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1.
Pretty little Lynx, mine to do as I may.
He finds her on the rooftops.
That is to say: He finds her body on the rooftops.
He is not in the habit of hauling himself up the Church of Barter’s slick steps, where he knows she often sits to eat Suli flatbreads bought with what meagre Kruge she doesn’t put towards her Indenture. Nor is he in the habit of chasing his tail around the city searching for absent informants. And he is a creature of habit.
But she has failed, for the first time in their months-long acquaintance, to report to him on time.
It is most inconvenient.
So he drags himself bodily into Ghezen’s slate palms. Hopes they don’t toss him back to the cobbles for his temerity.
And he finds her body on the rooftops.
8.
“This would be far more straightforward if you would just give me a name.”
“Oh?”
“You’d only be saving me a measure of effort. You can’t imagine I won’t uncover it anyway, eventually.”
“Even without a compliant spider?”
“I have my methods. They serve me sufficiently well in your absence.”
“And if I asked you to let it lie?”
“And let a slight against my own go unchallenged?”
“If I requested it be so?”
“I would have you recall one singular instance upon which I have conducted my business according to requests. You will find none.”
“Kaz -”
“He will bleed, Inej. By your hand or by mine, as you wish it. But he will bleed.”
2.
Quiet little whore, all alone in the Barrel?
It takes a moment to pluck her words out of the wind.
Not her words. Theirs. Their words bouncing around the empty walls of her chest, til they slip from her lips into a city that doesn’t blink at hearing them. A city that has taught too many girls too young to be on their backs the harshness hoer before the softness of thius .
A city that never bothered to teach her the word for what They’d done to her until he did. Until she’d called it nuken and he’d called it verkrachtig and she’d blinked heavy at him like a girl slowly waking, like it had never been that until she’d had a word for it.
Pretty little Lynx, mine to do as I may.
Quiet little whore, all alone in the Barrel?
Poor little slut, thought I was finished?
She’s saying it over and over like it’s some kind of rosary. Like it’s her own private penance. Like this is some rooftop confessional to her Saints, as if she’s ever committed a single sin worth confessing to. As if there are sky men to hear her, if she had.
He props himself up against this gravel-god’s pinky, two digits away from her own perch. Makes sure there’s a singular witness to her self-imposed atonement.
Spends minutes, or hours, thinking of ways to convince her of her own absolution without ever putting his own voice to it.
9.
“You’re sleeping poorly, of late.”
“This coming from you? The bags under your eyes will be hitting your chin before long, Brekker.”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“We’re not? And who decided that?”
“The same person who decided de Bruijn be relieved of some artwork last month. How’s that DeKappel looking in your room, by the way?”
Silence. Scratch of pen on paper.
“You’re not sleeping well. Since.”
“My nights are…interrupted somewhat, recently. Yes.”
Silence. Chair back creaking under the weight of swallowed confessions.
“My work keeps me at my desk late. If you should find yourself in want of company -”
A head tilt. He feels it, eyes stubbornly trained on the grain of his desk though they are.
“- there’s always the window.”
3.
Once she’s here enough to notice him - once she’s nodding and shaking her head by turn at his questions, hands twisting a satin scarf mindlessly through her fingers like it’s water - he leads her down to solid ground.
She’s his Wraith, but she’s never felt more ghost-like - more intangible - to him than now. Her Inej-ness (her soul, if such things held any water with him) hangs, limp and misshapen, off the bones of her. She’s a vacant house with dishes left in the basin; food left to fur in the pantry. Abandoned in a hurry, unplanned.
Her clothes are askew in such a way that could be explained by a scuffle. Her silence is customary enough to be dismissed as caution, walking in public as they are.
But her arms loop crossed around her torso, for all the world like they’re the only things keeping her insides in. Her hands fist in the fabric at her waist. They don’t sit, as they should, at the sheaths of her knives, steel will against willing steel, both bloody and dangerous.
But she holds her breath with every stumbling drunkard they pass, muscles pulling so drum-tight he can all but hear the twang of their tension. She skitters slightly behind him each time an oaf veers too close, and he’s accustomed to deference, but it rancors when it’s hers. (If he contrives to position her between himself and the wall, and deepens his scowl somewhat to keep the pigeons back - well, that’s for his own comfort, really. Hers is incidental.)
And she’s a vacant house, with an unfinished book cracked at the spine, half-read on the counter. Abandoned in a hurry, unplanned.
That tells him all he needs to know.
Kaz Brekker is not a compassionate man, but he is a shrewd one.
Someone has touched his Wraith.
10.
“- and on Tuesdays, he’s at cards with the Meijers until at least two Bells. Three if he’s winning, or particularly stewed. It’s not the longest opening we’ve got, but it’s the most consistent. If we can find a wa-”
“Do you have a name for me, yet?”
“For the Visser job? Do I have an in, do you mean? Not yet, really. I thought we might -”
“Not Visser. Our man from the Staves. Have your Saints loosened your lips enough to have you name him, yet?”
“You know they haven’t, Kaz.”
“More’s the pity. You know I’ll just -”
“I know you’ll just find him regardless, eventually. I know you’ll repay him, if I won’t. I know.”
“Then why not give me a name?”
“You’re doing this against my request. Since it’s without my approval, it will be without my assistance. I won’t have it in my name.”
“As you wish, Wraith. I’ll have it in mine. Now, as for Visser -”
4.
He’s back at the Slat before he notices. Lights every candle he can find to chase the shadows out. Sits her at his desk, with an unobstructed path to both door and window. Hangs his coat and hat where he ought.
Then he notices.
He’s left her with gifts.
A string of amethysts sits at her slender wrist. Loops of darkening purple. A versatile offering; she’ll have emeralds tomorrow; sodalite not two sunsets later. He wants to sharpen every stone pressed into her skin into a dagger, then make Him swallow them one by one.
There’s a bloom of lavender at her neck. Five fingertips of fragile buds, green-edged and closed in the queasy pre-dawn light, set to blossom outwards in the sun. He wilts at the sight of it. Wants to reduce Him to reeking fertiliser for the planters in the Zelver District.
Ruby half-moons along the shallow swoop of her collarbones. Smarting tulip petal stains at her knuckles. Kohl swelling the corner of one eye half-closed.
He stokes the fire in its hearth with more force than necessary as she sits folded in half on his chair, and imagines each blackened log as the limbs of this faceless man.
He’s left her with fucking gifts.
A fine Ketterdam gentleman, indeed.
He will see these gifts repaid.
11.
“What will you do to him?”
“You do wish me to do it? You wouldn’t rather let Sankt Petyr get a taste of him?”
“I’d wish it left alone, if I thought you’d allow it. You know that. But since you won’t, yes. I don’t think I’d - that is, I’m not sure I can - he’s -”
“Then I will. How do you wish it done? Any requests, treasure of my heart?”
“Only that -”
“Speak it, Wraith.”
“Only that, if you are to hurt him, I’d rather him be unable to repay us in kind. Men like these, I couldn’t sleep thinking we’d riled him, that he may just come and -“
“He will not be left breathing, Wraith.”
A nod.
He will not be left breathing.
5.
He doesn’t dress her wounds. He’s neither fretting handmaiden nor doting nursemaid. Can’t afford to sink, tonight, in any case.
He fills his ceramic wash basin - deeper than the one she keeps in her own chambers - and sets it before her. Steps several paces back, but keeps himself in her line of sight - purely, he tells himself, because having her panic now would be more hassle than accommodating her is proving to be. Prompts her to wash - her face, arms, and hands, for now. Nothing that requires disrobing.
He retrieves the crate containing his hodgepodge of personal medik supplies - his , not the ones with which he stocks Barrel safehouses - from beneath his bed. Spreads the sundry hoard on the desk in front of her, and from five clear strides away, talks her through treating each wound. Tells her how to splint her index finger, and wrap her wrist tight, and prepare a poultice for her eye. Explains twice over how to tie off that bandage, when the tremor in her fingers shakes the gauze free, and wants, as if from nowhere, to steady her hands against his own.
He does it because he needs her convalescence as brief as possible. Needs her back on his rooftops, a lucky speck of dust scratching sharp at the corner of his vision. He does it because it’s the only way he can conceive of mending - of putting any of this back together. He’s Kaz Brekker - he has at least two reasons for everything.
She heeds his word like a pliant puppet, his own quivering marionette, and he’s always loved holding all the strings, so why does it set him wrongfooted now? She follows his instructions like she’s his shadow under flickering lamplight, a thing frail and thin and trembling, and tends her wounds at his desk.
When the work is done, she returns, silent as a blink, to her own room. Little more than a nod as thanks. Some time later, he listens through the floor as he finally hears her break open, and he wants to break something. Or everything.
12.
“Janus van Cappellen.”
“New Mercher you’d have me tail?”
“Upcoming fish food. Better known to you by an alias - Issach Breitner.”
“Janus van Cappellen.”
“From Belendt, by way of Girecht, for a time. Kerch as Kirstmas. You were aware he had adopted an anonym, I presume?”
“I assumed. Many of them did - wanted to keep the Barrel stench as far away as they could from the upstanding Mercher lives they puppeted themselves around in.”
“Did you know him well, van Cappellen? Breitner, rather?”
“He was…a regular. Had a taste for Suli girls. I was his favourite. I hated being his favourite.”
“Inej -”
“He was one of those - one who told me he loved me. Who wanted it sweet, and romantic. Wanted me to act like it wasn’t forced. Some liked the power of taking what they could - what they thought they had a right to.”
“Inej.”
“Some - ones like - like Breitner - some wanted you to pretend it was theirs to take. Wanted you to coo about how wonderful it was to be stolen. Wanted - they just wanted - and it was worse than the ones who let it be what it was , because they just -“
“ Wraith. Inej. Are you quite well? What can I -”
He hears the window close before he realises she’s slipped through it.
12.2
He doesn’t follow her out into the ink-spill darkness, this time. He is not in the habit of chasing his tail around the city searching for absent informants, and he is a creature of habit.
If he doesn’t snuff his candles until he hears floorboards creaking in the room below his own, hours after the figures he’s scratching onto parchment have begun to blur together, that’s his business.
13.
“I thought I was dangerous.”
“Because you are.”
“I was, right up until I saw him, and then I was nothing but his pretty little Suli Lynx again.”
“You are dangerous, Wraith.”
“I had more blades on me than he has fingers, and when he had me in that alley, I was easy pickings. Some little clawless kitten who didn’t touch a single one.”
“You are dangerous. Don’t scoff - I’m not one to be argued with. I would have you even half as bloodthirsty as you are dangerous, but one day, the world will shiver at tales of the Wraith of Ketterdam.”
6.
Zenik’s lever is relatively straightforward. A runner dispatched to the White Rose, a fistful of Kruge in hand and the promise of a free breakfast, provided she shares with Inej and alludes not a little to his having suggested their meeting.
He needs someone who can fuss at her, a little. Who can cuddle and coddle and try to set his Wraith’s bones right against each other once more, in a way that he can’t. Who can tease something more from her than the half-choked ‘I’m fine Kaz - fine enough to work.” she’d tossed his way when they crossed paths on the stairs this morning, and have half a hope of it being the truth. Who could let her cry and not in seconds be swimming among corpses.
And Zenik’s price is the cost of waffles, and carte-blanche to glare at him as though it’s his fault Inej is all the bruising blue of the True Sea. (And he can’t quite convince himself that it isn’t, somehow, his fault, and the very idea is discomfiting). That’s a bill he’s more than willing to foot.
He tells Jesper he’ll front him for an hour at Makker’s Wheel for every hour he coaxes Inej from her room. Slips him enough coin for entry into any gallery, concert or museum he’s inclined to visit, provided he purchases two tickets, rather than one.
Inej is quick to laughter, a bright bell of a thing, when Jesper has her tucked under his armpit, and that’s what she needs, right now. Needs someone who can tell her tales so convoluted they trip themselves up on their own coattails; pull silly faces at her as they traipse through Little Ravka; match her toe-for-toe as they compare Suli and Zemeni folklore. Needs someone who can let her be seven-fucking-teen , for a spell, rather than the adults they all stretch themselves into.
He knows the levers to be somewhat unnecessary. Knows that with word that she needed them, they’d both pluck themselves from any far-flung corner of the globe and deposit themselves in Ketterdam to aid her. His levers are insurance; that they’ll come, and that they’ll stay. That they’ll return his Wraith to her feet and her rooftops and his side before he has to look too closely at the way his stomach rolls each time he remembers her vacant body propped up in Ghezen’s grey fingertips.
He surrounds her with people who can give her what he can’t , or won’t , or some infuriating cocktail of both. Props her up with the guileless kindness he can’t scrape from his own marrow while he finds a way to balance the scales with vengeance.
He can’t be what they are, to her. But he can make sure she has it.
14.
“Are you busy, this evening?”
“Not particularly. Why? Got a job for me?”
“Not as such. I have…business, on the Staves. Business in which you are welcome to accompany me, if you find your position altered.”
“Breitner?”
“Van Cappellen, indeed.”
“I see. No, Kaz, I - I wish you luck with your business, but I shan’t be joining you.”
“Very well. You will find Zenik quite relieved of paying clients for the evening, if you’re seeking company other than the crows.”
“And you’d have nothing to do with that, would you?”
“It is in my interest to keep alleys clear of pigeons underfoot, this evening, Inej. I can send a runner, if you’d have Zenik pass the evening here.”
“You think I need supervising.”
“It was merely a suggestion. I can certainly see the appeal of spending the evening alone rather than in such questionable company as Zenik, I simply wanted to present -”
“Send the runner. Saints alive, Kaz.”
“Very well, dear.”
“Stop smirking. You are insufferable . Oh, and before you go?”
The hilt is more worn than he’d known it, but its weight and grip are familiar as it lands in his palm.
“You were right. Sankt Petyr would like a taste of your business, this evening.”
He’s not one for doing a Saint’s bidding. But he will do hers.
He sheaths her blade.
7.
She won’t give him a damned name.
He’s certain she knows who it was. His face, at least. Some adopted identity, perhaps.
But whoever did this is known to her. He’s sure of that.
His Wraith can handle herself. The Barrel being what it is - people being what they often are - she has to.
He’s watched her, before now, turn to a drunken Crow Club patron and inform him that he will find his tongue carved out and fed back to him whole if he ever thinks to catcall her again. This without raising her voice, or her eyes from her tumbler of whiskey, yet she had sent the bruiser slinking into the night.
He’s watched her cleave a blade clean through the palm of a wandering hand that lingered a hiccup longer than it ought in what passed for a parlour at the Slat. Heard her murmured assurance that you’ll feel that next time you touch what you have no right to. Heard his men’s whispers that the Wraith is sharp, as they echoed like scuttling rats’ feet in the walls for months.
He’s watched her knock a man who’d backed her into a corner sprawling, driving a boot hard into the winded podge’s yellowing fingers as she went to go find Jesper to smoke, leaving her aggressor snivelling on the floor. He’d had to fumble for an excuse to retire early, on that occasion. Wasn’t keen to deal with the corpse disposal he knew he’d bring about if he looked at that gammon face a second longer.
There are far more things he has watched than he would like there to be. But the Barrel is what the Barrel is. People are, too often, what people are.
The only such occasion to render her vacant , in the way that this has, was a Menagerie regular. The sort that looked like he was made entirely of spare parts and off-cuts - like none of him fit together, really. He’d not said a word directly to Inej, but had asked Kaz the going rate for one last night with the Lynx, leering at the Wraith at his side. He’d paused, a beat, more than willing to let Inej dispatch the scarecrow herself.
Until she hadn’t. Until he’d glanced left and seen her left toothless.
Zenik had all but had to carry Inej back to the Slat, and he’d been down on numbers for that evening’s stakeout. Which he himself attended in clothing rather bloodier than he’d planned for, after a detour to the canals.
People are, too often, what people are. But his Wraith can deal with people. Ghosts are another matter entirely.
He knows she knows Him.
And yet she won’t give him a damned name.
It vexes him somewhat.
15.
“ Saints, Kaz.”
“Most of this isn’t mine.”
“I thought as much, since you’re still upright. But still - Saints. Did he have any blood left?”
“He won’t be needing blood, underwater.”
“I suppose. A successful evening, then?”
“Indeed, though your blade needs sharpening. It worked hard for you, tonight. It’s - here.”
“You’ll clean it before you give it back to me. No , not on your shirt - that’s as bloody as the rest of you. I won’t have you leaving my Saint both blunted and bloody, heathen.”
“My pious Wraith. You’d have me wield your blade to kill a man, but to leave it unpolished is sacrilege?”
“Less sacrilege than an inconvenience to me. And a poor way to treat borrowed tools, shevrati.”
“Understood.”
“Good. Now go and change - you reek of blood, and those clothes will need soaking overnight if you want a chance at getting the stains out.”
“Very well. Report back here at Eight Bells and a half-chime tomorrow morning. I think we finally have enough to move on Visser next week.
Something else, Wraith?”
“I said I wanted it left alone. But I - I can admit to being glad he’s gone.”
“A move against one of my own was never going to go unchallenged.”
“Still. Thank you, Kaz.”
“Eight Bells and a half-chime, Wraith.”
Her eyes roll as the window closes.