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Dawn came to Ketterdam in fits and starts, grey streaking through black, then white streaking through the grey. The fog lay heavy as a blanket and the air was thick with salt and decay. The dock jutted out into a clouded abyss. It could not quite obscure a shadow of a man, upright and sharp even in the muddied view.
Most ships would wait to dock in such precarious weather, content to float another hour or two until the sun rose to burn off the worst of it. The prow of one lean and daring ship pierced through it and came to anchor.
No one disembarked for several minutes. The crew utterly invisible if they went about their work at all. A dockhand or two whispered about a ghost ship that seemed to arrive only ever under cover. A legend only, of course. Every ship needed a berth once and awhile. A place to restock and to give shoreleave.
Even without the fog, it would be unlikely that anyone would spot the slip of a figure that came down on a single rope, hidden in the lee of the ship. But the man turned toward it like a compass pulled north.
Perhaps he smiled. Even she couldn’t tell.
“Permission to come aboard?” his tone was amused if nothing else, face obscured by a broad brimmed hat.
“Granted,” she held out her hand and he took it.
They gangplank lowered and they walked together up it, swallowed by history.
The Underground King of Ketterdam was never seen again. His reign had lasted well over twenty years, an astonishing feat in a cutthroat business. The Dregs, carefully trained for this day, were able to convince the city that he was still present and doing business for nearly three years after his disappearance. By then, his handpicked successor slid into his place, but even with training no one would ever last as long at the top again.
The boat stayed in harbor for a week, restocking and going about it's landed business. Kaz stayed in Inej’s cabin. It was a shockingly soft place for a boat. A bed had been built into the side of the wall and was laden with blankets and pillows. The walls were draped with tapestries, firmly nailed into place. They offered a cushion to the sounds of industry and lapping waves.
For the first few days, he had written letters, tidying up the final loose ends of things. They went out by messenger and brought back responses that kept him busy for another two. And then there was silence. He stood in front of her window. It wasn’t large, more an aggrandized porthole. He watched the sea and thought of nothing.
“That’s enough of that,” Inej came back in the evening with a bag of fresh things that they ate at her desk. It was something to see her behind her great slab of wood and him on the other side like a bargaining guest.
She taught him navigation. It wasn’t something he was particularly interested in, but they stood shoulder to shoulder over the great maps of the world and that had its own appeal. Her body had been whittled into pure utility, the territory of her skin as puckered and marked as the maps before them with their peaks and valleys.
He knew that map well now. They had walked different paths, but they converged often enough that they had managed to learn each other. With the creeping slowness that ate away at fear, they came together until there were no more boundaries to cross.
So when the maps were neatly rolled away, they crawled into bed together. There was salt on her skin and fire in her eyes as they came together. Their romance had taken so long to kindle that the fires seemed only now to reach their peaks.
The day came to leave port. He emerged onto the deck for the first time since boarding. He stood at the bow, watching his city disappear over the horizon. He held onto his cane, planted firmly on the Wraith’s weathered boards.
“You could go back. Visit, sometime,” she said in his ear.
“No,” he turned away from the sky to face her. “It’s done now.”
The ship sliced through the water, not hunting, not this trip. Inej spent the bulk of the journey talking quietly with each crew member. To each she tucked some small treasure into their hand, some wisdom into their ears. When she first boarded this ship, she had been younger than most of its crew. Now, she was ageless as rock, their immortal captain.
And so she would remain in their minds.
When they docked at last, the captain’s cabin was emptied of all it’s soft things. And many of it’s harder edged things as well. A new body would sleep in the bed that night.
There was a horseless carriage waiting for them. The driver easily arranged their trunks as they climbed inside, settling across from each other on a fine plush bench. The carriage belched out a foul smoke as they got underway and rumbled down the road. Their knees slid and locked together to keep them both from bouncing about.
“You could go back,” he echoed to her as her eyes strayed to the sea.
She snorted, inelegant and reached up to tuck a stray hair back into her braid.
They ate lunch on the side of the road, sitting on two stumps. The driver wandered up the road. Kaz kept an eye on him, marking how far he went just in case. He could probably drive the thing, if push came to shove.
But the man made no move against them. His lack of interest in his passengers was as genuine as it appeared. He took them further inland until water appeared again. A vast lake that was dotted with small boats.
They came at last to a long drive and they tipped him generously so that he would leave. They stood at the end of the drive, among the dense trees and the glimmer of the lake. It was so quiet that Kaz could hear the birds, and some small animal skittering around in the underbrush. It was a silence he hadn’t heard since he was small.
A whistle pierced through the quiet. A jaunty, tuneless whistle, cascading up and down. Footsteps crunched down the drive. Looking every inch a country lord, Jesper emerged at the end of the drive with a wide smile on his face. Inej made a soft sound of delight and went to meet him. They embraced and were already chatting away as Kaz made his way to their side.
“Come on then,” Jesper held out his hand to Kaz, “it’s good to see you.”
Kaz shook it, “So it is.”
It had been a long time. Kaz had lost track of the years. They had lived very different lives and Jesper had seemed to lose all traces of his relatively short time with the city’s underbelly. At the time, how much like one of them he had seemed, but the sojourn had been brief in comparison to their lives now. The Van Eck empire had spread under his investments, despite Kaz’s concerns. Jeseper was better with business than cards and Wylan tempered his remaining impulses. Kaz had stayed where he belonged, in the dark, as Jesper had thrived in the sunshine. Wylan beside him, beaming to rival it.
He had always thought of Jesper as a useful tool. A friend, maybe. Sometimes. But these days, Kaz wondered if he had become an equal of sorts. Certainly, he had his own kind of power.
“Dinner will be ready in an hour,” Jesper turned back up the drive. “Someone’ll get your bags and you can have a bath. Or two.”
“Are you saying we smell?” Inej was laughing.
“Of course not,” Jesper hooked his arm into hers. “Only that the sea does stick to the skin.”
The house appeared slowly, piecemeal through the trees. It was large, though not as expansive as a merch estate, but far larger than any place Kaz had ever called his own before. By design, he had never kept a separate residence from the Dregs. His rooms were only ever a little larger and better appointed. A king could not afford to live apart from his kingdom. But he was no king today. Or any day thereafter. Instead, he had this land that he had kept all these years. The house had been built from plans that he had approved, but seeing it complete before him was something else altogether.
It boasted many windows and several flower trellises leading up to them so that it seemed the earth had only reluctantly relinquished it from the ground. The front door was painted black in sharp contrast to the fine white paint coating the rest of it.
“The last of the furniture is still coming,” Jesper stopped just shy of the door. “Mostly just for the public rooms. The bedrooms are done, at least. And the kitchen is mostly finished.”
“Good,” Kaz murmured, eyes landing on the door knocker. The bronze crow regarded him in return still as striking as the day he’d found it by chance at an artisan’s market stall. It was the doorknocker that put the thought in his head and he’d purchased it with nowhere to put it.
“Here,” two heavy key rings emerged from Jesper’s pockets and he offered them out.
Inej took hers with interest, flipping through them and asking Jesper about the labels. Kaz only slipped them into his pocket. They settled there on his hip beside a deck of cards. His eyes were on her face. He gestured her ahead of him into the house, so he could watch as she took it in.
It wasn’t a grand entry, but a practical space. There was a bench to sit and remove shoes, someone’s dirty boots already lodged beneath them and a closet ready for hats and jackets. Before them, the hall was split by a staircase built of reclaimed wood. Inej walked towards it, hand brushing the banister. There were flecks of yellow and red paint that he’d asked to be left behind. A reminder of where it had come from.
She looked back at him, her eyes as round as dinner plates.
“Rustic,” Jesper offered offhandedly.
“How?” she asked softly.
“It seems that even wagons need retirement,” he shrugged as if it had been no task at all to store her parent’s vehicle for years after they had traded up. It was the place she had been born and nurtured her. He didn’t care for nostalgia, but he thought that she might.
She didn’t say a word. Instead, she moved up the steps as if pulled on string. He followed. The stairs were built more shallowly than the usual and broader too. A little kinder for a man with a cane. He supposed he could’ve had everything built on a single floor, but then where would she climb?
The second floor opened to its own sitting room with wide windows looking out over the lake. Doors dotted the side, between them works of art. Some of his own (technically his now at least, who could say where they had begun?) and some were hers. One was a map, like the ones they had studied days before with his careful handwriting spread across it, marking her movements and triumphs.
The furniture was simple, but quality. There was a bookcase, still empty and waiting, and chairs gathered around a low table with a silver coffee service and the remains of lunch around it.
“We like to eat up here,” Jesper said unapologetic. “There’s always something to look at out there. Maybe I’ll take up bird watching. Write a book about it.”
“Maybe you’ll learn to fly,” Inej grinned. “It seems as likely.”
Kaz crossed the room, ignoring the view. There would be enough time for him to learn it if he so chose. Instead, he opened the door beside the bookcase and stepped into their room.
Would she sense what this was? He rarely had to explain himself to her and it was all but spelled out in the decisions they had made. The bedroom felt the most naked of statements, it’s pointed singular bed that would soon be heaped with all her pillows and blankets. The matching bedside tables with drawers that didn’t lock. The gracious wardrobe that she’d remarked about liking in passing nearly a decade ago when they had reason to be hiding inside it. The way each window had a generous sill and trellises that would hold the weight of a woman if needed.
Inej slipped in beside him, her hand sliding into his.
“Jesper says there’s a dock,” she surveyed her new territory. “And a boat.”
“It’s not a fine warship. Just a pleasure ship. Every house on the lake has one.”
“Mm,” she rested her head on his shoulder, “the waters are calm here.”
“So they are.”
“Is this our room then?”
She asked so easily, carelessly. She had wanted nothing much to do with the making of the house. When he asked in letters, she had only asked for small things. A porch swing, a desk to write letters from, and perhaps a house cat. She had not even a word to say on the color of feline. So there was a porch that wrapped around the back of the house for her swing, a large room with a nautical bent and wide gracious desk stocked with the finest writing things and her very own seal. The cat had graciously arrived on her own accord, turning up on the stoop to Jesper’s delight that came across in the letters with a smeared ink stamp from a paw on the bottom. She was a calico that had no complaints about being brought in from the unseasonably cool spring and apparently liked to linger in the kitchen.
Inej had not asked for her own bedroom.
So he had taken with much second guessing the liberty of this.
“Yes.”
“Good,” she set down the cup of coffee she had procured on the bedside table to the right. Staking claim.
They saw her office next and she sat down at the desk to write her first missive immediately, insisting that he stay when he made to leave. So he sat again across the desk and watched her as she wrote a note with great care. When she discovered the seal, she laughed brightly at the ship prow with it’s tiny crow about to take flight from the prow. Delighted, she sealed the letter and set it aside to be addressed later.
“Show me more of our house,” she demanded.
Out of habit, for fun, they crept around like thieves. Snuck into the other bedrooms. The one across from their own had clearly been claimed by Jesper and Wylan, their things strewn about in a riot of color. A portrait of Wylan’s mother hung over the fireplace and they paused before, a momentary acknowledgement. She was gone now, like all their parents. Slipped through the cracks of time.
There was a guest room next though it had been decorated as if it had a permanent resident. It was done up in dark reds and golds, with fur spread out at the foot. If Nina wished, then this would be her place. An open invitation that would, perhaps, go unread. Maybe that was the note that Inej had written at her desk.
His office was tucked away in the corner, the views not of the lake, but of the dense woodlands around them. This had been farmland once, but he had had the trees planted when he bought the land and they had taken well to the fertile soil. The farmers one by one had sold off their farms, becoming rich as the lake became more popular for tourists and country gentry’s second homes.
It was not his original intention for the land, but he was pleased with the outcome. Instead of the painful reminder of his childhood, he had brewed something new here. The trees were already tall enough to shade his window, so he could sit at his desk and have the shadows he preferred around him. He had a few ideas for the work that would be done here, had perhaps already begun to cast out the lines that would lead back to it. Information had always been his favorite currency and he saw no reason not to continue trading in it.
Inej sat on the wide window sill. She opened the glass and peered around them and came back in with raised eyebrows, “There’s a trellis. Between my office and this one.”
“Is there?” He opened his desk drawers, examining the stationary as if it held great interest.
“Do you imagine I still sneak across rooftops?” she laughed. “That I’ll crawl in through your window?”
“Why not?” he didn’t look up, not sure if he was being laughed at or with.
“There’s a perfectly good hallway right there,” she protested.
“So there is."
They slipped back down the stairs, avoiding a busy looking servant. They were handpicked by both of them. Inej’s rescues and his treasures in the rough. A fiercely loyal bunch, who were happy to take a generous salary away from the dangers of sea and street. Jesper had migrated to the kitchen. There was a dining room off the left, a place for larger gatherings that may never see much use. The kitchen had a round table that had once lived on the floor of the Crow Club. It’s many scars and stains had been sanded away, but it’s shape was still pleasantly familiar. Waste not, want not and the Club had gotten new tables several years ago.
Wylan slipped in through the backdoor, his eyes missing them entirely to land on Jesper. They started chatting amicably, leaving space for Inej and Kaz to move around them unnoticed and out onto the porch.
Inej sat down in the porch swing, gesturing to him to join her. He sat slowly, stretching his legs before him, using the stronger one to push them.
“It’s just how I imagined it,” she rested her hand on his thigh, light as a bird.
“I didn’t think you imagined it at all.”
“Of course I did,” she looked out over the water. “How could I not? They were some of the longest letters you ever sent me.”
“I wanted it to be right.”
She looked out over the water, “And I knew you would make it so.”
Eventually, they did take baths, taking turns in the hot running water. They ate dinner with Jesper and Wylan, a long catching up that trailed upstairs into the sitting room. The moon came up over the lake with a full face and no one rose to light a lamp. They sat in the growing dark, sharing stories, laughing and drinking some. Kaz said little. Eventually he went to bed, leaving them to their stories.
The bed had already been dressed in her things and it was easy to slip beneath the covers that smelled like her. He’d planned on reading, but instead, fatigue found him. Later, he stirred as the bed dipped. It was a large vast mattress and she could easily settle on her side without touching him.
Instead, she slid her hand across the blankets and he met it.
They were still holding hands when he woke and he very slowly disentangled his fingers to let her sleep a little more. Instead of dressing, he slid on a heavily embroidered robe. This was his house. There was no one here who cared about his sharply tailored suits. He’d still wear them, but he had the luxury of a robe over soft linens in the morning now.
Breakfast was waiting in his office, the anticipation of a clever maid and he made a note to learn which one. Coffee steamed in its pot, homemade slices of bread still warm were laid beside a pot of honey and a dish of butter. This kind of thing was going to make him lazy.
He ate it anyway, sipping coffee slow as the leaves darted their shadows over the carpet shipped across the ocean. Eventually, he pulled open a drawer and had to stifle a bark of laughter. The letter she had written yesterday was there. His name was written across it. She must’ve enjoyed herself, writing up such a missive while he sat and waited for her.
He set the letter on the desk and pour himself a second cup before slicing through the seal and opening the letter.
My dearest, it began and he ran his finger over the letters.
We have written to each other a lot of things. I wish we were the type that could hold onto letters. It would be nice now, in this time that you’ve bought us to re-read them. But I don’t need them in my hand to know what’s before me.
This house is the finest love letter you could’ve written and far sweeter than any flower or candy. I will admit there were days when I wondered if we were capable of love. If what we did was some sad imitation of things we didn’t understand. Those days are far behind me.
When you first suggested retirement, I thought we would be terribly bored. Yet, how nice it would be to be bored. I’m not sure either of us are capable of it. Now that we’re here, I cannot wait to discover how you will keep things interesting and what I will do that surprises you. Perhaps, I will become a philanthropist and steal a title so I can be a generous Lady or maybe, I will take up embroidery, or painting or just find a nice bench to sit on while I scare children with pirate stories.
Will you be a spymaster now? Or a broker? Maybe we can invest in some young bright thing and speculate on technology markets. Maybe we will put on show in the front yard with acrobats and magicians. Maybe we will just grow old reading all the books that were never open to us before.
What I know is that I love you. I love the place that you made for us.
Her signature looped over the bottom. He read it through again twice and then put his other hand on it to tear it two.
Except that he didn’t have to anymore just as she'd said. His routine of shredding her letters and feeding them to the hearth had been a measure of protection. No proof their connection made them both safer. But now they lived together, their aliases' names joined on a deed filed at the local town’s offices.
He folded the letter neatly and put it into an empty drawer. One that locked because one could only change so much in a day.
Then he drew out a piece of paper and the finest of black inks. It was so deep and true that it seemed to devour the light. He filled his pen and began to write. He would leave it on the ledge outside his office.
Because she would climb through his window again if only because she could. Something pleasant to discover high above the world.