Work Text:
Kaz was painting the front door again.
November was, by all rights, far too cold for such work. She would have put a stop to it if she’d known, but Kaz was—as always—up before her. He must have stripped all the old varnish before the sun was fully risen and painted the first layer before breakfast.
The last time the doors had been given a fresh coat must have been… oh, two summers before Briar and her father arrived at Blackthorn Cottage. Inej had prepped the evening before, and painted at dawn to allow enough shade for comfortable work and enough sun for a quick draft. At that time of year, a through-draft from a propped door was welcome.
Not so much now, when the first frost had appeared three weeks ago and every day dawned a little colder. On mornings that she had business in the village, Inej walked with Briar as far as the school lane, her daughter’s nose pink-ended and the breeze whispering promises of snow. It was the season for hunkering down, for building fires and endless samovars of dark tea. Not for scrubbing, and sanding, and painting.
Inej wasn’t sure what had brought it on. She had tried asking Kaz, only to be met with evasive, short responses. Her attempts at brewing had taken twice as long with her burners guttering in the wind, and both the shawls she wrapped around herself became stained with cranberry tea. By lunchtime, she was so short on patience that she merely left Kaz bread and cheese on the table and tromped to the village in her sticky layers, muttering her frustrations to the nipping winds.
Her patients’ relief to see her and their continued improvements slowly erased the morning’s irritation. By the time she stopped by the grocer’s for twine, she felt the incident behind her.
And it was, until Mr Baade asked her if “that tall one—Brekker” had been successful with the door.
Inej frowned, turning towards the shopkeeper with a ball of twine in each hand. “He came to buy the paint today?”
“He had me open up early just so he could get it.” Mr Baade shook his head. “Seemed in a tearing hurry. Only told me he needed it for your door. I thought something must have happened.”
Inej stumbled over a response and paid up without much thought. She was halfway home before she even really realised she’d left the village. Her thoughts were all tied up in wonderings about what could possibly have happened to make Kaz so determined to paint a door today—problems at work, sudden domestic guilt?
Kaz didn’t do much around the cottage—he didn’t have many hours to spare, for a start—but generally he tried to help out where he could. Sometimes it was by her request; usually he offered, having learnt from their first years together that Inej preferred foreknowledge of disruptions to the running of Blackthorn Cottage. He hadn’t mentioned a desire to paint the doors.
There was one reason that would prompt such quick action. Inej sifted through all the other possibilities, giving each due consideration, but in her gut, she suspected the true answer.
She didn’t want to look at it. Such ugliness was not something she wanted anywhere near her innocent daughter, who could go through life untainted by such grime.
Kaz, though—he was always observant. She had seen him twitch around when Mr de Wit made an ugly comment to her at the market. At a village dance Briar had been excited about for weeks, Mrs Reinbach refused to let her daughters join Inej and her coven. She had tried to laugh it off, to not let Briar see the hurt, to ignore the narrowed eyes from across the floor. Afterwards, she had excused herself and found a spot away from the party to rest, and Kaz came to find her, offering her a drink and asking quietly if she was alright.
Inej turned onto the final approach home with trepidation rising in her throat. She had never thanked him for that. He had never brought it up again. But now—if Kaz’s whirlwind of painting was indeed caused by hateful graffiti on the door of her own home, would their relationship of equals become lopsided? The Suli had always stood tall against prejudice, choosing their battles and staying strong together. Kaz seeing this vulnerability… it made her want to run into the woods, to grow a wall of thorns around her home, to erase all his knowledge of such hatred against her people and their trade.
She did none of those things. She stomped onwards and found her front door propped open, its bright new sheen gleaming in the dregs of afternoon sun, and no sign of Kaz. Her instincts, however, told her where he might be, and she let her feet carry her around to the back of the cottage.
Sure enough, Kaz worked away at her back door, painting it the same as the front. Inej approached on silent feet, enjoying catching the normally hypervigilant witch unawares for once. Six feet away, she leaned against the wall and took a moment to admire him. He had stripped down to his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, his hair was tousled from the work, and he wore a stern expression of concentration.
“Hi,” she said eventually.
Kaz startled, twisting to look at her over his shoulder. “Hi,” he returned, voice somewhat croaky from disuse, and held up the brush accusatorily. “You nearly had me painting your wall, too.”
Inej pushed off the wall, stepping towards the doorway to examine his work. “You’re too careful for that.”
Kaz watched her assessing with wary eyes, paintbrush held out to the side. She ignored him and examined the door. A small, churlish part of her had wanted to find a mistake she could point out, some slip-up she could rectify, but there was nothing. It was neat brushwork, on a clearly well-prepared door.
“It’s good work,” she reluctantly admitted after a moment.
He nodded in thanks, eyeing her warily. “You seem less… upset.”
She wanted to shrug and play it off lightly, make a joke about not shooing away free workmen as Nina would do. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“Why are you painting the doors, Kaz?” Inej asked tiredly.
He turned toward the door, setting his jaw. “I wanted to,” he said.
Inej cocked her head. He could have at least come up with a more believable excuse. “In November. Really.”
“It’s a family tradition,” he said lightly, leaning against the wall with weight off his bad leg. “Every fifth year.”
It was an enchanting suggestion, even if she suspected it was a fib. Still, Kaz’s insistence that his motives were unrelated to her—and the idea of a small, dark-haired and dark-eyed child haphazardly sanding a door—took a little of the weight from her spirit.
“Is this colour a tradition, too?” she asked, nodding to the door.
Kaz frowned. “It was all they had in the shop that early.” He paused, then asked uncertainly, “do you like it?”
Inej surveyed the door. She had been rather fond of the maroon colour with gold detailing that used to adorn her doors, but it had been a long time since they had looked as vibrant as the caravan designs she had modelled them after.
The deep green that Kaz had bought would take time to adjust to. In the weak-tea sunlight through clouds, her front door looked magnificent in its resplendent new coat of green. The back door was heading that way too. It looked smart and welcoming, simultaneously at one with the forest she loved and nobly separating the three of them from the elements. It would do very well.
“I like it a lot,” she told him, and received a small smile in response.
Suddenly, she was glad that Kaz had taken this burden on after all. Inej surveyed the door once again before edging past it towards the kitchen, carefully holding her skirts out of the way to avoid wrecking Kaz’s careful job and a good skirt too.
“Do you want any help?” she asked as an afterthought, pausing on the threshold, but he shook his head.
“Has to be done solo. Tradition dictates.”
Inej placed her basket on the kitchen table, noting the mere crumbs that were all that was left of the loaf of bread. “I see tradition doesn’t dictate the painter goes hungry,” she called.
“Correct.”
“What does tradition say about cups of tea?”
“They’re encouraged, actually.”
“Great.” Inej set the kettle heating before beginning the search for the perfect cup that she knew was floundering in the back of her cabinet somewhere. It was a similar green to the paint Kaz had chosen, albeit chipped by Jesper—there!
Satisfied, she reached for it, already planning what they could do after tea. Something nice with Briar, so it was like an extra Zondag. She’d be home soon, but the house was freezing. While the tea steeped, she could build a fire in the parlour. Then everyone could warm themselves while they read Briar’s favourite book of Ravkan fairy tales.
A chilly breeze swept through the kitchen, setting the doors banging and curtains rustling. Inej pulled her shawl tighter around herself and smiled.