing Kaz’s face and kissing him hard when the person in charge of the ceremony pronounces them husband and husband

-Kaz is so flustered that he just melts into it

-The afterparty is insane

- There’s singing and dancing and a whole orchestra as Kaz is introduced to tons of important people and Grisha of all orders

-The Dregs were all invited, and they’re sitting off to the side awkwardly as Nina meets up with old Grisha friends and introcudes them to her girlfriend

-Inej is blushing and embarrassed to say the least as Zoya and Genya fawn over them

-Nikolai pulling Kaz off to the side to introduce him to two seemingly normal people that can only stay for a little while.

-The woman has a hood pulled over her head but once they’re alone she pulls it down and reveals a shock of white hair. Her husband his gruff but friendly, and both congratulate them before disappearing off into the night.

-Kaz has an idea of who they are

-When the party is over they retire to Nikolai’s chambers, where they fall onto the bed

-Clothes are slowly shed and tossed onto the floor

-Kaz getting all blushy when Nikolai tells him how gorgeous he is

-They haven’t done anything up until this point because Kaz was always too nervous about his flashbacks, but Nikolai is patient and caring and Kaz knows that he’s safe as his legs frame Nikolai’s hips.

-Kaz being how shocked at how good it feels

-The two of them falling asleep in each other’s arms

-Kaz wondering how he managed to be alone for so many years

-They’re together happily until the day they die- it’s the same night, both in their sleep, and they’re both well into their old age

-Kaz Dirtyhands Brekker, the Demjin, the Bastard of the Barrel, doesn’t get shot in his twenties and have his body dumped in the canal

-No, instead he dies peacefully in his sleep in the Ravkan palace with his husband next to him, holding his hands and smiling

-He dies happy

[lynyrdwrites]

Are you going to leave a path to trace

What’s that? Is it me  writing for yet another fandom? Why yes it is!  This is my first attempt at Six of Crows fic, particularly Kaz/Inej fic.  You should know that I have decided to completely ignore certain Unfortunate Events that occurred in Crooked Kingdom. Because I can.

Song title from Obilvion by Bastille, because Bastille has so many Kaz/Inej  songs.

---

They go their separate ways. Nina and Matthias leave for Ravka. Before long, Jesper and Wylan follow, seeking another Fabrikator.  By then, Inej had already been gone for months, tales of her achievements already finding their way back to Ketterdam; some of them  borne  by Slavers who are marked by the Sea Wraith, and Kaz  remembers their faces.  Their names marked down, in case is Wraith ever needs the  information.

              Because Kaz, of course, stays in the Barrel.

              He is the Bastard of the Barrel, the leader of the Crows, the Dregs.  He is the nightmare that lives under the bed of the Merchant children.

              He is completely and utterly alone.

              He always had been, or so he had thought. But somehow, he had grown used to Inej being there, just a step behind him.  He had grown used to seeing Jesper at the card tables. He had grown used to being able to call on Nina at the brothel.  He had even grown used to Wylan, a nervous spectre that never quite fit.

              He thinks he might miss Matthias, and that thought makes Kaz believe he must be going mad.

              It’s Inej he misses the most, though – an ache, every bit as painful as the one in his leg.  More so, even.  He can always rest his wounded limb, but his heart?

              Every time it beats, it beats out her name.  InejInejInej.

              He’s a heartsick fool.

              Not that anyone in the Barrel would realize that. A lovesick Kaz is even more of a bastard than regular Kaz, and now there is no Inej to appear silently at his side, and remind him that there’s something good in the world.  There’s no Jesper, with a quick jest to make his lips quirk.

              In his office, he doesn’t wear his gloves.

              At first, he tells himself that it’s because he’s warm. But the Inej has been gone for months, and he stops trying to fool himself.

              He does it, because if she returns, he wants to be able to touch her without the protective covering.  Just the thought of it, of stoking his fingers down her dark cheek, makes him ache.  It makes him think of holding her hand on the dock, and he doesn’t remember salt water threatening to overtake him, but instead the warmth of her skin against his.

              He spends miserable nights that way, wanting some sort of relief, but not entirely sure how to find it.  It’s sad and pathetic, but while Kaz has known desire before, it’s always been easily forgotten.  But he can’t forget Inej, or how her skin felt against his.

              He doesn’t want to.

              Instead, he just acts like an even bigger bastard, if that’s even possible. Except for those days when tales of the Sea Wraith reach him.

              The slavers fear her above all others, and it makes Kaz almost giddy.

              They should fear Inej.

              It’s ten months  to  the day after she first left that her berth is no longer empty.

              Kaz is taking a step  forward – a handshake, with another  bastard who has a hunger in his eyes Kaz recognizes.  Skin touches, and water threatens to rises over Kaz’s head.

              “The deal is the deal.”

              “The deal is the deal.”  It takes every ounce of Kaz’s strength not to retch on the words. He  swears the skin feels bloated and clammy… and then the contact breaks, and Kaz can breathe again.   No one looks at him oddly, and  he realizes that none of them knows how very close he came to breaking.

              Inej would have. He thinks, and how many times has he thought that?

              Jesper could shoot that.

              Wylan would understand that.

              Nina could do that.

              Even the damn Druskelle wouldn’t be fooled by that.

              It’s those thoughts that take him to the docks.  It’s a weakness he’s showing to the world, but he couldn’t stop himself even if he cared to try. Not with the memory of salt water a burn in his throat.

              His footsteps are wooden.  He’s walked this path so many  times, and he knows what he’ll find.  An empty berth for a girl that deserves so much more than the wretched creature he is.

              Except this time, the berth isn’t empty.

              The Wraith.

              He makes quick work of looking at the ship, ignoring the boy  on guard, until he says in what’s likely meant to be an intimidating way that the captain and her passengers have already disembarked.

              Captain and her passengers.

              The Van Eck house is alive when he reaches it.  Laughter and the echo of luggage making it alive in ways it hasn’t been for months.  He stand in the archway for several moments, silently observing.

              They are exactly as he remembers them.

              Jesper, wild and reckless and loud is teasing Wylan with  Nina’s assistance, and Matthias watches them all with silent stoicism.  But Kaz knows that’s a fond glint in the Fjerdan’s gaze, and Kaz wonders, briefly, if it’s echoed in his own.

              “Demjin,” Matthias says, the first to notice Kaz’s presence.

              “Kaz!” Nina is as alive and dazzling as ever, as she comes to him. Were he someone else, she  would have thrown her arms around him, he knows, but instead she settles for a bright smile. “That was fast.”

              Kaz’s brow furrows, not understanding – what was fast? – but Wylan is looking over his shoulder.

              “Where’s Inej?” he asks.

              “Yeah,” adds Jesper.  “We’re supposed to be having a victory party.  To celebrate the Wraith’s insanity.”

              Kaz will want to explore the meaning of that statement, but not now.  Not when he knows that Inej had gone to find him. He doesn’t bother with pleasantries as he turns his back on the others, but if they expected such from him, they’ll have to live in disappointment.

              He gets odd looks as he rushes through the Barrel, but for once  Kaz Brekker doesn’t care  about what the Dregs or the other gangs think of him. If he has to, he’ll remind them what Dirtyhands can do.

              Right now all he wants is –

              He’s breathing heavily when he bursts through the door of his office… and there she is.

              She’s sitting in the window, her face tilted towards the sun, a breeze stirring strands of hair that have escaped her braid. It’s shorter, he realizes with a jolt, and  her skin is  even darker.

              She’s the  most beautiful thing he’s ever  seen.

              “Kaz.” She turns from the sun to look  at him, her dark brown eyes taking in every detail of him, just as she is him.  “You’re not wearing your gloves.”

              He’s confused for a moment, looks down, and realizes she’s right.  He had tucked them into his pocket for the meeting, and never put them back on.  He tugs them out now, holds them up for Inej to see.

              “Small steps,” he says after a moment.  He leans against his desk, not quite ready to approach her. His fingertips itch for contact, but he doesn’t want to ruin this with memories of salt water and bloated skin, not yet. So instead he just… watches her.

              “Small steps,” Inej murmurs softly, a small smile curving her lips.  “I followed a ship-”

              She cuts off as Kaz holds up a paper from his desk. It’s the name of every Slaver that’s docked in Ketterdam and who they did business with.  Inej pulls herself into the room and walks to him on silent feet.

              “They’re yours,” Kaz says, and wonders if his voice sounds more hoarse than usual.   It feels like it should. Inej accepts the paper,  and  then takes another step, into his space. They aren’t touching, but it’s close.

              He can see all the different colors  in  her eyes; the shadows her lashes cast over her cheeks.

              “You brought a shipful back,” he says, clenching his hands on his desk against the urge to touch her.  She’s here, and he’s not ready for the magic of  this moment to be lost to a nightmare.

              “I stopped in Ravka. They were  homesick.”

              “Nina and the Druskelle?” Kaz raises an eyebrow, not believing her.

              “Home isn’t a place, Kaz.  It’s a person.” She doesn’t touch him, but she  doesn’t move away from him either.  “You are part of that.”

              He has no words, and he can no longer deny himself. So reaches out, and runs his fingers over her cheek.  Her skin is soft and surprisingly dry.  She turns her face into his touch, and Kaz brings his other hand up, so he’s cradling her face.

              Salt water and –

              “Kaz” – the voice breaks into his memories, and somehow her hand on his tugs him back, rather than pushing him further – “look at me Kaz.”

              He does, because he always needs to look at her, it seems, even when she’s out at sea and has to yearn and wait at an empty berth instead.  So he looks at her, until his frantic breathing calms.   He still cradles her face, her  hands covering his, and he doesn’t want to stop  touching her, but nausea is threatening in the back of his throat,  and it’s an odd mixture, this regret and revulsion as he lets her go, watches her step back.

              “I missed you.” The  words are little more than a murmur, but the way Inej freezes for a second tells him she heard him.

              “I’m staying with Wylan and Jesper, we all are,” she says, rather than acknowledging the words that have let Kaz uncomfortable and adrift.  He can only appreciate that. “Though I suspect you know that.”

              “A party.  Something about your insanity?” he feels more in control of himself now, enough to raise a questioning brow at her.  Inej looks back at him as she climbs in the window again.  The sun creates a halo of light behind her, and Kaz feels his breath catch.

              “Jesper is becoming a worried old woman without a gun in his hand,” Inej replies with a grin.  “Come join us, when your business allows.”

              “I will,” Kaz replies. He’ll probably be out the door as soon as she’s gone, but he won’t admit that.  She ducks her head to leave, but Kaz isn’t ready to share her, not just yet. “Inej?’

              She looks back, a question in her eyes.

              “Welcome home.”

              She quirks her head, as though trying to see through him.  Kaz isn’t quite ready to let her see all of him, not yet… but he tries to let her see all that he  can give her right now.

              Home is a person.

              You are my home.

              I would like to be yours.

              “I’ve missed it,” Inej replies, and Kaz isn’t fooled that she means Ketterdam as a whole. The  city has been far too cruel to her for that.

              She’s gone, and Kaz  leans back against his desk once more, the warmth of her skin still a memory on his fingertips.

              It’s good to be home.

[searchforthescars]

The Best by Far - Ch. 2

A solid two weeks after this chapter was promised, here it is. I hope you enjoy!

Alexander was nearly asleep by the fire when Jordan started hammering at the door.

She never pounded nor slammed; she was always the picture of calm and order, always knocking demurely or ringing the bell when there was one. When he flung open the door, she shoved past him, slamming and locking the door before leaning against it.

“Are you…okay?” He asked hesitantly, taking in her tangled hair, the wild anxiety in her eyes, the way she gnawed on her lower lip. Her breath was coming in harsh gasps. She obviously wasn’t but sometimes he felt he owed her the courtesy of a lie. “Did you run here?”

She nodded, the cut on her cheek flexing as she moved. “Okay, come here.” He pulled her into the kitchen, effectively startling the stray cat Victoria had let in three nights ago. “Sit down. I’m cleaning that.” [Read on Ao3]

He felt her calming as he worked; the tense muscles on her face smoothed and her hunched shoulders relaxed. He didn’t speak until he was done and only when her cut was cleaned and bandaged did he kneel before her perch on the stool and say, “talk.”

No matter how irate Jordan was, how stressed or tired or confused, her stories were impeccably told, always without room for question or error. She told every detail as if she was reading it from a page, her disturbingly perfect recall only working to her credit.

She told him about the ship in berth 22, the woman who looked like her, and a birth certificate she had found in her father’s safe with the name Jordan Ghafa inscribed in Kaz’s careful hand. He listened to it all, took it in more of a stride than Jordan was at the time, and waited for her story to wear out.

“I don’t know what to do,” she gritted out, her slim fingers clenching into a fist. “She’s there and my papa was holding her and… It’s all wrong, Alexander.”

“How is it wrong?”

She let out a loud sigh, her teeth sinking into her lip. “Because my father doesn’t hold people. And how dare she just come back! She left me!” Her voice rose, rasping against the walls. “She sent me to this city and stayed!”

Alexander drummed his fingers against his leg. His thighs were beginning to cramp but he stayed still. Jordan’s dark eyes were glossy with anger, resting on his face as if to burn his skin to shreds. “Maybe she didn’t mean to leave you,” he said tentatively. “You said she looked underfed and afraid. Maybe something happened.”

Jordan snorted incredulously. “Something that took 14 years?”

Alexander shrugged, standing up. “I don’t know. Just don’t judge too quickly, okay?” She sighed, brushing her fingers over the bandage on her cheek. Alexander pulled her off the stool and tugged her to the staircase. “Sleep here tonight. Go home tomorrow and talk to your father.”

The clock chimed two bells. The bags under Jordan’s eyes were dark and deep. “Alright,” she murmured, climbing the stairs obediently with Alexander at her back.

They crossed the hall to his room and Jordan went for the bureau, pulling a shirt from his drawer that he knew would fall to her knees. He stripped off his shirt and she turned around so he could divest himself of his pants. This had been their routine since they were eight years old and they knew it as well as they knew breathing.

Jordan burrowed under the covers; Alexander had to laugh at the way she was covered up to her eyes in blankets. He slipped in next to her, letting her lean her forehead against his shoulder. “Goodnight, Jordie.”

Her voice caught on a giggle. “Goodnight, Al.”

He shoved her. She laughed and he thought he might get drunk on the sound if he could.

Wylan was not even a little surprised to see Jordan Brekker asleep in Alexander’s bed.

He peered through the doorway, squinting to see in the morning light fighting for purchase through Alexander’s window. Jordan was secure in his arms, her head on his chest. Alexander’s free hand was tangled in her hair with the other one wrapped around her waist. It made Wylan miss his husband, who hadn’t come home last night, sending a messenger from Kaz’s home in lieu of his presence.

“Morning,” Victoria whispered from behind him.

Wylan turned, wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the forehead. “Morning, Victoria. Sleep well?”

She shrugged and yawned, her brown-gold hair a tangled mess around her shoulders. “Should I wake them up?”

Wylan caught sight of Jordan’s furrowed brow, identical to her father’s in sleep. “No, let them sleep.”

Victoria followed her father downstairs obediently, padding into the kitchen to get cups of tea. “What happened last night?” Victoria asked. “I got home and went to bed and I woke up to banging on the door. It was Jordan, so I let Alexander handle it.”

Wylan nodded, having only a vague idea of the events of last night that were conveyed through Jesper’s hastily-relayed message. His heart beat a little faster considering the possibility that the Wraith was home for good this time. Then he thought of the girl upstairs, asleep in his son’s arms, who had no idea who Inej Ghafa was or why her presence would turn Kaz inside out.

“I’m going down to the Slat after breakfast,” he told his daughter, who was studiously sipping at the black tea the servants knew to leave for her.

“Can I come?” She asked after a hard swallow.

Wylan sighed. “If Jordan and Alexander are coming, you may as well. Otherwise you can go to the Exchange, get started early.”

“You’re leaving already?” Alexander asked from the middle of the staircase. His shirt was a rumpled mess and there were wrinkles on his cheek from the pillowcase.

“You have university classes at 11,” Victoria reminded her brother with all the superiority of a younger sister.

Alexander ruffled her hair before slinging his long legs over the chairs, sitting backwards with his arms crossed over the chair back. Wylan was fondly reminded of Jesper. “I’ll be gone by then. I’m never late.”

Victoria pushed her chair back. “I’m going to get dressed. Alexander, wake Jordan up, will you?”

“Bossy, bossy.” Alexander tweaked the end of her braid as she slipped past him. He watched Victoria go upstairs, then turned toward his father.

Wylan was still acquainting himself with the concept of looking up at his son, who had sprouted like corn over the past year or so. “What happened at the harbor last night?” Alexander asked, his face the picture of friendly concern. “Jordan’s upset. And Jordan never gets upset.”

Wylan sighed. “Her mother is back.”

Alexander buried his head in his hands. “I thought she died. All these years, I thought she died.”

Wylan pushed a hand through his hair. “We all did. She was - is - the captain of a ship. You may know her as the Wraith.”

When he lifted his head, Alexander’s eyes were the size of dinner plates. “The Wraith. Inej Ghafa is Jordan’s mother?”

Wylan nearly laughed at his son’s surprise. “It wouldn’t shock you so much if you had known them when they were young. Kaz was impossibly in love with Inej when he could bear to admit it. He was going to marry her.” The last sentence was said softly.

“She doesn’t know a thing about her mother,” Alexander mused. “If Kaz loved her so much, why wouldn’t he tell Jordan anything about her?”

“Kaz never talks about what pains him,” Wylan said gently. “And Inej’s disappearance pained him most of all.”

“Now that she’s back, what will he do?”

Wylan looked toward the door, hoping Jesper would be home before he had to go to the Exchange. “He’ll rip the city apart until he gets vengeance for whoever took her.”

Alexander paused for a moment, picking at his cuticles. “Is...Is Jordan Kaz’s daughter? By blood?” Wylan must have made a strange expression because Alexander hurried to explain. “If she was at sea and was captured… There are things that happen.”

Wylan tried not to chuckle at the embarrassment on Alexander’s face. “She is Inej’s daughter. There’s no empirical proof but I know it like I know how to breathe.” He smiled, remembering his favorite things about the small Suli girl and how they echoed in her daughter. “Jordan has her determination, her sense of justice and her strength.”

Relief crossed his face, though he said nothing to explain his question. “I’m glad.” He trailed off after a moment, lost in his thoughts. “I’m going to wake Jordan and take her home.”

Wylan watched him go, praying that Inej was all right, elated at the possibility of seeing her again.

Victoria slung her satchel over her shoulder as she headed toward the Exchange, diving into the bustling crowd of the Financial District with well-practiced finesse. Many of the merchants called morning greetings to her and asked after her father. She gave them the same answers she always did and they gave her the same farewells.

“Every day is the same,” she muttered to no one in particular as she locked herself in her father’s office and began scanning the morning numbers. She was so absorbed in her work, she didn’t even hear the rapping on the door.

“What business?” She asked, poking her head out the door in answer to the young messenger standing in the hall.

“Victoria Van Eck?” He asked hesitantly.

Victoria suppressed an eye-roll. “Yes, that’s me.”

He extended an envelope. “This came for you and your father. It has an old postmark but I thought you might want it.”

Victoria turned the heavy envelope over in her hands. The creamy paper bore no return address and an unfamiliar hand. “Thank you.”

The messenger boy hesitated for a moment. “You don’t like being called Victoria Van Eck, do you?”

Taken aback, Victoria almost forgot to reply. “I prefer Victoria Fahey. Victoria Van Eck has too many v’s.”

He gave her a toothy grin. “Duly noted.”

“Wait.” Victoria stopped him before he turned to go. “What’s your name?”

“Arik,” he answered with a funny little bow of his head.

Victoria extended her hand. “Pleasure.”

He shook it firmly, then took his leave. Victoria watched him go for a moment, shaking her head as she shut and bolted the door once more.

She slid her pinky finger under the envelope’s flap and eased it open, careful not to rip the heavy paper.

There was no greeting, just spidery script in a heavy hand. The words were sharp and harsh and rudely addressing her father. Victoria scanned the three or so pages for a signature and, finding none, began to read it from the beginning more thoroughly.

“You need to stop locking the door,” her father told her, letting himself in with the key Jesper made him carry at all times. “One of these days you’re going to lock yourself out. Or me in,” he added as an afterthought, sinking into his desk chair.

“Look at this, Father,” she extended the letter. Wylan took it, squinting at the words, before handing it back to Victoria. “Sorry.”

Wylan grinned. “It’s fine. Who’s it from? Is it a love letter?”

Victoria grimaced while her father laughed. “Disgusting!” She glared at her father while reaching for her glasses. “No, it’s not signed.”

Her father frowned. “Interesting. What does it say?”

Victoria scanned it again, slower now that she had her glasses. “It’s addressed to you, I think… Should we have Kaz analyze the writing?”

Wylan leaned back in his desk. “Read some of it to me.”

“‘I think it’s absolutely ludicrous that you have taken the Van Eck empire - one you were never in a position to control - and turned it into-’ What’s wrong, Da?”

Victoria watched her father’s face drain of color. “I know who this is from.” He stood abruptly. “I need to speak with your father. Stay here.”

With that, he was gone, not even bothering with his coat or scarf. Victoria picked up the envelope that had held the mystery letter. The postage stamp was old and faded but she if she squinted hard enough he could make the name out.

"Hellgate?" She said aloud, her voice stunned in the silence. She reached for her coat and satchel, jamming the envelope in her pocket. A hunch grew in her mind. If she was right, she had to tell Kaz.

In retrospect, Alexander should have kept Jordan away from home a little longer.

The moment she entered her home, she was stalking upstairs to her father’s office. Alexander followed at her heels, attempting to talk her down from whatever rant she was about to release.

When he reached the office, Jordan was standing before Kaz’s desk. A slim Suli woman with wide brown eyes was perched on the armchair against the wall watching the interaction. She gave Alexander a small smile when he caught her eye.

“Inej,” he murmured softly, moving to stand near her so he could watch Jordan. “I’m Alexander Van Eck.”

She gave him a nod. He was reminded of his grandmother on her bad days. It made him sad. “You’re Jes and Wylan’s son?”

He smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

Jordan’s anger pulled his attention to the room. “You’re just going to let her back here? Now? After what she did?” Her voice was steel. Kaz’s eyes were equally impassive. “She left me, Papa! She abandoned me in a city I didn’t know with people I didn’t know. I was three, for Saint’s sake!”

“I don’t particularly care what she’s done!” Kaz shouted. Jordan merely blinked in the face of her father’s anger. Alexander wanted to excuse himself from the room but Inej’s steady gaze held him fast. “She is your mother and you will respect her presence in this home!”

Alexander saw Victoria slip in, shaking out her hair and folding her coat over her arm. “The door was open,” she whispered. “What did I miss?”

Alexander considered asking her why she wasn’t at the Exchange but thought better of it. “Jordan is angry as hell.”

Victoria cocked an eyebrow at him, fiddling with a folded envelope in her hands. “No kidding.”

“I am respecting her presence in this home!” Jordan roared back. “But I cannot condone your silence on the actions of those who kidnapped and enslaved her. Again!”

“She’s really mad,” Victoria whispered to Alexander, who nodded. He could always tell when Jordan was angry because her words turned formal and her tone turned stiff. Inej, who had been staring at the wall, turned to watch her daughter. Looking at her, everything of Jordan not evident in her father now made sense. Jordan had Inej’s slender hands, slim frame and coppery skin. She was every bit as beautiful as her daughter.

“There will be no silence, Jordan.” Kaz was deadly-calm now. Dirtyhands was coming out to play and Jordan was feeding off that darkness. “No one harms the Wraith and goes without punishment.” Beside him, Alexander saw Inej flinch. “But we are Brekkers and we do not act rashly. Understood?”

Jordan pursed her lips as she nodded. After a moment, the scared child was replaced with a scheming Barrel rat. “Can I help with the plans?”

The biggest uh-oh in Ketterdam ran through Alexander’s mind like a spooked horse when Kaz nodded.

Jordan grinned, all bared teeth and glinting eyes. “Good. Because I already have some ideas.”