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Chapter Text

TWO MONTHS PRIOR:

The Council of Tides found Kaz Brekker pickpocketing a drunk a few streets east of the Zovercanal.

They came in a flow of blue cloaks and mist, and they said as one;

"Kaz Brekker."

Kaz, crouched on the cobbles with his hand in the unconscious man's pocket, barely blinked.

"If you're on the way to a Geldin District fancy dress party, you're ever so lost, I'm sorry to say…"

"We've given you plenty of free reign, boy," said a woman to the right. "Put lots of slack on your leash. But you know you have to heed us when it's time. You may be a crook, but you honour deals like any Kerchman."

Kaz's eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't reply. The leader said;

"We are alone, Brekker."

"Regardless, I'd rather not be hounded by a bunch of cape-twirling tower princess types if I can possibly avoid it," said Kaz, pocketing a gold chain.

A hand in the sea of blue cloaks twitched. Kaz caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. They always came to him as a united front; a unit. But they weren’t good enough at staying that way, and it was obvious when they started to get impatient with him. Apparently today, they’d arrived predisposed to it. So they were expecting him to argue with them about something? Interesting.

"Never know who could be listening," Kaz said, straightening up idly. "Can't blame a man for caution in the Barrel." He leant on his cane and readjusted his hat. "Let me see. One, two, three, four… Ghezen. Only eleven? Whatever happened to your grand old friend who usually did all the talking?"

A ripple of unease passed through the Tides. No one liked that Kaz had learned to tell them apart, somewhat.

"Our leader has… passed on," said someone stiffly. A younger man with a hint of an accent. Probably a Ravkan Grisha who’d defected. Kaz mentally filed that away for later, whenever later was. He had noted minor things on each of them; one coughed like he’d taken a consumption in his youth– some talked like Kaz, with the plague-damaged voices– one man had missing fingers. Kaz suspected lots of them were ex-sailors or labourers.

"Gout, was it?" said Kaz.

"Heart failure."

"He was so old I thought it would happen far sooner," said Kaz dispassionately.

"He was blessed with the gift of the Etherealki, and therefore lived the same long life–"

"Blessed is not the word I'd use," said Kaz pertly. "Shall we get this over with? My answer is no."

"Brekker, we agreed–"

"The only thing anyone agreed to was that we swap information when necessary. And then you leave me alone, and I leave you alone. Everyone wins. It's very lucrative." He propped his elbow contemplatively on a nearby crate. "After all, like I’ve said; you wouldn't want anything untoward to happen to your towers…"

"We know exactly what you do and don't control, boy."

Under his hat, Kaz's eyes were flinty and strange. He said;

"You have no idea what I could control, if I had a mind to do it."

"Brekker, what we want from you is very simple,” said the younger man. “We’d rather not deal with you at all. But our numbers are depleting– and while no doubt you’d simply love the harbours of this city to go unregulated, we appeal to your stakes in Fifth Harbour. No one knows the city better than you. Find us some new members–"

"No." 

"Find us some new members, and–"

"Find yourself some new members," said Kaz. "Put up flyers. Have an open day. Find some nice, discreet children with promising talents for making pretty ice patterns and swirling mist around. Teach them to stop this rotten island from sinking. Pluck prodigies from mercher mansions. But don't send me to pull you some Grisha ferals from the depths of the Barrel."

"Your selfishness astounds us.”

“It shouldn’t,” said Kaz. 

“And it would be so very hard for you to make your profit, in a nonexistent city." 

"Believe me, in a major disaster, I'm sure the Crow Club would stand above the waves just that smidgen longer. Just long enough, for example, for me to count my final profits–"

"Damn it all, Brekker, this isn't a joke!” exploded the man who appeared to be the new leader. “You understand how we work, and we certainly know things about you that you'd rather weren't public knowledge. You know the secrets of half the people in this city. If you can provide us with a list of the potential Tidemakers in this city for us to pick from, we will leave you to your petty pickpocketing and conning."

“Do it yourselves,” said Kaz, perfectly aware that was the sort of thing the Tides did not do. “Besides, what if they don't want to work for you?" 

"Then we'll leave them be."

"Like you leave me be?" said Kaz. 

"This is about the fate of Kerch, Brekker! Have you no pride? No loyalty to the island that raised you, that made you so rich?"

Kaz tugged on his gloves.

"I made myself rich. And I hear Novyi Zem can be quite lucrative for Kerch immigrants."

"And we hear that you've been recently pushing the boundaries on what we agreed with you,” came the snide reply. “Unusually fair sailing always befalls the Wraith, even in the worst of weather. Wouldn't you say?"

"Very fair," said Kaz briskly. "Perhaps the saints smile on Inej Ghafa. She certainly values them much more than the rest of us miserable sinners. But you can't really expect me to let you have a say on every harbour berth– besides, that’s rather a lot of work for a group that desperately needs to recruit."

“We could–”

“I know perfectly well that you can drown me on dry land, that you can meddle with my blood flow just like a Heartrender, that you can interfere with my imports and exports and send a wave to destroy the Slat,” snapped Kaz. “I still don’t see anything in it for me. And I don’t make deals which aren’t mutually beneficial. So put your paltry brains together and think of some incentive– and then we’ll talk. Don’t say I’m not reasonable. Goodnight.”

They didn’t reply as he turned and left them standing there, and he didn’t look back.

“Oh Saints, it still smells like piss and coalsmoke.”

Nina and Inej came down the Wraith’s gangplank into the routine chaos of an evening at Fifth Harbour– Inej in her sailor’s garb, and Nina in a massive fur-cuffed coat that wasn’t strictly appropriate for late June. In her defence, it had been colder in Fjerda.

“No nostalgia, then?” said Inej smilingly. “Not even a little bit?”

“Saints, no,” grumbled Nina, though not with any real conviction. “I spent all my time in Ketterdam either being shot at, or sitting in various freezing rooms and listening to Kaz plotting. I am back solely to see my friends, and because I want a favour from Ketterdam’s resident big bad.”

“You’ll sooner get yourself pickpocketed on East Stave,” warned Inej, eyeing the coat. Any half-decent pickpocket would see that as a target. Nina shrugged.

“I’m sure I would, if I hadn’t sewn the majority of my kruge into my undergarments and worn no jewellery.”

“The majority of it?”

“Well, I think I should at least let the child pickpockets of the Barrel have a chance,” said Nina, generously. “Come on, Inej, I’ve not forgotten how this city works– and I know that Kaz would consider it a very funny welcome back. Hello Nina, I hawked your necklace and your earrings while you weren’t looking, and I want you to pay me to give them back. Bastard. He better be feeling hospitable tonight.”

“I can’t believe you actually want to go and play the tables at the Crow Club,” sighed Inej. “Wasn’t the appeal lost on us after we had to clean up vomit every morning?”

"You have plenty of crew members who are wanting to come too!” Nina reminded her. “And I imagine the crew of the Wraith can hope for better luck from the Crow Club or the Silver Six than any other gambling palace. As for me, I anticipate being treated like the royalty that I am– rather than what I used to be, which was an extra hand for chiselling chewed jurda off the table legs and replacing the baize on the Ratcatcher tables. I want Kaz rigging tables in my favour, like he does to keep the rich tourists playing. I want the good gin– not the dreadful cheap stuff they give you when you don't specify. I want Kaz to actually deign to be there– which is why I demanded you come with me. He’s far happier to ignore me than he is to ignore you."

Inej, fittingly, ignored this statement entirely. Nina laughed and hooked her arm through hers.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go and see the Bastard of the Barrel and make him buy us drinks. We’ll only gamble a little bit, so as not to offend your saints too badly…”

“Nina, we’ve all done far worse things than play a few games of Ratcatcher.”

“That’s the spirit!” 

Nina hadn’t been to the Crow Club since the end of the auction job, and now she took a fast, interested inventory of what the Dregs had done to it in the last year and a half. 

Quickly, she realised there was no need to wonder what Kaz had used his Ice Court payout for; his prize gambling hall had expanded almost monstrously, swallowed up several other buildings on the street to dominate half the facade, and it had definitely had a spruce up. It was still the same windowless black and red cavern that they had prowled when Nina had been in the Dregs, but it had a tinge of the upmarket to it that it had never used to; the impression that it was cleaned semi–regularly, anyway. The doormen dressed a little better, the steerers were a little subtler, the barkers brooked better deals with considering tourists. Kaz had always liked to snare the fattest pigeons.

“I like that,” Nina said approvingly, eyeing the huge silver crow over the doors. Inej rolled her eyes.

“So does Kaz.”

“They should name it.”

“I told Kaz they should name it Pointless Vanity Project.” said Inej disapprovingly. Nina laughed.

“Proj, for short…”

They went up the roaring facade arm-in-arm, dodging drunks and arguing couples, and Nina certainly did not fail to notice the eyes following them– from both Dregs she recognised, and Dregs she didn’t. And she definitely saw the word Wraith mouthed between a few. 

“I’m surprised they’re not all fighting to lay down coats for you,” said Nina, grinning. “Could you get us carried in on a palanquin? Did we even have to walk here, or could we have gotten Kaz to commission us a carriage and four?”

“This is why I usually approach from above,” said Inej, but she didn’t truly look exasperated.

Anika passed them on their way in, did a double take, then saluted them happily. Nina curtsied to her, which got a grin.

“Still all the same people, then?” Nina said to Inej, watching her go.

“I think so,” Inej returned a nod from Keeg, standing with his arms folded near the bar. “Kaz keeps bringing in new kids, but they do the grunt work for now. The steerers, the lieutenants, the bouncers, the enforcers… they’re all old faces.”

“Guess he doesn’t want the new kids getting complacent,” said Nina, eyeing the wheel spinning at a nearby game. “They all have to take the Kaz path of life, which is apparently made of hot coals and broken glass and demons grabbing your ankles.”

She looked around the cavernous black hall– at the dancers currently onstage, the bartenders arguing with drunks, the shouting gamblers. 

“I missed this, Inej.” She turned brightly to the Captain and her uncertain crew. “What are we playing?”

“Whatever you want. I’m here on your request.”

Nina pondered this.

“What’s the game Kaz is best at rigging?”

Inej snorted and directed them over to a Ratcatcher table.

Initially, their dealer was a very young Kerch kid in the customary red waistcoat– clearly one of those youngest Dregs members that Kaz had plucked from the streets and given a job. He looked tired; Nina hoped for his sake that the shifts would change, soon. The players at this table were definitely attempting to prey on his weariness, and there was a lot of furtive glancing and dithering between turns going on. He wasn’t a bad dealer, but he wasn’t as fluid as the older ones. He’d get better with age, Nina thought… if he survived that long, anyway. Some of the older players at the table were eyeing him with the distinct look of sharks getting ready to ambush a seal. Nina wondered if they were going to witness a fight. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

She snorted and placed her bets again, not truly that interested in winning– although a few kruge certainly wouldn’t be unwelcome. It would be more fun to watch the drama when other people didn’t. Inej was watching quietly, leaning on a pillar behind some of her crew members that were playing. There was a little gaggle of younger university students at the other end, to make up the rest of the gamblers. Poor pigeons. Nina hoped there wasn’t another Jesper among them, a naive kid who would be swallowed whole by the Barrel and spat back out too late. But perhaps that was a fool’s hope.

A bell went off for the dealers’ shift change, and the dealer practically shot up, straightening his cuffs madly. Enjoy your break, kid, Nina thought. He looked like he wanted one. 

Still, s he looked at her pitiful hand and huffed, hoping whoever they got next was going to be better luck for her. The group of gamblers opposite her were clearly banking on a similarly young kid they could also cheat, and even the students looked hopeful–

Which obviously meant that the hand that clamped down on the previous dealer’s arm and pulled him away was black-gloved, and the voice that said “Overstappen, Ruben,” was very familiar indeed.

Ruben jumped like he’d been struck with lightning. Nina beamed. One of the students at the end of the table downed the rest of their drink in one, in an attempt at self-fortifying– but they’d need something much stronger than that, no doubt.

“Yes, boss–” Ruben fumbled. “Sorry– I’ll go–”

He fled, leaving the deck on the table. Slowly, Kaz took his vacated seat, eyes narrowed. He looked the same as he always did, narrow-faced and grim– apart from the red waistcoat of the Crow Club dealers. Inej’s crew, to their credit, seemed unimpressed. A Shu tourist behind them muttered an oath to the Six Soldiers.

Nina, for her part, couldn’t have been more pleased. They hadn’t even needed to go and find him! Well, it was all working out now. 

She took the cards Kaz had laid out in front of her, and smiled expectantly at him.

Kaz shot her a dirty look and shuffled the deck an extra time, just to be a bastard about it.

“I always knew you let Per Haskell and Rotty lose on purpose when we played on Ghezen’s Day,” said Nina later, shoving her winnings more securely down her cleavage as they went along the dock, away from the gambling halls. Kaz had claimed that her win was to keep the other patrons playing, to give them the hope that if you just played one more game, you might make it all back… but Nina was fairly sure he’d just let her win because he was glad to see her. Not that he’d ever say so.

(Or possibly because Inej had told him to. Which was maybe more realistic.)

“They told me to make it fair. They should have specified if their definition of fair was more creative than mine,” said Kaz, limping along behind them, back in his black coat. How was it that he always looked exactly the same? Nina would have thought being incredibly rich meant that you slept and ate more, at least, but Kaz looked as severe and lean as ever–

“What do you want, Zenik?” said Kaz, never one to waste time. Nina raised her eyebrows.

“Maybe I just wanted to exploit your hospitality, Kaz…” Kaz stared at her. Nina folded her arms. “Fine– maybe I need a favour. Can we talk somewhere?”

“You can talk anywhere, if you don’t mind it being overheard by spies from fifty different gangs.”

“Don’t be pedantic with me, boy,” said Nina. Kaz, great lover of all things petty and pedantic, looked thoughtfully at her, then stepped it up a notch;

“You shouldn’t be blonde. It makes you look sickly.”

“Says the man whose barber is himself,” said Nina. “Do you know Kaz, I really think you missed arguing with me.”

“It’s just that you make it so easy, Nina darling…” Kaz jerked his head left, and they turned down a side street, into a quieter portion of the Barrel. “I trust you haven’t been a nuisance for the Captain?”

“Excuse me, I was very helpful on my journey here– wasn’t I, Inej?”

“You were,” smiled Inej. “Several of my crewmates want you to sail with us full-time.”

“I know so many filthy sea shanties, you see,” said Nina to Kaz. “I keep morale high.”

“And you reanimate dead men to turn on their comrades during fights,” said Kaz blankly.

Nina winked.

“And that. See, Kaz? You know I’m useful, really.”

“What about you, Kaz?” said Inej, a hint of challenge in her voice. “Your last letter was evasive. What have you been doing?”

“Nothing of major consequence, my sweet.” said Kaz distantly, eyes roving the street.

“You’re always doing something of consequence,” said Inej suspiciously. “My father is convinced you’ll never write about anything other than your latest scheme.”

Nina smirked. She’d never met Inej’s parents, but no doubt the time Inej had just spent with them in Ravka had resulted in several interrogations; Inej had mumbled something about her papa being blatantly nosey, and far more fascinated with Kaz than he really ought to have been. Nina sympathised. There was something unfortunately hypnotic about the Bastard of the Barrel.

“Perhaps I’m aware that Mr Ghafa is often privy to my correspondence,” said Kaz wryly. 

“Mama says your handwriting is beastly.” 

“I offer my compliments to your fine parents of superior epistolary taste,” drawled Kaz. “I trust they’re well?”

“Very well, thank you…”

Nina dithered behind them a little, watching them walking a little way apart from each other. She had never been sure how to figure Kaz and Inej’s relationship, which was probably exactly how Kaz liked it– but frankly, she wasn’t sure they knew, either. But maybe they just didn’t care to know. There was something in that, maybe– 

Someone from behind them shouted;

“Kaz Brekker!”

Nina turned fastest, and was first to see the group of thugs emerging from the alley. She planted her hands on her hips, irritated.

“Kaz, what the hell have you done now?”

Kaz really should have known.

A loose semi-circle of bruisers, with fists and clubs ready, faced them– and they had a masked Tidemaker, loitering with hands spread in the centre. If it was one of the Tides, they were brave to come alone. Maybe they were an aspiring member. Was this the Tides’ idea of hazing? Did they have to kill off an enemy of the Tides’ in order to join? How pedestrian. 

"The Council of Tides send their regards to Dirtyhands, and warns him that his avoidance of their terms, and his transgressions at Berth Twenty-Two, have not gone unnoticed," said the Tidemaker, as if he was reading off a list of stocks at the Exchange. Kaz hoped he never pursued anything thespian. 

“Ghezen, you really are cheapskates,” he said, adjusting his grip on his cane. “Most good bruisers wait to say that after they’ve delivered the beating, you know?”

“How down?” Nina mumbled from behind him, hands raised.

“Kill the miserable bastards,” said Kaz, forgoing subtleties. “I want to send a message.”

“This is what you’ve been doing?” said Inej, drawing Sankt Petyr. “Kaz, the Tides?”

“And I shall tell you all about it,” said Kaz vaguely, taking stock of their opponents. “Once they are no longer trying to–”

With a roar, a wave rose from the harbour to their left. Kaz groaned, trying to stamp down the prickle of discomfort prodding at him. The Tidemaker was a problem, admittedly. And something was wrong, here. Should he tell them to leave–? 

But the hired men had already started forwards. No time, then. They’d have to fight.

“Get to the Tidemaker,” said Kaz. “Else we’ll all drown nice and quickly. And I like this coat.” 

He lunged for the first bruiser that reached him– ducked under the first hit and headbutted the man in the face, then dropped low and rammed his cane into the soft bit of his stomach. He heard the metallic hiss of knives as Inej entered combat, a shout behind him as someone else made the mistake of turning on Nina. The man he’d hit crumpled with an oof, and was well-placed to receive Kaz’s boot in his ribs. Kaz turned for his next opponent, jerked back from a wide-swinging hit–

And saw the wave approaching them at full tilt.

The Tidemaker laughed, and the smacking wall of water knocked them off their feet and dragged them tumbling across the cobbles into the harbour, even the bruisers.

Kaz slammed into the water and struck the sea floor almost immediately, jarring his back. It was low tide, and it was barely waist deep here at the best of times; it wasn’t drowning, but it was disorientating. Kaz turned sharply onto his front, found his feet, and scrambled upright to stand above the surface, coughing. A wave hit him in the back and almost knocked him back under, saved only by his cane, which he’d somehow kept hold of, thankfully...

Spitting and swearing, Kaz shook harbour water out of his eyes and whipped around, seeking that saints-forsaken blue cloak. The water here was churning unnaturally, smacking in waves that were coming larger and larger. These fucking Tidemakers– well, he wanted rid of this one. Right now. 

Kaz found him quickly enough– he was standing on the harbour wall, hands turning in a complex motion over and over each other, clearly bringing the waves in for them. Nearby, Inej– not as tall as he or Nina– had hooked her arm around the slats of the nearby pier, and was fighting one-handed with a man almost twice her height, but it was difficult going. Why didn’t these Grisha have the dignity to fight hand to hand, every so often? Well, they’d learn. 

Kaz pulled his pistol from his sodden coat and shot the Tidemaker in the arm. He shrieked and dropped from the edge of the wall in a crumple of limbs, vanishing with a splash under the water. Whether dead or merely wounded, Kaz didn’t wait to find out– it was a fitting resting place, either way. He turned and shot at Inej’s assailant, too, and found his mark when the man roared and fell backwards into the sea. The water had calmed almost the second it was released from the Tidemaker’s control, dropping from their necks to their waists in an unnatural fizzing hiss of foam and sea debris. Kaz swiped irritably at his hands and arms, wading slowly backwards, towards the wall, taking stock of the men approaching him. Inej and Nina were to his right, still fighting, but the majority of the bruisers were on Kaz’s side, after him…

Panting, Kaz turned just in time to duck the first punch and return it, hard. His skin was prickling, and his teeth ached; he was in the water, and he wanted out, which meant these goons needed to be dealt with as soon as possible.

Violence was easy; violence in the water was harder. Kaz broke fingers and jaws with his cane, headbutted and bit and lunged, but they were all impeded by the black sea around their waists, and it turned into a brawl of grabbing and punching and biting quickly. Every so often, Kaz heard the hiss of a thrown knife, and would turn in time to see the gleam before it buried itself in Inej’s target, and he could hear whoever Nina had grabbed screaming, but was it enough? Inej was used to fighting in and on the water, these days, surely, but–

The screaming was getting more potent, and the man advancing on Kaz suddenly stopped, face drawn, staring past him. 

Suddenly suspicious, Kaz looked back– and his stomach twisted painfully. All around them, creeping out of the water, were…

"Nina!" he shouted, watching thin white fingers emerge from the surface around them and curl around the pillars of the pier and the arms of the horrified bruisers. A shiny white skull thrust from the surface, dripping. Skeletons. She was raising skeletons from the harbour. His voice sounded hoarse and strangled and not his own; "Nina, stop it!"

Nina, a few metres away, threw him a disbelieving look– and he couldn't give her a good enough reason, fast enough, to stop her. She’d gotten much more confident in this wretched power– far more so. 

Bones shifted under their feet. Kaz lurched back, horrified, as a skeleton burst out of the water between him and the other men, and waded away eerily fast, water cascading through the gaps in its ribs and eyes. There were dozens emerging, clawing out of the water to descend on Nina’s opponent, who let out a scream of disbelieving horror. Kaz felt an untoward twinge of sympathy for the idiot, which was quickly dissipated as his opponent shook off his fear and came roaring back– Kaz turned hastily from the hit and broke his nose with the end of his cane, aware his breath was turning ragged. These skeletons, these dead men, were– he cast another quick glance around– yes, they were tall; fully grown adults, men, women. Victims of drunken falls, or gang brawls, or murders. They weren’t children. So they couldn't be… no, they couldn’t be–

Some terrible compulsion hit him, and Kaz couldn't stop himself from checking again, from looking back over…

At which point the Tides grunt seized him around the neck and shoved him under the water. Kaz bucked in horror at the wet pressure of skin at his neck, and viciously kicked his knee out from under him, knocking him underwater, too. They thrashed under the surface, silt blooming in great gusts around them as Kaz’s back hit the shallow sea-bed. All around them in the dark water, more skeleton parts punched through seaweed and mud, or twitched about, scrabbling for purchase, animated by Nina’s awful power. Kaz, now gripped with a serious animal panic, fought practically feral– he stabbed his thumbs into the grunt's eyes and kneed him repeatedly in the chest, but his grip around Kaz's throat was iron. Kaz’s vision pitched and tipped, more from panic than lack of breath– from the sodden, cold press of his clothes, the clammy swipe of wet skin on wet skin, and the bodies all around them, devoid of flesh as they were. He was in the harbour, and he was in the harbour, and all around them, waded Nina’s bodies, each one seeming smaller than the last in Kaz's receding vision. Was he there? Could one of them be him? His vision was pinpricks, and his lungs screamed.

Come on, Kaz. Jordie’s voice, louder than it had been for a good long while. You followed me everywhere else. Why not here? The water is a kind death, Kaz– kinder than you deserve…

Kaz thought; it would be so easy. He’d almost drowned before; and had that been so bad? Being forced back to life by Matthias had been harder. He’d have been happier to have died in the water than anywhere else– why hadn’t he, anyway? It was– it was because he’d been thinking of…

Inej.

Where’s Inej?

Kaz would never forgive himself for what he did next; but sick, desperate, drowning and almost unconscious in the harbour… he let go of the other man, turned his right hand over his left… and pushed up.

The current hit them both with the force of a piston, knocking them both up to the surface and into the harbour wall with a nasty thud. Snarling like a rabid dog, Kaz clawed himself upright, and, as the man lurched upwards, he thrust his hands out, up, and clenched both of his fists.

The man didn't even get to finish his scream before the blood and foam burst out of his nose and ears and eyes and mouth, and he crumpled face down into the water. 

Jordie was shouting at him; I told you not to use it, Kaz, I told you, I told you–! 

Kaz fell senseless against the wall, hands scrabbling for purchase on the slick rock.

As a child, Kaz had always been good with water.

When he’d played with Jordie or the village kids in the river, he’d always been faster, more sure-footed, a better swimmer. It hadn’t seemed unusual to him. He and the water were friends, in a way. If he wanted it to do something, it usually would, if he bent enough willpower into it. And Kaz always had enough willpower, even as a very small child.

That was, it hadn’t seemed unusual… until Jordie had caught him breaking the ice on the water butts and horse troughs from inside, because he hadn’t wanted to go all the way outside in the cold. He’d reasoned he could see them from the window; so surely if he just thought hard enough about it, they’d crack. And they did. Jordie, he said, when Jordie didn’t seem sufficiently impressed, I do it all the time. Jordie had panicked, and shouted for their Da– which had made Kaz panic and start crying.

Da had firstly, stopped laughing, because he was upsetting both of them even more. Then he told Kaz that he was merely a rivierkind, a river-child, given an uncommon gift. His mother had been the same, he said. This hadn’t meant much to Kaz– his mother had died in the childbed while giving birth to him, and so he’d really known nothing of her. Rural childbirth deaths were unfortunately common. Only later he had bitterly reflected over a terrible Crow Club pint on the matter; it was so very typical, he’d decided, that he should be the one to live, while everyone around him died.

At the time, all it had meant was that Da had someone to to refill the troughs and make sure the irrigation worked properly. Kaz did that all with the precocious arrogance of a child who hasn’t been told there was a limit on what he could or couldn’t do. The couple down the road’s daughter could start the fire without matches, and there was a boy two villages away who could bend metal with his mind, who was a born-to-it blacksmith. These children happened, sometimes– and rural Kerch villages merely found them extremely useful. In a kind of ironic prescience, the superstitious few of Lij muttered that Kaz was a demon, a changeling child that had killed Lotte Rietveld and taken her power… but in general, it was unremarked upon.

That was, until the day before they’d gone to Ketterdam. Someone had dropped a quiet word to Jordie at their father’s funeral, some sort of warning. And so Jordie had given Kaz a good shake, and said: Kaz, you can’t tell anyone, and you can’t do any of your tricks. He’d told him that Ketterdam was full of people that would take Grisha kids away and make them be servants, and he wouldn’t like that one bit, because Jordie wouldn’t be able to go with him, they’d work him very hard, and they’d hardly pay him anything. Kaz had mumbled something about not liking the word Grisha very much, what did it mean anyway– and Jordie had shouted at him that he had to listen, Kaz! Kaz, still upset from what Jordie referred to as their Da’s accident, and worried he’d cry if Jordie shouted again, had nodded hard, and said absolutely nothing about it from then on. It wasn’t hard; small children were practically invisible in Ketterdam, and everyone talked to Jordie, not him. Only Saskia had talked to him, and he’d been too scared to even tell her. 

Perhaps that was why he’d taken so quickly to the street magicians. The idea that he could replace his forbidden power with something else, something allowed– something he frankly found more interesting. You had to practise to get good at sleight of hand. It was like a puzzle, and Kaz liked puzzles. There was nothing puzzling about his gift with water. It just happened.

He had suggested, sitting under the bridge after Jakob Hertzoon had vanished with their money, that they take him to a posh house and tell the owners he was a… what was the word? A Grisha, a water one. And then he would have a job, even a terrible paying one, and that was better than nothing–

The look Jordie gave him was so terrible that he never suggested it again. No, Jordie said; they’d find something else. Their luck was bound to change. No need for that.

It had changed, but not in the direction they’d expected. 

Too sick, too weak, too upset, Kaz had failed the both of them at Reaper’s Barge. He had tried to swim alone– and he had nearly drowned, dragged down by the waters that refused to help him, that felt hungrier, nastier than any river or lake in Lij ever had. And so he’d only had one way back to shore; clinging to Jordie’s bloated corpse, feebly directing the currents to give him what little help they could. He was never sure if he’d really managed anything at all, that night, or if it was just his sheer iron will that had gotten him from the Barge to the harbour ladder. He wasn’t sure he cared to know.

All Kaz knew was that he had crawled out of the harbour and sworn he would never again use the power that had proved powerless. It hadn’t saved Jordie; it hadn’t been enough for him to swim unaided, and had forced him to struggle his cold and lonely way across the harbour with his brother’s swollen, clammy body under his hands. It was no use, and Kaz Brekker had no time for useless things. It could do nothing for him that his wits couldn’t match.

When he’d been soaking wet, he’d neglected to coax the water out of his clothes. When he’d been mad with thirst, he’d refused to condense the constant mist and steam of the city– at any rate, it would surely make him ill. When the Slat’s pipes froze, he had leant out the windows with the rest of the Dregs to slosh water they’d heated in a kettle over the worst bits. When the cobbles iced over, he smashed it with his cane and his steel boot cap, even when it threatened his bad leg. He'd worked out myriad ways to hide it; from himself and everyone else. He shirked on employing an amplifier to watch his tables, even though it would have been the prudent thing to do. He wore coffee extract and paraffin. It was almost a mercy they couldn’t afford constant running water at the Slat, so they were forced to wash from basins. He couldn’t bear to be submerged. 

In time, he almost forgot what he had once been able to do. Water was his most ardent foe, not an ally. Water was the bodymen’s boats, Reaper’s Barge, and Jordie’s corpse. The water had given, and could give him, nothing that he wanted. It would make no bargain with him that could be worth it– so he would not try. He eked out his fortune and his revenge with every bloody punch and petty swindle and broken bone. He ignored the hiss and slap of the filthy water in the canals that wended through the city, the roar of the waves at the harbour that smashed boats to pieces, the sinuous curl of the mist on wet nights that got you jumped if you weren’t paying close enough attention. The Ketterdam water had a touch of the mocking about it– a determination to be as awful and monstrous and polluted as he was. But Kaz didn’t need a reminder of what he’d become.

The water had his brother; it would not have him, too.

When he came to himself, the bodies were blessedly gone, sunk beneath the waves as if they'd never been there. He was slumped against the rusted ladder on the wall, arm hooked around one of the rungs, shivering. Inej was shaking him– Inej, running with rivulets of filthy harbour water, but otherwise seemingly fine. She'd found his cane, too. Kaz felt foggily relieved to see her unharmed–

"Kaz. Kaz. Are you alright? Can you stand?" 

Kaz jolted back to himself. They were still in the water; it was pressing wet and stabbing cold around his legs and hips, digging claws into his bad leg. He was still in the– harbour–

Almost instantly, he was upright and scrabbling up the ladder, where he hit the slats of the pier hard, doubled over, and threw up. Inej scrambled up after him and knelt over him.

"Are you hurt?" 

Kaz shook his aching head, still retching. Inej put a hand briefly on his back, then removed it when he flinched away. She wouldn’t need to be told twice, mercifully. Or told at all.

She got up and placed his cane down next to him– then glanced over the side of the pier, at the dead man. "What did you do to him? I just saw him crumple." 

Nina– fucking hell, Nina– came sloshing over, jaw slightly slack. She turned over the dead man, which Kaz squeezed his eyes shut to avoid seeing in its entirety. The limp float of bodies on the water…

"Kaz, you've learned some new tricks…" she said incredulously. "What the hell happened? Was it poison?" 

Kaz made no response. They were very old tricks, but of course she couldn't know that. No one knew that. 

"Did you drown him? What's with all the blood around here–" 

Nina suddenly went very still, and very quiet.

Kaz turned onto his back and kept his eyes closed, trying to think his way out of this one. His brain felt like syrup, and he was shaking badly. He could feel Inej's presence to his right, but he knew she wouldn't approach him again, like this. 

"I've seen this before," Nina said distantly.

"Where?" said Inej.

"During the war.”

"In the First Army?"

Nina's voice was horribly strange. She said;

"In the Second." 

She came slowly up the ladder, and there was a wet splatter as she wrung out her skirts. She paused, then said;  

"It was a boy a few years older than me, at the start of the war. In his first fight on the field, he panicked. His opponent had a messy death, an unclean one– and he looked just like this when he was done with him. Blood and foam and spittle forced out of every orifice. And he wasn't a Heartrender, even though that's the sort of thing I could have done…"

Nina came over, and stooped very close to him, close enough to make Kaz shudder. She said, quietly;

"He was an Etherealki, Kaz." 

Kaz said nothing. Inej was silent, too. Nina pressed;

"You're Grisha. Aren't you?"

"Don't you fucking dare." whispered Kaz. The accusation snapped through the air, suddenly loud;

"You're a Grisha!" 

It was wasted; Kaz didn't dare open his eyes to look at either of them. He didn’t do anything–

Nina seized him by the lapels, shaking him so hard his head knocked against the floor. Kaz scrabbled against her, a spike of panic restoring clarity, a little. He opened his eyes, and his vision swam.

"Let go, Zenik–"

"Nina–!" protested Inej from somewhere behind them, but Nina was not to be talked down.

"You let me and Jesper be shot at and chased down and hunted!" she cried. "You sold Kuwei off as a commodity! You disdained the Grisha refugees, you sneered at Zoya and Genya, and all this time–"

"Nina, you can't prove–" tried Inej. Kaz started gagging again, and Nina shoved him back onto the floor, turning to Inej.

"Inej, he forced all of the blood in that man’s body into his head, and I bet he manipulated the water pressure to get them back to the surface, too!" She wheeled back on Kaz. "How did you cover it up? Did you help Jesper? Does he know? How can you be so removed–"

Kaz, helpfully, picked that point to black out entirely.

They turned up at the Van Eck mansion in a sullen, soggy silence that threatened to splinter any second. Jesper's smile died when he saw the looks on their faces.

"What the hell happened?" he said as they squelched inside, ignoring each other. "Why are you all drenched?"

"Ask Brekker, why don't you?" said Nina sneeringly. "Be prepared for quite the shocking answer, though…"

Nina had slapped him back to consciousness about ten seconds after he’d passed out, unkindly and unhelpfully. Inej had, more usefully, found a sealed hip flask of rum in her waistcoat and offered him a slug, which had given him the stability to stand. He might have teased her about being a proper pirate if he hadn’t felt so dreadful– and if he’d dared to make eye contact with her, which he hadn’t. Kaz wasn’t sure if she believed Nina; but she knew he was keeping secrets from her that he struggled to tell, and it would have been reasonable to assume this was one. It certainly wouldn’t have been the one he’d opted to start with, though… 

"Go to hell, Zenik." Kaz stalked past her, intending to change into the stash of clothes he kept under the floorboards in the east drawing room. Everything hurt, and he felt seconds away from collapsing. He desperately wanted to slink back to his attic room in the Slat, but he wasn't sure his leg would be up to it–

"Without telling Jesper all about it?" snapped Nina, hounding him up the stairs. "Hmm? About your special little secret?"

"Telling me what?" demanded Jesper, following them up. “Kaz, what’s going on?”

“Yes, Kaz, tell him–”

Kaz wheeled on Nina.

“What are you going to do, Zenik?” he snarled. “Are you going to recruit me for the Queen’s Army? Will you hire thugs to jump me and put me on a ship to Ravka to have me trained, or will you just bully me into it like you have Jesper? Will you have me shot as a traitor and a defector to the Second Army when I inevitably try to run away, with a smile on your lips and the knowledge that your Queen and Country are well served? Your miserable patriotism has always been your downfall–”

“And your lack of loyalty has always been yours!” roared Nina, taking it as a confession– which it functionally was, Kaz supposed. “An Etherealki, Brekker! Do you know how many times we could have used one at the Ice Court? On the ship there? The only order we didn’t have– and no one knew. Not a soul. You pretended to be otkazat'sya, but you’re not, Kaz, you’re not, you’re a Tidemaker, you wretched bastard, I’d bet my life on it, and you made us all worse off for covering it up!”

The word Tidemaker did something potent, snapped a switch in Kaz’s head. Such a specific reminder of his failure at Reaper’s Barge, of the Council that hounded him, of the currents and tides that had pushed against him throughout that entire miserable swim–

I told you! Jordie cried. I told you!

Kaz lunged for Nina at the same time she swung for him.

Chapter Text

"That's how you knew how to get past amplifiers with paraffin," said Jesper glumly half an hour later, Kaz and Nina glaring and slightly bruised on either side of the kitchen. Jesper and Wylan had pulled them off of each other before they could do too much damage, but Kaz suspected there was about to be a verbal reprise. "And how you knew to use the coffee extract. Is that why didn't the khergud didn't try to get you, too?"

"Untrained Grisha aren't as obvious," said Nina sourly, arms folded. "Especially ones that never use their power, and wear gloves all the time."

Kaz said nothing, staring at his untouched coffee. Wylan was standing nervously by the fire, looking at Jesper, who had slumped in a chair at the table. He was sure to get up again, in a minute. Inej was silent and still in the corner, staring at him. Kaz still couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

“This is ridiculous,” said Nina crossly, not for the first time. “I can’t believe this.”

Before Kaz could snap at her about her lack of imagination, Jesper leapt to his feet and started pacing, hands planted on his head. 

“So you knew how to get past amplifiers and khergud, because you’ve spent so long covering up being Grisha that it was practically second nature,” he rattled off, slightly hysterically. “You never recruited an Etherealki to the Dregs, despite it being the only order you didn’t have, because you already had one– yourself. Half of your plots revolve around the canals and harbours. You recovered from almost drowning with massive speed. You agreed to the Ice Court heist because y–”

“No.” said Kaz.

“What?”

“No,” repeated Kaz, palms prickling. “I knew how to get past amplifiers and khergud because I have a smuggler’s sensibility. I never recruited an Etheralki to the Dregs because I never came across one. Half of my plots revolve around the canals and the harbours because we’re in a port city, you miserable podge. I recovered from drowning quickly because Helvar was quick off the mark and the Barrel made me tough. And I agreed to the Ice Court heist, because I was offered a fantastically lucrative payout.”

Jesper let his hands slap down to his sides.

“Kaz, come on.” he said. “You don’t have to keep it up.”

“I couldn’t keep it up if I wanted to, since Nina has been so very insistent on ripping down the curtain,” sneered Kaz. “But don’t you dare try to attribute everything to this grand reveal. It’s not relevant.”

“Not relevant? Kaz, the biggest job we ever did, was over the drug that threatened Grisha everywhere!”

“By your logic, that should have made me more likely to turn it down, if I wanted to remain in hiding,” said Kaz icily. “I took it because Van Eck made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I had no personal stake in jurda parem.”

Jesper and Nina protested at the same time;

“Oh Kaz, come on–”

“Brekker, you can’t really be–”

But Kaz had seen Wylan move, and glanced over to find him suddenly looking very drawn. 

“Spit it out, Merchling,” he snarled.

"Kaz–” Wylan glanced briefly at Jesper, and then managed “...didn’t you have the parem? Didn’t Matthias give it to you?”

Jesper's mouth slackened in horror, in a look that might have been comedic if it hadn’t been so very genuine.

"...it was Plan Z," said Nina, sitting up suddenly. She got up and paced in front of the door, to stand directly in front of him. "Wasn't it, Brekker? The very last resort was you taking the parem.”

“I had it because Helvar gave it to me, to keep it away from you,” said Kaz shortly. Inej was looking at him, expression drawn and slightly horrified. He kept his face turned away, uncertain. She usually looked at him that way when it was warranted; this was, as far as Kaz could think, not something that was morally wrong. He would only have been hurting himself. Nina called his bluff instantly. She said, slightly pitchily;

“Kaz, you bloody fool! It would have killed you, and then what would we have done?” She ran her hands compulsively down her arms, gaze a little fractured. It didn’t take a genius to guess what she was thinking of. “No– you can't be serious. Untrained Grisha would almost certainly have killed themselves with uncontrollable power. And if that somehow didn’t get you, there's no way you could have gotten through the withdrawal–"

"Frankly Zenik, pampered Little Palace Heartrenders have no idea what I can and can't get through," said Kaz nastily. It wasn’t fair, and it was barely true, but he was past fairness. Nina took a step forward, but Jesper seized her sleeve to stop her.

“Kaz, that’s not fair,” he said. Kaz ignored him, holding Nina’s gaze, which was flushed and furious.

"The Council of Tides have some sort of deal with you," said Inej, after a moment. "They know, don't they?"

"The Council of Tides are a bunch of meddlesome ponces that think the rest of us should lick their shoes clean for their effort of not letting this worthless island sink," sneered Kaz, looking away from Nina.

“So, yes,” said Wylan. “Damn it, Kaz, did you bring the real ones to the auction?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I just staged a very convincing imitation, with a few changes.”

“Couldn’t let anyone catch onto you,” said Nina incredulously. “Deniability! I know how you work, Kaz. You love your failsafes.”

“Don’t presume you know the first thing about me.” Kaz said hotly, turning back on her again.

"So this is why you wear the gloves," accused Nina, heedless. "And you don't let people touch you. It's to hide the–"

"Don't presume everything is about your wretched little magician's guild!" Kaz shouted, launching to his feet despite the protest in his bad leg. He had seen this coming a mile away; the leap they would make. "If all I had to hide was this, Zenik, I'd have not have almost thrown up on your expensive boots at the docks. Being Grisha is nothing to me. Try to grasp that. Now get out of my way, and get out of my business!"

"Kaz–"

"Move, Zenik!"

Nina moved, and Kaz stormed out into the corridor to precisely no protests from the other four. Except–

"Go away, Inej," he said, halfway up the stairs.

"No." said Inej, tracking him silently the rest of the way back to the room they usually dumped him in, because it had the least valuable decorations. "Explain something to me."

"Explain what?" Kaz slammed the door and slumped into the horrid hard armchair in the corner, head throbbing. He'd been under the impression that using their power made Grisha feel better, stronger, but he felt like he'd been repeatedly run down by a carriage and four. Inej stood by his side, brows furrowed.

“Tell me about the deal you’ve made with the Tides.”

“I’ve said enough, today,”

"Kaz, you promised me you'd try to tell me everything eventually. This seems to cover a rather large patch of that." 

Kaz hesitated. He had promised, and he had tried– was trying. The death of his father and the ins and outs of Rollins’ scam had been within his power to recount to her– but that wasn’t the half of it. She’d wait patiently until he scrounged up enough willpower for anything else, he knew, but he hadn’t intended on having this be ripped out of his control. 

"I did."

"So tell me," Inej said.

Kaz rubbed his bruised face, trying to work out how to make any concessions, here. Frankly, he’d not really thought of this as something he’d have to one day tell her; it was walled up with the rest of his unremarkable childhood. Barely-there Tidemaker was nothing compared to Reaper’s Barge. He had entertained a child’s hope for his childhood gift– that if he ignored it long enough, perhaps it would just go away. 

To his shame, he waited her out. Eventually, she said, in a different, weary kind of voice;

"Do you still have the parem?"

"It's in an uncrackable safe at the Slat." 

"Tell me the code."

"No."

"I don't want you to have it, Kaz. You should have destroyed it." 

“You can rest safe in the knowledge I’m not simply going to decide to take it, to add a bit of interest to a particularly slow work day–”

“Kaz,” said Inej. “This isn’t like your other insurance tactics. You saw what it did to Nina. You can’t seriously think it wouldn’t do the same, or worse, to you. I know they’ve made an antidote, but it’s relatively scarce–”

“The hand-wringing over this is ridiculous,” Kaz snapped. True, it probably would have snapped the thin thread of his sanity; true, he might have died in the withdrawal, likely unable to bear the touch of anyone trying to help him– but he would have foreseen that. “I would have accounted for the possibility I would have died or gone insane from taking the parem. I’d only have hurt myself and the fools who’d thought to stand in my way. You’d have had instructions, you’d have gotten your money one way or another–”

“The money?” Inej turned on him, suddenly, plait whipping behind her. “Kaz, don’t you dare misunderstand me on purpose. I’m talking about what would have happened to you, not the payout.”

Kaz paused. 

“...at that point, it would have been–”

“At that point? If you’d taken the parem around the time of the auction?” Inej said angrily. “Do you think we would have only cared about the money then, Kaz? When I thought you were going to be killed at the Slat, I swore to myself I’d slaughter every one of them for daring to do it. Do you think I would have just cared about the money?”

Kaz bit his tongue, the Geldrenner bathroom bothering at his memory. 

Finally, he said;

"...the Tides don’t want a rogue Grisha at the top of the Barrel pack.” 

Inej exhaled slowly. She was getting her answer. Kaz went on;

“Especially not one with the same skillset as them. They found out, one of the early times I was arrested– the amplifier who works at the Stadhall Jail is on their payroll. They’re constantly trying to recruit, you see; it’s hard work, and they need several Tides on duty at any one time. I started a fight with the amplifier, but he’d touched me long enough to work it out, and he went running to squeal to them. I tracked him down and… silenced him once I got bailed out by Per Haskell, but it was too late. They tried to recruit me– back when I was young enough to be passed off as under a bad influence. I told them to go right to hell. So they told me, under pain of death, to keep it quiet, not to use it. They don’t want any Tidemakers except them running around in Ketterdam with the potential to control imports and exports…” He snorted. “As if I could blockade trading galleys. I was almost flattered that they believed I had the power. But believe me, I was more than happy to strike that deal. In return, they leave me alone, unless I do something to upset them, like staging a fake Tides intervention at the Auction–"

“Or pushing the boundaries of what you agreed," said Inej slowly. "Kaz, they mentioned…”

So she had heard; this was why she’d wanted to know. Kaz cursed those Tides grunts.

"Berth Twenty-Two?” he said, eyes on his boots. It was easier if he didn't have to see her reaction. He'd banked on her never finding out. "The currents around the harbours, especially Fifth Harbour, are strong in bad weather. There’s been a few wrecks in my time. But you never have trouble with them. Unusual. Specht has always wondered about it. He thinks you're blessed by a saint, can't remember which one…"

In his usual contrary fashion, there always had to be an exception for Inej. Everyone had to get the gang tattoo, except Inej. Everyone else was left to work the Barrel and the Dregs out for themselves, except Inej. Everyone else had to leave him be, except Inej. And he never, ever used that wretched power– for years and years he hadn’t so much as touched it– except when it was for Inej. He told himself it was prudent; he knew it was really paranoid. The deepest-seated horror of all of them had pressed down hard on him, and he’d yielded to it. These were the same waters that had taken Jordie– he’d have sooner worked himself to death, been snatched by Grisha indenturers, or had the Tides put a hit on him, than see them take her too.

He glanced up, saw her incredulous smile from where she’d perched herself on the coffee table. The weak lamplight made her hair shiny, and the thieving crow that had lodged itself in his breast was clamouring to touch it. Kaz's head hurt, and his heart hurt. He'd have begged her to come closer if it wouldn't have unhinged him, slightly. 

"You can’t keep doing that,” said Inej softly. “They can only ignore you a certain amount of times. And if it makes you ill like it did at the dock...”

“As long as I’m not interfering with their trade, I really don’t think they ought to care,” said Kaz mulishly. “Besides, I only do it in bad weather.” 

So what if it made him a little extra cruel and distant, for days afterwards? So what if he felt the waters rise so badly he’d thrown up near the Silver Six the first time he’d tried it? So what if it sometimes took so much effort that his nose bled and his ears rang? Inej got up and stood over him. She held out her hand, and he took it, regretting the gloves that he didn’t have it in him to take off. 

“Thank you, Kaz. But you really mustn’t.”

Kaz tried to shrug, disaffected, but he suspected it wasn’t convincing. He also suspected she knew he wasn't going to listen, especially when she looked at his hand, and said:

"...how do you do it without anyone noticing?" 

"The Ravkan way isn't the only way of doing things," snorted Kaz. “Excessive kefta-twirling and hand waving are really just placebos.”

“I see.” Inej paused. “Did you really not consider using it? At the Ice Court?”

Kaz stared at the faint veins on the back of her hand. 

“Some things aren’t even worth that payout,” he said.

“But if you–”

“Using it a little, every few months at Fifth Harbour, isn’t the same as using it in the middle of a hostile heist centred around jurda parem,” muttered Kaz, examining the shape of her chipped nails and the little scars on her knuckles. “If I’d pushed myself too far, you’d have had a half-mad untrained Tidemaker, instead of the Bastard of the Barrel. And then we all would have died, not just Helvar–”

“You keep saying that,” said Inej. 

“Saying what?”

“Suggesting it would have made you go mad. To use it too much.”

Kaz focused on the faintest presence of a pulse in her fingers, eyes glued to the floor. Alive; they were both alive…

“What happened in the water?” said Inej quietly. 

Kaz let go of her abruptly, and she let her arm fall, eyes on his face.

“Nothing,” he said brusquely. Then he tried; “Nothing I can–”

He stopped, but something in his face, his voice, must have convinced her. She nodded once, let it go. Kaz tried again;

“I can’t–”

“I know,” said Inej, before he dug himself an even deeper hole. “I can wait.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” muttered Kaz. But she would anyway, and he was more grateful for it than she knew.

"You're on Kaz's side," mumbled Nina, as Inej slipped through the door into the empty kitchen. Wylan and Jesper had left her alone on her request, and had gone off with equally drawn faces.

"I'm on the side of not seeing our crew completely fall apart." Inej came over and sat down opposite her. 

“Maybe you should have told your bastard boyfriend that a little sooner,” said Nina coldly. She caught Inej’s steady gaze, and felt a little ashamed. “...sorry. I know you didn’t know.” She paused. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“No,” said Inej. “No, I didn’t know.”

“And you’re not angry at him? Having to be bribed with 4 million kruge to care about his own people? And the Grisha refugees, too– I had to force him to extend any effort towards them.”

“I don’t think he sees it that way,” Inej said. (Sure as hell he doesn’t, Nina thought.) “I’m not Grisha, Nina. I don’t think I look at it in quite the same way you do. Kaz has his own reasons that I don’t presume to judge– good or bad. But I know why you’re upset.” 

Nina sighed tiredly.

“Am I that transparent?”

Inej leaned across the table and took her hand.

"He couldn't have saved Matthias," she said gently. "He's not a Healer, or a Heartrender."

"Inej, if he'd have been honest from the start, the entire job might have gone differently.” Nina leant forward too, eyes shiny. “I know he has no training, but the bastard tends to take to other impossibilities like a particularly dreadful duck to water…"

“It’s no use, dwelling on what could have been,” Inej said. “We all know that.”

“I know, but–” Nina hesitated. She was doing it anyway, even though she knew it was no good. It was just that– that– 

“I just can’t believe he didn’t even try!” she burst out. Inej screwed up her face.

"I was surprised too. It didn’t seem like him to not use every weapon in his arsenal at some point. So I asked him– and he said he didn’t even consider it. He implied…” Inej paused, uncertain. “He implied that it might have driven him insane. If he’d pushed it too far, too soon.”

"That's ridiculous." said Nina, sure that was a grandstanding Kaz excuse, but Inej shook her head.

"It's something…" she paused. "I don't know. But you saw how badly he reacted to using it at the docks. He seemed to think he had to pick between that and his mind, and he picked his mind."

Nina frowned, uneasy. She had to admit, she’d been unsettled by the look on Kaz’s face when she’d grabbed him, but…

“Did something happen? Why on earth is he so… aggressive, about it?”

“I don’t know,” said Inej wearily. Nina stared at her, and she shook her head. “I really don’t, Nina. I think I’m… beginning to have a suspicion, but I would never say a word about it either way. Not until he wants to tell me.”

“Have fun waiting for the day he finally coughs it up,” warned Nina. “You’ll be eighty. Kaz will be one of those horrible old men that has a shotgun above the mantle and hates children.”

Inej’s mouth quirked a little.

“He’ll live a lot longer than me,” she said, and Nina didn’t think she imagined the slight tremor in her voice. She squeezed her hand.

“Not to be morbid, but I doubt it,” she said. “Not if he keeps acting like that– not using it, suppressing it. He’ll age himself prematurely. Grisha in hiding always do. But don’t point that out to him– he’ll decide to do it on purpose, to keep up with you.”

“I’m sure it's already occurred to him,” murmured Inej.

“Yes,” said Nina darkly. “Yes, he did an awfully thorough job. I’m sure it already has…”

It was hard to imagine Kaz living to old age anyway– Nina had always gloomily thought he was sure to get himself missing, presumed dead at the peak of his notoriety, turn from tangible crook to folklore demon, keep people paranoid he might come back, someday... 

“I should have seen it.” she mumbled. “The hallmark of hiding Grisha– miracles and bedtime stories. I was thinking of the altruistic, the quaint. I should have thought of monsters under the bed and impossible escapes, instead.”

“I don’t think he’ll like you to attribute his reputation to any Grisha ability he may have,” warned Inej. 

“Oh, I’m sure his mythmaking is all too human,” said Nina glumly. “But that has to be partially why. To help him hide in plain sight. Of course Brekker has supernatural powers, everyone thinks that– and so, no one ever thinks to check.”

“Maybe…” said Inej thoughtfully. She glimpsed Nina’s miserable face. “Don’t be too cross with him, Nina. In a way, it helped. He might have been distant and cruel and over-pragmatic, but he knew how to get you and Jesper into the prison undetected, and how to keep you out of the khergud’s grip.”

“This is sounding awfully like that on Kaz’s side thing that you denied…” 

“I’m just saying that it had did end up having its advantages–”

“Inej,” said Nina sternly. “He’s not even that good looking.” 

Inej released a bark of surprised laughter, and Nina laughed too, glad for some kind of relief.

“...I still don’t forgive him,” she said, after a pause.

“I don’t think he expects you to, if that’s any consolation.”

“In a way, it is,” admitted Nina. Kaz would never act righteous in the face of someone else’s fury. He more or less expected it– he’d only truly exploded at her when she’d started making assumptions about him. 

Assumptions. She paused, thinking back to what Inej had said earlier. He really had looked dreadful…

“Do you really think he’s… afraid of it, somehow? He looked horrible at the docks. But I can’t see Kaz being superstitious or self-conscious about it.”

“I’m not sure,” admitted Inej. “At first, I didn’t think it was his power at all. I thought it was…” she hesitated. “Yours, actually.”

“Mine?” said Nina, stunned. “But I didn’t do anything to him.”

“Not like that,” said Inej. “We both heard him shout at you to stop, and he lost a lot of focus when you raised the skeletons. And I noticed he wouldn’t look at the man on the water, once he’d killed him.”

Stop it. In the revelation that had followed, Nina had completely forgotten that he’d shouted at her.

“He didn’t mind it before,” she said, but almost as soon as it had passed her lips, she doubted it. Kaz was always a little… strange, about the dead. 

As if she’d summoned him, they heard his uneven gait coming down the hall. He paused in the kitchen doorway, shot them a quick glance.

“I’m going out,” he said briskly, straightening his gloves and turning up his collar. “Don’t follow me, I have work to do.”

“Trust me, we don’t want to follow you on whatever horrid little errand you have to run,” mumbled Nina, but it was lacklustre. Kaz shot her an unreadable look, then turned away, apparently not interested in saying goodbye. Inej and Nina watched him go glumly, listened to the door slam. There was a short pause, and then footsteps creaked in the room above them.

“...Jesper’s going to follow him, isn’t he?” said Inej.

“His funeral,” said Nina. “He can rest easy in the knowledge that I’ll get him that open casket he always wanted.” She looked around. “Shall we make a pot of tea? I’m still cold.”

Kaz’s ‘work’ amounted to glaring at a double shot of rum in the back corner of the Kooperom and compulsively shuffling a deck of cards. He knew he’d be left alone, here; it was a common gang haunt, and no one, no matter how drunk, was stupid enough to pick a fight with Dirtyhands. He’d be presumed to be plotting– and he was, in a half-idle way. The Tides had gotten him into this, and so they had to pay. But how? Exacting revenge on a bunch of faceless Grisha with the power to manipulate your bodily fluids wasn’t the world’s greatest prospect.

Then again, the prospect of getting revenge on Pekka Rollins, King of the Barrel, hadn’t been so great either. And now he was out of the Barrel for good–

A long, familiar shadow fell across him. Kaz said acidly;

“If you’re coming to pick another argument, you can either turn around right now, or get yourself beaten senseless and dumped in the drink.”

“Actually, Kaz,” said Jesper. “I came to say that I get it.” 

He sat down, put his pint down, and propped his elbow on a sticky coaster, poking through the dubious peanuts in the dish. Kaz avoided his gaze. Jesper didn’t seem to be lying, but he didn’t think he’d imagined the betrayed tinge to his expression in the kitchen. As if he’d read his mind, Jesper said;

“Yeah, I’m pissed off that you lied to me for half a decade and let me run around doing a worse impression of something that you were doing way better, and that you let me bear the brunt of it at the Ice Court… but frankly, Kaz, being mad at you is not a new feeling.” 

He sat back and folded his hands behind his head, making his lanky elbows stick out like the wings of some gangly wading bird. “Nina’s just forgotten how often you make people want to strangle you. Plus, you know– it’s close to home, with her.” 

That much was true, at least. Kaz went back to shuffling his cards. Jesper sat up and dropped his arms, then leant back again. Still restless, still ceaseless. Perhaps they would all assume now that Kaz had favoured Jesper because they’d been hounding the same secret, but it wasn’t true. They were both constantly restless, constantly wakeful. There was something hungry and unsatiated in both of them, a constant stride forwards. Kaz had noticed it from the first, and he didn’t think it entirely stemmed from any stamped-down Grisha inclination–

"I know it's something to do with Jordie." Jesper blurted out. 

Kaz paused mid-shuffle, thrown off. He glanced up– Jesper looked mortified.

“Sorry,” he said. “No one said– I mean, I just guessed– look, Kaz.” He sat eagerly forward, apparently intending to fling himself down a dangerous path. “Selflessly overusing her Fabrikator gifts was what killed my mother, yeah? And so Da told me to hide it, for my own safety. I don’t know why exactly you don’t want to use it, or for people to know, but I can promise you that I get it. I don’t care how horrible the reason is, or what you did with it, or–”

Was that what he thought Kaz had done? Some horrible misdeed? Was that all he thought of him? 

Kaz flung the deck of cards down, and snapped;

“For Ghezen’s sake, Jesper, I didn’t accidentally kill my brother, it was just–” 

He realised what he’d said, and cut himself off abruptly. He looked sharply away and hastily gathered up the cards, waiting for Jesper to say something…

But he didn’t. He sat there, clutching his pint, getting long handprints in the condensation. Kaz could hear the ice in his drink creaking as it melted, and the vague dribble of Jesper’s cold glass.

"...he was your brother?" said Jesper quietly. 

Kaz glanced up, and found Jesper’s face crumpled into something truly, desperately sad. Years of Jesper desperately striving to get anything from him, any crumb of fondness or favouritism or forgiveness… and once he got it, all he could be was sad, genuinely sad, that Kaz’s brother was dead. Sometimes Kaz wondered how someone who cared so much had ever survived the Barrel at all.

“It was a long time ago,” mumbled Kaz. And it was, now. Over a decade ago. How much he had changed. How little.

“I’m really sorry, Kaz.” 

Kaz shrugged tiredly, scrubbing a hand over his bad leg. He could tell Jesper was dying to ask more, but he hoped he wouldn’t. He might have been practically made of spite, but he didn’t really want to lash out at Jesper– and he knew he would if he pressed him too much.

So, he was a little alarmed when Jesper said suddenly;

“Do you still have it? The– drug?”

“I wish everyone would stop asking me that,” Kaz muttered, sinking slowly into the corner of the booth.

“So you do,” said Jesper, a little of that weary misery vanishing. 

“Don’t turn all Inej on me,” said Kaz waspishly.

“Get rid of it,” said Jesper in a strained, tense sort of voice. Kaz rolled his eyes.

“As I said to her, I’m not just going to–”

Jesper flipped back his coat and put his hand on his right revolver.

“If you don’t get rid of it tonight, I’ll force you to do it. At gunpoint.”

Kaz stared at him, aghast. Jesper, draw on him? In the Kooperom? No one who wanted to live long drew on Kaz– least of all Dregs members, least of all publicly. Then again, Jesper wasn’t a Dregs member anymore, even if he’d neglected to get the crow and cup covered. But for all intents and purposes…

“You can’t ever take it,” said Jesper, the faintest hint of a tremor in his voice. “You can’t, Kaz.”

“You wanted to take it–”

“And you wouldn’t let me!” snapped Jesper. “When you refused, I thought you were just withholding the option from me– I didn’t realise letting you keep it would give the option to you instead! I don’t want it to be you instead of me!”

“Are you out of your–” 

Jesper curled his hand around the pearl handle, eyes wide and a little mad. “If you won’t speak my language, Kaz, I’ll speak yours. Get rid of it.”

So much for I’m sorry, Kaz, I get it, Kaz– now it was get rid of the jurda parem or I’ll adorn you with holes like a salt shaker, Kaz. 

“You’re a miserable bastard and I regret ever letting you into the Slat,” said Kaz nastily. "And if you shot me you'd be severely undermining the point of forcing me to destroy it."

Jesper’s gaze was fierce and hard. He said;

“Does this miserable bastard hear a yes somewhere in there…?” 

“Fine,” snapped Kaz. “Fine! I’ll do it, and you can come to supervise me like your housekeeper does to the scullery maid. Put your wretched gun back where it belongs, before I beat you bloody for daring to try and draw on me and send you to the next Council meeting with two black eyes.”

Jesper looked mollified. The gun disappeared. 

“Glad that’s settled,” said Jesper brightly. Kaz called him some choice names under his breath, and sagged back into his corner. "You'll come back to the house, right?" Jesper added.

Kaz, folding pieces of ripped-up napkin into little squares, weighed up his options. He far preferred the Van Eck house, which had unbroken furniture and far fewer people to careen up the stairs and pound on his door for the sake of settling petty disputes, but the Slat attic gave him his much valued solitude. 

"...why should I do that?" 

"Because I asked you to?" said Jesper.

Yes, because that was always effective. Kaz wasn’t sure what to say, so he ignored him. Jesper, unperturbed, took Kaz’s cards from the table and drew the top two, which turned out to be the Jack of Hearts and the King of Diamonds. If only he had that much luck with his draws in the gambling palaces.

After a little while, Jesper said;

"Tell you what I don't understand, though. If you've not used it for years– why don't you look worse?"

Kaz raised his eyebrows. 

"Worse?"

"You know what I mean," grumped Jesper. "Grisha in hiding get sick and malnourished and fatigued. You always look underfed, maybe, but you never seem tired, and you never get ill. How, if you've not used it for years and years?"  

The truth was, Kaz did feel those things. He knew he looked younger than he was, that most men his age were meant to look more robust. He often woke up feeling sick or aching, he spent most days thrumming with exhaustion, he never ate enough and never wanted to. He just forced his way through it, stuffed it down into some backroom of his consciousness, barely let himself acknowledge it. Live with suffering long enough, you learn to like the taste. How was he to know what caused it? Was it the denial of his power? Or was it his broken leg, his sleepless nights, the constant brawls? His endless patrols of his clubs? Eating subpar food and hardly resting? The stress? The paranoia? 

No, it wasn't the suppressed power– at least not entirely. The Barrel did all of that itself. 

Besides, Jesper wasn't entirely right. 

Kaz suspected that if he didn't tell him this, Inej would, and so he muttered;

“I have been."

“What?”

“I have been using it. The barest amount. Since the Ice Court, anyway.”

Jesper goggled at him. "How? For what?”

Through gritted teeth, Kaz told him. 

There was a pause, for just a second. Then Jesper laughed out loud, and said;

“Saints, Kaz, just buy her a ring already–”

Kaz threw the dish of peanuts at him. 

They got kicked out for fighting– the Kooperom bar staff didn't care who they were kicking out, only that they got out– and walked back to the Slat in a silence that wasn't as tense as Jesper had been expecting.

It was strange to be in the Slat again. They passed the rowdy and carousing kitchen full of Kaz’s off-duty lieutenants and several bottles of cheap kvas, which was certainly the same– but the rest of it had a distinct air of having had money spent on it, lately. The plaster on the walls was staying in place, for one thing, and it seemed warmer than it ever had when he’d lived there. There was also a serious population of street urchins, gawking from corners. Jesper watched as the scant few kids that ended up in Kaz’s wake fell back instantly, offering feeble salutes and backward glances as they crammed themselves against bannisters or walls to stay out of his way.

“We never saluted you,” said Jesper, amused, as they went up the stairs.

“They take Dregs general too literally,” said Kaz, unlocking his attic room door. “A lot of them are from poor sailing or naval families. It's a habit, unfortunately.”

He slammed the door behind them. His room looked the same as it always had, down to the terrible makeshift desk. He didn’t seem to like the office downstairs; he used it mostly as a receiving room during the day, Inej said, but did all of his real work up here. Jesper couldn’t understand why he still insisted on this many stairs… but that Kaz liked his silence and solitude, so perhaps it wasn’t that surprising. 

Kaz slid open a panel behind his bed (Jesper had not known that was there), and cracked the safe so quickly that Jesper didn't get a chance to memorise the code.

“I’m not going to steal from you,” he grumped.

“Can never be too careful,” said Kaz. He drew out the packet of parem and slammed the door, spinning the lock back into place– though not before Jesper caught sight of several weighty stacks of kruge, pricey looking jewels, and a few unassuming looking envelopes and boxes. Jesper decided he probably didn’t want to know what was in them. 

Kaz tossed the parem onto his desk. They stood and stared at it; Kaz and Jesper, pickpocket and gunslinger, Etherealki and Durast.

“You should have told me,” said Jesper glumly. “...but I know why you didn't.”

Kaz hadn’t even told Inej; there was no chance that he would have told Jesper, especially not after the mistake with the Dime Lions. It had taken Jesper long enough to scrounge back even the smallest bit of trust or forgiveness, after that.

What do you think my forgiveness looks like, Jordie?

Jesper worried the inside of his cheek. What had happened to Kaz's brother? His brain had fired off with a thousand questions the second the word had slipped out of Kaz's mouth, and now he felt ashamed for assuming– after all, there was a chance that Jordie’s death had nothing to do with Kaz’s power at all. But Jesper wasn’t sure he believed that. There was something– a horrible tangle at the centre of it all, somewhere where all the threads crossed, where all the winding lines of the Kerch canals emptied into the sea. Perhaps it was best that none of them seemed to be able to follow it all the way to the estuary. Kaz certainly seemed to want it that way.

Jesper waited, but Kaz didn’t move to do anything. His expression was blank and a little distant.

“Kaz, I know you think it's a failsafe,” Jesper warned, staring at the packet of parem. “But you have to destroy it. Can you even think of a situation where you'd think doing that to yourself was necessary?”

Kaz glanced at him.

“Clearly you could.”

“That was when the entire city wanted our heads,” said Jesper.

“Jesper, maybe your mercher mansion lifestyle has made you forgetful, but Ketterdam always wants my head.” 

Jesper blew out a breath, drumming his thumbs on his guns. 

“Ye-es,” he said. “But, you never needed to be Grisha to take any of them down before.”

Appealing to Kaz’s arrogance was a certain kind of play, for sure– but it seemed to work, because a small smile curled the corner of his mouth.

“True enough,” he said.

“Well, then?” said Jesper, pointedly. Kaz sighed, and drew a lighter from the inside of his jacket, rattling a metal ash-bucket out from under his desk. Jesper suspected he burned a good few documents every week.

“Hang on,” said Jesper, quickly. “What if it’s really flammable?”

“Well, is it?” said Kaz. “You’re the Durast, as I recall.”

“Oh,” said Jesper. So he was. He gave it a bit of an experimental prod. “Um, I don’t think so…? We probably shouldn’t inhale the fumes, though–”

“Helpfully, Inej has left the window open.”

“Inej has–” Jesper turned. “What? How long have you been there?”

“As long as you have,” said Inej, crouched on the sill with her hood shadowing her face. 

“I’m doing it,” said Kaz, rather petulantly, keeping his back to her.

“So I see.”

Jesper huffed as Inej got down from the sill and came to stand next to them, smiling faintly.

“How do you always see her, Kaz?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” said Kaz thinly, snapping his lighter to life. Jesper looked at Inej, who shrugged.

“I don’t know, either.”

“It’s nice that we’re all in the same… boat,” said Jesper. “Ha ha.”

“Do not start doing that,” said Kaz dangerously.

“Hmm? Doing what?”

Kaz shot him a dirty look and lit the corner of the packet, turning it this way and that to make sure it caught. Then he tossed it into the bucket, where it flared, burned eerily in licking tongues of green and blue and purple, then shrivelled with a hiss. 

They stared into the bucket.

Kaz said;

“For the record, Jesper, I’ve thought of about ten situations in which I could have made use of–”

“Shut up, Kaz.”

"I've done it, so don't bring it up again."

"Wasn't coming to ask that, actually, though that's good to know," said Nina, standing in the doorway with her arms folded. "You know, you could have just told me." 

"Told you what?" Kaz kept his back to her, and his voice was determinedly neutral.

"That for some reason best known to your creepy little self, you don't like my power and it distracts you a dangerous amount," said Nina. "Inej had to tell me, and even she doesn’t know why.” She paused, awaiting a response. There was none. “Kaz, if you'd have just asked–"

"I'm not compromising your effectiveness as a fighter over a personal preference," said Kaz tautly, briskly counting out a wedge of kruge out onto the writing desk. 

"But if compromises yours–" began Nina.

"I'm fine," snarled Kaz. Nina stared at him, but he didn't look over. "You think I could have lived in the Barrel eleven years and never seen a dead body?"

No, she didn't think that; which was part of what was worrying her. What had Kaz seen that had made him react so terribly to the raising of the dead? All of the usual explanations– superstitious, squeamish, religious– didn’t land on him, didn't stick. He was a heathen with a stomach stronger than a Fjerdan mountain man and less superstition than a rock. 

"...that's how long you've been here?" Nina came in uninvited, and sat down on the ugly sofa that Alys Van Eck had done needlework for. 

“Almost.”

“Where did you live before?”

“Here and there,” said Kaz. “In the harbour. In Hell. In the Kerch people’s collective gothic fantasies.”

Nina rolled her eyes. 

“I see. Well, I shall be very prudent with my dead men next time. Or, I’ll at least tell you–”

“I already told you not to bother,” snapped Kaz. Nina’s eyes narrowed. She was not going to be responsible for punting Kaz off the thin ledge of his sanity with a poorly-placed corpse brawl– but she also thought this was Kaz attempting to resist anything even vaguely resembling an apology.

“You can’t tell me a damn thing, Kaz Brekker.”

“If I could, all of my jobs would have been a lot easier,” muttered Kaz. Nina smiled, triumphant, and kicked her feet up onto the sofa, rootling through the stack of books on the coffee table. They were probably Jesper’s– actually, definitely Jesper’s, if the variety of trashy horror bodice-rippers and crime thrillers were anything to go by.

“What was the favour?” said Kaz, suddenly. Nina looked up from A Merchwife At Blackwater Gate, which featured a lovely cover of a white-lace adorned Mercher’s wife drooping prettily into the arms of a black-leather clad bandit .

“What?”

“You wanted a favour from me,” said Kaz. He’d turned the chair around to stare at her.

“Oh.” Nina put the book down, frowning. That felt so long ago, now– but it had only been a few hours. And she had, it was true. “I suppose you’ll want something in return?”

“Tell me what it is, first.”

Nina worried the tips of her fingers together, considering.

“...well, I’m not just here for a pleasure trip.”

“So I gathered.” said Kaz, stacking up the pens on the desk into a neat pyramid.

“Recently, there’s been issues with Ravkan ships around Kerch harbours–” 

“Nina,” Kaz said in a manner of distinct warning. Nina glared.

“Calm down, I’m not about to try and draft you into the Second Army. We weren’t plucking feral children out of Kerch to be on the frontlines. You’d have bitten the conscriptors.”

“Get to the point, then.”

“The point is, Kaz, the Queen of Ravka has noticed that her shipping in Kerch is being interfered with. There’s wrecks, losses of cargo, damages to ships, attacks by bandits...”

“You should tell the Queen that that’s merely how we live, in Ketterdam.”

“Well Kaz, I would, but it’s going beyond the mere risks of being in proximity to the Barrel. It;s being blamed on bad luck, but she’s suspicious that there’s rebels or mercenaries being sent to pose as dockworkers, or that someone’s hired on an Etherealki to target Ravkan ships. Even Sturmhond has been banned from approaching Kerch until they know what the matter is.”

Kaz looked as if he’d like that ban to be permanent. Nina knew he was a damn liar; Kaz liked verbally sparring with Sturmhond, and Sturmhond with him. It was their idea of entertainment.

“Why are you the woman for the job?” he said. “Don’t Fjerdan Princesses have people to do this sort of thing for them?”

“I’m very proactive,” said Nina, instead of the truth, which was that she'd wanted to see them all. “A modern royal. Progressive.” She spied Kaz’s apathetic face and scowled. “You know, Brekker, for a man so interested in intrigue, I find it shameful you don’t care for courts.”

“The overblown dynastic concerns of inbred royal families doesn’t exactly invoke my compassion.” 

“Your compassion is on a permanent holiday,” said Nina. “Regardless, Kaz, I suspected it was a traitor Etherealki, and was sent looking for evidence of one.” She searched his face for any indication of concern, or fellow-feeling. Nothing. He truly had convinced himself he was more or less otkazat'sya, hadn’t he? “I came here hoping you might know something, or be able to find out where or who he was. So at the docks, when you did that… well, I worried, for a split second–”

“That I was your man? That’d I’d been hired to sabotage Zoya’s ships?”

Kaz didn’t usually invite any type of reasonable guilt, but Nina felt a pang of shame now, even though he appeared unmoved by the accusation, clicking the lid of one of the pens thoughtfully.

“...only for a moment. I’m never sure exactly how far you’ll go, sometimes.”

The pen disappeared in Kaz’s hands. Nina marvelled at his obstinate fascination with mundane tricks. He had real power, but he seemed to think, in his usual contrary way, that Tidemaker gifts were inferior to East Stave vanishing acts.

“No need to worry, Zenik. No amount of money could convince me to blow my own cover, in this case.” The pen reappeared. “Tell me what you know.”

Nina sighed. For better or worse, that was probably true. 

“Whoever it is, they have to be pretty subtle about it. You’d notice if someone in a blue kefta strode onto the docks and started trying to sink a Ravkan ship, right?”

“You’d be surprised what people don’t notice.” said Kaz, but his gaze had become distant. “Go on.”

“So, either we’re looking at a lot of mercenaries hidden in Kerch sailing organisations, or a few Etherealki smuggled into–”

Kaz cut her off.

“How recently are we talking, here?”

“...in the last few months, maybe.” Nina knew that look. “Kaz, what do you know?”

“I have a suspicion that our friend is hiding in plain sight, Nina,” said Kaz vaguely. “Depending on your definition, that is…”

“Plain sight? What, someone with access to a lot of information, or with a lot of influence? A Mercher? A Barrel boss? What are we–” 

“No,” said Kaz. “No, no, not a Mercher. Tell me, Nina– if you were taking bribes and didn’t want anyone to know, what would you do to cover it up?”

“I’d…” Nina frowned. “I don’t know. Create a distraction, I suppose. Something to keep everyone else’s attention elsewhere.”

“Something big and dramatic, yes? A little controversial? A smaller controversy, to cover up a bigger one.”

“Yes.”

“Naturally. Anyone would. Well– it turns out that I have been that distraction.” He leant forward. “Nina– your traitor’s on the Council of Tides. I just need to figure out which one it is.”

Chapter Text

Finding out who was on the Council of Tides was not something that had exactly ever been done. 

The entire point, Nina knew, was that the Tides were anonymous, to maintain their own protection and leverage. They had been that way for all of living memory. Kaz maintained that a) living memory in the Barrel was a small span of time, since anyone over the age of 60 was a rare sight, and b) the only reason he hadn’t found them out was because, up until this point, he’d never tried hard enough.

“You think the only reason the identities of a sophisticated Grisha secret society elude you, is because you merely needed to try harder?” said Nina in exasperation. 

“Consider my previous efforts… half-hearted,” said Kaz. “For obvious reasons.”

The spent days poring over stacks of files that Wylan had accrued for them; classified Stadhall documents of suspected Tides members that the Merchant Council kept. Kaz and Inej, both still imbued with a great love for intrigue and secrets, had practically snatched them from poor Wylan the second he got inside. 

“I still can’t believe they tried to recruit you,” said Jesper to Kaz, flipping a cover back and forth idly. “You’d sink this island for a thick wedge of banknotes, even at twelve years old.”

“Several wedges,” said Kaz. “Maybe a few jewels. A chartered ship. Make it worth my while.” He moved a few files to the side. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the Merchant Council might be onto something.”

“I thought the Tides wore masks?” said Inej.

“Of a sort,” said Kaz. “They obscure their faces with a masking effect that looks like the night sky. Miserably melodramatic.”

“Says the man who tends to travel in Komedie Brute costumes,” murmured Nina. Kaz ignored her. 

“I think it must be some kind of mirroring device, or maybe something to do with how densely they can pack water vapour in the air–” he saw Nina staring interestedly. “–well, the point is, they’ve come to harass me enough times that I’ve picked up on things. And for a while I’ve had a hunch…” he spread a few files out next to each other. “Ah. Yes.” He tapped one picture with a black-gloved finger. “This man here, Kristopher Abspoel, the ex-sailor. His height and weight more or less match one of the Tides, the one with a few missing fingers… which Abspoel also lacks, according to this medical section. And the matching man on the Tides sounds like he’s had a couple of seafaring diseases fit for sailors– plagues, the like. And this woman here, Viviane; she’s also a clerk at the Stadhall. How convenient. In fact, they’re all apparently Stadhall clerks, and yet…” he turned the files around. “Recognise any of them, Wylan? Jesper?”

Wylan studied the faces, then shook his head.

“I don’t think so.”

“Nope,” said Jesper. “I don’t recognise their names, either. Weird.”

“Unusual, no? That the infamously affable Wylan Van Eck and his trophy wife–”

“Ooh, Kaz, don’t flirt with me,” said Jesper.

“–the only mercher couple who look mere Stadhall menials in the eye, fail to recognise any of these supposed clerks?” Kaz flipped to the payment history. “And their monthly payslips are unusually hefty for clerks…” 

“Almost as if they’re not clerks at all,” realised Nina.

“It’s a cover,” said Wylan. 

“Of course it is,” said Kaz. “The Tides can’t act completely independently from the government. Just because most of the Merchant Council don’t know their identities, and they destroyed the Stadhall one paltry time, doesn’t mean there’s not some sort of system in place to keep them salaried and safe. They’re valuable; as these very people told me, it’s hard to make your perpetual profit underwater.”

“And why were they doom mongering to you, Kaz?” said Inej archy.

“They like to threaten me with exaggerated death and destruction,” said Kaz. “I think they get a kick from it, frankly, but far be it from me to judge the–” he saw Inej staring. “...I told them if they didn’t stop harassing me, I’d fake another plague outbreak on their towers and make the Kerch people tear them down from below.”

“Every day I wonder at the fact that all the powerful people you run your mouth to, have so far let you live,” muttered Nina.

“Pure unfettered stupidity,” said Kaz. “Regardless, after our little scrap with their grunts, they’ll be lying low for a few weeks, trying to think of a better way to get at me. Happily, they’re all miserable idiots with brains addled by brine and tidal patterns, so they won’t succeed. This gives us a nice week or two to find Nina’s man, and shake him upside down from the nearest lighthouse until he cries mercy–”

“Kaz, I want him gone altogether,” said Nina, peering at the files. “None of your spooky little psychological torture on my prisoner. No convincing him you’ve clamped his grandmother in irons and thrown his sisters to sharks. I know you like to play with your mice before you kill them, you nasty alley cat, but you can do that in your own time.”

Kaz lifted a shoulder.

“I certainly won’t object to him being silenced permanently. But there’s so much to prey on, with Tidemakers…”

His eyes had taken on a little of that shiny quality that always made Nina’s spine prickle.

“Just do the job, Kaz,” she said.

“Oh, I always do. But as my lady the Princess wishes…” Kaz flipped another file. Jesper snorted, so Nina kicked him under the table. She regretted ever letting Kaz know about what had happened at the Fjerdan court, now that he was getting unparalleled mileage out of it. He’d probably been storing up comments for eighteen months. 

Kaz said; “Perhaps we ought to go straight to the source– pay one of the Tides a visit, to see what they know.”

“You can’t prove any of these people are on the Tides,” said Wylan. 

“The weakest link will snap soon enough,” said Kaz dispassionately.

“The weakest link?” frowned Nina.

“Whoever’s got the most to lose. Money, love, children–”

A clamour of warning rose briefly, from a table of people far too acquainted with Kaz’s great love of making opponents fear for their family’s lives.

“It’s practical,” snapped Kaz. “Stop clutching your pearls, I’m not going to do anything. It’ll be easy enough to bully one on their own into telling us what they know.”

“Whoever you pick, they’re still a fully-grown, powerful Grisha,” warned Nina. “I wouldn’t tell a trained Tidemaker I’d kidnapped their son. Haven't you ever read an over-romanticised novel about Tidemakers? It's all saving children from shipwrecks and holding back harbour waters for your beloved–"

Kaz scowled. "No."

"Honestly Kaz, I don't think you read anything except property deeds and blackmail notes," said Jesper. Kaz didn't contradict him, presumably because he was right. 

"Did you ever go to school?" said Nina, curious.

"Ketterdam is my perpetual education."

"Someone had to teach you to write, and I doubt it was Per Haskell."

Kaz flexed his jaw.

"...I went to school, briefly."

Nina blinked, surprised. 

"Did you get kicked out for conspiracy and embezzling funds?"

"Yes, Nina, I was flung from compulsory education at the age of nine for monetary fraud," said Kaz snappishly. "Where are the rest of the files?"

Well, Nina reflected as Kaz flipped bad-temperedly through the rest of them, no matter the reasoning, the age certainly made a lot of sense. And made a lot more surprising; it implied he'd taught himself to run massive sums–

She turned over a file and groaned.

“No way do they think you’re on it.”

“They suspect me of everything,” said Kaz mildly. “My file is the most-copied file in the Stadhall.”

“We’ll make you a medal,” said Jesper. “Most Likely To Be Guilty Of Literally Everything, Somehow. Saints, thirty pages? What are these tabs… Personal Information, Arrests, Criminal Charges, Affiliations… that personal information is scarce. Did they even measure you, or did you bite them when they tried? You look like you bit.”

They grinned at the grainy daguerreotype of a surly Kaz at about fourteen, then looked up and saw the adult Kaz mirroring the expression. Jesper roared with laughter. Nina flipped through Kaz’s file, grinning. Typically, they had no idea of Kaz’s origins, motivations, or legitimate affiliations– just a whole lot of rumour and paranoia. It was nice to know they were all in the same boat… though the row reading GRISHA APTITUDE?: N gave her a chill.

“Six arrests?” she read out. “Twice for pickpocketing, once for fraud and scam, three times from gambling hall raids…”

“I used to spring myself, until Per Haskell realised he had to bail me out to keep the gang running,” said Kaz, with a tinge of arrogance. He frowned, and then plucked the file from Nina’s hands. “I think I’ll remove that from this particular cabinet, actually…”

“Probably for the best, if you’re carrying on with this mad plan of keeping it quiet,” said Nina, watching Kaz tuck his own file into his coat.

“They didn’t call me Haskell’s rabid dog for my sensible and measured approach to life, my dear,” said Kaz. He considered the files, then picked up poor Kristopher Abspoel’s. “I think I have my informant. He has a wife and two children. Charming–”

“Our informant,” said Nina.

“What?” said Kaz.

“Nina and I are going with you,” said Jesper. “We decided.”

Kaz shot them a narrow look.

“I don’t need help.”

“You might if the Tides decide they still want you dead,” said Nina. “And this is my job that you’re usurping. Plus, Kaz– this affects all three of us.”

“It doesn’t affect me at all,” said Kaz glacially. “I’m merely entertaining myself.” He paused. “You can tag along– but if you slow me down because you’ve gotten too used to the high life, I’ll leave you behind without a second thought.”

“Um, you always threatened to do that anyway,” said Wylan. 

“Call it consistency,” said Kaz, and swept imperiously out.

"Goedavond," said Nina kindly, two nights later. "Is your Da home? We want to discuss a business matter with him."

Kristopher Abspoel’s son’s eyes travelled slowly between them. Nina: encouraging. Jesper: cheery. Kaz: Brekker. Jesper kicked Kaz to try and get him to neutralise his expression, but Kaz did not so much as blink.

“I can ask him…” the kid said, eyes still fixed doubtingly on Kaz. 

“That would be so helpful, thank you,” said Nina. The kid turned around and bawled up the stairs;

"DA!"

Jesper winced. A middle-aged man with a wide, wind-beaten face appeared at the top of the stairs and trudged down towards them.

"Who is it? For Ghezen's sake, Darrel, I told you never to answer the–" 

He saw Kaz and stopped.

"Hello, Kristopher," said Kaz pleasantly. "Not on duty tonight?"

Kristopher went white, then grey. In a sensible parental instinct, he ushered his fascinated son up the stairs; in a less sensible self preservation instinct, he tried to slam the door. Kaz shoved his cane in the gap and blocked it from closing all the way.

“Now now, don’t be like that." he said. "We only have something we want to talk about–”

“You know I could drown you where you stand.” 

“I don’t doubt it,” Kaz said. “But I always wondered how a Tidemaker would fare against, say, a Corporalnik. Or a Fabrikator…” 

He looked pointedly to Nina and Jesper. 

“I don’t know how you found me, you Barrel-bred beast, but I want nothing to do with you," Kristopher hissed through the gap.

"Oh, but Kristopher, you do." Kaz gave the door a particularly aggressive shove and Kristopher let go of it, letting it swing pathetically open. "You decided you wanted lots to do with me the second you all descended from on high in your pretty blue cloaks to make a deal with a twelve year old feral."

“I was outvoted. I never wanted to approach you at all.”

“I’m sure you were,” said Kaz, inviting himself in and looking appraisingly at a watercolour of a woman on the wall. “How lovely. Is this your wife?”

A vein was beating in Kristopher’s head. He said, through gritted teeth;

“Get. In. The sitting room.”

“Certainly,” said Kaz, and sauntered off down the hall, Nina and Jesper following. Nina felt sorry for Kristopher, but she was admittedly fighting the urge to giggle. Kaz glib and irreverent was a far sight preferable to Kaz surly and snappish.

Nina and Jesper settled themselves on the saggy yellow sofa; Kaz loitered by a side-table, leaning on his cane. The Tidemaker slammed the door and leant against it, then said, tightly;

“Out with it, then. You and your… thugs.”

Kaz’s pleasant demeanour had vanished. He said; "There's a traitor in your midst." 

“Impossible,” said Kristopher instantly. Kaz tutted.

“Kristopher, how do you think I knew that all of you Tides were some sort of respectable? If you were Barrel-raised, you’d be better at working together, and far more suspicious of everything. Unfortunately, your lack of cynicism and your sense of superiority has meant you’ve been… careless with your recruiting.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

Kaz opened his mouth to say something presumably evasive and antagonising, so Nina jumped in hastily;

“Sir– we have reason to believe there’s someone taking bribes on the Council of Tides.” 

A flicker of trepidation crossed Kristopher’s face. He might have been foolish compared to Kaz, but most people were– Nina doubted he was truly stupid. 

“...who?”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” said Kaz. “But with your help, I can find and… neutralise them. In return, the Tides will do me the apparently very difficult service of leaving me alone."

Kristopher frowned.

"You broke faith with us first, Brekker. You’ve been routinely meddling with the currents to ensure safe passage for the Wraith, and ignored us when we warned you not to.” Nina’s head snapped around. Kaz ignored her, so she looked at Jesper, who nodded confirmation. “Why should we strike another deal with you?"

So that was how he wasn’t utterly unwell all the time. A tiny use, here and there, to get Inej’s ship safely in and out of the harbour… Nina wanted to shake him until his bones rattled, and to give him a big kiss. Reasonably, she would do neither, because both would get her punched, but it was fun to consider.

"I think I've shown remarkable restraint," said Kaz, hands folded on his cane. “A mere occasional meddle with the currents to keep myself in good health? That’s really nothing. Imagine if I’d decided I wanted to run my gang with saltwater and shipwrecks, instead of good-old-fashioned brawling and bullying…”

He let the implication hang. Everyone looked uncomfortably in different directions. No one wanted to consider that prospect too far. Kaz Brekker the otkazat'sya was bad enough– Nina found maybe she didn’t want to know what Kaz Brekker the Tidemaker would have been like, after all. 

“And this is ever so rich, coming from the group that sent thugs to kill me, rather than re-negotiating,” added Kaz. “I’m really being very generous.”

Kristopher rubbed his shortened fingers, frowning. 

“They weren’t meant to kill you. Just give you a bit of… motivation to reconsider our offer.”

“Then you shouldn’t have hired a bunch of Barrel toughs all eager to get the jump on Dirtyhands,” said Kaz. “Yet another example of the Tides having no idea what they’re dealing with, when it comes to people. You should stick to shipping forecasts.” He leant forward. “This is the easiest deal I’ve ever struck, Kristopher.”

“I want proof that there’s really a traitor.”

“Your proof is in the amount of Ravkan shipwrecks and accidents, as of late,” said Kaz. “Surely you must have noticed? Everyone in the Barrel’s noticed. Sailors are refusing to get on Ravkan vessels. The Ravkan Embassy is in a fight with the Merchant Council– they say foul play. The merchers are insisting they’re just unlucky.”

So Kaz had taken note. Of course he had. He’d just not mentioned it until it was useful, as usual. Kristopher looked uncomfortable. Clearly he’d heard, too, if not even witnessed.

“It’s not our job to rescue–”

“Oh believe me, I know it’s not your job to rescue every poor bastard who gets himself a dunking in the harbour,” said Kaz glacially, “But Abspoel, no one but a Tidemaker situated on one of the watchtowers could possibly be doing away with ships so easily. Your proof is in the Tide’s sudden and distracting focus on inane nonsense– like trying to recruit Barrel ferals, and trying to get the jump on me. ”

Kristopher winced, slightly.

“I’ve not been on duty for anything, Brekker– really, I haven’t. I was at First Harbour when ships went down at the Third, and I was on the ground trying to help a ship that had run aground at Fourth, when another went up onto the sandbank at Fifth.”

“So you’re also being led astray, is what I’m hearing.” said Jesper. He whistled. “Yeah, there’s definitely a traitor. You’re being distracted. The easiest way to steal a man's wallet is to tell him you're going to steal his watch…”

“That’s a certain phrase,” said Kaz. He added; “As it happens, that Fifth Harbour disturbance lost me a few thousand kruge.” Nina rolled her eyes.

“Say I do help–” said Kristopher. “It still doesn’t solve our current problem. If you… dispose of one of our members, we’ll need to recruit even more urgently. Even if you think it’s a distraction, you can’t deny that we always need more members.” 

“What a pity,” said Kaz blandly. “I already told you I won’t help you, there.”

“You asked Kaz to recruit for you?” said Jesper doubtfully. “Wow. Good luck.”

“And frankly,” added Kristopher, ignoring Jesper, “How the hell do I know it’s not you doing this, Brekker? You’re the one bringing this to me. How do I know this isn’t some roundabout revenge for our interference? Sowing discord between us?”

“Because I’m not powerful enough to sink an entire trading galley,” said Kaz flatly. “And if I wanted to sow discord amongst the Tides, you’d certainly not know I had a hand in it.”

“I don’t believe you.” said Kristopher. 

“About which part?”

Kristopher was staring at Kaz’s hands. He said, stiffly; “Both parts.” 

Nina worried her lower lip. It was one thing to think it, but quite another to say it. She doubted Kaz was that powerful– but what if?

Kaz’s stare was bottomless.

“Don’t believe me, then,” he said. “Consider the other possibilities. I own most of the shares in Fifth Harbour, and don’t want inconveniences to my shipping. I have beneficial merchant ties that stop me from interfering with other harbours. I have far more pressing concerns in the Barrel slums and my gambling halls. And I would know that it would draw your attention– an attention I have never wanted.”

Nina massaged her temple, thinking she understood why exactly Kaz had been so pissed off with this entire ordeal. And yet– this was something she could fix.

“I imagine,” she said, getting slowly to her feet. “If the Queen of Ravka heard of the Tide’s plight, and their help in weeding out the traitor– she may be able to encourage a few new recruits to your cause. Have her Kerch connections recruit discreetly on your behalf. As a thank you…”

Kristopher looked hard at her.

“...and who are you, to offer that?”

“Someone who knows how hard it is to get Kaz Brekker to do anything for you,” said Nina wryly, anticipating being tripped with Kaz’s cane on the way out, for that one. Kristopher didn’t smile, disappointingly.

“Kerch refuses to be indebted to Ravka.” 

“Kerch will never know,” said Nina smoothly. “Just us, my contacts, and your new recruits.”

Kristopher shot Kaz a doubtful look, apparently not convinced by his willingness to keep his mouth shut.

“I shall be silent as the grave, my good man,” said Kaz smarmily, clearly enjoying himself. Nina stamped on his good foot.

“I have to impart upon you the importance of this,” said Nina to Kristopher. “I really do need your help catching this man. Ravka’s crown would be most grateful.”

“Don’t put much stock in Ravka myself,” murmured Kristopher, but Nina could see he was wavering. 

“And I’m sure that if this all worked out, we would all be willing to let bygones be bygones, with regards to the thugs you sent after us the other day.” Nina added. “Wouldn’t we, Kaz?”

Kaz said nothing. Nina said;

“Wouldn’t we, Kaz.”

“As long as they keep to their side of the bargain,” said Kaz.

“...I shall have to ask the rest of the Tides,” said Kristopher, shifting from foot to foot. “We’ll need a vote.”

“Voting never got anyone anywhere,” scoffed Kaz. 

“Spoken like a true Barrel boss,” muttered Jesper. Kaz continued;

“Besides, you can’t consult with the other Tides, or Nina’s target will realise you’re onto something and skip town. This needs to be done in secrecy. You should be good at that...”

They stared at each other across the quaint, dumpy living room. Kristopher shook his head slowly.

“I don’t understand you, Brekker.”

“Count your blessings,” said Kaz. “Is that agreement?”

Kristopher nodded unhappily.

“I’ll help you,” he said. “If I never have to deal with you again, after this.”

“I think that’s something we can all agree on,” said Kaz. “So– tell me, Kristopher; who’s been your most enthusiastic recruiter?”

Artem was probably not his real name, but it was almost definitely him, Nina considered. 

“He was the one who suggested jumping Kaz, the one who pushes relentlessly to recruit, he’s been acting off, lately… it has to be him,” she said as they examined his file in the East drawing room. 

“Kaz was definitely onto something about none of them being Barrel types,” sighed Inej, staring at the file. “An ex-runner means he has Merch connections.”

“Terrible liars, each and every one of them,” said Kaz. “It’s why they get shut up in their princess towers, so they can’t run their mouths and let things slip.” 

“But why would this guy care about getting rid of Kaz?” frowned Wylan. “Unless he’s being bribed to do that, too.”

“I’m the only link between the Tides and the Ravkan crown,” said Kaz, from behind the newspaper. “Probably got wind that Sturmhond likes bothering me, and doesn’t want me to use my prodigious intellect to make the connection and get a hit put out on him by Zoya Nazyalensky. Unfortunately, he’s too late.”

“Your arrogance exasperates, but does not surprise me,” sighed Nina. Kaz turned the page and ignored her. “But what about his motive? Who’s bribing him?”

“You can get that out of him once you’ve caught him,” said Kaz. “It could be anyone. Your Queen has enough enemies.”

That was, unfortunately, true enough. 

Over the next week, they gathered more information; they staked out the paths to the Tides watchtowers and the Stadhall until they saw him, worked out his schedule. Kaz stole his wallet and pocketbook to look at his identity cards, correspondence, and how much money he’d been paying out (and lifted a few banknotes while he was there) and Inej followed him home one night. He certainly didn’t make it easy; the Tides in uniform manipulated the mist when they travelled, to avoid exactly this, so Inej only got a vague impression of the set of streets he possibly inhabited. 

“If only we had a Tidemaker of our own, to counteract that…” muttered Nina, when Inej reported the problem.

“Yes, because he’d never notice me doing a shoddy job trying to crack into his twee little cloak of fog,” snapped Kaz. “Forget it; we’ll find him elsewhere. He keeps paying out money to bars and coffeehouses near the Lid, so we can try that.”

They settled on jumping him outside a bar, because they were staunch Barrel traditionalists at heart. Nina and Kaz set out on a wet, foggy night to a grim bar near The Gold Strike, and lurked until they saw him slip out of the door, tottering slightly. He was a slightly built man in his thirties, with close-set eyes and a thin mouth. He held his left arm slightly awkwardly, to his chest–

“Kaz, I think he was the Tidemaker that was with the thugs,” whispered Nina. “Didn’t you shoot him there?”

Kaz had just had the same thought, and now watched him with his jaw set. So he hadn’t died at all– he’d probably slunk off underwater while they’d been fighting, the miserable coward. Not only had he advocated for jumping him– he’d actually participated. Well, he’d be sorry. No one, Tides or Barrel or Mercher, had Kaz jumped and got away with it…

They cut out into the street and followed him, sticking close to the walls. Kaz wondered idly why he’d bothered with the bribes at all. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a healthy wage from the Tides position, and he didn’t live on the edge like the inhabitants of the Barrel, constantly poised to lose everything. Perhaps he had gambling or drinking debts? Was he merely extravagant and imprudent? He doubted he’d get to find out until Artem was arrested and squealed in interrogation, but– 

At which point, Artem turned around, and smiled at them. The mist around him curled sinuously, covered him– and Kaz heard him start to run.

“Kaz!” Nina warned. Kaz swore. He didn’t actually know how to– 

The mist briefly condensed into rain, giving a brief impression of Artem further down the road, then reformed. Kaz’s skin crawled briefly, settled. Kaz clenched his jaw, trying to bite down a vague prodding nausea. He couldn’t do this–

From somewhere inside, Artem laughed. Kaz gave up. He was a Barrel thug, not a Grisha magician– and this was his city. He’d be damned if he didn’t know where Artem was going. He’d turn right, because right led down to the harbour… and Tidemakers would always run towards the sea, because they were practically useless without it.  

He got out his pistol dispassionately, shot blind into the mist, and was rewarded with a shriek and a brief vanishing of the cloud– Nina ran in and seized him, forcing Artem to his knees as he clutched at his abdomen. Kaz had only grazed him, but it was enough.

Nina dragged him into a narrower alley out of the way, holding his arms behind his back. Kaz followed her, listening to them argue;

“...don’t know anything about any bribes…”

“So I suppose all those Ravkan ships just sank themselves, did they?” snapped Nina. “We know you’ve been beaching and sinking ships at the behest of someone. Who is it? The Shu? The Fjerdans? Some merchant?”

The Tidemaker’s face soured.

“You can’t prove a damn thing.”

“There’s always some kind of paper trail,” said Nina. “Cheque stubs, falsified taxes, cash withdrawals… and I have my nice friend Dirtyhands to work that out for me.”

“For a healthy fee from your Queen, I’ll consider it,” murmured Kaz.

“Didn’t think the Ravkan crown employed Barrel thugs for their dirty work,” Artem muttered, eyeing Kaz.

“I hear lots of important, powerful, lazy people want Dirtyhands to do their jobs for them,” said Kaz, tugging on his gloves. He shouldn’t have tried to dispel Artem’s influence; he was feeling the low lap and tug of the harbour waters as punishment. “In this case, however, I have a personal stake in the situation. You wronged me, so I wrong you, ja? We know it was you, at the docks. How’s the arm?”

“This isn’t about that.” 

“The fantastic thing about the human imagination is that it can be about whatever you want,” said Kaz.

“No– I know you–” he twisted his head. “You’re the Corpsewitch. The Ravkan Queen’s sent you.” 

Corpsewitch? That was new. Kaz wasn’t sure he liked it, but there was no real time for linguistic quibbles. He leant hard on his cane.

“That’s right,” he said, digging his teeth into the tip of his tongue. “Nina’s come to either take you to trial, or kill you and give you a nice, fitting grave in one of the canals. Maybe if you’re lucky, she’ll even let your skeleton be useful in a fight, in a few years. Won’t that be nice?” 

“Don’t spin to me, boy,” snapped Artem. “I suppose you think you’ve come out on top, now you’ve got your claws on the meddlesome Tidemaker that dared threaten you. What will you do if I tell the jury about your… talent?”

“Laugh, like the rest of the public gallery, I imagine,” said Kaz. He knew no one would entirely believe it, and certainly no one who had any sway with a jury would waste the time, effort, and probable injury to try and confirm it. It would be written off as the desperation of a traitor. 

“Kaz Brekker, the famous con artist,” snorted Artem. He was fast exposing himself as having some kind of mad fixation on Kaz. What was new? “Conning even himself. The rest of the Tides think you’re mad… but I don’t think you’re mad.” 

“I’m so thankful for your confidence in my sanity,” said Kaz.

Artem scoffed. He said;

“I think you’re scared. I don’t know why– but I know the look of a man afraid. I saw it when we were in the harbour. I think you avoid your gift because you’re afraid; I think you hate us because you’re afraid of us. I think you meddle with Inej Ghafa’s sailing patterns because you’re terrified of what will happen if you don’t. I think you’re a coward, Kaz Brekker.” He leant forward, and Kaz watched distantly at the droplets of blood on Artem’s abdomen and legs shrivelled and dried at his command. “Perhaps for she and I, it’s about the Ravkan ships. But it’s not about that, for you. What is it? You can tell a condemned man and a Corpsewitch. Was there someone you couldn’t save? It’s very common…”

There was a terrible pause. 

Nina was staring at him, apparently unsure what to do. Kaz stared at Artem, feeling the cold lap of the harbour waters all around him. He flexed his hands in his gloves. 

“Nina,” he said. “Let go of him.”

The first punch broke Artem’s nose; the second dislodged something in his jaw. Artem tried to raise his arms, but Kaz was already on him, wrestling him to the cobbles and raining blows on him so viciously that he felt the joints of his fingers creak.

“Kaz,” said Nina, but Kaz barely heard her, lost in the distant roar of dark water and the creeping cold harbour. He hauled Artem up and jammed him against the wall. Nina tried again; “Kaz!”

“Do you know how it feels to drown, Tidemaker?” Kaz hissed, face inches from Artem’s, his lapels bunched in his fists. “Surely you don’t. Isn’t the water your friend? Doesn’t it do your bidding, bend to your will? It would never betray you like that, would it? No. No– you might watch victims of shipwrecks and accidents and mishaps go under the waves every day with the Tides, but it would never happen to you– would it?” He shook him. “Would it?!” 

“No–” gasped Artem. “Let go, Brekker–”

“Would you like to learn?” Kaz said. “Would you like to know the iron weight of water in your lungs? The cold hand of the ocean pulling you down forever, no seabed in sight? I could do it, you know. I wouldn’t even have to use that gift you claim I hate– I could just take you out on a boat and throw you out into the open sea with your hands tied. The Tides wouldn’t help you– they know you’re a traitor. They say there’s sharks in those waters. I’ve seen them. Great grey beasts, with those black, lifeless eyes, just like mine…”

Artem’s eyes were wide and terrified. Kaz had been right. There was a lot to prey on, with Tidemakers– and he knew, because he had lived exactly what they were afraid of. Their gift powerless to protect them; the open maw of the force that they’d used to control, now coming to swallow them whole. The Tides threw their weight around with Barrel rats and reigned over Ketterdam from on high, exerting godlike power over the miserable sailors and poor travellers below. They lived without experiencing any of the suffering, any of the struggle, living quaint lives in government-funded secrecy– they didn’t know what it was like to fight, to suffer, to sink. And still he had the audacity to take bribes? As it it wasn’t enough?

“So you can choose,” Kaz said softly, “Never let it be said that Dirtyhands isn’t fair. Either go quietly with Nina like a good boy, and don’t even think about using those little talents to spring yourself from Hellgate… or she’ll give you up to me, and we can have a little sail out into the harbour. What do you think?”

Artem stared at him, mouth quivering.

“I think you’re a monster,” he said hoarsely.

“Too bad it took you so long to figure that out,” said Kaz quietly.

“I’ll– I’ll stand trial.”

“Thought so.” Kaz said softly. “Pity, really.” 

He gestured, and Nina came to grab her brand-new prisoner.

“What the hell was that, Brekker?” said Nina, as they made their damp way back to the Van Eck mansion later that night, Artem delivered into the custody of the Stadhall jail, and the two Tides who had been waiting there. Nina was sure Kristopher and Viviane would have a lot to say to their traitor member.

“Persuasion,” said Kaz, collar turned up sharply around his face.

“No, Kaz,” said Nina. “That was personal.”

“Everything is personal, in the Barrel. And he did have me jumped, if you remember?”

“But there’s no way you–”

“Enough, Nina.”

“Was he right?” Nina pressed. “Was there someone you couldn’t–”

“Would you rather he lived to threaten Inej another day?” snapped Kaz, turning abruptly on her. “He was taking bribes, Zenik; it was only a matter of time before some slaver’s associate slipped him ten thousand in cash to get rid of the Wraith and her captain, and make it look like an accident. Kerch’s reliance upon forced indenture and slavers won’t vanish overnight. Inej is up against real governmental and economic powers. It was necessary he never dared to use those wretched powers again, and that a healthy fear of taking bribes was put into the other blue cloaks.”

Nina paused.

“I hadn’t even thought he might–” she stopped, throwing him a narrow look. “Kaz, exactly how much time are you putting into safeguarding Inej’s mission? Sturmhond said something about–”

“Enough time,” said Kaz brusquely.

“You are afraid,” said Nina quietly.

“Call it prudence, call it paranoia, call it a care for the amount of money I spent on that schooner, call it fear if you must– but for Ghezen’s sake understand that I never do anything without a reason,” Kaz snapped. 

They walked in silence, for a while. Nina sighed.

“You certainly have some creative courtship methods.”

“Can it, Zenik.”

“Are you going to tell her that’s why you took such an interest in the job– and that you’re probably going to rig his trial, too?”

Kaz ignored her. Nina snorted, rubbing her hands together to try and warm them up a bit.

“...well. Job well done, mostly. Thank you, Kaz– you’ve saved us a headache.”

“Saved myself one, too.” 

Nina rolled her eyes. “Yes, and that. I imagine you’ll get a healthy payment in a few weeks, once the trial’s wrapped up…”

“I prefer my payments to be tangible, not imaginary.”

Nina snorted. “It’ll be as tangible as you can possibly desire. Cold hard kruge. Fresh and crisp. Not that you want for it, these days.”

Kaz grunted in vague acknowledgement. Nina considered him.

“Kaz, look–”

“I’m not discussing anything about it with you.”

“ I don’t know why I bother,” muttered Nina. “But really– if you do ever want to know anything… or pursue anything… you can ask me about it.”

Kaz was silent, but he didn’t strike the suggestion down. He knew, realistically, that he would never go further than the tidal patterns at Fifth Harbor, and that he would live in hiding and probably die prematurely for a Grisha… but he lived a high-stakes, high-danger life anyway. What was a little more risk? A little bit extra to conceal? But he felt he somehow owed Nina the dignity of considering it.

Nina said;

“Want to get really drunk at Wylan’s dinner table and expense, tomorrow?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” said Kaz.

Nina laughed, and they slogged down the foggy street into the alley that cut into the Geldin District.

“Thought everyone was asleep,” said Kaz, later, just as the sun was rising.

“I don’t always sleep well,” admitted Wylan, in the doorway of his office, which Kaz had let himself into. “Sometimes I get up to work, instead.”

Not surprising. No doubt this house’s association with Jan Van Eck was slow to fade. And Barrel-seeded paranoia did not stay strictly within the Barrel, so Kaz was told. Men that did get out of the scraps and the slums and the struggle tended to always be looking over their shoulders. Not that Kaz would know.

“...but I see you’re already doing that for me,” Wylan added.

“I’m not doing anything for you,” said Kaz, as Wylan joined him at the desk. “I’m gathering information for my own means.”

“Of course,” said Wylan, taking the galley deeds from him. “Which is why you’re looking at the plans for… refurbishments for my trading galleys?”

“It’s always useful to see what the merchant classes consider cutting-edge,” said Kaz. He tapped the third illustration thoughtfully. “What did the men at the boatyard tell you about this?”

“They said the oldest ones of this model were no longer properly streamlined, I think. I was going to ask Inej and Specht about it.”

“Do,” said Kaz. “Else they won’t be seaworthy for imports. The tidal patterns around Third, Fourth, and Fifth Harbours put pressure on starboard sides, and that’s where the wood has warped on your galleys, so–” he saw Wylan staring. “Things that I know, because I’m a smuggler and I own a huge share in Fifth Harbour, obviously.” 

Wylan blinked innocently.

“Of course.”

I should have left him at that chemical plant, thought Kaz, not for the first time. Wylan was an unfortunate inconvenience of his own making.

“I was expecting some moralising from you, Merchling,” said Kaz snippily, turning back to the papers. “No nice, bracing sentiment about being your truest self? No suggestion of packing me and Jesper off to Os Alta like merch sons to boarding school?”

“No,” said Wylan, peering at the sketches. Kaz raised an eyebrow minutely, and Wylan caught the look. “Even if I wanted to give you and Jesper the same advice, I know you wouldn’t take it. I told Jesper to be honest because I thought it would be best– and I thought he might listen. Getting honesty from you is like wringing blood from a stone.”

“I’m very honest,” said Kaz. “I tell you all the truths that you don’t want to hear.”

“Kaz, your number one job is conman. No one could accuse you of being an honest man in any sense of the word. You only tell the truth when it suits you. But if we want to be even adjacent to that term, we have to be honest about everything.”  

Again, true. Kaz tested the weight of his cane in his palm thoughtfully. 

“I have to admit, though,” said Wylan. “I’m a bit surprised.”

“By what?”

“That you’ve never used it to keep the Dregs in line. I’d have thought you’d think it was a good way of exerting discipline, at the very least. Or mythmaking. Something.”

As astute as Wylan had become, there were still some things he didn’t understand. Perhaps that was for the best. 

“I believe I once spun your father an elaborate metaphor about safes and people,” said Kaz. “Right before I tried to attack him, as I recall.”

“Happy memories, truly...” muttered Wylan. 

“Well, Wylan– using some farcical Grisha gift to control my gang would be like taking a sledgehammer to a child’s piggy bank. I can’t rule the Dregs with something as tangible as a Tidemaker’s powers and a bit of brawling. There are rules and associations that come with that– Tidemakers can do this, but they can’t do that. I need them to suspect I’ve got supernatural powers, to fear I can do things beyond the ordinary man’s skillset– not know. Men fear the unknown, Wylan, not the tangible and the logical. The Barrel fears me because they don’t know who I am, where I came from, or what I’ll do next. That’s a thousand times more powerful than anything I could do with water. Why do you think I said what I said to Hanna Smeet, or Geels, or Rollins? Why do you think I kidnapped Alys?”

“Because you’re awful?” said Wylan wryly.

“Because the best leveller isn’t Grisha power, or a gun, or a knife. People’s own minds are the thing that brings them low ,” said Kaz. “I told you, didn’t I? It’s shame that eats men whole. I trade in secrets, blackmail, and threats because they’re psychological, Wylan. Paranoia is everything, and it’s my job to plant it. Most gang bosses will create fear with enforcers and guns– or Grisha– and consider that job done. But I know that withholding information makes people come to their own conclusions. A single implication from me can do all the work that three grunts and their clubs could do for anyone else. No one caves faster than someone who’s afraid of what might happen– whether that’s to them, or someone else. I’m the monster under children’s beds; I’m the gambling man’s debtor; I’m what lowly gang grunts check over their shoulders for at night.” 

He said, ironically; “I am the Horseman of Volatility, that great concept that causes panic inside and outside of the Exchange. Dishonesty is my sword and Rumour my spurs, Merchling. Keeping my Grisha aptitude quiet is just an extension of that.”

“...it does make sense,” admitted Wylan. “Jesper said he thought it was probably something like that. And– well. It’s not like you’re any more forthcoming about anything else.”

Kaz gestured in the affirmative.

“But we’re not your gang,” continued Wylan slowly, eyes on the plans. “Not anymore. And I think– well, I think we wish that you’d just be a bit more honest with us.”

He glanced at Kaz warily. Kaz stared at the desk, too.

“I know you do,” he said. 

Wylan waited for more, but there was none. He sighed, and put down the papers.

“Well. I’m going to go back up– but if you think of anything interesting I might want to know from those, tell me.”

Kaz nodded. 

“Thanks, Kaz…”

Once he was gone, Kaz sat down in Wylan’s desk chair and stared at the ship plans, thinking about the last time they’d had a little heart-to-heart in the Van Eck mansion.

We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole. 

Perhaps he was a hypocrite; masking his fear and shame with his unknowable reputation. It certainly wouldn’t be a new thing, he could admit that. Had he attacked Artem because he knew, deep down, that he was right? 

No. He’d just said it himself– paranoia, fear of what might happen. It was something older, more primitive. 

Kaz stared at the plans until the words Fifth Harbor blurred and doubled in his vision. In the end, it was just grief. The same grief that had powered his pursuit of Rollins and his rise through the Dregs– the same grief that had given him the strength to crawl out of the sea at Fifth Harbor and vow revenge, that had given him the idea for the sugar silo heist, that had made him slip and call Jesper by his brother’s name… and a thousand other things. Everything fed back to Jordie. Kaz let it be that way. But Grisha power fed off of connection to life, the making at the heart of the world. Perhaps he was too stalked by death to make a good Grisha. What had he ever made except more suffering? More death?

Maybe he should ask Nina about it… or maybe he shouldn't. Maybe he should go and get a glass of something strong and never talk about it again. 

Of course, that wouldn’t be possible– because now they all knew, they’d bring it up. Kaz had not liked Wylan’s reminder of where they all stood, now. He understood, logically, that none of them were still members of the Dregs, of course he did– but he had continued to act around them as if they were, more or less. That was where they’d all begun, and Kaz had yet to entirely stop seeing them that way. Why was he incapable of changing his perspective on them? Why could he not accept that they were his friends, instead of his crew?

Kaz stared at the plans for a long, long time.

Then he sat up, stole Wylan’s best pen, and started making changes to the calculations of tidal strength and current patterns.

“If you tell Zoya Nazalensky anything about this, I’ll get back into the Ice Court and push you down the first convenient set of steps I find.” said Kaz, as Nina and Inej prepared to leave a few days later, at first light.

“Oh Kaz, how gothic,” said Nina. “Practically decadent. Sprawled at the foot of a beautiful spiral staircase with my gown and hair arrayed about me, a tasteful pool of blood spread from my cracked skull? You do have style, I admit.” 

Kaz stared at her. She cracked a grin. 

“Very well, Brekker– but I want to be assured that if you do decide to get rid of me, I will get an extremely grand funeral.”

“Closed-casket and three attendees.”

“Six.”

“Five.”

“Hmm. Four, I don’t want you there to deface the coffin.” said Nina. She held out her hand, and they shook ironically on it, with much aplomb. “Goodbye, you bastard. Don’t ignore my letters.”

“Make them interesting and I might think about replying.”

“All the court secrets you pretend not to care about, that you could possibly want…” said Nina. She winked and left to go and see Jesper, leaving Inej. Kaz eyed her, not sure if Nina had brought up his dual motive around the Tidemaker to her. But if she had, Inej didn’t mention it, which he was grateful for. 

“How are the tides looking?” she said, carefully sliding her hand into his.

“How should I know?” said Kaz, biting the edge of his tongue until he tasted blood, glad the wind was making his bare hand numb. Alive. He would force himself to manage this, since he’d not see her for another two months. “You’re the sailor, my sweet…”

“In my opinion, they’re nothing out of the ordinary.” said Inej pointedly.

“How serendipitous that is,” said Kaz, who had had earache since he’d arrived at the docks and was going to have it until he left. He flexed his jaw. “Especially because sailors on the way up seemed to think the currents were stronger than usual. Isn’t it nice that they seem to have improved for you?”

“I knew you weren’t going to stop,” said Inej, but there was no real disapproval in it. Her eyes were bright. Kaz made her a shallow but deliberately pompous bow, almost ashamed by how much he wanted for her approval.

“Until next time, Captain…”

Inej cracked a smile. Kaz steeled himself, turned her hand smoothly, dropped a quick kiss onto her cold knuckles, and let her go. Inej laughed, the wind whipping loose bits of her hair into her face.

“Kaz, it’ll be fine.”

“Yes, it will,” said Kaz. “Off you go, to your uniquely stabilised ship…”

Inej squeezed his arm, smiled at him in a way that Kaz would be hoarding for the next two months– and then noticed Nina hovering nearby and paused uncertainly.

"Kaz, that was pointed insolence,” said Nina, with her great gift for diffusing situations. “Inej might be our princess, but I’m actually a princess.”

Inej mumbled something and tried to pull her away– but Kaz said, contemptuously;

“In that coat? You don't look the part.”

“Now you listen to me, you miserable Barrel rat–” 

Inej seized Nina’s arm and towed her off towards the Wraith, so she had to content herself with a middle-finger-reliant gesture and sweeping haughtily off towards the gangplank. Kaz allowed himself a smirk, watching them all boarding, and Inej’s crew hauling up the gangplank. Wylan shook his head, chin tucked into his collar.

“We have such fun together,” said Kaz, seeing the look.

“If fun falls under rocketing each other’s blood pressures to incredible heights and having a fight on my landing– yes,” said Wylan. “You have such fun.”

Inej was already perched in the rigging close to the stern, sure-footed as ever, shouting orders to her crew–

The ship pitched very slightly, a little unnaturally. Nina, at the stern deck, grabbed the railing and mouthed, pointedly, while Inej laughed; FUCK YOU TOO, KAZ!

Still, she failed to hide the curl of a smile. Kaz snorted and turned his collar up as she disappeared further onto the ship, shaking her head. She’d gotten what she wanted; a man in custody, an answer for Zoya, and several spats with each of them under her belt.

Inej turned on the rigging and saluted them, and Jesper and Wylan returned it enthusiastically. Kaz nodded once, and the ship lurched forwards as the sails caught.

“You’ve got a nosebleed,” said Jesper, watching the ship pull out of port.

“Good,” said Kaz, locating his already blood-stained handkerchief. “Means it’s working.”

“Kaz–” Jesper stopped, then tried again– “You know I’ve been trained a bit. I can tell you how not to–”

“Let’s go to the Kooperom.” said Kaz abruptly. “I’ll pay.”

“Oh.” Jesper paused, and glanced at Wylan, who shrugged. “I mean, say less, but I know you’re only offering to get me to shut up– and I won’t, Kaz, you’ll make yourself anaemic, or something…”

They turned and found a Tidemaker standing in the entrance to one of the alleyways, watching them. Jesper’s hands instantly found his guns, but Kaz stayed still.

“...is that a threat?” said Wylan.

“I’d call it an acknowledgement,” said Kaz.

He tipped his hat to the blue cloak and turned to leave the harbour by another route. The Tidemaker turned away without any kind of gesture at all. Perhaps in the future they’d decide they were sick of him, again– most people did. Tolerance for him waxed and waned like the tides. For now, things hadn’t changed as much as Kaz had feared they might. And for now, the Council of Tides would leave him to do what he would. 

And he always had work to do.