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Chapter Text

Kaz Brekker folded his hands on his desk and waited for his guest to speak.

Inej Ghafa was a small, slender woman, and she moved with a silent grace. She was perhaps Kaz's own age-- twenty-- give or take a year or two. 

She had beautiful eyes, long-lashed and dark, and they burned with purpose. Kaz met them, his face impassive. 

"You know of my cause," she said, in perfect, faintly accented Kerch. 

Kaz nodded. "Freeing indentures. Unionizing brothel workers. Ending the slave trade. All very honorable ventures." The word honorable , on his lips, did not sound like a compliment, and her eyes narrowed. "As I employ neither indentures nor whores, I fail to see how your business involves me."

"I know you're taking down Van Eck," she said bluntly. 

Kaz ground his teeth. He knew who the informants among the Dregs were and regularly fed them false information. The only men who'd known his plans were men he could trust not to talk… at least not to the Stadwatch or the other gangs. Once their trousers came off, however, it was apparently another story. 

"What of it?" He asked. 

Ghafa folded her own hands on the polished wooden desk, mirroring his posture. "I want in."

*

He'd first heard of her two years ago, in the midst of the gang war that had broken out when Pekka Rollins had disappeared from Ketterdam and left the Dime Lions in the hands of his lieutenants: divided, weak, and ripe for culling. Every inch of their old territory, the gaming dens and brothels and squats, had been fought and paid for in blood that year by the scavengers who had closed in. 

Kaz had been one of the first into battle. When Rollins returned, Kaz wanted him to find his empire in ruins. By the time he'd heard the news that Rollins had been executed in Fjerda, of all unlikely deaths, well… by then, he had new vengeance to seek. 

In the chaos of the turf wars, the workers at the Dime Lion-run brothel, the Sweet Shop, had revolted and taken it over, led by an indentured Ravkan Heartrender who’d worked as a Tailor there. The news had spread like wildfire. The whores were the ones in charge there now, and they were now insisting on days off, and the right to refuse customers and set their own prices. 

The children enslaved there had been returned to their families. The indentures had burned their indenture papers. 

Three months later, the workers in pleasure houses all across the West Stave went on strike. The response from the brothel owners had been quick and brutal. Beatings were the least of it. After all, there was profit to be made, and even if the girls wouldn't work voluntarily, there were men who liked it when a woman fought back. 

As it turned out, there were far more men who didn't care for that at all. Business flocked, by and large, to the streets, where the girls flirted and laughed and went willingly with you for a few dozen kruge . 

And through it all, the name Inej Ghafa was whispered. She had been the one to escape from the Menagerie, travel over the rooftops, and climb into windows to spread plans and recruit allies, the one to meld dozens of small groups into a coordinated resistance. She had been the source of the words chanted throughout the strike, as girls and boys linked arms and refused to go with clients, as they fought to keep the others from being dragged away. 

You can't chain us all.

There were even rumors about the brothel owners who had been found strangled in their bedrooms after they resorted to particularly savage means to break the strike. Kaz was less convinced that it had been her. In his experience, it was not the outspoken and rebellious who were the first to kill. It was the quiet ones, the broken, desperate ones who did not know how to find the words to fight back. 

As the strike continued, profits collapsed, and death came for their peers in the night, one by one the Tantes and Onkles cut their losses and left Ketterdam for greener pastures. 

And when they had won, she had become a sensation in a new way. Tante Heleen had been a fool, turning a brilliant acrobat into a common prostitute. She may have been forced to whore, but she was born to fly. Kaz did not waste his time and money on pleasure house shows, but he'd heard enough men tell of the bars and swings and ropes that were hung from the ceiling and the wonder of seeing her lithe, graceful body dancing and tumbling along a wire, flipping, gliding, and soaring between bars, swings, and platforms without a net. Her costumes apparently left plenty of smooth, bronze skin on display, but she did not go with any man for kruge anymore. 

They were allowed to look and want, but never to touch.  

If she had invested the money paid to see her perform, Inej Ghafa would have become a rich woman. Instead, she had poured it into the workers alliance that had risen up. She, with the union behind her, had bought back the brothels and reopened them. As in the Sweet Shop, the workers voted on their own house rules, negotiated on their hours, and made a solid living wage. Houses that had once been gilded cages now offered protection, stability, and a measure of control over their working conditions. 

When the vote came up to elect a union leader, Inej Ghafa was once again the name on everyone's lips. 

But with the Barrel in chaos and his allies dying left and right, Kaz had never had the resources to take an active role in the developments on the West Stave. If he’d had the kruge , he’d probably have invested in one or two of the reopened brothels as they were starting up in order to watch his share grow in value. But every coin he could spare at the time was needed for weapons, ammunition, explosives, and the services of a handful of mediks, because he might be a monster, but he wasn’t the kind of monster who stood by and watched his own men die needlessly. 

Enough of them had died despite everything he had done. 

Ghafa had undoubtedly suffered herself at the hands of men like Van Eck, but she did not, could not, understand his reasons.

He did not scorn her profession, despite the idealism that drove her. Whoring was a necessary trade in any city, and regulating it only made sense. He couldn’t fault her business sense or her intelligence. But they lived in different worlds. He’d crawled from the harbor into a world of knives and cons and bloody fists. He’d watched years of careful plans burn to ashes, watched half the Barrel burn to ashes, been shot and stabbed and beaten unconscious and kept going. He was taking Van Eck down for deeply personal reasons that only two other people in the world knew the whole of, and she wanted in– why? Principles? 

She was an unknown quantity with her own motivations and priorities. Kaz had been robbed of his vengeance before. He was not going to risk it happening again.

*

Kaz Brekker’s face was a hard one, all sharp angles and scars, and Inej wanted to spit in it as he looked across the table at her and shook his head curtly. “This isn’t your fight.”

This wasn’t her fight, indeed. 

“Jan Van Eck is one of the most prolific traffickers of indentures in Kerch, Mr. Brekker. I fail to see how taking him down is not very much in my interests.”

“So send me a thank-you letter when I’ve done it. Your involvement isn’t necessary.” He gave the doorway a meaningful look. Inej ignored the hint. 

“He keeps dozens of parem-addicted Grisha indentures in his service. Tell me, do you have plans for what they can do, where they can go, when they’re suddenly cut loose?” she pressed.

The Barrel boss’s mouth tightened with what looked like anger. “Where they go and what they do when they’re free is their decision to make, not yours.”

“I can give them options, support,” she continued. “And I have connections in the Merchant Council.”

His eyes sharpened like a bird of prey and fixed on hers. “Go on.”

“The union can help them to get home–”

“Not that,” he cut in impatiently. “The Council. Who do you have leverage over?” He was being so offensive that it must be intentional. Even among the mannerless Kerch, most businessmen would have made some pretense of courtesy once she had shown that she had an offer worth considering. She glared at him, but answered in words as blunt as his own. Two could play this game.

“Radmakker and Dryden’s mistresses may be able to influence them if needed. Mainly Dryden’s. Radmakker keeps his own council on business matters, for the most part. Dryden is more suggestible.”

“Interesting.” His expression shifted and he was silent for a moment. “Would they,” he said slowly, “to pull an example from the air, be willing to declare public support for a plaintiff suing for their inheritance?”

Inej raised an eyebrow. So, he’d secured a pawn with some claim on Van Eck’s properties. “An illegitimate child, perhaps?” she mused aloud. “The claim likely would not stand. Van Eck has a three-year-old heir born within wedlock and his wife’s solicitor could act as property guardian until the son came of age.”

“The claimant’s legitimate and of age,” Dirtyhands said shortly. “It would stand, provided he was deemed competent to conduct his own affairs. The court is going to question that competence. Support from the Merchant Council would be useful in turning the judge to his favor.”

Inej tried not to show her skepticism; this was not a man who took kindly to his facts being questioned. But she had done her research. Van Eck had no living heirs besides Alys and little Janni.

Still, Brekker might be arrogant, but he was no fool. If he said there was another claimant, Inej was forced to consider the possibility that he had found one. 

“If the case is sound, we can secure Dryden's support for you.”

“What do you want in exchange?” 

Inej would never get tired of being in the position to make demands of men or deny them what they asked for. She smiled. 

“I want a contract guaranteeing that the Van Eck businesses withdraw their involvement in the indenture trade and cease their hire of indentured workers.” 

He nodded in acknowledgement. “I’ll discuss it with him. If he’s interested in the deal, we can arrange a meeting in the next few days.”

She was about to stand and take her leave when abruptly another figure entered the room. 

He was tall, shrouded in a blood red cloak spattered with darker, rusty brown. Beneath the hood, shadowed eyes looked out from behind a mask that appeared to have been shaped from melted, warped metal. Ragged, deep purple hand wraps covered long-fingered hands, revealing only dark-skinned fingers with the nails bitten bloody. His burgundy clothing clung tightly to his limbs and emphasized his unnatural, almost skeletal thinness, and his high-cut trousers and short jacket bore elaborate carnelian embroidery, the sort that had not been used in Kerch fashion for over a century. 

Inej had never been in his presence before, but she knew him on sight. The Unmaker.

He had appeared in Ketterdam a year and a half ago. There were countless rumors of where he had come from. The most popular story was that he had been one of the worshippers of the Starless Saint, who had granted him unnatural powers. Inej’s personal favorite– though she did not believe it– was that he had been a tomb robber in Eames Chin who had unearthed a cursed idol that warped his Grisha abilities so that he could only destroy. 

The Unmaker could stop bullets and dissolve them to dust with a wave of his hand. He could touch a blade and it would crumble with rust. He’d made buildings collapse. There were grisly rumors about what would happen if he touched a person, and why his cape always looked spattered with blood. He fought at Dirtyhands’ side, rendering him and his soldiers nigh untouchable. 

Inej did not believe he was a saint or a spirit, but nevertheless, being in the same room with him sent a chill down her spine. Whatever else he was, he was a killer. 

His tall boots clomped loudly on the floorboards as he stalked to Brekker’s side. 

“There’s a complication with the Belendt shipment,” he said, his voice low and expressionless. 

Brekker nodded. "Miss Ghafa, I'll have to ask that you see yourself out. I'll contact you tomorrow about your proposal."

She'd been about to go anyway, but something about his cold dismissal made her want to stay just to spite him. Why did his manner provoke her this way? She was quite used to disrespectful men.

She stood anyway-- what was she going to do, refuse to leave his office?-- and exited with a polite nod to his deadly lieutenant, ignoring Brekker entirely. 

She could hear their footsteps behind her as Brekker went off to see to his business, the Unmaker trailing behind.

*

The man who was called the Unmaker trailed behind Kaz in silence. He had grown used to being silent, these days, but he still hated it. Once, he would have been talking a mile a minute as they walked, brimming with nervous energy. 

That energy was only a memory now. The exhaustion and the pain in his joints never left him these days. It had been over a year, but he had never stopped hurting. 

Jesper Fahey was twenty years old, and he felt sixty. 

“How is it today?” Kaz asked, his voice expressionless but pitched to not be overheard.

“Pretty bad. You?”

“Leg is tolerable for once. Shoulder hurts like a bitch,” Kaz said bluntly, because there were some things you couldn’t go through together and still be nothing but boss and sharpshooter.

Somewhere between resetting Kaz’s dislocated shoulder in an alley, half-blind with the blood that poured from his own head wound and Kaz pinning him down while he screamed and sobbed in the throes of withdrawal, they’d become something like brothers. And these days, it was a perverse comfort to trade complaints with someone who also could not move without pain as a constant companion. 

Not that Jesper’s pain wasn’t his own fault, a bitter knowledge he had to live with every day.

The turf war had drained the Dregs’ coffers but done nothing to check Jesper’s gambling addiction. As brutal battles replaced profitable burglaries and cons, his debts had grown out of control, and he’d written to his father for a loan. He’d meant to make the money back, of course, to pay off the debt long before the point when the bankers began to send foreclosure notices.

And ever since jurda parem had arrived in Ketterdam, there had been one last option– a nasty one, but one that he’d considered more and more often as the foreclosure date crept closer. 

Jan Van Eck would pay large sums for Grisha Fabrikators to work for him under the influence of parem. In those days before the creation of an antidote, it was the next thing to a death sentence. But he needed people who could work with metal for the new ships he was building, and Jesper, well…

He would not let his father lose his farm, the land he had worked for to create a home for Aditi and a future for his worthless son. Jesper had taken the job.

He’d taken three doses of parem and the flesh and muscle had already begun to be eaten away from his body by the time Kaz broke into the warehouse by the shipyard that Van Eck had converted into a dormitory for his costly but short-lived Grisha workers. He had given Jesper no choice in the matter. He had knocked him unconscious, and when Jesper woke, he was wracked with pain and soaked with sweat in a safehouse. 

Over the next week, he had begged Kaz to shoot him more times than he’d asked for food or water. He’d been too weak to try to fight his way free and back to Van Eck, except for the times when addiction had given him inhuman strength. They had fought, then, until they were bruised and bleeding. They’d screamed at each other, said ugly, cruel things intended to wound the other to the soul. 

Kaz had not left. He hadn’t given up. And slowly, horribly, Jesper had recovered, if it could be called a recovery at all. 

He couldn't shoot anymore. His hands shook, and there was something wrong with his powers. One day, after nearly an hour of trying and failing to shoot straight, he had screamed in frustration and the grip of one of his beloved revolvers had dissolved to dust in his hand.

“You haven’t lost your powers,” Kaz had tried to convince him. “You’re still a Durast, you can still control–”

“I’m not a fucking Grisha. I’m not a fucking Durast, ” Jesper had bit out, the last things he’d ever been given by his mother broken and ruined in his hands. “I’m zowa. I’m a Maker, and this… this is not my power.”

Once again, Kaz had not allowed him to give up. “It’s your power now. It’s what you have left. Use it.” And he had learned, for Kaz. Because when he’d recovered enough to ask about the loan, to demand to know if his father had lost the farm, Kaz had told him it was taken care of. 

“The money you made from Van Eck covered most of it. I paid the rest.”

“You didn’t have the money to–”

Kaz had cut him off with a harsh gesture. “I had… an investment. A piece of land I… a farm. Near Lij. I sold it off. The loan is paid.”

Kaz, who had lost something to Rollins years ago that he’d been determined to take back. Kaz, who when he was very drunk or badly wounded, slipped into a softer country accent. Kaz, who when Jesper had jokingly gifted him a pornographic novel about a highwayman and a milkmaid had gone on a scathing lecture a couple days later about how that was not how cows OR highway robbery worked. The tirade about how both characters ought to be forcibly made to change professions had revealed more familiarity with the dairy business than any city dweller had reason to know. 

Jesper had never thanked him for it, not aloud. But he’d ignored the agony of what it meant to him, to have the gift from his ancestors that he’d always meant to learn to use properly twisted into something wrong. He’d practiced until he could summon it up at will, until he could crumble steel and crush bullets in the air. 

“I think I know what it is,” he’d told Kaz at one point. “There’s a principle I read about at university called entropy… it’s what makes things fall apart.” 

“Entropy,” Kaz had weighed the word on his tongue. “I like Unmaking better. The Unmaker.”

Jesper had given Kaz a look out of the corner of his eye. “What are you plotting?”

“You’re ready to come back to the Barrel,” Kaz had told him. “And if you still don’t want anyone to see you like this… I think I have a solution.”

Like all of Kaz’s plots, it was deeply and unnecessarily melodramatic. But it gave Jesper a way to help the Dregs while keeping the distance from others that he now needed, demanded, because everything hurt, everything overstimulated his senses. He couldn't concentrate and his emotions were unstable; it was like any ability he’d once had to regulate the workings of his brain had been burned away along with his youth and a quarter of his body weight. 

A constant, aching desire for more parem had replaced his urge to gamble, but Kaz had promised the few dealers in the Barrel who has the connections to get it that they would have a slow, bloody death if they sold Jesper a single grain. And deep down, beneath the senseless thirst, he felt nothing but revulsion for what it has done to him.

He'd lived with an addiction for years already, but a craving this fierce that he couldn't and wouldn't indulge was a new kind of torment.

Now he stood at Kaz’s shoulder, a silent menace as Kaz verbally tore apart the Belendt carter who thought he could raise his prices at the last minute and get away with it. 

He waited, and everything inside him waited, with a new and all-encompassing calm. They were finally taking Van Eck down. Kaz had resolved to a year and a half ago, and now the sex workers’ union apparently wanted in on it. But Jesper had a more pressing reason, one that went beyond his own destruction. Jesper had never been capable of holding a grudge on his own behalf. But for those he loved, well…

Kaz had described hate as burning, once, in a rambling conversation in the middle of the night. But for Jesper, hate was cold. 

*

On the second floor of the slat, there was a corner room where one of the walls was all but papered with sketches, diagrams, and equations. One long table against the wall held a Bunsen burner and a motley assortment of glassware. There were a couple chairs, cabinets, and dressers that looked as if they had been salvaged from entirely different decades. In the corner opposite the worktable wasa bed neatly made with threadbare sheets and a knitted blanket. The man who called himself Hendriks sat in the chair closest to the window with a sketchbook, drawing a woman's face. The features bore some resemblance to his own, and like his own, there was a cast to them that indicated pain, sorrow, and stubborn determination. 

His hands were freckled and long-fingered. They would have been an artist's hands if not for the violent history they showed-- scars from chemical burns, broken and healed knuckles from punches thrown back when he had not known how to make the right sort of fist. 

He held the pencil oddly-- the littlest finger and half of the ring finger on his right hand were missing, lost to a bomb there had not been time to construct properly. He only felt the occasional pang of regret for the choice he'd made; his work was more difficult now, and he'd lost most of the hearing in his right ear, but he had bought the lives of six Dregs with that sacrifice, and four of them were still living today.

Wylan had been taught as a child that Ghezen gave no blessing without demanding a cost. He was the three in one, the buyer, the seller, and the contract, and the scales must be balanced. He had consoled himself as a child by believing that his disability was balanced by some undiscovered blessing. 

Then he had come to the Barrel and seen how many sacrifices were for nothing. He'd learned that Ghezen didn't reach down and compensate anyone for anything. When it came to making sure their losses were offset by their gains, every man and woman was on their own. You only got what you paid for if you took it. You were given no blessings in exchange for your shortcomings. You had to work for, fight for, and create your own.

Kaz Brekker had taught him that, and in all disciplines but the one that mattered to his father, Wylan was a quick student.

To balance the scales was to serve Ghezen. Wylan's faith was warped and tarnished, but a certainty of the way things ought to be had survived, deep in the core of him. He intended to exact the price for what had been taken from him.

"My name is Wylan Van Eck," he said quietly to the empty room, "and when I was fifteen, my father arranged to have me killed because I couldn't read."

Every time he practiced the words, he felt his strength growing. He would be ready, soon, to stand up and speak those words before others. He had hidden all his life. He was ready to stop hiding. 

He still could not read, but that fault was nothing compared to his father's willingness to abuse, cheat, and betray others. And he refused to let his disability be a secret shame that could be used to threaten and manipulate him. 

That was another lesson Kaz had taught him, but years ago, he would have struggled to accept it.

The Unmaker came through the door, discarding mask, cloak, and jacket on the battered coat rack. With every piece of his persona he removed, the Unmaker slipped away until, shed of his disguise, Jesper Fahey collapsed onto Wylan's bed with a sigh. 

Wylan put down the pencil and joined him without a second thought, curling his body against Jesper's long, bony frame and twining their hands together. He nuzzled into Jesper's neck, savoring the closeness of him, the rhythm of his breathing and heartbeat. 

For a long moment, they just lay there, content to be home together and in each other’s arms.

Wylan had come to confront that his father's treatment of him was unforgivable because Jesper had shown him what love looked like. He was worth bleeding for and killing for. He was worth kisses in the morning and strong arms that held him when the nightmares came and lovemaking so tender and exultant that he thought he might break from sheer joy. 

If he was worthy of all this from Jesper, who owed him nothing, he'd deserved the acceptance and care of his own father. 

If he was worthy of the respect and confidence of someone as bitter and reticent as Kaz, he'd deserved honesty and straight dealing from the man who had raised him.

If his skills had earned him the trust and affection of the Dregs, he could win the same from the society he'd been born into and raised to move among. He had deserved better than to be discarded as soon as another heir came along. 

I'm a man now, and I'm ready to claim what's mine.

He didn't realize he'd whispered the words until Jesper responded to the declaration dryly. "While I'm the first one to appreciate your manhood, Wy, I'm not up to being claimed at the moment. I feel like I fell off a second story roof. You're going to have to settle for admiring my loveliness and bringing me cups of tea."

Wylan sputtered in indignation and pulled away. "I wasn't-- you know perfectly well that was not a proposition! Since when do I randomly announce that I'm going to... claim you carnally?"

"I have a rich fantasy life and unfailing optimism in your abilities to fulfill it," Jesper muttered, burying his face in the pillow and breathing in deeply. "Your pillowcase smells like you." 

"That's because I need to wash it," Wylan said matter of factly. “Shall I make you that tea, or should I lie here and make dramatic promises of…"

"Passionately ravishing my trembling body?" Jesper suggested. 

"Yes. Passionately ravishing your trembling body." Wylan kissed him softly on the corner of his jaw, at the edge of a rough spot of stubble. When Jesper's hands were not steady enough to shave, Wylan helped him. When they were, he insisted on doing it himself and perpetually missed spots. "So. Passion or tea?"

"Tea, please," Jesper sighed, and Wylan rose, lit the Bunsen burner, and put the kettle on to boil. “Kaz wants to talk to you. He’ll probably be in soon.”

“Mmm. Is it about demo or the Plan?” Because Wylan was uncreative at naming things and Jesper had lost all naming privileges when he'd named a corrosive agent "the Wyvil", they’d been referring to it as the Plan for about a year now. Distantly, Wylan noticed that the rain that had been threatening for most of the afternoon had begun to fall outside. 

“Plan,” Jesper answered, and sat up with a groan to take his shoes off when Wylan meaningfully poked one of them. Shoes on his bed were the least of the things he was willing to put up with for his boyfriend, but that didn’t mean he was going to admit that when he could pester Jesper to take them off instead. 

The kettle had just begun to whistle when there was a knock at the door and a rasping, “We need to talk.”

“Go away,” Wylan called, which was code for ‘Come in.’ Kaz’s voice was not impossible to imitate if the speaker was willing to cough themselves hoarse first. It had only happened once, but the ugly scar on his shoulder from the Black Tip spider’s knife had been enough motivation to put precautions in place. 

Kaz came in and tossed his coat onto the coat rack carelessly enough that it knocked Jesper’s mask to the floor before lowering himself into the most comfortable chair in the room and leaving his hat on the end table beside it. 

“You’re like a fucking cat, Brekker. No respect for anyone’s space,” Wylan told him with a pained look. He filled the teapot and took three mugs out of the cabinet that contained dishes and, despite his frequent protests, a cup with a broken handle filled with pens. 

“Start paying rent and I’ll respect your space,” Kaz retorted, propping his cane against his knee. It promptly fell onto the floor. Wylan let out an exasperated breath.

“You wanted something?” he asked pointedly. 

“New development. We’ve got a potential way to influence at least one more Council member to back you if you’re willing to cut a deal with the sex worker’s union.”

Wylan pulled up the less comfortable straight-backed chair and sat down to face Kaz, now fully listening. “What are the terms?”

“When you win–” Kaz never dealt in ‘if’s or second guessing, it was always when– “You sign a contract with Inej Ghafa to end the Van Eck businesses’ involvement in and support of the indenture trade.”

Wylan couldn’t help the faint smile that crept onto his lips. “You mean, if I do what I was already going to do anyway, they’re going to help us?”

“Not just grisha indentures,” Kaz clarified. “All indentures. Laborers, skilled workers, clerical staff.”

Wylan considered this and nodded. “Still doable.”

“That’s an expensive proposition,” Jesper put in from the bed. “She’ll be expecting a counter-offer.”

Kaz shot him an approving look. “We’ll make a businessman of you yet, Jes.”

“Ugh, wash your mouth out with soap. ”

“He’s right. Those aren’t even terms.” Wylan folded his hands and chewed his lower lip. “One Council member brought to our side will buy her ceased involvement in the grisha indenture trade, release of all grisha workers, and a pledge to speak out publicly against the use of jurda parem.” All things he was planning to do already, but the union didn’t know that. “I’ll discuss terms for further agreements with her if she’s willing to meet.”  

“She is. I’ll send a message to arrange it.” Kaz stretched out his bad leg. “I suggest you ask for additional use of her network. The union’s big. If she gives them your side of the story and puts out the word to spread it around, the whole city will be talking about it in less than a week.”

Wylan caught himself hunching in on himself slightly and forced his shoulders to straighten. This would help them, he reminded himself. This was what he wanted. Kaz was looking at him knowingly, and there was nothing sympathetic in his eyes, only a challenge.

This was no time to indulge the shame that his father had tried to hobble him with. He set his jaw. 

"The market interference case would be stronger if we could bring in an expert witness,” he said. “I don’t suppose she could find us one of those.”

Kaz shrugged. “Expert witnesses patronize whores like everyone else, I assume. Ask her.”

Wylan got up, poured the tea, and brought mugs to the other two, who immediately complained about the lack of sugar in it. 

“I’m out, and I don’t even put sugar in mine! Buy your own sugar.” He sipped his own, letting the warmth spread through him. 

“Kaz will buy you more sugar if you practice some more,” Jesper ordered him, scowling at his perfectly fine but unsweetened tea. 

“I’ll what now?” Kaz demanded. The two of them started bickering over whether or not it would be more inappropriate for the Unmaker or Dirtyhands to be seen buying sugar. Wylan tuned them out. 

He took a breath and walked over to the window to look out at the rain. 

“My name is Wylan Van Eck,” he said, “And when I was fifteen, my father arranged to have me killed because I couldn’t read.”

Outside, thunder rumbled.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: The Case

Jellen Radmakker had been surprised to receive the invitation from Councilman Dryden to dine at the Golden Hare, but as he stepped into the warm, carpeted restaurant and was greeted by a pretty, flaxen-haired waitress, he had to admit that it was a welcome break in a very stressful week. 

Ketterdam had been in an uproar since Tuesday, when the news broke out that Jan Van Eck’s son, Wylan, supposedly dead for three years now, had appeared at the courthouse and filed charges against his father for attempted murder and market interference. The Exchange had turned from a place of business to a hotbed of gossip; Van Eck’s stocks had fallen, then risen, then fallen again as new stories circulated about the truth of the accusations. Radmakker’s clerical staff had been all over the city trying to get reliable information to determine whether they should sell off his shares in the Van Eck shipping business or hold them. At this point, though, he suspected that they were using the assignment as an excuse to sit around coffee shops and listen to the most outlandish stories for their own entertainment. 

He was half inclined to let them get away with it. Someone might as well get some relaxation out of this mess, and he was fond of Sjaak and Arno. They made him feel a slight pang that he had never married and had sons of his own. 

The waitress led him to a table– one of the nicer, more private ones, and he stopped in his tracks when he saw the man sitting across from Dryden.

He had not seen Wylan Van Eck since a dinner party about five years past, but between the strong resemblance the man in front of him had to the boy he'd once been and the sharp, heavy lines of his brows, identical to his father’s, he was unmistakable. 

It was not a lookalike. He knew it in his gut.

“Wylan,” he said, keeping his voice even. “It’s… a surprise to see you.”

Wylan stood courteously and Dryden scrambled to his feet half a second later, looking as disconcerted as Radmakker felt. 

“I was unaware you were involved in the case, Karl,” Radmakker said, giving his fellow council member a piercing look. Why didn’t you warn me?

Dryden shook his head. “I wasn’t. I didn’t even know he’d be here when I accepted your invitation.”

“My invitation?” Radmakker paused in the act of pulling up a chair. “It was you who invited me.”

Wylan held up a hand to forestall Dryden’s reply. “A necessary deception. I needed to speak to both of you, and considering the buzz that the court case is causing and the risk of my father knowing my location, I thought it best to keep things private.”

Radmakker blinked and slowly took a seat. The Wylan Van Eck he remembered had been an earnest but awkward youth who would enthusiastically discuss engineering advances but stumbled through formal introductions. The honest demeanor was still there, but there was a quiet confidence to this young man, and a seriousness that was new as well. 

Wylan absently straightened his collar as he sat back down, and Radmakker shook his head. Even his little gestures were the same. This was unmistakably Jan’s son, but where had he been? He glanced over at the waitress, who was standing there awkwardly as if she was not sure if she should leave and come back when all parties had worked out what was going on. 

“Black coffee, please,” he ordered. “So… Mr. Van Eck…” Ghezen, that felt weird to say. He’d attended the boy’s memorial ceremony. “I assume you have something to discuss with the two of us.”

"I do." Wylan took a breath and looked from one of them to the other, meeting their eyes. "The Van Eck holdings have grown in value in recent years while your own have suffered. I'm sure you've heard that besides the charges of attempted murder, I've brought up a charge of market interference. The charges are true and I have evidence."

Radmakker nodded slowly. He'd known Van Eck for years. Though he had a congenial relationship with him, he didn't hold any illusions about his moral character, not since he'd divorced Marya to marry a mistress young enough to be his daughter. The question was not would he interfere with the market for his own profit, but did he. And it was with disappointment but little surprise that he accepted that the answer was probably yes. 

"As members of the Council, I would ask for a small favor that will not affect the outcome of the trial but will go a long way toward making sure the case isn't thrown away out of hand."

"A market interference case is not taken lightly, I assure you," Dryden blustered.

"My father will do everything he can to see the case dismissed before the court is presented with the evidence, and the first thing he will do is try to have me declared unfit to conduct my own affairs or represent myself in court," Wylan said, looking grim. "He will do this by demanding that I prove that I can read."

Radmakker raised an eyebrow. "Well, surely that's easy enough to dismiss."

Wylan took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. His irises were startlingly blue and for the first time, Radmakker realized that as much as the boy carried himself as a man, he couldn't be more than eighteen. "I can't read," he said bluntly. "I can draw, paint, speak three languages, solve calculus equations and chemical formulas, calculate rate of return on any stock investment on the market, and recite the full history of Kerch and its colonies, but I've never been able to learn to read. My father considers that proof that my mind is deficient. I do not."

"I don't understand," Dryden said slowly. "If you can do all that, surely…"

"The most expensive tutors were hired. The latest methods, the strictest regimens. When I was thirteen, the servants were forbidden to give me food for a week because he said I had to earn my meals by reading a sentence for each of them and I could not . He only gave in when I was too weak to stand. Trust me, councilmen, if you can think of it, it's been tried. I can recognize a few words, like the, and, and my name. But I can't read."

The two men absorbed this in silence.

"I'm willing to take any test of my competence you care to devise. I guarantee that as long as it doesn't require that I read written words, I can prove my mental fitness to your satisfaction. If I can do this, will you stand as witnesses affirming that I am competent to represent myself despite being unable to read?"

Radmakker considered this silently as the waitress brought his coffee and he mixed in a spoonful of honey to sweeten it. 

"I've heard the case involves some very foul dealing," Dryden said slowly. "Evidence ought to be allowed to see the light. And whether you can read has nothing to do with the first charge. You can't kill a man by correspondence, though I've got an aunt who certainly tries."

Wylan laughed politely.

"It's not as simple as making sure he gets his day in court," Radmakker mused. He looked at Wylan. "Backing you as competent would imply tacit support of your case. We'd be standing not just for you, but against him."

Wylan gave a half nod. "It could be seen that way."

"Forgive me for my hesitance, but I'd like to know more about both the charges before I commit my support."

As Wylan laid out the case concisely and emotionlessly, Radmakker drained several cups of coffee and ate an omelette that he barely tasted and he began to realize the reasons for the boy's grim demeanor.

Dryden was right. If even half of what Wylan was saying was true, this case needed to be heard. Van Eck had crossed the line between minor corruption and inexcusable violation of his oaths and responsibilities. Even if the charges could not be proven to the satisfaction of a court, once this came out, few men in Ketterdam would be willing to do business with him.

And if Wylan inherited anything by the end of this, it would be a helpless stepmother and half brother, a company no wise investor would take a gamble on, and a bank account drained from the fines levied for his father’s crimes. 

"Why?" Dryden asked when Wylan had finished speaking, voicing Radmakker's own thoughts. "Why put yourself through all this? It's the right thing to do, of course, but… as you said before,  you're in danger from your father, and there won't be much left of your inheritance once the unlawful profits are taken."

Wylan sat back, the line of his mouth hardening. "He put my mother in an asylum. I've gotten her out, but she deserves to have her home back. He's hurt her, and me, and other people-- people I care about. Isn't that reason enough, even if I were willing to leave Alys and her son in the care of an abusive husband and father?"

Radmakker started into his empty coffee cup and realized that he might be in the presence of a genuinely kind man. Ghezen did not teach kindness as a virtue; it could be a strength or a weakness, depending on how it guided you in life.

Radmakker was a man of faith. It was difficult to tell if Wylan was as well. But whatever he had endured since his attempted murder, it had transformed the kindness that had once been a weakness in an unguarded and eager to please boy into something as sharp and bright as steel. 

"No tests of your faculties are necessary," he said. "I'll bear witness to your competency. I couldn't in conscience do any less."

*

A mixed group of children and adults was yelling and shrieking with laughter. They had gathered in a little crowd around the puppet show booth that an enterprising street performer had set up between the baker’s stall and the coffee house. 

“I gotta new son now, you podge!” the Mercher puppet proclaimed in a high voice. “Get on the boat!”

“I don’t wanna get on the boat,” protested a smaller puppet with orange hair.

“I said, GET on the BOAT!” roared the Merch puppet, coming after him with a bat. The orange haired puppet fled on the boat while the audience booed the Merch. A servant puppet followed and the Merch grabbed the servant. 

“When the boat leaves the harbor, throw ‘im out to sea!”

In the shadow of the overhang outside the coffee house, Kaz leaned against his cane and watched. It was a violent, simplistic pantomime, but he still felt a lingering fondness for it. He’d watched many of these shows when he was a child on the streets. The cast of characters was mainly the same, though every puppeteer had a unique puppet or two of their own. The Merch, the Servant, and the Crocodile now following the boat were old standbys; the Heir was new. Kaz watched as the Crocodile leapt into the boat and ate the Servant, to the children’s shrieks of delight. The Heir threw himself overboard to escape and swam to shore with the Crocodile in pursuit. 

Kaz went into the coffee house, bought a coffee, and by pretending to not have change, then finding change and switching to paying with that, then accidentally paying too much and needing some of his money back, managed to leave with a fresh coffee and three kruge more than he’d come in with. It was a very old trick– try it on a seasoned Barrel merchant rather than a distracted teenager working his Ma’s counter and you’d leave with a black eye and no change at all– but it took a quickness with numbers and a certain amount of skill to do well.

It never hurt to keep in practice, especially when they charged way too damn much for coffee at these places. He could get coffee for half this much at the stand a street down from the Slat. Almost undrinkably bad coffee, true, but even now that he could afford small luxuries, he resented any expense that wouldn’t pay dividends. 

He returned in time to watch the puppet show conclude with the Judge sentencing the wicked Mercher to hang and the Mercher then escaping by convincing the hangman to put his head in the noose, yanking the rope to hang him, and running away laughing. Kaz approached the puppeteer, who was pouring out his hat and counting the coins he’d just collected. He was a skinny man with flushed cheeks and nose, and he grinned when he saw Kaz. 

“Brekker! The script was brilliant. A real hit, especially with the kids.”

“Not their parents?”

“Their parents just start gossiping about the Van Eck case and stop paying attention,” he said dismissively. “But the kids love cheering for the Heir.”

Kaz nodded in satisfaction. “You’ll keep doing it, then?”

“You bet I will. I’m even thinking of coming up with some of my own adventures for the Heir. The Mercher could throw him in the cellar to starve and he could be rescued by the lovely Daisy only to flee from her husband when he caught her with him.” He looked at Kaz eagerly for an opinion. 

“Have him rescued by the husband and chased off by Daisy,” Kaz suggested. 

“Even better! She can hit him with her umbrella,” the puppeteer laughed. “You ever get hold of any more scripts, you send them my way, you hear?”

“I will,” Kaz promised, smiling slightly despite himself. “The adults’ talk– what’s the general tide of opinion on the case?”

“Most everyone’s rooting for the kid, sounds like. You know anything about that murder trial? That’s the one everyone’s really dying for news about, since it’s closed to the public.”

“All I know is the kid washed up in the Barrel and worked in a tannery for a few months,” Kaz commented nonchalantly. “ I can’t imagine anyone from his side of the Beurscanal doing that if they had any other options. I had my people keeping an eye on him for a bit, but once the turf wars started a few months later, we had other things to worry about.” The puppeteer soaked in this gossip gleefully, and Kaz guessed that he’d be passing on that tidbit before or after the show in hopes of extra tips– just as Kaz had intended. 

“Hell of a thing to do to your own son,” was the response, and Kaz nodded. 

“If he survives whoever Van Eck sends to keep him quiet and makes it to court, I can probably get you some news from the trial, for a price,” he offered as he drained the last of his free coffee. “I’ll come back around next week if you’re interested.”

“Might be.” The puppeteer began to deftly reset the small stage as a group of children and young adults approached, probably coming off the early shift at the cannery. Kaz left him to his trade and headed back to the Crow Club, barely able to restrain himself from grinning as he heard from behind him the voice of puppet Van Eck declaiming to the booing audience about his villainous plans.

*

Inej’s office was a former private parlor in what had once been the House of the Blue Iris. It was, in fact, the only part of the house she felt safe making her own. She had chosen the building for its quiet elegance and the high-ceilinged hall that she’d been able to convert for her acrobatic shows. Though she would never lose her longing for home, for the brilliant colors and hand painted details of the caravan, she refused to flaunt the trappings of her culture for men to gawk at. The public rooms of the Blue Iris were decorated with azure-flocked wallpaper and delicate furnishings. 

In her office, however, Inej let herself indulge in things that felt like home. She had filled the room with warm-colored rugs, Ravkan wall tapestries, and painted furniture. Only the shevrati Kerch would see it as a sign of wealth to have furniture of austere varnished wood when it could be covered with brilliantly enameled birds and flowers. She also had an assortment of bright, squashy sofas and chairs. Inej sat curled in a cushioned armchair with a cup of tea and a box of pastries from the Ravkan quarter; Nina Zenik had draped herself across the closest sofa and was eating her way through her own box while she regaled Inej with the story of the trial she had just come back from.

There were others listening as well– fellow union members and friends, members of the community she had helped build. Elke, who had been bought from a Fjerdan orphanage for her white-blond hair and been indentured at the House of Snow for over twenty years. Roslin, who still flinched at raised voices, but kept the ledgers with dedication and a hawk’s eye for inconsistencies. Xue, a middle-aged woman who had been the Menagerie’s Serpent years ago and now worked with her son, an apothecary, to help Inej secure affordable contraceptives for union members. They each had their own favorite spots in the room to occupy– the loveseat by the bookshelf, the rocking chair by the fireplace, the plush rug beside the little coffee table that Inej would pile unwanted correspondence on until Roslin got exasperated and went through it herself.  A black cat with white paws napped on a pillow by the fire. 

“So he brought in representatives for a bunch of different shipping firms who all said that once Van Eck had bought up over half of the berths outside of the Barrel, he started charging a share of the cargo for them when the violence flared up around the docks. Then, in front of the entire Ghezen-fearing assembly,” Nina said gleefully, “He marched in more than a dozen thugs in their finest Barrel flash to testify that they’d been offered deals on ammo and liquor to rob and burn ships in the harbors Van Eck didn’t control and told not to touch any of his own berths or vessels or he’d stop funneling them weapons entirely.”

“Saints!” Inej covered her mouth with a hand just in time to keep a bite of teacake from falling out. “You mean the attacks at the harbors–”

“He’s been behind a lot of them? It’s sounding like it. Then they brought Retta’s little professor guy in and he went through a bunch of calculations over how much value the Exchange had lost from the attacks and projections of how much Van Eck profited. If he’s right, Van Eck’s been making a fortune off this.” Nina licked powdered sugar off her fingers as the other women murmured their own comments. “But the bastards declared the testimonies– well, except for the professor’s– inadmissible.”

Inej blinked in surprise. “All of them?”

Xue clicked her tongue. “Kerch law. If you have a crime on your record, you can’t testify in court.” She shook her head. “I tried to bring Heleen up for breach of contract years ago. It was after she sold me on and I earned my freedom. But she forged up papers saying I was indentured for committing a crime in Shu Han and they threw out the case.” She shook her head, a sour twist to her mouth. 

“Because of how serious the charges are, the judge has given them a month to produce character witnesses who can declare them reformed,” Nina said, reaching down to pet the cat, who had wandered over. “Hello, darling. Want to be a character witness?” The cat headbutted her and then leapt onto the couch arm and settled there, purring. “Yeah, you’re right, you probably have committed too much crime. That makes two of us.”

“That makes most of us,” Inej commented ruefully, “after they slapped those incitement to riot charges on us at the indenture auction last year. Wait, were you there, Ros?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Roslin said quietly and matter-of-factly. “Even in Ketterdam, no court would accept a retired whore as a character witness.”

“Does it actually say that in the law?” Inej demanded indignantly. 

“More or less.” Nina made a face. “The judge explained the terms in full. A man or woman of good reputation with Kerch citizenship who owns either a business or shares in the Exchange. One witness for each of them, and each witness can only back the good character of one person per trial.”

“Well,” Elke said thoughtfully, “At least we know where to find Kerch business owners. Here, every week at Inej’s performance.”

Inej blinked. It was true that her shows attracted the sort of snobbily respectable clientele who might normally hesitate to be seen on the Staves– the type who would keep a pampered mistress in a well-appointed little flat rather than visit a prostitute. For that matter, it also made an excellent excuse for anyone who was interested in the West Stave’s more traditional entertainments to be there. They’d been seeing a decided uptick in business from women after Inej’s shows– while it wouldn’t be appropriate for a widow or married woman to go to a brothel normally, Inej’s performances gave ladies an excellent reason to openly visit that side of town. 

She finished her tea and looked thoughtfully into the empty mug. “So you’re suggesting we, what, recruit witnesses at a performance? Wouldn’t that be a little too obvious?”

“Let Brekker and his crew handle the specifics,” Roslin suggested. “You still haven’t gotten their agreement to release the crewmen on Van Eck’s vessels from their contracts. Offer the performance as an opportunity to find character witnesses and promise your active cooperation in whatever scheme they set up in return for the last of your terms being met.”

Inej shook her head. She would never get used to the way the Kerch saw the world. While she looked at the Van Eck case as both a means to a worthy end and a good cause in itself, Roslin approached it purely as a business deal. 

Nina got to her feet and bent to brush a kiss to the crown of Inej’s head, making her smile. It had taken time for her to accept Nina’s demonstrative affection as something without ulterior motives. It had taken time to feel safe with anyone here, despite their common mission. But one day, she’d looked around herself and realized what she had done: built a family of women around herself not unlike the one she’d grown up with at home. Men as well, because men who’d worked in the sex trade understood in a way other men did not. 

She supposed the Barrel denizens found some similar comfort in their gangs, but it was hard to imagine. 

“Off to write to your Fjerdan?” Inej teased, and Nina tossed her head, unashamed. It had taken her a year to get the courts to hear her petition to free the former drüskelle, and when he’d first been released, he had looked at Nina with such hate that Inej felt her stomach grow cold with fear. But somehow the two of them had come to an understanding. Though he had returned to Fjerda, he had left the drüskelle order. Through the bits of letters Nina had shared with her, Inej could see something strong and real growing between the two of them. 

“Excuse you, I am her Fjerdan," Elke argued playfully. 

"I'm starting a collection," Nina said unrepentantly. Elke threw a pillow at her, which she caught and threw back. 

Inej listened to their banter, and when Nina left, listened idly to the conversation that started up between Roslin and Xue speculating about the murder trial. 

With the Kerch, everything was about profit, and whatever else Kaz Brekker was, he was Kerch, and purely driven by self-interest. Brekker stood to gain something by taking Van Eck down. As Inej mentally composed a message to him negotiating the use of The Blue Iris to find potential character witnesses, she decided that she was going to figure out what that something was. 

Chapter Text

The Ball of the Scarab Queen was set to be the event of the season on the West Stave. Fliers and invitations had gone out three weeks before– a party at the House of the Blue Iris featuring food, games, and an acrobatic performance by Inej Ghafa herself as the most elusive and revered of the Komedie Brute characters, The Scarab Queen. Regular patrons had received coveted special invitations and their own reserved tables; others had purchased tickets. Everyone, even the guests, was dressed in cloaks and Komedie Brute masks. Employees of the Iris glided between tables, serving drinks and snacks, clad in the costumes of the coquettish Parlor Maid or the lusty Paramour. The tables were draped in red velvet, evoking stage curtains. 

Three men entered and were escorted to one of the larger tables for invited guests. Sitting together,they  made a motley crew; the tallest of them was disguised as the Madman and the other two wore the masks of Scapejack and the Honest Merchant. The latter, whose normally red-gold curls had been tailored brown for the night, leaned in to speak to the Madman. 

“Tell me again that this is going to work.” 

Jesper reached over and squeezed Wylan’s hand lightly. “It’s going to work,” he said, then paused as if considering. “Or it could be a complete disaster but we’ll have gotten free drinks in a fancy brothel and a night out instead of sitting around scheming in the Slat.”

Kaz, overhearing, added, “And it’s not like it can actually make the situation much worse unless something goes wrong and we have to set the place on fire to escape.”

Wylan groaned. “Why would we have to set the place on fire? What circumstance would even call for that?” he demanded.

Kaz shrugged. “I just thought the prospect of spontaneous arson might cheer you up.”

Wylan glared indignantly through his mask. “That was one time.”

“Three. That was three times,” Kaz corrected him. 

“Two of those three times, it was your idea!”

“Yes, but you enjoyed yourself, didn’t you?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

Jesper’s body tensed slightly beside him. “And that’s our first two marks who just walked in. Bauwens and Schrotenboer, dressed as Mister Crimson and the Professor.”

As had been planned, after taking their tickets, the brunette Parlor Maid led them to a table that was a little off to the side but still had an excellent view of the performance area.

The three conspirators did not join them at the other table yet. Jesper took a champagne from a passing server’s tray and angled it under the full mask of the Madman to sip it, struggling a little. “This is why no one dresses as the Madman,” he complained. 

“It’s entirely appropriate,” Kaz said idly as he watched the entrance. “The Madman is usually in cahoots with Scapejack.” Wylan smirked. Of course, Kaz had dressed as Scapejack– the magician, con artist, and trickster who traditionally played the role of the villain in the Komedie pantomimes. 

“Kaz got way too into his costume,” Jesper whispered to Wylan in a voice meant for Kaz to overhear. “He got the patchwork cloak and the expensive mask and everything.”

Kaz bridled beneath what indeed appeared to be the more high-quality version of Scapejack’s mask. “It’s called having standards,” he shot back. 

Wylan shook his head. “Oh, no. I will not hear any talk about standards from the man who, not four days ago, dropped a waffle on the floor, picked it back up, and ate it without even dusting it off. If you ever had a standard, it took one look around itself and left in horror.”

“Damn, Kaz,” Jesper teased as Kaz made an indignant sound, “At least we dust off our floor waffles.”

Secretly, though, despite the floor waffles, Wylan sympathized with Kaz’s enthusiasm for the costume. The Komedie Brute had a sort of magic to it when you were a child. The masked figures and call-and-response lines… it was like being transported into a different world. 

“Landaal just came in with his mistress,” Kaz said, jerking his head very slightly toward the door, where a portly man in the mask of the Captain had just entered. 

“Do you know if Jong and Weber will be here?” Wylan asked, straightening his cape slightly and stealing a sip of Jesper’s champagne for his nerves. It was smooth and crisp on his tongue, and he realized as he swallowed that it was the first champagne he’d tasted in three years. 

“They’re not fools,” Kaz replied tersely. “People will be talking about this party for months. ”

Kaz was tense, but Wylan knew it had nothing to do with the plan. While he was used to crowds of people in the Barrel’s streets and the Crow Club, he exuded menace as Dirtyhands. People might pass close, but no one dared to jostle him in his own domain or put a hand on his shoulder to ask him to move aside. Here, wearing a different guise, two people had already done that in the twenty minutes they’d been here. Outwardly, Kaz had reacted with polite composure, but his hand had clenched hard on the inconspicuous cane he used during jobs.

Wylan, while unbothered by the crowds, had a knot in his stomach. Although the others were comfortable with spur of the moment improvisation, Wylan was a chemist. He liked precision and formulas. Everything else about their scheme had been years in the making, but in this case, they’d been tripped up by their own imperfect knowledge of the legal system. Two weeks of planning wasn’t nearly enough for his peace of mind. But they hadn’t known that testimonies by criminals were inadmissible, and why would they? The denizens of the Barrel generally settled things outside of the courtroom. 

“Kaz, Wy,” Jesper said quietly. “Who’s that?” Sure enough, as if summoned up by Wylan’s fears and doubts, a man who was neither Jong or Weber was being led to the table with the other marks. He was thinner and grayer than either of the men they had been expecting and masked as Mister Crimson. 

“Let’s find out.” Kaz’s voice was decisive, and a subtle shift in his posture marked the change that always came over him when he prepared to face a mark. Wylan took a deep breath and lagged behind as was the plan. He would follow in a few minutes. 

*

Wylan’s heart ached slightly, watching Jesper and Kaz work the table. The two of them were a seamless team; Jesper’s animated charm drawing people out; Kaz’s subtle remarks and questions guiding the conversation precisely where they wanted it to go. It was a rare glimpse of who his lover had once been, before the parem. It was the beautiful, reckless boy who shone through in occasional grins and bursts of laughter, who blazed like the sun in the moments of post-battle adrenaline before the pain and fatigue rendered them all shaking wrecks. 

He loved them both, the old Jesper who had burned too fast and bright and the tense, self-deprecating, battle-worn man who knew and treasured Wylan like no one else ever had. 

“-- cut them some deals on imported fabrics when they were getting started a couple years back,” Jesper was saying with a wave of his hand. “And I’m a regular around here. They’ve sent me tickets to an event or two like this before, though tonight is particularly spectacular, don’t you think?”

“It is,” agreed Schrotenboer. “I’m something of a regular myself, though I can’t say I’ve received a free ticket before.”

“Mirri here got me a ticket through the union,” Landaal said with a fond look at his mistress, a statuesque redhead wearing the mask of the Harlot with its elaborate cat-eyes. “How about you?” he asked Kaz. 

“I import herbs that prevent venereal diseases,” Kaz said briefly. “The Blue Iris takes great pride in their girls being clean. They only accept the highest quality.“ His original cover story had been deemed too complicated and distracting by Inej Ghafa when they’d run the final plan by her, and she’d provided him with this one instead. “And you, Mister Crimson?” he said, turning to the man who they had not been able to identify. 

The man chuckled. “Ah, I bought it off a man I work with who was going to be out of town. Stroke of luck for me. The acrobatics show tonight will be especially elaborate, I hear.” He leaned back in his chair. “I knew Inej Ghafa back in the day, you know, when she was still working at the Menagerie. The little Suli Lynx.”

There was a murmur around the table, and Jong leaned forward. “You had her when she was working? What was she like?” Wylan’s stomach turned slightly at the hungry tone in his voice.

“Oh, she was a treat. I was one of her first customers.” He licked his lips and drank deeply from his wine glass. “I paid extra to be one of the ones to break her in. Worth every kruge. I’ll never forget how she shook and swallowed little whimpers, the way she flinched. She was so delicate that I could hold both her wrists in one hand while I–”

“Now, now,” Kaz interrupted sharply, “You don’t have to go making everyone jealous. Let’s have a toast. To old friends,” the suggestive tone of his voice made it clear what he was referring to, “and new. Proost en winst! ” 

As everyone echoed him and touched their glasses together, Wylan saw Jesper make a subtle sign in the silent language all the Dregs used on covert jobs. An almost unnoticeable flick of the thumb against his jugular, one word. Kill.

Kaz signed back with a gesture which Anika had invented and added to the sign lexicon before they’d lost her in the Grafcanal battle. It translated to calm the fuck down. Then he looked at Wylan and tapped his glass three times– Wylan’s cue. 

Wylan took a deep breath and spoke his part. “Anyone else looking forward to when they reconvene the Van Eck trial?” he asked, using every technique Kaz and Jesper had taught him to keep his voice natural and relaxed. “I’ve got to admit I’ve been following it closely.”

“Me too,” Jesper agreed. “Van Eck’s berth tolls cut quite a chunk from my profits this past year. Damned shame about the witness testimonies.”

Landaal winced. “My profits as well. What do you mean about the testimonies, though?” he asked. “I haven’t been following the case, but I heard witnesses came forward saying he’d been behind the harbor raids.”

“Oh, you didn’t hear? The judge threw them out,” Mirri said with a nonchalance that Wylan envied, though of course a woman didn’t become the mistress of a prosperous mercher without knowing well how to help guide a conversation. 

“Threw them out?” Kaz asked, convincingly indignant. “My cousin’s ship got hit by one of those raids. His firm isn’t a large one. He had to lay off men, take out a loan… he’s only just gotten out of the red this past season.”

“That’s just what happened to me,” Schrotenboer piped up angrily. “I was about ready to spit when the testimonies were thrown out. It should count as confession, not witness testimony. They’re the trash who did the raids for him, after all.”

“Yeah,” Wylan agreed. “There ought to be some sort of exception when the criminal testifying is the one who committed the crime.”

“Now, we can’t be letting criminals go into court and sway trials in their friends’ favor,” Bauwens started to say, but Jesper cut him off. 

“You know what the judges said? That if they came back with reliable character witnesses who would go before court and say the criminals had reformed, he’d accept their testimony.” He laughed, irony thick in his voice. “Barrel scum don’t reform. It’s as good as rigging the trial in Van Eck’s favor. They’ll never find anyone to stand for them and the judges know that.”

“Be funny if some of the men his company defrauded came in and said they’d reformed.” This was the hardest line of the part he was playing, and he’d rehearsed it with Kaz and Jesper several times. It couldn’t come out stilted or too earnest. It was a throwaway comment, a joke. He laughed as he said it, and although it still didn’t sound quite like his own voice, it came out smoothly enough. 

“Oh, what a lark!” Mirri exclaimed on cue and grabbed Landaal’s arm. “Stefan, you could do that! Your brother in law’s business took such a hit from those raids, after all. And no one would dare gainsay your word. Ooh, Van Eck would be in such trouble!”

“I was only joking, my dear,” Wylan told her with a dismissive gesture. “Besides, it would take at least four character witnesses to make any sort of difference.”

“No, the girl has a point,” Kaz said, throwing back the rest of his drink, and Wylan marveled at how, with the slightest shifts in posture and tone, his confident presence suddenly dominated the table. “So they need at least four? There’s more than four of us here. What do you say, Professor? He hurt our pockets; shall we hurt his back?”

Schrotenboer tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the table for a moment then spoke. “You know what? I’m in. Serves the bastard right.”

“I think I’ll say one of them has given up his wicked ways and works as a runner for my office,” Kaz said with some relish in his voice.

“If I’d been born in Kerch, I’d join in. I hate being left out of a good joke,” Jesper lamented. “What about you two?” he asked Bauwens and the Mister Crimson. “Are you in?”

Bauwens fiddled with his napkin nervously. “I had to sell a good many shares and one of my ships on account of all this trouble,” he admitted. The invitations to this table had not been sent to these particular men by chance. They had picked out specific business owners who had suffered especially badly as a result of Van Eck’s crimes, and despite his reserve, Bauwens’ losses had been significant. “I’m not sure I agree with the morals of it, but it would be satisfying.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Mirri said, beaming. “Like the last scene of a play, with everyone coming forward to denounce the villain. You should get some of your friends to do the same! Imagine Van Eck’s face if suddenly everyone was coming forward and declaring the men he’d had burn the ships reformed and trustworthy! Then the judges would have to listen!”

Schrotenboer broke into laughter. “You know what, I just might,” he said. “And you, Honest Merchant? It was your idea, after all.”

“I will if he will,” Wylan said, daring to improvise from the script slightly to give Bauwens that slight push he looked like he still needed. Bauwens considered silently for a moment more, then set his jaw. 

“The deal is the deal,” he agreed. “And you? You’ve not spoken on the matter.” 

The uninvited Mister Crimson merely leaned back in his chair. “I don’t have a personal stake in this,” he said airily. “My law firm hasn’t been affected. If the lot of you want to get involved, that’s your decision. I’m just here for the show.”

It could have been worse, Wylan reflected. The man was a wild card they hadn’t bargained on. If he, like Bauwens, had voiced moral objections, they’d have had a harder task steering the table their way. 

Three witnesses– because though he and Kaz had declared they would do the same to encourage the others to follow the crowd, neither of them could actually do so. Three, and Mirri could be counted on to urge Landaal to get his friends in on it. Whether Schrotenboer’s resentment against Van Eck was deep enough to motivate him to draw his friends into the plan was anybody’s guess. But even three backed testimonies might be enough to add the needed weight to the case.

Wylan’s concentration was in pieces during the following discussion of the upcoming Hoede wedding, his mind branching out in every direction trying to trace possibilities and throw out last-ditch plans. Flasks and compounds were reliable, predictable. Men were not. Kaz thrived on manipulating people like pawns, but Wylan was driven to distraction by the uncertainty. 

He braced himself with the thought of his mother, slowly recovering in the shabby but safe room that he could barely afford to let for her. He thought of the half-brother he’d never met who should not have to grow up with a murderer for a father. 

This would work, he told himself as the music began and Inej Ghafa stepped out in the costume of the Scarab Queen. It would work because it had to. It would work because his father had made too many enemies, and because there was one last piece of the plan that they had yet to bring into fruition in the days to come. 

*

The darkness fell as all the lamps dimmed at once. From somewhere at the back of the room, a slow drumbeat began, one that seemed to skip a beat every now and then. Even Kaz, who was very aware of the manipulative artistry behind it, felt anticipation rising beneath his skin. 

When Inej stepped out, the room went silent. She wore the traditional deep green cape of the Scarab Queen, but instead of the traditional mask, her face itself had been made into the mask, false jewels and gold paint forming the shape of the mask over her features. Of course– a mask would not have remained in place during a performance, and if it had slipped, it could have blocked her vision. Then she allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders and there were gasps and murmurs of approval. The sequined costume showed every lithe and muscular curve of her body, its tones of green, gold, and iridescent insect-wing blue bright against her dusky skin. Her forearms and calves were bare. More sparkles glinted from her hair as she turned her head, tiny jeweled ornaments like stars against coiled black braids. Then she pulled herself effortlessly up the rope that led to the high platform, the climb itself part of the show as she paused to twist into graceful, precarious-looking poses. The drumbeat had picked up speed and was joined by a low wind instrument, something like an oboe or clarinet. Then all music faded into the background as she stepped onto the wire and began to dance.

She moved like water flowing and fire burning at the same time, and Kaz was grateful for his mask. He could follow Inej’s every move with the intent fascination her skill merited.  Not that anyone besides maybe Wylan would have noticed Kaz’s reaction– most of the men in the room and no small number of the women were watching Inej Ghafa just as raptly. 

She tumbled, spun, and leapt with complete confidence in her body, her placement, her momentum. Kaz did not think he’d ever been as sure of anything as this woman was. She defied gravity and doubt. She moved the way that people claimed cats did, though Kaz had never seen anyone or anything move with such unspeakable grace. 

He wasn’t sure if the clenching in his stomach was desire or jealousy. No, that wasn’t true. It was definitely both. 

Mister Crimson made an obscene little grunt of approval, and disgust twisted through Kaz and mingled with the awe and hunger he felt. 

Kill, Jesper had signed, and something inside Kaz had agreed. A man who spoke with such relish of violating a woman– no, a girl , because Heleen was one of the madams who preferred to buy her indentures when they were young and impressionable– was not worth the air he breathed.

But he would not risk all their plans on a well-deserved but unnecessary execution. And the woman before them, incandescent in flight, needed no protection or vengeance on her behalf. Kaz had never seen anyone in his life who exuded such freedom and effortless power. Jesper might have come close, years ago, in the heart of a gunfight. He wondered if she was Grisha, and the air currents themselves were bound to her will. 

If she was, Kaz envied the air. 

One last dizzying series of flips and somersaults, and then she took hold of what looked like a long streamer of silk hanging from the ceiling and in a liquid, graceful motion, she swung herself onto it, twisted it around her thighs and flung her arms out and her body back into an arch, one leg bent and the other outstretched. The room came alive with gasps and applause as Inej, now hanging upside down, reached behind her, caught the silk again, untwisted and lowered herself to hook an elbow and a knee in a way that allowed her to slide down and alight on the ground.

After the performance, Inej made her usual rounds of the tables, but this time, she stopped at theirs first. She was still slightly breathless and glowing with perspiration, but every inch the gracious hostess as she smiled at them, turning to each by name with an incline of her head. 

“I hope you’re enjoying your evening. We’re grateful you were able to make it, Mr. Bauwens, Mr. Schrotenboer, Mr. Hilli, Mr. Jong, Mr. Van Vliet, Mr. Landaal…” She paused on the graying Mr. Crimson, who was clearly not the Mr. Weber she had been expecting. 

"Come now, don't you remember Onkle Braam? I thought little whores always remembered their first clients. And we had so much fun together."

Kaz, directly beside her, was probably the only one who heard the tiny, broken intake of breath that followed his comment, followed by a slow, purposeful inhale and exhale. Inej turned very deliberately to face the rest of the table, ignoring him. 

The man– Braam-- clicked his tongue reproachfully. “Now that’s just unkind. Our time together was so special for me. Wasn’t it for you?”

“Is there anything I can have brought to you gentlemen?” Inej asked, her voice still carefully melodious, but there was something brittle in her smile and her eyes. 

“Everything is excellent,” Landaal said, looking slightly uncertain but clinging to his proper manners. 

“Got a sweet little Suli girl like you? I’d expect a discount, of course, since you know how very nicely I’ll take care of h–”

Before he’d finished his sentence, Inej spun to face him, tore the Mister Crimson mask from his face, and slugged him. 

She did it properly, using the weight of her body and the full strength of her acrobat’s muscles, and the man’s chair crashed backward, sending him to the floor, blood gushing from his nose. They were mostly screened from the rest of the room by carefully arranged potted plants, but a few patrons were in the position to catch a glimpse, and they stared in surprise. 

The sight of that brutal, satisfying punch hit Kaz with a wave of pure, all-consuming heat. Oh, she was glorious.

“Theo, Maud, will you escort this man from the premises? He is not welcome here,” she said to two passing servers, unclenching her hand and shaking it out. 

Kaz had the stray indecent thought that he’d like to kiss the blood off of her knuckles. Instead, he offered her his napkin, which she took with a genteel nod of thanks. 

As the Mister Crimson was hauled to his feet, he spat blood in Inej’s direction. “Just you wait,” he said, his words muffled and distorted by his broken nose. “You won’t be so high and mighty forever. All it will take is one fall from that wire and you’ll be broken and good for nothing but whoring again. And trust me, when that happens, I’ll be there to relive old times and put you back in your place.”

“My value isn’t in my body, shevrati, ” Inej said, her voice dripping with scorn. “If I fall, when I fall, my union, my family will take care of me. When you are old and broken and not even good enough for whoring , I doubt you’ll be able to say the same.” She glanced at the man who she had called Theo. “Get him out of here. He’s bleeding on my carpet.”

She turned on her heel and strode away, head held high as if she wore a crown, every inch the Scarab Queen.

Kaz ached .

*

Alys Van Eck sat in the garden, rocking her baby and waiting for her secret guest. She hoped she wasn’t being too wicked. 

She was just so lonely. And Myrtle Luiken was a perfectly proper friend for her to have, just as proper as Alys herself– after all, Alys had been Jan’s mistress before he’d married her. And it wasn’t as if the society ladies would have anything to do with her. 

Jan didn’t like her having guests over. He told her she had plenty of opportunities to socialize at dinner parties and such. But dinner parties with his colleagues were ever so dull. W henever she spoke, Jan gave her such angry looks, as if she were always embarrassing him, that she barely said anything at all. And Myrtle liked her, and listened when she talked, and it was so nice to have a friend. 

Jan didn’t like her to say so, but Alys missed Wylan. Even if he had run away and pretended he was dead and told awful lies about Jan, in her secret, foolish heart, Alys hoped he was all right. Jan had always talked to him in the voice that made Alys shiver and want to hide, and said he was stupid even though he was quite clever. He’d taught her about different types of music and all sorts of interesting, complicated things like how eyeglasses worked and why green-dyed fabric from Eames Chin was poisonous and she should never wear it. He’d always been very kind to her, even though she knew he hadn’t wanted her as his stepmother, not really. 

But she wasn’t allowed to mention Wylan any more, not since the trial had started. She wasn’t to worry herself about it, he’d said. She wouldn’t understand. 

Well, there were plenty of things she didn’t talk to him about because he wouldn’t understand them. Like thatshe’d moved the settee in the parlor not because she liked it better by the window but to hide the place where her dog had been sick on the rug. Like the wine she snuck up from the cellar on the days when she was sad and the baby was fussy and everything seemed gray and awful. Like Bajan, before Jan had found out and sent him away. And like the fact she had a friend who visited sometimes even though nobody was supposed to. 

When Myrtle came in through the garden gate that Alys had left unlatched for her, Alys put Janni on the ground so he could walk to meet her. Janni liked Myrtle too. But there was another woman with her, and Alys felt a chill of nervousness. Was she a friend? A servant? Her dress was shabby and plain, so perhaps she was just a maid who worked for Myrtle. Why was she here?

Myrtle knelt and opened her arms, and Janni toddled into them, and the woman crossed the lawn to sit down in the chair next to Alys. Her face was solemn and eerily familiar, and Alys felt her chest tighten in discomfort. 

"Don't worry," the woman said as if she could read Alys's thoughts. "No one will find out I'm here. You're not allowed guests, are you?"

Alys shook her head mutely. 

"I imagine you're not allowed to visit your family either," she continued, and Alys's eyes widened. How did she know?

"It… it wouldn't be economical," she ventured. "My parents and sister live four days' travel away."

"Has he started shouting at Janni yet, when he's too loud or unruly? Has he threatened to hit him? He will, you know, if he doesn't perform as expected in his lessons. Just like he did Wylan."

"How dare you say things like that?" Alys demanded, finding her courage at last with this new accusation. "Who are you?"

"I'm Marya Van Eck," the older woman said softly. "And you're just like I was, twenty years ago."

"Marya Van Eck is dead!" Alys cried. "Or… insane, I thought? Wylan said she was dead, but maybe she went insane and then died. Perhaps I'm being foolish again. But it doesn't matter," she said, gathering herself up. "You can't be her." 

She did look a bit like Wylan. The shape of her face, the faded red of her hair, not a common color in Ketterdam. But it couldn't be. Marya was dead.

Wylan had been dead too, right until he wasn't.

"What do you want?" She whispered.

"Your help," the woman– Alys refused to call her Marya– said. "Jan Van Eck took my home from me and had me locked away for years. He abused and tried to kill my son. I want him to pay for it. Wouldn't you like your freedom? To be taken care of without being trapped inside and kept from friends and family?"

"You're lying to me," Alys said stubbornly. "Jan takes care of me. He loves me."

"Jan treats you like a thing he owns. He doesn't know any other way," she continued, and Alys wanted to cover her ears so she didn't have to hear the words. "Wylan would care for you and Janni. He wouldn't put you out of our home or keep you locked away. He wouldn't mock you or frighten you when you disagreed with him."

Myrtle spun Janni around in the air and he let out a happy shriek. He'd already learned not to make such noises around his father. 

"What," Alys started to say, then swallowed hard. "What would I have to do?"

*

Inej set down the letter and let out a breath of satisfaction. Getting Alys on their side by providing her with a sympathetic friend had been her idea; men never took into account the complex network of alliances between women. And it was only common sense to deduce that a man who had locked up his first wife and tried to kill his son would not be the sort of husband to inspire undying loyalty. 

Reluctant at first, it had only taken an afternoon talking with Marya–and the reassurance that neither she nor Janni would be shamed or put out of their home– to win Alys’s cooperation. Van Eck might treat her like a child, but Alys was Kerch, born and bred, and like any well-brought-up mercher’s daughter, she could go through a ledger and find profits and expenses that did not match up. Jan locked his private books in his desk, of course, but what sort of wife didn’t know where her husband kept his keys? The three of them, Myrtle, Marya, and Alys, had gone over them together over tea and toast and found the weapons sales and bribes, noted down under other names but unmistakably aligned with the dates of attacks and the amounts the gang members had testified to taking. 

And to think, Brekker had concocted an elaborate scheme to break in during a dinner party, pick the lock of the desk, and make off with the ledgers. Men. The books would stay precisely where they belonged until the day of the trial, when Alys would simply bring them with her to court in her knitting bag and produce them when she was called to the stand. 

Since the performance, Brekker’s brief notes updating her on their progress had grown more frequent and a bit less reticent. Still entirely appropriate, though, so she trusted that he wasn’t going to become a problem. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her once he’d seen her perform. His desire had only intensified when she’d punched the man, but perhaps that was to be expected. Her main clients had been tourists and old merchers from Zelverstradt looking for an exotic thrill, but she’d serviced men who’d come up from the Barrel every now and then. What a man from the other side of town would call a vicious bitch, a Barrel fellow would nod approvingly at and call a girl worth knowing.

And a man could want a woman without pursuing her. Brekker did not frequent the brothels, but as powerful as he’d become in the past year, she would not be surprised if he kept a mistress or some other private arrangement. He’d probably just think of her while he was with them for a while. The idea didn’t trouble or disgust her. If he wanted to fantasize about her, Saints knew he’d be far from the only man who did. 

Still, he merited watching. A man without a conscience could be dangerous if he decided to fixate on her, and now that they had allied in the cause against Van Eck, he might make the mistake of thinking that other sorts of alliances were on the table. Inej pulled the handkerchief he had given her from her desk drawer. She hadn’t bothered to return it after having it cleaned– it was obviously stolen, as it was monogrammed with someone else’s initials, and it was made from a fine-woven blend of black cotton and silk that she had decided she liked enough to keep. If pressed, Inej might even admit that she’d liked the way the lust mingled with respect and approval in his eyes when she’d hit the man. He had seen and wanted not the exotic Suli prostitute or the untouchable performer, but the proud, angry woman. That was a sort of honest admiration that she could accept as her due rather than feel sullied by. 

Inej sat back in her chair, twirling her letter opener, and pondered her unlikely new admirer and the trouble he might bring.

Chapter Text

Kaz took another slug of whiskey, barely even appreciating the quality. Everything tasted bitter to him tonight. 

“-- and even if he appeals,” he rasped, finishing the rant he’d been on, “The Council isn’t going to change their verdict. Not guilty of murder, and convicted not on market interference but on corporate misconduct and tax fraud. Just a powerful mercher who got a bit corrupt, a temptation as always in the world of business to those whose faith in Ghezen’s principles is weaker than their greed. ” He quoted the words of the final judgment with venom in his voice. 

“I’m just glad you waited until Wylan passed out to start in on this,” Jesper said tiredly with a glance over at Wylan, who was sprawled facefirst on Kaz’s bed with Jesper’s coat draped over him like a blanket. The ordeal of the final court judgment and the knowledge of what would come next had prompted him to do something that years of the degenerate influence of the Barrel had not: deliberately drink himself into unconsciousness. 

Kaz’s room was no longer in the attic these days. After he’d reinjured his bad leg last year, he’d decided that efficiency was more important than pride and had his things moved to the ground floor. But the setup of the room was identical, right down to the placement of the furniture– he’d had neither the time nor the energy to learn the defensive strengths and weaknesses of a new layout. His surroundings were as familiar as a second skin as he sat behind his desk and Jesper sat on the other side facing him. Wylan, before his fourth whiskey had forced him to sit down on the bed and the fifth had knocked him out, had been silently pacing the room.

“Waiting doesn’t make it less true,” he said, trying to ignore the unconscious Wylan’s presence and wishing his pallor didn’t make him look like a corpse in the dim lamplight. “We failed. If not for the last part of the plan, the entire venture would be a loss.”

“We knew the murder charge would be thrown out from the beginning,” Jesper reminded him with infuriating calm, and Kaz bit back the yes, I know that, I’m the one who told you that and let him continue. “And we knew the case might go this way. But Van Eck is headed for prison and Wylan can sue for his inheritance. The Merchant Council felt the need to exonerate Van Eck from the worst of it, but the magistrates of the lower courts won’t be so indulgent. Wy will get his home back, and control of the business and market shares.” Jesper tipped his chair backwards, balancing at such a precarious angle that Kaz wondered if he was using the vague threads of his old power, which he was occasionally still able to summon, in order to keep from crashing to the floor. “You and I both know that’s not why you’re really angry.”

Kaz scowled. “Enlighten me.” He took another swig of whiskey, fished around in the greasy bag on his desk for the last of the chips they’d bought at a street stall, and found it empty. He scowled at the bag too. Closing a gloved fist on it, he crushed it into a ball, threw it at the trash bin, and missed. 

“You don’t have any vengeance to go after anymore,” Jesper said simply. “You’ve been fueling yourself for half your life on the need to get back at people who’ve wronged your family– first Rollins, then Van Eck—and now your enemies are dead or out of your way and you have no reason to keep going.”

The words hit Kaz like a punch to the gut and he set down his glass a little too hard. He looked up and met Jesper’s eyes defiantly. “Fuck you. I have plenty of reasons.”

Jesper let the chair rock forward until all four legs touched the ground and leaned his elbows on the desk. “Really? Name four.”

“The Dregs.” He swallowed, searched for something, anything else. “Kruge. Power.”

“Power and kruge are the same thing, you’ve said so yourself dozens of times. Got any more?”

Kaz let out a frustrated breath. “What’s the point of this exercise?” 

Jesper just sighed. “That’s it, isn’t it. Responsibility and profit. That’s all you’ve got.”

“What do you want me to say, Jesper?” The words burst from Kaz like shrapnel, brittle and sharp-edged. “That no, I don’t have a reason to go on? That I never planned for after this because I never thought I’d live this long? That I spent years making myself into a weapon until I’m no longer fit to leave anything behind in this world but damage?” He blinked back the violent stinging in his eyes and tossed down the last of his whiskey. “I’m as ruined as you are. The only difference is that I did the ruining on purpose.”

A muscle in Jesper’s jaw ticked, but instead of lashing out in return, he took a deep breath and traced a few lines in the condensation from Kaz’s glass on the table before speaking. “You’re not ruined. You’re giving up. You want me to shoot you? That would solve your problem nicely.”

Kaz shook his head. His death would solve his problem but create a dozen worse ones. The Dregs had a more solid distribution of power than the Dime Lions had, and a clear line of command they could fall back on in his absence, but his lieutenants were still too green not to make fatal mistakes. He still couldn’t trust most of those who’d come to them from other gangs.  With only a couple of the old guard left and none of them suited to lead, Kaz was forced to rely on those he could trust most– kids who were practical, loyal, and much too young. 

He’d been scarcely any older himself when the gang war broke out. He’d risen to the challenge. But back then, the Dregs had been less than a quarter of the size they were now; the politics in the Barrel had been more brutal but simpler. If Per Haskell had survived the war, he could probably have managed it– not as profitably or creatively as Kaz, but he would have been able to keep the Dregs together and their businesses in the black. But leaving leadership of the Dregs in the hands of Kaz’s young lieutenants would be a disaster.

He let out a huff of breath, darkly amused. Even now, he was putting more consideration to the complications of his death than he was into the next part of his life. It was possible that Jesper had a point.

“What do you suggest, then?” Kaz challenged him. He glanced at the whiskey decanter and the small amount still in it, then decided against more. His head was already beginning to ache slightly. 

“Do what you made me do after the parem– take what you still have and use it.” Jesper waved his hands in one of those emotion-filled gestures that was so quintessentially Jesper that Kaz felt the icy bite of his temper thaw slightly. “Stop being such a fucking hypocrite. Use what you have to get what you want! Scheme!”

“For what?” Kaz asked. “It's over. I won. I got as much of what I wanted as I could pry out of Ghezen's filthy hands, so now what am I supposed to do?” He nearly cringed at the naked vulnerability in his own voice.

“The same thing you’ve been doing for years,” Jesper insisted. “Building and hoarding enough power to keep your family safe and destroy anyone who harms them.”

Kaz thought of the plow, the Reaper’s Barge, the cobbled streets and alleyways where he’d left so many of his soldiers dead and dying. “I don’t have a family.”

“Bullshit.” 

Kaz reached for the decanter after all, but Jesper snatched it away with reflexes that were still faster than Kaz’s. 

“Give me that,” he demanded petulantly.

“No." Jesper gave him a hard look. "Because that’s bullshit, and you know it. We’re your family, me and Wylan and the others. And Barrel bosses who lie to their best friends don’t get to finish off the whiskey.”

“It‘s none of your business anyway," Kaz retorted. "You’re leaving the Barrel, going to live with Wylan. You won’t need me to protect you from anything. You’ll have money and status for that.”

“I’m not leaving until you’ve laid out a plan and I know you’re not just going to spiral into self-destruction.” Jesper’s voice was stubborn and he was so, so stupid. He ought to be going on to something better, not staying trapped here by his worry for Kaz. 

“You don’t have to waste your time babysitting me,” he said curtly. “Go with Wylan. I know you hate being the Unmaker. You can give it up now, be Jesper Fahey again.” He paused, a thought occurring to him. “Van Eck can’t sue you for breach of contract now. You could be Jesper Fahey again. You could go home, let your Da know you’re still alive. Tell him what happened.”

“You really think he’d forgive me? For dropping out, becoming a criminal, gambling away his money, destroying myself in an idiot attempt to get it back and then faking my death for years to avoid the consequences?”

“Yeah.” Kaz ran a finger around the rim of his glass. “I do. I think that when you lose someone you love, you stop caring about the ways they failed you. You just want them back. He’ll be angry. But he’ll forgive you.” He cleared his throat and took refuge in stark practicality. “Anyway. Even if he doesn’t, it’s not as if you’ll still be living with him.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Jesper said, his casual tone of voice its own warning. “I’ll go back and tell him if you figure out what you’re going to do with the next five years of your life. I’m not leaving the Dregs until you have a plan that doesn’t involve going down in flames and taking Ketterdam down with you.”

Jesper knew him too well. Kaz sighed. “There’s… something I’ve thought about,” he confessed reluctantly. “It would take a long time, which seems to be the sort of thing you’re after.” He looked up at Jesper with a twist of irony in his mouth. “The rest of it might not suit you so well. You want me to be successful. Comfortable. Driven by something other than spite. And there’s little profit in this scheme other than the satisfaction of taking down mercher scum. I’d start another war and make an enemy of every man and woman on the Merchant Council.”

“Yeah,” Jesper said with an exasperated sigh. “That sounds like the sort of thing you’d come up with. Go on, give it to me.”

Kaz felt almost hesitant to admit it. It was far more daring than anything he’d tried before, with an almost overwhelming amount of factors that were outside of his control. “I think I could do to the manufacturing consortium what the sex workers union did to the West Stave.” 

“Take down the bosses and replace them with prostitutes?” Jesper asked jokingly, but his eyes were sharp, thoughts already racing behind them. 

“Have you ever looked at the numbers? When we were going through the Van Eck Industries records, I thought we might have something with the number of worker deaths and injuries, but Wylan explained that they weren’t far from the average and told me what the expected average is. The factories eat people and spit them out dead, crippled, or addicted to whatever kept them able to work without falling over until they couldn’t keep the habit under control any longer.”

Although the numbers in black and white had been a shock to Kaz at first, there was a grim sense to them. He’d long ago learned to read his fellow Barrel dwellers’ professions by the scars on their hands, whether they limped or wheezed or squinted or had a slumped curve to their spine. Years of factory work shaped a person’s body. A decade or more destroyed it. 

It even came out in the names of the gangs– the Black Tips, boys and girls from the collieries, so called because the coal stained the tips of their fingers black. The coal factories hired pickers as young as six or seven, as soon as they were old enough to tell slate from coal. The Razorgulls, named after the noisy, sharp-billed birds that haunted the harborside meatpacking district. The Dime Lions, named after the toys sewn from fabric offcuts from the garment factories, the scraps stuffed in pockets and brought home by workers. The little lions were usually made by the workers’ older children while they minded the younger ones, then sold for a pittance to the toy sellers who marked them up to a dime apiece. 

Jesper nodded, tapped his fingers on the desk, looked at them, then back up at Kaz. “They make their profits on cheap, expendable labor. You’re right. If you try to take that from them, they will try to kill you.”

Kaz felt a familiar smirk tug at the corner of his lips. It shouldn’t make him smile, perhaps, but someone trying to kill him just meant that whatever he was trying to steal was worth taking. “It’s been tried a couple times, on a small scale. The instigators were all found dead in canals within the month.” Kaz steepled his fingers. “For some reason, reformers always seem to think movements should have principles. Justice, equality, nonviolence… and that's why they failed. No one gets anything in this city unless they’re willing to fight dirty.”

“If you’re thinking of unionizing them… well… there aren’t as many indentures as there once were, except for the occasional Alkemi, but all things considered, Inej Ghafa might be willing to help.” Jesper had a sly expression in his eyes. Kaz ignored it.  

“Of course there aren’t many indentures. You need to keep human property alive, fed, and properly housed so you can recoup their value. But there’s always more poor people ready to replace the last wretch who got crushed in machinery or roasted in a factory fire or stabbed in an alley trying to score a hit so they could make it through the night shift.” He scowled at Jesper. “I don’t need Ghafa’s help.”

“I saw your face after the show.” Jesper picked up one of Kaz’s pens and began spinning it between his fingers. “She’s something, isn’t she? Maybe you don’t need her help, but I bet she’d talk with you about it. Give some advice. Take a second look at the sort of man who wants to do a bit of good in the world, even if he isn’t very idealistic about it.” Jesper’s raised eyebrow was infuriatingly, inexcusably suggestive. 

“You should know better,” he snapped. “Even if she were stupid enough to think she saw good in me– and she’s not stupid– you know it’s not possible.” 

He’d tried. Of course he had. Not that there had been much time for flirtations in his life, but battle forged bonds of intimacy faster than anything else. There’d been a few people who he would have– if he could–  

“There’s a lot of ways to be with someone,” Jesper said, shrugging. He shot Kaz a grin. “If anyone could form a relationship out of subversive political machinations with a side of sexual tension, it would be you.”

Kaz hurled a paperweight at Jesper, who caught the badly aimed missile and pocketed it.  

“Give that back and get out,” he groused at the sharpshooter, “and take your useless lump of a boyfriend with you and out of my bed.” 

Jesper’s amusement softened to something warmer as he looked over at Wylan’s sleeping form.

“He wants to marry me,” he said quietly. 

“All right, then get your useless lump of a fiance out of my bed,” he corrected, then added, belatedly, “Congratulations."

Jesper snorted. “Haven’t said yes yet,” he admitted. 

Kaz blinked. “Why the hell not? He’ll make a better husband than you deserve.”

Jesper looked down, rubbing the back of his neck. It cracked audibly.  “That’s just it. I don’t deserve him. And now that he’s going home, he’ll have so many chances now to meet someone better…” 

“Then do it now before he changes his mind.” Jesper looked up in surprise and Kaz rolled his eyes and continued, “Look, you’ve managed to con the poor son of a bitch into loving you. Stop worrying about what you deserve and enjoy what you’ve got. Just say yes and try not to fuck it up.”

“I fuck everything up.” Jesper shut his eyes for a moment. He still had not returned the paperweight. Kaz opened his mouth to give him a pointed reminder, realized that now was not the time, and changed what he’d been going to say. 

“You haven’t fucked this up yet. And he’s a good man, though how you managed to find one of those in Ketterdam is beyond me. You’d be an idiot not to hold onto him.”

Jesper took a few deep breaths, nodded, and then looked up at Kaz. “Are you jealous?” he asked lightly, though there was something about his eyes that said without a doubt that the question was an important one.

Kaz was silent for a moment, considering. “No,” he finally said, “I’m not. I’ve got two good men already, even if I have no intention of taking either to my bed. In fact, I’d like to reiterate that one of them had better be taken out of my bed before the sheets start smelling like his weird cologne.” He shot a pointed look at Wylan. Jesper huffed out a laugh and stood up, and Kaz caught a glimpse of the scar on his temple– the one that Jesper had gotten saving Kaz two years ago. “I’ve got two good men,” he repeated quietly. 

Jesper hauled a limp Wylan into his arms to carry him to bed and paused in the doorway to shoot Kaz an affectionate, knowing look. “Yes,” he said, “you do.”

*

The cobbles were damp with the rain that had fallen earlier that night, and from the tang of ozone in the air, it was going to storm before dawn. 

Jesper had left Wylan curled up in their bed, clutching Jesper’s coat to his chest, creases of sorrow and pain etched between his brows.

He could still go home, he told himself as he followed the Handelcanal westward. He could shut out the rain, slide into bed beside Wylan, and let the warmth of body heat beneath sheltering blankets soothe the screaming pain in his muscles and joints. He could let go of anger and pettiness, look forward instead of back, and consign himself to sleep knowing that they had gotten what justice they could within the bounds of the law. 

Once, Jesper might have.

Once, it would have been enough that he and Wylan were safe, that Marya and Alys and Janni were free. That the Dregs were strong and vigilant, their territory well secured. That Kaz was… well, as safe as he ever was and not actively trying to get himself and everyone he knew killed. Not for at least another week. 

But his veins were hollow, his throat was hollow, his eyes were hollow, and those hollows were filled with shadows and bitterness. 

Kaz was right. It wasn’t enough. 

Kaz knew what he was about to do.

And so did Wylan. The Barrel taught hard lessons, and Wylan had learned. He’d become a streetwise, competent, dangerous man… but not a gentle one. Not anymore. Wylan had made sure he’d be drunk and insensible so that he wouldn’t have to confront the fact that he wasn’t going to stop Jesper. And Jesper and Kaz had watched him flee a little more with each drink from his own brutal, guilty decision.

Sometimes love was not letting the people you loved lie to themselves, and sometimes… it was quietly allowing them to, to spare them pain. 

The faint unevenness of his gunbelt dragged at Jesper. He felt sharply the difference in weight between the primitive Kerch pistol on his right and the masterpiece of wood, steel, and mother of pearl on his left, the one gun of his mother's that was still whole. 

It had been some time since he’d worn them. The Unmaker did not use weapons. He was a weapon. But the Unmaker hung in the closet at home, with the exception of the coat Wylan was feverishly clinging to in his sleep. Jesper was dressed in plain, nondescript clothing that was as much of a costume as anything he’d ever worn. He was excruciatingly aware of the seams, which set his nerves alight with revulsion– as did any clothing that he hadn’t specifically altered not to chafe against his skin. 

Parem had even taken the enjoyment of cheap, garish clothing from him. Lace against his skin was torture; the rough, vivid weaves of Barrel plaid nearly as bad. The color yellow made his stomach knot with craving until he couldn’t eat or focus his eyes. Rings were either too loose on his bony fingers or would not go over the perpetually swollen joints of his knuckles. 

Parem had taken every physical pleasure Jesper had had – everything but the comfort of Wylan’s arms around him. 

If Wylan had asked him not to do this, he would have forced himself to let go. But Wylan had listened when Jesper had told him, shut his eyes, and pressed his face into Jesper’s shoulder, breathing ragged. Voice silent. 

*

Jan Van Eck’s throat was so hoarse from shouting protests and imprecations that even the jug of water that had been left for him would not soothe it. He stewed silently now. He was entirely alone. The cell of the magistrate’s jail that he was to spend tonight in was unspeakable. The single night he’d be passing here before they transported him to a larger jail outside of the city was one night too many. There was a cot, a bench. Straw on the floor, and a drain over which he was expected to relieve himself. Guards stood watch outside the doors to the building, but none outside his own cell. They didn’t even fear his escape. They didn’t even care.

His peers, even his supporters, had looked at him with sidelong glances of discomfort and pity as he’d been led from the courtroom. The way they might look at a beggar or a particularly down-at-the-heels street whore. Once, Jan Van Eck had been respected, fawned to, given the welcome he deserved at any table or place of business. Now, he was given water, a bowl of beans, and a perfunctory nod as the day guard left for the night. Not even a candle. Not even a word. He wasn’t a man here. He was a body to be secured, fed, and passed on. 

He’d been stripped of his dignity, his personhood, and left with nothing but his hate. And oh, he hated with a passion. Foolish Alys, who he’d taken into his house, made his wife, honored with the bearing of his son– a despicable traitor. The courts, clinging to self-righteous pettiness and refusing to comprehend that a man in his position had earned the right to make his own rules. Ghezen himself had yielded to his will, after all, allowing him to bend the market to his own profit. A god had favored him; how could men dare to do less?

And most of all, he seethed with hatred for his firstborn. An aberration, a mistake that he should have ensured was properly gotten rid of and not left to the scavengers of the Barrel to dispatch. Of course such wretches and misfits had taken in the idiot as one of their own. And halfwit cretin that he might be, he still had Van Eck blood in his veins. He’d waited for the opportunity to gain leverage over his father and then struck. 

Ghezen’s eye, he should have had the little shit’s neck snapped the moment his defects had shown themselves instead of allowing him to reach manhood. He shouldn’t have wasted a second’s effort on tutors and newfangled medical cures. One didn’t cure an imbecile; one disposed of it. 

There was a rustle, a quiet scraping from the direction of the cell door. Rats, he thought in revulsion. There were rats in this hellhole, and the guard had not even allowed him the luxury of keeping his boots to step on them. He had a pitcher, a bowl. He was not fool enough to waste his water ration, and surely he hadn’t sunk low enough to shatter his bowl so he could attack a rat with the sharp ceramic edge. Even now, even here, they could not bring him to that. Would his cot be safe? Could rats climb?

Then, with a cold shock, he heard the sound of a pistol cocking inches from his head.

“Sorry for intruding on you without permission,” a voice said from beside him, “But my aim isn’t what it used to be these days.”

The bullet entered Jan Van Eck’s skull before he could open his mouth to cry out.