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Jesper managed to occupy himself for almost a month before he ended up back in the Barrel, standing outside one of the old familiar gaming houses, his heart suddenly racing. It didn't feel like an itch this time, but something much worse, a breath-catching longing to do something stupid, obviously dangerous even as Jesper felt it.
The day had started out fine.
As always, Jesper had slept in as late as he wanted, and woken alone in bed with his limbs luxuriously outstretched amid the soft covers. Wylan was not an early morning person, but he was still more of a morning person than Jesper. Jesper could hear muffled scales being played on the piano downstairs, and he smiled to himself, closing his eyes for a moment against the sunlight to savor the sheer ridiculous decadence of his life. Then he rolled out of bed to pad down the grand staircase and kiss Wylan good morning.
Breakfast was coffee, waffles, porridge, and fresh fruit, shared with Marya in the back garden in the pleasant rising spring. Wylan's mother tended to do well early in the day, reliably remembering who Jesper was, where she was, the outline of what had happened. As always, she avidly watched Wylan's face, but Jesper couldn't fault her for that. He had trouble looking away from Wylan himself most of the time.
"It's a very good face," he had explained, when Wylan demanded to know what he was staring, sometime in the first week staying at the Van Eck manor. "I missed it while it was gone."
Wylan had flushed pink. Jesper doubted he'd ever get tired of making the merchling blush. If anything, it was becoming more fun -- where once he'd tried innuendos, of greater or lesser subtlety, he now laid on compliments. Wylan drank them up like parched soil starved for rain, which made Jesper angry if he thought about it too much. Instead he told Wylan everything he enjoyed or appreciated about him, pleased to be the cause of Wylan's delight.
Jesper wanted to do everything he could to make Wylan happy. He might be a semi-reformed thief and a complete disaster, but this at least he could do. After breakfast, as he had every day, he read Wylan the financial accounts that had been delivered the night before. Marya sat in on the first part of the recitation, frowning faintly in concentration, before gathering up the last of the fruit and excusing herself. Wylan stared after her anxiously.
"She's doing fine," Jesper told him quietly. "Good odds are she's going to take an easel and spend all morning painting the view of the canal."
"That is likely," Wylan allowed, smiling.
"It's almost inevitable," Jesper corrected, and turned back to the accounts. "All right, forty bushels of jurda..."
After he'd finished reading Wylan the accounts, he took dictation on all the orders and shipments Wylan wanted moved, sent elsewhere, ordered again. After he'd written it all down, he handed the papers over for Wylan to sign, which Wylan did with scrupulous care.
Wylan was a shrewd businessman, keeping careful track of all the investments that had gone well for his father, and not throwing much money at new prospects. He was still investing cautiously at this early stage. Reading each day's returns, Jesper was able to track the modest but steady profit Wylan was managing to turn. It wasn't how Jesper would have gone about any of it, but that was exactly why Jesper only ever read Wylan the reports. He never made recommendations, nor wrote down anything Wylan hadn't dictated. He would never gamble with anything of Wylan's.
"Jes," Wylan said, frowning again. "Can you double-check something for me? Three thousand kruge on tulips?"
Jesper flipped through the accounts. "Three thousand," he confirmed.
"I didn't think they sold that well," Wylan said. "Either something is artificially inflating prices, or the tulips are a front for something."
"They are very popular with the tourists," Jesper pointed out. Wylan gave Jesper a look of pointed exasperation, and Jesper grinned. "No, you're absolutely right, it's very odd."
Wylan hesitated. "Could you do me a favor? Go ask Kaz about it."
Jesper's eyebrows went up. It wasn't as though no one said Kaz Brekker's name in the Van Eck house -- more than one evening had been whiled away in speculation about what the rest of the old crew was up to, Kaz more than most, since Nina and Inej had each written when they'd made landfall in Os Kervo -- but there was a difference between idly wondering what Kaz was up to and actually going to see. Of course Wylan couldn't go, now he was a proper upstanding merch, but there was no reason Jesper couldn't don his old flash and go back to the Barrel. "You think Kaz is keeping track of tulips?"
"Kaz keeps track of everything," Wylan said.
"Excellent point. If he did know something, why would he tell us?"
"Because if his tip turns up something good, I'll invest a little extra," Wylan replied. "Kaz can have part of the cut. I'm sure he'd appreciate it."
Saints, Jesper thought, Wylan was getting good. "All right," he said. "I suppose it's about time I paid the old stomping grounds a visit."
Which brought him here, heart pounding too hard outside a gaming house. What a fool he was, to think he could have avoided it. Of course Jesper had felt the itch, thought in his idle moments of wandering down to the Crow Club and sitting in on a game of cards -- but when this happened he would find Wylan and kiss him until everything else was driven from his mind, and once or twice he had pulled the color from a carpet after all, and replaced it with a different pattern. But not here, not now, when there was nothing to distract him or occupy him. You can't, Jesper told himself. He couldn't use Wylan's money, and he couldn't use his own, because he'd known this would happen, and had actually been smart enough for once to look out for his future self. It was all in his father's name, and while Jesper's credit was good now, he couldn't rack up that debt. He couldn't.
Remember your Da. Jesper quivered on the street corner, trying to think about something else, anything, his da's face or how it felt to line up the perfect shot. He felt suddenly, acutely, that it was a wound, as Inej had said, a terrible abyss inside him that needed something to fill it up, just one round at Makker's Wheel, please --
Jesper tore himself away, furious. It was the pathetic desperation more than anything that angered him, and propelled him onward, one foot in front of the other, away from the gaming house. He'd never tried to bargain with himself for it before. Either he hadn't had time, or he had, and he'd gone in again. With the distance of a month at the Van Eck manor, the longing finally felt like what it was, a stupid weakness. Walking on didn't feel like strength or victory, either, but like something temporary, like Jesper was hanging onto his ability to make a good decision with only his fingertips.
Still furious with himself, Jesper went on to the Slat.
*
He found Kaz in his old rooms upstairs. For a moment it felt as though nothing had changed, as though at any moment Inej might appear outside the window, as though Jesper had just been out on some errand and was here to report back to Kaz and gather a crew for his next scheme.
"Jesper," Kaz said, looking him up and down. "What do you want?"
From anyone else that greeting would have seemed rude. From Kaz, it was an admission that, whether or not he'd been keeping tabs on them, this visit from Jesper was a surprise. Jesper could live with that. "It's good to see you too. I've come with a question, and an offer from Wylan."
Kaz wrapped his gloved hands round the head of his cane. "All right, let's hear it."
"A shipment of Van Eck tulips went for three thousand kruge," Jesper explained. "If you have any notion why that would be, and it plays out right, you'll get a cut of the resulting profit."
"A cut," Kaz repeated. "I don't suppose Wylan sent you with a percentage."
He hadn't. He trusted Jesper. "Five," Jesper said easily.
"Fine," Kaz said. "Word is, some farming and tourism coalition got it into their heads that they could make tulips Kerch's primary export, market them as the symbolic spirit of the nation. All the wealthy households are eating it up. Artificially inflated demand, so it's going to burst by next tulip season, but at the moment they're the big fad. They're a solid investment this year. Wylan could probably clean up very well. Five percent."
"Five percent," Jesper agreed. They shook on it. "Thanks."
"I wondered," Kaz said, leaning back, "how long it would take you two to come back."
"It's just me," Jesper pointed out.
Kaz smiled, the crooked slash of a smile, rusty but real. "Yes," he said. "That's why I'm wondering."
Jesper left the Slat feeling uncharacteristically thoughtful. Kaz was an expert at inner workings, knew what desire hooked behind a person's heart and motivated them to the next thing. Jesper was an easy read, of course, but the fact that Kaz was curious about Wylan returning to the Barrel made Jesper wonder too. Wylan seemed happy, back in his comfortable mansion, the beautiful lost prince returned home to his kingdom. He had his mother, and Jesper, and a business to run. He was open enough about missing Nina and Inej, and Matthias, and even Kaz, but it was the people he seemed to miss, not the life. On the other hand, good upstanding merchlings didn't spend much time formulating and setting off homemade bombs. Jesper missed a good shootout, and maybe it wasn't inconceivable that Wylan might too.
Even if Wylan did miss it, though, probably what he missed was the excitement of it, or the freedom to wreak havoc. Probably it wasn't that he felt one jittery snap decision from throwing himself back to chasing one scrap of luck after the next to fill the void in his heart.
Jesper went home. He found Wylan in the garden, composing a piece of sheet music in great concentration, while Marya sat facing him, paints in hand. It was an idyllic tableaux, and Jesper felt bad for interrupting it, but he also felt like climbing out of his own skin or finding the nearest card table, so he came out into the garden. "Wy?"
Wylan rose at once. "How was Kaz?"
Right. The tulips. "In fine form," Jesper said. "The tulips aren't a front, there's just an artificial demand for them this season, and Kaz thinks we should invest. I offered him five percent. Can I talk to you?"
"Of course," Wylan said, blinking. He kissed Marya's forehead in passing.
She smiled up at him. "When you're done, come back out and finish your sitting? The light's perfect."
"I will," Wylan promised. He followed Jesper into the house. The foyer was dim and quiet, and Jesper tried to breathe. Wylan looked at him with close concern. "What is it?"
"It's not the tulips," Jesper said. "That all went fine. It's --" Saying it was more difficult than he'd anticipated. "I think I have to work out how ... how to be a Grisha."
Wylan beamed. "That's wonderful!" When Jesper stared at him, not quite sure how to react, Wylan explained eagerly, "I don't want to hold you hostage from your own money. I know that was your decision, and I respect it, but I hate treating you like my secretary when you're my --" He stumbled on the next word, and blushed.
"Boyfriend?" Jesper supplied, gently, even though he still felt like crawling out of his skin.
Wylan's beautiful face softened. "Yes," he said, "boyfriend." He cleared his throat. "All right, what can we do? You can't very well do lots of target practice in the city, or provoke firefights, and you'll definitely go mad just pulling colors out of the carpet for hours."
"Agreed to all of the above," Jesper said, frustrated. "I could ... unravel the curtains and give you new ones? Those patterns are hideous."
"They're fine," Wylan protested. "But --" A look of consideration came into his face.
"Is that scheming face?" Jesper asked, peering at him. He had no idea what Wylan was thinking, but he was already starting to grin, relief rising inside him at the prospect that Wylan had thought of something.
"Yes," Wylan said, his eyes alight. "Listen, getting the chemical components for bombs can be really difficult, but you could get them from anything, couldn't you? If I told you what to look for?"
"I suppose," Jesper said.
"We could build so much together," Wylan breathed.
"We could," Jesper agreed, "except you just said you didn't want to provoke any firefights."
"All right," Wylan said, exasperated. "They're not for us. We'll give them to Kaz."
"Innovative," Jesper pronounced. "Also terrifying. You want the Van Eck empire to sell bombs to Dirtyhands?"
"No, no," Wylan said, beaming. "Kaz is the go-between. We'll let him buy some outright if he really wants, but I want to make them for Inej."
Jesper stared at him. Inej, according to her letter, was building a skeleton crew for their first voyage, out of any Suli who wanted to join her, and any coastal Ravkans who wanted to eke out a better life after the civil war without turning slaver themselves. She could afford to hire them, but whether she could afford to arm them enough to take down slaver ships was still in question. If Jesper and Wylan supplied her with bombs --
He grabbed Wylan by the shoulders and kissed him, a long, lingering kiss, his hands wrapping in Wylan's curls. Wylan held onto the lapels of Jesper's vest, and at the end of the kiss their mouths stayed for a moment in alignment. "You little genius," Jesper murmured against Wylan's lips.
Wylan sighed happily. "Do you think it'll work?"
"I think," Jesper said, "that even if making bombs for Inej doesn't stop me from my -- from wanting reckless nonsense, we'll still have made bombs for Inej, which is definitely a net gain for the world."
*
Because Wylan wanted to start easy, the first batch they made were flash bombs. He brought Jesper a bulk order of industrial aluminum, which they set in a corner of the back yard in a stack of flat sheets. Jesper sat next to the stack, and one sheet at a time he Fabrikated them into pieces, a glittering shower of aluminum shards poured into waiting buckets. The stack of sheets took him all afternoon. By the end of it he had a little trouble standing, but when Wylan ducked under his shoulder and helped him into the house for dinner, Jesper felt -- good. Bright. He ate dinner with famished enthusiasm, gesturing animatedly as he talked, feeling a sort of soaring joy all the while. It felt like being in love.
When they went to bed that night, Jesper rolled Wylan over, tangling them together, and kissed Wylan for a long, warm, heart-poundingly lovely time. "You have the best ideas," he told Wylan.
"You seem happy," Wylan observed, disheveled and beaming.
"Give me more strange busywork," Jesper said. "For Inej."
In the morning, after reading the accounts, Wylan brought Jesper, rather inexplicably, several gallons of water from the harbor. "We can afford to buy sodium salt and potassium chloride," he explained, "but if you can get more potassium chloride out of the water, we'll never have to go to a chemist for that component again."
Jesper stared at him. "This is going to be so tricky."
"Yes," Wylan said sweetly, "exactly."
All morning Wylan mixed his sodium salt and potassium chloride, while Jesper sat near him, frowning in concentration, trying to extract tiny bits of the same mineral compound from the harbor water. He could manage it, but it was slow, tricky work, taking every single ounce of his concentration.
Jesper had never felt so focused and quiet in his life.
He ate every scrap of lunch, and a whole second helping. Everything felt very bright again, and Jesper's mood was wonderful. "So," he said, "how much more this afternoon?"
"I think we're good for now," Wylan said. "I just need to pack up a demo kit. And you should probably write down instructions: there are a few last things Inej will need to do, to get the flash bombs to go off. We can go to the Slat today to give it to Kaz."
"If I have written instructions --" Jesper started.
"I want to see him," Wylan said firmly. "I don't want Kaz to think I'm hiding away in my manor."
And Wylan missed Kaz, of course, even if he'd always been a bit alarmed by him. Jesper could understand that. "All right," he said. "You find some clothing that screams merchling a bit less loudly, and while you're changing you can tell me the instructions for putting the flash bombs together."
Within the hour they set off, Jesper in his flash and Wylan in his old Barrel clothing, with a floppy hat pulled low over his face in case any other upstanding merches recognized them before they'd escaped the more respectable parts of the city. On the other side of the Zentsbridge, everything became slowly disreputable and familiar. Wylan heaved a sigh, his shoulders dropping, as though he'd been carrying the Van Eck name around on them and had put it aside for a time.
They'd passed half a dozen gaming houses before Jesper realized he hadn't been feeling their pull. There was no sudden longing opening up inside him like an abyss. If he thought about it, he still wanted the clack of the Wheel, the shuffle of cards, but it didn't feel like an itch, or a hunger. Less urgent.
He knew he was fresh from Fabrikating, and that there was no easy fix. If he gave it time, he was going to feel the wound again. But, as he followed Wylan down the crooked streets, he felt good. He was already calculating in his head how many bombs they could send at a time without suspicion, and how to compensate Kaz, though Jesper secretly doubted Kaz would need much persuading to help. Jesper was thinking about codes they could use in letters to communicate with Inej, and about which merchants could be trusted with their cargo, and how he and Kaz and Wylan were going to manage to set this all in motion without connecting any of it to the Van Eck name. But there was no nervousness to his thoughts, only focus, a kind of stillness at Jesper's center.
They were going to help Inej, and he'd done that, with his power. He was zowa, and it did, after all, feel like a gift.