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They did not give up. Their Inej would never, and so they would not either.
As soon as they found out the slavers’ ship was headed to Ketterdam, they bought a map and studied the streets from the West Stave to the Geldstraat. They’d found a merchant whose wife was willing to teach them Kerch if they let their daughter attend every show. They drank in the gossip about the lower parts of Ketterdam. About the wars between Dime Lions and Razor Gulls, about the tattoos to mark the members of the various gangs and about the boy named Dirtyhands who committed atrocities with gloved hands.
Saving a few coins after every show, they would one day pay for a place on an honest ship.
When a party of men flying the Lantsov flag approached, the entire camp eyed them with necessary caution.
“We’re looking for the family of Inej Ghafa, missing for three years. She looks something like this.” Their leader spoke. Another man held up a drawing.
“Do you know her? Is she safe?” A friend of theirs tentatively asked.
He shrugged. “Someone paid me to look for them and bring'em to Ketterdam.”
It could be a trick, a bastardly scheme from slavers without means to use violence.
The man fumbled a piece of paper from his coat. “He wrote down that, if there is any hesitation, I should mention that her favourite flowers are geraniums, just like her mother.”
The mention of the geraniums drove them into each others arms. Whoever wrote that knew exactly who Inej was.
They did not have to pack anything. Clothes and food were provided during their voyage.
“Who sent you?”
The man shrugged again. “One mister Rietveld made the arrangements with some higher up in Ravka. He specifically ordered us to find you.”
Two terrifying weeks at sea later they docked in Ketterdam. The noise and the crowds were alienating. People shouted in every language. Zemeni traders loaded their Jurda and the Shu and Kerch merchants chattered about trade in a combination of both languages.
None of them mattered. Not when their Inej ran towards their ship. Older. Taller. With her hair in a braid and foreign clothes. Their Inej.
To wait until they could step off the ship was torture. To run down the gangplank and sweep her into their arms was ecstasy.
They wept and prayed when they held her after four years. Thanked the saints for the miracle that made this happen. When they were finally willing to let go, Inej introduced them to the young man who had stood and watched them.
“This is my friend, Kaz. Kaz, these are my parents.”
The young man extended a gloved hand. “Kaz Rietveld.”
They did not look too closely before they went to hug him too. This was the one and only mister Rietveld, the one who had sent people to retrieve them.
Inej pried their arms from the boy with a strangled gasp. “Mama, papa, please don’t.”
There were no words for how they wanted to thank him. Instead they put their limited Kerch to use into a stammered sentence. “Thank the saints for all you have done. We will be forever grateful.”
Mister Rietveld did not blink. “You owe me nothing.”
Inej took their hands as they walked away from the ships. Further towards the city, they approached a carriage. There appeared to be a group of waiting people but mister Rietveld, Kaz, walked right past them. The coachman helped them get in as if they were royalty.
“To the Geldcanal please,” Kaz asked.
They sat on each side of Inej, each holding one of her hands as if letting go meant another four years of separation.
The carriage stopped in front of what could only be described as a mansion. The few pictures they managed to see fo Kerch included large canal houses like these.
“Mama, papa, some of my friends live here,” Inej said while walking them up the steps to the door.
A young lady opened, and they were ready to wrap her arms around his girl too when she stepped aside to hold the door open. A servant. Whoever Inej’s friends were, they had servants.
“Thank you.” Inej nodded to the girl and led them to the living room.
They passed rooms of opulent gold with statues of marble and bronze lining the hallways and the two boys in the living room matched. They wore mercher’s clothes but had to be around Inej’s age.
“Wylan! Jesper!” She called. “Would you mind if my parents stayed here for a while?”
The red haired boy almost jumped into Inej’s arms from excitement.
“Inej! I am so happy for you!”
For the first time since they had met on the docks, Inej let go of their hands.
She hugged the boy back, and then hugged the Zemeni boy too.
Kaz had appeared behind them in the hallway. Somehow he managed to close the large wooden door without so much as a creak. “This is Wylan Hendriks," Kaz said, "it’s his house. And that is Jesper.”
They wanted to ask questions. Their eyes met and they knew they had the same ones burning on their tongues.
Taken from their arms as a child to the arms of two friends, from a slaver’s ship to a mansion in the Geldstraat. Whatever had happened in between was an unknown tale.
Dinner was served on the large oak table in the dining room. The servants, Wylan’s servants, had laid out extra plates and cutlery and the cook had improvised a lavish meal.
The boy named Jesper was an easy conversation partner. He and Inej talked about mundane things, like the stroopwaffles they should try and the sights of Ketterdam to see. Wylan joined in sometimes to share how much he loved the opera, and how he would take all of them to see his favourite musician from a private box.
The three spoke as if they were tourists, merely here to see the life their daughter built in Ketterdam. It felt nice to sit here and eat. If they listened to enough of Wylan’s stories, and saw Inej laugh at enough of Jesper’s jokes they could pretend that they did not see the small scars on their daughter’s face. They could tell themselves it was not strange that young mr. Rietveld barely said a word and kept his gloves on.
Wylan was in the middle of the story of how he and Jesper met Inej. Apparently they met at a tannery and went to work for Inej and Kaz.
“Does your family own many tanneries?” They asked. They thought they misheard when Wylan said he worked for someone, after all a young man with his house would have people working for him, but they ignored it as a small mistake in their Kerch.
“Actually-”
Jesper kissed him on the lips before he could continue.
“Jes...” Wylan protested.
“Oh sorry, do your Saints have rules for this?” His hand did not leave Wylan’s shoulder.
They were quick to answer “Of course not!” to the boy who had made Inej laugh with his terrible puns. “You are her friends. We are happy to learn Inej lives in a house where kisses can be given so freely.”
The atmosphere in the room instantly turned cold and even the candles dimmed for a second. Inej stared at her plate, fork still in her half eaten fish, and did not move.
“Inej, darling, is everything all right?”
“Did we say something wrong in Kerch?”
Wylan reached over the table to put his hand on her shoulder. Jesper pressed his lips together, trying very unsubtly not to look at Kaz.
“I’m sorry,” Inej choked out. A single tear made it past her eyelashes and she wiped it away with her free hand.
They were not sure who their daughter was speaking to. They looked around the room, feeling as helpless as the day they had lost her. It did not escape them how she’d reached for Kaz’s hand, her nails digging in the leather of his glove.
Kaz’s voice cut the painful silence into dread. “There was a time when Inej’s kisses had to be paid for in gold.”
That evening, they found Kaz and Inej in the salon.
Her story had a black side, one filled with nights she still suffered from. They knew this, no victim of slavers could escape such a fate, but it hurt impossibly more seeing its effects in person.
Their daughter sat curled up in one of the mansion’s jacquard couches, hidden in a corner as of she could disappear every second. Kaz sat solemly on the other side of that couch, the space between them painfully obvious. A show of respect for what she had endured? Or a cold refusal of comfort?
“I am not sure if I can tell you,” she whispered.
They wanted to reach for her, to take her hands and hold her, but strained to stay seated on their own sofa.
“You do not have to, ever. We would never force you to say things you do not want to speak of.”
“But if you do, we will listen, and we will love you, no matter what you tell us.”
Inej nodded. Her eyes were wet with more tears, but she did not let them go. T hey held each others’ hands instead.
How many tears had their daughter shed to be able to keep these from falling?
Part of them was relieved she could not tell them.
In the following weeks, their stay at the Van Eck mansion turned back into a tourist trip. They saw the views of the harbour and had their dinners in restaurants that came highly recommended from a friend named Nina, who had moved away. Wylan even made good on his promise to take them to the opera.
In the evenings they talked about home, and all their fellow performers. A boy Inej had played with when they were younger was now a master acrobat, and the twins from the red wagon moved perfectly in sync.
Sometimes Inej shared snippets of her life in Ketterdam. Short anecdotes about how she had stolen paintings from houses like Wylan’s and climbed over the rooftops like an acrobat. It wasn’t the full story, they knew it was not, yet they did not press further.
“If anyone can do the impossible it is Kaz Brekker.” Jesper said one evening, during a game of cards.
“Brekker?”
“Did he give you another name?” Jesper laughed. “Of course he’d trick...”
“You mean Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands?”
Jesper stopped laughing, sensing this was yet another dead serious matter.
“That’s what his enemies named him.” Wylain said quietly.
Somehow that was not comforting at all.
Things fell into place. How the ferryman had quietly taken them to the Geldstraat, how people equally stared and averted their eyes as they walked past. The gloves, his quiet steps, the ability to command a party of Ravkans to search for them.
They exchanged a glance, knowing they shared the same burning question. How did a boy like that get to know Inej’s favourite flower?
They only came to understand when they learned about the tattoos. Jesper and Wylan were swimming in the canal, or attempting to, when she worked up the courage to ask them about the scars on Inej’s arm.
Jesper wore his crow proudly on his forearm. Wylan on his shoulder blade, where it was usually hidden under his shirt. “The other merchlings can’t see it, but he did not want to go without one.” Jesper explained.
They nodded as if it made sense. Getting the tattoo of a gang while no one but intimate friends would see it.
“Does Inej have one?” The question was blunt.
“No.”
“Aren’t they... mandatory? I mean, if you want to join the....”
Gang. It felt like such an ugly word.
“The dregs?” Wylan helpfully cut in. “Yes.”
They let the unspoken question ask itself.
“Inej is the only one without it. Kaz insisted she did not have to.“
-
Ten years later they still despised the water, the effect of the waves now familiar to both of them. They tried to sail as little as possible, which remained hard when they alternated between living with their caravan and Ketterdam. The man who ferried them the first time still did so at their request, claiming Rietveld paid him for each trip. Whether he was paid in gold or more days to live, they never found out.
The Hendriks mansion had plenty of rooms and one of them was now their semi-permanent home. They visited often, hoping Inej would be there at the same time.
They had met Jespers father on a few occasions, and, as parents do, agreed on the dangers of the life their kids were living.
“When we are there,” they told Colm, “we will keep an eye on them.”
Inej had returned home to them once, and begged them not to tell anyone a thing about her life in Ketterdam.
“I am afraid the Saints will speak their disapproval through their voices," she'd whispered.
“Anyone who disapproves of your courage is not worthy to say the Saints’ names.”
Still, they had promised her, and Inej pretended to be an honest captain carrying cargo for her merchant friend Kaz Rietveld.
A young acrobat had asked her if she was going to marry her merchant friend.
They had held their breaths in fear of bad memories. Marriage and children were painful subjects still, and she said she never wanted to.
The gossip still told terrifying tales of Dirtyhands, but they no longer feared them. They’d offered to clear Kaz’s reputation, at least among their own camp, but he insistently declined.
The Wraith had become a legend. The ghost ship named after the ghost of Ketterdam’s underworld. Every sailor they met knew of it. Soon, the gossip told equally terrifying tales of her. Like recognises like. There was no one more dangerous than their Inej.
In Ketterdam, mothers of merchlings told their children the wraith would get them in their sleep if they were bad. In the barrel, crows boasted about her accomplishments to lions and gulls. Every time, they were torn between asking for their stories and hoping Inej would one day tell them herself.
Kaz never sent her geraniums. Instead he sent her letters detailing every mark and every target to strike. When The Wraith docked in Ketterdam, there would be a man or woman with a crow tattoo awaiting her with news. Inej admitted, one fateful night, that he’d written once about how he missed her.
The boy was sparse with affection. As easily as it came to Wylan and Jesper, as foreign it seemed for the boy Inej had entrusted with the matters closest to her heart.
Wylan and Jesper could act like kids their age, giving each other ridiculous pet names, good night kisses and pushing each other in the canal as a joke. (A good part of their conversations with Colm consisted of puzzling out what their most recent inside joke was.)
In all the times they got to see Kaz in Ketterdam, which was only once each visit if they were lucky, he did no such thing. He wore his suit and his cane as well as his grimace. The only sign of affection was a geranium in the lapel of his coat during a lunch together at Wylan’s house.
After ten years, they did not mind anymore. They nodded whenever they heard the stories of his crimes and politely shook his gloved hand, never asking any questions.
Inej had whispered one evening that Kaz could not bear the touch of human skin. The gossip agreed. “Dirtyhands beat a man to death for taking one of his gloves.”
They arrived late in Ketterdam the evening Inej turned 20.
A storm had delayed their travels and they hoped she would be at the Hendriks mansion with her friends. Unfortunately, a woman with a dregs tattoo told them The Wraith was due to depart that very evening, and they rushed to find Inej to give her a birthday hug at least.
They saw them sitting on a roof of a sailors’ bar, both clad in the colours of the night. In fact, only Kaz’s pale skin gave away their location. The cold glow of the moon that turned Inej’s eyes silver made him blue like a corpse.
Knowing where to look, they smiled knowing Inej was well. She had a knife around her ankle that had not been there the last time they’d seen her and they could hear her laugh quietly as they approached.
Inej’s head lay on the boy’s shoulder, his pale hand on her knee, their fingers linked together.
In the many years that would follow, they would never see such a sight again. Kaz kept his gloves on and Inej visited Ketterdam only once in a while.
There was a part of him Inej got to see as the only person in the world, and a part of Inej only the Rietveld boy knew of. They would never get to see, but they did not have to.
The boy did not give Inej flowers and he never would, but he knew every single one of her stories and understood to give her knives instead.