Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Beginning, Pt. 1

Kaz:

Another day, another parley. As the newest and youngest boss in the Barrel Kaz could have sent a trusted lieutenant to the meet in his stead, but that assumed Kaz trusted any of the Dregs under his command to do the job. Cane hitting the cobbles, he set a brisk pace he expected Keeg and Anika to follow. Ketterdam was experiencing a heatwave. The city had been baking in its own squalor for more than a week and the air was filled with static heat and the stink of the city’s poor. Sweat ran through Kaz’s hair under his hat and slicked his skin along his back. He was hot and irritable and while he could usually make that someone else’s problem he wasn’t looking for violence today. Regretfully his goal was altogether more peaceful.

The Pearl was moored just off the Lid within sight of the tourist ships and trading vessels docked at Fifth Harbour. Keeg whistled off-key between his teeth, as the three stopped at the top end of the pier eyeing the well-dressed patrons waiting to board. “That’s a real pretty boat,” he commented appreciatively.

“It should be,” Kaz murmured drily. “It cost five million kruge to refurbish.”

Built like a cross between a galleon and a buoyant treasure chest, the Pearl’s three masts were festooned with bunting and its sails were made of a filmy glittering material that – if rumour was right and Lars Schipp did have fabrikators on his payroll – did not just look like gold but was in fact cloth spun from solid twenty-four carat bars of the stuff. More bunting trailed down the bulging wooden sides and light spilled from the cannon ports turned windows. Kaz could hear the strains of a live band playing on deck and the gangplank heaved with well-heeled tourists and Barrel flash looking to lose some money aboard Ketterdam’s newest, floating gambling palace.

“I can’t believe we’re going in as guests,” Anika whined as the three of them joined the end of the queue waiting to board. “The little skivstain’s undercutting our profits by five percent.”

“Say that a bit louder. I don’t think Felps and Litko over there heard you,” Kaz drawled poking the beak of his crow cane toward the two Liddies leaning against one of the mooring rings on the pier. Felps, scarred and shrewd, doffed his hat when he saw Kaz looking. Kaz nodded back.

“What do they want?” Anika hissed, tensing under the clean dress shirt she wore under a man’s dark suit. Her lopsided blonde locks were hidden under a hat swiped from Jesper’s old room in the Slat. Her tie, a glittering affair in a loud violet with silver thread woven through it had also been Jesper’s. The Dregs former sharpshooter had lost most of his wardrobe when he took up with Wylan over two years ago. So far, he did not seem to miss it. Or his old life with the gang.

"Schipp’s paying them to run security,” Keeg replied. “They get a cut of the nightly earnings and Schipp don’t have to worry about anyone rolling his high rollers.”

“Not a bad deal,” Kaz admitted. “Especially for Schipp. Fat Abbe can barely count all his fingers on one hand. He has no idea how much Schipp’s making each night.”

“But you do, right boss?” Anika purred ramming her elbow into the guts of a Ravkan tourist in a periwinkle frockcoat behind her. The man fell back with a grunt, his protests dying on his lips when Keeg turned his bulk fractionally toward him.

“I can count all my fingers and my toes,” Kaz agreed. “I know the numbers on the door. I can guess the rest.” Schipp was pulling in the sort of punters Kaz could only dream about. Those well-heeled tourists too bright to be lured deep into the Barrel. The kind of monied quality who weren’t marks but patrons. Men and women who came aboard the Pearl not for a turn at Makker’s Wheel but to listen to the symphony orchestra Schipp had playing the night before last or sample the fifteen coarse Southern Colonies degustation banquet he hosted the week before.

Kaz was an ambitious man. He had already risen further than any friendless orphan canal-rat had risen before but he knew his limits. There were some things he could fake, others he could steal, more still he could convince a mark to overlook, but he could not manufacture the veneer of legitimacy Schipp used to his profit. The man succeeded in attracting a different class of customer because he was not the usual class of vice-peddling Barrel boss and that made him at once dangerous and interesting. A rarity in the Barrel where danger tended to be as predictable as the disease the heat would leech out of the evaporating canals before the summer was over.

Things had been too easy for too long. Kaz had had little to do in the last two years but sit back and watch the money roll in as the Crow Club and the Silver Six raked in business. With Pekka in permanent retirement in the country and Haskell pickling his liver on a diet of fifty-year-old scotch in Zierfoort, curtesy of the generous severance payment Kaz had given him after kicking him out of the gang he’d built, there had been no one to challenge his rise until Lars Schipp had arrived with his refitted warship. Kaz could admit to himself that he’d let the retired naval captain get a foothold in the city’s gambling scene because he was bored and Schipp was new challenge.

Lars was not another Barrel Boss. He hadn’t worked his way up in the gangs or donated his blood and innocence to Ketterdam’s gutters and alleys. Born the son of middling artisans, he’d left Belendt and joined the navy at thirteen. Twenty years later he retired a very wealthy man. Kaz had initially suspected Schipp had supplemented his naval salary taking bribes from slavers, but neither Roeder nor his other sources could find any hint that his money was dirty. Instead, Schipp seemed to possess a rare but honest gift for a good investment and the foresight to save his earnings instead of spending them on the tables he now ran.

And therein lay the opportunity. Where the Pointers, Razorgulls and Blacktips saw a rival to be ousted and destroyed, Kaz saw the chance to expand his operations in a new direction. He couldn’t lure Schipp’s quality into the Barrel – they were too secure in their wealth to be enticed by squalor wrapped in sequins and watered whiskey – but he could get his hands on their kruge another way. Today he hoped to finalise an alliance with Schipp that would make them both richer men.

The woman at the top of the gangplank wore a dress of flimsy chiffon in oceanic shades and frothy tulle. She looked more like the inner stuffing from a cushion than a wave, but Schipp’s failures in fashion where not Kaz’s concern. “Good evening, Mr. Brekker,” the woman said inclining her head in genteel fashion as he offered up his embossed velum invitation. Her gaze flicked to Keeg and Anika behind him and her heavily made-up eyes widened prettily. “Oh! I wasn’t informed you’d be bringing…guests,” she exclaimed entirely insincere but trying all the same.

Kaz spun his cane in his hands. “I’m very shy,” he said. “Loud noises affect my nerves. These two are my support thugs.” Keeg beamed amiably and Anika choked back a snort of laughter. Kaz held the woman’s eyes steadily.

Painted lips spreading wide and a glint in her eyes, she inclined her head. “As you wish Mr. Brekker. If you would just step over there? My associates need to check you for weapons. Just a precaution, you understand?” She waved him in the direction of two large men whose stance screamed ex-seamen. He’d expected nothing less from Moll Gerty, one of the few women to not only survive Rollins’ Sweet Shop but to leave with her sense of humour intact. Schipp had done well employing her to watch his ship.

“We really gonna let them take our weapons?” Keeg asked curiously as Schipp’s guards moved to surround them.

“If you can’t hide your weapons well enough not to lose them you don’t deserve them,” Kaz murmured back, holding his body relaxed and trying not to grit his teeth as one of the men patted him down.
He let the guard take the knife from his sleeve and the snub pistol at his hip so that he wouldn’t get the bright idea to look too closely at his cane or ask him to strip down to his shirt. He was already uncomfortably moist under his clothes, the thought of hands pressed to his skin with only the barrier of wet cotton between him and them tightened Kaz’s throat and he blinked hard, pushing down the waters behind his eyes.

The sailors-turned-bouncers let them go more because of the harsh look Moll Gerty threw their way than because they were foolish enough to believe Kaz had been rendered harmless. Immediately, Kaz stomped toward the door to the lower deck, weaving through the silver tablecloth covered tables arrayed over the deck. The raised part of the deck where the wheel once stood had been turned into a stage and a woman in a deep blue formfitting dress serenaded the smattering of dancers accompanied by a group of black-clad musicians. At the tables people clustered around flaming glasses of a bright green liquor, laughing as the booze burned. Kaz noted the number of bottles of Mermaid’s Dream on each table with satisfaction.

A wall of noise assaulted him as he pushed open the interior door. Schipp had gutted the multi-decked warship and put in a wide sweeping staircase down to the former hold. An impressively tinkly looking chandelier hung suspended over the stairs, casting crystal light down on the polished wood. Kaz could hear the susurrus of conversation, laughter and the low thunder of feet moving over the wood floor below, as well as the clatter of chips and the ratchetting wheeze of several Makker’s wheels as he descended to the gaming floor.

Despite the extensive refurbishment, Schipp had maintained a nautical theme in décor. White couches shaped like clam shells lined the far walls and the old ship’s wheel had been placed in the middle of the floor as both monument and tripping hazard. Although the vessel had been hollowed out, Schipp had built in gradations in the floor and several narrow but deep alcoves dotting the edges of the large hold where patrons could gather to dine and converse in relative privacy around long tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Taking everything in, Kaz calculated the wealth on display, totting up the zeroes appreciatively. Schipp’s interior decorating wasn’t to his taste, but he could still appreciate a man who knew how to wield excess against the rich and make a profit.

Bisecting the gaming floor Kaz led a gawping Keeg and sneering Anika to one of the private tables built into the far wall. Lars Schipp was entertaining two familiar guests. Kaz enjoyed Wylan’s look of surprise and suspicion before he focused on Schipp. Tall, blond and with a body radiating health that left Kaz wondering if the man had ever spent more than a week at sea, Schipp greeted Kaz with open enthusiasm and a strong handshake that would have made him far more suspicious if Kaz hadn’t known that Schipp treated everyone with the kind of good cheer normally seen in mental patients and marks fresh off the boat. “Mr. Brekker, welcome. I’m glad you could make it.”

“Mr. Schipp,” Kaz nodded, pulling his gloved hand free of the man’s grip. He looked beyond Schipp to the two younger men sitting at the table, blandly greeting each in turn. “Mr. Van Eck. Mr. Fahey.”

Jesper was, in respect to his setting, wearing a purple tricorn hat and a wide lapelled fuchsia frock coat over a frilly, open, sea-blue shirt. He raised his glass of lurid green liquor in a wry toast. Seated beside him, Wylan looked caught between two worlds. His suit was cut in sombre mercher lines but it was dark blue, not black, and Kaz suspected the splash of colour was Jesper’s influence at work. The youngest member of the Merchant Council looked as if he was choking off any one of ten different accusations before he finally managed to say in a strangled voice, “I wasn’t aware you and Mr. Schipp knew each other.” The moment the words left his mouth Kaz could tell Wylan regretted them.

Jesper shook his head at Wylan’s misstep. Kaz quirked a brow. He knew everyone who was anyone in this city and a fair few more besides. Wylan knew that. What he'd meant was that he would never have accepted Schipp’s invitation to dine with him had he thought for a moment Kaz would be joining them. The merchling had been among his own class too long, the lessons he’d learned in the Barrel wearing off, and Kaz saw less of the promising young demo man in his eyes every time they met.

Removing his hat, Kaz turned away slightly to rake a hand through his sweat-damp hair. It was hot and close inside the hold and thirst clawed up his throat, raking him with sharp claws. The thirst had been building in him along with the heat and it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore but business came first.

“Mr. Brekker supplied me with this interesting tipple here,” Schipp said cheerfully brandishing the slim bottle of luridly green liquor on the table. “Mermaid’s Dream. A delightful name, don’t you agree?”

Kaz inclined his head. “In the Barrel we call it wormwood,” he said. “I thought your patrons might prefer something more in keeping with the Pearl’s nautical theme.”

“Indeed. Indeed.” Schipp took his seat. “Please, Mr. Brekker, won’t you and your associates sit down?”

“I don’t pay my associates to sit, Mr. Schipp. I pay them to stop me from being shot.”

Stepping up into the alcove Kaz pulled out the chair next to Schipp, disdaining the chair that would leave his back to the room. It left him facing Wylan and Jesper. He could tell the sharpshooter was twitchy and wondered if this was the first time he’d been in a gaming hall since throwing the Dregs over for a life of luxury with his sugar-merch.

Schipp said pleasantly, “I understand you gentlemen know each other?”

“Yes,” Kaz said.

“No,” said Wylan.

Jesper sighed and clarified as if this was a regular occurrence, “I used to work for Kaz. I met Wylan after his dad tried to frame Kaz and me for his crimes.”

Kaz sat back in his chair and poured himself a glass of wormwood. He reached for the ornate, cut-glass water fountain, bringing it closer. Schipp handed him a dainty slotted spoon and a perfect cube of refined sugar. Opening the fountain’s spigot Kaz waited for the slow drips of purified water to dissolve the sugar into the glass before reaching for the book of matches in his pocket. He lit up the last of the sugar and watched it drop, burning, into the glass. A flash of flame leapt up before swiftly burning out. Kaz swallowed a mouthful of the wormwood, not blinking at the aniseed taste.

“You were right, Mr. Brekker, the drama of the drink’s preparation far outweighs the inherent fire risks,” Schipp said. “It has been the seller you promised it would be. Many of my patrons tell me they’ve experienced quite the burst of inspiration while imbibing.”

Jesper laughed, knocking back his glass. “You’re responsible for wormwood? I should have known.” The old hunger for excitement glinted in his eyes as he reached for the bottle. Kaz eyed him thoughtfully, wondering just where and when Jesper had his first taste of wormwood.

Owning the exclusive licence to distribute the new liquor, Kaz had made sure it was only available in his clubs and aboard the Pearl. Kaz knew Jesper hadn’t been in Dregs territory, meaning he was either a regular visitor to the Pearl or he’d been sampling bootlegged wormwood bought from Kaz's competitors. Neither option was a good one and Kaz considered Wylan’s bristling hostility in a new light. Jesper, it appeared, had fallen off the wagon.

Wylan scowled. “People are dying because of that drink,” he said. “A laundress burned down a tenement. The Merchant Council are thinking of making it illegal.”

Kaz regarded Wylan coolly. "My wormwood did not burn down that tenement,” he said calmly. “Hetty Lagarty was a staunch member of the abstinence movement. She never touched a drop of alcohol.”

Wylan’s anger remained unwavering and Kaz wondered if he knew how much like Van Eck-the-elder he looked when he mounted his high horse. “Public drunkenness has risen since you started selling wormwood. There have been multiple fires in the dock and meat packing districts as a direct result of bootlegged wormwood.”

“The key word there is bootlegged,” Kaz drawled. “My product is the genuine article. Made from only the best, Kerch-grown botanicals.” Or so Rotty had told him when he’d passed off the newest of his experiments in distilling to Kaz with the promise that this one was a winner. Truthfully Kaz wouldn’t have cared if it was made from the tears of butchered mermaids or the salt extracted from sailor’s briny socks so long as he retained exclusive rights to its distribution.

He held up his glass. “This is Ketterdam, gentleman, everyone comes here looking for that little taste of danger. They want to flirt with ruin and walk away with only good memories,” he said. “Wormwood gives them that distilled in a liquor they can take home with them.”

"And a hangover they'll wish they could forget," Jesper chimed in, clinking his glass against Kaz's. Wylan looked less than pleased.

“I am concerned that the Merchant Council may withdraw the licence for Mermaid’s Dream,” Schipp said. He looked at Wylan with earnest intent, “Mr. Van Eck, I invited you here so that we might discuss the Council’s fears and perhaps, find a way to resolve them?”

Kaz hid his smile behind the rim of his glass. When he’d offered Schipp a licence to sell his own label wormwood outside of the Barrel, he’d known what he was doing. When you couldn’t beat your competition, you supplied to them. Schipp would introduce wormwood to a new clientele and allow Kaz to benefit from Schipp’s particular brand of wholesomeness. Because while no Barrel rat could buy legitimacy, he could buy the man who had it.

“I’m sorry Mr. Schipp,” Wylan said, shooting Kaz a dark look. “Kaz –Mr. Brekker’s – wormwood might not be laced with paint thinner and driving people mad but that doesn’t excuse the fact that there have been a number of violent incidents connected to wormwood. A woman defenestrated her husband. Three sailors drowned in a rented room surrounded by wormwood bottles. Three more people suffered simultaneous heart attacks and eleven have gone blind.”

“Those three men didn’t die of heart failure. Their hearts exploded in their chests,” Kaz said finishing off his glass. “Two of them were Shu pirates. They were likely the victim of a Heartrender assassin sent by the Ravkans.”

“What about the nonagenarian who set his own head on fire?” Wylan shot back.

Kaz shrugged. “Senility.” He sat back in his chair and stretched out his bad leg. He didn’t care if Wylan thought he was poisoning old men and laundresses but he wanted to make sure Schipp didn’t get cold feet about their business partnership. He needed the man to be his stalking horse in front of the Merchant Council.

He needn’t have worried. Schipp wasn’t any fonder of Wylan’s moralising than he was. “Mr. Van Eck, do the Merchant Council have a shred of conclusive evidence that these unfortunate occurrences have anything whatsoever to do with wormwood?” he asked, patience strained.

Across the table from Kaz, Jesper sat up, eyes widening. “I might,” he said and pointed out onto the gaming floor.

Kaz had started to turn before Jesper spoke reacting to a sudden shift in the rhythm and tempo of noise in the room. Years surviving the Barrel had taught him how to register the change in pressure right before a good time became a very bad one. Snatching his cane, he was on his feet before either Keeg or Anika could react. He scanned the gaming floor.

A woman in a pale pink dress pushed back from one of the gaming tables, in one uncontrolled motion. Spasms raked her body as if she was choking and her face was mottled an angry, burned red. Her hands shook violently as she lifted them for all to see. Her palms were blackened and blistered and the stench of burnt flesh hit the air like a grenade, spreading panic through the floor. Burnt, crackling skin climbed the woman’s bare arms, eating over her flesh like flame devouring a candle wick. She opened her mouth to scream and a gout of flame set fire to the felt card table.

The dealer and the other players scattered, screaming and falling over their chairs. The woman shuddered on the spot, nerves twitching and muscles jerking as if struck by lightning. Her skin was now one huge, advancing burn. Ahead of the wave of blackened, blistered flesh, her veins stood out under her skin, black as pitch. Throwing back her head the woman screamed, long, loud and ragged. A jet of white-hot flame shot into the air.

“Down!” Kaz yelled dropping and ducking under the table as the burning woman convulsed once before exploding in a shower of molten blood and gore.

Chapter Text

The Beginning pt.2:

Kaz:

“… Work of a Grisha assassin,” Roeder capped off his report on what passed for considered thought among the Merchant Council after last night’s high-class immolation aboard the Pearl.

Kaz unrolled the map across his desk, pinning the corners down with an blank ledger, his untouched coffee cup, a handful of counterfeit coin from the confiscated goods box and one fist, propped on the table as he marked off the incident sites with the pencil stub in his other hand. “Who do they think was the intended target,” he asked looking up.

Roeder shifted from foot-to-foot. “I don’t know. But Radmakker called in the Ravkan ambassador. The dead woman worked in the embassy.”

“Svetlana Obanskaya,” Kaz murmured. “She wasn’t Grisha.”

Roeder scratched the stubble on his long chin. “Maybe she was,” he suggested. “Maybe she took that bad Jurda you told me to keep watch for?”

“Jurda Parem doesn’t cause Grisha to lose control. It does the opposite and then it kills them. Quietly,” Kaz added pointedly. He tapped the map with the end of the pencil. “None of the other deaths were Grisha.”

“Or they were hiding it,” Roeder piped in again.

Kaz gave him a flat look. “Has there been any chatter on the streets to suggest that twenty-seven hidden Grisha in the city collectively decided to suicide?” he asked.

“…No,” mumbled Roeder.

“Then they weren’t Grisha,” Kaz replied evenly. “The answer is on the streets,” he said returning to the map. “There is a pattern to this.”

“What about the sickness?” Roeder asked rubbing his hands nervously over the rough wool of his brown-and-red-flecked jacket. The weather had yet to break but Roeder seemed unaffected by the interminable heat. Which only served to make his presence more of an irritant than usual. “Anika’s got hot flushes and Jefro’s old lady had to cart him off to the pauper’s hospital last night. Says he went crazy and tried to shove his head down the privy. Keeg’s tapped Jansson to replace him at the doors tonight."

“Anika wore a black wool coat in the midday sun and Jefro baked his brain with Zemeni Spice,” Kaz shot back. “Four wells in the neighbourhood have run dry and the Jakkob tannery released its waste into the canal again. A lot of people are sick. Whatever this is, it isn’t plague.” He made another notation on the map, drawing a rough line from one point to another.

“Right,” Roeder said with more enthusiasm than confidence. “–Uh, boss? If this ain’t plague why do we care?” he asked.

Kaz snapped his gaze back to the man. Roeder took a step away from the desk. “What will happen if the Merchant Council decide there is disease in the Barrel?” he asked Roeder patiently.

The spider paled. “Quarantine.”

“Exactly.” Kaz put his pencil down and straightened up. He had begun the day in his suit but the thick, bad smelling air crowding the room had forced him to strip off his jacket around midday and the concession to something as transient as a hot, cloudy summer day rankled. His hands in his habitual leather gloves throbbed, swelling in the heat. He longed to shuck the leather and let his skin breathe. Pushing his hair back with one hand, his breath caught in his throat. His oesophagus was as dry as an struck flint; he felt parched, inside and out. “Send Pim to shake down Hillit at the stadwatch,” he said issuing orders in quick succession, “I want a full roster for all increased patrols in the Barrel. Tell Anika I want to know what the girls on the street are saying. If there’s a new blight in the city the whores will know. I want Beetle to do the rounds of the taverns in the warehouse district and send Leggsy Liu to talk to the Shu dissidents. I want to know who they’re afraid of this week.”

Roeder blinked. “Boss?”

Kaz pressed his lips together, reminding himself that Inej had questioned him as well. Of course, her interjections were more intelligent than uncomprehending and had more to do with raising moral objection to his actions but comparing Roeder to the Wraith was pointless. As pointless as thinking he could replace the irreplaceable.

Abruptly annoyed, Kaz slapped his hand over the map. “The warehouse district, the meat packing district and here -around the Rykt Jurda drying factory -have all seen the largest number of deaths,” he said. “Shu smugglers operate in the meat packing district. The warehouse district is overcrowded, plenty of opportunity for something new and deadly to breed. And the Rykt factory burned down after taking in a batch of stolen Jurda three weeks ago.” He whacked his pencil on the map. “These are not random outbreaks. There are too few victims for it to be a communicable disease; unless it’s a very choosy one. Either the victims are connected in some way and the deaths are the work of a very imaginative assassin or there is something significant about the location of each outbreak. If I can figure out which it is, I can find the cause.”

Roeder’s eyes widened appreciatively, the lazy left eye swinging as close to dead centre as he could manage. “How’d you figure that, boss?” he asked eagerly.

Kaz swallowed down a dry cough. “I don’t have time to teach you abductive reasoning, Roeder,” he said reaching for his stone-cold coffee cup, sniffing the thick black liquid and swiftly putting it back down again. He turned his head and coughed into his fist. “I want you to get some of our runners out to the canals. I want water samples collected,” he continued. “Send someone around to the wells as well. Then have one of the runners take the samples to the Van Eck residence. The merchling will know what to do with them.”

Longing to loosen his tie, Kaz stepped out from around his desk and paced to the battered armoire he’d retrieved from a fire gutted house in the suburbs. “Talk to the harbourmasters. I want to know everything there is to know about Jurda shipments into the city. And grill Diederik at Sixth Harbour. Find out if he remembers anything more about the Etovost theft.”

Six days before the fire at the Rykt Jurda processing factory a Ravkan ship, the Etovost, bound for Os Kervo with a cargo of undried Jurda blooms allegedly from Eames Chin, had docked at Sixth Harbour to avoid a storm at sea. Half its cargo had gone missing in the night. Some of that Jurda had ended up at the Rykt factory hours before it conveniently burned down, releasing an incredible amount of noxious smoke into the air. The low cloud and lack of either a strong breeze or rain had meant that the cloud hung over the Barrel for several hours, leaving a foul taste on the air.

There was nothing unusual about fire in the city, or foul smells, but this miasma had caused the deaths of every man who responded to the fire. This wouldn’t have piqued Kaz’s interest –men dying in the Barrel was not news and the heroic tended to die faster than most – except that Kaz had been unable to determine which opportunistic thieves had stolen the shipment or why the rest of the stolen Jurda had been discovered in the middle of Blacktips territory merrily burning away atop a massive bonfire. Three days later, Hetty Lagarty, whose tenement apartment window overlooked the burn site, went up in flames as well.

Kaz did not believe in coincidence. He believed in conspiracies he hadn’t yet unravelled. But he would. He just needed more of the puzzle pieces to put together the full picture. Walking back to his desk he swallowed down another rough cough.

“Boss? I dunno if this is important,” Roeder began, tone tentative, and Kaz swung his head around to look at him. “But, uh, there’s these Ravkan missionaries going around the tenements and stopping at the churches, yeah? They’ve been getting people’s backs up,” he said rubbing the back of his peculiarly long neck. Looking unusually serious he explained, “They’ve been asking about the Queen’s Lady plague. They want to know about people who got sick and survived.”

Kaz flexed his fingers in his gloves. “Why am I only hearing about this now?” he asked.

Roeder straightened nervously. “Only just found out, myself,” he said. “They ain’t been around long. I got a description of the leader though,” he added quickly. “It’s a woman. Blonde. Pretty. Blue eyes. Ravkan accent. She wears a lot of purple but not a kefta. I checked. The groups about ten strong, six men, four women. They say they’re doing the work of the Saints, trying to eradicate disease.” Roeder looked at him expectantly.

“Names,” Kaz rapt out.

Roeder pulled a battered, folded piece of dirty paper from his pocket. He squinted at the writing. “The blonde woman uses a lot of different names. She was calling herself Alina at the Koolkrop, Ilka at the Kooperom and Ekaterine at Sten’s,” he said.

“Doing the rounds,” Kaz murmured. The Koolkrop was in Pointer’s territory, the Kooperom was Dregs and the lunch special at Sten’s Stockpot was avoided by city natives of all creeds and affiliations equally, but it also served as neutral ground for the gangs, as anyone who entered was equally likely to die eating the food. Alina-Ilka-Ekaterine had picked her targets with care to ensure she was noticed.

Ravkan missionaries, a mysterious theft from a Ravkan ship no one knew would be docking in the Barrel, and a Ravkan embassy worker combusting in front of the great and the good of the city. Kaz’s gut told him this wasn’t a pattern. It was a screaming siren blearing “look here”. He’d bet his controlling shares in the Silver Six that someone wanted to forge a connection between the Ravkans and the deaths. The question was, why?

Kaz curled his hands around the back of his chair. “Put the word out that I’m offering a reward for the location of Ms. Ekaterine’s lodgings,” he told Roeder. “One hundred kruge. If no one bites, double it.”

“Right boss,” Roeder left, Kaz having finally taught him how to recognise a dismissal after months spent lobbing loose coins, paperweights and anything else he could find at his head.

As soon as he was gone, Kaz returned to the armoire, flinging open the doors. He tore at the tie around his neck, undoing several buttons. He breathed like he’d been running, one arm braced against the armoire and the other clutching his aching head. His throat was so dry he felt sick swallowing. Grabbing the bottle of brandy from among the collection of expensive bottles of liquor he’d purloined from various places, he poured a glass with shaky hands. Thirst gripped him bodily, screaming through his shrunken veins. He threw back the drink before the first painful cough could work its way up his throat but ended up coughing most of it back up anyway.

Water would quench his thirst better but until Wylan could prove that the only diseases swimming in the water supply were the ones Kaz already had immunity to, he wasn’t going to chance it. Filling a second glass he drank this one more slowly, swallowing carefully. The burn of the alcohol hit his gut unpleasantly, adding to the sensation that he was broiling alive and he limped to his desk, collapsing into his chair.

Slowly he peeled his gloves off, one at a time. His hand were blotchy and swollen, fingers fat and unwieldy, the skin around his fingernails an angry purple. The veins in the back of his hand stood out against his skin, a deep blue-black. Easing back in his chair, Kaz flexed his fingers carefully to improve circulation. He coughed and swallowed, feeling a dry burning sensation building in his throat. The cough had been with him since the Rykt fire and he couldn’t remember when he hadn’t felt thirsty in the last two weeks. Coffee didn’t help and while brandy wasn’t much better, the burn soothed his throat for a while.

Breathing carefully through his nose, Kaz opened his cuff and rolled up the sleeve over his right arm. The rash that had come up on his arm this morning had advanced further down his forearm from his elbow. Furious red dots, like a cluster of flea bites, marched down his arm toward his wrist, obscuring his Dregs tattoo. The skin was hot and tender to the touch. Shutting his eyes and tilting his head back against his chair, Kaz swallowed roughly, fighting another cough. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a natural disease. He sensed it in his gut. Diseases spread through vermin. Spit, shit and dirty water. But whatever this was, Kaz knew it had a hold of him.

His memories of the Firepox were dim, vague and pained, blurring into the clearer, harsher memory of Jordie’s flesh sloughing off under his hands as he swam to the dock and the biting thirst that had plagued him aboard the Reaper’s Barge. The thirst had returned and with it the stinging rash he remembered from his childhood, the beginning of the pox that would eventually make its way to his lungs. But this time, unlike then, Kaz did not have the advantage of ignorance to protect him from what was coming.

All he had was the knowledge that no matter how much time he had left, it wasn't enough.

Chapter Text

Beginning Pt.3:

Wylan:

Wylan pulled the treated paper strip out of the beaker of water and watched it change colour. He laid the strip aside on the workbench beside several others to dry and reached for another beer bottle turned sample container. Each bottle had a piece of scrap paper wrapped around it, secured with thick paste. Kaz’s jagged, spiky writing provided the location of the water source each sample had come from.

Lounging in a chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, Jesper leafed through a budget of papers. “Do you want to bid on the sugar beet plantation in Ship’s End?” he asked. “The viability survey looks good. The last owner paid well below the standard rate, which is why the workers walked. If we promise a ten percent pay increase, I think we’ll get the workers back and still make a profit.”

Wylan frowned at the testing strip, watching the water wick up the paper. It was just like the others. Frustrated, he laid the strip aside and reached for a fresh beaker filled with crushed and slightly singed, Jurda blooms. The very last of the Etovost cargo. Kaz had warned him to expect containments in the sample as the blooms had been retrieve from the burned out Rykt factory. Wylan wasn’t sure he’d get anything useful from the sample but he took up the pitcher of fresh water to fill the beaker and crushed and stirred the blooms until they released a small amount of colour. He let the water settle and then inserted a test strip.

“Wy.”

“Hmm?” Wylan turned to Jesper. “Sorry, what did you say?” he asked already turning back to the beaker. The testing strip was turning a deep purple. Wylan retrieved it before it could soak up too much liquid.

Jesper’s voice had an edge of laughter to it, “I said if a pay rise doesn’t help, I’d could sail to the Southern Colonies and perform a striptease for the workers. I’m a fantastic dancer and you know I have the body of a god.”

“Sounds good,” Wylan said checking the colour on the strip against the chart tacked to the wall and then reaching for a different testing kit.

Jesper’s bark of laughter startled him. Kicking his legs into action he ambled over to the bench and peered down into the beaker. “What’s got you so distracted? Did you find something?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Wylan admitted. He lifted the goggles from his eyes to rub at his lids. “I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” he confessed and then his mind played back to him the last thing Jesper said. “Jes!”

“What is it, O light of my life?” Jesper asked him cheerfully, his attention captured by the murky mustard yellow colour of the water in the beaker.

Wylan waited until he looked up and said, “If you ever perform a striptease for anyone but me, I’ll burn down that beet plantation.”

Jesper’s grin lit up his pale eyes before his grin sprang to life. “You were listening,” he said brightly.

“I always listen to you,” Wylan told him seriously. “You don’t always talk to me,” he added more quietly.

Jesper stilled abruptly –more of an admission than anything else he could have done – before swiftly looking away, nervous fingers flicking the side of the beaker. “I talk to you,” he said. “I am a raconteur of renown. Name the subject and I’ll pontificate all you want.” His smile was too quick, too bright.

“What happened at Van Deering’s lodge?” Wylan asked calling his bluff.

He wasn’t surprised when Jesper slunk away toward the row of wooden shelves at the back of the lab, fingers brushing over the heavy, fire-resistant overalls hanging against the adjacent wall. “Nothing happened,” he said. “I missed you so I came home from the shooting trip early.”

Not just early. Jesper had come back from the weekend in the country with the young and fast set of the merchant class upset and guilty. Wylan could tell something had happened, but Jesper had evaded with flattery or distraction every time he’d asked about. Wylan had stopped asking after day or two, his imagination running away with him. Gerardus Van Deering was the son of a textile magnate and lesser member of the Merchant Council. Feckless and brash with an over-inflated confidence in his charms, Wylan had taken an instant dislike to the man but he and Jesper had hit off. Van Deering was also a keen amateur marksman and target shooter and he’d organised a weekend shooting contest for all his friends on a date he knew all active Council members were required to sit in on city budget meetings. Jesper had offered to stay behind with Wylan, but he could tell how excited he was about the trip. Wylan hadn’t wanted to force him to stay when he wanted to go, no matter how worried he was about Jesper in the handsome, sporting and charismatic Gerardus’ company.

Abruptly angry at Jesper and himself, Wylan drew himself up and said, “If something happened, tell me. I can take it. What I won’t accept is you lying to me.”

“It’s not what you think,” Jesper said quietly.

“You don’t know what I think,” Wylan told him shortly. Wylan didn’t know what he thought either. He had tried very hard not to think. He still didn’t want to think about it but images of Jesper and the blond, toothy Gerardus had filled his head to burst in the last month. The whole thing had gone on too long, fuelled by Wylan’s helpless fear that he was losing Jesper.

He knew that Jesper was bored. He simply couldn’t offer him the constant excitement life with the Dregs had and over time Wylan had started to feel more like Jesper’s keeper than his friend and lover. He needed Jesper more than Jesper needed him, he knew that and the life of clerk and amanuensis to an illiterate junior Council Member wasn’t the kind of life could possibly want long term. What Wylan could give him, wealth and security as a hidden Grisha in the city with a checkered past, came with strings. He wouldn’t tolerate Jesper gambling and he couldn’t keep up with his thirst for stimulation. He just didn’t enjoy going out to places like the Pearl or the dance halls on the east bank of West Stave as much as Jesper did and he knew it wasn’t fair to shackle him to the house and his and his mother’s attention alone.

Jesper loved people and could fit in anywhere from a company boardroom to a Barrel bar brawl. Wylan felt out of place in most company, like an imposter just waiting to be exposed. Jesper loved to move. Wylan was content in stillness or when lost in a piece of music. Jesper had a hunger for danger Wylan didn't share, at least not when their lives weren't at risk, and a restless spirit that was beautiful but difficult to keep pace with. In so many ways they just didn't suit at all.

They compromised well. Wylan accepted that Jesper would spend half his nights roaming the music halls and going to dances without him and Jesper knew that it was in his best interests to stay away from the gambling palaces on the Lid and along the Staves, unless Wylan went with him. He also knew that it was best to avoid Dregs territory altogether. Kaz had blacklisted him from all his clubs but there was no such thing as a social call with Dirtyhands. Jesper had admitted that if Kaz asked him to do a job he probably wouldn’t say no. But the restraints he placed on Jesper, no matter how well-intentioned, left a sour taste in Wylan’s mouth and did not stop the worry he felt every time Jesper left to have his kind of fun without him.

In his weakest moments, he’d considered paying Kaz to have the Dregs tail Jesper. More than the betrayal of Jesper’s trust, what stopped him was the knowledge that Kaz would make him pay dearly to spy on his boyfriend and his price would be far more personally costly to Wylan than money. The greatest loss would be to his self-respect.

“He tried to blackmail me,” Jesper blurted out.

“What?” Wylan asked confused. “Who?”

“Gerry,” Jesper looked solemn, a hint of anger visible in the clench of his jaw. “He thought I was your kept man. Your paid bit of Barrel flash,” he said voice hard. “He wanted you to bail him out of a bad business deal and said he’d expose me as a whore if I didn’t convince you.”

“Oh.” Wylan could feel his cheeks heating. He pulled the goggles off his head but then didn’t know what to do with them. They swung uselessly from his hand as he tried to think of something to say. He stammered, “I’m sorry —”

“Don’t,” Jesper cut him off harshly and then his face fell into wretched lines. “This is why I didn’t tell,” he groaned. “I knew you’d get that look on your face. None of this is your fault, Wy. Gerry is a skiv. And an idiot to think blackmailing me would work. I took care of it.”

“Jes…”

“I didn’t get off the boat yesterday,” Jesper told him irritably. “I ran with Kaz for nearly three years and I had to deal with a lot of blackmailers when I was in debt up to my eyeballs with every other boss in the Barrel. I did my homework on Gerry before I left. He paid off the indenture for a boy from the Anvil and set him up in a nice apartment on Orange Straat his father doesn’t know about. I told him if he lied about me I’d tell the truth about Oleg and then I told him to make his father support your grant proposal for the pauper hospital or I’d tell Oleg about his other boy at the Obscura.”

Wylan felt sorrier now than he had before but also fiercely proud of Jesper. “I did wonder why his father dropped his objection to my proposal,” he said softly. Shaking his head, he pinched his nose. “Ghezen’s finger, I’m bad at this, Jes. You’d make a better councilman than me.”

“I’d certainly be the most handsome mercher in chambers,” Jesper’s grin flashed. “Although you’re not so bad yourself,” he added, smile softening.

“Thanks,” Wylan grimaced and then grimaced some more as an unpleasant smell hit his nose at the same instant a watery hiss filled his ears. He jerked away from the workbench as noxious, yellow foam erupted out of the beaker to froth down the sides.

He and Jesper retreated to the back of the room. Jesper threw him a protective hood and dropped another over his own head as the beaker hissed and foamed merrily, a thin, dangerous yellow smoke rising from it. There was a sharp popping-crack noise and the glass beaker exploded.

“Saints,” Jesper breathed. He and Wylan stared at each other in alarm. “Normal Jurda doesn’t ignite in water,” he said.

Assuming the crushed powder was Jurda at all, Wylan thought. He had agreed with Kaz that there was something suspicious about the Etovost shipment. “I need to run more tests,” he said. “Jes, you know what this means, right? This is why the firefighters died. They must have triggered a reaction in the burning Jurda and inhaled the smoke.”

“I’m more worried about us,” Jesper said moving past him and pulling on the dangling cord to open the ceiling vent. The vent fed out into the garden. Wylan hoped fervently that his mother wasn’t out on the breakfast patio. He eyed the mess on the bench. The reaction seemed to have run its course but a thin pall of murky smoke hazed the air above the bench, unmoving and ominous. The air currents in the room were not strong enough to stir it.

“Do we risk making a dash for the door?” Jesper asked him.

Wylan nodded. It would be worse if the stayed and waited for the smoke to waft toward them. “Don’t take of the hood," he said. The hoods didn’t have breathing filters but they would provide a barrier between them and the air. If this was corrupted Jurda, or worse, a new variant of Jurda Parem, Wylan wanted Jesper as far from it as possible. The water-based reaction he’d witnessed was almost as violent as auric acid in air.

Dashing up the stairs Wylan locked the exterior door to the lab and leaned against it. Shakily he pulled the hood from his head. Jesper did the same. “You think that’s the stuff making people explode?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Wylan admitted. “I would have said what happened on the Pearl was impossible, but we’ve both seen what Jurda Parem can do.” He shrugged helplessly. Wylan had understood as soon as Roeder brought him the sample of Etovost Jurda that Kaz suspected foul play and now he was certain his instinct was correct. Kaz’s instincts were rarely wrong when it came to trouble.

“Kaz said the rest of the Etovost cargo burned,” Jesper said thoughts clearly running along a similar track. “If it reacts to water, why set it on fire?” he asked.

“It’s possible the blooms need to be burned first as a catalyst,” Wylan theorised. “Perhaps the particulate matter released into the air contained the reactive agent? The human body is sixty percent water and the air is probably full of microscopic particles of the altered Jurda. The reaction isn’t instantaneous but —”

“The insides of anyone who breathes this stuff in should turn to goo. Hot, smoking goo,” Jesper finished for him.

“That’s obviously not happening,” Wylan pointed out. “Which means this tainted Jurda was designed to do something different when it reacts in a human body.”

Jesper frowned. “We have to tell Kaz.”

Immediately Wylan wanted to argue. His reaction surprised him. Kaz wasn’t a chemist but he was the defacto ruler of the Barrel. If something needed to be done –and it did –Kaz was also the best person to see it done. Wylan would trust him to do what was necessary, efficiently. He realised he didn’t trust the Merchant Council to do the same. Still the reluctance remained and simply because when it came Kaz Brekker, the necessary and efficient were so often also incredibly illegal. For Wylan, the greatest danger Kaz posed was that he was easy.

Wylan had spent only a short time in the Barrel under Kaz’s protection. He’d been part of Kaz’s crew for even less time than that, but the experience had changed him in so many ways, and if he let it, it could change him into a person he didn’t want to be. A man like Kaz himself, a man like his father, who believed that expedience and profit were the only determining factors in any decision. A man who believed he had the right to weigh the worth of other men’s lives and decide who lived and who died.

It said a lot about his father that of the two, Kaz was the more judicious in the way he exercised that power. Dirtyhands was brutal and unkind, but he kept any bargain he made and his definition of a person’s innate value was broader than Jan Van Eck’s. Kaz didn’t care that Wylan couldn’t read, while his father had believed his deficit was a crime he should die for. For Wylan, the problem wasn’t that he couldn’t see the appeal of Kaz’s thinking. It was that he could see it all too well. Kaz’s thinking was elegant in its brutality, simple in its ruthlessness and all the more seductive for it. The only thing that mattered was finding the best way to get a job done and Wylan envied him the simplicity of that mental algebra. In his darkest moments, when he had to swallow the outright insults of his peers, or the patronising veiled insults of the older Council members –his father’s once friends – Wylan wished he could cut away all the fear and doubt from his mind and be like Kaz, utterly uncaring and entirely focused on what he wanted and how to obtain it.

Wylan knew why Kaz kept tabs on him, while maintaining the illusion that they had nothing to do with each other. Kaz never let an advantage slip through his fingers and having someone on the council he could lean on was a card Wylan lived in fear of Kaz playing, not because he couldn’t or wouldn’t resist him, but because Kaz was smart enough to leverage his mother or Jesper to force his compliance. He didn’t even need to threaten them, just knowing he could hurt them left Wylan feeling weak and small. There was no doubt in Wylan’s mind that Kaz knew that and used it. The ultimate efficiency after all, was reaping the biggest reward for the least amount of effort.

All the same, the root of Wylan’s reluctance wasn’t really about what Kaz might do. It was what he could become if he used all that he’d learned from Kaz Brekker. Wylan knew that he might be a potential ace for Kaz, but the reverse was also true. Kaz was like one of Jesper’s revolvers. A well-oiled and expertly made weapon that was always at Wylan’s disposal, because Wylan had leverage of his own to use against Kaz. Perhaps the only leverage that could work.

Inej.

As far as the Merchant Council was concerned, the warship known as the Wraith was subcontracted by his company to protect his fleet from piracy on the True Sea. Her captain and crew were independent operators who still, nonetheless, flew the Van Eck colours, protecting them from prosecution in Kerch. Wylan had already presented evidence Inej had found against two Kerch privateers to the Council and secured fines and sentencing when a knife in the dark wasn’t enough to stop the trade in stolen girls. That was something Kaz, with his cleverness and reach in the shadows, could not do for Inej.

Wylan knew that all he had to do to have Dirtyhands do his dirty work for him was threaten to withdraw his support from Inej. It was the fact that he could even think of doing a thing like that to his friend that scared Wylan and made him resent Kaz for showing him how easy it was to think without conscience.

But Jesper was right. They needed to tell Kaz. “We’ll go to Wastefel Straat,” he said with a sigh. “Ann can get word to him and it won’t look suspicious if we visit the church.”

After his father had been arraigned awaiting trial and the family lawyer had ratified the forged will that legitimised Wylan’s inheritance, he’d turned his attention to St. Hilde’s, the asylum that had held his mother illegally for eight years. He’d had to take on much of the funding for the institution himself in order to get access to all the records and while he was relieved to find that every other patient in the asylum had been placed there in good faith, he’d insisted on a change of policy. St. Hilde’s was now an hospital for the mentally unsound where people went to get better, not be locked away forever.

Ann was an ex-employee of the asylum who had been fired for speaking out against the shoddy treatment at St. Hilde and Wylan had met her when she’d turned up on his doorstep one day, in a nun’s habit with tears in her eyes. She’d remembered Marya Hendriks and had offered his mother the first and only personal apology she had ever received for what had been done to her. Watching his mother comfort and absolve Ann had been one of the happiest moments of his life. Ann had taken on the running of a rundown church on Wastefel Straat after a little over a year ago. Wylan had become the church’s primary benefactor ever since. He’d paid for the small clinic attached to the church and worked with Ann to increase donations. Wastefel Straat was in Dregs territory and Ann had guiltily admitted to Wylan that she’d struck a deal with the Bastard of the Barrel when she’d arrived. She acted as gang medic, keeping her mouth shut about the injuries she was called to tend, in exchange for Dregs protection for the church.

Wylan had been immediately suspicious. The deal was far too tame. Kaz could have coerced Ann’s help and still insisted she pay for his protection. Instead, he’d offered Ann a deal that did not seem to benefit him all that much. The one time in the last year he’d seen Kaz before the night on the Pearl, had been at the church in Wastefel Straat. He’d demanded the truth from Kaz and for once, Kaz had simply given it to him.

“Contraception.”

Wylan had prepared himself for any answer except that one and his mind had gone blank. Kaz had seen his confusion and explained, “The lovely Ann provides free contraception to the working girls on the streets and anyone else who wants it. Her treatments for the Sinner’s Itch and Jansen’s Blush haven’t killed anyone yet, making them more reliable than most. Do you know how much business I lose when my best dealers are too busy whelping or scratching their bleeding balls to handle a deck? Prevention saves me money, merchling. Far more than I could get extorting a nun. Having a competent medik eager to work off a non-existent debt is a bonus. And all of it costs me nothing.”

Maximum yield for minimal effort. The Kaz Brekker way. “How do you always find a way to win,” Wylan muttered caught between disgust and bemusement. Kaz might not be acting out of altruism as such, but his decision to tacitly support Ann’s efforts was helping a lot of people in the Barrel.

“I could tell you Merch, but then I’d have to kill you and I expect to get some use out of you yet,” Kaz had replied drily.

Ever since, the church on Wastefel Straat had become a place for them to meet if they ever needed to without anyone knowing. So far they hadn’t needed it. Finding out that most of the Barrel had likely been infected with a new and completely unknown toxin wasn’t exactly the news Wylan wanted to impart but Dirtyhands knew how to handle bad news. Wylan could only hope that his particular and bloody way of dealing with bad news was directed at the guilty party and not the messengers.

Chapter Text

The Beginning Pt.4:

Jesper:

The clinic attached to Ann’s church was overrun with sick people. The overflow had spilled into the chapel and the sick and dying lay stretched out over the pews and on the floor in the space in front of the miniature auction block altar. Jesper gave Wylan’s hand a quick squeeze as they entered and tried not to look at the scrawny canal rat lying across the back pew. He saw too much anyway. The boy’s blistered face was flaccid, his black and swollen mouth slack and his eyes sightless as they stared up at the ceiling. The air in the small chapel was harsh with the phlegmy hacks and rasps of forty or so unique coughs. The percussive, repetitive noises rattled Jesper’s already jangled nerves worse than the bark of sudden gunfire. There was an awful smell, thick and meaty in the air; the scent of burning flesh.

“Saints, Wy. I think this might be your delayed reaction,” he said as a woman sitting on the edge of a pew suddenly bent forward and vomit steaming, bloody yellow bile onto the floor. She shook like the Kherguud Jesper had smashed in the face with a vial of auric acid and Jesper wasn’t surprised when her body fell forward into the puddle, dead.

He and Wylan rushed forward, but they were the only ones who did. Jesper realised then that the bodies lying in front of the altar asleep. They were dead. There were more corpses, fallen where they’d stood lying on the ground between pews. Jesper looked around saw that the walking sick had pressed up against the walls to keep their distance and he experienced a moment of panic. Had they just invited infection? Wylan caught his look and shook his head sadly. “If this really was caused by the bad Jurda then it’s not contagious,” he said. “Only people who breathed in the smoke will get sick.”

That was a pretty big if, Jesper thought. But the damage was done. Without another word he and Wylan picked up the woman’s body and took her up to the front. “The altar,” Wylan said. “I don’t want to leave her on the ground.”

“I’m late for the monthly tithe anyway,” Jesper agreed with as much of a shrug as he could manage with his arms full of dead woman. He wondered if Ghezen would appreciate this tribute paid in lost lives as he hurried back down the aisle and picked up the dead boy. The boy looked barely thirteen, his dark hair slicked to his forehead and his brown eyes hollow. Jesper laid him carefully on the altar beside the woman.

“You sure this isn’t a plague?” he murmured, eyeing the frightened people trying to merge with the masonry. Had they all come here to die, he wondered. Each one of them waiting to see which if them would go next. Every last man, woman and child hoping it wouldn’t be them. Suppressing a shudder, Jesper thought he’d swallow a bullet before he let that be him. No one would meet his eyes, as every sick person in the chapel looked inward, avoiding reality.

“We should find Ann,” Wylan said softly leading the way through the connecting corridor to the clinic.

All the beds were in use and blanket litters had been laid out where floor space was available. Jesper’s fingers twitched. The people in the beds weren’t coughing so much but one man was vomiting water onto the floor like a faucet turned on full and a woman was screaming and thrashing in a bed at the far end of the long ward. Three familiar figures stood around that bed. Jesper recognised Kaz, Pim and Keeg instantly, but he didn’t register who was in the bed until Wylan stopped abruptly, as if drawn up at the end of a leash and breathed out, “Anika,” like it hurt him to say her name.

“Saints.” Jesper hurried forward, trying not to pay attention to the man in the bed clutching his arm, gleaming like glass and utterly immobilised. He reached the group but no one acknowledged him there focus on the woman in the bed.

Anika’s face was disfigured by a violent, red rash and the muscles in her neck and jaw stood out in sharp relief as she fought against the bindings holding her down. Her teeth gnashed, her bloodshot eyes bulged and she spat and frothed at the mouth. Jesper realised he could smell smouldering cloth. He looked down and saw that the cloth tied around Anika’s wrists was smoking.

“Boss,” Pim exclaimed. “She’s doing it again.”

“I can see that,” Kaz’s voice sounded like quarry gravel grinding together. He gestured for Keeg to pick up a bucket from a sloppy bucket. The big bruiser tossed the contents onto the bed drenching Anika. She screamed, thick white smoke rising from her body as the mattress underneath her crackled and charred. Jesper realised that what he’d assumed was sweat covering her body was in fact the residue from several soakings. After a handful of seconds wet twitching, Anika slumped weakly against the mattress and lay still, muscles relaxing. She stopped smoking.

Jesper waited until he saw her chest rise before he looked up and asked, “What the hell was that?” Kaz met his eyes briefly but Keeg and Pim ignored him. The same way they’d ignored him the one and only two he’d got it in his head to visit the Slat.

“Going to have to go the well again,” Keeg muttered, looking mournfully into the empty bucket.

Kaz drew a switch knife from inside his jacket. “If it happens again, use this. We don’t have time to spend watching her.”

Jesper eyed the knife. Kind steel, he thought, a sick feeling opening a pit in his stomach. He wasn’t the only one alarmed. Keeg sucked in a dismayed breath, drawing back from the bed half-a-step, but it was Pim who defied Kaz outright. “I’m not using that,” he said boldly, crossing his meaty arms over his holey sweater. “Not ‘til she tells me she wants it.”

Kaz’s lips thinned but all he said was, “There’s only one kind of mercy, Pim, and it looks like this. Be careful sentiment doesn’t get you burned.” He set the knife on the side table, his movements strangely awkward, as if he couldn’t use his fingers quite right.

“How long has she been like this?” Jesper asked softly.

A muscle in Keeg’s wide jaw twitched but he kept his hard gaze fixed on the wall above Anika’s bed. Pim continued to behave as if Jesper was invisible. Kaz glanced at his lieutenants before he answered, “Two days.” He looked at Jesper and at Keeg and Pim, expression a bit too blank to be natural.

A jolt of surprise hit Jesper as he realised Kaz was the only Dreg not giving him the silent treatment. Jesper wasn’t surprised Keeg and Pim didn’t want to talk to him. The Dregs had been giving him the cold shoulder for the last two years. Until today, he’d thought they were doing it on Kaz’s orders. But Kaz was looking at Jesper waiting for an explanation and Jesper realised he’d been blaming him for something not his fault all this time. He looked away, taking refuge in the familiar symmetry of Wylan’s face.

“We came to talk,” Wylan said.

“In here.” Kaz limped to the door leading to the nurses’ sleeping closet and slipped inside. Jesper hesitated, blinking in surprise. He exchanged a confused look with Wylan. Kaz did not have his cane. Jesper couldn’t remember a time, outside of a job, when Kaz had gone anywhere without his crow head cane.

“I don’t like this Jes,” Wylan murmured.

Jesper reached for and squeezed his hand. “It’s going to be alright,” he told Wylan.

Wylan shot him a look. “No, it isn’t.”

“Fine,” Jesper grumped. “Everything is terrible and it’s only going to get worse. Does that make you feel better, Mr. Negative?” He muttered under his breath, “You’re supposed to thank me for trying to make you feel better, Wy. That’s how these things work.”

“I don’t think comforting lies are going to help,” Wylan whispered, opening the door.

“That’s where you’re wrong, because optimistic lying is a talent of mine,” Jesper shot back.

The inside of the nurses’ closet was cramped to the point of discomfort. A cot filled the far wall and several shelves and cubbyholes lined the adjacent walls leaving little room for three people to stand, especially when one of them was a tall, lanky Zemeni. Jesper had to hold very still to avoid cracking his elbow into a shelf. The air inside the closet smelled unpleasantly of disinfectant.

“Where is Ann?” Wylan asked as soon as they were closed in.

“Dead,” Kaz replied not softening the blow. His voice grated like a rusty saw.

Wylan’s hand spasmed in his. Jesper squeezed tightly. Marya Hendricks was going to be devastated. She and Ann had become fast friends. “How?” he asked for both of them, flicking Wylan a worried look out of the corner of his eyes.

“The same way the skivs in the chapel are dying. She coughed up acid and keeled over.” Kaz watched Wylan with pitiless eyes and Jesper felt a stirring of anger.

“Don’t talk about Ann like that. She deserves better. She was a good person,” he said quietly. He didn’t expect Kaz to understand. Dirtyhands didn’t feel grief or sympathy. Still, he didn’t want him upsetting Wylan.

Kaz’s dark eyes snapped to him but then seemed to lose focus, the rapier sharpness of his usual glare fuzzing into blurry blankness. Jesper noted the unhealthy flush to his cheeks and a jolt of something like terror ran through his nervous system. His gaze dropped to Kaz’s stiff right hand, totting up all the small oddities in his appearance. No cane. No tightly cinched tie. Sweat at his temples. Hollows around his eyes.

Jesper swallowed hard. “Kaz…” he began and the other boy’s gaze snapped into focus.

Like someone had flipped a switch, the deadly Dirtyhands was back. “What business?” Kaz snapped, rasp harsh.

Wylan straightened his spine and met Kaz’s baleful glare, his grip on Jesper’s hand light but secure. “The sickness is being caused by a toxin released when an unknown agent in burned Jurda interacts with water.” He quickly explained what they’d learned that morning from the sample.

“That doesn’t explain why Svetlana Obanskaya burned alive,” Kaz said. “None of the earlier victims' blood turned to acid,” he added and if he’d been anyone else, Jesper would have said he sounded pensive.

Wylan fingers tightened around Jesper’s. “There could be something unique about her blood chemistry that meant she reacted differently,” he suggested.

Kaz pounced immediately. “Such as?” When Wylan didn’t answer, Kaz snarled, “I need answers merchling, not empty guesses.”

“Maybe Obanskaya was like Nina,” Jesper said quickly.

Kaz’s eyes cut to him. “What does Zenik have to do with this?” he asked. Jesper knew that tone. It meant Kaz was running out of patience and someone was about to lose an eyeball.

He talked fast, knowing that words were his best defence against Kaz in this mood. “Not everyone reacts to strange substances in the same way. Nina survived Parem withdrawal. As far as we know she’s the only Grisha to manage that trick. There has to be a reason for that. Maybe she had some sort of innate immunity,” he suggested. “Obanskaya could have had partial immunity to the toxin.”

Kaz quirked an eyebrow. “She blew up Jes,” he reminded him but the danger had passed. Kaz was listening.

Jesper shrugged. “So? Her immunity wasn’t complete,” he said. “Or maybe whoever released the toxin has more than one kind,” he added warming to his idea. “Maybe someone is using the people of the Barrel as lab rats for a new chemical weapon.” The thought was not a good one but it felt right somehow.

Kaz agreed if his scheming face was any indication. “There’s a group of Ravkan missionaries making the rounds in the Barrel,” he said and explained what he knew about the woman with three names and her interest in plague survivors.

Wylan frowned in thought. “I don’t remember much about the plague. My father moved us to the country before the quarantine,” he admitted. “But the lesions on the victims’ bodies do look like the pox. If this illness is manufactured, someone could have engineered the toxin using the firepox as a template, or even a courier.”

This was getting better and better. So far, they had a non-communicable mystery illness that had already killed a lot of people in gruesome ways. How bad would it get if the outbreak became a true contagion? Jesper wasn’t sure Ketterdam could survive a plague of acid blood and exploding people. He wasn’t sure any nation could. He definitely didn’t want to stick around to find out, but Ketterdam rarely cared what any of her citizens wanted. Jesper rested his free hand on the handle of one of his revolvers. Kaz was right. They needed answers, or better yet, someone Jesper could shoot.

“What are we going to do?” he asked naturally slipping back into his old habit of waiting for Dirtyhands’ orders.

Kaz didn’t answer. He wasn’t even paying attention. He was staring at the wall next to Jesper, dark eyes darting as if a kinetoscope was projecting images across the shelves. He’d gone ghost white and didn’t look like he was enjoying the show. “Kaz?” Jesper asked that queasy, jolting sense of unease rearing up again. He waved his free hand in the air, knocking a roll of bandages onto the floor. Kaz’s dark eyes slid to him but Jesper knew he wasn’t really seeing him. Jesper swallowed cold spit, heartbeat picking up. Beside him he felt Wylan grow tense. “Kaz,” Jesper said louder now, “What’s wrong with your hand?”

Jesper remembered the first time he’d seen Kaz’s slim, unnaturally white hands during the Ice Court raid. He remembered being vaguely disappointed he didn’t have claws. Now he watched Kaz lift his right arm his fingers completely inert, and thought that whatever he was hiding under his glove had to be far worse than claws, spines or the blood of his enemies. He realised with a sick shock that Kaz wasn’t using his cane because he couldn’t hold it. The greatest lockpick in the Barrel couldn’t use his hand.

Kaz pried his glove off awkwardly with his teeth to reveal a hand so swollen and discoloured Jesper wondered how he could stand the pain. His skin was shiny red like a glazed ham, his fingers straight and rigid as the finger chapels of the Church of Barter. Jesper could just make out the tell-tale prickle of pox marks over his skin, disappearing under the sleeve of his suit jacket. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Jesper felt dizzy as his brain tried to reconcile the reality of Kaz being sick with everything he knew about the other boy. How could someone who acted like he wasn’t quite human get sick? Dirtyhands couldn’t be laid low by disease. He was the ultimate survivor. Nothing affected him. Nothing weakened him. Kaz was untouchable in every sense of the word.

Or he had been, until now.

“I want you to do something for me Jes,” Kaz said and Jesper’s confidence in the world was dealt another blow. Kaz Brekker didn’t make requests, he gave orders. But this, this was a request. “I need you to find Ekaterine and her crew."

Jesper licked his lips. “I can do that,” he said quickly, by no means sure he could if Kaz had been looking for her and come up empty. Kaz’s words sounded too much like a dying request for Jesper’s liking. He was willing to promise just about anything if it meant he didn’t have to listen to Kaz Brekker sound almost human. It occurred to Jesper that for all the times Kaz had frustrated him, angered him, even disappointed him with his coldness, his secrets, his cruelty, Jesper had also taken comfort in the fact that the bastard of the Barrel was as close to invincible as anyone he’d ever met. Kaz brought low was more frightening than dead piling up in the chapel. Jesper had seen dead bodies before. He had never imagined a Ketterdam without Kaz in it.

While Jesper floundered, Wylan kept his head. “You think this group is behind the toxin and might have an antidote,” he guessed.

Kaz looked at him, a world of wrath held in check behind his eyes like a great black wave. “No,” he said. “I think killing the Ravkan who did this to me is a better way to go than rotting from the inside out.” Kaz forced the fingers of his right hand into a fist so tight Jesper thought his swollen skin would split like the flesh of mouldy fruit. “The sick can’t be saved,” he said with dreadful finality. “All that’s left to do is as much damage as we can before we die.”

Chapter Text

The Beginning Pt.5:

Kaz:

Bastian, Milo and Teapot faced Kaz. Flexing his meaty fingers nervously Bastion spoke for the trio. “Beetle’s done a bunk.”

Kaz swept his damp hair off his brow. He didn’t bother to look up from the map spread across his desk. The lines and curves of the city blurred as his vision swam. “Are the explosives in place?” he asked. There was a long, heavy silence. Kaz looked up. “It wasn’t a hard question,” he prompted.

Teapot’s nose whistled with his drawn breath. “Y…yeah. Everything’s in place.”

Kaz scowled. “The barricades?”

Milo shuffled his feet. “South side up from the morgue’s sealed tight. Only the canals are clear. People aren’t happy. We had to break down doors looking for furniture. Lucky Slim had to fire rounds into the air to clear the crowd.”

“Next time tell him to fire into the crowd.” Kaz looked at Bastian. “I want explosives planted on the Barrel side of Goedmedbridge and Zentbridge and access to Fifth Harbour blocked off from the Lid. If the Liddies give you a hard time remind them who call the shots in the Barrel.”

The three men stared at him. Teapot’s nose whistled. Milo nudged Bastian in the ribs. The bigger man rubbed the back of his neck, the sound loud and faintly greasy. “What about Beetle? He’s not the only one to sling his hook. Imogen packed up and gone back to Zierfoort on the produce barge first thing this morning.”

“Imogen was stopped from boarding the flatboat at dawn. Beetle got himself arrested in the suburbs. The Stadwatch are picking up anyone leaving the Barrel with a gang tattoo,” Kaz replied dismissively. Looking up from the map he added, “Stadwatch reinforcements are coming in from Belendt. Once they arrive the Stadwatch will storm the Barrel. They’ll round up the sick and shoot the rest. Their orders are to quarantine the infected in Hellgate and burn down the district.”

“This is that mercher’s fault,” Milo snarled, anger flashing in his small, mean eyes. “Should’a never let his sort down here. Mercher’s got no business in the Barrel.”

Bastian slammed a meaty fist into his palm. “I think we should go pay a visit to the merch and Fahey. Give ‘em a lesson in what we do to traitors.”

“If you want to end up like Beetle be my guest,” Kaz replied indifferently, hating the way his tongue felt in his mouth. Dry and thick. He knew the three men were watching him. He didn’t care. They expected him to say something more, to condemn Wylan and Jesper both. Kaz didn’t have the time for that. Not when this was partly his fault.

After leaving the clinic Wylan had run straight to the Merchant Council with the news that the sickness in the Barrel was the result of a foreign toxin released into the air and not a contagious disease.
Wylan’s intentions had been good, which was way the results had been anything but. He’d believed that by informing the Council he could prevent both a mass evacuation of the wealthy and a pointless and costly city-wide lockdown. No doubt he’d hoped that forearmed with knowledge, the Council would set about dispatching mediks where they were most needed and allocating resources to capture the Ravkan missionaries. It was amazing that his faith in his fellow man had survived his stay in the Barrel. Living among the Dregs should have taught him that the Council would choose a different solution.

It was a matter of efficiency. When a man had a rat infestation he hired an exterminator to rid him of the problem, and when his rats were diseased, he sold his house and bought a new one. Every mercher knew that while quality had to be raised carefully over generations to produce fine upstanding citizens like Karl Dryden and Jan Van Eck, there would always be more scum in the Barrel. All the Merchant Council had to do was burn out the disease and wait for a fresh wave of poor to spill in from the country once the ashes had cooled. It was a much less costly solution than risking good mediks on bad men.

This could have been avoided. Kaz should have stopped Wylan, but he’d been slow in the clinic. Weak. He’d let the sickness get the better of him at exactly the worse moment. All because of a dead boy on the altar. Kaz hadn’t known him. Hadn’t recognised him. But as he’d entered the chapel after Jesper and Wylan, the latter prattling promises of aid once the Council knew the severity of the problem, Kaz had caught a glimpse of brown hair and blank, staring brown eyes and frozen.

Jordie. He’d seen Jordie. For just an instant, the fever had won and the corpse of a fourteen-year-old boy laid out across the auction block altar had thrown him off his game. Suddenly he’d been struggling to breathe. His chest had seized. His throat had locked and black spots had crowded the periphery of his vision. He’d heard the sigh of the ocean. Tasted salt brine on his lips. Black waters had surged under his skin. By the time he’d fought his way to the surface and shaken off the hallucination the damage was done. Wylan and Jesper were leaving and Kaz couldn’t remember a single word spoken in the last minute. He’d been scrambling to recover from that slip for the last two days.

“I want the Barrel sealed along a cordon from the Lid down the east bank of West Stave and the west bank of East Stave, passed the Slat and down to the morgue. Teapot, you’re in charge of distributing our stock of arms to anyone who can stand up for two minutes straight without keeling over. Come night fall I want every able-bodied man, woman and child armed and ready to defend the barricades.”

“Think we got a chance?” Bastian asked, his voice subdued.

Kaz looked at the Dregs in front of him. He knew that each man personally loathed him. He hadn’t forgotten the beating they’d given him the night he ousted Per Haskell but he also knew that everyman was a Dreg to his dying breath. They knew how to fight and they knew how to win and this was war. They would turn up and shoot where he told them to shoot and they wouldn’t stop until a bullet found them right between the eyes. He nodded slowly. “Dregs don’t wait for chances. We make our own luck. Once the bombs placed at the Stadlied and the University district go off, the Council will panic like startled pigeons and draw the Stadwatch from our lines. Quality have no stomach for a fight. We’ll blow the bridges and have ourselves an old-fashioned siege.”

Every flash, thug and canal rat in the Barrel lived their lives fighting hunger, disease, poverty. They were used to death riding their coattails and were tough as vermin. Sickness, flood or spontaneous combustion, the Barrel would endure. People here knew that when your house burned down you blew the sparks onto your rival’s house and roasted together.

“What about the Six and the Palace? They’re both on other side of East Stave,” Teapot asked, whistling voice nasally.

“I’ve cleared the vaults,” Kaz said. “Our assets will be safe, for all the good they’ll do us. Insurance will cover the rest.”

“I remember the Queen’s Lady,” Milo said pensively, fidgeting on his feet. “This feels worse.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” Kaz said turning to cough into his elbow. “The Queen’s Lady hit so fast all anyone had time to do was die. This is different. We know the hole we’re in this time.”

“You got a trick up your sleeve to dig us out,” Bastian asked a little of his old vitriol trickling out.

Kaz thought of Anika smouldering in the clinic complaining incessantly that she was so cold, so cold, why wouldn’t anyone bring her a candle, you useless spivs. He thought of Keeg blubbing like a baby when his fingers turned to charcoal after sifting the ashes in the oven. He thought of Roeder unable to move because his limbs felt like lead and the air was too thin to breathe. He thought of his immobilised right hand, swollen with fluid build-up. He thought of the pint of salt water he’d vomited into the toilet bowl that morning. “No tricks,” he said. “Tricks aren’t going to get us out of this.”

“Yeah, then what will?” Bastian demanded his anger a thin disguise for the sharp tang of fear that peppered his sweat.

Nothing, Kaz thought. This wasn’t a plague in the strictest sense of the word but it had the same power to command men’s lives. There had been no obvious pattern to predict who would survive last time, no discernible reason why some grew ill, languished on the edge of death for days and then survived and some went to bed healthy one night and failed to wake up in the morning. The same was proving true now. The glut of acid blood deaths over the last week had petered out and the strange Grisha-like symptoms had come on in those left. No one knew what would happen next, but Kaz could feel in his waters that it would happen soon.

If Kaz had been a different kind of person, one who had been left with a shred of belief in natural justice, he might have railed against the fact that the three men in front of him were all healthy, while his best lieutenants fought for their lives. But Kaz had lost his naivety on the long swim back to shore from the Reaper’s Barge. He knew that life was short, brutal and ultimately pointless and anyone arguing otherwise was running the biggest con going.

“The only thing that’s ever got us through a scrape,” he answered Bastian drawing up to his full height and staring down each man. “We’ll fight ‘til the last man standing and make damn sure that man is a Dreg.” Rumour had spread through the streets along with the sickness’ strange symptoms and people had started calling this blight the Etovost Plague. Kaz knew that the survivors would be left asking the same questions of this plague as the last. Why had they been spared and forced to live with the consequences. He bowed his head over the table. His vision blurred.

“Don’t blame fate for the cruelty of men,” Inej scolded him from the open window where she fed the crows. Kaz fought not to flinch. The window in his office was shut. He looked over anyway. Inej was not there.

The room was empty. He couldn’t remember dismissing Bastian and the others and sick fear clogged his throat. The gloom in his shuttered office took on a liquid, nauseating sway, as if the air had turned to water. Pain zinged through his right arm and his mouth flooded with salty spit. Lurching into the ensuite he’d had built into the office when he renovated the Slat, he collapsed to his knees in front of the toilet bowl. He choked on the deluge of saltwater spilling from his throat, unable to breathe as his body became a conduit for a canal’s worth of liquid sludge that couldn’t possibly have come from inside him.

A slim shadow ghosted passed the open doorway. Kaz reached for one of his hidden blades, keeping his head down as his gaze cut to the right. He caught the faint impression of a small boy in his peripheral vision. Lost and ill-equipped to survive the Barrel, the boy twined a red ribbon nervously around his fingers. “I’m looking for my brother,” he announced, voice halting and high-pitched. The salt water hadn’t ruined his throat yet.

“He’s dead,” Kaz told the boy and then the world warped again, reality twisting violently. He rested his aching head against the lip of the toilet bowl and breathed shallowly through his mouth as the floor underneath him rippled like the surface of a puddle disturbed by raindrops.

“You’re not well, Kaz. Is there no one to help you,” Inej asked him, a faint hint of exasperation in her tone.

“You’re not here,” he told her, not sure if he was answering or dismissing her.

He didn’t remember how, but abruptly he was prostrate on the floor. The walls were melting and Kaz could hear a steady dripping in his ears. He rolled onto his back with difficulty and watched the ceiling above him quiver with dancing light as if he was at the bottom of a pool looking up at the shifting surface. For the first time since that long night ten years ago when he’d vowed to live for revenge, Kaz found himself wishing for death.

The thought was enough to get him moving again. He would not be broken. He would not give up. He would not surrender to weakness. His revenge was complete and Jordie was waiting for him out to sea but he still had business to take care of before he was done.

He descended the stairs to discover Pim and Keeg were dangling Roeder out of the first-floor window. “I can breathe,” Roeder shouted, euphoric. “Drop me. Drop me! I’ll float. I know it!”

The two men hauled him back inside. Keeg’s carbonised hand left black stains on Roeder’s shirt, a trickle of dust sifting to the ground as he flexed his fingers. “It worked then? You really feel better?” Pim asked him excitedly, his cheeks flushed a sickly pink with fever.

“I do,” Roeder said taking in a deep breath that puffed his skinny chest. He announced, “I’m going up to the roof. The air is better there and I know I can make the jump down. Boss,” Roeder nodded to him as he hurried passed.

Kaz said nothing. He waited. Pim said, “It’s a Grisha thing, ain’t it? Like calling to like? I figured it can’t hurt to try.” He smiled bashfully, shaking out his shaggy hair and admitted, “Feels good to help people, you know? Like I get a bit stronger each time.”

“We gave Anika a bedpan full of hot coals,” Keeg said happily. “She perked right up. Juggled them in her bare hands, she did.” He laughed revealing teeth that had developed a metal coating when he’d taken a drink from his old, battered flask.

Kaz ignored the corpses floating inside the walls like flies caught in amber and carried on down the stairs without a word. The stairs stretched dangerously below him. He could hear the voice of the canal running alongside the Slat. It slurred like an old drunk. Stepping outside he looked up at the heavy, black-purple bruised sky. It was going to rain. He could taste the storm. Following the canal passed the closed-up Crow Club, he headed north. His destination was an ammunitions warehouse down a side alley near the Palace. He wanted to do inventory before the evenings work began. This was the quiet before the storm but Kaz could smell smoke on the air and with it the sickly reek of burning flesh. Tonight, the gutters would run with blood. The air would crackle with fire and twang with the ricochet of bullets. Once the other gangs understood that Kaz had blocked off their only means of escape, they would come for the Dregs one and all. Kaz needed to make sure weapons were in the hands of every Dreg who could still fight.

Standing over Helvar’s dead body, Zenik had asked him what he’d do with his take from the Ice Court job. He’d told her he’d build an empire so he could burn it down. A good businessman always kept his word. The Merchant Council would try and wipe the gangs out. Kaz intended to make sure that every Dreg got the chance to die the way they’d lived, with a weapon in their hand and blood on their teeth. They would die killers, thugs, monsters, one and all. They would not die victims.

A Bodymen’s flatboat drifted by on the canal, the bottom loaded high with dead. Kaz watched it pass. The lost little boy from before, weak and small and alone, moved on top of the pile. “I’m not dead,” he croaked, voice too broken to be heard by anyone other than Kaz. “I’m not dead.”

He would be soon. Kaz eyed the boy without sympathy. He knew what the boy would become after he’d made the long swim back to shore. There was more mercy in things ending here and now. Little orphan boys died quick in the Barrel but the monsters they became when they grew up only knew how to die the hard way.

The Bodymen’s flatboat passed under a rusted iron bridge, to small and mean to have a name. Two boys sat on the bridge, feet dangling through the trelliswork. They clutched cups of hot chocolate in their hands. The older boy told the younger, “I’ll get a job as a runner at the Exchange. Then a clerk. I’ll become a stockbroker and a proper merchant. Then I’ll make my fortune.”

The younger asked, “What about me?”

“You will go to school,” the older one answered imperiously.

Kaz doubled over in a coughing fit. When he looked up again, ears ringing from the pressure building inside his body, both boys were gone. Still, he was far from alone on the streets. The dead were everywhere. They clogged the canal like a new kind of algae and littered the alleys. Men, women, little boys in nests of garbage, little girls clutching each other as tight as dolls. They crowded his peripheral vision as the first splash of a thick, heavy rain crashed down from above.

“This is foolishness.” Inej chastised him. “There is still danger on the streets and you can’t fight, Kaz. You’re not strong enough.” Kaz did not flinch. He knew exactly where she’d come from. His own wishful thinking. “I hear whispers, Kaz,” Inej persisted. “The Ravkans are here somewhere.”

“Good,” he said.

The rain fell in hissing sheets. Above his head the dark sky bleached with lightning. Kaz felt a little of the terrible pressure he’d been carrying lessen, as if all he’d been waiting for was a little moisture. He pressed northward over slick cobbles, through the dead clogged streets, with only a wish of a girl for company. His suit was drenched in minutes and his skin drank in water like a flower. His chest eased, the congestion in his lungs lifting for the first time in weeks.

“You should go back. Let Jesper find Ekaterine,” Inej insisted.

“He’s not going to find her,” Kaz said confidently. Ekaterine was in the Barrel. She’d always been in the Barrel. His order to Jesper had been the fastest and most reliable way of getting the other boy out of the way. Left to his own devices Jesper might have stayed out of some misguided belief that Kaz needed him.

He forgot his purpose walking through the rain and listening to its hissing voice. He forgot the war he meant to wage. He forgot the bombs and the carnage he intended to leave behind him. The rain held him. The storm whispered. Every instinct honed over the years told him that everything was about to change.

He stood on a rusty bridge and watched the lightning reflect on the broken surface of the canal below him. He peeled off his gloves and let his skin drink in the rain. He flexed his fingers, pleased to see the swelling had gone down. Flicking the brim of his sodden hat out of the way, he looked toward the Lid. Kaz had heard that Lars Schipp had unmoored the Pearl and sailed across the bay to dock on Imperjum under the shadow of one of the Council of Tides watchtowers but all he could see was the blur of East Stave ahead of him wavering behind a curtain of rain.

He nearly missed the click of a woman’s heels over the bridge. The song of the rain was too loud in his ears. A woman in a purple kefta joined him at the rail. Her blonde hair was caught up on top of her head under a simple but expensive Grisha-dyed red shawl. Her lips were painted a nearly black purple and her hands were gloved in violet lace. “Mister Brekker,” the woman said, her Ravkan accent subtle but true. “I am Ekaterine Iskova. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I must admit, I thought you too clever a rat to scurry into my trap.”

Kaz did not look at her. “Catching a rat isn’t that hard,” he said. The real skill is keeping them once you’ve caught them.” He turned his head to look directly at the Materialnik Alkemi who had poisoned him. “Rats are escape experts,” he said, “A clever rat can walk into a trap and walk out again with the cheese and his tail intact.”

“I will bear that in mind,” Eketerine said looking faintly puzzled. “Tell me,” she said with sudden keen interest, “How do you feel?”

Kaz became aware of movement. Several people joined them on the bridge, keeping their distance. Kaz caught sight of a Heartrender’s red kefta draped over the shoulders of a large blond man to his right. “You want a war,” he said. “That’s why you came here instead of unleashing your plague in Ravka. You knew that you’d get a true fight in the Barrel.”

“I want an army,” she corrected him. “An army of new Grisha, created by my hand. All of you who survive will be the vanguard of a Third Ravkan army. One I will use to wipe out Shu Han. For too long Grisha have been the minority and suffered for it. Now we will be the dominant force and it will be our enemies who suffer.”

“Why are you looking for firepox survivors?” he asked.

Ekaterine looked out over the water, a small smile on her face. “There is no need to be coy Mister Brekker. I know that you have the antibodies I seek to perfect my virus. I have spent months in this squalid pit you call home, learning how you people live and how you die.” She faced him directly. In the gloom it was impossible to tell if her eyes were also purple. “I have made a study of you,” she told him confidently.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” he pointed out and thought that he’d enjoy pulping her head against the railing. “Why do you need the blood of plague survivors?”

“I am a researcher, Mister Brekker,” Ekaterine told him primly. “I am running an experiment. Everyday I learn something new. Every day I am able to tweak my virus.” She gestured to her silent crew behind her. “We sow chaos for a reason,” she said. “Ketterdam will be our proving ground for Ravka’s new weapon of war. This savage town will test the mettle of all our new Grisha. Consider this the ultimate field test of my Jurda Etovost. I am changing the world, Mister Brekker, and you are going to help me.”

Kaz said nothing, his eyes fixed on the falling rain. Ekaterine sighed. “My intelligence reported you were a better conversationalist,” she said sounding disappointed. “Are you remaining silent in the hope there is advantage in it for you?” she asked. “Don’t bother. You are leaving here with us. I can see clearly you are in the final stages of the virus’ gestation period. I am greatly curious to discover what you will become. Knowing your reputation, I have high hopes it will be bloody.” She told him proudly, “You are this cesspool of a city’s most famous monster, Mister Brekker.”

“I’m also her best thief,” Kaz said watching the water sluice down the curve of the bridge beneath his feet and over the side. In the corner of his eye, he saw the Heartrender lift his hands. “A good thief knows how to make a good escape.” Kaz shoved back from the railing, threw his hat in Ekaterine’s face and snatched a fistful of her shawl, slamming her head into the bridge. He caught her body before she could fall, ignoring the creep of disgust as her warm weight fell heavily against him. One arm locked around Ekaterine’s throat Kaz turned to face the four Grisha on the bridge with him. “I fought a Tidemaker on Parem once,” he told them, baring his teeth in a savage grin. “He could walk through walls. It was an excellent trick, but I’m a traditionalist. I prefer a good old fashioned disappearing act.”

Shoving the dazed and bleeding Ekaterine into the arms of the Heartrender, Kaz took one deep breath. He concentrated on the feel of the rain soaking through his clothes, slicking his skin, seeping into his pores. He remembered the force of the water dragging on his limbs during that long swim to shore from the Reaper’s Barge and the power of the current driving the stream under the sacred ash in the Ice Court. In his mind’s eye he visualised the water living under his skin, carrying his blood cells through his body. He thought of the ebb and flow of the tide – and, in a moment of blinding pain and dizzying release – he vanished from the bridge in an explosion of raindrops.

Chapter Text

The Hunt Pt.1:

Inej:

The Wraith had been docked in Os Kervo for three days. Inej had used the time to restock supplies, speak with her contacts and see her parents who had travelled to the port city to meet her. Now her crew were getting ready to sail. Sergei had provided her prey’s heading. The Precious Child, a slaver ship registered in the Wandering Isles, was due to dock several miles south of Djerholm in a little less than three weeks and Inej intended to travel north to intersect it beyond Fjerdan waters.

“Captain.” Specht hailed her from the portside. “Take a look down there,” he said nodding over the side of the ship to the pier below.

A young Shu man in a blue Kefta with red embroidery waved when he saw her. Kuwei Yul-Bo had filled out in the two years since his escape from Ketterdam. He’d grown in height and his face had lost some of its softness. He stood without the hunched stoop she remembered of the boy she and her crew had stolen from the Ice Court and whose life they had bartered to save them all. Inej hopped over the side of the ship and ran down the mooring rope.

She landed neatly on the pier and was surprised when Kuwei rushed forward and hugged her. Thankfully, the embrace was brief. “I’m glad to see you again,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “I was afraid you would leave without us.”

“Us?” Inej asked, cocking her head.

Kuwei smiled and stepped aside giving Inej an unobstructed view of the full-figured young woman in traditional Ravkan dress flirting with the harbourmaster. Turning her head, Nina saw Inej and smiled. She waved enthusiastically, said something in parting to the bamboozled harbourmaster, and hurried toward them.

“Thank the Saints we got here in time,” she exclaimed and this time Inej welcomed the embrace, hugging Nina back and feeling the tension pulling the taller girl’s back taut.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Nina tried to bluff. “Who said anything’s wrong,” she demanded propping her fists on her hips. “Can’t I just be glad to see you?”

“I should hope you are glad to see me,” Inej said. “I am glad to see you. But you didn’t come here because you missed me.”

Nina winced and admitted, “We need your help.” Side-by-side with Kuwei, Inej could see both Grisha were tense. Nina took a breath and announced, “We need to get to Kerch as fast as you can sail.”

Inej’s gaze flicked to Kuwei in alarm. The Shu boy’s golden eyes glinted with fear. “Why?” she asked.

Nina bit her lip. “Not here,” she said in a low voice, very deliberately not looking around at the members of her crew waiting at the mooring rings.

So it was that sort of trouble. Inej’s spine straightened. “Come aboard. We can talk in my cabin.” She waved them aboard as Specht and Joli lowered the gangplank. Had the request come from anyone else, she would have talked price for passage, but if Nina said she and Kuwei needed to return to Kerch then it was no quibbling matter. The danger must be severe indeed for Kuwei to take such a risk. Specht shot her questioning look as he recognised Nina and asked drily, "New heading, Captain?"

"South, to Kerch," Inej agreed.

Specht whistled. "I'll let the crew know. We'll hit squalls going south."

Inej did not believe in living above her crew. Her cabin was below deck and simply furnished and she regularly shared it with Joli – the newest member of her crew and a Suli girl liberated from slavers. It was barely large enough for three people to sit around the tiny table. Inej stood to pour three wooden cups of water as around her, through the wooden walls and floor of the ship, she felt the Wraith begin to pull away from the pier, her mooring ropes drawn up.

“Well?” she asked sitting at the table as the light fixture above her head swayed gently, throwing wide swathes of yellow light and thick shadow over the cabin.

Nina and Kuwei exchanged a look. It was not a good look. It spoke of very bad news. “A group of Grisha radicals want to unleash a new variant of Jurda Parem on the Barrel. We need to stop them before they cause a war between Ravka and Kerch,” Nina said in a rush.

Inej blinked. “How is that possible?” she asked.

Kuwei’s face fell. He looked miserable. “It’s my fault,” he nearly wailed. “I should have stopped Kat.”

“That’s not true,” Nina told him boldly. “You’re the only reason we know what they’re planning.” She turned to Inej and explained, “Ekaterine Iskova was one of the best Fabrikators in the Little Palace. She's like Genya. She could have been a great Tailor but she chose alkemi instead. She worked with our Healers finding cures for diseases.” Nina turned the cup in her hands nervously. “Everyone thought she was the perfect person to work on an antidote to Jurda Parem,” she added softly, not looking up from the table.

“But instead, she made a new Parem?” Inej prompted. She could hear the thunder of quick moving feet above her head, reverberating through the ceiling. The muffled commands from the deck filtering through the wooden boards were indistinct. Inej felt a sting of longing to be above deck and squashed it.

Kuwei said in fluent Ravkan, “Kat was clever. She realised that without a viable sample we had to reengineer the drug from first principles. I told her that my father wanted to find a way to hide a Grisha’s powers without hurting them. We worked together to find a way to break and restore a Grisha’s connection to the Small Science because we thought it could protect us from Jurda Parem. At least, I thought that was what Kat wanted…” Kuwei trailed off.

“What happened?” Inej asked. She could tell this story was difficult for both of them to tell, but her fear was for the present, not the regrets of the past. Ketterdam had been her personal hell, a place of torment and suffering, but she also had reasons to protect it. Three of them. She had no patience for tales of mistakes past.

Kuwei dropped his gaze to the table. He swallowed hard. “I trusted her and she lied to me,” he said golden eyes flashing back to Inej’s face. “Most of the Materalki did not like me. They thought I had no business in the labs and they mistrusted me because I am Shu,” he said bitterly. “Kat was kind to me. She spoke to me as a… colleague. When she asked me to help her work on a way of giving non-Grisha powers, I thought she was crazy, but I wanted to repay her for her kindness.” Kuwei’s face twisted in anguish, fingers curling tightly around the table edge.

Inej shared a look with Nina who grimaced and gave a small nod. Inej understood. Kuwei had made the same mistake his father had made, tricked into doing something terrible by his own good intentions. But while Bo Yul-Bayur had acted on his own, Kuwei had been betrayed by someone he believed cared for him. That made everything worse.

“Loyalty betrayed condemns the betrayer,” Inej told him quietly. “You risked your life to reach Ravka and keep Jurda Parem a secret. That the Ravkans could not be trusted is not your fault.”

“Ekaterine doesn’t represent the Little Palace,” Nina insisted fiercely. “David Kostyk threw her off the project when he found out what she’d done. When the Triumvirate learned that Ekaterine and her people had run they sent Grisha to hunt her down. But she’s clever and she knows us. She laid a trap for our spies.”

“What sort of trap?”

Nina sighed. “A team of Grisha sailed to Kerch from Novyi Zem on a ship called the Etovost. The ship’s captain pretended a storm had blown them off course and docked in Ketterdam unexpectedly. The ship was carrying Jurda as bait. The team lay in wait for Ekaterine, but something went wrong. They didn’t report in. The next we know, the Etovost’s cargo was stolen and a Jurda drying factory in the Barrel had burned down, killing a lot of people. We think she poisoned the jurda and set the fire to incriminate Ravka.”

Inej did not care about Ravka. They carried the blame for what their soldier had done. “What was this poison?” she asked sharply.

Nina threw up her hands in frustration. “I don’t know,” she said. “It made people sick and then one of our spies in the embassy blew up.” Inej stared at her and Nina huffed a breath, shaking out her hair. “Svetlana Obanskaya wasn’t Grisha, but she had Inferni powers when she exploded in the middle of a gambling palace,” she admitted with a grimace.

Inej’s eyes widened. “Nina, what does the new Parem do?”

“It changes normal people into Grisha,” Kuwei said confirming Inej’s worst fear. The Shu boy tilted his chin up, grimly brave with guilt flickering in his golden eyes. “The theory is sound. If Grisha power can be removed in Grisha then it must be possible to grant powers to non-Grisha, as our connection to the Little Science is the only difference between us. Kat said if we could find the biological trigger for Grisha we could save many lives."

Kuwei's sigh shuddered from his lips. “It is what my father wanted,” he admitted. “To give Grisha the chance to be normal. I didn’t believe it was possible. But Kat was sure we could make Grisha. She was right. We did it. But the results were terrible.” He looked haunted. “The test subjects were willing,” he explained. “Poor men and women who wished to live in a Palace. They wanted to be Grisha so they would not be poor. They died horribly.”

“You experimented on people who only wanted a better life.” Inej felt cold. Kaz would have said the test subjects got what they deserved. But Inej felt compassion for those nameless men and women who had hoped for much and lost everything.

“We did.” Kuwei met Inej’s eyes unflinchingly, accepting her judgement. “And we experimented on other Grisha. They were all willing…but,” Kuwei’s hands flexed over the table. “When the subjects died, I wanted to stop,” he said. “Kat did not. It worked, you see. Before they died, the subjects had powers and the Grisha did not – for a time.” His golden eyes were wide and fixed, focused on his memories. “In the Grisha the effects were not harmful. Their power returned after several weeks. The non-Grisha’s powers were strange. They were like Grisha on Parem. But when their powers faded their bodies began to fail, wasted away by the drug we gave them. They were all completely mad before they died.”

Inej tried to imagine a drug that could give non-Grisha powers even for a short time. She thought of that drug unleashed on the streets of the Barrel and whispered a soft prayer. It would be chaos. Briefly, she thought of Kaz, her mind supplying a flickering memory of his long bare fingers, the rope of scar tissue over his knuckles and the feel of his warm hand in hers and then she closed the door on those thoughts. They would do her no good now.

“Kuwei went to the Triumvirate. He told them everything,” Nina picked up the story. “But Ekaterine had friends in the Palace. They warned her and she escaped with a group of Fabrikators and Corporalki as crazy as she is.”

Inej nodded. “Why the Barrel?” she asked.

Two worried expressions faced her across the table. “Ekaterine is crazy,” Nina said again. “Really crazy. Worse than me during a waffle shortage.” Nina’s smile died before it could live and her expression turned grim. “Ekaterine doesn’t want to find an antidote for Jurda Parem. She wants to perfect her serum and make hundreds – thousands – of new Grisha. She thinks if we had the ability to make Grisha on command, Ravka could win any war.” Nina's expression was pensive.

Inej sighed. “Nina,” she said pointedly. The other girl was stalling. Inej knew well enough that no one created a weapon without having a target in mind. Ekaterine might want to create an army of Grisha but she’d chosen to recruit first in the Barrel. She wanted to know why.

Nina watched her with solemn green eyes, her expression harder and sadder than it had been before Matthias’ death. “Half the people in the Barrel will try anything once,” she said.

“And the other half already have,” Inej finished for her, a ghost of a smile twisting her lips before falling away. “But that isn’t the reason. There are fools everywhere.” And there were safer places to find them than the Barrel. Inej had traversed frozen wastes and fetid jungle. She had crisscrossed continents and survived tremendous storms out at sea but no other place in the world could compare to the unique dangers lurking in the alleys of the Barrel. Nor could many monsters in the wild compare to the iron will and cunning of canal rats and gang thugs. Inej's eyes widened in horror as understanding dawned. She turned to Kuwei, a spark of betrayal lighting through as she realised there was more to his guilt than she had thought. “Ekaterine knows about Kaz,” she said. Saying his name aloud brought a rush of blood to her head. It was a shock of sound. A single syllable she did not speak aboard the Wraith, as if Kaz Brekker had become her guarded secret, a piece of her life that did not fit her captaincy and one she protected jealousy with her silence.

She thought about the last time she’d spoken to Kaz, over a year ago. She’d come to him asking for Dirtyhands help to rout a group of Shu pirates out of the hole they’d gone to ground in. She remembered how Kaz’s gloved fingers had jabbed at his maps and plans laid out over the desk, his voice a rough burr in the dimly lit confines of his office in the Slat. It had been a short reunion and strictly business and Inej remembered being relieved that they had both kept their armour firmly in place. Yet even hiding behind the roles of the Wraith and Dirtyhands, Inej had sensed something new between them, the memory of a bathroom kiss and the touch of bare hands a living thing between them, one they need not speak of to acknowledge. Inej did not know what they were to each other now, but she had left Ketterdam certain that they would always be something.

Kuwei’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Kat blamed the test subjects when they died. She said that remarkable people were needed to achieve remarkable ends.” Kuwei’s expression was caught between stubborn strength and a boy’s guilt. “When she started asking me about the rest of you I realised I had been a fool all along. She was looking for the perfect test subject. Clever, strong and tough.”

Not just clever, but vicious too. It took more than good soldiers to win wars. It took monsters. Clever, strong, tough and monstrous survivors. Inej knew she fit that description, and so did Nina and Jesper and even Wylan – they had all chosen to fight to survive, no matter the price – but in the Barrel, Dirtyhands stood above the rest, always willing to go that extra length, to risk that much more for rewards most did not dare to grasp. A remarkable test subject, indeed.

She met Nina’s a steady gaze and asked, “What does the Triumvirate want you to do?”

“Stop Kat before she can build her army.” Nina tossed her hair back pouting, “I picked a terrible time to visit home. Zoya acted this was my fault and told me I had to fix it. Thanks to Ekaterine the Merchant Council has put the ambassador and everyone in the embassy under house arrest. They already suspect Ravka. If Kat gets caught now it will be war,” she said. “Or worse, the Council could call in Ravka’s debt, which would lead to the same thing because we can’t pay.”

Kerch did not like war. Kaz had told her it was because there was more profit in funding other peoples battles than in fighting their own. All the same, the Kerch navy was the strongest in the world and in her time at sea Inej had learned to respect it. If Kerch chose to blockade the main trading routes servicing Ravka or attack Ravkan trading vessels they could starve the country in short order and leave Ravka vulnerable to attack from Fjerda and Shu Han or both. Ekaterine must hate Ravka, Inej thought because she was doing all she could to destroy it.

“There’s something else,” Nina admittedly reluctantly.

Of course there was. Inej tensed. “What is it?”

“Kat stole from the fabrikator labs when she escaped. She took a live sample of the Firepox bacterium,” Nina said. “The sample she took was the Queen’s Lady strain.”

“She’s going to use a plague as cover for her drug?” Inej asked, appalled.

Kuwei shook his head. “It is worse than that. Kat believes the first test failed because the Jurda variant was a drug that had to be readministered. She stole the bacterium so she could modify it as a carrier for her Grisha plague. She wants to change people permanently by first making them sick and then harvesting antibodies from the survivors to perfect her serum.”

“Is that possible?” Inej asked Nina.

Nina’s green eyes were wide and angry. “I don’t know. No one does.” She sighed deeply. “Kat was the best Alkemi we had. If anyone could do it, she could.”

And she wanted to do it to Kaz. Inej felt cold and hot all over. The idea was unimaginable. Kaz was a creature so much of his own making that the thought he could be changed against his will horrified Inej more than the thought that he could die. Kaz lived a dangerous life, they both did, and death was inevitable. But the thought that Ekaterine would abuse and use him for her own ends set a fine rage burning in Inej, searing away the cold shock. She knew what it felt like to be coerced and manipulated to serve someone else. To be made it something she was not, and fundamental parts of her given away for another's profit.

“I will help you find this woman,” she said quietly, “and when we do, I will kill her.”

“Inej —“

“No, Nina,” Inej spoke over her. “I understand why King Nikolai wants to hide the truth from the Merchant Council and I will help you keep the secret if I can. But Ekaterine will die.”

“She will,” Nina said in a rush. “In Ravka. It will be horrible, I promise. Maybe we’ll boil her in hot oil? Or tie her to a flagpole in a blizzard? She won’t get away with this, I swear. But we have to bring her back alive. In the Little Palace we can —“

“I hunt slavers. I kill people who buy and sell the lives of others for profit,” Inej said very succinctly. “Ekaterine is no different and she will die for it. And if you try and stop me, Nina, I will tell the Council the truth myself. I will not let people suffer because Ravka let a traitor escape.”

Nina flinched and looked away. After a moment she nodded once and said, “Alright.”

Inej released a slow breath. “How long has Ekaterine been in Ketterdam?”

Kuwei picked up his cup of water and downed it in one. “Eleven weeks,” he said.

Inej’s eyes widened. “Why has the Triumvirate waited so long to do anything?” she asked, agog.

“We were doing something,” Nina insisted. “Ekaterine was just better. She must have been further on in her research than she told Kuwei. I swear, Inej. We didn’t know she’d poison the Jurda.”

“That doesn't matter. You knew what Ekaterine was wanted to do and you didn’t warn anyone.”

“It is not Nina’s fault,” Kuwei said quietly. “She returned to Ravka only days ago.”

Inej turned to Nina. “Is this true?”

Nina nodded. “And I thought coming home would be relaxing.” She sighed.

“Are we too late? Has Ekaterine unleashed her plague already?” Inej asked but she meant was, had she gotten to Kaz.

Nina’s steady expression said she knew what Inej meant. “We don’t know. Our spies are all trapped in the embassy.”

“We know that Ekaterine has released the imperfect version of her plague,” Kuwei said. “There is sickness in the Barrel. Many people have died. I am afraid it will not be long before she perfects the serum.” He met Inej’s eyes and said, “I am willing to die helping you kill her but I think it is too late. She needs to infect people who can produce antibodies to make more Grisha. We think she will stay in Kerch until she finds her remarkable subjects.”

“How will she control them?” Inej asked thinking that Kaz was not a monster easily leashed.

“She won’t try. Ketterdam is a field test for a viable serum.” Kuwei said. “Now she’s spread the imperfect version, she’ll watch the new Grisha run mad and destroy the city, harvest the antibodies, and escape.”

The Wraith had reached open waters and the lurching of the cabin increased. Kuwei and Nina grabbed for their cups as they slid over the table’s surface. Inej heard Specht shout commands above deck and felt the Wraith begin to turn to avoid the patch of rough seas. Her thoughts were in turmoil as she left her cabin to go above deck but the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach had nothing to do with the rocking motion of the ship.

Inej more than most knew the horrors Kaz was capable of his own free will. She knew exactly which parts of his fearsome reputation Dirtyhands had earned and what was lies heaped upon exaggeration. But it was not the monster she feared for but the boy behind him. If she had a Grisha’s powers she would part the True Sea down the middle and run to his side, but all she had was the Wraith and her crew to get her to Kerch in time. She whispered a prayer and a promise to the Saints that should she be too late to save Kaz she would avenge him. Ekaterine Iskova and her people would die, even if Inej had to embrace her own remarkable monster to do it.

Chapter Text

The Hunt Pt.2:

Jesper:

Jesper brushed his thumbs over the handles of his revolvers and rocked back on his heels. He sipped the air tasting smoke and damp, thick mist clogging his throat. In front of him the Stadhall loomed and beyond, the grey waters of Haanraat Bay painted the horizon. The Government District was always quiet, its wide streets and palatial embassies staid and solemn set behind tree-lined streets that were much wider than the crooked alleys and winds crisscrossing the rest of the city, but even here in the northern hook, he could sense the tension.

A pair of stadwatch grunts clomped passed him, on patrol. The men eyed him as they passed and Jesper turned slightly, showing off the gold armband around his left bicep bearing the Merchant Council seal. The stadwatch pivoted back on their way and Jesper grinned when the older one gave him a deferential nod. He almost laughed but then the breeze brought with it a fresh blast of ash-stinking air from the south and the smile slid from his face.

He went back to rocking back and forth on his heels, watching the steps of the Stadhall. He was sore from the scrapes and bruises he’d picked up last night and the quiet had him on edge. The city was under a partial lockdown. The browboats running the Belendt and market lines had been shut down and members of the Kerch navy were helping the stadwatch check and search every trader, labourer and country bumpkin looking to enter the city. The streets of the University District were littered with debris from the series of explosions that had rocked the campus late last night and a shimmering haze of thick white mist rose from the south from the direction of the Barrel, blurry into the low hanging clouds. The stifling heat had broken with a spectacular thunderstorm yesterday and the rain had returned in the early hours of the morning, helping to put out the fire raging in the remains of the Stadlied. Jesper suspected the cold, sleeting mizzle sinking into his clothes was the work of the Council of Tides. For the first time in over twenty-five years, the real Tides were visible on the city’s streets, guarding the Barrel.

“Jesper.” Wylan watched him from the steps of the Stadhall.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t hear you coming.” Which was embarrassing considering he was standing in the drizzle waiting for him at the bottom of the steps.

Wylan nodded, distractedly. His red-gold curls were flat, plastered to his head and lacking their usual cheery bounce and his eyes were hollowed from lack of sleep. The Merchant Council had been in emergency session for hours and before that Wylan had been with Jesper, out on the streets, coordinating evacuations in the bomb-damaged neighbourhood. He’d gone straight from there to the Stadhall and his clothes were soot stained.

“What’s the verdict, are we boarding ships and setting out for a new life in the Southern Colonies?” he asked brightly. “Or are we invading Ravka?”

Wylan snorted and rubbed a hand through his hair. “Don’t joke, that could still happen. Van Dierpen tabled a motion to arrest every Ravka citizen in Kerch. He was only voted down because of the cost in manpower.”

Stroking the smooth mother-of-pearl of his revolver handles, Jesper huffed in frustration, “They don’t need to arrest every Ravka. Just Ekaterine, or Ilka, or Alina, or the Empress of Eames Chin, whatever she’s calling herself,” he added darkly.

“Empress of Eames Chin or not, it’s hard to issue a warrant for an arrest when you don’t know what the person looks like, or if she exists. The Council wants to blame the ambassador anyway,” Wylan said joining him. "At least he was easy to find."

“Poor scrub,” Jesper shook his head. The Ravkan ambassador had been held under house arrest until early that morning when he and his aides were dragged out of the embassy and sent to Newfoort island. Now they were under military guard. “Think he knows anything?” he asked.

“I don’t know. My request to observe the interrogation was denied,” Wylan muttered acerbically. “According to Van Deering, I’m as much to blame for this as the Ravkans. He accused me of being part of a plot to overthrow the Council.”

“That skiv. Next time I see Gerry I’m shoving the barrel of my revolver where the sun never shines.”

“He’d probably enjoy that,” Wylan muttered darkly, adding, “You might be in for a long wait anyway. Van Deering sent his son and the rest of household south. Haanraat, Smitzen and Ljat were all absent from chambers and their homes boarded up. The Council are abandoning the city.”

“Course they are. That’s what rats do.”

“It’s going to make voting on action harder, with so few of us left,” Wylan said.

“On the plus side it will make staging a coup much easier,” Jesper opined.

Wylan frowned. “I don’t want to overthrow the Council,” he said. “I just want them to listen to me.”

“A spell in Hellgate would make them more receptive. A few nights in a cell having their toes nibbled by rats will make anyone more reasonable.”

Jesper was not joking. He’d happily see the Council locked up. The disaster last night was their fault. Mostly. Wylan had gone to the senior merchers with what they’d learned about the sickness and told them they needed to send mediks into the worst hit areas of the Barrel. Wylan had wanted to approach the gang leaders to help coordinate a voluntary quarantine of the worst affected to avoid the sick hurting the well, given their tendency to blow up at unfortunate times. The Council had decided, in their infinite wisdom, that the stain of Van Eck’s alliance with Pekka Rollins was too fresh in the memory and refused to deal with any of the Barrel bosses. They'd ordered the stadwatch to lead a roust instead.

Ketterdam being as full of information leaks as it was every other kind of leak, word spread quickly through the Barrel. Before he or Wylan had the chance to gather the mediks, barricades had sprung up at all the bridges and streets leading into the Barrel. Jesper knew exactly whose idea that had been. Kaz controlled the flow of information in this city. Dirtyhands had been responsible for turning the Council’s idiocy into a bloody siege that had nearly burned the city down.

“We don’t need the Council,” he said, tugging on his holsters. “We know what we need to do.”

Wylan’s reddened eyes looked sad. “We can’t get to the Barrel, Jes. The Tides —”

“Aren’t worse than the Fjerdans,” Jesper pointed out. “We took on the strymaktfjerdan and won. We can take on fifty Grisha in floaty cloaks.”

Wylan’s lips twitched. His eyes brightened. “A tank would be helpful getting through the ice wall the Tides put up,” he admitted.

“We don’t need a tank. You just need some of your bombs and a lot of ammo and we’ll be through,” Jesper said.

“Right into a warzone,” Wylan agreed drily.

“Pretty quiet warzone,” Jesper grumbled. Too quiet, after last night. “What do you think they’re doing in there?”

Wylan shook his head, “I’m not sure I want to know,” he said quietly.

They started walking back toward home and the Geldin District. Jesper eyed the rising finger domes of the Church of Barter and wondered why Kaz hadn’t blown the church up as well. His mood darkened. He didn’t want to think about Kaz. If he did, he’d start thinking about last night. He’d been on the zelver district side of the East Stave barricade; he’d returned fire to protect the group of mediks waiting to cross the bridge with the stadwatch and he’d been there when an ugly situation turned into a nightmare.

He'd had a bad feeling from the beginning. The usual excitement of a good fight was missing as he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the stadwatch firing on people he knew and recognised. What had his life become that he’d ended up siding with stadwatch? It had left him with the uneasy feeling he was on the wrong side. Which made no sense because he liked his life now a hell of a lot more than he’d liked being up to his eyeballs in debt. He was a better person for having given up his old life and he loved living with Wylan, but last night he hadn’t been able to run from the thought that he was betraying something in himself by siding with the law.

“The Tides left a note for the Council,” Wylan told him. “Anyone who tries to break through the ice barrier will be killed. They’ve assumed responsibility for controlling the Infected and the navy are following their lead. I think there must be someone in the Merchant Council in contact with the Tides, but I don’t know who. I don’t think its Radmakker or any of the senior members. They were too angry being dictated to.”

“But they won’t do anything,” Jesper said.

“Of course not,” Wylan agreed. “They know they can’t stop the Tides. I’m not sure they really want to,” he admitted quietly. “The Tides taking over means the Council doesn’t have to come up with a plan for dealing with the Infected.”

The Infected. Jesper repressed a shudder. He’d had his own close encounter with them last night. One minute he’d been trading shots across the bridge, aiming to miss, the air still wet and fizzing with the dying storm and the next moment everything changed. Horribly.

Jesper heard the screams first. At first, he thought some podge had caught a bullet in the guts, but then the sound grew and changed until it was a wave of noise like the voice of a gale slamming across the Stave and into the front line of stadwatch. Men were thrown backward, knocking down those behind them like ten pins. Jesper had felt the shock from his vantage point on the roof of the Palace. His ears had popped so loudly he’d thought at first his eardrums had ruptured.

Jesper had looked down from the roof and seen men and women standing on top of the barricades of old furniture and pilfered factory machinery, their mouths stretched like black holes as they screamed death down on the armed men below. The stadwatch were pummelled by waves of concussive force that broke their lines, ruptured organs and shattered bones. Men died with blood streaming out of their ears, their noses, their eyes, as the pressure of battering waves of sound squashed them into the street.

That was when the Squallers – because that was what they were – leapt off the barricades like monkeys, hurling their bodies over sixty feet through the air and over the canal. Some landed, cat-neat, on their feet on the ground and immediately laid into the surviving stadwatch, others ran up the sides of buildings as if the vertical climb was completely flat. One landed on the roof of the Palace right behind Jesper. Twisting and narrowly avoiding toppling off the sloped roof Jesper fired on instinct, hitting the former Dime Lion in the right shin.

It didn’t even slow him down. Hopping on one leg, Ifan leapt straight up into the air and landed on Jesper’s back. He was flattened against the tiles and then hauled back up the pitch of the roof. Ifan straddled his back, while Jesper was still trying to inflate his lungs. Jesper heard Ifan draw a breath and knew his brains were about to be liquefied by deadly, silent scream. Reaching up and back, he shoved his fingers into Ifan’s mouth. Choking, Ifan jerked back and Jesper used the shift in balance to buck him loose.

Immediately he was flattened by a sudden increase in air density that left him wheezing and unable to move. Gritting his teeth, Jesper dug his fingers into the gaps between wonky roof tile and reached for the particles of moss, dirt and clay fired brick. A column of flame shot into the sky, streaking upward like a reverse comet and the dank air was suddenly heated. Steam started to rise from the moss quilting the gutters.

Jesper felt the pressure grinding down on him relax and he directed the cloud of dirt and clay dust behind him into Ifan’s face. Jesper concentrated, thickening the thin dust into a dense paste as thick as wet clay that clogged Ifan’s mouth, covered his eyes and plugged his nose. Leaping up, Jesper balanced on the slant of the roof and shoved Ifan over. He fell backwards still clawing at his face, rolled down the slope of the roof and over the side of the gutter. Jesper slid down the roof and peered over the edge. A wave of humid steam smacked him in the face, stinging his cheeks. The air had turned as hot and swampy as the air in the Geldrunner’s private baths.

Flipping over the lip of the roof blind, Jesper swung in through the window leading into Kaz’s Palace office and hurried down through the deserted, dust-sheet shrouded gaming floor. A wall of solid heat shoved him back through the door. Jesper leapt behind the dust-covered bulk of the Makker’s wheel table as a squat, female figure appeared in the doorway along with a fresh wave of intense heat.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he heard Anika sing-song, her voice roughened with smoke.

Jesper drew his revolvers. Anika was a friend, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The gaming floor was a large, dark space. Hidden under the table Jesper could see flames reflected on the polished wood floors from outside as Anika’s booted feet ghosted passed the cloth covered table. The air crackled with a searing, whispering heat that dried Jesper’s throat. He swallowed harshly, afraid that he’d start coughing and give himself away. He could shoot Anika in the foot from here, but the bullet he’d lodged in Ifan’s leg hadn’t slowed him down at all. Jesper wasn’t sure if Anika could feel pain right now and he wasn’t willing to aim to do more than wound.

Jesper was willing to admit he was in world of trouble. And then he heard a second, heavy set of footsteps enter the gaming floor.

“Oi, Nik, what you doing? We’re driving the pigs back toward Zelver District.” Keeg’s voice was nearly unrecognisable, mangled and thick as if he had something stuck in his throat.

“Shut your mouth,” Anika hissed. “Someone’s in here. I saw ‘em.”

Keeg’s boots crunched over the ground. Jesper caught a glimpse as he passed the table. Thick, discoloured shards of glass stuck out of his leather boots like platelets, scouring the woodwork as he walked. “Boss’ll kill us if we burn the place down,” Keeg warned.

Jesper’s eyes stung as beads of sweat ran down his brow but he didn’t dare wipe his face. He was drenched all over and the heat kept rising. In another minute, Jesper was sure his blood was going to start to boil. Anika and Keeg were on his right, somewhere near the cluster of card tables and in front of the short set of wide stairs leading up to the raised level and the bar. Jesper twisted around to keep their legs in his sightline.

His breath stuck in his throat when his eyes met Anika’s. The Dreg had hunkered down with her cheek to the floorboards to look under the tables. Her eyes glowed dull red like the last coal in the grate. “Lo, there Jesper.” Anika grinned and slammed her palms onto the floor.

Jesper rolled across the floor as a stream of bright yellow flame raced toward him. He hopped up on the table as the floor was swallowed in flame. Anika and Keeg stood in the middle of the veldt of dancing fire as the air hazed with heat, sparks popping to life between them like tiny fireworks. Tendrils of flame coiled around Anika’s legs and the ends of her lop-sided hair smouldered. But it was Keeg who captured Jesper’s attention.

The Dreg bruiser was a human pincushion. Spikes of glass erupted from his face and jutted out from his shaven head like spines. His arms were studded with more glass spears at least two fingers thick and his skin was mottled and discoloured, patched with different shades and textures. Jesper saw a patch of skin down his neck that looked rough like the cheap fired bricks of the houses in the factory district. When he smiled, Jesper saw that Keeg’s teeth were black-grey like tarnished steel. Keeg looked completely relaxed as if he’d been born with glass growing out of his skin. The bottom dropped out of Jesper’s stomach.

“Saints. You’re a Durast.” A nightmare version of one. Instead of pulling component elements from objects, Keeg absorbed the properties of everything he touched into his body. “How are you still alive?” Jesper asked him.

Keeg grinned and stroked a coal-blackened hand over the three-inch-long spears of glass sticking out of his chest. “I eat right and live well,” he said.

Anika opened her mouth and breathed a jet of colourless flame through the air right toward him. Leaping off the table Jesper sprang over the flaming floor and through the doorway, painful heat licking over his back. Rolling along the hard, steamy ground outside, Jesper scrambled over the hot cobblestones, keeping low. The air was on fire and bodies littered the ground.

Crawling his way up Tinker’s Canal toward the rump of the stadwatch Jesper waited until he’d reached the last of the city’s defenders before turning back toward the barricade. Most of the street was a river of flame and at least twenty, fire-stripped figures stood in the middle of that blaze, with more jeering at them from the roofs, or clinging to the sides of buildings.

Anika and Keeg walked out of the Palace as thick, black smoke belched out of doors. They joined a line of figures backlit by the fire. Some were like Keeg, twisted and deformed, others stood wreathed in flame, breathing out raw heat into the wavering air and setting the rooftops ablaze. Screaming Squallers leapt back and forth from one roof to another, howling into the night louder than the emergency sirens ringing out around the city.

“We can’t fight this,” Jesper said taking aim at a squaller’s head as he leapt toward a huddle of mediks. He was relieved when the squaller collapsed unmoving to the ground. At least he knew that headshots worked.

He didn’t have long to savour the discovery. A wave of sound smashed him backward, toppling him head-over-heels and into the side of a building. He was too stunned to understand that the fierce rumble he felt thrum through the ground didn’t come from the Infected. He looked toward the Lid and saw a massive fireball erupt upwards into the twilight sky.

“The Stadlied,” someone cried. “They’ve blown it up!”

Jesper whipped his head back toward the burning barricade. Keeg and Anika had been joined by Roeder, who leapt off a roof to land neatly on the floor in a move that would make any spider green with envy. Where was Kaz? Jesper scanned the figures cheering as the Lid went up like a torch but couldn’t see that distinctive silhouette anywhere along the line. Jesper had been surprised by Kaz plenty of times, but he’d never been afraid of him. But he was afraid now. Dirtyhands never missed the action. If Kaz wasn’t here it meant he was somewhere else, doing something worse.

Another series of deep booms rocked the air from the direction of the University District. “Retreat,” yelled the Stadwatch commander and the grunts broke like quail flushed from a bush. Jesper sprinted after them, quickly overtaking with his long strides and running back toward the Zelver District, herding the terrified medics with him.

A chorus of jeers rose behind him and a wave of heat and sound roared at his back. He fired to his left, dropping a Squaller sprinting along the rooftops above him and nearly collided with a figure in a dark blue cloak. Jesper’s ankles tied up. He tripped and sprawled at the Tide’s feet. Looking up all he could see was a dark, starry mask within the depths of a hood wreathed in blessedly cool mist. “Mister Fahey, please step aside, you are in my way,” said the Tide raising his arms.

Great clouds of water vapour rose in the air, meeting the heat and producing a wall of steam that would melt anyone who tried to pass through. Jesper scrambled aside and saw several more figures in blue cloaks standing with their arms aloft as they pulled the water from the nearby canal out of its trench and through the air. Catching his breath, he watched the Tides hurl a great wave of water down the street. The wave smashed the barricade into matchsticks and washed the Infected back across the Stave, but all Jesper could think was, how did the Tide know his name?

“Jesper,” Wylan’s voice snapped him back to the present.

He stretched his arms over his head. “Maybe the Tides have got someone in the Stadwatch?” he suggested. “No one knows who they are, so they could be anyone.”

“Which doesn’t help us,” Wylan pointed out.

The Tides intervention had ended the fight. Jesper had seen them raise a huge ice wall from the water in the Stave, sealing off the Barrel. The Infected had been quiet since dawn, although every now and then Jesper head a smattering of gunfire or hideous shriek coming from the Barrel. The Tides were still stationed along the official quarantine line but Jesper didn’t know if they’d had any trouble. He did know that the Tides had shifted the currents in several canals turning them into tidal rivers so they could pull more water in from the sea to maintain the wall of ice running the length of both Staves.

So far their efforts were holding but Jesper thought that was more because the Infected didn’t want to invade the rest of the city. They’d been defending their home from the stadwatch last night, fighting back against forcible removal. But how long would they stay sealed away? More to the point how long could things stay like this with the crooked heart of Ketterdam a cage for the Infected? Jesper thought that if things stayed as they were some enterprising soul would start charging tourists admission to the ice wall. It would be one way to recoup the city’s losses with most of its gambling palaces stuck inside the no-go zone.

And where was Kaz? Why hadn’t he been at the Palace, defending his property? And who was the Tide who’d spoken to him last night? Jesper was certain he knew his voice from somewhere. He’d recognise it if he heard it again.

“Councilman Van Eck, sir!” A young stadwatch officer hurried toward them across the empty plaza in front of the Church of Barter.

He was trailed by three people dressed in country homespun. Jesper’s heart leapt into his throat as he recognised Inej and Nina. A pure whoop of delight escaped his lips and he broke into a run. He flung his arms around both girls. “All the Saints, your aunt Ida and my lucky left pinky, I don’t know why you’re here but I’m glad you are,” he said with feeling.

Behind him he heard the stadwatch officer say to Wylan, “They were carrying your seal, sir. The Suli woman insists she works for you.”

“Captain Ghafa works with me,” Wylan corrected. “Thank you for bringing them through the checkpoint officer…?”

“Smetje, sir,” said the officer.

“Officer Smertje, please accept this reward for your service. And don’t let me keep you from your duties a moment longer.” Coins changed hands and after a brief flurry of thanks the officer scuttled away.

A quiet voice Jesper never thought he’d hear again said, “I’m here too. Aren’t you going to greet me?”

“That depends,” Jesper told Kuwei Yul-Bo, resting his hands on his revolvers and asked, “How much of this is your fault?”

The Shu boy flushed unhappily. “This is not my fault,” he said.

Jesper snorted. “Say that again, but this time make it convincing.”

Nina slipped her arm around him and squeezed, managing to insert herself between him and Kuwei. “We’re here to stop Ekaterine and put all the crazy back in its bottle,” she told him. “So you’d better have waffles because I do my best plotting on a full stomach.”

Jesper felt his spirits soar. Nina was was Ravkan so she had to know what was going on. He looked over to Inej; an ice wall was nothing to the Wraith. “Where is Kaz?” she asked him, her gaze steady and solemn, as if she already knew the answer.

Jesper felt his spirits hit the ground with a thud. “Missing,” he said and as soon as he did, he knew it was true. The Barrel was in chaos and its king was nowhere to be found.

Chapter Text

The Hunt Pt. 3:

Wylan:

After a quick lunch of fried potato and hutsput prepared by Hester the cook (“begging your pardon, Mr. Van Eck, but the markets are closed”) Wylan and the others settled in the cream parlour, the smaller of the two parlours in the house. “The harbours are closed. How did you get here?” Wylan asked Inej, holding his coffee cup without taking a drink.

“The Wraith is docked in Zierfoort. We travelled north inland on the barges.” Composed and straight-backed in the wingback chair by the unlit fire Inej commanded an aura of serenity. Still dressed in his sooty clothes and exhausted from a sleepless night, Wylan felt quietly frantic in comparison. He wished he had a fraction on her calm. “The last time I was here Kaz took me to Rotty’s distillery in the country. We used his bottle boat to pass through the checkpoints.”

“Saints praise wormwood,” Jesper laughed. “Does Rotty know anything?”

Inej shook her head. “Only what everyone else in the country knows. The Barrel and pleasure district have been sealed off. He hasn’t heard from the Dregs in days.”

Nina waved a half-eaten oat cookie in her hand as she talked, “We need to talk to the Tides. They have to let us through the ice barrier.”

“Or they could drown us in our own sweat,” Jesper pointed out. “And that’s if we’re lucky and they don’t recognise Kuwei,” he added darkly shooting Yul-Bo a look. “We went to a lot of trouble getting you out of the country, including impersonating the Tides. I don’t think they’re likely to forget that.”

“There has to be someway through,” Wylan said thinking aloud. "The ice barrier's northern limit runs from Goedmedbridge in the southwest to the Palace in the northeast, cutting off access to the Lid and Fifth harbour.” Leaning over the coffee table Wylan drew his finger in a diagonal line over the lacquered surface. “They’ve flooded the Lid and are drawing water directly from the ocean to bolster the ice wall. I think getting in through from the Lid is our best chance.”

“But isn’t that where the bulk of their forces are?” Kuwei asked, sitting on the edge of the couch next to Nina. He stared down at the glossy black surface of the coffee table as if it was fully drawn city map.
Standing up from his place on the love seat next to Wylan, Jesper left the parlour and returned with the framed map from the hallway. Nina claimed the plate of cookies as the others moved their coffee cups to make space for the map.

“That’s why it’s our best chance,” Wylan said marking the barrier on the map with a pencil stub Jesper handed him. “The navy is in the Lid and the stadwatch have set up a watch in Fifth harbour. Anywhere a lot of people congregate makes it easier for a small group to slip by unnoticed. Especially when everyone is focused on keeping the Infected from breaking down the wall from their side.”

“Just like Hringkalla at the Ice Court; we’ll use the activity as a distraction,” Nina murmured, expression shading with grief for a second before she met Wylan’s gaze with an impish grin. “Kaz would proud.”

In the wingback chair Inej sipped her coffee, her gaze fixed on the unlit fire. “All our disguises were ruined in the Stadlied fire,” she said. “And we still need a way to pass through several feet of solid ice. Is it scalable?”

Wylan shook his head. “The Stadwatch have snipers on the nearby roofs.”

“Are we sure it wouldn’t be easier to break through somewhere else?” Kuwei asked plaintively. He pointed at the map, “What about one of these alleys here? Surely they don't have the manpower to guard them all.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Jesper muttered. “The stadwatch are watching the alleys and canals like hawks. The numbers increase the further south you go.”

“Toward Dregs territory,” Inej murmured.

Wylan nodded. “We don’t know what we’ll find when we get inside the no-go zone,” he said. “The advantage of entering from the Lid and heading south means we won’t be walking straight into the middle of Infected territory.” He looked up and met four sets of expectant gazes, which in Jesper’s case was particularly alarming as he was right next to him. Wylan felt his cheeks warming. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

“Because this is the point Kaz usually tells us the grand plan,” Jesper told him. “We’re down a bastard, so it’s up to you, Wy. Dazzle us. How are we getting in?”

Heat flooded Wylan's cheeks, “I thought this was a brainstorming session. Why do you think I have the answers? I'm not a schemer like Kaz,” he stammered. He had no idea how they were going to sneak passed the combined might of the Council of Tides, active for the first time in over twenty years and the Kerch military, not to mention pass through an ice wall they couldn’t destroy because it was all that stood between Ketterdam and the Infected.

Inej stood and set the cup and saucer on the mantle. “I will go and scout,” she said. “There may be a way we can pass over the barrier.”

Nina turned to Wylan and said, wrinkling her nose, “You should wash and get some rest. You smell like a fire in a men’s locker room.”

Wylan recoiled back into the loveseat, resisting the urge to sniff his clothes. Jesper had no such qualms, leaning in and sniffing loudly. “I find you delightfully musky,” he promised. Wylan’s cheeks burned brighter.

“Do you still have the polluted water samples?” Kuwei asked and then added, “I would like to compare them to the samples I brought with me.” He patted the small, tube-like leather bag beside him.

Wylan opened his mouth to object. He didn’t want Kuwei Yul-Bo in his lab. He shut his mouth when he realised he couldn’t think of a single good reason why other than he just didn’t like him. His face – one Wylan had worn himself for weeks – made him irrationally irritated.

Standing and stretching his lanky body, Jesper dropped his arms and frowned at Kuwei. “You are going to sit right there and wait for me. I’m not letting you into the lab unsupervised,” he said.

Wylan liked the idea of leaving Kuwei unsupervised with Jesper even less, especially when Kuwei brightened considerably at the prospect. “You should rest," he told Jesper hurriedly. "I’ll go down to the lab with Kuwei."

Jesper shook his head. “You haven’t slept since yesterday,” he pointed out.

“Neither have you,” Wylan objected.

Jesper waved that off. “I took a nap and changed clothes while you were in chambers,” he said. He ran his hands down his blue and cream flocked waistcoat. “Besides it takes more than a sleepless night to dull my shine.”

The heavy chime of the front door surprised them all. Inej slipped back into the parlour and closed the door as Magritt the housemaid bustled passed.

Nina stood. “Is there another way out of this room?” she asked exchanging a look with a worried Kuwei.

“The window leads to the garden. You can get to the boathouse from there.” Wylan headed for the door, waiting until Inej had the sash up before opening it.

Karl Dryden stood in his entranceway, his hat in hand. “Mister Van Eck,” he called on seeing him. “I would like a moment of your time.”

Wylan couldn’t have been more surprised if his father had been standing in the doorway, freed from prison by Radmakker and the others to deal with this newest crisis besetting the city. “Why?” he blurted without thinking. He and Karl were the youngest members of the Merchant Council but Dryden was still a decade his senior. They were also very definitely not friends. In fact, Karl regularly sided against Wylan in matters of policy.

Right now the nervous man stood in his deliberately modestly furnished entranceway smacking his hat against his opposite palm in agitated fashion. He grimaced in distaste, eyeing Magritt in unabashed suspicion. “Perhaps we could have this conversation in private?” he suggested, politeness straining in his tone. He nodded toward the closed door to the parlour.

Wylan resisted the urge to bar the door. “Has a new session of the council been called?” he asked.

A new voice said from the front door stoop, “There is no council. The only merchers left in the city are you, Karl and old Radmakker.”

“Mister Schipp,” Wylan exclaimed, “What are you doing on my doorstep?”

“Waiting to be invited in, Mister Van Eck,” Lars Schipp said politely, peering around the solid shape of a very confused Magritt.

The housemaid bobbed an awkward curtsey, “You said you weren’t taking callers, sir,” she said embarrassed.

Wylan sighed. Maybe he should have agreed to Jesper's suggestion of hiring a Barrel bouncer as a doorman. “That’s alright, Magritt. I’m sure these gentlemen wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

Schipp stepped inside, removing his hat. “We need to talk about what’s to be done,” he said. He looked at the closed parlour door pointedly. “I suppose its too much to hope that you’ve got Brekker squirreled away in there?” he asked.

As if on cue the parlour door popped open and Jesper stepped out. “I hope you're not accusing us of breaking the quarantine, Mister Schipp,” he said, hands resting comfortably on his revolvers as he leaned casually against the wall right beside the door, guarding it without appearing to do so.

“No accusations, Mister Fahey, just wishful thinking,” Schipp assured him. “You may as well tell captain Ghafa to come out," he added, "We know she and her companions entered the city this morning and what we have to say concerns them too.”

“Lars,” Dryden hissed furiously.

The ex-navy man shrugged his broad shoulders unapologetically. “The time for pretence is over, Karl,” he said. “We need action, not more hedging.”

Wylan and Jesper exchanged wary glances. “What action are you proposing?” Wylan asked.

“We’re on the brink of war with Ravka and the Council have turned tail and fled to Belendt. We’ve only a small window of opportunity to deal with the Infected before everything spins out of control,” Schipp said reaching into his pocket and retrieving a crumpled envelope. “I received this letter from Brekker hours before the siege. It made for eye-opening reading.”

“This is not something that should be discussed out here, Lars,” Dryden said cutting him off neatly. He turned to Wylan. “We know Brekker is an associated of yours.” Drawing himself up to his full height, Dryden’s whole demeanour seemed to shift from supercilious to coldly commanding as he announced, “The Council accepts his proposal and expects you and the rest of your…crew to enact the plan in his absence.”

Jesper shifted away from the wall, fingers curled more securely around his revolvers. He stepped up beside Wylan. “You said the council had disbanded,” he reminded them.

Schipp smiled in friendly fashion. “Not that council, Mister Fahey." Nodding to Dryden he said, “It’s time Karl.”

Dryden looked tense. “Mister Van Eck, I want your word of honour as a member of the Merchant Council that you will never speak of what you learn here. The consequences should you do so, for you and your associates, would be severe,” he added darkly.

Jesper knocked him gently with his arm. Wylan cleared his throat, forcing his spinning brain to still. “I don’t like being threatened,” he said.

“No one does,” Dryden admitted, sounding like a stranger. A much cooler, shrewder stranger than the man Wylan had encountered many times before in chambers. “My secret protects far more than my own identity, Mister Van Eck. But I am a loyal servant of the Council and my duty demands I take this risk.” He looked at Wylan hard. “I think you are good man. One willing to risk his life to protect Ketterdam, please don’t disappoint me,” he said and then Dryden raised and turned his hand, palm up. Wylan heard a soft plopping sound and looked over to the arrangement of big-headed daisies his mother had arranged in a cheerfully glazed blue vase on the incidental table set against the far wall. The long-stemmed flowers were still in their vase but the water now floated above many-petalled heads of the white flowers, like a globule of levitating mercury.

“Merciful Saints. I knew I recognised your voice,” Jesper exclaimed, outraged. He pointed at Karl Dryden who continued to keep the water in a viscous state suspended over the vase. “You’re the Tide who saved me last night!”

“You don’t need to sound so upset about it, Mister Fahey,” Dryden grumbled turning his palm and depositing the water back in the vase without spilling a drop.

“Do the other merchers know?” Wylan asked, annoyed by the squeak in his voice. It was nearly impossible to imagine his father had known about Dryden and said nothing.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Karl said. “That would defeat the entire object.”

Wylan understood. “You’re spy for the Tides. You’re the one who left that note.”

“I am not a spy," Karl snapped. "I am a Dryden. The fact that I am also a Tidemaker simply means I have the distinguished honour of serving on both Councils simultaneously.”

“You’re the mark,” Jesper told him flatly. “The Tides are forcing you to reveal your identity so they don’t have to.”

Dryden’s face darkened with more real anger than Wylan had thought him capable of. He started to raise a closed fist and Jesper coughed, grabbing his throat. Schipp cleared his throat sharply. “We’re not here to fight each other,” he said. “We’re here to help you do what I suspect you were planning all along," he told Wylan as Karl dropped his hand.

"You're going to throw yourself out on the street?" Jesper demanded, rubbing his throat.

"No," Schipp said with a smile. "We're going to help you get over the ice barrier.”

Wylan frowned. “Who are you really, Mister Schipp?” he asked.

Lars Schipp never lost his smile as he levitated the envelope balanced across his palm upward on a gentle upswell of air. “The Kerch navy doesn’t go in for dressing its Squaller’s in fancy coats and painting targets on our backs. We leave that to the foreigners,” he explained. “The navy and the Tides have a long and felicitous partnership protecting Kerch’s interests on the high seas. Squallers like me keep our anonymity in exchange for our service. But there are plenty of ex-seamen who know what I am. One of them talked to Brekker. That’s why he chose me to pass on his message to the Tides.”

“What message?”

Schipp smiled. “He wanted a meeting. He said he had the perfect scapegoat to blame for the outbreak. He also promised to steal the Etovost formula in exchange for a frankly eyewatering fee.”

“The Tides will not be extorted by a criminal,” Dryden said disdainfully. “All the same, Brekker's handling of the Yul-Bo matter proves his methods, while odious, are effective. We need a scapegoat,” he admitted seriously. “Without a convenient -- and weak -- target to take the blame Kerch will have no choice but to go to war with Ravka. A war would only encourage Shu Han and Fjerda to attack Ravka and international trade would suffer irreparably. That is too high a price to pay for the lives of villainous scum. In Brekker’s absence you must find a scapegoat who is not Ravkan, Shu or Fjerdan and bring us a sample of the Etovost formula.”

“You’ve got a week,” Schipp added drily. “After that, the Tides flood the Barrel.”

“Is that all? Would you like us to raise the Kerch Land Bridge while we're at it,” Jesper complained.

Wylan said, "The Infected haven't attacked since the siege. Flooding the Barrel isn't self-defence. It's murder."

“The Infected are an irrelevance,” Dryden said. “We need to stop a war.”

Wylan's clenched his fists, jaw locking. “Jesper and I need time to discuss your proposal and plan for our incursion,” he said, deliberately not mentioning the others. “Give me the letter and leave. I’ll have your answer first thing tomorrow.”

Dryden raised his chin. “I don’t think you understand the severity of the situation, Mister Van Eck —”

“I understand that you’re blackmailing me by holding the lives of everyone in the Barrel over my head," Wylan snapped back. "I understand that rather than doing anything to stop Ekaterine – or talking to the Ravkans – you want me to save you. What’s to stop me from leaving tonight and joining the rest of the Merchant Council in Belendt?” he demanded.

“You wouldn’t,” Dryden said, alarmed.

“And yet, despite being nothing more than my father’s unloved heir, you seem to think I’m capable of surviving the Infected. Perhaps, Karl, you don’t know what I’m capable of.”

“Karl, be a Grisha not a merch,” Schipp chided gently. “Brekker may not be here to play out his hand but he set the game up nicely in their favour. We need them.” Schipp spoke to Wylan and Jesper, “The Tides have power but that’s all they have. If they can’t knock a problem down with a big wave they’re sunk. If your father was here, the merchers would act,” he added off-handedly, ignoring Wylan's wince, “although Saints know no one would like the result – but as it is, we have no leadership when we need it most. Brekker came up with a shot in the dark that might work so we’re working behind the Tides back to give you time to fix this mess.”

Dryden flushed unhappily. “Did you have to tell them that?” he complained.

Schipp smiled at him with genuine affection. “I know it hurts your upstanding mercher soul, Karl, but sometimes the real work gets when you break the rules.”

Wylan had the odd feeling he was looking into a distorted mirror as he watched Schipp and Dryden. The two men stood side-by-side, close enough to touch and it was obvious they knew each other’s secrets. Wylan glanced at Jesper, whose grin was a lot like Schipp’s. Oh. The coin dropped. Wylan turned back to Karl Dryden with new eyes. Maybe he could trust the Tide after all. He said, “Tomorrow morning. I’ll have your answer then.” Not to mention a list of demands. Kaz had predictably plumed for financial reward, even though he had to have suspected he wouldn’t be able to collect on it, but Wylan wanted to save the Infected. He wondered if he could leverage the fate of an entire country to do so and then realised he didn't have to. Kaz had done it for him.

Kaz had known well before he wrote to Schipp that he wouldn’t be able to follow through on his plan so he’d set up the pieces necessary to force the Tides to react the way he wanted them to. The violence at the barricades had been staged to give the Tides the opportunity to erect an impenetrable barrier and trap Ekaterine in the Barrel before she could escape with her samples. Kaz could have reasonably predicted that without Wylan’s father, the Merchant Council would be too weak to challenge the Tides. Jellen Radmakker was a good and honourable man, but he was old and set in his ways, leaving only Wylan and the Tide’s spy left to do anything about the problem. While it seemed unlikely Kaz had known about Dryden, it was likely he'd predicted that in a battle of wills between them, Wylan would win. At least he hoped so. Tidemaker or not, Dryden still wasn't much of a threat.

That’s why Kaz asked Jesper to find Ekaterine. He’d known that Schipp would seek Wylan and Jesper out after Kaz had all but admitted aboard the Pearl that they’d worked together before, and he’d wanted them motivated and righteous to play their part. It wouldn’t surprise Wylan if Kaz had been at the clinic waiting for them to arrive, ready to prime his scheme surrounded by plague victims simply to ensure they'd do what he asked. It was the same ploy, writ large, he’d used on Wylan with his mother.

Just how far ahead had Kaz’s contingency planning gone, he wondered. Had he schemed to save himself from the Etovost plague or had simple human weakness done for Dirtyhands what nothing else could and stopped his diabolical mind dead?

Chapter Text

The Hunt Pt. 4:

Inej:

“I’m going to kill the twisted podge when I see him. I can’t believe in all that scheming Kaz didn’t think to leave a note for the rest us,” Nina whispered with force as, dressed in heavy cloaks and starry masks the five of them sat in the back of a browboat that moved without oars through the floodwaters of the Lid. Dawn had broken but the heavy cloud cover cast the new day in dour gloom,making every appear much darker than it should at this hour.

“What if he’s dead when we find him?” Kuwei asked curiously.

“I’ll raise him and break his nose,” Nina said resolutely and then winced and shot an apologetic look toward Inej.

Inej ignored the look. She wanted to break something of Kaz’s too. Under the fall of her heavy cloak, she checked her knives, breathing shallowly through the discreet airholes in the mask. The air was sharp with damp chill. The Tidemakers' barricade ahead of them, solid as the walls of the Ice Court, shimmered behind a haze of glittering mist that breathed from the sides like smoke.

“How are we getting through?” Jesper asked up front.

“You’re not getting through. You’re going over. Karl is going to sail to the lookout post on that roof.” Lars Schipp pointed. He was the only one of their group not wearing a disguise and the naval uniform he wore fit him as naturally as a second skin. “From there you can string a rope line to the wall and rappel down the other side.”

“What about the snipers?” Wylan asked.

“That’s why I’m here. I know the men on the roof. If I can’t talk them down, I’ll put them down long enough for you to cross. I'll stir up a mist cover as you cross so no one can see you.”

“And no one is going to think it's strange that there’s six Tides on a roof?” Jesper asked incredulously.

“They’ll think it’s very strange,” Schipp assured him. “But what about this situation isn’t strange?”

“Just work quickly once you’re across,” Dryden piped up peevishly his hands held slightly aloft as he manipulated the current to propel them forward. “The Council in exile have been approached by the Shu and the Fjerdan’s with offers of support should Kerch go to war.”

Nina tensed and bowed her head. Beside her Kuwei managed to exude nervousness even under the cloak and mask. In the front of the boat, Wylan said, “Even if the Council agrees to ally with Fjerda and the Shu it will take longer than a week to finalise a treaty.” Despite his words his tone was heavy with doubt.

“We should focus on what we’ll find on the other side of the wall. All else can wait,” Inej reminded. She paused and listened. “I can’t hear anything. Can you?” she asked.

“It’s been quiet for the last day and night,” Schipp said. “Our watchers report that there are people alive on the other side, but they’re the uninfected. No sightings of the Infected have been made since the night before last.”

Inej frowned. “Dead or waiting?” she asked.

Schipp glanced behind him and smiled tightly. "That's the million kruge question, isn't it? I'll be interested in hearing your answer, once you find out."

At the same time Wylan sputtered, “There are uninfected trapped inside?”

“Of course,” Kuwei said. “Kat used the Kerch Firepox strain as the base for the Etovost virus. There will be three groups inside. The Infected who carry the replicating virus in their bloodstream; the infected who will sicken and die without a transfusion from the first group and the those who are immune to Firepox and Etovost.”

Jesper shifted on the bench seat. “You didn’t think to mention that earlier?” he asked sourly.

Kuwei shrugged under his cloak. “I assumed it was obvious. Especially to a chemist,” he muttered body canted slightly toward Wylan, who stiffened at the insinuation.

“Enough. Bickering gets us nowhere,” Inej warned her eyes trained on the building they were approaching.

The Groots Ketterdam hotel was one of the few buildings in the city with a flat roof. The hotel was infamous for the fact that its roof garden flooded several times a year. They sailed straight through the grand double doors into the drowned interior of the hotel’s ground floor to the semi-submerged base of its wide, sweeping marble staircase. The air was frigid, the steps slippery with a thin patina of frost and their breaths steamed through the nose holes in their masks as they climbed.

Unlike the Geldrenner that had favoured Kerch purple, the Groots Ketterdam was decorated in shades of creamy marble and Verdigris, the floors were built around a wide-open interior space, with walkways fronting the hollow in the middle of the building. The dim light filtering down from the section of reinforced glass set into the roof reflected the rippling pattern of the waters below onto the white and blue-green walls. The accidental watery theme struck Inej as deeply ironic.

“You know what they should do when this over?” Jesper commented. “Turn this place into Ketterdam’s only aquatic hotel. What do you think Wy, feel like buying a hotel? I think it could be a good investment. We could put in a floating bar and deliver baggage in modified gondels.”

“I’d rather buy a warmer cloak,” Wylan grumbled, complaining, “Why isn’t Core Cloth insulated?”

“Because most Grisha can keep regulate their own body temperature,” Nina replied tartly, adding, “You’ll be glad you have that cloak when one of the Infected tries to set you on fire.”

Dryden turned at the bottom of the blue and white painted stairs leading up to the roof garden and waved them to silence. “Lars,” he said, “You come with me. The rest of you will wait until we send for you.” The pair clumped up the stairs.

“Tell me again why we’re trusting him,” Nina grumbled as she fidgeted with the fall of her cloak.

“Because we have no choice,” Inej reminded her.

Nina sighed with a grimace. “Just once I’d like the answer to be: ‘Because he’s trustworthy’,” she said.

Jesper laughed and scoffed, “Because we’re all stalwart characters ourselves."

“I’m trustworthy,” Kuwei muttered.

“You’re a menace and we should have left you to the Fjerdans,” Jesper fired back.

“I don’t like how quiet it is inside the no-go zone,” Wylan said and asked, “Do you think Ekaterine is controlling the Infected?”

Inej had been worrying about that herself. If Ekaterine's intention had been to unleash the Infected to inflict mayhem on the city, she had lost her opportunity thanks Kaz and the Council of Tides, but that didn’t explain why the Infected had been so quiet since the beginning of the quarantine. This was the dawning of the second day, which would not be a very long time anywhere else, but things happened fast in the Barrel at the best of times, which this certainly wasn't.

“There may be a flaw in the formula,” Kuwei suggested. “The Infected may be dying faster than Kat can synthesise the perfected virus from those with the right anti-bodies.”

That was not news Inej wanted to hear. She had prepared herself as best she could for what awaited them on the other side of the ice wall, but the thought that she might walk into a charnel pit was unnerving, even for her. She had faced and dealt death many times but that didn’t make it any easier when the face of death belonged to someone she had known.

Nina huffed irritably. “Is no one going to say it?” she asked turning her masked face toward Jesper.

Jesper shifted curiously. “Say what?” he asked, puzzled.

Nina drew in a fortifying breath and announced in a firm voice, “You, me, and Kuwei should go in alone. We’re all Grisha and immune to Etovost. Wylan should go to Belendt and try to talk sense into the Council.”

“And what should I do, Nina,” Inej asked coolly.

The masked girl turned to her and said, voice fierce, “Stay safe.”

Inej shook her head. “No.”

“Inej —”

“No, Nina.”

“You could be infected,” Nina argued anguish in her voice. “You’d make a fantastic Grisha, Inej, but I don’t want to see you as a corpse.”

“Thank you,” Inej replied drily. She tilted her chin. “I am going in.”

“Me too,” Wylan said.

Nina deflated. “I don’t want any of you to die,” she said, a note of real pain in her voice. “I’ve had enough of losing people.”

“Death comes for us all,” Inej said softly. “And if it is my time then I will meet death knowing that I die fighting for my friends.”

“That doesn’t help the people you’ll leave behind,” Nina whispered.

Inej embraced her. She knew who Nina was really thinking about. She had been there in the plaza when Matthias breathed his last. He had died bravely and found peace in his soul but that had been cold comfort to the heart he broke with his passing. Whatever Nina had done in Fjerda since that day, it had not brought her the peace Inej would wish for her friend. “If he could, Matthias would be here with us,” she murmured only for Nina’s ears. “His fear of Grisha would not stop him from fighting to protect you. Don’t let your loss make you afraid now.”

Nina hugged her back hard. “I hate when your wise,” she muttered.

Inej smiled behind her mask. “No, you don’t.”

Lars Schipp clattered down the stairs and gestured, “Right, come on up.”

There were several unconscious men in naval uniform on the roof which was shrouded in dense mist. A sturdy rope attached to a harpoon had been fired across the expanse between the hotel roof and the ice wall several feet below its rim. Inej knew that she would have to be first across to place the pegs the others would use to first ascend and then descend to the other side. She moved toward the edge of the roof immediately, shifting her cloak out of the way. Breathing in, the air burned her nose and throat, the cold both damp and sharp. The frosted fog hanging in the air was thick as torn cotton wads on either side of the roof, completely obscuring her view of the other buildings.

Inej pushed up her sleeves and flexed her hands in the gloves she’d put on. They were frabrikator made like her slippers, insulated against both extreme cold and heat. She looked back at the others and said, “No mourners.”

Standing side-by-side, the others -- including Kuwei -- intoned, “No funerals.”

Schipp stood by the rope. “Ghezen’s fortune,” he offered, saluting.

Inej did not need the Kerch god’s favour to make the climb up the wall. Perched on the top of the wide rim she looked down into the Barrel. The other side of the wall was studied with foreign objects. She saw the back end of a trader's cart, a thicket of boat oars and any number of other objects of wood and slate and metal that she could not recognise melded into the ice, reinforcing it from the Barrel side. Through the frozen mist she could just make out the ground below. It looked lumpy, pitted and ruptured with potholes and strange, irregular hillocks as if someone had shaken the ground like a carpet and let it drop back down without smoothing the wrinkles.

Looking along the stretch of West Stave below, Inej drew a sharp, frozen breath. Her heart lurched painfully in her chest. The Menagerie was rubble, and the Anvil was a hollowed-out, shattered shell, its façade ripped open like a ragged wound. The West Stave was clogged with rubble from the Goedmedbridge and the crumbled ruin of most of the sunken street. From her vantage point on the wall, Inej could not see down into East Stave, but she could see the cratered remains of the Stadlied on the natural island formed at the apex of the Barrel. All the buildings betwixt and between the paths of the two staves showed signs of fire and other damage but what chilled her most was the silence. The pleasure district was as quiet as the grave.

She began her slow descent down into West Stave, driving spikes from her belt into the ice to make hand holds for the others at careful intervals. The strange additions to the wall helped the climb, forming a series of irregular steps down. Almost as if someone wanted to help her descent. Landing neatly on the torn-up ground, Inej perched on an outcropping of rock burst from the ground as she waited for the others to make it down. She held Sankt Petyr loosely against her thigh, under the fall of her cloak. As soon as the others had made it, she would take to the roofs – where they remained intact. She felt exposed on the ground.

Studying the base of the wall, Inej realised that the ground merged seamlessly with the litter of broken gondels and flat-bottomed boats merged into the wall at least ten feet high, making the ice at its core almost redundant. This was deliberate. Should the Council of Tides choose to bring down their ice wall they would find their path blocked by a ready-made barrier. The riven ground was also carved in such a way to draw water into the Staves and its interconnected canals, making it harder for a deluge of water to sweep away everything in its path toward the Barrel. Whoever had organised this work had anticipated what the Tides would do next.

Inej frowned, unsure how she felt about that. It would help if she knew whose foresight was behind it. She did not like the idea that Ekaterine was turning the Barrel into a fortress of her own. The only other person who could have done this had not had the good sense to save himself before the quarantine hit, so she did not put much stock in the hope that this was more of Kaz’s dubious contingency planning. In truth, Inej was not surprised that Kaz had chosen to remain in the Barrel. He had made no secret of the fact he intended these streets to be his grave when the time came, but she could not help feeling angry all the same. Kaz had dealt the cards of this game and bankrupted the house, an unforgivable oversight for a seasoned floor boss.

The others were coming down the wall. Jesper’s lanky form spidering down in the lead. Inej jumped off her perch and moved toward the base of the wall. She froze when a whisper of sound reached her ear.

“Wraith.” The sound seemed to bend and warp in the air, beginning like a whisper more thought than heard and ending in a shout like a thunderclap.

Swiftly, Inej unfastened her cloak letting it pool to the ground and drew Sankta Alina along with Sankt Peytr. She scanned the ruined avenue. She could see no movement from the rubble crowded alleys or collapsed doorways of the buildings around her, but a chorus of voices reached her all the same, diving through the air like a thrown blade. “Come here Wraith! Come Here! We have secrets to tell!” The mocking call came from multiple different mouths, all speaking as one, as a sudden shift in the air current stirred dust and debris into swirling eddies around her.

Inej sheathed her blades and hopped up onto the curving spine of a ruined gondel. She remembered calls like this one. The words were almost the same as the taunts Oomen had crooned as he hounded her up the tower of crates on the docks the day the Razor Gulls and Blacktips ambushed them on Fifth Harbour. She started to climb in earnest.

The voices chased her up the wall. “Come down! Come down, little Wraith. Or we'll chase you up the wall!”

“Come down, Wraith. I’ve a knife with your name on it!”

“Come and take my secrets, Wraith. I’ll make you sorry you showed your face in Blacktip territory!”

She joined Jesper perched on a large wooden crate that had once held machinery, wedged deep into the ice. He’d removed his mask and his grey eyes were fixed along a sightline behind her. Pulling his revolver in one fluid movement he said, “Duck.”

The crack of the shot was loud but not as loud as the angry roar that boomed through the air and flattened Inej against the crate. Jesper managed to fire off another shot before he was knocked over by another solid wave of sound. Inej clapped her hands over her ears, pain screaming through her eardrums. She waited to be blown off the crate and down onto the hard ground. Nothing happened. She and Jesper lifted their heads at the same time, Inej finally throwing aside the mask she’d forgotten she was wearing. She didn’t hear anything. The hissing, whispering voices that had climbed the wall at her heels were silent. Peering over the edge of the crate she saw no one on the street.

“Have they gone?”

Jesper shook his head. He started to speak but was cut off by a shout from the top of the wall. A moment later a body plummeted passed them, in free fall. The falling Blacktip spread his arms and legs wide and arrested his fall with a sudden updraft of air. Rolling like a seal in water, the Blacktip – a man Inej did not recognise – flipped onto his back and grinned up at them with a mouth full of rotted, blackened teeth as he floated, light as a leaf, to the ground.

Inej looked up. The others had halted their climb and were clustered inside the curving hull of a gondel wedged into the ice wall more than half-way up. Another Blacktip stood balanced, with a foot on either side of the gondel, above them. He cupped his hands around his mouth in exaggerated fashion, preparing to shout. Jesper fired, hitting the man in the shoulder and knocking him off the gondel. He fell like a feather, drifting comfortably to the ground and then bolted for one of the narrow alleys running off the Stave.

From everywhere and nowhere a battle cry roared through the air. The ground below them was suddenly seething with Infected, spilling out from the buildings and alleys. Inej and Jesper looked at one another and knew they were caught. They’d climbed into an ambush. Someone had been expecting them.

Chapter Text

The Hunt Pt. 5:

Jesper:

Another day, another fight to the death with crazy Grisha. Jesper fired down toward the street as several Infected Squallers spidered up the wall toward them. Inej leaned over the edge of the crate and stabbed at the hand of a squaller who had used the bulk of the crate as cover to get underneath them. “There are too many of them,” she said.

Jesper reloaded, mentally counting how many bullets he had left. He took aim at another Squaller who leapt off the wall and dropped to the ground before he could finish pulling the trigger. The air shook and an updraft of intense heat chased up the wall an instant before the sky flashed a brilliant yellow-orange. “Saints, they’ve got an Inferni.”

“There,” Inej pointed down onto the street where a figure wreathed in flame stood in the middle of a pile of burning debris.

Jesper winced. It looked like the man had lit his own pyre. He wished he’d brought his rifle as he took aim, fired and watched as his bullet was deflected by one of the Squallers. “That’s Blue-Eyed Rubin,” he said. “What’s a Liddie doing working with the Blacktips?”

“You could climb down and ask,” Inej suggested drily, leaning back from the edge as another superheated blast of air reached them.

“I’m more worried about what happens when they melt the wall,” Jesper retorted. He risked a glimpse below. “Blacktips, Liddies – wait, is that Dieter Skurn?”

“Yes,” Inej agreed. “The Razorgulls are here.”

“Well, it’s nice to get a warm welcome.”

From above their heads, Jesper heard Wylan yell, “Fire in the hole!” and a burning jar dropped right passed his nose. A moment later Jesper heard one of the Squallers scream. The woman fell from the wall covered in bright flame. She did not land gently. Another flaming jar crashed down onto the street. This time one of the Inferni darted forward and drove her hands into the middle of the spill of flame.

Jesper yelled, “Wy, I don’t think fighting fire with fire is going to work!”

Below him, the Inferni looked up, arms full of crackling flame. Her face was disfigured with boils and lesions. The Inferni sent the fire leaping over the mounded – mostly wooden – debris at the base of the wall. There was a hiss of steam as the fire climbed the ice, melting it as it rose.

Kuwei landed heavily on his knees beside him, dropping awkwardly from one of the wall handholds. He held one of Wylan’s iron sulfide jars in his hands. “I think fighting fire with fire is an excellent idea,” he said uncapping the lid and drawing the instantly kindled flames in his hands. With a flick of his wrists, the Shu boy hurled the fire down in twin columns passed the jut of the crate. Under Kuwei’s command the fire became twin whips he snapped with negligent ease, swotting a leaping Squaller out of the air. Sinking to his belly, Kuwei leaned his upper body over the edge of the crate, dangling lines of fire hanging from his fingertips. He flexed his fingers, drawing the fire from the wall and into his waiting hands. Catching the glittering flames, he extended the fingers of both hands wide and sent the fire arcing downward like ten narrow spears.

Wylan and Nina joined them on the crate, which was suddenly very crowded. Nina peeped over the edge, murmured something under her breath and the burned Squaller Wylan had dropped earlier staggered to his feet, pivoted smoothly on his heels, took a mechanical breath and blasted the cluster of Infected Inferni with a single inhuman howl. Wylan tossed a couple more flaming jars down onto the ground and Kuwei used the fire to create a wall between them and the Infected. Inej flipped over the side of the crate and started down. Nina grunted and started to climb down after her, followed by Wylan and Kuwei. Jesper stayed on the crate, scanning the buildings, a revolver in each hand. There were at least forty Infected gang members on the street but none of them were Dregs. Was that a good sign or a very bad one?

Jesper made it down. Kuwei struggled to hold his flame wall up against a barrage of rocks and debris. The ground shook under their feet but did not break and Jesper tensed, remembering the columns of rock that had risen in the icy wastes to surround them when the parem drugged Grisha had attacked them in Fjerda. Behind the rippling wall of flame, a large shadow paced, footsteps heavy enough to reverberate through the ground.

Nina raised two more Infected, the fresh corpses standing like sentries flanking their little group. “Run, or fight?” she asked, eyes on the flame wall.

“Run,” Inej said resolutely. “We came here for Kaz and Ekaterine, not a fight with the gangs.”

“Don’t think we’re getting the choice,” Jesper shouted as Side-Angle Kelvin burst through the wall of flame and lunged straight for him.

The Razorgull thug had always been a solid wall of muscle. Built as tall and broad as the barns back home in Novyi Zem, Side-Angle on a good day didn’t so much have angles as massive plains of muscle and fat that jiggled when he lumbered along. Kaz had once commented that if old man Janssen had any sense he’d build a canon and launch Side-Angle out of it, as about all the dim-witted bruiser was good for was battery. As Jesper leapt out of the way of Side-Angle’s lunge, he thought it looked like someone had taken Kaz’s advice after all. The man hurtled forward like a cannonball.

He was also armour plated. Side-Angle’s swinging arms were encased in a thin patina of cracking, tarnished metal, as if someone had dipped him in hot lead and left him to air dry. A rubble of glass and metal shards bristled from the back of his shoulders and a thick band of rusty oxidation encircled his belly. Side-Angle’s fist struck the ground with a heavy thud and Jesper felt the reverberation through his body as he fired a shot that bounced off the curve of glittering silvered metal around the bruiser’s eye socket and ricocheted into the wall.

Side-Angle Kelvin swung his head around. He was bleeding freely from his eyebrow, his tiny, bloodshot eyes more red than white and his pupil’s wide and black. He grinned at Jesper with a mouth full of spent cartridge teeth. “Allo Fahey,” the bruiser gurgled, his throat sounding thick with tar. There were rusty nails sticking out of his chin. Jesper thought about how much nicer his life was when all he had to worry about was backstabbing, blackmailing Merchs.

Inej leapt onto Kelvin’s back. Using the cluster of metal sticking out of his shoulders as a handhold she drove Sankt Petyr into the bruiser’s ear cavity. The big man blinked once and dropped heavily to the ground. Inej hopped off his back, cleaned her blade and dusted off her pants.

“What was that?” Nina demanded hands raised to bring Kelvin back.

Jesper sighed. “A Fabrikator,” he said, the word bitter on his tongue. Nina’s eyes widened, flashing in understanding before she looked away with a wince.

Jesper tried not to think too much about being a Fabrikator. He’d been putting off going back home to learn from the Zowa for more than two years but he’d been practicing a little while helping Wylan in the lab. He wasn’t hiding what he was, he just didn’t want being Grisha to define all that he was. He’d feared that if he started training that’s exactly what would happen. Wylan would look at him differently, or he’d start looking at himself differently. He'd start seeing the world as Grisha and not-Grisha, and it would change him. Make him someone he didn’t want to be. He didn’t want to become part of the pointless war between Ravka and the witchhunters. Being Grisha was an accident of birth. He didn’t want to have to live and breathe the struggle when there was no way to win.

For the last two years he’d found a way to live where he didn’t have to hide all the time but could still keep hidden what he didn’t want anyone else to know. It was a life where he’d been in control of who and what he was; a life he’d liked. He could tell himself that he was Grisha, but it didn’t matter. Watching Side-Angle Kelvin bleeding from the ear, Jesper realised he’d been wrong. Being Grisha mattered and he felt sick to his stomach just looking at the Infected.

“Now!” Inej shouted and Kuwei dropped the flame wall as Nina sent Side-Angle lumbering into the crowd of Infected that had gathered on the other side. The dead Razorgull and the two other raised Infected cleared them a path through the mob before they were brought down.

Jesper and the others ran, hurtling over rubble and around potholes, Inej in the lead as she dove down an alley and cut diagonally toward the heart of the Barrel. Instinctively, they were running toward Dregs territory. Any hope Jesper had that the old territory boundaries still held in the Barrel died a swift death. The Infected followed them, howling insults and catcalling jeers as they set fire to the street and smashed windows with their voices.

They hurtled down the street alongside Samenvogen canal, formed by consolidating the runoff from both Staves. The canal would take them straight to the Slat. If they could reach it. Jesper wished that Kaz was here. If he had been they wouldn’t be running for their lives through the Barrel, or if they were, it would be part of a con they controlled. As it was they’d been in the Barrel less than an hour and were already fighting for their lives. Jesper might not always a good hand from a bad, but he could calculate these odds well enough. Unless their luck changed, they were in big trouble.

He heard Nina shout a warning and dropped to the ground as something bright and made of flame swooped low off the roof of the Sterren Lounge and passed over his head. Hitting the ground knocked the breath from Jesper’s lungs as a tongue of liquid heat swiped his back a second before his ears rang with an inhuman shriek. It sounded like someone’s mangled impression of a crow. Rolling to his feet, revolvers drawn, Jesper took aim at the bird of flame as it wheeled, and swept upward into the air, before diving down toward the rabble of Infected.

A bullet tore passed Jesper’s head, close enough he heard the air split and struck the wall of the lounge behind him. He dropped low, turning toward the sound of heavy footsteps pounding up the street. A scrabble of dust and moss fell from the gutter above him as a shadow landed on the roof and the Liddie Inferni was slammed back against the wall of Stinssen’s pawnbrokers. Jesper pivoted toward the roof. Roeder saluted him from the gutter and then leapt gracefully over to the pawnbroker’s roof before ambling up and over the apex and disappearing over the other side.

Jesper joined the others in front of the Sterren Lounge. “We’re surrounded,” Inej said knives drawn as she crouched beside him. Wylan handed off several vials of chemicals to Kuwei, warning, “Don’t un-stopper the blue one anywhere near the rest of us,” as Blacktip called Frank stretched his mouth obscenely, torso hollowing out as he breathed in.

The firebird from before wheeled through the air and dove straight into the pack of Blacktips, scattering them and setting Frank’s greasy head on fire. From the Sterren’s rooftop Jesper heard Anika yell, “This is Dregs territory. Get lost or we’ll burn you up.” Several Dregs started cawing loudly to back her up from the surrounding roofs.

Jesper started to say: “Thank the saints and my aunt Ursula,” when his feet were abruptly yanked out from underneath him by something cold and damp that hooked his left ankle, hauling him toward the mouth of a narrow cut between the Sterren Lounge and the machinist shop next door. A swift running stream of dirty water flowed underneath him, bearing him along. Twisting double and jerking his leg to detach whatever it was that had hooked him, Jesper felt cold liquid fingers stretch over his skin under his pant leg, holding tight. He couldn’t shoot water, or he could, but he'd only end up shooting himself in the foot if he did. The water snagging his leg didn’t feel like water, anyway. Instead Jesper had been snagged on the end of a fluid line that was rapidly retracting like a perverse inversion of a fish on a hook. Gunshots and fire light flashed and stuttered around him as the Infected got into it, but Jesper could do nothing to help himself or the others as he was dragged into the shadow of the cut and slammed into the wall.

A translucent hand burst out of the brickwork beside his head, grabbing his throat as it solidified. Jesper’s nostrils filled with the rank stench of canal silt and filthy water and his muscles locked in shock when he realised the hand squeezing down around his throat was wearing a very wet leather glove. “Kaz,” he choked as tiny threads of water, fine as hair, crawled over his jaw and pushed passed his lips, gaging him. Jesper raised his revolver, tilting his hand to aim at the wall at his back, but he didn’t know if enough of his attacker’s body had phased through the wall to make a target. He also wasn’t sure if he could force the bullet through a solid brick wall.

The hand released him abruptly, vanishing back through the brickwork. Jesper surged upright, spitting canal water out of his mouth. He faced the wall. It was dripping wet and so was he. A large wet patch chilled his skin over his right hip and Jesper reached down to slap a hand over his trouser pocket. There was something there. The narrow vial was filled with dark blood and ‘Geels’ was written on its grimy label in a familiar spiky hand. A shadow moved at the far end of the cut. Jesper spun and fired before he registered that the figure was wearing a red kefta. He was already running for the entrance back to the fight as the man grunted and fell back. Jesper didn’t waste time looking over his shoulder to see if he’d killed the man.

The fight in the street had ended while Jesper was being throttled against a wall. A few Infected lay on the ground in various stages of hurt or dying and the surviving Infected stood like statues staring at the blonde woman in the purple kefta leaning on a cane in the middle of the bodies, Keeg and Pim at her back. Her lace-gloved hands rested daintily on the familiar crow’s head of the cane.

Jesper looked to the others. Inej was on the ground, lying frighteningly still. Jesper’s heart stopped in his chest until he saw her chest rise in a steady breath. Nina and Wylan were held up against the wall, pinioned there with their feet off the ground by a Grisha woman in a blue kefta while Kuwei retched on the ground on his hands and knees, choking on the seawater another kefta clad Grisha forced from his lungs.

It looked like they’d found the renegade Grisha. Unfortunately, the Grisha had found them first.

“Oh, good. Here’s the Fabrikator.” Ekaterine smiled at him, looking sincerely pleased. “I heard a gunshot. I do hope you didn’t hurt Ernst?” she queried. “That would be quite unfortunate. For you.” Her lips were very red as she smiled. Hiding the motion as he holstered his revolvers, Jesper pocketed the vial of blood. He lifted his hands in surrender. Ekaterine’s smile widened approvingly. “Smart man. I hear you can manipulate bullets in flight. I insist you show me, some time. Such a talent will be very useful in my Third Army.”

Jesper smiled back. “I’ll be happy to shoot you anytime,” he promised.

Ekaterine rolled her eyes. She turned to Nina looking less than pleased. “As I was saying Zenik, I knew the Palace would send you – the Triumvirate’s darling pet freak – and as Kuwei was so obliging in regaling me with tales of your exploits, I suspected Councilman Van Eck and the good pirate captain would assist you. So, I set a trap.”

Nina struggled to draw breath to speak but she didn’t struggle to heap scorn. “I’d never have guessed, Kat. Thank you for explaining the obvious,” she simpered, cheeks mottled with effort and green eyes blazing fury.

“You are most welcome,” Ekaterine replied and Jesper shot her a look. He couldn’t tell if she’d missed the sarcasm or had simply served it back. It occurred to Jesper that he hadn’t met an honest lunatic before, despite the several hours he’d once spent in an insane asylum. He would have liked his streak to continue. “It’s good you’re here,” Ekaterine continued. “I need you to do something for me. Don’t worry, the task shouldn’t be too onerous. In fact, you don’t have to do much at all.”

Nina groaned. “Just get on with it, Kat. I’ve got better things to do than hang around all day.”

Ekaterine’s red lips twisted in moue of displeasure but then she rallied. “Bait,” she said succinctly. “You and your friends are going to be my bait as I go hunting. You see, there’s a certain Barrel Bastard who owes me a vial of blood and I intend to collect, just as soon as my new recruits can find him.” Ekaterine’s expression turned flinty. The enraptured Infected around her fidgeted uncomfortably.

“Boss’s slippery,” Keeg mumbled, iron teeth dark in his mouth as he ducked his head in embarrassment.

“We’ll find him,” Anika insisted her glowing eyes fixed avidly on Ekaterine’s face like she was made of solid gold. Every single one of the Infected looked at the Ravkan Fabrikator as if she was simultaneously the answer to all their problems and the best thing that had ever happened to them. He’d seen that look in the eyes of parem-addicted Grisha.

Jesper sucked in a breath. “Saints, you are controlling them.”

“Control is an ugly word in this context,” Ekaterine insisted. “I’m merely aiding these poor people in their time of need. You see, I have the serum they require to survive, but without enough donors these poor souls will die before I can fabricate enough for everyone.” Ekaterine shook her head mournfully. “How unconscionably cruel of Mister Brekker to run and abandon his gang now. Dear Gorka has already succumbed because Brekker denied him his blood. Shameful, after he promised to take care of you all.”

“Stick a sock in it, Kat,” Nina snapped. “You caused this.”

The insane Fabrikator looked up at her. “And now you’re going to help me fix it,” she said brightly. “Did you know that Mister Brekker and I had a pleasantly abstract conversation about rats and traps on the night of the siege? A clever rat needs the right sort of lure to entice him to walk back into my trap.” She cracked the bottom of the cane against the ground. “You’re my cheese, Nina, while the Dregs are my hunting dogs.”

Nina looked disgusted. Jesper didn’t blame her. “Please stop,” she said, “you’re tortured metaphors hurt my ears.”

“I’m going to hurt more than your ears,” Ekaterine replied, irritably. “If I can’t find Kaz Brekker, you, your friends and everyone here is going to die.” She smiled waxily. “You wouldn’t want that, now, would you, Nina, darling?”

Chapter Text

The Hunt Pt. 6:

Nina:

As she was led into the Sterren Lounge Nina realised that for the first and only time since she’d laid Matthias to rest under the ice, she was glad he was dead and could not witness the sight of Etovost Grisha lying on the floor or sprawled over the tables and booths of the dim club interior, dirty, stinking and too sick to move. She remembered how she’d felt after witnessing what Nestor had done with his powers while using parem back in Fjerda. How the wrongness of it all had disturbed her all that time ago. Now she felt like snorting at her own naivete. Jurda Parem was nothing compared to the Etovost virus. If Parem was a corruption, then Etovost was an obscenity.

The club stank of sweat and illness. The people collapsed around her shook and trembled in the throes of a miserable, damp fever that left Nina biting the inside of her cheek as memories of her Parem withdrawal surged. She clenched her fists and tried not to look into the faces of the people around her as she was marched toward the stage at the back of the smoky club. She had never been in the Sterren before, but she remembered hearing that it had been a popular venue for live music as well as a hub for the drug trade. Back when she’d been a Dreg the Sterren Lounge had been independently owned, paying protection money to Haskell. Now she wondered if Kaz had bought it out, considering Ekaterine had chosen it as her base.

There were several operating beds arrayed on the stage. A collection of medical equipment Nina recognised from the Little Palace’s medical labs clustered around the beds and tubing ran from the arms of the people lying in them to connect to clear sacks dangling from poles. The sacks were filled with blood. A Shu Corporalnik disconnected one full sack as they approached, replacing it with another. Her name was Ahn. She and Nina had arrived at the Little Palace at the same time and gone through training together.

“We have a problem,” Ahn told Ekaterine. “Our Tidemaker donor is dead.”

“Oh, for Saints sake.” Ekaterine threw up her hands, demanding, “What happened?”

“Take a look,” Ahn gestured toward the bed at the end of the row, nearest the rightmost wing of the stage.

Nina strained on her tiptoes, but she couldn’t see anything from her position below the lip of the stage. Ekaterine took one look at the bed's occupant and her pale cheeks flooded with an ugly flush. She stamped her foot in anger. Then her head jerked up and Nina had the satisfaction of seeing alarm shade her features. She looked into the wings and asked, “The samples?”

“All accounted for,” Ahn told her. “But we’re not going to harvest anything useful from the corpse. Desiccation is complete. His veins have collapsed and his organs are useless to us.”

Ekaterine turned in a circle, hugging her elbows, chin tilted toward the floor. “We don’t have another Tidemaker to tap,” she muttered. Her head came up, focusing on a Grisha standing toward the back of the stage, making notes on a clipboard. “Svetya. Run analysis on this one’s blood samples,” she snapped.

Ahn frowned, “I already told you the blood is all there.”

“No,” Ekaterine sneered, voice taking on a guttural edge. “You told me there was blood in the stores.” Her voice rose in pitch, becoming shrill as she threw her head back, the muscles of her neck straining and her fingers hooked into claws. “What none of you numpties seem to remember is that blood all looks the same.”

“No one could have switched the samples,” Ahn insisted, annoyed. “They are under guard constantly. It’s impossible.”

Ekaterine turned on her. “Really Ahn? And I suppose it’s also impossible for someone to sneak up and murder this man right in front of you?” Ahn nodded but looked just a little uncertain in the face of Ekaterine’s manic grin. “Tell me Ahn, how is that you failed to notice the wet footprints all over the stage?” she asked with sickening sweetness.

Ahn looked sharply down at the floorboards. The small lime lights set into the edge of the stage perfectly illuminated the surprise on her face. Ekaterine moved, motions jerky with anger and slapped Ahn across the face, staggering the Healer. A ripple of concern ran through the other renegades. Victor’s hands holding Nina’s arms tightened reflexively, fingers digging in. Nina didn’t mind. It was actually a relief to know the renegades were afraid of Kat. She might be able to use that, assuming Ekaterine didn’t intend to flay her alive and use her bloody skin to lure Kaz out of hiding.

“Do you see what I have to put up with?” Ekaterine demanded looking over the edge of the stage at Nina. “I’m surrounded by incompetents.”

“My heart bleeds for you, Kat,” Nina told her and then flinched, realising her mistake a split second too late.

Ekaterine’s leer looked like a jagged black slash across her face as the lime spotlights threw light and shadow over her form. “What a wonderful idea,” she mused dreamily. “Perhaps I can create a corpsewitch formula from it.” Nina shuddered and Ekaterine laughed. “Bring her on stage, Vic. I want to ask our corpse some questions.”

The corpse had been a man, Nina thought, but it was difficult to tell for sure. The body had shrunk as all the moisture was dragged from it in death. The skin covering the corpse’s skull was brown like cracked, flaking leather left out in the sun too long, clinging close to the contours of bone. Its hair was lank brown and the sunken, concave torso was swamped by the dirty, tattered remnants of a man’s yellow tweed suit and lavender shirt. There was a fist-sized wet patch staining the corpse’s chest but no sign of injury. The transfusion needles had been torn from the corpse’s stick thin arms and Nina could see that a few of the small, shallow puddles of dirty water on the floor were murky with blood. The pole beside the bed did not have a sack hanging from it.

Ekaterine had brought the others up on the stage with her and Nina couldn’t help shooting her friends a look under her eyelashes. Ernst had dropped Inej early in the fight, which proved Ekaterine knew which of them was the most dangerous, but the other girl was awake now and watching from the wings with steady dark eyes. Behind her, almost lost in the shadows, Nina thought she saw Jesper flash his gambler’s grin. He’d disappeared in the fight only to pop out of the alley that ran alongside the building once it was too late to do anything. Nina felt a frown begin to pucker her brow. What had Jesper been doing and why did he look like he knew a joke the rest of them didn’t?

“Raise this man,” Ekaterine told her. “I want to know who killed him.”

Nina snorted. “We all know who did it,” she scoffed. Nina wasn’t sure how the muddy puddles fit in and the desiccation was new and definitely alarming, but she did know there was only one person who could murder a man and rob Ekaterine’s blood stores right under Ahn’s nose. Kaz must have used the fight outside as his distraction, which annoyed Nina. They’d come all this way to save him. The least he could do was stick around them help them now.

“Who is this?” she asked reaching for one of the corpse’s hands, the fingers fixed into claws by the shrinking of skin and muscle. She rolled up the corpse’s sleeve, grimacing at the feel of flaking flesh. The dried skin was rough but somehow slick at the same time and felt like the rind of salt-dried pork under her fingers. The corpse had a gang tattoo on its forearm. It had shrunk but the black lines in the form of ragged fingertips was easy to make out. Nina curled her fingers around the dead Blacktip’s fragile wrist and listened in a small corner of her mind for the roar of black waters.

“Ahn?” Ekaterine snapped peevishly as she stood on the other side of the corpse from Nina. Nina flicked a glance around the stage. Victor was standing guard near the others, along with Samuli. A quiver of concern ran through Nina. Samuli was a Squaller and Victor a Tidemaker. They could hit her with their power before she had any chance of getting to them. She would just have to hope the others could take them down.

“Geels. His name was Geels,” Ahn said from near the edge of the stage amid the footlights. She rubbed her cheek, sounding sulky. “He was our last stable Tidemaker donor. Now our only viable source is Brekker —”

In the wings, Jesper tried to hide his crack of laughter by pretending to cough. Ekaterine whipped toward him and Nina seized her opportunity. She plunged power into Geels’ corpse. His paper-thin eyelids sprang open revealing shrivelled raisin eyeballs sunk deep into the cavity of his eye sockets. With a sound like sun-aged paper tearing, Geels’ hand shot out, his fingers locking around Ekaterine’s throat. The dead man sat up, swinging his skinny legs over the side of the bed and wrapped his other hand around Kat’s throat, shaking her hard as he squeezed.

Nina dropped to the floor as she heard a shout behind her. She reached out with her power, sending cool tendrils questing beyond the stage. Her power was blind to the living normally but the Infected inside the building were so close to death that even the still breathing tingled at the edge of her awareness, as if her power sensed their potential. Finally, she found what she was looking for, and she raised two more corpses, ordering them to charge the stage.

A gunshot cracked the air and Victor fell. Nina’s power snatched hold of the Tidemaker before Vic knew he was dead. Scrambling across the floor to the others she ordered him to fill Samuli’s lungs with water before the lovely but vacant Squaller had time to react. Near the edge of the stage Ahn screamed and cowered as the two dead Infected leapt onto the stage. There was a bright orange flare of firelight and a moment later Kuwei sent a gout of flame across the stage. It hit Geels, lighting the desiccated corpse up as if he was made of straw. Ekaterine hit the floor, screaming as her sleeve caught alight. Renegades spilled out of the wings. Ernst, his arm in a bloody sling, jerked his good fist in the air. Nina’s breath caught in her throat. For a moment she thought they were all dead but Ernst wasn’t aiming at them. In the shadows below the stage, Nina heard bodies moving and shifting as the Infected lumbered to their feet, groaning in pain.

“Run!” she yelled at the others, slamming into Inej before she could vault over one of the occupied beds. Across the stage, Geels was flailing around, body consumed in flame, which fell from him in liquid gouts igniting the maroon curtain in a gasping whoosh.

“What about them?” Wylan pointed to the Etovost donors strapped down to the four other occupied beds on the stage.

Nina knew each of the people strapped down to those beds were responsible for keeping the Infected Inferni, Durasts and Squallers they’d fought alive. She also knew that they were all Ekaterine’s victims. She knew what she’d been ordered to do. She knew what the smart thing to do was... and she knew what her heart told her to do. Without meaning to her gaze slipped to Kuwei, standing back in the shadow of the wings. Her heart hardened, fists curling at her sides. She knew exactly what had happened the last time she’d shown mercy. If she’d killed Kuwei in his cell in the Ice Court none of this would have happened. Reaching out with her power she ordered Victor to whip the flames into a tumult and hurl them at the occupied beds. In the bed furthest from her, a woman screamed. The sound was as sharp as an executioner’s blade through the air. A second later, Nina was knocked off her feet and sent slamming into Inej and Wylan by a solid column of air directed at her by one of the renegade squallers. Tumbling into a rack of stage costumes, Nina let Kuwei drag her to her feet, as Jesper did the same for Wylan and Inej.

The five of them ran along the dark painted, narrow corridor leading to the wide backstage area. Wylan skidded to a halt looking around him. “The samples,” he said. “We have to find them. They’re the only chance of curing the Infected.”

“Trust me, Wy. We have that covered,” Jesper said, his grin bright with an edge of laughter. “Watch your step. The floor’s soaking wet,” he warned as he dashed deeper into the cavernous backstage area.

It was. Nina could see a shallow stream of dirty canal water snaking across the floor toward the metal stairs leading up to a closed office door. The wooden door had a dripping wet patch in the middle as if someone had hurled a bucket of water at it near the top and let it drip and spread to roughly the height and breadth of a man. There wasn't time to investigate as smoke poured after them from the front of the stage.

None of them were skilled lockpicks and the back door was too heavy and secure in its frame to kick down. Jesper drew his revolver to shoot at the lock, but Nina could tell just by looking at it that it wouldn’t work. The lock was too large and the wood door too thick to blow the lock off. Nina looked over her shoulder toward the wide-open backstage area, already the space was filling with smoke and heat. “Look out!” she shouted as a figure wavered into view on the other side of the smoke. White hot pain ignited behind Nina’s eyes and she dropped to her knees, excruciating, flesh devouring heat chasing across her upper chest. Her lungs seized, her mind emptying of thought as the sickening agony brought tears to her eyes.

The woman who tottered out of the smoke was horribly burned. Her skin blackened and her hair burned away in a wide swathe that cut across her upper chest, throat and face. She raised her arms, still trailing tubing and Kuwei screamed as the skin of his face bubbled and blistered. The disfigured woman smiled. The whites of her eyes blazing bright in her ruined face. “This is what you get for burning me,” she said, voice shockingly calm.

Nina collapsed forward, another wave of sickening pain igniting through her nervous system. On the ground, she saw Inej’s slippered feet whisper passed. Nina opened her mouth to warn her but projected pain stole her breath, her skin blistering as the burn spread. She heard the meaty thunk as Inej’s blade found a home in the Etovost Corporalnik’s flesh. A moment later Inej gasped in surprise and collapsed to the floor beside Nina. Blood welled over her fingers as she clamped a hand over the free-flowing stab wound that had miraculously appeared in her shoulder.

Wylan shouted, “Don’t shoot. She’ll reflect the wound back on you.” Somewhere behind Nina Jesper cursed and she could easily imagine him holstering his revolvers as he and Wylan had no choice but to surrender. Caustic guilt almost as corrosive as the pain lanced through Nina. She’d only wanted to protect them from future harm, but instead she’d hurt a woman who could kill them all. Raising herself up on her forearms, Nina swallowed down the pain to face the Corporalnik. “It’s me you want. Let the others go,” she said through her teeth, the pain rasping over her breastbone.

The woman’s hooked fingers quivered. She shuddered where she stood, almost swaying. “I’ve got more than enough pain to go around,” she said, her words underlined as she hissed a breath. Behind Nina, Wylan and Jesper fell to their knees.

There was a loud bang and the stage door crashed open. “Oi, Moll Gerty. What do you think you’re doing?” Keeg demanded, voice rough and mangled by the fact that his lower jaw now resembled stainless steel.

Anika spilled through the door behind him, hands wreathed in flame. Her sharp eyes slid over Nina and the others, appraising and keen, widening when they landed on Inej, bleeding on the floor. “Knew we should’ve gone inside,” she said grabbing Wylan by the back of his cape and hauling him toward the door. “Boss’ll have our guts for garters for this.”

“Look what they’ve done to me,” the Corporalnik – Moll – shouted back at Keeg. “I never agreed to this,” she insisted angrily.

Pim stepped through the door. “Come here, Moll. I’ll help you,” he said holding out his hand toward her. A second later the skin over his face became shiny and red, glistening with a patina of tiny, weeping blisters. He hissed through his teeth, face twisting in pain as the burn intensified into open sores.

Moll Gerty sighed in relief. Nina was getting dizzy shifting her attention between the Infected as she turned and saw that the other woman’s injuries were fading even as blisters grew and burst over Pim’s face. With a jolt, Nina realised that Pim was the Etovost version of a Healer. He absorbed the wounds of others to heal them. What a horrible perversion of one of the Little Science’s greatest gifts, she thought. After seeing the almost inhuman Durasts, she hadn’t thought anything the Etovost could produce could shock her. That had been incredibly stupid of her. Corporalki were the apex of Grisha talent. Of course, Etovost would twist Corporalki powers into something vile.

Vile but powerful. Pim healed himself and Moll in no more than a minute, by which time the backstage area felt like the inside of a tinderbox. Nina could hear the ticklish roar of the fire devouring the front of the building and smoke clogged her throat. Keeg lumbered forward and scoped Nina up into his arms, bundling her swiftly out of the building as Anika helped Inej through the door behind them. The daylight was a shock to the senses, dazzling Nina and the fresh air scoured her lungs. Jesper, Wylan and Kuwei were already outside. All of them sporting pinkish burned flesh, but none as bad as the burn decorating Nina’s upper chest. She could feel the heat of it seeping through the layers of her flesh until she was sure her clavicles were black with soot.

“Going to have to wait a bit before I can fix that,” Pim said grimly, peering down at her chest without a single leer. Not that Nina could blame him. Her breasts looked like puddings left to burn in the oven.

“There’s no time,” Anika snapped. “Her majesty scarpered back to the Slat, but she’ll get suspicious if we ain’t back soon as." Anika’s face twisted in displeasure, her smouldering eyes sparking with banked fire. She turned on Jesper and said, “This is the last time we’re saving your ass, Fahey. Got that? Roeder will show you to the safe house but then you’re on your own. Least 'til the boss shows himself again."

“You’re still loyal to Kaz,” Inej said quietly, sounding relieved.

Anika looked offended. “Of course, we are.” She shot Jesper a dirty look adding, “Unlike some people, we know what it means to be a Dreg.”

“Boss left instructions with Roeder,” Pim said quietly. “Told us to stick to the Ravkans like glue, do what they say and wait for his signal. Weren’t expecting you lot to show up,” he admitted, “but we figured you being here was all part of the plan.” He puffed up proudly, smiling broadly. “Boss’ll give us a bonus for this, for sure.”

“Enough talking, let’s go,” Anika snapped and she, Keeg and Pim started walking toward the Slat leaving the others facing Moll Gerty alone.

The woman’s blonde hair was still mostly a stubble covering her head but her face and upper body had healed, revealing a rather beautiful woman with a very dangerous look. She narrowed flinty eyes and Nina tensed, bracing for more pain. But then Moll sighed, shoulders dropping. “I don’t know what game Brekker’s playing,” she complained, “but when you see him, tell him this squares our debt.” She raised her hand and a fresh wave of prickling pain raced over Nina’s ravaged chest before shifting into a queasy tickling sensation, making her skin crawl. Literally. Nina looked down and saw undamaged skin chasing over the burns and open lesions covering her chest. In a matter of heartbeats, she was whole again.

Turning to the others Moll waved her hands airily, healing their burns and Inej’s shoulder wound. “Here, you can have this back,” Moll tossed Inej’s blade to her. “If I see any of you again, I’ll show you pain you can’t even imagine,” she warned before turning and sauntering down the alley after the Dregs.

“Am I the only one completely confused right now?” Nina asked.

“No,” Wylan muttered darkly. He looked up at the back of the Sterren Lounge. Smoke seeped out from the sealed upper floor windows and billowed out of the stage door, where it hung on the air and coated the inside of Nina’s throat. “We should get out of here too,” he said and coughed.

Dazed and confused they tromped out onto the street facing the canal. “Anika said Roeder would meet us,” Inej said, shading her eyes to look up at the surrounding rooftops through the blackening veil of smoke.

Nina looked around the empty street. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the near silent slap of tiny wavelets hitting the sides of the canal in front of them. The street was utterly deserted. No sign of Infected or anyone else on the waters or in the boarded or shattered windows of the buildings peering down on them. The effect was eerie and Nina couldn't help bracing for another surprise attack.

Jesper snorted loudly making her jump. “Seriously? Again?” Nina watched him bound over to the canal railing and grab at something dangling from a string from the horizontal rail. It looked like a cloth sack. Jesper freed the sack and stuck his hand in, Nina heard something inside clink like glass against glass. Jesper groaned and withdrew his hand. Clasped in his fist was a glass vial filled with dark liquid. “You know Kaz,” Jesper said lifting his head and raising his voice to be heard over the cracks and crackle of the fire. “There’s this new trend people are into nowadays. It’s called talking to one another. Why don’t you try it?” he waited. They all did. But the only answer was the soft thump of an abandoned gondel knocking against the side of the canal.

Inej joined him by the rail. “How do you know Kaz was here?” she asked intently.

Jesper snorted. “Look for yourself. There are four vials of blood in this bag and I’ll bet big one of them is full of Moll’s blood and the others belong to the donors Nina roasted. Kaz is taking out Ekaterine’s Etovost supply and he’s using us as his blind to do it.”

Chapter Text

The Turning Tide Pt. 1:

Kaz:

A tremor of pain ran up his bad leg. His shinbone ached with a deep, wearying throb. Kaz leaned on his elbow crutch as he moved through the foundry. Dull daylight fell through the grimy windows set into the ceiling, striping the floor with bars of grey and black. The air grew hotter as Kaz approached Hyssop Janssen, the Razorgull general. Janssen’s massive shoulders strained under his soot stained docker’s coat as the man stood facing the enormous cauldron furnace in the middle of the foundry. Tendrils of greyish-white smoke rose from his clothing. Kaz stopped several feet behind the other man. Immediately a pool of water began to spread out around his feet. He waited silently for the other man to acknowledge him. Janssen knew he was there. He’d sensed him on the heated air, just as Kaz had sensed.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Janssen remarked without turning. He tilted his head to look up at the lip of the inert furnace. “I wish I’d thought to invest in the casting business when I had the chance,” he mourned.

“I hear it offers good returns,” Kaz replied, his own voice sounding strange to him. The words floating on the air between them, utterly meaningless.

Janssen turned. His ruddy face was slicked with coal stains and although he had no cigar, twin streams of smoke whooshed from his nostrils like the exhaust from a steam engine. His salt and pepper beard was singed and flecked with ash. In his right hand he bounced a smouldering lump of coal. Catching the coal in his fist, Kaz saw the wily old bruiser grimace briefly before he opened his palm and tipped a single, tiny, glittering diamond onto the ground.

Wiping coal dust over his coat the Razorgull appeared genial as he asked, “What business Brekker?”

“I’ve come to parlay,” he said.

Janssen grinned. “Where’re your seconds? Or are the rumours true and you’ve lost your place to the Ravkan witch? Heard tell she’s taken the Slat for herself.”

“All the better to pen her in,” Kaz answered. He didn’t ask why the Razorgull leader was lurking in the foundry without any of his lieutenants. He’d passed what was left of Janssen’s seconds on his way in. He’d recognised Timon’s naval medallion in one of the piles of ash, along with the glint of Nan’s gold teeth. Without looking down at his feet, he extended the spread of the puddle of water outward. The concrete floor was uneven, sloping downward almost imperceptibly toward the furnace.

“Got your enemy right in your crosshairs, that it?” Janssen commented without any real curiousity. The man's squinted gaze was apathetic.

“Yes.”

Janssen was not a stupid man, merely lacking in ambition. He’d risen to the top of the Razorgull heap by dint of surviving long enough to outlive his more ambitious competition and in the Barrel that was accolade in itself. His leadership had seen the Razorgull’s survive the rise and fall of both Pekka Rollins and his Dime Lions and Kaz’s own takeover of the Dregs. Janssen’s steady, contented lack of vision or drive was the reason Kaz had sought him out for parlay. He was looking to put the Barrel back together along lines as similar to what had come before as possible and to do that he needed allies.

The Razorgull asked shrewdly. “What is it you’re wanting from me, boy?”

“The same thing I want from the other generals. We join forces to retake the Barrel.”

Janssen laughed, a raft of smoke pouring out of his throat. “We’re dead men Brekker,” he said. Holding out his hand Janssen ignited golden flame in his palm before snuffing it out. “Look at us. We’re freaks. There’s no more tomorrows for us.”

“I’ve seen dead men rise, Janssen. We’re not licked yet.” A narrow rivulet of water snaked its way toward Janssen’s feet.

“Bah.” Janssen slashed his arm through the air, his sleeve igniting. “You’re showing your youth, boy. You think you can conquer the whole city, do you? Think you can convince the Council to turn a blind eye to what you are?” Janssen shook his sleeve trying to put out the flames eating up his arm. “Face facts, Brekker, you’re sunk.” A gleam lit in the old man’s piggy eyes and he curled his lip in a proud smirk, looking Kaz up and down. “But you already know that, don’t you? Looks like you’ve had a good dunking already. Where have you been? Lying at the bottom of the Samenvogen canal?”

“And the rest,” Kaz agreed easily. “The ice wall doesn’t penetrate the waters. The canals still flow to the Lid.”

Janssen tensed. “You got out? Ghezen’s hand, boy, why would you come back?”

“This is my home,” Kaz said. “I’m going to fight for it.”

“You’re mad.”

Kaz nodded. It was true. “What sort of dead man are you, Janssen? One to rot in a gutter, forgotten, or is there fight left in you?” he asked.

Janssen scratched his chin, flecks of soot falling onto the lapels of his rough coat. “You’re going up against the witch?” he asked a hint of eagerness in his tone.

Kaz pushed dripping hair off his brow. “I already have. While you’ve been hiding here, I’ve crippled Ekaterine’s supply chain. She can’t control your people anymore, old man. The gulls will come back to you, cap in hand, looking for forgiveness.”

“What about the witch’s drug?”

“If I’m right, the means to produce more is swimming in your veins. You’ll be a god to the Gulls. A father to a gang of unstoppable fire starters.” Kaz studied the droplets of water beading on his gloves. He was beginning to dry off in the heated air radiating from Janssen in near visible waves; he could taste the condensation rising from his clothes. It was thick and cottony on his tongue. “You could consider offering new members the drug," he suggested. "The survivors will be loyal to you and no one else.”

Janssen scoffed. “I’m too old to fall for silver tongued nonsense. Speak plain, Brekker.”

Kaz flicked his hand, shaking the water off his glove. The droplets hung suspended in the air. “There’s no profit in explaining to you, Janssen,” he said. “I need the bruiser who went toe-to-toe with Rollins when he was still working street level hustles and won, not an addle-pated old man wallowing in his dead lieutenants' ashes.”

The silent jet of fire Janssen breathed straight at him was visible only as a rippling distortion in the air, the heat so intense it was colourless. Kaz shook free of his crutch and sank toward the ground, releasing the control he had over his form and dissolving into the puddle spreading over the floor. He materialised at the end of the rivulet of water snaking its way under Janssen’s feet. Pivoting on his good leg he slipped behind the other man and notched his blade under his chin.

“Light up and you’ll be burned by super-heated steam,” he warned the Razorgull, one gloved hand tight in the man’s ragged curls.

Janssen was giving off a lot of heat. Kaz could feel it stinging through Razorgull's back into the wet cotton of his shirt. The heat made his stomach roil, along with the familiar revulsion of being too close to another warm body. He was going to have to follow through and slit the man’s throat or let him go. He couldn’t hold on much longer. Black dots ate at his vision and it was growing harder to hold himself together. Dissipation was no longer a matter of morals. The temptation to let himself scatter to molecules and float away clawed at the back of his mind. A constant, numbing siren call.

Predictably, the old Barrel bruiser fought back, hurling a fistful of flame over his shoulder into Kaz’s face. Or where his face had been a split second before. An explosion of raindrops doused the gobbet of fire and Kaz dragged his form together on Janssen’s far left. The Razorgull turned, dropping into a fighter’s crouch, Kaz’s discarded knife in his red-hot fist. “Fire and water, eh?” he sneered. “Wonder who will win?”

“Oi, oi!” A young woman’s voice called from the entrance of the foundry. “What’s all this then? Starting the fight without the Lions? Can’t have that, can we boys?”

Pox-scarred and rail thin, Elsje Haas was the sixteen-year-old leader of the Barrel’s newest gang, the Lions, built out of the rags and bones of the Dime Lions. Elsje had cobbled together her soldiers from Pekka’s street level runners and criers. Too young and too low down the pecking order to have gained a reputation on the streets, they’d survived the cull of the Dime Lions higher ranks by the other gangs. The Lions were no challenge yet, but they could be one day. Kaz had been watching Elsje and her gang carefully for over a year.

Ekaterine’s blight had unerringly found its way into the ranks of every gang in the Barrel, so much so Kaz suspected she’d poisoned their beer long before she unleashed her deadly variant on the rest of the Barrel to cover her tracks. But Ekaterine, a Ravkan who didn’t understand the Barrel, had passed over the Lions almost entirely. It had been easy for Kaz to persuade Elsje to parlay after promising her access to the drug that had given the rest of them power. Greed had always been his most reliable lever, and now she had arrived, more or less on time, with a few of her best canal rats with her. Some of them might even have a future if they survived the war to come. They were all hungry, vicious and eager. The angry, twisted heart of the Barrel rising against Etovost and for the moment, that heart beat in time with his rhythm.

Janssen wheeled to face the intruders. “Brekker!” he snarled.

“I told you, Janssen,” Kaz said crossing the floor on foot to retrieve his crutch. “I need fighters. You said it yourself, young blood fights hardest.” He nodded to Elsje.

“Brekker.” The girl tilted her chin, a clear tell that might get her killed one day. “Where is it then?” she demanded. “Where’s this drug that’ll give us power?”

“In the hands of the Fabrikator who can make more,” Kaz said. Roeder had told him Kuwei Yul-Bo was in the Barrel, surprising Kaz. He hadn’t thought Ravka that stupid. The Shu boy wasn’t his father, but he was better than nothing. Kuwei would work for him whether he liked it or not or Kaz would auction his corpse to the highest bidder.

Elsje scowled. “You said —”

“The deal is the deal,” Kaz interrupted her. “You’ll get to pick your poison once we’re done here. Did you do what I asked?”

Elsje was bright, ambitious and had enough will that in a few years Kaz might have had to kill her before she became a threat, but for now her brains saved her life. She dropped her challenge and nodded sharply, “Yeah, it’s done.”

Janssen extinguished his hands and straightened out of his crouch. “What have you been doing, Brekker?” he asked finally sounding interested.

“What I do, Janssen. I’ve been playing the angles. I know how the gangs can survive this.”

The click of heels scraping over concrete sounded from the shadows. A bloodied and scorched Moll Gerty stepped out from behind one of the smaller furnaces. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Brekker. Your pet Ravkan nearly burned me alive. When I promised not to rat you out at the Sterren you told me you’d get me out. Not set me alight.”

Kaz shrugged. “You’re out,” he said. “Now Ekaterine has no reason to think you’re alive. She won't come after you again.”

Moll snarled and ripped her long, ragged nails down her cheek, blood welled in the shallow cuts. Kaz felt his own skin part and cool liquid spill down his face. He didn’t flinch. Moll’s eyes widened, face twisting in shock. “Ghezen’s codger," she sucked in a breath. "What are you, Brekker?”

Kaz brushed the back of his glove over his face. Water and blood looked much the same on black leather, but blood had heat to it, at least when it first spilled. The liquid painting his face was cold as harbour water and just as thin. He answered her question, “Losing my patience.” The scratches Moll had given him tickled. His skin felt parched, becoming raw as it dried. Flexing his fingers in his gloves Kaz could feel the leather drying. He looked down at his feet and saw that the ground was not wet.

Gervaas of the Liddies arrived supported by three uninfected seconds. The Liddie general had rivets puncturing his chest, neck and face and his right arm was bent rigid, the flesh transformed into iron. His solid concrete left foot dragged the ground, necessity the support of his enforcers, but his expression was keen and sharp as he took in the others. "Well, this is a turn up for the books. There'd better be lager at this party."

Koort arrived without fanfare and a single Infected second. The Harley's Pointers’ general nodded with a smile when he took in Kaz without a single second. He knew that rather than a mark of weakness, standing alone in this company was a sign of strength. “I heard about Geels. You don’t let the grass grow under your feet, do you Brekker?” the former bank clerk gone bad asked, as germane as ever.

“What happened to Geels?” Janssen demanded, interest sharpening. The Blacktips lieutenant had been a thorn in his side for a long time.

“Brekker killed him this morning,” Moll Gerty replied, shooting Kaz a dark look. “Henrika and Gem are dead too, Gervaas.”

The Liddie shrugged, as much as he was able. “They were traitors,” he replied dismissively. “They went to the witch willingly.”

“What about Sjorrs?” Janssen asked referring to the Blacktips incompetent general.

“Dead,” Kaz said adding, “Etovost melted his lungs before the siege.”

“So you saw a chance of settling a few scores and getting rid of more of the competition by taking out Geels?” Moll Gerty snorted. “Only you could turn this mess to your profit, Brekker.”

“And yours," Kaz told her. "You wanted a gang, Moll, but you didn’t want to answer to another man. Now you don’t have to. All you have to do is fight for the Tips and they’re yours.”

“Fight that Ravkan witch, you mean,” Moll scoffed.

Kaz shrugged. “Don’t like the game, leave the table, Moll.”

“Maybe it's not the game but the dealer,” Koort suggested. “This isn’t your house, Brekker, and we’re not marks for you to shill.” He traced a finger over his full lips, musing, “I don’t think I like you calling the shots.”

“If you want to run your own game on Ekaterine, be my guest,” Kaz said spreading his gloved hands. “But remember, I’m the only one here with access to every Etovost Grisha variant. How long do you think it will take before you’re on one of Ekaterine’s operating beds once the Harley’s turncoats learn you can’t provide a fix for all of them?”

Koort hissed, the sound bouncing around the factory and making the others flinch. “And what about you, Brekker? You let the Tidemakers in the Dregs die. Afraid of the competition?”

Kaz smiled. “Just cleaning house, Koort.” Teapot and Bastian had been dead wood he’d wanted the excuse to be rid of. He might not have chosen to do it this way, but Moll was right. He never let an opportunity pass him by. It was how he survived.

“No wonder you don’t bleed,” Moll snorted. “I’m surprised you haven’t frozen solid with all the ice in your veins.”

“You’re wrong,” Kaz told her. “There’s no ice in my veins.”

If there had been he’d have passed through the ice wall. Instead, the ice and the water flowing below had repelled him, keeping him from reaching the Lid and from there Fifth Harbour. Kaz flexed his fingers, feeling the confining and defining constriction of the leather and pushing down the pulse of panic that marched up his spine. Ice was water rendered solid and yet turning to ice was the one trick he had yet to master. Puzzles he couldn't solve annoyed him on their own, but this puzzle was important. The Council of Tides had not only mastered the ice trick but used it against him. Unless Kaz could figure out how his plan would fail. The Council of Tides was the key to everything. He needed to find a way into one of the obelisk towers if he wanted to win this fight. And he had to win. Jordie said so. He couldn’t go home until he did.

But first came the deal, the angle, the plan, the fight. Kaz looked over his war council, sizing up the generals of the Barrel and shuffling the deck in his mind, pushing down the liquid panic in his veins, ignoring the call of black waters and the constant pain in his leg – the only immutable part left in him – he turned away the whisper of the tide, so close and so far and focused on the living, giving them what was left of his precious time.

“I’m offering an alliance against a common enemy,” Kaz told this gathering of Barrel plague survivors, the hardest men and women in Ketterdam, each of them a newly forged monster. “I’ll even share my stock of Etovost with each of you in return for a truce.” He knew he had them on the hook. No one here needed the drug to survive but all of them were fooled by its power, which was why they'd let Ekaterine cow them. They were afraid of what they'd become. Kaz was not. He'd made himself a monster long ago. Etovost hadn't changed his fundamental nature. “In exchange I want all of you to commit to a new war. The Barrel against the Council of Tides. Winner takes the city.”

How many times had he said he’d been born from the harbour? How many times had he claimed canal rats had no other mother than the water? He couldn’t count. He wondered vaguely what Inej would think if she knew how those idle boasts had come back on him now. The city’s waters had presided over the birth of this new him, but he’d been rejected right after. No matter how he tried, he couldn't lose himself in the sluggish current. The canals did not want to carry him to the harbour. If he couldn't reach the harbour he couldn't join the ocean. He couldn't sink to the silty bottom along with Jordie. Despite that, his brother spoke to him still. His voice a constant in his thoughts. He heard him in the sigh of the canal and the plink of water running through old pipes. Always Jordie told him the same thing. There would be no rest, no end, until the Barrel was his again.

Drip by drip, he had to fight back. He couldn’t let himself slip away until his enemy was dead. Jordie’s voice in his head echoed like the roll of the ocean in a seashell, a clarion call for vengeance. He had to make Ekaterine pay. Someone always had to the pay. Until they did, until every account was settled, Kaz couldn’t rest. That was his punishment for surviving. Not even the water would claim him. He would fight with every last drop of cold fury inside him. He’d tear himself to pieces and splatter the streets with what was left if that’s what it took. This fight would be his biggest, his greatest. The one to enshrine his legend. The one to wipe every last trace of him away. Nothing was off limits. Nothing was sacred. He would use every asset at his disposal and he would win because it was all he had left.

And then, when he'd given the Barrel everything, when not a drop of his will remained, he'd find Jordie on the ocean bed and together, they'd go home.

Chapter Text

The Turning Tide Pt. 2:

Inej:

Inej spotted Roeder before the others did. Catching peripheral movement in the corner of her eye, she spun in the street, knives drawn, as a dark shape vaulted from a roof to land on the street on the other side of the canal. He stood at the mouth of an alley and waved them over.

“Do we trust him?” Nina asked as they crossed the small bridge back to the smoky side of the street. The Sterren Lounge continued to burn, the fire belching thick black smoke out of the windows and the open stage door, flooding the adjacent street and side alleys with black clouds and red-hot sparks. The group moved quickly to escape the smoke, which the wind blew in the opposite direction.
“What choice do we have?” Jesper asked flippantly. Beside him, Wylan sighed loudly and pulled his Tides cloak more securely around him. He was the only one of the group to keep his cloak and Inej wondered about his attachment to the thing.

She took the lead, forging ahead. She knew the danger and also knew that if Roeder wanted to hurt them he would have already. The spider was waiting for them when they reached the alley. He looked as Inej remembered him, thin and awkwardly proportioned, his head too big for his neck and shoulders. Only the serious look on his face was new.

“I’m meant to take Yul-Bo and the blood to the church,” he said, eyes rooted on Inej. “Boss has a lab set up there. He wants him,” Roeder stabbed his finger toward Kuwei, who flinched back against the wall.

Nina pushed forward, putting herself between Roeder and Kuwei. “What does he want him for?”

“He wants him to produce more of the stuff that did this,” Roeder flexed his fingers worriedly.

Inej was not the only one dismayed. She asked, “And the rest of us?”

Roeder’s expression was blank. “He didn’t say nothing about the rest of you.” He looked at the others gathered behind Inej. “You need to watch yourselves,” he warned. “Things has changed. You can’t expect special treatment no more. The boss is…different.”

Nina snorted. “You mean crazy.”

Roeder stared her down. “No,” he said flatly. “I mean he don’t care about you. Anyone of you. Get in his way and he’ll kill you. Even you, Wraith.”

Inej stiffened and met the spider’s eyes. Roeder was afraid of Kaz and that was unsettling. Inej knew that Kaz had always used threat to maintain his power in the Dregs but the last time she’d visited the Slat Roeder hadn’t feared Kaz’s wrath. All the Dregs knew if they did their jobs, Kaz would pay them fair and square and honour his obligations. As fearsome as Dirtyhands’ reputation was, as many times as Kaz had proved his ruthlessness, his gang had trusted him and that trust had been earned. Now that trust was gone. Anika, Keeg and Pim were scrambling to curry favour while Kaz forced them to work with the enemy and a wealth of fear lurked behind Roeder’s eyes.

Seeing that fear left Inej feeling short of breath, her chest tight. Her stomach was as queasy as it had been the first time the Wraith had been battered by high waves far out at sea. She had managed the changes to the Barrel so far by reminding herself that this city had never really been home, and these people were no longer her people, but that careful distance would not work against Kaz and Inej was not foolish enough to think it would. It had been a relief when they hadn't found him among the Infected and she had spent much of her time bracing herself for who and what he might have become. She knew that she was not ready to see the answer to those questions with her own eyes. She also knew it didn't matter. This was not a tempest she could go around. She would have to push right through the middle and hope her heart would survive the battering. Straightening her back and lifting her chin, Inej squared her shoulders. “Take me to him.”

Roeder’s shoulders dropped infinitesimally. “You sure?” he asked. “I can take you to one of the safe houses,” he offered. “The boss is getting the other generals together to take out the Ravkan witch. You might want to sit this one out.”

“Either take me to Kaz or I’ll find him myself,” Inej said. Despite his words, she could tell Roeder didn’t want her to leave. He wouldn’t have told her anything if he had. She may not be a Dreg anymore, but she’d been Kaz’s spider first and none of the gang had forgotten that. It used to bother her that the Dregs still viewed her as Kaz’s right hand even after she’d left, but she’d grown out at sea. She knew that the Dregs easy acceptance wasn’t an insult but a gift, especially when compared to their coldness toward Jesper.

More than that, she was now the captain of her own ship, with her own crew to care for. She understood that leadership was more than giving charting a course and giving orders and in part she’d learned that from Kaz. He would never be a kind leader, but he had protected the gang with all his fearsome wit and reputation. She owed it to the Dregs, if not herself, to find out what had changed and if it could be fixed. That her heart felt like lead, heavy with fear, was simply something she had to deal with. There was business to take care of and if Kaz could no longer do so, she would do it for him.

Roeder took them to a small church with a clinic attached on Wastefel Straat that caused Wylan to gasp and Jesper to snort darkly when they realised where they were headed. Inej did not ask for the story. None of them felt like talking as they moved through the deserted streets. Inej knew her dread had spread to the others. She had come here for Kaz and yet the thought of reaching him left her dragging her feet. She feared that the boy she’d come to save was already lost.

The church was full when they arrived. People had arranged sleeping bags on the floor and over the wooden pews and a large camp stove and cooking pot had been set up next to the altar block. The scent of rich, dark stew filled the stuffy air. Dozens of pairs of eyes turned toward them as they filed up the aisle after Roeder. “Who are all these people?” Nina asked. “They don’t look Infected.”

“They’re not,” Roeder said. “Boss ordered us to stock Ann’s with food and blankets before he…uh…went off on his own. Nothing’s open so people buy what they need from us.”

“Of course Kaz is exploiting the needy,” Nina rolled her eyes. “If I was still a heartrender I’d force his testicles back inside his body,” she muttered.

Roeder led them through a narrow hallway into the clinic. Several families had colonised the space, creating partitions out of makeshift washing lines strung across the ceiling. Inej saw a young mother feeding a baby at her breast through a gap in one of the sheets. An old man with a mangy white-blond beard held a young girl on his lap on another bed, rocking her gently to sleep, he murmured softly, “Quiet now, Ilka. The monsters can’t get you in here.”

Nina whispered, “This is horrible.”

“Could be worse,” Jesper murmured back. “They could be out on the streets.”

“Don’t care,” Nina said. “I’m still tying Kaz’s balls in knots when I see him.”

There was an open door leading to a storage closet at the end of the long ward. Inej could see that the threshold was wet, the floor sodden. A twisted metal crutch that looked like it had been fabrikated from a single piece of metal by an inexpert durast to resemble a branching elk’s antlers stood propped up in the adjacent corner. The whitewashed walls gleamed damply and a puddle of standing water covered the floor.

Roeder stopped several feet from the door. Inej noticed that the two beds nearest the far wall were vacant, despite the fact that space was at a premium. It was noticeably colder here, as if someone had opened a window and let the canal’s chill seep into the ward, but when Inej checked she saw there were no open windows. Roeder cleared his throat. The sound as sharp as a gunshot. “Yul-Bo’s here, boss.” He didn’t raise his voice but the sound still carried, swirling through the air. The uninfected in the room grew quiet and still, even the children. Almost every pair of eyes watched the open doorway.

Except Inej. She was watching the corner, which was why she saw the walls begin to weep, the whitewash bubbling with droplets that raced toward the floor as if water was being pushed through a muslin cloth from the other side. The hand that pushed through the wall was as transparent as the waters in a snow-melt spring in the Sikurzoi Mountains and if Inej hadn’t been looking for it, she might not have seen it until the hand curled around the top of the wicked looking crutch, pushing it upright away from the wall. The water weeping through the masonry rose into the air and condensed like a breath of cool mist. It wavered into a human shape, strong shoulders and sharp angles, before there was a crack of sound, as if a washerwoman had snapped out sopping linens. Inej was pelted by a shower of droplets. She threw up an arm and turned her face away from the cold spray. When she looked back a drowned boy stood in the corner, leaning heavily on his crutch.

She didn’t know if the suit he was wearing had started out black or grey or even brown. Whichever the case, it was black now, clinging to the hard planes of his body, so utterly soaked the excess water didn’t drip to the floor but fall in sheets. He wasn’t wearing a tie and Inej could see the quick movement of his throat through his open collar. His skin was almost as pale as his white shirt. Mud and silt patched his clothes and rivulets of water tracked down the hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were hidden under a solid sheet of hair until he raised one dark gloved hand to impatiently shove it back.

Abruptly, Inej thought of her bosun Amuret. She had been a pearl diver before she’d been taken by slavers. She had told Inej about the black pearls she used to filch from oysters. Her eyes had lit up as she spoke of how special they were. She’d told Inej of their colour, like slate but darker, gleaming bright and yet so very far from white. Amuret had said that the most prized of all black pearls were the ones where the light did not gleam on their surface but appeared to sink into the pearl, as if the heart of the abyss lurked within the pearl’s lustre. Kaz’s eyes were black pearls; in them Inej could see an abyss. No light of recognition lurked in his gaze, no hint of coffee in sunlight, no whisper of warmth. In the white, bleached blankness of his face, the severe line of his mouth and the emptiness of his eyes, she saw something broken, an absence that roared like the ocean trapped in a conch shell.

“Saints,” Nina cursed and her hands flew upward in a sharp, familiar gesture. Kaz’s eyes followed the motion, one brow lifting. Nina dropped her hands, breath spilling out through clenched teeth. “Just checking,” she muttered. Louder, she told Kaz, “You look like a drowned corpse.”

Kaz’s brow furrowed. “Clearly, you’ve never seen a days-old drowned corpse,” he retorted flatly. Inej flinched as if he’d struck her. His voice was wrong. Instead of the scrape of old stone on gravel, Kaz’s voice was low and smooth like the murmur of rainwater rushing through overhead pipes. His gaze swept over the others, lingering on no one for very long. “Why are you here?” he asked.

Jesper barked a laugh. “Oh, I don’t know. We were in the neighbourhood and thought we’d drop by? Why do you think we’re here?" he asked. "You sent for us.”

Kaz stared at Jesper like he was a stranger. His eyes flicked to Roeder. The spider scratched the back of his neck nervously. “You told me to get Yul-Bo. They were with him. Figured it was safer to bring them here than leave ‘em for the Ravkans.”

Kaz wasn’t listening. He was staring at Wylan. No, not Wylan. His cloak. Kaz narrowed his eyes. “You came over the wall,” he said.

“Yeee-eeesss,” Nina drawled. She propped her hands on her fists. “Is it state the obvious day or do you just have water on the brain?” she asked.

Inej wasn’t sure Kaz heard her. He was still staring at Wylan’s cloak. “How did you get passed the Tides?”

“We had help,” Wylan said warily. Inej didn’t think he was aware that he’d drawn the cloak defensively around his shoulders. “Lars Schipp and Karl Dryden got us through.”

Kaz cocked his head. “Dryden,” he repeated.

Wylan clutched at the folds of the cloak. “Yes. He’s a member of the Council of Tides.”

Kaz blinked once. “Karl Dryden is a Tide? Poor, useless, Karl Dryden, the only mercher on the Council who couldn’t deal his way out of a paper bag… is a Tidemaker?” he clarified.

Wylan looked at Jesper for help. “Yes?” he said.

Kaz grinned, flashing teeth. Then, startlingly, he started to laugh. He leaned against the wall, one gloved hand pressed to his mouth as his chest heaved with bubbling torrents of laughter. Inej exchanged confused and alarmed glances with the others. After seeing what he’d done to Geels, she was not surprised to see that Kaz now had the powers of a Tidemaker on parem, even if the reality made her heart ache. But none of her careful shielding could have prepared her for his laughter. She couldn’t remember ever hearing him laugh. Not like this. She could not have been more surprised if he’d attacked them as soon as he passed through the wall. Less, she thought. Kaz had always been more comfortable with violence than joy.

Calming down, Kaz’s teeth flashed in another mercurial grin as he announced, “That is the stupidest thing I’ve heard all week.” Lifting his hands, crutch dangling from his forearm, he made a quick jerking motion with both arms. The water soaking his clothes leapt from his body and flew backward against the wall at his back, leaving him instantly dry. Leaning hard on his crutch Kaz dragged his bad leg as he stepped away from the corner and lurched toward the nearest bed. “The only one of you I need is Yul-Bo,” he said, voice suddenly hoarser and more familiar, “But I suppose I’ll keep the rest of you for the entertainment value.”

“If you don’t need us why did you set up that deal with Schipp?” Jesper demanded.

Kaz sat on the bed, twisting and lifting both legs up on the counterpane. “I don’t remember making a deal with Schipp,” he replied.

“You wrote him a letter. You said you knew how to stop the war.”

Kaz turned his neck, bringing his head around toward Jesper. “Why would I do that?” he asked.

Jesper threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t know. You tell me!”

Kaz blinked at him. “I don’t want to stop a war. I want to start one.” He turned to Roeder. “Go to Lions territory. Follow Elsje. She’ll take you to the weapons cache.” Kaz fixed his dead eyes on Roeder adding, “Make sure Elsje doesn’t get any notions of independent thought. Those weapons need to go to Koort and old man Janssen.”

“What about the Liddies?” Roeder asked.

Kaz scowled. “Gervaas is a liability. Harlin and Agethe were still chipping his foot free from the ground when I left. I won’t waste weapons arming dead men, and until Gervaas learns control that’s exactly how the Liddies are going to end up.”

Roeder nodded slowly but he looked worried. “What about the Slat?” he asked.

“Pull the others out if you can do it without tipping off Ekaterine,” Kaz said carelessly. “But I want someone with her at all times. Moll Gerty may decide to be brave at the wrong time. I don’t want anyone killing the fabrikator until I’m done with her.”

“But boss, ain’t the plan to kill her?”

“No,” Kaz said darkly. “The plan is to break her. She’s still useful. She doesn’t get to die until she’s served her purpose.”

“Wait. Hold up,” Jesper said. “What are you doing? I know I’m the last one that should be saying this, but the Barrel does not need a shootout right now. Who are you going after anyway, if not the Ravkans?” He sounded exasperated.

“Renegades,” Nina snapped. “They’re renegades. Not Ravkans.”

“I think you’ll find they’re renegade Ravkans, sweetheart,” Jesper retorted.

Kuwei stood at the end of the bed, facing Kaz. “I am not going to help you extract the drug from your system so you can make more,” he said firmly, chin tilted stubbornly.

“You will or I’ll shove my hand through your chest and dump your dried-up husk in the canal,” Kaz replied coolly.

Nina rocked up to the end of the bed. “Don’t you dare. This isn’t Kuwei’s fault.”

“I don’t care,” Kaz said.

Inej sighed loudly. For the first time, Kaz looked at her. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to see a near-familiar stranger looking back at her through his eyes. Instead, she turned to Kuwei. “Explain to me about this drug,” she said. “Why is Kaz’s blood so important?”

“He and the other gang leaders must have survived the Queen’s Lady’s plague. The virus has hijacked their immune response, mutating the antibodies to produce a stable version of the Etovost virus Ekaterine means to synthesise and use to maintain the effects on the rest of the Infected.”

“Stable might be pushing it,” Wylan muttered, eyeing Kaz on the bed curiously.

Inej frowned. “Does that mean that without the drug the Infected will return to normal?” she asked.

Kuwei shrugged diffidently. “Some might, with the right treatment. The rest will die like the first test subjects did.”

“Great. What you’re saying is the survival of the Barrel is in the bosses hands?” Jesper shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m amazed there’s anything left standing, if the others are as wasted as Kaz.” He glared down at the bed. “This is just like the time you got shot on the Belendt job and downed a bottle of Skim’s Dry before snorting a tin of jurda,” he told Kaz.

Inej blinked. “I don’t remember that,” she said.

“Nor do I,” said Kaz, frowning at Jesper.

“It was before your time,” Jesper told Inej. “Trust me, I wish I could forget. No sane person gets more energetic while bleeding out.”

“The Belendt job was Tarvin’s crew, wasn’t it?” Kaz frowned in thought. “I won’t be shown up by rank amateurs. You should have let me finish the job. My arm still worked.”

“It was the rest of you I was worried about,” Jesper told him.

“I’m not shot now,” Kaz said. “I’m not drunk.”

“You’re drunk on Etovost and you don’t even know it.” He threw up his hands. “I wish Matthias was here. He could sit on you while you dry out, like he did with Nina.”

“He did not sit on me!”

“Fine,” Jesper waved Nina off. “He held you tenderly and with love while you were high out of your mind and threatening to turn his eyelids inside out. My point is, we need to detox Kaz.”

“Will that work?” Wylan asked.

“It could be that the buildup of the virus in his body is impairing his thinking,” Kuwei said. “I don’t think we can draw the virus out of him completely,” he warned. “But he might be less…this…after a transfusion.”

“And he’ll be able to tell us what’s going on,” Nina said, adding under her breath, “As much as he ever tells us anything.”

Everyone turned to Kaz. He opened his eyes and looked back at them from the bed, his expression mild. “What?”

“You’re not going to raise any objections?” Nina asked.

“I wanted Kuwei to transfuse me,” Kaz reminded her.

“But once we do, you’ll be less weird. Your insane plan will be ruined.”

“Zenik, you couldn’t ruin my insane plan even if you knew what it was,” Kaz retorted.

Nina pounced. “So you admit Etovost has made you insane?”

“I don’t need to be a Grisha to be crazy,” Kaz said.

Wylan sighed. “While that’s true, I don’t think it’s something you should feel comfortable admitting.”

Kaz shrugged. “Just as well your assessment doesn’t matter to me, merchling.”

Inej looked down at the cold weather gloves she hadn’t taken off after scaling the ice wall and made a decision. Moving to the side of the bed closest to Kaz she slapped her hand over his mouth. It pained her to do it, but if she had to listen to more of this she thought her head would explode. "Stop," she said. "Just stop talking." Her gloves were thick, insulating him from the feel of her skin. Kaz’s dark eyes met hers.

He leaned back into the pillows mounded under his head. She could feel how tense and still he was. Removing her hand, she clutched it close to her chest. She wanted to apologise but she held her tongue. She couldn’t regret it. The others were having their fun, as they might if Kaz was simply drunk on cheap brandy, but Inej knew the truth. He was sick. Horribly sick. She couldn’t stand idly by wasting time when he needed help.

“This is a clinic,” she told Kuwei, “you should be able to find what we need. The sooner we do this the faster we can find a cure.”

“There is no cure. Only the war,” Kaz said.

Inej gritted her teeth. “Shut up, Kaz.” By the grace of all the Saints, he did.

Chapter Text

The Turning Tide Pt. 3:

Wylan:

The closet at the back of Ann’s clinic was as cramped as Wylan remembered it. He, Jesper and Kuwei looked at the six vials of blood in the rack pensively. “Does it matter that we only have one sample for Materialki?” he asked.

“No,” Kuwei said shortly. He plucked up Kaz’s fresh sample, before replacing it, revealing his nervousness.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Jesper asked, the edge in his voice making it clear he already knew the answer.

Kuwei scowled defensively. “I will need to study,” he said. “There is still a lot we don’t know about Etovost Grisha.”

Jesper managed to lean against the wall shelves without knocking anything over. He crossed his arms. “Like what?”

“Why are some of the changes are more stable than others,” Kuwei said. “Why do Fabrikators have the least control and Corporalki the most? Why is there a larger number of Etheralki turns than any other, except for Tidemakers? In natural Grisha the division is more even among the three classes, is this due to Little Palace training or did Kat engineer the virus to produce Grisha with offensive capacities on purpose? Then there is the mental aspect; Roeder’s mentality is less affected than Kaz, is this because he is one of many Squallers? Is there a social aspect to the change that should be factored into the equation and —”

“Alright, you’ve made your point,” Jesper cut him off. “Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you,” he added drily. “Best think fast before Kaz gets impatient.”

“Too late.”

The rough voice came from right behind Wylan. “Saints!” Jumping out of his skin, he slammed his elbow into the wall as he whipped around. “You did that on purpose,” he accused.

Leaning on his crutch Kaz ignored him. “Can you identify the active virus in the samples?” he asked Kuwei.

The Inferni nodded warily. “I think so, but without testing I don’t know how well I can synthesise a useful formulary.”

“All I need is the virus,” Kaz told him.

Wylan studied him covertly. He looked better, for a given value of better. His hair had dried in ragged strands, liberally sprinkled with silt. He’d peeled off his mud-spattered jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his formerly white shirt during the transfusion and the Crow and Cup tattoo stood out on his forearm. His grey waistcoat was open and his creased shirt untucked, open at the neck. He looked more unkempt than Wylan had ever seen him, except perhaps during their escape from the Ice Court, but his skin had some colour now, revealing three thin vertical scratches running down the right side of his face to disappear into the dark stubble covering his jaw. He looked both more like himself and completely unlike himself at the same time.

“Let me guess,” Jesper said, “Your grand plan for getting us out of this mess is to turn the Merchant Council into Etovost Grisha.”

Wylan shot him a look. “Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “Radmakker can breathe fire without the help,” he muttered.

Jesper flashed a smile. “Relax, Wy. Kaz isn’t going to give power to the Merchs.” He kept his eyes on Kaz. “You might as well tell us the plan. You know we’re a better crew than anyone you scraped up here.”

Kaz raked his eyes over the three of them. “You’re wrong.” Turning for the door he moved stiffly, his bad leg almost immobile.

Jesper slipped through the door and got in front of him easily, blocking his path. Hands secure on his revolvers he stared Kaz down. “Not good enough. This is more serious than a turf war. The Merchant Council are close to declaring war on Ravka. Do you know what that means?” he demanded.

“That a clever man should invest in armaments manufacture,” Kaz retorted, tone bland.

Wylan could see the anger in Jesper’s expression easily. “You told Schipp you had a way to stop the war,” he told Kaz. “I want to know what it is.”

Wylan slipped out of the closet and hurried forward. The slightest cant of Kaz’s head stopped him in his tracks. Wylan tried to catch Jesper’s eye. In the past, when Wylan had been the one to push, Jesper had been the one warning him against antagonising Kaz. He’d done it after Kaz had murdered Oomen on the Ferolind and he’d stopped Kaz when he’d shoved Wylan up against the wall of the crypt and threatened him. Now, Jesper was the one pushing Kaz when a blind man could see that he was dangerously on edge and Wylan wished he knew what the plan was -- if there was one. He reached into his pocket where he kept a vial of iron filings. If Kaz used his powers, he’d throw the filings at him. It had stopped the Tidemakers at the Ice Court from turning to Mist. He hoped it would work now. He very much doubted if things came to blows, all they’d have to worry about was a torn sleeve and a cut brow. The tension was palpable as Jesper and Kaz faced off. Jesper looked stubborn and determined and Kaz’s back was ramrod straight. He saw Inej and Nina break off their conversation and drift closer, worry naked on Nina’s face.

“Kaz,” Inej said softly, a note of warning and question in her tone. That note said: do you know what you're doing? And: do I need to stop you? all at once. Wylan was used to wondering where Kaz's limits lay, but he'd learned to trust Inej's ability to read him. Now she looked as lost as the rest of them.

He cleared his throat loudly. “Lars said you had a scapegoat that could draw the blame for this away from the Ravkans,” he said trying to break the tension, or at least draw Kaz’s anger away from Jesper.

Kaz turned his head fractionally, flicking a look toward Wylan. He found himself holding his breath. Kaz was always dangerous, but Etovost had changed things, turning him from someone familiar that Wylan only half-feared into an entirely alien threat he didn’t recognise. This wasn’t Dirtyhands, Barrel boss, gang leader and de facto master of Ketterdam’s criminal element standing in front of him and Wylan knew instinctively all the old rules no longer applied. If he was honest, he wasn't sure this Kaz was bound by any rules.

After a count of three slow heartbeats, Kaz cocked his head and asked, “What else did Schipp say?”

The rising tension bled out of the air. Wylan exhaled noisily. Questions were good. Questions meant there was someone to reason with. Jesper knew it too. His shoulders slumped and he stepped back, hands swinging away from his revolvers to rest at his sides. Inej and Nina relaxed as well. Each girl had taken a position to the side of Jesper and Kaz, ready to leap bodily between them. But they backed away now. Nina huffed and dropped onto one of the vacant beds. Inej remained vigilant, watching Kaz with steady, unblinking dark eyes, but the tension left her frame.

Wylan squared his shoulders. “The Council of Tides accepted your proposal,” he said. “We were sent to fulfil it if you couldn’t. The Tides are going to flood the Barrel in four days if we can’t sort this out,” he added darkly.

Kaz’s head was still canted to the side. Wylan couldn’t see his expression but he recognised his posture. “Scheming face,” Kuwei murmured from the closet door. Wylan nodded silently. He tried to tell himself this was a good thing. Kaz was clearly deeply affected by the Etovost virus and getting him to stop and think had to be a good thing. Didn’t it?

Kaz shifted, taking the weight off his bad leg. His brow furrowed in an expression Wylan didn’t think he’d ever seen on his face before. Confusion. “I don’t remember,” he said, a thread of frustration turning the utterance into a growl.

“Seriously? How can you forget your own plan?” Jesper demanded, appalled.

“I have a plan,” Kaz snapped.

“But it isn’t the plan that brought us to the Barrel,” Inej interjected. Kaz dropped his head. That one gesture was more of an admission than Wylan had ever seen Kaz make.

“We should talk it through,” he said hurriedly. “Maybe you’ll remember something.”

“No.” Kaz took a dragging step forward.

“Where are you going?” Jesper asked.

Kaz stopped, shooting Jesper a vicious look. “These people need to leave,” he said and Wylan remembered belatedly their audience of uninfected refugees.

“Saints,” Nina exclaimed, throwing up her hands, “I’ll do it.” she shot Kaz a dark look. “I don’t want you turning these nice people into beef jerky.”

Kaz ignored her. Slamming the end of his crutch into the ground hard, he barked, “Out.”

The refugees fled, with Nina hustling them out of the door and down the passage to the chapel. Wylan could hear her voice raised in a soothing lilt as she comforted a crying child. Kaz remained tense. Wylan played nervously with the vial of iron filings in his pocket, hand hidden by his cloak.

“What do you want from me,” Kaz spoke into the silence. The bloodless question was chilling.

“I want you to be you,” Jesper snapped. “I want to know that there’s a plan, and a backup plan and maybe a contingency thrown in for good measure. I want us to have a fighting chance,” he said with feeling. Wylan hated the crack of bitterness in his voice.

He worked hard to forget that Jesper had his own history with Kaz, one that he shared with no one else. They’d worked jobs together long before Wylan or Nina had come to the Barrel. Before Inej had become the only person in the world Wylan was sure Kaz truly cared about, there had been Dirtyhands and his Zemeni sharpshooter, running cons and getting shot at in Belendt and beyond.
Their history felt like a tangible force in the room as Kaz pivoted slowly toward Jesper, the awkward clunk of his crutch loud over the floor. Wylan wanted to move to Jesper’s side. The jealousy in him wanted to intervene and remind Kaz that Jesper wasn’t his anymore. The part that loved Jesper wanted him to know he didn’t have to face Kaz alone. But he knew this wasn’t something he should get in the middle of.

“Why?” Kaz asked.

“Because I don’t want to die,” Jesper said. “Because I don’t want the Dregs to go down like this.” He threw up his hands. “I don’t want you to go down like this either, you podge.”

Kaz blinked. He shifted his balance, grasping hard at his crutch. Wylan thought he was surprised, Jesper’s words hitting harder than they should have. The next words he spoke were some of the strangest Wylan had ever heard. “You’re not my brother." Kaz had a brother? Wylan stared at him. In the corner of his eye he saw Inej lift her hand, as if to reach out to Kaz, before dropping her arm.

“I’m too stylish to be related to you,” Jesper retorted, but Wylan could see the tension lancing down his spine. There was something in the air, a hidden current of meaning that felt like an undertow that could sink them all and Jesper was wading right into it. Jesper lifted his chin. “I’m your friend,” he told Kaz. “Maybe the only one you’ve got. Saints only know why,” he added tiredly.

Kaz spoke with intensity, as if for once, he actually cared to explain himself. “I have to find Jordie,” he said. “He’s in the harbour. I can reach him now.”

“Kaz.” Inej’s voice was sharp. Her eyes were wide but her expression was resolute. “Your brother’s dead. Rollins killed him,” she said.

Jesper choked on a nervous laugh. “No wonder you hated him.”

Kaz canted his head toward Inej, barely moving. “I said that," he admitted. "But I lied. Pekka took our money. Queen’s Lady did for Jordie," Kaz's tone was remote, as if he was reciting old facts and not a secret he'd never once even hinted at. The boy who'd been birthed on Ketterdam's streets, a child of all her cruelties, had had a family once. It shouldn't have shocked Wylan, but it did. "The Reapermen took us to out to the Barge," Kaz said. "But I wasn’t dead, so I swam back. I had to live. I had to be the monster to make Pekka pay.” He blinked; the single movement more frightening than anything else he could have said. The finality of that blink felt like a knife, brought down on memory. Studying the back of his gloved hand Kaz rasped, “I don’t need to live now.”

Jesper and Inej shared a single, wide-eyed glance, filled with fear that cut Wylan out completely. He remembered the sick horror he’d felt when he realised that his father wasn’t the man he’d always believed him to be. Worse than the day he’d tried to have him killed, the knowledge that his father had never deserved his love had left a crack in Wylan's world he still hadn’t repaired. Kaz’s confession shattered the myth of the infallible Dirtyhands, exposing an orphaned plague survivor so exhausted he swayed while leaning on his crutch. Wylan’s world was better now he knew the truth of what sort of man his father was, despite the pain. Was having proof that Kaz was as human and tired as the rest of them a good thing, he wondered seeing the stricken looks on Inej and Jesper's faces, or did some truths only wound?

“If you die, Ekaterine wins,” he said, not even sure if it was true but knowing that he had to try to reach Kaz for Jesper and Inej’s sake. Ketterdam might be better off without Dirtyhands, but if Kaz died but Inej wouldn't be. Jesper wouldn't be.

Kaz’s gaze slid toward him. His lips twitched. “I’m not suicidal, merchling. I know there’s work still to be done.”

Jesper groaned. “You’re out of your Saintsforsaken mind,” he said.

“Never said I wasn’t,” Kaz snapped back. He forced himself to stand straight, balancing his weight equally on both legs. Like a flipped switch, some of the old Kaz seemed to return, as if the con man had hauled on an old and trusted disguise. “Any scapegoat would have to be unaffiliated with the major powers,” he said shifting gears with an abruptness Wylan was sadly used to. “We’d need an organisation with the means to control a large number of dangerous Grisha and unleash them on the Barrel.”

“One of the pirate barons from the Southern Colonies,” Inej suggested. Her tone was level, her expression composed but Wylan thought it would be a while before she let Kaz out of her sight. “The barons command pirate fleets that many countries pay to assault rival nations’ vessels.”

“The Blue Bell syndicate have Kerch backers,” Kaz agreed. “I had Roeder watching their movements in the Barrel. There are rumours the Bells have a councilman in their pocket. I don’t know who,” he admitted.

“Why were you tracking the Bells, Kaz?” Inej asked him quietly.

Kaz frowned. “For you,” he said. Inej nodded, once, a sharp motion that drew her lips into a thin line. Wylan didn’t think the answer surprised her, but that Kaz would admit it did. Nothing Kaz was doing made any sense, he thought in frustration. How could he give up now, when he had people who would fight for him even if he couldn’t?

“The Council compromised with Shu Han after the bombings to cover for Van Eck’s double dealing,” Kaz said. “If we implicate one of the Council members along with our scapegoat we can embarrass them into standing down.”

“Haanraadt and Van Deering would make good targets,” Wylan heard himself say.

Jesper grinned at him. “You’re just saying that because you don’t like them.”

Wylan shrugged. “That’s not the only reason. Haanraadt is corrupt. Even my father said so.”

“Your father isn’t exactly the gold standard for character, Wy,” Jesper pointed out.

“He was able to pretend,” Wylan replied. “Haanraadt is too stupid to hide his double dealing. The rest of the Council will easily believe it,” he insisted.

“And Van Deering’s a podge,” Jesper added. He chuckled adding, “At this rate we’re going prove them right about that coup.”

Kaz’s attention sharpened. “What are you talking about?”

Wylan sighed. “Van Deering told the rest of the Council I was planning to usurp control,” he said tiredly. “It’s the reason I wasn’t told when they moved to Belendt.”

Kaz nodded slowly, his expression shifting toward open scheming. “We’re going to need to seize control of the city. Who’s running the Stadwatch?” he asked.

“The Council of Tides and the navy,” Jesper replied.

Wylan scowled at him. “We’re not taking over the city,” he said firmly.

Jesper shook his head, smirking, “Wy, even I wouldn’t take on those odds.”

Kaz swept him with his dark eyes. “I was going to turn the gangs on the Tides and take control of the Obelisk towers one by one,” he admitted, “but taking the council will be simpler, especially with most of the members in hiding.”

“Was this before after you walked into the ocean looking for your long dead brother,” Jesper asked him sharply.

“Before, obviously,” Kaz replied as if the question was entirely reasonable. “The Tides control Kerch waters. Control them, control the city,” he pointed out flatly.

“Their identities are a secret,” Inej said thoughtfully. “You could smuggle the Infected into the towers and no one would know.”

“And leave the Tides bodies for the Council to find when they come looking for the Infected to prove the danger is over,” Kaz agreed.

Jesper crossed his arms. “And what happens when the Tides are needed to control the current?” he asked.

Kaz shrugged. “Not my problem. I’ll be dead,” he said sounding pleased. Inej shot him a narrow-eyed look.

“This is why you wanted me to draw your blood,” Kuwei said quietly from behind Wylan. “You want me to make more Tidemakers to replace the Grisha you kill.”

“The Lions are uninfected,” Kaz said offhandedly. “Elsje wants power and I want her out of the way. Handing the job to her is a neat solution.”

“Kaz,” Inej snapped.

“Someone has to replace the Tides, Inej,” he replied reasonably, as if he wasn't suggesting doing to the Lions exactly what Ekaterine had done to him. Kaz had always been ruthless, but this callousness seemed almost careless, as if with one foot in the grave, nothing mattered at all to Kaz. Even his scheme to restore the Barrel felt more like a man settling his affairs in order before dying.

“No one is taking over the Tides or the Merchant Council,” Wylan insisted.

“That’s not what you were saying a minute ago,” Kuwei sniped at his back, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Wylan snapped his head around to glare at him. “No one asked you!" he snapped. Turning back to Kaz he said, "We’re trying to stop a war. Not start a revolution.”

A bright feminine voice with a faint Ravkan accent rode the air. “Nonsense, Councilman. A revolution is exactly what the doctor ordered.” Ekaterine strode into the ward from the passage, flanked by two red coated Corporalki. The larger of the pair, the man Jesper had shot, was healed and carried Nina’s body slung over his shoulder. “Hello, Mister Brekker,” Ekaterine greeted Kaz in a singsong saccharine voice. “It looks like my bait caught you just as planned. Thank you for clearing out the chapel ahead of our arrival. All those extra bodies could have proved a nonsense.”

Wylan shoved Kuwei toward the closet. “Go!” he snapped. They needed to get the samples out and there was a window in the closet. A second later his vision greyed and a wave of dizziness dragged him to his knees. He landed on his hands and knees in a puddle of water he didn’t remember being there a moment earlier. Blinking spots from his eyes, he saw Inej hit the floor. Jesper had his revolvers drawn before the Corporalnik could turn on him. That was when a stream of water flowed across the floor toward Kaz’s feet. Throwing aside his crutch, Kaz’s form turned translucent collapsing into a splashing cascade that flowed toward Jesper and exploded upward in a powerful spout. Jesper shouted as his revolvers were sucked from his hands. He was slapped across one of the beds a moment later. Wylan saw one of his revolvers arc through the air as the spout erupted in a shower of droplets. Ekaterine lunged and caught it before it could hit the ground, turning the gun on Jesper.

Kaz materialised in front of the closet door. Wylan fumbled for the vial of iron filings, but a wave of weakness flowed over him and he only just managed to catch himself on his hands before his chin hit the wet floor. The water under his hands surged, flowing rapidly into the closet. Kaz jerked his arm in a sharp gesture. Wylan heard a crash and a cry. A second later Kuwei was yanked through the door on the end of a liquid leash. Kaz caught him against his body, with one arm around his neck, and Jesper’s stolen revolver securely pointed at Ekaterine in his other hand.

“Clever rats don’t fear traps,” he said. “We turn them against their makers.”

Ekaterine beamed at him. “Are you planning to entrap me, Dirtyhands?” she simpered coquettishly. “Do you think you can ensnare me in my own designs?”

Kaz was not impressed. “This is the Barrel. We don’t play games. We make deals,” he told her. “I brought you here to give you a chance. Join me and live or die here and now.”

Ekaterine looked amused. “Brought me here?” Her trilling laugh was sweet and tinkling. “And here I thought I’d ambushed you.” Smug and patronising, Ekaterine reminded Wylan of the Scarab Queen in a Komedie Brute performance. Put her and Kaz in masks and they’d make the perfect pair, the villainess and the Mad Man.

Kaz cocked his head, his grip on Kuwei never wavering. “Do you hear that?” he asked as a series of muffled pops filtered through the air. “Gunfire. It’s coming from the Slat. Your people are dead,” he told Ekaterine. “Your supplies gone. You're as trapped as the rest of us and surrounded by enemies.”

Ekaterine tensed perceptibly. She turned the revolver on Kaz, making a show of stroking the trigger. “You’re bluffing. The Infected won’t betray me. They need me.”

“The Lions don’t,” Kaz told her drily.

Ekaterine frowned. “Those dirty children? Why should I care about them?” she asked, baffled.

“Because there are no children in the Barrel, only clever canal rats scurrying in the dark,” Kaz said. “You made a mistake when you ignored them. Now the Razorgulls and the Pointers are mobilising. Blacktips and Liddies will follow.”

Ekaterine’s pretty face was marred by an ugly flush that crept up her neck to her cheeks. Her smile was fixed like a snarl. “Let them fight,” she said carelessly. “None of you can go anywhere. You need me to stabilise the virus. The Shu brat can’t do it,” she said.

“I know,” Kaz said and Wylan stared at him. What con was Kaz running? What did he know that the rest of them didn't?

Ekaterine watched him avidly, obviously wondering the same thing. Outside the sounds of violence grew louder but she didn’t seem to notice. Her fascination with Kaz was total. “I believe you mentioned a deal, Mister Brekker?” she asked pleasantly after a long, tense moment.

Wylan glared at him. He forced the words out through a squeezed throat. “What are you doing?”

Kaz stared back at him expression unreadable. Wylan didn't think he'd answer, but this his gaze slid to Inej on the floor and he murmured, “Giving you a fighting chance.” To Ekaterine he said, “We both have what the other needs. Work with me and I’ll give you your Grisha army. In return you’re going to give Kuwei the means to stabilise the virus.”

Ekaterine’s head rocked back. “Why would I do a foolish thing like that?” she asked.

“Because I know what you are," Kaz told her.

In the chapel Wylan heard a distant crash and a whoop of triumph. The Corporalki holding Nina dumped her unconscious body onto a bed and turned toward the door, raising his hands. “They’re in the building,” he said in Ravkan. “We can’t hold them all.”

Ekaterine didn’t even look at him. Her smile didn’t waver. She stared at Kaz with a feverish intensity. “I knew you’d make an excellent Grisha, Mister Brekker. You were born to make war.” She inclined her head regally. “Very well. We are now partners, Mister Brekker.” Mad, she smiled charmed and charming. "Let the war begin."

Chapter Text

The Turning Tide Pt. 4:

Inej:

“Are we going to talk about the fact that Kaz has gone bad, or are we going to sit here in this larder like mouldy old cheese?” Nina asked darkly, wriggling in her manacles. Inej and the others – except Kuwei – had awoken in the Slat’s larder, wearing Grisha manacles.

“We need a plan,” Wylan agreed and, in the gloom, Inej heard him shifting against the wall. There was a clink as his manacles scraped over the floor. “If we don’t stop them, Kaz and Ekaterine will kill the Tides.”

“The Tides can take care of themselves,” Nina said darkly. “It’s us I’m worried about. Ekaterine could infect you and Inej next.”

Inej tensed. Kaz wouldn’t let that happen, she thought, but the belief died before the thought could fully form. She remembered him telling her he’d crawl to her, that they’d fight together with knives and guns blazing to the bitter end. So much had changed since then. The unthinkable had happened. Kaz had given up; his fearsome will was broken. Inej had always known that the steel in Kaz was the same as the steel in her, it had been forged in pain from far softer material, the flaws and impurities baked into the founding of a new person, but she had not truly believed Kaz's will could fail him.

Inej could draw a line connecting the happy girl lazing in her parents' caravan on the coast that fateful morning the slavers came and the pirate captain she was today. She could see every link in the chain, every dent in the steel she wore around her heart and knew how to it came to be, but she did not know the shape of the boy who had encased himself in Dirtyhands armour. She had only ever seen the shadow he made. She didn’t know his pressure points, save two. The fear he hid behind his gloves, and the grief that had set him against Pekka Rollins all those years ago. Damage was not enough to make a person real; no pain could make them whole, but it could ruin them.

She turned her wrists in the manacles, feeling the pinch of iron. “How much longer, Jesper?” she asked. Jesper had been uncharacteristically quiet and Inej thought she knew why.

“Never rush a master at work,” Jesper muttered. “I’m working blind. It’s complicated.” There was a small sound like the scrape of sand on stone but with a metallic edge. Jesper hissed in triumph. “Almost there.”

“You can use your powers? How? Ow!” Nina shifted in the dark, smacking her elbow into a bucket with a hollow metal clang that obscured the click of Jesper’s manacles opening.

“I didn’t use my powers,” Jesper said shaking off the manacles, which hit the floor with a clatter. “I used the picks Kaz slipped me.” There was a flare of phosphorous sulfide and a small point of light bloomed. Jesper held up the match and looked around in the seconds it took for the match to wink out.

“What is Kaz doing?” Nina asked in frustration. “Does he want us to take Ekaterine by surprise? He didn’t need to lock us up to do that.”

Jesper snorted. “He probably forgot what he was planning,” he muttered darkly.

“Kaz said something to Ekaterine,” Wylan mused aloud. “He told her that he knew ‘what she was’. I think there’s a reason Kaz won’t attack her directly. If we can figure out what that is we’ll know what he’s planning.”

“He’s not planning anything, Wy,” Jesper said tiredly as he paced to the locked door. “His brain is pudding.”

“He better not hurt Kuwei. I might not like the little podge that much, but he doesn’t deserve to die,” Nina said, an almost guilty note in her voice.

Inej said nothing. There was nothing to say. Questions had hollowed out her insides and left her aching. The only solution was to get out and find her answers. Then she would know what to do. There was another flare of light as Jesper lit a second match. He cast the light over the walls. Inej saw the matchlight catch on the milky curve of one the handle of one Jesper’s revolvers sitting on the shelf between several canisters of coffee beans. Jesper crowed loudly. “Ha! Come to papa my beauties.” He holstered the guns in the dark and then lit a third match from the book. “Inej. Your knives are here,” he picked up Sankta Alina, letting the matchlight run over the blade’s reflective surface.

Inej perked up. She had felt the absence of her blades keenly since awaking in the dark. “Can you get me out of these?” she asked, lifting her manacled wrists. The last time she’d worn shackles had been in the Ice Court, and the cold bite of the metal dredged up unpleasant memories of purple silk and Tante Heleen. She did not like feeling helpless.

“Wy, take the matches.” Jesper knelt in front of Inej as Wylan fumbled to strike a match with bound hands.

Inej was used to the sublime ease with which Kaz wielded picks, watching Jesper fumble with the delicate lengths of metal in the lock was almost painful. Finally, the lock released. Inej shook off the manacles the instant she felt the catch spring open. She burst to her feet and went to the shelf to collect her knives as Jesper moved on to freeing Wylan.

“Oh, fine. Do me last. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel Jesper,” Nina grumbled.

“Sorry, Nina sweet, I love you, but Wylan does this thing with his tongue where —”

Wylan snapped. “Jesper!” Even in the dark Inej could tell he was blushing.

She heard a scrape of boot against stone beyond the door. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered waving the others to silence, even though they couldn’t see. Slipping behind the opening door, Inej readied her blade as the others snapped their manacles back on.

Light pooled in through the open door. Inej heard Roeder exclaimed, “Ghezen’s pinky, what is taking you so long? Boss said you'd be out ten minutes ago,” he complained.

Jesper grinned. “We’re free,” he promised, slipping the manacles and drawing both revolvers on Roeder, “We’re just not in the mood to leave. It’s cosy and warm in here.” Inej could see the glint of natural light reflect of his teeth as his smile flashed.

There was a slight pause and then, tentatively, Roeder said, “The Wraith’s behind the door, isn’t she?”

“I am,” Inej agreed. Whatever was going on she wasn’t going to attack Roeder. For one thing, the spider had tried to warn them about Kaz and for another, it was obvious he’d come here to release them.
Roeder sighed explosively and then ambled into the room, completely unconcerned that Jesper was still aiming at him. “You was taking too long,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that Heartrender hadn’t hurt none of you worse than the boss thought.”

“Why’d Kaz put us down here?” Jesper asked, holstering his revolvers.

“Cuz Ekaterine said so,” Roeder said and Inej saw his shoulders tense as he said her name. “That woman’s a real witch,” he muttered.

Inej slipped out of her hiding place but kept out of the frame of the open doorway. “Kaz never makes a deal from a position of weakness. It’s too hard to regain the advantage,” she said. “Why is he working with Ekaterine now?”

Roeder’s beaky nose was limned by the daylight spilling in through the door behind him. “He doesn’t have a choice. She controls them.”

“Controls who?” Nina demanded.

“The bosses, Moll Gerty, them that you killed at the Sterren. A few others we don't know about. Kaz stayed away as long as he could to stay clear of her, same as all the bosses, but once you lot turned up he had to come back,” Roeder’s eyes flickered toward Inej and then away. Inej’s fingers clenched around the hilt of her blade. “Boss bargained her down while you was in here,” he told her. “You and the merchling won’t be touched," he promised, "but Ekaterine wants your blood, Zenik.”

“And I want a ruby encrusted Samovar.” Nina crossed her arms. “She’ll have to live with the disappointment.”

“Yeah, but you won’t,” Roeder said. “Boss said to tell you if you refuse Ekaterine wants him to take the blood from you the hard way." Expression grim, Roeder said, "You won’t like that.”

“I’d like to see him try,” Nina snapped.

“You already have,” Roeder shrugged. “You saw what he did to Geels.”

Nina was quiet. Inej hadn’t seen Geels but she’d heard enough to have a good picture in her mind. Kaz had used his powers to grant Geels a painful death. Inej had thought he’d done it to settle old scores. Now she wasn’t so sure. She’d known that Kaz’s control was slipping. She had not thought that it might have been stolen from him along with his choices.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Wylan said. “I thought Ekaterine was controlling the rest of you with the drug she extracted from the bosses blood?” he asked. 'How can she also be controlling them when none of them obeyed her?"

Roeder scratched the back of his neck. “Boss reckons she used a different poison on him and the other bosses. Said it wasn’t random, who got sick and who got powers. He had me asking around before the siege. He figured out that looking for plague survivors was only part of it. Sjorrs survived the Queen’s Lady, but Ekaterine still done for him because she knew the Geels was stronger. The boss thinks she was scouting the toughest, nastiest bastards in the Barrel to be her elite guard before she went about infecting the rest of us.”

“Like Tailoring but with pathogens instead of soft tissue,” Nina mused. She huffed in frustration. “But that means she has multiple viable Etovost variants. When she left Ravka she didn’t have one. Something must have changed. It’s like she’s creating new diseases out of thin air. Oh Saints,” Nina sat up against the wall, Inej could see the dismay clearly painted over her face.

“What is it?” Inej asked.

Nina’s eyes were haunted. “Parem,” she said. “Ekaterine is an Alkemi. If she took parem she’d have the power to make as many new compounds and viruses as she wanted.”

Jesper cursed. Inej stepped forward so she could see Roeder’s face fully. “Is that true?” she asked.

The Dreg shrugged. “Dunno. I just know that she’s the only one who knows how to stop us from getting sick again. Boss wants her to make the fix permanent or give the formula to the Shu. Ekaterine thinks the boss'll kill her if she does.” Roeder's shoulders slumped. 'They was still dickering about it when I came to get you."

"If Kat's afraid that means the bosses can slip her control. I bet that's why the slippery bastard offered her a deal in the first place." Nina stood. “He figured out the parem connection and he's using the fact that Ekaterine wants my blood and the gangs under control to force her to reveal her secrets.” She huffed and crossed her arms. “I’m going to have to let that witch have my blood. It’s the only way to figure out what she does with it all.”

Inej wished fiercely that they could just kill her, surprised by how much she wanted to end the other woman’s life. But she couldn’t condemn countless others to death, not until there was no other choice. She sheaved her blades. “Kaz has always played his allies and his enemies,” she looked to her friends and said, “We have to decide if we trust him to control the game now.”

Nina grimaced. “I don't trust the slimy canal slick as far as I can throw him,” she said, “but I don’t think I have a choice. I can't raise myself with my powers, and that’s the only way I could win against Kaz’s Tidemaker power. Also, he's probably right that playing Ekaterine is the smart way to go.”

“I vote no.” Jesper folded his arms, expression obstinate. “I’m used to Kaz keeping secrets. But that was when I was sure he knew what he was doing. For all we know Kaz is just the purple floozy's puppet.”

Wylan frowned at him. “You didn’t see what I did back in the clinic,” he told Jesper. “He’s not a puppet. I don’t know if we can trust him or not, but I do know he’s not on Ekaterine’s side. I vote trust for now and come up with backup plan for later,” he said.

“That makes you the decider, Wraith,” Jesper said, looking grim. “One way or the other your vote hangs someone.” Inej nodded. There were four of them left. Nina’s choice was no vote of confidence, but it was still a choice in Kaz’s favour. If Inej sided with her and Wylan, she knew Jesper would follow even if he’d lost faith in Kaz. But Inej wasn’t sure she could cast that vote. Like Jesper, she no longer felt she knew Kaz. The mask had fallen and she couldn’t predict what he might do anymore.

The knowledge that she trusted him less now than she had when she was Van Eck’s prisoner, was a knife through her ribs. The girl who had believed Kaz would cast her aside if she was broken had still believed in his ability to win the fight. He’d surprised her then, and after, proving there was more to him than the fight. He'd reached out a hand through his armour to show her a glimpse of the boy behind the monster. Back then she'd needed to know there was something more than the con in him. Now she needed to know the con was still in him. She had thought that her doubts about Kaz had been swept away on that sunlit morning on Fifth Harbour when he delivered her parents to her and it felt like a betrayal now to discover that when it came to Kaz, there was always room in her heart for more doubt.

The fear in her was not for herself. It was for him. Kaz's true weakness was that in all his battles, he had never fought solely for himself. Every con, every murder, every beating, it had been for a purpose beyond survival. Revenge at first, and after, the challenge of staying on top. But now his empire was in ruins Kaz had decided that surviving for his own sake wasn’t worth it. Performing the cold hard calculus she had seen him use so many times before when it was someone else's life on the line, Kaz had added the figures down the page in his mind and found the balance fell against him. He was fighting to lose and it scared her enough that she'd lost sight of one simple truth.

“This isn’t about whether we trust Kaz to lead us,” she said. “This is about whether we think he’s worth fighting for.” She met Jesper’s eyes. “We’ve always known what he is,” she told the person who had been her first true friend in the Barrel and the one person bold enough to declare himself Dirtyhands friend. “We followed him willingly, even when we could have died. The stakes haven’t changed. The only thing that has is now Kaz needs us more than we need him. You called him your friend, Jesper. If helping a friend isn’t worth the risk, what is?” she asked.

“Saints, Inej. That was a low blow,” Jesper groaned. He threw up his hands. “I don’t want to fight him!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want to have to throw a fistful of iron filings in his face and watch him bleed because he went after Wy, or you or Nina.”

Wylan patted his pocket. “That’s unlikely to happen. Kaz took my vial of filings,” he said.

Jesper scowled at him. “Not helping, Wy.”

“Running away won’t either,” Wylan said simply. “We’re going to have to face Kaz one way or the other. Either we face him as one of us, or we face him as an enemy. We need to decide now, all of us, before we leave here.”

“If I’d lost control on Parem, I'd have wanted to be put down,” Nina said quietly. "Saints know, I don't want Kaz as an enemy, but I'll put him down for his sake if I have to." She'll grimaced. "I'll just lure him and Kat to graveyard first."

“This is Kaz we’re talking about," Jesper said. "He’s not going to come at us with a killer wave or anything we can see coming. He’ll hit where we’re least expecting. For all we know he and Ekaterine are waiting in his office to disembowel us right now.”

“He won’t kill us in his office. The desk is new. He wouldn’t ruin it,” Inej said.

Jesper scoffed. “What you’re saying is your basing your decision on Kaz’s affection for quality carpentry protecting us against his rampant insanity.”

“I wouldn’t call it rampant,” Wylan murmured. “It’s quite subtle really.”

Nina agreed. “Haven’t we always trusted Kaz’s greed to protect us from the rest of his Kaz-ness?” she asked rhetorically.

Inej ignored them focused on Jesper. “I'm not trusting Kaz," she said. "I’m trusting myself.” She drew herself up. “I don’t need Kaz to protect me.” She never had, but he’d protected her anyway, just as she’d protected him. That was what they did for each other. She'd let the horrors of the Etovost plague distract her, like a naive mark new to the Staves dazzled by the flash and glitter. Her lips quirked as Kaz's words flittered into her mind. “I’m fighting to protect my investment,” she said.

It had hurt her once, when Kaz called her an investment. But what was an investment if not a promise for the future? And what greater mark of trust could there be, but to make an investment in someone else's survival? Kaz had done that from the beginning, gambling a frightened girl in a brothel could become a spy even the Barrel bosses would one day fear. Inej had made a deposit of her own every time she offered a prayer for Kaz's safety or hope that he could be better than his worst. Ekaterine was stealing that investment. Inej had a hundred reasons to fight for Kaz, she realised, but in the end, as it had been when she’d been his spider stealing rich men’s secrets, fighting for Kaz meant fighting for herself. And that, Inej knew, was the only fight that absolutely must be won.

“You lose, Jes,” Wylan said. “Three votes to one.”

Jesper’s shrug was suspiciously easy. “The odds were against me.” Inej shot him a sharp look and caught the hint of a smile playing at the edges of his lips. She found herself wondering if Jesper had really lost, or if he’d played them the whole time. Had the gambler finally learned to bluff?

Roeder cleared his throat loudly. “If you’re done with your pointless debate? I’m supposed to bring you to the parlour.” Expression droll he added, “I don’t know why you bothered with all that. It’s not like you had any choice,” he pointed out drily.

“But now we can face our disembowelment knowing we chose it ourselves,” Jesper told him chipperly. “I’ve heard it's good to die with a clear conscience.”

The parlour was where Kaz had fought for control of the gang on the night he ousted Per Haskell. It wasn’t so much a discrete room as the entirety of the ground floor of the Slat cluttered with mismatched chairs and a long wooden table where the gang ate and drank together. The last time Inej had been in the Slat she had noted the improvements Kaz had made to the décor, the bare floorboards covered in new rugs and the plump cushions on the rickety chairs. There was not much evidence of home improvements now. The Etovost plague had taken its toll on the Slat. The walls were singed black in places, the ceiling was covered in damp water stains, the floor was lumpy and pitted as if the wooden boards had warped and buckled and much of the furniture had been piled, broken, in the corners of the room.

A large number of Dregs were in attendance, standing at the edges of the room or sitting on the steps of the stairs. Some looked visibly sick, while others, like Roeder, looked mostly unchanged. Anika leaned against the cold fireplace, rolling a grimy lump of coal between her palms, her smouldering eyes rooted on Ekaterine. Pim sat beside her on the flagstones serene as always and Keeg looked like he was trying to detach his hand from the mantle without much luck. His fingers had fused with the wood as if it was sticky clay.

Kaz sat in one of the surviving wingback armchairs, his bad leg propped up on upholstered footstool. Ekaterine had given him back his cane and Kaz kept one hand on the crow’s head as he faced the Fabrikator. Ekaterine sat opposite Kaz, in a wingback chair of her own drawn up to a low table Inej did not recognise. She sipped daintily from a cup of tea, a gleaming samovar set up on the table in front of her. She set her cup into the saucer on the table when she saw Nina, a moue of displeasure marking her face. “I had hoped you’d call my bluff, Nina darling. I was looking forward to making new boots out of your dried-up flesh.”

“What a coincidence, Kat dear. I was thinking the exact same thing about you,” Nina simpered but her eyes were on Kaz. The two exchanged a look. Inej wondered at the look and the odd note of grudging respect. They were being pitched against each other in a game Ekaterine sought to control but that look was an acknowledgement that when the time came, both would fight together against a shared enemy.

“Where is Kuwei?” Inej asked. He wasn’t in the room with them.

Kaz’s eyes flicked to her, but he did not speak. Ekaterine flapped a lace covered hand negligently. “Locked upstairs. He was being quite obstreperous,” she complained. “He can stay upstairs until he learns how to behave in company.”

Inej looked at Kaz. He sighed, resting his head in one hand, elbow up on the chair arm. He looked vaguely annoyed, in a distant sort of way like he was only partially paying attention. Inej moved slowly around behind his chair, keeping her eye on Ekaterine’s surviving Grisha. She was down to three. The two Corporalki from the clinic and a purple kefta wearing Materialnik who stood near the front door, arms wrapped defensively around herself. Reaching around the chair Inej briefly rested her hand on Kaz's shoulder. His muscles were tensed under her hand, as if was holding himself taut like a spring.

“Mister Van Eck, we haven’t been formally introduced,” Ekaterine smiled at Wylan. “Kaz has made a salient argument as to why you will be useful going forward,” she told him brightly. “In recognition I have graciously agreed to leave you to your dull, humdrum Otkazat’sya existence.” Her smile stretched waxily. “Please do let me know if you’d like my serum. I think you’d make a fine Materialnik.”

Wylan’s cheekbones stood out sharply as he struggled to keep his expression fixed. “No thank you, Miss Ekaterine.”

“And you, the pirate girl,” Ekaterine frowned at Inej. “Kaz has made it clear that you are not to be touched,” the Fabrikator’s smile was rigid. “And while I do not think his argument anywhere near as well-reasoned, it was certainly compelling.” Her gimlet eyes glittered dangerously as she looked at Kaz, who sat so still Inej wasn’t sure he’d taken a breath in the last twenty seconds. Inej noticed that the front of Ekaterine’s kefta was damp, as if wet hands had closed around her throat.

Ekaterine waited, but when Inej said nothing, she swept on, enamoured with her own voice. “Now that we’re acquainted, let’s get down to business, shall we? It is now your responsibility to keep me safe, as my own guard has been unfortunately thinned.” She waved her hand toward the Ravkan Grisha. Inej didn’t think she was mistaken when the female Corporalnik flinched.

“What?” Jesper stared at Kaz. “Seriously. We’re stuck guarding the crazy lady?”

Ekaterine and Kaz watched each other. Ekaterine twinkled, almost wriggling with glee. Kaz bestirred himself to speak. “You’re protecting the cure,” he rasped, voice so hoarse it cracked.

“She has it? Will she give it to Kuwei?” Wylan asked eagerly. There was a pause. Ekaterine looked inordinately pleased with herself. Kaz looked tired.

Nina groaned aloud, “Sankt Petyr on a donkey. Please tell me she isn’t the cure.”

Ekaterine picked up her teacup and spat in it. Then she clasped the cup between her palms and swirled the contents before tipping it out onto the table. There was a hiss and crackle, and foul-smelling steam rose as the contents of the cup burned through the wood faster than auric acid. Dabbing daintily at her lips, Ekaterine declared, “Nina darling, I am the crucible. Through me all things can be made and unmade.” The tip of her tongue flicked out to brush her top lip. Inej saw that it was black as pitch.

Chapter Text

The Madman's Hand Pt 1:

Kaz:

Kaz thought that heaven would look a lot like the depths within Inej’s eyes. He wanted to dive into them. They looked peaceful. “Kaz,” she said and the hand gripping his shoulder tightened. His muscles were already tensed; holding himself still against the pain took all his concentration, but if he could have, he would have flinched. Her hand was a brand through his clothes; too firm, too dry. Too much.

“Pim,” he said.

“Yeah, boss?”

“Water.”

“Right boss.”

Ekaterine was gone. The chair opposite him was empty. If he tried, he was sure he’d remember where’d she gone. He didn’t try. The only way he’d care was if Ekaterine was rotting in a hole in the ground. And she wasn't. He hadn't put her there yet. He was sure there was a reason for that. He'd think about it later. There was probably a plan. There was always a plan. He focused on Inej’s eyes. Her face. She knelt in front of his chair. Silken strands of her coming loose from the braid running down her back. Had she changed in the last year? He couldn’t tell. She was simply Inej. And that was everything. He wanted to swim in her pupils. They were deep enough to drown in. Pim brought him water in a stained and chipped beer stein. The water looked clean. It had come from the rain butt out behind the Slat. Kaz held the stein in his gloved hands, fingers running over the faceted divots in the glass. He breathed in and let a little of the pain in. His bad leg was a single, solid mass of pain from his ankle to his pelvis. Bile hit the back of his throat and he swallowed hard, willing the pain down before he could make a sound. He didn’t dare touch his leg. There were some thresholds even he couldn’t pass.

“Kaz.” Inej was annoyed. He could hear it in her voice. That was quite a trick as he didn’t remember doing anything to achieve the result. The ambush at the clinic had been more improvisation than design, but he supposed it might count. He could have told the others what was going to happen. He hadn’t. What would be the point? It wouldn’t have changed the outcome. “Stand up, Kaz,” Inej said urgently.

“Can’t.”

“Why can’t you?” She asked and he frowned. She knew, he realised. How had he given himself away?

“My leg is broken,” he said.

“Who hurt you?” Inej’s eyes were so deep the darkness went on forever. It was comforting. He imagined the same darkness would find him if he lived so long as to die in his sleep an old man. Not that would happen. The water claimed him years ago. Eyes. He refocused on her eyes. He had the absurd thought that if he leaned closer, he’d see a reflection of the old farm kitchen within their depths. There'd be hutspot in the oven and wind-up dogs jumping on the floor. Jordie would be rolling red ribbons. Somewhere in the back fields, his Pa would be ploughing. In one single piece, his guts where they belong and not strewn across the field. But that wasn’t right. He’d sold the farm to Rotty. The kitchen was a distillery now. The only thing growing in the fields was wormwood.

There had been a question. He should answer it. “Ernst, the Heartrender. He rebroke the bone in my bad leg. Should have gone for the good one. That would have given me trouble.” He knew how to be broken in his bad leg. He knew how to swallow down pain. He expected it. He could fix it. He didn’t know how to bend around new damage; he hadn't learned that trick yet. He was beginning to think he might be approaching his quota on what he could manage. A frightening thought. There was so much to manage. There was not a part of him that was not broken or bent, but there came a point when something vital would snap and he wouldn’t be able to scrape his broken pieces into working order any longer. He could see that time coming, along the event horizon line in his mind's eye. But not yet. He was done yet. There was still a lot to do.

“Pim can fix it?” Inej asked.

He took a moment to wonder what she meant, then remembered his leg (he hadn't forgotten. The pain wouldn't let him.) He shook his head, the motion dizzying. “Pim needs to pry Keeg off the mantle,” he said. A bruiser stuck to the architecture was no good at all.

He gulped a mouthful of water and poured the rest over his bad leg. His parched skin drank in the moisture. A tingle ran through his body, like a fever shiver. He could feel his boundaries weakening, the shape of him loosening. The water diffused the pain, spilling it away. He became a boneless thing. Something that was only real because he willed himself so. Easy to fall apart. Easy to drain away. He didn’t have to reset along broken lines when he could give up his shape altogether and simply…stop. He had never been one for easy. Heaven wasn’t waiting for him. Jordie was counting fishes, not ribbons. His father was old bones in deep dirt and his blood was feeding wormwood. Inej’s eyes were not his private pools. There was no rest. Only the hard pull of broken lines and tired bones. Only the knowledge that the one cage he couldn’t escape was himself.

“Why did Ernst break your leg, Kaz?”

Kaz breathed through the last of the fluid shift. He drew his pieces together and braced through the pain of bone reconstituting. Why did she have to ask that question? Didn't she know it didn't matter? Why does the world break you? Because it can, Inej. Because that's what living does to a man. “I was going to rip out Ekaterine's throat.” After he'd drowned her in her own bodily juices. He'd been poised to sink his fingers through her trachea when Ernst snapped his shin bone.

“Why?” So deep, those eyes. He felt lost in them, frustrated by the dark current of confusion he saw in the ripple of tensed skin around her lids; the furrow cutting deep into her brow was an insult. Don't ask me that. You know. Everyone knows. You’re the one secret I can’t keep. Another of my weaknesses I’ve learned to wear on my skin. He never expected her to mock him with his weakness. It wasn't like her. Had he angered her that much? He couldn't remember.

“She threatened you.” I'd drown the world for you. Or save it, if I had to. I'd live for you, but you don't need me.

A flinch. A frown. He saw the denial forming before she spoke the words. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know.” If he hadn’t he’d never have persuaded Haskell to buy her out of Heleen’s contract. He’d never have made her his right hand, his Wraith. If she had truly needed his protection, she’d never have had it. Inej looked away. His fingers clenched around the chair arm. He didn’t have the means to keep his own secrets anymore. Words had become dangerous. He didn't know what might come spilling out. Water was transparent, in its purest form. He hadn’t learnt how to disguise himself in the filth of the gutters yet. Tell me you know my secret, Inej. Tell me you’ll keep it for me like all the others.

“Boss!” Anika’s shrill voice bored into his brain. A hot breath of air stung his skin. He resisted the urge to lash out. The Inferni was too close. She breathed smoke like a dragon from her nose. “Boss, it’s Pim. Something’s wrong.”

Inej rose to her feet, lithe as silk, quick as a spring. He was slower. He thought about letting go of his body and flowing through the wall, but his skin was too dry, too parched. His bad leg had set into crooked concrete, the pain encasing bone and sinew. It would not let him go. The cold metal of his crow’s head cane was hard and unyielding under his hand. He resented it. He wanted to sink into the canal and rest awhile.

Pim was on the floor in the kitchen. His body twisted in a rigid curl of stiff limbs. His face was frozen in terror. Keeg knelt beside him, his fingers pink and raw. “He fixed me and keeled over. Think he’s dying.” Kaz thought he was right. Pim’s skin had taken on the whorled pattern of wood grain and his fingers were fat as kindling. Steadying his balance, Kaz poked Pim in the chest with the end of his cane. His skin did not give. His chest was as hard and still as a lump of wood.

Kaz looked at Ekaterine, annoyed. He did not need this right now. She stood by the butcher’s block table, fingers steepled together. Jesper stood behind her, expression stricken. Kaz took a moment to remember why the sharpshooter was there. Then he remembered; he’d done this. This was the deal he’d struck. He looked at Nina, sat at the far end of the table, grimacing as she pumped her fist, forcing more blood from her arm into the transfusion bag Ernst held above her head. This was his design laid bare. He didn't like its shape. Dregs filled the kitchen, come to witness the death. Sentimental fools. They’d forgotten the rule: no mourners, no funerals. Not that the rule had ever stood. They might not have country headstones and mourning bands in the Barrel, but the wormwood would flow tonight, everyone drinking a cup to fallen friends. And come the morning it would all start again.

“Do something,” the merchling’s voice was strident with the urgency that came from the happy entitlement of believing life had meaning. He stood between Ekaterine and twisted Pim on the bare stone floor. Kaz couldn't remember why he was there.

Ekaterine’s smile was broad and red. “Whyever would I do that?” she asked. “I have many Corporalki. This one is of no value to me.”

“You lumpen whore!” The butcher’s block table caught fire. Pinky Tobin held Anika back before she could leap over it, a cheery red and smoking blade in her hand. Jesper tossed a bucket of rainwater over the tabletop. Steam hissed wetly. Kaz watched the wash-over spill to the floor. On the ground, Pim’s stiff body rocked like driftwood stirred by a sluggish current. The Dregs stood at Kaz’s back. Waiting. Watching. He wondered briefly where the old man was. He'd tossed all his model ships into the canal. Perhaps he should go and fetch them?

Ekaterine watched him. She was waiting too. “Shall I cure your Dreg, Mister Brekker? Shall I do what you can’t?”

Kaz hooked her ankle with a loop of water from the floor. She crashed to the slab stones, arms flailing. Jesper dropped to his knees, joints as knobby as an overgrown spider and pushed the barrel of his revolver into her forehead. Inej’s blade hit the female healer in the shoulder. The woman crashed back against a pile of grain bags, face pale with shock. Pinky released Anika who breathed a gout of fire toward the Ravkan Fabrikator. The woman screamed and scuttled out of the back door before she could burn.

Ernst raised a hand. Kaz’s vision blurred. A shock of pressure lit up through his bad leg, just this side of snapping bone. Kaz sent a line of water over the floor toward him. He caught Ernst’s feet but didn’t have the leverage to drag him down. Nina yanked the transfusion needle from her arm and slammed her elbow into his face. there was a satisfying wet crunch. The blood bag hit the floor along with a spatter of Ernst's blood. Kaz pulled the bag to him along the water line. He forced the blood out and held it between his palms before tossing it into the wall. He took hold of the needle and checked the tubing was still attached at both ends. He stepped over Pim and approached Ekaterine.

“No!” Ekaterine struggled against Wylan’s arms holding her down. “Ernst! Stop him. He’s stealing my blood.”

Pain ripped through his leg. Ernst was nothing if not predictable. Kaz slapped his hand down on the tabletop, absorbing the sitting water. Needles of pain crackled over his scalp. He went blind, sparks of fire behind his eyes. But pain only mattered in the flesh. He let his shape go and flowed along the table. He had a target, and water always kept its course. The human body was little more than a fleshy sack of fluids. It drew him forward. Punching through flesh and tissue Kaz solidified on the tabletop. His right hand tingled, the memory of shrinking tissue and cracking bone scraping against his knuckles almost immediately washed away by the flood of coolness that came with a fresh drenching. He looked down at the desiccated husk crumpled on the floor. There was silence in the kitchen.

“Saints,” said the Ravkan healer, “I’m sick of this.” The Shu woman glared at him. “I’ll help your man. Just keep your freakish hands off me.”

Kaz had no interest in the woman. He slid off the table, studying the droplets of water crusting his gloves. They looked almost like ice, but they sank through the leather into his skin just like water. More water ran down his spine under his clothes and dripped off the ends of his hair. His leg had stopped hurting. The water healing all ills.

“Ahn, you traitor! What are you doing?” Ekaterine thrashed on the floor. Kaz could hear her petticoats scraping over the stone.

“I’ve had enough, Kat," Ahn snapped. "I don’t know why I ever listened to you, but I refuse to die for you. This madness has gone on long enough.” Ahn crouched beside Pim, investigating his body with expert hands. “He’s breathing,” she said. “I don’t know how, but he is.” Kaz walked around the table. Inej handed him his cane. Together they watched Ahn peel back Pim’s yellow shirt and place her hands on his wooden chest. “Concentrate on the feel of my skin,” she told Pim. “Remember what flesh feels like and heal yourself.”

Kaz walked to the blood-soaked wall. He could have told Ahn why she'd followed Ekaterine. She'd done it for the same reason he still hadn't killed the woman. There was something in her blood. Ekaterine was an invisible contagion, her control nebulous but consuming. He said nothing. He wasn't in the business of giving information away for free. He looked at Nina, questioningly. “Oh, no. You’re not sticking me with another needle," she said. "That’s the only blood you’re getting.”

Fair enough. He hadn't expected anything else from her. “You can’t do this!” Ekaterine wailed. “We had a deal.”

“And I’m honouring it,” Kaz said. “You’ll get your army, and your sample. And I get your blood.” He pushed the end of his cane into her sternum as Wylan finally managed to wrestle her sleeve up. Jesper messily inserted the needle, repeatedly jabbing her arm and missing the vein.

Ekaterine hissed. “You cretin. Are you trying to kill me?”

“If I was, I’d succeed,” Jesper gritted out. “Hold still if you don’t want me making more holes in you.”

Ekaterine glared up at Kaz. “You planned this.”

“No, you did,” he corrected. “I can tell you’re not a card player. You don’t read your opponent well. You thought it would undermine my position if Pim died," he told her, shaking his head. "That's your trouble. You think like a kept Grisha. But life is cheap in the Barrel. If Pim died, Anika would kill you, we’d all get roaring drunk and tomorrow would be just another day." Instead, she’d given him the opportunity to remove the biggest threat in her entourage, turn her healer and, if they found the woman, the timid Fabrikator as well. All it had cost him was a rebroken leg and a secret he couldn’t keep anyway.

Ekaterine lifted her head off the floor, her angry eyes narrowing on Inej. “Perhaps I’ll repay this insult,” she hissed.

Inej drew Sankt Petyr and crouched at the woman’s feet. “Perhaps I’ll carve out your eyes,” she suggested.

“Welcome to the Dregs, Ekaterine,” Kaz said. “We take our deals seriously here. Everyone pays up one way or the other.”

Ekaterine gave up struggling. He could see her calculating her odds. She was no gambler, but she didn't lack for wit. He knew that she'd give up no further advantage today. She was used to scheming from a position of strength, convinced of her own importance. She’d never lived with the knowledge that her life held no value. She'd never begged, borrowed or stole just to see tomorrow. She didn’t understand how to win from behind. She didn’t understand loss. That was his advantage. But he knew he couldn't hold it for long. He'd need to find another soon.

He saw the first glimmer of understanding shade her face. “Your people are supposed to guard me. That was our deal,” she said.

“They are. Don’t you feel safe, Ekaterine?” he asked.

“The Suli threatened to cut my eyes out!”

“It wasn’t a threat. It was a suggestion,” Inej replied, flipping her knife and sheathing it with a flicker of sleight-of-hand that caught Kaz’s eye and his curiosity. He wanted to know who’d been teaching her tricks. He wanted to know if they were better than him.

Throttling his jealousy, Kaz said, “Right now Jesper and Wylan are keeping you safe from me. I don’t like traitors. Hurt one of my Dregs again and I’ll do to you what I did to Ernst.”

Ekaterine bared her teeth in a savage grin. “You can’t. I made you. Your powers don’t work on me.”

He'd been wrong. It turned out Ekaterine did have more to give. He leaned back, removing his cane. He swept his hair from his brow. "How much longer?" he asked Jesper.

“I don’t know,” he admitted holding out the flat bag. “It’s like getting blood out of a stone. I think she’s stopping the flow.”

Kaz looked at Ekaterine, her teeth gritted around her smile. “Torture me, I dare you. It won’t do you any good. I control my body on a level you can’t dream of. I might have taught you, but not now,” she told him spitefully. “All you had to do was accept my offer and Pim could have been healed without all this fuss. Now I know I can’t trust you. You see,” she crowed, “you’re not the only one who can trick an enemy into revealing hard truths.”

Kaz shook his head. “You don’t bluff well,” he told her. “You’ve never trusted me.” He trailed the end of his cane up her sternum until it rested in the divot of her throat where collarbone joined. He watched her swallow, felt the movement of her flesh push back against the cane. The tiny rivulets of water ran down his wrists, passed his fingers, to trail down the cane toward her. She hid her fear, but he knew how to see hidden things and he knew it was there. “Bleed now, Kat, or bleed later. It’s your choice.”

“What about my sample. You promised me the Corpsewitch’s blood.”

Nina snorted. “First rule of the Barrel. Don’t bet with someone else’s chips. Kaz should have known better.”

“I did know better,” he said. “The sample is fine.” He gestured to the wall where Nina’s blood remained beaded over the cracked plaster. “Not a drop spilled.”

“Show off,” Jesper muttered. “How’d you learn so much so quickly anyway?”

“I drowned myself seventeen times in one night,” Kaz replied. He shrugged. “When you want to learn how something works you have to pull it apart. It wasn’t that hard to apply the principle to myself.”

He’d always been good at making himself over into whatever shape was needed for the job. Jesper didn’t need to know that he’d failed to pass through the ice wall, or that every time he’d snapped back together, lungs burning, blinded by panic, clinging to the lip of the canal by his fingertips, his thoughts scattered, unable to remember where and who he was, had been its own form of failure. Most people didn’t have the brutality to learn from failure. They couldn’t throw themselves into the terror of loss, the ache of defeat, for long enough to find the advantage in it. Kaz had been doing it for years. He wasn’t sure he’d recognise a win that didn’t hurt. His gaze sought Inej before skittering away.

“I made you too well,” Ekaterine complained. “I wanted a perfect weapon.” She sighed, “If only you were biddable.”
She hadn’t made him. She’d broken him and there was nothing special in that. “I’m perfectly amenable,” Kaz said, ignoring Wylan’s choked cough and the flash of Jesper’s grin in his peripheral vision. “I honour my deals. The Barrel and the gangs will work with you for our mutual survival.”

“And where is this army?” Ekaterine demanded. “Where did the Lions go or my other generals? Why did they slink away after storming the clinic?”

“That’s a good question,” Jesper said. “The whole thing was a feint, wasn’t it?”

“I can’t remember,” Kaz said, deadpan.

Jesper snorted. “Oh, sure play that card when it suits you. Just so you know, the next time you claim not to remember a plan, I’m not going to believe you.”

“Good for you, Jes.”

Inej said, “Kaz. I need to speak to you.”

He looked at her, but not into her eyes. That would be dangerous. He’d just remembered why drowning wasn’t part of the plan right now. Facing him was not the Wraith, but Captain Ghafa, a woman who commanded her own legend, whose reputation would soon eclipse his. She didn't demand his total attention; she simply owned it. He followed her out of the kitchen and up the stairs of the Slat, accepting the rebuke as she forced him to climb every damn flight to his old office. He still didn't know what he'd done to anger her, but he probably deserved it.

Chapter Text

The Madman's Hand Pt. 2:

Inej:

Inej kicked an empty beer bottle out of the way as she walked into the cluttered office. The old door desk was the same as she remembered. The soot-stained walls were not. Moving to the window she ran her finger through a thick crust of ash covering the sill.

“The office is Anika’s now,” Kaz told her when she looked a question him.

He moved into the office slowly, taking in the damage with a dispassionate air. He flicked a wad of burned paper into the corner with the end of his cane. Inej watched him closely. He appeared steady on his bad leg, his gait fluid. She watched his gaze flick over the objects in the room as if they meant nothing to him. She wanted to know what he was thinking. After a moment he moved toward the water closet, his gloved hands sliding over the rim of the washbasin.

Inej tensed. “Don’t,” she said when he reached for the faucet tap.

He looked at her, puzzled. His hair was drying into dark waves, his skin returning to its normal paleness instead of the near translucence it had been when he thrust his arm through Ernst’s chest. She didn’t want to watch that change. She didn't want to see him become an elemental creature whose shape she didn't recognise. She wanted him away from water. She looked pointedly at his still drying shirt and then met his eyes. His gaze was a shattered window, a vacancy there that had yet to be filled. She felt like Kaz was only partly present, as if every time he used his new power it washed pieces of him away.

Kaz seemed to follow the line of her thoughts. He looked down at the basin and then slowly pulled his hands from the rim. He left the closet. Inej took up a station by the window. Folding herself onto the sill she wrapped her arms around one leg. Resting her chin on her knee she watched as Kaz made his way to the desk. Sitting down he pulled an appointment book toward him, flipping through the pages. It was a nervous gesture and it unnerved her to see it.

“Does Anika keep the accounts now?” she asked.

“No,” Kaz looked up. “This is the Crow Clubs roster.”

There was much to discuss. Ekaterine was unpredictable and dangerous. Inej knew she would try and hurt her friends. She already had. They didn’t have a workable plan for breaking down the ice wall or finding a scapegoat for the Council of Tides. It was time to stop reacting and start making plans. She needed to know that Kaz would not be a liability. She drew breath to speak and different words came out. “Jordie would want you to live,” she heard herself say.

Kaz did not look up from the desk. “I’ve lived long enough,” he said.

“There is always more life to live; that is the gift of the living. To reject it is to spit in the eye of those who had the gift taken from them by force,” Inej argued. More quietly she added, “I have never known you to give up.”

Kaz looked up at her, his eyes black. “I’m not going to get better,” he said. “There is no cure.”

“Then why fight so hard for it?” Inej asked. “Why not kill Ekaterine now?”

Kaz looked across the room to the closed door. He played with a singed coin, flipping it through his fingers and making it disappear too fast for Inej to follow the motion. “You misunderstand me,” he said. “Ekaterine’s blood can cure the others. It can’t help me.”

Inej sat up straighter. “How do you know?”

Kaz sat back in his chair. The coin reappeared. He tossed it from palm to palm. “Simple logic. There are hundreds of Etovost Grisha, but I’m the only Tidemaker. I killed Geels but all the others died in the early stages of the disease. There are no coincidences, only failures and enemy action. Ekaterine picked her targets too well for anything else, but even she can’t control life and death. Someone with a vested interest wiped out the Etovost Tidemakers.”

Inej sat back against the windowsill. “The Council of Tides,” she whispered.

Kaz looked at her. “I didn’t make a deal with the Tides, Inej. How could I? I don’t know who they are.”

Inej held herself perfectly still. “The letter Schipp showed Wylan, it was a forgery,” she said dread sitting like lead pellets in her belly.

“Did he even read the letter?” Kaz asked disgustedly. “Or did Schipp simply wave a piece of paper under his nose and tell him it was from me?"

“He tricked all of us,” she said not wanting to lay the blame solely on Wylan and Jesper’s shoulders. “He and Karl Dryden. They distracted us by revealing their power and we believed them because they could give us what we needed.” An old con and one they should have seen through but it was too late for recriminations now.

Kaz nodded. “Sleight-of-hand Grisha style," he murmured. "If someone turns up with all the answers, they’re selling something.”

“Schipp claimed you knew he was a Squaller,” Inej told him.

“He lied. I knew he had a secret. His service record was too neat and clean, and he retired, happy and wealthy, too young to be honest, but I couldn’t dig anything up. Makes sense if he’s in the Tides pocket,” Kaz admitted.

“They wanted us to find you,” Inej said lowly, fingers clenching in her lap.

Kaz smirked. “Karl Dryden couldn't kill me if he brought every drop of the ocean down on my head," he told her confidently. "That’s assuming I'm his real target. Dryden clearly has hidden depths. He might have done this to take out Wylan. The Council of Tides could intend to take the city with Dryden as their figurehead.”

“What can be done?” Inej asked.

Kaz shrugged, a loose, almost careless gesture he would never have made before. “Why do anything?” he asked. “If the Tides make a play for the Council, they’ll be forced out in the open and vulnerable." Expression abstracted he said, "There’s merit in letting our enemies fight it out among themselves.”

“That could destroy the city,” Inej objected. She sighed. “We have too many enemies. I don’t want any of them to gain the advantage.” She lowered her head, thinking. Aloud she said, “I don’t care who runs Ketterdam but I don’t want Wylan to lose his position.”

Kaz agreed. “It’s useful having a merch in your pocket. Whoever takes the city will see him as a threat. He knows too much. And if Wylan loses his position, the Wraith loses her protection under Kerch law.”

Inej did not pretend that was not a consideration. Sailing under the Van Eck seal was an advantage she did not want to lose, but that was a distant concern. “I wish we knew what our enemies wanted,” she said. “There are too many agendas. We can spend all our time guessing and still not find the truth.”

“Then I suppose we need to find your southern pirates, and run a game of our own,” Kaz said.
“The Blue Bell syndicate,” Inej agreed, although she did not for a moment think that Kaz was not running several cons simultaneously as they spoke. Transformed he might, but while he breathed, Kaz Brekker would scheme. It was as inevitable as the moon pulling the tides. “Will our plan work if the Tides are against us?”

“You said Dryden put you onto the idea of finding a scapegoat? Chances are the Tides want to avoid war with Ravka as much as Zenik does. They can’t very well hold the city if the navy is fighting on Ravkan seas,” Kaz pointed out.

“I wonder how long the Tides have been planning this?” Inej mused. “Dryden has been a Councilman for years.”

“Crisis breeds opportunity,” Kaz reminded her. “It’s possible the Council simply saw an opening and decided to take advantage.”

Inej frowned at him. “Why now? Why not twenty-seven years ago when they flooded the Stadhall? Why not during Kuwei’s auction?” she demanded.

“I don’t have your answers, Inej,” Kaz admitted with breath-taking honesty. “They found me once, right after the auction. They knew Yul-Bo wasn’t dead. They wanted me to hand him over. When I didn’t, they made it clear I owed them. Maybe sending you here was a way of calling in their marker.”

Inej smothered the surprise she felt to learn this now. She should not be surprised that Kaz had never told her. He kept his secrets too well for that. At least he had. She studied him covertly as he pretended to be interested in the defunct club's shift roster. What did she want more? she asked herself, a Kaz who kept his secrets safe from everyone or one who looked at her like she was the first safe harbour he’d found across rough seas? The answer came to her immediately and it surprised her. “You never told me the Tides came after you,” she said softly, needing to say something.

“They were hardly the biggest threat I met that week,” he said dismissively. “They tried to drown me. I threatened to expose them. That was that. I didn’t think more of it.”

“And now you’re the only remaining Etovost Tidemaker and you want to kill them because you think they want to kill you,” she said softly.

“I don’t know what I think,” Kaz said and Inej stared at him. She’d watched him turn into water and glide across the kitchen counter before shoving his arm through a man’s chest less than an hour ago. That had not shocked her. Kaz had always been a very efficient killer. Admitting he was not fully in control of himself and everyone else? That upset her. She had always known that not everything would bend to his will, although sometimes it was easier to believe otherwise. She had never believed that she would ever see him bend, shift or change so much.

“Honesty doesn’t suit you, Kaz,” she said quietly.

He almost smiled. “I’m surprised to hear you say that Inej. Don’t your Saints love a humble heart?”

“My Saints have little to do with your heart,” she told him. “And you would wish it no other way.”

This time he did smile. A shockingly boyish grin that scythed across his face, there and gone quicker than a flash of sunlight breaking through the leaden clouds beyond the window. “I need to know Ekaterine’s tell,” he told her.

Inej cocked her head. “Don’t you know it?” she asked.

“No,” he said tightly. “I can’t trust my reactions around her and if I can’t trust my judgement, I can’t read her.”

Inej picked at a stain on her leggings. “Does she have that much power over you?” she asked. She kept her eyes averted. She did not want him to read her fear.

“If she does, I pity her control,” he replied flippantly. He pushed the chair back so he could lean against the wall, turning his head to regard her. “She found me, the night of the siege. She found the other Barrel bosses too. We all went into hiding and she took control of the gangs. I think she can repel and attract us to her, but only if we're close.”

“Like a magnet,” Inej mused. She met his eyes. "You're drawing her fire away from the other bosses. You've made them your proxies while you distract her."

The coin reappeared. Kaz tossed it in the air and caught it. “I haven’t tested the theory," he said avoiding answering her with none of his usual deftness. "I don’t think any of us can hurt her. I’m not sure about Anika and the others whose powers fade.”

“And yet you attacked her,” Inej said. “What was that if not testing a theory?” she asked, surprised by the heat of anger climbing up from her chest. She knew the true answer, but she still hoped he’d give her a different one with which she could reframe what happened.

Kaz’s expression shaded into annoyance. “I made a mistake,” he said. “I miscalculated. It won’t happen again.”

“Your newfound fallibility concerns me,” Inej told him drily. What she meant was: I need you safe more than I need to be protected from a woman who has yet to hurt me. The only thing Kaz’s volatility had done was paint a target on her back. Inej could deal with that but it worried her that Kaz had acted so recklessly. The only time he had done that before was when he went after Pekka Rollins in the Ice Court. She knew what demons had driven him then. She didn't want to acknowledge what had driven him now.

Kaz’s expression darkened further. “I’m not thrilled with the development either.”

The memory of Pekka Rollins’ sleeping form flashed through her mind, unbidden. She remembered the spread of his nightshirt and the precise cut she’d left over his heart. She remembered sneaking into his son’s room and leaving the crow behind. A message and a threat she had been entirely willing to fulfil. She thought of the Heartrender Ernst. Kaz had killed him horribly and she did not care. He’d saved her the job of doing it herself. The man had snapped Kaz’s leg. Inej had intended to repay the insult. Hypocrite, she thought. She was angry with him for doing what she herself would do.

She had the strangest thought that she and Kaz had changed places, somehow. Here she wanted cold, hard calculation and the wall of Kaz’s terrible, granite will that had for so long held his secrets behind it. She wanted a plan and the sure knowledge that Kaz would execute that plan no matter what, and what she had was a Kaz who was pulling his walls down in front of her, brick by brick. Water erodes stone, she remembered and felt fear rise around her own heart like a wall of ice. Once she had wanted him without his walls and armour, now she was afraid that what she would see revealed was something her heart had no match for. He had once given her the ship of her dreams. She could not give him the brother he mourned.

“I don’t want you hurt,” she told him.

He quirked his brow. “I’m a lot harder to kill than I used to be,” he pointed out.

And yet you still wish to die, Inej thought. Aloud she said, “Death is not an opponent you can outmanoeuvre. Power won’t save you when it comes for you, Kaz.”

He shrugged. “Death has shown no interest in claiming me yet,” he said a hint of bitterness in his tone. He looked at her and promised, “I won’t give up the fight. I won’t leave you to deal with Ekaterine alone.”

“I have no fear of Ekaterine. She bleeds just like everyone else.”

“Not according to Jesper,” Kaz muttered.

Inej did not roll her eyes. “Then I won’t need to clean off my blades when I cut out her heart,” she said. “Tell me why you need her tell.”

Kaz’s frown was pensive. “She has a weakness,” he said. “It has to do with the bosses she gave her blood to. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why she doesn’t want all of us near her.”

“And you want her tell so you can work out the secret?” Inej took a breath. “This is a dangerous game, Kaz. Can you see it through?”

“Whether I can or not, I have no choice,” he answered. “Besides, have you ever known anyone to beat me at the table?”

“Everything I knew about you is part of some other boy,” Inej said. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”

He looked at her. The elusive sun finally forced its way into the room, pushing passed her back to find the light in his coffee eyes. “I’m the same person I’ve always been,” he said, a look on his face almost like anger as he looked down at the ledger. “You’ve always held more of my secrets than most, Inej. I’ve never been able to hide everything from you.”

“You hid enough,” she told him softly.

His head came up. “Maybe you didn't see enough,” he retorted.

Inej turned away. “Maybe some things are not so clear to the eye,” she argued.

“Some blindness is wilful,” Kaz said. “Do you remember when you asked me what my tell was? Do you know what my weakness is, Inej?” he asked her.

Inej lifted her head. “Your limp,” she answered.

“You knew that was a lie when I told you,” Kaz told her.

Inej felt heat flame across her cheeks. “I am not your weakness, Kaz,” she said, keeping the fear from her voice.

“No, you never were. You never could be,” he agreed. “Inej, I —”

The office door flew open. Nina stood framed within it. Her cheeks were flushed. Her green eyes snapping with anger. “Kuwei’s gone; someone has taken him," she announced. "I swear if this is your doing, Kaz, I’ll melt you into a bucket and boil you over hot coals.”

Inej leapt from the windowsill. “Kaz?” she demanded.

Kaz stood. “Why would I kidnap Kuwei twice?” he asked.

“He’s not in his room," Nina snapped. "I went to check on him and all I found was a puddle on the floor.”

Kaz’s brows rose. “I have an alibi,” he said gaze darting to Inej and then sliding away.

“And even the two of you couldn’t sneak him out without anyone noticing,” Nina conceded, shoulders dropping. “Ekaterine’s scared. She’s not showing it, but I know it.”

“Who would take Kuwei but leave the rest of us?” Inej wondered.

Kaz’s lips pursed. “Did anyone check the samples from the clinic?” he asked.

Nina’s eyes widened. “You think someone switched them?”

He shrugged. “No one was in the room and there was a riot outside. Plenty of time to slip in the window and leave a decoy.”

Nina’s eyes narrowed. “This better not be a con,” she warned.

“Of course, it’s a con,” Kaz said irritably. “Someone has enough leverage to use against us. They’ll use it soon enough.”

“But without Ekaterine’s blood there is no cure,” Inej pointed out.

“So, she says. We don’t know that,” Nina objected. “No wonder she’s worried,” she added, shooting Kaz a dark look. “You need her to return you to your less water-logged and crazy former self, but whoever took Kuwei and the samples may want to make their own army of insane Grisha knock-offs. Ekaterine’s just had her life's work stolen from her.”

“Could it be the Tides?” Inej asked Kaz.

He shrugged. “Anything is possible.” He was frowning, expression distant as he thought.

“Why would it be the Tides?” Nina asked puzzled.

“They lied to us,” Inej explained. “Kaz never made a deal with them.”

Nina scowled at Kaz. “Or maybe he did and forgot,” she grumbled.

“I forgot that I didn’t, not that I had,” he shot back.

Nina scoffed. “That makes a lot of sense, Brekker, well done. I feel so much more confident you know what you’re doing right now.”

“Stop it,” Inej warned. She frowned at Nina. “Kaz didn’t take Kuwei. He’s been under watch the whole time.”

“That’s convenient.” Nina told Kaz, “You could have set all this up to give yourself an alibi.”

Kaz shoved his hand through his hair. “Why would I move Kuwei when he was right where I wanted him?” he asked again.

“I don’t know why you do anything,” Nina retorted. “I assume it’s some kind of personality dysfunction.”

“I’m entirely functional,” Kaz snapped. “And there’s nothing wrong with my personality.”

Nina and Inej exchanged a silent look. Inej sighed deeply. “We need to focus,” she said.

Nina nodded. “The window frame was wet in his room. Whoever took him had to be a Tidemaker.”

“Or wanted to frame me,” Kaz said, he leaned hard on his cane, head bowed in thought.

“It’s working,” Nina told him. “I still think you did it.”

“I was with him the whole time, Nina,” Inej said.

She shrugged. “Kaz pays people to do his dirty work. He paid you, once. He’s paid all of us.” She looked at him hard. “No one knows where you were for two days. You’ve had plenty of time to do all kinds of things and forget about it.” She crossed her arms, blocking the doorway.

Inej turned to him. “She has a point, Kaz.”

“Why would I pay someone to steal Kuwei from me?” he growled.

“Why don’t you tell us, Brekker?” Nina threw out. “You’re our only suspect.”

“Other than the Tides,” Inej reminded her.

The other girl sighed. “Or someone else we don’t even know about,” she admitted. She straightened her shoulders resolutely. “Blaming Kaz is easier. It’s not like can be sure he didn’t do it. And it makes me feel better,” she said.

“I’m not deranged,” Kaz ground out.

“That you don’t see it, simply proves it,” Nina replied.

“Where are the others,” Inej asked before they could get into another round of insults and accusations.

“Containing Kat,” Nina replied.

“BREKKER!’ Ekaterine screeched from the lower floor. “WHERE IS HE? WHY ISN’T HE HERE? BREKKER! BRING ME YUL-BO RIGHT THIS INSTANT! BREKKER!”

Kaz grimaced. “Jesper should have stuffed her in the pantry.” He moved toward the door.

Nina stepped out of the way. “She’s probably going to try and kill you,” she warned.

Kaz looked at her and then over his shoulder at Inej. “She can’t,” he said. “I don’t have any weaknesses.”

Chapter Text

The Madman's Hand Pt. 3:

Jesper:

Inej landed at the bottom of the stairs having slid down the banister rail. She was followed by Nina clumping down looking like a storm cloud and Kaz, who looked like he’d just been turned out of the Crow Club with nothing in his pockets. At least he was dry. Jesper shared a look with Wylan, palms curving restlessly around the handles of his revolvers. The wheels of this bandwagon had well and truly come off and he wasn’t sure what to do. Wylan’s wide-eyes told him he didn’t either. Ekaterine boiled up to the bottom of the stairs as Kaz made his slow way down.

“Where is Yul-Bo?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Kaz told her, voice flat.

Jesper had been waiting for the slap but the sound still rang through the room like a gunshot, making him jump. Behind him, he heard Anika hiss like a steam kettle. Keeg made a rumbling sound low in his throat. Inej shifted her stance ready to spring, dark eyes rooted on Ekaterine. Nina raised her hands. Roeder pursed his lips, waiting. Jesper's hands hovered over his revolver handles. If things kicked off, he realised he had no idea who to aim at. Ekaterine’s hand had left a livid red stain across Kaz’s cheek. He turned his head back to face her, expression impassive. Jesper held his breath. Kaz locked eyes with Ekaterine... and did absolutely nothing. “Oh, come on,” Jesper exclaimed.

Kaz’s gaze flicked to him over Ekaterine’s shoulder, before sinking back to the blonde woman. The sound of breathing was the only sound in the room. “I didn’t take him,” Kaz said.

“Then who did?” Their delightfully unhinged newest crewmember demanded.

“Maybe he escaped on his own?” Wylan suggested boldly.

Jesper winced. “Wy. Stop distracting the crazy lady.” Wy wouldn’t be Wy if he didn’t try and diffuse the tension by injecting some sanity into proceedings, but Jesper was running low on ammunition and it would suit his rotten luck that Ekaterine would end up being immune to bullets, anyway. Jesper would be happy to let Kaz fight this one out alone; he was pretty sure the only thing that could kill Kaz now was a sudden heatwave.

“We did lock him a room and forget about him. Kuwei might have thought we’d abandoned him,” Nina admitted guiltily.

“Roeder,” Kaz murmured.

The spider nodded. “Right boss. What do you want me to do if I find him?” he asked.

“Knock him out and drag him back here,” Kaz replied.

Anika boiled over. “Is that it?” she demanded and a wave of heat flowed through the room. Jesper swiftly got out of the way, dragging Wylan with him. Cheery yellow and orange flames crackled in Anika’s cupped palms. She stared at Kaz with eyes that smouldered. “You ain’t gonna just take her disrespect, are you? She hit you!”

Ekaterine pivoted slowly, red lips spreading into a pleased smile. “Of course, he will. He’s mine. I made him,” she purred.

Anika’s jaw locked. She didn’t look away from Kaz. “That right, Brekker? Has the witch got you by the balls?” she sneered.

Kaz looked bored -- or half out of his mind. Jesper couldn't quite tell. “Are you challenging me, Anika?” he asked. At the foot of the stairs, Inej tensed, back straightening. Jesper could feel the atmosphere grow taut as the Dregs collectively held their breath. Jesper sighed. He still didn't know who he was meant to aim at.

Anika lifted her chin, head up. She opened her mouth to speak. Jesper tensed. There as a crack of breaking wood and a soft, meaty thud. Anika jolted, an arc of blood flying from her lips as the bullet that had sailed through the shattered window board slammed right through her and struck Ekaterine, who screamed and fell, clutching her shoulder. Dropping low, Jesper dove toward the window with the broken board, risking a glance through the bullet hole to look outside. He dropped flat to the ground as a hail of gunfire punched through the rest of the Slat’s boarded up windows. At least now he had a clear target.

“What is it now?” he heard Nina complain from across the room as Jesper reloaded his revolvers.

Keeg bounded forward, tearing away the splintered wood boards from the window. Several bullets hit him and his skin rippled, a patina of thin lead spreading over his flesh. He grinned and hurled something that looked suspicious like one of Wylan’s special vials through the window. Jesper heard glass crack and the tell-tale whisper-hiss of phosphor igniting. Outside someone cried out.

“It’s the Lions,” Keeg reported slinking back to where Pim was nursing Anika. The Inferni was already struggling to sit up, smoke rising from her clothes.

Jesper peeked through the window. Catching a hint of movement he fired and ducked back down. “I thought Elsje Haas was one of yours,” he said, turning back to glare at Kaz only to find that there was more trouble at his back. "Oh, for Saint's sake. Do you have to do this now?"

Inej crouched behind Ekaterine, one hand sunk into her hair and the other holding a knife to her throat. The Wraith at their throat would make any normal person, and most regular Grisha, pause, but Ekaterine wasn't normal. She also wasn’t interested in Inej and her knife. She clutched hold of Kaz, who she’d dragged to the floor with fingers like metal claws. Her hands were transparent, flowing like water. Jesper realised she was siphoning Kaz’s Etovost power to heal her bullet wound. She had Kaz on his knees, his head hanging down and his chest heaving as she pushed the bullet out of her fluid chest. Inej’s knife slipped through her throat without catching on solid flesh. The woman looked like a glass dressmaker’s dummy wearing a curly blond wig. At least now they knew what power Ekaterine had over Kaz. She could use him, and maybe the other bosses, to heal herself, feeding on their power in the same way the other Etovost fed on hers every time they took the drug she gave them.

Something heavy smacked into the Slat’s bolted front door. There was a soft whoosh of flame. Jesper smelled kerosene and rolled away from the window as the bright flames leaked under the door.
“Give us the drug, Brekker!” Elsje shouted and another round of gunfire rattled the air. Several bullets sailed through the window over his head. Part of the banister rail exploded in a rain of splinters and plaster filled the air as several other bullets embedded in the walls. Kaz was going to have dip deep in his pockets to fix the Slat up after this.

slithering back to the window, Jesper peeked and fired. He could see a group of dark clad figures moving on the street. Their shadows stretched over the cobbles as the sun broke from behind the fast-moving clouds. The Lions were darting back and forth between the shadows of the building opposite and the Slat, firing wildly without bothering to aim in the wind. Jesper clucked his tongue. “Amateurs.” It was like they weren't even trying. Taking aim he fired, clipping one kid in the air and causing him to drop the flaming ragged stuffed bottle in his hand. The accelerant spread at his feet, causing him and two girls hurling rocks to scatter.

Anika breathed on the flames lapping at the door. Immediately the flames slunk under the door and crossed the street outside, chasing after the Lions. Nina scrambled up beside Jesper. He saw her clench her fist, eyes closed. One of the Lions he’d hit earlier jerked to his feet and lunged at the knot of rifle toting Lions surrounding Elsje. The up-and-coming gang leader took one look at the shambolic dead boy and screamed, firing into the poor dead sack of meat’s chest until revolver clicked empty. Jesper fired over her head, the bullet smacking into the wall of the building opposite and spitting brick chips onto her posse. The Lions, none of them over sixteen, scattered.

“This isn’t over Brekker,” Elsje howled before turning tail and beating it down the street after the rest of her gang.

“Saints,” Jesper breathed. “Thugs these days. In my day we knew how to have a proper gunfight.”

“Those children did not take Yul-Bo,” Ekaterine insisted, even though no one had suggested any such thing. She was standing and back to what passed for normal for her. Jesper noted that the blood stain on her Kefta had washed out completely. The Ravkan turned in a tight circle, looking around at the trashed parlour. “This is completely unacceptable,” she declared. “I will not be made a fool of by otkazat’sya.”

Kaz’s cane clicked on the hardwood as he stood slowly and smoothed a hand through his hair. Jesper saw his roving gaze catch on the mantle clock, a ridiculously ornate piece stolen from a wealthy artisan on Taart Straat. Jesper watched as Kaz reached toward his open waistcoat for his fob watch, checked it and frowned. A suspicion formed in Jesper’s mind. He'd only ever seen Kaz check his watch like that on a job.

“Nina.” Wylan’s voice sounded strained and Jesper whipped around to face the door. Nina had brought her shambling corpse to the threshold. The poor, dead podge was leaking over the scorched floorboards.

“It’s not polite to bring corpses into the parlour,” he chided as the Dregs backed away from the lumbering corpse.

“I want to question him,” Nina announced imperiously. She shot Kaz a dirty look, one full of suspicion. Jesper didn’t blame her. Kaz was usually better at keeping his puppets dancing to his tune. Of course, maybe that was Ekaterine’s fault. It was obvious she wasn’t all that good at pulling Kaz’s strings or she'd have learned by now it was never a good idea to show your hand in front of Kaz too early.

“Stop immediately,” Ekaterine snapped turning on Nina. “I will not let you bring your weapon in here.”

“What’s the matter, Kat? Afraid of a dead boy?” Nina taunted.

Ekaterine’s hands jerked at her side. Her fingers were back to being softly rounded with neatly manicured nails, but the proof of her metal claws was visible in the torn lace of her now fingerless gloves. At first, Jesper wasn’t sure what it was about her hands that caught his attention, until he looked across the room and saw the intensity of Inej’s expression as she shared a look with Kaz and mouthed, “Tell?”

Kaz pretended to be focused on his watch, but Jesper had intercepted too many coded looks between the pair to be fooled. He watched as Kaz flicked beads of water from his fingers and snapped the cover of the watch closed. “Keeg, Agi, go check the back. Pim, Jesper needs more ammunition. Go bring in the stores from the pantry.” He pocketed the watch and looked up, dark eyes hard and fixed on his lieutenant. “Anika,” the one word held on the menace of the hammering of a scaffold outside the Stadwatch.

“What?” the Inferni shifted her stance, warily. She lifted her fists, ready to defend herself but she didn’t breathe fire and everyone in the room understood what that meant. There wasn't going to be a challenge today. Pim sighed in relief, stomping out of the parlour. Keeg shot Anika a complicated parting look before turning and following Agi into the kitchen. Jesper started to put away his revolvers but stopped when he saw Kaz give him a quick, almost imperceptible shake of his head. The little finger of suspicion in his brain pressed down harder. Kaz was planning something.

Raising his hand, Kaz clenched his fist and Anika started to choke, a gout of water drenching her chin. She doubled up, clutching her throat. She collapsed to her knees, face mottled as she struggled to breathe. Jesper started to put away his revolvers but stopped when he saw Kaz give him a quick, almost imperceptible shake of his head. The little finger of suspicion in his brain pressed down harder. Kaz was planning something.

“Don’t kill her,” Wylan said.

Jesper sighed. “He’s not going to kill her, Wy,” he said.

Inej nodded. “This is discipline.”

Wylan shook his head. His face pale in anger. “I don’t care. He’s hurting her.”

Anika sat up and spat more water out of her mouth. “Don’t need your help, Merch,” she growled, voice rough. She looked up at Kaz. “I don’t like that witch touching you,” she told him, muttering, “It ain’t right.”

“Brekker,” Ekaterine’s voice was imperious. “Order your reprobate to torch this corpse.”

Tone dry as dust Kaz said, “Torch the corpse, Anika.”

“Won’t do any good,” Nina scoffed. “I don’t need a body to talk to the dead.”

“There’s more than one use for a flaming corpse,” Kaz told her.

“How would you know?” Jesper asked him, genuinely worried that Kaz had run some kind of scheme using flaming corpses in the past and not invited him to the show.

“I have a vivid imagination,” Kaz told him. Pim entered the room carrying a crate of ammunition. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder. Kaz nodded. “Smart Ljuda, Big Mertle, pick up the grenatye and take up position on the first floor. Pico, Gaunchi, Flush Bob, take the second floor.”

Everyone stared at him. “What are you doing, Brekker?” Ekaterine asked, a world of wariness in her tone.

“Using my imagination,” he told her. “Our position isn’t secure. We could be attacked again.”

Ekaterine paled. “Then we should leave,” she insisted.

“Not yet. Zenik, be a dear and take Ekaterine to the pantry. You can bring your corpse if you want.”

Nina’s green eyes narrowed to fierce, intent slits. She crossed her arms. “Why should I?”

“Because Inej is more useful in a firefight than you are, and I need her here,” Kaz replied.

Ekaterine was almost entirely still except for the constant twitching of her little fingers. “What are you plotting, Brekker?” she asked, voice soft with genuine puzzlement.

Kaz shrugged. “This is the Barrel,” he said. “The best target is a wounded one. If the Lions have turned on me then that means the other bosses have too.” If, Jesper thought, he'd said if. Jesper tapped his fingers over his revolver handles, thinking.

Ekaterine reacted in real alarm. Her fingers went rigid, splayed at her sides. Her arms locked in place. “You will not fight them,” she ordered her voice thrumming with command.

Kaz turned toward her slowly. His eyes widened. At his side, Inej’s hands slipped toward the pockets of her tunic where she kept her best knives. Jesper watched all of them. There was something different about this command than all the others Ekaterine spouted and he knew what it was: this order was tinged with fear. Why was Ekaterine afraid of letting the bosses fight each other, Jesper wondered and why did knowing that make Kaz look like he’d just won the pot in Three Man Bramble?

“Look out!” Wylan shouted.

In the doorway Nina’s pet corpse shuddered, reacting to the heavy blade that had just cut into its throat. With a cry, the attacker shoved the corpse out of the way and bounded into the room. The man wore seafarers clothing and several days’ worth of beard growth over his cheeks and he did not look well. Jesper noted the droopy flower tattoo on his cheek before Inej’s blade found a new sheath in his forehead. It was a bluebell.

Ekaterine ran into the kitchen shrieking, Nina looked after her and then at Kaz. “You’re going to owe me big for this, Brekker,” she warned before taking off after Ekaterine.

“Saving your country should be more than enough repayment,” Kaz retorted, sliding down at the window next to Jesper.

Inej took up a position by the wall beside the open door and Wylan hunkered down at the window on the other side. Jesper winked at him. Wylan shook his head and reached into the voluminous depths of his Tide cloak for more of his chemistry experiments. Kaz pulled a revolver from somewhere on his person and checked the barrel. Jesper eyed him curiously, “Just for the record, so that we’re clear, the Lions haven’t actually betrayed us, have they?”

“Elsje’s timekeeping is worse than yours,” Kaz grumbled. “She was supposed to wait and give Roeder more time to free the pirates.”

Jesper grinned despite himself. He should have known. Of course, Kaz had had the Bluebells kidnapped without anyone knowing. This was Kaz. “Kuwei?” he asked, hoping the skiv was alright.

“Crow Club,” Kaz replied. “I slipped him the water and the window key while Ekaterine was shoving the rest of you into the pantry.”

Across the street, Jesper saw sunlight flash off the barrel of a rifle sticking out of an upper window. He fired two shots into the dark mouth and ducked, waiting for return fire. “Are you going to explain why you kidnapped your own hostage twice? Or is this a new habit of yours?” he asked. “Good job on faking crazy, by the way," he added. "You nearly had me fooled.”

“I did have you fooled,” Kaz retorted, firing at a figure slinking low to the ground along the far side of the Slat. The direction of the sun had shifted, throwing the man’s shadow forward under the window. Wylan tossed a phosphor bomb out on the street, creating a pool of fire to distract the other pirates as Inej hopped out of the window, collared the man, and dragged him around the side of the Slat. There were maybe fifteen Bluebells, Jesper thought and he was guessing they were only lightly armed because they were being cautious. “I’m waiting,” he reminded Kaz as he fired toward another window. He wasn't going to let a bunch of angry pirates get in the way of getting his explanation.

Kaz handed him more ammunition. Sitting with his shoulder to the wall below the window he could peer over the edge of the sill to watch Jesper’s blind side. “I had Alphonze and his crew under guard before the plague,” he explained. “Once I knew what the Tides planned, I decided they’d be more useful for me if they were free.”

Jesper nodded. “Can’t use a scapegoat no one knows about,” he agreed. He didn’t ask why Kaz had started kidnapping random slavers off the streets. He helped Wylan in his lab all the time, despite not having an overwhelming interest in chemistry himself. He’d heard it was good for couples to share interests and it wasn’t like Kaz had Jesper’s abundance of charm and good looks to draw Inej back to Ketterdam any other way.

“You couldn’t have mentioned any of this earlier because…?” he asked.

“You didn’t need to know,” Kaz told him bluntly.

“And you were busy being insane,” Jesper added drily.

Kaz shot him a look. “I can multitask."

Jesper nodded sagely. “Withholding information while being crazy. Two of your favourite pastimes,” he agreed.

A bullet fired from the roof of the building opposite struck the top corner of the window frame before ricocheting off the brickwork. Both he and Kaz dropped to the floor and then rose at the same time firing at the group of pirates attempting to cross the street. A grenatye arced through the air and denoted on the cobbles. Jesper heard a scream but couldn’t see much through the cloud of dust and stone.

“Ekaterine had a secret. I needed to know what it was,” Kaz said.

“So you tried to spook it out of her with a fake raid.” And he'd freed the pirates so he could fit them up for the crime of taking over the Barrel, knowing they'd come after him immediately and if there happened to be any witnesses willing to report back to the Council, they'd corroborate the story Kaz wanted told. Jesper shook his head. “Was Inej in on it?” he asked.

“No, she’s just quicker on the draw than you are. They’re going to try and circle around,” Kaz said.

Jesper nodded. “Do we need them alive?” he asked.

“No. We have a hostage. Nina can raise the rest.”

“She’ll be thrilled. You know she’s going to order her pets to throttle you once she finds out.”

Kaz scowled. “She can try.”

Jesper looked over his shoulder. Anika and Keeg were at the back of the Slat with Inej. They’d be able to handle any Bluebells who made it passed them, but Wylan was looking lonely on the other side of the room. Lonely and angry. Jesper didn’t know how much he could hear but he knew Wylan was smart. He’d probably figured out on his own more than Jesper had. Jesper could take being lied to if it was for a plan. He was used to how Kaz operated, and he was alright with being left in the dark if it meant Kaz was in control. It was better than the alternative. A Kaz brought to his knees by Ekaterine for real. He had a feeling Wylan wouldn’t agree and wasn't looking forward to that conversation.

“You said ‘once you knew what the Tides had planned’,” Jesper reminded Kaz.

Kaz sighed. “I didn’t write that letter, Jesper.”

“So you're really not working with them?” Jesper asked. He didn't mind being kept in the dark, but now the cards were on the table he wanted all the facts face up.

There was a long pause. Finally Kaz said, “…I don’t know.”

Jesper whipped his head around. “What does that mean?”

Kaz looked almost embarrassed. “It means that I’m not the only one playing a long game," he said, a hint of anger in his voice. "I played Ekaterine, but I’m beginning to think the Tides have been playing me much longer.”

“How?” Jesper asked because there was nothing else to ask. Ekaterine had reduced Kaz to a puddle and still not managed to get one over on him. How had the Tides managed it?

“I don’t remember,” Kaz admitted softly. “But somehow I ended up with this.” Kaz’s free hand flashed upward. He opened his fist revealing a strange looking key with a mother-of-pearl enamelled bow, shaped like a seashell.

“What does it open?” Jesper asked, noting its odd flatness and the unusual number of cuts running down the edge from the ridged shoulder.

Kaz stared right through him. Jesper's breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t fear that glazed his eyes; it was pure, glorious greed. He waited with bated breath, pirates forgotten. Jesper knew whatever Kaz said next, it was going to big. Ice Court big. Taking on the Council and the combined might of the gangs big. His heart beat faster, excitement crackling through his veins.

When it came, Kaz’s answer didn’t disappoint: “This is the key to the Council of Tides obelisk tower on Imperjum.”

Chapter Text

Interlude Ekaterine:

13th:

I wish Bo Yul-Bayur had survived. He must have been a remarkable man. The concept of a Small Science suppressant has so many useful applications beyond mere cowardice. It is a pity Yul-Bayur’s vision far outreached his ability as a chemist. Thankfully I do not have his limitations. It is clear to me that the true object of my research should be discovering the mechanism at the heart of the difference between Grisha and Otkazat’sya. If I could isolate the mechanism, then it will be within my reach to eliminate the difference between odinakovost and etovost. I would be mistress of Merzost, greater even than Ilya Morozova. What a world I could create.

27th:

I have decided I am fond of Kuwei Yul-Bo. He is not a complete idiot. For a Inferni he is not an entirely incompetent chemist. How novel. It is so rare to find someone above my contempt.

28th:

Alas, I was premature. Bo-Yul is an idiot. What a pity. I am surrounded by ignoramuses. How far advanced would I now be in my work if I did not have to accommodate the small minded?

7th:

Failure. Failure. More failure. I need a new approach. If one man can unlock true Grisha potential by accident, I should be able to do it on purpose. I know they are laughing at me behind my back. That mangled hag, Genya Safin, has never liked me. I know she is working her wiles on David in an attempt to have me removed from my post. But I will not be undermined nor defeated. I am meant to crack the Mervost code. It is my destiny. I know it. Once the power of Merzost is mine we’ll see who has the last laugh. Maybe I’ll melt Safin into goo? It could only be an improvement. Really, I don’t know what David sees in her.

12th:

Something has happened today. A border patrol discovered a group of Druskelle carrying Jurda Parem. It is believed they intended to travel south and contaminate the Little Palace’s water source. An interesting stratagem. Destroy us with our own power unfettered. David has allowed me to study the compound. This will be useful, but I intend to do more than study. Why fumble in the dark with experiment after experiment when I can simply take Parem and learn the secrets at the heart of the world in a blink? If that over-endowed renegade, Zenik, can survive then I am certain I will thrive upon taking Jurda Parem.

13th:

I hate you, Nina Zenik. Hate you. Hate you. Hate You. Hate You. Hate You. Always so perfect with your hair and your great, bulbous breasts and your swishy-swishy hips and your damn Corporalnik superiority. How did you do it? How did you overcome the craving? I feel like I’m dying. My organs are boiling. My head aches. I can’t think of anything but Parem. Parem. Parem. Parem. Paremparemparemparemparem….

19th:

I will beat this. I will.

21st:

The whole world is blind. I alone see. And what a world I see. I am changed. I feel it. I have performed the ultimate alkemi. Where once I was base, now I am superior in every way.
…I still want Parem.

23rd:

My fingernails have fallen off. I have taken to wearing gloves. Very fetching ones. Everyone is still an idiot. Do they not notice the change in me, or do they simply not care?

25th:

My tongue has turned black. I take my meals alone in the lab. If I eat at all. No one has remarked upon it. I am forced to conclude I am not missed.

26th:

Yul-Bo asked after my health today. I am fond of him again. When I oust the Triumvirate and take the Palace, I will keep Kuwei with me. Like a pet. Or a friend. I haven’t decided which.

My nails have begun to grow back in. They appear to be some unusual compound of iron. In related news, I am anaemic. On a whim I kept a coin under my tongue today. Now my teeth are armour plated. It would appear I am now a crucible, distilling elements within my body and forging them into new compounds. Good. I see a way forward in my research. The secrets of Jurda Parem are mine now. The next step is mastery over the evolution of Grisha.

28th:

For the first I feel sympathy with the Druskelle. I too wish to murder every Grisha in this place.

My progress is slow but steady. I have the formula for my Mervost serum but pandering to the weak sensibilities of those small minds around me is tiresome and time consuming. I wish I could simply roam the countryside looking for peasants to test my serum upon. It’s not like their lives matter.

30th:

I hate people. That is all.

1st:

I dreamed of Mama last night. When I awoke my tears had burned through the pillow.

My work goes on.

5th:

I miss sugar mice. I used to like sugar mice. Now everything I eat tastes of ashes.

Work progresses. I poisoned the well in the nearby Otkazat’sya village. We shall see how well my serum takes.

9th:

Failure. The corpses of the villagers were brought to the lab for analysis. Their organs had liquified. I have secreted some of the slop for further analysis in private. There may be something within the acids I can use as I rework the formula. If only the smell wasn’t so atrocious.

18th:

I have convinced David to allow me to experiment on willing participants. He thinks my focus is on neutralising the effects of Jurda Parem. What a fool. He and Safin deserve each other.

In other news, my hair is turning white. I am now dyeing it. Not even the Tailors have noticed. Their ignorance sickens me. Their disinterest infuriates. When I am in charge there will be changes around here. I will teach them a lesson for ignoring me.

19th:

I am suffering nosebleeds. Studying my blood has shown that the composition has changed. I have yet to name all of the new proteins I have discovered.

20th:

I have heard that the survivors in the village have started to refer to the rash of disease sweeping the countryside as the Grisha Blight as all the cases have occurred in close proximity to the Little Palace. This is not my fault. If I was allowed to travel further afield, I would have a wider sample group to compare to my control group in the lab. Still, the Otkazat’sya’s superstition has given me the inkling of an idea. I already know this batch of test subjects will prove failures. But I now see a new way forward. I will need to leave eventually: my work will not be completed at the Palace. But not yet. I am not ready yet.

10th:

The cowardice of my brethren disgusts me. We have one little set back and a test subject explodes and suddenly that lunkhead Heartrender Ernst is assigned to watch me. I know he is reporting back to Safin. That whore. Still, this does present an opportunity to experiment. I slipped a few drops of my blood into Ernst’s coffee. It will be interesting to see what happens.

12th:

I now have my very own, besotted Heartrender slave. How novel. For official record, it should be noted that my blood is apparently highly addictive and born Grisha are immensely susceptible.

This will prove useful.

13th:

I wonder if Mama remembers me now. I wonder if she had other children after I was taken away. I wonder if she gave my darling Minka to those other, usurper daughters. How dare she? Minka is my doll. It’s not my fault the examiners forced me to leave her behind in the snow. I didn’t want to. I blame Mama. She didn’t fight for me. I was her daughter. I was her perfect gold and snow princess. She said so. How could she give me up? How could she let them take me away? Didn’t she love me?

15th:

Exploding bodies are a nuisance. Visceral gets everywhere. The lab will need to be cleaned from top to bottom. I am unhappy. Valuable equipment was destroyed when the last batch of subjects went pop. Of course, Kuwei pretends to be upset over the loss of life. I do not believe him. The subjects were peasants. They existed for no other reason than to cull chickens, shepherd livestock and die of disease after a handful of decades spent wasting their limited little lives through toil and hard labour. At least now their lives have been spent toward a useful and noble goal. They should be thanking me. The data I glean from their pieces will have to suffice.

16th:

My pet has betrayed me. Kuwei has tattled about everything. Or at least as much as he knew, which was more than most because I was fond of him. I knew I should have slipped him my blood to make sure of his loyalty, but I was enjoying the novelty of having a helpmeet who helped because he truly wanted to.

I am disappointed. I feel…hurt? At least I have my blood besotted minions. Ernst and Ahn, poor stupid Svetya, and the rest. The Triumvirate’s watchdogs are mine now, whether they like it or not. And while my blood runs, they like it very much.

We were forced to leave the palace, sneaking away like thieves in the night. No matter. I already know the perfect place to continue my work. I am ready.

24th:

I am displeased. Apparently, becoming a Mervost crucible does not protect one from sea sickness. I will have to work on that. Later.

For now, I have a city to explore. First impressions are not good. Ketterdam stinks.

26th:

I have devised a little play for my pursuers that will ensure everyone looks in the wrong direction as their tiny brains scramble to discern my plans. The Etovost – a marvellous and serendipitous name for our getaway vessel – was carrying unrefined Jurda. I have had the crew slaughtered and the contents of the hold stolen. Let the Triumvirate believe I am still fixated on the weed as they are. To further muddy the waters, I have arranged for the jurda to turn up in several locations around the city’s slums. I intend to burn it. Then I will poison the firefighters and their families and anyone else who might reasonably be assumed to have inhaled the smoke with one of my failed serums. It is time to spread the Grisha’s Blight and sow the seeds of misdirection.

29th:

These Kerch are so entertaining. Watching them scurrying around is much more interesting than watching rats in a cage.

Still, there have been setbacks. The Kerch have a peculiar concept of hospitality. I have learned that when in the Barrel all offers are suspect. My group is now down several hundred kruge and it seems increasingly unlikely that we will find Ivan’s body.

31st:

I am learning much. Field work is so fulfilling. If it wasn’t for the stench, I think I could rather like this city.

Groundwork laid, it is time to introduce my modified Firepox strain into the population. It has been engineered to have a longer incubation period and less severe symptoms, at least until my pathogens have rooted. In order to plant perfect seeds, it is necessary to cultivate the soil. I predict fatalities of less than one percent, but one can never be sure. Humans are finicky creatures. They rarely perform to lab estimates.

All that matters, however, is that my pathogens spread and do their work. Once I have cultivated my human soil, I shall sow my seeds and reap the harvest.

2nd:

Hello, Mister Brekker. You are exactly as Kuwei described you. It will take no work at all to turn you into a monster as I suspect you already are one. What a boon it was to stumble upon your little raid on that nest of pirates. I think you will be my greatest creation. First among my generals. You will lay waste to Shu Han and Fjerda in my name. I could swoon just thinking about it.

Unfortunately, there is still work to do before I am ready to progress my true plan. In order to create stable Grisha, I must distil the very essence of the Small Science in all its iterations and incubate those strains in my blood. This act of Mervost will take time to perfect. With this one act I step beyond the bounds of even Morozova.

In the meantime, I think I’ll lay on a second act in my little farce. Svetlana Obanskaya in the Embassy is looking for me. I am insulted. The little spy is not even Grisha. I will repay this injury by poisoning her with my exploding serum.

I hope she suffers before she pops.

5th:

It is done. I have my exemplified Grisha strains. Now comes the dissemination. I am both mother and father of my new race of Grisha. I have produced the seeds and now I will spread them to my chosen few... I feel ill. I regret that metaphor. Fornication is such a messy, sweaty, grunty way to produce new life. I will not allow my miracle to be debased by association even in my own head.

The question now is one of tactics. I need generals, elite Etovost that will become the beginnings of my new breed, and I need foot soldiers to act as a living test of my Grisha serum, to see if it is possible to activate and control the use of the Little Science chemically. Naturally, I will retain control of my Etovost ‘children’ and chemically induced soldiers through a blood link, but a contingency plan needs to be in place if I do not want to become a target myself.

Thankfully, the hierarchy of the Barrel has offered me a solution. If the bosses are to be my generals, then their lieutenants can serve as my buffer. I will give a handful of the most influential thugs in every gang a strain of the serum from which the temporary Grisha drug can be synthesised. In this way, I can maintain production of the drug without draining myself and disguise the fact that all strains of the virus derive from me alone.

I know it is only a matter of time before the Triumvirate send soldiers after me. The more false trails I lay down now the greater the chance I can stay ahead of my pursuers.

8th:

After some meditation on the issue, it has become apparent to me that acts of creation are inherently parasitic. Babies feed on their mother in the womb, drawing life giving sustenance constantly without giving anything back. My Etovost could easily become parasites, so I have taken steps to make our relationship symbiotic. I will grant them the power found at the heart of the world and their strength will, in turn, enhance my own. If in need, I will draw from their gifts and the effects of my blood will ensure they cannot harm me without harming themselves. A very neat solution, I must say.

I am now ready to begin spreading my blood. It is time to make my presence known to my generals. I have learned that the Barrel lives and breathes on rumour and gossip. I think it time I start a rumour about an attractive Ravkan woman seeking out Queen’s Lady survivors. That should do it. The scars from the pox run deep in this city. The bosses will take my bait.

12th:

I should have been a playwright. Or an actress. Perhaps if Mama had kept me, I would have been. The Barrel has carried my rumour and is busily telling my lies for me. Now, thanks to the virus strain I stole, my Palace pursuers will think there is some significance in my search for plague survivors. Fools. They know nothing. I am the crucible. I choose who will survive me. Nothing else matters. No luck, no antibodies and no prayers to the Saints can intervene against me.

14th:

Etovost cultivation proceeds apace. The Bodymen are busy. The Merchant Council are perhaps a brace of exploding corpses away from a mass exodus. I am pleased.

16th:

I am bored. A man is dying noisily in the gutter below my window. It is very irritating. In other news, I found some sugar mice today! It is good to have my appetite back. Although not now; the sound of retching is enough to ruin my appetite all over again. I ask you! How long does it take for one man to die?

18th:

Three bosses infected. One dead. The Blacktips general was not worth the foul air he breathed. His death will mislead anyone who might see a pattern among the virus' survivors. It would not do to tip off my enemies to my favourites before they have come into their power.

Only Brekker remains elusive. He has sent his man to spy on me. I have infected Roeder with my lieutenant’s virus, although I have already infected a Squaller blood donor. Still, he could prove useful as leverage against Brekker, and it is always good to insure against natural wastage. It is a pity the Suli acrobat is no longer around. Now she would make a fine lever to control Brekker.

20th:

Fortune favours the bold. Brekker is now infected. Unfortunate that his paranoia necessitated Ernst dropping his pulse rate on the street so that I could force my blood down his throat, but never mind. There are times when subtlety is overrated and at least all the death on the streets meant there were no important witnesses.

The important thing is, I have my Tidemaker general. I did consider Corporalnik, but I have never liked Corporalki, and it is important I am able to at least tolerate my inner circle. Still, Tidemaker would not have been my first choice. Alas, the other strains had already gone to the rest of the bosses. I remain confident that the results will be to my liking, all the same. Mister Brekker is already my very favourite subject.

As a precaution, as it would not do to underestimate Brekker, or allow him too much power, I have infected the Blacktip Geels with a Tidemaker lieutenant strain. I do not intend to produce multiple Tidemakers because of the risk of infiltration by the Council of Tides – but having the ability to make temporary Tidemakers could be useful.

23rd:

Note to self: at the earliest opportunity punish Brekker for slamming my head into the side of that bridge. On the plus side, his cane is an impressive piece of work. I think I will make myself something like it. Perhaps a miniature shepherdess’ crook? I am, after all, the shepherd of a new breed.

I am very pleased. My generals’ transformations exceed my expectations and I have implanted the suggestion in each to withdraw for the nonce, which has taken well. My minions have retrieved all my blood donor lieutenants, in advance of synthesis of the drug, and my temporary Grisha are running amok in animated fashion. Nothing now stands in my way as I assume temporary control of the troops. This is good. It is important that I begin as I mean to continue, firmly in command.

25th:

Zenik is here. My troops tell me she scaled the ice wall with several of Brekker's known associates. I want to wring her neck until her eyes pop out of their sockets. I want to melt her flesh. I want to turn her blood to acid. Oh, how I hate Nina Zenik. Perfect, teacher’s pet, Nina Zenik. Little Miss Popular, too good to sit with me at lunch, Nina Zenik. Too good to talk to me in class, Nina Zenik. Well, I’ll show her. Once I’ve stolen her blood and unlocked the secrets of her corpsewitch powers she can become my very special test subject. Then, when I am finally done, I’ll use her own power to walk her corpse right back to Genya Safin. See how the mangled whore likes that!

It is meet that the Triumvirate should send her and my pet to stop me. I want them here to witness my triumph so that I may rub it in their faces. Perhaps literally. There is still an awful lot of visceral around the place. Spontaneous combustion has gone down to manageable levels, at least. Still, there is some value in troops that can be remote denoted at will. I will have to think about that some more.

There remains but one thing that concerns me. A flaw in my perfect defence. If anyone should learn the truth about my Etovost Heartrenders I could be in trouble. But who could learn that truth when I control the minds of my Etovost completely?

Chapter Text

Rats in a Barrel: Pt. 1:

Nina:

Nina leaned against the pantry door her ear pressed to the wood. The sound of gunfire had petered out, but she could hear movement outside the door. Dregs running back and forth in the aftermath of the fight. She itched to get out there and not only because she wanted to know what was going on. A horde of rampaging gunmen would be better company than she had right now.

“Your hair is a mess you know,” Kat commented, “It’s all knotted and your boots are atrocious. Did you steal them from a corpse?”

Saints! Nina wished she was still a Heartrender and could give Kat an embolism. “Your brain is a mess, Kat, but you don't hear me commenting on it,” Nina snapped turning away from the wall.

Kat scoffed, shifting on the crate she was perched upon. “You can’t comprehend what I am, Nina dear.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “I know exactly what you are Kat." She asked sweetly, "Do you want me to tell you?” She had the words in at least five languages and dialects.

Kat lifted her chin. “You’re jealous,” she said. “My Parem transformation was far superior to your own.”

Nina gritted her teeth. “It’s not a competition! I took Parem to save my friends. You did it so you could kill people.”

“I am saving our race,” Kat retorted.

“No, you’re risking our country!”

Kat tsked through her teeth. “You wouldn’t understand. You’ve always had it easy.”

Nina didn’t realise she’d crossed the room until the stinging impact of her knuckles smushing Kat’s cheek and striking her teeth zinged up her arm. Kat reeled. “You hit me!” She clapped a gloved hand to her face, eyes wide and glassy in the near dark of the pantry.

Nina shook out her hand. “I’ll do worse if you don’t shut up.”

“I could turn your blood to acid,” Kat threatened.

“Go ahead," Nina snapped. "Anything has to be better than listening to you talk.”

Kat hissed like a tea kettle, withdrawing until her back was pressed against the far wall. “You’ve never liked me,” she complained.

“You’re not likeable Kat,” Nina told her. “You were always mean. Now you’re crazy and mean.”

“How would you know? You never talked to me.”

“Because you’re a terrible person!”

Kat crossed her arms over her chest. “And you’re so much better than I am, I suppose?”

“Yes!” Nina hissed throwing up her hands. Nina had made mistakes and she knew it, but she’d never unleashed a lethal virus on an innocent population killing hundreds if not thousands of people.

“You betrayed the Second Army too,” Kat told her sulkily. “You’ve fraternised with the enemy. I know all about your Druskelle. Did you kill him when you lost your Heartrender power? Did he stop loving you when you could no longer twist his brain around your little finger? OW!”

This time Nina struck with the flat of her hand following up by snatching Kat by her neatly coiffed hair and slamming her head into the wall. “Shut your filthy mouth,” she snarled into the other girl’s ear. “I don’t care if you turn my blood into salad dressing and bottle me – speak ill of Matthias again and I will kill you, Kat.” Kat struggled, but she'd never been a fighter. Nina hadn't fought like this, with nails and insults and an unseemly amount of wriggling since her days as a student at the Little Palace.

"You're hurting me!" Kat yelled.

"Good," Nina growled. She'd like to bash Kat's brains in. She'd settle for scalping her by tearing hunks out of her ridiculous hair.

The pantry door opened and a fresh wave of light filled the room. Nina, squinted into the light but kept Kat in the headlock. The other girl stopped trying to dig her iron hard nails into Nina's forearm, growing still. Jesper’s lanky form stood silhouetted in the doorway. “Do you want me to give you two some privacy,” he asked, the grin loud in his voice.

Nina let go of Kat, wiping her hands on her simple homespun trousers. “Who attacked us?” she asked ignoring Jesper's interested leer.

“The Bluebell pirates.”

Nina blinked. Then she clenched her fists. “I’m going to kill that lying podge,” she hissed through her teeth.

Jesper chuckled. “You and Wy can fight it out for first dibs. I think he wants to introduce Kaz to the concept of evaporation.” Nina thought she might just hold Brekker down and help Wylan with that. She known he was up to something.

“Did you say pirates?” Kat asked, a strange note in her voice.

Nina looked back at her suspiciously. “So what if he did?” she asked.

Kat sat very still on her crate, back perfectly straight. In the light from the open door, Nina could see that her cheek was already darkening toward bruised. Her hair was no longer perfectly smoothed back into twist at the back of her head and instead stood up in finger-tangled lumps. She blinked several times in rapid succession, “Brekker lied to my face,” she said wonderingly.

“It’s Kaz, what did you expect?” Jesper scoffed. Kat didn’t answer him. Stiffly, she rose to her feet and pushed out of the room, her narrow shoulders stiff and high. “That’s not good,” Jesper murmured, following her with his eyes.

Nina and Jesper hurried after Kat, who marched directly up to Kaz, who was standing in the kitchen with Inej and Anika in front of the bound and kneeling form of a dirty looking pirate with a bluebell tattoo on his cheek. Nina opened her mouth to shout a warning, but there was no time. Kat raised her right arm and clenched her fist. Kaz staggered as if he’d been struck, coughing a gout of water. He crashed to his knees, water streaming from his mouth, nose, eyes and ears.

The Wraith was in motion, flicking a knife from between her fingers that hadn't been there a second before. The blade struck Kat in the chest, knocking her back a step. Vaulting the table, Inej kicked Kat in the face. Or tried to. Kat turned her body intangible in the last second, blurring out of range of the kick. There was a clatter as Inej's blade slipped loose and fell to the flagstones. A second later Kat solidified and brought her hand down hard as a thunderclap on the tabletop.

Nina hit the ground, all the air stolen from her lungs. Her vision went black; pulsing darkness threatening to pop her eyeballs. She couldn’t breathe and her heart sounded like a marching band in her ears. Kat had used the powers of a Squaller to depressurise the room. Nina felt like her organs were turning inside out. She pictured Matthias' face. At least she’d be seeing him soon. A solid wall of force hit her square in the chest, sending her careening over the floor on her butt. She hit the door of the pantry, hard. Abruptly, the pressure shifted. The roaring in her ears stopped. She could breathe again. Sucking in a greedy breath of air, Nina blinked and sat up. Her ears were still ringing and she felt drunk, her limbs slow and heavy from oxygen deprivation, but as her vision cleared, she saw Roeder, both hands held aloft as he dragged air into the kitchen to break Kat’s hold. His eyes were wide with fear, but his control was perfect and his timing lifesaving.

Nina couldn’t see Kat’s face from her angle. The Alkemi had her back to her, but her posture radiated fury. “Traitors!” she roared. “You. Are. Not. Supposed. To. Turn. On. Me!” She lifted her arm toward her face and jerked her head forward. Nina couldn’t see exactly what she did, but it looked like she’d just bitten into her own forearm. A moment later she spat out a mouthful of blood. The spray arrowed through the air toward Roeder. The Dreg spider had no time to defend himself. The instant the bright red droplets splattered his face, his skin began to smoke. Roeder staggered back with a howl of pain; hands clapped over his face. The smell of burning flesh and other things rose on the air. Roeder collapsed, convulsing on the floor, his feet kicking against the flagstones until he fell completely still.

“You witch!” Anika drew breath to spit fire and Kat turned on her, viciously slashing her right arm through the air. The crack of Anika’s neck snapping rang out through the room. She fell over the bound pirate, who’s curses were muffled by the gag in his mouth. The man started to struggle with his bounds. Kat clapped her hands and crushed his chest. The kitchen floor was suddenly crowded with bodies.

Gunshots rang out as Jesper shot twice at Kat’s head. Kat blurred into mist. Jesper staggered as his feet were wrenched out from underneath him by twin lassoes of water, spilling down from the filled sink. He caught himself on his hands before he could smack face-first into the long table block, but his revolvers went flying. Nina saw that Kaz was back on his feet, his body almost entirely translucent. His hand was up even as he swayed on his feet like a drooping puppet. Kat plunged her hand through Kaz's chest, causing his form to ripple. Behind Kaz, Inej froze, knife raised. Her eyes were wide. Nina knew why she hesitated. She would hesitate if it was Matthias, even if he was being controlled by her enemy.

Dregs filled the doorway from the parlour. Pim dropped to his knees beside Anika, shoving the pirate's body out of the way. Grabbing her head between his large hands he jerked her neck into alignment. A second, gentler snap sounded on the air a split second before he collapsed and Anika blinked, legs kicking. Near the door, Keeg checked Roeder’s pulse, craggy face grim. Nina already knew what he’d find. Roeder’s ghost whispered in her ear, “I had a good run.”

“You sent those pirates to attack,” Kat accused Kaz. “I know it. I was spying on you when you captured them. I recognise this man. How?” she demanded angrily. “How did you manage to lie to me. I control you.”

A slow shudder rippled through Kaz. Lifting his head, he closed his fingers around the wrist stuck in his chest. He and Kat looked like half-melted ice sculptures. Their bodies moved in flowing lines of silver-grey, like a snow-melt waterfall. There was tension in their shapes, as if at any moment one of them would collapse into a puddle never to be human again. Nina saw Kat's form ripple in surprise. Whatever Kaz was doing, she didn't like it.

At first, Nina wasn’t sure what was happening. She heard a faint crackling sound, like hoar frost climbing a windowpane. Tendrils of mist licked over Kat’s shoulders, resembling the crystal dust that whipped off the ice floes she’d seen as she trudged through Fjerda’s snowy wastes dragging Matthias’s body behind on a sled. Nina shivered as the temperature dropped. Kat’s body was solidifying, but not returning to flesh and blood. Silver shifted to dull grey as ice crystals rapidly formed over her shoulders and down her back. Nina could see the contours of her kefta once more, frilled with frost. More frost glittered over her ridiculously fake canary yellow hair, bleaching it a deathly white. Nina lurched to her feet, moving around the table so she could see. Kaz was solid again, lips bloodless white, the hard lines of his face frozen over. Nina looked down and saw that where he gripped Kat’s wrist, both their hands were now encased in a block of transparent ice.

“You c-can’t d-do this,” Kat stammered, teeth chattering. “Hurting me…hurts you…”

“That’s the trick,” Kaz rasped. “Pain is an old friend of mine.” There was a faint cracking sound as Kaz tightened his grip and Kat's forearm began to splinter. Was he going to shatter Kat into pieces? Could he do that?

“Get down!” Inej shouted.

Nina hit the ground, throwing her hands up to protect her head as a jet of golden flame seared through the air from the back door behind her. There was a tremendous hiss as the flame hit Kat’s chilled body and wrapped around her like a flickering, white-gold chain. Kat screamed and Kaz hissed through his teeth as he stumbled back, leaning hard against the table as burn blisters spread over his neck and chest under his shirt as Kat's pain transferred to him. Standing in the doorway with Wylan right behind him, Kuwei twisted the wrist of his upraised hand. The liquid rope of flame retracted, returning to him like a snapped whip, leaving both Kat and Kaz breathless.

Nina grabbed the waffle pan from the stove. Swinging from the hip she smacked Kat around the head with all her might. There was a resounding, meaty thud and then two bodies dropped to the crowded kitchen floor, unconscious. “Saints,” she panted. “Whose stupid plan was this?” she asked the room.

“No one’s,” Roeder’s ghost told her tiredly. “The witch weren’t supposed to know about the Bluebells. Boss didn’t plan for this.” Roeder’s voice came from somewhere near his body. Nina couldn’t see him, but she sensed his presence, loitering beside the ruin of scorched flesh near the parlour door. “Can you tell me Heike I love her?” he asked. “Boss got her and the girls out of the city before the siege and I got kruge set aside, so I know they'll be alright, but will you tell her I don’t mind if she sets up house with Midge, now I’m gone?" Very quietly, he said, "I don’t want her to be lonely.”

Nina hadn't known Roeder had a family. She held the waffle pan tightly, tempted to smack Kat again until her head cracked like an egg. “I’ll make Kaz do it," she said. "And I’ll make him pay for the wedding and a new house in the country,” she promised.

Ghosts don’t smile, but joy doesn’t die. She heard Roeder’s laughter in his voice. “Wish I could stick around to see that,” he said.

“You really don’t,” Nina said, ignoring the looks the others were giving her. “Be at rest, Roeder,” she intoned solemnly, calling on the waters of the dark river, “The Dregs will take care of Heike and your girls.”

“No, mourners.” Roeder’s ghost was already half gone, catching a lift on the fast-flowing river that had swept Matthias away.

Nina knew more now than she had then. She knew that what the waters took would one day return. Life and death were cyclical; life flowed into the dark river and but also back out again in a new form. “No funerals,” she whispered, the others echoing her quietly as Keeg and Fast Lips Loic picked up Roeder’s body and carried it through the parlour. The gathered Dregs filtered out of the kitchen after them. Roeder had always been popular.

“What now?” Jesper asked after a moment of stillness.

Nina set the waffle pan on the table and kicked Kat’s crumpled body with the toe of her atrocious boots. “We can’t kill her without killing Kaz,” she said. “I’m not sure that’s a bad idea but —” she began.

“No, Nina,” Inej said quietly, cutting her off firmly.

She sighed. “You’re right. Killing her now will kill the Dregs too. They don’t deserve that.”

“I have transfusion tubes,” Kuwei said. “Help me and we can drain her of a few pints before she wakes up.” He pulled the coiled tubing from his pocket. “I have everything I need set up at the Crow Club. Svetya and I can synthesise enough of the drug from her blood to keep everyone alive until we start weaning them off it.”

“Svetya?” Jesper craned his neck, peering around the frame of the back door. Wylan stepped aside to let the nervous Fabrikator girl step inside.

Nina knew Svetya from the Little Palace but even so she barely recognised her. She looked awful, thin and hollowed eyed. Her gaze was steady, however. “Kat’s blood is a drug,” she explained apologetically. “We had no choice but to follow her. But once she started spreading her blood too far her control weakened. She didn’t realise, but I did. I was trying to free the others but…” she trailed off.

Now the others were dead, because of them. Nina lifted her chin. “I’ll make sure everyone in the Palace knows the truth. They’ll be remembered as loyal soldiers,” she pledged. And as Kat's victims, she thought.

Svetya’s smile was weak and haunted. “We should hurry,” she told Kuwei and the two of them crouched in front of Kat. Nina stepped around them walking around the far side of the long table to where Inej sat on the floor with Kaz’s head in her lap. He was out cold, possibly literally given his little ice trick.

“Is anyone going to fill me in on what’s going on?” she asked. She didn't think Kaz had planned for Roeder's death - although with Kaz she wouldn't lay bets either way - but it was obvious he had engineered Kat's takedown, pulling Kuwei out of the way before springing his ambush. She wanted to know what else he had planned. She was sick of being left in the dark.

“We don’t know, Nina,” Inej said sounding as tired as she felt. “Kaz hasn’t told us.”

“I know,” Kuwei said.

“You do?” Jesper’s brow wrinkled and he asked, “Since when do you know our plans?”

“Roeder told me everything," Kuwei said proudly. "He was outside the window at the church. He whispered the words so only I could hear them while Kaz distracted Kat.” Lifting his head Kuwei looked pleased with himself. Nina supposed he might as well. This would be the first time he’d been in on his own kidnapping.

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Jesper said. “Tell us.”

Kuwei’s golden gaze was shading toward smug. “There is a saying in Shu Han we use as a warning not to risk more than you can afford to lose," he said. "Never put your hand into a barrel full of rats.”

“Excellent advice next time I’m down at the tables and someone offers me a barrel of rats,” Jesper scoffed. “But what’s your point?”

“Rats in a barrel will tear each other apart to get out,” Kuwei said, “but if you put your hand in, they’ll stop and turn on you. We’re going to trick Kat into forcing the Barrel bosses to fight each other, with her in the middle.”

Nina shook her head. “But they can’t hurt her.” She looked down at Kaz. “At least, not for long.”

“But they can hurt each other,” Inej said meeting her eyes. “And that will hurt her.”

“Kaz’s plan is a murder/suicide?” Wylan asked, sounding as confused as Nina felt.

“No. It’s a one-two punch,” Kuwei said. “The bosses will weaken her. Someone else will kill her.”

“Who?” Nina demanded.

Kuwei looked Nina right in the eye and told her, “Someone Kat won’t expect. Someone she’s already discounted." He grinned wide and fiendish. "Because you killed her, Nina.”

Chapter Text

Rats in a Barrel Pt. 2:

Kaz:

The night of the siege…

The water released him under the bridge. There was a small ledge for loading and unloading the barges that stopped and moored there and Kaz hauled himself up onto it. He could hear gunfire on the air, muted by the rain. The slick black surface of the canal was silvered by a streak of lightning. His teeth chattered and his bad leg spiked with pain. He didn’t know how long he listened and waited for Ekaterine and her Grisha to leave. He didn’t hear anything except the song of the storm. It was possible they’d left long ago. It was possible they’d never been there. It was possible Kaz had always existed under the bridge.

He'd always claimed to have been born of the canals; tell a lie long enough and it will become true.

The canal water clung to his shins, enveloping his feet. The grip was warm, firm. Kaz’s arms shook as he braced himself on the ledge. He wanted to slip back into the water. The canal would take him out to sea. He could float away. He wouldn’t even need to use Jordie’s corpse for buoyancy. But there was something he needed to do first. He had business to take care of. A distant boom, a softer form of thunder than the storm, shook the air. Kaz dragged himself upright and onto the street. The night sky was lit with the glare of fire. The crackle of breaking glass and gunfire mimicked the patter of rain. Kaz staggered, groping for his missing cane as his bad leg buckled. His bones were too heavy. His flesh waterlogged.

He heard shrieking and saw shadows streaking across the rooftops down Hotje alley toward the Palace. Hoots and jeers filled the air. The rain tasted like smoke. He took a tentative step, testing his bad leg. It held but every staggered step away from the canal felt like agony, as if he was peeling apart. He walked toward the sounds of gunfire.

A figure stumbled drunkenly into the street, wobbling on unsteady legs into the gutter. Kaz recognised Mads Mikkersson. He was on fire and so was the sodden trash at his feet. “Help me…” Flame poured from his mouth like molten lead. There were cracks in his skin. He took a step forward. His fingers flaked to grey ash as he reached out. “Ghezen wept. Help me!” Kaz stepped to the side, ducking behind the jut of the Letjenner bookstore’s boxy window. Lightning seared the street white. Mads exploded with a soft whoosh, a rush of liquid flame spilling over the cobbles.

Kaz stepped over his blackened body and kept walking. Several more Liddies lay dying in the street as he approached the Palace. He spotted Silke, slumped against the wall of the Bucket Onion, her face cracked like old stone. Hershal lay in the middle of the street, chest stoved in, staring up into the rain in blind surprise. Passing Suyin’s pawn shop he turned toward the sound of screaming. It didn’t last long. The pawn shop’s roof caved in, sending an avalanche of tiles and roof beams crashing inward.

He followed the rain in the gutters as it rushed the wrong way up the street. A barricade blocked his path. It was on fire. So was the street. Kaz shaded his eyes against the light, annoyed. He distinctly remembered telling the others to erect the blockade on the far side of the Palace. He could see people on the burning barricade. Anika roared flame into the air. He thought he heard Roeder’s voice whisper his name as the air currents shifted. “That you, boss?”

He heard the gutters gurgle, the water’s warning. Kaz looked to his right. Geels stood in the gutter, wreathed in raindrops. “Brekker.” He lifted one dripping hand and his fingers spilled back down toward his wrist. “Ghezen. What’s happening to us?”

“Nothing your tiny mind could wrap itself around, Geels.”

“Smug little —” Geels cut himself off, dropping his arm before it could drip down to his elbow. “Is this real?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Geels face twisted in pain. “They cut off Burstraat.”

Kaz nodded. “That’s what you get for going with a girl from the nice part of town. Maybe you could jump in the canal and swim there,” he suggested.

“You think this is hilarious, don’t you? But you’re alone out here and you don’t look none too steady on your feet.”

“At least I still have them.”

Geels pulled a gun with his remaining hand. It dropped into the gutter when his hand splashed away. “Oh, Saints,” Geels groaned lifting his arms and staring at his empty coat cuffs. “What’s happening to me?”

Kaz looked at the pistol in the gutter. It was submerged in the flow. The water was still running the wrong way. Kaz looked behind him back toward East Stave. The river’s level was down and the rain run off was spilling like a waterfall over the street edge, yet the water in the street leading passed the barricade was running away from the river. He walked to the street edge, looking down into the river. The current was fast moving, running toward the Lid.

“Oi,” cried Geels, “you can’t just leave me here.”

Watch me. Kaz stepped off the street. He didn’t hit the river. The river hit him. He had a brief memory of tumbling ass over teakettle within the fast-moving river under the Sacred Ash before the Stave consumed his thoughts entirely. He resurfaced abruptly in the middle of the river facing the widening sprawl of the Lid, the current bending around his body. The air was cold and ice crystals danced like steam over the surface as it hardened into frost. A wall was forming before his eyes, blocking off the Lid.

Out of the mist, cloaked figures emerged. They stepped out onto the surface of the river. “Kaz Brekker. It is time you pay your debt to us,” said one. His voice was vaguely familiar, but Kaz could not place it. He looked into the shadow of his hood, noting his mask. The Tides had come out to play.

Kaz quirked a brow and asked, “What business?” He watched the ice creep across the water towards him with detached interest. Would he freeze solid if it touched him?

In front of him he could see the wall of ice climb through the air, growing taller as it fed on the river. It was oddly beautiful but he couldn’t quite explain why. The ice was not the pure glittering blue-white of the snowfields in Fjerda. It was grey-brown, stained with Ketterdam’s filth and contaminated with lumps of refuse, including several old packing crates and the bones of some poor sap who had drowned long ago and never found his way out to sea. The man’s fingerbones poked out of the ice wall in vaguely accusatory fashion. Jordie? Kaz thought but dismissed the thought just as swiftly. The tide had taken Jordie out to sea, why would it bring him back now?

Speaking of Tides, he’d ignored his audience too long. The speaker had been joined by another man in a cloak considerably less spangled. There was something about the set of the man’s shoulders that was decidedly familiar as he cupped his hand and murmured to the Tide from the street side. Kaz thought about wading to the edge and climbing out of the river but he wasn’t sure his legs would support his weight. Like Geels and his hands, he worried he might not have any legs anymore.

“He’s sick. The Ravkans got to him too,” said the man with the military bearing and the suspiciously plain cloak.

“That works better. We can take him and get a sample of his blood.”

“You want to kidnap Brekker? Are you mad? What if he sees your face?” the second man asked.

“Once we’re done with him it won’t matter. Brekker will be ours.”

The second man drew in a breath. “— You can’t.”

“Of course, we can. In fact, it’s very convenient. Iskova has done us a favour. Now we don’t have to worry about Brekker’s loyalty. The initiation will make him ours.”

“Does everyone have an initiation except the Dregs?” Kaz wondered aloud. He was really going to have look into making one. It wouldn’t do to fall behind trend. “Do you have a secret handshake?” he asked one of the other Tides arrayed in front of him on the water. “Or do you recite dirty poems to the rain?”

The Tide was unamused. “You were warned you would pay for your insolence one day, monstrous boy.” This Tide was a woman and clearly one of the one’s who had accosted him two years ago. He must have made an impression, if she’d come out again just for him, he decided.

A very loud explosion boomed through the air from the direction of West Stave. The Tides obscuring mists trembled with the reverberation as the roof blew off the Stadlied. Kaz was not the only one who watched the fireball belch toward the sky overhead. He smiled. “Well. At least I started my glorious downfall with a bang.”

“We will teach you respect,” the female Tide hissed.

“But then how will you find the time to teach me your secret rhyming couplet?”

The Tide raised her arm. Kaz fell backward into the water, or maybe the water slapped him down? Either way it didn’t much matter. He was submerged in an instance, the water’s of East Stave closing over him like the lid of the fine pinewood coffin he’d never have. He looked up through the rippling surface of his wet tomb and thought that a week, or a month ago, he might have been alarmed. An hour ago, he might have fought, struggling for breath he now found he didn’t need. He was sure there was somewhere he needed to be and something he ought to be doing, but it didn’t matter. The water was comfortable and he didn’t much care what the Tides wanted from him.

If this was dying, he had to wonder why he’d fought so hard to stay alive. It was peaceful and almost soundless under the surface but not silent. He could hear the current, not with his ears but with a sense he couldn’t put a name to. He simply felt the water within him, like the blood he wasn’t sure still flowed through his veins. He may have moved, yanked along the riverbed by the Tide woman’s power, or maybe it was the other way around? Maybe he didn’t move but the world did? Flowing into a new shape around him as he remained inert? Like a stone lying on a riverbed.

Pretty thoughts, but irreverent. He didn’t get to rest long before he was dragged to the surface. His ears popped with the shift in pressure and the darkness all around him, deeper and thicker than the stormy night, told him he was enclosed within thick stone walls. He was floating, partially submerged in sea water. He could hear the deep, bass beat of the ocean humming in his ears. Instead of inducing panic, the sound soothed him. It felt like home and that should have surprised him. Kaz hadn’t had a home in years. He could feel the stone through the water, as it pressed against the confines of his prison. The walls were curved. He was in some kind of circular stone structure. A well? The air tasted cleaner on his lips, pickled with a hint of brine. He could hear water dripping from above.

He made himself look up. Above him was a heavy metal grate. He could see dim greenish light filtering through the lattice but no stars. So, he was down a well inside a tower at the shore edge? Interesting. The light shifted as a figure peered down through the grate at him. “Kaz Brekker, born Kaz Rietveld, I will let you out if you can make it up to this grate,” the voice intoned.

Rietveld. The old, lost name echoed down the well, bouncing off the walls. Kaz let the echo fall to the water and drown without comment. He floated. The ocean sighed. Somewhere, perhaps leagues away, Jordie flexed his barnacle-crusted bones through the ocean silt.

“Did you hear me, Mister Brekker? I said you must raise yourself out of the pit.”

“No.”

“I peg your pardon?”

“You don’t have it,” Kaz retorted. “And I said no. I’m not doing your initiation. If you want to talk business with me do it as a man, not a Komedie Brute castoff.”

“I could just leave you down there,” his interlocutor snapped.

“Go ahead,” Kaz said. “I’m sure you’ll find someone else to do your dirty work for you.”

The figure at the grate disappeared. The well was too narrow for him to float on his back so he let himself sink, drifting to the bottom with thoughtless ease. It was funny, ten years ago he’d been desperate not to drown. If only he’d known then how easy it was. Like falling asleep. The water was dark. No light to illuminate the clouds of salt moving in front of his eyes. He felt deliciously warm and protected, as absurd as that sounded. All that effort, all the struggle to claw his way to the top of the Barrel and for what? It was so much nicer down here at the bottom of this well. Would anyone ever fight, if they knew how much kinder it was to give in? Kaz let his thoughts diffuse through the water. He imagined dying here, his flesh and his will sloughing away in the water, becoming silt to bury his bones. The thought was a pleasant one interrupted by a great, burping noise as an underwater sluice gate opened in wall.

Kaz’s bones, flesh and will were rudely yanked through the narrow shaft as the gate sucked all the water in the well into a large stone chamber with a slimy, seaweed slicked floor. The water rushed to fill the space, lapping at the edge of a raised platform with a set of stairs leading to a firmly bolted wooden door. Locked into his flesh and bone once more, Kaz rested on his hands and knees in a measly foot of water. He looked up through the narrow window-like slits in the high ceiling above his head. He couldn’t be sure but he had the feeling the building he was in was wider at its base than its top. There was only one type of structure in Ketterdam he knew with that design. The obelisk towers.

There was a water gate set into the outer wall, wide enough to allow small boats inside. It was closed but Kaz could smell the lingering reek of sea water and knew that at certain points of the day the gate would open and let the tide flood in. He suspected this chamber was used to allow flatboats to pull up to the platform to unload supplies, making this room a servants entrance of sorts. Kaz looked from the water gate to the bolted door. He knew which one he’d liked to exit through, but he suspected he was being watched and the Tides would stop him if he tried to leave and swim back to shore.

He decided then and there he wouldn’t institute an initiation for the Dregs. He didn’t have the patience for them. A tattoo, a paycheck and a carefully elucidated warning of exactly what fate awaited a recruit if they betrayed the gang was all that was really needed. Anything else was an empty flex. Exactly like this. He waded out of the water and up the steps, ignoring the heavy ache in his bones and the weariness that pressed down on him as he left the water. The multiple bolts on the door would take less than thirty seconds to unpick. Kaz didn’t bother. He sank under the door, oozing over the cold stone beyond before dragging himself back together again on the other side.

“Ghezen, this is a bad idea.” The man who was not a Tide flinched when he saw him but covered it by leaning against the door opposite in the narrow corridor. He held a bone light lantern. “Mister Brekker,” he said tiredly, “Try and believe me when I tell you it’s not in your interest to kill anyone here.”

“Why?” Kaz asked.

“Why believe me,” the man asked, “or why not kill them?”

“Both.”

“That’s an easy enough answer. You’re dying. The Tides can save you, but if you hurt Ka — if you hurt any of the Tides – I’ll kill you. I can do it too. You’re vicious and you’re clever, but you’re half dead already even if you don’t feel it and I’m more than double your age.” The man raised his hand, wriggling his fingers. Kaz was knocked into the wall by an invisible force. The air in his lungs was hijacked. His vision spotted at the edges. His throat spasmed.

The Squaller released him. Kaz drew in a breath. The Squaller waited for his reply. “Why would the Council let non-Tidemakers into their tower?” he asked.

“Because the tide and the sea breezes are one,” the Squaller replied. “Where the water can’t reach, the breeze surely can.”

A conspiracy between Ketterdam’s Squallers and her Tidemakers? Kaz was faintly intrigued. He had wondered once or twice where all the native Etheralki hid themselves in the city. He nodded slowly. “I’ll bear your advice in mind,” he told the Squaller. He had no particular interest in living but he couldn’t shake the feeling he had something he needed to do and he couldn’t very well do it if he was dead. He might as well hear the Tides out. Who knows? There might be profit in it.

“Do,” the Squaller pressed earnestly. “I rather like you, Brekker. I’d prefer if our association did not end here.”

The Squaller pulled an ornate, seashell shaped key from his pocket. He opened the door at his back with it. Kaz watched him slip the key under his cloak and followed him into another hollow chamber dominated by a spiralling staircase. He noted the black and shiny walls, glimmering like wet slate in the bone light.

“Imperjum,” he murmured.

“Yes, we’re on Imperjum. You can smell it, can’t you? The sea air is different here,” the squaller agreed.

Kaz spent the brief trip climbing stairs studying the engravings on the walls. They weren’t that interesting, but it took his mind off the discomfort of having legs again, especially as one of them didn’t work well. The carvings scoured into the strange black walls of the Tide’s obelisk tower were the same ones visible on the base of the wrecked tower on Vellgeluk, which he supposed shouldn’t have surprised him but was a disappointing.

He climbed up into a triangular room covered in tapestries and filled with Tides. The well grate sat in the middle of the floor. “What was I supposed to do?” the Tide who had spoken to him down the well defended himself to the others. “He wasn’t going to leave and I have to be in Belendt by dawn for the Council session.”

“This is highly irregular. Every initiate must complete the ritual,” said the female Tide who’d drowned him earlier.

“Everything about this situation is irregular, Sonya. He wasn’t even Grisha two days ago!” A third Tide pointed angrily at Kaz. Kaz wished for his cane, or a chair. He eyed the grate in the floor. He was still dripping wet from his earlier dunking. He looked down at his feet as a puddle formed where he stood. Could he create a channel of runoff all the way to the grate, he wondered. He missed the warm ocean brine.

“He’s Grisha now,” Sonya snapped back. “He should do the ritual.”

The Squaller cleared his throat. “If it makes a difference, Honoured Tide, Brekker did turn himself entirely fluid and seep under the water gate door.”

“Is that true?”

Kaz shrugged and said, “Predictability is a death sentence for a good thief.”

“Thief,” murmured a fourth Tide, shaking their whole body inside their cloak. “In a hundred years we have never allowed a thief to penetrate our sanctum.”

“Few people do,” Kaz drawled. “I’ve yet to let that stop me.”

He looked across the expanse of mostly empty room to the full-length window. Barely wider than an arrow-slit the window reached from the narrowing ceiling of the room to the wider base of the floor. Kaz limped toward it, ignoring the angry shuffling of cloaks behind him. He peered down at the masts of the Pearl docked beneath the tower with interest. He wondered if the Pearl had all the crates of wormwood he’d sold Schipp still sitting in its hold. He wondered just how durable the obelisk’s walls were. Beyond the veldt of black harbour water, Ketterdam burned, burnishing the night sky with a rosy, orange glow.

Someone slammed a heavy wooden cane onto the floor. Kaz turned back to the room. A figure in a cloak and a golden mask stood in the middle of the room holding what looked like a highly ornate oar between both hands. The man slammed the end of the oar into the floor once more and hidden bone lights in the slanting walls flickered to life, casting strange liquid shadows over the floor and ceiling. Water gurgled up the well shaft to bubble through the grate in the floor. Rising up from the grate twisted tendrils of water wound through the air like the fronds of some strange sea plant to wend around the Tide’s body. The air in the chamber breathed out dampness. It started to rain from the ceiling. “Kaz Rietveld-Brekker, known as Dirtyhands, do you pledge your life and loyalty to the Council of Tides?” Boomed the oar-wielding Tide in a shivering, fluid voice.

“The only cause I follow is my own,” Kaz told the room full of Tides.

“Then you will die,” Sonya spat.

“So, I’m told,” Kaz agreed. “Death doesn’t scare me. Neither do you.”

“But we know something that does,” said the Belendt Council-bound Tide. “The Wraith makes for Kerch. She will breach our waters in hours. Pledge loyalty or we sink her.”

“Ghezen’s mercy,” groaned the Squaller. “Didn’t we talk about this? Never threaten a Barreler, Ka – Honoured Tide – they tend to call your bluff.”

“I’m not bluffing.”

“Then you’re a dead man.” Kaz fired Geels’ pistol from his hip. Behind his back he head the Squaller curse before a powerful gust of wind knocked the Tide down, out of the path of the bullet.
Instantly, Kaz was constrained in ropes of water that knotted around his body like giant serpents. He dropped the pistol. The water lifted him off his feet and flung him across the room. He was ready for the impact. He hit the wall and exploded into a shower of salt water. He crashed to his knees on the floor seconds later, gasping for air, indescribable pain ripping through his body, which was not a part of his plan.

“His body is rejecting Iskova’s transformation,” he heard one of the Tide’s say as a curtain of cloaked hemlines surrounded him. “If we don’t act now, he’ll be dead in minutes.”

“If we do this, we stuck with him forever!” another objected.

“And he’s stuck with us! We need him, Nico. He’s too good a tool to waste.”

Strong hands reached for him, hauling him up. Kaz couldn’t stand but this time the sense of weightlessness wasn’t languid or pleasant. He felt stretched thin, as if all his mass was pooling toward his feet, dragging his skin to breaking point. He remembered Geels, melting where he stood. He thought of the drowned skeleton waving at him from the ice wall. He thought of his brother at the bottom of the ocean. He thought of a ship riding the waves. He needed to meet that ship. Summoning his will, he gripped the hands that gripped him, fighting for form and substance and embracing the nauseating panic that came with touch. It grounded him, held him fast to the world. Only the living knew fear and right here and now, he needed to live.

He was carried to the grate in the floor. Sea water bubbled upward forming a pool beneath him. He wasn’t sure if it was the bone light or some Tide trick that made it glow but when he was lowered into the pool it held him aloft, cocooning him in a firm embrace that helped him keep his edges tight. He thought he'd stopped breathing. His heart was loud and slow in his ears. The Tides staring down at him were dim shadows in his fading vision as the water slowly rose and floated on the air.

The Tides were chanting. He didn’t recognise the words; his hearing was fading along with everything else. He had the strangest feeling that Jordie was holding him up, reaching through the water, just as he’d kept him afloat all those years ago on the long swim back to shore. He wanted to tell Jordie to let him go. He could sink and drift away. He’d seep through the grate and down the well and let the ocean’s current take him to his brother. It was what he wanted. He was tired. But he couldn’t do it. Berth Twenty-Two, Firth Harbour. He had to meet that ship. Not because her captain needed him, but because he wanted to see Inej. No mourners, no funerals, no goodbyes – but every man had the right to snatch at something good before he let this life win.

Above his head the Tide with the golden mask lifted the oar high over Kaz’s chest. The other Tides reached out for the shaft. Water frosted around the shaft like liquid diamond, hardening into ice. Kaz refused to close his eyes as the oar was driven downward onto his chest with elemental force.

White. All he could see was white. All he could hear was the roar of his heartbeat in his ears, too loud, too big, and maybe it wasn’t his heart, maybe it was something else. Something he hadn’t been meant to ever hear. Something that lived in the very heart of the world. The ocean was a dull thrum through his veins. He could feel the Tides, like strings attached to the oar shaft. If he wanted, he could know their names. If he wanted, he could forget his own.

“Kaz Rietveld-Brekker,” boomed the Chief Tide. “Do you hear the song of the tide?”

“Yes,” he heard himself say.

“Do you feel the current that connects all Tidemakers?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel the command of the water?”

“Yes.”

“Do you accept that command?”

Kaz blinked. All he could see was white. All he could hear was the heart of the ocean. All he could remember was a ship on the waves. “…Yes,” he said.

“Then prepare yourself, Tide Brekker, for your first mission.”

Chapter Text

Rats in a Barrel Pt. 3:

Kaz:

Anika incinerated Roeder’s body on the scrub land at the back of the Slat. Keeg threw a bucket of water over the bone chips and flakes of ash remaining, washing the slurry into the trash choked canal. Kaz ordered the Dregs to take up watch at the windows and up and down the street, while Ekaterine screamed and beat at the pantry door. Head aching, he slipped into his office, ignoring Nina’s death glare. He sat behind his desk and poured himself a brandy.

Inej slipped into the office, closing the door. “The lies need to stop, Kaz.”

He swirled his drink, watching the amber whirlpool in the middle of his glass. “I haven’t lied.” Inej made a disgusted noise. Kaz amended his statement, “…to you.”

“You’re lying right now.”

Kaz remained silent. He sat back in his chair. He took a sip of his drink. The back of his head ached obscenely. Even from a distance Ekaterine made sure he took the brunt of her pain. He was an old hand at pain. He could handle it. He would handle it. Once he finished his drink.

Inej drifted toward the window. She perched on the sill and watched him. She made him feel transparent. He wondered what her eyes saw when she looked at him. He wondered what there weas to see. “Without trust a crew will fall,” she lectured him. “The centre will not hold.”

“This crew is already as leaky as a rusty bucket, Inej.”

“The rust begins with you,” she accused.

Kaz flicked his gaze toward her. “Is this a mutiny?”

She hitched one shoulder in a shrug. “How can you lead if you cannot control yourself?” she asked him.

Kaz turned away. He took a drink. “What’s it to be then? Bullet to the head? Knife to the throat?” He tipped his glass. “Poison in my cup?”

In the corner of his eye he saw Inej shake her head. “I will lead the others over the ice wall,” she told him, resolute in her warning, “We will leave you.”

Kaz tilted his head back, a thin smile on his lips. “Say what you mean, Inej. You’re giving up on…Ketterdam. You don’t think it’s worth saving anymore.”

“Not the city, Kaz. You. I will not drown with you.”

He nodded slowly, eyes staring into nothing. “I don’t remember asking you to, Wraith.”

“Then your memory is truly failing you. You ask every time you look at me.”

Kaz did not flinch, even though her words cut him to the quick. He shouldn't be surprised that her aim would land true. She'd only either been blind because she hadn't wanted to see. “You’re angry.”

“With you,” she agreed.

That was nothing new. He’d made her angry a hundred times before. She’d left him before too. Her approval had never been any protection against that. “You should go,” he said. “I can’t be trusted and this isn’t your fight.”

Inej hissed between her teeth. “Is it so hard to ask for the help you need?” she demanded.

He finished his glass. “Nothing can help me.”

“Because you won’t let anyone try.”

Kaz poured himself another drink. He didn’t look at Inej. It didn’t matter. Her gaze was a burning point striking straight through him. He set his glass down and raised his hands, flexing his fingers in the salt crusted leather. The gloves pinched his fingers, as if all the soakings had shrunk them. Or maybe, he'd simply outgrown them? He peeled one glove off and then the other. His discarded gloves lay on the table like blackened carcasses. “And what help do you offer, Wraith? What can you do that I can’t? The gang bosses will be here soon. We’ll fight like the hungry rats we are and rip Ekaterine apart between us. The winner will take the spoils and the survivors will still be stuck behind the ice wall, waiting for the Tides to decide our fate.”

“Walls can be scaled, or broken down. Every good thief knows that,” she retorted. “Jesper told me about the obelisk key. Don’t pretend you don’t have a plan for the Tides.”

Kaz looked at Inej. “I don’t have a plan for the Tides,” he told her. He raked his hands through his hair, trying to scrub away the itch at the back of his brain. The pain in his head felt like a clanging warning bell. There was danger here but he didn’t know what it was. “There is something wrong with me, Inej. You should take me down. Shut me up in a barrel somewhere and let me stew.”

She snorted, unimpressed. “Self-pity is beneath you.”

Kaz looked up. “My plans aren’t sound. I keep forgetting the steps.” He knew there was a viable plan to defeat the Tides influence. He knew it involved Wylan and the Merchant Council. He just couldn’t remember what it was. He picked up his drink and knocked it back in one, tensing at the burn. His throat locked. He closed his eyes and heard the call of the ocean. Once it would have revolted him. Now he didn't know what it did to him. Every time he used his powers, he lost something. A memory here, a thought there. The exchange wasn’t a fair one but he knew he wasn’t going to stop. He hadn’t realised the feeling of peace could be addictive. All the vice he’d peddled and it turned out the one poison he couldn’t resist was as simple as the feeling of calm he felt when he let everything drift away. “I don’t remember killing Geels,” he heard himself say. “I know I did it. I just don’t remember doing it, or why.” He made himself look at Inej. “The next time I slip it could be you I kill.”

Inej met his gaze calmly. “Not if I kill you first.”

His lips twitched. “How would you do it?”

She shook her head. “There are many ways to dam a river and strangle a stream until it is nothing but cracked earth, Kaz, and you are still only a man.” She stood from the windowsill. Kaz stilled as she moved closer. His hands clenched atop the desk. Movements deliberately slow, Inej reached out a hand to touch his cheek. He snapped his eyes closed. The ripple of her touch spread through his skin, sinking deeper. The waters rose behind his eyes. “Do you remember the day you came to buy out my contract from Heleen?” Inej asked him.

He opened his eyes, thoughts washed in confusion. “Yes.” Old memories were like hardened protrusions of basalt in his mind. They kept their shape and form and did not dissolve in the waters. Everything new might fade but the moments that had made him would remain. He might stagnate, but he wouldn’t cease to be altogether. It wasn't a comfort. Old cuts would not keep him sharp.

Inej traced the line of his cheek. Kaz tensed his jaw. He didn’t want to pull away. Her touch was the only thing keeping him solid. “You told me I’d never find happiness or safety with you, do you remember?” she murmured.

He did. He was confident that was one promise he’d made to her that he’d kept. “What’s the point of this?” he asked.

“At the time, those words were a comfort. I would sooner have terrible truths than kind lies in this life.”

He didn’t understand what she was saying. All truth was terrible. All lies were shill for the conman. What he’d said that night was simply fact. Nothing more and nothing less. Inej’s palm was pressed to his cheek. Her skin was warm, hardened by calluses and cracked by the raw winds out to sea. He breathed in and the waters behind his eyes receded. The world felt a little more solid. Inej knelt by his chair. That felt wrong to him. He remembered another night, in the bathroom of the Geldrenner hotel. He remembered her telling him, ‘This isn’t easy for me either’, he remembered her telling him other things too. Things that meant he never wanted her to kneel in front of him. He jerked away from her touch, shoving his chair back. He leaned hard on his cane. The room spun woozily. Shouldn’t have had that second brandy, he thought as he dragged his aching body to the wash basin. He grasped the sides of the sink. He felt like a sloping bucket, over-full and in danger of tipping over and spilling on the floor.

Inej moved closer. She was still watching him. “You treat me the way a mercher treats his wealth; as something to be hidden, kept and sheltered, but never enjoyed. I’m no treasure Kaz. I am a monster just like you.”

“No.” He didn't know where the reflexive denial came from. It was just there, spilling from his lips.

Inej's gaze was knowing. He felt hunted. “If I asked you what you believed in now, Kaz, what would you say?” she asked him, a hint of amusement in her tone.

“Nothing,” he answered. It was be the only safe answer.

Inej stepped closer. Kaz straightened. There was nowhere to go. The water closet was not large. Tiny, arrow-straight Inej, with her silent acrobat’s feet and her hard won grace filled the space, so much larger than her bones. She placed her hand over his chest. Her touch was a brand, blazing through the damp cloth of his half-open shirt. His heart started to pound. The water boiled. He breathed sips of air. It wasn’t revulsion that clenched his muscles, or sickness that swam in his mind. He clenched hold of his cane. He felt the ground tilt underneath him. He didn’t know if he was afraid. He didn't seem to know much of anything right now.

“When I spoke to you in the Menagerie I knew who you were. Dirtyhands, the worst thug in the Barrel. The reason the Dregs were a force to be feared. The boy with no soul.” Inej’s words pelted him like rocks of hail. He knew it all, had heard far, far worse but for some reason the recitation of his hard built reputation never sounded right from her lips. He’d murdered his shame years ago. He’d done away with foolish notions of honour and fair play when he crawled out of Fifth Harbour. He’d stamped all over the memory of poor, stupid Kaz Rietveld, who thought insider trading sounded like cheating. But Inej’s words still held the power to wound. He wished he knew why. He wished he didn't know why.

Once, he’d decided to scrape together enough of the dregs of his decency to be a man and not a monster for her. But then he’d drowned. And drowned again. And again. All that was left now was the ghost of the boy he’d been ten years ago, dragged back by the drowning tide. A boy who wanted to dazzle with magic tricks and have a house with a roaring fire and a big dog stretched out across the rug. A boy who could have been happy with just that. The waters had done worse than transform him, he thought. They’d revealed him. He had nowhere to hide now and Inej saw right through him.

“I could have waited for another boy,” Inej told him, standing so close now that he had to look down at the top of her head. So close, her breath tickled the skin of his neck past his open shirt. “I could have held out for some shy, kind, country boy who’d come to the city and found himself swept off the Stave and into the Menagerie by his friends. I could have hoped that he might take pity on me, fall in love with me, and whisk me away from Heleen.”

Kaz stared at her. “You could never be that foolish.”

“But I was, once," she told him. "I used to be just a girl. A lazy girl who wanted five more minutes in bed in my parents’ caravan. A girl who knew nothing about the world. A girl who would never hurt anyone.”

Kaz shook his head. “You could have been all those things. But there is no part of you that has ever been helpless.”

Inej looked up at him. The motion brought their faces closer. Her eyes were huge. Her free hand came to rest on his, where he gripped the basin. The waters were still. The tide frozen, subservient to the will of the captain. “I couldn’t help myself in the Menagerie,” she told him boldly, defying her weakness even as she claimed it, unafraid. “Back then, I needed a monster to tell me that I didn’t have to be a victim.” Her fingers locked in the gape of his shirt, tugging.

She was so close. There was no chance of drifting away. Kaz lifted his arm. His fingers groped at the air, almost a spasm. He firmed his resolve into hard lines and clear angles. Slowly he brushed his fingers down her arm from her shoulder to her elbow and then let his hand drop to her waist. He felt Inej flinch. He remembered her telling him that she’d flinched the first time Nina hugged her. He froze, palm barely touching her hip.

Inej’s hand gripping his tightened its hold. Her breath hitched and she leaned in, ducking her head. She pressed her cheek against the hollow of his throat, her head notching neatly under his chin. He forgot how to breathe completely. His hand twitched off her hip, moving with a mind of its own, smoothing over the small of her back. He flexed his palm, pressing her closer. Inej’s hand on the basin dropped away, then swept in an elegant dive through the air to wrap around his back. She held him tighter than he held her. There was no way he could slip away. It disturbed him how much relief that gave him. He could feel the press of her cheek against his collarbone. He could feel the strength of her arm curved around the small of his back. His free hand leapt off the basin and cupped the back of her head. Her braid was a tangle, just barely clinging to her skull. Her hair still felt like the finest silk, fine grained but strong under the run of his fingers.

What do you believe in, Kaz? You, Inej. You. He felt ashamed. Sickened by the burden he was placing on her. He couldn’t be her monster today, or tomorrow or the next. He was missing pieces of himself and filled with power created by Ekaterine’s design. He was all at sea and he didn’t know how to find his way back to shore.

Once, he’d been able to offer her the safety of the gang, and his reputation. Once he could gather information for her and wipe out a few pirate slavers foolish enough to think they could hide in his Barrel, but those days were over. Even if he beat Ekaterine, he couldn’t win back what he’d lost. He wasn’t Dirtyhands anymore. For the first time in his life he didn’t know what he was and the uncertainty was almost paralysing. How could he make plans when he didn’t know his goal? The urge to tighten his grip, to hold Inej closer and closer filled him with a hot rush of sensation. It burned and it chilled him. The tide inside him swelled, crested, fell away. He was helpless. He wasn’t the monster Inej remembered.

Inej stirred. He let go of her head, immediately letting her move. She pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “You will always be the monster when he’s needed,” she told him with the certainty of Saints, speaking divine truth. “I will always be the Wraith. We will always choose to fight. But it’s a choice, Kaz. Not destiny. We wear our armour to protect who we are. But it is not all we are.”

He wanted to deny it. He was Dirtyhands. He was Kaz Brekker. His actions defined him because he’d allowed no trace of anything else to remain. Without his reputation, without his gang, without the certain knowledge that he could do whatever he needed to do to finish a job, what was he? A boy with a dead brother and no future. He might as well let the water take him like he should have done years ago. The Wraith fought for her cause because there were still people she could save. Kaz had no vengeance left. Jordie wasn’t waiting for him at the bottom of the ocean. Jordie was dead and Kaz had no anchor left.

Inej released him, bobbing up on her tip toes to grip his face between her hands. She made him look at her. She made sure he couldn’t look away. “I cannot promise you a cure. I cannot be your saint. I won’t promise to find you if you choose to drown in the dark – but I promise to be monster enough for both of us," she told him. "Let me help you, Kaz, until you can remember that it wasn’t Dirtyhands that made you dangerous.”

Kaz shut his eyes. He remembered the long, hard swim to Fifth Harbour. There had been no one to help him then either. The body in his arms hadn’t been Jordie anymore and he’d had to leave him behind in the water anyway. He remembered the fire that had taken his veins, so much hotter than the fever as he stood, sloughing water off shaking limbs on the warped boards of the battered pier and found his purpose. He’d wanted vengeance for Jordie and barely allowed himself to want anything for himself. It had been too hard when everything else had been striped away.

He wondered how Inej could do it. How could she survive being the girl who was caught, stolen, bought and sold and the Wraith no slaver could best at the same time? How did she survive the shame and the weakness of knowing what was lost couldn’t be clawed back? How did he find the strength to be Kaz Rietveld? How could he find the strength he’d had that night when left the water and chosen to live? How could he leave the water behind when he’d spent so long drowning?

He didn’t know. But Inej did. She could show him. He opened his eyes. He felt the solidity of his bones, the hard lines of his thoughts, rising from the waters. He didn’t have purpose but he had the desire to find one. If he couldn’t chart a course just yet, he could at least find himself a good compass. “All right,” he said echoing words he’d never spoken but she had, “How do we begin?”

Inej smiled, blinding as the sun in the country, and he thought perhaps he had lied after all, when he'd told her he could never make her happy. He thought this was one broken promise she could forgive. He thought he could as well.

Chapter Text

Rats in a Barrel Pt. 4:

Inej:

She managed to convince Kaz to sleep, using the low-lying truckle bed at the back of the office he used when he worked late on the accounts and caught a brief nap before the sun rose and he went to collect the night’s take from his clubs. That she was able to convince him to rest was a bitter victory. She was glad he slept but hated that he didn’t have the reserves of stubbornness to keep going. She hated Ekaterine for doing this to him. Kaz’s invincibility had never been real, but it hadn’t been an illusion either. Ekaterine had stolen something from Kaz that Inej wasn’t sure he could get back. She prayed to the Saints that he found strength in his loss.

Settling on the windowsill she kept a watch at the window. Kaz had told her the other bosses would be coming and she knew that they could arrive at any time. “Will they try to kill Ekaterine or save her?” she had asked him.

Kaz had brushed a hand over his sternum absently, a slight frown creasing his brow as if his chest hurt. “It depends on whether Janssen and the others decide to double cross me,” he admitted. “None of them can look further forward than the end of their nose, but one of them is bound to get it into his head that Ekaterine in Dregs custody weakens the rest of them.”

“Which is what you want,” Inej pointed out. He needed all the bosses ready to fight and fight hard. These were hardened men, used to a brawl, but for some of them, their brawling days were long over. They each had gangs of eager thugs to fight for them. To guarantee a wily old goat like Janssen would risk a fight, Kaz had to threaten more than just his life, but his reputation. Each boss would have staked their legacy on getting Ekaterine and her drug for their gang.

“I offered them a fair deal; I’ll keep my word," Kaz told her. "But I’d be a fool to trust them. The gangs have been rivals too long. Every boss knows that even if we work together today, tomorrow we’ll fight over the streets we win back.”

Inej nodded. It was the way of the Barrel. The petty squabbles over territory created its own strange order. The Dregs had been strong since Rollins defeat but Kaz had made sure that he didn’t expand too far, too fast. In his own way he had shown far more respect toward the other gangs as a boss than he ever had as a lieutenant. Inej wouldn’t have thought power would make Dirtyhands magnanimous, but Kaz had always been practical. When you were at the top, everyone looked to knock you down and fighting off more than one gang at a time would cut too deep into his bottom line. Kaz had wanted a financial empire, not a handful of dirty streets to bleed over; to build it, he'd needed to work behind the bosses back, while appearing to honour old battle lines. Inej hoped that the groundwork he'd laid would work for him now, or the entirety of the Barrel was going to be looking for new management tomorrow.

“The Lions are a wild card,” Kaz admitted. “Elsje has played her part so far but she’ll want her payment. If she isn’t the first to come here, I’ll buy up the land on either side of Ann’s church and build a new wing for the clinic.”

Inej scoffed. He would do that anyway. He wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise. “Will you give her the serum?” she asked quietly.

Kaz nodded. “The deal is the deal.”

“It could kill her,” Inej reminded him.

Kaz shrugged. “A lesson her replacement can learn from,” he said. “Every Kerch is free to make any bargain they want – and take the consequences.”

“You are giving power to your enemies.”

Kaz pressed his hand to his sternum. “My enemies have all the power they need,” he muttered, adding, “Power's no good if you can’t wield it. Like an idiot with a gun. It will backfire.”

“A dangerous gamble,” Inej murmured. She watched Kaz press fingers into his breastbone. She didn’t think he knew he was doing it. Hunched forward on the edge of the bed, Inej could not see much of his body but she was sure he was injured. Had Ekaterine hurt him earlier? Or was he now feeling an older injury his Etovost power had hidden?

“I’m not worried about given Elsje the serum,” Kaz said. “I’m worried about her showing up at the wrong time. We’re only going to get one chance to finish Ekaterine.”

“What can be done?” Inej asked.

“I told Roeder to find the Lions,” Kaz said, lips thinning. “He broke orders and got himself killed instead.”

“Don’t," she warned him. "He saved our lives.”

“I’m still down a spider,” Kaz retorted.

Inej reminded herself that Kaz did not show his respect with words but with deeds. Roeder’s family would be provided for and that was more valuable than any kind words for the dead. “I will go,” she said. “Where do the Lions den?”

“No,” Kaz said, surprising her with his sharpness. “One of the others can do it.”

“Kaz —”

“You’re no good to me with the Lions,” he reminded her. He met her eyes. “I need you here.”

Inej pressed her lips together, swallowing a retort. She nodded once. She had promised. Kaz did not need a spider to gather secrets. He needed a killer at his back. But more than that, he needed her: Inej Ghafa, daughter of Suli acrobats; pirate captain; former slave and whore. But also, just a woman who lived and breathed, as he did. Kaz needed her for all her parts and more beside. That truth was still hard for her to believe. It felt too much like the foolish wish of the girl she'd been before the Menagerie. It felt like a truth too dangerous to grasp. That Kaz marked her value beyond her skills, that he valued her life above his own; that he trusted her when he could not trust himself. No mere investment, but an insurance of a very different kind.

Inej was not sure Kaz could feel affection like a normal person anymore than she could, but she remembered the way he'd folded his body around hers as he held her. Like a man who needed her soul not her talents. Like a man who wanted her and not just her body. Like a man who... but that was a thought for another time, when battle did not beckon. For now, the truth was plain. Kaz needed her and not just to save his life. Pretending it wasn’t true was beneath her. She would do it no longer. Better frightening truths than easy lies, she thought, feeling her spine straighten as she took on the weight of her promise.

“Rest,” she told him. “I’ll watch for the bosses.”

That was an hour ago and Kaz had yet to stir. A light tapping on the door, roused Inej from her reverie. Nina stood on the other side. “It was too quiet,” she confessed. “I thought you might have killed him.” Looking over Inej’s shoulder she squinted at Kaz asleep. “He looks terrible. Worse than normal. Did you kill him?” she asked.

Inej sighed. “Nina.”

She shrugged, unrepentant. “Wylan has gone with Kuwei and Svetya to the Crow Club to cook up more of Kat’s poison. Jesper’s bored. He’s thinking of shooting through the pantry door to give Kat a scare. Has Kaz told you who he’s lined up to kill her?” she asked, gaze sharp, despite her words.

“No,” Inej shook her head.

“Kuwei said I’d already killed whoever it is. Unless the woman is lying around outside, I can’t summon the dead if I don’t know where to look,” Nina admitted peevishly.

Inej’s brow puckered. “Why does Kaz need a dead woman to kill Ekaterine?” she asked aloud. She understood the reasoning behind calling in the bosses. If they were all using their powers to hurt each other, Ekaterine could not draw on any of them specifically to defend her. Inej wondered if she would feel their pain, in the same way Kaz had felt hers? She thought it likely and suspected that was why Kaz had come up with such a risky plan. He would use her human shield and bludgeon her with it. What she could not work out was why Kaz needed a reanimated body to land the final blow.

“The dead don’t feel pain,” Nina shrugged. “Ekaterine’s powers won’t stop a corpse before I can order it to snap her neck.”

“Then why not do that already?” Inej asked in frustration. “Why risk drawing the other bosses into a fight?”

Nina grimaced. “It’s no secret Kaz is a wave short of an ocean right now,” she said.

“But not deaf,” Kaz told her. Inej turned away from the door and saw that he was sitting up on the side of the bed. “Kuwei clearly has a flair for the dramatic. He wasn’t talking about a literal corpse," he said. "Our assassin is very much alive.”

“Then why did he say she was dead?” Nina demanded. She blinked and answered her own question. “Kat knows who she is. She knows she’s a threat. But she won't be looking for her, because she thinks the assassin is dead.”

Kaz said nothing. He rubbed his chest. “Ekaterine made a mistake when she tied the bosses lives to hers," he shrugged. "It's a sound strategy against a common mark who thinks his life has value, but not against Barrellers who know life is for spending. Ekaterine is afraid of risk. That’s her weakness.”

“That’s nice but it doesn’t answer my question,” Nina reminded him. “Who is Kat afraid of?”

Kaz returned her flat stare. “What makes you think I’ll give you an answer?” he asked.

“If you don’t, I’ll raise one of the pirates outside and order him to rip out your spleen,” Nina replied sweetly.

“Inej will protect me,” Kaz told her, lips twitching upward.

Inej nodded solemnly. “I would.”

Nina rolled her eyes, but Inej thought she saw a spark of warmth in her eyes. “I’m happy for you,” she told Kaz but asked, “Will Inej also protect you from a waffle pan to the back of the head?”

“It depends on whether there are waffles in it.” Inej’s stomach gurgled.

Nina looked at her gravely. “The eggs are in the pantry,” she said.

Inej tilted her chin. “Ekaterine needs to die. Soon.”

Nina laughed. “Agreed.” She looked at Kaz. “The Dregs are getting weaker. Some of them don’t look so good. If the others don’t get back with the drug soon, we could be in trouble when the bosses arrive.”

Kaz brushed passed her out of the office. Most of the Dregs not stationed as lookouts were in the parlour, slumped across the surviving furniture. Inej frowned, surprised at how quickly they had sickened. Nina had been right when she called Ekaterine’s drug a poison. She had seen addicts in poppy dens around the docks look like this. Dead eyed and silent in their listless suffering.

Kaz smacked Keeg on the top of his head with the end of his cane. “Get up and make yourself useful. I want Elsje found. Tell her I have her payment.”

“Boss…I don’t feel so good,” Keeg moaned, slurring his words.

“You’ll feel worse if you don’t move,” Kaz told him, an edge to his voice.

Anika shifted on the couch. “Lay off. We’re sick,” she complained.

“Would you like me to put you out of your suffering?” Kaz asked.

Anika tensed in her slumped heap on the couch, shivering limbs growing rigid as she held herself still. “No boss.” She dragged herself upright painfully, as Keeg moaned and swayed to his feet like an old tree creaking in a gale. In short order, Kaz forced the other Dregs into motion, growling orders to get the door and windows fixed and relieve Dregs on watch on the upper floors. Every Dreg obeyed, dragging themselves up, even if they had to walk bent over double against the pain. Inej approved. She would have done the same with her crew. Sometimes working through pain was better than giving in to it.

“What about me?” Pim asked pitifully from the floor. He was sitting with his back to a bullet-bitten wall and looked like a puppet with cut strings. Sweat beaded his brow and drenched his face.

Kaz looked at him. “Clean the floor,” he ordered. Inej had the feeling the command was a spur of the moment decision. She didn’t believe Kaz had forgotten him, which meant that he wanted Pim close at hand but wasn't willing to admit it. Because he was a healer, she wondered, or did Pim have something to do with Kaz’s mysterious dead-but-not-dead assassin? Unlike Nina, Inej knew there was no point asking Kaz. If he’d wanted to tell her, he would have. That he hadn’t probably meant the element of surprise was necessary to the plan.

Unease crept through her. She had told him the lies needed to stop but enforcing that would not be easy. The Etovost plague had shaken Kaz to his core, stripping him of his certainty. Now he clutched at secrets as if they could give him back control. Inej did not like it. She did not agree with it, but she had never been as ruthless as he was. She couldn’t tear his flimsy amour apart now, even if she was certain she was right. Kaz needed more than her knives and if she took her trust from him now, she would leave him with no protection. But that didn't mean she would let him get away with keeping them in the dark. Moving to his side in the rapidly emptying room, she murmured, “You will tell me the assassin’s name when the time is right.” It was not a request.

“I’ll tell you now,” Kaz murmured back, just as quietly, watching Nina cross the room and disappear into the kitchen. “It’s Moll.”

Inej blinked. “Moll Gerty?” Her thoughts raced as she thought about everything she knew about the woman who had survived the Sweet Shop and carved a place for herself in the Barrel without a gang. Moll had been in the Sterren Lounge when Nina burned it down. Her Etovost Heartrending power had left all of them feeling her burns. Abruptly, Inej understood the game Kaz was running on Ekaterine. “How long have you known Ekaterine’s real weakness?” she asked him.

“Only as long as I have her tell," he promised her. "That's when I knew for sure. The rest was guess work, but the logic was solid. Ekaterine wanted her plague to create Grisha weapons. She did her job too well and forgot that there isn’t a weapon made that can’t be turned on its user."

“Will she do it?” she asked.

Inej had heard that Moll Gerty had turned Kaz down when he offered her a place in the Dregs; doing so and surviving had cemented her reputation in the Barrel as a lone operator to be respected. She’d gone on to turn down the Pointers and the Liddies. Inej suspected Moll was smart enough to know that she didn’t want to make herself a threat to Kaz by joining a rival gang, but she also thought that Moll valued her independence fiercely. Her powers would let her survive the quarantine without needing to fight. She could stay out of the battle, and not have to risk anything for the rest of them. As a loner, it was the smart play. What had Kaz offered her that could be greater than her freedom?

Kaz almost smiled. “The Blacktips have no boss and with Geels gone, no leadership. Moll’s too proud to follow another boss’s orders and too lazy to build her own gang. Now she doesn’t have to.”

Inej noted that his hand was still pressed to his chest. “You said you didn’t remember why you killed Geels,” she reminded him sharply.

“I don’t.” He frowned. “There’s something I’m forgetting. Another string to this plan that I need to remember.”

Inej suggested, “Geels was a Tidemaker. Like you.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “That’s part of it, but I didn't do it out of jealousy. Geels was one of the lieutenants Ekaterine tapped to create her serum, but she never used Geels’ blood to make more Etovost Tidemakers.”

“She fears the Tides,” Inej said, struck with sudden certainty. “The rest of the Etovost are a problem, but Tidemakers have power that makes them a threat to the Tides, so she didn’t make many.”

“I have a feeling the Little Palace know more about the Kerch Tides than the Merchant Council does,” Kaz said quietly. “But even if Ekaterine doesn’t know their secrets, the Tides are the largest force of organised Grisha in Kerch.”

“There could be enough Tides to destroy her Etovost army,” Inej murmured.

Kaz nodded, the flat of his hand pressed to his sternum. “Makes you wonder why they haven’t already, doesn’t it?”

Yes. Dryden had claimed that the Tides would drown the Barrel in less than two days. But they only had his word for that. The likelihood that the Tides were playing a different game grew by the hour. “They want the serum. Just like they wanted Jurda Parem. The Tides want the power to create Grisha,” she said.

“It would improve recruitment,” Kaz murmured. “It’s obvious they wanted Dryden for his mercher connections. If the Tides could infect anyone they wanted, they wouldn’t need to work through a podge like Karl.” He rubbed again at his chest.

“Kaz –“

A shrill cawing noise from one of the upper floor lookouts split the air. “Friendlies,” called out one of the newer Dregs whose name Inej didn’t know. “The Merchling and the Shu. Looks like they’ve got the goods with them.” A ragged round of cheers rang out among the Dregs. Inej heard Jesper’s voice filter in from the kitchen. He and Nina had been watching the pantry door, guarding Ekaterine. Hearing Wylan’s voice answering him, Inej moved to join them. Kaz caught her arm. His bare grip firm and warm against her skin.

“I need to show you something,” he said, face set in hard lines. His free hand was curled into the loose sag of his shirt, clutched protectively over his chest. He led the way back into the office.
Inej shut the door as Kaz pulled off his shirt. She did her best to keep her reaction from her face as he turned around. His chest and upper stomach was covered in bruising centred around an almost blackened impression over his sternum. It was round and the width of a fist, but too regular in shape to have been made by a human hand. Inej reached out but pulled her hand back to look Kaz in the eye. He nodded permission, jaw locked tight. He was holding his breath, body tense as she laid her palm over his chest above the mark.

“Something struck you,” she said. “Did Ekaterine do this?”

Kaz shook his head, a short, tense motion that she knew cost him. He hadn’t put his gloves back on when he left the office but Inej could tell that his tolerance for touch was fading fast. She peered past the ugly, black-red bruising to study the mark. “There is an imprint on your skin,” she told him, trying to ignore the warmth of his skin under her palm and the way her stomach squirmed in a mad swirl. “I can’t see what it is, the bruising is too dark.”

“It’s a tower surrounded by crashing waves,” Kaz said tightly, breathing out in a controlled release. “This mark was made with the end of an oar.”

Inej looked at him sharply, lifting her hand from his chest and clenching her fist. She didn’t know if she wanted to banish the memory of his skin from her mind or hold it close. “Who did this?” she asked.

“I don’t remember,” he said angrily. “I didn’t know I had it until now.”

“Because you stopped using your power and now you can feel again,” she murmured. “A tower and waves means the Council of Tides.” Inej clenched her fists tighter. The Tides had hurt him, branded him, and Kaz didn’t remember. Or claimed he didn’t. Inej didn’t think he was lying to her. He’d told her the truth about Moll Gerty when he refused to tell Nina and the others. She thought that he’d shown her the mark because he was trying to be honest, but she was also beginning to think that Kaz’s memories were not lost, merely jumbled up inside his head, knocked askew every time he used his Etovost power. That was worse in some ways than lying by commission or withholding. Even Kaz couldn’t control the game if he didn’t remember the rules.

“If you fight the other bosses, you could forget even more,” she warned him.

“It’s too late to change the plan now,” he said. “Ekaterine needs to die.”

“Do you think the Tides will try and save her?” Inej asked. If Kaz was right and the Council of Tides and the Ravkan Little Palace were in contact, the Tides might act to return Ekaterine to the Ravkans. It could be the reason Dryden had sent her and the others into the Barrel. Dryden knew they had worked with the Triumvirate to get Kuwei out of the city two years ago and Nina was already working for the Little Palace. Kaz crossed the office and retrieved a fresh shirt from a collection hanging up in the depths of his enormous liquor cabinet. Inej spared a moment to wonder just how often Kaz ended up sleeping and changing in his office instead of his own room before shaking her head to clear it.

“I don’t think they care about Ekaterine,” Kaz said. “But they want something. I just don’t remember what it is.”

“Why would you know?” Inej asked him, puzzled. Kaz had been inconsistent when it came to the Tides. His ignorance ebbed and flowed like tidal waters. Was he working with them, or was he not?

“I think there was a deal,” he told her. “And a water gate. But I don’t know why I remember that. I remember looking down at the masts of the Pearl docked on Imperjum. That feels important, but I don’t know why. I know I was on the island, which means I was on the other side of the Ice Wall. I don’t know how I got back here.”

Inej looked at his chest, where the brand on his skin was hidden by his shirt and the dark wool waistcoat he shrugged into. Unconsciously she reached out to grasp her own forearm, feeling the slick scar tissue there that remained after her tattoo and Nina’s Ice Court doctoring. “The Tides have marked you. Claimed you,” she said, words bitter with memory. She met his eyes, understanding widening her own. “They’re waiting for you to kill Ekaterine before they come to collect on your deal,” she realised.

He nodded. “I don’t remember what I promised them, Inej. Only that I did." There was tension in his voice. In anyone else she would have called it fear. "I’ve never failed to deliver on a deal," Kaz said, "but if I don’t deliver now, we’re all dead.”

Outside a chorus of human squawks and ear-grating cawing erupted. Jesper pounded on the office door, yelling, “Oi! The bosses are here. And they’ve brought the gangs with them!”

Inej met Kaz’s eyes across the room. Neither said anything. There was nothing to say. They had run out of time.

Chapter Text

Rats in a Barrel Pt. 5:

Wylan:

Peeking out through a gap between the boards over the window, Wylan ducked down when Nina pulled on his shoulder. “Careful. They’ll blow your head off.”

Wylan winced. “There’s so many,” he breathed. The gangs were out in force, thronging the streets and spilling down the alleys outside the Slat. He could hear jeering and chanting, reminding him of the deputies parade that had filed passed the Geldrenner Hotel. That was the only other time he’d seen the gangs in full colours. He didn’t like it now any more than he had then. Less in fact. Back then Kuwei’s face and the fact that the gangs didn’t know how to find any of them had protected him. Now the gangs were waiting only feet away, brandishing weapons and Grisha powers as they traded insults with the Dregs at the upper windows. It sounded almost festive, like a rowdy promotion on West Stave, but Wylan knew the violence in the air was very real.

Beside him, Nina sighed. “I hope Kaz knows what he’s doing.”

That seemed like a vain hope to Wylan. “I’m not sure it matters anymore,” he admitted. Ekaterine had set in motion a chain reaction that had finally reached critical condition. There was a miserable sort of inevitability to all of this.

The parlour was full of Dregs, some of them barely back on their feet as Svetya and Kuwei moved among them passing around vials of the serum. The Dregs were all armed and tension crackled through the room. Some of them were grinning and joking with each other. They were enjoying themselves. Wylan was not. He’d forgotten how this felt. The jangle of nerves and the wild energy through his veins. The feeling of being incredibly alive, his mind working faster and faster even as the fear that he was about to die rode him hard. He wanted to say he hadn’t missed it, and he hadn’t, but nothing he’d experienced since could compare. Sitting in Council chambers never made him feel alive and it also did very little for his intellect. The one thing he could say about Kaz’s tendency to put all their lives in danger was that it kept his mind sharp.

At that moment, Kaz and Inej swept into the parlour with Jesper behind them. Wylan’s relief was short lived, fading into concern when he saw the smaller figure of Ekaterine wedged between Jesper and the other two. Jesper held a gun to Ekaterine’s head. The Ravkan Grisha’s face was swollen and bruised but she held her head up and her back regally straight. She ignored the pistol pressed to her temple, glaring proudly at Nina as she was pushed toward the door. Nina rolled her eyes, tossing her head. Ekaterine looked a little less certain.

Anika and Pim flanked the door. Anika’s fingers glowed dull red, shimmering like embers dying in a grate. Pim looked almost serene, his broad features calm and his huge body relaxed. Wylan knew that Keeg had gone out just before the gangs arrived. He hoped that whatever the errand Kaz had him running, he’d made it without getting caught by the gangs. They were supposed to be here on Kaz’s orders, but that didn’t reassure Wylan. There was as much chance Kaz had ordered them to kill them right along with Ekaterine. Kaz couldn’t be trusted in his state, which would be alarming enough. Wylan felt a hundred times worse knowing that there still wasn’t anyone else he trusted to get them out of this mess in one piece.

Kaz really did hold on their lives in the palms of his hands.

Dregs crowded the crooked stairs, leaning over the landing and jostling each other on the steps. The house was full of the echoes of the shouts from outside and the softer sounds of shifting bodies pressed close together. Feet shuffled, someone sniffed loudly, someone else coughed. Wylan heard a smothered laugh. Crouched by the window next to Nina, his dwindling supply of chemical vials laid out on the floor in front of him, Wylan felt like time had reversed. He’d never been a Dreg, but he’d been part of Kaz’s crew once and he was again. His stomach churned with the same old fears that he was on the wrong side, or that his life had taken an extreme left-turn out of the ordinary, even as he knew there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

Standing in the middle of the room, a small circle of empty space open around him and Inej, Kaz slammed the end of his cane into the floor. All eyes were on him, they had been the whole time, but somehow Wylan could feel the attention in the room sharpen further, as if every man and woman in the room had stopped being an individual and become part of some huge, unholy organism with one mind and one will that belonged, wholly and entirely, to Kaz Brekker, the undisputed king of the Barrel.

Hair wild, face unshaven, fresh shirt untucked under a dark waistcoat and his trousers creased and stained with salt water, Kaz clasped both hands over the crow head cane in front of him, gaze locked on the door. “You hear that?” he asked as the jeers and catcalls outside grew louder, as if on cue. “That’s destiny calling.” Kaz waited a beat and Wylan knew he wasn’t the only person waiting to hear what he said next with bated breath. “It’s time to show her our true colours,” – a ragged, excited cheer swelled among the Dregs – “We’re going out there and we’re going to fight like the bastard, son’s-of-bitches barrel rats we are,” Kaz raised his voice to be heard. “We’re not soldiers and this isn’t war. We’re not that civilised. This is death. This is the biggest rumble we’ve ever seen. Say your prayers if you hold to that because some of you are going to die. But if you call yourself a Dreg you’ll make those fuckers work for it.”

This time the noise was deafening. Cawing and yelling, the Dregs exploded into action, spilling out of the back of the kitchen and rushing the front door ahead of Kaz in a suicidal wave, guns drawn. Kaz surged forward, catching Ekaterine’s shoulders before she could be swept out with the Dregs. Wylan didn’t see Inej move. She was simply gone, vanished into the rafters. The sharp, staccato clatter of gunfire rang in Wylan’s ears from outside.

Jesper was beside him in a blink, vibrating with wire-taut excitement. He grinned, mad and bad and so handsome he took Wylan’s breath away. “Show time.”

Wylan grabbed one of his homemade grenades – inspired by Ravkan grenatye – and yanked the pin. He hurled it through the open window. There was no thought to it, no strategy. He was simply part of the surge, part of the mad, wild rush of violence and desperation that propelled the Dregs into the fight. It felt a little like being drunk, and a little like being home, but not in any sense Wylan could define. A flare of searing pink light lit up the square of street he could see through the window, silhouetting a knot of figures as they fell to the ground.

Kaz seized his moment, shoving Ekaterine ahead of him he pushed through the cleared doorway and was immediately lost in the swirl of bodies fighting on the streets. Wylan barely had time to catch his breath when a figure filled the doorway, the glint of a rifle barrel catching in the light. The body dropped with a resounding boom. Wylan turned to Jesper, the echo of pistol fire too close to his ear still ringing through his brain. Jesper seized his arm, leading him toward the stairs. Nina followed, turning to fire her own pistol back into the parlour as they clattered toward higher ground.

Wylan looked back in time to see a flaming bottle fly through the Slat’s open door. It shattered over the floor in a liquid spill of blue-white flame. Nina shoved him hard in the back and Wylan stumbled forward, embarrassed. He’d survived two gang fights already since climbing the ice wall and he’d been through worse in the Ice Court. He should be better than this. They made it to the second floor before the Slat was overrun. Wylan tossed a vial of slick oil onto the floor and lit a match as the first invader crested the top of the stairs. The flames leapt toward the gang member, setting his trouser leg on fire. The man’s yell knocked Wylan off his feet and exploded the rickety table beside him into splinters and matchsticks.

Stunned by the Squaller’s yell, Wylan felt like his head was full of impossibly loud static. His senses reeled. He didn’t hear the bullet that brought down the Squaller and his eyes could barely make sense of Nina as she threw up her arms, raised the corpse and forced the Squaller to shout down at the others racing up the stairs, sending them all tumbling down before another shout shattered the stairs themselves.

He made it out onto the roof in a daze, palms scraping over the roof tiles. The roof was covered in enemy Squallers. Slate tiles sheared away from the roofing beams and flew into Dregs like guided shrapnel as the Squallers roared. Jets of fire streamed through the air and a female Dreg with an entirely shaven head slammed into a group of Squallers with grease-paint black handprints proudly emblazoned across their faces. The woman’s skin was sharp as flint as she cut the throat of one the Blacktip Squallers with fingernails made of broken rooftiles.

Wylan ran up the steep slope of the roof toward the gap between buildings. The Slat was one of many long and narrow houses built in a stretched line, bracketed by two canals, forming a right angle to the south and east, but unlike most of the buildings in the Barrel, there was enough space between the rooftops that the fall could kill him. He didn’t hesitate to make the leap. Landing awkwardly, his feet slipped out from underneath him and he slithered down the roof, his heel striking the wonky guttering just in time to stop his momentum. Slamming his foot down for leverage, Wylan wriggled up the roof and was on his feet in time to steady Nina when she landed. Jesper made the jump easily, his lankiness working in his favour. He was still grinning. The three of them didn’t stop, scrambling over the peak of the roof and down the other side, they shimmied down the old drainpipe to the ground below.

A skinny boy, wearing nothing but an old docker’s coat and torn green and yellow striped trousers leapt over the fence. He landed like a cat, feet slamming into the ground hard enough to kick up clods of dirt and crack the hard packed earth. Wylan staggered and almost fell. Nina grunted as the reverberation knocked her back against the wall. The shirtless gang member stamped his left foot and the ground under their feet buckled, throwing all of them off their feet before Jesper could get a shot off.

Wylan saw the boy grin right before he dropped and slammed both hands into the earth. Immediately the ground collapsed underneath them and Wylan and the others tumbled into a deep, narrow pit that was barely wide enough for all of them to stand. A rain of pebbles and rock cascaded down on their heads, choking thick. Wylan felt the walls of the pit shudder. It wasn’t his imagination. The walls really were closing in on them.

“Saints, he’s going to bury us alive,” Nina gasped as the light above their head dwindled.

“Quick! Start climbing,” Jesper yelled. He and Wylan worked together to boost Nina up. Scrambling for rocky handholds, Nina struggled to find a grip strong enough as she stretched for the rapidly closing mouth of the pit. A shadow appeared above them. Then Inej was reaching toward Nina and helping her up. Wylan looked at Jesper.

Jesper winked. “Brains before beauty, darling.”

“In that case, you’re never getting out,” Wylan told him. He reached for Nina and Inej’s hands as he jumped for the opening. He saw the body of the Etovost Fabrikator lying face first in the dirt. A wet puddle of dark blood spread out from under his chin.

“I’m glad you found us in time,” he told Inej.

“Me too,” she said sincerely.

Jesper bounced out of the hole. “Who’s winning?” he asked.

Inej shook her head. “Who can tell?”

A flare of heat and light scalded the air and then they were crashing to the ground as the roof of the Slat blew off, sending a rain of burning tile and wood flying in all directions. Wylan snatched a piece of shattered pottery off the ground as he lurched to his feet and started running, not wasting time to watch the Slat burn.

Inej led them around the back of the houses and alongside the canal. There was fighting everywhere. Wylan struck out with his pottery shiv, slashing a man in the eyes without thinking. He ducked a fist the size of a ham hock and scrambled under a pair of legs, knocking his attacker off balance. He came back to his feet in a knot of fighting and knew that he had no hope of finding the others. He was on his own. Ducking and weaving, Wylan fought his way out of the crush. A line of fire opened up along his side. Someone snatched at his curls. A body fell into him, drenching his face in blood. He didn’t stop. His body moved without his brain telling it to.

He’d been wrong, he thought when he could think at all. This was worse than the Ice Court. There had been order there. Black Protocol had been named for a reason: protocols meant order, organisation. Everything they’d been through at the Ice Court could be predicted, planned for and, ultimately evaded if they were clever, and they had been. The violence on the street didn’t care how clever Wylan was. It was pure chaos. There was no us and them. It was a free for all and Wylan was consumed with one thought: survive.

He didn’t know how he made it out of the heap of living and dying bodies thronging the street but somehow, he ended up running down the incline that led to the narrow tow path alongside the canal. His shirt was wet and when he pressed his palm to his side, he felt the tear in his shirt and the hot, slick wetness of blood. A stinging throbbing rose from his skin. Wylan didn’t dare look at the wound. If he was going to die, he’d rather not know.

Ahead of him he could see the narrow iron bridge spanning the canal and just beyond the bridge, the roof of the Crow Club on the other side. He ran to the bridge, jumping into a gondel moored under it and crossed the canal. He was panting by the time he reached the other bank, even though the canal was not wide. Hot and cold shivers ripped through him. Where was Jesper? Had he made it out of the crush? A pit of fear opened up in his stomach. Wylan shook off the fear. Jesper had been born for fights like this. Wylan needed to focus on his own survival so he didn’t disappoint him by dying.

There was something happening in front of the Crow Club. While the mob fought on either side of the canal, a knot of people stood in utter stillness in a loose circle. Approaching cautiously, Wylan saw that the knot was made of two rings, a wider outer ring and an inner circle of three men and one teenage girl, each standing at one of the cardinal points and surrounding Kaz and Ekaterine in the middle. Wylan’s knees almost gave out in relief when he spotted Jesper’s tall, lanky frame among the people forming the outer ring.

Wylan limped toward him. Several of the other gang members turned his way, brandishing fistfuls of flame or fingers tipped with iron hard claws. One of them opened their mouth and Wylan held up his hand, clasping the last of his homemade experiments in his palm.

“This is a concussive grenade,” he warned. “If it hits the ground, it will shatter every bone in your body.”

The Squaller shut her mouth, blinking in surprise. Wylan wasn’t sure if it was the word ‘concussive’ that had confused her, or the fact that he’d warned her before pulling the pin.
“How about we just burn you where you stand?” Sneered one of the Etovost Inferni.

Wylan stood his ground. “You’ll still end up broken on the ground,” he told him. “Let me pass. I’m with them,” he nodded toward Jesper, Nina and Inej, spotting Kuwei and Svetya in the little huddle as well. Jesper met Wylan’s gaze and mouthed: “Do you know what you’re doing?” Wylan shook his head minutely. It didn’t matter. He was doing it anyway.

Back straight, hand and grenade upraised, Wylan kept his eyes on the enemy gang members as he side-stepped toward the others. They watched him like the tigers he’d seen caged on a trip to the Southern Colonies with his father years ago. Wylan knew if he blinked or wavered a second, they’d be on him faster than he could throw and break the grenade. But they didn’t know that and that doubt was all he needed to pass in safety.

Jesper hauled him into a fierce hug, but he held at arm’s length just as quickly. “You’re bleeding,” he said sounding almost accusing, as if Wylan had done something foolish like cut himself in the lab instead of fight his way through a murderous mob.

“I’ve been knifed. I think I’ll scar,” he said.

Jesper turned him so he could see the wide, but shallow, slash along his flank. Whatever he saw seemed to reassure him. He sighed and managed a crooked grin. “Scars are sexy,” he said, “but if you ever disappear on me like that again, I’m locking you up in a tower and never letting you out again. The other merchers will tell stories about the handsome merchling locked up for his own good, for years to come.”

“As long as everyone remembers how handsome I am.” Wylan shrugged. He reached first and Jesper filled his arms eagerly.

When they parted, Wylan realised everyone in the inner and outer circles was watching them. In the middle of the circle Kaz raised one eyebrow. “Good of you to join us, merchling,” he drawled. “If you two are finished? There’s business to be done.”

Wylan plushed. Jesper scowled over his shoulder at Kaz. “No, we’re not finished,” he snapped. Turning back to Wylan he clasped his face in his hands. “We’re in the middle of a romantic reunion. The execution can wait.” Wylan, lips twitching half-way toward open laughter, leaned in for the kiss. Someone whistled. There was a smattering of applause. Wylan realised that Jesper was shaking, his kiss bruising fierce. He let himself melt into it. They could all be dead in a second. He and Jesper deserved a good last kiss. He made sure to take his time. Kaz had ordered him to make death wait, after all. But in the end, nothing to could delay what they’d all come for.

“What are you doing?” Ekaterine screeched at the other Barrel bosses. “You’re supposed to protect me! Can’t you see he’s trying to kill me?”

A large man wearing a long coat that rippled with flowing flame, shifted his bulk from one foot to another. He was either puffing on a pipe or breathing smoke all on his own. “It’s the drug we want, woman. Not you,” he said and someone even his voice sounded scorched.

“He’s right,” said a good-looking man in his early twenties. He wore a suit the colour of sugared almonds and it took Wylan a moment to notice that his fingers were sharpened razors and his beard didn’t just look like brushed silk – it was silk. “What’s it going to be, Brekker?” he demanded, tone jovial. “You gonna keep your word or are we gonna have to make you?”

“Both, Gervaas,” Kaz responded calmly. “It’s the only way any of us can feel like we’ve won.”

A lean man in his thirties standing to Wylan’s right, his pale face in quarter profile, chuckled lowly, the sound travelling oddly on the air. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get to it.” Behind his back, the Inferni and Squaller Wylan had faced down earlier shifting in anticipation.

“Oi,” snapped the teenaged girl on Kaz’s far side. “I don’t care if you lot tear each other’s asses off. I’m here for what you promised me, Brekker.”

Kaz nodded. “Kuwei. Take Elsje and her chosen lieutenants inside. Give her the serum.”

Wylan could tell Kuwei didn’t like it, but like all of them, in this fight he knew whose side he was on for better or for worse. This was Kaz’s show and he was completely in control. Svetya, the Ravkan Fabrikator they’d won over from Ekaterine, reached out and squeezed Kuwei’s shoulder. Her smile was sympathetic but unyielding. Together they marched toward the Crow Club.

Elsje watched them go, her scarred face pinched with worry. “You on the level, Brekker?”

“A deal’s a deal, Haas. I promised you power and I always deliver.”

“Nooo,” Ekaterine wailed. She tried to wrench free of Kaz’s hold. She didn’t get very far. He didn’t think she was used to real fighting. Yellow curls lashing her face, Ekaterine thrashed about, screaming, “You can’t do this! I made you to obey me. You have to serve me!”

“Woman, we serve ourselves,” scoffed Gervaas. He flexed his claws, scraping them together with a grind of metal. “How we doing this?” he asked the group.

“No quarter asked, none given,” Kaz answered. “We fight until we can’t.”

“Heh,” the man on fire guffawed, puffing smoke. “Reminds me of the good ol’ days when me and Pekka used to rumble.” Smoke poured out of his mouth as he raised his fists like an old-time pugilist, focused on Kaz. “Let’s be having yer, then boy.”

The lean man with the sinuous voice was faster. Pulling a pistol from his hip he fired two shots in rapid succession straight at Ekaterine. Kaz shoved her to the ground. The first bullet slammed him in the chest, spinning him off balance. The second struck him in the head.

Chapter Text

Rats in a Barrel Pt: 6:

Nina:

Beside Nina, Inej jerked in relief as Kaz’s body exploded in a shower of red-tinged canal water. Her shoulders dropped minutely but only for a second. Then she was moving, running for high ground as the lieutenants rushed into the fray. Nina dove toward Kat as Jesper drew his revolvers and Wylan hurled the little black glass grenatye he’d threatened the lieutenants with earlier. It shattered on the ground with a booming shudder of air that slammed into Nina’s chest as hard as any Squaller shout. The grenatye denotation cleared a path to Kat.

The Alkemi looked afraid. “Get me out of here,” she demanded, lips bloodless white and fingers hooked into claws as she grasped Nina’s arms. "We can escape together, back to Ravka. You can be the hero who brings me in."

Nina drank in her terror. “Not a chance. You made your bed, Kat. Now lie in it.”

“Hateful hag.” Kat spat in her face. Nina didn’t have time to turn her head, but unlike with Roeder the spit that hit her cheek did not burn. She started to haul Kat toward the Crow Club. She knew Kaz’s plan was to weaken Kat by weakening the Etovost bosses before his assassin arrived, but she didn’t trust Kat. She was too dangerous to leave unwatched in the middle of a fight.

A shock of heat riding the air was her only warning. Slamming her body into Kat she rode the other girl to the ground as a super-heated jet of nearly invisible flame ignited the air above their heads. Nina looked over her shoulder and saw the broad-shouldered Razorgull boss, Hyssop Janssen, break out of the scrum of brawling bodies and run straight at her. His coat flared behind him, dripping twinkling flames to the cobbles. The air tore and throbbed with a scream that sent a cascade of tiles raining down from the Crow Club’s roof. Janssen slammed into the ground and a second later, snake-hipped Koort, the Pointer’s leader and the man who shot Kaz, leapt on top of Janssen. The pair rolled over the burning cobbles, tumbling back into the heaving mass of lieutenants.

Nina turned back to Kat. A spit polished dress shoe, poking out of a pearly pink trouser leg, filled her vision. Nina ducked and covered her head, but the kick still struck the back of her skull and caught her raised shoulder with enough force to knock her onto her back on the cobbles. Ears ringing, Nina heard Kat scream. “Come on, love, let’s get better acquainted,” she heard Gervaas purr, the Liddie’s voice rich with triumph.

“Get off me,” Kat snarled but then she gasped in genuine pain.

Nina had heard rumours about the handsome Gervaas when she worked at the White Rose. The Liddies general had been a special kind of monster long before Kat got her claws into him, and while Nina could see a twisted justice in Kat suffering at the hands of the bosses, there were some things that just had to be stopped. She lunged, snatching at Gervaas’ leg and throwing her weight into him to topple the Liddie.

Gervaas did not have full control of his Fabrikator powers; his balance was ruined by the fact that his right foot was as heavy as a cement block blacked in grease paint to match his other shoe. As his flesh and blood left leg gave way, his body swung on the pivot of his nearly immobile right foot. Nina buried her face into his stomach as she felt him swipe at the air with his metal-tipped fingers. She braced herself for the pain she knew was coming her way. Nina heard Kat move. Snarling in rage, the Alkemi slammed her palm down on Gervaas’ hardened foot. The air sizzled, Nina heard a popping sound, nose wrinkling against the acidic smell. Gervaas roared in pain, knees buckling as his right foot dissolved. He backward, arms pinwheeling.

Nina grabbed Kat, hauling her up. Kat was bleeding freely from deep cuts slicing her arms and back. She sobbed in Ravkan as Nina dragged her toward the Crow Club door. “I can’t heal. Saints. Why are they doing this?”

“Why do you think?” Nina rolled her eyes. “They want you dead, Kat. They don’t care if they have to go through each other to do it.” A hand grabbed the back of Nina’s homespun jacket. She threw up her arms to protect her face as she was spun around to face her attacker. She doubled over as a fist drove into her stomach.

Kat yelled, “Nina!” uselessly from the door.

Retching Nina collapsed to her knees, seeing stars. She didn’t have the air in her lungs to order Kat into the club. Her attacker snatched her by the hair, hauled her to her feet, and slammed her into the wall of the club. Nina only had time to catch a glimpse of a twisted face, smeared in grease paint and marred by a collection of rusty nails studding the woman’s cheeks and brow, before she pulled the trigger on the pistol pressed snugly into the woman’s stomach. The woman died instantly and Nina drank in her death.

Kat gaped at her, outraged. “You have a gun? Why didn’t you use it before?”

Because in the confusion she’d forgotten she still had a loaded pistol in skirt pocket. Nina was, first and foremost, Grisha. The Little Science was her weapon of choice and there was still a part of her that thought like a Heartrender. She still believed her power made her a better weapon than any gun. Not that she had any intention of telling Kat that. “I didn’t want to give up the element of surprise,” she said, swiping a hand over the blood spatter decorating her skirts and velvet vest. She turned to Kat, shoving her through the club’s door. “Quick, get inside.”

Several Lions turned toward them as they staggered inside, guns and cudgels raised. “Don’t even think about shooting us,” Nina snapped. “I’m not in the mood.” Ignoring the Lions, she glared toward the back of the club. “This is the worst plan you’ve ever had,” she told Kaz.

Slipping off the bar stool and yanking the transfusion needle from his arm, Kaz shrugged. “I worked with what I had. If you think you could have done better, you should have spoken up.” There was a bloody graze on the side of his skull and a smear of dried blood painting his cheekbone, the only evidence he’d nearly had his brains rearranged by a bullet. Nina looked up toward the raised level of the club. Inej nodded to her from the balcony before she slipped through the office door to go and re-join the fight.

Kat was shaking next to Nina. “You can’t kill me. You can’t,” she sobbed. “I made you.”

“Too well,” Kaz agreed. He was soaked through, the water clinging to his body like a slick second skin. He walked without his cane; the only evidence of his limp a slight hitch to his gait as he sidled passed Kat without a second glance and headed for the door.

Kat snatched at him as he passed. “You can rule the Little Palace with me. We’ll bring an army back to Kerch and make you a king,” she promised.

Kaz’s lip curled. He deftly tugged his sleeve from her grip. “I don’t need a crown to rule.” Rapidly turning transparent Kaz shifted his fluid features toward Nina. “Call the dead, stay with Pim,” he tilted his head toward the big bruiser lurking over by the Makkers Wheel, “guard Kat. You’ll know when its time.”

Nina crossed her arms. “Go to hell, Kaz.”

Kaz smirked. “Not today. I have business.” His body dissolved into a cascade of water that flowed out of the door.

“Hurry up. What’s taking you so long. I want my payment.” Elsje, the Firepox scarred girl who wanted to replace Pekka Rollins, barged up on Kuwei and Svetya as they fussed with vials of blood red serum scattered over one of the card tables.

Kuwei scowled at her. “If we get the ratios wrong, you die,” he warned, a dropper tool poised between his fingers. Nina realised that it wasn’t only Kat’s blood he and Svetya were using. “You’re going to make Tidemakers with Kaz’s blood,” she accused. Kuwei grimaced but nodded, not meeting her eyes. Nina felt a pang of sympathy for him. Kuwei had been tricked into helping Kat and now here he was, deliberately infecting people with a serum he knew might kill them. His only cold comfort was that Elsje and the other Lions would almost certainly kill him and take the serum without him if he refused.

“Stop! I forbid this,” Kat tried to barge forward. Nina held her back. Kat turned on her, tear stained face blanched with fear. “You don’t understand. Only I can control the Mervost process.”

Nina sighed. “Kat, you don’t control anything. You never did.”

She should have realised sooner that Kaz would seize on the opportunity to control the Lions with his blood. Kat had never stood a chance of controlling an army of Etovost Grisha, but Kaz did. He’d already manipulated the gangs into open bloodshed. He’d positioned everyone, including Kat, to get them to this point. Nina couldn’t even pretend to be surprised. If she was honest, she’d prefer Kaz at the head of an army than Kat. She was fairly certain Kaz had no designs on Ravka. But Kaz was always the devil they knew, not the hero anyone needed. Kaz making a power grab made her uneasy, but Kerch wasn’t her concern. Ravka was and she needed Kaz on side to protect her country. She wondered again who Kaz’s assassin was. Kat was shaking like a leaf, sickly white and covered in sweat under the blood that continued to flow sluggishly from her wounds, but it was going to take a lot more than that to take her down.

“I could bring him back,” Kat babbled desperately, clutching at Nina’s wrists. “Your Druskelle lover. I could make him a new body, or tailor one to fit. Between your power and my control of the Mervost, you could have your lover back. All you have to do is get me out of here.”

Matthias. For a moment, Nina imagined it. If anyone could deliver on that crazy promise it was Kat. Could Nina find Matthias’s soul in the dark waters, or had he taken root with Djel already? She could wrench him free of his god, she was sure. She could force him back to life with her. Matthias loved her, in time he’d forgive her. She could have the other half of her soul returned to her. She could give Matthias back his life. And then she’d be exactly like Ekaterine, twisting and perverting the Little Science into her servant with no regard for the consequences.

Cold to the pit of her heart, Nina stared the other girl down. “You’re going to die, Kat. You deserve to die.”

“Noooo,” Kat ripped free of Nina, raking her wrists with needle sharp nails. She ran out of the door before Nina could stop her.

Her blood splattering the floor, Nina tried to stem the worst of the flow, grasping her wrists with blood slicked hands. “Oi. Let me help you with that.” Lumbering footsteps hurried toward. Nina blinked black spots from her vision as Pim closed his huge hands over her arms. Nina watched deep wounds open up along Pim’s arms as her own wounds closed.

Pim’s power was greater than any Healer she’d ever met at the Little Palace. In every way, he was faster and more effective, only Nina herself had been able to do more and that had been on Parem. She thought of Moll Gerty, flinging her wounds at them like old Ravkan grandmothers hurled curses. “Saints,” she breathed, shock washing through as she finally understood what Kaz had been building to this whole time. “Kaz. You twisted bastard. That’s your plan.” She pulled her wrists free. “We have to find Kat,” she told Pim. The big bruiser nodded, following her out of the door.

Bodies lay on the ground outside the club in varying degrees of dead. Most of the fighting had swept passed the club and flowed toward East Stave, but there were enough brawlers still around, fighting in pockets that spilled out of alleys and into the canals that Nina was confident Kat hadn’t managed to escape south. She and Pim ran toward East Stave. Reaching out with her power, Nina scooped up some of the freshly dead to clear a path through the thick, steaming mist that rose off the Stave and spilled into the streets. Nina could taste the iron tang of blood on the air along with the brown, stomach-churning scent of ruptured bodies and the acrid bite of flame. East Stave had never been as grand as West Stave, but now it was a shattered, burned husk of itself. Nina’s feet crunched over broken tile, broken glass and charred stone and she was glad of the sturdy boots she’d chosen along with her disguise. The breeze shifted, sweeping the mist from her eyes. Nina saw bodies lining the riverbank. Living bodies. They stood facing the water. Nina could hear the hiss of steam and the nearly subliminal boom of Squaller distortions mingled with the crash of water and the clash of heavy stone. She used her dead guard to push her way to the river edge.

The bosses were fighting in the river. Hyssop Janssen, his big body wreathed in coils of rising steam as he stood chest deep in the water, slammed his hands down over the surface raising a huge cloud of burning steam that Koort only just managed to blow through before it melted the flesh from his bones. That cloud of displaced air condensed and contracted in the air, falling down on Koort and Janssen as hardened bullets of ice. Nina looked but couldn’t see Kaz. She suspected he was hiding under the river. The ice melted before it could touch Janssen, but Koort screamed hard enough to lift a massive wave of water from the riverbed as the ice tore into his skin.

The wave struck Janssen, knocking him back into the water. He crashed under the surface, the water churning and steaming as he sank. Kaz sprang out of the rising steam. Lunging over the surface of the water he sank again as Koort screamed at him, splitting the wave he rode. Kaz’s form condensed behind behind the Harley’s Pointer and opened his throat with a knife. Koort choked, crashing face first into the river. Kaz sank under the river. Along the bank a howl of outrage rang out from the gathered Pointer’s but none of them tried to join the fight. Like a Parley, the gangs knew that a fight between bosses had to be one and lost by the generals alone.

The ground under Nina’s feet shook and a column of earth rose from the middle of the river propelling a sodden Janssen into the air. The Razorgull yowled in protest, limbs flailing as he was thrown airborne. A thick tail of water whipped up off the surface of the river to slap the Razorgull general onto the bank. He careened into his own gang, taking out several in a tumbling heap of limbs.

Nina saw the column of rocky ground shift into the form of a man, or as close as Gervaas could manage. His body was slick with black, filthy silt and rock and broken glass covered his limbs like lumpy growths. He looked like a river troll from the old stories Nina had read as a child. The ground shook again as Gervaas called the earth to him. Nina looked down and saw that the bank was widening below her; a mossy quilt of mud stretched forward on either side to strangle off the river’s flow. She realised Gervaas was raising the riverbed, trying to deny Kaz his element.

The water surged and four liquid Kaz’s rose from the surface. Decoys. Kaz wasn’t just hiding in the water; the entire river had become his weapon. Gervaas made a sound like rocks grinding together, a terranean growl that reverberated through Nina’s chest. The ground shook and water sloshed over onto the banks as a shower of debris from the riverbed shot into the air. The shattered half of a gondel’s hull took out two of the Kaz decoys and a hail of rusted machinery slammed into the third and fourth before pounding into the watchers on the far bank. That was when several lassos of water wrapped around Gervaas and dragged him back under the surface.

Rising spluttering from the water, Koort staggered upright, his neck miraculously whole. A trick knife? Had Kaz reused the old trick with a pig’s blood bag to make it look like he’d struck Koort a killing blow? Just how much planning had he done before the fight started? Nina realised that Kaz had held Koort under the water until he needed him. Dirtyhands had played them all like an instrument, even the bosses were helpless to do anything but dance to his tune. Turning, she broke away from the crowd on the bank as Koort drew breath and struck the rising Gervaas with a solid blast of force that shattered the Liddie and sent a hail of rocky shrapnel into the crowds on the riverbank.

Ignoring the jeers and cheers chasing her heels, Nina started running north, Pim grunting as he struggled to keep up. She was headed toward the Samenvogen canal where the runoff from both the Staves came together at the crown of the Barrel. Kat wasn’t a Kerch native. She didn’t know Ketterdam’s narrow alleys and crooked streets. Nina was sure she’d head for the Sterren Lounge, a place she knew.

Nina’s heart pounded, consumed by the need to find Kat and end this. The Alkemi could run but she couldn’t hide. There was no one to rescue her; the Grisha she’d enslaved at the Palace were dead. Her hold on the gangs was broken, her control of the bosses drowned in bloodshed. Kat was alone now, as Nina had been when she came to Ketterdam three years ago. Just another lost Grisha trapped in a city that would drain her dry without a care.

As much as Kat deserved to pay for everything she’d done, that was the other reason Nina found herself running at full stretch, a stitch in her side and her own blood dry and flaking off her arms. Nina knew this city’s cruelty and whatever else Kat was, she was a Ravkan Grisha. It should be one of her own who killed her. They had never been friends, but the two of them had been brought to the Little Palace at the same age, at the same time, both just girls alone in a palace that was always a little cold. They’d trained for the same war, she and Kat. Eaten at the same table and slept under the same roof. Kat didn’t deserve it, but Nina would make sure she didn’t die alone.

The Sterren Lounge was as Nina remembered it, a blackened husk. The roof had fallen in on one side, leaving fire-bitten beams exposed like parts of a human ribcage. The upper windows were dark with soot, the metal door at the back hanging open, the brickwork around it seared with more soot. Nina heard Kat scream and charged into the dark interior. The building wasn’t empty. Nina ran through the smoke-reeking backstage area and onto the stage, gate-crashing a long-awaited finale. The main lounge was filled with Blacktips, their printed faces barely visible in the gloom. The only light came from the hole in the roof. The grey light fell on Kat, huddled on the stage. Her ridiculous purple clothes were soot and blood stained, the lace shredded. Moll Gerty, dressed in a shimmering white dress that highlighted her slim limbs and shapely hips, stood in front of Kat holding a knife. She shook out her blonde hair, glancing over her shoulder at Nina.

“Oh look. It’s my would-be killer,” thin lips twisting the Etovost Heartrender warned, “Interfere and I’ll start carving flesh from your limbs. You look juicy. I’ll have lots to work with.”

Nina tilted her chin. Zoya had ordered her to bring Kat back alive, but Nina had known as soon as she’d seen the Etovost that she would disobey those orders. It wasn’t just a matter of refusing to betray her friends. Kat was too dangerous to live. The Etovost serum was worse than Jurda Parem in the damage it could do. But more than that, leaving Kat alive was a temptation that couldn’t be allowed. She would never stop trying to become the new Ilya Morozova and if things ended badly with the Ketterdam Merchant Council, the Triumvirate would be tempted to use Kat in the war. There was more at stake than simple loyalty. Grisha all over the world were in danger. Etovost changed everything. Nina didn’t know if that change was all bad but she did know that Kat certainly was.

“I’m not here to stop the execution,” she told Moll Gerty proudly. “I’m here to see justice done on behalf of the Little Palace.”

She met Kat’s eyes. Something had happened to the Alkemi when her creations had turned on her and each other. She looked haggard, as if she’d been starved for weeks. Her hair had changed from butter yellow to washed-out white and her sunken eyes were bloodshot, the sclera stained like old ivory with the blood from several burst capillaries. Her lips were blackened and puckered, as if she was suffering from metal poisoning. The tears that rolled down her cheeks were dirty, contaminated. Kat didn’t try to speak, she knew it was too late, but her gaze rooted to Nina as if seeking an anchor. She looked silently desperate and Nina hardened her heart against sympathy. She knew that if Kat had been in her position, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill her with a smile.

Kat’s execution was slow, painful and vicious. Pim’s presence let Moll heal with every cut, slice and stab she inflicted on herself and projected onto Kat and that just made Moll more imaginative. Nina was aware that the Sterren Lounge was filling up with people, but no one made a sound as Kat’s blood spilled over the stage. Only Kat made a sound, but not for long. She tried to escape, but Moll knew where to cut to make sure Kat really couldn’t run. Nina knew death, better than most. She’d killed and she’d seen horrible suffering, sometimes, she’d caused it. What Moll Gerty did to Kat was not the worst thing Nina had ever seen. That didn’t mean she had to enjoy the show.

“That’s enough,” she heard herself say. Kat was lying still on her side, her breathing a pained, shallow rasp. She looked like someone had thrown a bucket of paint over her. The smell was awful. Nina looked at Moll Gerty, whose dress was now a liquid crimson artfully slashed with holes. “Give me the knife.”

Moll narrowed her eyes. “You said you wouldn’t stop me.”

Nina kept her hand out for the knife. “If you want her to stay dead, you’ll let me do this,” she said and asked the other woman, “Why do you think Kaz wanted me and Pim here? The Healer gave you the strength to weaken Kat but I’m the only one who can kill her and make it stick.”

Kat was clever. She had to be gambling on the fighting outside stopping before Moll got bored with her. Once the other bosses were no longer expending all their power fighting each other, Kat could leech strength from them and heal herself. She’d made a mistake when she’d engineered Etovost Heartrenders with a power that couldn’t be repelled and she’d tried to counter that mistake by binding the bosses to her; a move that should have made her untouchable. But Kaz was more cunning than she was and no one could break an impossible lock like Dirtyhands. He'd teased out all Kat’s strengths and weaknesses in a matter of hours, leaving Nina hiding in plain sight the whole time, confident that Kat’s hunger for her power would ensure she’d leave Nina alive and that even Nina would forget what her power could do until the time was right.

Moll Gerty had been Kaz’s stalking horse, that’s why he’d made sure to tip Nina off that she would have a role in Kat’s end. All that nonsense about a risen dead assassin had been so much smoke and mirrors; a partial truth to hide a much simpler one. It would take someone who commanded the dead to drag Kat’s soul to the other side. Nina had always been Kaz’s chosen assassin. Of course, the arrogant podge couldn’t just tell Nina his plan. He had to play games to ensure that Svetya wasn’t still loyal to Kat and, maybe, just because he enjoyed them.

Nina took the knife Moll reluctantly passed to her and crouched in the blood at Kat’s side. Pansy purple eyes blinked at her, whole in a face that was not. Kat didn’t speak. Nina didn’t think she could. She picked up Kat’s cold hand. “I’m going to give you the mercy you showed none of your victims,” Nina told her. “I’m going to send you on in peace. All you have to do is let go.”

Kat was close enough to dead already Nina knew her power could reach her. But Kat was stubborn. Or maybe just afraid. She tried to speak. It didn’t work very well. Nina knew what she was trying to ask, she recognised the fear in her eyes. She’d seen it before. The lie she told was more than Ekaterine Iskova deserved. “No,” she promised, “You won’t be lonely when you’re dead.” Slamming the knife into the body of meat on the ground, Nina knew exactly where to strike. Kind steel, they called it in the Barrel. Nina didn’t feel kind. She just felt tired.

Kat died. The dark waters of Nina’s power received her the way they received everyone, hurrying her soul to wherever souls went. Privately, Nina thought this might be Kat’s worse offence. Killing her hadn't fixed a thing.

Chapter Text

Levers and Power Pt 1:

Kaz:

The night of the siege – post Tide initiation:

They made him swim back to the main island from Imperjum. His new Tide brothers and sisters could not have known about Jordie and that long night years ago by any normal means – the Rietveld brothers had left no paper trail behind them and there was no one to care enough to look anyway – but knew they did. This was revenge for refusing their initiation test. A torture they thought would break him to the bit. The joke was on them. Kaz had been broken many times. He’d yet to be beaten. When the time came to turn the tide on the Tides, he’d use the memory of salt water and Jordie’s ghost whispering in his ear as the fuel he needed to light the match that would blow them all to hell.

His chest ached as he dragged himself up onto the docks and there was a second when he thought he wouldn’t make it. The water held him fast, demanding he stay, but the euphoria he’d felt in the well had left him. He fought the call of the water; the ocean had taken enough from him for one night. Kaz felt more himself as he surveyed the docks. Fifth Harbour was silent, the docked ships emptied of crew, but there were people about. Stadwatch marched in pairs up and down the harbour as above the sloped roofs of the buildings, the sky glowed with flame and smoke while the fire bells clanged. Soaked to the bone, and maybe beyond, Kaz slipped behind the guards, weaving his way unerringly through the shadows. He’d built these docks; he knew every nook and cranny.

The city was locked down against the chaos but two men in fine wool coats huddled under the eaves of the vacant harbourmaster’s office. Hiding in plain sight, it was clear that neither of these men needed to fear the Stadwatch. Dripping onto the hard ground, Kaz filed that information away for later. He knew the two men. The taller one was the Squaller whose pocket he’d picked for the obelisk key currently tucked into the secret fold inside his sleeve, the other was the Tide who’d pushed hardest for his induction. Kaz studied him with interest. He knew him without knowing his name. He recognised him without seeing his face, the way he was sure he’d recognise the other Tides when their paths crossed again.

It was a bodily awareness. A knowing that went beyond anything he could pinpoint to any one physical sense. The only other time he’d felt this way was with Inej. He simply knew when she was close, as if his skin could breathe in her presence through his clothes. He felt drawn to the Tide beckoning him from the harbourmaster’s doorway. The pull was almost magnetic. This is what water feels like when it runs to the ocean, he thought.

Kaz could resist the pull. He had the sense that there many tethers pulling on him and the pressure of each gave him the advantage of a sort of inertia. He couldn’t go in multiple directions at once and so he had the luxury of choosing which hand, holding which leash, to bite down on first.

The Tide was closest. He joined the two men under the eaves. The jovial Squaller greeted him first. “Mister Brekker,” he said, dipping his head under a wide brimmed hat. Kaz’s brain itched. He recognised the man’s stance, his build, his voice. He knew this man. But while memory supplied him with the knowledge that they’d had dealings in the past, it did not give him a name or anything useful to spark recognition. Kaz did not like the sensation that he was playing with an incomplete deck, or worse, one with face cards he’d never seen before.

He looked at the other man, slimmer and radiating nervousness like a starved pigeon – of either the feathered or human variety – his new bosom compatriot had ditched the Tide cloak for a thick woollen scarf and a hat with brim so wide he looked like a scarecrow who’d taken the flatboat up from the fields. Kaz was unimpressed. “Trust a Mercher to think a scarf and a hat is a good disguise." Every Mercher he’d ever met wore a costume every day of their lives, one designed to highlight wealth through extravagant restraint, but those born to the finer things in life tended to be blind to them as well. The Tide-Mercher’s coat was too fine, his scarf too well knitted. Even his shoes shone in the gleam of the lamplight, the leather spit polished by a diligent servant.

The Squaller did a better job of blending in with the night because he wasn’t trying. No doubt, he was confident his kruge lining the pockets of the Stadwatch grunts stomping up and down the boardwalk would keep them from turning toward the conspicuous light burning away under the eaves. Amateurs. Kaz would have preferred to do business with the Squaller, because business was definitely going to be done tonight of one form or another, but it wasn’t the Squaller he could feel under his skin like a creeping sickness.

“I have orders for you,” said the Tide after a second of impotent bristling as he decided whether to respond to Kaz’s insult or not.

“I already have orders,” Kaz said. He couldn’t remember what they were, but he knew he’d been sent off with matching orders. It bothered him in a distant way that he couldn’t remember what the Tides had told him after they’d finished tenderising him with the end of the oar, but it had been a long swim, and as he’d never intended to obey in the first place, it hardly mattered. Kaz always kept his bargains, but he’d only agreed to obey the command of the water not a bunch of soft pigeons in sparkling masks.

“I’m giving you additional orders,” The Tide told him impatiently.

A slow-moving rivulet of water rolled from Kaz’s hair line down the bridge of his nose. In the distance he could hear the roar of flames and the tinnitus ringing of gunfire clashing against the clatter of warning bells. The air smelled like smoke; the night sky burnt by high flying sparks. “I’m waiting,” he said when the silence lingered.

“I want you to kill every Tidemaker you encounter,” ordered the Tide in front of him. Kaz quirked a brow.

Swiftly, the Squaller included a hasty clarification before Kaz decided to take the stupid podge at his word. “— He means in the Barrel. You’re to eliminate all the Tidemakers made by Ekaterine Iskova’s serum, save yourself.”

Kaz didn’t bother to ask why. In his experience motive didn’t amount to very much and seeking it out could be a costly waste of time. He’d learn everything in time, he always did, but it was usually better to let the truth unravel on its own instead of getting tangled up in the weave of it all. He’d learned in the Barrel that there was only one question worth the cost of asking: “What’s in it for me?”

“You are a junior member of our order. It’s your duty to serve the Council,” the Tide blustered.

“And you’re contravening the orders the Council gave me,” Kaz pointed out. “It’s a simple numbers game. There’s only one of you and more of them. I’m better off obeying them unless you give me a reason not to.” He waited.

“I can give you power,” the Tide said softly.

Kaz thought about the swim to shore. He thought about flowing under the water gate door. He thought about the pull of the bottom of the ocean and the drifting coolness flowing through his veins. Then he thought about the money he had sitting in the Gemensbank; his two clubs; the emergency caches dotted around the city; the land he owned in the south; the stake he had in Wormwood and his investments in the Southern Colonies. “I can buy power for myself,” he said.

The Tide shifted uneasily. “I can give you power money can’t buy.”

Kaz swept his sodden hair off his face in disgust. “Don’t waste my time.” Power beyond wealth was a fairy tale. It was the sort of nonsense that had built the Little Palace and convinced the Lantsov royal line that all they needed to maintain a country was an armoury full of over-fed Grisha in colourful coats. Power was a prop. Influence was a con game; here today, gone tomorrow. The only constant, infallible leverage was cold hard cash. Every Kerch worth his salt knew that. He started to tun away. The other hand holding his leash was tugging on his chain. He’d been away from the Barrel too long. He needed to get back to the Dregs and put in motion the plans he couldn’t remember but could feel swimming around in the depths of his brain.

The Tide called out to him, a squeak of desperation in his voice. “The Council of Tides,” he yelped. “I can help you get rid of all of them. You can have the tower and all the treasure inside it. Work with me and you’ll be the most powerful Grisha in the city.”

Kaz stopped. He lifted his head. He almost smiled. The Tide had unravelled faster than he’d thought. Slowly he turned around. “And what will you be?” he asked the man who was supposed to be hurrying on his way to Belendt right now.

The Tide breathed in a ragged breath. The Squaller placed a hand on his shoulder. The Tide shook it off. “Normal,” he said in a choked tone. He continued more briskly, trying and failing to cover his slip but the damage was done. Kaz knew his heart’s desire now. “The Council has spies in the Little Palace. We know that Iskova has learned how to make Grisha into Otkazat’sya. She devised the means along with the Shu turncoat, Kuwei Yul-Bo.”

People should learn to keep Yul-Bo away from chemistry sets, Kaz thought drily. The Inferni was a menace. Aloud he said, “What does that matter to me?” He kept his voice disinterested, drawing out the Tide-Mercher’s desperation.

“The Wraith is bound for Kerch with Yul-Bo aboard,” he said and Kaz’s pulse did not pick up tempo at the mere mention of the ship’s name. “Kill Iskova. Rid the city of these imposter Grisha," Kaz heard the echo of the wider Council’s orders in his words. He didn’t have time to chase the memory before the Tide-Mercher reached his point, arriving at the real reason he’d manoeuvred Kaz onto the Council of Tides in the first place, “You will get the Otkazat’sya formula from Yul-Bo by any means your gutter-born brain can devise and bring it to me.”

Greed was a lever that never failed. Kaz cocked his head. “And what will you give me in return?” he asked.

There was a split second of silence, as tense and taut as the instant before a trigger is pulled. Kaz heard the Squaller draw breath to speak, but the Tide-Mercher was faster. Fools always were. “Anything you want, except my seat on the Merchant Council.”

Kaz made his decision, schemes stirring like riptides under his thoughts. “Meet me here after she’s dead,” he told the two men and let himself collapse into water where he stood. He flowed south toward the Barrel. He had his orders and he was going to follow them all the way to the money.

The morning after Ekaterine’s demise:

Kaz leaned on his cane as he stood facing the other bosses. The day was leaden and overcast; the light falling through the broken windows of the old foundry was thin and grey. The air carried the metallic tang of rain. His head ached, a dull line of fire throbbing along the side of his skull where the bullet had grazed him. He was completely dry and his skin felt parched. “What do you say, Janssen, ready to crack open those munitions crates you diverted from Newfoort last month?”

The heavy-set, steaming Razorgull growled. “How’d you know about that, boy?”

“I know everything,” Kaz answered. Everything that happened in the Barrel was his business. What was remarkable was that people kept forgetting that fact.

Koort said, “One day someone will do for you, Brekker.”

He nodded. “But it won’t be you.” Every boss now knew the truth. When push had come to shove the Harley's Pointer had let the Bastard of the Barrel put a knife to his throat and pull.

Koort wasn’t the only one. All the bosses had danced to his tune. That was why they were still alive and, what was worse for them, they all knew it. It wouldn’t be long before the truth permeated through the gangs. Weakness always travelled like plague in the Barrel. There would be a reckoning. Gervaas or Janssen would decide to come for Kaz and the Dregs to save face. Koort would find himself with a revolt on his hands, as one, or all, of his lieutenants decided to challenge him. Soon enough the Barrel would be alive with the sounds of all-out gang warfare again.

But not yet. Pragmatism was Kaz's lever today and he used it well; he knew the bosses would wait until they believed they were safe from a Merchant Council led cull before they tried to make him feel very unsafe. Kaz shot a glance at Moll Gerty. She was back in white, dressed like a high-class hostess fresh from a West Stave club, not a hair out of place. He didn’t have anything to fear from that quarter at least. Moll was clever, but she was also lazy. She’d wait for the rest of them to exhaust themselves fighting for place and then pick off the weakest, while their back was turned. It was what a survivor would do, and only a survivor could make it out of the Sweet Shop alive and whole.

“Brekker asked you a question, Janssen. You holding out on us?” Gervaas demanded. The man no longer looked like river afterbirth but the shine was definitely off the rose. The Liddie was not looking nearly as pretty in his sunset-coloured suit this morning.

Stinking steam rose from Janssen. His eyes burned red. “What’s the matter, Gervaas?," he sneered, spitting smoke. "The Liddies not got the goods to take on the wall?”

“They don’t,” Kaz replied before Gervaas could waste time with bluster. “All their caches are on the shore side of the Lid.”

Koort, Moll and Janssen turned on Gervaas. “Well, well. Ain’t that news to know,” Koort murmured, his voice spreading through the foundry air with almost touchable force, the satisfaction thick as dripping honey. Weakness had its own aroma, and all the bosses stank. Kaz alone knew his weaknesses were shored up. He might be done, but he wasn't broke.

“The Deal is the Deal, gentlemen,” he said tapping his cane on the floor to draw their attention. He still needed them and a fight was time wasted they didn't have. “I’ve held up my end of the bargain. The Ravkans are dead. We have the drug. The Barrel is ours again. Now we go to the wall. Together.”

“Against the Tides?” Moll looked wary. Kaz nodded.

“How do you know they’ll be there?” Koort asked.

“If they’re not we smash their wall and walk on through,” Kaz shrugged.

“And what about the navy snipers on the roofs?” Moll demanded.

“If life was certain, Gerty, we’d all be much poorer,” he replied irritably.

“Why don’t we wait it out?” Koort asked. “No one has come for us yet.”

“It’s only been four days, cretin,” Gerty snapped. “While we kept nice and quiet, so did they.”

“Stadwatch will have heard the rumble we just had,” Janssen nodded slowly in agreement. He mused, “The Mercher’s might be sat dumb on their fat asses, but Klemtoe and his boys will come down here soon enough. Old Klem likes a bit of a rumble himself.”

“Better we fight on our turf than theirs,” Koort shot back.

“Speak for yourself. The Lid is my turf,” Gervaas growled.

Kaz said nothing. He’d let them bicker until they figured out the truth. There was no choice. The outcome was not in debate. They’d killed the interloper in their midst. Now it was time to fight their way out of the Barrel.

“If we start killing Stadwatch it will go badly for us,” Koort argued.

“True,” Kaz agreed. Everyone in the Barrel knew they were safer when the Stadwatch were fat, dumb and richer for a pocket full of bribes. Taking aim at one of them was a guaranteed invitation to be fitted for the final necktie. “That’s why it won’t be any of us attacking Ketterdam’s stalwart defenders.”

Moll Gerty tugged on the hem of her dress. “What are you plotting, Brekker?”

Kaz rested both hands on his cane. “Very soon, word is going to flit over the wall and reach Old Klem’s ear that the trouble in the Barrel was caused by a Ravkan dissident and her Blue Bell syndicate supporters,” he explained, knowing that even now Inej was scaling the wall and breaching the quarantine zone. “The Stadwatch will be told that the dissidents have an army of enslaved Grisha marshalled at the mouth of the Barrel ready to bring down the wall. Klemtoe will send his forces there to reinforce the line, while we break through to the east, west and south.”

“But the witch and the pirates are dead,” Gervaas objected.

Janssen grumbled agreement, puffing noxious smoke out onto the air. “Are you having a laugh, Brekker?”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Kaz asked flatly. He was known for a lot of things. His standup comedy wasn't one of them.

“You’re going to get your Ravkan chit to raise the witch’s corpse, aren't you, Brekker,” Gerty guessed correctly.

Kaz nodded. “And the rest of the dead that haven't burned already. The Merchant Council can hang corpses just as readily as they can the living." He said, "None of us can go back to business as usual until the good people of Ketterdam are sure all the diseased Grisha are dead. So that’s what will give them. A horde of dead Grisha.”

Koort’s head went back. His hiss of indrawn breath was shrill on the air. When he breathed out, it tugged on the roots of Kaz’s hair and stirred the dust on the ground. “No one out there knows we were infected," the Pointer whispered. "All they know is Grisha took the Barrel. The Council won’t come after us if they don’t know what we are.”

“The Merchers have known what you are for years, Koort,” Kaz replied tiredly. “They don’t care.” Leaning back on his good leg he rotated the head of his cane slowly until the crow’s eyes seemed to peer at each boss in turn. “People want reassurance,” he said. “They want to know that their lives can go on without further interruption. The Merchers don’t want consequences because those lead to decisions without easy profit.” He shrugged, watching the bosses under his hooded eyelids to be sure he had each one on the hook. It wasn’t just the Merchers who didn’t want to deal with consequences. Already Janssen and the others were dreaming of going back to their old lives and forgetting this ever happened. When it came time, it wouldn't be difficult to get the cure down their throats. “This is no different than cosying a mark,” he told them. “Ketterdam wants to feel safe. So, we offer them a dragon already vanquished. Do you really think old Klem will check the dragon’s teeth before he takes its head?”

There was a pause. Janssen broke the thoughtful silence, clearing his throat harshly. “I’ll get the weapons,” he muttered.

Kaz nodded sharply. “And I’ll bring the bait. The rest of you, I want the Blacktips to the south; the wall is weak near the morgue. The Pointers take the wall at points east, break through at Zentsbridge. You’ll take fire,” he warned. “Klemtoe won’t pull all his forces from the financial district.”

Koort bristled. “The Harley's Pointer’s can handle it,” he said, just as Kaz knew he would. He had too much to prove to refuse.

He turned to Gervaas, “The Lid is your territory. You know its weaknesses best. Stay out of sight and don’t get made when you follow the horde.”

“I got five years on you, Brekker,” Gervaas sneered. “I don’t need you telling me my business.”

Kaz did not reply. He had even odds on Gervaas getting himself shot and hadn’t yet decided whether he wanted to tip those odds in either direction. Stability in the Barrel served his purpose but cracking the Liddies had its advantages as well. Soon enough he was going to need easy access back and forth from Imperjum and clearing out the Liddies would give him that. Beyond that he had an old score to settle. Gervaas had snapped up his shares in Fifth Harbour when Rollins sold up, a fact that quietly rankled Kaz even now. He wanted the harbour back.

He turned to Hyssop. “Janssen, you get the west. Break through at Goedmedbridge.”

The old brawler nodded slowly. “And what’ll you be doing boy?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Kaz replied. “As of today, I am officially dead. I took a bullet from a Blue Bell during the raid on the Slat.” The Bosses attention sharpened on him instantly. Kaz spread his bare fingers wide over the head of his cane and tilted his head back, allowing himself the hint of a smile. “Congratulations, gentlemen,” he told the old guard of the Barrel. “You get your most cherished wish. Dirtyhands is finished.”

Chapter Text

Levers and Power Pt 2:

Wylan:

The worst thing that had ever happened to Wylan was discovering his mother in St. Hilde’s asylum. The second worst thing that he’d ever endured was not Miggson throttling him, or witnessing the depths of his father’s depravity, it was the handful of hours he’d spent cooped up in the Ketterdam suite in the Geldrenner waiting for Kuwei’s auction. Death, Wylan was cautiously certain he could face with courage. He’d done it before. Learning the truth about his father had set him free and taught him that the value of a blade was in the quality of its metal not its edge, but waiting was a torture he didn’t know how to deal with. Kaz, Inej and Nina had left over an hour ago. Nina glaring daggers at Kaz’s back. Wylan worried. Inej was going over the wall on her own. Kaz was meeting the Barrel bosses, and Nina had to raise an army of corpses to lay siege to the ice wall. And all Wylan could do was wait for Kaz to return and tell him what to do. It was exactly like the Geldrenner again.

“Are you ever going to stop pacing? You’re making me dizzy,” Jesper told him, pausing in the process of cleaning out the barrels of his beloved revolvers.

Wylan froze. “Sorry.” He made himself stop walking a short circuit across the wood floor. Letting out a deep breath he looked around the Cup and Crow distillery, a large converted warehouse in the south of the Barrel with a lovely view of the ice wall. Huge copper alembic pots dominated one side of the room and a network of tubes fed between them as wormwood mash slowly distilled. Casks and fire-hardened barrels waited in large racks against the far wall and crates of empty bottles sat on shelves above sacks of botanicals.

Wylan was embarrassed by how surprised he’d been when Keeg had brought them all to the distillery. He hadn’t thought wormwood was ready for mass production, but he should have realised that Kaz always worked fast. He probably had the distillery ready before Rotty had finished perfecting wormwood. Staring blankly at the stills, it seemed a very long time ago that he was worried about the proliferation of wormwood in the city. Depressed, Wylan thought that his life would have been so much simpler – and considerably happier – if the worst thing he had to worry about was people going blind from drinking bad liquor.

Kuwei and Svetya had set up a workstation underneath the big, grimy windows, performing distillations of their own as they worked to reverse the Etovost serum. Wylan watched the work for a while, interested in watching the ways in which a Fabricator with a solid grasp of the Little Science could speed up the process. Jesper was a capable assistant, but he was a Durast, his real talent lay in manipulating metal, not compounds and tinctures. Wylan couldn’t help feeling that he was taking advantage whenever he asked Jesper to pull a concentrate or refine impurities from a particular mineral he wanted to work with. He knew that Jesper still had a long way to go before he was as comfortable using the Little Science as Svetya.

Kuwei held a beaker up to the grim light, swirling the rusty coloured liquid inside. “Is that it?” Wylan asked.

Kuwei nodded. “Yes. This is the reversal serum.”

“Will it work?”

“Of course.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I have seen it work before.” Kuwei frowned at him. “Ekaterine and I worked together to find a chemical means to force the Little Science into dormancy. I know all the steps,” he said sounding put out.

“You said the serum made people explode!” Wylan objected, frustrated. He didn’t think there was anything unreasonable about his line of questioning. After everything they’d been through he didn’t want to have to wade through a river of exploded body parts and viscera on his way out of the Barrel.

Kuwei crossed his arms, tipping his chin. His golden eyes narrowed defensively. “It worked perfectly on seven out of ten of the final test group.”

Jesper ambled over to the join them. “You hear that, Wy? We only have to worry about thirty percent of our friends dying horribly.” Resting his hands on his hips, close to his revolver holsters, he looked over the vials and test tube racks with a sceptical eye. “Does Kaz know about these winning odds?” he asked.

“Yes,” Kuwei said softly. “He said to do better.”

Svetya added, “We think we’ve improved the efficacy of the serum by fifteen percent.”

“Great,” Wylan sighed. “Will anyone take it when they hear those odds?”

“I know for a fact that Barrellers will put just about anything in their bodies,” Jesper said confidently. “Don’t ask for details. I could tell you stories that will give you nightmares and ruin our sex lives for decades. The things I’ve seen done with a head of cauliflower could make a saint weep.” He shook his head sadly, missing Wylan’s immediate blush.

Smoothly ignoring both of them, Svetya continued, “The key is adequate blood testing before administering the serum. We won’t give it to anyone who exhibits natural affinity for the Little Science.”

Wylan frowned sharply. “What do you mean?”

The Ravkan woman looked sheepish. She shot Kuwei a frantic look, as she ducked her head shyly. Kuwei took a protective step closer to Svetya. “Don’t speak to her like that,” he snapped. “There’s no need to be rude.”

Wylan straightened his spine, capitalising on his inch of height advantage. “I was not being rude,” he said, offended.

Svetya placed a small hand on Kuwei’s chest. “It’s alright,” she said in Ravkan, pushing gently on his shoulder until he backed down. “I’m sorry,” she told Wylan in careful Kerch, wincing as she spoke, “I’m not used to talking to strangers. I don’t get out much.”

Jesper fabricated a cough to hide his laughter. He gave Svetya a winning smile. “I bet your missing the Little Palace already. But what did you mean by natural affinity? Etovost powers aren’t natural.”

“Being Grisha or Otkazat’sya is a coin toss,” Kuwei said. “But we have learned that there are factors that can affect how well someone adapts to Etovost.” He waved at the vials of blood lined up on the old desk. “We won’t be able to cure everyone,” he added sadly.

Wylan and Jesper exchanged a look. “Why not?” Wylan asked.

This time Kuwei and Svetya shared a loaded look. “Imagine you toss a coin a hundred times," said Kuwei. “At the end you add up the number of times it landed on heads or tails. If the number for tails is greater, the person is Grisha. If heads is higher, they are Otkazat’sya,” Kuwei explained. “Where the margin between is very narrow, say fifty-one to forty-nine, a Grisha who is exposed to the dormancy serum will lose their power forever, and a Etovost victim may reject the cure.”

“You could think of it as a quirk of fate,” Svetya spoke up. “Some among the Etovost were so close to being born Grisha that their bodies adapted almost immediately to these new powers. Trying to reverse the process might kill them.”

“Saints,” Jesper pinched the bridge of his nose. “Does Kaz know?” he asked grimly.

“Yes,” Kuwei said, “I warned him he could not take the cure. He was not surprised.”

Jesper scoffed, “Of course he wasn’t. Nothing surprises Dirtyhands.”

“That’s why he wants to fake his own death,” Wylan said understanding crashing over him. “I couldn’t figure his motive last night, but it makes sense now. Everyone in the Barrel knows his secret. He’ll be hunted down if he stays.” Wylan’s eyes widened as the implications added up in his mind. “He’ll have to leave the city.”

“Kaz won’t run,” Jesper said with certainty. “I know him. He’s got a plan and it doesn’t involve turning tail like Pekka Rollins.”

“Kaz always has a plan,” Wylan agreed irritably. The fight in the canal yesterday had shown that no amount of partial amnesia or deranged mania could stop that. “But he’s a grisha now, and a criminal; unless he’s going to sell his indenture he’ll be a target for every slaver who makes port in Ketterdam. He can’t stay ahead of all of them.”

“I can if they can’t find me,” Kaz said from right behind him.

Wylan’s heart and stomach made a valiant effort to leave his body through his mouth. He leapt half out of his shoes and snatched at Jesper’s arm for a life line. “Don’t do that,” he snapped when he was sure his internal organs were back where they should be. Turning, he faced Kaz who stood with a silent Inej at his side. While Inej looked mercifully blank, Kaz looked entirely unimpressed. “When did you get back – and where is Nina?” Wylan demanded.

“Ten minutes ago,” Kaz answered his first question.

“Nina is with the Liddies, ready to rush the wall,” Inej answered his second, more important, question.

“I can’t believe she agreed to this,” Jesper marvelled. “I thought she was going to knock your head off when you asked her to raise Ekaterine,” he told Kaz.

Kaz shrugged. “Zenik is a soldier,” he said.

“She’s never going to let the Merchant Council have the body,” Jesper predicted.

“She doesn’t have to,” Kaz said. “There are plenty of fresh corpses. All she has to do is find a blonde and dress the body in Ekaterine’s clothes.”

Jesper squinted at him. “That’s not what you said last night.”

“Last night Nina hadn’t threatened to march Ekaterine’s corpse right into the Stadhall and make her confess that everything was Kaz’s idea,” Inej pointed out.

Jesper grinned. “She out bluffed you.”

“She wasn’t bluffing,” Kaz grumbled. He smoothed his bare hands down his vest adding, “I don’t care who the Merchers string up for this as long as its not me.”

Wylan studied Kaz covertly – and not just his exposed hands. He looked like himself again. Hair slicked back, black merchant suit and white shirt pristine. Even the puffy swelling on the left side of his face and the angry scabbed red gash tracing the side of his head felt comfortably familiar. Kaz Brekker wore all his scars like medals of honour. Knowing what Wylan now knew, that Kaz could never go back to normal again, made his appearance seem even stranger than his dishevelment. How much of his unease was because of the siege, he wondered, and how much of it was fear of a future where Wylan could no longer count on the biggest threat in the Barrel being on his side?

His thoughts drifted to the aftermath of the fight. The gangs had called a truce, with their dead and bleeding still lying in the gutters, and partied long into the night while Keeg, Pim and Anika joined the rest of them in plotting their next move in the distillery. With a grimace, Wylan remembered the Dreg’s shock when Kaz announced Anika as his successor.

“But boss you ain’t dead,” Keeg objected.

“Well done, Keeg. Your powers of observation are top notch,” Kaz drawled. More soberly he admitted, “It’s about to get too hot for me in the Barrel.” Rolling up his sleeve, he revealed the crow and cup tattoo on his forearm. “What does this mean to you?” he asked them. “To me it means membership of a gang – the Dregs – that was here before I was born and will be here once I’m dead. Dregs die. Long live the Dregs,” he said bluntly. “Per Haskell thought the gang couldn’t last without him. He was wrong. I know better. My last job as leader is to get this gang back in the black and out of this mess.”

Pim had looked close to tears. Keeg looked stunned. Seeing this, Anika had lifted her chin, eyes smouldering with new resolve. “You’re keeping your shares in the clubs and wormwood, right?” she asked and Wylan had the feeling she was asking about more than money.

Kaz had nodded once. “Of course, I am.”

Anika had grinned, obviously reassured that while Kaz might be stepping down, he wasn’t walking away. Not when there was still money to be made. “Right then,” she turned to Keeg and Pim, and both men stood up a little straighter. “As boss I say that we need to keep Dregs back at the Slat tomorrow. I know its all burnt up but I don’t trust the Razors. They’ll try a territory grab while they think we’re weak.” Growing in confidence, Anika continued, “We’ll split the rest up, have some of us at Zentsbridge, Goedmedbridge and the morgue. Kaz’s lot will have the Lid. That way nothing will happen without us knowing about it.”

“Yeah,” Keeg nodded. “I like it. We’ll show ‘em we’re still the big dog in town.”

Pim smiled proudly a look of love in his eyes when he said, “Right…boss.”

Kaz had leaned back on his cane and watched behind heavy lidded eyes. Wylan remembered wondering what he was thinking, watching the lieutenants he’d trained work independently of him. Was he proud, or did it sting? How would Kaz feel in a week or a month’s time, when the Dregs and the Barrel had moved on without him? Kaz had once claimed to have bled and killed for his little piece of Ketterdam. He’d risked his life and come away with a beating to claim the Dregs from Per Haskell. Wylan found it hard to believe he was happy to give it up now, even if it was the practical thing to do. This wasn’t the first time he’d been hunted, and the mob wasn’t even out for blood yet. It just didn’t seem like Kaz to give up a gang that had been so much of his life. Last night, watching the Dregs hierarchy reform without him, had felt like watching Kaz was become a living ghost. Wylan never thought a time would come with the Dirtyhands would quietly dismantle the reputation he’d worked so hard to build.

There had to be some angle he was missing, Wylan decided. Kaz must have a new target in mind. Someone or something valuable enough to trade the Dregs and his place in the Barrel. But what? Kaz wasn’t Wylan’s father, he did put some checks on his ambition, but Wylan knew that nothing stopped Kaz when he had a score in mind. The Ice Court job would never have happened if Kaz hadn’t been lured by thirty million kruge, and now Kaz wanted something new. Wylan could see it even now, in the distant gleam in his eyes. He was scheming.

But what could be gained losing the only security Kaz had? What power could a Grisha hold in Kerch? This wasn’t Ravka, Grisha had to hide here and Kaz wouldn’t be able to do that once word spread that he’d survived after all. Sooner or later the truth would come out. Kaz might be able to best the slavers that came for him with Inej’s help, and Wylan would honestly pity anyone who tried to own his indenture, but what about the Ravkan Triumvirate? Zoya and Genya had worked with Kaz before. They knew what he could do.

Wylan thought the idea of Kaz in the Little Palace would be an unmitigated disaster that would likely end with either Kaz’s execution or Nikolai Lantsov deposed within a week, but would the Triumvirate see Kaz as an asset or a threat? Would they move against him, or to claim him. Wylan honestly couldn’t tell. Kaz was so often threat and asset at the same time, even to his friends. The odds were simply to close to call.

The only other game in town were the Council of Tides. Wylan still wasn’t convinced Kaz wasn’t working Karl Dryden, no matter what he said. Jesper had told him about the key to the Imperjum Obelisk, Kaz had to have gotten that from somewhere. What was he planning to do with it? Kaz didn’t do anything without reason, but a robbery didn’t seem worth the risk. But what could Kaz want with a tower? He couldn’t seriously be considering going up against the Tides, could he?

“Did Elsje and the other Lions survive?” he blurted out, interrupting the strategy session about the upcoming raid on the wall.

Kaz raised an eyebrow. “Most of them,” he replied.

Wylan pressed his lips together. “Do they have the potential?” he asked Kuwei, mind working feverishly.

Kuwei nodded, expression pensive. “I checked before I administered the serum.”

Wylan flushed angrily. He turned on Kaz. “This is a coup,” he accused. “You’re going after the obelisk on Imperjum with the Lions to take it yourself.” He couldn’t believe it. Kaz couldn’t really think he and the Lions could replace the Tides.

Kaz’s expression was flat. “What good is a tower to me?” he asked. “Towers can be burned out. Blown up. Torn down.”

“Or turned into a prison,” Inej murmured, shooting Kaz a warning look.

Kaz cocked his head expectantly and asked Wylan, “What’s the easiest way to go after a man’s wallet?”

“Steal his watch,” Wylan answered instantly, and then scowled. “Who are you fooling by going after the Tides?” he demanded. It was too great a feint. The Tides wouldn’t care if he didn’t mean it.
Wylan couldn’t make sense of the plan; they didn’t even know how many Tides were in each of the towers. There were clearly enough to erect and maintain the ice walls, but what if there were more of them still in hiding? They’d been able to bring down Ekaterine by turning her army against her, but that was because none of the turned Etovost Grisha had wanted to serve her in the first place and Ekaterine had wanted to be found. That had been her weakness. The Tides were an entirely different story.

The only Tide any of them knew in person was Karl Dryden. Wylan froze. “It’s Dryden. He’s your target,” he breathed.

Kaz played with the fingers of his glove, which had appeared in his hands as if by magic. “Do you know why I joined the Dregs, a gang that was the biggest joke in the Barrel, merchling?” he asked.

“No.” Wylan had never given it any thought. He’d only ever known the Dregs as Kaz’s gang, even when they weren’t. He’d never thought of them as a joke, because by that point they hadn’t been. Kaz had made sure of it.

“Because they needed me,” Kaz said. “Do you know how to make the powerful need you?” he asked.

Wylan knew that answer all too well, and it didn’t just apply to the powerful. “Expose their weaknesses,” he said woodenly. “Then offer to help cover them up.”

Kaz’s dark eyes rooted on his, gaze unforgiving. “Karl Dryden is planning to betray the Council of Tides and we’re going to expose him,” he said.

Wylan shook his head, angry and baffled. “How do you know that?”

“Because he wants me to kill them.”

“So you are working for him,” Wylan accused.

“I work for my own profit and nothing else, Merchling,” Kaz corrected, dangerously. “There’s no profit in helping the biggest podge on the Merchant Council. We’re throwing our lot in with the Council of Tides. For now.”

Jesper dropped his hand on Wylan’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Welcome to the great ‘Catch a dirty Mercher’ caper, part two,” he said teeth flashing in a wild, reckless grin.

Wylan rubbed his forehead. He had a headache. He was careful to make sure he didn’t dislodge Jesper’s hand and asked tiredly, “How are we going to do it?”

“We’re not,” Kaz said, predictably. “Karl Dryden is going to reveal his treachery all on his own.”

Frustrated, Wylan looked to Jesper and Inej. “Someone please tell me this doesn’t involve sabotaging sugar silos or impersonating Jurda farmers,” he pleaded.

Inej sighed. Jesper started chuckling, a sound that Wylan both loved and feared. Kaz scowled. “A good thief never repeats a failed trick,” he said darkly. Wylan started to relax. He should have known better, because Kaz hadn’t finished. “This is the plan, merchling. Pay attention because I’m only going through it once…”

Chapter Text

Levers and Power Pt. 3:

Inej:

Inej took to the rooftops headed north toward the Lid for the second time. Her route was not a simple one. The damage to the Barrel was extensive and she was forced to cut a zigzagging, switch-back path to avoid the burned out craters that was all that remained of destroyed buildings. The gangs on foot below her were no better off. Debris filled the streets and choked the canal and the barely organised rabble of Liddies singing and jeering as they marched behind Nina’s serried rows of the dead regularly found themselves forced to squeeze down side alleys or cross the canal to safer ground.

Inej’s focus was not on the Liddies. She was following Kaz. Despite what he’d told the Barrel bosses, she had known all along that he’d make for the Lid when the action began. He would not be able to resist. Making good time despite his limp, Kaz followed behind the rump of the rag-tag army, unseen. Even in this state, Kaz knew the streets and alleys of the Barrel like the back of his hand. Could he really give this up? Inej wondered. Wylan was not the only one with doubts about Kaz’s plan. Inej worried that Kaz had not considered what it faking his death would truly mean.

“This is your gang. Your family,” she’d cautioned, cornering him alone on the street outside the Cup and Crow distillery less than an hour ago.

Kaz had adjusted the fit of the hat on his head and said, “I’ve lost family before.”

“You don’t like to lose, Kaz,” she reminded him.

Slipping his gloves on he asked, “Who does? This is a trade, Inej. I give up something I can afford to lose in exchange for something I can’t. My freedom.”

No one could understand that better than Inej, but still, there was a flaw to his reasoning. “The Council of Tides will take that from you too,” she said. “An indenture has terms. You can buy your way out the contract. The Tides will keep you until you die.”

“They’ll try,” Kaz agreed. “But no terms mean no obligation and plenty of room to negotiate.”

“Negotiation in the Barrel is done under the gun. Do you really think you can blackmail the Tides?”

Kaz flexed his fingers inside his leather gloves. “We’re going to find out.” He glanced at her out of the side of his eye and said, “When this is all over, I’ll need passage out of Kerch in a hurry. Think you can manage that, Captain?”

Inej had rolled her eyes. “The Wraith is not a pleasure ferry. I only take working crew aboard. Think you can manage taking my orders?” she retorted.

Kaz’s lips twitched upward. His eyes were shaded by the brim of his hat, but Inej thought that had she seen them they would have been the colour of black tea in sunlight. “I think I might like to find out,” he murmured softly, the rough burr of his voice dropping to an almost purr.

Inej had looked away quickly. “I will chart a course. Keep track of me and follow on the ground. You still intend to go to Fifth Harbour?”

Kaz nodded. “Schipp will have a man on lookout, I suspect.”

Inej did not bother to warn him of the danger. Kaz already knew and their lives had never not been dangerous. There was worth and purpose in fighting for a life unfettered, even if that life was not the one Kaz had chosen for himself and Inej would support him in his fight. She did not pretend to know how the Council of Tides conducted its business – no one in Kerch knew that – but they had already marked Kaz as property, making him swear to a vague oath with more power behind it than simple words should have. Inej had known slavers do very similar. She would not be sorry if her knives found temporary homes in Tide flesh.

The ice wall rose in front of her, appearing before her eyes like an iceberg to sink her thoughts. They had reached the neck of the Samenvogen Canal. The two prongs of the canal came together like the twin arches of a low-backed M connecting West and East Stave at the opening to the Barrel. The waterway had always been busy, thronged with tourist gondels and flatboats whose drivers touted the wares, anything from flowers brought in from the countryside that morning to more illicit offerings like floating poppy dens to goods smuggled in from across the seas. The buildings lining the Samenvogen were almost as grand as the palaces of the vice thronging West Stave, growing progressively meaner as the canal travelled east, but even the meanest of taverns along the Samenvogen tended to be bright with East Stave spectacle and full of a strange mix of Barrel flash and wide-eyed tourists.

Inej couldn’t see the taverns, card clubs and narrow theatres on Samenvogen’s north side. All she could see was the ice wall. It had consumed the waterway along its entire span, creating an impenetrable screen that reached as high as the rooftops on either side. Hunkered in the shadow of the Gelukvinger’s large chimney stack, Inej spotted at least one – poorly concealed – sniper on one of the roofs on the east side, in a place where the top of the ice wall had dipped slightly as it melted. There would be more, as well as countless armed stadwatch and naval men posted on the ground.

Dropping over the edge of Gelukvinger’s roof and in through a shattered upper floor window, she made her way out of the office room passed the first floor private gaming rooms and down into the main gambling floor. The Gelukvinger was owned by Gervaas, and like the Crow club did for the Dregs, it operated as the tentpole business for the Liddies. Inej spotted signs of a hasty clean up in the upturned chairs and a few conspicuously missing pieces of artwork from the walls, all evidence of the gangs attempt to clean out everything available before the lockdown.

The impressive oak wood doors were locked and bolted and the shutters let in not a single chink of light. They did not move when Inej pried at them with her fingers. There would be a back way out, perhaps several. Inej would just have to find it. Otherwise, she would have to go back to the window and scale the outer wall, something she did not want to do unless she had no choice. The familiar click of a cane on hardwood caused Inej to turn toward the far side of the gaming floor, a knife in each hand.

Kaz stood between two dust sheet covered tables, palms resting on the crow head of his cane. “Gervaas is lazy, relying on an obscured door down a side alley. A clever boss knows tunnels are a much better security measure,” he said.

Cleverness was one charge no one would ever lay at Gervaas’ feet, but he did not lack cunning. Inej followed Kaz into a dark storage room and out of a door that had been painted on the outside to look like part of an ordinary brick wall. Had Inej not seen the door for herself, she would not have noticed anything at all. The rattle of gunfire crackled through the air. It had begun. She looked at Kaz, as they both pressed themselves against the wall. The fighting was on the main street, but Inej could not be sure who had started it. She had expected Nina to order the dead Grisha to attack with their powers as part of the ruse they had planned, but maybe Klem's men had fired first.

Kaz read her question on her face. “Someone on the other side had the smart idea of ordering troops to rappel over the wall,” he said drily.

“An ambush.” Inej asked, “Does that mean they want to take the Grisha alive?”

“The Council might think they can build a case for war, if they prove the Grisha are Ravkan,” Kaz admitted, adding, “The Merchant council can’t declare war without the approval of the lesser councils to the south. That’s not normally not a problem. The Council can force agreement on favourable trade tariffs, but war is different. They’ll need more than clout. They’ll need evidence.”

“Does this change our plans?” Inej asked, thinking about their scheme for the Merchers on the Council.

“No,” said Kaz but whatever else he’d planned to say was cut off by a tremendous cracking sound. To Inej it sounded like a giant had cracked the top off a boiled egg. Almost immediately the ground rumbled and a loud crashing sound shook her eardrums.

She and Kaz ran down the far side of the building exiting the alley to the north of the main street. Careful of watching snipers, they slunk under the eaves of overhanging roofs and store awnings until they came out on the street facing the Samenvogen. A portion of the ice wall had fallen down, spilling great chunks of ice and slush over the street. White steam rose in curling clouds around a half-a-dozen dead Etovost Inferni as they continued to expel jets of fire at the remaining segments of the wall. They were pelted by gunfire continuously, Inej could see blood and fragments of bone arc through the air as the dead were hit.

She looked up at the top of the wall and saw soldiers crouched there, rifles aimed downward. “They must know something is wrong,” she objected. “A Grisha on Parem couldn’t withstand a barrage like this.”

“Doesn’t matter if they do,” Kaz said, “They won’t live long enough to tell anyone who matters.” As he spoke three of the shooters on the wall were picked off by gunfire from their side of the collapsing wall. Inej looked across the street, catching movement from one of the windows. The Liddies had snipers of their own.

“We should keep moving, before we’re seen,” she said. Gervaas might not have Kaz’s imagination, but he was canny enough to realise how easily he could turn Kaz’s fake death into a reality with one well-placed bullet.

The simplest way to reach Fifth Harbour was to follow the Samenvogen east and then go north along East Stave. They had told Nina to join them there. Taking side streets and back alleys she and Kaz wove their way east and north. The attack on the ice wall had been planned in stages, between she, Nina and Kaz. While Inferni attacked further west, Nina had ordered Fabrikators to attack its foundations to the East. She and Kaz were thrown off their feet by a series of tremors that cracked and buckled the ground, sending cascades of roofing tiles tumbling down from the buildings on the street. Liddies spilled onto the main street, tossing incendiary devices toward the wall cracks appeared.

“Psst!” Nina gestured at them impatiently from a very narrow gap between a souvenir shop selling counterfeit southern lace goods and another selling wooden clogs no true Kerch peasant had worn for more than fifty years. Inej and Kaz squeezed down the gap between the buildings after Nina as another tremendous crash signalled the collapse of a second section of the wall. “This is too easy,” Nina panted once they out on East Stave. “Where are the Tidemakers? It’s like they all abandoned the wall before we arrived.”

Inej and Kaz exchanged a look. Kaz cocked his head, as if listening for something. “I’d know if the Tides from Imperjum were here,” he said. “Nina’s right. We’re not going to meet Grisha on the way.”

“A trap?” she asked, hands going to her knife belt.

Kaz shook his head. “An opportunity. Let’s go.”

Nina crossed her arms, blocking the path. “Are you sure you haven’t forgotten something again?” she demanded.

“I can’t know what I don’t remember,” Kaz pointed out, irritably. “Stay here and take your chances with the snipers if you want. I have an appointment to keep.”

The sound of gunfire chased them as they hurried north. More Liddies had gathered in front of the ice wall that blocked off the former Emerald Palace. The three of them stopped, taking shelter beside a building. They could not go on until the wall here fell. Nina’s hair tangled around her shoulders in a glorious jumble and her cheeks were rosy with a healthy glow even as she bent double and sucked in great lungful's of air. Despite her breathlessness when she straightened up, there was a light of joy and excitement in her green eyes. It was then that Inej remembered that for true Grisha using their power made them stronger. She shot an oblique glance toward Kaz.

He too had seemed better since Ekaterine’s death. It wasn’t just the fact that his gait was quick and his bad leg did not drag as badly as she might have expected after a gruelling fight, or the fact that he had chosen to keep his gloves off for most of the night, even in front of the others. Standing beside her, surveying the street, Kaz seemed filled with a strange energy – almost excitement – that she had never seen in him before. Had he been anyone else and had these been any other circumstances than this, Inej would have said Kaz seemed happier than she had ever seen him. There was no sense to it. But instead of a man bracing himself against inevitable losses, Kaz held himself like a man about to come into money, or someone freed from a burden they had expected to bear for the rest of their lives.

But that could not be true. Kaz had never wanted to be anything other than a Barrel boss, and rather than free, his future was in danger in a way he had never known before. He should have been as he had been when facing down Rollins, Van Eck and an entire city turned against him. Determined to fight to the last and ready to die for pride. But Inej knew Kaz, she knew that he had his eyes on some new horizon, some new prize, one that thrilled and excited him. In this new danger he saw opportunity – but for what?

His words from earlier whispered through her mind. There had never been a chance of Kaz leaving Ketterdam for anything but the shortest of trips before Etovost. Bosses stayed in their cities, lurking in the heart of their hard-fought territories, forced to be ever vigilant in case a rival should come and steal their throne should they leave it. Inej hadn’t thought Kaz minded that. Ketterdam was his city; he’d claimed her in his heart and Inej fancied that should someone peel back the layers of his skin, the circulation of his veins and arteries would follow the same pattern as Ketterdam's rivers and canals. Dirtyhands and the city that had made him were inseparable; the monstrous city and her monstrous boy belonged to each other. But what if she was wrong and Kaz did long to roam? The thought made Inej uneasy. Where would he go? Which lawless gambling town in Eames Chin or Shriftport would claim him, and would she be able to find him again once she gave him passage?

Inej did not want to give any real thought to his joke about signing on with her crew. It would never work. Kaz had not been built to take orders, and Inej knew that if he stayed aboard, she would soon find herself falling into her old life as his spider. Her Wraith would become his, not because he would take it from her, but because she would cede it to him simply by listening to his schemes. She had fought too hard for her independence to give it away, even to Kaz, who she knew would never take her freedom from her.

Was that really how it had to be, a small voice inside asked. Was she so unsure of herself that the thought of Kaz aboard the Wraith became a threat? Did she have so little faith in herself, in him, and in her crew that the only possible outcome was one of them being forced to give up all control to the other? Was that truly how she’d felt when she’d been Kaz’s spider? No, even when her freedom had to be paid for with interest every month to Per Haskell, she’d known herself free to run and escape her bonds. She could not blame Kaz for her choice to stay then. Just as she could not blame him for her choice to fight now.

What was she really afraid of then, if not the loss of her command? Deep down, Inej knew that it wasn’t fear of loss that quickened her heartbeat and made her feel like fingers were tightening around her throat. It was fear of what could be gained. Of something that she and Kaz had both believed impossible, suddenly coming into reach. She was afraid of the hope she saw in Kaz’s eyes. Hope she could feel, lodged like sharpened stone, under her breastbone.

A pirate captain and a Barrel boss had no future, beyond infrequent jobs together whenever she docked in Ketterdam. Dirtyhands and the Wraith had chosen lives that promised only brutal purpose and violent deaths, offering little chance of more, something they both knew only too well. But Kaz was not Dirtyhands anymore, and he could not stay in Ketterdam if he wanted to stay free. The game had suddenly changed and what had once been off the table, was now ready to be won.

The life of a renegade Grisha was not an easy one, but it had one advantage over that of a Barrel boss, Inej realised. It offered she and Kaz the chance to be together as something they had never been before, freed from the shackles of the past, free of the labels they had given themselves to survive in the old game. They could be free to decide who Kaz and Inej could be together, as equals, and maybe, as something much more than that.

Inej tried to imagine Kaz on the Wraith as a member of her crew. She knew that he’d make himself useful, applying himself to all the physical labour aboard the ship with the same bloody-minded determination he had used to get to the top in the Barrel. His past might make the rest of her crew wary of him at first, but if Kaz was truly willing to find a new self and let Dirtyhands rest, then she thought it likely that he would win her crew over in time.

Imagination travelling on swift feet ahead of her, she let her fantasy run. She would put Kaz to work gathering information for her when they made landfall, she decided. He would become her spider. He’d con secrets out of procurers and wrangle truth from slavers through games of chance. He’d create distractions for her and her crew on jobs with magic shows on the docks from Leflin and Weddle all the way to Bhez Ju. On long nights at sea, they would sit together in her cabin, the sway of the lantern above their heads creating dancing shadows on the walls as they plotted their next move and argued over targets.

She would take him back to Ravka, Inej knew, heartbeat increasing. They would meet her parents again and this time she would introduce him not with careful lies meant to cover hard truths she had not had the courage to tell last time, but instead, they would go among the caravans hand-in-hand and she would teach Kaz to speak respectfully in Suli and force him onto the high wire if he did not. And when her cousins asked her who the pale, dark-eyed man whose hand she held was, she would tell them –

“Focus, Inej,” Kaz’s sharp warning sliced through her fantasies.

Abruptly, Inej was back on a Ketterdam street, the clatter of gunfire filling her ears. But not for long, she thought fiercely. As the three of them dashed out into the street, hopping over chunks of ice and splashing through ice-cold water as the street flooded. Once the future had been a hope, a prayer to petition the Saints that she had never truly believed in, because it had no shape and no substance. Now it was a conviction. A promise. It looked like her mother’s smile and her father’s wary acceptance. It looked like Kaz’s sunburned nose as she taught him to navigate the seas by longitude and latitude. Nimbly jumping over a fallen body, she grabbed Kaz’s gloved hand as they dashed over the bridge toward the Palace, its roof just visible over the collapsing top of the ice wall.

Kaz swept his free hand in front of him and the waters parted, sweeping with them ice chunks in their path. A blizzard of icy pellets and small slivers of the falling wall fell like rain down on their heads. They skidded around the corner of the Palace, bullets pelting the brickwork. Ducking they were forced to let go of each other’s hand to crawl on all fours, until they could break into another sprint across the accidental iceberg bridge over the canal separating the warehouses of the Fifth Harbour from colourful drag of East Stave.

It didn’t matter. The compass in her heart that had swung so sharply to point her in the direction of her purpose over two years ago, swung again now and just as before she felt her strength redouble. She understood that Kaz’s vigour had nothing to do with being Grisha, and everything to do with hope. Dirtyhands may have fallen and Kaz might have lost the Barrel, but all things in life were a trade and what stood to be won was something Inej thought Kaz had believed lost to him forever.

The freedom to be happy.

Chapter Text

Levers and Power Pt: 4:

Nina:

They kept up a brutal pace until they were within sight of Fifth Harbour’s waters. Nina’s link to her undead soldiers broke, the snap of lost awareness echoing through her mind. She hoped that it was enough and that they’d done their job. The sound of gunfire dwindled from a constant to intermittent bursts. If the Liddies were smart they’d melt away with the last of the ice wall, pulling back to allow the Stadwatch to collect the dead Grisha. But that wasn’t Nina’s problem and she pushed it from her mind as they made it through the maze of warehouses to the waterfront.

The three stopped under the overhanging eaves of a slope-roofed shack that smelled of tobacco leaves. All three of them were puffing and panting. Nina sucked in air and took three tries to speak. “Is he here?” The harbour ought to be packed with dock workers, sailors, hawkers, pickpockets and working girls at this time of day. Not to mention Stadwatch grunts prowling for bribes and warehouse watchmen looking to relieve their boredom. Instead, it was deserted. The lockdown still in effect. The quiet made Nina nervous. There was a chill in the air, rising along with a thin ocean mist that seeped under and through the railings.

Kaz leaned heavily on his cane but lifted one arm to remove his hat and wipe his brow with the back of his wrist. He narrowed his eyes, scanning the quiet alley and peering through the dank mist. It had thickened to a white fog and continued to spill forward, thickening even more as Nina watched. She shivered, tasting damp on her tongue. “Someone is here,” said Kaz limping forward toward one of the long wharfs. Nina and Inej exchanged a look. Inej grimaced, knives in each hand. They followed Kaz.

The buildings surrounding the harbour were gone, obliterated by a thick blanket of fog. “This isn’t natural,” Nina declared, tucking her hands under her arms as the sweat under her clothes turned chill. Moisture condensed in the air, covering her skin like rain. The only thing Nina could hear was the soft slap of the water against the deep walls of the harbour.

“Is it the Tides?” Inej asked, she looked left and right, trying to see through the mist.

Kaz didn’t answer. Gait heavy, he pushed through the mist headed down a narrow jetty. Immediately he was lost from sight. Nina and Inej plunged into the wet, cloudy fog after him, following him along one of the wooden landing. The thump of Kaz’s cane and the tramp of Nina’s footsteps reverberated dully in her ears. Inej, as always, moved as lightly through the mist as the mizzle clinging to the strands of her hair. Just as Nina was wondering if Kaz intended to walk right off the edge of the jetty she spotted the small, silent figure waiting for them.

It was a boy, no more than thirteen, slight and gawky with damp brown hair that fell into his face, stuck there by the drizzling mist. His clothes had been good quality once, before wear and tear had gotten to them, but she thought the fashion was somewhat dated. The boy looked like a stock market runner from ten or more years ago. That was not the only strange thing about the boy. Nina could feel him with her power. the boy was dead. But Nina knew she hadn’t called him to the end of the jetty.

Next to her Kaz stopped so abruptly his bad leg buckled and he had to catch his balance awkwardly. His breathing had quickened, as if he was back to being out of breath. Nina looked away from the apparition to stare at him. Face slick with rain, Kaz was whiter than the ghost. His eyes were wide and fixed on the boy in front of them and he looked — scared. Nina had never seen a look like that on his face before. Not even when they faced the might of the Fjerdan army and Jarl Brum on Djerholm’s dock. Kaz’s quick, shallow breathing came in tense, panicked pants. Whoever this boy was, Kaz knew him.

“Kaz?” Knife vanished away, Inej started to reach out for him, but then drew back. Kaz had flinched when she spoke, the reaction so strong, Nina felt an answering shudder lock her shoulders.

“Jordie,” the name was ripped from Kaz’s throat.

The ghost at the end of the jetty smiled. He had a nice smile. An honest smile. In the Barrel it would have marked the boy as a pigeon to be plucked. “Hello Kaz.” Light and fluting, the boy’s voice sounded on the air, young and not yet broken. Kaz shuddered all over. He blinked rapidly. Nina wondered if he was going to faint. But the idea of Kaz Brekker fainting in fright was too absurd to be real. Inej looked almost as stricken as Kaz, the other girl’s line of sight breaking between the ghost and Kaz, unable to decide which one needed more of her attention.

If they were attacked right now, Nina was the only one ready to defend herself. She stepped forward boldly and asked the apparition, “Who are you?”

The boy turned his smile on her. He stood a little straighter and puffed out his chest like a cockerel. “Jordan Rietveld, at your service,” he declared with a little bow.

Rietveld. That was a name she’d heard before. Shooting Kaz a side-eyed look, Nina inquired, “Do you have any relation to a farmer named Johannus?”

The ghost looked surprised. “That’s my middle name. But I sold the farm after Pa died. We used the money to come to Ketterdam. I’m going into investment.” He grinned, big and wide and stupid. Conspiring jovially he added, “But I can’t tell you about that. Right Kaz?” Beside Nina, Kaz made a sound that might have been an annoyed groan if it hadn't been so pained.

“Why are you here?” Nina asked Jordie. She had met ghosts before, but she had never known one to be visible to anyone else. There had to be some power animating him, but what? Nina knew of no one else with power like hers.

“The Council of Tides sent me,” Jordie said proudly. “I’m their messenger.”

“How?” Croaked Kaz.

“Do you know how many people drown in Ketterdam’s waterways?” Jordie asked instead of answering. “This city gives its dead to the sea and the Tides control the waves. Every body that sinks or is swept out with the current gives up its secrets to the Council. The ocean remembers the lives it takes, even when the living forget,” said Jordie but the words didn't belong to this arrogant child. They were the Council's words, parroted from dead lips.

“The water hears and understands,” Nina murmured, remembering Matthias telling her that Fjerdans believed that all the waterways of the world were connected to Djel, the wellspring. Was it possible it was more than a legend? Nina’s power felt like a deep, dark river inside her when she wasn’t using it, the souls of the dead causing ripples on its surface. Corporalki were known as the order of the living and the dead, but Kat’s Etovost plague had shown Nina that Grisha power was not as neatly segregated, nor explained, as the Little Palace had taught her. Perhaps the Tidemakers on the Council of Tides could call on the dead like they claimed? If it was true, they were much more powerful than any of them had believed.

“When you joined the collective, you gave up my memory to the water,” Jordie told Kaz. “I belong to the Council now. They know me. They remember. Just like you do. There are no secrets among Tidemakers, little brother,” Jordie chided.

Gripping the head of his cane hard enough she thought his knuckle bones might split his skin, Kaz hissed, “Zenik.”

Nina walked forward. The boards of the jetty creaked under her boots. The mist clung to her clothes, tickling her with wet fingers as she pushed through. There was a circle of clear air around Jordie. Nina could just make out a line of pylons sticking out of the water beyond the end of the jetty. She knew that not far out beyond the harbour walls the Reaper’s Barge waited. For some reason, she found herself looking down, searching for a child’s bare wet footprints headed away from the jetty. She didn’t know why she was thinking about the long, cold swim from here to the Reaper’s Barge, or why it didn’t surprise her to find that on closer inspection, Jordie’s skin was pocked with angry, raised red welts and fever burn.

The water remembers, she repeated in her thoughts. Whatever memories the living Jordie had clung to in death had bled out into the ocean when he died. They must have been strong to touch her skin now, on the mist, tickling her with the faint edge of knowing. Stopping in front of Jordie she stretched out her hand and introduced herself, “I’m Nina Zenik.”

Jordie shook her hand. Immediately Nina was plunged into his memory. She saw a man dead in a field, an overturned plough beside his remains. She saw two boys in a country solicitor’s office. She felt how tightly the younger gripped the elder’s hand. She remembered the crispness of the envelope containing the meagre inheritance that was all the two boys had left in the world. She remembered the elder boy’s constant, stomach aching fear and heard the false echo of his confident stories as he promised his younger brother that everything would be alright. He'd become a runner for one of the banks in Ketterdam, then a clerk, then he’d work his way onto the investment floor and from there straight to Geldin District. She lived the dream with Jordie, riding the coattails of an imagination that far out-stretched his means until, inevitably, the story turned bad and a familiar face rose in her mind like the wicked witch-hunters in all the old stories she'd heard as a child in the Little Palace.

Pekka Rollins florid face, transformed into a jovial mask surprised her, but she was swept away on a wave of Jordie Rietveld’s optimism. She tasted home-cooked hutspot and canal-side hot chocolate on her tongue. She excitedly turned the pages of the novels Jordie bought. She felt his hope for a future he would never have and his desperate need to manifest all his promises to the silent, dark-eyed little boy who spent hour after hour making a length of red ribbon disappear as if the concerns of the material world were nothing to him. She lived Jordie's last weeks with him. She knew what it was to be cozied by Rollins. She lived every moment of the gut swooping horror Jordie had felt standing on the stoop of Hertzoon's abandoned home. She remembered how hard it had been to meet younger brother's big, watchful eyes when the truth dawned. She walked with the boys as they fell out onto the Barrel’s streets. She tasted bile on her tongue as Jordie took a beating and felt his dull despair like a brick in her guts as he fished his little brother out of the canal.

She heard the younger boy whine, “I’m hungry,” and heard Jordie’s defiant response, “I’m not.” It wasn’t a lie. His body had hurt too much from the beating to allow him to eat even if they’d had anything. Her bones ached with pity. But Nina was a soldier and veteran of the Barrel. She knew there was always worst to come. Hours later, the plague would take hold of Jordie. In a matter of days, he’d be dead. But that wasn’t how the memory of Jordie Rietveld ended. It ended with laughter and two brothers together, side-by-side watching the waters of the canal slide past. Jordie Rietveld's determination to hold on to hope, enduring even in death. But then, Nina had learned that death was often kinder than life.

Jordie's story may have ended with the memory of laughter, but Nina knew the real story had been far from other. It didn't end on canal side, or in a nest of broken boxes, or the corpse bloated pile of the Reaper's Barge. It ended here with the biggest bastard the Barrel had ever known waiting for her to tell him if the ghost of his brother was real.

“I am,” the ghost of Jordie Rietveld said. “I'm here. I’m real.”

Nina ignored him. She was wrestling with the truth. So often when it came to the living and the dead there wasn’t any one truth she could hold onto. Death was meant to be an end, and when it wasn't it only brought confusion. She thought of Matthias. During her long trek through Fjerdan to find his killer she’d so desperately wanted to hear his voice again that she’d conjured his imaginary ghost. He’d comforted and counselled her, pleading with her to show mercy to his killer and been with her every step of her journey to put his body to rest and then find justice for herself. He'd given her strength and offered her solace. He’d been everything good and noble she remembered about Matthias. And he’d been a lie.

Matthias’ ghost had none of his bad. None of his arrogance, or his moral rigidity. None of his blinkered hypocrisy. There had been none of the druskelle in Matthias’ shade. None of the boy who had shamelessly asked her, in the shadow of a Grisha pyre, if it had ever occurred to her that she and all Grisha weren’t meant to exist. Matthias’ shade had never throttled or threatened her, had never promised her, face hard and cold, that the ice did not forgive. And the shade had been the lesser for it, because he hadn't been real.

But he’d been all she’d ever have of Matthias in this life. The good memories culled from the bad, like shucking wheat from its chaff. The solace of the grieving was good memories, something to hold onto when the real loved one was gone forever, and Matthias’ shade, the memory of the boy who had told her he’d been made to protect her, of the boy who’d learned about her new power and talked about Djel’s light as a compliment, was a source of strength Nina would have with her until the day she finally died. But a memory could never replace a person. A memory was a fixed point in time. A remnant of a dead life; when that remnant lingered too long, it became a shackle to the living and an insult to the dead.

“No. You’re wrong,” said ghost Jordie desperately. “I’m real. I’m Jordie Rietveld. Tell him. Tell my brother it's really me!”

It was. Nina could feel the truth of his words. Jordie wasn’t just a conjuring of wishful thinking. His apparition was stronger than a memory; more than an illusion summoned by the Council to scare Kaz into line. Somehow, in someway, the essence of the real Jordie Rietveld was here, plucked from the depths of deep waters. It didn’t matter. When it came to the living and the dead, the truth was what she said it was. And Jordie Rietveld was too powerful a weapon to leave in the Council of Tides hands.

Nina turned her back on Jordie’s ghost and walked down the jetty. She did not see the memory of a big-eyed budding magician in Kaz because life was not a fairy tale. She saw someone waiting to be told what he wanted to hear. What he needed to hear. “It’s a trick,” she said, lifting her chin and announcing, “The Council must have made him out of mist and memory to make you obedient.” Taking a breath, she passed judgement on Jordie Rietveld’s shade and murmured so only Kaz could hear, “The ice does not forgive.”

Kaz’s expression hardened. He became a boy of ice and flint before her eyes. The mist hovering over his shoulders froze and the water droplets studding his jacket crystallised with tiny plinking sounds. Nina was immediately chilled, her breath fogging between her lips as the air temperature plummeted. She stepped to Kaz’s side. Kaz extended his left hand. His leather glove plated with a thin layer of cracking ice.

“Kaz?” Jordie’s shade sounded wretched and afraid. He pleaded, “She’s lying. It’s me. I’m here. Don't send me away.”

Kaz clenched his fist, twisting his wrist sharply one way and then the other. The air hissed and crunched as the fog condensed into thick ice, freezing Jordie’s shade solid. Snapping open his fist and spreading his fingers wide, Kaz shattered the ice. Long, crystal pale shards flew through the air and slammed down on the jetty before sliding off the side into the water in broken pieces. Pellets of hail rained down on the boards. Jordie’s spirit was gone. Nina couldn’t feel him anywhere anymore.

Kaz dropped his arm. His expression was composed, his eyes narrowed. Dirtyhands was in control of himself once again. The mist drew in around the three of them, rolling along the jetty. Vague shapes moved in the fog and wavering human faces swirled in and out of focus. A distorted voice issued from the water vapour, “That was a mistake, Tide Brekker. You have refused our gift.”

“I won’t be cozied like some nub,” Kaz spat.

“Our gift was a kindness, not a lie,” said the voice of the Tides. “But we see now you are beyond compassion. So be it. We know of Tide Dryden’s treachery. We have known of his weakness for a long time. We know that he wants to be cured of his Tidemaker powers. The water knows all. The ocean swallows all lies," the voice split into an echoing chorus as the face in the mist came back into focus. "We have chosen you to replace Dryden as our agent in the world," intoned the Council. "Know that any treachery on your part will fail before it can be started.”

“If you’ve known about Dryden all along, why didn’t you do something?” Nina demanded. It was all well and good to come here and threaten Kaz, Saints knew he could do with being threatened more often, but if the Council of Tides was as powerful as they seemed why had they been so slow to act?

“There is an ebb and flow for all actions,” said the voice of the mist. “We move with forces you cannot understand, Nina Zenik. We are subject to power you cannot imagine.”

“You’re lazy,” Kaz interrupted. “You want me to kill Dryden for you.”

“The traitor’s life or death matters nothing to us. The water rejects him as he rejects us. Dryden’s treachery goes beyond selfishness. You cannot let him gain access to Yul-Bo’s suppression serum,” the voice was one now, strident even as it sounded like steam rising from hot rocks. Kaz quirked a brow but said nothing. Nina crossed her arms and huffed a breath. So far the Tides had told them nothing they hadn’t figured out for themselves. On Kaz’s other side, Inej crossed her arms as well, tapping the tip of her knife against her elbow impatiently. They hadn't survived the Barrel to be impressed by empty theatrics. “We know of your plan to remove the traitor from both Councils,” the voice continued. “We approve of your actions. You may proceed, but know this, Tide Brekker, there are some on the Merchant Council who wish war with Ravka. They must be stopped. We will never allow war to come to Kerch’s waters.”

That was good. Their plan did not involve going up against the Council of Tides directly, and Nina did not think any of them was prepared for a straight fight, especially now they knew how much power the Council of Tides had collectively. They were far stronger than any of the Tidemakers Nina had known back in the Little Palace. Had the Council declared war on Ravka as well, they would have had no choice but to die trying to stop them. But her relief was short-lived, leaving her simply annoyed. The Merchant Council was already in Kaz’s sights, along with Dryden. The Tides intervention was nothing but a waste of all their time. It was obvious they had no intention of doing anything to help.

Kaz seemed to agree. “You’ve told me your demands. Now here’s my price," he said. "I want a guarantee that the Wraith, her captain, and her crew will always have safe passage in Kerch waters and I want passage out of Kerch as soon as this is done.”

Nina looked at Kaz sharply. Those demands were a long way short of thirty million kruge. What was he up to? Kaz kept his gaze locked dead ahead of him, as if he could see right through the mist to the hulking shadow of Imperjum’s obelisk tower beyond the safety of the harbour. Nina would have to be blind not to have noticed that something had changed between him and Inej. They weren't pretending indifference any longer, which was good because Nina wasn't sure how much longer she could stand the mutual obliviousness. All the same, Kaz asking for nothing more than Inej's safety was setting the bar low. It wasn't like him. And If Kaz Brekker had decided that there were things more important to him than money, the world truly was on the brink of disaster.

“You are ours Tide Brekker," the voice of the Council. "No matter how far inland you may run there is no hiding from the ocean. Her fingers are the rivers that stretch across the land, and her reach is inescapable.”

“Then she can reach out and grab my attention when she needs something,” Kaz retorted. “Until then, I won’t be imprisoned in a tower.”

“Nor would we have you,” the mist replied. “We would not take a viper to our breast.”

Unimpressed Kaz said, “You already did. Dryden plans to give the suppression formula to the Merchant Council to use on all of you, doesn’t he? The Council are sick of kow-towing to Grisha. They’ll purge the towers and then they’ll get rid of the Squallers in the navy and sell the formula to the Shu and the Fjerdans. The Council will position Kerch as the lynchpin of an anti-Ravkan federation.”

Nina looked at him sharply. That was the Triumvirate’s worst fear realised. The Shu and the Fjerdans had larger militaries but Kerch had reach and immense financial influence, if they called in Ravka’s national debt they could destroy her standing on the world stage, and if Kerch turned its wealth to funding a war, Ravka would be friendless and outgunned. Had Kaz known this all along, or had the Tides sparked something in that fiendish brain of his? Either way, Nina was glad she'd removed Jordie as a distraction. If there were elements on the Merchant Council picking up where Jan Van Eck left off, Nina wanted the Bastard of the Barrel focused on their destruction.

“The Merchant Council are short-sighted fools," said the voices in the fog. "Kerch will fall without us. The Shu will raise the land bridge and invade, and then the Merchers will find that their wealth is little help,” something like anger sent ripples of sibilance through the mist.

Kaz shrugged. “That won’t matter to you, you’ll be dead," he said bluntly. "But I suppose the ocean will remember. Perhaps she’ll crook her fingers and do something when the Shu warships sail in.”

“You will find the conspirators, Tide Brekker and you will stop them,” said the mist, droplets of water pattering to the jetty as angry rain. “Then and only then will you be free.”

All at once the mist drew out, blowing away from the jetty and shrinking back across the water of the harbour before dissipating into ordinary grey afternoon light. The normal sounds of the city crashed in around Nina’s ears. Shading her eyes from the sudden brightness, Nina huffed loudly, “What a waste of time.”

Kaz swept water off his jacket sleeves. “This job is Three-Man Bramble at an open table at the back of the Crow Club. Don’t let the riffraff distract you before the game’s won, Zenik.”

“Drown in a bucket, Brekker,” Nina snapped back.

Kaz adjusted his hat. “That’s Rietveld to you, Nina dear.”

Chapter Text

Levers and Power Pt. 5:

Kaz:

Kaz stopped when he heard his name murmured on the breeze. “Brekker.” He gestured for the others to stay still, listening for the distorted murmur. “Kaz Brekker I know you can hear me. Meet me at the Marlin Inn.”

“Squaller, throwing his voice,” Nina said, head cocked as she listened and hands loose at her sides. She scanned the roof tops warily.

“Lars Schipp,” Inej corrected. “Do we go?”

Kaz calculated swiftly. The Marlin Inn was on the edge of the Zelver District. A mostly respectable establishment popular with well-to-do sea captains, retired naval officers and tourists. Kaz knew the neighbourhood well, but in a lockdown, with his face well known to the stadwatch and navy men likely to be waiting inside, walking back out of the inn after his meeting could prove a challenge. “We go,” he said.

“And what happens if the stadwatch try and arrest us?” Nina demanded.

“We get dragged up in front of the merchers,” he said. “The Council are all in Belendt, which means we get our private audience with Dryden.”

Inej nodded slowly. “Arresting you would provide him cover for a meeting,” she agreed.

“And demonstrate that this puppy has teeth,” Kaz added drily. “Schipp has eyes on us. He saw the mist earlier.”

“Which means he knows you talked to the Tides,” Nina said.

Kaz took one hand off the head of his cane, shifting his weight onto his good leg. He flexed his fingers in his glove, feeling the leather move against his skin. His flesh hadn’t lost the bite of chill from the ice he’d summoned. His fingertips throbbed dully. For a moment the world slipped and he began to lose his grip on the here and now. Jordie's voice echoed in his ears. Black spots ate his vision. He curled his fingers into a fist, crushing Jordie’s image from his mind. He curled his lip, “He’s afraid.” He meant Schipp, but it wasn't the Squaller he was thinking about.

“Fear makes men dangerous, Kaz,” Inej warned him softly, but her words were more than a warning. They were a reminder. Fear was a lever like any other, and no one was more dangerous in pinch than Kaz himself.

He nodded sharply and said, “Let's not keep the man waiting.”

Avoiding the patrols in the harbour district was tedious but not difficult. Inej took to the rooftops and vanished as they approached the crowded street full of inns, artisan shops and hidden attic gaming rooms, secreted behind the dormers of sturdy residential homes. This was a neighbourhood for people a rung down the ladder from his old friend Smeet the lawyer and the residents made sure to keep their vices well hidden behind neat planters and vanished shutters. He and Nina did not speak as they made their way to the Marlin. Any word they said could be carried on the wind back to Schipp or any watchers he had stationed nearby.

He and Nina did stop briefly to study a bulletin board erected on the street corner. It was emblazoned with written instructions allegedly from the Merchant Council, but more likely from the pen of one of Old Klem's secretaries and addressed to the good citizens of Ketterdam during this most trying of times. It detailed the times of day and night curfew was in affect and the various restrictions on movement and trade in every sector of the city. It wasn't quite as strident as a plague lockdown but it was close enough. Every line on the board represented lost earnings and Kaz suspected, war or no war, Nikolai Lantsov was going to see an increase in the interest payments on all his Kerch loans in the near future. Even posthumously, Ekaterine might very well cripple the country she wanted to save. She'd already crippled Ketterdam.

“Even the rats are staying in,” Nina commented eyeing the trash in the gutters and the suspicious lack of squeaks and scurrying.

"Rats know when to cut their losses," Kaz said.

Kaz knew the names and financial misdeeds of several of the men of trade whose interests would be hurt the most from the closure of the Barrel, most of them were investors in the gambling palaces along East Stave, including the Crow Club. Others ran hotels and eateries or provided services that complemented the vice peddled in the Barrel. These men had no seat on the Merchant Council, a fact that chafed the pride of most of them. Approaching the Marlin Inn, Kaz turned in his mind to the various ways he could use those men’s interests against Council merchers.

“It’s open,” Nina said in surprise, looking up at the ever-so-slightly off-kilter façade of the Marlin. The inn’s shutters were drawn back and a faint light bloomed from within. Nina looked around the empty street, taking in the rows of shuttered businesses on either side of the street around the Marlin. It was the perfect set up for an ambush. “If I get shot, I’m going to use my last breath to order your corpse to set itself on fire,” she warned him.

Kaz shrugged. “It will be good practice for hell.” He moved to the tar black door. He didn’t look for Inej. He knew he wouldn’t see her and looking might tip off any watchers on the street. They hadn’t been shot at or attacked yet, which was all the proof he needed that the Wraith had things under control. He had faith that Inej would find her way into the Marlin unseen as well. The three of them would be a match for anything Schipp could throw at them. The man had come to deal, not fight and Kaz, who was always ready to deal and fight, intended to take full advantage.

The barkeep looked up as he and Nina entered the deserted inn. A ruddy faced man with heavy sideburns, Kaz recognised the man as ex-navy immediately. He said something to Schipp, who sat at the bar with his back to the door and then retreated swiftly through a door behind the bar into a backroom. Schipp turned on his stool as Kaz and Nina approached. “Shall we take a table,” he suggested politely, nodding his head to a round table sitting in the middle of the floor. A candle set into an empty wine bottle sputtered in the middle of the white lace tablecloth. The inside of the inn smelled of hops and barley and the tantalising hint of hutspot.

Long years avoiding ambushes had given Kaz a keen appreciation for the way silences sounded different depending on how many people were hiding behind a conveniently hidden door. The Marlin’s main room was split level and the narrow, dark wood staircase leading up to the partially open platform above was in his direct line of sight, as was the shadowed balcony. He was confident there was no one hiding on the level above them and the only other person on the premises was the landlord lurking in the backroom. Karl Dryden was not here.

Kaz was not surprised. Dryden had just enough wit to understand his greatest asset was the man seated across from Kaz now. Dryden had likely put himself out of the Tides reach, presumably somewhere with very low humidity, but failing that, a room full of his fellow mercher councilmen would work just as well. The Council of Tides had once washed away the Stadhall in a state of pique but if they truly feared being rounded up and stripped of their powers they would hesitate to attack openly. For all their strength, the Tides didn't know how to wield their threat successfully. Power was a lever, not merely a weapon. But the Council of Tides were too afraid to lose to use what they had and even a podge like Dryden knew it.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” said Schipp. “I want to know what you told to the Tides.”

“Nothing,” Kaz answered, resting his cane against the table in easy reach. The tides had been more interested in flexing their power than in listening, which suited Kaz fine.

Schipp was slow to respond clearly attempting to winnow out the lie in Kaz's one-word answer, but finally he asked the right question. “What did the Tides say to you?”

“They know Dryden’s plans,” Kaz said. Nina shifted in her chair, covering her surprise poorly by fidgeting enough to make her chair squeak. Schipp noticed. He did two things at once. He sat up straighter in his chair, losing the slight defensive hunch he’d favoured and also relaxed, sitting back more expansively. A fact Kaz did not fail to notice and file away.

Crossing one leg over the other Schipp asked, “And what plans are those?”

“They didn’t say,” Nina answered. “In case you hadn’t noticed, they don't like giving straight answers.”

Schipp smiled. “I had noticed. It’s an old tactic. They cover their ignorance in drizzle and a rain of vague threats. Don’t be fooled, they don’t have access to nearly as much information as they pretend.”

Useful information, but Kaz was getting impatient. Inside his gloves, his fingers tingled unpleasantly. He sat back in his chair and asked, “What business?”

“Rumour has it the Ravkan witch stormed the ice wall,” Schipp said. “I find it hard to believe you’d be here, answering my call if that were true.”

“And yet, if not for Kat we wouldn’t be here at all,” Nina told him. “Maybe you should think harder about your beliefs.”

Schipp chuckled. “Perhaps I should, Miss Zenik.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “I’m going to assume Captain Ghafa is hiding somewhere with a knife aimed at my back?” he asked conversationally.

“Safe assumption,” Nina agreed.

Kaz said, “Ekaterine Iskova is dead. I was told I could name my price.”

“Once we have the serum,” Schipp agreed.

“The serum needs perfecting," Kaz said shortly. "I came here to collect payment for services rendered. Don't try and stiff.”

“A convenient excuse,” said Schipp. “You came here to meet with the Tides. It would be a very bad idea for you to take their side, Mister Brekker. I tell you this as a friend. There is a reason Karl wants out.”

Kaz thought the reason was likely greed and the dawning realisation that there was no profit in being the least respected member on two councils when he could betray one to buy favour with the other. Evidently, Dryden had learned lessons in ambition from Jan Van Eck, but skipped the part where the other man discovered what an incredibly bad idea it was to cross Kaz Brekker. He spread his hands and asked, “Are we going to continue to warn each other off like a couple of peacocking thugs, Schipp, or are we going to get down to business? I want a twenty percent share in the Olendaal tulip nurseries and a seat on the board of directors of Lemkitz armaments.”

Schipp blinked. “Tulips and munitions. That’s quite the diverse portfolio.”

“If Kerch goes to war I want in on the profits.” Kaz studied the outer seam of his right glove.

“And the tulips?” asked Schipp.

Kaz met his eyes. “I know what really comes in and out in each crate of bulbs,” he answered. “A man in my position likes to know where the contraband comes from.”

Schipp tapped his fingers over the table in an irregular tattoo. “What do you really want Brekker?” he asked tiredly. “I was there when Karl offered you everything. A man like you doesn’t dicker over the poppy trade when he could take Karl for every dime.”

“I know what a mercher’s promises are worth,” Kaz replied darkly. “And I’m not bartering. I want the share certificates and my invitation to the board sent to this address no later than tomorrow afternoon.” He slipped a folded piece of paper over the table.

“A dead man can’t sit on a board,” Schipp argued smugly. “Word of your demise has spread.”

“A dead woman just brought down the ice wall,” Kaz reminded him. “I wouldn’t be so quick to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“We all know what assumption makes out of you,” Nina added under her breath. Raising her voice to normal volume she said, “This is all a waste of time. We’re not giving you the serum.”

Schipp stiffened, fingers crooking into claws on the table. Kaz turned to scowl at Nina. “Zenik,” he warned.

Nina waved her hands. “No, Brekker. I won’t be part of this. I don’t care about your profits. The serum isn't safe, and even if it was, the danger to Ravka if its gets out is too great.”

Schipp scowled. “Our intelligence said it worked,” he accused stiffly.

“Did your spy also tell you it blows people up?” Nina snapped. “I’m Second Army. My intelligence comes directly from the Triumvirate. Who are you going to believe?”

“I’m well aware of where your loyalties lie, Miss Zenik. I can’t trust your word,” Schipp replied, managing to sound mildly apologetic.

Nina slumped back in her chair. “I’m not lying about the serum. It only works some of the time and the rest of the time Grisha self-destruct. Do you really want to see Dryden’s guts decorating the Stadhall ceiling?” she challenged.

“I would,” Kaz said. He asked, “How’s your luck, Schipp? Feel like risking the odds that Dryden can suppress his powers without spilling his guts?”

Schipp narrowed his eyes. “Have you taken it?” he asked.

Kaz shook his head. “The numbers don’t favour me.”

“Numbers. Odds," Schipp growled in frustration, "Speak plain, Brekker. What is the risk?”

“Near impossible to calculate,” Kaz answered. “I was told a blood test can tell if someone can take the serum safely or not.”

“A blood test?” Schipp sat back in his chair, relaxing fractionally. He did not look any happier, but he didn't look like a man in the throes of panic either. “I assume Yul Bo is the only one who can administer this test?” he asked tiredly.

“Of course not,” Kaz retorted. “I’m not a fool. I have backups and several batches of contaminated serum should any go missing before we can come to a deal.”

Nina turned on him. “You didn’t tell me that,” she accused.

“I wanted to spare your bleeding heart, Zenik,” Kaz replied not looking at her. He watched Schipp watch them. The man relaxed a little more. He thought he knew what what was going on. He didn't, but a desperate man looking for an advantage will find one anywhere.

“I assume the efficacy of the serum will be proven as you give it out to Etovost in the Barrel,” Schipp mused.

“They’re all dead. Or in Stadwatch custody,” Nina lied swiftly and poorly.

Schipp’s patient look bordered on patronising. “I know what you can do, Zenik. You don’t honestly expect me to believe that the gangs willingly sieged the ice wall when they could send decoys instead? I’m a navy man. I know a thing or two about tactics.”

Nina glared at him and demanded, “Where the hell is your intelligence coming from?”

Schipp smiled, deftly ignoring the question. “I see your game. You want to buy time to cure the gangs, before handing over the serum. I assume you’ve heard there are members of the Merchant Council ready for war?”

“I want names,” Nina said.

“And I want the serum,” Schipp replied smoothly.

Did he? Kaz studied Schipp. A great deal of their plan rested on reading this man’s tells correctly. Schipp was Grisha. He’d been protected while he was in the navy, his Etheralnik abilities making him valuable, but he was a businessman now, one with links to a renegade Tide, who knew more about the Council of Tides than most men in his position. That made him vulnerable. Was he looking to shuck his powers like Dryden? Kaz doubted it. In fact, he’d bet Schipp’s feelings about the serum were far from covetous. This was all about Dryden. The question was, just how far would Lars Schipp go to make his lover happy.

“Give me the Pearl,” said Kaz.

Schipp stared at him. “Pardon me?”

No chance. “The Pearl for the serum, Schipp," Kaz told him. "We sign a contract on the back of that paper. I’ll leave a clean sample at the drop off address for you to pick up. Dryden can take his chances like everyone else.”

Nina tensed in her seat. So did Schipp. His gaze darted between the pair of them. “And the blood test?” he asked.

Kaz shrugged. “For an extra one hundred thousand kruge I’ll get Yul Bo to write out instructions for how to test his blood yourself.”

“You’d defy the Council of Tides for a pleasure boat?” Schipp asked incredulously. “One that I can barely afford to keep afloat right now with tourism down?”

“What can I say? I’ve discovered a newfound love of the sea and a pressing desire to travel,” Kaz retorted.

“I don’t believe you,” said Schipp bluntly.

Kaz spread his gloved hands. “What you believe doesn’t matter to me. I know what Dryden would do. And the deal he'd want you to make.”

Schipp grimaced, lip curling in a half-snarl. “As soon as we’re done here you’ll tip off the Tides that Dryden has the serum. He’ll be dead as soon as he takes it.”

“That’s his problem,” Kaz said. By the looks of it, it was Schipp’s as well. He stared into the middle distance, calculating. Kaz watched patiently. Schipp looked like a man staring down at a bad hand while trying to figure out how to turn it into a million kruge. He had no chance, but Kaz he’d seen this play out a thousand times or more on the floor of the Crow Club. Schipp was a desperate man playing for more than money. Dryden’s life hung in the balance, resting on how well Schipp could weigh the odds. A sensible man would leave the table. A sane man would realise Kaz's position was more precarious than his own. Right now, Schipp was neither of those things. He would not leave the table.

“Well played Brekker,” Schipp applauded with a slow handclap. “You’re looking to shift the pressure from yourself onto me. The Tides want Dryden gone but the jealous bastards won’t just let him go, so they’ll have you do it.” Regarding him with cool eyes Schipp said, “I’d rather not fence with you, Brekker. You know if you side with the Tides they’ll never let you go. Come in with us and you’ll get your freedom.”

“Freedom spends poorly, Schipp. I want the Pearl.”

“Are you planning to open a florist shop on the open waters, Brekker?” Schipp snapped, losing composure. The candle in the bottle snuffed out abruptly. “Tulips, poppies, guns and now my ship. What possible good is any of it to you?" he demanded. "You’ve lost your gang. You have no choice but to go on the run. The Council of Tides will never release their grip; you’ll live as their slave wherever you go. Help us break them and you can go wherever you like. Ghezen’s balls," he exclaimed, throwing his hand up and lifting the hazy smoke rising from the guttered candle higher into the air, "you can try your luck extorting the Triumvirate for all I care. I know you’ve worked for them in the past.” He shot Nina a cold look and said, “Ravka is ready to roll over and beg for mercy. A man like you could make three times what you’re asking for from Lantsov. Broke royalty or not, he’s still richer than most men.”

“My finances are my concern, Schipp,” Kaz responded calmly. “I want the Pearl.”

Schipp’s gaze snapped to Nina. “No objections?” he demanded. “Where’s your carefully scripted dissent now, Miss Zenik?”

“The same place as your manners, Schipp,” Nina snapped back, crossing her arms.

“The Pearl,” Schipp swept a rough hand through his fair hair. “What is so important about my damn ship?”

“Do we have a deal or not, Schipp?” Kaz asked deliberately failing to answer. He watched the contrails of smoke in the air. Instead of dissipating, the faint trail of tallow smoke swirled and eddied above the table, marbling the air. Kaz could feel the pressure in the room build, like an invisible cushioning weight pushing against his chest. He kept a firm grip on his cane but knew that if he wanted, Schipp could implode his lungs before Kaz do react. This was the moment his gamble either paid off or his bluff failed. He was confident he'd read Schipp right in their previous dealings but confidence wouldn't save him from asphyxiation.

Schipp’s fine hair lifted from his scalp, the ends rising as if changed with static or stirred by a breeze Kaz could not feel. Schipp crumpled the slip of paper in his fist. “You’ll get your shares,” he said. “The rest will wait.”

“On what?” Kaz asked.

“On what you do next,” Schipp said. “I’m not a man to be rattled into acting in haste. There’s no profit in it when I can let you take the risk instead.” He waved his hand casually tearing the trails of smoke apart and sending a gentle waft of air across the table to sweep Nina’s curls off her shoulders. “Test out the serum on your friends. Dodge the Tides for as long as you can. Play out your little scheme against the Merchant Council,” he added shooting Nina a look, “but remember, the Tides would not have chosen you as their errand boy if they didn’t fear Karl. Don’t underestimate us.” Schipp rose smoothly, brushing his hands down his understated dove grey waistcoat. “I’ll be watching, Brekker. We’ll meet again when I decide its time. Hopefully you’ll be more reasonable then.”

Kaz watched Schipp cross behind the bar and slip through the door into the backroom. Nina huffed, fussing with her hair. “Now what?”

“We find somewhere with better service,” Kaz said levering himself up out of his chair. He and Nina left the Marlin.

“What are we going to do if doesn’t give us the Pearl?” Nina asked not bothering to lower her voice once they were on the street outside.

“He will,” Kaz said, cane clicking on the cobbles as he walked ahead, head down and pace quick.

He and Nina did not speak again until they were back on the Samenvogen and Inej joined them, dropping neatly down from an overhanging roof as they waited in a narrow alley for a Stadwatch patrol to move on. They had timed their return well. The Stadwatch were out in force but the navy had pulled back. All trace of the ice wall was gone and the streets had been washed mostly clean of blood and bullet casings.

“Did it work?” Inej asked quietly.

“Perfectly,” Nina said, flipping her hair. She started ticking off points on her fingers. “We convinced Schipp that the Pearl is important to our plan. We learned that he and Karl know who on the Merchant Council is war mongering. We also now know that podge Dryden has something on the Tides that makes him dangerous. Schipp also refused to take the serum when Kaz offered it to him, which proves that he’s not invested in Dryden’s plan and only doing this to please him. We also bought the time we need to cure the Barrel and fix the Merchant Council.”

“Schipp thinks the Tides can be brought down and plans to use me to do it,” added Kaz. “It’s only a matter of time before he reaches out and tells me what that plan is, at which point, we cut him and Dryden out and I use knowledge of the plan to bargain for my freedom.” Tapping his cane on the cobbles Kaz said, “Lars Schipp is primed to be the lever that gets us both councils and Dryden on a platter.”

Inej looked doubtful. “All because you said you wanted his ship?”

“No,” Kaz replied drily. “It’s because I told him Dryden will die.” He looked into Inej’s deep brown eyes and didn’t look away when he told her, “This will be the second time I’ve used a man’s love against him. The first time got me Pekka’s holdings.”

“And what are you playing for this time, Kaz?” Inej asked him, her gaze unflinching, demanding without stooping to implore him for the truth and impossible to ignore because of it.

What was he playing for? A stake in a lucrative poppy smuggling ring? A seat on a board of directors he could never hold? Money? The challenge of winning against mounting odds? The satisfaction of defeating yet another rich man who thought he could use him? None of those. Kaz was fighting for something he’d thought beyond his weight division. A future. Not just another day, week, month or year at the top of the heap, but the sort of future rich men took as their due without a thought.

The sort of future where he could walk away from the table and a winning hand because he no longer needed to fight for every victory. A life where choice was an expectation not a luxury. He was playing for a time and a place where his choice of name was a whim of the moment, not a survival tactic. He wanted a future where the rules he played by weren’t dictated by the hard men who came before him; men like Rollins, or Haskell, who put a premium on sniffing out weakness and fell at the end because they’d rigged the game without realising that trapped themselves in it.

His past was melting in shards on a jetty in Fifth Harbour and for the first time since that terrible night when he’d chosen to live as a monster, Kaz felt like he could see the flaw in the game he’d been playing. Ketterdam had been his prize for so long he hadn't seen the prison bars. Hadn't realised how small it made his ambitions. The city’s boundaries had formed the limits of his vision no matter how far he travelled, but now the ocean whispered in his ears, telling him that the world was vast and he had only just begun.

His life was in flux, but he was no longer afraid of not knowing his own shape. His mind was changing, and his heart…his heart knew what it wanted. When he looked into the darkness behind his closed eyes he didn't see harbour waters. He saw the boundless warm depths in Inej's eyes. What was he playing for? There was only one answer: “Everything,” he said. “This time I want it all.”

Chapter Text

To Catch a Dirty Mercher Pt. 1:

Wylan:

“It feels strange being back in the government district,” Wylan said, pulling the collar of his woollen coat up as a sharp chill rushed him from the northern hook of Hanraat Bay. The Stadhall loomed ahead of him, framed by a colourless sky and his footsteps rang hollowly on the empty street.

“It’s only been a few days,” Jesper pointed out, long legged stride easy as he ambled along beside Wylan. He adjusted the strap of the leather satchel he was carrying so the bag wouldn't jostle the revolver at his hip.

Wylan frowned at him, brushing his curls out of his eyes. “This can’t feel normal to you,” he objected.

Jesper shrugged. “I’ve always been adaptable,” he said and added, “Cheer up. At least everything he doesn’t smell of smoke and dirty water.”

Wylan sighed. “I wish it did,” he said. “All of this seems like a sham after the things we’ve seen,” he waved his hand at the bold, blocky facades of the imposing buildings around them. The government district and the rest of Ketterdam hadn’t returned to normal yet. There were still fewer suited attaches rushing along the wide avenues with cases stuffed with sensitive papers, or self-important ambassadors promenading under the linden trees with their entourages trailing behind them. But the lack of obvious damage unnerved Wylan. The Barrel had been devastated but here it was as if nothing had happened. He couldn't even see the hole in the sky line the Stadlied had left behind over the tops of the diplomatic buildings.

Sitting off from home, Wylan and Jesper had seen runners racing across the open square outside the exchange and noted the increased number of gondels on the canals packed with investors coming in for a day of business or a meeting with the bank manager and goods traders in flatboats loaden with wares. Wylan wanted to draw courage from the city’s resilience but more and more it was beginning to seem like a collective delusion. One he wanted no part in, and yet he was, attending a Council session as if sixteen hours earlier he hadn't been hurling handmade incendiaries at the ice wall and trying to avoid hitting stadwatch riot officers.

Returning to home the night before with the others Wylan had felt just as much of an imposter in the Van Eck residence as he had the night he and Kaz had broken in to steal his father’s seal. He supposed he lacked Jesper's adaptability; he couldn't shrug off the life of a fugitive like a winter coat and slip back into the life of a respectable mercher as if was dressing for dinner. He wasn't sure he'd ever want to be that comfortable leading a double life. Jesper had offered to write to his mother this morning to let Marya know it was safe to return, but Wylan had refused. It wasn’t safe and he couldn’t let himself think so. The veil of normalcy that the respectable parts of the city clung to was an illusion, and a flimsy one at that. It wouldn’t protect his mother if Wylan and the others failed to stop a war.

“You’re thinking too much,” Jesper said, nudging him in the side. “You know what the Council is like. Don’t get distracted.”

Wylan pressed his lips together. “I don’t care what they think of me,” he said. “They ran away at the first sign of danger. I was in the Barrel. I fought. Let them try and come for me.”

“That’s the spirit,” Jesper grinned.

Wylan wasn’t so sure. He did know he was tired of feigning respect for men whose cowardice he found contemptible. He flexed his hands in his gloves and thought that even if he was wearing kid skin, the time for handling men like Van Deering with kid gloves was over. There were traitors in the Merchant Council and he was determined to root them out. Even if Kaz thought it was a waste of time.

“We’re not looking to expose a conspiracy,” he’d said last night as they all sat in the cream parlour eating oat biscuits, water crackers and cuts of cheese from the pantry. “This is a game of Wandering Whispers.”

“Wandering Whispers? What is that?” Kuwei had asked, pausing with water cracker in hand frozen half-way toward the jar of spiced damson pickle preserve.

Jesper chuckled, “It’s a game Kaelish children play. You start off in a circle and one person whispers a simple phrase to the person next to him and they pass it on until it comes back around. By that time the meaning of the phrase has completely changed.”

“Games aside,” Inej said from her perch on the wide windowsill looking out at the darkened street beyond, “We want to spread so much rumour and suspicion among the Merchant Council they become paralysed with indecision and can’t act.”

“But what if the conspirators use that as an opportunity?” Wylan had objected.

“They won’t,” Jesper said, “They'll expose their plot if they do.”

“By that point they might not care,” Wylan pointed out darkly.

“But the foreign ambassadors and diplomats will,” Nina insisted. “The conspirators want a pretext for war that makes them look like the wronged party, not the instigator. The Shu and the Fjerdans aren’t going to trust a group who get caught going behind the other Merchers’ backs. Not after the mess with Kuwei's auction.”

“If we undermine the Council no one will trust any of them again,” Wylan said. It frustrated him that he was arguing the Council’s case, but if he didn’t no one else would and no matter what he felt about the members of the Council personally, Ketterdam – and Kerch – couldn’t function without governance of some kind.

Kaz had met his eyes across the low table. “There are always men ready to take power,” he said. “The city won’t fall if the Boregs and the Van Deerings in this city lose their seats.”

“Or me?” Wylan challenged. “I’m a councilman too. What if I lose my seat? It was my father who bloodied the Council's nose two years ago. Suspicion could fall on me.”

“Relax Wy,” Jesper assured him. “By the time we’re done your halo will be so shiny Kaz’ll want to steal it. You’ve always been the only honest Mercher, now this city will know it,” he added with conviction.

“But I’m not honest. I’ve broken the law.”

“You've never brought this city to the brink of war,” Nina pointed out staunchly. She shrugged, “Someone on the Council needs to sign the papers exonerating Ravka.”

They had reached the steps of the Stadhall. Breaking free of his memories, Wylan braced himself for what was ahead. It some ways this part was the most normal he’d felt since waking up in his own bed this morning. He’d always felt like an imposter entering this building for a Council session. The ever-present fear that his illiteracy would be exposed a weight he could never shake off. It was lucky attending Council with an assistant in tow was considered a mark of status among the Merchers, most of whom tended to sleep off their lunches in session while their aides presented their case to the few members who stayed awake to listen.

Wylan suspected that all sitting councilmembers would be awake for this session. Standing in the wide entranceway, under the vaulted ceiling, Wylan observed the bustle of notaries and other functionaries skidding over the marble floor, clutching sheaves of papers, or running up and down the wide, carpeted central staircase after visiting the members private chambers on the first floor. In comparison to the bevy of attendants men like Natem Boreg employed, Wylan appeared shockingly self-sufficient with only Jesper at his side. Wylan sighed, wondering how he could hate the Council so much but still want to save it.

The wide corridor housing the Council members chambers was lined by portraits of notable present and former members. Wylan did not pause as he passed the discoloured spot where his father’s portrait had hung until two years ago. He still felt its absence like a silent accusation. It wasn't just a reminder of the man himself, but that Wylan anything but honest. He’d conspired to destroy his father’s reputation with a false accusation. He’d done it to stop his father’s hidden plot to plunge the world into chaos for his own profit, but still, when it had come time to act he’d conspired with thieves and murderers, all of which the Council would happily hang, rather than try and appeal to the members of the Merchant Council directly. In fact, the thought hadn’t even occurred to him, and not only because he’d wanted to protect Jesper and the others. The truth was, he had no faith in the Merchant Council and was just as bad as the conspirators looking to use it for their own ends. The only difference was his ends were better than theirs.

He would just have to hope that was enough.

The door to Karl Dryden’s chamber opened abruptly. He and Jesper exchanged a quick, meaningful look a moment before Dryden poked his head out of the door and gestured impatiently for them to enter. Wylan was a little annoyed, in that vague and ill defined way he always was when Kaz proved to be right yet again.

“Dryden will lean on you,” he’d said last night. “He knows he can get you alone. He’ll appeal to your shared mercher values. He’ll want you to betray me.”

From her perch, Inej had stretched out one leg across the windowsill. She did not look entirely happy. “And if he does not?” she’d asked.

Kaz had shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. In this game, there isn’t a move they can make we can’t use.”

“Overconfidence is a dangerous trait, Kaz,” Inej had warned.

“I’m sure it is,” he’d agreed blandly. “And I’ll remember to heed your warning if I’m ever overconfident.” Turning to Wylan he’d said, “Your job is to sell him the act that you can be bought, or failing that intimidated.” Tilting his head, Kaz had regarded him with shrewd, bruised eyes. “Shouldn’t be too hard. I know how this plan offends your noble feelings. Let Dryden sniff out a morsel of doubt and he'll swallow any poison you give him.”

Wylan clenched his fists, remembering the burn of anger and shame he’d choked back last night. He hated how good Kaz was at using his and everyone else’s weaknesses - and even their virtues - against them, while never seeming to have any of his own. Even becoming Grisha hadn’t dented his confidence for long and now Kaz was almost entirely back to his old self. Wylan found himself glad that he’d been leaving Ketterdam after this. It was about time the rest of the world suffered through Dirtyhands schemes. Ketterdam had taken the burden long enough.

He and Jesper entered Dryden’s chambers. Oppressively decorated in a colour scheme of different shades of blue, Wylan was reminded of the Ketterdam Suite in the Geldrenner hotel, the use of gold leaf accents was just as obnoxious, but at least there wasn’t a bank of mirrors lining one wall creating an unfortunate infinity effect. Wylan’s mood was bad enough without having to deal with multiple Dryden’s pretending to be cunning. Briefly, his gaze lingered on the discreet door to the water closet set into the far wall near the wet bar, but he quickly made himself stop before he gave himself away.

Ushering them into plush seating arranged around a low table, Dryden himself was too nervous to sit. He stood next to an enormous royal blue wingback chair, rocking back and forth on his heels. “We don’t have long before session begins,” he said needlessly.

“Did you need something, Dryden?” Wylan asked him performing his best attempt at patience. Jesper covered his smirk with his fist, pretending to cough.

“Why does Brekker want the Pearl,” Dryden demanded, firing off the question like a man who’d been holding it in too long.

“Because it's valuable and it’s important to Schipp. Kaz knows how to read weakness and he’s good at misdirection. He played my father and he’d been fooling this Council for years,” Wylan answered honestly. He’d spent enough time around Kaz to know that sometimes the best feint was the truth. Later, it would worry Wylan that the truth made such a good tool for a liar, but that was later. Now he was just glad Dryden hadn’t asked a difficult question.

“There’s no other reason? He’s not planning to…use the ship in some manner?” The Tidemaker probed.

“Use it how?” Wylan asked, puzzled.

“That’s what I’m asking you!” Dryden exploded.

Jesper’s coughing fit worsened. He reached for the pitcher of water on the table, muttering, “I think I inhaled too much smoke.” He punched his breastbone lightly trying to clear the congestion.

“If Kaz is planning something involving the Pearl he hasn’t told me,” said Wylan with a straight face, thoughts drifting back to the night before when he’d asked Kaz the very same question.

“I’m going to blow it up,” Kaz had told him, simply.

Inej had turned to him, surprised. “I thought the plan was to get Schipp to blow it up?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter who sets the fuse,” Kaz had said. “All that matters is who gets the blame.” Looking around the room he’d explained. “The Pearl is presently very noticeably docked on Imperjum. As well as the Tide obelisk there are a number of important munitions warehouses and secret military facilities on the island supplying Newfoort. Dryden and Schipp’s relationship is an open secret. Implicating his lover in an act of treason is the same as implicating Dryden himself. Karl isn’t Van Eck. He won’t be able to bully his way out of any charges.”

“This is beginning to feel like the Wyvil plan,” Jesper had muttered. “What’s the real reason we’re turning half-a-million kruge’s worth of prime real estate into toothpicks?” he asked.

“We’re going to use it to bring down the obelisk tower,” Inej answered.

Nina had sighed. “I hate everything about this plan.”

“I don’t,” Jesper had said brightly. “You’re going to send Elsje and her people to open up the watergate and rig the base of the tower with explosive, right? That’s why you wanted them to turn Tidemaker.” He grinned at Kaz. “Is this a new hobby? First the Stadlied, now the obelisk. Are you planning to blow up every notably building in Ketterdam before you leave?”

“The Exchange is too heavily guarded,” Kaz had replied causing Wylan to drop his half-eaten cracker into his lap.

“The charges I planted on the Church of Barter’s roof might still be good,” Inej suggested thoughtfully and Wylan choked on crumbs.

“Don’t encourage him,” Nina exclaimed. “Saints. I’m getting a headache. At this rate we're going to stage a war to stop one.”

“Don't pretend you wouldn't bring down Kerch to save Ravka, Zenik,” Kaz had snapped. “If you have a headache, drink some water. You’re needed for the next part of the plan. Someone needs to talk to the Ravkan Ambassador.”

Dryden’s strident, whining voice broke into Wylan’s thoughts. “There has to be a reason,” he insisted. “Brekker is planning something.”

“He wants to leave Ketterdam,” Wylan offered. “He’s planning to leverage stopping war with Ravka for his freedom from the Tides.”

Dryden looked down his nose at Wylan. “Please, Van Eck. Do not take me for a fool. I know the Tides want me dead and they’ve chosen Brekker as their hatchet man.”

“And you want him to kill them instead. It’s a good thing Kaz is good at getting rid of his enemies,” Jesper said, a smile playing over his lips.

“Is that a threat, Fahey,” Dryden snapped.

Jesper’s smile turned bland. “Just an observation.”

Dryden flushed. “I only want the quorum gone,” he said. “The Tides in the other towers are needed to defend the nation.”

Wylan and Jesper exchanged glances. “What is the quorum?” Wylan asked.

“The Council of Tides' executive body. It is made up of the High Tide and senior representatives from each of the other towers. When there is a threat they rule on what is to be done. It was the quorum who presided over Brekker’s investiture.”

“Aunt Ida’s bloomers, you’re planning a coup,” Jesper accused setting his water glass down on the table with a clunk. “You want to take control of the Council of Tides and the Merchers.”

Wylan sat up straight. “I thought you wanted to get rid of your powers,” he said.

“I do,” Dryden admitted, turning his back on them and walking to the wide, ceiling to floor, lead lined, windows at the far end of the room. He stood framed by the colourless daylight filling the panes. Nervously, he unbuttoned and then rebuttoned his suit jacket, giving them his quarter profile. “I’m not a fool,” he repeated. “I know taking the suppression serum is a death sentence while the quorum live. But with them dead and the Tides answering to me once I have the Oar of Silas I can finally be rid of these freakish powers.”

“Whose Silas and why do you need his oar?” Jesper asked, confused.

Dryden looked over, expression unimpressed. “A myth to cover a more mundane reality,” he answered bitterly. “I’m sure you’ve heard of Grisha amplifiers? The Ravkans are fond of them. The oar the High Tide wields to control the council comes from the wood of a tree felled in Kerch long ago that was said to be an amplifier. It has been used by the Council of Tides to enhance their collective power for centuries.”

“I thought amplifiers had to be people or animals,” Jesper argued.

Dryden waved his hand dismissively. “Ravkan propaganda. If you believe everything the Little Palace puts out about Grisha you might as well believe Morazova invented the breed,” he said contemptuously.

“And you want this powerful stick – why?” Jesper prompted.

“With it I’ll know the High Tide’s secrets, including the identities of all the Tides and the Squallers hidden in the navy. My seat on the Merchant Council will be unassailable. Van Deering and the others will never be able to look down on me again.”

Wylan and Jesper exchanged worried looks. “The Tides were right. You are planning to give the suppression serum to the Merchant Council. You’ll use it to blackmail the Tides and turn Kerch Etheralki into a slave army.”

“And why shouldn’t we, the Merchant Council control our Grisha resources?” Dryden demanded. “Ravka has been doing it for centuries. Mass producing the serum will make me exceedingly rich. Shu Han and Fjerda will become my customers. Finally the Little Science will be under the control of normal, decent people.”

Wylan opened his mouth. Jesper reached out and snagged his sleeve. “Don’t,’ he murmured too quietly for Dryden to hear. Wylan swallowed down his protests - and insults. It wasn’t just that Dryden’s plan was amoral, after his father, Wylan was sadly familiar with the depths of greed councilmembers could sink to. No, what made Karl Dryden worse than Jan Van Eck was his stupidity. His plan was terrible.

Unlike Jurda Parem, the suppression serum wasn’t addictive, nor did it grant any mood enhancing effects for the Grisha to make it appealing or useful as a leash. Beyond that the purpose of the serum was to render the Little Science unusable. If any Grisha called Dryden’s bluff and took the serum willingly, he’d be known as the man who deprived the whole of Kerch of its Grisha resources. The worse thing was the deluded podge didn’t seem to realise his plan had more holes in it than an artisan cheese. No wonder Kaz was so confident. If they gave him enough rope Dryden would hang himself.

“So, what do you want with us?” Jesper asked.

Dryden turned from the window. Pressing his palms together he ignored Jesper and focused on Wylan. “Come in with me, Van Eck. I know Brekker’s seeded counterfeit samples among all Yul Bo’s serum batches. Get me a clean sample or bring me Yul Bo and we can be equal partners selling on the serum.”

“And if I refuse?” Wylan asked keeping his expression very still. In the corner of his eye, he saw Jesper shift in his chair, hands moving to the butts of his revolvers. This was the moment where he should give Dryden a hint he could be persuaded, but Wylan couldn't make himself do it. Dryden's plan was just too foolish. Wylan wasn't sure how well he could pretend to abandon his morals, but he was sure he could not pretend to be that stupid.

Dryden raised his hand, cupping air and threatened, “ Refuse me and you don’t leave this room alive.”

Immediately the air in the room became soupy thick. Condensation ran down the panes as the windows fogged up. Wylan tasted salt at the back of his throat and jerked forward, spluttering. He spat a gout of seawater out over the table. Beside him, Jesper doubled up and coughed more water over the side of the chair arm. He gripped his throat, spine going rigid as his heels dug into the carpet. His eyes were wide and as close to panicked as Wylan had ever seen him. More water spilled out of his nose. Dryden was drowning him internally.

Leaping from his chair, Wylan snatched the vial he'd been carrying in his inner jacket pocket held it out. “Here,” he yelled. “Take it! Just let him go!”

Dryden’s eyes fastened onto the slim glass vial in Wylan’s fist. The liquid inside had a faint pink tint, as if someone had dripped a couple of drops of blood into water. “Is that it,” he demanded, his voice hungry.

Wylan nodded. “I took it for insurance. Kaz was planning to give you a dose of contaminated serum, but I was worried the real one might get out. I was going to reverse engineer a cure for the cure.” He shook the vial. “This is the only sample I have.”

Dryden opened his fist. Jesper lurched forward over the table, gasping and spluttering like a swimmer breaking loose of a riptide. He was up on his feet a split second later, revolvers drawn. Dryden barely looked at him. He reached out for the vial, face alive with avid need and no little desire. He took an aborted step closer and then seemed to remember himself. “Bring it to me. No!” he snapped stopping Wylan. “Take a step to your right. I want you in Fahey's sight lines,” he ordered.

Wylan sighed. Clearly it hadn’t occurred to Dryden that Jesper could simply move. But then again, Dryden could drop him just as quickly. Allowing himself a quick glimpse toward the water closet door, left partially ajar, Wylan rounded his shoulders and walked forward. Dryden snatched the vial from his hand while he was still two foot away.

He clutched the vial to him like it was a trillion kruge bill. “Get out,” he sneered.

“What about our deal?” Jesper demanded, voice raw and ragged from the sea water.

“There is no deal,” Dryden snapped. “I don’t need you now. I have everything I need and if you try to stop me I’ll expose Mister Fahey here as Grisha.”

Wylan almost asked why that would matter when he was intending to wipe out all Grisha power in Kerch anyway but realised that the question was pointless. Dryden was either too stupid or too full of twisted self-loathing to recognise the glaring dissonance in his reasoning. He wanted a cure for his power but couldn’t fathom any other Grisha would want that too. Wylan wondered if that was because Dryden had never identified as a Grisha on a personal level. It was obvious he didn’t think of other Grisha as people, but instead as commodities the same way most Kerch did.

Wylan knew something about self-loathing. He struggled with his illiteracy daily and for a long time he’d believed his father that his disability made him nothing but a liability. He knew how Jesper still fought to acknowledge and accept his Grisha nature, and how the treatment of Grisha in the world made it that much harder to accept his gifts. Dryden was being used by the Tides as their inside man on the Merchant Council, but his position with a foot in both camps only made him more of a tool, resented and suspected by both sides. If he wasn’t such a complete and total podge Wylan might have felt sorry for him.

Instead he left Dryden’s chambers with his head held high and conscience clear. In his own chambers he and Jesper cleared up and waited. They had eleven minutes before the council session was due to start. There was a soft tap on his window. Jesper leapt up to open it and Inej swung into the room. “Are you alright?” she asked the pair of them.

“I’ve had worse falling into the Zent canal drunk,” Jesper told her cheerfully, dabbing at his cornflower blue shirt with a dry handkerchief. The blue was off-set with eye-glaring flare by his yellow plaid jacket.

Wylan simply nodded to let Inej know he was alright. “Kaz’s plan worked," he said. "Dryden never suspected you were in the room with us.” Securely hidden in the water closet with a throwing knife aimed on Dryden the whole time.

“Of course he didn’t,” Inej said, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “He locked the vial in his wall safe and left shortly after you did. I recognise the make. Kaz can crack it.”

But could he make it look like a Squaller had wrenched open the door of the wall safe and robbed him? Wylan wondered. He shook his head. Kaz Brekker could stage anything. Including puppeting his enemies right into the position he wanted them. Wylan had no qualms about doing that to Dryden and Schipp. Dryden had threatened Jesper. He could have killed him. Wylan might not approve of revenge in general but he’d happily make an exception for Dryden and his lover.

“What about the special delivery to the Pearl?” he asked.

Inej smiled faintly. “Kaz is rounding up the Lions now,” she said.

“Do you ever get the impression that Kaz can’t be happy unless he’s bossing a gang around?” Jesper asked.

“I don’t think it, I know it,” Inej said, hoisting herself back onto the outer window ledge. “Good luck in your meeting,” she said in parting.

Wylan glanced at his watch, wincing when he saw the time. Jesper groaned. “I wish I was going with you,” he told her.

“Of course you do,” she said. “You like blowing things up too.”

Chapter Text

To Catch a Dirty Mercher Pt. 2:

Kaz:

“What’s in it for us?” Elsje Haas crossed her arms over her skinny chest, which did nothing to hide the shakes that wracked her body. Arrayed around her, the surviving Lions dripped sickness onto the floor of the distillery. Kuwei had had a lot to say when Kaz ordered him to release the Lions from their sickbeds, but Kaz had listened to none of it. Elsje and her gang were canal rats and street bruisers, not pampered children to be coddled by a nursemaid. If they died, they’d do it on their feet.

“Reputation and one hundred thousand kruge,” he replied. Schipp had deposited the stock certificates and a crisp new, signed but unaddressed cheque at the drop site this morning. Kaz intended to hand over the cheque to Elsje, and if the cheque should bounce, Schipp would have the Lions to deal with. “That’s enough scratch to claim a base and force the other gangs to accept your stake on the streets,” he said.

Beads of water ran down Elsje's fever burned face from her shaved hairline to her chin. Jutting out her chin she demanded, “Two hundred thousand.”

Kaz tapped the end of his cane on the floor. “Don’t waste my time.”

“You need us,” she insisted.

“I don’t need you; I’m using you,” he said. “Don’t mistake convenience for value.” There was a chance he would not need Elsje and her people after today, but he was prepared all the same.

One of Elsje’s bruisers, a fourteen-year-old called Ike drew a gun on Kaz. His arm shook so badly he staggered in his attempt to firm his grip. Kaz watched him levelly. “I’ve had enough of you, Brekker,” Ike spat. “You’re not even a Barrel boss anymore.”

Elsje turned on him. “Oi, you podge, put that down,” she snapped proving that he’d been right to choose her. The girl had been scrambling along the bottom rung of the ladder long enough to know that it wasn’t status that made a boss. It was the steel in his or her spine.

“But…boss…” Ike stammered. The old vest he wore clung to his broad chest, soaked through. The bare skin of his arms and neck glistened wetly. Kaz gritted his teeth, the ghost of old revulsion rising behind his eyes.

“Pull the trigger,” he told Ike.

“What?” Ike’s arm jerked so badly Kaz thought he might fire by accident.

He cracked his cane down on the ground in front of him and Ike grew still. With his free hand Kaz brushed his fingers along the scabbed bullet graze on the side of his head, ignoring the sting. “Go ahead,” he said, “If you can clip me like this on the other side I’ll give you your two hundred thousand. Fail and it will be the last thing you ever do.”

“I’m gonna kill you!” Ike declared, turning red under all the sweat. His feet were braced far apart for balance but it wasn’t working. He swayed drunkenly. Pimpled face creased in bleary concentration he looked two minutes from passing out.

“I’ll make this easy for you.” Kaz closed the gap between them. He caught Ike’s arm pulling it across his body until the barrel of the gun brushed the side of his head. Ike was shaking so badly that he was as likely to blow out Kaz’s eye socket as he was to give him a close shave along the scalp.

“What…what’re you doing?” The bruiser’s eyes swivelled from side to side wildly.

This close Kaz could breathe in his fear. The son of Kaelish immigrants, Ike had been a runner for Pekka Rollins looking to gain his Dime Lion mark when Kaz brought Rollins down. He’d joined up with Elsje and her canal rats looking for payback, still futilely waving the flag for the old guard. Kaz had known he’d act up and been waiting for his moment.

“This is why Eamon wouldn’t let you take the ink, Ike,” he told the other boy. “You’ve got the body of a bruiser but you don’t have the guts. Gerrigan or Shay would’ve taken the shot by now,” he said referencing two of the Dime Lions well known bruisers. Gerrigan had gone back to the Wandering Isles and opened a tavern. Shay had been shanked in Hellgate half-a-year ago, his enviable guts spilling to the privy floor.

Ike’s bloodshot eyes widened, visibly reacting to the hit to his pride. He was wide open for Kaz’s follow up. Yanking his gun arm up and out to the side, away from either of them, Kaz drove the head of his cane upward striking Ike under the chin. The Bruiser cried out, staggered back and dropped the gun. Returning to his previous position, Kaz dropped his cane back to the floor and folded both gloved hands over the crow’s head.

Elsje swept the gun off the floor. She turned it on Ike. “I told you to drop it,” she snarled, hand steady as she aimed the barrel at Ike’s stomach.

The kid held his big hands down toward his stomach. He begged, “Boss don’t, I’m sorry!”

Elsje’s pock-marked, flushed face grew tight. “You will be.” She fired, the shot reverberating through the distillery. Ike went down like a ton of bricks. He clutched at his stomach, rolling on the ground and squealing. Elsje’s face twisted in disgust, “Get up, you podge.”

“I’m shot! I’m bleeding,” Ike howled.

“You ain’t bleeding. That’s water,” said Silke, Elsje’s best lockpick, or at least what passed for one in the Lions. The girl had a spark of talent and in time she could become a creditable breaker but Kaz thought her talents lay in information gathering. She was almost as good at hiding in plain sight as Roeder had been. Admittedly, not a patch on Inej, but no one was.

Ike stopped rolling around like a fool. Pulling his hands away from his wound he stared down at his stomach. Amazed, he gawped at the water soaking the floor in a rapidly widening pool underneath his transparent body. Then he started screaming.

“Ghezen’s balls,” Elsje exclaimed and shot him again to shut him up.

It had the opposite effect. “Help me,” Ike cried, holding his transparent hands out in front of him as his fingers tripped away. “I’m melting,” he wailed.

Elsje put the gun up. “You’re untouchable, you dumb lump. Bullets can’t hurt you. knives go through you. You’ll shake off a punch like nothing. Now get up. You’re embarrassing me.”

Pain falling away from his face Ike goggled in wonder. “I’m untouchable,” he repeated. He tried to leap to his feet but ended up sloshing on the floor, his body collapsing into a puddle before he pulled himself together. There were two soft clinks as the bullets slipped free of his body and fell to the wet ground.

“One hundred thousand to set down roots and a reputation as the Barrel’s first and only Grisha gang,” Kaz said bringing the meeting back to order. “I’m being generous, Haas. Don’t try my patience.”

Silke stepped up beside Elsje. “What you want us to do?” she asked.

“Exactly what I tell you to,” Kaz answered bluntly. “Easy work for easy cash. You won’t find better.” If Kaz was right, the work would be as easy as lying down and playing dead. Something Elsje and her Lions were now ably qualified for.

Elsje didn’t like it, but she’d followed him this far and she’d continue to do so. He could see the light of greed in her eyes. Already he’d led her to power, now she saw money and influence in her future. She’d follow that beacon all the way to Imperjum’s obelisk tower. This job was her Ice Court. The haul that would unlock her dreams. She’d no sooner jump off the hook than he had in Councilman’s Hoede’s office when he’d made his deal with Van Eck. Unlike the ex-Councilman, Kaz intended to keep his word, but he was going to make the Lions work for their prize all the same.

“Take those crates and load them onto the bottle boat outside,” he ordered, gesturing to a stack of wooden crates filled with dark green wormwood bottles.

Elsje was no fool. “What’s in ‘em?” she asked eyeing the bottles suspiciously.

“A delivery for the Pearl,” he said, turning and walking toward the door that led out onto the canal towpath.

Inej was already there. She slipped off the boat’s railing, hoping down onto the path in front of him. “What took so long?” she asked.

“The Lions needed schooling.” He asked, “What happened at the Stadhall?”

Inej sniffed disdainfully. Her report on Dryden’s motives was short and to the point. “He is a vicious fool.”

Kaz hadn’t needed telling. He focused on the part of her report he hadn’t known about. “An amplify?” He tapped his cane on the cobbles, thinking. He remembered the ornate oar the Tides had driven into his sternum during his initiation. That it held some mystical significance to them made little difference. It was just wood, after all. It could snap and burn like any kindling under the right conditions. Kaz had felled the Sacred Ash; what was a carved stick after that? “They should have stuck to a secret handshake,” he said, staring into the middle distance as he thought through Dryden’s nonsensical plan.

Dryden claimed that the oar of Silas granted its wielder knowledge of the identities of all Tides, but that couldn’t be true. If it was, Dryden would have gained the ability to intuit Tides during his initiation, just as Kaz could recognise a Tide on sight without their cloak and mask. The oar did impart a strange sense for those who had undergone the initiation, which suggested that Dryden was right that it held some power, but a vague sense of kinship to strangers on the street was no prize at all. The quorum had used each other’s names in his presence. They interacted freely with each other. It made no sense that Dryden would need the oar to find out who they were. Or at least it wouldn’t, unless Kaz disregarded one key assumption. That Karl Dryden had gone through the same initiation he had.

Kaz almost laughed. Poor Karl Dryden, doomed to be pushed to the margins in every group that would have him. Kaz had assumed Dryden was part of the quorum, there due to his status among the merchers if nothing else, but now he realised he’d been wrong. Dryden hadn’t been touched by the oar. He wasn’t part of the inner circle. He didn’t know how to identify the other Tides, and unless he could name and expose each member in every tower, he couldn’t control them with threats. More than that, if he couldn’t deliver the Tides to the Merchant Council on a silver platter he had nothing to barter with. What a complete and total podge. He’d wagered on cards he didn’t even hold. After Van Eck, Kaz was insulted that he had to deal with Dryden. The man was living proof that even in Kerch breeding couldn’t buy everything.

Instead of the inside man Kaz had assumed Dryden was for the Tides, he was a threat they couldn’t kick out. The son of a Mercher born Tidemaker they’d had to take him, but they’d refused to bring him into their inner circle. They hadn’t wanted or trusted him. That they’d taken Kaz, the biggest scum in the Barrel had to eat at Dryden. He’d pushed for Kaz’s initiation for his own ends and the quorum had turned that against him. Kaz wondered how long it had taken Karl to work that out. Hours, days; or did he still not understand the game the quorum was playing on him?

It didn’t matter to Kaz. He had the information he needed to move on with his plan. Stepping aside to allow the Lions to load the boat, Kaz stood with Inej at the canal edge, watching the turgid waters flow under the low arch of the bridge.

“This plan isn’t like you,” Inej said. “You are giving the Council everything it wants.”

Kaz could ask what council she meant, but instead he spun the head of his cane in his hands. “I would think you’d approve of saving the Grisha from slavery, Captain,” he replied flippantly.

She sighed. “Don’t play games, Kaz. When we’ve pacified the merchers and neutralised Dryden you will be no better off than you are now. You don’t work for free,” she told him, as if he needed to be told. “Where is your profit in this?”

There were any number of answers he could give. Some might even shade the edge of truth. He flipped through each in turn, like shuffling a deck. But when it came time for him to speak, he chose the honest truth. “There isn’t one.”

Inej turned to look at him, but Kaz kept his gaze on the water. “What happened to taking it all?” she asked and admitted, “I am worried about you. Your mind changes as fast as the weather. This plan is —”

“Smoke and mirrors,” Kaz answered for her. The plan would work because it was a fool’s plan, played on fools. Kaz wasn’t even the architect this time. He was merely the lever. Barely more than a tool. It should worry him that he simply didn’t care. But he didn’t care, so he didn’t worry. Being played only mattered when you had skin in the game. Winning only mattered when you had something to lose. Kaz had cut his ties with this city and her wagers. He knew he would succeed because Ketterdam no longer held power over his dreams.

Everything Inej said was still true. Kaz had once prided himself on his focus. Nothing could make him lose sight of his goal. He had never wavered in all the long years he’d waited for his moment to take down Rollins and brick by brick he’d built a very cosy prison for himself, furnishing the cramped confines with wealth he’d never expected to live long enough to enjoy. It hadn’t felt that way at the time, and in truth it hadn’t been a prison he’d been building then. He’d thought himself the master of a city, if not an empire. It was only now that he found himself looking around at everything he’d won and built with distaste. What were bricks and mortar to water except an obstacle to be painstakingly eroded, or violently knocked flat? Now he’d seen through the illusion, the trick held no wonder and the game left him bored.

He’d outgrown Ketterdam. This city he’d bled for couldn’t have anymore of his blood. Like water, he’d run through her and escape out to sea. The last mooring holding him to Kerch had snapped when he'd shattered Jordie’s ghost. The Merchant Council’s infighting, the Tides attempts to protect themselves, Dryden’s posturing, all of it was nothing more than irritant. He brushed his fingers against the gash on his head. Inej had scolded him to keep it covered, but he’d chosen to let the wound breathe instead. It would scar soon enough. Ketterdam’s last embrace; his skull would always carry the city’s mark. Once the scar would have been a mark of pride, now it felt like a debt settled.

He gripped the head of his cane hard enough to stretch the skin over his knuckles. “What do you want from me,” he asked Inej. “Zenik will fight for Ravka. Wylan will never stop believing this city is worth saving and Jesper knows the game well enough to protect him. The Merchant Council is too distracted to act against the Barrel. Does it matter if I line my pockets lightly this time?” he asked.

“It should to you,” Inej said. She added quietly, “Every man needs something to fight for. Once you had your anger. Even when I didn’t know its shape, I saw it in you. Rage was your anchor. What anchors you now?”

“I have plenty to fight for,” he told her, a spark of anger rising in him. He didn’t need an anchor. Anchors just held him down. He glanced at her. “You know what I’m fighting for,” he said.

He knew she knew. She had to. They’d been through all this before in a dozen asides, a hundred aborted conversations. A thousand moments when one or both of them had pivoted away from what they really wanted to say. A million love letters had been written in the silences they left between them and Kaz was tired of wading through unspoken words.

But not so tired he was willing to be the first to speak.

“Knowing and believing are two different things,” Inej said softly.

Agitated, Kaz tapped the beak of his cane against the railing. Together they had run through a riot hand-in-hand. They’d fought and bled side-by-side too many times to count. He’d carried her bleeding body in his arms and slaughtered his way through the Blacktips to get her to safety. She’d followed him into the Ice Court and come back to Ketterdam to rescue him when the Barrel fell into chaos. What more did she need? A ring and a proposal from a destitute Barrel boss who’d just lost his gang, his city and all his guiding principles?

Kaz could say the words. They were there on his tongue, pushed by the tide welling inside him. Thinking the words didn’t make him want to punch his hand through a wall like it had once. He could own them. But did putting a name to the wellspring inside him really matter? Like water, the feeling was larger and more fluid than words could contain. More than that, a contradictory part of him refused to say them until he was sure she’d say them back.

If he gave her the words now, if he told her the only part of him that remained constant was the part that would always want her – if he admitted that he was fighting for her, and only her, what difference would it make? He didn’t know if he could touch more than her hand for any length of time. He didn’t know if he could express his desire. He’d spent so long denying he had any if he tried now would his body fail him? The thought made him flinch. He knew the mechanics. He was no blushing schoolboy. But he had no experience and failure in this, would destroy him.

But those fears paled compared to the real reason he couldn’t make himself say the words. He didn’t know if she wanted him back. Not in the way he had always wanted – needed – her. When he’d had no choice but to push down his desire, the black waters had made it impossible to even imagine wanting her the way a man wanted a woman. He hadn’t had to confront the fear that Inej would see in him what she’d seen in Tante Heleen’s customers. Another man with a craving for Suli flesh. When they’d first met, she’d asked him if he liked Suli girls. He’d told her he hadn't met enough to find out. Now he knew, would she hate him for it?

Knowing and believing were very different things. He believed but didn’t know. She knew but didn’t believe and between them they held a loose around the other's neck. He knew she knew. He could see it in her eyes. She knew he knew. She could see it in his. But none of it mattered. This city still trapped them in old shells, playing old games. When you’d survived by raising your fists to what the world hurled at you, making enemies before they could make you, how did you let yourself surrender to simple want, Kaz wondered.

Ghezen wept, he hated this. Dirtyhands had been easy. Dirtyhands had been bound and determined by everything he couldn’t do, couldn’t let himself want, and could never, ever have. Kaz Brekker had lived in his prison and never wanted to look beyond the bars. He’d leveraged greed safe in the knowledge that his weakness ensured he could never fall prey to it. His world had been cruel and blinkered and all the safer because of it. Kaz Rietveld was not like that. Kaz Rietveld was a hungry, greedy bastard. Ten years he’d buried himself under an alias made up on the spur of the moment during his first arraignment. Ten years he’d drowned under black waters. Now he wanted. He wanted. He wanted. And he wanted some more.

No skin in the game? He was a fool. This was the biggest wager he’d ever made. All the calculated risks he’d taken in the past, the long cons and the dangerous gambles, they were just games. And he was sick of games. She was what mattered. And no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t untangle his tongue to tell her so. “One day,” he told her, anger and frustration and the absurd desire to yell at the top of his broken voice making his throat hurt, “I’ll stand in front of you a new man and give you the words you need to believe in me,” he promised.

He’d promised himself something similar years ago. That he’d scrape himself into the semblance of a man for her. He’d barely managed to hold her hand. But the time for half-measures was over. He was going to be the man he wanted to be, not the one he needed to be. And when he was, when he knew his new shape and his limits, when fear was no longer his master, he was going to love this woman with every breath he took.

“Oi,” Eljse called from the boat. “You ready or what?”

Damn right he was ready. Fuck the Tides. Fuck the Merchers. And most of all, fuck Karl Dryden. It was time to burn it all down and run like hell.

Chapter Text

To Catch a Dirty Mercher Pt. 3:

Kaz:

Lars Schipp had moved the Pearl but instead of doing something interesting, he’d docked her back at Lid harbour. It was only Kaz and Inej aboard the bottle boat as Kaz steered the vessel up the canal toward the waiting strip of dry land between them and the ocean ahead. The Lions had jumped from the vessel further down the canal and would be moving into position on foot. The crates of wormwood bottles loaded rattled in the wake caused by a passing barge going in the opposite direction. A gondel followed and people moved hurried along the street on either side of the canal.

“What game is he playing?” Inej asked, shielding her eyes as she looked over the brow toward the Pearl’s bunting strewn masts, rising in the distance.

“One that’s not half as clever as he thinks,” Kaz replied. “The harbour mists hide Imperjum from view at dawn and dusk. He wants the Pearl somewhere everyone can see her.”

“He thinks you’ll steal her,” Inej agreed. “Tourist numbers are still down, but the Lid is always crowded. You will be seen. Schipp hopes to expose the lie of your death.”

“That’s what he wants. It’s not what he’s aiming for,” Kaz said.

“Perhaps he wishes to kill you,” she suggested drily.

Kaz and Inej used their oars to push the flat bottomed boat toward the lip of the path under the low arch of an old stone bridge. “Schipp may want me dead, but he needs me alive,” he said.

Inej hopped deftly onto the path as Kaz threw her the rope for the mooring post. The Merchant Council, still in session, had yet to lift the city-wide curfew and restrictions, but the Stadwatch – encouraged by the merchants in town – had taken matters into their own hands. There had been far fewer patrols on East Stave than there should have been after all the trouble; Old Klem electing to pull his men back rather than push into the Barrel to assess the damage. It was a wise decision, one Kaz had helped along with a few well-placed suggestions and bribes to people whose interests just so happened to align with his. The city would get back to normal faster without Stadwatch interference in the Barrel and Old Klem and the lesser merchants of the city knew it.

Clean up had already begun along the Staves and Kaz had heard callers drumming up business from outside the partially burned shells of card clubs up and down the Barrel. He’d recognised several Dregs runners luring vice-ridden punters to makeshift gaming rooms set up in undamaged buildings or Three Man Bramble tables set up along the canal side. He’d briefly considered a few business opportunities and strategies for turning a profit out of this misfortune before he remembered it wasn’t his business anymore. At the very least, it wasn’t his concern.

Climbing out of the boat, Kaz’s bad leg twinged. It had ached all morning. The dull throb both familiar and strange. He’d barely felt the old pain during his illness and there was something unsettling about feeling once more fully ensconced in his own bones. He didn’t appreciate the weakness, even if it was one he’d long since overcome. Dressed in the drab coveralls of a deliveryman from one of the breweries on the southern outskirts, Kaz kept the brim of his soft cap low over his face as he lifted a wheeled dolly onto the path.

Inej helped him load several crates from the boat onto a wheeled dolly. Her eyes skimmed downward, alighting briefly on his bad leg. She had noticed his limp but she nothing. Kaz was relieved. The pain in his leg was nothing new. The twinge fading into a hollow shaft of pain that encased his leg like an invisible cast. He’d dealt with far worse. It wouldn’t slow him down. He grabbed the handles of the dolly and jerked it onto its axis. The contents of the bottles sloshed in their crates as the dolly rattled over the cobbles. Inej stayed under the low bridge with the boat. She’d remain long enough to see him cross the wide central avenue in front of the waterfront and then abandon the boat and him to complete her other tasks.

Clusters of worried, uncertain tourists milled up and down the avenue. Kaz suspected they had been stranded in the city during the crisis and were now waiting impatiently for the ships to leave harbour. A day later and the Lid still wore the scars of the siege with several boarded-up storefronts along the waterfront and broken glass in the gutters, but the ice wall was a memory. The flood waters had miraculously retreated and only the very observant would notice the tideline marks besmirching the walls of the Groots Ketterdam Hotel. The Groots was not welcoming guests this morning, but other establishments were. Kaz was not the only person making deliveries and his passage did not arouse suspicion. Kaz counted the people loitering in the wide plaza in front of the Pearl’s dock, noting their position and any key details that could be useful later.

A wagon rolled along the avenue pulled by a labouring pony. In the back of the open cart, two boys made sure a block of ice suspended on a rope from a rickety wooden frame didn’t fall out and shatter on the cobbles. A girl of around fifteen enticed a group of alarmed Kaelish tourists with the cast iron guarantee that the block really had come from the ice wall. For twenty kruge they could own a little chip of history, and for eight they could have a cup of fruit flavoured shaved ice made by the Council of Tides themselves.

Waiting for the wagon to pass, Kaz trundled the dolly toward the landing area around the Pearl. Schipp had men waiting for him. He didn’t recognise the three large men who descended the lowered gangplank and guessed they were either out-of-town recruits or navy men hiding in plain clothes. Their bearing made him think the latter. Keeping his head down and gaze averted Kaz murmured, “Delivery for Mister Schipp.” Softly, he could hear the murmur of wavelets slapping the ship’s hull. It was almost a language in its own right.

“Mister Schipp is not taking deliveries today,” said the man in the middle. He was obviously the leader. His Kerch was crisp, each consonant ringing with inherited wealth. This man had not come up on the streets. He'd been breed to wear a uniform and wore his homespun like a ill-fitting costume. He had a habit of flexing the fingers of his right hand arrhythmically.

Kaz took note. He released the handles of the dolly and stepped away. “Suit yourselves, gentlemen. Enjoy your morning,” touching the bill of his cap he turned and walked away, leaving the dolly where it was.

“Wait,” called the leader. “You can’t just leave that here.”

Kaz kept walking. He concentrated on keeping his gait fluid but his speed just a little slower than normal. Guard dogs, of any breed, did not do well against surprises. Schipp had ordered these men to stop all deliveries, fearing one could be a pretence for theft or sabotage. He’d no doubt prepared them to deal with Kaz or any Dregs who tried to slip onto the boat or force their way aboard. He hadn’t told them what to do with an abandoned shipment of expensive liquor left at the bottom of the gangplank by a disinterested deliveryman.

Heavy boots thundered over the cobbles after him. A sudden breeze picked up at his back and Kaz felt a tug from behind him, as if invisible fingers of air had snagged his clothes. A wall of solid air rose in front of him, preventing him from taking another step. His throat clenched. Kaz stopped. The man with the fidgety fingers caught up with him. “I know who you are, Brekker. You’re not fooling anyone,” said the Squaller quietly, one hand drifting upwards, fingers twitching. So far, no one in the plaza was paying them any attention.

“Don’t bet on that,” Kaz murmured. He whipped out his hand and caught the Squaller’s wrist, twisting hard. The Squaller was larger than he was and deft on his feet. He broke Kaz’s grip, fingers flashing. Kaz was slammed down on one knee onto the cobbles by an invisible force. Instead of fighting to stay upright, Kaz made sure to sprawl onto the cobbles, deliberately – and loudly – spilling a collection of pocket change from a concealed pocket in the side of his coveralls.

A group of Fjerdan soldiers, stranded while on leave by the quarantine, turned as one from their morose inspection of a closed tavern window to see what was happening. The biggest and blondest of the group, squared his shoulders and took a very determined step forward, calling something sharp and commanding in Fjerdan. The man could have been Helvar’s older brother, there was something foolishly righteous to the set of his broad shoulders that had immediately reminded Kaz of the former druskelle when he’d spotted him earlier.

“One word from me and you’re on a pyre,” Kaz told the Squaller making a show of struggling to rise from his heap at the Squaller’s feet.

The Squaller looked away from the advancing Fjerdans and back to Kaz. “You did that on purpose,” he accused. Of course, he had. He’d made the Squaller from the first twitch and known that the Fjerdans were the group he needed for this little con. He had no idea if the men approaching were druskelle but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they could be. To a Grisha all Fjerdans were the enemy.

It made sense that Schipp would surround himself with Grisha and it was clear to Kaz that a sizable minority of Kerch navy men were Grisha in disguise, protected by the Tides so long as they remained useful. Schipp had once earned the Tides trust, as evidenced by the fact that he had been allowed into the obelisk tower. He undoubtedly commanded a lot of respect among serving Etherealki hiding in the city. Kaz wondered what they’d do when they learned Schipp intended to sell them out.

The Fjerdans arrived, their shadows falling like accusing fingers over the cobbles. “What is going on here?” the leader demanded in broken Kerch.

“Nothing. My friend fell.” The Squaller roughly pulled Kaz to his feet. Kaz made sure to fall into the man, struggling with his balance.

“He pushed me sirs,” Kaz insisted, keeping his face obscured by the bill of his cap and the fall of hazy sunshine. “I don’t know this man. Please, call the Stadwatch.”

The Fjerdan’s two younger companions began muttering urgently in Fjerdan, Kaz caught the word for “criminal” and “Barrel” but for once the words weren't directed at him. The leader of the group said to the Squaller in his halting Kerch, “You will release this man now and be on your way.” Despite his doubtful Kerch, there was a distinct bite of command to the man’s tone.

The Squaller released Kaz’s elbow. He looked furious. “This isn’t over,” he hissed in a low voice, speaking too quietly and quickly for the Fjerdan’s to understand. “You are not getting aboard. Try and I’ll kill you.” The Squaller turned and marched back to his two confused friends standing uselessly on either side of the dolly.

Kaz turned to the Fjerdans and began thanking them profusely, reaching out to ring the leader’s hand as quickly as he could, while appearing to clutch on tight. The Fjerdan shook him loose with distaste and he and his two lost and lonely comrades-at-arms marched stiffly away toward the harbour rail. Kaz did not watch them go. Pocketing the leader’s signet ring and the Squaller’s wallet he moved swiftly back toward the bottle boat. He didn’t bother to watch as Schipp’s hapless help argued among themselves over the contents of the dolly before wheeling it up onto the Pearl’s deck.

Schipp was waiting for him under the bridge beside the boat. Standing tall in a long coat with his hands shoved into the pockets he said, “The dolly was a decoy. What did you sneak aboard my ship while Hefstan and the others were distracted?”

Pushing his cap up off his brow Kaz said, “Go and see for yourself.”

Schipp’s eyes narrowed. “Unlikely. Either this is all more misdirection or you plan to murder me.”

Kaz did not plan to murder him. Schipp was too useful as a patsy. “The deal is the deal,” he said. “You paid me one hundred thousand kruge and I delivered a viable dose of the suppression serum. You should go back to your ship and make sure your men don’t spill any.”

Schipp shook his head. “Let them. If I had my way every last drop of the serum would be in the harbour along with Yul-Bo’s body.”

Interesting, but not surprising. Kaz raised a brow and asked, “What business, Schipp?”

The other man did not answer immediately. He looked over the bottle boat. “You have a lot of bottles onboard. I know who your customers are, Brekker. Most of their establishments are rubble. What is in those bottles?”

Kaz wished briefly for his cane. He shifted his weight almost imperceptibly off his bad leg. The water of the canal gurgled contentedly below him. He gestured toward the boat and in his best front of house voice suggested, “By all means, go and take a look.”

Schipp did not hesitate. Moving swiftly the man jumped aboard and looted a bottle from one of the upper racks. He smashed the neck on the boat rail and sniffed suspiciously at the contents. He jerked his head up. “Linseed oil. Very flammable. The vapours too.”

Kaz frowned at the bottle. But kept his tone light when he said, “I wonder how that got there.”

“How many more are like this?” Schipp demanded dropping the broken bottle over the side of the boat.

“None, I hope. Poisoning my customers is bad for business.” The truth was Kaz wasn’t sure. The linseed oil and rubbing alcohol had been added to fill the spare bottles when Kaz ran out of wormwood from the stills. Kaz had asked Wylan why his stores of flammables were so low last night.

“Because normal people don’t routinely stock their houses with large quantities of combustible fluids on purpose, Kaz,” Jesper had answered instead.

Kaz met his gaze levelly. “The question still stands. Why don’t you have more?”

Jesper nudged Wylan, “I think he just accused us of being abnormal, Wy.” Wylan didn’t answer, only narrowly avoiding spilling oil over the table as he poured it through a funnel into the open neck of a bottle sat on his work bench.

Kaz had ignored Jesper, focusing on Wylan. “Will it be enough?” he asked, surveying the filled bottles already in crates.

Wylan had nodded. “We’ve filled the bottles with flammables found in ordinary households. You don’t need specialist knowledge to know they burn well.”

“And the blasting oil?” Kaz asked.

“Bad for the digestion,” Jesper replied cheerfully. “I’d avoid taking a tipple on the trip, if I were you.”

Kaz frowned at him. “Will it be detectible?” he asked.

Wylan pulled the funnel out of the bottle he’d been filling and corked it. “The explosion will be too violent for an alcohol fire. The chemical explosive won’t leave a trace, but anyone who sees the blast will know it had to be there,” he said. He frowned at Kaz. “The wormwood you have is enough to burn the Pearl to ash. You don’t need the rest, so why use it?”

Jesper snorted. “Do you remember our friend Mark and his bunk biscuit?” he asked Wylan, who scowled. “The contaminated bottles are a ruse. We want Schipp to find them. Dryden’s the sort of podge who’d add more alcohol to a fire, but Schipp isn’t. He’ll know Kaz has access to better explosives than this. He’ll waste time chasing his own tail trying to figure out what we’re really up to.”

“I want the Stadwatch to find the contaminated bottles aboard the Pearl once we’re done,” Kaz said. “Schipp was navy, he could get hold of gunpowder, but he wouldn’t use it for the same reason these bottles are filled with household cleaner. I want the Stadwatch to find these bottles and think Schipp was trying to be clever but got careless and left evidence behind.”

Wylan sighed and shoved the bottle over the workbench toward Kaz. “Planting evidence isn’t going to be enough to frame Schipp. Not when he can blame you or the Dregs. It’s not a secret you two were in business together. He’ll claim you were extorting him and the Stadwatch will believe him because you are extorting him.”

“I’m dead,” Kaz reminded him. “And no one will see a single Dreg board or leave the Pearl. All anyone will see is a delivery of liquor taken aboard the ship by Schipp’s men.” Kaz had leaned back against an unused workbench and spread his gloved hands. “What could be less suspicious than a night venue taking a daylight delivery before its grand reopening?” he asked.

“Almost anything,” Jesper replied. “It’s too neat. The Stadwatch won’t believe it.”

“Exactly.” Kaz agreed. “Schipp had to redock on the Lid to establish his cover and that’s what we’re going to use to point the finger straight back at him.”

A smile played at the edges of Jesper’s mouth. “Think he’ll really go through with it?” he asked. “We can’t frame him if there isn’t a crime.”

Kaz knew several ways to frame a man for a non-existent crime. That wasn’t the issue this time. There was going to be a crime and Schipp was going to commit it. “He doesn’t have a choice,” Kaz said absently rapping the end of his cane on the stone floor of Wylan’s workroom. “Schipp is desperate. He’s the one who has to make Dryden’s plan work.”

Wylan snorted. “It’s going to take more than explosives to make Dryden’s plan work.”

Kaz agreed. “Explosives are all he has. Schipp is clever enough to be a threat but too stupid to walk away from an idiot lover. He’s on the hook, knows it, but won’t wriggle loose. He’s the best kind of mark. He’s doing all the work himself.”

Schipp had started in on another bottle, smashing it and checking the contents. Wormwood splashed over the bottom of the boat and spattered his shiny boots. “You owe me eighty kruge,” Kaz told him stepping aboard the boat.

Schipp ignored him. Finding another bottle, he pulled the cork out and sniffed. “Blasting oil.” He turned slowly, staring at Kaz.

“I need to fire my distillery crew,” Kaz commented mildly. He watched Schipp levelly.

“You were trying to kill me,” the older man claimed.

“I rarely need to try and kill a man,” Kaz remarked. He perched lightly on one of the mounded crates, folding his hands in his lap. It was Schipp’s move now. Of course, he had. He’d made the Squaller from the first twitch and known that the Fjerdans were the group he needed for this little con. He had no idea if the men approaching were druskelle but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they could be. To a Grisha all Fjerdans were the enemy.

“I could ruin you,” Schipp said wonderingly. “You can’t blow up the Pearl now. I’ll just report you to the Stadwatch.”

“Greater men than you have made that claim, Schipp.”

Schipp’s thin lips pursed. He wasn’t rushing to act. He was suspicious. He recognised his good fortune was a little too convenient and he was one of those rare clever men who understood that the truly smart man always doubted his own cleverness. It was the best way to stay alive. Lars Schipp was the kind of man that should have flown clear of Kaz and his ilk, too assured to fool for simple cons, too wary and clear headed to fall for the more complicated swindles, he should have lived his life getting richer, one of those rare survivors who make it without resorting to the games Kaz played, if it wasn’t for his one fatal flaw. Schipp was stupidly in love. Kaz could see it in his eyes. Anguish. Schipp knew he was drowning. He knew who was to blame. It didn’t matter. Schipp would damn himself a thousand times for Karl Dryden and he knew it. He knew that Kaz knew too. That left him no choice. He had to act and he needed Kaz for that.

“How much blasting oil do you have here?” he demanded.

“Enough,” Kaz said.

Schipp nodded slowly. He rubbed his lips and contemplated his future. “And the watergate?” he asked.

Kaz just looked at him.

“The key for the inner door?” Schipp pressed. “I know you took it from me.”

Kaz pulled the obelisk key from his pocket and held it up to the light. He didn't waste time being insulted that Schipp believed he needed a key to get through a locked door. The key was symbolic. A token of intent passed from Schipp to him and back again.

Schipp smiled. Then he laughed. “Clever Brekker. Clever. I see what you’ve done. I wanted to use you as my weapon and you’ve made me your accomplice instead. There’s more explosives in those bottles you tricked Hefstan into loading onboard my ship, isn’t there?” He shook his head admiringly. “You really have fitted me up well,” he admitted. “But I’m willing to die for Karl if that’s what it takes. Are you willing to risk the Tides wrath for your freedom?”

“A clever criminal knows how to hedge his bets so that he doesn’t have to risk anything,” Kaz replied. “I have Etovost Tidemakers in position around the obelisk. The Quorum doesn’t know them.”

Schipp’s eyes lit up with opportunity. “An ambush in their own tower? No, they won’t see that coming.” He clapped his hands together. A sharp burst of air knocked the cap from Kaz’s head. “I want the Oar of Silas and the Quorum dead, Brekker. Karl is going to have his freedom even if it kills me and you to get it. Do we have an understanding?”

“I understand you perfectly, Schipp,” Kaz assured him.

Schipp frowned. “And you’ll help me blow the tower?” he asked.

“Deal.” Kaz had planned to do that since the High Tide had slammed the end of his sacred stick into his chest and forced him to pledge allegiance to the ocean.

“And the Pearl,” asked Schipp.

“If you live you can keep her,” Kaz replied. The Pearl had only ever been a lever. Whatever happened to the vessel next was out of his hands.

Schipp heard the trap in his words but it didn’t matter. The man already knew himself to be trapped and he could only hang once. He nodded sharply. “Deal,” he said. “Pick up that oar, Brekker. We’re sailing this thing onto open water.”

Chapter Text

To Catch a Dirty Mercher Pt. 4

Jesper:

Jesper fidgeted with the pen in his hand. Around the huge polished oak council table the richest merchers in Ketterdam fussed in their padded chairs. “Open the window Van Eagen,” complained Hanraat irritably. The corpulent trader dabbed at his sweaty bald scalp with a crisp white handkerchief.

“I’m not your servant Sander, do it yourself, or have your man over there do it for you,” snapped Van Eagen, his back to the window. It would be easy for him to turn and unlatch the leaded pane, push it open and let out the stink of stubborn mercher, but when had the Merchers ever made life easier?

“Gentleman,” said Wylan, “Perhaps we could get back to discussing what we’re going to do about the Ravkans?”

“What’s to discuss?” Van Deering demanded. “It’s clear as day what must be done.”

“Quite right,” smarmed Naten Boreg. “War is the only answer to this insult.”

Van Deering, flaccid face red around the edges, twisted in his chair to stare at Boreg. “What are you blithering on about, Naten? Do you know how costly a war will be? No," Van Deering said firmly, "we need to squeeze that bastard Lantsov for every last ruby and emerald in his treasury and leave his destitute country for the Fjerdan wolves.”

“Gentleman please,” said Radmakker sounding harassed, “We will maintain civility in chambers. Do I make myself clear?” If he’d had a gavel to hand, Jesper was sure the tall, strangely shrimp-like mercher would be banging it down on the table hard enough to crack the oak table's glossy veneer.

“I’ll open the window,” Jesper said rising from his chair pushed up against the wall just behind Wylan. Amanuensis, even ones as charming as Jesper, were not allowed to sit at the council table itself. Tucking his notebook into his jacket pocket he winked at Willem Devitt’s apple cheeked note taker boy, stretched, and ambled over to the window.

The Council had been in session for over a hour, during which time such weighty matters as the pear blight and the price of good beeswax had been debated and lamented, Van Deering and Devitt had agreed to a private word about Devitt’s coffee plantation in the Southern Colonies over brandy after the session and someone – most likely Sander Hanraat – had broken wind at least twice. Only Wy had tried to bring up the issue of war with Ravka, the price of rebuilding the Stadlied, and when exactly they were going to lift the city-wide curfew. Jesper couldn’t help but think that the Council had been more efficient under Van Eck senior. At least then they could be counted on to do exactly what he told them. The sooner they cleared the deadwood the better. Then he and Wylan could whip the rest into shape.

He slipped passed Karl Dryden on the way to the window. The Tidemaker tensed up like a coiled spring as Jesper eased along the wall, the backs of his ears pinking with stress. Jesper kept his grin on the inside. There was still a damp patch on his shirt, hidden by his closed jacket. He wouldn’t mind paying Dryden back for that. But that could wait. He wanted fresh air. He also wanted to see who or what might be lurking on the sill. “Heat’s picking up,” he commented to no-one-in-particular as he shoved open the window and peered out at the leaden sky and asked, “Think we’ll have a storm?”

The merchers ignored him. Jesper’s overabundance of charm and his impeccable dress sense had led most of the Councilmen around the room to hire on their own note taker, but that didn’t mean men like Boreg and Hanraat showed him any respect. Or notice. Though what the merchers refused to see, their attendants surely did. Daan Viklinger, Hanraat’s boy, watched him with beady little eyes. Jesper had once clipped Viklinger in the arm during a scuffle on the Third Harbour wharf during his Dregs days. Viklinger had been running book on the prize fights for Legg’s Makka back then. Mean little podge he’d been. Nothing Jesper had heard since suggested he’d had a change of heart. Jesper patted his hip, palm brushing over the handle of his pistol through his jacket. Viklinger’s scowl deepened.

Turning back to window, Jesper pretended to be enthralled with the view. Daan was armed, and Jesper was fairly sure Radmakker’s attendant, a tall, thin man who looked like he was made of tallow wax, was in fact, Rollo Blekkermann, the Duck and Basket’s five time knife throwing champion and a bruiser even Inej claimed had good aim. It would have been funny, how many Barrel boys had made it into Council chambers, except Jesper was fairly sure he and Hanraat were the only one’s who knew. Jesper wasn’t sure about Radmakker. Old Rollo had married and retired from the Liddies not long after Jesper started doing jobs for Kaz. It was possible he’d left knife throwing and murder off his resume when he’d signed on with the pious mercher.

What all this meant was that Council chambers resembled an old-fashioned gang parley more and more often these days and Dryden stood out like the proverbial sore thumb without his second. Given how nervous Karl looked sat along the middle of the table, back to the exterior wall, he clearly felt it too. Kaz would have Schipp halfway across Fifth Harbour by now, on their way to Imperjum. All they were waiting for was Nina to come through.

Hands braced on the sill, Jesper leaned out of the window, peering down the sheer façade of the building to the ground below. He took a deep breath. There was still an acrid burnt tang to the air, like a half-forgotten bonfire. Despite the heavy sky, the view across the waters was good and Jesper could see the imposing walls of Newfoort rising in the distance on its own island. The council chambers were on the west side of the building and the entrance was to the south. Jesper couldn’t see the portico roof or the entrance steps from here. The narrow street running beneath him was empty. The window ledge of the floor directly below him was not.

Scratching his cheek, Jesper turned his face toward Newfoort and murmured against the breeze, “Nina better get here soon. If Hanraat’s flatulence doesn’t kill us all, I think Wy might leap over the table and strangle Van Deering.”

Contorted to fit onto the tiny ledge, her lithe body pressed against the sealed windowpane, Inej replied. “They’re on their way up to you now.”

“And Kaz?”

“With Schipp.”

That was that then. A surge of renewed energy pulsed through Jesper. The job was on. The only thing missing was the screaming and gunfire. Jesper didn’t think it would come to that in Council Chambers, which was good as he was a little worried a single bullet fired might ignite the build up of noxious gasses in the room, courtesy of Hanraat’s troublesome digestive tract, and blow them all up long before Kaz was through with the Tides.

“Ghezen wept. Van Eck, tell your Zemeni to close the window,” snapped Hanraat.

Flashing Inej a parting grin – the Wraith would scale the building and head back to Fifth Harbour to watch the shoreline – Jesper drew the window partly closed, but didn’t latch it. “Sorry,” he said brightly, “Just getting some air,” meeting Wylan’s eyes he added cheerfully, “I thought I heard thunder.”

Wylan sat up a little straighter at the table and then caught himself and tried to sink back into a more relaxed pose. He ended up looking like he’d stopped himself in mid-swoon, his boneless slide down the upholstery leaving him stuck somewhere in a semi-solid state. Jesper reclaimed his seat. Hanraat dabbed his shiny head with his now sodden handkerchief. Dryden sat stiff and silent as a board, shooting side-eyed looks back at Jesper and Wylan. Radmakker lifted his large head on the end of his skinny neck and looked like he was about to speak. A sudden knock on the door reverberated through the room. Hanraat cursed and muttered something rude about Ghezen and someone's second cousin that intrigued Jesper a little. Devitt grunted, awoken mid-snooze, Naten Boreg startled badly, tensing all over as a second, quick-paced rapping vibrated through the room. Dryden leapt to his feet like a bottle rocket, staring at the door.

Jesper smiled broadly and rose easily to his feet with a flourishingly little bow. “Allow me.” He side-stepped along the wall, his jacket scrapping over the gold and cream flocked wallpaper.

“Wait, you can’t just open the door. We’re in a sealed session,” complained Van Deering.

Twisting the sculpted brass doorknob and wrenching open the heavy vanished door with a flourish, Jesper pretended he didn’t hear him over the shiver of wood grinding over thick imported carpet. Nina stood on the other side of the door with a dark-haired man wearing a mustard yellow frockcoat and a chain of office bearing the Lantsov seal around his neck. The Rakvan Ambassador looked warily bewildered. Nina looked annoyed. “The doorman wouldn’t let us in,” she huffed.

“Does he still have all his teeth?” Jesper asked.

“Yes, but his family jewels are another matter.” Nina drew herself and, in a loud voice and even louder Ravkan accent demanded, “Make way for the Ravkan Ambassador. He desires an audience with the Merchant Council.”

“What? But he can’t.” Dryden insisted.

Boreg leapt to his feet, exclaiming, “He’s meant to be confined to the embassy.”

“This is highly improper,” Radmakker agreed, but Jesper thought he sounded more intrigued than offended.

Nina shoved the door open, brushing passed Jesper who fell back easily and melted back to his seat. Dressed in the uniform of the First Army with a service revolver at her hip, Nina had hidden her long brown hair under a mousy short-cropped wig and high square hat and used make up to make her skin appear stretched with age lines she didn’t have. The flare of her hips and swell of her bosom strained the uniform and somewhat ruined the disguise, reminding Jesper of a late night show he’d seen on West Stave one time. The girls in the chorus line had all dressed in uniforms, but he was fairly sure no real Ravkan soldier could do the things they could with a pole. Unless things took a very interesting turn in chambers in the next five minutes, it was also unlikely Nina would have to perform a strip tease.

The Ravkan Ambassador, taking his cues from Nina, strode into the room with a lot more confidence than he’d shown at the door. “Gentlemen,” he said in crisp Kerch, “I am afraid to say you have all been taken for fools.” Jesper noted that, despite his words, that he did not sound all that sorry.

“What is the meaning of this?” Radmakker demanded.

“Yes,” Wylan said. “I’d like to know that too. Ambassador, what did you mean we’ve been taken for fools? Do you have information on the Barrel situation?”

Jesper watched the room. He wasn’t sure Wylan was playing this right. The rest of the Council were caught between bafflement, offended outrage and queasy fear. Wylan sounded a bit too eager to hear what the ambassador had to say. Jesper didn’t blame him. After an hour being stuck in Council he was ready to get things over with too, but there were still a lot of ways things could go wrong, and most of those ways would be bad for Wylan. Relaxing in his chair, Jesper flexed his fingers, watching every threat in the room.

“He has nothing to say," Sneered Naten Boreg. "He's here to plead for his treacherous country. Well it won’t work. Lantsov won’t talk his way out of this one.”

“Quite right,” agreed Van Deering. “We’re going to squeeze your coffers dry until the pip squeaks.”

“Alas, gentlemen, you’ll be far too dead to squeeze anything,” said the ambassador.

“What!” An eruption of Merchers burst to their feet around the table. All except Devitt, whose habit of drinking three brandies before a session had caught up with him at exactly the wrong time. The coffee magnate blinked around the room and stayed seated.

“Call the Stadwatch,” Hanraat bellowed. “We won’t be threatened in our own chambers!” Daan Viklinger ran for the door.

“But you will be hoodwinked,” smiled the ambassador.

“What?” Boreg and Hanraat exchanged glances.

Devitt’s chin drooped, eyelids sinking to half-mast but Jesper knew he was listening all the same. Radmakker looked down the table to Wylan. He tapped his gnarled fingers together. His expression was alarmingly mild. He had the look of a man who thought he held a good hand and was fairly sure the dealer liked him. Jesper watched Rollo Blekkermann. The ex-Liddie raised two fingers on his left hand to his brow in ironic salute. There was a smile playing over the edges of his scarred mouth. Rollo was a Barreller, even if he'd moved up in the world, he could sniff out a con a mile off but as long as Radmakker made it out in one piece with his wallet intact he wouldn’t say a word.

Wylan cleared his throat. “Explain yourself, ambassador, before the Stadwatch escort you off the premises.” He hit the right tone of affronted outrage this time. Jesper was proud of him.

“Gladly,” the ambassador smiled. He’d grown in confidence with every moment and now looked like he was enjoying himself standing in the middle of the room right over Boreg’s stiff shoulder. “Gentlemen you are being deceived and it is not by Ravka. I have come to warn you before you make a grave error in judgement,” the ambassador announced.

“You’re here to save Ravka and don’t deny it,” said Van Eagen. “We’ve had enough. Everyone knows Ravka is in shambles and Lantsov is illegitimate. Your nation will fall and good riddance. You’ve given us grave insult.”

In front of Jesper, Wylan shifted minutely in his seat. Hanraat and Naten Boreg had been their prime suspects from the beginning but Van Eagen was a surprise. He didn’t seem to have anything to gain. His trade was wool and international exports would be negatively affected by a prolonged naval engagement. Although, Jesper supposed, he might just hate Ravka. Or Grisha. Or both. There had to be at least one Kerchman capable of acting out of something other than financial profit. Wylan couldn't be the only one.

“Ravka is not responsible for the recent trouble in the Barrel,” said the ambassador. “Word has reached me the Stadwatch are holding the bodies of the pirates responsible for unleashing maddened Grisha on the city. The Bluebell pirates are not affiliated with my country and that is a matter of public record,” he added smugly.

“They were being led by a Grisha in a Kefta,” Dryden insisted.

Scoffing, Nina rolled her eyes. Jesper grimaced. Nina wasn’t exactly suited to play a properly obedient soldier. Thankfully, the ambassador’s contempt was loud enough to keep everyone’s attention away from her. “Please, gentlemen. I know of several less than reputable establishments in this city where fake Kefta’s can be bought for forty kruge or less. I’ve heard they are quite a draw with a certain type of gentlemen interested in, shall we say, a private form of amateur dramatics?”

Interestingly, Van Eagen managed to grow pale while blushing at the same time. Jesper frowned. He’d thought those rumours had to be fake. Wylan asked, “If the woman wasn’t Second Army, who was she?”

The ambassador shook his head sadly. “Who is to say? Many Grisha are sold into slavery. All I know is the body you have is not the body of the Alkemi Ekaterine Iskova, as you claim.”

“How do you know? You haven’t seen the body,” Boreg shouted.

“I have received communication from David Kostya. The message arrived several days ago, but as I was confined and you gentlemen were engaged in…urgent business out of town - I could not share its contents until now," said the ambassador. "He confirms that Iskova was found in Ravka and is now under lock and guard in the Little Palace.”

Jesper took this to mean that Ekaterine’s body had either been hastily burned in the embassy furnace, stuffed into a barrel and tossed out to the sea or was packed into the hull of the vessel waiting to sail the ambassador back to Ravka. Whichever the case, she wouldn't be found. The body they'd used as Ekaterine's double had once been a woman known as Hare-Lip Ingrit and she’d worked the docks before Etovost had turned her into an Inferni. The ruse wouldn't hold for long once someone got around to cleaning up the body. That’s why they’d picked that corpse. Ingrit could pass as Ekaterine in age, size and appearance but only if you weren’t looking very closely. They' wanted to make it look like an honest mistake.

Radmakker cleared his throat and said, “This is a convenient tale, but do you have proof?”

The ambassador spread his large hands and declared, “I can prove the existence of a conspiracy to frame my nation that reaches into this very room.”

“Preposterous!” Hanraat yelled in a lather, “Guards! Guards! Where are those flatfooted oafs?”

Wylan and Radmakker looked at each other over the expanse of the table. Hooked fingers steepled Radmakker inclined his head toward Wylan, in silent acknowledgement. Jesper tensed all over. What did the old prawn know? Or think he knew?

Wylan cleared his throat, the sound loud as a gunshot. “These are grave allegations indeed,” he said.

The ambassador nodded. “But sadly, not unprecedented. This is not be the first time a member of this august company has sought to deceive his peers or threaten the peace.”

“Yes,” Radmakker agreed drily his gaze rooted on Jesper and Wylan his bushy brows bouncing, “this is all beginning to feel quite familiar.”

Wylan licked his lips but before he could say anything, a brace of Stadwatch burst in through the door following Daan Vitlinger. Jesper recognised Hennig and Hikriksson from jobs he’d done with Kaz. Both men had been in Kaz’s pocket for years. They surveyed the room with steady gazes and did not draw their revolvers. Hikriksson cleared his throat looking from Radmakker to Wylan and back again, clearly unsure who was meant to be in charge. “We came in response to reports of an intruder, sirs,” he said.

“Don’t just stand there,” Hanraat snapped. “Arrest the ambassador.” The two Stadwatch grunts goggled at him.

Slapping his dry palm down on the tabletop Radmakker barely raised his voice when he ordered, “Sit down, Sander. The ambassador has diplomatic immunity. Gentlemen,” he addressed the two Stadwatch. “Please guard the door. You may be needed presently.”

“Ambassador,” said Wylan, “You had better get to the point and say what you came here to say.”

“It is less what I have to say than what I must show you. Kerch’s national security is in jeopardy,” insisted the ambassador. Jesper caught the look Nina shot his way under the slipping brim of her boxy hat. It wasn’t a happy look. The ambassador's performance was heading into massive ham territory. “I have been made aware of a plot by someone with ties to the Merchant Council against the Council of Tides. This conspiracy is behind the Grisha trouble and the spate of disease in the Barrel. The conspirators are in league with Fjerda and Shu Han to manipulate a war between Kerch and Ravka,” announced the ambassador.

“Nonsense,” spat Van Deering.

“Utter nonsense,” agreed Naten Boreg with feeling.

“Perhaps,” said Radmakker mildly. His gaze cut toward the two men thoughtfully and then drifted around the table lingering on Hanraat and Van Eagen. “But," he mused, "once I would have said that Jan was the most honest and upstanding member of this council.” Around the table the merchers froze in their seats, as if a watery Kaz and his little Lion helpers had seeped up through the floor to stick fists through their backs. “I vote that we hear what the ambassador has to say,” said Radmakker.

“Seconded,” Wylan said softly.

“Agreed,” Devitt mumbled.

“Are you mad?” snapped Hanraat.

Devitt yawned. “Merely interested,” he said. Despite looking like he’d been poured out of the bottom of a bottle, Devitt was fully awake now, exchanging a quick, loaded glance with Radmakker. “Dryden? What do you say?” he asked.

“I —” Dryden’s throat closed with a click. Jesper sat back in his chair, fingers loosely laced together in his lap. He watched Dryden out of the corner of his eye. He felt almost sorry for the podge. He was well and truly skewered by every other gaze in the room. If either, Hanraat, Van Eagen or Naten Boreg had been Etovost, Dryden would have been burned to a crisp by the intensity of their glares.

“Perhaps a vote should wait until after you see what I have to show you?” the ambassador suggested into the tense silence. “It involves a cache of explosives aboard the floating Pearl docked at the Lid. An establishment owned by one Lars Schipp, who I believe is an associate of yours, Mister Dryden?”

The atmosphere in the room ruptured like an air-filled paper bag clapped between two hands. Van Eagen, Hanraat and Naten Boreg all released gusty exhales as Dryden jerked violently to his feet, jaw dropping in abject horror. “What?” he exclaimed.

“Schipp? Good man. Ex-navy,” mused Devitt. A dawning light flickered in his rheumy eyes. “Ahh,” he exhaled slowly. Slowly he shifted in his seat to stare at Dryden. Who still stood at the table, stricken.

“Well, Karl,” asked Radmakker. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Dryden opened and closed his mouth like a landed fish gasping air. He quivered where he stood and Jesper watched his clenched fists closely. Panic widened his eyes until the whites were visible all the way around. “I —” he stammered again.

A loud, resounding boom filled the room. The window blew open, bringing with it ringing echoes of a not-too-distant explosion. The merchers were all on their feet. The Stadwatch had drawn their revolvers. Jesper checked his watch before drawing his own. He and Nina exchanged a knowing glance, looking toward the window.

“What in Ghezen’s name was that?” demanded Radmakker.

“Oh dear,” said the Ravkan ambassador. “I believe that was the obelisk tower on Imperjum.” He sighed mockingly and chided, “You shouldn’t have wasted all that time on a vote, gentlemen.”

Chapter Text

To Catch a Dirty Mercher Pt. 5:

Kaz:

Sailing a flat-bottomed bottle boat out onto open water was not easy, and without his and Schipp’s powers, Kaz thought the current would have swept the boat back to the mainland or caused them to capsize long before they reached Imperjum’s rocky shore. Kaz felt a heady buzz as he reached out to the water around him and willed the current to shift in his favour. This was different than anything he’d experienced during his sickness. The Grisha power coiled inside him felt like a muscle he had yet to fully build and exercising his power was both tiring and exhilarating. This was real skill; it came with the very real risk of failure. What he’d done during his sickness felt like a fever dream in comparison. He knew instinctively that many of the feats he’d pulled off in the last few days were beyond him now. But the power remained, hinting at untapped possibility. With time, he knew he would master it completely.

“The approach seems clear. I don’t like it. Where are the defences? The sea mist?” demanded Schipp, looking up at the obelisk tower rising above them. A haze hung low on the horizon and dark clouds gathered further out to sea.

Kaz tasted brine on his lips. The boat bobbed on the water. He studied the watergate, visible at base of the tower, which was set lower than the island’s shoreline. “I only hire the best, Schipp. The Lions have done their job,” he told the other man.

“Then where are they?” The boat rocked as Schipp jumped to his feet.

Standing at the brow, Kaz did not look behind him. “Doing what any good thief does when the job’s done,” he replied. He could feel a pull coming from the tower. The wavelets lapping at the hull urged him onward, passed the low, rocky breakwater forming a tiny harbour in front of the watergate.

Had Kaz planned this heist, he would have made the watergate itself his first priority. The only way into the tower, there was no way to bypass it, but the entry was severely exposed from all sides. Before attempting a break-in, he’d have visited Vellgeluk and walked around the base of the ruined tower there, learning everything he could about the layout and comparing it to Imperjum. He’d have studied the construction of other watergates in the city and their operation. He’d have bribed workers in the munitions factories on the island to watch the movement of goods boats in and out and made in-depth enquiries about the weather on the island and how often the sea mists conveniently crept in at regular times during the day and night.

After that, he would have chartered a boat to observe the harbour, noting which boats set sail for Imperjum and learning the names of every member of every crew from the harbourmaster. He’d have broken into the storehouses supplying the tower to find out what goods the Tides could not live without. Grisha were no more immune to poison than the next man and a good thief knew that the real skill in any job was in eliminating risk, not adding difficulty. Put bluntly, he’d have done this right. But this wasn’t that sort of job. He wasn’t planning a theft. He was making a delivery and he knew he was expected.

“You’re putting a lot of faith in your people,” remarked Schipp, a note of doubt in his voice.

“No, Schipp,” he said, “you are.” Faith was all Schipp had. Faith and love. Unfortunately for him, he’d find no charity from Kaz.

The boat slipped through the water, passing easily through the chicane path made by the breakwater. The current here was choppy, disturbed and interrupted by the rocky walls. Schipp had used his powers to still the air currents around them when they’d been out on open water, protecting them from the winds, but he could do little to help now. It was Kaz who propelled them forward, commanding the water to bear them along and ignore the riptides swirling under the surface. When they reached the watergate they found it open, a narrow channel opening into the tower, water flowing through.

“How?” Schipp rocked the boat a second time.

“Who knows, Schipp, perhaps Ghezen favours you,” Kaz retorted. Schipp was not a stupid man by nature, only by love, he knew that slit of darkness ahead was not an invitation but a beckoning trap, but it was long passed the time for Schipp to worry about bait and lures. He’d swallowed the hook already and his doubts were beginning to irritate Kaz. A man should always commit to his own ambition, no matter where it lead him.

The sunken room beyond the gate was exactly as Kaz remembered it. The door leading to the narrow corridor and spiralling stairway beyond was shut. The raised platform above the waterline was deserted. The grate feeding water into the well shaft was closed and submerged. Schipp lit a bonelight lantern, bathing the dark interior in green light. He and Kaz unloaded the crates in silence. “We’ll detonate the explosives on our way out,” said Schipp.

Obviously. Had Kaz planned to kill the quorum, he might consider detonating the explosion and escaping to open water to wait to see which, if any, of the Tides managed to escape the resulting blast, but Schipp’s mission was theft and murder. He had to locate the Oar of Silas, a job that made assassination much harder. If this had been a real job and Kaz had been commissioned to steal the amplifier, his first step would have been to commission the making of several fakes. Nothing lured out a mark with a prize better than claiming to already have the genuine article in his possession. Once he had at least one fake amplifier in his possession he’d let the market bring the mark to him. Desperate to either prove his ownership of the true article or hunt down the swindler passing off Fabrikator made paddles as bone fide relics, the High Tide himself would likely send someone to infiltrate the market. Kaz knew all the faces working Ketterdam’s various black markets, a single new face would be easy to identify. After that it would be a simple game of tracking rumour to the real source and in weeks he’d have all the information he needed to steal the Oar without setting foot on Imperjum.

But this was not a real job. It was a farce – a pauper’s komedie Brute – and Kaz was losing patience. The door was locked. Kaz opened it with the key he’d taken from Schipp, feeling his resentment rise. A proper thief did not waste time with capers like this. The ex-navy officer pulled out his service revolver. Kaz surveyed the empty corridor. The inside of the obelisk whispered with the voice of the ocean, resonating with a background hum that reminded Kaz of the distortions heard when putting a shell to his ear.

“It’s too quiet,” Schipp said. “Where are your people?”

“Ready and waiting,” Kaz replied. He brushed his hand down the opposite sleeve of the docker’s coat he’d stashed on the boat and pulled on as they left Ketterdam behind. He wiped off a crust of salt crystals, rubbing the grains between his fingers. He’d gained a layer of salty brine on the trip out, a side-effect of using his new Grisha power. He’d drawn a mist of water vapour around himself without meaning to. The water had soaked into his skin, seemingly flowing into the well of power he now held within, while the salt had settled on his coat like an abandoned crust. It was something to work on later. Learning to conceal his power was going to be essential, perhaps even more than learning to control it.

He led the way to the winding stair. “Wait,” Schipp caught his arm. “You can’t just charge up there. They could be waiting for us.”

The muscles along his arm tensed, Kaz looked at Schipp’s hand. “Let go of me,” he said quietly. Schipp released him. Kaz resisted the urge to brush his sleeve again. He met Schipp’s eyes coldly. “Of course they’re waiting,” he said. “They’ve known about Dryden’s plan all along.”

Schipp levelled the revolver at Kaz’s head. His face twisted in harsh lines. “You tricked me.”

Kaz watched him through heavy lidded eyes. “You know what sort of man I am. You know what I’m capable of. Do you think I’d walk into an ambush unaware? A good gambler always stacks the deck in his favour.”

Schipp’s arm remained steady. It was the only part of him that was. His eyes swivelled in rapid movements, struggling to keep up with his paranoia. Schipp recognised the salient part of what Kaz had said. It was his favour the Squaller needed now. If he was in with the house, it would be safe to proceed, if he wasn’t shooting Kaz would not save him. Kaz watched that knowledge flow behind Schipp’s eyes. It was like watching a baited bear in a viper pit decide whether to attack or pull back.
“Whose side are you on?” he demanded.

“Mine,” Kaz answered. “Thanks to your darling podge, Dryden, I’m bound by the oar. I don’t wear a leash well, Schipp. I’m the sort who will bite the hand who holds it.”

Now, a clever operator, or a plainspoken man of good conscience, would know when they were being fed a non-answer. Kaz’s words wouldn’t have fooled any of the Dregs, or the average bruiser on the street who dealt in simpler, bloodier truths, but Schipp needed to believe what his heart was telling him. He’d happily ignore what he heard and interpret Kaz’s words in a way that gave him the courage to believe that everything would work out his way.

Hertzoon had done the same thing to him and Jordie a decade ago, painting a picture with word and deed that had coddled them so completely they’d never seen what lay beneath. Kaz had wondered more than once how much of what he remembered hearing had actually been said, and how much had been flim-flam reflected in the warmth of Hertzoon’s smile and the hint of concern in his friendly voice. Whatever the case, he’d learned his lessons well. Words were just another tool in his arsenal and the true liar never needed to utter a single falsehood when he could speak in a man’s heart’s desire.

Schipp was not Jordie; experience had tempered his greed. He knew gift horses died and no one sold a real diamond ring for the price of a flatboat fare to the city. His mistake was that he thought he could read Kaz. He thought he knew his price. When the truth was, he wasn’t even on the market. He didn’t fear the Tides hold on him. Only the very young or the weak of will feared being controlled. If the Tides thought they could leash him, he’d throttle them with the chain and loot the coins from their corpses pockets.

Schipp relaxed, lowering the revolver. “You want the oar for yourself,” he said nodding sharply. “You want to break its hold on you.”

Kaz said, “I’m won’t be rung out to dry when Dryden is done.” Meaningless words, empty words, but Kaz could see Schipp writing whole books with them behind his eyes.

Schipp raised his hands. He flexed his fingers, focusing on the stairs in front of them. “Stand back,” he said. “I’m going to draw the moisture out of the air above us. The Tides will have other sources to draw on, but I know Tidemakers. I know their favoured tricks.”

Kaz had seen Squallers hired to control humidity in storehouses before. He knew what Schipp was about to do. He wasn’t prepared however for how it would affect him. Schipp was skilled. His power barely swirled the air around them as he reached out to ring all the moisture from it. the walls began to sweat. The ceiling dripped. Kaz’s mouth went dry. His skin itched. It took more willpower than he wanted to admit not to recoil. The urge to draw the moisture toward him swept over Kaz like an afterthought, or an instinct he wasn’t used to. If his Tidemaker power was a muscle then it belonged to an entirely new limb Kaz had not yet learned to manipulate. His thinking was running behind his nature.

Stripping off his gloves, Kaz cupped his palms. Immediately the water streaming down the walls and dripping to the floor flew into his hands and he formed it into a swirling mist that curled above his palms like a tiny cyclone. Reaching beyond with his new, invisible limb, he drew rivulets of water down the winding steps toward his feet. Shouts of alarm rang out from the triangular room above them. Cloaked figures rounded the curve of the staircase. Schipp raised his arms and the two figures were immediately flung against the wall. Pinned there for a moment, a twist of Schipp’s wrist dragged the pair from the wall, through the air and into the adjacent wall. The cloaked figures landed hard. Schipp dropped the air pressure and flattened then before running for the stairs. Kaz lingered just long enough to toss his storm of water droplets over the pair before he followed.

Mounting the steep, winding stairs with the dry, tasteless air serrating his lungs aggravated his bad leg, giving him a reason to linger as Schipp tossed another cloaked figure down the shaft. The figure dropped like a stone, missing the stairs entirely and hitting the floor below with a splash, their cloak spilling out across the flagstones. Kaz waited until he saw ripples of movement under the cloak before he finished his climb.

The Tidemakers waiting above had pulled together. Kaz swung out of the way of the stairwell as Schipp staggered backward, clutching his throat and choking on gouts of water pouring from his mouth. Kaz counted seven figures in suspiciously voluminous cloaks in the room. The tallest of the figures remained unnatural still in the middle of the room, clutching the Oar of Silas in both hands in front of their body. Under the hem of the High Tide’s cloak Kaz thought he saw the ends of four chair legs.

One of the Tide’s, wider through the chest and shoulders than the others, charged Schipp. Kaz used the remaining moisture clinging to his fingers to flick salt into the cloudy darkness within his hood before landing a quick punch to his stomach. The Tidemaker fell back, seized immediately by a much smaller cloaked Tide who hissed, “Use your powers, idiot. We’re meant to be Tides, remember?”

Kaz clenched his fist, ringing more water from Schipp, before he had the chance to register what he’d heard. The Squaller doubled up, clutching at the edge of the wall to stop himself from falling backwards. Kaz caught his arm and hauled him away from the stairwell. His feet were dragged out from under him by twin ropes of water. He twisted and hit the floor on his side, striking his good hip. The bark of Schipp’s revolver rang through the room. One of the cloaked figures collapsed to the floor. The folds of the cloak parted, briefly, spilling around a translucent body that puddled to the floor and lay still.

The chair-balancing High Tide slammed the end of the oar into the floor. A geyser of water erupted out of the well mouth set into the floor. It spiralled up through the air, showering the room in water. The Tidemakers converged, coming together in a flowing, rippling line of dark blue cloaks. Water flowed overhead, moving like a fast-moving river across the apex of the angled ceiling before crashing down on both their heads.

Kaz shoved back against the deluge, throwing the water back into the room. Schipp made a quick motion with his hand and wrist, like a man flicking a fishing rod and dragged one cloaked figure across the floor toward him. A flash of pale skin was just visible within the depths of the figure’s hood the instant before a snaking column of water struck Schipp and sent him spilling across the floor. The snagged Tide, free of Schipp’s power, hastily yanked her hood down around her face.

Twice more the High Tide struck the floor with the oar. Streamers of water twisted through the air, corkscrewing toward Kaz and Schipp. Schipp’s revolver barked again. Another tide dropped. They were down to five against two. Kaz pulled on the puddles of water littering the floor and swept the legs out from under a Tide before Schipp could send the Tidemaker slamming into the wall. Pulling a knife, Kaz crouched over the downed Tide and drove his knife home through the thick folds of the cloak. He was up and moving toward the High Tide without waiting to check if he’d drawn blood.

The High Tide struck the ground again. The impact of wood on stone reverberated through Kaz’s sternum like the memory of the oar slamming into his flesh. He swerved away from the High Tide toward Schipp. The three remaining Tidemakers surrounded Schipp. They’d forced him to the floor and submerged him in a rippling shroud of water. Schipp’s body convulsed as he struggled to breathe. Kaz grabbed the back of one cloak, pulling the skinny Tidemaker backwards. The other two turned toward him, raising their hands. Schipp surged upright, sputtering. Arcing serpents of water reared through the air and slammed into the ground, Kaz was lifted by a coil and tossed aside. Schipp twisted both wrists in a complex gesture, fingers flaring. The High Tide made a sharp choking noise and toppled off the chair. The oar clattered over stone as the thick-bodied serpents collapsed, soaking the floor.

Kaz dove for the oar, noting the open, bubbling mouth of the well. The floor slick with water Kaz caught hold of Schipp and swept him toward the well. The High Tide grabbed for the oar. Kaz was faster, he snatched the oar and shoved it down into the bubbling mouth of the well. Immediately the water pressure dropped and oar and water gurgled down the shaft. He and Schipp stood in front of the well mouth and faced the Tidemakers. They were all back on their feet now, standing in huddle toward the far side of the angular room, the window large floor to ceiling window at their backs. They were not nearly as fast to act without the oar. They waited and watched, shivering and dripping under their shifting cloaks.

Schipp lifted his hands. Flexing his new muscle, Kaz reached for the water at the bottom of the well. Kaz’s ears dropped with an abrupt shift in air pressure that snatched the air from his lungs. The obelisk shook with a sudden, unexpected explosion. The air thundered, the walls trembled. Kaz, Schipp and the Tides were thrown off their feet. A wall of sound filled the tower. The building canted off its usual axis. Kaz felt the building’s foundations collapse. One of the Tidemakers they’d met below must have ignited the bottles he and Schipp had placed earlier. Seizing Schipp’s collar, Kaz reached for the water in the well, forcing it to rise again. Schipp leapt into the shaft.

Before he jumped, Kaz looked over his shoulder. The Tides were leaping out of the window, a straight drop to the waiting ocean below. Fighting against the folds of her cloak, the High Tide flashed him a grin, pock-marked face red with exertion before she leapt, cloak billowing behind her. Kaz made his own leap through the dark as the stone walls crashed in around him. The roar of the ocean in his ears louder than the crash of falling masonry.

Chapter Text

To Catch a Dirty Mercher Pt. 6:

Wylan:

The Merchant Council spilled out of chambers in a mad scramble. Born and raised in the city, Wylan had not spent too much time around farm animals, all the same, Hanraat, Van Deering, Boreg and the other councilmen looked and sounded like a group of panicked turkeys, gobbling and pecking at each other as they poured down the Stadhall steps and hurried toward the nearest gondels to take them to the Lid. It wasn’t possible to see Imperjum from the hook of Hanraat Bay, but when Wylan craned his neck and looked up over the imposing roofs of the embassies, he could see a column of thick, dark smoke rising to the west.

Wylan rode in a gondel with Radmakker, Dryden and Van Deering while Jesper stayed behind to talk to Nina and the Ambassador. Wylan wanted Jesper with him but he understood why Jesper had stayed behind. Dryden had already targeted him once and as Wylan’s Zemeni personal assistant with a colourful past in the Barrel, Jesper could easily be used as a scapegoat when accusations began in earnest. Wylan wanted Jesper somewhere out of the way – preferably a rooftop overlooking the Lid with a good sight-line – and not in Dryden or the other conspirators range.

Wylan was now certain he knew who the conspirators were, and while he’d like nothing better than to clap Van Deering in irons, it was obvious the greedy mercher wasn’t one of them. Wylan knew he should try and win Van Deering over in case the choice between war and sanity came down to another vote, but he just couldn’t bring himself to talk to the man. He consoled himself that doing so would look suspicious as he and Van Deering were not allies and Radmakker was already looking at him under his bushy brows as if Wylan had suddenly become intensely interesting. Dryden, stuffed onto the second bench alongside Van Deering, looked even more nervous than Wylan felt, and as the gondel wended its way along the canal, Wylan became increasingly worried Dryden was going to sink their boat.

The city’s waterways were crowded with vendors and private gondels for the first time in days, but the explosion had paralysed all traffic through the water. Many people had abandoned gondels and brow boats in panic. As the Merchant Council’s flotilla sailed on, Wylan’s heart sank as he watched the streets empty once more. He was partly responsible for this. He’d condoned another attack on the city instead of stopping the destruction. At what point did he become as bad as Hanraat, Van Eagen and Boreg, he wondered? Without meaning to, he met Radmakker’s eyes. The elder Mercher watched him calmly, hunched up on far side of the bench seat. Wylan held the man’s gaze but squirmed inside. Radmakker was a good man, even Kaz admitted that much, and the old man had always treated Wylan with respect and even kindness. Wylan didn’t like playing him this way, but he liked the thought that Radmakker might be on to him even less. In truth, Wylan felt torn. His two selves – Wylan Van Eck, passable demo man – and Wylan Van Eck, Councilman, had come together and the stitches at his seams were barely holding.

The members of the Merchant Council had to leave the water and make the last part of the trip on foot as the Stadwatch closed down the streets and waterways. A crowd had gathered in the Lid, watching the massive column of black smoke and dust rise above the tip of Imperjum. Several naval vessels were already out on the waters, sent from Newfoort to assess the threat. A wall of worried chatter hit Wylan as he pushed his way toward the sea wall. Below him, white surf hissed and fizzed, angry waves slapping the stone wall hard.

When he looked up, Karl Dryden was beside him. “If Lars is dead, I’ll kill you where you stand,” he said quietly as a large wave slammed the wall, throwing sea spray up over the rail.

Wylan didn’t flinch. “If he’s dead, it’s your fault,” he replied. “Your ambition killed him.”

Dryden did flinch. Another wave rose over the lip of the wall, spreading bubbling sea water across the ground and over Wylan’s shoes, soaking his trouser cuffs. Wylan stepped back and into Rollo Blekkermann. Radmakker’s tall, scarred ‘assistant’ gave him a thin smile and doffed his flat cap. “Begging your pardon, sir, entirely my fault, sir,” he backed off but kept his smiling eyes on Dryden. Wylan was left with the strange impression Blekkermann was protecting him and once again wondered just what Radmakker knew, and perhaps more to the point, what he might be hiding.

The Stadwatch had dispersed the civilians, but a large number of lesser merchants, artisans and well-to-do lawyers and bankers had gathered around Radmakker and the other members of the Council. They seemed to be arguing. Wylan was surprised to see Cornelis Smeet at the front of the pack, and relieved that he’d come without his dogs. “This will not do,” said Smeet in a loud voice as he played to the crowd. “Gentlemen, we expect the Merchant Council to protect our interests, but under your watch the city has been subject to days of unrest. And now this! That was the obelisk tower. What in Ghezen’s name is going on?” Drawing himself up, Smeet insisted, “We, the good citizens of Ketterdam, demand answers!”

The men around Smeet murmured angry agreement. Wylan recognised many of them. He traded with several and had fielded investment requests from a number of others. Wylan cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Mister Smeet, gentlemen,” he began in the placating tone of voice he’d adopted for dealing with would-be business partners who would not leave him alone, “I share your concerns, believe me. The Council is here to get to the bottom of this.”

“But what is this? Are we under attack? Are the rumours true? Is this the work of Ravkan Grisha?” Cried Jens Jakob, the proprietor of several bakeries in the city and the part of owner of a number of flour mills in the countryside. Wylan’s mother liked Jakob’s breakfast pastries very much and had invited the man’s wife for afternoon tea more than once. The two women painted watercolours in the garden. Daria Jakob was a genuinely friendly woman who did not treat his mother poorly for having been locked in an asylum for over a decade. Wylan had been looking for a way to promote Jakobs interests on the Council. Maybe today he’d get the chance.

“Yes!” Naten Boreg shouted. “We are at war.”

“No, we’re not,” Wylan said in a flat voice at the same time.

“We are investigating the possibility of sabotage from within,” said Radmakker, managing to speak over both of them. His eyebrows bounced above his deep-set eyes in a complicated dance as he stared down Wylan.

“Of course,” Wylan conceded with a deep nod, “That’s what I meant. It’s much too early to jump to conclusions.”

“Too early!” exclaimed Hanraat, spittle flying from his fleshy lips. “The city is falling down around our ears! What are you waiting for, man? Lantsov himself to come riding into Ketterdam on a white horse!”

“Be reasonable, he’s more likely to arrive by ship,” said Devitt, magnificently missing the point.

“Are we being invaded?” Jens Jakob asked fearfully.

“Obviously not. The seas are clear,” said Radmakker, patience at its end. Raising his voice to cut through the crowd he called out, “Dryden, where is your man, Schipp?”

There was a moment of awkward silence, as Dryden turned from the sea rail, expression so bleak Wylan truly felt sorry for him. When Dryden found his voice, Wylan wished he hadn’t. If heartbreak had a voice it would sound like Karl Dryden. “I don’t know.”

Hennig, the Stadwatch officer Kaz had ensured would be on duty at the Stadhall when they needed him, clicked his heels together and saluted. “Sirs, we’ve searched the Pearl. Lars Schipp is not aboard. We found nothing else amiss.”

“We’ve only just arrived,” Wylan objected. “Are you sure you searched everything? What about the ship’s hold? Did you check the contents?” It was a risk, directing the Stadwatch, but if Wylan did nothing Hanraat would whip the crowd into an anti-Ravkan fury.

“No, sir. We haven’t done that, yet,” Hennig admitted. He looked a question at Radmakker, “Do we have permission to search the hold and seize its contents?”

“This is preposterous,” Cried Dryden, pushing his way through the huddle of merchants. “You have no reason to suspect Lars.”

“I have found of late that reason dictates I should suspect everyone,” Radmakker told him, voice dry as dust, one wild brow arched high up his head, reminding Wylan of the perilous ascent of an ancient headsman’s axe. He turned to Hennig and said, “Bring up the contents and question anyone aboard. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

“You won’t find anything.” Dryden’s fists were tightly clenched at his sides. A little distance away, at the Pearl’s berth, a large wave rose up to slap the gangplank loose. Stadwatch officers cried out as they were lashed by surf.

Radmakker’s large head swivelled on his slim neck toward Dryden. “Control yourself,” he said in a low, thunderous voice. “This behaviour is unbecoming of a member of any council.”

Dryden recoiled, face paling. The waves dropped; the sea retreated. The Stadwatch scurried to find another plank to board the Pearl. Wylan held his breath. Radmakker knew what Dryden was. How did he know and for how long? Judging by the look on Karl’s face he hadn’t realised Radmakker knew his secret. Wylan wondered if his own expression matched Dryden’s as he looked at Radmakker as if the man was a stranger. A dangerous stranger. Radmakker knew more than he’d let on and if Wylan was right, he suspected even more still. He scanned the crowd and found Blekkermann. Radmakker’s assistant just so happened to have stepped into the space between Hanraat and Daan Viklinger, cutting the merchant off from his assistant and bodyguard.

Abruptly and fiercely, Wylan missed his own assistant. He needed Jesper’s glimmer-eyed excitement, his complete confidence that they could win any fight, right now. No sooner had the thought entered his mind that he saw something flash atop the flat roof of the Groots Ketterdam Hotel. The flare of sunlight catching on the glass of a rifle sight? In the brief instant of glare, Wylan thought he saw a familiar small, neat figure, deftly balanced on the pitched glass roof of the Groots rooftop solarium, but when he looked again, Inej was gone.

That brief glimpse had been enough. Wylan wasn’t alone. Jesper and Inej were watching from above and Nina would be somewhere in the crowd, in a different disguise, but with her Ravkan service revolver at the ready. All Wylan had to do was hold his nerve and act like an honest, upstanding member of the Merchant Council concerned with the safety of his city. It helped that at least half of that statement was the truth.

Sensing blood in the water, Hanraat, Van Eagen and Boreg closed in on Dryden. “Well, Karl, what do you have to say for yourself? What’s all this about Schipp and the Ravkans?” demanded Hanraat.

“There is nothing going on between Lars and the Ravkans,” Dryden insisted hotly. “Lars is a patriot!”

“Perhaps too much of one,” suggested Van Eagen, his smile oozing across his face. Dryden wasn’t the only one who tensed. Wylan didn’t like the smug gleam in Van Eagen’s eye. He looked like a man who thought he’d found an unassailable advantage.

“What do you mean by that?” Dryden asked him warily.

“Yes, man, what do you mean by that?” demanded Hanraat, glaring at him.

Van Eagen shrugged in an off-hand, entirely disingenuous, way. “Perhaps we should give credence to what the ambassador said,” he suggested. “Perhaps, Schipp has become overzealous in his ardent desire to protect Kerch from the very real threat of a failing Ravkan state and decided to take matters into his own hands,” he said, his tone so loaded with subtext Wylan was surprised he didn’t throw in a nod and a wink.

Hanraat was also surprised but only for a moment, then his expression shaded toward a redder, more bloated approximation of Van Eagen’s smugness. The two men decided then and there without words that they could save themselves from suspicion by pinning the blame on Schipp, which was exactly what Kaz had predicted would happen once the Ambassador had planted the false suspicion. With Schipp and Dryden as their scapegoats the conspirators clearly thought they’d be free to continue agitating for war while remaining above suspicion. Wylan could see in his face that Van Eagen was prepared to use Schipp’s unfortunate act as a reason to go to war, if only to save face. Kaz had predicted this as well and Wylan was both frustrated and relieved that he could read men’s greed so easily.

“Do you know the third rule of a good con, merchling?” he’d asked when Wylan had raised his concerns that their plan could fail. “Never provoke a desperate man.”

“The conspirators aren’t desperate,” Wylan had argued. “They’re winning.”

“I wasn’t talking about the conspirators,” Kaz had replied, staring Wylan down with flat, shark-like eyes.

Reacting to the insult against Schipp, Dryden erupted like a geyser, all the pressure building in his narrow frame bursting out of him in a wash of words and power. “You can’t do this!” Pointing violently at Van Eagen he curled the fingers of his other hand into a tight fist. Van Eagen choked, a rush of water spilling from his lips as he staggered, gripping his throat.

“Grisha!” Hanraat roared in surprise. The crowd of onlookers scattered like rats. But not so far they couldn’t watch as Van Eagen collapsed to the ground on his side, legs spasming in futile kicks as he fought to breathe through a throat full of water.

A slim blade flicked through the air embedding itself in Dryden’s shoulder, the impact knocking him backward, off-balance. At first, Wylan thought the blade was Inej’s work, until he saw Bleckkermann, knees bent in a predatory crouch, a slim flechette pinched between the fingers of his throwing hand. Daan Viklinger charged forward, barrelling into Karl Dryden. Stadwatch ran across the plaza. Someone shouted something. It sounded like a warning. Instincts honed from having participated in more brawls than a good Mercher should, Wylan ducked, hauling Radmakker’s old bones down beside him and saving them both from the enormous keg of lager – emblazoned with the Pearl’s insignia – that flew through the air, hitting the ground just in front of Dryden with enough force to rupture the keg.

Immediately snakes of golden lager whipped into the air, ensnaring Viklinger and tossing him aside. He landed several feet away on the cobbles with a bone breaking impact. He didn’t get back up. A wall of lager rose in front of Dryden, thickening like a flowing shield to catch the hail of Stadwatch bullets. A wailing wind slammed into the Stadwatch, knocking them over like skittles.
Lars Schipp stood just behind them. He was dripping wet and brandishing what looked like a brow boat oar with an ornately carved staff. “I have it, Karl!” he shouted. “Get over here, before they get you.” Whirling the oar around his head, Schipp whipped up a cyclone wind that spun across the plaza, hurling Stadwatch left and right.

Screams of shock and horror rose from the onlookers. Dryden broke into a run, spiralling streamers of lager swirling around his body. Waves crashed over the sea rail, spilling up over the lip of the harbour. The water flowed in fast moving rivulets toward Dryden and Schipp. “Stop them!” Radmakker bellowed, voice cracking. Schipp raised his arms. The ruptured keg lying on the ground near Wylan bounced into the air and spun toward Radmakker. It hit the mercher in the side, knocking him back down.

The bullet that struck Lars Schipp made no sound. It struck him neatly in the head from what should have been an impossible angle originating from the Groots Ketterdam’s roof. Lars Schipp crumpled to the ground like a pile of soiled linens. Karl Dryden’s scream was the roar of ocean waves slamming into the Pearl’s hull. The vessel groaned and rocked in its berth, listing dangerously on its side. Water spilled like blood over the plaza. The air tasted like salt and brine and grief. Dryden reached for the fallen oar.

Wylan helped Blekkermann get Radmakker to his feet. “Run,” he warned Hanraat and Van Deering who stood, struck dumb with shock, watching Dryden.

A jet of water, resembling a serpentine fish with a wide gaping jaw, arced through the air and swallowed Hanraat whole. Tossing the mercher first one way and then the other, the serpent spat the Hanraat out in a jet of water that carried him over the sea rail and into the raging surf. “You’ll pay for this!” Dryden screamed. “Boreg, Hanraat, Van Eagen – I know what you did! If I’m going down, you’re going with me!”

Naten Boreg tried to run. He didn’t get far. A bullet, later accredited to the misfired gun of a young, frightened Stadwatch officer who could hardly be blamed, but actually coming from Jesper’s rifle, clipped Boreg in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. Dryden’s serpent raced along the ground and snatched him by the ankles, dragging him back over the cobbles as the mercher screamed. Boreg’s flight through the air was even more impressive than Hanraat’s had been. His impact with the hull of the Pearl was very final. His body dropped into the water and was swallowed immediately.

“Ghezen’s mercy. He’s run mad! He has to be stopped,” wheezed Radmakker.

Wylan agreed. He’d seen more displays of Grisha power than he’d ever wanted to in the last few days. But Dryden’s power shook him not because it was so much greater than anything he’d seen before. Wylan had already faced down that kind of power from Jurda Parem and the Etovost Infected. But those people had been drugged, their feats empowered by something outside of themselves. The waves beating the hull of the Pearl, the water dragons lashing the air, these were a product not of a drug but of pure, unadulterated grief. Dryden was out of control and his power had broken the bounds of the Little Science because science could not constrain raw emotion. It could not control grief. The love of Karl Dryden's life lay dead at his feet and the tempest rose in answer.

Or did it?

Screaming against the surf, Karl Dryden held the oar above his head yelling, “You can’t stop me! I have the power of the Council of Tides. I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you!” A great groan of straining wood rose from the Pearl as the ship, listing dangerously and buffeted by endless waves, finally gave up and capsized into the harbour waters, its hull punched through by several gaping holes. A tidal wave rose, smashing the shell of the Pearl into the harbour wall and sweeping the debris across the plaza. The wave brought with it one other thing: a fast-moving ocean mist that swiftly filled the air.

Shapes moved in the mist. A dozen cloaked figures emerged. They converged on Dryden, who yelled, “No! I have the oar. You can’t touch me! I’m the one with the power now!” Cloaks rippling with unseen eddies, the Council of Tides were not impressed. A thick set figure in the middle of the advancing crescent swept his hand in a negligent gesture and a wave slapped the oar right out of Dryden’s hands and tossed it away.

Dryden tried to get away. Several Tides raised their arms. At Dryden’s back the mist condensed into a wall of rapid forming ice. The High Tide whipped a second oar from inside his voluminous cloak. He slammed it down on the ground and Dryden collapsed to his knees. He wailed, “No! A fake? You tricked me. You tricked me!”

The High Tide’s voice boomed through the air, loud as the pressure in a man’s ears as he drowned. “Karl Dryden, you have stolen from the Council of Tides and will be pay for your crimes with your life!” As one the Council of Tides raised their hands and the mist glittered with shifting ice crystals. Frost coated Dryden’s soaked clothing. It stretched across the cobbles and spun in the air like floating specks of cold, glittering light.

The High Tide raised the oar. He rolled the staff so that the paddle flicked one way and then the other in a complicated series of movements that mimicked the hand gestures Ravkan Grisha used. Karl Dryden began to bleed. Even from a distance, Wylan knew what was happening. It had nearly happened to him in the Ice Court when two Tidemakers drugged with Parem had started to pull all the blood in his body out through his pores. Jesper had stopped them that time. There was no one to stop the Tides. No one to help Karl Dryden. The only person who had cared enough to try was already dead.

Wylan watched in silence, as horrified as everyone else in the plaza as the Tides exacted their justice. “We are the Council of Tides,” bellowed the High Tide. “We protect Kerch. We guard her shores. We watch and listen. We demand respect! Those who lie dead here today conspired against these isles and shores we protect. They have paid for their crimes with their lives. Let their deaths bear witness to one truth: it is the Council of Tides alone who protect the peace of Kerch!” The waves crested, sweeping the plaza one last time, when the waters receded the Council of Tides was gone, along with Dryden and Schipp’s bodies. A great weight dropped from Wylan’s shoulders; a hammering tension he didn’t know he’d been carrying sloughing off him.

Radmakker tutted under his breath. “Flashy,” he grumbled. “Nico really needs to tone it down. The last time he was this bad was twenty-five years ago. I hope he’s not planning to knock the Stadhall down again.”

Wylan stared at him. “Who is Nico?”

Radmakker’s eyebrows danced. “I beg your pardon?”

“You said ‘Nico needs to tone it down’,” Wylan repeated.

“I think you’ll find I did not.” Radmakker’s right brow lifted. His left dipped. Wylan couldn’t read, but somehow he was still able to read a warning in those bushy brows. “Help me up, Van Eck,” Radmakker ordered. “Someone needs to sort out this mess, and Van Deering seems to have run off and that fool Devitt is asleep against that wall there and I suppose we should get a medik for Van Eagen. He appears to still be breathing.” Radmakker did not sound particularly pleased about that. He fixed Wylan with an inscrutable look, eyebrows dangerously still. “You and I will have to deal with this on our own.”

Wylan swallowed. “Yes, sir.” He leaned down and helped the older man up, supporting his weight. He didn’t make a sound when Radmakker grabbed him and hauled him closer, murmuring in his ear.

“There are no innocent men in Ketterdam, Van Eck,” said the old mercher, “And I know more about this city than any Barrel boss could dream. I’ve played her games longer than you’ve been alive. Your father loved himself above all things, but I love Kerch. Remember that.”

Wylan’s spine straightened. He had never liked being threatened. He met Radmakker’s shrewd eyes, and wondered if Kaz had any inkling that they’d all been played. Dryden hadn’t been the Council of Tides only inside man. But none of that mattered, because even if there were no innocent men in Kerch, Wylan knew one thing. “I love this city too, Radmakker and I’ll do anything to protect her.”

“Excellent.” Radmakker’s eyebrows were still and Wylan read approval in his face. He leaned into the silent Blekkermann’s side as he and Wylan picked their way over debris toward the knot of Stadwatch and merchants huddled at the far side of the plaza. “We’ll have to fill the empty seats on the Council,” mused Radmakker. “I suppose Smeet will have to fill one, unctuous little man that he is. Do you have any further recommendations?”

Wylan didn’t hesitate. “Jens Jakob the baker.”

“Indeed?” Radmakker’s eyebrows bounced. “My sister is fond of his chocolate dipped waffles. I suppose there are worse choices,” he decided, “but he’ll have competition. Van Deering’s son, for one.”

“That may not be the best appointment, sir,” said Wylan smoothly. “I have reason to believe Gerry’s philandering may become public.” At least it would once Jesper made good on his threat to tell Oleg from the Anvil about Gerry’s other boy at the Obscura. Wylan may not enjoy using blackmail but he’d enjoy having two Van Deerings on the council even less and after today, he was going to worry less about his honestly, so long as he maintained his integrity.

This was his chance to place truly honest, hardworking men on the Merchant Council and give the voices of the city’s working people a chance to be heard. He had no intention of letting that chance escape. In the back of his mind, he remembered Jesper’s joke about a coup. It hadn’t quite worked out like that, or at least, if this had been a coup, Wylan wasn’t the architect, but it was close enough to make him uncomfortable. He pushed the thought aside and walked on with Radmakker, arguing names and appointments, as he remembered his father once doing long ago. Tonight, or next week, he’d worry about the Council of Tides’ reach, the power they flexed behind their theatrics, and whether they’d used Kaz, Dryden and Radmakker to reorder the Merchant Council to their liking.

For now, he walked across the Lid, swept in sea water, washed clean of the bodies of the guilty and the foolish, and stared straight ahead at the broken mast of the Pearl, rising from the harbour waters, her gold bunting flapping mournfully in the smoke laden breeze wafting over the waters from the ruined tower. Tomorrow, Ketterdam would breathe easily again. The threat of war, plague, and Grisha was finally over.

Chapter Text

Epilogue: Ending to Begin:

Inej:

Inej had waited above the Lid, watching the water. Watching the Stadwatch scavenge the wreck of the Pearl and find the incriminating crates. She watched and she waited until the storm on the horizon drew into the harbour. Kaz had told her not to, but she alone chose when she listened to his orders and she had chosen to perch on the Groots Ketterdam’s roof as the Pearl’s ruptured cargo spilled its toxic contents through the waters and the shifting breeze blew the smoke from the shattered obelisk tower out to sea.

From the vantage point spotting for Jesper, she had seen Schipp paddle back to the Lid on a piece of broken flotsam, his power propelling him through the water. She had watched him climb the harbour wall. She had watched him fall to Jesper’s bullet and she had watched Dryden fall to his own pride soon after. She had watched, wide-eyed as the conspirators died and the Merchant Council almost ceased to be. She had not seen the Council of Tides approach; the sea mist made it impossible to count the number of cloaks figures. She had not been able to see if one of that cloaked number favoured a bad leg or leaned on a cane. Hope was the cruellest blade. It cut both ways and the only way to wield it was to grip the blade tight and let it bleed her. If Kaz had been suborned by the Tides then she would know that he lived at least. But if he was not with them, then she could believe that he had escaped their control as he had promised he would. She refused to believe that the ocean had stolen his corpse away.

“Do you believe the Tides will give you your freedom?” she had asked Kaz on the bottle boat as they rode toward the Lid. She had been sceptical. They both knew that freedom had to be won, not given and of all the parts of this plan Kaz had spent the least amount of time working out his escape from Imperjum and the true Tides.

“I don’t intend to find out,” Kaz had answered. “While the Tides are busy with Schipp and Dryden I’ll slip out of the city and board the first ship leaving Zierfoort harbour. I’ll be gone long before the Tides notice.”

“Are you sure? The Tides have many eyes in many ports,” she had warned.

“But only one mind,” Kaz had argued. “As long as the quorum is distracted, I’ll be fine.”

“And if they are not distracted?” she demanded, annoyed by his carelessness. Before he could answer they passed under one of Ketterdam’s many low bridges and shadow had fallen over him like an eager lover, draping him in concealing darkness. She barely saw him shrug.

“The Tides are lazy, not stupid. They know they won’t get me in a cape and cowl,” contempt dripped from his tone as he conveniently forgot all the times he had worn disguises, including capes and cowls, for jobs in the past. But those jobs had been of his own making, the disguises ones he chose. Wearing Tide colours would be the same as letting them brand him as property and Inej understood how that felt only too well. “They’ll kill me if they get the chance,” Kaz had said. “It’s what I would do. I’m too dangerous to leave alive.”

Inej had thought as much. Kaz could do what Dryden had failed to do. He could find out the quorum’s true identities and use the knowledge against them. He would never submit to their rule. It was not in his nature and he’d blow up every last obelisk tower in the city before he allowed himself to be locked away. Flight from the city was his only option and Kaz had known it all along. This was the real reason behind his decision to fake his own death. It had been a message to the Tides that he did not intend to stay in Ketterdam and fight them for control. He had given them and him an out that left both sides unharmed. The question was whether the Tides would take the out.

“I pray the Saints are with you on Imperjum,” Inej told him. She expected a jibe, a retort that he didn’t need her prayers. Instead, he gave her something else. A promise.

“Don’t look for me,” he said abruptly. “I’ll find you.”

Inej had never known Kaz to make an idle promise. He kept his word and he followed through on his plans. She released a soft breath, a little whisper of tension escaping her lips. “The world is a big place and you are not her master Kaz, you may find that promise hard to keep,” she warned him. She would wait, she thought, and she would watch, because she was the Wraith and finding the hidden was what she did, but she feared that the world may yet defeat them.

As the rains had come in to lash the rooftop she had turned her back on the Lid and returned to the others in Gelden District. Although Kaz’s plan had worked differently than he had intended, the result still favoured them. Their goal had been to force Dryden to expose the conspirators and their plot publicly, which was why when Inej had left Kaz at the Lid that morning she had sent messages to the lesser merchers of the city, men like Cornelis Smeet, warning them of a danger to the city to ensure there would be witnesses to the farce Kaz had planned. Facing a greater embarrassment than they had after Van Eck’s arrest at the failed auction, the Merchant Council would have no choice but to make peace with Ravka to save face. With all the conspirators save Van Eagen dead, Wylan and Radmakker had assumed control of the Council and made a pact with Ravka to hunt down the last of the Bluebell pirate syndicate.

It was a neat solution that pleased more than just the Council and the Ravkan ambassador. The Bluebell pirates had eluded the Wraith for many months, but Inej quickly found herself in receipt of an official Writ of Mark signed by Wylan Van Eck of the Merchant Council and the Ravkan Ambassador on behalf of the crown, granting her official licence to hunt them down, and all the money and resources she could want to do it. Kaz, who had carefully drawn the Bluebell syndicate into a trap before Etovost had struck, had found a way to make his labours work for her even in his absence. If it proved to be his last gift, Inej had been determined not to squander it. She had left Ketterdam after saying goodbye to Wylan and Jesper and set sail for Ravka with Nina, Kuwei and Svetya.

“I’ll write if there’s any news,” Jesper had said the day she left, enveloping her in a bone jarring hug.

She had hugged him back, just as hard. “There won’t be,” she had told him. Whether Kaz’s luck had held or failed him at the last, it didn’t matter, he was dead to Ketterdam.

“Then I’ll write to tell you about the terrible weather,” Jesper said fiercely. There had been a taut, wiry tension to his fidgeting, worry glinting in his grey eyes. They were no strangers to death, but life without Kaz in the Barrel was strange and unsettling, like a becalmed sea.

In the end, the calm did not last long. Jesper had written to her to tell her that a gang war had broken out in the Barrel, one so fierce the Merchant Council had to send the Stadwatch in. Many arrests were made, Hellgate filling with the losers of the turf war that had grown up in Dirtyhands’ absence. Keeg had only narrowly avoided hanging and had ended up going down for a five year stretch. Jesper’s words had been troubled as he wrote about the Dregs and Inej knew a part of him wanted to be fighting with them. But he wasn’t part of the gang anymore. None of them were. Not even Kaz.

The Dregs had come under attack on all sides. Anika had defended Kaz’s empire bravely but the loses mounted. The Palace fell to Moll Gerty’s Blacktips. The Silver Six burned in a Liddies attack. Soon, the Dregs had lost most of the territory Kaz had gained when he took over the gang. Still, Anika’s Dregs fared better than the Liddies general, Gervase, who swiftly lost his life when he challenged Koort in parlay and lost against the Pointers’ general. The Dregs fortunes were helped somewhat when Wylan lost his case in Council chambers to ban the sale of wormwood in the city. According to Jesper, Wylan was very annoyed and Jesper had yet to tell him he’d bought shares in the liquor. Inej told him to sell the shares and never tell Wylan if he wanted to keep a roof over his head.

The last letter Jesper wrote had been while visiting his father with Wylan in Novyi Zem. He told her the Barrel had returned to what passed for peace in the alleys but that he had heard a rumour of a new player, a group of phantom thieves who struck under cover of thick canal mist and left only wet footprints behind them. Jesper wrote that the group’s last haul, targeting the Meschel glassworks in Belendt, would have impressed even Kaz. His letter had been upbeat, but Inej wondered what chaos the Lions would unleash next and if Kaz's hand still guided them.

Life went on, months passed and, in every port, Inej sought word on a Kerch stranger with a limp. From Weddle to Leflin, Eames Chin to Os Kervo the answers she received were not the ones she wanted.

The Bluebell syndicate fell to her knives and her crew and the Wraith's reputation grew. Inej returned briefly to Ravka for Zoya Nazyalensky’s coronation. She had gone because she was worried about Nina. Her friend had vanished into Fjerda shortly after returning to Ravka and even meeting Mila Janderstat and her Fjerdan lover at the coronation did not soothe Inej’s concerns. There could be no real peace in wearing a mask forever, but Nina’s path was her own and all Inej could do was pray that it would prove a kinder one going forward than the one she had walked already.

If there was further trouble from Etovost or Jurda Parem, Inej did not hear about it. She rescued many Grisha from slavers as her mission took her first to the Wandering Isles and the harsh coasts of the islands of the Isenvee chasing the Precious Child. Her quarry from before the Etovost disaster, the slaver ship had evaded all her attempts to run her down on open waters. Finally she learned that although registered in Leflin, the Precious Child was contracted by a procurer in the Southern Colonies. Inej set a heading for the port of New Zierfoort, a year and six days since leaving Ketterdam.

Her target was Yannick Yul-Zir. Shunned by respectable merchers in Belendt because of his Shu heritage, Yul-Zir had opened several gambling clubs and pleasure houses in New Zierfoort, but most of his wealth came from slaving. He bought and he sold, facilitating the trade in many other ports and funding the Precious Child and her crew. Yul-Zir was said to be clever and cautious; he made sure to keep his operations small to avoid conflict with the larger syndicates, while still providing venues for human auctions across the Southern Colonies. Inej knew if she could take out Yul-Zir she could land a blow to several of the other, larger syndicates as well.

It would not be easy targetting Yul-Zir. The Southern Colonies were covered in jungle and wetlands and creatures waded in the shadows that would make a rinca moten hesitate. New Zierfoort reminded Inej of Ketterdam, without the nicer parts. It’s streets were water-logged, the air was heavy with the fug of dream weed, rain and static-heat and it was home to fugitives, outcasts, chancers and gamblers. Hard men and women that even the Barrel did not want. They posed no true threat to the Wraith, but it was not long before news reached her that her quarry was dead. The town buzzed with rumours. Many were saying that Yannick Yul-Zir had run afoul of the Shu, while some said it was the Ravkans and others that the captain of the Precious Child had turned on him.

Inej knew that last was not true. Bikon Ardell, captain of the Precious Child was chained up in his own hold and she held the keys. He would die spilling secrets and begging for his life, as others had before him. If the Saints heard his prayers for mercy, she doubted they would answer before Sankt Petyr slit his throat.

“It was that accountant,” he shouted, rattling the manacles wrapped around his wrists. Manacles he had snapped closed around the wrists of countless children he had stolen from their homes. “He’s the one who did for Yul-Zir.”

“What is his name?” Inej asked.

“Demjin. Loic Demjin. Damn crip,” Ardell sneered. “I warned Yul-Zir there was something wrong with him. No clerk has scars like that. He took the ledgers. I know he did.”

Inej believed him. Demjin. She knew exactly where she had heard that name before. It was a message. One only a Crow would understand. For instant the night held its breath. Her heart skipped and then life and her heart resumed its rhythm. “Do you know where he went?” she asked.

“If I did do you think I’d’ve stuck around here,” Ardell complained.

“Yes,” Inej had answered. “Your leg is broken.”

“And whose fault is that,” demanded Ardell.

“Yours,” Inej answered without sympathy. “When Havel Thirsk wanted to leave your crew you broke both his legs and threw him overboard. He was fifteen. He joined your crew because his father was in debt to you. He did not want to be a slaver.”

“How do you know that?”

“I am the Wraith. All whispers reach my ears.” She drew her blade.

Ardell’s eyes went wide and white. “Please. I have children.”

“Seven of them. You forced yourself on the girls you stole for Yul-Zir. They are better off without you.”

Leaving the Precious Child and her captain as a message for the others who would come after, Inej took to the ramshackle rooftops and crossed the town. The moon was a large white eye in the night sky, gilding New Zierfoort’s squalor in cool silver light. Inej dropped down into the mud street, the scent of spiced meat cooking over open fires tickling her nose. She heard Suli singing on the air. Slipping around the corner of the tar black warehouse onto the dock where the Wraith was berthed she heard the harsh tones of spoken Kerch. But as harsh as the language was, the speakers did not have Kaz’s rough stone burr.

She found Specht on the wharf. He turned to her, dismissing the Kerch informant. “Have you heard?” he asked excitedly.

She nodded. “A man called Demjin stole Yul-Zir’s ledgers.”

“A man with a cane and a deft hand at cards,” Specht told her cheerfully. “Word is he went inland to hide in the jungle.”

“He did not,” Inej said confidently.

Specht nodded. “The terrain would be murder for a man with a bad leg. Even for him. Reckon he’s still in the city?” he asked.

Inej looked up at the moon bathed hulk of the Wraith, her masts standing tall against the velvet night, sails furled. Inej’s crew would be returning soon. They were due to set sail before dawn. Inej had posted a watch, but Tulin was young and would not think to watch from the starboard side. It would be hard for her to hear the practiced tread of an experienced thief from up in the crow’s nest. Inej’s heart rate picked up. On silent feet, Inej climbed the gangplank. The deck was still, its boards silvered.

Tulin scrambled down from the crow’s nest. “Captain,” Inej’s newest recruit saluted, a habit that puzzled Inej. Tulin was Suli and all she knew of the sailing she had learned on her father’s small fishing vessel before they had been capsized in shallow waters off the southern Ravkan coast near the border with Shu Han.

The girl, only a few years younger than Inej in age but decades younger in experience seemed excited. “What has happened, Tulin?” Inej asked.

The girl hesitated. “An odd swell off the starboard side. It hit the hull low, near the cannon portholes. I don’t know how it did it, but the wave opened one of the portholes. Don’t worry. Barely any water got in the hold and I sealed it back up,” Tulin reported proudly.

Inej folded her arms. “You left your post to go to the hold?”

Tulin’s eyes widened guiltily. “Only for a moment, captain,” she whispered.

A clever thief would only need a moment’s distraction. “Next time, wait for Specht to return before leaving your post,” she ordered, stepping around the girl and heading for the door down to her cabin.

Inej’s quarters were exactly as she had left them, save for three noticeable additions. A pile of leather bound ledgers sitting on her small table. A seagull headed cane, beak hanging from the table edge and the young man sitting on the bench seat beside the table, his leg propped up on the remaining chair. He wore a midnight blue coat over a blue waistcoat with a stitched pattern of green embroidery that reminded Inej of Ravkan kefta – she knew well that this particular thief had always enjoyed mocking convention. A curved brimmed hat was pulled low over his brow. His scarred, suntanned hands were spread over the back of another ledger and his long, clever fingers rifled through the pages.

“Yul-Zir used a code in his journals,” Kaz told her without looking up. “One favoured by Shu spies. There’s a man in Konstrat to the south who knows the cipher. His price is reasonable.”

Inej said nothing. She waited. Kaz lifted his head. His face was shadowed by the brim of his hat. His skin, once as pale as the moon outside had met the sun in the last year. Bottom lip split, stubble on his chin, sawdust and mud staining the shoulders and sleeves of his jacket, and blood spatter speckling his white shirt, he looked healthier than Inej had ever seen him. Grisha, she thought. If he stayed ahead of the witchhunters, he would live a very long time indeed.

Inej approached the table. Kaz dropped his leg from the chair. “It is easier to approach Konstrat from the sea,” she said.

“Yes,” Kaz said. “I’m going to need passage. Do you know a ship sailing south?”

“You could try asking at the harbourmasters office,” Inej suggested drily. “But I doubt you will get far. You are wanted man, Loic Demjin.”

He had the grace to grimace. “I needed a name you’d recognise,” he said.

“You said you would find me,” she reminded him.

“I did. But I found Yul-Zir first.” Kaz took his hat off, resting it on the back of the bench seat. Nina, Inej thought, wherever and whoever she was now, would be pleased to know that he’d grown his hair out, perhaps to hide the bullet scar running along his scalp. Or to sheathe and soften the permanent razor edges the Barrel had left him with.

The effect was an odd one; a disguise almost as transforming as Nina into Mila but at the same time, considerably less remarkable. This was Kaz. Differently the same. He would always be Dirtyhands because blood on the soul did not wash clean and she would always know him. But she thought that she would enjoy discovering the new facets he hid behind Loic Demjin’s disguise. Inej sat down at the table, careful not to disturb the hang of his gull cane. Once again, new but not so different. Inej could tell the cane was fabrikator work and wondered how Kaz negotiated with Grisha now he was one.

Kaz took his time turning back to face her. He cleared his throat, the rough sound surprisingly awkward amid the soft creaks of the wooden ship. “Before we begin negotiating passage,” he said, “I need to tell you something.”

Inej folded her hands over the table. She waited. Kaz took his time. Inej lost patience. “I sail at dawn, Kaz.”

Kaz looked at her. His pupils were large, containing dark oceans in their depths. “I love you,” he said.

Something quiet settled inside Inej. A knowledge that had been poised just on the edge of believing found its home in her heart. Yes, she thought, these were words she could believe. And answer. She had loved him for a long time. But now she could take him home. The world had turned enough to allow it. Aloud she said, “That will not save you from swabbing the deck. Everyone on this crew earns their place.”

For a moment Kaz just stared at her. She thought that for once she had surprised him. Then his gaze dropped meaningfully to the pile of ledgers. When he looked back at her he quirked a brow. Inej was unmoved. “I could have found those on my own,” she said.

“I saved you the job,” Kaz argued. “I know where Yul-Zir’s money came from. Once I have the cipher for his code I’ll have a complete list of all his associates from here to Ahmrat Jen.”

“You killed my target.” Inej told him severely, “I give the orders on my ship. I decide when we strike.”

Kaz looked at her. Inej looked at him. “I’m here to negotiate a partnership,” he said.

Inej cocked her head. “You think I need a partner?” she asked.

“I hope you want one,” he said quietly. He reached for his cane, taking the gull’s head in his hand, he tapped the bottom against the boards of the cabin floor. It was a nervous gesture, Inej realised. Something she had never seen him do before.

The needle of the compass in her heart swung wildly once and then stilled. It pointed in one direction. It pointed true. “You will learn Suli,” she told him.

“Why?” Kaz looked at her in puzzlement.

“My parents do not speak Kerch,” she said.

Kaz stilled. The tapping stopped. Then it started again at increased tempo. “I won’t pray to your Saints,” he warned.

“No saint would trust a prayer from your lips, Kaz,” Inej retorted.

Kaz said nothing. He looked at her. Inej let him. She knew what he would not ask. “Your heart is a secret I have tried to steal for a very long time,” she told him. “You did not make it easy.”

“But you did it anyway, Wraith.” Kaz spun his cane. “Swapping the deck?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Inej firmly. “Be grateful I’m not making you climb the rigging.”

Kaz’s lips twitched. “You may not like my swabbing technique,” he warned. Raising his right hand, he crooked his fingers. The standing water in the jug Inej had forgotten to tip out earlier rose into the air, floating in a liquid ball. Kaz loosely clenched his fist and the ball condensed into a hardened sphere of ice, wisps of airy frost rising from it like cold steam. The solid rock dropped toward the floor. Kaz flicked his fingers and the ice shattered before it could land, bursting into an expanding ball of whitish mist and vapour that rose to spill back inside the jug before returning to water.

Inej stared, heart in mouth, as Kaz rose a little stiffly and walked over to the jug. He tipped it out, spilling fistfuls of ice nuggets, glittering like diamonds, into his palms. “For you.” He limped over and presented his haul to her. Inej looked into his face. She had seen his pride many times, in many jobs. Heard the burr of satisfaction in his own cleverness in his voice as he gloated over fallen foes. Seen it in the swing of his cane, the little flick he gave the brim of his hat as he adjusted it on his head. But she had rarely seen him happy with a simple trick performed only to please.

Before she accepted his treasure she told him softly, “I do not need jewels from you.” The glittering ice crystals reminded her of Tante Heleen’s necklace, until they melted into a warm stream of water that caressed her skin like a lover’s fingers, soothing any lingering chill.

“You’ve never needed anything from me,” Kaz said – a lie that he meant with complete sincerity. Sitting down so he could cup his hands and catch the trickle of water before it hit the floor, he admitted without meeting her eyes, “I like giving you things.”

Inej raised her perfectly dry hands. She turned her palms up and down. She thought of the Wraith’s deck washed clean and swept dry in an instant. She thought of fresh water for her crew to drink wrung from the air when out on open ocean leagues from port. She thought about Kaz’s contact in Konstrat and the secrets in Yul-Zir’s ledgers that would soon be hers.

“You’re wrong,” she told him. “I think I like your techniques very much.”

She had managed to confuse for a second time. He looked at her swiftly in surprise. Then he gave her a gift she favoured over any jewel or secret code, he smiled Kaz Rietveld’s smile and offered her his hand. “Do we have a deal, Captain?”

“And much more beside,” she said taking his gloveless hand in hers.