Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jordie Rietveld had always needed a reason. To get up in the morning, run his farm, kiss his wife, or — as he gazed up at the marble facade of the Exchange — to come to Ketterdam. Time was, that reason had been ambition. The siren song of a better life, a comfortable life, of a fortune made and a city where the roads were paved with gold for the taking.

Now, with the benefit of a long passage of years, he could only shake his head at that child’s foolishness. At the stupid risks, paid for in blood.

The Exchange, bleached white against the darkening sky, gazed down on him, making him feel every bit as small as it ever had. Once, he had been so desperate for a job working there, so eager to worship at the Church of Barter, so ready to throw himself into a market he knew nothing of but was certain he could best all the same. Now Ketterdam’s streets no longer promised possibility; the city had long since soured in Jordie’s mouth.

Ambition had once been that reason. And then he’d washed up, miles south of Ketterdam, wretched and shivering, body still aching from the last few echoes of the Queen’s Lady Plague that had nearly killed him. That kind of a brush with death can do wonders to cure a boy of his foolishness.

He had lost so much, that day.

Jordie turned from the Exchange, a bitter pit in his stomach. This place had ruined him. Ketterdam had taught him, cleanly and cruelly, how unfair and uncaring the world could be, even to a pair of grieving children.

But he had been lucky. He had built himself up — worked hard on Mr Timmerman’s farm, taking over its running when the old man finally passed on. And since marrying Kaatje… Well. His reason had turned from ambition to love the moment he saw her.

It wasn’t hard to find his way back to Zelverstraat — Jordie had always had a decent sense of direction, even if he was more at home out in the fields than navigating city streets. The buildings of the Zelver District were neat and orderly, cosmopolitan even, cheerful lights appearing in the windows and at the corners; the streets were narrower than in the eastern end of town, but paved and well-kept.

All the same, returning as an adult, Zelverstraat held little of its original charm, although whether it was Jordie or the city which had changed, he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t even recognise the house they had stayed in sometimes while they were here — the house of Mr Hertzoon. In the past three days, he’d walked the length of the street and found himself peering at every building wondering, was it here? Was this the place? Had it changed, or did he simply not remember?

Maybe he had just missed it. The street was long, after all. As were the years.

He couldn’t help wondering if he was doing the right thing by even being here.

He hadn’t ever meant to come back to the city. He hadn’t ever wanted to. This was the site of the worst time of his life and his greatest regret, all at once. It had taken years to push past the nightmares, the guilt. Even still, they resurfaced at times, never letting him forget. He didn’t want to forget.

He supposed his reason now, for returning at all, was sentimentality. He and Kaatje had started talk of children, of starting a family, and it had made him the most melancholy kind of nostalgic. He’d travelled over to Lij to see the old farm, his home, the place where both their parents had lost their lives, and the last place he and Kaz had ever been safe when they were together.

He’d even been idly toying with the idea of buying the farm, if the owner was interested in selling. He wasn’t rich by any means, but the years had been kind and they lived comfortably. And of all the investments he could make, the family farm felt right. It would be like giving something back, somehow.

But then, what he’d found at the farm had been so strange, maybe his reason was more curiosity. The pull of a mystery half-unravelled and yet still just outside his grasp. After all, if he’d found an owner unwilling to sell, he’d have had to return home empty handed, but that would’ve been the end of it. It wouldn’t have lived inside his head like this. And he certainly wouldn’t have travelled all the way to Ketterdam.

The farm had changed hands since Jordie had sold it as a child, and the new owner didn’t live on the land or even near Lij. The owner didn’t even seem interested. The farm was run by a skeleton crew of labourers, and when Jordie had spoken to them, only one had ever met the mysterious owner: a Mr Johannus Rietveld.

The name had been like a punch to the gut.

‘What did he look like?’ Jordie had asked, a slight shake in his voice, a thousand thoughts rushing through his mind. An imposter? Someone pretending to be him? Or could it have really been a Rietveld? His father’s parents had died before Jordie was born, and the only other Rietveld he knew of had sailed to Novyi Zem years ago and never been heard from again.

‘Strange fella,’ the worker, an aging man with the face of a walnut, had replied. ‘Didn’t seem like no farmer t’me. Dressed like one of ‘em fancy merchs, up in the city. Usin’ some kinda fancy cane, bird-headed. Stern fella. Real cold fish. Didn’t seem too int’rested in stayin’.’

Jordie hadn’t known what to make of it. He still didn’t. A wealthy businessman had bought his family farm, using the name Rietveld, only to leave immediately and never return.

Hardly a farmer. Hardly a Rietveld.

So why use that name? Why Rietveld? And why Johannus, Jordie’s middle name? If someone was trying to impersonate him — and who would want to do that? — why not use his first name instead?

It was a mystery that had stuck with him, all the way back to Kaatje and the farm, and for days afterwards. A mystery that had brought him back to Ketterdam, after all these years, and which still bothered him now.

It was that curiosity, more than anything, that had led him to the city, and to the Exchange today, for an audience with a clerk. Who really owned his childhood home?

It’d taken him a good three days to get that appointment. As he remembered from before, they’d taken one look at him and decided he was a county bumpkin, a farmer from outside the city; but as an adult, and an adult with some amount of money, he had succeeded where his younger self had not. And the wait had been worth it.

Most of what they’d told Jordie he’d already known, but some things were new. Apparently Mr Rietveld had been in Ketterdam, and recently. The clerk described him as a Kaelish man, with the distinctive features of the Wandering Isles, and said that he had been somehow involved in the conspiracy of a rich mercher, a Mr Van Eck.

With every new piece of information, the whole thing became more mysterious. There were no Kaelish Rietvelds, and no reason for a Kael to know Jordie's middle name. Was it a coincidence, then? Surely not. And then everything with a mercher, a conspiracy, and some kind of auction that ended with the appearance of the Council of the Tides and the assassination of the indenture. How had his old family farm ever been involved in all of this?

It wasn’t exactly much to go on, considering the clerk had no information on where Mr Rietveld might be now, but it was a damn sight more than he’d had before.

It had been late afternoon by the time he saw the clerk at the Exchange, and now the hour grew later as he made his way down Zelverstraat. His first day in town, he’d taken a room here at the Duck and Whistle, a clean and cheerful little boarding house, with large windows and green-painted shutters, the roof sloped against the rain and a sign outside advertising rooms in neat chalk letters. Still, he might not have trusted it if it hadn’t come recommended. Kaatje’s brother had stayed there on his last visit to the city, and could vouch for its honesty. After Jordie’s last stay here, he wouldn’t so much as trust the birds perched along the rooftops in this town.

It wasn’t yet late, but he knew well enough that he didn’t want to be out on the streets after dark. As he neared the Duck and Whistle, and his comfortable if sparse little room with its yellowing lace curtains, part of him wanted to turn around, head back out, try another clerk at the Exchange, ask about for Jan Van Eck, or Saints, simply start searching for Kaelish men with bird-themed canes. But he knew what Kaatje would say.

‘I wish you could come,’ he’d told her before he set out for the city. She had twice the head on her shoulders he’d ever have; his enthusiasm for good business far outstripped his ability, but not so for her. She was smart and canny and honest. The farm could do without him for a few days, but her wits would have been sorely missed had she left.

Still. It didn’t stop him wishing she were here.

She’d fixed him with a look, though it was without heat. ‘You’d like to leave the farm in Heinrik’s hands, would you?’ There was a teasing lilt to her words.

‘Ghezen save us, never.’ He’d played along, both of them pretending this was just a trip like any other — a business venture, perhaps, or maybe even a holiday.

Kaatje humphed, but he could see her half-smile. Then, sobering: ‘Just be careful, Jordie. And be smart. It’s a big city. Don’t get lost on its streets.’

Be smart, don’t get lost. Sensible advice, but they both knew there was more to the words. She knew what returning to the city could mean to him. Could do to him.

Jordie had told her of his time in Ketterdam on one miserable, half-drunken night, shivering through his words but unable to stop them once the dam had broken. She’d held him as he cried. She understood how entirely the city had ruined him — how foolish he had been, how guilty he felt for his child’s stupid greed and ambition, how it had cost them the last of their kruge, sent them out onto the streets and into the arms of the firepox, and how… how he and his brother had been taken by the Reaper’s Barge, and only one of them survived the trip.

Getting the Rietveld farm back wouldn’t bring Kaz back. Jordie knew that. And it wouldn’t absolve him of his guilt. His little brother was long dead. Jordie had been too gullible to see what was right in front of him, and because of his mistake, Kaz had suffered and died before he’d even seen his tenth year. A child. His baby brother.

Never mind being smart. He wasn’t going to sit in his little room at the boarding house, doing nothing. What, was he afraid of the dark? That was a privilege he and Kaz hadn’t been allowed as children. They’d had to deal with all of Ketterdam’s moods, all of her cruelty.

He turned away from Zelverstraat and the warm comfort of his room. He was going to find Van Eck, and he’d find the Kaelish imposter, the fake Rietveld. He wanted his home back.

Chapter Text

Dirtyhands was out to play tonight.

There was a mood about the city, a mist blown in from the True Sea as the hour lengthened, hanging heavy in the air and forming little halos around every streetlamp and candle. Kaz was the king of the Barrel, the city as good as his, but he was rarely welcome, and nights like these made him feel like the monster he’d spent his life creating. Those with sense receded into doorways or down alleys as he passed, faces rearing up out of the mist only to pull back as they saw him, as they heard his approach, the click of cane on cobble. Even the tourists, dressed in their garish costumes, grotesque masks appearing out of the mist like demons — demjin — seemed to sense something dark about him and parted to let him through.

No one wanted to try Kaz Brekker on his own turf. After going from the most wanted man in the city to bringing down a merch and a Barrel king in one night, his reputation well and truly preceded him.

That wasn’t to stop people from going after his gang, though. He’d had to put down plenty of rival gangs’ attempts to steal Dregs turf after taking over from Per Haskell — the Razorgulls, the Black Tips, the Liddies, Harley’s Pointers… everyone but the Dime Lions had chanced their arm for a bit of land, the Lions too busy picking up their own pieces with Pekka Rollins gone. It was the smart time to make a move, with all the upheaval from the Dregs’ change in leadership. He’d stamped it out all the same.

Tonight, he was after a different quarry.

Mikhail Orlov, captain of the Razrushhost, had left the Crow Club at midnight, heading north along the East Stave. He’d been coming to the club on and off for years, every time his ship put in to port, and his perpetual bad luck had made Kaz no small amount of kruge. But tonight, he had something else Kaz wanted from him.

He hadn’t heard from The Wraith in weeks, but that was to be expected, and there was plenty to be done in her absence. With the fall of the Menagerie, a myriad of other establishments had grown up, vying to take its place. While Inej worked on strangling their supply, he had the pleasure of taking down his competition. The Barrel was his: he would nurture or choke out any business he saw fit.

Kaz set his jaw against the ache. The cold front that had blown in from the sea was starting to seep into his bones. And Inej was due to be back soon.

Orlov travelled up the East Stave, passing the Silver Six and heading towards Fifth Harbour. Kaz followed. He could’ve had someone else tail him — plenty of would-be spiders all too eager to prove their worth — but Roeder was on another job, and he needed this doing right. In any case, it wasn't just a case of tailing the captain. There was a conversation to be had, too.

He waited until Orlov cut through an alley before making his presence known. ‘Captain.’

Orlov stopped in his tracks, turning to see Kaz behind him, gloved hands resting on the head of his cane. ‘Brekker. What business?’ A Kerch greeting from a Ravkan. The power of trade.

At least Orlov hadn’t pulled his pistol yet. A mistake on his part.

‘You haven’t had much luck at the tables lately,’ Kaz observed. Orlov’s debt had never been useful before, but Kaz had allowed the man to rack it up all the same. You never knew when having someone like him in your pocket might come in handy. ‘I want you to do something for me.’

Orlov understood. He swallowed. ‘What is it?’

‘Tell me who you trade with in town.’

An easy enough request. Orlov shouldn’t have been gambling in a Dregs den if he wanted to keep his loyalties elsewhere.

The captain hesitated, reluctant, before obliging. The Queen’s Parade and Lily Court. Two West Stave establishments.

‘Don’t lie to me.’ Never bargain for what you can take. Did Orlov really think Dirtyhands wouldn’t find him out? Even without his Wraith, this was Kaz’s city. He made it his business to know everything about it.

‘Listen, I would’ve come to you first, you know I would, but they gave me a good deal.’

I don’t care. ‘Where else, Orlov?’

The man’s face twisted, weighing his options. They were few and far between. ‘The Cathouse.’

‘And you thought it was a good idea to go behind my back to the Liddies?’

The two gangs were on peaceful terms — as peaceful as things ever got in the Barrel — but after tonight, that could all change. Kaz had no interest in starting a war. But this he needed to get done.

‘I’d have sold to you! But you know what they say about you.’

He let some of his twisted amusement show on his face. ‘And what do they say about me, exactly?’

Orlov realised his mistake too late. His many mistakes. ‘Only that you don’t buy indentures! And that— you know, the Wraith…’

Kaz took a step forwards, hand flexing on his cane. ‘And yet you still thought it a good idea to go behind my back, to sell to my competitors, and to come bragging in my bar?’

‘No! I—’

‘Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to stop doing business with the Cathouse. You’re going to stop selling to anyone in Ketterdam. You’re going to leave, without your cargo and without your ship. And if you ever set foot in my city again, I'll kill you myself.’

Orlov snarled in frustration, a rat caught in a trap, and reached for his gun. But Kaz’s cane was already sailing through the air, making contact with Orlov’s forearm before the pistol was even half drawn. A sharp crunch of bone, and the gun went skittering across the cobbles.

The captain roared in pain, rushing towards him; Kaz sidestepped neatly, bringing the cane back around. The crow’s beak sank into the soft flesh behind Orlov’s knee, and he fell with a sound like a wounded dog.

Kaz leaned on his cane, looking down at the captain dispassionately. ‘Do we have an agreement, Mr Orlov?’

‘You bastard,’ Orlov spat, trying to rise.

‘Yes,’ Kaz agreed, and hit him again.

***

‘How’d it go, boss?’ Skeeter was the first to approach him as Kaz reached Fifth Harbour, the docks deserted at this late hour. He didn’t have to look across to know that berth twenty-two lay empty; but there were other things to draw his attention tonight.

The Razrushhost was a Ravkan frigate, rising out of the mist like the walls of Hellgate, pennants snaking against the dark sky. It was his, now; not that he had much use for it himself. But Orlov’s debts had needed paying somehow, and Kaz owed the Van Eck fleet a warship. This would have to suffice.

He ignored Skeeter, approaching the ship. As he rounded the Razrushhost’s prow, a small group of people huddled on the docks came into view. Anika was the first to notice him, stepping away from the others to greet him.

‘How many are there?’ Kaz asked, scanning the cluster of refugees and captives clustered on the docks.

‘Twenty six,’ Anika replied.

Kaz thought of Orlov, dumped under a bridge on the East Stave. The Reaper’s Barge would find him in the next few hours. It hadn’t been his revenge to take, nor one he’d intended on exacting. But Orlov hadn’t known when to stop talking. He’d dug his own grave with his words, the things he'd tried to offer.

‘Good,’ was all Kaz said now. ‘His crew?’

‘Hard down.’

Kaz nodded curtly. A good night for business. ‘Offer them the usual terms,’ he said, gesturing to the group with the head of his cane. Even in the dark, he could make out Suli colours on one of them. He looked back to Anika.

‘I’ll see it done.’

He wasn’t running a charity. Those with skills he could offer employment — the Dregs were doing well, but he was always glad to drown out any remaining supporters of Per Haskell with new blood, loyal to him. Those who wished to return home could do so; if they couldn’t pay their way, they would be offered a working passage on a merchant vessel, or a trip on The Wraith the next time she put into port.

He turned away from the harbour. The Dregs had done their job, taking out Orlov’s crew while Kaz confronted their captain. And now three of the House of the White Rose’s competitors would be down a supplier. And he would have something to offer Inej.

Kaz took his time walking back to the Slat. Lily Court and the Queen’s Parade were independent establishments, as much as one could be in the Barrel, but it was the Cathouse that would prove the trickiest to dismantle. The Liddies may not have enjoyed the largest turf in the Barrel, but they plucked the fattest pigeons, and that gave them resources and connections the Dregs simply didn’t have.

Still. They were his competition, after all.

He’d barely made it halfway back to the Lid when Roeder found him, dropping from the rooftops like so much laundry.

‘Boss,’ Roeder said in greeting. ‘There’s been trouble.’

Kaz set his jaw, ignoring the spike of fear in his gut. ‘Tell me.'

‘I stepped in, like you said, but they got handsy. Bloke took some hits to the head, he’s out cold.’

‘How far?’ Maybe it was just the recklessness of a fight won, getting to his head. He knew it was a mistake, even before he started following Roeder in the direction of the others.

Roeder wasn’t the Wraith, he could never aspire to be even half of what Inej had been. Still was. But Kaz knew the importance of information, especially now the Barrel was his. He wanted to know everyone and everything in it, all the secret business that took place behind closed doors and in the depths of alleyways.

So he had known when a stranger from out of town had started asking around for Johannus Rietveld. A stranger who had taken a room at the Duck and Whistle, under the name of Jordie. He’d had Roeder tailing the man, back and forth from Zelverstraat to the Exchange, around the bars in the Lid, even halfway down East Stave, last night when the stranger had stopped at the Silver Six and Kaz had spent the evening working from the Slat.

No one in Ketterdam knew about Jordie, knew to use that name to hurt him. Only Inej knew the truth, and she would never betray his secrets. Jesper and Wylan had heard the name, of course — and not for the first time, Kaz found himself cursing that slip. At least Jesper had known better than to bother him about it a second time. But he’d also compromised information before. If the leak came from a Crow, it came from Jesper.

His mood blackened as he followed Roeder. The final possibility was somehow the worst. The thought that Pekka Rollins had finally remembered the name of the child he’d killed, and in whose name Kaz had destroyed him. If Pekka Rollins was back on the field, and this was the first Kaz was hearing of it, then things were far worse than he’d imagined.

Chapter Text

Roeder never knew what his boss was thinking.

Of course, it had always been like that. Even as a lieutenant to Per Haskell, Brekker hadn’t exactly been chatty, and he’d never really spent time with the other Dregs. He hadn’t wanted to celebrate his successes with a drink like so many others, he had never revelled in tales of his glories; equally, if he had concerns they were never voiced, and Ghezen help you if you ever asked to know more than he wanted to tell you. But then, Roeder had very clearly not been one of Brekker’s inner circle. The boss had never been one for shows of favour, but still. It didn’t take a genius to tell who he was closest to in the Slat.

And everyone wanted to be close to Kaz Brekker. Or at least, to feel seen by him. He gave out praise like it was rationed, like he’d had to smuggle it across the True Sea in a thimble and didn’t know when the next shipment might arrive. And no, obviously you didn’t join the Dregs hoping to get a nice pat on the back at the end of your day’s work. But still. Still. There was something about Brekker’s disappointment that made you want to chase his approval. And he was always disappointed.

So when everything happened and those two left to wherever they were now, Roeder had taken his chance. He knew the Wraith was in reality just a girl of flesh and blood, so surely, surely whatever Dirtyhands had seen in her he could see in Roeder. He could do everything she could! Probably.

But these days, he wasn’t sure if Brekker just didn’t like him, or if he had always been this tight-lipped even with the others. Because it didn’t feel like he was getting told any more than before.

And yet he still wanted to do a good job.

Leading the boss through the streets of the Barrel, Roeder could feel the hairs on his neck standing on end. He’d messed up, he knew that, but he didn’t know how badly. He couldn’t read Brekker’s moods all that well — the man held his thoughts more closely than a gambler trying to hide a winning hand — but he knew well enough when the boss was angry. It just depended on whether it was his general, baseline state of anger, or that ruthless, white-hot viper that appeared seemingly out of nowhere and left death in its wake.

Roeder hoped he wasn’t about to get his head smashed in. But you never could entirely tell.

He’d tailed the mark through the mist all evening, from Zelverstraat through the Financial District and finally onto the East Stave. It was a familiar route by now — the farmer had been coming around the Barrel pretty frequently, although Roeder had never been able to get close enough to hear conversation without risking being spotted. He’d have maybe one or two drinks in a bar, talk to a few people, ask a few questions, and move on to the next. Once or twice he’d tried his hand at cards, but he seemed to lack the appetite for gambling. And in any case, he never stayed late. Every night he’d return to his inn on Zelverstraat by sunset, and return to wandering the city the next day.

Except for tonight, of course. Tonight he’d stayed out after dark, and look where that had got him. Nearly plucked, is where. It could've been so much worse if Roeder wasn't there.

He didn’t know why the boss wanted the farmer followed. It was odd, and Roeder had no idea what to make of it. Rietveld just seemed like an out-of-towner here to spend some time in the city, doing some exploring, maybe some business at the Exchange, dabbling in the pursuits offered by the Barrel but too mousey to do anything more than dip his toe. How he was of any interest to Dirtyhands, Roeder couldn’t fathom.

But he was of interest. That was indisputable, if only by the sickening waves of intensity riding off the boss now as they stalked through the streets. Roeder’s orders had not only been to follow, but also to protect — silently, without the mark knowing, but to look out for him all the same. It reminded Roeder weirdly of the time Brekker had asked much the same treatment for Wylan.

That order had been a lot more successful. To Roeder’s knowledge, Wylan had enjoyed a very agreeable stay in the Barrel and never been any the wiser as to who exactly he had to thank for that. But this farmer Rietveld…

‘Who was it?’ Brekker asked as they walked, iron in his voice. Roeder risked a glimpse over to him; the man was keeping pace easily, hurrying Roeder along. His face was set along grim lines, but wasn’t it always? Did he look particularly flinty tonight, or was it just Roeder’s imagination?

Brekker flicked a glance at him. You’re staring.

Roeder felt his cheeks burn against the cold night air. ‘Dime Lions, sir.’ Any other gang might have respected Roeder’s warning to back off. The Lions had always been pricks.

If the boss made anything of this revelation he said nothing of it, instead continuing on ahead in silence. Roeder found himself dancing to keep up, and before long, they rounded a corner into the alley Roeder had named. A kid met them at the entrance, barely ten years old, all gap teeth and freckles. Tipper. One of the Dregs’ youngest. His eyes widened at the sight of the boss.

Brekker looked the boy over, saying nothing. Tipper took this as his cue.

‘Watched over ‘im, sir!’ he said, his high voice full of that mixture of nervousness and pride that Dirtyhands so often inspired in his underlings. ‘Still out cold, but breathin’ just fine.’

The boss didn’t reply, eyes fixed on Tipper. Roeder started to sweat.

‘Had to leave him with someone, boss,’ he said quietly, trying to justify himself. ‘Didn’t tell the kid anything.’

Brekker blinked once, and then turned away, heading further down the alley. Roeder skipped to follow, shooting a dirty look at Tipper. Wasn’t the kid’s fault he’d annoyed the boss, but still. Roeder had messed up enough for one night; he didn’t want to take the fall for some kid too.

The alleyway was dark, lit only by a wedge of orange light from the street, and even that was hazy in the sea fog. The farmer sat in a puddle of shade, propped up against some crates, the light only barely cutting across his body and catching his lower half, a few details of the face. The chin, the tip of the nose, the edge of one eyebrow, the thin trickle of blood, thankfully now dried, that had dripped down past his ear.

Roeder watched nervously as the boss approached, walking slowly now. Halfway to the farmer, Brekker paused, coming to a stop almost jerkily, his cane briefly sliding against wet cobbles before finding purchase. He took a moment to right himself, a moment that seemed to stretch on longer in Roeder's nervous state. Then he started towards Rietveld once more, approaching to get a better view of the man he’d had followed for the past few days.

The silence seemed to last for ever. Roeder struggled to read Brekker’s moods at the best of times, but now his face was in profile and half shrouded in shadow and mist, and Roeder couldn’t read anything into the man’s set jaw and stony gaze. Brekker stood ramrod straight, hands clasping at the head of his cane, as he always did. Roeder had seen him stare down rifles, pigeons, and working girls alike with that same look of grim determination. It was the look he’d given Per Haskell, the day he’d come to claim the Dregs, and the look he'd worn when he left his office every day since.

Finally, Roeder’s nerves and curiosity and desire to leave the alleyway got the better of him.

‘Who is he, boss?’

He hadn't really thought he’d get an answer, but the silence that followed was still oppressive.

Then, surprising him, a reply came so quietly it was almost to Brekker himself: ‘Focus.’

Yeah, that was about what he’d expected.

At least it broke the moment. After only a beat or two more, Dirtyhands finally moved, stepping in closer and lowering himself into a crouch beside the unconscious man. He raised a gloved hand slowly, paused, and then finally pressed two fingers to Rietveld’s throat. It occurred to Roeder that he had never seen Brekker move so gently before.

The moment lasted only for the space between breaths, before Brekker’s hand was falling away. The shifting of the light, obscured by fog and the passage of bodies in the street, made it seem like Dirtyhands was shaking. He remained crouched, studying the unconscious man beneath him, and Roeder moved silently, coming round as much as he dared to get a better view of the proceedings. What he saw… He wasn’t sure what he saw.

There was an expression in Dirtyhands’s eyes that Roeder couldn’t name, struggled to place. He certainly never remembered seeing it on the boss before. Trying to put it into words, he might have said it hung somewhere between bitterness, emptiness, and... something else. Something haunted. But there were any number of expressions he’d never seen on Brekker’s face, and whatever this had been was gone just as quickly as it had come, pulled out by the tide and lost.

When Brekker stood, he wore a much more familiar expression: anger. He turned on Roeder, and his voice was like clutching handfuls of broken glass. ‘I told you I needed this pigeon whole.’

Roeder felt panic leap into his throat. ‘I didn’t touch him! I swear! And I had Tipper watch over him while I got you!’

Dirtyhands rounded on Tipper, who still stood awkwardly at the entrance to the alleyway. A foolish mistake — the kid should’ve known to run the moment Brekker’s back was turned. Now, Tipper shrunk under the flinty gaze of his boss.

‘Where is his ring?’ Brekker rasped, the anger plain in his voice.

Tipper cast a frantic look at Roeder, who merely shrugged. He wasn’t sticking his neck out over this.

‘I’m sorry!’ Tipper squeaked, seeing he was without allies. ‘I— I didn’t know you wanted him looked after like that! I wouldn’t’ve— if I’d known!’ Desperately, he dug around in the pocket of his trousers before pulling out a small metal band and holding it out to Brekker in trembling fingers.

For some reason, Brekker seemed to pause before taking the ring. For a second, Roeder wasn't sure if Tipper’s fearful apology had persuaded him to let the kid keep his trinket, or if Brekker was about to crack the kid about the head and dump him in the canal. But whatever he'd been considering, he must have decided against it, because eventually he reached out and took the ring with hands no steadier than Tipper’s own.

Seemingly satisfied, Brekker turned to limp back to the farmer, and Tipper, realising his earlier error, ran.

Brekker had made it halfway back to Rietveld before he or Roeder realised their own mistake, as a groggy and fearful voice sounded from between them.

‘What…’

Ah. Jordie Reitveld was awake.

Chapter Text

It was cold in the harbour. Kaz could feel his body growing numb and sluggish in the freezing waters, muscles shaking with the effort of staying afloat. The little lights of the docks seemed as far away as they had ever been, twinkling tauntingly at him. He would never make it.

The depths called to him. How easy it would be to just let go, allow himself to sink and be lost. He was so tired and so cold. How easy to just slip away, a tiny unknown life lost, alone in the dark. No one would ever know. There would be no mourners for him. No funeral.

Not now. Kaz gripped his cane with white knuckles and forced his head above the water. If he had to sink, let it be later; he couldn’t afford that kind of self-indulgence now.

He had been holding himself together with both hands since he first entered this damned alleyway and laid eyes on— on whoever this man was. Not-Jordie. This man with the same dark hair and the same rounded jaw and the same— but it was dark, and Jordie was dead, and Kaz had been seeing his dead brother’s face on strangers in the street since the day he crawled out of the harbour. His brother was dead and gone, even if the feel of his corpse under Kaz’s hands was still far too present to even be considered a memory.

He wasn’t here. This wasn’t him. And Kaz needed to get ahold of himself before someone noticed.

Hauling himself together, clawing the bloodied scraps of himself into some semblance of a man, seemed like an impossible task. But his greatest strength had always been his sheer force of will: the will to keep going, to force himself forwards, to set his jaw against the pain and the exhaustion and the weakness and just push on and on and on, despite everything. It had kept him alive, in Ketterdam, in Fjerda, in the Unsea, in every Saintsforsaken mess he had ever called home.

Mind over matter. Sometimes mind over mind. He’d crawl if he had to, but he would see it done.

‘What’s going on?’ the man who was not Jordie slurred. Kaz steeled himself against the sound, against the waters it summoned, forcing them to recede. They would not take him, not here. He just had to make it to the harbour. Just to the harbour, and he could collapse on dry land. He couldn’t afford to go mad, not now. Not— out in the open like this.

He wrenched his gaze to Roeder. ‘Take him back to Zelverstraat,’ he rasped. The words tasted like saltwater.

The boy turned large, uncertain eyes to him, and Kaz fought the urge to snarl in frustration. He didn’t have time for this. The lights of the harbour were so very far away, and he wouldn’t make it if he had to drag Roeder’s dead weight too. One corpse was enough.

‘Just do it,’ he snapped.

Not-Jordie decided this was the right time to get involved. He’d pushed himself up against the wall into a standing position, listing heavily to one side but upright, and with enough presence of mind to raise his arms defensively. It wasn’t entirely clear if it was meant to be a threatening or a placating gesture. It managed to be neither.

‘No offence,’ said Jordie — Not-Jordie — speaking slowly but clearer than before, ‘but I’m not going anywhere with you people.’

Kaz ignored him. He’d been ignoring the Jordie in his own head for years; this was no different.

Except, of course, the Jordie in his head couldn’t try to push past him.

It was uncoordinated and awkward, Jordie lurching forwards off the wall, Kaz staggering backwards as a roil of nausea uncurled in his stomach, one hand thrown out to— what, warn? Plead? The knowledge of his weakness made him almost as sick as the thought of being touched.

And the terrible, the shameful thing was, he had been getting better at this. But it was so, so easy to slip back into those cold waters. To be reminded of the one thing about himself he couldn’t bully into submission, twist to suit his own ends.

Jordie had stopped, but that was likely more due to Roeder, who had moved round to block his path. Kaz caught Roeder shooting him uncertain little glances. Useless. At least he had followed Kaz’s original instructions — the pigeon wasn’t to be harmed.

‘Just let me go,’ Jordie said, speaking slow and gentle as if to calm an animal. For a brief, unhinged moment, Kaz almost wanted to laugh. The man really was a farmer.

In the light, now, he looked even more familiar, the lines between present and past blurring. Usually, when he saw Jordie, he saw a child — he’d seen Jordie in Tipper, earlier tonight. Ridiculous. They looked nothing alike. But they had the same youthful energy, the same seriousness when they focused on a job; not traits exclusive to either of them, just how boys that age were, and yet… Kaz didn’t believe in ghosts, but he saw echoes of his brother everywhere. Especially tonight.

His hands shook.

There wasn’t time for this.

‘Fine,’ he spat. He moved out of Jordie’s way, shook his head once at Roeder’s questioning glance. Let him go.

Jordie looked between them, tense, with suspicion in his eyes. But they made no move to stop him as he started towards the street.

Instead, he stopped himself, pausing at the end of the alley. He stood silhouetted against the light, shimmering slightly in the mist. Half turning back to look at them both where they stood in the dark, orange light only barely catching Kaz's lower half. The gloves. The cane.

‘I know you,’ he said. Quiet. Uncertain. He looked up to meet Kaz’s eye. ‘I’ve heard of you. You’re Dirtyhands. They say—’

‘I know what they say. You don’t know me.’

For a moment, it looked like he might say something else. But apparently even country folk, new to the city, had enough sense not to press the Bastard of the Barrel. He disappeared around the corner, and was gone.

Kaz let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. ‘Follow him.’ His throat felt raw.

Roeder scaled the nearest building and vanished into the night, leaving Kaz finally alone at last.

***

He picked his way back to the Slat over the rooftops, following in part the route he and Inej had devised all that time ago, when the whole city had turned against him. It was a pragmatic decision — the easiest way to avoid contact with others, even at this late hour, was simply not to be seen at all.

He travelled with purpose, not allowing himself to stop even when his leg protested. If anything, the distraction was welcome. Pain could always be counted upon to focus the mind.

So. He focused.

He didn’t know what he had expected to find in that alleyway tonight, but it hadn’t been that. His first assumption when he had heard of a ‘Jordie Rietveld’ in town and asking questions had been that it was some imposter, put up to nefarious business by one of Kaz’s enemies.

But now… If there was a trick, he couldn’t see it. The man didn’t have the air of dishonesty about him that Kaz would have expected from a conman, that he had learned to spot at twenty paces. Everything about him — the reports Roeder had made on his movements, the way he dressed and the manner in which he held himself, even the country way he pronounced his vowels — suggested he really was a farmer from out of town, come to the city to enquire about Johannus Rietveld.

Perhaps he was being used. Jan Van Eck had plenty of motive to see Kaz’s connection to Johannus Rietveld and the conspiracy with the Shu unearthed. The Council of the Tides had threatened him, as well. And there was always Pekka Rollins who could benefit from Kaz’s downfall.

So. A real farmer, a fake name, then? Of course, Kaz had used a real farmer to pretend to be Rietveld. There was nothing to say his enemies couldn’t be just as thorough — or as lucky.

It wasn’t right. He was missing something, he was sure of it. Travelling back to the Slat, he took the situation apart and put it back together, again and again. And while he found many places where the trick could be hiding, whether it wore the face of Jan Van Eck, the Council of the Tides, Pekka Rollins — or someone else entirely — he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, there was some crucial piece of the puzzle he was missing.

He would have Roeder continue to report on the fake Jordie’s movements, and in the meantime, he would use some of his other spider hopefuls to gather information on the other players potentially on the board. Forewarned was forearmed, after all. Whatever was going on here, he would get to the truth of it soon enough. There was no secret you could keep from Dirtyhands, if he had it in his mind to know. And he very much wanted to know who was behind the man with his dead brother’s name, who to Kaz’s sick, addled mind had appeared with his dead brother’s face.

Whoever was doing this, Kaz would make them beg before he killed them.

***

He made it all the way back to the Slat before he fell apart. That in itself was something of an achievement. He supposed he should at least be glad he hadn’t done it in the middle of the street.

But as he sat in his office, shaking with nausea and exhaustion and grief, it didn’t feel like much to be proud of.

Chapter Text

He didn’t start running until the cheerful little lights of Zelverstraat had come into view, the street suddenly every bit as welcoming and comforting as it had been when he was a boy. Ghezen only knew the hour; fog and fear had conspired against him on the way back, and Jordie had found himself going in circles more than once. Thankfully his boarding house was still open, although the doorman gave him a strange look as he clattered inside and up the stairs to his room. It wasn’t until he was safely inside, the bolt drawn closed behind him, that he finally let himself be still.

He had known it was dangerous. He’d remembered the Barrel from before. But somehow, even then, he’d managed to do exactly what he’d done as a child — go wandering around with no real idea what he was doing and no sense for his own safety, trusting blindly in his own intelligence to protect him, and with no clue what he was getting himself into.

And in just one brief moment, the city had turned from a place of possibility to one of threat, dangers looming up out of the dark fog, the masks once grotesque now demonic, and everywhere the sense of being watched.

He really had learned nothing in all these years.

Be smart, don’t get lost.

He wished Kaatje was here.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, slowly calming the jitters of adrenaline still running through his body, he began to take stock.

The kruge he’d kept in his pocket was gone, but not the rest he’d hidden — he sent up a prayer of thanks to Ghezen, and to Kaatje for seeing fit to sew the little pouch into the inside of his boot. The eye glasses his parents-in-law Arno and Irenka had given him as a gift were also gone; he’d not wanted to leave valuables in his room at the boarding house, but he should’ve known better than to bring them to the Barrel.

His wedding ring was also missing.

That was what bothered him the most. He didn’t have much of value, unless they’d wanted to cut the buttons from his shirt; and even then, in a place like Ketterdam he had to imagine there were juicier targets than some farmer who had scraped together his savings to even come here at all.

Kaatje had given him that ring on a warm and windblown spring morning, surrounded by their friends and family. It was made of equal parts metal and memory, and some things simply couldn’t be replaced. Though of course, there had been no one from the Rietveld side to witness the occasion. If the ring was his tether to Kaatje and their new life together, he had long since lost any such connection to his first family.

He had never used to be sentimental. But losing everything he had ever owned, all traces of everyone he had ever loved… An experience like that would change a man, even as a boy. And wasn't that why he had come to Ketterdam at all? To regain some small part of what he had lost, even if it was only a piece of land?

But of course, if some kruge and a few items were all he lost after being attacked and robbed in Ketterdam’s Barrel by Dirtyhands himself, he supposed he’d got off lightly. From the stories, he would’ve been just as likely to find himself beaten, maimed, or killed, just to prove a point.

Jordie didn’t know much about Dirtyhands. To him it was just a name spoken in bars with an odd mix of reverence, fear, and disgust. Sometimes whispered, like even mentioning it would bring bad luck; sometimes growled, like the very thought of him was offensive. The people that talked of him all seemed to hate him; everything Jordie had heard had described someone so ruthless and unhinged, someone so powerful and cruel it almost defied reason.

It reminded him of how the people back home had talked of the Beast of Nederwoud, three summers back. A creature that had preyed upon shepherds and farmers that strayed too far afield. To hear men talk of it, you’d think it had been a monster of lore: with flame-red eyes and acrid breath, tall as a man and wide as an ox, with claws that could cut through steel and a hide that no bullet could penetrate. It had killed as it pleased, and had the whole of Nederwoud terrified of its next strike.

And then one day ten farmers set out with their rifles and shot a den of wolves, and the attacks had stopped.

No thing could ever live up to the stories people told about it. So while Jordie had no trouble believing there were criminal lords in the Barrel who were ruthless, and cruel, and powerful, the legend of Dirtyhands had seemed too much like a fairy story to be real.

But waking up with a throbbing head in a darkened alleyway, bracketed by two strangers talking over him as if he was already dead, with blood dried halfway down his face and fear beating a tattoo in his chest… It was easy to believe in fairy stories, at times like that.

He shook himself slightly. The man had let him go. And for one brief moment, it had almost seemed as if... The image of the man shrinking away from him, like Jordie was a brazier and Dirtyhands was made all of kindling.

Jordie couldn't even begin to understand, couldn't even be sure what he had seen, the dark street further obscured by his own wooziness at the time. But whatever had happened, he knew the tales were just stories. If it hadn’t been for the distinctive cane, Jordie might not even have realised who had attacked him.

Now, as he began to calm finally and his faculties returned to him, they did so with an image of that cane burned into his mind. It'd been too dark, and he'd been too out of it to make out much else about the man. But the cane... What was it the farmer in Lij had said? Bird-headed.

It reminded him dimly of something the clerk at the Exchange had said. He hadn’t paid it any heed at the time, but now, the wheels turning in his head even as dawn threatened to break outside his window, his thoughts returned to it.

Johannus Rietveld, Mr Van Eck, and the auction of someone whose name he had forgotten; but the clerk had been all-too-happy to mention the irregularity of the thing, even before Mr Van Eck’s conspiracy had been revealed. Dirtyhands had been there. Mr Brekker.

Jordie didn’t know what to think. Maybe he was just tired, or still feeling the effects of being knocked out — he realised dimly that he had never cleaned up, and cast around for a rag to wash his face with.

Ketterdam was a big city, and he couldn’t believe that there was only one man who owned a bird-headed cane in the whole of Kerch. It was less of a leap to assume someone else owned a similar cane and had gone to Lij than it would be to imagine Mr Brekker travelling out to the old Rietveld farm.

But then. It wasn’t hard to imagine a criminal buying a farm under false pretences and getting involved in a conspiracy that ended a mercher’s career. It would at least explain the fake name a little.

Be smart, don’t get lost. He wanted to set out immediately, make the most of the morning light currently brightening the street and burning away last night’s fog. But he had ignored Kaatje’s advice once already, and look where that had led. The city wasn’t going anywhere. The only rush was how many days he could afford to stay here before his kruge ran out, and he was forced to return home.

Or how long he could bear to be here. Not much longer, if last night was any indication.

***

He rested as best he could, napping fitfully for a few hours. He found his dreams filled with memories of the Barrel from his childhood: sleeping under bridges and in alleyways, scraping together what kruge they could to eat — and eating scraps when they could not — and trying to stay out from underfoot of the bigger folk, going about their darker business.

One of them had offered him a job, once. As a runner. Take this message here for me. Jordie might have taken it, too, had his potential employer not been standing over a woman, bloodied and begging. His pride had been just enough to keep him from feeding his brother, but not enough to step in and go against a man twice his size.

He hadn’t told Kaz, and they’d gone hungry the next two nights. And then just as Jordie’s pride was starting to rot, and he was starting to consider taking a job anywhere, as anything, just so his little brother wouldn’t look at him with those big hopeful eyes only to be disappointed once again— then, the plague had struck, and Kaz had died, and none of it had mattered anyway.

With no desire to give the dreams any more power over him than they’d already taken, Jordie rose again around ten bells and set off through the city to continue his business. Maybe Kaz would finally let him rest once he had reached the bottom of all this.

Geldin District was a far cry from anywhere else in Ketterdam, all high walls, iron fences, and pristine hedges. It hadn’t been hard to find the Van Eck residence; he’d only had to ask a few passers by, and although they had given him curious looks, apparently he had seemed sufficiently trustworthy to be given directions.

The house was a mansion, ornate and attractive, and Jordie was suddenly very aware of how shabby he must look. These were among some of his finest clothes, but even so, he would be better placed as a gardener here than as a guest.

Still, he told himself, he didn’t want much. Only a meeting. Just one conversation could answer everything, so long as Mr Van Eck was willing to talk.

He had to hope the mercher was willing to talk. This was his last avenue of investigation, unless he wanted to brave the Barrel again on nothing but a hunch. Somehow, he thought Mr Van Eck would be more amenable to a conversation than Dirtyhands. This was certainly the preferable conversation in Jordie’s mind.

He raised a hand to the mansion’s door, and rapped thrice. A few moments passed, leaving him standing on the doorstep awkwardly, before the door opened to reveal a neatly-dressed woman who had the look of a maid about her.

‘Yes?’ she asked, looking him over inscrutably.

‘I’m sorry for just appearing like this,’ Jordie said, horribly aware of the hat in his hands and the country in his accent, ‘but I wondered if I could have a meeting with Mr Van Eck.’

‘Is he expecting you?’

Ah. ‘No, but it’s about— It’s about the business with Johannus Rietveld.’

Whatever she had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. She paused, clearly uncertain, before telling him to wait and disappearing back into the house.

Jordie hoped that was a good sign.

Chapter Text

Mornings were a slow affair in the Van Eck household. Wylan vastly preferred long evenings to early mornings, and while Jesper had spent the last few years burning the candle at both ends, he had quickly learned to make the most of having soft beds and servants. To say nothing of the perks of bed-sharing.

All in all, breakfast at ten bells had become something of the norm.

‘Update from Da,’ Jesper was saying around a mouthful of toast and marmalade. Something else that had become normal was their routine of going over the morning’s letter deliveries during breakfast. A significantly less pleasurable habit than lazing around in bed, but a necessary one all the same.

Wylan had quickly come to discover that he had really, terribly underestimated how many letters would be involved in his new position. The council seemed to send hundreds, all by themselves, and then there was everyone else trying to speak to him — there were shipping updates and merchant plans, market studies and weather reports, and an endless stream of people he had never even met trying to get him to buy things.

Most of these things didn’t even need to be a letter! What had happened to just sending a messenger? Or simply waiting for the next meeting? He had standing appointments with all his business partners, why did they feel the need to interrupt his breakfast on an almost daily basis? Half of this wasn’t even urgent! And all of it was tedious beyond belief.

With the exception of the letters from Colm Fahey, of course. Those were actually useful, and sweet, and always nice to have. Everyone else could go boil their heads, though.

‘Two more additions to the Consortium,’ Jesper was saying, skimming the letter. He usually gave Wylan an overview before launching into a full table read. ‘At this rate he’ll have the whole of Novyi Zem coming together for picnics.’

Wylan hid his smile in a mouthful of eggs. Good. The Consortium had been a joint effort, and it wouldn’t have been possible without Colm, but he still felt a savage little bit of pride for his own involvement.

In concept, it was blindingly simple. Zemeni jurda farmers had been selling too low for years, their product widely used but also widely produced. It had been as easy as agreeing a fair price with Colm, and letting him contact other farmers with the suggestion; anyone in the Consortium would then refuse to sell for lower than that price, and if the Van Eck trading company was the only one willing to pay it, then that was the fault of the other merchants.

One of the more elegant ways to end up cornering the market, and to ensure a fair price was paid to the farmers producing the goods. The various subsidies and other financial arrangements to make it profitable had all been Wylan’s idea. He was still proud of how well it had all come together.

Jesper had paused, reading quietly to himself; Wylan nudged him under the table with his foot. ‘What is it?’

Sheepish, Jesper looked up, shooting Wylan one of his dizzying smiles before glancing away, awkward. ‘Uh, it’s a bit to me. He’s asking about my training.’

Wylan stirred his tea idly. ‘What do you think you’ll say?’

It wasn’t a sore subject per se, but it was definitely a fraught one. If Wylan was proud of the Consortium, he was doubly proud of Jesper for trying to nurture his abilities. They’d hired a Grisha instructor, one of the many who had fled Ravka in the war; last Wylan had heard, things had been going passably well between them.

But he knew it was a lot more complicated to Jesper than just the lessons. Especially where Colm was involved.

Jesper looked down at the letter, contemplating his answer. But before he had a chance to give it, the dining room door cracked open to reveal Hanna.

‘Sorry to disturb you, sirs,’ she said apologetically. ‘But there’s a man at the door asking to see you.’

Wylan felt a jump of nerves. ‘Did I forget about an appointment?’ He usually had a passable memory, but he had to admit, Jesper’s company was pretty distracting. In the best kind of way.

Now, Jesper shrugged. ‘Not that I know of.’ To Hanna: ‘What’s he want?’

‘He said it was something about a man called Johannus Rietveld.’

Wylan and Jesper shared a look, breakfast forgotten. This was a problem.

They relocated to Wylan’s office while Hanna showed the man in. ‘Wylan’s office’, as if the approach didn’t still feel like being called in to face his father’s disappointment.

Jesper caught Wylan’s hand in his own and gave it a little squeeze. ‘What do you think is going on?’

Wylan twisted his face. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t like it. Did your Da say anything?’

‘Not in his letter.’ Inside the office, Wylan perched on the seat behind his desk, Jesper throwing himself into the armchair he’d insisted on having moved in to be more comfortable. ‘Do you think it’s got anything to do with, y’know… ’ he lowered his voice conspiratorially, ‘the Dickhead.’

Wylan felt a smile tugging at his lips despite his worry. The moment Wylan had said he didn’t mind, Jesper had declared open season on calling Jan names. It was a level of disregard for the old man that Wylan hadn’t quite reached himself — he didn’t know if he ever would, frankly — but he still found it stupidly sweet every time.

‘Hmm,’ he agreed now. His father’s trial was technically still ongoing, although it moved at a snail’s pace. He knew Kaz had covered his tracks, but it was still possible the defence would make a play to prove it wasn’t Jan who had conspired with the Shu. And Johannus Rietveld was the only real point of connection to do that. So if someone was coming around asking about him now… ‘Let’s really hope not.’

There was still a part of him — and he wasn’t sure how big that part was, or even if it stayed the same day-to-day — that felt bad for his father. He was facing prison for something he hadn’t done; never mind the fact that he wasn’t facing prison for all sorts of things he had done. He had kidnapped Inej, he had conspired against his own customers on Sweet Reef, he had betrayed Kaz, he had turned the city against them, he had banished Wylan's mother and destroyed her life, he had tried to have Wylan killed…

Okay, so it was a pretty small part of him that felt bad. But still. Getting him on something he hadn’t done, rather than any of the things he had, felt less like justice and more like a trick. And it was a trick that could be unravelled if anyone looked too closely.

But trick or not, the alternative was worse. If anything went wrong, and Jan was found innocent and returned home… Wylan didn’t even want to think about how precarious his position really was. He’d have to run. Take his mother and flee. He would lose everything he had built here, everything he had. Would Jesper come with him? Or would that be too much to ask?

‘You’re scowling, merchling,’ Jesper said gently. ‘You’ll crease that stupid face of yours.’

He took a steadying breath, shot Jesper a weak smile. One thing at a time.

The knock at the door came moments later, and Wylan beckoned the unexpected guest inside with as much cheeriness as he could muster.

The man was young, older than Wylan but not by all that much, and dressed in a brown suit that had probably been nice about ten years ago but had since needed several repairs, if the patches on the elbows were any indication. He looked respectable enough, but a single glance was enough to tell Wylan he wasn’t a merch — the man was tall and strong, and had the air of a labourer about him. Maybe a sailor or dock worker?

Standing in the doorway, he looked decidedly out of place and uncomfortable as he looked around the room. ‘Mr Jan Van Eck?’ he asked when he saw Wylan.

‘No,’ Wylan said brightly. It was that or get annoyed, and it was too early in the day for that. ‘I’m his son, Wylan, and this is my partner, Mr Fahey. What business, sir?’

The man seemed to teeter uncertainly. ‘Ah, my apologies,’ he said. ‘I had thought Mr Van Eck… But maybe you can help me.’ He started into the room, nodding gratefully as Wylan indicated the chair across from him.

He could feel Jesper’s eyes on him, and shot the other man a quick look as their guest sank into the chair. Jesper’s eyebrow was quirked questioningly; Wylan shook his head. I don’t know either.

If this man had been sent by his father’s lawyer, then why the confusion over which Van Eck he was speaking to? It made no sense. Something else was at play here. But who else would have an interest in the con they had played? Who would even know that name, and not know what had befallen Wylan’s father?

‘Thank you both for seeing me,’ the man was saying. Wylan couldn’t place his accent. ‘I’m— new to Ketterdam,’ his expression was strangely bitter, ‘so I’m afraid many of her customs are lost on me.’ He paused, seemingly trying to decide how to continue. ‘Perhaps I ought to start from the beginning.’

Wylan was having trouble deciding how worried he should be. This didn’t feel as worrying as he had originally thought — if this man was working for his father, he was going about it very strangely — but still, it didn’t feel not worrying either. It was too odd and unexpected.

‘That sounds like a good idea, Mr… ?’

‘Oh! Of course. Jorden Rietveld, at your service.’

Wylan felt his eyebrows making friends with his hairline. Maybe it shouldn’t have been that surprising — in retrospect, of course ‘Rietveld’ was a real name. Kaz was too thorough to just make something up wholecloth. But still, the likelihood of those two worlds ever colliding… Was this about Kaz, somehow?

Jesper shifted in his seat, and Wylan saw his expression out the corner of his eye. He recognised that look. It was the one Jesper wore when he was practicing his abilities, when had caught upon something and was concentrating hard not to lose the thread. ‘I don’t suppose they call you Jordie, do they?’

Mr Rietveld shrugged lightly. ‘Most folks do. That’s actually— So, listen. I don’t know anything about the business your father did with this other Rietveld fellow, but, well, I’m trying to find him. The truth about him. My full name is Jordie Johannus Rietveld, you see. Whoever your father knew, I think they were pretending to be me.’

What in Ghezen’s name was going on?

Chapter Text

Jesper had spent most of his adult life worshipping at the altar of Lady Luck, hoping for just a few scraps of her favour. He believed in chance as much as the next man — the one great equaliser, the one force with the power to make all people truly the same. It was she who could pluck a man from obscurity, who could condemn a life by a quirk of their birth; she cursed with one hand and blessed with the other.

And Jesper — gambler, gunslinger, Grisha — knew her intimately.

However. This all seemed a bit much to be coincidence.

If it was just the one name, Jesper would have shrugged and moved on. Maybe he would’ve found it strange to meet a man who shared a last name with the fake farmer they’d had his father impersonating. Maybe the first name would’ve made him think back to that day in the clocktower, when Kaz had spat it at him with such bitterness.

If it’d been just the middle name, he doubted he would’ve thought of it at all. That was exactly the kind of name that was common in Kerch. Walk down to the docks and you’d fall over five Johannuses on your way.

But he had to admit. Those three names, in that combination? That was where it really started tipping from ‘coincidence’ into ‘connection’. And they all pointed to Kaz. It always came back to Kaz.

Someone I trusted. Someone I didn’t want to lose.

Jesper often wondered how you could know someone so much and so little, all at the same time. He had always tried to consider Kaz to be one of his closest friends; for years, the man had known more about Jesper than almost anyone else in the world. While Jesper had been lying to everyone, even his own father, Kaz had been the only one to see the truth — the entire truth — and still decide to put his faith in Jesper’s strengths all the same.

Kaz had seen Jesper’s highest highs, and his lowest lows, and Jesper liked to think he’d seen the same of Kaz. He’d known it was an uneven friendship, if you could even call it that. He knew that he had messed up, right before the Fjerdan job, and it had cost him whatever trust he and Kaz might once have had.

What do you think my forgiveness looks like, Jordie?

It had still been a stark reminder. How little he knew. How uneven it had always been. He was useful to Kaz because of his skills. Because he had a secret Kaz could exploit. Whatever else had grown between them, whatever rapport or trust, Dirtyhands would always be a schemer first and a friend distant last.

With how little he really knew, Jesper would never in a million years have guessed that the farmer pulled out of thin air for a con, and the name Kaz had wielded like a knife could be the same person.

Nor that that person might one day arrive on his doorstep to interrupt breakfast.

Then again, where Kaz was concerned, he really should stop being surprised, stop trying to understand. The man had always been more secretive than Death himself; he had cheated Fortune more times than Jesper could count. Was this some kind of test? Part of Kaz’s plans? He half expected to see Kaz come stolling in, monologuing as he always used to, giving Inej time to set up.

But of course, those days were gone now. And instead, it was Jordie Rietveld who was talking.

‘Your father was conned,’ he was saying earnestly to Wylan. ‘I’m the last Rietveld, at least in Kerch. The name was fake. And if they were lying about the name…’ He paused, uncertain. ‘I don’t want to offend you, sir, but… How sure are they that your father really did— what they said?’

Jesper caught Wylan’s eye. Either this really was a test, or they were all in trouble. The Rietveld con involved all of them — Jesper’s father, the Dickhead, and Kaz — and it was the only loose thread in the whole thing. If someone traced it back to any of them, the whole case against Jan Van Eck, the Arsehole, could fall apart.

He wished he had his guns. He missed the comforting heft of them on his hips. But Wylan, pretty understandably, had some house rules about guns in his home and around his mother. So instead Jesper twirled a loose thread from his shirt around one finger, looping it over again and again. No substitute for the cool pearl of his gun handles, but a tactile enough distraction nonetheless.

Wylan paused diplomatically. Much that they all (albeit mostly Jesper) made fun of the little merchling, he was actually very good at this kind of thing.

‘The trial is still ongoing,’ he began, ‘so at the moment, I don’t think anyone is sure of anything. My father has a good lawyer, so if he is truly innocent, I have faith it will come to light.’ He met Jordie’s gaze with strength. ‘I don’t mean to doubt your word, sir, but you understand the position I’m in. From my side of the table, it’s hard to discern whether it is you or the other fellow with your name who is the trickster.’

Spoken like a true merch. Jesper felt a small smile tugging at his lips.

Jordie rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I do understand, sir. I didn’t mean to tell you your business. All I can give you is the truth. I grew up on a farm in the south, and these last few months I’d had it in my mind to buy the old place for myself. So you can imagine my surprise when they told me someone with my name already owned it.’ He shrugged one shoulder. ‘I came to Ketterdam to find out who, and why. If someone is out there, pretending to be me… I can’t believe they have good intentions. And I feel responsible for them, somehow. It’s my good name they’re involving in all this.’

Jesper cocked his head at the man. ‘Looks to me like we’ve got Rietvelds coming out of the woodwork these days. Have you got anything to prove you’re the real deal?’

‘Aye,’ Jordie said, reaching into his jacket and producing a small folded paper. ‘I had a copy made while I was in Lij. The Exchange wanted to see it as well.’ He passed it to Jesper.

Jesper had never seen the Kerch registration books, the ones where they noted births, deaths, and marriages, but he’d seen the paperwork Kaz had produced for the fake Johannus Rietveld. Including the registration of birth: a short note, made to look like it had been copied from a records book, and bearing some local council seal or other.

This looked similar enough. Barely more than a few lines, recording the birth of Jorden Johannus Rietveld to Lammert and Maud Rietveld in Lij, over twenty years ago. He thought the names sounded familiar, but so much had happened since he had been coaching his father on the con.

He read the names out as if mulling them over, but shot a questioning glance to Wylan as he did. Wylan was watching him with a curious expression, but he seemed to understand what Jesper was asking. He have a little nod of confirmation.

Saints, his memory was incredible. The same names as on the fake paperwork.

Jesper could feel the energy inside him starting to bubble, the wheels starting to turn, giving him the jitters, the itch. It wasn’t bad — he didn’t feel like a rat in a trap ready to gnaw its own paws off, not just yet — but it was still enough to make him stand and walk about the room a little. Anything to keep him distracted.

They knew their Johannus Rietveld was fake. So it made sense that this one was real. Not total sense — it was still an enormous coincidence, and a pretty big run of bad luck for the man to have ever made it this far in finding them out — but enough. At least, it made more sense than anything else.

No one else knew about their con. And if they did, they’d either be taking it to the Council or using it as blackmail. This was neither. This was too haphazard and uncalculated to be a trick.

So. Jordie was real. And his parents’ names were the same ones Kaz had put down for their fake Rietveld. Coincidence no longer. Surely this was proof that the Jordie in the clocktower and this Jordie in Wylan’s office were one and the same.

He leant back against one of the bookshelves lining the room’s walls, trying to force his body into a casual-seeming stillness. ‘Have you ever been to Ketterdam before, Jordie?’ he asked. ‘I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before.’

Jordie’s expression turned melancholy. ‘Only once. I never thought to find myself back here.’

‘No? More of a country lad, I get it.’

This man knew Kaz, Jesper was certain of it. Had known Kaz. And something terrible had happened between them, so much that it had chased Jordie back out to the fields and Kaz behind his walls.

Someone I trusted. Someone I didn’t want to lose.

The past tense in Kaz’s words had been conspicuous even at the time.

But then, Jesper had seen Kaz consumed with rage, overtaken with revenge. If they had betrayed one another, surely Jordie would remember his time in Ketterdam with bitterness or anger, not sadness. Someone I didn’t want to lose. Someone Kaz would be glad to see again?

He wanted desperately to say something, to simply ask if the man knew Kaz Brekker, but he had let slip details to Kaz’s enemies once before and it had cost them all dearly. Jordie seemed harmless enough — honestly, he seemed like every other pigeon in the city — but Jesper was currently trying very hard to learn from his mistakes and stop repeating the same ones, so. He wouldn’t be giving out any information about Kaz, not without permission. And the idea of ever getting that was laughable. Kaz would probably sooner drown himself.

In the end, the decision was made for him.

‘Sirs… there was one more thing,’ Jordie said, somewhat awkwardly. ‘It’s a little… Well. I have even less evidence for this. So I’ll understand if you want to disregard it. But I thought it seemed too important not to bring up.

‘The clerk at the Exchanged mentioned, uh, the man they call Dirtyhands… being connected to the circumstances of your father’s arrest, Mr Van Eck. Which I wouldn’t think anything of, except the owner of the farm in Lij, the one using my name, he was described to me as having a crow-headed cane. I didn’t make the connection until I saw Dirtyhands myself. The cane is identical.’

‘You saw Dirtyhands?’ Wylan’s question echoed Jesper’s thoughts.

Jordie answered rather sheepishly. ‘I was robbed last night. He was there.’

Jesper pushed himself off the shelves, pulling on the cuffs of his sleeves where they’d started riding up. That did it. Kaz didn’t rob random people in streets. So Jordie wasn’t random. And if he hated Jordie, he never would’ve let the man off with some simple theft. So he didn’t hate him.

And even if he did. Jordie had already made the connection from the fake Rietveld to Kaz. If Jordie was an enemy, Kaz would want to know; he would need to be stopped. But if he wasn’t… Someone I didn’t want to lose.

Kaz had been there for him when Jesper had no one. If he could give Kaz someone back in return, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

‘Mr Rietveld,’ he said cheerfully, ‘it sounds to me like you’re on to something. Why don’t we go and ask the fellow himself?’

Chapter Text

To his credit, Jorden Rietveld had allowed them to sweep him out of the house and towards the Slat with minimal resistance beyond an initial stunned silence. Perhaps the man had always known it would come to this — well, perhaps not literally this, getting dragged across the city by a Zemeni gunslinger and the son of the disgraced mercher whose office he’d found them in.

But maybe he had known it would come to a meeting with Dirtyhands. So many things in this city went through Kaz, after all. If Wylan hadn’t been in on this particular con, and didn’t stand to benefit from it so tremendously, Kaz would probably have been the first one he turned to if he wanted to find the truth.

Wylan let the other two walk ahead of him, content to listen in on their conversation and let Jesper take the lead. He had been the to make the connection to Kaz, to the name he’d thrown out when the two were arguing, while Wylan had still been considering the potential implications for his father’s trial. Jesper was smart — ‘not just a pretty face’, as he might say. Although he clearly had that going for him too.

Now, Jesper was taking the reins in the conversation, working to keep things light. None of them knew what to expect when they reached the Slat; of all of them, Jesper probably had the best idea of how Kaz might react, though Wylan thought he had a pretty good sense too.

He wanted it to go well. For Jesper’s sake. For Kaz’s. And for this poor out of towner who had somehow managed to piece together more of Kaz’s con than anyone in Ketterdam. If Jorden had a mind to sink the case against Wylan’s father, he could.

Wylan had known Kaz long enough to realise that, if things didn’t go well at the Slat, they would go worst for Jorden. Dirtyhands didn’t suffer people who could destroy him to walk around in the open.

Which was part of why the robbery detail seemed so strange. He wondered what Kaz had stolen. It must’ve been important, to risk being seen like that, to risk Jorden making those connections.

But then, he remembered five thieves waiting at the bottom of an incinerator shaft for their leader to return, the minutes trickling by like sand. For all his intelligence, for all his schemes, sometimes Kaz was willing to put it all on the line for things no one but him understood.

Up ahead, Jesper and Jorden had launched into a conversation about farming so completely alien to Wylan that he only understood about one word in three. Every now and again, one or other of the two would let out a bark of laughter — Wylan seriously doubted anything about farming was that funny, but it was good to see them getting along. ‘Defusing a situation by being charming and silly’ was, Wylan had always insisted, definitely a Jesper talent.

Deep in his thoughts, Wylan didn’t realise how far he’d fallen behind the others until the scrape of a familiar voice appeared at his elbow.

‘Come with me.’

He barely had time to react before Kaz was stalking away, ducking into an alley with the clear expectation of being followed.

Wylan dithered briefly, glancing after Jesper. ‘I’ll catch up!’ he called ahead. The nod Jesper gave in response was confused but affirmative. They would talk later.

Standing in the alley, Kaz wore his usual bitter expression, hands folded on the head of his cane, but there was something in the tightness of his jaw and the straightness of his posture that spoke of deliberate control. He was angry.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked, voice sharp.

‘Excuse me?’

‘One of my enemies comes to your door with a mouth full of lies, and your first instinct is to take him to the Slat. I might have expected as much from Jesper, but I thought you at least had a head on your shoulders.’

Wylan bristled. He’d forgotten how casually cruel this man could be. How closely some of the things he said echoed things Wylan had heard his whole life from his father.

He drew himself up to his full height. ‘Not our first instinct, Kaz. We questioned him, asked for proof of identity. His registration of birth matches the one you created for Johannus Rietveld. Lammert and Maud, wasn’t it?’

Kaz’s face twisted, and he looked away. ‘Do you really think I’m the only one in Ketterdam who can fake those?’ he asked, some of the sting bleeding from his voice.

‘Obviously not,’ Wylan said curtly. He would owe Kaz for the rest of his life, but he’d lost his patience for being treated like a fool. It was a miracle what just a few months of not being constantly derided could do. ‘That wasn’t the only thing. He knows about the con, he figured it out from the names. He’s suspicious about my father’s trial. If he was put up to this, why bring this information to us at all?’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t know of your involvement. He hoped to find a sympathetic ear.’ Kaz’s voice was dry.

Wylan snorted. ‘I live with your old second and the son of our fake. If he's figured out this much, it’s not a hard connection to make.’

Kaz said nothing; Wylan took that as assent to continue.

‘He’s real. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’

‘Impossible. He’s conning both of you.’

Wylan wanted to shake him. Smart as the Saints themselves, and he couldn’t see what was right in front of him! ‘Nothing else makes sense, Kaz! Who else would have this much information and use it like this? Where’s the trick?’

A muscle in Kaz’s jaw twitched. ‘It’s impossible.’

‘Why?’

Wylan wasn’t sure if Kaz even heard him. He had the strangest sensation, like Kaz was looking directly through him, like a man staring out to sea.

The quiet made Wylan brave. ‘He’s your Jordie, isn’t he?’

The moment snapped. Kaz blinked, and hardened. ‘My Jordie is dead,’ he said sharply. ‘Whoever Jesper is bringing to the Slat, it isn't him.’

Wylan felt like he used to sometimes when testing explosives. He would do everything right — all the right chemicals, all the right percentages — prepare to set it off, and then hunker down and wait. And most of the time, they went off spectacularly. But it was the times they failed that were the most interesting. At first, it would feel like anything else unexpected — the swoop in his stomach as he heard his father’s footsteps outside his door, even if they were only passing. The realisation that he had missed something.

Then came the next step. He would have to slowly approach the compound, carefully take it apart, and try to work his way backwards to whatever had gone wrong. Suddenly it wasn’t a failure, or even an explosive; it was a puzzle. Like taking apart his flute to find the sticking key, and putting it back together, whole and better than before.

He had assumed Jordie was dead, the first time he heard that name. Kaz had seemed, to him, like the kind of person who collected ghosts. The kind of person who didn’t let go until one or both of them were dead. The kind of person who didn’t just drift away, but who had their people ripped, violently and finally, from their grasp.

Then Kaz’s Crows had all flown away to new nesting grounds, and Wylan had realised any of them might sound like a ghost, if Kaz were the one doing the telling.

‘My mother was dead, too,’ he said quietly. ‘How sure are you?’

Kaz let out a shuddering breath, and in one moment went from the bitter, angry Bastard of the Barrel to a boy run ragged by his own mind. ‘I’m sure, Wylan.’

Wylan felt disappointment bloom in his chest. ‘Okay.’

They stood in silence, all the earlier anger and frustration drained away.

He didn’t know what to make of any of it. Maybe Kaz was right, and Jordie was dead. But Wylan had sat across the desk from Jorden, had seen his sadness when he spoke of Ketterdam. And Wylan had gone to Olendaal, wearing someone else’s face and looking for a grave, only to find a mother.

‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘Whatever is really going on, we’ve told him nothing. You can’t blame Jesper for this one.’

Kaz didn’t quite have the decency to look admonished.

‘He made the connection to my father on his own, and he’s done the same with you,’ Wylan continued eventually, after a pregnant, apology-sized pause. ‘He knows you went down to Lij, he knows you’re connected with the con. Trust him or don’t trust him, but we’re going to have to do something.’

‘On that at least, we are agreed,’ Kaz said, and strode back out into the street.

Chapter Text

How sure are you?

His hand tightened on his cane as he walked purposefully across the Zentsbridge, Jesper and— Jordie long disappeared up ahead. He wanted to catch them before they could spend too much time at the Slat.

I’m sure.

It was becoming harder and harder to keep his head above the waves. He hadn’t slept last night, although that was nothing new; not long after he’d returned to the Slat, it had been business as usual. Anika had a gaggle of refugees seeking work that needed housing and seeing to; Rotty had overheard a business deal in the Crow Club and had come to try and wheedle some support to intervene; and two of Kaz’s would-be spiders had independently reported the Razorgulls moving weapons through their territory. The Barrel never slept, and so neither did its king.

In some ways, it had helped. His work had always been a dam against the flood. Just because Pekka Rollins was gone — assuming he wasn’t behind whatever all this was, of course — didn’t mean Kaz didn’t have things to throw himself into, to focus on. Didn’t mean that he didn’t need those things.

But it had been a long evening, and even the best dam had leaks. He was knee-deep in harbour water before the sun even rose.

Eventually, when the confines of his office felt so small they might choke him, he had snapped up his cane and stalked out, looking every bit the corvid in yesterday’s dark suit. He’d intended to clear his head, and had found his steps taking him in the direction of Geldstraat to gift the Razrushhost to Wylan. Unnecessarily, of course — he could’ve just sent a runner. But it had provided a good excuse to see them, at a time when such excuses were few and far between.

His black mood had almost improved, when he spotted Jesper in the street, accompanied by the professed ‘Mr Rietveld’.

Of course they had involved themselves in his business. In the months since Kuwei’s auction, Wylan and Jesper had made it clear how little they cared to be involved in Kaz’s work anymore. You might have been forgiven for thinking they had moved to Shu Han, rather than just the other side of the city, for all that Kaz had seen them. But now, with something so complex and raw, of course this was when they decided to get involved.

How sure are you?

Had it been anyone but Wylan asking him those things, Kaz might have hit them. No, Inej would have managed it too. Jesper… it would’ve depended on his mood.

But anyone else would likely have received a broken bone for their troubles.

He had always known Wylan wasn’t stupid. He was surprisingly astute for a mercher’s son. But he had also known good fortune too frequently in his life to fully understand the luck involved. Wylan thought that because miracles had worked in his favour, they could be called down for Kaz’s sake too. But it didn’t work like that. Not for him.

He knew, without any doubt, that Jordie was dead. He had watched him die, heard his last wet gasping breaths beside him. He had held his corpse as it went cold, clutched his bloating skin for hours. He saw him in his dreams, and in his weakest waking moments. He felt him in every touch, every graze of skin, every punch, every kiss.

Certainty was safe. Without it, he thought he might just unravel.

Walking beside him, Wylan kept sneaking glances he thought Kaz didn’t see, full of sadness and confusion and something disgustingly close to pity. Kaz ignored him.

It was almost— better, this way. Jordie had been a child and a fool, a pigeon wandering in where he didn’t belong and with responsibilities he couldn’t support, and he had died like so many did in the Barrel: because of his own folly. Chewed up and spat out by a city that didn’t care.

And in the years since Jordie’s death, the change Kaz had undergone was such to render him unrecognisable to their younger selves. Someone else’s shadow. Demjin. He had no illusions. He knew that, had any of his family lived to see him now, they would neither understand nor accept. As well they shouldn’t. Despite what Inej might try to see in him, he knew what he was.

He struggled against the tide of his own thoughts. Jordie was dead. This was better. An enemy he could deal with, an enemy he could scheme against and take down, an enemy he could beat into submission and stand over as they begged.

Anything else… he didn’t know what to do with anything else. It was ‘anything else’ that kept him from Geldstraat unless he had business, that kept him awake at night thinking of Inej, and that made him sickeningly, uselessly incapable of contact. It was a weakness he had tried to carve out from himself as a child, and hardening himself against it had kept him alive all these years. He couldn’t afford to let the water rush in. He knew he would be powerless against it if it did.

Wylan’s disappointment pricked his skin. So many people lately, seeing things in him that weren’t there. As if he had ever hidden what he was. As if they hadn’t known, the moment they agreed to work with him. He wasn’t one to hide his true nature, so what made them think they had the right to feel betrayed when he simply acted as he had always said he would?

How sure are you?

He grit his teeth against the question. Uncertainty would only serve to weaken him.

But he couldn’t find the trick, either. Wylan’s logic had been sound. If one of his enemies had discovered this much about their con, to reveal their hand like this was ridiculous. This wasn’t the move of a tactician nor even a gambler. It was the uncoordinated flailing of an honest man who had discovered too much.

But Jordie was dead. He had held the body. He still remembered it, floating in the harbour, face down in the water, made buoyant by rot. Small and deathly pale. He had climbed on shaking limbs onto a gondel and thrown up seawater and stomach acid, shivering and delirious, only feet away from his brother’s corpse. He hadn’t had the stomach to touch Jordie again, to turn him over. To look at him one last time. To give him any semblance of a real burial.

It was a memory he had played over and over again, that rose unbidden to his mind at the most inopportune moments, that found the cracks in his armour and slipped through like so many tiny blades.

He had been so small, and he had been dying. Mistaken for a corpse himself, taken from the side of the canal, piled beneath bodies, thrown in like bundles of dead grass. Only barely strong enough to claw his way out from under them.

How sure are you?

He had been shaking with plague tremors, his vision reeling. He’d heard his parents calling for him as he swam across the harbour. He’d passed in and out of consciousness, clutching Jordie’s body, and woken to the feeling of someone stroking his hair.

He had seen Jordie’s face on strangers so many times in the years intervening.

Kaz was a lockpick, with a magician’s mind. He knew where and how to apply pressure, had built a career as a thief looking for ways to achieve the impossible. He understood possibility, no matter how small, knew how to widen the chances and weight the dice in his favour.

So, then. He knew. He knew it was not impossible that he had seen Jordie’s face on someone else. Delirious and dying, how likely was it that he had been able to find Jordie’s body amongst the tangle of the others, already cooling and stiffening in the dawn fog?

Was it truly impossible that Kaz, young and sick and alone, had been mistaken?

Had he swum into Ketterdam clutching a stranger?

Had he left Jordie on the Barge?

Nausea roiled in his stomach. His bad leg buckled slightly, briefly ruining his stride. He felt Wylan’s eyes on him.

‘You believe him, then?’ he asked, if only to have the silence between them filled. Ketterdam was never quiet, the noises of the city all pressing in at once, but it was somehow Wylan’s silence that was loudest of all.

‘Yes,’ Wylan replied, as if it were that simple. ‘I think I do.’

How sure are you?

Less and less, it seemed.

Chapter Text

Jordie didn’t really know what to make of Mr Van Eck and Mr Fahey, but he supposed if he was going to speak to the most infamous crime lord in the Barrel, he’d rather do it with some kind of company. Even if Mr Van Eck had left them along the way with a promise to catch up. Mr Fahey alone was more than help enough; although Jordie wasn’t sure if it was reassuring or concerning that the man had stopped to collect two pistols before they left the mansion.

The moment he’d remembered the cane last night — this morning? — he’d known he would eventually find himself headed this way. He knew Dirtyhands was connected to all of this somehow. His curiosity wasn’t worth dying over — be smart, don’t get lost — but he also knew that if he left Ketterdam without unravelling as much as he could, the mystery would plague him for the rest of his life. The knowledge that his old family farm was owned by someone like Dirtyhands, callous and ruthless and greedy, who didn’t care about the land or what it meant, who just wanted it as a prop in his cons… He hated it.

But he wasn’t hoping to get the farm back anymore. Now he would settle for some answers.

Returning to the Barrel in daylight, and accompanied by an armed man, certainly felt a lot safer than nosing around it alone and scurrying home before dark. The Barrel also did a lot worse under the brightness of daylight — its buildings were run down, its streets crumbling into the canal, its people tired and grim. There were still merrymakers traipsing around in their Komedie Brute outfits, but they weren’t the rivers of whooping people they became at night.

Then they turned off the East Stave, heading south, and they left those few partygoers behind completely. Here the only people were true Barrel folk; he could feel them looking at him with a mix of suspicion and canny interest, like a bird of prey scanning the ground below for mice.

He found himself answering Mr Fahey’s questions unconsciously, distracted by his surroundings as he was. Yes, he lived just outside Olendaal. He had last been to Ketterdam as a child. No, he’d never met Dirtyhands before last night. He only knew the name Kaz Brekker from the clerk at the Exchange.

That last at least jolted him from his study of the Barrel. Kaspian wasn’t exactly an unusual name, and Kaz was the obvious shortening of it, but it was rare enough that his stomach still swooped whenever he came across it. He didn’t know if that would ever change. Mr Fahey must have noticed his sudden melancholy, because he stopped asking questions in favour of hurrying them along to their destination.

The Slat, when they reached it, was a tall, crooked building that sagged against its neighbours like a drunk at a party. It was in a part of town where every building was ugly and run down, roof tiles blackened with soot and smoke, the streets mostly empty save for loiterers.

‘Home sweet home,’ Mr Fahey said, opening the door to the Slat with a flourish and waving Jordie in. He had asked the man how he knew Dirtyhands — the fact that there was any connection at all was pretty disconcerting, to be honest; Fahey had answered easily, saying they were old friends, and not to believe all the stories. But Jordie had caught the way Fahey’s face had fallen slightly at the words. He just didn’t know quite what to make of it.

Inside, the Slat was mostly tables and chairs, a large staircase twisting up to higher floors. Thankfully, it was also quiet — a group of folk a little older than Jordie playing cards in a corner, three children barely halfway to adulthood arguing over something at another table, and a few lonesome folk going about their business, whether that be eating, sleeping, or something else.

Jordie tried not to stare. This was a side of Ketterdam he’d never seen, not even as a child. It felt simultaneously alien, and ridiculously familiar — you could find a similar scene in the tavern at home. Although, the players there were farmers, travellers, or artisans, and you’d be pressed to find more than one knife between the lot of them.

Something told him these folk were considerably better armed.

The card-playing table looked up as they passed, and under their scrutinising gaze Jordie felt something like a cow at slaughter, as if they were appraising which cut of meat they’d prefer.

‘Gentlemen,’ Fahey said with overblown seriousness.

‘Here for a game, Jesper?’ one of the men asked.

Fahey stroked the handle of one of his guns. ‘Not today. Is Kaz in?’

The other man shook his head. ‘Should’ve known you’d be back for that miserable git. He just went out.’

Fahey’s expression sharpened slightly, but he kept his voice light. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m back for the ambience.’

With a sly smile, he was off, leading Jordie towards the staircase. They’d only made it halfway before one of the children came bounding up to them, calling Jesper’s name and looking pleased as punch. It seemed everyone here knew Mr Fahey.

‘Jesper!’ The child was barely a smudge of a thing, eyes lit up with excitement. ‘Are you going on a job?’

‘Just a social call this time, Tipper,’ Fahey said. ‘Showing a new friend the ropes.’

Tipper looked past Jesper for the first time and spotted Jordie. His eyes widened and his energy suddenly stilled. ‘Um.’

Jordie needed to know what exactly about his appearance was causing all these reactions in the Barrel, because honestly he didn’t think he looked that different from everyone else. His suit was rather drab and shabby compared to the brightly coloured waistcoats, jackets, and hats of these fellows, but really, did he stand out that much?

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ Tipper said miserably. ‘I shouldn’t’ve taken it, sir, an’ I wouldn’t’ve, if I’d known who you was.’ He held out his little hand, and cradled in it— Jordie’s eye glasses!

He stared at them for a moment, before collecting himself and accepting them. ‘Thank you.’

Fahey looked to Tipper. ‘You robbed my new friend?’

‘I didn’t know!’ Tipper said, half pathetic, half defensive. ‘Roeder only said Kaz had him following the pigeon, asked me t’stop anyone from stealing from him, didn’t say I couldn’t have a look see.’ He looked down at his feet. ‘Kaz was real angry when he found out.’

‘Don’t take it personally,’ Fahey shrugged. ‘He’s been angry with me for months.’

‘Is that why you don’t come around anymore?’

‘Maybe I’m just avoiding the smell.’

Tipper laughed, and Fahey sent him on his way, but Jordie was stuck on what the boy had said. He’d heard the fear behind those words, but didn’t quite understand what it all meant. He had been followed? This child had been told to stop others from stealing from him? Why? And how did Brekker even know who or where he was? He’d only just arrived in the city.

Fahey was watching him with an odd expression. ‘We can wait for Kaz in his office.’

Jordie nodded in assent, and they began to climb the stairs.

Brekker’s office was on the top floor of the Slat, which seemed like an odd place for something so important. The door was locked, and Jordie was content to wait outside, but Fahey just grinned, pulled out some instruments from the pocket of his waistcoat, and knelt down by the lock. A few minutes and some hushed swearing from Fahey later — ‘there’s a damn deadbolt, Kaz you bastard’ — and the door swung open to let them in.

‘Ta da,’ Fahey grinned.

‘Are you sure this is okay?’ Jordie asked. The prospect of facing Dirtyhands was intimidating enough without pissing him off right out the gate by breaking and entering.

‘Oh sure,’ Fahey said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘Used to do this all the time back in the day.’

Despite his bubbling anxiety and burning curiosity about his own situation, Jordie also had to admit to being pretty interested in how someone like Fahey went from clearly being a regular around the Slat to working for a prominent figure on the Merchant Council. There was a story there, surely.

‘Find somewhere to sit, if you can,’ Fahey said, passing further into the room. It barely constituted an office; smaller than Van Eck’s, and made of the same rickety wood as the rest of the Slat. The ‘desk’ was nothing more than what looked like a door propped up on some crates; there was a single shelf on the wall, holding several log books; the only chair in the room was clearly Brekker’s. A door on the opposite wall presumably led into another room, and a small window looked out over the rooftops.

‘I thought Brekker was rich,’ he found himself saying as he took in the scene.

Fahey shrugged. ‘No one’s rich in the Barrel, or they wouldn’t be here. Also, Kaz is more stubborn than a mule that’s scented hay. He could be rich as an emperor and still live like this.’

‘Where does all the money go?’

‘On the Slat. The Crow Club. The new one, too. Investments.’

How very business-like.

Jordie settled himself on the windowsill, looking out over the rooftops of the Barrel. ‘How long did you live here?’

Fahey had leant against the wall and was watching him with interest. He shrugged one shoulder. ‘A few years. I needed a place to stay.’

‘But you’ve gone up in the world since then, by the looks of things.’

The man laughed. ‘And don’t I know it! I’ve got Wylan to thank for that.’

Fahey was easy company; Jordie had found himself warming to the man almost immediately. He was full of stories and anecdotes and he shared them easily now, from tales of harmless fun around the Slat (Jordie was sure he was leaving out some more unsavoury stories, but he could laugh along with these well enough), to memories of his childhood spent on a farm or joking complaints about the ridiculousness of high society business. The conversation was engaging and pleasant enough that Jordie almost forgot where he was, and why. It wasn’t until they heard a steady thumping on the stairs that they quietened.

Brekker was back.

Jordie stood, awkwardly, trying to find a way to appear respectful and professional and non-confrontational but also not naive and foolish, all at once. He found it so impossible that he was forced to settle for literally just standing there and feeling all the world like a scarecrow.

The footsteps reached the door and stopped. The handle turned, slowly, and then the door swung open.

Last night, between the darkness, the mist, the backlighting from the street, and the recent unconsciousness, Jordie had barely been able to make out any features on the man they called Dirtyhands.

Now, the midday light streaming in through the window, Jordie could get his first real look.

His first thought was that Dirtyhands was about twenty years younger than he’d expected. There was a certain agelessness to aspects of his countenance — Jordie couldn’t quite tell if the man was his junior or senior — but that was more down to expression than any weathering about the face. It was the face of a young man.

His second thought was that the man looked eerily familiar. It was like humming a tune and forgetting the next bar; he recognised something about Brekker’s appearance, something in his features, but couldn’t put his finger on what or how. Had he seen him before somewhere? Did he just look like someone Jordie knew?

He didn’t realise they’d both been standing in silence until Brekker moved, stalking into the office and seating himself in the chair.

‘You broke in,’ he said to Fahey, and his voice sounded painful, like it was clawing its way out of his throat.

‘Inej was teaching me,’ Fahey said. He seemed to be aiming for the same easy lightness as he’d managed downstairs, but it came out slightly strangled. Was he afraid?

Brekker didn’t answer. He leant back in his chair, resting both hands on his cane, the light glinting on the crow’s head. His hands were gloved, Jordie realised. He wondered which came first — the gloves, or the name.

Jordie swallowed, and gathered all his courage.

‘Sir,’ he began, but Brekker cut him off immediately.

‘Why did you come to me, Mr Rietveld?’

Jordie blanched; he didn’t want to think about how much Dirtyhands knew about him, without Jordie ever realising he was being watched. ‘To do business, sir.’ A sacred duty, and one even the Bastard of the Barrel coud not object to.

Brekker looked up at him then with a piercing expression. Jordie had the uncomfortable sensation of being picked apart and reassembled in the man’s head. ‘What business?’

It was almost like a parody, hearing that greeting in these circumstances. If Jordie hadn’t been so tense, he might have laughed.

‘I believe you own a farm in Lij, sir,’ Jordie said. He was pleased with how professional he sounded. ‘I believe you own it under my name.’

Brekker said nothing, watching him unblinking.

‘I would like to buy it,’ Jordie said. It was a half-truth — he did, after all, want to buy back the farm, though something told him his purse wouldn’t stretch to the price Dirtyhands would ask of him. But if that line of discussion led to some explanations, he would gladly follow it.

‘There are many farms in Lij,’ Brekker rasped, dismissive. ‘Buy another.’

‘There is no other like it, sir,’ Jordie insisted, frustration colouring his voice. ‘It was my family’s, when I was a child.’

‘Then it was careless of your family to lose it.’

Jordie felt anger emboldening him. ‘My family were good, honest folk. We had a run of bad luck, that’s all.’

‘And I am to care about the bad luck of every sod in Kerch?’ Brekker spoke with forced calm.

‘Why did you use my name?’ Jordie countered. He knew he was treading on thin ice, he knew he should slow down, but he had the bit between his teeth and he was so close he could almost taste the answers. And really, Dirtyhands was hardly physically imposing; in a fight, Jordie liked his chances.

Brekker let out a noise that could almost have been a laugh, on any other man. ‘You lay claim to it, then?’

‘To my own name? Of course. It’s the only thing of my family’s that I have left, and seeing it misused—’

‘Misused?’ Brekker’s face twisted into something dark and bitter, and Jordie fought the urge to take a step back. There was Dirtyhands. All sharp edges and threat. ‘Are you sure it is not you who are misusing the name, Mr Rietveld?’ he spat the name like it was poison.

‘What?’

Brekker stood, drawing himself up to his full considerable height. Not many people could match Jordie eye to eye. Dirtyhands' anger burned cold and sharp, sudden and intense. Jordie had been a fool to forget who exactly it was he was speaking to.

‘Tell me, sir,’ the words were dripping with hostility, ‘if you are to claim the Rietveld name as you say, how well do you remember your family? Your parents? Who passed first, your mother or your father? How long did it take your mother to die? Do you remember your little dog, or the starling you nursed back to health? When you came to Ketterdam, who was it that ruined you? Who was it you left here? Where did you go, and why did you never return? Who—’ he bit himself off, breathing heavily.

The room was silent.

‘We’re done here,’ Brekker said, sharp enough to cut. ‘All of you get out.’

Jordie could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ear. It was an old affliction, phantom sounds only he could perceive; sometimes a low hum, sometimes a rhythmic noise in time with his pulse. The plague had left him with poor hearing on his right side, and given him the echoed ghosts of sound in return.

‘My mother died first,’ he heard himself say, as if in a dream.

Kaz Brekker. Kaz.

‘It took her six months.’

Younger than him, he realised now, the boy’s face suddenly achingly young.

He looked like—

‘We called the dog Roetje,’ he said. ‘The starling had broken its wing. I cared for it every day for a month.’

He felt suddenly sick.

‘My brother died,’ he gasped, looking at Kaz like he was drowning and begging to be saved. ‘When we came here. The plague. I— I passed out. They must’ve taken me— wherever they take bodies. I woke on the shoreline, south of here. I thought—’ He stopped, shuddering, suddenly unable to continue. ‘Your turn.’

Kaz was leaning heavily on his cane, staring at Jordie with an expression he couldn’t hope to name. There was a distant look in his eyes. Like he was dreaming. Or seeing two things at once.

‘I didn’t die,’ he said finally. The rasp was soft, like running your hand over wet stone. ‘I swam back to the harbour from the Barge. I used— I thought I saw your body.’ He stirred, like he was coming back up for air, and ran a gloved hand over his face. ‘Saints.’

Jordie didn’t know if he was going to cry or be sick or laugh with the wildest, brightest kind of shock and joy he’d ever felt. He felt almost numb, as if it were a dream.

He could feel his world cracking down the middle, tearing at the seams, everything he had ever known coming apart— and then, instantly, softly, brought back together, whole and new. It was like coming home.

They had both survived. How could this be? He'd thought himself lucky to escape even with his own life, but this... It was so far beyond what he'd ever even considered possible, beyond what he'd ever hoped to dream of. It was a miracle of the kind that only happened in stories. He had come here looking for an imposter, looking for answers to a mystery and the closure he'd hoped they might bring, and instead he had found— 

Kaz. His brother. Not the ending to a chapter, but the beginning to a new one. All this time, he’d believed he was alone, the last Rietveld, the only one who remembered his parents, their home, their lives together. And all this time, Kaz had been right here.

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry.

He wanted to wrap him in his arms, if only to be certain that he wasn’t speaking to a ghost. ‘Kaz—’

But something shifted in the air, and Kaz drew back. ‘Don’t.’ He stopped him before he came close, the cane a physical barrier between them.

It was the only thing that could have punctured Jordie's joy. He felt it draining out from him.

Of course.

Where did you go, and why did you never return?

He had left Kaz here. Ghezen, he had left a child here, on the streets that had nearly killed them both. He’d never come back — how could he never have thought to be certain? He remembered them, lying side by side, dying together; but he had survived. And he had left.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said now, the words falling out of him like broken promises, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were dead. I should’ve come back. I should’ve made certain. I’m so, so sorry, Kaz. This is my fault. All of this,’ he gestured to the office, to the Slat, to the Barrel. ‘All of this is my fault.’

Kaz was looking at him with dark eyes. The brother he remembered had been smart and bright, quiet but cheerful, and Jordie had always been able to tell when something was upsetting him. Kaz had worn his heart on his sleeve.

Not so now. Jordie couldn’t even begin to fathom what was going on behind those eyes.

Time was, they had faced the world together. There was nothing Kaz had seen, nothing he had felt, that Jordie hadn't been there for, that he hadn't shared in. But now... What kind of life had he lived, here? What horrors had he seen? Had he done? Jordie knew his brother. But he didn't know this man, not anymore.

They were interrupted by shouting from downstairs, the sound of hurried movement on the stairs. Kaz turned away from Jordie; his hand shook as he went to open the door.

He was greeted by the appearance of a young man with unkempt hair. ‘Liddies made a move, boss,’ he said.

Kaz nodded curtly. The shouting continued downstairs. ‘Who was there?’

‘Keeg and Anika, sir. Anika’s hurt pretty bad.’

‘I’m on my way,’ Kaz said, and the other man nodded and disappeared back down the stairs.

Kaz looked back to Jordie, unreadable as ever. ‘I have to deal with this.’

‘Yeah.’ Jordie’s voice came out weak. All of this was his fault. Kaz lived— like this. With these kinds of people. ‘What are you going to do?’

His brother watched him with a shark’s eyes. ‘You said yourself,’ he rasped, ‘you’ve heard the stories.’ He turned to the door, paused on the threshold. ‘I could use a second, Jesper.’

Fahey stood to attention from where he’d apparently been trying to melt into the wall. ‘Yes boss.’

The two headed down the stairs, towards the commotion below, and Jordie found himself alone. He sank to the floor like an abandoned puppet.

His brother was alive.

His brother was this.

Leaning his head back against the wall, he gazed up into the window, to the crows dancing along the roofline above. His heart felt like a hole in his chest.

He cried then, quietly and softly. For the childhood they’d had taken from them. For two boys, each believing the other had died, making their way through the world thinking they were alone. For his little brother, abandoned on the cruel streets of Ketterdam, and growing up to be the villain in a cautionary tale. And, stupidly, selfishly, for himself, who had not known the harm he was causing.

Chapter Text

Anika had been beaten bloody, but she would be okay. She and Keeg had been jumped on their way over from Fifth Harbour; only a handful of assailants, but still. What had provoked a daylight attack like that?

Jesper missed the Slat, he missed the people. He’d always liked Anika, and Pim was a good sport. But it always felt so strange, coming back. Anika was basically his replacement, which would never not be odd. And just being in the Slat at all was weirdly uncomfortable, now. He had so much history here, but he was an outsider. No longer really in the Dregs, no matter what his tattoo might say, no longer in on business (as much as Kaz ever let anyone in on anything). He’d had no idea the Dregs and the Liddies were even going at each other.

He worried, sometimes, that everyone he used to know in the Slat could die in a fight he wasn’t part of and didn’t even know was happening, while he was too busy eating fancy dinners and sleeping on fancy sheets.

While Kaz was getting information out of Anika, Jesper pulled Wylan to one side.

‘Kaz wants me for a job,’ he said. He didn’t think Kaz even knew how to compliment someone or let them know he cared at all, but he’d worked with Kaz enough to know when to read into what the man said. I could use a second was as close as he ever got to admitting he felt human emotion.

And Jesper would absolutely take it.

Wylan was looking at him with a worried expression. ‘I know,’ he said quietly.

Jesper felt something constrict in his chest. He bumped his hand gently against Wylan’s. ‘I’ll stay if you want me to.’

Even though Jesper had moved into his house, Wylan had never asked him to avoid the Slat or stop doing work for the Dregs. It had been Jesper’s decision to put all of that behind him, to avoid the gambling halls and the bars. And they had also been avoiding Kaz, somewhat, but only until the Dickhead’s trial was over. They didn’t want to make it any easier to draw the connection between them and start asking questions. Though that had gone out the window today.

Now, Wylan shook his head, his curls bouncing slightly with the movement. His hand found Jesper’s. ‘I won’t ask you to,’ he said. ‘I’ll worry if you go, but I know you’ll worry if you stay.’ He met Jesper’s gaze with his own, open and kind but strong and determined too. ‘Just be safe.’

Jesper squeezed his hand. ‘I will.’ A twinkle in his eye. ‘What’s my chances of a kiss for good luck?’

Wylan rolled his eyes, but stood on tiptoe to oblige. Jesper didn't think he'd ever get used to the way Wylan could fill his stomach with butterflies.

‘Time to go.’ At least Kaz had let them finish before he interrupted. Jesper gave Wylan a quick final peck and then turned to his old boss. Kaz was watching them with an unreadable expression.

‘Where to, boss?’

‘Just hurry up.’ Kaz headed out towards the street, and Jesper hurried to catch up.

It was just the two of them, and they walked in silence. There was so much Jesper wanted to say, wanted to ask, and the atmosphere grew heavy with unspoken words.

He had learnt more about Kaz in those five minutes in his office than in all the years he’d known him. And he had no idea what to do with any of it.

‘Why are the Liddies on the warpath?’ he asked instead. Kaz couldn’t object to talking business, surely.

‘I killed one of their suppliers last night.’ Kaz spoke in a monotone, without looking at him.

‘Sounds like you had a busy night.’

Kaz shot him a questioning look.

Jesper shrugged. ‘Jordie said you robbed him. Then again, Tipper said you had Jordie being protected, so really who’s to say?’

No answer. Kaz kept walking resolutely onwards. Jesper fought the urge to sigh.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Kaz had always been an intensely private person, and the Barrel wasn’t really the ‘sharing is caring’ type of place at the best of times. Kaz had known everyone’s secrets, of course, including Jesper and Wylan’s, but that was only because he had the best spy in all of Kerch dropping through his window at all hours of the night. And because he was inhumanly good at making inferences and drawing connections.

Still. Kaz had defended his privacy with unusual fierceness, resisting any kind of questioning into his background by responding with obvious hyperbole. At first, Jesper had been split 50-50 on whether he thought Kaz was alone and haunted, without any family to speak of, or whether he was so defensive because he secretly had an entire hoard of family hidden away somewhere that he didn’t want anyone to know about.

But to see Kaz around the Slat, to see him with the Crows, to hear him speak of Ketterdam… to see the melancholy that sometimes stirred in him… it had become clear that, if Kaz had ever had another home, it was long gone.

Jesper couldn’t even begin to imagine how Kaz was feeling now.

Well. He probably hated that Jesper had heard any of it. Honestly, Jesper half hated that he’d heard it. The conversation had been so intensely personal, the other two men so utterly focused on one another, on what lay between them; Jesper would’ve left if he hadn’t thought it would draw their attention. And if he hadn’t been so damnably curious.

Every new revelation was mind blowing. Kaz was a farm boy! Jesper never would’ve guessed. For all of Kaz’s dramatic protestations about being born in the harbour or whatever, it really was almost impossible to imagine him living anywhere else. Or to imagine Ketterdam without him.

And Jesper never would’ve guessed Jordie was his brother, even if he’d known Kaz had one. The two couldn’t be more different — Kaz all harshness and sharp lines, Jordie amiable and pleasant. Even their accents were unrecognisable to one another. Only their height gave them away; and Jesper still had a couple of inches on both of them.

He glanced over at Kaz, who looked as grim and determined as ever. Jesper didn’t know how he was still functioning. Wylan had broken down after discovering his mother, alive and trapped all this time. Jesper himself had felt like a mess the whole time his father was in the city, his two worlds colliding at the most inopportune moment. Surely it was so much worse for Kaz.

Maybe he really did only feel emotions in pinches, or possibly not at all, the way some Dregs muttered when they thought he wasn’t listening.

But he knew that wasn’t right. Kaz’s emotional range could never be called broad, but that didn’t mean he felt nothing at all. Jesper had known Kaz long enough to be able to identify his moods. There was regular Kaz, abrasive but collected; scheming Kaz, lost in thought; the sharp focused Kaz you got on a job; the dangerous, talkative Kaz that knew he was in control; and the wild, unfocused, raging Kaz that Jesper had only really seen once, on the ship to Fjerda. All his other anger had paled in comparison to that.

He had only ever seen echoes of other emotions on Kaz’s face. A fleeting moment of tenderness, a sideways grimace in pain, an aborted glance raw with melancholy.

But now?

If Kaz felt anything now, he was showing nothing of it. Jesper didn’t even know what it would look like on the man. The only repertoire Jesper had ever seen only extended to scheming, smugness, or violence.

He didn’t have to wonder which they would be getting tonight.

‘You talked to him, then?’ Kaz’s voice pulled him from his thoughts, and he sent a glance over to the other man. Kaz still wasn’t looking at him.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘About what?’

‘Sharing stories, mostly. Two farm boys, you know how it is.’ He wasn’t sure if that information would bother Kaz.

Kaz nodded once. Then: ‘Tell me.’

Jesper hesitated. ‘You don’t want to ask him yourself?’

The only answer was silence, and the click of Kaz’s cane on the street as they walked.

It was a little past midday, and the streets were almost deserted, Kaz taking them along back routes and avoiding the Staves. Jesper didn’t ask why. The city felt strangely quiet, like it was just the two of them, even though Jesper knew only one street over the East Stave would be starting to stir in preparation for the afternoon and evening festivities. They were heading to the Lid, he realised with a start. Enemy territory.

‘What’s the play, Kaz?’ he asked, glancing over. Kaz was still stony-faced and immutable, but the question seemed to spark something in him.

‘That’s my business,’ he growled, and the danger in his voice told Jesper he wasn’t talking about the Liddies. ‘Maybe since you left you’ve forgotten what it’s like in the Barrel, for people who live and fight and bleed and die here. Maybe it’s easy to forget how it works here, from the other side of the city. But everything has a price. It’s my choice if I want to pay it.’

Jesper rarely found himself at a loss for words. But he was now.

It felt like Kaz's anger had come out of nowhere. They'd walked a fair way in silence since their last mention of Jordie; had Kaz been stewing on the subject that whole time?

The worst part was, he was right about Jesper. Wasn’t that exactly what Jesper had worried was happening? When he’d lived in the Barrel, he’d seen things the same way as everyone else there. He’d been one of them. He hadn’t had the luxury of looking in from the outside.

It was a lot easier to notice things, from the outside, when you weren’t trying not to get shot or stabbed or kicked half to death. An easier life also made it easier to see the pain in the Barrel, now it was no longer so day-to-day that pain might as well have been the colour of the sky.

He wasn’t sure if he liked seeing Kaz from this side of the city. Now he could see how tired and bitter and run down he was, even in the face of a miracle.

It made for depressing viewing.

Jesper swallowed. ‘What’s the price of this then, Kaz?’

He knew better than to expect an answer.

Chapter Text

Jesper leaving with Kaz had a certain air of inevitability to it.

Wylan had always known how important and complicated those two were to one another. Kaz had probably been the most significant person in Jesper’s life for a good few years; if he had asked for something done, Jesper like so many of the Dregs had obliged without question. No matter how insufferable Kaz could be, or how cruel and brutal he had proven himself again and again.

Wylan had hated him for a long time. The Ice Court job had only made that worse. He still remembered his horror and disgust when Kaz was torturing that man on the ship, and the sick powerlessness Wylan had felt when the others had told him not to question or argue with it. Like it was just normal for them. Or like they were frightened of Kaz’s anger being turned on them.

But things had changed, once they made it back to Ketterdam. They had all been relying on Kaz to devise a plan that would save them, and whatever Wylan may have thought about the Ice Court Job, they had done it. Kaz had nearly sabotaged it on step two, and Nina had nearly died to make up for their mistakes, but they had made it out against all odds.

That kind of experience couldn’t help but bond you to the people you managed it with. Wylan could only imagine how many of those kinds of experiences Jesper had shared with Kaz in the years before he’d known them.

Now, Wylan still thought Kaz was abrasive and blunt, calculating and manipulative, and altogether too comfortable putting himself and others in mortal danger. But he had also saved Wylan’s life. He had given it back to him. Everything Wylan had now, Kaz had a hand in. Everything his father had tried to take, Kaz had given back.

He owed Kaz his life. He would never not be grateful.

He wondered if Jesper kind of felt like that, too. He wondered if everyone didn’t have something they were grateful for, something they owed Kaz.

Of course, knowing him, he would one day come to collect.

In the end, all Wylan wanted was for Jesper to be safe and happy. And he didn’t believe Jesper could get those things in the Barrel, in the Slat. Not like he could on Geldstraat. With him.

But nor did he ever want to trap Jesper. To drag him away. To risk him resenting Wylan. Because who was Wylan to tell him no?

Things had been so wonderful lately. They’d found a pattern, an equilibrium, a form of normality that suited them both well, that felt comfortable and comforting and right. Wylan loved the life they’d made together. He loved it like no life he’d ever lived.

The Barrel — Kaz — complicated everything. But these were strange times, and Wylan knew that, though Kaz may have been allergic to showing it, he had relied on Jesper. Much as the Slat seemed to be business as normal, and Kaz had never reached out or asked for their help or even their presence, Wylan had to imagine that Jesper had left a vacuum here in his absence. That man could fill a room with his presence, he could light the dark with a smile, he could make whoever he was talking to feel like the most important person in the world, in that moment. There could be nowhere Jesper had left that did not feel his loss.

And of course. Inej must have left a void of her own.

With everyone leaving, it was a wonder Kaz wasn’t more receptive to Jordie’s appearance. But then, maybe he didn’t know what to do with that. Maybe he knew how to handle someone’s loss, but not their return. And Wylan knew perhaps best of all how complicated even joy could be.

Jordie had never come down from Kaz’s office. Wylan climbed the stairs back up, and knocked softly on the door. He didn’t know what he’d find, and he did know it was none of his business either way, but Jordie had seemed a decent fellow, and Ghezen knew Kaz could do with something good. And Wylan was quite possibly the only other person in the building who understood even half of what Jordie must be feeling.

He was also to some extent checking that Jordie wasn’t dead. He didn’t think Kaz had killed him, but unfortunately that was always a possibility.

Jordie wasn’t dead. Wylan found him sitting against the wall beneath the window; he barely stirred as Wylan entered and made his way across the room to him. Wylan was struck by how different he was to Kaz. Stillness from Kaz almost always meant he was watching you even more intently, that he was confident in his ability to stop you should you try to make a move and so felt no need to get defensive pre-emptively. It was a demonstration of power and control and skill, a faux-casualness, a show of a lack of concern or interest when in reality it was the opposite.

Jordie? Honestly, Wylan wasn’t sure if Jordie had even registered Wylan’s presence at all.

It was horribly reminiscent of his mother, in those first few weeks. How distant and forgetful she had been — and often still was. The way she echoed things Wylan remembered, fragments of familiarity, but as a whole there was nothing about her that was not changed in some way.

The echoes of Kaz in Jordie were invisible to Wylan’s eyes. If indeed they were there at all.

‘Where are you staying?’ he asked, and the sound of his voice in the quiet room finally roused Jordie.

His voice, when he spoke, was rough. ‘On Zelverstraat. A boarding house there.’

Wylan nodded. ‘We have a spare room, if you’d prefer. You’d be welcome.’

Jordie let out a breath that might have been a laugh. ‘You people don’t get phased by anything, do you?’

You people. Lines were being drawn in the sand, then.

Wylan lowered himself to the floor to sit a companionable distance from Jordie. ‘A lot has happened in Ketterdam recently.’

‘Do people often come back from the dead, then?’

He thought of Nina, raising corpses. He thought of his mother, painting the same picture over and over. He thought of Matthias.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’d still say that’s something of a miracle, when it happens.’

Jordie was watching him with an expression of open curiosity.

‘My mother,’ Wylan said, by way of explanation. ‘I grew up being told she was dead. But that was a lie. My father…’ He didn’t know how much to say. But then, Jordie had figured out most of it by himself already. ‘My father was conned,’ he admitted. ‘But he deserved it. He deserves to be where he is now. Without that, my mother wouldn’t be back home with us.’

Jordie took a moment to digest the information. ‘You were part of the con, then?’

Wylan nodded. ‘My father wanted me dead. Kaz helped me.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a lot more complicated than that, but really that’s all it came down to. My father had the whole city hunting us on false charges, and he was too powerful and too careful to be taken down normally. Even if he deserved it, many times over.’

There it was. The truth, finally; Jordie had got so very close on his own, and if Wylan had been paranoid he might have withheld these last few details from him. But he didn’t think it would matter. Jordie cared too much about Kaz to turn them in.

A wry laugh, and Jordie was running his hands over his face. ‘I feel like I’m dreaming,’ he said.

Wylan knew that feeling. He’d felt it his first few weeks in the Barrel, like it was a bad dream he was still hoping to escape. He felt it now, waking up in a home that was his now, his mother alive and only two rooms away, and with Jesper slumbering beside him. It was too perfect, too wonderful. He still couldn’t quite believe it had happened to him. That Jesper had happened to him.

‘You know Kaz well, then?’ Jordie asked, and Wylan refocused on the conversation at hand. Jordie was looking at him openly, emotions writ large across his face. ‘Will you tell me? I… I only knew him as a boy.’

It was a terrible thing to have to admit. The pain and guilt were palpable in the words.

Wylan knew that feeling, too.

He also knew he wasn’t the right person to defend Kaz Brekker. He could only tell Jordie the truth, and he wasn’t sure if that was something Jordie was ready or willing to hear. Not yet. Nor was it something Kaz wanted telling, if Wylan knew him at all. Oh, he could say the more flattering things about the man — the things he had done for Wylan, the way he had protected Jesper’s secret, the expression he wore when he looked at Inej, the one he thought no one noticed.

But that would only be half of the picture. And it would be impossible to argue that he was noble and justified and simply misunderstood, or that the terrible stories were all lies. He wasn’t. And they weren’t.

‘My mother was— much changed, when I found her,’ he said instead. Memory loss and scattered thoughts were a far cry from murder and brutality, and Wylan definitely knew which he’d prefer to discover about a miraculously returned relative. But it was that or try to verbally untangle the complicated knot of his feelings on the Bastard of the Barrel, and he didn’t think his musings would be of much use to Jordie in this moment.

‘It— It is possible,’ he said instead. ‘To make something new.’

Jordie looked away, leant his head back against the wall. ‘I should’ve come back,’ he said quietly, almost to himself.

‘You didn’t know,’ Wylan replied. He had told himself much the same thing, after discovering his mother. She had spent years trapped in that place on his father’s orders. If Wylan had only tried to visit what he thought was her grave earlier… Perhaps the damage done to her, to him, it all could have been lessened. Perhaps poor, useless Alys could have been spared the marriage to his father. And his mother wouldn’t have had to spend so many long years waiting for him to find her.

In the face of all that, ‘you didn’t know’ seemed woefully inadequate. It had taken him a long time to accept any part of it as enough. Some days he still struggled.

But he was being selfish and cruel. The lady at Olendaal hadn’t known who she was talking to, nor the enormity of what she had revealed, but her well-meaning updates on his mother’s state had helped, even if only a little. Helped to make it real, if nothing else. He would never forget seeing all those paintings for the first time.

If he could give Jordie something similar, he would.

‘After I fled my father,’ he said, speaking carefully, like he was walking through a minefield, ‘I lived in the Barrel. Kaz protected me from being attacked or robbed or any of the other things commonplace here.’

He didn’t want to be dishonest, to give Jordie unrealistic expectations. He couldn’t make Kaz sound better than he was. But no doubt Jordie had already heard plenty of stories, and certainly it would be very like Kaz to confirm at least some of them before the day was even out. Jordie needed to hear about his brother, about the human Kaz so many people never saw, didn’t even believe in.

‘He takes care of his own,’ he said. ‘He rewards loyalty with his own. And he built up this place from nothing. There’s a reason he’s the leader. Some of these people would follow him anywhere. I mean, you saw Jesper.’

He drew his legs up, resting his arms on his knees. The knot was so very tangled. It was hard enough putting Kaz into words at the best of times, let alone sitting in his office beside a brother he hadn’t known existed mere hours ago.

‘I owe him a lot,’ he said simply. ‘He changed my life. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t met him.’ Wylan wasn’t a fool; he knew Kaz had always helped him because he had a good reason. Wylan had made a good hostage, he’d been more useful with a vendetta against his father fuelled by the knowledge of his mother’s fate, and now he was technically an insider on the Merchant Council, even if Kaz had yet to make use of that connection. But the outcome was still the same. To some extent, Wylan didn’t know if it mattered whether Kaz had other motives. His life was still unimaginably improved for having had Kaz’s help.

‘He’s prickly, and terse, and would sooner break your arm than let you get near him,’ he admitted — setting realistic expectations, after all — ‘but he’s not heartless. And he’s the smartest person I’ve ever met, so. I guess all I’m trying to say is, just keep an open mind. The boy you knew isn’t gone, he just grew differently.’

Jordie was quiet for a long while, but it wasn’t the cold, angry quiet of his brother. Wylan didn’t want to think about how different Kaz might’ve been, if things hadn’t turned out the way they did. It was unsettling, to see the effect of one city on a person.

‘Thanks,’ Jordie said eventually. He sounded like he meant it. ‘I hope you’re right.’

Chapter Text

Contrary to what he knew they said of him, Kaz took no pleasure in violence. He didn’t enjoy it nor seek it out, and it was never something he pursued for its own sake. Instead, he understood violence as a tool. A method by which to achieve his ends. And in everything, he picked his tools by what would be most effective in the given situation.

It helped that he had long since lost any moral compunctions related to killing a person. Or injuring, maiming, torturing… Morality was not a part of his equation, when it came to violence. Only effectiveness, risk, and effort.

So he had felt no desire to harm today, as he had broken a man’s collarbone, or stabbed a woman through the throat with her own blade. It had simply been the cleanest execution, the most effective solution.

The Liddies, Roeder had informed him on the way, were gathering to the east of their territory, where it bordered Fifth Harbour and the Barrel both. Likely they were planning on making a play against the Crow Club. They wouldn’t have the opportunity.

As with everything Kaz did, killing Orlov had been calculated, even if he had initially only intended to threaten. The man had been a fearsome captain, a terrible gambler, a badly-concealed Liddy spy, and the brother of Jaina Hakala. Secretly, of course — the name change had been enough to hide their relationship from everyone else in the Barrel, but Kaz had noticed the slaver’s preferential treatment and enough other clues to put together their connection. Hakala was a high ranking lieutenant in the Liddies, and well able to make all sorts of mistakes when it came to bailing out her brother.

He’d known that if Orlov returned to his sister with complaints of Kaz’s threats — or if his body turned up suspiciously close to Dregs territory — Hakala would levy all of her resources to seek retribution. She had telegraphed her weakness too clearly, just as Kaz had once made the mistake of doing with Inej. Van Eck had capitalised on that failure; now it was Kaz’s turn to do the same.

After all, what was the easiest way to steal a man’s wallet?

While Hakala drew her dogs of war to the other end of the Lid, Kaz had business at the Cathouse.

The violence had occurred there. Two bouncers, a hired guard, the madame, and a patron who had decided to be a hero. An inelegant solution — with their main supplier gone, the Cathouse would have struggled naturally, and Kaz could have simply choked off their demand. But Inej was due back to the city within the week, so time was not a luxury he could afford. He needed results.

All in all, a successful outing. Jesper had even stopped asking so many questions, once the fighting had begun. Good man.

Limping back towards the Slat — the hero had managed to crack him across his bad knee, and the pain was starting to settle in his bones — Kaz was forced to acknowledge that, if nothing else, violence made for an excellent distraction. He’d barely thought of Jordie once.

Effective, yes, but also unfortunately short-lived. Thankfully, after that display of brutality, no one was fool enough to try and talk to him.

Features set in a scowl against the ache of injury and memory, Kaz made his way back home in silence.

***

By the time he had climbed the stairs to his office, his leg was troubling him. Even more troubling was the scene he found inside.

Wylan and Jordie were sat together on the floor, looking up at him in what might have been surprise, had Wylan’s expression and the way his eyes danced to look over Kaz’s shoulder not betrayed his concern for Jesper, and had Jordie’s face not been almost comically caught between shock and disgust. ‘Horror’ was likely a more accurate description.

‘You’re still here, I see,’ he said tersely, shrugging off his coat and throwing it over his desk. It was stiff with dried blood. His shirt had taken the worst soaking, and was still wet down to the skin; despite the dark fabric, the stains were noticeable. It was likely ruined.

‘How did it go?’ Wylan asked, managing an admirable impression of casual conversation.

‘Well enough,’ Kaz replied, and crossed to the other door.

‘Are you injured?’ Wylan called after him, Kaz leaving the door ajar for convenience. His sleeping quarters were compact enough that he could wash up in the basin and keep an eye on the next room in the mirror.

‘Jesper is downstairs,’ he said. ‘He’s fine.’ He quirked an eyebrow at Wylan in the mirror. ‘I assume that was what you wanted to know.’

His gloves were sticky with blood, leaving stains on his hands where he peeled them off. The irony was not lost on him.

‘What about you?’

Kaz looked up, meeting Jordie’s eye where he had expected Wylan’s, the other man slipping out the door. The surprise shuttered him.

‘That’s a lot of blood,’ Jordie commented, mildly enough.

Still. Something about it bothered Kaz. Maybe it was how clumsy the attempt at manipulation was, the way Jordie thought he could draw information out of Kaz with nothing more than a few simple comments. Maybe it was the false concern that rankled — or the prospect that it wasn’t false at all; he didn’t entirely know which would be worse. Or maybe it was just the fact that Jordie had no idea what he was talking about, or what he was dealing with, and yet he kept ploughing on blindly anyway. He was the simplest of pigeons, an oaf of a man with little understanding of the real world or its currents of power and danger, who thought that he could get through life with a little work and a little honesty and the rest would all come together for him.

‘It’s not mine,’ Kaz said bluntly. He felt a savage little twinge of delight at the disgust on Jordie’s face.

To his credit, at least, Jordie didn’t back down. Neither did he raise his voice. His decency was almost as disgusting to Kaz as Kaz’s brutality no doubt was to him.

‘What did you do?’ he simply asked, and Kaz fought the urge to laugh. What a stupid question.

‘You don’t want to know the answer to that.’ He resumed his work on his hands.

‘I do.’

Kaz watched him in the mirror as he crossed the threshold. The room was too small to safely accommodate two people, and Kaz could feel his chest tightening.

‘Do you have livestock on your farm, Jordie?’ he asked, and only hesitated on the name for a heartbeat.

‘Yeah?’ The jump in topics had confused him.

‘Do they get attacked by wild animals? Foxes, wolves, birds of prey?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘And what is it you do then?’

Jordie understood enough now to set his jaw defiantly against Kaz’s line of questioning. His gaze in the mirror was a challenge.

Kaz finished washing his hands, pulled his clammy gloves back on. They moved unpleasantly, the leather still damp, but this was not the time to deal with that particular problem.

‘Ketterdam is a city of wolves, Jordie,’ he said. ‘You either die a prey animal’s death, or you grow claws.’

Jordie held his gaze for a long while. Then, finally, quietly: ‘is that what you think happened to us?’

This was the last conversation in the world Kaz wanted to be having right now. If Jordie weren’t blocking his way out, he would have simply left already.

‘What does it matter now?’ he asked instead. ‘What’s done is done. There is only the way it is.’ The deal is the deal.

‘I don’t believe that.’ Jordie’s voice was quiet, gentle. It scraped over Kaz like a dull blade.

‘Why did you come here?’ he asked through the heat in his chest, finally turning to face his brother. ‘This city destroys people; you should be careful.’ Was that a warning or a threat? Even he couldn’t be certain.

‘I—’

‘You should go.’ There was— too much happening. Kaz relied on his control, on his mind, but he could feel both spiralling now. The dam had irreparably ruptured, leaving Kaz treading saltwater and trying not to let any of the rot come seeping out of him.

Jordie looked heartbroken. An easy mark. He needed to learn to better school his expression. ‘If that’s what you want.’

Kaz nodded once, curt. It was safer than risking words. In this moment, he didn’t know if he could trust his tongue.

‘Okay.’ Jordie’s voice was unbearably soft. It could make a man go mad to hear.

Jordie looked like he had a hundred other things to say, but he at least could control himself. He left quietly, and sadly, and Kaz had to sit down to try and stop the shaking.

He had never thought, even for a moment, that Jordie might be alive. And so he had never imagined what this might be like. The miracle. The return. He supposed he was dimly aware of the fact that it should have been joyful. It should have been a cause for celebration. It shouldn’t have felt like it was tearing him apart at the seams. Like all of his work — on himself, with Inej — was coming unravelled in the span of a single day. Like he might drown in it all, finally, dragged down in its undertow and swept out on the tide.

Because he was too numb to feel joy. Maybe eventually it would set in, and he would be able to finally feel relief at the fact that Jordie was living a full life, instead of rotting at the bottom of Ketterdam’s harbour.

But now? Now all he could think of was how pointless it had all been.

He had been angry with Jordie for a long time. It was somehow both easier and harder to be angry with a ghost. At first it had felt so cruel he had tried to ignore it; eventually, as he became inured to cruelty, he had allowed it to creep in.

Jordie had been a foolish, reckless child, and it had destroyed them both. They were supposed to take care of one another, and instead Jordie had let Kaz down catastrophically not once but twice. He had lost them their money. And then he had left Kaz alone.

At least when Jordie had been dead, Kaz could only blame him for that initial act of abandonment. But a live Jordie had drawn that out, repeating it in every moment he had not returned for him. A dead Jordie could only let Kaz down twice; a live Jordie had let him down with every passing day.

While Kaz had dedicated himself to revenge, Jordie had returned to the country. While Kaz had fought and bled and killed in the Barrel, Jordie had tended to the crops in his fields. While Kaz could not bear to be touched even by the person he trusted most in the world, Jordie had a wife—

Nausea roiled in his stomach.

His vengeance against Pekka Rollins had been in the name of a man living a better life than Kaz had seen in years. The irony might have made him laugh, if it didn’t also make him want to break all his own fingers.

And that was just it. Jordie may have met him with an insufferable gentleness, but Kaz had seen the horror in his eyes. He knew the way people talked about him, the stories Jordie must have heard. He knew what he was, and what he had spent years telling people to fear.

He had been so quick to make a monster of himself.

He had been so willing. He was not only complicit in his own destruction; he had orchestrated it, he had designed it and obsessed over it, he had revelled in its creation, worn it like a banner and wielded it like a blade.

If Jordie could have returned to the city at any time, so too could Kaz have found a way to leave. But Pekka Rollins was here. Kaz’s only reason for existing had been within the city. His vengeance had dictated that he stay, and so he had.

Vengeance on behalf of a man living just a few miles away, who did not need, want, or even know of Kaz’s plans. Of the lengths to which he had gone in order to realise them. The things he had suffered, the things he had sacrificed.

He had ruined himself so readily. And it had been for no reason at all.

And now, his work complete, he was not fit for any company that had not also been forged here, in this crucible that was the Barrel. His self-destruction had been too thorough, too effective.

Jordie was terribly, achingly recognisable, even all these years later. He had followed in their parents’ footsteps, the latest in a family of farmers. He understood seasons and the weather, he knew how to calm an animal or when to plant pumpkins, and he had the same kindness and integrity Kaz remembered from their father, the same intelligence and patience of their mother.

But Kaz was something different entirely. If Jordie was a flourishing oak, grown up in a shaded grove of his ancestors, Kaz was something bitter and twisted, half-dead and rotting from the inside out. Standing alone on a storm-swept hill, barren and cruel.

He had done it to himself. And for all his miracles, Jordie was ten years too late to stop it.

Chapter Text

Brekker had never told him to, but Roeder always kept an eye on the ships coming in to port at Fifth Harbour. It was a busy section of dock, the flapping pennants of the ships creating a sea of Kerch purple and Zemeni orange, dotted here and there with the red of Ravka, green for Shu Han, and Fjerdan blue. Adding more to the mix were the flags of the different trading companies, military vessels, and who knew what else, a veritable menagerie of animals and symbols fluttering in the wind.

The ship he was looking for was unique in that it flew no colours. Plain-sailed, it didn’t declare its affiliation like the other ships that came and went from these docks. He supposed it made sense, for a ship calling itself The Wraith.

Perched on his usual rooftop, the one that gave him a clear view of the harbour, Roeder scanned the ships for his quarry. Brekker hadn’t said to expect it — in fact, he had never mentioned The Wraith to Roeder at all — but it had been clear enough from the first time Roeder let him know the ship had arrived that the boss appreciated the information. So he’d continued looking. Just a quick once-over of the harbour any time he passed. And he made sure to pass daily.

Technically, he was meant to be watching for Liddy movement right now. It had been three days since they attacked Anika. They’d made no move on the Dregs in that time — no doubt too busy trying to get blood out of the Cathouse’s floorboards. He’d heard it had been a massacre. The rumours had been flying at the Slat.

But clearly it had worked.

It was impossible to tell what the boss was thinking, and he would never tell a soul. But you couldn’t argue with his results. He played his cards close to the chest, but when the time came to show his hand, his was always a winning one.

Still, things had been strange around the Slat these last three days. Jesper was back, for one. Not always, not staying or anything, but suddenly he had gone from vanishing for months to daily visits. He’d say hello, decline a game, and saunter upstairs to speak to Brekker. It depended on the day how long he would stay, and how frustrated he would look when he left.

For Brekker’s part, he had been in an even blacker mood than usual. Everyone could feel it. No one knew the cause, but that didn’t stop the speculation. Had something happened at the Cathouse? Was he worried about the Liddies retaliating? Had he found a traitor in the Dregs?

Roeder thought he might know the truth.

Tipper had mentioned, off-hand, that the pigeon he’d stolen from the other night had been to the Slat with Jesper, the day Anika had been attacked. They’d gone up to Brekker’s office, stayed for hours.

Mr Rietveld.

The boss had called Roeder off that evening. The pigeon no longer needed a tail, he’d said. He’d sounded angry, and Roeder had expected a dressing down — he’d been busy with Liddy business during the day, hadn’t known Rietveld was back in the Barrel. He should’ve known, should’ve been able to give Brekker forewarning of his visitor.

It was the kind of mistake that Roeder had dreaded making. He knew the boss didn’t take kindly to that kind of oversight.

But while Brekker had been terse, he hadn’t turned his anger on Roeder. He had barely even looked at him, and Roeder had slipped out the room counting his lucky stars.

Even so. If he could go above and beyond now, and bring the boss news of The Wraith, it might start earning him back some of the little favour he had ever enjoyed.

He’d asked Tipper to keep an eye out for the Rietveld man, around the Slat. Something told him the man was important. Jesper being around, Brekker acting— not strangely exactly, but not normally either… Roeder had the sense it all came back to that pigeon.

According to Tipper, Mr Rietveld had shown his face back at the Slat only once, the day after his last visit. He had arrived with Jesper and spent a short amount of time on the ground floor before leaving. Brekker had been out, only Jesper had waited to see him, and Rietveld hadn't returned since. Roeder was beginning to wonder if his instincts hadn’t been wide of the mark after all. Perhaps the boss's mood really was just about the Liddies.

His view of berth twenty-two was obscured from this angle by a relative newcomer, a Ravkan frigate looming over the docks, so Roeder hopped down from his perch and shimmied along the rooftops to get a better angle. He hoped the ship was there. He could really do with a win right now.

The roof tiles were damp and slippery with sea spray, and Roeder had to move more slowly as a result. The buildings here were three storeys; fall, and he would never work as a spider again. He picked his way carefully, finding footholes along drains and chimneys, until he reached the end of the row. A good enough angle, surely; he looked back out to the harbour.

A little ways along from the frigate, berth twenty-two lay conspicuously empty.

Roeder felt his hopes fall. He’d needed this. He didn’t want to give Brekker a reason to doubt his usefulness, so he had to be indispensable. He could bring him good information, good leads, but the best of all to bring would be good news.

Oh, he understood that there was something about The Wraith that Brekker valued beyond its business opportunities. In fact it offered very little; from what Roeder could tell, the Dregs had never made a single kruge from their business with that ship. He vaguely understood that it had something to do with consolidating power within the Barrel and expanding out to new ventures and a bunch of other things he didn’t have full context for. Brekker didn’t need him knowing any of that, and so he didn’t.

But he also knew that Brekker’s mood improved when the ship was in port. And he suspected that had less to do with the ship’s business, and more to do with her captain.

Brekker’s Wraith never came back to the Slat. She had left on a job along with Jesper and the boss, and there had been rumours of her return to the city when those two had reappeared. But Roeder hadn’t seen her, and some of the rumours had been… far-fetched, to put it kindly. Hinsley had sworn up and down he had seen her fighting an angel atop the Church of Barter. Those kinds of stories made the more reasonable sightings harder to believe.

Roeder hadn’t ever really known the Wraith; he didn’t know anyone who had, except for presumably Brekker. Those two had been more secretive than the rest of the Barrel combined. But he knew she captained the ship named after her. And he knew Brekker missed her.

Well. He assumed. Brekker would never say as much, nor even suggest it consciously. But Roeder saw the way he finished up his business quickly and headed down to the harbour, whenever Roeder told him the ship was in port. And he had seen the look on Brekker’s face when he greeted Inej back to Ketterdam.

He had followed, that first time. Brekker had travelled down to Fifth Harbour almost immediately after being informed, and Roeder had taken a side route to get there without alerting his boss. He’d been curious. Was it really Brekker’s Wraith, or simply a ship that shared her namesake?

It was her. Almost unrecognisable, her dark spider’s clothes changed for a seafarer’s garb in wine red and dove grey, a brilliant golden sash about her waist. It reminded Roeder of the Suli silks sold to tourists, though hers made those seem cheap and gaudy by comparison. She was a spot of colour where once she had been shadow.

Brekker, still black as the grave, had met her on the dock. Roeder had been too far to make out the words spoken between them, but what he had seen had felt significant. After several minutes’ conversation, and Inej presumably issuing orders to members of her crew, they had started towards the city together.

Hand in hand.

Roeder, who had only been hoping to sate his curiosity, had suddenly received the impression he was transgressing on something far more sacred than business. He had allowed them to melt into the crowd, and had never followed Brekker to the harbour again.

But now, berth twenty-two lay empty.

He sat on the roof, deflating with disappointment.

When Brekker had taken over from Haskell, and it had become clear he was without his Wraith, every Dreg who had ever climbed a wall had been lining up to become the boss’s new spider. Brekker had made it clear he didn’t need or want one, but that hadn’t stopped them from trying to prove their worth. Roeder included. He was determined to be useful.

In the end, Brekker had ended up with a web of would-be spiders cast out across the city. Which only meant that Roeder’s competition was constant and unyielding. He had to race more than five other people to leads, he had to be faster and better and more wily, he had to know the best routes and he had to find the best information. And he couldn’t slip up, even once.

Except, of course, he had. And should Brekker ever decide Roeder was no longer useful, he had an army of hopefuls from which to choose a replacement.

Staring out despondently across the harbour, he almost missed the ship. It rounded the point to the east, passing between the Council of Tides watchtower and Eil Komedie, its plain sails raised to the half mast.

Roeder stood to attention; he moved too quickly and almost slipped for his trouble, but there was no time to be wasted. So began a wild rush back to the Slat across the rooftops, flying from building to building, dancing from foothold to foothold.

The Wraith was here.

Brekker would want to know.

Chapter Text

Coming back to Ketterdam always felt strange.

Returning to Ravka felt like going home, in a nostalgic, bittersweet way. It was the place she had spent years trying to return to, the place her bones sang for in the dead of night, and it would always be her home. But she and it had changed so much in the years they’d been apart, and in some ways the home she longed for was a time, not a place.

She had almost been surprised how quickly The Wraith became a home to her, after only a few short voyages. It was at once freedom, purpose, and promise, but it was also a familiar bed at night, the camaraderie she felt with her crew, and the fierce sense of satisfaction she felt whenever a slaver surrendered. Over months of travel, her cabin had slowly filled with items from their voyages, little trinkets or flowing drapes, an eclectic collection of mirrors hung on the walls — gifts given by the grateful, or reminders of her ancestral home.

Returning to Kerch felt different. Rounding Hanraat Bay and Newfoort, passing the Council of Tides watchtowers, Hellgate far off on the right, Eil Komedie, Sweet Reef, Fifth Harbour. She would never know another place as well as she knew this city. Even after months of travel, she could still trace its streets, its alleys and rooftops, its secret pathways and hidden places. It felt like every corner held a story, a moment from her past.

This city had remade her, over and over, until she came to be as she was now. Ketterdam was a site of horror and pain and misery for her, but it was also one of survival. And she could appreciate her newfound strength, and mourn the person she might have been, the suffering she endured, all at once.

In many ways, Ketterdam was both her port and her storm.

Now, as the ship approached Fifth Harbour and the people she had left behind in the city, Inej let herself drop out of the rigging, catching on the ropes at intervals to slow her descent. It was a practised move by this point; she was as comfortable on this ship as she ever had been on Ketterdam’s rooftiles, or her parents’ wire.

She landed on the deck at the prow of the ship, light-footed and soundless. Dua stood at the rail, long glass raised to watch the shore.

‘Anything to report?’

Dua started in surprise. ‘Saints protect you, Inej, you know how to scare an old woman.’

Inej smiled. Some habits would never leave her.

Dua was a good friend. The crew of The Wraith was a mismatched affair — partly seasoned sailors she’d hired under the advice of Specht, partly those they had picked up on their travels, people who had joined out of genuine belief in the work they were doing.

Dua fell in that second group. She was the first they had picked up, joining when they left Ravka after Inej’s visit with her family. Dua was from the same Suli troupe; a former strongwoman who had joined Inej’s crew in search of her granddaughter. Inej prayed they would find her.

‘How does the city look, baba?’ A Suli term of respect and endearment for the old and wise. Sharing a culture with a friend had been one of the unexpected joys of Inej’s new life.

Dua’s eye twinkled, and she held out the long glass for Inej. ‘See for yourself. Your man is on the docks already.’

Inej felt her cheeks heating. She took the long glass, scanning the quay for that familiar spot of darkness. ‘You know it’s not like that.’

Dua made an affectionately disbelieving noise. ‘I know that is what you say.’

‘It’s complicated,’ Inej insisted.

‘You say that also. But look at your face, child, and look at him there, waiting for you. To me, it does not seem so complicated.’

Inej did not know how to answer.

She knew what she felt for Kaz. If she had thought that time, travel, and separation might dull those feelings, she had quickly been proven wrong. And she knew something of what he felt for her. Theirs had never been feelings put into words. But every time they stopped in Ketterdam, he would come to meet her. And he had not worn his gloves since that first time.

She still didn’t understand the reason touch would send him spiralling, scrambling away with panic in his eyes. He hadn’t told her, and she doubted he ever would. She didn’t need to know, just as he didn’t need to hear the things that kept her awake at night. The memories that were raised in her by an unexpected touch, a sudden movement, or the feeling of dead weight lying over her.

No matter what she and Kaz were to one another — what they might one day be — neither of them had an inherent right to the details. In the end, what did they matter? Sharing those stories could be healing, but sometimes it was just a way of re-treading old pain.

But whatever the cause of his troubles, Inej did understand the effort he had been making. On her very first return to Ketterdam, he had greeted her at the docks, gloved; but he had offered her his hand, and they had walked together through the streets separated only by a thin layer of leather.

Since then, he had met her bare-handed. Their gloveless touches were fewer, and usually reserved for the safety of the Van Eck house, the privacy of closed doors. But they were precious. Inej held each one of them as dear and close as she had once held her blades.

They docked in their regular berth, Kaz stood a little ways down the jetty. He was wearing that expression he always wore when he came to meet her like this. She didn’t know if it was happiness or relief or longing, or some mixture of all three. But it animated his face with a light she enjoyed seeing.

‘What business, Inej?’ he said as she approached, his voice sounding even rougher than usual.

Inej smiled. A familiar greeting, a familiar routine between them. ‘Two more ships caught,’ she said, pride colouring her voice only a little. ‘The trade is starting to feel our presence.’

The Wraith was a corvette, fast and nimble and well able to chase down its prey. The ships she hunted were complacent and often too poorly-defended to put up much defence even against a small warship. She had to assume that would change as The Wraith’s reputation grew, but for now, the sea was theirs.

‘You’re making quite the name for yourself.’

Glowing praise from the Bastard of the Barrel. She fell into step beside him, walking leisurely along the wharf. ‘What news of Ketterdam?’ How are you, Kaz?

‘As it always is. But the Cathouse is out of play,’ he said, matter-of-fact. ‘They lost their main supplier.’

She felt a jolt of surprise. From what she’d heard, the Cathouse was tipped to become the next Menagerie, exerting no small amount of influence over the Barrel and the trade in indentures. She couldn’t imagine it had fallen easily.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Kaz gave her a reproachful look, as he always did when she tried to imply he might have a conscience, but there was no heat to it. He could justify his actions however he pleased; he could tell himself it was good business, taking out competitors, or whatever else made sense to him in the moment. She didn’t need him to do it for altruistic reasons. It was enough that he did it. It was enough that she had asked.

Walking beside Kaz, within arm’s length even if neither reached out to close that distance, Inej took the opportunity to study him. He seemed different, this time. He was always reserved, but now there was something about him that felt distinctly… fragile, she realised. He hid his weaknesses far too well for most to read them, but she had years of experience on her side.

He looked tired.

And, she realised when she glanced down to his hands, he was wearing his gloves.

Kaz watched her watching him. For a moment, it seemed he would try to hold his stoic countenance; but then he sighed, stopped, and admitted, ‘It’s been a long few days. But— it’s good to see you.’

Inej let the flutter of uncertainty still in her chest. ‘You too.’ She held out a hand, questioningly. After a breath of hesitation, Kaz took it in his own, his movements careful. She didn't know what had caused this regression, but the presence of his gloves was an even greater indicator of his mood than anything else about his appearance.

Still. He had taken her hand. Even through the leather, it felt like something.

They walked together through the city, intermittently discussing business or simply remaining quiet. They enjoyed something of a routine, by now — when in town, Inej always stayed with Jesper and Wylan, and the four of them would enjoy dinner together the night of Inej’s return. It was, Jesper had told her, the only time he reliably saw Kaz.

Today, however, Kaz seemed to be leading them in the opposite direction.

She walked with him for a while, making their way towards the East Stave, before she finally asked, ‘Did something happen with the others?’

Kaz kept walking. ‘No.’

‘But we’re not going to their house.’

This stopped him. He seemed to be wrestling with something, looking within himself to somewhere she couldn't see. The other passers by on the street parted like a river to flow around them where they stood.

Finally: ‘We can if you want.’

Inej wasn’t sure if she was frustrated or amused. ‘You don’t want to, then?’

She knew Kaz well enough to know when he was avoiding a question. He hesitated for a long moment, and then gave her a look that was almost pleading. ‘It’s complicated.’

Hadn’t she said the same thing to Dua not an hour ago?

There was a moment, walking the highwire, when you started to tilt too heavily to one side. A swooping sensation, a moment where you seemed to hang in the air impossibly, before you could shift your centre of gravity and right your position on the wire.

Inej could feel that, now. The wrongness of the angle, the tilt, the knowledge of the potential to fall.

She watched him, felt his hand still in hers. ‘Will you tell me?’

His gaze met hers, dark eyes made flinty. She couldn’t pick apart what was happening behind them, only that it was important. Whatever had happened, it was significant. And Kaz had been dealing with it the way he did everything — alone.

‘Yes,’ he said finally. She felt rather than heard the unspoken words. For you, I will.

Chapter Text

Kaz had lived in Ketterdam long enough to track her moods. Even on her best day, she could be cruel and capricious, and her sense of humour would leave a man weeping, but sometimes, when the wind blown in off the sea was warm, and when the sunlight made diamonds of canal water, it was as if Ketterdam smiled.

He knew all her colours — storm grey, summer cornflower, briny teal. But all was made right when Inej was there.

It wasn’t until she had left the city that he had realised how constant her presence had been. How different Ketterdam was without it. Whether she was beside him or half the city away, it had been a reassurance. Something to rely on.

When she crept up in darkened streets or atop shadowed roofs, he had always been able to feel her presence. Perhaps he had always known where she was because some part of him had always been looking for her.

He wasn’t fool enough to think Ketterdam became a safer place with her presence — she was one of the most dangerous people on these streets, after all — but it did somehow become safer for him. More familiar. He understood a city with her in it, in a way he had yet to come to understand the city without. Her presence in Ketterdam felt as right as the cane in his hand; he could function well enough without either if it came down to it, but he still felt the loss of that familiar weight, and appreciated its return.

She had left to do great things, and he was glad of it. Even if she had left and never looked back, he would have been glad.

But Ketterdam always smiled for her return.

Kaz hadn’t wanted to tarnish that. But it had been futile to hope Inej might not notice his reluctance; it was, after all, one of her greatest strengths. Her ability to read a person, to tease out information even they did not realise they were offering.

Her ability to read him, specifically. It had galled him at first — sometimes it still did — how she could read him, how she could see past his armour. How she asked him to take it off for her. How he wanted to.

She knew him like no one else did. In moments, Jesper and Wylan had come close. But they were the only ones; and even they had been different lately.

He led Inej off the more populated streets, heading into Geben Zonder End — a twisted nest of winding passageways running along the border between the Zelver District and the East Stave. Here at least they could expect some privacy; no one ever took these streets if they could avoid it.

They walked with purpose and in silence, Kaz only answering Inej’s wordless question with a nod. She found them a path up to the roof, and they climbed in silence too.

The rooftop, when they made it up, was all grey tiles. It looked out over the city, the Church of Barter standing over it all, the distant forest of masts in the harbour standing against a sky preparing for sundown. It might have felt peaceful, if they had been anyone else.

Kaz lowered himself into a seated position on the gable. Inej crouched gracefully, close without crowding, and looked out over the skyline.

He flexed a hand in its glove. The feel of the leather was both comforting and shameful.

‘Jordie is alive.’

Inej’s gaze slid off the horizon, turning to him.

‘He came to see me,’ Kaz continued, flat. ‘Jesper and Wylan know.’

They knew more than he had ever intended anyone to know. Even Inej had only heard snippets. Pekka Rollins had once known the most; but he had allowed it to be forgotten. Just one more con among hundreds.

‘How is that possible?’ Inej asked, and Kaz had the almost manic desire to laugh. How indeed.

‘I was— It was the Queen’s Lady Plague,’ he said. ‘I had thought I was lucid but… hallucinations seem real, when you’re in them.’

What a stupid, simple, ridiculous explanation. Everything he was today, everything he had become, and it was all caused by a mistake. A misunderstanding. The plague-addled delusions of a nine-year-old mind.

‘You thought you saw him die.’ Inej’s voice was quiet with realisation.

Kaz flexed his grip on his cane. ‘I thought I saw a lot of things.’

He had taught Inej to be curious, but she did not press him. Never dangerous, not to him.

Instead: ‘You’re certain it’s him.’

It wasn’t phrased like a question, but he answered it anyway: ‘No. Not certain.’ He looked out to the harbour, and thought of Jordie in his office, sitting on the floor with Wylan. His expression when he had seen Kaz come in. When Kaz had explained the blood wasn’t his. ‘But sure enough.’

Inej nodded slightly. He felt her eyes on him.

He had deliberately kept himself busy, these past few days. Not that he’d had much of a choice — the conflict with the Liddies had continued, with skirmishes breaking out between the two gangs. Kaz had extra security at every Dregs establishment in case of reprisals. There would be a counter-attack, and soon; it was just a case of being prepared.

Jesper had been helping. Kaz didn’t want to read into what the other man’s presence meant, but he also didn’t have to. It was easy to see what Jesper wanted.

If Kaz had been trying to distract himself, to keep Jordie from his mind, his efforts had been futile. Most insidiously, he’d developed a habit of wondering what Jordie would think of him, whenever Kaz was planning for the worst, or giving orders to Roeder, or even just going over the books from his clubs. Of course, it had also surfaced last night, when Kaz had taken a knife to the ribs and retaliated by caving his assailant’s head in. The Liddies should’ve known better than to try him on his own turf.

Jordie was difficult because he was so normal. Because he had followed in their parents’ footsteps, because he was a naive pigeon, because he had turned into everything he could have expected to as a child. He was horrifyingly unchanged. And the contrast to what Kaz had become was simply too great to bear.

But so too was Jordie’s judgement. Kaz knew what he was, and he had long since made his peace with it. Watching Jordie make those discoveries for himself was something else entirely.

‘How did you do it?’ he asked finally. Coming up for air. ‘With your family.’

Inej was quiet for a moment. Kaz had seen her with her parents, when they first arrived in Ketterdam. He had seen the relief and the joy. But he knew it had been more than that. Inej had sailed back to Ravka with them, spent time with them. She had never fully discussed what it had been like, but Kaz had noted enough to make it clear she had told them something of her life in the intervening years.

With Jordie, Kaz hadn’t had that luxury. He didn’t have the chance to withhold information about himself, to reveal it in the way he would have wanted to. That control had been taken from him. Jordie had seen too much already.

‘It was hard,’ Inej said, looking out over the city. ‘We all changed while I was here. And there were so many things we should have been together for. It’s hard not to mourn what should have been.’

Kaz nodded. Then, almost tentative: ‘Do they know what kind of work you did for me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You didn’t tell them, then?’

‘No. Not in so many words. But I think they saw it in me, all the same. They know that I’ve— that I killed people. That I still kill people. They understand it was survival.’ She smiled, half fond. ‘I think they have more trouble understanding it now it’s a choice, even if it’s for a cause. But they still care for me. And I know they’re trying. For now, that’s enough.’

Kaz had only spent a few hours with them, but Inej’s parents had been painfully genuine. Inej’s father had clasped Kaz’s hand and thanked him for finding them, and Kaz had been forced to excuse himself before Inej’s mother tried the same. Gratitude was ill-fitting on him. It grated.

Perhaps it was better, that Jordie had seen the truth, even if only a small part of it. Perhaps it would have felt worse, if Jordie had tried to treat him the way Inej’s parents had.

None of the options were good.

But he didn't need to ask Inej if it was worth it. And he hadn’t made a career out of hiding.

He leant his cane against his leg, and slowly, finger by finger, unpeeled his gloves. He had never pretended to be better than he was. He had never wanted to be seen that way. So Jordie seeing the truth was the lesser of two evils. Kaz knew what he was. He wouldn’t see anything new in Jordie’s face, anything he hadn’t already seen when he looked at his own.

When he pushed his gloves into a pocket, his hand grazed metal. At the very least, he could return that.

He stood, holding out a hand to help Inej up. They both knew she didn’t need it. She took it anyway.

‘We could go to the Slat,’ she said, still holding his hand. The contact burned and soothed, all at once. But Kaz had steeled himself for it, and he did not drown. ‘Or The Wraith will be quiet at this hour.’

‘The others will want to see you.’

‘They can wait. If you want.’

He considered it. A quiet evening between the two of them, without any of the complications of the others, of Jordie. The feeling of her hand in his. He might rebraid her hair where it was coming loose. They might sit in his office as they used to.

He wanted to. But tonight, it would feel like the coward's choice. He had business to attend to.

‘Later,’ he said. ‘Something to look forward to.’

Inej looked at him with eyes wise beyond her years, and nodded in understanding. After a moment, she moved closer — slowly, telegraphing her intent. Giving him every opportunity to back away. It was how they always moved with one another. Careful.

He stayed where he was. The waters threatened to creep around him, but he was determined to hold them back, even as she lent in, barely a breath of distance between them.

She kissed him, then. Gently, faintly, barely more than a brush of lips at the edge of his own, fleeting as a sunbeam, light as a butterfly. A question.

He answered with his own. Careful, delicate, each of them holding back so much of themselves to keep their own horrors at bay. But warm, and soft, and alive.

Afterwards, he had to let go of her hand as they walked. But he considered that trade to be more than worthwhile.

Chapter Text

Wylan had a standing arrangement with his overseer down at Fifth Harbour, making sure a message would be sent to him whenever Inej put into port. Which meant they all knew she had arrived. And they all knew she and Kaz were late.

Jesper had told himself to expect this. He’d told the others to expect it, too. Kaz had been making it quite clear these past few days that he had no interest in seeing Jordie again. Oh, he hadn’t said it in as many words — rather, in spectacularly Kaz-like fashion, he’d just given Jesper silence, glares, or a change of subject whenever Jordie was brought up.

Part of Jesper was disappointed. A large part. No matter how distant Kaz was the rest of the time, their dinners to celebrate Inej’s return had become a tradition. It was the only time any of the Crows reliably saw one another. They’d all done too much, been through too much together to come apart at the seams the moment it was over. Jesper didn’t want any of them to end up like Nina. Doing great work, but doing it alone.

Then again, she had always had larger horizons than the Ketterdam brats she worked with that one time. Perhaps, without Matthias, she’d lost her only connection to the rest of them.

Could Kaz really let them go so easily, too?

Jesper didn’t understand Kaz. He used to, a little. Jesper was one of only two Crows who understood the Barrel, who had seen Kaz at work before and knew what to expect, what not to balk at. Before the Ice Court job, it had been Kaz, Inej, and Jesper. They’d known their roles and how to play them. Kaz had trusted him, once. Jesper had long hoped he might do so again.

‘Kaz misses you,’ Inej had told him quietly, late the night before she left for Ravka.

Jesper, half-drunk on expensive wine from the Dickhead’s basement, had barely been able to process the sentence. ‘He said that?’

Inej had given him one of her little smiles. ‘He said ‘around the Slat’. But I think we can both read between the lines.’

She was right; they could. You didn’t work for Kaz as long as they had without learning how to read him, at least a little.

Which was why everything with Jordie frustrated him so much.

Jesper had been with Wylan when he discovered Marya was alive. He had seen the turmoil, the storm of emotions — the horror, the guilt, anger, shock, and joy. He had been with Wylan every step of the way since; he had seen how difficult it was for him, even as it was miraculous, the way he loved his mother now every bit was much as he had before, and the changes he had to come to terms with as part of that.

Jesper had never known Marya before, and he found her to be quite lovely now, but it was clear she was… scattered. She struggled with her short-term memory, and it had taken her a distressingly long time to accept that Wylan was her son. Sometimes, on bad days, she still had trouble remembering. She could be upset by seemingly strange or innocuous things — the smell of lavender, the texture of peeled oranges, and the sensation of cold water on skin. They had eradicated what they could from the house, and minimised the rest, but those first few weeks before they realised her needs had been painful for everyone.

But through all of that, Wylan had his mother back. She would sit outside in the sun and paint for hours, breezing back into the house with paint on her dress and mud on her hands, a flower tucked behind one ear and another brought in as a gift for her son. In her lucid moments, she was whip-smart and charming, with so many of the traits Jesper recognised as the ones he loved in Wylan. Even when her mind wandered, she was kind and fierce. It could be difficult, certainly; but that wasn’t all it was, even by a mile.

Once, after moving in with Wylan, Jesper had allowed himself to wonder how he would feel if it was him. If his mother had been alive all this time. With the appearance of Jordie, it was hard not to wonder again.

As if it was even a question. He had spent every moment since she died missing her. She had been so brave and so precious and so strong, and he had wished so many times that she could have been here with him, to give advice or teach him about his skills, or even just to hold him and tell him it would be alright. There were so many things he wished he could tell her. So many things he hoped she would be proud of. He wished she could’ve met Wylan.

Any time with her, even just a second, would be a gift. A miracle. If she was somehow alive, would there be any space in his heart for anything but joy?

He knew he wasn’t getting that miracle. He knew his mother had passed on a long time ago. And, for the most part, that wound had healed as best as it ever would.

But seeing Kaz offered this, and rejecting it? What wouldn’t Jesper give to see his mother again! And Kaz would just turn this down?

Maybe Kaz really was emotionless. Jesper had watched him, that day Jordie first appeared, and every time Jesper had gone to the Slat since. He’d seen none of the emotions he remembered from Wylan. Maybe Kaz had seemed more terse than usual, with less patience for Jesper’s energy, but that was hardly out of character, and no more intense a reaction than a bad mood. Was that really all it came down to? Did the revelation that his brother was alive really inspire the exact same response as rainy weather?

Maybe Kaz really was too far gone to care about something like this, to see the joy in it. Or maybe he could only feel things in sips, so big things and small things became flattened, one and the same. Or maybe he only knew how to feel for one person at a time. It was clear Inej occupied that space these days. Maybe she was the one who had carved it out of him to begin with.

For his part, Jordie seemed like a nice, ordinary man. He was friendly and easygoing, light-hearted for the most part, and smart in an open, honest way. He couldn’t have been less like his brother. Jesper’s Da had played the part pretty accurately, it turned out.

Maybe that was why Kaz couldn’t face him. Jesper hadn’t wanted to face his father, either.

‘They’re not coming.’

Wylan glanced across at him. ‘Can you pass me the small tuning hammer?’

Jesper sighed, turning to the equipment laid out beside him on the carpet. ‘Sure.’ He picked out the hammer, holding it up to Wylan.

‘Thanks.’

Wylan had been saying the piano needed tuning for weeks; Jesper had found the slight twang of the keys charming at first, but even he had to admit it had started to get out of hand.

‘We don’t know if they’re coming,’ Wylan said, fiddling with something deep in the piano’s belly. ‘But I doubt Inej would just let him skip it.’

Jesper leant back against a piano leg, watching Wylan work. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and if Jesper focused, he could feel the pull on the strings as Wylan adjusted their tension. If he was better at this, he probably could’ve tuned it himself that way; but the strings were fragile, and he didn’t want to risk snapping one. He’d managed impossible feats in the heat of a high-stakes plan, but even he had lines he wouldn’t cross, and breaking Wylan’s piano was one of them.

‘Play me the G# again?’ Wylan asked.

‘Uh.’

Jesper had to admit he sympathised with Jordie’s confusion; he hadn’t known the keys even had different names until Wylan started teaching him.

‘The same one as last time, Jordie,’ Wylan explained, and the other man obliged. The key still sounded flat to Jesper’s ear; he fancied he could feel the slack in the string.

When he was focused in on a material like this, he could almost feel his awareness branching out. There were the wires in the piano, of course, lined up like little toy soldiers in a matchbox, lying nestled but neat. Spreading out, there were all the little wires in this room, coiled inside a music box, holding the shape of a lampshade. Going further, there was the wire running through the walls, connecting almost every room in the house like a spiderweb, and all convening in the servants corridor to the kitchen, a wall of bells indicating which room had rung for service. It was like he could feel the whole house from here, the wires like arteries; he could feel it breathing.

So he felt, rather than heard, when one of the bells in the servants corridor started to ring.

Jesper stood up so fast he nearly hit his head on the underside of the piano, dashing out the room before the others knew what was happening.

‘Door!’ he called as explanation, clattering down the hallway. They always sent the maid home early on days they expected Kaz, so poor unsuspecting Hanna didn’t find herself opening the front door to find Dirtyhands on the step.

Instead, that pleasure was all Jesper’s.

‘You’re here,’ he said when he saw them, still half surprised they had turned up at all.

‘Evidently,’ drawled Kaz in reply.

‘It’s good to see you,’ Jesper said. To both of them.

Inej smiled her private smile, stepping in for a quick hug. ‘You too, Jesper.’

‘You know Jordie’s here, right?’ He didn’t want to tempt fate. And no doubt Kaz knew already. But he had to be sure. The last thing any of them wanted to deal with was a surprised and angry Kaz.

Kaz watched him with his classic unreadable expression. ‘Yes,’ was all he said.

It was good enough for Jesper.

‘Well! Come on in, then!’ He ushered them into the house, slipping into the familiar role of host. ‘I’m glad you’re here, because honestly there’s far too much food for just us, it’s embarrassing.’

Inej gave him a smile, and Kaz said nothing, but considering they were here at all, Jesper would consider it a win. He just hoped the dinner itself went smoothly. Somehow, now the others were actually here, it felt like they were about to navigate a minefield.

Chapter Text

Standing halfway down the stairs, watching Jesper usher two figures through the front door, Jordie felt his heart skip. Kaz was here. He was torn between running down to see and running back up to hide.

The ghosts over his shoulder whispered phantom sounds into his ear.

It was ridiculous, really. He’d gone half his life without seeing his brother, but now he knew Kaz was alive, just three days apart had been interminable. Knowing Kaz was out there, somewhere in the city; wanting nothing more than to chase him down and hug him and take him home to Kaatje, to sit out on the porch of an evening and just talk. To relearn everything about him. To remember how to be brothers.

But now? With that black shadow on the doorstep? Suddenly, he wasn’t sure if he was ready after all.

Jordie had never been very good at holding two things in his mind at once. He liked simple truths and clear directions; his experiences as a child had schooled him into suspicion, but it wasn’t his natural state. In all things, he wanted to find a belief and stick to it: he loved his wife, he loved his farm, and he missed his brother.

He’d found Kaz. But he hadn’t found his simple truth. Because Kaz wasn’t just his brother, not anymore. And Jordie had heard the name Dirtyhands first.

When Jordie had first realised Kaz was alive, there hadn’t been space in his mind to think about anything else, it had just been shock and joy and then, belatedly, guilt. Even if he had remembered who they had been here to see, what finding his brother here of all places meant, he wouldn’t have been able to grapple with the implications.

It was only afterwards that it had set in. Kaz was his brother. Kaz was Dirtyhands. It was impossible to reconcile those two truths. To connect the smiling child he remembered with the bloodied adult he’d found.

And besides. Kaz had made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in seeing Jordie again. And maybe it was that rejection that stung most of all, and the guilt that came with it. Because truthfully, Jordie couldn’t blame Kaz if he really did never want to see him again. And somehow the thought of going home and leaving Kaz here, leaving him like this, and knowing it had all been his fault… Ghezen save him, but it was almost worse than when he’d thought Kaz had died all those years ago.

(Of course. That had been Jordie’s fault, too.)

Jesper must’ve said something funny, because a chorus of laughter rose up from the doorway. None of it was from Kaz; even from this angle, Jordie could tell the man wore the same stern expression he remembered from their last meeting. He was dressed in the same neat style, all black, and as he entered the hallway his cane made a sharp metallic click against the marble tiles of the floor.

It was his companion who had laughed along with Jesper. A woman, Jordie realised; the ship’s captain the others had been waiting for. Jesper and Wylan had been all too happy to share their excitement for her return, and Jordie had heard various stories about her achievements. Inej.

Now, looking at the woman who inspired so much love from her friends, she seemed small beside her two companions. The muted reds and teals of her attire bridged the gap from Kaz’s dour monochrome to Jesper’s flamboyant everything. But she held herself like a dancer, poised and graceful, and there was something hauntingly beautiful about her countenance. Jordie didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone quite like her.

Now, as she spoke easily with Jesper, smiling along with him and stepping forward to offer an embrace, Jordie’s eyes slid back to his brother.

He watched Kaz watch Inej, and realised his search for a simple truth had become even more complicated. Kaz was his brother, he was Dirtyhands; but whoever was standing in the hall, gazing at Inej with unconcealed fondness, was someone new.

And then Kaz looked up and met Jordie’s eye, and his expression hardened into stoniness once more. Even flintier than before, if that were even possible.

Jordie swallowed, but held the gaze. He offered up a little nod in greeting. Kaz made no move to answer it.

‘Ah! Jordie!’ Jesper’s determinedly upbeat voice broke the moment, calling up the stairs with a grin. ‘Just the man I wanted to see! Come meet Inej, and then let’s have something to eat before we all fade away from starvation.’

Kaz had started slightly at the sudden interruption, as if waking, and now turned away to busy himself with the fastenings of his coat. Jordie was grateful for the reprieve. The man’s gaze felt like being pinned to the wall.

‘Jordie, this is Inej, the love of everyone’s life and about ten times faster than me in a foot race,’ Jesper said as Jordie reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘Also a feared sea captain and all that other stuff. Inej, this is Jordie. He doesn’t understand the concept of being a guest and has been helping out way too much, so I’m trying to train him into laziness. I’m sure you’ll get along great.’

Inej raised an eyebrow at Jesper’s introductions, and gave Jordie an appraising look. Still, her gaze felt a lot warmer than Kaz’s, and Jordie didn’t feel uncomfortable under her scrutiny, especially when she stepped forwards with a slight smile and an outstretched hand.

‘It’s good to meet you,’ she said kindly, and Jordie took her hand gratefully.

‘And you,’ he replied. ‘Thank you for taking care of my brother.’

Her eyes briefly lit with surprise, and then she bowed her head slightly in acknowledgement. ‘He has more than returned the favour.’

As everyone filtered towards the dining room, Jordie couldn’t help feeling out of place. Wylan, Jesper, and now Inej — it was becoming a pattern. Decent people, good people, whose company he found easy and their work respectable, and who spoke of one another with such affection, who orbited one another as they found their seats at the table, and who could be caught looking at one another with such tenderness. And yet all of them had a past with Dirtyhands.

It was the same dissonance he’d felt at the Slat, first when Jesper told stories of fun and camaraderie, despite Jordie knowing there was far more to that place, and then when he’d returned, hoping to see Kaz once more, and had to leave abruptly because the stories he overheard made him nauseous. Stories of a massacre, spiralling out into comparisons to so many other acts of brutality and violence committed by one man. A man who had returned soaked in blood.

But now? As they all went about settling in at the table? Wylan and Jesper and Inej sharing banter, Kaz looking on with an expression that could almost be called warm… Jordie didn’t know what to make of it. He couldn’t make anything of it. How could these people be so close to such horror, and yet soar on such comfortable and familiar highs?

‘Dinner’s been keeping warm in the kitchen,’ Wylan said loudly, looking over to Jordie. ‘Jordie, would you mind helping Jesper bring it through?’ He must have noticed Jordie standing at the side, looking uncomfortable.

Ghezen bless his thoughtfulness. Jordie accepted the escape gratefully.

He really liked Wylan and Jesper. He’d only been staying here for a few days, but they’d accepted him into their home so kindly, and made him feel so welcome, that Jordie had almost physically felt himself warming to them. They’d gone above and beyond with helping him, showing him Ketterdam’s sights and telling easy anecdotes. They were remarkably easy to get along with — he’d thought anyone living in this kind of wealth would be insufferable, but they were both not only personable and friendly, but sensible and practical too.

It was also definitely their home, as they were also, Jordie had discovered one morning outside what he now knew to be their shared bedroom, partners in more than the business sense, which explained so much that Jordie was left wondering how he hadn’t realised sooner.

‘So, what do you make of Inej, then?’ Jesper asked easily, retrieving food from the cooking range.

Jordie paused in trying to puzzle together as many side dishes onto a tray as he could. ‘She seems nice,’ he said, and then cursed himself for such a milquetoast answer. 'She has a real presence to her.' An understatement. He looked across at Jesper. ‘Are she and Kaz… ?’

Jesper laughed, rolling his eyes. ‘Honestly, at this point, I doubt even they know. Those two have been dancing around each other for as long as I’ve known them.’

Jordie processed that. Yet another thing that didn’t fit with his understanding of any of Kaz’s sides. ‘How long have you known them?’

Jesper stopped for a moment, thinking, and then looked almost sheepish. ‘You know, it’s not been nearly as long as it feels. Only a couple of years. We got a lot done in that time, I guess.’

Jordie loaded another bowl onto his tray, and carefully asked: ‘Has he always been like this?’

‘Like what?’

He huffed a laugh. ‘I honestly don’t know. I’m having trouble… fitting it all together. My memories, the stories, the things I see in front of me... None of it fits right. It doesn’t seem like it can all be the same person.’

Jesper gave him an amused look. ‘That’s the Kaz effect for you. We’ve all been there. Every time you think you’ve got him figured out, he goes and does something unexpected and you’re back to square one. Honestly, it drove Wylan mad for a good week or so.’

Jordie had no idea how Jesper could talk about this so flippantly, but somehow the other man’s casualness had an almost calming effect. After all, Jesper knew Kaz well. He knew this Kaz well. Which put him far ahead of Jordie. And if Jesper was used to this kind of thing, then… That must mean it was normal, right? Expected?

Jesper clapped him on the back as he passed. ‘Chin up, you’ll get there. And just remember, those stories? Some are more true than others, but at the end of the day, no one in the city knows Kaz better than us folks in this house. Just— uh.’ Jesper paused, suddenly awkward. ‘Don’t touch him. It’s— it’s a whole thing.’

‘Don’t… touch him?’

‘Yeah.’ Jesper shrugged. ‘He doesn’t like it. I used to think it was a power play, but he does it with everyone.’ A mischievous grin returned to his face. ‘Even Inej. So. Anyway, dinner time!’ He breezed out the room, leaving Jordie with yet another piece of information that didn’t fit anywhere. No wonder this was apparently a common feeling around Kaz. Nothing about any of it made sense.

He followed Jesper back to the dining room at a more sedate pace, balancing his tray carefully. It still wasn’t long enough to think. But he’d spent several days desperate to see Kaz, to talk to him, and he wasn’t going to hide now just because it felt like his brain was losing a marathon trying to keep up.

Reaching the dining room, he almost jumped out of his skin as someone appeared out of nowhere at his elbow.

‘Ghezen!’ he exclaimed in surprise, nearly capsizing his tray and only managing to save it because the figure came to his rescue. ‘Thanks.’

It was Inej, laughter dancing in her eyes. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘Is that Inej?’ Jesper called from inside the dining room. ‘Is Marya with you?’

Jordie stepped to the side to let Inej enter first, following after her. Half wondering just who it was he was sitting down to dinner with.

‘Marya won’t be joining us tonight,’ she said, returning to her seat. ‘Her headache’s come back.’

Wylan and Jesper made disappointed noises, and Inej had to stop Wylan from going and seeing to his mother immediately with the warning that she was trying to sleep. Jordie let them talk and busied himself with laying out the various dishes in silence, trying not to look at Kaz. He didn’t want to make things stranger than they already were by gawping.

Or maybe gawping was okay if it wasn’t too obvious. There were only two unclaimed seats at the table, and once he’d finished with the dishes, Jordie slid into the bolder of the two before he had a chance to second-guess himself. The dining table was long and rectangular, and Kaz had claimed its head; Inej had taken the seat to his right, and Jesper and Wylan sat side-by-side to his left. Of Jordie’s two remaining options — beside Inej, or directly opposite Kaz at the other end of the table — he had chosen the latter. Inej seemed lovely, but he would’ve had to crane his neck to see Kaz, and that would’ve been far too obvious. This way, he’d have to contend with that pin-sharp stare, but he hoped it would be worth it for the chance to watch his brother more easily.

He hoped.

Because even if he was confused and his thoughts tangled, he still wanted to see everything Kaz did. He was like a moth to a flame, fascinated by Kaz’s every movement, by the way his features echoed what Jordie remembered of their parents, by the way he recognised some of his own features reflected back at him. How many times had he wrecked himself over the knowledge that his baby brother had never seen adulthood? Seeing adult Kaz now was like something halfway between a dream and a ghost. He wanted to take in all of it.

It was only when he looked down at his plate to serve himself that he noticed the ring placed in its centre.

What... ?

He took it in unsteady hands, feeling its familiar weight. He'd thought this ring lost. He'd mourned it, felt naked without it, felt wrong knowing Kaatje still had hers at home, while his end of the tether was lost amidst Ketterdam's Barrel. He slid it back onto his finger with a lump in his throat, and looked up to see Kaz watching him.

‘This was stolen,’ he said stupidly, only belatedly realising that the banter around the table had fallen silent. 

Kaz nodded slightly. ‘It was.’ Then: ‘How long have you been married?’

Jordie blinked at the change in subject. ‘Three years this summer,’ he replied, because he didn’t know what else to say.

‘You have my congratulations, then.’ Kaz’s voice was a rasp.

Something told Jordie that turning a similar question back on Kaz wouldn’t go well, so instead he just said: ‘Thank you. I’m a very lucky man.’ And regretted his words immediately because yes, objectively, compared to the brother he had left for dead in a city full of wolves, he was a lucky man.

Ghezen. This was going to be a long evening.

He was quickly realising he didn’t know a single reliably safe topic of conversation. He had so many questions, so much he wanted to talk about, but it was all so sensitive, so messy, and they’d only just started serving dinner. It felt far too early to get into any of that now. If indeed they would ever be able to. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing. Who knew what Kaz’s reaction would be. He wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of: driving Kaz away, or inciting the anger he’d heard so much about.

‘Actually, with no offense to your lovely wife, Jordie,’ Jesper said brightly, ‘I think the luckiest man at this table is really Wylan.’

Wylan blushed pink and, if Jesper’s sudden and aggrieved ‘Ow!’ was anything to go by, kicked his boyfriend under the table.

And then Inej and Jesper were laughing, Wylan sheepishly joining in after a moment, and sneaking a glance at Kaz revealed even he wore the ghost of a smile. Maybe… Maybe he could do this, after all. Surrounded by good folk, kind folk. Maybe it would all work out in the end.

Chapter Text

Kaz had been alone for as long as she’d known him, and she hadn’t known him long before it became clear he had been alone for years already. The way he answered questions about his parents, his family, was too melodramatic to be taken seriously, but she quickly realised that was by design. How do you steal a man’s wallet? Kaz was a master of misdirection, after all.

All the Crows had been alone, in their own way, for a long time before they came together. But by the end of it, they all had somewhere to go, someone to go to, except for Kaz. Out on the sea, surrounded by her crew and doing work she loved, work she believed in, Inej still hadn’t been able to shake the way her heart hurt to think of Kaz. She’d found him alone, and had left him the same way. With the Crows gone, he was more alone now than he had been since she first slipped through his window.

But they had all got what they wished for — freedom, love, respect, a home. Those of them that had lived, at least. Though she had to believe Matthias found his wish in the afterlife. Peace, if nothing else.

Perhaps it was just a flaw in Kaz’s imagination that he couldn’t wish for anything greater than revenge. Safety, happiness… they didn’t factor into Kaz’s dreams. I don’t know if that exists in the Barrel, but you’ll find none of it with me.

That had been a lie, of course. She had found both. In fleeting moments. In lingering gazes and light touches. On rooftops and in bathrooms. If she hadn’t, maybe the winds wouldn’t keep leading her back to Ketterdam’s winding streets.

Then again, Jesper might just hunt her across the ocean and try to drag her back for dinner if she stayed away from the city any longer than she already did.

Dinner at the Van Eck household was one of her favourite times, one of her favourite places. There had been so little time or cause for playfulness, towards the end, and she loved seeing Wylan and Jesper in their element. They were so comfortable with one another, still a little giddy in each other's presence but achingly familiar, too. They understood one another in a way that spoke of experience, of partnership, of highs and lows and being there through it all.

Her eyes flicked to Kaz. He was tense, she could tell; but either the stress was less than she had expected, or he had done a good job of steeling himself on the walk over, because he remained his usual picture of control. He was quiet, allowing the others to carry the conversation, listening to tales of Jesper’s antics or Inej’s recounting of sea adventures with silent interest; but he was also bare-handed, and though he rarely engaged in the others’ banter, he did look on it warmly.

At the other end of the table, Jordie.

Seeing him was like dreaming of mirrors. She could only imagine how much stronger that feeling was for Kaz.

Jordie didn’t look much like his brother. When she had searched his face for markers of shared blood, she had found them, but on a cursory glance she wouldn’t have guessed the relation. Where Kaz was nothing but razor edges, Jordie was squared off, from his jaw to his shoulders. It was impossible not to wonder how much of that difference was natural, and how much was the result of their wildly different upbringings. Farm boy, Barrel rat.

Hidden Grisha. Kidnapped acrobat. Downtrodden, motherless merch. How differently they all might have grown, if things hadn’t been as they were.

In personality, too, Jordie and Kaz were nothing alike. Jordie’s nerves had been plain on his face; as had his sincerity when he thanked her for looking out for Kaz. Now, as he told an anecdote about a sheep stuck down a well at Jesper’s request, his voice was loud and friendly, his slight awkwardness endearing. Honest, simple, and normal. He was a man for whom the word ‘nice’ had been invented to describe.

She watched Kaz watching Jordie. To anyone else, he might have seemed emotionless, but Inej knew better. She recognised the waters rising behind his eyes.

She knew what it was like to vanish. And she knew that Kaz never disappeared; he drowned.

‘Kaz,’ she said, quiet. At length, he turned his gaze on her, and after a moment it softened. Almost imperceptibly, yet it did. Waters drawn out on the tide.

‘I’ve just realised something incredible,’ Jesper was saying loudly, already several glasses of wine in. ‘Inej, Wylan, you’re technically outnumbered right now.’ He sounded ridiculously pleased with himself. ‘There’s three farm boys at this table! It’s like the name of a performance troupe. We could go on tour.’

Inej fought the urge to laugh. ‘Jes, we’ve already been on tour.’

‘The Little Palace doesn’t count, I barely got to do anything.’

‘You made friends with the stable hand, if I remember.’

Wylan’s eyebrows raised. ‘You made friends?’

Jesper looked between them with mock horror. ‘Oh, now that was a low blow Inej. I barely knew you, Wylan! A dark time in my life. And one without nearly so many explosions.’

A dark time in Inej’s life, too. She would never forget the feeling of the blade leaving her fingers that first time.

‘You went to the Little Palace?’ Jordie was asking. ‘What, are you Grisha?’

Jesper inhaled his wine and nearly choked; Wylan started patting him on the back longsufferingly.

‘We broke in.’ Kaz spoke evenly, despite the sound of Jesper nearly dying one seat down.

The brothers made eye contact, and Inej felt the same sensation she used to just before a fight. When she had been moving silently up behind someone, knowing Kaz was relying on her to take them out. The tension in the air, the understanding, the purpose. The way the world shrank to this one moment, those two people. The sparks of what was to come.

But Jordie just nodded. ‘You break in a lot of places.’ Was that judgement, or merely a statement of fact?

‘I’ve made a career out of it, in fact,’ Kaz replied lightly.

‘Do you… Do you like it?’ He spoke cautiously, careful, feeling around for the right words. Like he was walking across an icy lake. Still, there was bravery in such directness. Even if the question itself was naive beyond belief.

Dimly, Inej was aware of the others across the table, Jesper no longer in danger of suffocating and both of them now torn between watching the scene play out and trying to melt into their chairs and go unnoticed. They were not nearly as experienced in disappearing as she.

‘I’m good at it,’ Kaz said, and Inej smiled inwardly at the note of pride in his voice. Of course. ‘It’s kept me alive this long. It’s given me all I have now.' He turned the question back on Jordie like the hilt of a blade. 'Do you like what you do?’

‘Yes.’ Jordie replied without hesitation. A sharp contrast to Kaz’s evasiveness. ‘I don’t know how good I am at it, but I like the work. I like the land. It’s hard labour but that makes for good, honest work. Besides, I never thought I’d end up doing anything else.’

Kaz’s expression turned bitter. ‘Neither did I.’

Sometimes things happen as the Saints will it, meja, her mother had said, on one tearstained evening as they held one another, speaking quietly between weeping and crooning lullabies. And sometimes they happen because people do. The difference is hard to see, impossible, but it is what you do with your fate that matters. You have holiness in here, in your heart. That is where the difference lies.

‘Is that why you bought the farm?’

Silence hung in the room, now. It radiated out from Kaz like ripples on a lake.

‘It was… part of a con.’ Wylan spoke carefully, waiting for Kaz to stop him. ‘The one with my father. We needed a jurda farmer for… It was actually really complicated.’

‘Jurda?’ Jordie asked, and Inej was impressed despite herself. That was the only part of Wylan’s statement Jordie wanted to question? ‘We farmed grain.’

‘It didn’t need to be accurate,’ Kaz rasped. He shot Wylan an unreadable look. ‘And I already had the farm. I bought it before I met any of you.’

That surprised all of them. Inej hadn’t known.

Kaz met her questioning look. ‘I worked my way up to the De Kappel heist. Cut my teeth on lesser artwork. The first score I didn’t put into the Slat or the club went into the farm.’

He didn’t say anything more, but he didn't need to. She knew his expressions as well as she knew the tides, and she read his words in the intensity of his gaze. The next one went into you.

She gave him a tiny nod. His eyes glittered.

‘Ghezen,’ Jordie said, and he sounded torn between misery and hysteria. ‘I could’ve gone looking all this time.’

Tearing her gaze away from Kaz, Inej felt a pain in her chest at Jordie's words. At least her family had been looking for her. They had never given up their search. She didn’t know if it had been better or worse for them, whether their hope had just caused them more pain. But to know that your family had given up on you? To know that you had given up on them?

But there was also some part of her that knew, without a shadow of doubt, that had Jordie found Kaz earlier, had they both left the city to find a better life, no one else around this table would be the same.

Wylan would still be living in the Barrel, if he had survived this long without the Dregs’ protection. If his father hadn’t sent more men to kill him.

Jesper would have fallen in with some other gang; he likely would have lost his father’s farm. Or he would’ve been killed for his debts, or sold into indenture if anyone discovered his secret.

And Inej?

She would never have found her family. She would never have gained a ship, set out upon her current path. Most likely, she would not even have lived this long at all. If Tante Heleen or one of her clients hadn’t killed her, Inej would have found a way to do it herself.

It was— perverse. That so much good had to come from so much suffering. That, had Kaz not lived the life he did, had he been rescued from it and all its misery, all its danger and violence and loneliness, everyone who had come to care for him so deeply would be so tangibly worse off for his absence.

It was almost like a curse. The price for their freedom and happiness — that Kaz remain alone in the Barrel.

Kaz didn’t answer Jordie. It was Wylan who spoke up again.

‘So… If not for the con, why did you buy the farm?’

He’d always been more willing than the rest of them to poke at Kaz. Inej could never decide if she thought it was something Kaz needed, or if it was just a cruelty born of inexperience.

Kaz leaned back in his chair, adjusting the angle of his bad leg stretched out under the table. ‘I plan ahead.’

‘Why use that name, though?’ Wylan pushed. Jesper tried to hush him.

‘It’s something our pa used to say,’ Jordie said, sounding like he was already half in the memory. ‘That farm had been in the family for a hundred years, and it would be the Rietveld home for a hundred more.’

Kaz watched his brother in silence. Then: ‘It was time a Rietveld owned the farm again.’

‘But not you?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? Why use my name instead? My middle name? ’

‘Because it raised fewer questions,’ Kaz snapped, his patience finally wearing thin. ‘Half the neighbours would’ve remembered a Jorden or a Kaspian and come looking.’

‘Not your middle name, though?’

Kaz looked away.

Jordie refused to let it go. He didn’t know the warning signs, he didn’t know he was already pushing too far. ‘Why mine, Kaz?’

Kaz set his jaw in anger, and when he looked up, his gaze was icy. ‘Why do you think I bothered changing my name? Because ‘Brekker’ is easier to spell?’ He scoffed, standing. ‘We’re done here.’

He snapped up his cane, gave a brief, terse nod at Wylan and Jesper, and turned for the door.

But Jordie didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, and he blocked Kaz’s path.

‘Move.’ It was an order.

‘I just want you to talk to me, Kaz! I want to understand, that’s all.’

‘Understand what, exactly?’

Jordie made a frustrated noise. ‘You, you dolt!’

Inej could see the tension in Kaz’s shoulders now, the painfully upright way he held himself, like if he let even the tiniest bit of control slip his ribs would all shatter away to dust inside him.

‘Get out of my way before I make you.’

‘No. Stop running away from me, Kaz!’

Kaz’s lip curled. ‘You mean like you did, Jordie?’

What do you think my forgiveness looks like?

The silence was so thick Inej fancied she could hear her own heartbeat. Jordie looked like he’d been struck, the shock and guilt plain to read on his face. Kaz just looked grim.

No one moved. The moment stretched, time dilating, like the moment before a dive as the whole world shrinks to these few seconds, stretching out before you.

When it was finally broken, like a spell — like a curse — it wasn’t by speech.

The two brothers stood staring each other down in silence. And then the bay window of the Van Eck dining room shattered inwards, showering the table with shards of glass, the crack of the gunshot echoing loudly in the street.

Chapter Text

The bullet collided with the crystal wine decanter on the table, exploding it in a spray of glittering red wine and chunks of glass shrapnel. Wylan dropped to the ground behind the table, sheltering his head with his arms. Shards of glass bit into his knees on the floor, and his heart hammered in his chest as more bullets flew overhead, shattering crockery and impacting the wall behind in little bursts of plaster.

Where had this come from? Wylan could feel panic threatening to overtake his mind. It’d been a long time since he’d been shot at, he’d almost forgotten how it felt. Like a fox hunted by dogs.

He tried to take in the situation tactically, like he used to — Jesper on the ground beside him, Kaz who had ducked smoothly into cover by the wall, Jordie pulled along beside Kaz, Inej nowhere to be seen. None of them seemed injured. Yet. He tried to crane his neck to get a better view of the street — who was attacking, how many — but another bullet whipped past, sending him back into cover.

They were trapped, the large window blown out and curtains fluttering in the night air, the ruins of dinner strewn across the tabletop, wine dripping down onto the carpet in rivulets of red. His home. His home!

His mother was upstairs.

They were meant to be safe here, it’d taken them so long to feel safe here, his mother was in this house, he wasn’t prepared for an attack, not here, not at home, he didn’t keep his things to hand, he—

‘Are you hurt?’

Jesper’s touch on his shoulder broke him from his spiral, and Wylan looked over to the other man with relief.

‘I’m okay,’ he said, finding his voice, and Jesper gave him a roguish smile in return. Wylan thought he looked radiant.

‘How many, Jesper?’ Kaz’s voice came from where he had ducked into cover on the wall. Wylan still couldn’t see Inej, but he’d heard how Kaz sounded when he was scared for her, and they weren’t there yet.

He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Okay. They were all okay. They just had to get out of this.

Beside him, Jesper focused, drawing his hands together with a look of concentration. After a moment: ‘Eight,’ he said, then corrected himself. ‘No, nine. Four on the rooftops, five in the street.’

Nine attackers? In the Geldin District? This wasn’t the Barrel, or even the harbour — the stadwatch would actually try to enforce the law here. And how had their first shot missed? They’d taken the room by surprise, had time to line it up, and Wylan had never been a sharpshooter but he knew he and the others had made easy targets. Had it just been a warning?

Something else was at play here.

If Kaz replied to Jesper, Wylan didn’t hear it, but he did catch the blur of movement as Inej slipped out of the room. She was soundless despite the broken glass littering the floor.

No gunshots followed her wake. The silence was eerie after the onslaught.

‘I know you’re in there,’ came a voice from the street. A woman, her tone commanding yet tight with anger. Wylan didn’t recognise it. ‘Come out slowly, and maybe we’ll let some of you live.’

Wylan’s world tipped.

‘I need to get to my mother,’ he said through the fog. Dimly, he was aware of Jesper beside him — was this how he had felt, when Colm had been shot at in the Booksplein? At least Jesper had been there to help; Wylan’s mother was alone upstairs.

‘She’ll be okay, love,’ Jesper said gently. ‘Just got to see off this lot and you can go apologise to her for the noise, yeah?’

‘Wylan.’ Kaz’s rasp interrupted them. ‘We’ll need smoke.’

‘I don’t have my bombs,’ Wylan snapped, frustration and fear making for a somewhat hysterical mix. ‘I wasn’t ready for this!’

With a thud, his explosives satchel landed beside him where Kaz had thrown it.

‘Getting soft on us, merchling?’

Wylan didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. Of course Kaz had known this was coming, of course he’d known to prepare for it, and of course he hadn’t said a word to anyone else.

A lone shot passed overhead. ‘Don’t keep me waiting,’ the woman outside called again.

‘Be ready,’ Kaz said to them. And then he stepped smoothly out of cover, moving to survey the scene in the street with his usual detachment. ‘It’s either brave or stupid of you to show up here,’ he said, his voice raised just enough to carry, ‘and the Liddies have never been known for their bravery.’

‘You’ve always been a cocky bastard, Brekker,’ the woman replied, her tone biting. ‘You think you’re above everyone else in Ketterdam, don’t you? Took out one old man and now you think you rule the world? You’re nothing. You’re the leader of a gang of children and imbeciles, and it’s time someone taught you your place.’

Kaz watched her emotionlessly. ‘How much did you pay the stadwatch to look the other way tonight?’

Moving up to the side of the window for a better view of the street, Wylan felt his heart skip. He had never quite learned to tell the difference between a plan and a bluff, when it came to Kaz.

The woman laughed. Wylan risked a glance to get a better view; he didn’t know her. A light-haired woman flanked by an assortment of others, more respectably dressed than most in the Barrel, but clearly armed as well as any other. They all had weapons drawn, a nasty assortment of knives and cudgels and guns. Kaz, standing in the window, stared them all down implacably.

‘The stadwatch wants you dead even more than I do, Dirtyhands,’ the woman was saying. ‘They practically paid me.’

Wylan suppressed a shiver. He knew Kaz had enemies. They all knew. But to stage such a brazen attack, on Geldstraat of all places — at the house of a member of the Merchant Council! Somehow, Kaz was even more unpopular than he’d realised.

And, of course, there was always the concerning possibility that one of Wylan’s enemies was involved in this too. He was too young, too radical, and too willing to openly associate with untraditional business partners for some of the more conservative members of the council. And his father still had some friends in worrying places.

‘So. You thought you’d do what the stadwatch, the plague, and every gang in the city couldn’t.’ Wylan couldn’t see it, but he imagined Kaz was raising a single sardonic eyebrow. ‘Like I said. Brave, or stupid.’

‘You massacred the crew of the Razrushhost. You killed everyone in the Cathouse. And you murdered Mikhail Orlov. That needed answering.’

Now, Wylan heard the smile in Kaz’s voice. ‘You won’t be taking your revenge from me tonight, Hakala. And I did you a favour, killing Orlov. He had been selling Liddy secrets to me for years.’

‘You’re lying.’

Kaz shrugged one shoulder. ‘I don’t care if you believe it or not.’

‘He’d never betray us. And you’d never have killed him if he were useful.’

‘He insulted me. That needed answering. You understand. But I doubt your boss will be so understanding when he realises you’ve started a war with me over personal revenge.’

A shift of unease went through the men in the street, and Wylan felt something jump in his chest. Ever the magician, of course Kaz had something hidden up his sleeve, ready to pull it out at the right moment. That man loved information, secrets, and an unwitting, easily-manipulated audience more than anyone in the world. Except perhaps Inej. And sometimes, Wylan fancied, the rest of his Crows.

But not tonight. Now, standing half in the shadow of the street, backlit by the brightness of the room, light gleaming off the head of his cane, Kaz Brekker was all sharp angles and danger. Tonight, he was Dirtyhands.

‘Your brother was a fool, Hakala,’ he continued, the rasp of his voice biting. ‘He thought he could get something for nothing, he thought that he was important, and he thought that he could get away with his mistakes.’

They could all feel the danger emanating off Kaz now, coming in sickening waves of threat. This was the Kaz that had walked into the Slat a wanted man and had them all begging to be taken back within minutes. This was the Kaz that had brought Pekka Rollins to his knees with a few words. This was the Kaz they told stories about, they whispered about behind his back, they watched with awe and fear and guarded eyes as he passed.

Few in Ketterdam knew the Kaz that smiled at Jesper, or gave Wylan confidence, or held Inej’s hand. But everyone knew this story.

Everyone but one.

Wylan glanced to his side, to where Jordie was taking cover. He saw the fear on the man’s face. He’d heard the stories. But there was a difference between hearing something and seeing it with your own eyes. Wylan stupidly wanted to reassure him, like it wasn't all about to get so much worse.

‘Your brother got what was coming to him,’ Kaz said dangerously, stepping over what was left of the window and out into the street. ‘I caved his head in and left him in the gutter because he was too stupid to realise who he was dealing with. If you want to make the same mistake, we can end it the same way. Or you can learn from your brother’s poor choices. And maybe I’ll let some of you live.’

‘I’m going to beat you to death with your own cane, you monster,’ Hakala spat.

Wylan heard rather than saw Kaz’s grin. ‘Try me.’

And then all hell broke loose.

Chapter Text

Jordie felt sick.

He had never been so afraid in his life. He could feel his heart fluttering in his chest, whining in his ears; he didn’t know what was worse, the people in the street threatening murder, or the man in the window gloating of his.

Kaz had stared down five people with the steely, cool determination of a stranger. Armed only with his words, he had aimed them like a blade at his enemies’ hearts. Jordie wasn’t sure who it had frightened more — them, or him.

Frightened? Disgusted. Horrified. Sickened. To speak so casually of violence, to stare it down with such callousness…

You massacred the crew of the Razrushhost. You killed everyone in the Cathouse. And you murdered Mikhail Orlov.

How many people had Kaz killed in the last week alone? How many people had he killed while Jordie was in the city? How many times had Jordie thought of his brother, at the very moment his brother was murdering someone else?

Nausea rushed through him. When had been the first? How old had Kaz been, the first time? What had Jordie been doing?

Had he ruined a life, abandoned his brother, and unleashed a monster, all in one move?

His head spun. It was all too much to take in. They might all die here, tonight. Had Ketterdam come to collect Jordie’s debt? Were Kaz’s sins finally catching up with him? Was this city going to swallow them both whole?

Suddenly the talking was over, and everything was happening all at once. Wylan threw something at the ground in a shower of sparks, white smoke hissing into the street, snaking up to hang thick and heavy like fog over fields, catching in Jordie’s throat as he tried to breathe. Jesper vaulted over the table, one moment unarmed, the next brandishing a gun seemingly from nowhere; he let off a peppering of shots into the smoke. Hakala ran at them with a shout, flanked by the others; Jordie caught a glimpse of Kaz hefting his cane into his hand before he stalked forwards to meet them and was enveloped by the smoke.

They were professionals. They had all acted with an ease born of experience, a confidence born of skill, and Jordie’s scattered, frightened mind couldn’t quite comprehend the fact that, only moments before, they had been talking and laughing over dinner as if it was nothing. They had all seemed so normal. Wylan had been fixing his piano. Jesper read to him over breakfast. How could they be so used to this?

It was too dark to see, the whiteness of the smoke obscuring everywhere Jordie tried to look, tendrils drifting out to cover more and more area, creeping around him until the only certainty he had was the wall at his back, the knowledge if not the view of the window at his side. He heard rather than saw the fight, the fog roiling with movement and struggle — a shout, a gunshot, a cry cut off by the wet crack of bone — brief flashes of light sometimes illuminating the white haze, but direction lost all meaning in the mist, everything was everywhere and nowhere, all at once, and it was all Jordie could do to hang onto his hiding place and hope, pray it would all be over soon.

Be smart, don’t get lost.

Oh, Kaatje. He had been lost for some time now.

He’d been in fights. He’d always had more pride than sense, and it’d walked him into his fair share of brawls. But they’d been stupid arguments — a few punches, nothing more. This was cold, calculated, steely. Murderous.

He couldn’t tell who was winning the fight.

He couldn’t just sit here and wait to be found.

He couldn’t just sit here and wait to see his brother atop a pile of corpses.

He had to— he had to get out, he had to go, he couldn’t stay here. He’d fight his way out if he had to. But— Ghezen, he just wanted to go home. He wanted to see his wife. He missed his brother, but whoever that was, out there in the street— Jordie’s little brother was gone.

He rose from his hiding place, peering out into the smoke. It hung thickly in the air, shifting with the movement of indistinct shapes. Jordie didn’t want to think about the sounds he was hearing.

He ran.

Out the window, through the smoke, flinching backwards as shapes rose up out of the mist, no way to tell the difference between friend and foe — no way to tell, even if he could see them — he ran, down the street, away from that house, away from those people — they could be killing him — he ran — he could be killing them — he ran.

Kaz didn’t need his help. That person didn’t need anyone’s help. Least of all Jordie’s.

He’d done this.

He ran.

Out of the smoke, the streets were dark; sprinting away, his heart hammering in his throat, Jordie almost didn’t notice the canal until it was too late; he caught himself at the last moment, stopping by the waterside, looking out over the dark ripples to the opposite bank beyond.

It was a dead end. He didn’t know this city. He didn’t know its streets, or its customs, or its way of life; he didn’t know how to survive, he wasn’t used to the cruelty that seemed so commonplace here, he was still just a fool from the country, a farmer with no idea how the world worked, with nothing but naive hopes — hopes for a life, for a brother, for a reunion, for it all to mean something, for it all to be worth something.

He should never have left his home. He should never have come here.

‘Don’t move.’

The world spun; Jordie turned in the direction of the voice.

Hakala.

A gun levelled at his chest. The canal at his back.

Jordie swallowed, raised his hands slowly.

‘Are you the one who killed my snipers?’ Hakala spat. He didn't know where she'd come from, when she'd left the fight.

Jordie shook his head mutely.

Hakala stepped into him, pressing the gun into his side. ‘But you’re important to him. You were at his dinner, after all.’

Important?

Maybe, once. But what could it mean to be important to someone like that?

He could never have it, he realised. What he'd wanted. Kaz would never come back to the farm with him. They'd never sit up on the porch, reminiscing. They'd never visit their parents graves together. They'd never embrace, they'd never sit side by side and talk of their lives, they'd never get to know one another again. The Kaz he'd known was still dead. The life they should've had as brothers was still gone. Nothing he'd found here could change that.

‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ Jordie said, a strange, sad kind of calm coming over him.

Hakala blinked in surprise, and then her face hardened. ‘What would you know about it?’

‘I know what it’s like.’

‘Everyone’s lost someone. That doesn’t make you special.’

‘I know,’ he said simply. 

Hakala looked at him like he was tricking her. ‘Is he going to care? If I kill you?’

Would he?

‘I don’t know,’ Jordie said. It was the truth.

She gave him a long look, her eyes glinting in the moonlight. She looked like Kaz, Jordie realised, his heart contracting. Maybe it was this city. Maybe it sharpened everyone who stayed here too long. Maybe it cut all their goodness away, piece by piece. Maybe it tore them to shreds, leaving only what was too stony, too angry to be ripped away. Maybe it starved them out, maybe it broke them in two, maybe it kicked them down. Maybe it did all those things.

‘Let’s find out,’ she said. And then everything went black.

Chapter Text

The smoke protected him from the initial burst of gunfire from the Liddy firing squad, and that was all he needed. He closed the distance to them easily, disarming the first man he came across with a crunch of bone. The man shrieked in pain, clutching his ruined arm, eyes wide with horror; Kaz hefted his cane and tried not to think about where last he’d seen that expression.

He didn’t hesitate, but his thoughts were just enough of a distraction to be dangerous all the same. A heavy blow across his shoulders sent him stumbling; he turned to his attacker just in time to catch a spray of blood as a bullet entered the man’s cheek. Jesper.

He’d missed this. Not the fight itself — there had always been plenty of those, with or without the Crows. And the Dregs were well capable of handling themselves; they hadn’t even been down the bodies for long, always new blood in the Barrel to swell their ranks, hopefuls and desperates alike.

But the rhythm was different. Like a city he wasn’t used to, or a cane weighted wrong. It felt good to find himself on familiar streets once more.

The man with the broken arm attempted to struggle, but he was no match for Kaz even with both his hands. Kaz dispatched him easily, and moved on to the next.

Let Jordie see. If he wanted to know Kaz so badly, let him see the truth. This would tell him more than any polite, strangled conversation over dinner ever would.

It was a dark night for dark deeds, and Dirtyhands answered the call.

Kaz had learned, through years of experience, that most dealings with the other gangs walking Ketterdam’s streets fell into one of two situations. Either it was a time when he could dine out on his reputation, when he didn’t need to do the terrible things he threatened because they would believe him and they would fear him even if he lied. He preferred those times, if only because he appreciated their efficiency.

The other times were those when his reputation demanded to be fed. When it demanded blood. And Kaz was more than happy to oblige.

That was the thing with survival in this city, he thought as he crushed a woman’s windpipe beneath his boot. It wasn’t enough to just claw and bite your way through the minute-to-minute, fighting off each attack as it came — although, of course, you had to do that too. But you also had to look ahead. You had to demand that people take notice. You had to protect yourself by becoming something more, something frightening, something dangerous.

Kaz was a good fighter, and he had the strength of the Dregs behind him, but it was that understanding that had driven him so far so fast. It was his reputation that had let him stand alone on the stairs of the Slat and demand the loyalty of a gang that had already betrayed him. It was his reputation that shielded him from the worst of the mockery, from idle touches, and, yes, from friendship too. And if he wanted that power, that protection, then he had to listen when it demanded upkeep to be maintained.

The fight didn’t last long. Hakala’s men were Liddies, but Kaz was Barrel born, and his Crows knew how to end a fight quickly. The smoke had barely started to drift on the breeze before the street quietened, bodies stilling on the ground.

‘It’s done.’ Inej’s voice came from behind him. She had landed on soundless feet, but he’d felt her presence. As he always did. The weight of her gaze at the nape of his neck, the flicker of shadow within shadow at the edge of his vision. Sometimes it felt like he was more compass than man.

Sometimes he resented that pull. Sometimes it was the only thing keeping him afloat.

Now, he nodded curtly, still surveying the area. The bodies. Wylan leaning against the wall of his house, catching his breath. Jesper bright with his usual post-battle glow. How had he been surprised Kaz knew he was Grisha, when he looked like that after a fight?

‘Hakala’s gone,’ Inej said, catching his gaze. Kaz nodded; she wasn’t among the bodies. No matter. She had never been his true target; just a means to an end. Besides, when her boss discovered her failure, after everything she’d risked with this attack, he would deal with her himself.

He turned back to the others, picking their way through the gash in the wall where once a window had been. ‘We need to talk about the Merchant Council.’ All business. A safer topic.

‘Do you like what you do?’ ‘I’m good at it.’

Wylan shot him a look. ‘Not now, Kaz.’

He wasn’t going to get out of it that easily. ‘Someone just tried to have you killed. Do you want to give them time to try again?’

The noise Wylan let out was almost inhuman with frustration, rounding on him with a flash of anger. ‘No, Kaz, they tried to kill you, and you dragged all of us into it! Without even— My mother is upstairs!’

‘Your mother was never in any danger.’

‘You don’t know that!’

Kaz flicked blood from the end of his cane, sending splatters across the cobblestones. ‘I do. She was moved to safety before any of this began.’

Wylan stilled in shock. ‘You knew this was going to happen?’

‘Not for certain.’ Kaz folded his hands over the head of his cane and fixed Wylan with a look. He was telling the truth; it was caution, not foreknowledge, that had prompted him to have Marya protected. But he wouldn’t have survived this long if he didn’t know how to prepare for the worst. ‘If I could have made it another way, it would not have been tonight.’ The evening had already been plenty complicated enough.

But tonight or no, it had to be here. He’d known that from the start.

‘Anika is with your mother,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘I have a… project underway. It will allow safe movement around the city. No one knows about it; there is nowhere in Ketterdam your mother would have been better protected.’ Wylan’s expression remained unconvinced. ‘They should be returning soon.’

‘Why didn’t you warn us? Why did you bring them here?’ The fear was starting to ebb away from Wylan’s voice, leaving behind only anger.

Kaz could match that. His patience was running thin. ‘I didn’t invite them,’ he said shortly. ‘You’ve been out of the Barrel too long if you’ve forgotten what it’s like.’

Wylan scoffed. ‘Excuse me if I didn’t think having a dinner guest would mean getting shot at.’

Was Wylan deliberately trying to frustrate him? ‘You know who I am.’ His voice was nearly a growl. ‘Half the city wants me dead. Don’t have me as a guest if you aren’t ready for what that might mean.’

‘Half the city,’ Wylan pressed, and Kaz flexed his fingers on his cane to keep from doing something he’d regret later. ‘Not here. We’re meant to be safe here. And you need to tell us if that’s not true!’

Wylan wasn’t wrong; he should have been safe here. But he should also have known better than to keep poking, should have read the warning signs. Little merchling, never knowing when to back down. Too much faith in Kaz’s self-control or too little fear of his lack of it; whichever it was, it grated on Kaz like nothing else. Until tonight, of course — Jordie had done the exact same thing.

Was it naivety that drove it? Were they simply too used to the soft life, to kind folk, to the world treating them gently? Both had gone through experiences that ought to have shaken that kind of foolishness out of them, but then, maybe those had only been a taste, a sip. Maybe you needed to be mired in it, soaked through to the skin, sloshing in your boots. Maybe Wylan and Jordie both had simply changed into dry clothes the moment they left the Barrel; maybe they didn’t see that Kaz’s coat was still sodden, lying heavy and clammy across his shoulders, trailing water with every step.

Words burned their way up his throat, but a noise behind him stopped them from escaping. Someone was there; he turned to see Roeder inelegantly dropping from a ledge, picking his way through the bodies to Kaz’s side. The sight did nothing to sweeten Kaz’s mood.

‘Why are you here?’ he snapped. He had given Roeder clear instructions; was the boy incapable of doing anything he was asked?

Roeder shifted uneasily under Kaz’s gaze. ‘Followed ’em back both ways, boss. But, uh — crossed paths with the others on the way, and… Looked like they was shifting a body, but not into the canal, back to their place. It’s that pigeon, the out-of-towner. The Liddies have him.’

Chapter Text

The Liddies have him.

Wylan hated feeling helpless. He hated feeling powerless, feeling unimportant, unable to help himself or others or really do much of anything beyond argue after the fact. He hadn’t known Kaz and the Liddies were going at each other; he knew almost nothing about the Liddies, and not much more about Kaz these days. He hadn’t known they were in danger tonight, hadn’t been told or prepared; his own mother had been taken from his house from under his nose, and he hadn’t known; Kaz had been the one to prepare Wylan’s bombs satchel, because why would Wylan have thought he’d need it; Kaz who had brought gunfire and death to Wylan’s home without so much as a comment; Kaz who had put them all in danger, put Wylan’s mother in danger, put Jordie in danger even now—

It reminded him of the deck of a ship, pitching in the Fjerdan sea, and a one-eyed man screaming for a demjin to stop.

He shuddered. The adrenaline from the fight was wearing off, leaving him miserable and cold.

Poor Jordie. He didn’t deserve to be mixed up in any of this.

Kaz was talking to Roeder, gripping his cane with force enough to snap it in two had it not been fabrikator made. The expression on his face was as dark as his coat.

He’d always been tight-lipped when it came to his business, but they hadn’t broken into a Fjerdan fortress blind. Kaz had always shared the details they needed to know. Always. And standing in a street filled with shattered glass from his home — a home he never thought he’d have, a life he never thought he’d get, that he’d worked so hard to make his own, to rescue from the shadow of his father — the fact that all of this was at risk, could be attacked at any moment… That felt like something Wylan had needed to know.

Even if he could sometimes be cruel about who he did and didn’t show his hand to. He’d cut Jesper out of his trust; was it Wylan’s turn too?

And if Kaz couldn’t trust Wylan, how could Wylan trust him? Around his home, his family?

‘You know who I am. Don’t have me as a guest if you aren’t ready for what that might mean.’

He thought he’d left all that behind when he left the Barrel, when Jesper came with him, when they started their new life together. The fight or flight, the endless readiness for violence, the exhausting, never-ending danger.

But then, he’d left everything behind but Kaz. And Kaz was the most dangerous thing in Ketterdam — to his enemies, and, it seemed, his friends.

***

They took Kaz’s new tunnel, from the Geldin District to the Crow Club. Another thing Wylan hadn’t known about. He didn't know if he wanted to think about why Kaz was having it built.

Kaz stalked ahead of them, the only sound he made the click of his cane on stone. Casting strange shadows in the half light of the lanterns, dark shapes thrown against the tunnel walls, dancing over their uneven surface.

Wylan felt Jesper’s hand slip into his beside him, a gentle squeeze.

‘Thanks.’

Jesper gave him a smile. ‘How’s your ma?’

‘Can I come home?’ she’d asked him, the first thing she’d said when Anika returned her. And the second: ‘I thought I was being sent away somewhere again.’

It had taken him some time after that to reassure her. And himself.

‘She’ll be okay.’ She was a little shaken — it had been more of a shock to her wits than anything — but she had managed to collect herself enough to understand his explanation well enough. What explanation he could give; he still knew almost nothing about what was going on.

He hadn’t wanted to leave her alone again, not at night with a gaping hole in the front of their house and Liddies out for blood. But Inej had guided his eyeline to the rooftops, to the dark figures crouched at the ready. It wouldn’t have been his first choice, but the Dregs had apparently watched out for him at Kaz’s command once before; he trusted them to do the same for his mother.

He had less faith that they wouldn’t try to rob the place, but at least when he left two of them had been trying to pin a sheet over the shattered window. Any missing silverware could be replaced.

Besides. Part of him was afraid what would happen if he wasn’t here.

He knew he couldn’t stop Kaz from doing something he wanted to do, no matter how terrible, no matter how angry or upset Wylan got. But he also knew the other two wouldn’t even try to stop him. They might feel every bit as uncomfortable as Wylan, but they would always let it play itself out. And by then it would be too late. Jordie shouldn’t have to see that.

***

‘Hakala will be hiding here,’ Kaz said, motioning to an area of the map. They’d settled in one of the private parlours at the Crow Club, all mahogany and blacked-out windows — and, apparently, a safe full of supplies secreted behind a false panel in the wall, including a map of Ketterdam in ink and pencil.

‘How do you know?’ Jesper asked.

‘The building belonged to her brother,’ Kaz replied, his speech clipped and businesslike. ‘It’s not a Liddy asset.’

‘How do you know she wouldn’t go to her gang’s turf?’ Wylan had never fully understood Barrel politics but even he knew enough about gang loyalty to realise this was an odd assumption.

Kaz didn’t look at him. ‘She’s gone rogue,’ he said flatly. ‘This was where she was planning to take me, if tonight’s attack had gone smoothly.’

The room digested the implications of that statement in silence.

‘I thought she just wanted to shoot you,’ Jesper said after a beat. He aimed for levity, Ghezen bless him, but fell just a little short of the mark.

Wylan swallowed around the lump in his throat. Kaz had come to dinner with this hanging over his head. And told no one. Did he really trust them so little? Or were threats to his life so commonplace he didn’t feel the need to mention them? Wylan knew Kaz better than to think this was the only scheme he was wrapped up in at the moment, but he really had assumed Kaz was... safer. Than all this.

‘We could have been better prepared,’ he said. ‘If we’d known.’ Even he could hear the frustration colouring his voice.

‘Yes,’ Kaz agreed, and there was a savage edge to his tone. ‘If you’ve really forgotten what this city is like so quickly, I’ll be sure to hold your hand through it next time.’

‘Kaz.’ Inej spoke quietly, but the effect was magnetic; Kaz both drawn to and repelled from her all at once, his gaze snapping to her as soon as she began to speak, sliding away just as quickly, his jaw tight with control.

Then— he sighed.

‘What’s the plan?’ Inej asked, her voice at once both firm and gentle.

For the briefest of moments, Kaz looked exhausted, cracks snaking their way up his perfect facade. ‘Jordie.’

‘Tell us what you need,’ Wylan said, Jesper nodding alongside him. ‘But Kaz — we need to know what we’re getting into, this time.’

Kaz met his gaze. ‘Fine.’