Work Text:
Kaz often walked over Zentzbridge at night. He had business at the Exchange and in the mercher mansions on the Geldcanal that increased the more he pulled Ketterdam into his grip, and most of his work was best done by the light of the moon or by no light at all.
Sometimes he walked in the center of the bridge, the picture of a man who owned the streets. Sometimes he walked along the side, gliding his fingers along the iron grating that was home to the sailor’s knots. Sometimes – not regularly, of course; Dirtyhands could never be predictable, and ritual made a man complacent – he left something on Zentzbridge, a scrap of dark fabric among the ropes.
It did the sailors who tied their ropes to the grating no good. Who were they praying to with their elaborate zeemansknoop? What god would deliver them safely from the storms and pirates of the sea? Someone who controlled their fates? Foolish. Men made their own fates.
Kaz tied strings to Zentzbridge for Inej, not for a god. She didn’t need them. The Wraith was not bound to the laws of the sea any more than she was bound to the laws of the land, and she was well and truly free now. She had mastered gravity, she had mastered knives, and now she had mastered the sea. He thought of her lips on his like a lightning strike, the fan of her unbound hair the halos her Saints were drawn with. She had mastered him, too.
Kaz gave himself an internal shake. A group of locals moved out of his way as he stepped off the bridge. He could pick a lock in three seconds and he could tie a zeemansknoop to the grating in four. It was the same skill.
Sometimes a proper thief leaves something behind.
Kaz bought the camera because it was somehow the least expensive way to get Jesper to shut up. The sharpshooter had waxed poetic about the inner workings of the box and the challenge of Fabrikating color into silver for so many dinners that Kaz eventually walked out of the Van Eck house in the middle of one. At least Wylan was suffering more. Jesper could not take a photograph, he just wanted to color the finished product.
So Kaz bought a camera, set up a darkroom adjacent to his office at the Crow Club, and took photographs of Ketterdam from the window. It was profoundly pointless. It was also easier to hand Jesper the photographs in exchange for updates on the Van Eck holdings than to break into their office, though, so Kaz kept photographing.
It became profoundly not pointless when Inej discovered evidence of the camera.
“Have you taken portraits?” she asked, sitting in his chair. The afternoon sun glinted off the gold of her earring. It was new, a pirate’s flash, a sliver of sunlight against her dark hair. It suited her. Everything suited her. Kaz couldn’t look away.
Inej smiled, slow and languid. “Would you like to take a portrait, Kaz?”
Infuriating. She knew exactly what she did to him. Well, two could play this game. He would not mention the earring until she did.
“Would you like your portrait taken, Wraith?”
“I think I can be persuaded.”
He directed her to a black stool and positioned it in the brightest portion of the room, then retrieved his camera from the darkroom and fitted it with one of his prepared silver plates.
Kaz touched the lens cap and raised an eyebrow. Ready?
Inej gave him an imperious reply without a word. Am I not always?
He didn’t bother telling her to sit still. He thought of stakeouts on rooftops a decade ago, Inej remaining motionless for hours beside him. He thought of the nights they lay beside each other on his bed, shoulders millimeters apart, hands entwined, relaxing bit by bit, hoping one day their demons would cease altogether. He thought of her months at sea, plotting courses by the stars, and his months at his desk, feeding her crows as he waited to hear news of a warship docked in berth twenty-two. Six minutes was nothing to them.
Kaz replaced the lens cap. “Don’t come into the darkroom for this. Wylan dislikes the development process, even though he helped design the one I use.” He almost laughed. “But this city is going to have to try harder than mercury if it wants to kill me.”
Inej stretched her arms above her head, blinking away the bright light. The quilted fabric of her vest shifted, exposing the barest brown of her side. Kaz shook his head to clear it. “You wanted a portrait. Go take care of your ship’s business while I make sure this summer humidity doesn’t destroy your silver image.”
“Always worried about silver and gold.”
He didn’t look at her earring. “Always.”
“And where will I find you when I’ve finished my ship’s business?”
“We have reservations,” he said, and carried the camera into the dark.
Development took less than an hour, which left him time to prepare the latest report for the Crow Club’s investors. It had long since been superseded by the Crimson Cutlass as his most profitable parlor, but Kaz refused to delegate the Crow Club’s tallies. Anika gave him shit for it. Kaz ignored her.
He wrote a few sentences, but his mind kept wandering to the portrait of Inej. The way her lips had remained upturned at the corners. The way her hair draped over her shoulder in a long braid. Were the wisps at the end visible in the photograph? Did her eyes shine they way they did in the real thing?
This was killing his work ethic. He went back into the darkroom, sealed the photograph in a glass case, and sat in his office chair, staring at the silver plate.
It was iconography. Ravkans carried pictures of their Saints, haloed with light or roses or whatever their Saintly domain was. Artists drew them and sold them, cheap images you could find anywhere. This was one of a kind. You could not buy this in a market, not even if you had a hundred million kruge to spare.
He traced his fingers along the contours of her face. Inej was halfway across the city, but he could feel her eyes on him, feel the charged silence before one of them spoke, building like a summer thunderstorm.
He went to their reservation at the Geldrenner an hour before he’d intended, the photograph wrapped in padded cloth and tucked into a hidden pocket in his waistcoat. By the time Inej concluded her business at the docks, Kaz was sitting on the massive bed, gloves on the nightstand, thumbing through a report on his holdings near Lij.
“Good of you to join me,” he said without looking up.
“This bed is far too large to leave you to alone,” Inej replied. “But it’s the perfect size for me.”
Kaz raised his gaze above the papers, a remark about her size on his tongue, and stilled. Inej wore a wide-brimmed felt hat with the largest black feather he’d ever seen – and his brand was a black-feathered bird, so he’d seen plenty of large black feathers – tucked into a teal band crisscrossed with gold stitching.
Kaz spent several long seconds ensuring his voice was level when he spoke. “You walked through the lobby wearing that?”
“Missus Rietveld is quite eccentric, Kaz,” she admonished, sweeping her fingers around the brim. “This is hardly her strangest action in the city.”
Inej knelt on the bed, the mattress barely dimpling under her weight, as if even the feathers of the bed could not bear to displace the Wraith. Her eyes never left Kaz’s. “I think we should take a second photograph with this hat,” she said.
Inej was a very effective negotiator.
Kaz kept the five photographs they took that week in his most secure safe, the one with an eight-digit combination and false tumblers and hidden in a false portion of the wall behind his mirror.
While Inej was on the waters, he retrieved one of the photographs, lay on his bed, and brushed the surface of the glass, matching the shades of silver to the contours of his memory of her body. Born in the light, fixed in the dark, gilded with gold, locked behind glass. It was a paltry imitation of the woman it depicted. It was beautiful. It was worth infinitely less than the living thing. It was his most valuable possession. Inej – decent, pious, honest Inej – had stolen something from within Kaz, but like any proper thief, she left something behind.