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Kaz Brekker was a patient man. He understood the unfortunate reality that some things simply took time, so he was more than content to sit and wait for a perfect opportunity. Better to wait a decade than rush in and lay down your cards before you even had an inkling of what your opponent was holding. So he waited. Made some investments, some inquiries, some acquisitions. Waited some more.
And now, he was finally ready. After tonight, everything would be different. After tonight, Kaz would finally win .
“That’s your scheming face,” a voice murmured, interrupting the turning gears of his mind.
Kaz looked up to find Inej looking directly at him, her brows furrowed either in concern or exasperation, he could never quite tell with her. Her arms were crossed over her chest as she lounged on the windowsill. There weren’t any lights in the room they were currently holed up in, but the bright lights from the unsleeping city on the other side of the window made her luminous skin glow as if she’d been blessed by her saints. Kaz swallowed and focused again on the disassembled gun on the table in front of him. He forced his hands through the familiar motions of putting the weapon back together.
Silence fell between them again, occasionally punctuated by faint sirens and the ambient noise of a city not yet gone to bed. This high up, it was easy to pretend the troubles of Ketterdam didn’t exist.
But the ghosts of the past were never far behind, not as long as certain demons still lived.
“Are you ready?” he asked. He finished reassembling the gun and set it down on the table.
“You know me,” she said as she played with the end of her braid. “I’ll do it whether I’m ready or not.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Inej went quiet, a pensive look on her face. Then she sighed, a hundred unspoken frustrations behind it. Kaz thought their relationship would be much less complicated if she just told him what was wrong instead of resorting to her proverbs all the time. He leaned back in his chair, waiting for another cryptic Suli saying.
“This job isn’t going to give you what you think it will.”
Kaz laughed, the sound harsh to his own ears. Inej always thought she knew better. It was a shame she was usually right. “Money? I think this job will give me plenty of it. Thirty million kruge, to be exact.”
“We both know that’s not what I mean.” She leaned forward, the end of her braid brushing against the steel surface of the table. Kaz swallowed and tried not to move back. Her bare fingers brushed the lapels of his jacket, light enough he could have been imagining it.
“You talk of the future,” she continued, her voice solemn, “but your heart won’t let go of the past.”
Kaz stilled. They had an unspoken understanding between them to not talk about certain topics. The scar on the inside of Inej’s forearm. His aversion to touch. Jordie .
“I have no past,” he said, his hands clenched into fists below the table. “I came from nowhere. From no one. I built myself from the rubble.”
And he had. When he had nothing, he stole. When stealing wasn’t enough, he killed. He had pulled himself up from the slums of Ketterdam to become one of the most notorious gang leaders, and he didn’t do it by having a heart. Kaz Rietveld’s heart had long drowned in the canals along with his brother. Inej was seeing a ghost of what had been and what never would be again.
But she only swung her legs off the windowsill until she faced him completely and leaned closer. He could feel her breath against his lips. His muscles clenched, every voice in his mind screaming at him to move back. To run. But he could only watch as slowly, she let her palm rest against his still beating heart. His breathing turned ragged. The water he could feel rising around his legs was as cold as a harbor in winter, but all he could feel from Inej was...warmth.
“Armor,” Inej said quietly. Her gaze rose to meet his, and he clung to it like a lifeline. “It’s all armor.”
He tried to focus on her eyes and not the sensation of a dozen dead hands pulling at his limbs. It was Inej, not some faceless corpse. Not Jordie. She looked at him with a hope in her eyes that reminded him of his first days in Ketterdam, that perhaps there was good somewhere within a festering core of bad.
Inej was wrong for once.
He took a deep breath to steady himself, then forced a laugh. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Armor is what keeps you from getting a knife in the back. Armor is what keeps you from bleeding out in an alley somewhere like a stupid skiv.”
Armor was what differentiated him from that stupid boy he had been.
He pushed the chair back and breathed a silent sigh of relief as Inej’s hand fell away. The water receded. But Inej was scowling at him again like he’d done something wrong.
A bell tolled from outside. Midnight was nearing, which meant the window they had to pull off the job was about to open. Kaz shook the events of the last few minutes from his mind as he grabbed his gun from the table and shoved it into his jacket.
“Don’t miss,” he told her as he turned for the door. If anything, her scowl deepened.
“I never miss. Keep talking and you’ll be the one with the bullet through the head instead of Pekka.”
“But think about how much you would miss me.”
“The only person in this city who would miss you is the undertaker.”
The door slammed behind him, leaving him alone in the dark hallway. Kaz shrugged and began walking towards the stairs. The clacks of his cane against the concrete echoed down the hall.
In an hour, Pekka would be dead. In an hour, he’d be free.
He thought about the streets of Ketterdam that would soon belong to him. Kings and queens, Inej. Kings and queens .