Chapter Text
Inej knows the rooftop of First Ketterdam Bank like the back of her hand. She knows a lot of rooftops in the city like that—she can travel the streets of Ketterdam without setting foot on the ground, if she chooses. She often does, if only to see the look on her friends faces when she drops out of thin air. Only Kaz can tell where she is at all times, though if Nina’s paying attention she can use her powers to tell when Inej is sneaking up behind her. The rest of them scare too easily.
This afternoon though, she’s not on the roof of the bank waiting for Matthias to walk by so she can drop behind him and see if she can startle him into swearing in Fjerdan. Nina swears she’s heard him do it, but no one else has any proof and they’re not sure if they should believe her. This afternoon, the alarms of the bank are going off and stadwatch cars surround it, their own sirens blaring. The whole scene is so loud Inej would lift her hands from the roof and cover her ears, if she didn’t want to risk losing her grip and falling to her death.
She knows the interior of the bank too, though not as well as she knows the rooftop. Still, she’s been inside First Ketterdam Bank half a hundred times. For all that commerce is sacred to the Kerch in a way she’ll never understand—it’s hard to hold commerce in a particularly high regard when you yourself have been bought and sold—banks still make a tempting target for thieves. She’s been both the thief and the hero fighting them, depending on the day and the person she answered to at the time. So yes, Inej knows First Ketterdam Bank well, and this simple excursion doesn’t worry her at all, beyond the fact that she really needs to study for her history test tomorrow and she’s not sure how long this is going to take. She’s told Kaz about the test, but apparently he hadn’t spread the word to the rest of the gangs of Ketterdam. Rude.
She catches Jesper’s eye across the roof. He’s balanced on the opposite edge much more precariously than she is—he’s never had her sense of balance, despite the long limbs that make him look like a stork—and she sees him twist his hand in a familiar motion, small and tight to the chest, only enough for her to notice because she knows what she’s looking for. The only concession to their activities is a plain black domino mask on his face and a black hoodie that covers the bright turquoise button-down he wore to school, in comparison to the dark purple, knee-length hooded coat and scarf wrapped around her face that Inej has on, a costume she developed herself to distinguish from the Lynx. The metal doors of the bank—blocked from view by her position on the roof—creak, and Inej knows that he’s expanding them in the frame, sealing the entrance. The people who are in the building will stay in, and the people who are outside will stay outside. One stadwatch officer—not one she knows—bangs his fists on the door and swears.
“They know we’re here.” Inej reaches one hand up to her ear, adjusting the small earpiece as Wylan’s whispered voice crackles across the speakers. She spots one of the stadwatch officers in the crowd below mirroring the gesture and wonders if Wylan’s copied a face in particular or is relying on the department being big enough for it not to be suspicious if no one knows him. Either way, he should blend well enough, even without a disguise. With his powers, it’s not like he needs one. Not that he couldn’t afford it, if he wanted to wear one. Being the son of the head of the Merchant Council has its perks, even if he has to do his super-heroing behind his father’s back.
“We’re inside, waiting for Inej,” Nina’s voice is so low that Inej has to strain to hear it, likely to keep the robbers from overhearing her. Kaz had heard rumors the Liddies were going to hit First Ketterdam Bank today on one of Inej’s regular spying missions for him, and had sent Nina and Matthias in ahead of time, waiting for them to start causing chaos. From what Inej could tell—Kaz never told anyone all of his plans, even her—they’re in line for one of the tellers, posing as one of those couples that got married instantly after finishing school, where the husband joins the military and the wife either becomes a nurse or joins a pyramid scheme. Nina had greatly enjoyed the role, and she and Jesper had spent a good 20 minutes coming up with an increasingly elaborate backstory before Kaz had cut them off, an amused smile he’d almost certainly deny playing around his lips. Not that Inej had been paying attention to his lips, any more than she’d been paying attention to all her surroundings in the way that she was supposed to! She had no feelings about Kaz Brekker’s lips, and what they might feel like pressed against her shoulder as he bandaged up her wounds. No feelings at all. Certainly no experience with the matter either. No. Kaz Brekker’s lips were nothing beyond being a way for his imperious demands to pass into the world, and that was all her opinion on the matter.
“Go, Inej.” Kaz says into her earpiece, in the same lofty tone he uses to deliver all his orders. She rolls her eyes, and all thoughts of Kaz’s lips disappear. Hearing him speak can be useful like that. She can see his car in the bank parking lot, sun glinting off the black paint, but she can’t see him sitting inside. Knowing Kaz, he’ll turn up somewhere totally unexpected, acting like they should have expected him to be there all along. She nods—hoping he can see her from wherever he’s stashed himself—and closes her eyes, letting herself fade into the shadows the same way she likes to sink into a warm bath at the end of the day.
Most people would likely expect shadows to be cold as they traveled through them, cold and dark and frightening, with monsters sniffing around the edges. Those were the stories of shadows she heard growing up in Ravka, after all. Stories of the Black Heretic and Santka Alina and all the other saints with powers like her own, stories that had sustained her ever since she was taken. Despite the value they give her, she knows some parts are untrue. To Inej, who’s been traveling through the darkness since she was old enough to walk, the shadows are warm and inviting. The shadows are home.
Her powers are limited in range, or she would simply have traveled home once Heleen had removed the power-suppressing bracelet the men who stole her had clamped on. She certainly can’t travel across oceans, and she wouldn’t bet on her powers even letting her cross a particularly large river. But the trip from the roof of the bank to a shadowy corner of the lobby is an easy one, a jump she can make with nothing more than a slight tug in her stomach.
Like she suspected, Nina and Matthias are waiting for her in the lobby, Nina clinging to Matthias’s arm with a very convincing look of terror on her face. She gives Inej a subtle wink before going back to her original expression, teary eyes wide and lips trembling. Matthias mostly just looks uncomfortable more than afraid—he’s never been much of an actor, unless he’s truly pressed. He’s one of those rare people, in Inej’s experience, to whom honesty always comes first and most easily—even Wylan, easily the most innocent of all of them, is a practiced and easy liar simply from experience with his father. With Nina though, he can push through it, if only to keep her safe. Which is why they’re usually paired together on jobs, if Matthias doesn’t need to be the muscle for some other angle.
Inej recognizes most of the Liddies, even with the ski masks they’ve got on. If they bothered to look in the shadows, most of them would likely recognize her as well—she’s got quite a reputation in Ketterdam. First as Heleen’s Lynx—a time she doesn’t like to think about, even though it’s likely detailed in her stadwatch file—and then as the Wraith, once Kaz had found her and helped her learn to be dangerous in an entirely different way. The Ice Court job, as much of a mess as it wound up being in the end, only made them more infamous. But the Liddies have never attracted the best and brightest, and she goes unnoticed even as she steps out of the shadows, some twirling around her legs like an affectionate cat.
They’re not alone, however. She sees Eamon, Pekka Rollins’s bruiser, first and knows that Kaz is going to be furious. He always is when Pekka Rollins is involved. A few of the other robbers have the green and gold armbands of the Dime Lions on, though she doesn’t recognize them under the ski masks. New recruits, maybe. They’re in the center of the room, sorting out what money’s been brought out of the vault so far. They’re not only involved in this operation, but they’re also leading it, and now Inej is as furious as Kaz will be. How could she have missed something as important as this?
Nina catches her eye, and Inej knows she’s seen it too. She sees Nina clench her fists, Matthias crack his knuckles. The Dime Lions add something new to the equation—the Liddies aren’t to be underestimated, no one is in a fight, but they’re more numerous than skilled. The reputation of the Crows might make them back off without too much injury to civilians. The Dime Lions, however, are not so easily intimidated. They’ll take out civilians without a second thought..
Inej won’t let that happen.
She tilts her head to Nina, sending the shadows sneaking across the floor as a part of their pre-arranged signal. Nina should drop the robber’s heartbeats, send them crashing to the ground. She and Matthias will then make sure they’re subdued, while Inej takes civilians and their payment—as Kaz calls it—to safety. When they’re all mostly out, Jesper will unseal the doors and Wylan will handle crowd control, keeping the stadwatch away and destroying any evidence they may have left behind. Kaz will then pop up somewhere and lead them back to the nearest safehouse—where that is, Inej isn’t sure exactly now that Haskell’s is off limits. The room she rents in a lodging house is out if she doesn’t want her landlady to be suspicious, Jesper will never allow them to go back to his house for fear of his father noticing, and no one would seriously suggest going anywhere near Jan Van Eck. Nina and Matthias have the space and the lack of supervision, but they’re too far away—going all the way across town, they’d practically be asking to be caught. So Kaz will have to direct them to wherever they’ll be working from once the job is over.
Nina should drop the robber’s heartbeats, Inej has given her the signal. It’s a practiced move, one they’ve done a hundred times before, in a hundred different circumstances.
Why isn’t she?
She makes eye contact with one of the bank security guards—they’ve all been herded into a corner and had their wrists tied, with two of the Liddies standing guard over them. Kaz stares back at her, dark brows furrowed with the same confusion Inej knows must be reflected on her face. Nina’s frozen, and Nina never freezes—they trained that out of her in Ravka, she’s always said. So why is she frozen now?
“Plan B?” the whisper travels through the shadows, finding its way to all her friends. Across the lobby, she sees Kaz nod.
Inej lets the shadows fall away and steps out into the center of the lobby. There’s a glass skylight that makes up a majority of the center of the roof—it’s why she and Jesper had to balance on the edges—despite the rainy weather in Ketterdam. Today though, is one of those rare gloriously sunny days. Golden light streams through the glass, hitting the white marble floor of the bank and bringing out the faint gold veins in it, making the whole center of the room shine. She’s still looking at Kaz to make sure he’s ready to follow through on his part, and she sees his breath hitch, his throat bob as he swallows hard.
“The Wraith,” Eamon growls, and all hell breaks loose.
Nina drops her terrified expression and turns, bringing her knee up into the crotch of the robber closest to her. He drops to the ground with a loud cry of pain. Matthias picks up one of the more muscular Liddies and throws him across the room, sending him flying into a group of his fellow gang members and knocking them all to the ground like a group of human bowling pins. Inej lets two of the knives she always carries—Sankt Petyr, Sankta Anastaysa—slide from her sleeves into her waiting hands before turning to face Eamon head on.
He's not carrying a gun, thank the saints—Jesper’s not in the bank, and his powers require him to have a line of sight to deflect the bullets. Instead he carries a large chain, swinging it through the air with a sinister whistling noise. Inej dodges easily, leaping back with a back handspring she can’t resist adding—no matter how hard anyone tries, no amount of training will ever knock the acrobat out of her. As much as she tries to blend into the shadows, she still can’t resist showing off just a little.
The Dime Lions are aware of this tendency though, and a pair of arms wrap around her upper torso as she rights herself on her feet, pinning her back against someone’s chest. Her first reaction is to panic, go still and quiet and hope to be unhurt. She waits for a power-reducing bracelet to clamp around her wrist, to hear Heleen’s laughter. But it doesn’t come. She feels her knives in her hands, hears the sound of metal hitting flesh, and remembers where she is.
She’s only been gone a second; just enough time for the man holding her to still be startled when she drives a knife through his wrist, twisting her own body so there’s no risk of accidentally running herself through. He yowls, dropping his arms to grab at his injured wrist. The action releases her and gives her a chance to finish turning to face him, slamming the hilt of her knife into his temple and sending him crumbling to the ground as his eyes roll back in his head. She kicks him once for good measure, before turning back to the fight.
Most of the robbers have been taken care of. Only Eamon and a girl not wearing the colors of either gang are left. Nina and Matthias are tying the wrists of the men they’ve taken down, while Kaz—having produced his cane and a knife of his own from somewhere—is facing off against Eamon as the girl sneaks around behind him.
Inej shudders, remembering Dunyasha. Small, slight teenage girls should never be underestimated. She doesn’t dare call out to Kaz—turning his back on Eamon while he’s carrying that chain could be equally deadly. Instead she steps into the shadows again, a slight tug jerking in her stomach. She appears behind the girl, only having to take a step forward to put a knife to her throat.
The girl twists away, dark braids flying out behind her. She’s Zemini, or maybe from the Southern colonies—her skin a few shades darker than Inej’s own, and from what she can see of her eyes through the ski mask they’re dark brown as well. There’s something familiar about them—though from what she recalls of both the Dime Lions and the Liddies rosters, neither gang has any members who match this girl’s description.
She might have been part of another gang—the Razorgulls or the Black Tips, maybe—or someone from school, or just one of the dozens of people that you inevitably pass on the street every day when you live in a city as large and densely packed as Ketterdam. But none of those feel right, and the mystery itches at Inej as the girl pulls away, moving to kick her in the head. She dodges the blow, punching the girl in the stomach and knocking her back a few steps. She recovers quickly, dodging Inej’s next hit and following it up with a punch to the jaw that she doesn’t move fast enough to avoid. She’s reluctant to use her knives—this girl is her age, and seems more terrified and confused than anything, lashing out. She’s got training though, that’s obvious just from the way she moves. She aims for vulnerable spots, keeping Inej on her toes, able to hold her own.
Kaz has finished his fight with Eamon—having used his cane to catch one of the links in his chain and pull the older man forward, sending him crashing to his knees on the marble floor before knocking him unconscious with another blow from his cane. Watching the scene, Inej barely avoids the girl’s next hit and has to take a couple steps back to avoid her swinging fists.
It’s time to finish this. A cloud passes over the sun, and Inej’s field of combat is suddenly widely expanded. She disappears into the shadows yet again, appearing behind the girl just as she whirls around to look for her. Only inches behind her, she tackles her to the ground and winces internally at the sound her chin makes cracking against the marble floor.
She pulls off the mask with one hand as she reaches into one of the pockets of her coat for rope to tie her hands with the other. When Inej catches a glimpse of the girl’s face though, the rope slips from her fingers and falls to the marble floor of the bank lobby without a sound.
“Kesh?” she whispers, and then Nina’s grabbing her arm, pulling her away from the girl—from Kesh, saints, what is she doing here—and into the shadows, urging her to pull them all away.
Instinct and force of habit takes her to the shade of the building just behind the parking lot, where Kaz’s car and Jesper are waiting. She sways, drained and unsteady on her feet—in addition to taking Nina, she’d also transported Kaz, Matthias, and a familiar brown briefcase she knows is full of kruge. Taking so much at once is always a strain on her system.
“Are you guys okay?” Jesper jolts to attention, twisting one of the half-dozen rings on his fingers. He’s bouncing on his toes, clearly restless after waiting so long. “Inej, what’s wrong?”
“I saw someone I knew,” she says, sitting on the curb as Nina crouches beside her. Kaz pauses with the passenger side of his car open, secret compartment under the seat ready for the briefcase he’s holding. She sees Jesper and Matthias exchange glances. “Not a gang member. Someone from Heleen’s.”
It’s perfectly silent, except for the wailing of sirens and cars in the distance. Inej doesn’t talk about the Menagerie—half pleasure house, half provider of super-powered people for any task you could think of. She’d been brought there when she was 14, taken from Ravka by a group of men with the skills and technology to hunt people like her down, and sold to Heleen. She’d been there a year before Kaz had come, looking for information and potential partners on a job. She’d pushed through the bracelet—Heleen kept those of them with powers contained except when she sold their skills instead of their bodies—and made a small jump, ignoring the shooting pain it had caused in her desperation to get away from that place. The next day, he’d come back for her, and she’d tried to forget all about it. She hadn’t, not even a little, but she’d managed to push it down. Until now, when she saw Kesh again.
Nina hesitates, but Inej reads her gesture even without the ability to read heartbeats and track breath, and leans in for the hug she so clearly wants to offer. Jesper rests a hand on her back, warm and reassuring. The cool texture of his silver rings reminds her of her knives pressed against her skin. Matthias gives her one of his soft smiles, one of the ones that makes him actually look 18. Kaz unfreezes, going back to stashing their loot. She can still feel his eyes watching her, and summons up a smile, letting him know she’s alright for now.
They drive over to the café where they’ve arranged to meet with Wylan. He arrives about 15 minutes later, having exchanged his stadwatch uniform for his usual trousers and overlarge sweater. He’s carrying his canvas satchel over one shoulder, looking like any other student. “My part’s done,” he says, sliding into place next to Jesper, who kisses him on the cheek. He steals a sip of the other boy’s coffee before continuing. “You’re normally good about evidence, but I checked, and they didn’t get anything.”
“We’ve got a bigger problem,” Kaz says, setting his own mug of black coffee on the table. Inej knows he snuck a couple cubes of sugar in it when no one was looking—no one but her, that is. Black coffee is part of his image, the same as the gloves and the cane and the black high-top converse, but Inej knows Kaz has a secret sweet tooth. “Inej recognized one of them. Pekka Rollins and the Peacock are working together.”
“Shit,” Wylan says, and no one responds. That about sums it up, really.
Even the amount of kruge they managed to get, which Kaz starts counting the second they get back to the anonymous studio apartment serving as their new safehouse, doesn’t improve anyone’s mood.
Nina’s trying though, leaning back on the couch where Inej is perched, going through her history notes. Somehow, the test feels less important than it did an hour ago. The others have gone to get takeout, try and salvage what’s left of the day. There are rumors about a press conference this weekend by the Merchant Council, which can’t mean anything good.
“We’re taking bets,” she says, leaning back on the ratty couch. She and Matthias had dragged it off a street corner and taken it to the Slat, and Kaz must have taken it when he left Haskell’s after the Ice Court job. With his super strength Matthias could have done it himself, but Nina insisted on helping. Inej perches on the arm next to her, stealing a handful of trail mix from the bowl in her lap and getting an indignant squawk in response, enough to make her smile.
“On what?” She asks, pulling her class notebook from her backpack to keep adding to her flashcards. It’s part of her routine, and routine is what she’s craving right now.
“Kaz’s powers.” Nina pulls the bowl of trail mix closer as Inej leans down to grab another handful. “I think it’s locks. Like a more specific version of Jes’s metal manipulation.” Inej doesn’t respond, ducking her head to hide an amused smile. “We all know what Matthias thinks.” Matthias had memorably accused Kaz of being a demon the first week of freshman year, and had stuck to his story since.
“I don’t think Matthias really thinks that anymore.” Inej flips through her notebook, looking for her class notes from earlier today. Already it feels like a lifetime ago. “Jesper insists it’s sleight of hand. He doesn’t think there’s any other reason he keeps losing to him in poker.”
“Has Jesper considered that he might just be bad at poker?” Nina asks, tossing an M&M into her mouth. Inej giggles, pressing a hand to her mouth, as it misses and hits her on the nose. Nina pouts. “Betrayed. I’ve been betrayed by my best friend.”
“Have you considered you’re just bad at throwing M&Ms?” Inej counters. Nina throws one at her and she catches it easily.
“Cheater,” Nina mutters. “Well Wylan insists he’s a mind reader.”
“That I might believe,” Inej says, glancing between her notebook and her flashcards and making a few additions to her timeline.
“So is that what you’re betting on?” Nina asks, tilting her head.
Inej just shakes her head. “No. Betting on this kind of thing’s not my style,” she lies.
Only Inej, it seems, knows the truth. It makes sense. Inej gathers his secrets after all, and knows Kaz is no mind reader. She’s seen him practice with the newest lock the merchers come up with to keep him out, run through sleight of hand tricks till he can do them as easily as breathing. She’s seen Kaz without his gloves, and knows he’s not hiding claws or permanent bloodstains.
Only Inej knows the truth. Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the most feared anti-hero in the entire city of Ketterdam, has no superpowers at all.