Chapter Text
He would think about it right before he went to bed, and then again when he woke up – thinking, thinking, thinking about what he could’ve done to not end up the way he did. After a week, he concluded that he was done for as soon as the man had walked into the Barrel.
Fall was turning to winter when Kaz was alerted to a figure lurking in the brothel district: a gentleman too prim for the grime that usually floated through the canal. Sure, the brothels and betting clubs brought in anyone and everyone – but he was different, and anyone with a good enough eye could see it. Whispers from the Grisha hiding in flowery bedrooms and cheap silken robes had floated down to his office in the Dregs, carried by a swift wind that was armed to the teeth.
“They say he’s Grisha, too,” she announced one night, perched on the windowsill like a crow swathed in darkness. “That they can feel their powers grow when they lounge with him in the main halls. An amplifier.”
“But he never pays for service?”
“Not beyond a bottle of wine or two.”
He drummed his fingers against the desk, shaking his good leg up in down in agitation. His mind was racing to jam the pieces of this mystery man’s identity together, fitting and turning and putting them in new places. Why he was here could be anything, but if he could just get the man on his side, somehow… there could be money to be made.
But he needed to know more before he could draw any one conclusion. It was the most infuriating thing about not being on the ground – he was always left to search for more later. Inej shifted so that her side faced the open streets below, staring down at the people ducking in and out of buildings in the dim early morning.
Her voice was barely above a whisper. “It’s curious, isn’t it? That someone like him would come here.”
Kaz’s brained shuttered to a halt, gears locked and straining. He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath, letting the cool night air sting his lungs before finding it’s way out again. A silent exercise in self-control. “Not particularly. If he’s sent from the Little Palace, then he’s bound to just be looking for them.” He refused to say who ‘they’ were. It required acknowledging their existence, which was something he simply didn’t do outside of office hours. If he declared that ‘they’ existed, it meant that he was no longer part of ‘us’, and that was the biggest vulnerability of all.
He flexed his fingers, the gloves whining at the contortion, stared up at the wooden slats of his office ceiling. “They’re always looking for obedient little soldiers, anyway.” Memories tickled the backs of his eyes. With a harsh shove, they were pushed aside into the nebulous oblivion of his unconsciousness.
Inej was silent as she fiddled with a knife in her hand. It was one of the ones he had given her – one of the few things he had given anyone . He made most people earn things, but Inej was different. Inej would always be different.
They puttered around each other for the remainder of their waking moments, saying few words to each other beyond passing comments or softly spoken questions. Hours like that were some of Kaz’s most prized memories, a comfort that he didn’t know he had until it was gone. They slipped past each other with ease, like water on fine silk, silent dancers practicing a distanced routine. It was only a few hours before dawn that Inej said her good-nights. In her wake, Kaz was left hungry for one more hour, one more minute, one more second with her.
It was maybe a week after Inej had first told him of the amplifier. Grisha held tight by the brothels in the Barrel were going missing in the night, though never at the same time, nor even in the same place twice in a row. No trace of them were left behind, no signs of struggle – not even bodies of would-be attacked bodyguards. Most of the time, it was Grisha that wanted to leave – this was expected behaviour, if anything. People became more worried when it was Grisha that never uttered a word about wanting to escape Ketterdam.
Worried club owners spoke of a rival businessman, and brothel stock whispered reverently of a wayward liberator, come to save all that wanted freedom from their indentures. Either way, Kaz paid it no mind – only to how it affected the Crow Club and all its assets. His eyes grazed over the dimly lit building, hands clasped tightly on the crow-head of his walking stick; a king without a crown and a cane instead of a scepter.
Jesper had stalked to his side with this wild look in his eyes. It wasn’t the usual giddy shine that overtook him when he set eyes on an open seat at the cards tables, nor was it the confident glimmer that colored his movements when he set a pistol to someone’s head. No, this was something different. Something more concerning.
From the outside, it looked as if the two of them were surveying the club together, a leader and his subordinate watching over a prized business. It was different when you inched closer to the dark, dusty corner they had secluded themselves to.
“He gambled for a bit, then left this at his seat for the dealer to find later.”
The note was passed between the two of them, a quick flash of parchment against dark clothes. Kaz hazarded unfolding it, noting the flowing and elegant script that contrasted the rough edges of the paper. The Kerch was perfect, if not a bit flowery. And yet he could still tell that this was not written by a native hand. It was too neat, too exact. Something of it stunk of a foreigner’s tongue. He slipped the note into his waistcoat pocket.
“Where’s Inej?”
“I don’t know, still out maybe? You’re the one who sent her off this morning.”
They stared out at the crowd a few minutes more. Someone at a table further to the back, closer to the private rooms, threw his cards down in frustration and stormed out of the club. Within minutes, someone had taken his place. That was the more merciful nature of running a gambling club – there are always chickens to be plucked, even when one escapes the slaughterhouse.
“Watch the floor, and make sure no one but Dregs enter the upstairs.”
Jesper sighed. “Kaz, what are you – ?”
He didn’t catch the rest, didn’t bother to; he was already marching towards the staircase tucked against the wall of the Club. If Jesper shouted after him, he couldn’t hear him over the din of the Club’s chattering customers. Thinking back on it, he wished he had strained his ears a little harder.
Inej wasn’t in his office like he had thought her – he knew when she was close by feeling alone, and he did not feel that soft sigh of a presence when he swung open the heavy wooden door. He strode through the interior and found his way to his desk, heaving himself into the leather with brow furrowed. Another note on the stained wood, in Inej’s hand.
He stripped off his gloves and tossed them onto the desk before rounding it to retrieve the note.
Job is taking longer than expected - will report tomorrow. I.
The penmanship was hurried, assumed to have been written hastily as a victim hovered out of view. It was not the first time this has happened, and Kaz suspected he would never live to see the last. He tossed Inej’s note into a drawer and leaned back in the chair, pulling out the one Jesper had passed to him.
He smoothed out the parchment with a thumb and read the contents once more.
Join me. I’ll be waiting where the colors are richest and the crowds are thickest.
Hazy images of a man with the power to bring rise to Grisha ability fluttered through his mind. The note was not meant for the dealer, no. He was too smart to do something like that – he could smuggle Grisha right out from under the noses of several guard-heavy clubs if he wanted to. Besides, the dealer wasn’t Grisha – none of the hires on the floor were. This note… It was meant for him and him alone.
Kaz knew. Kaz knew that if he went there without someone to watch his back, he would all the more vulnerable for it. He knew that when he returned, Jesper and Inej would be giving him an earful, crowing over his stupidity. (A small voice in his head chuckled, a laugh laced with foxglove. If, not when. )
But sometimes life in the Barrel meant you had to hold your own. And if anyone was going to see how this was going down, it wouldn’t be anyone that would remind him of it later. He grabbed one of the guns he kept in his desk and shoved it into the back of his waistband.
Kaz was going out tonight.
West Stave was garish and crowded, but it was like this even on a bad night. He expected it after living here for so long, really. People milled about; some were dressed in Komedie Brute costumes, drawing delighted gasps from naive visitors that had not yet tired of the time-honored tradition of deeply ugly masks and cheaply made clothing. Kaz wove around stationary groups that lined the sidewalks flanking the canal. The sounds of brothel barkers and their promises of a warm body to hold during the night came and went as he moved further down the street. With a hat pulled down over his head and a common cane – though just as deadly as his normal one – clutched in his hand, no one paid him a lick of attention.
Kaz wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for as he ducked down alleys and gazed out over the crowds gathering at food stalls. He had never once asked for a description of the man – the most he got was that he was a vigilante amplifier, and after that he hadn’t the reason to ask for more. His decision to come here was hasty and clandestine, and he was finding more and more holes in his plans.
He stopped in the mouth of a narrow backstreet to let a rather large crowd of tourists pass him by. They chattered excitedly as they did, pulling each other along with drunken tugs of one another’s sleeves, stinking of whatever alcohol they had gotten their hands on. The buildings that sandwiched the small lane were empty, or as empty as unclaimed buildings could ever be. He and Jes had used it during a cross-gang shoot-out. It was one of the nastier gang wars that rocked the Barrel from the inside. He stared up at it and it’s shuttered windows, the wooden facade practically disintegrating in the constant dreary fog the whole of Ketterdam was wrapped up in.
In the light of the streetlamp, Kaz saw movement on the roof – and he was sure the movement on the roof saw him, too.
He slunk towards the rickety door to the building a few feet away, further down the alley. He pushed it open with the foot of his cane. It swung open easy enough, creaking on the hinges as he went. If whoever – whatever – was on the roof had already seen him, he needed to get up there before they left. But it was possible the lurker hadn’t made its escape; Kaz stepped around the base level of the building as quietly as a mouse.
The furniture inside was littered with trash and rags – remnants of occupants past. He was honestly surprised that no one had taken up the property yet – if not to redo the building, then to tear it down and make something new. It’s what he did, after all. But it seemed that perhaps its proximity to other clubs, the transients it often held, or maybe even the sodden ground itself, had deterred prospective owners from the place.
It shouldn’t have been empty, though. The Barrel was filthy, and people always needed a place to sleep, away from the drizzle that blanketed the place year-round. Something was off, and Kaz’s brain kicked into overdrive.
His eyes scanned the cracked walls and shattered glass. There were escape routes here, furniture he could duck behind if he needed to. An overturned cards table, the velvet already peeled away and eaten by vermin. The bar that sat further away near the far wall. The door wasn’t a direct shot from the staircase that lead to the second story, but he would need to make it one if he wanted to live. He considered, fleetingly, calling for Inej or Jesper. He thought again of what they would say – perhaps nothing he hadn’t heard before, but in this situation? Nothing could sting more.
His palms were damp with sweat under his gloves as he picked through the rubble towards the stairs. All he wanted was answers. Maybe even a solution. His pulse drummed loud in his ears, and that far away voice laughed again. Foolish, foolish. A Grisha like you should be more careful with his blood.
The second floor was as empty as the first, if not a bit more sparse. It seemed to be the common room for employees, or even storage. Stacks of wooden chairs leaned against each other in a corner, a stained tarp spread across the rotting wood like a picnic blanket. There were several trails of footprints that crisscrossed the floor, but only one seemed to be fresh. The boot mark was crisp, but the rubber seemed worn; the pockmarked sole left little divots in the dust, haloed by a thick, segmented line. Military – and has seen a lot of time on the field at that. Kaz couldn’t imagine some castle guard’s shoes seeing any kind of wear such as this. No, this was a soldier.
There was one level left, and then the roof. It was emptiest of all, the third level, only the window that faced the canal and the door he came through. He crept past the doorway, careful to not let his heel turn too much or too suddenly. He heard no sounds from above him, only the raucous laughter of the crowds below. Carefully, he scaled the steps that separated him and the roof.
It was then that he realized his desperation had blinded him, for this all was far too easy to not be a trap.
“You know, I never did ask you to come alone, and yet you did.”
The man was standing with his back to Kaz, hands clasped behind him. He wore all black; he had no hat, though he had a common knee-length coat with simple buttons on the cuffs to protect him from the air’s chill. His boots that reached the middle of his calves – military issue, as he had suspected. He was quite tall, taller than Kaz. In fairness, however, that was not so hard to do. He barely cleared Inej’s head as it was.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for burying the lead,” he continued, voice low. He turned, slowly, the darkness seeming to curl around him like plants following sunlight. “As you’ll know, there are eyes and ears everywhere in this city.”
Kaz stepped back, knuckles white against the shaft of his cane. The Darkling looked to him with an almost predatory smile.
Every Grisha that knew anything about anything knew of the Darkling. He was famous beyond Ravka’s borders, the brutal force that pushed the Second Army’s domination of the Grand Palace – and subsequently, Ravka’s leadership. If they had any kind of spokesperson, he would imagine it would be the man standing in front of him.
“How nice of you to grace me with your presence.” The sentence came out calm, years of gunpoint negotiations holding him afloat. But with the way the Darkling looked at him, he could only assume that he saw the worst of what Kaz felt plain on his face. “I only wonder how it is you’ve escaped notice for so long.”
“Decoys are easy to set up, Mr. Brekker. There are plenty Grisha with the ability to amplify others that were willing to take my place. I just watch and wait for the rest of us to find me.”
Us. Us. The word burned on Kaz’s tongue. “There is no ‘us’,” he spat out quickly – too quickly. Any ability he had to contain his ire for the sake of strained bargaining was gone, just with those few hasty words. He did not spend his life denying what he knew to be true for this man to suddenly appear and attempt to undo it all with a snap of his fingers. ‘Us’ was reserved for him, and Inej, and Jes, and the Dregs. That was all the word ever meant to him.
The Darkling tutted, smiling down at his feet, before returning his gaze to Kaz. “You know as well as I do that your veins run with powers stronger than you, or even I, know.”
He stepped forward, and Kaz stepped back once again. The Darkling’s smile faltered.
“Come now, Mr. Brekker. Or may I call you Kaz? You must have come here for a reason. I doubt it was to run away.”
Kaz flexed his hands. The gun in his waistband burned against his skin. “Call me whatever you like – you wouldn’t be the first. But think twice before acting like you know anything about me beyond what you want from me.” He spared a glance behind him; the room still seemed empty enough, but he wasn’t so sure anymore. He strained his ears for signs of life besides himself and the Darkling on the roof, but the damned crowd on the streets were making too much noise to tell. The festivities had amped up since he had made the climb up to the roof, and it only made him more and more wary of the situation he had let himself walk into with only a single gun and a cane.
“I simply wanted to speak with you about the Grisha here. Many have already agreed to return to the Little Palace with me, where they belong.” He brought a hand up, palm facing the cloudy sky. “It would be prudent that you join us on the ship back.”
Kaz stared at the hand for a moment, then knocked it away with his cane.
“You would take me for a fool if you think that I’d willingly join the shithole that is Ravka’s military.”
The shadows around them surged, before being tampered like a flame. “I do not suggest you do that again,” the Darkling intoned, clasping the hand that was struck with the other. His eyes had turned hard like quartz, clouded in all the same ways. He massaged the back of the assaulted hand, as if it actually hurt. “You are rather surrounded.”
Kaz let his eyes finally wander to the surrounding rooftops as deep red and ocean-blue coats slunk out from the cover of night and into his line of sight. Their arms were raised, level to their heart, ready to strike if needed. He was not shocked; he should’ve known this man of great import was going to have a small army to protect him at a moment's notice. The presence at his back, though, that was what shocked him. That soft sigh he knew so well.
He hoped that it didn’t show on his face, that the newly spawned fear was beginning to gnaw a hole in his chain mail. He raised his hands slightly, cane still in hand.
“That’s more like it.” The Darkling signaled to the Grisha soldiers that surrounded them to stand down. “Now, can we be civil?”
Kaz kept his voice low. “As long as you can give me answers. Beyond that, I can guarantee nothing.”
“And what answers do you seek, Kaz?”
He swallowed. The presence behind him hovered expectantly. The audience of the Grisha beyond certainly didn’t help. “How do you get rid of it?”
He had thrown his first sunbeam as a child. He was playing around with Jordie in the field while his father toiled away on the farmlands nearby. It was one of the rare days they even had sun – it seemed perpetually cloudy that time of year, not unlike how it was in Ketterdam. They brandished sticks like swords, laughing and shouting as they struck at each other with the dulled ends. Jordie, being older and maybe a little more skilled, had knocked Kaz’s stick away and was going in for the final blow – a play blow, but Kaz didn’t know much better. He stuck out his hands to protect himself. Something surged beneath his skin, tingling in his palms, and the next thing he knew, Jordie was screaming that he couldn’t see.
His father had pulled Kaz away. His mother had ran from the house, leaving her darning scattered across the porch and rolling all the way into the grass. She was wide-eyed, weeping loudly as she held Jordie to her chest. He kept saying he couldn’t see.
“What did you do ?” His father had crouched down to grasp both his shoulders. Tears bubbled at the rims of Kaz’s eyes. He didn’t know. He didn’t know, and no one would believe that it was the truth.
Children didn’t get tested in Kerch the way they did Ravka. Grisha from the Little Palace would swoop in to orphanages only once every ten or so years, and even then there were very few that showed any sort of power. Kaz would watch the chosen few roll out of town in those fancy Ravkan coaches at the end of the day, when the sun was just starting to set. Sometimes the children showed fear. Other times, excitement. Kaz knew that if they found him, he would show dread.
Jordie’s eyesight came back eventually, but it never returned to what it was like before the accident. He started wearing glasses after, but only when they could afford to pay for them. And from there, his prescription got worse and worse. Jordie never blamed him. Of course, like any big brother who loved his little brother, he wouldn’t.
“It was an accident,” he had said once, after he had gotten his first pair of glasses. “It wasn’t your fault. Could’ve happened to anyone.”
But Kaz knew better. Kaz got older, and the power just became unruly – deathly wild. It surged beneath his skin like a second layer of muscle, screaming to be released whenever he stepped out into the sunlight. Even the smallest of beams would set off the whining and the barking of the beast, crying to simply twirl the sunlight between his fingers. But he clamped down hard, bit his tongue till his saliva ran red with blood. He learned to hate the sun, to detest it.
Kaz traveled out of his small own once with his father, to Belendt, on behalf of his brother. Jordie was sick that week, had come down with a cold that left him shivering in his sleep. So Kaz came, his trademark scowl already coming in. The two of them slept in a tavern frequented by travelers and refugees from outside Kerch. They brought news wherever they went, like sea salt on the wind. He would hear whispers of the Unsea, the turmoil in Ravka, the wars that were tearing it apart like wolves upon sheep. Some wished for a Sun Summoner that would solve it all, some holy being that could burn away the blights of the world. Other’s wished for the downfall of Grisha.
Kaz thought of Jordie.
He decided that the world would never see their Sun Summoner, not if he had any say in it.
“Get rid of it?” The Darkling laughed a mirthless laugh. “You could ask anyone that question, Grisha or not. Anyone could’ve told you that it’s impossible.”
The Darkling sighed. “There has been some who can hide it, such as yourself. And you do it quite well.” He hummed. “I do not even know what order you belong to. But it is not something you can simply bury, or lock away, or even destroy.” He raised his hand, and a tendril of shadow wrapped around his forearm like a wispy snake. “It is as much a part of you as any organ is.”
Kaz bit the inside of his cheek. Some part of him wilted, but it was the tiniest part of him that still hoped. Hoped for things to be different. Hope poisons, and Kaz knew that better than anyone. He quickly shoved it into a crevice far in the back of his mind to be forgotten – it was of no use to him, it never was.
But one last thing was scratching at his insides.
“How did you know?”
“About you? Easy. I could feel it.”
He furrowed his brows. The presence in the doorway tensed. The Darkling dismissed the darkness that had collated at his arm with a flick of his wrist. Kaz had a feeling it was a show of power, to make him tremble in fear. It might’ve worked on people in the past; it would not work on him.
“I can feel the power of Grisha. As an amplifier, I can bring it to heights greater than they could manage alone. It is how I form my closest guards.” He gestured to the Grisha that still stood on the surrounding rooftops. “Occasionally I test the aristocracy that flutter through the king’s doors, but none of the very few that have come to me were ever ready to serve.”
Kaz became acutely aware of the chorus of shifting fabric as the Darkling stepped, stepped, stepped close. He willed himself to stand his guard, to plant his feet firm against the ground, cane by his side. He stared up at the dark features of the Grisha before him, hate smoldering in his eyes.
“You, on the other hand,” The Darkling said, practically purring, “you are special indeed. You have the makings of a general, a fierce soldier to be feared on the battleground. You could become even more powerful in Ravka than you are in the Barrel.”
Kaz’s lips thinned. “I have no interest in becoming the king’s dog.”
The Darkling’s smiled, his eyes crinkling. “I can feel your power’s pulse. You, Kaz, would be no one’s dog.”
He grabbed Kaz’s arm. His thumb held an odd silver piece he had never noticed before, a talon protruding from the silver ring and curving in like a blade. Kaz’s jerked back, the contact setting his heart a mile a minute, but the Darkling’s grip was suffocatingly tight.
“This may sting,” he whispered, then shoved his thumb under the cuff of Kaz’s coat and sliced the skin underneath.
Light burst from his veins, rushing out like a river’s rapids. The Darkling’s face had split into a wide smile, illuminated by the brilliance of Kaz’s power. The Grisha around them had gone deathly still, some even sinking to their knees, muttering prayers to Sol Korol, king of the sun.
Kaz could never imagine letting his power flow free as anything but painful, something that wrenched a piece of him open so that it may never close. But here, with the Darkling’s hand wrapped tight around his arm like a noose, it felt like sweltering summer heat and smoky, crackling bonfires and heavy blankets in the winter. Something swelled within him, rose from deep in his chest, threatening to release itself into the world. Kaz quickly learned that it was a deep, deep hunger.
The Darkling released Kaz’s arm with a satisfied look on his face. Kaz felt the hunger, the warmth, leach away from him immediately. The sunbeam that had bloomed from his blood faded just as quickly.
“Kaz Brekker, I do believe you and I have a trip to make.”
Kaz opened his mouth to speak, but by then he was already being dragged into the darkness of the building by an openly sobbing Inej.