Chapter Text
Antonia loved going to Onkle Jesper’s house. He would take her out back to where he had targets and dummies set up, and teach her to shoot. She had a plain black pistol, a gift from her da, sleek and ruthlessly efficient, which she would practice with until it felt like an extension of her own body. If she did particularly well, Onkle Jesper would let her practice with his own mother-of-pearl handled pistols, which was a treat in and of itself.
But she didn’t shoot as well on days when Plum was there too, meaning that Plum’s presence automatically meant she wouldn’t be able to practice with Jesper’s guns.
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Plum. Her only fault was in being too perfect. She, like Antonia, was the daughter of criminals, born and raised to be dangerous and cunning, but she was also the daughter of the richest mercher in Ketterdam, and had firmly cemented herself as the darling of the city’s high society. She may have worn knives in her corset, and carried a gun in her reticule, but she also had perfectly pinned curls, a tiny waist, and an impeccable fashion sense.
Antonia was comfortable in who she was. She was no great beauty, and never would be, but at sixteen years old she commanded more respect from the city’s criminal element than most seasoned Barrel bosses. It had been her influence that had turned the international language of crime from Kerch to signing. She had killed her first man at only four years old, and most of the city was convinced she wasn’t even human. These were her accomplishments, these were the things she was proud of. She had no need of tea parties or gentlemen callers.
But when she was with Plum she couldn’t help but to compare herself with the older girl, and find herself longing for all the feminine traits she lacked. Where Plum was tall and willowy, Antonia was stocky and broad-shouldered. Where Plum’s curves and tiny waist drew young men to dance attention on her, Antonia was built like a brick, with a thick waist and heavy breasts she kept hidden under layers of baggy clothes, and her heavy dark hair was worn in a merciless bob. Where Inej coveted and doted upon her niece, Antonia knew that she had to force herself to love her own daughter.
None of this was Plum’s fault, but Antonia blamed her for it nonetheless, and prolonged exposure to her cousin always put her in a sour mood.
All of this meant that she left the Hendricks house in a foul mood that spring afternoon, her gun a heavy weight at the small of her back.
Her mood was somewhat improved by the sight of one of her spiders pooping up at the end of the street, raising her hands to fire off a quick series of signs before disappearing once more.
The Wraith had been seen entering the harbor.
The Dregs employed several spiders, with Xander as their lieutenant, but Antonia had hand picked three children off the street to serve her and her alone, for those times when her interests did not align with those of her father.
She had developed her own sign language for use with them, so that no other who happened to observe their conversations could glean her secrets.
She had been slowly but steadily creating her own splinter faction of the Dregs the same way her da had done during Per Haskell’s reign, and most of the younger generation of the gang now swore allegiance to her first, and her father second, a fact which she knew both irked him and inspired pride in him for his daughter.
She turned at the end of the lane, balancing on the thin railing running parallel to the canal, and walked heel to toe down towards the harbor. She would never match her mother or Curtis on the high wire, but she could walk along a rail as easy as a paved boulevard without thinking twice about it.
Perhaps she would meet her father at the dock, she mused as she rounded into the street above the harbor, hopping back down to solid ground, and received a few moments of his attention before he and Inej were lost in each other. It always took them a few days to resurface after her homecomings, a fact of life which their children had simply learned to operate around.
But this time it was not to be, any of it, for there was only one reason for a ship to fly black sails.
Kaz was nowhere in sight as the Wraith limped to her mooring, worn and bedraggled. She waited to see her brother’s face, a small hope fluttering behind her sternum, but a single glance at his swollen eyes as he descended the gangplank told her all she needed to know.
“Where is she?” she signed when Jonas paused before her. He reached out to her instead of responding, drawing her into his arms. She allowed herself to rest her head on his shoulder in the relative solitude of the private dock.
“We buried her at sea,” he said into her hair. “We were too far from shore to bring her home. I’m sorry, Tony.”
In a way it was a small mercy. Antonia’s relationship with her mother had always been somewhat strained, but even so, she didn’t think she could have borne the sight of her dead, staring eyes.
“It was a fight,” Jonas said, still pressing her to him. She could hear the tears in his voice. “It was the way she wanted to go. She freed near three score captives before she fell.
It was not much of a reassurance to Antonia. She would have gladly condemned all sixty of those slaves to the worst Ketterdam had to offer if it would have meant that she could have kept her mother.
“She was only fifty,” Jonas was saying. “She should have had more.” He heaved a heavy sigh and finally pulled away, gazing down at her. “Someone’s gonna have to tell Da.”
He was clearly hoping that she would volunteer for the job. Her agreement was already forming in her hands when it struck her, ice flooding through her veins. Da would already know. He kept a runner stationed at berth 22 at all times, and he hadn’t come. The runner must have toild him that the Wraith flew black sails.
And there was only one reason for a ship to fly black sails.
She backed away from Jonas a few steps in horror, and then turned tail and ran full pelt up the dock, desperate to reach the Slat in time.
His ground floor office was empty when she burst through the front door, heaving for breath. She took the stairs two at a time, cursing her short stature as she fought her way up.
The door to his attic room was locked when she reached it, and she received no response but the familiar rattle-clack of him loading the barrel of his pistol when she pounded on the unyielding wood.
She fell to her knees, lockpicks already in her fingers, but she knew she would not, could not get through it in time.
She had to reach him somehow, and the only one available to her was one she had not utilized in nigh on twelve years.
“Da,” she called through the keyhole, the word alien and unfamiliar in her mouth. Her voice was hoarse and cracked from a lifetime of neglect. She had to clear her throat before continuing. “Don’t, Da, please. I need— I still need you.”
The only answer she received was a single gunshot.
It was clean, brutally efficient. Just as Kaz Brekker had always been.
She let her head fall into the smooth grain of the door and allowed a single sob to escape her.
By the time she made it into the room the puddle of blood below his prone body had already stopped spreading.
His limbs were splayed out awkwardly, like a marionette with cut strings, and his eyes were wide and staring. No force, not even death, would have been enough to keep Kaz Brekker from his wife. Not even for the love of a child.
Someone would have to tell Xander, and Jonas, and Saints someone would have to track down Curtis in Ravka and tell him that both of his parents were dead. And then there was Jesper and Wylan, and Nina, and the Dregs, and official delegations would have to be sent to the other gangs in the city, to announce the change in leadership.
And that was when the next weight hit, for if Kaz were dead that meant Antonia was now the city’s newest Barrel boss. Anyone in the Dregs could challenge her for the position, she knew, and there would likely be at least a couple foolish enough to try, but everyone knew the gang was hers to inherit.
There were three items left laying on the desk, almost as if Kaz had set them out for his daughter to find.
The hat was a little too big when she donned it, sinking to rest just above her heavy eyebrows, leaving her bangs hidden and her eyes cast in shadow. Likewise, the gloves would need to be altered, as the extra fabric bunched at the ends of her fingers. She had never worn them before, had never even dared to touch them, but wearing them now brought her some measure of comfort. They were still warm inside, from the heat of her father’s body.
The cane clicked heavily beside her as she made her way down the stairs, its weight settling into her hand as though she had carried it her whole life. As she rounded the corner of the final flight of stairs she found the Dregs staring up at her.
Jonas stood in the doorway, his face wet with tears, and so the rest of the Dregs must have been informed as well. She couldn’t see Xander anywhere, but she felt his presence.
The weight of their gazes settled over her shoulders. The expectation was a crushing force, but she squared off against it. She paused at the top of the stairs, staring down at her new kingdom. She clasped her father’s cane in both hands, holding it before her, and sucked in a deep breath before uttering her first and final proclamation as the head of the Dregs.
“Kaz Brekker is dead.”
Her voice would not be needed again.