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It doesn’t happen overnight. The whispers spread like seeping ink and are quietly absorbed into the dark cloth that is Ketterdam. Without his best spider, news is slower to reach Kaz, and so the first time he hears the name Sankta Inej is from the popup stand set up on the street outside the Crow Club. Vendors claiming to sell the bones of Saints are common, so he pays the stand no mind until he hears the name being shouted above the din of the streets.
Kaz stops, turns, looks at the vendor.
“What exactly are you selling?”
“Tokens of Saints,” the vendor replies brightly. “I have genuine bones from Sankt Petyr, Sankta Alina, Sankta Inej--”
A burst of scarlet rage flares in him. “Inej isn’t dead ,” Kaz snarls, and he topples the stand with a well-placed sweep of his cane. He leaves the vendor scrambling to pick up bones from the cobblestones, already preoccupied with the strange feeling twisting in his chest. Those two words, rattling around in his head like something’s come loose-- Sankta Inej. Sankta Inej. When did his Wraith turn into a Saint?
-
Kaz does his research. Apparently, Inej’s work freeing people from slavers’ ships has elevated her to an almost legendary status, and somewhere along the way the people began calling her Sankta. He wonders if she knows; he can’t imagine that she would particularly like being seen as a Saint, given her faith. The irony is almost enough to make him laugh. Almost.
Now that he’s noticed it, he can’t stop seeing it. He doubts that the people of Ketterdam had ever thought of the Wraith as anything but dangerous, but they love Sankta Inej, and he can hardly go outside without hearing her name. It’s driving him mad. Usually he tries to put her out of mind as best as he can when she leaves, but that’s impossible now that the whole damn city is worshipping her. The bones are the hardest to deal with. Inej isn’t dead; he would know if she was. Still, some tiny part of him can’t help but wonder. What if she is dead? What if I’ve walked right past her bones and never known?
Then there are the nightmares. Kaz dreams of the ocean turned into a raging beast, Inej dragged into its hungry depths and swallowed whole with nothing but bones left behind. He wakes in a cold sweat every time. Inej is alive , he tells himself, but the words sound weaker with each day that passes without her return. She’s left before, but never has he felt this far away from her. Inej’s journeys and returns were a constant to him, an inexorable force of nature. The tides roll out, then back in. Inej leaves, then she comes back. Now, though, Kaz is terrified of the moment when the cycle breaks.
Perhaps it’s the fear that causes the shift in him. He finds himself lingering by altars instead of brushing past them. The bones still repel him, but there are other tokens that catch his gaze like a fly in amber, captured in gold. People want to feel close to their Saints, and despite his distaste for religion, it turns out that Kaz is no exception.
In the end, he buys himself a knife.
-
Eventually the tide rolls in, and Inej returns to Ketterdam. As always, Kaz is the first to hear of it, and as always, he doesn’t go down to the docks to meet her. She will come to him when she’s ready.
The sun is beginning to set when she appears on his windowsill, dressed all in black. She perches there easily, tipping her head to the side as she regards him.
“What business?” he asks.
A smile tugs at the corners of her lips. “Just feeding the crows,” she says, showing him the sack of breadcrumbs that she pulls out of her pocket.
They sit in comfortable silence, Inej feeding the crows on the roof and Kaz finishing up his work for the day. Or, at least, pretending to finish his work. He’s really just watching the girl in his window, his dark eyes taking in every detail of her.
Inej looks up quicker than he expects and catches his eyes before he can look away. “What is it?” she asks.
“Nothing,” he says, forcing his gaze back to his work. Suddenly the room seems far too warm, and he shrugs off his long black coat.
“Kaz, since when do you carry knives?” Kaz follows her gaze to the handle of the knife that’s shifted from where it was concealed in the coat’s inner lining and hides a wince.
He shrugs, keeping his voice casual when he replies. “Nearly all of Ketterdam wants me dead. I figured it was best to be prepared.”
“Have you named it?” she asks. He looks up at her again as she takes the tie out of her braid and combs her fingers through her hair. The blaze of the setting sun behind her makes the loose strands glow like a halo.
“Yes,” Kaz says quietly. “I have.” He doesn’t say it--she would laugh at him--but his mind whispers the words to itself, Sankta Inej, like he’s reciting a prayer.
He had thought that Inej’s return would let him dismiss the illusion of Sankta Inej and see only the girl again, but now he finds that isn’t the case. Instead, Kaz looks at Inej silhouetted in golden light that catches and clings to her hair and her face and thinks that maybe he was wrong about this whole Saint business after all. Maybe Saints really do exist, and he’s found one right before him.