Chapter Text
Jordie was in the sea again.
Neck deep and drowning.
A thick blanket of fog was draped over the blue water, growing paler as the night lifted. It was so cold, she couldn’t feel her legs and her limbs seemed to have frozen, now heavy as lead. Aches had settled in her bones and joints, shivers wracking her small body. Her cheeks were chapped with the frigid chill, the salty spray dripping down her oil—black lashes.
The ship was no longer in sight.
Her mother had disappeared into the mist.
When dawn came, Jordie’s tired eyes looked up to find herself at the east end of the Lid. The harbor was nearly deserted, apart from a singular stark figure that cut through the smog.
These last hundred yards would be hard. The tide had turned once more, and it was working against her. She tried to push and swim and stay afloat, but she wasn’t strong enough to fight it. The water had turned rough and the white caps were beginning to rise.
She was just so small, and she was already drifting back out to sea.
The cold water pressed at her chest, at her mouth, demanding that she part her lips. She tried to cry out, to call out to the figure on the dock as loud as she could, but salt water rushed into her mouth and drowned out her voice. She sank. The ache in her lungs was unbearable. Her vision was bleeding black.
Jordie closed her eyes and waited to die.
—
The countryside of Kerch was lovely this time of year.
Jordie walked barefoot and rooted herself to the earth, rather than the sea. Just to remind herself that she wasn’t drowning. It helped.
She was a strange sight to behold, no shoes, hair free, face turned to the sky, but she didn’t have to worry about anyone judging her out here. The Rietveld farm was the only one for miles, four hundred acres of green hills, blue canals, barley, corn, and wheat fields and one small pear orchard.
It was home.
Jordie lived there with her father for a little over ten years now. He made a small fortune as a businessman in Ketterdam before meeting her mother who acted as a small—time merchandise trader on the True Sea. They met, fell in love, and then Jordie happened. After that, the story as they told it to any inquiring minds went as follows: her mother passed away, her father took their small daughter and their small funds, and they moved to the old family farm. Though Jordie knew it was more complicated than that.
Truth was a fickle business, and no one ever knew the full story.
The sky was a fresh morning blue with streaky clouds hovering in the distance. There was no chance of rain today which would be a relief for her da’s leg. When she was very small, she used to think he was Grisha as he always seemed able to predict the weather to the point where he made it come true. Really, it was just because of the aches in his joints he had ever since a farming accident left him with a limp when he was young.
Always looking for magic when there’s none to be found, Rietveld.
Her barefeet crunched through the long green grass of their property, the sight of the house coming into view. Two—storied and beautiful, with white shutters and great wooden doors that were precluded by a wide wraparound porch. She passed the barn, the pair of horses in their paddocks and the few vicious geese that lurked.
One of the lads was mucking out the stalls, but he looked up when she made herself visible. The Zemeni farmhand was only a bit shorter than herself, brown—skinned, and had a smile that sparkled. He took a pause in his work, giving her that sparkling smile when she passed.
Jordie felt a blush creep up her neck and then strode faster towards the house.
No harm done. No harm in friendly smiles, she tried hard to reassure herself, but… still.
People were unpredictable, and Jordie didn’t like unpredictable things.
She was far too unpredictable herself.
Most farmhands were out in the east field today, clearing the land for the upcoming planting season. Her da oversaw everything that went on at the farm, though he hardly ever ventured into the fields himself and often forbade Jordie from doing so at all. He was always touchy around the ploughs, and even worse when his daughter was close.
In any case, she didn’t often see the people who tended to their property. They stayed as far from the main house as possible, though she was out earlier than usual which could explain why they were crossing paths.
Jordie had always been an early riser, like her da, but sometimes even she beat him out of the house in the mornings. Sometimes she couldn’t sleep, and she liked to see the sun rise over the wide plains that separated the farm from the canals that led out to the sea. Kerch was infinitely flat and she felt she could see all the way to the True Sea if she just looked hard enough.
The thought filled her with ice cold dread as much as it did with longing.
A heavy presence settled on her chest, or rather the absence of it. Even more than ten years later, she still felt the loss of her mother keenly. She remembered those earliest days of being nearly one with her parents. Of existing in their orbit, in their perfect gravity that ensured safety.
In her first home, Jordie did not have her own bed. There was no need.
Her mother had no concept of privacy between parents and children, and her father had very little memory of what a childhood looked like. She remembered laying in a pile on the big bed, each on top of the other, entangled and as one. On his bad days, her father would push himself against the wall and her mother would pull Jordie onto herself. But these days were never often, and neither of her parents were ever far away. Always within reach.
Then her mother died. They moved to the farm. Jordie got her own bed and her own room to match.
The double doors were her entry point for her da’s sake, but they were not her exit. Most often, she found herself climbing down the trellis from her bedroom before running off on whatever adventure awaited. It was pretty much a habit at this point, and good practice besides. Her da had long ago acquired a high wire and swings, ensured she learned to juggle, to tumble. It always seemed very important to him; Jordie never dared to refuse.
The top stair of the porch creaked and the door squeaked closed, the warning system of someone’s arrival.
The doorway had lines carved into it, alongside small charcoal writing. They had marked her height on this door frame every year, from six to sixteen. A whole decade’s worth of leaps and bounds of gap—teeth, nightmares, and small barefeet racing across the floor as a man with a limp tried to keep up.
Her fingers trailed along the walls of the farmhouse, humming some nonsensical tune under her breath. Her voice echoed a little, in the wide open spaces. There were too many rooms in this house, and most of them were empty.
The warm scent of food drew her into the kitchen.
This room, too, was empty.
A kettle of coffee spiced with caraway seeds had been left on the stove, along with a pot of hutspot. Jordie smiled to herself. It was made with the smoked sausage she liked. Her da must have ordered some from town for her. While she did prefer waffles with apple syrup, he had much less of a sweet—tooth than she did. The new housekeeper was clearly catering to him, determined to keep her job. Not many of the house staff were ever kept around for long.
It felt as if every time the staff got comfortable, her da sent them on their way.
Jordie was used to not getting attached.
If there was anything her da taught her, it was that.
No one would ever call him friendly, much less hospitable. He was a bit of an isolationist, and he didn’t take kindly to strangers or visitors. He met with fellow farmers only to discuss changing crop prices and talked to passing traders about business or news from abroad. He tolerated whatever friends Jordie might have with moderate success and watched her engage the neighbors with mild disinterest.
Kaz Rietveld was in his office, as he most often was.
Pacing in the mornings. At his desk in the evenings. Her father never seemed to sleep. Jordie took it upon herself to take care of him where she could. Saints knew he did enough of that in return. She lifted onto her toes and crept cautiously through the house, sneaking towards the open door down the hall. She held her breath and balanced a tray of food in her hands, avoiding all the boards she knew would squeak.
It was a bit of a game they played, ever since she could remember.
The office had been added to the farmhouse only in recent years so the rafters were still visible and the exterior wall didn’t fully reach the ceiling. She silently set down the tray outside the door and then made a light jump towards the top of the wall. Her hands hooked over the ledge and she pulled herself swiftly to the top. She slipped easily onto the ridge, secure in the knowledge that she was invisible as she balanced across the rafters.
Below, her father was working.
As always.
Jordie knew that running a farm took a lot of work, but it often seemed far more than was strictly appropriate. The room was mostly taken up by his desk piled high with papers. Newspapers from Ketterdam to Os Alta. Pens and ink blotters along with a few stacks of leather bound books. A decanter on the side table. The office had two wide windows that showed both the front and back of their property, which she supposed was on purpose. He liked to keep an eye on things.
She slid to a steady halt, drew in a long silent breath, and prepared to pounce from above.
“Hello Jordan.”
The air sagged out of her lungs and she dropped from the rafters, landing beside his desk. Kaz kept up his scribbling, but there was a definite upturn at the corners of his thin mouth. She had always been looking for that hint of a smile, searching for a bit of happiness where there really might be none.
“Da…” Jordie groaned dramatically, “I didn’t even make a sound!”
“And yet.”
She had been trying to sneak up on Kaz her entire childhood. She hadn’t managed it. Yet. Her da had made certain she would be invisible to most, but never to him. The same conflict stirred in her chest; longing and dread that, one day, she might disappear from everyone entirely.
Jordie noticed that he subtly swept a few of his papers out of view the closer she approached. Most wouldn’t have been able to notice, but Jordie had a keen eye and Kaz always taught her to pay attention to small details.
Business dealings from back north, she guessed but didn’t bother to ask. He never discussed it with her and she never wondered… until now. Whatever he was up to, he didn’t want her to know about it. Strange.
Jordie moved on.
The girl huffed good—naturedly, slunk back into the hall, and returned to deliver the tray. He murmured his thanks as he flipped through the previous month’s figures. Each sheet would go into his memory with barely a glance.
When she was very little, Jordie used to help Kaz. She would sit on his desk, legs all folded up, and help him count their earned kruge one paper and coin at a time. Although he kept books for the sake of potential traders and nearby farmers, her da did most of the tallies in his head. It used to infuriate her when she was unable to keep up with him. She would hop around like a rabbit, squeaky and indignant as anything. He would simply smile (as best he could smile) and tell her mock—threateningly to get back to work.
“Da?”
“Mm?”
“Cup of coffee…?” She peered at him, and then at the papers he had tucked away, “Or something stronger?”
His brow rose, and as usual, they tended to say more than his mouth did, “At eight in the morning?”
She eased into the chair in front of his desk and cupped her chin in her hand, “Depends on the sort of morning you’re having.”
His smirk matched her own, “No. Thank you. Coffee will do.”
“Suit yourself.”
She reached for the decanter of whiskey, mostly teasing, slightly to see if she could get away with it. Kaz’s arched brow didn’t shift, it was simply joined by a sharp warning in his eyes.
“Coffee will suit both of us.”
She could not get away with it. Jordie sighed but poured two cups of coffee, curling up and wrapping both hands around her mug. They could sit in comfortable silence like this for hours; him working, her reading or counting or tinkering or humming or anything really.
There was an open letter on the edge of the desk. Reading upside down, Jordie could see that it had ‘J. Fahey’ scribbled onto the signature line. He was one of her uncles, living further up north with her other uncle. She knew she had an aunt somewhere as well. They were family, though not related by blood. They didn’t have any blood relatives, that Jordie knew of anyway. Her da received letters from them every once in a while, along with presents for her birthday, when the mail boats managed to find them and deliver their packages over the canals.
She hadn’t seen any of them in years. She barely recalled their faces now.
Jordie realized Kaz was studying her, and lifted her gaze to his. He noted the dark shadows beneath her eyes, the slight furrow to her brow, the sudden rigid set to her shoulders. Sunlight slanted through the windows, turning his eyes the color of diluted coffee.
“You were out early. Did you have the dream again?”
This was the other reason she was an early riser.
Jordie flinched and forced herself to look away.
Her gaze caught on the world map that hung on the wall behind Kaz’s desk, just over his shoulder. It wasn’t one of those cheap whimsical souvenirs, the kind tourists might purchase in Ketterdam, but a detailed sort of thing with waterways and currents and details most sailors couldn’t even dream of.
Of the mass of horrors she had already endured in her short life, one of the hardest to survive was the brutal separation from her mother. Jordie felt protective of the child she had been. Tender and wide—eyed. The way she had been; innocent and sweet. Whole. But that little girl drowned in the True Sea. The person who came out was someone entirely different.
Her eyes strayed and her hand massaged the side of her face, fingers lightly trailing the scar that curved from her mouth up her cheek to the side of her forehead. It was paler than the rest of her bronze skin, pearled and unnaturally smooth. Her fingers continued sliding, slipping into her hair and clutching the locks in a tight fist.
Kaz hated it when she did that. She couldn’t help it.
Her nonanswer was answer enough.
“We all have scars, Jordan. Only some exist on the outside.”
She was scarred inside, too. She was torn up, a bloody mess. Her heart was so fragile and breakable. Her mind was a disaster. She couldn’t sleep for days on end. She felt her mother, always. She heard her. Sensed her. Whispers on the street. Shadows in the corner. Prickles on the back of her neck. Sometimes she saw things that weren’t there. She heard voices, too, when things were very bad, when the memories pressed in.
Everyone has ghosts, Jordan, Kaz used to say, Yours are simply a bit more visible than others.
“It’s over. There’s no need to be afraid now. There is only what is.”
He was right, of course, he usually was. The past couldn’t touch her anymore. Not safe away in her home, not when she was rooted to the earth, not when he was there to remind her.
Kaz leaned back, his gaze dismantling her slowly, “What do you remember?”
He asked her this every time she had the dream. He wanted to wring details from her, scrape together a clear picture. It was such a shame that Jordie would never be able to provide it.
“I—I remember…” She was slipping again, drifting into the waves of her memories. “I remember the ship. It was on fire, everything was on fire. So much screaming. There was someone… Then I was in the water. I was trying to get to the harbor. I saw you, but the ship…” She remembered to breathe, gasping in a shaky breath, “I drowned.”
It was no more a full account than it had been the first few days after it happened. Over a decade later, she still had no answers for him. She hoped he wouldn’t hate her for it.
Kaz’s face became a complicated mosaic of quick emotions. A twinge of pain, a pang of guilt, a flicker of a ghost. Then it was gone, back into a smooth mask. Jordie couldn’t bear to see it. He was haunted by her mother, by the memories, by the unknown. He wasn’t the same after that night. Then again, who was?
As Kaz nodded a bit to himself, his daughter pushed herself to her feet and made for the door.
“Jordan.”
She stopped on the threshold, feeling somewhat outside of herself, glancing back. Her father sat rigid, face inscrutable as ever, a skant attempt to make her feel better.
“It was just a dream.”
Jordie smiled. She nodded. But as she walked away, she knew the truth:
No. It wasn’t.
—
Kaz was dreaming again. Dreaming of her.
In all his dreams, he saw Inej, so real he could almost reach out and touch her, touch the future they had imagined. Small feet running on wood floors, sunlight burning his fair skin, that laugh — Inej’s laugh he could get drunk on — filling the house. On the farm near Lij, with green fields and pear trees, the house they were going to raise Jordan in.
Kaz just never imagined he would be doing it alone.
Is this what you wanted?
It was Inej’s voice, but he asked himself this question all the time, now.
Staring at the ceiling in the dark, reading reports half an island away, watching Jordan grow, laying in a bed all alone. It was, and it wasn’t. They used to talk about this, always in the hypothetical, over kvas and whiskey, getting away from it all, leaving Dirtyhands and the Wraith in the past to settle in the countryside somewhere.
The hypothetical seemed more realistic when Jordan came into the picture.
But they had never truly meant it, had they?
Inej belonged on the open waters, and she had a mission to take down every slaver she could hunt on the high seas. Her heart was an arrow and it pointed towards finding others the freedom she found for herself. Kaz had worked so hard, gotten so much rough work done, to become the King of the Barrel. He had taken down Pekka, brought down the pleasure houses, dragged the Dregs to the top, and ruled the Barrel with an iron fist.
They couldn’t give it up.
Kaz wondered now what would have been if he hadn’t been such a power hungry b—stard, greedy and selfish, unable to give up his crown.
But he’d left it behind now, hadn’t he? At least in part.
Rumors were left in his absence, festering, growing.
The Bastard King of the Barrel who disappeared. Perhaps he died a gruesome death and was alive only in nightmares. Or perhaps he still lurked in the shadows, a recluse beneath the city, pulling the strings of politicians and mob bosses alike. Perhaps he was hunting his enemies across the seas, perhaps he was biding his time. Perhaps he was driven mad with the loss of his Wraith, or perhaps they had disappeared together on purpose.
He managed the Barrel from a distance. Anika was doing well as his second, reporting to him on the rival gangs and club business. Wylan and Jesper had kept up their work on the Merchant Council, spying on those who needed to be held accountable and dealing under the table to ensure justice was served.
He was still pulling the strings.
He was still managing what he could.
It wasn’t the same.
He wasn’t there for the day to day business. He didn’t have the same sense of the city. He didn’t feel born from it, like he once had. It wasn’t that he missed it, exactly. Sometimes he just… craved it. He had always thought distantly that one day he would return. Back to Ketterdam. Back to Dirtyhands. When Jordan was old enough, when she was ready to see what he built.
A kingdom. A reputation.
Greying at his edges, wrinkles around his eyes, lines around his mouth. Kaz felt the years weighing upon him, exhausted and weary. Rapidly approaching forty, he felt double that. Then again, he’d felt fully grown at seventeen. H—ll, he felt like a man at fourteen.
Out of the water, young Kaz Brekker was reborn, vile and cruel, and he would die that way, too.
He had never imagined a life that might contain a family. That dream had died in the harbor with his brother, the first Jordie, and he did not want it back. Then came Inej, gleaming and good, who did not want to fix him, only ever expected him to try.
And they had tried, for so long.
Each of them with scars and their own horrors, it had been so much more difficult than any heist could have ever been. They had their fair share of failures and mishaps and nights where Inej disappeared out the window before he could even touch her or nights where Kaz hid away in the bathroom, vomiting his guts out.
It had been work, but they wanted it.
They wanted each other.
Then came the good days, when she could come ashore and be in his bed, when he was able to love her, as a man could love a woman, and they were better for it.
When Inej told him she was with child, Kaz felt himself recoil. Something cold and dark inside him slithered awake. Can’t scheme yourself out of this one, Brekker. Inej had stood there and she waited him out, d—mn her. She waited until he gave a reaction, any at all, because she wanted to know what his place in this would be.
It was like Van Eck once said. They raise them cold in the Barrel. Cold and cautious, Kaz had agreed. He’d been all that and more. Serious, straight—faced, matter of fact. He tried to say the right things. Do the right things. Go through the motions. It didn’t suit.
Inej saw through him. He pretended she couldn’t, and she pretended that he wasn’t pretending.
A deep furious ache filled his center; for days on end, he lived like there was a hole carved into his chest. He felt so entirely wrecked whenever he looked at Inej that he took to not looking at her at all. Tension sprung between them, a pressure bomb simply waiting to go off.
Kaz was not convinced he could love it. He did not think he had the capacity, the same as other fathers might, as his own father had. But he would ensure that Inej’s child was safe and fed and would never suffer as its parents had. That was his duty, as its father.
The birth hadn’t gone well.
Inej was bleeding for days before. Mediks came and went out of the Slat at all hours. They were faced with the very real possibility that the child they had created would die before it even had a chance to lie. This was the first time Kaz realized how little control he had. He had been so confident that once the child was here, the very least he could provide was protection. If not love, he could at least do that. He hadn’t accounted for the fear, or the crippling realization that, for the first time, no scheme could save them.
Inej had screamed and wept and bled, and then a little girl came upside down into their world.
They hadn’t discussed a name. Things had been too tense and too stressed, and each of them too stubborn to even discuss the topic by the end. But neither of them had the energy to be angry then. Kaz simply sat next to Inej on their shared bed, the child in her arms and pressed to her chest, each rosy and soft with fresh life. He slipped off his gloves, and Inej didn’t comment when his fingers shook as they stroked the little tuft of black hair on the top of their baby daughter’s head.
“Hello Jordan…”
The name had slipped out, and they never considered anything else.
Those years after, they were… good. If anything, having a daughter only invigorated Inej’s hunt for slavers. Once Jordan was old enough, Inej took shortened trips back out to sea, a few months of the year. Her first mate, Specht, was a fine sailor and he followed her orders well in her absence. Kaz felt a new fire awaken in him, becoming only crueler and more vicious, but for a different reason. He saw Pekka Rollins differently now, who surrendered it all for the sake of his child. Kaz would build a kingdom for his, and he would bloody the world if it meant giving it to her. He was not a man who loved easily, and what little of himself was capable belonged to Inej and Jordan. It was the happiest Kaz ever felt, happier than he would ever feel again, happier than Dirtyhands deserved.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
After, right after, Jordan hadn’t been well. Just as she had floated into the harbor, she floated across the land. She was only five years old, a mere wisp of a thing, a tiny wraith that followed him around the Slat, speaking to no one, sometimes not even to him.
Jesper and Wylan had taken her in for some of the weeks that followed, when he left to conduct a search of his own. When he’d become a beggar, driven mad with rage, a man desperate in a way he’d sworn never to be. When he met with Zenik, when he met with the privateer or prince or whatever he was, and then with the Dragon Queen of Ravka to appeal for assistance, to search for what wreckage remained of The Wraith and its captain. When he searched and threatened and killed and made deals for it all to come to nothing.
Then Kaz returned to Ketterdam to face a little girl, eyes devoid of life, and told her that he couldn’t bring her mother home.
—
Every successful farm ran on routine.
As harvest approached, Kaz brought on more farmhands, and the western field was bursting with corn stalks that nearly rivaled him in height. They traded pears with a businessman from the Southern Colonies who had mangoes in stock. The grass grew long on the edges of the canals which turned more of a spring green than a winter black.
Jordan’s birthday ushered in the new season, and Jesper and Wylan sent a book and the almond candies she loved. A few weeks later, a strange silver knife arrived from Fjerda with a note from Auntie Nina. Kaz was rigid for the rest of the day. Jordan put the knife out of sight.
Jordan snuck eggs from the chickens and geese, and they let the neighbor’s cows graze over the southern field that would be put into rotation next year. Kaz did the books and pretended that couriers weren’t delivering messages from his business up north. Jordan watched from her bedroom window and pretended that she didn’t notice.
Jordan celebrated the various feasts of Saints which Kaz bore with subtle sighs and light frowns. Her grandparents in Ravka sent seeds and roots that Jordan planted in the backyard, and she laughed when her da turned indignant and bright red at the spicy Suli meals that her grandmother sent recipes for. Straight—faced, Kaz watched and hid his flinches with every new trick Jordan learned on the highwire in the barn. He regretted agreeing to remove the nets when she was younger.
Kaz found that routine was important for his daughter as well.
Jordan’s bouts of… disreality lessened with routine. With routine, and time as well as safety and stability. Allowing Jordan to run wild on little adventures around the farm was curbed by a regime of a set sleep and meal schedule, along with a few reality orientation and grounding exercises that Kaz himself may or may not have researched from some pretentious merch book.
This was one thing that Kaz learned could not be stolen or copied in Ketterdam.
But sometimes even routine couldn’t save her. So, Jordan would emerge from her bedroom late at night, when the moon was high and her nightmares were fresh. She shuffled into his lamp—lit office, wrapped in the blue quilt adorned with black birds in a pattern, sewn by Inej’s mother when her only grandchild was born. She was soft and sleepy and peering at him through heavy lashes.
Staring at her, Kaz realized how little she was like the child he had been.
A child who never had to run bleeding and barefoot through alleyways, who never had to find someone smaller and weaker to take what they had, who never went hungry or left behind decency or punched until she saw blood. She had never killed to survive, killed because she had to, killed because she wanted to.
She was Jordan. Unpredictable, irrepressible Jordan. Blunt and honest, lacking most manners. A desperate need to be accepted. An irrefutable urge to cling and beg for love. Kaz was attuned to her moods and behaviors, and never found her strange nor tiresome. He accustomed himself to Jordan’s quirks rather than scrutinized them.
His daughter halved herself and sat on her shins, back against his knees so he could complete his task.
Without needing an explanation, Kaz brushed through her hair gently, perhaps more gentle than strictly necessary. He had always been terrified of being rough, of hurting her. He had called himself a monster many times; hurting Jordan would be the very first sin he couldn’t live with.
Jordan’s hair was much like Inej’s; beautiful, thick and black, worn long in the way of most young Suli women. He methodically dragged the horsehair bristles along her scalp and to the middle of her back where the hair ended. His right hand followed the stroke of the brush, smoothing down her hair and letting the strands pull through his bare fingers.
When he moved Jordan to the farm, Kaz put away the Frabrikator—made crow’s head cane, the hat, the black trenchcoat, everything that might make him stand out. He’d gone back to Rietveld, his family name. It was a country name and it allowed them to blend in.
Kaz also put away the gloves.
Kaz didn’t wear them in the house, nor around Jordan. He had worked so hard to be capable of bare—handed touch. He had bad days. At the beginning, it felt like all he had was bad days. But things had gotten easier. Now, he kept his gloves locked away in a safe, only pulling them out when any sensation at all made him think of bloated rotting corpses.
Of course, being gloveless did have its disadvantages. It meant that Jordan had questions. Inej’s little girl used to be fascinated with the shiny rope of scar tissue that looped around his right index finger. He told her it was from some factory accident, rather than a street fight he had in Ketterdam when he was fourteen.
Another lie to add to the sum.
Kaz had meant to tell Jordan the truth, about who he was, about who her mother had been. He intended to tell her all of it. At first, he hadn’t because she was too young to fully understand. And then he hadn’t because she was too fragile to mention what they had lost. And then he hadn’t because she was too traumatized to bring up the past. And then, and then, and then, and then he ran out of reasons until it was too late to tell the truth. He had let the lie linger for too long, and the thought of telling her that he had been lying to her all this time would be a betrayal.
And Kaz could lose her.
Kaz couldn’t lose her.
—
Jordie was laying on the back porch, playing a single hand of ridderspel (so far unable to beat Kaz), when she heard it.
A familiar tat—tat—tat on the front door forced her back into the house, through the kitchen, down the hall, and towards the foyer. Her linen pants billowed as she gracefully slipped to the door and yanked it open without a second thought.
An unfamiliar Kerch man stood on the top step, hat on his head and paper in hand, and he panted heavily as if he had literally sprinted from wherever it was he came from. He frowned when he saw the girl, eyes squinting and lips forming wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. Jordie didn’t say hello, and neither did he. They simply stared at each other, each a bit awkward.
“Well.” Jordie said after a moment, “You came to my house. What do you want?”
The man frowned deeper, still panting, “Where’s Mister Brekker?”
“Who?”
“Jordan.”
The click of a cane and uneven footsteps turned Jordie around. Kaz matched her frown and limped to her side, pulling the door open a little wider to see their visitor. His dark eyes trailed over the man, obvious distaste etched onto the hard lines of his face. Their visitor squirmed a little. Strange.
Finally, “What business?”
“He said he was looking for a man named Brekker,” Jordie chirped helpfully, peeking up at her da.
Kaz’s distaste intensified, cold stare never straying from the man, “Shall I teach you to read, or perhaps you didn’t see the name on the front gate? Rietveld.”
The man swallowed hard. Once. Twice. “Rushed message… For Mister Rietveld.”
Jordie’s brow quirked.
That was two strange things, back—to—back. First, that this man could get their name so absolutely incorrect and yet the message would still be for her da. Second, that a rushed message would even be sent to them. Jordie couldn’t ever recall a time they had ever received a rushed message, at least not in living memory. Besides being absurdly expensive, no business was ever so important that it needed to be hand—delivered to a small farm near Lij.
Kaz remained silent, the muscle in his jaw jumped as he grinded his teeth.
He took the outstretched paper, careful to avoid contact, before swinging the door shut in the messenger’s face before another word could be said. Appropriately invested now, Jordie folded her hands behind her back and leaned against the door.
Jordie was just about to ask him to read it aloud when Kaz’s face suddenly dashed white, as if he had seen a ghost. His throat bobbed, he swayed, and he quickly readjusted his cane at his side. He’d nearly fallen over.
“Da?” She slowly straightened, “Who is it from? Has something happened?”
Kaz didn’t respond, simply glaring at the thin paper as if it had personally wronged him in some way. His chest was rising and falling in unsteady puffs, jaw clenched so tight it was a wonder his teeth didn’t shatter. Jordie’s mind spun wildly, trying to concoct any rhyme or reason he could be acting in such a way. She reached to take the note, hand slow and careful, but he caught her wrist. A quick movement, harsh and sudden, something she didn’t see coming. His grip was firm but not painful, startling nonetheless.
“Jordan.”
A warning tone, a low threat. She froze. He never talked to her like that. His voice was always the rough sound of stone against stone, but this was something different. She’d heard it before, though never directed at her, but she couldn’t place when she could have ever heard it.
“Leave it be.”
Jordie’s gaze snapped to meet Kaz’s, “If it’s something bad, you can’t hide it from me—,”
“Can’t I?”
He released her wrist, his shoulders bunching, his gaze angry and ashamed as he turned his face to the shadows. Maybe it was because his back was to her that she could finally think the words. Speak, she begged silently. For once, tell me what you’re thinking. He didn’t. Her da simply pushed past her and strode from the room. She stood barefoot in the foyer, watching his back as it disappeared into their house.
Unease swirled through her gut, leaving her seasick.
After a moment, a beat of indecision, Jordie followed him.
Around the corner, down to his office, just outside the door.
Invisible, Jordie, she hissed in her mind, Be invisible.
The oil lamp on his desk was burning low, flame but a flicker to illuminate his features. Kaz’s face was harder now. All of the anger and weariness of wakefulness sharpened. He grimaced slightly, when he used his wooden cane to kneel to the ground. Kaz slid a blackwood panel of the flooring aside and unlocked the silver safe hidden beneath it. Jordie caught her breath. How many times had she walked into this room, sat on this floor, and all the time, never knew what was underneath? His actions were smooth, precise, as if he were dealing cards or picking an easy lock. He shuffled papers out, items she had never seen before, gathered them in his hands.
Then, he slipped on a pair of leather gloves.
Jordie drew away and slipped back to her room, breath panting with confusion. She paced the floor, heart pounding, hands fisting into her hair, pulling on it in a way he always told her not to.
She whispered, “Just what are you hiding from me?”
Jordie waited him out. Patience was an important quality in the Rietveld household. They relied upon it, practicing it early and often, to engage with one another, to live with themselves.
Kaz didn’t leave his office for days. That was all right. Jordie could bide her time. What he was doing in there, she didn’t know. She would find out. He would have to give in eventually. He ignored the business of the farm. It was she that gave out the weekly salary to the farmhands, that made note of it in his books. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. She left food outside his office door. They didn’t speak.
Finally, her moment arrived.
It was a chance occurrence, not at all reliant upon the fact that Jordie had devised a whole scheme to get him out of the office. He may have a wide view of their property, but he couldn’t see into the barn. And if she had made a point of walking past his window on her way to practice on the highwire everyday since he locked himself away, there was no way for him to suspect she had done anything different today. The sound of a massive crash in the barn should send him running.
It did.
Jordie just needed a few minutes. With Kaz barely out of the house, she crept into his office. Remembering the exact place her da had knelt, the girl bent and folded her long legs beneath herself. Her fingers trailed along the wooden slats of the floor and pulled for a better look beneath. A safe. A safe more complex than she had ever seen before, more complicated than anything he had ever taught her.
Jordie remembered being nine, crouched beside her father, the sides of their faces close. Kaz had flicked his cotton sleeve so two slender rods of metal appeared between his fingers. They danced smoothly over his worn knuckles then vanished once more into thin air. Jordie had been delighted, giggling — a beautiful sound, cheeks rosy with his magic.
“You see, Jordan, it’s a delicate thing: picking a lock.The right pressure applied at the right moment, in the right place.”
She watched in buzzing fascination as Kaz showed her how it was done, how smoothly he could pick a lock and open the safe hidden behind the world map. She hadn’t thought much of it, then; why he was teaching her this, why he even knew in the first place. She had only thought of how fun it was and how badly she wanted to conquer it.
“You wait to hear the lock click, Jordan. Do you hear it?”
She had closed her eyes and leaned into the safe door, cheek chilled against the metal, feeling the thin rods slip and slide through the lock. Her tongue poked from between her lips, brows furrowed in, trying again and again. But nothing. No click.
Kaz hadn’t been disappointed, hadn’t shown any reaction really. He just told she could try again tomorrow.
But Jordie hadn’t been able to sleep that night.
She stayed awake, running through the movements again and again, looking for that skip in the mechanism, the click in the lock that would explain how the safe gave way. She was the kind who wouldn’t rest until she had mastered that little bit of mystery for herself. Her father was that kind, too.
The little girl crept out of her bed once the moon was high, slipped down into her father’s office (mercifully empty for once), and she knelt on his chair for hours. Practicing. Over and over again. Then, once streaks of pink and orange were stretching across the horizon, and her legs were numb and her fingers cold, she decided to try one last time.
She closed her eyes, pressed her ear to the door, and slowly exhaled. It took Jordie a few quick heartbeats to pick the lock.
The door creaked open and she sucked in a sharp breath.
“Well done, Jordan.”
The girl had whipped around, messily pushing away her hair to find her father leaning on his cane in the doorway. His mouth was curved upward, pride glowing in his coffee brown eyes.
Jordie had been chasing that look in his eyes ever since.
She did the same thing now. She closed her eyes, pressed her ear to the door, and slowly exhaled. The tools twisted seamlessly between her fingers, searching for that perfect position between gears.
Finally, she heard a satisfying click, and the thick safe door swung open.
Stacks of kruge, more than she thought possible, and a sheath of papers she’d never before seen on her da’s desk. Words that sounded so familiar but she couldn’t place flitted before her eyes: Slat. Crow Club. Silver Six. Dregs. Some papers were covered in maps marked with trade routes, others listing share prices and the names of ships. Letters, some from J. Fahey and some from N. Zenik and some from names she didn’t at all recognize. Finally, she found the rushed message and her heart skipped a beat.
She tried to read it through, focus and catalogue the words, but her gaze slipped ahead and her heart stopped entirely. Only one word, just one, and somehow it was enough to bring back flashes of fire and viscera across her eyes — The Wraith.
The Wraith. The Wraith. The Wraith.
Jordie could have screamed, but she didn’t. Instead, she dropped the papers like they burned her, and she scrambled until her back collided with the far wall. Air evacuated her lungs and she was left gasping.
“No. No, no, no—,” she hissed, shaking her head and gripping fistfuls of hair, “Not my fault—it wasn’t my fault, my fault, my—,”
Jordie’s first sin was murder.
She sobbed on the deck of her mother’s ship, half aflame and splintering, on her knees and pleading for mercy. She couldn’t picture the faces of their attackers, but she remembered her mama. Her mama who slaughtered four men to get to her, who held her close and kissed her bleeding face, and then who threw her into the ocean for her safety.
Jordie left her mama to die. Her blood was on her hands.
Well done, Jordan.
Kaz didn’t congratulate her now. He didn’t say ‘well done, Jordan’ and allow her to hug his side ever so carefully. No. His reaction was quite different. She didn’t hear his uneven steps and she didn’t even notice his reappearance until he was standing over her, eyes glittering with fury.
“What the f—ck are you doing?”
For the briefest moment, Jordie’s face went slack, a confused and nearly frightened look in her dark eyes — there and gone again, so fast it barely existed.
Kaz tore the papers from her hands and pushed them back into the safe, tucking the floorboards back into place. His movements reminded her that she was angry and so, so confused. She dragged in a quiet strangled breath and shoved herself to her feet.
They were quiet in their anger, never heard the other raise their voice, but no one could match their tempers; two Rietveld’s butting heads.
“What are you hiding, Da?”
He ignored her, pushing himself straight up with another subtle wince. He turned back to his desk and began scouring his papers, but what he was looking for — if anything at all — she didn’t know. People were like safes too, Jordie thought, a vault of secrets and longings. The right pressure applied at the right moment, in the right place.
“You’ve kept secrets from me. You have done nothing but keep secrets.” Kaz’s shoulders bunched, but Jordie didn’t back down — she knew where to apply the pressure, “The business in the north. The couriers. The gloves. What the h—ll is going on?”
“I told you… to leave it be.”
She didn’t. She was angry and tired and she was going to get answers. “The Wraith, Mama’s merchant ship, what do you know about it? That note said it was spotted, is that true? Is she alive? Be honest with me!”
His hands came down on the desk, rattling the whole world with it.
“D—mn it, Jordan.” Kaz snarled, his expression closed, cruel in a way she’d never seen, “I’ll be honest with you when you’re honest about the memories that led to your mother’s execution.”
She recoiled.
The room was too bright. Her chest felt like a clenched fist. The water was cold against her neck. Her body had gone numb and yet she could still feel the heat from the flames of her mother’s ship. It was guilt that ate people whole. She was drowning in it. Drowning in the True Sea, in the Ketterdam harbor. Her vision blurred.
Kaz recoiled just the same.
But she startled at what she saw within his face, something cold and dead—eyed.
“You’re a liar.”
She didn’t know how right she was.
—
They came in the night.
Kaz hadn’t been sleeping; he couldn’t. He sat in his office, the oil lamp burning low, face in his hands. He shook his head, annoyed with Jordan and angry with himself. She’d fled to her room. He’d planted himself down here. They hadn’t spoken. It felt jarring for two people who’d barely been separated for even a day for the past decade. He wished he hadn’t said anything about her memories. Even those few words raised the familiar hurt in her eyes, begging to be forgiven.
He wanted his routine with Jordan back. He wanted Inej.
His mind had been consumed with thoughts of her. Inej. Inej. Inej.
One day, upon his death, they would cut him open and find her name branded on his heart, on his bones.
Jordan had been right about the message. The Wraith had been spotted, for the first time in eleven years. No captain in sight, no crew on deck, just a ruined ship cutting through the waters. Simply floating, drifting through the wind close to Shu Han.
Kaz was scheming. The ship had survived, but that didn’t mean its captain had. He wouldn’t have peace until he knew for himself. Perhaps Ketterdam was due for a visit from its infamous bastard. Or perhaps he ought to take a ship to Shu Han to search the waters himself. Was it time to assemble the Crows once more? He could nearly hear their voices in his head, half a lifetime ago.
“Scheming face,” Inej would murmur.
Jesper always nodded back, “Definitely.”
No schemes prepared him for what came next.
Kaz knew the instant the men invaded his home that he made a mistake. Somewhere, deep in the cold depths of his mind, he had known it might come to this. He should have trusted his crew. He should have relied upon them to keep Inej’s child safe. He should have trained Jordan to defend herself. But he had been so sure. So absolutely convinced that nothing and no one could find them out here. So sure, and he had worked so hard. Covered his tracks. Changed his name. Shed every part of Dirtyhands that could be traced to him.
All so that the very last piece of Inej that existed might be safe.
He had no crow—headed cane. His feet were bare. He was in soft clothes, his hands pale and ungloved. He didn’t feel like Dirtyhands at all. No, he was just Jordan’s father.
He wasn’t sure that would be enough.
But they had come for Inej’s child, and so they had let loose the monster, dead—eyed and unafraid.
Kaz missed the crow’s head cane now, lead—lined and perfectly weighted for breaking bones. His wooden cane snapped easily, on the first blow across one of their attacker’s faces. The shotgun was on the hook beneath his desk, and its bullets tore through bones and flesh and left viscera on the walls. But it could only take out three and then Kaz was on his own.
He was still plenty vicious, dangerous on his own.
He had never been a skilled fighter, but a tenacious one.
It had been bloody and brutal and ugly. He killed many, just not enough.
They overwhelmed him by sheer numbers alone.
Perhaps Kaz was getting old. Perhaps Dirtyhands had been gone too long. Perhaps he couldn’t remember how to see the rough work done. Perhaps Kaz Rietveld just wasn’t good enough.
He had a knife stuck in his back, and he was facedown on the ground, pinned with a boot to the side of his head. He snarled and fought, every bit the feral animal he’d been in the weeks after Jordie had died, after Inej had been lost at sea. The pain in his leg was horrible, worse than when the Crows were ambushed at the harbor, even worse than when he first broke it near the Geldstraat. It seemed more than possible he fractured the bone again. It didn’t matter. It was nothing. It didn’t compare with the pain of what happened now.
Marching boots passed him and ventured up the staircase to where his only child slept. The screams reached him first, high—pitched and guttural, and he screamed back to meet them.
“Your fight is with me! Leave her out this, leave her—,”
Kaz broke off into a garbled snarl as the boot shoved further into his bleeding back.
They had Jordan by a fistful of black hair, dragging her down the long staircase of the farmhouse. The girl tripped and fell on her way down, one hand grasping to the one fisted in her hair, the other trying to catch herself after each unsteady step. They tossed her the last few steps and she landed with a painful bang that instantly shot bursts of pain through her knees.
Kaz was on the ground, howling like an animal caught in a trap. His rage felt hot and mad and all too familiar. Something within him had torn loose, something he had barely managed to stitch back together for his daughter’s sake.
Jordan’s chest was quivering with sobs, “Da—,”
It hurt him to see it. He had never been sure what to do when Jordan cried, even when she was little, especially when she was little. Inej always handled it. She wiped away the tears, she whispered words of comfort, she soothed whatever aches might exist. Ghenzen, Saints, Djel, whatever holy beings there might be, none of them could offer her comfort now.
Nor could Kaz, who said nothing but a strangled, “Don’t cry. Don’t cry, Jordan. It will be all right,”
No, it wouldn’t.
The self—imposed leader of this pathetic excuse for a gang walked into the center of the foyer. He spewed chewed tobacco onto their floor, shiny shoes stopping just before Kaz’s face.
“Talking nonsense, Brekker?” He laughed a mocking sound, “Don’t start making promises. Not any you can’t keep.”
Kaz’s dark eyes swept around the room, taking them all in, scheming as he always did. He couldn’t fight all of them, not in this state and not when they were armed.
He glared up at him, rasping, “Who the h—ll are you?”
“Don’t remember us, Dirtyhands? These gentlemen are some of your old associates from Ketterdam.”
Kaz’s gaze strayed, slipped over to Jordan. She looked so small, his daughter, all the sudden five years old again peering up at him, freshly dragged from the harbor. She had been so fragile, then. So cold and scared and just as confused as she was now. He could take her out of Ketterdam, he could hide her away in the countryside, but he couldn’t keep her safe.
He failed Inej for the second time.
“You’ve gotten old, Brekker. Old and slow.”
When a foot buried itself into his gut, Kaz rasped and doubled over, spitting blood as Jordan yelled her defiance. The edge of a gun collided with her face, breaking her nose and splitting open her lips in an instant. She shrieked as she fell in a heap of hair and blood. Kaz screamed on the floor mere feet away, one hand clawing and scratching at the floor until his nails were torn and bleeding.
He couldn’t walk. He tried to crawl to her.
They laid on the ground, the father and his daughter, their reaching hands only a few feet away — still too far out of reach. Rage coursed through Kaz, blood thumping violently through his veins, tingling his vision blood red. Jordan was trying to bury her whimpers, one hand trying to hold herself up, the other cradling her battered face.
“How about you, little girl? Don’t have anything clever to say like you did upstairs?” The man stepped between them, blocking their view, “No matter. Your body will be the lesson.”
Feeling the dark door inside him swing wide, Kaz snarled, “You lay one more hand on her…”
“Now, Miss Brekker.” The man ignored him, leering over Jordan who was doing her utmost to back away, “As I’m sure you’re aware, your father has worked in a particular capacity in the great city of Ketterdam for many years now. I heard you’re the heir to his throne. And he has worked so very hard to keep his heir safe, done his very best, I’m sure. But I’m afraid my employer wants your father to understand—”
He drove a boot into Jordan’s stomach, and the girl crumbled as a crack of her ribcage could be heard in the air.
“That his best—”
He dragged the gasping girl up by her hair and tossed her into the wooden walls of her home, hand settling tightly around her throat.
“—Is not—”
His hard head connected with hers when he threw it harshly forward, further damaging her already broken nose.
“—Good enough.”
He slammed Jordan’s small body against the wall once more before throwing her towards the open door. She was cradling her nose, heavy tears leaking down her cheeks as she tried to get up, tried to crawl towards her father. Kaz groaned as he tried to reach out, as if he could simply drag himself into her. Pull her into his arms where he might keep her safe and protected, sheltered from his world and his past forever.
She cried out when they roughly yanked her back up and began to drag her away.
“Jordan!” Kaz fought wildly — as viciously as he could, punching and kicking and clawing and writhing, “D—mn you all, you take me! Take me instead!”
They dragged his struggling daughter out of the house, white night dress stained with mud and with blood. She could barely keep herself upright, small cold feet hanging loose and dragging beneath her. Kaz watched in horror as the darkness swallowed her, never to be seen again.
These men were like jackals, cackling and dancing, setting fire to the house around him.
Still towering over him, their leader reached into his coat and drew out a small crocheted crow. It was a faded black, its yarn mane tangled — and stained with blood. He let it drop to the floor. Then, he grabbed Kaz by the front of his shirt, hauled him up until their noses nearly touched, and he hissed:
“Pekka Rollins sends his regards.”